02-27-2023 City Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING February 27,2023 6:00 o'clock p.m. together. The information he put together was amazing. I also had an opportunity to meet with lots and lots of Orono residents who actually came up to me to say that we are doing a great job and to keep doing what we're doing and that we're doing it right. I mentioned earlier about the police department. You get a City who doesn't support their police department like the City of Golden Valley and they've seen their ranks go from 30 officers to 12. They've got to start leaning on Hennepin County and everybody else to come and help even address 911 calls because they've got some serious problems in addition to Minneapolis who has their own problems. In Minneapolis it's not only the police that have problems. They're down 20 and 30 percent of Public Works Administration,the water and sewer workers, so they're not getting anything done. So just remember to support like we do. We fly the Blue Line flag,the Red Line flag,we've got public works out there. We support all of our first responders.And I think I've told all my friends who are mayors and council members: the first thing you do is take care of public service in terms of your citizens being safe with all your first responders because if you don't have a City to manage, you don't have really anything else going on. Walsh said he attended the fire department retirement party for Kelly Shaughnessy and enjoyed the roasting and old stories. Since it's been awhile since we had Mayor/Council report, I hope everybody had a great Valentine's Day. It was a great Super Bowl to watch. I don't know if you guys watched the game when the Orono hockey played Hermantown in the semi- finals, and it went into overtime. It was an unbelievable kick pass to the young lady who scored the final goal. It was just unbelievable to watch. Those girls will remember those moments for the rest of their lives. CLOSED SESSION 13. The meeting will be closed as permitted by §13D.05, Subd. 3(a), to evaluate the performance of the City Administrator Walsh moved,Johnson seconded,to enter into closed session at 8:08 p.m.,as permitted by Section 13D.05, Subd.3(a) to evaluate the performance of the City Administrator.VOTE: Ayes 4,Nays 0. (The City Council was in closed session from 8:08 p.m.to 8:37 p.m.) Walsh moved, Seals seconded,to reopen the Orono City Council meeting at 8:37 p.m. VOTE: Ayes 4,Nays 0. Walsh said he had one more thing he wanted to talk about. We had a work session recently where we didn't have a lot to talk about so I wanted to move it to 5:30 p.m. Councilmember Benson had it moved back to 5 p.m. because that's what it says in the calendar. We've been operating for years, if we don't have anything, or if we don't have much we adjust it. I say we have a discussion of changing what's on the calendar to give us more flexibility. Johnson said what I would suggest then is that we cancel all our work sessions and we have that a function of our Council meeting to approve the next work session, and then staff at those meetings can give us recommendations or a Council member can put something on. Walsh said we could do it at the Council meeting,because then we can say, if we need one, let's just set one at the time and what the agenda is. And that way,we have flexibility on a time. Johnson suggested making that part of City Administrator Edward's report. Page 20 of 22