10.g City Administrator Report1
Staff Report
Date of Meeting: January 20, 2026, City Council Meeting
To: Mayor and City Council
From: Kyle Morell, City Administrator
Re: City Administrator Report
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Water Tower Barn Wetland Trail Project
The City’s LCCMR proposal was selected to move forward in the review process. I presented it to the
LCCMR committee on June 28. The Committee met on July 31 to determine funding amounts for all
projects. The City received $907,000 of the $998,000 it requested. The project was funded with the
passing of the LCCMR bill last month. Council approved the design and engineering of the trail
network at the September meeting.
The project is currently being designed, with plans to begin plans and specs to Council in February or
March to authorize bids.
Bliss Sewer Project
The Legislature met on Monday in a Special Session to approve all remaining budget bills. While a
bonding bill was approved, it included no local projects. The Legislature approved $200 million for the
MPCA Point Source Implementation Grant (PSIG) program to fund water and sewer infrastructure. The
City has been assured that this level of funding is sufficient to fund the Bliss project this year. However,
I have yet to verify this claim. The official PSIG projects that received funding are expected to be
released in September.
The list of funded projects was not released in September. Instead, the MPCA increased the minimum
point cutoff. Each project on the list was assigned a score; our project scored 40 points. The minimum
funding cutoff for 2026 was raised to 40 points. Additionally, each project was asked to indicate its
expected start date, in hopes of removing projects with later start dates, thereby making more funding
available for projects intended to start in 2026. We hope that these steps will eliminate enough projects
so that funding becomes available for our project. We now anticipate a mid-November release date for
the funded list, with the final list to be issued in December.
City Engineer Isiah Bubany has an update on this item in the Engineering Update.