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HomeMy WebLinkAbout07C City Council Regular Meeting Minutes - June 21, 2023 CITY OF COTTAGE GROVE Equal Opportunity Employer 2897 -458-Fax 651 2800 -458-651  gov.mnwww.cottagegrove Cottage Grove, Minnesota 55016 12800 Ravine Parkway  MINUTES COTTAGE GROVE CITY COUNCIL June 21, 2023 COUNCIL CHAMBER 12800 RAVINE PARKWAY SOUTH REGULAR MEETING - 7:00 P.M COUNCIL CHAMBER 1. CALL TO ORDER The City Council of the City of Cottage Grove, Washington County, Minnesota, held a regular meeting on June 21, 2023, at Cottage Grove City Hall, 12800 Ravine Parkway. Mayor Bailey called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. 2. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE The audience, staff, and City Council Members stood and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. 3. ROLL CALL City Clerk Tammy Anderson called the roll: Mayor Bailey - Here; Council Member Dennis - Here; Council Member Khambata - Here; Council Member Olsen - Here; Council Member Thiede - Here. Also present: Jennifer Levitt, City Administrator; Amanda Johnson, Assistant City Attorney-LeVander, Gillen & Miller, PA; Tammy Anderson, City Clerk; Ryan Burfeind, Public Works Director; Gretchen Larson, Director of Economic Development; Zac Dockter, Parks and Rec Director; Brenda Malinowski, Finance Director; Amanda Meyer, City Engineer; Emily Schmitz, Community Development Director. 4. OPEN FORUM Mayor Bailey opened the Open Forum; he stated Washington County Commissioner Karla Bigham wished to speak. Commissioner Bigham shared exciting news that on Tuesday the Washington County Board approved the conservation easement and a $500,000 Legacy Bond for the Mississippi Dunes property; she shared the proud partnership with the City of Cottage Grove. She appreciated all of the effort and leadership that the City staff has provided in that, as well as the volunteers on both Parks Boards, the City and County. Mayor Bailey mentioned the money being given to the City of Cottage Grove is to continue to expand the park along the river; our ultimate goal is make sure we have a City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 2 park and open space along the entire length of the property there. He thanked Commissioner Bigham for the County’s support in making that happen. As no one else wished to address the Council, Mayor Bailey closed the Open Forum. 5. ADOPTION OF AGENDA Council Member Dennis made a motion to approve the agenda; second by Council Member Thiede. Motion carried: 5-0. 6. PRESENTATIONS A. Award Cottage Grove Public Safety Board Craig Woolery Scholarships Staff Recommendation: Accept a presentation from the Cottage Grove Public Safety Board awarding the Craig Woolery scholarships. Mayor Bailey asked the Council to join him in front of the dais, along with Julie Rice and the Public Safety Board members, to award the Craig Woolery Scholarships. Council Member Olsen stated the Craig Woolery Scholarship was started by he and his wife after Craig retired from many years of faithful service to the City of Cottage Grove, his last role as Public Safety Director. They feel very strongly that Public Safety is truly the foundation of a healthy community. In order to have a great Public Safety Department, you have to have great individuals serving in all the various roles, police, fire, EMS, etc. We want to encourage young people to follow in Craig’s footsteps and pursue a career in the Public Safety field. We were hoping to raise a few dollars every year to give some young people, who were very passionate about a Public Safety career, help with a scholarship. Over the years, he’s been very grateful to all the people who chose to contribute to the Craig Woolery Scholarship Fund, which is managed by our outstanding Cottage Grove Public Safety Board. It began with an annual donation of $500, and we’ve kicked it up a notch every year since then; we hope to continue to do that. Members of the public can donate at any time to the Craig Woolery Scholarship Fund; contact Julie Rice for details on how to do that. It’s always exciting to see the young people who may want to work here one day, or maybe in another agency in South Washington County; this truly is a calling and it takes a very special person to do a good job. Craig Woolery was one of those people, as are others currently serving in our Cottage Grove Public Safety Department, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, and our other local communities. He has no doubt that the scholarship recipients this evening will follow in those footsteps. Julie Rice thanked the Lions Club, who matched Justin and Kim Olsen’s donation this year. We’re increasing the donations, which means we can always increase the recipient award for next year. Tonight, three individuals, Bryleigh Dana, Tia Rossow, and Joe Roeser, will receive the Craig Woolery Scholarship awards. We’re excited for them, their schooling, and their future careers. The Cottage Grove Public Safety Board is backing you. She congratulated them, and each of them were presented with scholarship checks; everyone applauded the recipients. City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 3 Julie stated we’re also looking for people who are interested in EMS and Fire training, as that’s a need for every community. She said on behalf of the Public Safety Board, Council Member Olsen, his wife, Kim, and others who have donated to this worthy scholarship fund, thank you very much. Julie also noted the scholarship has increased from $500 to $1,000, which all recipients received tonight. We’re hoping next year’s scholarship will be even higher. Photographs were taken and all scholarship recipients were congratulated by Mayor Bailey and the City Council Members. Mayor Bailey stated that was amazing and thanked everybody who donated; he also thanked the Public Safety Board for putting the program together, as well as Council Member Olsen for getting the scholarship fund started. It’s all about helping out the community. B. 2022 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report Staff Recommendation: Accept Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the year ended December 31, 2022. Brenda Malinowski, Finance Director, stated Matt Mayer, with BerganKDV, the City’s auditing firm, is here tonight and will do the audit presentation. She noted that Matt will be retiring at the end of June, and KDV has been our audit partner since 2013, so we want to wish him well. We’ll miss his professionalism, his knowledge, and his integrity. Matt thanked Director Malinowski for her kind words. He told Mayor Bailey and the Council he has another good report for the 2022 fiscal year. His job tonight: Summarize about 250 pages of data that they received in their packets, give the results of their audit for the 2022 fiscal year, as well as a little financial analysis. He stated Director Malinowski and her team do a great job on keeping the Council posted, but sometimes it’s good to hear an outsider’s perspective to confirm what you’re hearing internally. He stated their job as auditors is not one of accountants; you have the Finance team to put the books together, to keep the transactions, and to keep you posted on what’s going on here at the City. Our job is to come in as an independent party, test, examine, and give an opinion on those financials so that you can trust them, the public can trust them, and the Office of the State Auditor, the recipient of these, can trust them as well. We do that through an Independent Auditor’s Report, and we provided an Unmodified, or clean, Opinion on our firm’s letterhead in front of the larger document, the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR). That means that the numbers we’re looking at tonight are a true and accurate picture of the City’s financial position at the end of the 2022 fiscal year. Matt acknowledged that this is an award-winning document. The City goes above and beyond the base level of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to prepare an ACFR; that has pretty much any possible piece of information you would want to know about the City’s finances or its operations each fiscal year. That document is submitted to a national organization to be reviewed and awarded, and this is the 32nd consecutive year that the City has received that award. He gave kudos to the Finance City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 4 team for their work in putting that together and also to the Council as the governing body, dedicating yourselves to full transparency and completeness in presentation. Matt spoke about three audit reports, beyond the actual Independent Auditor’s Report: Minnesota Legal Compliance - The State Auditor wants us to make sure that you’re following all of the Statutes that apply to municipalities in Minnesota, things like contracting and bidding, conflicts of interest, and the like. We had no issues, no findings for the 2022 fiscal year. Single Audit - You received Federal money again in 2022, and every year you receive that the Feds want to make sure that you’re using it correctly. This year it was the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds that you’re using on a utility project, and there were no findings or issues related to that. Internal Control - We also provide a report on that; this is how you do business as an organization, how you transact, how you establish policies and procedures to safeguard the City’s assets and ensure accurate financial reporting at the end of each year. We had no issues that rose to a material weakness or significant deficiency level there. This report is about as good as it can get, four different reports, all of the best that we can provide you; again, this is a credit to the Finance team under the leadership of Director Malinowski. Financial Analysis Matt stated he’d like to give a little bit of financial analysis on how the year went, to take a quick look at the General Fund and also your Enterprise Funds, your business-type funds; those are the funds that most citizens interact with and also are probably the ones that the Council has most interest in. General Fund: Is really centered around the budget, one metric to evaluate the success of your General Fund each year is how you complied with the budget. You’ll see your final amended budget for the year, the bottom line, was basically a break even, a small deficit of $121,000; when you’re looking at a $21M budget overall, a deficit like that is pretty much a break even. You intended your financial health to stay relatively the same at the beginning of the year as it was at the end of the year. If you look at the actual results in the bottom line, that’s just what you did; you outperformed it a little bit, about a $209,000 surplus, so you outperformed by about $300,000, and that’s good news. If you look at the details of that, you can see that those that have budget responsibility executing on that budget, Department Heads and the Finance team, ensuring that revenue stream comes in did an excellent job in projecting and processing that. You had a budget of $21.2M for revenue, and actual revenue came in at $21.9M, so about $650,000 better than anticipated. The big numbers that jump out at you are Licenses and Permits and Charges for Services; both of those are development-related revenues. It was a big year development wise here at the City; as a result, you certainly outperformed on those numbers. Investment Earnings: Is another number that might catch your eye; it is literally negative for the 2022 fiscal year, and that seems kind of odd. If you’ve been watching the news, you know that interest rates have been rising significantly over the course of the last year as the Fed raises the rates. What happens is when you have a fixed income portfolio that is at the old interest rates, the value of those securities goes down. So, as part of our accounting process, we have to write the instruments down to their fair value, as to what you could sell them at as of the end of the year. That doesn’t City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 5 mean you’re going to do that, you will hold them to maturity, you will get the par value back, and this is just a temporary recognition of the drop in book value with the interest rate situation. So, we would anticipate that reversing in the future and probably seeing some gains as the interest rates start to plateau or come back down. Total Expenditures: Again, each of the Department Heads did an excellent job in executing on their budget, with a small overage of about $354. There were some inflationary pressures that a lot of the departments were feeling this year; that really took off in 2022, along with those interest rates, which caused some challenges in staying right within that. But, again, about a 1.5% variance, so he thinks the budget was executed very well for the 2022 fiscal year. General Fund Balance: The Fund Balance is what’s left over after the end of the year. Your policy here at Cottage Grove is to have 55% of next year’s budget in Fund Balance at the end of each year so you’ve got basically a half year’s worth of resources to get through the first half of the next year, and also a little bit of a contingency piece in place as well. If you do the math on that $13.3M Fund Balance in 2022, you’re at 55% again; so, you’re right in line with the policy. Two metrics used for General Fund success are: 1) Did we follow the budget? 2) Did we stay within the parameters the Council set? The answer to both of those is yes. Also, did you achieve your level of financial health that you wanted for the year, a Fund Balance of 55% at the end of the year? That answer is also yes, so a good job on the General Fund for 2022. Enterprise Funds: Are more of a fee-for-service, they’re not so budget oriented; so, your job as Council Members is to keep an eye and ensure that the revenue stream is sufficient to maintain a healthy financial position, as well as cover the cost of doing business in each of these funds. Streetlight Fund: Receives quite a bit of non-operating revenue that’s not shown here. The financial health of that fund has been relatively stable, but this chart shows that the charges for services, in relation to the operating expenses of this fund, fall short each year. It’s really a development-driven fund, and despite the development activity on the building and permits and charges for services, the actual streetlight piece of that development this year was a little bit slow. As a result, you can see revenue and expenses are both down, although there is a small operating income without depreciation factored in for the year. After a high back in 2018 of almost a little over $800,000, the fund balance has come down, but it has plateaued and has not gone down significantly since that first drop in 2019. Keep an eye on that fund, make sure that charges for services are sufficient to cover the costs of doing business, and decide what a reasonable level of financial health is. You’re spending about $1M a year in this fund; about $200,000 of that is depreciation, so maybe $800,000 in cash flow, and you’ve got about half of that in reserve. So, it’s about where your General Fund is, on a 50% fund balance standpoint. EMS Fund: Looks like it had kind of a challenging year; he thinks there’s a lot of background accounting associated with this number. You changed vendors for billing during the year, so there was also some transition there; in that transition, the Finance team really evaluated the collectability of a lot of the receivables in this fund. It’s really a challenging fund when it comes to the decisions regarding who’s actually going to pay the bills, the amount that you’re going to get from insurance companies and other resources, and how much you’re ultimately going to have to write off. The Finance team decided to be fairly conservative this year City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 6 in that allowance for doubtful accounts and bring that revenue down to about $1.3M for the year. You can see operating losses as a result of that, and the financial health of the fund dropped fairly significantly, from its high last year of $1.2M down to about $344,000. That fund would be one that you, as a governing body, probably want to continue to monitor and get consistent reports on; he’s sure Director Malinowski will be very happy to do that for you. But when that margin or that fund balance is down there where it is, in relation to your operations, which are about $2M a year, you want to make sure that you’ve got the resources to keep that fund self sufficient and self supporting. Continue to watch and evaluate the collectability of the receivables in that fund, but a conservative choice was made this year on how to approach that; we’ll see how that ultimately shakes out, as the dollars are received in 2023 and new billing occurs as well. Water Operating Fund: This was another fund that felt the pressures of inflation. You can see expenses were up about $500,000-$600,000 from the prior year, revenue flat year over year, exactly $3.6M for both years; as a result, you still have operating income with depreciation factored out, but we’re starting to see losses again. He would attribute that mostly to the revenue stream being relatively flat year over year. Again, with inflationary pressures, we need to keep an eye to ensure that that fund stays self supporting and that you’re choosing the rate structure in a way to cover those costs on an every day, every year basis. That being said, the financial position of this fund improved year over year, so it is still in a good place; it has about an $8M fund balance in relation to about $4M of operations. So, you’re very healthy in that respect, you certainly can cover operating costs, but this fund also would probably call on that fund balance for some capital needs. So, you’re going to want to make sure that you’ve got a reasonable reserve for operations but also a reasonable reserve for capital there as well. Sewer Operating Fund: This fund also had a big spike in expenses this year, 2021 vs. 2022. In this fund, though, we can blame the Met Council and the charges that they have for processing your waste; that’s about $500,000, year over year, and that’s almost the entire increase in expenses. As a result of that, you can see you had an operating loss this year, but with depreciation factored out, its still cash flowing positively from operations. This fund balance took a little bit of a step back, and he wants to remind Council that while we have almost a $6M balance in this fund, about half of that is an IOU to yourself, as that helped build City Hall. We took a loan from the Sewer Fund, and so that is part of your fund balance, part of the financial health of that fund, but it’s owed from other funds. So, the actual cash that’s available for operations in this fund is about $3M at the end of the year. Governmental Funds: He knows you like to have some perspective on how Cottage Grove compares to other cities; we consider your peer group to be those cities with population of 20,000-100,000. A typical city your size has revenue coming into the city of about $1,100 per person; about half of that is property taxes, another big portion is governmental and charges for services of an average city in the State of Minnesota. In Cottage Grove for 2022, that number was $1,300, so about $200 better per capita than a typical city your size. That being said, the property tax levy was $100 less per person here in Cottage Grove than it was at other cities your size around the state. You did better in the areas of intergovernmental revenue, with many different grants and resources coming from the State for various projects, so that helped considerably during the year. Again, that development revenue, City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 7 licenses and permits and charges for services, played a big role in putting you above the State averages when it comes to resources coming into the City. On the spending side, you’re right in line with a typical city your size. A typical city, as far as current spending goes, is $739; that’s what it takes to run the City on an every day basis, things like the Police Department, Public Works, City Hall staff. In Cottage Grove, it was almost exactly that number, $751, just slightly above that; so, you’re right in line with the averages there. It was a big year capital project wise again, in 2022, about $550 was spent per capita vs. the State average of $317. Debt Service: Is another number that’s nice to see, as you spent about $100 to service the bonded debt here at the City during 2022; that’s about 2/3 of what an average city has, as they’re about 50% higher at $144 per capita. So, that indicates to us that you’re using debt judiciously and that you’re pretty much on a “pay as you go” basis for the major needs that you have here in the City of Cottage Grove. Matt said he’d leave it at that; he appreciates the chance to present to the Council one last time and will miss the opportunity to work with you in the future. He wishes them the best, and knows you’ll be in good hands with his successor. If there’s anything you want to discuss further or if you have any questions, he’ll be happy to stay until those are resolved until acceptance. Mayor Bailey thanked Mr. Mayer for his presentation. Council Member Olsen stated it’s always fun to have Matt lay this out for us; obviously, we wish you well in your retirement. He let him know how much we appreciate all of the information that he provides. He found a couple of these numbers very interesting, there’s always something that catches his attention. You were very clear about the fact that in terms of our property tax revenue collections, when you look at us vs. our peer communities, we run about $100 less than our peers. Additionally, we run about $45 less than our peers in terms of our debt service, stating we ‘pay as you go.’ That really speaks to the value that the property taxpayer in the City of Cottage Grove receives. What also caught Council Member Olsen’s eye is in terms of our revenue, a lot of that is development driven and that’s very clear in his report. As Matt examined the numbers, he’s just curious if there was anything that stood out to him in terms of why we’ve been so successful with capturing ongoing development revenue. It’s been a busy time, he knows that, but is there anything that stood out to Matt as an analyst that made you say, wow, look at what these folks are doing, and perhaps a reason why. Matt replied he’d be speculating, so he has to be careful to editorialize when it comes to that. Obviously, demographically, you’re seeing growth and development in the City, the population is certainly a way to look at that over the last few years. Your population has grown in just the last two years, 2020-2022, from 38,000 to 41,000. Responding and reacting to that is the building and the development that’s been going on, which places a significant burden on the City team; not only the planners, but also the inspectors, and everybody that’s associated with that. What you do to respond and react to that is basically have a fee-for-service type scenario: You have the licenses and permits for the actual work that’s done and inspections related to that, but then there’s City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 8 also charges for services that can be levied when there is actual value to the developers and the individuals who are participating in that development. What he found interesting was a particular slide that he skipped over earlier: If you go back to 2018, 76% of your revenue was from the property taxpayer, and 10% was from licenses and permits. If we fast forward five years, that number doubled when it came to licenses and permits, and in actual real dollars it nearly tripled, went from $1.7M to $4.4M in licenses and permit revenue coming into the General Fund. What that did was bring those ratios significantly closer together, 20% and 69%; what that means is you’re not as reliant on the property tax as a revenue source. That allows flexibility to have other revenue streams to address that; especially in a year when your investment portfolio took a step back, it was nice to see. Is that sustainable and is that going to continue for the long term? Probably not, but what that is going to do is build a new tax base, and it’s going to be a cycle for you going forward. His advice to the Council is that as you transition and start to see that license and permit revenue start to plateau, you’ll know that that development is starting to slow down. What you hopefully will see out of that is a stronger tax base and realizing the operating needs associated with that and leveraging that new tax base to continue to provide service. Hopefully, that provides you with an answer. Council Member Olsen stated that was a magnificent answer. He really appreciates Matt referred to the slide that was originally skipped; that definitely encapsulates what he was looking for. We’re particularly grateful for the balance that we seem to have now achieved with both residential development and commercial development, especially in our Business Park. He thinks that’s helped us out a lot, and he thinks the numbers bear that out, so he thanked Matt. Council Member Dennis asked about the slide where we just talked about property tax and the special assessment, one of the goals that we’ve had over all these years was to build to the top end, especially in the areas of commercial and retail. He asked if Matt had any measurement that he could provide just to give us an idea by percentage what the difference is between residential, as a single category, vs. commercial/industrial. Matt deferred to Director Malinowski, asked if she had that split. He didn’t know if that split was in the property tax levy. Council Member Dennis stated at one point, years ago, it was like 72% burden on the residential taxpayer, and he’s just wondering what it is now, after all of the previous years where we’ve had record amounts of volume coming in relative to commercial- industrial. Matt apologized, as he didn’t have those numbers at his fingertips; we’re checking to see if it might be in the ACFR. If not, that information is readily available from other third party sources, and we can get that for you. Director Malinowski stated 2022 probably is not a good year to look at because we had a 20% increase in our residential properties. So, when we look back, it’s 80% residential and 20% commercial, but that is skewed for this year. So, we’d want to look at a 10-year trend for you, and we can do that. Council Member Dennis stated that would be awesome if they could and thanked them. City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 9 Mayor Bailey asked about the EMS Fund, which we’ve been dealing with from a staff and Council level. We obviously have some major changes happening there, and Matt mentioned we’re changing vendors, etc. Our challenge is we can charge whatever we’re going to charge for an ambulance ride or services, but people can only pay so much, even with Medicare-Medicaid. He asked what they’re looking at going forward with that fund and with the new company that we hired. Director Malinowski stated we changed providers on October 10, 2022; so, we’ve been monitoring the first six months of 2023. She looked at cash flow tonight between 2022 vs. 2023, because cash is what we look at in that fund; there’s a $600,000 swing in the first six months of this year compared to last year. So, that billing change is having a positive impact on that fund. We were able to go back and do some collection efforts on some of the old bills, and so those came into the fund this year. So, of that $600,000, about $300,000 was some old accounts that we were able to collect. And we’ll keep monitoring, but with ambulance, as you know, with Medicare and Medicaid, we only get a certain percentage. So, as we move forward in our model, we’ve done a great job here in Cottage Grove on always looking at the model and being able to operate it; so, what we’re suggesting is going forward, when we hire firefighter- paramedics, instead of doing 75% to the EMS Fund and 25% to the General Fund that we do that swing. Because we know that with Medicare and Medicaid, we just get a certain percentage of the call. Mayor Bailey stated he kind of knew that, but thought it would be good when you look at that number and see how much of a loss was taken on it. For the general public, the way the EMS system works is it’s not just Cottage Grove that we’re covering; we are covering our surrounding communities, specifically, St. Paul Park, Newport, Grey Cloud, etc. So, ultimately, our goal as a Council is to make sure each city kind of pays their own; in most cases, we are solvent, that’s the way it’s been. There’s enough revenue coming in to offset the expenses, but there were some challenging years, like we just came through, in that particular fund. Council Member Dennis thanked Mayor Bailey for bringing up that point about the other communities because this is something that we, as a Council, have been talking about for years. When you look at the different communities, how they pay, and the amount by percentage of bills that actually get paid that we’re able to collect, he doesn’t think any of us at this moment could give those statistics, but we know there’s a difference there. To have a program like this is very important to the wellbeing of our community. We also want to make sure we’re being fair to the people that are paying their bills, and that our community is getting service when we need it and not having all of our equipment or people out of town, then having longer response times when we have others come in to fill that void. We also need to make sure that they’re getting their fair return on the investment as well. We’ve got budget time coming up here very quickly, so maybe that’s something we want to look at again, like we do every year. Council Member Khambata added that if you talk to any of our Public Safety personnel, they pride themselves on our quick response times. Anyone who’s ever needed an ambulance appreciates that we get there quickly. Even though it’s hard to keep the books on a service like this, he sees this as an essential service for our City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 10 community; he thinks we should be proud of how the service has performed. As far as the numbers are shaking out, when we talked about making this change in terms of who was going to be collecting the money on our behalf, we talked about the potential to recoup some of this old bad debt. He was happy to see that that’s turned around so quickly. He thinks come budget time we’ll have some more empirical data, some of the old debt, as far as what we can project for collections moving forward. He hopes we continue to run a really great service. Mayor Bailey stated absolutely; he doesn’t think that any of us are saying do away with the service, but it’s just a point we were talking about. It’s great to hear that we’re getting some better collection numbers this year with this new company than we’ve had in the past. So, that’s beneficial to us right off the bat. Mayor Bailey thanked Matt for his presentation and confirmed Matt was retiring; he told him to enjoy his retirement, we’ll miss you, and thanked him for the years of service that he provided to the City of Cottage Grove. Mayor Bailey also thanked Director Malinowski and her team, stated they did a great job on the budget and the process over the last year with managing the pennies, nickels, and dimes, as we always do in this community. The community is proud of the work that we all do. Council Member Thiede told Matt that he can always come back just to have fun with us, too; it’s an open invitation. Council Member Olsen told Matt if he needs something parttime to let us know. Mayor Bailey said he could still do presentations for the Cottage Grove City Council. Matt thanked them all. Motion by Council Member Dennis to accept the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the year ended December 31, 2022; second by Council Member Olsen. Motion carried: 5-0. 7. CONSENT AGENDA A. Approve the June 7, 2023 City Council Special Meeting minutes. B. Approve the June 7, 2023 City Council Regular Meeting minutes. C. Authorize issuance of a single-occasion gambling license to St. Rita’s Church at 8694 80th Street South on September 15-17, 2023, for their Fall Festival. D. Authorize issuance of a Temporary Liquor License to the Church of St. Rita, 8694 80th Street South, for their Fall Festival September 15-17, 2023. E. Authorize the clinical site Memorandum of Agreement between the City of Cottage Grove Public Safety and Century College. F. Approve the issuance of rental licenses to the properties listed in the attached table. G. Approve the renewals of the Workers Compensation Policy and the Package Insurance Policy with the League of MN Cities Insurance Trust for the 2023-2024 policy period in the amount of $1,354,369.00. City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 11 H. Authorize the City not to waive the statutory tort limits when an individual claimant would be able to recover no more than $500,000 on any claim to which the statutory tort limits apply per staff and City Attorney recommendation. The total all claimants would be able to recover for a single occurrence to which statutory tort limits apply would be limited to $1,500,000.00. I. 1) Adopt Resolution 2023-084 Declaring the Official Intent of the City of Cottage Grove to reimburse certain expenditure from the proceeds of bonds to be issued by the City with respect to the East Point Douglas and Jamaica Avenue Reconstruction and Signal Modification Project. 2) Adopt Resolution 2023-085, Declaring the Official Intent of the City of Cottage Grove to reimburse certain expenditure from the proceeds of bonds to be issued by the City with respect to the Golf Course Irrigation Project. J. Authorize service agreement with C&H Sport Surfaces, Inc. for color coating and saw cutting at Hamlet Park in the amount of $25,000. K. Authorize service agreement with C&H Sport Surfaces, Inc. for the color coating and saw cutting at Highlands Park. L. Approve the First Amendment to the Lease Agreement for the Dog Park with WAG Farms. M. Adopt Resolution 2023-086 rescinding and terminating the Development Agreement for Ravine Crossing approved on May 17, 2023, and approving a new Development Agreement for Ravine Crossing. N. Adopt Ordinance No. 1066 amending Cottage Grove City Code Title 4, Chapter 3, Section 1A and 18 regarding Noxious Weeds and Plants; Height Restrictions, subject to minor modifications by the City Attorney and DNR approvals. O. Approve the Metropolitan Council Encroachment Agreement, with minor modifications by the City Attorney, to allow City infrastructure to be built, owned, and maintained within a sanitary sewer easement. P. Adopt Resolution 2023-083 authorizing the preparation of a feasibility report for the 80th Street Reconstruction project from Highway 61 to Ideal Avenue. Q. Approve the easement with NP BGO Cottage Grove Logistics Park, LLC, subject to minor modifications by the City Attorney. R. Approve the Permanent Utility Easement and Memorandum of Understanding with Robert W. and Joan E. Julen. None of the Council Members wished to pull any items for further comment and/or discussion. Motion by Council Member Olsen to approve the Consent Agenda; second by Council Member Thiede. Motion carried: 5-0. 8. APPROVE DISBURSEMENTS City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 12 A. Approve payments for the period of 6-02-2023 through 6-15-2023 in the amount of $6,428,546.55. Motion by Council Member Dennis to approve disbursements; second by Council Member Khambata. Motion carried: 5-0. 9. PUBLIC HEARINGS – None. 10. BID AWARDS – None. 11. REGULAR AGENDA A. Tobacco Compliance Check Violation Staff Recommendation: 1) Allow the business representatives for Cottage Grove Tobacco, LLC, an opportunity to respond to the City Council regarding the tobacco compliance check violation occurring on May 23, 2023. 2) Impose the scheduled penalty for the 1st violation in a 36-month period, a $300 fine. Greg Rinzel, Deputy Director of Public Safety/Police Captain, stated there was one tobacco compliance violation this year. The person who was in violation is not here tonight in the audience, but he’d been sent a letter about tonight’s meeting. Staff has a responsibility to keep businesses in compliance with State Laws and City Ordinances regarding tobacco sales. On May 23, 2023, Public Safety did Tobacco Compliance Checks. Cottage Grove Tobacco, LLC, 6990 80th Street, Suite 100, failed the compliance check; they were the only business that failed the compliance check this year. Captain Rinzel reviewed the procedure Public Safety uses with volunteer decoys, including not changing their appearance, they’re instructed to answer any questions, to give factual information, show their IDs, and not to lie during the compliance check. They’re to use their standard Minnesota driver's license. They’re given money, and that money is recorded by serial number, photographed, and then collected by the officer if a violation occurs. Captain Rinzel displayed a slide showing the differences of Minnesota driver's licenses issued to those Under 21 and those Over 21: Driver's licenses for those Under 21 are vertical, and it clearly states “Under 21 Until” then gives a date when they will be 21. Those Over 21 have driver's licenses that are horizontal. So, it’s fairly easy to determine whether or not someone is of age or underage while purchasing either tobacco or alcohol. A copy of the tobacco violation incident report was included in the Council’s packets. The decoy was 19 years old, went into the store, the transaction was completed, and Grizzly Wintergreen smokeless tobacco was purchased. The employee never asked the decoy for any identification. The decoy came outside, and the officers went inside the store and spoke with the employee involved. The employee was questioned; that was recorded on video and audio on officers’ body cameras. He admitted to the violation, City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 13 believed the decoy was someone who was a normal customer for them, who had previously been identified. However, that clearly wasn’t the case in this incident. We made contact with the owner-manager and explained the violation. A citation was issued to the employee who made the sale. A letter from Director Koerner was emailed to the owner, outlining the next steps; the owner was advised to attend this Council Meeting if he would like to contest the violation or just talk about the incident. However, the owner is not in attendance tonight. Captain Rinzel asked for the second recommendation, to impose the scheduled penalty for the first violation in a 36-month period, which is a $300 fine, as the owner is admitting to the violation by not attending tonight’s Council Meeting. Council Member Olsen asked for the name of the business. He’s assuming on the building it doesn’t say Cottage Grove Tobacco, LLC; Captain Rinzel replied he believes it just says Cottage Grove Tobacco. Council Member Olsen asked how many years they’ve been in operation; Captain Rinzel replied this is their second year. In 2022, they passed their compliance check, so it’s a newer business attached to the Ace Hardware store, at the end; that’s its location in the City. Council Member Olsen stated this is one violation within two years of operation, which Captain Rinzel confirmed. He asked Captain Rinzel if in his view the scheduled penalty was adequate for this violation; Captain Rinzel replied he believed it was, thought following the Ordinance that we have set forth is a good starting point. Council Member Olsen stated it’s unfortunate that the owner isn’t here so that we could have some dialogue with him, but asked what would the penalty be if they should have a second violation; Captain Rinzel stated he would have to look that up. Mayor Bailey stated Attorney Amanda Johnson, who is here for City Attorney Korine Land tonight, had the answer to that question. Attorney Johnson stated the fine for a second violation would be $600. Council Member Olsen stated the reason he brought it up was because with alcohol- related offenses, we will often do some training or will recommend training. He asked if that’s something we may want to do in this instance, or is that something we would implement should there be a second violation. Captain Rinzel replied he didn’t think this was a training issue; clearly, the owner, when confronted by the officers who talked to the employee, said that he’s taught the employees, trained them to ask for identification. It was the employee at the time, who felt that this was a customer they’d had in the past, which was the reason he didn’t identify the decoy. It wasn’t a training issue; they should identify all parties, even if they’ve been in the store previously. Captain Rinzel stated many businesses have software built into their POS system that requires an ID to be registered for a sale to continue. Mayor Bailey felt it was important to note that all of the other tobacco businesses in our community passed with flying colors, and every single liquor establishment also passed. He stated that was awesome and is very glad that the things that we’re doing to help our businesses be successful in this area are working. City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 14 Captain Rinzel stated we always want education over enforcement; that’s what part of this compliance is, to really educate them and make sure they’re following the laws. Motion by Council Member Thiede to impose the scheduled penalty for the first violation in a 36-month period of a $300 fine; second by Council Member Khambata. Motion carried: 5-0. 12. COUNCIL COMMENTS AND REQUESTS Council Member Khambata stated he had a great weekend at Strawberry Fest so thanked Council Member Thiede and all of the volunteers at the Strawberry Fest, as his kids had a blast. Council Member Dennis stated Strawberry Fest was fantastic, every aspect of it. He had the pleasure, as did Dan Schoen, of eating hamburgers cooked by Council Member Olsen; he believed they got the last hamburgers. Council Member Olsen confirmed that they ran out of cheese; Council Member Dennis stated they’ll have to order more for next year. He stated it was absolutely amazing, and he doesn’t know this for a fact, but he felt we probably had more people show up than ever before. The food trucks ran out of food, Lions ran out of beer, it was incredible. It was just people having fun. The amount of promotion that went into it included getting major news channels to talk about it, was great; just everything was fantastic across the board. He was very impressed with it, as usual, and gave kudos to Council Member Thiede and Council Member Olsen for the work that they did, as well as every other volunteer. Council Member Thiede stated it was a fantastic year at Strawberry Fest. Thanks should be given to Mother Nature because she cooperated, we had fantastic weather, and the rain projected earlier in the week held off. He wanted to thank all of the people on the Strawberry Fest Committee, as they did a fantastic job. We haven’t totaled up everything yet, but he thinks this is a record year. On Saturday night, there wasn’t very much open space on the parking lot at Kingston Park, it was just loaded with people. He thanked everyone who attended. We did an expanded Family Night on Thursday night, which was attended very well, so he imagines that we’ll continue to do that and have some more things going on, on Thursday night Family Night. Council Member Olsen stated regarding Strawberry Fest, there are a couple things he thought people might find interesting. We had out Cottage Grove Lions Club meeting last night, where we recapped the weekend events and how we did with those. Thursday Night: We counted about 2,000 people in the park, which doesn’t sound like all that much, but compared to previous Thursday nights, it was unbelievable. We sold a lot of food and a lot of beverages on Thursday night that we wouldn’t normally sell. Friday and Saturday, combined: Roughly 20,000 visitors to our Lions’ tent throughout the course of the 48-hour period. We had a record year in sales, it was a staggering number. As was mentioned earlier, we were scrambling all weekend to keep up with food, beverages, etc. We did a lot of extra shopping and even at that, we ran out, but City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 15 that’s really the goal. We would be remiss if we didn’t give a huge amount of thanks to Lori Olson, Samantha Crabtree, Dave Thiede, Eric Witt, Kaity Tobritzhofer, Willie Tennis, and all the other folks who participated and organized this event. The bands were wonderful, the weather held out, the parade was terrific; Sue Shea, Scott Shea, and Mark Helgerson did a really great job with that. He thought people just had fun. He also wanted to give a lot of thanks to our City staff; people may not realize this, but City participation in Strawberry Fest is at no charge. So, when you look at the amount of work that our people do at Strawberry Fest at no charge, the Festival Committee is always very grateful for the Public Safety presence, for the Park and Rec presence, for the Public Works presence. He knows Zac Dockter, our Parks Director, who also happens to be a St. Paul Park-Newport Lion, was out at the park for the majority of the event. He was a phone call away if we had a trash can that needed to be dumped, if we had a recycle bin that needed to be taken care of, his folks were on it. And they were responsive, they were unbelievable in keeping bathrooms clean, making sure the Porta Potties were good. Public Safety had a terrific presence at the park so that people could feel safe and have a really good time. We had Washington County SWAT participate as well, so it really was a culmination of many, many efforts, and lots of volunteer hours. But it all came together, it’s the best community event of the season every year, and this year was fantastic, outstanding, marvelous, spectacular; you pick your adjective, it was that. So, thanks to everybody who had a hand in it. Mayor Bailey stated it was an amazing event, and this stat staggered him a little bit, but it gives you an idea of the number of people who showed up out there: Lori Olson told him that some businesses did not take credit cards, so you had to pay cash. The ATM out there doled out over $70,000 cash. At one point during the night, his son came up to him and said the cash machine is out of money. Whoever was hired for that quickly came out and refilled the machine. That just goes to show how much excitement was out there and people were having a good time. With the amount of revenue, he hopes that all of the vendors did well, and it sounds like they did very well. Council Member Thiede stated they received very good reports back from food vendors, and there were over 104 booths in the Strawberry Marketplace this year; most of them said it was a great year for them, and they would come back next year. So, yes, it was great. Mayor Bailey wanted to thank all of the businesses who donated, too; there were many sponsors, and Strawberry Fest couldn’t happen if it weren’t for the volunteers and the sponsors. Everybody who gave money, time, and effort to the festival was amazing. Council Member Thiede stated Sheila Nitz has been the driver behind getting those sponsors and coordinating that; Council Member Olsen agreed, stated she’s obviously a key cog in the wheel. Mayor Bailey stated the next fun event here in Cottage Grove is the Fourth of July festival because the Lions and our sponsors, NorthPoint, Hy-Vee, 3M, Renewal by Andersen, and Tennis Sanitation once again each donated $5,000 to raise $25,000 to make sure that we put on an absolutely amazing fireworks show on the Fourth of July at Kingston Park. He encouraged everybody to come out there; it starts at 5:00 p.m. when City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 16 there will be some food and games for kids. We hope everyone will enjoy that great day and will keep our fingers crossed that the weather will be great. Council Member Thiede stated for those of you that liked the fireworks at Strawberry Fest, the Fourth of July fireworks will be about four to five times more spectacular, just based on cost. Mayor Bailey stated Cottage Grove has always tried to go after funding sources for projects within our community. Mayor Bailey stated he’s an appointee on the Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) for the Met Council. Today, Cottage Grove was awarded $7M towards the 100th Street and County Road 19 project, which is the extension basically from Jamaica going all the way to County Road 19, with a new roadway that will eventually also connect to Langdon and a new entrance for 3M. He got a chance to talk with the director of the plant at 3M, and they’re pretty excited about it, too. They’re a willing partner in working through this because it benefits all of us; for the general public, this is a particular area that frankly we never thought from a City standpoint would ever be open for additional development to expand our Business Park. Now, 3M has about 500 acres, and they’re interested in looking at some development opportunities, which means additional tax base, jobs, etc. for our community. So, this road is integral in that. He mentioned that $7M isn’t the full amount; the full amount is about $36M, so we also have other funding sources that we’re working on. We landed $7M of additional funds from the Met Council, it passed unanimously, so he was quite happy about that. He thanked all of the members of TAB for making that happen. He thanked City staff for putting some of his talking points together. He also thanked a Washington County Commissioner who is on TAB and some County staff members also helped make sure that this became a reality. Mayor Bailey stated the next item, 13A, is a Workshop, Open to the Public. It will be held in our Training Room, and it’s a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) workshop regarding the decommissioning plan and schedule for the 3M incinerator. Personally speaking, he feels what’s really nice about this is having 3M, MPCA, Washington County officials, and some State officials in the same room with us. He thinks it will be exciting to have some conversations about what’s going on with that. Council Member Dennis said he wanted people in the community to understand that the work that Mayor Bailey has done for a number of years now, being involved with TAB, Metro Cities, and fostering relationships with our higher end, State elected officials, and defining the needs and leveraging all of this together, is truly remarkable. The entire community should tip their hat to you. He stated that’s a very straightforward, serious, factual statement that not every city even gets close to having somebody who does the work that Mayor Bailey does. He comes under fire all the time, as we all do, and wants to speak a little more freely now: Here’s the thing, the community owes a debt of gratitude to Mayor Bailey; he really hopes that maybe the newspaper, when they look at the transcript of our meeting tonight, will hopefully write an article about that so people really understand the full measure of what Mayor Bailey has brought to the table and City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 17 the community. So, on behalf of all of us, thank you. Everyone applauded Mayor Bailey, who said thank you. Mayor Bailey stated we’ll be adjourning this meeting from the Training Room. To everyone who’s watching on TV, thank you, and have a great night. 13. WORKSHOPS - OPEN TO PUBLIC - TRAINING ROOM A. MPCA Workshop - Decommissioning Plan and Schedule for 3M Incinerator Mayor Bailey thanked everyone for attending this workshop, as he’s honestly never seen 3M and the MPCA in the same room together with us; he thought it was absolutely amazing to have everyone together so we can reach a common goal or objective at the end of this workshop. Everyone present introduced themselves:  Sean Lynch, 3M Corporate Communications Manager  Kelly Melberg, 3M Director of Government Affairs  Eric Funk, 3M Cottage Grove Site Director  Allen Chasteen, 3M Vice President of Chemical Manufacturing Operations; previously the Site Director until January 2023  Jim Kotsmith, 3M Vice President Global EHS Program  Rebecca Teeters, 3M Senior Vice President of Global Operations  Gary Bruns, Washington County Public Health & Environmental Programs Supervisor  Dave Brummel, Washington County Director of Public Health & Environmental  Karla Bigham, Washington County Commissioner  Jennifer Levitt, Cottage Grove City Administrator  Tony Khambata, Cottage Grove City Council  Steve Dennis, Cottage Grove City Council  Myron Bailey, Mayor of Cottage Grove  Dave Thiede, Cottage Grove City Council  Justin Olsen, Cottage Grove City Council  Judy Seeberger, Minnesota Senator  Rick Hansen, Minnesota House of Representatives  Kirk Koudelka, MPCA Assistant Commissioner  Crague Biglow, MPCA Supervisor, Remediation Program  Kit Grayson, MPCA Supervisor, Hazardous Waste Compliance & Enforcement  Samantha Adams, State of Minnesota, Supervisor Land Permits Unit  Elizabeth Kaufenberg, MPCA Program Coordinator  Michael Ginsbach, MPCA Hydrogeologist, Remediation & Enforcement Divisions  Ryan Burfeind, Cottage Grove Public Works Director  Amanda Meyer, Cottage Grove City Engineer  Tammy Anderson, Cottage Grove City Clerk City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 18  Gretchen Larson, Cottage Grove Economic Development Director  Crystal Raleigh, Cottage Grove Assistant City Engineer  Greg Rinzel, Cottage Grove Deputy Public Safety Director  Bonnie Matter, Cottage Grove resident Mayor Bailey thanked everyone for introducing themselves. He stated Kirk Koudelka, of the MPCA, would start with a presentation. Kirk thanked Cottage Grove for having us here, they’re happy to be here to continue a conversation that was started a couple of months ago about something that is really important to all of us. It’s kind of an end of an era with the closure of the incinerator at the 3M Cottage Grove facility; for us, it’s a regulatory end of an era because it’s the end of the permit, which has some unique characteristics. He appreciates the opportunity tonight to talk through what that looks like. Often, we speak about the beginning of a permit, the public comments about what goes on, but this is kind of unusual for it to be the end of a permit. He will review that process, as it’s very important to them as this is a large, important site for us to make sure we do it right. It’s an interim process that we’ll talk about; there are parts that build on each other, so it takes time for all of them to play out and to do it right. For us, as a regulatory agency, we see this as the last time we have this permit or this oversight of the issues. We have a number of decades of operations there, so we’re looking at things now with the newest science, things change; our ability to detect things has changed from operation things that had happened previously, and today we know more about various compounds. So, this is really one good last check at the site before it goes back to other possible uses. We have a team here, and many of you know them probably from various capacities that we’ve worked with; they are the experts and know the details. We’ll work on talking through this, we’ll talk about the timeline, and how that’s influenced by that interim nature. We want to make sure that we do things right as we take this one final look at the permit. He stated Samantha Adams would give the presentation. Samantha stated tonight she would speak, as John Chikkala, our Lead Permit Engineer on the closure work, is unavailable. She’s a Supervisor in the Land Permits Unit, that means that the Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) permit team is in her unit. We’re following up on our previous meeting, and will try to touch on a few of those points; there are some areas to which we want to bring additional clarity or open up for more questions. She thanked everyone for being here tonight. We’re happy to be here to talk about this. She displayed some photographs, some of which 3M was able to provide. We’re focusing on separating these out a little bit to understand what we’re talking about when we talk about closure. She pointed out the incinerator component and noted there is other manufacturing work that still occurs at 3M; so, we will differentiate a little bit between the two locations. Samantha said one of the things that we want to bring a little clarity to about the incinerator is that as of December 31, 2021, the incinerator shut down. At our last meeting in April, there might have been a little confusion; there is no hazardous waste being processed through that incinerator. As of February 25, 2022, the final shipment or City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 19 disposal of hazardous waste, meant to be processed with the incinerator, was removed; so, there is no hazardous waste present at the incinerator. The work we’re doing is really focusing in on closure of the incinerator, there’s no new waste going there, and there’s no waste being stored in the trailers. She stated regarding the semitrailers at the site, the RCRA program issues permits for PFC at facilities, the transport, storage, disposal facilities. We permit and authorize facilities to store hazardous waste. So, the waste being stored at the site was covered under a permit; that permit authorized waste to be stored in trailers, but the permit has very specific parameters. Those trailers were lined with metal, they had to have a certain angle on them so if there was drips or leaks it would be caught within the line or in the trailer. The other piece of that is much of the waste is stored in drums, and those drums have to meet certain standards, and Kit will talk about that later, about the large quantity generator standards. Part of that is the condition in which those drums are and how they’re shipped, how they’re stored, how they’re labeled; all of that has to meet certain parameters so when they’re set inside that trailer, they’re also in a good container. Another piece we wanted to speak about was the spills; 3M reports spills or releases to the Minnesota Duty Officer. So, if something happens, if something is spilled, that comes in through our Duty Officer’s phone number; that’s disseminated out to various entities, the MPCA is one of them, sometimes local units of government, sometimes local response depending upon the spill. Cleanups are performed based on what is found, as we respond to those; we have an Emergency Management Unit, and we work with the company to respond to those spills. Samantha said if a spill were to occur in one of the lots where something was being stored, they would call that in, we would work with them to recover that material and clean that up. So, the nine storage lots that had semitrailers located in them are all being sampled for closure to evaluate the soil. There are two different types of sampling being done out there: 1) Discrete Sampling, where we’re going to a spot where we may have known there was a spill that was reported to us. We’re going to go and work with 3M to make sure that samples are taken at that location to ensure that those cleanups were facilitated properly and there’s no remaining residues. 2) A broader-type sampling is done to ensure that those lots are safe, that there’s nothing there, and that there weren’t unidentified drips or spills. Those are the bigger grid samplings that are going to be done across all of these storage lots. Kirk had talked about this interim process that’s going to have to happen; part of that understanding is where the sampling is occurring, so we’re going to kind of move into that and talk a little bit about that. This is a short presentation and we’ll get to a point where you can ask questions. Regarding sampling and understanding closure, Minnesota Rule requires the MPCA must evaluate all hazardous waste management units and solid waste management units as part of a closure activity. So, when we get ready to close something in Minnesota, we’re required to look at both of those things: 1) A hazardous waste management unit, in this case the incinerator, as it is regulated under RCRA, which regulates hazardous waste. 2) A solid waste management unit, those would have been pre-RCRA, historic spots or spills or things may have occurred. City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 20 Solid waste management is stored in there, so there’s two different components to this: The historic spots have to be evaluated as part of the closure process. That’s another piece that sometimes is kind of hard to understand: To break apart the solid waste management unit and the RCRA, and be able to say it’s the RCRA work and the incinerator closure; Minnesota Rule says we have to go back and take a look at any historic site that’s left. Samantha said we’re also going to talk about sampling. Previous concerns have been raised regarding how do we know, how do we ensure, how do we follow up on those things. She invited Crague to speak about the quality control and quality assurance, how we know what is being done is being done. Crague Biglow stated he’s a supervisor in the Remediation Program (RP) at MPCA. The quality assurance and the quality control process here that we’ll walk through is consistent with the process that we use for other RP sites, for Superfund cleanup across the State. Initially, all analytical sampling is completed by an accredited third-party contractor- subcontractor; at the 3M site, he believes Barr Engineering is the contractor who will be out there collecting samples from the different areas. Samples are analyzed by a third- party laboratory; Pace Analytical is the lab that will be analyzing the samples that are collected by Barr, both are independent third-party entities. Pace is also identified in the quality assurance project plan and sampling analysis plan as the lab, and they’re certified and accredited to use the methodology to analyze the samples that are collected. MPCA will receive those analytical results directly from the lab in a PDF format. The PDF format then becomes the legal copy of record; as part of that, it will include a chain of custody, which tracks and identifies each individual time and date that they handled the sample for quality assurance purposes. In addition to the standard process, there will be a third-party data validation company, EDMS, that will validate the data and then prepare it into a format that can get downloaded directly to the MPCA database. The quality assurance project plan and the sampling and analysis plan then become the overarching document that direct the sampling and analysis for the project. The plan, between the two, is over 3,100 pages long; the estimate is that we should have completed plans later this summer, in the August timeframe. That will kind of direct the quality assurance sampling and the analytical pieces to ensure that all the data is found reliable, accurate, and of high quality. The quality assurance plan is signed by: The third-party contractor, the lab itself, the MPCA, 3M, and Washington County. Samantha Adams stated we talked about the sampling, the quality assurance, how we know that the data that we’re getting is validated, that it’s run through a third party. We want to talk about the next steps; we want to get to the timeline so we can have that conversation tonight, and hopefully answer some questions, maybe by 3M or MPCA staff, to acknowledge the importance of doing this and doing this well. Samantha stated an overarching view of moving forward is kind of talking about how this fits together. These workplans come in, and we’re going to review these workplans to ensure that they’re meeting the requirements. One thing she wanted to point out, of City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 21 which people might not be aware, is nationwide this is the second incinerator being closed down. So, this work that we’re doing isn’t like everyday work; there’s only been one other hazardous waste incinerator in our nation that’s been closed. So, our staff are doing a lot of due diligence to ensure and working with the company to ensure that we are doing the steps in the proper order and a proper fashion. So, that’s where that workplan and approval becomes really important. The analytical sampling and evaluation, the process that Crague just talked about, comes back to reinforce that workplan. So, once we have that validation, that information, we know that the workplan is being followed. Of course, then comes the removal of the incinerator components and final closure. So, they all have to kind of fit together and work to support each other as we work through this process. Samantha stated with the semitrailers, that’s the decommissioning and removal of the semitrailers. That plan has been approved and completed, so now the work actually begins where 3M is going to start the decontamination, the decommissioning, and the removal of the semitrailers. Following that, is the tank farm decommissioning and removal; that’s going through and decontaminating and removing the tank farm components, and that workplan has been approved. So, these things have to happen before we can get down to the Sampling and Analysis Plan and the Quality Assurance Project plan, or SAP and QAP as we commonly refer to them, because that’s when they have to come in and start that sampling work. That’s the 3,100 pages that Michael Ginsbach is so familiar with; he’s had the opportunity to review it in detail, but that’s a lot of information, so our staff has been working very hard to evaluate those pages. They’re evaluating it so that if we have questions, if we have concerns, we can call 3M; they’re having biweekly meetings with 3M to work through that plan and to answer those questions as efficiently as we can. As Crague indicated, the tentative timeline to have that approved is August; once approved, the work to start the various samplings mentioned earlier can begin. As you can see, this has to build upon one another; we can’t go in and do grid sampling until the semitrailers are removed, same for the tank farm. This is a controlling document that governs a lot of the work, how it’s done, and how we ensure from an analytical perspective that it’s being done in accordance with State Rules and Federal requirements. The next piece is the building, concrete areas, incinerator, stack demolition and decommission; you can see how we have to do these in order. Also, the wastewater infrastructure decommissioning can’t occur before any of those other things because of these decontamination efforts. So, all of these steps have to build upon one another for us to get down to the final site closure. You’ll see those solid waste management units are also in there because of the Minnesota State Rule requiring us to go back and take a look at those historic locations with the solid waste management. We need to ensure that there is nothing else there that would trigger additional work or requirements by the State or by the Federal requirement and guidelines that we’re bound by. Samantha stated she thinks as far as her staff and Michael, she knows that they’re working very hard; this is taking a large amount of their time, they’re investing a lot of that time working directly with 3M and with Washington County. The biweekly meetings to touch base to get these plans approved and completed are a big part of the work. She thinks everybody in this room wants this done well; she thinks that’s something that City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 22 we can all agree upon. So, working through this interim process to do it well is really what we’re focusing on and being as timely as we can. The fact that she can say those first two are done, the SAP and the QAP are coming shortly, in August. For 3,100 pages, she wants to give everyone a round of applause for that because that’s an excellent step in the right direction. Samantha stated the next part of this is what happens after the incinerator closure, like what does the regulatory world look like for us. She invited Kit up to talk a little bit about the regulatory components for 3M after the incinerator is closed and actually also right now. Kit Grayson, a MPCA Supervisor for the Hazardous Waste Compliance & Enforcement Unit, stated some of his staff are tasked with going out to any facility within the State that generates a hazardous waste; we conduct those inspections, whether they’re large, small, or whether they have a TSD (Treatment Storage and Disposal). Today we’re really focused on the TSD and the closure of the TSD; as Samantha said, 3M will still be a large quantity generator in the State, which means we’re still going to be inspecting them on a routine basis, along with Washington County. 3M is still required to follow all the State Statutes and Minnesota Rule 7045, the Hazardous Waste Rules; they still have notification to the Duty Officer whenever there’s a spill or release, they still need to containerize all of their waste in appropriate containers, so closed and labeled drums with appropriate labels on them. They still need to have a Contingency Plan at the facility, so if anything happens, we would still be reviewing all of that on a routine basis. We inspect large quantity generators in the State of Minnesota every three-to-five years; for TSDs, it’s every other year. Closing out, we’ll be stepping back, but Washington County also does inspections; so, they will see a regulator about every year, whether it’s the County or the State. Samantha said at this point they’ll open it up for questions anyone might have for us, people from the MPCA, or 3M; we want to bring clarity and answer what we can. Mayor Bailey thanked them for doing the presentation, and asked Kelly Melberg from 3M if she wished to speak before any questions were asked; she stated she’d just be happy to answer any questions as they arise. Mayor Bailey stated when we met in April, he had some concerns; the first was that there was somewhere between 500-700 semitrailers at 3M, and the impression was that there were still chemicals inside of those. There was a photo or two where it looked like chemicals were leaking out of the trucks. After having a meeting with 3M, we were told that that wasn’t the case. So, he didn’t think he was the only one who walked away with that impression; so, if that was the case, he was very concerned and didn’t understand how that could happen. The second thing was he believed during that conversation, there were comments that were made regarding some of the storage containers at the incinerator still had chemicals inside them; he asked if what he’s hearing now is that is not the case. City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 23 Samantha replied there is no hazardous waste at the incinerator. The potential for any hazardous waste to be at the incinerator is when they start to decommission that equipment, as that could potentially generate hazardous waste as part of the decommissioning effort. As you start to take equipment apart to decontaminate that, you have the potential to generate hazardous waste; she thinks that’s where we got a little off in our communication because the possibility to generate waste as part of the closure exists and then that could be there. So, regarding any waste being stored there or waste being brought into it, there is no hazardous waste from that perspective at the incinerator. Mayor Bailey stated at least from his perspective, it appeared that they were still storing waste on that site. His comment that day was if they finished decommissioning it, why wouldn’t they get rid of all the chemicals before they decommissioned; so, he got feedback on how that kind of worked there. Mayor Bailey confirmed that she said there’s only been one other incinerator in the United States that’s been decommissioned; Samantha replied to her knowledge, yes, in Delaware. He knows you’re working with 3M on all the details; he asked if they went through this already, in Delaware. Samantha replied, yes. Mayor Bailey asked if they were in communication with them in Delaware to get some information from them. Samantha replied that is part of our connection with the EPA, as we work pretty closely with EPA when it comes to our RCRA Permit Team. We work with Region 5, and Region 5 communicates with Region 3, where Delaware is, to get that information. An example would be the semitrailers and how to decommission those semitrailers; we had to work with the EPA and talk to them and work through those questions to get to the answer and to get the plan approved. So, that’s a long answer to yes. Mayor Bailey stated with what he saw on the timeline slide, if he looked at correctly, the first thing was the trailer removal completed by 3M by August, 2024; he asked if they were confident that that will be the case. Jim Kotsmith replied with the plan of what he’s seen, he doesn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be; we’re set up and ready to start that, now that we’ve gotten their approved plan. We don’t foresee any issues with that at this time. Eric Funk stated that’s what’s been targeted, he thinks they’re starting here relatively soon, and then that’s the direction moving forward. As things get better and we get more proficient at it, it shouldn’t really slow down. Mayor Bailey stated on the second one, where it said December 2023, he asked for them to explain what that means. He saw the tank farm and associated equipment. Samantha stated one thing that’s actually very nice about a tank farm is RCRA has very clear, specific requirements for how to decommission, decontaminate hazardous waste tanks. So, that’s something that’s already in the Rule; so, approving that plan and that component was more efficient, to go through and ask if we’re meeting what’s already written in the Rule. She asked Michael when we approved that workplan. Michael replied it was relatively recent, about 1.5, 2 months ago; so, that’s really standard. If we look at the scale of those, there are about 700 or so semitrailers. The tank farm is much smaller, as Samantha mentioned, and tanks are well defined in the City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 24 State Rules and Code of Federal Regulations on how to deal with those. So, it’s a matter of physical man hours, going out there, and we can only do so many trailers per day to get through these vs. a tank decommissioning, which is more standard and can be completed in a more expedited fashion. So, those are both approved and ready to go; it's just one is a much longer, much more arduous task to complete than the other. Mayor Bailey asked 3M if they’re comfortable with anticipated completion, with that piece of it, by December 2023; an unidentified spokesman replied yes. Mayor Bailey stated with this timeframe, by December, 2026, we’re basically back to ground. Samantha replied that’s for the closure of the incinerator. Mayor Bailey stated so by that time, it will have been tested and all of the items will have been removed. Samantha added a caveat to that; the SAP and the QAP and the sampling work and all of that that’s being done, the piece of that, the inner process, is to ensure that if we found something, it can be addressed and corrected. So, there’s always that potential for something to take a little bit longer, but this is the anticipated timeline. Council Member Olsen wanted to frame a couple things up before he asked his questions, as he wanted there to be some context. In 2008, Mayor Bailey was elected mayor and he was elected to the City Council. We were the two from the Council at that time who met several times with 3M personnel as they pursued the idea of bringing outside waste streams into the 3M Cottage Grove facility, to be taken care of by the incinerator. At that time, it was Doug Stang and Vickie Batroot; Vickie was the plant manager, and Doug was the government affairs person. Commissioner Bigham was also part of our team; she is a former City Council member and was our State Representative at the time. Katie Sieben was our State Senator. We had dozens of conversations with 3M, and we had dozens of conversations with MPCA staff at the time, both in town and up at the Capitol. We also toured the 3M facility a couple different times so that they could attempt to explain to us what exactly they were hoping to accomplish by pursuing that specific outcome, to bring outside waste streams into Cottage Grove. He recalled that we were opposed to having that happen. There were several different reasons for opposition, one of which was concern about air quality. We were so concerned about that that we actually partnered with the MPCA and a third party engineering firm to have an air-monitoring station placed, at the City’s expense, so that we could measure if there were any changes in air quality. There were also several citizens, including a former 3M plant manager, Fred Luden, who were very adamant about the fact that this was a bad idea; they were very concerned about the transportation of these chemicals and the storage of these chemicals. So, we had the dialogue, we partnered with the State agencies, we partnered with our legislators, and ultimately, we were not successful in getting this to stop. Since that time, there have been several violations noted at the site, and he quoted from a news release from May 26, 2022, which was put out by the MPCA: “The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency today announced its findings of an enforcement investigation against 3M that addressed a series of hazardous waste violations at the company’s facility in Cottage Grove, City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 25 Minnesota. The investigation began in June of 2020. According to the investigation, in 1996, 2006, 2012 to 2014, 2017, 2018, and 2021, 3M inaccurately identified hazardous waste sent to its incinerator as non-hazardous waste. Between 2015 and 2020, over the course of 109 weeks, 3M failed to have a certified third-party lab independently verify the accuracy of the incinerator, laboratory analysis as required by its permit. From 2014 to 2020, 3M failed to conduct verification on more than 1,800 waste stream profiles for mercury, lead, nickel, cadmium, arsenic, and other hazardous materials to ensure the waste did not exceed limits. Since 2016, 3M failed to require two third parties that sent waste to the Cottage Grove incinerator to submit comprehensive data for arsenic, PCVs, lead, mercury, and other hazardous materials. 3M stored approximately 1,300 containers of hazardous waste in unapproved areas, 650 of which were stored for longer than the one-year limit.” It went on to say, “The MPCA first became aware of these specific issues at the campus in 2020. The investigation revealed violations dating back to 1996, and there was a $2.844 million civil penalty. There was a second civil penalty for an additional $80,000 for failing to notify the MPCA of an excessive and abnormal permitted emission that may cause air pollution that endangers human health, and that was actually from a container.” The reason he brought up these things is his concern then and his concern now is these violations went back to 1996, and they didn’t get caught until 2020. That’s a long time, and if the MPCA is the watchdog, and they are supposedly doing inspections on the site, he doesn’t know how it took that many years to catch some of this stuff. How do we know that we’re going to catch it all now? How can we be confident that these storage containers, which were stored offsite and which the investigation unveiled were in many cases stored for too long, thus creating situations where they leaked and then some of those chemicals could potentially filter down into the subsoil, etc., how do we know we’re going to catch that? How do we know we’re going to find that? We’re talking about the incinerator, but the incinerator itself is just one small part of a bigger picture that is fine, spelled out very clearly. As a City Council member, as a City resident for almost his entire life, as somebody who’s raised his family here, and is charged with the public health, how does he know that the MPCA is going to be thorough enough to ensure that none of these sorts of things that didn’t get caught before won’t get caught now? We don’t want to be sitting here 20 years from now, asking hey, what happened? Gees, how did that occur? Who missed it? He’s really looking for some assurance that this is going to be a very thorough, fine-toothed comb oriented sort of process, where we can ensure that violations, such as those he just mentioned from your own press release, are not going to be discovered by future MPCA folks, future City Councils, future County Commissioners, future Senators and State Representatives, etc. to the degree that they look back at today and ask what were those people thinking, how did they miss that? So, he asked them to help him with that; how is it going to be dealt with? How are we going to ensure that there’s somebody on site? He thought Council Member Dennis, if he remembered the last meeting, used the analogy, something about a chicken coop; he asked Council Member Dennis what that was. Council Member Dennis said let me just say this; he hears where Council Member Olsen is going with this, and he thinks the world understands clearly, without casting any opinions or aspersions or anything that we can’t designate, he thinks there is a City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 26 responsibility on the part of what Council Member Olsen called a watchdog, which is the State, to ensure that they’re doing their part to make sure that everybody’s in compliance. It’s no different than what we did here tonight with a failed tobacco compliance check. Everybody has an area of responsibility; when you’re given a license, it’s a privilege, not a right or guarantee, and you have to follow the rules to keep your license. So, when we had that last meeting, the term Superfund site was used. There was a fair amount of host power that the representatives from the MPCA had initiated into that statement, relative to the potential severity of what might be being dealt with there. So, the logical question, like Council Member Olsen is asking, can you explain how this was allowed to happen, where was the oversight, where was the leadership, where was the follow through, where was the responsibility? These are fair questions to ask any of you, if we were involved in another circumstance or if we were involved in another venture, might ask the same questions for something else we’re doing. But here’s the thing: When it’s a Superfund, and that being kind of the highest level response or issue of disparity that you might deal with, one would think that if you were dealing with something at that level, that there would be an amazing amount of oversight, and not having it be farmed out necessarily to an outside organization to test results and do different things. It’s more along the lines of if the severity is that much, why do we not have boots on the ground from the very people who are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that these things are being attenuated and followed up on and responsibly handled? So, I think along with Council Member Olsen’s question, and in all fairness to everybody here, we didn’t have the company in the wrong, we had you guys in the wrong. Mayor Bailey is 100% right; the images that we saw, the descriptions, I think we all pretty much felt the same thing. It’s like what is happening here? How are these trailers left out there with contents? When you’re showing an image that very clearly depicts that there is a hole in the floor of the truck, and knowing that there wasn’t an appropriate liner put in the truck that would have been resistant to that type of chemical penetrating and working its way through it, breaking it down, that causes concern. And we’re people here that are duly elected to represent the safety and welfare and wellbeing of the 41,000 people that live in this City. So, this is stuff that he wants to be fair, he wants to be very decent about it, there’s no issue on his end with any of you personally, but it’s a little bit disturbing, to be honest, and I think we’ve all felt that. Council Member Olsen stated that’s precisely it; he just needs to know what steps are going to be in place to ensure that things don’t fall through the cracks. That’s his big concern. Council Member Khambata stated he has technical questions on materials themselves, whenever we can get around to that. Commissioner Bigham stated she’d only ask a couple things, but would start out on a positive note; she thinks that anything they can do to speed this up she thinks is good. It sounds like from your perspective that some of it is just pure logistics, there’s a lot of trailers, so she understands some of that. If there are ways to speed it up, she thought that would make people feel a lot better. To Council Member Olsen and Council Member Dennis’ point, it’s taken 20 years to get stuff passed in the legislature to have City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 27 PFAS and environmental protection. This doesn’t happen overnight; the protections and the accountability need to be there so the legislation can happen. She stated she doesn’t know why she’s getting mad right now. Her only question is a technical question; the legislation that she and Rick worked on for 20 years is still watered down, 20 years of instruction, many from people in this room, 20 years of sitting in meetings; this is the largest contingent that has ever set foot in this room. She told Council Member Olsen that he was wrong, she only had one conversation with Doug Stang, and it was when he’d come to try to sweettalk her into agreeing to do the permit for the hazardous incinerator. So, no, they haven’t really been forthright in public with what they do there. And Judy Seeberger is a rock star, because she was there for nine years and couldn’t get anything done with this legislation; Judy walks in and in five months gets most of it done. And Rick Hansen, after 20 years, was just now able to get it done, and it’s watered down because she knows he’s mad about it. So, people in this room need to understand the emotional ties to this issue and what this company has done. Know that! Her technical question is from that fine from last year; is the third-party verification requirement on the drums and everything a result of that fine, of the findings of your violations; is that a result of it, that required plan? A male from MPCA asked what plan, specifically? Commissioner Bigham replied the plan that you’re about to finalize, is that a result of the findings from last year? Samantha asked Commissioner Bigham if she could reiterate her question so she could make sure she understood it; her understanding is that the quality assurance and quality control plan that we talked about with the third-party verification happens over the SAP and the QAP, as part of that work that’s being done. Commissioner Bigham said so that’s a natural process of decommissioning the second one in the whole country. Samantha stated yes. Part of that analytical work that’s going to be done is the third- party validation. Is it a direct outflow of the enforcement action? She didn’t think so; she thinks it’s a natural part of the quality assurance and quality control work that happens. Commissioner Bigham stated so, it’s not related; Samantha said that would be her statement. Crague stated in terms of the regulatory system here, the rigor and the information that we have forms the plan, as mentioned in one of the earlier slides. We are spot checking those places where spills had been reported, a cleanup was done, and we verified at that point. In addition, we’re not only looking at that, but also at the whole site; that grid operation there is to make sure that if something was missed, that it would be caught. Also, one of the things is as we’ve all known and learned, our science and understanding and ability and tactics changed. So, even things 10 years ago have evolved, and he thinks that’s again why the rigor is being built into the plan, especially when we talk about PFAS and some of these other chemicals; we’re making sure that we’re able to do those detections and with the latest science. In terms of how this system is built, our regulatory programs are built on the responsible party, or the regulated party, is the one that needs to do the work. But then a layer over it is the verification through a SAP and QAP, the third-party contractor is doing the work, and us City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 28 getting the data. It’s not for the State or the State taxpayers to be able to do that work; it is for the entity to do it, which is what this plan relies on. But then that checking with the system, the quality control being checked on, the data could be going to folks like Michael and John, who you met last time, to do that type of review. This is our last ability to check on this, under the permit. There may be other ways to do things, too, if needed; but this is our last check and the thoroughness is there for us to make sure, even if something was missed in the past, that we’re able to catch it now, as we move forward. For a good chunk of this, we’ve talked about the incinerator. He wants to mention, too, there are those other sites that even before there were these regulatory structures out there, the solid waste units, which we’ll be going through; he mentioned how are we going to know what happened, if it was safe internally. As we look at the decision, 40 years ago, are they going to say what were those folks thinking and doing at the agencies, to verify? So, we do use the best science to be able to catch everything, but things will evolve to a point where we can only address what we know at the time. He just wanted to put that out there; he knows that isn’t full assurances that we’re going to catch everything because things will change, but we are using the best tools that we have today, in terms of science and knowledge. He stated he'll let Samantha and the rest of the team just talk about some of the other specifics as we go through this. Samantha stated they had wonderful statements and comments; she’ll try to go back and try to pick out the pieces that she can answer and recall. She stated the photo of the trailer she felt really led us to a place that wasn’t necessarily a clear depiction of what was on the site. So, she thought that was probably just a direction that brought us to a place that was scary; when you saw that the back of that trailer and the wood had a few holes in the side. There was a metal liner in it, that’s the way it is stored, in that metal liner. Some of those trailers were also not being used actively to store waste. She thought we were short on time so we weren’t really able to get into that and talk in more detail, but she thought it just led us into a place that wasn’t depictive of everything. Council Member Khambata stated the original permit allowed for a certain number of trailers to be stored there; he asked if that was accurate. Samantha replied it allowed for a certain number of gallons of hazardous waste to be stored on the site. The permit was based on gallons; so, it wasn’t like this many trailers, it was this many gallons of hazardous waste, and those had to meet certain requirements in the permit. She doesn’t have the permit at her fingertips. Council Member Khambata stated at our last meeting, 200 trailers is the number that stands out, like the original intent was to have 200 trailers or something like that, and there’s close to 700. Samantha stated she doesn’t recall, but it was based on gallons; she can tell him that because she double checked it. Council Member Khambata stated of the 700 trailers that are there, how do you move trailers that are weathered to the point where they’ve got holes in the side of them. City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 29 Samantha stated those trailers weren’t being moved; they weren’t being pulled down the road. Council Member Khambata stated now they’re potentially hazardous, and they’re slated for removal; so, my question is how do you move them now? Samantha replied they’re being deconstructed, and she doesn’t know if anyone at 3M would like to talk about the deconstruction. An unknown male from 3M stated those are being deconstructed on site, so they’ll be taken apart to the metal and wood components and then disposed of properly through that process. So, they won’t be moved off the site as part of the dismantling. Mayor Bailey stated to piggyback on what Council Member Khambata just said, he’d say two things: To him, it was like we were given almost like a scare tactic because it was that; then we were talking about the trucks or the trailers, and there was a conversation about there was only supposed to be so many trailers on site. He had an opportunity to speak with these guys over here, and they clarified and said it was not trailer specific, that the memo of understanding, or whatever they called it, was barrels or whatever. Samantha stated it was gallons. Mayor Bailey stated so they could have had that many, but that was also not what was shared with us at that meeting. You said that it was a short time, and it was, and that’s why we’re doing this after the meeting, and he appreciates the fact that everybody’s here because that was very alarming to all of us over here. All he’s sharing with them from his personal standpoint is just be upfront with us, just be honest with us. If you believe that you’re getting everything, trust and verify; work with these guys to get this thing decommissioned, as our County Commissioner just said, as quickly as we can but within the parameters, that’s what we want. We just want this thing to be done; in 2030, we’re now still talking about decommissioning the plant. That’s not going to sit well with him, and he doesn’t think it will sit well with the residents. He’s assuming it wouldn’t sit well with anybody in this room. He points to them because he just wants even the visual of it, to be quite honest with you, gone, so that we can move on, but that’s his take. Rick Hansen stated he had a few technical questions regarding the SAP and QAP. When you’re looking at sampling for contamination, are you only within the footprint of the incinerator site, or are you looking at a plume distribution of the prevailing winds, which occurred over decades? Are you sampling downwind for any contamination? That’s one question. Samantha stated she’d ask Michael to speak on this, but would answer the first part. She separated out the two parts for the RCRA, for the incinerator and then the solid waste management unit. So, the RCRA covers over the incinerator, that’s looking at those lots, the outside sampling, the grid sampling, and the discrete sampling. And then another set is the solid waste management units, which is the historic and the pre- RCRA, which was 1976, so looking at those discretely as well because we’re tasked to, and we want to do this well. We want to protect human health and the environment; we wouldn’t be here at 8:30, 9:00 p.m. if we didn’t. City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 30 Samantha said the second part of that is what happens with further sampling, and she asked Michael to talk a little bit about that in regards to gradient, down gradient, plume, etc. Michael Ginsbach stated we’ve been focused very strictly today on purpose, just on the incinerator property and the incinerator termination of the hazardous treatment storage facility. But there’s other regulatory oversight at the MPCA associated with it; we’ve got a number of air permits with the Clean Air Act, there’s NTDS permits for stormwater and wastewater work, and there’s been historic Superfund work on the site. So, we narrowly kept this in scope, but throughout all of those, especially on this work and then the Superfund work as well, too, we do what we call extended magnitude affiliation. And that’s something that we’ve discussed with 3M that we do; he works in the Superfund section unit. Samantha asked him to define Superfund, because she thinks that might have been a term that we used last time that wasn’t clearly defined. Michael stated that’s pertinent because he’s actually working on an update for our website now to further define Superfund. Superfund in Minnesota means a responsible party led site that has caused a release or a threatened release under the Minnesota Environmental Response and Liability Act (MERLA). If the responsible party, as defined in Rule, has caused a release that’s non-petroleum, that’s nonatomic energy, and not due to nonstationary moving engines for exhaust fumes, etc., they come to us in Superfund on that work. So, it sounds scary, it sounds high level, but essentially you can think of it as a responsible party, someone who caused the release, is investigating cleanup, mitigating, remediating under the oversight of the MPCA as we go through that, kind of comparable to our voluntary parties, to remove it. So, there’s a lot of oversight on this, in both Superfund and as part of this work. The other reason why we have anticipated on this is we’re doing the graded soil samplings, using what’s called incremental sampling methodologies, to get wide areas. If we find there is a release or there’s contamination of the soil, 3M will work with the MPCA on this; we will track down the full extent of it, how far it traveled offsite, regardless of arbitrary boundaries on this, and the magnitude, how much there is. And this is how we get that fully delineated, as it goes through. Again, we kept this very narrowly focused right now, as it stands, but these documents, the SAP and QAP, are very comprehensive and very long ranging on it. But, as Samantha mentioned every time we talked, this is interim. If we find something in the sampling that we weren’t expecting, we’ll have to step out and get that work done. So, the goal on this is to meet the standards that are appropriate for this site, for human health risk standards that we look at that are developed either by MPCA or risk assessors at the Department of Health; to fully know how exactly how far those go, and to mitigate any risk of obvious human exposure. We won’t arbitrarily cut this off at the incinerator boundary on here, we’ll get that full extent of magnitude known, and mitigate the risk on it. Even once the incinerator permit is gone, we’re still pushed to keep working on this. We didn’t mention it earlier, but he’s kind of the point person for all the ongoings at Cottage Grove. As Jim and others know right now, we’re working on a conceptual site model across the way to really look at this in a holistic and large-scale view, using all of our regulatory programs to put everything back together, to gain a better understanding of how things go. So, to understand the transport modeling, to City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 31 understand what has been released, what’s been done historically, to know what we know at the basis of the current extent and knowledge of science, as it stands. Rick Hansen stated to be clear, you have authority beyond the permit closure to look at offsite contamination from the incinerator that could be historic. Michael replied yes, it will continue on; it’s not an arbitrary boundary on the incinerator. So, any of the permitted regulated units or solid waste management units or actions or activities we’ll track through, and then again, we have a number of other programs with oversight on the incinerator. Rick stated, secondly, on disposition of the existing site materials, if you take apart the trailer, and you find contamination or even if you don’t find contamination, does it go to Sauget, Illinois, to their hazardous waste incinerator, or to another nearest one? When you take things apart, and with the incinerator when you take that apart, because of the heat, you’re going to find things. So, where do you take that? Do you truck that up, and is there notification to the community at all? If you’re moving something out and its on its way to Illinois, when you break apart the concrete, does that go to a C & D (Construction and Demolition) landfill? Before you take it there, does it have to be declared clean? It’s not going to be as easy to look at a green grass there because you’ve got all that material, which has been under a high heat with a stew of toxicity over the years. So, how do you handle the disposition? Because some of that could be solid, some of it could be C & D, but some of it is going to be hot, and how do you handle that? Where does it go? Jim replied he’s having to cover that, and there’s probably lots of details in the plan, and some of those plans, as noted, have been approved; some of those are still under development, but he would say there’s a very prescriptive process as to how we do that for every single part of the incinerator. So, the trailers themselves have a very elaborate process to say where the trailers are disassembled; there’s a designated area on the site when we take out certain parts of that. That automatically goes as hazardous waste to a designated location; typically, our waste goes to a Clean Harbors facility, so it could be any of a number of different locations that they have. Then there’s a cleaning process that also specifies how we clean and what the requirements are for cleaning, and then managing those waters, again as a waste that’s properly profiled and disposed. Any residual materials that can be recycled, typically, could be recycled and intended to be sent directly to some sort of smelting facility so it can be recovered or repurposed. That’s an example of the trailers; concrete and other things, as we mentioned, there are other processes for testing some of those materials and decontaminating them. Each of them has a very prescriptive and a pretty rigorous process. Some of those, as he noted in the tank farm, are a pretty straightforward process as to how to do that with steel and residual, managing all the ancillary equipment. So, each of those is handled differently. From a residuals perspective, there’s a process of testing and there’s a process of cleaning. There’s a process of sending materials either to a hazardous waste facility because of the accumulation of wastes that those have or to the extent they can be cleaned, sampled, and recovered; that’s also part of the plan. So, each of those is a different process that we go through. City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 32 A building will look different than a tank will and different than a trailer, but the steps that he described cover the kind of extent that each of those plans will detail. Council Member Thiede asked if that’s what’s in the 3,100 pages. Michael replied yes, that’s all spelled out in the workplans. The processes that Jim described, as well as flowcharts and diagrams on it. Looking back at what Samantha said earlier, there’s the potential to generate hazardous waste as part of the decommissioning process if the material that’s being shipped off as hazardous waste, manifests as hazardous waste, and is brought through there. As Jim mentioned, all of these are spelled out in the various workplans: the trailer workplan, the tank demo workplan, the general one. That’s one of the reasons it’s taken so long to review is confirmation that those are in line with the Federal Register and the State Rule on it. In addition to working with the folks in Delaware on it, he and John have been going through the nationwide reference incinerator, making calls recently with both Region 5 and Region 3; we’re making sure everything is in line with Federal and State standards. We’ve been talking about that in our biweekly meetings with 3M and our comments back to be sure that everything is spelled out properly, that these are manifested, they’re brought together, and its in compliance with the rules and regulations. So, those are all in there. Samantha told Rick she thought he went right to the point about the plan. The questions you’re asking are one of the reasons why we’re being so detailed in these plans, we’re looking at each step. Regarding Council Member Olsen’s comments on the SAP and QAP, those are an opportunity for oversight and to have all that analytical data. All of that data has to come into us to also verify, go through it, and look at each of those pieces and parts. So, that’s why this is only interim because you can see with the concrete area, that is the decommissioning of the concrete. So, before we even get there, we have to know how we’re going to sample that, we have to know how its going to be decontaminated before that can be removed or disposed of. And then where is it going; is there a place to dispose of it, and then are they ready to take that material? So, all these parts have to be laid out, and that’s also a reason why the timeline looks the way it does. We are trying, Michael probably works too many hours, but to be able to review that information in its entirety and in its complete form and say yes, we approve that, we agree with that, and then validate it. That’s what Crague was talking about with that third-party validation, the quality assurance; we’re coming back and we’re double checking this. Mayor Bailey asked as we near these anticipated timeline dates, he would like an update from someone, MPCA or 3M, just to say okay, we’re close, or it could even be we’re already done with all the semitrailers and it’s next year June, instead of August. He would just like us to be able to see how it’s going. If there’s something that throws a fly in the ointment, he would like to know about that; if there’s an issue with something or maybe something else is delayed, we’d like to know why it’s being delayed. So, then at least we’re in the know, and he thinks that will help this Council and our staff feel comfortable; you guys working together to help us get this done but done in a good way. City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 33 Commissioner Bigham suggested to Mayor Bailey that we should maybe set a benchmark date, like early December, late November for maybe an annual meeting until this work is completed. Mayor Bailey stated to her point, he just wants to be kept updated. What he likes about having both 3M and MPCA in the room is because both of you are saying we want to get this done, just like we do, but there are these steps. We just have to come along for the ride, so we just want to know what it is. He really appreciates the fact that there are this many officials in the room from 3M, the government, and the MPCA; the first time since he’s been mayor or even longer than that. It’s sad, but yet it’s good; it’s good because it shows him and the Council that 3M and the MPCA are in this to get this done and move it forward. We’re now hearing the processes that will be gone through, and this is how we’re going to doublecheck things along the way to make sure that there aren’t any residuals going through. Mayor Bailey asked a question of 3M, because it was a long time ago when we dealt with the incinerator; what was the incinerator itself made out of, was it concrete? An unidentified male stated the incinerator itself was brick on the inside with steel reinforcement along the shell. So, you’ve got a reinforced steel shell, and then its concrete mason on the inside, around the burner. Mayor Bailey asked if they saw that as going to the same type of a disposal place as the floor concrete or those other things; he wondered how you would really destroy that, its almost going to have to go into a lined landfill. The male spokesperson said it would be taken apart, brick by brick, and we have normal disposal processes that we’ve used throughout the life of it because we rebrick it throughout certain points of the life, so it would follow a similar process that we used during rebricking. Mayor Bailey stated he was just curious because he remembered the heat that it was generating, and he couldn’t remember what it was truly made out of. So, you’ve done that, obviously, over the years if the bricks in the inside needed. The male spokesperson said its rebricked every year or two, usually due to the thinning of the material. Samantha asked Mayor Bailey if she could make a suggestion. She and Administrator Levitt have continued to talk and collaborate to be able to organize things. She’s wondering if there’s a way that we can provide regular updates that way; so, as things move forward, we can also be transparent about where we’re at. So, if there’s ever a question that the City Council Members are posed with or they want something, we can kind of have a flow of information happening. Her staff is meeting biweekly with 3M; so, there are things happening on a regular basis, on which we can provide updates and give you that information hopefully in real time, as it’s happening. If there’s a change or a stumbling block or something happens that would slow the process, that would necessitate a larger meeting, we can give the status at that time and be able to continue this flow of information and communication. Mayor Bailey stated that’s fine, because our staff provides Council with a weekly update of things happening within the City, whatever it might be. So, if you had City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 34 something new to share, you could provide it to our staff so they could provide it to us at the Council; frankly, if something happened that we deemed appropriate to have a meeting, he would like that opportunity to make that happen so we could kind of see this to the end. We all can celebrate when it’s done because he knows all of them will be happy about that. Council Member Olsen said once again, as Mayor Bailey said, we very much appreciate that we have our government representatives here, various staff members, MPCA, and 3M in the room together; that’s a very advantageous situation when it comes to transparency and making sure that everybody’s on the same page. He went back to one of his earlier points; his job in real life is a retail supervisor, and he has a group of stores that he calls on regularly. As a retail supervisor, his store teams have a lot of processes they’re supposed to engage in on a daily basis in order to do things within the scope of company policy, State law, Federal law, etc. Part of his visit process is that he has to audit that those processes are being done correctly. That’s really what he’s getting at, is can we count on the MPCA or Washington County or both being on site to audit that these processes are being handled appropriately on a regular basis. Mayor Bailey said earlier, trust but verify. That verification piece is what he’s really getting at, and the MPCA gentleman who spoke earlier mentioned being on site maybe once a year. That doesn’t feel like enough to him, so maybe he’s misinterpreting what he said. Kit said he thought that was a great question. For the TSDs within the State, we inspect them every other year. Just to lay a little bit of background, he has seven staff for the entire State, which covers tens of thousands of facilities. The amount of times that we have been at 3M is consistent with any other facility of their size. As the TSD closes, and they then become just a LQG (Large Quantity Generator), they go onto a three-to-five year program from us to be on site. That doesn’t include Gary in Washington County, and he’ll let Gary speak about their process. Gary Bruns stated Washington County addresses inspections or regulatory visits based on risk; so, for LQGs, we’re out there quarterly, for most of them. So, we’ll go out and visit every three months; sometimes that coincides with the State inspection or with a Federal inspection, as he thinks this facility was inspected by the EPA in 2020 or 2021. We were partners with those visits, also, so we feel comfortable with the agency inspections. This site, though, also has multiple operations; so, we might inspect the incinerator itself or go out to the generator, or both at the same time. We try to get out much more frequently than the State, and that’s sort of our regulatory area for those routine inspections. If there’s any change in the process or there’s a history of violations, then we go out much more frequently than that. Kit clarified one thing; that is for the ongoing process of waste generation, not for the cleanup and all that. Samantha and Michael handle the actual TSD cleanup. Samantha stated she was going to separate the two concepts. So, the inspections that Kit and Gary are talking about, those are full compliance inspections; a full compliance inspection at a TSDF is a long process, which she’s sure some of them can attest to, as we go through everything. Then, on top of that, Michael and John, as part of the closure work that’s going on, have already been out she believes two times when things are happening; we want to go see, we want to trust and verify. They’re going to City Council Meeting Minutes June 21, 2023 Page 35 go out again, she believes next week; she was informed yes, Tuesday and Wednesday. So, there are multiple pieces and parts happening with visits at the site. You have your regular compliance inspections but then there’s also have the closure work, and the oversight and the visits that are done as part of the closure work. John, who was here last time, has also been on site for the above-ground storage tank permit. The other piece that we’re not even bringing into this conversation is all the other site inspections that don’t have anything to do with the incinerator, but might have to do with the wastewater or the stormwater or the air. There are a lot of programs, and then we also have our partners with Washington County, and Gary has been part of these conversations as well, with updates to the County. We also have the EPA, and the EPA occasionally attends some inspections in Minnesota. So, there are multiple working parts; she wanted to make sure that that was clear, that these are kind of two separate types of work occurring at the facility, as far as site visits. Mayor Bailey stated when he spoke Allen Chasteen that it was mentioned if Council chose to, there was an opportunity for us to do a 3M site tour. Allen said yes, it just mentioned that to Eric Funk, that would be fine and would give the Council an opportunity to see the new water quality improvements as well. Mayor Bailey asked Council if they’d like to tour both parts of 3M, the part that’s being decommissioned and see what new things are happening there. He assumed that Washington County Commissioner Bigham would be welcome to join us. Council Member Olsen stated he thought that would be a really good idea; if somebody there could explain things a little bit what we’re actually seeing, that would be helpful. Mayor Bailey asked if anybody from 3M wanted to speak on anything, as he hadn’t really given them a chance to say anything. Kelly Melberg replied that was fine, they were good. They’d be happy to have the Council take a tour and would be happy to have their experts there to explain things and give you some more insight into the improvements in our environmental management system and compliance. They’d be happy to do that. Mayor Bailey thanked everybody who attended the meeting tonight, it was fantastic, and he appreciated all the focus. 14. WORKSHOPS - CLOSED TO PUBLIC - None. 15. ADJOURNMENT Motion by Council Member Dennis, second by Council Member Thiede, to adjourn the meeting at 9:34 p.m. Motion carried: 5-0. Minutes prepared by Judy Graf and reviewed by Tamara Anderson, City Clerk