The New Richland City Council met on Monday, May 13 for its first meeting of the month and discussed the removal of something that should have gone a few years ago.
The railroad tracks on Division Street in New Richland are finally going to be removed after the council gave approval at the meeting. The council also discussed a recent classification and compensation study, along with the removal of trees at the dump.
Removal of railroad tracks
The railroad tracks on 1st Street in New Richland were removed a few years ago, and the removal of the tracks on Division Street was supposed to take place at the same time.
Since that did not happen, the Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) railroad company reached out to the city and presented them with an agreement that would have them pay for the removal of the tracks and to get the base of the street back to where it needs to be. The city would then pay for the paving of the street.
New Richland Maintenance and Utility Supervisor Eric Hendrickson has started to plan the pavement process.
“I talked to Eric, and we’re getting bids to see if we can work it into this years paving, but worse case scenario that road would just sit with gravel on top of it one season and then we pave it the next season,” said City Administrator Anthony Martens.
While the tracks that cover the road will be removed, the rest of the tracks will not be since the railroad company will reserve the right to put tracks on the street again at their cost if they choose to in the future.
The council agreed unanimously to the agreement between the city and CPKC.
Classification and compensation study
The city of New Richland worked with DDA Human Resources, Inc. to make sure that the city is paying its employees competitive wages. The company did a classification and compensation study to help the city figure out what the city should be paying their employees based on their budget and what other cities around the area are paying their employees.
The city and DDA selected a group of 16 cities and one county with whom the city competes for talent, which include, Caledonia, Chatfield, Janesville, Madison lake, Waseca, and Waseca County.
The city’s departments were all within the normal range for the wages across the comparable areas except for one: law enforcement.
“Martens presented the council with an updated list of wages for the city employees and asked the council to give him direction moving forward on if they would like to see changes to the wages or have them stay as they are after Martens made the changes after the study’s findings.
“This just basically shores us up so that if we have a departure of someplace, we have the ability to hire and keep our Police Department,” martens said.
Council member Ryan Gehrke, who used to be a police officer in New Richland before taking a job in Steele County, said he would like to see better numbers for the employee pay.
“There’s a reason why I didn’t stay here and that was it,” Gehrke said about his police officer role. “My number was well below this one, and with 16 years of experience, I didn’t get paid what I thought I should be getting. There’s a reason why people don’t come here or stay here and I would like good people to stay here.”
Martens agreed and stated that after the study, the city will be paying it’s law enforcement officers more and will open up opportunities for them to obtain and attain officers.
“The law enforcement side of this puts us back into at least talking to people again to get us candidates,” said Martens.
New Richland Chief of Police Tanyce Bruegger was also at the council meeting and said that the city has one of the lowest posting wage earnings out of over 300 law enforcement postings in the state.
“There’s even cities smaller than us that are paying their part-time officers like $10-$12 more an hour than we’re paying our full-time officers,” Bruegger said.
After the study, the city’s full-time police officer position’s pay went from $22.18 an hour to $25 an hour, but Gehrke would like to see a higher increase in the wage.
Martens stated that he would like to have a final decision regarding the wages and study by the council’s next meeting on Tuesday May 28. Gehrke moved to have city staff continue with the salary conversation and report it back to the council at the next meeting. Council member Jason Casey seconded the motion and was voted unanimously by the council.
City dump cleanup
The city has had an unusual amount of very large trees and stumps delivered to the dump at the beginning of May, resulting in the inability to maintain and move them by the city’s equipment.
“Unfortunately we can’t get them cleaned up,” Martens said. “We tried to burn them a few times and they’re just too big for our equipment so we need some help.”
Hendrickson went out or bids to remove them and clean up the dump and the city received three bids back. Martens recommended to the city council that they approve Dallas Loken, who had the lowest bid of $1,300-$1,400 to remove the trees and stumps. The board voted unanimously to do so.
The city will also add signage to the dump stating that anything larger than three feet in diameter is not going to be allowed to be dumped out there. It will either have to be broken up or split before it goes to the dump.
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