Soon after the conclusion of the City Council meeting, the Ways & Means Committee met with Crookston Finance Director Ryan Lindtwed and Public Works Department Director Brandon Carlson to discuss the preliminary budget for the Public Works Department for 2023.
PUBLIC WORKS BUDGET DISCUSSION
Carlson explained he tried to make the revenues level out to make it, so they break even for the year, which will help the city make money with other departments. Some of these items included purchasing more mosquito traps and putting in the purchases for two new mosquito sprayers, basing his purchases on talks with the Public Works Department in Grand Forks. He then went into dike and flood improvements saying he wished to use $100,000 to build a new levee by the Fire Hall to protect 30 feet along South Main Street in place of their current one that protects 26 ½ feet and wanted to add a new power head run for the levee pumps. He also mentioned that the Garbage Department had lost $17-18,000 in funds in 2021-22 and projects they will lose more for 2023. In response, he proposed that they would need to raise garbage bills from $5 to $6.50. He also proposed that they purchase a new garbage truck but expressed his concern that not enough people use the garbage service with them instead going to the transfer station, making it so the Garbage Department would not become a substantial income source for the city. For the Streetlight Department, Carlson said they had been losing substantial funds over the past few years and predicted they would lose $60,000 this year due to material prices. For the Building Repairs and Maintenance Department, he explained that they had an extra $10,000 and wanted to use them to replace the furnace in the Street Shop building.
CENTRAL GARAGE DEPARTMENT BUDGET DISCUSSION
Carlson then went into the Central Garage, where he mentioned that the charges for the equipment amounts they had were at an average of $260,000 with a 30% increase. One of the items he wished to add was a belly scrapper to their snowplow trucks for $35,000. The other item was a two-compartment garbage truck to get both garbage and recycling simultaneously for $300,000. Carlson then went into capital improvements. He started with the Street Improvement funds, saying that in last year’s assessments for the road reconstruction, only 11% was assessed for its competition and that they had about seven to eight hundred thousand dollars in revenue every year from state aid and gas tax. He explained that if they wished to be serious about maintaining the roads and infrastructure to where they wanted it to be, the assessments would have to increase substantially. Carlson proposed to raise the assessment rate to about $200 per foot, as an average assessment is around 50%. “Last year, we accessed $40 per foot of frontage. That only covered about 11% of the road reconstruction costs in 2021,” Carlson explained. “What we’re looking at doing is to maintain our roads. We need to replace about 3,500 feet to be replaced in 2023.” Carlson explained that if they were to replace every road surface every 40 years, they’d have to replace 6,600 feet of roadway every year.
WASTEWATER SYSTEM BUDGET DISCUSSION
Carlson then went into the Wastewater System’s budget, where he said that American Crystal will no longer do their lab sampling for it due to it being too much clerical work for them, which freed up $7,000 in expenses for them. Carlson also explained that they are trying to make new additions to the City pumps and levees, mainly lift station #3, to make it safer for the workers and improve the wastewater system with a backup system in case the pumps fail. “Part of this proposed budget was to replace lift station #3’s exchange system to get those system’s cases that make an unsafe environment from inside the lift station and pump them outside,” Carlson explained. “As far as the lift station pumps go, we need some impeller work on one of our lift stations, and then we need some of our bypass pumps to be repaired or replaced to where if our pumps do fail, we have a backup system, so it doesn’t back up houses while we get the main pumps repaired.” He also said that the fourth station pump needed a set of propellors and other repairs. His final item was that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources had requested the Wastewater Department to purchase some equipment for additional well monitoring locations for each of their well sites.
The next budgets the Committee will listen to are for the Crookston Airport, the Valley Tech Park, and other City Administration General Fund recipients.
