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City Council 14/04/26 – Drafts – $$ – 4 day sch wk
To see full agenda and Council 108-page packet posted on City website, go to https://www.ely.mn.us/council-meetings . If you want to comment on something before Council discusses or votes, it is too late. You can still request to appear during Open Forum at the end of the meeting. Check the Council Meetings website just before 5:30 pm on Tuesday for changes or additions. Not all last minute changes and additions are posted online in time for public or Council review. Check the table inside the Council Chambers for printed copies.
The public can email or call ALL of the Council Members and Mayor individually to voice their concerns and suggestions. Contact info is available via the City website https://www.ely.mn.us/council. Unfortunately, printing a one-page list of contact info from this Council + Mayor is not possible for many, most or all of us (?). Also, for some reason, the list is not alphabetical.
In this post, we will focus on 3 things: (1) Drafts of minutes and last week’s April 15th P&Z meeting, (2) Huge City Hall spending and funding requests for financially well connected businesses, and (3) the $$ impact on Ely after our School Board’s vote to go to a 4-day school week. Look for colors.
Glance through the entire 108-page Council packet posted online and then the last-minute changes and additions just before City Council meets at 5:30 pm in Tuesday, April 21st. The minutes and documents contain interesting tidbits. https://www.ely.mn.us/council-meetings
The Council packet posted a few days ago does NOT include draft/unapproved minutes of the last City Council meeting on April 7, 2026. This makes it hard for the public, Council, Mayor, City staff and speakers to review what happened 2 weeks ago should there be corrections. Not having the draft/unapproved minutes, means most of the public won’t know what actually happened on April 7th prior to the start of the April 21st Council meeting. The official Ely city newspaper, The Ely Echo, does not publish Council minutes until they are approved. Not everyone can afford or wants to pay Midco cable franchise fees to watch City Council meetings that are accessible 24/7/365.
Why aren’t the draft/unapproved minutes from the April 7th Council Meeting available in the packet? They are called “draft” or “unapproved” for good reasons. What is different this time?
Not all City commissions, boards, committees or authorities review and approve their minutes before submitting to Council and becoming public record. Not all type “draft” or “unapproved” at the top of their submissions. Check Tuesday’s packet and previous packets for minutes from the various committees. Supposedly, any revisions of minutes after approval are re-resubmitted with corrections. Has anyone ever seen that happen, seen the revisions posted?
There was an embarrassing (to some anyway) vote by Council on a recommendation from a commission that was not really recommended by that commission. If you view the recordings and documents posted on this website, it’s entertaining to see how nobody would directly admit any mistakes were done.
We all know it is too expensive for the City to pay for professionals to transcribe meetings or type up minutes from a recording. Volunteers are understandably welcome to be secretaries for the commissions they serve on. Typing detailed minutes is time consuming and difficult. Often the recorder doesn’t understand the other’s paradigm or philosophy or belief system, especially when they are not mutually shared. There are times, especially on controversial topics, that those writing minutes need to have a special sense of the English language to catch people’s use of nuances, subtleties and disclaimers. Another problem is Ely City Hall wants commission meeting minutes to be simple and short – few details – for a variety of reasons. There are problems with simple and short minutes. There’s a range between too much and too little. Commissions NEED TO review, discuss and correct as necessary their minutes BEFORE submitting to City Council and BEFORE becoming public documents.
Minutes filter info – Public needs 24/7/365 access to recordings
The public needs to understand and witness what happens in all City meetings. So does the Council, the Mayor, and City Hall. Here’s an example in Tuesday’s Council packet. Planning & Zoning submitted unapproved minutes from its April 15th meeting.
Compare what the speaker actually said with the minutes
Important points about what is done or not done in various committee meetings is missing. How can the City of Ely, Planning & Zoning, Park & Recreation, Land Use and Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee, etc. revisit, revise or improve if NOBODY says what’s wrong, what’s INTENTIONALLY excluded? Minutes should pass on useful comments, not filter them out. Some disclaimers and qualifiers are missing from the minutes. The speaker was given a generous 3 minutes. Not all last-minute speakers have hours to prepare crafted and typed out speeches to address ongoing systemic disregard of natural habitats and indigenous land acknowledgments as well as question some of the (missing) details in a shoreline excavation permit. Watch the unfiltered YouTube video and comments about P&Z posted on our website https://elyminnesota.com/blog/youtube-4-15-26-pz-private-beach-club-permit/ and compare with what was reported.
Left-side column above are “minutes” of speaker and P&Z discussion that can be compared with 16:08 – 22:11 time markers on the YouTube recording.
Among other things, notice the P&Z minutes do NOT include the words indigenous, Native American, or First Americans. P&Z and recorder apparently didn’t hear the speaker use these words, didn’t listen. They didn’t repeat any of those words in their discussion. If you can NOT hear, you can NOT claim you listened. Think about how Trump had “Climate Change” and other words deleted from government websites, etc.
The speaker gave more details about how natural spaces and indigenous history, culture and presence have been ignored by Ely. Not mentioned: Neither the Ely Chamber of Commerce nor The Tourism Bureau provide specific info or map about birding places in Ely. Listen to more specific comments about commissions and Comp Plan not recognizing nature, natural habitats for balanced development.
Right-side column above are “minutes” of P&Z discussion that can be compared with 45:45 – 1:26:00 time markers on the YouTube recording.
Upcoming $$ impact on Ely with 4-day school week
Both Local papers The Ely Echo www.elyecho.com/ and The Timberjay www.timberjay.com cover the ongoing financial problems of our ISD #696 Ely Public School District.
ISD #696 posts agendas and minutes online at https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Organization/1352. On Monday, April 13th, ISD #696 voted unanimously to move to a 4-school week starting this coming fall. You’ll notice as of April 20th, the minutes for their April 13th meeting have not been posted, just the agenda. Many people are upset about that decision.
The Library minutes (draft?) from their April 8th meeting gives an insight into how much the whole community needs to step up, examine options, and do something to help the kids, their parents, and parents. 500 students. Imagine the scramble. What will parents do? Send their kids to other private or charter schools? Home school?
Concerned and caring Library staff and the Ely Community Resource Center (ECR) want to step up. They do not have extra staffing, space or money. Same with other social service organizations and businesses.
There is no recommendation/motion posted on the current Council April 21st agenda for the City to help out with finances for staffing, space or educational materials. Chances are Council would vote no anyway. Somehow there has to be a way to indirectly support families and kids. Council won’t ask the ISD #696 to take back their vote and thus keep a 5-day school week? Why not?
There are restrictions to the mixing of City budgets and School District budgets. There are things they can do, things they can’t. Council needs to do some brainstorming Tuesday night. Residents, parents and teachers need to send GOOD DOABLE suggestions to all of City Council, not just to their favorites. Check out www.ely.mn.us/council for Ely City Council contact info. Call or send a mass email.
ISD #696 School Board Information
If you are looking for information about running for the next School Board elections, this is the weblink: https://www.ely.k12.mn.us/school-board-election-information. The webpage needs to be updated. Three current Board Members are up for re-election. See column of the left.
Council will vote to spend 1/3 million $$ on City Hall windows
Except for a few rich and/or well invested individuals, everyone is worried about the direction of our economy. Most people are re-examining their expenses and plans. Most people are reviewing what is essential and what is non-essential. What about City Hall and City Council?
On April 21st, hopefully the tax-paying public and those facing higher costs, higher fees, fewer benefits, and more expenses will hear and be satisfied with explanations for 1/3 million $$ proposed cost for windows in City Hall. How many? Why do they need to be replaced now? Do all of them in RFP need to be replaced now? Notice the memo from the Ely Clerk/Treasurer doesn’t give details about the urgency to replace x number of windows.
For such an expensive project, why would only 2 companies submit bids? Was the RFP (Request for Proposal) written and posted in such a way, so that only a few companies would submit bids? Notice the memo from the Ely Clerk/Treasurer doesn’t give details about due diligence, i.e., why only 2 and not more bids were received.
In the memo from the Ely Clerk/Treasurer, there is no background information which committees or when Council (recently?) recommended this expensive project. These windows apparently were not in bad shape back in 2014.
Memo and bid tabulation came from the April 21st Council packet https://www.ely.mn.us/council-meetings The AI Overview of US economy in 2014 was from a Goggle search on April 20, 2026.
City voting to lobby for funding business with $$ connections
As people throughout the region are discussing federal and state cut-backs and insufficient funding for essential services, including but not limited to public schools, they are questioning what expenditures are essential or nonessential. Funding for infrastructure will be reduced.
Why is the City of Ely lobbying for IRRB funds to be used for the Old Train Depot development project? Why is the City of Ely lobbying for businesses that have good credit and (in)direct access to financing? They are “spin-offs” or closely connected with rich real estate investors and/or developers, including those who own other developed and non-developed or neglected properties and buildings in Ely. Setting up LLC’s are safe protections for them. This website has questioned the Old Train Depot development while Chapman and Sheridan are neglected.
Why isn’t the City focused on helping established small businesses and apartment owners in the City who have leaking roofs and other construction issues? Some are located next to vacant, neglected and possibly unsafe structures. The street-facing fronts don’t look the same as the alley-facing backs.
Below is the Projects Committee webpage which is accessible via https://www.ely.mn.us/boards Projects recommended the City of Ely lobby for funding for the OldTrain Depot/Bearhead Development. The Committee shall make recommendations to the Council of all matters dealing with community projects…Wouldn’t a massive revitalization/renovation of established current SMALL businesses be a “community project”?
There are homes in town frequently flooded by runoff from other homes or streets or underground streams. Their homes were deemed safe to occupy when they bought them. Now they have to come up with their own money to pay for (resolving) problems that originate off their property. Wouldn’t these be essential “community projects”? Why aren’t these types of projects on the Projects agenda and list of priorities? Aren’t Project Committee members aware of these problems in the community?
Are only large projects promoted and sponsored by lobbists, rich real estate investors and developers the only ones that are considered community-based? Projects is to serve as a forum for others to express their views on subjects relating to community projects . . . When was the last time Projects pro-actively announced an open forum for all small business and apartment owners to help create a community-wide revitalization/renovation project?? It is easier for Projects to passively sit and have rich developers and real estate investors come to them for funding they could secure on their own. Who decided the Trailhead Building was something the Ely community REALLY needed? Or the luxury hotel? Or the cannabis dispensary?
The economy is not on an upswing. Regular people are suffering. The City of Ely should refocus its energies, tax-payer dollars, funding sources, and community projects to serve the essential needs of its real community.
City Council 14/04/26 – Drafts – $$ – 4 day sch wk
To see full agenda and Council 108-page packet posted on City website, go to https://www.ely.mn.us/council-meetings . If you want to comment on something before Council discusses or votes, it is too late. You can still request to appear during Open Forum at the end of the meeting. Check the Council Meetings website just before 5:30 pm on Tuesday for changes or additions. Not all last minute changes and additions are posted online in time for public or Council review. Check the table inside the Council Chambers for printed copies.
The public can email or call ALL of the Council Members and Mayor individually to voice their concerns and suggestions. Contact info is available via the City website https://www.ely.mn.us/council. Unfortunately, printing a one-page list of contact info from this Council + Mayor is not possible for many, most or all of us (?). Also, for some reason, the list is not alphabetical.
In this post, we will focus on 3 things: (1) Drafts of minutes and last week’s April 15th P&Z meeting, (2) Huge City Hall spending and funding requests for financially well connected businesses, and (3) the $$ impact on Ely after our School Board’s vote to go to a 4-day school week. Look for colors.
Glance through the entire 108-page Council packet posted online and then the last-minute changes and additions just before City Council meets at 5:30 pm in Tuesday, April 21st. The minutes and documents contain interesting tidbits. https://www.ely.mn.us/council-meetings
Meeting Drafts and Minutes
The Council packet posted a few days ago does NOT include draft/unapproved minutes of the last City Council meeting on April 7, 2026. This makes it hard for the public, Council, Mayor, City staff and speakers to review what happened 2 weeks ago should there be corrections. Not having the draft/unapproved minutes, means most of the public won’t know what actually happened on April 7th prior to the start of the April 21st Council meeting. The official Ely city newspaper, The Ely Echo, does not publish Council minutes until they are approved. Not everyone can afford or wants to pay Midco cable franchise fees to watch City Council meetings that are accessible 24/7/365.
Why aren’t the draft/unapproved minutes from the April 7th Council Meeting available in the packet? They are called “draft” or “unapproved” for good reasons. What is different this time?
Not all City commissions, boards, committees or authorities review and approve their minutes before submitting to Council and becoming public record. Not all type “draft” or “unapproved” at the top of their submissions. Check Tuesday’s packet and previous packets for minutes from the various committees. Supposedly, any revisions of minutes after approval are re-resubmitted with corrections. Has anyone ever seen that happen, seen the revisions posted?
There was an embarrassing (to some anyway) vote by Council on a recommendation from a commission that was not really recommended by that commission. If you view the recordings and documents posted on this website, it’s entertaining to see how nobody would directly admit any mistakes were done.
We all know it is too expensive for the City to pay for professionals to transcribe meetings or type up minutes from a recording. Volunteers are understandably welcome to be secretaries for the commissions they serve on. Typing detailed minutes is time consuming and difficult. Often the recorder doesn’t understand the other’s paradigm or philosophy or belief system, especially when they are not mutually shared. There are times, especially on controversial topics, that those writing minutes need to have a special sense of the English language to catch people’s use of nuances, subtleties and disclaimers. Another problem is Ely City Hall wants commission meeting minutes to be simple and short – few details – for a variety of reasons. There are problems with simple and short minutes. There’s a range between too much and too little. Commissions NEED TO review, discuss and correct as necessary their minutes BEFORE submitting to City Council and BEFORE becoming public documents.
Minutes filter info – Public needs 24/7/365 access to recordings
The public needs to understand and witness what happens in all City meetings. So does the Council, the Mayor, and City Hall. Here’s an example in Tuesday’s Council packet. Planning & Zoning submitted unapproved minutes from its April 15th meeting.
Compare what the speaker actually said with the minutes
Important points about what is done or not done in various committee meetings is missing. How can the City of Ely, Planning & Zoning, Park & Recreation, Land Use and Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee, etc. revisit, revise or improve if NOBODY says what’s wrong, what’s INTENTIONALLY excluded? Minutes should pass on useful comments, not filter them out. Some disclaimers and qualifiers are missing from the minutes. The speaker was given a generous 3 minutes. Not all last-minute speakers have hours to prepare crafted and typed out speeches to address ongoing systemic disregard of natural habitats and indigenous land acknowledgments as well as question some of the (missing) details in a shoreline excavation permit. Watch the unfiltered YouTube video and comments about P&Z posted on our website https://elyminnesota.com/blog/youtube-4-15-26-pz-private-beach-club-permit/ and compare with what was reported.
Left-side column above are “minutes” of speaker and P&Z discussion that can be compared with 16:08 – 22:11 time markers on the YouTube recording.
Among other things, notice the P&Z minutes do NOT include the words indigenous, Native American, or First Americans. P&Z and recorder apparently didn’t hear the speaker use these words, didn’t listen. They didn’t repeat any of those words in their discussion. If you can NOT hear, you can NOT claim you listened. Think about how Trump had “Climate Change” and other words deleted from government websites, etc.
The speaker gave more details about how natural spaces and indigenous history, culture and presence have been ignored by Ely. Not mentioned: Neither the Ely Chamber of Commerce nor The Tourism Bureau provide specific info or map about birding places in Ely. Listen to more specific comments about commissions and Comp Plan not recognizing nature, natural habitats for balanced development.
Right-side column above are “minutes” of P&Z discussion that can be compared with 45:45 – 1:26:00 time markers on the YouTube recording.
Upcoming $$ impact on Ely with 4-day school week
Both Local papers The Ely Echo www.elyecho.com/ and The Timberjay www.timberjay.com cover the ongoing financial problems of our ISD #696 Ely Public School District.
ISD #696 posts agendas and minutes online at https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Organization/1352. On Monday, April 13th, ISD #696 voted unanimously to move to a 4-school week starting this coming fall. You’ll notice as of April 20th, the minutes for their April 13th meeting have not been posted, just the agenda. Many people are upset about that decision.
Ely businesses, organizations and social services are now scrambling to help students and families
The Library minutes (draft?) from their April 8th meeting gives an insight into how much the whole community needs to step up, examine options, and do something to help the kids, their parents, and parents. 500 students. Imagine the scramble. What will parents do? Send their kids to other private or charter schools? Home school?
Concerned and caring Library staff and the Ely Community Resource Center (ECR) want to step up. They do not have extra staffing, space or money. Same with other social service organizations and businesses.
There is no recommendation/motion posted on the current Council April 21st agenda for the City to help out with finances for staffing, space or educational materials. Chances are Council would vote no anyway. Somehow there has to be a way to indirectly support families and kids. Council won’t ask the ISD #696 to take back their vote and thus keep a 5-day school week? Why not?
There are restrictions to the mixing of City budgets and School District budgets. There are things they can do, things they can’t. Council needs to do some brainstorming Tuesday night. Residents, parents and teachers need to send GOOD DOABLE suggestions to all of City Council, not just to their favorites. Check out www.ely.mn.us/council for Ely City Council contact info. Call or send a mass email.
ISD #696 School Board Information
If you are looking for information about running for the next School Board elections, this is the weblink: https://www.ely.k12.mn.us/school-board-election-information. The webpage needs to be updated. Three current Board Members are up for re-election. See column of the left.
Council will vote to spend 1/3 million $$ on City Hall windows
Except for a few rich and/or well invested individuals, everyone is worried about the direction of our economy. Most people are re-examining their expenses and plans. Most people are reviewing what is essential and what is non-essential. What about City Hall and City Council?
On April 21st, hopefully the tax-paying public and those facing higher costs, higher fees, fewer benefits, and more expenses will hear and be satisfied with explanations for 1/3 million $$ proposed cost for windows in City Hall. How many? Why do they need to be replaced now? Do all of them in RFP need to be replaced now? Notice the memo from the Ely Clerk/Treasurer doesn’t give details about the urgency to replace x number of windows.
For such an expensive project, why would only 2 companies submit bids? Was the RFP (Request for Proposal) written and posted in such a way, so that only a few companies would submit bids? Notice the memo from the Ely Clerk/Treasurer doesn’t give details about due diligence, i.e., why only 2 and not more bids were received.
In the memo from the Ely Clerk/Treasurer, there is no background information which committees or when Council (recently?) recommended this expensive project. These windows apparently were not in bad shape back in 2014.
City voting to lobby for funding business with $$ connections
As people throughout the region are discussing federal and state cut-backs and insufficient funding for essential services, including but not limited to public schools, they are questioning what expenditures are essential or nonessential. Funding for infrastructure will be reduced.
Why is the City of Ely lobbying for IRRB funds to be used for the Old Train Depot development project? Why is the City of Ely lobbying for businesses that have good credit and (in)direct access to financing? They are “spin-offs” or closely connected with rich real estate investors and/or developers, including those who own other developed and non-developed or neglected properties and buildings in Ely. Setting up LLC’s are safe protections for them. This website has questioned the Old Train Depot development while Chapman and Sheridan are neglected.
Why isn’t the City focused on helping established small businesses and apartment owners in the City who have leaking roofs and other construction issues? Some are located next to vacant, neglected and possibly unsafe structures. The street-facing fronts don’t look the same as the alley-facing backs.
Below is the Projects Committee webpage which is accessible via https://www.ely.mn.us/boards Projects recommended the City of Ely lobby for funding for the OldTrain Depot/Bearhead Development. The Committee shall make recommendations to the Council of all matters dealing with community projects… Wouldn’t a massive revitalization/renovation of established current SMALL businesses be a “community project”?
There are homes in town frequently flooded by runoff from other homes or streets or underground streams. Their homes were deemed safe to occupy when they bought them. Now they have to come up with their own money to pay for (resolving) problems that originate off their property. Wouldn’t these be essential “community projects”? Why aren’t these types of projects on the Projects agenda and list of priorities? Aren’t Project Committee members aware of these problems in the community?
Are only large projects promoted and sponsored by lobbists, rich real estate investors and developers the only ones that are considered community-based? Projects is to serve as a forum for others to express their views on subjects relating to community projects . . . When was the last time Projects pro-actively announced an open forum for all small business and apartment owners to help create a community-wide revitalization/renovation project?? It is easier for Projects to passively sit and have rich developers and real estate investors come to them for funding they could secure on their own. Who decided the Trailhead Building was something the Ely community REALLY needed? Or the luxury hotel? Or the cannabis dispensary?
The economy is not on an upswing. Regular people are suffering. The City of Ely should refocus its energies, tax-payer dollars, funding sources, and community projects to serve the essential needs of its real community.