TOWER— City officials and SEH engineer Matt Bolf received another earful Tuesday night from Lamppa Manufacturing plant manager Dale Horihan over the ongoing construction of the new plant for the company. The project has been built under the auspices of the city of Tower’s economic development authority with loan funding from the Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation. City hall and SEH are overseeing the actual construction.

Earlier this month, Horihan had taken issue with the lengthy delays in the project as well as equipment installations that were contrary to the company’s wishes. On Tuesday, Horihan raised a new issue, arguing that an air makeup system installed at the plant was highly inefficient, potentially forcing the company to spend much more on heating and cooling and would also require an air emissions license from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Horihan used the white board in the council chambers to make his point and to discuss a different type of system that would filter contaminated air from the plant’s paint booth before returning it to the building. He said the system that SEH had installed would vent large quantities of air directly to the outside, which would force the company to spend far more than they wanted to heat and cool the replacement air.

He went through a calculation in front of the council suggesting that the system installed for the building would completely change over air in the building about 44 times a day assuming it runs for five hours a day. “That’s all heated air that’s simply being exhausted,” he said.

Horihan questioned the process that the city and SEH followed and complained that lack of communication by the city created the current problems. “Here’s my frustration. SEH is the project management on this. I would expect that I wouldn’t have to do the research. I would expect to have monthly meetings with SEH and the city.”

Horihan challenged a comment made recently by Clerk-Treasurer Linda Keith that he was free to contact her if he had any questions about the project. “No,” he said. “Keep me informed. If nobody tells me what’s happening, I don’t know what to ask.”

Horihan also said that directly venting, rather than filtering, 8,000 cubic feet of air per minute from the plant’s paint booth would require an MPCA permit, adding further to the regulatory challenges the company will face.

Mayor Orlyn Kringstad, who made environmental sustainability a major focus of his campaign, said he recognized the importance of what Horihan was saying. “To me, it makes total sense to do the research,” he said.

Bolf said he didn’t want to argue about the decisions made and said he was unfamiliar with the facts of the issues that Horihan raised. He suggested that the city first needed to do some testing of the existing equipment to see if issues that Horihan raised Tuesday night and earlier this month were as serious as Horihan suggested. Horihan had earlier raised concerns about ventilation fans for the plant’s welding shop, which he feared would create OSHA or NIOSH violations due to noise.

The council did take action to greenlight a couple minor changes that Horihan had raised earlier in the month, including adding side-lighting to the paint booth and swapping out a small hand-washing sink for a more standard size and including a vanity for storage of soaps and cleaning supplies.

And the council asked for sound testing of the welding shop ventilation equipment and more research on the air makeup system in the paint booth to better understand the extent of the problem. They hope to have answers for the council’s next regular meeting, set for June 10.

Financial report

Kringstad had hoped to get a clearer picture of the city’s financial condition but Keith offered few details. She did confirm, however, that the $140,000 insurance settlement that the city received for the fire that damaged the city’s ambulance garage in 2014, had been spent covering city bills for ongoing projects. Keith, as recently as the council’s May 13 meeting, had told council members that the insurance funds were segregated in a special account and had not been spent.

As of April 30, Keith had reported that the city had $9,126 in available cash remaining, but she had been previously unwilling to acknowledge that that number included the insurance funds.

“So what is our cash position as of today?” asked Kringstad.

“I didn’t check it today,” responded Keith, an answer which clearly frustrated the mayor. “I would have thought you’d be prepared for this,” said Kringstad. “I did talk to you about this last week.”

Under questioning from Kringstad, Keith acknowledged that the city owes about $17,000 every month for city payroll, and that the payroll was due to go out as of May 31. “But you don’t know whether we have enough cash?” asked Kringstad.

Keith said the city always has more than $17,000 in available cash to cover payroll.

“Has the city had our available cash drop below $10,000 any time in the last month?” asked Kringstad. “Not that I’m aware of,” said Keith, directly contradicting her own financial report which showed less than $10,000 as of April 30. “I feel like you should be aware,” responded Kringstad.

Keith said the April fund balance was a temporary figure and that the city had received a $60,000 loan infusion for construction costs on the Lamppa building the following day, that boosted the city’s available cash as of May 1.

Keith said the city would replenish the $140,000 in insurance funding, yet the city’s auditor had raised concerns in April that the city had been using other funds for a period of years to cover frequent deficits in city projects and that the funds had only slowly been paid back to the city’s ambulance fund. Now, with those funds largely depleted, the city is tapping its own insurance settlement.

Newly-appointed council member, Sheldon Majerle, expressed frustration over the fact that the insurance money had not been used to rebuild an ambulance garage. “I’m a little peeved that the $140,000 is gone,” he said. “We’ve got thousands of dollars worth of equipment sitting out in the weather that should be in a garage. It should have been rebuilt.”

Kringstad argued that the city council needed firmer oversight of the city finances and motioned to create a budget and finance committee, with two council members and two at-large members with a financial background, to review financial matters and keep track of city spending. He said both Virginia and Ely have similar committees that do that work.

Beldo voiced support, noting that the city’s auditor had recommend increasing council oversight of city finances. The council approved Kringstad’s motion unanimously. The council will further define its function and appoint members at their June 10 meeting.

Grievance

committee process

In other business, the council struggled to reach resolution on how to respond to a remedy pushed through the union grievance committee that had the effect of overturning the council’s authority to investigate Keith over multiple allegations, including dishonesty and falsification of city records.

Keith had filed the grievance last winter accusing Kringstad of engaging in an unauthorized investigation of her activities, which he subsequently brought to the council. Ambulance Director and Fire Chief Steve Altenburg and former council member Brooke Anderson, both Keith allies, had approved a grievance remedy in March that prohibited the council from any further investigation into Keith’s alleged wrongdoing. Altenburg sent that remedy to the union without ever taking it to the city council and the union quickly accepted. Altenburg and the union have since argued that the decision is binding on the council. Others on the council had questioned the fairness of that decision and the validity of the approved remedy, which appears to directly contradict the city’s charter.

Kringstad challenged both the decision and its ability to bind the council. “That the grievance committee can make a decision and go directly to a union with a remedy bypassing the city charter and the city council is absolutely wrong,” he said.

Newly-appointed council member Mary Shedd also expressed her concerns with the process, noting that just two of the three members of the grievance committee, both Keith allies, were aware of the meeting during which the remedy was drafted and approved. She also took issue with Altenburg’s apparent conflict of interest in the matter, noting that he had filed his own complaint about Kringstad, which the council later dismissed as frivolous.

“It’s very hard to accept a remedy from two people, one of whom had his own grievance against the mayor.”

But Shedd encouraged the council to separate the two issues raised by the handling of the grievance, particularly as the council tried to decide whether to hire attorney Mitch Brunfelt to weigh in on the issues. The council had originally discussed hiring outside counsel to determine whether the grievance decision and remedy could supersede the city charter and prohibit the council from investigating Keith, but by Tuesday’s meeting the discussion focused mostly on investigating the fairness of the grievance process itself. Council members, at various times, seemed to separate the two issues, only to mix them up again.

Keith argued that the League of Minnesota Cities had concluded that the grievance remedy was binding, citing an email exchange in late March. But a League attorney, when questioned by the Timberjay, explained that the League’s advice was limited to the question of whether a grievance can be resolved at the committee level, which it clearly can be under the city’s union contract. “No opinion or information was provided with respect to any question outside of this narrow inquiry into the plain language of the applicable labor contract,” wrote senior LMC counsel Patricia Beety in a March 27 email to the Timberjay. As to whether a grievance committee decision could bind the council, Beety stated: “Any inquiry into the current or future process/decision-making involving Ms. Keith or questions regarding investigation, grievance or other matters related to Ms. Keith or any other city employee, is properly directed to Tower’s city attorney.”

City attorney Andy Peterson has refused to weigh-in on the question, however, leading the council to look for outside legal advice.

Council members Steve Abrahamson, Rachel Beldo, and Majerle all voiced support for hiring Brunfelt to offer an opinion on something, but exactly what was not clear.

But before any of them completed a motion, Shedd suggested that the council propose to mediate the question with the clerk-treasurer and the union. The suggestion met with considerable skepticism from the council chamber and the council itself. “I think from the union’s perspective it’s settled,” said Beldo. But Shedd persisted. “For me, it’s common sense to sit down. I can’t believe it couldn’t be done.”

She then made a motion to ask the city clerk and the union if they are willing to set aside the grievance and undergo mediation to resolve the issues in the complaint.

The council agreed to have Shedd contact Keith by email to suggest the idea and get back to the council at their next meeting on the response.

The council, in related action, gave Kringstad the authority to contact the city attorney and the LMC to determine whether the city could transition the grievance committee from its current three-member makeup to include the full council.

Keith argued that the council could not do that without union approval and not before the beginning of next year, but Kringstad will attempt to verify that claim.

Kringstad and others on the council have expressed concern about Altenburg’s presence as chair on the grievance committee, given that he reports directly to the clerk-treasurer, who is covered by the union grievance process.