City Council - Regular Meeting

Call to order for the City of Cannon Falls City Council meeting on Tuesday June 16th 2026 if I could get a roll call please Diane Johnson here Zimmerman Chad Johnson here Epson here Nobach Cronenberger here

Montgomery. Here. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, Because I have been told that our chamber director, Carrie Lawrenson, has something going on tonight, we're going to put her right at the top. As soon as we approve tonight's agenda, she'll be the very first item. If you guys can approve that change, I would seek a motion to approve tonight's agenda. Make a motion.

Second.

Motion from Chad, second from Diane. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That carries. All right. Carrie, the floor is yours. Press the button right at the base for the green light. There it is. Thank you.

All right. I'm Carrie Lorenzen, the new chamber director for anybody that I haven't met. And just going to give you a quick update. In the last week, we've had a couple of big events. Last Thursday, we had our summer kickoff, which was a community event downtown, which given the challenges of the weather, and a lot of people being out of town for the baseball state tournament. I think we still had a good turnout. It was fun, but I also am looking for feedback. So, if people have thoughts, things we could be doing differently, ideas, things like that, happy to hear that. We also had our golf tournament yesterday. We had a beautiful day. And we had 24 teams, which was really great. And so, I think everybody had a great time. And now we're focused on kind of preparing for Q3, Q4 events, planning different things. So, I'm open to ideas that anybody has. Please feel free to reach out to me. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Carrie.

That gets us to our public input. Public input is intended to afford the public an opportunity to address concerns to the city council. Public input will be no longer than 30 minutes in total length. Each speaker will have no more than three minutes to speak. Speakers may address the topics relevant to the governance of the city. Speakers must sign up in advance, must provide their name, address, and the topic they intend to address. Comments must be on topic. respectful, pertinent to city business, and adhere to the applicable data privacy rules. Any speaker that violates these rules will be asked to sit down. If the speaker refuses to comply, they may be removed from the meeting. Speakers shall not address topics that are the subject of a public hearing. All such comments shall be made at the public hearing. The city council will not generally act on issues raised by the public input, but may choose to schedule consideration of them on a future agenda. First tonight, we got Tim Deemer. Uh, sure. It was signed up that way, but we'll switch. Uh, so Laura Lamore.

I hope I'm on topic and in the right, uh, space. Um, so, um, I came today because I'm very concerned about the data center that's being approved for Cannon Falls. And these are my concerns, resources and environmental impact. Seventy percent of Americans in polling are not in favor of these centers and mostly due to the impact that they're forced to contend with. Water shortages and contamination, light pollution from 24-7 bright lights, noise pollution that affects wildlife and peace, electrical shortages, outages and escalating utility costs. These problems are not addressed by data centers, although they could be. and communities find that they are unreachable, hidden behind layers of legal protection when promised to address the issues that are not being fulfilled. Certainty versus risk. Experts in this discussion say these data centers are being foisted on communities at a maddening pace. There are data centers proposed all around us, Faribault, Farmington, Invergrove, far more than will likely be needed. The rush is called a speculative bubble driven by desire to be in the lead, have the most, not due to actual need. These experts say that within 10 years, the majority of these centers won't be needed because the technology that's driving the construction, AI, hasn't actually gotten to the point of estimating need. Our center could very well never have an occupant for AI. because the market shrinks or because no big tech company wants to invest here. Land development companies want to, I'm sorry, land development companies like Tract are very eager to put up these centers, promising jobs, sustainability, closed loop systems, et cetera. But other communities report that once the projects get going, the commitments get dropped and communities have little to no recourse. Many cities and states are putting brakes on data centers as more is known about risk versus reward as well as the economic uncertainty of them. AI is still uncertain in and of itself. The technology continues to evolve as does how society wants to engage with it. What is known is that data centers prevent many problems. No one wants them to be their neighbor. They are resource hungry and that appetite is not sustainable. Therefore, if the technology is to be something that we do decide we want, changes will be imperative. It seems certain that data centers like the ones we're considering could be and eventually will be built in a much more moderated and sustainable way. Maybe we should put the idea on pause until more of the design flaws can be worked out and the sustainability of the industry is better known. Thanks for your time.

Thank you, Laura. Next up, we've got Tim Deemer.

I wish I could be more prepared. That's very well said. It was Tim Dahmer, Cannon Falls. I wish that was somewhere else. So the truth is what I wrote on there. It's just more and more of the truth. So I guess just to start off with, this came to me maybe in a, Waking up to this thought of, so I've got a question, maybe more questions that would have to do with my original question, or others' questions, that I would really like to ask. And that's, I could end there. I mean, I would really, really like to ask, these questions and they're not, um, maybe just to leave that hanging or thinking about this, this neat little, uh, saying I, I stumbled across, which says sometimes someone unexpected comes into your life out of nowhere And I think I would change the way this next makes your heart race and changes you forever. And what they say is, we call these people cops, police officers, law enforcement. Do they make my heart race because I'm so frustrated and this and that? And just a thought from listening to the planning commission, something Diane said. that really, I think, stands true for a lot of things. I was going to record it and play it for you about the fence issue. She says, when somebody does something wrong, maybe you can finish what you said. You don't remember saying it. No, I didn't think so. So it's a pretty easy ending. When they do something wrong, They should make it right. That's, I think, exactly the word. I may be paraphrasing.

I'm OK with that.

Yeah, you definitely said it's on record. So when somebody does it, just to them words. I got, what, less than 30 seconds left, maybe?

20 seconds.

20? I'm looking at each one of you, and it's just, Don't I don't get it So I really have some questions All right Thank You Jim Moving on presentations tonight.

We've got we're gonna start off with towards zero deaths from Anna Kelly and lieutenant Joe Berg Do you need the podium HDMI

So I was here about a year ago, so I see some familiar faces, but I'm Anna Kelly. I'm with Goodhue County Health and Human Services. Part of my role at Goodhue County is being the TZD towards your death safe roads coordinator.

And I'm Lieutenant Joe Berg with the Cannon Falls Police Department. Good to see everybody.

So we like to do these presentations to city councils just to update you on what's happening on the roadways, in your community, and around the county, and to keep the program kind of fresh in your mind and update you of what we're doing locally as well. Perfect. So if you're not familiar with Towards Your Death, the mission is that it's a comprehensive, actually statewide program that's focused on reducing roadside fatalities. So it's really focused on collaboration, so taking sides of everything that kind of comes together and making sure that we're putting efforts that are data driven and best practices and driven by research to reduce roadside fatalities. We like to say that we have a 5E approach, so it involves law enforcement, engineering, education and outreach, so that would be my position, emergency medical and trauma services, and everyone else. So we include the last E because everyone uses the roads in some way, whether you're a pedestrian, you use sidewalks, or whether you're a driver and you use the actual road. You might also notice that we use the term crashes instead of accidents. I like to include this in here because it's very intentional. We focus on preventing crashes and not focus on accidents. So we think that, All roadside crashes have some sort of prevention that can be involved, whether it's an engineering point, whether it's law enforcement, whether it's educating the driver or general public. But you can tell in our program towards zero death, we really think that zero can be attainable with everyone involved. All right, so why traffic safety matters. Last year there was 363 traffic fatalities, so deaths on the roadways due to traffic-related crashes, and there was about 30,000 serious injuries on the roadside. So every day that kind of breaks down to about 170 crashes per day in Minnesota alone, 65 injuries and almost one death every single day. So these look like numbers, but I also like to give insight that these are real lives. So one of, or anybody here might know someone that had been in a crash, someone that might have had a death related to a crash or a serious injury. And these are life altering, not just for the individual, but for the family as well. Now, our most recent statistic is today there has been 147 traffic-related deaths on Minnesota roads. I looked back year to date last year, and to this date in 2025, we were at 148 deaths. So we're about exactly where we were at last year, which is good that we're not increasing, but also our focus is to decrease more than just by one crash. So looking in the next few months by the year end to really focus on increasing our efforts to decrease those numbers. All right. I also have this graphic here. So I know those numbers can be scary, but I do come with some good news today that we're seeing overall decreases. And this is quite remarkable because we haven't seen a decrease since about 2019. So around 2020 with COVID and everything, we saw some spikes in traffic behaviors that led to more crashes. But we're now seeing an overall trend in a decrease of crashes. So total fatalities are down about 22% from 2024. So with our numbers we have in 2025. And that's the lowest we've seen since 2019. Speed-related crashes are also down 29%, which is 43% lower than 2021. And then we're seeing a decrease in unbelted crashes, distracted driving, motorcycle crashes. The one spike that we are seeing is in bicycle crashes. So if you're familiar, there was a law change in 2023 allowing bicyclists to use stop signs as yield signs rather than full stop signs. This could be a contributor. We're also seeing an increase in e-bike usage, so higher speed bicycles as well. So in 2024, that crash number was about at seven, and then 2025, it was 14, so about doubled. So that's kind of a concern for us, and we're looking at doing more bicycle safety. So I just wanted to show you those numbers so you kind of know where we're at right now.

Do you have anything to share on that?

I want to do the 100 deadliest days.

Okay, perfect. So this is another graphic that we have showing from 2017, which is about the start of this program. You can see we fluctuated some, but finally between 2024, so those last two dots, you're starting to see a dip. So that is showing that what we've been doing in recent years is working. The collaboration and efforts that we're putting in, we want to continue and make sure we're getting education, more law enforcement out there to continue to reduce those numbers. This is also a graph or a map of our county. So you can see over there is Cannon Falls. The darker the dot is, the more crashes there has been. Yellow just shows about one crash. Orange is two. So those are the only colors around Cannon Falls area. You can see... there is a handful of crashes in the Cannon Falls area. Definitely some more in other areas, but just to kind of show you overall where we've seen the most crashes. I'll pass it off to you.

So between Memorial Day and Labor Day is what we call the 100 deadliest days of summer. So we're seeing A spike in fatal traffic crashes due to increased travel and more teen drivers on the road and risky driving behavior. So during that 100-day window, Minnesota averages over 110 road fatalities. The primary factors that contribute to these tragic accidents or crashes are speeding, impaired driving, not wearing seat belts, and distraction, and distraction being cell phones, eating, or interacting with passengers. So what is our response to that is having a law enforcement presence. So working with the State Patrol, the Office of Traffic Safety, getting our officers trained on how to identify those areas and focusing on that. As you know, this spring we had a month-long focus on seat belts. We last month was focused on speeding, and we pretty much focus on everything during the 100 deadliest days. We encourage motorists to practice defensive driving, giving themselves extra time in construction zones, and ensuring that the 100 deadliest days become the 100 safest days.

Okay, and what are we doing in the area? So last year, Cannon Falls High School had a mock crash, and this involved Cannon Falls PD, the emergency services. We had education as well as state patrol come to do a presentation, just one way to get out in the community and focus on those younger We also do adult detention center presentations here in Goodhue County. So this was from last year. The next one scheduled is next month. This is because this is a population that isn't getting our general education that we're putting out to the public via social media and other tactics. But it is a population that may be getting back on the roads and at higher risk of being involved in crashes or impaired driving and seatbelt use, distraction, et cetera. So making sure that we're making behavior changes in that population as well.

So just this last week, we were able to participate in the summer kickoff, as Carrie alluded to earlier. Look at our beautiful booth. If it didn't look like that when you visited, it's because of the wind and the rain. It kind of took our booth down and blew it around the corner. But we were able to get some wind and clear sun and dry up and still interact with the public. The picture you see here is what it would be in an impairment goggles and learning how to stack cups. If you'd ask that gentleman how that was, he would say that was difficult. We actually had a couple of people that say, hey, I've never drank, what's this like? They're like, oh man, that's what it's like. Yeah, that's what it's like.

informing or enforcing the perceived harm if impaired driving was the goal.

So last year, this is pictures from the fair last year, I will have a seat belt convincer at the fair this year which will simulate a crash at five miles an hour and how important that seat belt is. We did have it at kickoff to summer last year and I think we had a pretty good education on that but we'll have it all four days of the fair so I look forward to educating the public using that device. So hope to see everybody there.

And then we do have an active social media page on Facebook, Goodyear County Towards Zero Deaths, always sharing different educational information and events and activities that are happening within the county. And then our southeast region has a TZD steering committee. If you're interested in being involved, we talk about traffic trends, updated laws, regulations, things like that. Just reach out to me and I'd be more than happy to send the invitation over. And then we also have a Goodhue County TZD Safe Roads Coalition. So Cannon Falls PD is an active member of that coalition. We also have engineers that attend, and that's where we really focus on our collaborative efforts and talking about ways to uplift education and enforcement and reduce those traffic fatality numbers. And that's all we have. Any questions?

Have you noticed, well, you brought up e-bikes, so that's kind of people, newer audiences getting into the driving, but have you noticed that change since, like, things like Tesla and the automated driving came onto the scene? Has that improved or changed anything?

I would like to think that that would offset some, but our population continues to grow, so it is a challenge for us to keep those numbers at or a decreasing value, so... All those things, although for some, when they go get a new car, what's the first thing that's going to go? Well, do I really need that? And that's where trying to regulate that and making it, hey, this is a safety item, one of our new vehicles now. It's almost hard to go over the fog line because it keeps you on the road. And then it beeped at me today because I wanted to see what this is like, and that's trying to wake up drivers. So I think these advancements are going to help save lives on the roadway. Okay. All right.

They reduce some human error. You have the fine line of technology that could fail. I haven't seen an increase of crashes because of that. I know that's, as of now, rare. But with an increase of those numbers, we might see that. But there is that human error that gets reduced with that assistive technology.

OK. Thank you.

Yeah.

Any other questions?

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much.

All right, up next we have the presentation, Tyler from ABDO Solutions for our 2025 audit.

All right, yeah, thanks for having me. So my name is Tyler See, senior audit manager at ABDO, and I'm going to go over the 2025 financial statement audit presentation. So the audit presentation is meant to be a high-level overview of the audit, so kind of giving you the main details that we feel like you should be aware of without getting too lost in the full breadth of the audit report. So I'm going to go over first of all the audit results, and then I'll go over the financial results of all your funds, starting with your general fund, moving on to your other governmental funds, enterprise funds, and I'll end the presentation with some KPIs. So our responsibility as auditors is to issue an opinion on the city's financial statements. We are issuing what's referred to as an unmodified opinion, which is a clean audit opinion, so the opinion you would be striving for in a financial statement audit. And then we also do some testing around Minnesota legal compliance throughout the course of the audit. So testing around state statutes that's relevant to the city. And this year we do have one instance of noncompliance to note, which I'll go over on this slide. So each year we do issue audit findings. And the city in 2025 received two audit findings. The top audit finding is the preparation of financial statements, which is an internal control finding. And really what this finding means is that we as your auditors not only prepare your financial statements, but we also perform the audit, which is technically an internal control issue. This has been a recurring finding, so if you've seen this presentation before, you would have recognized that finding. The second one is the legal compliance issue that I noted on the previous slide. It states statutes that when a local government entity purchases anything on a credit card, there should be an original receipt with all of those purchases whenever possible. So, you know throughout the course of our out this year We did find that there were some missing receipts and it was considered an issue with the city in 2025 So that is why we issued that finding I think the main culprit was the gas cards and not getting receipts at gas stations and things like that So now moving on to the financial results here we're looking at your general fund fund balance in comparison to the city's fund balance policy Your fund balance policy is to maintain a fund balance of 40 to 50% of your following year's budget. And what this graph shows, if you look at that yellow line, is that your general fund has maintained about 80% of your following year's budget the last couple years, so you're meeting and exceeding that general fund fund balance policy. This slide here, we're just looking at your budget to actual results in the general fund for 2025. So, on the left, you're going to see that budget. In the middle, you'll see the actual results, and on the right, you're going to see the variance for that final budget. So, your revenues came in about $150,000 over budget, mostly due to things like grant revenues and reimbursements, things like that. Your expenditures were overall very comparable with your final budget, but did come in about $30,000 over that final budget. One thing one other thing I'll point out too is that the general fund transferred out about eight hundred and forty five thousand dollars to various capital project funds building up those reserves So you'll see that on a further slide But after all that activity your general fund did increase about a hundred and fifteen thousand and that three point nine million on the bottom of the slide That's your general fund a total fund balance as of year end 2025. I Couple quick slides here showing your general fund revenues by type over the last three years. So this just shows your main source of revenue in your general fund is, of course, your property tax levy. Intergovernmental revenues are significant as well. Those would be state grant revenues, state, local, federal. And then the other revenue sources would be things like investment earnings, reimbursements, those kind of miscellaneous revenues. And then same format here, but just looking at the expenditure side over the last three years. So your main departments in your general fund would be general government, public safety, public works, culture and rec. You're mostly seeing a kind of a gradual increase most years in those departments. And then your main other expenditures actually transfers out to other funds. So transfers out to capital project funds primarily. Moving on to your other governmental funds, here we're looking at your special revenue funds. So the city currently has three special revenue funds open, and this slide just shows the change in fund balance between 2025 and 2024. So overall, your special revenue funds decreased about 50,000 between all three of them this past year. Then here, just looking at your debt service funds. So currently, the city has four bonds outstanding in the governmental debt service funds. And this slide shows the cash and assets available in each fund. The bonds outstanding as of 12-31-25. And then the bottom half of the slide shows your debt service obligation from 2026 to 2034. And in 2034 is when the last of these four bonds will mature. Now looking at your capital project funds. So city has numerous capital project funds open as of year end 2025. And again, this shows the change in fund balance between 2025 and 2024. So overall your capital project funds increased about 1.4 million and a lot of that due to general fund transfers and so building up those reserves for future capital projects. So now your enterprise funds. So the enterprise funds are gonna have a format like this where the top half of the slide is gonna show your operating activity over the last four years. So your operating revenues, operating payments, and debt payments. And then the bottom half of the slide shows your cash balance in each of your enterprise funds. and that black line is kind of an industry standard target balance for the water fund it's the your following year's debt service payment so the water fund pays off the bonds as well plus six months of operating costs is that minimum target balance so in the water fund you're meeting and exceeding that target balance but the other thing to keep in mind with these enterprise funds is the need for capital within those funds and you know how expensive some of those utility projects can be Then your disposal fund or your sewer fund right here. So same format to this graph. And then again, you know, bottom half of the slide showing that cash balance. So again, here you are meeting and exceeding that minimum target balance. But, you know, again, that's kind of an operating target. You want to keep the capital needs in mind as well. And then here's your ambulance fund operating activity over the last four years on the top half of the slide. And then your cash balance over the last four years on the bottom half of the slide. Here that minimum target balance is six months of operating costs. You'll see an uptick in revenue from 2024. That was a one-time ambulance aid that the city received from the state. Otherwise that cash has kind of been hovering right about 400,000. And it's kind of right at that six month balance target. And then your stormwater fund here, so kind of similar story as the other funds, you are exceeding that target balance there. And your recycling fund as well, I think this one's kind of come up in recent presentations, but that recycling fund continues to build up cash and is still well above that target balance as well. Then this one here just goes over your total cash and investments on hand as of year end, the last three years. So your overall cash balance this past year did increase to about $16.4 million, most of your cash being in your general capital, debt service, and enterprise funds. And so here's the key performance indicator section of the presentation. So what we do here is we're comparing the city of Canaan Falls to California. Class 4 cities, which is cities of population 10,000 or less all across Minnesota, and then other cities in Goodhue County. For some of this data, like tax rate, we do have comparison data up until 2024, but some of this other data, we have to look back a couple years for the most recent finalized data that we have. So for like tax rate and really taxes per capita, probably slightly above that class four city statewide average, but then probably slightly below the Goodhue County average if we're looking at those two, but pretty comparable on all. And then this is, we call this slide the tax rate mix. This one's kind of meant to show like what a taxpayer would see on a tax bill with all the different you know, tax payments they make or different tax rates they'd see. So just showing the full picture between the city, county, school, and special district tax rate. Then here you're looking at long-term debt per capita. So again, comparing Cannon Falls to Class IV in cities in Goodyear County. So here your debt per capita, you have been steadily paying off that debt and below the average for really both those peer groups there now. And then here what we're looking at is current expenditures per capita and capital expenses per capita. So current expenditures basically being your operational day-to-day costs, and then capital expenditures would be like your big-ticket street projects and equipment purchases and things like that, and just kind of how you compare. So pretty comparable when we're looking at current expenses per capita. You know, it would be interesting to see that data, I guess, move forward a couple years. And then capital expenses, you know, you're going to be up and down a little bit there, because it just totally depends on when your bigger projects take place and stuff like that. So that's what I got. It'll open up for any questions on the audit.

None? All right. All right.

Does that lead us to... We do need to have a acceptance.

OK, so B1, Executive Governance Summary, we need to get a motion and approval of that.

CHRISTIE WOODLANDER.

Motion.

TODD BANDUCCI. Second. TODD BANDUCCI. Got a motion from Lisa, second from Chad. All those in favor?

CHRISTIE WOODLANDER. Aye.

TODD BANDUCCI. Opposed? That carries. We have to take a separate vote then on B2, Annual Financial Report.

CHRISTIE WOODLANDER. So moved.

TODD BANDUCCI. Motion from Diane. CHRISTIE WOODLANDER. Second. TODD BANDUCCI. Second from Chris. All those in favor? CHRISTIE WOODLANDER. Aye. TODD BANDUCCI. Opposed? Carries.

Thanks for having me. Anything else?

All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Tyler.

All right. That gets us to our consent agenda tonight.

Consent agenda items may be adopted under one motion as presented or may be removed for discussion and resolution as council business.

Item A, just and correct claims, the accounting period ending June 11th, 2026. B, meeting minutes, June 2nd, 2026, city council. C, approve CETA grant writing proposal. D, approve professional service agreement with WHKS for the 2026 lead service line replacement. Item E, approve fire department rescue one light tower upgrade to LED. Item F, resolution 2879, approving a variance for the six foot fence along a public right of way. And item G, approve permission to apply for assistance to firefighters grant and micro operations and safety grant. Is there any the council would like pulled down into council business? Hearing none, I would seek a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda. So moved. Second. Motion from Jep, second from Diane. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. Gets us to tonight's council business. Item A, Cannon Falls Mall Assessments. John.

Thank you, Mayor. So this was handed out to you and then emailed late. Some of the items weren't there, and then I was on vacation last week to get the resolution and memo pulled together. So I apologize for that not getting out earlier to you, but we did talk about this in finance committee and did kind of touch base on it at the last council meeting. So essentially what we have today is a resolution that is committing the city to working towards a settlement agreement with the potential buyer for the Cannon Mall property. The Cannon Mall property has a settlement agreement that was delivered from an arbiter back in 2001 for when that area of town was annexed and the water and sewer and street improvements went in. There were that property was very large, but kind of broken up into different chunks. So there was a lot of different components to the settlement agreement that were put into place. The one that lingered, most of it actually has been paid off because different portion of the property is sold. and other parts were paid off over over time but one of the elements that is still lingering is what are called the deferred assessments so these were portions of the property that were undeveloped at that time still undeveloped today and the way the settlement agreement was written was that the property owner was not subject to paying those assessments until the time in which the properties developed and which then they would become payment, they would be due. So those properties remained undeveloped. However, the settlement agreement also stated that the interest would be accruing from the time of the agreement until the property developed. So since they weren't developed and it's been 25 years or so, Since that took place, the accrued interest on the books interest for this is pretty significant, over $450,000. So as property has sold, what is one of the requirements is that the assessments need to be paid. and paid in full. So in this instance, we're in a situation in which those assessments that are due the liabilities for, for them exceed kind of the value of certainly the undeveloped land. Um, and that is problematic for any potential buyers for the property because they're paying off a huge sum of money. That's mostly long term interest accruals, uh, built up over time in which that's going to prohibit them from developing, um, the property in the future or maintaining the property in the future. Uh, so in this instance, uh, we do have prospective buyer. Uh, I, I won't speak yet to kind of their specifics, but we have, uh, they do have other properties, uh, like the mall of other large commercial assets that they've, they've purchased. I do have familiarity with the work that they've done in a previous city I worked for. Um, so they do come with a reputation, a positive reputation of, of owning property like this, maintaining it and using it for commercial purposes. Their intent is to maintain and support any of the existing tenants that are currently in the property. They have not indicated to us that they want to kick anybody out or change anything. So with that, but in order to facilitate the purchase and do so in a timely fashion, they're asking us for a resolution for these certain commitments. So Laura helped and team helped me tremendously last week when I was out to kind of confirm with the potential buyers these terms. So specifically it's that we would eliminate the accrued interest and ask for the principal payment of our principal to be of $118,525 to be paid over 10 years at a 5% interest rate. If they pay it back earlier, there's no penalty on those payments. They would have to submit to us a commitment that they're going to file a building permit to make improvements on the property. Something like the roof will deal with more of the specific terms. I had a meeting with the attorney today just on how do we ensure that it's held accountable and followed through upon, but they have committed that they are doing that work. I've actually already seen people on the roof doing assessments and giving them proposals for those costs. And then additionally the private road, um, 64th Avenue path that, that extends north and south between Rancho Loco and the, um, Hickory drive that, um, that would be conveyed over to the city and that the city could use that for public right away and, um, develop it for public purposes. Cause I do think that there is a need for that, uh, especially considering the developments that were of the new apartment complex and potentially another department complex. in that southern part of town and be able to interconnect them and kind of work with our active transportation plan in providing alternative routes for non-motorized traffic for people to access that area. So all of those things have been agreed upon by the potential buyer. And if we approve this resolution, this should help them to facilitate the purchase of that property, and then we'll work towards the final assessment, reassessment agreement, I guess, at a later meeting.

Questions, comments, concerns? Diane.

Okay. When we're talking about the portion of land, is it just the pathway or is it the land on either side of it?

It would just be the pathway and then likely anything west towards the highway. There's like 2.6 acres there, not the wooded area to the east.

As we're looking at new ownership of the mall and knowing that it's been kind of a struggle, I think, for... all of us who drive there to keep negotiating potholes in the parking area. Is there any thought to saying should we make like a actual public road going through the mall from like White Rock or First Farmers over to the restaurant and maybe coming down the main drive to the vet and the

That wasn't anything that we've discussed in our conversations with the potential buyer, but the potential buyer did talk about improvements to the parking lot area and that being something that they would incorporate into their plans in the future. If we would do that, we would certainly need to look at and consider previous, I think, conditional use agreements that are in place for those storage units because they do sit on the area that would be probably the most likely area for a public right-of-way.

I just look and say, you know, it sounds like a potential new owner might do a much better job, but who knows 20 years from now what's going to happen. And I know the city has had absolutely no control to, say, fill the potholes, repave the parking lot. And I do feel badly for the three businesses that are also... affected as well as renters. So, just a thought.

I was really excited to see, because just like most people, I don't know what's going on with the mall, and why they do it, and why they haven't been maintaining it, but it makes sense. They're not going to put money into it if they're going to have to pay off $500,000 to the city. So I like the idea of lowering it down to the principal. The new buyer comes in. They do the upgrades. They do the fixes. We get that where there's some type of rolling contract there where they have to meet those requirements in a deadline.

i was really excited when i read that there could be this could be happening any other questions or comments from the council hearing none i would seek a motion to approve the uh find the verbiage the cannon falls mall assessment would Do we have to approve the?

Reassessment agreement. Reassessment agreement. Resolution. Yeah, just the resolution number 2880.

So moved.

Motion from Diane. Second. It was a race to the second. I'm going to give it to Chad. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Carries.

That gets us to our reports. We already have the Chamber of Commerce. So the EDA met on June 4th. Laura, if you wouldn't mind taking that one.

The EDA, we had, well, first I want to actually introduce Blake Arneson is an intern with CETA. Blake, if you want to give a, I'll let you introduce yourself, give yourself a little brief update.

Hello, my name is Blake Arneson. I'm from Red Wing, Minnesota. I'll be interning with CETA for the next year. A little bit about myself as I did my undergrad with St. Mary's University in Business Management and Healthcare Administration. And then just recently, I graduated with a master's in business administration. And I've interned in a couple different places before this. So I have a little bit of experience, but I'm still learning every day. And I'm looking forward to helping the community. MIKE PATTERSON. Yeah. Well, welcome. Thank you, Blake.

and i'm excited to have help yeah so um but he'll be with me 20 hours a week in cannon so that'll be great um but just some eda updates at our meeting earlier this month we approved eight new purchase agreements in our new section that there's asphalt down curb gutter and they should have small utilities in, and so gas lines, I think, should be in. And then I believe that Excel should be coming in next week, I think, to get lines and lampposts up. And then I'm trying to think what else. Also, we've got WHKS putting together a proposal for us to get going on our next phases, only because I technically only have four lots left out of the 27 that aren't under some kind of contract. So we're moving right along and don't even have lampposts up yet. So we're excited about that. So otherwise, I think that's all I have for tonight.

All right. Thank you, Laura. Public Works and Park Board also met on June 4th. Jed, if you want to run with that one.

So we only had one agenda item. I brought to council three alleys that we were going to pave and then we had one citizen who had had some questions about it. When we actually had that alley surveyed and realized that it is clear off the mark, it's not even close. So what the plan is, is we are going to choose a different alley to pave in its stead this year, and we are going to straighten that alley that's just north of Minnesota Street. We'll get it straightened out this year and get some traffic on it, and it'll get paved next year.

Wonderful. We'll just do a quick around the horn. Jed, stay with you. Anything else?

Just real quick, just an update on our reconstruction project. They have been hammering through rock for the past two weeks. They Finally cleared the rock today fingers crossed. We don't hit anymore. It's been really slow going but They're past it. They're working their way towards the railroad tracks and then should be going under the the railroad tracks next week or I Can't remember which exactly it was kind of still up in the air. But anyhow But yeah, it's it is we should be we are on schedule and it is is going well It's just we knew it was gonna be tough going through all that rock. It was really really And then lastly, I just want to recognize Chuck Peterson. He is retiring. June 26 will be his last day. I sent council an invitation to his retirement party at one o'clock on June 26. So he's done a great job for the city. He's been a very dedicated, hard working, very, what's the word? dependable employee and he's gonna be missed. So he's always here. So yeah, thank you. All right. Thanks, Jed. Izzy.

I'll just provide an update. We're still chugging along with the comprehensive plan. So we had a workshop today with the steering committee and we'll continue to do a few more events with the steering committee and with the public. So still chugging along. So just an update on that. All right.

Thank you. Laura slash Blake, anything new?

All right, Chief. Well, Lieutenant Joe covered the Chamber's fun activities on Thursday with the wind and the rain. Would have loved to have seen a little bit more crowds after that cleared up, but we understand people had already made that decision probably not to come down because of that. We will not have another council meeting before the fair concludes. Mm-hmm. Um, so this will be my opportunity to remind residents, um, during fair week, uh, lots of things going on, come down, check those out, but be mindful that, uh, there will be some impacts on traffic, especially on the fourth. Um, there's some parking restrictions that will occur on some of the, Main Street's going in. Residents that have been here for a long time will be familiar with them. Same thing for the parade route. If you're not familiar with the parade route, I'm sure the beacon is going to have a nice photo of it in the upcoming paper so everybody knows where it is. I'm watching the weather. I'm hoping to sit on a weather service update this Thursday. I've got a conflict, but I'm hoping I'll be able to still get most of that information Mostly I'll be watching the weather. Last year, because of the temperatures, we had some heat-related events that occurred during the fair. And we just want to be prepared. So if it's going to be warm, we just want to remind everybody to make sure you stay hydrated. By the way, hydration may not include adult beverages. Have some water, some Gatorade, that type of stuff. And get out of the sun and into some shade periodically just to lower your body temperature.

I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I have had some people ask questions about social media posts that cars are getting broken into. And if you have any tips or anything you can share with the public to... Sure.

Springtime is always... You know, in our industry it's cyclical, right? Spring is car prowls. Most of our suspects are usually going to be between the ages of 12 and 15. They're usually going to be male. They're rifling cars, stealing stuff from center consoles, from front seats. The best thing people can do is to lock your car. You would be amazed how many cars are not locked in Cannon Falls. I would also say one of the good things to do for your home is to remember to lock your doors at night or when you're away. Same thing with garage doors. Close them. That keeps people out of those places. These tend to pop up. They go in spurts. Oftentimes what will happen is a parent will notice that suddenly Their child has about 15 pairs of sunglasses in their room and a pile of coins. And then we get a phone call and we have a conversation about what we suspect is happening. We can't account for all 15 of the sunglasses, but we know two vehicles have lost them. A lot of those go unreported. Um, somebody will come out, just think, you know, ah, maybe I, you know, left it in the house and then they move on with their day. Um, so when those things occur, uh, we try to get, uh, get them reported so that we can start seeing patterns of areas, times of, uh, occurrence. Um, somebody may start work at four in the morning and see somebody out. That helps us know that it's occurring before four, as opposed to happening at 11 o'clock and being done by midnight because that's what time they have to be home. Um, so those are some of the dynamics on that. If you've got any more questions, Consul, feel free to reach out to me. I'll try to answer them.

I appreciate that because I know the social media post was very effective. A lot of people were asking questions about that. Thank you. Sarah.

Hi, I just wanted to thank you for approving the audit. As you may or may not know, the audit is a lot of work on a lot of us. And so I just want to give a shout out to all the department heads for helping when we've put out requests to them. They've been very responsive this year and helped us get through this. But I really want to say thank you to Michelle Sandeen as well. And she, her and I work directly together with this audit. And we worked many weekends together and many, many, many hours together on this. And she's just really gone above and beyond. So I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Michelle.

Thank you, Sarah. Thank you to Michelle.

John. I want to echo those sentiments. It is a lot of work on the staff, especially during the audit time. I was telling somebody just before the meeting that when they are here in person, it's even more dramatic. But there's things happening from, I don't know, December throughout the course of the time that they get here, late April, May, to do the in-person work. So it's not just a short-term deal. I want to give thanks again to the audit team at ABDO. They've been very good to work with when they identify questions or problems. We work towards solutions. It's not just, oh, hey, here's a fault and here's your finding, which I wanted to touch base on as well. But they work towards, okay, what are the things that we're going to do to fix this if it was an issue or what caused this in the first place? So I love that about it. Certainly something I try to strive for in leadership and how we operate in the city too. So to address that finding that they found, you know, the credit cards and the receipts, and it is something that happened. We don't deny it. We strive really hard. I want to give a lot of credit to Sarah and Michelle too on identifying even before it's an audit finding. They're constantly reminding department heads to remind their employees that, hey, we need these things. We need these receipts. Now this is a really effective reason to show them why So we've talked about that and it's not a resistance thing. It's something that's just these times that happen, especially as you noted, it's the gas cards. So you pay at the pump, you know, does the credit card printer work? It's half the time maybe. And if you don't have an attendant or maybe it's after hours, a lot of these might be public safety folks that are coming in late at night. after a shift, it could be that they can't get a receipt. So we've worked in different ways and practices and procedures that we can address that. Because the last thing we want is anybody to suspect that and have reason to suspect that because these purchases aren't getting the receipts that these aren't eligible. We dove into those issues and found that they're not, we had no reasons to believe that these are issues of... of impropriety from employees misusing the gas cards. So I just want to make sure that that was where that we've definitely looked into that both internally and with the auditors. uh, as well. So, so we do have additional, uh, means and functions of which we can, we can do. We have some other ways that we're going to try to, to utilize more of our own, uh, fuel master systems that we have. So on fuel that we've already purchased. So, so just, uh, again, like reminder, these are, it's great working with that team because if there's some things that we find, um, you know, we want to find the ways to, to solve it and make it better.

All right. Thank you, John. Laura. I'm good. Chris. Good. Ryan. Good.

Diane. Thanks to the chamber for the fun fest. I was there when the rain came.

Thank you for attending. Lisa.

Good.

Chad.

Shout out to Dave from the Cable Commission. He made a presentation on the triad. And you'll find it on the channel if you're watching online right now. Kind of gives a breakdown, a general breakdown, on what they do back there. the struggles with the equipment, the team, and finding the time with just a couple of people working. Shout out to them. I'd like to say thank you to Kevin Landry for the Matt Ritz had a wrestling camp for the kids a few days this last week, and that was a lot of fun.

Awesome.

I just want to say congratulations to all the athletes from Cannon Falls that made it to state tournaments. Baseball was a lot of fun. I know that there were a few track and field athletes and was there a golfer as well? Yep, so congratulations to everybody. Spring sports are now all officially done, so summer has unofficially begun. School's done, sports are done, summer. So, without anything else, I would seek a motion to adjourn.

Motion.

Motion from Lisa. Second. Second from Chad. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? We're adjourned. Thank you, everybody.