City Council - Regular Meeting

Call the meeting to order. Let's stand for a pledge of allegiance, please. Pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. We'll call the meeting to order.

Council Member Nordby? Here. Council Member Woods? Here. Council Member McKenzie? Here. Council Member Schwer? Here. Mayor Monge?

Here. Thank you very much. And a motion to adopt the agenda, please.

I'll make a motion. So moved.

Council Member Schwerin?

Second. Second.

Council Member McKenzie? All those in favor say aye. Aye.

Thanks, sir. No presentations this evening. So consent agenda is item A, May 19th, 2026, City Council Workshop and regular meeting minutes. Item B, general claims of $653,735. Item C, HR claims of $21,957.91. Item D, a no change policy. Item E, special event permit for St. Peter's Church bonfire. Item F, League of Minnesota City's waiver for economic development authority liability insurance. Item G, letter of support for the Highway 120 and Highway 36 interchange. Item H, Teamsters Public and Law Enforcement Union supplemental agreement, 2026 summer hours. And item I, approving of training room AV project.

anything at this time if not i would like to pull items e and g please e and g all right thank you very much if nothing else can i get a motion on that the rest so moved second

Hey, John. Evening.

Good evening.

I missed that. I wasn't listening. John Schmoll, 2750 Chisholm Avenue. I would just like to repeat what Council Member Woods had said at the last meeting. I'm not an accountant, and I'm not an accountant times two. And the situation that I don't want to refer to is that the information from the financial officers saying that we would reduce the rates for electricity. and it was not the rate, it was a amount off of the power adjustment, which I've never really understood, but who knows. And in these times, at the chaos that has visited energy prices, I know we probably don't run our electricity off of oil coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, but it's all one big picture. And there are prices that are going up. And the thing is, is that the reduction is from the power adjustment. And I had submitted a data request years back to figure out what the power adjustment was. And were we paying that to MMPA and whatnot? And yes, that power adjustment is based on costs that we've incurred. as the producer, the MMPA, and they pass it on to the city, and the city passes it on to us, the residents. So how can you say, well, we're going to reduce that amount, that power adjustment amount. That's what we're going to give as a benefit to you as residents. But wait a minute. that you've incurred that cost. How can you say that that is reduced unless you have some slush fund somewhere that you can use? This is, you know, Not an accountant plus two or two times. I haven't got a clue as to how you can do when you are being charged something and you can say to the residents, you don't have to pay that total amount, but we'll give it to someone or we'll get that money from somewhere else. Secondly, the deal that's going on in Casey, they're still hauling tonight. And they still have the pumps going. And why didn't they put pumps in three weeks ago when they shut the whole operation down, the dewatering? And those pumps ran for four or five, six straight days to get the water out of the area. Why didn't they have the pumps going before? And I talked to one of the guys. I like talking to the guys. You know, they'll give you the straight skinny. and uh... said what happened up they were trying to get by on the cheap was a story thank you all right

Thank you. City business action items, we have two on the agenda for tonight. First one up is the Division Street Department's resolution of support. Item A, I'll turn that over to Ken Roberts. Oh yeah, I'm sorry, I apologize, I jumped ahead. We have two that we've pulled. That's right, so item E, special event permit for Church of St. Peter bonfire.

So I'm the one that pulled this. This is a permit for the St. Peter's Bonfire. I would just really appreciate it if Ken could take a moment to explain, because this is something we recently changed, and I just wanted to understand it. I was hoping he could explain, A, did this permit now fall under the free, or was it paid? And B, if he could explain what, Because some of these permits, I believe, now were being able to be approved administratively and not come to us. So I was also curious what on this permit triggered it to have to come before us and not come before us. So I was just hoping we could understand what we changed and why we changed it. But I'm fully in support and plan on approving it.

Mayor, members of the council, the reason this is before you this evening is because The permit to have a bonfire, the fire department's clearly very concerned and very cautious and they may require to be on standby and there would be a fee or a potential cost for that. That's the primary reason why this permit's before you. But you're right, Council Member Nordby, we did change the ordinance. There are some permits that can be approved administratively. We will notify the council, but you don't have to approve them. This one, because there will be some public expense by the fire department, we want to bring it before you to make sure you're aware of it.

Thank you.

And did this permit still fall under the free category? No. Yes.

It did? Okay. Okay. Special event permits for non-profits are still at no cost.

Thank you, I appreciate you taking the time for that explanation so I can understand what we changed. So let's vote on that one. All those in favor for the church permit for the special word for the church so moved so move councilman Norby Second councilmember swear all those in favor say aye aye aye Thank you All right next one next item is the letter of support for the highway 120 and highway 36 interchange I pulled this as well I was just hoping Morgan could speak to us some about what this truly means and especially because I don't believe there's a finalized project and what a letter of support means on something that isn't finalized. Just want to know what we're voting for.

Sure. Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, Council Member Norby. So what is before you is simply to approve or authorize staff to complete and transmit a letter of support basically for a funding application. This has happened just off the top of my head twice before for the interchange, maybe different councils, but there have been two past solicitations for corridors of commerce funding that the city council has supported by way of a letter of support. And this is no different, although it's a little different program. So this is what is considered a regional solicitation. So those dollars pass. THROUGH FROM EITHER THE FEDS OR THE STATE AND ARE DISTRIBUTED BY THE MET COUNCIL. FOR A VARIETY OF DIFFERENT THINGS, TRANSIT IS ONE, CERTAINLY TRANSPORTATION IS ANOTHER, TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS AND THE FUTURE INTERCHANGE AT 36 AND 120 IS A TRANSPORTATION PROJECT. So the lead agency here in terms of who's contemplating submitting the application, oh, and I should mention that the regional solicitation is competitive. So just like Corridors of Commerce, there'll be an application information on the potential future project, even though the scope is not totally definitively set, there's enough information there to request additional funding. And the lead agency is Washington County, And because we're, you know, 36 and 120 is right on the border there. So Washington County has decided to take the lead in making the application for regional solicitation dollars for the interchange. And they are requesting letters of support from Ramsey County, from North St. Paul, and also Oakdale. My understanding is that all communities are contemplating, you know, completing a similar letter of support. And that is a requirement of the application. They're going to require that all the governmental bodies that are impacted by any kind of regional solicitation type of improvement, and this is no exception, that they sign off with their support of the application process. letting the Met Council know that they're aware and that sort of thing, right? The request or the solicitation as communicated to me by Washington County is for $20 million. That does not cover all of the cost or contemplated cost as far as I understand for the interchange, but it is a major component, a major chunk. And so I think Washington County is contemplating regional solicitation dollars combined with potentially county or other state dollars as well too. There's no request for city funding at this point, although if you read that letter carefully, I think there's some language that just clarifies that if there is something that is within the city right of way that's impacted, that just like we own and maintain that today, that we would own and maintain that in the future, even if that does get improved. I mean, one example could be if it extends as far down south on 120 to the intersection of 7th Avenue and 120, if that becomes a part of the overall project, even though the interchange isn't going to be right there, THEY JUST WANT TO KNOW THAT WE'RE IN SUPPORT OF CONTINUING TO MAINTAIN SEVENTH AVENUE LIKE WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE, EVEN IF THEY PUT SOME OF THOSE DOLLARS INTO IMPROVING THAT INTERSECTION, RIGHT? SO OTHER THAN THAT, IT'S A FAIRLY STRAIGHTFORWARD LETTER OF SUPPORT. Again, $20 million, Ramsey County, Oakdale, and North St. Paul were requested to supply letters, and Washington County is the lead agency, at least at this point. And so we will have to see how the solicitation goes and the competitive scoring goes. We were on corridors of commerce. We were close, but not quite above the line for fundable. So there could be a good chance that the $20 million gets funded. We'll just have to see. And I don't think we will find out until, like, the end of this year. I don't know the exact date, but deadline for the solicitation, I believe, is June 25th. And they take some time to sift through all the applications so later in the year for sure we will find out Hopefully we'll be able to provide an update if not formally in front of council But by way of the city manager in terms of what the outcome was Is the city has the city of Oakdale?

Provided a letter as well.

Yeah, they're planning on it is my understanding there I don't know in front of the council or being done administratively, but I did see an email that Confirmed for Washington County that they're working on putting their letter together excellent

Could you also touch on, because I believe this is going to have some impact on the Gateway Trail, will the governing body of that need to do a letter of support as well, or how will that tie into this? Because I believe it could possibly impact them greatly.

Yeah, so that would be the DNR is the... authority in charge of the Gateway Trail, if you will, from a recreational regional trail standpoint. They were not included in the request for letters that I saw, so I don't know that that is a... I think it's more looking for what the region considers local agencies, which would include cities and counties, right? So I think the DNR has been involved with, for example, the 120 corridor study and... There's been some interaction between MnDOT staff or county staff and the DNR, but I can't speak exactly to whether or not they will or will not add a letter of support. They certainly will be impacted, right? And I know that one of the goals of the interchange project stated goals is to uh... maintain if not improve uh... multimodal transportation which when you hear that that means not just cars right so it it could include mass transit but mostly what they're talking about is bikes and pedestrians and as you know we have a strong interest in uh... presenting and continuing pedestrian movements and bike movements across the highway with the interchange in some fashion and even further north, links into Matamidai and the Lake Links Trail and up along Silver Lake before you even get to that point. So I'm not saying that the interchange will build the trail, but it certainly will set the stage for north-south connectivity from a multimodal standpoint and And, you know, we're still in – it's not even preliminary design. We're still in the very early concept discussions of what an interchange might look like and what alternatives are going to be evaluated. However, as funding starts getting added into the pot and we get closer to a fully funded project, those things are going to ramp up, right, and there's going to be a need – by MnDOT or the county or whoever is going to lead the project to really start digging into more detailed design. And so we'll learn more as we get closer. And if there is, again, a block of funds that is identified through this solicitation, that will certainly move things forward to a certain extent. But it isn't going to mean that instantaneously we're going to know exactly what the design alternative is or what the time frame is. Oh, they did mention in an email Again, this is to be taken with a grain of salt, but the solicitation has a time frame with it, and right now with this application, the funds would be programmed for 2031. So, again, that's subject to change, but that's just what Washington County is saying as an FYI right now.

I remember from our meeting, I think it was March when they did the update with us for the corridor, is that MnDOT doesn't have a budget for stuff like this. It has to be a groundswell coming from grants and everything else. So that's where it has to be, yes. And I thank Brian because part of it was they just wanted a letter from the city, but Brian said we've got to bring it in front of the council and have us show support for it. So I'm glad we're able to talk about it and be able to... continue and show our full support to try to get that moving. We do have that land where the old BP station used to be that we didn't do anything with because we knew someday something like this may happen. So we do have a card to play with down the line here as well. All right. Thank you. Any more questions? All right, so we want to bring up the motion. So moved. So moved. Council Member Norby? Second. Second. Council Member Woods? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

All right, on to our regularly scheduled. There you go. First up, Division Street Departments, a resolution of support. And over to Ken Roberts, our Community Development Director.

Thank you, Brian. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, this request is requested. Similar to the one you just spoke about, this is a resolution of support rather than a letter of support for the division street apartments. And those apartments are, this will show up better, on the corner of 17th and Highway 120, just up the road from the intersection in this location. And... Mr. Irubi is the owner of 612-651 properties. He's made this request of the city as he will be submitting a funding application to Ramsey County to get assistance to rehabilitate the existing apartments there. And part of his application to the county is to get a letter or resolution of support from the city. And so, as I said, he's in the process of buying the property. He's proposing to invest over $200,000 into them, primarily in the interior mechanical systems and improvements to the parking lot. He would be, as planned, as I show on the screen and in the report, keep four of the units with a rental income, or with a rent of no higher than 30% of the area median income, and the rent for the other 17 units at 50% of the area median income. So he'll be submitting an application to Ramsey County to get grant funding to help make this project happen. The important thing for the city to know is that there will be no monetary commitment or contribution expected with this. Again, it's a letter of support saying we think as a city it's a good thing to rehabilitate these projects, this project, and support it. So staff has found that this proposal to rehabilitate and renovate this property is in the public interest of North St. Paul and its residents, and we have a resolution in the packet supporting the application to Ramsey County for the acquisition of the Division Street Apartments located at 2726, 2720 17th Avenue, and 2633 Division Street North. Mr. Ruby is here. Be happy to answer questions if you have any. Want to hear a few words from him about his vision of the property? I think that would probably be a good idea. Sounds good. There he is.

Welcome. Thank you guys very much for your time and for allowing me to take a few minutes to field some questions. Would you like me to maybe give a high-level exposition on kind of my vision? So a little quick background and context. I run 612651 Properties. We are an affordable housing developer based here out of the Twin Cities. That is one of my jobs. I also work for the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, which is an affordable housing nonprofit lender. um non-bank lender so affordable housing is very important to me it's very near and dear i'm a big believer in it um so this application this request to you is coming with the purpose of as ken was mentioning uh submitting to a rfp at ramsey county essentially they have funds available from various pots of money local affordable housing aid a state affordable housing aid and some other possible money for the purpose of constructing new affordable housing, preserving affordable housing, and rehabilitation of affordable housing. That is kind of like the high-level overview. My intent with Division Street Apartments is that we currently have accepted LOI, and we are negotiating a purchase agreement. I actually just sent it over to the seller right now. And we will work, once purchased, to... renovate each of the interior of the units of the building. There's 21 units total. And I think perhaps, you know, I spoke with the fire inspector who's also the rental essence inspector, and I think what he said best kind of sums up kind of the state of the building. It's well-maintained, but it's tired. You can tell that it is incongruent. You know, there's a lot. You go inside, and there's different flooring from, like, the living room to the bedrooms to the bathroom, different coats of paint. The cabinets are tired. So what we propose is essentially to renovate these units while not displacing the residents. So essentially there's going to be a couple of units vacant at closing. We will renovate those units first, give those residents the opportunity to move over to a new unit in the building without increasing their rent, and then continue on with those renovations kind of systematically over the course of a year. Additionally, something that's also very important to me is energy efficiency, carbon reduction. So we'll be installing high-efficiency boilers at the building to replace the old original boilers, high-efficiency hot water heaters. All lights will switch over to LEDs. All fixtures will be switched over to kind of low-flow, high-efficiency, but not like the ones that you use and you're like, why I don't get any water out of the shower head, like ones that are comfortable for tenants. And then we'll also work with other providers. There's something called the multifamily building efficiency program, which we can utilize to upgrade appliances in the building, weather seal. So again, basically recapitalizing the building and bringing it back to essentially as close to brand new as you can without having a new construction. I've done this project before in other places, most recently in White Bear Lake over at 3637 Bel Air. That is an 18 unit apartment building that we have just finished stabilizing and doing the same exact thing. We'll be investing some of my own money, some of our own money from the business, and then utilizing money from Ramsey County as well, and then a loan from Bridgewater Bank, who is our financier partner, who we have a very good relationship with. Questions, concerns, comments? I try to be an open book and make sure that you guys are comfortable if you decide to support this.

The exterior on those buildings right now are pretty, they're stucco, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, correct. Are they going to do a re-stucco? Are they going to put some new type of material on the exterior?

Nope, there's no intention right now to do anything with the exterior. The roofs are new as of 2025. because there's a big storm, and from my understanding, there is a tree that fell through the roof of one of the buildings. So those have new roofs. The exterior of the stucco on my inspection is in pretty good shape. The only exterior work we'll be doing is most likely some window replacement or some of the older windows that have kind of lost their seals and or are just kind of in bad shape. We would most likely also be doing some resurfacing of the, or at least topping the black top there just to kind of make it look a little newer. It's a little rough and tired. Tired is a great word for it.

It's just like tired out there.

Yeah, I think what the fire inspector said is like, it's just a tired building.

MY QUESTION WAS MORE BASED ON THE BEAUTIFICATION OF THE EXTERIOR.

YES. IN TERMS OF BEAUTIFICATION OF THE EXTERIOR, I DON'T HAVE PLANS TO PAINT THE EXTERIOR RIGHT NOW, BUT WE'LL PROBABLY DO SOME BASIC LANDSCAPING ALONG THE EDGING. impacts, kind of hostas, mulch, other stuff along those lines around the exterior of the building, and then some additional work to keep water away from the foundation of the building at this time.

Are they lower level? The lowest level, that's underground just a shade, right?

It's like a garden level, yeah. So it's like partially underground. It's like half underground, correct?

I've driven by them for the last 50 years. Yeah.

When you get that far, we have our own electric utility, so there are rebates available, some of the work that you're doing.

Yes, Ken was nice enough to let me know that, and yeah, so we would be working with them, and then also since Centerpoint supplies gas to the building, we'd be working with them for the MFBE program, again, to kind of do that comprehensive look and see what all can we touch there to kind of make this as new as possible.

No, it's Xcel Energy. Okay.

Excellent. I think it's great.

Thank you.

I'm excited to see it get revitalized.

Fingers crossed. It's a competitive RFP. We've done well in the past, but always a letter of support from the city just is indicative of kind of another piece of the puzzle that's necessary to kind of create a very competitive application. So thank you guys very much. I appreciate it.

Unless you got the dairy cream right there. How can you go wrong?

I said that in my application, actually. I was like, it would be really great just to stop by afterwards or bring the kids by and, yeah. Yep.

Thank you. Just be careful in the driveway. Yes.

All right. So we have a resolution. All right. There's a resolution for Council Support Division.

I'd like to make a motion. Yes.

Council Member Schwerer is making the motion. Second. Second. Council Member McKenzie. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Thank you and good luck.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Second item up this evening is the Solid Waste Recycle and Yard Waste Collection Service Contract Approval. We'll turn that over to Kim.

Thank you again, Brian, Mayor, members of the Council. We have before you this evening the proposal for the new contract for our solid waste recycling and yard waste collection services. So as the Council knows, we've been working on this for several months with Foth Environmental and our team here at the City to work through and find a, go through the RFP process for the new contract, our current contract, ends the end of August 2026, and so we've been in the RFP review process. There's been a committee of city staff working on this with Chris Cherney, Dan Winnick, Barb Houselman, Taylor Lilly, and myself. We worked with FOSS to put the RFP together. Council approved the RFP back in December. We put it out on the street, so to speak, to see contractors who would be interested, and we received some proposals, and... We brought those to the council on April 7th for a little overview and review based on the scoring and the tabulation. It was the consensus of the council at that time to have the review team here interview the two highest rated vendors. If you remember, that was vendor A and vendor B on this table with the highest scores. So we did that. We had interviews with the two vendors in May. We had each of them in for an hour, hour and a half with the team. And we had good conversations with both of the vendors. Heard from each of them. Had good dialogue back and forth with each in exchange of ideas. at the end of each interview we encourage each vendor to send into the city an alternative proposal with prices for bulky pickup services the initial proposals had some information on that but we uh... as a team as a city really were stressing that that was an important thing to the city and so each vendor did do that and Vendor B, just for comparison, they were offering four bulky pickups per year at a cost of 75 cents per month per household. That would have included all bulky items, including mattresses, would not include appliances and electronics, because those services are available elsewhere. The other vendor was tennis. And their bulky waste option would allow each household to set out six approved bulky items per year at no additional charge and up to two appliances per year at no additional charge. And each of those was waiving the labor charge that they would have charged normally. And with both of these, in any of these cases, we, as a city, need to remember that The collection and the pickup is no charge, but we still pay for the tipping fees for their proper disposal at the facility down in Newport. So it's not completely free, but it's certainly at a reduced rate. So going through that and looking at the proposed contracts, We took a hard look at the tennis contract that was proposed. They would be for five years with three one-year extensions. The garbage and recycling rates will increase 3% each year. They are not proposing any provisions for fuel surcharges. The city will continue with the billing and customer service responsibilities as we have been doing. We have the bulky waste component in there. And most importantly, both the city attorney and tenants have reviewed and approved the proposed contract. So when we put it all together, it was the team's recommendation based on the rates, based on the bulky service pickup, and I think to some degree the success the city has had with Tennis, that we're recommending approval of the proposed contract with Tennis for the solid waste recycling yard waste collection and if so we have a resolution in the packet that awards the contract and allows for the signatures of the city manager and the mayor to proceed tennis representatives are here if you wish to hear from them but that's our recommendation

Questions, anybody? On my end, I do have a question. How is the city, because we're providing, we're contacting you as residents, letting you know we have a bulky pickup, and you all, the city, is providing us the customer service piece. How are you tracking how many items are being picked up by each resident in the house?

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, that's one detail we have to figure out here with tennis, and we're going to figure that out in the next three months before this starts in September.

May I ask you to bring that back to council just to discuss that and see what that looks like?

Absolutely, because the calls come into the city, and then we intern and contact with Tennis. So we'll figure out the most efficient way of figuring that out, keeping track of the bulk pickups and then the appliance pickups that are allowed. So it's a good question.

And the abusing of it, yeah.

Yes.

I guess I want to say thanks to all the tennis guys that came out and helped the city clean up on, what was it, May 9th? Yeah. Those were all you guys come up last year and this year, and that was a really big help, and I know our city helps and thanks you very much.

What I appreciate about tennis, and I appreciate that you guys are here too, Troy, I've worked with you in the past, just with cleanup days. I lived in, many moons ago, I lived in the city of St. Paul Park, and we were dedicated to tennis as our provider. And what I appreciate about them is they're very small town oriented, which provides pretty high quality tennis. Service and I actually called tennis about a month ago and said I was I was actually driving to bring my girls to school and just down the hill off of County Road B and McKnight there is a home on the corner that has a ramp and and the individual is handicapped, and unfortunately they can't bring their garbage can back and forth. And your gentleman, it was a male, he went up to the house, grabbed the can, brought it down, and then brought it back up. And I thought that was the neatest thing to see that piece of customer service out there. I've seen other employees of yours go above and beyond too. So I'm excited that you came in and were competitive with this. And I'm glad that this is at the table to vote on tonight.

If I could just add quickly, yeah, our staff has been very happy to work with them. They've always had good customer service. It's really great to have a locally and family-owned business who has just recently celebrated 60 years of service.

Congratulations.

Very good.

All right.

Does that mean you're all 60 years old, Ed?

All right. There is a motion. Yep. There is a motion for council consideration.

I'd like to make a motion to adopt this.

Council Member Schwer. Second. Second. Council Member Norby. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. Thank you for your service. We appreciate that. Looking forward to the future.

Yep. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.

So your drivers get little pins and bonuses, huh, if we call them? Yep. Good.

Yeah, turn it in.

Thank you. All right, very good. A lot of good stuff tonight.

Moving on to reports of city management departments. Did you get the report from Metropolitan Council this week? They do the annual population estimate. This is for 2025. They do housing units and households, so... From the 2020 census to the 2025 estimate, it went from 4,984 to 5,393, so up 400 in the last five years. Households went from 4,803 to 5,132, so that went up about 330. And total population went from 2020, like our signs say coming into town, 12,364 to 12,983.

Just need another 17 people so we can hit that 13. It's like your car waiting for the odometer to flip.

We've got the departments working on their budgets right now. That'll be turned in later this week, and we'll be moving on shortly to the CIP. City Hall summer hours have started this week, which is Monday through Thursdays, 7 to 4.30, and then Thursdays, 7 to 11. We shut down early on Friday, so just let the public know. Electric department's been busy. They've got a contractor working out there at Northwood, including installations of, they're doing the installation of transformers and switching out equipment there. They do have a new employee that starts next week. Communications, they've got all the preparations complete for the June 25th community event for the time capsule event. And the actual ground digging and pulling up the capsule is on June 15th. HR has been working still with new hires and job postings continuing through Paycom, doing a good job with that. Finance is working with the new cash payment policy which goes into effect August 1st for that no change. which just means pennies are no longer accepted. Customers must either pay the exact amount, or if they have a balance credit, it just goes onto their account. There is no rounding that happens with it. We had a new employee that started this week on Monday for Jackie's retirement, so so far so good. Departments, like I said, the budgets are due the end of this week, and then moving on to the CIP. Police department, they have their Motorola system is up and operational, so staff's working just through the minor issues and pleased with the performance so far, so things are going good. Got the car show planning, they're gonna make a couple of officers available for the car show, which is great. They have sergeant interviews scheduled for next Monday. Looks like they're having seven candidates, two internal, five external. And the police officer position remains open for applications for two more weeks. Public Works has two additional seasonal employees that they started this week. We got, I think, a couple next week, and then we're at full capacity. for the summer help. Construction on the pond project at Casey is ongoing. They're still looking at a completion of July 4th, but that's of course weather permitting. 7th Avenue got a good cleaning earlier this week for the car show. Everything's spick and span for that. Appreciate them coming in early and doing that. Fire Department has fire inspector applications closed tomorrow for that. Their May volume of calls has reached another record. They had 208 calls in May. And the access control project or the new door security systems is up and running just a few little things are working out But it's all in and working well That's all I got for you.

All right Thank you very much appreciate it All right council commissions You're up, kid.

Thanks. Parks and Recreation met last Wednesday. Thank you, Brian, about just mentioning the CIP and that the departments are getting ready for the CITP because Sarah did bring, and we got the CIP information and talked through just what are the plans and what does the future look like for Parks and Rec for 2027. So that was the main focus at the last meeting was what do we want, what does Parks and Rec want to look like? Want to propose to the council so good meeting our first meeting in June Yes, sorry I had to think about what day it was our first meeting in June will be held at Casey Lake at 630 on The third Wednesday, I don't know the day I'm off top my head um so 630 at Casey like great good to see her out and about to

The EDA meets next Tuesday on the 9th at 4 o'clock here in the chambers.

Thank you.

Arts and Culture will meet tomorrow night here in Council Chambers.

All right.

Planning Commission will meet two days from now here in Council Chambers.

Look at that. A lot of stuff coming up. General business. Anybody?

Yes, I first and foremost want to give a shout out to the History Museum. They actually did a story and a meeting on my house. So that was the last meeting at the History Museum. It was a lot of fun. I was invited by Sue Springborn. to attend because they were talking about my house and people would be driving past it. And it was very interesting. Learned a lot of new things about my home, but also it was cool to see just some of the structure that I thought somebody put in. It was actually original, but it came with the house. So it was really neat. That was a good event to go to.

It would be.

Yeah. So you can view it if you'd like to view it. And you're welcome to drive past the house. It's 100 and... Do you have cookies? Well, I do not have cookies, but maybe there's the leftover pecan bars from the event that night, too. But, gosh. It was a 2020, the house is 110 years old, 115 years old. Yes, so feel free to drive by. I won't promote my address. You can go to the history museum and take a look at it.

There you go.

The other thing I want to touch on is the car show. Car show's coming up on June 12th. It's pretty exciting. This is a big event for our city. We take a lot of pride in it. We are super grateful for the history cruisers and to continue the partnership with us. We appreciate their volunteering, the way they run the program, it's fantastic. I think it's important for our residents to know that yes, they've decided to go every other weekend, excuse me, every other week, and they call it out online, they're just getting older, they don't have a ton of volunteers, We sought out and found another group, the Invisible Wound Project, excuse me, who is a non-for-profit. We are super excited to have that partnership to continue to build off of something that is so exciting in the summer and for our residents and for the community. I would like to personally ask our community and those that are Associated with the city of North st. Paul and I asked them to reach out to the city reach out to the council members if you have any issues or Have a lot of questions about these partnerships and our relationships with these partners Please talk with us about those. This is why you have the ability to communicate with us We're looking forward to an exciting summer and an exciting partnership with both the history cruisers and the invisible wound project. I

Very well said. Thank you. When was the Polar Park? Was that two weeks ago or was that before our last council?

Boy, that's a tough question. Because I know we were just there.

We were the folks there. That went really well. That was really actually a nice looking park.

Very hidden back there in the corner. It's a little hidden gem.

It is, yeah.

Great.

Anybody else?

I've got nothing.

Okay. Just, Cassie, well said. Just one clarification. Isn't the first car show this Friday? Yeah. No, next week.

It's the 12th.

No, it's the 5th. 5th. Oh, good. I thought we had to wait. This Friday.

Okay. Is it the wounds?

Yep, they're the following. The 12th is the wounds. Thank you.

So, yeah, please correct me.

The first car show is the 5th, and that's the one put on by the Invisible Wounds Project. The first one from the North St. Paul History Cruisers is on the 12th. Okay. Personally looking forward to great partnerships with both those organizations and hopefully a long history.

Excellent. Thank you for that confirmation. Yeah.

I'd like to add one thing to that, if I could please. One thing, they did make a change. They are gonna make it open to all years, but they are for show cars during that time. So traditionally they were gonna do two different times of open up to all years. they have now changed that to every car show, just for the sake that they, seems like some of the concerns with the car show were some of the people that were coming in were trying to bring in those newer vehicles, and that's where they had some kind of conflict, so they're trying to avoid that and just want it to be a nice family-friendly event.

And that's the Invisible Wounds. Yes, that is correct. Is going to all years.

All of them. Excellent. Show cars, yep.

I wish I would still have my 1985 Plymouth Reliant. That would have been a show car. Also, the parking lot looks great, all striped up and against there, so our public parking over there on 7th, it really makes that area look much neater and cleaner. Also on the way home today, I saw that the electricians were at the student-built home, so I stopped over and I did a tour of both of them, looked at them. They're coming along nicely. They're very nicely laid out. They're nice-looking places, so it's going to be exciting to have that done. But, yeah, they did well with the space in there.

And when will those go up for market?

We're hoping, what, mid to late July? Yeah, hopefully late July.

And the plan is to do the open house before we put it on the market or put it on the market and do the open house?

I think the school will start in August.

Will they push it to August? Okay.

Okay, so that was looking towards August just so I can be here at home. Okay. For the unveiling. So that's going to be something to look forward to. Good stuff. All right. Our next meeting is June 16th. I have a call for...

Troy, I interrupted you, but you were going to say something about general business. No, I had nothing to say.

All right, everybody, good meeting. Call for adjournment. What? Oh, we had signed up earlier. Oh, okay. All right, come on up.

My name is Eileen Stever.

We'll put on this microphone for you.

Excuse me?

Three minutes.

My name is Eileen Stever. I live on the corner of South Avenue and 2nd Street. And the city has been mowing my yard. It's a very steep boulevard on the 2nd Street side because I live on the hill. And... When that street was put in, I'd asked for a retaining wall. Why we didn't get a retaining wall put in? Because it's very difficult to mow. And they thought it was prohibitive at the time. So several years later, I kept on mowing it. I planted grass and kept on mowing it. And one day when I was mowing it, I almost tipped over with my lawn mower and fell. and it was a lawnmower running. So I came back to City Hall, to here, to the council, and told them about something that's got to be done, because it's just too steep to push a lawnmower. And at that meeting, they decided to have the city move, mow the lawn after that. And they had been mowing it until last spring. And then the secretary said, well, we're not going to mow it anymore because we have no letter stating that it has to be mowed. And I said, well... I look for a letter and I didn't have a letter either. And so I guess maybe someone in the council told the public works department that they had to mow the lawn, so they didn't have a letter. At least they're telling me they didn't have a notice. And so I'm asking for a copy of that meeting so I can give them a paper in my hand and show them that they're responsible because I've lost the person who had been mowing my lawn for many years, quit. He said, I'm not mowing it again, it's too steep. And now my son helps me mow it and he said it's dangerous, it's just too dangerous.

Okay, well, we'll have the city manager.

So I would like a paper cup so I could send them so that they have it in writing. Can that be done?

I'll get your contact information and I will contact you and we'll figure this out. Pardon me? I will get your contact information from you after the meeting here and then we will figure this out. We'll figure out what happened and why it's the way it is. Is your address on a South Avenue address or is it a...

It's on a hill, a corner of South and 2nd. It's a big house on the hill.

Do you face south? Is your address south or is it second?

It's South Avenue.

South, okay. County Road, okay.

But along South Avenue, when they put that in, they had all these beautiful retaining walls in on the houses that were on hills. And when they put in 2nd Street and put the curb in, they didn't have a curb. It was way back in 1991 or something like that.

Okay, well, we'll take a look. It's also a county road, too, south, so there's a bunch of different territories with it.

Anyway, they put in new sidewalks and driveways for the people across the street, but they didn't do anything on the hilly side of the street except the curb.

We'll look into it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to me. Yeah, well, thanks for coming up.

Thank you.

All right, call for adjournment. I'd like to make a motion to call for adjournment.

Thank you very much, Council Member Schreier. Second. Second, Council Member Norby. All those in favor say aye. Aye. We'll see you June 16th, everybody. Thank you.