County Board Notes-May 24, 2011

A part of the OACCT's Public Policy efforts for 2011 is for volunteers from the Public Policy committee attend both City and County meetings and report back on items that are of interest/concern to business.

1) The first item of discussion centered around the RFP format for the 800-MHz Tower Station in Northeast Owatonna.
The discussion encompassed an upcoming school board meeting on June 13 in order to okay the construction of this tower.

Apparently Medford school district has already approved this tower and Owatonna School Board will most likely approve this tower.

It was asked of the board to send a letter that they feel the investigation and amount of work in assessing cost and
construction has been meticulous and the board agreed that they would send this letter.

Following the meeting on June 13 there will be quotes coming for work on the corresponding antenna which apparently will be very low cost.
There was extensive discussion regarding line of sight issues with a Federated building and required notification from any surrounding business of 6 to 9 months for any construction that may hinder the line of sight of the tower. it was stated that engineers have planned for any possible line of sight issues and can adapt to construction needs of surrounding businesses.
There was also discussion regarding the bottom line costs for which approximately half will include grants and the rest will come from the general reserve fund and the remaining portion of a bond. They did discuss raw numbers but I do not have those numbers at this time.

2) The second item discussed was regarding a local bridge replacement grant agreement and resolution.
This grant will be based off of bids received and it was stated that generally not all of the items in the bid will be eligible for the grant.
Apparently the bids that have been received so far were actually below engineer's estimates.


3) The third discussion centered around the fact that on the evening of May 23 the legislature adjourned and the Governor had vetoed the budget proposal so at present there is no budget currently available. there was also a question of whether a "lights on" resolution had been passed. the general consensus was that this had not happened.
The follow-up statement by Mr. Aziz addressed the fact that he will get the department heads together to plan for possible changes due to the lack of funding in the budget.

4) it was discussed and confirmed by Mr. Ebeling that Lisa Havelka had asked for funds regarding Tourism and that it was the board's policy to wait until July to see if the state has allowed for this type of funding.

The meeting adjourned at 3:55.

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City Board Notes-May 3, 2011

A part of the OACCT's Public Policy efforts for 2011 is for volunteers from the Public Policy committee attend both City and County meetings and report back on items that are of interest/concern to business.

The meeting was rather short with very little discussion regarding any of the
proposed ordinances or items on the agenda. I have attached a copy of the agenda
with some of my notes as well as the financial re-cap for your review. As you can
see, more than $221,000.00 of the money spent will be reimbursed by FEMA.

There were three parties that appealed their tax assessments for 2011 and the new
Assessor recommended reductions for all of them as well as others in the same area
that he deemed too high. He did not share any dollar amounts with us, but not sure if
he did with the council, but they were all approved.
All of the items listed under the Actions part of the agenda were approved by a
unanimous 7-0 vote.

The only thing discussed that was not on the agenda was the recommendation by
Jeff Johnson to install a lift station by Ag Power's new site. That was also approved
by a 7-0 vote.