The Duluth City Council held a Committee of the Whole to review the 2026-2030 Capital Plan, followed by a regular meeting featuring public comments on the Lester Park Golf Course proposal and other issues, a consent agenda, a contested change order for the Shopper's Ramp demolition, first reading of an ordinance conveying Lester Park Golf Course to the Duluth Economic Development Authority (DEDA), and second readings of three ordinances.
Councilors asked questions about fire department PPE, Lake Walk widening, fire station surveys, park budget decreases, Memorial Park funding, and Priley Circle improvements.
The consent agenda included resolutions on general obligation bonds (Series 2025H, $12,680,000), taxable tourism tax revenue bonds (Series 2025I, $890,000), lead service line fund allocation, a KnowBe4 learning management agreement ($56,726.67), a Network Architect civil service classification, appointment of Juanita Salinas as Finance Director, Duluth Legacy Endowment Fund grant acceptance ($15,000), DEDA FY2026 budgets, Rice Lake tax-exempt obligations, Lester Park real property intent to sell, SEH engineering amendment, MnDOT cooperative agreement for London Road roundabouts, LRIP application for East 4th Street ($1,500,000), chiller removal contract, Pierce fire truck purchase ($2,129,000), Park Hill Cemetery/conveyance, Indian Point Park & Campground agreement, DECC Bayfront Festival Park fee amendment, snowmobile and cross-country ski grants, Night-Riders and Drift Toppers snowmobile agreements, aquatic invasive species grant application, and Chester Bowl agreement transfer. The consent agenda passed 9-0.
I didn't get to the Dallas. I watched the airport one. Um the way back and the meeting. Uh I got air at the center. I don't know Lynn's here, right? No problems, right? So we are talking about we're just taking taking charge of the rest of the IS chair. So hopefully we'll see some blood here. Yeah. Hi. How are you? I'm all right. Yeah. Is there anything that we need to be aware of? I mean it's just gonna be is it gonna be a big crowd tonight? Did you read yours? No, that's been a good one. Don't do that. We like you. Don't do that. Oh yeah. Good evening. Oh yeah, pour myself glass of wine for that one. Yeah, yeah, please. Good evening. I want to just begin our committee at the whole in one minute. Good evening. We will begin our committee of the whole meeting with uh manager, budget manager Melissa Harold. Thank you for being here. Thank you. President Tamonic, City Councilors, thank you for the opportunity to share our capital plan with you tonight. We have a lot of information to share, and we want to leave some time for questions, so I'm just gonna jump right in. We'll start with an overview of the capital planning and bonding process, definitions of capital equipment versus capital improvements, and the planned budgets for each of those. This is a refresher on the planning and bonding process. We plan from June until now. Tonight you're reviewing that plan, and in December there'll be a public hearing and resolutions establishing the plan for the coming year. The most important thing to remember is you're approving the plan now. You'll we'll start spending in January, and next October or November we'll sell bonds that will reimburse us for these expenses. So what is a capital improvement? Capital improvement expenditures are related to our infrastructure. Some examples are facilities, roads, sewers, parks, or gas lines. We have a five-year plan to help us plan for both our most urgent needs in the coming year and also to have enough lead time to prepare and plan for the future. A capital improvement can have several funding sources, such as bonds, which includes state utility revenue and GO bonds, federal and state funds grants, street system maintenance levy, half and half tax and parks fund. A subset of the capital improvement plan are those facilities that are bond eligible. When we talk about capital improvement bond eligible facilities, we're talking about city hall, libraries, public safety facilities, and public works facilities. You'll notice here that we don't talk about parks facilities. Parks facilities are not eligible for bond financing, which creates a challenge for us. We have five a five-year plan for these facilities, and we sell 10-year bonds. Tonight you'll see the details of the 2026 capital improvement plan breaking down the 211 million of improvements as shown here. These improvements will be funded by all of these different funding sources with much of the funding coming from grants.