City Council - Regular Meeting

Yes, Diane Johnson Zimmerman here Chad Johnson here Jepson absent no buck here Cronenberger in Montgomery absent All right stand for Pledge of Allegiance

All right, can I get a motion to approve the agenda, please?

Motion.

Second.

Motion by Chad, a second by Diane. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. There is no public input for this evening, so we'll move on to the consent agenda. The consent agenda are items that may be adopted under one motion as presented or may be removed for discussion and resolution as council business. A, just and correct claims accounting period ending August 26, 2026. B, meeting minutes for August 18, 2026 city council minutes. C, approve 2026 lead service line replacement advertisement for bids. D, resolution 2892, approving a variance for minimum front yard setbacks in the RB residential business district. And E, introduction and first reading of ordinance 416, an ordinance amending city code chapter 152 related to architectural elements. Is there anything anybody would like to pull down? or can I get a motion?

Can I just ask one question about one of them? Sure. Lead service line replacement, is that just the city-owned part or is that also the residents?

This is actually the resident part of it.

Okay, thank you.

Well, it includes both sides, but most likely most of them are going to be on the private side.

Thank you.

Okay. If none pulled down, can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Motion.

A motion by Lisa.

Second.

A second by Chris. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. And that gets us to reports. Sometimes you have something from the chamber, Sarah? Fabulous.

All right, the library board. I was going to say, all routine business, we did approve the contract with the integrated library system, the annual contract.

It was the contract with SELCO for the integrated library system. We call it the ILS. It's a lot faster and easier.

I memorized the words.

Yay.

That's it. All right. And the joint power trail board?

No, thank you.

Nothing of note?

Nothing.

All righty. And then we'll go around the horn. Jed?

Our reconstruct project is moving along. They've got almost all the underground done, and we'll start rebuilding streets and curb here shortly. So within probably, I think next week we've got to shut down to finish the one short section of water line, and then after that they are done with all the underground, and they'll start building up the street and put in curb and gutter and paving. So that's all I got. Thank you.

All right.

All right. Since Jed stole all my thunder with the street project, I'll bring up the other street project. So the overlay project, um, uh, contractors intending to start, um, later here in September. So, uh, by the VFW and the post office, those streets will be, uh, repaved here, um, hopefully here in September. So, so fabulous.

Thank you, Nicole. All right. So briefly, just wanted to let you know some of the library statistics for August. We had 3,342 visits at the library. Those consisted of finishing off the summer reading program, the week-long book sale, that kind of thing. And we circulated 5,801 physical items and 916 Libby items. So that comes out to a total of almost 7,000. And we had 32 programs and 1,042 participants in last month. So as you can see, the library is used even in August when people are going on vacation. And then just looking ahead, I wanted to highlight a few dates. On Monday, we are closed for Labor Day. That is on the 7th. We have a show and tell for grownups on the 10th. So if anybody has anything special you want to show, please bring it. Decorate your library card on the 22nd. Pokemon club on the 23rd. Teen chess on the 29th. And book club on the 30th. And we are also starting a second adult book club, which is for younger adults so that we can explore different avenues with books and reading. So that is everything I have. Okay.

Izzy. Just a note and reminder, we have a Planning Commission work session on September 8th. That is next Tuesday. And then we'll have our normally scheduled Planning Commission on the 14th, which is the following Monday.

All right. Chief McCormick?

Well, we're actually in a little low light right now. School's already started. Normally, you'd be getting my back-to-school message for this meeting, but that's underway already. The Trick or Trot is over a month and something away, so there'll be further updates as we get closer to some of those fall type events. We will be having different parking for the school games. Visitor's bus is going to park on Highway 19, Main Street. The home team is going to park up on top of the hill by the Hoffman Street and Mill Street, that area, come down the trail. And then the ambulance is going to utilize the alley. And you recall you approved the limited parking restrictions, so those will get posted up and During games, the alley will be just limited to emergency services vehicles. But that's about all we got. Thank you.

Thank you. Sarah? John?

All right. I'll go quick. So you heard enough from me. Tracked application has been received, so that will be moving forward for the final plot on the Planning Commission meeting on September 14th. The mall property has sold, and they have been working on plans for working on the roof, so it will meet our reassessment agreement conditions. Jed and I met with the resident on Spring Garden Road and just want to update the council that we do intend to keep the road open during the summertime. We will fix the gates, and the gates will be closed in the winter, and we'll do our best to accommodate that. keeping it open as long as possible. But in the wintertime, just for the condition of the road to not make it any worse. And we've talked to the resident there that the gates should be closed and they will have to use the other access along the gravel road for that. um and then did just today set up a meeting next week with the county to talk about the recycling containers so i'm bringing the you know finding a location or agreement with them to to bring them back into into town those are good updates all right diane

Although I personally didn't suffer from the major electrical outage, hats off to all the workers who worked through all that heat to bring us, bring our town back online and surrounding.

I'm good. Chad?

Yeah, so with the power being out, I had people reach out, is there a place to go? I heard there was some updates on Facebook, but is there somewhere they can go to see, hey, the power's out, if you're on Dakota or whatever, and it's estimated to come back on? Because I know if you go to the utility website, sometimes they would have updates, but they were just way off, so...

So the best site actually would be the provider, whether it's Dakota Electric or Excel. Their time estimates, they tend to estimate conservatively, which they may give themselves longer and restore sooner rather than say we're going to have it on by 1, but it's not until 3. In this situation, Dakota Electric was not impacted, but Excels were. And it was a pretty big territory that was impacted by it. And from what I understand, they had to replace several pieces of permanent equipment. They brought in a mobile substation to function. And when you get those types of large outages, you can actually get cascading components to it. So they bring something online, When it failed, it sent a surge out. They correct that, but then that's weakened other transformers down the line. And then those blow or overload the system and It can be more complicated for them, but that's actually the best source.

Is the main blowout at Billsby?

Yeah.

Okay, because that's where some people are saying. Okay, I just wanted to know where the best place to go with for that would be.

Yeah, and they usually try to do a pretty good job of keeping their customers informed if they've got cellular numbers or send text messages out or email out. For the customers that aren't connected to them that way, they just get the paper bills. It's harder, but if they call the service number, they usually get a recording of what's out in their area.

I'll quick add to that because I did get an official message from Excel today. So the power outage was due to damage at a transformer at the Cannon Falls transmission substation, which I believe is over by the dam. So they began field switching customers to try to get the power back as soon as possible with the high temperatures. Once the load was adding, they needed to shut things down to keep the work. So they brought in a mobile transformer and got that connected yesterday, and that's when they got power restored. They do plan to do maintenance work tonight. So they do have a planned outage tonight, but they anticipate that starting around 1 a.m. and only lasting an hour. and then they'll work to try to keep things working throughout the system. As Jeff said, sometimes other things break or broke along the way that they don't discover until they get things back online.

And they will notify the customers that would be within that impacted area ahead of time from what I understand.

Sounds like if you're on that, they do have it set up where you can get text messages and receive the updates because people are like, the city should be telling me. I don't know.

Well, I think... you know some of the my frustration was not being I wasn't affected I didn't get no but even then to know what areas of town maintain electric because I kept thinking okay is the grocery store open you know and and I don't know if there's some way that we as a city can identify areas that aren't affected and be able to post that on our site and areas that are it's yeah it's not we don't have it integrated to us and I I wouldn't feel

safe in providing that because it is so much on Excel, their systems. There were outage maps. I was talking to an individual yesterday that was continuing refreshing the outage map and seeing what territories were affected. It is a little bit extra broad, and they probably have some that maybe weren't out but were on the map like they were So that would be the primary source. Go to the site for the utility provider because that's the source of the information. We'll do our best to, when we get official messages like this, try to share that. But I really would feel, out of place if we're trying to communicate on information we don't know and it is not necessarily i don't i don't want to be wrong in that i don't want to tell people it's on and it isn't and or it's often it's you know does the city offer the text messaging or anything like that say there's no removal or anything it's just it would just be for our facebook or our own city website and if you jump back a few years when we had the tornado

You know different parts of the city were impacted some weren't impacted because of power loss But they were impacted because you just couldn't get to those parts safely and so Those messages would have changed almost hourly, and a city our size, we just don't have a full-time communications person to be pushing that type of stuff out. So we try to do it consistently when there's these types of events, put something up to the Facebook page or that type of thing, but we can't guarantee this is open, that's not type thing.

so just thinking about future events doesn't have to be electricity but city city water that's the utility we we work on but if something happened to one of our city lines how do you notify customers is that something that we just go through facebook and just say like this half a town don't expect or what's the best way to do that direct mailings and sometimes it's door-to-door if it's an isolated like we have a main or something connection to shut down and it we know we're gonna out people of their water for a period of time while we're doing that repair

Door to door.

Okay. So especially with city water, I mean, it's a lot more visible. You'd see our operators out there with trucks and lights and everything. You know, it's a little bit different than the whatnot. But if we did have a water main break and we had to shut down an area, we would try to inform as many people as possible just by knocking on doors. Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. Um, Chris, was that you, was that your input? Sure. Yeah, that works. All right. Uh, I am good also. Um, so at this time I would like to request a motion to go into closed session. Um, do I need to read the reason we're going? Uh, yeah, just, just to be, um, to motion to go into closed session for labor negotiation strategy, pursuant to Minnesota statute 13 D dot zero three.

motion motion by chad and the second by chris all in favor just for the audience and participation so we we do go into closed session we will come back in but we have no other action items on the agenda so all the the only action that we'll take when we come back in is to officially adjourn the meeting uh for that so if you you know no summary is not required so so that's So that is all that there is. So if you don't want to stick around and wait for us to adjourn, you're free to leave.

And now we're feeling unloved.

Everybody deserted us. Well, actually, if you guys are coming back in, I'll walk out and make sure there's nobody sitting outside and waiting.

Nice one.

No, one's waiting outside.

Okay. I just have to do the motion real. All right. So can I get a motion to reopen the city council session? So moved second motion by Diane, a second by Lisa all in favor. All right. Motion carries. Now, can I get a motion to adjourn motion? Motion by Lisa, second by Diane. Oh, second, yeah. All in favor?

Aye. Us letting somebody else have a chance.

Chad Novak.

No, it's okay.