UAB 051821M
Mountain Iron Utility Advisory Board
Minutes
18 May 2021
Meeting was called to order 4:02 p.m. by Chairperson Renzaglia
Members present: Reynold Renzaglia, Sue Tuomela, Bret Renzaglia, Jacob Osell Others present: Tim Satrang, Public Works Director, and Lisa Stevens, Accounting Technician. Absent member: Paul Jacobsen, and Joe Prebeg, council liason.
Moved by Reynold Renzaglia supported by Sue Tuomela to approve the Consent Agenda including the 10 March 2020 Minutes. Motion carried unanimously
Communications: None
Public Forum: Councilor Roskoski in audience
Reports:
Electrical:
Reynold noted it was not necessary to go back through all of the outages for the year 2020. There were a streak of outage events that mainly happened with the Virginia feed and were resolved.
Water:
A water line on Unity Drive had a crack found in the cast iron pipe which causes issues. The trick is to stop the crack from spreading. This pipe is more than 100 years old. The City is looking for funding that would help in replacing these old pipes as cast iron is a hard surface to repair.
Old Business:
Water Treatment Plant: The updates and new construction is coming along and should be completed in early June. Went from a 4 cell system to 3 cell system to help cut costs. The bid came in under the engineer’s estimate. The filters being put in will now outlast the building has their estimated life is 100 years.
Water tower repairs and painting: The tower project was bonded with an interest rate of less than 2%. It was at the point where paint and structural issues would cause inspection to fail. The project went very smooth and very few issues happened or were noticed by residents.
Voltage upgrade: There is a new engineer from MN Power we are working with to give advice on how to achieve the number one goal of getting off of Virginia’s power. They have been coordinating between us and Virginia to get this done. Single phase transformers are 25 weeks out so it’s going to continue being a very slow process.
Reynold discussed getting security cameras behind the city garage to guard the transformers this summer. Tim mentioned he will look at the budget. There was also discussion about the yard waste site. It was rumored that there are people outside of the city are utilizing this site. Tim mentioned that it should still be placed outside the fence. There are other items stored inside the fence that should not be accessible to the public so having yard waste placed outside keeps people safer.
New Business:
Opted Out Policy: Discussion took place about having a policy drafted in regards to residents entering an agreement with the City for not utilizing an upgraded AMR/AMI meter. Tim read the policy provided to the board and proposed it gets submitted to council for approval. The fee would be $25 added to the resident’s monthly utility bill. Reynold suggested to take the dollar amount off the policy in case it should be agreed by council for higher fee.
It was moved by Reynold Renzaglia and supported by Sue Tuomela to have an attorney review the policy and then send the policy to council for approval. Motion carried unanimously.
Curbside Recycling: There was a schedule proposed to resume the curbside recycling program. It was recommended by board that City staff get the program going as soon as possible which would be the end of June.
Large Trash pickup: The large trash notice was dispersed to the board for approval. It was recommended it be changed with an actual schedule of dates each section of town would be picked up.
It was moved by Sue Tuomela and supported by Jacob Osell to continue the service and recommend it to council for approval. Motion carried unanimously.
Other new business: Tim has been in contact with MN Power in regards to creating an electrical mapping system of the city. It would cost around $16,000-17,000 from the electrical fund however it would help in the long term for stability in the electrical department. It would be a 25+ year investment and would help us pin point outages when they occur and help identify any other issues with electrical equipment. He would like the board to send this to council for their approval.
It was moved by Sue Tuomela and supported by Bret Renzaglia to move forward with sending the mapping system contract to council for approval. Motion carried unanimously.
Open discussion: Everyone is glad to be meeting in person again.
Announcements: The next meeting will take place on Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at 4:00pm.
Meeting Adjourned at 5:30 pm
Respectfully submitted,
Lisa Stevens
Accounting Technician
