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Current Events
- Elections... If you or people in your area or HOA want to meet and discuss current/future topics related to the city, reach out to me to set up a time to visit. (email, phone call, or in person)
- For those of you interested in the Flock camera system, the police department is having a public meeting on this topic Tuesday (8/18) at city hall at 6PM.
- The new water treatment facility is UP AND RUNNING! If you're on the north central water system you should no longer see discolored, sulfur smelling water. Though... for those of you not using a water softener, you'll still want to look into getting one.
- Many of you are familiar with the phrase "rural look and feel" or "rural character." Dayton residents have said this is important to them and I agree. It's even in our mission statement. We've had a couple work sessions on the topic and I believe it'll result in a list of ideas we will be prioritizing for the future. If you have ideas, please let me know.
Work Session (Long Term Plan)
This was another discussion on items in the long-term plan. While we went over all the items, the ones that generated a lot of discussion were a couple of the fire department items.
The first was an item next year for roughly $300K. It was to replace a paved area behind city hall with cement. The reason cited was the weight of the new ladder truck. There were a few concerns; The first was, we had requested from the fire department ALL the costs that would be generated by the purchase of the ladder truck beyond the cost of the truck itself. This was not in there but suddenly showed up in the plan for next year. There are many reasons this might not have been brought up, and none of them are very positive. The second concern was the removal of the planned cost to repave the entire area in 2029 for $200K. The entire area (twice the proposed cemented area) will need to be repaved, yet that was removed.
The second item is a little more irritating. Back roughly 3 years ago, the fire department wanted to build a training facility. The rough estimate was $1.5M, and the claim was that it would pay for itself in rentals to other municipalities (which didn't seem to agree with the numbers). When we asked for guarantees, all we got was one letter from Rogers saying they supported our construction of a training center which is far from a guarentee. At that time, we voted to take it off the Long-Term Plan. We also got an agreement with staff that nothing would be put on the plan without council approval. Well, suddenly it’s back in the plan for next year. The fire department now says they have agreements, yet they also said the price is anywhere from $1.5M to $10M for the facility. That tells me the agreements don’t exist since they have no idea what the price is. Very frustrating.
We directed staff to take both these items off the plan until we have a lot more information.
Item L (2nd Quarter Financial Report)
As usual, nothing in here as far as surprises go.
Item M (NW Water Tower Paint Options)
If you’re curious about what staff came up with for paint schemes, it’s in the packet. Of the 5, I would vote... none of the above. And there was little agreement between the council members. We agreed that we needed to have an open house for the residents to know what’s going on. During Open Forum a couple of residents made it clear they were not happy with the tower going where it’s currently planned (at the ball park). If you go back to those council meetings, you’ll find 2 of us (me included) were not at all happy with that location either (for multiple reasons) and urged staff to look elsewhere. Unfortunately, they came up with nothing. Given the small area of the city, there’s not a lot of spots to choose from. It may be that the open house provides other possible avenues.
Item N (Sundance Greens)
This was ugly for all the wrong reasons. Back in 2018, the council approved the Sundance Greens development plan. This agenda item was to amend the plan (12th addition, next to the golf course) to reduce some of the house sites and to reroute a road. Nobody had any issues with those changes, and that would have been easy. What wasn’t easy was this addition included an accessory building not far from the Brayburn Trails development. There was a lot of effort by many of the residents to show that it wasn’t properly approved back in 2018 and therefore... we should reject this amendment. Except... the accessory building wasn’t altered in this amendment. They were primarily concerned they’d be looking at an accessory building. To further confuse things, staff included a lot of information on the accessory building to the point where it implied it was part of the amendment. I looked at the information and believe it was part of the original approval. When the Planning Commission looked at this, they asked the city's attorney to give an opinion as to the original approval of the accessory building, and her opinion was that it was part of the original approval and altering that would open us up to a lawsuit. The Planning Commissions opinion was 4-1 that the amendment should go forward. The council voted to approve the amendment 4-1 (I voted for approval).
Item P (Pavement Improvement Project)
In our ongoing pavement improvements, this project was pulled in by a year due to the current low prices on pavement. The roads that will be improved include Diamond Lake Trail, and Diamond Lake Ct S on the south side of South Diamond, Pineview Ln north of the river road and most of the roads east of there within the large lot area north of the river road. For specific roads, see the agenda. This was to approve going out for bids. It passed 5-0.
Item Q (Pavement Improvement Plan Update)
To get our roads on an improvement plan we started a program 2 years ago to accurately measure the quality of our roads through an automated system. This was to approve using that system again to get measurements. It was approved 5-0.
Item R (Forgent Comp Plan Amendment)
Forgent recently rented out the Cubes building just off of Dayton Parkway and 81. They have decided they need more room and will be building a 352,000 sq ft building across the Parkway for a manufacturing facility. This was to amend the Comprehensive Plan to change the guided use on that property from its current assignment (3 different uses) to industrial. It was approved 5-0.
Item S (Resignation Policy)
In updating its policies, city staff created a policy to accept resignations. You wouldn’t think accepting resignations would be a big deal, except we’ve had a couple instances where an employee was told to either resign, or they’d be recommended to the council for terminations. I can understand that but it did bring up the fact that the council should be aware of what's going on even with resignations. With some adjustments it was approved 5-0.
Feel free to contact me with your opinion and questions.