City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the regular City Council meeting for the City of St. Peter, Minnesota. It is Monday, August 10th, 2026. At 7.02 p.m. we are called to order. Would all please rise for the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for

everybody should have received a copy of this evening's agenda are there any revisions or corrections to the agenda as distributed hearing none is there a motion to approve all those in favor of approval say aye aye any opposed our agenda is approved the minutes from our last meeting appear on pages four through six of the agenda are there any revisions or corrections to the minutes as distributed hearing none is there a motion to approve the minutes All those in favor of approval say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Our minutes are approved. We have time tonight on our agenda for visitors and we have some guests from MNRPA for an award presentation. So we're excited to have him here.

So I don't know. Please come on up. Love to see it. And then folks from the rec department, if we need more chairs, we can get more chairs. Whatever you feel good about, that would be fantastic. Because there's so many folks that have done great work. Pete, you too. You're involved in this. If you want to come on up. Or if you're ready to not bump knees with anybody, I respect that too. All right.

MNRPA, Minnesota Rec and Park Association?

That is correct.

All right, thanks for being here.

So absolutely, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here with you tonight to present St. Peter Recreation and Leisure Services and the Public Works Department for two special awards of excellence that we chose for them. I am part of the awards committee. My name is Mary Jo Knutson. I work in Owatonna. I've been part of MRPA for longer than I can remember, but I'm fairly new to the awards committee. So it's very exciting to get to come out and present to fellow greater Minnesota cities. So I will tell you a little bit about Minnesota Park and Rec. It was formed in 1937 to foster the growth and development of the parks and recreation profession throughout the state. There's approximately 850 members. The MRP Awards Committee was created in 87 with the purpose of, I should say 1987, since we're not in those 18s anymore, for acknowledging excellence in the field of parks, recreation, and leisure services. The awards committee members do represent a cross-section of association members throughout the state. The Awards of Excellence is an annual program, and the was solely created to recognize agencies and their staff for exemplary projects implemented in 2025 is what we're presenting these for mrpa members can nominate a project for an award of excellence in seven different categories tonight we're specifically awarding them in communications and park and facilities nominations are received reviewed evaluated and scored by the awards committee members only the top scoring nominations are selected to receive an award of excellence recognition on behalf of the MRPA awards committee it is my pleasure to present an award of excellence to Ryan and Pete and Kayla and Ryan or Pete decided to stay back there but we're presenting to him as well for the winning projects and the one in communications which was an amazing representation of using every resource you had to promote a project for an evening with and so that was really that scored very highly for marketing and communications just using all the avenues you have and doing an excellent job of promoting the activity and what an exciting an evening with you have coming up for 2026 or 2027 so that's um I'll probably come over for that one. That was a good one. And then the other one is for the Gorman Park Improvements Phase 1 for the parks and facilities. That's really a great update to the projects, and not only is it ADA compliant, but it's more accessible and welcoming, and what a great job in the before and after, and more yet to come. So it's very exciting, and I'm honored to present these two awards for you guys tonight. So congratulations.

express our gratitude for the awards and the consideration of everybody who was on the committee but also express our gratitude we have amazing staff here in the city and so residents at home should feel really proud about that and also our community members who serve on our park and rec committee they did a lot of work and planning for Gorman as well so

board members are unsung heroes a lot of the time and having been a part of parks and recreation for over 30 years i know the amount of work that's put into both of these projects and like i said they were just exemplary projects so you should feel should be very proud of your staff and what you've done so far with more to come wonderful thank you so much awesome thank you for having me

Let's see, we are gonna move on to, we have visitor comments on our agenda. Every evening we have a council meeting, we have time for visitor comments. Is there a visitor who'd like to address the council on an agenda item? Hearing none, we also have time for general visitor comments. Is there a visitor who'd like to address the council on another matter? Hearing none, we will move on to the approval of the consent agenda. The consent agenda begins with a memo on page 7 of the packet and concludes with a resolution that appears on page 9. The consent agenda this evening includes the following licenses and permits. We have temporary gambling licenses, and temporary liquor licenses for the Church of St. Peter. The location and dates are listed within the packet, as well as the schedule of disbursements for July 24th through August 6th, 2026. Is there any discussion of any item that's on the consent agenda tonight? Hearing none, is there a motion to approve the resolution?

So moved.

We have a motion and a second. Call the roll, please.

Mayor Novel?

Aye. Councilmember Johnson? Aye. Councilmember Weisenfeld?

Aye.

Councilmember Charstrom?

Aye.

The resolution is approved. Moving on, we have no unfinished business tonight, so our first item of new business is a McKinstry MOU acceptance.

Mayor and members, we have John here from McKinstry, but the person that's going to kind of be leading the discussion a little bit is Corey. Corey, of course, is your sustainability and communications coordinator. So she's going to provide a brief introduction, and I know John has a couple of items that he wants to mention as a part of this as well. So, Corey, it's yours.

City Council members. We've talked over the last couple months a little bit about McKinstry and doing a potential project with them. And so this is really phase one. This is the MOU. It's important to note that there is no cost in approving this MOU. It just signals the next phase, which is where we're going to start to actually work with McKinstry to develop a report. Again, even once we have that report, it does not commit us to anything. It does not say that we will do exactly this. We will have opportunities in the future to revise that and to really think about if we do something, what that would look like. And so I have John here who's just going to kind of give you a real brief kind of recap of where we're at so far and then kind of talk about the next steps in terms of what that reporting phase will look like.

Well, thanks, Corey. Well, Madam Mayor, Commissioners, I appreciate the opportunity to be here again in front of you. I see Todd's operating the computer this evening. So I also understand that time is of the essence this evening. So the packet, the presentation is in the packet. So I'm just gonna go through it very briefly and then ask for your approval at the end. So I always like to start out with this slide, the essence of what we're talking about here tonight for your approval. There we go. Looking at the far left, we're all about taxpayer savings for the city with our project. It's all about utility savings. In the middle is operation and maintenance savings. And a lot of the times the projects that we do for cities and counties, universities, et cetera, we like to utilize local labor. So there's job creation impacts also. And then obviously on the far right is all about sustainability, award recognition. We're talking about Green Step City. And I understand you got the block three of Green Step City's last meeting, right? So we're all about, we moved a number of cities right away to block five. So that's kind of our goal with the city of St. Peter is to move you to block five. And then carbon reduction. Next, our process, I'll go through this pretty quickly. So again, you've seen this slide before, it's in the packet. We look at all of your buildings, everything within the building, energy saving, operation and maintenance savings, and even safety considerations. Next slide. I'm moving really fast, so any questions will slow me down. And here's our format for our prelim report. It's a formal report, eight to 15 pages. We look at, you have an executive summary, which we'll bring to the table. We'll be back here with our formal presentation for the board to review. We look at potential project cost savings, greenhouse gas reduction. We look at all these incentives available, state, local government. And the bottom line is to develop a self-funding project for the city.

Next.

So we had a great meeting that Corey set up with a lot of city staff. We did this workshop. They made all these recommendations on opportunities within the city. I can go through the list, City Hall, Public Works, Library, Community Center, even the Fire and Police Station, Rivers Edge Hospital and Clinics, Parkview Manor, other city opportunities, properties, street lighting, and parking lot lighting.

Next one real quick.

And we'll look at all these opportunities that the workshop brought to the table. Indoor, outdoor parking lots, street lights, building automation controls, heating, ventilating, air conditioning upgrades, water conservation opportunities, O&M opportunities, staff time, dollars. We'll look at solar opportunities. And some of the solar opportunities we look at may bring that particular building that they are installed on to a near net zero operation, which is kind of unique. And we heard EV charging for both city vehicles and the public. And then we'll also consider, like I mentioned earlier, the Green Step Cities bring you to block five, and they have this new gold leaf program, which this, our program here, will definitely qualify for the new gold leaf program. We'll look at, at one of the prior meetings, you're looking at strategic facility planning as far as your sustainability goals. We'll move there. Next slide real quick. So we'll need your assistance on utility bills. We'll need some square footage of each building, and we'll need someone to help us walk through each of the buildings. We, in turn, will grab all this information, summarize the utility use for the entire city. Our team will do a walkthrough of all the buildings with your assistance, typically two, maybe three days max, and then we'll be ready for the formal presentation.

Next one.

So to wrap up, the essence for tonight is we're looking to move forward on the far left. This preliminary assessment, MOU, as was indicated, no cost, takes about 45 to 60 days, and then we'll be back here in front of council for presentation. So with that, I'll take any questions or comments. Any questions?

Carrie. So, will we have time in a workshop to review this before a meeting? Yes. Okay.

The goal will be, and I don't want to oversimplify, and John might correct me if it's needed, but you'll really get this report that will, in essence, provide you a list of opportunities. and it'll provide you what we would call the financial ramifications of those opportunities. And so then you'll pick and choose all of them, some of them, none of them, whatever you think, and we'll do that in a workshop process. Then ultimately that will come back to a council meeting for full approval based on how we might move forward through a bid process, vendor process, all of those things.

That's exactly the case, and we'll work with your team all the way along the path right up to the presentation with this council.

I was just going to say, as one of the two council members on the sustainability task force, we're very excited for this. It's going to give us more measurable steps that we can take action on. Instead of just saying we're trying to be more sustainable, we're taking action.

We have done this before with John and his team. They flew a different flag at that time with Amoresco, but it's a great team. We had considerable success with them, and so I think we can continue to be positive about how this moves forward and the expansion or opportunity for other community entities to be involved, not just direct city ones like the hospital, HRA, our buildings, but school district and other organizations that have been a part of the task force. and have had the opportunity to hear some of the presentations. So we're excited for that. That won't fall under your bid process necessarily, but certainly there's opportunity for us to do better the more we do together.

Hearing no further questions, I don't see any raised hands, the resolution approving a memorandum of understanding between the City of St. Peter and McKinstry Ascension LLS to conduct a preliminary energy and sustainability evaluation appears on page 29 of the packet. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Call the roll, please.

Council Member Johnson.

Aye. Council Member Weissenfeld. Aye. Council Member Sharstrom. Aye. Mayor Noel. Aye. The resolution is approved. Thank you, and we'll look forward to continuing working together.

Yes.

Next item. Oh, there we go. We have a city assistance request for Rock Bend Folk Festival. And I bet that's yours, Todd. That's me.

members this is substantially similar to what you've seen over the past well 30 years or so from Rock Bend Folk Festival there are a number of things that we mentioned with any community events or festivals of this type they have certain requirements that they have to meet this has been reviewed by your staff and on occasion we make suggestions about needs or other things that need to be taken care of and the folks from Rock Bend have always been fantastic about that we provide them a certain level of assistance and They meet those requirements including providing insurance For the event and the facilities while they're using those facilities Their letter and information is included in the packet and the resolution against substantially is similar to what you've seen in the past is on page 34 and 35 For time Great event, Minnesota Square Park in September, the 12th and 13th are the days that that event is going on. They get the park a couple days before and a day or so after for setup and cleanup and it generally works fantastically.

It's gonna be great.

Yeah.

Hearing no discussion, the resolution authorizing city assistance for Rock Bend Folk Festival appears on pages 34 and 35 of the packet. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Call the roll, please.

Council Member Weisenfeld? Aye.

Council Member Sharstrom? Aye.

Mayor Noel? Aye. Council Member Johnson? Aye.

The resolution is approved. Last item of new business tonight is a new license.

So, Madam Mayor, members, this is for on-sale Sunday and off-sale liquor license. This is all for the same location. The owners of Chuck Day LLC are, in essence, taking over the food and beverage operations for the American Legion, and so they're required to have a separate license for that separate facility, which is located at 229 West Nassau. It's three licenses due to the state statute. On sale Sunday and off sale have different statutes, and so it requires three licenses. They have passed background check before and have been in this business for a while under this ownership, and the resolution providing approval is included in your packet on page 37.

Any questions or discussion about this? All right, hearing nothing, the resolution approving new licenses is on page 37 of the packet. Is there a motion to approve? So moved.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Call the roll, please. Council Member Sharstrom. Aye. Mayor Noel. Aye. Council Member Johnson. Aye. Council Member Weisenfeld.

Aye.

The resolution is approved. We'll move on to reports. I have no reports at this time. Are there any council members who'd like to make reports? All right, hearing none, our city administrator.

I have two fast ones. Want to thank the community for their cooperation during seal coating. We have some great video and other information about seal coating and the importance that it is. Over the next few days, cleanup will continue to occur. It started today. And so it's really important and a wonderful value of your money in preserving your streets. And so we want to thank folks for their cooperation in that. In addition to that, I want to ask Ryan to come up and just talk, give a quick couple of words on an improvement that Pete's team has worked on and REC has worked on related to the campground, which maybe none of you have used very often because you live in town, but it's used quite heavily, especially with some of the events. And so, Ryan, please.

Sure, thank you. So the electrical upgrades for the campground include currently there's 11 electrical sites that are running at 30, 20 amps, all off of one 200 amp panel. And I'd like to put out the caveat that I'm talking about electrical things that I don't fully understand, Basically, we're going to upgrade all this because the way things have changed is people aren't coming with just flipping on the light for their camper anymore. They've got slide outs. They have two air conditionings going. So we're going to upgrade a lot of 30 amps to 50 amps, go from the 200 amp panel to a 600 amp service. So a significant upgrade. and to be able to allow us for some expansion in the future. As people are running more devices, Full Draw Electric was the winning bidder for the project. And do you need to know the amount as well? If you want to shoot, you have it there. OK. It was like $19,997 and some cents. And we're working on specific dates. But right now, it's looking at September 14 to the 21st is our window that they can get that done. So it's going to be a low use time and should be able to have that completed within that week. City is going to help out with some parts of it as well. And so it'll be a good combined effort.

It's really a gem within our community and a lot of people use it. And so we're excited to have that level of improvement.

Yeah, that'll be great. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks, Ryan. Anything else? Any more reports?

Madam Mayor, that's the last one that I have.

All right. There's no business before us. How about a motion to adjourn? All those in favor of adjournment say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We're adjourned. Thanks, everybody.