HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-10-02 City Council Meeting Minutes
CITY OF COTTAGE GROVE 12800 Ravine Parkway Cottage Grove, Minnesota 55016
www.cottagegrovemn.gov 651-458-2800 Fax 651-458-2897 Equal Opportunity Employer
COTTAGE GROVE CITY COUNCIL October 2, 2024
12800 RAVINE PARKWAY SOUTH
COTTAGE GROVE, MN 55016
COUNCIL CHAMBERS - 7:00 P.M
1. CALL TO ORDER
The City Council of the City of Cottage Grove, Washington County, Minnesota, held a regular meeting on
October 2, 2024, 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 Garza- Here; Council Member
Khambata-Here; Council Member Olsen-Here; Council Member Thiede-Here.
Also present: Jennifer Levitt, City Administrator; Tammy Anderson, City Clerk; Ryan Burfeind, Public Works
Director; Zac Dockter, Parks and Recreation Director; Conner Jakes, Associate Planner; Pete Koerner, Public Safety
Director; Korine Land, City Attorney-LeVander, Gillen & Miller, PA; Brenda Malinowski, Finance Director; Emily
Schmitz, Community Development Director; Nick Arrigoni, Deputy Fire Chief; Brad Peterson, Captain; Crystal
Raleigh, Assistant Engineer.
4. OPEN FORUM
Mayor Bailey opened the Open Forum. As no one wished to address the Council, Mayor Bailey closed the Open
Forum.
5. ADOPTION OF AGENDA
Motion by Council Member Olsen to approve the agenda; second by Council Member Thiede. Motion carried: 5-0.
6. PRESENTATIONS
A. Proclamation - 2024 Fire Prevention Week Staff Recommendation: Proclaim the week of October 6 through October 14, 2024, as Fire Prevention
Week.
Deputy Fire Chief Nick Arrigoni thanked the Council for this proclamation and formally invited them to our open
house on October 8, from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. We’re going to have kitchen fire demos, a cardiac arrest scenario,
station tours, and apparatus tours. It should go without saying but probably most importantly is the ability for us to
interact with our public and our citizens and let them know how we operate and who we are.
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Mayor Bailey asked Council Member Olsen to read aloud the 2024 Fire Prevention Week Proclamation and he did
so.
Motion by Council Member Khambata to proclaim the week of October 6 through October 14, 2024, as Fire
Prevention Week; second by Council Member Garza. Motion carried: 5-0.
Mayor Bailey stated once again, to share with the public, the Fire Open House will be at the Central Fire Station on
Tuesday, October 8, 2024. If there is not enough space in the parking lot at the Central Fire Station, you can park at
St. Rita’s Church across the street, and there will be access to safely bring you across 80th Street.
7. CONSENT AGENDA
A. Approve the August 7, 2024, City Council Special Meeting Minutes.
B. Approve the August 7, 2024, City Council Regular Meeting Minutes.
C. Approve the August 21, 2024, City Council Special Meeting Minutes.
D. Approve the August 21, 2024, City Council Regular Meeting Minutes.
E. Approve the August 30, 2024, City Council Emergency Meeting Minutes.
F. Accept and place on file the minutes from the July 22, 2024, Planning Commission Meeting.
G. Approve the July 9, 2024, Economic Development Regular Meeting Minutes.
H. Approve the May 13, 2024, Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Meeting Minutes.
I. Approve the issuance of rental licenses to the properties listed in the attached table.
J. Approve Resolution 2024-133 and the appointment of the election judges listed in Exhibit A for the
General Election on November 5, 2024, and authorize the City Clerk to appoint additional election
judges, as needed, to fill vacancies.
K. Approve the 2025-2026 labor contract with the Firefighters Union. All wage and benefits costs have
been budgeted for in the 2025 budget.
L. Approve the 2025-2026 labor contract with the 49er’s Union. All wage and benefits costs have been
budgeted for in the 2025 budget.
M. Approve the Stipulation of Settlement for Parcel 14 by and between YG Properties, LLC and the City
for the East Point Douglas Road and Jamaica Avenue Reconstruction and Signal Project and authorize
payment of the balance of the settlement amount, $51,300.00.
N. 1) Authorize the agreement between the City of Cottage Grove and Washington County Community
Services for Coordinated Mental Health Response. 2) Authorize utilizing the Opioid Settlement to
fund Cottage Grove’s portion of the Coordinated Mental Health Response agreement.
O. Adopt Resolution 2024-139, authorizing execution of the 2025 DWI Traffic Safety Officer grant
agreement with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.
P. Authorize the purchase of Zoll cardiac monitors (3), AEDs (5), and ventilators (3), including service
plans, for a total of $229,488.31 paid over five years utilizing a no-interest payment plan of
$45,897.65 per year.
Q. Authorize the purchase of four (4) ballistic shields utilizing criminal forfeiture funds to be reimbursed
by the Washington County Sheriff's Office.
R. Adopt the Fire Department’s 5-Year Strategic Plan.
S. Authorize the order of five (5) Dodge Durangos in 2024 during the State contract pricing vehicle
ordering window.
T. 1) Adopt Resolution 2024-134 Declaring Costs to be assessed for Removal of Noxious Weeds from
Private Property.
U. Authorize Resolution 2024-132, awarding the quote for boulevard tree trimming services to Birch Tree
Care in the amount of $113,887 for the year 2024-2025 trimming season, and authorize the service
agreement for the two-year tree-trimming project.
V. Authorize Public Works to advertise and sell surplus property on Cranky Ape.
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W. Authorize the City Administrator to enter into an agreement with Grey Cloud Township allowing City
staff to perform roadway shouldering for Grey Cloud Township in lieu of detour compensation.
X. Approve the Right-of-Entry Agreement as part of the Jamaica Avenue Trunk Storm Sewer Realignment
Project with the Joan Glendenning Kennedy Family Limited Partnership, WAG Farms, Inc. Landowner,
and Glendenning Farms, L.P.
Y. Adopt Resolution 2024-140 awarding the 2024 Goodview Avenue Well Sealing Project to Kimmes
Bauer Well Drilling, Inc. in the amount of $29,624.00 and the appropriate officials are hereby
authorized to sign all necessary documents to effectuate these actions.
Z. 1) Adopt Resolution 2024-136 declaring the costs to be assessed for the 2024 Pavement Management
Project. 2) Adopt Resolution 2024-137 calling for a Public Hearing to be held on October 16, 2024, for
the 2024 Pavement Management Project.
AA. Adopt Resolution 2024-138 approving the plans and specifications and authorizing bidding for the
Kingston Park Site Power Upgrade Project.
BB. Approve the Summer Valley Right of Entry agreement with the South Washington County Watershed
District subject to minor modifications by the City Attorney.
CC. Authorize the submission of the Comment Letter to the Metropolitan Council on the Imagine 2050
Policy Plan.
Council Member Olsen wished to pull Item O, 2025 DWI/Traffic Safety Officer Grant Agreement, on the Consent
Agenda for further discussion and/or approval.
Council Member Olsen stated this is an opportunity for us to authorize execution of the 2025 DWI/Traffic Safety
Officer Grant Agreement with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, which our Public Safety team in Cottage
Grove recently received. I pulled this item this evening so Captain Brad Petersen would have some time to tell us a
little bit about what exactly this grant is going to be used for and how it will benefit the residents of Cottage Grove,
especially in light of the fact that one of the very common things that we hear about from residents is traffic
safety. This is definitely something we will put to good use, and I was hopeful Captain Petersen could tell us some
more.
Captain Petersen thanked Council Member Olsen for giving him this opportunity to highlight this important
moment where we could announce to the public that we now have a fulltime Traffic Safety Officer, which formally
began yesterday. This is 100% grant funded through the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Office of Traffic
Safety; this is a fulltime position whose sole duty is to address traffic safety concerns. As Council Member Olsen
stated, we all know that traffic safety is a major concern for residents in our community and we hear about that all
the time. Unfortunately, our patrol officers just don’t have the ability or time to invest as much time as we would
like them to have to address traffic safety concerns, but now we’ll have an officer whose sole job is to address
traffic safety concerns in our community. As Council knows, we approved an ambitious Five Year Strategic Plan in
May, and in the subsequent budget workshops, Council challenged us to seek grant funding to support many of
those strategic goals and initiatives. Since those workshops, we’ve applied for three-to-four grants, one of them
being this Traffic Safety grant, and we’ve got a couple more in the works; so, we’re hopeful we’ll have some more
good news coming in the near future as well.
Captain Petersen stated more about this Traffic Safety position: His sole duties will be enforcing impaired
driving, speeding, distracted driving, seatbelt regulations, things of that nature, so there will be a component of
strict enforcement. However, a lot of his responsibilities and duties will include public education as well, so he
won’t be out there just writing tickets, it’s largely about educating the public as well. He’ll be held to performance
metrics that are terms of the grant itself and also performance metrics that come down from the Towards Zero
Deaths (TZD) program. As you know, for a long time we participated in the TZD grant programs, which funds
additional enforcement hours for DWI enforcement, speed enforcement, seatbelt enforcement, etc. We will
continue to do that as well, so we’re going to take a two-prong approach to traffic safety: We’ll continue to do our
TZD grants, which provides overtime hours for officers to go out and provide that extra enforcement, and then
we’ll also have Officer Lauden Rinzel, whose fulltime job will be traffic safety.
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Council Member Olsen thanked Captain Petersen and stated it’s my understand that this is one of those grants
where we can actually apply for it every year, is that right?
Captain Petersen replied that’s correct. Obviously, at this point, there’s no guarantee that it will be renewable,
but provided he does a great job, which I know he will, there’s a high likelihood that we’ll continue to renew that
year after year.
Council Member Olsen said okay, perfect. I also believe that the grant application itself was written by Sergeant
Pat Young and yourself, right? Captain Petersen replied I had a small piece of it, it was largely Sergeant Young who
deserves all the credit. Council Member Olsen said good, this is a really important thing. As we continue to evolve
as a community and we continue to grow, those traffic concerns I think become a little bit more prevalent, and
having somebody who’s fully dedicated to addressing those concerns is a big step in the right direction. So, thank
you, make sure you thank Sergeant Young, and Officer Rinzel as well for being willing to do this because it’s a big
job but it’s an important job.
Captain Petersen replied certainly, thank you. Council Member Olsen and Mayor Bailey both said thank you.
Motion by Council Member Thiede to approve the Consent Agenda; second by Council Member Garza.
Motion carried: 5-0.
8. APPROVE DISBURSEMENTS
A. Approve disbursements for the period of 8-30-2024 through 9-26-2024 in the amount of
$9,060,329.34.
Motion by Council Member Olsen to approve disbursements; second by Council Member Garza.
Motion carried: 5-0.
9. PUBLIC HEARINGS - None.
10. BID AWARDS
A. Jamaica Avenue Trunk Storm Sewer Realignment Project - Bid Award
Staff Recommendation: Adopt Resolution 2024-141 awarding the bid for the
Jamaica Avenue Trunk Storm Sewer Realignment Project to New Look
Contracting in the total amount of $298,439.00.
Ryan Burfeind, Public Works Director, stated tonight is our bid award for this project, which has a long name. He
stated I just want to quickly show where this work is happening for the Council’s benefit. This is along the east side
of Jamaica Avenue, just south of 95th Street. Today we have a 54-inch trunk storm sewer pipe that goes into
where the compost site used to be, where Kwik Trip will be going. This was a planned effort; we knew that we
needed to get this down to what we call our stormwater flume, so it’s that long channel that brings all the water
down to the pond on 100th Street and ultimately out to the Mississippi River. So, that’s an effort that we want to
undertake this year for a variety of reasons: 1) It just has to do with the development of that site and getting things
ready, dealing with some different issues of the DNR and such, so now is a prime time to get this done. 2) Just from
a weather standpoint, fall going into winter, you can see how dry it’s been, so that’s the best time to get some of
these stormwater projects done. Because it’s pulling water up Jamaica, it has to continue to flow water why we
actually do this work. So, it’s a little bit of a challenging project, and it’s about 300 feet of storm sewer that we will
be realigning down to the south.
We actually got a very large number of bids, we received 10 bids. It’s always a bit of a challenge this time of
year, and it really all depends on contractor availability; did they have a light workload in the fall where they want
to keep their crews going? If that’s the case, you see really good bids. Contractors who are extremely busy and are
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hoping maybe there’s not a lot of interest throw really high numbers at it, lots of overtime, just more expense on
their end. You can see as reflected in the bids, our estimate was $400,000, and we came under that at $298,000;
even though it’s quite a bit under, we’re still comfortable because you can see a nice range of those bids: Three
were under the estimate, one was right near the estimate, and the rest were over. Clearly we have some
contractors that have availability and opening to meet what’s a pretty tight schedule to get the work done before
December.
Director Burfeind said with that, the recommendation is on the screen, and I’m happy to answer any questions.
Council Member Thiede asked have we ever used New Look Contracting in the past?
Director Burfeind replied New Look is not someone that we’ve had a direct contract with before; they’ve been
subcontractors on projects, and they are someone that’s been around the metro, so someone that we’re familiar
with, just haven’t had a direct contract for.
Council Member Thiede stated looking at those prices, we’re to assume that they probably had the resources
available; do you think they’re just coming off a big project or something, just timing wise, or what do you think?
Director Burfeind replied I think when you look at the estimate, when we’re estimating a project this time of
year, it can be very challenging. So, I will say there’s some additional contingency that we always build in this time
of year. Their pricing, if it was early spring, and we were bidding this out at a different time, maybe you’d expect
that more, but because we have two other contractors just kind of slowly increasing an amount, it’s not something
concerning. If our estimate was $450,000 and everyone was above that and one was at $300,000, that’s where we
start to get concerned about such a large gap, so much money left on the table. But given kind of the incremental
increase, we’re pretty comfortable with it.
Council Member Thiede asked with this particular type of project, is there that much that’s really very difficult
upon it?
Director Burfeind replied I will say it’s a good question, there is a lot of bedrock, but we had good information
on the bedrock because we just did that large culvert project in 2019 that we’re going to be tying into, so we have
a good feel for where the bedrock is based on our soil borings. There can always be some flexibility, but we have a
good idea on what’s called the hard bedrock they have to kind of jackhammer out and the soft bedrock they can
dig out with their excavator. So, while there can be some range in that, that’s not something that one contractor
could anticipate over another. We have soil borings at certain locations, and they really use that to inform their bid
process. Other than that, there’s not really a lot of changes or inconsistencies in the project, no private utilities to
deal with, no real challenges that we know of; obviously, once you dig into a ground, things can happen, but
nothing that would be challenging.
Council Member Thiede said okay, good, thank you.
Council Member Khambata asked do you see this having a significant impact on traffic flow in that area?
Director Burfeind replied that’s another good question. In general, we’re going to be trying to keep the work off
to the side. The pipe isn’t very deep, it’s about 15 feet deep, but you can kind of see the blue lines where we’re
extending with that time point, generally we’ve got a good kind of 12-foot setback from the curb. So, the goal is to
minimize those traffic impacts, just from safety, there could be needs for one-lane traffic; I will say that south of
95th Street, that’s a little bit less of a challenge and the traffic kind of backs up from the signal during shift change,
but that can kind of flow through. So, at the most, you’d have kind of a one-lane traffic closure.
Council Member Khambata said okay, thank you.
Motion by Council Member Khambata to Adopt Resolution 2024-141 awarding the bid for the Jamaica Avenue
Trunk Storm Sewer Realignment Project to New Look Contracting in the total amount of $298,439.00; second by
Council Member Thiede. Motion carried: 5-0.
11. REGULAR AGENDA - None.
12. COUNCIL COMMENTS AND REQUESTS
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Council Member Khambata said I looked up and found out that in September we had 20 days over 80 degrees,
which is abnormally warm for September. So, I had the opportunity to take my kids out, and we’ve been trying out
a different park every day in Cottage Grove in September, and I think we made it to about 15 parks on our dad
days. I just have to say a huge shoutout to our Parks and Rec crew for taking such great care of our community and
our parks.
Mayor Bailey stated that’s a good callout. I did happen to bump into or saw Director Zac Dockter, as I had my
grandkids out about a week ago at Glacial Valley Park, and they love the play equipment there, so it was pretty
awesome.
Council Member Olsen stated I’ll definitely echo Council Member Khambata’s comments about the Park and Rec
team, and I would like to include River Oaks as well because I stopped by there over the weekend and it was busy
as all get out on the golf course. So, people are certainly taking advantage of the nice weather; I know we started
early this year and hopefully we’ll be able to play for quite some time yet, but I wouldn’t risk it. So, if you want to
get out there, make sure you make a tee time. The course is in great shape and of course, you can grab some food
and a cocktail or two when you’re done.
Council Member Olsen stated I also wanted to congratulate our Cottage Grove Fire Department for their Fill the
Boot campaign for MDA, which they started last weekend at Cub Foods. I believe they will have a table set up as
well for donations at their upcoming open house; so far, they’ve been able to raise right around $1,700 for
muscular dystrophy. That is a charity that means a lot to me; I was one of those kids when Jerry’s kids were on TV
and my sisters and I would go around and we had our little donation can and we’d knock on doors. I had a
grandmother who passed away at a pretty young age from multiple sclerosis, and MDA supports multiple sclerosis
research, etc. So, this one hits pretty close to home.
Council Member Olsen stated I also wanted to take a moment to formally congratulate our new Communications
Manager, Phil Jents, on joining the team here in Cottage Grove. Phil is not a newbie as it relates to Cottage Grove,
he actually grew up here and went to school here; he decided to fly the coop for a while, but ultimately, just like a
homing pigeon, he found his way back, and we’re pretty happy to have you. So, welcome to the community once
again, Phil, welcome to the team. I’m hearing great things, and I know you’re going to do great work for us.
Council Member Olsen stated last, but certainly not least, a shoutout to the new Executive Director for SWCTC, my
friend, Ann Schweisguth, who I think we all would agree is just flat out awesome at her job. Ann used to be Ann
Simpson, she hasn’t lost anything with the name change, in fact, she’s probably gotten better. The SWCTC team
has been operating with interim directors for several months, and Ann finally decided to take a bite out of that
apple and put her name in the hat and become the Executive Director; so, welcome to your new role, Ann, and
thank you for all you do in support of our community.
Council Member Thiede stated at the end of this month, on October 26 is the Monster Bash parade. Monster Bash
is associated with and managed by the Strawberry Fest Committee. So, if you want to be in the parade, you go to
the Strawberry Fest website and press the Monster Bash button, and it’ll bring up the Monster Bash parade
application if you want to be in that. The parade route is the same as it’s been for the last number of years, as long
as I can remember, going from the SoWashCo Administration building across from McDonald's, and it goes down
to Applebee’s. That will actually start at 10:00 a.m., and I think we’re going to have great weather for it, so I’ve
heard. So, get excited about that.
Council Member Garza stated I will mention some of the events that we have coming up in the month of October:
• I think we touched a bit on the Teddy’s Heart Foundation fundraiser that’s coming up on October 5, that’s
going to be at the Red Barn from 4:00-to-10:00 p.m., and it’s $20 per ticket, that’s going to be an
awesome fundraiser.
• On October 11, Park High School is having their homecoming parade, that starts at 5:15 p.m., so that
should be a lot of fun.
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• The Fire Department, as mentioned earlier, is having their open house on October 8, from 5:00-to-7:00
p.m. at the Central Fire Station.
• We have another treat with the locally grown theater, they’re hosting a play at the City Hall amphitheater,
and that’s at 5:30 p.m. on October 18; that play will be The Frankenstein Monster, so that should be a lot
of fun.
• Last, but not least, our Monster Bash parade, I’m excited for that; we participated last year with
Strawberry Fest, so I’m hoping to do this again.
Mayor Bailey said I have just a couple things and it’s a good piggyback. This coming Saturday, October 5, there are
a lot of food opportunities in town:
• The first one I want to mention and this is kind of cool because I got an email from the manager of Hy-
Vee, as Hy-Vee as a company was named the #1 Grocer in America by USA Today; in recognition of this
pretty distinguished honor, from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Cottage Grove location, they’re going to
be providing free hot dogs, burgers, chips, and beverages. They’ll also have bouncy houses, yard games,
and a whole bunch of other free things in the community. When I talked to Mike at the store, he literally
said that they’ve got like 10,000 hot dogs and 10,000 burgers they’re giving away and it’s free.
• Later on in the day, and this is the piggyback from Council Member Garza, from 4:00-to-10:00 p.m. at the
Red Barn, $20 a ticket, is the Teddy’s Heart Foundation fundraiser. I encourage everybody to swing in and
support that group.
• On Saturday evening, the Masonic Lodge in Old Cottage Grove is having their annual spaghetti dinner. If
you haven’t had it, it is amazing, and that is from 4:30-to-7:30 p.m.; adult tickets are $13, kids 8-to-12 are
$7, and children younger than that are free.
If you’re interested in any of those opportunities, maybe take a run down to Teddy’s Heart, I know they usually
have different drawings and things there. Then maybe take a run out to the Masonic and have some dinner.
Lastly, what I wanted to do is we’re getting close to the election, in just a little over a month, and I was just talking
to our Parks and Recreation Director Zac Dockter, and in the upcoming weeks before the election, you’re going to
hear a lot about the Preserve.Play.Prosper program that we’re looking at doing for our Parks Department here in
Cottage Grove. Most of you probably got a flyer like this one that you can see on the screen there with a lot of
information. I will just share with you a couple things real quick:
• There is going to be a Facebook Live event, and we’ll be getting additional information out to the public
where you can ask questions of me and Director Dockter and others if there’s something more that you’re
not seeing on the Preserve.Play.Prosper website.
• We’re also doing an open house with some pictures, etc., and that’s going to be at Hamlet Park, which
obviously is one of the benefactors if this were to pass. I just wanted to throw that out there.
• The other thing I was talking to our City Administrator, Jennifer Levitt, about is there are quite a few cities
out there, other than the City of Cottage Grove, that is doing this particular type of proposal, a Local
Option Sales Tax. Woodbury to the north of us is doing one, and in their particular case it’s for Public
Safety for a new buildout of their existing building. Stillwater is doing something for parks. A lot of cities
out there, if they don’t already have it, are in the process of doing it.
One of the things I just wanted to share from a public standpoint is that I’ve been asked is what happens, what if it
doesn’t pass? What if something doesn’t pass? The real answer is eventually we will build these additions, for
example, with the Mississippi Dunes Park, along the backwaters of the Mississippi, eventually we would do it. That
could be up to 25 years from now because we put everything on our Capital Improvement Plan (CIP).
The other question I get a lot is well, who really shops in Cottage Grove other than Cottage Grove citizens?
Because anybody who’s looking to either support or not support this proposal in the Preserve.Play.Prosper
website, there actually is a study that we had done a couple years from the University of Minnesota; based on data
from a couple years ago, basically the Cottage Grove citizens make up about 68%-or-69% of the purchases within
Cottage Grove, and about 31%-to-32% is actually from people outside of Cottage Grove. So, the reason that I
believe and I’ll speak for myself, but I’ll mention it from a Council standpoint, the reason the Council decided to go
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this particular direction versus let’s say a referendum question or just starting to pay for it over time is because if
you do the Local Option Sales Tax, it’s not just the residents of Cottage Grove that are paying for this out of their
property taxes. I believe that was part of the reason that we as a Council and our staff talked about how can we
support our play and fun and things that we do in Cottage Grove but not necessarily have all the Cottage Grove
citizens have to pay for the entire thing. So, that is the reason for this, but again, we just want you to vote, one
way or the other, please vote, but please be informed when you go vote. If you have any questions, you can reach
out to me or any of my partners on the Council, Director Dockter is always available. We do respond to any
questions that come through to the website. If there’s anything that we can do to better help you understand this
process and why we’re doing it, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Our next item is a Workship, open to the public, and basically what it’s about is an update on the August 29 Severe
Weather Emergency that we had when that storm came through our community. Council will be moving into the
Training Room to get an update on where everything is at, costs and so on, and then we’ll be adjourning this
meeting from there. So, everyone have a great evening
13. WORKSHOPS - OPEN TO PUBLIC - TRAINING ROOM
A. August 29, 2024 - Severe Weather Emergency Update
Staff Recommendation: Receive an update from staff regarding the State of Emergency issued on
August 29, 2024.
Mayor Bailey said I’m going to call the workshop to order; obviously, this is giving us an update on the severe
storm that went through Cottage Grove on Thursday, August 29. He asked Administrator Levitt to begin.
Administrator Levitt said a lot happened in about a six-hour window on August 29, and we thought it would be
good for you to just hear the recap of what we responded to, the incident, go through our recovery, and then also
talk about some of the additional costs and the implications of that. I have to tell you I could not be more proud of
how the staff responded that night. We had trained and trained, and Gwen has trained us and continues to train
us, and it showed in our response; we were a very well-oiled machine that night. They will have lessons learned in
their slide when they talk through it, but I will tell you they’re being very hard on themselves on the lessons
learned because I would not fault them for any of that because I thought that we really responded in an
outstanding way. They’ve done just an absolutely excellent job. Now I will tell you at one point in the evening,
when Brad and Dan Schoen were sitting in the Conference Room, they were writing every single call that was
coming in with addresses, they were marking them and labeling them, there was a moment when I went, is this
really happening? And then it felt like you know we do tabletop exercises in which we participated, they give you
these little injections of scenarios and situations, and it felt like the inject button was like stuck. And it was like,
Brad, is this really real, as we were going through it. So, I’d have to say the staff did an outstanding job. So, I will
just say with a couple of their lessons learned, they’re very hard on themselves. So, I will turn it over to Captain
Martin.
Captain Martin stated when we talk about lessons learned, we as an Emergency Management team did an after-
action review, went through a whole list of what we did well and what can we do better? An after-action review is
not about pointing out things that went wrong or if circumstances that occurred because as Jennifer said, we did a
lot of things really well, but there’s always room for improvement. So, when we talk about these lessons learned,
it’s not because something went bad, it’s just ways to improve. A little over a month ago, we had a typical
Minnesota weather day. The National Weather Service gave us a 2 out of 5 chance of severe weather. In fact, a
severe thunderstorm warning was issued for the southern part of Washington County, which expired about 5:15
p.m. However, during that time, there was a significant amount of rain, lightning, and wind. The officers who were
involved with the Park High School football game were safety planning; what do we do if this should affect the
attendees? Then, at 5:15 p.m., things calmed down, we’re like okay, warning’s expired, no problem. All of a
City Council Meeting
October 2, 2024
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sudden, about 5:30 p.m., we experienced what we later learned was a downburst, which occurs when winds in the
storm start heading opposite each other. When that happens, you get this downburst and surface winds; so, when
we talk about radar-indicated winds, radar indicates the winds up here or much further, but you get the point. And
they were about 50-to-60 MPH gusts, which was not enough for a severe storm warning. Radar does not indicate
the surface winds, and judging from the amount of damage, the National Weather Service later estimated we
experienced 70-to-80 MPH winds. So, that is why we had the severe weather event outside of the severe weather
warning.
Public Safety personnel quickly became overwhelmed with about 30 Calls for Service. The damage that
occurred, downed powerlines, downed trees, property damage, flooding, electrical hazards; we had several
smaller little fires and then a confirmed fire in a business, which Deputy Chief Arrigoni will talk about during his
slides. Thankfully, no injuries or deaths were reported during this. Public Safety Director Pete Koerner stated thank
you to the photographer for many of these pictures. Mayor Bailey said I went in that house, as there was a worry
that they were going to be home, that was scary.
Captain Martin said so once this happened, the School District delays to start the football game, additional
officers were called into work, Public Works and Parks did an all call for staff to return, as the Public Works
answering service was being inundated by calls as well. Command staff reported to the Police Department, at City
Hall, and decided we needed to set up the Emergency Operations Center (EOC). We received mutual aid from all
of our partners, police, fire, and EMS. I would say we dusted off our All Hazard Plan that you haven’t seen this
shiny new version yet, I’m still working on this 500-page plan, and you will be seeing it at some point. Our initial All
Hazard Plan was drafted in 2004, it has gone through several revisions since then, and this year has been my year
to revise it so you will see the new and improved version. But we still operate under that 2004 version, which has
had some edits. I’m going to turn over the clicker to Captain Brad Petersen.
Captain Petersen said I drew the short straw, I got to be the Incident Commander that night. So, it wasn’t high on
my list of the things that I wanted to do, but it was a great experience. Gwen’s done a pretty good job of describing
the initial Public Safety response, but I’ll go a bit further into the specific police response. One of the things that
benefited us that night was that we had extra staffing working the football game, so this would have been even
more overwhelming for police if we had been operating at our normal staffing levels of 4 or 5 officers; fortunately,
we had about 3 or 4 additional officers to help with our response model.
As Gwen said, they didn’t really fully comprehend the gravity of the situation yet, and they just started going to
those Calls for Service as they started dropping in the queue. Of course, they were prioritizing them somewhat, but
they didn’t quite understand the challenge that was going to be dropped on them once the full magnitude of the
storm was realized. Sergeant Dan Schoen and Sergeant Mike McCormick did a really good job of implementing
Incident Command, and one of the best things they had done was to notify our command staff quickly, rather than
waiting longer to see how this thing was going to play out. This allowed us to then activate the EOC quickly and get
citywide staff on board to start helping; so that would be one of my lessons learned that I’ll address here in a
moment. Implementation of Incident Command, notifying Command staff quickly, and having mutual aid
mobilized quickly from our surrounding communities because there was way too much workload for our handful of
cops to address were key in this situation.
I was at home at the time of the call, I got to the P.D. within a few minutes, and Dan and I were able to have a
face-to-face handoff where we were briefed on the situation, and he handed over Incident Command to me.
Schoen took over the operations side where I could focus on the big picture, and Schoen was handling the
operations side, and we worked side by side. I had activated the EOC through Code Red, set up the seat of the EOC
in the Minnesota Room. At that point, we started to triage calls and prioritize those Calls for Service and our
response. So, that’s kind of a summary of Public Safety actions at a very high level.
My first lesson learned is just trust the process, and by that, I mean we’ve gone through a lot of training and
drills where we talk about and practice implementing Incident Command and about the EOC, and cooperating
across departments, within the City and outside of the City. And it’s one thing to do it in training in a sterile
environment, but when it happens in real life, it’s really overwhelming, it’s an “Oh, crap” moment for sure; and I
found a lot of relief in that you trust in the process and knowing that, follow these steps and within a short amount
of time, more and more resources will pull into the problem and it’ll get easier and easier as those resources come
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October 2, 2024
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online and that truly did happen. When I reflect on this incident, it seemed like I pushed the Code Red button and
walked into the Minnesota Room, started some work, and I looked up and it felt like five minutes later I was
surrounded by City staff and they were all working like a well-oiled machine. And that just brought down the stress
level and it all got ten times easier as time went on. So, trust the process even if you feel overwhelmed because it
works.
The amount of communications that we had across the departments in the City was remarkable. I didn’t identify
any particular friction points between the departments, and you know how truly unusual that is when we have a
major incident like this, inevitably there’s going to be some friction points. I just didn’t experience that at all, and I
think that’s because the team trained so well.
I want to touch on mutual aid real quickly. As I said, this problem was way too big for us to handle on our own,
and so it was crucial for us to get mutual aid involved, and they did an awesome job and helped us out immensely.
As a reminder, when other communities have had their incidents, we’d go help them out, too.
The GIS mapping was the coolest thing ever, I didn’t even think about this as a possibility; I was using the old-
fashioned white board and that was working, but then all of a sudden, the GIS mapping came online and it was the
coolest thing ever because now we could see the dots start popping up. Then we could kind of realize where the
damage happened and start to distinguish was it a downed tree or was it a fire or was it flooding or anything like
that. So, it really helped us visualize where the problem was and what the problems were and then immortalize all
those different Calls for Service that were pending.
The last part of Communications is a reminder that this is a critically important function that we notify the
community of what’s going on and we deliver those messages to them that are in their public safety interest; and
we gather the neighborhood or evacuate or shelter in place, things like that. For those of us in a Public Safety role,
we’re putting out fires and responding to crimes in progress and all of that type of stuff, it’s not always the first
thing we think about and we’re not really adept at delivering that message. So, it was extremely helpful and very
well done to have the Communications team on board to handle that. I could look up and tell someone from the
Communications team hey, I need you to tell the community to stay away from this particular neighborhood. I
need to tell them stop moving our barricades, things of that nature, and then finally deliver that message when it is
safe for the community to return. So, they did a remarkable job, and I just appreciated the role they played in this.
Captain Petersen said so, I’ll now hand it over to Fire.
Deputy Fire Chief Nick Arrigoni stated so in the very beginning of this, the very first call that dropped for service for
us was Salons by JC, for a possible structure fire. So, they had black smoke reported coming out of their outlets,
and so that was kind of an all hands, that was an all call for us, that was an all hands on deck type of response. I
was also at home, and I was able to hop in my squad and respond from home directly to that scene. Chief Pritchard
was already there, and I remember as I was getting my CAD computer set up, I was seeing these calls in pending,
and I thought my computer was broken. Genuinely, I did, I was like this is backlogged from like multiple days of
incidents; and I did a face to face with Chief Pritchard and I was like my CAD computer’s not working. He’s like
nope, it is, like this is very real. So, we had at that point 20 calls, probably 20 emergency calls in pending. For us,
obviously, the first priority is life safety, so we had to prioritize what we would have to answer immediately. We
did not get the callback members that we would have hoped for; a lot of them, quite honestly, let us know on the
back plate, I lost power and I was home with my kids, things like that where they had to make that choice and stay
home. We relied heavily on our mutual aid in this as well, like Captain Petersen and Captain Martin said, so life
safety was the first priority, property preservation was our second priority. So, in these calls, what did we need to
respond to right away? Our challenge was at that time both Jon and I were on the scene of a possible structure
fire. So, he actually, as this kind of played out, was able to cut me loose, and then you go into I have to do so many
more things than we’re capable of doing right now, and what does that look like? So, we had to adjust how we
would respond, typically; on any Calls for Service we had that night, we’d love to have an engine there or a ladder
truck or something more than what we could provide on some of these calls. I asked Chief Pritchard, do you want
me to go to the EOC, or do you want me to go back to the station and start answering some of these Calls for
Service? That was one of our lessons learned is that we probably needed representation in the EOC sooner; ideally,
that would be him as the Fire Chief, but a lesson learned for us nonetheless where I could probably step in and I
did. I actually grabbed the multigas monitor and thermal imager, and I started prioritizing the calls that we needed
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October 2, 2024
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to get to right away, gas leaks that was leaking in houses that we know could turn into a structure fire quickly and
things like the powerlines down and trees on house kind of went more to that like how do we stabilize this incident
and we know we need to answer these higher-priority calls, and that any call could turn into a higher-priority call
at any point. As soon as I started knocking these off the list, we’re going to be able to get ahead of this. Luckily for
us, the Salon by JC it was not a huge incident; it was a little bit time consuming but the damage to the actual
structure was minimal and we were able to cut those crews loose. Chief Pritchard was able to then go to the EOC,
which helped tremendously, just a working collaboration with everybody else up there. We can get that 30,000-
foot view now as more people started to come in; he was actually up here, I was able to kind of remove myself
from the street level, answering physical calls, and manage the crews that we had at the fire station, which was
something that was incredibly helpful. Like the lessons learned, we talked about we were task saturated right off
the bat, and I think that second Deputy Chief that’s going to be starting soon will help that tremendously because
it's hard for us to get out of the mix, right? No matter where you are in the rank structure, it’s hard to pull us away
and say that’s not your job anymore, but this is a perfect example of that. So, we talked about setting up the future
EOC in the larger training room and having that needed equipment and technology be present. He asked if there
were any questions on the Fire side.
Captain Martin stated just from an Emergency Management standpoint, just to add to this, our support person
from Washington County came down and was in our EOC because at that point, we didn’t know how widespread
or how site specific the damage was. It ended up being pretty specific to Cottage Grove, not all of Washington
County, but he came down from a County perspective to help with that. We had talked about initially the EOC was
set up in the Minnesota Room and then as it grew, it grew bigger. The folks who responded were able to kind of
break out into some of the common areas, if you will, other offices, but ultimately having a bigger room in the
future; again, nothing was wrong with the way it was set up, it wasn’t bad, it’s just how could we do a little better?
Because I believe, Jennifer, you said there was a problem with the HVAC system.
Administrator Levitt replied I was hoping one of the pictures will come up and we can talk about that. She
stated here’s the one thing: You know, when you have the EOC, your adrenaline’s already kind of pumping, right?
You’re kind of hot, but it was, man, it feels like it’s getting really hot in here, physically. So, I’m texting Adam
Mosier, like something is wrong, like we’re really hot; and he’s like, oh, my gosh, you are really hot, it is like 80
some degrees and it’s just pumping out heat. So, I mean, we had some serious bonding time happening in the EOC
that night. So, what happened was when the storm came through, somehow our HVAC system thought it was 5
degrees outside and so it converted from cooling to heating, and it just like pumped in the heat into that side. So,
we’re all kind of sweating, I mean, it kind of felt like a sweat lodge in there for a bit. But, just so you know, there
were some other things happening that night and we weathered it well; we were more invested in deodorant in
the EOC offices or something.
I will tell you the other thing that’s kind of funny is as Captain Petersen and I were sending the message out to
activate the EOC, to notify directors, the next thing I received on my phone was is this for real? Like is this a test, or
is this really for real? Because it was hard to know if you weren’t even within 5 miles of Cottage Grove, you didn’t
know what had just happened. So, staff then started to report in from Finance and Administration to be able to
assist.
One of the things that we had to work with IT on was getting a phone system set up so we could route the
actual calls to the office area of Public Safety, so we could start taking calls out of the call center that Public Works
system was inundated with, and so we had all three IT folks in, being able to navigate that. Also, we had to figure
out a workaround with the call service because they were sending us messages with all the calls, but we couldn’t
get access to them; so, IT had to do a little end run around to be able to get us all of the calls that were sitting in
the queue that were placing Work Orders at Public Works.
One thing, too, that we learned in the process is that GIS mapping actually redlined our servers. So, Brian was
already in the process of replacing our servers, but because we’re doing so much manual input onsite and then
people remotely were consistently putting those dots in, our servers actually couldn’t withstand the load that was
coming in, so we had a little bit of a delay on that. But now our servers by the end of the month will actually be
updated, so we shouldn’t have that delay again.
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October 2, 2024
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It was helpful obviously to have Brenda there just to make sure as we’re sending our coding and accounting of it,
as Gwen had hammered into us, we need to document, document, document. Brenda was good at making sure we
had our codes out and that we were coding everything, getting that clarity out. It also provided us, when the
mayor showed up to make that Emergency Declaration, he had seen it for himself; he had seen our reports, he saw
our boards and where we were at, and that we were clearly overwhelmed with our own level of response, and so
we were able to make that Emergency Declaration. So it was very helpful for all of you to be able to respond to let
us know at 9:00 a.m. the next morning, going into a holiday weekend, that you were available to make that formal
declaration. At that time, we thought we were going to get a County declaration as well, and so we thought we
would be getting more cost reimbursement for that.
Now, for us, it was also about trying to get the message out more accurately, right? Because we had a lot of
property damage to homes, to cars, and things like that. So, we wanted to make sure our claim form was updated
and really clear, making sure our internal communication with staff if people called us to file those claims, we
weren’t going to argue with them, if it’s a boulevard tree or a private tree, we’re going to figure that out later. Let’s
just get them the claim form and be able to get them moving in the right direction.
I think one of the things, and I think Captain Petersen mentioned it, having more bodies in the actual building to
be able to get a lot of work done; I mean, we didn’t need Joe answering phones, but we put him out in a pickup
truck to be able to patrol, looking for manholes and covers off and the catch basins with floods and if roads were
clear or not. Director Burfeind said he did a good job for us. Administrator Levitt said I got a two-for-one when I
called Tammy because I got the City Clerk, and the beautiful thing is Tammy actually remembers all the Public
Works _____, so she was able to come in and help with that; but then also get the Resolution working with the City
Attorney that night on the Declaration and getting everything queued up and posted for 9:00 a.m. the next
morning. So, by the time we left here at 11:30 p.m., all of those documents and things were already in order.
Brenda helped with some policy stuff, making sure our internal communication was spot on because here’s the
thing: We need to remember we’re an organization of 250 people, we needed to make sure that our internal team
knew when they walked in the door the next morning exactly what to expect and how to operate. So, she made
sure all of our front-desk staff knew what to say when people called, what were the procedures and policies. And
then we also sent additional support down to Public Works because they were definitely going to be inundated
with all those calls when daylight came about.
As I mentioned, it was really important for us to have the IT staff there and the Communication staff because
we were able to put that Emergency Alert banner on the website right away; we kept using those continuous
updates throughout the event of what was happening. It was a great coordination with our Public Safety Facebook
page and our general City one; we were good at creating those messages, making sure that we were getting it out.
We were able to get that press release out that night before we left, and so by 5:00 a.m. the next morning, I made
contact with the mayor; I know you were getting the same calls, they started really early contacting us for press
coverage. So, I think we did an interview with every network, MPR as well, and so we had a lot of coverage of the
event. I know there’s a lot of cameras out in the community, getting pictures of the different damage and the
houses. We were really good about keeping ourselves from the media, they were updated, making sure we were
getting accurate information out to the public. As I said, it’s really important that we continue to focus on any
internal communications so that our employees are giving out the right information to residents all along the way.
One of the big lessons learned is everybody wanted to know what happened; that’s why when we met that
morning at 9:00 a.m., we still couldn’t tell you what happened, the National Weather Service still couldn’t tell us. I
think it was funny one of you guys had talked to the National Weather Service and they were like, you had
damage? Like they didn’t know anything until we sent them literally our spreadsheet of damage and pictures, and
then they were only able to go back and evaluate the event and really tell us what hit us. I think that’s what was
difficult, as we couldn’t explain to people what really happened; was it a tornado, was it straight-line winds, what
was it? And I think that in a way did create some challenges for us to be able to communicate that message. So, I’ll
turn it over to Tammy.
Tammy said so like Jennifer said, honestly, I got the notice about Cottage Grove and I genuinely was like is this for
real, Jennifer? And I called her and it was like she was on her cell and it was going in and out, and I was like gosh,
this is the strangest thing. But, ultimately, after a few moments, that’s when we called Andy, our Chief Building
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October 2, 2024
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professional in, and right away we were kind of battling a time where it was getting dark, and so we sent him right
out. So, he evaluated 14 homes that night, and they were coming in from residents who were telling us now that
there were trees down on structures, things like that. He was able to take a look at 14 homes that evening, 2 more
later on that week. There was just 1 home that he did condemn, the one that had the tree through it, which was
awful. Come to find out, he worked closely with the folks who live there and with that condemnation, they could
move right back in as soon as they were able to get a contractor to get those things fixed. So, it was a smooth
process there.
Ultimately, Jennifer touched on it as well, our Communications team was great about ensuring that our front-
desk team knew what to say, what information can they provide, what’s happening, and questions related to that
throughout the next week. They were helping them get through comments that they would hear from everyone.
Final lessons learned, and this is me speaking for anybody who asked me about how I felt; it was really under
this crunch time, right? Because it was getting dark, we didn’t know how bad it was initially, until we were
updated. And I’ll turn it over to Ryan from Public Works.
Ryan said during an event like this, Public Works and Parks really meld together into one entity because our guys
are the ones out there getting the roads cleared and such. So, Zac got everything put together for me, and Zac
called his own crew. I had called our on call, so, we have like an on-call supervisor every week that rotates for
callouts; in the winter, it’s plowing, in the summer, it’s usually small stuff, branches in the road. So, I called him at
5:51 p.m., so right after the storm hit. Right after the storm cleared, my wife came home, and I said get in the car,
because it was really bad, and we were going to go quick drive around. I made it, not barely clearing the
neighborhood, and I couldn’t get anywhere. So, I called Noah, I said it’s an all call for all the Public Works and
Parks; it’s amazing how that process works, right? Noah was at the hockey arena with his kid’s team or something,
he had no idea the storm had hit like that because it was fine up on 80th Street, for the most part. So, he went
through the process, he called all the foremen, the foremen called all their crews. Then I called all the other
superintendents and Zac, and by 6:30 p.m., we had everyone out in the field except for a few stragglers who live a
little further away. So, under a half hour. People are not expecting this, right? They’re at their kids’ activities, all
the different things, and they were back, ready to go, with all their crews, all their equipment out, clearing roads.
At the same time, I was talking with Jennifer and talking to Public Safety, seeing what was going on and letting
them know that we have all of our staff coming in. Two of those were the GIS staff, one’s a dedicated GIS
technician and the other one is Gavin, who is our Management Analyst, and he’s a really GIS guru; so Gavin is used
to that because he actually was in the Public Works crew before he was promoted, Eric is not, he’s usually up in
Engineering at City Hall. I called him in Stillwater and asked are you available? He said what do you mean am I
available? I send well, we need GIS folks now to help us with this event, and he dropped what he was doing; he
brought some dinner he was baking in the oven and he was there and really managed that. Actually, after the April
snowstorm last year, we said we need a better way with GIS to map these events. So Eric actually last year had
created an Emergency Response mapping tool, where you can actually go out and with your phone, with your iPad,
whatever it might be, you can drop it in and say tree blocking road, tree partially blocking road, powerlines,
flooding, whatever it might be, it’s right there, it’s ready to go. Or you can enter it manually, so when we were
getting the calls coming in through 911 and Public Works, they can actually enter them in the EOC; so, that really
helped other than the fact that we just buried that system and now we intend to fix that, like Jennifer mentioned.
So, it was nice to see that tool used and then we learned a lot about it as well.
Really, what we also did was the Public Works and Parks, so me and Zac, superintendents, we responded to the
EOC once we got those field operations set. We had to meet down at Public Works to get the guys going, and the
GIS staff responded right to the EOC. I won’t say a night like this wasn’t stressful; one of the most dangerous things
our guys can do is head out when it’s getting dark, and they’re going to be in the dark, and they are cutting trees
that are tangled in cars. We shouldn’t be touching things in powerlines, but it’s so dark out there. There’s just
stress on trees, right? It’s not like dropping a tree in the road and blocking it up; you don’t know when you’re
cutting through these how its going to let loose or really fall. So, a lot of stress for me, and I like that because it’s
just one of the most dangerous things that you get into, but they did an awesome job; we had all the roads cleared
by 11:30 p.m., with no injuries, no accidents, no incidents. And we really want to get the job done well, but that
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night it was about cutting and pushing. We were just getting roads open, we were not cleaning roads up that night,
that was for the following week.
Some of the lessons learned: We have our 800 megahertz radios in Public Works that we can communicate with
Public Safety, those are very important, and we’re actually in the process of getting new ones. Ours still work, but
we’re getting new ones, upgrading them, because they are about ten years old. We were trying to operate, I think,
on the same channel as the police, but there was too much going on. So, what we’ve determined is the leader, the
foreman or whoever it might be on the crew, they’ve got 800 megahertz, they can hear full, but we’re going to use
our Public Works channel for the field operations for our staff.
It’s been said many times the GIS maps are really critical for mapping and reporting. We actually have made
improvements with our Emergency Response mapping tool, based on all the use we got out of it. I think it’ll be
even better for our use next time around, hopefully far down the road.
Administrator Levitt stated and it was nice, too, because we’d already coordinated with Washington County,
they were bringing ten trucks or more in the next morning, and we could already print maps with the whole route
and stuff like that; they were already printed in color, it was all set up, and so the next morning they were literally
just handing out maps to Washington County drivers when they came. So, mapping was extremely beneficial to
make this a really efficient operation.
Director Burfeind said another lesson learned: We had our foremen out in the field, all four of them were here,
responded, but really they are hopefully experts in what is safe, what is unsafe. They supervise the crews, but
really we learned in that instance we need them right in it with them because they have the most knowledge; like,
we’re not touching that tree, if we try to cut that tree, it’s going to do this, and it’s going to be a huge safety issue.
So, I think when you have someone like Gary or Jim Fohrman they’d be out in the field, they were in the EOC, but
really to lead in the field operations I think would be a big benefit in a future event as well.
Director Burfeind said the other lesson learned was using mutual aid. We don’t always do that in Public Works,
it’s usually done in Public Safety, but Washington County coming in the next day will allow our City help with a
major event; we would have been at this much longer than we would have been without that help.
So, with that, going into just more information on the recovery and the costs, like I said, roads were open and
passable by 11:00 p.m.; that was our main goal that night I think as a group as a whole, but Public Works’ first goal
was to get those roads opened up. The next morning was the State of Emergency, and then we had the debris
management cleanup plan. So, we had the decision that the City pick up all the tree debris, have folks place it
behind the curbline and we’d pick that up first. That night it was tough, we knew this was a big event and how
much time should we give them, so we did go with that month timeframe. I think how we saw people manage
that, there was a lot of stuff in their yards, and I think we could go a little shorter if we did that in the future, just
because they have to clean up their yards; so, I think in the first week or two, people really had that taken care of,
but we just didn’t know that night. We just knew it was a big event and it would take a long time to clean it up.
Residents also dropped off their debris at the compost site, free of charge. We had Public Works mutual aid help
from Washington County, Burnsville, West St. Paul, and Newport; so, 570 regular hours, 126 overtime hours, and
through our mutual aid pact that we are a part of through Public Works, there’s no reason for us to pay for that;
so, we do not pay those cities back for that time, but we are part of that pact, so if they have a wind event, they
have a tornado, they have an emergency, we’re there to help them in the future.
For a cost summary, obviously we had a significant amount of unplanned expenses because of this event. The
public assistance threshold is $600,000; like Jennifer mentioned, I think that night we thought there could be a
declaration from the County, but we really didn’t have that. It was Cottage Grove and over to St. Paul Park that had
damage, it wasn’t that much outside of that. That public assistance, this cost, that’s not for any private debris; that
has to be very strict with FEMA rules, it has to be a tree that has blocked basically a roadway and there’s some
amount of leaning trees to certain-degree angles, they’re very specific.
Captain Martin stated yes, it’s got to be a 30-degree angle over public property for it to be reimbursable for
removing it.
Director Burfeind said and they’re not out there measuring that, it’s all a judgment call, but a lot of the work
that we did obviously would not be FEMA reimbursable, so that’s how that works.
Regular staff time: These are folks who are on regular time, they’re being paid anyway, they’re just doing a
different job than we planned; it’s almost up to 3,000 hours, but just the cost of that is $123,000. Once again,
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that’s budgeted, that’s regular time for Public Works and Park staff. City Equipment we were calculating using
rates because we didn’t know what this equipment or whatever part of that was for a public emergency issue
would have been reimbursable, up to $203,000. Once again, that’s not an expense of the City; that’s City
equipment that we’re using, but FEMA has the rates that we would have used to apply to that. Obviously, there’s
some fuel costs that plays into that a little bit. So, true expenses that we have to date: Overtime, about 700 hours,
is $46,000. We’re running the compost site, too, and we had residents drop off their debris. We didn’t want them
going back to our pile that’s on City property, we’re coming and going with trucks; so we really just had them go to
the Rumpca Compost Site through the standard process, so that’s something we had to pay, $5,000. There was
some but there wasn’t a lot of that material dropped off by residents. We did rent an additional skid steer because
the #1 thing we can have in these events is skid steers and backhoes; we have three, and that is the bottom line,
right? That’s what we use to pick up all these piles, so we immediately benefited with a fourth one for the month
so we could keep this process moving.
So, if you look at all the expenses, that first column talks about just the regular wages to date. The second
column is all of the unbudgeted, the top three I talked about: Overtime, Compost Site with the residents to drop
off, and Equipment Rental. So, stump grinding, that’ll be a 2025 expense; any stumps that were tipped over, our
staff have ripped those out, and we’re mostly done, we did that with all of the debris pickup. They’re basically out
of the ground and we can kind of do the last little bit with our equipment and pull them out. We don’t have the
stump grinding equipment that can handle the remaining, so there’s about 86 stumps of the trees that we lost that
have to be ground next spring. So, those are just cut flush to the ground right now; that is an expense that we will
have in 2025. Topsoil is related to stump grinding, we have to fill the hole back in; we pay for the material, this is
just the material cost that we’re estimating next year, about $12,000.
The big one is the 162 boulevard trees that we did lose. So, on average with the contractor rates for the
installation of those trees next year, looking at what that cost might be, it’s about $81,000 to plant those trees;
that is above and beyond what we have in our Forestry budget. Our Forestry budget is already fully programmed
because we already have 100 trees programmed to cut down this winter and then 100 to replant next year. So, this
is fully above and beyond. There is nothing that we can cut out of the budget because those 100 trees planned for
this winter have been identified as diseased or safety issues, so, those have to be cut down this winter. We can’t
delay that work to plant these trees, and that’s our challenge right now.
The $203,000 in Equipment I mentioned is not on here. And then we looked at mutual aid, the value of that is
about $33,000 for all the other Public Works departments. Now, it gets to be a big number, but based on all the
work we did, we figure about 25% of it was actually the trees in the roads; our thinking was some probably had to
be cut down but they weren’t leaning over or were part of that private debris pick up. So, it feels like we’re getting
close to that $600,000, but only 25% of that would’ve been really FEMA eligible.
In terms of funding those expenses, right now there’s $300,000 in budget contingency for 2024. Jennifer, is
there anything else you want to add? This is your specialty, but right now, the Fund Balance it looks like there’s
funding to do this, but if there’s anything else you want to add, Brenda or Jennifer.
Director Malinowski said I can talk about it. So, our Fund Balance Policy is remember, we have that Fund Balance
Policy of 45%-to-55% of next year’s expenditures; and then per our new Fund Balance Policy, with funding those
unbudgeted expenditures, we would still fall within that policy. Just a reminder, too, with the 2024 budget, we’re
starting a budget contingency to help us with these types of events or to help us with obtaining our target at the
end of each year per the Fund Balance Policy; we had $200,000 in the 2024 budget. With that, and that was per
the FMP, it was one of the things that we talked about, and we agreed that that was a good thing. So, for 2025, we
do have a budget contingency of $275,000. So, within that FMP, we are increasing that, but for this 2024 storm, we
do have legally either that budget contingency to use or budgeted savings, and we can look at that more and build
that fund.
Director Burfeind said just some discussion items: I think one thing we want to mention, and we have seen this,
this isn’t our first time doing a Citywide pick up. In 2021, we had previous straight-line winds, we did the Citywide
pick up. I don't know for whatever reason this time we definitely saw a little more use of that, which is kind of
unfortunate, because you had people who needed the help and others that were kind of taking advantage of that
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free pick up. It’s really hard to argue that; our guys out in the field aren’t out there to argue with residents, they’re
not going to try and nitpick, but it does get pretty obvious when you see an entire Ash tree dug up. Now, the one
benefit is we got rid of a lot of Ash trees, whether they were blown down or residents said I’m going to cut it down
right down, and the City can haul it away for me. I mean, there was a benefit to that, I will say, because those Ash
trees are an issue in our community. There’s a lot of that trimming of healthy trees, and you can kind of tell when
you’ve got all these branches with leaves on them and three weeks from the storm and then some on the streets.
So, sometimes contractors are doing that; Gary and I were talking, a lot of contractors, most are doing the right
thing, they had a truck right behind them to pick up all the work that they were doing. But we do know some were
taking advantage of that, so, that’s just something to think about. When we do the free drop off at Rumpca’s, then
you really know, and that’s a little more effort, right? You can’t just put it on your curb, people are using them a
little more appropriately. We even had one where there was a guy dumping loads of tree debris from a dump truck
in peoples’ yards on the Grove side because he knew it was getting picked up. Residents were reporting a dump
truck just dumped an entire load of tree trimmings in my yard. I don't know exactly where we’re at with him, we
were working with Public Safety on that issue; but just some cases of abuse that are kind of unfortunate, because
you had people who actually needed the help and had some real damages from this event.
One thing to think about is our giant piles of debris that we have on City property. I had a number in the budget,
we were trying to estimate based on 2021, as we did pay Rumpca to grind that material that we had collected. At
that time, based on that, we were thinking of a lot lower number. At Rumpca, we’ve been adding to the pile, and
the night he went out and looked at it, his estimate right now is $100,000 to grind that pile that we have, to deal
with it. The other option is we could look at a controlled burn on that pile in the winter; if you’re at the Dog Park,
you can see it. The City owns property on the other side of the water from the Dog Park, behind the compost site.
So, a controlled burn is an option we believe of that pile; but that’s something to think about because we want to
plan that correctly as far as the wind, and we don’t want to have smoke going into the City proper. That pile would
burn for a long time if we do decide to burn it. I think we want some feedback from Council on this; we have a
huge expense if we grind it. I don’t think we have to, there are other options, we wouldn’t have to grind that whole
thing; but we do have to deal with this pile because this is where we plan to expand the stormwater pond
someday, a lot of that material is going to be used for development of future sites but it’s not happening
immediately. We have to make a decision on which way do we go, so we’d like some Council feedback on that.
Council Member Khambata asked is there a way to maybe cut it into smaller piles and use it as like for Fire
training or something? Not that we do a lot of wildland forestry, but if it’s an opportunity to like get more familiar
with the equipment; I mean, is there a way to kind of make the best use of it if we end up having to burn?
Director Burfeind replied that’s something we could visit.
Council Member Khambata said because it would be a pretty big fire to put out; so, I’m just kind of thinking
outside the box because I know that either way you look at it, it’s going to be a challenge to deal with.
Council Member Olsen asked so if you guys were to take on a controlled burn there, have you already partnered
with the Fire Department on kind of how we would manage that? And, obviously, you’re going to need to have
oversight at the pile until its gone, basically. So, there’s a labor expense associated with that; I mean, have you
guys kind of done the math and looked at all that?
Director Burfeind replied I’m pretty sure the pile is still growing, and today, tomorrow, and Friday is our last full
Citywide cleanup. We kind of want to get some of those done, and we’re definitely going to have to partner with
the Fire Department, no question. That’s not something that Public Works and Parks would kind of take on, on our
own, but you’re right, I think we would need probably 24/7, I imagine, oversight of that pile, which is an overtime
expense for that, for sure.
Deputy Fire Chief Arrigoni said our Fire Marshal, Steve Zaccard, would definitely be the one that we can talk to
about that, and he’d know best.
Council Member Olsen said I mean, you’ve got to look at the cost-benefit ratio. Mayor Bailey said that’s a good
point.
Council Member Thiede asked how much of it would be actually wood that people could burn in their firepits or
something like that? If you said somebody could come in and cut what they wanted, take it, how much would it
deplete that pile?
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Director Burfeind replied I mean, I think it would, it’s just hard because it’s all mixed together, obviously. I was
going to take some pictures of it but it just doesn’t do it justice, the size and scope of it. It’s kind of blended
together, all the branches and the trunks. So, it’s hard, because when we were taking it, we wanted really big
pieces, so a lot of it is 8-or-10-foot chunks of 2-foot diameter trees. I think there’s a liability thing of having all the
residents running chainsaws on the City property. I think it would be a real challenge; you would need equipment
just because it all comes as one, and we’re using loaders to stack it. So, you would certainly need equipment to
remove those larger pieces. There certainly is a lot of good wood in there, I hate to say, but I think there’s a liability
component with that, too.
Council Member Thiede said well, if we’re looking at the costs in terms of the controlled burn and how much
that would ultimately cost, is it possible where there’s even some people that are professional-type people that
come in and maybe even cut it into certain smaller pieces? There are people out there who sell firewood, there’s
all the State Parks and things like that; it’d just be interesting to see, if you could take some pictures of it just to see
what the possibilities would be. And I understand about just saying it’s a free for all and residents coming in with
their chainsaws, but if it’s a little bit more controlled where people could come in, process it, take it because it’s
part of their business.
Director Burfeind said I think we could look at that; that’s one thing that we have not thought of, I could say,
thinking like a contractor that would actually make firewood, and we’d actually have insurance with them and
contractors.
Administrator Levitt said I think it’s hard to know; Ryan, the last time I saw the pile it was probably about 40 feet
high, how high is it? Director Burfeind said yes, its about that and its just gotten longer. Administrator Levitt said
so, it’s like a massive game of Jenga. I think it would be extremely dangerous, and it is all intermixed.
Council Member Thiede said you’ve got a lot of those people who take ropes and hang from trees and cut limbs
off of trees and things like that. But, at any rate, it’d be interesting to see who would actually say, oh, yeah, and if
you made a couple calls and they say, oh, nobody’s going to touch that, then you’ve got your answer.
Mayor Bailey said so, what I think we should do is why don’t you get a; you said who’s going to get kind of a
budget number?
Director Burfeind said you could talk to our Fire Marshal, Steve, on the Fire Department; but if, as I’m thinking
more about this, too, given the size of the pile, it’s likely that an outside company would come in and do a
controlled burn as well.
Council Member Olsen said and there’s going to be a ton of ash, and so you’ve got to mitigate that, too.
Council Member Khambata said I have one more thought. So, right here, a lumber company came in and cleared
for the farmer, would it be worthwhile to maybe put out for an RFP to a lumber company and see what they would
charge us to remove that pile? Because there’s little effort on our part, and it’s one more alternative, but if they’re
willing to go in and basically clear a hillside, then it feels like we’ve already done half the work for them. They just
have to come with their qualified people and equipment and kind of sort through what they want, and maybe just
see if they’ll bid for it.
Council Member Olsen said when Rumpca grinds that, they just turn it into the mulch that they sell over the
summer, right?
Director Burfeind replied so all this grinding actually go to a place called District Energy to get burned, just
because it’s a mix of soft woods and hardwoods. So, when they do their grinding, they’re not specifically pulling
out hardwood, but maybe they would do some of that here, but mostly it goes to a place called District Energy, but
even with that it’s still $100,000.
Administrator Levitt said I should note the $100,000 would bump that $200,000 contingency. If we’re looking at
the tree replacement, you can get the tree replacement at $198,000; so, it’s keeping you under that $200,000
contingency. If you desire to chip it or do anything more with that pile, it’s above and beyond the Council
contingency.
Mayor Bailey said so just as a side note, now the tree replacement, the goal here if you would, would be
$160,000 for the boulevard trees that were lost; did you say on that other slide it was $81,000? Director Burfeind
replied that would be our cost to replace those. Thinking that this is probably going to come forward, I had a
conversation with Rick Hansen, and there are some dollars out there that we may be able to get that would
replace the trees that were lost. So, that would probably take out that $81,000. I’ll talk with Rick to set up a
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October 2, 2024
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meeting with you guys, and he can guide us which direction to go in order to get those dollars. Because I was
literally even talking about having his fund buy the trees that we put on our boulevards, put aside this issue; but he
just said with those dollars, Minneapolis and St. Paul would want to do the same thing, and he doesn’t want to go
that path. But for a storm replacement option he said he thinks he can get it done. I didn’t know what the number
was until tonight.
Council Member Olsen asked so then if you were able to achieve that goal, that would leave us enough
contingency to deal with the grinding, correct?
Mayor Bailey replied now that Jennifer said that, that’s where I’m trying to think is how do we push it down to
that.
Council Member Olsen said the fire idea is a good idea, and on first glance, you’re like yeah, let’s do that, but
there’s a lot that goes into that.
Council Member Thiede said I still don’t see why we don’t see what a professional can do with it; it’d be
ridiculous not to have that checked out and let people come in and take it rather than having to pay all this money
to do that. Mayor Bailey said I don’t disagree, I mean, it’s an option. Council Member Thiede said well, it sounds
like everybody’s disagreeing.
Council Member Olsen said no, no, no. I mean, when Tony brought it up, the first thing Ryan said was like hey,
we didn’t think about that.
Director Burfeind said I think we definitely have to look at that. Gavin was our Forester, and he’s now our
Management Analyst, I mean that’s his area, right? So, I think he has to look at all the options.
Mayor Bailey said yes, and if we could save the money. I guess the one thing you said, Dave, I just would be
from a liability standpoint, having our citizens go in there. Council Member Thiede said yes, and I agreed with that.
Mayor Bailey said but if we had somebody professionally do it and they wanted it.
Director Burfeind said they’d be licensed and insured, and it’s really what they’re looking for, I’d say we’re
probably fine, but they’ll have to judge the pile. And I think with those big trees, there’s some 40-inch diameter
trees. Council Member Thiede said if you get a couple of those people to come in and take a look at it, and they’ll
tell you right away I’m not going to touch that with a chainsaw. Director Burfeind said I think that’d be a project for
Gavin, I think he could get people in there pretty quick to take a look at it, and I think by Friday we’ll be done
working in there and we can get a good handle on this and stuff.
Council Member Garza said and maybe there’s an opportunity for a mixture, right? Maybe we can get some
people to come in and take what they want.
Council Member Thiede said well, there might still be some stuff left if you get the majority of it out of there.
Council Member Garza said that’d be good. Council Member Olsen said use it for bonfires and stuff, right?
Council Member Khambata said that’s what I was thinking, if we have to babysit that fire, how long is that thing
going to burn? Council Member Thiede said I’ll bring marshmallows.
Director Burfeind said so, I think we definitely will look into that right away, and based on the State funding, one
of our questions for the Council, just to help out on the thoughts was mandatory vs. volunteer boulevard tree
replacement. But if the Council direction and if we can get funding to replace all 162, then we can do that.
Mayor Bailey said if we can; otherwise, we need to, we can look at it.
Council Member Khambata said I think, like for my 20%, if we have to choose between responsible cleanup of
the damage and planting a bunch of new trees, I think the new trees get pushed down on the budget a year if we
can’t get some other resources to help cover the cost of that. I think you have to prioritize planting new trees vs.
mitigating the damage from the storm, I think mitigating the damage from the store is our first priority.
Director Burfeind said the last one is the Tree Removal Policy, the Cleanup Policy, like I said, we hope we won’t
have a storm like this for a long time, but seeing we definitely had some abuse and dealing with this pile, we’re
kind of fortunate we have this land that’s not a pond yet. Working with our standards that we have to meet, it will
be a pond someday, so we won’t always have this more convenient, out-of-the-way location. I mean, is that
something that we still want to consider? And it’s a storm-by-storm basis, I guess, every storm is different; would
you want changes to it? You do have the policy in front of you, any changes you’d like us to make, you know,
basically where it allows us this longer period of time. So, we look at if we do this, it would be a shorter period of
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time; I think we saw more of the abuse, later abuse, for example add to the actual pick up on the curbs vs. just
opening up the compost site for free.
Council Member Thiede said I wonder if you did something like this but people would have to register to have a
pick up. So, if there was somebody that was way away from where the storm avenues, some of these piles, I’ve
even seen things in Hidden Valley, which I don’t think, you know I didn’t have any real big issues. If they had to
actually call in to order it, then they might have a hesitation about having this pile or I’m cleaning up this tree that I
want them to clean up, and I’ll dump it on here for the City to pick up. They might be a little bit more hesitant to
do that, maybe, unless they had a significant issue. Or you could bound the area; we had in there where the
primary area was because of the GIS and things like that, maybe you bound that area where people can put stuff
out. Again, that may not stop the dump truck from unloading a pile or something like that, but I would hope that
with Public Safety, that somebody has an idea on that truck or license plate that you could get them for.
Director Koerner said well, he left an invoice on the pile that this resident saw.
Council Member Olsen asked Gary Orloff, since you live over there, and I know that a lot of the homes right around
your neighborhood were affected, was it your observation that people were kind of like Johnny on the spot, they
got right out there? Because I was driving around after a few days, when it was safer to do that, and that’s what I
saw. I saw people out in their yards right away, even though it was a holiday weekend, they were working on it or
whatever, and it felt to me like the people who had been most affected responded rather rapidly. So, if you talk
about shortening the window, I think it might make some sense. What do you think?
Gary replied I do, as Ryan said. After that 2 weeks, it was pretty much the back yard trees that were down, and
the contractors were coming in. So, people wanted to be able to mow their yard, so they’re not going to leave
them sit there for a month, and you could tell by the trees that were coming out were freshly cut. So, I do agree
with this size storm, 2 weeks would be more than enough.
Council Member Olsen said so, the feedback we got, or at least I got, and I think I can speak for the staff for the
most part here, too, was extremely positive about the way the City handled this. If there was ever a situation that
provided evidence that this team knows what the hell they’re doing and is all about taking care of residents, this
was it. It was flawless. I mean, you put up some of your learnings or whatever, those were pretty minor things, not
that I want to discount those, but I mean, you guys deserve huge credit, and I think you got it for the most part, I
really do. I think the whole team was damned impressive and the residents see that. So, to take away that point
about maybe we pick up a day at the end of the road, I think those are things where people are like, man, I love
living in Cottage Grove; the City government really responds, but shortening it certainly is, that makes sense to me,
but I don’t think you want to completely go away from it, that’s my two cents.
Council Member Garza said so I live in that area as well that got hit really bad. So, right now, today, we still have
piles on our corners or on the corners of our homes, but I’ve been watching these piles; and what’s happening like
one tree fell on a house right behind my home, they just got contractors in there just this last week. When they
were in there, they were removing the trees that were still falling over the roof because they had to replace the
roof. So, those trees came up to the front now; so, right on Hefner, Hillside, and another street that starts with an
H, all of those homes are, those people are actually just now getting their contractors to replace those roofs. So, I
mean, we had a lot of damage in my neighborhood, we were the ones closed down, with a lot of trees on the roofs
and stuff. But their contractors are just now contracting, and they are the ones that came and did some of that
stuff; so, if you shorten that window, I just wonder is that where they would maybe call the City and say, hey, our
contractors just came, and they’re the ones that put some more trees out there because they couldn’t do our roof
without this. So, I don't know.
Council Member Olsen said but that would be something their insurance company would take care of.
Captain Martin said and that’s what I wanted to touch base on; when we talk about the City’s responsibility for
critical infrastructure, we are out there clearing the roads, we have to cut down the trees that have fallen on the
roofs that are in a 30-degree angle over the roofs, and we are responsible for those costs. And what FEMA tells
people is that your responsible for the trees on your property, and you hopefully have homeowners insurance that
will cover that expense for you. So, what happens with cities that experience these types of events is you have the
policymakers who have to make a decision, knowing that FEMA will not reimburse us for, as the previous slide
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said, approximately 25% of those costs. Had we had a Public Assistance Process, we could have submitted for it.
Knowing that FEMA won’t reimburse us for all the debris management, as a policy group, do you still want to say
that’s okay, we’ll shoulder the cost for you? And that’s going to have some budget implications. Or, do you say
look, folks, there’s a certain amount of personal responsibility here, you need to be responsible for your own trees,
and you need to work with your neighbors and homeowners insurance to cover those? So, that’s why in the
existing policy it does say that privately-owned trees are the responsibility of the homeowner, not the
responsibility of the City. Now if you were to have widespread damage that caused the homes to be obliterated, so
when we talk about debris that affects the public health and safety, that debris is left to rot; that’s something’s
that’s going to be jeopardizing public safety. So, this isn’t saying that every single storm the City’s going to act on,
you’re responsible for your own stuff; it’s evaluated on a case-by-case basis, is it jeopardizing public safety as a
whole instead of benefiting individuals. Those are just some of the things that we look at when it comes to
reimbursement.
Council Member Garza said so, with what you just said, did we just do a nice? Council Member Khambata said
yeah, we did a really nice thing. Council Member Garza asked we just did a nice thing, then? Council Member
Khambata agreed. Mayor Bailey said yeah, we never said we were going to do it all, whatever they had in their
yards. Council Member Olsen said we have done it in the past. Director Burfeind said we did this in 2021. Council
Member Garza said okay, that’s what I was wondering about.
Director Burfeind said we have done it when it’s a large, Citywide event; so, in 2021, it didn’t impact certain
areas, but it was a big event, it was in September, like the day before the Public Works open house, terrible timing,
but that was a Citywide impact and we did a similar thing, and that’s kind of been the trigger in the past years. We
didn’t do an Emergency Declaration in 2021, but it was almost to this scale, and that’s kind of maybe what tripped
them into doing the pick ups.
Council Member Khambata says I have three takeaways from this regarding like how long we should pick up:
The GIS system was awesome for you guys to map where the stuff was down. Our Public Works crew that was
clearing the roads, those trees were mapped with GIS and then they went back out and they cleaned that up. So,
those trees, if they were boulevard trees, Public Works already cleaned up those trees when they cleared them in
our subsequent days. Anybody who is paying a contractor to trim trees in their yard, the contractor’s price should
include disposal and removal of those trees; so, I think the people who probably benefit the most from this policy
are the contractors, who are charging full price but not removing those trees. I think between the GIS and Public
Works taking their trees when they’re doing their specific work orders, and well-meaning contractors who are
removing trees that they take down, I think 90% of the material is being removed anyway. Two weeks I think is
pretty generous, and I think yet for the instances where somebody’s like hey, I can’t get to this, you know, they can
call Public Works and ask them to come and do a specific pick up. I think the number of people who are going to
call Public Works and go that extra step vs. like hey, if I put it on the curb, somebody’s going to take it away; if it’s
like I have to go and ask for permission to have Public Works take it and have a justifiable reason, I think that
would eliminate a lot of the abuse. I think between Public Works, GIS mapping, and tree contractors removing
their own material, I don’t see a reason to give people the opportunity to abuse it.
Council Member Garza said that’s ensuring they didn’t take advantage of it and I think the people around there;
Council Member Khambata said and a roofing contractor, like you said, if it’s in the way, like that should be part of
the roofing bid. That has nothing to do with it.
Council Member Olsen said one thing is you should be talking to the insurance company.
Mayor Bailey said what was happening, well, not everywhere, but was some of these contractors are going to
these homeowners and taking down the trees or taking them off the house and putting them on the boulevard,
and still charging the homeowner, but less, though. Administrator Levitt said yes, they were charging them less.
Mayor Bailey said they were charging them less because they said the City was going to remove it. I thought
somebody, Gary, did you guys talk to them?
Gary replied I called a few of them up and said to quit doing that. Gary said there was one who said he never
would have came in there, and so he did charge less to get in that quick. Ryan and I were chasing the crane guys
around, and he even said we’re part of the deal, we’ve got people coming to pick this up yet today. So, when you
were talking about those other ones getting removed, that is part of their deal; they’re getting paid, homeowners
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insurance paid for that already. It was the private guys like came over on the Grove side and went in the back
yards, and they, I mean, literally some of those piles would take us four hours; they took every tree down possible.
Council Member Garza said well, that’s what my point is, though. So I see these trees that fell in the back yards,
huge trees, they had the contractors come out, they cut the tree down, and they put it on the curb. And they
received a discount for not having the contractor remove the trees, and they put it on us, pretty much, to remove
them and I’ve seen a lot of that.
Council Member Olsen asked Gary would you say a 2-week timeframe is probably adequate?
Gary replied I would. Most of it, what we’ve seen all the way back to 1993 are the ones that I dealt with, that
was a big one, and we did burn that pile; I was on the Fire Department and we did burn that one. But we should be
out helping these ones that can’t afford to call a contractor, they’re using their own saws and mucking it up and
bringing it out.
Council Member Olsen said that’s what I saw when I was out in your neighborhood.
Gary said but this storm, out of all the storms and I’ve been through quite a few, I’ve never seen contractors pile
it up; even in 1993, the contractors hauled it away. This one literally and I was calling, I said I don’t want our
residents being taken advantage of; if you charged them, you come back and get it, and some of them did come
back and get it. Some were honest and said no, we came in, knowing we would only be here for X amount of time,
get it on the loader and leave. But we should be helping the people that can’t afford a contractor, because that
contractor’s charging them no matter what they’re telling you. Even the one guy offered me and Ryan to just
leave, he hurried up and grabbed the pile, and he goes, I’ll give you the $400, that’s what I’m paying the guy to
come grab it, behind you. Director Burfeind said yeah, we were yelling at one, and he’s like I’ve got the truck
coming this afternoon and he’s obviously been fine. Gary said all the guys you’re seeing with the big trees in the
back yards that used the cranes, they had people already hired out. They were coming from Iowa, out of state,
they already have the people that take it away. Contractors did take advantage of not hauling it away, which is one
of the biggest expenses of it vs. taking down a tree.
Mayor Bailey said I know Wright was in there for Xcel; did they take all theirs, though?
Director Burfeind said so that would be a lesson learned, and it was my last one to touch on for tree removal.
They did, but they were piling it, and they were coming back 2-to-3 days later. They said that no, we will, but I said,
well, how are we going to know? We’re just going down that road, we’ve got a skid loader going, Washington
County doesn’t even know our town, like we’re picking it up. So, I think in the future, if we’re doing this, we’ve got
to work with Xcel right away; I don't know if we’re going to get addresses, how we would do it, but our crews
would have no idea that that’s a Wright Tree Service pile vs. one of ours.
Mayor Bailey said that’s what I’m saying; so, I guess we as a Council would have the choice to say put everything
down or not, right? I think the 2 weeks after is fine because I do believe what’s happening right now, even where I
live, there’s people putting stuff down and I’m like I had nothing happen in my neighborhood, so. I don’t know, but
to your point, though, on the other hand, I know Dave had mentioned that you could say, okay, if it’s right in this
area and we’re only going to do that area; however, I do know off of Ideal, down from the football stadium, there
was a massive tree over Ideal. I do think that the lesson learned in this particular case would be we say we’re going
to cover all the boulevard trees, anything, obviously, that’s owned if you will by the City; and then maybe we say
that we’ll cover the cost of them bringing it on their own down to Rumpca’s, but they have to do it or the
contractors deal with their stuff. I agree with you, I think you’re going to have to figure that out with Xcel, however
they manage that for the future, especially when we’re trying to go back through and clean things up.
Director Burfeind said the timeframe is also critical just for resources, too. I mean, the phone calls that we
continue to get throughout, and just the work orders that keep getting generated that pull people from some of
the other things we need to do, is incredible because it’s a one-month period.
Council Member Olsen said what I was going to say is if there was ever an argument for the way that we manage
the budget and the way that we support the various departments and how that then translates into the service
level that the residents of Cottage Grove have come to expect, this is it; I mean seamless, everybody jumped on it,
great feedback from the residents with the rapid response, the road response. I know that I was texting Pete
addresses from people calling me, and I know the mayor was getting calls. People see something like this and what
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October 2, 2024
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they say is what a blessing it is to live in this community. I mean, how grateful am I that we have such dedicated
staff. There’s a huge amount of capital in that when it comes to the PR piece and those sorts of things that
sometimes frankly the City doesn’t get. But this was front and center, like, hey, this is what you pay your taxes for,
look at this, this was awesome, and we still deliver it at the second lowest per capita tax rate in Washington
County. I mean you guys just deserve so much credit. And if it makes it easier to cut it down to 2 weeks and it still
provides that same level of confidence and service that the residents have come to expect, but it also provides a
little bit more of a reality check relative to what you guys are doing, I would fully support that. But I do not support
not doing it at all.
Mayor Bailey said so just a couple of quick questions on some of the takeaways that you guys had: I know I think
Nick you had made a comment that one of the takeaways was instead of being over there, I’m assuming being in
here, would that be the case? My question, though, from being up there and observing and watching, it seems like
there was different, you guys had it broken out perfectly; you had a group over on the police side doing their stuff,
the main room, social media was over in another area, Brenda was doing numbers on the other side and I can’t
remember, there was something else. This is just me thinking out loud: Does it make sense to not necessarily have
everybody in one big room?
Captain Martin replied having a big room with groups of people is one way to do it. We have the St. Croix Room
as a breakout room, we’ve got conference rooms throughout here, so absolutely you would still make use of these
certain rooms. When you’re talking about an EOC activation and what all goes on with your Incident Command,
your PIO, your Operations, your Logistics, your Planning; having people in a room so your planning person can go
to your logistics person and say hey, I need this, rather than having to run to the next room is sometimes very
helpful. So, having a bigger space, having room to expand more, and that’s what this room was designed for; its
got the outlets in there and you set up these squares of tables. So, for the 2023 winter storm, we set up at Public
Works, and that was fine. So, in the next storm, we may set up here and have 3 people here and think, oh, we
should have set it up another place.
Director Koerner said as the event continued, though, longer, we didn’t have everything by 11:30; normal daily
operations would have to start in the morning, so we’re like why is this Communications team sitting here? So, we
just started here and then we would have had to move them over to the other side.
Mayor Bailey stated the only reason I asked about it is because I could see Jennifer walk out to talk to social
media; hey, this is what you need over here is an example. Brenda, how much did we spend, I remember some of
the things we were talking about, how much did we spend on that last storm? What are we talking about when we
declare an emergency, what do we have to meet?
He said the other question I had for that evening, so you guys were using the white board at first, and then it
went over to GIS; was that always intended to be that way, was it always going to start with the white board and
then go to GIS, or did somebody say hey, you know what, we got GIS, let’s use it. Do you know?
Captain Martin said I think it’s both. I think when you start, it’s the handheld stuff, the incident objectives are
often scrawled on a cocktail napkin because you’re catching somebody identifying, and you always start with the
basic stuff, and then you expand with some of the technology. So, you will see that again. As we set up the next
EOC, it will happen, hopefully not for a while, but it will happen; hopefully I won’t be out in Montana, agate
hunting. But it will start with the old-fashioned pen and paper, and as people come in with the expertise, I can’t
run the GIS application, but I don’t need to run the GIS application; I need to know the guy or gal who can do it and
bring them in and things will progress.
Mayor Bailey said I was amazed by how quickly everything happened and the great work all you guys did.
Council Member Olsen said everybody across the board, and man, was it awesome. Gary said it was the smoothest
operation through a storm I ever worked here; it helped me out tremendously, at Public Works, because we’re
usually on our own through a storm like this, and I couldn’t believe how quick it happened and how quick we had
the roads open. Like Ryan said, no one got hurt, the roads were open, and it was because of everybody.
Council Member Olsen said and like Brad said, the training takes over, right? You train for it and it works.
Gary said, and like I said, the residents were bringing us Chick-fil-A sandwiches, and the people loved the quick
response and the service. Even other communities were calling me, saying God, I wish I lived in Cottage Grove, and
people were hearing about it all over. Council Member Olsen said let them know we’re building.
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October 2, 2024
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Director Koerner said yes, I took some eggrolls; they came out and gave the workers like 100 of them, the
neighbors were so happy. Mayor Bailey said that’s very cool.
Mayor Bailey asked is there anything else that staff needs on any of this, but there was not.
14. WORKSHOPS - CLOSED TO PUBLIC - None.
15. ADJOURNMENT
Motion by Council Member Thiede, second by Council Member Olsen, to adjourn the meeting at 8:53 p.m.
Motion carried: 5-0.
Minutes prepared by Judy Graf and reviewed by Tamara Anderson, City Clerk.