Greetings!
I hope everyone had a safe and fun Independence Day weekend. I was able to spend some time with my family and neighbors, which was nice. This week I’m going to provide some additional information about our sanitary sewer provider, MRVPUC. If you have any questions or comments about this blog, my email is jkruggel@cityoflesueur.com, and my phone number is 507-593-8312.
7/102017 City Council Meeting Agenda
We have a fairly robust agenda for July 7th, and I’ll give a little summary of the high points. Take a look at the entire packet if you have time. Also, we stream all of our City Council meetings on Livestream and will soon be streaming on Facebook Live.
The consent agenda, which is used to approve items that don’t require in-depth discussion consists of a maintenance agreement with Le Sueur County, authorization to participate in a municipal money market account, and a request to the county for additional time to evaluate a tax-forfeited property.
The regular agenda has some heavy-hitting items. The first being the bond sale for the 2017 Improvement Project. We get to find out what our interest rate will be on this bond sale, and in turn, property owners who choose to pass their assessment to their tax roll will learn what their interest rate will be. We also participated in an S&P rating call which evaluates the financial state of the City. We received an AA- rating, which is great for the city, hopefully ensuring we receive competitive quotes. Next, we have agreements with the school district to use the Community Center and to share an employee between Community Education and Parks & Recreation. Also on the agenda is an item renewing a financial services agreement with AEM, which currently provides these services and has done a very good job. There is a nuisance discussion on the agenda, and then I will go through the budget process and receive input from the City Council regarding budget priorities.
If you ever want to talk more about City Council meetings or have any questions about the agenda, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Downtown Master Planning Project
HKGi continues to gather information about the project through a community survey. There will be another open house on August 10th; please keep an eye out for more details.
Streets Division
We finalized our quote process for seal coating, crack sealing, and fog sealing. We received very good quotes, and Allied Blacktop won all three projects. They will coordinate their project around the Giant Celebration to minimize any impacts to patrons and the parade route.
Water/Wastewater Division
This group continues to tackle maintenance projects within the City. Sewer jetting and video of the line is being conducted on Main Street. It is good that we are performing maintenance as the line quite dirty. This maintenance is required to reduce the chance of sewer backups in your house. Also, the group is doing some housekeeping at Well No. 6, cleaning up the area.
Electric Division
The Electric Division is continuing work on the 400 block of Park Lane.
Community Development
The Downtown Master Plan banner you’ve maybe seen around town was moved to Ridgeview Le Sueur Medical Center in hopes of getting younger families to attend the upcoming public meetings. Sam met with Pam Williams, CEO, and went on a tour of Ridgeview. Sam also had a meeting with Le Sueur County to discuss tax forfeited parcels and the future use of those parcels and how we can partner together to see they are meeting the highest and best use in the future.
Parks and Recreation
Pickleball continues to be a weekly occurrence at the Community Center a few times a week. Pickleball is a smaller court version of Tennis. Pickleball continues to be a growing sport in the retirement community nationally due to the reduced amount of distance needed to be covered on a tennis court but still providing a level of excursion to the participant.
Also, Parks and Recreation Director, Layne Wilbright met with representatives from Agropur to work on a partnership to get employees healthy by realizing the benefits of exercise. The collaborative group discussed ideas for a membership drive with possible fun employee days with incentives.
Facilities
The Facility Manager has been doing some summer maintenance on ice arena equipment getting ready for the ice season (It’s almost here!). Also, they are installing a monitor system in the City Council chambers that will allow for presentations to be viewed by both the City Council and patrons in attendance. This system should be active for the July 26th City Council Meeting.
City Clerk/Communications
City Clerk Stacy Lawrence is also the Communications Director. Her role at the City consists of handling a lot of the behind the scenes action with the community, along with keeping everyone sane at City Hall. She also uses social media to help spread awareness about community events. LSI has challenged other businesses or entities in the community to see who can have the most participants in the Giant 5K. Current businesses officially competing are LSI, Cambria, ISD #2397, Ridgeview Le Sueur Medical Center and YourTime Fitness.
Market Fest Le Sueur kicks off July 13th and will run each Thursday through August 10th. Hours will be 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM. Fun, family-friendly activities, vendors, and business specials can be found on South Main Street. Visit their Facebook page!
The July Le Sueur Living Newsletter is complete. As always, paper copies are included in the monthly billing statements.
Minnesota River Valley Public Utilities Commission (MRVPUC)
Minnesota River Valley Public Utilities Commission or MRVPUC which is much less of a mouthful is a group formed by Henderson and Le Sueur to operate the wastewater treatment plant located in Le Sueur. The main goal of this organization is to provide wastewater treatment services to the entities at a wholesale rate. Another member of the group is Agropur, and this is due to MRVPUC absorbing their wastewater treatment permit at the time the plant was constructed.
MRVPUC is a little over ten years old and has done a very good job of operating the plant. City of Le Sueur employees are performing the work at the plant, and the City invoices MRVPUC for those services. This model has worked well over the years, but the board, which consists of three Councilmembers from Henderson and three Councilmembers from Le Sueur, are examining other business models that would allow MRVPUC to operate more independently.
MRVPUC is consistently doing work to enhance or make operations at the facility more efficient and cost effective. 2017 is no different as they are examining ways to better monitor the waste stream and create a more favorable working atmosphere in a very harsh environment.
MRVPUC has done a good job of balancing their budget priorities with the priorities of the cities, but as the facility ages, additional maintenance will be needed to continue operations at a high level. Planning will likely occur by each of the cities to help fund these necessary improvements, but the funding mechanism for this planning has yet to be developed. Likely as the board moves along their business model development, the cost share breakdown and mechanisms for funding will follow shortly after.
There will be an open house at the MRVPUC facility sometime in August, keep an eye out for the notice and check it out if you’re interested. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to call or email.
Closing Thoughts
Again, working on making these things a little shorter, but there just so much to talk about! If you have anything specific you want to be discussed in more detail, please reach out. Have a great weekend!