Wednesday, February 27, 2019

City Council Meeting 2/27/19

Tonight the Grand Marais City Council met for the final Council meeting of February.

It was a very full agenda with many items that required a great deal of consideration, so without any further ado, I will get to the summary. If you would like to see the video of the meeting, it can be seem HERE.

The meeting was called to order at 6:30pm with all members of the Council present.

The Open Forum was opened and community members present were invited to address the Council if they wished. One person, Michael McHugh introduced himself to the Council as an applicant to the opening of the Planning and Zoning Commission.

The Open Forum was then closed and the Council began with the Agenda.

The first item on the agenda, as usual, was the approval of the Consent Agenda, which had the typical three items on it (Approval of the Minutes, Approval of the previous meeting minutes, and Payment of bills). The motion was made to approve the Consent Agenda and it passed unanimously.

At this time the Council took up the business of appointing members to the City Boards and Commissions. There were two openings at the beginning of the meeting and the hope was to end the meeting with less than that, which is what happened.

The first opening was on the Planning and Zoning Commission, for which there were two applicants, Michael McHugh, a teacher at the school and area resident for 14 years, and Philip Oswald, a 5 year property owner and resident of the City with a background in planning and consulting. Both candidates presented themselves as fully worthy candidates, which put the Council in a tricky position, as only one could be chosen. After some discussion and question asking, a motion was made to appoint Michael McHugh to the Commission, which passed unanimously. Thank you both Michael and Philip for your willingness to participate! There will be some exciting work being done in the Planning and Zoning Commission in the coming years, so it is great to have a strong group of people working on it.

There is currently one opening on the Park Board as well! There is some exciting work to be done there as well! If you are interested, please come by City Hall and pick up an application!

Next Fire Chief Ben Silence and Assistant Chief Aaron Mielke came before the Council to present and seek approval of the culmination of several years of their work to write down and formalize the Standard Operating Procedures for the Fire Department. The result is a 50+ page document that outlines all of the necessary information for members of the Fire Department to reference so they can understand best practices and how the Department needs to be run and how they need to be a part of that. It is very well done and it was the Council's hope that this would make the operation of the Fire Department more streamlined and clear. A major driver for putting this SOP manual together was to achieve what was mentioned above, but also to lower the Fire Department's ISO (Insurance Services Office) score. This score is a risk score that rates the emergency response ability of the area around where people live. A high ISO score is bad and will result in higher home insurance rates because there is more risk that if a fire or calamity occurs, the Fire Department wouldn't be able to respond quickly or effectively. The Grand Marais Fire Department saw its ISO score go down (from an already respectable score) after the last rescoring, and it is assumed that having this manual and better record keeping will lower the score even more. That translates to lower home insurance prices for the community.

Discussion with Ben and Aaron diverged to a few other items after the plan was approved. Councilors asked what the Fire Department's plan was for testing fire hydrants and flushing them, to which Chief Silence stated that it is his hope to work with Tom Nelson at the Water Plant to do that work in the spring, thus replacing unusable hydrants in the early summer, or as possible.

It was also discovered that the Fire Department has only 18 people on it and the more, the merrier was the sentiment. Becoming a member of the Fire Department is very easy and the commitment is worth every minute of work you have to put in. There is also compensation for your years of service.

All you need is to live within a 10 minute response time of the Fire Hall. If you are interested in becoming a member, please stop by City Hall or stop by and talk with Ben Silence at his shop.

One last thing on the Fire Department: Grand Marais relies on these people a great deal and get an incredible service from them. One piece of equipment that the Department is seeking to replace is a support truck to go out on calls with. If you have a newer truck or SUV that is in good working order that you would be interested in donating to the Fire Department, please let me know and we can make that happen!

Moving along...
Next on the Agenda was a summary of the results of the Council's Prioritization Workshop held on February 19th where the Council and the Department Heads all got together and puzzled out what the priorities of the City should be for the next few years.

The process that was used was:
1. The Department Heads provided a "State of the City" report according to their department.
2. The Council and Department Heads brainstormed, from that information and other information discussed in Council meetings, a thorough list of priorities that could be addressed in the coming years. The list that I made had 54 items on it. The list made by the Council/Department Heads had 37, after consolidating.
3. All present people voted for their top 6 priorities and those votes were tallied, giving the Council its list.

*That list had to be weighed against the Community Values that were identified in the City Comprehensive Plan. Those values are:
1. Support and Enhance Local Business
2. Encourage Expansion of Sustainable Energy Uses
3. Develop Access to Housing that All People Can Afford Throughout Their Lives
4. Expand Education for the Mind, Body, and Soul
5. Invest in Safe, People-Friendly Infrastructure that Supports Active Living
6. Enhance the Community's Deep Connection to the Outdoors, and Active Engagement of the Environment.

The Six Priorities that rose to the top were:
1. City Code Update and Enforcement-Review, update, create enforcement strategy
2. Update City/County Agreements-Start conversations to renegotiate and update agreements
3. Redevelop City Hall/Liquor Store Site-Explore all options of development, including private development, considering cost and ongoing impact to the community
4. Highway 61-Advocate for community needs before and during construction. Work with MnDot to establish maintenance agreements
5. Housing-Evaluate City programs/regulations and potential changes to address housing. Identify a strategy to invest in housing
6. Capital Improvement Plan-Continue to maintain a capital improvement plan to fund upcoming, scheduled projects and to begin planning for upcoming projects that are not yet scheduled.

There were some comments from the Council regarding the wording of these priorities, but it was clear that the Council felt that these were very important to the vitality and health of the community and these priorities were adopted by the Council.

Each of these priorities will require community involvement to be effective, so please stay tuned and the City will be reaching out for engagement on each of these.

After that, and riding on the heals of priority #3 was a draft Request for Proposals (RFP) to be sent out to potential developers of the City Hall/Liquor Store site. There were comments regarding the implications that this would have for the location of the Liquor Store, and a concern about potential parking loss, but it became very clear that the Council can't answer any of those questions/concerns until more information has been gathered. The RFP, then, becomes a very useful tool for the City to be informed of what could be possible in the City Hall space, and how that would benefit the community.

Written into the RFP were requirements that went beyond designing a cool building.
It requests:
-A summary of proposed uses for the site and market potential for those uses
-Potential unit sale/rent prices and values
-Purchase price, terms, and financing for the developer to be able to fund such a project
-Schedule and proof that the developer can achieve what is being proposed
-How the proposal will address the City's Proposal Considerations, which were drawn from the City's Comprehensive Plan and from a Council worksession that took place in 2018. They include items such as: Enhance neighborhood vitality, Create pedestrian oriented development, Provide retail and other space that compliment and enhance the balance of downtown uses, Create efficient/environmentally friendly design, and define the City's participation in the project. This was expanded to instruct any respondents to give scenarios with the City's participation (i.e. Liquor Store and/or City Hall) and without.
The RFP was approved and will be sent out. The Council will be expecting to see responses in April.

The next item on the Agenda was a very technical piece from the MnDot. MnDot wants to purchase permanent and temporary easements from the City to complete the Hwy 61 project, but there was quite a bit of confusion as to why and whose responsibility the infrastructure on these easements would be.
There are three parcels, two permanent easements and on temporary easement. Councilor Swearingen recommended that we go through them one at a time, so we started with a small strip of land in front of the Library where MnDot would like to purchase a temporary easement to complete construction on the behind the curb work for project. This one was approved with the caveat that the Council would continuously check in to make sure that the Memorial Rose Garden remained untouched by the construction. The next parcel was a temporary drainage easement on the culvert west of 8th Ave W, up by Lunds Cabins. This would not impact any private property as it is on the south side of the road and was not seen as too controversial, so it too was approved.

The final parcel was the sticky one though. This parcel defined two permanent drainage easements, one in the drainage pond west of the entrance to the Rec. Park, and one at the Community Connection spot between the Rec. Park and North House. In addition to these permanent easements, there was a temporary construction easement running along the south side of Hwy 61. Since these easements are permanent, and that may impact the City's ability to improve the stormwater drainage of those two drainages, the Council opted to table that parcel until more information could be gathered. It will likely be taken up at the next Council meeting.

If you would like to see any of these diagrams, they are in the Council packet, which can be downloaded HERE.

The final item on the Agenda was the 2nd reading of the re-zoning ordinance for the properties on the east side of 5th Ave W in Creechville. These had been zoned Recreational/Commercial via a charting inaccuracy and with the approval of the second hearing of the ordinance they were re-zoned Residential Single Family (R-1). The ordinance was adopted, so those properties are now R-1.

Council and Staff reports were surprisingly brief this meeting. The only updates were Councilor Swearingen who had a YMCA Finance meeting where they looked at ways to increase fundraising and to further balance the operational budget and I reported that Feb. 26th (his birthday) was Norman Deschampe Day in Grand Marais due to a proclamation that I made and I was thrilled to report that Governor Walz declared the 26th Norman Deschampe Day in the STATE as well. Norman would have been 66 years old and will be greatly missed.

The speech by Governor Walz is on Facebook, so if you want to watch it, you can watch it HERE.

That was it for the night. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

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