City Council - workshop

All right, let's go ahead and get started.

I think we have a meeting follow-up, and I'm gonna hand it off to our city manager, some of the write-off balance updates, so go ahead.

Yes, council, thank you. Director Johnson is going to talk to you with a follow-up from a meeting, I think about a month ago, where you received some information about our write-off balances, which we need to correct. And so Jill will talk to you about how we go about correcting the information that was shared with you, talk to you about why you received some inaccurate information, and give you what is the corrected data.

Thank you, Jill.

Hi, Jill.

Hi.

Thank you for having me, Mayor, Councillors. First off, I'd like to clarify some information that was provided at the June 16th Council meeting. In pre-meeting, Councillors discussed a consent item for writing off accounts receivable balances. I want to clarify that these balances had been in collections for five years. And after that long, they're determined to be uncollectible. So in the annual process at the last meeting of the fiscal year, a list of uncollectible accounts is presented to council for approval to write off those balances. That removes them from our books. These accounts have bill dates, which are from fiscal year 21. and they are not impacted by the changes to the ordinance related to utility billing, which was approved by council in February of 2024. Secondly, the write-off amounts reported were incorrect due to an error in running that annual write-off report. The total write-offs approved by council was $49,813. The corrected amount is $219,004. As this is an annual process, staff is not proposing to correct this error for fiscal year 26. The write-offs will remain at $49,813, which is what council approved. The eligible accounts, which should have been included but were not, will be rolling into fiscal year 27. Council should be aware that the write-off report for fiscal year 27 We'll include these accounts in addition to the fiscal year 27 write-offs. So I did provide in your council packet memo kind of a description of what happened and why this error occurred and some things that we will do in the future to make sure that it does not happen again. And with that, I'm really happy to answer any questions regarding both the information that was provided and the corrections that we are proposing.

Any questions for Jill?

Yeah, go ahead Pat. So I appreciated the memo and read read through that. I don't understand why we still can't amend and get these off our books.

Mayor, Councillor. So again, we typically do this as an annual process. We don't go back into last year and change things after that fiscal year is completed in most cases because it doesn't really have a significant impact on our fish on our financial statements. It is just something that we would push forward into the end of this year. The reason why it doesn't impact our fiscal statements is because Whenever we do our financial statements we report accounts receivable net of an allowance for doubtful accounts. So every year staff evaluates all of our accounts receivable accounts and if it is believed that over time we are not going to collect it we write it off in that year anyway through the allowance. So it's not something that is imperative that we write off. It is just something that cleans up our books every year.

So to me, I'd rather have clean books going forward. And so is there anything in state statute that forbids municipality to look back? Because, I mean, it may seem insignificant in the total scope, 150,000 approximately. Just wasn't identified through one means or another. I'm just thinking. Why not take care of it and just pushing off? Because what's what's being proposed is just carry it over. For another year. which I think just adds to, I shouldn't use the word chaos, but, you know, having to describe it once again and just get it taken care of, so.

Mayor, Councilor, I am not aware of anything in statute which would prohibit us from going back and making these changes. It's just not something we've typically done. Again, the impact to our financial statements is is nothing. Whether we do the physical write off or whether we write it off through the allowance, it has the same impact.

I think if I go much further, it's nonproductive.

I'll leave it alone. Thank you.

Randy. I do have a couple of questions. Do we send them to collections or just write it off as that was a really bad day?

So actually, our collection process, we kind of went through this when we talked about the utility collections. So we provide a service, we present a bill to the customer. If they don't pay it within 45 days, we shut off their power or their electric, their electric, their water, and we send those to collections after we close their account. So they sit in collections for five years with the collection agency, and that agency continues to provide collections on that account. After five years of trying to collect it and not being able to, that's what's really on these write-off reports.

So this is after a collections agency has done everything they could, including potential legal, if they needed to, to try to collect this money. But if we don't write it off now, is it five years maximum for utilities? I know it's 10 years for medical, so you have to bear with me on that one. I don't know how long. Can they potentially spend this next year since we didn't write it off? trying to collect for that additional year and maybe we get a little bit of money out of that deal since we didn't give up.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Mayor Counselor after they've been there for five years the collection activity really dwindles to nothing.

There's really nothing.

But maybe not nothing right. Maybe. There's always a chance. DIRECTOR DEWOLF- Saying there's a chance.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Hey six dollars once from a guy for nine years. It could happen. So there's a little part maybe a couple bucks. Thank you.

Other questions. Thank you, Mayor. Do we, will we get, I can't remember if we get regular reporting on this or not, so, but on the water sewer trash specifically, is that something we're, because that's kind of what I thought we were, I didn't realize it, we took into consideration all these other expenditures, but do we get a comparison because what I thought we were, what I was interested in was kind of looking at the impact that the changes in the billing process for water, sewer, trash, what that had on our write-off debt. So will we get any kind of report on that sometime?

So Mayor, Councilor, yes, we are intending to come back to Council in September. which we'll talk about collections. So those would be before we get to the write-off process and how the impacts from the ordinance changes have impacted our collections.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Great. Specifically of those utilities. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Yeah. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Exactly. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Thank you very much. DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

So do we have landlord agreements which I think we do very similar to Rocky Mountain Power in Blackhill Center, Jean.

Mayor, Councilor, we do have landlord agreements. It is my understanding that they function the same way as Rocky Mountain Power does. So our landlord agreements are with, of course, a landlord and what happens with the utilities when that tenant moves out. So when that tenant moves out, if we have a landlord agreement, those utilities revert back into the landlord's

But not previous bills.

Not previous bills. Mayor, Councillor, we actually talked about that when we were making the changes to the ordinance and it was not approved by Council. So the landlord does not have any responsibility for those tenant accounts.

Thank you so much for the update.

Thank you.

All right, moving on to tiered water rates.

Thank you. Mayor, Council, Director Johnston will introduce our consultant. I think you are aware that we have been working with Raftelis to look at tiered water rates. And so you'll start to get a presentation about what that looks like tonight. And I will turn it over to you, Krista, because I know I'll just steal your thunder.

Mayor, Councilors, for over 30 years, the City of Casper has had the same rate model. So last year, Council had given the go-ahead for us to have a study to update that model, including the consideration of tier rates. It's really important to have this grounded in the cost of service, including the demand pattern for that service. So with that, we hired Todd Cristiano with Raftelis He's an expert in rate models, and he's going to present their analysis and a proposed tiered rate structure. It should be noted, though, that the goal is not for a revenue increase. We're keeping with the revenue projections that we talked about in our pro forma for 2027. And then following this discussion and his presentation, we are seeking council's go ahead with this approach so that we can begin with education and outreach of the public because this is going to be new for our public and we want to have ample time to bring them understanding and information so that they can be aware of the changes that could be coming. With that, here is Todd.

Give me one second here to get all sorted before we begin with this work. Good afternoon. Like Kristen mentioned, my presentation today is kind of a summary of the work we've been doing with Krista and Ethan's water rate structure.

And we spent quite a bit of time since April going over how we're going to put this all together.

So my presentation today is kind of broken into two parts. First part is kind of the overall conceptual. How do we, what's this process that we go through? And then the second part of this will go into, well, here are the results. Here's what we came up So those are the two areas. So we're going to talk about what is a rate study, pricing objectives that helps us guide through this process, and our findings, and obviously with a peer utility survey. Before I go any further, I just want to introduce Raftelis. We're a nationwide management consulting firm. We do everything both on the utility and general government side. Utility financial consulting, working with utilities such as the City of Casper, is our bread and butter. I'm based out of Denver. I've been doing this for 25 years, so I've got a lot of regional experience here. I've gained a lot more experience in Wyoming recently, so it's great to be able to work with Casper as well as some of the other communities, Pinedale and Alpine, Rock Springs and others. So let's get into it here. First off, what is a rate study? Well, first of all, it balances our community pricing objectives with making sure the utility is viable. In short, we want to make sure that from a financial perspective, we want our revenues that we're taking in to meet our expenditures. meet reserves and also meet any sort of bond covenants or state loan covenants requirements that you have. And the things we try to recover from rates are things like O&M, salaries and wages, supplies, materials, all those operating costs that occur each year. We need to pay for those somehow. Obviously, capital repair and replacement items, new mains, new storage tanks, storage tank painting, all those sorts of things. And building reserves. We do have a reserve level. We want to maintain a minimum level in the bank. Make sure if we have some sort of emergency that we can't pull from some other object code, we can go into this reserve, dip into the reserves, and take care of that expeditiously. And obviously, we want to make sure that we are paying for our debt service should we have any in the fund. The goals of setting rates, that's more of a financial plan perspective. In terms of settling rates, going through a cost allocation analysis. I'll talk more about that a little bit later. We're going to get into the weeds a little bit today. we do a cost of service analysis to make sure that everyone's paying their fair share. And we want to follow industry best practices. And that doesn't mean it's a cookie cutter thing. We open up a book and we just plug numbers into a table and wham, here it goes. Every utility is very different. They're all delivering water, they're all treating water, but how they operate and the key things, where they get their water from, whether it's surface or wells, all very different. So following basic principles and industry standards allows us to mold and shape our cost allocation to meet utility specific needs. Now these items down here you see aligns with community objectives and I'll go into more detail in a second, but we have about six there revenue stability, essential use affordability, cost recovery between classes, cost recovery within a class, conservation, ease of understanding. Those words help shape a little bit of how we design, how we come up with a rate structure. So I'm going to talk about those this morning in just a second. So here they are. So when designing a rate structure, looking at how you're billed, so maybe you have looked at your water bill, you see that you get a monthly fixed charge, and there's some sort of volume rate charge to get to your total bill. How do we come up with a new version of that? Do we just throw spaghetti on the wall and guess and say, hey, let's do this, or let's do that, and say, okay, that's great? No, that's not really an effective way to do it. It's kind of tail wagging the So we go through, it's called great structure pricing objectives, and if we can kind of get an understanding of what is the rate structure supposed to capture for the community, and it's different for everybody. How can we capture those values within the rate structure? And some of these are qualitative and some of them are quantitative. And we just when we put it all together, we try to find a balance of all those things to make it work. We just know when you kind of settle in like this, this looks good. This looks right. So let's get into some of these definitions here. We want to make sure we have revenue sufficiency. This is a given. Any sort of rate structure we design, we want to make sure we're recovering the full amount of the revenue. It's kind of pointless not to do that. Obviously, we want something to be defensible, meaning that if it stands up to scrutiny by a rate payer or someone else that We've got documentation. So we've gone through industry best practices and whatnot. There are no specific laws in the state of Wyoming of setting rates. The utilities have legislative authority to do what they need to do to recover costs. But like I said, industry best practices for utilities to have some sort of rate structure based on something, cost usually. We have revenue stability. We want to have a rate structure that's not going to have huge variances of revenue coming in in the summer versus the winter. So if you had a rate structure is all just based on water use and no other fixed charge and you had a really wet July, that's problematic and you could really dip down in your revenue. So we want to have something that. Provide stable revenue. Here's another one. Cost equity between classes. This is kind of a mouthful. This is essentially what a cost allocation process is. We make sure that we assign cost appropriately. to the customer classes based on how they use the system and the number of customers they have, the size of the meters that are within that customer class. So this is called cost of service. To give somewhat of an analogy, imagine going to dinner with a big group of people of 10 people. The check comes, and some people get anxious. Am I going to have to pay for the whole thing? Are they just going to divide the check by 10, or is everyone going to pay their fair share? Well, certainly you could get a bill and just divide it equally among everybody, but if you got the salad and someone got the filet, the person paying a salad feels a little like they paid too much. The other option is that everyone pays their fair share for their meal. That's cost of service, making sure that the cost is allocated appropriately. But instead of food or a meal or a plate, the way we do it here is looking at demand patterns for the different customer classes. If you think about an irrigation class, a lot of summer use and no winter use. Residential, some winter use, a lot of summer use. Commercial classes, their demand is pretty consistent over time, across the course of the year. Some may be high, some might be lower. And those demands they placed on the system is a way for us to allocate costs to them based on how the system was designed, how it operates, and how it's maintained. So it's really a method of doing so and applying those costs proportionally. So as a result, everyone kind of has a different cost basis and everyone's going to have a different unit cost associated. So that's cost equity between customer classes. Then there's cost equity within a class. That's basically the difference between Are the low volume customers paying their fair share or high volume customers paying their fair share? Pretty simple. And finally, essential use affordability. This makes sure that we provide that essential water use, you know, like enough for bathing, cooking, cleaning at a rate that is maybe below cost or is at the lowest cost possible, but still providing good level of service. And so that was the other item. And three more conservation wise use of water, and obviously one that's Really important is customer understanding. I can sit up here and develop the most great rate structure I think is really cool. But if nobody understands it, it's completely pointless because it's not going to do what you want it to do. And obviously ease of administration. This is a key thing. I've heard horror stories of consultants going in and designing a whiz bang rate structure only to have it not work in their billing system. It's not happened to me, but I've heard stories. So these are all kind of the pricing objectives. There are quite a few of them here, and we didn't sit down and try to piecemeal, well, does this rate structure meet 30% of this objective? It was more of looking at all these objectives holistically and putting together a rate structure that touches on all these to a degree. And the beauty of it is that the process we went through is kind of, I call it durable, defensible, and deliberate. Meaning durable, we kind of turned over a stone. We looked at a bunch of different rate structure alternatives. How about this? How about that? And obviously, defensibility, like I talked about. And deliberate, you know, like I said, we turned over every stone. The durable part of this is if adjustments need to be made in the future, you can do so without having to rip the bandaid off and start all over. You can you can make tweaks to this and yeah, that's going to impact bills and things like that, but you shouldn't have to go through a wholesale change and upend everything and start from ground. So those are the objectives we try to get. So here's your current rate structure and we're just talking about water. We're not talking about wastewater. It's just water rate structure, so you have two components to your bill. You have a minimum charge dollar per bill regardless of how much water you use. You're paying this minimum bill. Minimum bill includes 1,500 gallons of water. So if you use 1,000 gallons of water, you're still paying $11.54. If you use 1,500, you're paying $11.54. If you pay using 2,000, you use $11.54 plus this volumetric rate over on the right, $2.72 per 1,000 gallons. So this is called a minimum charge. This is common. You do see utilities that have volume allowance in the service charge, and that's one way to help with the essential use affordability to keep those lower volume bills at the lowest possible rate while still having good service. So that's the current structure, so that's what we're working with. And I believe you mentioned it's been quite some time since this has been updated. So we have some proposed customer classes. I'll go back here. This applies to everybody, regardless of whether you're an irrigation customer. commercial customer, multifamily, have a four-inch meter, six-inch meter, it doesn't matter. Everybody gets the same rate. So we came up, first thing we decided is like, well, what kind of customer classes should we have the most appropriate? We looked through all the billing data and decided that we have a couple of different customer classes we think that are broken up in such a way that represent demands based on this group of customers. There's different types of demands on these different groups of customers. And like I mentioned, there's this methodology of assigning cost based on the demand patterns of those different groups of customer classes. And finally, and like Krista said, the rates we come up with, the numbers you're going to see today are revenue neutral. We're not generating any more money. You're going to see some bills going up and some bills going down. But when you add it all together, it's still the same dollar amount. We're just shifting things around a little bit. A residential class single family class and this is basically these are kind of generic definitions. This is just a single family detached home. Pretty simple multifamily two or greater. In this instance, we're looking at residential homes that are greater than one inch meter. Assuming is multifamily, we're still trying to. We need to sort out all the different multifamily customers though, so essentially if you have one meter serving multiple units. For today's discussion, that's considered multifamily. And that includes apartments, condominiums, duplex, triplex, all the similar things. Commercial, hotels, gas stations, Walmart, Wendy's, all of those sorts of things. Churches and schools. We call this out separately and it's kind of saying, why churches and schools? Why churches and schools? When we look at demand patterns, and it's not unique to the city of Casper, the demand patterns for churches and schools are very unusual. based on when they're operating. Obviously a lot of probably more water use on the weekends and things and during the week and so their demand patterns are very much different than a typical residential and schools are the same way they've got. You know when your kids are in school and then you got irrigation, you've got football games and irrigating them and using water and all that sort of thing. So this is not unusual. I was the rates manager at Denver Water and we saw this with our churches and schools and that sort of thing. So We called out churches in school because their demand patterns are a bit different than everybody else. And finally, irrigation and then city parks. Like I mentioned, you know, irrigation. These are irrigation only taps. They're just irrigating outside. It's not for indoor use, just separate taps for outdoor water and grass. So those are the customer classes we came up with. Then we have to figure out, well, what rate structure is going to meet all those pricing objectives and how are we going to stick them to these different customer So two parts to the rate design here. Again, we still have a fixed charge just like we did on the existing rates, but this one is by meter size. And the difference here is that it scales by meter size and based on our cost allocation analysis, there's different sorts of costs that go into this then went into possibly your existing service charge. And this captures the cost of billing, the cost of meters and services, repair and replacing meters, cost of field service crews going out and fixing and doing calls. customer calls and whatnot. It also includes the recovery. Some capital costs each year. We know that a lot of your charges are fixed. Obviously you do have a capital requirement each year. Wanna make sure we've recovered a portion of your annual capital cost in this fee. And varies by meter size as the meter size increases, the fee increases, and that's really due in part to as you meter size increases, the whole pipe gets a little bigger and little bigger, little bigger, and the capacity required to serve them increases. So we need to have the system ready to be able to have that capacity available to serve them. So there's more of a cost associated with that. So, and you'll notice here on Inside City, the $11.54 for three quarter inch and five inch, that is the same charge that we are assessed, that's being assessed today. So that was one of the things in terms of the essential use affordability. Hey, can we keep the three quarter inch and five inch at the same levels currently at and then go from there in the future and then the rest of these scale up based on meter capacity and those sorts of things. We're proposing an outside city, an outside city rate of 1.35 times inside city. You do have an outside city differential. It varies based on the service charge versus the volume rate. That's not so common, so when we averaged that out, it came out to be about 1.35 times. So essentially, if you're charging $1 inside, The outside city customer base will be paying $1.35 per thousand gallons or whether it's service charge and that it too is very common for outside city. Utilities that are serving customers outside their jurisdiction and usually that ranges anywhere from 1.01.5. You're kind of in the sweet spot there and usually a policy decision or policy. Decision, but there's also ways to quantify that with math and that sort of thing. Um, Like I said, it recovers all these costs here, administrative cost, and it helps maintain revenue stability. Currently, I believe you're getting a majority of your fixed charge revenue from that. That minimum charge is about 18% of your total rate revenue. And as I've seen, at least in Colorado, ever since we had the mega drought back in 2002, service charges are very low to promote to allow people to kind of have more control over the bill. Service charges are really low, so the revenue your fixed revenue coming in was pretty low. Things started happening in it. A lot of revenue instability, so a lot of utilities have raised the amount of their service charge to increase the amount of their total fixed revenue coming in just so they don't have those fluctuations. And we're seeing ratio ranges anywhere from 20 to 35% along the front range, and so just around these areas, that's kind of what we're seeing with our service charge based. structure here. It gives us a little bit more fixed revenue as a percent of your total rate revenue, which is the fixed charge and the volumetric charge from 18 to 23. You don't have significant variances in your usage over the course of the year. Plus you have reserves as well, so. I think you're in a good spot, but also trying to meet that that essential use affordability. We go with a really, really high service charge for someone that's not used any water. They're paying a lot of money out of the gate, so we have to balance those two things. make sure that we're achieving both objectives, revenue stability, but also does essentially use affordability and conservation. You have a fixed charge, it's way too high, people can adjust to water usage all they want, the bill doesn't change. So what's the point? So yes, trying to balance all those things is it can be a little bit challenging. So we're going to look at the residential multifamily volumetric rates next. So what we've got here is we've, we've maintained a minimum charge for the single But instead of 0 to 1500 gallons, we're just rounding to 2000. Could you build 1000 gallons? So in a minimum charge for $11.54, you're getting 2000 gallons of usage and that is close to essential usage. Usually it's around 3000 or so, but when we looked at the figures and adding in 3000 gallons of volume, it really skewed certain level of water users and just it. It didn't look right, so that our tiered structure here, two to 15,000 gallons and that The rest of the indoor and a component of outdoor kind of average outdoor usage. I think the average usage over the course of the year is about 8000 gallons, so 15 captures you know the 8000 gallons plus then some. And then we have these 16 to 30,000 gallons and then over 30,000 gallons. What's very interesting about the residential class is that typically the water usage is really compressed between like 0 and 10,000 gallons in this region and down in Colorado. and just really compressed here. And it makes designing the rate structure very easy. However, in Casper, you do have a few customers that are in that tail end of higher usage. And so that skews a little bit when we were looking at how to develop the tiered structure here. And so we really had to look at different tiers here, how to best balance the rate structure to where the bills for lower customers didn't Decrease massively and increase massively had to find that balance of that that gets to that customer class equity within a class. So we spent quite a bit of time on that and this is where we arrived with the three tier structure. Multifamily very similar. We don't know the number of units on each multifamily customer. So if you have a duplex, we don't know that is a duplex in the billing system. We don't know that you have four units, so. What we had done, we had kind of carved out customers that were in the residential group of I think one or greater than one inch meters and looked at their usage and were able to figure out, well, these are all multifamily. So normally with a multifamily rate structure, you might have a tiered structure for multifamily that's on a per unit basis, 0 to 2000, two to four, something like that. And those thresholds would scale as the number of units So anyway, we don't have that here. It's a fixed tier structure. Again, 0 to 6 is including the service charge. That's what we equated to being this minimum use for multifamily. We have these other tiers that we capture, and we try to set these tiers such that the volume that's getting billed, the amount of volume you're capturing to one of those tiers, was similar to residential because, again, multifamily is a residential type entity, indoor and outdoor usage, just like single family. So we try to maintain that. to the best extent possible. Now, we also recognize that as we change rate structures, you can see on that Tier 3 of $10.40. That's quite a departure from what the rate is now. Of course, that's a small number of bills. It's a bit of volume, but it's a small number of bills that are in that area. And the $10.40 and $10.84 And we talked about this quite a bit. Oh my goodness, people are going to reduce their usage 20% and we're going to lose all of our revenue. I doubt that's going to happen, but you never know. So we have incorporated a factor to account for. You might see some reduction in the volume build in that third tier for both residential and multifamily. Kind of a correction. But when we look at that potential correction as a percentage of the total water use within residential, it's minuscule one or 2% maybe, and that's it's really small now. So we have accounted for that potential change in usage. The biggest thing that might hurt you is again a wet summer. That's what's going to really bring down your revenues more than doesn't matter where a structure to have. The wet summer is what's going to do it. All of proposed classes rates for the proposed classes are all uniform and You can see here that they all vary by the different type of customer class. Commercials 501, churches is 596, irrigation 658, and city parks is 461. And what we've got here, this really goes back to the demand patterns and requirements of these different customer classes. And I talked about how schools and churches have unique demand patterns that are certainly different than commercial and others. So their rate's a bit higher than commercial. commercial is pretty flat, so their rates one of the lowest here and irrigation again really high demands in the summertime. Virtually nothing in the winter time and city parks. Those are just set at 70% of the irrigation rate is per policy, so we designed all that in there to where we're able to charge city parks for 61. Again, we've we've made some adjustments here to just make sure that if there's any change in usage that we've tried to account for that. Typically, commercials are very inelastic class, meaning they need to have a certain amount of water to do their business. They might have some efficiencies they can do. If you think of a restaurant, might be able to get a new dishwasher or something, but they need to weigh that cost against the water savings, all that good stuff. So we would expect that if there's any Any reduction in consumption might be in the irrigation class as well. We probably see that just because it's all outdoor irrigation is really easy to turn that off, but they're relatively small class. So I'm going to pause right here. And see if there's any questions before I go into. Well, how does this look on somebody's bill? Because that's where the rubber meets the road. We can have all these great rates and things, but if the.

Results don't look right.

then we need to go back and reassess. So I'll pause for any questions, otherwise I can move forward.

Appreciate it. I'm sorry, what was your name again? Todd Christian. Thank you, Todd. Appreciate all the information. The only other question I have, more so a curiosity than anything, you talked about the breakdown of like the different tiers and the makeup of all of our water users. Do we have that information as far as the people that would end up in each tier? What percentage of the users in our system

Make up each tier for a residential multifamily. Absolutely we had to look at your detailed billing data and find out well. If you're using between 0 and 5000 gallons or using more, how much is how much revenue you're getting from that tier one? Yeah, that's the whole premise.

We have to have that in order to do that analysis. If it's available anywhere, I would love to see just like a pie chart of the breakdown.

Sure, absolutely. We can do that.

Could you go back to slide 10 by 10?

Here.

It says 9. This one was 10. Maybe the number is mixed up. OK.

This is the service charge here. So. I did have a question on that one. So depending on. So it's fire suppression systems. I think currently you've got to have a separate tab. For fire suppression. So is that included? You know whether that's I I'm not sure if the. Requirement on a say a fourplex. Is a two inch or three inch line? But is that also contained within the service charge?

No, any sort of fire separate fire fire line or fire requirement is is a separate thing. These are just the domestic water service meters. OK, that would be a separate calculation.

In. Typically residential. Would either have 5 eights or 3 quarter correct?

You most hotels have.

A two inch. Depending on the size of the hotel.

We actually went back and pulled a couple examples. I don't have hotels in my example, but the ones that I did find there were two or three that were two inch and there was one that was a three inch meter. I think they were all up in the Evansville area. Those hotels around there.

And then. I'm assuming some of those. From say two inch up are. Would be considered commercial.

Most likely you're not gonna see a residential on two inch, but yeah, they're either commercial. I think there's some churches that have a two inch and some schools that have a two inch irrigation. Definitely you've got a couple. I think a couple of six inch on irrigation so. I believe that. 35%. 35% of your irrigation 35% irrigation meters are one inch, but it spans the spectrum of all of these and commercial is is similar, but I think 2 inches kind of where things hover with commercial.

Yeah.

In I, I'd be curious if we have. Any say manufacturing facilities that within the city limits that have? If we have a six inch tab, six inch meter.

We can find. In the billing data for sure. Sometimes. The might have a large meter, but they might have a peak demand and not a lot of water usage. We've just got this. You're sitting there ready for that. One day that they're running their system or whatever. But I imagine we can look and find.

I'm just wondering if we've actually got 4-inch. I'm guessing we do have 4-inch meters.

Not too many. Not too many, but there are ones out there.

Do you know if we have any 6-inch?

I believe you have at least 16 each irrigation. I saw that one. I wouldn't know off top of my head. We can get you a distribution of.

What I'm trying to grasp is are those even relevant? You know they they wouldn't be major users or they might be ourselves. The city at cash.

Yeah. And your points about meter size is great leading to one of my other slides when I get to the examples. Any other questions on the service charge slide here? We're talking. OK. OK, typical monthly bills, single family residential, a 3 quarter inch meter. Here it gets to your question. Counselor 55% of the bills are for 4000 gallons or less. Now that's not 55% of customers. This is Bill. So if you look at all your customers, multiply that times 12. All those bills, 55% of the 4000 gallons. It does include a lot of zero bills. Customers that maybe have moved away or they're vacant or something, and it's there's a percentage of that in there as well, but gives you an idea of you've got a concentration here, but you have just a few bills that are trailed off in this kind of bell shaped curve of usage. Bills with usage less than 20,000 gallons will see a decrease in their bill. That's just due to we're changing how we're building. We've gone from this service charge with 1500 gallon charge with the same cost $11.54 to 2000 gallons. And we've got this tiered structure, so it kind of turned things on its head and some of these values are charged. You'll see it looks counterintuitive. Like wait a minute. How did if the commercial rate is going from 543, which is the current rate to 501, how are bills going up? That doesn't make sense, so I'll show that to you. But you can see here that the 4000 gallon 8000 gallon and 20,000 gallon. You've got a reduction there. At 4000 and 8000 and then you gotta slide. This is where it starts shifting. And 20,000 gallons and up. Now there are customers. There are bills that are at quite high usage levels and you expect that it ain't residential, but there are. A few bills, but because it's a few bills and it's high water volume, it's a lot of volume, right? So that's. There's that balance we have to try to find that balance of You know, making sure that we had this essential use affordability and. And in conservation messaging too. When we all back up to the cost of service discussion, we talked about the total cost needed get from each class and the rate structure is how we're going to get it. When we looked at the different custom classes, it seemed that the total the total amount we should be collecting from residential I believe is going down a little bit, just ever so much, meaning the revenue you're getting today from the It's close to what we need to get from cost service, just a little bit lower, but with the new rate structure you can see that we have some reductions here to lower volumes and then it'll increase as that usage goes up. Alright, multifamily. Now this is looking at what I did here instead of just a monthly bill with like single with single family. I showed you 4000 gallons or 8000 Here it was easier to look at. We took specific examples. I went on the assessor database, went to the billing website, went to Google Maps, found a couple of multifamily complexes. I calculated their bill for a year because they have summer usage and all this sort of thing, and it's difficult just to compare one bill. And so this is the average monthly bill, calculated 12 months of bills divided by 12. And you can see here we've got a 12 unit, 18 unit, and 24 unit. And the 12 unit 2 inch meter. The average monthly use of 73,000 gallons averages per unit is around 4000 gallons, and that's about what you'll see on a multifamily. Of course, the larger the multifamily complex, the use per unit goes down because it's smaller. You may not have a washer and dryer in there or something, or you might only have one bathroom. And then we had this 18 unit, which is strange. It's a it's a one and a half inch meter, but it's 18 units. Don't know that maybe the units are very small. Who knows? The average monthly use is 48,000 gallons and about 3000 gallons per unit. Now what this says to me on those first two is that you're getting a little more irrigation outside from their domestic meter. They don't have a separate irrigation tap. They're using just a regular meter they use for indoor and outdoor and they're using a little bit more there. Now the one on the right is 24 units and you can see there's a big difference in the cost and the average monthly use is 110,000 gallons. Average use per unit, 6,000 gallons. I calculated it out by looking at their summer usage and estimating their winter usage. 43% of their annual use was for outdoor irrigation based on that one meter. So when you have a multi-family complex, they're going to see that as they use a lot of outdoor water use, they're going to get into those higher tiers. But the tiers are spaced pretty high. It's 0 to 6, I think 6 to 150,000 gallons. So it's pretty spaced out. But again, conservation was one of the pricing objectives here. And also recognizing that, you know, these duplexes and triplexes, these might be owned as you get to the larger complexes, probably rentals and things. Those are difficult to send pricing messages to because there's no individual homeowners there.

It's more of the landlord and that sort of thing.

So again, very similar to what we saw in single-family. Okay, here's a bunch of others. And these are actual customers and usage, their names redacted. Couple of pizza delivery places. This was an aggregate of a couple of pizza delivery places. The 3 quarter inch meters are bill would go up about $5 a month at this point. You can see that a convenience store 3 quarter inch meter their average monthly uses 12,000 gallons, but they are. They're using more water. They got 3 quarter inch meter, but they're only going up about three or $4. That is a function of that. The meter charge. is a smaller percentage of the total bill than the volume rate. So at some point with that customer, if you kept on charted, they increase their water usage charge $5.01, that would overcome the current $5.43. You see that go down, there's that inflection point. And that's really what's happening with a lot of these is that there's this balance of water, a meter size cost they're paying now based on meter size and the volume the volume rate is lower under the proposed structure versus the $5.43 you're paying now. So they're paying more in a service charge, lower in a volume rate. There's an inflection point at which in certain meter sizes their use could go down at some point. And again, it's a function of rate structure change. You try to balance all of those things, but I think for a lot of these, the inflection point is way out there and it wouldn't materialize. But going forward in the future, you wouldn't have to worry about that because you're simply increasing these rates by any sort of financial plan increase. You're not changing structure. So the restaurant here, one and a half inch meter average usage of 53,000 gallons, a slight increase here. There's a local market I put on there and there's a school and a fitness slash recreation center on there as well. All very different usage types and some of them had a lot more outdoor irrigation off that three inch meter. The rec center is one of those. The school is another one. The local market, not a lot. It was interesting. Some of the convenience stores had some really high usage. They may have had some outdoor irrigation or something, but there were a couple of ones that were just very different than others. Didn't follow the tickle curve. What's that? I looked at car washes. They all, a lot of them had very similar. There were one or two that had very little, but there were some that they're heavy water users. And I think they're the ones that might meet that inflection point at some point because the amount of the service charge is overcome by the reduction in the volumetric rate versus a 543, but that would only happen for the year you transition.

After that, the rate would just go up based on how many you want.

OK, irrigation meters. This is just some simple, took some, I looked at a couple of bills for irrigation usages here based on these meter sizes and calculate them here. You can see there's a general increase and if you recall the Volumetric rate irrigation is I think $6, which is far more than the 543 they're paying for now. Their service charges kind of a smaller factor in their total bill because the amount of water use they have. In about 35% of irrigation meters or one inch does scale up to that four or five or four or six meter size as well, but not many. So when it comes down to it and we look at this rate structure change for single family residential. We have a number of these communities here. The proposed CASPER actually goes down a little bit for 8,000 gallons. That's just one bill. You might see a decrease in your bill in the wintertime. You could see an increase in the summertime, depending on how much you irrigate. And again, that's just a function of when you change over to a new rate structure. One thing I want to point out is that a lot of these utilities here do have service charge by meter size and tiered rate structure. So what we've presented here is not this bleeding edge. We're testing it out on the city. It's some things that are tried and true. I know that Rock Springs is looking to adopt a tiered structure. Laramie, Cheyenne, Sheridan, Jackson all have tiered structures as well to some degree. So we didn't want to push the envelope because it had been quite some time since didn't want to introduce any new. I think we did look at a customized commercial rate structure for about 10 minutes and decided that wasn't going to work too well. But so at the end of the day, these rates that we developed here, they weren't just pieced together as guesses and things. We did use those pricing objectives and trying to balance those set the guardrails for coming up with the structure. Then within adjusting the structure, that low volume, high volume customer, we had to balance the essential use affordability versus conservation and just the general equity between large and small customers. And we did apply cost service principles. We are recovering the same amount of revenue as we would in fiscal year 27 as you had on your existing rates. And this was a monumental effort to really digging into the billing system to sort out. Who's who and what's what with the different custom classes so? That includes our the results of our initial study of pause. Questions.

Yep, I smart. Thank you. Thanks again Todd for all this. I take it will get this presentation in full. My question was going back to the multifamily. If you could. No, it had the. Yeah. Yeah. So am I reading that correctly? And so this large 24 unit multifamily residential unit? The tenants in that multifamily facility could expect to see $120 $10 increase monthly to their water.

Yes, in total in total for the whole complex. So you need to divide that by This is $722 per month. For the whole complex. Yes, this is not per. This is not per.

Yes.

I was just trying to like I love potentially going down as someone that lives in single family residential doesn't want to go yard. I'm nowhere near 15,000 gallons, but. So I love that or that somebody in maybe a. You know. Or unstable financial situation. Renting in a larger complex would not see a disproportionate increase to their services to cover the decrease in.

Cause right the landlord might just pass this cost on. And there's. Unfortunately, there's little we can do in a rate structure to do that. That certainly can happen, but looking at the usage here for the particular customer, there was a lot of I think some simple conservation measures could probably bring that number down, just by looking at the pattern of the usage, it really jumps up. Maybe it was an anomalous year, I don't know.

You said it was like 45%?

Yeah, 43%. That's, you know, when you look at single family, about 50% is outdoor, but you have a lot lower usage. But here, you may not have I don't know what the size of the irritable area is, but it just jumped out at me that it was a little unusual compared to all the other ones I looked at that did have irrigation, outdoor irrigation on the domestic. I say this is common knowledge, that's why I put it in there.

A question.

So in the analysis, did you take the entirety of The users in the city. And. Are we looking at? A net decrease in revenue. By going to the tiered system overall or a slight increase in revenue.

Revenue neutral. Meaning we've just shifted where the money is coming from between different classes so. Based on our estimates on your existing rate structure and all your customers that usage, we have access to all the billing data. This wasn't a representative sample or we took like 200 or something. We looked at everybody all. Customers times the number of bills we estimated first that the total revenue you're getting today from your current rate structure. The 1154 with the volume allowance and 272 was about $18 million. So we decided to say, alright, well, we want to do our cost analysis based on recovering $18 million. And we did that, and so the $18 million got dispersed differently between the customer classes than how you're getting the revenue from them now. So it's net zero. Difference. Is that typical? That's how you would do a rate structure. If you change rate structures and throw start rate increases in It kind of skews the results. You're not able to see. How? The change is due to the rate structure versus just an overall increase. So we try to do this on, you know, apples to apples comparison.

Other questions? I'm sorry, I had written down too.

Yeah, I think this particular one is the only place I'm struggling to get on board with because what Kyle mentioned, to me, it's where individual users might be more impacted by the structure change. And I'm nervous as well. You say small changes could close the gap for these folks, I think. tenants aren't necessarily always in charge of landscaping, and they can't necessarily be, you know, they don't have the autonomy necessarily to be making those changes, so they're going to be relying on their landlords to make those changes, or their fellow neighbors, and, you know, depending on how the watering systems are set up. So this makes me a little bit nervous to see some of the larger increases affecting this particular class, and Just because I feel like those folks are more susceptible to pricing changes like this. I think their landlord will pass it on to them and I they don't have a lot of recourse or changes that they can make to their own water use to to rectify it. So everything else I'm pretty excited about. I think it makes a lot of sense this one. I don't know if there's a different approach that we could take there that would maybe minimize the impact to renters, but it does make me a little bit nervous.

Yeah, there's always a different analysis. One of the challenges is that there's because of the usage per unit and comment varies so much. You have to find strike that balance a little bit.

I know the one on the right there definitely looks kind of.

Off the beaten path a little bit, but something certainly we can look at to maybe try to better balance it. You know it's somebody goes up, someone else goes down. Teeter totter effect, but I think there's a good balance there.

Other questions.

Yeah.

Go ahead Pat. So on multifamily like the 18 unit or 24 unit I'm thinking that that's typically I'm thinking water sewer trash are typically included with the rate structure, rent structure.

With their rent? Yeah. Imagine, sorry. For a single meter, probably.

If it's on a single meter, you probably should have no way to know then.

So it might equal, say it, well, be up to the landlord. Say a $5 increase potentially. To the rent but. OK. I had something else, but I forgot it.

I will say that. No matter what utility you go to, multifamily is the sticky way. Sometimes you have multifamily where they're individually Some where they're not. May not have the billing units on there. There's when we talk about there's no silver bullet grade structure that really does come true with with it with any customer class, but multifamily. It's really susceptible to the level of data you have. What type of multifamily complexes? Because although it is residential. There's a huge variety. You've got a 60 unit complex versus a duplex and condensing them down into potentially one class. And so these are great questions. And these are the very, very typical questions we get on multifamily.

And it's challenging to thread that needle.

And we did the best we can with our pricing objectives and the data we had available. But there's always options that we can go back and sharpen our pencil on. I'm sure this is a study. So we'll work with some adjustments.

Mayor it seems to me that earlier this year we approved some rate increases December last year was it December on I think it was water and sewer and sewer was pretty substantial for 4 percent and then water was it And then. So. Was there also an increase automatically triggered for the next year within that resolution?

Yes, it was. Well, not after that, Kristen, your counselor for next year for water. It was an 8% increase, and so as part of this study, The revenue neutrality that we've talked about is that we've made the projection of what that revenue increase, including that 8% would be so that we could meet that revenue requirement while adjusting the structure separately.

And then.

One of your initial slides on base. Service fee or how it was put. You had something in park about parks.

Um?

Yes, let me find that here. Yeah, I mentioned that the city parks rate it includes that policy. Differential to be lower than I think the irrigation rate, so we've counted I think 70% of. maintain that relationship so that it's a lower rate than what the overall cost would be.

So with that, because we've made that adjustment here, does that mean the impact to parks is relatively, it's not really affected by the structure change?

Their rates actually go down and I thought actually I had a slide in there for parks and Seems to have you.

You did. You went past it.

I did, yeah, there's that. This is irrigation.

It's in a table.

We've got the rates for parts.

Yes, there's no, but I had a. I had a graph with with examples on there. I don't know what happened to it. I apologize. We got to help at that vacuum when I send that over, but those those those charges theory go down. For certain levels of usage, obviously.

So I'm currently on parks. Are we at the 1154? Current today.

For the service charge, yes, regardless of the meter size, you're paying 1154. It would be based on that meter size schedule.

So is this saying? These are the volume rates, so they'd still be.

Trying to track what this table is saying again, so this is just the volume metric rates. It's two parts to this whole structure. You got the service charge of varies by meter size. It's the same for all classes. And then plus the usage times this volume right here. You add those together and get the total. I'm just parsing out the volume rate component over here because I showed the service charge part of the previous slide.

And is this current?

This is what our analysis showed, the revenue neutral, everything else.

But I mean, what's current for city?

Oh, that's a good question. I don't know off the top of my head.

Mayor and Council, the current parks rate is 4.3.

Because I I had implied. Sometime of trying to get parks to. Basically, a wholesale rate.

I don't I don't know if that.

Mr Chairman, whatever you want to call me.

Council the current wholesale water rate is $4. I may have misspoke earlier on the partial. I think it's going up a little bit. I'm sorry.

Yeah, Michael. Way too early to go home, right? So I just want Amber's question or counselor policy question. Got me thinking about you go back to the one, but with the multifamily showings. Are those so? These are kind of. Scenarios if you will, I mean examples of what so I guess my question is is let's see.

Oh wait a minute, this is single family.

I'm sorry there we go. So. If if these are truly scenarios then. What I'm looking for is like OK so. You could have a 24 unit complex. That. And let's assume this one has some outdoor space or landscaping that is included in that water bill. It's being irrigated that's included in that, so you could. You could have a a 24 unit complex that doesn't have a lot of irrigation that their average monthly use is lower than that. Would they? I guess my question is, is would they? And the average use per unit is less. But would you still have that differential between the current rate and the? The existing rate that proposed rate. So if the volume is, let me see if this example might answer your question.

Like I said, multifamily, yeah, you could have a 24 unit complex just like that, yeah. And the bill could be lower, yeah, because you might have no But still high usage and their bill would go down. Or you could have a one and a half inch complex with 30 units and you have a lot of usage and that increase in service charge now dispersed among much more usage and they may not be getting to that top tier. So there's a lot of factors that go into whether a multifamily complex is going to go up or down. It's not just outgoing.

That was my point. It's not a foregone conclusion that it's going to go up. Correct that there is the possibility that would stay close to the same or exactly.

I mean, you look at this second one here. I mean this. This one is kind of quintessential. The 18 units that yes, going very nominally, but there are going to be some that that would go just based. You have the right size complex, right number of units, the right outdoor irrigation and the right amount of. Discretionary usage and then you're going to have somebody else exact same complex across the street. I mean, there were a couple that I found one or two that did. I think potentially decrease. It's not a lot, right? It's not the different like it's not the inverse of that, but yeah, and that's what again makes it so challenging of trying to find the right mix. But you know, in terms of the affordability part of it, there's probably some adjustments we can, you know, make to try to recover the cost and better balance.

Yeah, and I think that's kind of where you know where I'm thinking is. If if one of our objectives is to encourage conservation. That that could be a an education piece with customers about. What you know if you? If you took your monthly irrigation down or or your usage down, how much irrigation do you do? You know that kind of thing? You know if they customer. We can kind of educate our customers about the. The objective of conserving and that you know if you can do something to kind of help mitigate that that impact of irrigation on your on your monthly bill, you wouldn't see as large increase or maybe no increase.

In theory, a scenario is that top tier for multi families, $10 and whatever sense. that in the irrigation rate is something like $6. There might be that collection point of making worthwhile. I'm not sure how that works for the city of getting a separate tap, but sure, other communities try to support that. Of course you have to look at the it's the average of the bill because you're still going through those other tiers, but there might be a point in time that you're you're in such in that top tier that it does make sense to maybe look at other configuration. Again, I don't know how that would work here, but that's. Something that. Communities will try to do sure.

But there's a cost to them to do that. So this so the scenario would be is you have a 24 unit complex and they're all on one meter for the for the units. But you put the irrigation tap on a separate meter. Is that the idea?

I see you separate out. You can clearly see the outdoor usage for that, and although that rate is lower because you separated out, they can maybe decide on what they want to do.

But again, Thank you. So I I think maybe the thing that would be most helpful to me there would be to have like a little bit more of a detailed peek into that class generally and how it breaks down like. How many going up? How many going down and like sort of what's the? It's a Canadian rather than.

Just kind of these three.

Yeah, so maybe that would be helpful to get a better sense of like. know, is the impact largely positive renters is impact largely negative? Or kind of where does it what's the mix?

We have the data to do so. One thing we would one thing we often do is provide a chart that looks at the average monthly bill change, you add up 12 months of bills to divide by 12 on your existing structure and your new structure, whatever that delta is divided by 12, eight bucks a month goes up, and we would plot that and say, hey, 50% of these accounts are going to go up by $8 or more. It doesn't tell you the size. It's complex. It doesn't tell you a lot of other stuff, but it gives you at least a high-level look, and then you can drill down from there. There's a lot of different ways to kind of slice and dice it. It just depends on what's going to be useful for here to make a decision or

Serious slide done.

The. Be. And what it is now and then yes.

So we go back here. This is the existing service charges. Dollars 54 cents regardless of meter size, regardless of class, just 1154.

Then do we have a proposed? Well, what we would like to go to.

Yes, that's this service charge. Just breaking it out by class.

The reason I ask is on the agenda it says direction. So we're going to be asked for a thumbs up, thumbs down.

I think the correct me if I'm wrong, Janine, it's it's do we move forward with it? But I think there's some caveats. I'm just trying to write in some notes. I think the counselors have voiced, I think, some more information, especially about around multifamily, if I'm hearing that correctly. Am I on track with that, Janine?

With a thumbs up, we would begin education and public outreach for implementation January 1st. If you'd like us to come back before that to unpack multifamily a little bit more, we can do that.

Absolutely. Feelings around that if we gave it a thumbs up tonight to move forward, but also having. A little bit more research into multifamily. If there's anything we can do to help look at that from a standpoint, it's not some trepidation around the increase on multifamily. Yeah, I swear.

Uh, are we passing this via resolution? We're doing three public meetings or we're passing this like the center.

Mayor, Councillor, it would require a resolution update to switch the rate structure. Right now we have a two-year resolution for our fees. We would have to update that just on the water side.

So when it came to us in a regular meeting, it'd be on pay.

How's everybody feeling?

Yeah, Mike, I guess. Yeah, going back to this. But like the typical single family residential. Which meter did they have the one inch meter?

Is that what is that most typically made in three quarter or going to be the two most popular pocket? That's what's the most of the three quarter inch.

And that's a net. That's quite a significant, if that's the base rate, that's just. That's what the current is.

It's the same as the current. It's the same as the current?

Okay.

I was going to say, I got my point.

I was talking about the higher rates. Those are current as well?

That's new. That's totally new.

Yeah, that's that was my point was. If I have a two inch pipe and currently $11.50. Yeah, yeah, so I'm going from I have a two inch pipe on my apartment house and. I'm going from 1154 to. $55.61 a month. What size meter on a two two inch?

Correct. You also have to think about if you have a two inch meter, you're pumping a lot of water through that. So the part of the bill that is a service charge is probably fairly low in terms of the total percentage of the bill. Minimus. Thank you.

It's a fancy term.

Todd, I think the concern may have been, if I heard you correctly, Kelsler-Bond, that the current rate is $11.54 and it would move to $55, but that That's not what you're representing on this slide. Well, this is just the proposed correct, but I so counselor the proposed charge for a five inch meter would be $11.54 for a two inch major meter. It would be 5561. I don't know what the current two inch meter.

$11.54.

Oh, OK, that was my that was my OK. I'm sorry I missed that. So you're right and I'm not.

No, no, I I appreciate the clarification because I. If the base rate for everybody is currently 1154, but. My two inch meters going now to 55.

Yeah, that's a big change, but if you're a commercial customer, your volume rates also going down. Volume rate OK 45543 to 501 based in part on. We're recovering more from the service charge plus our cost analysis in terms of what commercial needs to recover. Okay. There's a lot of moving parts.

Yeah.

Thanks, Mayor. And thanks, Todd. It is complicated. I think you're doing a great job helping us navigate it, though. My question is, I understand the base charge is you're showing proposed, but what is the proposed change to the volume? Like, so, for instance, my water bill I have right now, I have the 1154 base charge for the next 500 gallons. I have $2.72. My guess is the proposed as we get rid of that small 500 gallon increase and just go straight to.

Correct, so this was this was a challenge. I was going to put the existing rate structure next to proposed rate structure. We're balancing two different tiers and I can certainly do that for you and I think it might be helpful if I put a column there says 1154 for everybody. And I can do that for the and you can see. Well, here's how much you would pay at 2000 gallons on an existing and proposed it will look a little wonky, but it will give you that side by side and I apologize. There was just way we were trying to put this together with sure I didn't know if I was going to invite more confusion initially, but we can we can put that together. More likely so I can put that, but to answer your question. So 1500 gallons is in there 1154. Going forward, it's going to be 2000 gallons and it's just for single family, not for any other class, just for single family 1154 for 2000 gallons and multifamily 6000 gallons.

Just based on so what is so right now where we charge $5.43 for each additional thousand dollars. Above 2000 that that is going down.

Now I can't remember. $5.20. Yeah, above two. So 543. So it goes down from 543 to 520. But once you hit 16, it goes up higher than 543. That's why we're able to have the 520 lower because we're recovering additional cost in the higher terms.

I'll go ahead. For anyone who's curious, I crunched the numbers for me. My bill last month was $35.98 under current rates and with the proposed rates that go down $3 to 3230. Again, I love it for me. Just want to make sure it's fair and equitable for everyone.

I want to be clear on one thing is that. You're using 20,000 gallons or less. The bill will go down, right? The few customers or bills that are above 20,000 gallons. There's a lot of volume there that helps offset the reduction. It seems very counterintuitive, and we had to go back and double check all that. So that's just a nuance of when you ripped a band off and you flip from one to another. So again, we try to account for any sort of reduction. We try to account for any sort of fluctuation of revenue as a result of that. But again, it was more pronounced with this study just because of

larger distribution of volume that goes in higher usage levels you don't typically have typically don't have a residential customer using 60 000 gallons brandy i'm going to pay your difference over here i got you totally fair i deserve every penny of it i know i got you

So I think we need to kind of move it along a little bit. I'm sensing some trepidation on this. It sounds like it's a very complicated issue, but it also sounds like there's several other municipalities around the state that are wanting to move towards this, which I can see the benefit around that. I guess I'm trying to take the temperature of the council on moving forward with this and then maybe getting some more information.

I do have one question. You said that was a specific complex that you gave our examples from?

Oh, for the multifamily, yes, it is. Let me see here.

Yeah. Is it, for example, say, the preserve that has beautiful green space and a swimming pool, not the apartments down here on First Street that are a lower income? Like, you've got the different variances. I don't know how familiar you are, but I'm just wondering, Is it because we're paying for really pretty areas and not watering? Like, is it someone in my area that is like, well, yes, but I want my grass to be green and I will pay that extra $5 a month? Or is it potentially in one of those lower income areas or less well-maintained landlords that I'm sure we don't have a whole lot of, right? But since you guys have a big idea of who the expensive one is, did we ask for it?

Mayor, Councillor, I don't actually remember the 24, but I have on my list to which specific users these are, but also gather a few more on the lower end of maybe a two-plex, four-plex to give you some other comparisons for these multifamily so that you have that, as well as the metadata for this customer class in general so that we can have that so that we do know if the preserve, they are doing a fair bit of water in there.

One thing, getting to your point of getting more detail, we don't have the number of units in the billing data, so we actually have to go to the assessor office. So we may not be able to provide all of the multi, we'll see how far we get. I'm sure we can get quite a few. There's not that many of them, but I forgot we don't have the units in the database. That were there, it would be a lot easier for this whole structure.

So during the summer, my water bill is over 300 bucks because I actually water my lawn and don't let it burn out. It's a big lawn. And it's really not that big.

Ten times my water bill, Pat.

So I'm fine with moving forward.

I not fine with. It not coming back to Council and just getting rolled out. Which is typical. From what I've seen. And felt so in order to get their answers. Because I I think the tiered approach. Is fair. With the different size meters as presented. I don't know if it's fair. I'm giving a bigger. Discount on volume. But again, I can live with that for a zero approach. I'm not sure if that's fair either, but. But. Anyway, I just I. I would appreciate more information, but I think being directions requested, I don't know what that looks like. I guess I'd turn to the city manager again and say, is there a different way to approach this in order to hit a happy medium?

I was going to offer up, kind of in the spirit of Pat's comments, I think I'm in agreement with them. I would love to see this extra information in our packet preceding the meeting that we are supposed to have this on consent. I would also love to see this on our pre-meeting agenda before that so that we have an opportunity to discuss whatever thoughts, concerns, feedback we have after digesting the additional information. And then in that pre-meeting, if we decide it's not ready for prime time, we can either pull it off consent for additional discussion or punt it at that time. But to keep things expedient, not push the timeframe out, but also give us the opportunity to digest this information and have at least one opportunity to talk about it. That's what I would offer up is that we get it in our packet. It's on pre-meeting agenda item before we actually pass it on consent at our regular meeting. Should it be on consent? Suppose we could pull it off consent in the pre-meeting. I mean, or we could just leave it off consent. I've advocated for that. in the past, so how can we pull up?

Yeah, you can pull it at any time, really. I mean, pre-meeting, in the meeting, direct city manager or the staff to put it on non-consent. I mean, we've been doing that more, so it's really at the pleasure of the council.

Is that something we'd want to do is put it on non-consent to have conversations around it?

I think you ought to let the, if the public wants to weigh in, let them weigh in.

Yeah, I'm comfortable with that.

Awesome. Okay. Move forward with that. We'll get information to lay any concerns, see if there's anything that we can, like Pat mentioned, if there's any room to make some adjustments to help allay some of our worries. Then we'll be put off non-consent. It sounds like you have enough direction there.

I do.

So when you talk about consent, we typically do this when we are adopting the weight resolution, and that's in December. So I would suggest us coming back to you prior to that to get your grind at a pre-meeting. But I'm open to the opportunity to have public comment

other fashion, I don't know the best approach to that. Well, I guess for my part, because we are not just setting rates, we're actually changing the structure of how we assess those rates. I wouldn't want that to be in its own resolution and not wait for December. Clearly, it's a lot of work to implement a new rate structure. Once it's approved by council, we need a lot of months of lead time. And I'm going to want to know that you all are are solid in support of that, of course. So did I answer your question? So I imagine We bring this forward probably within the next month or so right as you've just described for us here. As its own standalone resolution because the structural changes is a notable difference from previous just adjusting rates.

So it I heard a couple of things, but so is there. Because it's on consent and

not allowing public comment it will be a non-consent which will allow public comment yeah yeah so we're still going to stay that course we're keeping it on you've been off consent since i believe you probably explained it much better than i that i could have um but yeah it's gonna be on it's gonna be non-consent so there's conversation and public discourse yeah and pre-meeting and premium yes and hopefully we'll have enough time

at a pre-meeting that we don't.

Just rush? Yeah. I mean, and I'm more than happy to, if we can do it ahead of time, to have more, you know, a little earlier meeting time for that pre-meeting, you know, meeting at 5 instead of 5.30 to do that and make that recommendation. Give us more time to concentrate on that. Is that okay with everybody?

Yeah. Meet earlier, just keep the agenda light.

Yeah.

I agree if it's got five other items I'm pre-meeting we have five minutes.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

We just put it on another work session if we're going to have additional information again.

Okay. DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

Council want on a work session. DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

Okay.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

Okay. Let's do a work session then. I'll give us more time. Thank you all.

Thanks Ethan.

Goodnight.

You get this done in 10 minutes.

Do you want to set up anything?

Council, you requested this work session. You wanted to review our liquor licenses by type and also discuss what ordinance changes need to be implemented to bring our ordinance in line with state statute. Above Mills Lodge is our licensing specialist, and she is going to walk us through this tonight. And this is her speciality.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm going to provide a brief overview of our current city liquor license types and then consider our current amendments to our ordinance. The most common liquor licenses that we have are retail, farm, grill, and restaurant. We do have nine types of liquor licenses. Excuse me, I went too far. The bar and grill and retail are capped, meaning by population we only get a certain amount. The rest are unlimited. Our retail liquor licenses, we have 37. With currently issued, there is one parked. The one that is parked is 307 Hospitality at 256 South Center. They can be parked until January of 2027. RETAILER LICENSE ALSO HAS THE ABILITY TO SELL FOR OFF-SITE CONSUMPTION AND SALES. THE NEXT ONE, BAR AND GRILL. THESE ARE BY POPULATION ALSO. AND WE CURRENTLY HAVE 19 WITH 15 ISSUED. THERE IS ONE PARKED WHICH IS GRUNER BROTHERS. THEY WILL BE OPEN APPROXIMATELY THREE MONTHS. BAR AND GRILLS DO HAVE TO adhere to the 60-40 revenue requirement, meaning at least 60% of gross revenue must come from food and entertainment or a combination of both. And gaming revenue is not included in the entertainment portion of this. It cannot be calculated as meeting the requirement. The establishments for Bar and Grill have to have a physical bar, a minimum of eight seats and a serving station, dedicated bartender, and at least six types of distilled spirits. And they do not allow for off-site sales or consumption. Currently, let's see, I guess I already went through that. My apologies. Next, we're going to go through restaurants. Restaurants are not capped. The distinction between restaurants is they do have to have a dispensing area. It says room, but the room situation went away a long time ago. It just has to be an area. The other liquor licenses do not have the same requirement. We currently have 21 on our books. They have to do a 60-40 split also. However, their 60-40 split, the 60 has to come from food. It cannot come from anything else. We also have micro breweries. We currently have 10 issued. They can brew and sell their malt beverage. They can do off-site malt beverage permits to sell their product off-site. We have one winery that is currently assigned. That is through Gurner Brother. That is distinctly different from a satellite winery. A winery actually produces and sells their product, whereas a winery has to have like a retail store in Casper. And we did have one. They did not renew last year. That was at Artisan Alley. Satellite Distillery, we have one. They can sell their product. And they can also do limited offsite catering. The additional other types are like we do have limited. Limited is just one type, but it does have like three categories. They are generally issued to qualified clubs. They authorize the sale of alcohol and malt beverages for consumption on the licensed premise. members and their accompanied guests. We do under that, it could be a social club, which we don't have any in the city of Casper, fraternal organizations such as the Elks, Eagles, and then veterans clubs, of course, VFWs. We do have golf club also under that, and we do have two of those. We also have a special beverage permit. And that actually is It allows for the sale of malt beverage to certain qualifying public facilities. It has to have a maximum capacity of 400 people. It has to be owned by the city, county, state, or DDA. We also have resort liquor licenses. We currently have seven of those. And excuse me, special malt beverage, we have two limited. We have seven.

Oops.

Way far ahead.

And resorts, they can be, it's for on-premise only consumption to, excuse me, let me get there. And they have to have a resort complex that includes a restaurant, convention facility, lodging accommodations, and meets the minimum investment requirements. And none of these are wrapped by population. guys have any questions on those? Because now we're going to go to the proposed ordinance.

Questions? Yeah. Sure. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks, Carla, for this information. I think I called it out last time. But I do want to make a point to note that all of this information, or at least most of it, and then some is on the city of Casper website, I cite that webpage, that webpage often. So we just, you know, if you get questions from folks in the communities, I'm always directing people that webpage and I'm super thankful that exists. One question I do have on that webpage It says we have 37 retail licenses. Yes.

Did I say 36? Yes. We do have 36 by population standards, but we did have one annexed in in the 1980s. So our number is at 37. And I think it was top shelf. We tried to do a deep dive into that, and we couldn't find where top shelf went.

But we are looking.

I mean, it's still out there. It's assigned to somebody. But let me just say that.

It's transferred over.

Yeah, it's transferred on owners. Of course, in the 80s. Yeah, it was annexed. So by population, if you do the calculations, it will be 36. But we have 37.

I appreciate that clarification. Follow up. I've always been curious if a bar or if a bar and grill or restaurant liquor license holder does not meet the 60 40 you know say uh they tally up all their sales for the year and they're at 50 50 but uh i mean when we renew that we would let you guys know we would i would put that in my memo that says hey these guys did not need it i'm guessing since we've never seen that before it's usually a lot more tilted it's closer to like 80 90 and 10 20 or something like that we've actually seen it once and he was not renewed and i

Remember, I know the state won't let you buy any more alcohol either.

Yes. Oh, interesting. And the tickets.

Good job. Other questions for move on to the new ordinance.

I think it was annexed in during a sale. It was a liquor store on CY. Right next to where tractors supply is now. And I think Maurice may have bought it for Fire Rock. And then it got annexed. It was a county license and so that's how it became a city license. I can't remember the name.

I remember top shelf being in the original one, but then I. Like for the rest of the year, so. Okay. The first proposed amendment we are making is the ability for resort liquor licenses to full catering permits. State statute currently allows that for retail and resorts, but the city code does not reflect that. Very simple, adding one word into our ordinance, and we are recommending that. The next proposed ordinance change is the drive-through package sales. Currently, if you have a drive-through package sale, you can Continue to use that, but anybody new cannot anybody. Let me rephrase that. Anybody building a new or purchasing a new building that doesn't have when you cannot add one on the state statute allows that. So we're just taking out the paragraph with our restriction just to mirror state statute.

That's all. I like your last slide.

It was for.

take credit for it questions so mayor thank you both of these were requested constituents are within part one and uh so i appreciate staff and council looking at this i'm i'm in favor of both i was in town during the time period where the council decided to get rid of drive-out windows. I don't remember who the police chief was at the time, but it goes back a lot of years. But hopefully there's support. around both of these because I do think it'll make a difference, especially for the new liquor store down in North Casper by Max's Conoco specifically. They believe it'll help. They'll have to now add on a little because they've covered up Taco John's drive up, but it's basically set up and for security reasons, late at night, the staff would feel more comfortable with the drive up.

Questions for Carmen?

Thank you, Mayor. Sort of along those lines, this was directed from early on on council, I think I was on council, when we restricted the use of like, I'm trying to do some research to remind myself of the context, Carla, feel free to provide it if you remember, but state statute allowed fast food and fry order establishments to obtain record restaurant liquor licenses. And there was a concern that fast food establishments could begin distributing liquor through their drive through windows, I think was the context, but Is that, sorry, I'm refreshing my memory on the fly. Is that no longer a concern, though, that we would have fast food establishments with a restaurant liquor license? Would we be granting them that ability by making this change?

Council Mayor, if they applied for a restaurant liquor license and qualified, they would be able to serve on a drive-thru.

Um, the restaurant also package though, so it has to be ready to drink product which you can't. Drive around with my right so. They're not allowed to be sealed down. Yeah, restaurants can't sell to go. They can't sell to go down that correct? They had a retail. Yeah, they need to read today. Yeah, and then they could sell package.

You don't see how restaurant license could

No, that could be a fast food restaurant with a retail license, which would be a heavy license for a fast food restaurant to have. But it could happen.

Anything else for me?

Yeah, I'm super supportive of this.

June or something.

I'm right around there, but it made sense. So I'm all for it.

Just one quick clarification in 5083 30 restaurant licenses. There's a specific prohibition against it says no restaurant liquor license. The restaurant with an operation drive up window so so it's a previous conversation. It's not a concern.

Thank you.

For all the reasons just look it up with your. You should know that Eric.

They can't serve for off-site.

Right, off-site. That's what I was going to say. So I don't think that's an issue either.

Okay.

Everybody's good with it?

I think anti-drive-up, but I am in support of the restart. Just for the record. 100% against the drive-through liquor. Feel free to outvote me now.

You're outvoted. Sorry, I think you're outvoted. That was another concern at the time, though, was moderation in drinking.

Well, no reason. Read the news. I feel like if you can't walk to your liquor store, you don't need to get your liquor. So I'm going to put my name on that one, but resort away.

Resort away.

Thank you.

Take that, Pat.

One other point is some of these licenses have varying degrees of cost.

Yes, they do. Most of them cost different. Resort is... $1,500.

I thought resort was like... Oh, it's Bar and Grill. It's what, $10,000?

Bar and Grill is $10,500 for the first year and then $3,000 for renewal.

Okay.

But you could say, with your license in the middle, we will probably... Okay, and then

So resort is same as.

Confirmed. Yes.

Awesome.

Thank you, Carl.

Appreciate you. Thank you.

That was pretty close to 10 minutes. She was prepared. Alright, moving along gender review. Just maybe go over the next week and then anything on the grid. Would you like to bring up?

I am still not seeing one cent resolution on the agenda. And I know last time around, the first and only time I've been involved with the process, we were receiving staff recommendations end of June for that. So I'm just a little worried that we're almost into August and haven't had the opportunity to discuss it.

So, Counselor, my understanding is that the Council, well, first of all, it is coming on August 18th. I can give you that date. And my understanding is that the Council will identify priority periods for spending derived from the resident survey as per some conversations with our fifth set subcommittee or group. I shouldn't say it's a subcommittee. It's an informal group. So the resolution is prepared and intending to come on the 18th with a pre-meeting discussion on the 11th.

Is that the Tuesday before the 18th?

Yes, sorry, I said work session. Thank you for the clarification. The reason that it isn't coming sooner is because with that change, that will obviously influence how the SET funding is appropriated, and it would be by appropriation of the Council with standard budget years, budget year cycles, if that makes sense.

Thank you. So we can expect the first discussion on the 11th, and then the hope is that we pass a resolution on the 18th?

is correct um and i i think what you're you're skepticism i'm reading on your faces is that you've had a rather elaborate process of determining how all of those funds will be used but what i have heard from the committee is that the council wishes to move away from allocating specific dollar amounts and instead allocate funds to the survey categories and priority order established by the residents. So if you do that, that elaborate process that you have used that some of your staff refer to as the hunger game is no longer necessary. I will tell you, Fleur and I've had lengthy conversation, though, about your community assistance program. And so these are your partners, right, that you fund. WE ARE ALSO PROVIDING IN THE RESOLUTION THAT UPON RENEWAL OF THE FIFTH CENT IN EARLY NOVEMBER, THAT WE WOULD THEN IMMEDIATELY OPEN IN MID-NOVEMBER THE COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE FUNDING PROGRAM FOR PROPOSALS FROM FOLKS WHO WANT TO BE CONSIDERED FOR FIFTH CENT FUNDING. DID I ANSWER YOUR QUESTION OR ESSAI YOUR CONCERNS?

SLIGHTLY. OKAY. I GUESS FOR ME IT'S STILL A POSSIBILITY you know, I was expecting a robust conversation, certainly between me and Pat, on whether we retain the community assistance allocation. So, and I felt like a week was not, you know, the last time we did this, when city staff recommended going without it, I mean, I remember there being weeks of meetings and emails and phone calls, like, so I'm not sure a week is enough time to really capture public sentiment accurately. It's my main concern.

That's fair. I will tell you the resolution doesn't say much would go to this community assistance program what that process or procedure looks like we have talked about request for proposal process where we open it up to proposers to bring forward ideas for how they would like to partner with the city and put those dollars to work with particular metrics that we'd like to capture from them number of residents utilize type of number of residents served, type of services provided, and various other things. So I share that only because we're thinking about that process and procedure, but I don't intend to come forward with any recommendation for cutting that funding or deviating from the amounts that you've allocated in the past, that would be part of council's decision making. When we get those proposals in, then staff will vet them, we will give you feedback. But ultimately, it will be your decision how much and to whom. So the resolution just says we're going to have a program. That's all it says.

Okay.

So if the very existence of the program is a question, then that is not something that I contemplated for the resolution draft, nor have contemplated as a recommendation to you all.

I'm going to have you hold for a second. We'll get to Amber.

Yeah, I would just add that I think the recommendation of the working group is that we move away from treating Fifth Cent as its own allocations process outside of our annual budgeting process, where we are allocating funds, projecting out four years for the various things we want to do over four years, and instead integrate that into our annual budgeting process and in the resolution, giving ourselves the flexibility to do that by identifying which are the categories of items that council authorizes fifth cent monies to be spent on and aligns those with the priorities levels of the community set within their survey. So similarly to how we've done in the past without setting forth exact dollar amounts as we have in the past, essentially using that now like a specific purpose tax instead of a general purpose tax. So we're trying to move away from treating it like a specific purpose tax while still giving information about the types of projects that are eligible for these expenses. And then we could incorporate the conversation about how we spend those monies into the broader budgeting conversation rather than a one-time conversation every four years. And we can do it. every time we budget now. So that's the recommendation of the committee. So you'll see the resolution looks different than it's looked in years past. And essentially, that's the reason for it is to is to say, like, we, we don't believe we should be treating fifth cent like its own separate budgeting process, it should be incorporated into our annual budgeting process.

Yeah.

Now I'll get you real quick. Like to follow up to Ambrose. Yeah, I mean, um, Mine too. I agree with that philosophically. Like you said, it's general purpose dollars, not specific purpose tax. So I agree with that philosophically. I'm still curious, though, if we're not designating certain dollar amounts when we open up an RFP process for community assistance in November. But I mean, we don't have a budget for what, like, I'm trying to think about how that plays out in practice. If we don't have, if we don't know what the number is, how do we know how many applications to accept and stuff?

If I could, Mayor, through you, Mayor, Counselor, what I would offer is the city manager will make a recommendation based on probably historical usage amounts. And also weighing, I would offer this, and you'll probably be happy to hear this, your resident survey said street flood control and drainage was a super high priority, right?

The reason I talk about it.

I know you. That's it. I'm something that you're interested in. So what I will look at, I'll look at your historical allocation and then make a recommendation based on total available revenue, recognizing that community programs was the fifth lowest rate of the five areas that you asked your residents or your voting residents about in the survey. But ultimately, it will be your call how much you want to put to those programs. But I'm going to start with what you've done historically as almost a baseline and bring a probably inflation-adjusted recommendation that also takes into account the priority of the voters if you adopt that resolution to tell me to do so. So I won't have you start from nothing, I guess is what I'm saying.

So I just wanted to clarify on Amber's point about I like that approach, but Were you thinking about that annual review of those partner allocations as well, or is that still a one-time four-year allocation, or did you get a chance to consider that or not? That's not really been a discussion in the committee. Okay. That approach, so I can't really speak to that. I have a lot of opinions about it. Sure. But we haven't covered it in the committee. Well, and related to that, I think Some feedback I've gotten from some of those partners is they'd like to see that process kind of streamlined and. There were just there was just some consternation about the about the budget part of that to make to kind of stream like that as much as much as possible, yeah.

Thank you, man. Hold on a second. I had Pat in line. Sorry, go ahead, Pat. You're OK.

Oh, come back to you.

Gotcha.

That's never okay. Yet knowing that it hasn't, you know, the nonprofit allocation process hasn't been a component of the one send committee. That makes sense why that wasn't a focal point. I guess, will we have an opportunity after we pass a resolution and stuff to talk about that process and how we want it to look like I asked because I've never been happy with, I wasn't happy with the first AND ONLY TIME I WENT THROUGH THAT PROCESS, I HAVE NOT BEEN HAPPY WITH HOW COMMUNITY PROMOTIONS FUNDING, I JUST DON'T FEEL LIKE THIS BODY, CERTAINLY NOT MYSELF, ARE EQUIPPED AND KIND OF MOST CAPABLE TO BE DECIPHERING DOZENS OF DIFFERENT APPLICATIONS. I JUST, I DON'T FEEL LIKE THAT'S THE BEST VEHICLE TO ADDRESS THAT. SO I WAS VERY MUCH INTERESTED MORE SO IN LIKE A CONTRACT FOR SERVICE KIND OF ARRANGEMENT WHERE AS OPPOSED TO RECEIVING RFPs FROM FOLKS LIKE COMMUNITY ACTION PARTNERSHIP, And then us deciding, you know, how much merit it has compared against the dozens of other applications, simply giving the chief and the police department more money in their budget, knowing that they need somebody to provide forensic interviews for children in sexual abuse situations. And then they can contract that out, like they're going to be better equipped to determine who's going to be a better partner to provide those services than I am. And I think we as counsel, so I was kind of looking forward to a conversation about potentially rehauling that whole PROCESS, BECAUSE I'VE NEVER BEEN HAPPY WITH, I FEEL LIKE IT'S ALWAYS BEEN INEFFICIENT AND CLUNKY AND HAVEN'T LOVED IT.

SO, YEAH, I MEAN, I AGREE WITH YOU. SO I GUESS I'M WONDERING IF WE'RE LOOKING AT TWO SEPARATE THINGS, PASSING THE RESOLUTION AND THEN THE MECHANICS AND THE PROCESS TO GO THROUGH IT IS GOING TO BE AFTER THE RESOLUTION.

YEAH.

I MEAN, THAT'S KIND OF HOW, IF I'M UNDERSTANDING THE FLOW OF THIS CONVERSATION.

I WOULD AGREE, MAYOR, BUT I WOULD LET YOU KNOW, WITH THE RESOLUTION, WE'RE ALSO WORKING ON THE PROCEDURE AND PROCESS an idea of what that looks like with the resolution. So this is a timely conversation and literally something that the chief of staff and I've been corresponding about over the last few weeks. I agree with everything you said. I think there's opportunity to streamline the process. And I've also met with a number of the recipients of these funds from past years, crisis center, trying to take co-op, Neutrona County Health, Trails Alliance, They have told me as well, we'd like a streamlined process and I would like to bring to you an evaluation criteria as part of this process that helps you to look at the proposals and evaluate them in a consistent way. And one of the evaluation metrics would be, is this a force multiplier for city services like Child Advocacy Project? If they can show that they're providing a service that we would not otherwise, that we would otherwise have to provide if not for that group, That's a point, right? And so that's exactly what we're working on. And when you adopt the resolution to your point, Mayor, I don't think you're adopting the process. We just want to give you a peek at it, and then we can fine tune it before November with you. So that's what I was hoping to do. And I wanted to mention one other thing. I had not thought about the term of the contract for services that we could enter into with successful proposers. but I think off the top of my head, I would recommend twice in the four-year period, maybe two-year terms. And I say that because in the conversations I've had with some of these folks, they'd like a little more predictability. They probably love four-year contracts, so they knew for four years every year what they were going to get. So you guys can chew on that. But at minimum, two years gives them a little bit of predictability in their own budget. So this will be a good conversation.

Yeah. So... I don't even know where to unpack it and be respectful, but I don't think it's wise to just pass a blanket resolution and hope for the best for the nonprofits. And so I'd like to see. Are we going to cut the legs off? From underneath them, which is how I feel.

And.

Because. If. Which I I don't think. Your research. Will show I I believe it will show. If you took an average. That we've already undercut him. With this last allocation of 2.25 is about a 30% reduction. So. but I don't see discussions I've heard not just Kyle, but other counselors that, you know, that we see a reduction. And so I would rather come public because in in the past and going back probably 20 plus years ago, This was a function. That we had buy in from the community. And I didn't look at the bad on me. I didn't look at this survey. And it did. You know, specify. Youth Youth Crisis Center or specify some of those things. I I don't know, maybe it did. So did they fully understand what they were? Ask. In response, but. So I I would like to know a dollar number that we could provide the public. Is historically. This is. Pretty big change. In my my opinion of what we've done in the past. with the with the public.

No, no, no, go ahead. So so I guess for me, it would be helpful to know what we mean by the past, because what I'm considering the past is what was done with the one set 17 cycle. And I do understand that was slightly different than what had occurred in previous years. So I'm considering that kind of the baseline. what that process looks like. But I want to be clear to say I'm certainly not recommending to gut funding for the nonprofits. Not at all. Not at all. And I even said to Kyle, I will look at the historic baseline over the last four years of what you've spent and consider that kind of the past, if you will. I'm not going to go way, way back. So, you know, I believe that this decision is rightly a complete policy decision of the City Council. You can give as much or as little as you would like. But from a budgeting standpoint, I'm going to look at recent history in terms of budgeting to start there. But it's absolutely at your discretion to restore the 37%, to go beyond the 37%, or to cut further. Absolutely, that's a decision that lies with you. I'm just going to try to give you some recommendations out of the gate.

I would also mention that I would say the conversation at the working group has also been to not consider community, whatever we've called it in the past, nonprofit support or whatever it was, that was just a line item as its own line item, but rather see those things correctly appropriated into their topical bucket. So we've got public safety, we've got transit, we've got parks, recreation, and culture. We've got sort of all of these functions that these nonprofits serve, which is why I hesitate to say like, it's going to be x dollar amount, because to me, that line item doesn't really make any sense as a standalone thing, because it doesn't indicate its purpose. And so for me, many of those partners fit into public safety. And so I think that allocation should be considered under the blanket of public safety, and many of them fit under culture and recreation. And I think that those allocations should be considered under the what we're trying to achieve by providing that funding support, which is to enhance public safety or to enhance recreation culture. And so sort of this nebulous, it's this much regardless of what we're trying to achieve has never made sense to me. And so I'm, you know, similar to city manager, I don't think the intent is to, to throw the whole program into question. Though I do agree, I think there are some changes that need to be made structurally to the program. But I think to reimagine it to say, What are we trying to achieve with these partnerships in the first place for the community, and how do they serve the specific areas that we ask people to prioritize, which were facilities and technology. I don't think we have a lot of nonprofit partners that really serve that necessarily. Street repairs, drainage, flood prevention, sort of the same. But then you've got these other three buckets that I think it becomes most relevant, which is public safety, community and transit, and then parks, recreation, and culture. And I think that's where all of those live. But I think when we make allocations, we should be thinking about all the ways that we serve those particular aims, some of which is government services, some of which is nonprofit partnership. And so to me, it is a shift. I think you're right. I think it is a shift. But to me, I think it can help us be more impactful with what is our aim with those dollars rather than saying, well, it's this number of dollars, regardless of what the need is. I mean, we set a dollar figure that does not attend to What is the need at any given time in that particular area? And so I think I think that creates a misalignment as well. And so my hope is that we can move towards a more aligned way of operating this money. And sometimes that means partnering with nonprofits. And it has historically forever to achieve the goals that we're trying to achieve as a government. And we can't we can't do all those things ourselves. So to me, that's where The shift needs to happen. I do agree. I think all of the points that have been brought up are important. Like predictability is important. Being able to plan ahead is important. I'm sensitive to all of that. So I hope that we can, you know, come to a process that attends to those needs while also saying, like, I can't really predict necessarily what the need in culture and recreation is going to be for the next four years. I'd much rather be able to look at that annually or semi-annually and determine where we need to go. So that's philosophically what the working group has been working on.

In discussing that, when people see giving money to nonprofits, I think they're thinking mom and pop nonprofits that they don't understand the reality of a lot of our partners are necessary items under those categories that we need to have, especially like the Youth Crisis Center. There are necessary services that the city needs. It just happens to be a nonprofit organization that provides those services. And I think the community doesn't understand the difference between just the money going to a nonprofit. They automatically think we're giving money to charity instead of understanding what it is those funds are actually going for.

So it sounds like there's going to be a bit of a process still, but I know this came out of the working group and it was my understanding that Council was comfortable with. Or am I wrong?

All the further clarification and I feel content knowing that we're going to have plenty of fruitful discussion. OK, that's right.

Maybe I was trying to get just make it through everybody. Pat, I know you're still well.

I don't see it that way. In one more session, we're going to hash this all out. I don't disagree with you. There's plenty to talk about that.

What sounds like? The way we allocate to nonprofits and the way it gets absorbed into kind of these other buckets, it sounds like we're going to have one work session and resolution before it goes on the ballot. But then after it goes off the ballot, it sounds like my understanding is that we're going to have a lot more robust conversation about specifically community assistance type disbursements.

And so between August 18th and November, I'll need to know that you guys agree with the process we're going to use. I think we can unveil it on August 18th, if that's fair. But then we'll be back in subsequent meetings with you to make sure you're comfortable with it. It's your process.

Yeah, it sounds like there's going to be more conversations than just one work session. I think there's going to be plenty of conversations around it because I mean, from my, I don't know, three times that I've been through this process, it has changed from time to time. and how we do it. But I think, to me, this makes sense. Amber explained it very well, better than I could have. And I agree, Pat. I mean, I think that we're looking at the reality of the change of the need of the city, the needs of it. It's not to say I'm a huge nonprofit supporter and those groups. That's my background. But there's also real challenges and needs for the city as well that we need to balance and kind of look at. Doesn't mean we're not, but I think we also have to come from the lens of, you know, the challenges budgetarily.

Yeah, Amber.

I have some further clarification. So, August 11, we have the one-cent resolution and the process. Is that process the process that we're talking about now? Or is this the resolution and the process by which the fifth cent question goes on the ballot and all the, I mean, to me, it's sort of two things. We've got the mechanics of getting the fifth cent on the ballot via resolution. And then this is the process we need should the fifth cent pass in November. Then we need this process in addition to our regular budgeting process to decide where all the monies go. To me, that's a different process. So I'm trying to understand, are we talking about both things on the 11th? Or are we just talking about the resolution and the mechanics to get it on the ballot for November?

Mayor, I think we are talking about your one set resolution that determines your spending priorities and unveiling that community assistance process in its first iteration for future conversation.

Yeah, I think I would. agree with Pat, I don't think we should unveil anything until we have a work session where everybody can. Because because I'm not sure that bringing a recommendation that just is sort of based on historical, I'm not sure people are satisfied with the process from any us or the recipients. So I'm not sure. We may want to have a work session about that process. So we can get counsel on the same page before we unveil anything. Because once you say like this is what we're thinking, then it's going to be that makes sense.

Yeah, maybe I use the wrong word. What I see that is is a base recommendation from staff about how the process could look that then we come back in a work session and work it as a council to get it to where you want it to be so.

I'm a little worried that we do not have enough. Staff might not have enough information from Council. To make that recommendation, given that I'm not sure everybody is feeling like this should be similar to years past.

So do you see it as if I'm if I'm understanding you're seeing as the 18th being too quick? No, the 11th the 11th and then passing at the resolution.

No, I I think the resolution should go ahead. Oh right, it's the the community promotions process that we need to talk about that. am worried if we say this is a starting point.

I'm you don't think we're giving city staff a clear picture.

I don't think we're giving the city staff a clear picture of how it should look.

And I don't know that we ever have.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

So I'm a little hesitant to be like, go ahead and put something together without more of a consent consensus from council as a starting point to for them to build a program off of. I don't love the idea of like, them putting something forward and us tearing it apart. Yeah, I would feel that. And I also think it's confusing to the public, and I think that I just feel like there's a lot of room for confusion and for panic if we do it that way.

The preferred approach then, would it be continuing to mute? I would say I've had conversations with many of you individually as well, but how would you like us to go about it?

What would be the best way, do you think? And I'll defer. What do you think, Amber?

I mean, to me, I think it could be its own work session topic, just the process alone, that we could review historically how it's gone. We could, I mean, I think that there may be, I mean, we could put it to a subcommittee if we want. I don't know if it's the same subcommittee or if you...

I mean, I think that's the trick, because I think that

I mean, the subcommittee can say one thing, but there's only a few of us on it, and I'm not sure that's representative of them.

Yeah, I would say that it would be better for the whole council to be a part of that conversation. When could we get that on a work session?

What did you say? November 15th.

And we don't want it to be the same night as the resolution, different night. Okay.

Well, that one's looking.

Because it took us six hours. The 25th I think would be available. If you'd like to separate it from the one set resolution.

Yeah, I mean my. We could talk about it. As it's scheduled, but as its own item, I think we could. and treat it rather than I just think council should be prepared to weigh in on on that. And because I think we're gonna have lively discussion. And I'm not sure we have time that day.

But on the top, I don't think if it's going to be a lengthy conversation, we just do it on the 25th. Open.

Yeah, I would say that if we can do it on the 25th, that would give us plenty of time to allocate hour and a half or whatever you need to I know that Obviously is, you know, finite amount of time, but that would just plan on being here to hash it out.

Can I ask, does anyone else see? I would need to chew on it and maybe flesh it out a little bit more, but does anyone else see value in? Maybe it's a work session or maybe it's a completely separate town hall type event I. Do not mind and would welcome being in a room with many of these stakeholders and many past partners. To have maybe a little more conversation, you know, I imagine this will go like last time where it trickles out after we have our meeting on the 25th, maybe it starts trickling out. And then we just get a deluge of emails and phone calls and stuff for six weeks. I wonder if it would be helpful to provide a forum exclusively on this topic, invite the people that we think are gonna have strong thoughts and feedback on it. And just, I would make myself available for something like that. But I don't know, again, if that requires too much manpower with the timeline we have, but. I also think you know there was a lot of stakeholder input last time we talked about changes to this program reductions to the budget and stuff and I would just prefer to create a forum to solicit that feedback then. You know, deal with people like hey, you know, I saw you met on the 25th and fastest. I didn't even know you were going to do that. I'm pissed and I feel like I'm not heard so.

In terms of timeline, I mean, I think process wise, when we just need to open this up in time for us to be able to incorporate it into our budgeting process for fiscal year 28. Right? Already funded through fiscal year 27. So still time to sell time for us to write. So I mean, the resolution has a time crunch. But the process by which we allocate this is not as time bound. I think Pat's point is that this is an important consideration for folks when they're deciding about the fifth Senate. So I want to try to be at, you know, as responsive to that as we can. But that's, you know, still quite a few months away, too, before that decision needs to be made by the voters. So I think we've got a little bit of time to talk about the process. We don't have a lot of time to talk about the resolution.

So you're more concerned about process And then what that looks like, you know, having the conversation with the nonprofits.

Well, like Amber alluded to, from what I recall, this was four years ago. Memory's a bit foggy. But a lot of the stakeholders, a lot of these nonprofit partners made it pretty clear to me from what I recall that how we were going, the budget and how we were going to handle disbursements to those folks was important to them when they went to the ballot box. And so. To me, it feels important not only to get it done before it shows up on the ballot, but also to give us, like, I think we need to have a, I think we need to give the community a very clear picture of what our intent and direction is with one cent before they go. Like, I mean, for me, it's a month of four weeks of solid messaging telling people this is what you're going to vote on in November. And so, again, going back to my previous concerns, I just don't have much of a runway for me to feel super comfortable about this.

So. Obviously wasn't on Council 4 years ago. I feel that a ton. A phone calls. From community members from the nonprofits. What the hell is the city thinking? And did they not realize how important some of these services are, which has been acknowledged? And. I said, well, they. totally understand what are you talking about? Slash that. I don't I I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think it was around 3 million down to the 2.5 2.2 whatever. And so I I call Carter and I said what kind of a bonehead idea was this? Well, you know. And I. I said, well, you know, you've got to try to figure something out to explain to these folks what you're doing. And so I think that made it fuel some of the addition, but I think Kyle's got a great idea with having kind of a town hall. Hopefully we'd have staff there to answer questions You know some dollars and cents and because I've been. Wondering about these different nonprofits coming in giving reports. You know ahead of this, but that I think the only one that really reached out with youth crisis to my knowledge, but.

But.

Something you know and I I really appreciate Amber's. Talking through the priorities and how that might interplay. I guess I hadn't really thought about how that. Public safety. Line item interplays with all of this, but they are going to want to know, you know. Beyond process. Because it was made clear to me four years ago that they would, I shouldn't say try to sink the Fed Senate, but they would be more appreciative of knowing a number, you know, on the end game. So before they go to the ballot box.

Certainly would hope they would not. Well, I would certainly hope that they would have to also understand what we're working with. And Kyle's talked a lot about streets, which I agree with. I'm certainly going to be off of council when those big decisions are going to be made. But I also think, and I have a lot of friends in the nonprofit and in this community who deserve the help and so forth. But I think there's also a reality, Pat, that our budget is finite. And if 50% gets cut in November, I THINK THAT THAT'S GOING TO ALSO BE ONE THING THAT WE HAVE TO ALSO STEP BACK AND LOOK AT HOW DO WE HOW DO WE IF THERE'S NO BACKFILL IF THERE'S NOTHING THAT'S GOING TO COME FROM THE STATE LEGISLATURE THAT AGAIN WE'VE TALKED ABOUT THIS WHAT'S WHAT GETS CUT IT'S THE PARKS AND REC IT'S THE SOCIAL PROGRAMS OF THOSE TYPES OF THINGS TO MAINTAIN THE CITY CITY CITY MOVING AND I'VE BEEN FRANK WITH MANY PEOPLE THAT HAVE ASKED ME ABOUT THE FIFTH CENT AND I'VE BEEN VERY VERY CANDID WITH THEM TO SAY IT ALL DEPENDS I THINK ON 50 cent 50 percent cut in the in the in the in November if we if which I feel like fifth cent will pass I feel very comfortable with it although I think we still need to work don't get me wrong but I think there's some real challenges and I think there's a high likelihood that 50 percent could pass and I think then we have to come to that reality and I think our friends in the non-profit world and again I've never given them the illusion I've been always up front with them And that's when they should have been talking to the state legislature and saying, this is going to hurt multiple areas of our community. And so that's kind of how I'm framing it, that I don't know what it's going to look like. I think we need to be honest with our partners in the community that if we see that property tax get cut, where do we find the extra money? Where do we do those things? You know, that's what I mean. You know, I love nonprofits. That's my life. That's my whole career. But I have certain concerns. And I know it's going to happen, you know. I hear what you're saying, Pat.

I'm very discouraged, too. Sorry, Brandi, go ahead.

So what if the 25th, we have a heated conversation between us? See if we can come up with a game plan. Then we decide if or when the appropriate time to talk to stakeholders, whether that be a council meeting or a special session or whatever it is that we are legally allowed to do to have people in the room with us, right? Start with the 25th where we decide what we think we want. Then we decide when we ask everybody else what they think we should do. Then we meet again because it's going to take a minute to let you pack a lunch.

I'll have to start somewhere met on the 25th to hash internally. Obviously, in public, but then meeting with.

Yeah, I mean, my feelings are, we need to have as much conversation about this as possible and we need to come to a consensus about how we're going to handle it by. Beginning of October to give us 4 to 6 weeks to. Properly message to the community with that's my 1st.

That's telling you're working on.

think the transparent process is critical. That's what I've heard from a lot of your community partners. They don't know the process, and I think that echoes some of what Pat said. So my hope with having a process procedure in front of you for vetting was to make that clear, make sure we have agreement amongst all of you. It's your process, technically. Have that data able to be published so the nonprofits are able to get ready to ask for money in mid-November, and then have decisions from you by year end that align with the budget development process.

So, yeah. Mayor, thank you. I'm wondering, too, if what you said, Mayor, made me think about, I wonder if it would be helpful to have some, like maybe three contingencies around the $0.05 to You know, here's what it looks like. If you know even money, here's what it looks like with a 25% reduction. Here's what it looks like with because you're right, I mean. If. If our general fund. Is reduced. Are we going to then have to think about backfilling that with with some of that? If said allocation. And what does that look like? So I'm wondering if having those scenarios at our pocket by November would be helpful. I mean, it would be to me, I think, but I don't know about the rest of you.

Yeah, so absolutely we can work on that. Remember the property tax, if it changes at the ballot in November, won't take effect until next fiscal year. Right. So that by some time, that is different with the fifth penny, the renewal would would cause it to cease on January 1st.

So. So they'll still give us a little bit of a window, because it wouldn't be till 2728.

So what you said would cause what to see that 5th penny collections would cease on January 1st of 2027 without renewal. Whereas if the property tax people's initiative passes, we will not experience the revenue decline because of the way the collection cycle goes till next fiscal year. So, so we do have a little bit of, you know, planning run right there, but certainly something that's weighing heavily on my mind, Jill's mind, all of our staff's mind. So yes, I think scenarios are, are possibly in order.

Yeah. At whatever point, but I think that's part of being transparent with, with the nonprofits and with the community.

Yeah. I think part of it is we're just so much in limbo at this point. We just don't know, have enough of the information, right. multiple things kind of happening in the next several months, like the People's Initiative, like Janine said, and everything else. But I do agree with everybody, transparency, having conversations with them. I would say that if everybody's comfortable with it, 25th, we sit and we have a good conversation around what that looks like. And that can be an open process. And then we can move forward if we wanna start opening up the dialogue. I know a lot of the agencies have been reaching out to Janine and she's having productive conversations with her. And so, but that can also be an opportunity for us to maybe meet and talk with them and get their understanding of how they see things as well. So let's do 25th. Let's get through that. Let's get through the 11th, 18th, and then on the 25th, we can get together and then start having this conversation that we're doing right now.

So when do we pass the resolution?

Because county clerk's got to have something. So we're still going to pass it on the 18th, but it's just going to be that frame, obviously. And then on the 25th, that's when we're going to really kind of break it open.

Agenda review. Yes.

Thanks, Kyle. All right, let's go ahead and work accounts around the table if you have any items. Amber, do you have anything?

I lost track of all. I know. In time at this point. I don't think I know. I haven't had meetings with us, so I think I've said enough. Thanks.

Do you have anything tonight?

Yeah. Last Wednesday, there was an It doesn't look like very many people showed up. That was pretty much it except forums. Last week, yesterday, I had a council of disabilities. They have an idea that love to see a space like, not to the size of the senior center, but a space where it's kind of one-stop shopping and there could be some education and different things. They were thinking about fifth cent and I just thought I'd let you know that from my assignment with the Disabilities Council. This this morning at 1130 we had is a Casper board meeting and I brought scorecards. If anybody wants any from June and. Gaming gaming subcommittee meeting and. And lastly, two things. Tomorrow, politics in the park is over at Washington Park. Hopefully the weather cooperates. I didn't bring the list of all the house districts that will be covered that night, Wednesday night. And lastly, I just wanted to mention I saw an oil city. That I wasn't aware that Captain Brian Dixon had. Had medical issues and cancer. And so the Rialto. Is hosting. 2 shows. I think it's a Thursday night. July 30th, which is Thursday night, a 630 show and a 9 o'clock show. To benefit. Captain Dixon's. Help with some of the medical expenses.

and living expenses.

So just wanted to put that out there. Thanks to will city for running that piece of information. I'm sure number of you saw that. And then I don't know if it's proper if chief is getting any other information.

Captain Dixon is going through a very challenging time. He's been diagnosed with cancer and he's been going through quite a fight. The department, the community, a lot of people have been rallying around him and doing everything possible to do fundraisers like this thing on Thursday night and anything to support him and help him and his family get through this time and have as little stress on him as possible. Help him be a healer so he can get back to work.

But this is a good benefit. Thanks chief.

Thank you.

Mike. So yeah, I attended the gaming work group meeting this afternoon as well with Councilor Haskins and Councilor Sweeney and we talked about, looked at some draft ideas for resolution around the gambling ordinance and then also looked at a draft ordinance. come there. This week, it's been lively as far as contacts from constituents. So I've had some, I forwarded one email to the city manager with some concerns about PD Park and then there were also concerns in there about chipped sidewalks, which is a whole other issue there. Uh, but I've also heard from folks about Garden Creek Park and it's English Park and mostly the concern is about not. They understand their Brown lawns there. Their concern was more about the trees and that are the tree. They want to be sure that the trees survive and get enough water to. What's that? That's what those ugly black bags are for. That's water and trees.

Good to know.

I also had. ONE MENTION OF THE TRAFFIC SPECIFICALLY ON ON ASH STREET, LIKE THAT BLOCK IN FRONT OF RACAS, THE HOW THE AND I SEE IT ONCE IN A WHILE YOU THESE STREETING. THEN IT'S LIKE A DRAGWAY HERE. AND THEN. OH, HAD FOLKS CONTACT ME ABOUT THE. MALL PARK OR BY CASTLE PARK. So I think there's more to come there. Just about the condition of the roadway in there and restrooms and that kind of thing. So I think we may hear more from them. And then the last thing was I have had questions about water conservation. If at some point ASPR residents or water users will be asked to actively conserve water. And on my table.

Thank you. Brandy. I know you'll miss these.

If ever. Not likely if you're coming back.

I'll be loud on the TV. Don't you worry.

All I've got is the Science Zone is returning with their ANNUAL FUNDRAISER, SO IF YOU KNOW ANYBODY WHO HAS A COMPANY AND WOULD BE UP TO BUYING A TABLE OR IF YOU WANT TO GET A GROUP OF FRIENDS TOGETHER TO PURCHASE A TABLE, AMBER'S MADE A DONATION TO THE, THERE'S GOING TO BE A SILENT AUCTION. MY FAMILY HAS DONATED A ONE-WEEK STAY AT OUR BEACH CONDO IN BRAZIL AS ONE OF THE AUCTION ITEMS, SO IF YOU WANT TO GO It on that so and then we're also going to be doing a. Date night. With the Brazilian dinner for a couple of a few couples to help the science zone out this year so.

Kyle. Thank you for bringing up the science and elemental evening fundraiser. That was the very first board I ever served on. I very much like that organization and that's always Seriously, one of my favorite events of the year. I'm glad they're bringing it back. It's always been very interactive. They do a lot of experiments and stuff. So definitely a fun one. What's that?

Snakes.

Snakes, yeah. It's a good one. Crush big 50-gallon drums and stuff like that. So, yeah, very fun one. Good to bring kids, too, if you're into that. I went to Votapalooza on Friday afternoon. I was glad to see the great turnout by candidates. We had folks from all over the state, Treasurer Kurt Meyer and other people were there. So I appreciate our mayor was there. his booth. And so loved the turnout from candidates would have loved to see more general attendees. But sounds like the organizers are gonna maybe throw together one or two other events at different days and times to try to catch people. You know, Friday afternoon, maybe that's just tough for some folks to get to, but was glad to see so much participation by candidates and got to meet quite a few of them. And then lastly, I was kind of wondering, I see peace in our cities is coming up a future agenda item not currently on the calendar. So I don't, I guess I'd be curious what this group's appetite is to potentially lump in with our future Peace in Our Cities update. You know, my feeling is that Peace in Our Cities is kind of a more general, global, longer term kind of curriculum and effort. But it really could, you know, we've had so much youth violence in our community. Not only the high profile martyrs, but there was a Teen shootout in a city on parking lot right behind David St a week or two ago. I don't know if you all saw that, but thankfully nobody was hurt. Sounds like lots of bullets were fired. It's crazy that sounds like even property damage was fairly minimal, so just very, very lucky. But man, youth with guns and stuff. Really sketching me out. It's not exclusive to Casper. It's a nationwide problem, but it does make me wonder if there's. Other things we can be doing. Um, so for, you know, this is a program I came across called Group Violence Intervention, GVI. It started out of Boston. It's a strategy, you know, that the research that they've done, they identify the fact that it's a very, very small percentage of youth, 0.5% of youth that are responsible for over half the homicides and non-fail shootings. And I know in, you know, I'm sure before I speak with certainty, I'd like to ask the chief, but I'm almost certain he would confirm for me that many of the youths engaged in this violence and stealing the guns and stuff. They're known to each other. They run in similar circles. I know every time I see youth involved in violence, I'm scouring their social medias and stuff just to get an idea of what their network is, who they're related to, affiliated to. And I see the same faces over and over. They're all hanging out with each other. They all know each other. They're all in the same circles. And so this group violence intervention framework out of Boston, there's kind of three main facets to it. One is a call-in. So when there is a youth involved violent incident, the city leadership pulls in all the other people that are in these circles, and they speak with law enforcement, social service providers, and community leaders to deliver a clear message about stopping the violence. They let them know, like, hey, you know, we know you're in these networks of people. You guys are kind of under a magnifying glass, and we're not going to – lenient when it comes to violence, and so you kind of put them all on notice and give them an out. So another one is the exit ramp provides immediate access to social services such as employment assistance and counseling. You know you're giving people an off ramp. From that lifestyle and then also the third one is unified mandate establishes clear community expectations and legal consequences for continued violence ensures everyone involved understands communities united in its demand for peace so. This GVI program is a lot more kind of direct, immediate in its approach and not quite as long term and kind of global in its approach compared to peace in our city. So I'm not saying this is a program we have to adopt, but I'd be curious when we get this piece in our cities update if maybe. The rest of this group has any interest in something like GVI. I would love to get an update from the chief on like, you know, more direct immediate programs. that maybe the department likes or whether even they see the merit and value in it. But to me, it just I'm feeling pressure to be a little bit more direct and intentional in our approach in addressing youth violence, because the fact that we're having shootouts in downtown Casper is very crazy. So I guess that's my ask. If the group, maybe if the majority of council agrees, I don't want to send the chief off on errands to do a bunch of research simply on my behalf. But if we as a group agree that it's worth exploring some of these other initiatives a little more closely. I would ask for consensus on that to put it on a future agenda item, maybe along with peace in our cities.

Is that something Council would want? Maybe not on peace with peace in the cities, but maybe we can have it as a separate one. I'd welcome the chief's input.

Mayor, Councilor, I appreciate the conversation. In fact, Ms. Jordan and I had a one-on-one today and kind of discussed some of these topics as well. I'm happy to put some information together for you all and then do some and provide some research that we've done internally. Maybe we can come up with a way to maybe not tackle it all at once, but address some of these societal issues that we're having. And I will say to your point, Councilor Galenroth, that Vice Mayor They are running the same circle, but the nuances to this are, well, there may be one that's a 16-year-old that was subsequently charged as an adult. You have other ones that are adults, and it's got this bifurcating effect, if that makes sense. You've still got a youngster playing around with people that he shouldn't be playing around with, but you also have some 18-, 19-, 20-, and 21-year-olds that are also influencing some of that bad acting.

Does that make sense?

So you have to do some work on that.

So chief, I don't exactly know how to ask this, but. So were these? Work some of these same people. Possibly. On the radar screen. During the fair.

Mayor counselor, I'm not. I really don't want to go into too much detail and compromise any of the ongoing investigations aboard the. Sanctity of. innocent until proven guilty. So I don't want to go down that rabbit hole and violate some of those safeguards, if that makes sense.

And I don't want to discount the work that Peace in the Cities has done. I mean, I would want both considerations. I don't

at the same time.

But I don't know how that might interact with other organizations.

What do you think? Would it be better to have that whole conversation at one time? Or do you feel like Peace in the Cities report an update than having a separate conversation?

I'm leaning towards separation. Councilor McIntosh, I know you were involved in Peace in our City, so I certainly would differ.

Yeah, I think you could have two different conversations. Peace in our cities. Part of what we've done with peace in our cities involves some of the issues that we're having with youth violence too, but it wouldn't absolutely wouldn't hurt to look at other programs like that and and it could possibly be worked in with with peace in our cities group to help us navigate those because they may be. Other. Types of things as well, but yet you could start to do two separate ones and then. Discuss it more than.

I was just going to recommend that they part of that conversation has to be understanding the issue and the scope of it. You know the. You know how does you know what is the problem in Casper? What is the? What are the issues around that And how does that compare to cities similar to our size?

Yeah, so I think that sounds good. And so we'll have peace in cities report and then if Council's okay, we'll put on the Vice Mayor's request. What would you like to discuss on that, Kyle?

You know, I'm happy to pass along this GDI stuff that I've been doing research on, but really, you know, I think it is worth. Discussion on whether we change the way you know the chief alluded to the fact that some of these people are young and minors and some of them are adults. I think it's worthy of discussion as far as like how. Minors, for instance, are prosecuted. Do we do they get treated as minors? Do they get treated as adults? Do the parents have any culpability in the situation, especially if that's where the firearms are coming from or not? items are probably not addressed in peace in our cities framework because they're too granular. If my understanding of peace in our cities is a little more global and overarching. So I would just I think it warrants a conversation about more granular kind of policy driven approaches to some of these things. Yeah, I mean, peace in our cities to me is the global approach. But I think my personal opinion is we're missing a more local approach and how we're doing. I don't mind comparison sake. But I just feel compelled that we need to do something a little more intentional.

So I guess I was just whispering to city manager, how do we frame that work session item, right? Is it a conversation, and I would defer to the chief and Janine, is it looking at it from the scope of what's happening in the city? Because I see this kind of as a multi-layered situation.

What the chief and I talked about this morning would, in my mind, first thing we would do, and I think I'm hearing that from Councillor Bond as well, is have the crime analysts really look at the trend here and understand that. Certainly what happened last week is incredibly concerning, but I think it's always important to keep those things in perspective, and so the data would help us understand the issue. I would recommend that as a first step work session that we can talk to you about, and then we can come and Kind of hear your thoughts around that. We'll all be better informed about the trend and if it is increasing, and then subsequent research, as the Chief said, as you see fit, maybe in programs like you've suggested, Vice Mayor.

Great place to start.

I would support that.

Perfect.

Thanks, Chief.

Anything else, Kyle? That's it for me.

Kate, just a couple quick items. I had sworn in two police officers yesterday. Chief, we're on paper. What are we at? Sorry, should have just kept you up here. On paper.

So on paper, I'm pleased to report that effective August 24th will be at 107. That doesn't mean they're all operational. They still have to go through training. You have some laterals in there. I believe next week when the mayor shows up, there's two laterals and two new hires. Then on the 24th, There's going to be a couple more laterals. So on paper, we'll be at 107 on August 24th. But again, that's not operational capacity depending on what kind of training. You have a modified training program for lateral officers depending on how well they pick up orientation, and that is driven by program coordinators and how well they're progressing through the program. You have to understand if they're new hires, typically it's a year. That you're looking at by the time they get done with the Academy. By the time they get done with their post Academy and then their 15 week training program, it's oftentimes a year from their higher date before they're actually car by themselves and full of coverage. Just a little bit of time, but it's it's good news to report.

Thanks chief. Appreciate it. Yeah, super excited. Thank you. Thank you. And then on Friday I am doing a swearing in for the fire department, correct? On Friday. How many do we always? graduating and swearing in, do you know Chief? Eight of them, awesome, cool. So I will be doing that as well, looking forward to that. I think that's all I've got for tonight. Thank you for all the work, the staff. I definitely wanna just very quickly just acknowledge the work that they do and time and effort. I know this weekend there were some things that had happened. I was on the phone the evening with some of our staff about some things and they work incredibly hard and we get to go off into our little lives. Part time counselors when these people are putting 6070 or 80 hours a weekend to keep our city safe and functioning. So I appreciate them.