City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Thank you.

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Thank you.

TO THE SEPTEMBER 8, 2026 REGIONAL COUNCIL CITY COUNCIL MEETING IS NOW CALLED TO WORK. WOULD YOU ALL PLEASE RISE?

for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, President.

John Piper. Mark Moss. Ross Worth. Kennedy. Alright, that leads to our first public participation. Do you want to say something to us? Feel free to come up to the podium. You have five minutes. Please write in your name and your address.

Alright, my name is Layla. I live at 714 North Chestnut. I'm here because I am opposed to this rate increase for our utilities, for our electric We've had many, many increases. In my sense, an increase exponentially. But I'm not offended. What I am offended by was a statement by one of the council members about feeding a dead horse, talking about our elderly, vulnerable community having to work off of a fixed income. I'm offended because my neighbor has given 50 years of her life to this community. She has served the vulnerable community, the children in this community, who needed somebody to take care of them. And now this friend of mine sits in the dark, She sits in the dark and she has to choose between cat food and electricity. And to be callous and to think that her needs and her suffering is not important really offends a lot of people. We believe that it's not just utilities. Our whole world is expensive. But to think that the elderly need to suffer needlessly is insane. It really is. We do not want to see another increase. We want to see accountability. We want to see A real accountability for where our money's going. Why are we having the highest electric rates of 15 cities of comparable sizes in our area? Why do we have the second highest water rates of cities of our comparable area, of our city size? Why? Why do we have that? And why are we expected to keep paying more when we have people who can't afford this? I'm not suffering financially, but my water bill this month was a quarter of my monthly income. And that's ridiculous. That's unsustainable for a lot of people. So, like I said, this is my opinion about this, and this is on behalf of the ones who can't come up here and say anything, because they can't get out of the house. They don't have gas money to come up here. They have to sit at home and choose between cat food, electricity, and bed food. Thank you very much.

I'm Becky.

I've been in Cameronville for 35 years, and I'm also a security. I've earned it. So you know what? If I had to live on my social security, I could not pay my city bill. My water and my sewer is more than my electric. I keep my house on 88 in the summer. And 60 in the winter. Because you can't afford to live here. You know, it's gotten ridiculous. And I'm the only one living at home. I do one more laundry. How can it be this high? You know, I have to keep working. Now, for a compliment, I want to tell Dan Mill, his officers are wonderful. But I have nothing good to say about what's going on in this town. Absolutely nothing. You're raising these bills to where we can't afford to live there anymore. And it's ridiculous. It breaks my heart that if I'm on Social Security, I can't afford to live on Social Security. I'm still working. 40-hour job. just to keep up. So this has got to stop.

Thank you, Becky. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Nancy Wilson, but I have signed in. Okay, okay. Okay, perfect.

My name is Nancy Wilson. We have lived in Cameron over 10 years. We live on Bryan Street, Northeastern. I realize your job is difficult, and I applaud you for trying. But I have to tell you, as a former teacher of leadership at Ottawa University and strategic leadership at Beaton County Schools in Lenexa, Kansas, I can tell you your leadership is failing. Your fiscal policies are not following the town. The issues that I'm most concerned with are the fact that you do not listen to the people who you're supposed to represent. You also are spending money that needs not to be spent or is spent in the wrong places. The pipeline done against the people's will has debt and cost to people we didn't want, shouldn't have had. The temporary city offices that we're now paying $72,000 a year before we're paying $84,000 a year when other places were available at much lower cost. That much money over this past year or a half could have gone to other funds and other causes, could have helped with some of these rates. The rising utility costs are done to bring the fund to an appropriate level. We don't know what's in the fund now, what's needed, and who or what determines what's appropriate. No one has told us that. Having a combined city sales tax of 9.75%, with a population of only 8,000, according to recent census data, is not in line with other nearby cities, both with a greater population. Chillicothe has 9,100 in the combined sales tax rate of 8.35%. St. Joseph has a population of 71,000, and a combined sales tax rate of 9.7%, which is 1% less, with 10 times the population, 1% more than we pay, with 10 times the population. There's no, I can't understand that. My hand doesn't wrap around the reasons for that. Also, basic studies of societal economics tells us that people drive the economy of any town. They earn, they spend, they pay the taxes. When the cost of living in a society is greater than the spending power of that society, the economy fails and so does the town. We are seeing serious cracks in the Cameron economy to which this council needs to pay attention. According to the US Census Quick Facts page, Cameron's workforce is 44.6% of the people of Cameron leaving 55.4% that are not working. Of those, 12% are disabled. The rest are either retired, stay-at-home parents, or unemployed. Our poverty guidelines. 15.7% of the people in Cameron live below poverty guidelines, and they're trying to deal with these risks. Are you aware of that? Are you aware of the demographics? Businesses are also hurt. Because the same bills we get at home, the businesses get at their business. So they have to pass those costs on to us. Which means we pay our costs at home, and then every time we go to a business, we pay the costs again with what they have had to add on. How many times are we going to have to pay these higher rates? Did you consider that when you made it?

One minute, ma'am.

Okay, businesses also will be hurt because it diminishes discretionary spending by the populace. Even churches could be hurt by people not having the money to support their church. It seems these impacts have not been considered at all. It seems that when a problem arises, the thought is throw money at it and we'll take the money from the people. There are creative solutions if they're sought. If I had another minute, I would explain my experience in Denver, Colorado, with limited water resources and a huge populace, no grades in the hospital. How did they handle it? They did it strategically, with leadership. In summation, various decisions have had a definite impact on them as individuals, and on businesses, and definitely on the sustainability of our local economy. When the populace is doing well, the economy does well. When the populace is struggling, the tap will fade. That's five minutes, ma'am. Okay. One, twenty more seconds. Ten more seconds. The dark leadership in this town is not following. As you can see by the level of outreach, people are being forced to comply. That is not leadership. When you're pushing from behind, you're not leading. If you have two... Please stop doing only what you think is correct. Listen to the people who are paying the bills, and that's all of us. Thanks.

I'll be pretty brief. I just want to introduce myself. My name is Louis Drillon. I'm running for Clinton County Treasurer. I've come here tonight to introduce myself to your council. My name is Louis Drillon. I'm the original who do little do by the way. Hey, I'm just here to introduce myself. What you guys know, I'll probably be canvassing in Cameron for almost a month. So if you see me out in the street, we'll be able to put a face with a name and you'll know that I'm not.

um i'm running for associate circuit court judge and we've been coming to all sorts of different city council meetings and ordering meetings just to meet the people and see what's most important to them uh i'll be canvassing with him so at least a cuter face with him um he's like grandma says okay So yeah, I just wanted to introduce myself and hope you can speak afterwards. And it's been very eye-opening and interesting to listen to your guys' most interesting, I mean, not most interesting, I guess, things that concern you the most. And do you want me to start? Yes, please. All right. Let me move this on to the consent agenda.

Item A, motion to approve the minutes of the August 17, 2026 regular session. I will entertain a motion to pass the consent agenda.

So moved.

Second. All those in favor of passing the consent agenda, please say aye.

Aye. Opposed? Aye.

Thanks. Five in favor, zero opposed. And that moves us on to the appointments. Shirley.

The only thing I have for appointments tonight is, thankfully, to elect a representative in the Loggers annual meeting. The Loggers has an annual meeting each year where they give an update on the state of the pension fund. The employees send a representative, and the employer, which is the elected council members, also send

A representative is at that meeting where they elect board members for the upcoming week, and each faction votes for their own member.

So that is taking place in Springfield, October 10th, 9th, and 30th. It will require a full-time stay in Springfield, so if anybody wants to go, we can elect them tonight, or you guys can take on it, and then do it at the next meeting that we need to do.

It's nice that you give a list of those who've gone before. John Friberg is a two-time goer.

I've got a question. Can you guys speak up for each other? Sure.

So, does anybody have a calendar available?

I'm not available.

Can I get a motion to send Penny? Yes.

I'll move that we send Penny.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Is John here?

John, you hear him.

What's going on here? Aye. He is. You might wonder if we do any roll call votes. He has to have a roll call.

John, whenever we do a roll call, don't call. Yeah, I do. Okay.

Just remind me.

Check it. No, I appreciate it. Well, thank you for doing that. Congratulations. Thank you. All right. Let's move on to the city manager's report. Scott.

Thank you, ma'am. So, I'm not going to give a gen-web update because Zach, Paul, and Joe are all here. I'll let them do that when we go to the departments. The city hall building update. On your agenda tonight, you have the resolution to approve the AR company for the exterior remodel, which is all of the facade, the windows, the doors. So if you award that contract, the public works director and I are scheduled to meet with the representative on Thursday and their engineer. They're going to do the laser and survey the building to get the materials ordered. And to get coordination for, you know, what's the timeline looked at for the interior and And so we're going to try to coordinate with that. The MML conference is next week. It's this Sunday through Wednesday late morning. I just wanted to remind you that. You probably have your packet if you're going from the clerk. The Clinton County Initiative, Lance Raines and I attended that a couple weeks ago now. They're still working to do their family-wide library and some things and classrooms. And then the code enforcement issues, we had our second court date. Most of our things that we've cited have been resolved before they get to the court. And then a couple of our big cases, the staff and I went, yeah, when you go to court, you have to be appropriately dressed. You can't wear shorts. So some of the people in court had shorts on. We're not allowed to see the judge. Some people failed to appear. If you get a code violation ticket summons, Failure to appear in court is a bigger issue than going for your court issue. Isn't that just a suspension? That's what happens in my office. Yeah. You can get a bench warrant for your arrest. We don't want to do that over small things, but we set the court date, please come. So we haven't gotten resolution on those items. They're still scheduled for next month. And the judge wasn't too pleased that they didn't appear, so that's not good.

Can I say something? Sure. When we moved our city court from here to Foxburg, there was a concern about people that don't have vehicles to get there. So it was kind of a nice idea to see if we could let them know to call us so we could get them there. Sure. Because I know some don't. I know when it's city court, when we had to hear a lot of people walk.

Yeah, we really try our best in the department to mitigate things with mowing and trash and junk. Our hope is with education and adequate time that people make progress and that they're working on those issues. We don't like to issue tickets and we hope that that's the last resort. There's a lot of things in the city. I could have six code enforcement officers and you can't get to everything and Literally, our internal policy is we try to only have five pages of cases, which is a lot. It's like 50 to 70 cases. Because you have to update it, and you have to document it, and you have to go to the system to do all of that. So we try to keep it, when some fall off, we go on complaints. We try to follow up with safety issues first. So it is more about education and trying to get compliance. There's a lot of vacant homes. It's hard to even know if you own some of them. and sending the notice. So there are some that we just abate by having property mode, and then we send the property a bill. That's one way to mitigate it. So that's just an update on code. And then the upstate Missouri joint meeting was last week in Marceline. We attended that. It was a pretty big educational piece for all of the economic development people in the region about issues with with data centers, other technologies, and more fact-based than emotional-based. A lot of things are out there. When you know the facts and the information, it's a lot different than what you just hear through TV and media. And that's all the updates that I have.

Any questions for Scott?

question but just a comment for the City Hall building. I know they're not waiting. I know that you said we've got to talk to them and find out when they can start working on the end carrier. I think let's get that brushed as fast as we can because It costs them this money to have people out of Bank Midwest, etc. And so I'd really like to see if there's a way. And I know Pat's been doing a really good job with this. So Pat, if you can just kind of ask them maybe, like, is there any way, if that's the group that's going to be doing the interior, maybe you can check with them and just see if there's anything they can do.

Yeah, John, I kind of had a conversation with Pat as well, and that's already been taken care of in the works, and he's got a good plan for it.

Thank you.

Okay, perfect. That's what I wanted to hear. Pat, on the contract, I didn't see that there was a to-be-finished date on that contract.

Remember, they filled out the insurers and the paperwork and show it, and they give us a year's date.

Yeah, when the starting date was.

and so and he also whenever he put that year stage down there he also kind of included like he might even get this bid for the interior so yeah so i think i think that they're a year is a long time but i think that's what they're going off of that they might get their interior kit also and how much longer do we have the bank building leased for it's through august

SHELLY'S MADE IT PRETTY KNOWN THAT SHE WOULD LIKE US TO BE IN THE CITY HALL LIKE THE WEEK AFTER SHE RETIRES. BUT, YEAH, WE'RE TRYING TO EXPEDITE THOSE THINGS. I THINK, YOU KNOW, THE IMPORTANT THING TO THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE THE BUILDING DRIED IN WITH THE WINDOWS, IT'S REALLY HARD WITH THE MOISTURE CONTENTS AND THE WINTER AND THE MOISTURE AND HUMIDITY HERE. YOU CAN INSTALL DRYWALL AND THINGS, BECAUSE IT COULD ACTUALLY, YOU KNOW, WE DON'T WANT TO DO WORK AND RIP IT ALL OUT. BUT WE WANT TO MAKE THAT EXPEDITED AND HAVE THE SCHEDULE TIGHT. SO WE'LL BE WITH HIM THURSDAY, AND WE'LL HAVE A BETTER IDEA OF OUR NEXT REPORT, WHAT THAT'S GOING TO LOOK LIKE. I APPRECIATE ALL THE WORK THAT, IN ADDITION TO EVERYTHING ELSE YOU DID.

WELL, I WOULD LIKE TO THROW OUT THOUGH, SCOTT, REMEMBER, IN THE WINTER,

It's drier than it is in the summer, so we're going to need to make sure that we get it done this winter. That makes it even more important. You're worried about humidity.

We were told there's like a 30-day lead on the window, so my hope is on the window and exterior, we have that done by Thanksgiving time.

Thank you, Scott. That takes us to our unfinished business. Charlotte, a second and final reading for Bill 2026-19.

Bill 2026-19, an ordinance for the City of Camden, Missouri, repealing the current electric rates and establishing new electric rates FOR CONSUMERS OF THE CAMBRIDGE MUNICIPAL UTILITIES.

I WILL INTERPRET A MOTION TO PASS BILL 2020-19 ON THE SECOND ENTITLED MEETING BY ROLL CALL.

SO MOVED.

SECOND.

DISCUSSION. GUYS, I'M JUST GOING TO ECHO WHAT I SAID AT OUR LAST MEETING. I DON'T LIKE, NOBODY LIKES MIKE'S RATE INCREASES. I DON'T LIKE This one in particular, just because I don't feel like that it's needed. I don't see that we're losing money. I've heard this study that everybody keeps going back to. I'll reference it again. Residential was making 8% then. It was making money, and now we've raised it at 8.5%. We raised it another $80 with the service fees. We raised it another 8.5%, and next year it's going to go up another 3%. and now that is just it's just too much um yeah i agree i agree i don't you know it's the same thing that i said last time i'm just not a fan of it it's it's not good timing we've got too many unfinished businesses uh and if we're moving money to create a shortfall and then having to refill it I'm not okay with it.

And I think that for things like this, when we've got this type of a crowd coming in, we definitely need to make this a third, not a second and final. So I would disagree with making it a second and a final and give it another week because my guess is the more and more people that hear about this, they're going to be coming out there or they're not able to pick. I heard someone say that they have their service out at 8 a.m. That's unacceptable. So we're making people do that. And on top of that, so, okay, so you run them out.

Great. Then you've got the younger folks that are just coming in. They don't have the money.

It's already in affordable form with the housing and everything else. So one way or the other, we've got to stop this. I don't want to hear any more about that we need this for this and we'll lose money and all that. Fine. But make it to the percentage that we've lost. And I guarantee you that 8.5%, just like Ross said, 8.5 and 8.5 is three. do it doesn't mean we do it. We have to think about the people at hand. We have to. We're bringing folks out. That's it. That's it for me.

Okay. I think the question a lot of people don't know is why is this now and why for so much? Where we're at right now is the electricity.

I would like to explain that.

So our reserve is not like a slush fund, a savings account. It's our operating account. The capital items that the department presented are things like line, meters, We have meters, we need 60 meters that we don't have.

Can you elaborate on that? Because it's what you told me is kind of important.

Sure.

And I would like to map that.

Yeah, so we're doing one-time capital items. We're not using it for salary increases or benefits or vehicles. This is going towards equipment that they need, that they've been prolonging. Two years ago, the revenue was $200,000 short because the council set the rates back. So they were $200,000 short in revenue to meet operating... Did you find that?

I looked back on the budget. Did you ever find that? I couldn't find it in the budget. I could not find it.

So what... I was not here, but they went out and they saw an engineering firm by our fee that does studies nationwide with our rates, our citizens, our costs, and they cost $82,000 to do this study. And they recommended a minimum increase, which is what, and we did that on water and sewer here as well. The minimum increases for 2029 and 2030, the city's bill last month was $605,000 for us to pay for power. That comes from all of the city uses, the rate payers. In 2029, with just a 3% increase, that's gonna be over $900,000. The city can't operate at a deficit. We have loans, we have debt already. Those items that the department asked for, we could take some bonds, or we could take debt. The reserve fund is there as a cushion. Like in the Arctic Blast they have in Texas, when the gas rates went up 600%, those funds are there to insulate you. What if a tornado hits our transfer station? What if you move? There's something up coming in. These meters, they're 60 meters, are currently not operating and taking date. When the meter doesn't take data, those people get free electricity. I'd love to have a meter that doesn't work, and then I don't have to build. That goes into everybody's contributions that you could build these reserves of. And so, you know, I don't, they recommend.

Why can't we get the meters? Why are they not?

We don't have the capital to purchase all of that.

An electric meter is close to $300. You talk about reserves. The last time that we were in there, you said you had to spend, like, There's an amount of money out of the reserve. So I'm just trying to figure out why we have to send it out. It should be a savings of sorts. And I get that. And I want that for the big situation. But at the same time, I don't want to be hurting people while we're telling them the same story that they heard 1,500 times throughout the century.

I mean, that's an operating expense. Our costs have not gone down, just like everybody else in the city. We pay the same rates. Our rates are commercial and business here. They pay a different rate. So they study how to appropriate it between the citizens and residential.

Well, the city didn't pay it. The city didn't pay it. The people paid it.

The people paid it.

The people paid it. The people paid it. The people paid it.

The people paid it. So I mean, you pay for experts that do this to tell you what the minimum operating. This is the minimum recommended rate changes. This isn't to do all the upgrades, to do all the improvements. This is just to keep our operating expenses where they are today for 2029. I mean, you cannot do this. It's one of those things with rates. If you don't do this, it's going to be heavy down the road.

So I need some good words. What's heavy down the road look like?

Well, like for the sewer treatment plant, well, you know, our sewer rates, we need a new sewer plant. I don't know, Zach might know the time on that. That's not a 20-year thing from now. That's a four-year thing, a six-year thing, maybe a 10-year thing. What do you think, $30, $40 million? Maybe more? That's pretty close, sure. And, you know, that's going to be in the rates. So if you don't start banking some revenues, you could take a $40 million... DEBT OUT AND THE PAYMENTS ON THAT WILL BE DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTED TO YOUR 20 TO 30 YEARS TO PAY THAT BACK IN THE RATES. A LOT OF THE PLACES AROUND US, IF YOU GO TO NPUA, NPUA HAS DATA ON EVERYBODY THAT REPORTS IN THE STATE. I KNOW EVERYONE LIKES TO THINK IT'S MORE EXPENSIVE HERE THAN ANYWHERE ELSE. THAT IS NOT A GOOD FACT. THE FACTS ARE YOU CAN LOOK AT THOSE RATES. HALF OF OUR STAFF LIVES IN THOSE PLACES. THEIR ELECTRIC BILL, WHAT IS YOUR ELECTRIC BILL, $2 OR $50 THIS MONTH? I mean, our rates are done by a professional engineer to tell us what they should be to operate. These aren't like, oh, we're going to have all kinds of new equipment. So the sewer plant's coming. You've got 3rd Street right here. 3rd Street has lead pipe. It has leaks. The whole system there needs to be replaced. That's not the only street. So when you defer maintenance in these projects for years and years, those projects today are several million dollars more than they were 10 years ago. And if we don't do them soon, they're going to be more expensive than that. You can't just continue to have them. They're definitely requiring us to change those pipes. We're hoping to get some grants because the lead pipe thing's a big thing after Flint. We're hoping to defray that with loans. If you don't do these rates and these types of things, if we don't do anything with sewer and we get to the point where DNR says you're outside of your compliance, They'll come in, and they'll build us a plant, and they'll say, here's your rate. You'll get grants. You'll get loans. You will get USDA low interest. And the rates will change drastically. We see that all around us, and I don't have any specifics of people in the Alliance that do that. You hear about that in places around us. Water is not cheap anywhere. Some of the places people are looking at, cities with 600 people, they don't have to do the sewer plant. Their effluence, their water requirements, they're not good. That doesn't mean that they're to the standards of a city. We're in a city over 5,000. It's a lot different for places that are 80 or 100,000. I've been in places with hundreds of thousands. And the systems are different requirements. And it's not unusual to have those big expenses. And we're a small community. We're trying to grow. We don't charge the development a whole lot. There's fees. If you go throughout Missouri, there's tap fees for residential. A lot of our shift could be to the new growth and the development process. I did a Walmart in one city I did, and their six inch water tap was like $700,000 just for the tap. I don't know what our six inch tap is, probably like 40 grand or something.

So my deal with that is that I know that costs are gonna go up, and I know that we You know, our expenses went up three percent, but then we raised it eight and a half. But we didn't raise it eight and a half. We added all the service fees and everything else. So it went eight and a half plus 80. We spent $82,000 to get a survey done to tell us rates, income, expenses, and capital improvements. At some point, you have to compare that to reality. Will that work in our community? You know, we tried it at eight and a half with the 80 dollars on top of it what is that rough you know with everything else 30 percent and it's just too much too quick it took however long to get you know off the tracks and like you said not pass things and not improve things i'm not for all saying no i'm just saying that we need to do less increments to raise it this much in that shorter period of time is it's too much

So when they do the percentages, that 8% recommendation, these are here to the people here in the budgets and how they look at us. In all honesty, if you're going to be smart as an entity to say we're going to do a 5% increase every year from now forward on all utilities. Because in the future, when you get to those $30 million projects, you'll have banked away some reserve and you can offset the debt that you take on. It's not like our system and our our infrastructure, our streets, they are not top end. They are not. They do not have minimal investment required. There's a lot of work and a lot of money that still needs to come. And that's up to the council how to set where the taxes are. There comes a point when it's acceptable or it's not. I mean, that's really. Do we get any federal grants? So there are lots of federal and state grants. We work with the water, the USDA water issues. Paving is hard. It's hard to come up with paving. There's alternatives. One of the city attorneys like to do a transportation gas tax. Lots of places around us do a one cent per gallon. If you get $500,000, $600,000 a year and you save that for three or four years, you could do overlays for six, eight miles. A lot of these taxes that we have in our sales tax, that's not on the people who just live here. That's defrayed over everybody that's going on I-95 stops and buys food and gas. If they take those away, that tax in November doesn't pass. Guess what? That full cost of those buildings is also coming to us, and that's $760,000 a year. You have to pay it. It's not like we can just not pay our rates. And honestly, it's nice to have those convenience centers and those tax things, the transportation. Turn that off. You know, the council that decided on these big projects, you got a pool and a power plant, and those things were $13 million, and there's debt obligated to that, and you can't undo those. Those are debts that go until 2046. I mean, our recommendation is to follow what the engineer and the people that do this provide the recommendation. If you don't get those recommendations, it's going to come to you. It's nice to kind of incrementally pick it up. No one wants to tell you you should raise it 50%. There are places that do that around this area, and it's hard to burden that. Most people like that incremental smaller increments. And the two eight years in a row, it's actually eight and a half. That's 17% in all of them. And right, and in all honesty, Our rates could be doubled and it still wouldn't cover the future obligation.

And then I think we're going to have to watch what you're saying. So I have no problem with your idea of making it smaller and getting rid of the original, you know,

People's budgets are still adjusting from the 8.5% plus the 85%. And, you know, it's just a lot. And I'm not one for saying no to progress, but I think it needs to be done in a longer period of time. What would that look like? You know, you say that The cost of our electric is going up 3%, so let's keep with that. If it's going up 2% to 3% and we go to 5%, that is doable. You're still doubling your money if it's a 2.5%.

But that's this year. How many years did the city go without raising the rates? And John was on here previously and stopped fees from going up.

And so now this council is playing catch up.

But it raised three. We went up to eight and a half. We went beyond that and we raised everybody's utility bills a flat fee of $80, $85, somewhere in there with all the different itemized fees.

Yep. And now we're eight and a half again, and next year it's three, and next year it's three, and you know, keep up with the increase, keep up with the necessities, but $991,000 in capital improvements, I think it's too much right now.

So a lot of the capital improvements dealt with equipment purchases. from equipment that's 20 plus years old being replaced to keep reliable equipment so we can maintain our infrastructure and a building to house that materials. Is that apartment the building? Yeah. So we have somewhere in the middle.

And I don't want that until we find out how the country's out.

Yeah, we've put out feelers of that and have gotten no response.

That's fine. We can wait. They're sitting there in the same spot they've been sitting there for over a year.

We would have a million plus dollars worth of inventory sitting outside on a lot for thieves, weather.

It's hard to charge somebody 60 grand for a transformer when it's all rusty and looks terrible when you give it to them new.

So that building is...

So we also have equipment and materials stored in our plant that's been condemned for many years that we can't tear down while it's still full of equipment.

On 8th Street? On 8th Street. It's in bad shape. So the equipment, like I said, is 20-plus years old. 325,000 is a bigger direct truck, which there's a good chance we may not even get in the next fiscal year. But we have to have a resolution for it and money appropriated for it in order to make the purchase order to get it ordered. Otherwise, it just continues being pushed on down the road. These are all things. that are spurring from deferring these purchases over the years. At a certain point, we have to pull the trigger on them.

So you say deferred. I mean, a lot of people don't understand city-municipal talks. I mean, deferred means that the rates were not increased.

for a long time, and you guys didn't get to... Well, I'm not saying they weren't increased, because they haven't been increased. But they are not sufficient enough to keep us caught up with current prices. So, you know, a load of 30 poles, per se, is $20,000 to $25,000. We've got roughly 100 holes right now still from our most recent inspection that need to be changed. So there's a good amount of work that we can't do because we don't have the materials or couldn't afford the materials to do that. We typically do one to two loads of poles a year. We've changed out some of them. They were 65 poles so far this year. But we have to maintain the stock in case of an emergency, a storm, a tornado, things like that, because those aren't things that you get overnight. Same with bale transformers, meters. Our meter system is 11 years old now. It's towards the end of their useful life. So they have to be replaced.

All of them?

Not all of them, but they are dying at a pretty significant age. So in order to replace 3,500 meters, it's a pretty good chunk of change. Originally, when they moved the system, they took out a lot of money for it, bonds for it.

How many of you buy in this year? Maybe we should look at that as well. Do that like one fourth over four years or something. Which was part of our capital expenditures. Yeah, I know part of the capital, but I'm saying is that, are you saying that that's only a partial? Yeah. At this point?

Yeah, we have no way of knowing how long some of them will last. We know. Right, right. We know we typically see 30 to 40 a month that fail.

And so you can't replace those right now?

We can only replace them. But we have budgets. I think we have $40,000 in budgets. So $40,000 is $120,000.

We have around 3,500 meters. And some of those are commercial meters are significantly lower.

They're about $1,200 a piece. Okay, so if you have a meter not working, then they're not getting charged. They're still getting charged, yeah. But they're not, uh, they're not communicating to our auditory system, so we have to send crews out every month to go review. There are some that fail, and then we just have to estimate based off sort of long-term usage. So we could be undershooting or overshooting, there's no way to know. Based on the last three months average.

That makes sense. So, what's it going to look like if it fails?

Well, if you fail... Can I ask one more real quick question? Sure. There are other alternatives to the company that we're using now to supply us with electricity. And if so, why don't we get in from multiple companies to provide us? with that information, and let's see if somebody else needs it. I know there's at least two electric companies here in the area, but I don't know why they're not. That's why I'm asking you.

I'm not going to say that it's not possible to go through another company, but typically you would have to give them multiple year notice and have somebody to replace that load that you're taking off of it otherwise they would let you out of that contract without significant cost and there would be options for us to buy directly from the grid but it would require multi-million dollar step-down transformers and multiple new substations to be built I mean, we've had a long-standing history with BlackBerry Electric, and they've always done well for us.

I'm not saying that they're raking their rates every year, and maybe the other companies have to do the same thing, but one of the things that I noticed out there in talking to people and reading the information on it was that they were coming in with sometimes water bills, What I would do would be more electric than myself because they had, you know, they were saying black hair, and they're saying, let me put that, whatever. But I'm just curious, and I love the idea of the grid thing, but I don't know that that would make any sense either. But I would like to know, how good would our top go we spend the upfront money and then how low would it go?

Probably not enough to justify it. I mean, it would be a multi decade. You know, we, one thing that flat clay and just the purchase through the associated system of rural electric co-ops. So they, they have yet to pass on costs from these winter storm events like URI and Pern, where in some of the other places I've been, those costs go straight to the buyer. When I worked at Gallatin, we got slapped with a $60,000 charge just for two days worth of electricity on top of our home and university. because that was spread throughout the poop based on the amount that was used during that storm. So that's become a thing that wasn't very common in the past, but it seems like every year we're having these named winter events that are taking down the national name. Okay, so who do we need to talk to about trying to find these fish groups?

To be completely honest with you, this is the same

conversation I had with a previous city manager about insurance and then Zach was able to go in and find a $120,000 savings for it. So just wondering would Scott be the one or you? I'm not sure who.

We communicate with our representatives from them. We cannot go direct from NW Electric. That gets redistributed through We don't, to be honest, our 8,000 people in our businesses, we don't purchase, our power purchase pretty insignificant for a city. They're dealing with, you know, buildings and infrastructure that uses 10 times the power of a city does. And the way to make our utility imprint cheaper is to buy a whole lot more power, right? So if we have industry here and you know electrical type demand our our rates get cheaper when we buy more so that's the key to making them more affordable is getting more of it you know that has to mean you know we don't have to work that's correct we don't have the population thing that i've been told about the insurance too so i'm just saying i would just like to find out

if that's the question.

You know, if you could bring our representative from our wholesaler to explain how that process looks.

And it's not... We are under contract with Black Plague for I believe about 20, 40 something years. Yes, we just renewed that contract with them.

For 20 years? Switching electric wholesale providers is certainly something that we can look into, but it's not something that's going to happen in this budget year.

All right, good enough for me.

Okay, so I've already asked Todd this, but I'd like to know the timeline. I know that there are other cities that they don't raise

So that's what this study, I mean, you know, when they brought you the study, you could be like, well, we want to just charge all of our businesses. I mean, those are the kind of things that aren't equitable and they design it for where the costs are. Um, You know, we haven't discussed this. This is coming down the pike when the provider says you're going to implement demand metering to the high demand. Those are the people that like two to six when it's more expensive. We have demand meters, but we don't feel for demand usage yet. Commercial usually does that first. Those people that have the high demand during those times, their bills are going to be significantly higher, which helps people at home with fixed incomes. You hear this on the radio around here. Don't do your laundry two to six. When you demand hours when it's hot, turn your air conditioner two or three degrees. And those are cost savings because with demand metering, it costs more during those times you use it. Do your laundry in the middle of the night. And that's something that they mandate.

And that puts the charge to the people that are using it.

Business usually doesn't like that because they're, hey, this is our fixed cost. Residents don't like that. When they mandate that and we have to do that, we don't really have a say. We just start billing it and that gets passed on to the consumer. And all of this is based on consumption, right? Water, sewer, electric, everything is based on your usage at your house. None of these rates have been implemented this month. Last month and this month for electricity are our two highest months of the year. Just like the gas company, it's probably January, February. You just got the biggest bills of the year you're gonna see, and then it diminishes as . You do all the analytics because you wanna get the scientific ability to pass it on in an equitable manner to everybody that's a consumer. And that includes all your three tiers, whether that's residential, commercial, or industrial. And then they design those rates to follow norms in the industry. It's complicated. You can read all that. I mean, our budget is on our website. You can look at where all of the department costs go. There's not a lot of meat on the bone to do all the extra things that need to be done.

And the way that happens is either debt or higher, you know, a lot of... That's why we're trying to pull from our reserves rather than going out and taking loans for these purchases. We... draw those reserves down, and then start slowly building it back up for our next capital project, be able to pull it back down. Saves us interest and keeps us with a healthy balance to be able to manage big swings in costs.

And those are Council-approved policies. Your reserves were set at 30%. Those are industry recommendations. And if you use some of that like this year to pay for those things you need, You're kind of borrowing money from yourself. It's not because you overcollected. You're never going to overcollect. You have more needs than you could ever satisfy with this system improvements. But we're trying to get those things knocked off the list that we can get done. It's not acceptable like if 3rd Street fails and we've got to spend a couple million dollars on that to get people water. It's an emergency then and we do it. It's nice to plan them out and try to get ahead of it. The only way you do that is by incurring more revenue. And there's other ways to get revenue. Grants. property tax. Everybody loves hearing that. I mean, in this region of the country, you know, most of the places around us, they kept their rates. They took less revenue. You know, they have more growth. They kept their revenue at the same money number, but you got new houses, new businesses. Instead of keeping the rate where everybody's been, you get that additional revenue gain. Those are the kind of things, over time, we need to do to pay for these types of things. You keep the tax rate the same with all the new stuff. But most places, they set it to what last year's revenue was. We just did that. You don't have to do that. But those are ways to catch up. And if you get too far behind, no one sitting up here wants to do that. But when you get, hey, our revenues are not going to meet our costs, and you have to do adjustments. You want to be proactive and try to get ahead of that. And that's kind of what's going on here. Is that what you're going to get going on?

I just, I don't understand how the rate study came out and it shows. I do understand it. Hypothetically, I'm saying I don't understand it. Residential was making 18%. Small commercial was making money. large commercial and industrial were losing 25 to 30%. So instead of raising them, we took that burden and put it on our citizens, which are slightly less, half of them are fixed income, instead of the companies that are making millions of dollars. And if we can't do slow improvements, with 8.5% and the gains that have already been done, taking into account all the other things that we're doing right now, I am not okay raising the rates again right now. Just let the dust settle. Or raise them on the businesses that are making millions of dollars.

Please, please, please. It has to be done equitably. So they looked at those, they implemented them all in classes. You know, it would be good to pay the kids to only come back and explain that because it is very complicated. But that's the recommendation, the minimum recommendation. I mean, yeah. It's 8 1⁄2, 8 1⁄2, and then for three years, 3%. Instead of saying, you know, we recommend you do 30% this year, which would get us ahead, and then start doing 3%. Nobody likes to say, let's do 30%. It's just not politically. That's why they give these recommendations. I mean, I've got several staff back here, and they do water, and there's places all around us that went up. Some of them went up 91% this year. What was that? Stewardsville.

Oh, but we know why. Did they spill their stuff?

Yes.

So we're members of NPUA, UA, and probably are paying for that road that they were going to be on, the water pipeline, but they got smart and got out clear.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but it's 8.5%.

Plus $80 per household. That makes a big difference on a bill. It's not the 8.5%. It's all the fees and the meter fees and this everything else that changed at the same time. It's not 8.5%. We're not at 7% or 8%. We're at 45%. The service fees for the water, the service fees for electric, everything changed on that first rating.

we have in the last packet we got all of those questions and it was like two dollars for the base need and i think electricity is one cent per kilowatt i mean it's all consumption based and to some people that may be in dollars some people might be 800 minutes

It didn't go up to 20. It went up to 20. The first rate increase that happened a year ago, the fees came on at that point.

Some of that is our trash fee. I mean, these are all services you're building.

HAS A LOT OF STUFF OKAY WELL THIS MIGHT STILL GET LONG YEAH ALL RIGHT ALL THOSE IN FAVOR PASS THE BILL 2026-9 SAY AYE ROLL CALL OH ROLL CALL THAT'S RIGHT THANK YOU JOHN FEIGER

Is there a way to request a third reading? We're voting now.

No, the ordinance is either passed on a second reading or not.

You don't need to say you're voting now. I'm asking a question to the attorney if we can get that out.

He would be answering.

He's had it all. He was talking to you, John.

Ordinances. That's okay, John. Ordinances are two reasons. You could, if you wanted to, table the ordinance. to postpone the second reading for further discussion, but there's no third and final reading. It's a first reading and a second reading.

John Feigert? No. Mark Hart? Yes. Ross Wirth?

No. Penny Gantz? Yes. Becky Curtis? Yes. All right, that takes us to second reading of Bill 2026-20.

Bill 2026-20, an ordinance for the City of Cameron, Missouri, repealing the current water rates and establishing new water rates for consumers of the Cameron Municipal Utility.

I would entertain a motion to pass when it's all moved. Bill 2026-20 has a second and final reading, if I will call.

So we do have to follow, the HBR did the study, but we also as a member in the water project, we have a minimum 120% of the usage cost that we have to charge in order to recover the reserve fund for that project. And these are in line with what the rate is for that. They cannot close on our loan without doing that. So us and Maysville have set these rates and calculated them. And we really have less wiggle room to do anything with this rate because it is tied to that project. So we're getting closer. We have... A lot of that the attorney probably doesn't want me to speak to.

I mean, I can just real quick, as far as the final cost, because it's a financing, it really depends by the day when it closes. This is what the final cost would be. It just, again, blows my mind how we're establishing rates and increasing rates on something that we don't even know the cost on yet.

We just know it's going to be expensive, Ross.

That's not how I negotiate a car deal.

And then we'll have to raise it again next week. USDA requires a 120% debt service coverage ratio.

I don't know off the top of my head what the file number is, but, you know, Zach and the folks at Alliance and the financing team put that together, and then we set the rates at the minimum requirement to meet the federal debt service coverage requirements. But we're raising it. We've said it once, but then we're raising it.

They've raised it with the study term that the cost would be incurred so they could use some money. Because you have to have that, once we get that 120%, once we get that reserve bill, then the rate, no one will tell you to reduce rates, because it's always going to be more cost. You should never go down, because it's never going to get cheaper. Our operating costs are never going to be as cheap as they are today. That's just the reality of all of these utilities. If you look back 20 years, we should have done a lot of things 20 years ago, because now they're really expensive.

And the rates... But that Weber's home is no good, doesn't it? We were going to have all these towns around this one that I did, and it was going to cost a flat.

You can't predict those things, and they could still tie in, but we can't predict those things.

The draft's coming, maybe not this year, and the citizens are going to be coming to the table and joining the association to help our community. I'm sorry, did I say we have a city council meeting?

Oh, they did. We did what we did.

That was expensive. $65 million expensive?

It was like a couple of, maybe $120,000, $150,000. I mean, and that was the once in every, 5 or 10 or 20 years.

So those rates are, by the study and by the finance group, they did give us the recommendations on that. This is to meet our minimum requirements. And we're really close to that. I mean, this is changing it. What is it? It's like... It's going up... All right.

Are we finished with the question? $0.39 for $1,000. $0.39 for $1,000? Yes. For $10,000.

For $10,000.

For $10,000. For $10,000.

For $10,000. For $10,000. For $10,000. For $10,000.

For $10,000. For $10,000. Mark Carr.

Yes.

Rossworth.

No.

Penny Gantz. Yes. Thank you, Curtis.

Yeah.

John Figer.

Yeah.

That takes us to the second and final reading of Bill 2026-21.

Bill 2026-21, an ordinance of the City of Cameron, Missouri, repealing the current sewer use rates and establishing new sewer use rates for consumers of the Cameron Municipal Utilities.

I'd like to take a motion to pass Bill 2026-21 on the second and final reading of our bill. So moved.

Second. Second. Second.

Previous comments.

Rossworth.

No.

Penny Gantz. Yes. Becky Ferdinand. Yes. John Feigert.

No.

Mark Hart.

Yes.

All right, that takes us to our second trial, Bill 2026-22. Bill 2026-22, an ordinance approving the City of Cameron this early budget for the ensuing fiscal year October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027. I will entertain a motion to pass Bill 26-22 on the second and final reading by roll call.

So moved. Second. Second. I thought there was going to be a finance meeting before we voted on this.

That's for the budget adjustment.

That's for the last budget. That's for the last budget.

All right, roll call.

Kenny Gantz. Yes. Thank you, Curtis. Yes. John Feigert.

No.

Mark Farr.

Yes.

Ross Gray.

No.

All right, that takes this. That takes us to our second final reading on Bill 2026-23.

Bill 2026-23, an ordinance authorizing an amendment to the agreement signed between the City of Cameron, Missouri and the Alliance Water Resources Inc. for management and operation services of the Cameron Water and Wastewater Facilities.

I WILL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO PASS BILL 2026-23 ON THE SECOND FINAL REQUIREMENT CALL. SO MOVED. SECOND. DISCUSSION. THEY ACTUALLY IS THIS ALSO That's what I thought.

This made it a partial year amendment in April, March, April. This is a renewal?

Yeah, so this is a renewal for the upcoming year. And what we did was kind of look on the price because we just expanded the scale back in April. We held that price, what we kind of quoted, we kind of held that basically for the next year.

So the little bit of increase that you saw was basically on operation at the wastewater plants. And again, those increases come out to be about 0.8, a little less than 0.8% over the existing contract.

I'm afraid you have the contract. But they're taking care of a lot of waste and water. And staffing. Thank you.

Thank you, Curtis. Yes. John Figers.

Yes. Yes.

Rothworth?

Yes.

Any hands? Yes. That takes us to a second final reading for Bill 2026-24, Shelley.

Bill 2026-24, an ordinance for the City of Cameron, Missouri, rescinding in its entirety Article 13, Cameron Community Center Board of Chapter 2, Administration of the City of Cameron Code.

I will entertain a motion to pass Bill 2026-24. 2026-24 in a second and final meeting by roll call.

So moved.

Second. Discussion?

Just to reiterate, we're taking the community center board advocate vote since we don't have any. Good idea. All right, show me. John Feigert. Yes. Mark Hart.

Yes.

Rossworth.

Yes.

Penny Gantz. Yes.

That takes us to new business. A resolution 2026-35, Shelley.

Resolution 2026-35. A resolution authorizing an agreement between the City of Cameron and J.R. & Co. Inc. for the exterior city hall renovation project.

I will entertain a motion to pass resolution 2026-35. So moved.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council. This is to enter into a contract and give a notice to proceed with J.R. and Company. This resolution is for the exterior of the City Hall renovation. The contract amount is $1,701,000. This includes a contingency budget of $125,000 and a performance to pay bond in the amount of $45,921, which is 3% of the bid amount. Okay. We'll figure out how we're paying for this.

I like I like that I'm torn we have a building that fell into disrepair from neglect now we are stuck and tasked with fixing it to be good stewards of that building but it comes at a price and I don't like the idea of a remodel and I've told Pat this I don't like the idea of remodel of having to go into debt especially this big of debt for remodeling it. So, you know, I know, I mean, we're stuck. For me, I'm stuck. But how are we paying for this?

We have an obligation that the bonds, transfers, we have some reserves from the general fund, but...

I'm just going to add another obligation, but it would include a line item in the budget for a potential debt payment, but it would be up to council at a later time to decide how much debt, how much reserve you want to use. So she'll be providing you with that information. I mean, you know what?

because I'm here for the discussions of the previous engineering, but a facility this size to build a new building, you're looking at $15 to $20 million. To renovate this building, you're probably looking at $3 to $6. Was there an estimate? I mean, you're seeing what the exterior costs. We have a quote for the foundation work, and that's about $160,000 additional. If our staff does some of the flat work and prep around buildings, So we drive in, it's really good, but yeah, the interior remodel was not, you know, carpet and walls, and it adds up, all the lighting. It's a property you do own. And to be honest, you know, I built a new city hall in 2005 in Colorado, and it looks brand new. The contractor in this project was from 2001, and the windows and the leaks and the... I was going to interrupt.

You said neglect. That's not true. That's not true at all. How is it not true? There's a lot more to that than neglect. Yes, there is neglect. Yes, there was neglect. It was going into offices, even into the chamber. The problem was that... was a lot of things changed according to the original plans. TV, wrong windows were put in, a lot of wrong stuff was done. There were no safety inspectors, there were no inspections. So I mean, we didn't look to see what really happened and what happened because Phil was shocked. When you have a fraudulent person you can treat those people the same way.

With all due respect, to me, not doing proper inspection is the law. If you have a house built and built wrong, if things start leaking, if things start failing, you fix them. You don't just let it fall apart and then go, oh, it gets cheaper than it was. No, I mean, that's where I am personally. Okay, I disagree, but I agree with you.

But Ross, you're preaching to the choir. None of us have anything to do with that.

We can talk about that. And as we know, just like the new roof, it's going to be inspected yearly by the company. So that's wonderful. And it's up to future councils to see that that gets done with the improvements and repairs that we're doing now. So I don't think it's fair. to criticize the old council.

I mean, I don't think we can name all the people involved.

I think it was 2009 when I saw the first report on the leakage and several other things were mentioned in that. So, you know, you can trace it back. Feedback provides a lot of information on that. It doesn't matter at this point The way I look at it is, we knew this was going to cost us a ton. We chose to go this well. Some chose to go this well, except that looking at things like the community center or building a pool barn or whatever they were talking about. I just know that in the end, it always costs us three to five tons, whatever it was for. So just hang on out there. We've got more debt coming this way.

ANY OTHER COMMENTS? ALL RIGHT. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR OF PASSING RESOLUTION 2026-35, SAY AYE. AYE. ALL OPPOSED? AYE. FIVE IN FAVOR, ZERO OPPOSED. AYE. UNDERWAY.

ALL RIGHT.

THAT TAKES US TO RESOLUTION 2026-36.

Resolution 2026-36, a resolution for the City of Cameron, Missouri, awarding the project and authorizing the city manager to enter into an agreement with Echo Turf Playground Servicing for a foreign-placed service in Recreation Park.

I will entertain a motion to pass Resolution 2026-36. Discussion?

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This is a piece of playground equipment down at Brett Park. This is the last section of playground down there that still has the old pea gravel. We did apply for a grant to try to satisfy some of the costs of this project, but unfortunately, we did not rank high enough, so we are not receiving any grant funds from it. So I was kind of bummed out by it, so Lance, we kind of worked together on it to try to get some. But the money coming out of this would come out of Fund 12, and Park Board unanimously voted for this, so they're completely on board. I did get three quotes from three different companies. One was Echo Turf at $106,999.18. The second one was from Playground. What was it? Constructed play things for $145,297.20. And then the third quote, I never did get a response back on. So I tried getting dealers out there to try to get the best money that we could on it. And Echo Turf came in under budget or at their price. This is a pretty big area. It's going to be like the same four-place rubber surface that we have for the new piece of play, the playground equipment that we installed last year. This area is going to be a little bit bigger. This is 109 by 51 feet. So the one down there was probably half the size. So like I said, you'd have to have voted on this to approve this.

All right. Any questions?

Are they going to be able to get this done this year? I'm hoping they are because they're getting ready to start. another project that new station replacing all the turf down there, which the city is kind of, you know, bored with the maker foundation. And we're split costs with that. So that projects about 27,000. So we're gonna split so it's gonna be 13,000 change and stuff. And it's starting to get some wear and tear on it. It was over 10 years old down there. So We did get some, my guys installed some of the new play features down there with its touch sound and some other stuff. I can't remember all of them. We had two big old play features that we put in down there. So I think it's going to be a good thing. So with this company, while they're there, I'm hoping we can kind of just, once they're done with that project, they can just move right across the street and start on the other one.

Any other comments, questions? All those in favor of passing resolution 2026-36 say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Aye. Passes 5-0. That takes us to our second public participation.

Marty Gray, Lackin Blaine, Cameron, Missouri. All I'm hearing tonight is blaming past city councils and directors for budget woes, equipment woes. Some of this does include you. You blame the other council because you were on it before, as were some others. Directors, you have budgets. Capital improvements aren't something we have to have. It's something that if you can't afford it, you say no. Because what I'm not hearing is cuts. Everybody's driving brand new trucks. Why didn't we cut those out this year? Drive them for another year. Build up the capital. Build up the reserves. Got brand new dump trucks. What was wrong with the other ones? Were they showing low rest? Yes. Drive them for another year. You guys keep smirking, but it's the truth. You can cut stuff. You don't have to pay for it because St. Paul doesn't have to be a Taj Mahal where 6,000 population. It doesn't have to be this damn capital thing over here. Make some cuts. Quit hitting all these people with all the bills and stuff when you guys as a council can ask questions and make cuts. That's all we got to do. We got a building out here. You're telling people you want to control, you want to keep the code up. You got a building with a roof caving in out here that you're storing equipment in. A roof's a lot cheaper than a $300,000 building. As is a pole barn out there to cover your transformers. Make some cuts. It doesn't have to be the Taj Mahal when we're a population of 6,000. We don't have the prisons to save us anymore. We don't have a dope place out here to save us anymore. Make some cuts. Have a good night. Thanks.

Just listening to you all talk, I had a couple of questions and concerns. But mainly I was thinking about this. I have to travel a lot for work. Mr. Carter, you know this. What about solar energy? We have that farm out there. What about investing in putting solar field out there? I know that Chill Coffee, I know this is in Chill Coffee as well, and they have a lawyer that works full-time doing nothing but getting them grants. And that's half the way that their city keeps refunding things. Maybe we should check into something like that. I'm not here to criticize anybody because I would want your job. I'm just going to say that. Obviously, it's all been ran down, and it doesn't get replaced. I think it's awful to have to do it right now because there's a lot of elderly people. Everything, all the cost of living is super high. It sucks. Timing is awful. But surely there's other things we can do to generate money into this city. We're smart people. Let's be smart people. That's all I have to say.

Larry King, 308 East 3rd Street, barbershop. Been there for 63 years. My water and sewer bill is normally around $25.30 a month. Last month I used, I don't know how you figure it, I used 504. Is that 504 gallons of water and sewer bill? I got $70. The problem was, Larry King didn't have $80,000 to hire some company to come in and tell me how I need my Chinese raised haircuts to offset my utilities. So I had to do what a good customer of mine told me years ago. He said, Larry, when you think you're getting gigged, just smile and say thank you. Well, I'll tell you, this old man's getting tired of smiling. I got two questions for the county, or for the... There's a fire hydrant down by the ambulance building. All summer long, big transports, tank wagons, trucks with big tanks on them, hauling water out there. I assume there's a meter on that fire hydrant? There is? We've asked about that. What? We've asked about that. Okay. My question is, Who's hauling that water? Who's paying for that water? And the big question is, what rate are they paying? Are they paying the same rate that I am on 500 gallons of water at the barbershop? Are they paying the rate that residents are paying? Or are they paying the rate that some big business in Cameron's paying that's almost nothing? What's the rate they're paying to get that water out of that pipe? Do you know that? I'm listening.

So we don't usually engage and respond to comments during public comments. We just can get maybe we don't really know what we do. And, you know, that that's our I don't know.

We could have somebody on staff get back to you. Now we now we we don't have to just come off.

Well, I'd like to know because I got I can name before the week we overall have another 50 people in barbershop asked me about that hybrid.

They do have a water meter. It's $2,500 for the meter as a deposit, and then they get charged. But they're always different. And they get water. And that's... Same company. Who owns that meter?

Same company.

Yeah. They got different names on their trucks.

Okay. And it's at a commercial rate. So it's a lot more expensive than what your businesses are. I think they do pay the commercial rate out.

It sounds like mine's pretty high. It's probably about $4,000 water.

I wouldn't want to have that meter and have it open to everybody.

Anyway, thanks for listening. I'll report tomorrow to the barbershop what happens.

Thank you, Larry. I think that's exactly what you're talking about. Yeah.

Hi, I'm Brandy Perkins. I live at 11508 Northeast Packard Lane, Flywheel, when the house is done. But I think it would be helpful with regard to the water rate if there was more transparency on our bills. We are on city water out there, even though we're not in the city limits. And we don't even have water hooked up to our new house yet. We have a half bath in our shop that we use for the bathroom while we're doing construction and wash out paintbrushes. We used 661 gallons this past month, and our bill was $89.05 just for water. There's nothing on the bill that says what the rate is, what the minimum is, nothing. Just here's what you use, and here's what you owe. So I think it would be helpful, because I don't know how to figure that out, Like on my cell phone bill, it says this is what your bill plan is, this is how many taxes are going, and then this is how each line breaks out. There's nothing like that on the water bill. So I don't know what it's like for the rest of the city bill, but it would be helpful to know what we're paying for because we haven't even, we're not even living in our house and just the water's almost $100 a month. And my parents live here in town and they used 4,500 gallons last month because they watered flowers. We're living there right now. And their bill was like just over $100 for water. That doesn't really jive the difference in that. So I've got to call City Hall still and try to figure out what that rate is. And maybe we're paying a different rate because we're outside city limits than inside city limits. Double? That's fine. Okay. Thank you. Specialist. But I just think if there was a breakdown on the bills, maybe that would be helpful so people know what they're getting in their dollar and not just here's what you owe us because that's not helpful. So that's all I have on that. Thank you.

And John, I think you... Yeah, I had to ask for that. And I was told that with the new computer system that they're using, that that is supposed to be coming out Because that is something that my wife has been asking for and bothering me about for the last, I don't know, five, six, ten years. So I can't give you a time frame. I'm not sure if anybody out there can give you an exact time frame. I do know, though, that they did say that that is with a new computer system. We should have that. Okay. We need to know an itemized bill. with the amount of usage, et cetera, including the 100%.

Thank you.

Eric Cheney, 1144 North East West Street. I just want to kind of add to what the young lady just said. I've worked at that address for six years now. George Pugh is my next-door neighbor. His water bill for 600 gallons is $90 a month. My bill for 4,500 gallons is $980 a month. So, again, next-door neighbors. No, I don't understand how they're calculating that. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

My name is Rebecca and it's been made aware that my questions probably won't get answered so I'll go ahead and bypass those but I do think it's notable for the people in this room to realize that in the back corner of this room I can hear Mark Carr calling people in this room names like epic idiots and a-holes. So that's really reputable. It's on record. It's 100%. There's a video so

I don't know where that's coming from because I did not.

You can try to defend it. It's on video. But I thought that was pretty professional. It means that the public participation ground rules are very clear about using profanity. But you can look at it.

What was your question? Okay. If we can answer, we'll answer. And if not, maybe we can get you a response.

I'm curious. It was mentioned that there's $82,000 that was spent on the survey. Was that just one survey? Or the study, I apologize.

I used the wrong term.

We spent $82,000 on one study? No, an electrical study and a water sewer study. So that's all three combined are in that $82,000?

And not to exceed contract for that was to bid out our... That takes us to miscellaneous comments from the staff. SO I DID WANT TO BRING TO COUNCIL'S ATTENTION THAT WHEN WE DO THE BUDGET AMENDMENT FOR LAST YEAR'S FISCAL YEAR, WE ASKED THE COUNCIL, WE ONLY HAVE THE LAST MEETING OF THIS FISCAL YEAR'S OCTOBER 21ST, AND SOME OF THE PEOPLE WERE NOT AVAILABLE TO ATTEND ON THE 18TH, AND A LOT OF THE COUNCIL AND SOME OF THE STAFF ARE GOING TO END THE MAIL THIS NEXT WEEK, SO WE WERE GOING TO SCHEDULE THE SPECIAL meeting for the budget amendment to be at five o'clock on the 21st that way we can have a little bit of time before 6 p.m and get that accomplished so that we don't have to have a separate date and meeting and then we'll be at night just probably all of you so if that's fine staff can go ahead and get that on the agenda and get it scheduled Other than that, I didn't have anything else to add. I do appreciate all the comments, and it's no fun to have to look at costs and operating and try to make things better. It's a lot of work, and I've lived in four states and a lot of communities. I've lived in 28 different households, and it doesn't help to come to a rural small county or community and tell them, except for college, this is the cheapest rates and taxes that I've ever had. And I've lived in Missouri an hour from here. You know, NTUA has all of the studies. And you can look at, we just looked at the rates. Ours was really in line with small cities. I don't like to pay that. I pay the same bill as well. But I think you and our staff worked really hard. try to improve our services and really care about the citizens we serve. I know it's not fun for any of us. And I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, ma'am. Nothing for me. Thanks, everyone, for coming out. Thanks for hanging with us. I'll keep it pretty short.

We do have a small well, I've got a project we need to probably look at starting to get close. The pool is starting to pay for chip and pools about five, six years old now. So I'm starting to reach out to contractors on quotes to repaint the pool for either this fall or spring. Why can I got looking about that I got I got looking at two slides, and nothing's physically wrong that I can see that I'm going to try to find like a stressful engineer. something to somebody of that nature to just inspect make sure they're okay that's really about it about the pool um told you about rec park the project that we've got coming up with that um summerville i'm still waiting to hear back from barton west hopefully they'll get some numbers to me so we can start getting the bid packets out to the project out there at the parking lot so it's still going i'm just waiting on Portland was giving some numbers back to give to Shelly for bidding that out. So, other than that, we're just, we're mowing along still.

So.

Thank you, Mayor. Just doing a lot of economic development items. Next week, I'll be gone for three days to an economic development summit in Maryville. Also doing a lot of planning and zoning items. You can see the signs around. Whenever you drive down BPP, because there will be a change in that planning and zoning proposed for the next P&Z meeting, which will be Thursday, or next Monday. So, I've got to get stuff out by Thursday. So, other than that, that's all I've got for now.

Yes, Mayor. We're working, the police department's working with Fire EMS. I'm not sure if everybody's aware, we're having an air show here on September 8th, 2019. It'll be Friday evening, and then

I think, again, Saturday, starting around 10. So they're going to have airplanes. They're going to have hot rod cars out there, all kinds of stuff. Who's putting that on? Lee Crouch. Okay. Rain on Sundays. No. Cars and planes are going to rain. If it rains on Saturday, they will have the same schedule on Sunday. So Sunday is the rain day if something happens on Saturday.

That's all I have, Mary. Thank you.

Is there another chief I can't see?

Zach?

Just a quick update. As far as city operations go, things are going pretty good.

Again, we're running a lot of sewers, a lot of exercise, a lot of routine maintenance stuff right now. Genwick We are pumping water. We do have skate up and running, which is not good. We're still working on a few little metering issues, but we are receiving water from Genwick, and I think operationally things seem to be going pretty well.

I just want to give a shout out to Council Member Penny Yance, who was at the county clerk's conference last week, and she was the first ever I think I've said enough. Thank you guys for coming out.

Thank you to everybody for showing up.

We couldn't put this the way that you wanted. It's not easy being up here, and it's not easy being on the other side, or either side, when we're doing these, and I know that. But I do want to say, I appreciate you coming out. You've got to keep putting your voices out there, because at some point, it will make a difference, I promise. I will. To jump on to Phil, just wanted to say thanks for helping me get set up. I had a doctor's appointment down at KU, so he had me set up on the phone and was able to get me on here tonight. So I appreciate that very much. Let's keep e-docking. We need all the extra money we can get so we can lower these costs. uh dad keep up doing what you're doing up there with city hall uh thank you for for your efforts and and i know that every one of you are working hard up there but i'll call the other individual it just happens to be this time we didn't have to cross paths so uh last thing just want to make sure that something's out there for staff my understanding is that We had some folks leaving early on Friday. And quite honestly, as a manager, as someone that's always been on salary, that's not something we do. So with the salary increases that you got, with the salary that you're getting paid, I would assume that all people that are up there salary-wise are sticking around just to, if nothing else, show the rest of your staff what it means to be doing the right thing and sticking around. I realize you may get more than 40 hours, but you know what? That's part of being a manager. I've had that since 1998. I don't think I've ever had a 40-hour week. It's been 32, 45, 50 hours. So I would really appreciate that. I've had a couple of folks just question that. So if it's you, fix it. If not, I apologize for you not being here. That's it for me.

All right. First of all, we have had a solar come out a few years ago. A few years ago. Yeah. And the attorney at the time that was dealing with that company had a desk so full that they never got back to us.

I'd say check in for it again. I mean, it might be worth something. And you get rebates for them. You know?

Keep your gas guzzling cars. What did he say?

Keep your gas guzzling cars.

Keep your gas guzzling cars. Yeah. It's cheaper.

Thanks, guys, for coming out. God bless you. I'll entertain a motion. Thank you.

Thank you.