City Council - Regular Meeting

post your teeth. Yeah. All right. It is 6:30 p.m. We will call the Monday, February 9, 2026 city council meeting to order. You could please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Sorry. Thank you. With that, do we have any additions to the agenda tonight? No additions tonight, mayor. Hearing none, I'll look for a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Motion. Second.

We have a motion, a second. All in favor say I. I. Post sign. And motion carries. 5. With that, we'll open up public comments. If there's anyone who would like to discuss anything that is not on the agenda, please come forward. And seeing none, we'll close public comments and move to consent agenda. Is there anything on the consent agenda that needs to be pulled for further discussion? Hearing none, I'll look for a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Motion second. We have a motion, a second. All in favor say I.

I. Post same sign. Motion carries. 50. So that will take us to business items to consider approval of agreement with new for utility billing and miscellaneous fees portal services. Thank you, mayor. Uh handful of meetings ago, city staff uh presented information on new uh a platform that provides a utility billing portal for residents to create accounts, log in, they can check their bills, they can pay online. And it was requested by staff to look out into alternative options to find out if we could lower or eliminate the a fee that was involved. That was based upon our current practices where right now if you're signed up for automatic a with the city. Um it is no cost to the resident since we only have a $40 bulk charge for all the AC's that we do all the ACHs that we currently do. Whereas going with the new portal, it would change that from the free service to the $1.99 per ac. Uh so city staff looked into a couple of other options. The two were able to find that meshed with our Banyan data systems software. One was Invoice Cloud and another was a program that was uh standalone through Banyan. when I we had discussions with InvoiceCloud uh prior to the year end uh we had scheduled another meeting and then when we had the meeting in January, they notified us that uh they were informed that the integration agreement between Banyan and Invoice Cloud uh had lapsed and it was not renewed. So they were no longer integrating with each other. And then when inquiring about the standalone product, they said it's still in development and it wouldn't be released until later this year. and they weren't uh they weren't scheduling a demo for that at this time. So went back into the discussions with new on the utility

billing portal and a way to thread the needle on it. Uh and that's what the updated contract and is in here for is continue to have the service service but we have eliminated AC as an option to pay through new. We were concerned about having administrative duplications and overlaps between us keeping our register of a new doing theirs. Uh so by removing AC from new the new side of things, we're going to keep that in house. So we're going to continue to have automatic a payments through the city since we're already doing them. It doesn't add any extra work and it allows it to remain a free service uh the AC through the city. will have a blurb on there if we choose to approve the agreements tonight that if you want a automatic service contact the city and get signed up and that's what residents do right now so that we feel threaded the needle of the concerns between uh the AC $1.99 costs we sacrifice doing AC over new but I think the gains in that will make up for it

thank too. I like the solution. Any other questions or anything for either uh Nick or Alicia on this? Yeah, I'm if it's not additional work for you and people still have that option, um it is it is nice. Yep. So, they just won't be able to do through. They can still do credit card payments, right? That is just fine. They can still drop checks off with the city like they normally have, but they'll still get portal access to do the rest of the stuff. Now, what about the bills? How what does that look like for people that have AC? Will they just get an electronic statement through Net or

Yes. So, it'll get posted to their account. They can see that on the account if they want to look for it, but it'll still get pulled automatically each month. No, like the you know like if I the bill I get in the mail. So if I don't switch and I just do the AC. Oh. Oh. So if you just stick with a you're not required to get a new account. You can just stick on paper billing. Okay. That's an option. You would like to migrate people over to new because that lowers our cost. But if you choose if you're on a now and you still want to receive a paper bill. Okay. Absolutely can. Okay. And if I want to do AC and I want an electric bill, electronic bill, I can't do that. Yes, you can. I can. Okay.

So, you would sign up through uh on the portal with new to get your bill online, but then you would then sign up with the city for automatic a withdrawal. So, you'd still have the account and then we just continue doing the AC withdrawal. So, if we already have a we can still sign up with new a bill and then you guys don't have to print it. Right. Correct. So eventually the goal would be to get beerless, but there are still people that may not want to be paperless. Yep. And they can can continue to stay on paper. You know, the older generation too might not want to get an email. Right. Agreed. So I don't want to eliminate that and I like looking at it. Otherwise, I don't know if I'd open it.

Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate looking into that option. I think it's a good solution. One minor note, the contract that's in your packets uh for the miscellaneous fees and portal services. So that's if you're if you want to pay your community center rental online, your building permit, things like that that are not utility related. In the in the one in the packet, it lists it as 3.95% on credit card, but that was an error. That's actually 3.5% similar to the utility billing and I got that verification from new on it. Thank you. Any other questions?

So with that then I'll look for a motion to approve for the approval of agreement for utility billing and miscellaneous fees portal services. Motion second. We have a motion a second. Any further discussion? And just as a quick reminder, this is probably a 90-day implementation timeline on their end. So, we'll start coordination. Perfect. Hearing nothing. Then all in favor say I. I. Post same sign.

Motion carries 5. So with that, the next business item is consider approval to go to close session to consider strategies for labor negotiations, including negotiation strategies, development, or discussion of labor ne labor negotiation proposals authorized by Minnesota State Statute 13D.03. So with that, I'll look for a motion. Motion. We have a motion and a second. That was quiet. Sorry.

Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I. Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. 5 Z. We will go into close session. Thank you for coming. Good to see you, Peggy. Nice to see you.