Minutes - Council Work Session - 11/14/2023

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Councilmember Woestehoff asked if they have the capacity to turn down one of the water towers while it gets refurbished. Parks and Assistant Public Works Director Riverblood said yes and explained that the new water treatment plant will have a 1,000,000 gallon water storage with pumps to bring the water up to City pressure which is more than the capacity of the water towers. Finance Director Lund explained how this process will work moving forward and shared that she will bring this to the Council for introduction at their next meeting. Councilmember Specht asked if they are going to continue to move forward with the playground replacements next year. Parks and Assistant Public Works Director Riverblood said yes and noted that they should be able to get two done by the spring. The consensus of the Council was to prioritize trails over the aeration at Sunfish Lake and to direct Staff to move forward with the CIP. 2.02: Continued Discussion of 2024 Budget/Levies Finance Director Lund reviewed the Staff report and gave updates on the 2024 budget and levies. City Administrator Hagen discussed the closing of the Ramsey Elementary skating rink. He explained that they ran the numbers on the savings and the only thing that this adjusted was the seasonal worker wages. He shared that they sent out a survey to other cities about their Public Works departments so that the City can compare this information. He noted that they are still waiting on the information from all cities. Councilmember Woestehoff thanked Staff for their work on collecting this information. Councilmember Musgrove also thanked Staff for their work. She asked about Lino Lakes and if they have parks staff as it was not listed in the information provided. Parks and Assistant Public Works Director Riverblood explained that some cities pool their maintenance resources together for both parks and streets. He added that Lino Lakes also has substantial County park land. He noted that he can gather more information on this while they wait for the additional cities to respond. Administrative Services Director Lasher added that they are still waiting on a greater response on this with more data coming in. She noted that they will try to put some charts together once they have collected all of the data. Councilmember Musgrove discussed the funding totals in the September financial reports that are on the Consent Agenda for the Council meeting this evening. She noted that the format of this is not the same as the budget format. She added that she was not able to find all of the information City Council Work Session/November 14, 2023 Page 5 of 7