City Council - Regular Meeting

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Yeah, among other things, probably, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, I did this. You're my supervisor. You're going to have to fill out a supervisor's... I would say...

All right, let's go ahead and call a regular council meeting of Thursday August 27 2026 to order we have the Pledge of Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Roll call for council persons. Roll call for departments.

Mayor Brendan Pratt.

Here.

Councilperson Dale Stuber. Here. Councilperson Bruce Thielen.

Here.

Councilperson Matthew Buren. Here. Councilperson Susie Zilmer.

Here.

Councilperson Susan Rowe. Here. We have absent Councilmember Timothy Lima. We also have present Attorney Sam Bach Hanson, City Administrator Michael Golot, Assistant City Administrator Roy Atkinson, Police Chief Kelly Bakken, Director of Public Works Scott Quick, City Engineer Christian Hubert, Finance Director Tina Nelson, Planning Director Taylor Greenwell, Fire Chief Mark Renderman, and Lori Prudluk, Utility Account Manager, and City Clerk Cindy Bauer. We have a quorum.

All right, citizen participation period, no more than 20 minutes unless extended by two-thirds vote per section 2.04.051b, time limited to three minutes per person. Does anybody like to speak at this point? That's not on the agenda.

Seeing done, Barron will make a motion to close citizen's participation period.

Roll a second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

opposed motion carries Discuss consider approval of the minutes of the August 13th 2026 regular council meeting roll move to approve The only second okay, we have a motion in a second all in favor say aye opposed Motion carries all right report city officers department head city committees departmental monthly reports Your honor we did provide a

SUMMARY REPORT, AGAIN, AT THIS MEETING. A COUPLE THINGS TO POINT OUT. EGGS AND ISSUES. THIS FRIDAY, ROY'S GOING TO BE GIVING AN OVERVIEW OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES WITHIN THE CITY OF VALTOONA AND OUR PRIORITIES. WE'VE GOT RIVER PRAIRIE GINOMOUS PUMPKIN FESTIVAL COMING UP ON SEPTEMBER 26TH. AND THEN YOU CAN READ SOME OF THE OTHER THINGS We have the stormwater utility rate study that we've been working hard on, and that'll be presented tonight. We had National Night out. The mayor's probably going to talk about the last concert of the summer last week. You want to give a report on that?

Yeah, it was, like always, a back-to-school night. It was a huge event. And there was no different last night. It was a packed house, a perfect evening. But, yeah, it was a great turnout. Mike gave a great speech as far as me not being mayor anymore coming this next year. So thank you, Mike, for that great introductory speech. But, yeah, it was a lot of fun. And the mayor ended up dancing on the stage the last couple of times.

And broke the record for donations?

Yeah, we collected almost $3,200 for the care closet for the school district. So that was the all-time high that we've ever collected for that cause. So that was great for the people there to open up their wallets and help with that cause also. Everything was perfect last night. It was great.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pratt, for all that. Mayor Pratt, members of council, I have a couple of updates to provide. First one is we hear you when it comes to notices for upcoming events and meetings. I talked to Cindy in the weekly upcoming meetings notice she sends out every week. She's going to attempt to provide or she will provide upcoming city events, activities, and other items that may be of interest. reporting Highland Park improvements. They're nearing completion. A lot of good work has went in there. It's been a long, long project since it's been added to the budget. A few carryovers and really, really nice upgrades there. Resurfacing of the basketball court. and also the multi-purpose pickleball tennis courts, new facilities for an enclosure for the restrooms up there, porta-potties, an extension shade structure with a surface for kids to play on. And also, there's a shed up there that holds different equipment. and different items for programming. So they've been pretty deliberate about programming up there in Highland Park. So it's really nice to see that one completed. Other than that, I don't think I have anything else.

I have two more things I was just reminded of. One was we had a good meeting this week on the Saxonwood proposed development. We got really good engagement by the neighborhood there, got a lot of input. And we're going to be collating that information, get something to you, and then we'll have to decide what you want to do with that. and whether you want to move forward with anything. I think that was it. I did have one other thing, but I can't remember. Darn it, anyway. I'll think about it in about 10 seconds.

Anybody else? Any other reports? All right. We'll move on to the consent agenda.

Can I? I'm sorry.

Okay, go ahead.

I saw city committees. I was just going to say the library set a record. They broke 1,000, more than 1,000 kids enrolled in the summer reading program this summer, and they also had the most adults enrolled in the adult reading program. I mean, I don't know if you went in the library much, but June and July, it was really buzzing. Every time you walked into the library, they had huge turnouts for their kids. all their activities that they did with the summer reading program. And they use the yard a lot for a lot of their outdoor activities and stuff, which really helps with the capacity issues that we have with the meeting room here, too. But anyway, just a busy, busy summer, and nice to see those kind of numbers.

You did remind me of what I was going to say. So it's sad news that Cooley Boutique is moving south, as they say. She's going to close at the end of September. So we're going to have to think about other opportunities and other ideas for that space. And I see that there's going to be a borscht day that was announced today that they're working on over there. So that'll be fun.

Okay.

There's a couple items on the consent agenda Yeah, just Taco Juanita's is being sold that Bethany that's been in charge of it before she's moving back to Florida so one of her workers is taking over the The restaurant, they lease the building, so it's not that they own, it's no ownership of the building itself, just the leasing. But they want to start the ownership starting with September 1st of next week. So what we'll do is they'll surrender their license. Bethany will surrender the license, and then the new owner, Liliana, will take it over if you guys approve it.

And then there's a proclamation to the ski sprites. And I'll go ahead and read that, since it was kind of an important thing in Altoona. Basically, it's recognizing Altoona ski sprites as the 2026 Division II National Show Ski Tournament champions. So whereas the Altoona ski sprites were born-. Your Honor?

Yeah, go ahead. Can we do that next meeting? When they're here?

Yes. OK. Thank you. I just didn't know what that was. part of the agenda, or we're going to wait for that?

It was a communication thing. They didn't get me the information until last minute. I thought it was going to be pushed until next. So I'll let them know.

Yeah, that'll be better.

All right. I need a separate motion to move that off. We just won't take action on it tonight.

Okay. So just a motion for approving item one off the agenda? Yes. I'll go ahead and make that. Second.

All right. We have a second. Approved. Second I'll say I have a motion a second all in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries, so yeah, that'll be better All right new business number one quarterly strategic planning update

Mayor Pratt, members of council, as you're aware, this quarterly update provides an overview of the management initiatives that are assigned to city staff in support of the city's broader strategic goals, which the city recently updated in last year's strategic planning process. This strategic plan is intended to establish a two-year blueprint on projects in the city. And it is all their individual and shared responsibilities. They establish target completion dates. And they provide a mechanism for tracking progress across really all facets of our organization. from community development, financial sustainability, to infrastructure, technology, and workforce priorities. The plan also demonstrates significant collaboration among our departments. This is something that we talk about monthly at our leadership team meetings and we work on. It's something that we're constantly moving the needle on. Overall, the departmental strategic plan is intended to translate the city's strategic priorities into measurable management initiatives and provide counsel with transparent way to monitor implementation. Staff will continue advancing initiatives, and according to identified timelines, while also addressing barriers that we face throughout. And there are barriers. And we work really hard to get through them. And then also, in that vein, when we hit barriers, we come to you and tell you about them. So really, it's something that we put into place. We're keeping it very much top of mind. And we're bringing it out, as I said, monthly at our leadership team meetings. So I'll kind of walk you through where we are. The other thing I wanted to do is if you have, you know, we sent it out ahead of time, if you have any questions or you had any of the initiatives you just wanted more clarification on, we're here to answer questions. I guess I'll start with strategic goal one, community growth and development. The downtown revitalization plan, you know, really we've focused a lot of efforts into our downtown in the last several years, you know, with the yard. And also, you know, getting a real bearing on what is downtown and where do we want to go. in that vein the county building is coming possibly available to us and so that's that's goal c1 we're looking at that mike and i have worked together we've had meetings with with the county and we're reviewing an offer to purchase and we're assessing next steps on that and we will schedule a walk through in the next couple weeks yep Goal C1 also is expanding the library. It's grant contingent. Something, you know, we've had a few cracks that we've come very, very close on, and we haven't received grant monies for that. We are keeping our head on a swivel, as I always say. If an opportunity comes available, we're going to go for it. And that's on hold, and it's carryover at this time. So when we're looking for grants, we're assessing options. procuring an industrial user that's the objective the next objective c2 marketing the 1080 parcel that's the East neighborhood parcel it's on hold at this point carryover we just had our strategic thinking session at the last meeting kind of talking about where options might be and the direction we might want to go and you know we're unable to market without having the parcel subdivided into master plan finalized. So, you know, we're talking about options. We were talking with the EDC this week, Mike was, and, you know, really really working through options for that parcel. The next one is completing strategic thinking sessions with council on the feasibility of large industrial loads focused on community education. That's for a large-scale, hyperscale user. Something that is on track. Taylor is considering doing it either now in Q3 or Q4. We're kind of figuring out best timing for that.

And just so no one gets excited, the discussion is whether that's even in the realm of something that you want to entertain, essentially. What is it? What are the different levels? That kind of thing. On September 29th, there is a community educational session out at The event center, Country Jam Grounds, and everyone's invited to that.

The next objective is container park success. Managing seasonal challenges is the management initiative. We've been working on that. We had a CIP item in this year's budget. We did a number of initiatives with that. Mike and I are still working on getting a projector. Working on programming. It's not easy. We're working our way through that. We also continue to, as we talked about a little bit ago, we talked about the roofs. We have approved from you guys to do flooring. Christian is working with the vendors for later this year to get the flooring replaced in a few of the units. We're still looking at that. And the big thing is we have a continual conversation with the vendors. We're talking to them actively. Expanding park programming, that's something that we're continually doing. One of the things, we added a tent to the space. We have been doing marketing in volume one. And we've been reaching out to nonprofits and trying to get that to be their space. They can have their events at the yard. We want bodies at the yard. And it's really important. So that's something that we consider to be on track. Once we get the projector there, hopefully we can have Packer nights. We can have movie nights. We're excited about the prospect of that. Developing the 80 acre site. That's the next objective establishing a viable development plan in the completing a partnership agreement There are two things that you know these are things we've worked through as we look at that site. We've looked at that site Obviously completing a partnership isn't exactly viable right now And a development plan coming out of the meeting we had last time around gives us more of an idea of where we want to go. The other item is developing the landfill site. We've been working through that. We just had the public meeting this week, considering what may that look like. Are we even going to have a project? So we've been working through that. And it's on track. You want to take two?

Sure. Sure. I'm going to move quickly. TIG growth and planning. Depending on what direction we go for the 80 acres, we have plenty of TID capacity now after closing TID number three. And that may be a critical tool for moving that forward. Budget education and ownership at all organizational levels. We've been working through that during the budget process. I think the Capital Improvement Committee was a good move and made that go a lot more smoothly. Leverage partnerships for shared service opportunities. We have been talking with the City of Eau Claire on possible innovation grant applications for fire and EMS. We're also I'm talking to the county and the city about possible IT support. The complete border agreement of the town of Washington, that's ongoing. I don't recall when our next meeting is scheduled, but I think it's coming up here. Do we have one scheduled, Taylor?

They're currently.

OK. Assure financial health of enterprise funds. Develop, track, and report key performance indicators for enterprise funds. I just had a discussion with that with Sean Lentz as he was leaving. But we all attended a seminar a couple weeks ago that was very good, right on point with this. We're going to start working with Ehlers to look at some of those key financial indicators that tracks the financial health in a more timely manner. A resolved sewering bill of dispute with the city of Eau Claire. Those are ongoing. There's some movement from Eau Claire this past week. Legislative advocacy. We met with one of our representatives to talk about extraterritorial jurisdiction and why that's important for the sustainability of cities and the state, frankly, overall. Also, other key issues include affordable housing, facility funding legislation. And we respond and advocate and testify as necessary. Grant funding. housing and infrastructure grants, especially with regard to implementation of our space needs analysis. Our priorities, we've talked about those over the past few weeks. And again, we will seek CDS funding for a fire facility in the future. Next call. Strategic goal number three, major road and utility projects. The big one that we have coming up, as we talked on the capital improvement discussion, is Spooner Avenue. That will seek a lot of community input. We do have money budgeted next year for design. We continue to. frame our CIP for roads around meeting the lead line rule, the EPA lead line rule. And that'll just be iterative process. We've got about eight more years left to get that done. Growth planning and needs assessment, complete installation of well 10, and planning and installation of well 11. And that work is ongoing this summer. Want to do four?

Yep.

So I'll try to go fast. Strategic goal four is leveraging technology to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptability. We are working on completing an assessment of new operating equipment to improve efficiency. I know that Public Works Department has looked at that. They test out some Ventrac mowers. They're a stable mower, really, really, really efficient good use. We're also looking at autonomous lawn mowers for our fields, baseball fields. We're kind of considering that at this point. Anything is on the table. If we can figure out something, we're going to take a look at it. Implementing the new global search system. This has kind of been a long this has been a longer project our document management project has been a been a bear You know one where we're working away. We were working with a lot of paper records Working our way back. We were able to change our retention policy to best practices. That was one thing. We applied our retention and got rid of a lot of documents. And it's something we're still working into. We do have access to global search, and we can search our records. Next step is getting people trained in and getting our staff equipped with it. That's coming down the pike here, and we're scheduled for Q4. Exploring integration with AI to improve efficiency. We're planning, honestly, any way we can jump into AI. We have an AI policy that we approved in December. It's an excellent tool, and I am very much an advocate for our staff utilizing it in a safe, responsible way. And it's something that we believe needs to be incorporated in operations. that we're doing responsibly. and for efficiency's sake. T3 is scheduling citywide AI training and training around AI. That's something I know council also asked if we do a training that we invite you to. I was actually looking at different trainers in the area to potentially set that up. So it's something that we're looking at in probably the first quarter of 2027. Then this is the big one we are actually talking about today with EO Johnson is transitioning the City Hall email from Google to Microsoft. And so getting to the Microsoft 365 suite adds a major level of security to our data, something that we'll be doing here in the near future. So you'll be hearing about that because your emails will be moving over to the 365 suite.

The other thing on this one on technology is we're taking a real assessment looking at our cybersecurity. And we got a grant to do some intrusion testing and analysis by UW Stout. And we do have some recommendations from E.O. Johnson on some additional software we can get. And the way he characterizes it is that, as we all know, they're getting more and more sophisticated on how they attack. And there's more tools that are being built to combat that. And they're recommending a couple new tools to implement. So we're looking at that as well. Goal five, workforce benefits, compensation, retention. You identified retaining and recruitment of good employees as something that's critical to our operation. Professional development training, develop annual training plans for all employees. That's discussed as part of their evaluations. Identify critical tasks, cross-train, and develop SOPs for those tasks. I know that as we prepare for Cindy's retirement, it's something that we're really going to need to do for elections and get everything down on paper. Update wage and classification study within two years. That'll probably be done next year or the year after. Implement monthly employee engagement activity program. We actually... I did one a couple of weeks ago, which was fun. Well, actually, we've done two in the last couple months. We had our employee picnic, and we had a trivia night. Developed succession plans for key positions, especially for short timers. We've been working on the clerk's position. We had an evaluation done of her position description. and she's been sharing a lot of her knowledge with the assistant city clerk as well. Formula A plants retain difficult-to-hire positions. We've put a lot of time, effort into training Roy in particular, so I'm looking at that. We'll talk about that during the budget process, how to keep him around here until... until I'm not here, which is getting, you know, I realized, like, it's not that far. So you have this director level performance goals based on new strategic plan. So that's something we'll work through with the evaluations as well. So if you have any questions on that, that's a lot. And again, the other thing to realize is, We update our strategic plan every two to three years. So this really is a three-year work plan. It's not to get everything done in one year. But we need to be making progress on all these things. And also, we want to try to stick to this. But if we also recognize that things change, And we have to react if we need to. And sometimes something gets put on hold in order to focus on other priorities. Any questions?

All right. All right. Thank you. All right. Number two, presentation of stormwater rate study with possible action from council.

Thank you, Your Honor, members of council. The city of Altoona engaged with Trilogy Consulting to review our stormwater utility. There was a number of different reasons for this. We were seeing an uptick in the amount of staff time that was spent on stormwater due to the growth of the stormwater utility. And the way that it's being billed right now is a bit complicated, and we wanted to just get an expert set of eyes on how we run our utility and look at those key financial metrics. So since this is a lot to get through, I'll kick it over to Christine Demaster from Trilogy Consulting to go through this. Encourage you to, there's a lot to consume here. So if at any point you have any questions, just jump right in in the middle of it. And between Christine and ourselves, we should be able to answer your questions.

Okay, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here tonight to share with you the recommendations from this study that I've been working on with staff for the last several months. And I just want to say thank you to all city staff for the hard work that you put in to getting me the information and data that I needed to develop a good picture so that I could give you some good recommendations. So by way of background, I'm an owner of Trilogy Consulting, which I co-founded in 2011. I've got about 29 years of experience in this field. The bulk of our work is working with water and wastewater and stormwater utilities on financial planning and rate setting. So that's who I am. I'm going to give you a preview of this before we jump into this. But what you're going to see tonight is one of the things that sets utilities apart is that most of the revenues come from user charges. Yours were set in 2007 and have not been touched in almost 20 years. And as you will see later on, they're very low compared to other communities. You do currently have a substantial amount of cash reserves in the utility that's been built up from prior years. But at this point, you're just getting to that point where your revenues are not enough to cover all the costs for the utility because of the increasing operation maintenance activities that we'll talk about. And so the recommendations are two. Two recommendations. One is to implement a series of phased-in rate increases over the next four years to bring those revenues up to the level that they need to be to fully cover your costs. And the other one is changing the rate structure to a method that's used by most other utilities in Wisconsin now that you have better technology and data to do so. And so with the proposed rate increases, the good news is that the rates will still be below average compared to current rates charged by other communities. Oops, wrong button. So I want to talk first about kind of the operational and financial status of the utility, and then we'll talk about the rate structure. I think it's important to talk about the services provided by the utility. Get everyone thinking about where are these dollars going? What are they actually doing? There's three categories of things the utility does. One is constructing, operating, and maintaining facilities designed to manage the quantity of stormwater runoff. That's your surface level things like ponds, your curb and gutter system helps convey the stormwater, and then the underground storm sewers. Take that to the surface water and because these drain into surface water There's a lot of activities that go into getting pollutants out of that stormwater runoff. So you're not polluting lakes and rivers And then there's education and inspection regulation and reporting that's required because the city has to have a permit with the DNR and So this is a big laundry list of kind of the ongoing operation and maintenance activities that span a whole range of different things designed to do those three functions that I talked about. And the other thing to keep in mind with this is these are the direct activities, but there's also support activities. support services like things like accounting and billing, customer service, office and garage space, repairing and maintaining vehicles that are used for stormwater utilities, training, fuel, miscellaneous supplies, a whole lot of other things that go into this. One of the things that the utility has been focusing quite a bit on the last couple of years is mapping. So this is a screenshot from the GIS system that shows all the inventory of stormwater assets that are maintained. And it's not just a map, it's a database underlying this that enables you to gather and have information about types of materials, diameter of storm sewer, inspection and condition of those assets and things like that. So it's a sophisticated tool that allows staff to manage those assets. And then there's the capital side of things, so replacing stormwater infrastructure as it ages, purchasing vehicles and equipment and tools that are used for stormwater management. Some of those are shared with the other utilities, but the stormwater utility pays for a portion of that. And then there's other city facilities that, again, the utilities all use and benefit from, and so each of the utilities contributes towards the cost of those, like the radio tower project or the public works building. So I do want to spend a little time on this because this is kind of the key graph that shows where the utility has been financially and where we think it's headed in the future, with or without a rate increase. So the bars there show the utility's costs. So the red portion of the bar is the O&M expenses. So that increased from about $231,000 per year in 2022 up to this year's budget of $408,000. And there's been a lot of increasing activity for stormwater maintenance. So, you know, when you started this utility, you had one stormwater pond. Now you have 26. There's been more staff time spent on the utility in recent years. additional repairs, diggers hotline calls, more work on inventory, inspection, and maintenance, and that helps support that development of the GIS application and so on. For 2027 and future years, we assume a reduction of about $29,000 in wages and benefits, but then 3% inflation per year for the O&M. The green bar is the debt service. That's been around $211,000 per year. We're projecting kind of staying on that path of a level payment there. And then the purple is the cash-funded capital outlay. You'll see that fluctuates from year to year because you're borrowing every other year for a portion of those costs, so that's why that goes up and down. The blue line is revenues, and you can see that's been elevated a little bit the last couple of years, and that's because of really high level of interest earnings on your fund balance, which is pretty high. we're going to be conservative here with the projections and say that's going to drop down a little bit in future years so without a rate increase that's that lower blue line the upper blue line is what we're recommending for the rate increases and then the last thing i want to talk about is that purple dashed line so that's cash reserves in the utility so it's at you're at about 1.5 million as of the end of last year which is quite high but Kind of a rule of thumb, I would say your utility should kind of maintain about $380,000, which would be two months of operating expenses, one year's worth of debt service, and then $100,000 for emergencies. So you're well above that right now. If you didn't have a rate increase you could hold out for you know a couple more years But you would pretty quickly drain those reserves based on revenues your revenues right now are not enough to keep pace with what your expenses are so But with the that high level of cash reserve you can kind of ease into Phasing in those rate increases over the next four years All right So we did look at two alternatives for those rate increases. The first alternative would be to fold in the curb and gutter replacement costs into the utilities, since that is part of the stormwater conveyance system. So with that, we're estimating about $70,000 per year on average for that piece of things.

Those are the assessments, to be clear.

Yeah, instead of assessments, we'll build those into the rates.

This was based on Council's direction over the last few years when we've had special assessments. Because the cost of reconstruction has gotten so high, those assessments in the past, two out of the three assessments, we've adjusted that value to be in line with a five-year average of previous assessments. It's a bookkeeping nightmare. Instead of that method to reduce special assessments, we were looking into alternative methods. And curb and gutter is an item that is a stormwater conveyance. That's what it's used for. It makes sense to wrap it into the stormwater utility. And the implication is around a 10% decrease on special assessments on average. So... that we asked Christine to pull this together as an alternative with our rates. As you can see from the two, there's a cost to that. It makes the utility fee go up more, but it does reduce that special assessment hit by around 10% when it's your turn to get a reconstruction.

Yep, so that's the two alternatives, and then you'll see later on in the presentation what that looks like in terms of dollars per quarter for your rates. So then I want to turn to talking about the rate structure and what we're recommending there as far as a change. So the current quarterly rates are set as you see here. Residential properties that includes a single family, duplex, and some of your multifamily are charged on a dwelling unit basis, so they're paying $9 per quarter. Non-residential, including most of your multifamily, is done on an acreage basis. And you'll see that those multifamily, commercial, and institutional are all charged the same amount per acre, and industrial is a little bit lower. And those were set based on some broad brush assumptions about the density of development on different types of land uses, not necessarily measured impervious area for each property.

And I just want to speak to that. This was one of the first things I was tasked with doing when I got here was to establish a stormwater utility. We hired SEH as a consultant. And the tools 20 years ago were just much different than they are with regard to GIS mapping. And this was kind of the state of the art at the time and best management practice for how stormwater utilities were established. But with regard to equitability, we have tools in place that can make it a lot more equitable now. So that's the goal with what Christie's going to present to you today, is to implement some of those tools. And that's one goal, to make it more equitable. But also, this was, and Laurie's here, this was a nightmare to administer. So we're trying to simplify things as well to make it more easy to implement.

Yeah, so the proposed rate structure is one that is now common to most utilities in Wisconsin. It's not universal, but it is common. And it's setting rates based on an equivalent runoff unit or an ERU. So the ERUs are based on actual measured impervious surface area. And the definition of an ERU is basically set at whatever is the Amount of impervious surface area on a typical residential property So in your case city staff looked at at homes in Altoona and determined that 3,000 square feet was a Single-family home and impervious area includes buildings pavement, you know sidewalks and gravel basically So these are a couple of examples. We'll talk about later of commercial properties and the purple area is what was measured as the impervious area for those properties and And this is just a map of the whole city showing all the properties that are where we used measured impervious surface area to determine those rates. So for residential, again, residential would not be based on measured impervious area for each property. The idea there is that there's not a ton of variation between residential properties, so they're all assigned a similar number or the same number, and that's commonly how this is done. And then it also avoids having to change that calculation any time someone adds a deck or something like that or patio. So all single-family units were assigned one equivalent runoff unit. Duplex and twin homes were assigned 0.75 based on a sample of those properties. Multifamily with two stories or less were 0.75 units, and then multifamily with three or more stories, 0.5 units per unit. dwelling unit. And then in the commercial class, excuse me, in the commercial class, you have Hillcrest Estates. So that was kept on that residential basis with 0.75 ERUs per dwelling unit. And then everything else was based on measured impervious area divided by 3,000 square feet. So that shows you that kind of the summary total of what you have currently. And the rate calculation itself is fairly straightforward. We looked at the targeted amount of revenues for each year based on the targeted percentage increase in revenues for each of these alternatives, and then divided that by the number of ERUs. I did build in an assumption of about 1% growth per year in the ERUs, just based on looking at past history of how your customer base has grown. So keeping it fairly conservative there. And then you'll see the calculated rate per ERU on an annual basis and a quarterly basis. So with alternative one, the single family properties would go from paying $9 per quarter up to $13.44 per quarter for next year. And then in total over the five years, We've extended out to 2031 to show what that would look like. We're projecting maybe an inflationary increase for that year as well. So in total, over those five years, this would increase the quarterly bill for a home by $12.05, or $4.02 per month. And then if we look at alternative two, similar picture here, but again, it's a little bit less of an increase. So ultimately, with that four steps plus an assumed inflationary increase in 2031, that's a total increase of $9.96 in the quarterly bill, or $3.32.

Would it be possible to build in? I mean, because, I mean, if I had just paid my assessment last year, And then going forward, I'm going to be help paying for everybody else's assessment. I mean, is there some way to do a look back at all and forgive part of this for the next few years for a few people? I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I know you're trying to simplify things, but I'm also kind of like, it's kind of a fairness question that if up until now, everybody's always been assessed and had to pay it. And then now going forward, they're going to get to help pay for everybody else's. I'm just, is there a way to do a little bit of a look back for?

I certainly could look at it, but I think because we've had to do those adjustments to the total revenue collected since I've been here with all the years, except we won't this year, you know, we're already kind of, we're trying to anticipate that growth of how much the assessments have gone up and how these recent years have been penalized by the added construction costs. So this, you know, it would be around a 10% reduction in that special assessment increase, but some of those, like when we did Fairfax, that was a 20, around 20% decrease that we had to the total special assessment revenue generated, and I believe that's around 10 or 12%. Okay.

To do the look back you're talking about, we'd have to increase the rates.

Right. And the look back begs the question, where do you draw the line?

I get that. I'm just saying.

But to Christian's point, at the point where the huge increases post-COVID came in construction costs, Council has recognized that and tried to make those adjustments for those people within current policy so At least the most recent ones that really got hit hard By those have had some adjustments made so how many years have we done adjustments?

I

When I started, I started at the end of 2023, and 2024 was Fairfax, I believe, and we did an adjustment that year. I'm not sure that you did one before that. But costs have been relatively stable.

So are you looking at a complete payment of assessments, or was that a 10% decrease of assessments?

Just the stormwater portion.

Just the stormwater. Curb and gutter. When I itemized the assessments, curb and gutter is around 10% of the total. I just looked that up for the project going on this year, and it tracks almost right on. So that's where I got that figure from.

So they still have an assessment. It's just a curb and gutter.

So on your line items, you've got grade and gravel. You've got water main, sanitary main, driveway, sidewalk. we just wouldn't have that curb and gutter section. It would be similar to storm sewer, where you're not assessed for storm sewer.

The other interesting part of it that it kind of tracks to go in this direction is, and frankly, I don't remember 20 years ago when we went through this, but the SEH recommended that sewer pipe was a non-assessable item. So it follows that curb and gutter, which are integral to the stormwater runoff, it makes some sense that it follows.

No, I think it makes sense to do that and get rid of the 10%. I was just trying to think of a fairness piece.

We had this discussion ad nauseum.

To try and take the edge off for the folks that are facing the years of paying back.

I just don't know where you draw the line. I get it.

And the alternative is if we didn't do it, if you keep directing me to reduce it down to the average, you end up at the same place anyway, but we lose the revenue collection.

Yeah. No, I think it makes sense to go with that alternative one and to reduce the assessment. Even reducing the assessment by 10%. I mean, for some of those people, it was like $14,000. So even if you're taking $1,400 off, that's not insignificant by any means.

Can we look at the other number two? We didn't look at that. Are you coming to that?

Yep. Okay. Yeah, so I went back to alternative one. And so you can see, like, the quarterly rate at the end of this five years is $2,105. versus $18.96 with the curb and gutter included. So that kind of gives you that gauge of how much of that is. It's a little bit less than 10% of the total in this alternative.

There is one other consideration that we talked about with regard to working the curb and gutter into the rates, and that is we're assuming an average $70,000 a year. And right now, we know that whatever the cost is, it's accessible. So we may find ourselves in a situation where we have some years where we don't do $70,000. in curb and gutter work on street projects, but we may also have other years where we have a lot more. So there is some exposure there in terms of uncertainty that is worth thinking about as well.

And that feeds into this discussion about reserves, and that is kind of one of the purposes of having reserves also. to mitigate those years where you have fluctuating capital. I just want to go back to that real quickly here, because I don't think I talked about this. But if you look at where that dash purple line ends up with the proposed rate increases, that would maintain your reserves at about $660,000 is what we're projecting. So that's comfortably above that kind of minimum level I was talking about. So you've got some cushion there.

What was the minimum level?

$380,000. Thank you. You know, that's just a broad rule of thumb, but it's, you know. Yeah, so that, yeah, that's the difference between these two is, you know, a little over $2 by the end of the time period.

Quarterly, you're talking about less than half a cup of coffee.

Yeah, for a quarter, for the quarter, yeah, right.

So does this get billed on our water and sewer? Yes.

So this is a comparison with other communities around the state. I'm not claiming this is an exhaustive list. but it was ones that we could readily acquire that information. So yours are shown in yellow there, and this is showing alternative one. So the higher rates are shown on here. If you adopt alternative two, that would be a little bit less than that. But you're very low right now. Even with the series of five, four, including the fifth one, you'd be below average compared to what communities are currently charging. Would expect there'll be some other rate increases taking place for some of these in the meantime You know, we've been working with in recent years with Hudson Lacrosse Ford Atkinson Sussex are some of the ones we've been working with and they're all kind of getting to that same spot that you're in right now where rates were set up and you know, maybe somewhere between 2000 and 2012 and just frozen at that level since then and There's more and more requirements for management. There's you know aging infrastructure and so on and so of utilities around the state are getting to that place now where they have to have some significant increase. And the last thing I wanted to talk about is how this would impact your commercial properties. And it's really going to be a mix of impacts, because they're all charged based on acre right now. And then this will be based on actual impervious areas. So some will go up and some will go down.

And some of them are eligible for credits as well. Currently, yeah.

So in this example, this parcel is 1.34 acres. So currently it's paying $635.16 per year per acre, so $851.11 per year. With the proposed fee, the measured in previous area is 36,072 square feet. 12 equivalent runoff units at the proposed 2027 rate of 53 dollars and 74 cents per eru this property would actually see a little bit of a decrease in their bill to 644 dollars and 88 cents so that speaks to you know the more equitable basis here of using measured impervious area And then this one is a property that currently gets a credit of 50% on their bill. So with 4.5 acres, they would, without the credit, pay $2,858.22, but that's knocked down to $1,429.11. With the proposed fees for 2027, they would be 44.4 ERUs times that rate would be $23,000. under $86.06 per year. So they'd see an increase, mainly due to that credit. Without the credit, they'd be actually getting a little bit of a decrease as well.

Does the equity piece of this make sense in terms of looking at pervious area versus just the parcel size? I think it's kind of tricky, but looking at the figure, you can see you take that parcel. That's what they're being charged on right now. So it makes a big difference if you've got a small building and a big parcel. you're paying the same as somebody with a big building in that same parcel, even though you're generating completely different levels of runoff.

I think where people might have a legitimate issue is compared to how our previous rate structure is. If they put an approved stormwater management structure on their

Property they they got a credit That there are no credits anymore in And the reason for that is like this this business on mayor and 12 they're getting a stormwater credit and because the system contains a percentage of their runoff from a given storm. But ultimately, that goes to a pond that becomes our responsibility that we have to maintain.

So it crosses the road, yeah.

Crosses the road. And there are ponds that are privately managed, but there are very few that would meet that threshold to contain the 100-year storm event that we require. You know, it becomes, our code currently says that council shall adopt a credit policy, and one was adopted that gives this 50% credit for capturing a certain amount of stormwater.

And 50% is arguably arbitrary.

Yeah. You know. And it's a bear to manage because the policy that was adopted doesn't match our stormwater requirements of 100-year storm event. So...

It's just if they have a hole on their property.

And that's how it had been administered in the past. So we've got some that, if you've got a depressional area in your backyard, they've been getting this credit. And it makes it really tough for Lori to manage. So do you have this swale in your backyard? You've been getting the credit. How do we assess that? Businesses in River Prairie get the credit, even though it's a pond that we maintain.

And then if you really should be going back and reviewing from time to time to make sure that the conditions are still the same, right?

You know, if you're offering the credit. And this is the nice thing about this, like these shapes, I went into all the commercial properties and the residential properties, three stories or more, and drew these polygons. So it's very easy with how frequently we get air photos that I can update when we get a new air photo, if we get a building permit for a change to a commercial property or a three story plus residential, it's really easy for me to update that polygon and their bill goes up based on the impervious square footage that they add.

So you're not required by a state law to have a credit policy, but there have been a couple of situations that have arisen in the past. Like you have one kind of actually in Eau Claire, Plainwell Tissue had part of their property that was draining into the river. So they appealed to the Public Service Commission and Eau Claire had to then give them a credit for that portion of the property that wasn't draining at all into the city system. So if you have a situation like that, then... then you need to look at those on a case-by-case basis. But I would say, yeah, the credit system that's in place now is not a good match with, you know, what's actually happening or with this new rate structure.

So I have a question with an individual home. They're charged, shall I say, one ERU, but then the apartment buildings are charged a half. Why is that? So if they have 10 units, they're charged a head for five.

Okay, that's that's not and that's based on a sample size of You know units in that category and then same with the way that the 3,000 square foot Per er you was developed. I I drew shapes around, you know a sample of residential properties and And some were quite a bit lower, some were quite a bit higher, but they merge on that 3,000 square foot average. It matches with Eau Claire's average also, not surprisingly. But yeah, I think this is a good model that is really going to streamline how we bill for stormwater. I know Lori spends way more time than she should on managing this as part of the water bill.

The other thing on the ERUs on the apartments that we recognize is a three-story apartment is the same impervious surface as a two-story apartment. So any over two stories, it goes down to a half an ERU.

And the people that have an acre land are still assessed one unit?

Yeah, because it's all about the impervious area on their lot. So it goes to the average house plus driveway plus your storage barn, impervious square footage.

Yeah, most of the runoff is coming from the impervious surface area versus lawns and things like that. So in summary, the recommendations are to adopt rates for 2027 through 2030 using either alternative one or alternative two. And then we would recommend once you get to 2030 doing a re-evaluation of this to see what you need to do going forward. And then adopt that new rate structure based on ERUs. Eliminate the current credit policy. And then if you do decide to go with alternative one, then that would also require modifications to the special assessment code. And again, I always say continue to monitor this on an annual basis because if conditions change substantially from what we were looking at in the study, then you may need to make some adjustments. But I feel confident that the next series of four rate increases is going to get you in that ballpark of where you need to be to cover all of your costs.

Well, I'll say I appreciate the work that you guys put into trying to figure this out. I feel like we've been hounding you for a couple of years. I kind of feel bad about it. But you guys really did put in the work and figure it out. And to say, you know, 2007 like that, we've got a big gap to catch up. And I think it makes sense, you know, counting it as impervious. I think that and with the goal of equity, I think is also a really important thing to say, you know, spreading it out over the entire community and recognizing all the different uses or how it's going to impact people. Phasing it in and then also your last comment there about doing the look back. I think that's, you know,

We'll keep an eye on it and adjust it You know as needed or just to see if it's playing out how we're projecting it Okay anybody else Recommendation I'll go ahead and move to approve the proposed stormwater rate increase implementing alternative one which would change the assessment policy and as described in the memorandum compared by Christine DeMaster of Trilogy Consulting.

I will second. Okay.

Okay.

We have a motion and a second. Let's do a roll call on this one.

Member Thielen?

Yes.

Member Zilmer?

Yes.

Member Rowe?

Yes.

Member Stuber? No. Member Beeren?

Yes. 4-1. OK. Motion is approved. Thank you. All right. Moving on to, thank you, everyone.

Thanks, Christy. Thank you.

All right. Moving on to item number three. Public hearing at 6 p.m. or as soon thereafter as possible to consider amending Title 19 zoning for Altoona Municipal Code by amending Chapter 19.02, zoning district pertaining to wellhead protection relocation 19.08, subdivision standards pertaining to the ETJ land division exceptions. Yeah, and amending the Title 13 water and sewers pertaining to the wellhead protection standards.

Thank you, Your Honor. So yeah, so we have a couple changes we were making to Title 19 and Title 13, which would be water and sewer, as summarized in the very long description that I provided for you. Basically, so the main, like the biggest, I'd say, change that we're making there is the ETJ alteration. So historically, in our ordinance, our land division ordinance, we have had a provision that says that And our ETJ, the 1 and 1 half miles, that's mainly outside of our border. That's a non-incorporated territory. State code gives cities land division review authority in those areas for growth management processes that they adopt an ordinance to do so. And we've had a minimum of 10 acres for any new lot. So if you want to subdivide in the ETJ and go below 10 acres on any of the lots being created, then it was not allowed. However, we acknowledge that in some cases, such as if a parent wanted to split off part of their property for their kid to develop a house or what have you, estate planning purposes, that doesn't go against our growth management objectives. And so it would make sense to provide a route to allow them to do that while still following our code. We use a third party agreement. Typically, if it was at the parcel in question was not adjacent or, sorry, contiguous to our border, then it would simply say that you can split up the land once, and then once we become contiguous at the annex in, connect a water and sewer, so on. And if it was a contiguous property, it was if you And you can annex that you can split up this one time But if you want to subdivide further you have to annex in the city and then connect to water and sewer This was set up as sort of a way to help out people in the county at the last legislative session the Association of counties brought up case law saying basically stating that you could not make a land division contingent upon a third party agreement and they held up our ordinance as an example of one that did this and And we were caught a bit off guard by that when that happened. But in response, we don't want to put ourselves at risk. So the ordinance change would basically take that exception out. We adjusted it to provide an option if you are in an already-set divided neighborhood. If you want to subdivide it further, as long as the new lots would be in line in terms of size with the surrounding immediate lots, then that would still be allowed to move forward at our discretion. It would be limited to four total lots to be included within that land division, but that would only apply to already subdivided areas. We really have no way to do more than that. So that's the change that we had in place for the ETJ. The other change was simply administrative relocation. We adopted a Wellhead Protection District, I believe in 2025. It was required by the state. It deals with water and sewer. It's administered by the city engineer and public works. And so moving it from Title 19 to Title 13, which is the water and sewer district section, we wanted to relocate it for administrative ease. Nothing would change as far as regulations, text, content. It's just doing cross-referencing, and that is it. Yeah, that's kind of the summary of these changes that we're talking about in there Plan Commission heard that heard the changes in recommended approval of the ordinance All right, so this was a public hearing to this point.

Is there anybody in a public like to speak on this?

Okay, seeing none Beard will make a motion to close the public hearing.

Thielen will second. We have a motion and a second all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Number four discuss consider approval of ordinance 8B-26 an ordinance amending the title 19 zoning of them alternative municipal code by amending chapters 19.02 zoning districts pertaining to wellhead protection relocation 1908 subdivision standards pertaining to ETJ land division exceptions and amending title 13 water sewer pertaining to the wellhead protection standards

Motion would be in order.

Roll move to approve Ordinance 8B26, an ordinance amending Title 19, zoning of the Altoona Municipal Code by amending Chapters 19.02, zoning districts, 19.08, subdivision standards, and amending Title 13, water and sewers.

Stuber, a second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

Who said being on the council wasn't glamorous?

All right, number five, discuss and consider approval of resolution 8A-26, a resolution endorsing the Western Wisconsin Urban Outdoor Recreation Plan.

Mayor Pratt, members of council, this is kind of the culmination of a lot of effort on our Rural Partners Network project related to eight counties and all of the great outdoor recreation initiatives that take place and outdoor recreation amenities that are in this region. Visit Eau Claire in collaboration with National Park Service, Altoona, Lake Hallie, Chippewa Falls, and the City of Eau Claire have been working on the development of the Western Wisconsin Regional Outdoor Recreation Plan. The plan has two sections, one for rural areas around the Chippewa Valley and another for the urban areas within the Chippewa Valley. This is tonight's presentation. Hopefully, we'll summarize, try to make it brief. relates to the urban plan. The plan is similar to the city's comprehensive outdoor recreation plan, but with a regional level of focus. The public from each involved municipality provide input on the development of the urban area plan. It was something where we had a member from the park service and we had Kennedy from Visit Eau Claire go to each municipality and has went to the parks boards and then now to city council. So staff provided input on this urban plan specific to Altoona, and the plan is in the draft stage, and we're going through for approvals. And this was brought up for the Parks and Recreation Committee in June, and the Parks Board recommended unanimously supporting the endorsement of the plan and made the recommendation to city council to endorse it as well. So we're seeking your recommendation of endorsement and support of the plan. I submitted a lot of materials. There's about 133 pages worth in here. And there's a resolution recommending endorsement included. You looked at it. I want to kind of go through the main points, kind of like guiding principles, and go through that a little bit. One of the big elements is thinking regionally, making sure that our assets, that we're connecting our assets in the region. It's really important. And also working between cross-jurisdictionally. One area has a park that's available for a tournament and maybe booked up. Hey, we might have availability here in Altoona. Stuff like that. Becoming a regional hub, that's one thing. We have the businesses. We have the lodging. We have recreation businesses. Really just... Bringing that together and becoming a destination. Forming a new organization, that's something we're looking at to give this legs. Pulling in the counties, pulling in the user groups, and establishing a board to help this live on. Also noticing that we all have capacity issues. in our organizations. That's one thing right now we're facing with this is in forming a board and conceptualizing it is getting this going and finding people who are passionate and keeping this plan moving forward. Outdoor recreation is a must-have. That's one thing that over the years, the evolution of outdoor recreation and its importance as an economic driver, that's one thing that It is important. It has staying power. It's a must-have. We've invested substantially in outdoor recreation and in our parks, and it's a big reason we are as appealing and as much of a place where people want to live because of it.

And it carried the economy largely in our region during COVID.

Yep. Branding, unified regional outdoor recreation identity and branding strategy is something we've also noticed that we need. And really working between our tourism and DMOs and our groups to have a unified regional branding approach. The recreation commerce connection, Continuing to foster collaboration and partnerships between businesses, nonprofits, municipalities, the DMOs, and other user groups. Continue to grow this sector. It's very important. Income generation. Creating sustainable funding approaches will be needed to maintain improve recreation infrastructure and experience that's one thing you know you build the park you build it and it sits and then you replace elements in the park no we have to be thinking about ways to monetize continue to find funding strategies to replace items you know it's just another lens and thinking we've done it we've tried to do that and everything we do we have festivalization in our park spaces we are we have rental opportunities there And grants, we work hard at that. And facility quality matters. Having high-quality facilities, maintenance, accessibility, and visitor experience are essential to the long-term success of the parks and those outdoor spaces and outdoor recreation. Do you want to take the next area?

Is that what we're doing?

Yeah, I thought we were tanking it.

Yes, we are. OK. So themes. So some common themes emerged from doing this work for us to look at in terms of our recreational assets. One was rivers, river corridors, and lakes. And again, we're looking at the urban areas. So Chippewa's got rivers. They've got lakes, Lake Wissota. Trail towns. Eau Claire's invested a lot in trails as we have. How do those all connect? We've got the Chippewa River Trail. We've got the Red Cedar Trail. We've got the Old Abe Trail. How does that all come together? How do we work together to promote that? Outdoor community and cultural events. People love that thing, like our River Prairie Ginormous Pumpkin Festival. generates a lot of revenue, brings people to town, people have fun. And then ecotourism and agricultural tourism, getting the more rural parts of communities surrounding the urban area involve things like wineries and apple orchards and blueberry picking and farm-to-table restaurants, that kind of thing. Those things are important. Adventure and exploration, we have a lot of really nice county forests and state forests around us that could be developed. encourage people to explore. And we're not talking about just passive recreation. We're also talking about organized events. The mayor was just out this past week on huge biking. What was it called?

The Coon Fork 40.

Coon Fork 40.

That's a big fundraiser. But they had 550 bikers from all over the Midwest. Yeah.

But we're also talking about birdwatching, hunting, and fishing, all those outdoor activities. So these are all things that I've got to give accolades to Holly from National Park Service, who poured her heart into this thing and wrote a real beautiful plan here. And Altoona really was kind of the spark plug on this to get it going, and the county. And what we need to work on now is getting an organization pulled together that can champion this going forward. But it's a great plan.

And one thing I wanted to say, too, that when she presented it to the Parks and Recreation Council is that she really opened our eyes to things that we just take for granted, like the lakes and the ponds and the rivers. She said they're very underutilized. And, you know, she really opened her eyes, didn't she, Roy, to a lot of things that are just so commonplace to us that she said would bring in so many other people to our area. So it was very good.

Yes. Yeah, a lot of involvement here. Again, we had also Kennedy from Viz Eau Claire. Kennedy from Viz Eau Claire.

Yeah, very good. She lives this stuff. She breathes it.

And I mean, it's just, she loves it.

Yeah, and she took over the reins when we got into it, after we got it off the ground and facilitated it, along with West Central Wisconsin Regional Planning helping us with the broader eight-county plan.

We learned a lot throughout this process, and we'll continue learning. One of the next steps coming up, and we'll let you all know about it, is I know Kennedy's looking at doing a public charrette or public meeting to talk about next steps for this. So I'm sure you'll all be invited, and we'll be sure to let you know.

Is there a similar plan for the eight-county area for the rural recreational piece? And then is there then something that links the two together? Right.

Yeah, I mean, they were done in concert with each other. The grant that we got for the eight-county plan did not include, we couldn't talk about the urban areas. But then we got another grant to get help from the National Park Service, so they took on the urban. So it comes together as one, but it had to be two plans.

Got it. So there is a second plan for the rural part?

Yeah, for the eight counties, yep.

Is it possible to see that, too? Yes.

I think we're going to have another approval on that.

Yep. Or endorsement. Okay.

Yeah, we're waiting for a review on that. Yes.

Yep. And I believe that it got through. I think it was approved, but I can't speak totally to that.

Well, and then it seems like, yeah, clearly the linkage between the two because people are going to stay in the urban area, but they may want to do the rural activities, you know, and stuff like that. So it just makes sense for it all to be connected.

It's interesting, too. I mean, a lot of those, some of those businesses are the ones that sustain those communities, those rural communities. When I, I'm always up, not always, I used to be up in the UP a lot, driving through, you know, I'd go through and you'd see something, you'd see a, oh, here's a tubing business, and it's just a little burg, you know, and it's just teaming with people, ice cream shop, you know, spin-off, burger bar. But that was really interesting in this process was to think about the outdoor recreation economy, think about it as it relates to here, and really build a lot of relationships.

Yeah.

Kind of piggyback off of that Marquette, in this report it mentions Crosby, Minnesota. I've been up to the Cuyuna Trails and seen the communities that it's really breathed a huge new breath of life into the vitality and the investment and the draw that that has brought to that area.

You know, one thing that we struggled with a little bit is it's arguable that we don't have anything epic. I mean, we're not... Utah, we're not Crosby, Minnesota. But what it is is we have a lot of things that come together right here. We have the beauty going down to the driftless. We've got world-class deer hunting, trout fishing. Disc golf. Bike trails, disc golf. But it's very family-friendly. So if you can pull all this together and promote it, It can bring a lot more people here and allow them to enjoy our area.

Spoiler alert, I'll be talking about this a little bit tomorrow in Eggs and Issues.

And it's like what Roy said, too, to bring all the communities together for something big, like a big basketball tournament or something like that. Because we do have a lot of space that isn't utilized, and it could be utilized together. Yep.

I think you'd be surprised how much recreation experience you have on the council here. I know the mayor and I go back at least 40 years.

I go back more than 40 years.

And I've been involved in multiple plans like this through the years. I won't tell you when I graduate from college. The problem comes down to funding the stuff. And back in the day, we used to get lock-on funding. And it was a windfall profits tax on the oil companies that took oil out of the Gulf of Mexico. That's long since dried up. And as your parks go, so goes your community. And it's great stuff, but it's always a struggle. It's always a struggle.

And luckily, we've been able to, at least the last 20 years, invest in our parks and continue to invest in our parks.

And Utah, it was 0.5% of every sales tax dollar that was spent in Utah went to parks.

And says somebody from Minnesota, they adopted a three-eighths of a cent sales tax, and that was massive for the state as far as the state parks and the cities. And that passed on a vote overwhelmingly, like 65 to 35.

Well, it goes back to my comment earlier about the municipal funding formula. Investing in our values. Yeah, yeah. Right.

Yeah, when I was on the state board for Parks and Rec in Utah, the whole concept was if people are coming to the state, part of that money that they're being spent in the state should go back to. Why they're coming. Yeah, provide more support in parks and recreation. So that's why they passed that.

Statewide point a half a percent went back to the communities isn't Eau Claire County have a Tax on to have sales tells the sales tax on to write.

Yeah, this should go back Steuben Rose approval of resolution 88-26

Bureau second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. All right, number six, discuss consider approval of ordinance 8C-26, an ordinance amending chapter four, public nuisances.

The police chief hung around all this time just for this.

All right. Good conversation, though. Your Honor, Counsel, I have for you to consider a rewrite of Chapter 8.24, Public Nuisances. I could go through the entire thing if you want. Okay. As you've seen in your materials, the red is all the stuff that I added. So I really increased what we had in our public nuisance ordinance. As you guys know, it's been a problem for a while. It's been a struggle enforcing nuisance yards. junk in yards, properties that are just dilapidated and not kept up. It's been a struggle. So what I did was I looked at a number of different ordinances from a number of different communities. I incorporated a number of things from a number of different ones. Some of the most notable changes that I added in here is I added a section for chronic nuisance landlords. So if we have landlords that have nuisance properties, we can address the landlord. As well as the occupant of the property Also in here it addresses just nuisance properties in general So properties that have been a continuous problem in violation of this ordinance will be able to address that We also included sections like urination and because we didn't have that previously covered. So that's in this ordinance. I really beefed up the exterior of property and premises to ensure that they're maintained clean and safe and in a sanitary condition, free of junk and debris, that sort of thing. And then the one thing in our old ordinance that was kind of a struggle for us was the abatement process. And so I rewrote the abatement process, made it very specific, easy for anyone to look at and understand how the process works. And I ran that through the city attorney's office. They're in agreement that we have it right. And so, yeah, that's what I have for an ordinance. I can answer questions if anyone has any questions. I can go through it more if you'd like me to, because there is a lot more that I changed.

Is there any kind of a citation process?

Yes, there absolutely is. Yes. So on page six, it goes through the courtesy notice, the notice of violation, and the citation process. And that would all happen before the abatement process. Unless it's an emergency, then the abatement process would happen quickly.

So is there a monetary figure to the citation process?

Yes, that is in a different chapter. That's in chapter 1.08. Okay.

Does the citation go to the actual owner or to the tenant?

It can go to either. It can go to either.

So my question, Kelly, is that does somebody have to complain about the situation or your officers are making a judgment?

Yes. So we don't have to receive a complaint to be able to enforce this ordinance. Unfortunately, a lot of times it stems from complaints that we receive. We are trying to do a better job of being proactive, but it's been something that hasn't been addressed very well for a long, long time. So there's a lot of things that need to happen. But we're doing... Better I would say and making the making the criteria more objective is going to help yes, absolutely Yes, fixing this will help us be able to do that

Has there been some interest in that vehicle donation offering that, I forget, was it which officer had presented on that?

Yeah, NOAA. That was part of NOAA's project. So Julian is incorporating that into the project that he is doing as well. And so that's getting presented.

I don't know.

So we give the person that information and then they can donate it if they want to donate it. We don't really stay involved in the actual process. We just make sure the vehicle's gone. So I'm not sure if anyone's taken advantage of that or not. I know we've been able to clean up some vehicles, especially in the mayor's neighborhood. We've had some chronic issues up there for a long, long time. So...

Some over by my house, too. Yeah, just when I was reading through this, I was just thinking that we're putting these codify or really, you know, defining some things, but that we also do have options and that, you know, that discretion and then the steps in it, um, that it's not just, you know, absolutely.

And good point. Like our goal is really to work with people because we understand that some people can't afford, um, to be able to take care of the things that the nuisance property that they might have. So to be able to work with them through the programs that we have in the city and help them get into compliance, that's our goal. We would prefer to do that versus cite them. Compliance is always better. And that goes for anything in regards to law enforcement. We always work towards compliance.

Yeah, and aside from the vehicle removal, the Safe Steps program reminder offers $500 for income-qualified people. Clean up their yards.

Mm-hmm if they're sighted Yeah, did does this give you guys some assistance with? Areas that are like frequent flyers for for calls and things like that it looked like it maybe beef that up and made that a more more Consistently defined type of a problem.

You mean chronic offenders?

Yeah

No, the ones that clean up and next week all the junk reappears.

Well, no, I was thinking more like where you get called to the same property multiple times for, you know, that it kind of gives you a little bit more teeth to deal with some of that as opposed to just going through the same motions every time.

Especially if it's a rental property. Yeah. This really gives us more options. But yeah, you're correct. So if we get called somewhere for disorderly parties or loud parties, that sort of thing, we can address that.

Overflowing dumpsters.

Overflowing dumpsters, that happens too.

Yeah, I've always, you know, to me it's the option of instead of multiple times dealing with a tenant, just go right to the owner. It's like, hey, owner, it's your property. You need to deal with it. Otherwise, you're going to be cited instead, not the tenant.

Yes, and this will allow us to do that.

So is the city attorney good with this? Yeah, we reviewed the...

I just noticed something on page 12. You go from 8.24.090, and then on page 13, you added non-abatement prohibited 9.24.110. The numbering is off. I just noticed that now. Should we just, I mean, before approval with any changes.

The scrivener's error.

Right the scrimmage, but I wanted to at least bring it to your attention that we can finalize it Kelly if it's to make adjustments Yeah, so the numbering is right. I don't like to make changes, but if that's Yep, we'll make sure it's number properly

We're going to go ahead and make that motion to approve Ordinance 8C26, the Ordinance amending Chapter 8.24 for public nuisances.

Thielen will second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you.

Thank you, Kelly.

All right, any other miscellaneous business and communication?

Please, no.

I have none, Your Honor.

First of all, let me...

School starts back up next week, Tuesday's first day of school. I'm going to have a lot of kids out biking and walking to school. Keep an eye out for kids going to and from.

I've got a question. Excuse me. I was wondering why when the people are sitting around a table out there, they don't use the microphone.

Yeah.

That microphone there? There is a mic. There is a mic. So it's a broadcasting mic.

Right in the middle of the table.

Yep. There's a broadcasting mic, and it picks up everything.

It is a lot better than what it used to be with those other little mics. That really does work good. It even kind of captures people out in the audience that I've noticed.

And I also want to apologize for the fish house not having the microphones out. That was a miss, and yeah.

But I brought up Erin, and she said, and it made sense that they were locked up. An important, expensive piece of technology that they want to keep track of and keep safe.

Well, I know, but they should have been out. So sorry about that.

I'll make a motion to adjourn. Roll second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.