Agenda - Council Work Session - 06/17/2014

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Attached is a revised version of the Lower Rum River Watershed Management Organization Joint Powers Agreement and a redline showing changes from the last draft. In response to comments from the City of Andover, I have reduced the number of terms used to describe the Commission and its Members. References to the Commission are all changed to "LRRWMO ". The Board of Commissioners is simply referred to as the "Board" and individual members of the Board are referred to as "Commissioners". The Member Cities are referred to throughout as `Member City" and the councils of those cities are referred to as `Member City Councils ". The former draft of the Joint Powers Agreement contained provisions related to the funding of capital projects in both Article VII and Article VIII. The attached draft includes in Article VII provisions relating to how capital projects are to be funded, either by contributions from the Member Cities or a county tax levy under Minnesota Statutes, Section 103B.251. Provisions in Article VIII now deal only with how those payments are to be made by the cities for capital projects that are not fully funded from other sources. Andover suggested that the Joint Powers Agreement should define in more detail what is considered to be a capital improvement project and more specific direction as to what is classified as member maintenance. The rules of BWSR at Minn. Rules, Part 8410.0020, subpart 3 defines "capital improvement" as "a physical improvement that is not directed toward maintenance of an in place system during its life expectancy. "Since this is in the state rules applicable to WMOs it may not be necessary to repeat it in the JPA. I don't have a good definition of maintenance. In my experience, joint powers WMOs don't generally own and operate capital improvements. Rather, they are owned maintained and operated by the host city. However, dealing with maintenance, repair and operation could be handled differently and this should be decided and agreed upon by the parties before constructing a capital project. In correspondence from the city of Ramsey, it appears that their primary concern continues to be the fact that Ramsey, or Ramsey taxpayers, may be required to pay the cost of capital projects that it does not favor. Unfortunately, Minnesota Statutes does not allow joint powers agreements to require unanimous consent for capital projects. See Minnesota Statutes, Section 103B.211, Subd. 1 (c). On June 3, 2014, Todd Haas submitted the revised version of the JPA to the City Administrators of the three member cities for distribution and review along with the following qualifying statements; Attached is revised version (one is clean version and the other is a redline version) of the LRR WMO joint powers agreement that has been prepared by Charlie LeFevere, attorney for the LRRWMO. Please review the agreement by Friday, June 27th and let me know one or another if any additional changes need to be considered by Charlie LeFevere.If there are no changes that need to be considered, I will send another e -mail to each of the Cities to move forward to having the joint powers agreement to be approved by your City Council. If the three member cities are unable to agree on a proposed JPA amendment, the existing JPA terminates on January 1, 2015. At that time, Anoka County would assume the responsibilities of the WMO and act as the WMO for the watershed, or they would petition the Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) for creation of a watershed district. The County or watershed district would then assume all responsibilities of the WMO for surface water management within the watershed area. This is an important point as the County or watershed district could fund capital improvement projects within the watershed in any number of ways, but whichever way is used it would generally result in the taxpayers of the largest cities, or the cities having the highest tax value, paying the largest share of capital improvement projects. In addition, none of the member cities would have a vote in any decisions made by the County or watershed district to undertake a capital improvement project. In other words, it would likely be better to accept and extend the terms of the current JPA then to let it lapse and let the County assume the responsibilities of the WMO. Timeframe: