City Council - Regular Meeting

Is John at home?

He's right there.

I know, but... I thought you were going to start talking about it. It doesn't look like it's home, but of course it is.

Oh, it's a background. Oh, okay. I was going to say, I wish you luck. I had the same morning. That's my man, Dave. Good night.

I think we can be done in 45 minutes. I'm retired.

I don't ever talk to anybody. Why?

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Welcome to the August 3rd, 2026 regular scheduled city council meeting is now called to order. Would you all rise and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right, Shelly, do you want to do the roll call? Maggie Curran is here. John Feiger.

Here.

Mark Carr.

Here.

Ross Worth.

Here.

And again. Here. All right, that takes us to our first public participation. If you'd like to talk to the council, please come up. We'd love to hear this from you. Be sure to sign with your name and your address, and you have five minutes.

No tankers, ma'am.

All right, that takes us to our consent agenda. Item A, motion to approve the minutes of the July 20, 2026 regular session.

I will entertain a motion to pass the consent agenda.

So moved. Second.

Second. Any discussion? All right, all those in favor of passing the consent agenda, say aye.

Aye.

All opposed? Aye. Passes by favor, zero votes.

Next, we go to appointments. Shelly. For the Board of Adjustment, we have an application from Tom Hamlet. Um, Arch Hereford's term on Board of Adjustment is expiring, and Mr. Hereford is going to retire from the board. The Board of Adjustment met on July 13th, and they do recommend the appointment of Tom Hamlet to the Board of Adjustment.

Any discussion?

He's a good man.

Yep. All right, I'll keep you in the point. I'm Mayor Becky Curtis, hereby appoint Tom Hamlet to the Board of Adjustment. All in favor, say aye.

All right.

All opposed? Aye. Passes? Welcome aboard, Tom.

Five in favor, zero opposed. Next, we have Planning and Zoning Commission. Stan Hendricks' term is expiring and he is retiring from the board. And Paul Turner is moving outside the city limits. So we do have applications for Larry Workman and Braxton Bell. Planning and Zoning met on July 13th as well and recommend those appointments.

Another discussion? COMMENTS?

ALL RIGHT.

I, MAYOR MICKIE CURTIS, HEREBY APPLY LARRY WORKMAN AND BRAXEN BELL TO THE PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION. ALL IN FAVOR, SAY AYE. AYE. ALL OPPOSED? OKAY. WELCOME ABOARD. AYE. ALL IN FAVOR. ALL RIGHT. THAT TAKES US TO OUR CITY MANAGER'S REPORT.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. JUST A FEW ITEMS. I KNOW WE HAVE A LONG EVENING. GENWIC UPDATE, CHARLIE CONTINUES TO HAVE A FEW DAY PEACE EVENING. We are making good progress on the easements. I know Matthias is recording the ones that we're digitally doing. I think we have two parties left to sign. So those are all at the point of being prepared. So we're getting to the end of that. Let's see, the sewer project today, they were pouring for the tie-in to the main line. The road grading, all that work's been done. They're just putting the remaining finish up work, the rock and the grading and seeding. So I anticipate they are monthly meetings tomorrow or Wednesday, and they should be wrapping it up here in a week or two. So that project should be completed. City Hall, we've got the bid opening this Thursday at 2 p.m. to the external facades. The bid closes at 2 and we have the bid opening at 2 or 1. At 2, not 2 or 1. They need to begin by 2 and then we'll open it after the time passes. Public Works and inspections have staff come up and look at the external facades coatings on the foundation. I talked about that in the report, but they do recommend us coating and reinstalling the foundation. The rotary luncheon was last week. They talked about the rotary meeting. And then the floodplain process in Clinton County is underway. who's the WSP USA Incorporated guy that works with the state of Missouri emergency management floodplain engineers. They did a presentation for county commissioners and associated cities. They are taking active comments on their website. So if you go to the floodplain, click on your address, click on the city, you're able to put comments in there. They do ask that you do make comments, put your name and contact information. Spencer and I went to that, it was pretty decent training. I think that's all I have. The other things are executive session.

Any questions or comments?

Just clarify that the bidding closes, so the bids are in.

They need to be submitted before Thursday at 2 p.m. And then after that, what happens? We'll do a public bid opening with those received and review them.

Oh, okay. Just reviewing the bids then.

And then around the 17th, we plan to bring your recommendation. Gotcha.

Okay. That takes us to unfinished business, our audit presentation.

Good evening. I'm the mayor of the City of Castle. My name is Tim Fitzgerald. I'm a resident.

an audit manager during the audit process. The audit for the year ended September 3rd, 2025. So I think each of you should have three reports as well as a PowerPoint presentation. So I'm going to briefly go through that PowerPoint presentation. The three reports that I've mentioned, there's the basic science of states, which really includes all the financial activities for all the city's funds. That's the fund financial statements, and then we also convert the statements to what we call government-wide financials, and that's government wide financials on a full accrual basis. The difference between the fund statements and the and the full accrual was just there's some conversion adjustments we made. Then the second report is a single audit. The city was required to have a single audit performed this year because the expenditures, total expenditures of federal awards exceeded the threshold amount of a million dollars, which, by the way, that threshold amount increased from $750,000 to a million dollars for this fiscal year. So you have this huge project going on at the airport, so there was approximately more than $5 million of federal expenditures during the fiscal year. And then the third report is our requirement communications and management letter, and I'll go through that here in a little bit. When I was preparing for this meeting, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I identified a couple of typographical errors. and so i thought i had to go over those with with carmen and with shelly and we're going to revise revise the financial statements the error occurred on pages 11 and 12. there's a couple numbers that don't articulate back and forth on the schedules and they really they should And then there's some issues with some of the page numbers. So we're in the process of making those corrections. I think we're going to have to type a paragraph later on the page. Look at page 11. The total net position. for the governmental activities. That amounts to carry over to page 11 as a total net position, but there was, as you can see, there's an amount of difference. So there was a typograph layer that we found out about back in this morning, which I want to make a comparison to this. We didn't identify that earlier, but we will get it corrected. The scope of our audits was we performed the audit of the city's basic financial statements, which is the main report. And then again, we had to perform an audit of the city's compliance over the expenditures of federal awards, which is the basic audit report. Our responsibility as auditors are really conduct our audit in accordance with generally accepted accounting standards, government audit standards, and the uniform guidance related to federal grant programs. Our other responsibility is to plan and perform our audits to obtain reasonable, but not absolute, assurance that the basic financial statements are free of material misstatement. and finally we report on control controls or financial reporting compliance laws and regulations and the compliance requirements for the major grant program which again was the uh the major grant program is the airport grant The auditing standards boards of the AICPA recommends that we communicate the following matters to the governing board. As far as legal acts, none came to our attention as a result of performing our auditing procedures. There were no changes in significant accounting policies during 2025. There was a new Gatsby statement that was implemented in 2025, but it has to do with compensated absences and the way we go about calculating that. But it didn't have a material impact on financial statements. We had no difficulties or disagreements with management, or at least on the render of. And we had full access to the books and The financial compliance audit really addresses three basic questions. Are the financial statements free of material misstatement? And in our auditor's opinion, we have issued an unmodified opinion, which is a clean opinion that states that the basic financial statements are fairly presented in all material respects. The second question is, are internal controls over financial reporting adequately designed and operated effectively? And we recommend that in our management letter found in the management review the year-end closing procedures to improve internal controls over financial reporting. and this is a routine finding from the prior year however we didn't notice some notable improvements during the year and basically what that has to do with the audit adjustments that we proposed during the audits and so there was a significant improvement during the year from 24 compared compared 24 to 25 so uh i think carmen's We're going to be trying to lessen the number of adjustments we have to make year to year. And the third question is, does the city of Cameron, Missouri comply in all material respects with the finance related laws and regulations and the grant requirements? We know that no compliance with the finance related laws and regulations that govern the city's operations. And there were no claims of compliance requirements over the city's major federal grant program. In our management letter comments, again, we have a comment regarding the financial reporting, which has to do with the adjustments we have to make during the audit. But again, we... notice notable improvements in that area and then there's some future accounting pronouncements that the city just needs to be aware of that may affect the financial statements in the future and then again the prior year we did have the finding again on the financial reporting but there has been a lot of improvement I just wanted to put a shout out to Carmen, Jim, Shelley, and others, city personnel, who make our audit process really smooth. So we appreciate the opportunity to serve as the audit for the city of Cameron, Missouri. So that's my synopsis of the audit. I'd be happy to entertain any questions. Thank you. Good job, guys.

working with that firm and they are under contract for another year.

No news is good news.

Who do we want? The more unfinished business, our second and final reading of Bill 2026-15 for our second and final reading.

Bill 2026-15, an ordinance extending the imposition of the city sales tax for capital improvements and calling an election on such tax to be held on November 3rd, 2026.

I will entertain a motion to pass Bill 2026-15 on the second and final reading by roll call.

So moved.

Second. Discussion? I do think there was some misunderstanding. I don't ever get on Facebook very often, but I just happened to read by it and people are thinking this is a new tax.

Sure it is. Because if it goes off, now we have to put it back on.

Right, that's why we're doing this now, so it doesn't go off.

So this does sunset from the, it was originally set up in 1995 and started in 1996. subsequently passed to go until January 28th. It is unrestricted as far as water sewer infrastructure. So you can kind of use it for any of those purposes in there. This is not asking for a new tax per se because it's already being collected. But if it sunsets and is not collected, the voters can always vote and do what the voters do. But currently we're estimating for this budget that 38 cents would collect roughly $900,000 this year. And if they don't have that tax, we have significant loans and debt structure that goes all the way out to like 2046. Those water sewer infrastructure projects would be paid for through the users on the system, not just people with general sales tax obligations that come and visit, pay for gas, pay for goods. So the city would have to figure out how to come up with $900,000 if it does, not until 2028, It goes out in January 28th, January 1st. So it's kind of a misnomer. We are asking the voters to extend that to January of 2038. That's another 10 year extension. And I've been in lots of communities that you need to do sewer plants, you need to do major infrastructure. We have a lot of tourism and people that shop locally. you know, hey, you're coming to shop in the local city with the local tax and you help pay for our sewer plant or infrastructure. The good thing for the voters is you can elect to do that rather than say, hey, let's just increase our rates $900,000 in these utilities to pay for the debt. So really, you know, I would say I live here. I'm a user. I'm an assistant payer as well. It's a good thing to advocate to voters in the jurisdiction to support the tax, otherwise we have to come up with another way to create the funding mechanisms we're already supporting. And the water sewer issues in the future, no community is free from all of the DNR mandates and the future coppery fluids. Things that they're gonna put on the water sewer plants that are gonna be tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in the future. And so the plan you have today, even if it's built today brand new, It's not going to meet the new requirements by 10, 15 years from now. And either you go systemic with bigger users and you're paying for consumption, or you have to build these systems. And it's kind of a never-ending process. But I think asking our voters to extend this is kind of prudent to us where we sit financially with our obligations. It's going to help in the future with issues that we have coming before us. So I don't know if that helps to bring that. If you want more detail. You know, people who go, you know, I can think of like Rifle, Colorado. I used to shop there. I didn't live there. And every time I shopped there, I paid for their sewer plant, their libraries, all of their great things that Rifle had. I didn't live there, but I paid a tax and I chose to shop there. Those people that live there benefit in that these taxes help pay for their systems and their projects locally.

Yeah, I'll focus over it. That's pretty high as it is. There's two ways to take care of this. One, decrease.

and quit looking at future. Every time we turn around, we want to set up a new bond or whatever and have long-term expenditures, or B, find other revenue sources. And there are other revenue sources, and there are ways to cut spending. So, yeah, it is a continuation of a tax, which essentially is a new tax. And the folks of Cameron have, for the longest time, have had to deal with very high taxes. So the majority, I don't know what the numbers specifically are from outside of Cameron, but I'd say that a lot of folks in Cameron now leave Cameron not to pay the taxes. So just throwing it out.

And like you said, those people that are leaving Cameron and shopping, they're paying for that city's infrastructure. So more power to them to support another community.

It's just cheaper. I mean, people have to go to where they can get their money to stretch as far as possible.

I like my sewer system.

No, any, actually, anybody that goes to any place in any county, you know, Liberty, you're doing a CID tax on that. So there is up to 9-10% in those.

Well, if you go to Jamesport, it's like 2.5-3%.

Oh, yeah, that's probably, yeah.

I'm just saying, there's places out there where people are finding that are less expensive. So, just throwing it out. That's what we're competing with. But we can vote.

Any other comments? All right, shall we? John Feiger?

No.

Mark Carr?

Yes.

Ross Worth? No. Danny Gantz? Yes. Becky Curtis?

Yes.

The ayes have it.

not throwing any stuff out there all right now we're up to our public hearing fiscal year 2027 our annual budget and just remind that we do enter and exit a public hearing

Mark Hart. Yes. Ross Worth. Yes. Penny Gans. Yes. Becky Curtis. Yes. John Feigers.

Yes.

Alright, we're in public hearing.

Alright. So the budget has been disseminated and posted at the public hearing. You know, obviously staff Carmen and I and all of the staff meet and go through our proposals and all of the budgets and do all of the pre-budget work to get the capital improvement, to get the annual allocations, to look at all of their line items. And then we bring forth the preliminary budget. We did the budget kickoff meeting this year on June 29th. And then the subsequent budget workshop on July 14th. Staff presented a proposed budget request. They detailed each department. departments. It has every fund. Um at the back it has all of your capital improvement asks. Um at the very back it has all your long term obligations and your debts. Um so it has all of your debt in this with your certificates of participation, capital equipment lease. Um the current city obligation for long term is sits at 25.8 million dollars. Um some of those things sunset this There are some other ones that end as soon as 2023 ended. So some of these were like loaders, dump trucks. They're on our list because their final payments have gone through. They're being taken out. But some of these are long-term, like the Somerville complex, swimming pool. Those are each about 5.9 million. They sunset 2046. The sewer water system, treatment plants. I mean, it talks a little bit about that, you know, you build a new sewer plant and by the time you get it paid off, you already have to build a new one and change it. And so getting to our budget, the capital's in there, the utility rate increases we talked about at the last meeting slightly, those are recommended by HDR. They do an engineering study to make sure you have adequate reserves. Electric Reserve Fund was one of the big transfers this year. They're transferring within their own reserves to pay for a lot of the equipment they need, transformers, wire, SCADA meters. We have 100 meters not operating now. When they don't register the meter, they don't charge for that service. So when you have 100 meters and somebody's not paying for any service, they're paying the base fee. That's not efficient, so we definitely want to replace those things and start incurring those fees from those people to help pay some of these operating expenses. We do have the vehicles. There's a financial software. It's not just financial. It's records management. It's operating software. There's a 2.5% COLA with a one-step merit increase for employee retention. I'm just kind of going through the background on your overview, because if the public didn't print it out or have access to get that online, we do have some vehicles, code enforcement, an ample controller is broken into separate line items this year for better quality control. The rec park is going to look at doing the parking lot on a traditional 225 spots, I think it is, 248, somewhere there. I don't know. Public Works, a three-phase, three-year payments for a dump truck. Some of these equipment things we order now, it won't be ready for two years. It's like a fire truck. So the draft budget is here for presenting to the public. It's where they have opportunity to ask questions, engage with the council. The staff has recommended, I want to applaud Carmen and the staff. I've been through this with numerous types of cities, counties for the last 27 years. And this is probably one of the easier ones. I mean, most of the staff didn't ask for eccentric big things and a lot of staffing. And so when it starts out with only asking for essentials and things that you really truly need, it makes the process a lot easier to whittle down and present to you the product. But that doesn't mean it's always done. You know, you get to the hearings, if there's something you missed or something that you think is more compelling, where obviously we work for you. This is your team. So that would be my to-do if you have questions. All of the department heads are available. And it is the public opportunity.

And it is a public hearing, so if anybody in the public is here tonight and would like to speak about it, I do have a sign-in sheet if you want to make any comments or ask any questions.

I just have one question. Is there a budget line item for the second phase of the police if we go to pay out vacation that cannot be used due to staff shortages?

We're going to bring that hopefully to you at the next meeting, our layout and everything for the base.

Is it, are there funds budgeted for that?

Yeah, we can do it. We can take care of that.

And then normally we would do a budget adjustment. Right. That would, that would be helpful.

Okay, I gotta go over.

What happened to your leg?

Okay, my name is Sue Mannion, and I was talking about money, and that's the budget, and there was an issue last week with some information that was put out on Facebook about money, and it was on the truck stop, and so immediately I was just infuriated because I have It was misinformation in that it said the city would lease them back to the truck stop. They were funding it. Basically, they were funding it, leasing it back, and they paid them back. Knowing that we're struggling for money all the time. And we hear that at every meeting. Money, money, money. I did find out we're spending $500,000 on the sewer and water. I'm not sure why I get economic development as much as anybody in this room. If we don't have the money, and if you're depending on those townspeople to keep taxing and taxing and raising and raising, without the townspeople, you have no position here at all. So I was infuriated when I found out we're spending that much money to get a truck stop. How many truck stops have been here? Now, is it sour grapes that I'm trying to cross the road? Maybe a little bit of ice. I don't think so. Because I've supported loves across the highway. I support this, although it's just interfering with my little piece of heaven out there. I do not support continually spending money that we do not have, according to everybody, to bring economic development, which is a private, Let the free market work. Yes, you can give them stuff. You can make it easier for them. You can make it not so hard. And I do know this for a fact just from local dealing with the city. But to spend that kind of money and then tell me that you're going to raise utilities. Tell me you're going to raise this. Tell me you want to tax for this. And you know it. You're me. All of us are the same. You come out of this room, you're no different. We're taxed to death. And we want our departments to run. But we want our streets fixed first. I'm not going to say we. I want our streets fixed first. I want our infrastructure fixed. I don't care that they've got a nice new sewer thing going out there. I want our sewers fixed here. And if we're going to spend the money, spend it here and then let the people come. But until you're putting this big It's like putting a ribbon on a piece here. Just be blunt about this. Am I upset about it? I am upset about it. Because I did economic development. There's nobody that can argue with me or even probably have a conversation with me in this room about economic development. And I do understand it, and it's a chance. And it's a big chance. Truck stops are in today, 10 years they may be out. 10 years you may not see a truck go down the highway. 15 years you may not see it but they'll have to revamp the whole thing because this is how fast technology changes so i'm just i'm telling you put the tax on there let people decide that's not an issue i have i have an issue that we keep doing this we try to keep trying to do this economic development and we don't have a history of doing very good at it you guys and so until we get the city hall fixed I will support the city in whatever they want until I don't. And right now I don't. On this one issue. I think that this truck stop is just an example about how it's not a bad thing. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But if they can do it, they can do it. If they can't, they can't. And that's the free market. That's how it works. So that's all I've got to say is that we need to stop spending money on these big companies wanting to come in here or The idea that they're going to make us so much money, they can't guarantee that. You can't guarantee that. We said, oh, we're going to make this much money on sales tax. You can't guarantee that at all. I don't even care about the 1%. Don't go there. That's not the issue. The issue is we spent a half a million dollars, and I know it to be a fact. I did my own research on this. And then you want to raise rates. I don't want to do that. But I don't have a choice. It's up to you guys. And this falls on you. And remember that. You walk out of here, you're the same as everybody else. You pay the same bills. You pay the same taxes. You pay everything the same. So anyway, that's all I got.

That was really good, Sue. You had four seconds left.

No, I didn't.

I can't.

Nobody else?

Not during a budget public hearing.

Which is kind of on focus because it's spending money that, it's where we're spending the money. So I'm just looking through some emails that are going on in my internal company right now and I just wonder if Citi's ever doing anything like this.

It's more of a question rather than a

commentary like Sue. We're actually doing a big capital project right now and we're trying to determine whether we spend cash on that project or go out and finance the project. And my CFO tells me that we have financed the project we have to do what's called the capital investment analysis, or some banks call it the capital expenditure, called CAPEX for short, where we prepare an executive summary of the required investment, strategic rationale, revenue forecast, expense forecast, EBITDA impact, cash flow projection, payback period, ROI, net present value, sensitivity analysis, key risk, and recommendation. So to Sue's point about if we're spending a half a million dollars on sewer or whatever, And as I understand it, we bond this out and then pay back the bond. That's correct. Or maybe not. Maybe we just pay cash for it out of reserves. If we pay cash for these things, which is another option we have, our CFO wants to see Payback periods, ROI projections, discounted cash flow, net present value, a lot of the same things. I'm just scrolling through, and we have to do what's called scenario model. So we spend $500,000. At what point in the project or at what point in our future do we... get that $500,000 back? And then at what point in the future have we made $500,001 per profit? So I'm just, that's my question. Do we do either of those types of analyses before, before we make these decisions to spend that money? Because if we have the cash, great. But to Sue's point, we're doing a lot of great increases and things like that. But if we bond it, finance it in some way, my question is, do we do that other type of analysis with the bond company or whoever holds the bonds for the bond period? If you don't have to answer it now, I'd love to hear from somebody that's involved in that, but those are my questions.

The city, when we go to newer projects, We do have a routine where we contact our municipal financial advisor, which is currently D.A. Davidson right now, and then Charlie Sidnik, and is it Steve Gale? We're able to rely on that group and then also our utility engineers that sets our rate structures to make sure we have the coverage and how these bond issuances dovetail for their final payout. So there is analysis done.

Additionally, if it's a COP, there is a public offering statement that is prepared by bond council and our municipal financial advisor. And then it is also circulated to some banking institutions. And then it is also reviewed again by each and every entity that is determining to purchase the COPs.

And then during this process of a bond issuance, we also do a standard and course rating review where they look at all of our information and history in order to rate us. And that goes another step into our evaluation process.

So do those tell us, like, in the year 20, just pick a number, 2040, we'll have our $500,000 back. And at that point, we'll be net profitable in the $500,000 investment. Because I know that it relies on sales tax to recoup the investment.

So cities, specifically in accounting, do not operate on profitability. Anytime a city makes a profit, that means that the public will get the money. So city analysis does not typically concern profitability. concerns coverage. Because once coverage is met, then any amount above that can go towards any other project that that sales tax can fund. So there's never a profitability construction or interpretation for municipalities. It is coverage of debt service ratio, and then all other funds above the debt service ratio are spent.

Yeah, not the same thing, though, in Beagle Jargon.

Yes, it could be, but yeah. So it is done, and it's done by five different entities and every banking institution that seems to seek the public offering statement.

So then at some point the city knows whether or not they've made money on their investments or lost money on these investments.

Honestly, we're a service organization, so everything we do is based on providing service. Even the wealthiest communities in the United States don't meet most of their needs. stormwater, the infrastructure, the vehicles. You tailor your organization and your service to your service delivery model. So, like, we don't have budget and, you know, a lot of communities that hit hard times, first things to go, what do schools cut? They cut band, they cut recreation and sports. They don't cut the curriculum of the school hardcore, you know, education. We might not do, I mean, the community here has been very proactive about sports complex, the swimming pools back. Those are large investments for a community of this size with large implications. But then you have 10 years of leadership and different councils and different boards that made determinations for these councils that have really kind of tied our hands to moving forward with those obligations. But that doesn't undo those sewer requirements and streets. They went several years with minimal street improvement budgets, and it kind of shows, right? And to get that back, it's going to take a large investment and effort to get that changed. Currently, there's three huge projects, right? You've got Harris Street, Godfrey Street. There was another street project. That's not just the road. That's the stormwater through town. to get those big corridors evacuated out so it leaves our municipality. If it discharges it somewhere downstream, like no one wants to be downstream taking everybody else's water. You're dealing with that around the state really bad this year. But yeah, we really, our job isn't to be like in a personal income thing where I'm a business owner where I'm like, I have to make the profit or I'm not in business. We provide service. and we try to extend every dollar we have to the best capacity usable, and you're never gonna have enough to meet all the needs for the municipality. And that translates to tax rates. Everybody, you know, if you're accustomed to a certain threshold and certain rates, it's not easy to live somewhere that goes up 30%, right? But then you got people that come from elsewhere, you got communities around us, comparatively, we said pretty good, in some areas. And, you know, I lived out of state. I came here and the electric rates are three times cheaper here than where I did previously. And I'm like, wow, it's so cheap. People here are like, our electric bill is expensive. It's all very relative to the types of infrastructure and cost. You live, you know, live near a coal plant.

And near Wyoming, and that was pretty shady. So I appreciate the legal and the academic side of it. You know, from a philosophical standpoint, as taxpayers, you know, we swallow the tax increases or the utility rate increases. Just for your benefit, it would help if we said, hey, we think we'll generate $100,000 a year of tax revenue for So in five years, taxpayers, your investment is break even, and from there, we're net, and we can build more streets and do more things. That's one thing. Secondly, to Sue's point, if we're talking about economic development, I mean, I guess we're kind of trying, if we're a service break even industry, okay, or are we an economic development engine that wants to build and make money and have, you know, those are kind of, Those are different sides of the same coin, it seems like. So there's a little bit of philosophy going on.

Yes, we do do that with incentives. I'm just pulling up the spreadsheet that was presented to the council and made publicly available.

So every expenditure line item in our budget has the revenue source. And it shows here, you know, by state laws, every state requires you to not exceed your budget authority by not spending more than you take in unless it's coming out of a reserve or some kind of funding mechanism. Like some of the USDA rural water, some of these projects and federal monies, interest rates could be as low as 1.5%. It's not like your mortgage rate interest rates were 6%, 7%, 8%. It still doesn't help if you have a large amount of money at any interest because you're not just paying off the principal. But a lot of the instruments that municipalities use are tied to our credit rating. So as we get more debt obligation, we go from like a triple A rating down to two. If you're a single, your rates are not as good. And that affects how we pay for things, how we do things.

so for ta just from the general and transportation sales taxes the city will make five hundred thousand dollars by the beginning of year three that that's exactly the type of thing but but what the but what was provided to the city for the normal projected sales of a travel america would mean that based on just the general transportation fund, the city will begin receiving $130,000 a year from year one.

That's exactly what I'm asking. If there was that type of analysis done, and that's helpful because that's what none of us ever hear. All we ever see is $500,000 go out the door, and we spend all this money, but we don't know whether it comes back and benefits the city.

Because they bought that, and there was not...

I MEAN, YOU CAN RESERVE MONEY. OUR INTENT WITH OUR DEPARTMENTS IS WE DON'T JUST HAVE, OH, WE HAVE X AMOUNT OF DOLLARS, WE'RE GOING TO SPEND EVERY CENT. PROJECTS ESTIMATES ARE USUALLY A LITTLE HIGH, RIGHT? OH, I'M GOING TO BUY A GREATER, $175,000, AND IT COSTS $248,000. WE TRY TO GET BUDGET NEUTRAL. WE TRY TO, WHEN YOU DO ESTIMATES, IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT THAT THE COMMUNITY AND THE COUNCIL UNDERSTANDS THESE ARE BUDGET PROJECTIONS. 2003, THE HOUSING INDUSTRY AT 2008, I was in a big county in 2003. It's not a big deal to lose 13% if your budget's only $20 million, but if you're in a county with a $2 billion budget, 13%, like during the Atlanta Olympics, they laid off 2,800 employees because of the budget crisis, because the revenues didn't come in. And that's where we really have to stay attuned to, hey, things are changing. I was in Alaska during COVID. When you have 100 cruise ships a month come into your small community and got taxed and hit severance and this and that, and all of a sudden it's zero for two years, that's a problem. And we don't know, you know, is there going to be a national issue again with gas and shipping? And, you know, right after COVID, a lot of our projects had huge escalation costs on them. plywood and construction and fuel. And that translates into everything we do. And none of that's really ratcheted back to where it was pre-COVID. So a lot of our budgets are strained. It's not a perfect science, but I think it's important. All of our department heads have to watch their budgets. They don't have budget authority that go exceed those within the line item. They have to manage that. They have to come to Carmen and myself to get adjustments into council to get budget authority. Some of these projects we're doing like City Hall. There's a lot of checks and balances, but I think what's important to understand is we have a lot of needs and a lot of things that need to be done.

and not enough revenue to cover all okay so i just have to say this because i get it i absolutely understand what you're saying but on the other end of the spectrum the people we have economically challenged people here in cameron their wages are not keeping up with inflation so every finest city or big government or whoever said we need we need It's you're pulling the pennies out of these people's pockets. And so as a community, we have to take, I can pay it, you can pay it, we all here probably can pay it. I have people that can't pay it. And so what does that translate to? They can't pay the rent. They have to come to me, and then I have to bankroll until they get, because they're going to get their utilities shut off if they don't pay. And so I'm a big advocate for selfish reasons. Yep, it's my job. But on the other hand, I know all these people. They're not on welfare. They've got the minimum wage jobs or the jobs that are paying $15, which I can't remember if it was $15 an hour. It would be a heck of a... Okay. Well, it's not anything. It's nothing. And so if I'm passionate about it, it's my job. These people are not only my tenants, they're my, I interact with them on their, everything, including their family and everything else because it's all financial. And so when we say, this really sounds cool, let's do this, or let's raise the utility rates,

You're hurting somebody.

And sometimes I just eat it until things straighten out. And so, again, if some of the stuff that's been going on that I've been hearing is not right, that after I research it, it's false. It's just downright false information. On the other hand, the city would just come out and act like we know something. I'm not stupid. I'm not the smartest bulb in the box. Don't you agree with me? But I'm figuring things out, and I do know a lot of smart people. And I know there's a lot of smart people here. I want our departments to run. I want our streets fixed. I want our infrastructure fixed. And he's trying to tell me to shut up. And that's all I, I just want you all to understand when you're talking to big business, when you're talking with these entities that say it looks good on paper, there's a person out here.

I mean, I have a client come in, a customer that was on the pay plan. They didn't meet their pay plan. Our policy says in 12 months you can't get back on a pay plan. They couldn't pay utilities or on fixed income. And I said, you know, the city, we have to pay our utility bill too. And the electric bill last month was $589,000. And they're like, what? Like, yeah, if we don't collect all those rates and everybody gets a pass and we just kind of don't collect it, I can't pay our bills. And I think the magnitude of that is it's hard. I mean, I kind of probably not appropriate. These are 80-year-old individuals. They have no credit. They have no credit card. And they're like, you know, I can't tell them you should go get a credit card and float the balance for 30 days to get your check. That's not, that's probably not ethical for me, but it's like, you know, it's hard because, you know, what do college kids do when they get flat tire? Do you have a credit card? And I don't like to tell them that. But it's hard because it's, I mean, there's, You're right, it's not easy to increase things. But the same thing, our cost of services, we're paying those same electric bills and gas bills.

I understand that, but it's the cost of your business, and that's what I'm saying. But the fact that this right now is really tough, so let's maybe not do, maybe let's don't do that. Maybe let's, we just kind of go along and just a little bit, because when we do, and I've done this before, I've kept my grants down there so long that all of a sudden I had to bump them. And it was hard.

And that's what the city's done with utilities. They went backwards on it.

But again, I'm just playing devil's advocate. When we can throw this out there, when we're saying we've got to have this to run, but then we're putting it out there to do truck stops and this, when we've got to finish the city hall, which God knows how much that's going to cost. And I don't think we do know.

I guess the estimates they had was three and a half million. Five. Five, maybe six. Yeah, until we get into that, it's... That's right.

I'm going to shut up now because you sound like a sound sour grape. I don't. I just want you to... There's people out here. This is what I'm trying to get to everybody. When we sit in here and we're making these decisions, and there are people out here that are actually paying for this in one way or the other, and it's hard. And so the human aspect, we're not a city, but we don't have our people. And we take care of our people. And so it's just a reminder that it all looks good on paper and all this good stuff.

Somebody's paying for it. Like all communities, if we have twice as many houses here, I need a lot more police and fire and electrician, electrical workers. The really big bang is industrial and commercial tax base because they pay a lot more tax rate than the citizens like we do. And when you have trades and values and all that sales tax incubation happens, it makes our taxes affordable and keeps them low. If you don't have that growth and some of that stimulation, it's just the people here paying all of it. Are you saying $3.5 million more on top of what we've already spent on that building? Oh yeah, we haven't. And today we're at the point where we're kind of like neutral. We're ready to start rehabbing. Three and a half more million on what we've already spent. On top of whatever's been expended. I mean, that's a rough guess. I think it's going to be up to five. Something like that should be in jail.

Yeah, I have a name, but I don't think I can say it publicly.

This is ridiculous. We could build a new building for half of it.

I don't know if I have like that's pretty cool. You're probably looking at 12 to $15 million building. I'm not.

I remember when we built in 1996, when they took from this building to build that building in 1996.

It's supposed to be top of the line then. We debated on the cost of building new or rehabbing this and this was cheaper.

It was.

Well, yeah, it's taken a while. Well, that was when we were being told a lot less for the cost. Everything costs more, though, than when you started. Right. You just plan on 30% more.

The government tells you it's going to cost so much.

anyway i'm not going to say more i think i've got the point across pay attention to your people so patrick thank you for that answer that's exactly what i was wondering and i mean guys you should pin you and i have talked about this like communicating out that type of stuff would be exceedingly helpful just from a public image public relations standpoint hey we're spending half a million bucks we've got it in the piggy bank um we could In an ideal world, get our money back on day three, or year three, day one, or day one of year four, or whatever. I mean, I'm all about spending money to make money. I love that concept, and that's economic development. A lot of what you guys are talking about are on the services side, you know, and there's really not a lot you can do on that unless you say, well, we're going to pause economic development and take a hit on the services side and use that money instead. Those are decisions that you guys have to make. But, you know, from a philosophical standpoint and the community perception, that would be great to know that type of thing. I truly had no idea whether that type of analysis was even done. So it's good to know that that's done. City Hall obviously doesn't turn a profit rate.

When we're raising rates and then we turn it around and we have to go out and buy new vehicles, new buildings, etc., etc., etc., that's a bad look.

But John, if we need it, I get it. But if we need it, we need it. That's not, I mean, I know what you're saying too, but that's not the bad, well, first of all, communication is the biggest thing. If you're trying to get anything across, you know, it needs to be out there. It needs to be. when I saw about this tax, you know, that we're talking about tonight, it's like, let's continue the tax. I know what it is. You know, how it's been spent in the past, I have no idea. Are we being prudent with the money? Are we just, you know, I don't know that. I mean, you guys know that, but there's nothing anywhere that shows me. I wouldn't even know where to go. So that's my big issue. If you're going to ask us to do something, then I think we're smart enough. Some of us are smart enough to figure out it's a good deal or it's not a good deal. And again, I'm supporting every one of these departments. Whatever you guys want, I'm 100% for it.

But I think there's some spin-off benefits for the city too. When we do a big sewerage system that goes out to the drug stop, there's a lot of property along the way that could tie into that and benefit from it. And I think that's really good. And then when you have a nice hotel and restaurant and all that, they're sitting on the corner. There's a lot of land out there that's not developed. And that means other people would look at it and say, well, there's an opportunity to put some money.

That is absolutely a dream. And it is economic. That's what developers do.

Yeah, but that's not costing us money. We just ran the sewer line out to the truck stop. And... the other stuff you know that nobody's saying we want that too or we you know so that's something in the future if they have to have sewer there i just want to insert that there's that there are spin-off benefits to developing in an area and there's a lot of space out there that could be developed and it may or may not cost money because of course everything does Yeah.

It's important to, as a service industry, our personnel is like 60 plus percent of our budget. And as you saw with police and dispatch, when you're not competing, you lose everybody. And then you have to adjust, and then bring new people in, and guess what? To outfit a police officer and train them, double up with an MTO, it's $10,000 on equipment and gun, and no one wears the same stuff. And guess what? That multiplies every time you have a loss of retention. And so it's hard if you don't keep up. I'm not saying, I mean, it's hard to be a top-tier payer. You want to be, as classification goes, in the middle range in your area, because you don't want to be the lowest, because that's kind of what happens. And if you're the highest, well, that's great if you can sustain that, but most places can't, because there's a lot of other needs. And personnel is a large chunk of this budget. And you can't have people, you can't have three police officers that only have one car, It's not an easy thing to grow and to change, but it has to be leveraged and multiplied, and it's not easy. I mean, you know, we get into that with our policies. We're advancing our comp plan this year that's in the budget, trying to get the holistic review we need to do our overhaul, our code, and make our development processes streamlined and efficient. That's probably our biggest thing here is developers don't want to wait six months a year to get answers and have meetings with me and six other people and get told, eh, that's probably not going to work. It's about efficiency. So I think kind of ratcheting down with our team this year and trying to make that more efficient and more effective. It takes a lot of hours and work to do that. But that's what you have the people for. So I think that's, you know, there's a lot of people Lots around Cameron with utilities to them that are graded, ready to build on. It's not just our location that causes them not. It's other things that we can fix, and that's what we hope to work on. I definitely have a lot of great teammates here.

We're only having one evening to look at the budget before the last meeting. I had a question, several questions actually. You had said on the public hearing that it was going to advertise utility rate increases.

Is that the one that currently happened or- No, no, we went over that a little bit. So the rates for this coming year, Genwick obviously is a little different. It's kind of going off the projections and the actual cost of the debt is going to trigger that actual rate. But the utility rate, I think this year was 8% for utilities. So all of the ordinances affecting those, I want to make sure that this year when we bring the final budget adoption forward, you can't approve a budget and then not approve the consequential rate you built that budget on. So I think it's important to have those at the same meeting. to have it all tied together. It makes staff kind of pull their hair out when you say, oh, we approved the budget, but now we've got to go back and revamp everything because we're not doing utility adjustments. The water rate, I'm trying to remember, that's a little different. The sewer rate and water rate are tied to the study. And so when you have an expert that evaluated it and they have this threshold, there's small increments after this for what, the next five years? I think it's three.

have to speculate some amount because we get a range this time of year from our suppliers that are ready to go somewhere between four and 8%. But that's not going to take effect until middle of our budget year. So we kind of have to play that into it. It's not cut and dry. Our rates change on October 1. And that's going to accompany the rate change from our suppliers at the same time. So they're We don't know whether it's going to be 4% or 8% or somewhere in between. So we have to kind of compensate for that. And that will be the biggest cost increase as far as electric freight goes for us.

It's not just adjusting the rates up to nest egg more money. Consequentially, our power purchase is going up. Our cost of our operations is going up. And they put that all into the study. So, I mean, I haven't read every page of it. It's huge. But looking at the synopsis of it, if you don't increase rates now, you kind of do your citizens and everybody in disservice by just getting five years down the road and having to do 30, 40%. I don't know that the 3%, 5% is kind of the cost of living indicates that. It's 4 point something this year. If you don't keep up with that, you're gonna pay later. It's hard to tell people that and to think on that, but it's, you know, I was, I did not live here, but the year in Texas when it had all the sub-zero temperatures and the gas was limited and it went up like four to 500%, I think they were hit by that year. So everybody's rates was like, oh, my gas bill went up, you know, 600%. The city has to budget for those types of things with our reserves. So we have those reserve policies and You're not just sitting on the money. We leverage our money and invest it and actually try to leverage that. But we don't just set the budget to just pay for everything we're doing. We have to have those reserve accounts to cover, hey, what happens if we lose infrastructure? What if there's a change in the electric rates? They have reserves built in in case there's fluctuation.

The Texas issue was completely different. That was because they were relying on solar and wind. I will say, if y'all are going to raise the utility rates again, I want it done before the people go to vote for this new tax, or the recurring tax. I want it out there, and I want the utility rate so folks know where they're at with that before they go to vote for a new tax.

The election's November 3rd, and we plan to bring those ordinances either the next meeting or the next two after that. They have to be passed by September 3rd, as does the budget.

One of my other questions was about the $1 million transfer for the electric department. Is that so we can get a jump on it instead of spending it out of this year's budget?

It avoids water increases. and it brings our cash reserves back down to our policy limits. Part of that is the sale of the property. It's going to boost our capital, our reserve funds above our policy limits. They want to keep enough cash on hand for disaster. But we don't want to just be cash register sitting in the bank either. We've got to be able to cover that. So to transfer this covers some of these projects and equipment that's

it's nice if you have reserves and you're above your threshold and can transfer pay for that instead of taking long-term debt it's kind of leveraging you know especially we're not we're not making generational purchases here it's not like we're building new powers yeah it should i don't know to me it's a hard sell because the You know, you've got the utility rate increases now, too. And then, you know, our capital improvements.

It looks like for the electric department, it's $991,000.

And things they haven't done, they should have been doing.

We had a building that was probably built in the 1950s with huge telephone poles and a barn tent. It has a dirt floor in it, tombs, cats.

For me, it's just a timing thing. There was never a good time.

What about the, there's a couple of buildings out there that I was thinking about. think I brought up R.W. He said before he'd be interested in leasing out something. I don't know how many vehicles can fit in that or not, but today I was sitting there thinking I don't even know if the old GTE building was sent retail. I don't think they have trucks running out of there anymore, but I know from way back that place is huge.

You can put I've brought that to Scott and other people to try and acquire that building, but they're not interested in selling or leasing it. They do still use it. They don't have much in there, but they do still use it.

We have storage problems. The old water plant is condemned and needs to be demoed. It's hard to tell people in town to tear your house down when our building is atrocious, but there's stuff stored in it. We have a lot of facilities in the business park that have storage, all the Christmas decorations, milling equipment, road, streets, water. I don't know if water has a lot out there. But those are problems. We don't have adequate storage in the city. We do have electric department, part of that million dollars is a storage building over there, their current building is rusted tin and there's raccoons and people obviously go in there at night because cabinets are open. Not a lot of copper for people to steal, but that stuff should be secure and locked and inside a weather facility. You got an $80,000 transformer sitting on pallets over there out in the weather. You know, if I buy an $80,000 transformer and it's all rusted, I'm like, that doesn't go over well. It doesn't hurt the performance of it, but it's kind of

Anybody else build a new building or business and have a rough declaring form or something outside of it?

So store, I mean, that is something we, you brought up those buildings. It is probably something during the next year I need to look at in addition to what's in this budget. Maybe after the fire, maybe a little more.

So, right, right. Right, right.

I don't think you can schedule close.

Anything else? Did we change the colder amount for flories?

Looks like, I think it was less than that in our previous budget.

I think that the first meeting was 3%, then it was 2%, and now it's 2.5%. The numbers that are presented today are the same numbers that were presented at the July 12th meeting.

And what's the merit percentage normally?

Between 1.5% and 2.5%. It just depends on where it is on the matrix.

So we're talking about four to six percent increase?

Probably four to five, yeah. Anywhere from three to five.

Three to five?

Is that it? Any more questions or no?

Well, I'm just contemplating here. Again, the year in a row that I've asked for meritocracy instead of COLA plus merit, that rate is going to be more than what most of the folks that we're taxing are going to be making as far as an increase on their salaries. And the reason why I know everybody says, well, you've got to have full with the credit if you're at the max, then you don't get anything. Well, the idea of max is that's the max you're supposed to get. I've dealt with that myself. You either move to a different department, you move up, you do initial schooling, and you become at a different level, whatever.

And so

I THINK WE ALSO NEED TO GET A SUCCESSION PLAN ESTABLISHED FOR EACH OF THE DEPARTMENTS. AND I THINK WE NEED TO GET THIS FED. I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST ANY ONE OF OUR EMPLOYEES. I'M VERY HAPPY WITH IT. BUT I DO ALSO KNOW THAT IT'S THE SAME THING AS WHEN I'M SUPPOSED TO GIVE RACES TO THE FOLKS THAT WORK FOR ME IN In the business world, sometimes your best people get a little more and the rest of the folks don't.

It's just the way it is.

And again, I don't think the majority of the people out there that we're passing are getting a 5% raise this year. Or even So that's all. I'm just, I really want to get off this merit COLA stuff. COLA is only used in unions and in cities, apparently, which everybody that I talk to in government knows all about COLA. So.

Security of Social Security. Very much. 18,000.

So is the COLAs across the board? Is the merit across the board too? So that is based on performance.

Based on performance. So it is performance-based. Right, yeah. There's only so many steps, and I know that every once in a long time they get you. Right.

Once you're maxed, the only way that they can get anything additional is through the COLAs. But if you're maxed, that was supposed to be the max amount that that person was supposed to get in that category.

But if you have good employees and you want to retain them, you want them to get an increase as well. You don't want your good employees sitting there getting nothing.

But if your max is your max, then they need to either move up, like move up, So instead of being a Class 8, go to a Class 9 due to training or whatever else. But, I mean, if you don't want to put anything else into it other than just years, I agree. I don't want to lose our best people. But also, know that there's a reason why we have minimums and maximums for each of these classifications. I've dealt with this for 30 years in business.

I can tell you that there is a reason.

Because what happens is we continue to overpay for the job that's out there.

I'm pretty sure we're not overpaying anyway.

I don't know anybody that's overpaying. If you are, raise your hand.

Well, no, no, no. I'm saying overpay in comparison to what our max is. If you're over the max, it's just like I'll use our last city manager as an example. We were paying him more than the max.

It doesn't mean you're paying your best people more. You're just giving them more because they've been here longer.

And that doesn't necessarily equal the best. I have nothing against giving our best people the most amount of money. But let's develop them and give them the best in the class to the next level instead of a step is all I'm saying. And I've done that before. We've done that before for someone else. And I'd rather do that than to sit there and go about the match. The match is set and established because that's what we found.

At that time, the things keep moving forward. The studies are only based on your colleagues, your data.

They all monitor you. Yeah. Okay.

Any other questions or comments? I move we go out in public here.

Second. Rossworth.

Yes.

Penny Gantz. Yes. Becky Pernitz. Yes. John Feigert.

Yes.

Mark Feigert.

Yes.

All right, that takes us to new business. Our first reading for Bill 2026-17. Shall we?

Bill 2026-17, an ordinance for the City of Cameron, Missouri, to establish a procedure to disclose potential conflicts of interest and substantial interest for certain business officials.

I will entertain a motion to pass Bill 2026-17 on the first reading. So moved.

So moved.

This is an annual housekeeping issue. Missouri Ethics Commission would like us to do this every other year. I just do it every year so I don't forget. Basically it says that because our annual operating budget is over a million dollars, it states public interest that council will refuse themselves if they have a financial interest in any matter that comes before council. that we will fill out the personal financial disclosure form and submit that to the Missouri Advocacy Commission every year before May 1st. That's the gist of it.

Yep. Do we do that for committee members as well? I'm just curious.

This is for elected officials. It's for the five councilmen, for myself, and for the city manager. And so it applies to those who are appointed.

No, I understand. I just didn't know if that was... No, it's just people didn't actually make decisions to spend money.

And a lot of the boards and commissions cannot do that.

Is this a local version of what the ethics commission makes us do statewide?

I mean, it is a direct copy and paste from the ethics commission. They send it to every city saying, hey, if you adopt this, you get under this. Because without that, there would be some additional like triple reporting that would create it so that was happening. Your guys' job was reporting.

Any other discussion? All those in favor of passing bill 2026-17 say aye. Aye. All opposed? All right. Passes by. Resolution 2026-31.

Resolution 2026-31, a resolution accepting the bids for the City of Cameron Annual Cape Seals Street Improvement Project and awarding the bid to Vance Brothers LLC. I will entertain a motion to pass resolution 2026-31.

So moved.

discussion thank you mayor council this is just our street project decided we're going to go with a cake seal project this year instead of our normal mill and overlay stretch our money out a little further than doing it the other way this will come out of our half cent sales tax for our street this project also and we did have a bid opening on july 8th 2026 we did have just the one bid there's not that many people around here that does that kind of work the other one i believe is around saint louis somewhere so the mobilization would be very costly to even get them up here But it was Baines Brothers and they are out of, their headquarters is out in Chillicothe. And the prices come in at $183,500.52. Can you explain what Cape Seal is? Cape Seal is where you will put down a chip and seal first. that'll kind of fill fill in the cracks and the the lower places the divots and then they'll come in with a slurry seal on top of that and then that's what makes it that's we'll put the black back on and that's what makes it look like a brand new strip but you have to patch all the holes first yes

You said there were some streets that we've already got this done.

Third street from Walnut all the way to the end and it's a little over 10 years old and it's still holding up very well. That's good. Same people? Yes.

Any other discussion? Comments?

All those in favor of passing Resolution 2026-31, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes. Fives in favor, zero opposed. All right. I don't know if you hear us.

Aye. Thank you.

All right.

I think I was on mute. Sorry.

All right. That takes us to Resolution 2026-31. 2026-32.

Resolution 2026-32. A resolution of the City of Cameron, Missouri authorizing the City Manager to enter into a contract with SMICO Contracting Group LLC for emergency stormwater repairs.

I will entertain a motion to pass Resolution 2026-32. So moved. So moved.

Second.

Discussion?

Thank you again. This here is a 24 inch storm sewer that's approximately 160 feet long. It goes through the front of the property of Dr. Spotless car wash on Grand. They only have the one driveway entrance. Normally, we pick it up and replace the failing storm sewer. But in this case, we would have his only access to his business. We would probably have it closed down by the time the concrete cured. We would have his business shut down for approximately 8 to 10 days. So I normally don't do this kind of lining of them. But in this case, this is one of those places that we need to do that. And they gave me a bid of $29,580. And this will also be funded out of the stormwater sales tax fund. So this is a liner? Yes. Yeah. They'll go in, they'll clean it out, and then they'll blow this liner in there, and then they bake it to the outside, bake the shape, and then it's just like you have a brand new pipe, and you don't have to disturb the ground.

You did that over at the... Housing. Yeah, the housing development a few years ago. Is that an island?

Yeah, amongst some other stuff, yeah. Yeah.

All those in favor of passing resolution 2026-32, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Aye. It passes 5-4-1-0. To our public participation, our second one with counsel. Anybody would like to stand up and talk? Please feel free. Alright, that takes us to the next one. Miss Elena elements from the back and our staff working with budget it still needs to go to formal adoption we're trying to time those things with those other items

I THINK EVERYTHING ELSE I HAVE IS FOR EXECUTIVE SESSION. THANK YOU ALL IN THE PUBLIC. IF YOU DON'T PARTICIPATE, IT'S HARD TO GET INPUT.

SO WE'RE INTO THE BEGINNING OF AUGUST. WE HAVE TWO MONTHS LEFT IN OUR FISCAL YEAR. WE'RE GETTING READY FOR THE NEW FISCAL YEAR FOR THE AUDIT. for the whole cycle that just continues and keeps going. So lots of work that we've accomplished, lots of work yet to do again. So thank you.

um three guys there continuing running their patcher and removing some of the slab concrete that needs to be replaced with that i had one of the one of the guys on the crew they dug up a foundation on the city hall as scott was saying earlier there is a foundation drain so that's a good thing He did say that it does be weatherproofed on the outside. Structurally, it's very well built. There was like a pink foam that put on the... Yeah, it's a polystyrene foam. But they should have brought it up to ground level and they left it down probably two feet below ground level. So whenever he removed some of the Well, Spencer said that stuff was water just ran out of it. So it's trapping the water down.

Can I stay on that for one second? Yeah. So essentially when they put the waterproofing on the car, the black waterproofing that they put on the foundation, they also set the polystyrene foam. onto it immediately, which then eliminated the waterproofing. So as they pulled that off, water was trapped back behind. When you go down to the basement, there are places where there are cracks or foundation ties. When it rains a lot, you can see water coming through that foundation. the foundation drain was in place the gravel rock was in place as well with filter fabric but like ted said it was supposed to be brought up another two feet but it's not protecting that foundation and giving an opportunity for it to get down behind it water infiltration is one of the biggest biggest replacement of everything

you will have to replace it.

The way he described it, yes, the way he described it, the material is not going to be that expensive. It's going to be the labories, and they have to remove all that old, all by hand. Terrible. Who is he, Spencer? No, I have a contract to take a look at. You're right, I didn't say it, but I agree with you.

Me too, I was just wondering who it was. That's all.

Well, before I went on vacation for a week, we were working on Great Northwest Wholesale Water Commission items a lot, and we'll continue that until we get that done. Also have been documenting the current 353 that we have open, which is a, it was a project for one of the businesses downtown. So I'm going back through with documenting all of the money that they had put into it. Also did a little work on familiarizing myself with the Crossroads CID. And then lots and lots of planning and zoning over and over and over. We are very, very busy with B&Z. And we got our three ring binders done. Terry was great enough. I owe her a big because we've got all of the updates in for the figuring binders and she got that done for me. That's all I got. Thank you.

Alright, our staff is coming back. We just one started today. We get three more conditional offers for dispatch. So we're open by October 1st. All the officers and everybody will be back in their normal spots. And that should put us at 10 dispatchers, which gets my director off the radio so she can do her job. And that still leaves us four short, but we will be back to par, hopefully, with the 10. Axon, our body cameras, in-car cameras, and tasers, they were here last Monday and Tuesday, I believe it was. Everything's installed in the cars, working wonderful. Tomorrow night is National Night Out at Somerville. So please come out. We're going to have lots of fun things out there. At 5 o'clock, we're going to have a helicopter landing. The PAWS trailer from Harrison County Hospital just arrived this afternoon. And the last thing I have is We got a bid for the doors for ADA and come in cheaper than what I thought. Spoke with the city manager, we're gonna move forward to get both of those bids, this one and that one. That's all I have, thank you.

Mark. Electric department's been doing a lot of pole replacements here lately for poles that were identified in our inspections. With nice weather, parks have been extremely busy. The guys have been busy mowing and stuff and keeping up with the restrooms and picking up the parks throughout all of the parks we have.

This weekend will be the last day of the pool. The pool will be closing Sunday, August 9th. Saturday, August 8th, we're going to do a half price from 4 to 8 o'clock, just to give back to the community a little bit. We didn't really get to have a free swim around 4 July, but we had a little bit, but the weather wasn't very good. So we're going to do another free swim day on the last day, August 9th, from 1 to 4. And then we're going to close it down at 4 o'clock to the public. and then i'm going to have like an employee appreciation slash clean up day at the pool so it's better to buy a bunch of pizzas and the kids can work and clean things up swim if they want to and kind of say thank you for the season so i will have an end of season pool report for you guys on our next city council meeting you can count how many days up that we had i mean we closed and all that stuff like i did last year so uh down at rec park uh Our two young ladies that were doing some community service down there, they finished up today. They did get both sides of Park Avenue completely repainted on parking lot lines. And all the blocks, the end caps are all painted nice and blue. It looks pretty good down there. Well, good. Maybe they won't be painted inside. Yeah, maybe they won't be painted inside. If we have any more community service, I've got another six or seven parking lots to paint. All right. We could definitely throw the work. We will gladly help you out. Another thing at Breck Park, I should hear, I reached out to Regent D. on her grant for that piece of playground down there that we want to take the pea gravel out and put that four-place rubber. We should hear something about 30 days from them. We should have heard something 60 days ago from them. But Kathy, Kathy Conkine, I reached out and talked to her the other day. I seen her at the pool and she kind of told me the same thing. So you get Kathy on that, she'll usually find you an answer pretty quick. Yeah. The turf repair for at Moose Station, it should, I don't know if I told you guys this or not, they are able to do it, but they were asked if we could wait until after school starts because they're trying to finish up some school projects and stuff while the kids aren't there. And I told them that was perfectly fine. So that should start somewhere around end of August in that time frame. So that ought to look a lot better down through there at Moose Park. So other than that, just the guys are, like I said, busy moment and take care of the park.

I don't want to do it again. I don't want to happen. But no, we had, I mean, things I'm focusing on lately, this has been going through doing safety trainings for our field crews, the required safety trainings by MIRMA, trying to get those taken care of for this year and making sure everybody's following the procedures and all that. And then I've been working with Stoney. I've been helping them go into doing our public-facing and our city-owned buildings, doing the inspections, just trying to take care. safety concerns that we have and things that I know are required as well.

I've just been doing general tech stuff. Helped people out with some of their equipment replacements. There's stuff that's not working well, meeting rooms set up so that we've got something that's more consistent for whenever they do need to have web-based meetings. I've been doing a lot of review of the network wiring over at the old city hall that Robbie put in for us a while back, and he did a really good job on all that. Just a few things I needed to change around to preface for when we would be ready to start rebuilding into that building, while I still have access to the wiring inside the walls. Also kind of looking at trying to make game plans for what we want to do for the city council chamber and what type of equipment we might need to replace in that room as well as we get to that point. So that's kind of been some of the review over there. Probably one of the bigger things has been working with our vendor with the mapping systems, trying to get the tools in place for us to go out there and be doing the updates again like Mark was kind of talking about there. we had lost some of that ability to maintain and modify those maps and we've got the ability to maintain and modify those maps again. So we've got to review some stuff with Shelly and with Lance to make sure that we've got all of our stuff updated like we need to. We're going to continue to work with that vendor to make those maps more public and then see what other functions that were there before the project kind of got laid aside a couple of years back. I've been working with that vendor on that project and it's going pretty good. We just work through it. Those are the main things. Everything else is really boring.

Well, the fire department is still busy. We're really busy. We worked an 8-to-8 call in Plattsburgh, a five-hour call. It was a real hot Saturday afternoon. We structured fire. This afternoon with KW and Pattersburg fire up on I-35 at the Grand River Bridge. We got that taken care of. I continue repairs on the truck. Everything I've done so far is already in-house. I have staff that can actually do most everything, so don't have to send anything out. I continue to do, I have actually inspections I have to do in some of the local nursing homes and things like that, so that's coming back around on a yearly basis. I do those too. So, here again, it's busy and we're going to be working on some grants. We actually received a MoDOT Highway Safety Grant. It's a 100% grant. It's $22,000. And we'll be going, two of us will be going to Lee's Summit. We have to sit through a class in order to get the money. So, we'll be spending the day doing that. So, here again, we just proceed on. It's day to day. You never know what's going to happen.

First thing is, good news is, we got that water line done in front of co-op. It went very well. Really smooth. Next week, well, next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, they'll be coming in to re-concrete it. We'll let it settle down for about a week and a half here. Bad news is, lift station three it's down by in Bill Beckett's yard down around Park Avenue if it is failing quickly. So we're going to have to start thinking about doing something down there. The pump is not sucking. It's not got suction. We don't know if there's a hole in the pipe or what's going on. Supposed to have a contractor there that your kid was going to have a contractor there today to see if we could minutes to make it get by, but we better start thinking about doing something down there. So just wanted to let you know that. Last meeting I told you I was trying to get the usage out from off the genwik and my average for the month was $677,000 a day. We needed about $650,000. So we're right there where we need to be on that. We can go a little more if we need to, but right now we're making our demands.

I want to remind everybody that tomorrow is the voting day. I think you guys will probably set this up after this meeting tonight. And I'm so happy for the president and the governor and all the people who are texting me. So hopefully it will get better after the election. I don't know. So go vote tomorrow. Thank you.

vote for Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite I don't have anything John you have anything please you're muted

That was a no.

I don't either. Thank you guys for all your hard work. Thank you guys for coming. And I'll entertain a motion to exit our meeting and go into executive.

So moved.

For attorney, finance, communications, and real estate. Second. Kim Gans. Yes. Thank you, Curtis. John Fiders.

Yep.

Mark Carr.

Yes.

Ross Ward.

Yes.

Thanks, guys.