The Fargo City Commission met on Monday, April 27, 2026, beginning with an executive session at 4:30 p.m. in the Red River Room to discuss negotiating strategy for the potential purchase of property involving Fargo Lumber, LLC and/or Hempel Companies. The executive session closed at 5:03 p.m., and the public meeting reconvened at 5:09 p.m. in the Commission Chambers. All five commissioners were present: Mayor Mahoney, Commissioners Kolpack, Piepkorn, Strand, and Turnberg. The meeting included a video presentation on the city’s Storm Water Management Program, approval of the consent agenda (with two items moved to the regular agenda), and key decisions on the convention center, human rights commission, and mosquito control.
Call the meeting to order. I invite you to join us with the uh Pledge of Allegiance in the United States of America. Roll call, please. Colpack, here. Pepcorn? Here. Strand? Here. Turnberg here. Mahoney. Here. With spring upon us, we are encouraging residents to help keep pollution out of our stormwater drains. Whereas, like they say, only rain down the drain. So now you can start an arch. I work for the City of Fargo stormwater division. And I um currently am working with erosion and sediment control. All of the water from storms or from rain events in Fargo goes down the storm drains that are in neighborhoods, and then it flows directly to the Red River. Our stormwater is not treated in any way. So it flows directly, like I said before, to the river. The only filter or treatment, so to speak, would be us. Like whatever we can do to stop other debris from entering the system is the best filter that we have. Spring melt is one of the times where we get the biggest rush of water running into the system. And a lot of the snow melt has been sitting on a parking lot or on the side of the street or on the curb line, and it's collected lots of sediment over that time. So it gets to be pretty critical that we can try to manage that. Typically they're on a corner, sometimes they're in the middle of a block. And then maybe take some responsibility with your neighbors and work together to kind of take that drain and keep it clean. Make sure there's no leaves, garbage. Commonly most things that enter are going to be debris off the roads, like salt, debris, other things that can wash from homeowners' yards into the system. Sediments, we don't want sediments in our system. And a lot of times also even to the point of trash. Cigarette butts are a huge problem. So we want to keep as many of those out as we can. So we want to keep as much sediments out. Plus, there's a lot of times there's sediment and chemical, you know, off of yards or lawns or whatever. And that causes overgrowth in our river system. Once the stormwater enters the Red River, Red River runs north, so it goes to Canada and then all the way up to Lake Winnipeg, and eventually to the ocean. So we want to keep it as clean as we can. Is there a motion to approve the order of the agenda movement items 3132 from the consent agenda to the regular agenda? And I'm going to put them in front of the liaison report. Is there a motion? That's a move. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, saying nay. Motion carried. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of the April 13, 2026 regular meeting? Move to approve. Second.