Review proposed capital improvement project cost-sharing amendments to Lower Rum River Watershed Management Organization (LRRWMO) Joint Powers Agreement (JPA).

Purpose:
The purpose of this case is to review proposed amendments to the Lower Rum River Watershed Management Organization (LRRWMO) Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) as drafted by LRRWMO attorney Charles LeFevere with Kennedy & Graven.  The amendments are attached to this case in both track changes format and as a clean copy for ease of review.  A memo summarizing the purpose and content of the proposed amendments is also attached.  Per the memo, the proposed amendments are intended to clarify certain provisions of the JPA relating to the funding of capital improvement projects, and to clean up the JPA in several areas including updating citations to state law and making the form of the citations uniform, provide for the consistent use of defined terms, clean up typos and grammatical errors, remove all references to Coon Rapids since they are no longer a member city, and extending the term of the agreement another 10 years to January 1, 2025.
 
Background:
As noted in Mr. LeFevere’s memo, and as the City Council has discussed on several occasions, the existing LRRWMO JPA does not set forth a clear, definitive and equitable process for allocating costs among member cities as related to paying for any capital improvement projects administered by the LRRWMO.  The three current member cities of the LRRWMO recently received the attached memo and amended and restated JPA.  Each member city has since been asked to provide these documents to their City Attorney for review, to discuss the proposed amendments with their respective City Councils, then to report on the outcome of those discussions at the March 20^th LRRWMO Board meeting.
 
The City Attorney reviewed the proposed amendments and feels the revised document is an improvement, though more extensive changes could have been made to more clearly set forth the capital improvement project funding process.  The revised language more clearly prevents member cities from being forced to pay a capital improvement project allocation.  If objections are raised to CIP funding, the issue will go to non-binding arbitration, and if that fails, the capital improvements will be funded via Minnesota Statute section 103B.251 (County bonds).  The City Attorney will be at the work session to respond to any questions the Council might have.
 
During previous Council work sessions, Council discussed options for amending the JPA to prevent the City of Ramsey, which currently funds almost half the costs of the WMO, from being required to fund a similar percentage of costs for any WMO driven capital improvement projects, such as the proposed upgrades to the Anoka Dam.  Those discussions primarily focused on increasing Ramsey’s voting power for approving WMO driven capital improvement projects.  During recent WMO Board meetings, the member cities discussed options for increasing Ramsey’s voting power but the other member cities were not in favor of this approach.  As such, efforts were focused on clarifying the language within the JPA to allow cost sharing allocations to be agreed upon between member cities on a project by project basis, thereby resulting in the attached proposed amendments.
 
The other two member cities, Andover and Anoka, are also in the process of reviewing the proposed amendments with their City Councils and City Attorneys.  As mentioned earlier, all three member cities will present the results of their Council discussions at the March 20^th LRRWMO Board meeting.  The results of those discussions will then be brought back to Council for further consideration.  The existing JPA expires on January 1, 2015 so any proposed amendments to the JPA must be fully agreed upon by all member cities before the end of 2014 to prevent the LRRWMO from being dissolved.

20 minutes

Future stormwater related capital improvement projects will likely be funded from the Stormwater Fund, though funding sources for each project will be examined on a case by case basis.

City Administrator Kurt Ulrich and Councilmember Mark Kuzma will lead the discussion on this item.  City Attorney Joe Langel and City Engineer Bruce Westby will also be available to address questions as needed.

The results of tonight’s discussion will be discussed at the March 20^th LRRWMO Board meeting, along with feedback received from the City Councils of Anoka and Andover.