The Crookston City Council and staff held their annual strategic planning meeting on Saturday at the Crookston. Also invited were members of the Crookston Housing and Economic Development Authority and identified members of the community. City Administrator Shannon Stassen said it was a fantastic day with lots of ideas and engagement. “I think the day was fantastic,” said Stassen. “Councilmembers were very engaged and brought lots of ideas and great feedback. We had a number of community partners here as well who helped keep the conversation going forward and being productive. Overall it was a great day and time well spent and we’ll take these items and turn them into action.”
Crookston Mayor Guy Martin also thought the day was valuable. “I think it went really well,” said Martin. “We discussed a lot of topics and prioritized the items that need to go to the Ways & Means Committee ASAP. We had four categories, the second was items that need to be discussed and decided on in 2019, the third was for 2020 and the fourth, which I don’t think we had any for, we’re items that aren’t urgent at this time.”
The group identified six action items that need to come before the Ways & Means Committee in the near future said, Stassen. “Some are basic franchise agreements, tobacco-free policy, things we’ve been working on we’d like to bring forward sooner than later. Doing some work with energy efficiency with Otter Tail Power to save some money there, working on cultural awareness making sure our community is as welcoming as we can be. Bob Herkenhoff brought forward a neat concept for housing that I think we’ll give a lot of consideration too. And making sure we move forward with the childcare conversation. This is an ongoing process.”
Childcare continues to be a topic of conversation and Martin said the entire group wants to continue to advance the childcare discussion into actionable steps while also identifying a few key items he sees the council discussing over the next two years. “Definitely the childcare,” said Martin. “That needs to be something that’s a priority. In 2019 we want to address the Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct. We’ve discussed a lot of things and it’s nowhere close to being done yet and but we’re getting closer. For 2020 the biggest thing is probably downtown sidewalks. Everyone you talk to who is a business owner or has to shovel those sidewalks it’s a problem. But it’s a bigger problem then just pulling bricks up and laying concrete. There is a lot of ADA issues that come into play, we’re going to probably have WSN assess the situation and give us a ballpark figure or maybe even closer than ballpark to figure out how much we can replace per year. I don’t know what it’s going to take maybe 5 years, 10 years, 15 years to get it done.”
Stassen also discussed some of the items that we’re discussed for coming before the council later in 2019 or in 2020 as the research into them progresses. “Before the end of the year we really want to wrap up the Code of Conduct and Ethics,” said Stassen. “We’re going to spend some time on our snowplowing policy and procedure as well as some long-term looks at garbage service and some of that stuff that is ongoing with presentations yet this year. There was a discussion about video broadcasting the council meetings on Channel 3, the website, Facebook, a YouTube channel and some other ways. It takes some investment up front but that’s definitely possible. Downtown traffic safety came up again. It is a priority and there isn’t a cheap fix but if we want a vibrant downtown and our retail and services to thrive we have to make sure people moving around on foot or other modes of transportation do feel safe.”
