City Council - Special Meeting

MS. As outlined in the memo, staff intentionally pursued two procurement options this year. We participated in a regional cooperative bid while also preserving the option to purchase through the state's contract. This allowed us to compare pricing and ensure we select selected the most cost-effective option for the city. Although the state contract price is higher than last year, it is still lower than the lowest cooperative bid, resulting in the best value for Ellsworth while ensuring a reliable supply for the upcoming winter season. For those reasons, staff is recommending approval of the proposed motion, and I would be happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Do we have any questions?

Just what is the price difference between our best and the state bid? From the procurement, the lowest was $75 for us, and then the state was lowest was $72.42 per ton.

And what will that add up to? How many tons will we be securing?

We typically ask for 3,000 tons, but we haven't used 3,000 tons yet. for the last several years. We haven't needed that much. I don't have the total of what it was.

I think it was 2,500 last winter.

We used 2,500 last winter, 2,500 tons.

So there must be a time limit that we have to meet? Yes.

So the reason for the special meeting is because the state gave us a short window of time to accept. So I have to let them know by tomorrow.

Question. I know in the past we've had issues with salt quality. Do we have a sense of this salt compared to other salts?

So Eastern Salt is the vendor that we used last year, so I believe that's your preferred vendor.

And we were happy with that? Yeah. Okay.

I think we should hold out for the pink Himalayan seesaw. It's so much prettier on your roads.

Probably slightly more expensive.

Yes, but you know me.

Any other questions from council? Councilor Halloran?

What do you do with the access?

The excess what? Salt.

You said you buy 3,000 but you don't use?

No, we request up to 3,000. So when we put in a bid, we say we could use up to 3,000. They deliver quantities that we don't get 3,000 delivered. We say we could use up to 3,000.

So what do you do with the excess?

You still got something to say on that?

There's still some in the shed, but we didn't meet the 3,000 last year.

But what do you do with the excess?

It's in the shed.

So you reuse it this year? Yes. Thank you.

Yeah, it was quite the process to see, you know, I've been out there, and they have this, like, conveyor belt when they're reloading you, and I think a lot of communities ran out last year, but Eastern Southern was able to keep it going, and we were, I know some folks reached out to see if we had extras and other pieces, and I was like, wow, we were a good call on that vendor, so...

You actually use more salt the less snow you have because you get a lot of icing.

And there was an issue. Wasn't there a transportation change that happened with shipping last year?

Dot 2026 through 2027. winter road salt contract by accepting the bid from Eastern Salt Company at the delivered unit price of $72.42 per ton with funding to be paid from the FY 27 highway operations budget. Second. Did I get all the numbers? Okay.

You need a second?

Second.

Okay, any further discussion from council? Seeing none, all those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries, six to one.

Don't get nervous. So I had a gentleman call today from Sergeant Drive. And I know that's a... private private road yeah right that there's some agreement with the city about sanding that we upset a truck last year on sergeant drive and they they asked um the ratio of salt to sand that the city uses Apparently they pay for some of that to the city from their association or something?

We sand the road and we charge them by the yard.

Okay, and so they were asking the ratio of salt to sand in a yard, and I didn't have that answer.

Usually we're putting about three yards to ten of sand. Three yards of salt to ten yards of sand. Okay.

Three cubic yards? Yes. To ten of sand. They also asked about last year when the dump truck was upset. And I don't know if any of this is true, but I told them I'd ask the questions tonight because I didn't know how to answer the ratio. I could only guess. That the oil was never cleaned up and that it was in the watershed of Branch Pond and that the DEP was not involved and the oil spill from the accident was never cleaned up. Is that true?

We put sand on it to contain it, and the sand was, I mean, soaked it all up, but... Was it ever cleaned up? No, we didn't get back to clean that up because we had a storm coming shortly after that.

Okay, so you put sand on it, but we never cleaned up our mess. Could we? We could. That's a request that this citizen was asking. I'm not saying to, I'm asking... It just seemed to be relevant that they were upset.

They never said a word, Steve, to us.

I'm not saying they did. They called today and said, how much salt goes in this and why was this not cleaned up? And the final question was, and I don't believe this is true, that apparently the city does some sort of maintenance on this Sargent Drive at no cost to this association.

We grade the road twice a year. Is that happening this year? They're supposed to call us. Is that happening this year? It will if they call us, but they haven't called yet.

Okay. They need to call, and that's on the city? Yes. Is that how that works?

Whoever the president of the association is has to call me. Then we'll go grade the road, but we can't just go grade it. They have to request it first.

And it's at no cost?

It's at no cost, exactly.

And how do they call you?

They can call me on my cell phone would be the best way. And what is that? 266-0752. I believe the President's Association has my number because he called me for sand in this one. But anyway, we can do that.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah, I think we should have the DEP, see if there's any needs there. Do we have, like, an actual formal agreement with this organization on this road?

I haven't seen it. No, I don't know. I don't know if it's back in the...

Yeah, I think that's the other piece is for all these pieces, you know, if we're plowing, sanding, salting a private road, there's some sort of, if there's a formal agreement, if there's not a handshake agreement, there is a truck, but we need to figure that out and either go to a formal agreement where all this is specified or let the private road be done by private contractors through contracts.

I'm not suggesting either way. I'm asking questions.

No, I'm suggesting either way. We can't have a handshake agreement on a... On a road that... Is that what this is? Considering that nobody here has been able to say so, I'll be looking into it more. If there is a formal agreement, if the HOA has one, we should specify when the sanding and salting needs to happen, what's the tiering and order of events, how much the cost of things are, and have it spelled out, especially with a private road.

And you're saying that they call and you sand it and send them a bill?

Yes. Send the bill at the end of the season. Right. But I can't stand it until they call and ask for it.

Right.

And they said that to me today, but they asked about the ratio because of this meeting. Yeah.

I don't know. That particular accident, we'll saw it when they made any difference because it was raining. Oh, I understand.

Tire change would have. Yeah. But I understand that. But there was a DEP report filed.

I'll look into that piece. What did you just say? I said I would like to contact the DEP to see if there's something that needs to be done.

Were they contacted or not?

I didn't contact them, no.

Did you contact them? Is there a police report? Yes. There is? Yes. This citizen says there isn't. No, there is.

We'll look into those pieces, and the other one, too, again, that's at my request, is if there's a private road that we're doing work on, we need a contract with that, and maybe when you have this conversation with this homeowners association, we can also ask if they have any paperwork on a contract, and let's go from an informal handshake agreement or not. Maybe there is a contract that I don't know about or some previous city manager, city council agreement that was entered into on this private road, and let's finalize that.

Mike Harris, Public Works Director. So this question that you're talking about right now was asked after this accident. So after this accident, yeah, we actually had a few meetings on this to determine what the protocol that was followed, that wasn't followed, and what the protocol should be going forward as far as making sure that all the proper documentation and police fire reports are handled. appropriately, which we are doing now. This particular agreement, though, is something that I had already planned on talking to you about because unless there is a formal agreement with them, I don't think we should do it. I'm sorry. That road is treacherous in the wintertime. And how many accidents have we had on that road? Three. I've had three accidents in my tenure. We've had one in my tenure. But when I asked why we do it, the answer was that we've always had an agreement with them. So my response was, well, where's the agreement? Because the original agreement was they call us, this is what I've been told through word of mouth, is they call us when they want us to come sand, which I don't think is appropriate. Right. I think when the storm is bad and it's time for a road to be sanded, we should go down there and sand it. If it needs to be sanded, if it's a road that we take care of, I don't think we should be on call for somebody to be able to just call us in the middle of a storm or something and say, Hey, come sand our road now. Cause we have all, all of our trucks in operation working their different areas to try and get all their roads sanded. And so I was already going to speak to you about this Charlie before the end of the summer. about these type of situations because unless we do have a formal agreement, then fine. It is what it is, and we'll either amend it or make sure that it's commensurate with what we should be doing. But if we don't have a formal agreement and we can't find any record of a formal agreement, then I don't understand why we're putting ourselves at risk and our vehicles at risk and our people at risk.

And this has come up. before in the past, and the city said no.

Yes. The city said no to what? Sorry.

The city said no. To doing that road? Plowing roads, camp roads, and stuff like that. It was a big issue back in the 80s.

So we do need to chase down the existence of this agreement?

There's no written agreement.

That's what I'm saying. If there's no written agreement...

one thing I would add to the conversation is we should have consistency why are we in an agreement on some private rooms but not others and just get a sense of bigger picture what we're dealing with here and what's appropriate I agree in time for people to make other arrangements if that's the decision yeah because calling or calling the

All right, well, we'll get to saying how the reimbursement goes. It all needs to be formalized in an actual agreement. Maybe one exists. The team hasn't seen it yet. And, yeah, the protocol for – and I don't know how much oil was spilled. This is the first time I've heard that there was an oil piece there.

I don't know if it was oil either. They said contaminants. Now, I don't know if that's oil, diesel – What have you, but if the city is, and I don't know any of this to be true, but if the city is out trying to enforce branch pond and keep our drinking water clean and protected, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. And if we didn't clean up our frigging mess, we ought to be out there doing it.

Yeah, so we'll look into that.

We'll check it out. We'll figure it out. I mean, how many months later is it? I don't know that there will be much evidence left for us to clean up, but we'll go look.

Yeah, so I'm going to call DEP back.

So other than this issuance now from Steve, we haven't heard a word from anybody out there.

This is the first I heard today.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. If anybody had said anything to us about it, we would have been like, oh, yeah, no, let's go figure out what's going on. They're saying it now.

I thought the fire department usually called the DOT after that. And if the fire department wasn't involved, maybe that's how it would be.

It could be. I mean, that accident was definitely a wake-up call for us in terms of how we need to handle those types of situations and what the protocol needs to be going forward. And so we made some changes in effect to that in terms of what happens when we have an accident, which we followed the accident we had on Bayside Road with a pickup truck. And I made sure all the appropriate people were notified and the steps were taken that needed to be taken. So, yeah, a lot of things happened. We fixed them.

I'll throw this out. It's awful easy to complain in July about what happened in January. And in January, everybody was doing the best they could in a storm.

Yeah.

And to have a sunny day conversation, is not exactly fair, if you will, because I'm sure everybody was doing what they could do. Accidents happen. It's in the dictionary for a reason. But when this guy started asking about the salt ratio and the DEP and the police report, so maybe there is a DEP report. Maybe there isn't. Did anybody from this department call DEP? I did not call deep.

No, we did an after-action report on that for the reasons Mike expressed. We circled up with the police department, the fire department, because, as you mentioned, an accident has happened. It was an incredibly – it was a glazy day, if I remember, too. It was ice.

Well, if you did an after-report, could I get a copy of it for this man? Sure. Sure.

And then the other piece that we looked into was, obviously in the moment, was the health and safety of the person that was there. And then I think I even reported to the city council meeting and the finance committee meeting about the issue. Obviously, we had a replacement on that vehicle. We did discuss. At the time, nobody had said that there was some sort of contaminant piece. I don't remember. I could be wrong. But I don't remember a discussion on like, hey, As part of the protocol, we should also notify DEP.

No, I mean, yeah, we should. I mean, I think there's a limit, which I'll have to investigate, but if I'm not mistaken, if it's less than 50 gallons, it doesn't necessarily require it, but I've got to make sure that's right.

Yeah, we looked into the main DOTs, like, you know, incident happens on their protocols, what they do, tried to model some of our next steps on that piece. So I'll have to, maybe we need to add the DEP notice on there.

My thing is this, is that if we're going to run around and enforce things around Branch Pond, we ought to adhere to the same rules.

Okay. Can I just say one thing? Sure. I just think, I mean, I think you're absolutely right. I'm just thinking of all the private roads in Ellsworth. I mean, even if there is a... grandfathered agreement or a handshake agreement. That's not transparency. If we're going to do it for one private road, then it has to be opened up and given the option for all the other private roads or no private roads.

I agree. We do have more than one of these type of agreements.

That's like bad fish.

If there's been accidents on this private road, that should be handled with private contractors that pave and salt and sand private roads. We'll look into it more on if there is some sort of previous agreement with the council on why would they do that. There might be a reason. Maybe the city did something out there and they had to go into this. Is this the only road we do this type of thing with, or are there other roads? There's other roads.

We have a sick grader to begin with. We shouldn't be making it more sick on private rooms.

You're preaching to the choir over here.

How many, well, maybe we can get, maybe we discuss this at a later, I wouldn't mind bringing this to the council.

We've got a little far field of assault bid in our conversation.

We are.

It's a great time to ask the questions.

We've got the right people here.

Motion to adjourn.

I'll entertain a motion. Do we have a second? Second. All those in favor? So adjourned. Thank you all.