Agenda - Council - 08/11/2014 - Laserfiche WebLink

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improvements will be funded via Minnesota Statute section 103B.251 (County bonds). On June 2, 2014, a revised version of the draft LRRWMO JPA drafted by WMO Attorney Charlie LeFevere was submitted to WMO Chair Todd Haas with the City of Andover, along with the following qualifying statements; 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 LRRWMO 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. At the June 17th Council Work Session, the City Council reviewed and approved the revised JPA by consensus with one minor revision requested; change the word "may" to "shall" in the last sentence of the fourth paragraph of Subdivision 4. This requested revision was accepted by the WMO attorney and is identified in the attached redlined version of the revised JPA. The City Councils of the other two member cities, Andover and Anoka, reviewed and approved the revised JPA as attached with no additional revisions requested, and subsequently formally approved and executed the new JPA. The City of Ramsey will be the last city to formally approve and execute the revised JPA upon Council approval. If any additional revisions are requested by the Ramsey City Council the proposed revisions would again need to be reviewed and approved by the two other member cities before the existing JPA terminates on January 1, 2015. If a