07-26-2010 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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COUNCIL MINUTES July 26, 2010 APPROVED 405 There being no further public comments, the Mayor moved to council comments and action. 06 407 Council Member Roeser moved to approve Resolution No. 10-68. Council Member O'Donnell 408 seconded the motion. 409 410 Council Member Roeser moved to answer some of the questions posed this evening. He believes that 411 reading the resolution in its current form should relieve some of the concerns he has heard and 412 reassure people that the resolution is strictly about a budget issue. What the city is looking at is rising 413 expenses, home values decreasing and state aid disappearing. The city must come up with some ways 414 to save money. There are lots of different thing that will be considered and some may be bold. The 415 city cannot continue to do everything that everyone wants and that means some people will have to 416 take responsibility for some of their needs including translation services. He sees the city will 417 become more diverse in the future and he embraces that but that may bring some costs issues like 418 translation services. He thinks that the way to be fair to everyone is to do business in English. He 419 sees that there could also be some costs for certain things like translation of city regulations that could 420 result in liability to the city. He has found Lino Lakes to be a very friendly city,with many,many 421 volunteers stepping forward and he is confident that if a neighbor comes to the city and needs help, 422 there will be a neighbor to volunteer to help. 423 424 Council Member Rafferty noted the amount of passion seen at the meeting this evening, on both sides 425 of the discussion. The reality of the situation is that these are really tough times for everyone and this 426 is truly a budgetary issue. There is a good city staff that has taken pay cuts and furloughs and no 127 raises and faced even layoffs. Everyone is pretty much in the same position with the difficult •••-428 economy. He doesn't believe that the council can be perfect in their decisions to protect the good 429 staff that this city has but he is committed to doing the best he can. He thinks it is prudent to take any 430 possible steps now that could save those jobs in the future. The council's job is to protect the staff 431 and the jobs that are needed to serve the city. 432 433 Council Member Gallup thanked those who commented tonight and in other ways. She believes the 434 information has been very valuable to the council. She thanked the city attorney for providing such a 435 carefully constructed document that lays out clearly that this is a financial consideration and nothing 436 else. She does have concerns however about its perception and that Lino Lakes will come off as 437 unwelcoming and she is struggling with that. She doesn't feel she will be able to support it. 438 439 Mayor Reinert commented that he heard a comment at the mike about racism. Cutting comments like 440 that seem to come from people from outside the city—Lino Lakes residents are more respectful 441 including of differences of opinion. It is offensive to use words like that. When his family gets 442 together it looks like America's melting pot and he takes great offense to any implication using such a 443 terrible word. It is a word of intimidation and is a powerful weapon. It has been used through this 444 discussion wrongfully and it is painted with a broad brush on many issues that absolutely don't bear 445 resemblance to the word. He has heard over and over that the council hasn't explained the costs 446 involved but he feels the council can't make decisions just for today. The fact is that most policy the 447 council sets is for the future and he noted one example being the emerald ash borer. The city is 448 working and planning to address that problem but it isn't here yet. Another example is road 149 maintenance—it isn't obvious that the work is needed now but performing certain maintenance can 10