The Crookston City Council met Monday and approved the consent agenda quickly, which included a resolution to approve change order #1 on the 2018 street improvements, to approve an application for a variance to reduce the required lot line setback along the residential district from five feet to one foot and allow a structure to exceed 25 percent of occupying the rear yard to 32 percent of the rear yard on Block 8, Lot 3 of Grand View Place (609 Central Avenue), a resolution approving a Special Operations Group Joint Powers agreement with addendum, acceptance of the quote from Crookston Concrete Company and awarding the concrete replacement on the east entrance of the Crookston Sports Center and the adoption of the business subsidy policy. Most of the topics had been discussed in previous Ways and Means committee or Planning Commission meetings.
The council approved an ordinance establishing the Office of Finance Director and Combining Finance Director and City Clerk. “With the new ordinance we wanted to make sure we were in compliance with the city code which has a city clerk-treasurer,” explained Crookston Finance Director Angel Weasner. “So now we’re establishing it as to be the finance director, but it will entail the city clerk duties also.”
The Crookston Ways and Means Committee met on Monday evening following a city council meeting and reviewed both the 2017 city audit and a change order at the airport.
Kim Durbin of Brady Martz & Associates presented the 2017 City of Crookston Audit report, which was similar to prior year’s audits. Durbin said Government assets increased by $2 million, total liabilities were down $4 million and revenues came in above budget.
Park and Rec revenues exceeded expenditures. “(It came back) just like in past years, which is always a good thing,” according to City Clerk Angel Weasner. “Having a good, clean audit is always the objective. The nice things was we had a single audit which is the federal dollar amount. They have a threshold of $750,000, if you exceed receiving those dollars from the federal government you have to do a single audit and we had an opinion that everything was great there also.”
Following the city audit review, the committee turned their attention to the change order at the Crookston Airport. Blake Carlson, Project Engineer for the airport, spoke to the committee about the change order at the airport. “There were two parts to the change order, but the one part that was primarily under discussion tonight was in regard to the concrete slabs that were installed out there this fall,” said Carlson. “Last fall, there were three slabs installed and one of them through the winter suffered some frost heave damage and needed to be replaced and so that work was done this spring. We excavated about four feet of material from underneath the slab and put in non-frostable granular material and compacted it and then put a new slab on top of that for the fuel pump.” With the work completed the focus now shifts to how the repairs will be paid for. “Unfortunately, the timing of change orders doesn’t always work with needing to get a project done. The work has been done, in fact, the project just has some final grating for the site with seeding, fertilizer and a little bit of electrical work and then it will be complete.”
The Downtown Crookston Development Project committee members updated the council on what they have planned in 2019. They said they are looking to have storefront improvements, business signage upgrades, more lighting and energy upgrades, more beautification, historical signage restoration and they want to make the city more green/energy efficient. The DCDP is seeking $25,000.
