02-25-2026 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Staff Report To: Mayor Fischer and Members of the City Council From: Bill Dircks, Public Works Director Date: February 25, 2026 Re: Approve Agreement with Bolton & Menk for MS4 Services Action To Be Considered: Motion to approve the following: • Agreement with Bolton & Menk for MS4 services, including Self-Audit, Inspections, and Annual Report, for an amount not to exceed $34,500. Background: The city has an MS4 permit for storm water from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). The permit is wide-ranging and involves lots of documentation, education, inspections, and reporting. Staff has done the best it can with the resources it has available to keep up with the changes from permit-to-permit, which almost always include more unfunded mandates. It has gotten quite difficult to manage the entire program in-house, especially after hearing how some of the recent MPCA audits of cities’ MS4 programs have been going. The MPCA has been cracking down and levying hefty fines for violations of the permit. Bolton & Menk offers MS4 permit services to its clients and does all or some tasks for a number of cities. Staff met with Paul Strong, Water Resources Project Manager with Bolton & Menk, to see what he could do for the city’s program. He said the most important things to take care of are: - Self-Audit ($12,000): A self-audit to see where the city stands and make improvements based on the audit. An outside party that specializes in this type of work and knows what the MPCA is looking for can much more easily spot issues with the city’s permit. - Routine MS4 Inspections ($15,000): While the Ramsey Washington Metro Watershed District handles the majority of the city’s MS4 inspections, the city actually needs to be doing its own inspections periodically to essentially “audit” the inspections that are taking place. The city does not currently have the staff capacity to handle this, but staff will shadow some inspections to determine whether they can be handled internally in 2027 and later. - Annual Report ($7,500): The city needs to complete an annual report for its permit, which is a significant task. The MPCA has been upgrading its reporting software and website for the past three years, so annual reports have not needed to be filed during this time. However, once the system is operational, all reports must be filed, so there is a lot of work expected to catch up on all of them.