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ARDEN HILLS CITY COI-INCIL WORK SESSION - JANUARY 13,2025 Director of Public Works/City Engineer Swearingen thought around mid-third quarter. There are already one or two queued up waiting on a decision. Mayor Grant said it is important that we are able to award utilized the entire $41,000 we were awarded. Director of Public Works/City Engineer Swearingen is certain that it will get used. Mayor Grant said we are an old enough community that we should be able to use that money. Councilmember Holden thinks we need a policy. People have been hanging on and not submitting because it was first come, first served. We didn't get the information we needed. Then the next person is on hold because the person in front of them didn't get the necessary information. We need to have a timeline for Staff that if someone applies, they have a certain amount of time to get the work done. There needs to be a policy that states if someone doesn't utilize the money in a certain amount of time, it goes to the next person. She said someone can hang on to $5,000 for the whole year. There was still money left in November. Councilmember Weber supports a timeline. He also said, if we are looking at running out of available funds in Q3, then it is better to take a spread-the-wealth disbursement approach. Maybe 50oh,lp to $4,000. Maybe a little less. Obviously using it all, is the most important thing, he would prefer to see it stretch to help as many people as possible. Mayor Grant agreed. From a practical standpoint, he wondered could this type of work be done in Q4? Director of Public Works/City Engineer Swearingen said it would need to be done before freezing temps. Mid-November would probably be the latest. Mayor Grant said the end of Q3 is not a bad proxy to make sure the money is used. Councilmember Holden said there was one $5,000 allotment left in October. That person didn't come through. As soon as they were told to get their information in or we would have to move on. It took a while for someone else to claim that. She worries that if the amounts were less than $5,000, people may not be able to cover the entire difference and will choose not to fix it. Mayor Grant summarized that the claim amount will remain the same and we will revisit the equity component next year. D. Newsletter Policy Draft Interim City Administrator Jagoe said this is a follow up discussion from the December meeting regarding removing the Communication Liaison from appointments for the2025 calendar year. Based on that direction, and through discussion with the Senior Communications Coordinator it was determined that the newsletter policy and procedures needed to be updated. References to the Liaison has been removed. The point of contact for topic submissions is the City Administrator. There were no other changes to the policy other than what Council had seen l5