City Council - Regular Meeting

Airbnb private lands for wreck.

ations around items two and three. Um, but I'm gonna try to keep us going on that a little bit. Um, just so we can have plenty of time to go over the last two items, too. So, get us out of here on a reasonable time. What do you think, Wallace? Should Amber recuse herself from the open container? Comfortable. Usually I mean I usually when we're voting at least I do but you think that's okay if first right sure that's first it is first thanks for stopping in appearance

I feel she's relevant to the discussion just so she stays on thumbs up I know Amber's been pretty consistent with not being even in the conversations but you're I'm comfortable either way whatever like Wallace said whatever you're comfortable with because I know you're in the open container and I use it so

thanks Pat I and I know what you're saying too. Yeah because it's just a conversation about extending the boundaries not whatever. All righty, let's go ahead and shift into open container. Madam city manager, do you have anything like

I'll just start up while uh Carla, our licensing specialist and floor uh come to the podium to remind you council that you have a standing resolution for the open container area downtown. So, it has kicked in under your standing resolution on May 1st. Um but noting you wish to have some conversation about that. Um staff are prepared to talk through potential changes. Um you'll note they are not recommending a boundary change but are suggesting a change in the hours of the open container period. Mayor counselors um we are um recommending the changing of hours from 5 from 5:00 p.m. to 10 p.m. to 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. This better aligns with multiple downtown events. Some of our event organizers have to get a container from like 3:00 to 5. Um so this um we are not recommending expanding the boundaries um due to safety and traffic concerns. Um and all the qualified liquor license holders are in the current boundaries. Um if staff agrees with the changes and the recommendations, we will prepare an updated resolution. That's about it. Awesome.

Any questions about the expanded times? I I'll can I go? Please. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sorry.

No. Um B and Pat and I were just at the meeting this morning for the DCBA and their main concern was um with the time and so having the time change um to 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. I think they'll be satisfied with that. Um they were just curious about that uh that boundary because there were some shops but made a good point this morning to them that um like from different advice that they had had that uh all the entities that are participating that have the license that can serve to those folks are already in the boundary. And so they understood that. They also understand that it's public safety does come first. They were just hoping or wondering if there was going to be a hard like somebody monitoring, which has never been that way in the case of where the boundary is and you can't come out my back door because that's 50 ft from the boundary line, you know, that kind of stuff. So, um that was their concern. And then I pointed out like specifically it was Cadillac Cowgirl

that wanted um her shop to not be excluded. But again, it's like where do you stop with that boundary when there's nobody that's participating in that in that area and it's closer to First Street. So, did you Yeah, if if I could expand a little bit on that. So, the concern was that you've got the open container and it's limited to Second Street. So if they walked down to Cadillac Cowgirl, if she was participating, let's say in art walk and they had a cocktail, then that was her. It's illegal

for her to carry or for anybody to carry an open container down to Cadillac Cowgirl at half block. So that that was the main concern. Chief, did you want to say anything? Come up. Oh, she told you to sit down. That's not quite what that was.

Yeah. So, and we can change the boundaries. Um, when we spoke to PD, it was basically, as I mentioned to you, we spoke previously, it's just the public safety concerns of traffic, um, and dealing with that. Obviously, we don't recommend that anybody not follow the rules, the legal rules. Um, and what Chief just came up and said was that we can see that from this time each year and during the hours, they do have increased call volume. Not a significant amount, but it does increase. I think he said 15%. So, that is something to keep in mind as we expand the boundaries. So obviously it's council's discretion if you would like to expand that. That's just why we didn't recommend it.

I also pointed out to them that we can't keep doing this every year. Just to make that clear too that we can't keep extending the boundary and extending it and changing it constantly that they need to well figure it out. all the time that I've been on seems like every year there's been some level some type of thing that they want adjustments and which I'm not opposed to per se but I think at some point we need to remain consistent and safe from this area and I think even for the sake of the police that you know who have to manage that and do those things how they so they can oh because it'll be all the way clear up to first street

you know and then that's why dot right and more traffic more safety concerns especially if people have open container drinking I don't even feel comfortable that that close. So, but so any other questions for something? Yeah, go ahead. So, Ash Street, if I'm correct, is where Gaslight Social and the office is at. And so, that boundary is there. Yes, it goes all the way to the office. Pardon? It goes all the way to the office.

Okay. And I think the other request which I understood uh why not was um um prosties um from somebody and that that really unfortunately didn't make sense to go across Collins that's for sure. So, so let me ask is because I don't have the actual map pulled up here. Oh, but I do.

He does. Um, is Signant in that? I thought they were in that boundary, right? Yeah. And so that was the other concern that a couple of them had. Not not anything about Signant. It was the back door to Arc 321 and Rockas, but Rockas doesn't have a permit anyway for that. So, all right. They cannot serve but it does extend walking there because of the office. Okay. So you can Okay. And then all the way to sign. So Okay. So they can. All right.

Michael Flur or Carly. Have Have there been any requests like for uh I'm sorry for uh see where the the boundary extends up beat Street to Collins to access the Nick for example, but I I'm thinking about ArtWalk. So is is I don't know I don't know if the recommended path to to get to the Nick is down the rail trail if you're going east. Is that correct? Yes. So then they would just come up. That makes sense. Okay. So that that makes sense about it goes all the way behind the nick on the rail trail. Yeah. All the way up to that stop light on second. Okay.

On the other back side of the nick. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. They asked specifically for the rail trail and there was concern about extending northbound on beach. It would include the bus hub and uh didn't know if you wanted open. Yeah, it's on Beach Street now, but I mean I take the position I'm not I'm not open to expanding anything. I know I said that in leadership. I'm great I'm great with the hours, but the expansion of the boundary I think we should maintain the consistency and they understand that good

from the meeting. I mean, they just are putting in their suggestions and they're understanding that we can't just keep on and we need to have those boundaries. just want to hear from you.

Mayor, council, if I may, I would I would agree. I don't want to continue to extend this every year because it just creates a problem and then people are going to start breaching the boundaries that are already that are already there. Just like Miss Jensen pointed out that somebody's already asking for this accommodation and this accommodation and at that point then we're just it's too hard to manage that. Not to say that it can't be done, but people are going to start pushing those boundaries anyway. So, I would respectfully request that we stick with what we have, not entertaining additional requests for extending that. Any questions for Chief? Yeah, go ahead Pat.

To avoid keep coming back. Um, so, uh, if you took a half of South David and a half of South Center and a half of Walcott, um, I mean the desire, and this is more more around our walk, uh, in particular, um, I don't know if those businesses will particip ipate, but if you did a half a block, um, especially David Street in particular, I don't know if Gruner Brothers with the restaurant stuff will open those. Um, like Frontier um,

what's that? Frontier uh did serve out of both sides which is David Street and Second Street. I don't know if the new owners uh will will do the same thing uh to avoid any problem. And again, Center Street, it's just a matter of walking um you know, carrying an open container a half a block down and the same with Walco Walcock Alria in particular.

So you have something I did. So for Ger Brothers, they are not pulling the same liquor license that Frontier had. They are actually going to go with a restaurant and bar and grill. So you cannot do off premise consumption. So they cannot pour for out of the premises. Oh your head microw. So they will no longer be able to do that.

Okay. So just for clarification purposes. So being you're not using a particular disposable cup to put the drink in. So, it's clearly identifiable. What's to stop me from buying a a clear cup? I'd walk into Gruner Brothers, whatever they're going to call it, uh, buying a beer, walking back out, and nobody's going to stop. Um,

it would taste just to make sure it came from the right brewery. Yeah, it would be up to Grder Brothers to not allow people to take just like anywhere you go, it's the liquor license holder responsibility to say you can't take this outside. Um, and then the people who do participate give out wristbands. So, you can see where it came from. So, I'd have to go to walk down to from the office clear to uh backwards and then I get another wristband. Yes, essentially.

So I could end up with five or six wristbands. I was drinking I have a night. I'm I'm being very serious. Yes. Yes. Essentially that's what they should do. That's the rules. That's Yes. You know, when it's the chocolate walk and you get the stamp. Yeah. Like that. But you don't get a passport. No, you get a bracelet chain. Okay. Because to take that specific entities drink out, they have to have they have their own colorcoded wristband for each one. So they know where the drinks came from.

And we sell those. So they're compliant. Each bar has one. They have them during open container. So it's not like Marty GR where you're goal is to collect more. Or is it your honor? So yes, establishment buys their wristbands. They send us what they look like and then we track that. questions you can think of from the meeting. Okay. Is everybody okay with Oh, go ahead, Randy. Sorry.

I was debating if I was going to say anything. I don't love excluding Cadillac Cowgirl just because somebody has a drink, they aren't going there during all of our events.

Has anybody ever said that, do you think? So well I hate to side with you but I mean they are the only one on that street right now but I also love the let's do this every single year right chief but I do think that I would say that if we get some businesses and all these empties down here and there are more people that want it on center street I would be completely open to having this conversation one again. I would say though too to the argument of them that all the establishments are already within the border. There's nobody down there who can get arith and sell them. But center street is

empty. So I am comfortable saying if we open some businesses and they want to readress it then I'm open to that if they want to get just a couple more people down there. I'll let you guys deal with that next year. Yeah. Thanks guys. Right. Anything else for the chief or thank you everyone appreciate it. Um is everybody okay with the extension of ours? Oh, this um adjustment of ours. Okay. And everything else stays boundaries stay the same. I'm not okay with I'm great with okay with the boundary.

Okay. because I I think it's um if I had a business in Walcott Galleria and I and I was participating in the art walk, I'm not saying purchase, but you're in trouble right now if you go down the Walcock Galleria with an open container, whatever establishment you bought it at. That's the way I read the boundaries. Is that how you would determine it? So that I'm not okay with. So thanks.

But is anybody in the Walcott Galleria have I mean I get your reasoning. It's the same fight that Cadillac Cowgirl has right now, but there's no business establishment in Walcott Galleria that can hand out wristbands, right? Do they participate in the art? That's not what I'm saying. He's saying if you buy a drink from Backwards, you can't walk to into the galler. It's the same thing as as Cadillac Cowgirl. Yes, it is. That's what I was saying. It's the same, right? Okay. All right. We'll save that conversation for another day. We forward on the on the unofficial vote and then it'll go to resolution.

The next item we're going to stick All right, let's go ahead and move on to the mobile vendor. You have any setup you'd like?

Um, just to state that we did have a counselor bring forward a concern from David Street Station, which I asked the staff to look into with David Street Station. Uh, they have done that and this discussion is the result of that uh work with our David Street partners. Mayor, counselors, um, currently our mobile vendor parking permit ordinance allows for one vendor per block face and block face is we consider both sides of the street. So just one on each block face. Um, in a maximum of 10 days per month on the same block face. Um, what we are proposing is to remove the 10-day monthly limit. This permit is not used a lot. It's used consistently, but not a lot. um increase the capacity to have two vendors on each side of the block. Any more than two, we would require them to do a street closure in a special event. We're also changing the fee structure from $25 requesting from $25 per parking space to just a flat $25 permit. Um if council approves, we will move forward with an ordinance change.

All right, who would like to start the conversation? Yeah. Black face meaning um so you'd allow um on each side of the street one trailer, one trailer, or are you talking two trailers and two trailers? Uh mayor, counselors, we would allow one trailer and one trailer on each side of the street per block. Per block. Okay. side of the street, but two total. Two total. Yes.

So, within Yeah. within your boundaries of the street, you can have two total. Whether they're on the same side of the street or on opposite sides of the street, only two within that block. Okay. Michael, I I reread the memo, so I got my question. It's good to read. Go ahead, Pat. I I read it but

so um when this all first started so is there any consideration if I'm I've got a food truck and I want to uh be right in um the branding iron with a competing business and I don't care what Brandy Iron thinks that's where I want to be. Is that totally legal? No,

mayor counselors. No, it is not. Um the ordinance specifically says you have to have a sponsor, a business sponsor within 30 ft. Okay. If you don't have that, we would not approve it. So that that has changed. We're not changing. We're not requesting to change that.

And another question I've got, so the parking right across from Rockus um and that originally got set up with supposedly some electric extra electrical um specifically for food trucks. Um, has anybody taken advantage of that or council or mayor counselors? Have they Have I ever had a request for that to be rented?

Is there like a PSA do you think we could put out for summer that would remind people? I think out of sight, out of mind kind of forgetful. So, So, do do we charge $25 for a single spot over there or is multiple spots?

Mayor, counselor. Um, we do it's $25 per spot, but it's a $300 deposit for electricity. And I think sometimes that's what makes them not want to do it. A lot of them do have generators. Um, but most of our food trucks are around David Street Station, and that's just a little bit too far. They don't want to be that far away from David Street Station. So, why such a high is that something that was such a high um $300 for is it just a deposit for electricity? It's just a deposit just in case something goes wrong with the um Yeah, with electrical. It's fully funable. Oh, it's fully refundable.

So, I think the thought behind the whole thing was I the only thing I've ever seen in Austin, uh, Texas, they do a lot of groupings of and they've got specific spots. Find out. I don't exactly know how they work it, but I think that was the thought, which I think was a good thought of that council, but um too bad nobody's taken advantage of that. I don't know if the hotel comes to pass, you know, how that's going to impact. question that a whole parking scenario around that ship sale. So the recommendation is to go with your proposal the ordinance. Is that correct? How does council feel about recommendations for that? Go ahead. If you take um all four spots up, that's that's legal then for 25 bucks.

Mayor, counselor. Um no, we actually have a cap. You can only take three diagonal and two parallel. Okay. So, you could take four if you pulled two permits, but that would be 25 permit. Yes. Two different trucks. Or if I had a truck and then set up massive tent, not massive seating, but yeah. Okay, council's good with that. Awesome. Great. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. All right, let's go ahead and move on to budget amendment number three. I'm take that away. Um,

council, this, of course, is your last budget amendment for fiscal year 26. I think uh director Johnson and Nicholas Gasman are accounting super cute through uh these changes may counselors. Um so this is again the third budget amendment of the year, typically our last one, which we just kind of used to make sure everything's looking good. We're not going to run into any issues, do any projects that got approved late in the year, that type of stuff. Um so I outlined six different items in the budget uh the memo that has been prepared. So I'll just touch on those a little bit. Uh so the first uh main item in this uh amendment is the white dot popppler cy to column water and sewer. So we originally budgeted this project already. Um but when we got the bids back it came in significantly higher than we originally thought it would. So what this amendment does is it increases the budget based on the quotes we got back from the RFP. So that it this one is done in conjunction with Y dot so the timing of its concern which is why we're doing it as a budget amendment. Um I did want to point something out in this there's a small typo in the last line on this one where it says it's coming out of the sewer fund balance. Um it's actually coming out of the sewer and water fund. So 270,000 is coming out of the sewer and 1.5 million is coming out of the water fund for this one.

Okay. Uh the next item that I wanted to bring attention to is the ones Oh yeah, go ahead. Questions as we go along or save them. If you want to save them, maybe let's let's staff go ahead and go through them and then if you make note then we'll go back if that's okay. Pat. Sure. Okay. Go ahead.

Yep. Mayor counselors. So the one the next one is the 1ent7 collections. So we have a couple different projects in here and the main point of this is to allow us to spend the money earlier than we were originally expecting. So the 1% uh 17 funds we're expecting to fully collect that a little bit earlier than we originally expecting. So with that it gives us the ability to not break the cash on hand rule but do some things a little bit earlier. So this kind of benefits because like the seven soul cardiac monitors if we wait till next year to do this I think it's a 6% price increase is what we were being told. So just kind of allows us to get more with them. Uh the then the next one um is the rec center RTU replacement. Uh so again, this is another project that was um currently in our budget, but when we're getting quotes back and working with the engineers um figuring out exactly what we need, the price is more than we originally budgeted. So this um amendment gives us authority to go after the full project that we're looking for. Then the next item is the subsidized fund changes. Uh so um these are the recreation area where some of the um different like if we had less revenue than expected it would increase the subsidy for it. If we have more expenses it would increase the subsidy. So in total the subsidy is changing $676,000 and the majority of that is because of the hard winter with hogon this year. Okay. And then another item so back in January the council approved some contracts with the opioid funds. So, this is giving us the ability to pay those. Um, and then the last one is the North Plat Sanitary Sewer Interceptor Phase 2 project. Um, and this is, uh, the good thing about this one is we have the federal earmark that will help cover the majority of the cost. So, that's 1.75 million of this $2.18 million

project. Um, so in total, all of the items in this increase spending authority by 9.5 million. And then it will also increase revenue by 3.2 million. So the net impact to the city's funds as a whole will be 6.2 million as a reduction. And then with that, I'll open it up to questions and we'll defer to some of the department heads as needed. Pat, do you want to start off? Could we go one by one? However you want to. Okay. Does anybody have anything on number one? the white dot popppler.

Go ahead.

So, um on on that um I I am curious why our our estimates from engineering was so so far off. mayor counselor. Uh there on the sewer side, I know this one well. We have some really unique manholes. The large interceptor sewer that goes through that area. We are putting manholes in locations that it's conducive to do lining projects down the road um without having to redig up that new concrete that they're going to be putting in. They're very large. They're unique and not common. So I believe that they um the contractors didn't have a good experience um in installing them earlier and maybe increased their bids for that. The water additionally uh there was um more work that was identified a little bit later but uh the bids came in a lot higher. A lot depends on the contractors that are bidding on the project and the workloads that they already have. There wasn't a lot of competition for this project. Go ahead.

Excuse me. Um Christie, could you also speak to the fact this project was bid twice is my understanding um in conjunction with why do first uh bid came in exceedingly high um and the second bid was a little bit better if I recall.

That's correct. The first bid was um I would I if I recall correctly about $4 million over on utilities combined. Uh why do went out and bid trying to phase it into two separate years to make it more um exciting to contractors to bid on which brought these prices down from where they were. So at the end it it talks about funding for this amendment will come from the sewer fund balance. So I'm I'm a little with some of the others. You know what sewer fund balance those those reserves would be at? Our sewer fund reserve um is approximately $8 million over reserve requirements. So sorry our sewer fund balance yes is over 8 million over reserve requirements. So we have the capacity to absorb this. Similarly, water has even more. Uh I if I'm recalling correctly, they're about $16 million over reserve.

Go ahead, Jenny. Christa hit it. I just wanted to remind you that this is the um section that had the typo. So, it is coming from sewer and water. And I was worried that we were queuing in on water and forgetting or queuing in on sewer and forgetting that water was a portion of it. But Christa Yeah.

Any other questions on number one? Okay, let's go and move on to the next one. Anybody like to comment on unscent collections? Go ahead, Pat. So, I mean, all all good projects and we've already talked I believe on these I I think have been talked about and approved on especially the steel roller replacement. Seems like we've already gone through that. So, um I I I guess I contemplated that these things were already allocated, aotted, and um were figured out. Now, we're looking at a a budget amendment. So, some place along the line, I'm I'm very confused.

Okay. Mayor, counselors. Uh, so what we typically do in a lot of the memos where we're going to do stuff before we have budget authority is give you the heads up to changing the budget later. So we can't really do a budget amendment every time we want to change something just because of some of the legal requirements. So we consolidate those all into like three items throughout the year. So while yes, you did talk about those earlier, that was kind of giving us the idea that yes, you would accept this when we do present it as a budget amendment. Go ahead.

And council, this will allow staff to proceed in the current fiscal year with these purchases and avoid uh increases in prices that could occur if we didn't amend it in to this fiscal year and just brought it forward in the the subsequent fiscal year. Other questions on item two? Let's move on to item three. questions, concerns, anything like that.

So, basically, I'm I'm pretty disappointed um that this one's so far um increased, if you remember during discussion, I asked, you know, what size, how many ton, uh that kind of thing. And um so I guess I'm just And how much excess number 17 do we really uh because I'm I'm taking this on number 17. um is you know obviously access is what we're counting on on utilization or am I wrong on the excess? I guess if I could, mayor, when you say excess, you mean overcolction beyond what we anticipated?

On the fifth set. On the fifth set. Yeah. I don't think this is overolction. No, within the allocation for parks and recreation or buildings that was originally envisioned when the fifth cent passed. So, it's a reallocation of funds because these units are costing way more than anybody anticipated what, four and a half, four years ago. And with that, I I'm sure Zelima can give you a very detailed explanation.

Counselor, um, councelor Sweeney, you may recall we did talk about this in April on the 7th, and you did ask, uh, the question that I could not answer for you. We did follow up with an info packet memo that clarified that the two units. One is 46 tons. Um, the other unit, um, let's see, sorry, I have to refer back. Uh the second unit is the energy recovery uh ventilator that serves the locker room areas and that ERB which improves the air quality and replaces the warm moist air in the locker room with fresh outdoor air. Um that has a cooling capacity of 10.75 tons. So we're replacing the existing 40 ton unit with a 46 ton unit and then the ERV is going to be a 10.75 ton unit. So hopefully that answers your questions. In terms of the funding, uh, city manager is correct. So for 1 cent 17 cycle, city council allocated 5.4 million to facility improvements of the major building systems. HBAC of course being one of them. So this is funded by the original allocation that was provided for facility maintenance. It is we we're not counting on a an excess collection to pay for this. Thanks, mayor. And so, um, because I was w struggling to wrap my head around this in leadership. So, this was already an allocation we made back in 21 uh when it went or 22 maybe when it went on the ballot and it's a expense that we I guess were originally planning for later, you know, maybe next fiscal year or something, but because we know we're going to Yeah, I we're we're doing the work earlier than anticipated a fiscal year as opposed to budgeting it for next

fiscal year. Is that

the issue? Mayor, councelor. So, what we asked for was the pre-spending authority so that we could um bid it the project at a favorable time um for pricing as well as installation because large HBC units have a long lead time and we want to be able to install it during an ideal temperature time. That is why we asked for the authority to move forward with the project before, you know, the July 1 timeline that the the project would have been funded. And the facility condition assessment did identify these units as needing to be replaced, I believe, in FY27, maybe even FY28. But what actually prompted this project to be budgeted originally or added to the the capital budget for FY27 was the failure that occurred last summer that just reinforced that the units are failing and we need to address that before we have a catastrophic failure that makes the facility undesirable to use over the summer months. Amber,

um, can you talk a little bit about what the primary reasons for the delta between the original request and the actual uh, expense that we're looking at?

The original mayor counselors, the original for the project was actually extracted out of the facility condition assessment. So that was a low figure that was provided by the consultant that we should have vetted more. So that was a mistake on our part to not get updated uh relevant quotes. In addition to that, however, when we had the failure and we had to address that, it was identified that it would be highly beneficial for us to add controls that allow us to remote monitor and control the system um from a computer in the building's structure shop or a laptop that is mobile. And so adding that control component added a significant additional cost um that we were not necessarily planning for or anticipated but we do believe has that's high value.

Um just to speak to that a little bit council um I can tell you that um these RTUs have really increased in price since 2020. Um I've experienced I know our neighbors next door are experiencing it. In fact, I I uh provided some information to councelor Macintosh who sits um on the the Hall of Justice committee. Uh they're also seeing expensive prices and in my previous position um we saw prices more than triple following the pandemic. Um, I did a little googling before we looked at this. Um, but they're saying that some of it is driven by federal regulations, some of it is driven by labor shortages and also rising material prices that have been post-pandemic supply chain largely related. We keep hoping these prices will come down, but I can assure you it's not just Casper. And probably your consultant pulled that $250,000 cost estimate around 2020, 2021, and then the world kind of flipped on its head for some reason. related to the price of these pieces of equipment. Michael,

some of the federal regulations around it is there's a change in the refrigerant that they are now using which increased costs with that and so yeah safety concerns as well as refrigerant changes EPA EPA get them. All right. Uh, let's see. Any more on three? Okay, let's go on to item four. Thanks. Anybody have questions around the item four?

Yeah, Mike, I'm curious. I I don't know if this is a question for Simma on the subsidies. Um, I'm just curious how this I mean obviously to me Hogan is kind of the outlier there probably just because of the bad year, but how do these Can you do you know how this kind of compares to subsidy increases in past years for a kind of a ballpark? Mayor Counselor

and particularly Hogan. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so unfortunately, yes, because of our abysmal snow conditions this winter, uh Hogon fell well short of anticipated revenues about $450,000 short what we would normally have primarily foresee passes, which of course people did not buy given the snow conditions, and then daily lift uh tickets as well. And so uh you know I of course don't have u you know the history of all the subsidies committed to memory. However I can tell you it is a pretty large portion of the discussion. We generally have at budget time and I am working on preparing some stuff for the city manager that gives some of that history for you all. And of course through our business plans we're also trying to um display that and so we're happy to provide some follow-up information for details that I'm not really prepared sure

to provide tonight. that that would be insightful I think just to kind of know. So each of our business plans shows expenses and revenues over the you know 5 to 10 year past as well as our projections into the future and so happy to provide those. Thank you. And I realize subsies are always always a projection anyway. So for the very weather dependent operations.

Sure. Oh, sorry. I can just tell somebody else come in the box.

Um, yeah, I certainly was expecting to see type of um adjustment coming for Hobon. Uh, one that seems less intuitive to me is the ice arena. So maybe that is also one that would come with further detail later but if you have any high level kind of um context for for those two numbers the both the reduction in revenue and the increase in expenses would be helpful. So what I can tell you on the revenue side of we had some snafu early season with the warb birds ownership

of course previous ownership had rented much more ice time for practice and we had more scheduled games. Um when everything happened with the ownership, um we ended up the new ownership had to scale back practice time. So that's ice rental revenue that we lost, as well as we didn't play as many home games here in Casper as originally planned um because in the transition we dedicated ice time to other users and so it was just a a lot of decrease in both ice rental time that would have normally gone to the Warbirds as well as concession sales for games that we were not having um at the arena. So those were the primary drivers of the revenue loss. Um primary drivers of the increase in expenses uh were really staffing. Over half of that was non full-time staff. Um that was really miscalculated during our budgeting process of what we needed for coverage for the hours that we operate.

Thank you. Yeah. And and sorry, I would also add utility costs. Water and electricity have gone up pretty significantly and unfortunately ice is pretty water and power intensive. Quick on the parking fund. Um which which structure are we talking about? Mayor counselors. This is the downtown parking structure. Um and what we're looking to do is this is getting an engineer hired. so we can do some structural assessments and some like to figure out where all the cracks are so we can seal them and do that type of work.

Yeah. And I'll just tag on to that counselor through you mayor. Um in reviewing the budget um director Becker raised to my attention that our parking um vendor who operates the facility for us uh is concerned and was asking for some repairs. We have concrete uh dropping off of some of the overhead areas. And so with that in mind, um we conceptualized of a structural assessment to really look at what that structure needs. It is fairly old um and look at uh long-term repairs versus short-term fixes, but that will involve getting an engineer involved.

Okay. I mean, I I thought the 40,000 was a lot. Uh but I'm I'm not a structural engineer so that's for sure. Yeah. Um I would add if I could mayor um the number may be uh a bit um wide. What we had hoped to do was to potentially engage an engineer to look at that structure as well as the structure that abuts the um business center. Okay. and sort of get a hopefully some bulk rate pricing if they'll look at both of the analysis and and like I said can look at long-term solutions and not just patchwork.

So it could be a little heavy is what I'm getting at but we won't spend more than than we need to. No. And that that was my thought process exactly if you could work both of those structures in at one time. But and I believe we've still got uh structural engineers here in town. So it would be great if it could staff told me we have one. Any other questions on the subsidized funding changes?

Okay, let's go on to opiate settlement payments item five. Questions on that? Yeah, go ahead. So, I guess I I'm not sure why this was different than what we approved. So, if somebody could kind of members of council, um I think what you're seeing is the it's the half amount. So, we are only putting in a budget amendment for the half. The county is paying the other half. So, what you saw in the memo was for the full, but only 50% was ours. So, I think maybe that's the difference you're looking at. Otherwise, it's the full amount we approved to go to them as a whole.

Okay? Because we uh we had $3 million in total and we were only uh we were taking a third of that and dispersing it this time, right? So, this 500,000 is half of the 1 million the countyy's taking. That makes sense, Pat. So, we still have opioid settlement monies. We have not wanted to make dispersements, track success, and then use the remaining 2/3 to invest. Yeah. After we have some baseline metrics to go off of. So, this would total mil.

Yeah. this 500,000 plus the county's 500,000 will be one 1 million which is a third of the three that we've received. Okay. Mayor counselor if I could jump into um we would only budget what you guys have approved to be um spent. So even though we have extra money that is um in the opioid money that we are restricting, we are not budgeting the entire thing. We are only budgeting what has been approved to be spent. Yeah. Councelor Dam, that three million that you mentioned, is that that's a million a year over three-year period. Is that how that works?

Uh, no. I I don't believe we made any multi-year commitments. Uh, it was just uh one year. I see. We don't want to That's the That's the twothirds that's remaining. Yeah. I see. Thank you. So my recollection was we may get more but right now that that was the total uh at this point. So that we might be out in another another year or so or two years.

Yeah. And that was the intent of the uh the group that was making the recommendations was we didn't want to, you know, blow our wad at the onset before we had gotten a Is that an inappropriate phrase? Somebody Somebody used it the first time and then now it's just stuck in my head. Thought it was you that used it the first time. Nothing. I'm gonna point this to Steve Kathy. That sounds like it's Steve Kathy. Don't print that, Tommy. It's inappropriate. I apologize. So, yeah, we didn't want to, you know, empty the bank empty the bank account that Thank you.

Uh, now I'm going to Google it. Don't you innocent child. Did you have something to serve me? Your way up to lose or spend all one's money. I don't know why you guys are trying to make me feel so terrible about that. Okay, we clear.

So the do you know the spending timeline time frame for the three million is that by when does that have to be spent? There's no there's no no end. So just whenever it runs out yet yet. Okay. Thank you. Good change. City manager. Yes, we um have invested those are collecting interest.

All right. Good for all right. Item six. Um, there been questions passing out. She got lose consciousness. Sorry. Yeah, we do have an A, don't we? Um, phase two. Does anybody have any questions about item six?

So, the Will's turn and Pat. I again um worried about you know fund balances you know and some of the loans were requesting and grants. Um so I and I know I realize this is the interceptors and collection points but um why so wastewater treatment plant fund uh where where does that fund balance That's currently

your counselor, we are several million dollars over reserve requirements in the wastewater uh plant fund. So this uh can additionally traditional uh capital expenses, operational expenses and debt services are split among the different entities that pay for the regional wastewater uh services. So wastewater is typically a a net zero type of operation. We um bill for the all of the expenses that we have. And the nice thing about this project is it's a $ 1.75 million uh congressional uh earmark uh for the interceptor and the added expense is our match for that uh uh grant. Okay.

And I can't remember if it was one of the other numbers. Was it is a wastewater um fund same as the sewer fund or are those different?

Mayor, counselor, they are different. The regional the wastewater fund funds the wastewater treatment plant as well as our regional interceptors and regional infrastructure. The sewer fund funds only the city sewers and city sewer infrastructure uh pump stations and pump stations. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you staff. appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks, Nicholas. So, after all that, it sounds like um if everybody's comfortable with those budget adjustments. Yes. Oh, sorry.

Sorry, Mayor. Madam, city manager. We were just looking for direction on Oh, geez, that's right. Sorry. I suppose if I would have read the recommendations. Go ahead, Madam City Manager. Um, council. So, we are looking for uh direction on the budget amendment and your approval. Is everybody okay with that? And this will come in the form of a resolution as well. Yes. And thank you for the reminder. Awesome. Okay. All right. Let's move on to the fire annual report.

Um so this way to the podium. Um the fire department did just complete their 2025 annual report and I thought it would be useful for uh you all to receive a highle overview of that report. We'll look at operational outcomes and some notable accomplishments from the past year. Uh the full text of the report is available on the city's website and there is a link in your packet if you'd like to go read that in full on a subsequent date. Um and then given the um interest in the public around fire danger for the 2026 summer, I believe Chief Black will conclude by just uh sharing some observations from the department as we look at the summer of 2026. Okay. Thank you, mayor, counselors. Thank you for uh tonight. Uh this is going to be a two-part briefing. I'm going to first go over the 2025 annual report for the fires department and then I'm going to do a joint presentation with emergency management Mike Cavalier and uh discuss our outlook for the 2026 wildland fire season. So, if you have not had a chance to look at the digital copy of the annual report, I do recommend that you do that. Um, the PDF print off out is not as pretty as the actual report online. So, it's it's interactive. You can get in there and and get a lot of different stuff. I I recommend you take the time going through it and doing a deep dive in it. Um, but before I get into the numbers, I'm just going to take a minute and talk about what 2025 actually was for this department. It was a year of continued progress, strategic investment and organiz or organizational maturity. The demands of emergency services continue to grow every day and they they

are not stopping. Our department stayed focused, strengthening our ability to respond, train, and serve the community. Our personnel responded to thousands of calls last year. And behind every single one of those calls is a firefighter, an engineer, a captain, or a chief officer committed to the people of Casper. We made a deliberate investment in our capacity. the staffing increase, the separation of the truck and rescue. We had two recruitmies. We have a new deputy chief position. And these aren't just one-year wins for the department, the city, for the community. They're results of several years of planning. and they position the department, the city, the community for several years ahead and position us in a really good spot to be able to respond to the increasing needs. So now we're going to walk through the data a little a little bit as a refresher. The firearms department, we we've got five stations, minimum of 20 personnel per platoon on shift at those stations. That gives us three to five personnel minimum at each station. We have five engines, one ladder, one rescue, one squad, three brush trucks, a battalion chief running the shift, and also hazmat incident command and regional response capabilities.

Now, let's chief, I'm sorry. Um, so I was a little confused at one ladder truck because I thought we bought that our frontline apparatus. Oh yeah, our So we have reserve apparatus, but in in that statement, I'm just talking about our frontline apparatus, the ones that are ready to go all the time, we do have reserve apparatus, which that additional ladder truck is one of the reserves. Okay. So in this when you when you talk about five engines and one ladder truck, so this is all all the five stations combined. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And that's our front line. They're staffed ready to go.

Okay. If if I talked about all of our ancillary equipment, we'd be more time.

We've got a long list of reserves and and backups. So, um last year we we ran 9,661 total incident responses, pushing 10,000. it it is increasing every single year. Um 7,135 of those were EMS responses. Only 176 were fire responses. 860 were good intent calls. 608 service calls and 882 were additional responses, false alarms, canceled and route hazardous conditions. So with 74% EMS and 2% actual fire, that is a ratio that tracks with national standards, but that doesn't mimic what most people think we do. Most people think that all we do is run fires. But the majority of the time that call comes in, it's somebody on the other end of the line that has a medical issue going on. and we're sending at least three trained professionals and they're showing up at their door making their day better. Looking at a 5-year trend, in 2021, we ran 8,354 calls. 2025, 9,661. That's roughly 15% increase over the last five years. and roughly 4% year-over-year from 24 to 20 or 5% year-over-year from 24 to 25 that it just keeps keeps climbing. Um that that's why one of the major wins for the department and the community was that increase in staffing

and being able to split that truck and rescue company. Um distribution by shift, it's it's pretty even across the board. A, B, and C shift. They get a even workload. Um, if you look at the distri distribution by hour and weekday, uh, throughout the week, the the call volume increases, uh, peaking about midweek, 8 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. are usually the b busiest, unless you're at station one or station 3, and then you run a lot of night calls. When you get into the online version of the report. There's a there's a G geographic map and that shows all the hot spots in the city and and you can tell those hot spots are around the downtown area, station one, station three, which we have more personnel at both those stations, more apparatus, and that helps respond to that increased call volume. So breaking it down into actual unit utilization of those almost 10,000 calls. Our apparatus generated 25,287 total commitments of apparatus in 2025. An average duration of just under 21 minutes. An important number here, 6,433 separate instances. Last year, we had three units committed at the same time with an average of 8 minutes and 40 seconds. We had another 3,000 instances with four units committed simultaneously

and nearly 1,400 incidents with five. That's what overlapping call volume looks like. And that's that's another reason that being able to increase our staffing and split that truck and rescue and help with th those overlapping calls and make sure that we're capable in responding is a big deal. And I I just ask that council keep in mind anytime we talk about future capacity decision decisions that we keep in mind that overlapping call volume because it does impact operations and our capabilities for the responding to to the community. Um looking at our response time performance for 2025, our average response time was 4 minutes and 41 seconds. That's 4.6 69 minutes. Um, that's measured from the moment the citizen dials 911 to the moment the first emergent CFD engine arrives on scene. We track it that way so that we can actually quantify what that person in need is going through and how long it's going to take from the second they touch that phone to the second our professionals show up on scene to help. I'm going to move in uh community risk reduction. Um that's our prevention department. Deputy Chief Kevin Ross is here tonight. This is his uh very first council work session experience. So Kevin, thank you for being here. CRR plays a critical role in in supporting our public safety development and operational readiness through the city of Casper. Um, it's the part of the

department that does the work before the calls come in. and and a lot of times you can't quantify how many how many emergencies you stopped, but the work that the CRR division does is is incredible and and it does pay dividends every single They also do plan review on new construction, code enforcement, life safety inspections, fire investigations, public education, Last year, CR participated in more than 40 construction and renovation projects across the city. Major building major bills include Newport Mall, the county health building, Lewab, Yellowstone Apartments, and the Hyatt Place Homewood Suites Complex. Every single one of those was reviewed for code compliance and life safety during the design and construction um investigations. We handled 60 fire investigations led by the Casper Fire Department and that included significant work on the spree arsonist case where we actually got a conviction. So strong work, Ken. Um, capacity capacity capacity building with CR. We continue to look at new ways to be able to to get in and educate people through our business self-insspection program and and make sure that that public education is paying forward every single day. And and that public self inspection program has has done a lot for our community in the last couple years since inception and uh Chief Ross has some ideas to make it

better for the future and we're looking forward to kind of advancements we can make. They saw 2350 third-party life safety inspection reports. Our crews had completed another 686 additional inspections. And the number of different events for community risk reduction and public education that they do. I mean, it touches and impacts so many of our community members. They engaged with 5,371 members of the community last year, teaching them about fire safety. Moving into the training division, in 2025, Casper Fire MS logged more than 33 hours. That's a big number. But we've had a lot of a lot of institutional knowledge leave our department over the past few years and I'll get into that. But we are constantly training making sure that our our members, our men and women show up and they're ready to make people's days better. Breaking down those hours. 275 went into airway management, medical emergencies, trauma, pediatric, pediatrics, and then different elective hours and paramedic level hours throughout all of the ranks. Fire and special operations training,

company training, almost 12,000 hours. Driver operate operator training 3,181. Offer officer development just over 1,600. hazmat nearly 1,200 special operations nearly 3,000. Wow. It goes on and on. Our I'm very proud of our our members of our department for what they put in training and our training division on how they prepare them daily. changes on what I I briefly touched on. So, we hired 15 firefighter trainees last year and ran them through two recruitmies. We promoted more than a dozen members of the rank structure, captains, engineers, a battalion chief, deputy chief, and we said goodbye to some long tenur members. between a battalion chief, two captains, an engineer, and a firefighter, 123 years of combined service walked out the door. And that's another another number I want you to hold on to on why it is so important to support our training division to make sure that all these new faces we're bringing in are trained and capable to respond to the needs Looking forward to the next year to 2026, we're going to continue focusing on staffing stability, leadership development, facility modernization, and operational excellence. With strong community support and dedicated workforce, we remain committed to meet the challenges ahead of all of us.

So, that concludes my information on the 2025 annual report. And but before I segue and and call uh Mr. Cavalier up here. Um, I explained how how we're postured, our staffing, our training, our prevention work, our response capacity, and that matters most when we go into all wildland season like we are. Wildland seasons can test departments and communities in ways that you all know. You guys have seen all the the bad wildland seasons throughout the different communities in the United States. We're coming through several seasons of compounding fuels conditions. Vegetation that grew during the wet years has cured and is now ready and dry. Um, our wildland urban interface around Casper continues to expand every year. The resource competition during the height of fire sight season when other parts of the state other parts of the country are also burning that affects what we can re rely on locally for mutual aid. The upstream work that goes on outside of what we're preparing for is done by emergency management, fuels assessment, predictive risk modeling, inter agency coordination, public preparedness messaging, um, and and Mike does incredible job at all of it. So before I turn it over to him, I'd like to ask if any of you have any questions on the annual report go into the fire season. I think Pat

has. So thanks for all of these details. Um, chief, how how do you you on tracking in the training uh like the fitness hours um of 8,275? So, I'm I'm guessing they're on duty and so that's clocked. Is that the same with Wildland and all of those trainings or part

I'd say a large majority of it does occur while on shift. Some of it of course can be like a one week or two week class where it overlaps on days off and individuals are actually on their days off and training as well. But I mean, our our training calendar every day is booked all day long and they cut off their PT first thing, you know, by 10, 10:30 in the morning and then they go straight into inspections, training, public education and and sometimes it's packed till 5 6 7 o'clock at night. But there there is instances when they are off duty and and it's not while they're on shift. And then um you mentioned wild land. So you know noticed in the past um mills might send a truck um and equipment to I think it was last year was California and maybe Ders went from our department. How I mean how much uh brush trucks do we actually have for the city of gas for?

We have three. Three. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. And we are we do have a wildland program where we will send members out on those those large project fires. But before we do any any resource allocations elsewhere, we make sure that we're covered in the city of Casper first. So, where I was going with that is how if you're out on a federal fire, I'm not I'm not sure if California's um Palisades fire was considered federal or what not, but do we get does the city get reimbursed?

Yes. Yes. the city gets reimbursed for their time, get for any any call backs to backfill their positions. Um, they get paid for any type of apparatus or specialty equipment. So, there there's a whole funding model that goes into it and make sure that that it's solvent before we send anybody and make sure that we have the staffing back home to be able to send anybody out.

Okay. So the city gets reimbursed for let's say um plus uh plus the help. So how does how does that marry together with do they take vacation time to do those things?

No they they don't take vacation time. They the what happens is is their time is covered by that fire while they are gone. And then any backfill that is required, the fire covers the back fill as well. So if we have say three individuals that want to go out on fires, we'll put them on the board for a two to three week period and say, "Hey, this is the time frame that we're com comfortable with you guys going out." They can get picked up, get sent out, and then they're supposed to be on shift. that fire covers for any of the back fill to make sure that we are covered staffing wise back here at home.

So do they get paid any it depends on the fire if they make it it depends on the hours that they work on the fire.

Every different every everyone is different. I mean sometimes they could work eight hour days. Sometimes they could work work 12, 14, 16 hour days. It depends on what fire it is and and and the team running it and what's needed. It's pretty fluid on on each one. But typically they they will and one of the the really good benefits of it is the amount of training they get by going out on these large fires, the instant command training, the different wildland training, getting that experience that typically they're not going to get while they're here in Casper.

Thanks, Mayor. I have a question for you, Chief. I appreciate all the information, but I would encourage folks, it is a lot more dynamic presentation uh on the website. Like you said, I'd also uh want to give kudos to Captain Cody Park. Sounds like he's the one that takes all the pictures. As I was looking through it, I was thinking to myself, these are some great pictures. So, yeah, he does a good job. Thank you. I I will pass that on to Thank you. Any others before turn over to Mike? Yeah. For those of us fortunate enough to only have experience via TV, can you give us a quick version as to why you guys are called to all the medical things and we aren't just relying on the ambulances here in Casper to do that?

Okay. So, uh, a reader digest version of that. Perfect. Yeah. Goodness readers.

You are Smith, citizen of Casper, and you call 911. you you expect somebody to show up quick, right? If you are, say out in PV and the hospital is in the center of town and you're having a heart attack or a stroke, let your arm off or any of the any of the number of things that happen, that ambulance could take 8, 10, 12 minutes to get there. Our fire truck is getting there on average 4 minutes 41 seconds. So the way that we are positioned around the city with the five different fire stations, it's just a nationally recognized model that it is better for the communities because we are able to get there and get that life saving care initiated quicker. And then when the ambulance arrives with their paramedics, EMTs, whatever, then we can transition that to the transport to get them to the emergency room. But if you were just relying on an ambulance service, I don't believe you have the rapid type of response and the life-saving capabilities for a community that that our citizens expect. One more or whatever. You guys are actually more qualified than a lot of the personnel equipped on our ambulances as well. Am I right? Well,

professionally qualified, not just personal opinion, but looking at our training hours, 33,300

plus, we take it very serious and and a lot of times we are 100% in this career for 25 to 30 years. So, I don't know the the statistics on on career paths for medics on ambulance services and how long they're actually in that, but I would venture to guess that in the fire service, you have a longer career path which builds more experience, all of that training, which could compound into a much more qualified individual.

I should have rephrased that in a less fired up way. I'm sorry, but we require you to be more qualified than we require the ambulances based on the contract we have, I believe. So, it's safe to assume we'd rather you get there first anyway, right? Absolutely. I don't actually have to ask you that. I know the answer. We require you to be more qualified than require the ambulance. I am very thankful for our partnership with Banner Mills Evansville and their capabilities to help us transport our citizens to the emergency room. I'm sorry I didn't mean to You're fine. You said it very well. Chief,

you guys are always teaching me. Send him to Iran. Any other questions for Chief before we bring Michael up? Yeah, please talk about our last ISO report and rating and when we expect our next ISO review.

Okay, so we we are an ISO level of one. That's the highest ranking you can get in ISO, which also lowers our insurance rating in our insurance rates in the city of Casper. We were audited in 2022 and we expect to be audited again next summer of 2027. So, we've been putting in a lot of work to make sure that we're caught up and and on track with all of our training hours, our inspections, our response. I mean, there's a whole myriad of different items that come into that recipe to make sure that you're at that top tier. I'm very proud of our department on on what we've built over time and sure that we keep

and on that council because I think um certainly the work that our fire EMS folks do in terms of life-saving uh efforts for fire and EMS are important but I also think it's important that we recognize that they have an important role to play in terms of our local economy and the costs that our businesses incur for insurance as well as the costs that we incur as individual home and property owners. Um so having that viable department is um important for quality of life or excuse me quantity of life but also for our quality of life when we're looking at uh insurance costs.

Thanks Chief. All right. Thank you. Appreciate all of your support. Mike, if you want to join me up here, council Mike Cavalier.

Council, so I haven't met all you guys. My name is Mike Cavaler. I am the emergency management coordinator for Nrona County. So, um, typically you guys kind of interact with me more often than not during our emergency operation plan revisions and adoptions and things like that. Um, I've been uh here been my current position uh since June, but I've been with the county since uh 2018ish. So, um definitely not new to the program, but new to the position. So, you might have met my previous boss uh Stacy Hills, who was uh kind of leading the charge on the EOD revisions last year. So, um, yeah, sessions and I I really do think that that's a testament to fire, the EMS, law enforcement, dispatch, all of these programs, uh, that kind of work with the more public facing side of of public safety that you guys see. And the programs that they run are are great and and that's typically why I'm not here is they're they're carrying that uh that flag really well. But I want you to know, you know, not only personally, but statutoily, I'm I'm the Toronto County Emergency Manager. So that is every municipality within the county. So I'm just as committed to you guys as uh the county, even though I'm I'm a employee of the sheriff's office. Uh we we work uh alongside of all of your guys' agencies as well. So I am glad to be here kind of ahead of of disasters. normally uh that's that's always a better position to be in. And uh trying to kind of one echo what what Chief was sharing, but also to kind of forecast a little bit for you guys some of the problems that we're we're going to run into most likely this year. I don't think it's going to be a terrible surprise to anybody on, you know, the moisture content and everything this year, but you know, some of that is quantifiable and I kind of want to talk about that a little bit. Um

we're seeing again severe drought conditions um going into the season. We've already had a 6,200 acre wildland fire in Nrona County in March. Um that's that's not typical. I know that's not just a one-off. Um that that really is not typical at all. And uh what this technically is indicating is is our fuel loads uh the things that burn are drier uh and more prevalent this year uh than they typically are. And this has been building up. This was a problem last year. It's uh it's definitely a problem this year. The way we look at this, so BLM fire, which is now the US uh wildland fire service, uh it's not BLM fire. They have some technical indicators that they use uh and they rate it in hours. So we are looking at thousand hour fuels. Um and when we talk about thou thousand hour fuels um we're kind of timbers 3 to 8 in uh in size. Uh they're looking at that they're looking at the drying conditions of those and then they take into account something that's called an energy release component an ERC. Uh and this is a a composite index. There's a bunch of science behind it. I'm not a scientist. There are fuel specialists that that talk about this. Um, but they look at the the worst case scenario of this particular piece of fuel can can provide uh energy in a in a fire and a released uh per per unit that they they have. Um, if you look at that ERC and you look at that fueler load, um, it starts giving us the indications of of fires uh, potentials. Um the other component we look at is our weather and uh it has been unseasonably warm already. Uh it's going to continue to trend as we're seeing this leninia flip. Uh what what happened is the atmospheric patterns and everything are going to push even warmer conditions on us uh

especially as we head into uh late summerish in the western part of Wyoming. So that's definitely a problem. Additionally, um we're looking at I know uh speaking with with Casper Mountain Fire Department, they're struggling to even fill water tanks right now with the amount of available water at that at the mountain uh locations. And we're kind of seeing that in a couple different other areas. Uh, additionally the last uh, you know, kind of doom and gloom is what we have is return fire intervals, RFIs and return fire intervals are basically uh, how nature typically would run fires and how we're seeing them now. So if you had an area that's every 50 100 years, you have a big fire that comes through and clears out uh, you know, conifers where they're not supposed to be. uh and we haven't seen that for for typically reasons where we're we're aggressively uh moving into these interface areas with houses. So, we fight these fires uh like we're going to lose a house, not like we're we're we're worried about fuels. Uh we see that these return fire involves don't occur building and building and building. And you know, we look out here and it's, you know, green grass and things like that. But, uh, I'll tell you, all of these factors, we don't have 8 to 10 inch logs laying around the city of Casper. They will affect the city of Casper directly, uh, in big major cases. So, there are a couple active mitigation efforts that we're doing. There's some gaps um that we'd always like to to grow into. Uh, what we're doing, what we'd like to do, as you guys know, as a council, doesn't always jive. Um the first thing I wish we did this last year but uh you know just because of the intervals we have our community wildfire protection plan uh and part of that plan update that is coming uh hopefully by

the end of this year is joint f fire joint wildfire task force. On that task force we bring all the the the right players and stakeholders to talk about this um and identify areas identify plans identify solutions. So, that is underway. Um, that is actionable. You know, things that we're learning right now, if uh if there was a case today, we we would be putting that info into into play even though the plan's not done. So, we are working on that. Um I I do want to talk about public and private mitigation efforts. This is this is kind of a tricky spot. Um there are areas or what we call interface areas wildland urban interface um that introduce fuels up into structures and structures when we talk about big fires like this or additionally fuels. So you look at the Palisades fire that you were talking about or you know the Marshall fire out of Colorado. These had huge tremendous impact uh on on houses and not one house here, one house here but rows and rows of houses. um and that uh the mitigation effort around these locations like even in an area um you know like Wolf Creek or or Garden Creek or some of these areas these are still very key things and I I know uh through the CRR program you know these are these are uh topics that are all kind of that risk reduction point um we really can't stress enough fires don't care about property lines they don't care about municipalities uh they're going to do whatever they do and and we need to be working uh to identify those areas now because we don't have a fire firewise program any longer in Wyoming or I'm sorry in Nrona County um we kind of have to rely on you guys as m municipalities to help us uh get that word out help us on that education point uh to work with those homeowners to talk about the three

30 foot to 100 foot uh space around their structures. Um we really uh we talked about resources or or apparatuses and front line and and uh second outs and third outs. Uh that comes down to to resource management and resource management uh in a in a wildland fire is going to be very difficult because uh the moment we send three of your guys' brush trucks to one part of the county and there's a structure fire and we're calling people back. All of these these are just cascading problems that uh if we don't have those resources, we don't have those personnel, we don't have those plans and systems into place that that's going to cascade faster than we're going to be able to get ahead of it. So, um those are, you know, some of our gaps and some of the mitigation efforts we have underway. And I I I do kind of feel a sense of urgency on some of this uh because when we're we're talking about fire progression, we're talkagement. uh if the chief comes to you, if I come to you guys, what we're asking for for uh in in emergency situations, really time is of the essence. So, that's kind of a talking point I love bringing up with councils, uh with municipalities is that if we ask for declarations, if we ask for delegations, if we ask for those things, these are not just from the hip. They're either pre-staged in the EOP that you guys have already adopted. uh there's processes, you know, laid out in that or they're very well thought out because of of uh whatever that situation demands. Um that red tape that that is that is a real problem uh for us on those incidents. So, please kind of consider that when you guys are are getting those requests um especially in disaster situations. But if it's if we're calling you for something like that, it's it's definitely a situation we have to worry about. The other component is unified messaging and uh you know we we work really well together in the public safety world with some of our our our

stakeholders and other governmental partners. We have public information officers that we rally on incidents or people even if that's not their primary duty. Taking pictures is not you know a primary duty of a fire captain but uh maybe they have secondary training and and we could allocate those resources. We have a couple full-time uh PIOS, which is great as well in the midst. Those folks are really going to be the driving messaging force. Um because if we throw out conflicting information um that that's a problem in in responses and we see that unfortunately uh in in other counties and other states uh and other responses. Um so that uh practice of unified messaging working with us together is great. Um, when we talk messaging, it's hard not to talk about emergency alerts, um, and evacuations. So, we primarily use ready, set, go. Not primarily, we use ready, set, go. Uh, that is the verbiage. Uh, the ready phase, you know, it's kind of a prepare now thing. We live in Wyoming. Tuesdays will kill you in Wyoming. Um, we have to make sure that we have resources and things on our home side of the house that that are in place in case we have to do things. So preparing is a big part of of that uh component that I push out. The set is is simply hey uh get set to evacuate. You're adjacent to uh an area that we have a high level of concern uh that you know you very well could be hit a place where we need to evac now. Uh if you feel like leaving that's fine. Um please do uh now and then uh go go is is pretty self-explanatory. It's evacuate now. We would love to say every chance we get, you know, every incident we get the chance to say, "Hey, get set uh before go." Sometimes we don't get that opportunity. And then with that is our emergency alert system. So, uh we have one system for all of Nona County and that's Kexus. Um you can go to

noncount-w.gov to sign up for emergency alerts. Uh signups are huge deal for us. If we don't know where you live and what your telephone number is, we can't tell you that you're you're adjacent to an emergency. We also have, you know, the EAS and WEA system that, uh, you know, takes over cell phones and TV and radio. Uh, but there's different stages and different criteria and technical reasons why we're we might start with a subscriber-based one first. So, we definitely want up-to-date, accurate information on that. And then um cooperation and training is is kind of the last point I want to touch on uh in this briefing, but you heard from Chief Black that 33,000 hours were were conducted by Casper Fire and that's that's a a great amount of training hours. Um in in that I know some of those hours were dedicated to joint trainings because we do that very well in in our area. Um, we want to continue to train with county, state, and even federal partners as much as as po possible. That interoperable, uh, training, uh, the the shared language, the shared communication systems when a fire when a fire breaks out, whether it's, you know, just an initial attack on a very small one or a moderate sized one, that training is what's going to prevent that from going any further. So, supporting that training um, allows us to work uh, together as flawlessly as possible. And we we see great dividends on on that uh around the area. I'm going to talk about resource management again. Uh resource management that is a key to success. If there's a fire uh here in Casper, you very well could see an ambulance for Mills or Evansville. If there's something that happens uh you know on the east side of town, uh you might see uh Casper Fire Engine help out and go over to those. uh going back to the ISO ratings, some of those are all contributing factors into what we call automatic aid and mutual aid system

stuff. So supporting of of these this team sport that is public safety in our area is is not only a very Wyoming way to handle uh business working together, but it's also uh incredibly important to homeowners insurance uh to resources and definitely to those that are experiencing the emergencies. So, um I have a ton of resources on this stuff, a ton more I could talk about. I I am trying to keep it, uh brief for you, but if there's any interest you guys ever have, uh any desire to sit down with us and talk with us over at emergency management or myself or or meet or anything, please reach out. Don't hesitate. Like I said, you know, I have employed by the sheriff's office, work for the county, but um I serve you guys as emergency management quarter coordinator um both, you know, personally and statutoily. I got a high interest in in uh working for you guys just as much. So um that's all I have on the brief, but what what questions can I answer?

So you mentioned declarations and that type of thing. Do we have anything ready to go?

So in the EOP there is some sample uh you know deformationation answering questions on the test. we haven't even written yet. So, we have some framework and there's definitely best practices and attorneys uh that can can talk a lot to declarations and and delegations. Um but in the EOP, we do have some framework and some pretty standard language in that regard. And by resolution, this council uh along with all the other municipal councils adopt that same EOP. So we do have a good strong foothold starting towards that just adapting to whatever that situation.

You might explain your acronym emergency operation plan. Uh the EOP EOP emergency operations plan. Sorry. So I don't have the resolution. I should have referenced it, but yeah, there's there's a resolution. Uh our latest version is 2024. We're currently in a revision right now of the emergency operations plan. So every couple years as as things change and lessons are learned and tactics are adjusted, we we update that plan. So anticipate you'll you'll see version of that here 27 adoption.

So one of one of my worries this summer is the center part of the mountain. We haven't um thank God that we haven't had a major we've had the east end well the west end first and then the east end but um parts of that I believe are city property um and I don't know how that all interplays uh would we be supporting uh county fire and you know state resources um and how how might that

resolution process all

so uh depends you know res resolution wise there's there's quite a few factors on that I'll tell you from uh what what we call incident management um one of the core tenants is a unified command system And and what that does is I might take uh any one of the chiefs from Casper Fire, a chief from County Fire, a chief from Mountain Fire. They don't relinquish any any powers or authorities, but they're they're there linked up making decisions together. Um that's our first line of defense, and that happens very regularly uh with throughout our county uh with with crews and teams. Um so that's going to be kind of that first line of defense. From there, um, it really depends on how we're going to attack that that fire, what that fire is doing, uh, whether or not we have, uh, state or federal resources that can come in and support us, uh, or or if this is going to be, uh, remain in our control. At that point, we might look at at something, you know, as far as a declaration or delegation of authority. But generally speaking, I I think that unify command is is the correct answer for for much of what what I'm concerned with until we can get federal or state support.

So, one of the things I'm very concerned about in particular with property tax reductions and you know, on the ballot this fall, uh it's going to be the 50 uh 50% uh residential property tax reduction. And so where I'm going with this is our county fire. Um and unfortunately late in the game during this legislative season, Alicia Campbell um tried very hard to stand up something in particular for special district fire units across the state. Um unfortunately I got um way late and uh died. Uh do you really I mean on the county fire level? Um I I'm concerned they're going to have to shut possibly the east side station. Maybe they already have, but do you have any

I'm not going to be able to speak to county fires. They they have their own county fire board. I'd be much like me speaking for your council, which what I'd refrain refrain from doing so. Um I I I they're answering calls for service. um they have an incredibly uh dedicated group of individuals within their department and uh you know I I know that they're they're rallying uh around you know the need uh for sure. So I think that uh a lot of that is is to be determined still and I know they're working that problem.

Yeah. Any other questions for Mike? Yeah. Mike, thanks for being here. Mike, update. One question about is do you have any uh you mentioned uh about being not having firewise any longer? Do you have a do you have what would be your number one recommendation for how how to how the city in particular could go about and the county could go about creating more awareness in the absence of that? Yeah, I I think um I'd love to see the Firewise program come back. Uh it's it's uh it is a great program. It is a a national program that's that's super helpful uh on a local level. Um I think that would be my first recommendation would find a way to bring that back for a municipality. Um it is that education piece. it is um you know you guys are fortunate you got a CR program and I think this is uh definitely within their wheelhouse of things that they they work on. Um but as a as a municipality you know working with your your public works and making sure that the the areas that you guys do have that have uh heavy fuel loads are mitigated. That's uh simple to say sometimes a little more difficult to access and accomplish. Um, but you know, that's where you'd lead on your CR uh on your public services and and folks and and kind of let them come up with some good brainstorming options to to get that accomplished. But I think it's putting it on the table to discuss um I think and keeping at the forefront of a discussion point because we have a lot of draws, you know, from a lot of areas where there is fuels even in the city. So that typically would involve uh education for public for business owners and so forth. Yep.

And then I mean did firewise I don't I just don't remember did that also include things like PSAs or media yeah they did a really and that kind of thing elements to it. Um the public information and and public training uh messaging portion was a big part. At one point they were partnering with land owners to clean up their own properties. Um, which was amazing. Whether or not land owners choose to participate, that's that's always kind of the challenge. Um, but to to get a, you know, paid to to mitigate fuels on your own property or to have contractor do it for you, that was that was a pretty good program.

Thank you. Why don't we Trona County doesn't? But are there other parts of the state that have firewise? Yeah, I I couldn't rattle them off, but yeah, there's still active programs and that's all grant based and and um take staff and and I think you know a couple of the staff they just retired and uh say torch barriers. I don't feel like that's the appropriate term. uh you know, but they they kind of uh uh they they retired and we we hadn't quite had anybody else jump up to do that. But I do I do believe there's there's program out there to participate.

All right. Still have a lot of their literature in my office. Happy to share it with anybody that wants it. Good lure. Thank you, Mike. Sir, thanks, Chief. Thank you everyone. Thank you staff, everybody, for putting that all together and talking to us. Appreciate it. Thank you.

All right, let's go ahead and go to agenda review. Um, next few work session, regular meetings. Uh, madam city manager, do you have anything to touch base on or give us heads up on? Um, mayor, nothing I in particular I'd point your attention to other than just to reiterate that we do have a couple of full agendas over the next few Tuesdays. Um, so maybe bring snacks, I guess. Anybody have any questions? Anything like that on the agenda? No. Okay. All right. Going to council, Mr. Mc.

Sure. I have anything or not? Check my notes. Too much went on this week. I didn't get better than I thought. Well, he's looking at that. Yeah, go ahead.

Okay. No, I was just looking at the grid. And so, we have a special work session here on the 27th for the budget. Is that called today? I'm sorry, I I would I'm not listening. Jenna, could you say that? Um, yes. So on the we have a work session on the 26th and then it says the 27th is a special work session for the budget. Is that that is correct that would be a Wednesday. Thank you for pointing that out. Okay. How long do you suppose it says we're going to So we're going to do about 4:30 so like till 8. On just trying to figure out Steph I think it's fairly quick. It's a single action item. Go ahead.

Okay. So, mayor councilors, um, in the past we have usually scheduled two days for the budget. We don't always use that second day. So, it's really up to council if you feel that you have covered everything that you need to in that first meeting. Um, so we'll kind of have to play it by ear because if we get into a budget 26th and we need to come back for an hour or two, we can do that as well. if we need clarifications or want to follow up on anything, but in years past I think we haven't used it before. So,

okay. So, it looks like we also have a special council meeting scheduled after that. That's executive session. So, if we do cancel the special work session for special meeting that will be very short. Okay. The uh special meeting should be short. So, we will meet on the 27th. Should we move it the other day then to Tuesday just so we'll for sure be here that day? I like that one. In case we do cancel Wednesday, we do that. Move it to the 26th. Absolutely. Thank you. Good call.

We move this to the 26th in case we end up not meeting this special work session. So we don't have to come in on Wednesday just for the single Okay. item and you do expect it to be short concerned about we have a 4 hour meeting on Tuesday twoour exact session afterwards or yeah request a pay raise just to fire up the the world we'll come back to you Mike I'm I'm I'm ready volunteer

so uh Ray and I had uh uh met with the uh ARJPB board uh to uh and interviewed a few people for the board positions and we came up with two. We will be uh appointing them next Tuesday. So that'll be on our agenda for next Tuesday. So we had we had four really good candidates and unfortunately we only needed two. So we narrowed it down to two and went with that. appreciate um chairman Mil declared a conflict because he's on the board. So I told that I I should do the same.

So Mike and I Commissioner North. Yes. Sorry I missed that. It was fun. had some good conversations. I agree you did. We missed you. That's all I got. Awesome. All right. Well, last week was pretty busy, jam-packed, and Pat was with me almost the whole time.

Well, we had Visit Casper lunches. We had Hell's Half Baker's ribbon cutting, which was phenomenal. So, go out there and check that out if you haven't. It's just breathtaking. Um, and they graded like redid the whole parking lot, picnic tables. Yeah, it's amazing. Um, and then we went over to the bus garage to see you were with me the whole time. And then, um, yeah, for their fifth anniversary. And it was fun because I got I was the one of the ones that were there for the first year anniversary. So, it was just nice to see all them guys again. Um, just want to do a shout out is that for my Rotary Club last Thursday, um, Steve from Fort Casper came over and presented and he did an amazing job out there and just kind of got everybody jazzed up about visiting Fort Casper again. So, I want to give him kudos and he's getting out there and making people aware of Fort Casper and the things that are going to be coming. and then his program list hit the um ESA on the internet for the city too. So for the summer. So lots of good things to look forward to. Um and then I want to say thank you to all of my fellow council people because I have one paper left and it's my final paper and a presentation and then I graduate on Saturday with my masters.

Congratulations. Wow. I know. So, thank you for all of your patience and it's a public administration, right? NPA. Three years in making um yours. Okay. So, I'm ready. Good enough. On the slow boat with every all my other commitments. It's the only way I could get her done. But point is I got it done. So, for you. Um yeah. So, thank you for your patience and letting me leave early on work session days so I could catch my classes and all the things. I really appreciate it. So, thank you. Well worth it. Congratulations.

I don't have a whole lot. I did go to a our first meeting for the gambling commission stuff. We have somebody coming on the 19th to tell us all the differences in the machines. Thank goodness because I'm still not sure I know. And I apparently spent Pat's only spare time that he wasn't with Jenna here. I thought I got Pat, but knew Pat everywhere. Look, you're not even going to have anything to talk about now. We We just covered it all for you. That's work here's done. Shriners do that. I know, right? Shriners had their onions out. I used to have a guy. He does. He no longer my guy, so I had to go searching for them, but I found them in the Mard's parking lot. So,

they're also in Sportsman's Warehouse parking lot. I saw them in Hobby Lobby's parking lot after I left, but apparently that's only on weekends cuz they're not there right now. But anyways, if you can't find onions, they're in the Menard's parking lot. So, Shriners. Yes. And you don't get That's a short window, Pat. If you miss them, call me. I've got one bag left. 50 pounds. We should all go in on one. Everybody gets otherwise you got 50 pounds. iPad them like an apple. I don't I hoard them like a psychopath. You've kind of taken us off the rails here. I'm sorry. Okay, I'm done.

I don't know why. This is why we let Pat do the talking. Lesson learned. Support your community. That was the end of her. That was good. Love it. the end of it. Do you have any? Nope. Pat doesn't either. So, Amber, he looks So, you forgot the chamber banquet. Oh, yep. Chamber. So, when you were there, there was so much. Yeah.

I did meet last Wednesday with Blue Peak. He just wanted to update. I don't know if other council members talked to them. So, I thought I was good. And that was Wednesday. Thursday public works. testified at the end uh during select water uh storm water and and then Friday was a delightful day with Helz acre. I mean, what got accomplished out there is really pretty incredible. So, compared to what it was, that's for sure. So, um and then uh kudos to our transit workers and folks um their cookies were very good.

Who are you looking at to talk? Oh my We talked about the cookies all

so and then uh as Brandy said on on Monday we met uh with the city manager um you know trying to get the ball rolling on the the gaming and at the chamber banquet um we had uh the city attorney and myself had a really good visit with Kyle Rich and gave us some really really good ideas and thoughts I felt. So also a delightful day, right? Also a delightful day. I wouldn't go that far.

Sorry, Eric. I tried. It's okay. Then this morning I had uh downtown Casper Businesses. Oh, I thought I said that, but no, I didn't. I was there with Pat this morning, too. We had a date at ether. So,

much too early for all of that. So, no cookies. So, um and u so that kind of rounded rounded things out. So, appreciate it uh allowing me to ask some questions on the the budget stuff. So I much briefer during now that Amber showed me how to open that whole file. Job Amber here for you. Thank you. Mark's job by Pat.

Now if I can figure how to get back there. It's the book. It's orange. Do you have anything to add?

Um, I'm just very delighted to be back in person with you all instead of seeing my really large head on the screen. This is a quite awkward experience. So, really happy to be back um with you. I have parks and wreck on Thursday. um wanted to give a reminder to the community that the um deadline to apply for the Caspberry impact grants is um and your liaison to that group will be reviewing those uh at the end of the month and awarding those uh funds to the various community uh partners that um that apply. And then um also the deadline to um if you're already registered to vote, the deadline to make any changes to your party affiliation uh are tomorrow. So if you need to make any changes to party affiliation, you need to go to the um county clerk's office and um make those changes by the end of day tomorrow.

That's it. Big biggest example is independent, right? Yeah. Yes, there is no ballot, right? For independent, correct? Yes. I called today just to confirm my registration. It took 14 to 15 seconds. So, I would encourage you just to double check that and make sure that everything is in order for your registration so that you don't have any unexpected surprises when you try to go to the polls. A couple thousand purge. You can register at the poll. If you are not at the purged, correct?

Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, I'm looking forward to the meeting next week with Nick Larendi, the director of the gaming commission. Uh, I've been meaning to bring this up the past meeting or two. Uh but Pat, counselor Sweeney, in regards to the carveout we made for skills games, um a couple weeks ago in our moratorum, it was after that I found out Smith's Grocery actually does have three skills games in there here in town. So that was brought to my attention after that conversation we had. So um in the grocery store in the grocery store right beyond the checkout aisle. Okay.

Uh they got kind of a partition. Uh but again uh not something that I'm uh keen on. So uh yeah uh just one topic of multiple conversations uh I hope to have with Nick next week.

I uh like councelor Sweeney also met with some Blue Peak reps. I appreciate them reaching out. Uh you know I think they were just wanting to be proactive and uh sent me with a contact sheet for kind of their chain of command if I talk to people that have issues and stuff. On that note, am I the only one that's heard from I've had multiple people call me about work being done in their easements um lately, Matt? Also, so maybe it's just a W two thing, but uh I know we've had that conversation multiple times in the past. Um but it for one reason or another, I just do not feel super equipped to uh um give people resources and stuff when they call me with that. So, I personally would look like a little refresher on, you know, um I know when unsatisfactory work is being done in an easement, you know, the citizen is initially supposed to kind of go up that chain of command, figure out who the service provider is working in that easement, get in touch with them, file a uh you know, a complaint or a service ticket or something. Um, but I've talked to multiple people that have done that and I am not aware of what levers the city can pull when they are not getting resolution through those those methods. So, I personally would love a little refresher just because I've had multiple of those phone calls. So, I don't know.

Do you want that on like a work session or just in an information packet as a memo? Something great. Just great. Thank you. Um, and then I will be attending a WHAM board meeting or retreat. Maybe it's it's two days long, so whatever you want to call it, uh, in Lander Thursday and Friday this week. As a result, I will be missing my DDA board meeting. That is Thursday at 11:00 a.m. at CityWorks. They do provide lunch. It's always very good. So, was hoping someone could serve as my proxy at that board meeting. And maybe you want to be proxy at that this Thursday. this Thursday 11 am city works

be larakers. Cool. Cool. I think Liz is gonna be there. So it's not there. I think we'll have city staff there. Um so yeah, I'll I'll try to connect with Alyssa. She already left. She already took off. Uh I I'll give her a call and I'll update y'all uh next week on what they talked about. That's all I got. Thank you. Awesome. Just a couple things. uh fifth anniversary for the Casper transit system was really really well attended. Council members were there. Um our city manager, committee staff, Zu Lima, it was great. Eric was there. Yeah. Sorry, Eric. You're standing right next to me. Christa Christa was

Oh, yeah. Christa was Anyway, there were a few of us. Anyway, it was it was great. All leadership.

It was great. it was um well very very well worth it and and was there at the very beginning as well. I know Jill and I were talking about that before um on day one and so it's they've done an amazing job and I did mention in my remarks that um with everything and how they transitioned they did it on day one. They were able to one day make the transition into the next day seamlessly. Um so no no riders had any issues or disruptions. So they were amazing. near forgot uh tomorrow night Casper Police Department's having the deal at I don't know what street station burgers, games, music. They can be there. It's their block party for police week.

I thought he was being serious for like two seconds. Thank you for reminding us. Yeah, totally spaced it. Thank you. Uh Chamber Awards banquet. Uh uh was able to attend that. Sat with um couple of council members. Um and Lisa was great. Chief Black was there with us. Eric sat with us. Um Chief Chief Oh, sorry. Chief, you were right next to me. I'm sorry. And Chief, it was a magical night with you, Chief. Memorable. Memorable.

Memorable. Um, so it was really great. Um, also next Monday there's lateral swearing in for officers chief lateral. So how many do we have? Two. Yeah. So we have two lateral officers that will be swearing in on the 18th doing that which I look forward to. That's all I've got.