The Crookston City Council met at the Crookston High School Auditorium on Monday evening in front of a large crowd of over 100 people, heard the community survey results, held a public forum with over 15 speakers, and hired a new Public Works Director. The story is below.
COMMUNITY SURVEY –
The community survey results were given to the council at the beginning of the meeting. The City hired Megan Pederson to conduct and go through the information and present it. Pederson gave all the information and said there were over 700 respondents to the survey. The City of Crookston website had a 5.23 out of 10 user rating.
Another question was if they were confident in our City Council member’s ability to make decisions for the best interest of Crookston residents.
437 disagreed, 152 agreed, and 103 were neutral with the breakdown of – Somewhat disagree was 168, disagree was 164, strongly disagree was 105. Strongly agree was 11, agree was 47, and 94 somewhat agreed.
The question of “On a scale of 1-10: How satisfied are you with CHEDA? Of the over 700 respondents, CHEDA received a 3.46 rating.
Pederson told KROX she had to redact some information before giving it to the city in a couple of days. When it is made public, KROX will post all the survey results.
PUBLIC HEARING –
The public hearing on rescission of the enabling resolutions concerning the Crookston Housing and Economic Development Authority and to dissolve the Crookston Housing and Economic Development Authority. There were over 15 people that spoke with a variety of pro-CHEDA, anti-CHEDA, and some saying a change in leadership at CHEDA needs to be made.
One of the speakers was Crookston area farmer Robin Brekken. Brekken said with the City Councils F grade in the community survey, they weren’t exactly doing great things. “This has been a contentious issue for years now. I think culturally, there is a problem at City Hall and wherever its tentacles extend from there, and I don’t think addressing this CHEDA issue in the swift matter they are trying to do isn’t going to change the culture, so what’s the point,” said Brekken after the meeting. “In their own survey, they have a 50 percent approval or disapproval, and by any grading standard that is an F. So why do you want a hand an entity over to something that is grading an F, which stands for failure. They should take their time, and maybe City Hall should try to improve their transparency, improve their own grades, and if that can happen, then maybe we can look at CHEDA and be rearranging things a little bit there or doing something different. Again, take your time, get your facts straight, and don’t operate on subjective information.”
Mike Skaug, Chairman of the Board for the Ag Innovation Campus, spoke and said they have had a good experience in Crookston. “We wanted to come here to bring some complimentary words. Our project has been in the development stage, and we want to compliment the City Council for helping us, and we want to compliment CHEDA for helping us. We were able to get things done through City Hall, and there is a lot of planning things that have to go through CHEDA, and those two agencies are very helpful,” said Skaug. “We were actually kind of surprised that this issue came up because we have been totally happy with how things have been going with the council and with CHEDA. Everything we have been able to get or ask for from CHEDA has been accurate and has proven to be spot on, and we want to make it clear we are happy, and we are moving forward, and we hope things can improve between the relationships. We will continue to plow forward, and we will bring several new jobs, it will be an exciting project. We are proud to be a part of the Crookston community.”
Crookston resident Marsha Odem spoke during the public forum, supporting, in some way, the change. “It seems like our city council and the mayor, whom we elected, don’t have a clear path for working with or supervising the CHEDA board or the CHEDA director. We just heard it is the CHEDA board, who we did not elect, has power over what he does,” said Odem. “The City Council, who we elected and the mayor, named Amy Finch as our city administrator. She has the job of managing our lovely and wonderful city. She has proposed a way to give the city council some authority for supervising the work over economic development and housing. I live in Ward 1, and I support, at least the general idea that she has come up with.”
The CHEDA board members are appointed by the mayor and have to be approved by the city council.
For all of the speakers, click on the video below. It starts at the first speaker.
NEW PUBLIC WORKS DIRECTOR –
The Crookston City Council unanimously approved Brandon Carlson as the new Public Works Director to replace the retired Pat Kelly, which was met by large applause for the 15-year city employee. “I am really thrilled,” said City Administrator Finch. “Brandon is an excellent and respected leader in our organization. He is a problem solver. He doesn’t come with just complaints, he comes with solutions and not just solutions that impact his particular department or division. He looks out for the city as a whole as an organization, as a community, and we are so thrilled that the resolution was passed tonight.”
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