Aberdeen City Council - Regular Meeting

For Monday, April 20th, Jordan, would you start us off with a roll call?

Please respond by stating present. Council Member Ronayne. Present. Fulberg.

Present.

Liebel. Present. Ward. Present. Johnson. Present. E. Conger.

Present.

Nelson. Present. Norbstrup.

Present.

Meir Shoneman.

Present. Please stand with me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance.

first order business is to approve this week's agenda I do have a couple of slight modifications primarily the minutes had a couple of exceptions to be made and then we're going to remove item 7e from the agenda for the night so I take a motion to approve the agenda with those modifications so moved second Got a motion from Councilman Econger. Second. Councilman Fulberg, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries on to those minutes. As amended in the previous agenda item, I would take a motion to approve the minutes.

So moved.

Second. Motion to leave out the second word. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. When I came in, there was no one signed up to speak at open forum. Is that still the case? You want to check that for me, Pat? Okay, we're in good shape. No speakers for open forum consent calendar. Six items to review all in one felt swoop here. I'll take a motion to approve our consent calendar. Move to approve. Second. Got a motion from Councilman Ward and second Councilman DeConger. Does anyone have anything to discuss on any of these items before we take a vote? We also have an official proclamation about Arbor Day, but that will be posted on the website if anyone's interested in reading that as part of this. All in favor of the consent calendar, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. That motion carries. Speeding right along here. Old business. Not a single item made it through from last meeting two weeks ago. So our new business tonight will begin with a public hearing and a possible approval of a new retail on-off sale malt beverage and South Dakota wine license for Costa Brava. which will be doing business as Costa Brava Peruvian Kitchen, located at 104 South Main Street, which is in the Ward Hotel, Suite 112. So I would take a motion from someone in the council, if no one is here, to speak on that approval. Move to approve. Motion award, seconded and outstripped. Any discussion from anyone on that liquor or retail on-off sale malt beverage, I guess? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. That motion carries as well. Possible approval, WRF improvements. Pay request number 10, it's $1,000,000.840,750. And that is to PKG Contracting. Amanda's here with the wastewater treatment plant as per usual. Amanda, how is the project going down there?

Going well, thank you, Mayor. This pay request is for pretreatment bypassing, demolition going on in the pretreatment building, reinforcement, steel procurement and installation. Aeration basin wall concrete pours, that is complete now. Shored slab on the aeration basin. Final clarifier slab and wall pours. And then project is approximately 32% complete, and they just did another large pour this past week, so a large majority of the concrete work is underway and done.

Request approval for this move to prove Second got a motion from councilman Ronan and the second from councilman Ward. Does anyone? From the council have any questions as relates to this particular pay invoice All right easy enough Jordan Councilmember Ronan.

Hi Fulberg. Hi, we built. Hi Ward. Hi Johnson. All right II conger. Hi, Nelson abstain Councilmember Nordstrom. Aye. Mayor Shoneman.

Aye. Motion carries. Thanks for joining us, Amanda. Next is a recommendation on bids for the City of Aberdeen Public Works Facility Construction. Stu will walk us through the bids that we had received and what we're going to be voting on.

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. So the city received seven bids for this project, which we thought was just fantastic, including from two local firms here in Aberdeen. And the Public Works Department has reviewed those bids, and we're recommending approving the base bid with alternatives one, two, four, and six from Quest Construction based here in Aberdeen for the amount of $20,634,500. And I believe Dave would like to add a little bit of information to that for you.

Yeah. Is this the time that you want to talk about our funding? sure okay um as we looked at this project i just want to make a comment based on what we're recommending so today we know that we've we've looked at this project for a long time there's been the need for a long time this this team has worked in a condition that we really commend them for. This is something that we've anticipated and it's gonna be an investment in our community. So what we're recommending is approving the base bid with the recommended bid alternatives and we feel that's imperative. Accepting the alternates one and two today ensures that when we move into the building, we have the adequate space to park and organize our equipment and that we are not stacking our personnel, equipment and materials upon one another like we are at the current facility. If we put off building the space we need today, it will be much more expensive to do this in the future. With the approval of the base bid and our recommended alternates, we are making a significant investment in our community. The investment also ensures that the Public Works Department will continue to provide the quality of service and operations we have received from this team and expect in the future. The project puts all Public Works teams under the same roof, allowing for improved communication, planning, training, and enhanced community engagement and outreach. As we know, our Public Works team does an incredible job. Each year, the demands on this department increase, and the Public Works teams take pride in their ability to manage traditional responsibilities while taking on new challenges. This facility will be a major improvement in investment in the future of our community. So Stu's talking about the recommendation to approve the base bid and the alternates one, two, four, and six. We want to talk briefly about the financing and how we're going to look at that. And Jordan has an exhibit here that we can bring up to review. As we look at this, we'll walk through a little bit about what, Jordan, can you explain how we allocated this and how we looked at the funding for this project?

Sure, I can do that. So I'll start with a different tab here. This is bond proceeds. We issued bonds in the amount of roughly $20 million for this project. Of course, we've incurred some project expenses, there's cost to issuing bonds, so we don't have all those proceeds remaining today. What I'm showing here is the bond proceeds that we received within our project fund, and there are also premiums issued on bonds, which are related to the financing as well, which created roughly $20.08 million for project expenses. As I mentioned, those costs of issuance, right around $880,000, along with other project expenses. Pardon my miscomment there. It's roughly $880,000, roughly $700,000 in groundwork, improvements at the site. It was a pit that had a bunch of debris in it, so they had to clean that out. So that left right around $19.2 million available in the bond proceeds. So switching to this other exhibit here, the project improvements as presented with the alternates will total roughly $21.3 million. From that previous exhibit, we have roughly $19.2 million remaining. That creates a gap of additional funding needed of roughly $2.1 million. What we are presenting here is utilizing the available bond proceeds in addition to reserve funds held specific to the Moccasin Creek CARES reserve vehicle replacements and interest that will be generated on the proceeds of the bonds.

Thank you, Jordan. I want to make a couple of quick points. First of all, the Moccasin Creek Project Fund, we had amassed a fair bit of money in that fund, and we weren't using it nearly fast enough to deplete that fund, so that shouldn't interfere with our project moving forward, and we'll continue to fund that as we move forward. We had that discussion. And then the CARES vehicle replacement, that will not interfere with the money set aside for the economic development that we had set aside.

Correct. The Moccasin Creek Project Fund has a current balance of roughly $2.25 million. This will bring that down to roughly $1 million. And the CARES reserves for city vehicles is roughly $846,000. This will pull it down to $500,000 less.

But independent of the money.

Independent and separate from the CARES, yep.

Thank you for that clarification. I know that a lot of people are interested in installing out the other things that we have going to make this building work, and I'm glad to see that we're not. Anything else?

That's all I have. I could provide additional information regarding the resolution for CARES balances if you'd like to see it, but I don't need to get into that if you don't need to know that now.

I don't think that's necessary.

All right, Dave. All right, that's all I have.

All right, Stu, anything else? No, I think we pretty much covered it. We recommend moving forward with Quest construction.

Move to approve the bid from Quest as proposed. Second.

So we've got a motion from Councilman Ronan and a second from Councilman Econger. Chad, did you have something? Nope. Okay. Just waving your arms over there. I did also want to mention numerous folks from around the community inquired about the MFG building and I had more than one time reached out to the folks that own the MFG building and it's not something that we're able to acquire for anywhere near this price tag. So unfortunately that's not an option for this. I know that It would be nice to take that thing out of its decommissioned state, but this isn't the project that's able to make that happen. So with that not being an option, I think this is a great way to move forward, and new construction is always good. So if no one else has anything on council to discuss, Jordan, would you give us a roll call on that bid acceptance?

Council Member Nordstrom?

Aye.

Nielsen?

Aye.

E. Conger? Aye. Johnson?

Aye.

Ward?

Aye.

Leibelt? Aye. Fulberg? Aye. Ronain? Aye. Meir Shoneman?

Aye. That motion carries. Next possible approval to purchase a GPS unit and data collector for the engineering department. Here is... Assistant engineer, Destin, welcome. What are we looking for for this GPS unit?

Thank you. Recently our GPS unit has stopped working on it for us. This is a tool that we use for topographic surveys and staking and something that we crucially need for the upcoming construction season. We are asking to purchase the GPS unit and data collector from the attached quote for thirty seven thousand dollars here All right, so we make a motion going I guess I just like to ask because I

GPS unit has meanings to one, you know, the one I have in my boat It's obviously not 37,000.

So what does this give us that that doesn't? I should have brought our old one down so you can visualize it. If you ever see a surveyor on the side of the road working and they have that big pole and this unit on top of it, that unit on top is what we're asking to purchase. So that is a lot more accurate than the GPS in your vehicle. So that way when we are surveying, staking, we get very precise measurements.

Would you be willing to lend your boat GPS to Dustin and the crew?

My boat sees the water so little, I may as well.

You guys saved the city $37,000. We make a motion to approve.

Thank you. Second.

We've got a motion from Councilman Nielsen. Second, Councilman Knopfstrup. Any other questions? Any other jokes? All right, Jordan.

Councilmember Ronan. Aye. Fulberg.

Aye.

Liebel. Aye. Ward. Aye. Johnson. Aye. E. Conger.

Aye.

Nelson. Aye. Nordstrom. Aye. Meir Shoneman.

Aye. That motion passes. We've got next F, as we have delayed the agenda item E. F states the possible approval of a request to purchase a Ford Maverick 2026 from Pearson Ford for $29,970 and to approve that total payment in the same amount upon delivery. Ken, looking to buy a new truck.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. We had budgeted for $35,000 to replace one of the units in our aging fleet this year. Unfortunately, with the state bid, we were not able to locate a model that would suit our needs or be available within our price range. after that we brought in our research and Did find two? Ford Mavericks available from local dealerships and we obtained bids for each of those vehicles and are recommending approval of the low bid of 29 970 staff recommends approval Move to approve second

We've got a motion from Ward and a second from Nielsen. And the $35,000 that you were anticipating, was that a different model, or was that also the Maverick style?

At the time, it was to replace any vehicle. I mean, find a substitute vehicle. We were looking for an Equinox Explorer, something that would be enclosed and provide storage for our equipment. anything in that category either wasn't available on the bid list or outside of our price range. So we started shopping.

And this one has the four-door crew cab? Yep.

Good.

All right. Any other questions from the council? Jordan.

Council Member Norvstrup?

Aye.

Nielsen? Aye. E. Conger?

Aye.

Johnson?

Aye.

Ward? Aye. Liebelt? Aye. Fulberg? Aye. Ronain? Aye. Meir Shoneman? Aye.

Motion carries. Next is our possible approval of a resolution 260402R that repeals resolution 250203R and establishes an amended promotion fund finance administration policy. Jordan, would you walk us through what are the substantive changes for this policy?

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. So the City Council was presented with and approved a promotion fund reserve and financial administration policy in 2025. I think it worked really well through the 2026 promotion fund application process. Through the process, we identified a few things that we could change or improve. The biggest change within what's presented this evening is the conflict of interest, which I will let Ron work through later. But I would mention the changes that I made, which we did earlier this year in the 2026 subsequent allocation funds. We're asking you to prioritize funding existing commitments before we take on new commitments. we did that earlier this year this puts it into the resolution it clarifies that we will pay outside organizations before we pay city organizations and it just improves some of the timelines that aren't necessary for 2025 and prior thresholds so those are gone those are my cleanups and i will pass it to ron to describe further in detail about the conflict of interest portion

Thank you, Jordan. Council members, my contribution here is that Roman numeral five C and D is where you'll see the meat of what I'm proposing to change to the policy. The issue for me is what we can do to protect the council members individually as you have the potential for dealing with conflict of interest from applicants to the fund. And what we see here in Sections 5C and D is an effort to allow that conflict to be identified clearly within the internal allocations that you folks do and to not necessarily penalize that abstention. or that conflict of interest in the way that the median scoring is done. And so the whole allocation that's ultimately done by the city manager once the manager has received all of the allocations is through a median scoring. And for those of you who aren't familiar with median scoring, it's basically finding the middle of a number of scores. And what I did with B and C, I'm sorry, C and D was identify the ability to write in conflict. It doesn't get counted as a zero. Otherwise, if an item is left blank, it will be counted as a zero. And that can matter in the way that the median scoring is done. I would also point out to the council that there was a question about change at subsection D about needing five or more council members. It formally read as a majority of council members, and I have proposed that we change that to five or more, but that's, again, my suggestion to you having to do with whether something less than five, an allocation of amounts to an organization of less than five of the council members should or should not ultimately result in an allocation from the promo fund. So I have changed that there must be allocations of five or more greater than zero dollars, so however that works out. Earlier today I sent out to the council an email that showed, that tried to show that, I don't know how helpful that was and whether, if you would like me to put it up I certainly can and we can talk through that a little bit, but again what I wanted to do is come up with a system for allowing you to identify a conflict and not necessarily having that conflict hurt Other applicants by being counted as a zero so those are my changes for the promotion fund policy In addition to that this would repeal the existing or resolution and replace it staff recommends approval as presented Move to approve

Motion from councilman legal second councilman obstru and so the five the Requirement for five council members is part of this that's as the motion stands right now That's that would be the case that change would go would be part of the amendment Sounds good, and it shouldn't really impact too many so long as everybody turns those on Those sheets in.

In the parade of horribles I gave you, I showed multiple conflicts on a single applicant. That's likely not going to happen. But if it did, we should now have an example of what that would look like.

Fair enough. Any questions from the council? All right. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote on this resolution?

Council Member Ronan.

Aye.

Fulberg.

Aye.

Leiboldt.

Aye.

Ward. Aye. Johnson. Aye. E. Conger? Aye. Nielsen? Aye. Nordstrom? Aye. Mayor Shoneman?

Aye. Motion carries. Next, Rich, I hope you brought your comfortable shoes. You've got the first of many is the possible approval of a pay request to Foreman in the amount of $19,846.95. That's the purchase of a 12-2 bus and $19,846.95 for a 12-2 bus. Between the two, it's $39,693.90. Would you walk us through those two new buses and what the schedule looks like? Thank you.

Yeah, so as the mayor stated, the total amount that I'm requesting is $39,693.90 for the purchase of two 12-plus-2 buses. This will be under... Section 5310 grant with the grant number 812263. This was approved by the council October 20th of 2025. Again, the total amount is $39,693. The DOT will cover $224,626.10. I recommend approval on that, please.

Move to approve. Second.

We've got a motion from Councilman Ward and a second from Councilman Econger. Does anyone have any questions for Transportation Director Krokl? What was the timing looking like on those?

These buses will be delivered this week. Great. Yep.

All right. Mr. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote on that pay request?

Council Member Nordstrom?

Aye.

Nielsen?

Aye.

E. Conger?

Aye.

Johnson? Aye. Ward? Aye. Liebel? Aye. Fogberg? Aye. Ronan? Aye. Mayor Shoneman? Aye.

Motion carries. Next, possible approval of a 5339 SD 2026 equipment grant for $6,400 and a rolling stock grant for $383,500. Rich, what about those two grants?

Yep, our local match will be $1,600 out of $8,000 for the equipment grant and $86,500 out of a total of $470,000 on the rolling stock grant. So this is covering two line items. And we recommend approval on that.

Move to approve. Second.

Motion, Ronay. Second, Ward. Any questions? All right, Jordan.

Council Member Ronay. Aye. Fulberg. Aye. Leibelt. Aye. Ward. Aye. Johnson. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Nielsen. Aye. Nordstrom. Aye. Mearshawn.

Aye. That motion carries as well. Next possible first reading and passage of resolution of an intent to sign the municipal hangar to hangar nine for five years, one renewal term option included beginning in 2021.

26 rich didn't hear a lot of scuttlebutt about this one no not this time ron is going to cover this one thank you mr mayor council members when the city is proposing leasing its property to private persons it sometimes can implicate the statute that says that if the lease is for longer than four months or for more than twenty five hundred dollars that it has to go through this process where you announce first that you are intending to enter into the lease. You then have a public hearing, and then you can approve the lease. So that's what we're doing today here is the first step. The municipal hangar out at the airport is up for a new lease, and Hangar 9 submitted a bid and was the high bidder for that lease, so we are proposing that the council approve the resolution of intent to lease that hangar to Hangar 9 for five years with one renewal option beginning in July of 2026 and resolution number 26-04-03R announces that intent and sets a hearing on for, I believe, May 18th, if I'm correct. But in any event, this would be the first of the process to then move to a public hearing and approval.

I move to approve item J for hanger nine.

Got a motion from Councilman Liebel. Second, Councilman Knopfstrup. Any questions on that process or upon this vote? All right, Jordan.

Councilmember North strobe Nielsen II Conger Johnson Ward Lee belt I Fulberg Ronay here Sean amen.

All right motion carries easy-peasy next is the approval of the following for the AIP project Rehabilitation and lighting improvements versus a payment to Helms eighty nine hundred twenty six dollars and forty eight cents second is the approval of an amendment to Helms services agreement and finally the approval of authorization to submit the associated financial closeout report to the FAA for that project rich Yep, this is this has been a long time in the making This is for AIP 49 our runway

Rehabilitation and lighting project that we did in 2023 We are looking for approval of payment of invoice number 30 That would be Helms final invoice on this project for the amount of eight thousand nine hundred twenty six dollars and forty cents and Item two is the Authorization of Amendment Number 2 to the Professional Services Agreement. That results in a cost reduction of $12,618.41. And the third line item is recommending submission of the financial closeout project to the FAA for final reimbursement of $87,508.18. And this project was a 90% federal, 5% state, and 5% city project. Airport Board recommends approval.

Move to approve. Second. We've got a motion from Councilman E. Conger, second from Councilman Ward. Does anyone have any questions on any of these three items within this motion? All right, Jordan.

Councilmember Ronan.

Aye.

Fogberg. Aye. Liebel. Aye. Ward. Aye. Johnson.

Aye.

E. Conger. Aye. Nielsen. Aye. Nordstrom. Aye. Mearshawn. Aye.

That motion carries as well possible approval and authorization of the submission of the financial closeout report to the FAA for our rehabilitation and lighting improvements rich Again, this is so if you remember that project was divided into two

two AIPs because there were two buckets of money. So AIP 49 is the one we just approved. AIP 50 now is for the financial closeout of that AIP project number 50. The financial closeout report will go to the FAA and final reimbursement amount estimated is $288,810.60. And that was 90% federal, 5% state, and 5% city. Airport Board recommends approval on that.

Move to approve. Second. A motion from Councilman Ward, second from Councilman Econger.

Any questions as it relates to this closeout? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. That motion carries. Next is a possible approval for apron reconstruction. The first is a payment, $16,362.41. Second is for the authorization and submission of the associated financial closeout report. Rich, we're closing them out left and right.

Yep, we got three of them actually for closeout. So it's good to be up here to do that. So this is AIP project 52. This was a general aviation apron reconstruction phase two. We did this last summer. Invoice number 28 is HELM's final invoice on this project, and that's for the amount of $16,362.41. And then we're asking to submit this financial closeout to the FAA. Final reimbursement would be $254,625.53. This project was funded 90% federal, 5% state, and 5% city, and the airport board recommends approval on that.

Move to approve. I'll second that.

We got a motion from Councilman Rene. Second. Councilman Liebelt, any questions about our final payment and closeout for the Phase 2 apron? Jordan.

Council Member Norvstrup. Aye. Nielsen. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Johnson. Aye. Ward. Aye. Liebel. Aye. Fulberg. Aye. Ronan. Aye. Meir Shoneman.

Aye, that motion carries as well. Next is a possible approval of the following airport terminal access road and terminal parking lot. The payment to Helms will be $14,692.75, as well as a submission for the closeouts to the FAA-rich third and final closeout.

So this one is for AIG project 53 and 54. The terminal access road and parking lot reconstruction that we performed last fall, finished up early November on that. Invoice number 13 is Helms final invoice for $14,692.75. And then looking for authorization to submit this to the FAA. And the final reimbursement amount will be $9,499.99. That was for AIP 53, and then $13,958.11 on AIG 54. This project was 95% federal, 2.5% state, 2.5% city. Airport Board recommends approval. Move to approve. Second.

Got a motion from Councilman Ward. Second, Councilman Knobstrup. Any questions as it relates to the final paperwork for terminal access road and parking lot? Jordan?

Councilmember Ronan? Aye. Fulberg?

Aye.

Leibelt? Aye. Ward? Aye. Johnson? Aye. E. Concord? Aye. Nielsen? Aye. Knobstrup? Aye. Meir Shoneman? Aye.

That motion carries as well next we've got a possible approval of payment of invoices as well as pay estimates for our airport terminal expansion first Helms seven hundred four dollars and thirty five cents second West thirty nine thousand nine forty one and sixty three cents and third another two Helms for thirty one hundred thirteen dollars and twenty one cents

Yes, this project also has two project numbers, AIP 55 and AIG 56. There's two different buckets of money for this one. The first would be Helms invoice number one for $704.35. Pay estimate two to Quest Construction in the amount of $39,941.63. And then Helms invoice number 13 in the amount of $3,113.21. The project funding for this one was Senate Bill 144 from 2024. And we received $1.2 million from the Aeronautics Commission on this. And then the federal part of it is $800,000. And our local share on this one is going to be about $60,000. So that's a little bit more than... what we're typically used to spending at the airport airport board recommends approval on this second

Got a motion. Councilman Knobstrup? Second. Councilman Ward, any questions on any of those three payments? Jordan, would you give us a roll call then on that?

Councilmember Knobstrup? Aye. Nelson? Aye. E. Conger? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Ward? Aye. Leibelt? Aye. Fulberg? Aye. Ronin? Aye. Mayor Shoneman?

Aye. That motion carries. Next, we've got a possible approval of a payment to Helms and Associates, $875, and that is for a preconditioned air unit project.

Rich? Correct, yep. So this AIP Project 57 is a preconditioned air unit that will... be mounted on the jet bridge to keep the airplane tempered throughout all of the seasons. Helm's invoice number eight in the amount of $875, and that was for assistance in the acquisition of the PCA unit. This project is 95% federal. This is the Vail project I've been telling you about. Voluntary airport, low emissions project, and 5% city on this one. We're looking at a delivery date got bumped out to July of this year. So we're kind of hoping to kick that one off in April as well. And airport board recommends approval on that.

Move to approve. Second.

We've got a motion from Councilman Ronan and a second from Councilman Econger.

Any questions before we take our vote? Jordan.

Councilmember Ronayne.

Aye.

Fulberg. Aye. Leibelt. Aye. Ward. Aye. Johnson. Aye. E. Conker. Aye. Nelson. Aye. Nordstrom. Aye. Mearshawn.

Aye. That motion carries. Final one for our Transportation Director is the final possible approval of a payment $5,622 that's made payable to Helms and Associates for our SRE building expansion.

Invoice number four is for design services, which is roughly about 10% complete on the design portion of this. This will increase our snow removal building. We're adding a 70 foot deep by 100 foot wide expansion onto that so we can store more of our equipment inside. This project is 95% federal, 2.5% state, and 2.5% city. Airport Board recommends approval.

Move to approve.

Second. We've got a motion from Councilman Liebel. Second. Councilman Ward. There's nothing from the council. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote on that payment to help us?

Councilmember Nordstrom. Aye. Nielsen. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Johnson. Aye. Ward.

Aye.

Liebel. Aye. Fulberg. Aye. Aye. Ronan. Aye. Mayor Shoneman.

Aye. That motion carries as well. Thanks for joining us, Rich. Next, we've got review and approval of our claims and payroll. Payroll is April 5th through the 18th. Move to approve.

Second.

Motion award. Second, E. Conger. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote on paying our bills?

Council Member Ronan.

I abstain.

Councilmember Fulberg I abstain from a payment to Dakota Bank Councilmember Lee belt I on everything Ward hi Johnson all right he conquered hi Nielsen I with an abstention on payment to banner associates Councilmember North strip mayor Shoneman I

I will abstain, but the motion does carry, and the bills will get paid. Next, we've got our city manager's report. Dave, a few things to share with us.

Yeah, thank you. So we talked briefly in the last couple sessions about having a work session with our Parks and Rec Board. We think that's important. We want an opportunity for our city council and our parks board to kind of come together and talk a little bit about what our expectations are for the future, what we see our future to be. We have some significant input from our community on the community needs assessment that we want to talk about. So it really helps us plan for the future and get your input and thoughts in the directions we want to go. We're looking at doing that next week on the 27th here in our city council chambers at 4 p.m. And Matt's here tonight. Matt, I think we're able to make that work with our parks board as well. Is that correct? All right, great. So this week, Matt and I will probably send out some questions for you to think about in preparation for our meeting. This will give you an additional opportunity to kind of give us your expectations and thoughts on the future of everything from what we currently have and maintain and the direction we want to go with what we want to do in the future. So I think that'll be a really important meeting for us, and I look forward for that opportunity as we look you know, to, uh, our budgeting session and how we're going to look at capital planning and a wide variety of things. So be very helpful for us. So again, uh, next week on the 27th at 4 PM, if you could be here, uh, that would be great. Um, we took a trip to Pittsburgh, Kansas last week, and I really want to give councilwoman Fulberg, uh, uh, you know, high praise for how she put that trip together with some of our team as well. Logistically, it was well put together and gave us a great opportunity. So basically, we traveled about 10 hours south, looked at a city that was similar to the size of Aberdeen, has many resources that have similarities to Aberdeen, and we, you know, we're The hospitality that we experienced by Pittsburgh, Kansas was amazing. So from the minute we landed there and we had a full schedule, we were looking at the things that the city do, the university, the Chamber of Commerce, the community partners that were put together to make that community grow and thrive. So our group brought back a lot of great suggestions and input, and we're kind of putting that together And when we have all those pieces put together, we look forward for the opportunity to kind of give you a report. There are things that we can start moving on right away, but the most important takeaway for me from a city perspective is how well we need to communicate with our community partners and facilitate communication and the openness and willingness to explore all opportunities that exist in our community to find ways for economic development, to reduce barriers and build bridges for our community partners when they're engaging our city for services and permitting and different things. So I could probably talk at length about how much takeaway there was. And a group of 22 people coming back and putting some thought you know on paper and kind of debriefing that i think we'll have some quality things that we can bring back and there are several action steps and of course strategic planning is at the heart of some of those things and as you're aware we're talking about strategic planning and moving into that in the future so we look forward to talking about that so great trip aaron thank you so much for putting that together a couple city council people. I don't know if you have any quick comments on that or if you want to just wait until we have our full readout on that would be fine.

Thanks. It was a great opportunity to see another community that's a little bit smaller than Aberdeen. They're about 21,000 people. larger university, about 5,800 students, where the northern is closer to 3,500. And to see what they're doing, and I think the biggest, they were in a position where they were the poorest county in Kansas after the 2008 recession, and they were in a position where they had to make some decisions to be proactive together, and they started collaborating weekly across the whole community, and it's amazing what they have done building up through collaboration, and I think it was inspiring, and we're not in that position. We're not the poorest county by any stretch of the imagination, and we're not in a desperate position like they were, but the world changes so fast. It's just good to know that with deep collaboration, all things are possible, and I think a lot of us were inspired to think bigger and dream a little bit more together.

Yeah, thank you. So another thing I want to talk about is last week it was severe weather awareness week and usually during that week we have public messaging. We talk about a community response and how we notify our community when we have severe weather. Will you understand that in our community for a long time we've had outdoor weather sirens that alert our community when there's impending and dangerous weather that's moving in. Primarily these sirens are designed for people outside, gathering events and arenas and stadiums. But upon testing with our system, Our system right now is nonfunctional, and I can let Tanner talk about that a little bit. So that's an area that we're going to have to look at for future planning. Our system is an aging system that runs on, I would almost be able to say, probably software in a system that is pretty much obsolete. So that's an opportunity in the future here that is going to require some planning and maybe some funding input. And an evaluation, too, on whether and where we're going to need these continued sirens. So I know Tanner's been working with Kent, our dispatch director, a little bit. Tanner, is there anything that's changed since we talked a little bit about our weather sirens? And I think Tanner wants to talk a little bit about notifying the community that while these are operationally down for a little bit until we get them up, what else we can do to notify or what citizens should be aware of when they're looking at weather and when they should take and seek shelter.

Correct. Thank you, Dave. So we knew at least over the last year that about 20% of our sirens weren't working as they should be. But as of the end of last year, everything was working correctly as far as we knew. As the awareness week, what happened last week, they did kind of a countywide test on Wednesday, and it was at that point we learned that the entire system was down for us. We believe it likely originates at the computer or at least one of the components next to the computer, but you're correct. The system's about 25-plus years old. It's still running on a very early Windows version that can't be updated, and the software's quite old. So there's a few things we need to look at, and I talked with Kent Jones, the Director of Communications, this morning, and he plans to contact our provider, Dakota Electronics, that works on our system to see if they can identify at least what the initial issue is. But we're going to have to look at long-term if we're going to upgrade or go on to a different system. But as far as the notification, our plan is to work with... the city public information officer, and put out as much information as we can as far as what our plan is for. If there is severe weather, we'll put out what we can, but folks are really going to have to rely, at least in the near term, on following the National Weather Service and their local news to understand what's going on.

Thank you. Since Tanner and I are talking about public safety a little bit, we had an event in the community last week that caused some serious alarm and serious inconvenience for our public school system. So last week, it was been reported and an incident happened where there was a called-in threat near our public high school. And as you can imagine, that... requires a large-scale response by our law enforcement community. And our law enforcement community rapidly responded. We had every agency in our community that represented who we have in our community from the FBI all the way through our local partners. So our first responders did a great job getting to that location, going to any area that was believed there was a threat, and then secured the school. Now I know that this caused some significant alarm for parents in our community, parents that heard about this possible threat to the school. Some parents responded to the school and weren't allowed into the school to have access to their children. And this is a terrible thing. As parents, we understand how horrific this can be, hearing there's a possible threat to the school and you have your loved one in that school. But I just want to reassure the community and the public that the school does a fantastic job of planning. preparing and they have a plan and they engage that the reason that we can't let parents inside the school during these events is that it's a critical incident you know the school's being locked down and controlled we control the access on the outside and ultimately that's what we did so I'm very sorry for any parent that experienced the horror of this event but I just want to reassure the public that the right things were happening in the school the right things were happening with the law enforcement community and And we did secure that school, and people weren't going to go in. We just can't. We don't know the nature of the threat. We're not going to let people enter the school. You know, if that incident would have continued in a long-term fashion, we do have a reunification plan within our community. We practiced it with the school system. We prepared. We talk about it every year. One of the reunification sites is at our Civic Arena over here. We have a flow chart there, and it works well. So if this event would have extended, we would have put together a reunification, and the parents would have come together with their children as soon as possible. And this is something that we take highly serious. Hopefully, working with our FBI partner, we can find the source of this call. But I just want to let the parents know that we do understand your suffering and pain as you went through this, and that your need to get into the school Doesn't go unnoticed, but I want to reassure our community that we do practice this and have a highly prepared and professional response that handles this. And Tanner, I don't know if you want to talk any more about this at all.

I think you covered it pretty well, Dave, but the one thing I want the public to know is that Throughout the process, the school and the law enforcement worked really well together, kind of implementing both of our plans with this type of a response. And afterwards, we always do post-incident debriefs. The school did theirs today. We're doing ours at the police department Thursday morning, and then we're going to come together with the school district after that and kind of compare notes on both sides to make sure that we know we did well, but there's always room for improvement no matter what you look at. So we want to make sure we get, you know, Unfortunately, something similar will happen again for at least the nature of the call.

We want to be as prepared as we can With that I'm more of a happier note Along the public safety line. So last week the chamber had their Abbey Awards and It was a true honor to be able to see chief Joel Weig and his fire department staff receive uh... the heart of service award and basically they are recognized for their high professionalism their dedication to the community the things that they do on a day in and day out basis to provide safety and rescue services to us it was just a high honor to be able to see this team be recognized for the role that they play in the community And just, you know, the day in, day out things that they do, they're truly amazing. You know, if you know our fire department, they're professionals. They're constantly working on a day-to-day basis to improve and, you know, perfect what they do for the community. So I just want to say we're highly proud of Chief Weig and his fire department team for receiving this award and being recognized at the community. I want to thank Gail. tremendously for putting that together and facilitating that event night. So lots of great community heroes and partners that received awards that night, but we should recognize our fire department for the incredible work that they do. So thank you, Joel. With that, tonight I would like to invite Amber and Matt up to the podium to talk a little bit about a bike grant and park opportunity that we're currently developing to kind of make our community aware of what we're working on.

Okay, there we go. See the green light now.

All right. Thanks, everybody. Just want to talk a little bit about the nature area up there across from the PC campus. So we were approached as kind of a multi-phase thing, but it started with Leadership Aberdeen, the 25 class that got the idea and raised funds for a bike skills park, pump track, that type of thing. They explored the county first. that with the floodplain and wetland mitigation stuff that would take place. It was a little impossible, so they kind of approached the city at that point about the nature area. Then, of course, out of the leadership, Aberdeen, Aberdeen Cycling Association branched out of there, and they're the ones that are also kind of taking this project now and running with it. Um, I got involved as the parks because one, this does fill the community need based off of our community needs assessment. One of the, you know, actually two of the top priorities was trails. And then on a note right below that it was nature areas slash nature trails. So we're kind of working on this as a holistic approach of how can we, um, you know, tackle everything, even if we don't have funds for it from the park side, Aberdeen Cycling Association and the leadership class do have those funds. So I, from the park's perspective, asked permission from our park board to write a grant for this using the RTP funds. This one I was originally going to target. Last year we applied for more trail lighting to go along, kind of starting at Brown Park there going north. That was about a $380,000 request, talking with my colleagues across the state, other directors. Everybody's funding was very far down on this RTP grant request, and even Mitchell received 20% instead of the normal 80%, so they weren't even able to move forward with their project. So with this tough funding, I knew this $380,000 asset's the only thing I really had preloaded to go. So I approached Aberdeen Cycling Association and said, hey, here's probably your opportunity to take a shot at this grant money if you keep it. Hopefully around the $150,000 range, you guys match $30,000 of that. Hopefully you have a good shot at it. I did also say a big portion of this needs to be adding a nature trail component into this. If it's just the skills park, that's not going to grade as highly for a recreational trails grant. So this is kind of the route we took, and I wrote that grant for them. They needed a federal grant. number basically to you know apply for those funds so i was like well we can absolutely as a partner here another component of this too is we are working on an mou with them which is essentially going to be aberdeen cycling association is going to primarily take care of the the maintenance of this area we will help when we can when time allows you know if it's something like hauling some dirt away or you know hauling something in we'll help with that also you know a tree falls across the trails or something like that we obviously will help in we have arborists that can handle those types of things so that's kind of the relationship that we're building as far as this area goes you can see here kind of the skills park and trail component. I will say that I did massage this a little bit more too and added more trails. It'll be about a half a mile worth of trails that would be in those trees to the south of that retention pond over there. So you can kind of see that hatched area there to the south. Basically a loop system is what In the grant, I ended up writing in there. So it would be a full loop system. It'd be a one-way trail. So that way, everybody in the traffic is going the same direction. So you're not a walker isn't meeting a biker coming opposite directions. And then you can see the skills park area there. That one would basically be a gravel beginner course with a couple features in it to get kids started with their biking skills. And then they could progress to the mountain biking and walking trails that are to the south there. Trying to think if there's anything I'm not covering. Anybody...

And the grant has been submitted then, Matt?

The grant has been submitted, yep. It needed to be done last Friday, so two Fridays ago. Gosh, I don't know. Time kind of flies, but yes, it has been submitted. We typically hear back from the grant last year when we heard that we didn't get the funding. It was in September, so that's roughly probably when we'll be hearing about it again in September time frame.

Thank you. Appreciate you guys doing the hard work on that. Looking forward to this. And so the trail lighting then will be delayed by a year and you anticipate probably restarting the...

It'll depend on what the feedback is from the Game and Fish that administer this grant. If federal funding is still kind of sketchy and we're not sure that we'd get this request, I think we might focus more on trail connections within town, like a lot of the hard surface areas, you know, working with Stu here and his last week to kind of talk about, I think that, is that a Wednesday meeting, Tuesday meeting? I can't remember what that is, but we do have that to kind of pick his brain and figure out connectivity issues and where we can kind of put these grants. Yeah, that's kind of going to be the plan until we would get feedback otherwise where solar lighting or lighting along the trails would maybe come up the priority list or greater funding comes through.

Great. Well, thanks for doing this, guys. Looking forward to this new park. Everyone's excited about new things in town, of course. Any questions from the council or anything to add?

I will just add a big thank you to everyone who's helped us with this. We've had a lot of in-kind work and collaboration throughout the community regarding members of the Leadership Aberdeen class. I think Gail and her program, this is a testament as not only in the four months that people are in the project, this project has expanded over a year and people, whose employers have put them in the project, have allowed them to continue working on the project. So big thank you to Helms, who has the plans here. Actually, Nathan Perry, I want to give a shout out to him. He was a Leadership Aberdeen 2025 graduate, and they have allowed him to work on this and not only expand what he learned in Leadership Aberdeen, but expand working on projects, which is great for his workforce development. We do have our president here tonight behind me. His name is Jeff Swingler. He's the ACA president. So he stepped up in the community. He's a biker of many modalities. He's a mountain biker. He's a BMXer. So he's rolling up his sleeves, as Travis would say, to just dig in on this project. And again, many other leadership Aberdeen people and their efforts and other members of the community have stepped up as well. Alexa Sheldon has done a lot. So it's good to see her continuing efforts in our community. And I'm sure I'm forgetting something. So if you've helped, I appreciate everything that you've done. And we appreciate you listening to us about this. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much. And good luck with the grant. We'll cross our fingers for you. Dave, anything else?

Yeah. Real quickly, so there's good news and good news. The good news is we're experiencing warmer weather, and I at one point made a promise we weren't going to have any snow anymore. So hopefully we can follow through with that. But with that, warmer weather means construction season. So we know that we have lots of projects planned this summer. And two that we want to talk about a little bit on 8th Avenue where our water transmission lines are running through. Businesses have expressed a little bit of concern about how long that's going to take and what's going to happen. Will that tie up their business? Dustin and I will talk about that a little bit. And then obviously with our North Dakota road construction street project that will occur here at the first part of May, that will be significant. That's going to be something that we really want to communicate well with. Explain to the public what we're going to do during the time frame where North Dakota streets closed We provided a map here that you have that you can look at Destin We'll talk a little bit about but we've created a couple road alternates and travel alternates for that There's a mailer that will go out to the community what those two things Destin you want to talk a little bit about what we're doing for how we're moving these projects forward and what we're going to do to help communicate with the community on this and

Yeah, I suppose I'll just start one at a time. I heard from one concerned person about 8th Avenue. And the reason that that is blocked there is that's where our transmission line is crossing the south side of the road to the north side of the road. And there's a significant amount of utilities there and a fair amount of work to do. I did go down and talk to them today. So they estimate that they got about a week left of utility work there. And then on top of that, you probably have about a week worth of concrete work there. Though the concrete work might tentatively happen later, and we might place gravel surfacing just to open it back up. It kind of depends what the scheduling is with the concrete contractor. But the project's going pretty well overall. That's true for both at County 19 and kind of by Kettering there. So they have two crews both working at the same time. Both about roughly a week until both those closures will be open After that you will be looking at just a lane closure not a full street closure As they dig the transmission lane through and then later in the summer roads at the intersection of Roseville and 8th will have to close for probably about two to three weeks on that also as a transmission line goes through there and But we'll get there after this, when we get there. Dakota Street, so that is going to close from 24th Avenue to Nanonego Avenue. And that diagram you all have is the temporary road construction we're going to do. So we're going to build those temporary roads out of the recycled material from the existing Dakota Street. Because Dakota Street will be closed to rebuild it, That is how they will have to get in and out of their homes. And we have sent them, I don't think anyone's received it yet, but we have sent that same diagram you have to every single home along there to let them know this is how you're going to have to enter your home from here on out. Along with that, we're having a public meeting this Thursday at the library, 1130 to 1 p.m. If anyone wants to show up and talk to our staff and ask questions. We're going to put our message board there one week before this starts. This is road construction starting on. And we had our pre-con this morning, actually, with our contractor, and it sounds like May 4th is going to be our starting date. So we sent mailers... We're gonna have the public meeting, we're gonna put the message board out. So I think we've done a pretty good job touching bases on reaching out on that. I suppose while I'm talking about all our road closures, maybe I'll just throw in 10th Avenue Bridge. So today they're out there forming the curb and gutter putting expansion but joints in the sleeper slab Tomorrow we should see concrete on the ground Tentatively, I was told that we're looking at asphalt the week of May 4th and potentially having that open and done Probably the end of that week So they have all the curb and gutter sidewalk bike trail and asphalt servicing to do so that is actually a lot for that short period of time, but it looks doable and So those are really the biggest closures we have coming up here. So anyone has any thoughts or want me to elaborate anything, I certainly can.

Thank you, Destin. Our commitment is the continuing messaging with our community on how we're working through the different time frames on the projects for our schedules and the road closures and the detours that we've created. These will also be on our city website as well. Again, I would encourage people to go to our meeting on Thursday so we can talk about that. If there's further need to go out and communicate with that community, we can go up and up into that neighborhood as well too so thank you for your time appreciate that I just have one last thing. So as you're aware, a 26-year member of our team who served us proudly over the years by being involved in so many different things, having so much relevance to so many important projects and infrastructure programs and just a wide variety of things over the years, been an amazing part of our team. You know, it's quite a legacy when you have such an impact and role in the future of a community and the services and the different things that you provide over the years. So just, you know, learning from Stu, that's something I try to do, you know, as I integrate into a team, try to learn the best from a person and what they have to offer. So, you know, if you've ever worked with Stu, just his calm demeanor, somebody that can look at a problem and basically analyze it and come up with just the amazing ability to find two or three or five solutions and then make things work. And then his ability to absorb criticism and complaints and all the frustrations people experience, which is fine. We don't mind that. You know, please continue to bring your frustrations forward. That's what we're here for. But just a calm demeanor and professionalism. So I've learned a lot from him. I've leaned on him quite a bit and have quite a bit to take away. So his legacy will continue in us as we move forward with our team. But we're just very appreciative. And his retirement is going to be, his recognition celebration is going to be Wednesday. This Wednesday between 2 and 4 at the K.O. Lee Library. And we're going to look forward to seeing him there and talking much more about him. contributions but since this is his last council meeting tonight we're gonna miss him significantly and I thought what a incredible way to go out you know so basically he's here tonight he's advocating for a new public works facility the last best thing he can do is provide something that's going to be a huge commitment to our community just a A tremendous thing for his workforce and that's one of the big things that Stu's always, you know, been so proud of is the people that he works for and works with, you know, to be able to bring this project to its fruition tonight get it to the finish line, be able to send off his team in the future that they have a new facility that they can work in. and be proud of and continue to meet the expectations of the community. So it's kind of poetic in a sense that his last night, he brought this last project to its finish line, did all the work. And with that, Stu, I just want to say thank you for all your years of service, and I'll give you the last word.

Okay.

Thank you, Dave. I appreciate it. Thank you to the council for giving us the resources to do the job. And that's really, at the end of the day, that's how we get things done is with your support. And, you know, when I started in this job and Robin appointed me, He asked, you know, we sat down and talked about goals and, you know, one of them was to get this public works building off the ground. I just didn't think it was going to take, you know, almost three years. But we're there and I'm really happy about that. So I'm really glad that it worked out that way. Thank you very much.

So in case you missed it, there's the celebration for his retirement at the library on Wednesday. Be sure to mark your calendars 2 p.m., and we'll see you over there. Thank you much, Stu.

Anything else? That's it, ma'am.

All right. Well, thanks again, Stu, for your dedicated work for the city here. We all appreciate the impact that you've made around here. Don't be a stranger. I take a motion to adjourn the meeting. Second. Motion now to strip second. Nielsen, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed nay motion carries we are adjourned