City Council - Regular Meeting

Yes, they are. All right. Hello. Um, good evening everyone. It is May 11th, 2026. Uh, 5:30 p.m.

Hello. Good evening everyone. Good evening everyone. It is 5:30 p.m. May 11th, 2026. Um, I'm Mayor Shelley Carlson. The Morehead City Council welcomes public input on issues listed on the agenda or of general community interest, time and council permitting. Speakers are limited to three minutes each. If you would like to address and council during the meeting, please fill out a form provided by the city clerk and I will call you up during the citizens to address council on the agenda. You'll need to state your name and if you are a Morehead resident. If comments were submitted to the clerk prior to the meeting via email or phone, those comments will be entered into record. For more information on participation, please visit the council meetings page on the city of Morhead website at morheadmn.gov. We the Morhead City Council collectively and with gratitude acknowledge the sacred land the city of Morhead is built upon. We acknowledge the people have resided here for generations and recognize the spirit of the Dakota Ajiway Mati and all indigenous communities permeates this land. With that, could we could I get a roll call, please?

Ryan Nelson here. Nicole Matson here. Heather Nissmeer here. Emily Moore here. Deb White here. Lisa Borggan here. Sebastian McDougall here. Chuck Hendrickson here. Mayor Shelley Carlson here. And for those who are able, please stand for the pledge of allegiance. United States of America standy and justice for all. Right. And city manager Molly, do we have any agenda amendments? No amendments to the agenda tonight, mayor. Okay. And moving on to consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So move Nissa Meyer. Second. More motion and second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That motion carries. Moving on to recognitions and presentations. We have a number of them tonight. The first one is a more heart recognition, and I will turn this one over to Lisa Bod.

Thank you, Mayor Carlson, and members of the city council. Tonight we're here to celebrate with the Morehead Spudnicks robotics team um who was nominated for a Morart award um by council member Nicole Matson. Um the robotics team uses their problem solving skills and electronic talents. And one project that you may have seen in the news recently is they built a digital hand for another fellow student um to ensure that she can participate with the rest of her class um due to um you know her her um needs. So the lighted sign allows her to signal the teacher when she wishes to ask or answer a question. Through the Spudnick's hard work and innovation, Amara can better engage in the classroom. Council member Matson wrote in her nomination, "This is what it means to be in a community. We look out for each other because we are all buds." So, with that, Mayor Carlson, if you would like to present the award, the coaches are here, Matt, Tammy, and Enoch. They want to come forward. And then the students could stand behind them while you make the presentation if you wish. Yeah, they do.

Yeah. Come on. I I remember one of the criteria I think for the more heart award is that people weren't out fishing for recognition. I think you're seeing that. Um I really want to thank you for the recognition. It's been super rewarding for us to work on this um project with Amara. Uh we've learned a lot. People have asked me if the students been really enthusiastic about it and excited about it and I said well they're they're in high school. Uh, so it's hard to tell, but they came to a bunch of optional practices and when I thought we were done, one of them was like, you know, we really got to redo this again with a hand in blue instead of red because blue is your favorite color. So, we're doing that. And once again, want to thank you for the recognition.

Thanks. I just asked the mayor if I could say something brief. As a parent of one of the inaugural team Spudnik members, um I just wanted to also congratulate the kids, uh the students for the great work that they did and and also just put a a an appeal out there. um they do a lot of great work and um they need equipment that is not exactly cheap. And so um I you know if you're looking for a great way to support a STEM program then I strongly encourage people to make a donation to team Spudnick so they can go out and continue to do the great um work that they're doing. Uh it's great educational and great for the community. Thank you and congratulations to the Spudnick team. I think it was pretty incredible that the work that they did was focused around helping somebody else and I think that that was probably the biggest element about their nomination for the Moore Heart Award. So, congratulations to them and it's always fun to give it to a group of students and future leaders of the city. Um, next is a check presentation from the Friends of the Morehead Library and I'm going to turn this over to Miss Gene Asi. Mayor Carl uh Carlson, council members, I'm representing the Friends of the Morehead Library and uh we have just completed our third year uh with the Giving Hearts Day organization and we are happy to report that this year we're we have a check for $22,000. The friend's donation to the loop this fall was in the city records at $73,000. So with this check, it makes $95,000 for the loop and with other gifts that have come from Friends of the Morehead Library, we're over $100,000. And we're

very, very proud to make those donations. I'm sorry. Karen, uh, president of the of the Friends of the Morehead Library is here with me and we will present the check back. Do it back there. Okay. To, um, to Shelly. I can be responsible for come back here. So the next is going to be the graduation of our citizens government academy and turning this over to my greets. Uh thank you, mayor and city council. Um yes, tonight we are here to recognize uh the 25 outstanding graduates of the uh 2026 uh Citizens Government Academy. Um before we do that, I want to make sure and and recognize a couple of other people. Uh, first of all, I want to

recognize Kelly Coun, our our communications coordinator. Um, she's, uh, providing the leadership for this program now and is doing a really a fantastic job. Um, and she's assisted by Addison Carl's who takes care of all the uh, all the details that that help make the thing run week in and week out, you know. And I also want to recognize uh all the other city staff from the various departments that show up on their Tuesday night and and provide, you know, all the the materials, the tours, the interaction with the uh with the class. Um they're they're the ones that that really make this program what it is, and I I really appreciate uh what they what they've done this year and and over the last four years. Um but back to our our graduates. Uh over the last eight weeks, um each of them has uh committed their Tuesday evenings to learning firsthand about the inner workings of the city of Morehead. Um, they've engaged in classroom learning, hands-on workshops, and bes behind the-scenes tours uh of of critical city departments, all with the goal of understanding how Morehead operates, serves its residents, and plans for our future. Uh there were sessions here at the MC Comp, uh visits to the fire station, the law enforcement center, various parks. Uh and this year we we included the MPS water treatment facility. Uh during those times they im immersed themselves completely uh in the complexity of city operations. Uh they asked questions. This group was a very engaged group. They they asked a lot of questions and and we loved it. Um they they demonstrated a genuine curiosity that not only enriched their learning, but it also provided invaluable feedback

to our staff about what truly resonates uh with with our community. That's sort of one of the hidden gems of this this program. One of the things that I was surprised to to kind of find is that we we almost learn as much from them as as they do from from us. So that's been great. Um the uh now the the graduation graduation from the citizens government academy is more than a certificate. It's an invitation uh an invitation to continue sh uh shaping our community by serving on advisory boards and commissions and by staying engaged with the projects and services that they're now familiar with. So, uh, thank you to the graduates. Uh, thank you for contributing your time, uh, your questions and your energy. Thank you for being part of a program designed to enhance civic understanding and strengthen community trust. Uh we hope you'll continue this journey whether by bringing forward issues that matter to you uh shaping policy in advisory roles or simply encouraging others to learn about and support local government. Mayor and council, we are proud to recognize their achievement this evening. This commitment embodies the spirit of community engagement and thoughtful citizenship we aspire to model here in Morehead. We look forward to seeing the ways you will apply your knowledge, insights, and passion to make our city even stronger. Congratulations.

Okay. And try a different way to do this tonight. Um, the first one is Sonia Bar. How do you want to see that? Oh, yeah. Just you can grab a group photo. Okay. Yeah. With her name in it. All right.

Thank you. All right. Lindsay Cox McQueen. Congratulations, Ashley Derer. Doucher. Okay. I'm sorry. Thank you. Oops. There we go. Cynthia Forester. I'm glad we got that walk up music. You're welcome. Thank you,

Gloria. Uh, gayos. Congratulations. Uh, Joseph Garel. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Matthew Gekki. Yeah. Congratulations, Beverly Henning. Jason Hoolland. Congratulations. Alicia Hulkrren, Ian Kaket

How do you say? Okay.

Dan Kennedy, Jacqueline Kudson. Deborah Lwig. Thank you. Camaloon uh Camaludin Muhammad. Oh, there you are. Muhammad Mustafa. Ashley Nelson. Congratulations Christopher Prol Dave Row.

Anna shower. Michelle Sherman. She must not be here. And Sharon Williams. All right. Okay. We're done. Thank you.

I think the pomp and circumstance really added additional flavor and reality to this. Um I think it's incredible that this has only been going going on for four years because as soon as the uh the opening occurs for people to participate, it is full um really really quickly. So I think it just showcases the great work and the great outcomes. um of this program in the city. And for the graduates, um you know, I think there's a lot of grad invites. I mean, you might as well, you know, compensate yourself on some of this. Send out some grad invites, have a party, maybe you'll get 20 bucks out of the deal. Who knows? Um then you can donate it to the friends of the Morhead Library and it'll come back to the library next year. Um I also wanted to say thank you to the Friends of the Morehead Library. I know that when they started doing giving hearts day um a couple of years ago um they didn't know if they would uh even make5 to $10,000 and now the last couple years it's been over $20,000 that they have been able to raise. Um, I also want to make sure that people know that um, for the library there are still four named sponsorships available and those sponsorships range from 50,000 to 500,000. Donations of $2500 or more get uh, your name on the donor wall and there is a lot of room for a lot more names and it's a really great way to honor a person or a family business um, with this community legacy project. So, um, thank you for, um, the donation though to the Friends of Library and congratulations again to all of our graduates from the Citizens Government Academy. All right, moving on to the uh, update um, for the mayor's ad hoc committee on immigration. And I just got done with this. Instead of just listening to me talk, it's always nice to have a visual. What What

do I do? Do I do that? Oh, there we go. Okay. Oh, now it went away. Okay. All right. So, this was the third and the last meeting um of this mayor's ad hoc committee. Um it was a great um informational and learning opportunity for everyone who who was able to attend and have discussions related to immigration um activities in the city of Morehead. I'm not going to go through all of the lists of people who were involved. Um but these were the entities that sent representatives to participate on the uh May 11th meeting. So what we did is through the agenda we had uh representatives from all of these different agencies or organizations provide updates related to activities uh that had to do with ICE um in the city of Morehead. and Morehead High School had previously repo reported that 5 to 10% of the students attending Morehead uh public schools uh that there was a 5 to 10% increase in attendance for the months of January, February, and March. And after that meeting, Dr. Lun got back to me and said he had actually heard it wrong, that it was actually 5 to 10 families that were affected. So about one family per school within the the city of Morhead, not the 5 to 10%. And he said that there were no um immigration agents that showed up at any of the schools in Morehead and none of them um requested to assemble at any of the the student or any of the schools in Morehead. He also stated that um if you actually compared the months of January

March 2026 to January March of 2025 that attendance was actually up in 2026 versus uh comparing to the same period of time. Um so he was glad to report that it wasn't the 5 to 10% that he initially had stated it's 5 to 10 families. uh with our colleges and universities, each of the college presidents reported um that collectively students expressed feeling very safe on campus and that again similar to Morhead um public schools and I don't know why I put Morhead high school is supposed to be Morhead public schools but um similarly there was no immigration agents that uh came onto any of the campuses uh in in at MSUM at Concordia or at Mstate. uh all of the college presidents stated that a lot of the anxiety and the concerns that the students had communicated to them um were for family members in the Twin Cities and not for uh necessarily any activity that was happening in Morehead. They did all state that social media played a significant role in heightening the apprehension and anxiety of the students. Um and one uh one college MState reported that there was an increase in the use of the food pantry in January through February. So that was the reports from the schools. Um law enforcement uh our our police chief was able to attend all of the meetings and the information that was shared this was shared on the fly. Oh, I was forgot to do this. Sorry everyone. I'm just gonna hand out all the information that was just take along. So there was a flyer that was developed in January actually um from the Morhead Police Department that talked about the fact that Morhead

police will not ask anybody about their immigration status, will not arrest or detain people because of immigration status. That they do not have a legal they do not have legal authority to enforce immigration laws. and they do not have the ability to confirm the validity of a federal search warrant or arrest warrant. Um, Morehead police officers are required to provide their name and badge number upon request, and they can respond to a scene with activated body warn cameras and document observations, but federal law prohibits them from obstructing or interfering with the work of federal officers while they are performing their duties. So, that was on a sheet that was handed out um and developed in early January. They are still in the process of updating the wording to be friendlier and translating it into seven different languages. That just takes a little bit of time. Um, and that information has been shared on the Morehead website, more the city of Morhead website, also the Morhead Police Department's website and first link. Um, that link was also posted on the city's web page and the police department's web page. Then we heard from a number of different agencies that were boy I really put this PowerPoint together pretty quickly. So sorry about that everybody. Um so supposed to be civil legal services. I don't know where the D came from. Um but these are entities that um provide civil legal services throughout the city and we heard back from a number of them. Immigrant Law Center serves immigrant immigrant and refugees families and individuals in immigration matters and or applying for citizenship. Um if you Google them, their phone number um is, you know, it comes up um as well as information on how to seek their specific services. One of the things that Immigrant Law Center and Justice North both stated is that they really

encourage people to call first to make appointments and not to take walk-ins um because they are not necessarily always there and it's easier to have appointments. Uh Justice North is formerly Legal Services of Northwest Minnesota. Um, and they serve low-income they serve low-income residents with certain immigration legal matters like naturalization and citizenship, green cards, special immigrant juveniles, VAWA petitions which violence against women act petitions, uh, T and U visas, removing conditions on residents, replacing lost, stolen or expiring documents, employment author authorization, and again just Google them and set up an appointment. IShara is an agency that works really closely also with Justice North and as well as Community Connect. Both of those organizations have funds that can assist with immigration issues. Um they also provide community navigation support um assist with ba basic need support and workforce and career development. One thing that we heard over and over is um to have a repository where all of this information can be shared and that is why the city of Morehead has chosen to create the the link for people looking for this information so that it takes people directly to first link. Um first link is an agency within the city of Fargo, city of Morhead but also the whole metro area that provides information. And so I just did a few screenshots to just give an idea of the plethora of information that you can find on First Force's website. And it would be um very cumbersome and very challenging for the city to take on that uh service of gathering all this information, putting it on the website

and then keeping up with um hours and everything like that. Um, so the first one is you can search by the need. And for example, if you clicked on food and nutrition, you would come up with the the blue one that says food and nutrition. It talks about emergency food, food benefits, prepared meals. And if you just clicked on emergency food and Dorothy Day comes up, which is one that's commonly used in the city of Morehead. And then you click on details, it talks about eligibility, if there's fees, application process, and everything like that. So, it's a lot of great information that people can go to the website. Um, there's also a number that people can call to be able to navigate and access information on all the different um services that are available in the Fargo Morehead community. Um, this is just another example um of that provides information. If you go to uh their specific organization on FirstLink, it provides all the payment or program information, location, phone numbers, emails, what they're able to do. If there's a fee, it just has all of that information. And First Link does a great job of keeping track and making sure all of the information is current. The the last I saw I think was April um the very end of April. And so I think they are making sure that they're updating it at least on a monthly basis. Another issue that was brought up was housing and rent. Um, and just a reminder that the city of Morehead did use some um, SAHA funds and provided an additional $25,000 to CAP LP to um, really help families who might be address um, um, having some crisis situation provided um, by anxiety or fear of leaving the house or if somebody in their family has been taken by ICE, this will help um, with rental

assistance and and housing. Um but they also just do that and that's why they um are able to quickly create that program or have that program in place um pretty much immediately to address that fear um or address the immediate crisis situation. They provide assistance for shelter, rent, mortgage payments, security deposit andor utilities. And then Morehead Housing, which is actually managed by Klay County Housing because we don't have a department in the city of Morehead that is dedicated to housing. Um, that was kind of enveloped by Morehead or Klay County Housing and they do the homelessness programs and rental assistance. And we did have a discussion at one of the mayor's ad hoc um meetings about the COVID rental moratorum and talked about putting a cap on um rent or something of that nature. And what was told to us by those entities is that the previous rental moratorum had a lot of negative and unintended consequences. So were they were not um they were not necessarily in favor of doing it either. They advised that that would maybe not be a good route to go. Next uh was a conversation around food insecurity because that was also a big topic of conversation. Again, First Link has a lot of great information on their uh on their website that you can go to. I think there's 23 different entities across Fargo Morehead that you can look to find food if if needed. There's also the food pantries on campus and and in the Morehead um Morehead public schools. uh Isshara, New Roots Midwest um also provide assistance when somebody is experiencing food insecurity along with the immigrant development center. And of course, Klay County Social Services actually has

people who um are full-time employed working on this particular issue. When asked about if there were people that were on SNAP benefits that um were concerned about any immigration agent issues, Klay County Social Services reported that during the months of January, February between January and March of this year that there was one family that was on SNAP benefits that called to report that they felt fearful leaving their home. Um, and the social workers at Klay County Social Services were able to work with that family to utilize Uber Eats to get their food delivered. So, they were able to resolve that issue. Um, businesses, Greater um, Morehead Business Association and Downtown Morehead, Inc., yet another typo, um, they said that they went out and talked to um, a number of businesses in Morehead. uh they did not report businesses um that stated that they struggled due to immigration activities in Warhead. Instead, uh a lot of the businesses reports of struggle due to current economic conditions um such as the tariffs that are currently in place, uh inability to find workers, uh things of that nature, and no businesses closed during uh the early part of 2026. Immigrant Development Center um said that the the businesses that they spoke to did report a decline in customers during January through March um and reported that that was due to um potential fear and anxiety of immigration showing up in those businesses, but they also reported no businesses closed. Mental health was also brought up as um a concern and these are the entities

that provide a lot of the mental health services within Morehead and and the area. Uh Klay County Social Services provided a number of handouts which I've provided copies of those handouts to all council members who can disseminate them. But Klay County Social Services um again has those departments and people that are working full-time to help individuals who need to address those uh challenges. Uh First Link again is one of the places that they encourage people to go and fill out forms. Same with housing and food insecurities as well. And then they talked that a lot of their referrals go to Lakeland Mental Health. Um so that's uh that's how we were able to share information on how to access uh mental health services. Um and the separation ordinance was an issue that we've been receiving a lot of um uh quite a few emails uh making that request and no one had brought it up at the previous meetings and so um it was brought up and discussed at this last meeting and a lot of the discussion revolved around the response and the legal response and what we heard um from legal was It would be imperative to review any current federal grants or agreements to ver with that the city has to verify the city doesn't inadvertently obligate itself to comply with ICE hasn't inadvertently obligated itself to comply with ICE rules by receipt of any grants or agreements. So there there is just that um kind of a heads up about that. um also suggested the need to evaluate the fiscal impact of if any federal grant funds were revoked. Um that would be um a negative fiscal impact likely on the city. And just a

reminder that cannot limit activity on any jointly operated facilities such as the library, um more public service property, the law enforcement center since they are co-owned with other entities and not just Morehead. There was also um spotlight concerns that were brought up where um again the the university president stated that the students at the colleges and universities expressed uh gratitude for the universities not calling attention to the city of Morehead or the the the universities I guess and um the phrase flying under the radar was brought up a lot. they were a lot they were more concerned about calling attention to the the universities and to the community itself. Um and there were there was um a few individuals who stated um that they also felt that it was safer to not have attention on the community um and not putting that spotlight on the city. And then the enforcement reality was discussed about um a separation ordinance, the difficulty of actually enforcing the ordinance um and how you would make an arrest and and go towards prosecution. Um and then the discussion about a potential lawsuit. um if uh an arrest were to occur and the federal government ends up suing the city, it could cost a significant amount of money and take the funding away from other needs of the city and with no guarantee at a clear path to win the lawsuit. So those were the different um kind of topics that or topics of conversation that were brought up during this discussion. So next steps for the the group that has

now met three different times is all of the agencies and organizations felt that it was a great opportunity to share informations and um develop good relationships with or more enhanced relationships with one another. Um, Justice North uh said that they would kind of take the lead and they are going to be uh convening a community huddle in June and inviting all of these same entities to come and continue to have those discussions. um most people felt that you know the city if you look at all of the different services and um assistance that's provided. There are other agencies and and in in particular Klay County social services who actually have people who work full-time to provide a lot of those different connections and services. So, um, the community huddle will have the theme of immigration as kind of that overall theme to bring people together to continue this conversation. Uh, and the people that attended the mayor's ad hoc committee were able to exchange emails and I'm hoping that they'll be able to stay connected and so working better versus working better together versus maybe in silos. So that is kind of the update on the mayor's ad hoc committee. So um and I just want to look to council member Nisser and Sebastian if you had anything in addition that I may have forgotten and please do not critique me on my horrible typing ability.

Do I have council member Nissa Mayer? Um I am not sure where to begin. Um while the separation was on the agenda, I never received the agenda. It was brought up by Mayor Carlson and it was brought up after the meeting time had ended. So the discussion did not include all of the individuals that were listed. Um and I had to leave. There was no followup from Mayor Carlson. And so I appreciate her adding additional information. It's news to me. Um and so I look forward to the new business item that we have today. Um uh elements that were missed uh that I feel may be of import um is we went through CAP LP and the CAPLP funding um and structure. And what I thought was most important is that although we offered up um some uh SAHA funds, which is a really great acronym, and we can go into acronyms another time, but it is um money that we shifted around and how we are utilizing it within the city to give access and support to a program that CAP already has and it's $25,000. But what they stated cap LP and the representative who was there who was there is that they take um weekly referrals um and they are not able to address each weekly referral because all of their programs are full and so only when somebody is graduated out or gets that uh resource um they are often able not a they are often not able to help people in need and so $25,000 which is better than zero. I don't want to put shade on that, but there is a great deal of need and uh families that are out there in need, keep keep reaching out for referrals because you need a new one every week. Um, which to me seems sort

of like a test of resilience, but it is the way that the system is set up because we are at max capacity for our ability to help folks. And as we've had housing and several of these other organizations here to even share and present at uh city council, we um have far more need than we can handle even as a metropolitan area. And so the the need to really double down and help those. Also, it was um highlighted that homelessness uh preventive prevention services is great, but we didn't really talk about the importance of keeping people in their homes and it is easier to keep people families, individuals, people with disabilities in their homes um rather than have them enter the unhoused system and start that cycle of recovery and services. Um I I appreciated the um nonprofit and um service organizations that were there at this meeting. Um it had been repeated multiple times, but I have a star on my notes that says it's not the lack of services, it's the communication. And so a a request was made to the city of Morehead to put things on the website. And um the mayor said that that was possible. I want to follow up. I know this isn't necessarily the time, but I would really love to hear if we've been able to do that. Uh, Mayor Carlson, have we been able to do that since that meeting was a couple weeks ago on May 1st?

I believe that the the link to first link where all this information can be found was placed on the website. I'm looking at city manager Molly to confirm. Yes. And there's information on the police department's website as well.

Perfect. and it was uh about how we could have not only First Link but also Klay County Public Health, Human Services, a variety of links to really um drill down just the top three um uh links for people. And it was not only going on our main website, but the HRC website and the police department website. And so I appreciate you sharing uh city manager Molly that uh we we know that it's already on the city's website, but also Morehead Police Department. And it's not like these are the all of the resources. It's these are the links to really help find folks who don't have that social capital or have those connections to know that they need to continue down many many paths to find help. And dialing 211 may be common knowledge for many of us but isn't for everyone. And so to share that out in your circles I think is my call and ask to folks who are in the room today really just to um share that there are resources in our community there. There are lots of them, but it's very difficult to get that information. Um, I also want to highlight um, legal services actually offered up education and presentations about what they offer and they have a staff member um, who is housed in St. Paul. Um, their name is Essie and you can make requests. So, if you have an organization, if you have an employer, if you have a business, and you really want uh to be able to learn more about what Legal Services of North uh West Minnesota do, um Justice North also does presentations. And so, really, you don't have to look for those um oneoff type communication opportunities like the community huddle. That's great, but it you can likely only send one human there. But these resources are available um not only with open office hours but to do education and presentations to organizations and groups. I thought that that was something very important to share out. I

had one more note. um the separation request that had been made um there was some discussion that I did catch uh before I had to go back to work and it was um as uh Mayor Carlson highlighted that there are implications potentially and a list was requested to bring a list of information or organization overlap or funding opportunities that may be restricted. Did we bring a list tonight to have for our separation discussion? I don't know that the list has been able to be compiled. Um I'm looking to city attorney Shockley. I don't know that there's been sufficient time.

So uh the Thank you, mayor. the uh city manager and I are kind of waiting for direction from the city council to proceed on uh that sort of research as there are a lot of different grants and that's very timeconuming to go through all the grants that the city has. So I don't know if Dan has anything to add. Nothing to add.

All right. So that was my um last update uh that I wanted to make sure we include from the ad hoc meeting in May. Thank you for that. And yes, the human rights uh commission page forgot to include that one. So, thanks for that reminder. Council member McDougall, I don't know if you had anything else to add.

Uh just a couple things. Um it was really surprising to me that we've had such a push to have say a separation order and items like that. when when we started these meetings, all of the community leaders within there have had no no real issues brought up to them. Like for more public housing right away, um when we first brought it up, they she was like, "We haven't got a single response or even a a question on what can we do with this." So that kind of led me to believe along with the previous conversations that we were having with everyone uh and even coming from our last meeting with uh uh the universities I think social media really had a large presence and spreading more of a fear base if you will um as opposed to what reality was that came directly from one of the universities in uh in the area. Um, another prime example of that is, um, there was a report, I think it was on a more fantastic Facebook page that, hey, Ice was sitting over here at Casey's on 30th Avenue South and everyone was kind of making that up and spreading it around. Well, what really came about was it was SWAT had did a training and a few guys went to Casey's to grab some refreshments and stuff and it was kind of blown out of proportion a bit. Another incident was over by MSUM. There was a report that MSU was go uh ICE was going door to door knocking on people's doors, pulling people out. Well, come to find out that was an active police investigation for a stolen vehicle instead. So, I really think the base of what came out of a lot of this was as great as social media can be, it can be have negative effects and a lot of what we were hearing with ICE um here um I think was more based on that fear of what was happening compared to what was actually in reality. Um, and I do believe that um, presentation, I think, is it June in the library that you were referring to earlier?

Are you talking about the community huddle? Correct. I I know it's in June. I don't recall the date. Yeah, I think they had it solidified. And I think it's at the library, too. But, uh, for the most part, everything else was uh, what you covered was great. Thank you. You all right. Um, Council Member White, you have a I don't know if you want to wait to the new business or do you want to talk about that? Okay, go ahead. Thank you. And then just a reminder everybody, we do have people that are here for a public hearing that was, um, going to be starting at 5:45. So,

so, um, a couple of things I just wanted to point out. First, I'm just so disappointed at how little has come out of this workg group. Um the information that we just was just shared with us tonight about the separation ordinance, um questions about grants, what uh loss of federal funding, how we would negotiate, uh if it was property that we shared with others. This is all stuff that we talked about what was it in January, right? I'm u our city manager can share with that. So, we met with the city manager and with our city attorney in January, brought this information to our um other city council members. So, this isn't anything new. And we proposed some um things then that we had worked through with our city attorney of some things that we might possibly do as um things that would be enforcable. So, um, it is I just can't begin to say how disappointed when I look at even the small things that came out of it. These were also when we look at things like funding for housing, um, uh, looking at connecting with businesses, these were things that we also talked about in January, February. So again, I'm happy that some things finally got done, but I'm just really tired of these performative things of bringing people together to have meetings so that it can look like we're actually doing something when we're not.

Excuse me. Council member Wait, I just want to make sure that the audience realizes this is not an opportunity to make comments, to snap your fingers, to clap or anything like that. If you are wanting to do that, please step out into the lobby or please just remain quiet. This is a business meeting of the city and you're observing.

It is very emotional and I do appreciate the folks that are here because they care so deeply about our community. Um, in terms of what things are happening, I just want to talk about a few things um that have happened in our community. On December 31st, a young man in our w in my ward the age of my son who is here in the United States legally has not committed any crimes was taken by ICE and then he was held for a month. First he was held in one county jail and then when a judge said you need to release him because you don't have any means any reason to keep him. Instead of releasing him, ICE took him to an office in Bloomington and held him in shackles for three days with no bed, no blanket. He couldn't sleep. And then finally after that, after threatening that they were going to send him to Texas, they then put him in the Candyohigh County Jail and kept him there for another couple of weeks. After an entire month, he was finally released after a rid of habius corpus was um submitted and a judge said unless you have any reason to keep this person um unless you have any evidence that um you have a reason to keep this person then you have to release him. So he spent a month in jail. This is a 20-some year old guy who was here legally has done absolutely nothing wrong. Spent a month in jail. tremendous costs in terms of legal expenses, trauma um for absolutely nothing. On the day um when we in our council meeting were um hoping to discuss putting some limited restrictions on ICE use of public parking lots that are places where we have high number of vulnerable citizens, such as places like parks where there's lots of kids or here by our senior center. Um, on that same night when we were having that meeting and some of our

council members said, "We shouldn't even be discussing this, another gentleman from Morehead from our fourth ward was taken. He's a a grandfather. 32 years ago, he was convicted of a crime. He paid his time for it and then he went on to be a upstanding citizen. He raised a family here in Morehead. He and his wife ran a successful business. He's had a petition or an application for citizenship that's been pending for years. He was taken by ICE on that early day in February and immediately taken to Louisiana. This week he was deported to Laos. This is a country that he has not been to since his family escaped when he was an infant. His family is deeply worried because he has severe health issues including diabetes. It's very distressing for his family, including his son, who is currently serving in the US military. Um, in April, before I went to El Paso, I received a phone call or a message from a a former co-orker um who was seeking some help because she had a friend from church who had lived in Morehead for decades. He and his wife were upstanding citizens. In fact, they'd been foster parents and he was also taken by ICE. After um being after only a couple of days, he was taken to Louisiana and finally after spending thousands of dollars, he was finally able to be released. And then, as some of you know, I was in um El Paso, Texas. And even though this person is not a Morehead resident, but they are a Minnesota resident. And I think it's important to get this story out because of what it says about what's happening in our country right now. While I was there with an ecumenical

group, um, two pastors in our group were able to meet with Andrea Pedro Francisco, a 23-year-old Minnesota resident. She's lived in Minnesota for 23 or for excuse me for seven years. She came here as a child seeking asylum. She was scheduled to have surgery and a biopsy on a tennis ballsized ovarian cyst and days before her scheduled surgery she was taken by ICE and immediately sent to detention in El Paso, Texas. She has been there now for more than three months and has not been able to get the surgery and the biopsy biopsies uh biopsy that she desperately needs despite the fact that she is hemorrhaging. She's in tremendous pain. Um she's been in the emergency room and re doctors have repeatedly said that she needs this surgery. She was in Camp East Montana for quite a long time and that is one of the camps that our government opened at the end of last year. It is part of a plan to be able to house to to detain thousands and thousands and thousands of people across the United States. Camp East Montana, which was built after they already had two detention facilities in El Paso. They built this third one on the site of a Japanese internment camp where we used to uh uh imprison Japanese Americans during World War II. It houses five up to 5,000 people. Within the first few months, three people had already died and many different there were many different um allegations of human rights violations. Now they want to build an even larger one in El Paso. So that 5,0001 wasn't enough. And then there are plans to build many others across the United States. So that is the reality of what is happening here in the United States.

And that is the reality of what is happening to citizens in our city. And we can ignore that. We can say, "Oh, it's not that many. Oh, it's just a few people." Or, "Oh, those are criminals. I'm sure they did something wrong." But that's not the reality. We know that many of these people have been doing everything that we asked them to do. My goodness. I mean, Andrea Pedro Francisco, when she's not cleaning houses, she spends all of her free time at church training to be a deacon and singing in the choir and playing musical instruments. I mean, what more do you want in terms of the ideal kind of folks that you want coming to our country? So, we can pretend that this doesn't exist. We can pretend that there is no real public safety risk, but it is happening. And I don't care if it is five families, it is five families too many. And we are here to represent all of the citizens of Morehead. Not just the ones that look like us. Not just the ones that family came here in the ways that we came here. We are here for all of them and particularly those who are at greatest risk at this time. Now, I have a list of all of the people that have contacted us for months asking us to look at ways of protecting those citizens. And I could leave off list off all the names. I won't. But again, we know that we have heard from more people about this issue than we have heard from on many other issues in all the years that I have been here. But I'm quite certain that still there are many people here who will just say, "Nope, we shouldn't be talking about this. It's not our job." Public safety is our job. Public safety is a core function of the city of Morehead. Whether it's because of somebody who is a serial killer or whether it's from our federal government, public safety is our

job and it is our job to protect our citizens. And so I hope that we will talk more about this later. Um I am deeply disappointed that the task force didn't spend more than what it seems like a a minimal amount of time after all of these names. All of the I know that all of you received these after all of these people wrote. That's the best that we could get out of this. When we asked three months ago for this task for, excuse me, for this workg group to be formed, it was because we knew that this was an urgent issue. We said we shouldn't be waiting. We need to be talking about this now. And instead, what it became is something that only met once a month, only allowed one council member who actually supported doing anything. Okay? And then didn't even address until the last meeting in the last few minutes of it. what many people have been asking us to talk about. I have nothing else to say.

Thank you, Council Member White. Any other things? Okay. I will ask you again. This is a meeting. You are here to observe. You're not here to clap or boo or do or snap or whatever. This is the last time. If you do it again, I will ask law enforcement to escort you out into the lobby area because this is something for you to observe. So, just to let law enforcement know, the next time somebody claps or makes a statement or something like that, please just ask them to go out into the lobby, you can listen and watch it on your phone or whatever. Thank you. We're going to have an orderly meeting and by acting like that is not orderly or respectful. Um, moving on to we need to get to a public hearing. So, I'm gonna um just pause everybody. We can come back to this, but I want the people who are here for the public mir uh hearing at 5:45 to have an opportunity to speak and to have that part of our agenda completed. So, we're going to skip down to that. Um, I'm going to bring Tom Turbridge up to talk about uh or to open the public hearing for 40th Avenue South. Uh, Milan Overlay from Ath Street to 20th Street South. Do I have a motion to open the public hearing?

So, second, Nissa Mayer, I have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the public hearing? Opening that. Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I.

Any opposed? All right, we are open for the public hearing and I will turn this over to city engineer Tom Trobridge. Thank you, mayor and members of council. We have a presentation that'll come up on the screen in a moment. We have it. I'm not sure why it's not showing up.

Okay. So, this is the public hearing for 40th Avenue South Street improvements and the extent of the improvements is from 8th Street to 20th Street as shown on the map there. background. Uh the original road construction, it's a batuminous road with aggregate base. It was a formal formerly a gravel road, a county road that the city enexed when the school district was building down there and we improved it to an urban section paved road. Uh that construction happened over a period of years from 2004 to 2006. The roadway is functionally classified as a minor arterial roadway, meaning it's intended to carry more through traffic. Um, and it's uh on the city's municipal state aid street system. The current PCI, which is pavement condition index, has some ranges from 24 to 44. It's actually lower than one would normally expect for doing a mill and overlay project, but it does have a thick pavement section, and that's mostly a surficial thing. And so, as a result, we do believe a mill and overlay will be an effective uh uh improvement to make on this road. Since the improvements were all made in the 2000s, the the utilities are all in good condition. and they're the sanitary sewer and water mane are both PVC and the storm sewer is RCP reinforced concrete pipe. The road does have sidewalks both sides throughout the area except for along 14th Street which was added to this project in response to some of the pedestrian concerns we have in the area. And it does have a in addition to being sidewalks, one side is wide enough to be

a a trail or a shared use path. Uh that trail does cross the road. So part of the way it's on the south side and part of the way it's on the north side of the road. And then intersection controls in this area. 8th Street, which is a US trunk highway, has a traffic signal. And then 14th Street is an all-way stop condition. All the other roads out there are currently two-way stop conditions. And during analysis of the roadway, we did look at uh the traffic counts. And all of those stop conditions that are currently there are there there's no we wouldn't need to do a traffic signal at any location. The one that comes closest would be 20th Street. And even that, it's probably at least five years down the road, maybe 10 years down the road before we would expect it to meet the traffic warrants. Um, to do a all-way stop or a traffic signal, we're supposed to meet certain conditions. Uh, usually it's based on traffic volume. Sometimes it's pedestrian also. But, uh, if we don't meet those warrants, those uh those types of intersection controls don't perform well. So, the proposed improvements that we have are shown on these next two slides. Uh, this one focuses from 8th Street to 14th Street. What you can see on this map, the green areas are areas where we're we're actually doing some turf improvements because we're taking out turn lanes. Um, at the time we built 40th Avenue South, there wasn't hardly any development out there at all. And now the area is fully developed. And that leads us to uh we we evaluated those turn lanes and with the traffic that we have, we actually don't need to have those turn lanes. And we think that

the those turn lanes provide extra width to the road which has been leading to uh a problem of some speed specifically from 14th to 20th Street. the data we collected showed that there was uh a higher speed than we wanted to have. So, and the other thing I want to highlight is we're doing various pedestrian improvements. So, between 11th and 14th Street, we're proposing to do what's called a rectangular rapid flashing beacon or RRFB for short. Those are signs that they're pedestrian activated. So you push a button and lights start blinking and those have very good uh compliance rates. Vehicles when they see those start flashing, they do yield for pedestrians much better than passive controls. We're also adding some medians that provide refuge islands. So at 10th Street, there will be a refuge island with the RRFB in front of the school. There will also be a median refuge island. The roundabout that's being proposed has islands that also function that way. And then at 16th Street, we're also proposing another RRFB at that location. And then we're widening the existing median on the approach towards 20th Street, which will make for a better pedestrian crossing there as well. And so, as I was highlighting some of those pedestrian improvements, RFBS, up to 98% of traffic in studies has has yielded appropriately to pedestrians at those locations. And so, we're very confident that that will have a significant impact in this area. Refuge Islands give pedestrians a way to cross just one lane of traffic at a time, and then they

can pause and wait for it to be clear. It shortens your crossing distance by at least half and those things work also work well for pedestrians. The road diet that we're proposing by removing some of those right turn lanes between that and the addition of some of the medians. We do think that that should reduce speeds in the corridor which will allow us to sign the entire corridor at 30 m hour. Currently, it's 30 miles an hour kind of from the 1500 block to the west, but from the 1500 block to 20th Street, it's signed as 40 miles an hour. And it's just changing signs is not likely to be effective. And that's why uh some of these other improvements will will allow us to change the speed limit in that area. And then we're also adding a shared use path on the east side of 14th Street. At the time we built 40th Avenue, we had to maintain a rural ditch system which took up too much rightaway for us to have a trail on that side. And now with the development that's happened, we are able to fill in that ditch and put in a the wider sidewalk there. So, the proposed project has because this is a minor arterial roadway, uh it per the city's policy, we have a large assessment area that uh we can assess on an area basis halfway to the next arterial road. In this case, 30th Avenue South is the next one to the north. And we don't have one in this area to the south. It goes all the way to the south city limits, which is the equivalent of 46th Avenue South. So, the assessments, we have a total of about $1.2 million in proposed assessments. Of that, about 10% of it is front footage assessments for properties that have direct access.

Almost twothirds of that is the school district property. Uh there's also uh the Hornbachers area, the an apartment building a little bit further east, and the church property that also have direct access to 40th Avenue South. So we have the primary benefit to the properties that have direct access. They get a $45 per foot assessment and then everybody within that area that you see outlined on this map gets the equivalent of $620 per equivalent unit which is based on the acreage. So the school gets three units per acre. So they have about $45,000 of their assessment is the areawide and about 45,000 of their assessment is the front footage as an example. Almost every property that you see in this map gets a $620 assessment. So out of the 1388 properties that are being assessed, all but about 20 of them, I think are getting a $620 assessment. And then one property, the one that's highlighted in orange on this map, is technically outside city limits. Seems a little odd. We've grown well beyond it, but they were outside the city at the time we were annexing other properties and it was a developed property at that time. And so it's the way the city does things, it's their choice to come into the city. So we're we have not enexed that one property yet. So technically, we're not assessing them. We did send them a notice that said, you know, we're reserving this cost. Should you petition to be annexed at some time, then we would proceed with the assessment at that time. So, as I said, there's 1,388 properties and the total amount assessed was

a,210,000. The average assessment is $872, which is more than the median. As I said, greater than 90% of the parcels out here are getting the $620 assessment. Then the maximum assessment was the $94,000 uh to the school district. So the total project cost based on the bids is currently estimated at $4,175,000. of that about 30% is being assessed. The remainder of that is a city share. And just as a reminder to what the city is doing, the way we finance these projects typically is we issue a bond for them. And the state statutes regarding bonding requires us to assess at least 20% of it. And so the policy we have using front footage and area wide assessments is designed to make sure we get over that. So we don't set a specific percentage that we're going to assess. Occasionally we still fall under the 20%. Based on the way uh we have front footage and how we do our assessments, but most of the time we're going to be close to 30%. So that's a very typical amount of assessments. public input. This project has actually had quite a bit more public input than we often have. Um, and we held a an open house back in January, had a website set up and shared a lot of information with the public in advance of completing the preliminary engineering report and asking the council's direction on preparation of plans and specs. So we by the time we had the council meeting in February 23rd where the council ordered the plans and specifications and

authorized us to go to bids uh we'd had quite a bit of public input. Since then in response to sending out the public hearing notice we've gotten additional visits to the website and views of the video. So, I think back in February, there's some something like 400 plus visits to the website. With a thousand other notices that went out, there's been another uh renewed interest in that. And so, the public has public is well aware of the project. And we also presented to the school board back in February as well. In response to the mailed notice, we have received nine uh total calls or emails. One of those was only asking questions, wasn't giving us necessarily feedback. Out of the other eight, uh, some people spoke to both the project and some also spoke to the assessments coming and some, you know, some only did one or the other, some did both. But the total in support of the roundabout, we received two comments in support of the roundabout, five opposed. And with assessments, we had one in support and three opposed. So, and I think you know the comments that we had were ones that we'd heard before. Mostly the ones that were against the roundabout were mostly concerned with how it impacts pedestrians. They they didn't believe that it would improve the situation. You know, we've had plenty of discussion on it. We do think with the RRFBs, the other pedestrian enhancements, the removal of the turn lanes, all of that that does make the roundabout will be a very good improvement in this area. So, uh, summarizing the project schedule here today, we're at the public hearing. Uh at the close of the hearing, what we would like the council to do is to order

the improvements and declare the intent to assess the project and to award the bids. And if the bids are awarded, we expect the project would get started uh the very beginning of June. And the uh the because we're working around the school, the intent is to have all of the work done before school starts in September. The contract has, you know, the substantial completion date fits with that. And then we allow for some work like turf establishment to go on beyond that that doesn't have any significant impacts to traffic in the area. And in order to build the roundabout, we're going to close the intersection of 14th Street for a period of time. And that'll that'll allow them to get the work done. And then following the the project at the end this fall, we would hold the assessment hearing. So again, uh as I said, this this was the public hearing. And so uh following any receipt of any additional comments, we would ask that you would close the hearing and then consider a resolution to order the improvements and another resolution to award the bids. And I would add because this is an assessed project, the resolution to order the improvements requires a positive vote of seven council members and then the award the bids requires at least six. Do you have any questions for me?

Okay. So, since this is the public hearing portion of this agenda item, we do have two individuals here who would like to speak to this um during the public forum uh period of time. The first one is Alicia Milander. And I'm sorry if I said your name wrong.

Thank you, mayor and council members. So, just you can have um the three minutes here. So, when it's green, you can talk. When it's red, you just have to wrap it up. And if you can state your name and if you are a resident of Morehead. Thank you. Go ahead. Oh, Christina, sorry.

Okay. Hi, my name is Alicia Milander and I live in the area that was mapped on this map that I received recently about this um proposed updates to the roading or to the road and to potentially put in a roundabout. Um, the letter stated that that is all considered either a primary or a secondary benefit. And I would like to go on the record and state that I do not consider a roundabout here to be beneficial in any way. Um, I drive on these streets every single day. I drop my kids off at daycare. I drop my nephew off at school, pick him up at school at SGR. And I can tell you that um when I drive on these roads, they're in very good condition. And I can tell you that I have been at this intersection, which is an unobscured intersection, which has a four-way stop and has really good sidewalks that we've been on. Um, with it having an existing four-way stop that is unobscured, how does putting a roundabout in with a bunch of yield signs somehow make this more safe? How are you going to guarantee that people who don't even know how to use roundabouts in our community are going to somehow manage to magically learn how to use a roundabout versus a stop sign and it somehow be more safe for the people who live in this area of the city? Um, what alternative options were considered, if any, such as putting stop lightss there or flashing stop signs first? There are no flashing stop signs there, but I can tell you that the crosswalk guards every morning come out with their flashing stop signs to encourage people to stop when people are trying to cross in the pedestrian areas. Um, if they were considered, how much did these alternative options cost to the city and the homeowners who are

going to be assessed in this area? Um, who are being targeted for even more specials? Some of us just bought houses in these communities and we're paying specials upon specials upon specials. Um, the schools are constantly redrawing their boundaries for who can attend which school. How long will it be until those of us being forced to pay more specials will get redistricted out of this school that's right by the roundabout we're expected to pay for? Can the city guarantee that we will be allowed to send our kids to SG for the foreseeable future, past the foreseeable future? Um, since SGR is the elementary school that is right there and in the current economy, is it really the best use of our funds to be making improvements to these streets that when I drive on them are perfectly great, and there are a lot of other roads that have tons of potholes, lots and lots of problems that could potentially be getting funds instead of a street that's in really good repair. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Um, the next individual who wants to speak on this item is William Waitman.

You want to just come and state your name if you're a resident of Morehead?

My name is William Weightman and I am a resident of Morehead, Minnesota. Good evening, mayor and members of the city council. Uh, I am a homeowner in the assessment area and when I look at the total on the assessment notice, I do not see this as a burden. Rather, I see it as a seed, an investment in the future of our community and what we want our community to look like. Our engineering department has laid out rigorous data. the undisputed bedrock of this project. But beyond the spreadsheets and the blueprints, there is a more profound question. What kind of world are we building for one another? Imagine for a moment that there's a new family looking to perhaps find their new home in Morehead and they're searching for a place to belong. And as they do so, they drive down 40th Avenue. Now, in one version of this future, they see a high-speed thorough affair where residents peak anxiously from their windows with a constant reminder of the danger uh just a few feet from their front doors. It is a place of transit, but not a place of life. Now, imagine the world this plan creates. This same family sees a neighborhood that is active and vital. They see children riding bicycles with a sense of freedom and safety. They see neighbors taking a quiet evening stroll. They see a community that has

intentionally slowed down to notice one another. We often speak of property values in cold clinical terms, but value is born from desiraability. A neighborhood that functions as a sanctuary where the streets are guardians of the people rather than obstacles to them is a neighborhood where people want to live, stay, and invest. This design increases the worth of every home by making our neighborhood a safer, more beautiful place to exist. Change can feel uncertain, even daunting. But the science of this design, from the 16th Street beacons to the 14th Street roundabout, is simply an elegant solution to a human problem. in a way to ensure that our common journey through this city is defined by connection and not by tragedy. I urge the council to approve these improvements. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Are there any other members of the audience who wish to speak to this agenda item? Feel free to come up. Um, we will need to have you state your name if you're a resident of Morehead. And if you have not filled out one of the forms provided by the city clerk, you'll need to do that after you speak. Thank you. Go ahead.

My name is Jamal Abigz. I live in this area. I'm represented by the word for uh uh counselors today. Um, the world where people are cycling and walking is the one that exists on 40th Avenue South. I take that route a lot. I know it to be true. My concern is the unregulated four-way intersection that goes across a railway just at the edge of that map. Nobody's gotten hurt there yet. something won't get hurt there soon. That's all I really had to say on this matter. Thank you.

Thank you. And then if you just want to go to the city clerk, she'll provide you with a form to fill out. There any member Oh, yeah. Right over here. Um are there any other members of the audience who wish to speak to this agenda item? All right. Uh go come on up. And again, if you want to state your name, if you're a resident of Morehead, and then when you're done, uh, you'll need to go to our city clerk and complete the form so we can have that documented.

Sounds good. Thank you. Uh, my name is John Beetlespocker. I am a resident of Morehead in one of the uh, areas that is being assessed for it. And my main concern with the roundabout, uh, first, I personally I do like roundabouts. Uh, I have not encountered one where there's a lot of pedestrian traffic ever. Um, and then on the website there's a really good list of statistics. And the current four-way stop is for pedestrian and and uh I think bicycle traffic is almost two times safer than a single lane roundabout for fatalities. It's like 26 per 100 million uh car entrances versus 62. So, it seems like we are increasing the possibility of a pedestrian uh injury in that. Now, it is less for the car accidents, but I think the main concern there is for especially during school time in the summertime when the kids go get free school lunches. I think we're increasing the risk to those people, and that's just based off of the information that's on the on the website. So, just questioning why we would go that route.

All right. Thank you. Any other members of the audience who wish to speak to this agenda item? Come on up.

Good evening. My name is David Wolf. I'm also a member of the community and one of the area I live in the area that's assessed as well. Um, more importantly than the assessment though is my kids uh live in that area as well. I definitely question whether or not this roundabout was designed to protect pedestrians or increase the efficiency of traffic. My understanding of roundabouts, that's their main design, is to increase the efficiency of traffic. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any deadly multi-vehicle accidents at that intersection. However, there's been two recent pedestrian uh incidents. That's my biggest concern is there's so many kids that are walking through that neighborhood at a lot of times. Um, we talked about the the um what did you call them where you could

No, the little islands, refuge islands, how are those going to work in the winter time when they're covered in snow? Yep. And we'll have we'll have Mr. Trobridge respond to all these.

Yeah. So, these refugees islands, I have no idea how those would be plowed in the winter time. Uh the snow sometimes stands 2 feet tall on either side of that road. uh you're talking about vehicles that are pulling up to that intersection that will be looking either left or right to try and clear for vehicles that are moving 15 to 20 miles per hour as the website stated when they should be coming to a complete stop. If you're trying to protect pedestrians, 0 miles per hour is so much safer than 15 to 20. So the the efficiency that you're moving through that intersection is not the greatest risk. Um, I I just I question what the initiative was, whether it was to um protect deadly multi-vehicle accidents or pedestrians. So, if you can maybe respond to that after the after I get done talking, I'd appreciate it. I appreciate y'all's time, too. Thank you all.

Yep. Thank you. Um, any other members of the audience who wish to speak to this item? Any other members who wish to speak? Okay, seeing none, um I would look to the council to have a motion to close the public hearing portion of this agenda item. So move Nissa. Second, Borggan. Okay. Uh we have a second Nissa Meyer. Um motion by Nissa Meyer, second by Borggan. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I.

Any opposed? That motion carries. the public hearing portion of this item is closed. Um Mr. Troberg, if you want to come up and maybe respond to some of the questions that members of the public ro um raised um to provide information again for the council to make a decision. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. So, uh one one had wondered what some of the alternatives that we'd considered. Again, we looked at the warrants. Was a signal warranted? We even considered, you know, because there were some people that suggested, we'll just put another underpass, a pedestrian underpass in and the that would have had major major rightaway impacts and other utility impacts and cost. And we think that our RFBs uh in connection with some of the other pedestrian improvements are much going to be more effective for the dollars that we're putting into it. Um, and there was a comment that we should just do flashing stop signs. Currently, East and West is already flashing stop signs. And what I hadn't talked about in the presentation, but we all know because we talked about it back in February and throughout this process, we did look, we videoed the intersection multiple times last fall. The compliance rate for vehicles stopping at that hallway stop was frankly appalling. Uh it was less than 50%. Um I actually just this morning I was watching the news and I saw Channel 6 doing a story and they had a person they were only on screen for like 3 seconds in front of that intersection and talking about this coming up and I saw a vehicle maybe it did a slow and go but that was it that went behind him on you know going through it and they were going east west through there where it's got the blinking stop signs. So, we have we have a problem with that and the roundabout is one of the better ways we can deal with it. What people don't necessarily know about the design is this one has the crosswalks are a little bit further back. So, there's 20 to 40 ft between the crosswalk and the

circulating lane. So, as a result, a vehicle approaching it has to look at the crosswalk. If there's a pedestrian by state law and the signs that are there, they have to yield to them. There isn't a pedestrian, they proceed up further. Now, they're looking for vehicles. They don't have to look for merging while they're looking for peds. They look for the ped first, then they it's a two-stage process, and then they'll be looking at merging with the traffic. So, we do think that addresses a lot of that. In addition to that, by having the RRFBs, uh, one is about 400 ft west and the other one's probably 800 ft east. If people don't feel comfortable crossing at the roundabout, they don't have to. They can cross at one of those locations as well. Um, there was a comment about the data on the hallway stop versus a roundabout. And the data he's citing is average statewide data. We actually didn't put the data specific to this intersection on the website because we thought that would be prejuditial. But the reality is is because of the pedestrian incidents we've had. this intersection is way higher, you know, orders of magnitude higher pedestrian risk based on actual data that we've got it, not average statewide. And so again, there this isn't an average intersection. And there was a question about maintenance. We've talked with public works because where these RRFBs are, we have 10 foot trails, 10 foot wide sidewalks at it. The city is going to be running a plow down it. So, in addition to plowing the road, they'll be crossing and the these these uh pedestrian

crossings will be wide enough for them to run the city uh plows down. So, maintenance should be adequate. And I'm not going to say it's perfect. We get a lot of snow in the winter, but uh they will be maintained that way. I think that answered the questions that were raised. All right. Thank you, Mr. Trobridge. Uh any questions from the council? Council member Nisser.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um the space that was selected for this, there are several um elements that are being added. I heard a resident talk about uh they did not use names, but I'm going to make some assumptions here about 40th Avenue and 20th Street uh because it has a railroad and it is currently um stopping traffic only one direction. Um is there a reason that this uh project was not extended um east? Did I get my directions right? East. Yeah.

So, yeah. So this project originally we'd been looking at doing 8th Street all the way to 40th Street as a milling overlay. Based on the age of the road it is due for that. It's all of that stretch 2 and a half miles was built uh in that same 2 to threeyear time period with the analysis that we wanted to do. We broke it over two years. So this year we're doing 8th to 20th. Next year we're planning to do 20th to 40th. Um, and the the uh intersection at 20th Street, again, it doesn't meet warrants to try to do a traffic signal at it yet. That would be the next logical step to do. As development continues east of there, we do expect traffic to increase. If 20th Street at some future date will get get extended down to 60th Avenue South, that's a long ways out. those types of things will drive a lot more traffic at it. Um, but safetywise that intersection still functions safely. There there's not a accident history that would uh create a special need there and the traffic volumes do not yet rise to the level where a traffic signal would be warranted. But it's something that's on our radar and we'll keep paying attention to that.

Wonderful. Thank you. I've got two more questions. um the snow being cleared. I know uh you mentioned that city uh sidewalk plows are coming through. You also mentioned the work being done uh when school is out. I think about uh frequent um comments I get about uh sidewalks on the way to schools not being plowed. Um, has this been explored or discussed with public works to be able to facilitate it being cleared in a timely fashion uh for kids to get to school or is that still in the works because it doesn't exist yet?

I I guess that's a question. We've we've worked with public works so they know the design we're building. They know they can maintain it. Timeline I can't comment on that. And you know I think everything is always going to depend on when does the snow stop to you know I so that that'd be a question that we can discuss with public works but they have assured us that with the design that we're proposing they will be able to do the maintenance.

I am aware that there are only 24 hours in a day and mother nature throws lots of curve balls in. I just I wanted to put that in folks's minds that you know our first snow snowfall might not be ideal but as uh winter continues on that it may be an opportunity. Um one resident mentioned uh school board uh or excuse me uh boundaries and schools and the school's um interaction with this project. Can you speak to what uh school board had heard and discussed um and when maybe uh so people or residents are aware that it's not just city council um that there are other entities involved?

Yeah. Throughout the uh design of this uh even going back to last fall where we were doing the traffic analysis and trying to come up with possible solutions to present to the public, we've been working handinand with school district staff. Um, and again, that kind of led to us doing the presentation to the school board as well. So, they're they're well aware of the project. And I'll readily admit all along, every time we've talked about the roundabout, the very first reaction was, "Are we sure that's a good thing to do here?" Um, but after presenting the data, talking about the issues we're seeing, talking about the design modifications that we're looking at, you know, it's we've we've gotten the support and approval from the school district and and many others.

Thank you, Tom. Right. Council member Borggan.

Thank you, Mayor. So, I just wanted to thank Bob and Tom for and your staff for all the work you've done and the communication. I went to the open house in January, saw the video. The video has been playing on the website forever. I honestly probably have gotten more calls because people think that's my district. It's not. It's these guys. But I'm really close. So, yeah. So, I mean, we're we're very close. So, um so I just think if PE when people would call me, I would say, "Well, have you looked on the website? Have you watched the video? Have you seen the data? And have you seen that Fargo has two schools that have kind of the same exact design and have had them for years and haven't had any issues? It's like you said, it's it's uh change, learning something new, and also understanding that the crosswalks are quite a ways away from the from the roundabout. So, I think people initially thought, how is my kid going to traverse this roundabout? Well, they're not. They're going to be doing it far away from the roundabout. So, I'm I would like to make the motion to order the improvements.

Second, Nissa Meyer. Hey, there's a motion and second. Any further discussion? Council member White. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, and thank you, Tom, for the information. First, I just wanted to say for just for folks um that are in the audience and are listening that I think when we've talked about this one um what was very clear in terms of consensus is that we were all focused on what could we do that would be the um greatest improvement in terms of safety that um you know uh very often we talked about we don't want another tragedy to happen. what happened last year was horrible and um we can't let that happen again. And I hear that from the citizens too. And in fact, today um my friend Amy whose house burned down today when I called her to say, Amy, what can I do to help you? And you know, let me know what what do you need? And she was about to get off the phone with me and she said, "Wait, there's one thing you can do." I was going to go to the city council meeting tonight and talk on that uh issue and um I'm really concerned about the roundabout if whether that's going to be the best choice. Um and I want to make sure that nothing horrible happens there again. And so I know that our citizens care deeply about this too. I just I'm not surprised. What I have heard too is questions about the roundabout and so I would like us to spend a little more time talking about that. Um, I felt like the information we got, you know, and I'm to me it's very important that we're making evidence-based decisions and I feel like we've seen a lot of that. Um, there's some things that I think we haven't talked about tonight that I'd like to draw out a little bit more. Um, one of the things in my recollection too is that again, one was the very um high rate of people ignoring the signs. Uh, and they also ignore traffic lights too. So people run through lights all the time. And so um my understanding is that what uh engineering departments all over the

country are doing more now is creating these mechanical means of making people slow down. So we have traffic calming things that you know because we know that they don't follow speed limit signs but if you narrow the road and you put in other things that they have to slow down then that's a way of achieving compliance. And then so I would would like you to talk a little bit more about that of how having something like this because I've seen that in other where my son lives they've added a whole bunch of them in a residential area and it's super annoying to drive through the neighborhood but you absolutely cannot go fast. um and um you don't have a choice unlike driving through stop signs and so um so that is a question that I have but also I do wonder I appreciate that you said we are um the way this will be set up is that also besides the fact that it makes cars go slower um that we don't want people crossing right at the traffic circle um that the the um crosswalks are a little bit before then and as you said the cars will first have to stop for the traffic circle and then they can move up. One of my concerns is will people abide by that? We've got pedestrians who've been used to walking right at that intersection and crossing. Could we maybe put up in those areas right at the traffic circle some small fencing because I've seen that used also to direct people from this is not where you're supposed to cross. So, if we instead in the area where they're not supposed to cross right at the inter right where the circle is, if we put up some short fencing that wouldn't interfere with plowing and things like that, that could also help with the pedestrians of saying directing them to cross where they're supposed to cross. So couple of you know more more information if you could share on why the mechanics of a traffic circle um are

help better than in terms of safety than um traffic lights and stop sign would be important and if there might be even a few other things that we could do to make sure that this is the safest option.

Okay. All right. Uh so I'll start with you had some discussion about some of the alternatives and like speed bumps or speed humps uh raised crosswalks, things like that. Um you like you were talking about those can be traffic calming options on residential streets, the quieter streets. That's sometimes that's in the toolbox that we actually do if if someone has an issue on one of their residential streets. this road because it's a minor arterial state aid roadway vertical. We'd call that a vertical element where you're displacing vehicles vertically is not it's generally not allowed to use on a state aid roadway and the effectiveness of that. So generally you can reduce speed at that location but this is already an allway stop. So you're not really doing it for that reason. I think the other things we're doing will the other benefit you can get is there's maybe a little more visibility by calling any attention to it but some of the other signing that we're doing I think will be effective as well on that and so what we would rather do is proceed with these improvements that we're doing we think will have a major impact and some of the other things we can do later we can always evaluate it and see if that's a need that we have to do make a Good example there is you you mentioned fencing. Uh for example at Concordia when we put in the hawk hawk signal there they had used to have a lot of people crossing kind of willy-nilly in between 10th and 12th Avenue South. So some fencing was put in to really encourage people to use either 12th Avenue at the signal or 10th Avenue at the Hawk signal. And I think that's been effective, but that was put

in because there was an identified problem with that. I would wait until I I do think this is not very far out of the way. It's one thing to have to go 200 feet to get to a signal versus 10 ft over further from where you wanted to go maybe. I I do think people will use the crosswalks at the roundabout that we have or those alternative ones that are further away. But that's something we can definitely monitor and if if there's an issue we can we can address it then. Yeah.

Council member White. Thanks. I think I just was too wordy and not clear enough. What I'm asking is could because I don't think people are convinced that the traffic circle is the most safe option. And so I know you provided more information to us and part of it had to do with the mechanics of a traffic circle as opposed like why is that better in terms of preventing deaths? Yeah. Compared to stop signs and stop lights.

So the average So at a roundabout, a typical roundabout is going to reduce speeds to about 20 miles an hour maximum because that's that's what you have to slow down to physically to go. And then of course if you see other vehicles and peds, you'll slow down further to find your appropriate zipper merge for example or something. you you can avoid coming to a full stop, but you slow down enough that the peds get across. Then you go and then you get you find your gap in the traffic. But if there were no if there were no peds and no other vehicles, the maximum speed you're going to go through there is is 20 in a normal roundabout. But this one's a mini roundabout. It's smaller than that. So the actual speed that people would be able to drive through comfortably is more likely going to be 15 miles per hour or less at those speeds. if of if someone hit a pedestrian at those speeds the rate and yeah this information is in the safe routes to school study that was done I don't remember the exact amount but it becomes exponential as you increase 10 miles an hour every 10 miles an hour you increase it it's a very steep drop off and the survivability of it so when you're only going 10 or 15 miles an hour it's only going to take you maybe 30 feet to come to a full stop. That's including your reaction time. Whereas, if it's a 30 mph, it's 90 to 100 plus feet. That's a very significant difference. And so, sometimes if a driver wasn't paying attention and didn't see the blinking stop sign and then at the last second sees that and reacts, if they're going 30, they're not going to get through that. But with the roundabout, they'll have had other reasons to start slowing down and advance and they can stop much faster.

That's helpful. And um I think I that's what I wanted you to get out because I think for us when we when you presented it, it was again really important. We were trying to see which of these options would be the safest and so I feel confident that the information that we've been provided over the last several months indicates that this is the best one. Um I would still say going back to the fence issue and I I can support this tonight. I wouldn't I would love if we could look at something like that. I think people are still looking for some other ways. And um I don't I understand what you're saying of let's wait and see if it's a problem, but if it's a problem, that's probably a little kid and I don't want to wait. And so if we know we're working there um and there's other things that we could do to tweak this to make that the safest way possible, I'd rather do it now. And if that means a change order, um, again, I'm happy to to support this tonight, but even something like that just to make sure that we're directing, we're doing our best to limit the um speed of the cars and making them drive safely and that we're making pedestrians make the most um take the safest routes, too.

Thanks, Council Member Matson. Uh, thank you. uh from the National Safety Council. A pedestrian struck by a vehicle traveling at 20 miles per hour has a roughly 90% to 95% chance of survival. This speed is considered a critical threshold for safety as the survival rate drops significantly to approximately 50 to 60% at 30 mph and only 10 to 20% at 40 mph. And my recollection is that we we uh routinely see people traveling upwards of uh close to 50 m an hour on this corridor. Okay. Um uh Council Member McDougall.

Thank you, Madam. um what kind of contingency plans are in place or thought about because there's talk about removing a deletion of the right turn lanes if say traffic starts to back right up quite a bit more so than what it currently is because with turn lanes what kind of contingency plans were made for that

and yes that's a good question and that's actually where the roundabout will be very convenient for that it'll it handles the traffic better when you have the allway shop. It backs up traffic a lot further with it. Um the other thing that we're doing is uh we've worked with the school district on reconfiguring how their parent drop off works and that's on the east side of the building. People will enter on 40th and exit on 14th Street. So you'll have less conflicting movements at each of those locations. It's again it becomes oneway traffic and that should help as well. Council, did you have any additional question? Okay. All right. Other questions from council members? Council member Hendrickson.

Uh, thank you, Mayor Carlson. I just want to say thank you, Tom, for all the work you've done. I know we met with a lot of groups and Sebastian and I were there with those groups. Um, people get a little worried about roundabouts, but they're a good thing, I think. But I do have a question. And so there's going to be four total crosswalks in that small area or is there going to be two?

So So there is a there's every intersection has crosswalks, right? So there's a marked crosswalk at 9inth Street. Uh at 10th Street, there will be a crosswalk that has a median refuge island. At 11th Street, it's standard marked crosswalks. And then between 11th and 14th Street, where there's the primary north south access to the school, that's going to have a RRFB with a pedestrian refuge island. And then at the roundabout, every leg has a crosswalk. Um, and then at 16th Street, we'll have an RRFB. And then at 20th Street, we're widening the median. Right now, the median width isn't officially a refuge island. It'll be a little bit wider enough that it would be a refuge island. And then on top of that, we're also doing some crosswalk improvements south on 14th Street as well.

Um, yeah, I've gotten a lot of questions like there's just going to be two crosswalks and they have to run for their life to get across, but that's not the case. There's many crosswalks, many opportunities to cross those roads. Yes. And it's desperately needed. My wife and I were walking to get coffee on Mother's Day and I saw two cars just blow stop signs. And I looked at my wife and I said, "Yeah, that's why we need these be. We need a roundabout." And and I've seen like with stop lightss too. I've seen people just blow through those, too. But round out will make you slow down. So I I think it's the best choice and the best best option. And um like I said, good work. Thanks.

Any further discussion from council council member Nelson? Just a quick question. Uh Tom, you mentioned this was a mini roundabout versus an average roundabout. Can you let I I I just need to visualize that for just a second. I'm thinking of like Detroit Lakes as a mini roundabout downtown and I go about the same speed through that. So, if you could just help me with that.

Yeah, th this will be bigger than the Detroit Lakes ones because we did have more rightway so we can take up a little more space with it. Um, but it's substantially smaller than the other roundabouts that we've built in the past. So, we currently have roundabouts on 24th Avenue South at both 40th Street and 45th Street. And we have another one at 28th Avenue South uh and 36th Street. And all of those are bigger than what what this one is. They're substantially larger than what this one is. So, as a result, again, the maximum speed that a vehicle would feel comfortable driving through there if there was no nothing no other conflicts present uh would be about 15 miles an hour.

Thank you. So, it it's still going to do the intent of doing the roundabout is what I'm what I'm getting at. So, thank you. I'm good. All right. Any other questions or comments from council? Right. Seeing none, we do have a motion and a second on the table. Oh, Council Member Nisser, I just wanted to clarify that we're taking 9B. I believe that that was the motion that council member Borggan took. We won't be done. We'll have to do 9C separately, but I just wanted to make eye contact with her that we were on the same page for the motion. Thank you. Yes, for that time to clarify, mayor.

All right. Thank you. All right. See no other hands being raised. Um, all those in favor of 9A or sorry 9B signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That motion carries. I'd be looking for a motion to approve 9C. So moved. Second. Nissa mayor. Motion and a second. Any discussion on 9C? Seeing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I.

Any opposed? That motion carries as well. Thank you, Mr. Trobridge. and Dr. Zimmerman. Um, and if you have the people that did have questions, um, if you have any additional questions, you can maybe grab them on the way out. Thank you. Um, now we're going to go back to 9A to approve the April 27th, 2026 meeting minutes. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. There's a motion and a second. Uh, motion by McDougall, second by Moore. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I.

Any opposed? That motion carries. Right. We are going down to citizens to address the council. There are find the right pile over here. Um, we have four individuals who wish to address the council. Um, I'm just going to go from the top of the list or the top of the group that I was handed. Um, and again, this is an opportunity to address the council. Um, there won't be any back and forth. Um, it's not a Q&A. It's just for citizens to be able to provide information to the council. Um, when I call your name up, you'll have three minutes to address the council. And this fancy little contraption will be green when your time is available and red when your time is up. Um, and you'll need to state your name and if you're a resident of Morehead. Uh, the first one is Carrie Lobler. What's the What's the contraption I'm looking at?

Oh, this fancy little stop sign. Oh, kind of thing. You state your name and if you're a resident in Morhead. Thank you.

I'm Carrie Lober and I am a resident of Morehead. Um, good evening and um, I'm Carrie Labber, which I just said. I'm an educator. I'm also a faith leader, um, a founder of a nonprofit education center and a micro school here in Morehead. Um, and I am here tonight asking you to allow staff to draft a federal separation policy that creates clear guidelines regarding local police cooperation with ICE and the use of city spaces as staging areas for federal immigration enforcement operations. Um, I'm also the faith leader that met with Andrea um Pedro Francisco in Texas. And I know um I don't need to get into that because Deb shared her story, but I will say that she is a 23year-old kid. She is the age of my kids and when I met with her and um prayed with her and she leaned into me and started to sob and I could not let her go because she is just a kid. She is here legally. Um and she is one story of thousands. Um it is imperative that ICE operations are not staged near schools or parks or libraries, food pantries, other community spaces where children and families should be able to feel safe. Those spaces are meant to foster learning and belonging, recreation and trust, not fear. As an educator, I can tell you directly that children cannot learn when they do not feel safe. As fear does not stay isolated to undocumented families, children absorb the anxiety of the adults around them. They notice when parents, neighbors, or friends are afraid. And this fear is already shaping how people treat one another. Just last week, my daughter, who was born in the

US, who I adopted, who also happens to have the most beautiful brown skin, um was walking to the grocery store pushing my new grandbaby um in a stroller when someone rode by in a bicycle, yelling at her to go back to her country. That she is our family and this is her home. How is she supposed to feel safe here when this is the climate that we are creating? Because when fear and suspicion and dehumanization become normalized in a community, it does not stay contained. It spills outward onto neighbors and families and children. Policies send messages and communities absorb those messages. This is not about whether someone supports or opposes immigration law. People can disagree on immigration policy, but local communities still have the right and the responsibility to decide what kind of atmosphere that we're going to create. I do not believe our parks and schools, libraries, public spaces should become staging grounds for federal immigration enforcement operations. Um, we deserve uh much much better than that and safe places for our families and our kids to go. So I would urge you to consider that.

Thank you. Thank you.

The next uh individual that I have is Madison Clark. You Madison and state your name if you're Morehead resident. Hey. Yeah. I am Madison Clark. Dr. Dr. Madison Clark and I am a Morehead resident. And good evening, Morehead City Council. This isn't for Deb. This isn't for Heather. You girls are good. Rest of you all. It is my understanding that several members of the local community are urging a separation ordinance, though limit local cooperation with federal and immigration enforcement. I am encouraged that residents are working to find solutions and efforts I don't see active among the city representatives names. Ex. Yeah. However, I know I'm ignorant of behind-the-scenes activities since the ad hoc committee the mayor has created does not have meetings open to the public. But it seems like you guys have trouble with communication anyway. So, but the public nevertheless is persisting and responding by limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The city is protecting its most vulnerable populations. There is an easy tendency to fall under the excuse of federal powers dominating over states. But I urge council members to remember that not all laws or legalities are just. as a local history professor who has had several students in my office every week about these fears and concerns they have not about their families and cities but right here in the Fargo Morehead area. I'm consistently teaching college students how the United States developed since its inception 250 years ago and reminding them that the founding fathers would be horrified and disgusted from the nation today not only because of its growth as a world superpower but because of its rich diversity and advertised opportunities. We know our country did not start off as a place where anyone can fulfill their dreams and voices were limited to white male land owners. But

progress means developed change and our responsibilities in the 21st century include ensuring we are not regressing back to limited representation and discouraged safety. We are foolish to continue believing that ICE or this current presidential administration has this nation's citizens best interest at heart. Corruption, greed, manipulation, exploitation are some of the hallmarks behind ISIS legacy. We have multiple cases, just a handful mentioned today, proving that the incompetent uniform agents are carrying a mission of discrimination and racism. Trigger happy and ready to take advantage of the general public's lack of mobility and action to their turn. May Morehead respond differently. Let us not cower to submission and stand in solidarity with other cities and communities who are working to protect by any means necessary. While it may sound nice to think about future generations looking back to today, I am more concerned about making sure my people survive the seed tomorrow. May our conscience move us to act sooner rather than later so that all of our neighbors may be with us the next day. Peace out. Thank you. The next individual that we have is Jamal Abigz. I'm hoping that I said your last name correctly. Thanks.

Let you know if you did. My name is Jamal Abigas. Yes, I am a Morehead resident. I want to thank the city council today for the discussion and to urge that the words here become action. I want to deepen the conversation here. However, I'm a member of the international democratic people's movement known as impedum. Point 19 of our revolutionary democratic platform reads, "We demand the immediate withdrawal of the terroristic police and military troops from the African community and the replacement with African liberation forces whose struggle in defense of our community against our oppression demonstrate their loyalty to our community and their willingness to serve in its interest." The ICE and CPB kidnapping campaign is an example explaining the necessity of that position. As we've seen, African people are being snatched and shot down all over the country by ICE and CPP. What is effect in what has effectively become a state-led pgram against colonized peoples throughout the United States. The colonial police have at every step been complicit in this process. This ordinance should be drafted with the understanding that throughout the state of Minnesota, the Minnesota State Patrol has been engaged in false detentions, pulling over cars with no reason on uh the interstate, and intimidation of commuters who are suspected of monitoring ICE activities as ICE vehicles are dangerously speeding down our roadways. It should be drafted with the understanding that just as the federal government is increasing attacks on colonized peoples, it is also going

after colonizers who dare to stand in solidarity with us. It should not be forgotten that in this metropolitan area, one former police chief was allowed to retire after calling myself and other black organizers trying to bring focus on the negative conditions that we exist in. Uh we were referred to by this individual as domestic terrorists. This person was replaced by a different police chief who in a private meeting with other organizers specifically said, "Oh, we know Jamal. He can make one call and burn the city down." Nonsense. But I mean, I'm not that cool. Let's let's keep it a buck. Um, this ordinance, let me take a step back. That culture in policing underlies the ways in which rank and file police agencies are complicit in sharing dangerous rhetoric that highlights organizers and lay people alike for targeting by these same snatch gangs. This ordinance should include a restriction on Morehead police collaboration with state intelligence organizations such as the FBI with regard to the illegal and unwarranted surveillance they are carrying out. The federal government with its NSPM7 or national security presidential memo 7 is weaponizing all agents of colonial state violence against people for what are essentially thought crimes. This city council should bar Morehead police from collaborating with any federal agency that is engaged in these pre-rime or thought crime type investigations that target community members and organizers in addition to

barring Morehead PD from collaborating with st state sanctioned snatch gangs known as ICE Customs and Border Patrol or HSI DHS.

Thank you. All right, the next person is Cara Glow. My name is Caraglo. I'm a Morehead citizen. Good evening, Chair Carlson and members of the Morehead City Council. I'm here to contribute to the discussion regarding the separation policy or ordinance. First, I would like to thank the city council members who have responded to my correspondence throughout this very difficult year. As a mental health therapist, I can tell you that many of us have experienced much damage to our sense of safety and stability. Not just from oper operation metroserve metro surge sorry but also from the flood the zone strategy of this administration. The uncertainty of never knowing which demographic of people will wake up to discover they are the next target andor never knowing how to protect our loved ones has resulted in hypervigilance. A trauma coping mechanism in which people are constantly on high alert for threats. Hypervigilance develops from experiencing dangerous situations directly or secondhand and thrives on an uncertainty. I'm here tonight to encourage you as our elected officials to do whatever you can to reduce uncertainty and increase the sense of safety within our community, including limiting limiting local police from cooperating with or employing crowd control in coordination with ICE, establishing a reporting protocol for city employees who interact with federal immigration enforcement, and limiting the usage of city resources by the federal immigration authorities.

A few months ago, I started volunteering with a local family who was coordinating getting food and supplies to folks who are homebound due to fear of the of ICE presence. The need was great. The coordinating families started receiving requests from social workers and other helping for other helping professionals, not just individual families. Think about that. um one one family connected to their community, finding and organizing volunteers, donations, deliveries, etc., and serving community members in a way that even folks deeply and professionally connected with our official systems of support relied upon that family. Unfortunately, the coordinating family moved out of state and the connection to those vulnerable vulnerable community members went with them. As long as people do not feel safe in their own towns, this need will exist and we do not have the infrastructure to meet it. While I understand there are limits to what the city can be legal can legally do given the structure of our city government and the distribution of power among federal, state, and local governments. I have been extremely disappointed by how dismissive many members of the council have been regarding common sense proposals on policies already being implemented in other Minnesota cities, such as banning ICE from city-owned areas where our most vulnerable city citizens often gather. This is not the first time cities and states have had to protect their citizens from state sanctioned harm. During the 1950s, numerous cities declared themselves as sanctuary cities and refused to cooperate with federal

slave catchers who claimed to be enforcing the legal fugitive slave act. These cities chose dignity, humanity, and courage over unjust federal mandates and set a powerful precedent for us to do the same. Miss Glow, you're past your time, so I almost gave you an extra minute, so thank you. All right. Um, we are going to take a just a five minute break because I anticipate that uh with mayor council w with the discussion it might get a little bit long and um we've been sitting here for two hours. So um we're going to just take a 5m minute break and come back at 10 to 8.

Hello. All right, it is 7:50 and our five minute recess is completed. Um, if we could have a quiet in the audience, please. Um, I'd appreciate that. We are now on to uh mayor and council reports. Um before we get down through the agenda, um are there any council members? If if the audience could please be quiet, that'd be greatly appreciated. Um do council members have any reports or uh from any boards or committee meetings? Uh council member Borggan.

Thank you, Mayor. I attended the Sanford community breakfast which I believe they have quarterly and it was very interesting. There's several hundred people that go to it and they did a review of the educational opportunities that are offered through Sanford and their partnerships and they highlighted our career academy here in Morehead public schools. So, I thought that was pretty cool. They also have a great partnership with MState and um MSUM as well. And then I also um attended the project partnership agreement signing which I'm sure you're going to talk about mayor. But I wanted to bring up the fact that it was a really nice ceremony with the senators from Minnesota, North Dakota, a colonel, a general from the army, and Mayor Shelley, the Fargo mayor, and West Fargo mayors were all presented with special military medals and plaques for all the work they've done on the diversion. So, I thought that was a great honor for our mayor. So, thanks for doing that, Shelley. That's it.

Thank you. Uh, other council members have reports from boards or committees. Council member Nisser, I don't know if your hands half up or I as if somebody wants to go first, they absolutely can.

No. Okay, it's me. Yes. Um, it is uh police week. Uh, for those who may not know, we have lots of things going on in our community um regarding um law enforcement. And so for those um who uh are in the Citizens Police Academy alumni association, um we uh participated in volunteering and donating items. So there uh could be a lunch for first responders, uh sheriff, police, a whole bunch of crew um at the law enforcement center today. Um, and so there are alternative events for those who work the night crew so they can get uh foods and snacks and be appreciated as well. Um, for those who may be interested, uh, Friday at noon at Lynenwood Park in Fargo, the North Dakota um, uh, FOP,

Fraternal Or

Fraternal Order of Police, I was having a tough time with that. Um, is holding an annual law enforcement memorial ceremony. All are welcome. And so if you would like to be part of that, it's at Linenwood Park in Fargo, North Dakota, Friday at noon. Um there are other um opportunities to engage um should you be interested in volunteering or becoming part of the Citizens Police Academy alumni association, you could attend the um Citizens Police Academy. And so for those folks who did the Citizens Government Academy that just graduated tonight, congratulations. But now we perhaps it's an opportunity for you to join the fall fun of the um citizens police academy and learn um and get to do a whole bunch of hands-on things. Um, the application usually opens in July and starts in September and goes for a number of weeks throughout the fall where you can get hands-on um, experiences, ask lots of questions, and engage um, to learn more about our uh, law enforcement group here in the city of Morehead. If you don't want to wait until the fall, the um city of Morehead uh police department always is looking for volunteers to help with um traffic enforcement. Uh if special events, think like uh the Greater Morehead Days parade and you see all those humans at each intersection wearing vests or cool things, you too could be handed candy for standing and keeping us all safe. So, um, consider that those volunteer opportunities. All of those can be found on the city of Morhead website. The application for the Citizens Police Academy also will be there once it is made live. Uh, Wednesday, we have the Caslay Food Commission meeting, which is May 13th from 10:30 to noon at Metrocog. Um, we have a great deal of information.

Um this year we are doing a themed approach to all of our meetings. And so we have the city of West Fargo doing a presentation on their uh food forests and community gardens and a variety of engagement it with West Fargo parks and uh as well as the city of Horus uh maybe giving us an update as well. Um Morehead will be presenting in the fall sometime. I don't know if that will be September or November. Stay tuned. Um all are welcome to join us for a cup of coffee um for a 90minute meeting and we also have a um citizens to address um the food commission uh time and so if you would like to have your thoughts heard to for those who make uh policies that um are in seven municipal entities um AC throughout our metropolitan area. I encourage you to join us on Wednesday.

Right. Thank you. other council members. Uh, Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just wanted to say thank you to Nathan and his team. We had the local board of appeal and equalization on April 30th where we review property assessments and that went splend splendidly. All things were quiet on that front. Um, and also share some information. If you do have a property assessment and your increase was 12% or more, then you can qualify for a special property tax refund through the state of Minnesota this year. So, that's just something that um you have access to this year to let folks know that if you're looking at a high assessment jump that you should look into that possibility. And then we also had our EDA meeting on May 4th. And one thing that jumped out at me that I wanted to share with folks is that um when we do tiff, which is tax in incremental financing and um businesses can delay paying taxes, one thing that we do is we get more affordable housing through that agreement. And Emory Apartments has affordable housing. They have to file a report every year and we review it at the EDA and just make sure that they are offering those apartments at a lower rate. It's a 60% of the average median income and of our area to have that more affordable rent available for you. And it doesn't help anyone if people aren't renting those properties. So, there are eight available right now and they have to be held vacant if they are not rented to a family that qualifies for that um the income qualification rate. So, thank you so much.

Thank you. other council members. Okay. Um for mayor reports, um several of the things have already reported on and um as council member Borgens stated, uh yes, the assistant secretary, assistant secretary Tel was in town to present the $100 million from the US Army Corps of Engineers budget um that was allocated to the diversion project. The diversion authority has authorized a portion of that money to be used for match funds should we receive any from the state of Minnesota this year to complete projects in um in the city of Morehead and in Klay County. Uh the rest of the funding are going to be used for other mitigation projects um that are kind of um on unscheduled to be completed along with paying down debt that uh the diversion project took on to be able to pay for the $3 billion diversion project. Um Senator Clolobashar was not able to intend in person, but she was there um and talked about the benefit to the project for being able to have this money allocated early. um as well as Senator Hovind, uh Congresswoman uh Julie Foddorch and uh other members of the US Army Corps of Engineers um such as Colonel Chase. Uh the diversion project is um when one of the things that we found out is that it is something that is being analyzed across the United States and actually has been a study in 2018 at Stanford University. So it is something that um this community can be very proud of having a project of this size and coming together with multitude of different leaders um um across two different states, two counties, several cities and uh a gener almost a generation of leaders that um participated in making sure that this project could actually

happen uh in the in the metro area. Um I was also uh invited to join a group of musicians for National Music Week. Uh Mayor Mahoney and myself declared uh the last week of uh April, early May National Music Week and then just a multitude of other different committee meetings that I was uh attended to. So with that um looking to city man if you have any reports.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll be brief. the um so we're halfway through one of our favorite local holidays, Morehead Cleanup Days. Um the uh a big thank you to the herculean crews in the city sanitation division that have been doing such a great job. So week one was last week and um crews are out this week. Uh the Oakport neighborhood um uh cleanup is on May 19th. Just wanted to let you know too that public works director Paul FeNer will be at the next city council meeting to talk about you know how much was picked up and there's always one or two really wild stories um something you know so he'll be presenting on that uh at our next meeting which um in two weeks city offices are closed on Memorial Day that's Monday May 25th so as a result the next MOD city council meeting is on Tuesday May 26th so making sure that's on everybody's radar we also have a reforest the red event scheduled next Tuesday, May 19th from noon to 4:00 at Riverfront Park. And so River um Reforest the Red events are always fun and a big thank you to um Riverkeepers for um pulling out more trees and shrubs and they're nice trees too and talking about edible shrubs and some neat stuff along the river. So if anybody wants to volunteer, the link is on the website. And um lastly, uh fun and much deserved update. Sandy Timian, the office manager um in the Morehead Police Department, was honored a week or so ago with the 2026 Minnesota Association of Women Police Excellence Award. Sandy has served in the Morehead Police Department for um 31 years and is retiring at the end of this month. And so throughout Sandy's career, she's been a steady source of support and um boy, just invaluable in terms of helping guide and especially in our local um transition and leadership at the police department. So just wanted to say a big thank you to Sandy uh and everybody um in that uh police department. So thank you.

All right. Thank you so much. Um, we do not have an executive session tonight, but we do have new business, and I will turn that over to Council Member Matson and Nissa Meyer, who had put this uh item on the agenda.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. I am excited to have this on new business. Um, again, as I shared uh at a meeting, oh gosh, at the be their first April meeting, um, my hope had been to have it on the agenda. Really, my goal is after several weeks of continuing to navigate the process in which two city council members can put something on the agenda prior to the agenda um being released. Um navigating that, my goal was um as Council Member White mentioned earlier, the impetus of how many emails we've received um with this request. And uh you may or may not know that it is illegal for all of us to get together and talk about stuff that is not public. And so for us to be together and have a public conversation based on the number of engagements and again Deb's got a list. I've counted over 200 emails. It is an outstanding number which tells me that we need to have a conversation. I don't know which way this conversation will go. But it is very important that we have it here and publicly so folks can see folks being residents in the world that we're having the discussion and that we're here to talk about it. Um, and so I appreciate the time and the space for everyone to be here today to have this conversation. Um, my goal is to uh offer up what possibilities are. And so unless council member Matson wants to speak first, um, I would look to uh the city manager to really see what options we have based on the requests that we have for a separation ordinance or policy for the city of Morehead. Council member Matson would like to

Okay. Speak. Perfect. Council member Matson. Put a pin in that. Sorry. City Manager Molly.

Thank you, Madame Mayor and Council Member Nie. Mayor, um I know we've all been here a long time, but this is very important. So, uh I'm going to say what I have to say. Item number one on my list. Um I just want to go back to the idea of uh we're afraid of calling attention to ourselves by by doing this. What what are what who are we afraid of? We are afraid of our own government of our federal government. That is what we are concerned about being um retaliated against in this democracy by our federal government. So I just want to name that because one of the things I find is that um it's important for us to all operate in what I call a shared reality. right now it's very rare I think for all of us to to live in the same world even though we're breathing the same air and so so I just want to start there is what we're talking about this is what we're afraid of is retaliation by our government and um what kind of retaliation well I'd like to talk about some things that I saw on social media this year Rahman US citizen disabled on her way to the doctor pulled out of her car violently by federal agents, assaulted and detained by immigration uh authorities. I saw that on social media. Um I saw the Jackson family uh US citizens on their way home from a basketball game with six children in the car, including an infant. Their car was teargassed by federal agents because they must made the mistake of turning to go down the street to their home. Uh, the infant stopped breathing. Again, US citizens. I saw that on social media. I

saw um Renee Good get shot in the face by a uh federal law enforcement agent on social media. I also saw Alex Prey get shot um for the crime of trying to help someone who had fallen on the ground again by US citizen killed by our federal government. So, we talk about social media and people being afraid. I mean, I think we have I think people are justified in their fears. And I don't think it's um I actually find it I guess I'm not going to characterize how I find it to to suggest that somehow the fact that we're bringing attention to it is the problem and not the acts themselves. I have here a um executive order signed January 20th, 2025. It is called protecting the American people against invasion. Day one of the Trump of Trump 2.0. This was signed. I'm not going to read it all to you. It's about six pages long. But I did want to read the highlighted section here. This is section 11. Federal state agreements to ensure state and local law enforcement agencies across the United States can assist with the protection of the American people with the consent of state or local officials as appropriate uh through agreements under this section or otherwise. This authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security um to uh allow I'm sorry, I'm going to back up. with the consent of state or local officials as appropriate, take appropriate action through agreements under this section or otherwise to authorize state and local officials as the Secretary of Homeland Security determines are qualified and appropriate to perform the functions of immigration officers in relation to the

investigation, apprehension, or detention of aliens in the United States under the direction and supervision of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Now, what I what I read that I'm not an attorney. Um, we have an attorney here on the on the on Zoom with us. My my interpretation of that is that with our approval, we could allow our law enforcement officers to function as immigration agents. Conversely, that means that we don't have to allow them to do that. And in fact, the president has clearly said we don't have to do that. So, I don't know why this is so hard because even Donald Trump thinks that we can do this thing. Okay. Uh, next on my list, um, I just print I just saw this today. This is, uh, Trump says he will send an election integrity army into every state for midterms. We are talking about, um, things that have happened and those are very important. But uh we have a a citizen here who came a month ago and said that her expectation of us is that we we will look ahead and plan for things that have not happened yet. I have a lot of concerns about about all citizens. Every citizen, no matter where you were born, if you were born here or born someone else somewhere else, if you are an eligible voter, you should be able to go vote in peace and not be intimidated or threatened. I have a lot of concerns about this idea of uh an election integrity army that the president is going to send for us. Okay. So, that's something I would like us to start talking about. Finally, I would like to um refer us all. There's a book that I read eight years ago. I think probably some of you have read it as well. It's called On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. And I'm going to say this and I'm going to ask you not to react to it because you will be removed and I don't

want that. Okay. The first rule in that book is do not obey in advance. We are in a situation where those of us here, none of us have been in this situation before unless you came here from a repressive country, which some I know some people did, right? No, I don't. But most of us have not experienced this before. Okay? We're all kind of we're trying to figure it out along the way. We're doing our best. But we can look to history. There are people who have been here before. And the number one rule is you don't give your power away. Okay, that is what we're doing right now. We are giving our power away. And that is a choice we are making and we can make a different choice. Is there other um other council members who would like or I guess I should make sure both council member Matson and niece mayor are okay. Uh do you want to go to comments or do you want to do my request? I think um a lot of people aren't sure what we have the capacity or the power to do. Uh attorney uh city attorney Shockley had said he was waiting for the direction in order to provide us with a list of things that may be impacted. Uh depending on our choice to go down that route, I assume we would choose ordinance or policy uh with some research involved. And so he had already addressed that. But I don't know that anybody knows what our options are. And if we do all know what our options are, I would still like them publicly shared. And that is why I directed city manager Molly really just to say like ask us to do something or tell us not to do something essentially. And by something I mean research, prep work, stuff like that.

Sure. I'm sorry, mayor. Um, yep. Go ahead. So, you know, we work at the the will of the city council, right? So we maintain and ensure efficient operations as a staff. Um that's day-to-day sorts of operations. This is a a separation ordinance is a policy matter. It is um a council affair. So as the council directs staff is what we would research and bring back. Okay. Other comments or other comment or council members who might want to weigh in? Council member Borggan.

Okay. So, and we've heard a lot and yes, I've gotten a lot of emails and frankly I have not responded to any of them because I don't respond to canned emails that they get off of the internet. It was the same words. Everyone said the same words because it was something that was given to a group of people that said, "Send this to the council so we can be heard." And in that email which we all got, it included that we are in a crisis and our people are being terrorized. That is simply untrue. It's simply untrue. And if you if you don't like it, you can leave. And I would ask the police if we continue to have outbursting these people out of everybody. These are the people you're going to leave. I'll leave.

Good. Okay. Good. Embarrassing. Good. See you. Thank you.

Again, this is a meeting and if you could please be respectful. This is not a sporting event. So, uh this is a meeting. We don't go into your places of business and respond to things that you are uh discussing in your places of work. Um so, please be respectful and not add lib or provide other additional commentary. Thank you. Um council member Borggan. So, as I noted, these emails all talked about the Morehead being in a crisis, that we were being terrorized, that we needed um a rent moratorum or eviction moratorum because people were getting kicked out of their houses. I mean, I didn't I don't agree with any of that and I did not respond to those emails because I do not believe that Morehead should be declaring itself a sanctuary city, which is exactly what this request is. That's what the separation ordinance would do. I don't believe that the majority of our voting people in Morehead support that action. I don't support hamstringing our law enforcement and telling them what their limit is when they right now don't have to cooperate with ICE if they don't feel it's appropriate. It is up to them whether they feel like they should or shouldn't. I have been in law enforcement. I was the county attorney for eight years. I was a judge for seven years. Ma'am, are you going to continue to be disruptive because I've asked several times very politely for you to just maintain silence? We would not come to your res to your place of business while

you were having a meeting and be disruptive like you're being. So, please just maintain um your composure and not this is a meeting amongst these people that you're here to observe. Thank you. So, there are many times when our law enforcement works with all kinds of agencies, not only the Fargo, West Fargo, uh, law enforcement, the BCA, the BCI, the FBI, ICE, Custom, and Border Patrol. And it's not always for these types of things. There are legitimate reasons for them to work with other agencies. I am as appalled as anyone about the actions of this administration, the actions of the ICE in Minneapolis, how they have mistreated these people that you have given us examples of. We all know all these things. I mean, Deb, you've told the same story the last meeting. We heard the same exact thing. We know that. But doing making Morehead a sanctuary city by doing this ordinance isn't going to stop any of that. It's not. They had those ordinances in Minneapolis and St. Paul and those other places where ICE did the crackdown. It didn't help. I I just think it it's it's it's performative. We aren't You know, you talk about giving away power. I don't think you know what your power is. We're the city council. We aren't social services. We can't um you know, council member Nissa Meyer talked about how we should be giving more money for to help people with this and and to help with rents. That is the county's job. That is social services job. That's not that's

not the city's job. Yes, we have a budget for certain things and we had $25,000 that we could help people with and we gave it to CAP LP because they know how to get rid of that money the right way and people will apply for it. That's not our power. We aren't the state government. We aren't, you know, we're not legislators of the state of Minnesota. I mean, if you want to have that power, then run for those offices. We are the city council of Morehead. Roads, garbage, mosquitoes, you know, that's what we do. That's what we do. Um, I just think I'm not afraid of retaliation by the federal government in general, but we all know that this administration loves to go after people they're pissed at, and that's why he came to Minnesota in the first place. And I don't see why Morehead, which is not in Minneapolis, there is not a single city in Minnesota that has an ordinance like this unless they're in the metro area. So why would Morehead want to do this when we haven't had all of these things that you're saying are going on in Minnesota? We know they are, but they're not happening here. So, I just think that, you know, we're a border city. We're much different than Minneapolis. We have to work with North Dakota. We have to work with other agencies. I have complete trust in our law enforcement. If they don't want to work with an ICE um if there was ever something that was going on here, they don't have to work with them. We've never had anyone want a stage in our parks or at our school. Our superintendent said no one's come into the school. The the presidents of our universities has said no one has come in

there. Why are we doing this? It does not make sense to me. I think it's out of the bounds of what we really need to be doing as a city council and I will not support it. Council member Nelson or

Thank you, Mayor. So, uh, appreciate your update at the beginning of the the meeting. I thought it was very thorough and appreciate the, uh, committee's work on on the task force. Um, I concur with, uh, Council Member Borggan's, uh, comments. She covered a lot of the points that, uh, I was going to cover here. Um, just just to highlight a couple items. You know, we don't, as the council get involved with the day-to-day operations of the police department. we leave that uh for our chief of police to do. That's not that's not our that's not our business. So we I I don't know where we believe that we can are going to set the operations for the um federal government or uh any federal law enforcement agency. It just doesn't doesn't make sense. Um there's no meaningful way to enforce anything like that. It's going to put um our officers at u at risk. There's it just it's gonna it just it's just like um council Borggan council um person Borggan mentioned there. We just we're way way overstepping our authority here. So um I'm not going to be in support of the separation ordinance. There's no surprise. We've talked about this at workshops. We've talked about it at council meetings. Uh we know where everybody stands um on this issue. Um and it's okay to be passionate about it, but it's okay to uh disagree about it. So, um, with that said, um, mayor, I'm going to make a motion right now to move to close this discussion on this matter and not have any staff and and not have staff, um, put any further research or time uh, resources into a separation ordinance.

I'll second it. Okay, so there's a motion and a second. Um, any other discussion about this motion? Council member White,

I don't think refusing repeatedly to talk about things is helpful. Um, I'm opposed to this motion because I think we should have the opportunity. We even had folks that had their hands up and they deserve the opportunity to speak on this. All we have seen is repeatedly other council members who just don't even want to talk about it. And part of it is because I think if you had to talk about it, you would realize the utter hypocrisy of the things that you are saying. The fact that you can sit here and say things like Morehead is not in a crisis. People are not being terrorized when I have given you specific examples of multiple people including people that are in your ward that you represent that have been terrorized that are in a crisis. The fact that you can sit here because it's not affecting you and say that is so deeply offensive.

It's deeply offensive that you don't get your way. So, you want to continue to bring up something that you don't have the votes for. You don't have the votes. That's how you can call it how you want to say that that these people are not in that folks are not in crisis. that people are not being terrorized after you have specific examples of people in Morehead is deeply offensive and I will stand by that. Other council members question.

Okay. Um I think call the question means we have to take a vote immediately. Is that correct Mr. Shockley? um with a technically when you call the question you need to have a vote to call the question and then you have then you have a vote on the interlin question. Okay. So we need a vote to call the question. A point of information uh we're voting to call the question on which question? The motion that um council member Nelson made. We had a motion and a second on the floor. Do we need to call the question? It's Mr. Shockley. you kind of clarify the specifically the next steps with this.

Yeah, when you're uh Thank you, Madame Mayor. Essentially calling the question means to end debate on the underlying motion. So, you need a motion to end the debate. Technically, we had a motion to end the debate, did we not? It that was a question to um to not continue discussion on the motion and the second that was made. So, um, with that, um, if we could take a roll call vote on if we want to go immediately to a vote on the motion and the second Matson. Um, I don't understand what I'm voting on. I really don't.

Okay. Council member or city attorney Shockley. Um, yeah. Uh, Council Member Matson, this is a procedural vote to end debate on the underlying question, which is uh, Council Member Ryan's motion in the affirmative to uh, not not to continue any further research or efforts by city staff um, or continue working on any type of separation ordinance or policy? No. White. No. Moore. No. Nissa Meyer. No. Nelson.

Oregon. Yes. McDougall. I. Hendrickson. I. All right. The vote is 44. Um, I will break a tie in this and I will concur with ending the discussion. We have had numerous discussions regarding this. Um, I'm gonna go back to um, council member. I don't I'm sorry to interrupt. My understanding is the call the question requires a two-thirds vote. Is that not correct? Oh, city attorney.

Yeah, madame mayor. with a small group. Uh typically we have not employed a twothirds requirement to call the vote or close close the vote because you have just a small group of uh members and so it just requires a majority vote. You still have to vote on the underlying question. Thank you. So that means that we are voting on the underlying question of the motion uh made by council member Nelson and I don't remember who seconded it. Uh council member Hendrickson. Um so with that, could we get a roll call vote, please? Borggan, yes. McDougall, I. Hendrickson,

hi. Matson, no. Nissa Meyer, no. Nelson, yes. Moore, no. White, no.

Okay. And um again in this in this context I would be breaking the tie and I want to acknowledge that philosophically um I agree and I understand the intent behind uh wanting to do the discussion and believe that the concerns that raised came from a genuine desire to make people feel safe and supported. But we do have an obligation as a city to operate within the legally legal realities of what the city can or cannot do. So I will be voting no. So with that we are moving on um from new business and it is 8:26 and we are ajourned. Thank you and good night Morhead.

We didn't even get a chance to talk about possible