Winona, Minnesota

It is 6.30 p.m. and I call this meeting to order. Please stand and we will recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the Lord, the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, for the nation of God, the indivisible, for liberty and justice for all. Good evening, everyone. We've got a packed house because we've got some state championships that we've got to recognize tonight, which I love. Before I get into that, I do want to quick make a comment or a notice about an upcoming event at the library. On June 27th, we will have Patty Wetterling, who is a children's safety advocate, mother of Jacob Wetterling, if you're old enough to remember. She will be speaking at the Winona Library on June 27th, so look out for that. Now, a couple here. We're going to start with Winona State and Devin. At this time, I would like to recognize and congratulate Winona Senior High School senior, Devin Filson, for his achievements in the Class 2A State Track and Field Championships, held June 5th and 6th. This is the third year I have the honor of recognizing De vin for his success at the state meet. This year, Devin succeeded in obtaining four state championship titles in the 100, the 400, discus throw, and shot put wheelchair events. In total, Devin finished his career with 20 state medals, including 14 gold, and currently holds the state record in shot put and discus . On behalf of the entire city of Winona and the city council members, we extend our congratulations on your multiple track and field achievements. Devin, I'll meet you up front here, and we'll take a few photos quick. Thank you. Thank you. We should recognize you. Wait, hold on. Wait, hold on. Wait, hold on. Wait, hold on. Wait, hold on. Wait, hold on. Wait, hold on. Wait, hold on. All right, there's one more. No, two, I'm not sure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. Now, the only reason I chose Winona State first, or Winona High School first, is because there are so many Cotter athletes here tonight that we have to recognize. So, which is great. Awesome. All right, next I would like to recognize the combined Cot ter and Hope Lutheran Boys Track and Field Team. After I read through my comments, I will invite the team forward to be recognized. On June 5th, the Cotter Hope Lutheran Boys Track and Field Team won the Class 1A Minnesota State High School League Championship with 92 points. They outscored the second place team by 30 points and achieved three event championship titles. The team earned points in eight of the 25 track and field events. Eric Semling, Kellen Groth, Ryan Littlefield swept the top of the podium with first, second, and third place in the 3, 200-meter run. Zephyr Paulson placed ninth in the pole vault. Ezra Burrows placed second in the 200-meter dash. Brayden Nowakowski took third in the 400-meter dash. Kellen Groth placed second. And Ryan Littlefield placed fifth in the 1,600-meter run. The team of Dave Hansen, John Gibson, Isaac Menke, and Ezra Burrows placed first in the 4x100-meter relay and set a new Class A state record with a time of 42.05. That means you are all in the 10-second range, more than likely. The team of Isaac Menke, John Gibson, Brayden Nowakowski, and Ezra Burrows placed first in the 4x200-meter relay and set a Class A state record with a time of one minute and 27.08 seconds. The team of Gavin Kammerer, John Gibson, Aiden Fitzgerald, and Brayden Nowakowski placed sixth in the 4x400-meter relay. The Cotter track and field team is coached by Tom Reichst ead, Isaiah Poulsalon, Brian Semling, Talon Gilbertson, Stephen McLeun, Jackson Kata, Eric Paul son, Cody Harvey-Moon, Mike Sharon, and Dalton Yoakam. Congratulations to the Cotter and Hope Lutheran Boys team for their achievement in the Class 1A track and field state championship, and to Eric Semling, Dave Hansen, John Gibson, Isaac Menke, Ezra Burrows, and Brayden Nowakowski on their event championship titles. I will now invite the team to come forward into the chamber well to be recognized. applause applause applause applause applause applause applause that is all I had for this evening I will pass along to city manager Chad Ubel Mayor and Council like to call up for our first item Patrick Menden has the update on the aquatic center mayor and council not the news that we were hoping for but the pool is not yet opened due 100% contractor delays we'd hope to have the pool and the timeline was originally supposed to be opening on Saturday June 6 it 's pushed back now today after tomorrow Wednesday June 17th however the timeline is still uncertain contractor delays supply issues but I can say the positive side is that right now the pool is filled the new filtration in the system system mechanics have all been installed they did ran a test on a new filter system today everything appears to be working but there's still some final checks that need to be made as well as the state inspection has to be done so the state inspection they can't schedule it with a contractor until they know the contract work is done kind of makes sense can't have one before the other so right now we're just waiting on these final checks to be done and then get the inspector in and we open for the season Steve you had a question I do Patrick thank you for the update people are anxiously waiting of course I feel that some calls on this and all sorts of rumors one rumor was that we didn't pay our bills on this contractor then delayed is there any truth to that did we pay our bills in full and on time to the contractor so there's really no way to construe this that this is somehow the fault of the city this is this is a delay of the contractor for what whatever their reasons are is that right right right 100% good thank you the rumors fly it's just unbelievable so thank you any other questions for Patrick when he's here no Sam do we have a tentative new opening day well we're still pushing for day after tomorrow Wednesday June 17th it's possible so chemicals get delivered tomorrow I'll push everything through there's a lot of all all brand new systems that have to get fired up one of the things other than the inspection that has to happen is that the pool water temp has to be at 80 degrees in order to allow staff can train in 74 degrees but it's got to be 80 degrees to allow the public and so right and that's a safety component that's absolutely but but on the another positive note to this is that swim lessons and water fitness classes have all been going on without without issue at st. Mary's University pool so swim lessons have been getting in people are getting their water fitness and at st. Mary's has been an excellent partner yep thank you to them for working with us yes thank you I'll keep my fingers crossed for the 17 yep we'll communicate updates to the city's website winonmn .gov perfect Facebook page and media release very good all right thank you I mean council just wanted to note that at the July 6th meeting I'll have Carlos Espanosa give an update on ADUs if you remember about a year ago tomorrow I think will be a year the council asked for us to come back to council and give an update one year after ADUs were were I guess authorized and so we'll provide that information at the July 6th meeting likely during my comments and that's it for this evening very good thank you Chad city clerk will now take roll call mayor scott sherman here councilmember young here here christensen here zierton shortridge for shikowsky here dicas here for the remainder of this meeting residents are only allowed to speak councilor is here in shortridge are you here present very good thank you for the remainder of this meeting residents are only allowed to speak if they have a request for council and I recognize you to speak under the petitions request and communications item 3.1 is the 2026 liquor license renewals move the council approve the licenses second motion from Steve second from Sam any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.3 is the harriet street closure request councilor through the request second motion from steve second from sam any discussion motion passes item 3.3 is the harriet street closure request council through the request councilor receive and file the report second motion from sam second from steve any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.5 is the 2027 heritage preservation budgeting memo the council receive and file the report second motion from steve second from sam any discussion i did have a question please so in my understanding where this is a request for 2027 we're we're we're setting things up why is this unfamiliar to me i read through this twice and um we're not having other boards or commissions establish their budget at this time why why why i don't mind i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna vote in favor of this but why are we doing this in this manner i don't quite understand this thank you thank you thank you mayor and council the winona heritage preservation commission is required in city code to prepare a budgeting memo every may of every year which is why you see it from them but not to from other commissions part of that is reporting to the certified local government program but it's actually codified in our city code so even if that went away as a reporting mechanism in the certified local government program our city code theoretically could still continue to require this budget memo is is this because hbc so often is operating off grants is that is that part of the reason why yes it is part of the reason why it's also to demonstrate continued progress for heritage preservations across the state of minnesota so a lot when heritage preservation commissions were created in the 1980s typically they followed a lot of similar formatting that required consistent reporting so that they were demonstrating proactive efforts to designate properties and update surveys as well as documenting that they were continuing to do that work so the state historic preservation office knew which uh which local governments were actually active so it's a suggestion by the state that we adopted to codify it this way to to to budget in this manner is that i think that's a fair assessment okay thank you it just stuck out to me yeah good question great answer i appreciate it any other questions comments discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes and item 3.6 is the license agreement for boats and blue grass move that council approve the license agreement and authorize administration to execute the same motion from sam and a super fast second from jerome and george is going to ask george you want to ask well let 's uh uh any presenters here isaac you want to come on isaac there he is we need to update on last year how well it went and how great it's going to be uh yeah thanks for having me up uh everything went amazingly well last year one of our our smoothest events uh we added a couple more staff members to help coordinate parking to help coordinate tour buses coming in and out and so everything was uh really smooth and we're just going to carbon copy what we did last year onto this year as we've done in the last few years uh we have 50 tickets left as of this morning which is wild uh we haven't even we have to line up i think in the next couple weeks and then obviously the festival's at the end of september so people are excited to get back out there uh great opportunity we've been working really well with visit winona and obviously the campground has been amazing uh so a lot of great partners a lot of great support so we're excited to keep keep it cooking awesome thanks iza thank you any other comments questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed motion passes item 4.2 is the resolution and ordinance to convey that portion of patnude drive to the port authority the council adopt the resolution and introduce your notes second motion from steve second from sam any discussion carlos tell us all here what we're doing we have an understanding but a little more in depth mayor council uh this is the second step in the process to convey a portion of patnude drive to a private landowner because the port authority is recognized separately than the city via state statute is able to purchase and sell property in a much easier faster manner than the city is the first step is for the city to convey the portion of property to the port authority again the reason why the portion of property is being conveyed to the port authority is because the city is declaring it marginal thank you steve would it be fair to say for the record that that the the the small strip of land we were surprised to discover that we own is that a dead end has no public utilities and no further use to us would that be a plain english way to say it that's correct thank you you should be on tv steve or radio maybe radio any other comments questions or discussion at all thank you carlos hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 4.3 is the selection of contractor for the solar on public buildings project will the council adopt the resolution second motion from steve second from jerome any discussion jeff yeah um so we've looked through the details of this first of all i i appreciate the folks um from champion solar coming in and giving us their perspective and what have you and i and i would agree with you that in in all things being equal i typically lean towards local there's no question about it but in this situation in what i have looked at as far as the evaluations things weren't equal and that's why we do rfps is to gather information to try to get the most cost efficient um and well done project that we can for the taxpayers of winona so in looking at the evaluation points you know between the bid that we're recommending and champion there was some discussion in one of the gentlemen that uh spoke earlier in the public comments that there was only a two percent difference in evaluation points and uh to be clear there are eight projects in all and the evaluate the difference between the evaluation points are as follows i'm just going to list them one through eight so one is it's a 14 percent difference the second one 's a three percent difference the fourth the third one is a 12 percent difference the fourth one is a 15 percent difference uh where am i at fifth and sixth they're both seven percent difference the seventh is two percent and the eighth is 12 so although there is one that is a two percent difference the others are significantly more than that with the exception of one that was a three percent um so and at least half of them were double digit differences the other thing that is a big difference was the over total the total overall costs and there was about 143 000 in difference in the in the cost between the bid that was recommended and uh the one the champion put forward so given that the evaluation points were significantly better the costs were significantly lower i feel like we don't really have much choice other than you know to go forward with what is recommended so i wanted to provide just some context you know because i don't i want people to understand there is a process and there's a process for a reason so i'll leave it at that thank you so uh at the risk of being very redundant uh amy van gilder had a presentation that i did not know about no my fault my fault so i apologize to amy amy if you would jeff i apologize to you as well for forget everything i said yeah okay well it's easy to do thank you i apologize uh good evening mayor and council uh tonight i'm presenting the results of the selection process on the solar and public buildings project on april 6th the council rejected the previously received quotes and approved moving forward with the formal rfp process to select contractors for these projects at that meeting the council also approved the rfp this initiative consisted of eight separate solar installation projects each project is funded through a state grant that covers 70 of the project cost with the remaining 30 funded through a federal tax credit these are reimbursement based grants meaning that the city must initially pay the full project cost and then seek reimbursement the state grant portion is typically reimbursed relatively quickly often within about 30 days however the federal tax credit portion will likely require the city to carry those costs for a significantly longer period potentially up to one year after project completion or as much as two years from the start of the project additionally the state grant program capped all systems at 40 kilowatts acs excuse me proposals were encouraged to submit proposals proposals for all eight projects although they were not required to do so since each project will be awarded through a separate contract in total the city received proposals from three companies ziggler submitted proposals for seven of the eight projects while champion solar and solar connection submitted proposals for all eight the evaluation criteria shown on this slide uh were included in the april 6 council packet and approved by the council the purpose of publishing detailed evaluation criteria is to promote transparency and fairness in the procurement process following council approval the criteria were published online and remained available throughout the solicitation period until the rfp closed this ensured that all interested proposers could clearly see the seven evaluation criteria understand the points that were assigned to each category and tailor their proposals accordingly this also ensured that every interested proposer had access to the same information in other words all companies were competing under the same set of rules and expectations for this rfp we assembled an evaluation committee consisting of members of the citizens environmental quality committee and city staff because there were 23 proposals to review across the eight projects the evaluation process was extensive the committee members dedicated a significant amount of time to carefully reviewing and scoring each submission evaluators scored proposals independently submitted their scores electronically and remained anonymous throughout the process as a reminder to both council and members of the public here tonight minnesota state statute 13.591 governs data in this procurement process under the statute the contents of the proposals the identities of the evalu ators and the evaluation materials themselves are considered non- public data during the selection process the information presented on this slide is is limited to public information based on the evaluation committee scoring solar connection was ranked as the highest scoring proposal proposal for all eight projects thus staff recommends awarding all eight contracts to solar connection while much of the evaluation information remains non-public council members are authorized to review this information as part of their decision making responsibilities for that reason i provided sheets at your table these sheets contain information about the solar systems proposed by each company including the number and type of panels and burger specifications estimated uh first year kilowatt hour production cost per watt and other financial data council members may discuss the information contained in these sheets openly as part of tonight's deliberation at this time i'm going to invite john howard to join me at the other podium i'm happy to answer any questions related to the rp process evaluation or procurement requirements and john can definitely answer any questions better about solar panels and the solar sites themselves we also have aaron here from solar connection here to answer any questions about their proposals or proposals or general information about their company thank you amy steve you had a question amy thank you for uh for the outline and the review so uh i i'm noticing as as uh councilman heima pointed out um 143 000 difference in bids and my understanding is that would fall under that that difference in cost would fall under the federal tax credit essentially free money right free money opm other people's money um and is is there two questions is there a carrying cost to us do we pay interest on that we would have loss of opportunity for sure and then can you outline the carrying risk on that that it could be up to two years uh seeking reimbursement through a federal tax credit great so um mayor and council the city would have to pay for those funds ahead of time and then would have to wait for that reimbursement typically once these projects are completed you then submit for the federal tax credit portion of it or if there's other ones in there as well too and then we have to wait it's typically about a year after the completion to get those back so the cost to us would be we're spending that money and having that money out there that we can't use on other items and then the possibility real possibility change in priorities of the federal government that is yeah okay all right thank you appreciate it sam i think this is more of a question for sustainability coordinator howard but i noticed a couple of differences mostly with panels and inverter capacity from the different proposals do you see a big difference in the quality of inverter or panel between any of these proposals or do they all seem of the same quality roughly uh mayor and council based on my review it looks like all the proposals had high quality panels of inverters that would work so and in some cases the exact same equipment so yes i thought i think things were up and up in in quality great thank you jiff okay remember everything i said before yes so a couple other additional things um john it's my understanding that the capacity thing is somewhat of a moot point because there's only so much power um i was going to say nsp but that's wrong excel is going to allow us to sell them so could you talk about the limits of of this particular project and and and am i correct in that that capacity piece is limited uh mayor council the the state grant that we applied for they set a cap of 40 kilowatts as ac power that that that is the level that uh excel readily accepts as net metering so it's an easier interconnection process and um and i believe that's why they set that set that level but we are we are bound because of our funding source through the state that's that so and there are some there are some projects that are below that because we don't have the physical space or the building's capacity to add add more solar but um that's yeah 40 is is is the is the top okay and then amy there is a there was another piece i went through we had all the documents out in the paper and we were going through it one of the aspects of the champion proposal was that we apply for additional grants beyond the two the two additional federal tax additional credit yes right and that and those are hoped for possibly but not guaranteed by any means i don't think anything is guaranteed but it's highly likely that we would get them at some okay but it's an additional step that we would we would have to do we would have to yes so we would be paying out the full amount ahead of time and then getting that reimbursement back okay all right so that was that was another aspect of it as there was a kind of a another element of risk i also you know want to make clear that you know in looking at these that the solar wasn't the you know we weren't simply taking the cheapest bid i mean what we what we ended up taking was the middle cost bid um and there were reasons for that because of their high ratings and the fact that they would do all eight projects but i also you know want to dispel any rumors of all they just took the cheapest one that's not the case either no that's not the case we they were the the recommendation that came to council tonight was based solely on the evaluation committee's um uh rankings or ratings um to those seven criteria that were listed up there earlier right and i think it does make sense to have one company do all eight i mean the fact that the one the one particular company that bid only bid seven out of the eight it you know as far as continuity and what have you uh i think it's it makes sense um with the uh i don't know how to go about this i'll let you figure it out um but the the representative from solar connect or or somebody could could we talk about some of the other projects in the in the area that they have done i invite you to come on up state your name and company with please and jeff maybe help them out with the primer on the question again yeah um so what i'm wondering is my understanding and when we were reviewing this stuff you you folks had done some work in lacrosse as well could you can you uh let us know what other projects solar projects you've done within a 45 mile radius of winona yeah sure so my name is aaron benson i'm with solar connection appreciate your time tonight and the thorough uh evaluation process you guys have done an amazing job with that so um yeah and we're we're in southeast minnesota and western wisconsin so we've done um upwards of it's right around a thousand projects so far um many of these are commercial projects we we focus a lot on schools and the solar and public buildings we have many projects that are just like this uh across all all of southern minnesota so we've done several of these through the same program um lacrosse we've done a lot we've done uh all of the county projects there's uh about a about a dozen projects that they've that we've done for them over the last three or four years um we're doing a bunch uh i guess uh la crescent um we've done several just commissioned another one for them uh lewiston um we could go go down the list of an awful lot of projects in the area but this is this is our wheelhouse these are the type of projects that we do um and i know the the main probably point that people have brought up is just the uh local localness but uh an awful lot of my colleagues are live live right here in winona and um dun blacktop is our sister company and and uh so we're we're definitely here as well our service techs we have two well we have four service techs two of them are right in wilson just just a few miles away so they report there every morning that's where we store a lot of our excess inventory as well so um so we'd be able to to respond very quickly to any issues that do come up so we are definitely local okay and then one other question i don't i'm not looking for a specific answer just kind of but but one of the discussions we had when we met you know to talk about this in detail was that and this is not a surprise to anyone the roofs that you're putting a lot of these things on are old roofs and so um i'm wondering if there's it sounded like within your bid and whatever there was some some some reasonable contingency to work with what you 're finding i guess is the lack of better words so i mean so i at least see there seemed to be an accountability and in the history of of work that you just cited i know with schools and what have you what you find is things in a various state of repair can you speak at all as to how you deal with you know with things that may need a little bit of remediation in order to support what you're trying to put up well we certainly recommend you put it on a fairly new roof but sometimes you have to work with what you've got so okay certainly if if there's a roof that's at you know near near the end of life it just has to wait until it gets taken care of i know that was we've discussed that at the salt salt shed for example that was that was one that we had discussed we found some areas that didn't look so good my understanding that's been repaired so uh but that's uh that's a key component to to what we do i know that uh most of these are many of these are ground mounts at least so that helps and makes it a mood point for sure bud king i guess is another one that uh you know we're just using a small section there of that roof but um but yeah it's a good good question um certainly panels can be removed for a roof reinstallation uh it is expensive to do that we like to avoid that whenever possible so sure trying to match them up with the age of the roof is certainly best case okay thank you very much sam you had a question uh my question was answered okay very good george uh do you do a lot of work for private industry sure yeah we do i see you seem to mention more government agencies as you were presenting here but any uh any names of any companies locally in here in town that you would have done or nearby well frankly we we do more non-profit work than anything and schools and and you know cities and municipalities but we um certainly do do commercial projects as well first supply is a company we've done a lot of work with mc donald and owen lumber company torrance casting you know you know we could we could certainly get you a longer list of reference uh projects well that's fine so okay thank you yep thanks george any other comments questions or discussion thank you thanks for coming all right thank you all appreciate it uh hearing none all those in favor george you want to say something yeah just just in closing here is that myself i know everyone here we want to go as local as we possibly can uh the number here i'm hearing a hundred and forty three thousand dollars is the number that i'm hearing is that correct that's the number that we're hearing yeah mayor and council i don't have the paper in front of me but yes okay the difference between the total of the uh the difference between the two projects was about 140 000. okay so and like i say you know i like to go as local as local as possible but 140 000 that's uh that's a gap you know it can be close on these projects but that's uh that's a gap and uh uh it would be hard to make that up so thank you you had a comment yeah echoing counselor borchkowski we all want to stay as local and support the little guy as we can but when cost and value is 25 of the evaluation criteria and six of eight proposals from champion solar came in 15 over budget or more where solar connection five of eight of their projects came in under budget it's a hard case to support jason i've worked with jeremiah and carl on a project in my house and so i've literally lost a lot of sleep over this while sleeping under their panels and while i want to vote with my heart i really have to vote with my calculator and so i think i'm gonna echo everyone else here thanks jason any other comments questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye motion motion passes motion passes under new business item 5.1 is the transit grant application for 2027. the council doubt the resolution second motion from steve second from jerome any discussion sam okay all right any comments questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed motion passes item 5.2 is the renewal of the winona state university transit service agreement with the council approve the license agreement authorized administration to execute the same second motion from steve second from george sam as an employee of winona state university i will be abstaining from this vote very good any discussion thank you winona state yeah well i think they say thank you to us too they do it's mutually beneficial we move move the students around for them yeah any other comments questions discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye nay abstentions that's me all right motion passes item 5.3 is the updated winona transit procurement policy this is required by the state as part of our grant application and the report is due to the state by june 30th will the council approve the request motion from steve second from jerome any discussion sam i wish that the grant application didn't require this by june 30th and we had more time to review it i think review of our transit procurement policy is really important and this agenda was very full i wish we could have had more time to review this and i would have pushed for a table so that we could have that time but now acknowledging the fact that it is to be included in that june 30th grant application i feel unable to ask for this agenda item to be tabled mayor and council just to report um the minnesota department of transportation provided us a template to use that was not provided to the city until april 28th we did not have much time to review it so that was presented to council but i would note that most of what is in the procurement policy is federal and state law that we don't have any really any say in changing so it's pretty much uh cut and paste we're putting in city of winona and winona transit thank you for that context my commentary still stands very good any other comments questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 5.4 the winnebago island cabin license agreements the council to prove the license agreement authorized administration to execute the same second motion from steve second from sam any discussion mr mayor just confirming that that this does not change this this is just simply a name change with the name of the latch island board and this does not uh alter the agreement extend or modify the existing agreement it's a it is a name change only is that correct uh mayor and council that's correct good thanks jeff same question thank you any other comments questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 5.5 is the acceptance of the grant agreement for the west and skate park will the council approve the contract authorized administration to execute the same second motion from steve second from sam we do have zach craig here if anybody let's hear oh let's hear from zach come on yeah that's right he's looking at patrick like he said is that brown band is that craig band just roll with the man just roll with it there any questions or just want an overall update we just want enough i'd love to hear an update and if you've raised any more money because we have we have raised more money yeah we're um i believe at last count over 680 000 the build itself i believe in the rfp is going to be at 620 000 which leaves us with a good amount of money for all of the the amenities and other requirements of of the grant can you answer some questions about the grant agreement specifically i've got questions i've got questions uh mayor council it's the grant agreements reimbursement grant with the state it's been awarded 550 000 written into state statute the money is ours um we um the city's contribution just let me let me say this first that there's a combination of in-kind and then the donations that that zach and the and the fundraising committee has raised so the city will contribute about about 156 000 to the project but again know that that is money that's sitting in the winona community foundation so it's a combination of that and then in-kind so no tax dollars so no general fund tax dollars are funding this project it's all state money and money that zach craig and the committee has raised sam you had a question for zay i did we just saw the importance of rfp criteria and how they can really play a big role in that final vendor selection how do you feel about the evaluation criteria as the current operator of the space uh we've worked closely but i think uh amy can answer that best okay yeah yeah that's great i feel great about it awesome steve you had a question this is this was grant money there was there was there was a the state had set aside a pool of money and we we applied for it is that is that generally the the case did i understand that right yes yeah they they selected eight uh skate parks eight cities in in minnesota and we were one of eight for a pool of four million dollars and we got 550 000 in that four million and it's fair to say that had we not applied that money would have gone somewhere else would have gone to another city international falls mankato or cottonwood yeah or good view okay that's a joke jeff i my next question will probably be for the next thing but i just want to reiterate you know the appreciation for all of your efforts thank you you were dogged on this and and and again congratulations because it took a while i know you know seven years various people had doubts including myself that this was you know going to come to fruition and through no fault of your own but just through the general way the legislature works and it seems like they promise and they promise and they promise and occasionally they deliver in this case they did and but again it wouldn't have happened at all without your hard work so thank you again thank you sam building off what counselor hyma had just said great lead in thank you i try to be useful for agenda items like this where it's a complex process that's multi-step i and i believe the public would find tremendous value in a numbered list that outlines the steps of the process with where we are at currently for those who aren't engaging in this work day to day it can be difficult to track what part of the process we're at and where we're going not specifically for this grant agreement but for other complex processes like this and i think that that that tracking of process with our current step and where we're going would be a tremendous asset for governmental transparency thank you thanks sam any other comments questions or discussion thanks thanks patrick hearing none all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed motion passes next on the agenda is item 5.6 request for proposals for the design build of the outdoor skate park because we approve the request second motion from steve second from george before we do anything else we have a presentation from assistant w clerk amy van gilder all right good evening again mayor and council the next item for discussion is the request for proposals for the design and construction of the skate park now that we have received and accepted the grant agreement which was our prior agenda item we are ready to move forward with issuing an rfp to identify a qualified firm to design and build this highly anticipated free outdoor skate park because of the special language in the bill we are not required to follow the traditional design bid build process where one consultant prepares the design and specifications and then the project is publicly bid for construction instead we're authorized to use a best value r fp process which allows the city to select a single contractor to both design and construct the project this allow this approach can streamline the process and provide greater collaboration between the design and construction teams from the start this is kind of a hard picture to see but i wanted to show you guys this the area included in the rfp is shown on this slide the gray shaded structure in the center represents the existing building it's kind of like a really fat l i guess in the middle there which is not part of this grant funded project because the building is excluded from the grant the city retains complete flexibility regarding its future if the city chooses to renovate repurpose or even remove the building at a later date it remains free to do so the scope of this rfp focuses focuses on redesigning the existing parking lot and constructing the skate park around the facility and to answer the question proposals will be evaluated using the criteria shown here these criteria were included in the rfp will be published in the rfp they will remain publicly available throughout the solic itation period so that all interested vendors understand exactly what the evaluation committee will be looking for and how each criteria will be weighed this helps ensure a fair and transparent process and allows proposal proposers to submit complete and competitive responses the next slide outlines the projected timeline if the rsp is approved this evening it will be published tomorrow and remain open until july 8th or approximately three weeks from today following the submission deadline staff will begin the evaluation process as with our other best value rfps and evaluation committee will be assembled to review and score the proposals the committee will consist of approximately five to ten individuals and will include current skatepark users parents of skatepark users members of the west end recreation complex fundraising committee and city staff the goal is to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders who can evaluate proposals from a variety of perspectives finally as i do with every rfp presentation i want to remind the council that this process is governed by min nesota state statute 13.591 under the statute the proposal submitted the identity identities of the evaluators and the evaluation materials themselves remain non-public during the evaluation process this helps us preserve the integrity of the procurement and ensure that all proposals proposals are evaluated fairly and consistently so and then also when i bring this back to council for to select the um to select the uh contractor i will include a timeline of those steps in there so you can see them where we're at great any questions for amy jeff and i'd i'd i'd asked this of her before so i just wanted to you know get it out there in the public so my understanding is and you've partially explained it but i wanted to be clear so zach when we first met on this three years ago you you had a you kind of had a design laid out and so now when we put out the rfp is that kind of the starting point and then the other and then it can be tweaked is that exactly what we're doing we had already worked with um two different companies the the grant required going out and and and getting designs and estimates from other which is normal in this process to go go talk to firms ahead of time and we paid them um early on in our with our with our fundraising money for those um designs largely to communicate a general idea to the public of what it would look like for fundraising terms got it um when we go out the the firms will be given a like a general wish list of what we're what we're hoping for and they'll they'll come back with what they can provide what they think exactly okay and then the second question is is my son's a skater and i know he's got friends that are skaters so if you've got if there are interested people then we should get the names and emails to you correct correct correct okay perfect appreciate it thank you very much excited any other questions sam now zach how do you feel about the rfp criteria oh i think i should have asked that question during this one not the last one same answer same answer great thanks y'all any other comments jason yeah how many firms do you anticipate uh submitting proposals any idea at this point just those two or do you think it's going to go wider than that um i think the the firms are pretty selective with you know with the timelines that we're we're hopeful for and and our budget i i wouldn't be surprised with with with three and then are we how do we advertise these rfp because i know i i just know because my sons live up in the twin cities and again i'm not against local or anything like that but also i want to cast a wide net on this because winona hasn't had a skate park in 15 years 20 years you know so there's not a lot of skate park you know there are plenty of skaters plenty of people passionate about it but as far as those that design skate parks winona is not a hotbed for it so i would want in this case to cast a fairly wide wide net so that we get places and you know that are doing this on a pretty regular basis and obviously for us in minnesota the twin cities is typically the place correct so we'll be um sending out a link to the solicitation online to any of those um companies that have done similar type projects um typically you can find a list maybe online at um if people are part of the state's procurement um process there's also like on different um uh national cooperative purchasing um boards that you can send that are list a number of companies on those as well so we 'll try to identify as many as we can and send it out in the hopes that we get back perfect for those thank you very much thanks amy any other comments questions or discussion chad you had something i don't know if we could bring up the presentation again amy i just want to yep point out something to console i think to the first slide second one oh maybe the second one then with the graph the gray graph on it um you had alluded to that this is a design if you go back to slide one i think it was just your comments about this is a design build okay sorry that's okay so you made a comment can you just repeat what you said about on slide one here sure um due to the the special uh legislation that went around this this is a design build rfp which means that we're hiring one company to do both the design of the actual skate park and then constructed typically when we do these type of projects especially at this dollar amount under normal solicitation requirements or procurement requirements with the state we're required to do what's called a design a bid build where we would hire like a engineering firm or you know some sort of a contractor to actually design it they would write the specs for it and then they would put out we would submit out a bid and have a construction company or that type of company bid on that type of project so this is a little bit different um due to that um due to that special legislation and how it is written we're allowed to use this process instead so mayor council i just wanted to repeat that because um to kind of piggyback on all the comments and what we saw tonight with the other rfps and what we've been doing with the rfp process is that we've asked in this case that staff come and present the rfp process because it can change with each project each project might have different legislation it might have a different statute it might be uniform bidding it might be competitive bidding it might be design build although we don't do very many design builds this is special legislation to allow for design build so if we have come contractors come back and say well how come you didn't select mine we've presented the criteria we've presented the legislation this is the process that we 're following i think it's just bears repeating that we would have staff present this each time and then a criteria of those rfps because they can vary from project to project counselor zierden shortridge brings up another good point and certainly no pressure on my intern francis cole but one of his tasks during his time as an intern is to create what we would call like a staff manual for larger complex projects where it involves multiple funding sources state funding and it is good for us and appropriate for us to outline like the project steps and timeline i just always want to be cautious to say that that can change and if we bring back a change it would be staff's responsibility to show the council or the community that change the reason why i mentioned that if we had another half an hour to discuss this i think zach would attest to the complications of state awards the rules change sometimes while you're going through the process or you assume something through the legislation it goes to a department of deed goes the department of mmb and they go yep that's the legislation says but you have to do this and you thought we were going down this path and then mmb will say you need to go down this path and it is complex and it needs to be uh scheduled out uh francis is working on that this summer during his internship for staff to have some of those guidelines in place that then we come back and present to the public and the council so you understand those steps because these processes you can see get to be complex when we are so thankful we've gotten state money that is great but then here come you know i think it was close to 20 pages of rules is really what the manual is you need the manual in place in order to get the rfp criteria so that we meet all of the state expectations so just kind of wanted to reframe that uh point well taken uh we are the classic working on it i think it's important to have those steps outline not only for staff or if you have a community donor involved those steps are then outlined as well so thank you for that ted appreciate it any other comments questions discussion from council hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes moving on to item 5.7 this is to negotiate a purchase agreement for buildings on prairie island road will the council approve the request second motion from ste ve second from jerome any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 7.1 is council concerns council member borzikowski uh thank you mayor we're talking rfps where are we at with the marina mayor and council um the marina operators agreement ends uh 12 31 of this year as part of that agreement they are allowed to negotiate um the sale of i'll use the broad term of their assets so things like the docs or the business they do have the ability to sell that if we do not have some resolution likely by the first part of august then we will just have to start the rfp process um if there's not a sale or some other business interest then we'll have to go through the rfp process with uh dicks marine and they're done at the end of the year done at the end of the year all right thank you uh i would like to begin by sending out retirement congratulations to rhonda aspison a long time teacher i believe 38 years at our winona high school and she's helped educate many many young men and women as they went on in their lifetime and want to congratulate her again and thank you for her service to the youth of our community and to the school system in general also like to send out congratulations to sharon brado she is the wife of ben brado who was a long time school teacher in the city of winona here and she received the outstanding service award from the southeast minnesota retired teachers association for her volunteerism and thank you to sharon for her time that she has put in very very wonderful lady on a sadder note i would like to offer condolences to the family of francine yank fran who began her teaching career in winona at central school and then she retired out of wk school about probably 20 years ago so to her husband mike and her daughter susan savat and to her son dr jay young and their grandchildren condolences on the passing of fran and she again has mended many many alum many young lives in our community so condolences to her family as they begin their healing process also this morning the community began to mourn the loss of susan miller susan miller who is the wife of former mayor jerry miller the mother of willie todd and j eremy and to her grandchildren those of us that knew sue she was an outgoing individual i mean she hunted she fished she raised her family raised her grandchildren just a wonderful wonderful woman always on the go 5 a.m in the morning till midnight seven days a week and uh to her family and her loss will not only be felt by her family but by many members and friends in this community so condolences to them thank you thank you george councilmember young yeah thank you um so we have seen two two significant items on our agenda the solar on public buildings and the uh um the the skate park it is so important that how we communicate this and and how we we share um as a group the uh the seven of us and how staff talks about this now everybody in this room who knows and understands this under and and communicates to our friends our neighbors the press that this is grant money this is not tax money i've gotten question why are we doing a skate park why are we spending my tax dollars on on solar on solar on buildings and it's it's it's it's harder to explain than you would think to convince people it really is grant money it is not tax money and uh so i i uh i hope as we're talking to our friends our neighbors that that we can uh accurately um reflect back to them how how things get done how some of these projects get funded and many of these are done through grant dollars with absolutely no levy dollars involved important conversation we need to be having that um so that we represent the city well i'm against misinformation very good thanks steve councilmember heimann that's the only thing significant i got is i'm hoping we have good weather for the fireworks on steamboat days so i'm going to keep it on the lighter side okay so we 'll call it good there i like weather yep good weather councilmember christensen um i just add my condol ences to george's to jerry and the miller family at losing susan she was a she was a spark plug and i'm going to miss her energy and vibrant personality and beyond that um steamboat days is happening let's have fun yeah thanks for all councilor zierden shortridge i've got a couple tonight buckle up y'all uh as stated in item 5.5 i'm requesting that all staff outline the total process and our current progress in each agenda cover page via a numbered list for any multi-step process i welcome all questions staff have about this request in service of governmental transparency my second piece is a little less formal i have had a handful of community members reach out to me saying that they wish to speak publicly at open public comment but they do not want to give their address for fear of repercussions of their address being made public in our agendas and and i'm sure they wish to speak publicly at the same time and i'm sure they wish to speak to them and i'm sure it is to hear if that individual lives in winona or not in winona if that is the reason could we amend this that is just to state their city of address instead of their full local address i very much understand the concern of having your public your address listed publicly on a government document we all recently had our home addresses pulled from the city website after melissa hort man's assassination i would love to see an agenda item come back to council that outlines the process for removing this piece of public comment in hopes of getting more commentary from the public and i would like to wish a happy birthday to babs zierden and it's my brother cool very good thanks sam council member dacus i just wanted to offer a shout out a good job to city staff street maintenance uh uh for taking care of all the trees that were knocked down in the storm last week i felt the next morning i saw a lot of activity and actually during the night um and everything seemed back to normal by i would say by noon so that was that was a lot so thank you yep thanks for that jason moving on to the consent agenda there are two items approval of the minutes from june 1st and the final adoption of an ordinance for light industrial zoning amendment we can also approve the consent agenda second motion from steve second from sam all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed motion passes mayor time being 7 39 p.m i move we adjourn second motion from george second from steve all those in favor say aye aye meeting adjourned thank you everyone good job okay yeah

It is 6:30 p.m. and I call this meeting to order. Please stand and we will recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good evening, everyone. This is a regularly scheduled meeting of the Winona City Council. I don't have any proclamations tonight, but Council Member Christensen has gone on a planned vacation this evening, and he will not be attending remotely, so no roll call vote this evening. With that, I'll pass it along to City Manager Chad Ubel. Mayor and Council, one announcement tonight. I want to start by thanking Representative Rapinski and Senator Miller for their hard work during this legislative session. We received notice that the City of Winona is included in the bonding bill that was passed, and the city is scheduled to receive $6.5 million for our wastewater treatment project. So, again, thanks to them for advocating for us, and obviously was part of our submission to the state as part of our state bonding package. We had three projects. Wastewater was one of those projects. So, again, positive for certainly the local taxpayer that will reduce our total amount that we'll need to take out in debt. We'll likely have an impact on our utility rates, but we won't make any of those adjustments until really probably the project is bid, until we know the final cost of the project. It's difficult to analyze what those utility rates should be, but this is certainly a positive good news for the City of Winona and local taxpayers. Absolutely. That's it for tonight. Thank you, Chad. I will now ask City Clerk to take the roll call. Mayor Sherman. Here. Council Member Young. Here. Heima. Here. Christensen. Zierden Shortridge. Here. Borzikowski. Here. Taikas. Here. For the remainder of this meeting, residents are only allowed to speak if they have a request before the council, and I recognize you to speak. We are going to go slightly out of order here. We're going to move 5.1 to the front to accommodate our aud itors. So under new business tonight, item 5.1 is the 2025 city financial reports presentation. May the council receive and file the reports. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. We have Brad from ABDO here this evening. Thank you, honorable mayor, council members. This is on. Good. We did go through in detail the presentation or the financial statements in the pre-council meeting. I'll just present kind of the results in this regular scheduled council meeting. So we, for the financial statements or ACFER, your annual, your ACFER financial statements, we are issuing an unmodified or a clean opinion on those financial statements. So that is the opinion you're looking for when you have a financial statement audit performed. So that's a clean opinion on your statements themselves. The state auditor requires us to issue a letter or a report on your, on some state statutes that they require us to go through as part of our financial statement process. So we go through each one of those checklists that they provide for us, and we are not issuing any non-compliance with any of those state statutes either. One other report we did issue as well was a single audit report, and that's a requirement if you spend more than a million dollars of federal awards in a calendar year. So we do a compliance report on those federal dollars that you spend based on different checklists that the federal government provides us, and we are not reporting any non-compliance with those, how you spent those dollars as well. So clean reports all around, and certainly open up to any questions you may have. Thanks, Brad. Any comments, questions, or discussion? Steve. Thank you for your explanation earlier this evening, and I just want to compliment our finance team. It is not without effort to obtain a clean report. This is, it may, the eyes may gloss, the eyes of the community may gloss over when they read audit, but it's crucially important that your dollars are accounted for and that we're following the rules that are set out for us in statute to protect people's money. So that needed to be said. Thanks. Agreed. Thank you, Steve. Any other comments, questions, or discussion by council? Brad, thank you for presenting tonight. Thank you. Thanks for sticking around. We appreciate it. No other discussion. We will vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Continuing under new business, item 5.2 is the award for a financial reporting presentation. Will the council receive and file the report? Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. I would like to read a news release. Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada has awarded the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting to the City of Onona for its annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2024. The report has been judged by an impartial panel to meet the high standards of the program, which includes demonstrating a constructive spirit of full disclosure to clearly communicate its financial story and motivate potential users and user groups to read the report . Their certificate of achievement is the highest form of recognition in the area of governmental accounting and financial reporting. And its attainment represents a significant accomplishment by a government and its management. Congratulations to our finance department, Jessica, Christine, Danielle. Thank you all very much. And I'll give you back this either now or later, whichever. Any comments, questions? Yes, Sam, please. Really building off Councillor Young's comments, this speaks volumes on accountability, trust, transparency. Thank you so much for doing the work of making sure that we know exactly how our funds are spent, where they're going, and we're keeping track of them appropriately. Only 15% of cities received this award, and if I'm not mistaken, this is not our first time receiving this award. I think I've read them every year I've been up here. I think that's right. Yeah. This is an incredible accounting team. Thank you. Agreed. Thanks, Sam. Any other comments, questions, or discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Second. Back to the beginning of the agenda, under petitions, requests, and communications, item 3.1 is a massage therapy license for Ming-Lang Zing. Will the council approve the license? Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.2 is a lease agreement for the Masonic Theater Management. Will the council approve the agreement, direct Mayor and City Clerk to execute the same. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? We do have Eileen Moeller and Aaron Young here from GSRF if anybody has questions. I just had a general one. I looked through it. I mean, it looks great. I'm very excited about this partnership. I noticed the lease is primarily just for the second and third floors. And so what, and that's not necessarily a question for you. I don't know who the question's for, but what are we doing with the first floor? Actually, the original lease that was approved last year was for the second and third floor. And then the first lease incorporates the first floor. So it's the entire building now. Okay. All right. Perfect. Thank you. Congratulations. Good luck in the endeavors. And thank you for everything you're doing in there. We appreciate it. Steve. I'm not certain if this is the venue or you're the people answer the question, but I'll ask it and you can correct me if needed. There's a fair amount of, the last time I was in there, which was maybe two or three years ago and you gave me a, we walked through it. There was a fair amount of maintenance that needed to be done. Are you, are you guys picking through that? Is this another group? Is, help me, what's, what's the master plan on that building? Oh, sure. Um, well, uh, I think it's been a great example of a partnership between the city and nonprofits. Uh, we were able to begin moving in, in early August. Um, and so we've been in constant conversation with city staff about what falls under the city purview, what falls under ours as the renters. Um, so there are some improvements that I made myself ripping out carpet, painting, patching walls and some other things that, especially when safety comes, uh, up as a question of what is proper management. Um, we coordinate with city staff, um, and put in work orders, um, so that there's documentation of what's being done. Um, so a lot of the cleaning and, um, just sort of gussing up the space has been me, us, um, uh, uh, uh, our staff, um, and a lot of it has been city staff when appropriate. Okay. Thank you. See, go ahead. If you have not been in the building in a couple of years, it's worth a trip. It looks really great. And a lot of that is thanks to GRSF and you, Eileen. Yeah, I would say, I would, I would say the same thing. I've been, I was at the building for a couple of events over in the last two months and it's amazing. It's, it's a, it's a transformation in progress, but it's definitely a transformation. So thank you. Any other comments, questions or discussion? Thank you both. Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.3 is the Winona Swim Club practice agreement. Will the council approve the agreement authorize administration to execute same. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.4 is a license agreement for the Great Dakota gathering on October 2nd. Move that the council approve the agreement and authorize administration to execute the same. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. We do have Katie Engelman online if anyone has questions. Do you have anything she wants to tell us? Katie, would you like to talk about the event a little bit? Sure, I would love to. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Perfect. Well, my name is Katie. I serve as the chairperson of the Winona Dakota Unity Alliance local nonprofit community group. Since 2004, the WDUA with support from the city of Winona has hosted the gathering. It's an event that honors indigenous culture through music, art, dance and education. The 2006, sorry, the 2026 gathering will take place October 2nd through the 4th at Unity Park. This year's event features a sunrise ceremony, drama dance, and the indigenous people's task force. As an organization, we are grateful for the city's continued support and we kindly invite your participation October 2nd through the 4th. We are grateful for the city of the city of Winona Dakota. We are grateful for the city of Winona Dakota. We are grateful for the city of Winona Dakota. We are grateful for the city of Winona Dakota. We are grateful for the city of Winona Dakota. We are grateful for the city of Winona Dakota. We are grateful for the city of Winona Dakota. We are grateful for the city of Winona Dakota. We are grateful for the city of Winona Dakota. We are grateful for the city of Winona Dakota. We are grateful for the city of Winona Dakota. Item 5 is a license agreement for the Alzheimer's Association Walk on October 3rd. Move that the council approve the agreement and authorize administration to execute the same. Second. Motion from Sam, second from Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.6 is an appointment to the Board of Adjustment. Move the council to confirm the appointment. Second. Motion from Steve, second from George. Any discussion? Very good appointment. Thank you. Appreciate it. Very good appointment. And Ben. Any other comments, questions or discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.7 is the Board's and Commission application announcement. There is currently one opening on the Citizens Environmental Quality Committee, three terms ending, and therefore three seats on the Heritage Preservation Committee and three current open seats on the John Latch Memorial Parks and Recreation Commission. Move the council receive and file the report. Second. Motion from Sam, second from Steve. Any discussion? Thank you to staff for still continuing this. This is great. We're going to do it forever and ever. I can't wait. Any other comments, questions or discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.8 is a presentation by the Creative Commission. Move that the council receive and file the report. Second. Motion from Sam, second from Steve. We have Judy Myers from the Creative Commission here this evening. And Jackie Paulson. Sorry, I didn't see you at the beginning of the meeting. There's two of us tonight. Glad to have you both here. Hello, Mayor and Council. Thanks for having us and thanks for sharing your agenda with us. My name is Judy Myers. I've been on the commission for a while since about 2020, I think. Back when it was the Fine Arts Commission and now it's the Creative Commission. And Jackie, you want to introduce yourself quick? Sure. I'm Jackie Paulson and I joined the commission when it was reestablished in 2023 maybe? Yeah. Something like that. A little bit of a break in there. I wanted to also give a real quick thank you to Laura, to Patrick and Chad for the work that we're doing. Great River folks just left, but they've put in a lot with the arc and we're going to talk about that here in a moment . And things were very successful there, so we're very happy about all of that as well. You probably have the, yes, you have the slides right in front of you. Great. Just as a reminder, we are here to advise the city with the implementation of the Winona Arts and Culture Strategic Plan. We are currently still looking at that and we'll talk about that. And to advance the arts and culture to foster the growth of arts and the culture within the city. You can see the list of the commissioners that are on there . We're all from different sort of sectors and around. I don't know who's doing the slideshow, but that's okay. Hold on one second, Judy. There we go. There it is. Yeah. You guys can read that. Probably don't need us to do that. So Judy, they're operating. They're coming on and off. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt you, Judy. Yeah. They're operating from inside the booth. So when you want the next slide, just say next slide and they'll advance it. Oh, great. Great. Ooh, high tech. It's like magic. Thanks. Yeah. Just really quick. I think one of the biggest things that we can talk about real quick is -- We can go to the next slide. Oh, thank you. There we go. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. 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We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the next slide. We can go to the finance and strategic planning committee first. So I think the completed project that was a big piece to bite off is we took a look at that Winona Arts and Culture strategic plan, which was created at a different time with different resources. So we went through and did an evaluation of community impact, difficulty, and difficulty of execution. So we can take a look at sort of what is possible over the next few years. Right now what we're working on is like an analysis of that data to kind of take a look at like what is feasible and what will the impact be on Win ona for different projects that are within that strategic plan. Some things have been completed. Some things are not feasible. So we're defining what is. And then future initiative is to move forward with that strategic plan and make recommendations for action. I think the biggest thing is there. We don't want to waste time or money. So trying to get to the heart of all of that. Also, I just mentioned the community arts resource committee. The only thing I would add to that is just some numbers. We've cataloged 63 not-for-profits and 12 for-profits. You can go to the next slide. Thank you. Oh, yep. I keep forgetting. Yeah, 63 not-for-profits and 12 for-profit venues in the area. So it's quite, it's a lot more than you would think. The reporting that we seem to be getting doesn't include a lot of the venues that provide for arts servicing. When you think of all the breweries and churches and community centers, places like that that are holding arts events that don't necessarily get on the radar for real arts event happening. If it's not at the Arc or if it's not a university theater or something, then it's not seeming to get counted. So we're trying to take a look at that as well and see if we can get a more accurate count of the arts participation in this community. I think we'll all be very surprised. All right. And finally, let's talk about the marketing subcommittee. The next slide, please. And so again, we, you know, partnered with Visit Winona. We've been working very closely with Visit Winona to how to get the message out there with, we have an identity as an arts destination town, but the organization is just kind of getting back on track right now. And I think kind of some of the exciting work is looking at a standardized data collection tool for arts organizations. So we can really then come back to you in a year and give you some real numbers on the impact that arts have in the city of Winona and what we need to do to make it stronger. Good. And just to summarize real quick, some of our successes that I think we can sort of bring about. You can go to the next slide. Thank you. It's not necessarily the more tangible successes. These are the more intangible ones. We feel like that the current group of folks that are on the commission have a good energy. We feel like we're working well with a, with them together as an organization. We feel like our direction with the commission is getting stronger, a little bit more directed. I think, um, the committee work has been successful as well . Um, the creation of subcommittees has been very helpful to sort of, uh, disassemble or reassemble the work, whichever one you put it. I mean, that's helping as well. Um, I think several years there sort of around the COVID time when we were a little bit more inactive. Um, but we were able to pull things around now and we're a little bit stronger in terms of stewarding the arts initiatives. Designated arts funds are now being strategically planned for future community investment. And we're feeling much better about, um, uh, the way our time and our funds are being used. Yeah. And so I would just, I guess for the challenges, you know, we're focused on that arts and culture strategic plan, which is tricky. Cause right now that's a hundred percent volunteerism from the commission. And I would say that, that the team is working hard and together we have had a little bit of burnout. I think, you know, it, we all have jobs or are doing other things, you know, and care passionately about the arts and we're doing the best we can. So it, the work is maybe not as fast as we would like it to be. Sometimes it takes a little while, you know, and we're taking off bite size pieces that we can do in the team that we have. And then, you know, we have lost a few commission members just because they, they took a heavy pull and then we're ready to hand the baton. But it's tricky when we don't have consistency to do good high quality, consistent work. And just, you know, when you're meeting once a month, it can take a long time for things to happen. And so, um, I think, uh, you know, we've talked a bit about how an additional Laura is amazing and has been an amazing advocate and it's just always available and always there. But a little more support at the city level with a dedicated arts position would greatly help move that strategic plan forward. Yeah, you can go to the next slide. Questions. What do you have for us? See, you know, I don't have a question, but I'm just going to say thank you. It is these public partnerships that are just so invaluable . And when one of you made the comment that we, you know, a little bit of burnout because we have, we have jobs. Yeah, I get that. I get that. Preaching to the choir here. Right. Yeah. Um, and I'm going to say this. I won't be joining you because I'm the least creative person sitting in the room, but I appreciate the creativity that you and the skills and the talents that you bring. So an essential part of our community. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to echo Councillor Young, but also as someone who did sit on the Fine Arts Commission, it is thrilling the amount of work y'all have accomplished. And I hope that you are able to step back and really see that and that the day to day hasn't taken away from the accomplishment that you've attained over these last couple of years. I mean, the last iteration of the Fine Arts Commission could not have dreamed of getting this much done. So thank you so much for that work. I think we should shout out to Kerry, who also was, you know, our president for a while. Absolutely. And Margaret. Yeah. And Margaret. Strong. The transitional pieces that brought it from Fine Arts to Creative for sure. Doing the report helped. Yes. Helps us to think of what we've done. Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. Jeff, you had something? Just kind of echoing some things in regards. For me, the nicest thing is, you know, I've been on city council for about three and a half years and I remember when we were voting, you know, for the extra funding for the ARC and all of these things. It's so nice to see the payoff coming. And it only comes because of your hard work and the time and effort that you and many others put into it. But it's very gratifying. It's, you know, it's, it's all pulling together. So it's, it's a wonderful thing. So thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah, we appreciate the work that you do. And obviously that staff is doing as well. Um, we thoroughly, uh, enjoy having Laura, Patrick and Chad here. They're good peeps. So, and you're doing great work. So I appreciate both of you and the entire commission. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you coming down. Thanks. George, George has something. Oh, George. Yes. Uh, I remember when the first fine arts commission was formed X amount of years ago and they've laid the foundation. And now the foundation is being built on and it's being built more and more every year. So thanks to the initial fine arts committee and thanks to you people. It elevates every year. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Any other comments, questions or discussion? Thank you ladies. Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Under unfinished business. Item 4.1 is the 2026 sidewalk replacement project. The council top the resolution or the contract to follow her hammer. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? George. We haven't heard Fowler and Hammer in many years, have we? They're good. I mean, they're very good contractors. Not to throw George under the bus, but that was our contractor last year as well. I was testing Brian. Good test. Good test. They do very good work. They got through in and out quick last year and no complaints. Happy to have them. Do they know when they're starting? They just want to get awarded. I got it. I got it. We'll find out. Yeah. No problem. They usually hit it pretty quick though. Yep. Yep. Yeah. They were done fast last year. Great. Thanks Brian. Any other comments, questions or discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Back under new business, item 5.3 is a city of Winona housing trust fund request for funds. Does the council adopt the resolution? Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? Steve. This is exactly what we should be doing. Our comprehensive plan indicated that housing was one of our top needs and we have an opportunity to convey a piece of property, a buildable piece of property. The board authority was told there would be a twin home built there through our friends at Habitat. What a great project. Thank you. Thank you. Sam. I find myself agreeing with Councillor Young yet again. This is a great thing for our community. I am so glad that we're able to utilize the housing trust fund in this way. I'm so excited to see twin homes built. This is a win. Thanks, Sam. We do have Brittany Hennessey from Habitat here. Brittany, you want to say a few words about this partnership deal, however? Yeah. I sure do. I'm joining you from Minneapolis. So I apologize that I can't be there with you in person as I appreciate all of your time. And I just want to first point out that these projects are not possible without nonprofit municipal partnership in any way. And so thank you from staff, Ford Authority, Council above and beyond, who not only look to the comp plan, but also look for partnership within our community. So first and foremost. So first and foremost. But second, I think Habitat for Humanity is really excited to look at the goals within the comprehensive plan and see how we can achieve some of those affordable housing, gentle density, infill, all of those items. And I think that this twin home will accomplish all of those, which is really exciting. So for those who weren't at Ford Authority, we're hoping to build a twin home, two to three bedrooms, one bath with an attached garage. It will be one story, zero step entry, ADA ready home as well. And again, we build with ICF. And so on top of all of that is incredible energy efficiency for our homeowners that only adds to that afford ability. If you want to see our blower door test, I don't have it off the top of my head, but I'm happy to also email that to you so you can see how incredible the homes that we build are. So we have one family selected and we're hoping to kind of announce the second here in the next couple of weeks, given our due diligence with selection. So other than that, we're excited to partner with the neighbors. We've already met with Cotter schools and talked about what this development will mean for that community, address any potential disruptions and that type of thing. At the core of it, I just want to state that partnerships, especially financially, is what makes these projects affordable as well. Between rising costs of construction and I would say just the wealth gap that we're continuing to see in our applications, there's no way that we can truly meet the needs of Winonans without this type of support and partnership. So thank you all. And with that, I'll take any questions on our build. Very good. Thank you, Brittany. Any questions for her at all? George? Yeah, Brittany George here, a Port Authority member. I asked you at the port meeting if you want to update the council on the habitat home on East 9th Street. I would love to. 1050 East 9th Street broke ground almost a year and a half ago. And that will be finished actually August of this year with a hopeful sale September. That homeowner is doing excellent and it's fun seeing her and her fellow coworkers on the job site. They've come out like a dozen times if you want to see fun videos that we've captured. So you all will be invited for a celebration when we do that ribbon cutting. I encourage you to attend. And again, that will be in August or September that we'll host that celebration. And in that same timeline is when we'll break ground on Hil bert Street. And we actually need to complete by February of 20... 28? 27? 27? Thank you. because we also have Minnesota housing monies that are supporting this project and affordability as well. So that is our overall build timeline for the next couple of years. Great. Thanks, Brittany. And there are comments, questions, or discussion. No? Thank you, Brittany. Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.4 is the request to vacate a portion of Pat Nude Drive. May the council set the public hearing date June 1st, 2026. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? None? Can I just get... Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Sam. I'm going to steal George's line. Could I have someone walk me through this? There you go. Sorry to take it from you. No, that's... That's what I was going to ask. I'm willing to hand off. Steve, we're just on a lot. Mayor and council, this is a small portion of road out by the airport. It would look like it's their property already. It's something that we honestly didn't 100% know it was ours until Brian Woodley pointed it out. Really, it would end up being transferred to the property owner that owns the property on both sides of it, but that doesn't happen until the public hearing. So the public hearing will happen, and then it will be declared marginal property transferred to the port. Then the port would actually convey it to the owners. Thank you for that. Yep. Steve, we have no utilities under it? None whatsoever. There's no public or private utilities that are in the right-of-way that would serve anything other than the buildings that are right there. No future development beyond that road? It dead ends. No reason for us to have that. Right into the river. Dead ends into the river, I think. Into a parking lot, which is their property. And then eventually to the airport. Right. Then to the swamp. Yep. Yep. Things lead to the swamp. Any other comments, questions, or discussion? Thank you, Brian. Hearing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.5 is a request for qualifications for construction manager at risk for the phosphorus removal project at the wastewater treatment plant. The council authorized advertised request for qualifications. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? Jeff? I can go for somebody walking me through this process. I read through it, and it sounds like we're hiring. Is this similar to what we were talking about with BKV in regards to you having an intermediary that helps you keep the costs under control, or am I missing this completely? Um, not a hundred percent. No, I'm just kidding. This is an actual process that's laid out by the legislature. Oh, okay. Contractor, contract manager at risk, and it's a two-step process. The first step is this request for qualifications, where we garner qualifications from a multitude of contractors. Hopefully, obviously, we want as many to put in qualifications as possible, and we do have some strong interest. Um, we narrow that down to, say, three contractors that will then submit requests for proposals, where they'll give us a proposal with an estimated price of completing the project. What the value of this is, is they'll look at our plans, which you don't even have to have 100% plans for this process, but we do in this case. They're already approved by the PCA. They'll look at our plans. They'll look at our specifications and try to find cost-s aving measures within that. And then, after you pick one of the proposals, one of the contractors for the proposal, they'll actually solicit bids from subs to get the actual price after we've already awarded to the construction manager at risk. Okay. It's kind of convoluted, but what we've heard in the industry with a project like this is if we just did the classic design, bid, build process, we probably wouldn't get any bids. Rochester had a treatment plant that was $80 million treatment plant. They got zero bids. And then they did a CMAR, and they got three. Is it because they don't have any hands in it prior to the bids going on, the requests for bids? I didn't catch your question. Is it because they don't have hands on it before it goes out to bid? Like they just don't want to touch it? I think this is a way they can control the process better and they can feel more in control of it. I mean, they're at risk. There is a risk factor with it, but they control the process a little better. And, you know, even though it says more risk, it may actually be less risk in the end. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions? George. You know, as far as wastewater plant construction and engineers and re-engineering, I think we've got one of the best firms right in town, do we not, down in the east end of Winona? They've done a lot of work and they will be on the list for , it sounds like they're interested. They may or may not be the manager, but it sounds like they 'll probably at least get a portion of it. You know, obviously it's up to them to put in. And we're fortunate to have them with us. Yep. And they've done, they've done a chunk of work down to the treatment plan already. Obviously not on this project, but in the past. Their specialty. Chad, do you have a comment? Mayor and council, councilor Hyman, is a good one. This is a slightly different than what will be coming to council here in the near future with a construction manager advisor. So we had Krause Anderson present at a previous council meeting. We're working with them on the public safety building. Again, the difference here, as Brian's mentioned, they're not doing the state statute required construction manager at risk or the CMAR. They'll come in as an advisor. Part of that is making that decision is that, you know, again, we haven't 100% solidified the project. And so in this case there, we, in a sense, really know what we're doing at the wastewater treatment plant. We, again, haven't made all the final decisions in the public safety building. So we bring Krause Anderson as the construction manager advisor, or that's what will be recommended here shortly. So there is a difference between the two. Similar, in a sense, until we get to the bidding. Probably the similar where your construction manager is going to look for cost savings. Correct. The bidding process, though, was a little bit different than what was just described. Very good. Any other questions? Thanks, Brian. Appreciate it. Hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.6 is an annexation request by Anthony and Greta Vogt for property located at 1628 Valley View Drive. Will the council adopt the resolution? Second. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from George. Any discussion? Are you going to say it or am I? Oh, well. I know, or Luke here, yeah. Now, this property, isn't this part of the orderly annex ation area? Mayor and council, that is correct. This is the orderly annexation agreement that would go forward to the township first, and then we would sign after the township signs off. Should the township not agree to the orderly annexation agreement, we would pursue annexation via ordinance. Okay. Jeff? What's our current track record with the township? I remember this coming up a couple of years ago, and there was some... I am confident that... I don't want to say there were issues, but there were concerns. Is that a better way to put it? I think that that is a very apt description, council member Hyma, and I would not be surprised if this came back, too. All right. So what... Let's just play this out, then. So it comes... You know, they don't agree. It comes back. Where do we go from there? Then we would work on annexation by ordinance, and so after 45 days, if they have not agreed to the order ly annexation, we would pursue the other avenue, which would be feasible because of the tank structural integrity compliance component for their septic system as well as soil separation. So we've got a plan A, which is the easy way. We've got a plan B, which is a little more difficult, but still quite doable. Quite doable. Indeed. We'll get there. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Any other comments, questions, or discussion? Thanks, Luke. Hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Motion passes. Item 5.7 is a certified local government grant agreement extension. Move that the council approve the grant and authorize administration. Execute the same. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.8 is the IAFF local 575 fire captain's 2026 through 2028 bargaining agreement. Move that the council adopt the resolution. Second. Pushing from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 7.1 is council concerns. This evening we're going to switch it around a little bit. George is going last. Sorry, bud. Okay. Do you mean Dykus goes first? Yeah, let's do it. Dykus. Okay. Oh, nothing actually. Okay. Very good. Let's see. I'm working backwards. Sam. I don't have anything tonight either. Okay. Very good. Jeff. I don't have anything either, but I really appreciate you asking. Yeah, you bet. Absolutely. Steve. Nothing tonight. Can't wait for George. Yes. The anticipation is built. I guess I'll stand for this. So. Council Member Borzikowski. Thank you, Mayor and my members here. I'd first like to congratulate Andy Wojciechowski on being named the 2026 Steamboat Days Harbor Master. If you don't know who Andy is, just say Wojo, and that's Andy. Wojo is Andy Wojciechowski. And a very, very good selection and a good candidate to represent the city during Steamboat Days. The project on 3rd Street coming along from Hamilton to M ankato. A lot of activity there and a lot of things going on and things getting ripped up and a lot of hours working. And the project is coming along very, very good. And I'm sure that will certainly be done on time. So. Election season, it's upon us. I've been, I'm sure Jeff had as well, too. I had a lot of calls from Gabe and from different newspapers. Jeff, I'm sure, had the whole thing in different media outlets. And are you going to run for office again? And how long have you been on the council? And, you know, what's your plan? So on, so forth. And are you the longest serving council member? First of all, I am not the longest serving council member. Jim Stoltman, post-World War II in that era there. He holds that particular record in there. And Jerry Craig in our modern day era holds it for those of us that are here right now. And two very, very, very good council members. My father served on the city council back in the 60s and 70 s. He represented the 4th Ward. I came with Mike Krzyzewski when he coached Duke. We kind of joined at the same time. I was on council. He was head coach of the Duke basketball team and very, very successful. And he had a career just about as long as my career. In fact, someone asked me, how many years do you have on council? And I thought about this. I have 28 years. I have more by myself than the rest of my council colleagues combined. So kind of, yeah. Bragging rights. Yeah, bragging rights. There you go. However, for 44 years, Aborzikowski has represented Winona 's 4th Ward. My father and myself. And I'm very damn proud of that. 44 years of public service. We did well. And we're going to continue to do well. I have asked the voters of the 4th Ward for seven election cycles for their support, their trust, and confidence. And they have given it to me overwhelmingly. The 4th Ward has always been there for me. Tomorrow is election filing day. And during that whole time, I built a lot of relationships throughout this community with businesses, with people, with families. And it's been very, very good. And we've got a lot accomplished and a lot more to accomplish. Tomorrow is election filing day, as I've already repeated it. And tomorrow, I will not be asking for the support of the voters of the 4th Ward. Thank you. Thank you. I think we should all recognize how special a moment this is because George literally embodies service to a community . He really does. George and I have not always agreed. And I'll speak to me and George's relationship here. But George and I don't always agree on everything. And that's the way it should be. Councils should not always agree on everything. But George and I have gained, at least from my perspective, I've gained a lot of respect for you. As a council member, as a person, as a father, as a community member, and a stalwart of Ward 4. We know that. Thank you. The town knows that. We all know that. George, I've always been able to say with true honesty that you are one of the hardest working council members. I have ever met in my entire life. And I've met quite a few. I haven't met all of them. Not as many as you. But someone calls, you have coffee with them. You talk with them. You let them blow up for five minutes. You've told me that you let them blow up for five minutes before you have a discussion with them. You do all the right things that a council member needs to do in terms of taking care of your ward. And I, as mayor, recognize that my position is something that is special. And I want to thank you, as mayor, for all the years of service that you have given the city of Winona. So really, truly, thank you, George, for everything you've done. Bring that home and tell your wife I said that, too. And thank you. And I'm not done yet. I'm here until the end of the year. That's right. And a lot of decisions to make yet. Oh, you're coming back. Okay. All right. In June. All right. Good. You'll see me first meeting in June. George, it's a special moment. We really appreciate it. Thank you. All the service over the years. All right. What's next? Under consent agenda, we have three items. Item 8.1 is the approval of the May 4th, 2026 minutes. Item 8.2 is the ordinance to amend Chapter 43 of the Un ified Development. Code. And item 8.3 is the ordinance to designate a handicapped parking space on Zumbrough Street. With the council approve the consent agenda, including publication of the summary ordinance. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Motion passes. Mayor, time being 7.19 p.m., I move. We adjourn. Second. Motion from George. Second from Steve. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good evening everyone. This is a regularly scheduled meeting of the Winona City Council. Tonight I have a couple announcements. This past weekend we were unfortunate enough to have lost former mayor Tom Slogge, who was 90 years old. He passed away last Thursday. I'm just going to read a summary of his obituary. He was born in Winona in 1936. He went to Cotter High School, graduated in 1954. He later went to St. Mary's College for two years, and then he was assigned to the United States Military Academy of West Point, where he graduated in 1962 as a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. He later served in the Army Reserves and later as a command ing officer of the Winona National Guard unit. He was assigned various National Guard staff positions throughout Minnesota, ultimately retiring after 18 years. His final commission was lieutenant colonel. In this room he was mostly known as a First Ward Council member from 1986 to 1987, and he was also known as mayor from 1988 to 1995. He was a member of multiple groups within the community, but he was specifically a finance officer at the American Legion Post, and also president of Woodlawn Cemetery Association. I would like to take a moment tonight. All of us stand for a moment of silence in memory of Tom S logge. Thank you, everyone. On another note tonight, I have a proclamation for the Win ona County Law Enforcement Memorial Day. City of Winona, Minnesota Proclamation, whereas May 13, 20 26, is designated as Winona County Law Enforcement Memorial Day and is set aside as a day to honor all fallen law enforcement officers. And whereas the well-being of all citizens of Winona County and the United States is preserved and enhanced as a direct result of the vigil ance and dedication of law enforcement personnel. And whereas more than 700,000 men and women at great risk to their personal safety presently serve their fellow citizens as guardians of peace . And whereas more than 130 peace officers across this nation were killed in the line of duty during 2025. And whereas all Winona area law enforcement agencies use this day to honor our fallen fellow officers who have made the supreme sacrifice for the citizens of Win ona County and the city of Winona. And whereas this day also serves as a reminder of the dangers faced currently serving law enforcement officers in their day-to-day activities. And whereas our officers do not serve in a vacuum, but are assisted in many ways by the citizens of Winona and Winona County. Now therefore I, Mayor Scott Sherman, hereby proclaim Wednesday, May 13, 2026, respectively as Winona County Law Enforcement Memorial Day in the city of Winona and do hereby call all the citizens of Winona County to join area law enforcement agencies in honoring our fallen officers. In witness whereof, I have here unto set my hand and cause the seal of the city to be affixed this fourth day of May, 2026. That's all I have for this evening. I'll pass it along to city manager, Chad Uble. Mayor and council, wait a second for a picture to come up on the screen. Tom Slogge, as the mayor mentioned, served as a city council member for one term and then mayor for two terms. I was lucky enough a few years ago to capture this picture of Tom, Jerry Miller, Mark Peterson, and Scott Sherman. A photo of Winona's mayor spanning nearly four decades. On behalf of the city of Winona, the employees past and present, our deepest consoled condolences to Tom's family. Obviously not an easy way to transition from that, but I do have two other updates that I'd like to mention to council. We are working on an item for May 18th, council meeting requesting a construction manager be brought on to the public safety facility project. Kraus Anderson, I think I mentioned this, that we were looking at this meeting to bring that back. However, we're working through the contracts with Karl Sand erson and BKV to make sure the two contracts talk to each other. That's an important piece when you bring on a construction manager and architect. More importantly, we want to make sure that those contracts meet the state requirements for possible reimbursement. I say possible reimbursement because some of the costs associated with that construction manager may be reimbursable through our state grant. Also along that line, we are still moving forward with the FBO agreement. The negotiations have been moving along well. It is taking a little bit longer than anticipated. Primarily moving from a 30-year-old lease or agreement to a new agreement does take some time. I don't have a timeline for that agreement to return to council at this time, but just a heads up that we are working through that. That is it this evening. Very good. Thank you, Chad. I will now ask city clerk to take the roll call. Mayor Scott Sherman. Here. Councilmember Young. Here. Heima. Christensen. Here. Zierden Shortridge. Here. Borzikowski. Here. Dykus. Here. For each public hearing, staff will make a short presentation, and then I will ask if anyone from the public wishes to speak to the matter. Please state your name and address clearly. You'll be given up to three minutes to make your testimony. I will call three times for public comments. Once the hearing is closed, the public may not participate in the discussion by city council. Under the required public hearings, item 2.1 is the parking ordinance amendments. Evening, mayor and council. I do have a presentation on this, so if we could bring that up in a moment, that would be much appreciated. For this agenda item, we are looking at two city code amendments that would reduce off-street parking spaces. The first city code amendment would be to reduce the requirement for studios and efficiencies from two off-street parking spaces down to one off-street parking space. The second amendment would be to utilize up to half of a property's street frontage immediately adjacent to the lot to be able to help satisfy the off-street parking requirements that we have in code. Let's see if we can get your presentation pulled up here. Sorry, Carlos. That's all right. Okay. Okay. Thank you. We're still recording. Mayor and Council, just a small technical error. Grant said it'll be ready here in a minute. Okay. If we can just hold tight. There we go. All right. Thanks for everybody's patience. All right. We'll go ahead. So for this public hearing, there are two proposed amendments in front of council, two city code amendments that would reduce off-street parking requirements in the city here. The first that is proposed would be, as I mentioned previously, to reduce the number of off-street parking spaces for studio and one-bedroom dwelling units from two to one. The second is to allow up to one half of street frontage immediately adjacent to a lot, not including driveway approaches and no parking areas, to help meet off-street parking requirements. These two amendments are being proposed based on direction from the comprehensive plan to promote construction of new housing units in Winona. And they're also being proposed because of the fact that requiring too much off-street parking is a major roadblock to construction of housing, especially the type of infill housing that is supported by the comprehensive plan. And I'll note that Winona is not alone in addressing off-st reet parking requirements and taking a look at reducing them across the nation and in Minnesota. Cities have and continue to look at their parking requirements and reducing them in order to promote the construction of more housing units in their communities. In terms of the first amendment to reduce the number of off -street parking spaces for studios and one-bedrooms from two to one, some reasoning behind this proposed amendment. For these types of units, there's likely only one or two people living in each household unit. And many times, these household units have only one car or one vehicle. Another reason is that we've seen smaller household sizes on average from about three in 1960 in Winona to about two in 2023. And so we have a stronger demand for some of the smaller style housing units, such as studios and one bedrooms. And finally, studies have shown that requiring more than one off-street parking space per unit is detrimental to the construction of infill housing. In terms of the second amendment, I'll refer to it as the frontage amendment for tonight. Some reasoning behind that amendment is that the hard surf acing already exists on the street immediately adjacent to a property. There's no need for additional off-street paving that increases water flow into storm sewers. Also, the amendment puts valuable real estate to use. Our streets in Winona are maintained, plowed, swept, patch ed, and resurfaced curb to curb. And so the idea is to use the space to help provide more housing for people. We all want more housing, and it almost always comes down to dollars and cents. And so this amendment will help us to construct more residential projects in Winona and help those projects to become a reality. Third, the amendment provides flexibility. Dedicated off-street parking is still more desirable and will continue to be provided, but the additional units allowed via on-street parking could help make a project more financially feasible, so we see more housing units actually being constructed. In terms of the frontage amendment, we see the greatest impact as being in the mixed-use zoning districts where our 30% rule and lot size requirements do not apply. Those mixed-use zoning districts were created in 2017 to promote reuse, redevelopment, and new housing units, especially in the areas that you see on the map that are outlined in red. These areas are in the greater downtown area at the center north portion of the map, West 5th Street area, as well as along Mankato, and immediately adjacent to WSU on both the west and east sides as a result of council action supporting rezoning in these areas over the past year. One example of how the frontage amendment could play out is a mixed-use area that was recently rezoned last year, immediately to the east of WSU. An example property is 520 Center, and 520 Center is the address for an overall development project that encompasses three properties. Those three properties have been looked at for apartment redevelopment for approximately the last 10 years, but nothing has been actually constructed on the site. How this frontage amendment would apply to this individual case is that the three lots have approximately 110 feet of street frontage. Applying the ordinance that's proposed, you would subtract out the amount of space or the amount of frontage for the driveway, which is 24 feet, and that gets you to 86. Then per the ordinance requirement, 50% of 86 will get you to 43 feet, which is good for two parking stalls at 18 feet in length. And so for this, what this would allow if this amendment were adopted is the addition of one regular unit on the property, or potentially two studios if amendment number one being considered tonight is also adopted. So this would help make this project become a reality, adding new units where we want them, and in a location that is supported by the comprehensive plan. Conversely, we see the frontage amendment as having less impact in residential areas due to the 30% rule, and also minimum lot size regulations, which essentially require a variance to add a second dwelling unit on virtually any property in the core area of Winona. The residential areas are shown in the map that by the arrows, they're colored in yellow, orange, and brown. They're essentially between the mixed-use neighborhood zoning areas. So for an example of a residentially zoned property where the frontage amendment would apply, this just happens to be a lot at the corner of Minnesota Street and West Wabasha. It's your standard city lot, 50 by 140, 7,000 square feet. It has 30 feet of street frontage on West Wabasha. Then you get into a no parking area where the corner is. 70 feet of frontage along Minnesota Street. Then at the southern end of the lot, you have driveway access. And so per the proposed changes, you would add the 30 to the 70 to get a total of 100. Take a half of that, and again, that 50 foot in frontage would be good for two parking spaces at 18 feet in length each. So to turn a single-family home into a duplex in this location, you would only need two off-street parking spaces instead of four. So instead of hard-surfacing additional areas adjacent to the garage, maybe off the alley on this property, those additional parking spaces for the second unit could be provided on the street instead. However, importantly, if all that works out, you would still need to comply with the 30% rule in order to create a second dwelling unit on this property, and you would also need variances for lot size and setbacks as well. So you would still have to go through the Board of Adjust ment and obtain a variance to add a second unit on this property . If all of that happened, I would look at this as actually a pretty good example of being able to add a new unit that fits the character of the overall area, because all you have to do is look across the street, and on the same size overall lot, you have two single- family homes on a 50 by 140 piece of land. Some additional information related to both of the amendments. Both amendments apply only to new units created after adoption of the ordinance, and so existing units must continue to supply parking as is . If you have a single-family home and you want to add an additional unit, you don't just get to say, oh, I'm just going to put all my parking out on the street. You still have to provide the required two parking spaces for the unit that was created prior to the ordinance being adopted off-street. So you still have to keep the parking that you already have related to the property that's off-street. Additionally, alternate-side parking is the reason why the frontage amendment is limited to half the street frontage adjacent to a property, so that's baked right into the ordinance proposal, and this helps to provide sufficient on-street parking spaces when the alternate-side parking regulations are in effect. And finally, I mentioned this before, but utilizing half the frontage is an option. Dedicated off-street parking is still more desirable and will continue to be provided. The frontage amendment simply provides us additional flexibility in the overall intent of getting more housing units constructed. Council options tonight. First of all, the Planning Commission reviewed this at a public hearing on March 23rd and recommended approval 6-2. Options tonight would be to approve the amendments as recommended by the Planning Commission by introducing the ordinance in your packets for adoption. You could also take a look at modifying the amendments, denying the amendments, or postponing a decision to a future date. With that, I'm available for questions now and after the public hearing. Steve. Thank you for the excellent introduction. Two quick questions. About how many units would you think would be built in that first example you had, 520 Center Street, you identified the possibility of one or two additional parking spots gained by the proposed ordinance. How many units would be at 520 Center? Yeah, so for those three properties, the latest development proposal that we had in 2022 was for two 8-unit apartment buildings. 16 units, and we're talking one to two parking spots. Okay, second question. Could we be, and this may not be for you, but could this promote litigation or bring us to litigation related to the grandfathering, where we're telling, we're establishing in the ordinance that it's only new units after May 20th, 2026? Does this, do we set ourselves up? How secure do we feel that we are not setting ourselves up to really rip the band-aid off this thing and have a parking, changes we did not attend? I will note that there have been multiple changes to our parking requirements through the years since the original adoption of our ordinance in 1955. Up until about 1970, there was only zero or one parking space required. That was increased to 1.5 and then two. And so anytime we create new ordinances related to off-st reet parking and related to parking, we have to take a look at an individual development site and take a look at which units were created and when were they created, and then apply our parking requirements accordingly. So in short, we already do this and have done it for the entirety of time that I've worked here, approximately 18 years. Okay, so you're saying we are doing this, have been doing this since the 1950s and on. Okay, all right, thank you. Any other questions for Carlos from Council? George. Now, for what's on the books right now is not affected by none of this. That's correct. What's on the books right now, just for anything new. A question came today, if I have to provide this particular spot out on the street, does that particular spot just belong to my unit, or is it open for the whole general public to park there? It would be open for the whole general public to park there , but that is one reason why we are proposing only half of the frontage be available for a parking space, so that if other people are parking on your side of the street because of alternate side parking, there's still enough room to accommodate additional vehicles, and not just all from your property. And then for off-street parking, is a garage counted for one parking stall? Depends on the size of the garage. Yep, so yes, the answer is yes. If your garage is empty. Yep. Thank you. Any other questions for Carlos? I'm going to open up the public hearing. I'll now open the public hearing. Does anybody from the public wish to speak during required public hearing, item 2.1, parking ordinance amendments? Hi, Stacy Owecki, 226 Kansas Street. Thanks for this opportunity to speak, and thank you for your service. I understand that there is a housing crisis in Winona, and housing is a very important issue, but so is parking. And I agree that maybe for a studio or efficiency or one bedroom apartment, one parking space should be provided, but I don't like this half thing, and that, you know, people should have a parking space. And what I'm worried about, too, is mostly businesses downtown. We have a lot of apartments above our businesses downtown, and there's a lot of space that could be used to build new housing down there. And parking is so important for businesses. I know at one point that the street was blocked downtown to make a pedestrian area. That didn't work in Winona. We need our parking, and we want to grow our downtown, so will this interfere with growing our downtown? Also, I know a lot of those apartments don't have parking spaces. I know there's quite a number of Airbnbs where they don't provide parking for the Airbnb. It's in the street or one of the public parking lots. I also think with the ARC downtown now and the Masterpiece Hall coming, what is that going to do to our parking? Are we going to tear down more houses to make parking? I don't want to see that happen. And then, on a personal note, I live in the downtown area, and sometimes parking is really hard in front of my house. I live across from St. Martins. All the kids park in the street when they come to school. Also, you know, we say, oh, yeah, everybody's going to have one car, but that's not true. My neighbor has seven cars. That becomes a real problem in the wintertime. We're kind of fighting for spaces out there in the winter time when we have to park on one side of the street. Also, one thing, you know, Carlos said, oh, they're doing this in a lot of cities, but those cities have really good public transportation. They have bike lanes. They have taxis. You know, we have a little bike lane here, but not enough for people to – I won't ride my bike in this town after a b iker – a bicyclist was killed on our street last year, and I think there was another accident with a bicyclist on our street. So – and I'm all for bicycling, so I think we even need less cars on the street. That would help people bicycling more if we could get rid of some of the cars on the street and have bicycles. Yeah, so I think it's – you know, I know I agree with the one half thing – I mean with the one, you know, parking space, but the half on the street, I don't agree with that. So – and especially downtown. Maybe we could modify it where certain areas – we're not going to do this, especially like around the university. Have you been down Wabasha when school's in session? There's no parking there for those people in those houses, and I have a friend. She says, oh, yeah, you know, my friends can't park in front of my house when they come to visit me during the day . So I'm for half of this and just totally getting rid of the half of the parking on the street, or at least modifying it so certain areas of this town are exempt from that. Thank you. Thank you, Stacey. Does anybody else from the public wish to speak during the required public hearing? Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Brittany Hennessy, 851 West Wabasha Street. I'm actually here in support of both of the amendments proposed. It's a practical pro-housing policy for the city of Winona, and I want to state that this is happening around the state . It's actually part of big packages, like the Starter Home Act that is being – or was – that was being pushed forward. Parking minimums may seem like a small zoning requirement, but in practice, they have a major impact on whether housing gets built, what type of housing gets built, and whether that housing remains affordable. Every required parking space takes up – takes up land. It has extra construction costs and limits the number of homes that can fit on a site. I want to, like, echo one thing. It's that this is for new development, right? In many cases, a single parking space can cost $10,000 to $ 12,000 to construct. Costs like that are ultimately passed on to renters, homeowners, and working families. For a community like Winona, a city that is landlocked, walkable, and already investing in public streets and curb infrastructure, parking minimums are often one of the least effective uses of our land. They can force housing projects to dedicate valuable space to parking instead of homes, green space, or neighborhood- serving designs. And reducing parking minimums does not mean developers will stop building parking. It simply means they can build the right amount of parking based on the needs of the residents they serve, rather than a one-size-fits-all in our community. For example, 49.1% of households in Winona have one car or less. 7.3% of our residents have no car. While we don't know the socioeconomic link between those, I could guarantee that there might be one based off of age and income. What matters here is that we take a serious stance on housing. A pro stance on housing per our comprehensive plan, one that encompasses affordability, and effectively using our land as well. Modernizing our parking policies is an important step forward, and I encourage you to support this change. In a perfect example, if parking minimums weren't a thing, and let's say somebody wanted to build a twin home on a vacant piece of land, they could effectively put two studios, potentially, on that, and have two parking spots on the city block, not a garage space that would be below, if you get what I'm saying. So, when we talk about gentle density, when we talk about using vacant lots appropriately, parking plays a huge difference, and if that is viable. Thank you. Thank you, Brittany. Does anybody else from the public wish to speak during the required public hearing? I'll ask one last time. Does anybody from the public wish to speak during the required public hearing, item 2.1, for parking ordinance amendments? Ted. Ted Azelton, 1073 West 5th Street. I would urge the council to stop this nonsense. I live on a block in Winona on West 5th Street that is 80% rental. We lost seven parking stalls back in the early 2000s when the city and the railroad built the median on 5th Street. Because of the parking regulations for providing parking in rental properties, people can still park in driveways and on the property, and they don't use as much of the street. This new proposal seems unfair to those that already complied, and you're given preferential treatment to new development. Why should they reap the benefits at the expense of the public that needs the parking? Now, that's just in my area. A block and a half away is Cotter. Look at all the parking when school is in session there, and the fact that we live on a block of 80% rental. So the 30% argument doesn't hold water in most cases in several areas in town. As the first speaker stated, where do you park? Where do you park? Especially with alternate parking. So I'd like the council to consider these observations and either pause it, seek more information, amend it, or modify it, but don't push it through as is. It needs to be worked on some more. Thank you. Thanks, Ted. Does anybody else from the public wish to speak during the required public hearing tonight? And I'll ask one last time. Does anybody from the public wish to speak during the required public hearing? 2.1 for parking ordinance amendments. Hearing no one, I will close the public hearing. Mr. Mayor, move to approve the amendment as recommended by the planning commission. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? Steve. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I see this as a modest proposal and I see this as a somewhat as a go slow approach, especially because this is only on new units. We are not completely opening, we're not having a parking free-for-all. We are simply allowing this change to units after May 20th of this year. So this will be a go slow approach. It's a modest proposal that will help us achieve our important goal of more housing. Really our number one goal from the comprehensive plan. So I think we should move forward with this. We've made parking changes over the years as was outlined by Carlos and this will be another change. And I think in the end, Winona as a whole will benefit from it. Thank you. Very good. Thanks, Steve. Jerome? Yeah. Yeah. I've always been an advocate for having places for people to sleep over places for unoccupied cars to sit as a priority. And I think that this addresses, begins to address that. I agree with Steve. This is a go slow approach. Gives us a chance to see what the impact will be in a very limited area of the city that's already designated for changing use, land use, and to see how it works. I think that one other key thing here is flexibility. This gives landlords an option to continue to offer more extensive off-street parking if they so desire and charge for it. and more limited supply for a more affordable residence. As it was pointed out, parking spaces off-street don't come for free. So I think this is a good first step in addressing housing and parking, getting that balance in place. And the point is well taken regarding public transit availability and walkability and bikeability that those also have to be on our agenda. But I think that this is a reasonable proposal and should be supported. Thanks, Jerome. George? Thank you. Thinking about this issue and I've had phone calls with Carlos back and forth on this and I can go either way on this. Does it personally affect me? No. In 1971, I attended Winona State College at the time. It was not a university. There was no place to park. I went to Cotter High School previous to that. There were a few students driving cars but we found a place to park. Now granted, ma'am, you mentioned St. Martin's school, church over there. Yes, with the school and a lot of activity there, yes, parking is going to be consumed during the day. It's going to be consumed, Ted, as you mentioned, at Cotter High School. Look at Winona Senior High School. The parking lot is full and there's nobody biking to school. They're all coming with their cars to school and they're still parking in the neighborhoods. So like I said, parking around, congestion around schools, understandable. Winona State graduates this Friday. There will be all kinds of parking around Winona State. And when the high schools and the other schools get out, yes, there's still going to be cars there but parking will be more available than what it is during the school year. The school year always brings more traffic, more cars, more people, more students, more buses, bikes, whatever it may be. Carlos, if I was to buy a single family home and I want to make it a rental property, what rules do I have to abide by for parking? So in terms of parking, you would have to provide at least two off-street parking spaces. We also have some other options within city code. Bicycle parking, covered bicycle parking would be another option. With this amendment, you would also have the option of up to half the frontage adjacent to your lot. An important consideration though is you also do have to comply with the 30% rule so you cannot make your house rental if the block that you're on is already over 30% and your block is saturated. So if I buy that home and just rent it out as a single-family home, I go according to the rules that are on the books. That's correct. So thank you. Thanks, George. Any other comments, questions, or discussion? Hearing none. Yes, Jason. As someone who sees himself as a strong advocate of what known as 30% rule, I really looked at these amendments with a skeptical eye. I'm just not seeing anything that puts that at risk and so I'm going to be, I would be in support of it as well. Okay. Thanks, Jason. Any other comments, questions, discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. For the remainder of this meeting, residents are only allowed to speak if they have a request before council and I have recognized you to speak. Under the petitions, requests, and communications, item 3.1 is the 2026 Steamboat Days Agreement which will be held June 17th through the 21st. The council put the agreement authorize city manager and city clerk to execute the same. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from everybody. What am I taking it from? Even the manager gave it a second. That's illegal now. All right. We'll take, we'll take Sam as a second. Any discussion? I think we all love Steamboat Days. Should we bring up Mr. Maynard, John? Oh, we'd love to hear from him. I don't know. I don't know. Not the one. Maynard Tipoff is at 8 o'clock. 8.30. 8.30. Oh, okay. Well, I'm really not president or whatever but I've been on Steamboat Days for probably over 28 years or whatever. Did you used to work at the city as well? I also was the park and rec director. Oh, okay. Yep. All right. And I know almost everyone here and I still do things for the city on my own time only I don't get paid this time. And we appreciate it, Maynard. Yeah. Either do we. more than others but anyhow. I can answer any question. You guys should have had the packet for everything and the maps. There is one map that you don't have in there but on purpose and that is the map that actually shows specifically where the gray water and everything else is and that's really not a necessary thing for here but it is for like the water department street and all those guys. So they'll get the map in particular but that actually shows pretty much everything that's on your regular map for the set. We also have all the maps for everything there between fireworks and PK5K every map that we ever used. We actually had to make a special map for somebody behind me at Gaybrick because the fire department has a new person there with Matt and he required us a better map so we did a Google map so that even though it's locked there and we're taking and shooting up fireworks for the and all they are is salutes so they don't have a spray but we did a Google map and Ted did that for us because then it shows where the fencing is and the parameter of it is that nobody it's locked but that way you can see exactly when they requested that so we work heavily with those guys even with the 20 foot area because of fire and whatnot in all the locations we listened and met with community people I actually personally went around to every area I have one left that I want to talk to because I'm trying to get special parking for that person after this but talk to every person around 2nd Street in that area it's been a lot more difficult and I'm glad we have a new hotel down there for Mike's Hotel in 44 but that's where we had the majority of the carnival which made it much more difficult to set up the carnival we have too big to go down to the lake and too many other things and we have a really nice area that we use for up on top of the levee for the carnival so that would be detriment to go down there with part of it because we want things to be as close we did listen to community two years ago we are not using the parking lot at all over by but by the old how what do you want to Riverfront no third and center third and center but it's over by the what's what's there right now what's what's the it was a transit shelter yeah but what's the business that's right no not that one anyway municipal lot it's two municipal lots 111 front riverfront and then down by the down by god you guys help me will ya I'm not used to being up here anymore and I can't sit here and talk much longer because the T-wolves are playing I've been totally but anyhow so with that we did take all that stuff into consideration we're not on we're not on there we're only on third street this year for the for the car show keeping that pretty much the same there were some issues with that part of it and we're not doing it anymore other than that particular time the rest is all on second street from Maine all the way to Lafayette and all those businesses have been talked to we have one like I say and I'm waiting for I'm going to say it Mr. Rivers with Mike and also Jake that is their maintenance person down there and Cindy who runs that to try to allow them it used to be a dentist office and now there's businesses so last year we had to give them parking permission there because they're blocked and so we take their garbage out before the dumpster and after and they can't get in that parking spot so we're trying to get them to go behind that building so they can walk back there right behind their building that Mike may allow us if they aren't full so even if they are full I think we can still accommodate the cars that we want to do there so okay we try to do everything but go ahead I just wanted to thank you for the outreach to businesses two years ago you started that I was actually at that meeting a couple years ago there was excellent exchange and clear communication it was needed and I appreciate you continuing to do that so well done and this year people that weren't there we even made a point to go to talk to some of those people and we had very few suggestions that we didn't already take care of and things and there are a couple there and I have to say one we need to make sure because Center Street North will be closed a little bit and that's where actually the new hotel goes through they will now go through the alley which will be open or go down Lafayette Street through behind the craft beer place and down to Mike's I've also asked Mike for sure to make sure that he has parking signs up at the hotel for no parking so he'll get those up because otherwise everybody will park there and the police cannot ticket those particular people because there is no sign there so we made sure I've done this so many times that if I'm sure we missed something but we try to take care of it even with everybody around there so any questions any questions from anyone we're going to vote you ready all right all those in favor say aye opposed motion passes thank you guys everything you guys do thanks bud and the departments as well 100% we can't do it without them absolutely you're 100% right Maynard thank you moving on to item 3.2 is a request for licenses for the 2020 16 boat days festival this is for the temporary on sale liquor license and a carnival license with council approve the licenses second motion from Steve second from Jerome any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye opposed motion passes item 3.3 is a request from the main street program for the big muddy brew and Q event to be held on Saturday August 15th move that the council approve the agreement and authorize the city manager and city clerk execute the same second motion from Sam second from Steve we do have Travis Lieback in the audience George you want to hear from him yeah come on up Travis have you come down and not get on TV yeah good evening mayor and council members I want to give a little background on why we made the change from levee park down to third street so this change came after extensive conversations that began actually with our 2025 chamber board retreat and continued with members from the big muddy committee the steering committee and other various main street committee members rising costs event costs made it important to us to rethink the format and ultimately shift the event to third street so that more directly supports the cash registers of our local retailers restaurants and bars while also ensuring we're physically responsible so the main street program can continue to grow it's programming and possibly impact downtown Winona and its businesses for years to come big muddy may look a little different this year but it will still include many components that the community and visitors have come to love we'll still have the ribbing contests the tastings live music just a little smaller and we will still have the kids area and the artists in the market by bringing it to third street we're excited to create more opportunities for business to be a part of the event and bring people through their doors as well cool thanks Travis any comments questions or discussion no George thank you for what you do because those are all big undertakings yeah you need a lot of people to put it all together and I'll mirror what Bader said that it's not possible without the city staff so again 100% yes all right thank you Travis thank you thanks for sticking around all right with that all those in favor say aye opposed motion passes item 3.4 is a temporary on sale liquor license for the Winona area chamber of commerce the council approve the license second motion from Steve second from Sam any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.5 liquor licenses for Rocco's pub and pizza through the council approve the licenses second motion from Steve second from Sam any discussion George likes Rocco's pizza I know that people from Rocco's here tonight I don't see them any out any coupons I believe that would be legal as well George all right any more questions comments or discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye opposed motion passes item 3.6 is a Kiwanis club taste of downtown Winona request for June 6 move that the council approve the request second motion from Sam second from Jerome any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.7 is the update of the mobile crisis response team agreement by representatives from Hiawatha Valley Mental Health Center council receive and file the update second motion from Steve second from Sam come on please and thank you for being here appreciate the opportunity mayor Sherman and council and my name is Eric Sievers I'm the executive director with Hiawatha Valley Mental Health Center and here with Jen Deak current director of our mobile crisis response team as well as the director of our substance use disorder department so we go to the next slide one of the things we wanted to update the council on is just some of the background on the mobile the importance of a mobile crisis response program for the city and for the community what we know is that the people that are in need of a mental health crisis response is increasing the need for a service like this is not getting to be less and less and what we provide and what we know is traditional systems are not designed to effectively respond so systems like law enforcement and emergency rooms are effective for what they're designed to do and provide but a behavioral response such as what we provide is better to quickly respond and reduce hospitalization and reduce symptoms this response is also needed because any delays in a response can increase risk can reduce can increase hospitalization and what we provide really reduces barriers to care you know stigma is still a big challenge we face in the work we do and people with mental health symptoms and so what our program provides is free confidential no cost service for people so the barriers around stigma the barriers around cost the barriers around transportation are removed through this model the next slide talks about what we provide so future slides will go into how long we've done this but what we provide is an immediate on-site support for people in a mental health crisis so we meet people where they're at through that we reduce fear of accessing help and we get involved to help de-escalate situations safely and quickly what we provide also is services for anyone so if someone calls 98 or 800 number we're there to help them whether they're a child adult or family member we help individuals stabilize them where they're at and connect them with other resources that might help them in the community the next slide goes into kind of where this all started so this is actually a county mandated service mobile crisis it's something the state has had in place for many years that counties in our state provide a 24-7 mobile crisis service in 2015 we began providing this for Winona County in the region primarily helping adults and primarily after hours and it was a shared program across the region 10 years ago the big change is that we started providing this 24-7 with our staff contracted with the counties in the region so we were one of three county community based organizations throughout the region us an agency in Rochester and then one over in Owatonna that provided this regional response for all ages 24-7 so I just wanted to make sure the council knew and others that this is actually a required service that be provided the counties are mandated to provide it the next slide which I got notes all over so one of the things that this was an exciting opportunity for us and in partnership with the city June of 24 is when the contract was drafted it was executed a month or two later and it was really the city supporting us with funding to dedicate a person for the city so that that is something we have never done in the other communities we're in and outside of Rochester no other community that I'm aware of in this part of the state has ever had a person dedicated to a city to respond so it was a good it was a very good opportunity with some unique funding to try something and these were the goals these four bullets on the bottom of your slide speak to what we were really hoping to achieve in conversation with Tom and Jay from the police department at the city the one big goal we were looking for is reducing the time law enforcement was out on mental health calls so as I said earlier law enforcement is a very necessary service for any city and our hope is that we would get engaged in the calls sooner to relieve law enforcement so they could respond to other matters that came to them the other goal the second one is a quicker response the third one is to increase we call it stabilization so part of the crisis program is that after that initial concern that then you are there to support them and stabilize the situation so that was one thing we hoped to see with this added staffing specifically for the city and we've had a good relationship our agency with the city for many many years actually one of the best relationships we have with any other city department is with Winona but we thought maybe this would be a way to enhance that relationship and partnership the next slide is it your slide so this slide is a gathering of data all the way back from the beginning of the contract of June July 1st excuse me of 24 I'm relatively new to this role I started taking over leadership of the mobile crisis department in September of last year so I appreciate Eric's sharing of the history of the service but as you can see on the slide here dating back to July 1st of 24 this data is only for the city of Winona as you can see with zip code 55987 we responded to 368 assessments we conducted 176 screeners 502 stabilization so that is all of it combined we are a daytime nighttime weekend holiday 24-7 service that is the total data throughout that time the number after those numbers is the number completed by the designated responder that was assigned to the city of Winona so of that 368 assessments excuse me 48 were completed by the designated respond 43 completed by the designated responder 35 screeners which is just a pre-screening like do we need an assessment or can we assess the risk at this level and doesn't have to go any further and 132 stabilizations which like Eric's that is really just bridging the gap until they can get into long-term services from the onset of the crisis call and I think it's noteworthy that you know a significant number of stabilizations were conducted by this designated responder just some more data about 179 unique people utilized the service during that time 146 adults 33 youth and because it's a voluntary service people do have the right to remain anonymous so we receive 50 calls from people that we don't know much about we know that they were 47 of them were adults three were youth but it could have been the same 47 or one adult could have called 47 times or it could have been 47 adults calling once we don't know and then some referrals from law enforcement during that time period we received 24 from the Winona Police Department and four from the Winona County Sheriff's Department and again these everyone included in this data has an area or a zip code of 55987 so this is just a portion of the work that the team does I think you're next yeah so the next slide while we were piloting this program with the city with you know staffing a person for the city Monday through Friday during the day we also in 2025 began a new relationship across five counties so we historically from 2016 till 2025 we were the equivalent of three counties all of Winona all of Houston part of Fillmore and part of Wabasha County and so we grew our program last year all last year really expanded it into all of Goodhue and the other halves of Fillmore and Wabasha so we grew we more than doubled our staffing and we were able to do that and we've been able to provide what we provide in this city beyond the daytime allocated person that you funded through a long term state grant because as I mentioned earlier the state has mandated county state mandates counties to provide this and through the state grant funding and Minnesota Medicaid is how we sustain the programming the last slide on the regional program if you can go to the next one then Jen's got a couple more is that so I mentioned we now have dedicated daytime staff across Fillmore Goodyo Houston Wabasha and Winona counties I missed we missed Winona so all five counties we have half to more than two staff designated in those counties we've really in other communities I mentioned I think it's a great relationship we have with the city here in the department but we've really been doing a lot more outreach with law enforcement schools and other organizations across the region and then we since it's a 24-7 we had to expand what we provide in the northern part of our service area in in good you and the upper parts the northern parts of Wabasha on the west part of Fillmore we had to expand our staffing for our overnight coverage but and that's been our growth and we were able to do that while also helping increase what we do here in the city so I had in the next slide I wanted to include some data of how the program has grown from a regional perspective throughout the last couple of years keep in mind that the 26 data is only q1 so I only added quarter one data onto the slide here but if things keep going in the way that they're going we can expect the total call volume to continue to increase um stabilizations more than almost doubled between 24 and 25 so it's we're growing at a very consistent rate throughout all five counties um just I pulled data the end of the beginning of this month for last month and we over doubled the number of assessments that we completed in April than we did in March and so I we're doing like Eric said a lot of targeted outreach and we're doing we're doing like that we've got a lot of targeted outreach those communities where we are under utilized hoping those numbers can grow as well and so just a lot of exciting opportunities to help reach people when they need us the most in all of those five counties I didn't include it on the data but if you were interested in the city of Winona data for April I have it right here we did 15 assessments three screeners and 38 stabilizations in the city of Winona last month and then on the next slide one of the things we want to make sure that we continue to do whether we continue to do whether we continue to support the city of Winona as we would any other area in our region this is a service that is provided to our youth 24 hours a day seven days a week and at no cost to the caller as I said we continue to do outreach and education the staff that we have now is wonderful they are reaching every single law enforcement law enforcement EMS fire city council in every city incorporated city in the five counties that we serve continue to have that strong relationship with the police department historically we have done a lot of crisis trainings for when on a PD hoping to include other law enforcement agencies in that as well and then again the long term funding through the grant through the state as well as the billing that we do with Minnesota Medicaid I think the last slide is just questions open to questions any questions Sam first of all thank you so much for coming and presenting this to us and also thank you for providing this service to our community and our region this is clearly very necessary service I want to know a little bit more about Hiawatha Valley mental health what are the qualifications for these responders or how are these responders trained I can speak to the qualifications so the statute just changed the language so they used to be referred to as a mental health practitioner now instead of the this service to our community and our region this is clearly very necessary service I want to know a little bit more about Hiawatha Valley mental health what are the qualifications for these responders or how are these responders trained I can speak to their requalification so a statute just changed the language so they used to be referred to as a mental health practitioner now in statute they are called a behavioral health practitioner there's three or four different ways to meet the criteria to be one of those a bachelor's degree in a related field a certain number of supervised experience and so then outside of the just the statute requirements they're also required to do at least 30 hours of crisis related training we get ours through something called train link which is a DHS offered training and we do consistent training year-round just to help staff stay you know informed of the latest and greatest so to speak new resources available things of that nature yeah thank you the other part of the program that's important is right now there's a mental health professional on call with our practitioners so mental health professionals a master's trained there there if you think of a therapist that's what that is and so during the day and evening and weekends and holidays our date our practitioners as Jen described have a professional to call to consult with our agency as a whole has been around since 1965 so we provide in Winona we provide the things we don't do is inpatient treatment for kids or adults we don't do inpatient mental health or substance use treatment we do all kinds of housing in Winona we own four homes in a 20 single bedroom apartment where we have adults about 58 adults that live with serious mental health conditions we'll we do a lot of things actually it's more to say what we don't do them what we do but great thank you I did have I'd like you to outline as best as you can what a call looks like from receiving that call who gets that first call how is it communicated from the PD to I what event Valley mental health what does that resolution look like thank you so we use it to the PD to Hiawatha Valley mental health what does that resolution look like thank you utilize a call center based in up north by itasca first call for help so a call whether it's through 988 or four through our eight four four number goes to them they have a triage protocol they try to assess the situation see if mobile crisis response is even warranted if it is we they then contact us through our phone system they will contact our on-call responder and if it's during the day we'll have one person respond if it's at nighttime two people respond for safety we will go to you we will talk to you on the phone we will do whatever it is that you want us to do in terms of location we do safety screeners we do the Columbia suicide risk assessment to try to figure out what is going on can we resolve this keep you in the home keep you you know out of the hospital keep law enforcement out of the deal if they don't need to be right we involve law enforcement if it's a safety issue they safety plan like I said try to keep people in their homes we then can refer for stabilization help people get connected to long-term services whether that's therapy psychiatry substance use disorder any housing or food support that they need and then next that it's a short-term it's intended to be short-term we can extend it if medically necessary just to bridge the gap once they come to us through a crisis we can stabilize them in the moment get them connected to long -term services and then we're out great and if they call again we just do do it all over again but the law enforcement in all five counties have an opportunity to use the call center and just be dispatched straight to us I believe because this was pre my time with the program that they could just call that designated responder directly and then we they could correspond together we can still correspond now right like whatever they need we're willing to go with to help correspond if it they do believe it's a medical or I'm sorry a mental health related issue as long as the scene is safe great thank you so much for that context I really appreciate it sure thank you any other questions comments yeah George thank you when this is getting all put together I believe Chad I know I was on that with a group of people here not doing the actual contract but laying the groundwork for it and and just a couple of things why is is why is this increasing today mental health and all that and then what do you mean by stabilization sure I I think people are becoming more and more aware that everyone has mental health just like everyone has medical health you know if you were to tell a friend oh I went to see my primary care physician last week no one's gonna look at you like there's something wrong with you we still have a lot of work to do obviously to reduce stigma but people I think are feeling safer to reach out for help when they need it I think another reason is because this is grant funded and we also bill insurance it's no cost to you right if I go to the doctor because I'm sick I'm probably gonna get a bill but I can have this really fun group of people or respond or come to my house where I need where I don't have to leave I don't have to I don't have transportation they can come to me and they're not gonna bill me for it I think that's another valuable asset for people to utilize the service more and more we know that crises are happening right but if we can intervene kind of like a early on before it gets bigger then we can hopefully reduce the likelihood that they'll call again oh and stabilization so like I said we like to use the phrase bridging the gap so some people don't have services at all and what stabilization does is it just helps keep them afloat until we can get them to long-term support well like I said whether that's therapy psychiatry housing whatever that may be we can help people get to the food shelf just whatever you need until we can get you connected to long-term support Thank you of course Chad you had something I mean counsel I just want to make sure that we were clear that the agreement runs through July of 26 we are not currently paying any invoices to Hiawatha I mean a health center if you notice with the data the position that was dedicated the city is no longer She resigned there And so we aren't Contributing to we kept the agreement in place one that wanted Hiawatha to give the update show the data and Then as a reminder that we are providing Payments still for the navigator position that is through the Winona Winona health Hub Hub and so those payments are still being used from our ar pa dollars to help support the navigator position and again in our 2027 budget process we'll talk about this again during that process but because of the five county Um grant through the state and the in the support that Hiaw atha has and it being a county mandate Um, it'll unlikely be within our budget for the city of Winona in 2027 So I just wanted to make sure I stated that now we'll have that discussion again in that well July in the end of August Of course, we've talked with Hiawatha Valley Mental Health Center about this so Again, it's time for them to check in and report but just want to be clear about that as following the presentation Yeah, same I'm not sure who this question is really directed at it might be City Manager Google it might be Deputy Chief Rasm ussen How does this service or how does our chaplaincy service differ from this? There seems like there's a lot of overlap between the services provided by the chaplaincy service and crisis response And from what I'm hearing your staff seem to be significantly better qualified and trained than the cha plaincy service Council of all the questions I thought we'd get I wasn't prepared for that one. I wasn't expecting that one, but I try to keep you on your toes. Yeah, sounds good The chaplaincy program is very different. The chaplaincy program is more Dedicated toward our officers mental well-being and mental health Not even necessarily mental just their health in general We do use the chaplains sometimes to respond to a death scene Certainly if someone lost a loved one whether it be a young child To a tragic accident or even an elderly person that was unexpected The chaplaincy's chaplains might come there to help Help with that consoling them and being you know offering offering that kind of but more Offering that kind of support but more than anything the chaplains are more dedicated toward The police department and our families keeping us their number one goals are to reduce officer suicide And shared number one goal is to keep officers in their marriages Very different towards what more towards towards us Than what Hiawatha Valley mental health would would be doing correct. That's fair. Yeah, great. Thank you so much for that clarification Mayor and council Deputy chief Rasmussen if is that program now expanded to the fire department or is that something that was going to be done through the 2027 budget process the chaplaincy. Yep, I believe it is. I don't know if it's with the fire department yet Okay, I know that the sheriff's offices just onboarded a couple of them to sell Thank you Any other questions comments or discussion? No Thank you for the presentation appreciate you staying around for us very much and everything you do in our community All right hearing no more questions all those in favor say aye Motion passes item 3.8 is the appointment to the citizens environmental quality committee of Andrea Richards For the council confirm the appointment second motion from Steve second from Sam any discussion Hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed Motion passes item 3.9 is the boards and Commission application announcement. There is currently one Vacancy on the citizens environmental quality committee and three on the John latch Memorial Parks and Recreation Committee The council receiving further in the announcement second motion from Steve second from Sam any discussion Hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed Motion passes item 3.10 is the license agreement for the IA FF local 575 K event to be held on Saturday June 6th the council to prove the agreement authorized city manager and city clerk to execute the same second motion from Steve second from Sam We do have Peter Brigham in the house Why don't you come up and tell us about the event? Since you're here the whole time good evening everyone. I'm Pete and I work at the fire department. So We used to put on this race every year starting in 2013 and we did it through 2019 and then with COVID we kind of fell by the wayside But we wanted to revitalize it started in a different location than your standard 105k around the lake so we're starting under the bridge the interstate bridge Working our way up around the bridge and over to latch island and across the wagon bridge and bringing it back I just feel like the space under the bridge is underutil ized I've been to Wabasha for their days and their race and they do like pancake breakfast and everything underneath their bridge I thought that was really cool and I go Mike well, maybe this will spur some more people to use this space because it right now it's just people walking at their lunch breaks, but So we we raise funds for a charity and that's our main goal with it and It's something fun that we get together and do so Cool. Any questions? Yeah, any questions for Pete? Thank you. Thanks for sticking around appreciate it All right, all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes Item 3.11 is handicapped parking at 627 East Wabasha move to approve that request Second motion from Jordan second from Sam any discussion Hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes Under new business item 5.1 is a consultant contract with s 2s Architects for the City Hall roof and masonry project Council approve the contract and authorized marriage to declare to execute the same second motion from Steve second from I think I heard Okay, George first. Yeah, George seconded it Any discussion Go ahead Mayor and council I think oftentimes we have items on the agenda that come and go and you see these large packets of information that have an agreement attached to them and If you're not familiar, I do want to point out that there's a lot of work that goes in from the city attorney's office to make sure that These agreements come before you complete There's a lot of review with staff This has been one in particular that's taken a longer time to complete no fault of really any party We just wanted to point out that again these come and go I think it's a good time to point out that the city attorney's office provides a heavy lift and often an Immense amount of time to make sure that these contracts are in place for these projects. So I just wanted to point that out. Thank you Thumbs up Chris We appreciate it. Thank you Okay, any other comments questions or discussion? George and this roof would be done this year yet, right? Mayor and council Probably a better question for Patrick I'll answer it quick and we hope so the review typically from SHIPO You know once this contract is executed shouldn't take that long. It's not a complicated SHIPO review very similar to the structural and rough project we did the Masonic temple if you recall It is just to review that we are meeting the National Register guidelines for things like stone cat or stone caps or cap cap stones Sight lines from the street things that SHIPO requires but once we're through that it should be relatively straightforward Okay Yeah mayor and council a spring bid opening is still very doable With possibly a late summer early fall construction window Question probably is coming up just about what type of bids the quality of bids you're going to get But doing a late season project it could actually come in our favor So a lot of times contractors are looking to fill late season work in between gaps in their own scheduling but we're not held to this contract year Project can go as late as December of 2027. So I think we should have a good opportunity to get some solid bids on it George then looking at the schedule of fees the bottom one says Expert testimony. What does that mean? Mayor and council I think that is in relation to the contract administration. So the contractor would be able to do handle things like closeout activities Bidding documents on just giving us He's that expert that we can turn to okay. Thank you Mayor and council I think it's also Used in the event that there's a dispute So if there's a dispute in the project and someone has to come in as an expert testimony Or provide expert testimony that sometimes is used as well Any other questions for Patrick or Chad any discussion? Thank you Patrick Hearing none all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed Motion passes item 7.1 is council concerns councilmember Borchikowski. Thank you mayor As he has the mayor mentioned earlier at beginning of our meeting the passing of former mayor Tom Sloggie This shirt that I'm wearing tonight is in honor and memory of Tom Tom Had these shirts he was giving them out years ago, and I was fortunate to have one received one long as he had my size and I usually always wear it around this Polish time of year, which is the first weekend in May and Tom was a strong voice for the Polish people He was a strong voice and strong leader for the city of Win ona and he's going to be missed into his wife Kathy and his two sons condolences on the passing of this very very wonderful gentleman and then also last night at the Polish Museum Tom was inducted into The Polish Hall of Fame and his son was there to receive His plaque in Tom's memory and honor and also to another former mayor Jerry Miller who also was inducted into that same Hall of Fame last evening as well too and Congratulations to Jerry and to the Sloggie family. Thank you. Thank you, George Come to memory on You know, I would add to that I knew Tom and his wife Kathy primarily through athletics their promotion of runs and fun runs and and Helping at Trinona, so I just appreciate their their helping and their their championing Until not long ago of Seeing young people run and performing even people my age run So thank you to them. Thank you Steve Jerome Yeah, I'll add my Experience there too. I got started in news business about the time that Tom got started in the mayoring business and He was always I dare say a lot of fun to deal with as mayor and as As the years passed as a good friend and it never Never failed to when I'd bump into him no matter where it was always Greeted with an always a pleasure to see you and it always was and I'm gonna miss that pleasure very much My sympathies to Kathy and to his family Thanks, Jerome Councillor Zier and Shortridge I Couldn't have said it any better than you three already have so I won't try Best wishes and congratulations to the Winona State graduates who will walk at commencement on Friday Thanks, Sam Councilmember Dicus What am I seeing different this spring I am seeing tons of kids cruising around on these tiny little micro scooters that go 30 miles an hour much faster than I can ever get on my on my fast bike and I would urge people to Suggest that it's not a bad thing to wear a helmet These they're so small so fast little wheels there They're on steady. So just Share that that helmets are cool. Yeah, sure. Thank you. Thanks Jason appreciate it Under the consent agenda there are two items Approval of the minutes from April 20th in the final adoption of an ordinance to amend the city code for temporary outdoor encroachment permits the council approve the consent agenda including including Publication of the summary ordinance second motion from Steve second from Sam all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed Motion passes mayor. I am going to make the most important motion of the night Time being 7:56 P.m. I move we adjourn second Motion from George second from Steve all those in favor say aye aye aye go Wolves Good job Oh I

It is 6:30 p.m. and I call this meeting to order. Please stand and we will recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good evening everyone. This is a regularly scheduled meeting of the Winona City Council. Tonight I have two proclamations to read. The first one is Child Abuse Prevention Month. City of Winona, Minnesota proclamation for Child Abuse Prevention Month. Whereas Minnesota's future prosperity and quality of life depend on the healthy development of the more than 1.3 million children residing in the diverse communities across our state. And whereas preventing child abuse and neglect must be a priority that requires individuals, families, child serving organizations, schools, faith based groups, businesses, government agencies, and civic leaders to support the physical, emotional, social, and educational well-being of all children. And whereas child abuse is a serious public health issue with wide-ranging social consequences, as data show the link between the abuse and neglect of children and a wide range of costly medical, emotional, psychological, and behavioral issues into adulthood. And whereas parents and caregivers who have a support system of family and friends know where to find public resources and understand how to remain resilient in challenging times are best equipped to provide safe nurturing environments for their children. And whereas statewide and community prevention programs serve as proven and effective ways to reduce child abuse and neglect, no matter what the geographic region, race, or ethnicity, or economic status. And whereas parents and community prevention programs serve as a priority that is in the community. And as a community, we have a community that is in the community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And as a community that is in the community, we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community. And we have a community that is in the community that is in the community. invasive species and whereas all of us as caretakers of our planet have an obligation to work toward lessening our environmental footprint and whereas all of us can help build a resilient help build resilient communities and reduce the negative impacts of climate change by planting and caring for trees and by using wood products to store carbon into the future and whereas the city of Winona participates in the green step cities program and the tree city USA program to better achieve our environmental goals and obligations now therefore I mayor Scott Sherman hereby proclaim Wednesday April 22nd 2026 and Friday April 24th 2026 respectively as Winona Earth Day and Winona Arbor Day in witness whereof I've here unto set my hand and cause the seal of the city to be affixed this 20th day of April 2026 with that I will pass it along to city manager chair to go mayor and council a couple things tonight to start with the city wishes to recognize the service of water operator Michael Zabarowski who retired on April 17th 2026 after 26 years of service to the citizens of Winona Mike began his services at the water department on February 8th 2000 as a maintenance worker was promoted to operator on October 7th 2025 during his tenure his duties included monitoring testing and maintaining the wells and pumps to ensure quality drinking water was available to customers throughout the city he also followed up on high water usage reports and answered general inquiries and concerns from property owners Mike was a very reliable employee and could be counted on to respond during emergencies he was good at mentoring new employees by showing them how things work at the headspace and pump stations and he shared his plumbing knowledge and expertise Mike was best known for his jokes and sly comments to liven up conversation or help ease attention tension in stressful situations I want to thank Mike Zabarowski for his commitment in service of the citizens of Winona for the past 26 years the water department as always we wish him a long healthy and happy retirement mayor like to call up Laura Holberg who has a couple announcements for the council please Good evening Laura Good evening mayor and council You're not on I don't think Is it on? It's green Okay that's all we need Better? Yep Okay Good evening mayor and council I wanted to take a moment to recognize some achievements in the park rec department Several of which are here today after hosting another successful dementia friendly month event attended by well over 100 people So the department has received two awards this last month The recreation department has been nominated and awarded the 2026 president civic engagement community partner award from Winona state In the nomination it was written the city of Winona park and recreation department is an exemplary community partner who sustained commitment to student mentorship experiential learning and community engagement has strengthened Winona state university for decades The department's willingness to invest time expertise and institutional support serving as supervisors collaborators guest lecturers and adjunct faculty Has resulted in meaningful educational experiences not only for students but also for faculty Successful career pathways for graduates and lasting benefits to the Winona community Recognizing Winona park rec with the community partner award affirms the university's mission Celebrates a partnership that directly advances student success and workforce development and highlights a collaborative model worthy of recognition and replication Our department really values student engagement and collaborative efforts with winona state university in 2025 we offered 3,842 hours of internships and practicum experiences to winona state students This does not include volunteer opportunities Staff going and speaking with students students and coming and interviewing staff and a whole lot more All staff across the department work with students on a weekly basis All staff across the department work with students on a weekly basis It's a lot of work, but we find that it's very beneficial for students and for our community as well In addition to the community partner award the friendship center and specifically sheena gifford have been recognized for outstanding collaboration And have been awarded the 2026 president's civic engagement community collaboration award The nomination outlined the importance of the friendship centers relationship with winona state over the past 10 to 15 years and the educational background and experience of recreation coordinator sheena gifford Winona state and park rec partnered to offer fall prevention clinics for older adults due to the success of the program plans are in place to continue offering fall prevention services to older adults in winona community This collaboration is a really great example of how through partnerships shared resources we can come together to provide opportunities To make winona a better place to live it's been really exciting to watch student engagement grow and experiences expand so congratulations to staff on their achievements absolutely thank you yay park rec good job Nothing else this evening very good thank you chan i will now ask city clerk to take roll call Mayor scott sherman here council member young here heima here christianson here zierden shortridge here borzakowski here dykus here for each public hearing staff will make a short presentation and then i'll ask if anyone from the public wishes to speak to the matter please state your name and address clearly you'll be given up to three minutes to make your testimony i will call three times for public comments once the hearing is closed the public may not participate in the discussion by city council under the required public hearings item 2.1 is the proposed 2026 sidewalk replacement project and preliminary assessment role i move that the council adopt the resolution sorry yep ready i now open the public hearing does anybody from the public wish to speak during the required public hearing for item 2.1 good evening good evening uh mayor and council thanks my name is john kerr my wife and i live at 1215 west fifth street street it's a modest enough matter that I'm here for we received notification last year that our sidewalk square would be replaced in front of our driveway we had kind of a series of different explanations so the letter that we received was that it was above a quarter of an inch differential between the you know sidewalk squares which it wasn't so I asked somebody to come out and look at it and then we heard that the answer was that there were multiple cracks in the sidewalk square which there weren't and then the next when they came out said it was a quarter of the square was larger than the quarter of a square was the crack covered that amount which it doesn't and then essentially the answer was that it was going to need to be done anyway eventually and so it might as well do it so I don't in itself have a problem with replacing the sidewalk square we're going to do that but the cost of about four hundred and fifty dollars has jumped to seven thirty seven eighteen so I'm wondering if there's an option either to and if this you know needs to be directed elsewhere I can do that if it's a specific place to go to either to defer that replacement or to just hire our own workers so that there's not administrative fee and removal costs and things like that that were not mentioned early on which have you know things have obviously been a moving target so I just leave that for you to consider I don't know if that's word that you can give back as to who I should take that to or what should happen with that yeah we'll we have your information we'll have a staff member reach out and okay and take it from there thank you much thank you for thank you for being here appreciate it does anybody else from the public wish to speak during the required public hearing good evening mark swenson resident address is seven three zero prairie island road here referencing the address is 1078 west fifth street I had called in October talked to some young lady and I said that I have I have two pieces that are that are marked one yes it's cracked the one in question it has cracks in it but it's next to the railroad which has different blacktop pieces so that's what's dangerous and she said well have somebody look at it and get back to the she called the next day and said that yep the city will take care of that one and but the other one will have to be replaced so according to the letter the recent letter was I believe it would be for both pieces because I don't know how one piece could be eight hundred and ninety dollars where the estimate for a regular piece was according to the initial letter was like three something to what do we got here three twenty five to five eighty five per square so let's go on the high side so five eighty five that's a long ways from eight ninety okay so that's my question that so I don't know if something fell through the fell through the cracks right didn't get from one person to the other what happened there so I'd like to have that addressed okay yep we have the address on that so we will have someone reach out to you okay thanks honey thank you appreciate it is anybody else from the public wish to speak for the required public hearing for item 2.1 proposed 2026 sidewalks replacement project and preliminary assessment role and preliminary assessment role and the last one last time does anybody from the public wish to speak during the required public hearing for item 2.1 proposed 2026 sidewalk replacement project and preliminary assessment role hearing no one I will close the public hearing Sam I move that the council adopt the resolution motion from Sam second from Steve any discussion George George oh administration or engineering will reach out to these two people right so and would that be like this week yet or or how soon would that be okay all right okay thank you thanks Brian thanks George any other comments questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes for the remainder of this meeting residents are only allowed to speak if they have a request before the council and I recognize you to speak under the petitions request and communications item 3.1 is the coming street closure request for June 21st the council approve the request second motion from Steve second from Jerome any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.3 is Peters beer garden street closure request for July 24th and August 21st the council approve the request second motion from Steve second from Sam any discussion discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.3 as Peters beer garden street closure request for July 24th and August 21st the council through the request second motion from Steve second from Sam any discussion hearing none George well it's good to see all these closures come up it brings people together neighborhoods it brings them together so keep them coming that's right all right any other discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.4 is the license agreement with bird rides accounts for the agreement authorized mayor and city clerk to execute the same motion from Steve second from Jerome Jeff I'm just wondering if we've got any public comments good bad or indifferent in regards to this in the past year I mean I've seen some of them in wayward places at some sometimes but that's just kind of anecdotal so I'm just wondering if we have anything anything formal or mayor and council in the last year I have not received any complaints I know the company does have local representatives that go around each day and reposition the scooters throughout and if people find them blocking a sidewalk or in the street we do have on the website the number to call or they can call the city and we'll alert them okay thank you Steve that was my question okay Sam same question but since we do have the chiefs here have you all heard of any complaints thank you thank you Jason years past we've gotten numbers on growth as far as total rides and unique users of any updates on that this year um mayor and council i do have a sum of like the last several years and i will email that out to you it's it's a pretty good number of of riders i have met and talked with specifically the local representative for them and he is animate that he likes them out of the sidewalk as well so he's he's all about it and he is in town and he is very responsive like he even showed me how the app works when he gets a notice of something sitting in the wrong place or something not where it's supposed to be he's on it like that day if not that within the hour so it's good yep fantastic good good local representation for sure all right any other discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.5 is the license agreement for the wsc warrior wattle on october 10th for the council approve the agreement authorized city manager and city clerk to execute the same second from steve second from george we do have anna wurtz here from wsu if anybody has any questions not a question but a comment i will be abstaining from this vote as i am an employee of winona state okay very good and there are comments questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed abstain motion passes item 3.6 is the license agreement for the orc starlight stroll to be held on november 6th move that the council approve the agreement and authorize the city manager and city clerk execute the same second motion from sam second from steve we do have david bitner here if anybody has any questions okay no problem do you want to come up and just say a few words quick since he came all the way down george would have asked if i had i was going to say nice events so good evening well winona orc our mission is to help people with disabilities in our community provide help them find a power empowering employment and meaningful employment and our vision is to have people with physical mental and learning disabilities find their full potential and meaningful work community relations family and friendships and and starlight stroll is our one of our major events that we do each fall and it's unique in the fact that it is that starlight people who want to be goofy can come and glowing type of things in this past year we had about 180 participants and that was up from around 40 the previous year uh... and so what i think is really unique about the the event also is that it's it literally is for all abilities and um a winner came from the eau claire area and he competed with his dad and he was in his wheelchair and they did that tandem um participation and then they were just our keynote speaker at our banquet so it was really neat to have that all tie in together and we're looking forward to try to grow it regionally and so um patrick has just been amazing to work with so so efficient and um so we're looking forward to having another great event great thank you thank you yeah we appreciate it it is fun i've done it so spread the word my minus the running part it's really fun thank you for being here we appreciate it any other discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.7 is the overnight park use by the winona amateur club council through the request second motion from steve second from sam any discussion anyone here from the amateur club lance is here okay say a few quick words for the lansworth how many years have you been doing this now golly at least 30 okay that i've been involved with anyway it's gone on before me i'm just the latest in the caretakers of it but uh field day is an important uh activity for the winona amateur radio club it's basically an operating activity where we set up in the park here uh like we did last year uh grab uh different people's equipment from different places and put it all together and set up a radio station and it's also our big show and tell event what do we do why do we do it how do we do it and the public is all invited great and we have uh the um emergency communications uh agency is gonna let us uh use their communications trailer again which makes for an awesome uh place to operate especially if uh the weather is gonna be like it was last friday mm-hmm yeah great well thank you lance we appreciate that i know our emergency services appreciate having the group in town as well so thanks again thank you thanks lance thank you and you are all welcome to join us uh on the 27th awesome cool thank you all right any other discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.9 is the reappointments to the board of gas examiners of norm allen eric rosa key lake vandermoon and ryan benning the council confirmed the reappointments second motion from steve second from jerome any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.10 motion passes item 3.10 is the appointment to the citizens environmental quality committee of chloe brzynski the council confirmed the appointment second motion from steve second from sam any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.11 is the appointments to the john latch memorial parks and recreation commission randy peterson excuse me brad peterson randy strikins barb bambenick mike christensen maya martin and dave gilmer we move that the council confirm the appointments second motion from sam second from steve any discussion good good appointments for this committee very good start anyways yes yes thank you uh hearing none uh all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.12 appointments to the board of adjustment of chris sanchez and crystal hyatt the council confirm the appointments second motion from steve second from steve second from george second from george any discussion no them both they'll they'll do well they'll good good fit good good both those people excellent thank you sam i've heard from a handful of community members that there's concern that board of adjustment members aren't recusing themselves when appropriate i want to delicately remind board of adjustment members that recusal is a little bit of the board of adjustment members that recusal is a little bit of the board of adjustment members that they're not recusing themselves when appropriate i want to delicately remind board of adjustment members that recusal is an important part of building trust with the public sure absolutely yeah thank you sam any other comments questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye motion passes item 3.13 appointment to the creative winona commission of kelly isbell the council confirm the appointment second motion from steve second from sam any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes item 3.14 is the boards and commission application announcement there are currently one opening on the citizens environmental quality committee there are zero on the creative commission the council just appointed a member and there are three on the last board the council receiving file the announcement second motion from steve second from george any discussion sam yeah i would still like to know what our typical procedure is for noticing these appointments how many days out from the appointment are we putting this on the agenda for the first and second hearing things like that i know that we've been going back and forth on this timeline for a little bit now okay do we we have any clarity oh yeah mayor and council include in your agenda is an excel file showing the schedule for the rest of this year so you'll see on the next one that will be noticed will be for the heritage preservation commission we will announce it at the may 18th agenda and the june 1st agenda applications would be due june 15th and the mayor will make have it on the agenda for july 6 of course these are tentative debate depending on how many applicants we get some of the Sometimes it will be based on they're open until they're filled, but there is included in the agenda the schedule for the rest of this year. While I appreciate this work it does not address my question. What is the question again? What is our typical timing for this? How soon should the public expect to see one of these appointments come through? How far out from that is the appointment process? It seems like staff is zooming in when I'm asking to zoom out. Are we noticing these 21 days before the appointment? Are we noticing them four months before the appointment? Are we putting... Mayor and Council, they are all listed right now on the website. I don't send notices to the newspaper every day of every opening. They're on the website right now. You can apply anytime you'd like. We'll make a special announcement at the council meetings on these specific dates. I don't know what else you want me to do. It's on the website. It's on the website today. Yes, I understand that. My question remains. I see that we are... I see that we are... It looks like a month before the appointment, we are putting it in the agenda. Can I have clarity on what that timing is? So, Mayor and Council, when Monica and I first worked on this, we tried to set a consistent date, meaning, as you referenced, like a 21 day, so that we knew... So, there was some consistency on planning, like you're saying, to zoom out. Okay, every 21 days before it's due. But because the council Monday sometimes don't align with that 21 day calendar, then it went out further. So, the example that the city clerk just gave, it is more than 21 days, or in this case, what we tried to do then was to have the first announcement, have at least one, if not two, buffers of council meetings before. So, we tried to have a fixed date when we first started, but because of the odd Mondays, if you get a fifth Monday in the calendar, etc., then it's going to be longer than a 21 day. So, there isn't a consistent day, like 21 days is always the mindset. But we're trying to have at least two council meetings before the appointment is made. Okay, so if I'm hearing this correctly, it will be announced on the agenda for the first time, two meetings prior to the appointment. It will then be announced on the agenda for the second time, the meeting directly prior to the appointment. Everything you said was, sorry, Mayor and Council, everything was correct that you said except the second announcement would be before the applications are due. And the applications are due? And the applications are due? Those vary based on the vacancies and the opening, well, vacancies or, well, the best term is vacancies because it could be someone that decided I, for personal reasons, I have to not fulfill my term. It could be at the end of the term. But we're, again, that's where the 21 days doesn't quite come in based on the meeting days. But there is an application, there's two announcements before the applications are due. Okay. And the applications are due typically how far before the appointment? We tried the best to get them at least one month. But again, when I say month, again, member, like I've said three times now, I guess I don't want to keep reiterating that. But it does depend on the calendar, but it's basically one month before the appointment ends up on the agenda. Great. Thank you. Mayor and Council, I think it would be helpful if you clarified what exactly you are looking for. This was in the packet. If it does not meet your expectations, I would like clarification on what it is you would like. Do you want it to be three months? Do you want it to be five months? I did the best I could with putting this calendar in the packet. Yes, Jeff. So just so I understand this, anybody can apply for any of these and that application stays on file at, you know, whenever. So, and so when a vacancy comes open, we first, we take anybody that has an application on file and they are automatically put in for the vacancy? No. No. I will look at them. I, I, not, not that they would automatically get the position. They would get considered. But they would automatically be considered. Yes. That's what I meant. And I, I, so, I might be using the long term here, but by statute we have to hold on to them for two years? I'm not sure it's by statute. Okay. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. two years so if they're already appointed there may not be considered for another one but whenever there's an opening I forward pretty much every application to the mayor for review. If someone says well I've applied for the Heritage Preservation Commission but an opening comes up on another commission the mayor may consider them for that commission as well. Okay and we do have people applying for multiple commissions as well so sometimes sometimes I won't approach them on one but maybe another one has a vacancy or whatever yeah or maybe they show an interest in one. Okay so that kind of helps me so I guess I'm I'm it sounds like anybody that has an interest can apply at any time regardless of the deadlines or the amounts before the things and they will duly be considered because we want as much obviously participation as we can possibly get. Yep. So okay. And I have kept them going all the way back to when I started in office so if if there is like a serious vacancy or we don't have a quorum or something like that then I'll dig back through them. I haven't had to do that often but great I think I had to do it once maybe so. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Any other comments, questions, or discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Under unfinished business, item 4.1 is the cancellation of the Winona Municipal Airport fixed base operator and lease agreements. Deputy Clerk Van Gilder is on line if you have questions. Move the council to adopt the resolution. Second. Motion from Steve, second from George. Any discussion? Jeff. Yeah. I read this several times and this one's still not registering. So we've got a new person, a new group that we are negotiating with. That's going well from the reports that I read. But at the same time, we have to issue a... Is this a cancellation for the old one or the new one? I guess let's start there. Mayor. Go ahead, Amy. Sorry. Mayor and counsel, this is a cancellation for the current FBO, B2W, to cancel all five of their FBO and lease agreements that they have had in existence for many years. Due to the terms of their current agreement, we're required to give them a one-year notice. So this is just a formality to give them that one-year notice. And then the new FBO would begin on May 1st of 2027. Okay. So I'm sorry. I don't mean to... This is setting the move out date, basically. Okay. So this is setting the move out date. So we're negotiating with the new person. This is the year out notification to the old one that we're done. And the new one is starting on this specific date and going forward from there. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay. That's that. I don't know why that was so hard for me, but thank you very much. Appreciate your patience. We're glad Amy's here to help you through that. Thanks, Amy. Any other questions, comments, or discussion at all? Thank you, Amy. Appreciate it. Hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 4.2 is the public safety facility schematic design update. Mayor and council, tonight we have representatives from BKV. I'll let them introduce themselves as they come up. While they come up, Grant is going to bring up their presentation. I would note that we're at a point about 60% roughly done with schematic design. Typically, we have update at around 100%. We'll get to that here in a minute. So BKV is going to give an update on our progress so far. After they're done, I'm going to do a brief presentation as well. And then we'll open up for questions if council should have any. And again, gentlemen, I think you can just let the control booth know when you want to hit the next slide. Thank you, sir. Mayor and council, we're representative of the BKV group for a matter of public record. Our address is 222 North 2nd Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401. My name is Paul Michel. I'm the government managing partner for our practice involving local government projects here in the Minnesota region. I'm also the national law enforcement practice leader and have been doing public safety work for the better part of my career over 25 years. So I'm really grateful to be here and have an opportunity to speak. Mitch Cook, civic practice leader, BKV group. I've been working in city government for 18 years of my career and focused on public safety for the last 12 to 15. I've done both police and fire stations for the majority of that time and excited about the project. Next slide, please. All right, so set the agenda really quick. We're going to talk a little bit about background, kind of what's happened in the recent months to get here. We're going to talk a little bit about the initial concepts, both site and floor plans, and some preliminary massing views, just to sort of understand the scale of the project as we've been looking at it in order to meet the program. And then we'll talk a little bit about next steps in the process. Next slide, please. So from the background, since the contract has been executed and things have been shifted around since we've been focused on the site, we've gone through program verification, which is essentially looking again at what the spaces are that need to be put into this project as we're looking to combine police and fire and emergency management within this project. And really the goal is looking at how can we find ways to economize and save space and be able to make sure we're not overplanning the project, make sure that there's some ability to find that economy in the program. From that point, we looked at master planning, specifically focused on this central school site adjacent to that historic building, looking at how can this project fit. We've come up with the program. Now we need to look at how can it fit within the project, not only from a building standpoint, but from exterior site needs as it relates to fire station apparatus movement in and out of the site, as it relates to parking has been a big concern. There's a lot of need for parking, not only for staff personal vehicles, but fleet vehicles, apparatus, and then the public that may come for visits as well. So really the building and the site, I'm sorry, building and parking are both very important aspects of that. We've looked through the initial budgeting as part of that master planning process to get to a point where we're comfortable. And that's been gut checked not only with our internal cost folks, but also with construction partners here in the industry, looking at a building of this size and scope that meets the program. What would that be? And that's already been shared with you as well. And then up until tonight, we've been working on the preliminary design as we're looking to develop it further. We thought it would be a good idea to come before mayor and council to be able to visit with you a little bit about kind of the progress we've made. Next slide, please. So this is the site plan. You can see, we'll call it plan north, even on no word at angle here. So on the north side, you got 6th Street or Broadway there. You can see the central school building that's been converted there to apartments on the right-hand side of the block. We've really got two blocks in the light gray coming from the bottom from the south. You can see the return apparatus path for the fire trucks. And then they're going to be responding out onto Broadway. We've got the largest block of space to the left along the roadway there. And that's really where all the operations are going to happen. Police, fire administration, fire living quarters. And then in order to meet the parking needs for the program as established, we are looking at doing some on-street parking for the public. But in order for police fleet, fire fleet vehicles, some staff, then we really have to look at underground parking. So we're looking at a half a city block here. So we do have a way, a ramp that goes down from the south into a basement that is really taking up the entirety of the developed side of that half of the city block there. We'll go to the next slide. And as Paul stated, once we made it through a program verification, really we're looking at the spaces within each department and within the departments within fire and police. So we're breaking down the building, understanding exactly what the needs are for both fire and police, but also the needs within those departments as well. So on the plan to the left, you'll see where we're coming down, ramping down into the lower level. We've got about 40 to 45 spaces right now. That's kind of fluctuated as we're working through design. And also we have program space in the basement. So we've got evidence processing downstairs for PD and then support spaces for patrol, whether that's storage, gun storage, ammo storage. And then we also have locker rooms in the basement at the lower level. In the upper right-hand corner, you'll also see an area for K-9, for PD as well. And then we've got room in the upper left-hand corner for some mechanical spaces. You'll also see circulation stairs that go up through the building. Part of those are for code, but also some of those are for circulation paths to get from lower level to PD to FD. And then if you look at the plan to the right, which is the first level, in the center there, we have an entry lobby. And in the blue on the south side of that plan is PD. So you come into the lobby, that's a public space. There's a grand central stair that circulates through the building. We also have elevator and public restrooms. From there, you can access or come up to the counter for police and records area. And then behind that, we've got patrol, office space, work spaces. We also have room in the lighter blue you'll see there for investigations, for soft interview rooms, but also office and some hoteling stations for patrol writing, investigations offices, plan south there. And then also on that first level in kind of dark blue to the right-hand side, we've got a garage for police as well. Within the police space, we've got a central stair that goes up to level two. So PD can circulate from level one to level two and not be contained just from circulating up and down. So they have space from two levels there. On the north side, you'll see large apparatus bays, drive-through bays for fire apparatus vehicles. In between that space is fire support spaces. We've got personal protection gear, equipment storage, decon area, really support spaces for bays, pull-through bays on the right-hand side. And then we have some longer back-end bays and shorter back-end bays that can support smaller apparatus vehicles, trucks, different things like that. Next slide, please. On the left-hand side of the page, you'll see level two. We have a central lobby that you come up through the central stair, elevator, and public restrooms there. This level on the north side is really living quarters for PD. We've got bunk areas, showers, locker rooms, but also kitchen dining day room, and then some outdoor space on the north as well, patio space. You also see some of the darker red from looking over into the apparatus bay. That is a mezzanine which can be used for training, and then storage for training and support spaces off of that as well. Working down the plan, just south of the lobby space, we've got fire administration. Please, please. Sorry, you're dark. Yeah. Sorry. So, oh, go back one slide. So, plan south of the lobby. Dark red, we've got fire administration, and then further south of that, we've got police administration. You'll see a central stair there, but we've got workstations, office for chief and other administrative staff, but we've also got some shared restrooms there as well to support both fire and PD. And then on the right-hand side, level three, this space on the north is fitness, which will be a shared space for fire and police. We've got tactical training rooms and kind of the light blue there next to the green as we work plan south. And then keep working south, we've got a lobby space, some restrooms, some mechanical space on the right-hand side. And then the lower portion of the plan where you see a little bit darker blue is EOC spaces emergency management. That in an emergency event, that can be activated. All emergency management staff can come in there, utilize that space, but when it's not in use, there's some options to have that as a multipurpose use, too. So, I would say, as we look through how we put these buildings together, what are most paramount, sorry, I got closer to the microphone, make sure you can hear me. One of the paramount things we look at is efficient operations. It's absolutely imperative that square footage that is built is used efficiently. So, we want to talk, we talk very closely with the departments and figure out who really needs to be next to who. We can certainly bring our experience in doing these kinds of projects, but how these departments operate is extremely important. So, for that reason, on the first floor, we had patrol and investigations together. There's a lot of work together that they do, so it was important for them to be together. One of the benefits on the second floor is having police and fire administration in close proximity to each other. There's a lot of collaboration there. They get along really well, and we want them to be able to work together. So, having that proximity is very important. Beyond that, pushing up some of the support spaces of training, EOC, both for police and fire, it's really a shared area where there's going to be a lot of training and activity, either separately or together in those areas. So, the adjacencies, the efficiencies is a very, very important part of what we look at as we look at these buildings. Can you go into a little bit more context about why fitness is directly above the sleeping quarters? That doesn't make sense to me, but it seems like you've spent a lot of time really thinking through these processes, so I'd like to understand that a little better. Yeah, we've been talking through that, and all plans have evolved over time, and we're continuing to develop these and work on those. That is one thing that we are aware of. It's over the kitchen dining day room right now. The bunks are a little further to the south, but those are things that we want to look at as far as acoustics, sleep deprivation, things that are important for firefighters as well. We've looked at locating that more to the east side of the building, but one of the things we're going to look at next steps as we take program development, lay out these spaces, we're going to take a deeper dive into code and understand that. But health, safety, and wellness is something we continue to look at on fire and PD side. So those things, once we lay those out and kind of put all the puzzle pieces in, we're going to continue to move those and develop those. That is one area that we know we need to look at, and we're also thinking about, once we move a little bit further here in a second, is natural light, exterior walls, where we're placing things. So all of these things still are going to need massaged and figured out, but we're early in the design phase and the development, and we're working with both departments in the city to continue to recognize where we may have challenges or things that we want adjacencies to or things that can move. So there's things that we can do on the constructability side to mitigate some of those sounds and noises from a structure standpoint, padding, acoustics, but those are all dollars too. So we want to make sure we're being mindful of not just constructability, sound, adjacencies, and where that goes. So there's definitely going to be opportunities to keep developing that, moving that, but yeah, hopefully that answers your question. But we're early in the design phase and continuing to develop plans. Thank you. Next slide. Next slide. So as we looked at floor plans and program, we've started to look at the building in three dimensions and understanding floor to floor height, where the finished floor is going to be, how it relates to the surrounding context, not just the existing buildings, but the landscape. And some of these views you're going to see where we have fenestration and glazing and also where we have solid materials, heavy materials, masonry, things like that. So we're still developing the building envelope, but we want to look at opportunities where we have natural light, where we're bringing those into office spaces. You know, bringing some light into the bunk space is important, but it also, you know, we want to have a quiet, calm, dark space for sleep. So looking at each view, kind of in the upper, upper left-hand corner, looking southeast is the kind of backside of the building. And we wanted to look at this as kind of different containers and stacking and how these spaces come together. You'll notice the, well, it's a little hard to see maybe up on the screen, but ramp down to the back and then the apparatus drive into the bays and how it's situated on the site. We do have zero lot lines on the site. So understanding where utilities come in, maximizing space, looking at those efficiencies, but being mindful of how this building is laid out. On the right-hand side, looking from the south, southwest corner, you'll see a little bit more back-of-house space. One thing we didn't talk about on the floor plan, that center spine or center column that you'll see is a training tower that can be utilized for fire and PD for training. We, we build a lot of those into projects. A lot of, a lot of times that's built offsite too. So to have that integrated into the site, you know, there's structural qualities that can be utilized for the building, but also having that there and having it close to do training, training hours, not having to go outside of city or needing to go to another site to do that is a benefit to the project. And then on the lower, lower left-hand corner, looking from the north, looking, looking from the north to the west, you'll see the apparatus bays, the pull through bays, and then some of those fenestration and glazing from the building from that view. And then on the right-hand, lower right-hand corner, you'll see looking, looking south. The apparatus bays there, you know, we do have opportunities for streetscape and being mindful of that. But one of the things this is going to allow us to do is understand the heights of the building, floor-to-floor heights, but also site security. You know, we want to be able to have strong, durable materials on the outside and not just look at security in the building, but also from the street as well. So understanding where that building is going to land, if it's a foot above street, if it's two feet above street level or with street level, we're trying to be mindful of not just materials, scale, but also security, both exterior and inside the building. Yeah, I would say the only other comment I would make on a close on the, you know, we're looking at this from, like, to all these points, I've mentioned that as scale, portion, materiality. We're going to take cues from the neighborhood. We want this building to fit in to the community that's going into, but we really need to understand, you know, this is a, this is a sizable project, and we need to understand how it fits. So looking at the massing and how it steps and addresses and meets its neighbors at the perimeter to the best we can, while still giving the departments the operational space that they need is, is really important. And so these are very preliminary exercises. We're going to be dialing and even further, just like Mitch said on the floor plans, as we continue to shift and massage, as we work through the rest of this design phase, we're going to be doing the same thing with the exterior design. And we'll have more information to share at a later date on that. So looking at, you know, one of the things that we feel is an important next step is bringing a construction manager on board. This is a very complex, very costly, important investment for the city. And, you know, we think that managing cost schedule is extremely important, and a construction manager can do just that. So reducing financial risk is part of this issue. You know, getting them on board, ideally, as quickly as one can before we get too far into the design phases is important, because they're going to be right there with us as a partner to not only us, but to the city, the police department, the fire department, and evaluating the scope that's been developed and the resulting cost. Some of the things that we'll also be looking at is, you know, really making sure that we're looking at a total budget management. You know, this is not just about the bricks and mortar that go into the building. There is an entire budget here that relates to soft costs, furniture, equipment, you know, all the regulatory fees. Construction managers will help the city and everybody understand the total budget picture for the project. And it's going to be transparent. It's open book. You're going to be able to see every dollar and cent and where it's spent. It's not a competitive bid process. It's a closed book. This is going to be a collaborative partnership. We think better quality and fewer surprises is important. You know, as working, I like to say, over the shoulder reviews, I love having construction managers on teams on projects like this, because we're going to be talking about constructability and detailing and how this building goes together. We're going to be talking about site impacts, utilities, stormwater. Everybody will be looking at this through one lens. It's not just going to be one voice or two voices. It's going to be a lot of voices working together collaboratively on this project. I always like to liken it to a three-legged stool. You know, we've got the city. We've got the architect and the engineers, and we've got the construction manager. If one leg is coming up short, everything's out of balance. So it really is important that we're all working together. So they also will be involved in anticipating some of these challenges that we've talked about, whether it be, you know, site conditions as we get the geotechnical information and how we're going to put this building to the ground, how we're going to manage groundwater. So, like I said, one of the most important things they're going to do is balancing the scope and the cost and the time. And really, from the very beginning, if we start to look at the budget that's been established and start to see there needs to be adjustment, we're going to be coming to you together with ideas to reduce cost and to manage to that budget together as a team. And lastly, a construction manager's agent, they're independent, they're city-focused. They're working for you on your behalf. And that's really what I think is really important. Just like we're your agent, a construction manager would be the same. So we can go to the next slide, please. So next steps, like I said, we do recommend engaging a CM. I think there's a lot of benefits to having them as a partner on the project. The next thing after that will be in completing the schematic design. Hopefully, we'll have the construction manager on board. They'll be able to provide a fully comprehensive cost estimate for the project. Beyond that, it's really going to be into the city's hands to continue to work with the state on the funding. And then hopefully, we'll also be continuing design and make it move in the project forward so that we can break ground and start work in getting this project built starting next year after the freeze. So, Chad, did you have anything else or do we want to have questions now? Me and counsel, again, I have a presentation following BKV. I have a similar topic, but if you have something real specific for BKV, maybe now is the time, but then we'll ask them to stay tuned at the end of my presentation as well. Yep. Jeff. Start. Thank you very much. I appreciate the information. Obviously, this is a huge undertaking for the city. And so, I've personally got reservations. And so, a couple questions for you in regards to that. Can you give me a ballpark idea? I guess I'll start larger and move towards the more specific. It feels like we're trying to do an awful lot on this lot. That it feels, you know, by virtue of the fact that we're going three floors up, one floor down. Is there any other public safety facilities in this state that have tried to put this much on this size of a space that you can think of that we can, that we could, you know, use as a comparison in any way, shape, or form? I'll be honest with you, Mayor and Council, I did not come with a, you know, specific answer to that question. I think there probably would be more urban solutions. You know, we're in a position where, you know, this is the site that is available. That, as far as we can tell, it works. You know, it also is very good for fire department response. So, it does work. It is tight. It's a little bit of a jewel box on this site. But, you know, efficiency-wise, it does work, and it meets your program entirely. So, there really is not any compromises in that regard. Pushing the third floor, pushing some of the spaces that are lesser used to the third floor. Fitness is certainly going to be used. Defensive tactics and those sorts of scenario-based training for police is certainly going to be used. There's going to be in-service training in the community room when it's not used for, or the EOC when it's not used for the EOC. So, you know, but the bulk of the operations is really across two floors. The lower floor really is parking and some of the support spaces coming in, having the police officers get dressed out, showered after shift, and those sorts of things. So, core operations for both police and fire really are across two floors, which is fairly typical. It's the support spaces that are necessary that we've tried to, you know, keep out of the general everyday operational space. Okay. And so, by developing underground parking, my understanding in just the rudimentary discussions we've had here in regards to parking garages and underground parking, is they're expensive, surprisingly so. And so, one of the things that I'm, you know, that I'm wrestling with personally, and I'm just speaking for myself here, not for the council, is this site better for just a fire department, or is this really work? How much of a premium are we paying by trying to put both on one site? In other words, if we were just doing a fire department there, which I agree, the response time, and I've seen all the things that say that's a great place based on response time, but if we were just doing a fire department there, one, would you need three floors, and two, would you need the underground parking part of it? And I'm trying to get a sense as to how much add-on this is going to cost by having an underground parking facility, because I understand they're expensive, and adding a third floor. It seems that construction costs, you know, the less you go up and the less you go down, and the more you go out, the cheaper you are in a rudimentary way. So, could you shed some light on any of that? We believe that the underground parking itself is about $10 million of cost. Okay. Now, if you were to go acquire land, what you don't have is site area. Right. You would have to acquire land and develop that land, either, you know, adjacent or remote, and that's land you don't currently have. Right. So, there's a cost there. It's a trade-off. Either you're going to build it as it's been preliminarily conceived, or you're going to have to expand your site area to do that. But if it was just a fire department, would you need the underground component? You would not. Okay. But if you would have to find another parcel for the police and- Correct. No, I understand that. Then you have all the site acquisition, other issues that we have all explored together in the past iterations of the study. Right. Yeah. And I know there'd be other issues. I'm not saying it's a quick fix. I'm just, like I say, I'm trying to get a sense of this. And as far as going up three floors as opposed to, you know, if it was a fire department, just a fire department, I would assume you'd get away with two and not do three? It would be a two-story department. It's a two-story with no underground- Plus a training tower, which would be a little taller. Okay. But no underground parking, no third floor. So, those are things that would be- Those are- I'm just trying to weigh out the cost factors. I'm not- I understand. I'm not speaking against what you're saying. I'm just trying to wrestle with this. Okay. I think those are the main ones I have for this point. Thank you very much. Thank you. George. Oh, thank you. Would you be looking at closing any streets at all? Not at all. Purchasing any other property around that area to make this project go? We would not. We would not be reducing any other, you know, some of the concepts we looked at before required some site acquisition of single-family residences, et cetera. And, you know, no, we're not doing that. In fact, the only thing that we're doing outside the property lies is including improving the right-of-way areas to provide for some better, you know, defined on-street parking. Not only on the west side of the project itself, but also looking at some of the other surrounding areas. Because those improvements are necessary in order to make this project work as well. Now, speaking of underground parking, now, you would not need the whole building would not be underground parking because of the weight of the fire engines. Would that be a solid floor where those are parked? You know, the bigger trucks, the ladder trucks and the big pumper trucks, there would not be a basement under where those are parked. But there is a basement underneath the entire park. So we are structuring the back apron, the return apron, as well as the apparatus bay floor. This is not completely atypical. This happens on projects. We've already worked with our structural engineer to determine what that needs to be based on those kinds of trucks traversing the site and parking in the apparatus bay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Certainly. One last one. Since we're talking about underground and since we're an island in the middle of the river, what issues do we have related to the potential for groundwater seepage? Because half the basements in Winona get wet. We're looking at that actively. We've got geotechnical borings that have been done. The other thing that's being done is we're monitoring the groundwater because the borings were taken a couple months ago, but we've got monitoring in those wells right now that are going to go through this initial rainy season of spring and into summer. Okay. So we're going to get a good idea of what that looks like. We've done this before. It's a balance of not necessarily having an entry right off of the sidewalk, so to speak. We do want to raise the building up a little bit from the standpoint of vehicle attack and, you know, sort of the crime prevention through environmental design principles that we would want to do for a public safety facility. But it's also going to help get that basement a little farther out of the dirt. We will have a waterproofing system. We'll have a full water, we'll have a waterproofing consultant on our team who's going to advise on how to protect the basement as well as not only from the way we're going to build the foundations, but also some pumping systems that will be there in case they're needed. Okay. And then lastly, I assume if you've got underground parking, you've got emissions from vehicles, all that kind of stuff. So you have to have, like, separate air handling systems, you know, I mean, how many air handling systems do you end up needing in the building? Because obviously you can't have the same ones for living quarters and car exhaust. Largely, the garage will be ventilated, not necessarily conditioned. When you go underground, a lot of times it's more tempered space. Our mechanical engineers will be looking at that closely. You'll have to ventilate it. The occupied areas, like the locker rooms and the other spaces down in the basement, will be conditioned. That would be normal. We will get into, especially as a fire station, we will get into some very specific ventilation strategies because we've got the dirty apparatus bays, we've got the clean living quarters, and we've got a transitional area where we're going to be managing the decontamination process. So those are, you know, we haven't gotten into the weeds, so to speak, on the mechanical system design, but, you know, that's something else that we'll be doing through our workshop process with the city and user group to determine what the best solution is, the most cost-effective solution, not only for day-to-day, but for your long-term. Okay. You know, your long-term as well. So... And then maybe this is you, Chad, next, but are we going to get a sense of where this is at price tag-wise at this point? That's next. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Sam? I do have constituents in that neighborhood who are very concerned about the ventilation and how those decontaminants and those carcinogens will be, or will not be, placed into their immediate neighborhoods. I'm sure that's something that you're considering, right? Yes. Thank you. And Greg Carter, who's been involved in this project from the very, very beginning, he's our fire and EMS practice leader, national expert. He's going to be actively working with the team, continues to work actively with the team and our engineers, and we'll make sure that that's covered. Thank you. Certainly. Chad? All right. BKV can stay, just in case at the end there's questions, but I'll go into my presentation. It shouldn't take too long. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. If you can go to the next slide, Grant. So, good segue. Public safety building, why does it cost so much? Again, the early estimates were the 61 to 71 million. So, the community's certainly going to believe that it's going to be over 70 million. We're trying to target the 61, but that is the range right now. Well, we just talked about some of the reasons. We have a site constraint. We'll get into this more in more detail. But we have, you know, the placement of more vehicles onto the site. We have a site, both police, fire, and then let's not forget central school. There are residents that live in that facility that need parking as well. Of course, the site constraints about going down or up also address future growth. Oftentimes hard to think that this building will last for 50 years. That's going to be a hard concept. But we also need to build in some future growth within this facility. The underground parking certainly was mentioned by BKV. This is also program space. It's not just parking for police. That's not appropriate. If anything could happen, you could have a place to go to the site. We could have a place to go to the site. We could have a place to go to the site. So, it does include program space. As BKV mentioned, parking for fire and police. You know, we certainly want fire employees to be close to the apparatus bay. And that concept seems pretty logical. That if a call comes in, we want those personnel close to the apparatus bay. I would also like to see our police staff not have to, you know, traverse blocks to get to their squad cars. We want them close to the facility as well. Although we have police on patrol, we do have staff at the facility and need them to respond in appropriate times as well. Speaking of response times, again, this is kind of a recap. But remember, we're here in this location because we looked at, I think we looked close at probably 20 plus sites through the community that met or made logical sense to the response time. So, that we keep our ISO and insurance rates an appropriate place for our residents and commercial businesses as well. Because they're going to pay higher fire rates if we go outside that response time. Which is just another way that you could say they're going to get taxed. Of course, why is it cost so much? Well, we have construction costs, inflation that can continue to increase. That you're seeing across sectors. This isn't normal. I know that we sent out some information about per square foot construction costs. We're seeing other municipal projects of this scale cost approximately $65 million. Owatonna is a good example. And so, it is the cost of doing construction combined with inflation. Not to mention, sort of my next couple points here is available land in the city of Winona. So, if you go to the next slide. Next slide, please. Thank you. So, this is an image of Sinclair Park. So, this is between Kansas and Liberty Street on Broadway. Sinclair Park came out as the number one location for a combined police and fire facility. It had the best response time with all the 15 years of data, all the heat maps. This was the most appropriate site for the public safety facility. We didn't think the public would like the idea of losing Sinclair Park, historic Park Square. And so, it's not being considered. Now, we could, if we don't want this to be, or we want it to be less than $65 million, we could build here. As you just heard, we may not have to go up three stories. We may not have to go underground. We can save about $11 million if we go here. Or, if you go to the next slide, you could build at Sinclair Park and then put a park at the half block at Central School. We could still purchase the half block at Central School and we could make it a park. Again, we're not proposing that. So, next slide. You see an actual pretty similar, if you squint and you put these buildings together, you'll see a similarity. This is a study done in 2007 that looked at building a combined police and fire station at the current central station for fire. It's an entire block. Includes parking for fire. Includes parking for police. Includes a police parking garage. And it would have eliminated nine residential homes on that property. In 2007, the estimate for this construction was $8.3 million. In that $8.3 million, no property acquisition was considered. So it's $8.3 million without property acquisition. We looked at this site in 2024, well, 22, 23, and 24. We looked at this site. We determined that taking down nine homes, relocating fire, rebuilding on the site, with housing being our number one priority in our comp plan, that it wouldn't be appropriate to take down nine homes on this block. So next slide. This is an image of the East Rec Center block. So you've got the entire East Rec Center on the right-hand side and a portion of the St. Stan. The East Rec Center block. So we looked at this property as well. So again, we have a full square city block. Don't need to go underground. Don't need to go up. Could spread out. The idea was to build a new recreation center across the street from the current rec center and then spread out the fire and police on the city block that was owned. The community said they didn't particularly care for this project. And so we set it to the side. Next slide. During that process, it can be really hard to see this. I know it's small print. But during that process, BKV did an estimate for us. It was May of 2022. The total cost for all three projects would have included a new community center, police and fire station at the East Rec Center. The estimate back in 2022 was $42 million for all three projects. Next slide. This is an image of a full city block, maybe a little bit more. This is the county jail with the LEC, the current LEC, sort of toward the bottom of the picture. At that time when the county jail was built, there certainly was discussion of updating the law enforcement center at that time and make it a combined jail and new law enforcement center that would have housed the sheriff and police department. Again, that didn't happen, I think, as was mentioned by Council Member Young. He got ahead of me today on the work session comment. This didn't happen, and I think what's ironic about that is that 77% of the sales tax is generated within the city of Winona. So that sales tax would help pay for that facility as well. Next slide. This one is just a comment. It's just a thought process. I'm not recommending it. But when Central School was up for sale, it could have been sold to the city for a very, reasonable price. It went through a bidding process. We almost had it. Then we didn't. And now, of course, we don't own Central School. But for concept, we could offer a price to the current orders and buy the building. We could also take it through eminent domain. We would still pay a price. And then we could demo it and have a full city block. But this community has told us back in 2012 when it went on the National Register that it values historic properties, that they wanted it to remain, that it wanted to be repurposed potentially for housing. So we're not proposing that. But again, now we have a half block that we need to build on. Next slide. So why Central? So why Central? The point here is, and these greater than symbols, I guess, could be equal. But we feel the community has said to us, well, Sinclair Park or Parkland is greater than public safety. That housing at Central Fire, the nine residential properties, or the housing at Central School is greater than public safety. The historic preservation of Central School is greater than public safety. The East Recreation Center is greater than public safety. If you believe all those to be true or equal, then they have a value to the community. And we know what that value is. Paul was polite. It's 10.5. I round it up. It's $11 million. That's how much Sinclair Park is, at least at a minimum worth. Because we could just build this facility at Sinclair Park. We wouldn't have to build up. We wouldn't have to build down. It would save us at least $11 million. But that park has value to the community. So we, in a sense, are limited in land and space where we have a full city block. East Rec was a full city block. Community said, don't build it there. East Rec site probably is worth at least $11 million. Again, we could spread out at that location. So we now have a value of what, at least in a sense, some of those properties are worth, if not more. Next slide. So again, you can see tonight, it's a good logical step process. This is, Jeff has been on the working committee. This is obviously the logical response is, well, we should build separate or go back to the county. So the issue there is, as we just assessed, is where are those two standalone stations going to be? At Central Fire, we still need to acquire properties. At ProBuild, we still need to acquire properties. Both of those sites would require displacement of the fire department. Of course, if we went to Central School, we wouldn't have the displacement costs. Also, if we go separate and build a loan without the county, then we lose, or we need to return the $7.5 million to the state, because it's no longer a joint public facility. And any money we've spent with BKV, again, would be then city dollars. It's not reimbursable by the state. So next slide. So in 2023, again, these are going to be really hard to see. I'm just showing it to you for context. BKV did another study for us, or did some more work on estimated project costs. We asked them in June of 2023 to estimate a standalone fire, a fire station with ambulance, a standalone police, a fire ambulance, and police facility, a police and sheriff combined new, and a police and sheriff at the current LEC site. So again, these numbers aren't important. I mean, I'll refer to them here in a minute. It's just a screenshot to say BKV did this work for us. I can go back if you want the detail. Next slide. So because we got those numbers, in April of 2024, I showed this slide at a joint meeting between the county board and the city council. And you have to kind of follow me here as you look at the screen. So BKV on the low end had estimated a stand or a combined police and sheriff facility at 23 to 26 million, and that did not include the design costs. But the working group said, well, what if we gave BKV a budget so that we can only afford 22 million? I said, we can value that out and show you in a sense how that would work. So, for example, we said, okay, we're going to build a $22 million facility for police and sheriff. And on the left-hand side, we did receive some state funding for $7.5 million. So if you take that off of the $22 million, which, again, isn't fully accurate, but if you did, it would leave on the right-hand side a $14.5 million project. Now, again, we need to add in some acquisition, acquisition design costs, relocation costs. You add $3.5 million back in. You've got a project in the hypothetical here. You've got a project that's $18 million for a combined sheriff and police department. You ask the state for half that. That's typically what we do. We ask for half the amount. If the state would support us for $8 million, then the new local cost would be $9 million. And the city share would be $4.5 million. And the county share would be $4.5 million. We put the yellow bar down there as a warning, as we mentioned before earlier in the work session, is that the city of Winona taxpayers share that cost twice. They get taxed by the county, and they get taxed by the city. And so we're not suggesting double taxation. We just would have to be careful in this scenario. We did this scenario to show that the county would need to support at least $4.5 million if the state came through with $9 million on this hypothetical project. Next slide. If you advance that to today's dollars and what we've seen with inflation, the new cost for a police and sheriff facility is $34 to $43 million. So we'll tell BKV we can't afford $43 million. We'll just say we have a budget of $34 million. So you add in the state funding at $7.5 million. And you've got, you reduce that. You've got the $28.5 million. You've got to add back in, though, some more design costs, relocation costs, acquisition costs. We put it at $5.5 million. You've got a project that's $32 million. If you ask the state for half of that for a $32 million project, and they give it to you at $16 million, now the new local cost is $16 million in the right-hand side, and the city share is $8 million. The county share is $8 million. Again, both city of Winona taxpayers pay or share in that amount twice. Next slide. One back. So this is that same project if there's no state funding. What if we get no state funding and we're trying to build a sheriff and police department? Same $34 million to $43 million estimate. Same everything follows down except the zero from the state. The city ends up paying $16 million. The county ends up paying $16 million. Again, the city taxpayer shares in that cost. I would also mention here is that I know it's difficult to discuss this. And I think in some ways we have to be open about this discussion. We sat in discussions with Winona County for 18 months. I did not get any indication from the county board during those 18 months that they're willing to spend $16 million on a facility. I'm not sure I got any indication that the county board wants to spend $1.6 million on a facility. But if I missed that, then they should step forward and let us know that we misread that. Not once in those 18 months was any cost to study the facility placed on the county. The city paid for all the study dollars that you saw through BKV. We agreed to do that so that we could provide this information. The renovation study of the LEC is not complete to my knowledge. The county has put funding for a renovation study to see what it would cost to renovate the LEC with or without police, even though we did provide a number through BKV for that. If we would go back to the county, I'm going to estimate that we would need 18 more months of discussion, that construction wouldn't likely start until 2029. The reason for that is we'd have to go through design, bidding, ownership agreements, which we never got to in those first 18 months. Who owns the facility? Who pays the construction bill? Is there future rent paid by one tenant? Do we share IT? Those are all questions that were not answered. What's the cost of a facility in 2029 per square foot? I don't know what it is. I'm going to guess it's more than $600 per square foot in 2029. While we wait, the costs to maintain the 1955 Central Fire Station are mounting. Boiler is not in good shape. HVAC is not in good shape. The southeast corner is not in good shape. Engines may not, in the future years, fit in the facility. As I've mentioned before, the bones and the internal organs of this facility are not good. The 1977 LEC has mounting maintenance costs. Who pays for these mounting maintenance costs of these old facilities? The taxpayer. We have no indication from the county how much it's going to cost to renovate the LEC, or as they stated during the 18-month evaluation, how much it would cost just to bring it up to today's standards, which I think at one point was estimated somewhere around $7 million, just to bring it in compliance. Next slide, please. So why does it cost so much? Primarily because costs increase while we decide what to do. And the taxpayer rarely plays less the longer we wait. I don't see many projects. We have maybe a handful of projects that are like sidewalk-related that we've rebid, and there's been some savings that are in the thousands. Again, waiting isn't helping us. So next slide. Going to be difficult to read. Maybe up on the big screen is better. This is BKV's timeline. And I wanted to mention that we're only in schematic design. We are about three weeks behind on this schedule. That is no one's fault. If anything, it's probably primarily the city. We just got a little bit of a late start with the contract adjustment. But 100% of schematic is scheduled to be done by the end of April, which is really now the end of May. At that time, the council can decide whether to continue with this project and go into design development. So next slide. Design development is planned out for the city. BKV does provide this schedule. There are one, two, I think I counted right, five check-ins with council during design development. If we continue with this project at Central School, design development is scheduled to end at the end of September. Next slide. If we continue to go on past design development, we go into construction documents. Again, there are several check-ins with council to make sure that we're proceeding appropriately. The end of construction documents is likely the middle of September. Sorry, December, the middle of December. If we continue to go on and we find a funding solution and funding sources for this project, we would authorize this project to go out for bid. That would likely be in January of 27 with a construction activity from March of 27 all the way to summer of 28. And the closeout would be sometime in the fall of 28 with this schedule. So next slide. So the next steps. On the top half here in black, these were the next steps that we voted on in August. So there was a motion to direct staff to finalize an option or purchase agreement for Central School property. We're holding on that until, again, we confirmed some things tonight. The directive was to confirm legislative language with the state and complete the construction grant agreement. We're holding on that. We don't want to select a site for the construction grant agreement with the state if, in fact, we are changing course. Continue with BKV under current agreement for MPB3 pre-design. We're doing that already. Amend BKV contract, of course. We're doing that. So in April of 2026, the next steps are we need to hire a construction or a CM for the project, construction manager. Finish the schematic design. Again, finalize the option agreement to purchase. And then sign the contract, construction contract with the state. And again, just a kind of a question, do we want to hold off on any of that until this legislative session finishes? The idea there is that we don't know if we're receiving state funding, just like the county example. If we don't get any state funding during this legislative session, then we've got, you know, obviously adjustments to make from the financial standpoint. So before I just kind of finalize, I do want to mention that the city has, at a staff level, since we started with BKV and the new agreement, we have had conversations with Kraus-Anderson about coming on as the CM. Representative from Kraus-Anderson is here tonight. If you have questions about construction management, you can ask the mayor to have him call. I'll call him up if that's something that you want to hear. Otherwise, at this point, we'll open up for any questions. So you're saying we should do this now? Jeff, go ahead. Well, I appreciate the information, Chad, and I appreciate the information from the architects. I think we've got some tough decisions to make. I think to answer the last question that you posted was, should we wait for the legislature to finish? Unequivocally, yes. Because the one thing I have not heard in the least is in going through the scenarios that you talked about getting state money versus not getting state money, and all of those with the county. Without state money, I have not heard how we're going to pay for $61 to $70 million worth of police fire station. I think it's not that it's not a good plan. It's not that it's not warranted. It's not that our police and fire departments don't deserve it or that the community doesn't deserve it. All of those things are true. The question is simply this. How are we going to pay for this? And the fact that you have a $10 or $11 million premium just because you're going to build it underground seems like a tremendous cost for the community. So to me, you know, I need to back up and say this picture doesn't even start to come into focus until we know what the legislature is going to do. We've all, we've talked about this each year saying, oh, you know, they're, you know, our representatives are putting money in and certain senators are retiring. And so we're going to, you know, things are looking good. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But the reality is those that are asking for the money are not in power in the House. They're not in power in the Senate. And they're not in power in the governor's office. So maybe miracles can happen. I'd be certainly open to it. I'd welcome it. But I'm looking at the reality of the circumstance and saying chances slim to none. And I hate to be pessimistic because I'd really like to be optimistic in this situation. So without that clear understanding, I don't think we can flesh out these options. I don't think we should go forward in developing the plan for a building that we don't know how to pay for, even if it's warranted, even if it's a great design, even if it's really needed as it is. And so I'm not trying to throw a monkey wrench in this by any means because I know staff has put a tremendous amount of work into this over the years. Our respective public safety administrators have put a tremendous amount of work into this. And I think as a community, we've got fatigue around this. And it's kind of like, oh, we've been working on this so long. Let's just settle on something. That's not a reason to go forward. And if it takes a little more effort and a little more time, I'm all for it. And I'm not saying years. I'm not saying 18 months. I think there's two pieces out here. One, the most important thing is what's going to happen at the legislature and if there's going to be any other funding. The second piece is the county said they were going to do a study. They funded the study. Let's see if they can come up with that information by this summer. And I would say by the end of June, we should have an answer on both of those and we will be in a much better place to make a decision on what's going forward. So from my personal standpoint, this is just me. And then I'll be quiet, at least for a few minutes. Get out of stopwatch. I have a hard time with this plan at this site. I think we're putting too much in one spot. I still think my personal opinion, and granted, it could be a pipe dream. You could call it Pollyanna's wish list. That's fine. But I think without a question, a standalone fire department and a combined facility with the city, county, in some way, shape, or form, still is the one that makes the most sense and still is the one that has the most community support. I am open. I think that it's worth... You know, we haven't... You know, the things that you went through, all the places that we've looked in the past, all of those are a couple years old. And I think that it's worth... There are a few other properties that we've had discussions about that I think are worth the possibility of looking at. They may not amount to a hill of beans. That's just fine. But we owe it to do the extra work, even though everybody is tired of this. So those are my comments. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. George. Yeah, thank you. A lot of information tonight. Chad, you kind of mentioned that, you know, with the task force that we had, and Jeff, you and I were on there, and you mentioned about maybe not much interest from the county. You know, Jeff, you know, you and I served on there. And during those months, which is going to take three months, but it took, what, 17, I did not get a strong feel that the county was interested in combining with us. And I don't know how you felt on that. I didn't think there was a strong interest in it. And then, you know, we decided to go on our own. Now it appears they may want to discuss this again. Do you have that same feeling or your same thoughts when we served on it, that there wasn't a lot of interest from the county? I guess I didn't draw that conclusion, George. I really didn't draw a firm conclusion. There were certainly roadblocks. And there were certain individuals that were roadblock-ish, for lack of better words. But I think as a whole, we never got to the hard questions. We never got to a share, you know, what kind of facility we're going to share. Certainly between the Sheriff's Department and the Police Department, they've worked together closely for 20-some-odd years. I didn't see anything within the two departments that would prevent them from wanting to continue to work together. I see this more at the county level of them trying to decide what to do with the building and them having budget constraints and concerns about who's going to pay for a new building. But we never had those discussions. I mean, if we were, you know, I mean, this is, if we're going to, if we're just going to float ideas. I mean, one idea is, if we did get the state money, you know, you could do a situation where you built a combined LEC in the place that we talked about building it, only because the city got the extra money from the state, they could own the building. And the county could lease it. I mean, we never got to any of those discussions. So we never got the, we never had an opportunity to discuss those, those things. They may, again, not be interested. But to answer your question specifically, George, I didn't get any impression that the two agencies didn't want to work together. I think they do. They work very well together now and have for years. And I would foresee them being able to do that far into the future. So, but it's more the budgetary process. And do you rehab the old or do you build the new? Who's going to pay for it? That's where the disagreement was. And that, you're correct, is where there was, if not hesitation, indecision from the county. I would describe it more as indecision than out and out hesitation. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, here we are again. The money, Jeff, I agree with you, is daunting. How to pay for it. Until we know what it is, we can't really grapple with that question. We have, we're well down the road on a solution. A solution that should have been dealt with 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 4 years ago. We're going to, we're going to, we can keep kicking the can down the road until the can is so dented it falls apart. We've, if we're going to wait and put our fate in the hands of either the state legislature or the county board, that's a covering for our ass, as far as I'm concerned. This is ultimately our decision. This is ultimately our decision. And saying, well, let's wait and see what this, what the state legislature does. Let's see what the county board does. rather than let's see what we can do to meet our needs. I think is irresponsible. I would say let's keep moving ahead with what we have. If all of a sudden the county gets the idea that, hey, we want to do this, well then, then we can talk again. But we spent 18 months waiting. There's a phrase I think applies, shit or get off the pot. And the county never quite got off the pot. And we've been looking, pushing them for some motion, and they're not going to do it. And let's face it, they're looking at paying for a $28 million jail facility. And they're, the board is not looking at constituents that are going to be eager to contribute to a county facility. We talk about not being able to, about paying for, how do we pay for this? If we bring the county on board, and they charge, and they split the cost, and they tax it back, who gets taxed most? The same people we're looking at. How much are we really saving? Not half on the part of our taxpayers, but a fraction of that. So no, I think that we, we should keep moving ahead with, with the planning. And if it turns out, there's no way we can do this financially. Well then, that's when we say, okay, we put the plans on the shelf. But if we don't have plans, we can, we don't have anything to put on that shelf. And we're, and we're never going to get this thing, get this thing done. It's always easy to say no and back off. But I think that we have to keep moving ahead. Despite reservations. Despite what's going to be a real pisser of a financial situation. But also on the part of the legislature, if they see us backing off, that removes the pressure from them to act on this. And it may not be this session. It may be the next session. Right. And I, I don't, yeah, you, well, I, you know, and what do we do? At what point do we, we just say, no, you know, let's pitch tents and build a carport for the fire engines. We have to face up to it. We, we, this has been kicked down the road for decades. And it's in our lap now. And I think that we have to deal with, we have to keep moving ahead. Thanks for all. Steve. We just had a great summary. And I, I appreciate, uh, uh, BKV. Chad, thank you for your, your extensive history lesson. Uh, um, and, and, um, I look at this decision that we're making as one of the essential functions of, of government. We're, we're a small governmental body. We have a responsibility. The public assumes that, that we will provide public safety. The public assumes, uh, that we would, we would, uh, provide a, uh, functional and up-to-date and occasionally renew, um, a fire station and a police station. We've gone through, and I, I've been part of, part of a small portion of it. But, uh, um, the history was recounted, uh, to us of the different locations that we looked at. Yes, I, I saw the, uh, proposal for Sinclair Park, and I thought, no, I can't go there. But yes, in the heat map, that was the best location for it. The public, as I've, I've talked to numerous friends and, and acquaintances, business associates, and they kind of look at me like, like, well, of course you're going to do this. Of course you're going to provide a, an up-to-date, uh, fire station and police station. Promoting the general welfare is what government does. We've been taking steps, and, and to those who have said that, that we're not prepared, or not preparing for this, we've done so for years, to trim our debt down, uh, um, to, we saw on the chart there, how low our debt per capita is. And that is by design. We have planned this. We have worked on this, uh, probably before even I was here six, so, which is, which is, I'm in my sixth year. So, to say that we're not queuing up for this and teeing up for this is not the case. We, furthermore, the public saw that we went through a process that was supposed to be a three-month, month process of trying to work with the county. Lasted 18 months? The answer was no. You, you, you, you, you two guys, my, my, my right honorable friends didn't come back with an answer on this. And an answer, no answer's a no. And, uh, I haven't seen our, our, the communication lines are open from our friends, um, at the county. And those lines have been silent to come back and, and, and cooperate on a station. Nobody's, nobody on that other side of the aisle, nobody on, in that other body, the, the, the, the county, is saying they're going to do that. So, I think that, that leaves us with this plan. We have the outlines of a good plan. And, uh, we need to move, we need to move forward to be responsible with, uh, the, the current money the legislature has trusted us with. And to serve, most importantly, to serve our role, our responsibility to the public, to provide public safety and public safety buildings in a timely manner. So, it's, uh, it's time to, uh, keep moving forward. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Sam. I appreciate all of the discussion tonight and both of the presentations. They were very informative. Uh, once again, I find myself speaking to very different people than Councillor Young. And I could hear my constituents sharing in your disbelief of taking away Sinclair Park. And immediately after that, the slide that pointed out the 11 million dollars of value for these spaces and saying that we're prioritizing those over public safety, I hear my constituents scream, those are public safety. Housing is public safety. Adequate park space, recreation space is public safety. I understand that that is not a sentiment shared by all of Winona, but it is the value of some. So, regardless of the route that we take through this, we are going to have to have very clear ways to communicate, what does the community get from this? Updating facilities for the sake of employees? Absolutely. That's important. But I have been asked time and time again by my constituents, how does a new building make me safer? And I don't have a great answer for them. I know how it makes our fire and our police forces safer by reducing their exposure to hazardous materials. I understand how our facilities are outdated and we have a duty to address those outdated facilities. But I would like a very clear answer of how this makes the public safer. Because that makes it much easier for me to explain that to the community who has entrusted me with this decision. Thanks, Sam. Any other comments, questions, or discussion? Jeff? Just one clarification. I said it before, but I think it's worth saying again. So, I think it's prudent to find out what the legislature is going to do this session. This session only. Not in the future. Any clout that we have there is going to diminish significantly after this session. So, this is it. Yes or no. And I think it's a valuable thing to know. I think that is a critical piece of information that will steer whichever way this goes and how we're going to pay for it. We're talking about six weeks. I'm not talking six months. I'm not talking a year and a half. I'm talking six weeks. It's the third week of April. Session ends mid-May. Even with the overrun, which typically happens. We're talking June. That's six weeks. So, I think it's worth waiting. Okay. Thanks for that. Jason. I hear that this is not going to get any cheaper. But I believe that there is some room in the design at this point to look at some ways to get a little cheaper. Evaluate our list of wants and needs. And I hope that those aren't completely baked in at this point. And I also see that we do have capacity in our bonds. I don't think if we show momentum at this point that we're going to be considered at all at the state level. As far as state bonds. So, I'd like to move forward at some level. Okay. Thanks, Jason. So, Mayor and Council, I think it's important to note, one, I want to make sure we get BKV out of here. They've got a long way home. Appreciate you staying. Is that we have an agreement with BKV to get through schematic design. I mean, we're not stopping schematic design unless you tell me that tonight. I think what I meant by what are we doing is, well, do you want to continue after, you know, do you want a presentation of 100% schematic design? We'll wait for the state legislature. Obviously, we'll have some ideas of what that is. I just wanted to make sure, though, that, you know, we're not wasting time and effort on central school if the council wanted to, you know, do we want to look at it combined with the county? That was the intent of tonight. Second thing I'm glad that it was noted is that we have been planning for years with our financial aspects. We've still got a long ways to go. We have been reducing our debt service. I can just share this with you. There is not one person in the fire department, police department, administration, finance department that wants to or is motivated to take out $65 million worth of debt. We do realize that that is a large amount of money. I just want to be very, I mean, not that anybody's saying that, but we are concerned about that amount. All of us. Every firefighter, chiefs, police officers, administration, finance department concerned about the dollar amount. We know the impacts, but we've also been doing some things to get ready for it. I think it's rather obvious that in our pre-council work session that I guess I pointed out that we have, what was it, $857 million worth of estimated market value that's tax exempt. That isn't paying taxes and they get all the excellent service of the fire and police department. And so that we've talked about franchise fee. Is that a way to spread this out so that the taxpayer, the property taxpayer isn't taking on 100% burden of this cost if we don't get state funding? I get it. It's sometimes seen as a regressive tax. It does impact utility rate users or our utility rates. Understand all of that, but it does spread out the cost. We've been having discussions about franchise fees. We still need to bring those items back to council, but each of these work session presentations from Baker Tilly and ABDO are preparing you with more information about taxes, our debt capacity, franchise fee. We're trying to proactively set up the cost or to prepare if we do have to take out debt for the total cost of the building. I think if we can, for a few minutes, this is probably a good transition if we could, if mayor would allow to call up Chad Pike, because another piece of this is what BKV was mentioning and I mentioned in my slide is that the services of a construction management come on to help us with the budgeting and the financing piece of that. So if we could just call up Chad for a minute, I'd appreciate it. Thank you, mayor, council. My name is Chad Pike. I work for Carl Sanderson. Um, I go around and do a lot of public, um, buildings, um, in the state. And fortunately, I actually live in town or close to town. So, um, when I get to get involved in Winona projects, it's more special for me because it is my community also. Um, so I'm really happy that I'm here tonight. I know that this is a really big discussion and all the projects that I've been involved with, it's always in communities. It's a big ordeal. It's a big undertaking. Um, and there's really hard, hard decisions. So I'm glad I'm not sitting on that side. All I can do is do some advice. Um, and, um, good luck with the decisions, but I'm here to help. Okay. Um, we're a construction manager, uh, and we're here to advise. We're not like your typical contractor, general contractor, try to get the price as high as possible. We don't work like that at all. Um, we're actually here to help the process. And I think, um, BKB actually did a really good job, um, explaining what construction managers do. But in this scenario where I know there's a lot of discussion about costs, you know, what does it actually cost? Um, and at Carl Sanderson, we do so many of these projects. Um, and I think, um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. Um, we're going to have a lot of discussion. We're going to have a lot of discussion budget. What we look at is the entire budget. Then all of the costs, whether it's the soft costs, tables, chairs, uh, internet, whatever it is, we try to buckle it all into one big bucket to manage the costs up front as soon as we're hired. And I think that's what BKB is asking right now is, hey, help us out. Give us some guidance. Um, and that's what we're really good at. We're really good at giving that type of advice a little bit in the background for the most part during these phases. Um, and I want to give you an example of some projects and how detailed some things do get. Um, so this is a Woodbury project and our first estimates, which would be typically your napkin sketch, like concept design. This is about how much paperwork you have. And then, uh, where we're at now, it's at the schematic design. I'm going to pull the right one. Um, so schematic design. We start getting into some pretty good detail, right? And you start looking kind of through some of this and it's, it's every little system, um, is outlined in detail. And so as their drawings get better, our paperwork gets more and more thick because there's more detail that we take in consideration. And then at bid day, obviously, um, we try to get within a percent and normally within your pen percent or two, you can make things work pretty easily. Um, but what I would say is planning and having a really good plan up front is very important. Um, and that's where we're really trying to help that to bridge that at this point. Is there any questions on what our process would be right away? Right away. Steve. Uh, what recent projects have, uh, what, what cities, where are you working now? Where's your firm working? And, and some that are close to Winona perhaps? Sure. Uh, close one is actually city of Rochester. We do quite a bit of, um, Rochester work. Um, and our firm is actually headquartered out of Minneapolis. I work out of the Rochester branch. And so I do a lot of Southern Minnesota projects. Fair amount of police fire. Yeah. Experienced with that. Yep. Mm-hmm. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Chad. Um, mayor and council again, I want to respect the time of EKV. We, we've got a long ride back home. Any other questions for representatives from BKV? Will it be cheaper if we wait? Belabor the point. Okay. I think what I've heard is that, well, we have a contract with BKV. We're going to continue with schematic design. Obviously we're going to take into account the state legislature, but we are going to continue with the schematic design for central school. BKV will be back at a hundred percent, uh, with updates and cost estimating. And my plan is that we would bring back a contract for, uh, construction management at the next city council meeting. I think I'm understanding everything, right. And no action is required to no action required tonight. Just, just the reports. Correct. All good. Everybody. Good. All good. Jim. Gentlemen, thank you for being here. Appreciate it very much. We will move on then to new business. Item 5.1 is the temporary outdoor encroachment permits. Move that the council introduce the ordinance. Motion from Sam. Conceded. Second by Steve. Any discussion? Sam, go ahead. I spent a lot of time in the last two weeks talking to local businesses downtown, whether that was employees, owners, the next door neighbor, any of it. Uh, and I have not heard a single complaint yet about this. The businesses who are excited to use these new temporary encroachment permits are very much in favor of the way it's been formatted. Businesses who have no intention are thrilled to see their neighbors come back out into public life a little bit more. Cool. Thank you to staff for working on it. Good job. Thanks, Sam. Steve. I heard the same thing. I heard the same thing. Talked to local businesses. Excited about it. Uh, great, great work by staff. Thank you. Uh, um, we've got, uh, Brian, I think had some to do with that as well. So we've got a, uh, opportunity for people to, uh, uh, be able to assemble out in the street and eat and even a pathway for alcohol, uh, when, when the rules are followed. So, uh, um, yeah, uh, great partnership with our businesses and staff and, uh, um, thank them for being patient. So. Thanks Steve. Sometimes. Any other comments, questions or discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.2 is the law enforcement labor services local 75 police officers, memorandum of agreement for assignment pay. Will the council adopt the resolution? Second. Motion from Steve. Second from George. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 7.1 is council concerns. Council member Borzikowski. Uh, thank you mayor. Uh, this weekend coming up is the townie tour. You're going to see a lot of activity in downtown Winona and in the east end of Winona. It's St. Mary's. The seniors, I believe, are doing their farewell. And Winona State will be the final weekend. I think it's May 1st. They will be on their townie tour. So, uh, and they all hope for good weather and it's, it's a fun event seeing them scooting all over town. And they're down on Mankato and deep east and they get all over. So, just be safe and, uh, enjoy the weekend. And also, I'd just like to pass on condolences to the family of Jim Glendie. Jim who passed away here a couple of days ago. Wish his family well as they heal. And also to the family of Bob Chip, Chipper Hanson, who was employed as a cook at Winona State. Passed away as well and wish his family, uh, good, just good thoughts as they begin their healing process. Thank you. Very good. Thank you, George. Council Member Young? Nothing tonight. Thanks. Very good. Council Member Hyma? That'll do it. Thank you. Council Member Christensen? Hey, we, uh, we supported a whole raft of street closures for parties. Uh, we're putting, uh, chairs and tables out on the streets so we can have a beer in the sun. Um, turns out that we're a fun town to be in. Thanks, Cheryl. Councilor Zewden Shortridge? I do have a concern for the evening. I've had more and more constituents reach out to me with concerns about flock cameras. I would appreciate if staff could have a presentation or something that outlines our use of flock cameras and how our contract protects the digital security of Winona's. Thank you. Thanks, Sam. Council Member Dykus? Uh, in light of localized, uh, cyber attacks, I'd like to continue to raise the alarm to local residents that major tech platforms, most notably Facebook, Instagram, and Google knowingly sell scam ads to you. Even the owners of Facebook internally estimate that 15 billion ads are issued every day. And Facebook alone earned 15 billion dollars in revenue for shareholders last year. Through my work, I have noticed the number grows exponentially, exponentially, of seniors, citizens, and technologically vulnerable people. Please reach out to your parents and your friends and let them know that anytime a phone number pops up on your screen, it is a scam. Do not call it. It happens a lot. Yeah. Thanks, Jason. Appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. And moving on to the consent agenda. Item 8.1 is approval of the minutes from the April 6 meeting. And 8.2 is the final adoption of an ordinance to designate handicap parking on Broadway. Will the council approve the consent agenda? Second. Motion from Steve, second from Sam. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Mayor, time being 8:35 PM, I move we adjourn. adjourned second motion from George second from Steve all those in favor say aye aye opposed Meeting adjourned. Thank you everyone. Oh, good job

10 seconds. 5. It is 6:30 PM and I call this meeting to order. Please stand and we will recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good evening everyone. This is a regularly scheduled meeting of the Winona City Council. Tonight I just have one comment. Recently I just wanted to send out my condolences to the family of Martin Bernard, who was a long-time member of the Winona-Dakota Unity Alliance and a well-known member of the indigenous populations across the region. Martin served in Vietnam as a combat medic. He was a large part of some of the things within our community, including Unity Park, Covenant of Friendship. He helped assist with the Dakota gathering every year. And ultimately he's worked with three mayors in Winona, beginning with Jerry Miller, Mark Peterson, and myself, as well as multiple staff over the years. I just wanted to take some time to pass along my condolences to his friends and family and the Winona-Dakota Unity Alliance. With that I'll pass it along to City Manager Chad Uble. Mayor and Council, nothing this evening. Very good. I will now ask City Clerk to take the roll call. Mayor Scott Sherman. Here. Council Member Young. Here. Hyma. Here. Christensen. Here. Zierden Shortridge. Here. Borzikowski. Here. Dicus. Here. For the remainder of this meeting, residents are only allowed to speak if they have a request before Council, and I have recognized you to speak. Under the petitions, requests, and communications, item 3.1 is a Tourism Improvement District presentation by Civitas. Mayor and Council, before we call on a representative from Civitas, a couple comments. One, the 2026 budget does have an allocation that the Council approved during our regular budget work session to look at or conduct a feasibility study for a Tourism Improvement District. If you recall, the Council had asked staff to look into various ways for the city to increase revenue. We looked at different fees. We talked about a hotel/motel tax. We talked about food and beverage. We talked about different avenues to bring in revenue. Um, and this is another way that there's a possibility to bring in some more revenue through, uh, Tourism Improvement District. So we are using the funds that you allocated in the 2026 budget to bring on Civitas. We've partnered with, uh, Visit Winona, uh, conduct to conduct the feasibility study, and then we will have city staff represented on the steering committee. Um, that reviews the study that's being conducted. Um, that reviews the study that we've conducted. I would just, um, also note that this, you'll see it here in the presentation in a few minutes. Um, we decided on doing the presentation during the Council meeting and just to do this brief, uh, presentation. Because when Kate and I, uh, met with Civitas, they gave such a great introduction to what a TID is that we thought it would be good as the introduction to the study being conducted and the steering committee being set. That it'd be good for Council to hear the introduction, uh, piece again before it comes back from the committee. So with that, Mayor, with your approval, I'd like to, uh, have Kate Carlson come up and just say a few words before we introduce, uh, Gina from Civitas. Good evening, Kate. Good evening. Thank you again for having me. Visit Winona is extraordinarily excited to partner with the city and our lodging partners to explore the creation of a Tourism Improvement District. This is truly a collaborative effort that represents a proactive investment in our community. We have pulled together a diverse group of stakeholders to be a part of the Winona TID Steering Committee and look forward to having meaningful conversations led by the research and data compiled by the Civitas team who are experts in this field. I will now turn it over to Gina Reed who is joining us via Zoom, um, to give us more information on next steps. Thank you. Thanks, Kate. Good evening, Gina. Good evening. Can you guys hear me okay? Yes, we can. Fantastic. So you have my presentation ready to go? It is up on the screen. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, good evening. My name is Gina Reed with Civitas. Thank you so much for the wonderful introduction. Um, I am the director of project manager at Civitas. I've been with the company for about 12 years now. So we are the leader in Tourism Improvement District formation. Uh, these started, uh, in California. There are about 115 of these in California alone. And we are now helping other states, uh, draft legislation and form TIDs so that they too can have these, uh, sustainable revenue sources for tourism promotion. So it is lovely to be here tonight. So, um, in my presentation, uh, I'm going to be going over the importance of destination promotion. I will be giving an overview of what a tourism improvement district is and how it works. I will talk about our scope and timeline for our feasibility study for Wynonna, and then I will answer any questions. So let's get started. So why is destination promotion so important? So why don't, you know, hotels just do their own promotions, attractions, just market themselves and leave it at that. And there are two answers to that question. First off, the primary motivator of a trip is the destination itself and the experience that it offers the visitor. So travels usually decide first where they're going and then decide where they're staying, where they're going to eat and where they're going to shop. So it is the destination that needs the bulk of the marketing effort. Secondly, effective marketing requires scales. So one business alone doesn't have the scale to be able to market the destination effectively. So we need to pull the resources together as a group. So a tourism improvement district is a great, uh, resource to be able to do that. It allows the lodging businesses to pull their money together in order to be able to do that. So, uh, to market above and beyond what's currently being done. So next slide. So how does a tourism improvement district work? So tourism businesses pay an assessment. Uh, typically it can be either a dollar per night or a percentage of room revenue. Um, you decide on what the boundaries of a district is. Sometimes it's countywide. Sometimes it's multi-county. Most often it is citywide. Um, the funds are then collected, uh, when a guest stays at a business, they're collected in at the time that the guest stays at the room in the, in the same manner as, uh, the revenue and all other taxes. The funds are collected, um, either by the local government, or in some cases, a third party. And then the tourism improvement district funds are then remitted to either a DMO in some cases, a chamber, but regardless, remitted to a nonprofit organization in order to implement the programming that is decided. So the funds are legally required to be spent on programs and activities that benefit those that pay. So those that are paying are in this case, the lodging businesses. So programs, uh, what we often see, obviously sales and marketing programs, uh, we can, we see events in some cases, capital improvements, transportation improvements. Um, the great things about tourism improvement districts is that they are, um, whatever is necessary for your destination. We can create them so that they benefit whatever your destination needs. So whatever the, the lodging businesses decide will benefit their, you know, increase, uh, demand for overnight stays. Um, I know in our initial discussions, um, we had talked, we had talked about, you know, promoting winter stays and activities. Um, I heard events. Um, sounds like hockey tournaments are pretty big in Winona outdoor recreational programs, activities, or improvements, things like that. So those conversations are something that we would have throughout this process. Um, but essentially figuring out what types of programs and activities, um, will benefit, uh, Wynona lodging businesses. Um, excuse me, what, what's a DMO? Uh, destination marketing organization. So like visit Wynona. Great. I apologize. There's a lot of acronyms. Absolutely. Just wanted to make sure we were all on the page. Yes. Thank you. Um, so like I said, tourism improvement districts are a great option for many reasons. One, they provide great transparency. So, you know, how much is being raised and you know how the funds are to be spent because all of this is required. When you form a tourism improvement district, this all goes into the formation documents. So there's great transparency. The funds are reliable. Um, they cannot be diverted aside from their legal purpose. So all of the programs that, uh, are decided on during the formation, the funds have to be spent, uh, in that manner. They can't be diverted at any time. Uh, the assessment can be passed on to the guests. So there's no out of pocket to the lodging businesses and they create a level playing field so that any lodging business that meets the definition of an assessed business, um, pays the assessment and passes it on. So everybody essentially is, um, you know, paying the same amount at checkout. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide. So just to give an overview of the tourism improvement district, uh, state at this time, there are currently 222 tourism improvement districts globally. Uh, the last one being formed in this, uh, uh, north central mass at the end of last year, um, spanning over 25 states. Uh, the smallest district is raising a whopping $10,000. Um, but, uh, altogether raising about 725 million in destination funding. Um, and you can see that as, as, as when it relates to. Uh, whether a destination charges a percentage or a dollar, it, it, it looks like it's about half, but some states require a dollar per, per room night, per, per night, per stay. But, um, some states require that, but most destinations choose to do a percentage, um, you know, as, uh, rates increase, um, the budget kind of grows. So you, you do see a percentage per, um, of room revenue as a more, um, popular choice. But, um, yeah, that's a little overview. Uh, next slide. So tourism economics is a very reputable company in the tourism field. So them with our help conducted a study to demonstrate the impact of TIDs and destinations. So we selected a hundred U S cities, 29 cities with TIDs, um, and 71 cities without a TID. And we analyzed data over about 30 years. Uh, the reports, uh, measured things such as lodging performance and examined the TIDs, uh, room demand revenue and visitor spending to name a few. And basically what the study found is that destinations with TIDs drove about 2.1% higher increase in room nights sold. Meaning more heads and beds and more revenue flowing into the destination. And on average destinations with. Um, and then we also, uh, uh, tourism improvement districts generated 4.5% more hotel revenue than those without one. Um, so while this is just a little bit of the study, it is proven that destinations with TIDs outperform those without them. Um, so. Uh, next slide. Uh, next slide. So this is, uh, essentially the process in timeline for our scope. So we were hired to, we'll basically be working, um, over the next three months. So initially, so as Kate mentioned, we have, um, found, uh, I think nine members who will make up a steering committee. Um, and it is members of the city as well as some lodging business representatives. So we have our first meeting, I think this Friday, yeah, this Friday. So we'll begin to, um, look at again, what services are important to Winona, to the lodging businesses, to the city, to really understand what programs will drive business for you all. Um, we will look at data and budgets to see what some potential budgets, um, we could raise, um, from the hotels. And then from there, we'll start to put together what's called a service plan. So we'll look at again, what the budgets, what a potential assessment rate is, and we'll basically put that all into a plan. Um, so that's basically what we'll working, what we'll work on for the next month. And then from there, we'll start to talk to stakeholders outside of the steering committee. Obviously not everybody is familiar with tourism improvement districts. So this process does include, or it does take some education. Um, especially there is only one tourism improvement district in, uh, the state. So it probably will take, um, some education. So we'll work with the stakeholders, um, which I know actually has already been done. So you guys have done a great job already, um, with teeing that up, but talk about the service plan and really understand whether or not there is, if a tourism improvement district is feasible. So, of course, we'll revise the service plan as needed with the feedback that we get from, um, those outreach meetings. Um, and then basically at the of our scope in June, our firm will put together a report that basically gives our, um, findings on the feasibility of forming a TID, our recommendations and our next steps. So if it is feasible, essentially layout, you know, what the process is to form a TID, um, our recommendations on, you know, if there's anything else you need to do, any other outreach or, um, essentially our suggestions on what needs to be done in order to form. Um, a district. So that's what I have. Um, a little short and sweet, but otherwise I am here to answer any questions. Thanks, Gina. Uh, Steve, you had a question. Hi, Gina. Uh, thank you for, uh, for the presentation. I'm, I'm Steve Young and, uh, I, I need to kind of repeat back so I understand the, the, the assessment. You, you, this, so this would in essence be a tax. And this is, this is when the, the person who's reserving the hotel room, maybe, maybe it's somebody from Madison, Wisconsin. They're looking to visit Winona because Winona is awesome. And, and so then it's going to be a percent. It's going to be one or two percent or whatever percent we decide of the cost. Of the, if the, if the hotel room is a hundred dollars, it's, it's a hundred and one dollars. And the one dollar is, is that assessment? Is that right? Yeah. So what I understand you guys is lodging taxes, 4%. So if the room is a hundred dollars and I actually, we just had a staff call this morning and Minneapolis came up. I understand there might be a tax on the assessment. So it might only add a few pennies, but what it might look like is a hundred dollars. And then there's the 4%. And then the assessment is on the hundred dollars plus the tax. So the assessment. Yeah. So whatever we decide the, the assessment is yes, it is, um, one or 2% of the, the room revenue. And the, the, uh, the hotel then passes that on to a city government somehow, some mechanism. Yeah. So unfortunately what we learned with, um, uh, Minneapolis is the state collects. The lodging revenue, the lodging tax that the cities don't individually do it. So there, um, because there wasn't a mechanism in place that the city is already collecting it. The city wasn't willing to, you know, create this whole new process. So that's something that we'll have to talk to the city with. So there, um, we know a third party that works with, um, hundreds and hundreds of municipalities for tax and compliance issues unrelated to TIDs, but they actually do collect assessments in other jurisdictions. So in Minneapolis, they actually hired a third party to collect the assessment. So again, something that we'll have to work through with the process. If the city is willing to collect the assessment, you guys actually have, you know, less lodging businesses than them. So if there is an appetite to collect the assessment, then the city would collect it and remit, um, to visit Wynonna. If not, then we'll have to potentially look into another third party that can collect it because the state was not surprisingly unwilling to do that. It'd be very important to me that, that the, uh, the collection method be as, as least onerous as possible to the small business owner. The last thing a small business owner wants or needs to do is fill out some nother report, some nother website to, to log on to, to remit their whatever that they're viewing as a tax. I don't mean to be a downer on this, but, but this is a significant burden, uh, for, for small business. I don't want to minimize it. And I'm, I'm absolutely pro Winona. I'm pro pro pro visit Winona pro tourism, but I'm, I'm going to, I want, I want everybody here to know, I'm going to look at this very carefully. This needs to be worth it for Winona to collect yet another tax. All right. So I'm, I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. That's good. Good question. Jason, um, would, would this apply to like Airbnb, VRBO, um, the online, um, again, something to talk about with the group. I don't know if, um, Chad and Kate have thought about that and want to speak to that, but, um, it's something that we talk to our clients about some absolutely want to include them. Um, what we usually like to ask, or our favorite quote here is the juice worth the squeeze. So we like to figure out, you know, what, first of all, how many do you have? And first of all, are they regulated? If they're not regulated and you guys don't regulate them, we essentially can't include them because if we don't know who they are, we can't, you know, assess them. If they are, we first of all, like to see, you know, how much revenue could they bring? Because if you're including hundreds of Airbnbs for a small amount of revenue, sometimes it's not worth it. But then again, some like for, you know, I mentioned a level playing field. Some are like, no, I want them to be included because I want everybody to pay the same rate. So it varies by destination. So again, that is something that we discuss, um, with our clients during this process. But I don't, um, know if Kate or Chad have thought about that or have that conversation. Mayor and council, we have representatives on the steering committee that I think it's safe to say represent, uh, VRBO operators. And we have, uh, front porch management for campground sales represented in the steering committee as well. So anything to campground sites to VRBOs to hotel stays. The other piece I just wanted to clarify as long as we're talking about this is we certainly call it another tax, but it's not a tax that the city is instituting in this case. Right. So the hotel is, or the operator is instituting this fee that then is returned in a city. Um, returned in a sense to visit Winona. Those dollars then what the committee will look at is how are those dollars then used. For example, it could be used to help the $43 million of deferred maintenance we have in the park system as an example. Um, and so the end user pays. Yes, a tax. Um, just wanted to clarify that piece. Thanks, Jen. Sam. Do we have any revenue revenue projections even with that one to 2% from our current hospitality tax? Uh, mayor and council in 2024 with the 4%, the total lodging tax was $496,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $518,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $518,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $518,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $518,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $518,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $496,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $496,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $496,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $496,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $496,800. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $5,800 with a 4%. Um, and so the total lodging tax was $5,800 with a 4%. Great. Um, and then my understanding of the push behind this initiative was that we would have more sustainable revenue for outdoor recreation. How do we ensure that this revenue is moved or shifted into that funding stream so that outdoor rec does have continued revenue? Uh, mayor and council, if you go back to the, well, we, we don't need to bring it up because otherwise we're going to lose Gina here, but in the slide, it says that again, the steering committee will make a recommendation to the council on percentage of collect collection and what percentage goes to what area. So it could be, I'm just going to use examples. It could be 2% goes back to marketing for visit Winona. Um, it could be 82% goes to parks and recreation. I guess I didn't do the math quick in my head. Whatever percentage is left could be designated for outdoor recreation. Um, or it could be whatever percent I just left, which is going to be over a hundred. Sorry. 2% could go toward events so that it helps event, uh, promotion so that we do bring more tourists to come to the events, stay in the hotels, et cetera. Um, but that percentage of breakdown would be presented to the council by the steering committee. Since we are at the very beginning of that steering committee and that was, I believe the understanding from all of council behind this, could we make sure to inform the steering committee of councils. Um, as they go through this process. So outdoor rec or the park rec department more broadly is considered well in the steering committee's discussions. Um, Aaron council short answer is yes. Longer answer is in our first meetings with Civitas. The question was asked what, you know, what was the initiative behind this? Um, as I introduce it tonight, I think that at this table with this council, previous councils, it was how do we generate more dollars for park rec, uh, initiatives and, or our deferred maintenance within the park system was certainly a strong, uh, message that we've heard that we have, uh, another revenue source that could help with some of those projects. So short answer. Yep. Uh, some of the steering committee is here tonight. I think they've now heard that we've relayed that onto Civitas as well. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Sam. Uh, Jerome and then Jeff. Yeah. If I'm, my understanding is correct. This would be levied on. We'd continue to collect our current 4% lodging tax. And this would be on top of that. Correct. Um, as usual, my dumb question. Why don't we just raise the current tax? Um, so mayor and council, uh, we proposed that originally. Um, you have to go through a legislative process to do that. Uh, when you do that, I think it's fair to say that cities encounter, um, quite an uphill battle, um, with tourism lobbyists. Um, and I think so that doesn't sound too unfair. Um, and I think so that doesn't sound too unfair. Um, and I think so that doesn't sound too unfair. Um, and I think so that's why a tourism entity or tourism viewer may lobby against that. Because the fear is that those dollars would go away from marketing, uh, the community that they represent or the state they represent. And that it, that if cities were allowed to do this, they would just simply use it for capital projects. So they would just, they would simply just use it for our deferred maintenance. And there wouldn't be any other promotion to help bring tourists to the community. Um, and that's typically what the lobbying effort has been successful in doing. Um, so in that process of watching other communities go to the legislature, ask for these additional lodging tax. So instead of four, can we raise it to six or instead of four, can we raise it to eight? During that legislative process, we saw them be unsuccessful. And so we worked with visit Winona to look another option. And the other option was the state statute allow in the state of Minnesota for a tourism improvement district. And so now we're searching, researching that entity. So in essence, what we're doing is an end run around the legislature to continue to fund visit Winona at its present, uh, rate. And, uh, rate. And then, uh, grab some money to put to our use for the, uh, for, for, for, for park, uh, maintenance and, uh, projects. So it's, it's, it's, it's, in other words, we're, we're, we're hiring Peter to pay Paul. So, uh, I'm hearing counsel. I think it's important to note that the state legislature has set up rules and statute to allow tourism improvement districts. So. Yeah. I understand what you're saying, but also it probably should be noted that the state does allow this to happen. And it's through state statute. There's a process obviously that we're going to work through with Civitas to bring that forward. Oh yeah. It's, it's legal. Just understanding why we've got to be legal this way rather than legal that way. Jeff. Okay. Um, so starting out, various cities have various different lodging taxes. Is that correct? Various rates, even though you got to go through the legislature and jump all the hoops and all the things we've already said that where that may not get you where you want to go. So where do we, and I know we talked about this at what one time, but I don't remember. So where are we now at a 4% lodging tax compared to most other communities? We high, low in the middle. Uh, mayor and council cake can likely answer this better, but the primary state statute says that you can't, you cannot institute a lodging tax greater than 3% without special legislation. There are a few communities, a handful of communities that have gone through special legislation, but no one of being one of them to increase it to 4%. But again, I'll defer to Kate for any other details. Yeah. Contextually, um, just to give you an idea of the region, how we compare. So again, Winona is at four city of La Crosse is at 9.5%. Rochester is at 7%. And Fargo, North Dakota, which I know isn't the same city or the same state. Um, but they just actually doubled from 3% to 6% specifically to build a convention center. So a lot of those additions are for special projects like what we're going to be studying for this. Okay. So obviously if we're at four surrounding communities, we're low. And so if we added, for example, I'm just making a suggestion. So if we added 2%, we'd still be well within line of other communities and less than La Crosse. They must be crazy. Very much so. Um, so, okay. That's helpful. Kate, what's Duluth at? They're up there too, aren't they? Eight or nine? Eight. Eight? Okay. Okay. Okay. So this, this seems to be, and I like the aspect of us being able to, through a community process, decide where the money goes. I think that's critical. Um, because the thing that we have talked about and struggled with numerous times here is how do we fund the parks and the recreation opportunities? Because I think realistically, that's what the majority of people come here for. So the more we can enhance those, it feeds on itself. It's a good thing. So I like the fact that once decided, the funds cannot be diverted to something else. So they're not going to be used to put a new roof on City Hall, even though we need one. Um, but we got that planned already. Um, so don't worry. Um, and then Gina, the only other community right now from what you had said that has this in, in Minnesota is Minneapolis? Currently? Currently, yes. Yep. And what is their percentage? Um, they are at, I want to say 2%. 2%. Okay. And then as far as my 2 cents, I like a level playing field. So we do, um, keep track of the Airbnbs and we license them all individually. And so we do know who they are. And so I haven't thought about the campground at all. That was a new twist for me. But I think all lodging should be treated equally. I think that otherwise you're starting to pick winners and losers and I'm very uncomfortable with that. So my 2 cents for what it's worth is I think it should be applied equally to all within that category. If you're renting a room in Winona, I don't care if it's in a house or if it's in a hotel, it should be charged the same amount. Um, campground, that's a whole nother discussion that I wasn't even thinking about. So I'm not prepared to make any statements there. And besides, I don't want to make Jamie mad. Um, so, um, let's see if I got any other ones. I think at this time, and this is just, you know, an open-ended question that I don't really expect an answer, but obviously if the city can manage the fund collection, that seems to make sense. But if it's something that's going to be overburdened, you know, then obviously we'll have to look at a third party. But third parties don't work for free. Neither does the city. So you're going to pay somebody. Um, and I guess that's something we should carefully look at to see what makes economically the most sense. Do we have the bandwidth to absorb this within the city? If so, then that would be my preference because I think we do an exceptional job of fiscal responsibility. Um, and if not, I would certainly want to see what we were paying out from this to a third party because it doesn't make sense to, for example, collect 2% and then one of it goes away to a third party that has nothing to do with any of this. Um, other than they collect the money. I can pass through. I can tell. I can tell. Yeah. So HDL, the third party that does collect for our other districts collect, uh, takes 2% of the total collected up to 2%. So, okay. There you go. All right. And so, and if we were looking at, based on 2025, the estimates that Chad had mentioned were about $500,000 based on 4%. So for adding two, we're looking at about 250 grand a year based on those numbers going forward. I think that's, that is a significant enough amount of money to warrant looking carefully at this because I think that could make a big difference. Well, wait, you said, you're talking about how much would be collected at the 2% assessment? Right. I was roughly basing it off of what we are collecting now on the 4% room tax. You're collecting 500,000? That's what I was just told. Okay. Yeah. So this would be 2% of 500,000. It was a little over five. So yeah. So you'd be around. So it'd be 10,000. This is like $10,000. Oh, 2%. 2% up. Not, yeah. I think the confusion is coming in. Councillor Hyman was talking about the total assessment that would be collected from the lodging establishments. Correct. Where, Ms. Reed, I believe you were talking about the 2% of the 2% that would be paid to a third party that would be collecting the assessed resume. Yeah. I'm not talking about third parties anymore. I'm just talking about ballpark. What would the city potentially gain from this? Or the community. It's not the entire community. So I think, okay, so my numbers are not that whacked. I'm a social studies guy, not a math guy. So, okay. Always need to be double checked on the math. Okay. I think that's got it for me. I think this is a great thing to look into. And I appreciate that we've got a broad based community group to look at this for a variety of different aspects. I guess last question. So since this is something that's going to be applied only to rooms, correct? We're not doing food. We're not doing beverage. Anything like that. How does this, I mean, is this, what's the mechanism to pass it? I mean, do we need X number of hotels and folks that say, yes, this is a great idea. Please do it. Or is this something? Yeah, it's over 50% of the total businesses. Okay. So that is something that we'll have to take into consideration if we are looking at all of the Airbnbs. We'll have to look at the total because then it might be tricky. Hmm. Yeah. Okay. That's something that we- Do you guys have property? So, but there is, you said a property management company that manages a lot of them? No. No. Okay. Something to talk about during the process. Right. I mean, if you want equal footing, I mean, it's one thing if a, you know, if a hotel has a hundred rooms and an Airbnb has one, they shouldn't have an equal vote necessarily. I don't know. That's a whole, that's a whole piece that needs to be worked out. I'm not- They do though, yeah. I shouldn't comment on that because that's further down the road, but okay. I think I got to, I think I understand it. I think I, and I definitely support looking into it further. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Chad, you had something to add? Yeah. Yeah. Gina, just really quick on that point, not that we have to belabor this, but if- Yeah. You own 14 VRBOs, you, you get either 14 votes or your 14's not calculated in the total. Is that correct? Yeah, you would get 14 votes. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And if you own one hotel with 200 rooms, do you have one vote or 200? One. Interesting. Yeah. We'll figure that out during the process. Excellent. Right. Something to talk about. Good question. That's why I ask about property management companies is because sometimes they are able to sign on behalf of all of the properties they manage, but if you don't, then it's a moot point. Sure. Okay. Good. Thank you for the question, Jeff. That helped. George. George. And I think it's, you know, important to thank our hotel investors in this community. They're putting up the millions of dollars to build these, the Airbnb people that are investing and making these apartments and all these things going and it costs money. And if not for them, we wouldn't be talking about no tax tonight. So thank you to all the hotel investors and Airbnb investors, all you folks. Thank you. Good point, George. And I think also it shows the support that, or at least the engagement that we were, we've received from the hotel, motel and Airbnb owners in town says a lot about this initiative and what we can potentially do with it. So agreed. Agreed. Any other comments or questions for Gina while we have her? No? Thank you, Gina, for the presentation. Appreciate it. Thank you, guys. Good job. Bye-bye. Did we have a motion on this one? No, no action is required. No action. Okay. Very good. Moving on then to item 3.2 is the craft Bev tour agreement for Saturday, June 27th. And Pam Simon is here from Layton Media. Did you forget her name for a second? I did. Okay. Do you need a motion? Go ahead. We'll do motions first. Move the council to approve the license agreement, authorize city manager and city clerk to execute the same. Second. Okay. Motion from Steve. Second from Jerome. Go ahead, Pam. Thanks. I just wanted to say thank you very much first. I can't even, I think this is our eighth or ninth annual craft this year. We've upgraded. It's noted it's not a craft beer tour. It's a craft beverage tour. We have, over the years we've included hard ciders and then we had people bringing like Bloody Mary mixed samples. And so we've decided to expand it at our St. Cloud event in January. They even had craft coffees. So this is made possible in part by a liquor license provided through a nonprofit in Winona, which this year is the Winona area of mountain bikers. This is Natalie Horick, who also works with me as a media consultant with Layton. And she's also a member of the organization. So we're very thankful for that. We want everyone to know that when you attend, a portion of the proceeds goes to the mountain bike club or they can get an advertising. It's up to them. But it's very important to know that a nonprofit does benefit from this. And if there's any business out there that would like to participate by sponsoring swag or have a booth there, give us a call. We'd be happy to get you more information. There are going to be lots of fun things going on this year. So I want everybody to cross your fingers, knock on wood, throw salt over your shoulder, whatever it takes for awesome weather. Yes. I'm so glad that you two talked because I've been thinking about Winona area mountain bikers for that for years. Yeah. Well, she was kind of standing there and we said, we kind of need a nonprofit. And she's like, hey, I kind of. Right. So yeah, a very good hire, obviously. Awesome. Great. Thank you. Any questions at all? Comments? I don't know what the new fun thing is, but definitely get tickets will go on. They're on available on line right now through craftbeertours.com and they'll be available for sale through an outlet beginning, I believe the middle of May through the day of the craft beer tour. Great. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you. Any other comments, questions or discussion from council? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Motion passes. Item 3.3 is the temporary on sale intoxicating liquor license for the Winona area mountain bike association. I move that the council approve the license. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Motion passes. Hearing none. Hearing none. Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.5. Item 3.5. Liquor licenses for the Winona, or excuse me, for the Island City Golf Garage. Yes. Item 3.5. Council approve both the licenses. It's a temporary on sale intoxicating liquor license for the Winona Arts Center for an event on May 2nd. Second. I move that the council approve the license. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.5. Liquor licenses for the Winona, or excuse me, for the Island City Golf Garage. Council approve both the license and the permit. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.6. Is the River City Dancer's street closure request for June 12th and September 18th. Move that the council approve the request. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes. Item 3.7. Handicapped parking requests to the parking lot. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes. Item 3.7. Handicapped parking requests at 328 East Broadway. Move that the council introduce the ordinance. Second. I don't know if anyone notices this, but we've switched things up tonight. Wow. It's throwing me off a little. Motion by Sam. Second from Steve. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.8. Appointment to the Human Rights Commission. Move that the council adopt the resolution. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Thrilled to see the first appointment under our new appointment process. It is the first, yes. And this one was actually done by the county, I believe, right? Okay. Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.9 is the Boards and Commission application announcement. There are one vacancy on the Creative Commission and three actually on the Citizens Environmental Quality Commission. The Board of Education. I'm thrilled to see the first appointment under our new appointment process. It is the first, yes. And this one was actually done by the county, I believe, right? Approved through the county? That's correct. All right. No discussion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.9 is the Boards and Commission application announcement. There are one vacancy on the Creative Commission and three actually on the Citizens Environmental Quality Committee. Those both will be, applications will be accepted until the seats are filled. Move that the council receive and file the announcement. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Did we have clarification on the timeline for the appointment process and how far in advance these vacancies would be noticed? We did not talk about that. But I think we had kind of settled on, if I remember correctly, it was six to seven weeks out so that we could hit two meeting notices before the appointment on the third one. Is that correct? We got some work to do still. Great. Can't wait to ask again next meeting. We'll work through it. Yeah. We'll be waiting for you. All right. It'll be appropriate. Let's say that. Can't wait. So that people have plenty of time. All right. But I would again note that you can apply for any commission at any time. Yes. And we maintain those on file for two years. Yep. So you don't have to wait until we make the announcement. If there's anything you're interested in, you can email or call or send it in. True. And thank you to the write up by the post. I have had so many constituents reach out to me with interest about joining a board and commission. Great. I'm thrilled to have more people helping in this work. Absolutely. All right. Any other discussion at all? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.10 is the Minnesota Beethoven Festival free concert on July 11th. Move that the council approve the request. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Jerome. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.11. Acknowledgement letter for the spongy moth spring. Move that the council approve the letter and authorize the mayor to sign the same. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.12 is the recreation alliance of Winona agreement report being presented by Jamie Schell. Will the council receive and file the report? Second. Motion from Steve. Second from George. Good evening Jamie. Good evening Mayor, council, city staff. Thank you for having us here again this year to present about what the recreation alliance has been up to in the last year under the contract that we have with the city. We'll just start off just to remind folks that we have a new agreement report. We have a new agreement report being presented by Jamie Schell. We have a new agreement report being presented by Jamie Schell. The council receiving file the report. Second. Motion from Steve, second from George. Good evening, Jamie. Good evening, Mayor, Council, city staff. Thank you for having us here again this year to present about what the Recreation Alliance has been up to in the last year under this contract that we have with the city. We'll just start off just to remind folks who our board members are and so people in the public as well as you on council can see who is serving on this. And we'd also like to thank Lou Overhaug and Lyle Blanchard for their six plus years of service on this board. They've recently retired off. Still very active individuals in the recreation community but no longer have to show up to our meetings all the time if they don't want to. We'll get right into part of the contract managing, operating, and doing what we do at the Sugarloaf Park. Just some estimated volunteer hours that this board and members of our boards do annually. 830 hours of time spent up there. Obviously, the ice park is a big chunk of that. But that volunteer cleanup day where we have folks, we had about 40 people this year, but we had folks come from Chicago again just for that day to come up to help work on the park. Doing all kinds of different things. The other would be trail condition observation. That's just paying attention to the trail. Is it really muddy? Should we close it? Do we open it? Do you know all of those pieces? And then just as far as maintenance on that trail, if something goes wrong, Alicia and Park Rec reached out to us just last week. This is a picture. Big tree fell on the trail, uprooted. Made it dangerous, kind of impassable. Really, within 12 hours, a member of our board was able to go up there and repair the trail enough that we could keep it open. The other option was park maintenance could get there, but it was going to be a few days before it worked in their schedule. So we would have had to close the trail. So this happens maybe once, twice a year. We're big trees down, and folks can't get to it soon enough. Recreational Alliance has been able to go and help with those. So it's just an important piece of the partnership. Just wanted to say thank you, and we're just really, really happy about getting a trailhead sign. And also you just see a trail closure. We've got to come up with a better mounting tool. This was our first time with a new kiosk there of how we put a sign up to tell people the trail's closed, but we'll continue to work on that so we're not covering up the sign. But having a trailhead sign there is just extremely significant. As I'm going to show you in another slide, all these user groups are there, school groups and hiking clubs and rock climbing, ice climbing, families, runners, nonprofit orgs. All these folks, as well as WSU families and college families come there. But people are always asking, is this the trail? We run into people. They're like, is this how I get up there? Having a trailhead sign that's very prominent now from the road down below. People know and feel like, okay, I'm in the right place. And just having some great information there is really important. This is just October 1st through just like a week and a half ago. But these are some trail count numbers. That 22,239, you divide that in half. We assume that you have an up and a down that the trail counter is doing. So that's over 11,000 trips up and down the Sugarloaf Trail in that six-month window. So throughout a year, it's obviously considerably more. October 18th was the peak day in this last year. That's 550-plus trips up and down in one day. That was parents' weekend. Beautiful weather. The campground was slammed as well for that weekend. So WSU, a lot of their programming, I just want to say thank you to them because they're making the students feel welcome, safe, know the place. And it's such a beautiful place to take their families when they come to town and their guests. So that's the only thing we could attribute that busy of a day. It's just nonstop cars probably coming and going that whole day. So that's pretty amazing to me that that many people are getting out. It's also great leaf season. So it's a beautiful place to do that. Something I want to show here, October being the busiest month of the entire year, but if you see we get through the fall season, we hit winter around December 1st, and you see how it basically flatlines. And then we open the ice park right around New Year's Day. And I believe most of the winter would look just like December if there was not an ice park on that property. And now you just see, you know, significant 200-plus person days. And then you obviously see the ice fest that Big River Climbing Guides puts on towards the end of January there. So significantly activated that space. So the ice park is just really getting people moving in the outdoors in the winter. So it's great to have these trail count numbers to look at. Just some different user groups. There's students, youth groups, families, you know, all kinds of things. Pretty pictures of lit ice as well. So with that, this year, the 2025 Recreation Alliance and the ice park received the Partnership Excellence Award from Visit Winona, just recognizing how important that ice park and just Sugarloaf Park in general really is, bringing people here in the winter and activating folks. Also this year, the Recreation Alliance's Luminary Hike partnered at the same time as the ice fest. So you just kind of got that joy. Everybody saw the ice park lit up. So it's just continuing to create great things for this community to kind of be proud of. Ice Farmers, I always want to say thank you to those individuals. Most of those 600 hours is that group of people right there. Pretty much all volunteer, with the exception of that little bit of gear that we get from companies that also see how important that park is. So these individuals are the Rec Alliance volunteers that are making that thing happen, as well as spearheading the other work days, trail maintenance, all those things. So thanks to those individuals. Just some more pictures from up at the ice park when it's lit up. So it's really fun. Ice park water usage this year was up significantly, but we also had, you know, I think arguably the biggest ice park we've ever seen, and a very, very successful year. The 173,000 is in our contract with the city. That is covered by the city. So Rec Alliance covered that 201,000 plus cubic. Basically, the 6,000 in our contract we paid back in water this year, and then obviously all the other things are supported by our fundraising and our community as well. So, but definitely was a significantly improved ice park this year. Unfortunately, Mother Nature came to a hard melt here a little bit earlier. We would have liked to get almost another month out of it, but that's the way it is. You can't control Mother Nature. So this is my last slide. Really only one thing here pertains particularly to our contract, but I do want you to know what the Rec Alliance is also up to, the 5A Spillway Portage, very new conversation with the Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, just simply out at Prairie Island Park, up and over the spillway to McNally Landing, trying to create safe passage for canoeists, you know, paddlers, as well as just recreators. So right now it's boulders. Actually, you've kind of received some pretty good interest from the Corps of Engineers. So at least very open to talk about it and come up with some solutions that hopefully aren't massive, you know, have to take it to the federal government to try to get. So they did suggest some ideas in our meeting, so hopefully we can talk more about that as that gets closer. Bluffs to Backwaters will be a festival. There's going to be canoe races, all that. That's going to be a lot of fun. That's at the campground as well. That is Rec Alliance sponsored and hosted outdoor recreation festival. That's hopefully going to continue to grow. The Winter Luminary, we're going to do this. I think we're going to do the same thing. We partnered with the YMCA last year, and the Y was a great location to host that right below the ice park during ice vac. The lit wall, all of that just made a really great community buzz, we felt. And then ice park access improvement. I'm going to put my glasses on here. So we've been in talks with the Bird Saul, Scott and Deb Bird Saul family, about a small tract of land, 1.6 acres, that is their land, but it connects Garvin Heights Road to the top of the ice park. That is a piece of land the city's talked about for years, needing for maybe Bluff Diverse Trail, all those, but also for the ice park. They have committed at this point to gifting it to the Recreation Alliance as a nonprofit. So what that means is we're an outdoor recreation organization whose mission is to create access, to build infrastructure, to get people outdoors. The Bird Saul's wanted to put it in our hands so that we could make decisions for recreation and the public access in partnership with the city and other recreation partners. We're in the final phase of contract work with them, so everything's been drafted for that to hopefully go forward. We just need to talk about a couple more little details, and hopefully we will be able to announce that it's 100% done, but they felt comfortable that we could let you all know tonight that that piece of land, which is also a very important piece if the Bluff Traverse continues to go forward, and then also for long-term sustainability of the ice park. That's where we access our water. That's where we come in from the top. So that's a really exciting thing that we've been working on hard for a while, and it looks like it's all going to pan out. So that's it. Any questions for us? Steve? Jamie, thank you. I mean, wow. Just this whole list here. I'm amazed. I mean, the portage idea coming down from the spillway, I'm aging. I need help with that. I walk that frequently. I take my way down through the boulders. Yep. All right. The land strip. Negotiating with the bird salts. Wow, what a blessing. A question. How are we doing for parking at trailheads? I remember even before I knew that there was an ice climbing wall, I'm like, why are those vehicles parked there on a Saturday by the real estate office? And that just seems to have grown and blossomed. How are we doing for parking in general at these trailheads? Is it just overflowing? Are we doing okay? You know, during the ice fest, of course. It's very, very busy. I know Eric. It is Big River Climbing Guides Festival, not Recreation Alliance. But I do know Eric has hired public transit buses to help try to get people from downtown, less vehicles, parking there. I would say most normal weekends and times, it looks very busy there. That new public parking lot right below the Super 8 and that definitely is full often. And then the roadside can be at certain times. I've seen it busy in the fall. We were just talking about that. We're like, man, you know, ice fest, there's tons of cars. But in the fall, there's a lot of cars, but not as many. But that's because everybody's there for the ice fest for, like, a big, long period of time. Whereas I think, like, in those October months, you're talking from sunrise to sunset. You have just people coming and going as opposed to all there at once. So that's where you get those high traffic. I mean, I certainly think it would be worth, you know, paying attention to and making sure we're, well, one, being good neighbors to everybody. And, you know, so far our experience with Edina Realty is they've been great folks. You know, we make a point to talk to them and try to be good neighbors for that. But I think most people know now that parking lot is the new parking lot there and the road is where you should park. Although there is a couple spots that are public in Edina's lot as well. But I think it's great. I think the stairs there has helped people, that whole area clean up too. But as far as I know, it's holding on at this point, that parking. Thank you. Jeff. Well, I want to echo the thank you. This is, it's remarkable. This is, this is what you hope for, you know, in a partnership. And it's, I know it's drawn a lot of people to town and it's a gem. So I appreciate it all, Jamie. The question I have is about water. Because I know this, this has evolved over time. At one time it was unlimited, then we put a limit on it. But I see, you know, I can see just by looking up, you're expanding. You know, you're using more water because you're making more ice. And I think you guys have gotten more, I think you guys have gotten better at it. You know, so you're using it more efficiently. You know, and I can see that the majority of what the city kicked into you, you paid back to the city for water. So is that something that we need to look at and rebalance given the scope, the increase in scope? Well, I certainly, I can tell you, we've pretty much met the limits of what the ice park can grow. You know, we're as far east and west, really, as that park can go. So I think we're going to hit a bit of a plateau on the growth now. Weather conditions, any given year, just depends what happens and, you know, how many times we have to farm and those things. But I do know our contract is up at the end of this season. So that's certainly a time where, you know, of course, that would be the time to talk about if there needs to be something different. It is, you know, to, yeah, to the 6,000 that's in the contract and goes back into water. You know, will it be like that every year? Yeah, it just depends on our weather patterns is probably the biggest piece. But we would certainly love to talk about it because we've proven to be an organization that the more we have, the more we do. Well, as long as, you know, it makes sense. Yeah, and I think it needs to be because you're, it's bigger, okay? It's the same thing that we talked about with Winona Area Mountain Bikes. We, you know, doubled the size of the trails, but it took us a while to, you know, increase the funding accordingly. And so I'm not saying that you've doubled the size of the wall, but you certainly increased it. And so I think now is the time to kind of take a look at this again and recalibrate or rebalance it such that it's meeting both sides' needs. And I certainly think that's why we have contract periods and lengths because then you revisit it. You know, you do what you do for that time and then revisit it. And we'd certainly be open to it. We've, you know, yeah, the ice park brings a lot of people. And that park in general activates a lot of people and a lot of people use it. So when we're talking about TIDs and all these other conversations out to a rec is definitely a driver of economics in this community. Absolutely. So I, you know, I'm not going to be the one that tells you how much water should or shouldn't. I don't know anything about it. But I look forward to the staff recommendations and the conversations that you have with them and the recommendations that come forth from those. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Sam. I appreciate the praise from my fellow counselors. Unfortunately, as a board member on the rec alliance, I will not be able to vote on this. I figured since your name was on the slide. It was a dead giveaway right at the start. It was. Yes. We can't keep track of all the boards you're on, Sam. All right. Any other comments, questions, or discussion for Jamie? Jamie, thanks for coming. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Okay. Hearing no discussion. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Under unfinished business, item 4.1 is the 2026 Bellevue Street storm sewer extension and water service replacement project. The low bidder was Griffin Construction with a bid of $239,727.31. Engineer's estimate was $311,326.50. The council adopt the resolution or the contract to Griffin Construction Company. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from George. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 4.2 is the 2026 bituminous mill and overlay project. We have one bidder, Dunn Blacktop, with a bid of $662,160.20. Engineers estimate $654,136. Move the council adopt the resolution or the contract to Dunn Blacktop. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? Jeff. Brian, could you refresh our memories or at least mine? Where is this happening this year? It's going several places. Viola Street from 6th Street to Gilmore. It's in pretty rough condition. It's not a full rebuild that we're doing there, but the pavement thickness and the gravel thickness is next to none. So we'll be taking that out and adding gravel. Is part of that from the take down to Lourdes Hall? No. That's all separate? No. That was in poor shape before they ever started. Okay. It was really beat up. Okay. It's basically because the section wasn't thick enough when they built it. I got it. Okay. The other streets are Maceman, portions of Wayne, portions of West 9th, portions of West 10th, the intersection of Main and 2nd where that's really beat up even though it's not that old. And then Buckridge Drive is due for a reclaim and overlay. Okay. Great. And what? Total mileage? Oh, I have no idea. Okay. That's all right. More blocks than mileage, but yeah. Yeah. Glad it's getting done. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Any other questions or comments? I'd be remiss if I didn't say I like the Lynn overlay. Yes, you do. Any other comments? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 3.4. Requests for proposals on the solar on public building projects. And Amy Van Gelder is available online. She has a short presentation. The council direct staff to reject the quotes. It's your request for proposals for solar on public building projects. Second. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from George. Good evening, Amy. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Can everyone hear me? Yes, we can. Yes. Okay, great. So this agenda item is to consider rejecting the quotes previously obtained for the solar on public buildings project and to authorize staff to issue a formal request for proposals or RFP. Following a review by the city clerk's office of the quotes combined with the requirements tied to the grant agreements approved by council on February 17th, staff have identified several elements that are more appropriately addressed through a formal solicitation process. This includes incorporating requirements like prevailing wage provisions as well as additional project specifications to ensure consistency and clarity across all those proposals. Additionally, some of the previously obtained quotes have expired because getting updating pricing would require us to go back to certain vendors. Staff leaves it is more appropriate and efficient to reissue the solicitation through an RFP. This process ensures that all vendors are working from the same information and submitting proposals under consistent terms and conditions. If approved by council this evening, the RFP will be issued tomorrow. The full RFP document along with the proposed timeline has been included in your council packet for review. If council has any questions, I would be happy to answer those. Thank you, Amy. Jeff. I think this is a great idea. I know we heard from some local business owners in regards to this process. And it sounds like perhaps before the playing field wasn't quite equal or there were some misunderstandings. So I think this clears things up and gives everybody a clean slate to operate from. So I think this is a great idea and look forward to the proposals that will come forth from it. Thanks, Jeff. Sam. While I was reviewing the current selection criteria for this RFP, which is page 62 of the agenda, I noticed that customer service and maintenance capabilities is only allotted 5% of the selection criteria weight. And that feels too slim to me. I know Councillor Young has mentioned in the past how we do not always invest in maintenance at the level that we should. I think this is a place where we could hire weight customer service and maintenance capabilities to set ourselves up better in the future. So we select a vendor who has the capacity to meet our future maintenance needs. I'd be interested in hearing other councillors' thoughts. Go ahead, Steve. Do, can, does staff perhaps want to indicate why their thought process, did we pattern this against some other standard? Did, did we, is there a thought process into that? Is there, perhaps there's a lot or perhaps there's a little maintenance needed on this. You know, I don't know. Certain things require lots of maintenance, certain things require less. I, I don't know. So that, those would be my questions for staff. Why that was, if, if there was a thought process as to why that was weighted at five points. Sure. Mayor and Council, the, the actual grant requirements are not for, there is a warranty requirement that goes with the product. And so that's why it was weighted a little bit low because of the warranty. And then also, um, John might, if John's still there, he might have some, um, more information as to the requirements for, um, maintaining. Is he still there? Yeah, he's coming up. Okay. It's on. Uh, Mayor and Council, as, uh, Assistant Clerk, uh, Van Yelder said, uh, the warranty does cover a lot of the maintenance requirements. And so that is already covered in the contracts we'll be signing. So we should get sort of built in, um, coverage there. Uh, and with solar, theoretically, it is pretty much installed and not, shouldn't be much maintenance, um, required. And so that's, that's why it is scored relatively small, small part of the overall scoring. So it's not a fire truck in terms of maintenance. Shouldn't be. Okay. All right. Or a plow truck, right, Amy? Correct. Any other questions, Sam, or more discussion? That was my big piece for discussion, was just really looking at that maintenance capabilities piece. I understand that there is a warranty that would cover us. I think the timeliness of the work for any warranty or maintenance issues would be important. Uh, from my understanding, photovoltaic, it's only working if it's working. And if it's not, we're not recapturing the dollars that we're hoping to, which is kind of the point of this project. So I might still advocate for a, a reassessment of the selection criteria to put more weight onto that maintenance capability portion. Also, in the past, I have brought up that I would like to see a community values assessment included in our RFP selection criteria. I understand that it's not included in this one, but moving forward, I think there could be something of that ilk. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Sam. Jeff. Um, I think, I think Sam brings, brings up good points. I, I do however think that, that they've been considered, you know, in regards to the, you know, the, uh, warranty and the, and the amount of complexity to the project once it's established. I, myself don't have a strong opinion one way or the other because I'm ignorant. I, I don't know anything. I know what they do. I know how they are. I don't know enough about them to have a specific opinion. So, um, but I appreciate the answers of both John and Amy. So I'm, I'm satisfied with that. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. Jason. I also appreciate, uh, uh, council member, uh, uh, steering short at Ridge's, uh, comments, but, uh, we've already delayed this a few months and I'd like to get it going and make sure that we can possibly get some, uh, arrays, uh, built before winter. Very good. Very good. Thanks Jason. Any other comments, questions or discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Under new business. Item 5.1 is the Winona community foundation grant. Move that the council approved the agreement and authorized city manager to execute the same. Second. Motion from Sam. Second from Steve. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in, oh, I'm sorry. Chad. Hearing council. Uh, since, since there's no discussion, I'll just note that, uh, Tell us about the emergency e-bike. I'd like to acknowledge the fact that, uh, staff took the time and effort to complete this grant. This was an item that was proposed in the 2026 annual budget. It was removed, uh, to balance the budget in 2026. So I just want to commend staff for seeking under other funding sources, aside from tax dollar, to, uh, provide, um, really a response time that correlates to the expansion of the bluff traverse. Not that we didn't need it before, but certainly with the expansion of the bluff traverse, the ability for an individual to get to a location in a timely manner, or maybe a more efficient manner, uh, is clearly going to be a benefit to this community. And so I just want to recognize staff's effort to bring this forward. Sam. I would echo city manager Ubel's thoughts. In my work with Reck Alliance and Winona Area Mountain bikers we've held multiple, I'm gonna say trainings, with emergency personnel regarding how do we ensure safety on our trail since we now have a pretty extensive trail system. I'm excited to see an e-bike to assist in those. I'm really excited to see what kind of bike we buy but I'm sure that Park Rec Director Minton will keep me informed. Could I just quick ask, is this Park Rec or is it is it fire and then where will it be stored? Mayor and Council, sorry I missed the second part. Where will it be stored kept? So both the fire department and Park Rec worked on this project. My understanding is that Fire Chief Corcoran will in a sense outfit the bike and you know have some input on what really the capabilities of the bike are and then my understanding will be stored at the fire department when there's call needs to be within our apparatus array so that can be called on quickly. Nice. I can't wait to see the bike rec on the fire truck. Yes I know on the front. or whatever emergency vehicle is used. Obviously, there's options there. So any other comments, questions, or discussion? None. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.2 is the 2026 sidewalk replacement project. City manager's recommendation. Will the council adopt the resolution? Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? Second. Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.3 is the 2026 sidewalk replacement project. Feasibility report and resolution ordering hearing for Monday, April 20th. Will the council adopt the resolution? Set the public hearing date for Monday, April 20th, 2026. Second. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? She did beat you, George. Sorry. She did. She did. Just by the timer. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.4. Grant applications for the lead service line replacement projects. Will the council adopt the four resolutions? Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. Any discussion? Yeah? Brown, could you just review these for the general public, you know, grant applications? I'm assuming this is, if you're on that line that needs to be replaced, there's a possibility for homeowners to get some remuneration? Not really. You kind of jumped with the gun a little bit. Oh, did I? Okay, sorry. We got 2,600 of them to do. This is certainly not going to get all. Oh, okay. Gotcha. We got one bigger project that's 160 different services right around the central barrage area, kind of to lay an area for you. That's the map included in your packet. Yep. We have a leaking service line. So, if somebody has a lead service line or a galvanized service that happens to leak during this calendar year, we can apply to get that one reimbursed. Got it. We also have the 3rd Street project that you guys approved a couple council meetings ago and they should be starting next week. Okay. There's 29 services on that that will be applied for. And then the final one is West Broadway's from last year. Got it. So, four different projects, four different resolutions, kind of. Okay, that's a good summary. I read through it and I kind of went, okay. We actually applied for this grant on the 31st and they're allowing us the resolution to come afterwards. Because they gave us so much time. They gave us literally six days to apply for this. Oh, my goodness. Steve. Brian, this is federal money. And this is, right? It's a federal pasture. We're getting it from the state. Oh, right. But it originates from the feds. Okay. And so, these eligible properties with these lead goosenecks, this would be, on this map, this would be 100% paid for for them. Yes. So, if they're on this map, they'll receive contact at some point and a contractor will come through and complete this. That is correct. This is approximately a tenth of what we would have to do? Yeah, a little less than a tenth. I mean, with the 2,600 divided by 10, you get 260. So, between that, 3rd Street, Broadway, and lead service lines were probably around that 200 area. So, not quite a tenth, but close enough. And again, none of these are actual lead service lines. They're galvanized lines with the gooseneck. Small lead gooseneck, correct? Gotcha. Yep. All right. Thank you. George. And also, too, Brian, when these streets are opened up, the homeowner is notified as well. Maybe they have a bad sewer line going out that way. And, of course, at their expense, they could replace that then as well, correct? Yeah. All these homeowners are notified because we have to get inside their house. Okay. So, like with this larger project, they've all been notified already. And literally, pictures have been taken inside their house and along with the 3rd Street projects, et cetera. So, yeah, they're aware of that. For the bigger 160 project, it would be really difficult to pair a sanitary sewer line with this because we're only going to open up a small hole in the street, a small hole in the boulevard, and they'll literally grab onto the line and pull it out to pull a new line in. So, as much as I would like to see them being able to do the sewer lines, it's really not going to be any benefit cost-wise for them. But if that street is completely opened up during reconstruction, then they can do it. Like 3rd Street, yes. 3rd Street would be the opportunity, yes. Most people don't do it. Just generally, the sewer lines aren't in as bad a shape. There were a few Orangeburg on Franklin Street 9, 10 years ago. That's the only time I've ever seen that. Okay. Right. Good. Thank you. Thanks, George. Any other comments or questions for Brian? No? Thanks, Brian. Hearing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.5 is 44 North, final plat. Will the council adopt the resolution. Second. Motion from Steve, second from George. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Motion from Steve, second from George. Any discussion? Motion from Steve, second from George. Any discussion? Final plat. Will the council adopt the resolution? Second. Motion from Steve, second from George. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.7 is the Minnesota HS legacy grant application. Will the council authorize staff to apply for the grant? Second. Motion from Steve, second from George. Any discussion? Can Luke tell us about this? Luke, can you tell us about this? Please. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, members of the council. Before you today is an opportunity to resurvey the St. Stanislaus Basilica, which is one of two basilicas in the state of Minnesota. This was last surveyed in 1992, 1988, and 1981. That coincided with early surveying efforts for the city of Winona, as well as its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. Since that time, significant changes have happened at St. Stan's Basilica, including new roofs, changes to the surrounding site, as well as just general wear and tear and use impacts over time. We know that they have some upcoming projects, and they are open, of course, to having them reviewed by the HPC if this survey were to lend itself to local designation. When we reached out to the diocese, they informed us that anything that we might have regulatory-wise will be less than what Rome has available for them, now that they are a basilica. We expect that this will lead to a survey that does indicate that local designation could move forward, and this would be the first opportunity for us to move forward with surveys of our places of worship based on our work plan for the Heritage Preservation Commission. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments, questions, or discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Motion passes. Item 5.8 is the acceptance of the special appropriation for construction projects for the public skate park. Will the council adopt the resolution, instruct staff to begin the bid process? Second. Motion from Steve, second from Sam. Any discussion? Jeff's fingers going up. Just a thank you. Sorry you were next to last on the agenda. Yeah, sorry, Zach. That you had to put up with several hours of this. But this is truly momentous. It truly is. So I just wanted to, you know, this has been many years and a lot of effort in coming. So I just want to thank those involved, particularly Zach and Patrick at Parks and Rec. This is a wonderful thing. So thank you. Thanks, Jeff. George. I know speaking with Zach, when all this started, you were committed. And I remember you saying, it's going to happen. Yeah. It's going to happen one way or another. It's going to happen. Can you tell us what's going to happen with the rest of the city? Are you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Zach, this is great. Obviously, I'm excited to see it come to fruition. I am not trying to throw a monkey wrench in this in any way, shape, or form other than I had read an article. I must have been talking about it because something popped up on my phone. Talking about multiple lines for different user types. And I'm just going to put that in your head and just leave it there and let it simmer. So different user types have different requirements for like, you know what I'm talking about. Yep. Yep. Thank you, Zach. Appreciate it. Steve. Mr. Mayor. Yeah. We all echo the congratulations to you. Thanks for your efforts. Hey, I would like to get this into the record just to make sure and confirm that the actual item that we're being asked to do is an interfund loan from the facilities fund. And I want to confirm that this is a short term and it's temporary that this is not not not not levied Winona tax dollars going to this, but it is quickly reimbursed by the state of Minnesota. Could I get a confirmation on that? I'm mayor and council. I can confirm that there's no city tax dollars going to this project. So everything the five hundred and fifty thousand is being funded by Minnesota through deed. Yep. It's a reimbursement and deed since they've had this four million dollars sitting in this fund. They want to get it in our hands. So their their intent is to send those checks back quickly. So the interfund loan is just just to facilitate this and get her done. Just yep. Great. Thanks. Just in case we need to. I'm going to ask you to ask Zach here. So when you look at the funding and you add up the numbers, we've got the five hundred and fifty thousand dollars from deed. There's the in-kind contributions for the park and then the donations that their group has raised. The total funding we have available right now anyways is seven hundred and five thousand nine hundred and seventy one dollars. The total cost for the project with an eight percent contingency seven hundred and four thousand. So they did it. Nice work. It's awesome. It's awesome. Happy happy. All right. Any other discussion or questions? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.9 is the facility fund commitment. Move the council adopt the resolution. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from George. Jessica. Mayor and council, I have good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you. Thank you. I have a good news for you. I have a good news for you. I have a good news for you. I have a good news for you. I have a good news for you. I have a good news for you. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. As we closed out the year 2025. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. As we closed out the year 2025. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. I have a good news for you tonight. Excellent news. That's awesome. Can you outline kind of primarily what the source of these excess funds were? How did this happen? How can we make it keep happening? Sure. Mayor and Council, we had revenues over what we budgeted, specifically for the police and fire aid and interest revenue. We had expenditures under budget. So for flood control, our maintenance and repairs and electricity were under budget by 75,000. Our engineering department was under by 95,900 for employee services. And we had unspent contingency for 300,000. I realize I didn't say how much the revenue was. So the savings or the additional amount for police and fire aid was 172,000. And interest revenue was 510,000 over budgeted. Okay. So probably higher interest rates, maybe some spending we didn't do and it winds up being a surplus. And we, you know, we've got a financial plan and it gets swept into facility fund. And thank goodness, because we need a roof. So very good. And this, this just really shows our conservative budgeting and I appreciate it. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.10 is the law enforcement labor services local 75 police officers 2026 through 28 bargaining agreement. Do the council adopt the resolution? Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Jerome. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 7.1 is council concerns. Council member Borchikowski. Aye. Opposed? Opposed? Motion passes. Item 5.11 is the law enforcement labor services local 261 police sergeant's memorandum of understanding. The council adopt the resolution. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Jerome. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Item 7.1 is council concerns. Council member Borchikowski. Thank you mayor. As Brian mentioned next week from Hamilton to Mankato Avenue on 3rd street to reconstruction process will begin. It's scheduled to go Brian till October roughly if everything goes right. Maybe a little bit shorter time frame than that. So and so everyone has alley access to their homes and just be patient. And when it's done it will be a very beautiful street. And also go Michigan. Oh really? Yes. Michigan fan huh? My Duke team is out so now I'm staying with the big 10 Michigan. Gotcha. Got a good bracket going you're saying. Okay. All right. Council member Young. Pass. Very good. Council member Hyma. Pass as well. Okay. Uh just congratulations to city staff for being frugal on their spending and helping us not have to invest in buckets because the rough leaks. So well done. Thanks Cheryl. Councilor Zierden Shortridge. Nothing tonight. Thank you. Very good. Council member Dykus. Nothing tonight mayor. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Under the consent agenda there are two items. Approval of the minutes from March 16th and a claim by the city Winona for damage to a squad car. Council approve the consent agenda. Second. Motion from Steve. Second from Sam. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Mayor time being 8:05 PM. I move we adjourn. Motion from George. Second from Steve. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned. Thank you everyone. That's a long one. Does it feel like a long one? I don't get many. What are you doing? How are you doing? No. You're doing a lot. I'm doing a lot of time. I'm doing a lot of time. I'm doing a lot of time. I'm doing a lot of time. I'm doing a lot of time. I'm doing a lot of time. - That was, I asked.