The Crookston City Council meeting was over quickly Monday night as the council unanimously passed the consent agenda. The city set various public forums for the Tuesday, November 13 (an amendment from the original agenda calling for the meetings on Monday, November 12.
The following public forums will be held on Tuesday, November 13 for proposed assessment by street reconstruction for: Project No. 959 for S Ash from Loring Street to Houston Avenue; Project No. 960 for McGrew Street from Washington Ave to Lincoln Ave; and Project No. 691 for Winter Shows Frontage Road; for proposed assessment by bituminous Mill & Overlay for: Project No. 962 for South Main Street from Euclid Avenue to 9th Avenue South; Project No. 963 for 5th Street East from Elm Street to Victoria Street; Project No. 964 for Summit Avenue from Alexander Street to Walsh Street; for proposed assessment by construction for: Project No. 965 for 5th Avenue South from Guthrie Street to McKinley Blvd.
Contrary to the council meeting, the Ways & Means Committee agenda was debated ad nauseam for more than two hours resulting in two split votes. Despite a directive for committee members a list of changes they’d like to see to the master plan to last night’s meeting, the committee was not given the opportunity to make changes to the master plan. The agenda presented the downtown master plan as “simply asking the council to decide if adoption as an official document was warranted. Altering or editing the plan was not one of the options given.”
Councilman Jake Fee said he was working under the assumption that each councilman was supposed to bring proposals for edits to last night’s meeting. Mayor Wayne Melbye responded, “No, I said to have them in beforehand so that they were here [on the agenda] to vote on this meeting.”
However, during the September 24 meeting, Melbye did say “2nd meeting in October to bring this back and at that time have what you want either line-item vetoed and either changed or whatever you want to call it. And then we can kind of mesh it together as a council.”
Fee also reiterated his stance from previous meetings saying, “I don’t think it’s appropriate to the council to adopt a policy or a plan when they’re not comfortable with it. If we can’t make the changes now, I have no faith they’ll be made going forward.”
There was also considerable input from the audience during the meeting. Terri Heggie, executive director for the Crookston Area Chamber said she took it upon herself to visit with downtown businesses when she heard the downtown plan would possibly be moved through. “90 percent of them didn’t even know what the master plan was, the ones that thought they knew thought it was about the traffic lanes,” said Heggie. “Walking around downtown talking to business, the majority said how about fixing our sidewalks first.”
Mayoral Candidate Dean Adams added, “I did the same thing, that’s the exact same thing I heard.” He added, “the one thing the businesses I talked to agreed on was they want the traffic slowed down.”
Much of the discussion also centered around invitations or lack thereof committee members thought should have been extended specifically to council members and downtown businesses. Sarah Reese and Tim Denny both spoke in support of the downtown plan, with Reese mentioning several organizations that were involved in the process, while Denny spoke about being frustrated that something with so much community support could be tabled by people who weren’t in attendance for the meetings. “There was a lot of community involvement, the expert involvement, we don’t get engraved invitations to public meetings,” said Denny. “Now is not the time to say start saying I wasn’t involved so we’re going to table this thing. Voting against this is voting against the will of the people.”
Councilman Steve Erickson said it’s his responsibility to protect the business that is in Crookston, “When you’ve got most of the businesses downtown against this because of trucking and other things. I have to watch out for the small business downtown and make it as easy for them as possible to do their business.”
Discussion continued for several minutes, before another member of the audience Frank Fee asked, “when Alderman Regan stated that nothing in this plan will be complete unless every piece of this plan is approved?” City Administrator Shannon Stassen responded that the council and other possible checkpoints may be involved. Frank Fee then said, “I don’t see why anybody is opposed right now to the plan itself.” He also directly addressed Councilman Tom Vedbraaten, who among others had spoken about possibly putting off a vote until the new council was seat [after elections]. “You talked about pushing it off to the next council, you were voted in to make these decisions, not to push it off to someone else.”
Shortly thereafter, the master plan was put to a vote and passed six to three. Submitting yes votes were Regan, Dale Stainbrook, Vedbraaten, Bob Quanrud, Clayton Briggs and Melbye. Submitting no votes were Baird, Fee and Erickson.
The committee also discussed adding a one-time stipend for the Crookston Housing and Economic Authority (CHEDA) of $350,000 from the reserves fund. Financial Director Angel Weasner advised the committee against dipping further into the reserve funds, however, most committee members felt that CHEDA has shown great progress and believed that further finances were needed to advance initiatives such as expanding the rehab housing program and addressing the daycare shortage. “I think it’s been a long time since the city has really contributed so that they had a fund they could work with to look for business to bring in here,” said Erickson. “We’ll still be the watchdogs for [how they spend money], hopefully that money will be used wisely and spur some economic development.”
The vote to give $350,000 one-time to CHEDA to further address those initiatives passed by a six to three vote. Submitting yes votes were Quanrud, Vedbraaten, Erickson, Fee, Baird and Melbye. No votes were submitted by Regan, Stainbrook and Briggs. We will have more from the Ways & Means Committee on Wednesday.
