City Council - Regular Meeting

Six-minute meeting, yeah.

No, I already told her she could have five. Now it's up to seven.

Eight-minute meeting.

What's the record tonight, Matt? I don't know.

Call to order. City of Cannon Falls City Council meeting, Tuesday, July 7th, 2026. If I could get a roll call, please.

Diane Johnson. Here. Zimmerman. Here. Chad Johnson. Here. Jepson. Here. Nobach. Here. Cronenberger. Absent. Montgomery. Here. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States If I could get a motion to approve tonight's amended agenda. Motion from Jeff. Second. Second from Diane. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. Nobody has signed up for public input, so we will skip that tonight, and we will go straight into our presentation. It is the Cannon Falls Area Historical Society, and the presentation is by Amy Dombeck.

It's been a couple months since I plugged an HDMI cable into a device, so.

You're used to summer?

Yeah, already in the summer mode, so yeah. Thank you all for letting me speak tonight. I appreciate that. My name is Amy Dombeck, and I am the interim director of the Cannon Falls Area Historical Society. I have taken on that role when our director last year left and We appreciate to talk a little bit about some of the things that she helped us do But I also just want to take a little time and talk about some great updates that we've had and a lot of the investment that's been done by the city is in part of that so our current I'm the current director. Our current board president is Joe Terwilliger. Vice president is Al Brine, and our other members are Bill Erickson, Keith Holt, Martha McCusker, and Ray Rapp. And again, I just want to thank Jody Schoblum, who came in for a little over a year and was our director and kind of filled that void that was left by Zach Wareham, not being there, who had been there for over 14 years, maybe even more, and was actually under the direction of Heidi Helgren when he, that was handed off to him after she left. And one of the things I will tell you in this role is that it has become very clear that we had very mindful stewards of our museum and we have some amazing artifacts and records in there. I want to in particular do a shout out to Jody because last year Jody did a history of the fair and that was put up or whatever at the fairgrounds. There was a lot of good feedback about that. But in me putting together a little presentation this year display, I ended up finding two amazing three-ring binders full of all or many of our Civil War, World War I, and World War II vets. And even some of their testimony and experiences or their letters that they sent home have been retyped up and put in there for people to see. Even the Colonel Colville, the memorial that happened when President Coolidge came to town, and the 100th year of that is in 28. We even have that memorial bulletin for people to kind of see what that is like. So we have some amazing records, and one of the things I'm hoping to do, which for those that don't know, I'm almost a 30-year teacher at Cannon Falls Schools. I'm going to be bringing some of these resources to our schools so that students can kind of dig into some of these primary accounts. I think it's amazing. to have that, and we need to kind of get that into the school. So that's going to be one of my things this year that I'm going to be working on. So I just want to give it a shout out to all of our past directors on that. So some historic milestones from the last year is the publication of this book right here. So This is our Mineral Springs Sanatorium history. It is put on by the Clean Water Land and Legacy Amendment money. That is what made this book possible, the funding for that. So if you're not a scratch-off user, go ahead and scratch off every once in a while and just Call that your contribution to the Clean Water Land and Legacy Amendment. But I just want to speak to the work of Bruce Colwell, who is a local author who is currently writing the history of the Cannon Valley Trail. But he wrote this book for us and went into our own archives, worked with Rice County, some of the other counties that had sanatoriums. and even with Goodyear County Historical Society partnered with them. He was able to put together an amazing story. I don't know if people know this or not, But the first time tuberculosis was successfully treated was in Cannon Falls. That happened here in partnership with the Mayo Clinic. And it made us kind of a worldwide, there were people from all over the world coming to understand what happened here. In kind of doing this, we ended up, I want to thank a work media group in the Beacon because they even took that out to the Red Wing website. Republican Eagle, and we ended up having over 50 people show up at our annual meeting, one of which was an author who did the whole history of the sanatorium all around Minnesota. And we had a really interesting attendee who we think might be the last teenager who was treated at Mineral Springs. He is in his 70s now, but he and his little brother were brought to Mineral Springs in the late 60s. contracted from a family member. And when we talk about public health and all of the things with COVID, they were picked up by the county, driven away. They have clear memories of their families being absolutely horrified, like what's going to happen? Am I ever going to see you again? But he talked about the treatment, like the experience of that and how much they tried to make that as nice as possible, but the reality is you're getting treated for a pretty deadly disease. And he was treated successfully. He's clearly living a long life. But Bruce did a really amazing job putting that history together, and that came from a lot of our artifacts and records. The other person I want to speak to is Mark Hyman. It's a local publisher in Northfield. And if you get a chance to look at the book, it's actually a living book, I would call it. It's full of pictures. And Bruce's words tell an amazing story. But Mark put the pictures together and brought this story to life in a way that I think just adds to all of that. So if you get a chance to read that or stop by and purchase one of those, we would appreciate that support. But you should know there's some really good history. Yes, the library has one, too, for checkout. Thank you for pointing that out. But it's a really good testimony to the work that's kind of going on here with our local historians and all of that. The other big milestone thing, though, it gets into the building, and that is what I want primarily here to thank you all for your support, for the community support, the city council support. I was talking to Ryan about the Endress, who owns Atlas Roofing. He and his crew did an awesome job, but they were pulling apart the roof, and we actually think that probably was from the 60s. because the materials were actually obsolete by the mid to late 70s. And so they did this amazing work to restore and repair some of the edge, the parapet up on top, just trying to get that set back in place, and then took it all down to the board, which they were really surprised at how well things were holding up. There's just a few, quote unquote, really bad soft spots. But even that, he was kind of surprised. And they restored that and removed the asbestos that was up there. And now we can breathe a sigh of relief when it's raining and pouring cats and dogs. We're not going to have to worry about those cats and dogs coming into the building. So the other one I want to speak to is the window replacement. And we had a local benefactor who she gave us some money to put towards replacement of the windows. And I know there are some people in the community that might have some concerns that this is a National Register building and it needs to be historic and all that. We have saved all the windows, and we are going to do our due diligence to put the front-facing back to its historic look. When you read National Register and get into a little bit, that is one of the things that street-facing needs to be historic. And so that is one of the things that the contractors who did that are going to help us with that. And then when that's all done, I will speak to that. Next steps for us this summer are super excited to have student volunteers this summer. We have some high school students are going to come in and help with cleaning up some of the back. We've had some trees, dead trees taken down thanks to Jed and his crew. And thank you for that. We also need to find a mason to get into some tuck pointing. We actually have holes in the side of the building where some birdies are nesting, and that's no good. We've got to do something about that pretty quick. So that is kind of our next thing. My intent is to be, again, good steward of the purse. I don't want to just go, I don't know if you've seen what's going on in Northfield, but this can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. But I'm going to get together a proposal. I'll work with John and any other groups, and we'll put something together and talk about what the possibilities are for that. That so so to be mindful of the dollars that are being put into that and then in the not-too-distant future here the public will be seeing Communication coming in the mail about some needs of the historical society and we're hoping that increases Maybe gets people to think about becoming a member and it's just supporting on a annual basis what we do and then I must be meeting with our accountant because I'm just moving forward one of the things I will say about the past directors is they have done such a great job in running this place on a shoestring budget, but we also have some big dreams for what we would like to see in the future. And we want to make sure that not only this building, but other historic buildings or other potential historians, we want to be able to support that work in the future if somebody else comes in and wants to be a part of that. So my main thing for just being here is just to say Thank you for your support of the roof project. And I'm super excited about the possibilities where our group is going, some ideas that we have. And we're moving forward and trying to make good things happen and keep telling that history, that story of our amazing community. So thank you for your time. Appreciate that.

Thank you, Amy. Yeah. Any questions for Amy? How much did you say the book was?

$27.95. If you want to round up to $30, we'll take the donation. Or more. Thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Yep. Thank you.

All right, we move on to tonight's consent agenda. The 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 for the accounting period ending on July 2nd, 2026. B, meeting minutes for June 16th, 2026 city council. C, resolution 2881, adopting primary and general election judges for 2026 and setting the hourly wages. Item D, approved 2026 street maintenance quote. Item E, resolution 2882, approving the application for the deed redevelopment grant and committing local match and fiscal sponsorship by the city. And F, approve O'Gorman addition development agreement. Is there anything the council would like to pull down Hearing none, I would seek a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda.

Motion.

Motion from Chad. Second from Chris. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Carries. Gets us to our reports library. Nicole, if you would like to update us on that.

Sure. Okay. So last month we had meetings with Goodhue County commissioners regarding policy the funding for outside sources for 2027 and I have good news that they opted to provide flat funding for the libraries for 2027 and then resume their contractual agreement of CYP in 2028. But then because of our funding formula, relies on the percentage of the overall rural resident circulation in each library. We've had higher rural resident circulation, so we're actually gonna get a little bit of a bump in money. A couple other libraries are gonna see a decrease of a few thousand dollars, but we're gonna see an increase of about $1,700. So I'm really happy about that. And so then now I'm able to start working on the budget for next year. And then just wanted to let you know that we've got some fun events coming up at the library this Friday. Actually, this is not actually at the library. It's going to be at Eastside Park. There is going to be an agility, a dog agility event at Eastside Park at 11 AM. If you want to see the fun dogs going through and jumping and running fast and everything, just head on over. It's a library event. And just another interesting one that we have is an information session about what is Lutheran Social Services and how they support youth in particular. That's going to be on Thursday, July 16th. This particular information session is about in particular youth who have chemical dependency and homelessness. But I know personally that a friend of mine lived in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and her youngest was in the school during the massacre in 2012. And Lutheran Social Services actually was involved in a camp for all of the survivors in that school the following summer. So they're involved in a lot of things to help kids. And it's Lutheran, but they don't care about any kind of religious affiliations. So I just kind of wanted to let you know about that. And that's all I've got at the moment.

All right.

Thank you, Nicole. Joint Powers Trail Board also met June 25th.

Yeah. Go ahead. I guess they were finishing up, I think, mile 14 was coming to an end there. They made some updates to the website, and the book is getting closer to being completed. So that was pretty much a wrap-up on that. And there's part of the trail where it's dipping a little more than it should, and so we're working on approving kind of like guardrails. So when you're on the trail, if you happen to go into those areas where it's steeper, hopefully you don't go whoop. You'll run into a rail. Yeah.

Put up a rail to protect you. Yep. EDA, Laura.

Let's see. Thank you for approving the grant application for the redevelopment grant. A colleague and I have been working feverishly on that application. It's due at the end of the month. There's a lot of information we have to gather for the terrorists to get that application in. It's pretty labor intensive. But we'll get that in. Hopefully we can get some funds so we can get that taken down and get that lot redeveloped. Let's see, we've got three, possibly four lots closing in Hardwood Estates for the new subdivision this, on Friday. The fire department was awarded about $13,000 to get a new extractor and dryer for their gear, which is really important. If you don't know what that is, it's like a super industrial washing machine that gets all the carcinogens off of their gear. and then a dryer to dry their gear. So anyway, so that was actually just delivered today. They were awarded the grant in June, but Bryce just let me know that it was actually delivered today. So I'll get that installed and they'll get reimbursed for that. So that was good. That was through the state fire marshal grant that we'd applied for back in April. So that was good. I'm trying to think if there's some other ones. I think that's all I have, but I did want to extend an invitation to all of you as council members that CETA is celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. So we have a couple events coming up. One, we have our big celebration up in Cohasset, which I know is kind of a jaunt. up in northern Minnesota. That's in October, but I will be having a regional one that's a little closer. That will be in August, on August 19th. It's a Wednesday from 4 to 6, and I'm having it down in Mantraville because it's centrally located for my territory, which is Goodhue County and Dodge County. So I'll send an invitation out to all of you, but I hope you can all make it. That's all I have.

All right. Thank you. We'll go around the horn. Jed.

Our 2026 reconstruction project is making headway. They got past the railroad tracks, which was the biggest obstacle we had. And now they're just working their way down forth and then probably start Ohio here in the next couple weeks.

All right. Chief. So we wrapped up the fair. Now we kind of coast till the end of summer. Fair went really well, I think. The parade crowd didn't seem that big, but seemed sort of normal. But there are a lot more cars on the side street, so I'm thinking that the crowd may have actually been larger than I anticipated just driving through it. There weren't too many beer spots, which is always good for a parade. I will be meeting with the fair board president. One of the things that the police department is trying to do is after action reviews, when we have events or something happens, looking at just you know how do things go could there be smoother better ways to do it plan for any future in this case it's an annual things that would make the next one run even smoother so that'll be something that'll be working on with them over probably the next month They need about a week to recover. They put in some very long hours in preparation and then during the event. So other than that, I can't think of anything else. We have some towards zero death waves that will be coming up later, closer to Labor Day, where the refocusing, typically Labor Day is usually a speed focus. So as that approaches, I'll probably cover that more. All right. Thank you, Chief. Sarah.

Thank you. A couple things. There is no finance committee meeting on Monday the 13th, so just checked with John. And then there is the notice of election filings that is starting actually next week, next Tuesday that starts. It goes from July 14th to July 28th. Um, if you would like to refile for office, um, the fee is $2 and you can come to city hall and we'll help you file. Um, there is positions available as the mayor, uh, two council members for a two year term and two council members for four year terms. So come on in.

Thank you, Sarah.

John. All right. A couple of things. Between the last meeting and now, we've had the league's annual meeting that was in Rochester. And the big takeaway was the National League of Cities is promoting what's called the Civility Pledge. So that was one of the big items that they carried around throughout the conference to pass a resolution. for our city to adopt our own civility pledge. And it's a commitment to respectful governance, constructive communication, serving every resident with dignity and respect. And I thought that was a good sentiment and maybe that's something that we put as the lead in conversation to the public forum instead of our orders and rules as an idea. But it was a really good conference. I really appreciate the speakers. One talked about measuring dignity and trying to put that into terms where we understand what that truly means and how we use our language to support the dignity of others. So I thought that was really interesting. Part of the reason for no finance committee next week, we'll be having our budget meetings. So we're going to start that work and hopefully have our kind of meetings with the department heads and council looking at early August. And then I wanted to acknowledge the employee appreciation lunch that we're doing next week. on July 14th at Riverside Park from noon to 2. So I did send that out in a message earlier. So any council members, if you did want to participate and help out, I'm always welcome to doing that. It's something that I've done in past cities, and I think it goes over really well for our employees to, for us to serve them sometimes. And then lastly, I wanted to touch on the recycling containers that were down by the pool at the parking lot. I know there's been a lot of messaging going around about that. So indeed, it is true that it was a request made to us from the fair board to the city that they be removed, especially during the week of the fair, which we accommodated that request. And in that conversation, we've also had Dick Thompson, who manages that service for the county, shared information about the contamination and other things that are going on. So we've been talking with them about What can we do for monitoring? We've looked into it. For us to put cameras and to monitor that is something that could be done, but it's not in our immediate plans and certainly would come with the cost. We opened the door and said, are there any other locations that you would you know like to put them city locations or even county-owned property that's within the city um since they're they're not directly a service for our residents as we do the curbside recycling program for you know residential um people in cannon falls so that was where we left it and then it seems that in that time span of two weeks there's confusion that the city has told us to take them away and not put them back but I've been waiting for that to be a conversation. So I did have a follow-up shortly after we put the request out with the county and the representative that I spoke to talked about, well, do we need the county board to approve a different location for them? So I've just been waiting for their, you know, open the door for that conversation. It's not that we told them to get them out of here and never put them back. Not that we didn't offer other locations within the city.

John, do they own the, so they're not going back on that exact location? Do they go the other side of that lot at the pool?

That was something that we opened for a conversation. Like the area adjacent to the, to the fair didn't want them on that property because they're kind of on part fair property as well as ours. But also like if the contamination is a problem, you want to have some measure to be able to monitor that so you can you know, catch people that are doing that and hopefully correct that behavior and prevent it from happening.

When you say contamination, I mean, it's supposed to just be cardboard and recycling. Yeah.

Putting garbage there, you know, we've had Dick Thompson was here, showed us pictures of, you know, just pure garbage, you know, garbage bags, random garbage thrown into the, into the pens, like not something that's acceptable. It costs the County money. They contaminates the batch of recycling and, it takes all other people's good intentions and actual practice and, and throws it, makes it wasteful. So, um, you know, in, in trying to find a better solution, you know, we're opening the door to, you know, helping to put in a better spot.

Got it.

And unless council says otherwise, like, I mean, that's, that's where we stand.

I used them all the time, but a lot of people did. Yeah. Yeah.

We're not, we're not opposed to having them in their, in town. That was message and sentiment that I tried to convey.

Yeah. Okay.

All right. Thank you, John.

Laura. I'm good.

Chris. Good. Good. Diane.

Just hats off to the fair board and all the volunteers for a great time.

Lisa?

Good. Chad? Yeah, I wanted to talk about the recycling. I'm glad John addressed that. And again, to not only the fair, but the police, the fire, the ambulance. I was there for the derbies. I even saw Bryce Miller, the fire chief, out there in that hot gear on a 98-degree day. Everyone put in their time this weekend, so I appreciate all of it. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, I'm just going to piggyback on that. It was a great 4th of July. I thought the parade was awesome. Thank you to our police department, everybody that's involved with the parade. Everything looked very organized and put together. The crowd, I agree. I think the cars in the neighborhood, it seemed like there were just more people, which was great. And then the fair, too. It was a great presentation. I know that kids had a really good time. The Midway is popular as ever. So with that, I'd seek a motion to adjourn.

Motion.

Motion from Lisa.

Second.

Second from Chad. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you, everybody.