Caution: Public building boom approaching

With the Great Recession firmly in the rearview mirror, local governmental bodies are eyeing and undertaking building projects that many say are long overdue. In most cases, they're correct. Still, the question of how to fund a public building boom has elected officials scratching their heads, and taxpayers worried that property taxes are going to make their homes unaffordable.

In Carlton County - and particularly Cloquet - there are so many big-dollar current and proposed projects, it can be hard to keep track of them.

Here's a quick rundown of the latest:

Nearly completed

New combined Cloquet city hall and police department: estimated total $3.9 million

New county offices in former Cloquet City Hall: purchase price $750,000

Mostly approved

Renovations and expansion at Cloquet Public Library: Estimated total $2 million

More research needed

New combined Cloquet Area Fire District station: estimated total $10-$12 million

New county jail in Carlton: estimated costs $30 million

New or renovated Cloquet public works facility: estimated costs up to $10 million

"There's a boom, no doubt about it," said Cloquet Community Development director Holly Hansen, noting that private sector building/renovations are also on the rise.

Of course, none of these current or proposed projects are happening on a whim. The city of Cloquet, library officials and foundation members, the Carlton County board of commissioners and the fire district all conducted and/or commissioned official needs and assessment studies for every project.

A 2014 city of Cloquet facility plan had looked at needs, and mostly recommended new buildings, which Hansen said didn't make sense. By moving and combining city hall and the police department, the city got more bang for its buck, consolidated some services and reused an existing building at a lower cost to taxpayers.

"When you step back and say who is going to occupy this huge downtown building, the city of Cloquet is really the perfect occupant," said Hansen, referring to the former Members Cooperative Credit Union building at 101 14th St.

The community development director and planner also finds the sale of the current city hall to the county philosophically pleasing.

"The city hall building was paid for by public dollars and is being transferred via sale to the county, another taxing agency that's out of space," she said. "This will bring more jobs to our town and give them the expansion they need."

Hansen likes to compare the current public building boom to a game of dominos.

"Obviously the city of Cloquet deciding to move was the first domino that created an opportunity for the county to look at our building in Cloquet," Hansen said. "Then we grabbed the police department, and the second domino fell. The third domino is the fire district getting into the entire public safety building."

It may be a domino from the city perspective, but from the fire district perspective, the "gift" of the aging public safety building is only a stopgap measure.

Fire district inadequacies

"What this building does is buys us some time to look at things, slow down a step and make sure we do things right," CAFD chief Kevin Schroeder said, referring to the fire district's future plan to build a new $10-$12 million combined fire station on donated land near the former Diamond Brands plant. "In this current location, with the hill and neighboring homes, it's hard to expand and add onto buildings."

While CAFD will gain office space when the police department moves out - which means Schroeder and three other full-time administrators can move back to Station 1 from Station 2 in Scanlon - it won't gain space for equipment or living space for its full-time firefighters and EMT staff.

That's a problem, said Schroeder, showing off two cubicles at the back of the training room in Station 1. Each one has a bed and a bedside table and locker, because there are more firefighters than there are sleeping rooms at the full-time fire and ambulance station on Cloquet Avenue.

Additionally, CAFD will still need to store training equipment and other supplies at Station 3 in the Scanlon Community Center. Part-time firefighters and command staff will also continue to be based out of Scanlon.

"At some point we need to deal with facilities," Schroeder said. "The plan that was in place - that went through the public hearings - was scheduled for groundbreaking last August but when the legislation failed last year that halted that."

Now that the language allowing the fire district to bond for building funds was approved by the state legislature, the chief said the fire district needs to take its time and reevaluate, he said, pointing out that the fire district has grown since that plan was drawn up, with the addition of East and West Brevator.

"We need to go back and look at our plan and make sure it's still what we need, not too much or too little building," he said.

New combined city hall/police department

On Thursday, city of Cloquet and the police department employees began moving into their new joint facility. Effective Monday, that is the new city hall.

Originally, the city planned to spend close to $6.4 million to tear down the fire department side of the Public Safety Building at 508 Cloquet Ave. and rebuild/remodel the police department. The purchase of the MCCU building means the city will spend only about two-thirds of that money - and sell the existing city hall building instead of also paying $775,000 to remodel it - plus get a newer building with space to spare.

Library changes

Cloquet Public Library is in the planning stages of a $2 million renovation and expansion project, funded by a state grant and the city of Cloquet. The library received a $784,000 library expansion grant from the state of Minnesota, which requires a 50/50 match of dollars from a local entity. There is a chance the grant will grow if other libraries fail to come through with matching money; if it doesn't, the city will likely bond for $1.2 million to help pay for the project.

The proposed expansion includes several elements:

• More space for the collections

• A quiet study space

• Reduced noise levels

• More meeting room space

• More computers

• Separate, child-friendly space

• Adherence to American With Disabilities Act requirements

Public works

The Cloquet Public Works department, a collection of buildings off Armory Road where a new $6 million water treatment plant is currently nearing completion, was slated for its own improvement project, although that project is currently getting a second look by consultants. Building new could cost close to $10 million, but public works director Caleb Peterson is hoping the consultants he hired can trim some of those costs. The main building isn't necessarily unsafe or unsound, it's inadequate.

The biggest problem - similar to an issue the county faces right now at its Barnum garage - is that the city's equipment (snowplows, dump trucks, etc.) has outgrown its space. The original plan also included office space to bring the entire public works department together under one roof, but with more space at the new city hall, department administrators and engineering staff will remain at city hall, and street and parks department employees will stay at the facility on Armory Road.

New county offices

By the end of the month, Carlton County will take over ownership of the former City Hall building at the corner of 14th Street and Cloquet Avenue. Although the plans are not yet finalized for all the new space, County board chair Dick Brenner hinted that they're considering moving the emergency management equipment and facilities into the massive basement area in the former city hall building and ACE workers in upstairs.

A 27-year member of the county board, Brenner stressed that the county has continued to improve and build new buildings, even during the Great Recession. They built the new Human Services building in downtown Cloquet, and the new transportation building on Highway 61.

"The county's been very diligent about replacing buildings and remodeling and trying to stay as current as possible with the money we have," he said.

But it is time to build a new jail, he said. And a new garage in Barnum. And a new airport hangar, but there are state and federal dollars to pay for that, he added.

A new county jail

In Carlton, the county jail - officially known as the Carlton County Law Enforcement Center - is too crowded and inadequate for needed mental health and substance abuse programming and a growing population of female inmates. County commissioners, Sheriff Kelly Lake and jail administrator Paul Couglin have been looking into solutions for years. The board is not questioning the need for a new jail, rather the issue is figuring out how to pay for it and how to build it to fulfill current and future needs for decades.

Brenner admitted that he and Commissioner Marv Bodie recently talked to representatives from the Carlton School District about their plans for the high school, which sits on the other side of the jail from the courthouse.

He said the school district officials said they're uncertain of future plans for the high school, which is in need of expensive repairs to update it, but student enrollment is dropping. Consolidation with both Wrenshall and Cloquet have been discussed, but not agreed upon.

"They asked us for our drop-dead date," Brenner said. "We're hoping to have our consultants look at the building. We told them we'd give a date within 45 days - a date when we would want to get started. It's not anytime soon. We're looking out to 2021 at this point."

Brenner said the board will be asking voters to decide how to pay for the jail in November, when they will be presented with the choice of bonding (to be paid off with property taxes) or a half-cent sales tax. If they vote for the sales tax, the proposal would then go to the state legislature for approval.

Other?

Then there are the various school district building referendums, which have met with varying results. Cloquet voters approved $49 million in 2015 to build a new middle school, and improve security and other renovations at its other buildings. Moose Lake voters approved a state subsidized referendum in 2014 to build a new PreK-12 school on district-owned land far from the lake, which had severely flooded the existing school in 2012.

More recently, building referendums in Carlton (asking for $23 million in 2017) and Wrenshall (asking for $12-$14.4 million over two years and three different referendum votes) have failed. A vote last month asking for nearly $4 million to create better athletic facilities failed in Moose Lake, after the district ran out of money to complete all of its projects during the first referendum.

Additionally, the city of Cloquet just got permission to tap into approximately $5 million in local sales tax dollars that were inaccessible because legislation required the money be spent on infrastructure for a commercial development on land near the junction of Interstate 35 and Highway 33 that failed to come to fruition.

City administrator Aaron Reeves said the city has already planned about $4 million in infrastructure and parks projects for the newly available sales tax dollars, and the council would need to allocate another $1.5-$1.8 million of the newly available funds, or it could decide to not fund the other projects and readjust priorities.

They will likely discuss options for the remaining sales tax dollars during the work session at 5:30 p.m. June 18, Reeves said.