Dan and Melodee Riddle requested and received permission from the Grand Marais city council to have a haunted house at their property at 120 W. 2nd Street for October 29, 30 and 31. The hours will be from 5 to 9 p.m. each evening.
The Riddles came before the council on Wednesday, September 25.
Included in their request was to have 2nd Street blocked off during the hours of operation by law enforcement barricades. The Riddles said they were in contact with the sheriff to see if it would be possible to have an officer on site from 6-8 p.m. Status of that request was pending as to who would pay the law enforcement officer.
City council/county agreement update
The city of Grand Marais and Cook County are in the process of updating joint agreements for the community center, street maintenance and law enforcement. Council recently discussed the agreements and rated outcomes they expect those contracts to produce. At the council’s Wednesday night meeting they focused on street enforcement and the law enforcement agreements with the expectation that the county board will want to further discuss the city’s financial contribution to the YMCA Community Center.
When discussing the agreements, city administrator Mike Roth noted that both parties were service providers in the street maintenance agreement while the city was a client in the law enforcement agreement.
Concerning the street maintenance, councilor Kelly Swearingen said, “I like the team approach. That’s what the approach should be about.”
Councilor Anton Moody questioned whether the city could get a look at the service hours Cook County law enforcement has provided the city in the past, and Roth said he thought that might be difficult to obtain. Going forward, Roth said the city would have to negotiate how many service hours of patrol time the city would buy.
Roth said city staff has been working on ideas for how the city can best meet its duties and responsibilities, gathering ideas that can help produce better results for both parties.
The next step, said Roth, is to have the council and county board review the list together and decide on a format to prepare a new agreement. Once done, the boards will discuss costs and then make adjustments to the frameworks if needed, and the staff will prepare draft agreements for consideration.
Cost of agreement with MnDOT
Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) sent the city a bill of $2,305,959.79 for upcoming work on the Highway 61 project that will take place in Grand Marais in 2020 and 2021.
“The city’s cost share as recomputed, increased from the preliminary estimate of $774,136.22 to the revised estimate of $2,305,959.79,” wrote Malaki Ruranika, MnDOT Cooperative Agreements Engineer.
A spreadsheet compared the lowest bids MnDOT received to do the work compared to the city’s hired engineering firm’s estimates.
On May 29, 2018, the city entered into an agreement with MnDOT and the State of Minnesota, Department of Transportation, to provide payment by the city to the state for the city’s share of the cots of trail, lighting, sidewalk, roadway, water main and sanitary sewer construction and “other associated construction to be performed upon, along, and adjacent to Trunk Highway No. 61 from 1.8 miles north of Cutface Creek to 0.1 miles north of County State Aid Highway 14…”
The city’s engineering firm estimated $258,825.64 for water, and the bid came in at $554,128.30. Sewer was estimated to cost $151,332.20 and the bid came in at $875,671.18. Electric saw an increase from the engineer’s estimate of $122,661.64 to $459,181.34. The street work decreased from $168,166.59 to a bid of $126,50.74.
The General Fund saw an increase of $73,150.14, and MnDOT’s engineering fee, which was tied to the total cost of the project, increased to $93,839.50.
All told the bids came in $1,531,823.58 over the city’s estimates for the project.
Council members expressed quite a bit of angst over the higher costs. The installation of 8-inch pipe was six times higher than the city engineer’s estimate, and far more expensive to install than 10-inch pipe, and Mayor Jay Arrowsmith-DeCoux wanted to know why?
“I don’t know,” said Roth, explaining that construction companies weigh their risks when bidding, deciding where to put their profits in a bid package.
Councilor Swearingen asked if the city needed to spend $85,000 on kiosks and the dollars to purchase a pedestal. She asked if it might be possible to remove some of the “sparkles on the dress” from the contract.
“I recognize this isn’t a solution to saving a lot of money on a contract this big,” she said.
Arrowsmith-DeCoux asked the council to look at the numbers and suggest possible change orders with the contractor. But as Roth said, the bill to MnDOT has to be paid by October 19 and no amount of talking by the council on Wednesday night would change that. Still, no decision was made to send MnDOT any money, and council will wrestle with the high bids and meet again to discuss the contract further.
Two more liquor renewals
Heart Rock LLC (Wunderbar Eatery & Glampground) renewed its liquor/Sunday license for $2,500 and the Hungry Hippie Tacos renewed its license to sell wine and beer for $440 for the coming year.
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