Council debates road plans, beekeeping

A number of tie breaker votes came up at the Fairmont City Council meeting on Monday as the council discussed agenda items old and new. One of the first items discussed was the five year street reconstruction plan and associated sale of general obligation bonds.

Jessica Green with Northland Securities, the city’s financial advisor, said that a public hearing was associated with the five year reconstruction plan because of the sale of bonds.

“The city typically issues street improvement bonds, versus street reconstruction bonds,” Green explained. “The big difference… is assessments.”

She said that the bonds would be issued this year to cover project costs the city has already incurred in 2023 and 2024 and also borrow for street projects moving forward to 2025 and 2026.

Finally, Green said that staff has worked to identify potential projects that could be borrowed for over the next four years and that there’s about $20 million total but that the city is only planning on issuing $9 million this year, a third of which will be covered under street improvement bonds. The other two thirds will go under street reconstruction bonds.

After the public hearing closed, Council Member Britney Kawecki made a motion to add several amendments to the road reconstruction plan.

“I feel like our road reconstruction plan needs to be discussed… this is a five year plan and we have $20 million… and Mr. (Matt) York (Public Works Director) had stated at the one meeting, that $36 million was needed to fix all of our important roads and now we’re discussing $20 million. That’s a big chunk,” Kawecki said.

She said she believes an owner’s representative is needed on the project so it’s not over-designed or under-designed and that everything is being done in a cost-effective manner.

“Roads seem to be the most important thing to all the residents of Fairmont,” Kawecki said.

Her three amendments included to hire an owner’s representative, to go out for an RFP (Request For Proposal) for an engineer to complete the design and to be able to amend the street plan by the owner’s rep or engineer at any time.

Council member Jay Maynard said he thought that talking about engineering and RFPs was premature because the council only needed to adopt an overall plan.

“If these streets are what we think needs to be done… then we need to vote yes and move on,” Maynard said.

When asked by Council Member Wayne Hasek, York said in his experience he has never heard of using an owner’s representative for a street project.

York added that in-house staff works on some of the road designs but some larger streets will go out for RFPs. He also said that a lot of communities do just one or two street projects in a year, not a large number like Fairmont does in some years so it is also dependent on staff time.

“There’s a lot of ways to do it. Are any of them right or wrong, it’s just the way that it is. Sometimes if you have four projects you have four engineering firms work with you and give them each a project. There’s different ways to do it but owner’s rep and construction manager, those are usually done in-house,” York said.

He added that RFPs are for the design of the project and all of Fairmont’s are bid out.

“I think sometimes we get confused that the design is RFP or RFQ (Request For Quote) and that road projects will always be a bid process,” York said.

The motion received no second vote and it failed. Maynard made a motion to approve the street reconstruction plan as presented and it passed 3-1 with Kawecki opposed. In a unanimous vote, a municipal advisory service agreement with Northland Securities and a resolution providing for the sale of general obligation bonds passed.

Moving to other matters, the council considered amending Fairmont City Code, Chapter 4- Animals. The item was previously discussed by council twice in the past few months after a resident questioned why there wasn’t an ordinance pertaining specifically to beekeeping.

At the start of the meeting, Kawecki had asked for the agenda item to be removed entirely because she said at its last discussion the council had not called for any further action to be taken.

However, on Monday City Attorney Cara Brown with Flaherty and Hood said that it was her duty to let staff know when there is a risk with ordinances and while extensive changes weren’t needed, she said there were risks with allowing beekeeping without any regulations in the city.

“…without any limitations on quantity or how close it is to a daycare or any kind of residence so we wanted to recommend having bare minimum regulations for that purpose as well as clarifying to make sure that beekeeping is actually allowed. The current language… is ambiguous,” Brown said.

Council Member Randy Lubenow questioned why those concerns weren’t brought up in previous conversations. City Administrator Matt Skaret said at the time of the conversation there was some talk about putting in some stipulations and although the council decided to move forward without them, more research was done afterward.

“We are working on our ordinances and subdivisions and this would have been taken care of at that time so I feel that this is basically going against council’s action,” Kawecki said.

She said if the attorney felt like it should be reviewed it should have come to the council again first.

Maynard said, “I have no problem at all with city staff, who are the expert we hire to deal with these kinds of things, when they realize that council might need to do something different, that they take the initiative to figure out what the best course of action is and bring it to council. That’s what we pay them for.”

Council Member Randy Lubenow said he was concerned that staff might not have time to check in on this new ordinance and make sure people are in compliance with it.

Maynard made a motion to approve of the first consideration of amending the ordinance. It received two votes for it and two votes against it. Casting the tie breaker vote, Mayor Lee Baarts voted yes and the motion passed. It will come back for a second reading at a later date.

In other business:

— The council approved a grant amendment the MnDOT grant agreement regarding the hangar taxi lanes and aprons project.

— The council approved a new policy for the installation of new streetlights.

— The council, after discussion, approved a revision on the personnel policy on employee development: tuition reimbursement which increased it from $1,500 per year to $2,500 a year.