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City Council Minutes Page 3 <br />October 3, 2005 <br />----------------------------- <br /> Chief West stated that some good lessons have been learned from this activation. He stated <br />that there were some paging issues, both with the digital pagers and with the Nextel cellular <br />phones. Chief West explained that this was a small scale EOC activation and there were <br />enough personnel to handle it but if it had been larger, additional personnel would have <br />been needed. <br /> <br /> Chief West noted that the Fire Department received about a dozen calls that evening <br />relating to lightning strikes, fire alarms due to power outages, and for one structure fire in <br />Lafayette Woods. <br /> <br /> B. Utility Issues <br /> Elk River Municipal Utilities General Manager Bryan Adams indicated that his office began <br />getting calls about 6:30 p.m. the evening of September 21, 2005 regarding power outages <br />and with all of the line crews working, the power was restored by 2 a.m. He explained that a <br />majority of the power outages were caused by trees on power lines and that the reason that <br />Elk River didn’t experience more power outages is because about 60% of the electrical lines <br />are underground. Mr. Adams stated that the day after the storm was spent cleaning up and <br />on Friday, a line crew was sent to assist the City of Anoka restore power. Mr. Adams noted <br />that many of the agencies in the area have mutual aid agreements amongst them for <br />instances such as this. <br /> <br /> Councilmember Dietz questioned if a representative from Elk River Municipal Utilities was <br />present in the EOC. Mr. Adams stated that he has discussed the issue with Chief West and <br />there will be a representative from Utilities in the EOC in the future. He noted that the <br />Utilities phone lines will need to be transferred to the EOC so residents can contact them in <br />power outage situations. <br /> <br /> C. Street Clearing and Storm Debris Pickup Plan <br /> Street Superintendent Phil Hals stated that he had three crews on the streets the evening of <br />the storm looking for trees down on city property, the boulevard, and on the roadways. He <br />stated that the weekend following the storm was very busy at the compost site and he <br />estimates that they saw about one vehicle per minute dropping off brush there and that the <br />pile of brush. <br /> <br /> Mr. Hals indicated that curbside brush pickup will begin Tuesday, October 4 and go <br />through Monday, October 17. He stated that this curbside cleanup may not take as long as <br />originally planned and that the final cleanup will be completed by the 17. <br />th <br /> <br /> Councilmember Dietz questioned if there was a way in the future to communicate to <br />residents that the city will be picking up the brush curbside so pickup could begin earlier. <br />Mr. Hals indicated that most residents assumed the city would be picking up the brush and <br />that there were a couple reasons for choosing the dates that they did. One was to allow the <br />residents a couple weekends to get the brush cleaned up and the second was to allow time <br />for the Public Works Department to get some other important issues such as drainage issues <br />taken care of prior to picking up the brush. <br /> <br />D. Drainage Issues <br />City Engineer Terry Maurer explained that due to the recent rainfall events in the month of <br />September, a number of drainage issues have been brought to the city’s attention. Mr. <br />Maurer stated that Street Superintendent Phil Hals, Assistant Street Superintendent Mark <br />Thompson, and he have been responding to most of these calls from citizens regarding <br /> <br />