City Council - Regular Meeting

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Welcome to Boulder City City Council. Is my mic on? Welcome to Boulder City City Council and call the meeting to order. roll call please and posting thank you mayor and council the agenda was posted in accordance with nevada open meeting law and all members are present thank you we will rise for the invocation followed by the pledge of allegiance rudy paredes of the seventh day adventist will offer the invocation for us thank you

Our Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day that you have given us. Thank you for the privilege and honor to be in an amazing country like the one that we live in, where we are free with our rights and assembly of governments over us, Lord. As we begin this meeting, we ask for your wisdom, for your Holy Spirit to be with each and every one of us. Thank you, Lord, for all the men and women that serve this community, that serve this beautiful city, Lord. And may your presence be in this building, and may this city prosper under your guidance. We ask this in your name, Jesus. Amen.

Thank you, Pastor. I pledge allegiance.

states of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

In the way of public announcement, The city has discontinued live telephone public comment to help ensure compliance with Nevada's open meeting law and federal broadcast regulations similar to other jurisdictions in Nevada. Public comment remains an important part of our meetings and community members are encouraged to attend in person or by providing written comments submitted by email to cityclerk at bcnv.org or through the city's online public comment form at www.bcnv.org. We appreciate your continued participation and engagement in this process.

Thank you.

We will now open public comment on anything that is on the current agenda. Please come forward, identify yourself, and share with us.

Mayor, council, I'm Christopher Tillman. I'm your mic on. Is there a button there to turn it on? There is not.

It's not just me.

Mayor Hardy, we're together. Agenda item 19. You know, my dad was on city council in the 80s and I was semi encouraged all right coerced to come to these meetings and i swore i'd never come to another one and i've tried not to but here i am um i'm your justice of the peace and juvenile hearing master and i gotta tell you i absolutely love the job And I'm third generation Boulder High graduate. And I'm here to say that I'd love to be your muni judge. I think the transition that I made from private practice to the Justice Court and the juvenile bench was smooth. And it certainly will be smooth if you appoint me to the muni bench um you know i've got big shoes to follow i mean judge miller is you know one of my mentors i did one of my first trials in front of him in 1994 in the basement yeah he convicted my client but but that's you know it was one of my first trials um i just thank you for you know what you do for for the city and uh like i said i'd be honored to serve contribute my energy and experience to the community bench. Thank you.

Thank you.

Again, thank you, council members, Mayor Eric King, a long-time resident. I wanted to speak to item number 11. It concerns the commercial manufacturing zone and the growing of food. It's vertical farming as I understand it. I just had the pleasure of meeting one of the maybe the principal of the operation and I certainly spoke wholeheartedly about supporting it last month as I recall as well. I just wanted to touch on maybe some consideration for the council as things move forward. Definitely please help green light this operation. I think it would be great for the community to have more climate localized food speciation growing for our health and vitality in the valley and in the city here. So very excited about that. And with that in mind, I just thought that maybe it makes sense for the city council to reach out to those who oversee the youth. We just had the justice of peace talking about the youth. Reach out to the youth, maybe the folks that coordinate youth education with the schools here in the city. I know that's a large district. But maybe there is certainly is a microclimate that exists here in Boulder City that's a little bit different than the valley in general. And so that may make sense with my idea of the nursery to have some face time with educators that oversee that portion of education for the kids. I know there's some gardening programming going on over there already at the schools. I think I know some of those folks that help run that. You can never help a youth learn the value of soil and health and vitality from plants they know they can grow their own or know where their food comes from. for the sanctity of the rest of their life. I think that's true for any human being, certainly those that live in the valley here, southern Nevada, where it is getting hotter and drier for longer every year, just about. and where there seems to be more angst than even when you all and I were kids, we had our own angst, and every generation does, but with social media, now they've inherited the angst of thousands of other cultures that they've been exposed to, so given all of the climate, urban heat island affect all the localized challenges we face food and knowledge that they can grow it and it will survive their novice handling is a certainty that helps them in their life so please consider that discussion thank you thank you mr king

Hello, Janelle Sorensen, Boulder City resident. I'm reading a letter from Brenda Lormier who couldn't be here tonight and asked me to read this into the record, slightly edited in the interest of time constraints. Dear council, regarding agenda item 19, I'm asking you to direct city staff not to begin an outside recruitment process for municipal judge and instead to take the necessary steps to appoint our elected justice of the peace, Chris Tillman, to the position. if we elect a qualified judge to serve our community why should city council choose another separate judge for us this is the first of five reasons i'm asking you to listen to your constituents number one respect the voters choice judge tillman won his election outright in the primary defeating two other candidates and demonstrating clear support from the voters Number two, follow Nevada state law and the model used by Nevada's other rural communities. Your own agenda packet acknowledges that among Nevada charter cities that appoint their municipal judge, the majority provide for their justice of the peace to serve as the ex officio municipal judge. Yet your agenda packet goes out of its way to point out Yarrington as the single other rural Nevada municipality that separately appoints its municipal judge. Pointing to the one other outlier does not make a persuasive case for maintaining Boulder City's unusual system. If anything, it illustrates just how unusual our system is. Number three, that said, follow Boulder City precedent. your own agenda packet shows that the same person served as justice of the peace and municipal judge for roughly 50 of the last 57 years whatever distinction the charter makes between an ex-officio position and a separate appointment the precedent is clear Number four, save taxpayers money. Boulder City is currently paying more than $138,000 a year for an interim municipal judge. We already have an elected justice of the peace working out of the same courthouse. Before funding a separate position, you owe taxpayers an explanation of why that expense is necessary, especially considering the city's recent budget shortfall. number five shed the image of cronyism and the old boys club there's a reason residents have become cynical about city hall this council has been plagued by a perception of a good old boys club whether you believe this perception is deserved or not is beside the point it exists and has damaged public trust please do the right thing and direct staff to take the action necessary to appoint judge tillman and begin the process of placing a charter amendment before the voters to make our elected justice of the peace the ex-officio municipal judge going forward thank you brenda lormier thank you

Good afternoon. Thomas Memmer, for the record. I'm going to basically meet to everything that Janelle had said. So I just want to add, please respect Judge Miller's retirement decision after his 40-plus years of dedicated service as our city judge and our justice of the peace. More importantly, I think it's time to honor that service, probably name the courthouse after him, and name his successor. Follow the precedent that's been set for the 40 plus years, and more importantly, honor the voter's choice by appointing Tillman. That's who we elected as our Justice, so to peace, it makes sense to make a margin, Judge. Thank you.

Thank you.

regarding number, agenda item number 19. There's a saying that lots of people use. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There are lots of items on the agenda, on this particular agenda, sort of trying to complicate the issue. I don't understand why it had to take so long to come to this. It could have happened a lot quicker. and you have precedent again if it ain't broke don't try to fix it thank you thank you anyone else in public comment

we will close public comment and go to approval of the regular agenda madam city clerk thank you staff is requesting item number 18 be moved up to be heard before item number 11 please

And so I'd look for the approval of the regular agenda with moving 18 before 11.

I move to approve the regular agenda moving number 18 before 11.

Second. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. And that leads us to I need approval for the consent agenda.

Move approved.

Second.

moved and approved on the consent agenda all those in favor say aye aye any opposed unanimous And that brings us to the regular agenda and the presentation. We have with us Danielle Casey, President and CEO of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance here. And she probably is going to elude the fact that, or tease us with what the name could change to. Or she doesn't have to.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the council, for the record, Danielle Casey, Las Vegas, Global Economic Alliance. I tell you, but I disappoint all our many fans who want to know at the same time, so thank you. But we can allude to that a little bit. We are going to have an update that you're privy to as a member of our board of directors. It's a pleasure to be here this evening. The mayor knows I'm not good at brevity or speaking slowly, but I'm gonna try to do both at the same time in the interest and respect of your time and those of the community here. As the president and CEO now for almost a year of LVGEA, it's a privilege to work with our local municipalities in the region, and I was speaking to a few of you earlier. I have a personal fondness for communities, especially rural communities. I started my career in local economic development in one, and in fact, Cynthia Sneed, your Director of Finance and I worked at the City of Maricopa together many, many moons ago. So you never know who you're gonna run into again in government service. So she's an absolute delight and you're lucky to have her. I do have a, wonderful, you all have this presentation up. So we do a lot of work on behalf of the region. And it is my privilege to just share with you a little bit of an update on what LBGEA has been up to over the past 12 months. what we are doing now and what you can hopefully anticipate in the future. And it's gonna really focus on our strategic planning work, which does apply to the region. For anybody in the community that doesn't, what is LVGEA? This changed the name, it's confusing. We have actually been around since the late 50s in the region. But FAFSA, we were called SNF, the Southern Nevada Industrial Foundation. Mayor, we are not changing it back to SNF, I'm sorry. But I know, I know, so many hearts are broken. But we've been around for a long time. We were reorganized in 2012 in our current state. And for folks in the community that may not be aware, we are also the designated regional development authority through the Governor's Office of Economic Development. And I'll talk a little bit about that here in a second. but for all intents and purposes we we represent on an economic development front for the state and through our regional partners the whole clark county region communities large and small if you want to get a little bit of a sense of who's on our board of directors including the mayor representing boulder city this is a an example of all of those that serve we had a great board meeting last week and made some big changes to the organization i think are going to service very well and i do want to add i i don't have the data in front of me but i do believe the mayor may have the most uh perfect attendance record out outside of a little bit of time this summer uh you know for good reason of any of my board members so i want to thank you for your commitment and dedication i believe you might have even been on our webinar today i think i saw you there so thank you for paying attention and keeping a close eye on what we are up to on behalf of the region's economy So I always like to share with everybody in all of our community partners, what do we do on behalf of the Governor's Office of Economic Development as that regional development authority? We do a lot of things. These are highlights of our contract with GO-ED. So a couple of things that are important to point out is we are obligated to support their key federal and state initiatives. So we are a partner there. We go to trade shows, we work with them on that. We've done some big things. We actually represented the whole entire state at the BIO International Technical Trade Show just earlier this summer. We engage with site selectors and brokers, so any inquiries from a company coming into the state of Nevada that say they are looking at a potential location in Southern Nevada, come through us to circulate to all of our communities and partners for responses to those inquiries. So that is an obligation on their behalf. We would want to do it anyway, of course, but we also regionally align with them. We have open communications with GO-ED. We do inventory and asset mapping, so we work very hard to keep track of sites and opportunities for future business in our region. And we do participate at board meetings for GO-ED on behalf of company clients. So we just got out of a meeting last week. If you look on our website, you can see a press announcement about four different companies that were announced for the region, and our team facilitated their process from soup to nuts, so to speak. Additional municipal benefits. And while I can tell you, while we didn't locate a specific company within Boulder City's city limits this last year, municipal benefits are real and a rising tide, I believe, raises all ships in regional economic development. So a couple of things I wanted to share that you may not be aware that you are getting from your engagement. We convene our economic developers in the region once a month. So your economic development team is invited to a meeting to know everything that we are up to in terms of prospect and business development pipeline activity and also meet with other economic developers. So not only do you have a seat at the table on our board, you have a seat at the table on a technical staff side in the interest of partnership and cooperation. We host site selector tours. We bring national consultants out. LVGEA facilitates this, puts together a really wonderful regional tour, shows them what we have to offer. And the whole goal is to get on their short list for great company locations and opportunities. We give you the opportunity, of course, to engage with regional business leadership. We're starting some new initiatives called a growth council, for example. You participate on the board. And we have actually in the last year launched a lot of new cool tools and resources for the region software labor analytics we can do in-house market comparisons between our region and other regions for cost of doing business we can do economic impact analyses these are also tools available to you all and to your staff if they are ever useful to you in any of your evaluations so give me a call we're happy to do it And one thing that we're working on right now that's very important is coordinating the regional comprehensive economic development strategy, which is unique and different from our strategy. And I'm going to close my presentation with that. Fun, exciting numbers. These are all in your packet. So in the interest of brevity, what's most important here, you'll see that it says New Boulder City revenue of about $69,000. This is calculated through economic impact analyses of projects that we've located in the region. and an estimate based on where people live and how they spend money of what we believe through those economic impact models would have come to revenue streams to the city of Boulder because of that rising tide raising ships and bringing revenue into the region. So while I didn't stand at the cast register and watch it happen, these are the best economic models and assumptions available. So we hope that that's at least a solid direct return on investment. And in terms of pipeline, what's, oh. Oh good, you're perfectly fine. Pipeline support, these are also opportunities that we've shared with your team and also the activity of deal flow. When we say deal flow, we're talking about prospect activity with prospective companies all the way through that sales, anybody who does sales, it's that sales funnel pipeline that brings them into the community and also workforce impact and other activity that we've had happy to answer any questions on the details on this offline. But what I really want to get to very quickly is something we're working on in our strategic plan. This is something that when I was recruited to the role last, about a year ago, it was very clear with our board and all of our partners that everybody said, Danielle, we just need you to diversify the economy. It's no problem, just diversify. Tongue in cheek, they knew it was hard. So it was very clear to me that we needed a shared understanding. of what diversifying the economy meant and what kind of lifting activity that would take in the short, medium, and long term for our region because we have a major dominant asset in this market in this state that we want to be respectful of and be appreciative of, but it's also okay to grow the pie in a positive way and bring great jobs, better paying jobs, more opportunities for folks that maybe were born here and grew up here and they don't want to go into entertainment or maybe gaming and they want to have other opportunities. So we thought long and hard and talked about this and determined the primary measurement indicator is something called the Hackman Index. I didn't make it up. I don't know Mr. Hackman or whoever he is, but it's an economic term that's pretty widely used. And what it really means is the measure of diversification of your economy. So if a one or 100% is a very diverse economy, we're at a 74 now. And we're talking metro, we're talking entire region. So in order to move that needle just a little bit, we talked about what does it mean to diversify our region. And we knew that our strategic plan was something that was going to have to direct what is LVGEA's role. And I'll get to the interesting piece and what that Hackman Index needle looks like here in just a second. So if you look at the bottom right on this slide, what's very interesting, the converse of that, you see just above a 25 there, 26. That's the percentage of tourism and entertainment in the Las Vegas region, Clark County, and we're comparing that to other markets. So it's always good, if you don't look at things in context, it means nothing. So when we look at us, but then we look at Orlando being under 20% concentrated in tourism and hospitality. That's something that we can strive toward and look at other markets and how they can still be very dominant in wonderful visitation sectors, but still be building other industries long term. So that's our kind of guidepost, so to speak, our North Star. We actually updated our mission and vision statement. We thought this was very important. Before LVGEA's mission statement talked about us attracting and growing jobs, This is very intentional. The words trusted regional partner were a deep discussion about the criticality of our role in needing to invest in and spend time being a trusted regional partner and thinking about a diverse, resilient, and prosperous economy. And our vision talks about us being rooted in world-class hospitality, but being powered by innovation. And it closes with opportunity for all. I believe deeply in that. As a regional economic development group, I tell my employees and team members and leaders, Our role is to help make life better and continually better for residents across the Clark County region. And if we're doing something that doesn't lend toward that outcome, we need to think long and hard about why we're spending time on it. So that's a little bit of my, if you can tell, my long time as a public servant, I can't get it out of me. And we are clearly still a large public service organization with LBGEA. This next slide is about the busiest slide you could ever design in your life, but I blame my board. They said, Danielle, you gave me a 50 page document for a strategy. Give me one thing I can look at. So this is our entire 50 page strategic plan on one card. um you can certainly dissect it later it talks about the industries we are targeting this is where we're doing outbound work what companies are we going after to try to proactively recruit in our region and these have been identified through ones that bring greater outcomes into the community and also align with our assets Every goal and key tactic over there, every bullet point has a half a page on how we are going to tackle this over the next three years. And I'm circling back to that Hackman index piece. So to move from a 74 up to a 76 or a 77, just a couple percentage points more diverse as a region, that's gonna take 34,000 new jobs over five years, quite an impact. So I wanted to make sure our board and the community knew that doing this means a long-term dedicated and focused effort. and an extreme alignment. So everything we're going to do is to be focused on these target industries because these are industries that will offer a higher wage premium. So we're focused on bringing in opportunities that deliver 1.3 times or greater the average wage premium. so that we can be additive to the economy. And we are focusing very hard. We really want to see that the new jobs that we're bringing into the region are in these diverse sectors and target industries. Because as you know, jobs for jobs counts sake do not necessarily mean the right thing for the community. And while there will be opportunities that look at our region and market that maybe are not ideal for us, we can control where we spend our outward time. Great. this is a lot of all the things we're going to be doing through the end of the year so please digest this as as you will and feel free to come back but i will share um that the mayor is very well aware some of the organizational work that we've done recently and over the summer we passed this plan with our board early june and we already came back and updated our just last week did a full update of our articles of incorporation our bylaws and some restructuring so we can organize LVGEA to doing the work and tapping into the expertise of our business leaders as opposed to a lot of really boring governance meetings and instead asking them to lean in as subject matter experts. So you'll see some shifts there and the mayor's pretty deeply informed about what that means. So I'm very excited about that and it's gonna be new ways of engaging our partners And we are off to the races and yes, October 15, we will have the perspective awards dinner and we will be announcing our new name then. So Mary, you have to hold on just a little bit. But that's a key piece. Our strategic plan was very intentional that we did need to think about an identity reset. Because quite frankly, our name right now is confusing for site selectors and companies that are trying to understand what we do and who we are. And with that, I promised I'd come back to the comprehensive economic development strategy. This is different than LBGEA's strategic plan. I'm sure mayor and council are aware, a regional SEDS is a very important document required for future opportunities for funding through economic development administration and other grants. We are the grantor for creating the plan. We're the facilitator of the plan. A SEDS is a plan owned by the entire region. so we've been inviting folks far and wide to weigh in on this and give input completing this plan will be important and it'll be important to boulder city if there are related grants or other opportunities that you want to go after for the community later so we get to facilitate that and we learn a lot but i'm always really clear with everybody we have our own strategy and this is a plan that the whole region owns and we just get to facilitate and Actually going back to that, anyone in the community or otherwise, we actually are sending out regular newsletters. It's going to be completed by the end of the year. There's tons of data and information already from stakeholder interviews and input available online right now. So if anybody's bored or you can't get to sleep tonight, maybe that's a way. all right um and then finally if you are interested in what's going on with us we produce annual reports we do have a quarterly report from quarter one and uh mayor i believe uh by next week we'll be sending you and all the other board members and investors out our quarter two report for this year um and and that includes things like our new regional deal overview which is something we now produce on a monthly basis which we did not previously Thank you, I really appreciate, I'm very grateful for your time. I know you have a lot of important things to get to tonight. I'd be happy to take any questions, but I appreciate you and thank you.

Questions or comments?

First off, thank you so much. I've been here six years. I think this is the first time I've ever had someone come in and talk. So it's really nice to see you more than just like an acronym of some sort that's changing clearly. So I'm going to have to revisit what I think. Your really busy slide, it intrigued me to be honest which is kind of your strategic plan overview. I know when we do an overview or a plan overview, there's the short term, long term, medium term kind of goals that you have there. It's exciting. Are you going to implement what that progress looks like in your newsletters or in your reports at the end of the year so we can kind of get an idea for what we're seeing in that direction?

Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp, absolutely. So after this quarter two report, since we just approved this in June, future quarterly reports will include that. And I've made a commitment to our board that every time we have a board meeting and a discussion, we're going to be reporting back on activity related to the strategic plan and how we're moving those needles forward. Because even in community strategies, if you don't stick to the plan, you're not going to achieve it. What gets watched gets measured and what gets measured gets done, right? Or measured gets watched, watched gets done. And so that'll be very important and we will even have our next, we'll have a board retreat in January where we will every year look at it and recalibrate. and go what did we get right what did we not get right and where do we need to put new energy in fact we even just approved last week an adjustment to our budget for the rest of the year so i could reorganize where we were spending money maybe in places that were not the right places to be aligned with the strategy so we're already making movement

That's awesome and I have to say I love the high goals I love that because when you set high goals you have a tendency to achieve and as a long time resident my entire life of this area I've seen the valley grow and I have you know eventually if you live long enough your own kids get real people big jobs and they talk about whether or not they're coming back and you have to have a variety of jobs to have your kids come back and get to see your grandkids so thank you I really appreciate it Danielle thank you for the intensive PowerPoint I just had a couple of questions for you are you working currently with our Chamber of Commerce

you know we've uh mayor councilwoman we have had introductions and we've had conversations i've been extremely impressed so um and i'm i'm fairly certain but i need to check my list i do believe that they've been invited especially to the seds so um so absolutely okay i was thinking she probably had a seat on the board or something because she's so active um do you do any work with international i noticed everything here was mostly national It's a wonderful question and in our strategy this fall we will be creating a foreign direct investment strategy so that's a bit an add-on to the strategy so we can analyze what's happening, what makes sense, which target industries are most suitable for us, which markets. One thing we have done in the past and did complete this year is a significant presence at SelectUSA which is a conference that happens in Maryland every year and pretty much every state and every major region is there talking to foreign companies and having conversations there. Oh, and I would just, sorry to go back to your question, also on the chamber, part of what we're standing up also are advisory councils and ways for more folks to engage. If we don't have a seat for them on the board, how do we engage more of those investors and community partners? We haven't really had a good structure for that in the past. It's kind of been, you're either on the board or you go to one or two events a year and you don't really hear from us, and I'm working very hard to change that to be more transparent and connected with with the community across the region and do you have anything on tap as far as new ventures like new sports teams or things like that oh my um so so the the tourism space is a little bit outside of our space but we are fun we are focusing on things like sports tech right so companies that are doing new technologies and sensors and going after them so So CES is a very, very big show for us as well. So when you think about sports adjacent technologies and discoveries there, I think that's a big piece where we are gonna be leaning in. And so stay tuned. But it's a wonderful question. I love where your mind is going.

Okay, thank you. And my last one was, okay, it's kinda loud. You said you work with the governor. Any specific initiatives that you could share with us?

Oh, goodness. Well, thank you. Where to start? A lot of those pieces— One of the highlights. I think the one that I pointed out earlier, they tapped us to lead the Bio International trade show for the entire state. We are going to be working with them. We are not a lobbying organization, and we're actually going to be working into shifting into a 501 status. We are a subject matter expert in economic development so you can definitely see us working with them and weighing in on different policies and what their impact would be to the region and to the state and economic development. One of the other things that we launched that is kind of a really fun thing and I'm excited for the future of this, we have not had a statewide professional association for economic developers. meaning a group that trains people to do economic development in our state, and every other state I've been in has that. So my second week on the job, I had a chat with Taylor Adams, who runs our sister organization in the Reno market, formerly known as EDON. They just renamed. I didn't know they were doing this, and they one-upped me. They're now going to be called Northern NB now. But we got on the phone and we said, well, we're both lifelong economic developers professionally. So we've started a group called the Nevada Economic Developers Association. We also have Director Burns with GO-ED on that board and a few others, rural and urban. the idea is that this organization will be a way to bring together rural and urban communities across nevada not only to train economic developers but also to talk about policy priorities from an advocacy and an education standpoint with legislators across the state so you know if we find things that are good for rural and urban communities and align on that that could be a very good thing absolutely thank you for you to do it quite a bit appreciate you so much

Ms. Casey, thank you. I'm turning to the page with numbers and dollars and investment return attached. Down the blue column, we have 1,275 new jobs created and the average hourly wage of $39.83. What are the new industries that LVGEA has helped bring here and what specifically are we looking at the jobs where people are getting 1,275 new jobs created and that hourly rate. What is the industry or the various industries that have been developed?

Absolutely. And I would love to rattle off all the company names. I would definitely want to direct us to some of the press releases over the last year. But I can tell you these are heavily focused on advanced manufacturing. We've seen a lot of that. We are also still seeing companies locate here in the warehousing and logistics space. While that is necessary for regions in terms of supply and demand, we're very interested in leaning heavier towards that higher value-added advanced manufacturing piece, for example. So Haas Automation, as everyone knows, is a very big footprint that's happening in Henderson. We just announced last week a couple of technology companies We do have one company that it is not a data center. They manufacture the racks for data centers. So they are creating the equipment and the materials that will be shipped out to those nationwide. We know that's a lot of activity. And what's pretty interesting about that one is called Hype Solutions. They're actually expanding manufacturing operations in northern Nevada and southern Nevada. So we're seeing quite a bit of that and some new technology companies and happy to send you all over the links to the recent announcements so you can dig into those companies specifically.

Yeah, thank you. I have read some of those articles of those companies coming in. You did mention, and thank you for the question relating to how we work with the governor's office. Do we have gubernatorial appointments on the LVGEA or is it strictly Las Vegas area or Clark County appointees?

That's a wonderful question. The only seat that is state appointed is executive. Director Burns does sit on our board, but that is all. The rest of our board is made up of municipal representatives for our municipal investors and partners, as well as the private business community. And as of today, I have 51 board members, 51 wonderful board members.

Thank you for your time and for your answers. Thanks, Mayor.

So one of the things that continues to impress me is how this is so good for the state to have the state office of economic development, the governor's office, economic development work with us down here, I'll call it. and how, what a boon this has been for the Governor's Office of Economic Development. Director Burns, I think when I first met him, it was here in Boulder City, and he was taking his daughter out to breakfast, and that was probably 20 some odd years ago. we developed our friendship with Dr. Burns. So he's been very valuable to us in helping us and clearing things that go through the state channels. It's been a great relationship that we've had. So you can see how Ms. Casey brings a certain amount of enthusiasm and push and how do we say it? just enthusiastic and appreciate you and what you're doing personally and how the board has been able to coalesce and be there in in its entirety and so it's been a good good opportunity for us to be on that at that table so thank you any other questions when are you coming back

i would be happy to come back whenever you invite me and would like me to come at minimum annually but if you would like updates on a more frequent basis i would be honored to be invited he keeps promising them and i keep missing them it's it's like the hockey games and never seeing a good fight well we do have a cam so you actually could see where they're at all right thank you all right thank you so very much for your time appreciate it thank you now that brings us to number 10.

Ready?

Excuse me. Good evening, Mayor Hardy and council members. For the record, my name is Kevin Hickey and I am the Homeownership Programs Manager for Nevada Rural Housing. It's good to be back and to give you an update on what we're doing over here at Nevada Rural and to be back in Boulder City and speak with you tonight. For more than 50 years, Nevada Rural Housing has worked to expand housing opportunities across rural Nevada through homeownership, rental assistance, and housing development. And today that impact includes more than 11,000 homebuyers assisted since 2006 when our homeownership programs began. That equals $2.5 billion in mortgage lending, $69 million in down payment assistance, $180 million have been invested in affordable housing development, and 851 affordable housing units have been developed or preserved with more than 590 additional units planned through 2027. On the homeownership front, since 2006, we've helped 22 homebuyers here in Boulder City with about $5 million in mortgages and about $166,000 in down payment assistance. And part of that's thanks to the private activity bond cap transfers that the city has provided to Nevada Rural to help support our home ownership programs. Your partnership makes all of this possible. Private activity bond cap is not funding from your local budget, as you know, it's a federal allocation that can be used to expand affordable home ownership. And by transferring unused bond cap to Nevada Rural Housing, you're helping keep those resources working for rural Nevada families. Today, BondCap is used exclusively to support our Launchpad homeownership program. Launchpad provides below market interest rates, down payment assistance that helps working families purchase homes that they may not otherwise be able to afford. And while we have not had any loan activity in Boulder City over the past year, we've been working hard to get the word out about Nevada Rural Housing's programs, including Launchpad and more recently, our Rural Rocks 20K program that provides $20,000 in down payment assistance among other benefits. That program was previously restricted to essential workers, but has recently opened up to all who qualify. To help get the word out, we advertise via streaming media services targeted to rural areas. And our metrics show that we've reached 250 Boulder City households in the past year through those streaming media services. We also have heavily promote our programs on social media through our lender partners and through appearances on the Mortgage Matters radio show on KUNV 91.5. Though that show is at UNLV, we often speak about the areas adjacent to the Las Vegas Valley because as you know our program is intended for rural Nevada. So there's very, very little opportunity for our programs to be used in the Vegas Valley. And so we talk a lot about the close in communities like Boulder City, Pahrump is another one, Laughlin and Mesquite come up pretty frequently. So we do target the rural parts of Clark County heavily to help drive these home ownership programs. Other than that, we're doing our best with our local partners, reaching out to them, reminding them that Boulder City is considered rural. It often is confused that it is not rural. And our definition of rural is determined by the state legislature, and it's based on population, 150,000 people or less, which is why this area is considered rural. So we target that heavily to try to get the message out there and help folks purchase a home.

uh thank you for your continued partnership and for considering the request to transfer your unused bond cap and i can happy to answer any questions you may have questions i just have a question or in a comment i guess um there's a new housing initiative that's coming down from the federal it's called the 21st century housing act are you working with that project or integrating with the feds

It's possible that we are on the upper executive level with Nevada Rural Housing. We do partner with our federal delegation in Washington to help advance housing initiatives. We also work through the National Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies, say that 10 times, right? They are the industry group that promotes affordable housing initiatives in Washington. Nevada Rural Housing is considered a housing finance agency, a local housing finance agency, and that's because we don't serve the entire state. So there's the state, Persian local, but we do work with them as well. And then internally we work with folks that promote housing initiatives on the state level.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you for coming today. I appreciate it. So if somebody doesn't live in Boulder City and they want to buy a home in Boulder City, can they use this loan?

Absolutely. Our programs offer different options and that's what we strive to do so we can help as many people as possible. The only thing that you might find a restriction on is our Rocks program that requires folks to have lived in Nevada for at least six months but it can be anywhere in Nevada so that certainly wouldn't preclude them from coming to Boulder City provided they've been in the state for six months.

So that's a good option. I'm going to pick your brain a little bit. Why do you think we haven't, because I'm familiar with your loans, why have you not gotten any loans this year in Boulder City? What do you think the answer is?

I think it's a combination of pricing and interest rates. You know, it's got a lot of people nervous and scared of the interest rate flexibility in the market or economic, you know, things that go on around us that we can't control. So we have seen, we recently have seen an uptick in loan activity thanks to the Rural Rocks program, which is fantastic. And just to provide a little insight on that, that came about thanks to AB 540 in the last legislative session that created the Housing Affordability Fund for different projects including home ownership. But that has brought more people to the table to help them purchase a home now that they know that assistance is out there. It's coming with an interest rate that may be typical the market or slightly lower oftentimes down payment assistance comes with a higher interest rate and when we have outside funding like that it keeps the interest rate lower so we're hopeful that with lower rates and maybe stabilizing house prices or housing prices that we'll be able to get more activity here in Boulder City thank you so much for coming and sharing with us thank you I appreciate it

So specifying it is a $20,000 down payment loan. Correct. That you could qualify. Is there a minimum or maximum house price involved with that?

No, there's no purchase price limit set by the program. There are loan limits, but those are, it's a conforming loan limit, changes every year, and currently it's $832,750. So it is quite high, so we're not likely to run up against that. The other thing that we would look at closely is income. The Rural Rocks program has an income limit of 150% of the area median income, which for Clark County is about $143,000. So it is a generous income limit to help folks who, even with that kind of income, it's still hard to save up for down payment and purchase a home.

Do you know off the top of your head the percentage of the loan rate?

Like interest rate? Interest rate. So currently there's two, well there's two different options through the program. You can use the $20,000 for all down payment and closing cost assistance and then anything that's left goes toward lowering the principal. The other option is to use a portion of that to buy down the interest rate. So it helps increase that affordability. So 2% of the loan amount would buy their interest rate down. It varies from day to day based on market. But our goal is always to make it at least half a point lower than what's currently available. And that comes from that funding. So the borrower doesn't have to pay for that interest rate reduction. And then whatever is left can help toward down payment and closing costs as well. So currently, with the rate reduction, options are sitting in the upper fives. And then for the rate reduction, or for the standard rates, it varies based on the type of loan. So if it's a government loan, a conventional loan, if their income is below 80% AMI or above 80% AMI, there's different options. So it really ranges anywhere from the high fives with the permanent reduction on up to the upper sixes.

Okay, thank you so much.

So do they just call you up and say, I need $20,000, and you say, here it is, and you can use it for your down payment, or you can use it for your loan reduction, or you can change your interest rate. Those are your three options. Those are the options.

We're happy to give it to you. Yes. So we do get those calls, and we're always happy to answer any questions that folks have. As a matter of fact, I've gotten a couple emails recently from someone in Pahrump who's trying to help her son purchase a home with information and knowledge. So she reaches out to me and says, how about this? What can we do here? And then I share more information about the programs that she then shares with her son. So word of mouth, of course. But we do work with local lenders throughout the state to help folks use our programs. So there's no application directly with Nevada Rural Housing, which we like to think keeps it more simple, because they don't have to come to us first and then their lender. They just go to a lender who's approved to offer the program, and then they walk them through the whole process, just like if they were not using the program to purchase a home.

And so is the lender willing to do that without being prodded?

More often than not, especially if the borrower doesn't have a down payment or enough down payment saved, they will recommend various down payment assistance programs. Of course, you know, there's our programs, the state has programs as well and there's many other down payment assistance programs available. We always lean on our lender partners to make that information available to their home buyers. We often tell them, too, we know we're not the only option out there. If there's a better one for a particular borrower, that's great. Our lender partners do a great job of making sure they're getting their borrowers the best assistance program that they can have.

Is your secret phone number somewhere?

so we do have our main Nevada rural housing phone number which is seven seven five eight eight seven one seven nine five and there is an option in there to choose the homeownership programs and folks can reach out to us all right appreciate it any other question

I just have one comment we have Jennifer Headland is our community resource liaison and every now and then she puts on town halls do you do you come out to rural areas during those times if she reached out to you I would love to yes absolutely okay thank you thank you all right thank you I appreciate your time appreciate it thanks for coming thank you

That brings us to number 18. We do have the resolution. Resolution.

Yeah.

We need to have a motion for resolution 8172.

I'll move to approve resolution number 8172. I'll second that.

Moved and seconded. Discussion? those in favor say aye aye any opposed it's unanimous thank you thank you that brings us to number 18 that we said was going to be out of order instead of number 11.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm Brock Armantrout, your Revenue Contracts Real Estate Manager for the City. Item 18 is a resolution to authorize pursuant to NRS 268.063 to permit the City to enter into direct negotiations with the Carbon Cactus Project to lease land from the City for real property consisting of approximately four acres at 1201 Quail Drive. For those who aren't familiar with what Quail Drive is, that's the road that accesses the city's wastewater treatment plant, and 1201 is directly west of the quarter-scale racetrack on the south side of the road. NRS 268.063 allows cities to enter into direct negotiations and bypass the RFP process, or bid process, with interested parties, provided they meet at least one of several criteria. In section four of 268.063, it has to either be the establishment of a new commercial enterprise facility within the city to support retention or expansion of existing commercial enterprises within the city. Third, the establishment, retention, or expansion of public, quasi-public, or other facilities or operations within the city. Fourth, the establishment of residential housing needed to support the establishment of new commercial enterprises. Or five, any combination of those that I just mentioned. For a bit of background for those who aren't following this process over the last several months, Carbon Cat has submitted a request to lease the land from the city to construct a demonstration project to study how the The cactus pear can be grown within the community for agriculture purposes, for cattle feed, possibly for biofuel, for many purposes as well as many other potential purposes that the cactus is uniquely suited for. Previously, the city council did authorize city staff to seek an appraisal of the land in preparation of a potential process to negotiate for the land. and we'd have had that appraised and the average of the two appraisals came in at $3,454 per acre as a lease rate. We had asked also the Carbon Cactus Project to clarify how much water the site might use if developed for four acres, and annually that would come up to 222,000 gallons per year. Initially that sounds like a lot of water, but that's actually only about one and a half households within the community. The carbon cactus people are here to do a presentation, answer any questions you may have. And should you approve resolution 8179, that would then allow staff to enter into direct negotiations with the carbon cactus project for a lease that will come back before the council at a future date. Any questions before we turn the time over to the cactus people?

Questions?

Okay.

Thank you.

Hi, Jess Malaski, great to see you guys. Thank you for your time, Mayor, Council. I'm really excited to be here. I think we have a presentation, nice. Was John Cushman able to join remote from UNR? Awesome.

Yes, he's on.

Love that. Good, thank you. Allow me to control it. Which button? The worn out one? The one that's been clicked. So I wanted to reintroduce myself and our project. My name is Jess Malaski. My family's been in Southern Nevada since the 50s. Our main business is building communities, affordable housing, market rate, workforce housing in Las Vegas. I started this nonprofit a little bit out of college, and I've been working on it for quite a bit of time. There's been definitely a few iterations. with the concept of instead of planting trees, why not plant cactus to sequester carbon? They grow faster, they use less water. There was a lot of good research that showed that that's a great path forward. What I found was there's not a lot of cactus available. And so that started to kick off a process of exploration of, okay, why are people not farming this crop? in what seems like a perfect geography for it. Places all around the world grow nopal. Specifically, that's the cactus that we're talking about. It's used for food. It's used for cattle feed. You can turn it into biofuel. You can turn it into plastics. And so many economies use this crop. The Southwest United States has not really adapted it yet. And so our mission has evolved, right? Especially as water use has become more and more of a topic with the recent ruling or decisions on how the Colorado's gonna be used. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the data, but farming and agriculture is one of the biggest uses. And if we can find efficiencies on 1%, 2% of that farming, I think the impacts will be huge. And so our mission with this pilot farm, just to really lay it out there, is to partner with UNR, to partner with a city like you guys, who are forward thinking and thinking about conservation and thinking about sustainability, and prove and show other farmers that this is a viable crop. as well as a way that they can make money and a way that we can save the Colorado River in some ways. We're here applying under this NRS. We are applying under two pieces of it that he mentioned. We're the first movers on some of your A1 agriculture land, which is really exciting, I think, for the city's plan. It's right next to the water recycling area. It's next to that racetrack. There's not a lot of other uses except agriculture that would be a good fit there. And what it may start is, you know, an entire agricultural industry on the land that you've zoned for that, which is exciting. We'd also be providing cactus for farmers at either a donation or discounted price. We'd be offering help with irrigation for farmers to be able to change and be more efficient if they chose to do this crop with us. The second really exciting piece is we've been able to create a partnership with the University of Reno. John Cushman is doing a study. He'll speak to this I think maybe now. As soon as I'm done here with this little piece But that partnership really means a lot to us they really are excited about working in this geography with you know this jurisdiction and We're kind of combining you know commercial agriculture research community education a lot of different things into this project And we're really excited to have that so is it easy to cut over to John I?

Sure, if you're ready for John to present, we can move to that presentation.

Or just for him to speak a moment about his project and then I would jump back in, or is it better for him to do that at the end? I don't know. You guys tell me, is it easy to do that?

Well, we have the two presentations, so if you'd like to just introduce himself, I believe he's on the Zoom. Is that right, Holly? So he can introduce himself. Okay.

Yes, I'm happy to speak after you complete your presentation.

Okay, perfect. I'll do my thing and then we can get back to you. Perfect.

I think that would work better.

All right. Let's see. So we talked a little bit about the Colorado River water usage. If you look at it, 74% of the water is used for agriculture. 26% is used for municipal and living in the desert. Five million acre feet of the water is being used for that 26%. 1% reduction in alfalfa water could save 50,000 acre feet annually, you know, for a time when that's important, a time when the lower basins are going to be forced to come up with creative solutions to save water, you know, each little production is really meaningful. Um, If you look here, alfalfa is one of the higher uses of water, but almonds and, you know, a lot of the other things grown in the desert are similar usage. So we're going to use alfalfa as the main comparison. Um, one acre foot of water is 325,000 gallons. You know, we have a lot of different nomenclature and so it's a little bit tricky, right? But it's easier for me to say one acre foot is about two households. Desert alfalfa uses 12 acre feet per year. And a farmer who grows that makes about $214 per acre. So a lot of water for $200. The crop that we're growing uses a little bit over one acre foot. And the profit from selling the pads, from donations, and from the fruit is anywhere between $1,500 to $3,000. And so for a lot less water, you're able to produce a crop that's more valuable. This picture here was taken at John Cushman's study in the Moapa Valley field trial. And a lot of the purpose of working with the UNR would be understanding what crop grows best in this geography, building best practices for farmers, understanding how to, you know, I'll let John talk more about it, but it really allows us to add that academic layer that we can then inform generational farmers and help them keep their companies relevant versus having to sell to bigger companies, keep these farmers within the family or within the generations. I spoke to this a little bit. It's used all over the world. There's a billion dollar market cap of Apuntia currently. Whether it's the fruit or the pads, we're importing a lot from other places. The version that we're growing is spineless. What we have found is that there's a very quick return on investment for farmers. If we were to switch to this crop within 18 months, they're making money. A lot of crops, like I was saying, like a fruit tree, can take four to five years just to bear its first fruit. And the amount of water just to get to that point is quite significant. The amount of time and investment and energy is quite significant. And so, yeah. Like I was saying, it's grown a lot in Mexico and we're bringing a lot of it into the country instead of providing it ourselves, especially when we have a geography very similar that we could be growing it. The biggest replacement for alfalfa would be for feeding cows and feeding horses and cattle in general. It's a high protein, high water. It has a lot more nutrients than a hay. If you mix it with hay, it's really a lot healthier for the cattle. And it also means that cattle produce less methane. The last pieces growing in this area really does do what our original plan was. It's an amazing way to sequester carbon. As plants grow, a large part of their biomass is carbon. The cactus double, triple in size each year, versus a tree that takes a long time to grow biomass. The cactus are sequestering a large amount of carbon. They're also providing amazing pollination paths for birds, for bees, right? And so that's critical, especially in a desert agriculture. Last time we were here, we had a lot of questions about what our water usage would be. We really want to dial that in for you guys and talk a little bit about it. Like we said, it would be 220,000 gallons per year for all four acres. So less than that full acre foot, right? That would be less than two full households of water. Our current plan is to plant around 3,000 plants on four acres. And so on average, we'd be paying about $60 a month, maybe $80 a month of water usage comparable to people's house bills. Just a little bit more comparison the city ordinance just reduced water usage for golf course irrigation from six acre feet or six point eight acre feet I think down to four acre feet so our usage would be about four times less water intensive than a golf course for example This is our location it's Zoned A1, this area is, I think, meant for future agriculture as well. We have the race track adjacent, we have the veteran cemetery, and we have the water facility treatment plant next to us. There would be some challenges and there would be some amazing future discussions of how could we use that water, right? Instead of it evaporating, could we use some of it for this agriculture? It would take purification and some steps that we're not prepared to do quite today in order to get this project in the ground, but it's really some fruitful ground that we could talk to and partner with in the future if that was something that you guys were interested in. Let's see. The last piece is we've done a lot of work since we were last here with you, partnering with different community partners. We have cactus and there's certain timing that we need to get them planted in the ground before it gets too hot. It's been way too hot for anything. And so the spring and the fall are the timelines that we're working up against. That's one of the reasons we're asking for this economic development exemption. Otherwise, the process is a six to nine month RFP process for land that is not being utilized. And so we're really trying to get plants in the ground by next spring. In the meantime, since we've had a little bit of a challenge getting this site off the ground, We've partnered with all of these local partners and planted about, you know, a couple hundred to a thousand cactus. And we've kind of done this disaggregated approach where we're still going to be able to produce more pads. They're growing. We're showing the community what we can do. It's long term partners, right? Like Gilcrease Orchards, the Green Gale Farms. That's a long term family. UNR, Springs Preserve, Desert Crop Development. And so we've been able to get a lot of community buy-in, and that's a big mission of ours, too, is just education. Last piece, I just want to show you guys our general site plan. Carbon Cactus, the foundation that we are, is planning to use that first two acres. That's for demonstration garden, propagation, teaching the community about this crop. And then University of Reno would be using the back two acres for field research and variety trials. And so it's a balance between commercial demonstration, propagation, and education. That's it for our presentation. Sorry if that was a little verbose. But I'm happy to ask questions and kind of chat through whatever you guys are thinking. So, yeah.

You have somebody online that still wants to say something?

Sure, yeah. Maybe John could speak now about his engagement as well.

Sure. Let me share my screen. Can everybody see that?

Yes.

Okay. My name is John Cushman. I'm a professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Biotechnology at UNR, University of Nevada, Reno. And I've been a professor here for 26 years, and I've been working on cactus pear for the last 15 years. And the project that would integrate with the proposed plan in Boulder City would be a research project that is already ongoing. It's a $9 million research project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. It's a five-year project, and we basically want to understand how we can improve the productivity of a puntia cactus pear under hot and arid conditions. by leveraging rhizosphere microbial consortia. The overall goal of this project is to understand and improve the high biomass productivity of cactus pear. This makes it an excellent feedstock for a lot of uses, but our focus is on bioenergy. And this is basically, this is a feedstock that allows for sustainable biomass production under very hot and arid conditions. And the reason that the Department of Energy is interested in this is because of its potential as a bioenergy feedstock as conditions on the ground get hotter and drier. And of course the cactus pear is incredibly water use efficient. So we want to understand the genetic basis of this high water use efficiency and the nitrogen use efficiency. And the way that we're doing this is by surveying national germplasm collections of Opuntia. And we only use spineless accessions. The other goals that you can see there is that we want to look at how microbiomes associate with Apuntia and then model this and actually create synthetic microbial communities that would improve the biomass productivity of Apuntia and its ability to sequester carbon, but also these microbes have the ability to make the plant actually more drought tolerant. So this is a national project. The University of Nevada, Reno, we are leading this project. We're the lead institution here in Northern Nevada. But we also have partners at the Pacific Northwest National Lab, the National Laboratory of the Rockies, two USDA ARS facilities, one in California and one in Arizona, and two subcontractors, the University of Florida, as you can see there, and a private company called Loop Bioproducts. We have planted four common gardens throughout these locations in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida. The site, the projected site at Boulder City would be a fifth research plot. And what we're doing at all of these sites is we're planning common gardens. And what a common garden is, is basically a collection of 240 different cactus bear accessions grown under the same conditions under replicated conditions to identify those accessions that are going to grow the best have the highest biomass productivity and have the highest potential for sequestering carbon and producing fodder and forage for animals and also for human nopalitos and tunas for human consumption. Where these cactus come from, I've been working, as I said, for the last 15 years. I have been accumulating these accessions for the last six years, actually seven years. And I won't go through all of this, but we have over 400 different accessions. Of those, about 250 of them are spineless. And what we've trialed in our common gardens is 240 spineless accessions in those four locations. The other thing I'll say about this, our common gardens, is that one of the things that we're looking at is that there's a national precipitation gradient. We go from very dry conditions in Arizona and potentially Nevada and California to wetter conditions in Texas and Florida. And what this will allow us to do is actually have the ability to see how the cactus pear responds to different levels of irrigation or precipitation. So that's part of the plan why we went national with this program. So this is what the field sites look like. These were planted earlier this year. This was planted. This is Maricopa, Arizona. This was planted in February. This is Parlier. This was California. This was planted in March. And then this is Texas, which was planted in April. And this was Florida, also planted in April. And you can see that we are planning out the 240 different spineless accessions with a border. And each one of these plots is about 0.8 acres in size. And that's replicated. So it's about 1.6. But then if you take into account the land area around it, it comes to about two acres in all told. So, what we would do at this site would be to plant our common garden. We would also have room to expand for selecting 20 to 30 different elite accessions from this entire collection. This would create what we call the core collection. We would be evaluating and testing this collection for identifying the top biomass producers, and then we would be able to work with the Carbon Cactus Program to expand these elite accessions for water conservation and carbon sequestration purposes. So, uh, we can learn more about, uh, our project, uh, uh, boosting cactus pair bioenergy with rhizosphere microbes. Uh, there's the URL, uh, and, uh, explains everything that's going on with this project. And with that, I will be happy to take any questions.

Well, my simple question is, do you still have people who do work study on the Valley Road project where I built glass greenhouses and studied selenium?

Yes, the Valley Road project in Reno. Yes. We have students that are in what are called the prep program, which is equivalent to the work-study program. I guess it's a new version of the work-study program. In my lab, we train about five to seven undergraduates and graduate students each year. And part of the public outreach for our program is that we are producing a outreach video about our DOE program. And so this would be an important way to communicate our research results to the general public.

So this would have the full blessing of UNR and all of the things that come with it?

Yes, I've kept our dean and director of the experiment station in the loop. They are fully supportive of this project. Yes, they're very excited. You'll notice that none of our previous common garden plantings are in Nevada, and we'd really very much like to have a location within the state in Southern Nevada.

Other questions, comments?

This is pretty exciting to me. And a lot of people in Boulder City have horses. So what I was wondering with these pads, can you substitute the pads for alfalfa or do you have to have both still?

Yeah, you have to have both. So we've published on the nutritional qualities of cactus pear. the cladodes or pads. These could be used to supplement the diet up to 40 percent for cattle and I assume that that would be equivalent in horses. The cladodes, the pads themselves are about 90% water. So they do supplement the water requirements. And then if you're running sheep or goats, they are more tolerant of the cactus pair. The cladodes, they can survive on 100% of their diet could be from the cactus pair cladodes.

So do they eat a pad and the pear? Is that they're doing both?

No, we only give them the pads. They're diced up and provided as a supplement to what their normal fodder would be.

The pear has value, I think, with human consumption. Yes. It's being put into products like beverages and vitamins, something like that. Yes.

And do the pears have thorns on them like the pads?

The pears have very small what we call glochids. And so In commercial fruit production, those are washed off before they end up going to the market or the supermarket. Yeah, that's a routine process that they go through. We are working for the animal feed. We are working to identify All of our accessions that we'll be surveying are spineless. And they do have glochids, the little tiny prickles. And one of the goals of this project is to find a variety that has very low glochids. We already have candidates for that. We have the glochids come out of little marrow stems called aerials on the pad surface. They're the little points that you can see behind me on the cactus pads. And we already have varieties that have almost no glochids and are highly suitable for animal feed.

Another question that I had was, what do we do about protecting it so that the critters in the desert aren't eating this cactus? Because I know they're eating like my aloe vera and stuff. They actually have pretty good sized bite marks out of it.

We'll have a pretty robust fence. We talked with John a lot about that. And we talked with our farmer, Jay, a lot about that of how do we put an agricultural fence around this to protect the crop. But yes.

All of our common gardens are fenced. All of our projects have to be fenced to keep out the rabbits and the gophers and the ground squirrels.

Okay. And then my last question was going to be... I think I forgot what my last question was going to be here, so I'll just pass. But thank you very much.

Thank you.

So you have a focus for replacement crop of some sort for alfalfa, but you also see down there that there's biofuel. What percentage of research is being done on those? Is it more towards crop replacement, more towards?

I think for carbon cactus, that's still our name, carbon. We're looking at carbon sequestration, but we're really pivoting a bit more towards that farmer education, supplies for farmers, creating the supply of cactus for farmers. I think John's research is a little bit more focused on that biofuel. Am I correct, John?

Yes, and it's hard to put a percentage of this like any biofuel feedstock. You can compare it to corn or soybean. They have multiple uses. They're used for animal feed, human consumption, and as a feedstock for biofuels. So this crop has many uses. and that's you know that allows farmers to have multiple income streams it also has that value added fruit that can command a premium price above and beyond what the the paths would would be used for for animal feed and then as we expand the the uses the main biofuel uses are biogas or methane And we can sort of project that the demand for methane is only going to grow in the future. And then these can also be converted to ethanol, which can then be converted to sustainable aviation fuel. And that's a real high priority for the Department of Energy right now. And one of the reasons why this project was funded.

Our location is close to the airport. I don't know if that helps, but.

Only if we'll have a direct line, right? If it works out. It can't hurt. No, it's very interesting to me, the possibility here and the research that we're able to do. as this project goes on, are we going to have the opportunity to see what the research, will you come back to us, report, will we be able to see?

I'd love to send you guys reports and it's right here. I'd love for you guys to come and do visits. I'd love to invite the community out there to come see it as it progresses. I think it's great for the schools to see. I think it's great for the community to come out and see. I think if we want to get volunteers to come out, we can do a lot of the hard work and people can kind of maybe shovel some dirt. But I think, you know what I mean? I think it'd be great for the community to buy in and be involved and follow along on the process.

Absolutely, so would you be reaching out to the schools when this comes up?

That's 100% the plan is trying to reach out to schools, trying to reach out to neighbors saying, hey, we're doing this thing. I think once we've grown it a certain amount, maybe after the first year there's a harvest, we could maybe give some of the plants to the community. Whether we give some even to the city to plant along barriers, whether that's a fence barrier that has trees traditionally. whether that's a street median, there's lots of uses that we could figure out for it to be, yeah.

Yeah, one of the great things about up until is particularly for the Las Vegas region in southern Nevada is it's used as a horticultural ornamental species and we have a great diversity of accessions, as I mentioned, some are smaller summer larger and this would allow us to showcase. the diversity of a Puntia and people could come and pick and choose what they think would be suitable for their horticultural applications. And that again is geared towards saving water and replacing the grass acreage within the city. This could be a wonderful resource for replacement of those water hungry plants. plantings that we have in place now and transition to a very highly water use efficient horticultural commodity.

It's pretty incredible. I think you saw John's photos with the little baby guys. We got our genetic stock from John's test out at Logandale. And I believe within three to five years, there are these big trees you see behind him in his photo. And so they go from the little guy to being this massive plant. It's very, very shocking. I've grown up around some prickly pear my whole life, hiking in Red Rock, but it was the little guys. These are a different breed, actually.

Yeah, these are very large. Some of the accessions are very large. Within five years, they are towering over your head.

Is there a max size that you end up at?

I think you start to harvest once they're that big and try to keep them manageable, I would think, John. Yeah.

They grow very tall. So the plants that you can see behind me in my background, these are plants in parlier. This is part of the National Germplasm Collection. And some of those plants are 25 to 30 feet tall. wow okay so they get they get big, but you big for you know biomass production animal feed that sort of thing that's that's why we're going with for the big biomass producers, but we have a great variety, we have you know great a variety. Within our collection yeah.

Have we heard enough to accept a motion? Not even close.

No, not close. I have a lot of questions. But I'll yield to you. Go ahead.

I just wonder how long is it going to be until we start seeing something out there? Is it going to be one year, six months?

We're ready. We have about 3,000 cactus.

I mean cactus. I didn't want to see you. I wanted to see those little cactus.

Of course. We have about 3,000 cactus that we're ready to move on. Like I said, we have some that were earlier ready that we've had to find some other locations for. It's really about this deadline of trying to get in, I think, by next spring.

So if you get in next spring, will it be one year or two years before people can go start seeing cactus growing?

It would be next spring. I think we can plant them within, give us 90 days to get the site graded and get some irrigation in there and get the plants in the ground. I don't think it's a long process once we get permits and everything through. And so as soon as the plants are in the ground, I'd love to have the community out there. just planted some in my backyard and within three months they've tripled in size and so I think quickly within like the first year we could you know start to have those tours with the schools so they can see it at the very beginning and then within three years and five years they're these very large you know kind of trees so yeah I think I think it happens pretty quick thank you

I love the project. When you guys first brought it up, I was really ecstatic about it, that you're going to do something that's a positive thing to our environment. I'd like to talk a little bit about cons. We are in the Super El Nino phase, and they expect September, October. a considerable amount of rain, mostly I think in California, but it could drift over. How much water is too much water, just rain water, that would destroy crops or anything like that?

I'll let John speak to that, but I think rain in the desert would be beneficial. It would mean we'd use less water domestically.

I mean, could it be too much water? In Israel right now, they've got too much water, different places around the world, and the crops are destroyed. So is that a possibility?

So you'll notice, if you noticed in my pictures, the way we plant the cactus is we plant them on berms. So we use a berm and swell system. I think maybe I could go back to my presentation here. and so you can see that there's a berm here and then a depression so this is florida 1300 millimeters of precipitation a year it's not going to be a problem because the water will collect in the in between the rows and we would we would be able to do that. That's something that we typically do. Cactus, I don't think that they would, the optimal amount of cactus precipitation is about 400 millimeters. That's our previous studies have shown is the highest. That's where you get the greatest biomass per water input or the highest water use efficiency. If you give them more water, they will grow in a linear response. But there's, I think, very little chance that they would have a problem with storms where you have a big downpour. They're evolved to be in a desert environment and actually being a succulent plant. The way that a Puntia grows is they grow their roots out in a very shallow manner, about one and a half meters around the plant. They're succulent and so they take up the water from a rain event and they store it in their tissues for the dry periods. And so that would not be a concern in a desert environment like Boulder City. Even though you have a heavy precipitation event, the ground would be dry. It would soak up a great amount of that water. And as long as you have a level field where you're not going to have runoff, as long as your fields are laser leveled, that's not going to be a problem with the Berman's Well system that we'll use.

OK, I was going to ask about wind as well. We get a lot of wind down here. Yes. If they're shallow.

Yeah, we've actually studied that as well. And we have actually selected for, we're going to be testing a whole variety. They do break in the wind. That happened in our Logandale trial. But we actually identified one species of Puntia coccinifera that is flexible and it sort of sways in the wind and is much less prone to breakage, but other accessions will break. But breakage only becomes a problem when they start getting big up until breakage would not be a problem until they're at least three years old.

Thank you, and I only have two more. Jobs and volunteers, I know you said volunteers. Is there room for jobs down there at any certain time for harvest?

We have one Boulder City employee currently. He's an agriculture specialist. He wasn't able to make it tonight, but he was at the last meeting. He just moved to Boulder City actually for this project. My executive director, Joel, currently lives in LA, but has been spending a lot of time in your city. If we get this pilot project going, he would become at least a part-time resident. And then when it comes to Harvest, I deeply believe there's a need for whether it's high schoolers or people who need to work, I think it's a great opportunity to tap the labor pool out here. I don't think it's a large job driver, but I think there are opportunities for, yeah.

Yeah, even if it's an intern, doesn't have to work.

I think especially that, right? Those kinds of things. I think we're non-profit, so we're gonna be trying to find ways to get people to volunteer and help us with this really cool project, right?

So since it's going to be a food source, is the FDA involved in that? You mentioned Department of Energy, but you didn't really say anything about it.

There's lots of grants that I think we're hoping to pursue once we get in the ground. Many of them require you to actually have produced something before they give you dollars, which makes sense. In the meantime, the Malasky Family Foundation just in January gave a large amount of dollars and is committed to getting us through the period until we are able to produce and get grants from FDA, from other organizations across the federal and state landscape. But most of them require some sort of production or you're in the ground and you're doing the thing versus you want to do the thing.

My last question is international. Any plans to have foreign students to come and work with this? Obviously you want it to grow out than the United States.

I think foreign students. I also think there's opportunities to work with foreign entities. I started this project by working with a guy down in Peru. He was doing biofuel with Cactus. This was like eight years ago. We didn't end up partnering with him, but There's so many collaborations. And I think what would be unique is Boulder City would be that hub. Boulder City, again, I'm so impressed with you guys. You're really a leader in so many different things. And you're willing to try, I think, novel things that make sense. And we need that. And I think that leaning into that more is aligned with your guys' vision, I think. And so this would be another one of those components that helps your trifecta, whether it's solar, whether it's water, whether it's hydroelectric. Now you're exploring... you could start off a whole little agricultural zone. I'm hoping we can get another farmer to do a plot next to us. That would be awesome, right? So, yeah.

Can I add something? Please, yeah. So one of our co-PIs on our grant, Jose Dubois at the University of Florida, He represents the United Nations FAO CactusNet organization. This is an international organization that promotes cactus pear throughout the world. I have a lot of contacts with a lot of other researchers. uh throughout the world i get requests for the cactus pear i just just got a request from somalia the other day so we're able to export the cactus pear and and promote the use of it throughout the u.s and internationally but this is a international crop it's grown throughout the world And it's kind of surprising that there's not been that much attention in the US. And we're working very hard to change that.

I think Israel has a program going. Yes. As well. Yes. Thank you very much for the presentation.

I have an intensive interest in cactus pear. And actually, I've been in discussions with people in Israel. I get interest throughout the world, Portugal, France, Mexico.

Our partner Jay does a lot of desert agriculture in general with Israel and other desert agricultural nations, so Cactus is a piece of what he's done in his career.

There's some great YouTube programs that are on that talk about this, so I'm pretty excited about it that it's here in Boulder City. I'm excited.

We'll get you guys out there. We'll put shovels in the ground. It'll be fun. Thank you. All right, Steve.

Mr. Cushman, Mr. Malaski, thank you for being here. And I think it's maybe it's ironic is the right word, but the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the Colorado River Commission meet in the building that is named for your family. Because this is about water, right, really. And so I'm gonna focus a little bit more, I have a couple statements and then some critical questions. both for you and for Mr. Cushman. I see that in Maricopa and potentially Nevada, and then in California, we're talking lower basin Colorado River states. The upper basin uses about 90% of their water for agriculture, primarily for livestock support, and we're about 50%-ish in the lower basin. So the total in the Colorado River Basin is about 70% for agriculture and the rest for the 40 million people, right? I'm, since you came the first time, I thought this was an amazing plan, really grew to accept its interest and support it. So let me state that as well. But it is, it's unique because we're talking about right now, as you referred to, we just got a report back from the federal government where the lower basin states are taking big cuts in our Colorado River use and Nevada, basically Clark County, is taking 50,000 acre feet of hits per year off of our 300,000. So it's pretty substantial, right? And so we're talking about using water for the potential to save water, which is always good. You have to invest something. There's a cost in investment for development of new technologies or new opportunities. But you're still asking a town with very limited access to potable water and diminishing because of not only hydrology but the cuts, right, to support a new water use. So, you know, I think that statement needs to be made and appreciated. Definitely. Right. And so I don't know if this is sustainable for 15 years necessarily.

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Especially without tapping into the effluent recycled water.

Well, and I think anybody that knows the chemistry of water knows that treated effluent is not good for living plants. It has to be changed in its chemistry. If you guys want to figure something out for that, maybe that's an additional answer down the road to water use. So my questions are going to focus around what's the marketability of it now. Mr. Cushman said he's been doing research on this for 15 years. Sounds like a long time. I don't know, you know in in research world if that's a long time or not but You know if we're talking about using a scarce resource water to create a new crop We should be replacing that water consuming crop aka alfalfa and Now, right? Or within the very near future, because when we're talking about saving water down the road, we've got to talk about saving water. And if we're going to research for an indefinite period of time and never come to the place where we're replacing alfalfa with this, then... Why are we doing it? Why are we using our scarce resource? Totally right.

I do think the indefinite period I do want to pause. We are doing a lease with you guys with two extensions. I think it's six years total. And so it is not an indefinite draw on your guys's water resources. There would be a great opportunity maybe to renew that further time. But also, if after six years, you know, the data has been collected, the plants have been grown. We've been able to harvest them and share that with other farmers. Then if this is no longer a fit, I don't want you guys to feel like you're stuck with it forever.

Thank you. And you did comment that this is a five-year grant and project that you have for this, so that the six-year timeframe fits, right? Is there current marketability where we're replacing, we generally, right, are we replacing alfalfa use with this? Are we bringing in product from Mexico that is used for agricultural feed currently? Is this currently being used as biofuel, replacing some of the corn product or whatever else is being used in the Midwest? Are there any current replacement marketing uses?

I think John could probably answer that better. On a very micro example, we're working with Green Gale Farms. They grow a lot of palm trees. We just planted, I think, around 500 cactus instead of palm trees with them. So on a micro example, we are starting to make that progress. I think maybe John could speak to the bigger. You could, yeah. Yeah.

Thanks. Yeah. I don't have exact numbers for the apotea market. It's widely grown in Mexico. The nopalitos and fruit are all imported. uh i'm not aware of any domestic production of cactus pear and so i don't know the economic numbers for what's imported but other than to tell you that it's it's widely imported it's an important crop for the hispanic community it's a traditional crop i think one of the issues is that we don't have the resource base to have it be used. And so that's the that's the sort of the rationale behind our programs is to try and expand the use. And then once people see the availability of the feedstock, we overcome that, we expand the production, then the uses will follow. And in terms of the bioenergy, again, I'm not aware of any bioenergy conversion to biogas or ethanol in the United States simply because we haven't planted Apuntia, but in Mexico it is used and in Chile it is used for biogas production. And that is a growing industry. But again, I don't have economic.

In our slides, the current market in the United States for Nopal is 600 million, and it's projected to grow to about a billion by 2033.

In sales? Dollars of sales?

Dollars of sales currently of nopal at stores, et cetera. So apparently, if there's no production in the US, it sounds like we'd be importing all of that. So I don't quite have that answer for you. I could look it up. But that's if we just backed into it. I don't want to get in the weeds on how much money.

But just if we're actually using it.

There is a real market. And it seems like farmers could grow this crop and make more money. than selling alfalfa. That's the exciting part, right? Because if you can create an economic incentive for someone to do it versus they're doing it for the good of the environment or the good of their heart, if we can really show a farmer, hey, the economics of this makes more sense. You're going to save money on water. You're going to make more per acre. and it's maybe gonna be less work. All these things combined could be a really powerful, convincing argument versus like, hey, do you guys wanna grow some cactus?

Has there been any outreach to private farmers or farming corporations that are currently growing large volumes of alfalfa to get them to do some replacement yet?

So because we only have 3,000 plants and we need to kind of grow that stock, Like I said, I'm a developer. 10 years ago when I started this project, I'm gonna buy some land and I'm gonna plant a million cactus and it'll be great. There aren't a million cactus. And so to really fill up a commercial scale grade and to go to a commercial farmer, we're not there yet. I think to find a local farmer here or a local farmer in Logandale or a farmer like that who says, I have 50 acres, I'm gonna convert five. to your cactus thing and let's see how it goes. And our foundation would help install them, would help that irrigation, that's efficient irrigation. We would provide the plants. And so for almost zero cost, I think is what we're proposing, farmers could then make more money if they switch this over. So we're being the altruistic one and they then get to have the economic benefit. That's why we're situated as a non-profit.

Yeah. Thank you. It's also important to decide which cactus to grow, which is why we're doing this diversity. Right.

We wouldn't want to go to a commercial guy and grow a million of the wrong. The wrong one. And then they die.

Well, that was just part of my trying to understand where this is going, because we are using, back to my original point, a scarce resource to support the research, which I'm supportive of. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking these critical questions to undermine it, but just to fully comprehend where we're going.

I do think like the water use though, right? Like when you do compare it to golf course, or if you compare it to even the veteran cemetery across us with grass, right? Our water use will be very, very, very minimal compared to a lot of things that get built. I don't think there's a lot of new construction that happens out here. And so I understand what you're saying, but I think our impact to you guys will be very small. Yeah.

You said 220,000. Gallons a year a year. Yeah, okay Yeah Yeah, and the comparison to households depends on which size we're using Yeah, you know and in Boulder City and at that same time that we're bringing to employees and to new residents Thank you, yeah, I I do have one more one more question I I really appreciate that you're saying that, you know, you've put some at your at your home. Totally. And that the idea is potential, you know, for, you know, municipal planting where you might otherwise have trees or shrubs or whatever. We could put different versions of this species. uh so my question is can there be uh potentially during the negotiations uh if council chooses to direct staff to proceed some some community access to the different species so we could put them in our yards too totally right and be more water smart here in our own homes and reduce our water use 100 and i think that was something we talked about with staff of

giving away pads and then helping people understand, okay, what wall would you want to plant this against? Where are they going to do the best? Instead of planting pine trees, which are beautiful, but then shed and take a lot of water, maybe you should plant some cactus that are going to grow beautiful along this wall and flower twice a year. And so yes, and I even think that applies to you guys have a great cactus garden I've actually driven past you guys have a lot of fencing around the veterans cemetery you guys have a lot of fencing around the golf course if There was opportunities when trees die or if you know you want to replace things Or even if there's empty parts of fence where we want to add some ornamental landscape we'd be happy to donate extra pads and Provide that to the city as well. I think that'd be really awesome. I

yeah well for future reference if if council passes this resolution to consider that totally be great for for our community as a whole to kind of be able to buy in should we choose at that and i think if we end up making you know jam and we end up making some products with these things we can have a little market that people could come to that's a little bit in the future but the fruits can have lots of many uses so it's kind of fun

yeah awesome well thank you for uh answering the questions and thank you mr cushman for being online with us today mayor that's all i've got so when the smoke clears and you're done proving that it's a wonderful thing we still have four acres do you take it all away or do you return it to its normal desert state or what do you do at the end of

I think it would be really what you guys would want from us. At that point, they're quite large. They've sequestered a lot of carbon. They are providing pollination. They're providing more pads. If we do want to renew the lease and continue to pay you guys, if you guys want that, it could continue to generate plants for other farmers to plant. If you guys have another use, you want to build another race track out there, I'm happy to, you know, it's a lease. If you guys want us out, we can return the land to whatever state you want it to be. I mean, removing the cactus and doing some grading work is something that's totally possible, if that's what you guys want, but... if you want to decide that now we can if you want to decide that at year six after our extensions or whatever we can do it then but um but that could be part of the negotiations the lease negotiations as well we're happy to commit to whatever

I think before us we have the question of do we want to direct staff to negotiate the lease, develop, construct, and operate a cactus farm, et cetera, et cetera. So I think all of those things could be part of that negotiation if we choose to do it. What's the desire of council?

I'd like to make a motion to move forward 8179. Second.

Moved and seconded. Discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. That's unanimous, thank you.

Thank you guys, that means a lot to us. We're really excited for the partnership, or potential partnership. We gotta negotiate still.

And so, talking about all this cactus makes us feel dry, so we're gonna take a break.

Thank you guys, appreciate it.

You would have thought I could have remembered long enough.

How long is it going to take?

I could write it down so I could remember it.

Thank you. A lot of Sundays after church, we'll go over there. I have a friend.

We don't do it anymore.

Mayor, let me know when you're ready. I'll get the mics up.

Call the meeting back to order.

Mr. Mayes. Good evening, I'm Michael Mayes, your Deputy City Manager. So, the growing of plants and vegetables are currently not a permitted use in the CM commercial manufacturing zoning district within Boulder City. Boulder City Botanical Company has submitted a application for a text amendment which would add agricultural uses, the growing and wholesaling of crops and other related agricultural and horticultural activities inside a building as a permitted use in the CM zoning district. They're proposing to occupy 682 Wells Road, an existing building in that zoning district. This went before the Planning Commission on May 20th, and the Planning Commission recommended with a vote of seven to zero to add this text amendment to the CM zoning district. you have within your staff report staff's analysis of similar types of uses permitted in the jurisdictions within the valley which which allow this type of use in similarly zoning districts So what staff is looking for is for the council to hold the public hearing that's required for this item to consider adoption of bill number 2133 subject to the findings. And I am available for questions regarding the proposed text amendment. The applicant here is also here and can answer council questions.

All right. Questions for Mr. Mays? Probably have the applicant come forward.

Hello, my name is Richard Galvin.

Avi Moss for Boulder City Botanical Company. Teach us.

So basically what we're trying to do is to grow plants for gardening is what it is. It's plant starts. So the same plants that you would buy from like Star Nursery, you would be purchasing from us. So we'd be selling tomatoes, peppers, anything like that type of plant. But the plant would probably be, you know, anywhere from 5 to 10 inches depending on how, that's about as big as they're going to get. and then we would buy them plant them and grow tomatoes yeah the idea is for more people to actually garden i have a big garden at my house i promote people to grow their own food as much as possible the whole idea is to get more people involved in growing their own food so this is a business one for profit and two to teach people about food because we've got too far off about where we get our food. So I think to have a local business that grows the plants that you're gonna end up producing food from is a pretty cool idea. so there would be a building or hoop buildings or how what's this so this is totally inside it's a vertical garden it's inside of so it'll be his shelves uh inside of the building with lights that would have multiple stacks of plants on them And everything is self-contained. So what would we be doing is capturing the water from the humidity from our air conditioning and dehumidifiers, and then reuse the same water. And then everything would be organic from the plants, seeds, the medium. Everything involved in it would be organic.

So you'd use organic sunlight?

The sunlight is actually, that's the only thing that's not from the organic, yeah. That's manufactured sunlight. Okay. Yeah.

I guess I caught him, huh? Any questions or comments?

i i just have one that's you know so is this going to be hydroponically grown then and then or is it no it's technically not hydroponically grown it so it'll have a medium but mostly it will be compost and um cocoa or peat moss but uh it's kind of like

everything's going to be hand watered and but it's not hydroponically it's yeah yeah and you do intend on having retail in some portion of the of the occupancy so residents can come and like you said buy this the starting

Most of it will be for delivery, because we have a website. So we're going to deliver the plants, one, because nobody delivers plants to you. And so it'll make it easier for people all over the Vegas Valley to get these plants, because some people might not want to drive that far. So it'll be easier. And because they don't need to be refrigerated or anything like that, we could deliver them in anything. So it's not a problem. They're already going to be accustomed to the temperatures.

So in other words, no retail, all you'll be- Some, some, but mostly it will be delivery.

Okay, okay, thanks. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

How large is this building?

It's 5,800 square feet, but there's an apartment above, so that's about, so it's 4,800 square feet.

And about how many plants will you get in there?

We're projected to grow 40,000 plants every two months.

And how much water will you be using?

About 300 to 500 gallons a day, but that's without capturing any water. That's the worst case scenario. But with the dehumidifiers and the AC, I'd project that to be lower. But I'm just going to say it, 300 to 500 gallons a day.

and then i also want to ask this are you going to be growing any cannabis in there no no no it's not zone for that no no no no no it's just food i believe that's in the wording correct it is and we we have an ordinance that prohibits that anyway so yeah doesn't hurt to ask now we all know right for sure yeah it's good to ask just in case just in case yeah i just wanted to make it up bring it up But thank you very much, I appreciate your information.

Thank you. Other questions?

So I tried to go on and find your website and I couldn't take it. Is it under Boulder City Botanical Garden?

Boulder City Botanical Co, C-O.

C-O, okay, okay, that's what I messed up. I wanted to do that before I came in.

It's a lot of words. So BCBC, that's Boulder City Botanical Company. We're gonna bring it down to BCBC and make it easier for people, but yeah.

Is this the first time you're doing it?

Yes. Yeah, I'm a I'm a local gardener, not here, but in Las Vegas. But I have a huge garden. So gardening is really my focus. So but not on this scale. This is a this is different. But I mean, this is the easiest part of the gardening. Getting them into your house and being able to keep them alive is the hard part.

You'd be surprised to know there's a lot of gardeners in Boulder City. We actually have a garden tour.

I'm a part of the garden. with michelle gimble no uh the the community community yeah the face group group yeah because i do a lot of social media uh with uh my gardening so yeah so there's a there's a lot of people that would have interest in what you do um and you said you would uh deliver so do you order like on the website where you have that's how you order already created it's there uh we obviously can't order anything but i mean it's it's you can see it it's it's open right now well if it's a distribution center how do you get orders From the website. That's what I'm saying.

So you go on your website and order. If I wanted five tomato plants, I would just go to that website.

So you'll also be able to order them in advance because you could order any plant you want, and we'll have 60 days to grow it, and then you'll have it ready for any season you want. Because plants, they only sell plants six months out of the year because it's too hot or it's too cold. But we're going to sell plants all year round.

Well we were just talking in the break about you know having food without preservatives and this is like the perfect thing and then the cactus garden on the other side so you know everybody be coming into Boulder City that's got to be revenue for the business for the city.

Absolutely yeah yeah I want to get more people growing food as much as possible that you know we we don't know where our food's coming from what's on our food you need to know and to be able to eat stuff that you grew with your hands is pretty amazing.

So do you have to be licensed through FDA or how does that work?

We have an agricultural license. So we're not selling food. We're selling agricultural plants. So you turn it into food.

Okay, so yeah, kind of like Star Nursery or whoever.

Right, right, exactly. It's a nursery. That's what it is. It's a vertical nursery inside of a building.

Okay, so my last question is you don't think you'll have a lot of traffic around the area because basically you're delivering it out. It's a distribution center, not where a lot of people would be congregating.

No, there would be some people, but not a lot of people. Because for this business to be successful, I need 400 customers. That's it. That's as many customers as I need. would you consider something like an open market period periodically so what i would like to get into pushing out farther with that we're going to talk to people with that have land out here and start to look for places like that where we could do outside events uh but then we're starting a charity that's going to build beds and to give plants away uh yeah yeah

So along with Boulder City Botanical Company, we are currently negotiating with a person that already owns a charity for 15 years to rename the charity in order to fast track it. This charity is gonna provide raised beds to local schools, senior centers, VA hospitals. We already have promised St. Jude's to sponsor their summer gardens. So essentially we're gonna run these companies parallel. Neither of us are gonna be on the board because of a conflict of interest. So we have a whole board that we picked out and we're waiting to announce that. We really wanna reach out to the community on on a level where i don't want to just sell you a plant i want to deliver it and help you plant it and maybe take a look at your irrigation to make sure that you're going to be successfully growing that plant just because it's so important these days some kids don't know where food comes from it's unbelievable we want to change that we really want to touch on that um hopefully the the grand plan is that boulder city botanical company will eventually have to expand in order to provide all the plants to the charity that's that's our like five year goal as of now so

so being from new york concrete jungle we would go as kids up to um the north to the farms so we can see where food comes from so that's kind of neat that uh potentially we may have one right here in boulder city and you're reaching out at the education program with the with the schools and i'm sure so that's it so just to touch the um the the traffic issue or the traffic question um

we don't we don't plan on having people come to the warehouse to buy anything um if somebody does want a tour we're more than welcome to give it to them um but we do plan eventually to possibly have you know maybe school children come in for a presentation or maybe even the senior center or any any group that really is interested in this that would like to hear us blabbering for a little bit we'll be more than happy to have them for that if we do have a situation where we're having an event we're going to make our yard available for parking on top of the parking that's already there just in case you guys have a question about that that's where we're trying to think ahead thank you i wish you the best yeah

so i need to clarify we did not talk about this during the break just to clarify that oh no that was just tammy and i talked about fresh bread no yeah it wasn't the council talking that during the break it was the staff and i was talking about getting fresh bread without preservative and i gave her a place to go thank you mayor thank you any other questions or comments or we need to open this as a public hearing we'll have you folks stand down and anybody who would like to come forward in a public hearing and testify about this particular item would be welcome to do so

Good evening once again, esteemed leaders here in Boulder City, Mayor Eric King, long-time resident here. I was just talking with a fine gentleman, gonna bring you a bunch of cacti, grow them in the desert here, and told, just talking a little bit about leading people out to the wild lands, I've led more than a thousand people out to wild lands in Nevada here, brought them back safe, except for one guy was looking at me climbing a cliff face that the people I was leading were gonna be climbing and so he turned his ankle on a rock instead of looking where it was going, looked at me. We got him off the mountain safe. I've been getting a lot of people off mountains safe for a long time, saved a lot of lives, people in real danger, the rest of my own, and that's what really trees do when they grow here. I'll bring it back around to trees here for a second because they're talking about starts of wonderful food plants like figs we talked a little bit about, And so thank goodness, and I don't want to break your mic, so I'm going to let it go. So trees, I've been here a long time. Mesquites, been in the area a long, long time. They sent a taproot down more than 50 feet, some of them more than.

So I will say we're not talking about trees right now?

Well, they're going to grow some trees too. So I just wanted to, it is per a conversation I had with him, just to let you know. So thank goodness they're going to be growing desert-adapted trees. That's something I'm really excited they're doing along with species that indeed have been, per them, proven to grow well here. I think that's really exciting all for it. And the notion with growing trees here being native, we were just talking with one of the council members about some lost trees and I had mentioned to one of the city manager here actually about the nursery and I just wanted to make clear that the idea I have with the nursery is to help you guys have more potential food plants and other kinds of desert adapted plants in conjunction with wonderful people doing this, where we can stack the functions. So you get shade, wind protection, cooling power, and beauty and food products that can come from a well-designed urban scape, like what I've been talking about. You need tree materials, you need plant materials. For instance, lupines, a gorgeous flower. Some of them grow four or five feet high. Those could be plantings with these wonderful cacti and other fruit plants that we're going to be growing here. You could do plantings like that and harvest some of the rain in troughs that don't exist right now, right next to side curbs. Those are things that could happen. With a nursery, those decisions get a lot easier alongside these wonderful people's intentions, too, and good design. So I hope that does come through to your hearts and minds. They're fine ones, and I'd love to help make those things happen sooner than later. Thank you.

Anyone else like to come forward in public hearing? Council? Consideration of bill number 2133? Mayor, I think...

It's been great that we have this group that is kind of opening this conversation, but we are indeed talking about an amendment to the entire zone commercial manufacturing, and that's outlined in red in the map on our packet. But not just these folks, and it's not just a conditional use permit, but in the entire area. So anyway, I move to approve the resolution.

Is there a second?

Second.

Is there a discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? It's unanimous, thank you. Thank you, that brings us to number 12.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members, Marissa Adoo, Airport Manager. Tonight for your consideration is Bill number 2134 to approve a lease agreement between the City and Hangar Club LLC for the development of approximately 37 acres at the Boulder City Municipal Airport. The proposed lease term is 40 years with a 10 year option. this property is located on the airport east of taxiway Bravo and was identified in the airport's master plan for future Aviation development in February of 2025 a competitive request for proposals was issued three proposal proposals were received and High Flying Holdings was recommended for award Staff subsequently negotiated with the proposed agreement with High Flying Holdings doing business as hangar club LLC. The development would be financed and constructed by hangar club LLC in phases with up to 121 aircraft storage hangars and a 4,000 square foot clubhouse and common use facility. hangars will include a variety of sizes from 100 by 100 foot hanger to 41 by 30 feet hanger the tenant would also be responsible for constructing the necessary taxiway connectors vehicle access roads aircraft pavements and a run-up area to runway 15 in accordance with the city and faa standards The proposed lease rate is $1.08 per square foot per year with a minimum required building improvement area of 427,870 square feet. The agreement would generate approximately $462,100 annually to the airport fund and the lease would also include annual CPI adjustments between two and 4% beginning in July, 2029. I'm happy to answer any questions that you guys have and The developer is also available if you have any questions for them.

Any questions?

I think we've heard about this for, I don't know, a year or so. I think we've had a great job by staff to bring this before us. And if you're okay, Mayor, I haven't had the chance to hear from the potential developers. And if you're amenable to that, I'd love to just have them come up and talk a little bit about it.

Mayor, members of the council, my name's Kenny Hinkus. I'm the president and CEO of High Flying Holdings. I'm an active aviator for 54 years. I learned to fly in 1970. and it's been after my wife and kids it's been my passion i love mentoring kids i was a flight instructor for years i'm a member of the experimental aircraft association we mentored kids through the young eagles program we we have volunteer pilots who give kids introductory flight lessons and so it's just been a passion when my son who's our chief development officer came to me in 2019 and said dad teach me to fly and I thought I was gonna be a retired real estate developer in those days I Said okay, so we bought a trainer and I taught Jack to fly along the way we realized there was nowhere to store that airplane and In fact, the waiting list was about 60 airplanes at the airport in Albuquerque. And so being a real estate developer, we do complicated urban redevelopment, condominiums and office buildings. How hard could it be to build airplane hangars? Well, Marissa will tell you. You're dealing with the federal government. They don't sell land. They only lease land. They don't lease it indefinitely. They only lease it for about 40 or 50 years. And at the end of that lease, there's something called the revisionary clause, which means that the sponsor, you all, take the improvement back as your property. So if you're a real estate developer, you're going to say, who would buy anything on a piece of property that's leased that at the end of the lease, they have to give it back to the government, which is why there are no airplane hangars being built nationally. There's about a deficit of 60,000 aircraft hangars nationwide. The General Aviation Manufacturers Association is delivering between 4,000 and 5,000 new airplanes a year. And only 25% of them have shelter and so that was an opportunity We formed a much bigger company and we started looking at opportunities the Las Vegas Metroplex Is full of folks with airplanes where there's nowhere to shelter them and of course the heat and the Sun is very difficult on any Precious avionics and if you own an airplane it needs to be flight ready so that it can perform its mission over 50% of the aircraft that will be housing are being used for business. They're not just Luxury items these people travel well here we are in nevada arizona nevada california utah it's spread out and if you do business in small towns you can't get there on the airlines and so and so general aviation fills in an extremely important economic need And those folks need shelter. And so we are in the business nationally of developing high-quality aircraft hangars. We just broke ground in Frederick, Maryland, which is home of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. We'll build 78 hangars there. Manassas, Virginia. We're in Lincoln, Nebraska. We're here. It's a huge economic developer Sorry economic engine for the city An aircraft owner doesn't just pay ground rent pass through ground rent, which is the four hundred and thirty two thousand But they buy fuel and they have maintenance and they upgrade their airplane all of that's done locally but beyond that they generally take up a business here in the city they're gonna find a place to operate a business out of if they're stationed in another part of the state they're probably gonna have a satellite office here the National Business Aircraft Association did a study on the economic impact of a general aviation airplane, which is a million and a half to a five million dollar airplane. It's a turboprop or a light jet. It will generate up to two million dollars of economic activity in the local community on an annual basis. We are gonna be building 120 hangars. So you're going to have hundreds of millions of dollars of economic activity here at your airport. It's going to be a huge contributor to the local economy. And I can answer any questions you'd like.

I like the revenue side.

It's huge.

so is that i i got the plan that was up there as well um are you looking at maybe adding a restaurant in that area so these people that are there councilman that's a wonderful question originally there's a site

That was there's five pads that are restaurant retail We were and are happy to develop them. We're in conversation with the airport manager We know you need a restaurant there very much. We do Our thrust coming in is to build aircraft hangars, but being real estate developers it's not a very heavy lift for us to get a tenant to develop a site there and bring in a restaurant we've had folks reach out to us already who are in the business asking if there's a site and could we talk about it and certainly what you find is a chicken and egg a restaurant operator is going to want to make sure there's enough revenue right and and so too will the investor who who builds that improvement and leases it to them So the short answer is yes, we're open to helping do that It's not our primary business, but we're we're in that business in Albuquerque Thank you. I think North Las Vegas or not North Las Vegas the executive airport in Henderson They're little restaurants doing really well most most well I think what you'll find is there's gonna be a restaurant and it's gonna come as a result of this new economic activity Thank you

i just want to say thank you very much i am so excited about this project i think it's going to add so much so are we i really appreciate you guys thank you you know you gave the perfect pitch for why we would do this um thank you yeah and when i first started flying it was a hundred dollar hamburger there you go probably a 200 hamburger now it's quite well we came in this morning in our bonanza from albuquerque

Yeah, so the cost of fuel. I think it was $350 of fuel. Yeah.

Thank you. And on a related note, I think it shows the wisdom of this council for having extended the ground leases of those other hangars, general aviation hangars. I don't know if you were privy to that discussion that has occurred over the last several years. We heard about it. Yeah. We weren't involved in it. Yeah, we really appreciate our aviation community and recognize the value, you know, intrinsic as well as, you know, hard dollars that will come in and the impact. So I really appreciate your insights. Thank you. I don't think we could have gotten a better. Thank you. A better summary of what's going on here.

So thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Members of the council. Oh.

Sorry, on a semi-personal level, I think there's a couple things that happen in a small town airport that people don't recognize. One is it's a community of people coming together interested in a hobby, so it's healthy for human beings in that regard. Another is that it's a place where young or maybe not quite as young deciding to change career people decide to come and learn a new profession or and or a hobby. And I know that my own son is a pilot and my husband is a pilot and those who enjoy that area are passionate. about it and it provides that opportunity here. I mean my son was able to get his private pilot's license here and as a mother I appreciated it since my husband told me he got his in Wisconsin in a farm field and that didn't feel so good to me. Talking about the EAA, every year he's been since he was 12 years old because he grew up there. So I appreciate your connection that you're talking about and your investment and understanding the community that you're servicing. So I think that that's wonderful. I look forward to this partnership. I look forward to the idea of you being flexible to possibly offer, as you know, when you go to different airports, there are different services available there. And as we grow, this is almost doubling, if not, almost doubling. hangers and it's for a population called general aviation that's right which is being pushed out of a lot of other airports and so I like the idea that we are serving that population because I think just as you said what it does is it brings more than you would think into a community does We have flyovers during the 4th of July or different things from people in our community that are willing to do that for us and it adds an element of cohesiveness. So thank you, thank you. We're looking forward to this and look forward to your partnership, thank you.

Thank you, thank you all.

Thank you, okay. Any other questions? Nope. Do I hear a motion?

Move to approve bill 2134.

I second.

Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? It's unanimous, thank you. Thank you. And that brings us to bill introduction number 13, bill number 2135. Would someone like to introduce that with the reading except for title?

i'll introduce bill number 2135 waive the reading except for title thank you bill number 2135 an ordinance of boulder city nevada approving agreement number 26-111 between city of boulder city and bell atlantic mobile systems llc dba verizon wireless for a land lease for a communications tower located at 2100 canyon road red mountain this matter will be considered at the august 25th 2026 city council meeting thank you and number 15 or number 14 rather under regular business

Resolution 8173. I feel a presenter coming up.

Sorry, didn't realize I was late. All right, good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Jim Keen. I'm your city engineer, and we're here to recommend the selection of an architect for the Boulder Creek Pavilion Replacement Project. We did an architect selection. We selected two firms off of our qualified consultant list to interview for providing design services. APTIS and LGA were the architect names. Firms were interviewed by a panel that included city staff from the Community Development Parks and Recreation and Public Works departments and representatives from the Boulder Creek Golf Course Chamber of Commerce and the Boulder Dam Credit Union Aptis was selected as the best firm for the project we Negotiated a scope of work and fee for the design services in the amount of seven hundred forty seven thousand six hundred fifty dollars so for the pavilion some of the major elements first and foremost being the budget is nine million dollars we're looking to build a ten to twelve thousand square foot pavilion with seating for up to four four hundred to four hundred fifty people it'll be designed to complement the existing clubhouse include an enclosed or covered walkway between the pavilion and the clubhouse have its own restroom facilities, have a warming kitchen for catering, having serving areas and bars for providing for the users of the facility, have storage areas for stages, podiums, tables, chairs, things of that nature, additional refrigerator, freezer space for both facilities that can be used by the clubhouse and the pavilion, have bride and groom prep rooms for weddings, audio video equipment spaces that can be divided up so if you have a conference and you have breakout areas you can have smaller areas for people to go an outdoor gazebo patio area looking out onto the golf course so we have somewhere outdoor to go to that's still covered as well And then during construction, we're also looking at a temporary area in the parking lot to use for to cover for approximately 150 people or so that week. So we can still have like golf events where when they're done with their tournament, they can do their awards presentation, things of that nature and still be covered, not have to be outside somewhere. So our next steps, once we get the contract approved with the architect, is to begin design and go to 30%. Similar to the pool, we're gonna recommend using the CMAR, the construction manager at risk. As you know, that gives us better team collaboration, early selection of the CMAR, pre-construction reviews and estimates, helps manage our risk and reduce our risk, and then we get to a guaranteed maximum price. So while we're proceeding to the 30% design, we'll prepare the advertisement for the request for statements of qualifications for CMARS to do that selection. And then once we select a CMAR after that process, we'll negotiate a pre-construction services contract with them and then bring that back to city council, including a presentation to city council of the 30% plans to get your input on the direction we're headed with the pavilion. For a schedule, we're looking at our tentative schedule. Complete design, mid to late summer, 2027. Begin construction in fall of 2027. And then open the pavilion in summer of 2028. With that, like I said, we're recommending using the CMR process. As we've talked before, it gets us the best final product for the best value. It's not the cheapest price. You know, before we said best bang for the buck, we're building a pavilion. Maybe this will give us one of the best pavilions for our millions. And with that, I'd like to introduce Brandon Sprague with Aptis. He'll let you know who they are and what they bring to the table.

Good evening. Brandon Sprague, principal and owner of Aptis. I was born and raised in Las Vegas, third generation. We have an office in the old wholesome lofts downtown. Next month will be 24 years that I've had the firm. We have nine people. We've done work for the state, city of Las Vegas, city of Henderson, North Las Vegas, UNLV, school district, most every public agency, and then we do private work as well. when we interviewed we showed a lot of similar projects to what we're going to be doing here nothing's exactly the same but very similar and i think hopefully that's why we were chosen i take a lot of pride in what we do both in our service our design and the drawings we do and hopefully we'll be good stewards of your land and and the funds for this building i i just want to say you know you've listed some okay clients but this is really the feather in your cap right here so i i don't want to brag but in 1989 i worked on the gym edition for uh i mean there you go roger already had roger holliday yeah yeah yeah all right another question comments question the only thing i didn't see on here is lighting in the parking area

which is a big deal because every time we have an event now and it's really dark out there and i had mentioned it to gary i just wanted to get that on the record that lighting is a you know that's a safety issue that needs to be added if this goes through i appreciate that we weren't aware of that but we can definitely work our best on that one

Yeah, I think we can definitely look at that as part of the project, whether we change out the existing lights to brighter lights but still dark skies friendly, or if we add maybe some pylon lights in the medians or something like that. So we can definitely look at that.

Can you give, just in a nutshell, the revenue that will come compared to what we have now? I mean, because it sounds like it's going to be so much nicer, but what does that look like revenue-wise?

That I have not done anything on. I could not tell you.

Okay, maybe that's something to come back with. Hopefully.

You can't Mr. King can you share with us where the revenue is coming to build this project.

This is all RDA funds that we're using for this.

And if we don't use that RDA fund what happens.

It goes away in 2029. Michael can answer that.

Yeah I just I think everybody should know how exciting this project is and where it came from and.

When the RDA expires in 2029, any unused funds is distributed to the other taxing bodies because when the RDA was created, we had a tax cap and all increment came to the city to encourage reinvestment. This is an excellent project for RDA funds because the Pavilion is going to help economic development within the community and help our local businesses.

And I think the citizens that want to get married here and have an anniversary party or something like that. So that's a great project. Thank you very much for sharing that. Appreciate it.

I don't have any questions for either our engineer or the applicant. I can wait. I do have a couple comments. So however you want to handle that.

I'm interested in a motion.

then I'll give a motion after my comments. I do appreciate, and thank you for that question, because it is really important. These are RDA funds that have been being collected in the RDA district over years, and we do have, kind of like ARPA, there's a sunset on that. And if we don't put it to the right use or to the use for redevelopment, then it just gets redistributed and kind of absorbed without real impact. So I appreciate that question, Council Member Booth. and I also appreciate that staff worked with the potential stakeholders throughout the community in advance of the design and that we know what we use it for and then begin the design from there on to fitting the use. Of interest, I spoke with the sports director for Convention and Visitors Authority today and she mentioned that of all the Division II golf tournaments throughout the country, The favorite is the one held at Boulder Creek Golf Course in Boulder City because they love the course and because they love working with the staff. And I think I appreciate the fact that we'll have the temporary structure so they can continue to hold the D2 championship and have some safe retreat from the weather. as well as being able to then put forth a really first rate pavilion where they can further enjoy the manatees that we have here in Boulder City. With that, I'll move to approve 8173.

I'll second that.

Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, that's unanimous. That brings us to number 15.

As the city was preparing for the sale of track 350, now referred to as Liberty Ridge development, the city wanted to make sure that the subsequent subdivision of the lots of this development did not have direct access to our collector rooms, which is Adams, Bristol Cone, and Clubhouse. And so to ensure that, city put in place a one foot no access easement along the perimeter adjacent to those three right of ways. Now as development is moving forward and as the council knows with the approval of the final map for phase one and subsequent development, Toll Brothers is looking to build streets that will connect to each of these collector roads. So in order to give them access, we need to vacate that one foot no access easement for those streets along phase one as well as a pocket park which will be located at the corner of clubhouse and bristol cone so before you tonight is resolutions 8174 8175 and 8176 which would vacate that one foot no access easement to accommodate the development And for this, it does require a public hearing. And with that, I can answer any questions. Any questions?

Yeah.

So we will open the public hearing. Anyone want to come forward and give comments or opinions? Seeing no one who's coming forward, we will close the public hearing and go to resolution 8174, what is the wish of council?

Move to approve 8174. I'll second.

Moved and seconded. Any discussion?

All those in favor say aye. Aye.

Any opposed say nay. It's unanimous again. Thank you.

Mayor Hardy? Yes. For the record, can somebody tell me who seconded this motion? Thank you.

And then we have resolution 8175.

I move to approve 8175. I second.

Moved and seconded discussion. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say no. Unanimous thank you. Resolution 8175, 76.

I'll move to approve resolution 8176 And is there a second?

Second And is there any discussion? All those in favor say aye Aye Unanimous again thank you

Mayor and council, agenda item 16 is related to agenda item 15. This is for council consideration for the final map for phase three of Liberty Ridge. As I mentioned before, with development, you have tentative map and then subsequent approvals of final map for each phase of the development. Council's already approved the final map for phases one and two. This occurred on March 24th. this year and as folks have seen as they've been out to the development construction is underway on phases one and two Toll Brothers is now ready to move forward with approval of the final map for phase three council approved the tandem map on October 14th of 2025 Final map for phase three went before the Planning Commission on July 15th, and they recommended unanimously approval of the final map for phase three. I can answer any questions regarding proposal. Isaac Summers with Toll Brothers is also here to answer any questions.

Any questions?

I've got a question about access for the phase up along Adams. Is there the ability to have the construction access now go through the driveway at the golf course and ease the interruptions on Bristlecone for all of the residents that live up and down that area?

Yeah, certainly. We can talk to the developer about making that the primary access to minimize congestion onto Bristlecone.

Okay, that would be great, thank you.

Anything else?

This is not the final phase map, right? Is there going to be another phase that comes through, or is this it?

That is correct. And there's a little confusion here, because as you recall, when the tentative map was brought before you, there was three phases, phases one, two, and three. When Toll came forward with final map approval for quote unquote phase one, they broke it into two phases. So that became phase one and phase two. So this, which was previously contemplated as phase two, is now phase three. And then there will be a final phase four for this development.

So with this phase three and with the allotments as they're metered out, it could be some time. Is this phase three needing any more grading or dirt removal or anything prior to them being built on?

I will defer to Mr. Summers to answer that question.

Hello, Mayor and Council. Thank you, Mr. Mayes. Yes, to answer the question, there's most of the pads in this phase three area are rough graded at this point. With our civil plan approval, we then go and do what's called a blue top where we fine grade the pads. There is a little bit more fill that we have to do in the corner of so it'd be the southwest corner of Adams and Bristlecone, those will come up a little bit. That elevation, ultimately those pads will sit lower than Bristlecone and Adams. So while there will be a little bit more fill placed in that area, they'll still be substantially lower than that corner of the intersection.

When do you see that taking place?

All the final grading activities have to happen before we can do anything else in this phase.

So the real reason I'm asking to get on top of it right is it's basically a little sand dune over there. I think we've discovered as we've kind of lifted up some earth right. So if this is phase three and we're a year or two out we are done can we put something on top of it so that when the winds kick up because we're notorious for that it doesn't lift you lose half of your soil and we gain half of your soil in our backyards

Yes, we've absolutely battled the elements so far on this site. But we did take measures and placed a dust palliative on all of the future phases. Once we go in and finish this, any unstable areas will then be retreated so that they're stabilized until we get there with our full construction activities.

great because that's kind of the the thought i'm having right is let's make sure we keep it stabilized if we go in and disturb it again because i i do notice a difference since that has happened it's not going to eliminate everything but there has been a difference and that's been nice and we appreciate that so with that phase coming through you you've already started building on phase one and two Just a question that probably doesn't pertain. How have the cells been going?

So we've had quite a bit of interest. It's actually, now that we're looking at, it's substantially more than we anticipated, so that's why we had our 30 allotments for construction year 24 to 25, and 30 from 25 to 26. We're already looking at converting reservations to allotments from 26 to 27, as soon as we work through the initial 60. so 30 and 30 and then 30 more will roll into allotments as soon as possible and i believe that's going to happen after this final map records uh toll completes the the land takedown purchase of this land and then we're burned through the 30 plus 30 allotments that we currently possess do you see yourself being on time for the initial 30 allotments What do you mean by on time?

Being able to finish on time to be able to have those 30 be used. Because if you don't finish on time, you don't use them, they're gone.

Yes, that's what I'm describing as part of that plan. So we're not planning on losing any of those 30 or 30 that we currently are in possession of.

Okay, great, thank you. Yeah, thank you.

So along that same line, the berm on Sunrise Circle that you look at when you come out, it disappeared. What did you do? What magic did you do to make that go down?

Yes, that was part of our discussion that we had prior to our phase one and phase two final map. What we did was we regraded that portion of the site. That lot originally was draining entirely into Honor Line Court, which is the street on the north side of that lot, just a little bit north of Sunrise Circle. What we did was we lowered that pad elevation so that when we created what's called a B type drainage Where drainage goes off the back of the lot? So that's how we were able to slope and lower the back of that lot To be more consistent or parallel with the grade and bristle cone. So it's less of a bucking grade We call it where you have you know, your grade on the lot is working against your street grade adjacent to it. I All right, thank you. And we did make the commitment during our last final map hearing that we were matching walls from our property on the west side of Bristlecone to the properties that are adjacent on the east side of Bristlecone. We're still fully making that commitment and we're even going to, once those walls are constructed, we're gonna survey to ensure that we're matching, thus the commitment that we made. Thank you, appreciate it.

When would the model homes be open?

they i believe they're projecting an october uh public opening right now we have our sales office on site that's been operating since uh may so that's open to the public but the actual model completion you can certainly see them in the air and they're well underway i believe i can get an exact date but i believe it's october that they're going to open to public and the next question may be for michael since the pool is predicated on some of these builds how's that going as far as the funds coming over for the pool

Fortunately, with the voters approving the two separate ballot questions that provided the total of $16 million in advance, we were able to move forward with the pool project ahead of schedule. What will happen is as the funds continue to come in for the final two takedowns for Toll Brothers, If it is not needed for the pool, it goes back to our capital fund. And so we have the opportunity to use capital funds up front to advance the project and we'll reimburse.

Very good. So the pool is on schedule too?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions or observations? Go ahead.

So the level at which lot, I think it's called 28, right? Yes. That infamous lot 28 is what it is, what you currently have it graded at.

Yes. So that grading is complete on that lot. So that, you can kind of see the northern half of the lot looks more level. And then the back of the lot seems to slope off more significantly. That level portion is where the actual house is going to sit. And then the sloped portion is the backyard. okay and and we feel like that the wall will be because it still seems rather high for the wall yeah it i think it's a perspective um based on how the grading is right up against bristlecone on that street um and then and then it look it seems lower and then the lot seems higher But we've engineered it. The drainage works. We've actually surveyed. We did the mock-up panels, looking at the wall elevations, making sure we were accurately projecting where they were going to be. But we'll be certified that we are matching the commitment that we made.

Okay and the next question is clearly Bristlecone is going to start having more traffic on it as you finish these allotments. Do you see yourself finishing the improvement of the street of Bristlecone prior to the end of the project? Where do you see that fitting in?

What we've been constructing is the storm drain improvements, which should be complete actually in a matter of days, if not a week or maybe two weeks at the most. That work will then roll right into the surface improvements along the entirety of Bristlecone. The way we designed the site was the Bristlecone surface improvements were included with the toll phase one civil improvement plans. So it will be constructed with the completion of toll phase one.

okay okay so that's when it will be finished fantastic the next question is i see and i believe it's you guys coming over to fix the rocks across the street right yes which great i know we had to remove move a little of your dirt and give it back oh you probably took it back is what you did with it um but i i think uh just on a personal note

the third level the top level there it's a different color than the other two might want to throw some of the same color up there so if i if i can kind of a funny story as as soon as they laid the rock we verified it is the same color rock from the exact same quarry it's just a it's a it's a component of having a natural uh material that you're that we placed so what we're going to do we're going to do a couple different things we're going to first try to wash it which will which will darken the color a little bit and get a little more of the pink out of there and then if that doesn't work and get it close enough in shade to what's existing we're going to bring in additional rock and blend it

Yeah, because that's what I was going to say. Even if you threw a little bit up there, at least it would have some continuity.

Yeah, we'll figure that out.

That's just on a personal let's make it pretty now.

Absolutely. And we're on the same page. And when we landscape the west side of Bristlecone, that will also be same rock, same quarry. So it'll look more uniform when everything's complete.

Fantastic. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

So what are we going to do with resolution 8177?

Move to approve 8177. Second.

And any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. And that brings us to number 17, master plan amendment, Avenue G storm drain.

good evening again mayor and council jim keen your city engineer we have a short presentation to go over what the master plan amendment is all about we have the design engineer for the project from btn rachel lawrence here to give you the presentation hello rachel lawrence with vtn nevada i'm the consulting engineer for avenue g storm drain improvements

The improvements start on New Mexico and go southerly till the Georgia Channel going down Adams or south of Adams Avenue. The original MPU in 2022 proposed dual 72-inch RCBs or RCPs going from GBGR 0189 to 0204. There were several constructability issues in that corridor north of Highland, south of Adams. So with that effort, we switched the alignment to strictly be in Georgia and Avenue G. This allowed us to use a single box in eight by eight to a ten by four RCB until we got to the Georgia Channel. It improved constructability for the narrow corridors, and it also allowed us to maintain a size that improved the scenario for flooding down Avenue G. The watershed as a whole from the 2022 MPU to the 2026 MPA stayed the same. The local routing within the streets deviated down Avenue G going to the Georgia Channel. But in general, the flow rates are about what they were with minor nuances because of peaking times of your storm events. Using the 2018 MPU cost tool, comparing the 2022 MPU improvements for this same corridor to what we're proposing now for the 2026 amendment, the net change is about a decrease in $91,000. So we got the cost of improvements to be about exactly what they were before with a better design, easier construction, and improves the stakeholder scenario across the high school. Do you have any questions?

Questions?

What do you mean by better design? In terms of the dual 78-inch RCPs, the corridor that we were traveling down, there was essentially a canyon that physically putting those RCPs in would wipe out the residents' driveways. so without hurting them or being a detriment to them it was better to move it to avenue g there was a few other locations north of adams going through the private residential street those streets are extremely narrow the water and the sewer also don't meet current separation standards if we added storm drain to that we would make a bad condition even worse So we are helping mitigate some of the issues coming off of those streets and increasing separations, but in general, those health district criteria we were able to achieve in Avenue G. Thank you, great example, great answer.

Thank you.

So it is a public hearing. So if you want to step away, we'll open the public hearing on the master plan amendment for Avenue G, the storm drain improvements.

Again, good evening to you all, and Eric King, longtime resident in the area. So I am actually coming up here. I didn't plan to speak on this item, but since it is particularly about Avenue G, and I've done some reconnoitering with my designer's eyes, with my very concerned heart for your trees in this beautiful city that you have, I just wanted to paint a... about a minute's worth of a picture of how to save some of your trees that I absolutely know will die if the heat continues unabated for future summers like it is now, which is probably gonna happen. There's a really large pine tree. I'll just take that one for instance. I've taken some photos of it. It's on the west side, the hottest side of the, the house and the west wind blows across the parking lot of the high school hits that probably 45 50 foot pine tree outside of a single story residence just to the east of the high school's parking lot and it's pretty brown now and in its life it's probably given the equivalent of at least 1,000 homes AC units of cooling for the city. That's just the cooling power, not the shade power as well. And those pine trees are pumping out coolness 24-7. Mesquites do a little bit different job because they're desert adapted. So why am I saying that? Because at a steep angle, you have fast flowing water that runs down Avenue G, right past the high school. shoots right down to the library's road, which I can't tell you exactly, I think it's Adams, but I probably got that wrong. Anyways, really fast flowing water. All that sheet water goes to the side, the curb, runs right by that pine tree for years and years and years. If you took, just to help you picture, a three inch or even a two and a half inch what they call curb core which they do in places like tucson that want to plant a million trees and use rain water to help them do it some of that water because the hole is right at at the grade level of the street flows now into a trough say for that pine tree that would be higher elevation It's a little bit of that water flows in there, pools in that trough, and then plumes down to the tree. The city didn't pay for that. They put a curb cut in there. And somebody has a tool to do that. And now that tree has a chance to live without that owner having to pump copious amounts of water to it. And all those high schoolers get to see that it's possible to save the trees, even the pines, here in the valley. So that's the picture I wanted to paint for you.

Thank you.

Anyone else want to come forward in the public hearing on item number 17? Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing and go to resolution 8178. Thoughts on 8178? Move to approve. Second. Moved and seconded, any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? It's unanimous, thank you. And that brings us to

Good evening, Mayor Hardy and members of the council. I'm City Manager Ned Thomas. Item number 19 is a discussion by the council and direction to staff regarding the process that you would like to follow or use in appointing a new permanent municipal judge. Now, some have asked me why we need to have this discussion tonight, so I just want to make it clear that your direction is needed because Section 8.1 of the city charter provides that the city council may appoint the municipal court judge, but it doesn't prescribe a process. And the city has always appointed a municipal judge since 1960. In fact, they've used the appointment process to select the court judge. And so again, this item is for discussion and direction to staff on how you would like to proceed in following the city charter on this matter. Um, yeah. Just a little bit of background. Most recently, of course, Judge Victor Miller was appointed and served as the Municipal Court Judge from 1984 until he, and he served in that capacity until his retirement in 2024. And at that time, Judge Miller was appointed, or excuse me, just a little bit more background. So at the time that Judge Miller was appointed as the Municipal Court Judge, he served for a number of years before he was actually elected to a in a similar office, but on the county level, which is the Justice of the Peace. So for the past several years, a couple of decades, he has served in both capacities. But that hasn't always been the case. Most of the time that has been the case, but certainly not all the time. In fact, before he was appointed from 1984 to 1994, there were two different people serving in the two different judge seats that we have here, if you want to call that in, one the Justice of the Peace, the county level, and one for the municipal court judge. For about 10 years, there were two different people. Earlier than that, from 1960 to 1963, you have to go back quite a ways, there were two different people serving in those roles. But for the most part, the same person has served both roles. But again, always, the municipal court judge has been appointed, that particular role has been appointed to the council in accordance with our municipal code. Now after retiring, Judge Miller became a senior judge within the Nevada state court system, and this is a type of emeritus status where a retired judge is allowed to take on temporary judicial duties, and that's exactly what has happened here. As a senior judge, then Judge Miller agreed and offered that he's currently serving the municipal court judge for Boulder City, but it's on a temporary basis while the council considers options for how it wants to proceed with appointing a permanent municipal court judge. And of course, the last couple of years, we've had two different people in those two different judgeships that I've talked about, and Chris Tillman was elected, once Chris Tillman was elected as Justice of the Peace. So that's just a little bit of background on all of that. Just for the discussion purposes, I wanna offer you a few options. Again, the council may appoint a municipal court judge through any process that it directs. Certainly the council as one option has, the ability to make a direct appointment as the municipal court judge. This could be done just simply appointing a qualified person to the position or as has happened in the past, the council might conduct a recruitment You would solicit applications and conduct interviews and then select a person. Another way of doing that is the council could create what we would call an ad hoc judicial selection committee. They would do all of the work I just mentioned. They could help us put together qualifications, solicit and review applications, conduct the interviews. and then make a recommendation to the council. Now that recommendation could be a top candidate or the top two or three candidates. They could just screen or vet the candidates and then send them all to the council with a few comments because then you would be getting some, we'll call it experienced advice from either a current or retired judges in good standing. So there's a number of different ways to form, I just mention all that, there's a couple of different ways to form that judicial selection committee and then ask for their input to you as the council. I refer to it as ad hoc because usually that type of a committee or commission would be for a specific timeframe and for a specific purpose. So in this case, the purpose would be to review applications for a municipal court judge and then once they were done, then that committee, it wouldn't necessarily have to be a standing committee or commission. and we would foresee that that type of service would be on a voluntary basis. A couple of other ideas regarding this committee. If desired, tonight the council could provide staff with some general direction on the size and the composition of the selection committee. For example, it could be a committee comprised of three current or former judges standing in Southern Nevada. Or it can be comprised any way that you would like it to be. I think my suggestion would be that it would be good to have someone with some experience in the law, particularly in the function of a judge, because you want to get someone, it's an important position, even though it serves part-time, that could, our municipal court judge not only sits on the bench, but they also manage the staff in the municipal court, and they, I deal with them regularly on budget matters and that sort of, so in a way, they function like a department head, but they're a separate entity within the city government. A couple of other ideas, if desired, the council could direct staff to organize the committee. We can put together a job description, basic qualifications, and some cities would do this like a regular job posting, but it would be for a municipal court judge. If you'd like, I might suggest we could work with Judge Miller on this. He's obviously done this for 40 years. He's very familiar with what's needed in a municipal court judge. He could probably help us identify prospective current or retired judges to serve on such a committee, again, if that's what the council wishes to do. A couple of examples of this was mentioned earlier in the staff report. We mentioned the city of Urington. In a recent vacancy, they ran it as a job posting and then they have a standing administrative committee that reviewed the application and interviewed the candidates as I've described. That committee then recommended a top candidate to the council, but they also sent all the supporting documentation for all of the candidates to the council. So there was one that in their minds was recommended as this is the good one, but here are all the other ones if you want to consider those two councils. That's one way to do it. At the state level in Nevada, when a vacancy occurs in a district court, the state uses a commission on, they form a, I think it's an ad hoc commission on judicial selection. So this is a commission comprised of seven members and it's chaired by the Chief Justice of the Nevada Supreme Court. In this case, the commission solicits application and conducts a public interview process. And then the commission recommends three finalists to the governor and the governor reviews those and makes an appointment. And then a couple variations on that theme. Several states use an independent nominating commission to screen and evaluate candidates. Again, very similar to Nevada. In that case, the governor then takes the list of qualified candidates and he appoints from that list that has been vetted by a commission. And then again, in other states, the governor or the legislature directly appoints judges without prior elections or any screening by a commission. This is, in our review, this is much less common and it's usually done when it's a specific type of court or a specific type of court or a specific level of the court. So those just give you a few examples to kind of help the discussion along. I'm happy to answer any questions and we've been working very closely with our city attorney on this so she is also here to provide any input on legal side of things.

So this job of judge, I'm not sure, how long is this, if we appoint someone, how long is this for? Four years, two years, since 1984? I don't know the process, if it's for life or?

I think much like your other city executive, it would serve at the pleasure of the council, is that correct?

Yes, per the city charter, all the terms must be indefinite.

so it would be indefinitely yes we wouldn't fire him well you would have authority I mean I mean it would be really something rare like was it capable of carrying the job down okay so it would be for for life basically and I think that was the big one for me is and also do they have to live in Boulder City yes they have to be a resident for one year for one year be a resident and for life, basically you're looking for life unless they do something.

Yeah, indefinite is at the pleasure of the council, so until the person chooses to move on or the council chooses to remove the person, which can be with or without cause.

Oh, with or without cause, okay.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

I have a question. So would it be a conflict of interest if the muni judge and the justice of the peace are the same?

no for many years we've had the same it hasn't always been that way and some for 10 years from 1984 to 94 we had different people serving in the judgeship but then for the past 40 years we've had the same okay so it wouldn't be a conflict of interest um my other question was um if they do wear the two hats does clark county have a say so They would have to because the, well, I'm gonna let you answer that because there's nuances.

So there are nuances because the city of Boulder City has never provided that the justice of the peace is the ex officio municipal court judge. So if the city council's direction were to let's have the justice of the peace be the ex officio municipal court judge then whomever is elected to the justice of the peace position would always be the municipal court judge that would require an agreement with the county and we would work out terms with the county for for that would have to be approved by the county commission Now, Boulder City has always appointed the person, and so if you are appointing the person because you want that person, not because of the office they hold, because that's what ex officio means. Ex officio is by virtue of the office. Then that statute's not triggered because we're just separately appointing that person. If they happen to be the justice of the peace, as well. There may be some differences of opinion with the county, I don't know, but with Judge Miller, Judge Miller was appointed municipal court judge before he was ever elected Justice of the Peace. So this was never an ex officio appointment. It was appointing him, and then he thereafter got elected. I think it depends on how the council chooses to do the appointment, whether it's you're appointing the justice of the peace because they hold that office, or if you're appointing that person, and if you're appointing someone else, obviously, who's not the justice of the peace, that wouldn't be triggered as well.

Okay, so one of my questions was, and then the judge actually came up and said he didn't mind, was to ask him, did he want to be the Justice of the Peace? Did he want to take on that extra role? And he came up earlier and said that that would be possible. Now on the Muny side, that's an election, right? Like there was an election for Judge Miller?

No, so the Municipal Court judges, yeah, the appointment, so the Justice of the Peace is elected. And then the City Council appoints the Municipal Court judge.

Okay, so the Justice of the Peace side has an expiration date.

Yes, that's a term of four years, I believe.

And I think that's where Kirky was trying to go with. Six years, sorry. Six years, okay. So that position will always rotate every six years, that side of it. So the only other thing, if we're doing discussion at this time as well, or just questions? So the discussion is, if the current judge doesn't mind doing two jobs, and it saves time and money, to me that would be a good thing than to go outside and have to i don't know if that's a volunteer committee that you put together or it's a committee you pay so maybe that's the discussion we'll have to have is what's the cost of going this longer route when you have someone that says yeah i don't mind doing it and and it has been done that way for the last

I wanted to, Mayor, if I may, you brought up a very good point that I wanted to bring up. If the council were to appoint the Justice of the Peace as ex officio municipal court judge, then the municipal court judge would change with whomever is elected thereafter. Yes. And so therefore, if you're not appointing the office but appointing the person, then

then it if we say appointed the person then it it would not change with the election so it's a key distinction i think is just wanted to throw that out there go ahead two points of clarification for my own mind here so is it a savings of money to have the same person serve in that those two positions

It just depends on how it's structured. In other cities like Wells, Elko, I think Caliente, they don't have municipal court staff. They don't have anything like that. They have everything go through the justice court and so for them it is a cost savings. Now we've always had our own court and had our own staff. Don't know that that would change and of course the city would still have to pay Portion of the salary either way unless that was worked out with the county And that would all be up to the county's negotiation as well so if we were to go the ex-officio route, so I Could there be a cost savings? Yes. But that would all have to be worked out. And we currently have the staff. So I don't know that that would change. And so we'd have to get rid of staff to make it a cost savings. Pretty much.

Is what you're saying.

Yeah right.

So it pretty much isn't a savings to have one person do both. My question is this though what is the manpower hours that you have to put in with both positions. What does that entail for for one person.

Yeah, the municipal court judge is a part-time position. Technically, it's 20 hours a week. I know Judge Miller puts in more than that. I think it's up to the person that fills that position. But technically speaking, it's a part-time 20 hour per week position for the municipal court judge. I don't know if that's one of the reasons why sometimes the same person has filled both positions, because then it becomes a full-time position and there's some implications to that.

So sometimes there's things called unfunded mandates that cause you to work extra amount of time that you didn't expect to work to, right? That can happen. I see this two different ways. First off, I feel like a good for us in Boulder City that we've been great at picking our judges and voting in people that are fantastic. But I still like the idea of being able to vet and make sure that that person is the right fit for the second like you said. It would just rotate automatically if we just put it in. Many of you know I have a daughter with disability that comes with something called an IEP. It's a plan for her that says no matter where Aubrey goes, this is what Aubrey needs. And so if the teacher changes, the new teacher coming in knows what Aubrey needs. It's not based on the teacher. So this isn't based on a person per se as I would say as a procedure for me. So that the person coming in or going out or whatever it is, is picked with like kind of a set of I don't know not rules or of ideas or whatever. So it's not person specific. Please don't think it's not person specific. We'll probably get to the end and find out we're gonna get to the end of where it's supposed to be, but I would like to put in place myself an opportunity to be able to have a selection process. And up to this point, we've been so good in Boulder City at picking the people we've selected. And I could see that that could happen again. I just would not wanna put ourself or pigeonhole us into a position where we have to put the same person who was elected in that position, just in case.

Thank you, Mayor. I think it's important to clarify a whole lot of things as we proceed on this discussion. Just so it's all out, we're all on the same page. And in no particular order other than how I wrote them down. So we've, we meaning the city council since 1960 has appointed the municipal judge. Has there ever been a formalized process? Was it ever written? Was it ever codified? Is there anything that we have in our records that show that there has been a process for the selection of the MISP court judge?

Just in researching this item, previously the city council did conduct a recruitment process in 1984 when Judge Miller was chosen. Judge Miller lived that experience and is here. But yeah, in general there was a recruitment process that was conducted at the time by city council that held interviews and then they selected a person.

okay so what i'm hearing you say is it was a process that that particular city council chose to follow at that particular time correct but not one that became a codified process for all councils from there on out correct okay thank you that's one clarification and it's important to remember that Judge Miller was appointed as the municipal court judge for some number of years prior to running for and be elected as justice of the peace. So comparing the JP to becoming muni court judge is not what we've had for the last number of years since Judge Miller has been that judge, but that he was appointed by that city council, by that ad hoc process, we'll call it, and then later became justice of the peace so I don't think that saying that we've done it that way for 30 years is accurate because it's not because he was appointed first and then ran and became that not that it's good or bad it's just the thing we have to put out there so that we're all on the same page right and if I could add there was only in our research there was only one case where it was the opposite where we had an appointed

Yeah, there was a sworn in justice of the peace who was then subsequently appointed as the municipal court judge. But as noted in this report, he only served for a few months. That was Jack Quinn, not sure of the years on that one. So it's been both ways.

But we don't know what that process was.

We do know. And there's no codified process other than the city council may appoint a municipal court judge. They made the appointment.

And I think it's important, the justice of the peace position is different from the muni court judge position in that the JP is a county affiliated appointment or election and role, right? Correct. For the Boulder Township, which is much larger than the city of Boulder City. So that's a county-affiliated position. The municipal court judge is the municipal court of the city of Boulder City. So they're distinct and different. A question is, how is the fund currently, the funding, since that's a county-affiliated position, even though it's elected through the Boulder Township election process, How is the JP position funded versus the Muny Court judge funded?

Yeah, so the Justice of Peace and all of their operations are completely funded through the county, and they don't touch our budget. I'll put one caveat on that, and I'll come back to it in a minute, whereas the Municipal Court judge and all of their staff is part of the city's budget. The place where there's some overlap there, of course, they're both housed in the same building, which is a city building. And so whenever I heard various episodes where whenever they need something done over on the district courts, I'm gonna call it the wrong court, the county courts, the Justice of the Peace side, then the city is responsible for that. So there is a little bit of overlap in the facilities. Yeah, because they use the same courtroom on different days.

So that's basically it, though. The facility is a shared cost because it's a city facility. well there's a and there's a lease in place okay so the county pays the city a fee for the space yeah is that what you're saying i believe so yes i believe they pay a fee okay okay so i think that's important to to recognize and um when we talk about this agreement with clark county if we choose if council chooses as their process to say whoever it is ex officio meaning by virtue of the office that individual doesn't matter the individual at that point it matters that the office that they fill What is this potential agreement, or are there any hangups that Clark County could kind of lay over Boulder City that we may or may not be amenable to? What are some issues that could come up? I mean, we don't want the county to interrupt our autonomy, right? And is there the potential that if we have both of them, then hey, we have to agree with the county. They have to approve this. Is there some autonomy that we give up to the county or potentially that we have negotiations with them? Could you explain that?

It's hard to say what the downfalls would be. I mean, that's part of the reason why this is agendized as a process because even if we were given that direction, we would need to talk to the county, talk about what the terms of an agreement like that would look like. We don't know what they would require because it requires this consent of the county commission. So we don't know what they would ask for or require. That would all have to be explored. So it's really just uncertain what the conditions of that would be until we would have discussions and negotiations with the county.

Mayor, are you okay if Judge Miller has personal experience dealing with the county from that role, if he'd come up and tell us any experience that he had?

He's probably here for a reason.

Do you have anything to add on that, Judge Miller?

Yes, thank you very much. We had a situation where the county came in both in Boulder City and in Mesquite where the Justice of the Peace and the Municipal Judge is the same individual, and the county came and proposed that they would withdraw their approval for the Justice of the Peace to be Municipal Judge unless then they put together a an agreement an mou which required a lot of things from the city including that the city pay all expenses for both the municipal court and the justice court and that then the city would submit a bill at the end of the year for how much time was spent on justice court versus municipal court. And so they had an unusual formula that they took from California. And California has a uniform judicial system. And so all their judges do both municipal court, justice court, superior court. all of those and then they take a formula to determine how many judges they need in a particular judicial district based upon this formula. Although they don't even do the same kind of law that we did here in Municipal Court and Justice Court, but yet this was the, we're going to deny judges the opportunity for Boulder City to have the Justice of the Peace be a municipal judge unless the city agrees to this process. Luckily, the city manager at the time had dealt with the Clark County in a different municipality and knew that it was very difficult to get them to pay any bill. In fact, they're supposed to be paying for our marshals that cover justice court. They've never paid. So that's the kind of things that can happen. Just in 66 years, we've never had an ex officio municipal judge. I don't think our charter provides for that, provides for the appointment of a municipal judge. and then we don't have to deal. It's the same, when I was the same person, that was the response was we didn't, Judge Miller does not serve municipal judge as an ex-officio justice of peace. We appointed him as city manager and the mayor at the time met with the county commissioner and got this, But it was like a three-year unpleasant process. And so at any rate, we showed that we had never appointed an ex-officio municipal judge. We appoint the municipal judge. And so then there was, they didn't have to have a say or didn't get to have a say. And so things went on just fine after that.

And we were able to do that because you were serving already as the Muni court judge prior, not as ex officio after having won an election as the JP.

Right, and even if it were the other way around, when Judge Quinn was appointed, I was appointed at the same time he was appointed municipal judge, I was appointed associate municipal judge. But he was appointed as municipal judge, he wasn't appointed as ex officio municipal judge.

okay thank you judge miller appreciate that clarification thanks can i ask the judge a question so would you be would you say that we're kind of opening a can of worms by not keeping it the way it was in a sense even though there wasn't a process and all that because if we do go the other route the county would probably get involved

I don't know what the county will do. They have in the past. They may not have a appetite to do that now, but if you appoint a municipal judge, whether it's the Justice of Peace or not, then they don't have any say because we appointed a municipal judge, not someone by some, I don't know, you know, loophole by a position. It's because of merit. When I was appointed, I knew I was the person that the council thought was the best to do that. If Judge Tumble were to be appointed, he would know that it's because the council thinks he's the best person, not because of some fluke in his, just from an election to a different position. Thank you.

Thanks, Judge. Which then going back to the questioning for our city manager and city attorney, if this council chooses through some process to select Judge Tillman to serve as that, then we avoid that. It's just the ex officio issue that creates the potential for the complexity with Clark County.

Is that correct? That's correct. As I heard Judge Miller speaking, that kind of became more clear to me. You're really looking at ex officio, as city attorneys write, by virtue of the office versus a merit-based. And so either way, you're still maintaining the historical precedent of the council appointing a municipal court judge. but one is sort of automatic, ex officio, and to avoid that, you would just appoint that, and it could come up with, as Council Member Jorgensen, you may end up at the same place, depending on who, but it's the term of the process and how you get there.

I would just add, if you're appointing the person, then that person is going to stay in that office, even if they're not reelected. Right, yeah. And I think that's a really key point here, is that that person, as your municipal court judge, isn't changing with the election. Right.

Yeah, and a certain amount of continuity may be appreciated by the council and the community. But that's further down the conversation. I think it's important for anybody who may read the proceedings, there might be some misunderstanding that what the Justice Court does versus what the Muny Court does. And why are there two judges anyway? And why are we having this conversation? I think a fair amount of people thought, well, look, we elected him. Why isn't he that judge? Well, because there wasn't an election for Muny Court. It was for JP. And just for the benefit of everybody, just briefly, please, describe the differences between Justice Court and Muny Court, please.

Yes, Judge Miller could probably do a better job. But I will say just generally, municipal court has jurisdiction over all of our misdemeanors that are committed within our jurisdiction. So things like trespass, DUI, domestic battery, assault, battery, misdemeanors like that, whereas the Justice Court has jurisdiction over higher level crimes, gross misdemeanors, I think some felonies, and then also evictions, small claims, and I know I'm not being exhaustive, but essentially the jurisdictions are divided in NRS and the Municipal Court has jurisdiction over all of our misdemeanors and all of our ordinance violations. and even civil matters, traffic citation hearings go to the municipal court. We even in our code have code enforcement appeals go to the municipal court. So we also give the municipal court additional duties within our code because it's within our control. What our city code, it gives the municipal court additional duties as within NRS constraints.

Okay, thank you. That's perfectly clear enough for us. Thank you. So there are differences, right?

May I add one more thing? I think it's worth mentioning that the municipal court judge has always overseen the drug court as well. And then we heard tonight that Judge Tillman oversees the juvenile, I put the terminology just wrong, but the juvenile program, yeah. And so there's some division of labor there, so to speak. Sure.

And I think it's been pointed out. We have staff for both. One is on the right side of the hallway, one's on the left side of the hallway. And having the same judge doesn't mean that one set of staff disappears and that all those costs are absorbed into the county's side or the city's side.

And I think that's reflective of the different types of cases that they handle as the city attorneys.

They're distinct. So when we talk about cost savings... We're not going to eliminate an entire set of staff for one court or the other. So there's really minimal, if not inconsequential, discussion about any cost savings there. Is that a fair statement? OK, thanks. Are there differences specifically in the qualifications in the two judgeships? Does our charter or does ordinance call out in order to be eligible to serve as the justice of the peace? Granted, it's an elected position, so maybe there aren't any other than just the few you have to live here and be elected, but are there differences functional differences in the qualifications between the two judgeships?

I don't know that there are functional differences, but I think this is a very important question and why the council might want to seriously consider why you would want to hold on to the right and continue the practice of appointing your municipal court judge because as part of that appointment, and as part of this process that we may set up, you can identify qualifications that you would like to see, whereas the judicial court, did I get that right? Justice Court, I call it the wrong thing every time. The Justice Court is an elected office, so you don't have any purview over that, but you do, again, the charter is silent, but I think we can be liberal, you have some purview over the qualifications for the municipal court judge.

okay and that that's why it's an important distinction that that is an appointment by the council thank you um i think those were my clarifications my questions i appreciate that uh and and um I do agree that this agenda item is... And if we choose to give staff direction and we don't want to process, that can be our direction. Obviously, it'd have to come in another meeting where it's agendized accordingly. But I think it's an oversight by any council to not... Codify a process because here we are. I mean, I don't like this I don't I don't want to even have I wouldn't I would prefer not to have to have this discussion because I Well, I don't know if I should say but I'm just soon. I'm a judge still been serving It's done and it's over and the conversation just carries on but but there are reasons why it's it's been handled differently and I think there's uh because it's potentially and well the term is indefinite and the council or whatever council in the future may want to keep that muni judge well beyond the justice of the peace term and if if we make it ex officio and that's our process then that person's out and a new person's in and it's not by who the person is or by who a selection process of qualified individuals within the community selected, it's just the person who was elected, which is critical. And I appreciate the fact that, and one of the reasons why I think this is a laborious conversation is because the citizens did vote Judge Tillman. And he was their selection. And it would be real easy for that to just continue on, and we're all happy and good. But that isn't how it was designed since 1960, nor is it designed that way today. So I think it's important for a process. I do recognize, and I appreciate you mentioning it, there are some nuanced differences. And I don't know what many of them are, but I do know there are some very unique things that Judge Tillman does in his court. and one very unique thing that judge miller does maybe among others but one specifically is the breaking the cycle and i know that there was training involved and a continuation of a continuing ed and participation in that association and if we were to have a process for a municipal judge, I would think that we would probably want to put that condition that this will continue on and that that judge will support the breaking the cycle and that that judge will become certified or whatever that process is and participate in the continuing education because we would hate to see some negative variables occur in that, and maybe among other things in that court, by not putting that as a condition in the process for selecting the municipal court judge. And I guess another question is, and it's been brought up here, I think it was mentioned, the ad hoc judicial selection committee we've had that in the past right and that's how judge miller was selected through an ad hoc judicial selection committee my understanding is that uh hr just had a application process where they opened applications and the city council conducted the review so they did their own review is my understanding okay yeah i'm not so sure from my review of the minutes yeah yeah okay but sure sure judge

The open meeting law was different in those days.

Please come to the mic.

The open meeting law was different in those days and so personnel matters the council could handle so there was a group of committee of the council who did it and ultimately the council was able to do interviews and they were in a closed session and so things were a bit different in those days.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. Do folks that serve on judicial selection committees serve at volunteer, or is there a cost for that?

We would ask them to serve as volunteers.

Is that not unheard of or somewhat standard?

Yeah, it's pretty standard for them to serve as volunteers.

So we're not incurring some unknown cost if council chooses to go through a selection process through a judicial selection committee.

Other than the cost of staff time to get things ready for them or to run the job posting. Well, and that's a paper cost because you're already here at work, right? Yeah. Yeah.

OK. Mayor, I think I'm going to yield the floor now. Thank you.

Could the city set up a process so another city council doesn't have to go through this? Is that something this city council could do?

I think, yes, I believe that's what I heard Council Member Walton suggesting. We could do that separately from this process, but maybe concurrently. I think you've identified a need. We just haven't had to use it for 30 plus years. But moving forward, I think that would be very helpful to a future council. And I think that if you go through a process where you're identifying a set of minimum qualifications or things that you would like to see in the municipal court judge, then we could likely either write a policy or have some type of framework around it so we're not starting from scratch again.

Yes I would definitely recommend it being a concurrent but separate process but we could take the direction from you today and go about that process for recruitment and selection and then as a model then bring that back as an ordinance and that could have more detail about the municipal court responsibilities such as the recovery court program as well.

If we had a committee of judges that interviewed people, could those judges do it behind closed doors now? Can they interview privately or do they have to interview publicly? I know they would with us, but would they have to also do that with

Yeah, I think that's a really good question. If your direction to staff is that we could easily work with Judge Miller and identify some current or retired judges in good standing to set up that council, if you wanted to give that type of direction to me or to staff, then that committee could meet. It gives that committee much more flexibility. than if the council appoints them and then they would come back to you and everything would, I mean, it's not like we would bring everything to you and have it done in an open forum, but all of the administrative work can be done behind the scenes if it's done under my direction. Working under the direction of the council, of course.

get some judges that could do the interviewing for us. Okay, thank you.

And they're really just, the way I foresee this, and it's up to the council, that panel of qualified, or we'll call them experienced, seasoned judges would be well qualified to review the types of applications that we receive. So they would do an initial vetting, I guess, of the candidates, and then we can bring forward as many of them as the council would like. If you want just one recommendation, we could do that. If you want the top three, or if you want a recommendation, then all of the materials, we could do it that way too. So that would be part of this process that we would set up.

Thank you. Just for point of clarification so say we said yes let's do an ad hoc judicial selection committee we put individuals who have experience two three whatever they interview the specific things that we want is that something we need to be specific now will it come back to us like per what council member Walton said you know we really would like someone who had breaking the cycle as a priority for them since we've had such a great experience up to this point, right? So is that something that we say here and now or is that something you vet and then come back to us with what we would want to see in that candidate?

Yeah, you could give direction on what you'd like to see tonight. And the committee that's formed could also develop qualifications and measures for evaluation of a successful candidate. How much control and influence the city council wants to have is up to you. If you want to set the qualifications and set all that, we can bring a discussion item to have you approve all the recruitment materials before they go out, or you could just delegate that. It's up to you. It's up to the council. You could just give a few things that you want to see tonight, or you could have us bring back to you a whole recruitment package for your approval.

Can I ask a question? How would the advertisement go out? How does that work, the selection of whoever these people would be?

So again, it's up to council, but we would recommend just like a job posting, and then we would post that. We use NeoGov is what we currently use for our job postings, and then individuals, we usually promote that on various platforms, and then people would be able to apply, and then we'd get those applications, and then again, we could bring them all to you as city council, or we could have an administrative judicial selection committee that's formed by the city manager. So it's up to the council how you wanna go about that.

I just think when I look at this, right, that it's position specific, not person specific. And so what happens when we get up here is we have to make decisions on how to make a decision because it's never been decided. on how this process would go per se. So I see some negative results possible by making it be just whoever got elected in with the ex officio. Thank you, you knew I was struggling. So only because I really don't want the county to encroach in that position per se. I also see the negative part of that being when you do breaking the cycle, there are things that you learn the longer you're in there, right? and that if you have that judge in there and they're in there and they're doing such a great job and then all of a sudden they don't get elected back in but they're great in that area, I would hate to just see them leave and just have us have a rotating door there too. So I look at this as position specific as opposed to person specific and I would really love for us to have the guts to make the decision on how to make that happen so that it doesn't have to come to the next city council to figure it out again.

Is there a time line or time restriction for when all this has to happen?

There's not a set time frame.

So Judge Miller would stay for the interim until this process? That's up to Judge Miller. Well, that's why I'm asking the question.

How does that work? That'd be a question for him. He can stay until we're able to as far as legal reasons, but how long he wants to stay is up to him.

So when you did the job posting for other things before, how long does that normally take? Is that like a 30-day thing or...?

It depends on how much involvement Council wants to have honestly because if you know Council wants to approve the recruitment materials before they go out then we'd have to bring that back if you want to delegate it all to a committee then if you give that direction tonight then we could put the we could have the committee meet form the materials then we could do the job posting and then get you know have 30 days for it to be open or so and then the committee could then review and then bring back recommendations so it could move a lot quicker if we go that route but if the council wants more involvement then it would take longer and the council makes the ultimate decision of who that person would be not the public correct of course like in any in any circumstance even if you had the committee the committee would just be helping to narrow the applicants down and bring back to you the the top and they wouldn't be choosing. They would just be helping narrow it down and you'd have that expertise. Or we can bring all the applications to you. We could even have the interviews in a public meeting like Ned and I did. So we can do that if you'd like. So it's all up to the council.

Also, you asked earlier what would the job posting look like. Like any job posting, it would have the title likely, Can't read my own writing here. The salary range, a little description of the job. I think we'd likely want to include a description of the municipal court in Boulder City. We'd want to mention the drug recovery court as a minimum qualification. I would recommend that the council include some type of legal background. I don't know that necessarily have to have experience. Usually when we hire for a city job, we look for past experience at upper level, look for past experience in that type of a job. I don't know that they necessarily need to have been a municipal court judge, but if they have some familiarity with the court on the right side of the bench, then...

Well, I've been somewhat quiet So I've been around the block with different levels of government and From a City Council standpoint I love to have our autonomy and so we as City Council can appoint and fire a municipal court judge We cannot fire an ex officio judge. The county, for instance, if the county does, that's why I say I am very nervous about giving our autonomy, as it were, to the county, whatever the county means. And so I'm kind of working back. I'm familiar with the three panels where the district court judge, for instance, the job posting is done, they interview, the panel says, we recommend, to the governor who you should appoint as district court judge. And the governor appoints that person after the governor interviews them and says, yes, I appoint you. Not just because the group interviewed you and said you were the best, but he has the power to do that. The he being in this case, five people. We are he or we are she depending on who's the governor and I like the process where there is a vetting by people who are judges who are talking to the potential municipal court judge and saying, what do you do? What do you believe? How do you feel about breaking the cycle? How do you feel about people that park on the curb wrong? How do you feel about all of the things that are with the city, which is what we do? And so I'm much more comfortable with keeping our autonomy as the city and not abrogating our ability to let somebody else choose for us. I appreciate elections. I think those, we don't have, we have people who are willing to run and that's great. We have people who are elected and that's wonderful. But they're not ours. And so we have to figure out what we want to do. And I like the autonomy that we keep. And so I like the concept of a panel that brings to the council what they thought, and then we, the council, says this is the person we want. So we are maintaining our autonomy, we're maintaining our ability, and we're still allowing input from knowledgeable people who are in the community familiar with the process of law as it deals with municipal. judges it wouldn't surprise me for instance if instead of district court judges we get municipal judges to be on that panel and ask them are you willing to get three municipal judges and say you know are you willing to look at the qualifications interview our people who have answered the ad and tell us the top three and the top three come to us, and we say, okay, we have this frank discussion, and we ask them how they feel about breaking a cycle, et cetera, and then we maintain our autonomy, and we say, that's the person that we want. And then if they screw up, we fire them. Because we can.

Yeah.

But otherwise, we muddy the water, I think.

Yes.

That's good. I agree with that.

I think that's... Microphone.

that because i'm not an attorney i don't know all the questions i should be asking i like the idea of having someone that's been a judge be able to ask the questions and then when we answer to the community we can let them know that we did the very best that we could possibly do by getting that person back and i know mr tillman's sitting here tonight i asked him that question would he be okay with that he did tell me he would be okay with that when i interviewed him And I think that gives him a leg up that he's been a judge when he's interviewing. So I think that would be a great process. Anyway, that's how I feel about it.

Mayor, can I put up a test balloon and see if there's any flavor for it? This isn't a motion. It's just a thought. And it can be, of course, since it's not a motion, it can be reframed or thrown out into the little trash bin right behind us that we might consider. directing staff to work with Judge Miller and any other pertinent judicial sources to determine what's appropriate for our muni court, as we've had our Judge Miller serve there so long, to determine what nuances there might be. And after that's determined, then meet with Judge Tillman and determine if he's amenable to those particular terms. And then in a subsequent meeting, we agendize appointing Judge Tillman based on that agreement and in addition to that, continue with the process so we're talking parallel right making an appointment but not failing to continue with the process so that we then after that appointment continue on with what we've framed as the proper qualifications and traits to serve there and codify what we will do or what a council would do in the future when this event occurs again, which it is definitely going to occur. That allows us continuity with the Muni Court Judge. It allows us a certain amount of consistency that we've had over the years, although it's apples to oranges. But I do respect the fact that the voters chose Judge Tillman. And I have great confidence in Judge Tillman. He would be a great media court judge. To me, that accomplishes both halves of this issue that we're trying to do. not delay this and delay it and delay it and keep Judge Miller on the hook for an indefinite period of time. It allows us to respect the wishes of the voters for at least the justice of the peace. It allows us to come to terms what are the important elements of serving and get an agreement with Judge Tillman that he will and agree and abide by that. and then have that agendized so that we do it and then continue with the process as we have conversed here by having a judicial selection committee and in the conversations that occur, we could put those prerequisites, what will be on a job announcement for a future announcement. That's my test balloon, Mayor. It's not a motion, but it's some thoughts to be debated.

So, okay, I'll respond to that. I fully expect, for instance, in this case, that our panel talks to applicants and they come back and they say, by the way, Judge Tillman is one of them. I fully expect that. And then we have the opportunity to see what's out there and who's there and what they are and what they would be. I would hate, I don't use the word hate. I think we put off and we put off. I'm uncomfortable with that when we're sitting here and we can make a decision of how we're going to do it. is we're fine now. Judge Miller hasn't told me that he's quitting tomorrow. So I'm taking that, that we still are breaking the cycle. We're still doing things and we're still wondering and he's not screaming at me right now. So I'm comfortable doing right now what we plan on doing tomorrow. as opposed to doing something and then see what we plan on doing afterwards. I think we're here. We can do it, get the process done now and put ourselves in a position that will carry us through on this process forevermore until we change it. But I think it behooves us to kind of just figure out what we're going to do now and then do it. I just appreciate what you're saying.

I agree with that because whatever we do now, we should do in the future. Because they've kind of left us in a bad spot, I think. Somebody should have given us a plan of how to do this, made it a little bit easier. But I agree, I think whatever we plan on doing, we should do it and move forward from that. And I again think, I'm with you, I'm sure Mr. Tillman's going to be on that list because He's of his reputation and whatnot so and I have actually stood before Judge Tillman so I can say he is a good judge but I think the process should be one that we carry on in the future in that I we have that committee because none of us are attorneys here and I think that it behoves us to have somebody that is in that profession look at all the applicants because the applicants only can come from Boulder City we could have only one applicant that would come forward possibly so that's why I prefer to go the way that the judge Dr. Hardy is stating.

I have no objection to the concept. I just hearken back to breeding ordinance, leash law, and how many ever are the things that have taken us months and months to labor over. Yeah, but the challenge is, I mean, we may be into next year by the time we come up with a process and agendized and redone and redone. And I agree with you. I haven't heard, more importantly, Mrs. Miller say Judge Miller's retiring tomorrow, whether he wants to or not. But nevertheless, it's been a year and a half, and it's gone on and on, and for a variety of reasons, because there's been a lot going on. But it does take time, and maybe for my personal preference, probably more time than I think is necessary, because I think we're all reasoned. reasonably sure what the outcome could potentially be. But there again, I support the process. I'm a process and systems person. And I can absolutely agree to that as well if the majority of the council is tilted that direction. Either way, for me, I think either way accomplishes what we want to. One might delay it. longer than I view as necessary, but doesn't mean we'll come to a bad outcome, so.

Thoughts?

Are you gonna make a motion?

Yeah, make a motion, because I'm thoroughly confused.

If I were to make a motion, am I allowed?

You are? I'm going to make a motion.

All right. So I move that we direct staff to seek out particularly municipal court judges, preferably three, within the next two and a half weeks. and ask them if they're willing to serve on an ad hoc committee to put together what they think would be a good municipal judge we advertise that on the web that we're looking for municipal court judge and this is the application process that you do and that you come and be interviewed and your three judges will decide which one they recommend or the two that they recommend or the three that they recommend. And then it comes back to the council and then the council votes on who the municipal court judge will be. And fully expect that that includes anybody who is currently serving in a judgeship in Boulder City.

that's my motion i'll second that discussion i have some discussion just a little bit so within that process that you just described did you say it is 30 days that position has to be posted it doesn't have to um and and just because i know it will come up there is a salary range already in the class and compensation listing that we would use for posting but the council would set the compensation. So the final applicants could say, I'm looking for X and the council would decide at that point. So there is an existing salary range that's already approved, just because I knew that would probably come up.

Okay so if we desired to do say you say two and a half weeks to find this committee of three right to put together kind of the job expectation slash requirements we just have to fly that position for two to one week and then we have gone through the process and then the committee or however right then that committee could come to whatever applicants have applied and interview them and then it can be brought to us. Could you see that happening within a month?

You mean as far as narrowing down the applicants and bringing the applicants to you? Yeah. In a month? No. It would take

We could probably get the recruitment started. We could limit it to, say, 21 days rather than 30 days. We'll just find any time that we can. But we can move us pretty quickly. Can I interrupt you, Mr. City Manager?

I'm sorry. Remember that the direction that we give tonight has to be formed by staff, has to come back to us as an agendized item. No.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't have to come back.

Do we not have to approve the final product?

Only if you want to, but that's not the mayor's motion. The mayor's motion is to...

I don't want this to be the... I want to see what you take out of this for council to approve the final product.

I don't... Well, if you're talking about codifying the process, is that what you're...

I'm talking about council approving the process.

Oh.

I think that what has been said is good, but until you put it on paper and we see it, we have to vote on the process. I'm not comfortable saying, yeah, this motion is the process. I want to see what you put together based on our conversation and then put the process on paper for us to approve.

When you say process, are you looking to approve the recruitment materials that are generated?

No, no, just what we determine will be the process. We will have a three-panel judicial committee. We will post it for a determined period of time if we want to codify that or not. I don't think we need to post it for an inordinate amount of time. I think two weeks is more than enough, honestly. And whatever other nuances you come up with that we're not thinking of tonight, it's possible you might say, ah, hey, you forgot this or that. We have to agendize it to approve it. I'm not comfortable saying whatever we say tonight to you is the process. We're telling you to put together what we're talking about and then bring it to us as what we would approve as the process.

Okay, we could do that in the resolution.

Unless the rest of the council doesn't like that and I'm the only one hanging out on the tree, which is fine. But sometimes what we've seen that come back, we've all stood on it for a couple weeks and you've found things that we didn't realize in the conversation and pretty soon it looks different. And then what? Do we start all over again?

So if I can, this is a one-time deal. I think your point that you so eloquently, we need a real process going forward that's different than we need to do something now. And this is a two and a half weeks, three judges, and they make a decision and they bring them back to us. And to your point about two weeks, probably not gonna happen that quickly. But certainly I look forward to this fairly quickly. And what my motion is, is we directed staff to do that. And staff can do that because they come, the three judges, as it were, come back, and then we make the decision. And it's done about who it is. So I'm not going to list the questions that the three judges are going to ask. That's the judges that are going to decide what they feel is an appropriate municipal judge according to the criteria that we know and love here in Boulder City.

Could we hear staff read back what the motion is so it's clear for everybody?

Mayor Hardy moved to direct staff to seek out a municipal court judge, preferably three of them within the next two weeks to serve on an ad hoc committee to select a new municipal court judge and advertise it, and the ad hoc committee will recommend up to three judges for council determination.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

so is there anything on there that we haven't put that we need to well essentially what how it would work under this motion is the city manager would form an administrative group of three municipal current or former judges to create qualifications create the job posting We have the salary as listed in the class and compensation listing that was previously approved by council. We would use historical data on what the current position is as far as any benefits, which it is a part-time position. and the part-time positions of 20 hours or more are are per usable and then there's there's multiple types of per systems, but those types of systems would be decided once you have a Candidate because the default is a traditional per system, but the council can choose the judicial per system but that would all be brought back once you have a candidate because it's it's the default is the traditional pers and So I'm just saying all the job posting, I'm thinking it through all the job posting criteria would be developed by the committee, the salary already exists, and it's been delegated to the committee to determine what the job posting looks like and determine what the qualifications and evaluation criteria would be. so that's all been delegated under this motion so then the council hasn't set those criteria and so then that would be brought the applicants based on the criteria that this committee decides would then be brought back the top three for the City Council to ultimately decide having a summary of the full process having a summary of the evaluation criteria of the questions asked and this will be codified not under this this is something that the council is directing us to do we can later bring back a bill that will qualify it but that's not the direction right now the direction right now is to bring you back a pro well to bring you back three candidates for up to three candidates for selection and then we could later then codify that process but that would take a long time because we would have to draft a bill, we'd have to, so if we were to codify it first, that would add months, months.

And that's what I was thinking, that we would codify what we're going to do and then do what we codified.

Right, that would add.

But the suggestion here is that we just proceed, do it, and then basically come back after the fact and codify what we just did. Correct. And that would remain in place for the future until some council in 2052 wants to change it.

One benefit of that might be that as we go along through this, it's kind of on a parallel track, so we'll... bring everything forward so that the council can appoint a municipal judge now and then learn from that process and maybe it will be the same thing that we end up bringing forward to you to codify but if there are lessons learned we can build that into the codified version if that is of some benefit it's kind of on a pair yeah thank you short term and long term yeah thank you okay any other discussion no

All those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Unanimous, thank you.

Thank you.

We will go to, there has to be something else.

There are two other finance items.

Management report.

I think we're on 20 or 21.

City managers report claims. We're moving right along.

Yeah, so the item 20 is the claims paid report, and there are no, nothing to report on that. And then item 21 is similarly the city manager's financial report. I will note that the financial report for this time around is as of June 30th, so it's at the end of the fiscal year. However, it is unaudited. But it does give you an indication of how we ended the past fiscal year.

Any questions? So we will open public comment at this time. Is there anyone here who would like to make public comment?

All right, council. I love your humor, Mayor Hardy. Well, to the few people that are here, Mayor and council members, I want to address the town site solar to data center. For months I have spoken to this council about the problems with data centers, water, power, electricity, pollution generators, and the impact on our community. Now, the project has moved, as we all know, from Boulder City Land to BLM Land and the is appealing this decision. All good? Yes. I support the Boulder City standing up for its rights and I appreciate City Attorney Ms. Brittany Walker for raising serious concerns about this data center and the city's appeal. Truly an amazing job. I mean the way you wrote that appeal, very, very impressive. You burnt the midnight oil on that one. So I appreciate that. Thank you and everybody else does I'm sure. But I do have one question for this council. Why weren't we hearing these concerns when the exact same data center was proposed for Boulder City? that is Boulder City land. When it was on city property we heard about the financial benefits. The city's own information said that the project would generate approximately 1.47 million a year as we well know in lease revenue and roughly 2.3 million a year in total new revenue. Now that the project is on BLM land, Boulder City no longer gets this lease revenue. And I think the citizens deserve to ask why the conversation has changed. Because the data center didn't change when it crossed the property line. The servers didn't change, the generators didn't change, the electricity and power demand did not change. The environmental concerns did not change as well. The only thing that changed was who owned the land and who received the money. I have been consistently talking about these data centers and I'm sure some people are sick and tired of it but it is the most bipartisan issue since beer in America. There's no doubt about that. Data centers are not right for Boulder City whether they're on city land, BLM land or anywhere else in our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else here for a public comment? We will close public comment and go to city council's report.

Thank you, Mayor. The only thing I have to report on is the Nevada League of City. We are preparing for the legislative session for 2027 and looking at BDR's bill draft request for that. I have been working with the attorney to oversee what I've been looking at, so I'm not making the decision for the city, and she's been giving me guidance on that, so I want to say thank you for doing that. I want to give a shout out to my neighbor who, I don't know, it's one of my neighbors down the street. My car broke down on the way here, and I just waved in the street, and they said, what are you doing? And they gave me a ride. And I said, thank you. And they said, well, you approved a dog leash, so that's the only reason why we picked you up. So I guess we're doing something right up here. You could get a ride to work. So shout out to my neighbors. That's all I have, Mayor. Thank you.

i don't have anything tonight to say except thank you everybody and i just feel so blessed to live in this beautiful community and i know it's a little bit hot out there but it's i just love it and i appreciate so much being able to sit here and represent you thank you

I was able to attend my board meeting for the museum and we were able to have Senator Catherine Cortez Masto come and visit with us personally and ask questions and I felt like that was a very nice experience actually to be able to express concerns for our community specifically and then as a county and appreciate her willingness to come out here and hear us.

I'm grateful every day to live in Boulder City. It's a great place to be. And I love serving our citizens. Interestingly, as was mentioned earlier, maybe we can get our youth involved in the environment and other things. We had a presentation, well we have them on a semi-regular basis at the Southern Nevada Water Authority from the Youth Conservation Council. And the Youth Conservation Council, let me pull up their information here. is a group of high school students focused on water conservation education and learning, and how science, technology, engineering, and math can help us engineer better use for water. and they have special guest speakers and they go to the Springs Preserve and learn about water smart use of irrigation and in-home and other things and it's really phenomenal. So I think there's maybe perhaps the conversation we might be able to have with our high school here to see if we have any youth that might be interested in this Youth Conservation Council. It's a really dynamic group of young women and men of high school age that really are getting engaged in our community. That's the first thing. Second thing on the waterfront, also the federal guidelines for the Colorado River use have come out from the Department of Interior because the basin states couldn't come to a negotiated agreement on how to share drought shortfalls, if you will, and how we might conserve as a basin together. So the federal guidelines laid a heavy toll on the state of California, the state of Arizona, and while the numbers don't sound heavy, it's a substantial percentage on the state of Nevada. And so the state of Nevada for the next two years has been directed to extract 50,000 gallons, 50,000 acre feet less from Lake Mead than we have allocated from the 300,000. acre feet. Fortunately, we've already made drought contingency reductions to the tune of about 29,000 acre feet. This isn't in addition to that. This is just 50 total from our allocation of 300. So it's an additional amount of water, but it's not more than double of what we were already reducing. So what does that mean to Southern Nevada? So for the next two years, now this is a 10-year plan, but the years three through 10 really depend on hydrology. So we'll see how they play out. But of the water that we have access to in southern Nevada and the return flow credits that our purveyor partners who use the bulk of the water of our allocation over the hill do their return flows, we did a total draw from Lake Mead of about 198,000 acre feet far short of our contingency reductions of 270,000 acre feet. And I'm adding that extra 20 in there because we have Virgin and Muddy River, Virgin River and the Muddy River allocations of 20,000 acre feet. So if we take just the Colorado River, it's 250,000 acre feet. We're far below that right now. So we feel we have a comfortable cushion that we can live within. That doesn't mean that hydrology is coming back or that we have snowpack this year. So we've got to still tighten our water belt, so to speak. There will be an additional, because of the cuts from the state or the country of Mexico, state of California, state of Arizona, state of Nevada, beyond our cuts, an additional 100,000 acre feet that will stay in Lake Mead and keep our elevation at least that many acre feet up. I don't know if that equates to six inches or six feet, but... that will stay. What does that mean? Well, it means we have a little bit better head pressure to potentially continue to spin the turbines to create hydroelectric power. It doesn't mean there will be greater releases, it just means that the head pressure will be high because there will be more storage in the reservoir. We're hopeful that we can continue, cross our fingers, with hydropower from Hoover. But, you know, hydrology will tell us that story. And if we don't, that means more that we have to purchase out on the open market. And that will definitely affect us because Hoover power hydrology or hydroelectric power is the cheapest power by far for our community. So a lot of unknowns there. And those are my reports, Mayor.

Thank you. I think you got a little bit of a taste of the LVGEA, whatever it's going to be called in the future. So Miss Casey obviously has a lot of things that are on her plate, and she's spinning all of those plates and keeping them in the air. She's an amazing person, and we've been really blessed to have her in that position. We are in a great place doing good things. I marvel at the third straw that we had put in so many years ago that we probably wouldn't even be sitting here with grass or power or anything. So we have been blessed with people who have had good ideas for a long time and we appreciate all of us as we interact with the people in this area looking forward to growth and development. And with that, council's adjourned. Thank you all.