Speaker numbers apply only to this recording. Names come from transcript evidence. “Possibly” marks uncertain attribution.
The City of Fraser City Council met on Thursday, November 12, 2026, at 6:30 PM in the City Council Chambers. The meeting lasted until 10:16 PM and included presentations on the Steffens Park Master Plan, capital improvement projects, several contract approvals, and public comments regarding a community garden controversy.
City Clerk reported a 60.36% voter turnout in Fraser for the recent election. Early voting and absentee ballots accounted for about one-third of votes. Precinct 5 had 70% turnout. The clerk thanked staff and DPW for support.
City Manager reported that a police vehicle involved in a pursuit-related accident was totaled; a replacement will be pursued.
How do we give us a h do we give us a hug We were asking people to pick one over the other, but to take a look at them as tools to look at different areas of the park. Do you want a basketball court here? Do you want a pavilion there, a splash pad of this size, a splash pad of that size? And we have found strong support for a larger splash pad. We showed a smaller one in one concept, a larger in the other, overwhelming support for revamping Fort Fraser in some manner, due to nostalgia, stake in it, just overall amenity for this park is huge, and we know that. So maybe while we have these big event spaces, but also having garden or places to pause in a shaded space, and then of course spaces for events. Some areas that we found might need more explanation or exploration would be like the amphitheater, and that's location and proximity to residences, fitness stations and those support, and location to parking and other amenities, parking and circulation, and create making sure that there's access to all portions of the park, whether that's parking or walking. And then operation and maintenance concerns, as we add more amenities, was also something to consider. Things that we found were more of a split response, didn't have a great direction one way or the other, are the skate park, disc golf, dog park, and roadway connections into the neighborhoods nearby. So the skate park didn't have a strong support or really one direction where to put it necessarily. Dog park, there was considerable amount of concern about safety or management of that type of amenity. And then roadway connections, there were some concerns about traffic through traffic into the quieter neighborhoods. All of these, you'll see a combination of the two of these concepts in the master plan here. So yeah, so this is the master plan for Stephens Park. We will walk through them through the design phase by phase, but on a high level, this layout is similar to currently how Steppen Park is today. It is a combination of both concept one and two, as Courtney mentioned. You'll notice that we've put an emphasis on upgrading current amenities right now, such as the baseball fields that I know the city has already invested some money on, the parking lot near 14 mile road, the baseball fields, basketball area, and Fort Fraser upgrade and expansion. We also included some new amenities as well, such as the splash pad, the nature walk, the one kilometer walking loop around the park. These were all results of the what the survey resulted in. We also prepared a phasing and estimate plan. It's important to understand that when you add all these numbers up to, it's about a $20 million price tag. But that figure is extremely preliminary. It's long-range planning estimate and it's not construction ready, or a commitment to spend 20 million dollars. The estimate intentionally takes a conservative approach. It accounts for anticipated inflation, future design and engineering services, additional planning and coordination for individual projects like Fort Fraser or a splash pad, and some capital improvements necessary to maintain and support existing infrastructure like pavilions. The intent is to establish a high-level funding target that gives the city a realistic framework to build and plan and budget over time. One of the primary considerations in developing this phasing plan was making the best use of infrastructure that already exists. And we want to avoid investing in improvements today that need to be removed or relocated or reconstructed to accommodate a future project. By looking at the park holistically, we can coordinate improvements, establish supporting infrastructure early on, and minimize unnecessary work and duplicated costs in the future. Phases one through three. So that's the blue, the pink, and the bright green on the on the sheet there. Those contain the majority of proposed improvements and focus on putting foundational infrastructure up front. It includes things like parking and circulation, stormwater management, and mass grading to prepare other areas of the park for future improvements. These investments are intentional and address underlying infrastructure early on to work around existing limit. I'm sorry, excuse me, so that we're not working around existing limitations in the future or revisiting improvements that were already constructed. Phases four through eight, those are generally smaller in scale, a little more flexible, and are it just offers the city more flexibility in how improvements are implemented and they can advance as complete projects or small projects as funding becomes available throughout time. Another important consideration is that stormwater management will have to be addressed in phase one, no matter what is in phase one, just to make sure that that's taken care of up front. Grant funding was also an important consideration in how this phasing was considered. We want to make sure that the city is positioned for competitive grant applications. So some things were kind of lumped together in a phase to know that, like, for example, a DNR grant and what their priorities are for those programs. And it's also important to clarify that the estimate doesn't account for smaller capital improvements over time and day-to-day maintenance, like we're not accounting for replacing mulch beds and additional support staff that would come with new amenities. So we'll take a look at this phase by phase and kind of break the park down a little bit