City Council - Regular Meeting

Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat.

How old? Good. Good. down here, huh?

Yeah, pretty much. Welcome to Boulder City City Council. Call the meeting to order. Madam City Clerk, roll call and posting, please.

Thank you. The agenda was posted in accordance with Nevada open meeting law and member Sher Jorgensson is absent from the meeting. Thank you. If we can all arise, Deborah DS from the Christian Center for Square Gospel Church will offer our invocation for us. Please join with me in prayer. Gracious and sovereign God, you are the source of wisdom, justice, and provision. You establish communities and entrust them to our care. From the smallest details to the largest decisions, you see it all and nothing is beyond your concern. We confess that we do not always steward what you have placed in our hands as faithfully as we should. At times we have lacked foresight, courage, or unity. Forgive us when we seek comfort over wisdom or overlook the long-term good for short-term ease. Tonight, as this council considers workforce partnerships, public safety resources, housing policy, financial reserves, city enterprises, and future land use decisions, grant clarity and discernment. Help these leaders strengthen opportunities for workers and families, reinforce the safety of our community, steward public funds with integrity, and guide growth in ways that preserve both character and sustainability. remind us that while the world is vast, we are responsible for this small corner of it. May Boulder City be shaped by decisions rooted in wisdom, fairness, and care for generations to come. We thank you for the beauty of this community, for those who serve, and for the privilege of gathering freely to govern. May all that is said and done tonight honor the trust placed in these leaders. Amen.

Amen. Thank you. Everyone would remain standing for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge

algiance 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. not aware of any public announcements. We will open this uh portion of the city council for public comment. Anything related to what is on the agenda? Uh people are more than welcome to come up and spend three minutes up to three minutes and say anything you would like about what is on the agenda tonight. Thank you. if you could state your name.

My name is David Ellert. I live reside at 1333 Cattail Falls here in Boulder City and been a resident for almost 5 years. I am a retired IT analyst and have been part of the process of designing and implementing data centers for both government agencies and private companies. I am against this land use update to the Elorado Valley transfer area due to the impact that data centers have on the areas surrounding them. When we moved here 5 years ago, we enjoyed not only the city, but also the views of the surrounding landscape, especially the mountain ranges to the west and south of Boulder City. In our travels around the country, we have firsthand experience seeing the land impact and the visible impact of that data centers have on communities. After viewing the council meeting of January 27th, this item is requiring our approval through the ballot process because the council lacks the authority to unilaterally add data centers to the approved uses in Elorado Valley and you are also looking for more revenue. Now, under the environmental impact of data centers, water is the first vital resource that we have that we need to be good stewards of in the areas affected by the diminishing flow of water through the Colorado River system. Our reliance on the water in Lake Me causes concerns if evaporative cooling is used at the potential centers. Electricity is also an issue as Boulder City receives most of our power from the Hoover Dam. One national survey found that once centers are operational, bills increase at least $25 per month per residential user. What impact will that have on Boulder City residents if the ballot measure is passed and potential projects approved? Excuse me. There are known issues with noise from cooling systems that have led to sleep issues and reduced quality of life with the constant hum from the

centers. Air quality will be affected during the construction of the centers and will continue to affect the area when standby generators are either tested or used during due to power failures. Building of facilities could impact wildlife for an extended period. It will impact or displace the desert tortoise, quail, bats, falcons, ospreys, various lizards, and rattlesnake families. We already have the Boulder City Conservation Easement to help protect our wildlife, so we are aware of the importance of it. In closing, we already know by admission staff and council at the January 27th meeting that data center developers have been in contact with staff. It is important that the citizens of Boulder City understand the scope of these possible projects and location and the impacts of these projects of the valley. Even if that information is made available to us citizens and the council votes to place this item on the November ballot, I will still be opposed to it and will vote no. I'm sure that I'm not the only person here this evening who feels the same way as I do. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Anyone? Oh, someone's on the phone. If you could wait just a moment. Go ahead.

Good evening. Record Fred Bolts. It is a given community's expectation that their municipal governments will effectively manage a wide variety of projects and operations in the public interest. Regarding agenda item number six and the two city-owned golf courses, mismanagement has characterized these operations. A marketing plan that gives out an average of over 40 free rounds of golf every open day of the year is not standard municipal golf course procedure anywhere else in the US. Continued subsidies from the city's general fund for expensive golf course capital equipment benefit an unknown number of boldites since no statistics are kept on unique residents using the golf courses. We pay outside contractors turf tech over $1.6 million a year and Shaper Golf over $660,000 a year to handle day-to-day operations without revenue or break even financial objectives. We pay for tea time scheduling software by barter, not in US dollars. The two courses permanently guzzle, no recycling, over 1.4 billion gallons of water annually, far eclipsing on a per hole basis water consumption at privately operated Cascada. The courses make no contribution to water system operations and maintenance expenses. they heavily impact paying only wholesale SNWA water rates, not retail commercial water rates. These two courses are prime candidates for enterprise fund status, just as eight other jurisdictions around Nevada have overlaid onto their municipal golf course operations. Ultimately, perhaps they should be sold or leased to a private operator if the city cannot responsibly operate them. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead.

I'm Linda Williams, a Boulder City resident, and um I'm also here about the uh letter in the paper, the um letter to the editor by George and ABS called absent financial management in the Boulder City Review dated 2526. Okay, this letter is regarding the two Boulder City municipal golf courses being maintained by Boulder City and paying wholesale or lower than wholesale rates rather than rent retail rates. But to my point uh being noted that uh thousands of dollars of Boulder City residents money being spent unnecessarily if the in the maintenance of the two courses. I would like to put to the Boulder City Council and the city manager. Why is the city uh in this kind of business anyway when a solution has been offered? I I realized that the enterprise fund is still city, but it would be a business rather than a service and that makes more sense to me as a resident and uh better use of my money and uh would put the golf courses to be self-sufficient and so I'm looking for accountability and clarity. I want to know why. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Someone on the line. All right, go ahead on the line. Wait patiently there at the podium while we get the line.

Uh, yes. This is Ryan Walker. Uh, my family and I live in Boulder City. Um, and I am opposed to considering AI data centers being um, a part of our city. Um in addition to the environmental impacts um they cause noise pollution um they don't actually provide many jobs. They um provide long-term ecological issues with u whenever um infrastructure gets old and needs to be swapped out. Um I I just see lots of different issues with this and and I'm I'm very concerned that we would be considering adding those to our community. Um, so I am opposed to AI data centers.

Thank you, sir. Go ahead, ma'am.

So, my name is Robin Baker. I am a Boulder City resident. And the very first thing is I want to tell everyone up here at the podiums that I appreciate the efforts you make. What I'm asking for tonight is accountability. I want to know why you are doing on the decisions you're making. what has prompted that? I also want to know what were the outcomes because outcomes lead to evaluations and evaluations mean you can go back and consider was your action correct? Do you need to take corrective action? Do you need to follow through and continue what you're doing? It's not whether it's the golf course or it is um the data center or I particularly am interested in historic preservation. It's very different difficult to have any level of accountability. It's very difficult to have any kind of a conversation about what comes after when you have no accountability. You don't know how much money is spent, what the money is spent for, how many people benefited. And at the end of the day, I'm interested in a sense of place for myself, for my neighbors, for my community, because that's why I moved to Boulder City, because it's a lovely sense of place. It's a good place to live and I want to maintain that not just for me but for my neighbors whether they are interested to be here tonight or not. The number of people who vote do show their concern. But having said that um I do trust that you will do the best that you can as Ned knows and I wish you a good evening. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else on the phone? Okay. have a comment. Go ahead. It's very difficult to have. Hello. Hi. You'll have to turn down the TV in the background. Go ahead. Okay. Oh, hello. Hi. Go ahead and state your name for the record. Oh, my name is Jennifer Levit. L E A V I T. Okay, go ahead with your comments. Oh, okay. Um

Oh, do I need to wait for her to finish speaking? You you have to turn down the TV in the background because there's a delay. And just go ahead and talk. We can all hear you.

Oh, okay. Thank you. Um, hi, my name is Jennifer Levit. I've been a resident in Boulder City for over 11 years. Um, my family were the early settlers of southern Nevada and also the First Nations people. We are literally the original caretakers of the land. It moves my heart as I am strongly opposed to this data center being considered or built in or near Boulder City or even in southern Nevada for that matter. Data centers currently use an average of 25% of the local water supply available in dry climates. So much more than in humid climates. And we're in what is considered a mega drought here in southern Nevada. And we have been for over 20 years. Bloomberg stated that over 70% of host communities have spikes in their electrical bills and they have spiked on the members of the community up to 267%. That's just unacceptable. I'm really disappointed that this would even be considered to be brought in, especially in the drought that we're enduring. I cannot understand how it could make any amount of sense to put the families that are already here and the the animals and the entire environment in such incredible danger. Even more concerning than making the drought worse are the impacts to individual health. I was a patient of Mayor Hardies. He fought for me to be seen at UCLA. My daughter and I and some of our other family members have a genetic condition.

It's a mutation to our DNA. Um, and part of that comes from where my grandparents lived and the promise from local and national government that these industries and things being brought in, they were fine. They were safe. But the brain tumor growing in my head, my heart failing, and worse than that, watching my daughter who is sitting in your audience fight for her life every day because someone in a government position decided that bringing in money was a better idea than the lives that would be damaged. When data centers are built, there are increases in asthma, neurological diseases, COPD, and more. I cannot find any good coming from a data center. I cannot find putting our children and grandchildren here in Boulder City and in surrounding areas at risk. I think it's irresponsible and I am vehemently opposed to this and will continue to fight this and until I'm here no more. Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead, sir. Good evening. So, I guess I'm one of the older guys here. I've been around this town 63 years. I remember when the MUN was built and I remember with all the controversies during the construction of Boulder Creek, Cascada, and even the Adams Boulevard extension. Former councils and city staff were perceived by some residents at that time of not being honest and transparent regarding these projects. Even after a vote of the people might have indicated one course of action, decisions were perceived as slight of hand to achieve an outcome contrary to voter wishes. Whether the outcome was good or bad was immaterial. It was against the will of the people. It is time for the controversies to end regarding golf courses. Frankly, I'm tired of it. It's been going on since 73. I think the first step we have to do is identify if the golf courses are a for-profit, a notfor-profit business or a community service. If a community service, we should be able to identify a sufficient majority, typically twothirds of individual residents who utilize the golf courses. As a nonprofit, there should be accounting available to show that the course generates enough income so as to not burden residents with responsibility to subsidize the cost of the courses. They should be self- sustaining and on

equal footing with other enterprises with regard to cost. For an example, what are the water costs? Are they the same as other enterprise funds or other entities in the city? We don't know. As a for-profit, accounting should show a revenue stream that should benefit the residents in other ways. To this end, an enterprise fund designation would be a good first step towards transparency and accountability. Additionally, forensic accounting and equalization may be required to get the financial truth about golf course operations. One of the po hot points I'm hearing about is that of free rounds of golf. For an enterprise business, that is a direct cost of loss of income revenue or some would claim it's an investment. Business norms would require a tenfold return on investment. If less, it would account as a net loss. Therefore, the accounting should show that the player receives a free round produces 10 additional unique rounds played at full cost. Thank you for your attention.

Pardon me. Can you state your name for the record? My name is Chris Gdlin.

Anyone else here in chambers? Anyone on the line? Okay. On the phone, please. Public comment. Go ahead. Public comment. Go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, Staff. Brandon Smith for the record just calling in to address agenda items number six and seven. Um I think I had previously uh mentioned my um aversion to having a data center anywhere close to Boulder City, Elorado Valley most specifically. Um I think the the after effects of uh installed data centers is pretty wildly um accepted at this point. Um, and I can't honestly think of a less efficient place to put uh a data center than in one of the hottest regions in North America. Um, and right in our backyard. Um, that's really all I have to say about that. Uh, as far as um the the the golf centers and putting those into um into uh some sort of um uh method where they're accountable for their losses, their gains, the cost things. Um I can't uh stress highly enough more that we uh that we need to engage that. Obviously, if if we're giving away $640,000 a year worth of golf, um that that money could be going towards something more beneficial to the city, perhaps uh rellandscaping the BO, something of such nature. Um instead of providing a very small return for a a minuscule amount of our population who plays golf. Um, and then at the at the expense of the entire city population, I think that's a it's really bad luck. Um, and it doesn't go far to uh kind of make us believe that you guys are really looking out for the

population of the city when you're throwing our money away. Anyway, that's all I have to say. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Go ahead. Hi, my name is Cherabel Lob and I urge Mayor Hardy and the city council to uh oppose adding the question regarding locating data centers in Elorado Valley near Boulder City. We have been in a drought for almost as long as I have been alive which is uh a very long time. Data centers cause major environmental impact as well as they are very costly. They're going to rise power costs in the area. They're going to tax and strain our local energy grid, which will of course be why our our power costs raise. The water resources, it's going to use a lot of water. It does everywhere, but especially in a hot, humid, dry climate where we are already having issues with getting enough water. the noise pollution they cause is massive. Um, and then we have the immediate environmental impact of it is automatically going to cause issues with uh where the animals currently live there. It's going to be a major eyesore and it's going to remove a lot of our beautiful natural desert that we really should be trying to preserve in a time where a lot of land is dying and a lot of land is being taken away. If we continue to add like this, by the time I reach the ages of everyone else here, there's not going to be any land left. We're already losing so much every day. We shouldn't be adding to it with something that's going to also be not just adding noise pollution, but normal pollution into the air because there are health impacts from the fine particle matter that comes from the AI data centers. And the data centers do not add enough jobs to offput the costs. it's going to come that are going to come from it both from building as well as long-term costs and they're going to become that much more costly to us when

the bubble pop happens because it inevitably inevitably will. Same as it happened with going to happen with AI and with the AI data centers and we are going to be in we're going to be I can't even say our heads are going to be underwater because there's not going to be any water left. So, thank you. Thank you. any

public comment. Go ahead. Hi, this is Bin Delorier and I'm calling to speak on um the issue of the golf courses and um you already received my written public comment on the data centers and how I am also vehemently opposed to them like everybody else who's spoken tonight. Um, regarding the golf courses being um, put on the ballot as a uh, enterprise fund model, I completely agree with that. Uh, we sat in the January 27th city council meeting where finance had presented that uh, the city seems to be hemorrhaging money and is looking for um, ways to raise money, which is one reason I was um, uh, one reason I'm calling tonight. And it seems the golf courses um are not making any money for us. So I I can't understand why they're suggesting things that are unpopular to seemingly everybody in the city. um like data centers. And if everybody reviews that portion of the agenda packet, potentially um redoing our tax structure to take money away from our libraries and other things that people may be opposed to and adding data centers to uh make up that balance. Uh at any rate, when we are spending an exorbitant amount of money on our golf courses and while they're not making money, while we're giving free rounds away, while they're paying a wholesale rate for water and therefore not uh contributing to our infrastructure maintenance, while the rest of us taxpayers through our water bills are. So, I don't feel any of that is fair to taxpayers. I feel like it's um a loss

for uh for everybody and I do hope city council will consider adding that as a ballot measure and I hope everybody researches it, looks into it and votes in its favor. So, thank you very much and have a good night. Another call. Public comment. Go ahead.

Yes. Um this is Pat Murphy. I live in Boulder City and I want to comment uh first quickly on the data center. I'm shocked that we'd even be thinking about putting that resolution on the ballot. A data center would be a terrible way to spend uh to use any land in this area. Um other people have commented on why I'll save my time to talk about the golf courses. Um and I do understand that the council is in a difficult position. And I know I remember the meeting where many many upset people who live by the golf courses were very upset when there was even talk about removing a small amount of turf. So it's a tricky situation but I was shocked when I read about how much the city is spending to support the golf courses. And I think we have an easy way, easy, maybe not politically easy, but a way that exists to make the golf courses pay their way, which is the enterprise fund approach. So, I strongly suggest either the council vote to uh change the golf courses into an enterprise fund or vote to place that on the ballot because that makes sense for the city. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Another phone call. Go ahead, sir. My name is George Re. I'm a Boulder City resident. My comments are embedded more in the context of climate where I think there's been too little planning, too little horizon scanning, and too little awareness of long-term risks. And these long-term risks are now becoming short-term risks despite the fact that John Enter assured us on the radio that there was no problem with water coming through Glen Canyon Dam and we shouldn't worry. When the pilot of an airplane says don't worry about the left engine, maybe that's something we should be concerned about. But I'll just add my voice to the people who are requesting transparency with the golf courses. I'll keep it short. We don't seem to know how and when our money is being used on these city golf courses and I think running them as enterprise funds would go some way to solving that problem. So, thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone on the phone? Okay. Hi, my name is Jeff Lafka, 610 Lake here on Lane. Um, the agenda item six has been pretty well covered and I want to add my voice to that. So, I'll just make six quick little bullet points here. I've been following the work of a bunch of people doing work with the public records and the Freedom of Information Act kind of things. And it looks to like um the golf courses are using fully half of Boulder City's water usage and they're not paying the normal water rate. So that's a a drain on the taxpayers. Looks like we spend about $2 million in a couple of contracts for maintenance and management and that's not really um generating that's that's not accountable, I guess. Um, we have about a half a million dollars of city employee time probably spent on management and administration for the golf course. It looks like we're spending about $6 million for improving the irrigation system. And it looks like we give away about 16,000 free rounds of golf per year, which is very surprising. And I guess it's not a standard any other places in the country with municipal golf courses. and it seems like one really good step would be to set the thing up as a u as an enterprise fund. So, I hope that gets on the ballot. Thanks for your time.

Thank you. Anyone else here in chambers like to come forward? Anyone on the phone? Good afternoon. Hi, I'm John Twoarts Madrid and uh I have a lot of concerns. Um number one, when does the city, the city council, every one of its employees become accountable and transparent? Every dollar, every penny that's spent in this city belongs to everybody in this audience and everybody in this community. And why should they not know where every penny is going? Uh you I'm sure that the data center will have an EIR, environmental impact report. However, I am personally requesting an EIR, an economic impact report that will affect not only the current situation but generations to come. What is the financial implications of this data center on the future? And that includes the environment as far as water issues, heat issues, and as far as the community goes. And I ask you, city council, if I was a city council, I'd have my slogan would be do the right thing at the right time all the time and find a solution. We're not looking for problems. Find a solution. make it a win-win situation, but don't penalize the community. Um, the other thing too is I think that considering the data center, the golf course, oh, late friend of mine, uh, some guys may have heard of him, name's

Jack Lane. All right. Anyway, Jack Lane, uh, don't people don't know this, but back in the olden days in the LA, there was a guy named Jack Manari who owned a whole bunch of gyms in Los Angeles. Jack Manari sold his gyms at Jack Lane. Jack Lane became a household name as far as exercise and fitness. Great. But what people don't know is that Jack Manari went to Pasar Robels and bought a golf course that was a losing enterprise. And I'm asking you on this next election, add in a third option. Sell the golf course and make it a private enterprise because whoever buys it, they'll make it a profit. And if they want to give away 16,000 free golf games, go for it because it's privately owned and they can do it. Uh but when and when we consider any issues, Iraq it. For those of you that don't know what Iraq is, what is the issue? What is the rule or the law? What is the application or analysis? And finally, what's the conclusion? In other words, what decision are you going to do for the best possible future of Boulder City? John Two Harts Madrid. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Anyone on the phone? Anyone here in chambers like to come forward at this time? Seeing no one and no one on the phone, we will close public comment. That brings us to our approval of the regular agenda. Do I have a motion? Move to approve the regular agenda. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor say I. I. Thank you. And then I need a motion to approve the consent agenda. Move to approve. Second. All those in favor say I.

I.

All those have been unanimous. Thank you. Then we go to the uh regular agenda number two presentation offered by work workforce connections hiring boost money Adams ha good to see you two together teach us we are here and thank you for the invite Mr. Mr. Mayor and members of the council, I know uh we get to see you more often. Uh we uh are glad to meet the members of the council. We haven't met before and we are here to tell you that we um want to get to know you more. We're we're available for one-on- ones if you'd like to know more about our business after today, but we're really grateful that uh Councilwoman Booth serves on the consortium representing Boulder City. Um so we get to see her often. We're also glad that uh the mayor makes time for us. He uh more recently agreed to be on a mayor's panel. Sent me 12 reasons why that would be a good idea. And after seeing where's that stuff we got from the city address, Irene,

I really love one team together. By the way, that's really awesome. And then now I know where you got all the 12 things cuz I love this right here. For example, I didn't know there was only three traffic signals in this city. So this is really good. I'm going to uh kind of rip this off for steel. Repeat and rinse this. Uh Mr. May, this is great. Uh, I always love to come here because I grew up in a third world country and now I'm a proud American and nowhere have I been in a city or county where there's this level of civic engagement. So, I take my hats off to the to the people of Boulder City. Sometimes I am scared because it gets heated, but that's okay. I think the dialogue today was perfectly civil and uh but it makes me proud as an American to come to a city where people participate like here. So, that says a lot about the council. So, again, my name is Haime Cruz. I think we have a PowerPoint. I can't see it, but yep. And uh if we would please turn to the next page.

Oh, that's me. I got to I'm sorry. I'm putting you to work so I can do it myself. Sorry about that. So, yes, this is uh me, Haime Cruz. I serve as the executive director. Irene is our deputy director and chief strategy officer. And as you know, she also volunteers mayor for other roles that you know that we don't know how she finds the time of the day to do all that stuff. But here's our agenda today. And I'm going to turn it over to Irene to get us started. Thank you, mayor. Um members of city council today for our agenda we're going to talk about the role of workforce connections give you some highlights um and also talk about collaborative efforts and then we'll end with um ideas that we have to grow our relationship and future plans uh the pink dot. Yeah for you.

Yep.

Our role is workforce connections. So, uh, mayor and city council members, I want to let you know that we are your local workforce development board. So, every state has at least one. In Nevada, we have two. The Southern Nevada Local Workforce Board overseas four counties which include Clark, Esmeralda, NY, Lincoln. And so, what's important in this slide is wanted to let you know that we are responsible under the federal law to convene a one-stop delivery system. And I'm going to have a picture to show you just for uh a visual. Not easy uh to do and I'll explain why. But what I want you to take away is our collaborative efforts to work with you to be able to benefit the employers and the job seekers and connect them um for uh workforce in this area. Next, here's the picture, the visual that I want to see. This is the one-stop delivering system. What I want you to let you know is we are one of 17 entities that receive money from the federal government to connect these employers to a ready workforce. Although we are only responsible for one bucket, um there are 17 uh individuals uh entities that receive the money and it's not easy to corral them but we have made great strides in doing so. Next, some of the highlights that I want to talk about. This is one of of many things that has not been accomplished in other states. It is the collaboration with bucket number one and several others. In this state, one of the things I'm most proud of is our we don't have to collaborate, but we do. And being able to come together under one brand so that employers do not have to go around and search, well, which which one of the 17 am I supposed to go to? Uh if you're a job seeker, who helps me? We do it under one BL brand called employee envy

and that includes a career hub for job seekers to go look for a job. It includes uh a business hub where only employers go for the finished product uh once we finish helping an individual get to that point and then a specialty which is the youth hub which is for individuals that are 16 to 24. Next slide. Workforce connections in Boulder City. Um, for us, we have an employee inv careerhub/business hub inside of Boulder City Library. It's one of our proudest partnerships. And here's where job seekers and employers can come. And we're going to share some success stories that have happened within this area. But we also partner with some of other entities like Boulder City Chamber and other city partners. And I'll demonstrate it in another slide. This is Hugh.

Thank you. And so, uh, Mr. Mayor, you know that you're very good with math and we know that. And so, Irene kind of said, you got to answer for the math because you ask really great questions. And the first thing I got to do here is apologize because our system is built for very large numbers. And of course, when we only when we talk about Boulder City, the numbers become very small. As you can see there in that screen, they uh uh 0.15 million really is more like $150,000 as you know. Uh but so I brought some cheat sheets here to let you know if we look at the year the program year 2023 this means that from July of 23 to June of 24 this is what happened in Boulder City. And what I'd like you to to focus on is that the next year we actually increased from 150,000 to 220,000. Also the completions increased from 36 to 42. Now one of the first first questions already in your mind saying is well why so little? And so I went and did the math because when you compare the the people we serve in Clark County to the population, this percentage is actually higher. So

well, I've been around you, Mr. Mayor. So um but anyway, I think here just a little bit are this screen again is is fixed for large populations, but it talks about where those investments go. So, in this latest year here in in Boulder City, it was $221,21 that went into helping people find jobs, get trained for jobs, and employers uh hire those people. About 39,225 was invested in classroom training. 25,289 in on the job training, which means that we actually reimbured an employer for training somebody. Uh we spent supportive services roughly $7,000 and then again that's to buy somebody the the steel toe boots they're missing the knife set that they're missing to go work in a kitchen uh uniforms and things like that. Sometimes it's transportation as well barriers that they have. And then we also provided roughly $115,000 of staff provided services. And why that's important is that as we know uh one day I think AI and automation is going to do a lot of this uh quantitative work but we're and so that humans can be freed up for more qualitative work but we're we're still not there today. Uh we still the people that we serve really need a lot of empathy, need a lot of compassion, need a lot of help because if they could do it themselves, they wouldn't need us. And so we really are helping a population that has intensive needs. And for that you need staff. if you need caring staff that can guide them through the process, help them with uh the the the paperwork, help them with the followup and help them be successful. So, uh these two screens kind of just to give you a picture of what's happening in Boulder City and the numbers.

Is that me also? Yeah.

Okay. So, here I think just to share with you one of many success stories. This is a participant that we enrolled that was pursuing a career as a phabotamist in the healthcare field. It's hard to say that word. Um, but anyway, through the participation, the career coach was able to provide the guidance that and the supportive services that this person needed and with that assistant and cost uh for training, transportation, uniforms and other things. Uh, we reduced those barriers that that person had for employment and of course the completion happened in May 2024. They secured employment as a phabotamist in August. The employment was verified and the participant remains employed through one full year of retention follow-up demonstrating again this is the purpose of these programs to raise uh elevate people from dependency on a system where we as taxpayers have to play welfare uninsure unemployment subsidized housing to self-sufficiency and that's what we like the most to be able to see when you look at those numbers 42 people this is just one of those 42 people so me okay she has me with all the numbers mayor so I'm going to keep crunching uh again quickly to see here that we've uh been working with 23 businesses here in your area. Uh of those one was is a new one. Uh we have uh updated two business registrations uh 112 unique business services provided for those businesses and that can be anything from listing their jobs doing recruitment for them organizing a hiring fair for them or actually actually bringing them a client that they hire. Uh on the other side we have contacted again 39 39 new folks. Uh we have a digital contact of 29. So the first one is in person. Uh again employer registrations. That's the one new one. We have scheduled uh 10 employer meetings. We have um uh four strategic planning or economic development activities and that happens a lot with your chamber with Jill. I don't know if Jill's here but I always love seeing Jill. uh job order support again with employers actually wanting to list a job because they're a they're a

small business they don't have an HR department so we help them with all that we help them post the jobs create the job descriptions and save them the money that they would have to pay somebody else so you see a little bit about our recruitment support and the referral of qualified applicants to those businesses in Boulder City and um I just want to give you oh no this is still you

me still me okay another success story uh this is professional pet room and groom and In 2024, the employer receives something we call incumbent worker training. It just means training somebody who's already employed by them. And we upskilled that employee from a bather kenno help role to a groomer kenno help position. This uh took place between January and June and of course resulted in increased skills, improved wages, and stronger employee retention for that person.

And so those are examples from the jobseker side. Now I'm going to give you an example from the employer side. And the goal is for you guys to be able to retain these stories so that you when you're out in your areas with your constituents, you can say, "I have an example to to share." So, we have two examples here. One with Veterans Electric Group. Uh they needed um support for for tools and supplies for some some of their employees for business growth. We were able through workforce connections and um the small business development center connect them to a loan program and as a result they were able to get uh the acquired tools and financing uh that they needed to strengthen their talent pipeline and increase in their business uh profits. And so the other one is an all industry panel night that we held on January 26 this quarter uh with Jill from the Boulder City Chamber. It was a collaborative effort that I had talked about earlier. So it was us, it was the economic development um person from Boulder City uh and ourselves to be able to highlight the resources that we bring to the table for this area. And as a result, there was um generated new employer interest. There was followup and engagement. So that's how we serve your employers in order to make sure that they are thriving in this area.

Yeah.

Yeah. So again, as as we look ahead, uh, as I mentioned earlier, we would love nothing more but to get to know the new members of the council that we don't know, strengthen our collaboration with the not just the council, but also your chamber of commerce, increase the visibility of those services that you heard we provide through the library location, uh, grow the employer participation, uh, and continue, you know, really seeding these investments to benefit the residents and businesses of Boulder City. Uh, one note of uh, I think that is worthy for you to mention, for you to know, and again, thank you to Councilwoman Booth who encouraged us to come here. I think she uh, knew that we hadn't been here in a long time, mayor, and so here we are. Uh, but in March or next month, one very notable thing is for 35 years, the National Association of Workforce Board, which is the organization that kind of convenes all 575 of us across the nation, they h they hold a annual forum in Washington DC. And uh you know thousands of people come to that to receive updates from the federal government on the policies that rule uh how we uh distribute these resources, how we run these programs, but also to exchange best practices and to receive awards for those who are doing a good job. For the very first time in history, they have moved this conference here to southern Nevada because they want to highlight a lot of the good stuff that's happening here, the partners with the libraries, the partnerships with the uh chambers of commerce and economic development. So that's a source of pride for us that we uh were able to get this conference here. Of course, that's a little boom for us in economic development as well. But more importantly, it really um you know, it's not often hopefully it's more now often than not that people want come to Nevada to learn from us. So that's something that's happening in just a few weeks. So that concludes our presentation, but we'd be glad to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you. Go first. No, you go. I know we have a lot of firemen here in the department and you had a program going teaching people how to drive ambulances. Can somebody from Boulder City learn to do that and how would they learn to do that?

Absolutely. So, um I would say to that person, the short answer is get a hold of us and we'll connect make all those connective points. But the short answer is uh we have uh a pilot that we just did that got a lot of notoriety with Clark County. they actually made an investment and said, "We recognize there's a shortage of entry- level um emergency medical technicians, I think they call them, that can end up to be ambulance drivers, paramedics, firefighters." And so, we have had a such a success with that program, every person that's went through it has been now hired. And so we are looking now to formalize that beyond just what Clark County seated for, but to assign some other funds, find funds, and replicate that in a greater way, scale that if you will, um to other training providers and other jurisdictions like Boulder City. So have that person uh that you want connect with us and we'll walk through that journey with them.

Or they could go to the library. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So if they can just hear us out there, they can go to the library. I'm going to ask you one last question and that would be for teachers. you have some special assistance for teachers.

Yes, that's another pilot that we did and I want to mention those pilots, right? Because it's the municipalities that or the employer that come to us and say, I am struggling with this job placement. Uh and so yes, um we got some um some funds from the department of employment and training to focus on a teacher pilot that we did. We partnered with UNLV, ourselves, um, and deer to be able to, uh, take pair of professionals that were office managers or substitute teachers and they had either started their journey and pursuing their lensure or wanted to go in that direction. And so, UNLV had a cohort. We invested in that cohort to either help them to remove barriers like paying for tuition, paying for books, uh sometimes transportation and together we were able to get that cohort to graduate and become licensed teachers. So increasing their their salary. Uh and so we replicated the model twice. Uh now we are looking at uh doing a pilot for uh teachers that are focused on special education because there is a need across this region for that. And so uh I love the pilot process because we start small and we test it and then replicate it and now we're going to move on to the sustainability phase to make sure that it is sustainable to get the funds for us to do that. I just wanted to thank you because there's so much you offer that I wanted Boulder City to know that you have so much to give and it's so appreciated and that's all all of my questions. I'll turn it to Denise.

I'd like I'd like to first say thank you, mayor. I'd like to first say thank you for your service. Um I mean your connection and that's what you do and and listening to you and all that you do. I did not know to be honest. Um I I have I I do want to get with you after because I do have some other connections. Um, there's a group here in Boulder City called the Boulder Business Development Group, and it's 30 businesses that get together every Tuesday morning at 6:45 in the morning, but we give you free breakfast. Um, I I'm sure they would love to hear this presentation, and that's what you do. You connect, especially when you were talking about getting employees for employers. You know, they need help as well, as well as people looking for jobs. So, putting those together are really good. I love seeing youth on there. That's like a a big thing uh for me. I am on the board of the council of government and that's one of the things we were talking about today, the next generation and getting them involved and uh becoming productive citizens. Um let's see, you said 557 boards that's all around the nation, correct?

Yes. Yes. That's that's huge. So what's your marketing strategy? How because I have not heard and you're doing so much so I probably heard of you indirectly like I know Koki's on that board but um what type of marketing do you actually do to to get the outreach to everybody?

That's a fantastic question. I'm going to give you an analogy um because I think it best explains it. And by the way before I forget yes to the we'll get with you at any time to have some more questions and also with the city staff. We we want to be available to you. I know I get to meet the city manager, but we know some of you for a year and so we want to be available to you too whenever you need us. Uh, but the answer to that question is is really interesting because let me give you the analogy. If you had a bakery here in Boulder City who was um, you know, had a a parcel that was big enough to fit two ovens and and have four bakers and make a thousand bagels a day. Um, and every day they sold out of those 10,000 bagels unless they had new capital to expand or buy more ovens or hire more bakers. Marketing really wouldn't be a benefit except maybe to create a demand.

Excuse me.

Oh, sorry. I kind of went away, didn't I? Um, it would create a a demand that wouldn't be met, right? So, people you you market a really good product, a bagel that everybody loves, but all of a sudden there's 2,000 people that want bagel and there's only still the 1,000 bagels that go out. It's a way to say to you that the the funds that we get from the federal government and we've managed to actually based on the success we've had to bring in uh more money than we are allocated by the federal government. So we have the federal government, the state now and the counties and and the city of Las Vegas too funding us to increase and scale the amount of work we can do and the amount of job seekers and business we can help. But it's still every year we run out of money without marketing. And so the answer really is we think that if we started to market, we'd create a uh a longer line of people. And not that that's a bad thing. I think what we instead what we're doing is trying to secure more resources to be able to serve a longer line. So I hope that helps on the why don't you know us? Uh because I think we do have a good bagel, but we only have so many of them.

Right. That was that was a good analogy and that was going to be actually my next question. And um I'm sure you will invite grants in and there are like council of government and league of cities that are looking to give grants or work with organizations like you. So um that's the other thing I'm sure that you have a you said you work with Jill and Jill is always looking for grants and ways to get funds but kudos to what you do. Thank you truly for your service.

Yeah counciloman with a great question. We welcome that that dialogue continued. And to say to you, I'll leave you with a seat. Another thing we can talk about when we meet with you next time is something we call the opportunity youth coalition. It it started with only uh three people in a room and now it's 50 organizations here in southern Nevada that are pushing to try to disrupt the um the pipeline of disconnected youth. What does that mean? We currently have 45,000 45,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 24 that are not engaged in skill acquisition. So, they're not in school, high school or post-secary, and they're also not meaningfully employed. That could almost solve our unemployment issue right now, but again, we can talk for a long time about they're very different than you and I, and what our parents taught us was important. The new generation is very different. So, but that's an issue that we are um very hardressing towards and we'd love to share that with you.

Thank you. I look forward to it. I was trying to find some math. No challenges for you. I mean, no. But you came up with a very meaningful one. 16 to 24 age 45,000 not employed or in training. So you've got plenty to do. Yes. We appreciate what you do. And I think one of the things in your math, you always had positive things instead of negative things. And so you are building and we appreciate what you do. So, thank you to come from coming to Boulder City and the National Association Workforce Boards Forum is certainly welcome to have a workshop here in Boulder City.

Thank you. And again, they're going to get to hear from you. You'll be on the stage with the other mayors. So, okay. We're excited about that. You mayor Hardy, if I can just ask the last the last slide was our ideas of how we could continue to build our partnership, but I'm grateful for the council woman making suggestions. The other one was maybe an introduction to your city manager who's here on the left. And those are the kind of things, right? It might be simple. It doesn't it could be that introduction to a relationship. That's where Mr. Thomas, would you like to stand up and thank you appreciate Thank you for coming.

Thank you. We appreciate you. Thank you. We've received that report and we will move to item number three uh presentation on the risk cost benefit analysis report by our fire chief Ken Morgan. Chief Thank you. Got our slides started. There we go.

Again, uh as introduced, my name is Chief Ken Morgan, chief of Boulder City Fire Department. I'm honored tonight to pres present you with our community risk assessment that we completed last fall. Tonight I'm going to do an overview of the community risk assessment. I'm going to talk a little bit about our community profile. I'm going to talk about our community risk assessment itself, the response and review uh and response plans that we have, the gaps that we've identified within that risk uh assessment, what our current situation is, and then I'm going to tell you how we're addressing our current such situation and present a multi-step process to close the gaps that we have. So, briefly, uh, Boulder City has a population of about 15,000 with a large senior population. Our senior population is nearly double that of the Nevada state average. We sit at about 2500 uh feet above elevation and we are surrounded by fairly rugged terrain and a very large valley to the south. interesting to me was Boulder City has 514 structures that are listed on the National Register of Historic Do uh historic places. Most of these were built between 1931 and 1942. We run a response area of about 212 square miles. We have recreation areas, municipal airport, which is the third busiest in the state. We have three major roadways, uh, Boulder City Hospital, four schools, senior veterans home, and a state railroad museum. We also provide mutual aid to the Lake Meade Recreation Area, Hoover Dam, and Hoover Dam Lodge, which is a 17story high-rise tower. We have critical infrastructure which includes natural gas lines, solar generation facilities, wastewater treatment plant, large utility

transmission lines. We also host several major public events. Uh the spring jamboree, uh July 4th, art in the park, uh one of the bigger ones, uh the worst fest, and of course the holiday light parade. We have 20 square miles of solar generation fields across 11,677 acres produce 446 megawws of power. Now, that's doesn't seem like a lot, but that will supply 786,400 homes power during hot season and over a million more in the cool season. So, substantial. And we are home to uh several um Tesla facilities. one that has 120 Tesla mega packs. For land use, our biggest land use is open space that's undeveloped. Uh 87% of the city. Uh only 1.94% of that's residential. Uh and but we do have 9.64% that is solar. So it's it's vast and it's pretty uh uh conclusive out there. So why do we do risk assessments? We develop a risk assessment assessment to help the fire department come up with a plan on how we can reduce risk within the city. It's the foundation of our standards of cover and it establishes our rep response plan, but it allows us to establish the consequences and the impact on staffing on the citizens and gives us the ability to start managing the risks appropriately. It is critical to our organization that clearly identifies these risks using a standardized methodology to classify and categorize these risks. It helps us with our risk reduction. Uh it identifies efforts that we need to put towards

reducing our risks within our community. And we do this through identifying those risks and providing that to our leadership and to the community leadership so we can make educated management decisions. So, how do we do a risk assessment? We look at a several areas. These are the highlighted areas right here. The fire risk, the emergency medical services risk, our hazardous materials risk, technical risk for technical rescue, and our aircraft operations risk. We also assess uh natural hazards and large public events. They're scored on a low, moderate, or high scale. And uh I can go through and read all these, but typically each one of those categories has a rating uh based on a mathematical formula. And I'll go over the fire risk and the emergency medical services risk because those are the ones that are the highest at this point. Our fire risk uh is assessed through a mathematical formula based on probability which is a five-year trend of what we've done a community consequence which is a loss of loss of life cost to replace and what kind of hazard the occupancy has and the impact of daily staffing or the number of people to efficiently and safety safely mitigate and handle the situation. Obviously the higher the score the greater the risk. If you look at the fire risk, our low risk is a six. These are our typical small trash fires, single vehicle fires, things that we can handle with the resources that we have. Uh the structure fire risk is higher. It's 26. And that's based on the on the uh amount of personnel that we need to handle a structure fire and the the consequence to the community of losing a structure. And of course, the high risk would be a larger commercial or high-rise risk. uh commercial would be our biggest issue. Again, that is a a personnel inensive situation that has a

high community risk or high community impact. So, he gets a score of 51.96. We do the same thing with emergency medical services and they're based on basically the same type of risks. Uh the consequence, the number of people we need, etc. Our high- risk, of course, are the uh catastrophic events. uh they're the personnel intensive one score of 32.19 uh and our moderate risk of 22 uh.72 and we do this for all of those categories so we can evaluate those risks. Additionally, we look at homes that are located on elevated or restricted driveways because these present a significant risk during a fire because of these occupancies. These are areas that our fire engine cannot access and we've come up with a plan uh with a special support vehicle that was developed to help us deal with those. It's a smaller vehicle that allow us to lay lines up to the to the house. Uh our EMS risk to do a good assessment on that we have to have a breakdown of what our call volume is. So 70% of our calls for service are EMS related. That is not uncommon nationwide. it runs between 65 and 80% depending on where you're at. So, we're pretty normal on that end. But, we uh responded to over 6,000 calls uh 6,000 emergency medical services calls from 2023 to 2025. They account for 77% as I say and our call breakdown is we break them into three categories. First is our ALS2 and what that means is it's these are the super critical calls. These are the ones that are uh really personnel intensive, high risk of loss of life, etc. And they're 3%. Our ALS1, which is the bulk of our calls requiring par paramedic intervention, 75% of our calls fall into that category, the ALS1 category. And then

the remainder of them fall into our basic life support or BLS category. From fiscal year 23 to 25, we ran roughly 2660 calls for service average annually. Again, 77% were EMS. That's about 1756 per year. In 2025, we saw 2723 calls of which over 2,000 of them were EMS, 39 fire calls, and we received mutual aid 30 a correction 29 times. And I'll talk about that in a minute. A lot of question about why we transport where we do. Uh, I'll go into that, but I just wanted to let you know in 2025, uh, just over or just under 50% went to the Boulder City Hospital. The remainder, uh, went to either St. Rose or St. Rose Sienna or other facilities, uh, and and the, uh, Henderson Hospital. Uh, call volume is rising. 2023, as you can see, was kind of an anomaly year. We actually went down, but in 2024, we rebounded and caught right back up. uh that has happened in numerous locations. I could not tell you why it happened, but we do know that 2025 has gone up and we're projecting this year a 6 point uh 6.9% increase in call volume over last year. And we we track that every month uh to to see where our trends are. We do believe that our call volume uh increases are directly related to EMS calls. And some of the factors we've identified, including an aging population, uh, as the population ages, they become less uh, resilient, more reliant on emergency service and health care issues and falls. The number of lift assists is something that we're seeing going up. And this is something we're taking a very close look at because these are typically run out, pick somebody up, help them back into

their chair, and go back in service. They uh, do tax our our system quite a bit. So, we're looking at these very closely to to see if we can find either a community risk reduction method to reduce them or uh through other avenues. We do have a a large visitor traffic that runs through uh the city. That does factor into the call volume and mutual aid responses to Lake Me and National uh Park Service areas account for a little bit of it. Uh but they're not significant. They're just time consuming. So, what are we doing to mitigate some of these? We're looking to establish fees for facility requests for lift assists. These are facilities that have medical staff on duty. Uh if we go to one of these uh lift lift assists at a medical facility, we're tying up our guys uh on a call that they should have staff to take care of. So, we're taking a look at that. Do we hire personnel to staff non a non-emergency apparatus? The problem with that is is we only have a single mission for that piece of apparatus. and we're not getting the full bang for our buck. It would help on the EMS level calls, but it's not effective for the other things we have to deal with such as fire, hazmat, tech rescue, wilderness rescue, etc. A multi-roll firefighter EMT or firefighter paramedic is optimum. Could we outsource to another agency? Um there are a lot of issues with outsourcing our calls to other agencies from delays of service to the cost of service. Depending on how uh agreements are made up um we would lose income on our ambulance transports. We could lose uh reimbursement through uh Medicare. There's a variety of things that we have to look at and we have not had the time to fully vet what these things would have an impact on her. There are uh agreements out there that um ambulance services pay the city based on what they're going to recuperate on runs and our run volume is not high enough at

least I believe it's not high enough to warrant them committing the service to that up here. Uh again that's something we've just started to look at. We've got to vet that a lot more carefully. Uh non-emergent calls. Uh there was talked about non-emergency calls. Could we could we pass them on to an ambulance? Again, the problem is is that for an ambulance service to come up here and do a a call that they're not going to transport on cost them money and they don't recuperate anything because they cannot bill for a patient they don't transport. But we do need to investigate this a little more and uh we are in the process of doing that right now. So this is our response plan response plan. And it gives you an idea of what we send to uh uh different types of calls for structure fire. We send everybody that's available and that includes the staff that's in the office if we're available. Um if we're uh after hours and we're not available, we all respond to that from home uh so that we have the command staff available. For small vehicle fire, as I mentioned before, uh typically it's one engine. Uh sometimes they'll take uh the rescue with them just so they have the extra personnel. uh a critical EMS or ALS call, we send an engine and rescue. And I'll go into that in a little bit here shortly on why we do that. On a non-critical, we send one rescue with two people on it. Again, smoke or odor gets a single engine. So, why do we do that? We know that based on national standards and past practice that we need at least 16 people on scene of a fire to manage it, to management, manage it appropriately. And we do not have that. We had if we've got everybody at work, we send eight.

So something's going to give there. Whether it be search and rescue, whether it be our rapid intervention team, um you know, slow down on our water supply or slow down on our backup line, something's going to give. And that's the safety factor that I worry about. For a medical call, uh cardiac arrest, we can do it with three. If you've done a cardiac arrest with three people, it's a lot of work. There's a lot of things that have to go on for that patient to have a chance to recover. Typically, we need six on that call, and that's why we send the engine with the rescue on uh those higher level EMS calls. There's a lot of things that should be done in a proper order to get them done. We are on time constraints by protocols uh and it gets hard to do based on two people trying to do it on their own. Um so we do send them the extra personnel uh to help them uh mitigate that situation. So what do we do? We we've broken our city into risk zones and this is to make it a little more manageable to see where the the the challenges really are. We break our city into basically three large zones. Urban one, urban two and rural. And each of the urban zones, urban one and urban two, are broken down based on what you see on this map right here. A risk risk assessment is then conducted on each subcategory to determine the overall risk to that specific area. So we know which part of town is is the higher risk for which type of situation and we can base our response planning on that. Risk areas to the north and east side of the city have extended response times. And I'll show you that in a in a second here on another slide. And it's based on the relative location of where our US uh fire station is. At one time, our fire station was pretty close to the middle

of town. It's it's not any longer. Uh these listed here in uh order from uh highest to lowest uh with the range being 9 minutes and 16 seconds to 8 minutes and 26 seconds. None of those meet our personal goals, our department goals, or the national standard. And I'll look at I'll show you those times specifically here in a minute. 38% of the time we have multiple units committed to calls. What does this mean? It means that it reduces our capability to handle another call. Uh it may mean that we have an ambulance on one call and a fire engine on another or two ambulances on one. But out of those uh a lot of it has to do with overlapping responses where we have two or three calls going on at one time. It reduces our response capability and and our ability to take care of patients. Uh the other thing we looked at is out of out of town hospital transports. They do delay our resources. Unfortunately, by Clark County Health District policy, we must transport patients to their requested facility. We have a 50 mile buffer. So if it's out of 50 miles, which virtually eliminates everything in the valley, then we can tell them no, we can't take you there. So if they ask us to go to California, no, we can tell them no.

But otherwise, we have to go to their the facil facility they request with certain exceptions. And there are specific facilities for trauma, burns, stroke, uh a uh specific type of heart attack. And the reason they we send those people to those facilities is because time really matters for them. Uh and I'll go I'll talk a little bit about that too here as we get into this. transporting patients out of town by calling a private ambulance uh would delay their transport. Plain and simple. We'd wait 20 minutes for an ambulance to come. Now they're 25, 30 minutes into their call and they're out of that special time zone that we have to watch. So it's not something that we can look at to do that way. And I've already discussed why we send two units. It's basically staffing to make sure the patients get t taken care of correctly. So what are our risk gaps? We've identified two specific risk gaps. Um the first one is staffing. Our current personnel levels are insufficient to meet the rising call volumes. We're seeing more increased times where we're unable to respond to calls because we don't have units available. We are seeing um times where we have to take person off the engine to go into the hospital because a patient's critical takes the engine out of service. Now we've got a piece of apparatus we can't use. And these are the kind of that's the staffing gaps that we have to look at. The other gap is a geographical gap and this inequity exists because response time to specific zones exceed that standard. The standard that we set and the national standard. Now you think that I might have come up on this I on my own. We did this gap analysis in 2021. It identified the same gaps. So, uh, a year later, the insurance service office comes in and scores our fire department, and that's how they, uh, they they they don't set the insurance rates, but, they give the insurance companies an idea of what or how we can mitigate problems. And, uh,

they knocked us for not enough engine companies, not enough truck companies, the way we deploy because we can't meet our goals and our standards, and we don't have enough company personnel on duty every day. So we do our 2025 update uh on the gap analysis and again no surprise it shows the same thing same issue. So for f at least five years we've known that we've got a gap within our service and we're trying to find a way to do to fix that and uh here in a second I'll tell you one of the things that we've done. So personnel additional personnel is a found foundation for our greater response capability. staffed units. The more units we have staffed, the more we can go to calls, uh, the less likely we're going to miss a call or not have the ability to transport somebody. And we have actually had a patient call us back and say, "Don't don't worry about it. We'll figure out how to get the hospital on our own." That is something uh, fortunately I was not here for, but I don't ever want to have to deal with that phone call. That does not happen often. Thank you. uh to meet the standard of seven uh 6 minutes and 20 seconds which is the national standard we would have to add two fire stations to the city just because of the geographical spread of the city one in the northwest and one in the southwest. This would reduce our response times well below the our goal of 5 minutes and or 6 minutes and 50 seconds and the national standard. Can we ac accomplish this? We can but we have to do it in a planned methodical way. make it responsible for the citizens transparent and uh e financially uh viable. So our current situation right now and I'm not going to go over the left side of that slide because I've gone over it once before uh but how we staff now right now we have eight people assigned each shift. If everybody's on work we have four on the engine which is

optimum. We have uh two on rescue 121, two on rescue uh 122. That's how we can staff. We have one person go on vacation, one person call in sick. We go down to seven. That's our minimum staffing. We have seven on duty all the time. How do we do that? Our engine gets cut down to three and we keep the two rescues up. And that's one of the issues we have. We're now starting to deplete our capacity. So what's the impact of that? Understaffing directly compromises our efficiency, the safety of the firefighters, and our operational workload. In a perfect Boulder City response world, having three ambulances staffed along with the engines staffed at four and our truck capable of being crossstaffed if we need it, our ideal staffing would be 10 on duty all the time. We have seven now. So, this is one of the ones that I wanted to show you. This is our uh geographical issue. We have a single response location from station 121. The green areas that you see on the map are the four minute zone. Those are the ones that if everything goes perfect, we can be on scene within four minutes after we depart the station. You can't really tell it, but on the edge of some of those between there and the yellow is a cream colored zone. That's a five minute zone. And those yellow zones right there are 6 minutes. Everything in another color is in excess of six minutes. Now you got to remember that we talk from our dispatch time, call taking time plus our time to turn the truck out plus our travel time is what our response time is. Anywhere that's not green is exceeding that time. So what happened last year,59 times we had more than one unit committed to a call. 38% of the time we have more than one unit. We have three, but 38% of the time, two of them are committed to a

call. And typically, uh, out of that, 789 of those times, we had no transport capability, which means both of our ambulance, our paramedic ambulances were tied up. That's concerning to me because of another call comes in, we have to now wait for an ambulance to come from the valley to come up here. 85 times we had no no capability at all to address another response for service. 3% is not real bad. on 15 of those, we did not respond to anything. And that's uh unequitable to the city. Uh the citizens pay for a service, they should each get equal service. And that's what we're trying to close this gap for. And again, our run volume is going up. I expect it to be up about 6% this year. We do have some help. Uh we do uh work handinhand with Henderson Fire Department. Uh virtually anytime we get a fire call that looks like it's going to be something real, we call them right away. Henderson's very good about knowing what we have responding to that call and adjusting their response to make sure we can meet that 17 person goal. Uh we also rely on them as our uh part of our hazmat team and for technical rescue. Again, with eight people, we could not handle a hazmat team or technical rescue by ourselves. We will need help. uh Clark County Fire. Uh we rely on them for fire response. Uh they're our backup to the technical rescue and uh we use them for um water resources if we have an area that we don't have hydrants. Uh just so that you're aware, Clark County was in the city the other night and they covered our station for about seven hours while we were on a call. That's the second time since I've been here that we've had to have them come up and do it. Uh we do have some agreements with BLM and the National Park Service. Uh they're very limited um primarily the wildland stuff and they do that. We do have a mutual agreed with mutual aid agreement with Nellis Air Force Base. Uh

they have a very large water uh resource available for us and they will respond if we have a military aircraft incident. And then we have we're a part of the Clark County mutant say this good. Clark County MU multi-jurisdictional mass casualty plan. basically says if we have something big anywhere, we all get together and we deal with it. Can't hit myself here. So, what are our near uh near-term needs? Additional space at the main fire station is our biggest issue right now. We are maxed capacity. So, our goal is to get a training facility and uh build our training facility, which we are doing now, and build our emergency storage capability, which we have done. We're proud to have taken delivery of that. We're going to start working on moving all of our emergency operations stuff into one location. That way, if we have a an issue, we have a one-stop shop. We can go in and get it one place, get it where it needs to go. The next thing we need to look at is administrative offices and an EOC training room. And we're in the process of doing that now. We've got a plan developed um to uh move the administrative offices to a new building adjacent to the fire station which will have a training room in it that will also act as an emergency operations center. And then our long-term needs of course sufficient staff to address our gaps uh for the multi multiple services and of course our new fire station down the road to get our response times back in line. So response times are big. Time is time is muscle as they're say. Time is important to us. So why is it important? Well, in the 2021 survey, I'll tell you it took us 10 minutes and 30 seconds average to get out to the Keys part of of the city. 10 minutes. That's a substantial amount of time.

The changes that we've made uh up until 2024 dropped that to 9 minutes and 12 seconds. And we made another adjustment to the way we were doing things, how we were dispatching calls and how we were receiving them in the fire stations. And you can see 2025 the impact that that had. It has actually taken a lot of the urban one zones and put them back into our goal and actually took one of them and put it into the national standard. The problem is it didn't address much the urban two zones. In fact, one of those zones actually uh um became a longer response time. So our goal is time is important to us. The national standard 6 minutes and 20 seconds. Our goal is 6 minutes 50 seconds. And we're meeting that with about half of the city. My goal is to meet it with all over the city. So why does time matter? Why does time matter? Well, first off, fire doubles every 30 seconds. So if you have a fire in your house, every 30 seconds that fire grows and it doubles in size. It's exponential. Um within four minutes we have flash over full involvement. Now four minutes from the time the fire starts takes a minute and a half roughly for the smoke detector if you have one to go off for you to alert the fire department. Takes us another minute or so to process the call. Another minute turn out and four minutes to get there. We're already behind the curve.

We're already two to three minutes behind the curve. for medical calls is critical because we know in cardiac arrest if we can get a patient into the hospital within 60 within 30 minutes and they start their treatment we can actually reverse a heart attack. But the key is that time. We have a time minute of five minutes from the time we arrive to get our first EKG done, make a determination on whether we got to go. So time matters. So if we are tied up on a call and we're taking 10 extra minutes to get to you, we're already well behind that curve. So time does matter and people matter because time matters. Stroke is the same way. If we can get you into a stroke center, they can give you uh the thrombolytics to break up the clots, reverse a lot of the damage. Uh the faster we get you in there, they have a a certain protocol. They've got to get certain things done and get those thrombolytics into you within 45 minutes. And again with with a heart attack if we can get that uh clot broken up within that 60 or that 30 minute window we can actually reverse the damage. So multi-step process. How can we close this gap? I propose a stepped process. The process is going to be several steps. It's going to take a little bit to get done. We've already started step one develop plans for administration administration training building that's in process. Um we are in the working with public works on some finalized ideas on that. Um and that's going to provide room for expanding our station for staff in that station. Number two is going to be to build that administrative training building and then reconfigure the offices into dorm rooms. The reconfiguration is the easy part. Um, we can have the administrative building uh up and running probably

within six months of the go because it's a modular constructed building. Uh, it's local building's already here. They just have to reconfigure it for us and they can put it together and it'll be a long-term solution for administration. Step three is to add a firefighter on each shift to increase our response capability. So, what is that going to do? Well, we anticipate that we will see a slight reduction in overtime as minimum staffing would remain at seven during this step. We pro provide some relief to the uh added expense to personnel. Reduction in mandatory overtime and I'll talk a little bit about that here coming up in just a second. Mandatory overtime is tough on our guys. First off, they work 48 hours and then to be told towards the end of a 48 hour shift, you can't go home. You have to work 24 more. uh mandatories are really tough and we try to avoid that at virtually any cost we can. But moreover, we have the ability to staff that third rescue about 25 to 30% of the time. So we can take a look at what kind of an impact it would actually have to have a third rescue up and running. So how would that look? Three more personnel. If everybody's on duty, the middle column, we have three on the engine. All three rescues would be up and running. If one goes off, the engine goes to four. We still have that capability of four on the engine, but we also still have two rescues. And if we go down to minimum, we're back to where we are today. Three, two, and two. So, why is this important? Um, part of the solution is to help mitigate the cost of adding personnel. At some point in time, I know we will have to increase our minimum staffing and add more firefighters, but it gives us a chance to take a look at how the impact of adding one per shift would work and then get let us forecast what doing a second person per shift would do.

So, step four would be to increase that minimum staffing from 7 to 8. This will won't have an impact on the personnel budget, but it will have an impact on the overtime budget. But then again, it also gives us that enhanced response capability, not only for fire calls, but primarily for EMS calls. While we're doing that, step five would be continue the development planning for the next fire station. We kind of know where it's going to go. Uh we uh the company that's doing our administrative building planning also builds fire stations in a modular format. So, we could do that in a stepped process, too. We could build a smaller scale fire station to maybe house one rescue. And then as the calls increase,

as the calls increase, we can add on to that for more dormatory space. We can add on to that for uh more space for a firetruck. So we have the capability to make it bigger without having to rebuild the entire station. Step five again is continue that development. And then step six is develop a timeline uh for construction and make a determination of whether we can hire the the third set of firefighters. Again, this is something that it's stepped process. Each step we can accomplish, we can take a look at, we can validate, we can be transparent on it before we move to the next step. And that was the key to the plan here was to be able to prove that we need to move to the next step

and give us a benefit of what we're going to get from that. So, how would that look? uh increase minimum daily staffing to eight. It's going to give us a three on the engine on those three rescues all the time when everybody's there. But if we go down to minimum, we still have four on that engine company and the two rescues. And again, that four is important. Uh it's 25% more efficient to have a fourth person on that engine and directly uh affects how our injury rate could be, how our fatigue rate could be, and our decision-m process. Plus, it allows us to get that uh initial strike at a fire with more personnel. So, what are we looking at uh for costs? Well, we know the headquarters right now is going to be about $2.7 million complete, and that includes uh virtually everything to put it in the ground. There's a couple of things that we have to to evaluate first, and we're in the process of doing that. Between the station project fund and the project 350 money, we have 2.6 six 2.2 million660,000. So we're a little short, $440,000 short to make step this first step really work. That is key to this a fire station. Right now, uh we're estimating between three and 4 million. By the time we build it, it's going to be closer to five, but that doesn't uh take into effect the cost of the modular construction. That will probably be a little bit lower. And we actually talked to the company. They've built a station in Orange uh Orange County, California, and they've got one under construction right now in Utah. So, they've got some experience in doing this. The three firefighters, uh the annual cost is roughly 632,000 depending on whose numbers you run, but uh I calculated them up and my best estimate right now based on numbers I got from finance is $684,000 a year. And that includes everything. That includes the firefighters. That includes their

turnout gear. That includes their air mask, their training, everything we need to put them online. Now, I know that in a perfect world, July 1st, if we get the funding to do that, we put them in service July 2nd. That's not going to happen. We know that we probably will not be able to get these guys online till late November just based on the fact that we have to do testing and and evaluation. But the fact of the matter is that's an avenue to get this gap, one of those gaps closed and it's very important to closing the second gap, that time gap. So, we analyze our call volume types for optimized response. We look at lift assist fees for medically staffed facilities. That's something that we're really going to look at closely. I do not know what the impact would actually be. Um, the fees would not be a source of income to the department. It's more of a deterrent that if you've got medically trained staff, they should be able to lift their patients. Uh franchise option, we do I do not believe it's a sustainable model simply we for the fact that we don't have enough run volume up here and we're kind of isolated in a in a corner of the county. Again, it does need more investigation. I've got update ambulance fees. This year, we asked for a 10% increase in EMS supplies because EMS supplies have gone up over the last several years. We've never increased our uh ambulance fees in the last six years. We're 19% behind where we could be. And based on some basic uh calculations, that's about $400,000 that we're missing in income. Now, do we want to jump our fees from where they are now up to what we can do by the health district max? Probably not. That's a pretty substantial increase, but we could step it up over the next couple of years and start mitigating some of that cost. We have uh new development. Um we have a plan to work uh for a fire service fee for new battery installations, new solar

installations, um data centers. Uh but there's things that we're looking at that could help offset some of the cost of this thing. Uh we can consider re redistribution of the solar fees to address the fire safety infrastructure and staffing. Uh we are very proactive in our grant uh pursuit. I'm itching to get the safer the staffing grant open. Has not opened yet. U the downside is that we did apply for an AFG grant last year. Um so did uh several thousand other departments uh to the tune of about $4 billion worth of requests with 365,000 365 million to fund them.

Crazy. So, it's incredibly competitive to get a grant. So, in summary, we do have uh growing uh service gaps. Our ability to staff units, our ability to respond to calls is becoming uh concerning. Uh we have taken an easy to a hard approach. We've taken the easy steps that we possibly could. Uh, one of the biggest steps we we did was implementing a new dispatch uh system that allows our guys to get the calls faster. Uh, that shortens some response times. We are taking a stepped approach of this and our step is basically take the step, evaluate what's going on with that step and then determine what adjustments we need to make and then repeat it. We make a step then we go back and we do that same process again. That way as we go through these steps, we're doing it openly, transparently, and validating it based on uh results of the prior steps impact. Uh step one is in process. The only thing that's holding up step two is funding. Um we're working with finance trying to figure out how to how to to uh um find that money that we need for the remainder of the uh administration building. Once that building's up, then we can move on to our hiring of the firefighters. uh and that would be our next step and then of course putting them in service. In closing, first off, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to present you with this. Um again, we did a a risk assessment in 2021. Uh it gave us the same information that the ISO gave us in 2022 and our presentation tonight, 2025 is our updated risk assessment let us know that the gaps are starting to widen out. They're getting bigger. We need to do something about mitigating those gaps to close a geographic uh gap as response times. Uh we need to build a fire station and building a fire station is for the most part non- effective

unless we have the staffing to put in it. So we have to get the staffing first, build the fire station, move the staff over and then we can really evaluate where we're at and then we can figure out what it's going to take if we actually need to build that third fire station down the road at some point in time and what kind of staffing we need for it. It gives us enhanced coverage for citywide EMS. It gives us enhanced coverage for citywide fire response. We have that third transport capability. Uh it will um substantially increase our personnel wellness by increasing their safety, their well-being, uh and their ability to to have time off in between shifts. Um and that's it. Thank you. Questions, comments,

when we had our sir, you're not finished yet. Sorry. Um, when we were had our briefing, you had mentioned that on these different steps, you're looking into some ways that you're going to come back to us with some ideas or you've given them all to us tonight.

I've given you a couple of them tonight. The one that I haven't really fully vetted is whether we franchise with an ambulance service to help mitigate the EMS calls. And I've looked at two models so far. I've looked at city of Las Vegas model and and the pros and cons of that is the annual service pays the city of Las Vegas to run calls in their district. They still have the fire department still has to go on calls, but they don't transport. The downside is they don't get the transport money for it. And with our number of transports, I think I don't think we're going to get anybody to use that model to come in here. There's just not enough transports to to validate what the cost would be.

So, you also stated that you're working with our financial department to see if you there's funding to finish up your building. So, that's an ongoing is that that's an ongoing thing. I I we're waiting for a couple other things. We've got to make sure that there's a couple other things that fall into place. load management on our emergency generator, that kind of stuff. How the power and water and sewer would hook up. Those things I think are minor. Uh the biggest a biggest roadblock we got right now is finding $460,000. Okay. The other one that I wanted to ask you about was the f and the 460. That's for the people basically.

That is no that is a cost for the administration building that we don't have the money to start the process. We've got to do that before we can add people. But we have a place to put them right now. So the in the past fire trucks took a long time, the EMS trucks took a long time to get made up and get here. Is is that something that maybe we should start investing in to get one coming so that a year from now we'll have a fire truck? I don't know. I think it was we actually have one on order right now. Um 22 months was the given time to get it built. Okay. Um, we're sending a a couple of people out to do the engineering part of it, I think, next month,

uh, in March. Okay. That starts that starts the process. And then, so we have that one in place, but we won't see that for probably another two years. Okay. That's what I was wondering if you could get the people, but you don't have the equipment for them to use. And then you were also going to look at the overtime using some of the overtime money into hiring somebody else. was that

well right now that we we have to look at the impact on that and I did a real quick analysis um from July till I think December and it would alleviate I want to say 140 overtimes. So that's that's that's a good amount of money. Is it enough to pay for the cost of three firefighters? No. But moreover, what it does is it eliminated 46 of those times where we had the mandatory people to stay to work. And those are the ones that are concerning to me because I have a firefighter that's been on 48 hours. Now I'm going to make him stand stand in 24 more. 72 hours. Your brain's a little fried at being at work. And now I'm going to go out and send that guy at 2:00 in the morning to make drug calculations and make decisions on life or death on a patient. Uh the fatigue factor worries me. So we do limit them to 72 hours. They can't work any longer. I want to say I don't feel it's fair to them either because it's their body and the stress that they're doing, the harm they're doing to themselves is kind of sad. Okay, that was all of my questions. Thank you. That great presentation.

You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I first like to say thank you for your service. Um the fire department has a special place in my heart. I shared with that that with you yesterday. Um I'd like to go back to um how we as a community could help and you said something about the community reduction method. What does that look like?

Uh we do a lot of community ris risk reduction and a lot of it has to do with uh extending that uh brain death time. We do CPR classes. That is essential. If we can get CPR started that extends that time a little bit for us, keeps the circulation going. We do um fire extinguisher classes. Um, we have a video and I think a couple of you saw that where a young individual was in a building and was unable to escape, needed help to escape and nobody knew how to use the fire extinguisher. That's a simple fix. We we can train people on that. Uh, we train them in first aid. Again, uh, if you're first a trained and you know it's a little boooo and not a big boo boo, maybe we don't need to call 911. We can take them to the emergency room on our own. So, we do a lot of that stuff. We also do um like uh work with the school kids so that they understand what fire prevention is. Uh we do um a lot of classes within our with our station with first aid. Again, I mentioned CPR, that kind of stuff. So, we're actively in the community trying to uh mitigate some of the things that might result in a call um so that they can deal with them on their own.

Okay. Um the other thing I had on here was the modular station. Now, that was just for the administrative building or a modular fire station.

There's two aspects of that. The one we're working on right now is a modular uh platform for an administrative office and it's going to be uh basically in the front parking lot of the fire station. Um that is pretty much done. The structure part of it already built. It's uh sitting at at the manufacturer right now. They're just waiting for the go-ahhead to reconfigure everything. But they do also build and have built fire stations on the same concept. And the thought is the concept is that you could build a fire station right now and then when the money is available, you could build a permanent fire station there. Pick this one up, move it to another location, you'd have another fire station. But the fire stations that they're building up in Utah are considered permanent structures now. So we're looking at that simply because the cost is a little bit less. the the administrative building building that we're getting right now, we're getting in a heck of a deal because the structure part of it's already built. We're saving about 800 to a,000 to a million dollars by buying this building partially built, which in my world substantial money. Um, the fire station would have the same cost effectiveness. it would still be more a little more expensive because it's not built yet, but u because it's a modular construction, the the basic panels are all built the same way and then they configure the inside of them for what we need.

And the last question that I had uh was the best the the battery um storage, you know, we have that big fire down there. Obviously, that adds on to everything you talked about technology and using a lot more water, hazmat training, which I'm sure is really extensive. So that adds on to everything that you talked about here.

That is correct. Uh the storage system fire um when we originally had that thought uh that fire, we thought we were going to be there for quite a while. Turned out we were, but not as long as we expected. But the fact of the matter is is it tied up everything we had for six, seven, eight hours. And we had to have other units come in. Henderson came and helped us with a fire. Clark County came in. They brought an engine in. They covered the station for a while. Eventually, we got to uh release some of the units so they could go back into service, but Clark County stayed for quite a while. We used that model again the other night

um when we were out with the in incident at the power plant at at the power substation. Uh Clark County came in and covered our station for us. That's the the great part of those mutual aid agreements is specifically with Henderson. I'm very happy with there because they they don't hesitate. They And same thing with Clark Kang. didn't hesitate and we made a couple of phone calls. Boom. We had a fire station, fire engine covering our station. And the neat thing about Henderson is they just put another station right down on Boda Highway. Yeah, they moved it a little bit closer to user closer. We don't want to depend on them all the time, but that's a good thing, too. Thank you for your service, sir.

Chief Morgan, thank you. Um, I think another um another community risk reduction topic you were looking for but couldn't quite find it was the um automatic external defibrillators that we have all throughout the community. Another community risk reduction effort that our our crews have worked on to get into the businesses, the schools, um churches, whoever has asked for it so that again we can

Yeah, AEDs are are phenomenal. Yeah, you don't have to be really trained on them. It's nice if you are because it's a little less nerve-wracking, but the instructions are right there. Put this here, put that there, push this button, and if everything goes right, boom, you got a heartbeat again. Um, so that's a phenomenal thing. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Uh the presentation is is extraordinarily objective

and it's great when we have data data that's proven over time and compared against standards and our own needs within our community. So phenomenal presentation and I think it's it's it's pretty evident that gaps exist. The question is, you know, how does the policy body and the the body that controls the purse strings want to manage that risk or are we able to manage that risk with the funds that we have available? I will say that, you know, coming bringing it back here for a moment, you know, we have a multitude, millions of dollars of capital improvement projects that have been presented to us, some for this fiscal year, some over the five-year term. we could as a body adjust uh our priorities and consider where that may lead us in our discussions um in the future. And then uh really what it comes down to how we can work together with our with our city manager and our finance department in finding the funds to carry out the phases that we need to to cover the gaps that we have. Um, so as as far as uh you know our our conversation from here on out, uh it's it's very objectively based and we appreciate the way that you've presented the facts, the figures, the times. Time is tissue. Time is life. And whether it's a fire or an EMS call or a vehicle accident or hazmat leaking, whatever it is, um time really plays an important role and therefore um and not only time but the amount of people we have to actually address the issue because then we can't be as timely as we need to if we don't have the amount of people we need to get to it. though

clearly stated um having of course been in the industry for well over a quarter century uh this all seems kind of redundant to me but um it's important that everybody here understand the critical nature of what we're talking about and it really is we are now tasked with managing our community risk and um people have asked why hasn't this been done over the decades es um well, you know, the city councils either haven't had the means or the will or the data to look at it in an objective manner or just flat not having the funds. And so we find ourselves where we are. Whatever the reasons were in the past, they are and there it's water under the bridge. Now we have the opportunity to look forward and and to manage that risk. So thank you for your presentation, Chief. I I had a question about the people. I understand there's a shortage of firefighters. Is that a problem or how long does it take to find one? And how long does it take to train a firefighter?

Typically, there's not a shortage of firefighters to find them. There's a large shortage of volunteer firefighters. Uh career firefighters uh usually aren't too hard to get. Um, typically it would take us uh probably four to six weeks to develop uh uh the hiring criteria. Obviously, we use what criteria we have. Then we've got to run a test um physical agility exam and then we can create a list. From that list, we can hire. Um I do not think we'll have a problem getting people that want to be career firefighters up here. We've got a wonderful department. Um that being said, once we get them hired, then we got to train them. and training depends upon whether they're certified as firefighters or not. If they come from one of the other agencies, which would be unlikely but possible, uh, and they're already certified, that training uh, window narrows because we just have to train them on what we do and how we do it. They've already got the basic firefighter stuff. But if we have to start from scratch, uh 10 12 14 weeks depending on the person individual and then they spend the rest of that year on probation and we continue that training while they're actually on staff.

Thank you. Question. Okay. So, people have accused me of doing the math. So, I'm going to do the math. Uh what I hear is right now we need an administration building before we can hire anybody because we have to have somewhere to put them when we hire them. So the administration building will be $450,000. Correct.

And we then can hire three people for a total of $632,000 per year which we'll be doing in the same place that we're at now. And that leads us to the third piece uh which would be uh a second fire engine a second fire station plus nine people to staff it. No. Um and that depends on our staffing model. Uh my envision right now is to staff it with a twoerson rescue, but I can't do that right now because the bulk of our calls come from this area. Um, so what we would do is we would hire two now and two later and then we could staff that third rescue all the time and that then would be moved into the new fire station initially.

Okay. So we Do you mean three now and three later? You said three. Yeah, correct. Three. What I meant was two groups of three. Yeah. But three now and then three later would allow us to staff it on all three shifts. So um I'm going to do this again. 450,000 now. And do we have that money now? We don't. That we're short that much money to get the administrative building, okay, in process. So we need 450 now. We need once we get that done, we need three people for 200 or 632,000 per year. Mhm.

And then we need the second fire station. And how much does a second fire station cost? Well, we don't know for sure. We're estimating between $3.5 to $5 million, but we're talking about a step that's okay down the road a piece.

So, so that when you say a step down the road, you're talking about one and a half years, two years. To be honest with you, I don't know because the step process we have to look after we hire the first firefighters and see what kind of an impact it has. Uh then we can move on to whether we're going to hire another one because we have to have those two to staff that third station. Uh and once we get those on then we can sometime in between there we'll start looking at avenues to build a fire station so that when we get the the second ones hired can staff that second rescue all the time we will then have the capability to put them in the fire station.

So 450 now three people after that building is done 632,000 per year. Second fire station for 3.5 million plus two people. No, no, three more. It' be three more. Another 600 600. It would be 632 again. And then the third fire station uh would be again the same kind of 450,000 plus the 600. So it'd be kind of the double. So you're talking about seven. you're pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Oh yeah.

So that's kind of our job is to figure out how to do that and that's why uh parish the thought we will many times go to the public and say what do you think about this way to do this? Uh there is no way that we can increase property tax to do that. I mean, I'll just say that right now. So, people aren't worried about their property tax. There has been a property tax cap. Can't do it. So, it's not going to be property tax. We have land that we lease that gives us revenue. And then we have uh enterprise funds that do their own thing. and we'll probably hear what the golf issue is. But there are things that we don't have options to do some of these things without using some of the resources, the fixed resources that we have. And so we have to decide as a city what we want to do with the fixed resources we have, which is called land. And that's where the city gets to choose many times for themselves, you know, what can we do? So, I think if we know that we have a potential um $10 million hole in doing what we need to do, we need to take that into account and say, okay, how do we get there? And that's where we're probably going to talk about different things that um nobody likes to pay money more money for what we get, but the reality is we'll need more money in order to be able to do a plan. And I appreciate you bringing up this plan in

steps because it gives everybody a little idea where we're going and how we get there. So, I appreciate your uh process and how you've walked us through. This has been invaluable. Uh it'd be more valuable if you gave us the money. But anyone else have anything? Okay. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you, Chief. And that will bring us to Can we have a break? We can have a break. Okay. We're going to take a break of no less than 15 minutes.

No less than 15 minutes.

No less than 15 minutes. That's good.

like to welcome. Like to welcome like to welcome I really would like to welcome your mic like to welcome test test check like to welcome

I rebooted like to welcome everyone back uh to our city council meeting. Uh we have now um gone through number three and we are now on number four which is a public hearing and Mr. Maze please educate us. Good evening, Mayor Hardy, members of the city council. Michael Maize your deputy city manager. The city has two commercial zoning districts. They're referred to as C1 and C2. Currently, within those zoning districts, residential uses are a conditional use. That means it requires a um public hearing before the planning commission to consider the appropriateness of those uses within those commercial zones. The legislature last year passed a bill which requires all counties and cities in Nevada to allow residential uses, specifically multifamily, as permitted uses in commercial zoning districts. staff's approach in responding to the state law is to modify our C1 and C2 zoning districts to allow residential uses as permitted uses instead of conditional. And then also to provide conditions under which those uses may be permitted to ensure compatibility with surrounding commercial uses. And so you have before you uh bill 2093 and mayor, as you noted, it does require

a public hearing to consider those text amendments that would allow residential uses as permitted. I can answer any questions. Any questions?

Any questions? No questions. Thank you. So it we would open the public hearing. Anybody who's online or here in chambers welcome to come forward and speak. Is there anyone on the phone? Okay, we'll wait a little bit and anyone wants to come forward and say anything about this. Um, please do. See no one and no one on the phone line. I'll close the public hearing. Come back to council. And what is the wishes of the council?

Uh move to approve 2093 findings listed in the bill. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Is there discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Anyone say nay? It's unanimous. Thank you. Of those present, I should say. Mayor, this bill will become known as ordinance number 1876 effective March 19th, 2026.

Thank you. And that's compatible with the state requirement. Thank you. Brings us to number five. uh discussion and possible direction for revenue sources, fund balances and funding caps and special reserve funds and Councilman Walton. Thank you, Mayor. Is the mic working? Okay. Um, chapter nine, uh, financial administration of our codes dictate and you have I'll have a handout that was provided by the clerk as well as some information uh in the packet um will be uh of of use to us. So, in 2010, there was uh a passage of um ordinances that dictated the the way that uh funds would be created using um the the lease, land lease money, and where it would be distributed and how we would then create special funds. And in 2011, those special funds began to be uh funded as well as we've created additional funds uh like the um special fund for the swimming pool construction and then ongoing for operations and maintenance. Uh that one is the exception to my statement that um in great degree the amounts were established 15 or 16 years ago and it's been basically on autopilot for that long and I think the the financial landscape is

not the same today as it was 16 years ago. And so what I was looking for was for council to hear from uh staff on the amounts, the caps, the amount going into this annually and for us to then consider are we still okay with the caps the way they were established? Are we still okay with the amount of funds going in on the annual basis or do we want to have any reconsideration uh not only in capital improvement project funding but also we heard from the fire chief tonight in uh needs that we have that um we need to consider how we might fund things. And as a part of this, we could consider are there monies going into these accounts on an annual basis that could be reduced into those accounts preserved for the general fund that could then go to cover operational costs such as a portion of three additional firefighters or whatever we might think is important for the city as we consider financial u prudent financial stewardship. So, that's my intro to this. Um, and I think it'll be good to hear from our city manager and our finance director on the special funds, the amounts going in, how much we've paid out over the years, if it seems to be the right cap and the right um annual contributions to those. So, there we have it. Thank you, Council Member Walton. Just a few comments and then I'll probably invite our finance director to come up if the council has any particular questions regarding the special revenue funds. As was indicated, they were

created a number of years ago. I I think it's worthwhile if the council has direction for staff that we could uh specific direction for staff that we could take a look at. some of the uh items that have been mentioned such as the uh the caps that have been set on the reserves and how the how the reserves function and um we have uh each year um we provide a a nice summary report. I think this was included as part of the packet. Our uh finance director also put together a nice table that gives a brief outline for each of the funds what the caps are. uh some of the thing, you know, still relatively new to the city's finances. But one of the some of the things that I've learned in speaking with her and reviewing that table that's included is uh the caps are not fixed. They they're not um set at one level and remain there. They're actually based on things like 5% of the overall assets of the city. And uh some are b you know, one of the funds is for compensated absences. If we have a an employee who retires after a number of years with the city, uh that would be in before we had the fund. It's my understanding that that was a large drain on that particular department's budget for that year. And um and so it was set up to address many of all of these funds were set up to address some type of a large what would otherwise be a large hit to that department's budget or to the general fund. So um we monitor these on a regular basis. you you will see in your financial reports from the finance department there's at least a page in there for each of the funds a lot of times there will be a comment at the bottom it will say that these funds are uh operate can't remember the exact wording Cynthia that that these funds are operating as planned or operating as expected um they are invested they're they're pulled together and invested and they earn significant investment income for the city that those fund those um the interest that's earned then is a

portioned back into each of the funds as well So it it earns money while it sits there. But I also learned one thing is that there are recurring expenses. So for example that compensated absences fund uh over the past few years that table includes I think it's three years worth of data on uh how much was taken out of the fund. So the money doesn't just go in and stay locked there. There there are most four of the five funds have regularly has money being taken out to pay for it. So uh one is the vehicle fund. So each year as part of the a part of the budget process, the city will uh identify vehicle or equipment needs and and so that fund is uh for for that purpose and um and then Cynthia can go through some of the others if you have particular questions, but I would I would draw your attention to that table. I think it's uh very helpful in giving a very succinct overview of what the funds are for and how they were set up. If I can add to that, the the the table I believe you're referring to is page on my electronic version in PDF is page 108 and the packet of 132 and it's at the end of the the the slide presentation if you will. That's what you're referring to, right?

Correct.

Okay. And in addition to that, if I could add also um let's also hear from our finance director. We have the the general the excess balance in the general fund. And we've talked recently about the percentage that the state requires, the percentage that we as a city have determined that we would keep and then the excess above and beyond that and how that compares to other funds. Um, you know, we have the um revenue stabilization natural disaster fund, which revenue stabilization would be part of why we keep those reserves where we have them. Um, and and so we have funds that could be used for similar things. And so when we look at those in totality, um, it's important to understand that, you know, multiple at least two. And if I can find the um extraordinary maintenance uh repair and improvement of capital asset fund is also one that could be used as a stabilization of a shortfall if we have an an an extreme um need for extraordinary maintenance. And so we've got multiple funds here that I think we if we once we compare all of them we'll be able to decide as a council are these the right amount or not. I'm not suggesting that they are or that they aren't. I think it's just been so many years that it warrants a review and a and an assessment from council. So,

thank you. Oh, Cynthia, before sorry, Director Sneed, before you begin, if I could just I should have started out too with the overall view so that the the public and I know the council knows this, but um for those who are not uh familiar with the city's finances. So, these funds are going into the reserves are um are from the uh lease revenue, our land lease revenue in the Elorado Valley and and elsewhere. So, city lease revenue, 20 under the city charter, 20% of those revenues go uh to the capital improvement fund. So, that's for the city's infrastructure uh and all all of the uh nice parks and the facilities that we have here. The other 80%

Mr. City Manager, we need to differentiate. That's the voter approved capital.

I have that note here and I forgot to mention. Yes, it's a voter approved fund. Um, director Sneed can give you a few more details on how much that generates each year and how that is a portion to the capital how, you know, we bring that before the council for direction on how those funds are used, but it's 20 just in general, 20% of those funds automatically go to the capital improvement fund. The other 80% then is divided. Now, so of the other 80%, 20% of that goes toward the operational expenses of the city. So into the general fund and that helps for the general operations of the city and then that leaves 60%. So uh so there's 20 to the capital and 20 to the operational expenses. The other 60% is divided between the two funds according to the direction of the council. So the direction of the council that we're dealing with now 20% of and I don't mean to be too uh technical about this but 20% of that 60% then goes to the capital improvement fund again uh 70% to their operational expenses and then we get down to this smaller amount it adds up to the last 10% that is the last 10% is divided among these special revenue funds. So 1.1% to compensated absences fund, 1.1% to extraordinary maintenance fund. That's if something large breaks and we need to fix it, another 1.1% to revenue stabilization, and another 1.1% to the risk management fund. And then the last 5.6% goes to the uh vehicle and equipment replacement. Again, just to give anyone who's listening or the general public an idea of where these funds are coming from and how they are divided again as directed by the the city charter and ordinance requirements of the city. And all of that is explained in this lovely brochure that we provide because it it does uh get a little bit complicated, but this tries to explain um it it does a very nice job in a

succinct way of describing where those funds are how those funds are used. Thank you, city manager. And good evening, mayor and council. I'm I'll go through this uh this table briefly to describe each of the funds and the ins and the outs and the ceiling. So, the first one is the compensated absences fund. And now, compensated absences is actually an accounting concept that really means your payout when you separate from the city. Um it it's this fund is only for governmental employees meaning the the utilities and um airport and and the other enterprise funds are not captured here. So when an employee separates they are entitled to be paid whatever their unused vacation leave balance is as well as in some cases based on policy some of their sick leave could be paid out. So that's that's what this fund does is when somebody separates and we do that payout, it it it gets charged to this fund. Now the the benefit of that is that it it keeps constantly in the the general fund for salaries in the various departments. If we had it as we did 25 years ago, um any of those separations and payouts would hit the department budget and often that meant holding vacancies and not refilling those positions until such time as past that we had the funding available again for that. So that's really the the benefit of doing this. So, as as city manager indicated, what comes into this fund is 1.1% of that lease revenue, which equates to approximately $230,000 a year. So, it's it's not a lot. Um, what we've been paying out the last few

years is u well, you can see on the chart here, 730,000 in fiscal year 24, fiscal year 25 it was 205,000. And so far this year, 6 months into the year, we've already paid out um almost $400,000. So, it's coming in at a rate of 230 and it's going out at a at a greater rate than that actually at at this point on on average. Um to give some context to that, that is uh in the first two years that I mentioned, that was 14 employees that separated and had available balances to be paid out. And in that first six months of this year, there was 12 employees that separated and had um a payout that hit this fund.

Can can you tell us what that uh payout that had nothing to do with PERS? That's correct. That is has totally separate from PERS. This is acred vacation time um and and in some cases some sick time depending on if you you know how the policy falls out and and those payouts are not persable. that doesn't count towards your retirement benefit. Okay. So, let's if you don't mind, mayor, can we talk about each one? Yeah. As we go along, did you have anything more to say about that?

I I was just going reading down the chart to say the fund balance at the end our last fiscal year audited balance was $2.4 $4 million. And then the ceiling is is defined as the the total compensated absence is liability as determined from our audit. And for last year that was 5.1 million.

So for context, what we say total liability, we uh have an anticipation of the average payout for each employee. And so the ceiling is the the average payout times 200 and a few employees. Is that correct?

We do a very thorough analysis and we look at each individual employee, what their rate of pay is um and what their their vacation balances are and and sick balances and and we calculate what if if this person had left on June 30th, what would that payout have looked like? And so that's the liability that that we are this employees are entitled to this and we would have to pay that out, right? But it's times 200 and some odd employees, right? You figure that the total liability is for every single employee in the city that has vacation and and sick leave.

Thank you. That's what I'm driving at. So my point in this particular case, I do think the balance cap is excessive or the ceiling because we're we're carrying that for 200 employees. That's a a lot of liability that 12 went this last year in the first six months of this year. So from July through December, which we had 12,

which I think is quite an anomaly. I don't I don't know how many leave on average per year, but from my experience um in a much larger city, it was not entirely uh usual to see that many people leave in one fiscal year and especially so that's you know a pretty large percentage of the employees that left. I can't imagine that we would have that type of turnover year after year after year. Um and your data shows that um it's it's variable, right? We had for three years 1.4 million, which is roughly, which is kind of a lot. Uh my question is if we spent three 1.4 million over the last three years for payouts, the balance is still 2.44 million. Um, did that fund get seated with a large amount of money 15 years ago? So that because if it was only growing at that $230,000 annually and we're making these kinds of payments every year, we would not have a $2.4 million balance. Right.

It was initially funded out of the general fund. I don't know the exact dollar amount that that was that first seed money as you described it. Um I will also u indicate as as uh city manager indicated that in addition to the lease revenue there's a a piece of u interest income that that comes into here but that varies wildly the and that stays in each individual it's it's after it's all lumped together invested returns come then the percentage is divvied back out into each individual fund. Yes. Based on cash balance. Yes.

Right. Yes. And is it accurate to say that for this fund as well as every other one of these special funds that those funds are restricted for use only as defined in the chapter 9 of the financial administration. So they can't be crossed. Well, we'll take some from here and we'll put it in the general fund. We'll put it to capital. It's only for that use. That is correct. Okay. Uh okay. So right now we're halfway to that ceiling what as calculated for this current number of employees based on the calculation that you did. Right.

So basically the balance right now is rather than 100% of the liability, it's at 50% of the liability at at June 30. That's correct. Right. So and since June 30, we've paid out 400,000 more. Okay. So right now we're about 50% of that. Right. So, it would it'd be approximately 2 million and change. Well, if you have the total liability listed at 5.1 million, 2.55 would be half of that. Yes. 50% of the liability, right? Yes. If if I my math is wrong, you correct me. I don't want

correct. I was referring to fund balance and not the not the total liability. So, right. Yeah. The fund balance is right here as you listed 2.447 million. And so that's roughly about half of what the ceiling is calculated at for 200 plus employees. So, uh, I'll I'll leave that as it is. We can we can readress this unless anybody else has any questions. Go ahead. You're bringing all these things up, so I'm having a good time. So 1.1% of the lease revenue goes in and that's the only thing that goes into the fund. Is that right?

There is also a small amount of of re u interest income from our investments that that come in. Yeah. Yes. Yes sir. And so of the one and a half what is the 1.1% of the lease revenue? What number is that in? That's approximately $230,000 every year. Okay. So if I have 14 employees leave and how many employees do we have 20 32 H Michael do you know how many employee full-time employees we've got

224 224

and so if we have 224 and 14 out of 244 before is like 10 out of 200. So it's like 5% or something like that. So if I have 5% of the employees leave on an average, and that's a big average because we don't usually get 14 leave in one year. So if we get 5% of the employees leave, um then we can figure out what that would be. you know what they would leave and so that would have been close to what we would have we paid out of the when the 14 left. So how how much did we pay out when those 14 left? 397,000. So 400,000. And I also want to remind you that but that number is only for six months. For the first six months of the current year from July through December, we had 14 separations and paid $400,000.

So do we have to pay another $400,000 because Well, it depends on who separates from the city. So that was paid out. I mean that's history. That's Yeah, it's paid out. It's gone. So we still have the last half of the year that So if we look at what our prior um separation was, it probably wasn't 5% separation. What was our prior separation? So in fiscal years 24 and 25 we had for the full year and each year had 14 separations that had payouts.

And so it's about 2.5% of the people leave on a given year. And so if they're 2.5% so we can do that math and see how much money we need to do and what would happen if there was something go wrong and people had to leave because of whatever. So can we have a a cushion is what we're looking for. What's the cushion that we need in order? And I think that would be somewhat predictable with using the numbers that we have. If the worst we ever had was 14 leave and we use that as the cushion, then we can say how much we would have to have in the worst case scenario so far.

We we can certainly look to history for for some of that. But of course, as time goes on, wages increase, which increases that that those that payout amount, right? But if we look at the percentage of people leave, we know we do the percentage then of what the overall salary was that they left with. So we can always keep an eye on that salary amount that's going to change. But we we know that we're projecting 5% of people leaving

and the salary overall is going to go up, but it's still going to be 5% of that salary. So we can say okay that percentage of salary we have to make sure we have available with a cushion in order to do that. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes sir. Make sense? It it does make sense. Yeah. There's a there's a lot of options we could consider as we go along the way. I I have some other thoughts about it, but yeah, I mean, and and from my experience in municipal government, most people leave in the first half of the year because they view that as tax liability beneficial.

And you know, you might have the few stragglers in the second half of the calendar year. Uh in the fiscal year, the first half of the fiscal year, you don't see it a lot because that's July through December. not as many go as after January for whatever reason. They they think that's gonna save them money on their taxes. So we see the the the number increase around that time of year from my personal anecdotal experience. Steve, can I ask you a question? When you say leave, are you talking retiring? Retire. So these are retired. Separate from the city. Okay. So um they could quit. They could quit whatever the separation.

Okay. That's I just wanted to know when you say leave, are you talk? Yeah. the terminated and then they get that and it does not include PERS. We don't pay PERS money on that at all. Okay. Yeah. It's their cash out for their earned leave per their labor contract or if they're not contract employees, whatever the agreement is that they're working under. Okay. Is that a fair statement?

That's that's good. So if we change the definition then of what the risk is our 48% actually would not we would be more to your point. We would actually be 45 or we'd be 55 or 56 or 58% of it funded. understanding the cushion that we would predict would people be leaving

I you know from my two cents here you know this is the group conversation 50% of the total liability so if we have 224 calculate that for 112 to me that is more than enough cushion we're never going to have 112 we're never going to have a hundred people or 50 people leave in a given year. We got some big issues if we have that many people separate from employment in the city. Um so for my two cents, I believe that a 50% liability is more than enough cushion there. And then we could consider once we get to that, how do we maintain that? Right? Do we say, "Okay, well, we're we're riding that 50% cushion and do we want to reduce the amount per year going into there?" Because we know the cushion is pretty large and we could, you know, have the same amount or less or once the once the 50% is met, then the remainder goes to the general fund for other expenses or however we want to manage that. But I think this is a good first step, a good first topic for the special funds. That's kind of what I was driving at is

determine. Right. I have a question for Cynthia. You are the certified public accountant. I read that. What do you recommend as a safety point for us? I see Steve's idea of 50%. Good idea. What as a CPA, what would you advise me to do? If it were my business,

my recommendation would Well, let me back up just a little bit. I do want to acknowledge that in in 2025, that was the first year of some new accounting standards that uh surrounding compensated absences that actually increased that liability. It's a mandatory calculation that we do and it brought in some other components which increased the liability. Um I would my recommendation would be to look at there's two parts to it. There's what one year what we think we're going to have to pay out in the first year and then long you know everything thereafter. I would recommend um if if you have the desire to change it to uh do just the long-term portion which is about 4 million instead of the six or instead of the five million. Let me get my step financial statements out here. I mean, it's uh it's a it's an important safeguard and but I do acknowledge that it has been artificially increased with the NUA accounting standards. So, if there was a desire to lower it, um my comfort zone would be um to that long-term portion, which is 4.2 million. And then it's

and and leaving it at the same percentage, the 1.1% each year. Yes, I think that's a a a good uh addition every year to to help keep us replenishing what we're paying out mostly. You would take a million 12 out of that and leave the 4 million in there. So the 4.2 million, my recommendation is for the ceiling. That's that's just it's a number that says, "Okay, when it gets to this amount, then then we discontinue adding money to this fund and instead add it to the swimming pool." And do we know what percentage that puts it at? What percentage? Like 50%, 75%.

What does the number 4.2 million represent? That represents our um analysis of what the compensated absences, the payouts would be for years two and beyond. Okay. And the one approximately 1 million is for the current one just the first one year. It breaks it into current and then the long-term is years two and out. For how many people? For how many people? For the entire uh full-time those that have um

vacation balances and sick balances that would subject to payout. So, are you still recommending having um the liability or the ceiling as 100% of the employees total liability? You're just reducing the number. If you break that big number into two pieces, we have I'm I'm suggesting that we keep the larger piece, but eliminate the smaller piece. I your pieces were not clear to me when if you addressed them clearly, I totally missed it. So, I'm going to ask you to go back. Okay. What were the two pieces you're talking about?

So, the total liability is that 5.1 million. That liability is there's a shortterm portion, one-year expectation of of payout, and then there's the long-term meaning and long-term meaning years two forever. So, it's broken into 4.2 million and 1 million basically. So, so, so I I think we're all kind of talking for how many people?

For the entire uh population. Well, for governmental employees. Okay. So, that 224 number includes not government employees. When I say not government, I mean government funded. We have the enterprise fund. So, the utilities, the airport, okay? um those employees however many there are are not included in this fund in this calculation. So are we protecting the those people too?

Yes. So the difference is and this is one of those differences between governmental funds and enterprise funds which will come up here shortly um is the enterprise funds because we have to fully burden every expense related they that each fund has to bear their own liability of compensated absences. This fund is for the governmental employees. Yeah. And how many are those? I there's probably this is a guess 190 maybe backing out what's in our utility funds and air airport.

Yeah. So are you suggesting that we carry the ceiling as the full balance for 190 employees? I'm suggesting that we carry it at the long-term liability amount which is the four and for this year was the 4.2 million and you know notches it down from what what the 5.1 million is.

Yeah. I you know when you talk about the long-term liability you know we're getting into a realm that you know is is is for governmental accounting right? So I'm trying to trying to grasp that. Um, but if it's continuing to be funded, then why are we concerned about keeping the ceiling at the long term when we're still putting in 1.1 million or I mean when we're still putting in 1.1% 230,000 but that 1.1% amount can vary based on the lease income, right? Yes. Which is very predictable. We we know what our lease

Yeah. But I mean, depending on a lease that we sign, that 1.1% is going to go up, right? Yep.

So, so I'm still I'm still a I'm asking the question when you're talking about that long-term year two and forever, yet we're still funding it with 1.1% per year. Why are we concerned about that two to forever when it's still being funded? The reason I would choose the one year to take off of that um liability is because typically um vacation and sick time is used throughout the year. So the the one year okay this is getting into some um

keep terms as much as you can. So when we do this analysis right we have to include what we believe people will take in their vacation in the you know in any given year how many hours based on history and we do a you know very thorough analysis of that isn't that included in their salary because they're taking that's exactly where I'm going with this yes that that that first year is going to be largely people that are still on the roles they're they're taking their vacation they're taking their sick time and that is reducing the liability throughout that first year and that's all happening in the general fund in their normal.

Do you mean the first year of employment while they're taking leave or just the first year of what? So for the next year we know that people are going to take vacation and so but as they do that it reduces this liability and it doesn't hit the this fund. It don't it hits their home department the salary. Yeah the salary lines. Yes. May I make a point of clarification? I was hearing from the council a question on on why the ceiling matters if the fund is going to continue to grow by 1.1% per year. Is that a question I heard

is because my understanding and I guess a a point of clarification for finance director is once that fund hits the ceiling will that 1.1% of lease revenue continue to go into that fund or will it go into other places?

It does not continue to to go into this fund. It would go to the uh swimming pool fund, but the governing creating documents of that fund suggest or mandate that any overflow, no pun intended for the swimming pool, but any any of these funds that um that hit their ceiling that those revenues cannot go in there any more. So, we diverted over to the swimming pool fund. That answers my question. I couldn't figure out where we were going with this. So, where does the money go then? Does it go to capital? I'm sorry. It goes into any any um operation or capital. Operation or capital in the in which fund?

The swimming pool. It Well, right now it's capital because we don't have operations in the swimming pool fund. Right now it's to help. It could be operational too. Once it comes online, it will also take care of operations. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm just sh That's perfectly clear. I go with that one.

The it may be and and then after the pool's in operation for a period of time, this exercise may need to happen again to determine if all those excesses going into that fund are the right amount or not. Right. Um I I'm wondering if you know I still don't believe that we need the full u liability for 190 employees. I think that's excessive for a ceiling. Or if we want to consider keeping a ceiling, I mean a cushion, if we have 12 people leave, we have a cushion of 175 potential people. That's a pretty big cushion. But do we then change the percentage? Do we say, you know what, put don't put 1.1% in there. Put 5%. So that frees up operating money to pay for other expenses like we might be considering at some point down the road.

Right. Right. That's I think what this exercise is going to help us determine at each fund what does that ultimately end up at. And if if all of us believe you know what or the majority think leave it the way it is great. Then we've done the exercise we visited it. We can put it on the shelf and talk about it again at another time. I I really appreciate that observation and I was sitting here saying, "Well, what happens to money then?" So, we've just talked about what we need $10 million for, for instance. Yes.

Um, not that that ever came up. Um, but there if we don't put it one place and we've got it, where do we put it? But that's not part of this discussion as much as we would have access the money that we haven't paid out in salary or sick leave or anything else. We've got a ex I'll call it a excess of money that we didn't have before because it was put in a silo that we didn't touch until somebody left. What I would really like to see because I I'm not a CPA is on this $4 million that you brought up, I'm going to go back to that. How many people does that four million cover? Does it cover 50 75%. What I would like to see is what is the percentage and are we legally allowed to remove this 1.1? Could we take it to 1%. Um, that would be my question. And I know there's a bunch of questions here. And so we can put that money in the pool. Do we have to put it in the pool or could we put it into something else?

So there's three questions. There's three questions in there, right? Um so the the the 4.2 million is the relates to the 190 approximately 190 uh employees that are in you know captured in this in this fund. Um and it it relates to what we expect to be have to pay out in the out years not you know in that first year is in based in the on their salary in their home departments they pay for that. So that's that's where the 4.2 is for all those 190ish employees. So at 4.2 you still can cover 190 employees. Yes.

Okay. So what I'm saying to you I think and I didn't make that clear is so what what would it take to do 50 employees? What would it do to do 75 employees and have a little graph would it be how many million there to cover that percentage of people? We would have to do different like what if scenarios and and calculate under different um circumstances. Um it it we still have to calculate it for financial reporting purposes that the full amount but for the purpose of setting the ceiling you know that's a council decision something that would be easy um that yeah we can run some we have the data be you know for the audit we could run different scenarios.

Now this extra excess money can only go into the swimming pool or can go wherever we designate it to go at this moment it can only go into the swimming pool fund from any of these pots. Yes, that's correct. Okay. But we could change that that if council desired, they could um Okay. Yes. Because that's where I'm really stuck. I really need to know what this percentage should really be and why you would want it at 100%. I'm not quite sure I understand that I portion of it.

So, let me step back just a little bit. It's all about risk management and prudent financial stewardship, right? And I do want to point out that pool pact has set us as the gold standard to other entities in the state. Um because we have you have the triple crown. So you great job a lot of money in the bank these you know safeguards um to keep us running efficiently should any one of these types of things occur.

I I just feel that's my opinion Dr. Mayor Hardy. I I don't feel like I can make a decision unless I knew what percentage it took to sit down with a calculator and figure out what percentage it took. And I I don't think having all your money tied up in one area is the best idea, but you've got to be able to cover those people and cover for a couple years in case something happened uh like COVID again and the money is not coming in. So then you've got to be able to cover yourself for a couple years. So that's why it would be nice to know how much money would cover how much money it would take and and what are we going to have to do with that money. So that's what I need. I think I need it spelled out for me. That's I think what I'm saying. May I um just offer a I believe and I wasn't there when these funds were created but um given the accounting standards and the ceiling that was put forward I think the ceiling is not uh meant to be a an amount that the city needs to save just in case everyone left in one year or two years. this this money this that the these amounts are the city's liability in perpetuity. Um annual leave and what what these employees are earning they have a right to that leave and it the city will pay it out at some point whether it's in year two or 10 years from now. So I think the policy behind these accounts was to have that savings account to save that money so that the city has it for all the employees in perpetuity and then once that ceiling was hit the other income could be used for others that I think that was the policy at the time and that can can of course be changed and also the amount that the fund grows per year can be changed as the council pointed out

earlier to free up the uh revenues coming in to for other purposes. I just wanted to I thought that might be helpful to answer your question, Councilwoman Booth, on why the 100% was was there.

For me, I'm just really stuck on wanting to know what that is. And I understand about the ceiling and and about we don't have to have that much money there. What you're saying, but what is the financially the prudent thing to do? I mean, is it 50%, 75, or is it 10%. I think we need to look at and what those are and how long does it take to recoup that money at 1.1% a month so that because we're we're spending more than the 1.1 each year though of the three years you have here. I don't know if it's been that way all along but if we're we're doing that we can pretty much see that 7:30 was the highest here but I just I can't I I can't function unless I know what the different circumstances are. That's where I'm struggling with for myself. And I I get this number isn't important maybe to you, but it's I think it's for the citizens of Boulder City. We we need to make sure we can pay them when they get ready to leave. At least I'd want my money then. And Cynthia, I have a question. Is this same scenario for each one of these pots? There's five. First of all, I think we should have had this graphic up so everybody can know what we're talking about because I'm sure they're going crosseyed out there. But um so we we are talking about the compensation absences. Same same scenario for the extraordinary maintenance and on and on.

It's there are some similarities but the funds have different purposes. Okay. But it it to the extent that the funding comes in at the 1.1% of the lease revenue, yes, that is consistent. still that cushion in case something may happen. I I I I'm trying to understand overall Steve U is the point we're trying to get to what we could use out of this for something else. Is that the bottom line? As I um tried to outline at the beginning, I don't know that this exercise has occurred in 15 years.

It's possible. And you know, I I wasn't watching or paying attention to 10 years ago if council did this exercise or not. Um I reasonably certain that didn't occur in a council meeting within the last 5 years. Um, so I think it's just important for us to talk about what's there, what it's used for, how restricted it is, and do we believe that the reserve amount in each of these funds is still the right amount.

And maybe we'll come to that conclusion that it is. Sure, maybe we won't. That's all I'm proposing is that we go through the exercise and consider is it right for where we're at today. Consider the history, right? what we've paid for the various funds over the last, you know, five or 10 years, however much data we have, and then make a decision. We do have some some serious financial decisions to make. Yes.

When it comes to not only uh just the operating accounts and capital improvement, but from what we heard today, is that going to affect our conversations in the next two months before we finalize the budget? And I think it's important to have this conversation right now as a part of that bigger picture. That's that's my intent in bringing this forward.

I think it is prudent. We just had the fire chief talk about a safety issue and and monies that we may need and and we probably will be looking under every cupboard, you know, pulling out all the drawers to see where we could find money for five stations and all that. So, of course, it's prudent. I just wanted to know if as we go through this exercise of each one was that the end goal. So thank you just just revisiting what yeah and if it results in in in you know determining that there is recurring funds that could be made available through any adjustment we feel is prudent then there we have it. If not then we got to look elsewhere.

Okay. I have another question here on the extraordinary repair improvement of capital assets. That could be a fire truck. Correct. No. No. Okay. Golf cart. It could be an improvement. So, are we ready to move on to that fund from compensated absences? Are we done with comps? Okay. So I let me just so to answer your unspoken question when I was on city council I had an ostic that said preserve the reserve.

So that was in 992000 we had this discussion about you know what we're doing with it. We know that we have to have a reserve according to good accounting accountability. And so that's you know the underlying question is how much do we need to be able to meet a standard that somebody says this is a safe standard and somebody's probably said that you know what it is that you have to do to be able to make sure you can uh afford the risk and we know that 14 people was an outlier and so you know what is it that is and that's where I So, how many people re, you know, what's the percentage? At any rate, I the the probably the unspoken thing is what you just said, Councilman Asher. What can we use the money for in order to justify changing the risk? And it would be we're talking about changing a risk, albeit not very much potentially, but we don't know. But if we change the risk and the risk isn't as much as we changed it, then we're glad because we're okay. So, we want to free up revenue in some way to be able to meet our ongoing upward cost of employees that are current, let alone that separate because employees get raises. So what is it that we can do that's a responsible thing to do? and that responsible thing to do. I don't know if we have the uh ability to either understand or know

what the responsible thing is by people who are smarter than me and then be able to figure go down and say okay we are saving money that doesn't need to be saved that can be used and if we use that money in a responsible way we may save lives

quite frankly. And I I see that as this discussion is what what can we do that allows us to free up money preserving the reserve so that we don't overestimate and that we allow us to be able to make decisions that will be critical for the lives and health and welfare of the people who live here. So, I appreciate you bringing this forward because it's not just this one, but as you point out, this one, this one, and this one, and this one are all going to add up. And by adding up, we may actually get something that we didn't know we could get.

Did I say there you go,

Mayor? If I could add one additional thought. So this I my understand this item was placed on the agenda just for this type of a discussion by the council to give direction to staff and I what I'm hearing on this particular and we've just looked at one of this five reserve funds but for compensated absences what I'm hearing is that you would like us to look at in particular the ceiling is it an appropriate ceiling and and what are the other options that the council might consider I think I heard council member Booth ask for some additional analysis around that I think we have enough we could take that back and come up with some different scenarios and at some point bring that back to the council. We'll want to do it very quickly because it is attached to some of these other needs within the city and and but there you're exactly right mayor. There is an opportunity here. If it is um we can explore that a little bit, bring something back to the council um based on this discussion tonight with a little more analysis behind it and maybe some options for you to consider. And there was one thing in there because what what uh our financial director said all this money has to go into the swimming pool right now. So we need to be able to change it so we could allocate those money to where it was suitable or where it was needed.

Yeah. What I'm what I'm hearing is that there may be there will likely be several different policy changes that we could uh recommend to you. Um and that would be the second one because if if the money if for example if the if the ceiling is adjusted such that there we would reach that ceiling and then that money becomes available right now as the director indicated that would go into the swimming pool fund. So we would then secondarily need to look at that policy as well and possibly make a change that to to where the and direct it to where the council would like that to go. I like that. I like you. Sounds good. So, I don't think we need to vote on anything because we're giving you

Yeah, I see consensus among the four members that are here. Now, that's compensated absences. I don't know if you want to want to look at everything. Okay. If you want to look at the other four, we can um we can continue and look at the other. Um, I will say it may be a little easier because th this one is unique and the and the verp the vehicle uh equipment replacement is a little unique, but the other three are all, you know, the the the ceilings are are set are all the Yeah, they're set a similar way, I believe. And and we we were the ones that said it goes to the swimming pool. We the council, right? No, so so we can change originally. Cynthia told us. Well, she told us, but we did originally.

Oh, the former council did. Okay. I I I did not do that. Yes. When we created the swimming pool fund, that was part of the the creating um documents and what you voted on.

And the reason we did that is when we make a new special revenue fund, you have to have an ongoing revenue source. And so for the swimming pool specifically, that was uh admission, you know, user fees of people going to use the the pool. And then this would if if we ever hit the ceiling on any of these, this this would be, you know, some ongoing revenue as well. If if that changes, then we have to rethink that whole fund because we would not have an ongoing revenue source and it would not be used to pay for operations because we wouldn't have an ongoing revenue source. So just so context we have to have a poll. Okay. Okay.

So the next fund is extraordinary maintenance, repair or improvement of a capital asset. I know that's a long title. Um this is this fund would cover any extraordinary maintenance things that were not contemplated that were um emergency type things. things like if we had a plumbing break in city hall and then the whole place got flooded and we needed to fix that. I was just gonna ask, do we need the rest of the presentation or are we going to look at each one of these and come back with some kind of understanding. Seemed like the same. It seemed like the same scenario.

I think they're different enough that it warrants diving into it at least a little bit. I mean, especially looking at this, you know, the the ceiling on this one, and I'll just use this as an example kind of as of giving my response to your question. 5% of governmental capital assets. So, um I think it'd be good to hear um what assets exactly we're referring to, right? Is it are they buildings? Is it buildings plus land plus whatever? or and then right now the the balance is 11 million.

Um it doesn't grow at a lot per year. 1.1 is 230,000 a year. Not a ton when we look at the potential expenses. Um but the historical data at least for the last few years and year to date the fiscal year we're in we're only at 81,000 but that's an incomplete year. Right. Correct.

It's only half of that basically. Um, but looking at that, we've only, you know, we spent less than 200,000 or well, just a little over 200,000 in this uh report here. Um, but the current balance is 4.9 nearly 5 million. Um, so the ceiling would be 11 million. I think I said that wrong earlier. So the balance, current balance is almost 5 million. The ceiling would be 11. Um, and again, this is this is not capital improvement projects. This is emergency something busted and we don't have we don't want to interrupt the rest of the operations of the city. So, we need some substantial money to fix it now.

And include the fire truck. The the fire truck is the vehicle and equipment replacement. That's a different fund. That's the verf. If you look at your chart, you'll see the verf next. Oh, I'm I'm sorry. I thought we were on verf. I'm sorry. No, I'm talking about the extraordinary maintenance. So, the extraordinary maintenance, we could change a portable to portable from a raw water line.

That uh would not be unforeseen. Um so, examples of what we've used this for u previously, it's usually safety related that wasn't already in the CIP. That was some sort of emergency. So, the rock slide cleanup, that was one thing. Um, when we removed the motocross rack or whatever it was, um, and then to replace this the pedestrian bridge right out here. Things that are safety related, um, is where what we have historically used it for. But the the primary intent is for those unforeseen major things like a big plumbing break or you know routine things that happen but that weren't contemplated in the CIP program.

When's the last time you went into that fund for something that happened like that? It was um earlier this year. Yeah. Let's just pretend we have a 60 old pipe from Lake me. It's portable water. Well, that would be a water fund issue and not not this governmental fund issue. Okay. And that would come out of the $5 million reserves required to be in the utility fund, right? Correct. Which we have. Is that fully funded? Just as a side note. Yeah, I I believe so. Yes. Okay. We don't that's not on our agenda. So, and we're about to enter the rate study then which we will be looking at that as well.

Yeah. And You know, I'm interested in knowing what the government capital assets include just just to know not what the balance, not what the number is because I can do math 5% the ceiling 1.1. So, I can just multiply that out. I'm not interested in that. Just the definition of it. And um I guess that's one, you know, from my perspective, we have absolutely no idea what might urgently come up. However, this this falls under the capital definition. So, it's something that's durable for 5 years or more,

right? So, I don't even know what an example would be of something that that wouldn't um wouldn't fall under that. That would be an emergency repair unless well, even HVAC systems last beyond five years. So, I don't even know. Another good example of if if something went down and it wasn't on the replacement schedule, we needed to do it now. I I would hate to be fall short on this one because we could suffer for quite a while for some ant unanticipated thing. But anyway, the definition

Yes. So, it includes things like land, art, buildings and building improvements, improvements other than buildings, machinery, equipment and furniture and infrastructure. So if we were to define capital, anything durable beyond five years, it basically would be all the capital, any mobile, immobile, fixed. Yes. Land, whatever. Our capitalization threshold is $5,000. So anything that has a longer life and is over $5,000 ends up here.

Ends up there. Yeah. Thank you. I honestly don't have anything more to say. This one to me is one of the most important funds. um really protects us, covers our our behind, so to speak. So, yeah. Well, maybe she'll want us to increase it. Well, that's a question, I guess. Huh. This one. Yeah. Okay. Did we do Did we give you folks enough to go on on Yeah, if I'm hearing correctly, no change on that one, although right at that consens general consensus. Okay. Yes.

Okay. Moving on down to the next fund, the we call it the verf. It's the vehicle equipment replacement fund and that is to uh purchase a new and replacement vehicles and large equipment. Um that that otherwise would be purchased through our acquisitions and improvement fund which are our general CIP type of fund. So that that opens up money in for other capital projects. Reboot. I don't know what happened. Reboot. Well, but Oh, there we go. I don't know. It's a ghost. Maybe it's my mom.

Um, so this one, unlike the others, the revenue coming in, it's still lease revenue, but it's at 5.6%. Um, which is about at $1.2 million annually. and and you can see what the expenses have been coming out of that. Now, that being said, we have almost $3 million kind of programmed into the VERF replacement schedule um over the next four years. So, we will be definitely um paying that down and it this is a really great fund to go to, but you know, we talk about the firetruck that came in much higher the the purchase price than we had contemplated. But because we have the available funding in this fund, you know, we were able to just go ahead with the purchase even though just dip into that.

Do the trucks that belong to the utility divisions purchase out of their accounts or does that come out of the verf as well? It does not come out of it. It comes out of the utility funds. Now they are um looked at and analyzed for are they eligible for replacement. So they go through that process, the verf process, but the funding comes from the utility funds. It does not come from the ver fund. Same with the police cars. The police cars would come from the ver. They would come out.

Yes. So that you know right now we've got 4.7 million and it is the same calculation for the ceiling of 5% of the um capital assets. And you're going to make recommendations or you feel like that should just be left like that? I I think it's fine the way it is set up now. Same. It it provides us the place to go for those vehicles so that we don't get caught short.

I would love to see and I don't know if my fellow council members agree with this, not not for a change, but just an analysis. You'd mentioned we have 3 point something million planned for the next four years. um just kind of analysis of what we're looking at purchasing with the VERF funds, uh which department, what type of vehicle, whatever. Um because if we, you know, at only 1.2 million per year, um we're barely increasing the balance after four years. And and so and with a balance of 4.7, say we increase it by half a million,

that's not going to cover very many vehicles for very long. So, I um I'm I agree. I'm not interested in changes here, but certainly I'm interested in the analysis of what we at least for the next few years plan on spending what you're referring to. I I'd like to see analysis on each one basically to see where they're going because I think I was shocked to find out a used fire truck or a rehab fire truck was almost 200,000. So, not was it ambulance? An ambulance. Yeah. The the the new fire engines 1.2 1.4 I think paramedic but the yeah the paramedic rescue was and it was a rehab. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions on verf? Shall I proceed?

Yes.

Okay. So the revenue stabilization and natural disaster mitigation is is has some similar characteristics to the extraordinary maintenance but but some significant differences too. There's two types of expenses that that are qualified to be paid from here. One is if we have a a revenue shortfall, if for whatever reason our C tax, you know, totally totally fell um more than 10%, this is a place we could go to to supplement that so that we could continue to pay our bills, our employees and and whatever other bills we've got going on. So that's the one piece. The other piece is for um natural disasters. So unlike the extraordinary maintenance, right, that's not a natural disaster if we have a plumbing break. But if if there's an earthquake or a flood or some other act of God that that reres havoc, this is where we would go to to um fund that. And fortunately, we have not had to draw any funds out of that in the last several years. Um but it also similar to the other funds we talked about, it grows at the 1.1% of the lease revenues. Um the current fund balance is 3.7 million and the um the ceiling is 3.799 which means we're very close and and we will be then um moving any new revenues into the the swimming pool fund on this one because we're we're we've hit the ceiling and I also want to mention that that 10% of expenditures are from the general fund which sets the ceiling that's actually rooted in NRS So, we're nearly there. So, that 1.1's going to start heading over to the swimming pool fund as soon as

as soon as we hit that, which will be in a matter of We're already doing it because we've got interest income as well. That's I'm adding to this.

I have a question. Um, in light of the recent uh event down at or near one of the substations in Elorado Valley, um, we have all the different definitions here, but we don't have the heaven forbid um or or I don't even know what to title it short of a of a nefarious act, let's call it, um, at one of our substations or that hit something in our infrastructure at one of the and I mean the me substation which is our main which is is our power source right

but at one of the other substations um in the in in the city is that only covered in the event of a nefarious act act of God natural disaster whatever can this fund be used for infrastructure that would otherwise be considered utility or can only the utility fund cover that and I'm asking this because maybe we want to add one more line of definition to this if if it could be.

So if it if it re relates to service delivery uh from the utility then that would need to be paid from the utility fund. If it's if it's one of our land leases and something happens, that's more of a would be covered probably by this extraordinary maintenance. I think your answer is no. That's right. That this couldn't be used for that. Is that what I'm hearing you say? it and and if if the utility fund was unable to then then we would have to look at maybe doing a loan from another one another fund or something because we I mean we would cover it and then sort it out later but but we'd have to borrow from one or the other potentially depending on you know the the extent

so adding a line of def well I mean there could be something that occurs by a nefarious act that is something that's not utility right a building right or something else that doesn't fall under that definition and would we need to because you know we're very restricted and and I would need to to know since we created this definition by ordinance or create an orance by bill right are then can we not operate with a little loosely for example if something uh somebody did some harm to something that you know maybe you know we have the extraordinary maintenance fund that maybe we need additional funds from to cover it from from this uh revenue stabilization or natural disaster mitigation. Could, you know, could we combine those? Could we use it? Is it even legal to un except for a loan, right? Could we free up those funds by adding a definition to this? Well, I'd have to look at the exact language and the specific scenario to determine whether we could use the funds from a different fund for that. Um, of course, the language is always uh subject to modification by city council as a council passed ordinance. So, the council can change language um in these ordinances. Um although I do believe one is more limited by NRS. Um, so I think there's specific parameters in NRS for that one that I'd have to look at. Um, but to the extent that the purpose of the fund is not limited by Nevada state law, we have flexibility and can modify the ordinance.

I guess I'll ask is there any value in us considering modification of the definition? as I understand it, we could change it when we need to on the fly, so to speak, for the city council. Okay. Then I don't have anything else to add to this one.

And then lastly is our risk management fund. Um again, 1.1% of the lease revenues. Um approximately $230,000 um coming in every year. Now, this covers our insurance premiums, our deductibles, any claims that are not covered by our insurance. Um, workers comp. Um, and you can see the, you know, the inflows coming in 230,000, but we consistently spend more than that coming out of that fund. And the current balance is 2.6 million. I I I did have a question I was going to ask about insurance when he was talking about natural disasters and things like that whether it's coming out of this pot. Is there insurance that covers that kind of stuff on top of this?

Uh so we participate in pool pack which is our basically our insurance. Um, and yes, if it was a covered expense, then yes, we would we would get some Well, that may be something to look into to see if we're covered for any nefarious events like uh domestic terrorism or things like that because those things are happening. Um, we have an airport right down the street if one of those light planes came into the building or some insurance it seemed like would cover that kind of thing, not this particular fund. I don't know that to be true. I'm just asking the question. I will I will check if that's one of our covered.

Well, it frees up money if there's insurance that covers it. That's what we're paying insurance for.

I will note that this fund also pays for uh litigation in the event that pool does not covered. Pullpack does not cover uh litigation with regard to civil rights or equitable claims. Um they also don't cover uh breach of contract claims outside of employment. So um for example, one of our construction contracts, if there were litigation with regard to a construction project, that would not be covered by our insurance and would would have to be paid for by the city. So um the risk the risk management fund also steps in to help pay for litigation costs when poolacted is does not cover the claim.

Thank you. And we have used that before. Yes. Yes. which the 5% of governmental assets balance seems entirely appropriate because just I mean based on the history here uh and what we know the potential is those are not small values that come out of there generally speaking and uh

I would not I I don't think I would be happy considering anything under that stated balance there 5% at 11 million. Um I think the the creation of these funds when they were created uh was highly insightful and very uh beyond prudent in managing and protecting and insulating our our monies. Um I do have a question though is when we look at the excess fund balance which we've talked about you know each year when we come come to the budget cycle and we've seen a variety of graphs some going down and some going up when we talk about the use or potential use over the 16.6% 6%. Do when those uh calculations or those forecasts are made, do do they include anything that's defined in these special funds as well or they entirely operational entirely separate?

It is exclusively in solely general fund general fund typical expenses or anticipated expenses. They don't cross-pollinate is what I They do not when you when when the analysis is made. Correct.

Um let me look at the um so I don't know if if fund balances uh meets the the strict definition. I also wanted to um I wanted to to consider or have a report to council about the excess fund balance amount. Um we've talked about that a lot, but we've seen that amount go up rather than down. Um and we're 24 million over the 16.6%. Right.

And that 16.6% 6% is basically considered revenue stabilization, right? So, so we have that revenue stabilization two times what's minimum state and only three months is is pretty minuscule. I'm surprised the state thinks three months is adequate honestly. So, the 16.6 is two months worth. Only two months. I thought that I thought that the state minimum was three months of your operating. Okay. Okay. Well, then I misunderstood that. So, our 16.6% is only two months of our operating our general fund expenditures, our budgeted expenditures. Yes.

Which is pretty puny. Does that include the enterprise funds? No, it's only general fund. So, it's Does the enterprise fund also have that same They have they do have a reserve. Uh I it's not rooted in um number of months of expenditures but they do have their own reserve requirements. Okay. That's by statute. Yes. The 8 point So 8.3 is one month and then 16.6 the 8.3 is state statute. Yes.

And we go to we go double that a whole two months which is not too much. Yeah. Okay. Um, we do we have any historical data? I guess I guess maybe I'm asking and maybe there's consensus here. Um, and if we're going to be provided that in greater detail in the weeks to come when we talk about the budget, uh, that would be sufficient. But um a historical view with of the um general fund excess or the general the excess balance in the general fund. And so we can talk about that as as we refine the budget more. Yes.

Fair enough. Okay. Thank you, mayor. I don't have any other questions or comments. I'll turn it back over to Thank you for bringing that up. All right. Appreciate it.

Well, thank you. Appreciate that. We will now move to item number six. Okay, that would be me. And I'm glad Cynthia is here because I may have some questions for her. So, my introduction is uh during my campaign, I vowed to have an ear to hear from our residents who feel they do not have a voice and to be transparent and accountable for how I vote on the council. Some have said that being too accessible to the public will open the floodgates. While this may be true, I found our residents to be intelligent, sincere, passionate, and respectful. As many of you know, I've been meeting with a few groups on Tuesdays. One of these groups have expressed their concern over what they perceive as a lack of transportation when it comes to the two city golf courses. As with every matter, there's always two sides to the story. Here is where dialogue is required. Over the past six months or so, the group of residents has secured foyer documents and has had open dialogue with the city manager and his staff. While clarifications have been made on some items, the residents still feel strongly, as presented tonight, that these matters should be bought to the council for public discussion. After careful consideration and knowing my own limitations and lack of full knowledge about the enterprise fund or how moving the golf courses over to this fund would be fiscally sound or prudent, I've decided to discuss it with my fellow council members with the hopes of an in-house solution and if necessary directing the staff to research the following issues and come back uh to give a briefing on the findings that um I haven't touched that I won't be touching on tonight like water conservation, etc. Uh some of the questions that I have, I'll just go through them real quick, then I'll uh have discussion. What is

the difference between a search charge fund and an enterprise fund? Uh the municipal golf course I im uh irrigation project is slated to cost $6 million. Is that our RDL RDA money? I I have an answer for that that was given to me. Um the incentive program we talked a little bit about the 1,600 free rounds at $40 a round is 640,000. Um I don't know if that could be considered dollars or not, but we'll talk about that. Is there a policy that tracks um these incentive programs? Is there a tracking mechanism in place um for transparency and who decides who gets what incentives? And I got an answer for that, but I'll let uh maybe Cynthia talk to that or Miss Callaway. Uh can the courses revenues, expenses, and income sustain operations on their own without aids from other funds? Uh five, considering past city directives and policies before I got here, maybe before any of us was here, should the enterprise fund for these two uh courses be put on the ballot um on the upcoming election? And um the ask that I have tonight is that maybe the staff would uh uh give us a future briefing similar to what we saw, not as indepth as uh the other briefing we just had, but something where it breaks all this down and some type of a spreadsheet to where um the residents could see this is where things are going, this is why we spend what we spend, you know, and so on. So um I'd like to end with a quote from Ronald Reagan. He says there's no limit to the amount of good you could do if you don't care who gets the credit. Trust but verify. And I think that's kind of um the discussion tonight on uh the two city golf courses. I wasn't here when they were built. Um we had some of the residents that came up that were

here when they were built or at least the um um Boulder Creek and whatever went on with that. But um Miss um Cynthia, I'm sorry, Miss Need, if you could um tell us what a sir charge fund is, I'd appreciate that. So we could at least see what the difference is between a search charge and an enterprise fund.

Uh we use the search charge fund as uh to help fund the capital expenditures of for improvement, capital improvements at the golf courses. So when a golfer comes in and pays their green fees, a piece of that, a couple three to five dollars of that fee gets uh deposited into the search charge fund and then that is the source of funds for some of the capital improvement projects um at the golf courses. So that's what the searchcharge fund is. It's very specific to capital expenses. Now an enterprise fund that is a an accounting concept. It's a it's part of the accounting principles and it really defines uh what differentiates it from the from the general fund is the types of revenue that comes in. Um so and then in this case it's the user fees, the green fees. The golfers pay their fee. Now that the expectation is then as an enterprise fund that that those fees cover all of the operating expenses, all of the capital expenses, it covers everything related to the golf course.

So enterprise in a nutshell, it pays for itself. Search charge is getting help from other funds. Well, the search charge is a fund of its own that gets, you know, the revenues coming in are a couple dollars of that green fee. So, it's not subsidized by any anything. It then helps to pay for the capital expenditures. And I would like to direct this to the council. Is there at any point, I guess, mayor, maybe you've been here the longest, that the golf courses were considered to go under enterprise and you thought, well, no, it's best that they stay the way that they are. You're asking me?

Yes, sir. It's never considered to be under an enterprise fund, but by the same token, it's designed not to lose money. And that's probably where I'll just ask you to go down the list and maybe we'll see some of those answers. Okay. Okay. And then uh we go down to the municipal golf course um irrigation projects for 6 million. I I thought I had heard it came from the RDA, but I was told that it's really from ARPA funds. It's combination of ARPA funds and the citywide capital projects fund. Okay. So, it's not coming out of subsidies from the residents at all.

No, it's it's coming from the the fund a formal fund name is acquisitions and improvements, but that is what we use for all citywide um for capital improvements. Okay. which doesn't come out of the general fund. It is funded from three different places and the general fund does contribute a little little bit of it but it comes from the voter approved fund that we talked about earlier that um that funds part of that um general fund a little bit and then and investment income. Okay.

Oh and I would just quickly add the source of those funds is from the lease revenue not from property taxes. So it's not being it is not being directly I think this is a misunderstanding that is not being directly subsidized by the voters of or the residents of Boulder City but from the lease revenue right and that's probably not known to the average resident hence the questions um the incentive program if you could cover that maybe you or Miss Callaway yeah if Julie would come up to do that but I um don't have my calculator with me but 1600 rounds at $40 per round would be 64 $4,000. Okay.

Happy to share with you. I'm Julie Callaway, your parks and recreation director, and I'm happy to share with you information regarding our incentive program at both of our golf courses, which has really increased our overall rounds and overall revenue for both of our golf courses, which have resulted in um actually funds being added to the general fund, not exhausted from the general fund in the last couple of years. So, with that being said, our incentive program is much like any other incentive program that is out there. Um, if you go to a coffee shop, you buy 10 cups of coffee, your 11th one is free. Or if anybody has any kind of a credit card that has incentives attached to it, like for instance, maybe you love to fly Southwest, so you have their credit card. It is exactly like that. It is a customer loyalty program to encourage customers, to attract new customers, and to re retain customers to bring people into Boulder City to um attract our residents to golf here. The essence of it is it is a players card, which unlike your coffee shop perk, it is something that you actually pay for. You pay $200 for a golf Boulder City card. With that, you have benefits because you have purchased that. You get a free round of golf at Boulder Creek. You get a free round of golf at the municipal golf course. And happy birthday, you get a free round of golf the month of your birthday. Also with that, for every seven rounds of golf that you pay for, you get your eighth round free. When you do the math, even conservatively, last year alone, it

paid for $1.6 $6 million of rounds of golf plus the $250,000 that people paid for for their cards ended up with almost um $2 million of golf revenue that is specifically driven from the incentive program. So when you just hear that we give away $16,000 which exa isn't the exact figure from last year but we'll go with that. When you hear that we've given away 16,000 rounds of of free golf, yes, that could seem very alarming. When residents have questioned that and asked about it, we gave them all the same information that is provided here this evening about the incentive program, about the success of it, about the money that is being put back into the general fund. and um really consider this a marketing tool and a business practice to attract business into Boulder City. One of the strategic p plan uh strategic goals um currently in our plan is to attract different sources of revenue and this does just that. It is an incentive program to bring people here. Also for our residents to benefit from to enjoy golf and continue to come back to Boulder City and enjoy all that we have to offer.

And we don't know how many of our residents actually golf. That is that difficult to put into numbers?

So when you register for golf, you have to keep in mind that we have forsomes going out about every eight minutes. So, that's a lot of congestion in your in your golf course. Um, you it is not like registering for a uh a class at the rec center where you are automatically in our registration system and you say, "I'm Julie Callaway. I'm here to sign up for aerobics and they pull my name up in the system." It could be one golfer walking up and saying, "I'm paying for the, you know, the Callaway um forsome. there's actually two foresomes that I'm paying for and here's my credit card. Take my money and I'm out and I'm already to the driving range. It is just how the business operates. So, we do not have a database of individual golfers.

Do you think it's worth having a database to do that or is that time consuming or very much time consuming? The um the current program software we have does not allow that. I'm not sure that there's golf specific software that does. And I think that that would be um a a negative to our golfers that it takes that much time and you're asking that much personal information that they're never giving at any other golf course. Okay. Um you also had said um yesterday I talked to you or today um that Boulder City residents get lower green fees. Could you speak to that? the the benefits that Boulder City is getting out of the golf course.

Correct. So, Boulder City residents at the municipal golf course have a reduced rate versus, you know, people that live over the hill. If you are um a lucky senior um that you're 55 or older, you also get an additional uh reduction in your green fee. Uh the interesting thing about golf for those people who aren't golfers and are unaware there is many different golf rates. There is a um an early rate for you know your 605 tea time. There is a late rate, there's a twilight rate, there is a summertime rate. So the rates are really um broad and again that is to capitalize on the the business. If most of the people want to be there first thing in the morning, we try to have that price point accordingly at 4:00 in the afternoon when they only have two and a half hours left to golf and those people are going to try to get as many holes they can in that two and a half hours. that's going to be your least expensive round of golf in the middle of the day in the summertime when nobody wants to golf unless you're at MUN because it has lots of shade trees. Um, then that is going to be a very inexpensive time. So, it's really a concept known as revenue management where you try to have your price point be most advantageous and mo most economical so that you are producing as much revenue as possible.

Okay. Um the next question was can the course revenue expenses and income sustain itself on its own if we did go to an enterprise fund. So it's a great question and um I will tell you that if the golf course fund in its inception so let's go with the municipal golf course. The municipal golf course has now been around for almost 55 years. Had that started as a enterprise fund back in the day, then when golf was doing really really good, that fund would have money in it. It would not have any large infrastructure improvements that were necessary probably for the first 20 years. So therefore, you would have have had an established fund from those revenues coming in so that when you hit your 20-year mark and you have to make some of those big infrastructure improvements, you have funds set aside to be able to do that. So let's look at MUN 50 years later, scroll forward to today. We have a large water conservation, turf reduction, irrigation improvement project at just over well right about $6 million to um to improve efficiency of our irrigation system that is way overdue. Had we had a enterprise fund, we would have those funds for it. But we don't have an excess in revenue um from year to year of at the tone of $6 million to be able to afford that because that's not the type of fund that it has been.

So with the MUN, you're saying that we're too far in to change. Basically, it would die on the vine. Correct. And so let's we can look at Boulder Creek. It's 25 years old. Your average irrigation system lasts about 25 years. It's due. So again, we're in my terminology, we're behind the curve.

Okay. But that so we're behind the curve and the mun is what it is. So basically what you're saying is we're stuck with what we have. Well, unless you want the general fund to um to subsidize a uh enterprise fund. I mean in in golf courses that that does happen. There are some golf courses out there that are a enterprise fund. Often in m municipalities when they choose to go that route off that way they're sub well that or they're still subsidized by the general fund.

Okay. Um, so my my last question really is, do do you believe or do you think one way or the other if this is a ballot question for the public? I I am not a ballot question expert. So I I don't feel um confident to be able to answer that question.

Okay. And I'll take that question and any other thing that uh my fellow councilman may have. May I add one Oh, excuse me. May I add one other comment about the just quickly about the players card? I I want to address something I've heard a couple of times tonight. I just looked really quickly in Southern Nevada courses alone, $249 elite card, Alante and Wild Horse Golf Courses. Another one, the Las Vegas National Card. Um this is uh free rounds as well. And the uh with Alante Wild Horse, five free rounds. Las Vegas 11th round free. And then another one, $139 Arcus card for Angel Park and Desert Pines. I bring those up as just three examples. It it is incorrect to say that this is not a common practice in golf c in public golf courses around the country in southern Nevada, let alone around the country. This is a common practice at a golf course to generate golfers coming back and bringing their friends who do pay full price for the rounds of golf. And I I'll just leave that as part of the conversation around the the players card. I wonder if they have any kind of tracking system that they use for that to to make that case.

So along those lines, I just want to let you know that we do have a monthly um golf course management meeting where finance is there, public works is there uh and our our our partners at the golf course maintenance and inside concessions. And these are topics along with um what the rate is, what tournaments are coming in, just all things golf course operations. Of course, we talk about the profitability of the golf course as well and what changes or improvements we can we can implement to increase that revenue for the city. And the players card along with its benefits are also addressed on a regular basis. as an example. Um, couple years back the card was $150. It had a benefit that it was for you, the card owner, and three people from your forsome. That, of course, you know, at one time was what what business-wise was needed to get more people there. Well, we're doing good. We can kind of back off on those. So when we're when we're meeting and we're looking at profitability and what we're giving and and what you know they're receiving, we've changed that. It's $200 now. It's only for the card owner owner. You actually have to have a um a little credit card business card that has your picture on it because lo and behold um you know Julie Callaway showed up with her little paper card and then all of a sudden Tammy showed up with Julie Callaway's little paper card. And so we've looked at this, we've looked at the processes and we've made changes and adjustments and we kind of do that every single year.

And you did mention, I didn't have it as a question, but you mentioned the the uh turf reduction and water conservation. Can you speak a little bit to that?

Uh yes. So that project has started at the municipal golf course. It was um heavily uh vetted with the residents and golfers because obviously those two groups would be impacted the most. The residents who um enjoy their beautiful golf course views that thought it would be a negative impact having that reduction and um that is underway right now and should be ending September. Along those lines, one thing that uh has been a little hit on the golf course is that now it's only open for nine holes. So, our revenue this year will be um drastically reduced. Uh but I'm happy to say that it's already we're only in month we still have uh five months to go in this fiscal year, four and a half months to go in the fiscal year. And the municipal golf course has already um surpassed its budgeted amount of what we um anticipated it to make in its revenues. And right now both golf courses are um exceeding their revenues are exceeding their current expenditures for this fiscal year. For transparency, I want to let you know that at every first uh council meeting, there is the manager's report that includes detailed information about golf course finances. We have made um finance, I should say, has made um extreme measures to try to make sure that that is as transparent as it could be. It's line by line by line and you can go in and see the last report was for figures as of the end of December which showed 3 million in revenue and about maybe 1 something in expenditures but

that's available online. It's available in the packet from the Yes. Yes. It's and it's in every first of the month managers report and I would love to tell you the page number. Sorry, I forgot it. But the last one then would be the February 10th meeting. Okay, thank you. I'll look that up. Okay. So, how much does a round of golf cost? Well, are you a Boulder City resident? Do you have a golf card? Are you a senior? Do you want to go at what time? I'm going to 605.

I'll give you an average. At the municipal golf course, if you're a Boulder City resident, it's probably around $40. Um at the at Boulder Creek it's about maybe 50 to 55 and it the card costs 20 or $200. The card costs $200. You do not have to purchase it,

but it is available if you wanted to buy one. Yes, it is $200. They typically go on sale mid November. we look at the sales of those cards and we stop selling them before we see that there's too many that are out there. So again, that's another management decision that the uh management team that oversees golf course profitability and um and playability looks at and we curtail uh sales of that. They go for one calendar year and start up again the next year with slight. So I buy a $200 card and I get three free rounds.

Yes, sir. 65 bucks a piece, which I would get less if I didn't buy the card. Yeah. Yes. And not and not everybody uses their card. My my mother-in-law might buy me a card thinking I'm going to play golf. So this this and I lose my sneaky way of getting free is really not as free as one might think.

So I guess what we're saying and what we're hearing from people is um transparency sometimes has to be more overt than just available. And if we had something uh more available that ran through like you've just done and put that on our website, uh that would probably be helpful. Let people realize that uh the card's a good deal if you go six times a month or whatever. But bottom line is uh it still is a good way to get people to golf. And golf's a good exercise. Uh, and so that's a good thing, too. Um, but I don't know. Does anybody else have any

Well, I I just wanted to share I knew Scogi Linen. He loved golf and the joy of Skoggi Linen back when the high school had to swim out at the lake. They didn't have a swimming pool. So, he would be the first one to tell you it's one of the greatest forms of exercise. And trust me, he would tell you. So, just wanted to share that. That was at the municipal golf golf course when it got built. Do you know Scogi? I do not. No. Have you ever heard of him? No. Oh, yeah. So, uh, 27 years ago, I had another Ostick. Golf is good. This is when we were trying to build the, uh,

golf course at that time. And so, it it made sense then and still makes sense now. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Anybody else got any questions? You want to say something? Yeah. I just um I know um the city manager, you said you have a couple of meetings set up with some residents that you have been meeting with in the past. You have one more set up with them.

Uh we don't have any meetings scheduled in the We have met with a group of residents on this topic and some related topics related to water conservation some months ago or several weeks ago at least. And uh there there is a uh there was a request for information that came in an email. Uh we've done one round of that. We have another round that's currently ongoing. Some of the questions are appropriate for city staff to answer and others are not. So we will answer the ones that are appropriate and then this will be the last round and if they're they're additional questions then they can always schedule a time to come in. But we do have other work. You know we have our regular work at the city that we're doing. So unfortunately we can't cater to long lists of questions every time they come in. We we will always try to uh respond to the residents whenever we can as as appropriate.

I appreciate that. You can't ask for more than that. And you know, I I think what we do and what we've heard tonight on pretty much every agenda was trans, you know, to be make sure that we are accountable and transparent in everything that we do. Um and I know you have an open door, you know, but you have work to do. I understand that. But I do want to put to the council one time. I don't know if we have to vote on it or not, but do you think this should go to the ballot for an enterprise fund? Can I answer that?

I I have something about an enterprise fund here because I had to do more homework on this than I really had anticipated because I kind of understood enterprise funds. But I'm going to just read this about the enterprise fund. Basically, to start out, I'm just going to say to have an enterprise fund, they should have started the golf courses out in an enterprise fund. It's a whole different accounting system. And something I just learned about government is they do not uh acrew things like we do or depreciate things like we do. And so, but the enterprise fund does. So, I'm going to read this what I found out from legal AI on the computer. Enterprise funds are typically used for self- sustaining services like water and sewer. That's the biggest thing I found. Water and sewer and airports was the two things that they recommended. They often cover 100% of the operational costs through user fees and that's operational costs. The percentage of time these funds are utilized varies by city and service. Many cities allocate 10 to 30% of their budget to enterprise funds. Regular audit ensures funds are used efficiently and effectively. We are audited all the time and they come and report to us about what a wonderful job that our financial department is doing. Enterprise funds can also support capital projects related to services. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the enterprise fund is going to cover the capital portion of the fund. It could only cover the possibly only cover the operation. It depends upon how it was set up, right? So, I do not believe that you would want to go and try and change it now and change the whole accounting system because we've already been we haven't been depreciating and in an enterprise fund you would be depreciating. So, how would you handle those two? It would change everything those two things. So, I don't believe at this point in time there should be any reason that we would want to take it to

a ballot question. That would be something that should be should have been done in the very beginning. And again, I think we have a CPA, certified CPA who does have the triple crown and would advise us, I would hope, properly. And I think she does. Yeah, that triple crown girl. That's what all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor was Steve. I I don't feel an enterprise. I think we're actually, as I understand it, the golf course is paying

into the general fund, not being dependent on the general fund. So, I don't think I don't feel the need to change anything other than making sure people understand the concept that it's self- sustaining and doing well that way. So, that's kind of where I'm at.

Okay. Thank you. And and I want to say that, you know, I bought this to the council because they don't get to hear us talk. We, you know, and I can't talk to you. I could only talk to Steve and you can't talk to anybody. So, you know, the the residents don't hear this. And I think, you know, if we want to be transparent, then to do this is is a good thing. It's not a waste of time. It's that yes, we did take time. We talked about it. This is the outcome that we came to and we'll go from that. So, I thank you for allowing me to put this on the agenda. Appreciate you. Thank you. So, that brings us to number uh eight.

Seven. One minute break. Um we're going to take at least a one minute break. One minute. One minute at least. That means don't leave your seat, baby. At least. Sorry.

Thank you.

You do know your Yeah, I know. I've been looking at that. Two in there. You have to pick one of them. You have to pick the right one. One one of them's going to win, I think. Okay.

Yep. Thank you. Meeting will come back to order and we are now on item seven.

Thank you, mayor. Um, good evening. Good evening, Mayor Council. Um item seven before you are two ballot questions that I have drafted per the city council's direction on February 10th. Uh one the first uh start with resolution 8099 ask voters whether data center facilities should be a permissible land use in the Alado Valley pursuant to section 144 subsection 2 of the Boulder City Charter. So, the Boulder City Charter limits the land uses in the Elorado Valley Transfer Area. By way of background, the Elorado Valley Transfer Area was purchased in 1995 by Bowler City um indirectly from the federal government. And after the purchase was made, there was an initiative petition uh that was pursued by the vote by the residents that uh sought a charter amendment to limit the uses uh that could be approved within this Elorado Valley transfer area, which is an area just southwest of the city limits. Um so per the charter uses are limited to public recreation, solar energy facilities, desert tortoise preserve, uh easements, and other similar governmental uses. Subsection 2 of section 144 allows additional uses to be approved by the registered voters of the city. This has been done several times. In 2007, voters approved geothermal uh as well as wind. And then in 2022, uh there was about a question about clean energy technologies such as battery energy storage and hydrogen. Um in addition to grandfathering in the two natural gas generation facilities that were that were uh existed or proposed to exist. So, we've had there's been

around the country data center projects have been proposed and built uh and but would not be allowed in the Elorado Valley without voter approval. Um data centers are industrial buildings that house a network of computers, servers, and IT infrastructure that help power the digital economy. um technologies are integrating renewable energy sources and using water efficient technologies such as waterless cooling or cooling with reclaimed or recycled water instead of portable supplies. The land values for data centers are much higher than other currently authorized uses in the Elorado Valley and revenue received from these leases could be used to support government functions. And as we just had a very in-depth discussion of how we use those revenues, um they help keep our taxes low and help fund our operations. Um, I think importantly this question doesn't ask to put a data center in the Elorado Valley. This just asks whether it should be a a permissible use and the city council can then later decide whether a project would be appropriate. I also want to point out that um of this about a 100,000 acres over 86,000 acres of this Elorado Valley transfer area is set aside for a multiecies conservation easement. What that means is over 86,000 acres in this area cannot be developed. So, we're only talking less than 25,000 acres of developable land in this area, much of which has already been developed for solar generation and battery storage. So, the draft question is before you. I did make some changes that are available as a handout. The handout also includes a map of the area that was just shown on your screen,

but I wanted to make it more clear that 86,000 acres of this area would not be developable. So that is made more clear in the ballot question. And then this also explains that the question does not impact city council decisions outside of the Elorado Valley transfer area. So, this question is specific to the Elorado Valley Transfer Area. The city charter does not limit land use within the original Boulder City Town site. That's governed by our existing zoning structure and our code. And uh at land, if a data center was approved outside of the Elderorado Valley within the the original town site, that would just go through our regular land use process. Um there would have to be a zoning change. our none of our current zones allow for a data center. So, there would have to be a zoning and master plan amendment and it would have to go through all that process, but it would not need voter approval in the original town site. So, just wanted to make those two points of clarification and uh again the updated version of the ballot question is as is provided as a handout and if there's any questions I'm available. How much land is available in the Elorado Valley for solar fields left?

Um I don't have the exact figure but we uh there are we just did an RFP for about 1100 acres for solar and battery storage. Uh that was the largest parcel in the Elorado Valley which we call Black Hills North. Um, and it's to the south or to the north west of the dry lake bed there. Um, and then there are a few small parcels I would say anywhere from 30 acres to maybe a maybe a couple hundred. Um, that uh we also have RFP for battery storage. Um it so there's very limited land even available for a data center uh within the Elorado Valley right now. A lot most of it has been developed. Thank you. So really it's the Elorado Valley area is more for the wildlife still there as opposed to more development that's as significant as what we have now.

That's correct. And we we could not change that. We have granted an easement to the county um conserving that over 86,000 acres. So if we were dependent on lease revenue, we probably wouldn't be able to uh anticipate using that as much as we have already. Well, the benefit of a data center is that they don't use I'm talking about solar. Oh, for solar? Yes, that's correct.

Thank you. Questions, concerns? I don't know that it's a question per se, but just a clarification or a reiteration because you already stated this. We have vernacular in Boulder City. We talk about the Elorado Valley and we point out there and that basically includes everything that way all the way to city limits. We're specifically talking about the limits in the pink of the Elorado transfer area only for this potential ballot question. Right. As you stated, anywhere else within city limits, this ballot question has no applicability.

Correct. the ballot question is not needed um for other areas within the city. And of the somewhere 100,000 to 120,000 acres of the transfer area that Boulder City purchased from the bureau, 86,000 acres are already set aside for the endangered species habitat, which is basically if you look at that at that um map where it says Elorado transfer area in the lettering, essentially that whole area is the habitat. It's on the east side of the highway going uh going down to search light, right? None of it extends to the west side where the the development has been for solar and and energy production, right?

Um there's some on the west side, but the vast majority of it, yes, is is in that is in that area where the texts you see. Uh but there's there's sections all throughout really really that area. It's It's pretty comprehensive and Okay. I I don't have any questions for her. I think there's some discussion to happen. I'll I'll yield the floor. I I just need cl Can you hear me? I just need clarification. We're talk Okay. The original town site which is in purple. Oh, you don't have it up anymore. That's in purple and there's a little triangle I guess you to the west. Is that the little area we're talking about for the for this proposed? So, we're talking

where where is where are we talking about? The blue area here is the original town site, right? This large pink parcel, right, is what we're talking about for the ballot question. Okay. And the large pink is is belongs to us, correct? Mhm. Okay. So, I'm missing something here. There's no proposed data center in this pink. Correct. There's no proposed and and the ballot is saying so there won't be any data centers in this pink.

Now the ballot question is asking whether we should allow allow them as a land use as a as a as an option whether data center should be an option to put in this area. It is not allowed now. Right. It's not allowed now.

Okay. Yeah. And again, the the benefit is that data centers take up a smaller footprint than say a solar development and yield a much higher land value. So there could be significant lease revenue while other jurisdictions are kind of limited in the benefits that they can receive from a data center due to property tax abatement, sales tax abatements. the city can actually realize a lot of benefit more benefits from the data center with um increased land values which provide lease revenues to fund our operations. There's also community benefit agreements you can negotiate donations to nonprofits and things of that nature that you can negotiate with a with a with a data center and you can put parameters on you know whether they use water or not. You can say you don't you cannot use water, you have to be air cooled, you can We could be specific.

Yeah, because we own the land. We can be extremely strict on the type of data center that's allowed. But um whether that's can even be allowed in the Elorado Valley area is up to the voters because right now they have to approve any use. Okay. Beyond what's enumerated in our charter. I I think where I was getting while you were talking I was thinking well we currently have the battery storage. It it's in the townside area. Correct. battery storage is all throughout uh the Elorado Valley transfer area. Um well, I shouldn't say it's all throughout. There's about um

there's one there's at least two right now. And then there is one battery storage project that Yes. is in the town. That particular one if they wanted to go to make that a data center that's outside of our boundaries. So the um you're referring to a proposed project that's within Boulder City limits in the original town site that is not subject to voter approval. That does not need voter approval. That project is is separate and is up to the city council. Okay. And goes through our traditional land use okay processes goes through planning commission would go through all of those other public processes. Okay. you've answered my question because I was specifically talking about that. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So, I got a ton of phone calls today about this subject here. Uh even one of my fellow realators called me, but their biggest complaint is water and electricity. And I never even thought about the electricity, but they really feel that if we have the data centers that they take so much that your electricity bill is going to go up by 23%. That means all of the people in town site that their utility bill would go up from just what I could read. So is that what you're hearing or can you say they can't use our power or our power bill can't go up because of a data center? How would you handle that?

Yeah. Um again most of the the available land uh in the city is is the city own land. So we have a lot more control over those parameters. what you know that what type of water you use, whether you can use water to cool, um whether you connect to our electrical distribution system. When it's on private land, we have less control. Uh but if it's to serve a large load, the electric utility does still have a lot of control over whether that data center can even connect to our distribution infrastructure. And so we have a lot of say in that. And we um if any project gets proposed to move forward, we would ensure that the residents are held harmless in the rates that they pay and in the infrastructure that's needed that that it would not be a burden on our distribution infrastructure and that the the low rates that we receive from say our you know Hoover Dam contracts and those contracts those would be for the residents. We would not allow a data center to we we would put parameters in place to protect residents rights. In talking with other jurisdictions, I have asked that question. We're still doing a lot of research on whether a data center is even appropriate for our jurisdiction. Um, in talking to other jurisdictions that have authorized them, that was a direct question. I have asked that, have you seen increases to your electric rates? Has that impacted rates? Uh, everyone I have talked to has said no, they've not seen a a big impact to or any impact to the the market rates in their area because the data center is loud. That's just the individuals I've talked to. I've talked to a small jurisdiction in Oregon that has authorized a lot of data centers uh as well as um in uh Virginia and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Thank you. Okay, so the uh ballot question seems okay to me. Any questions about it? If we're uh back up to council for comments and discussion. Yep.

Thank you. Um so I think it's important there's a there's a lot of statements that are made as fact that aren't necessarily fact about data centers. I think it's important to clarify where we're at. So, in the Elorado, again, getting back to the Elorado transfer area, there's a a a minor or a less than I'm going to use the word minor percentage that's actually allowed for development. And what we've seen down there is already consisting of solar energy production, battery energy storage systems, and uh of course the natural gas that we're grandfathered in. Um and so development is occurring down there and we as you stated we're going out to RFP for additional land leases out there. So uh talking saying a data center would do all this harm to uh the environment there is already an area that's being developed and has been developed and if technologies a matter of fact we're aware of one of the facilities their technology is is becoming obsolete and they're decommissioning their solar energy production facility. Right. So the the question becomes um that's the area that smaller portion of the Elorado Valley transfer area only the conversation is that pink outlined area where development has occurred or is going to occur because of our RFPs for solar or battery energy storage. Um it it the discussion of a data center is not outside the scope of what's

occurring that's been approved by the voters for use down there already. That's I think an important thing that we need to remember and and talk about here uh to our residents. And as you stated, number two, because we own the land, we have absolute discretion on what any lease agreement or contract would look like. Um, we do know that, well, from my research, it's not good to have data centers on your municipal feed. They have high peaks and low valleys which draw an unnecessary demand on your municipal service. So anything that happens out there that may relate to a data center would have to be entirely isolated. Another service line from WAPA. For example, other uh energy producers that have either WAPA service lines or create their own energy could have agreements for a data center where they're entirely isolated from Boulder City electric infrastructure. No impact whatsoever to us other than the ability to bill because they're within our service limits. So the potential then is to have a zero impact on our electric infrastructure and the ability to bill them for the power that they're using because they're within our city limits. So again another fact that needs to be considered and data centers the technology we know just like batteries just like solar production is changing exponentially year by year getting more efficient better use of space better technology for cooling. We all agree any form of consumptive use would be unacceptable

and and for uh our our folks to to say well they use all this water. Not necessarily. No, you could have a closed loop system that entirely cools the area without consuming any water. You could have entirely mechanical um and we have a million gallons roughly of of of effluent a day that goes into the desert that could be utilized. So you could use the water molecules at least twice uh if that's a use that anybody wants to explore. And so all we're looking at is for the ability to have a conversation about the potential where development is already occurring that would be entirely isolated from Boulder City electrical infrastructure and that would not be consuming water. Those are the concerns I've heard and we have absolute autonomy to write a lease agreement that would eliminate any of those concerns. And because of those reasons um I I don't see and the additional benefit we also have to remember we have a strategic plan goal to diversify our revenue source within prudent financial stewardship. And so we want to look for ways. Land lease is one overall topic, but do we want to be dependent wholly on one type of of technology? And when that technology changes or reduces their footprint or doesn't need the space that we're currently receiving income from, then our income from lease revenue goes down. And we know that one-third of our income comes from sea tax, one-third comes from land lease revenue, and then a variety of sources made up for the other one-third. And if

I'm not mistaken, only about 2% come from property tax collection. And we've already had this discussion. It's been stated that's not even on the table. So taxes aren't going to be affected. So we have to look at how we can maintain and maximize our city's revenue. Finding independence and stability in financial revenue that can move with the technology. Again, the points I've made already don't need to be reiterated ad nauseium. So I'm going to lay off of that. But it's just requesting the residents if the conversation can exist to be responsible in maximizing the technology for the city's well-being, financial well-being. All the other negatives that have been discussed about development in the in the Elorado transfer area are already occurring and we'll be on a larger much larger footprint if it's solar and battery energy rather than the potential for a data center again isolated from our infrastructure electrical and not consuming water. Um I think the ballot question has validity. I think I'd love to hear from our citizens who can then with correct information and the totality of it look and see if it's a benefit for our community. And if they say no, great. No data centers in the Elorado Valley transfer area. And if they say yeah, we at least have the ability to have the conversation. I think that summarizes all my thoughts. Thank you. Is that your motion on resolution number 8099?

If there's no other comments, then I'll make a resolution to uh or I'll make a motion to I don't even know the number to pass that99. 8099. Is there a second? I second. Uh any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? The nay. One nay. Uh, councilwoman. Okay. Okay. And that uh passes and

yep. So, next you have resolution 8100. Uh, this again was pursuant to the council's direction on February 10th. Um this question uh would ask uh whether the city council should be per the measure would seek voter approval to allow the city to expend up to 50% of the most recent audited fiscal year's ending cash balance in the capital improvement fund for capital improvement projects. So the capital improvement fund as we as we talked about earlier is a fund created by the city charter which the proceeds of the dispositions of city- owned lands sales and leases are directed into this fund. Um and then any expenditures from this fund must be approved by a simple majority of the votes cast by the registered voters. So, the cash balance right now is about 8,411,697. Uh, and then it grows approximately $3 million per year. Um, and then again, these monies this these monies are available but cannot be spent on projects without voter approval. Um, so this question, allowing up to 50% of the fund to be used each year would allow the dollars to be used towards eligible capital projects without spending the time and money for a ballot question. Um, but I do would like would like you to review the wording to ensure that captures the intent of the council from February 10th. And I want to point out that the voters have previously authorized $1 million per year for the maintenance and improvement of city facilities and infrastructure. Um I did provide a copy of that ballot question as a handout so you could see that particular question. And the question for council is whether this question should be in place of that $1 million or in addition to that $1 million

that has um been previously approved. So can you define the what the advantage is of the $1 million with or without? Is there a difference that it could be less than that or more than that? Is that

Well, so right now, let's pretend the balance is $10 million. If this question were to pass, the city could take $5 million, which is half of the balance, and attribute it towards different capital projects. Um, and then the next year it'll grow about $3 million, so then there'll be $8 million. Um, at it'll grow about $8 million, so then you could take half of that and take 4 million. Um, but we're already taking 1 million out. So the question is, do we want to replace that 1 million or are we saying we'll take the 4 million and the 1 million? Does that

So basically it allows the city council to do something sooner than going to a ballot for anything more than a million dollars in the capital improvement. Yeah. for any project. It would allow the council to access up to 50% of the balance in that fund without having to seek voter approval. But the question is, there's already $1 million authorized. So the question is, is that 50% in addition to the $1 million or in place of the $1 million? So is a fire station a $1 million or more than a $1 million? I don't know. I think it was four four

five million million. It was 5 million. But this would have you could take for example a fire station and that would the half of the balance um would would get there by the time it passed up to that could be used. Whereas otherwise we would go to a vote of the people to use that money if it was more than if we needed another $4 million. to augment the 1 million that we could do by ourselves. If this question were to pass. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.

I think that is wise that we do that because a fire truck is over a million dollars now. That's just a fire truck. So, like you said, the the firehouse that we should have built and we couldn't build because we had to go back for another vote to in order to get it built. I think that the five million at least would get a lot of things taken care of that we're having to go out for vote on and I I personally think it's a positive thing for the city to do something like that.

Can I ask a dumb question? So, when this was brought up originally, it was $1 million and we had to go to the uh public to ask to spend that. Now, is that like some kind of special ballot or you always had to wait for that election year because now you're talking I mean maybe four years to to get something approved. How how does that work? Yes. So, the capital improvement fund which is again is funded by the sale of land and the leases of land. Um there's currently $8 million in it just ready.

Okay. Um, typically whenever we've spent money out of that that fund like the pool, we go to the ballot and say, "Voters, will you approve as taking this much money out for this particular project?" Right.

At the February 10th council meeting, the city received direction to draft a ballot question to allow us to use instead 50% of the full fund for any capital project instead of like having a specific project. But there was already $1 million previously authorized by the voters. $1 million per year. So now this question says so we already have 1 million that we take out every year. Um so the question is can we use instead it could we use 50% of the balance of the capital improvement fund? My an my question to council is that is that in place of the $1 million

or is that in addition to in addition to it should be in place of the 1 million to say from not having one million but having f and being honest and just making it simple that everybody can understand instead of giving us 1 million you're going to give us 5 million 50% it's too convoluted I think well and that's the question so is it 50% of the are we comfort or do you want to make it a specific number and increase it from the 1 million to a specific number? Thank you. I think that we need to remember the distinction the fund the voterapproved capital improvement fund grows at 4 million per year.

Wow. because of the approved transfer of 1 million from the voter approved capital fund to the acquisition and improvements fund for general capital projects. It therefore grows at 3 million. if we by this ballot question say, you know what, if that one passes, let's take away this million. So that fund is actually going to grow at four million per year, not three. Four. And so for my two cents, I I I think I'm agreeing with you.

It I think the ballot question would read up to 50% for capital projects. And I don't know if you distinguish between calendar year or fiscal year. I don't know if that matters. Fiscal year is probably better for accounting, right? So up to 50% in a fiscal year and and then just and replace that 1 million thing. Wipe, excuse me, wipe it away. Right. So that fund continues to grow at 4 million per year. It never go lower. It could go higher. Yeah. Was that a motion to approve 81? If there's no other comments, that's a motion. Move to second.

I'll second then. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? It's unanimous. Thank you. That brings us to what I've long been waiting for. Appointments. We need to appoint an aotment committee person and I get to choose from the little bowl. Oh, please. That's correct. And you choose one. We only need one appointment. One. I only take one. It has to be.

Yeah. Have I only got one? Okay. I think I only one. And do I have to read it or can I turn it to the That would be good. Tad be nice if you let me know. Oh, no. It's upside down. Oh, you can't read She wasn't. So, Christine Sheay will be appointed to the allotment committee to um fulfill an unexpired term which would end June 30th, 2027. Thank you. And that brings us to the planning commission appointment.

Can I make my disclosure, please? Sure.

Thank you. For item eight, city council appointments to the planning commission. I would like to disclose pursuant to NRS 281A that a family member is a legal client of one of the applicants for planning commission, Steve Morris. Additionally, I serve in a leadership position for my church along with W. Mr. Morris, which is akin to serving together on a nonprofit board. I have been advised by the city attorney that my participation on this item would not be a conflict of interest. Thank you. Anyone else? I have the mic. So I have to say that the planning commission is critical for everything that we do and it's critical in that we expect and want and desire the planning commissioners to be able to think and to weigh and recommend consideration in changes of any policy and be able to thoughtfully grant approval or create an environment that will be necessary to change the code. In other words, if there's a split vote on the planning commission, that's okay. It's a signal that maybe we and the city council need to consider a change in policy. I don't anticipate the planning commission to be unanimous all the time. I think we're we appoint people who uh have the rights and the willingness to know and do what they think is best. If we just depended on the staff to say

no, you can't do this and yes, you can't do that or whatever, then we don't need a planning commission. But we need a planning commission. We appreciate the planning commission because they are the ones that hear the nitty-gritty challenges that a real person has about some of the codes laws that we have. And so there's there's a difference between what the committee decides and what we as the council have to decide. And so we literally make the codes. We literally make as it were the laws. We depend on the C planning commission to help us do that. Now, for this particular one, I I uh approached this appointment to the planning commission in different ways and I I said to myself, who had the specific focus desired to be on the planning commission? And then I said to myself, who has the most experience? And then I said, "Do I know the individuals and do I" And then I said, "Do I have a conflict of interest?" Then I said, "Do I have confidence in the person that I will appoint?" So I went down the two people. Uh they both went to law school. Uh one's used to be my backdoor neighbor, one used to be my next door neighbor. They're both friends of my family. one. They've both been prior city employees. Yes, I have confidence in both of them. And so I'm not sure I have a conflict of interest as much as I'm interested. And so I feel uh in my situation that I would be supportive of the person who has the most specific experience. Anybody else want to say anything?

I'm in the same position you are. I'm like those 82 also. I don't know any of them. So I I'll go ahead and put a name in. Well, this is easy. I'll make the motion that we appoint Mr. Morris on planning commission. I'll second that. Any discussion? Any other nominations? I I don't see um I lost my sheet. I did have a nomination. Dne is my sheet that the sheet with Dane. You want to nominate Dne Safransky? Dane Safoski.

Okay. So, there have been two nominations. Uh Steven Morris and Dane Zafransky. Uh and I can we'll take uh the first one first. All those in favor of Mr. Morris say I. I. I. Three. I lose. It's settled. Mr. Morris's plan is appointed to the planning commission. Thank you all. And that brings us to public. Mayor, I'd just like to note for the record, so Mr. Morris was also appointed to serve an unexpired term which will end January 1st, 2027. Okay.

And that will lead us to public comment. Anyone here in public com? Anybody on the phone? 7025899629 and we'll wait a little bit for anybody to call in. If they were that persistent, I admire them. And anybody here in the chambers would like to come forward. Uh if you want to call in 7025899629. If you didn't get a chance to call in, you can always write a letter to us for public comment and we will put that in the record as well. uh 7025899629. No one on the phone. Okay, I'll close public comment and bring us to city council report and we will start with Councilman Walton on report. Anything you'd like?

Somebody is on the phone. Oh, good. Yes, we'll take the one on. have a comment. Hi Tammy, it's Brandon Cong again. Hi. Um, good evening again, council, mayor, um, staff. Uh, I just wanted to, um, what's your name, sir? Your comments. just wanted to say, okay,

I just wanted to uh thank Councilwoman Asher for uh proposing the uh the fund for the golf courses. Obviously, that didn't go through. Um I think for transparency sake, it's, you know, I I do think it's probably imperative for for the city to know what's going on, what isn't. Um, if you do the quick, you know, back of napkin math, uh, based on the quarter of a million dollars that, um, uh, that supposedly come in on on the golf cards, that's a total of,50 golf cards that are sold. Um, to come up with that quarter of a million dollars. Uh, 1,250 people represents less than 10% of our population. So, it's it's quite a um small percentage of people that are taking advantage of that. Whether

whether or not you guys cult, you know, chop it off at some point or not, um I'm not quite sure that that the big maps kind of works itself out, whereas you're comparing what the the courses are costing versus how much money they're making. Um, so I'm a little disappointed in in in that and that uh transparency wise I don't think anybody really got a firm answer about what's what is and what isn't. Um, I'm pretty sure that if if it did end up into some sort of enterprise fund where all that accounting was transparent. Um, and if the golf courses are truly making that kind of money, you know, maybe the fire department could take advantage of some of those funds to uh pay for a new fire station or some of the other things that the city needs. Um, I I you know, I think overall if you know, if we've got a $50 million swimming pool and we need a another fire station, there's something really wrong in the big scheme of things. Um, and then circling back to the data center question, um, I know that obviously that's that's on everybody's mind. Um, and I'm if there was some way to make sure that the city holds everything accountable um way Mr. Walton um described that you know we get ultimate veto power and you know it has to be air cooled and they can't possibly use our grid to power these stations. But um who you know who's going to do that? uh we we just kind of have to hope and pray that that's how it turns out. So um I'm not quite sure that that works

out in big team things, but Brandon, yeah, you're over the 10 minutes, so if you could wrap it up. Yep. Okay. I just wanted to say that and again, I just wanted to say thank you to Miss Asher for making herself uh very available to the community. Um she she does a great job of of representing. So thank you so much and to all of you uh for doing your job. Thanks so much. Have a great night. Thank you. I will close the public comment again and go to city council report. Council Walton.

Thank you, mayor. Um I don't have any uh uh committee reports. Um USA hockey is the best both for men and women. Go USA. That's right. I wanted to send out a special thank you to the Boulder City Police Department, uh, Metro and, uh, the FBI. Um, who would have thought we would have had an incident in Boulder City with a terrorist type person. And I really want the police department to know how much we appreciate them, how respectful they were on uh, the news. I was really impressed with all the the comments that they had. But thank you so very, very much. Appreciate you guys.

Thank you. Uh, I don't have anything uh board member um information to report. I did have the council of government today, but I had to leave early because of the council meeting. So, I'll report on that um at the next uh city council meeting. I do want to give a shout out to the residents that came out tonight. Um I think we Boulder City is who we are because we have concerned citizens and we have citizens that stay on keep us on our toes, which is a good thing. and um they're not afraid to to to bring anything forward and we're not afraid to take anything in. So, I just want to say thank you to the residents. Thank you to my fellow council um for again allowing me to bring that agenda. I I also want to give a shout out to our fire department. Um the public didn't get to see the presentation that they did the video, but um they work hard. They deserve to have a good safe um place to work. And um I hope that things work out for them. But I just want to thank them for their service and thank our guys in blue that stayed here late tonight to protect us. Always thinking of you guys and praying for you guys. Thank you and go USA.

Yes. And with Steve. Thank you, Councilwoman. I have announcement. The state of the city in Mosquite is March 4th and I think Councilwoman Booth Jill and I are going together to Mosquite. Uh member of the Nevada League of Cities and good to support them.

Yes, they're very always support us. On the 20th, I went to the uh a baby shower that had literally hundreds of people supported by the Southern Nevada Health District and uh Southern Nevada Community Health Center helping people get strollers, helping people get diapers, helping people. So, it was held at a community center. People would bring their little one or their unborn yet. And it was just wonderful all the things that they were given and the support of people who are having babies and the headline on the picture was baby boon and it was just a really a special time. So with that meeting's adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you. Is this a record time? Last time I said this lady was a short-term rental.