City Council - workshop

Okay, let's do it. And then it's very big, I'm sorry. Now, I'm going to tell you, I tell you that it's an explanation.

Now I go, well,

Okay.

So. Okay. Oh, okay. Well, if you want to do that next one, it's not a problem.

Thank you.

All right, meeting follow-up. Does anybody have anything from last week's meeting? Any other questions or applications? Slept since then. Yeah, I know. It seemed like it was a long time ago. All right. Madam City Manager, Police Department grant.

Thank you, Council. So Chief will address you asking for approval for applying for a Health and Wellness Act program grant for the Kessler Police Department.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'll leave the contents to the memo that I provided to Council about the importance of the grant for just the sworn personnel. And touch a little bit about the uniqueness of this grant will allow for us to put some pieces in place for family, professional staff as well. Some grant opportunity or some opportunities to provide resources that support spouses, partners, children's, family members of law enforcement, allowable family resources, family orientation programs, resilience, stress management training, confidential counseling opportunities. and referral services. Some of these things that we could help facilitate with this grant is also provide support following critical incidents. We have a number of critical incidents just like the fire department does. Typically, family is left out of those for confidentiality reasons. This would provide for opportunities for us to craft a program where they could come in and we could maybe give them a censored version of that. On top of that, this provides for more than funding for more than one time event, so it's carried out over two years and we also found out today that the ask is more than the $200,000. We didn't change the number, but we can ask for up to $250,000, so that would be our request. With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Questions? This is a no brainer. I mean, I share a lot. This is critical for first responders. We've seen it in the past. Individuals that need that, especially in the police department. I'm 100% behind this and love it. Anybody else?

Thank you, Mayor. So this would also not just the officer. or staff member, but also. Go on family also.

Yes, Sir, that's that's some of the opportunities we could afford or push this out to family members, children.

Partners.

Some of those programs.

Chief, thank you. Also, I know when we went to DC and we Department of Justice. I think that's something that's really important, not only for I mean for first responders, but thank you for your dedication to continue to. Are your officer safe and mentally mental health?

Thank you. Madam city manager, do you want me to talk about the other grant? Sure, if you would like to mention that if I could just real quick, we had also on the original memo in the packet we had the. We were looking to do a piece on the substance abuse grant, substance abuse and mental health services. I think it's a great opportunity for some of that early intervention and diversion. However, the grant deadline was a little, we were kind of pressed up against that. The grant deadline application is tomorrow and we're missing some components internally. I think we could do it, but I'm also concerned that if we do it, we may be missing opportunities to ask for some reimbursement on that grant. And those would be like the data collection. talk about core data. We're not spun up on that entire perspective. And then also some interview protocols that we would have to have in place. And how would we track an officer or a professional staff's time when they're interacting with those individuals in mental crisis? How do we, how would we go back and ask for reimbursement on that? So we got to get a few of those pieces in place before we would come back and solicit this grant. But I think we can do it. We just got to do a little training and a little work on the back end to make sure that we can

So. Both of these do tomorrow. Or just the one.

Mayor counselor, both of them are due tomorrow, so in grants.gov we just have to do the intent to apply. So we've we're we're set to do that for the Lima Grant, the one I spoke about first. This one record the second one that I just spoke about required a full blown grant application to be done. And several deliverables in there to include CVS for partners playing community partners and things like that, and that's that's just a lot of work. Not saying we couldn't do it, but there's a lot of pieces that we have to tie together in order.

So you probably won't. You won't submit for that second grant or Mayor Council.

That's correct. We're not going to spend for that. We're going to do some more work internally and make sure next time it pops up that we're better situated to apply for it.

Thanks, man. Thanks, Chief. Is it a grant that other community partners or stakeholders could apply for instead? Or does it need to be a municipality that applies for it?

Mayor counselor requires law enforcement participation, as I understand.

Go ahead, Mayor counsel. So yeah, I've been involved in some of the discussions and it does take the local government to be the applicant. The problem with a lot of these SAMHSA grants, there's absolutely no forewarning that they're dropping them. And so then we have like three weeks to put it together. So We did have several meetings with other community stakeholders to see if we can work this through. I had obviously some similar concerns. Chief and certainly the PD would be carrying the majority of the water on the grant, and so we just don't think the timing is right at this point, but we continue to work on the data sharing and some of the other stuff that I think once we get to a higher level will enable us to apply when they come around again.

Anybody else? Thank you, Chief. Thank you. All right. Smart Capital Network.

Council, while our presenter comes to the podium, I'll just share with you the Whammy Smart Capital Network was formed in 2010. when 17 Wyoming cities and towns came together to form a consortium to access $13.2 million in federal funding through the US Department of Treasury, through their state small business credit initiative program. Those municipalities formed a consortium and hired Development Capital Networks to administer the program for us in our municipalities. Originally, this program allowed for support for small businesses within those 17 municipal boundaries. It has since evolved and is now able to support projects outside of those municipalities. What the program does is help businesses access capital funding for business expansion. Sam Weinstein is our development loan officer with the Smart Capital Network. City of Casper was one of the 17 founding municipalities. Two other municipalities in New Toronto County were part of that original 17. That is Midwest and Edgerton. Excuse me. So what I had asked Sam to do is to give a little bit of background about the impact of the Smart Capital program across the state, and then drill down and focus on the impacts in Casper and Neutrona County to date as well. So I'll introduce Sam, and he can tell you a little bit more about himself. Sam has been with Smart Capital Network for 10 years.

Yeah, forever. Not as long as you have, though. A little over three years.

I can't believe it's only been three years.

I thought it was longer.

Well, in any case, that's who Sam is, and he's going to give you lots of great information.

Mayor, council members, Madam Manager, thank you so much for having me. I've created this little handout for you just to let the numbers kind of speak for themselves. So to go into a little bit more detail about our structure, I'm employed by a company called Development Capital Networks, referenced as DCN, if you ever see that. And we are essentially the fund managers on behalf of the Smart Capital Network. My role is to go out and communicate and make the relationships with the banks across the state. We have 25 bank partners across the state. That's 25 charter banks. That also includes every single individual branch of all the banks that exist. In addition, you'll see at the bottom of the other logo is the Rural Development Fund. So in 2021, the advisory council of WSCN supported the establishment of a new nonprofit We were able to apply for a grant through the EDA, the Economic Development Administration, for $4 million. We were able to get that $4 million with the assistance of $1 million funded by the Smart Capital Network. So as Ms. Jordan was stating, we operate in 16 or 17 communities or counties specifically for the Smart Capital Network. Everything outside of those counties, we are funded through the Rural Development Fund, the RDF. So in total... you'll see that the original allocation was $13 million and then the $5 million through RDF, so a total of about $18 million. It operates as a revolving loan fund, and we strictly operate now as loan participation with bank partners. So our bankers call us and our funds have to be sent on behalf of a small business, a business no larger than $750. Oftentimes, I would say I believe in our portfolio at least 40 to 50 percent of our participations are with companies that are labeled as VSVs, very small businesses, so 10 or less. So the majority of the work we do are for very, very small mom and pop type shops, very impactful work. So we have to be partnered with a bank, and that's really the strength of the program is that it really is your community banks that are running the show. We step in for that risk mitigation, help those really good deals that you want to see get to the finish line, but either they're lacking collateral, they're lacking cash, or in just tighter economic

around in the Community for a long time, and I think has been successful enough to be able to be sort of invisible. So we wanted to heighten the profile a little bit and share the good things that have happened and remind you that the city of Casper being one of only 17 cities. of the 99 in Wyoming that came together back many years ago has enabled all of this. The other thing I would mention is none of the 17 original cities who applied for the funding through the Department of Treasury have ever put in a dollar, not even one dollar. So far, the $13.2 million seed corpus from the federal government has recycled three plus times, 3.4 times or something.

Yep, so we've supported a total of just shy of 35 million of our funds alone, which has created roughly 165 million in total loans across the state. So those, yeah, 161 right there. And again, those are all loans that are held at Wyoming institutions. for Wyoming companies. All the companies and projects that we fund have to be based here in the state of Wyoming. All of our bank partners are here in the state. Our funds, now that they're recycled, are held here in the state. We really are a true homegrown crew. Very proud of the work we do, but as Madam Manager said, we don't do a very good job of selling us and marketing all of the wins, but As I was pulling into town today, I was driving around. I was like that one, that one, that one, this one, that one, this one, these new ones over here. And then seeing the pipeline we have, I've got about five or six projects in the pipeline for the city of Casper right now too. And it's just great to see. So appreciate you guys having me. And again, happy to answer questions. Otherwise I know how busy these meetings can be.

Any questions? Yeah.

I'm a business consultant. And so I've got a lot of, My clients that are looking for something like that we approach about your local banks.

So on our website and I am remiss that I not a marketing guy and I put this together. I can leave some business cards. Jeanine has all our contact and we can share that. But I would say all of our bank partners contact them. All of our bank partners in the state know who we are. We're very, very close specifically in this in this region. All of our bank partners know. know about us. So as much as I would be happy to have a conversation with business owners, we are not a direct-to-consumer lender. It all has to flow through a bank, so I highly recommend anyone to contact your bank first. I'm happy to answer basic overview questions, but a lot of times those businesses will get frustrated because I'm not just writing them a check and they have to go talk to somebody else anyway.

Other questions for Sam? Go ahead, Pat. So really interesting. Uhm, so obviously first state bank. So are most of those generated out of this bank or correct?

Different right here, OK? And this listed on the back is just obviously specific to Casper, but all of them there. I mean, obviously there might be a handful of projects that a bank outside of the Toronto County funded, but that project is still here in the county.

Pretty pretty impressive. Yeah. Very.

This is awesome awesome. DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

Can I just ask you before you leave to address the advisory board issue only because I think this will come before you here before too long in terms of councilors participation on the advisory board going forward and what the board recently discussed.

Yeah, so the board recently voted to add in the city of Casper as a participant to the advisory council. We did that at the specific request of the council itself because Janine has been with the group since 2012 when it was founded. So recently the advisory council voted to make it a formality to have Casper sit on the advisory council. And that will most likely be something that Again, I'm not sure the entire politics of the latter and how that will go up. We'll most likely reach you guys that we ask for official support to sit on that advisory council just so that you guys are aware of all the projects that are going on and just to continue the support here on the ground. Hopefully that was the right question and answer.

i clearly prepared a ton of notes for this when the when the group converted from a governing body to an advisory body casper no longer sat on at that table so to speak but at this point they would like for us to maybe be more active and i will say with a third of every loan participation in this county i think That makes sense. And I assume you all would support that. So you may see a resolution or some action on a future agenda to memorialize it.

Okay with that. Support it. Absolutely. Good.

Mayor, Council, Madam Mayor, thank you guys so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Sam. Yeah.

You heading back tonight? No, I'm hanging out here tonight. So I'll do something.

You're going to patronize one of these businesses.

I'm going to patronize a few of those. Yeah.

all right let's talk about parks and water on the council while director lopez gets up to the podium um you'll recall you had asked for an update about our um uh parks water irrigation also cost control and conservation efforts uh zulema and i talked about the cover memo it's a little longer than you're used to but i thought that the um material was informative and I I hope hits the mark of what you had been looking for. I don't think that soon we will cover it in its entirety, and I believe she has prepared a short slide presentation just to help us move. At a decent pace through that material. And I can keep talking while. Well, the folks. Dance dance dance. You have 120 acres of irrigated parkland. I will share this actually, which we had talked about in pre Council. We understand that is that time of year when after a dry winter and any any summer around this time of year, things start to dry out. So we are seeing around the community on some of our special areas. Maybe looking a little rough, a little dry that is compounded on the fact that last season you had some reduced watering as well. So I guess I would. I urge for some patience, if you will, from the public. And as you hear comments from constituents or concerns, I'm just reminding them it's been a rough year. The staff and Salinas Department are trying to stay on those areas and keep them looking as well as they possibly can. But it is a time of year when things start to go from green to brown and people start to notice.

Thank you, Mayor, Councilors. It's great to be here with you. tonight we're going to talk about parks watering and really focus on some of the strategies that we have been working on since 2022 really to try to really reduce our water consumption and save costs associated with irrigating our park system so just a little recap the parks division manages approximately 120 acres of irrigated parkland numerous irrigated special use areas throughout our community and again water conservation has been a strategic priority for several years as irrigation costs and water resource concerns have continued to increase so since 2022 which is the first time i came to you all to discuss parks watering the division has really implemented a number of strategies to conserve water and reduce associated costs including the baseline irrigation control and pump station replacements well irrigation considerations, alternative water rates and irrigated area reductions in naturalization. So it is my intention to just give you an update on the status of each of those strategies and try to quantify the impact of each understanding that when we implement simultaneously several different strategies at once, it's hard sometimes to sparse out exactly or to parse out exactly what is having what impact, but we did our best to use some representative examples. to show you how we feel like each strategy is performing. So before I go any further, though, I want to introduce a couple of folks that will be critical in answering some important technical questions that you may have, because I am certainly not an irrigation expert. And so Jim Gerhart is our supervisor over parks maintenance, so he manages all of the irrigation, mowing and playground maintenance crews. And then, of course, Randy Norvell, our parks manager. I will likely be calling on them to answer some of the more technical questions that you all have. They definitely put a lot of work into preparing the data. Jim especially is an Excel whiz, so he really helped me out preparing the data and combining all of the information necessary to inform the presentation and the update. So we're going to start with baseline because it has been probably our highest priority area. And while in the memo and in the presentation we lumped together baseline control systems with pump station irrigation or pump station irrigation improvements, those are very intimately related, but I did break them out for the purpose of the conversation just to kind of simplify it as my intention that after each sort of section will give you an opportunity to ask questions specifically related to that. Certainly if there are other questions at the end that you or didn't think about during the presentation, we can revisit, but I think it will help us kind of stay focused on the topic at hand. So again, our baseline project is a citywide irrigation automation initiative that was designed to improve irrigation management, water conservation, and our operational efficiency. Baseline as a system utilizes base station controllers, substation controllers, flow monitoring or metering, soil moisture metering, and then ties it all together in a communication infrastructure that we can do that really helps us to centralize irrigation management, provide some remote programming and monitoring opportunities. It's a flow-based leak detection system, so we are able to identify leaks in the system much easier through automated mechanisms. It's soil most moisture driven irrigation adjustments. Once all of those tools are implemented, automated weather responsive scheduling. So if it rains it will shut down and then improved efficiency for our irrigation operations are of course one of the key capabilities that we were looking to benefit from this program. So project initiation and in a memo from way back in in 2022, we reported that the city operated 145 separate irrigation systems. At that time, 45 of those systems did use some type of automated control system, although they were antiquated and several of them were cellular-based, so they were really expensive to maintain because of that cellular requirement. All of the remaining 100 systems required staff to manually travel to the site for shutdown and restart of those activities. So it was very inefficient. It was very cumbersome from a personnel resource standpoint. So the baseline project was launched in fiscal year 23 with an original completion estimate of 28 months. That was our best guess at the time, not really being as familiar as we are now with baseline and all of its complexity. And at that time we proposed that we would utilize city staff for implementation, which today we have that complexity that we weren't really sure at the time and then staffing limitations that we've suffered in parks, area have certainly extended the implementation timeline, but we're showing you on screen here is what we have been able to accomplish. So we have gotten 20 all 21 of the base station controllers installed. We have over half of the substation controllers installed. We've done both of the main baseline controllers, fewer of the flow meters and the soil moisture sensors for about a 61% total project completion. I think the key takeaways here are that the core system backbone infrastructure is in my estimation pretty close to fully installed and the remaining work really focuses primarily on field devices and site level deployment. We have implemented at some major locations including here at City Hall all of our fire stations Ford Wyoming Center campus Highland Cemetery, our soccer complex, Washington Park, Crossroads, Fairdale Park, Mike Cedar Park, Paradise Valley Parks, trying to hit those larger sort of regional parks first so that we could see those benefits pretty quickly. So based on what we know now and understand that this is not just been a large resource lift for parks, it has also included a lot of IT time because they have had to program all of the controllers for us. And so it's been ordering the equipment, waiting for IT to do some controlling work for us, and then deploying those things in between times when we're busy responding to other maintenance concerns. And so, again, it has slowed us down. We're now anticipating an additional probably three years to finish the project in its entirety. And that's if implementation continues using only existing stack resources. We have not outsourced any of the work yet. for baseline implementation, and we don't necessarily plan to, unless that's direction that we get, because you want to see more expedited completion. The benefits that we've already realized are improved irrigation visibility and control, faster response to system issues, and enhanced water conservation efforts through the areas where we have been able to implement. And again, just using these sort of as representative areas Centralized control, flow monitoring, and irrigation optimization has already produced measurable water savings. And we selected these three areas as representative areas because they were not cut back substantially in FY26 when we made the cuts because of property tax reductions. So in terms of watering, these areas remained irrigated almost exactly the same. And so we could do an apples to apples comparison year over year. So knowing that our savings are likely attributed primarily to baseline and not a combination of baseline and other reduction strategies that were implemented. So we have noted the operational and financial benefits, including water consumption through that optimized irrigation scheduling, early leak detection, which minimizes water loss and infrastructure damage, weather responsive watering, which improves our irrigation efficiency reduced field visits and manual operations, which improve our staff productivity for sure, increased system reliability and operational visibility. And of course, all of this supports our long-term sustainability and resource conservation goals within the department. So looking ahead, I think continued deployment will expand centralized irrigation control access at the remaining sites. And additional water savings are expected as more locations become operational through this system. Reduced water consumption, leak-related losses, and labor costs will help offset, or so the savings from those will help offset implementation and maintenance expenses. We still anticipate that to be pretty big. And annual savings and budget impacts, of course, will continue to be monitored and reported as project completion progresses. So I'm going to stop there with baseline. This was a significant, again, investment. The Council agreed to over $600,000 in opportunity funds to buy the equipment necessary to transition all 145 of these irrigation systems to automated control. And so most of those funds have been expended because they were for the equipment. In fact, probably all of the funds have been expended at this point. Pretty close so. But we'll stop there and give you guys an opportunity to ask any specific questions that you have about baseline and how implementation has been going. What we can expect maybe in the future as far as the projected timeline that that Jim proposed of about three years.

Any questions on this on the baseline?

Can you help me conceptualize? what percentage of the total water usage at the soccer complex, for instance, 5 million gallons is.

Last year reported usage at the, I'm sorry, the uses that we reported last year was 65 million. This year we're estimating savings of 5 million.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor. Thank you. I was very interested in this one. Invested in this one since we began. Uh, could you clarify for me? Appreciate all this information too. By the way, all the equipment is purchased. It's more so just bandwidth of staff time to deploy, or is there still equipment that we need to purchase as well?

There is still a little bit of equipment we need to purchase. We estimated how many controllers we could purchase versus how many of the IT radios to do all the communication. I miscalculated that, so there is, we did do a request for sort of $50,000 in capital funds for this year to just help us purchase more of those radios. We do have the controllers, but we have no way to negotiate with them without those controllers for the radios.

Thank you. Follow-up question. I was hoping you could help me quantify or kind of Give me an idea of the impact to staffing. You know there was 100 systems that required manual turn on and turn off. I don't know if I'm clear based on these numbers how many of those systems still require manual adjustment, but. Cost savings as far as staff. I imagine we're not saving costs on staff. I imagine they're just spending their time doing other tasks, but I don't know if you're able to help me conceptualize what that looks like.

I can be honest, this year we haven't had to go out and shut anything off manually.

Our goal at the very beginning of the implementation was to hit all of the controllers that we had to do that first with. As Alina said, we had 45 systems that we could kind of already, we already had central control and we need to know it was antiquated. But by doing those all first, now we're actually replacing the old antiquated systems. most everything is already on central control now. And it's been amazing. It's a click of a button, do it from my cell phone, anywhere I'm at, out to eat. Oh my gosh, it's raining. It's been a big help.

Council, I'd just like to mention too, is generally about three staff that is installing this on an annual basis. And our staff, Staff is only doing it from basically after blowout, which is sometime between October, the month of October, and then when they start turning it back on in April, it might have had a little extension this year. But, I mean, other than that, once they're testing back closed and two or three people just fixing leaks all year. So it is a short window that we get about a five-month period to get everything installed. It is taking a little longer and we appreciate it. I mean, oh yeah, because there's been a little learning curve there with just getting the radios up and then and and. Line of sight to all of our our controllers too.

The questions about baseline go ahead.

Last one and then I'll shut up. Appreciate the estimated cost savings and stuff up to this point. Do we have any idea once we reach 100% what that's going to look like?

know what does the end result look like after we're 100 i would almost venture a guess that we would uh i would probably add a little bit more just because we're still converting um but i can't remember the numbers that were in the memo off the top of my head i think but like zelina said it was hard to tell whether it was our cutbacks or baseline itself that actually showed us those savings

Yeah, I imagine there's so many different variables.

There really is, and I tried my best to try to split it out, but I think this year, even the budget that we asked for, we were able to save about $3,000, even on top of the decreased amount of money that we requested.

Councilor, I would also add you know, quantifying by cost is challenging because water rates increase. And while we do now have a different water rate, which I'll talk about when those increases are implemented, they're implemented for us as well. So while our consumption may be going down, sometimes our costs stay the same or rise just by the nature of increased rates. But so we are trying to track by consumption so that we have a better idea of what our true conservation is not necessarily in terms of cost.

Anybody else for baseline?

Yeah, go ahead. So I I since we're since we've got time. Thank you guys all for for all this information. I am. I'm just want to make sure I understand the difference. Like so special special use areas. Is that like Fort Wyoming Center? Anything that's not a park is that a good way to put it kind of.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Mayor Counselors so I don't think we consider Ford Wyoming Center a special area. So we have a dedicated two-person team for special areas and those are generally like landscaped areas outside of parks. So think like 12th and Beverly Wyoming Boulevard and Fairgrounds Road or excuse me Poplar.

See why like the see why and fairgrounds why it's yeah. Generally, there are landscape areas.

All of the planters in the downtown area are considered special areas. OK, the cemetery that cemeteries on its own is not considered a special area and calculations there.

We can give you flows, but. Over probably 60% of that still manually operating. There's no with hoses.

Yeah, yeah, I remember that from from our tour. So just kind of to kind of follow up. So I noticed on the the cost graph on the first first page of the memo. The special use line doesn't. And I don't. Thank you explained it in that in the paragraph. If so, I'm sorry I apologize if I missed it, but the special use graph line doesn't go down as drastic. I mean the decrease on the Park maintenance cost. Kind of goes pretty drastically, but. How do you? What do you? Can you kind of help me understand what the? But why the is it because that's more? There's more manual. Watering involved or what?

What's that about mayor counselor? So again, these are landscaped areas that generally are not really water intensive because we're talking trees, shrubs and some flowers, right? So So generally speaking, those areas are going to remain fairly consistent. The reason that we saw any savings in FY26 was because we completely eliminated several special areas so that we could reduce the non full time seasonal staff for those areas. And so we had to just completely eliminate where we weren't doing. I mean, we were doing weed control and that's pretty much it. We didn't plant flowers. We didn't do any additional maintenance to those areas, and so we saw reductions there because the water was essentially just shut off. But generally speaking, those are going to stay relatively stable because we're just keeping the small amount of vegetation alive in those areas.

Yeah, but I'd also point out what you're seeing, Zelina made mention to it, the difference between the cost and the actual usage. If you look at the usage is at least half of what it was last year. Yeah, that is probably She was mentioned to be eliminated quite a few areas.

OK. So that so the cost. A reflect it's not just water, it's staff and.

Maintaining that's how much we paid for water counselors and pay for water.

OK, this graph represents pure water costs, not static costs.

OK. Usage and costs. Yeah, no, I don't. I just the last thing is just that kind of thing. I think along the same lines as the vice mayor, but I mean, this is. Serendipitous, but it kind of fits in with your departments. Absorbing a little bit of the budget reduction and so. To me, this seems like a real. Nice strategy to kind of think is part of your overall plan

I assume this would be the best time in the presentation to talk about the pros and cons of continuing to keep it in house or. Looking at contracting it out, so we're going to talk about going to move on from baseline after this, right? OK, so. You know, personally, I see a lot of advantage in getting this done as soon as possible so that efficiencies can be realized, but said you weren't necessarily bringing that forward as a recommendation. is the primary reason for that just cost of it? Or are there other reasons that you see advantage to keeping it being done internally by city staff?

I would say right now, with all the installations of the main stations, things should start going a lot quicker now for us. At least on that part, we have looked at hiring out, putting in the moisture sensors and the flow, but finding a contractor just to do specific points like that has not been very easy. It's not necessarily just, I mean, we should be controller wise. We'll move through it very quickly here in the next year. Now, as far as getting our stations in, um, I would say, but moisture sensors and the flow meters are, it's just, it's a little bit of, it's not all science. It's a little bit of art trying to find out where to place the sensors and on the hillside down at a low spot. I mean, and then just trying to understand, moisture in those areas, it takes a little bit of work.

And I would point out that the reason why we're doing way better on flow meters right now than soil moisture sensors is simply because we've been able to use part of that old antiquated system. They had hydrometers already installed, but we weren't sure if we were going to be able to use those with the new system, and we figured out a way to get them to talk. So it's very simple to add those as we take them out, and those are the ones we're focusing on now. So the flow is coming quite easily to us now. So the moisture will actually have to be whole, drench, and install soil moisture sensors at each of these locations. It's tough to do that in the winter. It's dry, so we try to do that. Yeah, well, some winners dry last winter. But yeah, that's that's the reason why those are there's there's kind of lacking and really we've only got three. And basically just test mode on those right now just to see what they're capable of. Decide where we're going to install them in each location still so.

Good. If costs were not a factor, is your preference to keep it, the work being done in-house on the timeline that you've established, or would the preference be to look at outsourcing?

I'd love to outsource as much as I could, but to try to keep cost control when we were asking for the original, we decided to try to do it ourselves to save money.

To that point. Yeah, $600,000 was a significant investment in opportunity funds. And so we were trying to control those costs as much as possible and just really purchase the equipment that we needed to get it done.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And then we also cut your stuff. So you know, I just thinking like, perhaps this is a this is a example of a place where we could take off a little bit of department pressure where we've piled on some pressure in the last couple of years. So personally, I'd be interested in exploring it, if it's helpful. If it's not helpful, and if it's like we'd rather just keep on trucking, then that's also fine.

And we have outsourced a few items, but it's only been electricians. Another license, electricians. Certain areas were like, yeah, we need power here. We can do that. We can look at putting some costs together and what we think time-wise we can get it done and for how much.

Mayor, Councilor, City Manager, I don't know if this would be an appropriate time to bring up our staffing scenario, but so Jim mentioned three. Actually, our FTE count full time equivalent count for irrigation has actually been two and a half because one position was shared with Hogan on so. In the summer months it was down in parks assisting with irrigation that person resigned and and we decided given the things that are happening at Hogan and weather climate considerations that we would. build that need at Hogadon with seasonal non full-time staff if if it were in fact a need. And so we have an opportunity potentially to add half of an FTE to parks to give them a whole full-time person that could be allocated to irrigation. That was not in this year's budget and so we were prepared to come and ask for a temporary authorization for that position. We're still working with financial services to see exactly what financial impact that would have. before we came to you with an ask but you know there is the potential that with another part-time person throughout or with a full-time person throughout the entire year you know things could be expedited even okay next part Alright, so next we want to talk about might as well just stay up here next. We're going to talk about irrigation pump controllers and so. Make sure I've got my notes here. OK, so to complement baseline, we've also made. Several modernization or upgrades to our irrigation pump station and so these stations include Paradise Valley Park, Crossroads Complex, which is tied to the same pump station that irrigates the Fort Wyoming Center, Casper Soccer Complex, and then two stations at the Municipal Golf Course. I can tell you that when the Ford Wyoming Center pump station was going in earlier this year, it was like Christmas at Parks and Rec. Jim gets very, very excited about updated pump stations. And so he is really the expert and can answer any questions that you have. I'm going to try to give you a very high level overview of what I understand the upgrades are doing for us and the capabilities they are providing. And then of course, Jim can supplement any technical questions that you have. But These stations incorporate variable frequency drive technology, which the benefit of VFD operations are that it matches pump output to actual irrigation demand. It reduces electrical consumption and operating costs, and we'll get a little bit more into detail with that. It maintains consistent system pressure throughout. It reduces water hammer and pipeline friction losses. and of course you probably know water hammer causes breaks and damage to the pipes, minimizes stress on valves, fittings, and the main lines. And then in addition to the benefits of that VFD technology, we see expanded capabilities through integrated monitoring systems and advanced flow monitoring because we can connect with the baseline system for flow measuring and reporting water accountability and leak abnormal flow detection. And so through all of that, We are able to realize, you know, faster response to operational issues, reduce staff travel time, simplified troubleshooting, all of which are producing some efficiency benefits for our staff. And so performance improvements that we can that we can provide to you. BFD controlled pump stations are, you know, from the manufacturer reported to reduce electrical consumption by 15 to 40%. So electrical savings are certainly anticipated at the Ford Wyoming Center with some verification pending, you know, more in-depth review of the utility billing systems. When was the final, final, when you were done and it was up?

Early June.

So this system has been operable since mid-May, so we'll need some time to actually quantify what those potential power savings are. But we do know also that because of this pump station, Ford Wyoming Center has full capacity use of its 4-inch main line. So our irrigation window reduces from approximately 14 hours it took to water the grounds to 50% reduction in irrigation runtime, increased operational flexibility, and improved our ability to meet irrigation demand because it is full capacity use. With the enhanced pressure management, we anticipate reduced infrastructure stress and failures. So when we upgraded the North Casper Soccer Complex, we saw much fewer mainline breaks. And so far, that has also been the case at the Ford Wyoming Center when in the first six weeks of its operation, we're seeing or none at this point. Mainline leaks in that system up there. And so early results really indicate improved system reliability, reduced maintenance requirements, and greater irrigation efficiency and operational performance. I anticipate we're going to see the same at the golf course. Those two upgrades were done even after just a week or so after the Fort Wyoming Center was installed. So golf should be able to report some similar benefits for their irrigation. So I'm going to stop there. That's where my knowledge of pump stations stops. But we're happy to try to answer any additional questions.

Questions?

Yep.

So on Fort Wyoming Center crossroads, the soccer complex, any pumping out of the river or regional water?

It's actually pumping from a 35-foot deep down at Crossroads. So it'll actually pump water up the hill to the Fort Wyoming Center where we contain it into about a 300,000 gallon holding pond.

Which you've heard us refer to as the frog pond and everybody gets really concerned about that.

That's what we call it, the frog pond. I've never seen a frog there. I have seen a snake. But Crossroads is irrigated from that pond just from gravity. It's 115 feet elevation difference, so we don't have to do any additional pumping at crossroads. It just feeds back down the same line that it fills with and irrigates all the crossroads. The pump station at the Ford Wyoming Center pumps out of that pond, and then it feeds water to all of the Ford Wyoming Center, the ski range, the air modeler facility. The Speedway uses it to water down their track for races, and the motocross actually uses it for wetting down their tracks for advanced systems as well as all of the advanced center. It's been very, I think, you know, that 14 hours to six and a half hours baseline installation up there. We used to have six separate clocks, manual clocks that ran different bundles of valves around the facility and trying to get those to talk They can't talk, but trying for us to arrange them in such a way that it could water it was very difficult. You know, baseline is basically one big irrigation system now, and we've never been able to get flow readings up there at the Fort Wyoming Center until this pump station was installed. And having those flow readings is very necessary because now we can say, well, we can water in three zones at a time, and I can tell the controller to do that. Or I couldn't do that with the standalone systems. And that's why we see the huge reduction in that water. More streamlined.

I'd like to mention too, Jim, about the efficiency we were first told in soccer. We probably saw an 80% reduction in our line breakage over at the soccer fields.

And so, yeah, so far, I mean, we haven't had a mainline leak at the Port of Wyoming Center yet, but it Still early, but we're anticipating a similar decrease on that one. I said it's a really old system.

1984 stations also provide. Not only backup for the electronic butterfly valves will sit there and open slow closed slow so you get an even flow all the time so you get no water hammer out of it. And then if you have a VFD failure, the BVS would also running like a VFD where it doesn't allow the pipe to.

And then I guess I would also like to point out with that pump station, we actually ordered it to do double what we needed it to do. So there's two 21st pumps on it and one jockey pump, sustained pump. And we only really use one at a time, but it uses them equally with the idea that if one of them in the past, if our pump went down, trying to find a new install. While we're not irrigating. Sure, plus for future expansion and development going across so now we have some redundancy up there to save that.

So it's just curious on the golf course municipal golf course must be buying water.

We did buy earlier water before the rains, but we are sustaining right now. We haven't purchased probably since April. We started getting all of our rains in May. Water came up. We were able to fill not every, the big or larger reservoir we weren't able to fill, but we were still running off that, so there has been no more water purchased. So.

Okay.

It's hot though.

It's 100 degrees.

Hopefully we'll make it through this month.

So the next strategy that we've talked about before is raw water irrigation. So several of our facilities currently irrigate using raw water. Of course, you heard a lot of our athletic fields, the municipal golf course, Fort Casper, the whole area around Fort Casper, Paradise Valley Park and Wells Park are all currently utilizing raw water irrigation. And we recognize that expansion of raw water or raw well water irrigation. Could benefit us in in a few other areas. The highest potential locations that were identified were Brian Stock Trail Blvd, Riverview Park in North Casper, Casper Central Services facility and the water distribution garage. Potential benefits of course include reduced irrigation water costs because we wouldn't be purchasing water. Increase utilization of alternative water sources and long term support of our water conservation initiatives, but because other strategies have been prioritized over the last few years, ie baseline and the pump station replacements. Primarily this portion of our strategic portfolio has not really advanced much over the last couple of years, but it remains a long term strategic objective for us to try to improve our irrigation efficiency and control our We'll continue to explore this, have some testing done, identify if the locations that we believe are viable are in fact viable, and then work on conversions over to those. Not much in terms of an update, just know that it's still on our radar and a strategy that we intend.

Water distribution garage.

It is on... Wyoming Boulevard adjacent to the water treatment plant. The south of the water treatment plant.

So we're we're literally buying regional water to water the grass over there.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

And then wouldn't it take quite a irrigation or a line to take care of Rhinestock Trail and the Boulevard area pump pump that up there. DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

The infrastructure is already in. We just need to run a mainline for the soccer fields. one of the entryways and then we have one more connection and then that would be complete.

How far up Brian Stock Trail would that go?

Basically the entrance into the where you turn in off Brian Stock Trail to go into the soccer fields. It'd be from there all the way up around that corner and all the way down the front of K Street. Plus the yard in front of The service center.

OK. OK. Thank you.

Anything anything else on this one?

OK, next we're going to talk about our new water rate. So prior to 2025, public parks and rec facilities paid the same retail water rate as our residential and commercial customers. So in 2022, when we talked to you about the various strategies that we were looking at for water savings or cost savings associated with irrigation, we did suggest to Council at that time that we look at a water rate specific to Casper Parks. And so we did spend a lot of time in those few years talking to our counterparts at water and on June 1st of 2025 with the help of Tom Brower and Ethan Yonker who did implement through City Council's approval a dedicated Casper Municipal Parks water classification rate and so that did become effective June 1st 2025. It only applies to city parks, athletic fields, cemetery, golf course and other seasonal public facilities does not apply to indoor use for any parks and rec facilities. It's only for seasonal summertime use of those facilities. So in fiscal year 26 we do estimate that the savings were approximately $30,000 with that reduced rate. And of course that allows resources to be redirected to other park maintenance operational priorities.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

So what what was that determined I remember the vote but what was the rate for the seasonal.

DIRECTOR MACK. Mayor Counselor I apologize I did not print the resolution do you remember.

Well, the rates didn't work January 1st this year. I believe we pay, we don't pay for the first 1500 gallons of usage for each month at each location, but we do pay a $10.85 meter fee every month just to have a meter there. And then we're getting charged $5.03 per thousand gallons after that. That's the rate that we're currently on.

Councilor, I'm happy to. Provide the resolution. We can send that out again for you to refresher memory and then you'll see how the rate increased January one impacted.

So it seems counterproductive. To me. For us to be. Like the rec center and the pool. Any of the pools for us to be paying retail rate? To fill those pools, which is very expensive. Anytime you're changing water, I can't imagine how much the ice facility, you know, the sheet of ice. I mean, could we explore all facilities, not just seasonal, on our wire usage instead of us paying, not looking for free, but why aren't we paying wholesale rate?

Mayor. Councillor. Certainly we could do an evaluation. I know that you know it's a balance right. The water department has a budget too and rates matter to them. So and there were there were some staff Andrew Beamer among them that was not a proponent for us having a reduced water rate. Anybody that asks, you know, understandably so. I do believe that it's a balance and we are a large customer, but that was also one of the considering factors. And we've actually had two instances this season where we were asked specifically to reduce irrigation or shut it down for a period of time because of issues at the water treatment plant or concerns about capacity at the water treatment plant. And so given that that rate was provided to us, we agreed that we could easily be a first cut if we needed to be to conserve water for the rest of the citizens. So we're happy to partner with them that way and make sure that we're benefiting all users.

I'm not seeing a great appetite here. I think we should look at it. I disagree with Andrew, but.

So I think the compromise was a seasonal rate rather than you know an across the board rate. But evaluate that board further if that's the direction.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Thank you. Would you like to have the council look. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Not if I can't get any support.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

I don't want to waste. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. I don't want to waste staff doing it.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

How does council do we want to go down that road. Is there any support to have the staff look into that.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

I mean I wouldn't mind at least I'm trying to find old conversations and like I wouldn't mind at least a memo of like a recapture, like inclusion of the resolution, kind of a refresher of what that last discussion looked like. One might start to expand that.

That'd be enough.

Well, no, no. I've been down several of these roads before and I don't want to waste staff time. If we're not gonna.

definitely do a refresher memo fairly readily and easily. And then you guys can let us know what your thoughts are. To me as well. Yeah, to get up to speed on that. What I'm not aware of right now is if there's been a full cost of service analysis of this cost of service for these types of water uses. And so we're happy to get a refresher memo and it'll refresh my memories.

So the last thing I want to talk about before we sort of do a recap of the impacts are irrigated area reductions and naturalization so. turf reduction and naturalization projects do support the casper area parks and rec master plan that was something that we had our consultants evaluate um because in 22 we identified that we wanted to reduce the cost associated with irrigation to a reasonable extent or and so they did some evaluation during that master planning process And gave us some recommendations into the areas that we should look at naturalizing or cutting back on. And so we have implemented a lot of those. So we've done complete turf conversions in a few places. Marion Kreiner Park. So the area to the north of the swimming pool was turf and a small playground. That is now a skate park and a pump track. So all of that, most of that turf has been removed. Sage Park, of course, has been converted primarily to an Arboretum, and while Arboretums do take water, especially to establish, it's not as irrigation intensive as manicured turf would be in a park. City Park, we added a very large new shelter, so while enhancing opportunities for users at that park, we were also able to reduce pretty large area of turf. And then Fun Valley Park had a smaller shelter, and we expanded the size of that shelter as well. Through some of those alternative uses, we have been able to eliminate some turf, which of course will result in irrigation savings. In addition, over the next two to three years, it is our five-year plan to convert Eastdale Park to a park that has off-surface bicycle trails and then naturalize the entirety of the park. So if you're not familiar with Eastdale, it's a linear park. It's in a drainage way. It's a lot of turf. that is irrigated and mode, but it's the park itself doesn't serve a high purpose, and so the conversion that has been recommended. We actually really love the idea for so you may recall that we actually applied for a grant to make these improvements to the park to build the trails as well as to construct an obstacle course. we're not successful at that particular grant application, but we'll continue to seek opportunities to fund a new park that again will eliminate quite a lot of turfgrass for us. And then Mike Cedar Park. Of course, you know we are proposing an all wheels park in the area around the swimming pool and adjacent to BMX. There's a lot of grass there that is not really utilized much, if at all, by park users, and so converting that large grass space to the All Wills Park will see a reduction in turf and irrigation for us. Areas that have been partially or fully naturalized, and again, these coincide with what was recommended as a Parks and Rec Master Plan, are Long Park, Riverview Expansion, that's in North Casper, Nancy English Park, certain portions of it, Meadow Park, Fort Casper Park and then Washington Park West. So that's the hillside of Washington Park just West of Jefferson, which cuts through the park. So those areas have been let go to a more natural state. I think there's still some work to be done to ensure that the native grasses are healthy and they look aesthetically pleasing, but we have started down that road of implementation to naturalization in those areas. Benefits, of course, include reduced irrigation demand, lower maintenance requirements, improved sustainability, and more diverse recreational opportunities for the community where we've been able to transition to alternative uses that have benefit to different types of users. Questions about park conversions?

On the reduction in naturalization, have you thought about some of the special use areas like the roundabout on 21st or some of those areas changing those to more?

native grasses. Mayor, Councillor, we definitely need to look at that area. In fact, I've very recently been contacted again about that roundabout. And so, yes, you know, a lot of our special areas are not turf grass. They are sort of more native natural grasses and trees. What we could do in those areas to like further reduction an irrigation need we'll have to evaluate a little bit more. You know we've had conversations I think as as a team and as a body about you know landscaping in certain areas and the pros and cons of that. My team finds that sometimes that is as maintenance cumbersome or even more so because it tends to collect trash in Casper Wind. But I think there's opportunity still to look at some of those Evaluate each year and we make some changes each year. It's just slow.

Thank you.

Any questions on naturalization? Yeah, but I missed what you I think I missed part of what you said about Eastdale. What were you? What was the idea for converting Eastdale Park?

So naturalized or yeah, it would not. We would naturalize the park, but it would also have soft surface trails that go throughout the park for people to walk on, walk their dogs, ride bicycles, things like that. And then a portion of the park we've actually identified as a great place for an obstacle course as well. A brand new amenity that Casper doesn't have that we think would be really attractive. The nice thing about Eastdale Park is that the rail trail runs right by it, so it's very easily and safely accessible for many neighborhoods surrounding it because of the rail trail. And so we just feel like it's an ideal destination for a bicycle focused and more nature focused area.

And then does on Mike Cedar, just sorry. Take it away, man. Thank you, Mayor. So the Mike Cedar, there's that kind of pretty grassy area that's right adjacent to College Drive there. Is that, I think that was still being used. That'll remain, because I think the little guy football still uses that area for midget football. Thank you.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Mayor, councilor, it's actually junior football club but.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

Sorry junior, midget. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. All three of those. DIRECTOR HAMPSON- So yes it is the intention that that large turf area would continue to be used for athletic field purposes. It is also widely used by the public as just open green space. And so we don't intend to change that too much.

And then is, just want to clarify terms here, so is naturalized essentially the same as xeriscape? Or no? Is there some watering that takes place with naturalized?

I think we could make West Washington a good example of that. Everybody who's driven down Mitchell Street or Jefferson Street knows that there's just a plethora of pine trees along there. We do not want to lose that. It's a people part of the park. So we are still irrigating those areas. I think right now we're at three days a week just to keep water to those trees, but we're not focused on turf watering and we're really not focused on mowing any of that. So it's literally just keeping trees alive.

And natural grasses that don't exceed a certain height is generally what the goal is. I see.

Even ornamental grasses can survive

Is that kind of the case at the Fort Casper Park too?

And with Steve, that's adjusting just a little bit. The area is where the most sense given some of his visions for the park. Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, ma'am. And thank you guys for all the information. Really interested in kind of the progress being made on all these. My grandmother used to live right across from Eastdale Park, so I spent a lot of my childhood at Eastdale Park. Good times, but also I remember how much turf is there and how, you know, people don't use it that often. So very interested in like an obstacle course and bike trails and some other maybe higher utilized concepts for that park. Going back kind of the previous conversation, is the bottleneck funding and staff or is it just finding those grants and, you know, everything lining up, timing and opportunity windows and stuff. Is it more of a timing thing or is it staff and funding?

Mayor, Councilor, are we talking specifically about, like, park improvements like Eastdale or?

Yeah, just kind of this push towards naturalization, zero escaping, just kind of the conversion of existing spaces in general. I'm curious if there are bottlenecks. I would just love personally for us to be like as ambitious and aggressive on this as possible, especially in light of just my constant ranting about water. This is just something that I've again been really interested in, invested in, and would love to see us get more ambitious if possible. But you know, understand that these grants are cyclic, you know, cyclical, and you know, if you miss it one year, can't take advantage of it one year, you might have to wait a year. So just carries from our context on that regard.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Mayor and Councillor so I would say you know in the instances where we're looking at major park conversions that include adding an alternative park amenity that is capital intensive then yes the funding is is the bottleneck and we're constantly seeking opportunities to find grants in fact We're in the process of writing a grant for the Mike Cedar All Wills Park. We're looking at different programs that Eastdale Park could be eligible for and so unfortunately the one that we applied for was not successful but the good news is we wrote a very strong application that could be reutilized for other opportunities and so it was not time lost but So so yes if we're talking about conversions that are capital intensive the funding is the challenge. If we're talking about conversions where we're just looking at naturalizing certain areas that's really been done largely in the parks that were identified in the master plan as ideal locations for that. Again trying to find that balance between irrigating enough to keep you know the beneficial vegetation like trees alive versus you know creating an eyesore in the community that people are not going to be happy with. There's there's definitely a balance there that we're trying to strike and and I think it will require some overseeding and probably a little bit of maintenance to make those areas look nice, even though they're natural. So that we're not seeing the complaints and you know the nice thing about the parks and rec master plan is that the survey results indicated that there is an appetite in the community for us to go more naturalized in certain areas. certainly will continue to evaluate if there's other parks where that may make sense, even if they weren't necessarily named in the master plan. And so, you know, that's just kind of ongoing analysis as we continue to evaluate spaces and how the community is using those spaces. But, you know, if we're just talking about naturalizing, we've already cut back the irrigation. Those savings are being realized. In fact, in the next slide, we'll Right. So next, so beginning in fiscal year 26, of course, you know, the Parks Division implemented irrigation and maintenance reduction measures in response to property tax impacts and general fund budget pressures that were a result of that. And so in addition to the reduction strategies that we've already discussed, we really made an effort to eliminate or reduce select landscaped areas and reduce watering frequency based on park use, visibility, turf condition, and irrigation system capabilities. So our assessment of the parks where we reduced watering and mowing was quite strategic. It was intentional. We, like I said, evaluated several factors, including whether or not those areas were already controlled by baseline, what the turf condition already was in those parks, whether it was a highly used regional park or a small neighborhood park and the visibility, you know, if it was adjacent to a major thoroughfare and the visibility was high, we considered that as well. And so we did see a number of reductions in a lot of our primarily neighborhood parks to conserve. And of course, I know that you all got some feedback about that as many of the parks suffered and looked brown, especially towards the end of the season. But those conservation efforts did produce the results that we estimated. We estimated, I think in the in the budget and the spreadsheet that Jim put together, it was a 35% estimated reduction and we actually saw about a 38% reduction in water consumption over $100,000 in cost savings from that effort. And so you know, I think the the chart really shows the significant reduction that we saw. unfortunately that didn't come without consequence. And while we were very thoughtful and mindful in our selection and our strategy for reducing, I mean, we went so far as to go through every area and decide, okay, we water six days a week, now we can water, I think three was the least unless we completely eliminated it. But some were needed to stay at five or some stayed at six based on the area that we were talking about. And so, but we couldn't have predicted the intense dry winter that we had and so on its own. Those reductions probably would have been fine combined with a very warm and dry winter. Unfortunately, really caused a lot of damage and so now we're having to do some damage control and Jim and his team are actively restoring some of the hardest hit areas. by targeted irrigation adjustments. So increasing irrigation in areas where we need to do that. Overseeding, aeration and turf rehab. Yeah, it was an unanticipated consequence. Obviously ongoing monitoring will happen while we're trying to balance conservation goals with community expectations for safe, attractive and functional parks within our system. And that's not always an easy balance, especially when we can't control the winter, you know it is it is a priority for us. I think it was just as hard for us to see some of the parks and the condition they were in as it was for the community and in some cases maybe even harder because these guys live and breathe parks. So so no we felt that pain right along with the community and we're trying to find that balance now so that we we can maintain parks that people enjoy being in while still realizing some of the conservation goals that we have.

questions for the whole caboodle of the last part. Savings anything like that. Okay Jim thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks Randy. All right. Moving right along. Urban Renewal Process Training. Anything to set up.

I believe you have many staff presenters counsel who are going to walk you through training here. They are well organized and ready to roll. When they start I'm going to run upstairs and grab my chart.

I think Liz is supposed to be my comic relief while I'm setting up the technology.

Introducing your comic relief.

Oh the audience is leaving. Oh thank you.

They are comfortably seated. DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

I think we're all right to move on unless you is this something we all have to.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON.

Yes you all have to participate.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

In that case I'll grab the memo notes. DIRECTOR HAMPSON.

Now do they have the handout.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF. No we could get that. DIRECTOR HAMPSON.

Oh they're right there.

Okay.

So I will pass those up. They can be something that you save for later. But they already .

We've got instructions with those. So we would definitely .

Good to see you with us again.

I saw you last night. I know right. Yeah.

Want to get it on public record.

Thank you.

Thank you. I'm glad to see you.

Yeah, it looks like a quick break.

There's a handout on the other side of the iPad that you're going to want.

or to pass the class.

The whole thing is for me?

Yeah.

All right. And do I have to answer any questions? I don't know. She said I have to have it to pass the class. So it makes me think I need an exam. It's a training. Yes.

Just don't say. Yeah.

So, before we get started, you know, as I was lying in the hospital bed a little over three weeks ago, I was thinking of you all.

i was thinking of tonight and i thought i've got to get well to get this appendix out of my body so i can be here with all of you so then um that week i got this get well card that came to me and you guys had signed it and i said they like me they really like me so thank you all and yes we are back and ready for this evening so again um We want to give a special shout out to Heather Bender, our paralegal here, for really putting together a lot with the packet. And urban renewal training may sound a little overwhelming for a Tuesday evening, but I think you're going to see that we're going to kind of clip through a lot with the process, but to get you all ready as we continue to move forward. I will be covering a lot with the components related to the planning commission role that we've gone through, as well as with comprehensive plan. and economic development. Eric is going to be covering the council role through this process, and Jill is going to be picking up and really doing a primer on tax increment financing and that importance for the City of Casper. So to kind of kick us off, we're going to step into some of these slides. The idea with the slides and the white space is the bottom is in case you all want to take notes. So there was a deliberate attempt to say, if you should want to take notes, feel free, and we will cruise along. What this first slide is about is really looking at what we'll be covering this evening, and some of it we've already handled with you. The blight study truly kicked all of this off. We kind of went through a lot with the blight study back in March, and ultimately, Council approved the blight study on April 21st. Then following that, we went through an initiative resolution with all of you. That was approved on May 5th. We'll step through that again. The urban renewal powers, Eric will be covering with you, but you did do a resolution on how you want to handle the urban renewal authority and agency component. And you approved that on June 2nd. Now we're up to the urban renewal plan part of the process. And just this last week, Councilor McIntosh was at our planning commission meeting when we went through the urban renewal plan which is the next part of creating this whole URA concept. The planning commission did review it as indicated here for conformance with the comprehensive plan. And just to let you all know I did bring a copy. You all have got these in your packets long ago but our Generation Casper Comprehensive Land Use Plan is the guiding document for community development. And not just us, but when we go into any site plan reviews on any projects in Casper, separate from URAs, we utilize this document. It was 18 months of public engagement on how the City of Casper residents wanted to see the city grow. So as we refer to the comp plan and conformance, I wanted you to know the document, again, completed in 2017. Craig and I and our new planner will be initiating that update this next year so that we typically do them every 10 years. So again, with after the urban renewal plan, you all will see that document on July 21st. It's docketed on the grid. Then we begin to look at the project. So we move to the second P from plan to projects. And we do have a project which will be coming forward. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. Project financing options, we've talked through a lot, even with the Blight study, about the opportunity that a URA opens up for grants. It opens up opportunities if we want to get into loans, if we want to look at, again, TIF financing. So a lot of options await us as far as project financing and the revenue committee. THAT YOU ALL HAD COMMISSIONED THROUGH CITY STAFF IS ALWAYS LOOKING AT OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROJECT FINANCING. THE DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT WILL BE A DOCUMENT THAT THE TEAM WILL TALK ABOUT HERE. AND THEN AGAIN, UNDERSTANDING THE TIP WILL BE THE NEXT PIECE. NEXT PAGE THREE IS AGAIN A RECAP OF THE BLIGHT STUDY AND THE SEVEN AREAS THAT YOU AS COUNCIL IDENTIFIED AS AREAS THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE POTENTIAL REINVESTMENT PUT INTO. and redevelopment put into. And so we just put this into the packet as a little bit of a reminder. Tonight we will be referring a lot to the downtown Casper blight study. But again, the other ones are right there and we continue to explore opportunities already and several of those. That was again approved by the Planning Commission and then subsequently by you in April. The next is the initiative resolution on page four. And the key point on the bullets that are here outlined and by statute what's required is literally for me number. Thank you. Thank you. Is the third bullet on the findings in the initiative resolution we outlined the seven areas and the multiple blight findings by area. And it was a huge document in that resolution because Each one of them had potentially seven or eight blight pieces in each of the seven areas. The other item is the fourth bullet down which talks about how redevelopment associated with the URA is necessary for the public health safety morals and welfare. So again we're trying to get blight out of the community. We are doing so statutorily by looking at again those components. And now.

Thank you, Liz, Mayor, Council. I would like to, before I start, just reiterate my thanks to Heather and to Liz and Jill. If I had to prepare this PowerPoint, it would be white background with black text. And so they saved you from the extreme boredom of an attorney's presentation. That being said, I would also like to point out that the statute that Wyoming has adopted around urban renewal It's fairly robust, and there's a lot of nuance to it that we're going to try to spare you. So in a sense, tonight's presentation is both high level and then somewhat tailored to the project that we know is coming before you. So there's probably a lot of other avenues, aspects of the statute that we can get into, and I'm happy to do that at any time and answer any questions tonight, but just know that there's a lot more to it than we're going to get to this evening. The city of Casper is has the ability to exercise urban renewal powers, and there's two ways that city can go about doing that. One is that City Council can exercise those powers directly, which this Council has opted to do at this point, and then that comes with the full. Menu of powers that the statute provides, but not limited to reviewing and adopting urban renewal plans, making the statutory findings, program projects, entering into development agreements, overseeing tax increment financing, as well as all the other types of financing and tools that are available to a municipality. What I would say is that the decision of council to exercise those powers directly and not appoint an urban renewal agency It is not set in stone. It doesn't have to exist in perpetuity. I think the advantages of you all exercising and directly now is really from a timing aspect, knowing that there are potential project coming forward. This was really the most expeditious way to allow the city to. Exercise those. However, an urban renewal agency board can be established under statute and again, you'll see kind of a list of powers that the URA board can exercise. And really, the only power that can't be exercised by an agency is the power of condemnation. That always has to reside with city council. But upon the establishment of an urban renewal agency board, that board kind of exists to exercise all of these powers. And so Why would the city potentially want to establish that agency? I think there's a couple of positives. One is that there's some continuity that would exist over election cycles. You would develop that expertise and can bring on subject matter expertise to develop kind of a really depth of understanding of what's needed in the city. And then, frankly, it helps to reduce the administrative load on Council itself. Council still has obviously a role to play in many of the approvals, but a lot of the upfront work and down in the weeds work can be done by that agency, and then those recommendations would come to Council. And then it would also, in turn, lighten the load on city staff as well. So with that, I think we're back to this.

So on the next slide, again, back to the Planning Commission and the importance of the conformance with the land use and the comprehensive plan. When we met with the Planning Commission last evening or last week, and you all will see it in your memo coming forward on the 21st, we did look at the consistency with local land use objectives. And I wanted to recap the six areas. One of the uses, which is again identified in our comprehensive plan that I showed you earlier is to consistently look for infill and redevelopment and reinvestment. So again, Generation Casper identified we wanted to look at growth in developed areas. And so this particular discussion about downtown core fits that. We looked at the other, the second one of the six factors were the vibrant urban core. And we've talked forever about keeping downtown Casper vibrant, as well as again continuing to redevelop the old Yellowstone district. The third was economic development. And with the urban renewal plan that's been presented, it addresses quite a few components on economic development. Tourism, business travel, hospitality employment, downtown commerce, and private investment. So from an economic development standpoint, again, being one of the six criteria that we identified that is meeting the Generation Casper. Areas of change and future land use are the other number four and five, which truly relates to, again, keeping a vibrant urban core, but looking at redevelopment and reinvestment and where they should be occurring. And the downtown white study identified that. And the last of the six factors with, again, the Generation Casper plan that we found, as well as the Planning Commission that was met, was the public-private partnership. Urban renewal cannot just be done by we as a public entity. It requires the private aspect, and we feel that with this plan, it is executing that very nicely, as you'll see. So that is kind of the planning and zoning review for the Planning Commission. Then we get into the urban renewal plan and the Council approval aspect that again will come to you. On what date it's a test? July 21st. So you all will see that urban renewal plan come forward and your role as Council approval is to again look at the project area. It's defined in the plan. Re look at what the blight conditions are for that plan. There will be the reference to project financing in that plan. Again, you just heard me step through the conformance with the comp plan, but the statutory findings under State Statute 159-110 talk quite a bit, and we'll have that also in your memo, about the statutory requirements being that before approval of an urban renewal plan, the governing body must determine that In this case, feasible relocation method exists if families are displaced. That's not going to happen in this project. We don't have residential impacted. Number two, the urban renewal plan conforms with the Municipalities General Plan. Yep, you heard that, and we'll continue to hear that. Number three, adequate consideration has been given to parks and recreation. Statutorily, it's very important to maintain that, and even in our downtown core, we are fortunate to have access to our riverfront recreation. We've got it with David Street Station with recreation. The mountain is referenced as far as a destination, but again, from the downtown aspect, we really emphasized the river. And again, the placemaking that we've really worked hard to do with David Street Station, but also access to some of these wonderful parks that Salima has shared with you tonight. So again, there'll be a test on the 23 of them. Number four, the plan affords maximum opportunity for redevelopment by a private enterprise. And so as the plan is approved by you and we move forward then to the next component, which is a project, again, you'll see the opportunity that we are working on as staff for private investment. So the next step after the approval of the Urban Renewal Plan is the project. You all will begin to see the project unveiled in August. And the project, the identification here in orange, again, obviously reducing and eliminating slum and blight, stimulating private investment. But here comes the creating economic activity, construction jobs, wages, local spending, growing the tax base, and supporting the long-term community revitalization. And in this case, it'll be a lot within the old Yellowstone District, but also adjacent downtown. The urban renewal project that will be brought to you in August will have the quantified information of what the economic impact will be of this project. So as you look at the plan, you're looking at conformance with the comp plan. As you look at the project, you're going to see if the economic benefits are, in fact, well spelled out for this project. And again, you will see staff support on that.

Moving right along, we'll discuss Council's role in an urban renewal project. I think the next couple of slides, there's going to be a little bit of redundancy, and I think that's because when you read through the statute, it's not a real linear process in some areas, and the statute kind of uses plan and project sometimes interchangeably. But when we're talking about the actual project, the council action will focus on implementation, the public improvements, and the use of a TIF or other types of project financing. And so, as Liz said, Again, Council will have to confirm that the project is consistent with our adopted plan. Council will authorize the city to implement public improvements and you know, I would just point out 1591 13 has a fairly long laundry list of general powers that a municipality can can exercise. In an urban renewable project. The City Council has the authority to negotiate and ultimately approve a development agreement, which which I'll talk about here in a couple of slides. Allows the city to use it to effort tax incremental financing for eligible public costs until we'll go into some detail around that and really the Council's role in approving the project at that point is the final step before construction and then reimbursement through like a TIF can't begin. And so when we look at 159110, again, urban renewal project findings, a council is required to make a number of findings. And again, Liz kind of hit on some of these. Some of them are not going to be applicable when you're talking about the area downtown, but certainly conformance with the Municipal Comprehensive Plan, parks and recreation, Providing maximum opportunity for private redevelopment. Those would be required findings as well as that a finding that counts would potentially have to make that spring. This economic development would be in the interests of. The city. And when we talk about urban renewal project financing again, 159119. lists a number of types of financing options, but typically what we're looking at is that private investments going to get a fund the building or the. It's being, you know, redone. Public improvements are going to support that redevelopment and TIF would reimburse eligible public costs using a new tax revenue. Again, 119 list other types of financing options such as Council can issue revenue bonds. Council is also empowered to fund 100% of public infrastructure improvements, but if it shows, but using the private public partnership model. You know the tip tip seems to be the best and then finally Terms are finalized in a development agreement between the developer and the city. And a development agreement is essentially a contract between the city and the developer, and it's going to delineate the roles and responsibilities, expectations and performance requirements after Council adopts the urban renewal plan. This. Development agreement. will memorialize the partnership with that private developer. Development agreements aren't spelled out specifically within the statutory constructs around urban renewal. However, it is the typical vehicle by which the city contracts with the redevelopment. And then council's role in the development agreement is that So obviously staff would do the heavy lifting on putting that development agreement together and bringing it to you for consideration for approval by resolution. Again, just ensuring that the agreement is consistent with our urban renewal plan. And if applicable, if there's a TIF that's been proposed and going to be implemented, ensuring that it's only used for eligible public improvements. And again, Jim will go into more detail around that. And then Of course, the agreement is subject to future amendments. And really, this is the final step before construction and TIF reimbursement can start. So I think maybe this is a good point before Jill starts on the TIF to ask if there's any questions on that very kind of high-level overview that either Liz and I can answer for you at this point.

Questions about this?

Pat?

In general, Can we, as we go along, is this very structured for one particular project and then for the next possible project, can we add a module or are we laying the framework for any development citywide, but we'll have one particular project?

Yeah, Mayor, Councilor. So I think what I would say this is twofold. I think the processes that we are establishing and kind of would be applicable to any projects that would come forth in any of the blighted areas. And as I mentioned, kind of at the outset, I think knowing what potentially is on the horizon, we've kind of focused on some things that you might see sooner rather than later. But this this framework could be applicable to any of the seven areas, any projects that come forth, any plans that come forward. And again, if Council goes through this one time and says, and this is a heavy lift, we need an urban renewal agency, then we can certainly stand that up and go forward basis. Have them point entity with regard to future projects. Exactly.

Like the development agreement would be.

A new one for each project that comes forward? Yeah, Mayor Council, that's correct. Those would be project specific.

Can you have multiple areas of a TIF?

Mayor Council, I'm unaware of any prohibition on having multiple TIFs, so I think, yes, you could.

Many municipalities that we've studied have multiple TIFs. Missoula has been one that's got five. We studied Reno as well as Guadalupe. So again, multiple tips for different projects.

Add to that. Usually it's tied to the urban renewal area. So as you have an urban renewal area, the TIF is tied to that area.

Let's go on to TIF.

So my part of this presentation is to talk about tips. It's not any particular project. There's some examples that we're going to go through. But they're all hypothetical at this point. It's just to show you how the tip works. And I also have to apologize. I did not realize that that blank space at the end of each of these slides for you guys was for you to take notes. I gave you my notes. So you don't have to take notes on that. You've already got it. So awesome, right? I was planning ahead. So what is a TIF? So a TIF, it's called Tax Increment Financing, and it's really a tool that local governments use to help promote economic development by providing a funding for public improvement. That's what a TIF is for. So its purpose, a government uses a TIF, it encourages business and developers to invest in areas that need improvement. It can help pay for projects without raising tax rates. It can create new jobs, housing, and businesses. And it can turn neglected areas into places where people want to live, shop, and work. So TIFs pay for public input. Tax increment financing is a way for governments to use the future increase in property taxes from a growing area to pay for the improvements that help make that work happen. And when you look at TIF eligible areas throughout my career the only places that I have ever seen a TIF be used is in connection with an urban renewal area. So you have blighted areas you typically do an urban area and then the TIF ties into that. So what kind of public improvements will a TIP plan use? This is just some of the examples, and it's really anything that's a public improvement. So storm sewers, sidewalks, landscaping, I mean, the list is pretty extensive. Again, this would be in your plan. So as you look at your plan for your project, these would be what would be listed. In addition to storm sewers and all of those types of things, you can also use the expenses to do bonding and those types of things can also be paid for with the TIF. So this slide is, I think, really important. And I gave you some information on this slide in your packet. So the TIF is generated from the increase in the value of the property. The property is due to the improvement. So when you make improvements to the property, the value goes up and that creates this increment. So all of the taxing authorities who have a mill on the property in the tax district will continue to receive property tax at the base level. They won't get the increase from the improvements but they'll get the same thing that they get today. The TIF is actually taken off the top. The increment is taken off the top. So the company taxes are assessed. You take that increment off and then the rest of it is allocated by mill. So once the improvements are paid in full, then the URA, the TIF dissolves 20, 25 years, whatever the plan is, then all the taxing authorities would get that increase in the property taxes at that point. So what items do you need to calculate the TIF? So you'd start with the original market value of the property. You also need the new market value or an estimate of the new market value after the improvements have been put in place. You need the assessment rate and then the mill rate. We're going to walk through an example. Again, this is nothing that is, this is all hypothetical. So this is before the TIF project. So this is how anybody's property taxes. If you wanted to calculate your own for your house, this is how you would do it. So you would take the market value. I'm just going to say it's $30,000. Take the assessment rate of 9.5%. that gives you an assessed valuation of 2850. You would take that times the mill rate for the DDA area. That's going to be 88.9 mills. And you would get $253.37 of property tax that would be paid on this property in a year. So then if you do improvements to the property after the TIF project, let's say the market value is now $100,000. Same process. times the assessment rate of 9.5% gives you $9,500 times the mills will give you $844.55. So the difference in those two tax amounts is the increment. Let's walk through one more. So let's say we have a piece of vacant land with a market value of $50,000. The assessed value at that 9.5% would be 47.50. It generates $422 of property taxes in a year. The developer comes in and puts a department store in that vacant lot and increases the market value to $1,000,000. Now your assessed value is $95,000 and the generated property taxes would increase to 8445. So the increment. From the property taxes is going to be $8023. That would be eligible for. financing public improvements. So when you think of the value of this increment, you think, gosh, that's not very much money, $8,000. That's not going to fund anything. But if you look at it over a period of 20 years, if everything else stays the same, you've now generated $160,000 that can be used for public improvements from that increment. Okay, so I lost my place, but we'll catch up. So of course the improvements need to be completed. I mean, it's kind of like the chicken and the egg. So you've got to complete the improvements to get the increment, but you don't have the increment to pay for those improvements in advance. So typically you see a TIF as a revenue source for financing opportunity. So some type of bonding. And it can be any type of bonding that you want to do. So it can be industrial revenue bonds. You guys just did a policy on that. You could do revenue bonds. You can do geo bonds. You can do lots of different ways to get the financing in place and then use that TIF as your revenue source to repay those bonds. So the TIF is not the only thing.

that you can use to repay the bonds.

Of course, you can use any revenue source that you want. As Eric explained, the TIP is usually the preferred method. So as you do that improvement, you get that tax increment financing and you use that for your revenue source. However, if you need more money than the TIP is generating, you can look at other ways to finance that when it's grants, it can be contributions, it can be other revenue sources from the city. So with that, that's really the end of my presentation. If there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

So you had a TIF in place pre-profit tax exemption activity. Was that due to the increment? I mean, I

it presumably what does that do I guess to our repayment position the improvements and does that create so the great question mayor councillor so the exemptions that were put in place by the legislature Even if we look at the upcoming November Citizens Initiative those are all residential property tax. So these are commercial in most cases. So that would be something to consider as we look at doing financing. Is it a commercial property. Is it subject to those exemptions. And we would certainly need to consider that as we looked at other financing opportunities. Sure.

and the legislature presumably could decide that they wanted to exempt property tax at some point, and then we would have a predicament.

We would. Unfortunately, you can't foretell whether that's going to happen or not. But at this point in time, all of those exemptions on residential property versus commercial property. And again, I think that as we look through these financing opportunities, Is that something that we want to do if it's a residential property? Would we look at bonding or something in that, in those options? Maybe that's not the option you want to choose. Okay, thank you.

I'm going to turn if it's behind me.

Oh, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be lurking. Mayor, Council, so I think to insulate the city from potential liability in that case to where You set the base, and then because of legislative actions down the road now, there is no positive increment potentially. I think it comes down to drafting that TIF agreement to translate it. So there was an instance where something similar like this happened in Wyoming, and it didn't go up and went down, but because of not seeing that potentiality, municipality had to apparently pay out some money. So So I think it really comes down to having that foresight understanding that that could happen and then drafting the agreements, such that if that happens, they're not entitled to anything, there's no liability on the city.

So so in that circumstance, then it would just fall to the developer as it would have had there not been a TIF implemented for that project?

I would think so. I mean, not having drafted one, but I would envision that if there is no incremental gain in taxation and there's maybe a net loss, that there should be no expectation of payment on the part of the developer. That's what I would view it. Thanks. Thank you.

Yes, go ahead. Sorry, Kyle. Thanks, Joel. I actually hadn't even considered residential as a component of this. I was strictly focused on the commercial, but I am curious now, could somebody potentially apply for residential development using a TIF process? I'm thinking of a case in which maybe the city's designated a dangerous building, demolished it, put a lien on the property, and maybe that lien being on the property is some sort of deterrent from people's purchasing it and developing it. Like, I'm curious if residential development entities could potentially use it.

I'm gonna look to my my counterparts here to help me out. This is why there's three of us. Again, typically, this is within an urban renewal area. So that's usually where I've seen the TIF be connected. So if you had an urban renewal area that included residential multi-family whatever. I would assume that the TIP could still be utilized in that way.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON Mr. Mayor Cheyenne just did a TIP on a multi-family development in an urban renewal area in Cheyenne.

We have that they shared that plan with us so that we can kind of see how the development agreement was crafted.

And I'm trying to remember the name of this crafty little name but it is a development down down there.

And Mayor, what I would add is I think two points I would make is one, by saying to the private sector, come forward with your proposals, that takes the onus off staff to come up with every permutation. I think that statute clearly contemplates residential developments. And so, you know, if it is within an urban renewal area, I think it's an option. And then two, if the city does choose then to move to stand up an urban renewal agency, then you get to building that bench and depth of knowledge, and we get some experts from the community that can really help us flesh out.

Because when I look at the statute, I mean, there's lots and lots of permutations, lots and lots of possibilities, and we just need some experts to come forward and say, this is what we think will work.

Can somebody help me understand how the other property tax collecting entities factor into the structure if at all.

So they don't at all. As I said before the TIF comes off the top. So as the property taxes are assessed and they're collected the TIF comes off the top and goes into a separate account for urban renewal use. So then the base amount is what all of the other taxing entities get. So, again, it doesn't reduce their property taxes. It keeps them at the same level going forward, even though there's improvements.

Mayor, if I can add to that, too. So two things. I could find nothing in statute that required city to gain approval from, say, the county or any special districts or the school district. Doing some national research, I mean, this has become a topic of debate in other communities and other states where districts potentially are saying, hey, you're taking away our property tax. I think the contrary argument to that is, but for this TIF, that project would never have occurred and there would have been no bump in taxation and you've still got that base amount and that's what you're going to get now. on the upside is once that TIF investment is repaid, and you have that bump in property tax valuation. And so ostensibly, down the road, these other entities are going to see an increase in tax revenue that but for the TIF would not occur.

It's the same justification that we make for our entity, right? But they don't have any like authority over it. A little bit wild.

freeze them functionally for 20 years at that rate without them having it just it seems a little interesting yeah okay I'm trying to formulate a question yeah it's in there somewhere yeah it's in it thank you mayor I am curious about the duration is that something that sort of overarching standard for that?

I can start with it, but I'm probably going to punt to you, Eric. So I believe it is within the development plan. So when they propose the project, they will determine how long they want to do the URA for. So and the TIF, again, is connected to the urban renewal. I'm going to get it wrong. Plan. So plan project. So the project is in the plan. The plan is connected to the TIF. And they have an expiration. They have an expiration date. And it's usually 20, 25 years. Thank you.

And Mayor Kelsey, I think that's accurate. And remember, the TIF can only repay eligible expenses.

And so once those are recouped, they can't continue to reap that benefit.

So I think getting the economics and the forecasts up front, then that becomes Council's purview to say.

So just a little bit, but you know how in Rapid City, and I haven't been there in several years, but they built off the main drag downtown some two-story parking structures back way to increase tourism available parking. Do you know if any of that was done with this kind of financing in particular?

Mr. Mayor, Councillor, I'm not sure on Rapid City, but Missoula did that with TIP and at least one parking structure. And that would have been back when I first started about 2007, they had done that. So it is possible.

I have real concern. I think you've probably already got an agreement in place on the main parking lot. Right across from Rockers and. All of that. In. You know, with with additional developments of, let's say. The lyric. uh, in that future potential, um, in whatever else growth. Um, I know when I visited months ago with the Lyric, um, I brought up, you know, potential conflicts on parking and they mentioned the new, uh, Thyra Thompson, uh, as potential overflow parking. Um, getting people to walk that far, they'll walk half a mile to get into Walmart. But, you know, getting folks to park that far away to, let's say, the Lyric or Gaslight Social when they've got concerts, that type of thing, or David Street Station, you just don't know. So, thinking through that, how do we add on to parking and not make necessarily make it city's responsibility that the developers responsibility?

Good question.

And we don't own. The state owns a lot. Very true.

Mr. Mayor, I will say that the developer with this project has been in touch also with the parking garage management team to look at employee parking over there so that that can also free up downtown parking with the various service lots that we have. And the parking garage right now, again, continues to be about 70% to 75% occupied. So we've got some wiggle room there, and the LARIC knows that also.

You know how many spaces? That has currently is that like 300-400 spaces.

The garage or the surface lot surface lot. Used to.

Formulate well, I think so. I'll take a stab already. That's why I think I'm ready. I just I just want to so I still want to make sure I understand the tip as it relates to eventual. So I just let me start the scenario and then you tell me where I've got it wrong. So. So this project comes forward. The project gets approved. Is there? I know. So where is the money? If I understood you correctly, you said that the tax increment funding comes off the top of the property tax. So if we're talking about a residential area and let's say there's, I don't know, some improvement in that area that raises property values. I don't know what that would be, but I don't know. But Let's see, that's the case. Just. And then if I, I think if I understood you further that it set you, you indicated that the. I'm not sure I'm unclear about where the money comes from initially. If you if I, because I think what I understood you to say was it gets comes off the top later. On future property taxes or Is that to repay the TIF? Am I kind of on the right track there?

You're sort of on the right track. Let me clarify a little bit. So when you do the TIF, the TIF is going to be collected over 25 years, whatever is in the plan.

Even during the time that the project's occurring?

So, yes. So if you think about when the project first gets, there's no property value increase at that In fact, there probably isn't any property value increase for a couple of years because we only do it once a year. And so those improvements would have to be in place. So that's what I talked about. It typically works in conjunction with some kind of financing, so some kind of bonding. So when you go out for the bonds, the bonds would have the same period of time that you're going to collect that increment because you would use the increment as your revenue source to repayment. To repay the bonds. Right, so then you get all of your money up front from the bond sale and then you would repay that. OK, OK, and the bond sale is the money that would finance those.

OK, so then. Once once the project is complete and then the so then that's having an impact, it is having an impact on property values. Which are which are coming up. Well. So. Can you can you kind of fill in that gap there about OK, the property values have come up whether it's commercial or residential? Then then you have that formula for calculating the property tax. I think I heard you say something about there was some kind of like a like a delay or a. Gap in there before. before the increase in property tax actually takes a factor. Which is, are you saying that's just while the project is taking place before it's completed? Correct.

So as the improvements are being built. Yeah. So if you think about how property is assessed, so you have a base level before you do any improvements. Even if you have your house and you do improvements to your house, you build a deck or you build, or something that improves that value of your house, the assessor's office doesn't do it every month. I mean, they do it once a year. And so if your improvements are not done or not completed or not at a place where it would increase the value, then there would be no change in value for that year. And so it would go again to the next year. And if the improvements were in place, everything's done, then the property value goes up and the property taxes increase at that time. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think I'm good.

OK, and because the other thing is, is I think we're talking mostly. In our case anyway, about areas that are going to be mostly predominantly commercial. Impact.

And again, the tip once it's put in place is typically for the urban renewal area, correct? So it would be assessed based on the properties within that

So what I'm thinking is say residential development. So you would define the perimeter of that urban renewal area and it's going to be. It's not going to be here and then jump to here. It's going to be kind of a linear progression in terms of as that subdivision or that housing development gets built out, those individual lots get assessed higher and higher, but it may be 5 to 7 to 10 years until that entire area is built out until you get to the kind of maximum for the TIF, and then that can go back to service the debt that was used for, say, the infrastructure to build out that housing subdivision.

Okay. Mr. Mayor, Councillor, one of the blighted areas happens to be the Eastridge Mall area. And just say, excuse me, we have a developer that wants to do senior housing on part of that pad around the mall. That would be an area, again, that we would start with the plan, get the project done, And TIF, but to Jill's point, we don't know what's going to happen with the residential property tax, but that would be potentially a residential TIF that you all would look at being shot forward. That is one project that's been proposed just for part of the area around.

Yeah, that's a good example. Other questions for staff?

I just wanted to make one point and I think Councilor Sweeney maybe to your question. The developer or the development is still subject to all of the requirements of the city even if it utilizes tax increment financing and a development agreement to pursue that financing tool. So for instance with respect to parking whatever this project is required to provide for parking under municipal code is still going to be applied to them. And I wasn't sure if that was clear. I was worried that we were getting off thinking about the development agreement and negotiating those things there, which you could address it there. But more importantly, it doesn't it doesn't change the requirements that they have to meet for development under municipal code. I don't know if that addresses your question or not, but I want to be sure to state that here.

It does and it doesn't because that's not within the Yellowstone District today. Yellowstone District, my understanding is, doesn't have form-based parking requirements. Plus, we've overlooked lots of different things.

Mr. Mayor, Counselor, Again, downtown as well as the old Yellowstone District, we do not have parking requirements on C2 zoning or the OID. It is shared parking with that. We have the requirements on any residential development as we did with the Yellowstone apartments as you all wrote. We were counting every space with the Yellowstone apartment project to make certain that they could be housed on that ground floor and not be taken up all the side streets. That's not allowable. So and they they met that they actually over met it. But again with commercial there is not a, that was relieved because we didn't want to see from a density standpoint, a bunch of parking garages taking up space in downtown Casper or the Yellowstone district.

So could they have done a TIF on the Yellowstone apartments as an example?

No, excellent question. Yes, that came up during all of staff's discussions with that project, but we were not this far along. We would have had to immediately have tried to be implementing an urban renewal. The blight study and everything on that step to try to get that done before those apartments broke ground and they weren't wanting to get those completed and filled. But yes, did it come up? It sure did, but we were not at that point. Shannon was a little bit further ahead of us, so they were able to do their housing development with the tip.

Any other questions?

Thank you, staff. Appreciate it. Thank you for the information. And there's no direction on this, just information, correct?

You're just trained now. Just trained.

Can we get a certificate? Expect that in our emails certainly.

All righty.

Let's go to the agenda review.

Anything we need to go over.

to see if there's anything you want to touch base on there.

Council, there is nothing that I wanted to highlight. You do have one pre-meeting topic next week, which is your second sheet of ICE update. Looks like that is going to be moving forward after positive Planning Commission action. And I have nothing else unless you have questions or would like me to touch on something.

Yeah, any questions about the next regular meeting, anything on the grid?

Any update on when we might see Prometheus come present to us?

Mayor, through you, so we have had, my understanding has been that there was no urgency of this council for that simply because the city has no regulatory role to play. I understand they're in conversations with the county, which of course does have a role to play. So if you'd like us to Put in a request for a more timely presentation. I can do that, but I know they're very consumed right now with working through their their processes. I'm good with them.

Pulling off because they're working probably with the county. Anything else? Yeah, go ahead. Not seeing on here. We have a city of.

A lot down off the 2nd Street. Actually, I'm in 2nd St. And I don't know I've come in under any resolution. As far as parking agreements and leases. Or are we some point gonna try to move forward? In resolve this with the basis.

Yes, through you, Mayor, as we've previously reported, City Attorney's Office is drafting license agreements. We are planning to discuss this with you in coming weeks and potentially bring actions onto your future agenda. So we're working diligently, and I think you'll be receiving more information on this very soon. Do you want to add anything?

I think you covered it. Okay. I would just ask us not to keep respectfully Not not to push back. The dates and we get things moving sooner than later.

Yeah, no dates are pushed back, so it should be good.

Thanks. OK. Let's go around the table. If there's any updates or anything else you'd like to share. Amber, I'll start with you.

I've got a meeting Friday for LBGT advisory and regional water on Tuesday, so I'll have updates for y'all then.

How many updates? I'm sorry, thanks for. So I forgot to ask if we had a fires on July 4th. I mean, I couldn't believe. How I wouldn't say green green and how great a job that the area was prepped for the fireworks were being set up. Which I think prevented a lot. But. And then. I don't know if the chief is still here, but high high marks. From the Sheriff's Office and fairgrounds to the city. And the working relationship is pretty remarkable. I think since Chief Cheney's been on board with the sheriff's office, and I don't know how many got trespassed or hauled off on the city side, but averted a lot of lot of dangerous activity with some of our youth in particular. So hats off to the chief and his staff and whatever port stands for. That's the technique that was used by the city and it was effective. Good job, chief. And I'd also like to thank the Police Department. Marion Kreiner on July 4th takes some special effort. I had my next-door neighbor accost me with a police officer there. She was trying to get me to go down to Marion Kreiner with probably a hundred and so folks down there picnicking. I wish they would pick up after themselves because July 5th was a total wreck down there. I appreciate parks and the cleanup is unbelievable, but I don't think we arrested anybody and I'm thankful for that. I think it's a great containment area, but I'm what they want to do up to a point. I don't think we had any stabbings or shooting this this year. It's been a couple of years, but. But that's what my neighbor. So, but anyway.

I went to the. Went to the meeting this afternoon of the it was the. Collective Health Trust. report on housing, their study. And so what they did is, I may have gotten a survey in their email for me to fill out. They compiled those. They sent them to all the different community organizations, entities, nonprofits, governmental, so forth, on this housing study. It was a housing survey, rather. They also used some other sources of data. The study from the... Housing Authority. Couple other sources, but anyway, they they've compiled this housing study report that and I were there for the for the report out this afternoon and they. There was. We weren't allowed to leave with any other than what we could write down. There were no handout. Anyway, that's another story, but anyway, there's lots of good data there. There there was some indication on the part of the health trust that they would be willing to take on and. So kind of one of the recommendations was kind of this community wide approach towards. Housing looking at housing. I've talked to you about turning to me. But they apparently would be happy to kind of manage that coordinate that facilitate whatever you want to use. Because it would take some coordination between. the city and all the different. Nonprofits and organizations that serve serve unhoused individuals. Anyway, so hopefully that will be available in print form sometime soon and then I'll attend the meeting with the city manager and Eric and the member city staff and. Counselor Sweeney as well. This afternoon the gaming work group. We looked at some ideas for survey for potentially for areas that we talked about. If there are areas of town that the majority of property owners and business owners would prefer not to have gaming, for them to bring that information forward to council. I talked a little bit about the, Eric had done some comparison between the Rock Springs, we have a draft of the Rock Springs ordinance and the new state statute that went into effect in July. So yeah, more to come. Thanks, Mike. Brandi?

I've just been living my best life in Casper. I don't know if you know this or not, but I went to something every single night last week. Concert, concert, concert, comedy show, concert.

One, I'm tired. Two...

I love that the event center had such a tiny little concert venue. I hope you guys do a million more of those. I hope it was profitable enough that we can do that. One, it was amazing. Love Charlie Crockett. Two, I don't think I've ever seen that small of a concert at the event center, so I hope it worked out because I loved it, loved it, loved it. 007 at that coffee shop at the event center. It's a Red Bull with two shots of espresso. Got me through the whole week. Do not recommend it.

You're still riding the high, aren't you?

No, no, it's still going strong, guys. Not a good 9.30 option. Just my mistakes. But it did get me through a Charlie Crockett. It started at 9.30 on a school night. Oh, my goodness. But anyways. Thank you to everyone in Casper that is making me live my best life. I've got no kids and I can go out every night.

Empty nesting.

I am empty nesting like a boss.

Jenna do you have any updates or anything? Mike.

I had planning and zoning Thursday and everybody else stole my thunder on everything that happened there. So it's already been updated but it was it was great. Zulema and I did some cheering afterwards and It's exciting to finally get the second sheet of ice moving forward.

Awesome. Tomorrow's Wild Gives Day. So pick some nonprofits if you're able and support them. There are a lot of matches going on throughout the community and throughout the state. I can almost guarantee that your favorite nonprofits are participating. So give some thought to it. I'm making my list right now and try to try to support folks doing good work in our community.

Thanks for the reminder.

Yes. Sorry. Did I say something? No, I'm just kidding.

Thank you, Mayor. At a Downtown Development Authority board meeting last Thursday, we discussed the tree lighting ceremony, which went very well. I think everyone was pretty pleased with it. Thank you, Mayor, for giving a proclamation. I wasn't able to attend, but really jealous I missed it. discussed another successful round of window painting over the fourth. Everyone's just really excited about kind of the energy and excitement that has created. So I think they're going to really lean into that and start doing that more often throughout the year. And lots of people are coming together to help, you know, cover costs and materials and stuff like that. We approved next fiscal year's budget. And we also approved, I think it was five new applications for boost funding. That's The program that DDA is kind of spun up again recently where they provide match funding to force facade improvements or sponsorship of events in the area and people are really taking advantage of it and I'm excited to see that. Had a couple task force meetings last Friday, one regarding Casper Business Center Police Department project, the other regarding priority based budgeting, discuss funding options for the remaining phases of the Police Department, which I imagine we'll see in the way of staff presentations in the near future. I imagine that will come back in front of us. And then also just how priority based budgeting has been influencing internal decisions and how we're going to continue using that philosophy to guide the budget going forward. Had a joint downtown stakeholder meeting last night. I want to thank Lindsey Grant at the Lyric for providing the venue and City Works Cafe for the refreshments. Captain Dabney was there. He gave updates on the work his team's been doing in the area, which has yielded some really positive results downtown. Reminder, The new round of Casper Area Initiative meetings is coming up here in about six weeks, end of August, the 25th, 6th, and 7th. But I'm just really thankful for those meetings. Thank you to Liz and everyone involved with getting those. It's a stark contrast how much communication and coordination is going on downtown now compared to my first year on council. It was very siloed. Nobody was talking to each other at all from what I could tell. So it's nice to see All those folks coming together. I'm seeing faces that I've never seen before at those meetings, so I just really appreciate that opportunity to get all of the downtown stakeholders together to, you know, give me what I need to know coming to these meetings and kind of advocating on their behalf. Do have a Casper Housing Authority board meeting tomorrow, so I'll update you next week on that, but it was announced early in the week that Kim Summerall Wright is retiring as their executive director. Sounds like she's going to move to Texas to get more time with her grandkids. So I want to thank her for her hard work over, I think she was there 12 years. She's overseen a lot of transformative projects, including Centerpoint, Ravencrest, Liberty Square, the acquisition of Wyoming National Apartments downtown, St. Anthony's Manor, a little bit further south and other locations around the state. Also Urban Thistle Farm at the Old North Casper School. Housing Authority was never wanting for things to do under her leadership, and she certainly earned her time off. Casey Doolin, their current finance manager, will be stepping into the role of executive director, and I have faith that she will continue to build upon the culture and successes that that team's had over the years. Lastly, I know it's been a long one, I apologize, but I've had a lot of people reach out to me over the weekend and throughout the past few days regarding my inclusion on some negative mailers that appear to be sent out to a lot of our residents. And for some reason, I am published alongside Speaker of the House and Hewlett resident Chip Neiman, as well as Gillette Representative John Behr. Both of these men are registered members of the Freedom Caucus. Both were publicly associated with the CheckGate controversy this last legislative session, and both are running for election this year. I am not a state legislator or in any way affiliated with the Freedom Caucus. I was not involved in CheckGate, and I'm not on the ballot this fall. So a lot of folks were understandably confused to see my face in their mailbox, especially with that kind of company, and came to me looking for answers or an explanation. The long and short is that I don't know who ultimately decided to include me on those mailers, and I'm not going to speculate beyond the facts, but what I can tell you is that I started following the paper trail. The disclaimer on both of those mailers that I've seen lists an address in Hudson, Wisconsin, 5026th Street. That address is publicly associated with multiple businesses actually owned by a gentleman named Thomas Datweiler, I believe is how you pronounce his name. Mr. Datweiler, I've come to learn, is a prominent campaign finance consultant, compliance specialist, and treasurer associated with dozens of conservative politicians across the country, including folks like Jim Jordan and George Santos. This client list also includes being treasurer for the U.S. House candidate Reed Raisner's campaign. These are matters of public record, and you can verify this information by looking at Raisner's FEC campaign finance disclosures. Do these associations prove who conceived, funded or directed this mailer? No, it doesn't, but it certainly explains why people are asking questions not only about the mailers that have my then bearded face on them, but all of the negative mailers that campaign materials that I imagine we're all getting in our collective mailboxes. And I think people are entitled to answers. Political consulting has become an industry unto itself, with packs, LLC's, consultants, vendors and independent expenditure expenditure groups layered one on top of another until the average or even a very persistent and curious counselor has no idea or ability to determine who's really behind the message sitting in their mailbox. Whatever the intent, though, I believe this effort has failed. If the goal was to misrepresent conversations we've had as a group two years ago about whether utility agreements should be under the name of tenants or property owners, just know my record is public. I'm always willing to answer for it anytime, anywhere, to anyone. Good luck getting a response to anyone representing Freedom Forward Alliance. Or if the goal is to convince Casper residents, which I've heard from a couple, that I've become part of the Freedom Caucus, adopted its agenda, or been involved in any of its controversies by displaying me alongside some of its most prominent members, let me be perfectly clear, I haven't and do not. Instead, I ask recipients of these materials to judge me by the votes I've cast, the positions I've taken, and the work I've done on behalf of Casper. not by a mailer from someone who clearly has money to burn and will never have to sit opposite side of the table from residents that we represent. So I hope that has been, I hope this is my centralized repository for getting this information out there. I hope it's been helpful for people that are curious and have questions. But if you still want to connect on this issue, if you have lingering questions or concerns, please feel free to give me a call. Both mailers I've seen have my phone number right there.

So easy reference.

Yes.

I was going to call it and say, You should have. Yesterday I was going to have chatted with you. Who are you, sir? I thought I knew you. Just a couple things. Same task force. The Vice Mayor went to CBC and the PBB. He explained it very well. It's a very busy Friday. A couple other meetings as well. We have the breakfast on Thursday, Council of Governments. So we'll be there meet with mayors and the commissioners. So I think that's all I got. Jeannie, I know you said you wanted to give a little bit of an update on fire.

Yeah, I can update you on that. So the chief did report, and he's not with us tonight, but he did report we had a few small fires from fireworks over the 4th of July holiday weekend. Of course, we had a large fire on South Walcott on the 1st of July, and then, of course, a wildfire that did turn into a structure fire in damaged some homes up on Pheasant Drive, and that was on the 5th. In addition, on the 4th of July weekend, our department, in the midst of all of those things, supported a Jonah County fire on a rescue down in Fremont Canyon as well with some climbers. So they had a very, very busy weekend. But fortunately, largely good outcomes, although certainly a couple of homes damaged and one lost, I believe, in

The only other thing I was going to mention is Pat did a great job on the fair board. I went to the rodeo one night. I think I saw you there. You did a great job with coordinating the mutton busting. That was his favorite song there. I got a trophy for mutton busting. But thank you, Pat, for all your work. The fair and rodeo went great this year.

Letting me leave so absolutely to just say something came up for Casper's having their Casper Collins Day this Saturday. So cool looking for something to do. It'll be out there and it'll be good. He says.

And Saturday is also outdoor wreck. Down at David Street Station. Crazy days and crazy days.

GET OUT THIS WEEKEND. LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE. GO OUT THIS WEEKEND. CHECK IT OUT. SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE. THERE IS A CONCERT, SIR. NO.