Last year the Spring Valley Business Alliance asked the Spring Valley City Council to allow them to try temporary seating areas at the end of each block downtown in order to ease the flow of traffic, prevent wrong way driving and to beautify the downtown.
After a successful concept test last year with temporary barricades, the city and the alliance have been moving forward with the next steps of the project.
During the council’s April 24 meeting, Drew Weber, of Bolton and Menk explained, “Last year we started this downtown vision process and public involvement process. That included a community-wide survey and got about 90 responses, which is actually really good, so kudos to your community for providing feedback. After receiving that survey we held a two day workshop with a couple of our landscape architects from our Des Moines office. We reviewed the survey to see what the feedback was from the participants and then had open conversations with members of the committee. Through that process we developed a few concepts and that night we held an informal open house to gather more feedback. The question was who is going to pay for it. And, I think, that is the big question for any sort of improvement.”
“I think the concepts look amazing and it was good to see a lot of residents that I spoke with that evening had positive feedback. Of course, the cost is the issue,” Council member Justin Mlinar shared.
According to Weber, the next step would be creating a demonstration to help bring these concepts to life in the downtown.
When asked if the demonstrations of the concepts would help, Spring Valley Business Alliance representative Dan Freeman said, “I think it really does. I’d hate to see us spend a bunch of money and not really get it right the first time. We would much rather do a couple of iterations of the downtown and find out what is working for the city with maintenance and what’s working for the residents. We’ve got to take baby steps to make sure it works.”
The alliance is working with the Spring Valley Garden Club to fill numerous planters to be placed in the designated space and possibly memorial benches.
Through this process, it was brought to Public Works Director Chad Hindt’s attention that some of the handicapped parking spaces may be too close to some of the crosswalks and would impede on the sight distance for vehicles at the intersections. Due to this, Hindt is looking to re-stripe the downtown area.
“We are looking at what it would cost to remove the existing striping and make those modifications as needed. Chad talked about sliding some of those stalls down if necessary,” Weber said.
Hindt added, “In the surveys we also had some people talking about parking stalls being a little narrow, so if we were going to redo it we may need to revisit whether we want to make the parking stalls wider.” It was agreed that while the city would lose parking stalls to do this, it would make the downtown parking more appealing and accessible.
While Weber is currently working with a company to come up with an estimate of cost, he predicted the cost to be anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000. The cost of the striping could be absorbed into the street department budget, according to Hindt. The remaining cost of the demonstration of concepts would be covered primarily by the Spring Valley Business Alliance.
Freeman told the council he has hopes they will be able to find grant opportunities in the future to help with the costs of the downtown project, as well.
“Partnering with the city I think we can tap into some money for some major improvements as we go along. We’re not constrained necessarily just to the city’s budget, because it shouldn’t entirely be on the city. If we can get some outside dollars, terrific; if we can do some fundraising, terrific. I think it needs to be a partnership between the city, private, as well as community organizations,” Freeman stated.
The council voted to continue moving forward with demonstration of the downtown project.
Capital Fund Discussion and Sewer Rate Increase
Mike Bubany, of David Drown Associates, and the council took a look toward the future as they worked through the upcoming plans and projects within the city’s capital fund.
Some of the upcoming projects include seven different street improvement projects, which are tentatively planned to be completed from 2025 through 2033, as well as the Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) project.
The group workshopped through a vast amount of different financial scenarios so they can better plan for the future expense of the projects. This will also give the council a visual of how these upcoming projects and expenses will affect the tax rates and the city’s total debt.
“Everything looks decent right now. The problem isn’t what we are doing, it is what we are going to need to do,” Bubany said of the need for increases in rates and possibly taxes.
While the council remains leery of putting too much financial strain on residents, City Administrator Deb Zimmer said, “It just means we need to find other funding where we can and go from there.”
The talks then focused on the need to increase the city’s sewer rate to stay ahead of rising costs.
“Right now the sewer rate is pretty competitive. The downside now is what is happening to the projected cash in the sewer fund. It’s just barely going under zero for a few years, but it continues to go down as operational costs continue to go up, but you raise your rates. This is going to look even worse when you add projects,” Bubany explained.
As Jake Pichelmann of Bolton and Menk explained in their February 12 meeting, in order to be grant eligible, the sewer rates will need to reach a level that is determined to be affordable. It is estimated the increase to meet this would be 50% overall.
According to Zimmer, receiving a grant will reduce the debt payments, though the city would need to rely on sewer revenue and taxes to fund the operating and debt payments for the WWTP.
After much discussion, the council voted to raise the sewer rate by 25% beginning in August.
MCSPECT
Economic Development Authority (EDA) Director Chris Hahn brought the council up to speed on the proposed contract with MNSPECT, LLC for all building permits and rental inspection services.
“Planning and Zoning met last week and reviewed the proposal from MNSPECT to move forward with doing all of our planning and zoning process,” Hahn shared. “We would have everything under one roof, so whether it be rental inspections or planning and zoning, it would all be on an online portal.”
As part of the contract, MNSPECT would provide the city with their Community Core permitting software at no additional cost, which will allow the city to access all aspects of the planning and zoning and inspection process. Another feature would be the option for any fees to be paid online through the city. When needed, MNSPECT would work also with the city attorney to enforce the city’s ordinances.
According to Hahn, the Waconia, Minn., based company is also working with numerous cities in the region.
“It’s really hands off for the city and staff, which is nice, but we still have all the visibility on the process,” Hahn said.
The council voted to approve the annual contract with MNSPECT.
Phased Retirement
Zimmer asked the council to consider her proposal for her phased retirement plan.
“I don’t fully want to retire, but they (Public Employees Retirement Association, PERA) do offer a program called Phased Retirement so I would be working 20 hours a week instead of 40,” Zimmer explained.
She noted while the clerk position will take on some new duties, with Hahn taking on more EDA duties and the new MNSPECT contract, the 20 hours “is very doable.”
The program would allow Zimmer to work for another five years at the reduced hours.
The council voted to approve the phased retirement proposal with the a guarantee that Zimmer will hold the position for the full five-year term.
Territorial Road Project
Weber updated the council on the Territorial Road project.
“We bid replacing the existing pavement as part of the base bid and then paving the south end as an alternate. The south end we didn’t do any engineering on because we didn’t want to spend any dollars associated with getting a price to do that work. We’ve now gone out with the contractor and did some of that engineering that we would typically do before hand while we were out there on construction,” Weber explained.
What they found was the existing culvert would need to be replaced with a longer culvert and the ditches would need to be extended out from the road in order to support an improved paved roadway.
“That would affect the ditch drainage on either side of the road, which would then require more work and more cost and what I’m particularly hesitant about would be the downstream end. Currently there is not a waterway across the field to the east and I think by improving the culvert and drainage there may be downstream impacts as far as erosion in the field,” Weber continued.
The council determined it would be best to continue work on the base bid with only an additional 50 feet of pavement on the south end.
Other Business
The council approved the off-sale application for Bluff Brothers Brewing, LLC. This will allow for 128 ounces per day to be sold through off-sale.
This year’s late snow prompted the council to review the street and WWTP departments compensation time policy. Currently, employees can accumulate comp time from November through April 1 for hours worked over 40 hours per week. The council voted to extend the date to April 15.
Last year, as part of the legislature’s one time funding for public safety, the city received $107,432. These funds could be allocated to the fire department or ambulance service. The council voted to assign the money to the ambulance service to put toward a new ambulance in the coming years, as the city already sets money aside in the Capital fund for the fire department.
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