City Council - workshop

All right, call this meeting to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Welcome everyone will the clerk please take attendance all council members are present. Mr. Mayor and Susan from was fuller on yep, and Susan is joining via conference line, okay and entertain a motion to approve the agenda.

So moved.

Second. Please call the roll.

Avery?

Aye.

Doran? Aye. Hager? Aye. Niemeyer? Aye. Specker? Aye. Tildenburn? Aye. Wendell?

Aye.

Okay. Item 4, open forum. In order to provide equal access to all, during the open forum and public comment portions of the meeting, each individual offering comments shall not exceed the allotted three-minute period. The podium light turns green and then to yellow and when there is one minute remaining. Your time for comment is expired when the podium light turns red. Is there any member of the public who wishes to address the council on an item not listed on tonight's agenda? All right, we will move on and our first item is outside agency requests and I'll hand it over to Paul.

Thanks, Mayor. As part of the budget process, every year we budget funding for outside agencies, either social service agencies or economic development agencies. As part of that process, we offer an opportunity to any agency to come present their request and give an update to city council. As part of that process, tonight we have South Dakota State University Research Park, as well as the Regional Growth Alliance here to present. I believe we'll start with the Brookings Regional Growth, I'm sorry, the South Dakota State University Research Park first. I believe Larry and President Dunn is here to give that presentation.

Mr. Mayor and council members, Larry Tiedemann from Brookings, South Dakota. I want to thank you for the past support that you've given to the research park and also ask that you continue as we go forward. I've served on the board for 22 years. I saw it when it was just plain grass and crops out there, and now we have buildings. It takes time to get things done. I also want to recognize that President Dunn also serves as a board member, and he is available to answer any questions if you have any of them. I also want to take this opportunity to thank Dwayne Chapo for the 15 years that he has put in as the manager of the research park. He'd be retiring, and if you look over the things that have been accomplished, he did it through some tough times. There were times when we were in the Great Recession and the carryover, and then were COVID times. He did a lot of the work by himself because staff couldn't be there. He opened the doors, he made sure that things were running. And I just wanna say, I thank you, Duane, for all of your efforts as we've gone through these 15 years working together. I'm here to ask that you consider raising the dollars that are in the budget. And I think that you, as I have an opportunity to present, that it's because we're going to be going through a time of transition. First I want to highlight some of the things that are happening at the park. It goes back to Al Kurtenbach, who helped start the research park. He had a dream, a dream that students that come here, if we can take them through research opportunities to be part of working with industry, that we will keep those people in South Dakota and keep them in Brookings. He had that dream. And I want to give you three examples of how that is working. One is the STAR program. It's where this student, he's not a graduate student, he's a student who has developed a piece of equipment that can be used on tractors that are 2004 and older. And he can do it for $4,000, industry charges $8,000. He's also hiring students that are coming in as freshmen in ag engineering to be with him. but he can use the GPS to move those tractors forward. More for the moderate-sized farmers, not the large farmers, but the moderate-sized farmers. And he is at the point where he is moving the opportunities to grow even further. He hopes to have 200 units out by the end of this year going forward. So that's one example. He's hired a number of students that are going to be helping him as they transition towards this. The second one is the AeroFly. AeroFly really is about drones, but it's also about equipment that they have designed that they can take to Mars or the moon to take samples of material. They've received a lot of funding from Department of Defense. Everybody recognizes today that drones have become a critical component with any of our military maneuvers. Ukraine has probably got the real presence of the best drones, but this group here of four graduate students, two faculty members that are doing things competing with what's going forward. The last one is a grad student who is doing bio-based fruit preservation. He's patented, he was at the university, got his doctorate degree, and he's also doing work within the bioprocessing facility. He started at the research park and has moved over to the bioprocessing facility. He's doing things with bio-based from corn, soybeans, and sunflowers, adding value to those products that our farmers are producing. As I mentioned, we are transitioning. SDSU is moving towards R1 research status, hiring a new person to run the organization as we move forward after Dwayne's retirement. is going to be critical that we find the right person. When you're applying at a non-profit, the one thing you look at is the 990. Are the people that have supported you in the past still with you? Or are you going down in those support dollars? I'm asking that you consider raising the dollars. I know Dwayne put in a request for 175,000. Last year we had 145, 135, 145 the year before. So I'm asking for your support to continue with that as we go forward. Because it will send the right message to the person we try to hire. Otherwise it sends the wrong message. There's a reason why the research park in Brookings is great. Better than the other two in this state. It's because of the local support that we have received. And we are doing far more than the other two research parks, far more. So I want you to consider as we go forward increasing those dollars the first year when i was a state legislature legislator i went to seattle washington on the program was bill gates everybody knows bill gates he didn't give a speech it was a dialogue where the moderator asked the questions and bill gates gave the answer the question that was asked was where are people going to move to the south because the weather is better, to the east coast, to the west? He said no, they're gonna go where the best research is being done because that's where the ideas are created, that's where the students will learn more because of research going on. So I ask for your support and I stand by for any questions.

All right, is there any public comment on this item? All right, President Dunn, do you have part of the presentation also?

I would like to, please.

Oh, more than welcome, sir.

Well, thank you members of the city council. I'm Barry Dunn. I'm the president of South Dakota State University. And I really appreciate the opportunity to address the budget you're crafting. I understand the process very well. I do the same thing at a different institution than you're working with, but I understand the process and I understand the pressures you're under. But I would like to follow up with from the comments that Larry so eloquently made. This was a 22-year partnership between a community, a community including the city and the council and this state's land grant university. And each of those three partners have invested now literally millions of dollars into its success. And I think it's highly successful. from my perspective and I think has enormous future whether if we haven't communicated well enough about the activity there or its economic impact it to the city then that's on us and we need to do a better job but South Dakota State itself has invested Literally tens of millions of dollars. We invested the land, we invest it now. We've invested two buildings, one of them $32 million building and the poet bioprocessing building. But Young Brothers Seed Tech there is also there. It's full of faculty, full of students, full of research, full of innovation, patented and licensed new varieties of crops. We've invested in relationships to bring Raven, CNHI to this community, which is a powerhouse company in the world, Fortune 100 company, has a presence in our research park because the investment that South Dakota State and the city and the county have made. We brought POET, the largest ethanol producer in the state, into our research park. They're there today. They've been there for 15 years. We brought General Mills, a Fortune 50 company, into Brookings with scientists who have professional staff here. And each of those companies hire dozens and dozens of students each and every year. We are a pipeline of human resources into those companies that is almost invaluable. in terms of timing i think the the other aspect that i want you to consider is we're not only hiring a new director of the research park as duane moves into retirement we're also hiring a new vice president for research and economic development at sdsu and that's so this partnership is a is A really important message that we send to potential scientists, let alone a vice president, about the opportunities here in Brookings. And I believe that the budget cut that you've made from 135 to 55 doesn't sound like a lot. It's an enormous amount of money right now. because it will send the wrong message to the people that we're trying to bring into this community to accelerate research, to accelerate tech transfer, and to accelerate economic development. It might not seem like a lot, but if you follow through with the budget as proposed, it'll send a very, very negative message to our campus and all that we've invested over the years it'll send a negative message to the candidates that we're trying to recruit for both of those jobs. So I understand the pressures you're in, but I respectfully ask for your consideration to restore it to last year's level. Thank you very much, and I stand by for questions.

All right. Is there any public comment or questions on this item? Council have any questions, comments? Council Member Hager?

I just want to start my comments by saying I am employed at SDSU. I do not have any affiliation with the research park, nor do any of my immediate colleagues or students. So I do not believe that I have a conflict of interest. If any of my fellow council members disagree, please stop me before I continue speaking. All right, so when we started the budget process and we knew that we needed to be making some tough choices, I did some research into the various entities that we fund. So please bear with me as I have some notes here that go through my own independent research and also what I was able to find on the research parks website and in their proposal for funds. So both then and as of yesterday, there are 40 total tenants listed on the research park website. Over half, 27, have one of the following issues with their website. They don't have a website or they're listed in error, such as the Brookings Economic Development Corporation that is now with the Brookings Regional Growth Alliance. They do not have a business location listed. They do not list Brookings as a business location. And if Brookings is listed, it's not the primary location, it's just one of many, usually the second or the third. Of the tenants that I could find that are actually located in Brookings on their websites, it appeared that most of them were using office space, not the entrepreneurial activities Research Park boasts. There's a variety of labs that were mentioned even just today in our presentation that were primarily associated with SDSU or POET. The proposal states, though, that the funds are needed to continue, quote, entrepreneurial ecosystem innovation center operations, startup incubation, business mentoring, commercialization efforts, implementation of economic development master plan initiatives, and support recruitment of high growth business. There's a disconnect between my research and this proposal, in my opinion. The last news post on the website was from September 2025. It's September 2026. What's happening at the research park? On Facebook, the account only recently became active. Prior to that, the last post was in February of 2026. On August 31st, we were emailed an impact report from the research park. In that report, it says there's 60 total tenants, but there's only 40 on the website. There's 101 new jobs that have been created. But where? Based on my research, I can't tell if any of those are actually in Brookings. So where is the economic output? To me, the math isn't mathing. We received a variety of timeframes for statistics, but it's unclear exactly what those were. Sometimes it was 2024 to 2025. Sometimes I can only guess that it was the entire time the research park has been in its creation. The report talked a lot about what a research park does, but I want to know what's happening at ours. It spent nearly four pages explaining what a research park is. There was a lot of focus on SCSU and partnerships. Those are very important, but I didn't see a strong case for why the city of Brookings needs to be funding these endeavors. I didn't see anything until page eight in that report. Most of what was said here was actually more impactful than what the report says. Even then, the city benefits are listed, but those are seventh, eighth, and ninth on that list of what the benefits of a research park is. So increased jobs, increased community wealth, and increased economic impact. There were a variety of tables with statistics. The source of those, the time frames, again, were unclear. Overall, to me, the report made a stronger case for why SDSU or even the Board of Regents should be funding the research park, not necessarily the city or the county. And I just mentioned the county because that was included in the report. So again, the data sources are unclear. So at least from my stance, That report and what I've seen so far supports the decrease in funding, but if my questions can be answered, I'm definitely open to entertaining restoring some of that funding. But as of right now, I'm just not seeing that there's a case to be made.

Council Member Specker.

Yeah, just to clarify, if funding is restored, then we have to reduce it from these other outside agencies, correct?

I think council has probably one of three different options. That would be my recommendation to staff is to cut another entity because ultimately it would be an ongoing operation. You do have the option to maybe pull from reserves. Wouldn't recommend that because this would be, once again, an ongoing funding source. I would hate to see you do that with a one-time reserve. The other option, of course, is to cut your own city funding that you utilize for this, which means it would impact people. Once again, so those are your three options. My recommendation would be to cut another entity in here. You would have, for example, the Brookings Regional Growth Alliance you could cut. SDSU student visitor promotion or the Dakota Bank Center the Dakota Bank Center as we look to transition it to a recreational We're carrying currently going to look at not only keeping the activities at live event curtailing the Concerts but adding a recreational component we assume about 450 to 500 thousand dollars is going to be needed At least for that first year But once again, I would encourage you to look at cutting operations of one of those entities first is my recommendation.

Thank you.

Council Member Duren.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of questions. I know some of these may have been discussed in previous conversations or impact reports, but I am wondering first, in its history, since the research park is funded by a lot of different partners and there have been different financial strains on those partners, I was wondering if you'd be willing to share any other entities that have maybe had made difficult choices to cut and what that resulting impact was. You don't have to share the names of those entities. I was just wondering if there's other kind of a precedent in the research park with this situation. I can reword it too. Okay, so rewording it. In its history of the research park, has there been other years where a funding partner has substantially cut their partnership, and what was the result from that?

Yeah, Barry Dunn again. To my knowledge, Council Member Doran, we have not had cuts to the research park budget over the years that I've been involved. I've been involved 16 years as Dean of Agriculture and then now as President of SDSU. So the budget from the city has been pretty much the same over those years and the same with the county. SDSU contributes many different ways, and we have not cut it, actually, we've increased it. So it's a complicated, well, no, it's a pretty simple relationship between three community organizations trying to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem, and so we have some Certainly some startups that probably aren't very sophisticated as councilwoman Hager pointed out we also have some some very sophisticated companies in the park that have that bring very very high levels of professionalism So not sure I answered your question.

Yes. Yep. That's what I was looking for. Thank you. And then a follow-up question too is Have there been any documented efforts or startups or ideas that have chosen a different research park or moved on from Brookings because the funding level wasn't where it was needed to be in general at the research park, not necessarily specific from the city.

No, you know, I I don't think so. Well, we've had lots of companies start and then and then grow and move out or some have not. Some have failed. I'm sure I don't have all that history, but. That's what that's. That's the whole idea of that that the startup enterprise that we hope to see. Some will fail and some will move on into the community. Some of the relationships that are so important though are very intangible, but certainly very beneficial. So when General Mills moved from really right outside of The Twin Cities moved their oat breeding project in terms of acres, but also in terms of professional scientists and then hiring students. When they came to the research park about 12 years ago, and they're still here, they brought that energy and those ideas and those salaries to this community, removing them from one in the Twin Cities. Same with Raven expanded to bring scientists to Brookings and has professional staff there all the time and hires students literally by the dozens each year. Same with Poet. And so I think it's a nice mixture of sophisticated companies and some of the startups that will fail and some will succeed. That's what makes it hard to explain sometimes or to fully understand. But I only see bright, shiny days ahead of us. I have argued with the Board of Regents that the three legs of this stool, the university, the city, and the county are why this research park is doing as well as it is versus the other models that we have in the state with USD and School of Mines. It's because the community has invested not a lot of money every year, but some, and certainly a lot of money through the TIFs that have been put to build the infrastructure. But I think it's that three-legged stool, Councilwoman Doran, that really makes it a very exciting future for us.

And then one final question too. If you could just maybe reiterate or explain more whatever you'd like to share of, I acknowledge that a cut does send a signal of optics with hiring those two candidates and with the general support of research in the community. I was wondering if you could share any other resulting impacts that this cut could create.

Yeah, I don't run the operations, so I don't have the operational budget in mind right now, but we are very short staffed. We have a very small budget, and cutting this budget will We'll reduce our operating budget, and I think we were kind of a two-person team trying to keep the building open and serving the tenants and recruiting. And I think we will certainly move forward with a very limited, even more limited staff than we have right now, which is certainly not ideal. The building and the park is 24-7. The poet bioprocessing facility is growing, and it only exists... Success has many parents, and poet bioprocessing has many parents, but one of them is the research park. They the staff of the research park facilitated the transfer of resources from both philanthropy and the state of South Dakota to get that building built and to create the DBX. The company that's operating there now without that additional staff, I think those types of efforts will be severely hindered in the future.

Thank you and Mr Tieneman. Did you have other comments?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Larry Tiedemann. Again, there's a couple of situations that have happened in Brookings. And the goal of the research park was not to have every entity move it into the park. But HUDEC, the one that developed the fish food, there was an opportunity for them to come to the park, but they chose to go to a building that the city owned. And now they're over at Volga by the soybean plant because it makes more sense to be right there rather than in the research park. But it was research that was done at SDSU on developing that fish food that now is being sent to Norway. That's where their biggest export is going is Norway for the fish there. There also was another one called RTI that was looking at locating at the research park. They stayed in the building. And so, again, we didn't want to compete with those that were going to be in Brookings. We want to recruit those into Brookings. As President Dunn said, the difference with General Mills coming here, you saw a complete turnaround on oats production within this area. That made a huge difference, and those people have direct contracts with General Mills. But they used the oats that were being bred through the research at SDSU to be growing on the farms and then being put into Cheerios. So I think those are examples of the impact that it's done. I think the other thing that I'd like to mention is that we only had one person at the research park running it. He got hurt. He had a severe accident. And so we were without anybody in the research park most of this year. And the president is exactly right. We've been operating most of the time with one person. What do you do about vacation? What do you do about sick leave? MAKES IT VERY DIFFICULT. THE FOLKS THAT WERE OUT THERE AS PART OF THE GROWTH ALLIANCE, THEY HELPED UNTIL THEY MOVED. SO THAT MADE IT VERY WORKABLE FOR THE WHOLE SITUATION. SOMETIMES COMPANIES THAT LOCATE IN THE PARK LIST THEIR ADDRESS AS TWIN CITIES BECAUSE THEY'RE GENERAL MILLS OR THEY LIST SOUTH FALLS BECAUSE THE HEADQUARTERS IS IN SOUTH FALLS. So I can't answer all those questions, but the ones that I talked about there, their address is at the research park, even though they live in a dorm on campus. So, thank you.

Thank you both for your comments.

Council Member, I'll just go, well, Council Member Specker.

Okay, I want to get maybe Larry back up there. The one you mentioned with the drone technology, that's a really interesting company and I'm aware that they have the grants from Department of Defense. And being a federal grant, they get a pretty high indirect reimbursement for indirect costs. Does some of that go to the research park? Does the research park charge rent on groups or companies that have that ability to pay through indirect funding?

Thank you for the question, Mr. Mayor and council members. We charge rent for the space that they're in. Students are given a break when they first start in the process. If they're a company coming in or somebody that's further along in the business sense, they pay the full rate. But we start students at a lower rate. I do not know the answer on the indirect. We do not get indirect from them. I can answer that. But I assume there's some part of indirect. But again, with the Aerofly, there's also two faculty that are involved with that and a former graduate of SDSU that's involved with Aerofly. And again, that's only a part of it, but that drone is what's really driving quite a few dollars. But they're also tied in with NASA with some of the equipment that they have developed. that they can take to the moon to draw samples out. And that auger system that they have could also be used by farmers to move soybeans because you have problems with the current auger system. They tend to split the beans. And this auger system they've developed is totally unique. The outside moves. The auger doesn't. So thank you.

Councilmember Hager I Just had a quick clarifying question in response to councilwoman Doran's question President and then you can correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the South Dakota Board of Regents cut funding to the research park recently I

Thanks for the question. I'm not aware of that. The Board of Regents does not directly subsidize the research part. The partnership is with us, South Dakota State, and we have not in the past provided direct INFLUX OF CASH INTO THE RESEARCH PARK, BUT I'M PROBABLY MISUNDERSTANDING OR MISREADING WHAT YOU'VE READ OR WHAT YOU'VE SEEN.

PHONE A FRIEND.

TO ANSWER THE QUESTION, COUNCILWOMAN, ACTUALLY THE RESEARCH PARKS, ALL THREE OF THEM, WERE GIVEN $100,000 THROUGH THE LEGISLATURE. I WAS CHAIR OF APPROPRIATIONS AND THE VICE CHAIR AND I WORKED THE DEAL AT THE END OF SESSION BECAUSE WE SAID WE TRULY NEED TO INVEST IN RESEARCH. OKAY, THEY'RE PASSED THROUGH DOLLARS. WE CAN'T GIVE GENERAL FUND DOLLARS DIRECTLY TO NONPROFITS. YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH A DEPARTMENT. SO BEFORE WE DID IT, WE MET WITH THE BOARD OF REGENTS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND HE SAID YES, SOUNDS GREAT. Well, then about three years ago, there were cuts to be made, or two years ago. And the corporate knowledge of those dollars and how they were put there was gone. So the Board of Regents cut those because they didn't have any direct control over them. They were passed through dollars. So you're right. And I only know that because, so it was cut out of the budget, but it was dollars that were directed directly to the research parks.

Barry Dunnigan, I get it now. So the state of South Dakota did cut funding. Councilwoman Hager, you're exactly right. It was a pass-through through the Board of Regents, but it was from the state of South Dakota. The Regents did not cut funding to the research park in reality. It looks like that for sure, so we understand.

Yeah, I think that's just how it was presented as like the Board of Regents cutting funding.

All right, now Councilmember Wendell.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, thank you so much for being here this evening to continue the conversation around our support for the research park. I think any line item like this that sort of lives in that other agency funding is always good for us as a body to dig back into and understand the history of our funding there and where those relationships originate. You echoed some of my thinking about this, President Dunn, when you referenced a three-legged stool and ensuring that all of the legs of the stool are strong and we send a signal that we're committed to the research park. And I've appreciated in recent days and weeks hearing of SDSU's continued commitment and even stronger commitment to the research park through the hiring process of the next executive director and the relationship with the new vice president for research and economic development and the investment in the facilities and infrastructure. I think you're demonstrating that SDSU is committed at the research park. We are having conversation around the level of our commitment and we were at 135 in the current year. The request for 2027 was 175 and the recommended budget includes a decrease down to 75 and that's really the conversation we're having this evening. Is that the appropriate number? I'm sort of inclined to think as an individual member of the council that I'd be supportive of restoring some of those dollars in the 2027 budget. I'd like to visit with my colleagues on the council about what that looks like. Do we go all the way back up to 135? Do we meet in the middle somewhere? I want to continue the conversation around what the impact might be to other line items in the budget if we restore the funding, but I'd like to see some of that funding come back. i value the work at the research park and and do believe that it offers a return on investment to the community i think there are jobs that are created those are folks that choose to live in brookings and buy homes in brookings and shop in brookings and from a city perspective i think all of that is positive activity that's associated with our investment in the research park I also think it's a retention initiative. It's an opportunity to retain SDSU students and graduates in the community, certainly in the state of South Dakota, but in particular in Brookings. I know that's something that we all try to put a lot of energy and effort behind in our community. It's one of the things I think Brookings does perhaps even better than some of our peer communities in the state, but we always look for new opportunities to retain SDSU graduates, and I think the research park is one way to do that. One of the questions that this has brought up for me is that three-legged stool and what partners are coming to the table and at what level will they continue to be at the table. Councilor Hager had referenced new activity on the research park's Facebook page and one of them caught my attention a couple of weeks ago. It was a post referencing generated tax revenue to different entities from activity at the research park. And the post highlighted approximately $275,000 in revenues in municipal taxes, $314,000 in city taxes, and $626,000 in state taxes. And that caught my attention because of those three lines that were identified, city tax revenue actually was the lowest number. And that by that graphic, it appears that Brookings County actually generates more taxes than the city of Brookings does through activity at the research park. And so it made me wonder what the third leg of that stool is considering and if they are interested in also partnering with us, because we're all feeling budget constraints. And the request at 175 for 2027 was a hard one, I think, for us to hit, but I was curious, was a similar requested increase submitted to other funding partners, or was it just the request at the city all the way up to 175? And then could you share with us, I believe the county invests approximately 75,000 a year, which would be the city's recommended investment for 2027. So I was curious if the request to the county was higher than that number or how you calculated the request to the city at 175 this year.

Thank you, Councilman and Mayor and Dwayne Chapelle, CEO of the Research Park. So we did not ask for additional dollars from the county. They had been providing 70 and so we stated that the reasoning for the city request is the majority of the companies, and to Councilwoman Hager's point, NOT ALL OF THOSE JOBS ARE AT THE RESEARCH PARK. THEY'RE WITHIN THE COUNTY. WE HAVE ABOUT A 7% BLEED ON THE COMPANIES THAT DO LEAVE THE COUNTY, WHICH IS PRETTY LOW. SO OUT OF ALL OF THE JOBS CREATED, THE MAJORITY OF THOSE ARE FOLKS THAT DO LIVE IN THE CITY. AND NOT TO TAKE ANYTHING AWAY FROM WHAT THE CITY DOES OR THE COUNTY, THAT WAS JUST THE RECOMMENDATION THE WAY WE WENT THROUGH THE PROCESS THIS YEAR.

I might encourage tonight to serve as a launching pad for continuing that conversation around how all the partners come to the table and if the city request is going to be at 135 or 175, can other partners join us? Because I think we're all benefiting. By the data you shared in September, we're actually benefiting less than the county is in tax revenue generation. So that was an interesting and surprising statistic for me, in particular as we were in the season of considering return on investment.

Yeah, and we used the economic in-plan software, which is the industry standard for economic development. So we only report what the software gives us. And I know there's other things that factor into that, but I didn't go outside of what the software generated.

Thank you for that insight. I had maybe a follow-up question to something that I think Councilor Specker asked about the other outside agencies. And if we were to restore some funding at the research park I know one thing we're talking about is the timing of us setting our budget and basing it on projected sales tax revenue and 3B revenue. And so, Paul, could you talk a little bit about what we know today are our revenue projections. We may know more in December, and it might be more favorable in recent years. The December outlook has been more favorable than the August and September outlook has been for revenue generation. So can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Yeah, we'll concentrate mainly on 3B because that's what funds the economic development agencies. 3B traditionally comes in a lot stronger than your sales tax. Sales tax projected for next year is at 2.5%. We're projecting 3% for the 3B. Once again, that's 1% of every bed, booze, and boarding here in Brookings. Right now, we're anticipating roughly about a $35,000 surplus by the end of the year. That's based on today's dollars. Once again, it always comes in better than anticipated. So if you were to, for example, cut agency and say you choose the Dakota Bank Center one of the things I would recommend to you as a follow-up is that any excess cash is generated this year to help plug that hole in for the Dakota Bank Center and then maybe commit any future growth to that as well as we're taking on recreational component there's something brand new and we'd like to commit to it as much as possible we would ask that but once again that doesn't handcuff you as a council because you can never handcuff future councils but there are opportunities and To wait and see and the reason why I would say the Dakota Bank Center over outside agencies We can control those expenses once their city entities You can't really so much at once outside agencies and once again those traditionally come in higher than anticipated But with that said I'm not talking hundreds of thousands, but maybe tens 20s 30 thousands Maybe a little higher than that. But once again, it's a little bit of a gamble but for the most part it usually comes in higher than anticipated and

I appreciate that insight. And part of that is because we're talking a little bit about the optics and the impression we might be sending by the dollars that we invest in certain areas. And whether that's 35 or 50 or more thousands of dollars, some of that is about the optics we're sending. And when I look at the other entities that are sort of in this cluster, I certainly don't want to send a signal that we would reduce the funding at the Growth Alliance. We're heavily invested in the Growth Alliance and its success, and this is a pivotal year for them. We're in the midst of launching a recommendation for the Dakota Bank Center and our continued commitment for the next phase of the Dakota Bank Center. I certainly wouldn't want to see us send a signal that we're wobbly on our commitment financially at the Dakota Bank Center. And so I'd love for us to approach this conversation in restoring some of this funding keeping in mind that if revenues in the 3B category cave in more favorably, we would dedicate those to an entity like the Dakota Bank Center, even if we have to scale back this number for today, that we would plug that hole at the end of the year if there's additional 3B revenue. I wanted to have that conversation here so that we were clear about our commitment to the entities that are sort of in this cluster. That's all I have.

All right. Council Member Avery?

Well, I would just like to say about this request and some of the other ones that we get that are fairly large, my background, as you probably know, is in banking. And if I was to bring a request to the board with the information that we collect sometimes, they would have told me to go back and get the real numbers. So I think there is a case where, in this case, with with the research park where a lot of the income is generated from actual rental income. There's a substantial asset there. It's got value. It would be helpful to actually have real accountant-prepared financial statements on an annual basis just to see what we're dealing with. There's no debt to service. There's income from rent. That should pay a lot of bills. What's the shortfall? what does the money that the city would put, what does that cover? So I think there's room to improve on this case, plus other ones that we deal with. We really need to know the numbers before we can make really well-informed decisions. Going beyond that, I want to thank Dwayne for his 15 years of service, and he's been the face of that operation for all this time, and doesn't put his heart and soul into it and thank you duane for that larry thank you for coming and sharing your insight from your long involvement and thank you mary dunn i know you have many things to do and we really appreciate you taking the time to be here and it it made us think very seriously about your request council member

First of all, I just want to thank all three of you for being here tonight answering our questions and for the presentation. I think the information you provided certainly shows that with this investment, we do see a return. Whether that return is financial or in maintaining some of the brain power that our community sees, I think that's a benefit for Brookings. I want to echo some of the sentiments I heard from Councilman Wendell here in that I think on this particular line item, as we continue these conversations around the budget, we should give a little more thought as to whether or not this allocation that we have outlined here for this suggestion is the right dollar amount. I'm not necessarily advocating that we'll be able to make it all the way up to the requested amount or previous year's funding, but I do think that there's opportunities for us to see if we can elevate that amount a bit, especially as we see some changes happening out there in the ecosystem and just understanding how we can continue to support keeping some of this research in our community and in our backyard. So I would be in favor of continuing kind of the exploration around whether or not we can reallocate some of the dollars and then certainly take a look at the 3B funding at the end of the year and plug some of the holes that we might see if we do make some of those shifts. I would also encourage you all to Also, go back to the county and other funders that you have and see if they may also be able to elevate some of that support Because it's certainly a benefit for all of the parties involved not just the city not just the university and so That's my stance on where we're at with it.

So thank you again So I might make a couple comments myself Larry do you want another comment that you would like to put on Thank You mr. Mayor

Your last question or comment, I think, really struck home. When we first built the first building, we had an EDA grant of $2 million. Vision Brookings, the people of Brookings, contributed a million. And Governor Rounds found $500,000 in his future fund. WHEN WE ADDED ON TO THAT BUILDING, 2 MILLION FROM EDA GRANT AND VISION BROOKINGS, THE PEOPLE OF BROOKINGS KICKED MONEY IN. SO THE PEOPLE OF BROOKINGS HAVE DONE FANTASTIC IN HELPING PUT THAT TOGETHER AND I THINK THAT GIVES YOU SOME BASIS THAT IT WAS MORE THAN JUST CITY TAX DOLLARS.

THANK YOU. So some of the comments, I've been on this board for five years now, and when you become mayor, you become a member of this board. That was not told to me before I ran for mayor, but I would have ran anyway. So anyway, some of the comments that Council Member Hager said is like these people don't have a permanent residence here, but a lot of the tenants that are in the Innovation Center are support for some of the research that is going on there. Woods Fuller is there. They help with patents. There's a group that's part of the Angel Fund that's there. Dwayne could probably name off maybe five or six entities there that are actually support tenants to help some of the other individuals that are there trying to create a new business. And the whole idea is to maybe get them big enough where they build their own building on the research park. Or we have enough people there that have an idea, it's like maybe we need to bring in somebody else. I know we've had South Dakota Soybean Association and South Dakota Corn have considered putting their base here because they are right next to our agricultural community. and research. Research parks don't grow real fast. NDSU has had a research park quite a bit longer than we have and they're not any more successful than we are as far as right now. We had a retreat about a year ago, guys, was it? And we had a professional that came in that helped other research parks and were more than willing to help us for a fee, but we chose to try and take care of it ourselves. But we did have some insight in there and they said, you know, we're doing pretty good for what we have. And so... I truly believe that this is just blossoming, even though we've been at it for almost 20 years. We still have a really good opportunity to expand on ideas that are coming out of SDSU, support Aerofly. I mean, this is a really cool outfit. I mean, if you've seen one of their presentations, it's amazing. Larry touched on the auger, and it's a reverse auger. It's really cool. I would have never come up with it, but we have very intelligent young men and women that are part of some of these. The young man that's retrofitting regular old tractors that have no computers in them and setting them up for GPS. That's going to become a big deal because there's a lot of farmers that are going back to the auctions now and buying old tractors. just because of the economy that we are in. And he's in the right place at the right time. And he's going to bring in students to help him expand his business. He's ready to expand and blow. So, I mean, we have a lot of good things going on out there, and I really appreciate the city's support in what we've already done. And I'm truly in favor of... transitioning some of our funding here paul's idea of whatever's left on 3b at the end of the year we'll put towards that to rejuvenate what we've taken away from dakota bank center if we do it that round i like that idea just to remind council the budget uh final ordinance won't come before you till late october so at that point in time you have an opportunity to change this

JUST HEARING THE CONVERSATION, ONE OF THE THINGS I MIGHT RECOMMEND IS A MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING. RIGHT NOW WE HAVE ADMINISTRATIVE AGREEMENTS WITH OUTSITE ENTITIES. THIS ONE I'VE HEARD FROM COUNCIL A LOT OF DESIRES FOR MORE INFORMATION AS WELL AS HIGHER REQUIREMENTS. SO I WOULD RECOMMEND MAYBE THAT COUNCIL CONSIDER A MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING WITH THE BOARD OR WITH THE ENTITY SO THERE'S SOME ACCOUNTABILITY THAT COMES BACK TO YOU WITH RECORDS BASED ON WHAT YOUR DESIRES. SO JUST WANT TO LET YOU KNOW IN THE TIME FRAME.

The other thing I might suggest too is I know there's been some questions here from the banker. If we can get him some numbers there so that we can digest a little bit about what the budget looks like, what we've been spending the money on, I think that would be a legitimate ask. It makes a lot of sense. Appreciate that, Wayne. Any other questions, comments on this item? All right. Thank you very much, gentlemen. We'll move on to item six.

Laurie's here to present.

Oh, I'm sorry. We're still in the audience. Come on up, Laurie. Thank you. Please introduce yourself and welcome. Welcome.

Good evening, Lori Frederick, CEO of the Brookings Regional Growth Alliance. Thank you to Mayor and Council for having me an opportunity primarily here just to give you an update of what's been going on with the Growth Alliance. First of all, I want to thank all of you for your support that has happened prior to the year and just taking that leap of faith, I guess I will say, and having this organization come together. This has been very much what I would consider a transitional time. I came on board at the end of March. During this time, we have really tried to put together who we are, what we want to achieve, and how we can partner with the city to take things to that next level. One of the things is we've launched the new brand, the new branding of that. We have a new website. Understanding the need of that will be coming out here in October. One of the key things that I would like to say is that we have been able to do about an 80% retention of membership. That is above industry standard for most Chamber of Commerces. So we've had the support of the community, of the businesses, and we're very excited about that, and we're continuing to work on that and to make sure that they have the benefits that are needed for them to continue to grow, to expand, and to start up. So we have a number of those different things. One of the things that we have really tried to focus on is community, just part of our growth in one of those things. And so, of course, this year we had the 11th annual Downtown at Sundown. We had over 14,000 attendees in four weeks. Mother Nature did not participate well the first week, so we were really excited about that. One of the other things is working with the communities is like the Volga and Bitness Network. Some of the things that we try to focus on go as part of Brookings, but also a little bit beyond that. And I know that the city council doesn't necessarily, you know, you don't fund those, but understanding that that partnership and how we can help the other communities benefits Brookings is one of the key things that we're really working in on. And through that, we helped with a mental health first aid training for area employees in Volga. And we had over 14 area professionals complete that training. Part of that was for all communities. It wasn't necessarily just for Volga. But some of the things that we worked on is also the destination and policy. So we're partnering with the South Dakota Tourism Coalition and the destination professionals regarding some upcoming legislation that would help affect the community or that funds to be able to increased. We also have looked at candidate forums for the upcoming elections. And then we did some candidate profiles. So our role in that is to be basically that voice of providing unbiased information regarding candidates. That's really what we're here to do. And so we don't take a stance on either side, just provide the information. One of the other things we've done is helped with the city of Brookings in a hotel study. And we appreciate that partnership. We facilitated that. What that has led to is the potential of a very large redevelopment project here in the community. By having that hotel study completed, we were able to reach out and have some conversations with some individuals who had an interest in Brookings. And so now we're working on that at very early stages. The other thing that we've kind of worked at is the workforce, of course, is always a question, right? We have a very low unemployment rate. So we work with the South Dakota State University Trio Employer Tours. And what that has done is it connected South Dakota state freshmen with local employers. And it's really introducing them to local careers. So we've had about eight to 10 tours on that, really starting at that freshman level of them thinking about where they can go, what they can do, and how they can stay in Brookings after they graduate. And also helping them to find those internship opportunities. In Destination, we're also partnering with South Dakota State in their PR writing class to help with the 2027 Visitor Guide. This is an ongoing relationship. They're again offering that experience to South Dakota State University students as well as helping them to better understand Brookings and the opportunities that are here. Through the business development, we've helped some with some expansions. And the organization itself has developed our mission, vision, values. We're in the process of completing out our team and hiring that. And we're also partnering with South Dakota State University on an economic impact study. And that study will show not only the impact of SDSU to the state, but also to our region and to Brookings County. So going forward, what are we looking at doing really expanding our business development, um, activities, whether that's business attraction, um, coming in from expansions and for local companies that workforce, how do we help companies address workforce? Really, our methodology on that is how do we help companies find staff members versus trying to attract staff members here. With the low unemployment, sometimes people say, well, you know, everybody's got a job. There are no other jobs. So really, we're trying to help businesses find those key people that they're looking for and help from that side of it. And we've been able to facilitate some of that through some data and some software that we've been able to come forward with Overall, we see the partnership and a lot of exciting things that could be coming forward We appreciate your support and we look forward to working with you over this next year and increasing and going forward Any questions you might have for me?

Thank you. Laurie. Is there any public comments questions? Councilmember having questions comments Councilmember during

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for your presentation, Lori. I just had a clarifying question that maybe I want you to reiterate. You talked about that membership is holding strong at 80%. I think when we have a merger or a major transition in a community like with this agency, it would be typical to probably see in other communities a dip in membership. It sounds like you have not seen a dip in membership. Is that true? And kind of what testimony have you heard from businesses through this transition as well?

We've had, I mean, I think we've held really steady to what has happened with the other organizations prior to the merger. There was about that type of level. What we're hearing is some support for what we're trying to move forward and to do. There's always individuals who will drop membership for various reasons, whether it's financial or they're moving in a different direction. But anecdotally, we've seen a lot of support and a lot of interest in how we can help them and those resources. This has been one of the biggest things. When you have an organization that maybe has two people in it, such as the Economic Development Corporation, then you now have a team that has really made a difference on how we can provide that support to companies and businesses.

Sounds good. Thank you. It just got me thinking about that from our previous conversation about the community support and community benefits. So I'm glad to hear that the business community is receiving great benefit and feels supported.

Yeah.

Councilmember councilmember Tilton burn Thank You mayor Thank you very much for joining us tonight and providing information about the organization. I have a couple of questions one is you talked just a little bit about the The new merger that happened right in the way that a larger team is maybe benefiting from some of the efforts that smaller teams were previously doing independently. I know it's still early on in the merger, so maybe you don't have a lot of information on this yet, but have you seen any efficiencies or any maybe neat collaborations that have happened that weren't able to happen previously now that you're in a new structure where there is a larger team?

Yeah, I think the marketing has been one of it because the organizations each were either contracting or had marketing being completed. And so this merger has helped bring together one strong message and one strong team. So that has helped, I think, considerably. The other is some of the alignments that we have seen, for instance, The chamber has always done some of the policy and that type of thing as well as the economic development as well as visit. So as we have come together to talk about what is our message and how we approach actually at a state level, what is it that we would like to see happen that would benefit Brookings? Having those three organizations come together and having that stronger voice is definitely where we're seeing some benefits from that side.

All right, that's wonderful. I know that one of the benefits is going to be a new home location. You have the opportunity maybe to speak a little bit about the move and all of that.

Yes, so two weeks ago we were able to move into our new building in downtown. across the street. Right now we're absolutely loving it. We had a function for the Brookings Professional Network there just this week in the morning. Had a number of people. It was one of our largest groups as far as coming together for that event. And we've had a great reception about the space. It has a much larger community type room, training room. If you were in our former building, barely held maybe 10 or 12. This one is set to hold about 25 to 30. We are in the process of waiting for our new tables, so we don't have those yet, but we're hoping to really be able to provide some opportunities for groups and communities to come in to have some training and also to use the space.

And then the last question I have, you mentioned some of the benefits that happen to surrounding communities. Certainly one of the benefits I think that the city has in that is a good partnership with our neighbors, right? So that's great. Do you receive any funding or support from those neighboring communities as you look at funding on an annual basis?

We receive a very small stipend from Aurora and from Volga. Those two combined are less than $4,000. Okay. So we are looking at that coming forward into next year and how we can maybe work with them a little closer just to see what that could look like from a funding source as well. Thank you.

All right. Any other questions, comments?

Paul?

I would just say that I've really appreciated our relationship so far working with Lori and her staff. We've worked together on not only reviewing TIF projects, going through that rubric to make recommendations, reviewing agreements, as well as working together with developers. I've never seen someone work so fast on that hotel study. It's been one that we've been talking about for many, many years. I really appreciate your knowledge that you bring as well as your innovative thought as well. That's been a breath of fresh air. and helping to think how we can evolve the things happening here in Brookings, which there are a lot of things happening. So greatly appreciate that.

Thank you. I'm excited for the year to come and the other years.

All right. Thank you very much, Lori. Thank you. And I think that's all we have for outside entities tonight. All right. So now let's move on to item 6, BMU, Missouri River Energy Services Agreement. And Russ and Steve will... Steve Meyer will be the one to present. Russ will be a sidekick, I guess.

THANK YOU, MAYOR AND COUNCIL. I'M STEVE MEYER, GENERAL MANAGER AT BROOKINGS MUNICIPAL UTILITIES. JUST WANTED TO THANK THE COUNCIL FOR ALLOWING US TIME TO PRESENT TO YOU. WE'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT TRYING TO FIND A TOPIC THAT WE CAN BRING TO THIS FORUM, NOT ONLY TO HELP INFORM THE CITY COUNCIL, BUT THE REST OF THE CITY. So the topic for today is our relationship with Missouri River Energy Services. They are our wholesale supplier of electricity, one of our wholesale suppliers of electricity. We spend about $20 million in business between us and MRES. YESTERDAY, THE UTILITY BOARD VOTED TO EXTEND OUR CONTRACT WITH MRES. THAT IS EXTENDING THE END OF THAT CONTRACT FROM 2054 TO 2064. IN THE POWER BUSINESS, YOU DO CONTRACTS IN THE VERY LONG-TERM ARRANGEMENTS BECAUSE SOME OF THEIR FINANCING DEPENDS ON THOSE LONG-TERM COMMITMENTS. I've asked Russ to put together a presentation on MRES and who they are, what they do. Just really appreciate the time to explain some of these things. I know you're interested in these things as an owner of this enterprise. 100% OF ALL THE PROFITS FROM BMU STAY WITH THE CITY. WE TRANSFER SOME OF OUR PROFITS DIRECTLY TO THE GENERAL FUND, BUT THOSE THAT AREN'T TRANSFERRED GO DIRECTLY BACK INTO THAT ENTERPRISE THAT YOU OWN. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm going to turn it over to Russ. He's more of a good presenter and entertainer, so enjoy his presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, City Council. My name is Russ Helgerson, Electric Department Manager for Brookings Utilities here in Brookings. And I know you guys are very excited about this thrilling presentation, but it is a long-term agreement. It is a big deal for Brookings Utilities. We want to make sure that the City Council is aware of the long-term agreement that we're signing and what it means for the City of Brookings and Brookings Utilities. So agenda quick. I did want to provide a little perspective about where we're at in Brookings as far as electricity and where we got here and how that shaped where we're at today. Again, talked about the wholesale power arrangement in Brookings, who our partners are, the benefits of extending the S-1 agreement, and then some of the key terms and changes as well as the timeline and next steps for signing the S-1 agreement extension. Again, the history of electricity in Brookings. This is actually the power plant in Brookings in 1908 is a picture of where it was. I think this is where the Lions Club is today. Downtown is where the location is. So started in town with Edwin Gaylord, started the Brookings Electric Company in 1887. He's a very interesting guy. He was a photographer, furniture store owner, and he actually started, it was July 4th of 1887. He lit up three streetlights on Main Street on the 4th of July with a dynamo generator and that was the start of the electric industry in Brookings. He operated that for about 20 years and in 1899 the city of Brookings purchased that electric company for $5,000. We became in the electric industry. We started selling power to businesses along Main Street and that's where really electricity took off. In 1903, the steam heat plant, the one that fed the steam to downtown businesses, to schools, and fed all the heat downtown, that was built in 1903, and it operated for about 80 years. So a lot of history, and we operated that way for a long time. And in the 50s is when the hydroelectric dam started getting built on the Missouri River. And that was, now it's WAPA, but then it was the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. And they started with the Fort Reynold Dam and they started building these generators and seeing that the power generated from them could benefit entities within the Missouri River Basin. I'll show a map of that in a little bit of who benefits. So everyone within the Missouri River Basin gets a WAP allocation. They get power from the hydroelectric dams on the Missouri. And at the time, it was great. They produced a lot of power, more than we ever needed in South Dakota, but it was actually more expensive than what we could produce here in Brookings. So in 1960, there was a very controversial decision to shut down the power plant in Brookings. It was cheap. It was smoky and it was sooty, but it was cheap power and it was very controversial to go to WAPA because it was more expensive and we didn't necessarily, it was a new entity, we didn't know how it was going to work out, but it turned out to be the best decision that we made in Brookings, electrically wise. It became so important that we wanted to protect our WAPA power. So in 1965, that's when the Missouri River Municipal Power Agency, now known as MRES, was created. And at the time, its sole purpose was to protect our WAPA allocation. It was to protect the WAPA power. It was to work legislatively to make sure the federal program remained intact and was successful. And they did that here into the 70s. I'll talk about that. But 1970 is when Brookings actually voted. The Brookings residents voted to create the five-person utility board. So BMU as a board was created in 1970. So in the early 70s, WAPA was saying, okay, the cities are growing. There's only so much power generated by the dams. We're going to have to, they were talking about capping power so that people, they would give a community fixed allocation. So when they started talking about, that is when Western Minnesota Municipal Power Agency, Western MIN I'll call it, is actually an arm or a branch of MRES, and they were saying, MRES was looking at generating for the power that was over and above the WAPA generation. So that's where Western Min was created. That's kind of one and the same of MRES. In 1977, WAPA did, in fact, cap everyone's allocation at what our power usage was in 1977. In Brookings, that means we were capped at 19 megawatts. which when you compare that today, we're about a 70 megawatt utility today. So WAPA is about 30% of our energy source in Brookings today, and I'll show a graph here later on. So Western MN was formed, MRAS was formed, and in 1978, that's when we officially joined MRAS and signed our first S-1 agreement. The first agreement was only a 12-year time period, so it was only a 12-year contract. And so in 1985, we signed the first extension. And then the next slide here, about every eight to 10 years, we sign an extension to keep it as soon as, it's a 40 year agreement now. So as soon as it gets down to about 30 years, they want us to sign another extension. So we, about every eight to 10 years, we sign an extension here where we're looking at approving our sixth extension of the S-1 agreement. So that is the history of kind of where we were, how we moved through. Any questions on the history of electricity in Brookings?

Russ, I got a question. Yeah. Has anybody left MRAS? What's that? Has any of the members that are part of Missouri River, have they not renewed?

No. I am not aware of any. I think there's been a couple that have joined MRAS. Okay. But there's 61 members now. But, yeah, I do not know of any that have ever left.

Most of them are municipalities.

All municipalities.

All right. Yep. So wholesale power supply arrangements. So how does it work in Brookings? We talked about WAPA. So here's the map of the Missouri Basin. So everyone within this Missouri Basin, the tributaries that feed the Missouri River, they get a WAPA allocation. So WAPA manages and represents about 40% of the hydro production in the United States. Again, we have a long-term agreement with WAPA that runs through 2050. So again, in the electric industry, we always deal with very long-term agreements. And again, our fixed allocation is about 18.9 megawatts, which represents about 30% of our energy use in Brookings. So they're our initial source of energy, and then our second wholesale provider, who we're talking about today, is MRES, Missouri River Energy Services. They have 61 member communities. It's a joint action agency that was actually formed in Iowa. It's headquartered in South Dakota, Sioux Falls, and it also has that arm called Western Minnesota, which is in Minnesota. So it's a four-state entity that their primary purpose is to provide us supplemental power. That's their primary focus, but then they also provide other resources and other benefits to Brookings. They help us with the rate studies, our rebate program, and then our legislative and regulatory services both at the federal level and the state level. So they have a portfolio of energy generation. Their primary source is the Laramie River Station in Wyoming. That had been historically their leading source of power, but they're really working on diversifying their power source. And this is actually an old slide. They just had a Marshall solar project, a 10 megawatt solar array in Marshall. And then you guys are probably aware of the one in Brookings. That's a five megawatt solar array that they're just commissioning and they're going to have a ribbon cutting ceremony in October for that project. So they are looking at all hands on deck as far as power generation in their portfolio. So we look at what that means for Brookings. The periwinkle color, I think, is what it is, or maybe the purple, the bottom one, is our western area, our WAP allocation. You can see that's fixed. That is our fixed energy. And as Brookings grows, our mix of WAP at MRES keeps getting bigger. So we keep purchasing more energy from MRES. And WAPA is our cheap power. So it's very important that we protect it. It costs about 2.9 cents per kilowatt hour for the energy we get from WAPA. And respectively, from MRES, it's about 6 cents per kilowatt hour. So MRES is very cheap from a wholesale power comparatively across the country. But compared to WAPA, it's about twice as expensive as our WAPA power. So as we grow, our wholesale power actually becomes more expensive. When we look at our wholesale power bill, about 89% of it is allocated to Missouri River Energy Services.

Go ahead.

Thanks, Mayor.

Russ, when you referenced the investments that were made in the Marshall Solar Plant, the forthcoming plant in Brookings, will any of that impact some of the cost of the power we get for MRES over the long term?

Yeah, long term, it'll stabilize energy costs. As energy costs continue to rise, the cost of solar is coming down. So long term, it'll actually stabilize electric costs in Brookings and all of the member communities. So...

I'm not holding you to this, but the hope is an investment in those solar plants might prevent this line from going upward at the trajectory it is now, but potentially it'll even out?

Correct.

Yep.

That's the goal.

Yep.

Russ, when you go back a slide, as far as, so there are some wind turbine fields in Minnesota and North Dakota, but none of them in South Dakota?

Not that MRES owns, no. Okay.

Yep, they're in Minnesota. All right.

Yep. And I should clarify, they don't necessarily own them, but sometimes they have a purchase power agreement with an existing farm, so they purchase energy from them, but not in South Dakota. So let's talk about the S-1 agreement. What is that? It's a supplemental power agreement, and it basically obligates both MRES and BMU to do certain things. MRES, most importantly, they're obligated to provide us all of our power requirements above and beyond our WAP allocation. So as Brookings grows, MRES is obligated to provide that energy, and that's a benefit to Brookings. We don't have to worry about where our power is coming from MRES, as part of this contract agreement, is promising to provide that. They'll also provide our transmission service. So getting the energy from the generation sources into Brookings, MRES is a partner with that and they're obligated to provide that service as part of this agreement. They are a not-for-profit entity, so they, as part of this agreement, they agree to have reasonable rates and to not exceed a reasonable surplus, is what they say. For BMU, we're obligated to purchase all of our power from MRES, so we can't openly go out on the open market and try to find another source of energy. We're promising to buy our energy from MRES, and that's how they can lock in long-term bond arrangements and financing arrangements. And then we also agree to pay their rates. So we agree to pay for their generation and pay for their . How does that benefit us? Again, I kind of alluded to it. It provides us security on our energy futures. We have a supplier. We know where we're going to get our energy from. And MRES is a great partner to help us meet the growth and the needs of Brookings. When we look at a whole group, MRES-wide, 61 members, when everyone signs their S-1 agreement extension, it helps MRES build additional generation. It knows it has long-term agreements with all of their members. They can source those low-interest bonds, and they can build that generation knowing that they have partners for the next 30, 40 years. So key terms and changes to this one. There's really not a lot of changes. The big change is Section 2, extending from 2057 out to 2067. So it is a 40-year agreement. They changed some definitions or added some definitions related to green energy as the environmental attribute are kind of progressing, renewable energy certificates. There's a lot of new... new definitions that need to be included from when this contract was last signed 10 years ago. Again, Section 3, it talks about MREs agreeing to sell, us agreeing to buy, and it just adds a few more definitions. And I'll keep going through this pretty quick, but if you guys have any questions, certainly stop me, interrupt me, but I'll move pretty quick. The one thing I did want to touch on is what's called the MRAD, the maximum rate of delivery. And this is a unique, interesting little function, but basically it's saying that if for some reason we're not happy with MRES or there's another solution in the industry where we think it's advantageous to purchase our power from someone else, in 2040 we could cap our purchases from MRES and we could go to a third party and purchase additional energy from them. Again, I don't know of any member that's ever done that, but it's kind of, we always kind of describe it as an off ramp. If we do, if there's something that we're not aligning in our views, there is an off ramp that we could cap our MRES purchase power and look at getting someone moving somewhere else. So that is a clause in the agreement that, like I mentioned, I don't think anyone's done, but there is an off ramp on the agreement. Again, adding environmental attributes. Section 5 talks about the measurement and supplemental power. Basically, it's how is our wholesale energy metered coming into Brookings, and that was adjusted for the Brookings Solar Project. They did need to upgrade their metering, and it just updates where we're metered at. I'll kind of go through here, rates. We just agree to pay their reasonable rates. And that's really, again, they're just minor changes, removing duplicative language, adding email into the communication method. And I'll kind of keep scrolling through, but there's not a lot of changes as you go through, not a lot of meaningful changes in the S-1 agreement that they're proposing. So next steps in timeline, like Steve mentioned, we did approve the BMU Utility Board approved the S-1 agreement extension yesterday at the Utility Board meeting. We're here today presenting to the City Council. Once we get the agreement signed by everybody, we will submit it to MREF by November 1st, and then MREF will ratify the new agreement, hoping to get all 61 members and ratify the new agreement December 3rd, and the new agreement will take effect January 1 of 2027. So with that, any questions for me?

All right. Any questions from the public? Council have any questions, comments? Council Member Hager?

Thank you, Mayor. One of the questions I have, which I think you answered it, I just want to make sure I understand it correctly, is all our supplemental power has to be purchased through MREs, and then there's that exception for 5% that can be renewable energy from elsewhere. And so I guess like my thought process with this is MRES is also developing their own renewable energy sources so we benefit from that but if by chance we're like oh there's some other option on the market we could get that extra 5% elsewhere. Is that right?

Not really elsewhere. We could build our own. So what that means is that if we wanted to build a community solar in Brookings we could size that to be up to 5% of our load.

Oh, okay. Gotcha. All right. Perfect. Yeah. Well, I didn't have it right. So that's good. I asked the question. All right. And then my other question is throughout the presentation, it mentions how MRES sets rates and they have to be able to cover all the load growth. So, you know, we've had multiple conversations about data centers. We hear about it in the news. So what does that mean about data centers? If by chance there ever was one in Brookings or like in any of these member communities of MRES?

Yep, MRES is taking data centers very seriously. There is a lot of things being talked about data centers, and I think MRES is helping their members. If a data center is being proposed in a member community, they're really helping their members, helping Brookings identify, hey, here's your risks. If you build a new substation or you need to make all of this investment, make sure that the data center pays their own way. And I think MRES is doing a great job of identifying what those risks are and helping their members mitigate those risks. As far as like generation costs and the cost of power, I think that's still to be determined. I think there's a lot of generation going up around the area, around the country, whether that's tied to data centers or not. I think there's a lot of action going around and there's a lot of discussions around data centers and I don't think there's really, it hasn't really come to fruition in the local Midwest and South Dakota. If that helps, if that answers your question.

Yeah, so I guess a follow-up question is, you know, let's say that there's a data center that goes in one of the other MRES member communities. How does that impact, if at all, Brookings and MRES's ability to provide us with supplemental power?

That is a great question. Steve, you might be able to help me answer that. So Steve's on the MRES board. I think he hears a few more of these discussions than I do.

Most of those issues are addressed through rates, through the MRES rates. If everything worked perfectly, it would not have any effect on the other members. Hopefully, they would try to use that effect. If it did anything, it would improve the efficiency of the other members. MRES can probably find that power. There is a market to buy power through. The rates that they would attach to that that power would have to be structured such that it does not hurt that individual community or does not hurt the other members.

Thanks for that answer.

Alright, Councilmember Tilton Burn.

Thank you, Mayor. You'd mentioned in your presentation that in October there's going to be a ribbon cutting for a solar project that's happening right here in the Brookings area. Are there other plans for additional renewable energy stations that maybe are solar or other types of renewable energy that MRES will either do or, as you mentioned, having the opportunity to maybe implement our own local renewable energy source? Are there plans on either side there?

I'm not familiar directly with MRES. I know they built one in a 10 megawatt with a battery storage unit in Marshall. They call it the battery or Marshall Solar Plus project and then Brookings. But I don't know of any active other active solar projects in MRES's plan or budget. Correct me, Steve, if I'm wrong.

Yeah, we just went through MRS's budget process here this last month, and there are no additional solar plans planned in their near future. They are working on trying to find additional peaking generation, adding that into the portfolio as Russ described. MRES is a all sources of generation company. They want to, if you can remember in the presentation, there is a nuclear source of power that we're using. There's also a diesel plant in Watertown that we're using. Laramie River Station is a is a coal plant. They own several wind generation. The natural gas is usually peaking plants. There is a large peaking plant in Iowa that is owned by MRES. The nuclear plant they're buying power from is at Point Beach, the Point Beach nuclear facility up in Wisconsin. And of course, they've got the hydro plant, hydro sources too. And Missouri River Energy Services also built a hydro facility when they converted a dam along the river in Iowa, the Des Moines River in Iowa, near Pella. Changed the flood control dam into a hydro plant. They do have a lot of interest in exploring more hydro. They're still watching the solar. They're using, the first solar plant they built was in Pier, and it was a one megawatt solar plant. They've expanded now to the one in Marshall with a battery storage attached to it. Comparing that to the Brookings plant, we will not have batteries in ours. They're still using that as active research to make plans for the future.

Thank you. As a follow-up to that, you mentioned the ability to generate possibly up to 5% of our own energy locally. Are there any barriers or maybe challenges that are presented if an individual in the community wanted to say put solar panels on their roof because of the agreement or is that strictly up to 5% for say BMU as an entity?

That 5% is BMU as an entity. If a residential customer wanted to put rooftop solar on their house that does not go towards that 5% cap. And for reference, we do have six rooftop solar in Brookings. We haven't had one for a couple of years, but we've had six. And five of the six actually have batteries incorporated into the solar array on their roof.

Council Member Avery. Well, I don't want to confuse the issues or anything. Your presentation is very straightforward, and I understand that. We are aware of other things that are going on in our power generation area and some involve a large solar plant that's gonna cover a large portion of land in Brookings County and some major transmission lines that I know people are very interested in. Will you be monitoring that or be able to keep us kind of up to date on that? Tell us when it's time to be worried?

We can, yes. So those projects you talk about, the large, I think it's NextEra Energy is building a large solar array north of Brookings and the 765 KV transmission line on the east side of Brookings County. Brookings Utilities or MRES are not involved with either of those projects, but we're certainly staying up to date and we're staying AWARE OF THE PROJECTS TO SEE IF THEY POTENTIALLY HAVE AN IMPACT TO BROOKINGS OR THE LOCAL UTILITIES AND I I DON'T KNOW OF ANY DIRECT IMPACTS AT THE MOMENT BUT WE'LL REMAIN IN TOUCH AND IN REMAIN KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT THOSE PROJECTS COUNCIL MEMBER SPECKER

I, being, you know, attending your board meetings, I also, one of the things that I have found interesting that maybe you want to mention is the line between Aurora and Brookings. It isn't that 765. It's a much smaller one. But the benefits of having that redundancy and what that will do for BMU, having that extra substation?

Yeah. So I'll try to cover that quickly. So we're very excited about a project. So if you guys remember the derecho, the derecho, the city of Brookings was out of power for 27 hours due to the derecho that came through and knocked out the four power line. We have four feeds that serve our Brookings WAPA. So we talked about WAPA. So WAPA has a substation north of Brookings. And all of the lines feeding that substation were taken down in the derecho. and that's why we were without power for 27 hours. In my mind, the best thing that came out of that derecho is that the regional transmission planners realize that there's a vulnerability in our region transmission-wise. There's a need for additional transmission facilities. And this isn't the big 765 lines. This is just more transmission feeds into Brookings. So earlier this year, we were awarded a project that will help us with that. It'll provide an additional redundant feed into Brookings, which is huge. We've been working on it for decades behind the scenes, and we haven't gotten much momentum. But like I said, I think the duration will finally took that that concept into reality and made it a priority for us and so we received notice that we are partnering with east river electric to build a line from aurora into brookings and then wapa will build a line from aurora up to white so we will receive an additional transmission feed from white basically from white down to aurora into brookings And like I said, that will provide a lot of benefit, not only resiliency and additional reliability, but it will provide us more capacity to serve load in Brookings. Not necessarily for data centers, but just normal growth that we see as a community. This will provide us extra transmission capacity to serve Brookings as it grows and set us up for future growth. So there's more to come on that project. The timeline for that is 20. We're investing dollars right now. It's about a $13 million investment for BMU, and that'll start now, and the project won't be completed until 2030 or 2031. So it's a five-year project, but we'll continue to keep you updated as that progresses as well.

So Russ or Steve, I've just got a question. We just had Solventum. expand on what they have for facility. Bell Brands obviously is putting an addition on. How much more energy is that actually taking just individually with those two there? We're talking like another megawatt?

More than that. So so Ventum added on they're proposing once they get up to full generator full production about 4.5 megawatts Bell brands they are about a two to two and a half megawatt load right now and they're gonna add about 65% on to their existing load So again, we think that'll be about a 1.6 megawatt load Adding on due to Bell brands expansion

With that being said, we just had a data center that came before us that wanted to go up to 10. You could just take that in a comparison. That's not a large data center. That's a pretty small scale one. Just looking at what two manufacturing plants that employ quite a few employees and residents of our community versus, say, a data center that's going to suck up 10 megawatts and maybe have five employees. Heck of a lot of difference there, so I just kind of take and put that into context any other questions comments Thank you gentlemen very informative All right now item 7 proposed ordinance changes pertaining to trails sidewalks shared use pathways for electric bikes and scooters Josh Bowman, our Assistant Parks, Rec, and Forestry Director, will present this item.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Josh Bowman, Assistant Director of Parks, Recreation, and Forestry. We are looking at tonight an overview of a proposed ordinance change to Chapter 62, Article 5, as it pertains to sidewalks, trails, and shared use paths. The intent here is to establish clear expectations for our users and give the city a framework for managing these facilities. These proposed changes were developed through discussions with Parks, Recreation, and Forestry, the Bicycle Subcommittee, the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, the City Attorney, and the Brookings Police Department. There's really five primary reasons to look at these proposed changes. The first of which is safety. We want our users and pedestrians of our facilities to feel safe and comfortable when they're out there using our trails and our sidewalks, our shared use paths. Second is consistency. We really want a framework of rules that are understandable and consistent across the board for everybody. Third would be clarity. This ordinance will define the devices that are now using our trails that we're seeing so many of. Fourth is the infrastructure. The city has invested a lot of time, energy, and money into our infrastructure of our trails or sidewalks and our shared use spaces, and we want to ensure that we're setting it up to protect that infrastructure. And fifth is access. We just want to ensure that people are continuing to use our facilities for recreation and connectivity. What we're adding here, one of the biggest changes is putting definitions into the municipal code, specifically identifying bicycles, e-bikes, e-scooters, micro mobility devices, mobility assistance devices, pedestrians, and motorized vehicles. The ordinance also establishes where these rules apply, which is our sidewalks, our trails, and our shared use paths. It also touches on city owned or maintained park pathways and greenways. Where can these different users operate? The ordinance treats sidewalks differently than trails. With sidewalks, our primary focus is pedestrians, so we're looking at those pedestrians. Mobility assistance devices, micro mobility devices, and e-scooters, both of which we would expect and require to travel at a pace that's consistent with pedestrian traffic. And then when we're looking at our trails and our shared use pathways, we've got pedestrians, our bicycles, class one and class two e-bikes, mobility assistance devices, those micro mobility devices and e-scooters. There are also some restrictions that this ordinance does not, so some items that we do not allow through this ordinance. That would be our motorized vehicles such as ATVs, UTVs. Our class three e-bikes are prohibited on sidewalks, trails, and shared use paths. just due to the speeds. Reckless or unsafe operation is prohibited. Damage or defacing the infrastructure is prohibited. And then use while impaired by alcohol or controlled substances is also prohibited. This gives us a little bit of an overview of the Class 1, the Class 2, and the Class 3 e-bikes. Those Class 3 e-bikes, just due to their speed, their throttle assist that they have, the speeds that they can reach doesn't make them suitable for being on our sidewalks or trails and our shared use paths. And this is pretty consistent with what you'll see throughout the country as far as limitations on Class 1 and Class 2 being allowed in these spaces on the trails and the shared use paths and Class 3 not being allowed on there. The most important provision is the speed right-of-way and passing. This is saying that pedestrians have the right-of-way at all times, which is why we're looking at that 15 mile per hour max speed on our trails and our shared use paths, that sidewalk pace on our sidewalks for the e-scooters and the micro-mobility devices. And it's just also outlining that users should keep right, pass on the left, make an audible signal when passing, and stay in control of the devices that they're on. We did outline a specific area for e-scooters in this ordinance just because they are so much different than a bicycle and they are very popular, especially with the school age individuals right now. The e-scooters would be permitted on sidewalks, trails, and shared use paths. They would be required to maintain that pedestrian pace on sidewalks, the 15 miles an hour on trails and shared use paths. But because they're allowed on the sidewalks, we'd have some other requirements as far as a front light and a rear reflector for low light conditions and having those functional brakes available. One thing I should also mention, this ordinance does lay out that city approval would be required if any of those entities that do shared scooters or rental scooters would have to come forth for city approval before being able to operate within the city. We do also lay out some everyday responsibilities within this ordinance. Animals must be restrained and the owners must pick up after their pets. No person can obstruct a sidewalk, a trailer, a shared use path, and it still maintains that adjacent property owners to these sidewalks have to require them to remove snow and hazards per city ordinance. We would have exceptions for emergency vehicles, city personnel, contractors, that such. The enforcement implementation, depending on the situation, a violation could result in a warning citation or fine. Repeat violations may result in restricted access to some city facilities where it would be applicable or permitted by law, and the city would install signs and markings to communicate the rules and implement the ordinance. Our main objective is educate and compliance before simply just issuing citations to individuals. We want to ensure that they understand the rules before they're unintentionally violating them. This is just a sample of what we have out there right now. If you're familiar with any of our trailhead signs, that's the image on the right. We've got the rules of the trail and we have some bike safety and rules regarding roadway usage down on the bottom. Then the rules of the trail, that's just a sample of one of the signs you might see up in some various other areas within our park system or out at our Dakota Nature Park where we got some heavily used trails. But it would be items like that for signage that we would put out there. And then as far as that education piece, that's going to be a big portion of this. You know, passing the ordinance is just the first part of the process and we need to make sure the residents understand the rules in order to be able to follow them. Our intent would be to use multiple avenues to communicate these changes. We'd use the signage that I just showed you, tabling at community events, working with the schools, working to get something in utility bills, getting a one pager in that, communicate that way. Social media posts and some other various marketing efforts We also have opportunities to work with our existing community partners including safety town in the police department And we're also currently working with the Brookings backpack program with some free helmet vouchers that we're doing through the bicycle subcommittee the goal is to make this and for information accessible and understandable before the enforcement becomes an issue or has to come into play and So in summary, this ordinance is about creating a clear and predictable framework for how our sidewalks, trails, and shared use paths are used. Brookings has a growing and increasingly diverse network of pedestrian and shared use facilities, and we want to ensure our municipal code keeps up with that growth. The ordinance has been reviewed and supported by the Bicycle Subcommittee, the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, the City Attorney, and the Brookings Police Department. So we appreciate the council's consideration, and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

All right, thank you, Josh, for the presentation. Is there any public comment on this item? Please come forward, state your name and address, sir.

Kurt Cabrus, longtime Brookings resident, longtime bicyclist. I listened to the presentation. This is the first time I've seen it tonight. I've had a lot of questions about bicycle safety. I'm a big, big safety advocate overall. But I'm also on the other end of the spectrum. I'm the guy that does all the fun, crazy stuff. I think you've covered all the bullet points, Josh. You've done a great job of hitting all the safety points. Out there in the biking world, globally, one of the recommendations I respectfully consider to be added is expanding the definition of mobile devices to adaptive. The reason is, is there's so many different types of adaptive bikes for handicapped people. And I apologize, I'm not nervous, I just went through surgery and I can't breathe very well. There's two wheel, there's three wheel, four-wheel, full suspension, analog version, and powered bikes. And there's all kinds of variances of those. And I get involved in those in other communities down in Bentonville, Arkansas. Hope you might have seen that. Yes, I did. Yep. And so we've got a group that we help. And then same with in Sioux Falls, too. But adaptive is a term that's, I think, an important piece to cover. And you've got the framework already in there, so I think you guys have done a good job of encapsulating what's needed. And my experience, I don't have any data other than what I know, but most of the worst accidents and most frequent accidents happen on asphalt. Even though we do the heavy mountain bikes trails, we do the big jumps, we do the big scary jumps, mountain bikers are riding within their skill set. They know that. But the biggest hazard is those inexperienced people out on the public asphalt, sidewalks, these little scooters. And I'll share this safety example. My son was going to college up in Watertown doing a an experiment for school and he had one of these little powered scooters with suspension it was a big one it was quite expensive and it would go 55 miles an hour and his experiment was to deplete the battery so he had a scientific experiment on how long that battery would last and all this stuff and he knew all the police in Brookings and Chief Toomey up there and one of his deputies found him lying on the main street downtown happened to catch it on his camera, he caught a little pothole, Boom. Went down, knocked him out cold. Broke his eye socket, turned it about 10 degrees. It all came back. He'd had a helmet, everything, he was doing everything right, but it just got away from him. And he wasn't going terribly fast. According to his little computer, he was going 15 miles an hour. That was it. Even though that thing would go 55, and yes, I tried it. It's horrible. It's a bad idea. Whoever designed those. But I think you got the framework. And all those categories I would just consider adding adaptive because that is a growing term in the whole industry and then, but I think as I apply it. I think you've got everything covered within in those devices as well in here so great work. I don't have anything else to add, but and there's a lot of discussion in Sioux Falls about this topic. I'm in all the clubs down there and we have a lot of. A lot of pop and discussions on Saturdays after big rides. And this is a very hot topic in Sioux Falls. And it's because they have large, wide bike paths. Mothers with baby strollers and people on these electric dirt bikes and the scooters. Safety is the big topic down there, too. So I think you guys covered it all. So that's all I have to add. Thank you for your time.

Thanks. Thank you, Kurt.

Council member Avery. I was reading this now. The e-scooters, do I read that to say that they're not allowed on the street then? They're on the sidewalk.

Yes, they would be allowed like on the sides of the roads. And the chief might be able to answer this a little bit better as far as what they enforce. But in our bike lanes and stuff, they would still be allowed.

I want to see that pedestrian that can go 15 miles an hour though. I think I walk at a fairly good pace. I walk about four miles an hour.

And that's why we would like to see on the sidewalks that everybody maintains a pedestrian pace or that flow with pedestrian traffic.

And I would, you know, see quite a, not so many, and I have noticed a couple times, twice, that a young person on a scooter would come up behind me and say, you know, excuse me, I'm coming on your left, you know, and who buy and say thank you. That's very rare, but somebody must have coached them a little bit. That's good. I don't worry too much about getting seriously hurt by one of them, but I would be more worried about them getting seriously hurt when they're in the street. To drive an automobile, you have to be a certain age, you have to have training, but we'll send nine-year-olds out on the street in a scooter. It just seems like it's They just don't fit in our transportation system very well. I don't know what we do about that unless you just outlaw them entirely. I don't know. I've seen them more and more just going right down the middle of the street or kind of a combination. Being on the sidewalk and then coming into the street. There's a lot going on there. One other question too. I was thinking of John back here in the background. He hasn't got involved yet. The one intersection that I see is really troublesome and I walk there about every day is when you go on 20th Street to Maderi and you have the walking path crosses the street and then further ahead, 20 feet or so, you have the stop sign. So it just seems like it's out of sync there. And I've many times had people stop for me when I'm going to cross, and they wave you across. But you've got to watch the guy from the other side, because he's trying to get you. It just seems like that one is a really difficult one for bicyclists and walkers. But I haven't got hit yet.

Well, I know we've had some discussions on that intersection. John would probably be better to talk about that one. But on the e-scooters on the streets, I would like to address that quick. We had actually extensive discussions on that when we were deciding whether or not to allow them on the sidewalks. And part of that was you see a lot of those younger 9, 10, 11, 12-year-olds driving those around. I live down on the south end of town, and they're buzzing all over the nature park with their fishing poles and their backpacks on the back, and they're going out there fishing. And one thing we looked at with wanting to keep those ones on the sidewalk at those slower paces is because we were afraid we would be pushing them out into the roadway, and with so many young individuals on them, we didn't feel comfortable doing that. So that was one of the reasons we wanted to keep those e-scooters on the sidewalks, the trails, and the shared use paths in general.

No, I think it's better to have them on the sidewalk and the walking path than the streets. Yep, yep, absolutely. All right, Council Member Tilton-Byrne.

Thank you, Mayor. First, Josh, I just want to say thank you for the presentation and for all the work that's been put into this by you and others on staff to craft this ordinance for us. I do have several questions, so bear with me here. The first question I have, you reference that pedestrians still have the right-of-way. In this ordinance, in these scenarios, would e-bikes at any level and the e-scooters be considered pedestrians?

No. Our pedestrians that you'd be thinking of would be anybody on foot. It would be considered a pedestrian and would take the right of way over any other device.

So would it be true then that individuals that are on wheels would have to kind of abide by traffic laws, stop at stop signs, that sort of thing? I'm just thinking about scenarios where someone on one of these scooters or bikes or even just a regular bike might kind of approach an intersection. There have been instances even somewhat recently where individuals are The vehicle maybe has right of way based on traffic lights, but the individual may pass into the traffic. So in those instances, who would have the right of way?

yes so uh i see you see that a lot with the individuals on the bikes and stuff that will just kind of roll through a stop or just go right through um but yes they would still have to follow the traffic laws especially if they're out in the roadways and in some instances on our trail system you'll see that we do have stop signs or yield signs in some key locations i'll just give a for instances if you're traveling along our trail system on 22nd avenue south and you get through our golf course where we have a couple of crossings to get into our clubhouse driveway or into our maintenance shop. We have some signs up or we have some paintings on the ground. So some key places like that, we do have those in effect and they should be utilizing those just like it's posted.

Absolutely, well, I'm very supportive of that. I have certainly been in scenarios myself where I'm driving in my vehicle and sometimes the scooters, the e-bikes, especially for instances when they're on the sidewalk, it can be sometimes very difficult to see them approaching until they're right at the intersection. And so I think requiring them to follow those traffic safety laws is probably the right way to go. As you do your education and outreach on this, I would definitely encourage you to really stress that point, that if you are on wheels, you have to abide by those laws because I don't think that that's a universal understanding amongst all bike riders, scooter users, or anyone that uses those devices. In the ordinance, you also reference pedestrian pace. Obviously, that's less than 15 miles per hour, but is there a defined range of what pedestrian pace is?

There's not really a defined range of that pace. I think that one, when it comes to police enforcement, would be more based on judgment, and that's where it's gonna get more into. We're hoping not to have to do those citations. I'm sure Chief Drake would rather do more education than citations and have his team do that. But really, it would be those judgment calls based on that. And some of those are fairly apparent when you see somebody cruising down a sidewalk, especially you get some of those areas I'm thinking just down 3rd Street here to the east of Medary. You get some of those hills coming up to the four-way stop, and some of those bikes really get cruising coming from about the Hillcrest area down towards 3rd Street. But yeah, I really think it would just be a judgment call on some of that.

Follow-up question to that, and maybe this is for Chief Drake. Can a speedometer clock a scooter or a bike? I don't know how that works.

That's a great question, ma'am.

As Josh alluded to, when it talks about pedestrian speed on these things, generally speaking, those ranges are three to five miles an hour by pace. Then you would talk about joggers though, because we haven't touched on that. Joggers can jog a little faster, maybe up to seven, depending. But as Josh indicated, it's a Salinas site. So when a police officer sees that person, anything that your judgment call would be like, that's faster than a pedestrian because it's just by the speed. Or if you see people walking, then that would be something where we would stop and educate and make sure that they understand it. Our radar guns can only pick up certain speeds. It wouldn't go that low depending. And it also takes about the reflectiveness of it. I can go into the whole radar and how it works if you're able on the cosine angle if you want. But that's like 30 years ago in my career. I might be dating myself. But yeah, it would be more of a visual estimate and what we see on every day of a pedestrian walking on the sidewalk.

Sure. This maybe will date me or show that I am not a scooter user or e-bike user, but do they have typically speedometers on them so that the rider can be aware of whether they're going 15 miles an hour or less?

Some of the class one and class twos can, but you're gonna see those on those class three e-bikes.

I'm wondering if, in the consideration of this ordinance, if there was any thought around possibly having a required or suggested age at which e-bikes, e-scooters, cannons should be used on the roadway, or whether or not helmets should be used, especially knowing that there are scenarios where people can be drastically injured.

So not so much on the ages for the e-bikes, but we did talk extensively on the helmet usage and ages and whether we look at requirements for helmets, whether the age requirements would be like 16 and under, 14 and under, under 18. With a Class III e-bike, there is some requirements of that. That's just state law. But it was kind of decided between the Park and Recreation Advisory Board and the Bicycle Subcommittee that they just weren't ready to commit to requiring the use of those helmets. And that's when we started those discussions. That's when we ended up purchasing about 380 helmets. We got them at a very good cost. And then we developed a voucher system so that we could get those helmets to individuals that do need them, so we could at least encourage individuals to be wearing those helmets. We partnered with the PD during Safety Town, and we got helmets to them. I think they do keep some in their cruisers as well, and they were able to get helmets to those individuals, at least through the Safety Town classes that were in need of those.

I'm glad to hear that it was considered. I don't know what the rest of the council's opinion is on this, but as a mom to young kids, I would certainly entertain a requirement for helmets for children under a certain age because sometimes that's not even just the rider's safety awareness. Sometimes that's a driver's safety awareness, another rider's safety awareness around you that can impact that chance of injury. The mom and me kind of wants everybody to be wearing helmets when they're on wheels So thank you very much for answering all of my questions Just to add on Oh councilmember during

Thank you, Mayor. Okay, so I think a lot of my questions have been answered, so I think you just have two for me. Thank you for this presentation. One of them was in reference to Councilmember Avery's comments around kind of distracted driving or driving safety, I was wondering if a component of the education that you're providing to bicyclists and the users of these other equipment Is there education focused towards drivers as well in our local driver's ed program or the school district of our new drivers or new residents who are driving in through our town too?

I think that's a great point. With this ordinance, we've been really focused on the users, the individuals that are using these devices, but I think that is a great avenue to explore as well as increasing that to the drivers.

Sure. That's great to hear. And then the second was in reference to the public comment that we received tonight. I was wondering if there was any consideration or discussion around the language in this ordinance of that mobile to adaptive language and kind of what the conversations were around that.

There wasn't and before this night I'm actually really glad that was brought up because that is something that we will move forward and discuss getting added into here because I think that's a very important part especially here and that's getting to be more popular and more up and coming and becoming in more discussions is making sure that we have verbiage in there for that adaptive those adaptive devices.

Perfect thank you I'm glad to hear that because I want to make sure that our our language and our ordinances are the most accessible that they should be. I think those are both of my questions thank you so much.

Any other comments, questions? I'd throw one out there. I have an employee that's seriously looking at getting a unicycle and varying in speeds, and he's looking at one that can go 75 miles an hour. I was just like, you've got to be kidding me. But he lives in Volga, and he's looking forward to passing somebody on Highway 14 on the way to Brookings some morning. I can't imagine. That's scary. Right right say I'm coming Okay, thank you very much Josh. Thank you guys did a great job And now we move on to Future agenda items does anybody on console have anything that they would like to have discussed in the future All right our next meeting is on September 22nd I've been warned that it might be a marathon meeting We all have budget workshop number two CIP and consolidated fee schedule The budget amendment number seven Looking at second readings. We have three of them the property tax levy the budget amendment number six and the levying assessment and then revising the special assessment policy also, and then we also will have the city progress report and

There's also a flock presentation. Yes. Yes. It's not on this list here. Key items as well.

Police Chief Drake will be here next week to give us a full update on flock cameras. Any other comments, questions? Entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved. Second.

Those in favor to adjourn, say aye.

Aye.