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CC Work Session 2. 1. <br />Meeting Date: 06/17/2014 <br />Information <br />Title: <br />Review of Revised Lower Rum River Watershed Management Organization Joint Powers Agreement. <br />Purpose /Background: <br />Purpose: <br />The purpose of this case is to review the latest draft of the revised Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) for the Lower <br />Rum River Watershed Management Organization (LRRWMO), which is attached in both clean and redline versions. <br />Background: <br />The existing Lower Rum River Watershed Management Organization (LRRWMO) Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) <br />provides for each member city to receive one vote on any matter requiring a vote. Since there are currently three <br />member cities in the LRRWMO (Andover, Anoka, and Ramsey), each city receives one -third of the total vote. The <br />City of Ramsey has historically paid about 45% of the LRRWMO's annual costs due to our large area of land <br />within the LRRWMO and our net tax capacity. Comparatively, both Andover and Anoka pay considerably less. <br />Considering our greater financial obligation it seemed reasonable to request that Ramsey receive a larger percentage <br />of the total vote, especially when considering potential large capital improvement projects such as the proposed <br />Anoka Dam reconstruction. <br />On October 8, 2013, Council member Kuzma proposed an amendment to the LRRWMO Board allowing for <br />weighted voting whenever LRRWMO related capital improvement projects were to be considered. However, any <br />time a simple majority vote would be required, Ramsey would still only receive an equal vote to the other two <br />member cities. This amendment would have allowed capital improvement projects to be approved after receiving a <br />minimum of 66% of the vote with each member city being allocated a percentage of the total vote equivalent to the <br />amount contributed annually to the general fund. This proposal was discussed on several occasions but the <br />LRRWMO Board never adopted it. The Cities of Andover and Anoka both indicated they didn't approve of a <br />weighted vote as proposed. <br />On January 14, 2014, the City Council was updated at a workshop on the status of the City's proposal to allow the <br />use of weighted voting when considering the approval of LRRWMO driven capital improvement projects. <br />On March 11, 2014, the City Council reviewed proposed amendments to the LRRWMO JPA as drafted by WMO <br />attorney Charles LeFevere with Kennedy & Graven. A memo summarizing the purpose of the proposed <br />amendments was also reviewed. The memo stated the proposed amendments were intended to clarify certain <br />provisions of the JPA relating to the funding of capital improvement projects, as well as to clean up the JPA in <br />several areas including updating citations to state law and making the form of the citations uniform, provide for the <br />consistent use of defined terms, clean up typos and grammatical errors, remove all references to Coon Rapids since <br />they are no longer a member city, and extending the term of the agreement another 10 years to January 1, 2025. <br />The City Attorney reviewed the proposed amendments and felt that the revised document was an improvement, <br />though more extensive changes could have been made to more clearly set forth the capital improvement project <br />funding process. He also felt the revised language more clearly prevents member cities from being forced to pay a <br />capital improvement project allocation. If objections are raised to CIP funding, the issue will go to non - binding <br />arbitration, and if that fails, the capital improvements will be funded via Minnesota Statute section 103B.251 <br />(County bonds). <br />On June 2, 2014, a revised version of the draft LRRWMO JPA as drafted by WMO Attorney Charlie LeFevere was <br />submitted to WMO Chair Todd Haas with the City of Andover, along with the following qualifying statements; <br />