Aberdeen City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, it's 5.30, so let's call to order this meeting. Jordan, would you start us off with a roll call?

Please respond by stating present. Council member Ronayne?

Present.

Fulberg? Wiebel?

Present.

Ward? Present. Johnson? Present. E. Conger? Present. Nielsen? Present. Nordstrom? Present. Meir Shoneman?

Present. Please stand with me for the pledge. Got a couple of small points to make on the agenda here tonight. We have a couple of guests joining us by Zoom, so we will roll through all of the new business items until we hit 6 p.m., at which time they will join us. We should be able to get through majority of them I would think and then we'll move into the discussion about data center at 6 p.m. with the industry representatives one more modification to make to the agenda item 7 I had a slight clerical error the dollar and cent amount is correct but the item attached to the agenda packet has been updated since it was originally published I would take a motion to approve the agenda with those considerations

so move second second

Got a motion from Councilman Nielsen. Second, Councilman E. Conger. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. We've got minutes to approve from our previous meeting, which took place on August 3rd, as well as amended payroll section. Some of those information was not available at the time of the meeting, so it has been added after the fact. I take a motion to approve the minutes.

Move to approve.

Motion to leave out. Second, Knobstrup. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. We've got a speaker here tonight for open forum. Generally speaking, we allow two minutes in duration for each speaker, but since we've just got one and it's a big topic, Janelle Meyer, if you wouldn't mind making your way to the little podium. Are you interested in speaking? Great. Yeah, limit yourself to four minutes. We'll give you double the time of normal. If we do, I would like to suggest and remind everybody that the portion of the meeting in which we will be talking about the data center in its exclusivity here today will be for the people in the industry and adjacent industries which will be impacted by data centers. And next meeting, will be for business owners, and then we're going to have a big meeting where anyone from the public can come and speak their mind on data centers, which will take place on September 14th, and we'll kind of gauge how many people will probably need a little bit bigger space at that time. Janelle, welcome to the meeting.

Welcome, yeah. Well, my first question is, I didn't get to get all the insight, but where is this data center going to be?

And the format of this isn't a Q&A type of thing. You've got four minutes to express yourself. As of now, there is no concrete data center. We're trying to get together an ordinance that will be efficiently allow Aberdeen to have some guardrails for a future potential data center, which may or may not come down the road.

Well, that was my concern. I believe data centers do not belong in the middle of farmland. land rezone to industrial vote i don't know if it was an agriculture to industrial we do want and i would like to insist on one well written complete and researched ordinance community benefits agreed i'd like no use of public grid noisy equipment in homes restriction on water and waste wastewater use large vegetated buffer, limits on size, building size and expansion, water usage, power demands, strict noise limits, property values, and environmental impact, traffic and construction, tax and revenue, how many permanent jobs, endangered species, water and forever chemicals, chemical discharge, public disclosure, hazardous material storage, Measure of the impacts of data centers, heat plumes and noise on livestock, behavior, milk and production, and fertility, increased rates of respiratory, sleep, or distress disorders, light pollution, protection mandates, dark sky, compliant downward facing red lightings, power limits on high users, established hard caps on peak megawatt consumptions during high demands, electrical infrastructure cost, Whole data centers financially liable for road damage caused by heavy destruction and sound, static, and pump limitation. So if I'm not sure, we're just doing an ordinance, a proposal, anything we do consider, I would like to see a public vote with everybody that can vote on this. That's my opinion. I'd like to learn a lot more about it, so that's why I came to listen to all these representatives. I personally have seen many states, many cities are trying to ban it. They were shut down. They want to not have it in their backyard. That's a concern of mine. I mean, I knew it was coming. They want to use all our flat land. It's easier to build, cheaper, etc. But I just... Allendale, I've heard bad things from people that live there with the noise, the dust, the increase of rent and housing. There's no place, you know, it's all this infrastructure. Personally, I'd like to see a vote with the town, whatever we decide on.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that input, and I think that a lot of those concerns are probably shared with people up here as well as people in the audience, I would definitely imagine. So, Janelle, thank you for joining us tonight, and thank you for bringing that to our attention. all right we've got just three items for our consent calendar community event permit for an item at the Red Rooster we've got a one day alcohol license for the Sertoma Club which holds the Storybookland Uncorked which will take place on September 10th for all of you people that would enjoy such a thing and then finally a Aberdeen marching band festival is coming up so they'll need a street closure for that I would take a motion for those three consent calendar items move to approve second motion award second e-conger all in favor please say aye aye opposed nay that motion carries we will move ahead to our new business item b uh leaving the discussion for the data center industry folks until 6 p.m when they're all here on board for us so the first item of new business will be a public hearing and possible approval to transfer City Lights retail on sale liquor license and video lottery license to the Yildiz Shrine organization. Has anyone here to speak on that?

Okay.

Would someone from the council care to make a motion? got a motion from Councilman Nielsen an officer second Nielsen anyone have any thoughts concerns comments on that transfer the oldest shrine was using a temporary one from the folks over at the veterans organizations and they moved that to their new buildings so they're we're in need of a new Jordan would or I guess all in favor please say aye sorry let me abstain then I thought we were roll calling sorry all right jordan would you note councilman ward's abstention all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed nay motion carries next we've got a public hearing possible approval of that one day on sale liquor license for the storybook land on cork that i had previously mentioned on september 10th i take a motion second Got a motion from Councilman Nielsen, second from Councilman Ward. Any comments? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. That motion carries as well. Next, I've got a possible pay request. It's for WRF Facility Improvement Project in the amount of $1.861 million.

pkg contracting and we have amanda the uh director out there to walk us through how's that project coming along amanda thank you very well um project is about 46 complete as of this pay request um your typical concrete work in all facets of the areas different productions um aside from there's nothing major the final clarifier gallery has been installed and the building has been placed that will go on the next pay request but everything is going along well and staff recommends approval move to approve the pay request i'll second that got a motion from councilman johnson the second councilman lee belt does anyone on the council have any questions for ms fisher all right jordan would you give us a roll call vote

Council Member Ronan. Aye. Lee Belt. Aye. Ward. Aye. Johnson. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Nielsen. Abstain. Council Member Nordstrom. Aye. Meir Shoneman.

aye that motion carries next we've got a possible pay request title number three thanks for joining us Amanda North Dakota roadway improvements is $175,152 as well as a change order for $81,240 to Reedy Construction out of Aberdeen Leaf that project has been completed for a little bit looks like everyone's happy with the with the work completed what's up with the change order

So the change order is for as bid to as bill and including some miscellaneous items such as furnishing topsoil. We end up having the contractor do that instead of the city furnished. Our source wasn't suitable for the project. In addition, we had some miscellaneous items associated with the work that had some changes. And then the pay request is for grading, gravel-based course, the sidewalk, some little portion of the concrete pavement, saw cutting, those items. We're close to finalizing it. Staff recommendation is approval.

Vote to approve.

Second. Got a motion from Councilman Ronan. Second, Councilman Ward. How much finance outstanding is clearing this one up?

It's about the retainage. That's about it. So this will need the final closeout documentation before we release retainers.

Thank you. We appreciate that explanation. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote?

Council Member Nordstrom? Aye. Nielsen? Aye. E. Conger? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Ward? Aye. Liebel? Aye. Ronan? Aye. Meir Shoneman? Aye.

Aye, that motion carries. Next is a possible pay request for the lime slicker replacement in the amount of $16,580.70 to Northern Plains Contracting of Wolverton, Minnesota. Leif, are you going to take this one as well?

I'll pass this one to Destin. Jim Ackerman was able to give him an update on this.

Sounds great. Thanks, Destin. Welcome to the meeting.

Yeah, thank you. This payment, the Lime Staker project isn't going to start for a while. This is just a payment to cover insurance and bonds for the contractor. They'll be here at the end of the year to actually install them.

Move approval.

I've got a motion from Councilman Johnson, second from Councilman Ward. Does anyone on the council have any questions as it relates to that deployment fee? Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote then?

Councilmember Ronan? Aye. Leiboldt? Aye. Ward? Aye. Johnson? Aye. E. Conger? Aye. Nielsen? Aye. Nordstrom? Aye. Meir Shoneman? Aye.

motion carries next is possible pay request title number two is for our sanitary sewer lining improvements it's twenty nine hundred thirty dollars and thirteen cents a change order of a negative twenty seven thousand three ninety one to the Municipal Pipe Company of Hudson

So this one, the change order is to remove the six-inch pipe. It wasn't lineable. We did have them clean it. And then the pay request is for work was completed. And as far as what's left is basically retainage. We have a small punch list for them, too, that may have costs associated with it. Staff recommendation is approval.

move to approve second i've got a motion from councilman leave out second councilman nelson no councilman e conger for those of you that are not here every meeting those guys sound exactly the same sitting where i where i sit where would you give us a roll call vote

Councilmember North strip. Hi, Nelson. I eat hunger. All right, Johnson. Hi Ward. I'm Lee belt. Hi Roni I'm here Sean.

I mean, I that motion carries next as possible pay requests number 10 It's for the water tower and transmission line. It's five hundred seventy four thousand five thirteen to dummy construction work continues along over there As I'm sure all of you guys have seen, but thankfully our two-way traffic is open on 8th Avenue Northeast for the time being, or I guess through the end of the project. So nice work on that. Leif, tell us about this payment.

Yeah, so this is for work completed out there, including, as many have noticed, the reconstruction of the railroad crossing on Roosevelt and some asphalt work and then pipe that's been installed and things are moving along nicely and staff recommendation is approval.

Move to approve.

Second. Got a motion from Councilman Ward. Second, Councilman Johnson. Any questions?

Mayor, I don't have a question, but may I make a comment? Please do. You know, I believe this was kind of before your time, the planning of this, but this is such an improvement over what we had. The, the, the, the private ability of Roosevelt has really improved. And this is something that we've been trying to get done for some time. We've got to be just thrilled at the result.

I would also like to give Dave, our city manager, some credit there. He was one that really pushed to improve that section around railroad tracks. And even though it did hold up our project for better than a week, it was worthwhile in the end and it was solved an age old problem with indefinite number of complaints attached to it. Nice work, Dave. Appreciate that. Next, we've got a pay request for our water tower plant roof improvements. This was one that we had made the modification to, but the Oh, fair enough. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote then on paying dummies for their work? I was trying to sneak them through the thought of doing that, but they didn't notice.

Council member Ronan.

Aye.

Leebelt. Aye. Ward. Aye. Johnson.

Aye.

E. Conger. Aye. Nelson. Aye. Nordstrom. Aye. Mearshawn. Aye.

Now we'll move along to our pay request for the water treatment plant roof improvements. It's $199,385. It's just Skinner roofing of Grand Forks. Destin, is that one for you then? Since you were intimately involved in the other water treatment plant, can you walk us through what this payment entails?

yeah absolutely um this is a rough repairs to both the buildings at the water treatment plant um they're probably about half done maybe slightly less than half done um it's 199 000 staff recommends approval the pay request so moved second

Got a motion from Councilman Johnson. Second. Councilman Nielsen. Project's moving along all right. It's about half done. It looks like the dollars and cents are all going to be about what they were with the estimate. Everything looks good there?

Yes.

Excellent. Good to hear. All right. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote?

Councilmember Norvstrup? Aye. Nielsen? Aye. E. Conger? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Ward? Aye. Lieber? Aye. Ronin? Aye.

Aye.

Mayor Shoneman?

Aye. That motion carries as well. Next, we've got a possible approval of a change order. It's for the Aberdeen Public Works Maintenance Building. It's $98,034. It's paid to Quest Construction, our general on the project. Leif, could you walk us through this change order?

Yeah, I might lean to Dean a little bit on this. He's here to visit the council a little bit about it.

Dean Marske, I saw him coming in. There you are. Would you make your way to the podium, please? And you can walk us through. It looked like it was an air conditioning issue.

This has to do with when we started the project it was discussed having air conditioning throughout the building obviously in the office areas and the engineers when they got to the the shop area they did they did conditioned air which is in some respects A type of air conditioning but not to the degree that we had talked about in the city believe that we were getting so we had to we had to change that out and upgrade the air handling units for just the shop there and that's what this involves and We have conditioned air for and air changes in the warehouse. We have in-floor heat and So it's just a balancing that it took it required a little bit more than what we had and we did not have this In the bid as it was it was missed as far as before the the bid documents So we came back in and we need to get these Submitted so we can get the equipment order just 52 weeks out So that's where we brought this up when we did our review when we started production and leased people went through and they Saw that at that time

Mayor, this is the change order at K, I think.

Right, we're considering item K currently and skip J.

Okay, we'll zip right. all right well just to be known this is item k that dean has been talking about it's the one that i queued up we'll uh hit the next one which was a separate uh a pay request uh for that same project um any so does anyone from the council care to make a motion on that change order so moved Got a motion Johnson, seconded by the officer.

Go ahead, Chad. Dean, could you clarify kind of the timeline of the change order again? You had made a comment that they went to a fully conditioned space, but it wasn't in the bid document.

The original design is what the engineers told us that they looked at. They had just finished the county warehouse in Sioux Falls, and they said that how they did, not the warehouse, but the shop area, what they had done was conditioned air. Now, when... As far as within our office, we thought they were talking air conditioning, but they said it's not to the degree of keeping, for instance, the space. And it's not like it's going to be 65 degrees in there, but it's going to be 70 to 72. And that's a big difference with Jeremy and his people. that they wanted air conditioning in the shop area, where the welding, well, it's not the welding next to it, where all the equipment, the cranes and everything are working. So that was conditioned air, but it's not air conditioning. And so when we came to them, we brought it to our attention. that's what we went in and talking with Jeremy and they said that's what they thought they were getting and it wasn't in the bid documents that way so that we had to modify it. So that's basically all. And then I want to bring up one other thing. I would like to approve it, but looking through this when I got there and I didn't want to bring it up and change it up, but they have profit overhead both for Quest and for Barton And I don't think we can have, I don't think you do profit overhead on both. So we'll modify that. If we approve the change order, we'll get those final numbers. I wanna make sure with the city that that's correct.

Ron, any thoughts on that?

No. So just to be clear, some items that are overlooked. And so as Dean is describing it, I see no issues with approving the change order for the conditioned air versus air conditioning.

but what about the profit overhead line items?

Well, the profit overhead and line items, we're seeing anymore in these larger contracts that those items are spelled out in the contract documents as reimbursable to the contractor as dollars that they put forward in the bids, number one, and then secondly in the setup of these change orders. So it is expressly allowed in that contract for 5% overhead and 5% profit.

Dean made mention it might be duplicated in this.

No, it's not. This is separate.

And the other thing, too, is we do have a contingency that was in the bid documents that this will be taken out of. So it's not an additional change in the, well, it's written out of the contingency that we have already in the project. All right. So we've got a motion. Second. Any other questions from the council?

Jordan. Councilmember Ronan? Aye. Leibelt?

Aye.

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

Aye. That motion carries. We'll skip right back to that pay request number two, Dean, while you're still standing there for Aberdeen Public Works building for $52,250. That's to Quest Construction. What is that invoice for?

That's for starting the mobilization, the insurances, putting up the fence, and general requirements, insurance. Like I said, insurance, I guess, already. So that's what that's covered, mobilization, general requirements. And then there's a portion of that was also for sprinklers, sprinkler design, fire sprinkler. Second.

Okay, got a motion from Chad and a second from Knobstrup. Anyone have any questions about that payment? All right, Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote on item J?

Council Member Knobstrup? Aye. Nielsen? Aye. E. Conger? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Ward? Aye. Liebelt? Aye. Ronan? Aye. Mayor Shoneman? Aye.

Aye that motion carries thanks for joining us Dean next we've got a possible approval of the following payment invoices as well as a couple of change orders for airport improvement expansion terminal expansion project we've got Helms invoice 17 68 62 and 50 cents we've got Helms invoice 552 83.54, and we've got Quest Construction with a change order of 44, 647.05, and a pay estimate of 143, 356.51. Here to walk us through those are our Transportation Director, Rich Krokl. Rich, welcome to the meeting.

Thank you, Mayor. So pay line item number 1. Is invoice number 17, the amount of 6862 dollars and 50 cents and that's for construction administration meeting and reports. Number two invoice number five in the amount of five thousand two hundred eighty three dollars and fifty four cents is for concrete testing Number three quest construction change order number two is an increase in the contract amount of forty four thousand and $647.05. It was discovered that we had a leaking underground valve and we dug that up and it actually became two valves that were leaking that were unknown to us. A 6-inch and an 8-inch valve. So that would cover the associated piping with that and additional cost of the conveyors that are going to go in to the new TSA baggage screening room. And then line item number four, pay estimate number six, in the amount of $143,356.51 for work completed to date. Funding for this project is through Senate bill 144 2024 at 1.2 million dollars. Here's some federal money at $800,000 and that's for AIP IIJ number 55 and federal grant $64,600 and that's for number, project number 56, and then our local share is projected to be about $60,000. Airport board and staff recommend approval of this.

Move to approve all four payments.

Second.

All right, got a motion from Councilman Johnson. Second, Councilman Econger. Anyone have any questions for our transportation director as it relates to those four payments on the airport improvement project? Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote on making those payments?

Councilmember Ronan. Aye. Lebel. Aye. Ward. Aye. Johnson. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Nielsen. Aye. Nordstrom. Aye. Mearshawn.

Aye. That motion carries. Item number M in new business is a possible approval to Helms for $8,400. 33 cents to authorize the city manager to sign the AIP project for the SRE building expansion. Rich, conveniently you're up there, so why don't you walk us through what that project looks like.

Yep, invoice number 8 is for AIP project 58, and that's design work for the snow removal equipment building expansion. That is currently taking place. Invoice number 8 in the amount of $8,400.33 is for work completed to date. Invoice number eight is the design services are approximately 20% complete and the funding allocation is 95 federal two and a half percent state and two and a half percent city and Board and staff recommend approval of this one as well move to approve second motion Johnson second Nilsen Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote, please?

Yes

Councilmember Nordstrom. Aye. Nielsen. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Johnson. Aye. Ward. Aye. Leibelt. Aye. Ronain. Aye. Meir Shoneman.

Aye. Motion carries. Next is the airport weather camera system payment. It's $14,872 as well as to authorize Dave McNeil, the city manager, to sign the invoice for the FAA weather camera system. Rich?

This is a project that was authorized by the South Dakota Aeronautics Commission. We installed four weather cameras on our airport beacon structure. That was the amount of $14,872.22. The Aeronautics Commission agreed to reimburse the city at 75%, so the 25% remaining that the city is responsible for will come out of the airport fuel tax fund maintained by the DOT. And that total cost, that 25%, will be $3,718.05. Move to approve.

Second got a motion from councilman Lee belt second councilman Ward Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote on that payment, please?

councilmember Ronan I We belt I Ward. I Johnson. I II Congress. Hi, Nelson. I norm stroke. Hey, you're son. Oh

We've got one more item before we move over to our discussion on data centers. It's the possible approval and authorization of the city manager to execute a financial agreement between the DOT and the regional airport for our AIP projects ongoing. Rich, can you walk us through that contract then?

Yes, this is the financial agreement for AIP 58. This will cover the design work for the snow removal equipment building expansion. We're doing a 100 by 70 foot expansion to the south of the current building. Design work is approximately 20% complete on that. Funding allocation is shared among the city state and the FAA with the city and state Each contributing about seven thousand two hundred fifty dollars, which is two and a half percent of those eligible costs and the FAA will contribute 95% toward this grant which amounts to two hundred seventy five thousand five hundred dollars and the airport board and staff I move to approve

Second got a motion from councilman Johnson second councilman e conger all in favor. Please say aye motion carries rich. Thanks for joining us is now six o'clock or slightly thereafter and we will move to our discussion on data centers and in this case it will be hosted by our data center industry representatives and off first we've got mr scott sandal scott is a senior executive at sunbird software a provider of data center infrastructure management software and uh there you go looks like he's from there make sure the little green light is on that Yep, green light's on. Sounds great. Well, appreciate you being here and joining us here tonight, Scott. I'll leave the floor to you, and we'll take some questions when you're finished.

You bet. I'll go through my slide. And it's an honor to be here this evening. I find myself in this predicament a lot anymore. And I'll go through data centers and my interpretation of those. So I thank you, Aberdeen Council, Aberdeen servants, Aberdeen community. I'll go through the slide deck just to show you how I got to where I am and why I'm sitting here in terms of the industry. Go to the next slide. Just a little bit about myself. I have a 30-year IT background. Ironically, I'm sitting here kind of smiling because that 30-year IT background started down here at Jurte Hall in 1993. Started school here, went to a computer class and the computers was a little bit more to move on to DSU so I wanted to be a DSU graduate. But I met my lovely wife here who's with me tonight who also has played a role in the industry in her profession as well. But that career started right here in Aberdeen so I find it funny to come all the way back to here's where I am. I am a vice president of Sunbird Software. I have 50 plus data center experts throughout South Dakota that I employ with Sunbird as a VP. What we do operationally is we have a software platform, so we're a software company that provides software to data centers for their operational efficiency. essentially saying how much power do you have provisioned to a building, and how much of that power actually makes it to compute, and then what is all the inefficiencies or efficiencies of the operational mode. So that's what we do as a software company. So that's taken me around the world in doing so. I've been on the Linux school boards. We now reside in Linux, Southeast Sioux Falls. I've been on the school board for nine years, many of those years being a board chair. So I understand your lovely roll call and all that fun. And I love having an audience. I've been on the board, like I say, nine years, and I think we've had a community show up to our meeting maybe five times, probably less. So I love the community involvement that we're seeing what data centers. It's an interesting topic. Again, I mentioned I graduated Dakota State. But what I really like people to know is I'm a West River ranch kid. That's where I grew up. I went to a two-room country school, K through 8. Graduated from Faith High School. Got into livestock. I know cattle probably better than data centers. And I'm really here because of what happened where, and if anybody remembers South Dakota Certified Beef and all the programs that were supposed to proceed with that, Animal ID and traceability that really never went anywhere. When that happened, when that happened to kind of dissipate out, so a lot of questions like this lady brought up here a little bit ago, I had the exact same questions, I just had them 20 years ago. So that's what got me to where I am here today. So what I really want you to know is I'm here only to share my knowledge and my experience of what I've gained. I work with data center managers in 50 states, all 50 states and 110 countries around the world. Many of those I've traveled to, I've been in 49 states doing projects, and well over 30 countries. Pick a country, pick a continent, probably been there other than two. So that's a little bit of background about myself and how I wound up here. Again, born and raised, South Dakota won't leave. That's why we built a team here. Our headquarters is Piscataway for Sunbird, the company, but I built a team here of experts, even though there's really no data center industry here, okay? So that's a little bit about me. Now what I want to go through, so you can ask me any questions that we go through there, but what I really want to go through in this presentation is how we got to where we are and where we can try to find balances within this industry that's growing rapidly. So I always love to bring up, because once I left DSU, I went to Gateway. So anybody remembers in Norsey City, we had Gateway computers. I started there working in document management systems in the data center. So I had jukebox platforms. We did all document management systems for every processing of order that came in went to archive, which went electronically in the data center at that time. Then I moved on to Wells Fargo, did the exact same thing. But I like to start there where Gateway is, because that's really, for me, where this all began. Then we moved from Gateway. You got your typical PC in the next block there. Then you moved your gaming PCs. And really what you're looking here is an evolution of the personal computer to the digital age. And the two pictures on the bottom are what you'd look at as either a gaming PC with GPUs in them. We see those a lot in golf simulators where we're processing videos. So they're nothing new. They're out there. So you take these computers, and then you shove them in a rack. So you take them, instead of having a personal computer or laptop in front of you, you put them in a rack. So in the bottom left-hand corner there is a server, just a traditional server or a computer. We call them servers in the data center. And that server then is put into a rack. And then many of those servers are stacked on top of each other. And then the hotter they get, they get into liquid cooling. And so that's a couple different pictures there. So again, we have a background, personal computer. Take a whole bunch of those, put them into a rack. And that's important as we get into the capacity or the density of the devices or the racks and what we're seeing today, because your standard compute can be air cooled just like your standard laptop or whatever it is. Move into the gaming PCs, you saw the hoses in there, they're liquid cooled. Same philosophy and that's what's happening. You take all those computers, you put them in a rack, you put them in a row, and then you put them in a pod. So what you have in front of you is a picture of a pod. And it's also important to note this is all non-proprietary stuff. This is all stuff you can find online. So instead of doing Google search by Google search, I put in a presentation. So this is a air-cooled data center pod because on the floor there is where air is pushed up underneath of there and then pushed up in front of the computers where the computers can take a breath of air. blow it across the system, and keep it cool. That's traditional data centers, and still many operational data centers that exist today. Take those pods, you put them in a big room. The big room, that's what we start seeing, that's where you get to the size of the scale that we're talking about in many locations today. So.

Or is that you in the picture?

No, that was not me. Again, this is all online stuff, but I've been in some of these. Then I'll take that from the computer to a rack, to a row, to a pod. Pods are either where you contain cold dial, so you'll take two rows of computers, face each other. And then in that, you put doors on the end so you contain that cold air. Because what we're trying to do is keep the temperature, the environment, to be most operational efficient. Then you put them in our building. And then you have campuses. And that's where you're starting to see now the growth of campuses. So on the left-hand side there, that is where I got started in data centers, or I'll call it a computer room, at Home Federal. Home Federal in Sioux Falls is a net operator. That, too, is not me. But that is a picture of my life for all through college days. Bottom left-hand side, those are modular units. That's where we're going to drop in maybe one, maybe two. Those are typically one megawatt or less type of units. Then you get into the full campuses. So that's where, and then, of course, in the middle one is our... data center push when you're talking to ai facilities putting them wherever they can bottom right hand corner picture that is a tent literally a tent like a barn tent that they're putting devices into racks into because they can't build fast enough that's that's where this craze is coming from So just to kind of give you a general idea, right, we got computer, we got room, we got rack, we got row, we got pod, we got building, we got campus, but what makes up that campus, and this is where you get into some of the sound and the noise and whatever it might be, is the more you put into a room, right, so the more you put into the room, the more heat you create, the more need to dissipate that heat outside, and that's where you get to like this in the middle, is known as the data hall, where the racks are. And on the right hand side is just the pod. But that pod sitting inside the room, that room is known as the data hall. And that's where all the compute is. All the peripheral stuff around it, that's what supports that data hall. So depending on how big the data hall is designed to be, whether that's a one megawatt facility, five megawatt, 10, 100, gigawatt, whatever it is, that's where you start the design of the compute inside of it and how to dissipate the heat. So in 2008, going back to the RFID, when that left or that kind of fizzled out and didn't become something, I got a wild hair and I actually built a data center. Again, going back to the curiosity, I'm like, okay, well, what are these things? Let's build one. So I did build one in Yankton, went live in 2009, and it's been in operation ever since. So if you ever look on a map, there's five data centers. One of them I built. Also note, I'm not here to build a data center. I'm just telling you what I've learned since that point, okay? So again, my data center, the one that I built in Yankton, was only one megawatt, one megawatt in size. So we had a data hall that could support up to one megawatt, or at that time it was about 200 racks because they were designed at 5K per rack-ish. So as you look at this, that's where all the noise starts to come from on the outside because everything in a data center is designed redundant. So if you've got a power supply in a server or a power supply in a device, like this laptop has one power supply on the left hand side, everything needs redundant power. And then it goes redundant network. And then that power has to be redundant itself. It's just the way things are designed or has been over the years. So if I have one power supply coming in, I need two power supplies. If I have one bank of generators, I need another bank of generators. If I have one data center, I need two data centers. That's just the world of IT because we love our whatever it is we're storing, we want it immediately. And if it ever goes down or offline, that's a problem. to consumers. So everything in Zeta centers are designed for redundancy. So multiple fans times two. Make sense? And so that's where your outside noise starts to be. The higher the density, the more fans you need outside pushing air out or whatever your cooling methodology is. And that's where you start to get the volume of fans. I chuckled because I walked by our school the other day. And there is a fan running outside, the cooling fan for the inside, the HVAC system of the elementary school. And that thing's loud. One of them is loud, right? That's where you get into issues is you put multiple together because you have that much more power coming out or that much more heat. You've got to dissipate. So that's the perimeter of the building. That's the data center hall. And then I get asked here often, what happens when these data centers... are going to be decommissioned or start to decline. Really what you have, and I'll go through a couple more slides here, is the data hall usage of square footage starts to shrink. So I've seen data centers that have been designed at 60,000 square feet with 10 megawatt of power coming into them. But because the rack density, I got a couple of good slides for this, the rack density starts to get smaller. or higher than less. And so the number of rows that are allowed in that 10 megawatt decline. So you get that particular one, 60,000 square feet. It's in a cave. Only 10,000 square feet of it is usable because the power density of the rack went up. And I'll go through a couple of slides for that. So I won't read you this one. It just basically is just I put a lot of this together so you have it for future conversations or future topics. But it really what is the job of a data center? It's nothing more than a Google search that shows you the physical security of our information housed, stored and processed into compute. And then we have the AI stacked on top of that. So as a project in Linux, they came to me and asked me to do a similar kind of a research project for the community because they wanted to write an ordinance. My wife and I said, we want to turn it a little bit different. Instead of doing an ordinance conversation, we want to use the students of the school, because I've been on the board many years, to do a research of the community to even understand what capacity we have in the community that could even support a data center. So the students and us did a research. This slide just represents something I threw into chat GPT to say for a high school level student who uses data centers and why do they exist? And it started with this slide. That study wound up to turn out that really Linux can only have a certain amount of power and really what it does isn't that there's a data center coming it just tells us where the benchmark begins to even have a conversation aka knowing that five megawatts and i'll go into some more capacity five megawatts is about all we can handle in linux on the substation as is to still be able to grow organically as we have been to be able to still be able to offer other industry right? Their ability to grow. Five is our cap. The substation can do more than that, but five is about the reasonable cap where we should have a conversation. That way our city council knew if somebody comes to town and says, I need 50 megawatt or 100 megawatt, we know that conversation nearly isn't almost non-starter without them saying how you bring in your power, right? Not saying that a five megawatt should show up in Linux, just that that is the starting conversation at all for the community, if that makes sense. All right, so I do a lot of agriculture talk, and I love this one because it just goes through and says, where do data centers fit into the agriculture industry? And you can get deep in some of that. I love the one on the left-hand side of this one because that's truly AI right now. You can tell artificial intelligence is spelled incorrectly. That's just the way it works right now, right? Will it be as better than this? Will it not be better than this? But that's what is kicking out for us for fun right now. So moving on to types of data centers, and this is how I break them down when I'm working with customers. And this gets into your capacity when you're talking to data centers of what are you bringing to us? What is it going to look like? Again, going back to the campus mentality, I simply say 100 megawatts of total campus, right? If you're going to tell me you're going to build a 25 megawatt data center, does that mean you're going to build four more of them? Or are you just doing just 25 megawatts? Second to that, to understand what they're using the facility for. as I go through these types is the KW design of the racks inside. So I say anything over 75 KW per rack is what we start seeing is AI enabled type facilities because that's going to have your GPU and the rack density is going to be at that 75 or above. Then you have your Bitcoin mining. I won't do much of those. Everybody knows a lot about those. We're back to the traditional data center where we have kilowatts to megawatts in size. When I'm working with customers throughout the world, their data centers are anything from KW in size, a small IT closet sitting in the back room that has maybe two, three cabinets in it, medical clinics, all the way up to multiple megawatts, 10, 20 megawatts. But typically the design in a traditional data center, enterprise, healthcare, university, is going to be in that 5 to 50 watts. And that's air cooled designs that they use themselves. Again, so it's campus size, building size, and then rack density. Those are how I decipher between what a data center is designed to do and who's going to be the tenants of it. We'll go through that. And like I say, we've done audits throughout the US for a healthcare organization where they did their two primary data centers that were about 10 megawatts each or a little less than that. But then we did every IT room across every clinic and hospital that they had. to pull it in so they can get the same understanding of operational efficiency within that space, right? How much power is that little room drawing? How much cooling does it have, security, et cetera, on from there. So this one, I bring this in because the health risk of data centers, and the lady had a good list of them as well, they're not to be discounted at all, right? It goes through, and I'll show you some slides here in a couple seconds, air pollution, noise pollution, light pollution, increased cost to consumers, wasted water, climate change within the area, do they create a heat island? I just read a study from Data Center Knowledge where It's like a parking lot or a car lot. When you have that much heat coming out of that many fans together, it creates temperature changes as it blows it out. So it's, again, back to the density of the campus. You have that many units kicking out heat, it does. Studies show that. I'd like to break it back down again back to my ranching is around carrying capacity. Anybody who has a livestock background or understanding will understand that there's a carrying capacity of every piece of property. You have to understand that so you don't overload it wherever it is. I myself break this down. I have a ranch out in Meade County, south of Faith. We run about 20 to 30 acres per pair there. That's about max cap without doing supplements and hay and whatever else. Our water source out there comes from about 2,500 feet in the ground to get any kind of usable water across the ranch. There is some a little shallow, but it dries up pretty quick. And we only have about 16 to 19 inches of annual rainfall, right? go to Yankton County or come up to Brown County, you're gonna probably hit three acres per pair, right? You get the difference, right? You get where we're going with that. So as you look at what is the actual capacity, going back to Linux, what is the actual capacity that you can even begin to have a conversation that isn't gonna blow it out, right? And then if you go back to the large noise and the large, the dense population, so if you've ever heard of Data Center Alley in Loudoun County, Virginia, That equates to me, from an agriculture background, that equates to feed yards in Kansas City, right? If you put 100,000 head feedlot side by side by side by side, you're gonna get sound, you're gonna get noise, you're gonna get different pollution, you're gonna get all that. That's the same thing that happened in Loudoun County, is you have data center after data center after data center after data center, right? So that's where some of this research and now you get to these mega campuses, same things happening. So that's my little brain process. The same thing is, and that truly is a picture of my ranch on the top of one of our branding days back when we still operated. I still own it, just don't operate as much, versus a feedlot, right? So there's capacity that we have to understand that would be plausible on a piece of property that might be reasonable. Again, back to who is the tenant, AI or enterprise? Because enterprise still need data centers. This is a slide that we've seen over the years. This is probably what's grown the hottest topic in it, is traditional data centers are that 3 to 5 to 20, maybe up to that 50. And that just is an example of heat that grows the higher you go in a rack density. based upon GPU versus CPU, that gets hotter and hotter, and you have to do something with the heat so the systems don't burn down. So that's a slide just to show that. But to show you what the difference is, going back to the two computers, The top one here is an air-cooled system. Again, I can support that with air flow through the building. There used to be like chicken coops in early days of my data center experience. Chicken coop buildings that Yahoo built down by Omaha, they were designed just like a chicken coop. Force the air in, push it through, and it dissipated through all the servers and kept them cool. Then the more dense that we got these racks, aka the bottom one, which is the GPU units, which requires liquid cooling, now we've got to have a loop system to get that heat off of there, circulate it out, and then carry it outside. That's where you get into the water usage, the great water usage. Again, just another slide to just kind of give you a representation of the technologies currently around cooling. What do you need when? So if it's a 3 to 5 kW, that's perimeter crack, you can get up in the Midwest here, North Dakota, South Dakota, what we get is what's known as free cooling. If you're in that 3 to 15 kW, which means if I have a loop that's chilling the inside data center, that as it goes outside, the ambient temperature in North Dakota, South Dakota here is low enough that the loop outside will cool itself before it goes back in the building, right? It's just basic HVAC systems. So if I send it out, run it long enough, it will cool itself, take the water back in, recirculate, right? When I have high density systems, that water coming out before it goes back in the building because I need a flow rate and a pressure in order to make sure that the heat transfers from the devices onto the liquid, whatever that liquid is, then I'm going to have to have supplemental outside. And that's where we get into water usage, where I'm running either water over it or fans to blow it to cool that loop outside. And that's either run more fans to cool down, or I do evaporated cooling to run it over that coil to get its temperature back down before it goes back in the building. So that's the different technologies as today. I always come at this one with a different kind of challenge to our universities and to the industry. In the last five years, I've seen this industry go from we talk millions of dollars, all of a sudden we're talking billions of dollars. I have customers in the Middle East who talk trillions of dollars in development, right? So if all this money is out there, why can't we get universities funded to find different technology? That's where I lay that challenge out to all the universities and the industry, my peers within the industry, to find that research and get it moving forward to essentially engineer water back out of the data center. A little bit more coming down the last couple slides here. What we really do, and this is again my wife here, she sold power strips. In order to understand how the power usage is occurring within the data center, These power strips are not your typical under the floor kind of power strips. They're a 30 amp, 60 amp, 100 amp, 200 amp type circuit where every outlet on that device is measurable. So everything you plug into the outlets, you can understand all the power consumption across there. And then they have a whole bunch of other intelligence. What is the thermal? What is the heat going in or out? So what is the environment? We have vibration sensors, all that kind of thing just to track. To me, this is where we start the whole idea of the foundation of transparency. If we can measure the data inside and the data outside, so continuous measuring of all the points, you get to what the industry recognizes as the Gartner information of data center sustainable metrics. That's your power usage effectiveness, water usage, carbon usage, renewable energy. I have customers overseas who can track every server and what power it's pulling from at any point in time. meaning the utility company has opened up APIs to say, from this hour to this hour off of this grid structure, we feed this type of power from here to here. And then they have the whole mappings to say, okay, well, this set of servers, when they're operating from that same time, are fed from that grid. Therefore, we know whether they're either run of wind, solar, nuclear, whatever it might be, right? So that's where we get to the data center efficiencies and metrics. And this last slide to bring up for you this evening is really just to say, AI is one thing. AI has really kind of come on the scene and kind of caught everybody off guard as to what is it, how much do we need of it, is there benefit, all that. The underlying slide, the blue line here, represents back to the types of data centers, the traditional data centers. Our need for email, our need for compute of whether it's research, right, are in situation of recording these meetings. I joke because I had a person the other day who was recording a 15-minute conversation for their record. And I'm like, cool, why? Do you really need that record? Can't you just write it on a piece of paper, right? But that blue line represents consumer-driven traditional compute of data centers at a 16% to 18% compound annual growth up through 2030, right? So there's a need here, and that's for, if you get into who's coming to town to build a data center, again, it's not me, be clear. If you get into who's coming to town, are they building an AI facility, or are they building a traditional data center for their own enterprise or research needs? There's a big difference. So with that, I'll take any questions you have of me.

So you had made mention of one example where a 60,000 square foot facility was condensed like a 10,000 square foot of computing space. That was just because the equipment got smaller and smaller, and that was the maximum output that that power source was able to provide.

Yep. So if you go back to that slide where we went from three kilowatt to one megawatt in a rack, that rack, So as that density of those cabinets goes up to the right or to the right of that chart, then that power is allocated in less of a footprint. Go back to that one, the floor plan, if there's 20, let's say 20 rows of cabinets in there that are all designed at 10 kW, kilowatts per rack kind of consumption. And all of a sudden new IT equipment comes in and that new rack is now designed at 20 KW while I have less square footage.

What was the, what was the time period in which that contracted by that?

That particular data, and there's many of them out there. Um, but that particular data center, we had a 25 year on it. Um, and they're, they're adjusting right now if, if they can get more power to the building, because I have to turn it off and get more power from the local utility. in order to increase the capacity of the halls. Right now, that doesn't look like it's possible for them. But other data centers as well where new AI equipment, again, because you're looking at the difference between a room that was designed at 5 to 10K, maybe 15K per rack, is bringing in some of these AI racks, and they're running at 75K in a pod, right? So that all goes hand in hand in those designs. And how do you redesign that shell? Again, you're going to have less cabinets taking up less square footage in that data hall.

That was over a 25-year period that it was cut by like 90%.

That particular data centers, but there's some modern data centers today that have been built maybe five, 10 years ago that were designed for traditional computer on that 10 to 15K. And they're enterprise data centers where they're asking them to bring in the AI type equipment as well for their own research. in their own usage and those then have a different push. All these are enterprise that I'm talking about right now. So it has a different square footage there as well. So there's not necessarily 25 years on some of those. They're just getting redesigned with less square footage.

So with all the communities all the different facilities that you've dealt with all over the entire world are there I guess patterns of the ones that seem to be good corporate neighbors in the communities that they serve and ones that probably have stand to be improved in that department? And what are those things that are obvious to you?

That's a great question. The obvious ones to me in terms of what has changed is the industry recognizes that the time where like sales tax rebates and all that has that well has probably gone dry across the world, right? So where a company used to be able to come to town and say, hey, I'm going to come pick a big company, right? I'm going to come to town and build something here. and get some kind of a tax rebate for that, that has dried up. The industry really, if you stay on top of it, understands that not only is it power, water, and all the other fiber needs that's there, it's also the community. What are we going to give to the community to even exist there? So you're seeing this trend, and it's across the world. It's not just here locally or in the United States. It's across the world. Other than probably the Middle East, they built a lot there. But in Europe and other places where what does it mean to be a good neighbor if I'm going to have this facility there? And that's why I lean in on is it an enterprise facility, right? Like a bank or a healthcare or university that's trying to build it? Or is it more of what we're experiencing right now in the AI world? Whom is that and what are they building and what is the operational life of it based upon that design? Enterprise data centers are gonna get every and that's why that's why we exist as a company On the software side is because they're trying to get every watt out of that building as possible into compute, right? So The the The changes there become okay, we're not we're not gonna come to town under secrecy, right? That's that's starting to change You're starting to see that a lot in the industry across the world. We're gonna come into the community meetings and answer questions and The challenge becomes there, again, back to why I break it down between an AI versus an enterprise is typically enterprise knows we're the customer. We're building it for our use versus a co-location or an AI, which is, hey, I'm the builder. I'm building the building. Then this company is bringing the compute in, and then they're going to lease that compute to somebody else. So we don't know who that final end user is. We only know who's bringing compute in, the AI racks into the space. So starting to see that kind of change across the world is, again, more transparency. Again, that's why I put the map up there. Hey, if you're going to come and you're going to be transparent, here's some questions I ask to have you expose on a monthly, if you're a data center, to expose on a monthly, daily basis to whatever governing body or community that cares. So lots of changes. The map that I'm seeing across the board is every data center is kind of a snowflake itself. So there's technologies and things that are used in there, but they're designed just a little bit differently based upon what that facility is going to be used for. But there is some commonalities.

So I had done a quick AI search, and it suggested there was about 700 of these facilities currently in construction in the United States right now. Does that sound like a reasonably acceptable number?

There's a... That's an interesting question because there's a lot of speculation. Again, as I mentioned, that's why I bring it up. You go from millions to billions to trillions, you get a lot of speculators that come along with that. And they're looking, how can I get a piece of property and get it prime and ready for a data center so I can sell it to the data center? Because I want to get a chunk of that money. So you have a pipeline of that 700 that's flooded with speculators. How many of those 700 are actually real deals? And that's, I think, what happened a lot in the utility companies, too, is people were willing to call up, say, hey, I found a piece of property. Hey, can you give me power to that? And so a whole bunch of inquiries came into utilities asking them, how much can you give to me? And all of a sudden, utilities are like, how many of these are real and how many are not? Right. How many respect and how much power do we actually need? So of that 700, those are probably going to be leaning in more of that AI type driven facilities versus, again, that 16 to 18%. That's just traditional data center that's being built out wherever that takes on a little bit different life. There's still plenty of those are, you know, more hundreds of those. The AI facilities are the ones that are getting the buzz.

And that you think that's 80 some percent probably of the ones that are currently under construction. That's that's oh, no, no, no, no.

I think of the 700 that's noted that that 700 is going to be more of that. Hey, we're here to build an A.I. type facility we're trying to get. There's the more subtle ones are the ones that are going to be the enterprises that you just don't recognize. And that's one like like the data center built in Yankton. When I gave this similar talk, we had to explain to people where it even was because people didn't even know it existed there. And it was kind of fun because some people are like, I drive by that every day. Like, yeah. It's security by up security on that smaller type facilities over the years. AI has taken it a different path, but a lot of those traditional data centers like north of Sioux Falls, you drive, if you take Highway 60, you drive by three of them on that road. So again, who is it is a question that I have. So that 700 is gonna be a mixed bag, but probably heavily slided towards AI.

Any other questions from the council? Mr. Mayor?

Go ahead. I appreciate you coming, Scott. Just what goes to my mind, and I know hearing from a few constituents here, people reaching out, I guess goes kind of to the one megawatt facility. So right size is definitely a question. I like the feedlot analogy that you have there. But I guess before getting to the right size, What would mission creep look like, I guess? And maybe I don't know if Chris Nelson is still on from the PUC. Maybe it's more for him if he is available. But my question would be, if we would get a data center project here, let's just throw out one megawatt or five megawatts. protections are in place from preventing a developer then to, okay, let's double this. Let's go from 5 to 10. Let's go from 10 to 20. What protections are in place to prevent something I would call just mission creep? I don't know if you're comfortable to answer that.

I would leave that to POC and you guys as counsel and how you write the ordinance. To me, that would be a part of an ordinance that, hey, this is max cap. period for campus that's why i break it down campus building racks this is max campus right in order to have whatever the max campus could be on the the whether you're doing um like a provisional approval right uh cup um if you're doing one of those um that would be written into there like this is your max again the i would also push a developer to have to go study that with the utility right to thoroughly understand because it's not just the substation that's what a lot of people jump is It's not just the substation, because now we need to talk upstream for the whole community, up through, and PUC and Northwestern are way better at that than me. But we just have, for our community, the baseline to even start a conversation before we'd ask them to go. So creep, to me, gets put into an ordinance, or more in the provisional use, right? If approved, so if somebody comes knocking, you now know what to start the conversation, right? So in Linux, that's what I would guide them to say is, hey, yep, five is a cap. They want five, well, let's see if that even fits, have them do a full study, right? A full study of the power with the utility at that point in time. And if that does, then that would have to be part of the provisional use. And that would be there to not allow them to scope creep.

Is Chris on from the POC?

Talmadge, did you have a question?

Yeah, I did have a couple. Please. OK.

Anyway, I appreciate you coming and appreciate Appreciate the presentation. You had a slide in there that had a picture of a kind of a drawing of a server room with the false floor and everything that looked very, very familiar to my background because I ran some manufacturing IT operations for a number of years. And the one thing we never really had to look at in that environment at the time was power. So, you know, it seems like the limiting factor that we're always talking about on here is what's the power usage. And I think you started to touch on it. I was just, is there some way you can kind of quantify it for me and get a picture in my head? I mean, we had like 14 servers. I have no idea how much power we were using. We had 14 servers, I think a size 20 at one point. And it's kind of what's, What's that mean? I mean, you know, I'm just having a hard time just bridging that gap.

So five megawatts, so going back to Linux, I'll use five megawatts. Five megawatts is essentially the equivalency of about 4,000, a little over 4,000 homes of just average use, right? So five megawatts, 4,000 homes. Linux is only about 2,200 people, right? So it's it's double the size Double-double the size of Linux when I say 5 megawatts the town today uses about 11. So Then you get into the actual design of that 5 megawatts how it's broken down to the cabinet density That's why I go back to the kW per cabinet because typically you probably saw in those rooms is maybe 1 to 5 max kW per cabinet in your in your rooms and was probably right around there so power was not a problem because you could run it off the 30 amp 60 amp breaker very easily. Today when we put a rack on the floor we're designing it at max power capacity right on day one and so we need to understand how much those IT devices in there are actually pulling, right? Like this device here is probably a 250 watt power supply and it's probably only drawing maybe 75 watt, right? So it's that calculation of how much overhead do I actually have per row, per pod, per room that I can use somewhere else. But typically in those IT closets or traditional data centers, again, you're probably looking at five, but five megawatts, 4,000 homes. And you can do the math on up from there. Claude is really good at it too, if you want to ask Claude.

Well, the one question that I had is when you were talking about like the community input and involvement that some of these better neighbor companies had had, one of the concerns that we've really had here with the overflow of a workforce from the data center up in Allendale has been really contraction of available housing. And is that an area that you've seen any of these data center companies take an active role or a stake in?

Not traditionally. We're moving. I see the industry moving that way. The talks of it, like, hey, what does it mean to be a good neighbor in a community? That's more of the talks. I would say that's still unfolding in front of us. And it's really more of a thing, we're all in this together, right? If this is true compute, what does AI mean? Is AI really going to become a thing, and how is it going to become a thing? Is it a bubble? Is it not a bubble? There's a lot of stuff around AI that's just unfolding in front of us, but that includes data centers knowing that now what used to be true when you walked in a community is no longer true. And so what is the new rules to development within a community? What is the ordinance? What do the people want? Or even hearing, or I'm reading things, it's interesting because my Facebook account is full of data center transparencies and anti, and then my LinkedIn side is all about pros and developments. And you can imagine how it is, right? So it's all full of the social stuff. So on that side and the LinkedIn side, you're still starting to see how do you get these data center like community benefit programs or whatever it might be, what do they look like? I don't have any examples to share with you. There's just buzz out there, right, as what it is, what could it be, what should it be, waiting myself to see some come to fruition.

thank you one more question yes please okay go ahead um the uh you talked about redundancy briefly i was wondering if any uh if you had seen anywhere where redundancy was required was required actually like outside of the communities because one of the one of the developed parades of horribles in my head right and then we try to get around and get around those things and prevent them from occurring but so like if you example i saw something recently somebody didn't backed up to the cloud but their cloud provider that they backed up to folded um you know i and so they lost a bunch of data i would Is there anything that you've seen where they're putting in place something to say, okay, you aren't going to be so mission critical in our place that if you become somebody we need to push out that you, you know, that suddenly you make it a terrible thing.

Like load shedding down even to the compute level, right? Like I know that like some utilities, like jokingly looking at one in Yankton when we, just before we sold the place down there, And they have by policy to load shed for large loads like a data center. So the one megawatt, two megawatt, they could shed you off, the utility provider in that area could shed you off, right? So that's at a power level, but then you can get into the compute level as well to say, okay, I need to shut down these IT devices, whomever that is, in order to bring the power consumption down, similar as fans, right? Like that's one of the things I think is gonna happen in the industry is, is if I'm hitting a certain noise level because I got shed from the utility, and so I'm running generators and I'm running the fans, I'm going to have to shed some compute in order to get back down below the decibel levels, whatever the ordinance says. So you'll see shedding I think in happen over time at all levels of a facility. But like the data center I built in Yankton, back to redundancy, it is a redundant location designed for Sioux Falls businesses, right? Because it's close enough proximity to Sioux Falls that they can drive within an hour or two if there's a disaster recovery event But it's it's so it's close enough for that, but likelihood of a tornado hitting yankton and sioux falls is not very right so so that's that's where the Dr and that's where you get into co location back to the types of data centers. Co location type of utilities or data centers are for kind of Dr type facility where, then they can judge you or whatever. One more.

I was just going to see if we could have Chris Nelson come back on and answer. I think he was still on. If he could just, and I could repeat the question.

We've got four speakers, and I mean, unless you want to.

I am on. Thank you. And I apologize for not being there in person. I'm elsewhere in the state at a South Dakota Telecommunication Association annual meeting.

Mr. Mayor? Maybe we tie things up with a bow for Scott, right?

Can you hear me?

Sounds great. Chris, pleasure to have you here. Sorry you couldn't be here. We'd have much preferred to have you here in person. Councilman Ward has a question for you.

Hey, Chris, thank you for coming on. I guess my question to Scott, I'll just shift over to you and maybe I'll kind of add on to it. But what I've heard is kind of the question about mission creep. I'll say, you know, if we would get a project and whatever we cite them for, what would be the protections in place? Or does the council need to look at that protections in place for having someone go from, you know, let's just say five megawatts to ten megawatts on the same end? you know, if someone needs more power, could you talk about are they responsible for, you know, investing in more power generation or transmission as well if the area they can't serve?

Thank you. Big question. And the other maybe initial statement, I want to make it clear that the PUC is completely agnostic as to whether or not data centers come to South Dakota or not come to South Dakota. But if they do, obviously there's areas that particularly from the electric supply situation, that we will do our job to make sure that the South Dakota is protected in that. I would say what we are hearing is maybe more opposite of what you have laid out in that a data center will negotiate with a utility company and say, you know, over time, we're gonna need 50 megawatts, but we're gonna start with 10. And sometimes the utility will say, you know, 10 is all we can start with, but give us some time and we can help you move up to your 50. And so that to me is really the more common scenario that we hear about is that they set the outside boundary to begin with, but it starts smaller and build up.

Great, appreciate that, Chris. Well, I think that for the sake of time, we've got Michael Feinblatt. Is Michael on the line?

Yes, I'm here.

Perfect. Well, I'm going to lead you in with the limited information that I've got. Michael Feinblatt is an environmental professional and area manager for TRC Companies. He's got experience in air quality, noise and vibration assessment, and let's see here. That's all the information I've got. The rest of it is fluff. So with that, Michael, appreciate you being here.

Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for having me here tonight. My name is Mike Feinblatt. I work for a company called TRC Environmental Corporation, which is a national company. We have 150 offices throughout the country, and I have about 35 years of experience doing noise and vibration studies for a variety of sources. Throughout the country in every state, and I've done a lot of data center work as well. Noise studies for data centers as well. So I just have a few points for the council to consider. Just to kind of start to frame things 1 of the unique things about data centers and the noise from data centers is it typically typically is in the. The low frequency range, so like the base, so you have your subwoofer on your stereo system. And, you know, you crank up the base on your stereo system, you feel the vibration of the music. So a lot of the noise that comes from data centers is in that low base by noise range. So noise and vibration tend to kind of go together when it comes to data centers. So I'm going to speak about noise. But as I'm speaking about ways to control noise, I'm also speaking about ways to control vibration. Because again, the data centers, they kind of go hand in hand. The other thing to consider with data centers is that they often create pure tones. And what a pure tone is, every sound you hear is a combination of a lot of different frequencies of sound from treble to bass and everywhere in the middle. And a pure tone is a sound that has a very distinct frequency that's a lot higher than the frequencies around it. So if you think of nails on a chalkboard or squeaky brakes on a truck, So, it's a, it's a sound that's sort of grading to you and can be annoying even beyond how loud it is. And that's what's called the pure tone and the frequencies that data centers typically operate. There's a lot of opportunity for pure tone. So 1 thing that the board should consider is not just regulating the overall sound from the data centers. but also think about the different frequencies. A lot of municipalities will have a noise ordinance for data centers or other sources that actually have frequency limits. So each of the octoband frequencies will have limits. So you're not only limiting the overall sound from the data center, but you're also making sure that it doesn't have a particularly high sound or a pure tone in the low frequency that can be particularly irritating to people beyond its magnitude. so just to start i guess first of all i just want to say that not all data centers are the same and should be treated the same there's a big variety between the small traditional data centers and the large hyperscale data centers when it comes to noise and vibration you know the small traditional data centers that require cooling but do not require power generation can be fairly benign you know you certainly have the sound from the cooling systems but they are enclosed in a building So the sound levels from a small traditional data center can be quite easy to manage. When we start to get closer to the hyperscale, the data center typically requires more power than the grid can require. So the data center will actually have its own on-site power generation. That's not something that has been talked about yet tonight. So that's really, so you have with a hyperscale data center, not only the sound from the data center itself and its cooling systems, but you also have an onsite power plant, whether it's generators, whether it's turbines, but also has noise associated with it and has its own cooling systems associated with it also make noise. So I think when you're looking at how to regulate data centers, You need to have separate sets of regulations for sort of a small traditional size data centers that only require cooling of the data center itself and then have stricter limits for the larger hyperscale data centers where they are not hooked up to the grid where they have their own on-site power generation. Because that's where the real impacts come from is from that on-site power generation which also requires its own cooling. So you certainly don't want to take a one-size-fits-all approach. You want to regulate those larger data centers a lot more carefully than you do the small ones because the small one is pretty easy to control and it's very difficult with the larger ones. So the next consideration is sighting. The most effective way to mitigate noise and vibration is distance. So you really want to try to get the noise-producing equipment as far away from any noise-sensitive receptors in the area as you can. So you can do that 1 way through zoning. So, trying to cite data centers in more industrial zone areas where there are not a lot of residences or schools or hospitals. Or other noise sensitive areas that would be particularly affected by the noise and the vibration. And you also want to utilize natural buffers where you can. So if you have sites that have natural screening through trees or other sort of natural geographic features can have a big effect on the ability of that noise and vibration to make it from the source to the nearby noise center receptors. So again, what I would recommend and what a lot of municipalities have done is They have separate noise limits at the property line, depending on how the adjacent property is zoned. So if the adjacent property is an industrial property, you can have fairly high noise limits. And if the adjacent property is a residentially zoned property, you have much stricter limits. And you'd expect them to mitigate a lot more when their adjacent property is a residential property. So again, not taking a one-size-fits-all approach for sound level at the property line considering what the surrounding uses are and how sensitive those surrounding uses may be to noise and vibration. Next thing to consider is equipment and technology selection. There's lots of different technologies out there for cooling data center equipment. Typically, air cooling is louder than dry cooling. So that's something to consider. Obviously, with wet cooling, you're now using water in some cases. So that's something to consider. But in terms of noise, using air cooling will have a much higher sound level than using wet cooling. So that's something to consider. Again, there's the on-site generation. What is that on-site generation? How is it cooled? Is it air cooled or is it water cooled? And then some equipment has better internal dampening systems and enclosures. So you could require applicants to utilize technology that has its own internal dampening systems so you're not relying so much on Outside mitigation, you know, this sort of natural mitigation from the equipment itself kind of built into it. So equipment and technology selection is really important. Next is the site plan. You know, once you have a site and you pick your equipment. You want to try to cite the, the noisiest equipment as far away from the noise sensitive receptors as you can. So again, if you had a site where you had industrial adjacent users to the north, the west, and the south, and some residential uses to the east, you'd want to encourage the applicant to site the noisy equipment as far away from the east property line as they can and to have as big a buffer as they can. So you could do that through the zoning process by requiring larger buffers for residentially adjacent properties than industrial adjacent properties. to encourage developers to site their equipment as far away from the residential areas as they can. Last, I would say, is sort of mitigation. So once you've kind of done everything you can with siting and equipment and its location, now you can consider different types of mitigation. Obviously, you can put equipment in buildings and enclosures. In some cases, you could install sound walls. Um, particularly when you have residential adjacent properties. You know, one thing I found in my career in a lot of cases is that out of sight is out of mind. And even in some cases where a sound wall doesn't necessarily have a big effect on the sound from the facility. It's when the residents can't see the facility, they kind of can't hear the facility either. There's a psychological effect. We're just out of sight out of mind. So, you know, requiring developers to have sort of buffer. Buffers, whether it's trees, whether it's some kind of vegetative planning, whether it's an actual wall. Even if it isn't needed to achieve compliance with the sound level limits. It can go a long way when you have adjacent residential uses, you know, if they can't see it, they feel like they kind of forget it's there and then it doesn't bother the same sound level that. Didn't bother them before still won't bother them because now it's not something that they are kind of looking at every day. So in some ways it's psychological, but I also think there's a thorough practicality to that. So that's something to consider as well. So I guess those are some of my thoughts. Like I said, I've done sound studies for quite a few data centers, and these are the kinds of things that we process we've had to go through. A lot of them are being built in Texas, where there's not a lot of noise regulation. But we've really encouraged developers to be proactive in being good neighbors and trying to minimize noise and vibration impacts in the design of their facilities. Because it's a lot more expensive to do it after the fact. So even if there aren't regulatory limits, you could still have neighbors complaining. And to be a good neighbor, you want to address their complaints. And now you have to spend a lot more money putting in mitigation after the fact that you could have put into the design at the beginning. So regardless of what the regulation says, I would say in terms of being a big neighbor, we certainly encourage our clients that are putting in data centers, to try to understand the concerns of the people that live in the area and address those concerns proactively, regardless of whether it's involved in complying with the ordinance or not. Because again, at the end of the day, you don't want to build something and have a lot of people unhappy about it, get the bad public relations from it, and then have to, you know, scramble after the fact to try to put in things that you could have much more economically put in from the beginning. So I really encourage the city and the community to work closely with the developers to try to make sure the product is being designed to the extent it can to take into consideration the concerns of the residential uses in the area. Again, regardless of whether compliance is involved or not. That's really what makes a successful project is that stakeholder engagement. I've seen a lot of projects where the developer didn't do that and things didn't go well. And I've seen a lot of projects where the developer did do that, and things have gone very successfully. So I guess that's what I came here to say, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Well thank you for joining us Michael. You know one thing that a number of people have brought up that you know kind of fits in the categories that you spoke to are on the vibration end of things with those assessments that you're doing maybe impacts on people or impacts on wildlife or animals or that type of a thing. Is that an area of the study that you've taken a look at?

Yeah, like I said, the vibration in a lot of ways goes along with the noise because a lot of the sound from a data center is in the low frequency. You know, sort of the bass again, when you think of the treble bass analogy. So by mitigating noise, you're in effect mitigating vibration when it comes to data centers. We have not seen a lot of issues with vibration, to be honest with you. It's certainly a consideration. But I would say that in our experience, we have done vibration studies for a lot of data centers and it's typically more the noise that is the issue, not the vibration. Vibration is really more related to sort of construction. As long as you've properly grounded the equipment and you have the right foundations in place, you can typically mitigate any vibration impact. So I would say that noise would be a much greater concern than vibration. And if you're managing noise well, then you're likely managing vibration as well, because they sort of go hand in hand with data centers.

Thank you for that clarification. Any questions from the rest of the council? Rich?

Real quick question there. Appreciate you coming, Mike. I think you referenced, and maybe I just missed it, but a large and a small scale data center. Could you just define that, what you're considering, like a small data center? Is that under 100 megawatts or just a definition so I can have something in mind?

Yeah. Yeah, again, it sort of varies from place to place. I think a lot of it has to do with the availability of power. As I mentioned, the real differentiator is whether this data center needs its own on-site power or not. So I would say typically, once you're getting above the one megawatt scale, you're likely going to have some kind of on-site power. It may be emergency power, but you're going to have some generators on-site, and you may have some turbines on-site. I would say, you know, anything less than a megawatt is probably going to be. On the grid and anything greater than megawatt more more than likely has its own on site generation. So if I had a draw line, I guess that's where. I would draw it as a rule, but again, I think it sort of varies on the community because. depending on the availability of power you may be able to have a larger data center that can actually work off the grid so in that case the concern wouldn't be so great it's really that on-site whether the need for on-site power generation is there or not is what i would be concerned about thank you great well mike genuinely genuinely appreciate your time and and expertise in this matter uh if anything else and from your perspective to include No, thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Appreciate you joining us here tonight. Well, next we've got Northwest Energy, Tom Glanzer. Is Tom available on the Zoom call? Tom, welcome.

Hi. We also are on the road. I got a lot of sun behind us, but Brian Kempnitz and I are here. I'm Tom Glanzer. I'm the Community Relations Manager for South Dakota, Nebraska for Northwestern Energy. I'll let Brian introduce himself.

Brian Kempnitz, Electric Business Development Manager for the entire company, I guess.

So, yeah, I guess I would start out by just saying Northwestern Energy has obviously heard a lot of requests from data centers with power needs that we cannot take care of and power needs that we actually could take care of. We're out there looking at different things for different companies, but with that said, our main goal is to take care of our legacy customers and make sure they're taken care of. There would never be a situation where we would take power away from our customers. That would obviously end us up in his office. That is not something that we're about. We are taking care of requests from different data centers that come in looking for power. Obviously, I think anybody's best interest but that traditional data center AI data center is probably something that we can look into some of the small scale the mid scale I guess I don't really know how they they tap those um here on currently has a project that's looking at a 90 megawatt the water usage was less than a the local car wash on a daily basis that kind of that kind of technology I think can lend itself to a good Uh, access business for, uh, the, the towns that we live in. I think if you look at location, um, obviously, uh, we would like it close to our power lines or transmission lines or a substation, uh, those substations, uh, some of our, uh, current substations and, uh, generation that we have in the area, uh, already, you know, confines with the, uh. the noise regulations in the area. It's already zoned for that. We have some projects that we are putting in the ground here on the southwest side of Aberdeen. That project is not built for a data center. That project is built for baseload generation. There will be some capacity on that when that project is completed. But obviously, the data centers come asking and it's our due diligence to make sure that they understand what we can offer them. Brian?

So I've, I've heard from different people that have been talking about kind of the impact in North Dakota that the differential between a residential customer and a data, a large data center customer is just absolutely considerable in terms of dollars and cents of the cost of the electricity itself could you kind of speak to that with the data center customers that you guys currently serve what is an average cost rate and then is it is it strictly based on the volume of usage or how is it um how is it explained that a residential customer pays more per kilowatt hour than a consumer like a data center

We don't currently have any data center customers that we serve today, but we do have rate classes. And today it's broke up and Chris was on earlier. He actually would know better than us almost, but ultimately it's broke up by cost causer these different rate classes are broke up to allow that cost causer to pay for their rate. Now, on this project and any other project we look at is what we will do is we'll look at the cost for this specific project and how they play into our overall rates. And if that customer were to raise our rates, they would actually have a surcharge on top of it that would allow cost shifting not to go to our legacy customers. And that would be a process and approval through Commissioner Nelson and the rest of the PUC.

So in that hypothetical circumstance, they would pay a higher rate than what their rate class would be identified as, but it wouldn't be a higher rate. Presumably, they're always going to be in a lower rate class because of the volume of usage.

Volume generally does lower their usage, yes.

It would really not be much different than, say, any other big user like AGP, things like that. We consider our key accounts the accounts that have a large energy use on our system.

So the state law that took effect in July that I think was aimed at trying to hold residential customers harmless to data rate increases based on the usage of data rate data centers, could you kind of speak to what that looks like and how that would be applied?

Essentially, the way I look at it is it's going to be applied the exact same way that it would have before. Northwestern Energy would likely file for a rate with deviation and we would go to the commission and the commission would approve it and we would show that we hold legacy customers.

Very good. And so you've got a new substation. Is it a substation or a generation facility that is intending to be built on the south side of Aberdeen?

Yeah, we have a planned gas fire generation station. We had a public hearing on that probably earlier at the end of last month. I don't remember when I was up there. But 131 megawatts, it's part of the SVP, part of the ARIS project. We know that we need about 80 megawatts coming up in the future for basal generation. And being part of SVP, you have to have 30% more on your system. Then what you actually can say you need and that would take us to that Hundred and thirty hundred twenty is just as far as how the the projects are being built out. It's a hundred and thirty one megawatts That's plan that's already proposed They're just north of our substation on the southwest of the southwest area of town over by them coated beef and a couple other existing plants, but that that obviously is Gas fire that's a it's a it's a

project that probably won't see shovel until 27 i think i've asked a lot of questions anyone else in the council have anything david have you guys had uh a chance to see like what our potential capacity is like other speakers have talked about for the aberdeen area

So when we talk capacity, there's a lot of things that goes into that. There's electric transmission system, and then there's also the electric supply system. And so each individual project is kind of looked at separately. Tom actually, in fact, calls me a lot and, hey, how much capacity do we have in this location? The answer is it depends, and what types of upgrades we and the customer would want to partner in on that project and things of that nature. So Aberdeen, what I will say, is a very strong spot on our system, largely due to investments that we've made in your community. So with the generation we have there and the generation we plan to build in the future, It does bolster Aberdeen, but as Tom mentioned, that's more of a coincidence than that was certainly, as he mentioned, not built for data centers.

Can I ask one more question? Please do. Have you guys required large energy consumption customers to pay for that upgrade? Or how does that work? If somebody wants to come in, you can...

In the past, the answer is no, but we've never had a customer of this size come in either. And the answer would certainly be that we would make sure legacy customers are kept whole going forward.

So Scott had mentioned a minute ago that 4,000 homes are generally powered by about five megawatts. Is that about what you're seeing?

Boy, I don't want to do that math off the top of my head and go on public record. It's pretty close.

And so the consumption of Aberdeen, Aberdeen is probably about three or four times that currently. So what is the need for the 80 megawatts additional generation? What primarily is driving that demand?

You're looking at growth all over the system. This will not change. transmission line, the backbone goes from Aberdeen down to Yankton, from here on all the way over to Mitchell and all the other towns in between. And the other thing you have to look at is the possibility of coal. We have three coal plants right now, with Big Stone being over 53 years old, you know, one change in administration and that coal plant could be told it's going to shutter in three or four years. I guess if you look at the whole picture of generation right now, We built a lot of coal back in the day and that's taken us through to right now. We are in a feasibility study for nuclear. That's no secret either. And I think if you look at the shoulder or what we go from coal onto nuclear, there has to be something there because nuclear is, you know, it's about a 10 year build out. We're probably not at the technology yet where we want to say this is the technology that everybody in the industry is going with. But right now, we are able to build gas fired with gas being as affordable as it is. It's really lent itself to be that shoulder between coal and the next technology. If you look at the plant that was built in Huron, We did a 58 megawatt plant in here on over COVID under budget. And that thing has absolutely put back onto the system way more than we thought it was going to. It's been called born quite a bit. So that technology is kind of what's going forward. We did the same thing in Montana with the Yellowstone. And I don't remember how many megawatts Yellowstone is. It's pretty sizable. But that's the idea. We just know for resources what we're going to need in the future what we need for capacity and that hunt that 80 megawatt load was kind of what we saw that we would need for a you know 10 to 30 year period down the road as far as that and if you look at the Southwest power pool which is which we're a part of goes from North Dakota all the way down to Texas area we have to be able to put and that's federally regulated we have to be able to put energy on that as well you go back to February of 22 and was when we experienced the brownouts. That was kind of our first inkling that the system needs a little bit more than what it had. We had maybe 1%. The wind was not blowing across that whole area. There was a polar vortex over the whole place. And we did end up having some brownouts in Huron and Falkton. I don't remember if Aberdeen, we had to take- Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did. We were required to take 15 minute outages cuz there was not enough power on the system. So that's where this SPP heirs project is coming from. That's where that extra 30% is coming from as well.

So in that future look and just knowing how many of these data centers are coming online, do you guys personally have any concerns that maybe the entire system is going to be a little bit on the taxed or overburdened side with the additional power consumption necessary to run these high-scale AI facilities all across the country?

I guess I'm not privy to, obviously, everything else that's happening across all the other states. I think if you look at Nebraska, Nebraska's, you know, they're pretty tapped out on what they can do. They're not taking an RFP over 25 megawatts. They understand that they need to build more generation to take care of what they have going on there. And I think, obviously, South Dakota, North Dakota, with the weather that we have, Lens itself, I mean, data centers aren't out there trying to spend money and build things that aren't Uh, you know, financially feasible, financially prudent. Um, and I think that's the thing that they're looking at, like, oh, we can do this here. You know, obviously our land might be cheaper than trying to find land in Atlanta, you know, or trying to find land in a big suburb. And then obviously our weather patterns here tend to lend themselves a little bit better to cooling. But if you look at the power around, there's not a single utility out there that I would think is going to put their legacy customers at risk just to get a 200 megawatt data center or things of that nature. The other thing you're seeing from some of the bigger players, they will build the actual generation themselves they will put the bill to build that generation so that they can have a data center I think you have that on a few different areas you can probably do the do the Google search and find those but you know Bible transfer is not something that's out of the question either

Thank you for that clarification. Anyone else on the council have questions for our pals over at Northwest Energy? Well, gentlemen, really appreciate you guys sticking it out with us and giving us all that great information. Anything else from you guys?

That's it.

Really appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

So did we lose Chris? Jordan? Well, one of the questions that I had was going to be about that legislation that I touched on. Mark, is that something you have a moment and some expertise to share with us? I'd appreciate it if you'd jump on there and kind of explain to us in practice the intended purpose of that legislation that was passed and what the, you know, like in a circumstance in which those numbers would need to move around, how would that work?

You referencing Senate Bill 135?

I think so, the one that was supposed to hold the residential customers harmless.

Yeah, Senate Bill 135, that was referenced as the data center bill of rights. And the intentions of it was to protect the rate payers and the citizens of South Dakota from escalating electric rates in the face of potential data centers coming into the state. You know, it requires that the companies themselves have to take on that additional cost to place the infrastructure necessary to service them, and that cost is not in turn then passed on to the South Dakota citizens. And so it was a good bill. There's several other parameters in there, and surprisingly enough, it was something that we all agreed with in the chamber as they passed both the Senate and the House unanimously.

So you're pretty confident that that'll hold pretty true if we aren't going to see massive rate increases as individual consumers as a result of the AI data centers that are potentially being built around the state?

You know, with my short time in Pierre, I've learned there's no such thing as perfect legislation, but it was something that was tried to be a little bit proactive to get ahead of it, and it's going to be a learning process as we go. because it's been referenced here several times tonight you know we're looking at unprecedented levels of consumption of electricity required basically equal to the existing current usage that's been built out since the existed existence of statehood and our country so it's going to be an ongoing process but the bodies came together unanimously like i said and it's a good place to start

Thank you. Appreciate that. Anything else that you'd like to share on data centers? I know you've done more research than the average person.

No, just here to learn like everybody else. Thank you for sharing that, Mark.

All right. Well, that was a good session. Does anyone on the council have any final thoughts or any words before we move along to the next segment of our business here tonight? all right well i'll consider that a six a success gentlemen appreciate you being here um i think it really really helped clarify a lot of different questions that we've got scott appreciate you being here in person really really mark appreciate your expertise in that as well One last bit of meeting that we've got to conduct here is a final review and approval of our claims and payroll for this week. I would take a motion to approve the bills.

I move to pay the bills. Second.

Got a motion from Councilwoman Lebo. Second, Councilman E. Conger. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote?

Councilmember Ronan.

I would abstain.

Council Member Liebel.

Aye. Ward. Holpstein.

Councilmember Johnson? Aye. E. Conger? Aye. Nielsen?

I will abstain on the payments to PKG and Banner Associates, and aye on the rest.

Councilmember Nordstrom? Aye. Mayor Shoneman?

I didn't read all of them this time, so I'm going to have to abstain just in case I'm in there or a business that I do business with, but it does have enough votes to pass. So that motion does carry. Next, we've got our city manager's report date.

Yeah, thank you, Mary. So in our last council meeting, we had an opportunity to submit our proposed 2027 budget for your review as we continue to work through that and gather feedback and input. We wanted to take a little bit of time to kind of talk about the operations piece to that. As we work through a budget, you know, it's a balancing act and working with the priorities our department heads have and their mission and their objectives. We saw some key performance indicators that were tied to, you know, the information that we submitted and obviously the budget is relative to that. It helps them perform their mission. A couple highlights that I'd like to bring to your attention on our budget, you know, with our budget, You know, the staff that driver mission really are the key success indicator and how we achieve things. So, on this proposed budget, I'm proposing adding a couple in different departments. The 1st department that we'll be talking about is our fire department. If you're familiar with the stations and their capabilities, the fire department at Station 2 has an ambulance. Currently that ambulance can't be manned 24-7. We would like to add two additional firefighter paramedics to that to allow that to be full-time staffed and operationally Efficient what that does is obviously it gives us more capacity for ambulance service, but at the same time it takes some relief and stress and burden off station one. So we think that's a good fit and that will be well serving the community as we look as we meet continued demands and larger calls for service. related to the fire department. So that's one thing that we're talking about. The next thing I'd like to talk about is our finance department. The mission that they have, the things that they do are critical to city operations. We're aware that our finance department manages $275 million in city assets. They manage $31 million in outstanding long-term obligations. So there's increasing financial responsibility. As we're aware, we have a lot of TIFs to manage. We currently have a lot of bond debt. And the continued work with our enterprise operations, those different departments that generate revenue, that provide those services, and our continued work to be more efficient and to analyze the things that they do. We think adding a staff member in the finance department to help that team continue to be efficient, help with our financial responsibility and the reporting. There's increased reporting and Every year we hear an audit and we kind of talk about the challenges and hear the things and recommendations to improve on that. So we're recommending a staff member in the finance department. And then the last recommendation that our budget proposes is continuing to work with our public works department. Our public works department, specifically our pump department, has a very small staff. We have a long-term member in there that kind of has the foundational knowledge and institutional knowledge that carried that department for a long time, but that person is going to be retiring. We know that we need to increase the capacity, the operational capacity in that department for a lot of different reasons. They've done a great job over the years managing the resources that they're in care of. But as I talked about before in my budget presentation, we're at kind of a place in time where we're assessing the things that we need to fix and build on the future. So recently, when we had our storm event, you're familiar in your particular neighborhood, maybe the lift station went offline because of the power. These are the people that go out and bring out the generators at all hours of the day to make sure those lift stations continue to pump so we don't have that sewage water go in our houses. So spending time interviewing staff upon taking this position, going out and looking at the responsibilities that Public Works is in care of and understanding and working with our engineering department and the staff there on the things that we want to continue to improve and build on. We think that this is a good fit for those FTEs. The other part too with our water plants is trying to help them maintain regular capacity. One of the things they experience are turnover in those smaller departments and when they have turnover, you lose your operational capability, you lose your experience and many times you're hiring people back. So I have worked with our water plants and our operators, our directors, to allow them to, at times, hire an additional FTE to, when that qualified staff member is available, to allow them to maintain operational continuity there. So, you know, a lot of times we talk about budget, we talk about staffing, and we've Over the years, we've been proud to not grow government, but I believe at this point, these three operational variables and adding staff will make a big difference for us over the long term. With that, that's kind of my overview with staffing. There's a lot to digest here. I wanted to give you an opportunity to ask questions and kind of talk about operations in general. In our next city managers report, I'll kind of talk about the capital improvement program and talk to some aspects there. So with that, does anybody have any questions related to what we've presented so far at this point?

So Dave, on that public works, you said that there was going to be a retirement? That's correct. So it's not a washout position? There's going to be two added to replace one?

Yeah. Well, actually, you would hire, you would replace the person that's retiring and hire two additional FTEs for that.

Okay.

So 3 people, yeah, that's correct. So you'd have your department of 4 goes to the Department of 7. Which those individuals then help the pipe department and those individuals help. you know, the other work groups within Public Works, whether that's, you know, road repair at different times or whatever that is, but just understanding what they're in care of and what they're responsible to do, it's profound that they've been able to work so efficiently up to this point that they do. You know, that group does everything from mowing in the summer to again fixing things, but With Robin and Stu retiring, one of the things they impressed upon me is that we need to start doing programs like valve exercising, having our staff go out and actually turn valves to know that they'll work at the time that they should. And if you notice, a lot of our watering breaks or water breaks sometimes result in going to a place that's broken and then trying to shut that water off, only to find that those valves, when we touch them, because we haven't touched them over the years, break as well. So it's a sequence of events. So while we've held our own over the years, we just know that we've added lift stations too, and that's another variable that I think these workers will be really important in. As we've taken on new housing developments and added lift stations, we've increased that capacity as well.

So one new finance person, one new fire person, and two new public works people.

Two fire, one finance, and two pump employees.

Okay, thank you Unless anybody else has any questions so because I do need to Fix I think in an inadvertent mistake here just now on the approval of claims and payroll We look back and it appears that we do not have a majority vote for the claims to PKG and banner And if any of the three who abstained, Ronayne, Ward, or Shahneman.

I will vote yes on those names. All right. Very good.

Thank you, Patricia.

Fair enough. If there's nothing else, I take a motion to adjourn the meeting. second motion Nielsen second Ward all in favor please say aye aye motion