The 2021 budget season kicked off Monday night with department heads Scott Riopelle, Parks and Recreation, and Pat Kelly, Public Works, presenting their proposed 2021 budgets to the City Council. The two departments are the largest in the City of Crookston with Parks and Recreation incorporating nine area budgets totaling a proposed $3,605,988, and Public Works, which includes 12 area budgets totaling a proposed $8,106,602.
PARKS AND RECREATION
The budget review process includes expenses in the early stage and doesn’t account for revenues. The most substantial part of the Parks and Recreation budget is $1.79 million for buildings and structures. Of that, $1.39 million is offset by a grant for the RV Campground in Central Park for $1.35 million. There is also a $40,000 picnic shelter for Wildwood Park included in the budget, which would also be offset by revenue from a service club that would purchase the shelter explained Riopelle. “The Greater Minnesota Parks and Trails will offset a great deal of that for the campground,” said Riopelle. “We’ll only have to come up with dollars for the bathhouse, and we hope to save money on that through another venue as well. The $40,000 for a shelter in Wildwood Park, we have one shelter there now and used to have two. We’d put in a bigger one that would be similar to Ray Ecklund Park, where the Lions Shelter is. We have a service group that would be raising funds for that, so that would be offset as well. That wouldn’t cost us anything and would be an addition to one of our parks, so we’re making some big strides without having to spend a lot of money.”
If the city moves forward with the campground, the City of Crookston would have to have come up with the $400,000 matching funds on the grant for constructing a bathhouse. Riopelle said they would also be applying for an additional grant from the Department of Homeland Security to make the facility a rated storm shelter that could cover 75 percent or $300,000 of the bathhouse cost.
If the city moves forward with the campground and is successful in getting the 75 percent grant from DHS, the proposed budget increases $31,944 from 2020 to 2021. That increase includes a significant increase in safety expenses to operate the Crookston Sports Center due to COVID-19 with that line item increasing from $250 in 2020 to $5,000 in 2021. Riopelle also noted several changes likely for youth hockey due to COVID-19, including limited travel areas, no locker rooms, limited fans, required facemasks, and temperature checks, as well as a policy of returning tournament entry to a withdrawing team if the reason is COVID-19 related.
The budget included $20,000 for a utility task vehicle (UTV) and sprayer to spray Crookston’s parks for weeds, said Riopelle. He also added some leaner staff figures to offset increases in other areas based on what he said the department has learned about how they can operate leaner due to the impacts of COVID-19 in 2020. “We’re looking at purchasing a UTV and a spraying unit to spray some of our parks and take care of weeds,” said Riopelle. “We can utilize that equipment elsewhere throughout the summer and winter too. As far as being leaner, this year, we’ve had to cut back the personnel without many programs going on. We’ve had to cut back and move people around. We feel maybe we can operate a little bit leaner. We’ll see how that goes. We still don’t know where COVID will be next year. We still have a good number in there; it’s just we reduced it a little bit to save some cost. We think we may be able to get by with a few less now that we learned a few things this year.”
Overall, the salary and benefits reduction for operating leaner is $22,129, but Riopelle told the council that would be a result of reworking how they use staff, not from hiring less staff. Councilman Bobby Baird also questioned whether it would be cheaper to have the Parks and Recreation department spraying for weeds or to contract it out, saying he’d need to see numbers proving having park staff do it would be cheaper. It should be noted while the expense of purchasing a UTV and sprayer was included in the budget, there was no expense increase for the chemicals for controlling weeds.
PUBLIC WORKS
The total Public Works budget consists of twelve budgets overall and three separate divisions – Public Works, including things like street improvements and snow removal, the Water Department, and the Wastewater Department. Overall, the three units had a combined $151,920 decrease in their proposed 2021 budget from the approved budget in 2020.
One of the big projects on the budget again in 2021 is the water system’s filters that remove heavy metals such as iron and manganese. Initially, the council had approved $650,000 to rehab the filters in 2020, but Kelly explained that after disqualifying a bid, the second bid was too high, so the city is looking at a replacement with a new filter medium instead of a rehab. “We had budgeted $650,00,” said Pat Kelly. “The bids came in, and our low bid was around $650,000, and the second bid was around $1 million. Our consulting firm disqualified the low bid, and we decided not to take the second-lowest bid to take a step back to see what our alternatives were. Right now, we’re looking at probably doing a total replacement of the filter media in the tanks, which is still probably around $400,000 but lower than the $1 million.”
Kelly also said the water meter system replacement is nearly complete with just a few properties to finish both commercial and residential that were put on hold by COVID-19. And the other big-ticket items on the budget were replacing a two pieces of heavy equipment. “Replacing a front-end loader, a backhoe in the water division,” said Kelly. “But essentially, most of our budget in Public Works has stayed relatively flat.”
The council also discussed the gate arm for the motor grader during snow removal with Kelly, who stated that it’s hard to use with more than three inches of snow. The city also needs to have at least three inches of snow before they usually send out plowing equipment unless there is heavy drifting, according to Kelly. Kelly also said the gate could mean a reduction in parking due to narrow roads or the need for other equipment to follow the motor grader to widen the road. Councilman Fee suggested that they come up with some plan this winter to use the gate as much as possible to get more data on whether it is useful for Crookston.
