The Hampton City Council met on Tuesday, October 8, 2024 at the Hampton City Hall for the regular scheduled meeting. Present were Mayor John Knetter; Council Members David Luhring, Anthony Verch and Nick Russell. Council member Jerry Huddleston was absent. Also present was Brad Fisher of Bolten & Menk as well as Chris Meyer, City Treasurer and Marlin Reinardy.
Regular Meeting called to Order - Mayor Knetter called the Regular Scheduled Meeting to order at 7:00 p.m.
Disclosure of Interest – None
Approval of September 10, 2024 Regular Scheduled Meeting Minutes – Motion by Luhring seconded by Russell to approve the September 10, 2024 Regular Scheduled Meeting Minutes. All voted in favor. None opposed. Motion passed 4:0.
Approval of Disbursements - Motion by Russell seconded by Luhring to approve the October disbursements, including the Approval for final payment for the Pavement Maintenance Project in the amount of $12,767.28. All voted in favor. None opposed. Motion passed 4:0.
Public Comments – Marlin Reinardy asked if the frontage road was going to get striped. The Mayor said that they where going to. Brad Fisher spoke up and said that he would have to look back at it and that he couldn’t recall but he assumes that it should have been. The Mayor then asked Fisher if he could reach out to the people in charge to get the stripping taken care off. Both the Mayor and Fisher agree that they remember stripping being included, with Fisher saying that he remembers talking about wider shoulders and something about semi-parking.
Mayor Knetter recognized a Deputy in attendance, thanked him for his service and asked him if he had anything to report. The Deputy approached the podium warning of a new scam that is going around. This information is being shared to everyone, but the scam is people are being notified by phone that they missed a court date or that they have a federal subpoena that they didn’t show up for and the authorities are saying that they can pay by bitcoin. There have been three victims here in Dakota County and they have lost $20,000, $15,000, and $5,000 in this scam. The Deputy went on to mention that it is believed that the scam is coming out of an actual prison from out of state, an organization of people that work in the prison. The scam is country wide and they’re posing as Law Enforcement, saying that you owe fines and that you need to pay it. They’re pretty aggressive in nature. The Deputy says to don’t fall for it, that Law Enforcement doesn’t operate that way, that they don’t demand payment through bitcoin or any other way. He then goes on to report that they have received a lot of school bus stop-run violations. And that it’s a misdemeanor if the kids are not off the bus and gross misdemeanor if the kids are off the bus. It’s a pretty high offense and they have been heavy on that. He also wanted to mention that on the Sheriff’s page on the Dakota County website that there is a form for a request for extra patrol and that he encourages residents to use that form. The dispatch center has also rolled out an online, non-emergency service that you can access online to fill out a form. It creates a CAD, which is a call for them, and its to be used for non-emergency. They are still actively investigating for the missing woman, Nicole Anderson, and that if anyone has any information to please let them know. They are also bringing in new people, new faces, and constantly hiring.
Members of the Council then went on to thank the police for their efforts in getting the speed on 47 through town under control.
Websites mentioned above:
https://www.co.dakota.mn.us/Government/Sheriff - to fill out the extra patrol request form
https://dakota911mn.gov/ - to fill out the non-emergency service form
Petitions, Requests, and Communications: A request of the Communication of Bank Authorized Signers. A motion is needed to remove Judy O’Brien and add Kelly Roan to the Bank Signing Authority. Motion by Luhring and seconded by Verch to remove O’Brien and add Roan. All voted in favor. None opposed. Motion passes 4:0.
Ordinances and Resolutions:
Resolution 2024 – 13 Resolution Adopting City-Led Engineering Practices for Private Development of PID 180080030012 – Was removed and dismissed
Resolution 2024 – 14 Resolution Accepting Work for the 2024 Pavement Maintenance Project Motion made by Russell seconded by Luhring to approve the now called Resolution 2024 – 13 Accepting work for the 2024 Pavement Maintenance Project. All voted in favor. None opposed. Motion passes 4:0
Resolution 2024 – 14 Resolution Accepting Bids and Awarding Contract – 100,000 Elevated Water Storage Tank Project Motion made by Luhring seconded by Verch to table the Resolution 2024 – 14 until the next City Council Meeting. All voted in favor. None opposed. Motion passes 4:0
Reports of Officers, Boards, and Committees:
Engineer Report – Brad Fisher of Bolten & Menk: The bids came in for the water tower. They came in higher than what was hoped for. There is a limited number of contractors who perform water tower work in the Midwest and they all have a healthy amount of work right now. That combined with the inflation impacting the increased material prices. The last thing that we got hit with is just the fact that it is a smaller water tower. When we’re trying to scale out these, a lot of it has to do with material amount based on the size of the tower. There is a base amount of work that has to go into these. We’re seeing that reflected here in the bid prices. We have 61 days after the bid opening to decide, November 18th is the deadline. Or not accept the bid and rebid in the spring. The only real way of seeing the prices going down is if the workload where to decrease. But it’s a gamble to see if and when that could happen. Based on that Fisher’s recommendation is if the city’s treasurer finds it financially feasible for the city, he would recommend approval based on the bids that was given back. Fisher stated that they also did some research on the bidding as they weren’t not expecting numbers to be so high, they did research on recent bids and reached out to other communities, stating that bids on water towers don’t happen every day, but he did say the decision to not go with PFA funding through the state was neither a plus nor a minus. In general, he found that those coming in were 15% to 20% higher when you had Buy America, Steal Provisions and everything that comes along with utilizing that money. It certainly wasn’t a detraction for the city to decide to not go with that. One last thing Fisher wanted to add, because it was in the Bolten & Menk contract: We went through bidding and whenever we do make that decision, we can table this, if we table up the decision on the award, we have a proposal that was also included in here for our services for contract administration and inspection, as well as material testing throughout construction. That would be something that you’d want to consider as part of that, letting us know if there’s a different level of service you’d like to see out of us. What we had included in there is what we think is necessary based on our experience with other water towers from an inspection standpoint, but certainly open to feedback on that once we get to a point of needing to decide, but just understanding that that’s a piece of what goes into the total project cost, not just the construction cost.
Councilmember Luhring asked what the difference is between one and two. Alternate 1 (Resolution 2024 – 14) is too remove and salvage the existing 75,000-gallon tank. Alternate 2 (Resolution – 14) is to demolish the existing 75,000-gallon tank.
Marlin wanted to know if we’re getting a 125,000-gallon tank, the council assured him that with everything they had read it was to be a 100,000-gallon tank. He was inquiring because only increasing by 25,000-gallon might be too small. Both the Mayor and Fisher told him that with smaller communities, like Hampton, you need to have water turnover. If you make too big of water tower, the water won’t turn over and you end up having issues with potential freezing in the winter and causing issues down the line with long term maintenance and water pressure as well.
Chris Meyer, City Treasurer came in, the bids for the Water Tower came in $400,000 over budget. He said with the pavement project that we just did, we used the sewer fund to fund that project and it depleted a lot of the excess. We could do and Chris throws out a number, maybe $100,000, $150,000, but not $400,000. He said that he will talk with Shannon Sweeney and they will get all the numbers in order. Mayor Knetter said that he would like to sit down with Chris after he talks with Shannon. Anytime Hampton has a project Shannon will pull up the numbers, he’ll do the tax impact on the houses and will provide all that information. The Mayor said that we need to understand all the information before we move forward. Councilmember Luhring asks Chris if he could provide all that information at the next City Council meeting.
Mayor Knetter went on to ask if anyone would like to go and look for any grants, there are some federal funds. Councilmember Verch said that he might have time to look. Mayor Knetter said that Angie Craig has a website you can visit that helps with getting grants.
Brad Fisher went on to finish his staff report by mentioning just a small AUAR update. The 30-day public comment is still going and will officially close on October 24th at 4:00pm. Councilmember Verch wanted to ask Fisher one thing: You had said there were certain things that Bolten & Menk does, everything you guys bid out is no fluff as far as the water tower project. You said we had taken away certain inspections and stuff like that, but that’s not recommended. Mayor Knetter interjected with: That would not be for the water tower bid, that would be for their services. Councilmember Verch answered: They’re services, so that’s over and above what I’m seeing here. I don’t see how we can bring that down enough to make it feasible. But are there major things that can be done? Fisher went on to answer: We’ll hire a geotechnical firm that would do the materials testing. The terms in the industry are you have a specified density, which means that we come out and test and we verify that you do compaction to a specific density. So, they take a sample of the material, figure out what that compaction rate is, test that to verify that they’re getting compaction. The other end of it is, quality compaction, essentially that’s just a fancy word for saying we’re gonna stand out there and watch it to the best of our visual ability and make sure that you compacted that. That would be a little bit of savings. To your point that’ll decrease by $5,000 if you didn’t want to do steel testing, which is what you typically do. Mayor Knetter states: I would not recommend we do that. Councilmember Verch asks: I was wondering, some of these testings, is that the responsibility of the contractor that’s erecting this tower as well? Fisher replied: Some things are included in the contract; other things are done by a third party that we hire. Some things we allow them to do essentially in-house and we just observe it the other way around is we hire that third party to come in and do it, mainly for the site inspections. It’d be welding inspections, things like that, where we have a certified welder come in and actually observe the welding inspections. Councilmember Verch asked: I just didn’t know if there was overlap as far as compaction tests, they should probably be doing that on their own, or have a third party come in, but you’re also having someone come in. It’s your responsibility, not theirs, and they’re good? Or was that just an example? Mayor Knetter answered: It’s a QAQC. The contractor is responsible to do it. We want someone there to say it’s been done right. Same with welding check, if you don’t check somebody’s welds and let’s say you want an x-ray of the weld and they x-ray the same weld seven times. This one looks great, but that wasn’t the entire tower. Councilmember Verch added: And I just didn’t know if there was overlap within the bid that they were required to have a third party test it or something. Fisher went on to clarify: No, we went through that, internally, which was something I have not shown you, but to me they identified the items that are being completed by the contractor and then what our specialty staff needs to complete. And then a subset of that is called my civil group by roadway utility extension on Lincoln St. That’s what my team is going to be more in charge of a certain subset of that, call it 20,000 of that. We have identified in there for when they’re actually putting in the sanitary sewer and water main and building up that roadway so that’s another thing where right now I think we have allocated like 25 hours a week to watch them which isn’t even full time but if that’s another place where you could say hey we just want you to stop in two days a week not be there every single day checking in on them again you’re slowly taking a little bit away and that’s something that we can do if it’s going to help make it more financially feasible from the city’s perspective you just have to understand that you’re losing the level of service by doing that. Councilmember Verch responded by saying he got it and thank you.
Water / Sewer Report – Mayor Knetter went on to report that in water: we’re cutting that last quarter samples into tomorrow morning, sewer is actively discharging right now, potential samples are good I guess as far as I know. There is movement on the phosphorus reduction, there’s something coming in the next 12 months. One will be as addition to the water bill last quarter asking people to not put any phosphorus sold products or something like that. More information to come on that as we go through the current permit for the sewer plant.
Park Report – Councilmember Russel went on to report: No Major updates. The only inquiry that was out there was just trash removed from the parks.
Street Report – Councilmember Luhring went on to report: Nothing to report on streets, just that Kelly got the street sweeping scheduled for fall. Luhring asked a question for next year, is there a mechanism for us to do better weed control on the curb and gutter? The weeds between the joint of asphalt and curb is getting crazy. It’s not good for the roads. Mayor Knetter suggested maybe spraying, again starting it next year.
Unfinished Business:
Engine break ordinance – Tabled until next meeting. A few notes to mention. The council still likes the Sauk Centre Engine Break Ordinance. The Mayor got an email back from Cory saying that we can’t put a sign on 52. The State does not allow that. Signs can be put along 47 and 50, the County was okay with that, and the City can put signs anywhere on the City right-of-way. Fisher stated that has to do with the proximity to the off-ramp. There is a certain distance they do allow with MnDot right-of-way, but there is a very, very clear defined policy about where there allowed and the proximity to the off-ramp is what isn’t allowing us to do it here.
New Business: None
Adjournment - Motion by Verch seconded by Russel to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor. None opposed. Motion passed 4:0. The meeting adjourned at 7:32 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Kelly Roan
