06-22-2020 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING Monday, June 8, 2020 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 15 of 21 Seals asked what was problematic with Golden Valley as far as why it took them so long. Johnson said Golden Valley did not get the cooperation from realtors when it got rolled out. Walsh said Golden Valley did it so that when someone listed their property, it had to be done. Johnson said the realtors fought the City; the City did not get any support in rolling out the idea. Since it was 2007, it was probably a pretty aggressive idea at the time. Golden Valley does the vast majority of the inspections, but they have a provision that vendors can get approved to do it. One of the things they learned is, if there are outside vendors doing it, they had to specify what type of camera quality, because some guy might have black-and-white photos. They had to come up with a process, if an outside vendor was used, of what specifically they have to do. He said he called three people that do that inspection, and none of them had the same camera. Two of them said they would not be responsible for sending the video; another guy said he would put it on a thumb drive and give it to the resident and they can be responsible for getting it to the City. Then the City would get thumb drives potentially. Golden Valley also ran into a very clear definition of what’s acceptable, because when you do these, you find dips. Lots of engineers will say a certain amount of dip is acceptable or is not acceptable. Also, they can’t do the scoping because it needs to be cleaned first. He asked what provisions do they have when the scope won’t go through because of all the roots that grow in there and make it so the scope does not work and a cleaning has to be set up first. He said this is costing Orono hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Met Council. Walsh said if the City does it, it bypasses all the issues about specs from a different vendor, although it puts more onus on the City. Johnson said the issue with just the City doing it is really their capacity to respond within what is defined as a reasonable timeline to get everything done. As he read through the structure, the City provides timelines of when they have to get it corrected. Some of them are catastrophic, and they can’t be given 90 days to fix a catastrophic failure such as a complete separation and there is a sinkhole of that household’s waste going in the ground, or a line collapses. Statistically, what is being proposed does work. They saw a huge reduction in their daily groundwater getting in, etc. Golden Valley started out with the City putting lining in, just like Orono. It was Mr. Oliver’s opinion that the majority of the water getting in was coming from the residential properties. He stated when Golden Valley would do roadwork, they would do every sewer on there because there is an economy of scale when you are pounding them out and already doing the roadwork. Walsh noted those are not voluntary at that point because people are selling their house. The City is doing road work and then they are going to do inspections. Johnson said the City is proposing $250 and he wanted to make sure the City was not undercutting what the private sector charges. Walsh stated $250 was a pretty fair cost. He said it would be another discussion if the City were doing a road and wanted to proactively start going in and doing that. The City has never done it before and can baby step their way into it. He mentioned that it sounds like the program is set up relatively well at this point.