The City Council meeting on VIA Video Conferencing using Zoom Optional for Elected Officials

The Chief Administrative Officer and the Chief Legal Counsel for the City of Waite Park have deemed an ongoing health pandemic and peacetime emergency by the office of the Governor of Minnesota, that warrants allowing members to choose to attend the meeting by electronic means as a precaution to ensure the health and safety of the other regular attendees of City Council meetings as well as members of the public who might choose to attend the meeting.  Members can choose to join the meeting via a Zoom conference or in person.  The City Council will adhere to the processes required under State Law:
     1.  We will ensure that all members of the meeting body, wherever their physical location, can hear one another and can hear all discussion;

     2.  We will ensure that all members of the public present at the regular meeting location of the body can hear all discussion of the members of the boys; and

     3.  At least one member of the body, chief legal counsel, or chief administrative officer or designee will be physically present at the meeting location. 

The City of Waite Park is part of the St. Cloud Regional Pool Capacity Agreement for Wastewater Plant.  We have had discussions with St. Cloud regarding the desire of adding the City of Foley to this agreement.  This has been something that has been discussed for some time.  The City of Foley has agreed to become a contractual user in the St Cloud Wastewater Plant and staff would like to discuss with our City Council how this would work adding them to this Agreement.

Police Chief would like to discuss with the City Council some challenges they have been having with seasonal parking on streets in regards to winter parking restrictions.  The police department has had some challenges with some perpetual violators and would like to discuss some solutions to address this.

Staff has been discussing the idea of doing some strategic planning that would be the next natural step to complete after the Culture Assessment work.  They have identified a consultant. Perme & Peterson Associates that our police chief, Dave Bentrud, has had some great experience working with over the years with the Police Chiefs Association.  Staff would like to discuss this idea with the City Council and have Cathy Perme and Amber Peterson of Perme & Peterson to join us to discuss their ideas for completing a strategic plan with the City of Waite Park in more detail. 

The Police Department was awarded a COPS grant in 2020 that will allow the department to hire up to 3 positions with portions of this being covered by the COPS Grant. The City Council agreed to accept the grant but wanted to revisit this in the Spring.  Staff would like to discuss this with the City Council on how to move forward.  In addition, the police department discussed with the City Council back in the Fall about the Pathways for Policing Program that is designed to assist with bringing forward untraditional candidates into policing.  The program is designed to assist those interested in policing with getting their POST license certifications.  It is really trying to bring forth more additional candidates into policing.  The police department has been working on this program and has received some grant funds to assist in potentially considering one of these applicants for a police position within the City of Waite Park and will bringing forward potentially one of these candidates to interview at the work session.  The police chief would like to discuss this with the City Council in more detail and provide more background on this issue.

The police department has one candidate from the Pathways for Policing selection process that they would like to bring forward for the City Council to interview.  Information related to this candidate will be provided by the Police Chief at the meeting.

The City has been contracting for its building inspection services for the last several years with Code Consulting Services.  This contract will expire in December 31, 2021 and the City Council has requested to have a meeting with them to discuss their plans for the future in providing these services.  Jeff Howe, owner of Code Consulting Services will be present at this meeting for this discussion.

State Statutes has changed and now allows for lowered speed limits. The APO has had a number of meetings and we have also discussed with other engineers from St Paul and Rochester who have both recently lowered their local road speed limits.   The APO has requested that each community discuss this with their councils  to gauge their interest.

Things currently being considered / discussed:

• Local Roads….. changing to 25mph
• Collector Roads……  this is a grey area where more thought / study would be needed to provide recommendations
• Arterial Roads……  no change to existing speed limits
• Consistency among the APO communities will be important to avoid driver confusion
• All of this would need further study and recommendations from the technical group to be considered by the councils

City staff would like to discuss with the City Council the plan moving forward for the 2021 road projects.

City staff has been working with New West and Mammoth on the opening of the AMP and the plan moving forward on how we intend to address the unknowns with the COVID restrictions and the timing of the facility opening.