Called To Order
President Carlsrud called the meeting to order at 3:30 PM.
Roll Call
Members present: President Carlsrud, Commissioner Magnuson, Commissioner Bishop and Commissioner Erickson
Others Present: City Administrator Crawford, City Attorney Martineck, Finance Director Richter, Administrative Assistant Johnson
Department Reports
Operations Supervisor Klemisch reported there was a PT employee that started last week in sanitation. With these colder days we are storing our containers overnight at Ken’s sanitation to help them dump easier.
Electrical Superintendent Senf reported 3 outages for the month due to aging infrastructure. We’re changing out lights and will get into tree trimming soon. Other than that, just doing load control. We get billed monthly just like everyone else and we try to keep the load as low as possible. The peaks usually happen around breakfast, lunch and dinner.
West Main the lights are out of warranty but they may still stand behind the product. Anything East Main has another year so they will be replaced and all the way up 5th Ave NE and 12 St N.
Fire Chief Magnuson reported 17 calls for service last month. One call as a fire that resulted in a fatality. We had the electric guys come out and not sure what they did but they kept everyone in the neighborhood with electricity. Clint came out on Sunday and moved snow, sanded streets and ran the track hoe which was impressive to watch. New building is making progress, the doors ended up needing all new openers so that was added. There have been some calls about smells in houses, flush your toilets. If you have a bathroom that’s not used a lot that could be the reason.
Police Chief Hatcher reported on the process of interviewing 4 people last week. We had 3 we passed on to the background and just within that time we lost 2 of them to somewhere else.
The patch being passed around has the autism pieces for autism awareness. We will be ordering these and selling them to promote autism awareness and donating the money to the non-profit in Fargo or if someone else has an idea we would consider it.
Operations Supervisor Klemisch reported they’ve been working on some of the corners and widening streets now that the storms have calmed down. Sewer department had a couple lift station issues where we had to swap out pumps but nothing major.
Last night we were called out to Love’s to sand it, another semi was stuck, it continues to be an issue. We did speak with Mike Gille but right now we haven’t run into an issue to where we couldn’t get to it.
The Street Department pickup has been ordered too, they’re hoping for a late May build.
Review the monthly bills/reports.
Finance Director Richter stated there were $1.2 million in expenditures for January. The fire hall addition came in at $88,000. Construction projects other than the fire hall addition were minor at $26,897, we paid our annual liability insurance for auto for $105,625, MRES we paid $386,646, payroll and benefits were $453,392, PFP $18,800 and fund 240 at $47,000 leaving $127,000 for operational expenses.
Consider Moving up Public Works Budget Deadline or at least any Fee Increases.
City Administrator Crawford stated last year we had a fee increase in December due to that being when the budget was finalized. I feel like we need to let the residents know in advance when the rates will be raised and gave a few different options on how to do that.
PW Manager Jacobson stated he would rather not do the budget process earlier because it’s nice to look at the information as late in the year as possible and recommended moving the rate increase if needed into the year effective February or March.
Decision was made to keep the budget process as is and if there will be an increase that will come later in the next year giving residents the proper notice.
Consider Policy for Paying for the First Seal Coat Following a Street Reconstruction from Infrastructure Funds instead for Special Assessments.
Deputy Auditor Klein stated for the 5th Ave project it was agreed that the sealcoat would be paid out of the R&R Funds. We have another reconstruct ion project this summer and have a meeting with the property owners on February 8th and would like a policy that the seal coat will be paid for out of the R&R Funds moving forward.
Discuss having P&Z doing all Variances.
City Administrator stated we have the PZ committee and a separate variance committee. The variance committee has been called together 2 times since in the last year or so and is called together as needed. When there is a plat or replat at the same time as a variance the PZ committee is able to make the decision. With the number of variances outside of that, why can’t we have the PZ make the decisions on the variances instead of having 2 separate committees.
City Attorney Martineck added that he thought Mike Schell had originally said they had the variance committee in place so they didn’t have to convene the PZ committee for those small of decisions but with the number we have there’s no reason why we couldn’t add it to a PZ meeting. Right now, the variance board is established by ordinance so if we are to make those changes, we will have to draft new ordinances.
Adjourn
The meeting was adjourned at 4:18 PM.