10-24-2022 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING October 10, 2022 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 6 of 7 Seals noted they combined many elements of a Fire Chief role plus a consultant role. She clarified Member Crosby does not meet the minimum requirements and the public does not have to worry about him making it through the résumé screening. Johnson moved, Seals seconded, to approve the Fire Chief Job Description and authorize Staff to initiate the recruitment process. VOTE: Ayes 3, Nays 0. PUBLIC COMMENTS Brad Erickson, 2485 Independence Road, stated Mr. Williams did a fine job the previous week of summing things up. Evidently what happened on the steps of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 is no big deal to him and “you guys laughed.” Mr. Erickson asked if they brought him up here? Mr. Erickson does not think he helped them. He is wondering with all of these allegations going around, Proud Boys, what is that all about? It says right here that “he” was crowdfunding for a Proud Boy member for the Proud Boys of Minnesota. Mr. Erickson showed a video on his phone noting “that is him.” He asked “how many of you guys are involved in that? Is that funny to you? I don’t think that shit is funny at all.” Mr. Erickson asked how many times he has to say that. In six months they have not answered one question and they are going to start. Mr. Crosby is going to answer some questions, too, because Mr. Erickson is done with it. He is demanding answers and wants to know what is going on. He wants to know how much danger they were really in when they were under imminent threat of attack in 2021, and “you guys were keeping this shit out.” That is what Mr. Erickson wants to know, when are they going to tell them? Remember they were going to come burn Wayzata and Orono to the ground and “you found it in your heart to send me some, whatever you want to call it.” Mr. Erickson has some people he would like them to send that stuff to and see how well it goes for them, because it is about to get real bad. To be clear, what he means by that is they need to answer some questions about Proud Boy affiliations, about Capitol steps, crowdfunding, and what is going on up here with all their money that they like to brag about. Mr. Erickson stated he brought $10,000,000 to the City of Orono in the last two f-ing years. He spent $525,000 on taxes the previous year and said he is a player too, and stated for them not to treat him like he does not belong here. Alisa Benson, 1220 Lyman Avenue, is honored to be running for Orono City Council and stated in the past couple months of door knocking, community is something she talks about a lot. She attended Long Lake’s City Council meeting the previous week to introduce herself. Ms. Benson noted as a City Council, they do not stack up to their neighbors in terms of public comment, noting it has been two hours since the meeting began. Unlike Wayzata, Long Lake, and Medina, public comments are at the bottom of the agenda so people who would like to introduce or talk about something are made to wait a lot longer than in other communities. She thinks that is significant because residents haven’t signed up to be here as elected or appointed officials and Ms. Benson thinks residents deserve to go first and it seems like an easy win for this City Council. Ms. Benson spoke on the subject of shared fire services and community, noting the community does not know what is happening with the shared fire services, the cost, or impacts to service. After researching the issue, she understands it is an award-winning model of shared resources out of Cloquet, Minnesota which is a slightly bigger City than Orono. She noted the Fire Services individual, Ken Schroeder has said everyone was used to making their own decisions and serving their own small slice of geography but the future of fire services, shared emergency services, is really a team sport. She thinks that is really important to remember. The City has been willing to engage the community on parks but really has not done that on the fire issue. Cloquet spent several months engaging the community to understand how they thought and felt about shared fire services. Ms. Benson hopes the Council takes time to consider this for the future of the community.