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Mounds View City Council March 25, 2024 Regular Meeting Page 5 Council Member Meehlhause reported he attended the Twin Cities Gateway board meeting last week. He discussed the year end financials for this organization noting he was pleased to report revenues were up. He explained the City would be receiving $10,680 from the visitor’s bureau in 2024. He thanked the visitor’s bureau for their tremendous efforts to draw people into the community. He commented further on how the board officer positions would now be a two year commitment. Mayor Lindstrom reported the Festival in the Park Committee would be hosting an Easter egg hunt on Saturday, March 30 at 10:00 a.m. at Silver View Park. Mayor Lindstrom explained he attended a meeting with Arden Hills Mayor Grant and Councilmember Rousseau to discuss recreational programming and potential partnerships. In addition, he had a discussion with Arden Hills Councilmember Monson regarding organized trash collection. Mayor Lindstrom then read a letter in full for the record to the citizens of Mounds View. He stated organized collection… “To the citizens of Mounds View, Organized collection has been a hot topic as of late, and we have spent a lot of time talking about it. I realize you are tired. I’m tired, and we are tired. At the last meeting, I laid out the timeline of events up until that meeting. Since then, I have received a letter from the president of Walters, Mike Moroz, stating, “Mayor Lindstrom, I am writing on behalf of the Mounds View Haulers to acknowledge your speech given at the Mounds View City Council meeting on Monday, March 11th, 2024. Please be advised that the Mounds View hauler group will meet to discuss the draft contract and pricing for proposed waste services. We understand that our response must be delivered to the city by Thursday, March 21, at 12 p.m., and it is our goal to meet that deadline. “ The haulers subsequently met on 3/18 and came back with an offer on the afternoon of 3/20 stating that they would not lower the price but were open to offers, so we submitted the St. Anthony pricing, which we believe is fair based on the fact we are similar cities, and they have a new contract. The haulers met again today and gave us another proposal and though it was better; it is higher than the average cost per tote with the exception of the 35 gallon of all the cities that we looked at in an organized environment in Hennepin and Ramsey County. It is not the St Anthony pricing we asked for. We believe that our pricing should be in line with or better than theirs since we are a denser city with a similar easy access footprint. The Haulers were unable to get there, further reinforcing the fact that we are at an impasse in this negotiation. We made it crystal clear what we wanted and that we are not going to continue a back and forth with them. We appreciate their efforts, but they simply are not good enough for our city and in my opinion it’s time to move on. We also received another mailer from haulers for choice, this time with some amped-up rhetoric and pictures and phone numbers of council members. Which has been characterized on social media as dehumanizing tactics. I now want to take some time to talk about each member of this council, starting with the man “leading the charge,” according to our most recent mailer, Councilmember Meehlhause. Gary has lived in Mounds View for over 40 years; he raised his children here. He has been on council for close to 12 years and was on various commissions for over a decade prior to that. Gary is