##VIDEO ID:nRjNpbuylZY## e e e e the workshop for August 20th do a roll call please council member Cole here council member schwe here council member Wong here council member nordby here mayor MGI here thank you very much can I get a motion to adopt the agenda please so move so move council member Cole second second council member Wong all those in favor say I I I thank you very much city manager thank you mayor thank you um first topic up is the park fee dedication discussion um this has been um something we been dealing with for a little while it was uh part of the um Sentinel building um and centenal building and but we have uh attorney Jack here that is going to kick us off on that and kind of give us a brief history and where we're at now uh Mr Mr Mayor members of council so this is um kind ongoing matters the Redevelopment uh a few different names but the Uptown Commons development slth new Sentinel Apartments building um there was uh back in 2020 uh there was a development agreement that was signed with the city as part of that uh that included a uh Park dedication fee uh in the amount of $8,100 uh ordinary practice would be that fee would be collected before the plat was filed and recorded uh that did not occur so that that fee has still not been collected by the city um we frankly do not have great records as to why that did not occur um we have there's one uh note on uh open gov about on the building permits that states uh Park dedication fee will be paid later uh with no explanation uh of why later or when later um in talking with the developer uh we uh their understanding was they were uh apparently working with uh some City staff who were no longer with the city uh and um apparently came to some kind of an agreement with the city there were some changes in the overall terms of the development there was an increase in the cost of the formal former City Hall site uh and a number of infrastructure changes uh apparently the developer understanding is that that was done in lie of paying this part dedication fee um again we do not have any particular records on um whether that's correct or not I will say as you know this is a the per development contract that was approved by the city council as a body executed by the city you know as a as an entity uh and so even if there was some kind of an agreement with an individual City staff member uh that would not be an effective Amendment to the development agreement uh it would need approval of the city council uh which the city council even to this day could provide so if the city you know this is not um again based on our understanding um this is not a this was not a favor to the developer um there were there was potentially some additional work done on behalf of the city some additional fees collected elsewhere uh so this would not necessarily set a precedent for you know waving a park dedication fee just whenever asked uh and so it would be uh up to the city council uh what we're looking for in the end today is some direction from the council um the options are either to continue pursuing uh the collection of this outstanding Park dedication fee uh or direction to come back with a formal contract Amendment uh that would be put on a the agenda for a city council meeting at some point in the future to sort of you know in either way to sort of build the paper trail and um have some kind of formal resolution uh of this issue uh I understand the developer is here uh and is potentially able to speak to some more of the details uh otherwise uh if the council has any questions uh I am happy to provide any information I have you said that note was an open gov that or is that what you said uh yes so there was a um who put that in there I mean who was the so it was a staff member who put the note in and then the staff member said you know it said um Park dedication fee will be paid later per the manager at the time for the what for the manager at the time the city manager yeah okay that's who okay all right so it was the city manager was not the person making the entry but was referenced as the source of the delay and I'm understanding you right that the individual that place a note is no longer with the city uh yes neither the manager at the time nor the person who wrote the note are currently with the city so and have been contacted and have not provided any um additional information did not have have any additional records to share okay you mentioned it wouldn't set a precedent for a waiver is that um something um a precedent within our city or just generally speaking no I just generally speaking like um because this is would be a a waiver of the park dedication fee in exchange for these other items that were apparently done they would not provide the basis for another developer going forward to you know claim unfair treatment or to ask for a waiver of this fee in another project these other um tasks that the developer provided those were not added to the contract either correct uh that is correct although it is our understanding that they did in fact get done right mhm okay but yes there there have been no formal amendments to the development contract there was a change order in December of 2020 it looks like as far as that and then uh the pay application is that have any signatures on it or how does that work uh I'm not if I could um it wasn't a pay voucher per se and actually Jim if you wouldn't mind coming up Jim Winkles was the amcon manager of the project at the time um but it wasn't a pay application and I did reach out with WSB as well and anyway that wouldn't come into a pay application anyway that comes from material cost uh labor cost for the contractors so this would have been something through the city and the and the I got that from the Amco or is it Amon amcon uh letter that they responded with so that's why I was curious between that in the change order usually when there's any kind of changes to any kind of contract there's a change order like in my business if I have 150 phones and we had another phone it's a change order to make sure that we document it so that's what I'm looking for yes sir I'm Jim Winkles I'm with Amun and I was the U the original uh person that came before the city council back in 19 2019 or maybe even 18 um and was involved in the project from the get-go as I say uh we uh we got introduced to some local people in from North St Paul you're all aware of and uh uh so we decided jointly have having never met him we decided jointly worked out something that we'd move ahead the and I only heard a bit of what uh City attorney was talking about but uh um and I apologize I was I came from way out in western part of the cities and it the traffic was brutal and I just I finally called Tracy at about 10 minutes before we're going to start here I said I'm I'm I'm I'm down the road that I'm coming so the kind of the background of this whole thing so I I don't I don't see anybody on this Council that was on the council when we did this project um we had when we came in here and I don't see anybody up at this table by the way different city manager City attorney probably the same Law Firm um but not certainly not Jack I know that uh too young tell that uh but the Genesis of it was there's piece of property there the half of the two-thirds of the property was a former city hall site uh there were and if you know it there were two homes on the south side of the height on the south side of the site two single family homes one was owner occupied when was rented there was a building on the west side which we affectionately called the Blue Barn if you remember that building at all and there were a couple of businesses in there there were about two or three I can't remember two or three residential units above that there was a vacant piece of property there was an old gas station piece of property and the gem of it all was a 121 year old two-story building 2,000 sare ft of floor that housed the dentist and that building was fortunately and I don't know how it ever could have been was not on the register so we didn't have to fight that battle that building was and I don't know if you remember that building but if you were handicapped and you had a dental appointment you would call in before the dental appointment they would come out with some of those ramps that you would use to change your oil and they would put those down so people could roll up and get into the dental office um so that was the other building so we went out and acquired all those sites bought the two homes without you know just went out and bought them without getting any approvals from the city in terms of a development agreement took the risk went out paid almost $550,000 for those two homes we bought the Blue Barn we bought we bought made a deal on the Dental Building including building out his space over in the new medical building built it out completely because he had to move before we could do anything we had to take the risk to do that that cost us about $600 some th000 so anyway that's the background and the rules we were when I remember sitting over here in the conference room on the second floor here at a work work session and the rules we were dealt with is can only be a three-story building we'll never have a four-story building on 7th Avenue you have to have a minimum of one parking stall below grade for every unit we have that we have that and we had to have a we had to have a commercial building our space in the building preferably they said a restaurant we have that so we did everything we were supposed to supposed to do for over a year in negotiations we were talking and the idea was the land would be brought in to the project at zero at zero cost I found out about a 250,000 I was asked told negotiations that we're going to pay $250,000 for that piece of property one and a half hours before the final Council meting to get everything approved so I I said okay cuz we got to get this project done we had to get in the ground we had issues with weather we had to get going and the big thing there was not that we couldn't get in the ground you you don't see it from the site you know where the the pit is where the fire uh the grills are all that sort of thing and then the other side in the back there's a parking lot there are Ting a lot of huge and I mean huge tanks underneath that ground to handle the water we had to get that in in the fall absolutely had to that was requirement of the Watershed District which we did and put that in so that's why the urgency so I finally said our app for the meeting I said okay we'll do it we have to we don't have a choice we'll pay 250 I did however since we were opening up negotiations I said okay guys that's the case then I want the park fees thrown into the project I said I don't have 250 in the budget we don't have $250,000 in the budget for land we want the park fees which is $80,000 so we're short the other thing that we did if if if you again a bit of background for everybody Seventh Street in Margaret really bad utilities the utilities in Margaret were 114 years old down there way down there they had to be replaced so the city had a budget at that time of about $3 million to do the work the bids came in at 3.6 million to do the work there was no more money City could not assess because there was a statement made at a Business Association meeting to to the businessmen you'll never be assessed for that street so we had a $600,000 problem we suggested to the city that perhaps if we did the project we could get some economies using our excavators using our pipe people using our landscapers using our concrete people maybe we can negotiate something that would get us in a situation where we could drive that price down we finally did that the price came in at about $2,000 less than $3 million but to do that we also had to forego any fees to manage that project now this I don't I don't want to say anything that somebody guys back but I'll guarantee you the city Engineers got a fee for managing that construction or inspecting what we were doing we took the risk of guaranteeing that project at $3 million and we without getting anything even paid for it nothing we just did it and to do that which is really interesting which is maybe the first time in the in the state of Minnesota we had to set up two separate accounts for the tax increment money that came into the project one for the private property one for the public property both through Old National Bank and so we had and we had meticulously keep track of money going between accounts because Old Nationals had you they will only let money out under certain circumstances so we had to be very careful as to what how we were doing things out there and you know at the end of the day it worked out it all worked out we got new streets we got new utilities we got a nice project we took care and by the way there was also we ran into a little bit of petroleum product I mentioned there was an old station on the site we had to pay another $50,000 to correct go in and take out a whole bunch of stuff dig out a whole bunch more stuff so it all works out and it worked great and it is the perfect it is the epitome of what Redevelopment projects in this state should be should be a partnership between the public and the private side and in those Partnerships and when you're doing read like that things are never like like petroleum things are all of a sudden it's a surprise you don't know you got to have kind of a give and take and go with this thing to make it work and that's what we did we you know we said we'll do this you do that and you kind of keep going down that path but we were very careful and I think that's the thing that I want to really emphasize here tonight we were really careful not about keeping track of money we were very careful so that no way anybody could ever come back to us and say that we got any favors by being working with local business people that's really important because the local people that were partners with did not want their name sullied one bit and I can understand that they should never be in that position so we were Ultra sensitive to make sure we said we won't collect fees we said we'll pay the $5,000 and I would add we even paid twice we had to renew letters of credit that were ensuring that the public Landscaping into those into some of the irrigation and some of that stuff with we had we had to post a bond with Old National Bank ensuring that we the city property and their Landscaping would get done properly City could not make up their issues I'm not Bri but some people are having issues of should we irrigate these spaces or not irrigate these spaces well so we had to we had to hold that out Old National make us kept on we had to keep on renewing it twice each time was about $1,800 renewal for our letter of credit to ensure that the city's property would get finished so I mean it's a continual give and take and that's what Redevelopment is in Minnesota and I tell you the the end result though is we made a comment I can remember being in that room saying four and A2 years ago this will spur on other things and you can only look across our street from our site and you can see what else has done it's created other act other activity and it will continue to do other other things in this city and which is which is needed I mean you got there's going to be a rebirth you can see it already it's starting to happen and there's going to be a lot more things happening here too not that we're planning anything but I'm too old to do anything anymore anyway but uh it's so it's all worked out good everybody got what they intended to get out of this project so I'll answer any questions well you brought up a good point when you first started that nobody here is the is the same as far as the people and you know next January we're going to have different people again the thing is the only thing we can go by is the records that are kept right and we have no records of any changes that anybody did we have a contract that was signed by everybody and it was in there and there was no change orders is that normal you know it's that with that pay app you've got there that was generated by us for our purposes and we have to have pay applications to to submit to our lenders to get funded for whatever we do and it it just is that uh is it normal I wouldn't say it's normal but this is not a normal project far from a normal project you know it's not just one piece of property doing one thing with one just I'm the borrower you're the lender type type of a thing uh it's it's you know we had we had subcontractors doing this work that were you know they would an excavator he's out there doing where's the line that he's supposed to keep in track of of what's public what's private when he's doing that I mean that's that is enormously difficult task for these guys riding a riding a you using a back hole or using a a grater out there to get to move move dirt around and find that stuff when you're doing landscaping where do you where do where do you plant this versus on this what's public what's not I mean you know you guys all saw that when that project was going on the downtown was a mess we had half the street blocked off the street blocked off all the time there were you know was it was hard to get around so you know no is it absolutely normal is it is it abnormal those things you know they happen well my thing is with the 250,000 you did the change and you added that wasn't there something written up when it came to that time or was it there was I suggested that we get that done it never got done for some of the circumstances you just talked about people change and people are gone and it never got documented but you know and in the interest of getting it done and knowing the costs that we would have incurred or this project may not have happened and it's not because you can't dig during the winter you can dig footings and put in footings we do that all the time but with the type of system we had to have for drainage with these enormous tanks which nobody even knows exist under there you'd have to see the plan we had to get that thing in the ground and that's why when I was told hey you got to do this it was kind of like well okay let's do it we'll figure it out later because we got to get going y I appreciate that the only thing we have to look at is the contract the original one and now as being up here and with our taxpayers we have to say you know how would we forgive 880,000 when we don't have a paper record of it that's what we're trying to work on probably $90,000 in normal construction management fees with without having anything documented from the city that's why we wanted you here we need to understand we just can't you know pencil whip this and not talk about it we need to just submitted one of without my one of our project managers on the job actually submitted on like like on the first payoff to the city submitted a bill for a a share what have been 3% of project management fees and Scott dudak said no you guys said you do it without I didn't know that was gone so then our guy he was told that Scott came to me and our Scott at amcon came to me and said the city rejected and I said that's okay because that's what I agreed to any other questions by your you reference yourself as old and I tell you what you're sharp as tack you remember everything from day one um I some people just write good notes well I appreciate you coming here and telling us and filling a sign on the background I mean this was four years ago that you all have been working with this and um this was brought to our attention recently this year um I also agree with you everybody up at this stand is brand new we don't know what was agreed upon what negotiations went down um and it's it's one word versus nobody that's up here um so he I appreciate you being up here um but I End discussion I'm curious to see how people feel I sit on the Parks and Recreation board um not board but I am the representative excuse me so um I'm I'm interested in some discussion up here regarding this you know we do have like on the uh on extending a letter of credit on behalf of the city where we paid $1,800 a time we've got all kinds of letters on that uh we have all kinds of documentation relative to the city putting in you know are they going to put in or not put in the irrigation into the where the trees are out on the city's property out there and uh we have a lot of that sort of thing we have a we have a ton of information relative to what we had to pay to buy properties what we paid to relocate the dentist and do that property what we had to do to correct the uh to correct the soils because of the petrol problem out there which is in the contract saying that that's a City cost and we again we've just we opted because we said we don't want to we don't want to get you know we don't want to make something look bad here and part of you know this is you made a comment you're up here you're brand new this is at least the third if not the fourth time in the last four years we have tried to explain this issue and it's never our story has never changed from the first time we have people we did things I sat in meetings Tracy had in meetings Jean had in meetings we all heard the same thing not once did anybody say you should be paying $250,000 for that property we talked the cities we we worked with this with the uh Michaela huitt who's the city's financial adviser we sign in meetings after meetings your predecessor whatever your partner down there s in meetings over a year 14 15 months not one comment a year hour and a half before a meeting and I'm so how did it start at zero and then 250,000 what brought that upon how did that all of a sudden at the last minute thing I think on anything is negotiations you see you're talking this is what we need this is what we think we need this is what we want you to do it started at zero though started at zero and we never left it never left it an hour and a half before it goes up to 250 hour and 250 yes I remember it distinctly and if people have asked me why do you remember that so well because I had covid and that was in November of 2020 that was before you know five months before any vaccination and I could not leave I was in my basement my wife went me out of there threw down a little bit of food every now and then as about it but I CU I remember I couldn't come to the meeting I told her I can't be at that meeting but I did say we got to get this going we don't we are at that point we have and we bought and closed on two buildings we bought the two houses we bought and closed on a dental building and committed to building out a space you know we we made those risks because everybody was working together on the council everybody was talking all the staff everybody was talking we're doing this deal so we had to make decisions so we took a risk we were probably 2 million dollar into this project and I wasn't going to I couldn't stand to wait for another two three 4 weeks the documents some of the stuff we had to go it would have cost us another three4 $500,000 if we couldn't get going because of the because of the weather so you got to do things and again unusual project how many cities can say that they had a developer come in do his own project then build public streets and but then keep two separate accounts for how you develop into the tax increment to do that City new North St Paul had never done it I had never done I've done all kinds of tax incent projects over my career I've never done anything like that we had to go down to Old National Bank and sit down with them and say this is what we have to do because we have to separate these two accounts and that took a long time then we had to go sit down with a title company who could not understand how they were going to be separating money and approving money and allowing payments to be made out of one account versus the other pound we and that was really highly unusual project highly unusual okay any other questions from anybody um yeah I have a question so um you know the work's done the there's a potential fee out there um but I think the people who are at a loss in a way is is the parks mhm department and and all the activities that the parks do so um yeah I'm kind of curious like how do we make up for that I mean that's $80,000 that the parks don't get to use you know if I could comment on that I don't it was not a question of not a question of do we want to pay Park fees I didn't care where the money came from I latched on the one thing I know that was still out there which was the park fees $80,000 as far as we're concerned all this money you know we paid 250 you know I said I don't have to pay 80 we paid 50 more for petrol issues which is right in the contract we you know we had to pay extension fees for letters of credit for the city a dollar is a dollar for us we don't care you know if if somebody would asked me at the time I'd have said you're getting 250 you know for the land and we actually the want cost if you look on there wound up being 350 that we ultimately paid for the land I'd say transfer 80,000 to me it would have been simple take 80 out of that and give it to the park board thank you I I appreciate your comment um I think that's kind of where I think there's a bit of a difference between private and public um is that we do have to look at those impacts um so just something for us to ponder a little bit but that is something that I'm sitting on um and just a little uncomfortable with and again if I could end one thing here is there's not a city out there that gives you a permit if you haven't paid all your fees we got a permit and everybody was satisfied that we had satisfied every single condition on that development agreement and again this is the fourth time I have tried to explain or we've been questioned as if we've done something wrong we've done nothing wrong we saved the city a lot of money we got the city a project they had no ability to do by doing taking on the roads and the utilities out there that would never got done which is the definition by the way of tax increment financing because the ultimate test is but for but for the use of that could this project happen would have never happened if we hadn't stepped in and helped them well I apologize that it's the fourth time but you know this Council up here is good at getting things done so we we're going to get this figured out and be done with it for sure I I can't tell you how much I appreciate that thought because it's been this is an issue that's been hanging done not done done not done type thing for all these years thank you thank you appreciate it thank you Jim thank you I think the finance director has raised his hand way back there yeah when you sit in the cheap seats I can't see you thank you uh mayor council members heard all of the the dialogue it's really there's two separate issues that are going on here um one is for you to decide um whether what you've heard um is accurate a reflection especially with the city not having uh very good records um but at the end of the day what needs to be done with that is it needs to be memorialized needs to be put into an agreement it needs to be brought back to the city council um and you vote on it if you agree um with it you pass that Amendment um as far as council member Wong you make a very good suggestion I know council member schwe did too that money would have gone into the park dedication fund so when this item is brought back up memorializing it with an agreement for you to vote on um I'll also provide a potential funding source to be able to make the park dedication um fund whole of that $80,000 um I do believe and I can't quote if I if there's enough to cover the 80 but it's probably pretty close that there still are some funds that um are available through the bond funds um that were related to um these two projects so um if that is enough to cover it um that will be the source if not I will you know suggest another source again final decision city council but those two pieces would be brought forward forward but at the end of the day um I think there was a very good comment between private sector and public sector um and that is this gentleman did fantastic job um of explaining um and uh memory his memory fantastic of going through it the difference is and he's right you know I've Done Construction management for many years and things happen on the Fly um the difference here first of all is a change order the contracts weren't our contracts change orders would have never come to our city council for approval the only changes that would have come would have been to the development agreement itself and that's what we need to have memorialized um part to it the other part to it in in a public versus private is that we have a formalized board that needs to approve everything uh there's no delegated authority that has been granted to cover this so This does have to come back to city council for his final decision so if it's okay um we'll work with the city manager um and the attorney and if you'll help us memorialize some of the great great uh memory that you have uh we can bring a document forward that um it's acceptable by the attorney um for you to review and either approve or not and also there will be a funding source hopefully to make the park dedication um fund hold on that so we're just looking for consensus this evening on where you're at and then clear up something absolutely please if you don't mind so the only one that can change is the is the city council when it comes to negotiating the contracts and everything else is that correct city council approved correct that contract unless they delegated that authority to somebody else which was not done in this circumstance then yes it has to be brought back so then when it was negotiation it should have came back you know during that time it should have came back so we're missing a step here absolutely so negotiations were done without the city council I if you don't mind me taking a second here um we had the one Lily building over there where Jim was having um some issues with the you know the first floor you know trying to figure that out and you know we came back and as a council we decided to do something which we we could have decided to do something here if it came to the right spot absolutely yes and and that's that that's the differ I just want I'm not I'm not going to say they did anything wrong they didn't at all doing it in the best interest of the city and and to do thing it's just whoever was in charge and had the authority to either say yay or nay on the city's behalf should have been the city council or they should have asked the city council for delegated authority y that individual or individuals they're they're in the wrong on this on this instance that's why to make it corrected we do need to have the amendment brought forth for the city council and I'm all for making it whole incorrect but we have to make sure we don't keep doing the things that weren't correct and I think we proved with the Lily that you know a developer comes to us and we're able to help but we need to be involved right now we're coming back we have absolutely no documentation on our side we couldn't prove a thing if we if we had to because there's nothing absolutely and and and I just want to say I'm not pointing finger on any individual for any blame or that in the time that I came here in in the later part of 2021 we've had uh with not all the city council members were were here two of them were we modified our policy our purchasing policy and we have another draft of of some more changes that we'd like to make that'll come sometime in September um we have had a clean audit all the way through what that's reflective of is things have changed we have a different culture we have a different leadership we have a a fantastic uh city manager who's not allowing any of those things to occur so the bottom line is can't correct the history of things in the past we're going to correct it uh appropriately and that's where there has to be an amendment brought forth and I don't mind getting a black eye if I know we're going forward you know sometimes that's what happens when you look back in the past you got to take you know you have to you know learn and go forward and that's where I wanted to say I think we're in a better place now and things like this won't be for the next Council four years from now that's trying to figure out what the heck we did absolutely no and this and I've noticed the change in the city council leadership um that's really pushing for those things and I think you pointed it out you saw how the Lily development went and that's not the only change there was a big change as far as um you know Tiff financing um component to where we pulled funds so everything came back to city council for approval perfect and that's you know then records are we can understand and try to find something so great I appreciate that for everybody correct me if I'm wrong we didn't have uh documentation for the bottom floor for the LLY building or article 7 that's right this is a side but yeah just to comment [Music] any other questions Jason does um I I just wanted to thank both of you for coming out um I I view this as you just giving us information um please don't um this was information gathering don't hold it against us we have to you know make the right steps forward um so I I I hope we haven't eroded your trust with the city I I I'm very good I just you know following up with mayor [Laughter] you can tell you don't have a skinny mayor so you're good at that point they are yes and by the way if you don't know the restaurant tour is a Native Son oh yeah he's on our Eda oh okay what do you want next so are you looking for direction on a cons are we agreeing or disagreeing on collecting this $80,000 that's correct Jack do you want to repeat how you started you gave us two choices in the beginning and I forgot them yes so the the the two options before city council right now are um basically pursue collecting the $80,000 in the par dedication fee or um you know formally you know get a formal waiver of that fee U and that would be a you know brought forward as a a formal contract amendment that would be brought before city council at a a future meeting so can I ask a question is there a third option where we say the money they paid is formalized by a contract and 80,000 of that money that they had already paid goes to the park and Dan will make that right it sounds like Dan had proposed the option of taking the bond money uh if this is decided not to go to pursue the developers that we could potentially take whatever's the bond money whatever that looks like and put it in the park dedication can you explain just the bond money where that is why that's been sitting there and just that kind of thing if you don't mind is that a fair question I don't know it's a fair question as the gentleman said this was a very I came at the tell very complex um project um because the this it's a tiff District the city bonded um $6 million on this project also um took loans out of uh from the state um through MSA dollars um it's all in a tiff District it just happened at the end of the day that there's some you know some bond funds every time there's a project there's always some bond funds that are usually lingering um if you recall ear earlier this year I wanted to close out one that had I think about $130,000 that we ended up closing that bond fund out and and um it it was a you know on the on the debt side to it and transferred it over to um uh to cover uh a change that we had done with our building inspection um so there happens to be some money in that debt fund I believe probably enough to cover this so let's play it all back I I I honestly believe what he had said um and so what he could have done is that you know and it should have been um that there should have been an amendment at that point in time for the $80,000 he actually had a claim for a lot more than that but we're going to leave it at 80,000 so let's not go too far yeah for yeah yeah um but uh if it was brought forward the city would have had to come up with that $80,000 at that point in time Park dedication fund would have been made whole the park dedication would have been thing it's all after the fact so we're going to try to make that all happen at this point in time by memorializing it into some sort of amendment form um if the city council decides that they're okay with what the information was provided and they want to go this road in addition with that is that um we suggest the funding source to be able to make that Park dedication whole remember if everything would have been done correctly once upon a time you would have paid that you would have paid $80,000 or more let's not call it Park dedication out of something they would have paid their park dedication fee it would have gone into the park dedication fund somehow it appears that there was through negotiations a tradeoff um sounds like they got the short end of that trade-off but but they're okay and they're not asking for anything onto that so my suggestion is if city council and need your direction if city council is in agreement with what has been presented in front of them tonight and said yep you know I I agree that that there was probably some I'll call it quote unquote horse trading done it wasn't memorialized so let's memorialize that and if the city council's okay with that pass that we'll make the park dedication fund whole and we're done with with this as an issue it does not as as Jack had said in the earlier it does not set a precedent for anything and we also know that culture has changed here so this isn't going to be something that's going to be repeated um so that's kind of my final thought on it may if I can add to that [Music] said about the B6 milon B support of that b we have guar minimum value on thatty 182,000 can you come up to the if you don't mind because we got a lot of people at home that uh listen and then we're going to say we missed a big section so thank you sorry I I was going to say in support of that $6 million Bond the city sold to make all this stuff happened we signed an assessment agreement with the city for which we said we will guarantee regardless of what happens on that property a minimum value on that for assessment purposes of $1,250,000 that number was not pulled out of the air that number was discussed and approved by your legal staff and more importantly your financial advisors that do all your tax increment analysis that was the number they came up with that said that's the minimum number you have to be willing to guarantee to make that happen we are prohibited by law to ever challenge that below 8 18, 250,000 so it's there so and that's that is what supported the bond to make this whole project happen was that guarantee which is still in effect and will be for my grandchildren very very correct statement so yeah talking about is a it's a minim minimum assessment agreement and it goes through to the county for their review and approval um it's in place as long as the tax increment districts in place what it does for the city is that it guarantees that we're going to get a certain tax increment back that's why Michaela from uh Baker Tilly uh was a part of that and so we should be able to get the cash flow in an annual basis to pay all of our our debt payments that are on that Bond and that the city is not at risk for default on that okay which doesn't happen on all tax increment districts and so that is actually a bigger piece because you know Market values could drop like that and they're still paying property taxes at that based on 18 million I think is what are that's assessment value came out we a strong strong upwards and and Commercial R it can go it doesn't happen in Vegas that way does it there's a floor ceiling right yep so with all due respect may I have your name again Jim I apologize thank you Jim um again thank you for everything I do I do believe that we do need to get this in writing um again this is conversations that none of the office staff here and Council had been involved in I am in the belief of what was agreed upon was agreed upon in the past uh and even though I sit on and represent Parks and Recreation uh did they know about it no it was a surprise when it was brought to us the fact that that there are some dollars in the bond we don't know those specific dollars but to have that idea of what that is and if it is to cover it um I my decision uh would be to foro this trying to go after this $80,000 because you saw this fee not knowing really what this fee was um and you had proposed to get rid of it and it was agreed upon that you weren't going to be charging it um so that would be my recommendation on my end I of course have four other people here uh mayor and Council if I may just there was a a question from I believe council member Cole earlier about is there a third option um for what Jason sorry um B you know is there a third option of of moving the money around and I would say uh from a legal point of view there are the two options and then separately from that the city could decide to make a budgetary decision to put other money towards the park dedication fee Park dedication is is a specific money collected at a specific time for specific purpose under a specific Authority um so it would be a forgiving the park dedication fee in the development agreement and then the council would separately consider whether to increase funding to the park dedication fund through some other means yeah and that was my intent to have because it is IT Park dedications has specific uh State statutes to it yes so we would revisit that obviously at another time during budget session I think it would be a separate item outside of the budget part to it that would be a whole separate two separate items that would come forth to city council for in and you know definitely can be on the business item for discussion and any follow-up questions and then a resolution attached for both of them I hear you so when we do this resolution that other resolution will be with it for to take that money that the they're separate items but they're going to happen at the same time so that way we don't forget to you would have the amendment go first and then you would have the funding of the transfer because if you don't do one I wouldn't do the other perfect so ex any other questions anybody I just I think guidance now yeah well part I I appreciate thank you very much for explaining that um we're not set in precedent which is which would have been concerning to me uh I think we fixed the issue of knowing who the right party is That's supposed to be doing this as far as that so those are two of the major things that um that I was I was concerned about with my notes so thank you can we get an answer how does guidance work for from a workshop when we can't vote does that make sense yeah I think you can give us Direction consensus you can give us Direction yeah you the council members can express their views and then we can hear what is expressed and that will shape what what formal action we bring forward at a that's legal and we're not okay yeah there's no formal there's no final action taking place tonight right uh what would happen is that just that guides the resolution that we will then draft and bring before you in future and the two resolutions is either we forget you know it's yay or nay when it comes to that and then the other ones completely separate so the resolution would be that we wouldn't go forward with trying to claim and go from there right the guid it would be to accept it would be to accept an amendment to the contract in that $80,000 yeah to wave the fee and yeah and wave the Fe and then from there we work on our stuff yep anybody does everybody consent can you ask that I don't even know anybody have any questions on that what's your opinion we just go down the road cass's given hers um you know s of mine or yours all right um first off Jim thank you this is this is this is awesome um one thing that you can quickly tell by looking at councel and looking at staff is there's a whole lot of history that was lost um when people either retired or moved on um which makes a lot of these things a lot more difficult it makes it tough for Council to make decisions on um you know uh we we talked a little bit about the difference between public and private in the private sector um you know director Winnie called it horse trading uh I think I wrote down uh something fast and loose um that happens in the private sector and it doesn't necessarily need to be documented or approved or things to to the extent that it needs to do when you're dealing with the city entity um it was far from I think the the normal project um we had a they put a camera up on the top of of of of one of the buildings over here so that everybody could keep an eyeball on what was going on downtown on a you know two the minute basis as far as as far as what was going on um I do not believe that anybody benefited from this one side of the other I I truly believe this was win-win um and I think that either based on timing or the the horse trading fast and loose however you want to take a look at it decisions were were made um that normally wouldn't have been been wouldn't be done the way they are today um and you know for those Reasons I'm I'm all about making the amendment waving the fees thank you CC um I I I agree um without having stuff documented recorded I believe these gentlemen at their word I'm uh I I believe that's truthful what happened I'm also in favor of um waving the fee and then making things right later thank you council member Norby council member Wong yeah I I had some of the same concerns around you know setting precedent um I think you know this is another lesson for us as in a city is to document document document um which again I think we're doing a better job at um I do appreciate the the building that's gone up it's definitely caused a buzz in the community so thank you for coming out and and sharing your perspective um and with that said I think um uh that we can go ahead and I would be okay with waving it this time okay thank you council member Wong myself um I already said that you know we're in a different place and we're and we're um better off and we know where the chain is so I think I agree 100% when it comes time I think we can we can do that too so it's unanimous when it comes to going forward thank you thank you thank you thank you and thank you guys hope to never see you again how's that well actually I hope to see you again we're g to put some more stuff out here right he said after four times he was tired of coming so we are too we appreciate it well you're always welcome here yep oh there is well we appreciate it and then we do hope to see you another project thank you Tracy thanks Tracy thank you gent thank you all right we got to have Ron talk fast tonight uh all right whatever your budget is cut it by 80k and then [Laughter] go I can prob that all right next topic is 2025 budget discussion uh Levy budgets I'm going to kick that over to finance director winck to start us off uh this is a continuation of our budget discussions on Levy budgets uh tonight we'll have Ron Richie the director of Public Works he'll cover Street Maintenance urban forestry in par S I do want to say that um from his 24 to 2025 proposed budget um it'll show a total of 30,000 approximately $30,500 increase or about a 1.5% increase I don't know how we did it but that's also um that that small increase of 1.5% is is covering 7% increase in Personnel costs so that means the remainder of his budget is is being decreased by over $40,000 or um a 4% reduction um in my time that I been the finance director of the city of North St Paul I have been uh extremely impressed with u Mr Richie and how he directs his staff and how he uh is very conscientious um and he does treat what I've always said and and in trainings that I have given um is that he treats the taxpayers money like it's his own um and so with that I'm going to turn it over to Mr Richie to walk you through um his budgets well thank you Dan uh you're being way too nice to me um so any questions and I'll be done so what's the next big truck Dan Y is this hooked up yeah yeah we I had it on he's just having some tech issues we got a pretty picture of uh Finance director Winnick right here we're looking at get that he's all tan he's taking advantage of the pool we can see you on he had me on well we'll have to talk to our guest here today about about some of the old other open property we got he's a neat guy so Ron you said your presentation's done right you've already cut everything we're good I cut what I could I got come something else I'll have to go back to drawing board I guess I didn't I came here way early to make sure that this work oh funny well clearly it isn't it's you that was a great well the animation that was put in was phenomenal well was your uh that's your budget now just a blank screen blank screen we'll tell your staff that too I presented but they didn't like it Z that's right we're even saving power we're turning off the computer to cut power the Electric's not here but still better be careful with Mr Wick uh oh it may be more than uh just your computer my friend sounds like they're investigating or do we need to save it for next [Laughter] time yeah got a little AV stuff going on I apologize to everybody that's watching online or listening so do you know what section we'll start off first now you smok my computer yes yes in the in the handout it's page the new one's not in the budget so you better1 page 40 of 6 page 40 of 61 Main Street Maintenance thank you there we go tou Danny very nice can we get it yes you did take credit there we go we're good we got it okay well that didn't take too long so thanks for having me um so I I'm just going to go through real quick just the kind of the goals of Public Works there I got streets parks and Forestry so I'm just going to give quick overview really fast here if you have questions along I well I suppose I'll just go through this just stop me if you have questions and after this if you have questions I can answer those you know as time goes on so um public works you know our goal is to maintain uh Public Works core Services the highest level we can that's our streets Parks water sewer sanitary forestry um I said we have 10 guys total in public works on our best day and then Randy and myself um we do take try to take great pride in our work um what we do um we try to get work done in a timely manner and we really try to be more proactive than reactive to to things that happen here um our streets um as a pavement we're doing a three-year our PCI score of PVE pavement index to kind of help guide us in what roads that we you know are going to um you know repair or work on um uh with the addition of the pavement uh rehab program in 2024 our goal is to extend the lifespan of our existing roads and improve the ride quality without the extents of uh or extent of doing the full reconstruction um the additional money that was added to the 2025 budget is to try to help get that score to go up the money that was added for 2024 four kind of Keeps Us on an even even plane this is just trying to get that number to start heading in the right direction um you know although we're not doing the full reconstruct with with you know it's the water utilities we're picking the areas that we can that we've had the least amount of problems with water main brakes or the utilities but we're just trying to get a lot of that red areas of our Maps down to you know better areas by US 20 years on some of these road so we can you know build this budget to hopefully in the future not be so far behind um yearly we use about 500 tons for patching um that's kind of our average over the last five years about 500 tons that's what we put out there for pothole patching um a lot of potholes it is um snow removal uh snow plowing um is a priority in our winter months um we take great pride in uh you our our plowing of the city and our residents let us know a lot of times you know we have a truck breakdown and we're not in a neighborhood at a certain time we get calls um we explain to them you know hey we're going to it's an and it might be just an hour difference but in a way that's good because you know I feel that you know that expectation is high and we really really try to meet that goal um replacement of the trucks when we're coming here when we're replacing our trucks the new truck the technologies that they have in these trucks it helps us save on salt um we can dial these in we can use less salt there's brine tanks that go on them it activates the salt quicker um it so the the money that goes into this stuff there is a a payback for it um let's see here um you know our average timeout in a year normally it's about 15 to 16 times is that what we kind of based numbers off of for um going out per year last year I think we were out twice like doing like a full plow the year before we were out 28 times so it's it's kind of hard you know but like I said we just kind of go off of our average of what we go out per year um the downtown district with these buildings going in downtown these apartment buildings um it's great uh we you know when we go and we put all these plants we irrigate them trees uh you know there's a lot more labor that goes into maintaining that stuff um you know we have a guy that kind of does full-time irrigation between down there in our Fields um you know in the future additional equipment you know may be needed to to handle downtown uh last year we rented a loader um to test out how that would work having another loader to push the snow out to the ends of town because we basically have about 1 from 1:00 a.m. till about 6:00 a.m. to get the snow out of downtown um and if you guys are go downtown in the winter time we remove pretty much all the snow from the sidewalks we don't leave any um wind rows for people to step over on the curbs and how we do how we're able to do that is we push the snow in two different areas downtown and pile it up and then we haul it out at a later date but with the new buildings going in downtown we're losing these spots to pile that snow so we have to push the snow we have some other areas we can push it but we have to push it twice as far so the addition of another loader we have two guys down there instead of one to handle that getting out of there in that time frame um so I I that's how I'll talk about that here so I can get through some of the stuff um street sweeping we we uh average about six to eight times per year the Watershed District um a lot of cities only go get out sweeping like in the spring and in the fall they get out twice and they really push to to you know to sweep your streets more often we get out about six to eight times per year which we're in you know good shape with that we we have the ability to do that um like i' I've mentioned to some of you before getting rid of the street sweepings is is really expensive um we actually truck our street sweeping to MOA which is about a two-hour round trip uh one of our guys had talked to someone up there at uh um a landfill and we save about $1,000 per load hauling it up there it' be about $1,200 to get rid of it here and like I think the closest place would be like Burnsville um but we save we do that on our off days rain days and we Chuck that stuff out but that's uh like a big uh the big thing with the street sweeping is getting rid of the stuff because it's contaminated um a forestry um Emerald ashb you guys can all see that in town or how you know how bad that that is and how bad it's really showing right now uh our emerald ash bar for us the our Public Works um we increase our removal do try to remove about 115 to 120 trees per year um as of 81624 Public Works say we've removed 86 ash trees um we sell have 400 ash trees remaining on at public property boulevards Parks uh public land um we are treating 85 ash trees in the Parks um and 115 ash trees we replace one tree for one tree that we remove so that's on the Public Works side we receed the the Minnesota DNR uh relief Grant um which is $400,000 300 for public Ash removal and $100,000 for the low income or private ash tree removal uh the private asht tree we had 38 applicants out of that 81 private Ash trees were removed that money is pretty much spent that $100,000 we have a um there's a couple I think there's a little bit of money left but we're just waiting to see so we don't go you know over that amount um uh public ash trees we there's 90 trees removed per that Grant this year 90 trees will be replanted for that on this late September we have about $150,000 remaining of the $300,000 for that um and then our continued trimming of all the other trees um Parks our Park amenities continue to grow um so is's a need for maintenance including Citywide Building Maintenance clean up after events um they in the Parks our desire is to enhance the safety appearance of our parks and Parks facilities we're adding some irrigation we add some irrigation to Casey Lake Park kind of the Inner Circle down there um replanting some grass and and just trying to make those those areas look a lot Greener um you know for that uh this is that that's I think I touched on all the budgets um this all it is is kind of a daily worksheet of kind of the things that we have to take care of and the the people that we have to do it so you can see mowing ball fields park trash uh grass you know trimming ice Rings dumpsters uh you can see the list there so basically each day when Rand and I are making a schedule we're basically picking some things that we're not going to do for that day um it's not like I'm not saying that we can't manage this or handle this um but we have a wide variety of things that we need to take care of and depending on the weather for that day I'd say 50% of the time we make a schedule for the day and 50% or 50% of the time we end up changing or having to Pivot and do something something different for that day or adjust you know for that which you know in a way I don't mind that it's you know kind of keeps on your toes keeps things going but um just kind of like I said a brief uh overview of kind of things that we we we do on a day-to-day basis so I know that was super quick uh super high level um so I will stand for any questions that that you have four minutes yeah well thank you so much for giving us your report it's da your daily Duty sheet and everything else it's kind of cool to be able to see this stuff and how much work trees and everything else it's sometimes you forget about all the stuff that's involved in your department so it's nice to be able to see that thank you for your hard work and your staff you know and I'm I'm going to give a shout out to Randy uh he handles the auction stuff for us for our vehicles um we always get a trade in price when we first price out a vehicle um you know probably a year in advance and I I would say probably on average we're getting double the amount that we get for tradeing pretty close by going out putting out on action we put out we might put a higher uh um res High yeah excuse me thanks higher reserve on it to see where things are at um but we do spend a lot of time trying to get the most out of the vehicles that we can and trying to you know save as much money for the city as we can for that and you know he does a great job with that so well that's appreciated and taking it to more be able to d i mean you guys are really concientious and always trying to save and that really we really appreciate that as a city I mean to think out of the box you could easily go down to Burnsville and take the half a day and do whatever else so doing something like that and just understanding that you know every pending when it comes to to a city you know is helpful so thank you thank you anyone else I mean my only comments are we're spoiled thank Youk thank you thank you both um to to your point we get 11 Ines of snow and we're dug out by 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning there's St Paul is 3 or four days down the road um street sweeping everything else you guys do thank you we are we are truly blessed and spoiled by having having you both you're welcome thank you one quick question is how much extra salt do we have this after the spring for the winter well so did you m a salt Castle I'll give you a as quick as I can on the salt I have to order the salt in March for the year coming up and the order I put in I have to stick with and I can take 20% or is it no 10% more or 10% less so we have to guess how much stff we're going to use so if I asked anyone of you how how much is it going to snow this winter you know that's a hard thing to do so we ordered a normal amount last year which we didn't use now I have to take that by a certain date which I had to take it by I think April and if I don't take it I get charged the storage fee for every month that I don't take it so you have to have enough room in your salt shed to take it so we had a room we had to pack it in there we had to use a snowblower to pop pile it up high in there so we can take snowblowing salt now I never heard that before that's so we could get it piled high so we have uh uh probably 500 or 600 ton about five I think we have 500 ton in our storage set which is about what we use on average in a year so this year I ordered Le I ordered half of what we did last year so we have some on hand and we have this but I also talk with some of our neighboring cities to see what they are ordering and cuz if we did run out we the only way we could get some more is like barter with another city or have you know borrow from them well you really have to guess you got to be a weather guy besides being the Public Works director and everything else huh you usually spend a few days on it and argue back and forth some heated argument sometimes and we're all going off of just guessing a number so well I'm glad you were I'm glad you have a lot left over after I appreciate it so thank you if nothing else I also agree thank you so much for everything you guys do I mean you're on top of things when something happens whether it's garbage in a park you're on top of it so thank you you're welcome and like I said if you have any questions looking through line items on the budget you know don't hesitate hesitate to ask I will justify you know anything that we do here appreciate it thank you thanks thank you all right are you sitting there for the next one or are you going to say something oh no I'm not saying a word that a boy nothing further nothing further yes anybody so moved council member Cole second second council member schweer all those in favor say I I if we can take a five minutes before we'll start around uh 636 for