City Council - Regular Meeting

So,

welcome to boulder city city council call the meeting to order madam city clerk confirmation of post and enroll call please thank you the agenda was posted in accordance with nevada open meeting law and all members are present Thank you. We will rise for the invocation by Pastor Kurt Hedlund from the Bethany Baptist Church, after which we will stay arisen for the Pledge of Allegiance. Pastor Hedlund, please.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we approach the 25th anniversary of 9-11, we're reminded of the dangerous world in which we live. We're sad to remember all the lives that were lost on that occasion. We're reminded of the first responders who jumped into action and first responders who still suffer the results of their exposure to bad things on that day. Comfort those families. And there were men and women who went to war also as a result of that. We realize there are other conflicts going on in our world. We pray that our national leaders might have wisdom in trying to resolve them. We, closer to home, recognize that we Southwesterners are dealing with some challenges related to lack of water, to Lake Mead that continues to lose water. So we realize there are some things like that that are beyond our control. So we pray that you would be gracious to us and give us lots of snow this winter in the Rocky Mountains. And even closer to home, we pray for the city council members some of the decisions that they have to make. are difficult, whatever they decide. There will be people unhappy with their decisions. So just give them wisdom and seeking to do the right thing and the ability to have fortitude to stand up for decisions that they make. So guide this meeting tonight. May your wisdom prevail. May there be things thought out and argued out that need to be argued out. May it be an effective, efficient meeting. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Pastor. Will you join us with the word of the Pledge of Allegiance, please?

I pledge allegiance to the Father,

Are there any public announcements from city clerk. Open public comment at this time. This public comment is to be on anything that is on the agenda and limited to matters on the agenda for action. Each person may take up to 3 minutes to speak on a specific agenda item.

We will now open public comment.

Good evening, Roseanne Rabiola-Mealy. Regarding items two and three on the consent agenda, it is a little puzzling to me. RTC, is giving $75,000 for entity non-project specific expenses for fiscal year 2027 to 2031. And they're also giving $100,000 to the city now. These are projects that are going to benefit Boulder City. RTC is given money to the city for projects that benefit Boulder City. But we're still paying our employees. If we didn't have employees, Why is the employees have to do with money what they get from various entities, whether it be grants, whether it be whatever? So what's the job of employees? We're getting money, plus we're still paying employees. I'm not saying don't pay employees. That's not what I'm saying. But when we're given money for nonspecific projects, that's a little odd. If you look further, it'll say, OK, no money is going for this. No money is going for that. Oh, but we're going to give some money to prepare agendas.

Wait, wait.

I prepared agenda items all the time I worked here. That's my job. It kind of looks like I'm doing my job But RTC, or we can use any example, is giving the city money for the employees of the city who are supposed to do a job for the citizens of the city, extra money. That's all. Think about it.

Thank you. You can go ahead.

Just identify yourself. Good evening, esteemed leaders, mayor. Eric King, long-time resident in the Valley. Hi there. Yes, ma'am. Okay, great. Looks like I'm ticking off here. All righty, then. Good stuff. Thank you all for hearing me. I am thrilled to be here just prior to our amazing fire chief and their presentation and representing the department. I think they're tremendous heroes and I don't mind telling any firefighter I see that all the time. In keeping with fire safety here and public welfare and safety in general, I'd like to talk about the hydration of the soils, particularly when it comes to pine trees, when they dry out, Possibly become fire bombs Risks and so I've mentioned in previous meetings about hydrating the soil with rainwater that runs off at enormous volumes of your hardscapes here in the valley and actually off the mountainsides and right on down to Basins here and then they they send it on along to most likely Lake Mead or some other place. I'm not sure where they send it. I know they don't send it to a water treatment facility to be used by the residents to water trees and things like that. And it's my understanding that nobody has a curb cut or a cut curb, there's different ways to say it, that sends that water running down the street into a basin that would hydrate trees here in the valley. So I'm advocating for that on behalf of the fire department not having to rush to trees that may well catch on fire because they are dried out and dead or dying and heavily distressed. That poses a limb fall risk as well as all kinds of diseases that may spread because of diseased trees. chief among which they are weakened if they don't have enough water. And so hydrating the soil with the copious amounts of water that does flow through the streets, fast and furious sometimes, and finding ways with great design on a micro scale, even tree by tree as possible, to hydrate these beautiful mature trees that y'all have, and I'm sure have great pride in having living here, cooling and shading your residents and visitors. And I would be thrilled to add value to designing for that, as I've described before. particularly in the context and possibly with some consideration for language that could be interpreted by public works on through to other departments in conjunction with the fire department for fire safety risk by hydrating the soil so those trees don't do what I'm describing and die or go towards death and become a fire risk and hazard. So thank you for hearing me on that, and I'd be thrilled to add value in that way. Thank you.

Thank you.

all right good evening mayor and members of the city council my name is adam schultes and i will be speaking regarding item number eight on the um agenda tonight i am asking you to reject these five percent annual utility rate increases for boulder city businesses as well as for the residents of our town 5% may not sound enormous, but this is 5% a year for three years, while Boulder City businesses and residents are already paying more for food, gasoline, insurance, and almost everything else. And remember, approximately 37% of Boulder City's population is 65 or older. Many of our seniors live on fixed incomes. they cannot simply create more income because city hall decides it needs more revenue i want to make something very clear tonight i support our boulder city businesses 100 percent and i always have Our businesses are telling you these increases won't hurt. Pavilion Helicopters, excuse me if I pronounced that incorrectly, Helicopters estimates that these increases would cost approximately 29,000 more during their first three years. Dairy Queen says its utility bill already is 2,000 a month. If you the council say that we support local businesses, how can you the council approve this 5% increase for three years? Let's stop making it more expensive to do business here. And our residents are telling you the same thing. They cannot afford this. Before asking residents and businesses to pay more, the city should look harder at its own spending, its use of outside consultants, and every possible alternative. Let's have a line item budget. Residents should not be City Hall's ATM. our seniors are being squeezed our families are being squeezed our businesses are being squeezed tonight I asked this Council to do something very simple listen to them don't tell the people of Boulder City another increase is inevitable tell them we heard you we will find another way reject these increases and put the people of Boulder City first thank you

Thank you. Anyone else like to give public comment at this time? Thank you. We will move to the action approval of the regular agenda.

You're asking for a motion for approval of the regular agenda. I will do so.

Second and thank you all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed. It's unanimous Thank you, and then I need a motion for approval of the consent agenda. I move to approve the consent agenda I'll second it and all those in favor say aye aye Any opposed? Thank you. It's unanimous Exists to number four of the regular agenda. Mr. Robinson. I

So greetings Mayor Hardy and council members. I'm Theo Robeson, your Region 3 Superintendent, here to give you our Quarter 2 Municipality Report. So I will start off by telling you we have a ton of celebrations in our school connectedness and safety survey data that I'll be sharing with you today. And so I would like to first start by saying that we had a decline in the actual number of students here in Boulder City that took the assessment. At first, we had 1,109 students in 24-25 school year. This time around, we assessed 1,100 students. So that's about 108 students difference between 24-25 to 25-26 school year. However, we have some tremendous highlights and so by first, I would like to point out that the questions that we're asking to measure student safety are number one, this school is safe. Number two, students feel safe in this school. Number three, the school has safety procedures that work. And number four, I sometimes stay home because I don't feel safe at school. And so what we saw is a gain in our score from 24 or 25 school year in grades four through five at 88% to 93.1%, which is a great accomplishment in the race there. Also in grades six through eight, we've seen another huge celebration. We went from 72.5% in 24-25 school year to 84.1%, showing a favorable response this time around, which is a tremendous accomplishment as well. And then in grades nine through 12, we had a gain from 88.9 to 91.5%. So overwhelmingly, we see that our students are feeling safer here in our Boulder City schools over the last two years. And you can also see some trends in the positive direction in the last three years as well. So next I would like to transition to the perceptions of connectedness. And so what we're measuring here is the first question in this survey is I like my school. The second question is teachers understand my problems. The third question is my teachers care about me. And the fourth question is if I am absent, there is a teacher or someone other adult at the school that will notify of my absence. And so what we see in this data is also some pretty positive celebrations. We saw that in grades four through five, We went from 89.3% favorable rating to 91.7%. In grades six through eight, we went from 65.5% to 76%. That is almost an 11 point increase. That's pretty positive as well. And then at the high school level, we saw a slight decline from 84.3% down to 83.7%. Next, I would like to celebrate some of our school celebrations as well. So when we look at our celebrations from our schools, we're gonna start with our priority one, academic excellence. We see that Mitchell Elementary School began the year in the 55th percentile in reading and math, following strong results in I-Ready in the 24-25 school year, which was actually the MAPS assessment then. But now we made that transition to I-Ready. So at King Elementary School, 100% of our students completed the beginning of the year I-Ready assessments, resulting in 50% of a reading at or above grade level, which is phenomenal, and 76% of those students in math met or exceeded the expectation. At Garrett Middle School, we completed fall assessments with students and teacher leveraging leadership notebooks to set targeted academic goals with their students. Also at Garrett, we boosted 85% student participation in music and over 50% enrolled in accelerated courses and universal participation in two STEAM courses as a designated STEM school. Boulder City High School expanded advanced offerings to 16 college credit courses by adding two new dual enrollment options. And then at King, they launched their What I Need program on September 8th, which was today, to deliver targeted intervention and academic acceleration. And then when we look at our priority two, career and connected learning and durable skills, we see that Garrett Junior High School is embedding durable life and leadership skills via Leader in Me initiative and applying the eight habits to daily routines and using mentorship classes to improve personal growth and goal tracking. And for our priority three safe and supportive schools and King is celebrating the designation as a leader in me legacy school on October the 23rd, 2026, featuring over 50 students selected for the student lighthouse team and the schools across the feeder pattern have introduced Bobcat time for students selected activities and weekly Friday Foley's run by the student council to build community spirit. And then at King, we expanded access to social and emotional supports by employing a half-time counselor and a shared school social worker to connect students directly to Tier 1 and Tier 2 resources. And then also, our schools in Boulder City kicked off the year with the 26-27 school year destination, Boulder City. They had a collaborative learning experience unifying teachers and high quality instruction goals and shared community purposes. I was there and the amount of energy and synergy that happened within that event was phenomenal and it was a great, great, great experience there. And then next I'm ready for any questions that you may have.

Any questions or comments?

I know that every time you come, just so people are aware, that you report on something different so that it doesn't seem like, well, that's interesting. He just came and talked about the connectedness or whatever. This is specifically what you're coming to report to us this time, which I appreciate, and I think it's important, too, for a well-rounded education for kids to feel like they are missed when they're gone or valued and needed. And I also think it's very important for them to understand that they're safe where they're at because those two things are the underlying beginnings of feeling like you can learn. I think when you're worried about the others, right? It's kind of like when you're hungry, you can't learn too. There's things that keep you from learning that are outside of an educator's sometimes but these things are within it I'd love to see that our schools are continuing to push forward and that you're coming out and supporting us thank you so very much we appreciate that at a district level it's important to us I love that we chose destination Boulder City I don't know if that's every school was asked to do that but I know that the district is Destination Clark County School District is the theme for the school district as a whole so I'm glad we chose that here and I really would love Destination Boulder City come to Boulder City you'll see the amazing things are happening just like you just said that we're working to create leaders and leaders that can pass proficiency and above and they're really pushing hard. So thank you for supporting us in that way. The last question off topic a little bit that I wanted to ask is I know that in the past we've talked about consolidating like some of our schools together and I know that the fall was when that decision was going to be solidified a little bit more. I'm curious if that meeting has happened. I know that I have said many a times I would like to be informed about it since I'm the liaison.

So that final conversation hasn't happened and we'll make sure that it'll be here in Boulder City and you'll certainly be invited to be a part of that conversation. But we have not had that meeting yet.

Perfect. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. So I really appreciate that because you can tell how much we value education here and how important our kids are to us and to you. So thank you. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

I don't want you to go out and think that you feel compelled to do any of that.

Excuse me.

So we look forward to the process. And having Councilwoman Jorgensen being so involved in that process, I think that's important that we have that inclusion.

Yes, indeed. It was a tremendous turnout. I know we had two in the springtime, might have been winter and spring, but I came to the first one that was here and it was a phenomenal turnout by the community. And then I heard the next one was also a pretty strong turnout as well. And so again, we haven't made final decisions, but once we get to that point, we'll certainly do what we have in practice for the rest of our facility management planning throughout the system for sure. So that would mean another conversation up here for sure.

So are you saying that that process is still in place or there will be a decision made with or without us?

It'll be made within the team and within the community in collaboration with the district. So we certainly would be, we've been taking the solicitation of the input as we had those original rounds within the Boulder City community. And so we certainly are elevating the voices, but we're also trying to make sure we're fiscally responsible as well as we are stewards of our citizens' dollars as well.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

I just want to thank you for getting back with me. Can you hear me? Okay. On the back side, some of the questions I had asked before, I appreciate that. How was the surveys actually conducted?

So they're typically conducted within your classroom, and they go from, I believe, December the 1st through December the 29th, if I'm not mistaken, but they're typically done in your classroom setting.

And are the parents involved at all?

So there is also a parent perception survey, but this specifically was a student perception survey.

Okay, will we get to see the parents or get to hear how that went?

So I can certainly get that information for you as well, so let me write that down, and I'll certainly follow back up to help you get that information.

Okay, I'm just glad to hear that there's safety, connectedness that there's that type of survey I didn't even know you did that so you know the kids normally are connected either with the church or after-school program or at home but I didn't know that the schools actually get in that that involved like that so thank you for that and I know you had gotten back with me on the truancy and that's actually doing better on a national level has Nevada raised

up in the levels at all so so we have improved over the last three to four to five years if i'm not mistaken our chronic absenteeism rate and so we are doing some work there consistently because honestly you're in that battle until you have 100 of the kids in school 100 of the time but for sure we've seen some great strides with the work that's been done across ccsd and in the boulder city community so we have seen some decreases in that data

yeah the governor is running the ad i know it's election year but you know he he's really pushing uh education and i think on both sides of the aisle so i'm looking forward to nevada doing better in education thank you for all you do for our children thank you very much thank you if there's no one else we appreciate your report thank you for keeping touch with us have a good day thank you thank you

And we will move on to item number five, Chief Morgan, a report on the fire department on their annual report.

Thank you. It is with great pleasure to present the annual report for fiscal year 2026 on behalf of the dedicated professionals of the Boulder City Fire Department. It was another busy year filled with challenges including the Tesla Ion Fire and an increased number of service requests. Proudly we remain focused on providing superior services to our community. That is our goal to ensure all citizens in Boulder City have a rapid response time and equitable service. This report showcases our achievements and performances over the last year. I am confident it will provide a sense of pride and honor to those who read it. As the fire chief, I am deeply committed to our mission and the values, and I hope this report conveys the same passion that our team brings to work each day. We are eager to continue our mission in the year ahead. I'm going to highlight the mission statement. I'm not going to read it, but I want you to look at highest level of public safety services. That's one of our priorities. It is our number one priority to provide the best emergency services to our residents. Our organization We have five administrative staff, 24 shift personnel. Our daily staffing is set at eight with minimum seven on duty every day. We still retain two reserve battalion chiefs who work on the weekends for us and two reserve firefighters. We have a contract employee that does duties of the fire inspector for the city and I am proud to say, and if I counted them right, we have 23 certified paramedics. 2026, the department had 2848 calls, which is an increase of 3.3%. And that's been typical over the last five to six years, about a 3.3% increase each year. We attribute this to a couple of things. First, the population of Boulder City is aging and that usually results in increased number of runs. We have a number of activities, including biking trails, great recreational opportunities. The Boulder Dam is through here and they have to go through us to get to that. So there's a variety of reasons that we could attribute to this increase, but it's been steady over the last six years. 74% of those calls are EMS related. During the last year we responded to 41 fire suppression calls, nine technical rescue calls, and 22 hazardous materials calls. The remainder being alarm system calls, mutual aid, and non-emergency type calls. 90% of those calls are within the populated area of the city. This year we recorded a $308,000 loss in property valued at 3.8 million. That does not include the lithium ion battery storage event that was a $6.5 million loss on a $390 million property. For fiscal year 26, 42% of our calls went to Boulder City Hospital. That's a 3% decrease from last year. 382 to Siena, 1% increase, and Henderson, 335 for a 3% increase. Since the hospital's changed its status to a rural hospital, We've noticed a sharp decrease in the number of patients being transported to Boulder City. It's about doubled that 3%. It's about a 6.2% shift, and that's mostly going to Henderson Hospital, Siena Hospital, and we're seeing a lot now going to the ER at Boulder's Edge. Another service area that we're including in our response data is the non-emergent lift assist which continue to arise each year. In this fiscal year we did 448 lift assist calls and these are typically calls where we go out, get somebody up off the ground, either put them in their bed, put them in a chair and then we're done with them. So we're looking at ways that we can change that. 400 calls is a substantial number of calls. It's risen about 37% in the last few years with 14 of these occurring in assisted living facilities. And I'd also like to note we've had in the last year two cardiac arrest saves. We do a lot of training. If we're not running calls, we're training. We train every day. In fact, last year we completed almost 10,000 hours of training. And it's broken down there, I won't get into it, but I do want to note that we did a lot of technical rescue training because we ran a rope rescue academy. It's something we haven't done before. For community risk reduction, we have a contracted fire inspector and he does a lot of work. He did 589 fire inspections, reviewed 594 plans for construction, and did 386 construction inspections. He's a very busy individual. public education this is a forefront of our community risk reduction plan uh... we did sixteen cpr classes for a hundred ninety one people uh... stop bleak uh... we did two classes with for ten people and first aid we did four classes we had twenty three attendees on top of that we revitalized our be aware program which is our smoke detector program we actually installed two hundred fifty four smoke detectors in the city over the year and then we had our helmet safety program, which began last May. We've provided 282 helmets to youth within the city. Over the past year, Emergency Management Operations Center was put on standby five times for our larger events that occur within the city, and we also supported one county-wide event, the Formula One race, Improved capabilities. Last year, emergency management storage facility was constructed. There's a picture of it up there. It's located by the fire station. It was designed to consolidate all the emergency management equipment into one location, freeing up space, not only in our fire station, but in the Smith Center or the Smith Building. We're at, the way it was built, we had to build it in two years. This year we'll actually get power and air conditioning to it. We're working with Public Works on that as a project. Will allow us to start moving stuff into it. You'll also see parked in our training ground is a tanker prop unit. We obtained this for free from one of the local companies to train on it. It allows us to do realistic hazmat training and we also use it for our heavy lifting prop. What you don't see here is two ventilation props that were given to us by Clark County. When they closed their training center, they're rebuilding it. We were fortunate enough to get a couple of props from them, so we have that. And in our CIP plan, this upcoming CIP plan, we're gonna do some more improvements over there, moving some connex boxes and building an area of cover so that we can rest and recuperate firefighters that are training in shade. So what did we accomplish this year? We purchased a new engine. It's expected to be here October, November of next year. Completed our community risk assessment and I'll talk a little bit about that in a second. We developed a combined community risk assessment standards of cover document. Basically one lets us know where our problems are in the city and the other one tells us how we're gonna deal with them. We published the 26 to 31 fire department strategic plan. We completed a female restroom upgrade, which was badly needed. Completed our EOC building that I mentioned before. We assisted in the creation of a special operations subcommittee throughout the valley dealing with hazardous materials and technical rescue. Our EMS division consolidated certifications for basic life support, advanced cardiac life support, and PALS under one single agency, the American Heart Association. And again, as I mentioned before, we did our technical rescue rope academy. In the process of doing our community risk assessment, standard to cover document, we determined that we have a couple of gaps, and some of the things that we looked at were response times. The urban two area, and I don't have a map of that, It's basically the outlying areas around the city. Does not meet the industry standards for response time. And then 10 to 15, or correction, 15 to 20% of our calls annually are running concurrently now, which reduces our response capability. So the Community Risk Assessment Standards that cover declares that the Boulder City Department service level defines the basic resources needed to meet our objectives and identifies the current effectiveness of these objectives. That resulted in a gap analysis that we determined that we're not getting equitable service within the city. There are 14 zones that the city's broken into for our response. Three of those zones, we actually meet the objectives of our timeframes. Five, the overall time is met, but it's pushing the edge on the response times, and then there are six that we do not meet our time standards. So what are our issues? Currently we don't have the staffing to meet those standards, so we have developed a plan. The problem with our plan is we don't have the adequate facilities to deal with that right now. We need to move the administrative part of the department out of the station so that we can convert the administrative offices to sleeping quarters so that we can begin to increase staff. That's right now one of our higher priorities. Other listed up there are the replacement of a 2012 GMC Rescue that's become tricky to operate, it's one of those things that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's our fourth line rescue, so it doesn't get used very often. We have recently come into a situation where we were depending on that rescue as our frontline unit and made the decision to borrow units from Henderson and Clark County, which they were gracious enough to let us use for a few days. Remember I tell it telling you guys that don't be surprised if you see a Henderson Fire Department rescue in the city It's our staff on it. We just borrowed the vehicle Our emergency management facility lacks HVAC and power that's in process of getting done right now once that's done we'll be able to consolidate all our resources under that one building and then finally we do need a staff vehicle replacement and that's being planned for in the vehicle and equipment plan and So goals for our upcoming year. First off is our headquarters plan. That is our priority because it sets the foundation for our stepped plan on how we expand our services. That kind of hit a roadblock a little bit but we're trying to work around that but that's our number one priority. We need to continue upgrading our training facilities and we have a plan in the CIP to do that. Improve the living area of operations personnel. We're working diligently with Public Works on dealing with little things plus upgrading some things in the station Specifically right now laundry room. We just did the bathroom But our laundry room so we can get all of our washers and dryers in one location They're kind of scattered around the station right now We want to improve our capabilities in emergency management through the finishing of the storage facility and getting everything under one roof. We are currently in the process of being reevaluated by the Insurance Service Office public protection classification section. We are class three right now. During this evaluation, we expect that we'll maintain that rating. It's basically a rating of one to nine. A one is a very hard classification to get, and there's very few cities. City of Las Vegas is a one. I think Henderson is also. The next thing on the forefront of that is our reaccreditation. We're in the process of redoing that. And that kind of leads into the next item, but I'll wait for that when we get up there. And then the last thing, it's not really a goal, but we recently deployed to Northern Nevada, which is something we don't normally do. We were the third or fourth task force out of Southern Nevada to go up to Northern Nevada during the wildland fires. We deployed to Elko with Henderson, Clark County, City of Las Vegas, so it was a group effort. A task force went up there. While we were up there, our guys didn't sit idle. They did some training while they were up there. They cleaned and reorganized the volunteer fire station for Elko. They even went as far as to help a lady that was across the street from the fire station who couldn't get her landscapers to come in because of the fire, so they went and did the landscaping for them while they had their downtime there. We're very proud that they came back, that they did what they needed to do, and showed the city proud. Our skilled team of professionals provides 24-hour emergency service on a multi-hazard role. We work diligently to serve the community, and I would not be prouder of their efforts. We are committed to our vision to meet the changing need of the community, our mission to provide the highest level of public safety services, and our core values of pride, accountability, professionalism, integrity, diversity, and compassion. Lastly, our printed annual report will be available on our city website sometime tomorrow. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you. Questions, comments?

You mentioned that the rural hospital destination for Boulder City Hospital that we're down like 6% of sending patients there. Why is the reasoning because it's a rural hospital or what is the reasoning behind that 6% down in your opinion?

I believe it's because patients, I don't know if patients have heard or if we're informing them that they can't be admitted there any longer. They have a, part of the rural hospital rule is that they can only hold patients 23 hours. So any patient that we think might be admitted, rather than taking them there, having them stay there a few hours and having them take another ambulance trip to a hospital, it's easier for us just to take them to a hospital.

And also, I noticed that where you're assisting, helping people up off the floor and stuff like that, especially at some of our homes and stuff that we have here, are you guys working on a plan for that?

That seems like that's a problem that needs... That is a definite problem, and yes, we are working on a plan. It's in the works right now. I've been working with the city manager on developing a fee schedule for that. And again repeat offenders. It's not uncommon for us to go once or twice to the same Location the same day and that's problematic to us because if we're going out once that's one thing if you fall down We get you up and you're fine, and we don't see you again for another month. That's one thing But if we're going out there two and three times a day and we got to deal with it And we've had that recently where we had three calls at one in one day and we finally talked to patient into going to be evaluated at the hospital and

And how long do you think it's going to be to come up with this plan? Are we looking at a month or three months?

That's up in the air right now. Again, I'm working with the city manager on developing the plan, and it will have to come before you guys to be approved. So it's in the works now, but there's no real definite time frame on it.

It seems like that's something that should be a rush because of having our guys away from emergency when somebody really needs it. And I know being on the floor is an emergency, giving them that option of having some free time where they could go help do a real emergency. Then my other question I had for you is that you, your staffing, you said you want to make more room for staffing by moving the administrative rooms out of the firehouse or maybe to a different location. I'm not sure if I understood that correctly, but how do we get administration out so you can use those to build bedrooms so that we can hire the people that we need because i'm in one of the areas where you don't make it on time all the time and so i know to a lot of people over there that it is important

Well, I can give you the steps in a nutshell. Basically, we have to get the administration out because we need that space in the fire station. And that's going to require building another headquarters, finding another place for us to be. And again, we're working on a plan with that. We had a plan. It kind of got derailed because of some legal issues. So the mission's still there. The goals are still there. That's the key. Once that's done, then we can convert the four offices into four dorm rooms. And that will allow us to start expanding the service. The whole goal behind this is at some point in time, we'll build a fire station. And building the fire station is not the expensive part, it's the staff for it. So if I can start building the staff while we have the current station, it'll allow us to increase our response capability. while we develop that staff. And then when we get enough staff, we can build the fire station, move them over, and we don't have to worry about adding additional staff to open a fire station.

Maybe you've considered this. What about bringing trailers in? We have talked about that.

That is in one of our discussions, bringing temporary trailers in, relocating to another building within the city. We've talked about that. There's some talk about the Smith Center potentially, but that's going to be down the road quite a ways. And I don't know if we can really wait for that to happen. I think this is something we need to really pursue in this fiscal year and start the process.

I agree that really it's been a problem for four years that I've been here. So that's something I'd really like to see us improve upon. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief, for all you do. I'm sure you do a lot more that we don't understand, and everything costs. And I know that you're doing all that you can with what you have. I just wanted to understand what you meant. You said you had 10K, 10,000 hours of training. What are your required training hours? Is that half of what you're required to do, or is that?

It's pretty close to what we're required to do. It depends on which standard you look at. Technically, we're required to have 20 hours of training for each firefighter every month, 10 hours of command training for the officers every month, and that is inclusive of whether we do hazmat training, whether we do fire suppression training, technical rescue stuff. The things that we try to focus on are the things that we don't normally do every day or see every day. So we focus a lot on what they refer to as sets and reps, how to run a fire, how to run it correctly. What happens if a firefighter gets injured? How do we deal with that? So we do that quite a bit. I think we do it, is it monthly, right? Yeah, monthly we do those drills and we do it on each shift. So we do three of those a month. In addition, we do technical rescue stuff. We have to have a live fire burn every year. So we do that and we're fortunate enough that we have the facility to do that and fortunate enough that the Boulder City Fire Brigade loves to come up and we train them the same time. So that interaction is great. We've had interactions with Clark County. We've invited them up to do live fire training and we've done that with them. So It's a variety of things. And again, depending on which standard you look at, I think we're meeting our training objectives with the hours that we have now.

It sounds like the priority trainings are rolled into that. So does that also meet your accreditations? You could roll those into that as well?

Yes, definitely. That is part of the accreditation process. It is part of the fire protection classification situation that was one of the things that we had issues with last time we were there is that we were doing the training but we weren't documenting it correctly but we've gone and fixed that so that we're hoping that gives us a little boost in that rating

okay and thanks again to the firefighters that took the time to go up north to help out i mean you're already shorthanded but yet you stretch that much to help somebody else so kudos on you for doing that yeah we put an email out and we probably had half the department respond within an hour and a half wow they were ready to go thank you

Sorry, I'm going to talk before the expert on the panel gets a chance to talk, I guess. First off, to say two cardiac life saves, that's huge for those two families, whoever that is. And so thank you. That's part of showing up and being able to show up. so that you're having the conversation with the city manager about how to facilitate the 448 lift assist a year that you have to do so that you can actually, when needed, save those lives that are, the capacity to be saved, right? I just had an experience this last week. I was telling you of my gratitude for the fire station. I deliver meals on wheels. I showed up to a place and rang the doorbell and the guy said, help, I can't get up. I've fallen. And he wouldn't talk to me, couldn't hear me. Every time I rang the doorbell, he could only say that he had fallen. I didn't know what to do. I ended up calling 911, got out of my car, walked to the door and firefighters were coming around the corner. It was that quick because why? They were across the street at another place too, which means now they had two concurrent calls going on right next to each other and ended up that this gentleman had to be transported. I see how this happens. I saw how it happens, right? I was part of it. And the gratitude I had that you were able to come, he'd been there for a day or so. And so what some of these lifts are are mandatory and require more than just getting them up, I would say.

Some of them do. Sometimes we wind up not only getting them up, we might end up transporting them to the hospital for evaluations. A lot of times it's just a lift assist because somebody can't get out of bed or can't get off the floor. They fall on the floor but they're not injured. Those are the ones, it's tough until we get there to find out what's going on. We have to really evaluate what's going on and those are the tough ones to decide what we're gonna do with. Because we technically don't want to stop running on them because they could be injured. The ones that concern me the most are the ones that go to facilities that have nursing staff or staff there. And we seem to be doing that a lot more than we should be.

OK. So is that part of the discussion being had, how to facilitate that?

Yes, it is. We're talking with the city manager. We're looking at a plan for that. And we're looking at a plan potentially for two, three, four day repeat offenders. We don't have them that often. And I say offenders. That's probably not the right term. Patients that we go to more than once or twice a day or once or twice a week that we think probably really should go to the hospital but refuse to go.

Okay, so you also have that, that you're experiencing. I also, as with Councilwoman Booth, would hope that we could work on that quickly because I think that if we could come up with an effective, at least strategy, hopefully, and implement it in some sort of a way, we would be able to free up some of those double, I think, did you say you ended up getting another call at that exact same time and you ended up going out, so then that was three. and seven people on duty every day. Three were helping me. I don't know how many were over at the other one.

It happens a lot more than you think. I know at least twice today we've gone without an ambulance because they were on calls. At one point the station was empty because they were on calls, which tells me that if something else comes in, we're calling up an ambulance out of the valley to come help.

I think it's important for us to recognize that and acknowledge, yes, you guys do have those situations that you're put in and that we do need to address it and sooner rather than later. That's one of those I would tag as a priority. For you guys to be able to put you in a position where you have available resources for other experiences that are happening. Part of this is an aging population like you said. And we're only going to grow just a little bit but still every little bit adds something to it. So you told me or us that.

We're not building the connexes in the back is that we initially thought that we were building part of our plan is to build a concrete pad out back move the connexes over there and then build like a lean to type structure between them so that we have an outdoor area that when we're training in the summer, we can get them out of the sun where they can cool down.

Okay, and that will also be the offices?

No, that's just part of the training program. The offices is a whole different program, and there's a couple of different directions we could go right now. We just have to determine which one's the most appropriate and the most cost-effective. Okay.

And then my very last question, because I just saw two different situations today, bringing my daughter home from work, helmets for kids. Just because you give them to them doesn't mean that they utilize it. I saw one with it. I was so proud of them. Then I literally went down the street and the girls Riding the one wheel as fast as she can. And I'm like, what are you doing? No helmet. So do you give those out in school still, or do people come to you? How does that work?

A combination. We do programs with the school, I think once a year, where we hand them out. But anybody that comes to the fire station, we'll take time, make sure they get fitted for the right size helmet.

Okay, so anyone who can hear this that knows of anyone that needs it, there's a helmet available for you. So thank you for all you do. Thank you. And please tell everyone at your station, thank you.

I will do that, thank you.

Thank you.

I'm grateful for the depth of interest and the depth of understanding of my fellow council members on these topics. It really is crucial. And it's been a journey and a learning process. And I don't know that the general public understands how integrated into the community the fire department is. And I'll include police. in that overall statement, but since we're receiving your presentation now, we'll focus on that. I think every fire chief in the country can relate to this statement, and I'll just use this number because it's what is in this quote. Your number is different. Our department takes 1,000 calls every day. Do you know how many of the calls the public expects perfection on? 1,000. Nobody calls the fire department and says, send me two dumb firemen and a pickup truck. In three minutes, they want five brain surgeon decathlon champions to come solve all their problems. And that's the challenge that Chief One and Chief Two and your administrative staff have. in preparing and training, equipping, outfitting, and locating our firefighters to serve our community in that excellent way. And I appreciate your mission statement to provide the absolute highest level of service possible. And we need that from our emergency services. You know, over the years, I think we lose sight of the fact that there's no shortage of good ideas in the world, right? And particularly when you come to municipal government, there's no shortage of good ideas or why don't you just? But it all comes down to two things, really, in essence. It comes down to time and money, staff hours and money, right? We were fortunate enough to receive what I would say is probably a larger than our expected share of ARPA funds. And a pretty good amount of ARPA money did go to the fire department. And we're grateful for all that we were able to do with our ARPA funding over the years, but particularly we had a lot of money $1.46 million towards the fire tower. We had money set aside, about $105 million set aside for the substation, which has subsequently been reallocated to other important projects for the fire department. Dispatch improvements and then the AED program. So we have the automatic external defibrillators. that were distributed out to businesses and churches and community locations so that, and then the CPR classes were offered to go with how you can use an AED You know, knock on wood, we haven't had to use any of those from my questioning of your staff recently, but they're there. And they're there in the community for rapid response, much like the Narcan is out there in the community so that we can also be trained to assist our first responders. responding to needs and there's just so much going on and and I won't belabor you know the questions that have been asked but just to say you know when we consider now as has was mentioned in our invocation the 25th anniversary of 9-11 and all the people impacted by that across the board every you know civilian sworn public safety members. We're super grateful. People don't realize, I think, the exposure to stress, to cardiac disease, to cancer causing carcinogens, and time away from home. away from kids birthdays away from holidays away from anniversaries because our firemen are on duty serving us and we are grateful to to you for what you do to support them so thank you and there that's all i have i have just a quick question something you alluded to you said the boulder city fire brigade like they were volunteers do we have some volunteer

No, we don't have volunteers. The Boulder City Dam has a fire brigade. It's employees that are there that come together to be a fire. They're like a first responder fire department until we can get there to back them up.

Okay.

But they, too, require training every year, and we're proud to be able to provide them with their live fire training.

And these are folks down at the dam?

Yes, they're workers from the dam.

Okay, great. Thank you. I didn't know who they were and who they were serving, so thank you.

Thank you all. I was curious about training and what we're doing in the Eldorado Valley area with batteries and how we're training there. Obviously you've had very good successful outing trying to and doing very good job at quelling a fire in there. Can you bring us up to date on our battery and the safety therein?

We're fortunate enough to be able to work with the companies that build the battery systems and the solar panels. They work with us very closely on training whenever we need it. are set up and we do inspections of the places out there, the solar fields out there, the battery systems, and they provide us with training on how to operate them, not operate, but how to operate around them if they're on fire, if they're having a problem. So we've got a really pretty good partnership with the companies that are in El Dorado Valley, and they do provide us training. We also received a trainer, a solar panel trainer from Tesla. It's a practice board. It's like a pretend switching board so that we can look and see how things are switched and work so that we can shut power off if we have to.

Thank you. Any other questions or concerns?

Thank you, Chief.

Appreciate it.

We move to item number 6 on our agenda we need an introduction of bill number 2136.

Mayor all introduced bill 2, 1, 3, 6, and we have the reading set for time. Thank you.

Thank you. Bill number 2136, an ordinance of the City of Boulder City, Nevada, amending Boulder City Municipal Code, Title II, Departments, Chapter 3, Fire Department, Section 3, updating fire department duties. This matter will be considered for action on September 22nd, 2026.

Thank you, Madam City Clerk. That brings us to number seven, introduction of bill number 2137.

I'll introduce Bill number 2137 and waive the reading except for title. Thank you.

Thank you. Bill number 2137, an ordinance of the City of Boulder City, Nevada, amending Boulder City Municipal Code, Title 1, Administration, Chapter 5, Officers and Employees, and Title 4, Business Regulations, Chapter 1, Business Licenses to require fingerprinting for employment, Contractors and certain business license categories this matter will be considered for action at the September 22nd 2026 meeting Thank you

That brings us to item number 8 under regular business. So I will make a statement as it were. Under state law, NRS Chapter 237, the city is required to notify and solicit feedback from local businesses regarding proposed changes to electric, water, and wastewater rates. In July, the city mailed notices regarding proposed utility rate changes to all businesses holding a current Boulder City business license. We received 11 comments in response to the notices, two businesses and nine individuals. On August 25th, the council received a detailed presentation from staff and had a robust discussion on proposed changes to the city's utility rates. We also received additional public comment. Item eight on today's agenda is limited to council consideration and acceptance of the business impact statement and any comments received from local businesses or members of the public. Council discussion will be limited to the business impact statement. In other words, we're not going to vote on a rate increase at this time, but you're probably going to clarify everything that I may have said wrong.

Yes, sir. No, you nailed it. Good afternoon, Mayor, Councilmembers. Tonight I bring before you item eight. Under NRS 237, item eight is required procedural step for the business impact statement which stems from our rate study conducted by Financial Consulting Solutions or FCS. As the Mayor stated, approving item eight tonight is not an approval of any proposed rate adjustments. It only confirms statutory requirements were met during the business impact statement public notice period. The other thing I could add to that was the business impact statement was actually run for 20 business days, where NRS 237 has a minimum of 15 days. So we actually ran it five days longer. Out of those 700 businesses that were issued business impact statement, we had nine responses which were received in total, two were from local businesses, and seven were from individuals, no others were received. So tonight, staff is seeking council approval for item eight, which will affirm that the business impact statement was properly prepared in accordance with NRS chapter 237. And I'm here for any questions.

Any questions or comments?

I just have a clarifying question, and not that it's pertinent necessarily to accepting the business impact statement, but the numbers, right? So in the packet, it says 11 were received, two submitted by businesses, nine submitted by individuals. And so your numbers that you're saying now are two and seven?

Two and seven, correct.

Okay. I don't know that it changes. Let me just verify. Sure. Two and nine? Two and nine. Okay, so the packet's correct.

I apologize, yes. Okay, fair enough. That was my fault.

No, just wanted to clarify. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. That's the only question that I have.

For the record, Shannon said the correct answer. I concur. All right. Other questions or concerns? So we need to consider and approve the business impact statement. Any other questions about the business impact statement or any other comments about it before I have a motion to approve?

mayor if there's no questions considering that the city complied with the legal requirement in rs237 with the method and the timing at least i move that we approve the business impact statement

Is there a second? I'll second that. And any comments, any discussion? All those in favor of approving and accepting the business impact statement, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. It has been unanimous, thank you. And that brings us to the city manager's report.

This is our monthly report for the claims paid, and there's nothing out of the ordinary to report on.

Any questions? If not, go to number 10.

And similarly, this is the monthly financial report for August, and nothing unusual to report.

Thank you. Any questions? And we will go to public comment, our second public comment. People who are here can take up to three minutes and share with us their concerns or suggestions.

Good evening. Tonight I'm asking you and everyone watching to separate two very different issues.

Could you identify yourself?

Oh, yes.

I'm Carol Schulteis.

I'm asking you and everyone watching to separate two very different issues, America's need for technology and Boulder City's decision about its own land. Recent public discussion including reporting about military data center needs has linked support for data centers to America's ability to compete with China and protect our military. I strongly support our country and our military and our national defense, but question one is not a national defense measure. It contains no requirement that these facilities serve our military, handle classified information, or even be operated by American companies. Our military maintains specialized, secure, and resilient systems for its most sensitive information. Approving commercial data centers throughout our transfer area is not the same thing as strengthening national security. Patriotism should not be used as a substitute for careful land use planning. The federal data center approval on BLM land has now been paused while the appeal proceeds. Yet even after pursuing the federal property, T-Solar II spent thousands of dollars advertising in Boulder City Review telling the residents it was waiting to see what we would decide on November 3rd. That tells us something important. They still want the transfer area. Question one is not permission for one carefully defined data center. It would establish data centers as an approved land use and open the door to additional applications under this council and future councils. This decision could last far longer than any promises being made today. Quincy, Washington is now being promoted nationally as a data center success story. Its tax revenue helped build roads, hospitals, schools, and recreation facilities. But almost buried at the end of that glowing story was a warning from the former mayor, Patty Martin. Communities must weigh immediate financial benefits against long-term demands on water, electricity, and the character of the community. Quincy has abundant Columbia River hydropower, and even its former mayor is asking what happens 10 or 20 years from now. Boulder City, surrounded by desert and dependent on limited water and power, should be asking that question before opening the door. Now residents face a proposed utility increases of 5% annually for three years. As I understood the presentation, well, sorry I ran out of time.

Thank you.

But I'm so glad that we did have the reserves.

Thank you. Anyone else here for public comment?

All right, my name's Adam Schultes. Are we on? Yes? Okay. So, ballot question number one is not gonna be forgotten. Because I've walked, well, I've knocked on about 2,500 doors, talked to about 1,500 people. I'm more in touch with the people of Boulder City than all of you combined. I'm gonna be frank and very honest. Ballot question one, should data center facilities be an approved land use within the El Dorado Valley Transfer Area outside of the multi-species habitat? Conservation easement. Well, of course we want to vote no, but the council created this fiasco mess. It should have never gone to this level. Thank God we have somebody like Brittany Walker, who was absolutely brilliant in her appeal. But she was appealing everything that the people had been saying for months. you didn't listen until it moved to the blm now you have a city attorney that actually was writing for the people it's all about we the people it's not about we the council it's all about we the people and we don't want question one passed Now, out of the many people I've talked to, I've had 22 people tell me that they want a data center. Now, some people in town, the powers that be, are pushing this. It's not going to happen, because the people are not stupid in Boulder City. This government, from national all the way down to local, is about we the people. Once again, it's about we, the people. The founders founded this country on we, the people. Not we, the corporations. Not we, the industries. Not we, the businesses. Not we, the council. Not we, the Congress. Not we, the Senate. Not we, the president. It's about we, the people. And we, the people, don't want ballot question one to be passed. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else here?

Roseanne . I was looking at the budget. And when we talk about the budget, If I make a budget and I know I'm only gonna get this much money, I shouldn't be spending that much money if I don't have the money. So when we talk about budget shortfalls for the city, that's like, no, no, no, no, no. here's what you're going to get and here's what you're going to spend. You shouldn't have a budget that says we're going to spend a million dollars more if we're only getting this much money. So I'm looking at just one thing. from the 2027 budget. We increased employees in we increased the amount of employees 19.3 or 19.4 employees from 2002 to, like, current budget. What was the emergency? Why did we need 19.3 more employees? Priority to me, and even when I worked here, fire guys, okay? They were always getting shortchanged. They can't make times because they got not the right equipment. The lockers are here, there, everywhere. What kind of crap is that? That's crazy. Where are our priorities? Where those 19.3 employees go? They go to the fire department. They go in thinking about how we're going to separate the administrative section of the fire department so it can be more efficient. Priorities, people, priorities.

Thank you. Anyone else?

Good evening. Once again, Eric King, long-term resident. Pleasure to be with you all here. Thank you for your service. And also to the city manager and his staff, thank you all. I wanted to speak a little more fully on what I touched on earlier. Boulder City is really rich in resources in a lot of ways. The largest township, I think, in Nevada, one of the largest in the country. No stranger to you all to know that. You have a lot of rain that falls here. I touched on that in previous sessions. You just took the rain and the 8,000 or so acres that's above you on slope here coming off the peaks of the Red River Mountains, or the River Mountains, excuse me. Some of it's red, colored by the stone. Before that reaches you, that's about a quarter of a billion gallons of water of runoff. That's not all the rain that falls there. That's just what reaches you by some fair estimates. Because nobody's measuring all that rain, so those are estimates based on about five and a half inches of rainfall per year. That's a lot of trees that you don't have to pump water to. water. Frankly, it's a lot of landscape costs reduced for residents that use more than 50% of their water for outdoor use. So we're talking 10, 20% or more cost reductions per resident to use that water if it's done smartly with great design. which is what I'm talking to you all about here today. Great design is to say, let's take water that falls every year, lots of it, above us on slope, hold it up there, some way that's efficient and effective and distribute it to people who'd like to have their water bills reduced just like they've had their energy bills reduced. I think that's a really smart design concept that people could get behind here. You all are leaders and voices of the community, and I fervently pledge my devotion to help make that happen. If you all want to sit down and talk with me about it, I'd love to do that. I've invited myself to do that a bit. I haven't gotten together with you all yet, other than a little bit of talks here and there, but in about 25 seconds, Any wisdom I could share would be take that quarter billion of gallons, add it to the half a billion gallons that's flowing fast and furious as it falls to the sky and down your roadways, off to Never Never Land, never to be used by anybody every year. Take that 750 million gallons, store it somewhere, pump that 500 million back up here, and people get mostly free water to use outside. Pretty good idea, I think. Love the design. Thank you.

Hi, Mayor and Council. Echo. Actually, I wanted to hear him speak because I think I heard him speak two weeks ago about a similar, same topic. And the three cities I lived in prior to here, El Paso, San Francisco, Philadelphia, they all had storm water recapture programs that were all quite creative in their own ways. CONSERVED QUITE A LOT. COULD YOU IDENTIFY YOURSELF? THEY ALL RECAPTURED QUITE A LOT OF WATER. I'M SURE YOU ALL JUST SAW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SAID THEY WERE GOING TO CUT OUR WATER ALLOCATION HERE BY A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT. by more than what we use. And Nevada's suing the federal government now. So I also saw on Facebook one of the city council members had said something just in the last couple days about, you know, effluent that we evaporate out into the desert is you know just a teaspoon and you know i think when they're talking about cutting our allocation to um what 43 in the next few years of what we actually use you know every teaspoon or you know 1.2 to 1.5 million gallons a day actually does matter so i think we should be paying attention to every last way we can conserve water think we should be listening to proposals like that and I was actually concerned about something that I only just recently noticed because I think we were all paying attention to the data center proposal that was in our March 24th City Council agenda also in there there were a bunch of building code changes one of which was And Townsite Solar II did say if Boulder City and the SNWA allow us to use the treated wastewater effluent, we will, up to 900,000 gallons a day. Also in there, there was an agenda item for allowing reuse, allowing for evaporative cooling. which I did think was banned, but it was for effluent. I thought it was banned overall. We were told back in January when data centers were first brought up, they won't be allowed to use our water. And that was snuck into the March 24th city council packet, I just noticed. It was a huge agenda item, so. I just wanted to bring that to everyone's attention. I don't think that's right when we're still awaiting the results of the SNWA feasibility study, which was due two years ago. You all, as a council, voted on it. We had workshops, town halls. We all, as a city, agreed to what I think were the best two options. You all voted for the SNWA to study the feasibility two best options and we still haven't heard anything. I submitted a public records request to the SNWA and they said, sorry, it's not available. That was back in April and again, it's two years overdue. I'm hoping you can put pressure on the SNWA to share the draft results with us as a city. I don't think we should be making promises or offering to send it to a data center when we could be returning it to lake mead which would be for the people not for a company like that to use i don't think that's fair to anybody so we should be looking to conserve every drop at this point and i do hope that everybody looks at looks at that and reconsiders reconsiders that um thank you thank you thank you

Hey, who stole the pen? All right, somebody took the pen. Good evening, mayor, council, staff, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Brandon Smith of The Record. Tonight, I'm gonna try something a little different. Firstly, I'm gonna read, so bear with me. Instead of getting up here and asking, pleading, and begging you to listen to my voice that hopefully channels Our city and our community, I'm gonna do my best to simply thank you. Thank you for giving me a crash course in local politics. Early in my residency here, now going on for my sixth year, and with the four of you, already seated, I thought to myself, you've got this. We are in good hands. I paid vague attention to what was going on but didn't feel the need to get involved in any substantial way. That lasted until it became clear that the Bureau of Reclamation had not followed the plans that we had reviewed in the residence meetings in prior years, and Michael Mays revealed he hadn't visited that hellscape just up the block here in the final three months before it was completed, during which it could have been remedied and before it was too late. Now, over two years later, the BOR is still a state of catastrophe. Add many dead plants, overgrown plants, an abundance of weed, and lack of shade contributing to a new urban heat island in the middle of town. 160 degree benches are still major hazards with no signage about the potential for third degree burns. And absolutely nothing has been done. We continue down that pathway of looking the other way. We, of course, arrive at the data center fiasco. The calculated and premeditated turmoil that this council introduced simply to confuse people after being in talks with the TS2 team for several months couldn't then nor now can be overlooked. Luckily, they withdrew their application before the potential of this council adding the data centers to the land management process of approved uses took hold. Fast forward to TS2 moving their interest to the BLM, which ultimately resulted in appeal by both the city Great job, Brittany. And by the Center of Biological Diversity, which was successful, with the mayor taking no time to celebrate, but to go ahead and double down on inviting data centers to Boulder City while raising our utility rates, continuing to support and throw money at our one billion gallon plus a year water wasting golf courses. Councilman Walton has come out and declared himself no longer in support of returning treated water to the lake, though this lake hits new all-time lows day by day. So thank you, Boulder City Council. Thank you for letting us, the city that elected you down. Thank you for ignoring our voices. Thank you for wasting months of our lives to give you the pulse of the community in regards to the popular opinion with regards to the feelings about a data center or data centers in Boulder City and then ignoring us. Thank you for continuing to try to take away our voices. You all ought to be ashamed. But mostly, thank you for inspiring me to stay engaged. I fear the city's future left to your agendas. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else would like to do public comment? I will thus close public comment and go to the city council's report. We'll start with you, Councilwoman Ashurst.

Thank you, Mayor. So today I had a civilian military council meeting over at Nellis Air Force Base, and it was a good meeting. We talked about housing for Creech Air Force Base airmen. They live way out north, and they're looking at housing out that way, north of Las Vegas. So that's happening maybe in the next two to three years, looking at rent freeze for short-term deployment. Hopefully that'll happen for those airmen that come and their rent may go up. They're trying to stabilize that. Outreach for military during upcoming holidays. We'll look at ways to support our troops. especially those that are abroad, and also assisting them with drone encroachment, which we already have a program with them, but maybe looking at how to better help them. Also, I attended the emergency management class last week at the Smith Center. The last of that program will happen tomorrow night at 6 o'clock over at the Smith Center. Outstanding class. I encourage anybody who's here or at the sound of my voice to make it over there tomorrow night at 6 p.m. It's about an hour, hour and a half, I think, but it's really good class that they put on over there. Shout out to Nikisha and Lauren that came out to my town talk meeting that takes place every Tuesday at 9 o'clock. They came and talked to our group. We had about 20 there today, and they just told the residents what they do and took some questions and answering. It was civil. And they really just told them that their doors are open. So they gave some encouragement in the planning development area in town. And also, I just wanted to encourage everybody to come out to the citywide Bicentennial 9-11 ceremony that will be happening this Saturday at 10 o'clock. Bring your chairs and blankets out and support our first responders and just everybody who... was impacted in 9 11 it's the 25th anniversary thank you thank you

Mine's kind of been a week of reflection because of 9-11, and so I was just going to share with you my thoughts and feelings about it. My dad served in the Navy during World War II, and I lost a good amount of friends in Vietnam. For years, I feared enemies beyond our borders, but felt safe at home, my comfortable place. After 9-11, that sense of safety changed. I became fearful of threats within our country and uneasy on planes and large venues. I have placed even more faith in the Lord, and 9-11 is forever etched into my being. I hope everyone who can will attend the 9-11 memorial. Remembrance Day gathering at Bicentennial Park gazebo September Saturday and 10 a.m. And then I have my other thought was this week about all the wonderful young people we have in Boulder City and then I read the newspaper about the Boulder City High School who adopted Grayson Armstrong and made him a and Eagle for the day, and I just want to say congratulations, Grayson, for being Eagle of the day. I think that's just amazing. Congratulations to the Boulder City High School young men that did that.

Thank you.

Thank you. I had the opportunity to go to Blake's service this last week at the Veterans Cemetery. And it reminded me about the important parts of being in a community like this. And it's that people know each other and that they show up for each other in those situations and other situations, a lot of different situations. It was beautiful to see the outpouring of love for that family and the continuation I hope of prayers and thoughts on their behalf. I also attended a debt management commission meeting this week and I will also attend the citywide event at Bicentennial Park on 9-11 I also think Councilwoman Booth about that day my husband's an airline pilot and our lives and our livelihoods changed in the way that it was done and I want to thank Pastor King for remembering in our community to organize a I don't know, I would call it a celebration and remembrance both of us and our country and our first responders and those who went through it. So thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, the only committee update I have is from the convention authority. The college football playoff team is ramping up. There's like 137 days till that event goes off, one of the biggest events, sporting events in the country, January of 2027 for the 26th season. And they have a tremendous outreach in the community, community-wide, not just City of Las Vegas or Clark County, but throughout the entire area. And so we will see a lot of activity there. And they're going to maximize the F1 venue by having additional music and concert events there at the F1 venue. a sporting location, and so we get to double our value of the money invested there. And there are positive indicators for visitation and REVPAR and convention increase attendance. So those are good things for the Valley, good things for the area economically. That's the update I have, thank you.

Thank you. We appreciate everybody who's been here, everybody who's testified. I think we all remember where we were when. We're all over 25 years old. And so we remember where we were when and I had the opportunity when 9-11 happened to come back from El Salvador the day before 9-11 and left my friends with American Airlines in El Salvador. And they knew the people that had those planes fly into the Twin Towers. We obviously all have kinships of one kind or another, and we respect those people who have passed on, and we respect those people who still wear the uniform. whether that be firemen or police or veterans or active duty. And I would pray that we have the ability to avoid those kinds of conflagrations today. And with that, meeting is adjourned.