FAIRMONT– On Monday the Fairmont City Council was tasked with considering the installation of safety doors and windows for the first and second floors of city hall.

Public Works Director Matthew York said that the topic went back to a facility assessment done by Wold Architect and Engineers a few years ago that identified several issues at city hall.

“We began working on some first floor and second floor safety modifications to ensure the safety of our employees,” York said.

He said in the last year and a half he’s been with the city there have been several instances of non-employees going up to the second floor and walking in areas they shouldn’t be.

“People don’t always have ill intentions but they don’t know where to go so they start wandering around and we want to make sure that they get to where they need to and talk to who they need to,” York said.

The city went out for bids for safety doors/windows and York said the low bid came in from Fairmont Glass at $29,500. He recommended the council approve of the purchase.

City Administrator Matt Skaret added that the Wold study had referenced the security needs at city hall and had actually proposed several hundred thousand dollars worth of renovations.

“I think this is a good, intermediate measure,” Skaret said.

Council Member Wayne Hasek said he thought the project was long-time overdue, but Council Member Britney Kawecki had several issues with it and said she thought a lot has changed since Wold did the study.

“I’ve never been told by any city staff that anybody has any safety concerns or fears,” Kawecki said. “It’s concerning to me that we’re being asked to spend money on something when we just had the work session for Brunton (Architects) to talk about a new design for a city hall and we don’t know what will happen.”

She brought up Mayo Clinic’s “exist out of town” and speculated that city hall could someday be inside Mayo Clinic.

“This is an expense that isn’t necessarily justified for me. I don’t know why city hall is different from other professions, banks, etc.,” Kawecki said.

Council Member Jay Maynard then spoke up and said that he has been told by city staff members that they have safety concerns at city hall.

“The other part of this is, maybe we’re looking at building a new city hall or fire hall… but in any event, we’re not going to be out of this building at a minimum for at least another year and I’m not comfortable with exposing staff for that long,” Maynard said.

York added that of the five municipalities he has worked for, Fairmont has the least secure office.

“It is our staff and we need to feel comfortable about coming to work on a daily basis,” York said.

Council Member Randy Lubenow returned to Maynard’s comment about city staff not feeling comfortable and said he felt all council members should know if any particular situation took place to make staff not feel safe.

“If we’re basing this off of one incident, was the Fairmont Police Department called? What was the threat? I think we all want to be safe when we go to our place of work but I can also tell you that $29,000… are we going to start doing this at the liquor store? Where do we end?” Lubenow said.

Mayor Lee Baarts said, “Do we just wait until something happens?”

Baarts pointed out that the local schools are locked up for safety measures and he added that this is something that’s been discussed for quite a while and wasn’t just added to the agenda randomly.

“This was brought up almost before I was mayor… and I thought it was a good time to bring it back. This wasn’t something I just made up. This was brought up prior to me becoming mayor,” Baarts said.

Finance Director Paul Hoye agreed and said it’s something that’s been discussed for a long time and he said that staff’s concerns about safety aren’t new, either.

“They have expressed their concerns to me, I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it myself,” Hoye said.

Hasek said he has had four people bring up concerns to him.

Kawecki said that if there is a problem with fear and safety, council should be discussing it and she said that even though it was brought up in the past, it never went any further.

“Council as a whole makes a decision, not one person. I don’t come here and say that I want something because that’s in our policy. One person doesn’t get to make a decision– not a mayor and not a councilor,” Kawecki said.

Council Member Michele Miller added that she would like to be informed by the city administrator if there are issues going on at city hall and while she thought the council should move forward with implementing safety measures, she would like to be made aware of issues.

In closing, Skaret told council that the conversation of adding security measures isn’t due to one particular situation.

“I’ve had multiple employees come to me about just general safety… and there aren’t many businesses in town where anyone can just walk in and start walking through the offices and hallways,” Skaret said.

The council unanimously approved of the purchase and after the motion passed Kawecki asked that all council be made aware of instances of city staff not feeling safe moving forward.

Continuing with the theme of security, the council on Monday also needed to consider the proposed Martin County Justice Center and Fairmont Police Department lease general terms. The Martin County Commissioners had approved of the agreement in a special meeting on Oct. 8.

Skaret said that the county wanted more of a commitment from the city other than the earlier memorandum of understanding that was approved in 2021.

“The intent was to have a lease agreement for council to consider at today’s meeting; however, upon review of the document by legal (counsel), there’s a number of details they recommend adding before it’s recommended to the council to approve,” Skaret said.

He also said that since some representatives of the county were present, some key details of the lease could still be discussed.

Skaret went over some notable items in the terms which included that the lease is for 30 years and that for the first 10 years the lease rate will be $15,000 per month, which is up from the $5,000 the city is currently paying. After 10 years the county would have the right to increase the amount up to 5 percent annually.

“The city would also need to provide its own furnishing and equipment and if the city cancels the agreement before the 30 years is up, we would be responsible for the rest of the rent payments until the 30 years is up or the county found someone else to lease the space,” Skaret said.

County Attorney Taylor McGowan said that the $15,000 a month would cover the cost of constructing the police department portion of the facility and that there was just the possibility of a 5 percent increase after 10 years, which would cover additional costs that could come up with the maintenance of the building.

He said that Fairmont’s city attorney indicated that they wanted clearer language in the lease agreement, which the county was fine with.

“I think a lot of the items that will be added won’t be of great relevance… the real key elements are the monthly amount, the term of the lease and… if the city exits early, it would be liable for the remainder of the lease until the space is repurposed or reutilized,” McGowan said.

Lubenow said he would like to see the potential of a 5 percent annual increase lowered to 3 percent at the most.

He also said that if at some point in the next 30 yeas the city’s police department ceases to exist and the sheriff’s office takes over, the city would be obligated to pay for a lease.

“It’s a far-fetched idea but with a lease that’s 30 years you have to look at everything that could possibly happen. With Flaherty and Hood telling us not to approve it tonight, I think we need to table it until we get the correct language…,” Lubenow said.

Kawecki also said she was not comfortable with a 30 year lease.

“I think with what happened in Truman, and I know Truman is smaller… but I agree with Councilor Lubenow that we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Kawecki said.

She said she did not believe it was fair the the city was being asked to lock into the agreement for 30 years when it’s unknown what the future holds. Kawecki also mentioned the work session with Brunton Architects that included a design for a facility that houses city hall, a fire department and a police department and that she thought too much pressure was being put on the city.

County Commissioner Kathy Smith, who was present, said, “I’ve been working on this project since 2016 and it was seven years prior to that that this project has been worked on and during that time the Fairmont Police Department was part of all the discussions and we did do a space analysis for the PD and have all of that information.”

She said the county is now in its final phases of the design process and that it was fine if the city didn’t want to go ahead with the agreement, but that the county needs to know so it can move ahead with plans.

Maynard pointed out that it was just said that Chief Hunter has been involved in the planning since 2017 and that the facility was designed to include space for the department.

“It just makes sense to have Fairmont PD in the same law enforcement center as the county’s sheriff department, otherwise we would have to duplicate a fair amount of the same facilities,” Maynard said.

While no decision needed to be made on Monday, Skaret said that council needed to give some direction. McGowan added that the county was seeking approval on some core elements of the agreement.

Maynard made a motion that the council goes ahead with the lease agreement as outlined with the exception that a negotiation about a lower limit on the increase in rent will take place and that a clause will be added that says if Fairmont dissolves its police department, damages will be one year of rent and to also include that better lease language be included in the agreement.

The motion passed 4-1 with Kawecki opposed.

In other business, the council had a second reading on amending chapter 4 of the city code of ordinances pertaining to animals. The topic came up following the June 24 meeting when a resident asked about allowing the keeping of bees in town and at the July 8 council meeting the council had decided to take no action.

However, upon further review city staff discovered issues with the existing ordinance so amendments were brought forth to the council and it approved the first reading of the updated ordinance at the Sept. 23 council meeting.

City Planner and Zoning Official, Peter Bode, said that the ordinance amendments mainly clears up two things: definitions of animals and provides an exception for honeybees with two hives per recorded lot.

After Bode’s brief introduction, Lubenow said he wanted to point out that council did not ask for action to be taken on the matter.

In a roll call vote, the ordinance failed 3-2 with Councilors Hasek, Kawecki and Lubenow opposed.

“I, too, agree that there was no action to be taken on this and I feel that this was a waste of tax payers dollars and there are more important things we need to be working on and I want that to be noted.