City Council Meeting 3-13-19

The Grand Marais City Council met Wednesday at 6:30 at the City Council Chambers amidst rain and mild temperatures for the first meeting of March.

If you would like to watch the meeting, the full video can be found HERE.
*A note and a thank you to Communications Director Patrick Knight for linking topics to specific times in the video (expand the notes on the video and you will see what I mean). That is just another way to make sure that the work of the Council is more accessible...

The Council was called to order without Councilor Moody, who is on his spring vacation. We hope he's having a good time and safe travels.

There were no public present for public comment, so the Open Forum was opened and closed and the meeting proceeded.

The Consent Agenda had the typical three items on it (Approval of Agenda, Approval of Previous Meeting Minutes, Payment of Bills) and an additional item, which was the renewal of the Curling Club's Consumption and Display Permit, which allows them to have intoxicating beverages present and consumed at club events. The Consent Agenda was passed unanimously.

The next, and one of the more significant items on the agenda, was a discussion on Calendar Parking brought before the Council by both the deep snow conditions of the winter and the County Highway Engineer, Krysten Foster. Ms. Foster presented a number of ways that snow emergency/snow removal scheduling/calendar parking has worked in other communities and provided a draft ordinance for a way that Grand Marais could implement such an ordinance to address the complications experienced in removing snow from City streets.

I will not spend a lot of time on the examples that wouldn't be ideal for Grand Marais, but to mention that they included having someone need to declare and communicate a snow emergency when parking restrictions would be implemented or to have there be a different mechanism that would put the parking restrictions in place. It was deemed that this would be onerous to residents of the community and that a communicated plan for calendar parking would be a better solution.

What is Calendar Parking?

Simply put, it is an ordinance that requires that vehicles/trailers (no matter who's vehicle/trailer it is) be parked on a specific side of the street on specific dates. The draft ordinance brought forward by County Engineer Foster identified a schedule of odd numbered days parking on the odd numbered house side of the street and even numbered days parked on the even house number side of the street:

For Example:
My house number is 8. That means that on the even numbered dates (2,4,6,8,10,etc) I will be parking on my side of the street (east side). On the odd numbered dates (1,3,5,7,9,11, etc) I will be parking across the street on the west side of the street. Not too complicated there.

Timeframe: The ordinance also suggests a timeframe. The City doesn't need this to be in effect all year round due to snow, so dates were suggested of November 1 to April 30 assuming that these would be the dates most likely to be impacted by the necessity of snow removal.

*There is also an allowance in the draft ordinance for an exception for enforcement at night because the plows won't be going out at night. The suggested time for this exception is from 7pm to midnight, but this is not finalized and will be subject to conversation. The main point to consider with this element of the ordinance is that there will be a "grace period" at night when the plows aren't going to be out plowing where you won't get ticketed/towed if you are on the wrong side of the street.

Let's talk about that ticketed/towed part for a second:

That's part of this that makes peoples' ears perk up. No one wants to get a ticket or be towed. No one also wants their car to be plowed in or to have big chunks of frozen snow from where someone's car was plowed in to end up in their driveway... It was suggested that, early in the season, before tickets and towing would start (and before the snow piles up to significant amounts as to create problems) there would be a period of time where warnings would be given out instead of tickets to educate everyone of the expectations. At a certain time these warnings would cease and ticketing/towing would begin to ensure proper snow removal of the city streets.

**There was no decision made by the Council on this topic at this meeting. There will be more discussion at future meetings and the community will be looked to for comment. It was noted during Council discussion that this seems to be the right direction to be moving in for City snow removal. Please let me know if you have thoughts on this. I hope that I did an ok job of describing the elements of the draft ordinance...

Following that discussion the Council proofread a letter to County Chair Storlie beginning the conversations identified in the City prioritization exercise done earlier this year. That exercise identified six things that the Council will be prioritizing for the next year or so, one of those things being the renegotiation of City/County agreements.

The letter outlined this information and requested that the full Council and Commission plan a time to discuss three major agreements between the County and City. Those are:
1. Support for the operation of a Community Center-- This agreement was made to support the YMCA, but was called a "Community Center" because it was unknown at the time of its drafting what the facility would be called. Since there have been significant changes in the operation and agreements pertaining to the YMCA, the City feels that it is important to re-address this agreement as well.
2. Law Enforcement-- The City has contracted with the County Sheriff Department for law enforcement services for nearly twenty years. As the City Council renovates the City Code the necessity of having the buy in from the Sheriff Department will increase. It is the desire of the Council to have up to date ordinances that are clearly enforceable, which will include the Sheriff Department as well as potentially an enforcement method provided by the City. At any rate, this needs to be discussed and renegotiated.
3. Street Maintenance-- This ties into the Calendar Parking discussion above. The City and County have a very old agreement for maintenance of streets within the City, some of which are actually County roads and some of which are City streets. The County has the equipment to do the City streets and the City has the equipment to take care of some of the more significant County roads, as in South Broadway and Wisconsin Street. This conversation will look at that arrangement and also hammer out ownership concerns regarding some streets that have had big question marks over them, such as 4th Ave W above 5th St... Otherwise known as the Old, Old Gunflint or the street behind the Recycling Center and by the softball diamond. All of this will be on the table.
*The Council authorized the sending of this letter with some proofreading corrections.

An ongoing item on the Council agenda has been the MNDOT Right of Way Acquisition/Lease offers. At the last meeting the Council looked over the offers and had some significant questions about how the leases would impact the City's ability to maintain or improve some of the stormwater drainages that MNDOT was interested in. Since the MNDOT did not reply with an answer to these questions, the Council decided to not take any action and continue to wait on a response from MNDOT.

Next on the agenda was a two part discussion regarding some ongoing personnel work.

Firstly, last year the Personnel Committee started the process of reassessing the position of Golf Course Superintendent and brought the reassessed position to the Council for approval. These reassessments are done using a common rating system and the increase in "points" for this position reflect the position being weighed with the same interpretation of the responsibilities of the position compared to other positions in the City organization that have similar responsibilities. The reassessment also placed the Superintendent position back in the same relative position to other supervisory positions within the City organization, which is a slight reassurance that the process is working the way it should be. The Council reviewed the reassessed position and approved the new rating for the position.

Secondly, with that reassessment completed, the Personnel Committee, along with the Park Department and the Golf Course Task Force, which was populated with interested/involved members of the community, brought forward a candidate and solution for the uncertainty at Gunflint Hills Golf Course. Through the process of looking for a new superintendent the City advertised, interviewed, offered, re-offered, created Plan A/Plan B scenarios, and considered many different concepts for the operation of the Golf Course. A few items rose to the top of discussion at all levels: The course must be in tip top condition or people will not want to play it and there need to be events/incentives to encourage new players at the course. Through the search process and all of the conversation, the City feels confident that we have found a candidate that can provide all of those things for Gunflint Hills. Paul Jones was the man contracted by the City last season to fill in the gaps for turf care and was able to do great things with the condition of the course. The Council authorized the hiring of Paul for the full time position of Superintendent, which will include clubhouse activities, events, course care, and staffing. This position is a part of the Parks Department, so Mr. Jones will be reporting to Parks Director Tersteeg. The Personnel Committee explained that the starting wage for Mr. Jones is in the middle of the approved range for the position and not at the lower end of it because of his work with the course last year and his broad experience in golf course management/turf maintenance. The Council looks forward to a great season at Gunflint Hills this coming summer.

Also included in the Personnel Report was the request from the Library to hire Tom Knutson as a part-time Library Clerk. Tom has previous experience at the Library as a technician and is familiar with the clerk position, so his addition will hopefully be seamless to the operations at the Library.

On to Council and Staff Reports:

-Councilor Schulte reported that the Park Board set rates for Gunflint Hills Golf Course aimed at maintaining the golfing population and incentivizing new golfers to come up and play. If you are interested in those rates, I believe that they will soon be updated on the Gunflint Hills website. He also reported that representatives of the "Stars of the North" Music Festival are still seeking an answer regarding the necessity of a "Beer Garden" enclosure for the sale of alcoholic beverages during the festival. This conversation will be taken up by the Council when the application from the organization is made.

-Councilor Kennedy had nothing to report other than that the Planning and Zoning Commission has sent out the Request for Proposals for assistance with the rewriting of the City Zoning/Housing ordinance. It will be a little while until the proposals come back, but more on that upcoming!

-Councilor Swearingen provided the Council with a copy of the existing North House Folk School lease requesting that the Council educate itself on the contents of that agreement as North House Director, Greg Wright, will likely be coming to make his annual presentation to the Council in the coming months. Any continuation of the conversation on the lease will require knowledge of the existing contract and its stipulations. She also reminded the Council that the Administrator position for the City does not have a formal Performance Evaluation process and continues to encourage the Council to adopt and perform one. Considering that Councilor Swearingen and I compose the Personnel Committee, we will dedicate some time to this and perform this evaluation in the coming months. This also brings up the fact that the City Administrator position is the only remaining supervisory position that has not been rerated in the past few years. Conversation about whether or not this position should be rerated will be ongoing.

-My report included my presentation at a panel put together by the Cook County Local Energy Project regarding the City's Climate Action Plan, which is nearing completion and will be put out for community comment in the coming weeks. In the work that I have done with Climate Action Plan coordinator Shane Steele, whose position has been funded by a generous grant by the McKnight Foundation, many great ideas have come forward and the plan will provide Grand Marais with a plan to reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2040. In addition to this presentation and the Climate Action Plan, Coordinator Steele requested that the City accept an intern from the University of MN Duluth to help in updating the City's Greensteps City profile with all of the work that the City has done on the Climate Action Plan. This intern would work on this project as a part of his undergraduate work, thus gratis, and travel expenses for trips to Grand Marais would be handled by the Clean Energy Resource Team of MN, so the City will be getting free labor to get caught up. This is a double benefit as then Coordinator Steele can use the remaining McKnight funding for his position to participate in the vetting/iterative process and implementation of the Climate Action Plan instead of spending his time updating the Greensteps database. The Council agreed to move forward with this.
I also reported on the revision/renewal of the City's parts of the County Emergency Management Plan. Administrator Roth and I sat down and updated the different resources that the City can contribute to any Emergency Response. The plan is a crucial tool in preparedness for our community and Administrator Roth and I were impressed with how well it was written initially, requiring only minor updating.

Having no further business, the Council adjourned following that report!

As always, please let me know if you have any questions and I will do what I can to answer them.