JENKINS — Whitetail Hollows, a property development in Jenkins owned by Mark and Lisa Leutem, was the topic of discussion for over two hours at the Aug. 12 regular Jenkins City Council meeting.

Decisions regarded accepting the current conditions of turf near the development, whether to remove “ditch checks” (piles of rock and earth in the ditches meant to control water flow) from the plans, whether to retain a letter of credit as warranty for road development, whether the city would pay all or part of an overage on engineering costs and whether to continue with Widseth as the engineering firm for the remainder of the project.

The council approved four of the items and tabled a fifth after much discussion for each.

Discussions were thorough with strong feelings in some cases. Mark Leutem attended the meeting online via Zoom and frequently shared his perspective on each topic.

The council agreed to accept the current condition of turf near the development, and agreed the two within city right of way should remain in place.

Leutem initially requested they be removed from the plan, but he did not continue to push the issue when the council realized those checks were drawn into the plan by Leutem’s own project engineers and not Widseth.

The letter of credit was a far more contentious discussion. Leutem said the project is already over budget, and he wanted to use the money to pay vendors for their services rendered. He said the road was perfect and the best in the city, and there was no way that the road would be damaged and need warranty funds in the next two years.

Leutem previously said during a statement regarding the city’s engineering firm, Widseth, that he didn’t trust that he would get back the warranty money regardless of whether the road remained in good condition.

Mayor Andrew Rudlang put his vote of confidence behind Leutem, saying he agreed it was extremely unlikely the city would need to draw on the warranty money. But if it did, he was confident Leutem would make it right.

Leutem’s statement that he was over budget and wanted the money to pay workers actually made the credit more important to some council members.

In addition, this warranty fee is required of all road projects in the city, so waiving the requirement now would ignore pre-established city policy that had been applied to other road projects in the past.

The council was not so keen on possibly assuming the risk and cost if the unforeseen happens and the road needs repair. If that happened, the city would have little to no leverage to have the repairs done on Leutem’s dime, unless they retained the line of credit agreed upon in the developer’s agreement.

There was one caveat, however.

Council member Jerimey Flategraf was unwilling to move on completely dismissing the line of credit for warranty work, which is $20,000 the first year and $10,000 the second year. He was, however, willing to let go of the $10,000 credit the second year, saying he feels like they will know if there will be issues by the end of the first year.

The rest of the council was agreeable to this decision, with the exception of Roman Siltman, who still wished to retain the $10,000 the second year.

The council shot down two possible agreements regarding an outstanding $4,727 bill for engineering, legal and administrative expenses.

The bill was technically for $6,241.75; however, the council previously agreed with a request by Leutem not to include $1,514.75 in fees and costs incurred before the signing of the developer’s agreement.Leutem said he was displeased with how much the engineering and overall project costs were over budget, allegedly by $250%. Furthermore, he said he didn’t believe the costs and asked that the city pay some or all of the cost.

“I don’t think this is truthful,” Leutem said. “I don’t. I don’t see where this much work came from.”

Rudlang suggested the city should consider paying the fee.

“I think taxpayers will see way, way more than that back,” Rudlang said.

He said making agreements with developers is beneficial to the city.

When no other council member bit at Rudlang’s suggestion, he asked if anyone would be agreeable to splitting the bill, paying $2,363.50 each.

Flategraf said he would be amenable to splitting the $6,241.75 cost, with the city assuming a share of $3,120.87.

Other council members were less open to this suggestion. Siltman pointed out that whenever the city does a road project, they require 10% of the project cost be retained for contingencies and overages.

This time, however, the council agreed to waive that requirement for Leutem at the start of the project. Siltman pointed out that percentage would have covered these costs.

“I hope we look at this going forward to see we need to stop bending and we need to stick to the letter of our agreements and not be run over,” Siltman said. “At the end of the day we are the city, we are the governing body, and I feel like paying the engineering fees for a developer is a slap in the face for taxpayers.”

Council member Melissa Haff agreed. Though Flategraf had made the motion, he agreed that he didn’t like the idea of partially subsidizing a private development.

Flategraf’s motion failed with three no votes. Council member Ryan Barnett suggested the fees remain in place as is. The decision passed unanimously.

Leutem said he felt the council was missing his point. He said the fees were over cost by an unreasonable amount and, not for the first time during the meeting, indicated he did not trust the total provided by Dave Reese with Widseth.

For that reason, the council earlier in the meeting considered removing Widseth from the rest of the project and appointing a different, independent contractor. Leutem also said he felt Reese was not objective.

Flategraf, Siltman and Barnett did not hesitate to voice their opinion that the city should continue to use the services of the official city engineer, which is Widseth.

Rudlang asked whether Leutem had any other engineers in mind.

Haff said she wasn’t entirely opposed to using a different engineer, but that it was inappropriate to have Leutem choose them.

Barnett said he would like to know what Widseth thought of the suggestion. Another council member said it’s possible that Reese would like to be done with the project as well.

The council agreed to table the discussion to ask for Widseth’s perspective. Rudlang voted in opposition.

In other business Aug. 12, the council:

• Presented and approved a developer’s agreement for Earle Jenkins Estates, pending signature from the developers, Bradley and Nancy Stockman, who needed time to review it.
• Agreed to begin discussion to bring back the once-annual tree lighting event at Veterans Park.

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