by Dennis Dalman
According to the various government departments of Sartell, all is well with the city, and some excellent advances and achievements were set in 2015.
As always in recent years, challenges in all departments were mainly due to yet more growing pains, with more people moving to Sartell, more businesses, the need for new and or improved roads, extended safety protections and other growth factors.
At the March 28 city council meeting, the directors of five departments presented year-end reports to the council: fire department, police department, public works department, planning department and engineering department.
The only two members of the council present for the March 28 meeting were Mayor Sarah Jane Nicoll and member Pat Lynch. Absent were members Amy Braig-Lindstrom, Steve Hennes and David Peterson.
The following are summaries of the department reports. More detailed reports can be found on the city’s website: www.sartellmn.com.
Fire
The Sartell-LeSauk Fire Department had a “record year” in many respects, said new Fire Chief Jim Sattler, who was named chief to replace former long-time chief Ken Heim.
There were 163 fire calls in 2015 – 47 more than the year before.
Two firefighters retired in 2015, with another set to retire this year. Currently, there are 29 members on the department, with one still in training.
Each year, each firefighter goes through an average of 58 hours of training, for a total of 1,764 training hours. Training periods are set for the third Tuesday of every month in the evenings, but this month Sattler is going to add a morning session for firefighters who work night jobs.
Good improvements last year, Sattler noted – the updating of the department’s air van, which was 30 years old; and the purchase of another rescue boat that can carry up to six firefighters, functions well in rough water and has a 40-horsepower motor.
Sattler and the department members are also very happy with a “washer extractor” they were able to buy with a grant. Fighting fires often bring firefighters’ protective clothing and other gear into contact with chemicals and even carcinogens. Previously, firefighters would have to take the time to bring their clothing to dry cleaners in St. Cloud.
Sattler then shared with the council some upcoming challenges and goals. The current fire station was built in 1982 when the population of Sartell was less than 2,000, and there were 30 or fewer calls per year. With more people, more buildings and taller buildings, and multiple-unit living places, firefighters have to go higher and reach farther. Thus, a new platform truck will eventually be required with an extension bucket that can reach up to 100 feet.
More firefighters are also needed, mainly ones who can be on call in the daytime, and efforts will be made to recruit some.
Sattler said members of the fire department deserve thanks for their service and dedication, including the retired firefighters’ association, which does so many good works, including installing batteries in smoke detectors for people unable to do so. Sattler also thanked the city council for its continued support.
Mayor Sarah Jane Nicoll thanked Sattler for his report and praised firefighters for all the hours they put in and all the work they do for very little pay.
Police
The Sartell Police Department now has 17 full-time officers, two part-time clerical workers (one of them a dispatcher as well), a part-time data entry employee and 10 volunteer reserve officers.
A new officer started April 2, and it’s anticipated another officer will be added in May.
The department also developed a new mission statement and a new officers’ badge in 2015.
Incidents of offenses were up a bit in 2015 but not by much, although crimes that need to be reported to the state (dubbed “reportable crimes”) were up by 5.6 percent. Those that showed increases were assaults, 53; burglaries, 44, drug-related arrests, 112; and theft-related calls, 500.
Also high in number were alarms, 228; driving complaints, 245; juvenile complaints, 111; medical calls, 582; extra patrol requests, 309; suicide threats and attempts, 77; suspicious incident calls, 648; and welfare checks, 304.
The volunteer reserve officers contributed 2,743 hours of tasks, for the dollar equivalent of $68,000. It was, Sartell Police Chief Jim Hughes told the council, a tremendous amount of work for the community: transporting prisoners, helping to secure crime scenes, running evidence, winter parking, house watches and many other things that must be done and that help free up patrol officers’ time.
The department received $17,763 in donations in 2015 for all kinds of needs, from helping purchase bicycle helmets to buying needed items for the DARE program.
The police department has nine community-outreach programs, including Police and Seniors Working Together (SALT) and the Police Activities League (PAL) for youth in the summer.
Training, Hughes said, is a “huge” part of the department, with a total of 1,500 hours completed by police personnel last year.
Public Works
There are 14 employees on the Public Works Department, Director Brad Borders told the council.
The council just recently approved two more, for parks and for utilities, so by the end of the summer there will be 16 employees.
There are 102 miles of streets and 101 culs-de-sac that must be maintained and plowed by the street workers. In 2015, thanks to some new equipment, the workers shaved about an hour off the time it takes to plow streets. It used to take them seven or eight hours, depending on how much snow fell, but now they get the job done in six or seven hours, Borders noted. He thanked the council for the addition of snow plows.
Costs, however, keep going up, including the price of salt to put on roads. Fortunately, with less snow in the winter of 2015, salt costs and other costs have leveled off.
Workers did 92,000 square yards of seal coating in 2015, and the city is now coming to the end of its goal of seal coating every city street at least once, Borders added.
The city compost site continues to generate more usage, with 2,140 permits sold, 233 of them purchased at a slightly higher cost by people who live outside of the city. Those kinds of permits also increased last year. There is enough space at the compost site for many years to come.
Borders told the council the new dog park in Pinecone Central Park has received a lot of use.
The city has 50 miles of trails, and 16.5 miles of them are maintained during the winter time.
Aug. 4 was the 2015 date with the heaviest water usage, with 3.8 million gallons used, down a bit from the year before when the all-time record usage was 5.8 million gallons used on just one very hot day. The average water use year-round is about 1.28 million gallons per day.
There are 5.5 miles of sewer lines cleaned by workers last year, less than the department’s goal, but Borders said the department hopes to clean much more of them this summer.
Engineering
Several major road projects were done last year, said Mike Nielson, Sartell’s engineer. They included Pinecone Road Phase I, which included the construction of a roundabout at the intersection of Second Street and Pinecone Road and the concrete road from that intersection north almost to Seventh Street N.
The Pinecone Road Phase II project was also started and is just about completed, with the two roundabouts constructed on the south stretch of Pinecone.
Major collector roadways, like Heritage Drive and Roberts Road, were seal coated, and fog sealing was done over the seal coating to reduce the incidents of flying chips.
Property was acquired for rights-of-way for the 50th Avenue and Fourth Avenue projects set to begin in 2017. Federal funding was obtained to purchase the rights-of-way.
The Safe Routes to School sidewalk project was delayed a bit, but it will be rebid and started sometime between late April and mid-May, Nielson noted.
Improvements will be completed this spring to two single-family properties, Avalon 8 and Providence. Improvements were also started or completed at Fifth Street from Victory Avenue to 500 feet east of the Grandview III Apartments and at the Chateau Waters senior-living facility in south Sartell by Lake Francis.
The SolarStone solar garden project should get underway as soon as the company, SolarStone, is about to do soil borings at the property in central Sartell, a place where solar panels will be constructed so energy produced can be sold to a utility company and purchased by consumers who wish to have electricity generated by solar power.
Nielson noted in 2018, Benton County plans to do improvements on CR 33 and CR 29 on the east side of the bridge.
Nielson said in 2015, his office took many calls and answered many questions from prospective developers interested in Sartell, as well as many requests for traffic-control issues.
Planning/Development
Sartell City Planner and Development Director Anita Rasmussen said single-family housing growth got a new lease on life in Sartell last year after the fallow years following the national housing bubble.
The developments of Providence and Arbor Trails now have 143 single-family lots in them.
The 54 single-family final plats were the most approved in the past five years. There has been 220 vacant family lots in the city, and the 54 new ones really help reduce that number.
The average price of a single-family home in Sartell is $223,000.
Last year, there was a total of building-permit valuations of $46 million and 4,600 building inspections of all kinds completed.
Rasmussen’s department has been busy updating the city’s long-term comprehensive plan and doing ordinance updates. The department also passed its audit “with flying colors,” she noted.
After the presentations, council member Pat Lynch thanked the department heads for such thorough year-end updates.
MISSING PHOTOS OF SATTLER & NIELSON