CC Minutes 2000 12 11CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL
REGULAR MEETING
DECEMBER 11, 2000
Mayor Mancino called the meeting to order at 6:40 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to
the Flag.
COUNCILMEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Mancino, Councilman Labatt, Councilman Peterson,
Councilwoman Jansen, and Councilman Senn
STAFF PRESENT: Scott Botcher, Roger Knutson, Bruce DeJong, Todd Gerhardt, Kate Aanenson,
Teresa Burgess, and Todd Hoffman
APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the
agenda amended by Councilman Senn and Councilwoman Jansen as follows: l(g) as amended; 1(1) as
amended; l(m), amended to include per Minnesota Statue 469.176; adding to item 5, Adoption of
CIP; and moving discussion of item 5 to 12, and deleting item 11 from the agenda. All voted in favor
and the motion carried unanimously.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT:
Mayor Mancino: Actually the only one that there is is that they've decided, the Supreme Court that Bush is
going to serve two years and Mr. Gore will serve two years. They just decided to split it up. Just kidding.
CONSENT AGENDA: Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Peterson seconded to approve the
following Consent Agenda items pursuant to the City Manager's recommendations:
Resolution #2000-87: Accept Utility Improvements in Lynmore Addition, Project 99-10.
Resolution #2000-88: Accept Street & Storm Drainage Improvements in Springfield 5th ~ 7th
Additions, Project Nos. 99-3 and 99-18.
c. Resolution #2000-89:
d. Resolution #2000-90:
Projects.
Accept Utility Improvements in Marsh Glen, Project 00-06.
Authorize Preparation of a Feasibility Study for 2001 Street Improvement
Approval of Purchase Agreement, Lots 998-1000, Carver Beach, Anita Benson.
Approval of Bills as amended.
Approval of Minutes: City Council Minutes dated November 9, 2000 and November 27, 2000
Receive Commission Minutes: Planning Commission Minutes dated November 14, 2000; and
Park and Recreation Commission Minutes dated November 28, 2000
Approval of Rezoning Request from Single Family Residential (RSF) to Office and Institutional
(OI), 6400 Minnewashta Parkway, Fire Station No. 2, City of Chanhassen.
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
j. Site Plan Amendment to Allow Painted Block at the Entrances of an Office/Warehouse Building;
Lot 1, Block 1, Chanhassen Lakes Business Park 8th Addition; Andreas Development.
k. Set City Council Meeting Dates for 2001.
1. Resolution #2000-91: Approve Resolution Defeasing Tax Increment Bonds for Tax Increment
District No. 1 as amended.
m. Resolution #2000-92: Declare Excess Tax Increment in Tax Increment District 3 and Authorize
it's Return to Hennepin County per Minnesota Statute 469.176.
n. Resolution #2000-93: Set Public Hearing Date to Expand the Project Area of the Downtown
Redevelopment District to Encompass the Project Area for Tax Increment District No. 2.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
E. POWER RIDGE APARTMENTS: FINAL PLAT APPROVAL TO REPLAT OUTLOT A
INTO 3 LOTS, POWERS RIDGE APARTMENT HOMES 2N~ ADDITION; APPROVAL
OF DEVELOPMENT CONTRACT AND PLANS & SPECIFICATIONS.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the Final Plat to Replat Outlot A
into 3 lots, Powers Ridge Apartment Homes 2na Addition, and approve Development Contract and
Plans and Specifications. All voted in favor, except Councilwoman Jansen who opposed, and the
motion carried with a vote of 4 to 1.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: None.
LAW ENFORCEMENT UPDATE: UPDATE REPORT FROM SGT. DAVE POTTS, CARVER
COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT, AND JOHN WOLFF, FIRE CHIEF.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Good evening Mayor, Council members. This is the early edition of my monthly reports
since Christmas happens to be the normal date here. Drawing your attention to my memo, items 1 and 2
are the standard area reports. Number 3 is a table I inserted and it might have been a little premature to
put names with the different shifts scheduled for next year in Chanhassen but it does give you an idea of
how the Sheriff's office will be covering the contract hours next year with the increase to 48 hours a day.
For the most part the names will be in place at sometime in the first part of 2001, with the exception of one
name listed under Team 2, Chris Wagner. One of our other deputies was leaving and Chris Wagner
latched onto a shift out west so she actually won't be working in Chanhassen next year at this point. But
we do have a lot of changes still going on in the Sheriff's office so some of those names may be kind of
coming and going a little bit. But the main thing I wanted to point out is it does kind of give you an idea of
the hours and where they're going to come from for next year. You'll see on there that we've added one
deputy to each team so there will be a total of 10 deputies in Chanhassen to cover the contract hours. Some
of the more significant changes are Deputy Gamlin and Deputy Walgrave, both of who have worked in
Chanhassen for several years. Each were reassigned as corporals and will be more on a roving schedule
throughout the county. For the time being, since some of our new people are still in field training, Deputy
Gamlin will be working Chanhassen until we can fill some of those shifts and then he'll move into his
roving spot. Deputy Bromwell is moving to, or actually already has moved to investigation from
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Chanhassen. And for next year, Deputy Stalke and Robbins have bid shifts out in the western part of the
county, closer to home for both of those officers. Three of our officers out west will be moving to
Chanhassen. Not physically moving their residence but moving to a Chanhassen shift. Scott Tautge, Mike
Felt and Ben Geurs. Both Mike Felt and Ben Geurs have previously worked Chanhassen. Have some
experience over here. And three of our new officers, namely Dewitt Meier has already started working
Chanhassen and Larry Lasard and Jason Bruening are still in field training. Will be coming to Chanhassen
next year, and hopefully my presentation in January I'll be able to give you some more information, maybe
actually bring the deputies with me for presentation to the council. Down into a miscellaneous items, I just
wanted to mention some personnel changes in the sheriff's office. Three kind of key people at the sheriff's
office, not directly affecting Chanhassen. Chris Dewitt, the accountant who is assigned to the sheriff's
office is leaving us along with Kim Weckman. The investigative assistant who's been with the sheriff's
office for many years and one of our long time dispatchers, Bob Brown is leaving. So those are three big
holes in the sheriff's office that they'll be filling down there. Two of our officers were promoted to
sergeant recently, both on patrol and one of our patrol sergeants will be moving into the office in charge of
civil process. So some ongoing changes down in the sheriff's office. Records code for special traffic
detail. Something we'll be using this coming year. Our new year actually begins December 18th so next
week we'll begin using special traffic detail code within our records keeping that will allow us to better
track some of our traffic enforcement efforts throughout the city and we'll kind of tie that in with the
Project Leadfoot. Also a new records software is coming to the sheriff's office so hopefully we'll be able
to produce better and more accurate records. Our system isn't all that old but as technology changes, it's
already fairly antiquated. And recently we fulfilled a request over at the Children's World Daycare for an
officer friendly type of visit. And a couple just late breaking items crime wise. Over on South Shore
Court, a homeowner over there interrupted a prowler inside their garage, apparently having gained entry
through a vehicle that was parked out in the driveway with a garage door opener in it. They just clicked the
button and opened the garage door but that woke the homeowner and they interrupted that and that person
fled, was not captured. And over a couple incidents of theft of mail over off of Hunter Drive and Bridle
Creek. Both off of Galpin Boulevard, both north of Highway 5 and south of Highway 5. So a couple of
different neighborhoods apparently experiencing some theft out of their mailboxes that we're currently
working on. And that is the quick version. I know you've got a lot of other business but any questions for
me this evening?
Mayor Mancino: Any questions?
Councilwoman Jansen: No questions.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Thank you very much Dave.
Councilwoman Jansen: Thank you.
PUBLIC HEARING: REQUEST FOR AN ON-SALE INTOXICATING LIQUOR LICENSE,
CHANHASSEN AMERICAN LEGION CLUB, 7995 GREAT PLAINS BOULEVARD
(CURRENTLY HOLDS A CLUB LICENSE).
Scott Botcher: Well we've been, we can wing this together Todd. We've been working on this for a year
and a half anyway. The Legion has submitted a request for an on sale intoxicating liquor license and this is
one of the, this falls under the category of trying to do a good turn for a local civic organization and State
law does not, and Karen I think has a memo in your packet that's far more thorough than my presentation
will be but State law makes liquor license in general very complicated and in this case, you know Karen's
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
representation is full and accurate. Staff's position is we've been just trying to really work with the Legion
frankly as just a long standing part of Chanhassen, to assist them in their request. We think we've met an
opportunity here, or have found an opportunity to do that and so we are recommending that they be granted
their request following a public hearing.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Any questions for staff?
council on this? This is a public hearing on the request.
comments from council members? Councilman Senn?
Is there anyone here tonight wishing to address the
Okay, bringing this back to council. Any
Councilman Senn: No.
Mayor Mancino: Councilwoman Jansen?
Councilwoman Jansen: No comments. Thanks to staff for working with the Legion.
Mayor Mancino: Councilman Peterson?
Councilman Peterson: Looks good.
Mayor Mancino: Steve, any questions?
Councilman Labatt: None. I move we approve.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Then can I have a motion and a second please.
Councilman Labatt: Move approval.
Councilman Senn: Second.
Councilman Labatt moved, Councilman Senn seconded to approve the request for an On-Sale
Intoxicating Liquor License for the Chanhassen American Legion Club. All voted in favor and the
motion carried unanimously.
PUBLIC HEARING: TANADOONA/DOGWOOD STREET AND UTILITY IMPROVEMENTS,
PROJECT 00-01-1.
Public Present:
Name Address
Donna & Martin Jones
Dick Lundell
Art & Amy Adamson
Jan Quist
Barbara Freeman
Jay Rubash
Laurie Johnson
7321 Dogwood
7341 Dogwood
7331 Dogwood
7331 Dogwood
7431 Dogwood
HTPO Inc.
HTPO Inc.
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Teresa Burgess: Tonight is the public hearing for the above referenced project. The staff has met with
the neighborhood prior to this. The neighborhood also held a meeting that staff was not invited to to get a
chance for them to discuss the issues without staff interference or input. And based on that information
from the neighborhood meeting and feedback from several members in the community after that
neighborhood meeting, staff is currently recommending that Option 2, supplying sewer and water and the
upgrades to the street to the entire neighborhood on Dogwood Road not be approved this evening. Instead
we are recommending Option 1 which would be the servicing of the current city maintained mound system.
Three properties currently use that mound system. That mound system has been certified as failing by the
city's inspections department. We are required to address that system within 10 months of notice which
will put us in August of next year and it is our intention to hook those people to the city sanitary system.
This project is feasible because of the BC-7 and BC-8 project which has been previously approved by the
council. I do have the consultant here from HTPO to discuss the alignment of that project. However I'd
just like to reiterate that the feasibility study does find that this option is technically feasible and cost
effective with the comparison of alternative options that were evaluated by that feasibility study being
either comparable in cost or if slightly less expensive, more maintenance intensive so more expensive over
the life span of the... If council has no questions I'll turn it over to HTPO for the technical end.
Mayor Mancino: I don't have a question. You're just, you're wanting us to authorize preparation of plans
and specifications?
Teresa Burgess: Correct. We'd like to do the plans and specifications with the BC-7 and BC-8 project so
we can let this as one project. We believe that we will receive a cost savings by doing it as one project
rather than two separate projects.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Are there residents here tonight on this public hearing? Good. Can
you hear everything?
Audience: No...
Mayor Mancino: Can't hear a word she said. Do you want to Teresa kind of turn around a little bit
towards them and just, or try the mica little better.
Teresa Burgess: I don't have a no switch. I'm assuming...
Kate Aanenson: You have to talk right into it.
Mayor Mancino: Yeah, I keep going in and out too so put it real close.
Teresa Burgess: Okay. Would council like me to just start over?
Mayor Mancino: If you could. Now, can you hear her? When you can't, please raise your hand. Thank
you.
Teresa Burgess: Tonight is the night set for the public hearing on the Tanadoona/Dogwood street and
utility improvement. Staff is recommending that council authorize preparation of plans and specifications
for Option 1. Option 1 is serving the three properties currently on the mound system that is city maintained
only. We are not recommending the project to serve the entire neighborhood that would bring sewer, water
and street improvements to the entire Dogwood road section. The reason we are not recommending that is
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
it is too cost prohibitive. The assessments at this time are not feasible for the neighborhood to bear. We
feel that the cost of the Option 1 which serves just the three properties are feasible. Those costs are 100%
assessed. The property owners have provided documentation that they have been previously assessed for
the mound system. That is not a trunk assessment. Their request to get some credit for that does seem
reasonable from the staff's standpoint, however we're recommending that be addressed as it states in the
staff report at the time of final assessment roll adoption and not at this time. It is something we can discuss
but it is a final assessment roll issue, not for tonight's project. I do have HTPO here, the consultant's that
did the feasibility study to go over the actual alignment and to answer any technical questions.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Let's go ahead and have HTPO give us that and please remember to speak clearly
and into the microphone for the residents that are here.
Jay Rubash: Honorable Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Jay Rubash and I'm with
HTPO Inc. I have brought some information here this evening.
Mayor Mancino: So it's up here residents on the monitor, right behind Mr. Knutson.
Teresa Burgess: Madam Mayor ifI may, for those residents that are here. These are the same, this is a
similar map to the one that was shown at the neighborhood meeting and it's similar to what is in the
feasibility reports that were sent to you at your homes.
Mayor Mancino: Can you see it okay? Okay. Maybe we can turn offa light. Is that a little better?
Okay. You're welcome.
Jay Rubash: The objective of a feasibility report was to determine the feasibility of serving the Dogwood
residents with sanitary sewer and domestic water. In the existing conditions the residents have on site
sewage treatment and individual wells. The road itself is narrow and varies from approximately 12 feet to
16 feet and a portion of the road has been constructed in specific the cul-de-sac is predominantly
constructed outside of the right-of-way. Option Number 1 is to install new pumps at the location of the
mound system which serves the three residences located in Lots 3, 4 and 5 of Sunset Hills on Lake
Minnewashta. The route for the force main, which would be small, plastic, polyethylene pipe, roughly 2
inches in diameter, would be along Dogwood as indicated by this green line and along Tanadoona Drive
and down and connect into the ending point of BC-8. As the crow flies that will be roughly 1,200 feet.
However, following the road right-of-way it's approximately 2,200 and some odd feet. Option 1 does not
include any watermain improvements or roadway improvements. The total estimated construction, excuse
me. Total cost of Option 1 which includes easement acquisition and engineering, legal and city fees, is
$117,678.60. If you have any questions I'd be glad to answer them at this time.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you Jay. Any questions from council at this point? And then we will open it
up for a public hearing. Thank you. Should we get the lights back on please. Is there anyone here tonight
that wishes to address the council? Please come forward if you could at the podium. And state your name
and your address into the microphone please.
Dick Lundell: Thank you. My name is Dick Lundell. I live at 7341 Dogwood Road in Excelsior. One of
the properties involved here. Honorable Mayor and members of the council. Thank you for the
opportunity to make our presentation. I, along with my neighbors, wish to address this utility need issue.
First though we want to make it very clear that we are interested in a workable sanitary sewer. We are not
interested in having a system that does not work. However, we question whether or not the problem really
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
exists and maybe the solution is the right solution but I think we ought to explore a few others. And by
doing that I'd first like to go back a little bit as to how this system came about, and it's been in place for 15
to 17 years I believe. And at that time two of the, the first if you had that map back up there, there were
five properties in a row and two of them they put in.
Mayor Mancino: Mr. Lundell, we'll get the map up so you can kind of show us as you're speaking. And
we'll try and track with you.
Dick Lundell: Yes. At that time the first two properties, this and this one, the solution was to put in a
private mound system and for the next three of us in the row, Jones, Quist and myself, was a private mound
system. Or a community mound system. And that was kind of just said, this is what you're going to have.
And it went forward. And now let me move ahead 15 years. We have not heard one word up until a couple
of months ago about this system, and I walk that road. The Jones' live across from that system. Nobody
was aware that there was any problem. So we were informed that why don't you pump your tanks because
we're having trouble with the system and we were informed to do that and I've been out of the country and
gone quite a bit this fall so my system, and I had to dig up my driveway to do it by the way. Just got
pumped on the end of November. Now our question is really back to what got us here and that is, is the
system really failing? And are there some other solutions? And the first notification we had the system
was failing, as I said, was within the last few months and at that time they said we want each of the
homeowners to pump their septic tank, which would be the first time anything was done on this system in at
least 15 years. So that has been accomplished. We would like to know whether or not that system since
that action was asked of us, has been tested to find out is it really failing. And along with that is, is there
another solution? Since it had, none of our tanks had been pumped for 15 years, it just seems that isn't,
aren't we kind of rushing to the final solution before we really say is there another solution to this problem?
Maybe, you know in the old days and other people I know pumped tanks rather regularly. And maybe
that's a potential solution to this saying maybe we have to pump those tanks, our own tanks which feed into
this other system. Those are the types of options that we'd like to say we think ought to be explored before
all of a sudden you come to us again like you did before and said boom. Here's a new system and you guys
got it. This just doesn't kind of play right. Doesn't feel right. I think that's really the gist. As I said, the
other neighbors are here and I'll pass the mic on to Martin or Art first if he wants to make some other
comments but that's what we'd like to have that kind of discussion.
Mayor Mancino: Good. Thank you for your comments. Have you, Teresa, have you met with the
neighborhood and have they asked these questions prior to this and etc?
Teresa Burgess: We have met with the neighborhood. I have met with a couple of the property owners
individually to discuss the mound system. The mound system has been observed as failing. The
inspections department, the City's inspections department went out and inspected the mound system, just
like they would a private system. We are treated no differently than any private mound system or septic
system, and sewage was observed as coming to the surface. Because of the location and the proximity to
the lake, that puts it into a highly environmentally sensitive area which is why we only have 10 months to
respond. I believe the council, if you remember back, saw one not that long ago that had 3 years. That
was because it was not as environmentally sensitive. The pores that normally the fluids would seep away
into are plugged. That is what is causing the fluids to come to the surface instead of to go down. We have
not tested since the property owner's pumped. At this time the city's inspections office has informed us we
must address the problem and we have not contested their decision or their action at this time. We are
moving forward to correct the problem with a long term solution. Mound systems have a life of
approximately 20 years. This one is already 15 years old and has had extensive.., couple of years so we do
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
feel that this is an appropriate response to the inspections department informing us that the mound system
is failing.
Mayor Mancino: Are there any other alternatives?
Teresa Burgess: We explored possible alternatives. They are discussed in the feasibility report. We did
not explore them beyond are they a possibility and what would be the ongoing maintenance. All of them
require extensive ongoing maintenance similar to the mound system. The other problem that we've run into
is similar to the mound system and these are no different than a septic system and as such it requires that
the property owners do a certain level of maintenance. They are not a sanitary system like homes that
maybe on Lake Lucy or on just down the street where you flush and it's gone. You have to maintain your
septic system and so by going to a sanitary sewer system we are addressing the long term maintenance
issues as well as the current problem of the mound system. The other issue that was brought up as we
investigated this is that the mound system sits on private property. To correct the mound system, if we
were to build a new system, we would need to purchase property to do that. This area has a number of
wetlands. Finding suitable property to do a new system on, whether it be a mound system or one of the
other possible technologies, is a problem. We have a lot of wetlands. The soils are not conducive. It's not
the best situation, especially when we have a sanitary line so close to hook up to.
Dick Lundell: As I said, one of our responses is that it hasn't been tested. You know I just dug up a brick
driveway. If you had already decided that this thing wasn't going to go, why did you issue the command
that you have to pump your system and we have to find out what the problem is. It seems like it was a
foregone conclusion but again our concern is that, are there some other alternatives? Do we pump yearly?
Twice a year? I still don't think that's been addressed. You know the system that you fostered on us
wasn't our system. I mean we, you kind of said you'd do this and now you're saying it was done wrong
and here we are. You know it's our problem again. This doesn't quite feel right. But Art, why don't you
address, and I think Martin you should too because you live right across from the pump station and it
sounds to me like we've got sewage kind of coming out and I tell ya, if that's happening none of us want to
be there. And I walk that road twice a day. Anyway.
Mayor Mancino: It also sounds like there needs to be some more meetings and some more explanation and
education.
Teresa Burgess: Madam Mayor, ifI could. I did ask the inspections department how often it would need
to be pumped. Would pumping need to be done if we did not address the mound system and their response
was that those would need to be treated as a holding tank, which would require those septic, to have their
tanks pumped depending on use, at least once a month. Probably more often because it would be, the
mound system needs to be shut off is what they have informed me.
Mayor Mancino: Okay.
Arthur Adamson: I'm Arthur Adamson and I'm the et.al, of the Quist. And by the way we don't live there
but we're part owners of it. It came as quite a shock, it's about $30,000 we're going to have to pay
immediately and we don't want the problem. We want to be sure the problem is corrected. But a little
history and Teresa I don't believe you were here then, the federal government was the one that put the
specifications on I believe. And it was built according to their specifications. We always said what did we
do wrong and we went along with it and by the way we were assessed and we have all paid assessments on
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
this current program. I think there was some confusion or I don't know, said we hadn't paid the
assessment. I have the records if you want to look at them, and Teresa too. I think you're satisfied.
Mayor Mancino: It's been paid?
Arthur Adamson: The question is, what did we do wrong and there is no leakage in that system today is
there? In the winter right now.
Teresa Burgess: Right now? I have not been out there in the last week.
Arthur Adamson: Well we've been inspecting it but we'd be happy to go with one of the city inspectors
anytime.
Teresa Burgess: The city's inspection office has certified the system as failing. At this time the only
other option would be to certify, would be to have a consultant go out and prove them wrong.
Arthur Adamson: Well maybe we should call Sullivan's. Sullivan put it in and he's the local contractor. I
believe Martin has talked to him so I'll get him to address that. And it was made according to
specifications. They say the soils out in that area are very heavy and I know nothing about that Teresa but
it doesn't absorb. Well we can put in new soil if we have to and maybe it'd be better.
Mayor Mancino: Well also, some of the State regulations on septic systems has changed in the last two
years about what they will and won't allow so there have been quite a few of the septic systems in the area
that are 20, 15 to 20 years old that have had to individual homeowners have had to go in and spend
$20,000 to put in new septic systems in and around the city.
Arthur Adamson: ...
Mayor Mancino: I know but those were regulations back in the 50's or 60's, whenever.
Arthur Adamson: Well no, this was 80's.
Mayor Mancino: Well they've changed since then.
Arthur Adamson: Well who said they won't change another time? We're a little spooked about this.
Mayor Mancino: And they're kind of unfunded federal regulations that have changed so.
Arthur Adamson: Martin, maybe you want to address.
Martin Jones: I'm Martin Jones. I live at 7321. I guess my concern is, this was shoved down our throat
15 years ago. I wasn't for it then and I'm certainly not for a $30,000 or $35,000 horse feeding. I don't
like this. I think it should be checked out further. I feel that there's got to be other options than having it
done as staff has said it should be done. Why can't it be dug out completely and put new piping in? That
can't cost $117,000 to do that and put in the proper type of piping this time rather than ones with little, tiny
holes, put in larger holes. More sand. More gravel. I think that can be done.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Teresa, can you answer that or?
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Teresa Burgess: It has been dug out several times by our staff, by our utility staff. It is not just an issue
of the pipes being full. It's the soils that are full. The pores in the soils are full and so it is not possible for
the current site to function. We would need to purchase new land and construct a new mound system. As I
said earlier, there are a lot of wetlands in the area. We do not own the current mound site so we would
need to purchase land from a willing buyer in the area. The property in this area is very expensive and so
in looking at it, it is our position that comparison to building a new mound system, this is a cost effective
method of addressing the problem. A new mound system will require continuous maintenance. Much more
intensive than a sanitary system. The sanitary system is something that is much easier to maintain because
we do not have to worry about soil conditions. It is something that we have the lift station already existing.
We are not adding to the problems. The lift station is currently in place. We are upgrading it to handle this
situation but it is, we're not adding any more complications to the system than already exists.
Martin Jones: You say that they have dug up the system many times. Where have they been digging? I've
seen a little area that's about 3 feet by 6 feet and that's the whole system. I don't think so. It's a lot bigger
than that.
Teresa Burgess: Utility crews over the years have dug up different areas in the system. They try to be
non-intrusive. But the utility crews have dug up pieces of the system at different times to address the areas
where they're seeing seepage.
Martin Jones: Okay, because I've been up, I go up on the mound system about once a month. Just to look
up there. I very seldom ever see any disturbance except for when the mowers are out there and then the
grass is cut. And like I say, I've seen just one area that has been dug up now, but that's all I've seen.
Mayor Mancino: Mr. Martin, have you had time to speak with our inspections department about the
activity that has happened?
Martin Jones: No I have not.
Mayor Mancino: Okay.
Martin Jones: I have called Sullivan's. I've asked them to come out and look at the system again because
they are the installers and I did talk to Pat Sullivan. He said it was installed according to the directions that
they were given so.
Mayor Mancino: I'm sure it was, yeah. We all know Sullivan. Well I'm just wondering, get some more
feedback from council, if this is something some of the residents might want to spend some time with the
inspections department going over what has been done. Why the recommendation? Why there aren't
alternatives but to take the time to do that. Is timing wise if we don't go ahead with this tonight and wait
until January after the residents have really had time to sit down and talk with the inspections department
and engineering, can this wait?
Teresa Burgess: If we wait that will mean delaying plans and specifications and preparation design time.
That will delay our entire project. It may mean that we will have to do this by change order in the spring
rather than being able to bid it out in the spring with the other project. We do have a time limit. We have
10 months. We are being treated just like any other property and so for us to ask for special treatment is
something we do have to be careful about. We don't want to be asking for an extension for special
10
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
treatment. And I'd like to stress for the council alternatives were considered as part of the feasibility study.
It's not that we just made up our mind and went that direction. We did look into those alternatives with the
idea that there was a potential at that time the BC-7 and BC-8 project would not go forward. We are now
in design phase for that but we did look at those alternatives and the biggest problem is the soils are not
conducive and we do not own property. So that needs to be kept in mind.
Mayor Mancino: And I think we understand. I think it's just taking the time with the neighbors to go over
that more so than for us. But if this came back in the January 8th, I think that's the first council meeting
next year.
Teresa Burgess: January 8th probably would not be viable for us to bring it back. I will not be in town
that week and so it would have to wait until the second meeting.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. The question that was asked was if we bring this back on January 8th and give
some time for our inspections and engineering departments to meet with you, residents that would like it
and bring it back on January 8th, would that work as far as timing and Teresa will not be here on January
8th but hopefully will be someplace vacationing so it would be the second.
Teresa Burgess: It would be the 26th.
Mayor Mancino: 26th of January. Mr. Lundell, you wanted to come back up and ask a question. Please
come to the podium again. Then we'll bring this back to council.
Dick Lundell: Thank you. Just for point of information. Who owns that property now that it's on? Is it
on a lease basis? One of the members there thought it was probably purchased with funds that.
Teresa Burgess: It's private property. It's on private property.
Dick Lundell: And who owns that? Who's the private property that owns it?
Teresa Burgess: Thomas Wartman.
Dick Lundell: It's on that property so is there a lease on it?
Teresa Burgess: No.
Dick Lundell: I would think if I were Thomas Wartman I'd be a little concerned about this too.
Teresa Burgess:
Mayor Mancino:
Mr. Wartman is aware of it.
Mr. Wartman is aware of it.
Dick Lundell: He just recently...
Teresa Burgess: It was something that came to light as we were investigating the mound system. That
when this project was done by the county using federal dollars, someone dropped the ball. The property
was never conveyed to the City as it was supposed to have been done. And so we do not own the property
that the mound system sits on. It was never properly conveyed to the city.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Dick Lundell: Did we pay for that?
Teresa Burgess: No.
Dick Lundell: Didn't somebody pay for it? It had to be, the original estimate for the property, for the
system was about, I don't know. Anyway it was a lot less than...
Mayor Mancino: It must have been a lot less.
Dick Lundell: ... but anyway, again. It's just saying, I just feel like this is coming down the road and it
doesn't make any difference. We don't care, we want to do it this way and if you don't like it, that's just
the way it is.
Mayor Mancino: Well we're going to have to solve the problem.
Dick Lundell: But we appreciate the time and our question is now, from a process standpoint, what are our
remedies? I mean one was, do we get our own inspector? Is that, to inspect the system. Would that be a
proper thing for us three to do? To have our own inspection done. We're just trying to look at what the
process would be to say, and we don't necessarily like what's happening and you know let's have our day
to talk about it.
Mayor Mancino: Mr. Lundell when we bring this back to council we'll talk about that. The rest of the
process and how it goes forward. Okay?
Dick Lundell: Alright, thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Mr. Martin, did you want to come up?
Martin Jones: No, I was just curious about.., purchased it originally but apparently...
Teresa Burgess: It was a glitch in the platting. When the plat for that property was.
Mayor Mancino: Can everyone hear? Okay, again.
Teresa Burgess: It's a glitch in the platting. When that property was subdivided, it was to be donated or
dedicated at that time. However it was never properly recorded so we do not own the mound system, the
land that it sits on. The county constructed that mound system and turned it over to the city for
maintenance. When we initiated this project, when we were informed that the mound was failing and we
initiated this project, HTPO did a parcel search and did a tax information base search and it was discovered
at that time when we initiated this project.
Mayor Mancino: So it has been sitting on private property since obviously the 80's. Early 80's?
Teresa Burgess: Since it was constructed. It's been in operation for 15 years.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Mayor Mancino: 15 years. Okay. Anyone else wishing to address the council? Might want to make sure
something isn't going on on your property. Okay, I'll close the public hearing prior to bringing this back to
council. Steve, your feelings?
Councilman Labatt: I'm curious, is holding this out for 30 days until the second meeting in January, is that
going to hurt your time line severely?
Teresa Burgess: It sets us back significantly. As I said, we probably will not be able to let it with the rest
of the project. We will have to add it on as a change order because we will not have plans and
specifications.
Councilman Labatt: Okay. I'm just trying, I want to try and have the residents get their questions
answered from the inspections department that they wanted to ask. And yet weigh that against the, your
time line. I mean obviously you've got a time sensitive problem here and you've got 10 months to fix.
Teresa Burgess: Actually I've already lost 3 in doing the feasibility study.
Councilman Labatt: So, when is your time line, when do you anticipate, if everything goes.
Teresa Burgess: In speaking with the inspections department, because of the time line necessary to make
this project feasible, they have agreed to the August that we are proposing to have the BC-7, BC-8
completed and we would be connecting into that system. That is slightly longer than the proposed, that
they came to us with the 10 months. However, that is in keeping with how they treat private systems is that
they need to be showing diligent effort and so we would be looking to have this project substantially
complete in the late summer of next year.
Mayor Mancino: IfI may interrupt. If we're meeting on December 27th, would that be more helpful? To
put this on the agenda on December 27th.
Scott Botcher: We could.
Mayor Mancino: Residents, Mr. Lundell, Mr. Martin, are you going to be in town and will you have time
to meet with the inspections department between tonight and December 27th, if we were to put this on our
agenda again on December 27th?
Martin Jones: That's a Wednesday.
Dick Lundell: I'll let Martin address that but.
Mayor Mancino: Not a Monday. It's a Wednesday.
Dick Lundell: I'm getting lost here. The feasibility study was to do the whole project and that was going to
have to be done in the same time frame and that was going to be a million five, a million seven. We're
talking $117,000 job. Now I'm not quite following. Is it that complicated that that's going to push us, I
mean that's where I get back in to saying, how were we ever going to get the other one done, which is a
massive road change. I mean it was a massive change and that had the same time line so again, I'm feeling
real rushed here.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Teresa Burgess: IfI can answer that Madam Mayor. The reason the time line is driven by the rest of the
project. This project needs to connect into another project that will be completed next year and cannot be
turned on until it's all been tested. So your correct, that project proposed for the entire neighborhood was
much larger. However the pipe would not have been functional until August of 2001. This is not just the
Dogwood Road section. This is the piece that.., and serves out to Highway 41 and brings sewer and water
out for Westwood Church.
Mayor Mancino: So we're getting the whole.
Dick Lundell: And that's going to keep going anyway though.
Teresa Burgess: That is a separate project.
Mayor Mancino: But we're getting this bid at one time.
Teresa Burgess: This project cannot finish before that project.
Dick Lundell: Well but let's, again we're jumping to the conclusion before I think we've got, what if the
answer is, you can pump your system every 3 weeks and it's going to work and we don't have to do this. I
mean that's where I'm saying is, it just feels like we're saying the dog is wagging the tail here. I mean this
is just a little piece of that. But Martin can address the 27th because again, trying to find people that can
tell us you know what is. Again, the system hasn't been tested since we did what you asked us to do and
you're saying it's bad. Well, if it's all that bad we could have saved ourselves, we could have had this
discussion 3 months ago.
Mayor Mancino: Mr. Martin, if you have anything more to say. Then we're just going to keep it up here
at council.
Martin Jones: The 27th, this is when it's going to come before council again. When does inspection think
that they can do this?
Teresa Burgess: There's no one here from inspections to answer their schedule. We'd have to look at
their schedule.
Mayor Mancino: Yes, Kate Aanenson can set up a meeting tonight with you to go over it.
Martin Jones: The problem is I work full time and I don't have a lot of extra time. I get home at about a
quarter after 6:00, 6:30 at night. I got here tonight at 20 minutes to 7:00 so my time is not the best. I could
do it at 8:00 in the morning.
Kate Aanenson: Otherwise if you want to just give us a list of the questions. If we can have somebody else
meet on the site that wants to meet with the inspector, Randy Debner, that wants to meet out there and ask
questions. There's other people that are in that neighborhood could meet. The ones of the group.
Mayor Mancino: But also an 8:00 in the morning meeting would work too.
Kate Aanenson: We can meet right after this and try to get some consensus of how you want to handle it.
At least it gives you until the 27th to get some additional information. Get some of your questions answered
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
by Randy and his inspection and what he found and make sure you understand the alternatives and what
direction he has. We can make that happen by the 27th. If there's other people in the neighborhood that
could meet on site. There might be other people in the neighborhood that wanted to meet too.
Mayor Mancino: So after we're done tonight, Kate will get your name and number and set up a meeting.
Okay, Mr. Peterson.
Councilman Peterson: I think what we just discussed is a logical alternative. Move it to the 27th and I think
we should exhaust every alternative that we can, whether that's doing another inspection, I think is
reasonable after we've asked them to evacuate their tanks so it's, I know Teresa's probably assuming that
because of the pores are filled, it's not going to change it by draining the tanks but you know their solution
may be, they may want to pump it every 3 weeks. I mean that's an alternative I guess. If they're willing to
do that per se.
Teresa Burgess: We would need to confirm that that meets the standards.
Kate Aanenson: Sure, that's part of the process of the meeting that we'll hold. We'll get all those
questions answered.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilwoman Jansen?
Councilwoman Jansen: I guess the other piece of it that I'm hearing voiced is the previous assessment and
not wanting to need to double pay. And of course you've now noted in the staff report that you're seeing it
as reasonable to take those previous fees and apply it here to these assessments. Have you put any sort of a
schedule together? I know you're saying that probably shouldn't happen until this comes back but I'm
hearing the neighbors may be needing to see that information applied to this project so we can see the.
Teresa Burgess: That information did not come to light until late last week and so I don't have a total on
what that impacts the project. They are not trunk assessments, which is what our fees are. These are fees
that were charged for the mound system. However it seems reasonable that if the project is still
economically feasible, that the city pick up that portion of the costs, even though that was assessed by the
county. But until I have time to do additional research what that dollar amount is, I don't know what the
total is.
Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. Is that unrealistic to think you might be able to have that by this December
27th meeting?
Teresa Burgess: I can attempt to have that information. What the total dollar amount is for the December
27th. However, as I've put forward, I believe that is something that should be addressed by the council at
the time of final assessments because we will need to address what our debt load is at that time and if we
can sustain that much more to be added to our debt load or not. And looking at it as just this project it may
seem feasible where when we get to the end, all those little things add up.
Councilwoman Jansen: Understood. Okay, and then the other part of it that I'm hearing is wondering if
we're communicating properly what you're saying and that's that we are nearing the life expectancy of the
system versus whether it was done wrong. I gather if they've been out there digging it up numerous times,
maybe there are some issues with it but I mean right now we're maybe thinking it's going to last another
what, 3 to 5 years at best on whatever we come up with temporarily?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Teresa Burgess: Normal life span is 20 years, and that would be an optimum system. The system was
installed according to the practices at the time it was installed. There is, no one has ever stated that it was
put in inappropriately or not according to spec. The rules have changed and we have learned from past
mistakes but it is a 20 year life span is, usually what's used for forecasting. These soils are not the best
soils for a mound system.
Councilwoman Jansen: So probably just part of your communication then, and then also sharing that the
entire city has gone through a new septic inspections and that may help. I don't know if it spreads some of
the burden but all of us on septic systems have had now gone through these inspections and there have been
some that have come up around the city that we have had to address. So though it may feel as if you're
being, if you would, picked on or singled out, other systems also have been looked at and have had to be
addressed but I certainly hear tonight that a little bit more time with staff and asking some of these
questions would, or answering some of the questions would be helpful to the residents so I would be in
favor of pushing it off if we can. Oh the other question. You had mentioned that it would turn into change
orders on the project. Is that more expensive? Or just less convenient?
Teresa Burgess: It's a possibility of being more expensive. It depends on quantities. It depends on if we
have those items as bid items so we can just change quantities. If we reach a certain percentage of the total
contract amount, which hopefully we would not, then the contractor has the legal ability to negotiate new
bid prices for bid items that are increased over a certain percentage. So we would want to keep that in
mind.
Mayor Mancino: Councilman Senn, thank you.
Councilman Senn: Teresa, what are the, what would be the cost at this point of just proceeding and getting
the plans and specs part done?
Teresa Burgess: We currently have HTPO under contract for that portion. We already have a contract
for it. Plans and specs. Jay or Laurie, do you remember what that portion of the contract was?
Jay Rubash: Jay Rubash again. We actually did not break out just the plans and specs portion. Our fee
included construction, staking and inspection so we don't have just an exact fee for the plans and specs for
this portion. However.
Councilman Senn: So you've got the whole, total big project. This is just a small portion and under the
contract we pay the same amount either way?
Teresa Burgess: Under the contract they are authorized to do the entire project. We are asking the council
to authorize plans and specs for this piece before they start preparation.
Councilman Senn: But the point I'm trying to get to is...
Teresa Burgess: The dollar amount has already been.
Councilman Senn: ... the amount on the contract regardless of whether we proceed now on the plans and
specs or later, correct?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Teresa Burgess: The dollars are negotiated.
Councilman Senn: Okay. So essentially if you proceeded with the plans and specs at this point you would
not lose the time you don't want to lose.
Teresa Burgess: Correct.
Councilman Senn: Okay, but however at the point that we got the bids, okay, we could do this as a bid
alternative which means we could reject it and we don't need to include it in what is awarded under the bid.
Which is a far better situation than effectively throwing it out as a change order, which you and I both
know, at least as experience teaches us, is always more expensive. So why not get these conversations and
discussion going because I think they need to occur, but why not keep the time line going because we're not
losing anything by not keeping the time line going.
Mayor Mancino: Got it.
Teresa Burgess: Correct. We could certainly do it as a separate bid schedule to be decided by the council
at the time of bid award, which would give us the time that the council is directing to work with the
neighborhood and explain the situation. Just so the council is aware of it, we do have a request for an
increase but it is not related to this portion of the project for the consultant services contract. It is in
relation to geotechnical services that were HTPO and the other consultants were directed not to...
Mayor Mancino: Okay. And as you said, it doesn't have to do with this project.
Councilman Senn: If I could then I'd like to essentially move that we proceed with plans and
specifications. However that we, when we come to bid, that this be included as a bid alternative and
proceed on that basis and come back to council after, and you know that also gives you a little more time
through the holidays to get these discussions held and find out where everybody's sitting so.
Mayor Mancino: And also do you want to add inspections and the neighborhood getting together?
Councilman Senn: Well I'm assuming that's going to happen administratively anyway so.
Teresa Burgess: That would allow us to leave this until February to come back to the council. Giving us
more time if inspections does have recommendations to be followed up for the neighborhood to respond.
Councilman Senn: To be honest with you, I think it's going to take you a little more time than 2 weeks to
resolve some of the issues I've heard raised here so I think it's a logical way to proceed.
Scott Botcher: Yep, I agree.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, is there a second?
Councilman Labatt: Second.
Councilwoman Jansen: I have a question on the motion. Once the plans and specs are, as we authorize
them here tonight, if any changes come up in the course of the neighborhood meeting, as you going to be
able to adjust for those then?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Teresa Burgess: If the changes from the neighborhood meeting are to eliminate that portion, which is
what I'm hearing from the neighborhood. They don't want the sanitary section brought out to them.
Councilwoman Jansen: If it's alternatives.
Teresa Burgess: An alternative would be let separate regardless. Because it's not the same type of work.
It's a different type of contractor. So we would have to do separate bid documents and let a separate
contract if it's an alternative system to sanitary.
Councilwoman Jansen: And right now you haven't heard any objections to where it's actually being
proposed to be located?
Teresa Burgess: We have spoken with Mr. Wartman and he is at this time not opposed to the location.
He is willing to negotiate with us for the right-of-way that we would need to do the project. The other thing
is I have heard from a couple of people that they would be interested in, if we could make minor
adjustments to the systems connecting and that would decrease the cost per property owner, but those
properties are not mandated to connect because they are not on a failing system so they were not included
in the assessment roll at this time. So that can also be explored further.
Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, we've had a motion, we've had a second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Peterson seconded to proceed with preparation of plans and
specifications for Project No. 00-01-1 for Tanadoona/Dogwood Street and Utility Improvements with
the condition that this be included as a bid alternative. All voted in favor and the motion carried
unanimously.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you for coming and Kate will, if you can give Kate your name and phone number,
she'll get in contact with you about setting up a meeting or going through Mr. Jones. Thank you for
coming.
Teresa Burgess: Actually Madam Mayor, ifI could. I believe the next item is Kate's so if people would
like to meet with me in the entryway, I'd be happy to take their name and address.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, Mr. Jones, Mr. Lundell, Teresa's going to meet with you and get all the
information.
PUBLIC HEARING: PROPOSED HOUSING DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM AND ISSUANCE
OF REVENUE BONDS UNDER THE MUNICIPAL HOUSING PROGRAMS ACT~ MOUNT
OLIVET ROLLING ACRES~ INC.
Scott Botcher: We have a gentleman here tonight from Mount Olivet. As you remember from last month
and from your packet this month, they are seeking, or have negotiated a deal I guess with the City of
Victoria where the City of Victoria will issue revenue bonds under their authority and they will be used to
help capitalize some facilities within a list of cities and I think there's, I don't know, 12 or 13 cities that are
listed in your packet. Plymouth, Waconia, Mayer, Chanhassen, Minnetonka and Brooklyn Park, Richfield,
18
City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
New Hope, Shakopee, those types of places. What they need us to do this evening is take public comments
on this and then secondly to authorize entering into a joint powers agreement with the City of Victoria as
well as the balance of these communities. Allowing the City of Victoria to issue revenue bonds under the
Municipal Housing Programs Act for the benefit of Mount Olivet Rolling Acres. Confirmed with Mr.
Batty and with Dorsey and Whitney who serves as counsel for Mount Olivet. The City is at no risk. This
is strictly, frankly the City of Victoria is not at risk on these either. Mount Olivet is the responsible party,
but if you would like a gentleman's here and he can address it briefly.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. If you'd like to come forward please.
Mark Beese: Madam Mayor, members of the council. My name is Mark Beese with Miller, Johnson,
Styton, Kennard and I am a member of Mount Olivet Church and Mount Olivet Rolling Acres is a non-
profit headquartered in Victoria and they serve developmentally disabled adults in our community. They
basically are doing a refinancing of their group homes and doing some improvements at them totally
$2,250,000. And because they're spread out, we're in 12 different municipalities. There's 14 homes and
City of Chanhassen actually has one home that we're refinancing for roughly $100,000. Any questions I'd
be happy to answer them.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you. I'll open this up for public hearing. Anyone
wishing to address the council. Okay, then I'll bring it back to council. Any discussion? Any questions,
comments from council members? Steve?
Councilman Labatt: No.
Councilwoman Jansen: No questions.
Mayor Mancino: Then may I have a motion please.
Councilman Senn: Move approval.
Councilwoman Jansen: Second.
Resolution #2000-94: Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve a
resolution giving host approval to the issuance of revenue bonds and authorizing execution of a joint
powers agreement with Mount Olivet Rolling Acres, Inc. Project. All voted in favor and the motion
carried unanimously.
REQUEST FOR CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT AND SITE PLAN APPROVAL FOR A
COMMUNICATION TOWER AND 75 FOOT MONOPOLE AND EQUIPMENT PLATFORM;
7700 QUATTRO DRIVE~ LOUCKS ASSOCIATES AND SPRINT PCS.
Kate Aanenson: Thank you. The request is to install the monopole tower by Sprint is located on the
Beddor property on Quattro Drive. If you'll recall it was a number of years ago that we looked at a site
similar in this area but it was closer to the tracks and Eden Prairie residents at that time had some concerns.
We were able to, through a series of negotiation, to put that on the Eden Prairie tower. When this site
first, site plan or request came to the staff we again looked at the Eden Prairie site and the Planning
Commission also raised that as a concern, if that site had been exhausted. So that's one of the issues at
their public hearing on November 14th. They did request that we get something in writing from Eden
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Prairie. We hadn't met with them and that has been done. Their site, their tower has been exhausted as an
alternative. We believe this site is superior in that area in the fact that it's further away from the residents
and is not directly on Highway 5 which was a concern at the time we were trying to locate the other tower.
One of the other issues is the co-location. The Planning Commission raised that concern as far as the co-
location ability. The applicant originally came in with 75 feet and had since lowered it down to 65. While
they believed that they had the ability to co-locate they had lowered the height. Again we always try to
provide two opportunities so we're not putting any additional towers than necessary. So that was one of
the conditions of the staff report and the Planning Commission that they do provide co-location abilities,
which they have. So with that we are recommending approval for up to a 75 foot tower on the site with the
conditions outlined in the staff report and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Any questions for staff?
Councilwoman Jansen: No questions.
Councilman Peterson: When you say up to 75, are they going to go 75?
Kate Aanenson: Well that was a question we should also address with the City Attorney. They are
allowed to go higher. With this caveat it does say 75 feet and because it is a conditional use, we probably
still have to come back and revisit that. That's something we're going to look at in the ordinance. How we
can provide a mechanism that even though the first one comes in lower, that we give a higher height,
greater height so we wouldn't have to come back and, because at this point if it does go higher than 75 feet,
it's my understanding it would have to come back through the process. So that's another glitch that we're
looking at in the ordinance to remedy that. Because we want to make it expediate that they can use these
sites without making it burdensome so we have them on one piece of property. So that was something we
found with this. A nuance we found with our ordinance that didn't quite accommodate what we wanted it
to that we'll be working on.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Is the applicant here and would you like to address the council please?
Roger Behrens: Good evening Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Roger Behrens. I'm
with the law firm of Faegre and Benson. I am Sprint's zoning attorney. Sprint is a communications
venture committed to providing an integrated offering of wireless services by building a national wireless
network using PCS technology. This site at 7700 Quattro Drive is an example of such technology. Now
this proposed location is really the ideal location. One, the site complies with all the zoning requirements.
As you can probably see on the staff report, the setbacks are doubled, in some cases even 7 times greater
than the required setbacks under the zoning code. And the height of the tower is well below the minimum
required as well. I'll explain why this is the ideal location from two standpoints. The radio frequency
standpoint and also a land use standpoint, and I'll begin with the radio frequency standpoint first. There
are two issues when addressing radio frequency. There's capacity issues and there's coverage issues. I'll
go over coverage first, because I think it's a little easier to explain. This facility, and again it's going to be
a 65 foot tower with the antenna at about 65 feet, plus the lightning rod which may add up to 3 to 5 feet so
we're talking maybe 70 feet in total height. That's why I think we have the up to 75 foot language in there.
It will be co-locatable as well by the way. Sprint agrees with all of the staff's findings, as well as the
Planning Commission's findings and will agree to all the conditions, the 10 conditions set out as well.
Again it needs to provide the Sprint service in an area of high traffic and high public communications
traffic. Now to show you the coverage issue I'll begin with this plot here. Okay, I'll give the abridged
version of this presentation if that's okay. I'll just quickly go over. Well there's a gap in Sprint's
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
coverage. The white and the blue there. The white represents no coverage. The blue represents inadequate
coverages and as you can see if we're to fill that gap we've got to get somewhere where that blue dot is in
the search ring. Our site, our proposed site fills in that gap. The green and the yellow, and this should be
green, even though it's blue there. The green and the yellow represent coverage. As you can see the site
fills in the gap that I showed you earlier. So from a coverage standpoint this site works. Then there's the
capacity issue that I had mentioned. Now with the capacity issue, and again I will give the abbreviated
version instead of going through all the details. The capacity issue is very simply this. In order for the site
to work the various antennas around the site need to switch the call from it's antenna to another antenna. If
the site is too close to any of these surrounding antennas, the calls, the switching calls will be dropped. So
it's not only have to cover the area, it's got to be placed in an area where the calls can switch without over
loading one particular antenna. Now Sprint's explored alternative sites and I'll take you on a brief tour
again of those alternative sites. The first as was mentioned was the Eden Prairie water tower. Each of you
should have received a letter from the zoning administrator of Eden Prairie stating that the site was, the
antenna would have been inappropriate to have been attached at the side of the water antenna, and that the
water tower, at the top of the water tower is currently filled. Well, even still, even if the site could go at
150 feet at that water tower, it would result in some capacity issues. The coverage would probably be
there but the capacity issues at 150 feet would result in overloading, it would be too far reaching. It would
interfere with these other surrounding sites. And again the city would not allow us to go on the stem of the
tower as you can see by the letter that you had received. Still our sites, candidate B here was a site and an
NSP tower located on 78th Street east of Highway 101. And again it's too far south and would cause the
capacity problem issues, the lack of switching from the other antenna sites surrounding there. The same
with Site C. It's an NSP tower located on 78th Street east of Highway 101.
Scott Botcher: Did you shoot those NSP towers at different elevations or just at one elevation?
Roger Behrens: I'm not sure of the elevations on those towers. I know that it has to be a certain amount of
feet below the wires there and I think that's where we did it as high as we could on each of the towers. And
I think that's where these maps are based upon is the highest height we can go on those towers. I'm not, is
that correct?
Scott Botcher: Is that optimal location?
Dave Hagen: Yes.
Scott Botcher: Because higher isn't always better.
Roger Behrens: This is Dave Hagen of Loucks and Associates.
Dave Hagen: Good evening Mayor and members of the council. Yeah, the height that we used in modeling
what coverage we would get from the NSP, existing NSP towers was the ideal height for the site. They
have to be below the lines. They have to be 10 foot separation. I don't know what the exact height it is. It
may be indicated on those coverage plots that are in your agenda package. I don't know but at any rate
they were high enough. The towers were tall enough for us to get the antennas up high enough to, for an
ideal height. The problem was the location of those towers. Not the height of the towers.
Scott Botcher: Okay.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Roger Behrens: And finally our last site was the AT&T Brown site located at Great Plains Boulevard and
Highway 5. And as you can see it was too close to our site in Chanhassen which is 1455 Park Road in
Chanhassen, and again would cause interference with that site. With our current site there.
Scott Botcher: Did you look at moving it? Did you look at moving it at another site? The pre-existing site
or eliminating it?
Roger Behrens: Consider moving the existing site? Well then it would cause a coverage gap in this area
here though. Our current pocket is where the white is here.
Scott Botcher: So basically the analysis that was done, you just tried to peg one in. You didn't do
anything else to any other site?
Roger Behrens: As far as increasing?
Scott Botcher: As far as covering your area. You did not, in your analysis, perform any modifications to
any pre-existing site whatsoever?
Roger Behrens: Oh I see what, well if we, the only thing we could have done, I would assume what you're
asking is, would be increase the height at that current site.
Scott Botcher: Just so I understand, no modifications were considered whatsoever for existing sites when
you did your analysis prior to dropping in what you'd like, prior to dropping in...
Roger Behrens: No. Yeah, these sites are based upon what's currently there. That's correct. These plots.
Mayor Mancino: Dave, could you state your name for the record.
Dave Hagen: Oh I'm sorry. Yes, my name is Dave Hagen and I'm an employee of Loucks Associates and
we're a consultant to Sprint in acquiring and zoning the sites. I would point out, in answer to the question
from the City Manager that we did not look at moving the location of the existing site. That is correct.
When Sprint establishes a site in the particular location, it invests a great deal of money in doing that and
considers that to be a given as we plan locations of future sites. The height of those existing sites is
sometimes something that can be changed without a great investment. The height that they're located at at
the present time is an ideal location as it relates to this particular site that we're proposing and those
existing sites.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Do council members have any questions? Councilman Senn? Have
any questions?
Councilman Senn: No.
Mayor Mancino: Councilwoman Jansen?
Councilwoman Jansen: No questions.
Mayor Mancino: Councilman Peterson?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Peterson: None.
Mayor Mancino: Mr. Labatt. Do you have any questions?
Councilman Labatt: No. I'll just save my comments for later.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Is there anyone here tonight here on this issue? Okay. Let me bring this back to
council. Steve, you said you had a few comments.
Councilman Labatt: Yeah. It seems like this is our third or fourth cell tower, as long as I've been on
council, and they all talk about co-locating, co-locating, co-locating but yet this is, we've never seen an
application for co-location. And I have a hard believing that 4/10th of a mile causes that much damage to
the coverage. I'm trying to measure things out and where did those pictures go? Oh, I've got them in my
hand. They're just, if you look at the NSP towers and utilizing that, I don't know. It just seems that
something else can be done here. I think Scott brought up a good point. You know what else could be
modified elsewhere? Maybe they need to do more homework before I'm satisfied, but I don't like it.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, Councilman Peterson?
Councilman Peterson: I agree with Steve. I don't like it. Never have liked them. We have seen a half
dozen of these in different forms over the last few years and unfortunately Roger hasn't let us mm them
down. And we have to take the advice, or seemingly we had to take the advice of experts in technology
saying that yes, it does make a significant difference if you move it 4/10th of a mile. And we've argued
that, at least at the Planning Commission we've argued that time and time again, so I'm kind of between a
rock and a hard place. Who do you believe? And that's what I'm struggling with and I'd like to deny it
but I can't see a compelling reason to do so.
Mayor Mancino: Councilwoman Jansen.
Councilwoman Jansen: Well actually I guess I tend to have to follow the federal regulations and since it is
allowed to be in this location, it meets all of our ordinances and we said that this was a spot that we would
accept an antenna. I don't see an argument necessarily against it and if it's improving the technology and
the capacity for the technology in our community, then I am certainly in favor of it and we have no
neighbors that I'm aware of that are truly in objection to this one and we've had then in people's back
yards so I see this as a location that even if we had reviewed our zoning, it probably would have stayed as
an allowable location. So I'm not opposed at all.
Mayor Mancino: Councilman Senn.
Councilman Senn: Nothing new to comment on.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Thank you. I have nothing new to comment on either. Ditto on what's been said
so may I have a motion please.
Councilwoman Jansen: Move approval.
Councilman Peterson: Second.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilwoman Jansen moved, Councilman Peterson seconded to approve Conditional Use Permit
#2000-6 to permit the installation of a communication tower and site plan approval for up to a 75 foot
monopole tower and equipment platform, Sprint PCS, plans prepared by AEC Engineering dated
8/30/00, revised 11/1/00, subject to the following conditions:
A building permit is required to construct the platform and tower; the tower must be designed for
an 80 mph wind load and include the effect of one-half inch of radial ice.
2. The plans must be signed by a professional engineer licensed in the State of Minnesota.
The contractor shall meet with the Inspections Division as early as possible to discuss plan review
and permit procedures.
The applicant shall submit a detailed grading, drainage, and erosion control plan for staff review
and approval.
The proposed use for the 12 foot wide gate opening must be shown on the grading plan and will be
used for access through the passage between the two buildings.
6. The tower shall be of a color that blends in with the sky.
A letter of intent committing the tower owner and his or her successors to allow the shared use of
the tower if an additional user agrees in writing to meet reasonable terms and conditions for shared
use shall be submitted to the city.
The tower shall be designed to be capable of accommodating future co-location of antenna below
Sprint's proposed antenna.
9. The two conifers proposed on the landscaping plan are other than Colorado Spruce.
10.
The tower shall be designed and constructed such that it is extendable in the future to a sufficient
height to attach an additional antenna above Sprint's proposed antenna.
All voted in favor, except Councilman Labatt who opposed, and the motion carried with a vote of 4 to
1.
REQUEST FOR AN INTERIM USE PERMIT TO ALLOW "THE LIFE" CHURCH TO
OCCUPY A PORTION OF AN OFFICE/WAREHOUSE BUILDING LOCATED ON LOT 1,
BLOCK 1, CHANHASSEN LAKES BUSINESS PARK 8TM ADDITION, ANDREAS
DEVELOPMENT.
Kate Aanenson: The New Life Church is looking at occupying a portion of a building that was approved
that's 43,000 square feet.
Mayor Mancino: Can everyone hear?
Kate Aanenson: In Chan Lakes Business Park. It's the building that's 43,000 square feet. The property is
zoned 1OP. A church is an interim use in this district. The church itself will occupy approximately half of
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
the building. One of the concerns that the staff had obviously was the parking. Because of the nature of
the use of a church, the parking will be in evening hours and on the weekends so it shouldn't conflict. The
proposed seating is 237, which translates to 81 stalls. So staff is recommending approval of the Interim
Use and it does have findings in the report. One of the conditions that we did put in there is that we have,
with the Interim Use if there is a conflict with traffic or parking, that we would have the right to review
that. But the Interim Use, because the site is currently in Jonathan, they want to stay in this area. Give
them opportunity to locate in this area for up to 5 years. The building is owned and is a taxable piece of
property. They are leasing from the site, again which we think makes sense. We have done this in other
situations. Family of Christ where we actually, for the Family of Christ we amended that district with the
shared parking. Similarly we did with St. Hubert's where we provided, they actually were looking at 40
acres. It got down to 10 acres because of the shared parking and we also in the Jehovah Witness church,
we amended that industrial park so we have a history of reviewing this and making accommodations so
again the interim use which runs out in 5 years, hopefully giving them an opportunity to look for additional
sites. But again it's still on a taxable parcel and provides the opportunity to evaluate any parking or
conflict problems that are in the area. The Planning Commission did review this on December 5th at a
public hearing and just made a minor modification regarding the language about hours. Just limiting them
to evening hours and then on weekends. So with that we are recommending approval of the interim use and
I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Any questions for staff at this time?
Councilman Labatt: Yeah, when you say limiting them to evening hours, what about as far as
administrative people?
Kate Aanenson: That's a good question that, that is a good question. If we want to talk about assembly.
General assembly or I don't know.
Mayor Mancino: Well it says worship services shall be limited to evenings during the week.
Councilman Labatt: What if you had a wedding?
Kate Aanenson: That is a good question. I don't know if the City Attorney has some wisdom on that.
What it would constitute so we would have some control.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, good question and the applicant can speak to that too.
Roger Knutson: I think worship service is pretty well understood term. If you want to further restrict it in
some other ways, then you'd better address it.
Scott Botcher: If I were to say that I believe a wedding to be a sacrament.
Kate Aanenson: Or worship service.
Mayor Mancino: It's not a worship service.
Councilman Labatt: That all depends on how you look at it.
Scott Botcher: ... your wife worship you Steve?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Labatt: Oh yeah.
Roger Knutson: I would not consider, if you wanted to restrict a wedding as being a worship service,
although you can argue.
Councilman Labatt: So a Saturday 1:00 wedding would be allowable?
Kate Aanenson: Well we said weekends, right. If weekends, anything on the weekends or evenings. It's a
weekday issue so I guess we felt that accommodated it as long as, you know if you want to put specifically
define evening and after a certain time.
Councilman Labatt: So how about like, in the summertime when some churches have Vacation Bible
Study during the day.
Kate Aanenson: Right. I think that's something that we may want to add a little bit more detail on for
parking.
Mayor Mancino: We can ask the applicant how pigeon holed they want to be in the time.
Scott Botcher: And frankly from our point of view, we don't want to be listing every single sacramental nit
because we'll never list them all. And we don't want to be in the interpretation business as it deals with
freedom of religion and expression thereof so I would hope that all just play nice.
Mayor Mancino: Good question.
Kate Aanenson: But on the interim use we do want to put reasonable conditions.
Scott Botcher: Just trying to draw a balance here.
Mayor Mancino: Any other questions and then I'll let the applicant come up because he can answer,
maybe answer some of them.
Councilman Labatt: I've got one more too. This is probably for Todd. Now there, this is a TIF parcel or
area. TIF, but there's no affect on that TIF...
Todd Gerhardt: The owner has been notified that if this use does go in the building they would exceed the
15% of non-permitted TIF users so a church, production studio, whatever you want to call this, is not one
of the permitted uses under TIF law. So the owner is aware of that and the tenant and the owner are
discussing that issue. So if for some reason that they should move ahead with the project, we would ask
them to relinquish their rights under the private redevelopment agreement, that they will not receive TIF.
So you may want that to be one of the motions on this that they sign a waiver of their TIF rights. And
enter into an agreement. What do you call that agreement Roger?
Roger Knutson: I just drafted one today.
Todd Gerhardt: You just called it an agreement, right?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Roger Knutson: An agreement.
Todd Gerhardt: I haven't seen it yet.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you.
Councilman Labatt: Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Please come forward. State your name and address.
Fred Haymer: Madam Mayor, Council members. My name is Fred Haymer. I'm a ministry assistant and
deacon with the Life Church. To answer some of your questions that came up, I could hear what they
were. We do, the primary use of the building that we want to lease is for church services on primarily the
evenings, Wednesday evening primarily, and the.., church which is the administrative side which we are
leasing office space. We anticipate sometimes between 10 and 20 people being there during the day on a
normal 8:00 to 5:00 work schedule. We have no anticipation in our lease agreement with Andreas at all of
having any activities during the daytime other than the administrative use. Presently today we have our
services at Jonathan in Chaska and our office in Eden Prairie and what we're trying to do is combine them.
As far as the tax issue, we have discussed this with Andreas and we understand our obligations there and
the TIF issue and that will be part of our contract and that wording has already been worked out as far as
the contract. If there's any questions I'd certainly be happy to answer them obviously.
Kate Aanenson: If I could make an additional comment. Administrative offices is a permitted use in the
district so maybe to answer Steve's questions, concerns, maybe we could just state something to the fact
that weekday use is limited to the administrative function or something to that effect.
Mayor Mancino: And we have sufficient parking?
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Councilman Labatt: So they're looking at a 5 year agreement on this, correct?
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Councilman Labatt: So what happens in 2 or 3 years if they add a summertime, daytime program for kids.
Kate Aanenson: Well that's what I'm saying, the weekday use would be limited to the administrative
office.
Councilman Labatt: But if they want to come back, are they allowed to come back and... ?
Kate Aanenson: Sure. They can always come back and amend an application. Anybody can. Request
that, and then we can evaluate it at that time because they would have that right to come back, either extend
the interim use. They may want to do that and you can consider at that time, evaluate the pros and cons
and then any other changes they would have a right to come back.
Councilman Labatt: Okay.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Kate Aanenson: And it would require the same process. Public hearing before the Planning Commission
and then up to you.
Mayor Mancino: Any questions for Mr. Haymer? Thank you.
Councilwoman Jansen: No, thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Bringing this back to council. Any other comments Steve?
Councilman Labatt: No.
Mayor Mancino: Councilman Peterson?
Councilman Peterson: I think it's reasonable with those caveats we already discussed.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, Councilwoman Jansen?
Councilwoman Jansen: Nothing new to add.
Mayor Mancino: Councilman Senn?
Councilman Senn: Nope.
Mayor Mancino: I have nothing new to add either. May I please have a motion?
Councilman Senn: Move approval of the Interim Use Permit with the attached conditions as outlined by
staff. Also contingent upon the owner signing a waiver of TIF rights and adding a condition that weekday
use be limited only to use by administrative offices.
Mayor Mancino: A second please to the motion.
Councilwoman Jansen: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded that the City Council approves Interim
Use Permit/t00-3 to allow a church in an lOP District for "The Life", to be located on Lot 1, Block 1,
Chanhassen Lakes Business Park 8th Addition, and occupy 20,700 square feet as shown on the plans
dated Received November 1, 2000, subject to the following conditions:
1. The applicant shall enter into an interim use permit agreement with the city.
2. Compliance with conditions of site plan and plat approval.
3. There shall be no outdoor storage of any equipment associated with the church or the auxiliary
uses associated with the church.
4. Worship services shall be limited to evenings during the week and weekends.
5. The Interim User Permit shall expire in 5 years from the date approved by the City Council.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
6. Plans must be submitted to the Inspections Division for review and building Permit approval.
7. Meet with Fire Prevention Division for Fire Code requirements.
8. At any time if issues of parking arise, e.g. parking in public right-of-way, conflicts with other site
users, the City will re-evaluate this application.
9. The owner shall sign a waiver of TIF rights.
10. Weekday use shall be limited to use by administrative offices only.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
RESOLUTION ADOPTING THE BUDGET FOR 2001 AND CERTIFYING FINAL TAX
LEVIES FOR 2000~ COLLECTIBLE IN 2001~ AND ADOPTING THE CIP.
Bruce DeJong: Mayor Mancino, Council members. Tonight we're here kind of the end of a long road that
we started back in July and August with the initial budget submittals from the department heads coming
down to a preliminary Truth in Taxation tax levy that was certified to Carver County back in September.
And we've had many meetings to look at individual departmental budgets. To look at CIP expenditures for
the next 5 years and what you have in front of you is a summary of that. What we're really here tonight to
talk about is setting the final budgets for each department and setting the levy that will determine the
amount of taxes that the citizens of Chanhassen pay next year. Last week, Monday, we had a meeting,
Truth in Taxation hearing mandated by the State where we were taking public comment regarding our tax
levy and at that meeting there were approximately a dozen people who showed up and approximately 6 who
spoke and their discussion was to somehow reduce the tax levy, that the general level of taxes is too high,
and that seems to be a common complaint. What we are experiencing though is that we have certain
expenditures that you've reviewed and in general those expenditures don't seem to be excessive and we
have not heard any general clamor for reducing programs or services from the city which would reduce our
expenditures. So what you have in front of you is a budget and tax levy that fully funds the expenditures of
the city without really adding any new programs. There's been a change with one full time equivalent
employee from the recreation department to the MIS department, but other than that there are really no new
programs in this budget and no new employees in this budget to fund. So I guess with that, we have a tax
levy that we start, we use as a starting point for our discussion of $6,957,375 and that is made up of a
general fund tax levy of $4,630,000, two debt levies of $1,699,000 and Southwest Metro Transit levy of
$628,000. So above and beyond that it's probably pointless for me to start rehashing some of these budget
numbers but I'll just mm it over to you for discussion of what you'd like to do with the levy and the
budget.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Thank you very much Bruce. Before I go forward I just would like to say to both
Scott and to Bruce that, I know this was in our packet a couple of months ago and that was the Standards
and Poors, the debt rating that we got from them that was the A- rating which went from intermediate to a
longer term of positive. So this was a very excellent report to get from Standard and Poors about our bond
rating and it certainly has a very positive effect on the city so thank you for that. For the second year in a
row and upgrade. A longer look at the city and how we're doing so again we really didn't talk about that
publicly yet but I wanted to thank you both for it. All the work you did on that. Going to the budget, why
don't we take any public input right now on general budget questions or concerns that you have, because I
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
see some people. If you'd like to come up, state your name and address. On any questions, any comments
that you'd like to make on the budget. Okay, seeing none I'll bring this back to council. Let's ask
questions. We did not get any time during our work session to ask for budget questions. Steve, are there
any questions that you have on our 2001 budget?
Councilman Labatt: So you said there's a shift in the allocation of funds for the employee from the rec
center to the one in MIS? Did I hear you right there?
Scott Botcher: We had an unfilled, yet budgeted I think for at least, well for two consecutive budget years
position that in this budget I removed from parks and rec and then sort of the offsetting entry that he
mentioned is the addition of the MIS position so that's what that trade off was.
Councilman Labatt: So it's a trade off. So MIS will get their person in 20017
Scott Botcher: Well you guys obviously.
Councilman Labatt: Yeah, we haven't sold but that's where the, so we're not seeing an increase for that
extra salary and benefits and all that stuff? That was already figured into the 2000 budget. 2001 is just
physically the moving the person from one place to another.
Scott Botcher: Well I think the salaries for the MIS person are slightly higher than that for the park and rec
person. I don't want to say they're identical because I don't think they are but as far as FTE's to FTE's,
that was the idea.
Councilman Labatt: Okay. Okay. That's all I had for right now...
Mayor Mancino: Okay. So no other budget questions. Craig.
Councilman Peterson: Well I think Bruce is probably sick of me asking stupid questions so I think I'm past
the stupid ones now and, I think the only issue I spoke, I struggled with some of the capital, and whether
you want to have that as a secondary conversation or not.
Mayor Mancino: The CIP?
Councilman Peterson: Yeah.
Mayor Mancino: Yeah, I thought maybe we'd just talk about budget now and then talk about CIP.
Councilman Peterson: No, I think it's reasonable.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilwoman Jansen.
Councilwoman Jansen: Actually after coming through all of the meetings with the department heads, first
of all I guess many thanks to Scott and Bruce for working these numbers through and giving us all the
detail that you did and to all of the department heads for going through the numerous meetings that we had.
Just going through all of the different expenses and all of our questions that we've thrown to them over the
past couple of months and I guess the only expense, cutting tool that I mentioned back in August that we
addressed as possibly being able to start implementing in budget year 2001 would be an incentive program
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
to the staff, since they are so intimately familiar with what all the costs are rather than maybe it coming
from us. If we can set a goal for the year as to where we would like to bring some of these expenses down
and incentify the employees to go in and find those cost efficiencies and maybe re-configure some of these
expenses and possibly we can sit down as a council and evaluate some of the programs. I do think there's
some things that we can do as a council working throughout the year as we approach the next budget
period to be sure that we have everything as tight as we can so that as we are coming through these difficult
financial times as we're working through all of these debt service issues, if there are things we need to add
or we could spend more wisely for our taxpayers, that we're addressing those. So that we are putting as
small a burden as possible on them. Of course this year the issue is the debt service and getting that taken
care of. But no, I'm comfortable with the budget. I think you've done a nice job with it and I don't have
any questions at this point. Just encouraging that we go forward with that incentive program that we had
talked about in August.
Scott Botcher: The only thing on the, and I agree. I think the incentive program is well done. It will take
time to put it together because obviously the issue is, I mean if you give Bruce, Todd and I a pencil and
about 15 minutes we can incentivize a whole bunch of stuff, but whether or not that's in the best interest of
public policy, you know we serve a larger constituency base and so we have to figure out a way to balance
the incentivation.
Councilwoman Jansen: Absolutely.
Scott Botcher: Incentivizing, that's not the word I'm looking for. Sorry Bruce, it's late. Again it's the
public policy issue, aka lifeguards, right Todd? Lifeguards at Lake Ann and those types of things but I
think it's a great thing to pursue. It's just we have to be careful how we put it together.
Mayor Mancino: Well and that's also assuming there is fat. So you'll know that.
Scott Botcher: No but there just may be some alternative ways of doing stuff. I mean Bruce and I are still
holding out for commission on the bond rating upgrade. Maybe Bruce is, I don't know but I think it's a
good idea.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, Mark. Councilman Senn.
Councilman Senn: As far as the operating budget goes, I've gotten answers I think pretty much to all of my
questions. Between the work sheets and the work sessions and stuff. There's only one thing I'm continuing
to have a difficult time to reconcile and Bruce, maybe you could help me out. Essentially but looking at all
the work sheets essentially, all the numbers, and rather than picking them apart by department or whatever,
let's just kind of go down to the total because I think it's reflective of the same question. But if you
essentially take the work sheets that you guys put together, which I assume is your best indication of where
those numbers are at this point. The actual through November, you're showing expenses of $5,891,503.
Councilman Labatt: Mark, what page is that?
Councilman Senn: This is on the budget work sheets.
Mayor Mancino: And what's the total that you came up with?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Senn: Well it's right at the last page of the budget work sheets. Which is the grand total
column. Okay. It has an actual through November expense of $5,891,503 and estimating a year end total
expense of $6,959,547, which is approximately $1.1 million dollars during the month of December. And
I'm just trying to figure that out. It's been a problem around here time and time again. Every year as far
as year end spending goes and this one I just can't figure out because no where in my mind can I fathom
that we can spend $1.1 million dollars out of a $7 million dollar budget in one last month of the year. So
I'm kind of trying to figure out how to reconcile those numbers.
Bruce DeJong: Quite honestly I haven't updated those numbers since they were put in there in, back in
September I guess. And I don't believe that we will spend $1.1 million in December. In the general fund.
Councilman Senn: But then the necessary question to follow is if our expense level as of November 30th,
which is supposedly updated numbers, is $5,891,503. Why are we starting from the premise that we once
again need $7 million base to start from before we talk about increased expenditures for next year?
It seems to me we ought to be going more from a $6 million base than a $7 million base.
Scott Botcher: I don't think we started at a $7 million base. I mean I think 80% of our costs is a human
services cost and we run exact spread, I mean we run spread sheets identifying by salary grade and by
individual what those costs are going to be, including the benefit costs, including FICA. That's by far the
biggest part of this budget. Always has been, always will.
Councilman Senn: No, I understand.
Scott Botcher: So we don't start from a base. I mean that, if you wanted to make the argument of zero
base budgeting.
Councilman Senn: No, no. You're misinterpreting what I'm saying then because what I'm saying by the
face is your original budget amount, which is right here on the same sheet and the same line item. $7
million dollars. Okay.
Scott Botcher: Okay.
Councilman Senn: You're telling me you had a budget of $7 million. You've spent $5.8 through
November, okay? And if you're not going to spend $1.1 in the next, in the next 2 weeks or 30 days from
the point that this last report was done, okay. That $7 million budget was about a million dollars
essentially higher than what you needed for this year based on your actual expenditures. So all I'm trying
to do again is reconcile why there is that $1.1 million dollar difference and if that difference is in fact fair,
why aren't we effectively starting from a needed amount in year 2000 of $6 million rather than $7 million?
Scott Botcher: And I guess the answer is, because I think that the recommended budget amounts aren't put
together off the base. I mean I don't care, frankly they're not. They're not put together off the base. We
run a spread sheet.
Councilman Senn: Maybe I'm not understanding. You define base to me. When I say base I'm saying this
is the amount you budgeted in the year 2000, $7 million dollars. That's your base.
Scott Botcher: That's not my base. That's my.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Senn: That's your base of this work sheet.
Scott Botcher: No it's not. That's my 2000 budget amount. When I build a 2001 budget amount, we go
back and we run a complete spread sheet identifying our human resource costs. And we plug those
numbers in. Those are real numbers without us going back, unless Bruce does and say oh geez, last year
we had a $7 million, $6 million base. Whatever the number is. That's where we start from. That's not
how we do it. We run actual numbers for 80% of that budget. Then we go back and we look at every
single line item. And some of those that have been far under what we have budgeted in the past, we do cut.
Those that are higher, or have over shot the expenditures, for whatever definable reason, we try to make
adjustments. We don't always make them as much as department heads would like, but we do do that. So
it's not like we start with a total gross budget base because that's not how the budget's put together. We
look at every single line multiple times.
Mayor Mancino: But we still have a $1.1 million dollars.
Scott Botcher: But Bruce, I mean Bruce just said though that the $5.8 million number needs to be updated
and the $7 million budget or whatever Mark said was the budgeted amount, we can all sit here and say well
geez does that mean we're going to have excess revenues going into a general fund this year.
Mayor Mancino: That's right.
Scott Botcher: Yeah, you can maybe make that argument if those numbers hold true, but that's an
argument a little bit separate and distinct from what the expenditure levels are for the 2001 budget, which
is what you're getting at.
Councilman Senn: Well Scott yes and no. I mean I understand how you're responding in relationship to
building an expense budget okay. But part of the relationship of building that expense budget is essentially
that if you only needed $6 million dollars in the year 2000, and your not adding any new programs or staff
or anything like that okay, and you are purely you know essentially just adding you know the additional
things you need to add on to it, then essentially we're going from roughly $6 million in expenditures in the
year 2000 to a proposed level expenditure under your budget of almost $7.7 million. Okay.
Scott Botcher: And we need to figure out what makes that difference up. It's not an issue of working off
of a base. You want to know what makes up that difference.
Councilman Senn: Yes.
Mayor Mancino: Yes. What makes up that difference?
Scott Botcher: I just want to make sure I understand the methodology because we don't work off the base.
Mayor Mancino: Yeah, I understand working off the base but there's a lot of excess there. And maybe we
need to give you some time to do that.
Bruce DeJong: Well part of it is a function of the way we budget. And the way we budget is you're
setting a maximum expenditure budget. Certainly you don't want to set something that is, you know that
has a 50/50 likelihood of being exceeded. If you wanted to do that, you know we could do that but with the
expectation though that we're going to come in you know, at least half of the time and say, boy. We really
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
missed it here and we're going to have to raise our expenditure you know, our expenditures are going to be
substantially over budget versus our revenues. Now if you want us to predict accurately as possible what
the maximum expenditures, that's what this budget does. If you want us to predict you know some actual
expenditures, you know we could certainly reduce that amount but you have to understand that we're
probably going to come in at least half of the year and say, boy. We've exceeded this and you know there's
some good reasons why but gee, we didn't budget enough revenues to cover those costs.
Mayor Mancino: But Bruce, this is kind of an anomaly. In the last 5 or 6 years we've always come in
under expenditures. Under projected expenditures. We've always come in under but it's been maybe 3, 4,
5%. I mean this just seems like a fairly big number is all we're saying.
Bruce DeJong: But it's going to be higher than what you think based on that. We've got about 11% of
our payroll expenditures yet to be paid out, which is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of
$420,000. Because of the way it falls, that 26 pay periods during the year, every two weeks, we have three
of those pay periods falling in the month of December. So that's $400,000 right off the top and, plus what
generally happens with our department heads, and other employees, is that they are by nature conservative
and they do not take a look at their budget and say oh boy. I can spend all of this money right away at the
beginning of the year. What they do is they say, you know I'm really worried that something's going to
happen and I'm going to have to spend this money on something I didn't plan on. And so they save that,
even though there are planned expenditures in there, and do spend some of the money in December. That's
certainly the case in a lot of the materials and supplies area that, it's a function of how they operate.
Saying gee, if we have something unexpected happen in one other area, I've got this reserved so that if I
don't have to spend it, I can put it towards some other type of unexpected type of budgetary problem.
Scott Botcher: And similarly, you know to the extent, and I can, I would encourage you to go back and
look at last year but I know last year my sort of edick was, we didn't want to have that because I heard
stories that's what always happened. I didn't see that happen last year. I don't see them going out and just
blowing money in December for the heck of it. In fact I had department heads come to me and ask to spend
money and we considered each request on it's merits and some are denied and some were not denied and
that's just management. But given the fact that expenditures do come in under budget I guess is maybe
more of a testament that department heads don't go out and blow all of their expenditure monies because if
they did, then they wouldn't match up. Any expenditures would come much closer to matching up to what
the budget said they would.
Mayor Mancino: Yeah last year we came in $117,000 under budget. Expenditures.
Scott Botcher: Right. And you know we've got all sorts of, as Bruce said, we've got these issues this year.
We've got the couple hundred thousand dollars that we're pulling in out of TIF that were salaries and
expenses. This year, you know let's be honest. We budgeted for a public works director and a city
engineer. We don't have that. We had some of these issues happen that are six figure issues.
Councilman Senn: Yeah, partway through the year we had a number of adjustments...
Councilwoman Jansen: Can I ask one question?
Councilman Senn: Don't let me, I mean I don't want to belabor where you're going with it essentially. I'm
not essentially going to the point that I want to create the impression or even imply that that was the case.
Okay. All I'm trying to say, and we can see where the rest of this goes tonight or whatever, because we
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
have to talk about the CIP and tax levy issues but I'm just saying, as an operating budget issue, I would
like to understand what essentially goes into making up that $1.1 million differential at some point. Now I
mean granted, we kind of backed into the tail end of the budget process here. We've only had this
information for a very short period of time, for a week or whatever, and we've had a lot to digest and go
through. We solved a lot of questions, answered most the problems. This is one I'm still having trouble
with. So all I'm saying is, if you go back or somebody go back and kind of close that gap for me and tell
me why. That's all I'm trying to understand.
Scott Botcher: And we can certainly have Bruce and the finance department go back and just reconfirm the
$5.9, $5.8 million dollar figure and make sure that's tight. And then actually, I mean and this has been
something that we frankly debated in Delafield. Do you estimate your expenses at the budgeted level,
which is a conservative way of doing it. Or do you guesstimate them to be somewhat short of what's
budgeted? So in this case if the budget amount was, I don't know what you said, $7 million. Bruce goes in
and looks at it and says well, it's really going to come in closer to $6.5 so he tells you $6.5 as a non-
conservative representation. We get to the audit next year and oh, guess what? It was $7 million bucks.
You then make levying and finance decisions based upon something not as conservative as he might
otherwise have provided you and then you all sit there and say well what the heck happened. In my own
personal experience I had that debate with the councils in Delafield and we generally as a rule said okay.
What we budget is what we'll set as our estimated expenditures unless something was really way out. That
was just a very conservative policy to take. It's not right or wrong. It's just a choice.
Councilwoman Jansen: Bruce, if you don't mind my asking. On the sheriff's contract it would appear
from this 11/30 statement that we've only paid for halfa year. Might the rest of that invoice be due?
Scott Botcher: It's in the bills now. That's the second half.
Councilman Labatt: We approved $603,000 in bills today so there's half of the $1.1 million.
Councilwoman Jansen: It's like $400,000 that isn't in here so I was just looking for a big invoice.
Assuming that you've got something so there's 600 of it right there so, to have the rest of that.
Bruce DeJong: 600 encompasses quite a few months but yeah.
Councilwoman Jansen: Well this is 400. This is $400,000.
Scott Botcher: The other ones are disparity funds.
Councilman Peterson: Mark isn't your question more fundamental? Isn't it? Let me finish my question
though. If the original budget was $7 million for 2000 and we said that we have that...at $6 million, or $6
½ million. Fundamentally I think your question was, can't that $500,000, whatever that number is, be
applied towards the ensuing year. That's what I'm missing.
Councilman Senn: Craig fundamentally that's where it ends up but I'm trying to understand the gap first
before you talk about what goes where and that's all I'm trying to do.
Scott Botcher: Well maybe one of the issues is, and Bruce if you can go here, that's great. If you can't
then just tell me I'm wrong. I know in internal discussions we've been trying to estimate what our fund
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
balance addition or deletion would be at the end of the year. And to the best of my recollection, and Todd
you were there as well, it was in the neighborhood of 3 ½. Is that about right? At this point?
Bruce DeJong: Well right now I think it's $380,000.
Scott Botcher: That's the informed estimate at this point.
Bruce DeJong: That's the difference at this point. Between expenditures and revenues.
Scott Botcher: Estimated on both sides. Estimated expenditures, estimated revenues or current?
Bruce DeJong: Actual.
Mayor Mancino: At this point.
Bruce DeJong: At this point. I'm guessing that it's going to be about $300,000 but I don't have any solid
figures or analysis to back that up.
Scott Botcher: Okay. So in order to come up with that $300,000 number, then you simply just took actual
against actual. Made a guesstimate for cash flow in November and December to drop off that $80,000 and
that's how you come up with 300 grand.
Bruce DeJong: That's correct.
Scott Botcher: Okay. And so, that's the, and I didn't know if you were part of that discussion but that's
that 300 grand that we had thought would be added to fund balance, which we have recommended in this
budget being, you know hoarded I guess with the balance of the cash, to use for defeasances and whatever
else we want. We do with it what we've talked about ad nauseam in the past. Does that help at all? I
mean that's sort of how, I asked that question sort of so you guys could hear the answer but that's how
Bruce came up with that gap because we sort of knew what the additional fund balance would be.
Councilman Senn: You know I understand Bruce's number. The estimate of the 300 and some thousand
dollars. We've talked about that. You know again, I'm just not reconciling that with what I'm seeing in
the work sheets. Again, all I'm trying to do is understand the gap. I think he understands what I'm saying.
Okay, and it's easily done.
Bruce DeJong: Yeah.
Councilman Senn: Yeah, okay. End of question.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, any other questions on the budget?
Councilman Senn: Not on the operating part, no.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, any questions on.
Scott Botcher: Does everyone understand the fire relief and all the other ones? Just want to make sure.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Mayor Mancino: Bruce, one of the things you and I had talked about is rolling the fire relief fund into the
general fund.
Bruce DeJong: That's correct.
Mayor Mancino: And is that something that you would suggest that we do now?
Bruce DeJong: Well I have not made any recommendations for fund closings or for equity transfers out of
any of the funds, simply because we're still struggling with some of the basic accounting and I want to
make sure we get that done correctly before we actually close out funds and transfer monies that may or
may not be available. The fire relief fund is pretty straight forward and I'm certainly recommending that
we not levy any taxes for that this year. You know for collection next year, and that we put those
expenditures inside the general fund. That ends up being an annual payment of something approaching
$85,000 and there is a substantial fund balance in that fund. Probably about $240,000 at the end of this
year that certainly would be available for transfer to the general fund or any other place that the council
sees fit.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. What about the environmental protection fund. I know this is getting off the issue
for one second. Would you also suggest doing that with the environmental fund? Protection fund?
Because again we're not levying for that, and I'm talking about in the future.
Bruce DeJong: I guess that's one of the deferred decisions. What we're really anticipating doing is using
the fund balance to run that program for the next several years until we identify either a different operating
resource to fund it, or make the determination that we want to include that into the general tax levy. We
made kind of half stab at trying to incorporate that along with the surface water management, which at
least at this point I think those discussions probably were a little fruitless. Yeah, there's some statutory
restrictions from the state standpoint as to what you can fund out of surface water and there are some
ordinance restrictions based on our own city code that say how we're going to use that. It seems to me
there is some overlap in those two and perhaps that fee that we levy along with the sewer and water fees on
the utility bill may be a possible way to fund the operations of that particular department.
Mayor Mancino: Okay.
Scott Botcher: In other words the attorney shot us down. It wasn't you.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, those were questions on budget. Questions on CPI. Final questions on, I'm sorry,
CIP. And then we'll go to levy. Steve, any questions that you have on CIP?
Councilman Labatt: No, I had mine answered in the work session. And they dealt specifically with the
annual street maintenance program. And those were answered by Ms. Burgess. The telecommunication
purchases. Craig brought that up... The other one had to do with 800 MHz, but that's not til 2004, and we
said we're jumping that up to 2003 or something. And then Scott addressed the dive equipment and he
already reduced that but I'm okay with the 15,000. I think it's a worthy program and we need it here.
Other than that, that's all I have.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, Craig.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Peterson: Yeah I'm still struggling with laptop computers for the fire department. I'm a little
leery of spending thousands of dollars with a consultant to pick out, help us pick out what we need. I'd like
to think it's more obvious than that so a substantial portion of that in 2001 is just having a consultant tell
us what to do. I'm leery of approving it on that basis. I just think it's a lot of money for not knowing
exactly what we need. I think it should be more self evident. The dive equipment, you know it seems
logical that if we've got Carver County is able to do it, and I'm reluctant to dedicate funds to providing for
it ourselves if we have an alternative that seems viable. I guess I wasn't convinced we don't have a viable
alternative but at the end of the day I'm nickel and diming as it relates to the percentage of the total so I can
certainly be convinced otherwise and wait for other comments.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilwoman Jansen.
Councilwoman Jansen: As I mentioned in the work session, I just want to have held back this
telecommunications purchases, the $115,000 until we can have a discussion over what has already been
spent and allocated from the 2000 CIP amount.
Councilman Labatt: When you say hold back, you mean?
Councilwoman Jansen: Not approve. At this point.
Councilman Labatt: Delete it?
Councilwoman Jansen: That's probably the, I don't know about deleting it. I mean it's probably the
easiest thing to do. It sounds as though the 2000 amount may cover our needs. At this point I think there
needs to be more discussion around that item. So that it's not just a blanket approval with tonight.
Mayor Mancino: So not approve?
Councilman Peterson: We can just ask staff not to make any commitments prior to further discussion with
council.
Councilwoman Jansen: That was one of my issues. The other was, wanting to include the
recommendations from the Park and Rec Commission that they had made to be included in the park and
trail fund. So the Marsh Glen trail connector, we all now have a copy of that. That memo. It was the
Marsh Glen trail connector at $68,000. The skate park improvements for the $35,000. The Recreation
Center illuminated wall sign at 10. And then they had three miscellaneous that came to like $13,000 that
they requested as part of that fund. Not the general. And as far as the laptop computers and the trucks,
you know to follow up with what Craig said, that does seem like we need to get that tighten up before we
do any sort of approval on that. To just send them out with consultants. And on the dive equipment, I
guess the difference between the county and city services, as I heard it, is that we would be providing
rescue whereas we rely on the county for recovery. And I guess if we can manage to avoid having someone
drown, to know that we have at least the ability to get there and try to rescue those people, knowing that we
have 3 minute response coming from our emergency team, I guess it seems worth the $15,000 that that
might enable us to save a life so I guess that's what I heard in the course of the explanation but. Those are
my issues. I brought up the water treatment plant and of course Teresa was suggesting we wait before we
move that to sooner. In the feasibility that she'll be able to tell us over the course of the year what type of a
water treatment facility we'll actually need before we go moving that to sooner, so I'm okay with that,
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
though I'm anticipating that it will probably end up being a 2002 expenditure versus 2004. Those are my
comments.
Mayor Mancino: Councilman Senn.
Councilman Senn: My issues CIP I think pretty much mostly were discussed in the work session. I still
have an issue just to find the need for three thermal rescue devices. When we just purchased one and really
don't know the impact of it yet. Laptop computers I also had down as I think some of the other council
people did. The telecommunications issues we talked about relating to 2000 expenditures and where we're
sitting there and what fund balances that are left to want it going forward and the actual need for 2001
being 115, was that a questionable. Let's see here. The problems with the dive equipment, another one.
The water plant stuff is still an issue to me. To me it's a water quality issue that goes beyond the arsenic
regulations which are going to be revised next year because I think we had water quality problems that we
receive a lot of complaints on that are based on other factors. But something I think we need to take a
harder look at. And the only other one was based on current estimates that Teresa's come up with and
stuff. Our expectation was to be kind of funded on our trail level for 101 and we're quite under funded at
this point given her current estimates. So that's another issue. So that was it on mine.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. I don't think anyone brought up anything new for mine. Then we'll have to come
to some consensus on this. One of the, on the laptop computers, what about funding $10,000 this year for
a consultant for the fire department, for a consultant to let us know, let the council know what's needed?
Much like we're doing for telecommunications. Where are we at this point? Keep a hold on it and do some
sort of a, some money there for consultant working for the fire department and really developing a plan for
the laptops. Before going ahead and approving any acquisition or anything else. Discussion around that.
Councilman Senn: Were you saying plans or needs assessment? ... different issues.
Mayor Mancino: Well really needs assessment.
Councilman Peterson: On the surface that seems like a lot of money for, there are few other fire
departments out there that probably have done this that, I'm having a hard time thinking about spending
$10,000 for them to do a survey of departments when we could pick up a telephone and figure this out.
Mayor Mancino: Well come up with an amount or say.
Councilwoman Jansen: I think we just handle it as.
Councilman Labatt: I think it can be handled internally, yeah.
Councilwoman Jansen: Staff has a conversation with the fire department and let Scott work it out with all
of us and them as to how we can better accomplish this without a consultant.
Mayor Mancino: Have you sat down Scott with Rick on the fire department laptops?
Scott Botcher: Last year, I mean we did last year and over the summer on the... This, I would tend to
agree that this provides an opportunity to take 50 grand out of the CIP because I agree. I think we can
learn and steal from others. We haven't had a discussion specifically about this application. We can. So
if that's an opportunity you want to take, then we can do that.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Mayor Mancino: Are you comfortable with that?
Councilman Labatt: Yeah. I'm thinking that, I'm trying to look beyond the city limits of us and say, what
does Chaska have? What does Victoria? Maybe we can pool the intelligence of all the fire officers from
three departments and say, you know maybe we can come up with something where we all can share in the
cost and yet come up with a program where if they have a big structure fire or a structure fire in Chaska,
we're going to be responding to assist them. We can share each other information to them. So I can
support removing that. But I just wanted to talk about the dive equipment.
Mayor Mancino: Couldn't we do that with the dive equipment too? Between us and Chaska, do some sort
ofa.
Councilman Labatt: Well see I don't know, they don't have the personnel. And I can just, I'll share, I
worked 5 years on Lake Minnetonka in water patrol enforcement and when I hear that our fire officers say
that response time to get the deputies who are not working in to the office, and for the response time for the
deputies that are working on Lake Waconia, to get them over to Lake Minnewashta or Riley or Lotus, it's
hours. I did it for 5 years on Minnetonka and when we had to leave Lake Minnetonka and go down to the
Mississippi River or go up to Robbinsdale and that time is, it's going to be like the lifeguard issue. We're
going to save $15,000 and we can wait an hour or two hours for Carver County, that's ridiculous. Fire
fighters are first on the scene a lot of times, even in water emergencies. They can be the ones to initiate the
recovery. We don't have to, or the rescue. We don't have to wait for Carver County to do that so I'll leave
my two cents with that and let's not create another lifeguard issue for $15,000.
Councilman Peterson: It's more than $15,000. Isn't there some T and E and travel and training in there
too?
Councilman Senn: Yeah, there's an additional $2,500 in training.
Councilman Peterson: Insignificant.
Mayor Mancino: Yeah, it's a $20,000.
Councilman Peterson: I'm won over.
Mayor Mancino: Telecommunications. I think we're all in agreement on that. Holding on it. Park and
trail acquisition. Anyone have any problems with the additional from the memo coming out of 4107 How
do we deal with 101 north? That is something that we certainly know from MnDot that we'd have to jump
through quite a few hoops to get that trail built, but it's also something that we also told the neighbors in
that area that we would be working on diligently. So how do we set aside money to construct the trail?
Councilwoman Jansen: I don't know how we set aside money at this point until we proceed with the
discussions over whether or not we're even going to be able to get the approval to function in their right-of-
way and that meeting, according to staff, will happen and that discussion in the second. Is it the first or the
second meeting of February?
Councilman Labatt: Sometime in February.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilwoman Jansen: In February. Teresa mentioned in the work session, and then otherwise all we have
is a guess on MnDot's part on what they think all of their suggested changes might do to the project as we
apply them. So to go from that kind of a guesstimate before we start working through what all the issues
are, I don't know how we start allocating funds in the CIP. There's certainly a commitment on the
council's part to move forward and we've got the date in February to discuss MnDot's information again
but I don't know how we start allocating in the CIP before we have those conversations. I guess would be
my two cents.
Councilman Peterson: But could we do anything, if all the moons align and we could begin without
allocating now, we wouldn't be able to right?
Councilwoman Jansen: Sure we could.
Councilman Senn: Well the $600,000 was a number at the time that this was made up and put in that
reflected the then current best guess or estimate on that issue. But since then we've done a plan and that
plan has been estimated out and that plan number is now higher. Forget the MnDot add on's or whatever.
That plan itself is higher essentially than the original estimate of the $600,000 so the question is, do you
want to increase the commitment to at least cover the estimate in our plan effectively.
Mayor Mancino: And what's that estimate, a million?
Councilman Labatt: A million.
Councilman Senn: No, no. That's what MnDot all attached is a million. Teresa's number, based on the
plan that we sent to MnDot was.
Scott Botcher: Yeah but tonight she said a million bucks.
Councilman Senn: No, no, but that's...
Councilwoman Jansen: That's MnDot's number.
Councilman Senn: ... letter. I'm saying aside from MnDot's letter, which we may have a lot of issues with
yet, I don't think we should make that leap. I'm just saying I think we should at least leap to the point to
the plan that we were comfortable with that we sent to MnDot effectively that she came back with an
estimate on, and I thought that was, I thought it was, was it 750 or?
Councilwoman Jansen: I thought it was 600.
Scott Botcher: I don't recall her speaking to another number tonight.
Councilman Senn: No, I'm not saying tonight. She just referenced a million but I'm just saying, at the
time that we sent the proposal into MnDot and they costed out that proposal, she gave us a new number
that was not the $600,000.
Scott Botcher: Oh previously she had said ~ of a million. 750.
Councilman Senn: I thought it was seven something.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Scott Botcher: But that was, I mean in defense of Teresa, that was a wag.
Councilman Senn: Right. Based on her plans.
Scott Botcher: No. It was based upon.
Mayor Mancino: Based on the preliminary plan.
Councilman Senn: Well but Scott, that's when we had a plan. We never had a plan before.
Scott Botcher: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Councilman Senn: Okay. And she has a consultant come up with that number was my understanding.
Scott Botcher: I want everyone to understand what kind of reliance is put on that number.
Councilman Senn: No, I understand.
Mayor Mancino: It's a place holder.
Scott Botcher: Tonight we found 50 grand though...
Mayor Mancino: Well let me do it another way of looking at it. If we put it in, it doesn't mean obviously
that we have to spend it. But it does show a commitment that we've thought about it. We want to go
forward. It's in our plans. IfMnDot won't approve it, if we can't go ahead, then obviously we don't
spend the money because we can't do it, but it does show our commitment, our serious commitment that
we've got it in our plans and we're, we will go forward and we're going to push it unless obviously we're
stopped. So that takes kind of an opposite viewpoint from Linda's of just waiting and then putting it in, but
starting up the year and saying here it is. We are committed to it. We've got it in our budget. Now
whether we can proceed or not, obviously funds aren't going to be spent unless we do get the go ahead.
Councilwoman Jansen: I guess versus it being opposite what I'm saying is that there's a $600,000
commitment that's already in the CIP that is as squishy as any of the other numbers and we have a great
deal many more discussions still to have and we're already committed to further discussion on the 101 trail
where we can maybe firm that number up a little bit more in reviewing what MnDot said and at least get a
better feel for what or if this is going to happen. So I'm saying it's committed. You've got the money in
the CIP. There needs to be more discussion around this. You know if we're just taking a whack at this to
make it seem as if we're more committed than $600,000, I don't see the point of it.
Councilman Peterson: Let me go back to my planet alignment again. If everything does go ideally, what's
the probability of us being able to spend, even if it is $750,000, in 20017 I mean will it be able to get done
in that kind of time frame?
Councilman Senn: Depends on what MnDot does. Depends on what the legislature does. Depends on
what the city does.
Mayor Mancino: But can you do it, yes.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilwoman Jansen: As we were requesting, weren't we requesting some funding Scott from MnDot
and wasn't that for the year 2002 as we were asking for them to participate?
Scott Botcher: Well Teresa's making you know taking that run up the flag pole with that funding source.
Councilwoman Jansen: So we're still pursuing that?
Scott Botcher: I guess my answer is, if you put a gun to my head I'd say no. I think the chances are
greater that you would not complete the project in the fiscal than the chances would be that you would
spend all the money in fiscal year.
Councilman Peterson: That's all I wanted to know.
Councilwoman Jansen: And then we are still pursuing the funding with MnDot. Okay. So that might be a
potential other source.
Councilman Labatt: So could you, and I don't know if we can even do it with the fund in 2002, an
additional amount.
Councilman Senn: I mean nobody was contending this project was going to be built in one year.
Scott Botcher: No, I was just answering Craig's question.
Councilman Senn: Yeah, but I mean you know essentially all that's budgeted there now is money in one
year.
Scott Botcher: I mean if you really are serious about, if you think that the $600,000 number, albeit
squishy, is too low and you wish to throw some money at it, equally squishy to try to make it look like you
on paper have the money to do this, Steve's idea is probably the best one. Because it's going to be a two
fiscal year project. You say okay, and I don't have it opened up right now but say you've got $600,000 in
one year. If you throw another whatever number you pick Steve, I don't care. Throw another $200,000.
Pick a number out of the air, and in that fiscal year, in the CIP portion.
Councilman Labatt: It's not affecting this budget year at all. I mean and that's showing a commitment. I
mean I don't think any one of us are up here saying, based on MnDot's letter, let's stop the trail. Let's stop
any progress on it.
Scott Botcher: And we frankly are going to need to figure out how to finance it if cash is not the way. I
mean there are some significant hurdles absent DOT that we're going to have to deal with. Just so
everyone knows that. Putting it in the CIP doesn't mean we have the cash. Money's fungible but it's not
that fungible. And so as far as representing your wishes and the vision of the community based upon a
CIP, that's a reasonable approach.
Councilman Senn: The program though is priorities though.
Scott Botcher: Sure, it's a programmatic questioning.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Peterson: I think it's a reasonable alternative.
Councilwoman Jansen: Agreed.
Scott Botcher: I say that as much for the neighbors who might be reading the minutes as anything else
because I don't want to mislead anybody.
Mayor Mancino: Well and the other thing is, we do have the funding for it. We do have the funding in
410.
Scott Botcher: If that's the choice that's made to do that.
Mayor Mancino: Yeah. There is the money that is sitting in that particular fund. The $1.3 million and
what we will have made another $500 to $600,000 again on fees. So there's quite a bit of money in the
410 fund to pay for the trail in 1 or 2 years and that is money that is sitting there. There have been so
many, I remember in the park and trail referendum in 1997 and when we went to the community in 1996 to
give them information in that area, we told them that a trail would be coming soon at that point in '97 and
'98 and it still hasn't happened so it is, and this has been going on for years and years and years and
everybody says wait until we update the road and of course the roadway has never been updated and
improved, etc. So all those people have been waiting, all those residents have been waiting for a trail for
many, many years and I think it's incumbent to take it seriously. To have the money set aside and
hopefully to go forward. And I don't even live on 101, but I think it's important.
Councilman Senn: Can I get back to your initial question?
Councilman Peterson: Which was what?
Councilman Senn: Which was the part over the park and trail, or the parks commission recommendations
essentially and a few that differ. Can somebody from a staff perspective explain I guess why those items...
Bruce DeJong: I'm sorry, what was the question?
Councilman Senn: If these are the recommendations that came out of the parks and rec commission, okay.
You've been going through budget process internally staff wise and all that sort of thing and now you've
come forward with a recommendation to us. Including a CIP one. CIP does not have several items here
that came out recommended by parks and rec. I'm trying to understand the why. I mean so you understand
both sides of it before you say let's put those back in or whatever. Obviously somebody took them out for
a reason.
Bruce DeJong: I don't think that anybody took them out because I don't think they were included in the
last year's CIP. That's new stuff that the council did not take any action on.
Councilman Senn: So you did not, you didn't want, I mean for that reason you didn't add it into the 2001
recommendation?
Bruce DeJong: That's basically correct.
Councilman Senn: Okay. Alright. And the items were the what? The skate park and.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Bruce DeJong: Marsh Glen.
Councilman Senn: Marsh Glen.
Bruce DeJong: The wall sign out at the rec center.
Councilman Senn: And the sign. Those three?
Bruce DeJong: And there were a couple miscellaneous for tree plantings. Some new park signs. Picnic
tables.
Councilman Senn: Okay. Todd, are we ready to go to the next step on the skate park? I mean we had a
great deal of discussion this year over the skate park and going to the second step and putting the additional
money into the park, which we did essentially to double size the park and all that sort of thing. At the same
time we talked about a number of operational and other issues that we thought needed to kind of get under
control and we needed to get our hands around and stuff before we went further. I mean is that, you know
to me that bears heavily on this. It seems to me yes, that's been very popular and I think we've all been
happy about that. That's why we made the additional commitment, even at year end 2000 to put more
in...but I mean is it time to kind of now sit back and study what we've got and what's working and how it's
acting and you know, before we, and this seems like a pretty significant jump in scope of service so to
speak compared to anything we've talked about before.
Todd Hoffman: Sure, Councilman Senn and the council. The improvements we're talking about have
nothing to do with the facility. Excuse me, the ramps and the jumps themselves that the council approved
in the second addition this past year that was purchased and we now have $30,000 worth of equipment on
site. What we're talking about here, the primary needs are the access stairway or access route to the skate
park. You've all noticed as you come out of the City Hall parking lot, it's just a worn dirt trail up the
hillside right now which is not very appealing. And not very accessible either. And then some seeding and
a covered shelter to provide shade. There's a single tree out there, the lone maple tree which has held off
from the disease. The other maples in that area have all died from disease and if you notice that area on a
hot summer day, it's packed with the visitors and the spectators. The operational concerns you spoke to
are absolutely present. I deal with them most every day out at the skate park, working with Helen
Merchant our principal primarily, and talking to the other folks in the area. The parents about how they
see the operations of the skate park taking place. The 3/4 fence that you saw that was approved by the
council and put us has taken care of many of those issues. Access issues inbetween the fire department and
the skate park and school and skate park. It still remains at a $30,000 investment plus you know you have
an investment of space and lights and some operations. The most highly used recreation facility that the
city has ever invested in. So to make this additional commitment to provide a better environment for our
parents, because primarily what we see in operations is that the more parents we can attract and maintain
on the property during the times when the facilities is being used, the better the behavior at the skate park
so if we can provide a shelter with some shade and some seating, and a comfortable location for those
parents, we feel that the improvements or the operations will only improve.
Councilman Senn: Alright, thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Todd, can you tell me the difference between the plantings here and the plantings that are
under reforestation? There's another you know pretty significant amount in that.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Todd Hoffman: Yeah. Annually the park department in fall does tree plantings to either replace dead plant
material in our parks and reforestation is a different area from what I'm working on an annual basis out of
park development.
Mayor Mancino: So you're going to put another tree next to the skate park?
Todd Hoffman: Traditionally we've been fortunate to have trees donated and then we move them for about
$25 a piece so our money can go pretty far, but if we have to purchase trees, yeah that's a different story.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Any other questions for Todd?
Councilwoman Jansen: No.
Mayor Mancino: Steve, any questions?
Councilman Labatt: No.
Mayor Mancino: Craig? Let's see, the other thing that was brought up was the thermal rescue device.
Mark you had a concern with 3, 2, 17 I mean we've already purchased one. What's your concern?
Councilman Senn: We just purchased one this year. Now we're talking about a second one for $20,000
and a third one next year for $20,000. I'm just having trouble justifying that in my mind when we haven't
even seen the benefits of one.
Councilman Peterson: Has it been used at all? Do we have any idea?
Scott Botcher: I don't know. I just remember during the presentation the issue was, and I'm going to do a
terrible job of representing the fire department's position on this but, that you needed two because you go in
in pairs. One doesn't do you a whole lot of good.
Councilman Senn: No, he was saying they needed one at each fire station. One at Minnewashta, one at
central and then they wanted a third one for the...
Scott Botcher: I thought they needed to go in buildings in pairs.
Todd Gerhard: You're both right.
Councilman Senn: But essentially if we're going.., both fire departments.
Scott Botcher: That's what I recall.
Councilman Senn: No I guess I'm going back to when we had the original presentation on buying the first
one though. You know we were told on the basis kind of that well if we had one of these, typically it would
go in the command vehicle and it would be out at the fire, wherever the fire is, and that's where it did the
most good because that person's directing effectively where people go and what they do.
Scott Botcher: That's true. I remember that.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Senn: So I mean to me it seems like yes, that was a good $20,000 and we should do that and
we did it and now we should try it and see how it works. I just kind of hate to just kind of leap into another
$40,000 you know, without really having an evaluation period or utilizing that. So that's I'm just saying is
my only problem.
Councilwoman Jansen: Actually the original request did anticipate the 3 units being purchased out over the
three years so from our original understanding, this is just the continuation and at that time they had also
mentioned one at the west station, the downtown and the chiefs vehicle. So I guess it is as it was originally
portrayed. I guess I don't have.
Councilman Senn: I'm saying I have a problem with it.
Mayor Mancino: You have a problem with it, okay.
Councilwoman Jansen: I guess from the work session and the explanation from the fire chief, I'm
comfortable with the additional units.
Councilman Labatt: Can I just get a clarification point on the 101 trail? So do we need to make an
amendment to the 2002?
Mayor Mancino: Yeah, when we go through here.
Councilman Senn: I assume we're going to kind of have to go back through each one of these.
Mayor Mancino: Yeah.
Councilman Labatt: Okay. I just wanted to make sure.
Scott Botcher: Or as you make a motion to amend the CIP, you just have a laundry list of changes that you
wish to make. I think that's...
Mayor Mancino: Any other issues? We've talked about telecommunications. Thermal rescue device that
people had concerns with. 101 north trail. Guide equipment. Laptop.
Scott Botcher: Lights for the rec center gym.
Councilman Labatt: That's it. That's all I had.
Mayor Mancino: Lights for the rec center gym?
Councilman Senn: Well I mean again, there's no answer to this but my only other, I'm not sure there's an
answer before us right now or whether we talk about it tonight. The other issue I raised was over the water
treatment thing and I'm still really worried about that as a water quality issue. Again, aside from the
arsenic regulation which will make it's own call so to speak next year.
Councilwoman Jansen: So what staff had shared with us, and I too share Councilman Senn's concern, but
we can't move forward with a plant or we're not being economically prudent to move forward with a plant
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
for just the water quality issue if it's going to have to be enlarged for the arsenic problem and you need
more land. So it seems like with that pending decision coming this next year, we can make that judgment
call based on better information and it does sound as though we would be moving it forward.
Councilman Senn: Well 2001 we'll have that call...
Mayor Mancino: So you're saying put it in 2002 regardless.
Councilman Senn: My issue is I don't think we can wait until 2005 to solve our water quality problems.
Scott Botcher: Oh yeah. If you wish to accelerate it to something like 2002, that seems to be...what
Teresa said but I agree with, I'd hate to just throw money away at a study that doesn't mean anything.
Councilman Senn: Nobody's saying that.
Councilwoman Jansen: The specific before we go with it.
Councilman Senn: Wait for that. I just think we need to move those 2005 numbers up into 2000, you
know, into an earlier timeframe.
Councilwoman Jansen: The other part of that was whether we're moving that large.
Councilman Labatt: W011.
Councilman Senn: Yeah, it's under the water treatment.
Scott Botcher: So you wanted it in the 2002?
Councilman Labatt: Which one? Do you want the $500,000?
Councilwoman Jansen: On the feasibility study?
Scott Botcher: Yes.
Councilman Labatt: In 2002?
Mayor Mancino: Well remember the $500,000 also included land and includes design feasibility study
and...
Councilman Labatt: So the $3.5 million goes where then?
Councilman Senn: Wait now. If we have the decision next year on the essentially in 2001 on the arsenic
issue, then it seems to me that's the point we should begin our study of where we go and what we do
because that's the only, how would you say, variable that we're waiting for an answer on. So it seems to
me we ought to look at funding some of that in 2001, later part of the year unless it's December, I don't
know Scott, is it December we're going to find out the arsenic regulations...
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Scott Botcher: In your correspondence packet tonight I put something in there about water regs and frankly
with the EPA you never know.
Councilman Senn: So you think it's highly questionable whether...
Scott Botcher: All the representations are, is that we should get one next year. But I'm not going to stake
my reputation on saying it's going to come next year. I don't know.
Mayor Mancino: We could put 250 in 2001 and 250 in 2002.
Scott Botcher: But I think, I mean you could do that. It's sort of, I mean you want your plan to be as
accurate as possible. If for some reason you get a word in the late part of the year, you can always go and
amend it and say we're going to accelerate this plan. You may not actually end up encumbering funds or
needing to encumber funds until 2002 anyway. If you're just trying to placate citizens with numbers on
paper, that's one thing but I'd hate to just, I mean there's ways that you can deal with this in 2001 if you
need to.
Councilwoman Jansen: Well and Teresa and Kate also mentioned that they'd be siting a water tower in the
course of the year 2001 and they could potentially incorporate some of this information into those studies to
evaluate sites. So it wasn't as if they were saying they wouldn't be doing anything in the year 2001. Just
that we may not need to be moving this capital expenditure in order to get it accomplished.
Scott Botcher: And there's a question as to whether or not, and Teresa and I have just had this discussion
briefly and it's a tough call because the audit has indicated that our rate structure in the enterprise funds is
acceptable. There's a general comfort level with what we have in terms of our rate structure in the water
side primarily. At the same time we did this year have a rate study in the budget. We sort of set that aside
and said we've got a good audit. Let's just save the money and push it back. If we know that we're going
to be doing a feasibility study for a water treatment plant, it almost, and we have to finish this conversation
but it almost makes sense to talk about whether or not you do the rate study before that feasibility study's
done or you wait until the feasibility study is done and say okay, what's the probability that we're going to
do this and this size plant, 2 times 3.5 million dollars, whatever the number is, how does that then impact
the rates because based upon that rate analysis, you'll have to tell your citizens oh by the way. Your water
bill's going up, fill in the blank. That to me seems to make more sense, but Teresa may walk in and say
you big dummy, there's a reason that we need to do it. But I just, don't be surprised if next year that gets
held off again, just to sort of see what happens. My main concern in the rate structure for the enterprise
funds is to make sure that we just have enough money to make it go. That our cash flow's okay. That our
terms are okay. All that sort of happy stuff. If the auditor's happy, I'm happy.
Councilman Senn: How about if you just take those 4 and 5 numbers and just move them to 2 and 3?
Scott Botcher: That's certainly your choice. I guess I brought that up as an aside. Just so I wouldn't look
atit.
Councilman Labatt: Mark, on your comments, if you look at 2003, this water system improvements, we're
only at $130,000 for the year. The bottom line so if you take 2004 and go to 2002 and take 2005 and go to
2003, that might.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Senn: Yeah the bulk of it would go into 2003 because the study would be in 2002 and if you
start to implement something, it'd be 2003.
Councilman Labatt: I'm okay with that.
Scott Botcher: Additionally, and I'm just sort of eye balling this and I don't know what the cash flows are
going to show this year, although I can come to a pretty good guess. Your sewer and water expansion fund
in your coffer as of 12/31/99 shows $1.9 million and some change as your cash and cash equivalents. You
know certainly funding a feasibility study out of that balance, which I would expect to break through $2
million this year unless I'm missed some large expenditure that I haven't seen, is very doable and will have
very possibly no impact on the debt situation. So that in mind, I think it doesn't mean you want to waste
your money, but I think at least there's a comfort level I have there that moving it into 2002, which is
otherwise a pretty terrible year for debt purposes, is probably okay as you're dealing with this enterprise
fund. For whatever that's worth. And that also then could carry over to 2003. Unless people quit drinking
water.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, any other concerns? Any other discussion points? Does somebody want to pull
this together and go about approving the CIP with some of the changes?
Councilman Senn: Why don't we do one motion incorporating it all, but before we do why don't we go
down here and decide where we've got a majority yeah or nay on what.
Councilman Labatt: Okay.
Mayor Mancino: On the laptop.
Councilman Senn: On the laptop.
Mayor Mancino: I think we have.
Councilman Labatt: I think we have a majority there.
Councilwoman Jansen: Delete.
Councilman Senn: I'd say no.
Mayor Mancino: No, and develop a plan internally. Okay. Dive equipment. Keep it as is.
Councilman Labatt: Wait now. Can we just go right down the order of these?
Councilman Senn: Yeah, why don't we.
Mayor Mancino: Okay.
Councilman Senn: Thermal's the first one if you go on the list.
Councilman Peterson: That seemed to be a yes.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Mayor Mancino: Keep going. Just.
Councilman Senn: Thermal's the first one.
Councilman Labatt: Yes.
Councilwoman Jansen: Leave it.
Councilman Senn: Okay, I'm a minority on no. Laptops was the next one. We all said no. Everybody no
on that.
Mayor Mancino: Correct.
Councilman Senn: Okay. The telecommunications, $115.
Councilman Labatt: No.
Councilman Senn: Put it on hold?
Mayor Mancino: Hold.
Councilman Senn: Okay.
Councilman Peterson: But you're leaving dollars in there. You're just.
Mayor Mancino: Yes. On hold.
Scott Botcher: No expenditures without authorization.
Councilman Senn: And dive equipment.
Councilman Labatt: Yes.
Councilwoman Jansen: Yes.
Councilman Senn: Was yes.
Mayor Mancino: Yes.
Councilman Senn: And we had two, what was it? 200 in 2002?
Councilman Labatt: 250 in 2002 for 101. Trail north.
Councilman Senn: And we had 500 in the 2002 for water treatment study and $3.5 million in 2003 for a
water treatment. Is that everything? Then we had the parks and rec.
Councilwoman Jansen: I'm sorry, Scott were you okay with moving the 3.5 into 2003 or are we just
moving the feasibility study for now?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Scott Botcher: No that will be, Bruce that will probably be a revenue bond but it's solely off of the
proceeds of the water bills so that's okay.
Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. So we're okay with that.
Scott Botcher: On the trail though, you moved a quarter million dollars to 2002. Did you roll something in
the 2003 behind it? Did I miss that or did you not?
Councilman Labatt: Where?
Scott Botcher: The 101 trail.
Councilman Senn: No, we didn't. We already had 600...
Bruce DeJong: I would like to clarify. Would you like to move the $400,000 that's in the capital
replacement now to the park dedication?
Mayor Mancino: To 410.
Councilwoman Jansen: No.
Mayor Mancino: I would.
Bruce DeJong: That's why I'm asking.
Mayor Mancino: Because we know we have the money there. We don't have it in capital replacement.
Councilman Senn: You don't have the money in capital replacement yet to bond for it and this has been
bought and paid for by all the residents in the other fund already.
Councilwoman Jansen: I'd like to have that discussion when it comes up as to how it is actually funded. I
mean right now we're saying it's going to be funded.
Councilman Senn: We have to identify a budget.
Scott Botcher: The 101 trail you mean?
Mayor Mancino: We have to identify a funding source.
Councilwoman Jansen: Correct.
Scott Botcher: Oh geez yes.
Councilwoman Jansen: I'd rather leave it as is.
Scott Botcher: That discussion is down the road. You're more concerned about the fund balance but.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Mayor Mancino: Yeah, Linda would like to keep it the way it is.
put into 410 because I know that we have the money there.
Scott Botcher: Okay, but Bruce, tell me.
Councilman Senn: That's where the money they paid went.
Scott Botcher: Taking money from where to 4107
Mayor Mancino: I'm just changing the funding source.
Bruce DeJong:
than...
Scott Botcher:
fund, correct?
Bruce DeJong:
Scott Botcher:
Bruce DeJong:
I would like to take the whole 600 and
It's in the capital replacement fund because no funding source has been identified other
Okay, but the capital replacement fund is a more unrestricted revenue source than the 410
Correct.
So why would you make that move?
There is a significant fund balance.
Scott Botcher: Why wouldn't you put it in general fund? Or just leave it alone. I'm just asking. I guess
the whole theory of moving it from.
Bruce DeJong: Park dedication fund is to fund you know parks, trails and open space outside of what you
bonded for a couple years ago and it seems to be a better fit than what we're generally using as equipment
out of the capital replacement fund.
Scott Botcher: And that's fine. I'm just, I'm taking the theoretical argument, taking funds that are largely
unrestricted, or less restricted, and putting them into a fund that at least has the appearance of being,
having it's uses more restricted. Does that make sense?
Bruce DeJong: Well we're not taking money, we're just moving the expenditure.
Scott Botcher: I thought you said transfer fund balance.
Mayor Mancino: No. No, no, no.
Bruce DeJong: No.
Scott Botcher: You could call it sewer and water for all I care. It doesn't matter. It won't matter until we
get there. Can you tell I'm pretty anal on these. Don't be touching stuff. Screwing up my plan.
Mayor Mancino: Craig, you want to take it 4107
Scott Botcher: Because frankly it's not going to matter.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Labatt: You know I don't know why we're worrying about where it's going to come out of so
I'm going to say no... change.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. So we have three that say yes. Two that says no.
Councilman Senn: ... you have the items there of Marsh Glen. You have Marsh Glen 68,000. Is that a yes
with everybody?
Mayor Mancino: No problem.
Councilwoman Jansen: Yep.
Councilman Labatt: Yes.
Councilman Senn: Then we have a condition of $35,000 for skate park improvements, covered shelter,
seating and access stairs.
Councilman Labatt: Yes.
Councilman Senn: Is that a yes for everybody?
Councilwoman Jansen: Yes.
Councilman Senn: And then we have.
Scott Botcher: Are you going to get a stereo in there too?
Councilman Senn: Then we have the illuminated sign for the rec center.
Mayor Mancino: Illuminated?
Scott Botcher: Now tell me where that's going to go again.
Councilman Labatt: North side of the building. You're going to take down that banner?
Scott Botcher: Is that the one we looked at? I'm confused then. We looked at that already. So why is it in
here?
Todd Hoffman: We looked at it. Financing it out of the $15,000 for the monument sign which we used
excess revenue.
Scott Botcher: Right, and I thought we were going to maximize those dollars.
Todd Hoffman: Yes we can.
Scott Botcher: So why is it in the budget again next year?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Todd Hoffman: Well we're not fully funded out of the...
Scott Botcher: I know but we were going to make due with what, we had a couple thousand dollars and we
were going to try to make due with what we did or utilize, hold other expenditures down and try to use them
for this purpose, I thought.
Todd Hoffman: We haven't transferred money over. This expenditure will not occur until 2001 so we
have to transfer those dollars over so they should be included here if we're going to expend them in 2001.
We're not writing the check this year.
Scott Botcher: You could. If you can cover the funds. Does it matter?
Bruce DeJong: I don't think he can get delivery this year.
Scott Botcher: You don't have to have delivery though. I'm just trying to save us some money. Bruce and
I need to have this, just for a second. Does it matter to you at all? I mean it's not a huge deal.
Bruce DeJong: It doesn't matter to me.
Scott Botcher: Fine. But then those dollars then will be rolled into general fund balance, you understand
that?
Todd Hoffman: Correct.
Councilman Senn: Okay, so do we want to amend it?
Scott Botcher: Leave it in there then.
Councilman Senn: Okay. And that's an okay with everybody?
Mayor Mancino: Yes.
Councilwoman Jansen: Yes.
Councilman Labatt: Yes.
Councilman Senn: Okay, and then you have.
Bruce DeJong: So that is a yes. We're going to add $10,000 into.
Councilman Senn: Yeah. And that's it then off of that list then, those three items.
Mayor Mancino: That's it.
Councilman Labatt: Four.
Councilwoman Jansen: There were the tree plantings at 5. The new park sign at 4. And the picnic tables
at 4 were the other three items on the commission's list. Are we adding the last three?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Labatt: Yes. I mean it's in there...
Mayor Mancino: Yes. We all said yes. The only other point of discussion that I think we need to look at,
and obviously everybody feels comfortable with it but what about the public works expansion.
Councilman Senn: You're really a glutton for punishment.
Mayor Mancino: I know. Well we've changed that to $200,000 in 2005. Everybody comfortable with
that?
Scott Botcher: Our position is, staff's position is we are just going to have to make due as best we can
utilizing some of this space in the Lake Ann building and frankly looking at our debt service schedule and
the water treatment plant possibilities. Teresa, we're not going to have staff time. I mean it just makes
sense for a lot of different reasons, unless you're in the public works department. I mean I would defend
their right, or their need sorry. Not a right. Their need to have a facility because they need a facility.
Frankly last time, our previous public works director and Amcon, is it Amcon? Just did frankly a terrible
job in their needs assessment. It wasn't a needs assessment. It was horrible. Even we couldn't recommend
it. But then other issues came up, well it was. We had the debt study. We had the budget issues. We've
got the water treatment plant. We've got the library. We've got the Lake Ann Park building. Enough's
enough. I mean we're trying to maintain control here a little bit and that's why we pushed it off.
Councilman Senn: So if we do a motion now then essentially to adopt the CIP budget as submitted with the
following amendments, as indicated, and you've written those down now, then essentially we're all in the
same and that's the motion.
Councilwoman Jansen: Yep.
Scott Botcher: And the CIP is considered approved.
Councilman Senn: That's the motion.
Councilman Labatt: For the CIP?
Councilman Senn: Right.
Councilman Labatt: So I'll second that motion.
Mayor Mancino: All those in favor? Any other discussion?
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Labatt seconded that the City Council adopt the submitted
CIP as amended by the Council in their previous discussion. All voted in favor and the motion
carried unanimously.
Mayor Mancino: And if we can see a revised list for us to review to make sure that it's in sync with what
we just discussed, that'd be great.
Councilman Labatt: What about the 2001 budget? Did we already approve that then?
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Scott Botcher: No, we have to do that yet.
Mayor Mancino: We got the CIP. Okay, let's talk about levy. Because we've talked about budget.
Steve, any questions that you have on the levy?
Councilman Labatt: No. I think Bruce said it so eloquently last year or last week. That the taxpayers of
today need to pay for the services of today and go with the staff recommendation.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Craig.
Councilman Peterson: Well Bruce knows what I've been struggling with over the last couple weeks for
sure, and what I'm trying to sort through yet is surplus and how do we define surplus and applying that
towards the increase in the levy and I really need some help from fellow council members. Kind of walk
through that. Because if we truly have a surplus then I think it's, that should be applied to the levy. So
those are my preliminary comments I guess.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Further discussion. Linda.
Councilwoman Jansen: If we truly had a surplus I would be in absolute agreement. But unfortunately
through all of Bruce's hard work and Scott's hard work trying to pull together where we're at on these debt
service issues, we're looking and being advised by staff at needing to hoard, as using his term, as much
cash as possible. And I don't think they would have gone to all the difficulty that they've gone to to
demonstrate that to us if it wasn't a significant issue. So though we're looking at having that cash, we're
also hearing staff saying that they need to address defeasing debt and trying to look out to some of these
increasing debt service issues. The debt service went up by 40% just this.., the debt service is going to
continue to be a burden we need to address. One of the things that Bruce had said to us early on in our
discussions is that if there were, and there aren't right now, levy limits, we would still be able to levy this
year another million dollars. So we're below where a levy limit would be able, or enable us, or allow us to
levy to. We're looking at this year in the legislature a possibility of levy limits reoccurring. And if we've
locked ourselves in at so low of a revenue stream from our taxes that we can't address that escalating debt,
we're not out an option and that's one thing that I keep hearing Bruce say. I keep hearing Scott say is we
need to keep our options open. And they're not wanting to penalize our taxpayers any more than we do.
And I certainly heard everyone's concerns last week as they were telling us how it had impacted them to
have this 18% levy increase come across. Fortunately because of our growth some of that burden was you
know at least taken off of our current taxpayers by growth. We certainly want to address the expenses as
we go into next year but we all went through the budget, department by department, and there has been
prudent expenditure on the part of staff trying to not increase services. Not increase staff people. So it
seems like a conservative budget which is what would then allow us to be able to bring this levy down.
Would be one of the controllable so with everything that we're being presented, and there is still the
possibility of another tax compression happening. I just had been going through some of my old issues of
the AMM, the Association of Metropolitan Municipalities. The August issue was again addressing that we
could have another class rate compression. If the property taxes significantly changed in 2001, levy limits
will be in place depending on the amount of class rate compression, the city's tax capacity could decrease
and the relative portion of the total for each class could change. So immediately I go to remembering what
Bruce was saying as he worked through all those options on TIF. If this thing compresses on us again, our
problem has now increased again. So I'm looking at what staff has put together for us as somewhat
uncomfortable. I would just as soon be able to use some of the cash that's out there but I'm feeling
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
fortunate that it's there because now we can react and take care of some of these situations. And looking at
the revenues that have been projected in this year's budget that have been brought up significantly. That
have been brought up 40%.
Mayor Mancino: $700,000.
Councilwoman Jansen: Over to, well last year for permits, and I'm looking at the permit number because
that's always been our windfall number. Where the permits have come in over. We're right now sitting at
a million. Million 43 in permit revenue and Bruce has projected a million 113. So he's being aggressive
with the permit revenues so we can't anticipate that we're going to have this windfall coming in. So he's
been aggressive on revenue which he's been challenged to do in order to have this at least be a truer picture
for us. So looking at that I think it is a tight budget. It is, it's well crafted and definitely meticulously
thought through and Bruce, thank you. Much appreciated for all your hard work on it but I guess that's
where I stand. I'm supporting the budget as submitted by staff and I'm supporting the staff's
recommendation on the tax levy. And we have our work cut out for us.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Mark.
Councilman Senn: Over the last 8 years saw more and more funds created kind of just bordered on the
absurd. I think what we'd do? What we'd get to a point? We had a hundred and some funds I think.
Scott Botcher: 56.
Councilman Senn: Under our previous city manager or something. It was 100...
Bruce DeJong: ... all the debt service.
Councilman Senn: It's over 100. I understand but it's over 100. We had like 100 of these special little
funds and the slush funds or whatever. There were tremendous shell games played with each one of those
funds you know. If the council, I remember the time the council found the City Hall expansion fund and a
bunch of money sitting in it and then all of a sudden there wasn't any money in the City Hall expansion
fund anymore and now it got moved to a new facilities account. I mean that's just kind of been really
interesting to watch and put up with over 8 years. I'd really like to commend Scott and Bruce for coming
in and finally presenting you know essentially a full and honest picture to us as it relates to the funds. And
I applaud their efforts in getting those funds consolidated to get rid of all these special little funds. Bruce,
I've kind of been cranking numbers a little bit ad nauseum but essentially would like to kind of just run
through the scenario or some numbers with you. Okay, because I want to make sure I understand what
your, I guess I want to see if there's a hole here somewhere okay. You know essentially we started here
with this 11-27 document that you gave us here showing roughly $29 million cash balances the city. Okay.
Now, extracting from that okay, try to analyze and create at least a picture in my laymen's or lay person's
mind what really is or isn't there as far as surplus. Okay. What it started with was your general fund
balance of $5,265,965. Okay. And please disagree with any of these numbers if they're not correct. And I
then deducted from that as per our financial policy $2,700,000. Which is the amount in our financial
policy we say we should take out of that balance and hold essentially, okay. So that to me out of that
general fund left surplus funds of $1.9 million. Okay. Any disagreement so far?
Bruce DeJong: No. I want to throw out the caveat that quite honestly working through the audit, I finally
got the final audit adjustments from Tautges Redpath back in the middle of November so this is the first
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
run through really of the balance sheet in over a year. And I'm not sure that those numbers are entirely
accurate in that I may have journal entries where they're, you know the cash has been gone but there are off
setting liabilities you know that the payables haven't cleared for some reason. Particularly in the case of
the payroll clearing fund. I know that there shouldn't be any cash in there and so that's why I stamped
draft all over these projections because I'm extremely nervous about relying on those. I think I've
expressed that probably to a couple council members. It is the first run through and quite honestly I don't
know. I may have made some...
Councilman Senn: Okay, so let's come back and deal with this.
Bruce DeJong: ... put those journal entries in. I'm very nervous about that and I want to make sure that
you understand that.
Councilman Senn: I'm not making light of that. Let's come back to that, okay. And stuff. I mean
essentially what I was going from here is I mean your estimates had been about a $1.6 million reserve
which you recently upped about a few hundred thousand so I mean that tied out to me $1.9 million made
sense. Okay. And so just given what we know that was a number that I could carry out to the side and say
okay, I think we both understand that that's the debt excess okay, or surplus. Okay. Then I took the fire
relief fund of $327,457.60, which you've now consolidated into the general fund and funded out of the
budget effectively to what we have to fund at this current time and stuff. So essentially this $327,457.60 is
excess surplus funds. More or less not allocated or spoken for.
Mayor Mancino: I'd say not allocated. It's not allocated.
Councilman Senn: Not allocated. Not allocated. Not spoken for.
Scott Botcher: Minus the obligation you'll have to make because there's no levy for it.
Councilman Senn: No I understand but we've already, we've budgeted for that.
Councilwoman Jansen: You haven't shown it as an available.
Bruce DeJong: But that expenditure for this year's.
Councilman Senn: 107,000.
Bruce DeJong: Hasn't been made yet.
Councilman Senn: No I understand but that's in our budget unfunded there, okay. Alright.
Scott Botcher: But then you need to take the three some number and reduce it.
Bruce DeJong: Yeah, that's where I was coming from that $240,000.
Mayor Mancino: Because that's in the budget.
Scott Botcher: Because that's not yet been made out of that fund.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Senn: Alright. So I moved that number over to the side then. Okay. Then I took the
environmental protection fund, which was $562,656. okay. And there's nothing allocated essentially
against that or spoken for against that fund. Except yes. Except one thing, there was an $85,000 item
coming out of the 2001 budget. So that wasn't reflected in that number. So that should be deducted from
that number. Okay?
Bruce DeJong: Yeah.
Councilman Senn: And that was, by the way that was for three salaries.
Mayor Mancino: Or portions of.
Councilman Senn: Or portions of three salaries which surprised me a little bit because I thought we were
trying to take all the salaries and put them in the general fund or whatever but again, I don't want to get
hung up over that detail at this point. Let's just deal with the framework, okay.
Bruce DeJong: Yep.
Councilman Senn: Framing of the whole thing. Okay, then I went to the debt service fund. The debt
revolving fund. And we had $413,636 there. Okay. And again, unallocated, unspoken for so I moved that
over to this column, okay? Then I went to the capital projects fund. I went to the general capital facilities
account where there was $1,027,225.72 and that's unallocated and unspoken for so I again take that and
move that over into this column, okay. I then went to the vehicle and equipment fund. And there was
$427,826.55 there. And again that was unallocated, unspoken to so I moved that over into the excess fund.
Bruce DeJong: With the caveat that when.
Councilman Senn: When we pass the budget, I'll come back to that.
Bruce DeJong: Okay. But the assumption was at the beginning of the budget hearings that we would
combine that with the capital replacement fund. And that would fund this year's expenditures so there's a
deficit in fund 400 that needs to be filled, and this is kind of a complicated fund because we really made it
to maintain it as the internal service fund and we have to unwind those accounting transactions you know
with depreciation calculations that we were doing. Moving the fixed assets out of there and then move the
cash back in so there's much less available than the...
Councilman Senn: Yeah, I'll come back to hit that at the end. Right now I'm just trying to deal with
framing you know, as of this date, you know which is a date fixed in time, you know basically the first part
of December of 2000. Okay. Alright. Then I went to the trust and agency funds and went to historic
preservation and there was $3,266,360.89. Okay. And after taking the money out for defeasance, that left
$2,119,360.89.
Scott Botcher: Is that last year's defeasance or this year's?
Bruce DeJong: After taking out the money for last year's grant.
Councilman Senn: Grant, correct. Right. I'm sorry. Okay, grant. Yes. Okay. So I had $2,119,360.
Move that over. Okay. Then I had investment earnings, $2,375,211 and I moved that over.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Bruce DeJong: And that's another one of those that there has to be something wrong because that would
imply investment earnings of someplace around 10%.
Councilman Senn: I thought it came out about 7. Average.
Bruce DeJong: Well what you have to look at is the year end total cash. And project that because it
fluctuates during the course of the year. Our cash balance right now is really high because we just got
some tax dollars out.
Councilman Senn: Right, okay.
Councilwoman Jansen: And not to interrupt but when we went over that you also noted that the earnings
are split out to some restricted funds so even some of those numbers aren't available to just cash out.
Bruce DeJong: Yeah. That's been the practice to split those out at year end.
Councilman Senn: No I understand but let's just.
Bruce DeJong: ... straighten out, we'll do that on a quarterly basis.
Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. Because these aren't all available cash balances.
Councilman Senn: Let me just focus again on framing this so we can keep framing it and just do it, okay.
We'll come back to how you put a fudge factor in for that later. Okay so you have investment earnings
essentially of $2,375,000. You know granted you said you know, you're not real, real positive with that
number but that's the estimate that's in there that we've been working with. Okay. Then you have TIF
number 3. And you have essentially $150,000. That's $240 you know, basically. You know we had to
pay a portion back, right? And so there's 150 balance.
Todd Gerhardt: That's our money back from the excess TIF, paying it back to the county.
Councilman Senn: Yeah. Yeah. The excess. I'm just talking the excess okay, which is the 150. Okay.
So I moved that over. Okay. Now ifI take all of those numbers we just went over, and basically could be
put in that column, that's essentially $9,303,375. Okay? And remember now back up on the general fund
I took the 2 million 7 out. It was in our financial policy as a reserve to hold. So essentially you've got a
$9,303,000 number but if you include the excess or the reserve that we created under the financial policy
and the general fund, it's really $12 million. Which is essentially a number you and I have been bantering
about over 3 months now. Being roughly in that neighborhood. Okay. And we're in kind of agreement
that that was the neighborhood of the number but that you know, didn't have all the details of how getting
there so that's kind of what I went through the exercise of getting there. Okay. So now if we take that,
okay. And we say that, let's take the most conservative TIF approach assumptions you know that we
talked about, okay. Essentially taking those most conservative numbers. We had roughly around $3
million, just under $3,200,000. Essentially in terms of the dollars we needed to effectively, well let me
back up okay. Maybe we need to go through each TIF district independently .... lose everybody else. I'm
sorry. Maybe I shouldn't do that. Okay, TIF District 1. Option 1. Most conservative, okay. We had
essentially a gap needed to repay debt of $4,000,030. Okay. We identified general fund surplus of a
million 30 and we identified historic preservation fund surplus of $2,119,360 and we also talked about how
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
the new general fund tax revenue coming in in that first year beyond the district was a million dollars.
There's your $4,149,360 to cover that problem. So essentially if you take the $4 million 30 problem. If
you take those general fund surpluses of a million 30 and take the historic preservation fund surpluses and
the million that's going to come in District the last year for the first year out, that covers that problem in
District 1. Under your most conservative assumptions, correct?
Bruce DeJong: There is some difficulty because we're also using in Mark Ruffs projections of how we're
going to fund all of that GO and special assessment debt. There's an additional, there's a jump of a million
2 in the year 2004 when that district comes back on. That assumes that we'll use all of that increase in tax
revenue to fund some of these GO things and not towards the.
Councilman Senn: Which will continue at $1 million a year rate basically.
Bruce DeJong: Right.
Councilman Senn: Right.
Bruce DeJong: But all I'm saying is they can't use the same million and 2 to fund both GO debt and to
pay off our TIF debts.
Councilman Senn: The same million 2?
Scott Botcher: You count it twice. Is fiscal disparities part of that puzzle?
Todd Gerhardt: I think it's taken out.
Councilman Senn: No. 2004 I'm just using the million dollars. The other two numbers are coming out of
fund 101 and fund 800.
Bruce DeJong: Right. But the debt that Mark Ruff estimated us spending shows that in the year 2004,
that we're going to jump up our, yeah. In the year 2004 we're going to jump from a debt levy of a million
8. Okay, I guess it's actually about $950,000. Going from a debt levy of $1,802,000 up to $2,752,000 so
the assumption in putting together that number is that we're going to use those funds for our general levy
for pre-existing debt rather than putting it towards the TIF deficit. So there's still roughly a million dollar
gap.
Councilman Senn: That's left at that point.
Bruce DeJong: Yes.
Councilman Senn: Okay.
Mayor Mancino: So is that the $841,397 GO debt in 2003? And the 1.97 Are those the two numbers
you're adding?
Bruce DeJong: Yes. It doesn't show a total I don't think for what the improvement that is versus what's
the GO debt but there is only one GO issue and that's the park bond funds so whatever the difference is...
and the $2 million 752.
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Councilman Senn: Okay so by the numbers I was giving you though, then the worse case, forgetting about
that.
Mayor Mancino: You can also levy for it.
Councilman Senn: Yeah, I mean you can also levy for it but I mean let's not go with that scenario for the
moment. Let's, if you basically take essentially those numbers, that $3 million, roughly $3,150,000 or
whatever it is, okay. In terms of those coming out of Option 1 or coming out of those funds. The historic
and the general fund surplus, okay. And forget about the million of additional 2004 revenue, okay. But
now plug in the million dollar difference you were just talk about. Essentially that makes that total problem
then about well, essentially still $4 million then. Right? Okay. Alright. So if we take, now if we go back
to our $9 million 303, okay. And we deduct this $4 million problem from it, okay. Essentially that leaves
us a little over, well what? $5 million 3 or whatever, as far as what that $9.3 million excess or allocated
number is now $5.3 essentially. Okay. Are we in agreement on that?
Bruce DeJong: If I'm following you. I think that makes sense.
Councilman Senn: Alright. So essentially then, as you frame this out then, we have this $5 million 3.
Okay. Now if you take that $5 million 3 and essentially say okay, we have $1.1 million roughly of
increased levy you know proposed in this budget. Okay. That's now $4.4 million, okay? And even if one
would then provide a couple million dollars more of surplus return or relief or whatever you might want to
call it back to the taxpayers because it's their surplus they created in the first place, it still leaves you a
couple million dollar gap. Or not gap but a couple million dollar excess number sitting there, which
essentially comes around to some of the things we talked about like I'm not sure this number is super firm
or that. You know I wouldn't want to rely totally on that number etc, but $2 million is a pretty good
cushion. So under this framework then we've dealt with the TIF issue and the debt issue and we've
identified the excess or the surplus. Now just, all I'm saying is, help me break down that argument because
that's the number I come up with.
Bruce DeJong: Well the problem that I have is that there's, even beyond that there are other deficits that
we have not identified a method of funding. That exist today in those areas.
Councilman Senn: In the areas we went over or in other areas?
Bruce DeJong: In some of those other funds. You've got deficits there that you need to transfer available
funds from somewhere to plug those holes and to close those funds out. The operations or activities of
those funds have been in some cases long since cease to be around, but yet those deficits remain. And we
have to, so we have to offset those.
Councilman Senn: Just as we have other surpluses though and other funds though too in your $29 million
cash analysis. I mean yes...
Bruce DeJong: Yes. Yes, there are some other surpluses but those are dedicated monies. Those are not
available to be transferred to fund, you know to cover the deficits. And we have a significant deficit in the
McGlynn district that isn't included in TIF 1 in the downtown stuff. Basically what I've found out in the
last week is that...this year and we have no place to fund that from. That's identified anywhere. So it's
going to be a million dollar problem in that fund.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Councilman Senn: It's a new problem. That's a new problem in the last week?
Scott Botcher: Well part of it was promlegated by the grant response where they didn't play ball in the
McGlynn debt service.
Councilman Senn: That was the $400,000 reduction?
Scott Botcher: Part of it.
Bruce DeJong: That was the $464,000 from 1999 that we're not going to get funded, and it's another
$600,000 in 2000 that's not going to get funded.
Scott Botcher: So your 2 million cushion's just become 1 million with what you just said?
Bruce DeJong: With the existing deficit. Did you get a...
Scott Botcher: Look at this. Just waiting my turn.
Bruce DeJong: What is the deficit in the McGlynn?
Scott Botcher: McGlynn. I think it's at 251 as of December 31.
Bruce DeJong: So $251,604 and $464,000 so.
Todd Gerhardt: Then there's the possibility you're having to pay the $800,000.
Bruce DeJong: It brings it down to essentially no cushion... The McGlynn district that we've included in
there revenues of $712,000. But State Auditor has told us that we need to pay that back. That's what
we're contesting right now.
Councilman Senn: Okay, that's that ongoing argument.
Bruce DeJong: Yes.
Councilman Senn: Okay. But that's included in your $1.3 then, or not?
Bruce DeJong: No. That's not included. That deficit goes from you know 251 up to 970...
Councilman Senn: ... I thought it was 7 something was the top end.
Bruce DeJong: Well that's the $700,000 that's in dispute but what's not in dispute is that we have an
existing deficit of $251,000 in that fund without including that. If we have to pay it back, then we go up to
$960 some thousand deficit in that fund. And we don't have an identified funding source for.
Councilman Senn: So we've just eaten up the $2 million cushion? Okay.
Bruce DeJong: It's gone.
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Councilman Senn: But now we've already taken $2 million out for relief and $1.1 to keep the levy the
same, okay. So now, so essentially then let's just back out of the framework okay. So let's say now that
you don't provide additional relief of $2 million but you just take the $1.1 million out to leave the levy the
same. Now same thing. Tell me how do we make that $2 million disappear?
Scott Botcher: I'm confused. Back up. You said you had $2 million for relief, is that what you said?
Councilman Senn: Well Scott, when I started, yeah I deducted out the $1.1 million then I just took out
another $2 million and said let's set it aside for the moment.
Scott Botcher: Tell me again what the 1.1 is.
Councilman Senn: The 1.1 I backed out because that is the difference between, that is the additional levy
effectively being added on, or the 18% increase in levy. Tax levy increase. More or less keeping the tax
levy the same. Equalizing it. That was the 1.1.
Scott Botcher: So reducing the rate.
Councilman Senn: Yes. Okay. And then I took out an additional $2 million just for the moment and set it
aside and I just said well that was for relief or you know whatever. Okay. And stuff and got down to the
$2 million, you know the other $2 million which has now disappeared over our original discussion
essentially but now I still have the other $2 million that we took and set aside for possible rebate or relief or
whatever. So now can we make that disappear Bruce?
Bruce DeJong: Well you're talking about cash balances though. You're not talking about available fund
balances, and we're going to spend $10 million worth of cash in the next two months.
Councilman Senn: I understand that but I didn't touch that $29 million. All I did was pull out those funds
which we agreed were unallocated, unexcess, not programmed for expenditure .... pulled out, as we've
gone through this exercise.
Bruce DeJong: But they are programmed for expenditures through the CIP. I mean you're going to spend
money on capital facilities in the CIP and what you're saying is that there will be no cash balances
expended then in the CIP. It's all going to be new debt issued after we do, after we take care of our
problem.
Mayor Mancino: Yes and no. I mean all the streets and sanitary sewer and water all comes out from the
enterprise funds. And those cash balances.
Scott Botcher: No...
Mayor Mancino: Have you used any of that?
Councilman Senn: Plus a lot of those capital outlay numbers are also included in your general fund and
budget which we're fully funding. Already are fully funded. I mean that happens by just simply levying
the existing levy. So I mean it's not an issue that I'm creating unfunded. I mean that's funded. It's funded
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
because you're going to send the tax bills out regardless of the same level this year as last year so then
you're funded.
Scott Botcher: Except to the extent that I'm not.
Bruce DeJong: Well, but we create a problem the following year because we haven't reduced any
expenditures so then we have to increase whatever the inflationary increase is, plus the additional $1.1
million.
Councilman Senn: I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just, all I'm trying to, well but Bruce.
Councilwoman Jansen: We're just delaying the inevitable.
Councilman Senn: You're not delaying the inevitable. What you're doing is, you've created a surplus
from taxpayers who have been paying taxes, okay. And if you give them back part of that surplus and say,
don't worry. Next year we're going to go back to the normal, at least they've gotten something back. Is it
better to tax them more this year and next year when you don't really need the money? I have a hard time
following that logic.
Councilwoman Jansen: But those dollars are going to debt that it probably should.
Councilman Senn: Not they're not Linda. There's no debt...
Councilwoman Jansen: That it should have been paying for, which has now accumulated because we
haven't been fully levying and we haven't been paying for our operating expenses out of the operation
budget that have been being paid for out of these other funds and now we're bringing them back in and yes,
in order to bring them in and pay for them, today's taxpayers end up with that increase coming in. I am not
willing to open up these numbers like this after our experts have gone through them and presented as
prudent a plan as possible. Just sitting here tonight and listening to you know Bruce explaining some of the
pitfalls that we still have to face. A year ago I never would have imagined that we'd be sitting here tonight
even facing that debt situation. We knew and Bruce was telling us and Scott that they needed to get their
arms around it. They've put the hard work in. They've brought through to us a recommendation after
countless hours. I mean I can't even imagine the time that they've spent going through these numbers, and
I have a problem now sitting here and tossing all of this out and saying that we have a better solution. I
don't feel confident that we can come up ourselves with a better solution than staff and our experts that we
have seen work with all of our finance advisors. And we know the back-up that these gentlemen have and
the experts that they have to rely on to come up with these recommendations and I'm certainly not
comfortable now tossing around these cash numbers as if they're actually available when they may not be.
Councilman Peterson: I think the real question is, and I think the question that I asked you last week Bruce
was, we do have unallocated dollars.
Bruce DeJong: Yes, absolutely.
Councilman Peterson: So the question is how much do we need? And that was a tough one for you to
answer. And do we need $5 million? Do we need just the $2.7? Do we need somewhere inbetween? And
that's what I'm struggling with is how much we need.
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Scott Botcher: And you know the problem is, and this city as much, I can't even imagine. I mean
sometimes we sit around here and Bruce and I will spend hours on the marker board and we just wonder
what, pardon my French, what the hell was going on around here. Because we just, and then we go to
Houlihan's on Guinness night and have Newcastle's because that's the only way we can figure it out but,
it's just, the future is so unknown and you look at our debt study and you look at the stuff that, and Bruce
was talking about you know, his cash balances that he's trying to get figured out. We move into these
things with trepidation because we've been absolutely amazed at times at some of the stuff we found. It
blows me away. You pull open the gaffer, page 11. Our net bonded debt from '97 to '98, one single year
nearly quintupled. It just blows me away. You know and you go to the comments, and I don't want to
make this endorsement because I don't always buy the comment but today's citizens pays for today's
services. I don't think it's as clean as that, but quite frankly today's citizens are now having to pay for
these services, these debts that frankly in the past they didn't have to. I mean the City went out there in
'97-'98, and in '99 to some extent, and they were not levied for what shows in the gaffer. They were not.
Simply were not and unfortunately we're paying for the sins of the father at this point. We need to make
sure, because $2 million isn't a lot of cash for an organization this size. It simply is not. It's a lot to me. I
like it when my wife hands me a 10 dollar bill. But 2 million bucks for us is not that much cash because
we have so many unknowns out there and I would much rather be prudent with our taxpayers, given all the
other things that are out there. We know rate compression is going to happen. It's probably going to
happen more than once. It will probably happen 4 times between now and 2005. You can pretty much
bank on it. As long as Ron gets re-elected and run unopposed and people in Minnetonka keep voting for
him, he's going to be there. And he's going to push rate compression every single time. It's going to
happen. Bank on it. We are going to have to fight that battle until that downtown district is closed. Bank
on it. It will happen. We've got McGlynn issues. You know we've covered some debt and we ran the debt
service series today on the marker board. We've covered that debt service out of other funds because
we've had to. We've got to pay those back and I just frankly think, and I don't like, I mean God knows I'm
the one who is as cheap as anybody around here but dang it. I'm looking at this thing and I'm looking at
the absence of the levy. I'm looking at my tax bill. And maybe that's how I do it. I don't like to pay more
but my tax bill's going up 5%. I said that last time. If my tax bill goes up 5% and I have a better feel that
the City of Chanhassen is finally getting it's crap together, I'm okay with that. I'll pay 5% for that.
Because I'd rather pay 5% today then have the City come back to me the next 2 years and say oh, we gave
it all back to you but we need it back today. And I would just rather have it today, and this is purely
organizational, cash in hand today for the benefit of all the taxpayers that have to fight with them to get it
back over the next 2 years. If we have to do that, and I think that's a very real possibility if we go too far
into these cash balances. I mean this is just, the gaffer is clear. The gaffer is extremely clear. Percent of
market value. I mean these numbers are just astounding. We have not, as an organization, levied
responsibly for these numbers. We haven't even gotten close to it. And I'm sorry, it's time. We've got to,
we unfortunately have to pay our bills. We have to pay our bills. I'm not going to argue with, the debt
service is one thing. Bond indebtedness is another. We can play all sorts of games with the stats on this
thing, but it's prudent for us to hang on to that cash. It simply is.
Councilman Peterson: What's enough? I mean have you in your mind decided what's enough?
Scott Botcher: I think that's enough is what's in the recommended budget. I think we need, because we
have so many unknowns and I think that some of the numbers that Mark pulled out, especially in the
environmental funds, I'm not sure they're as unrestricted. Part of the problem is that when we set up
funds, and I know Mark said this before and he's right. We just sort of created funds. We never really
went through the process of having enabling legislation identified what they were for. State statute governs
in some cases. Gap governs in some cases. So I mean we could be doing that for hours. Trying to
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delineate which dollars are actually unencumbered and which dollars are not. But just looking at these
numbers, I think we need to, I mean last year we gave some back. We did. We used some fund balance for
tax levy reduction last year. We did. This year we have a better picture of what's going on and our
recommendation is that we don't do it. I'd rather be able to pay my bills. I'd rather be able to go to
Moody's and Standard and Poors and say look at our cash balances. Give us a bond rating upgrade. Our
cash balances are a big reason that we got our bond rating upgraded. It's certainly not our debt service
schedule. They know what it is. You know we sat there and said, we are going to hoard cash. Straight out
to them. We're going to hoard cash. We're going to take care of our bills and we're going to try to
straighten out these funds. That was basically our three prong approach. That and we talked really nice to
them.
Mayor Mancino: But so far what you've really told us about debt concerns that you have is with tax, wait.
Just a minute. Is with tax increment. I mean when you talk about levying, we've been levying the right
amount. That has nothing to do with our tax increment and where we're having our problems now.
Scott Botcher: It's your turn to swipe at it. I don't believe that to be true. We have not.
Mayor Mancino: Bruce. Bruce, answer that.
Bruce DeJong: We have not levied in those debt service funds adequately because we've got some GO and
special assessment debt service funds that are in deficit. That situation should not happen were we
following a bond resolutions that we passed.
Mayor Mancino: And we have a surplus built up in the general fund to pay for that debt. I mean all the
time that we didn't levy, we do have a surplus sitting there that can go back and pay for that debt that
wasn't levied. Correct Bruce?
Bruce DeJong: Yeah. There is some surplus there. I mean quite honestly, I've not been able to do an
analysis to show you, you know to hand you a piece of paper that says, you know, the general fund surplus
will cover all of those deficits in those GO and special assessment debt service funds. I don't know what
that is as I sit here today. And that's the problem you know. We've had such a difficult time getting our
arms wrapped around it. Just the TIF issue and god knows it's difficult because our defeasance amount
went from $3.6 million last week to $4.6 million. And I guess it just doesn't seem very prudent to me to
use a lot of our cash in this manner without really knowing and I think we'll be more comfortable next
year. I'm probably comfortable with using some cash to reduce the levy. I wouldn't reduce any of those
debt service levies that we've got in there. You know we haven't had much discussion about it, but I don't
think that there's any unanimous or real consensus on the council to whack the Southwestern Metro Transit
levy you know. We're to the point where we're kind of levying, we're pretty much levying the same thing
as the other participants in that. So that leaves your general fund levy and if you want to reduce that, you
know maybe it's a progression kind of thing. If you want to reduce the levy, you know we were at
$367,000 last year. Maybe do half of that. But certainly don't spend all of your available or you know a
large percentage of your available cash balance because you do have to levy again for it at some point in
the future. When those surpluses are gone, if they're gone you can't do that and then you've got a double
whammy. Not only the increase in your operations but also the amount that you didn't levy the previous
year.
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Scott Botcher: And last year we retired nearly $9 million worth of debt. A lot of it was scheduled. Some
was defeased. Some was pre-paid. We called it probably a little, a lot of our debt doesn't have a very
strong call feature in it. We just, this city has never really done that.
Mayor Mancino: Let me just ask this philosophically. Excuse me, I need some water. Do we have any
more water? Thanks. On our TIF debt, our tax increment debt, because that's where we have so much of
it and where we're fighting with the rate compression, etc. Conceptually or philosophically I'd like to see
not residents pay for the TIF debt. I know. I know. Take that off of the backs of the residential taxpayers
and is there a way to, even though the TIF district is decertified and that money comes into the general fund
and we refinance that debt to have it paid for by the businesses that got the business subsidy?
Scott Botcher: I don't know how you do that. I mean.
Councilman Senn: I don't think we can do special districts...
Mayor Mancino: Can't we?
Councilman Senn: I don't know, Roger can we do special taxing districts?
Roger Knutson: Yes you can but it has nothing to do with what you're talking about. You can set up
special taxing districts. You have to petition the property owners to do special services...
Scott Botcher: Oh they'll be right in, yeah. I think, I mean we can try to make the delineation between the
TIF debt and the non-TIF debt. The reality is, we're on the hook for it.
Mayor Mancino: I know.
Scott Botcher: And we don't have a lot of opportunities outside of the grant and we try to use the liquidity
as a tool and Mark, we've talked about. You know that. Try to use liquidity to leverage as much cash as
we can out of the state and other sources. But if we don't have the cash in the future for unknown things
that quite frankly we have to be realistic. The State's going to do stuff to us and we have to be ready for it.
And sometimes they give us opportunities, like the grant fund. I mean liquidity in our case, given the lack
of financial stability, and that sounds negative. I don't want to make it sound negative because it's not like
we're on the brink of disaster here. But we're trying to pull together our financial puzzle and liquidity,
especially to the tune of a couple million bucks, again in an organization this size to me is appropriate.
That's my opinion.
Todd Gerhardt: Bruce, in 2005, won't there be a tax decrease then? Won't we have most of that debt
taken off?
Scott Botcher: Yeah, once you get past 2004, the picture changes but again, yeah. Absolutely.
Todd Gerhardt: ... and to answer Nancy's question, in 2005 is when people are going to get, see the impact
of what the industrial, commercial has done.
Councilman Peterson: If they can afford to pay their taxes between now and then.
Mayor Mancino: If you haven't taxed them out.
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Councilwoman Jansen: I'd like to propose a motion to adopt the budget for 2001 and certify the final tax
levies for 2000, collectible in 2001 per the staff recommendation.
Mayor Mancino: Is there a second?
Councilman Labatt: Second.
Councilwoman Jansen moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to adopt the budget for 2001 and certify
the final tax levies for 2000, collectible in 2001 per the staff recommendation. Councilwoman Jansen
and Councilman Labatt voted in favor. Mayor Mancino, Councilman Senn and Councilman Peterson
voted in opposition. The motion failed with a vote of 2 to 3.
Councilman Peterson: You know I'm not necessarily ready to make a decision tonight. You know I think
we tossed around numbers and I got a headache when you were walking through them. I stopped copying
them down. I just, whether or not, we need to spend more time with Bruce. It all goes back to, there are
unallocated funds and what I'm hearing tonight is we're assuming the absolute worst in every scenario.
The odds of it going across the board being the negative of whatever the State does to us. Whatever
McGlynn does to us, you add these up, you know probability says you're not going to have a negative on
all of those. So then the worst case scenario, and it goes back to my earlier question. How much cash is
enough? And I think my sense is we've got enough not to raise the levy 18% and still have the comfort
across the board. And what I heard tonight hasn't convinced me otherwise.
Councilman Labatt: What do you need to hear then Craig to convince you? The professional staffs our
experts.
Councilman Peterson: It goes back to, you know is $10 million too much, is enough cash to use that to
apply to the levy. You know and are we taking a pessimistic view of what's going to happen in the future
at the cost of today's taxpayer?
Councilwoman Jansen: I guess what we've all heard however is that the picture keeps getting bleaker and
bleaker, or those of us who have to live with this as we go into next year, we would certainly want to be
sitting here and being just as dam conservative as we could be because you know, we're feeling this as
well. But every time something else has come along, it's been negative. And Bruce has tried to give us the
down side to these things and as we're kicking cash numbers around, keep in mind, yeah. Bruce did reflect
us this $5 million. Well, you start hearing other cash numbers and you're hearing Bruce say he's only just
gotten the final audit. You know I don't see us sitting here next year rolling in cash and unable to find one
of these problems to be able to address. And we're questioning the experts as they've been digging into
these numbers and it's a rather conservative proposal which fortunately, yeah 18% sounds like a lot, but a
lot of that was picked up with the additional growth. And it's balancing our budget. It balances the
budget. It's not as if we're looking to put cash in the coffers because Bruce has now raised our revenue
projection to the point that quite frankly, if we were going to sit here and pull it apart, I think it's a little
aggressive to be using that number. It should be maybe $200,000 less. Well so now if we're talking about
bringing the levy down, okay. Well what about if we miss that revenue projection? We're now not
covering it. I think we can be good fiscal stewards next year by starting from the beginning of the year
trying to address with staff an incentive program to go after some of the cost. Look at some of the possible
savings we can procure out of the budgets but we haven't done that.
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Councilman Peterson: So when do we start giving it back the unallocated funds? When does that happen?
Do we wait until 2004 when all the potential negatives are gone? When do we start doing it?
Councilwoman Jansen: We have the potential of those unallocated funds being gone very quickly as we're
trying to address the problems over the next couple years so.
Councilman Peterson: We just added it up and again, numbers are squishy but we took the worst case
scenario and applied those and we still had monies left for unknown things, so how many unknown things
do we prognosticate?
Councilwoman Jansen: When you say we, you're referring to Councilman Senn walking through numbers
that I don't follow. I'm following.
Councilman Peterson: I'm not agreeing with that but I'm saying.
Councilwoman Jansen: I'm following the numbers that Bruce has put together because those, he's the one
who's closest to the finance numbers. He lives with these every day. He's probably dreaming these
numbers unfortunately. I have to put my trust there and it makes me very nervous for us as rookies if you
would, laymen, to be trying to pull these cash numbers out and about when, and you heard Bruce and Scott
both say, it's been surprises, unanticipated things.
Mayor Mancino: Mark, are you a rookie after all these years?
Scott Botcher: Craig, I guess the only thing I'd say is, and I don't disagree, you know and I was the one
last year who applied fund balance to it so I'm comfortable with it but I guess what I'm saying is, we do
live with it every day and there are just things out there we don't know and quite frankly, you know I guess
I could make the argument saying that when these tax increment districts were set up, or when these bond
schedules were put together, city took, I'm assuming here. I'm taking a leap of faith. They made what
they thought were conservative projections and then they put together the revenue streams for the tax
increment districts. And in some cases.
Councilman Senn: Not true but go ahead.
Scott Botcher: Well, but the council had the ultimate obligation to do so. They did not and in fact they
turned out far worse than anyone ever could have imagined. And so I guess, and it is without question a
conservative bent but I don't want to have to, and again a personal antidotal test, come up to my neighbors
next year and say oh by the way, in addition to using up fund balances that we might otherwise use, or
have, our building permit revenue stream plummeted, and it's short. And we're going to need to increase
your taxes by X. But isn't that great you got it back last year. That argument doesn't wash that well. And
I mean I think part of the test is...I think we've done as good a job as we can because frankly I know the
phone for Bruce and I has been ringing from citizens calling us. They want to know what's going on.
Melissa's tried to put her arms around a really complicated issue and I've spent time with people who are
convinced that (a), we're going bankrupt. And we explain to them what really is and what really isn't. Just
look at the seats. I think that people understand our situation maybe more than sometimes we give them
credit for. Personal opinion and maybe I'm being naive, but I think they understand that things were a little
messy. That there are unknowns out there and that, I know Nancy and I had this discussion. I don't think
people should assume that the fund balances there are strictly from advoloran tax revenue sources because
they're not. And to assume otherwise I think is incorrect, and certainly an argument can be made that if
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we're going to return them to people, you could make the argument and I'm not making it here, that there
are a lot of folks beyond advoloran property taxpayers in the City of Chanhassen who have generated that
fund balance. So there's all sorts of different ways to do this.
Councilman Peterson: Yeah, you can spin it.
Scott Botcher: Any way you want.
Councilman Peterson: Yeah. My head is spinning right now so what, do we have, do we have to make this
decision tonight?
Scott Botcher: I'm going on vacation. I'm kidding you.
Mayor Mancino: When's the date we have to make the decision by Todd? If we want to spend some time?
Is it the 28th of December?
Scott Botcher: No, it's 6 working days after the 20th. Something goofy like that. I've just been saying
Christmas.
Todd Gerhardt: The 27th. In there. Not including Saturday and Sunday is part of that.
Scott Botcher: And the holiday. Monday is Christmas.
Councilman Peterson: Can we move it to the meeting on the?
Bruce DeJong: One or more days after the public hearing, but no later than December 27th, cities must
adopt their final payable 2001 property tax levies and payable 2001 budgets.
Scott Botcher: That's adoption to us.
Mayor Mancino: So we're, and we're meeting on the 27th?
Todd Gerhardt: Potentially.
Mayor Mancino: At 5:30.
Todd Gerhardt: Are you talking about the TIF modification meeting?
Bruce DeJong: Yeah, we've got a public hearing scheduled.
Scott Botcher: You're also going to be in closed session on the 18th. I mean again, I'd rather have more
time than less to get our paperwork done and get it to the county. I mean no offense. Don't really
appreciate the 27th. I want to get my work done as well but if it has to be, it has to be I guess. It's out of
my hands.
Councilwoman Jansen: This was one of the concerns and why you know, we encouraged that there needed
to be a lot of footwork up front in order to address the numbers. And you know further conversation with
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Bruce and Scott, I hope what you're going to hear is that the experts are pretty firm on the recommendation
that they' re making.
Councilman Peterson: Well even Bruce tonight has offered up a few hundred thousand as being plausible
SO.
Councilwoman Jansen: So let's go back and let's address that revenue number. You know it could be too
aggressive because I mean there's.
Councilman Peterson: Then why would he have put it in there? So I mean it goes back to, I'm looking, if
you believe part of his numbers, you've got to believe in all of his numbers.
Councilwoman Jansen: I guess that's where I'm putting the trust in all of the numbers because he's gone
out and been aggressive in that revenue number so that, and otherwise he would have had to have increased
the levy even further in order to cover whatever he wasn't going to put in that permit number.
Councilman Peterson: Or you use the unallocated funds.
Councilwoman Jansen: Not if you're going to balance the budget, which is what we're trying to do.
Councilman Peterson: You're using whatever funds you can. It goes back to, no different than the State of
Minnesota. It's very similar to that and they may not have used all those funds, so they're providing a
surplus back. I'm not pretending to do that tonight but.
Scott Botcher: Frankly though, and this is going to be really cynical but it's, I'll speak the truth anyway.
If we're sitting here wasting 2 weeks over a couple hundred thousand dollars, throw a couple hundred
thousands dollars in and call it a day. I mean god dang it folks. I'm sorry. It's not worth our time.
Mayor Mancino: Scott, I don't think it's wasting it. I think it's taking what we've heard tonight. Looking
at those numbers and coming back and really feeling comfortable.
Scott Botcher: I guess I'm responding to you know, Craig's comment. If that's what we're going to come
down to, then.
Councilman Peterson: All I commented was what Bruce was being offered tonight.
Scott Botcher: Yes, and I recognize that.
Councilwoman Jansen: Well I won't vote for a deficit budget. Again, just so it's on the table.
Scott Botcher: Understand though, and I do want to be fair, because I don't want to debate this, but
utilization of fund balances as a revenue source is not a deficit budget. Never has been. Never will be.
And so it is a tool. I'm not recommending we use it. Be very clear.
Councilwoman Jansen: I won't vote for anything where our operating revenue doesn't cover our operating
expenses. Cut it however you want to cut it.
Scott Botcher: I just want to make sure that, you know you make the correct statement.
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Councilman Peterson: So what do you do with those balances? You never, ever use them then?
Councilwoman Jansen: Oh they're not just going to sit in our scenario, we're not in a normal scenario.
Yeah, if we were in a healthy situation, absolutely. If we were sitting in a healthy situation without all of
these pending situations where our finance direction continues to say we need to hoard cash because our
situation right now keeps getting worst. We're looking at a legislature that's being projected to put levy
limits on and doing tax compression. Yet those are all things that we can sit here right now and hope for
the best but these are our taxpayers.
Scott Botcher: So, just so I understand from a staff perspective. Whatever date we pick, what do we need
to provide for the council?
Councilman Labatt: Nothing for me. I've got everything I need.
Scott Botcher: I mean because I just would like to know because we want to get our work done.
Councilman Peterson: Yeah I mean I'd like to see those worst case scenarios. You know if McGlynn goes
south. If this goes south and see the worst case scenarios to how you'd spend the surplus that we have.
The unallocated dollars. I'll use that vernacular.
Scott Botcher: So we'll need to run what we believe are the unallocated dollars? Okay.
Mayor Mancino: So when would you like to, when can we meet back again? Can we do that on the 27th,
during that meeting?
Councilman Peterson: Well can we do it on the 18th?
Mayor Mancino: Or on the 18th. Does that give you enough time Scott?
Scott Botcher: When do you want to do it?
Mayor Mancino: Can you do it on the 18th after we've had our closed session?
Bruce DeJong: Yeah.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. And do we have enough time to post it, etc legally?
Scott Botcher: Well we've got to post a closed session anyway so... Is that going to work?
Bruce DeJong: Yeah, I think we can get some.., numbers by the time.., and find out what those negatives
are. I think what makes us all nervous from the staff side is the surprises for the last year and a half, really
none of them have been positive. And it does color your perception that we, we keep finding more negative
things out and they're always six figure negative things.
Mayor Mancino: Well that has to stop at some point.
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City Council Meeting - December 11, 2000
Scott Botcher: Well we get to the point though, and Mark's right and I'll use Mark's quote because then I
can say I cited him as a source but the shell game. I mean people do that. They don't do that for positive
cash flow reasons. They do it for negative. For bad. To quote, to cover bad stuff. And Bruce is right. I
mean we were brought in and handed sort of the gaffer, well I was brought in here and handed the, I wasn't
even handed the damn gaffer. Say well the budget's in here somewhere, get it from Pam. She's gone.
Couldn't get a cash balance out of Pam. Was fortunate enough to go steal Bruce away from Dave Childs
and I just, I told him, I don't know what the hell we have here. Couldn't tell him and we continued to find
these things and I'm, the problem is, it will be a piece of cake honestly Craig to show how that whole cash
balance will be gone.
Councilman Peterson: Well I hope it is.
Scott Botcher: Whether or not you all choose to believe it or not is entirely up to you. You know we can,
you know we can make numbers do whatever you want them to do. We can.
Councilman Peterson: Well I don't want you to say it that way. I want you to give me a reasonable
estimate.
Scott Botcher: Oh yeah, I understand but we can do that. But we've tried really hard to give you what we
think is in the best interest of the organization and so we'll try to get you those numbers but that's why
people do shell games because things aren't good because the surprises are there, and let's be honest. We
did have over 100 funds. There are surprises we haven't found yet. I guarantee that.
Councilman Labatt: How many of those surprises were you guys able to foresee? I mean all these
unforeseen surprises coming up, all six figures.
Scott Botcher: I don't know. You know, you don't know.
Councilman Labatt: ... who knows? Either when you run out of money or...
Scott Botcher: I think by the time we get to 2004.
Mayor Mancino: It's your tax increment.
Scott Botcher: Yeah, a lot of it is. Some of it's just not, you know not doing 105% of debt service levy
like you're supposed to. Some of it involves relationship with the county. I mean there's still that question,
does Carver County have the obligation to levy what we've given them if we haven't really officially
rescinded our levy. I'm not here to get into...with Carver County but that's still a question. We're going
to continue to have battles with the State Auditor. I mean if you think the State Auditor is not going to
come in here and audit us, and give us a proctol like you've never seen and find, I mean if you think she's
not going to come in and say oh by the way, you owe me more money. We're all naive because it's going
to happen. It will absolutely happen. We need to have the resources to deal with that. And I can't tell you
how much it is. And how much that is.
Mayor Mancino: That's true. You make it public. You tell the taxpayer and they understand why.
Scott Botcher: Except then.
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Mayor Mancino: I'm not going to say they're going to like it.
Scott Botcher: No. No, I understand but we just, from our point of view, it's nicer and easier for us to do
our job if we have those resources. You guys have to decide how much is appropriate.
Councilwoman Jansen: And if levy limits are in place again, our options are then restricted.
Councilman Peterson: I motion to table until the 18th.
Scott Botcher: What time do you want? Can you do 4:30?
Councilman Peterson: For that I would.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, is there a second?
Councilman Labatt: I'll have to make it obviously to break the tie.
Mayor Mancino: Is there a second to the motion?
Councilman Senn: Sure.
Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Senn seconded to reconvene the City Council meeting on
Monday, December 18, 2000 at 4:30 p.m.. All voted in favor, except Councilman Labatt and
Councilwoman Jansen who opposed, and the motion carried 3 to 2.
Submitted by Scott Botcher
City Manager
Prepared by Nann Opheim
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