Old business, updates the focus of City meeting

By Steve Altenburg

Tower MN—The regular monthly city meeting held on May 8th lasted only an hour and covered a dozen updates on city business.

The trail head project which created a parking lot and canoe/kayak launch area Phase 1 will be completed by the end of June in order to meet the grant funding deadline. Phase 2, which has funding from the IRRR consists of finishing the Main Street access and new restrooms located by the Civic Center.

There is $382,000 left in the IRRR grant funding city expects final costs for the main street road soon. In conjunction with the trails project the council approved $2,500 to be spent on the trail mapping that is supposed to provide signage along the river for canoes and kayaks. The prebuilt restroom designs provided estimates were between $156,000–202,000.

The city was notified that it had been selected to move forward with the MN Housing Partnership, and the council appointed clerk/treasurer Michael Schultz and councilor Joe Morin to assemble the core team of seven that will participate in the program training/planning.

The new water treatment project now has an official executed agreement with the Army Corps and the environmental assessment is under review and expected to be finalized within the next couple of weeks. There is still a roughly $2 million shortfall in funding which has not yet been resolved.

A public hearing will be held in conjunction with the June 12th city meeting to get input from the citizens on whether streets should be renamed to honor individuals. Streets with home or business addresses would likely not be considered, which would leave only a couple of streets that would even be available for name changes.

Tidy Up Tower will take place on Saturday June 3rd and Monday June 5th. Flyers with details will be posted around the city prior with details.

The handing over of the Gunderson Trusts monies to the foundation for investment was noted as still waiting for the courts approval.

The airport has agreed to use the Gem car as its courtesy vehicle and the council approved replacement of the batteries for roughly $2,400.

The televising of sewer lines and valve exercising had been completed and the video is under review with a report on findings/problems coming shortly.

The paperwork has been finalized and the Civic Center and mini-park land ownership will be transferred back to the city from TEDA.

In other new city business:

• The Hoodoo point campground store was approved by council to spend up to $23,000 to replace the windows and doors. Half of the funding will be covered by capital improvement surcharge account and the other half by the campground’s maintenance and repair budget for this year.
• The city rehired Chas Hanna as the summer seasonal worker based on recommendation from the city maintenance crew.

The council rehired Steve Olson to the fire department as a firefighter. Olson had apparently resigned around the end of 2022 but had requested to rejoin.

• Council approved a 6% wage increase for TEDA executive director Marshall Helmberger (3% for 2022 and 3% for 2023).
• And finally, a brief discussion was held about ideas to better engage the community and provide information on any number of city issues. Councilors were asked to offer any suggestions they might have as they consider options.

The meeting adjourned at 6:32 pm.