City Council - workshop

That's 12 test 12. Switching test 12 camera switching test 12. Keep talking.

mineral royalties grant to the second right after the Edward J. Byrne Memorial. I just want to give everybody a heads up on that, but go ahead and start with the meeting follow-up. Does anybody have anything from last one week?

Any questions, anything like that?

All right, let's go ahead and move into the Edward J. Memorial Justice Grant.

Mayor, Council, if I may, before we get into the substance of the grant, I want to acknowledge the process on our end. established city process is that we obtain council authorization before we pursue any grants. In this instance, we got ahead of ourselves in that process and submitted the application before bringing it to council. So with that, this process moved farther than it should have before we stopped and recognized council authorization had not yet occurred. I also want to ensure council that we recognize the process issue and we'll make sure that future grant opportunities are routed appropriately beforehand in an application to submit it. So with that, I'm happy to explain the grant itself and what it would provide, why we believe it's worth the council's consideration.

Questions for Chief? Yes. Michael, did you have something?

I thought you said something, Mike. Mike Bond, you didn't have anything.

So when I've had meetings most of the day, so did this comment, Is that dish tone? In what?

Oh, I can address that. I'll answer that for you. Yes, the chief brought to my attention this morning. The discrepancy that he just spoke to you about and so we did add this work session earlier today and so you would not have seen that if you looked at your materials prior to about noon today, which which I. I did OK, good.

Fine, I saw something from Amanda. Later today in which contain the information. Now I can't see it.

OK, I could. If you like, I could resend it to you and put it at the top of your inbox. That might make it a little bit easier.

No, I see it now. This is going to be the entire packet again.

Yeah, she just lets us know if it's changed at all materially from the one we got Friday.

Yeah, OK. Don't know. I got this all news to me. Don't don't wait on me.

Any other questions for the chief? He's going to discuss what they're called. Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, I'm trying to do like. Answering emails.

Thanks Mayor Council. It's the FY 25 Edward J. Byrne Memorial Justice Grant. Typically these are pass through funds. We require an MOU with Natrona County. They are considered a disparate agency in this grant and have told us that they do not wish to receive any of them. They declined any funding opportunity for them. So with that, the entire amount would be $36,874 for the city. And what we'd use those funds for is to purchase pneumatic breaching tools for the department.

Okay, questions?

Chief, are these tools the department already owns and are seeking replacement of, or would they be in addition to existing inventory?

Thanks, Vice Mayor, Council. These are new. Typically, we have the handheld breaching tools where you stand up there and you've got to see them in the movies. These are pneumatic. They require a blank shell casing or a blank shell, and it does not have any overpressure from an explosive breach or mini projectile. There's a pneumatic piece that goes in and can reach up metal door jams, office doors, things like that. And it can do several doors within a matter of seconds. The time in that fatal area or that hazardous area is pretty quick.

Thanks again, Chief. NEA, obviously a little bit more technical than just a heavy post with some handles on it.

I expect the maintenance would be part of that when we get the package together. Cleaning the lubrication, the preventative stuff that we. In the packet that we have itself for the pneumatic piece, it doesn't. Here to be anything more than what we already have on hand with some of the other. Anybody else?

Yeah, just add Council. There is no match for this grant, so no financial contribution from the city.

Awesome. Is Council okay with moving forward? Thank you. Thanks, Chief. Appreciate it. All right, let's go to the Mineral Royalties Grant for Fire Station 1.

I'll let Chief Black come to the podium, but Council, just as a refresher, we did come to you in the spring and ask for your authorization to apply for an MRG grant for Fire Station 1. We have subsequently found out that we were not able to apply at that time, and so the chief will talk to you about a revised application we'd like to submit.

Get dressed up for us.

Mayor, Mayor, Council. I just came from annual promotion ceremony and it was excellent. Awesome. Thank you for being there.

You could say it's for us.

Yeah, you could. It was pretty good. Well, I thank you for allowing me to be here tonight to request your permission for the resolution to approve the submission of a mineral royalties grant request in the amount of $2 million to support the construction of the new fire station. Earlier this year, we had tried to get into an exception period with this application for a higher dollar amount. And that dollar amount was $8,915,000 to help with the construction of New Station 1. After not being allowed into that exception period because it wasn't an emergency and discussions with them directed that the best approach would be go to the lower limits and with a max amount of $2,000,000. So at this point, the grant is due September 27th. September 17th, 2026, and it's scheduled for consideration at the February 4th, 2027 regular state loan and investment board meeting. With your approval, we'll get it submitted. And if you have any questions, please let me know.

Any questions on this application? Yeah, go ahead, Mike.

Match, I don't know. Oh, it says no matching for the request.

Anybody else?

Yeah, so are you aware of any other? This was a new one for me to be able to go through mineral royalty. Rampant. Or was the other one also? Through that process.

Earlier this year, yeah. We were unable to get into that exception period when we when we realized this would be a good good way to pursue some funds. It was too late, so we tried to get in the exception period, but the exception period was for emergencies only. So that's why we were directed to try and go through this round.

The others.

OK, it's Council OK with moving forward with this with the Thank you very much. Thanks, Chief. Appreciate it. All right. Swami Business Council Workforce Housing.

Here, our Director Becker will introduce our presenters this evening.

Counselors. I'm sorry. Mr. Mayor, counselors, I wanted to give a little bit of an intro about the Business Council grant application that we're asking for your direction on. um you all remember a year and a half ago the wcda came out with a study about the shortage of affordable housing throughout the state in casper we were looking at being short about 1800 units of affordable housing and truly it was identified as a barrier to economic development because we do not necessarily have quality new construction um Available for people that want to move here and start businesses or actually be employees. And so you all have over the past year and a half approved the sale of the Mesa land for Goodwill Landing, which was profiled last week. You approved a loan to update the Wyoming Bank building apartments when they were transferred to the Wyoming Housing Authority. You also sold the land at Trevitt and Robertson Road for the units of senior affordable market rate housing. And you also helped with the WCDA grant application to improve the Juniper Ridge affordable housing units to preserve them on the far east side of town. So what we have before us this evening is another opportunity and another local developer, a developer who's come forward with a grant request and is seeking your approval of this one, which again would bring in workforce housing as well as market rate. And what I like about this one with the Wyoming Business Council back in June, their board of directors decided that the BRC program, which previously was business ready communities became building resilient communities and that housing would be a form of infrastructure development and how right they are. And so that board had then allowed and approved back in June housing projects in both Douglas as well as in Wright. Wyoming, again, for the reasons of trying to get accommodations for people, and again, kind of supplement and encourage economic development. So I have this evening with us Lisa Burrage and her daughter Erin, who are looking at this workforce and market rate proposal out next to Ravencrest, which is right off of Wyoming Boulevard, close to Poplar Street. and looking at potential for infill development. Our comprehensive land use plan has listed that area as housing, so it fits everything with our comp plan. It is an area that does need utility infrastructure, and that's where this business council grant would be a wonderful fit, if you all so decide. And the grant that we're looking at for that project area, and you know, there's a lot of topography issues out in that particular area. There's gonna be a lot of dirt movement But the project itself is right at 14.7 million. The match is 25%, so that's right at 3.7 million. The developer picks up the match except for 184,000, which would be our responsibility as the city. And so we're looking at ways that we can accommodate that match. And that takes the project request to the business council. Right now, this is again, all preliminary at 11 million for this housing development. And Lisa's gonna step you through what we would see upon completion of this housing community. So what we're looking for this evening is direction so that before we spend the time and the resources of getting appraisals and surveys and engineering studies done, that we wanted to see if this would be something that the council would be interested in. So that's the, the tee up. And then I'm going to let Lisa, let you see the picture of what this additional housing would be like for Casper. Lisa.

Can I ask for Lisa? No, no disrespect. So, When I was watching, I believe it was slip. Few months ago, Cheyenne, the city of Cheyenne had a. Housing project we were watching the same one and in that case. My my take on it was the city was buying the land. With the lease back in order to. supplement, but make the project work for the developers. And then the Secretary of State for the state kind of got into a pissing match with the governor and the treasurer over qualifications for Residents of the state of Wyoming and documented residents is the way I took it, which HUD, I believe, already handles within the state.

That was an affordable development, which is HUD versus?

This is not.

This is workforce as well as then market. OK, but yes, that slip meeting was also where we heard the unmet housing needs grant applications later in that day. But yeah, that one was turned down. And then there were further discussions about the importance of housing based on those discussions for infrastructure and the consideration that housing is a key infrastructure tool. And that's what changed with the June board meeting and then subsequent slip meeting.

So with this. If if we move forward. Hopefully we would, but would this be into next year before the Business Council would would hear this and this mayor counselor?

Yes, so I thank you. I forgot that in my TF applications are due December 1st and then yes, the new slib would hear this proposal because application. Thank you.

Lisa?

I'm there. Hi, Erin.

How are you?

Good evening, Mayor, Councillors. Thank you so much for the opportunity to meet with you tonight. Are we okay to hand out some handouts?

Absolutely.

As Liz talked about, we're here tonight to discuss with you the area that a lot of people know as Harmony Hills. And if you know about Blue Ridge Coffee, that's the area. And you see the big D that got built there. You see the car wash that got built there. This is another 20 acres surrounding that. I've owned the property for almost 15 years and have never been able to make it work financially. It's a unique property, and I'll go through eight points with you guys. But really, what's been the barrier to this project in A lot of ways, in part, is the requirement to expand Wyoming Boulevard. We had to do that for the initial part of the development when we put in Ravencrest Apartments and the little strip center where Blue Ridge Coffee is located. And expanding Wyoming Boulevard as state highway is no small feat. It's a really expensive and so forth. So over the last 10 years, not only have things gotten almost ridiculous in price for lots, the cost to expand Wyoming Boulevard has gone up twice of what I thought it was going to cost. So the reason for the expensive infrastructure is in part due to the Wyoming Boulevard expansion. But with you there, I have eight points I wanted to talk with you guys about. And I think really the central question here is really simple. It's why this project, why infrastructure participation, and why now? This is an opportunity to use infrastructure funding to unlock a centrally located infill project, a property that can produce market rate housing, support employers, and expand Casper's tax base. So let's talk about why is this infill and where is it at. We talked about it's positioned centrally. It's not remote. It's not a fringe development. It's not something that's going to take brand new infrastructure to bring it in to be able to do a development. The land has development potential, but the cost of required public infrastructure is the barrier that has prevented it from being developed over the past 15 years. This grant is the bridge between a good location and an economically feasible project. We're not trying to create demand. The demand actually exists. Liz talked about the number of shortage of housing units and so forth. So we're trying to remove the infrastructure obstacle that prevents supply from being delivered. The grant participation makes the whole project feasible. Streets, water, and sewer must be built before the housing can be delivered, obviously. And those costs are incurred upfront before homes generate any revenue. Grant participation would reduce the extraordinarily high front-end burden and make development achievable. It also helps keep infrastructure costs from being pushed directly into every finished lot or housing unit. And I think that's the important key here. Our thought is, and we've given you some pictures, we've given you some information, but I really want you guys to focus on the fact that our goal is to offer the lots for less money than we'd otherwise be able to do. That's the only way we're ever going to get affordable housing, workforce housing, and help the missing middle, in my opinion. The infrastructure participation unlocks private investment. Number three point is that market rate workforce housing is the missing middle. It's not a subsidized project of any kind. It's not intended to be income restricted at all. Again, it's market rate. the target is the underserved middle. Working households are often earned too much to qualify for assistance, but struggle to find newer attainable housing. The project can include a range of housing choices. So attainable entry level products can coexist with move up options. So oftentimes, what happens is, because development, because development so expensive, a developer will, I'm sorry, it's okay, I need some water desperately. Yeah. oftentimes you can only develop 20 to 40 lots. Well, if you develop a neighborhood of 20 to 40 lots, you cannot have mixed use in 20 to 40 lots. So what it really takes is probably 200, 250 lots to actually identify different segments of a market that you could build out. And that's why this project could do that. If a private developer We're going to go ahead and develop this project. You'd never be able to develop 200 or 250 residential building lots at one time. It would eat your lunch on the front end expense.

Okay.

Okay. Workforce recruitment and retention is number four. Housing availability is an economic development issue. Thank you so much. Employers compete for employees and employees evaluate whether they can realistically live in any community. More quality housing choices, ownership and rental improve Casper's ability to recruit and retain workers and families. We've already obtained a number of letters of support from businesses. We've obtained it from the hospital. We've got letters of support from Casper College. We've got them from Mesa Petroleum. So what's happening is a lot of employers are incredibly interested in workforce housing. Because all you have to do is drive to our Eastside project, where houses are $600 to $1 million, and you want to say, why can't we just get workforce housing? Well, there's a lot of reasons for that. And with COVID, it was kind of the turning point of how a house price could go from sort of affordable, now in hindsight, people wish they would have just bought back then. They kicked themselves. They're like, how could that house that used to be $300,000 now cost $650,000? Well, the lots cost more, the furnaces cost more, the houses cost more. So this is an attempt at trying to equalize that for the missing middle. More quality housing choices, and again, our ability to, in one development, cover several different sections of housing, which we'll cover on the map in just a minute, will help that, will help people be able to recruit better. Infrastructure funding produces housing capacity that supports the broader economy. Number five, the existing utilities are available. We had preliminary meetings with city officials already. Liz has been amazing to work with and help us get with the engineers to make sure we have ample water, there's ample sewer. We've talked to the gas company, electric company already. There's ample utilities to be able to complete the development. That matters because the project can use capability and capacity that already exists rather than requiring the city to create an entirely new utility system in a distant growth area. So infrastructure should always be a city's number one hope. It also happens to be one of the most difficult things to find. This is an opportunity to get more return from infrastructure Casper already has. Number six point. This increases the city of Casper's tax base. Today, the property is underutilized. Development converts it into homes, residents, utility customers, and potentially complementary commercial activity. Each completed property adds assessed value and supports long-term revenues and economic activity. The public infrastructure investment is therefore tied to a larger private investment and tax base outcome. Seven, we've already talked about this a little bit. It creates a true community. The vision is not a single housing product. It's a mixed community with multiple housing types and price points. Entry-level housing gives people a place to start. It gets people on the housing ladder. And unfortunately, many of your children and grandchildren will never hit the first rung unless we do something to provide them with their first chance to buy a home. This creates that continuity. First time home buyers, working families, downsizers and ranchers as well. They can all have a place within the community. The vision that Erin and I have here is that if somebody can start off with a tiny home as an example, because that's all they can afford and they're single and they don't need a basement and they don't need a garage necessarily, they love the neighborhood. Why would they love it? Well, we've worked really closely with the trails. And we donated a good piece of land so that there was an ability to connect the trails through a large part of the 20 acres that we currently have. So do I think that people move into communities because of walking trails and things like that? Yeah, I hate paying for them, but the truth of the matter is they like it. Okay, the Eastside people, people in the development that I have on the Eastside borrow the other Eastside people's walking trail and they love it. So I know it's not really the Eastside people's property, but they love it. the fact that they get to use the city's property there. We want to build a neighborhood that where people can grow and just not simply a collection of houses. Number eight, smart growth is good use of public investment. In-field development uses land with inside the existing community footprint, takes advantage of nearby roads and utilities, services, schools, employers, and commercial areas rather than pushing growth further outward. It reduces the need for entirely new offsite infrastructure and makes more efficient use of prior city investment. Before Casper expands further out, which is almost impossible, by the way, I've been looking for years, this is a chance to make better use of land and infrastructure already inside the community. The value of this grant is actually leverage. It allows Casper to use available infrastructure funding to unlock a centrally located infill project, attract substantial private investment, and add market rate workforce housing, support employers and grow the tax base. The infrastructure is the piece that makes the housing possible, obviously. Erin's going to explain to you our color-coded map, which is on page three of your project, and kind of what the different color codes mean. Before she does that, this is at the beginning. We've already spent money to get to this point. We had an engineer help us plot out this particular drawing. want to make sure and mention that it is not the final product by any stretch. So what we're hoping to have here tonight is, is this something that the city wants? Do we want to support this project or not? Before we go have to expand the funds that Liz mentioned, further engineering, reporting and things like that.

Okay. IF YOU GUYS WOULD LOOK AT THE MAP, YOU'LL SEE THE COLOR COATING. SO THE YELLOW REPRESENTS ABOUT 44 TINY HOMES, AND WE HAVE ON ADDITIONAL PAGES AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT THAT WOULD LOOK LIKE.

THIS IS WYOMING BOULEVARD.

THAT IS WYOMING BOULEVARD RIGHT HERE, YES. OKAY, THANK YOU. AND IF YOU GUYS LOOK AT THE WYOMING BOULEVARD, THERE AT THE NORTH OF YOUR PAPER, YOU WOULD SEE OVER THERE ON THE NORTHEAST OF YOUR PAPER, OR NORTHWEST OF YOUR PAPER, THAT'S WHERE THAT BLUE RIDGE COFFEE AND OTHER COMMERCIAL site already sets.

So is that here?

Yes, and then right below that would be the Ravencrest Apartments. And so then all the acres that we're looking at over here is in the colors. So the yellow represents about 44 tiny homes. And when we talk about tiny homes, we are saying around 450 to 800 square feet with or without a basement. So 44 of those. The pink, the pink color here is

If I could ask as we're going so the 400 days just one floor 800 with basement so it could be a variance of that.

So these homes. I mean again, these are not actual houses. These are pictures of maybe kind of an idea that might be something that could get built there, but a tiny home can be built with or without a basement. OK, it can be built 400 square feet in no basement. It can be built. 400 square feet and a basement to get an 800 square feet. A builder can finish the basement or it's still considered a tiny home if it's 800 square feet. So to give everybody some perspective, the houses that are over by the Three Crowns Golf Course in Fort Casper, there's many of those down there that are 550, 600. I mean, that was not an uncommon thing when those were put in there. So it's not like it's a new concept. It's a new concept for new construction.

Along along that straight line there of the pink that's represents around 14 twin homes. Orange and we have a picture of the twin homes along there, so you'll have pictures throughout the whole packet to give examples of just ideas that we've preliminary came up with 14 twin house. The orange section is about 33 single family homes. And those sizes can vary depending on what would work best for workforce homes. And then along the green side there, those would be fourplexes. We make sure those would be fourplexes where somebody could come in and do. There's an awesome opportunity for 3.5% down FHA loans for an owner-occupied tenant situation. So that gives people an opportunity to start their investments. We've got a lot of people who will take advantage of that at 3.5% down to become your own landlord. That's a pretty awesome opportunity for people. And then along that blue line, that's the single family homes that we are also part of the infill project, and that's represents about 49. Yes, 49 single family homes.

So the the thing about the layout, there's a lot you can do with 20 acres and it doesn't have to be like this, but this gives an idea that was our whole hope is just to kind of show you what what could maybe be around 200. We could actually really easily 220, 250 even housing units in here if we just keep on working with it. But this was just a preliminary blush to be able to help you see what might be a possibility. The blue section, as you're thinking about, if you stood in the Blue Ridge Coffee's parking lot and looked toward the mountain, you would see a big ridge. You can't even see the blue section from standing at Blue Ridge. There's a mountain there, okay? most people don't even recognize that there's anything back over there. But if you go on the back side of that, you would drive right up Goodstein. And we started a development that was part of this project initially, which is just off of Goodstein on Walnut. Turn left on Walnut instead of right on Walnut. And you have a few newer houses up there. So that would be an extension of what's already there. So again, the entire 20 acres here is all infill. So we'll see. We brought you some pictures. I know we're capped for time, so we'd be happy to answer any of your questions. Yeah. Questions from the council.

I'll start with you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Lisa and Erin. Appreciate all the information and the context. I'm very interested in this. I think this is a very exciting proposal. We used to live by Three Crowns on Brigham Young. My first home was at 870 Square Feet, and I bought it for $120,000. And I've been complaining my whole time on council that you couldn't find a house like that these days. My question is, I'm very interested in like the tiny home. Actually, I love the whole concept of mixed use. What are you expecting, like a tiny home? What do you think that price would fall for?

Let me, so we can't control the construction costs, okay? I will share with you guys that on average, new construction is costing $300 a square foot, just for a one level house. So if you think about it, 800 square foot, That's going to be 240 just for the house. OK, so we think about 120. We're not ever going to hit that ever in our life. OK, but a lot of work. OK, but our goal is, is that for the most part right now, you know, without any help, every one of those lots in this would cost over one hundred thousand dollars. That's not feasible. And nobody, you can't put a tiny home on a $100,000 lot, right? So our goal is to offer the lots for enough less than what the cost is. I mean, we still have to make a profit. I have to pay for the land. You know, we have to get our money back. But at the end of the day, our whole goal is to subsidize the lot price because we can't subsidize the build price. I would think to give you an example, which that's all it is. I hate saying examples because then some of you will be like, you said you stood up there at that one night and you said. But if the house is 240, then we would hope that we keep it around 300 total. Maybe a $60,000 lot. So the things that aren't included in this infrastructure grant that a developer still gets to pay for, my match is like to our match. You need to start saving some money. Our match is like 2 million something, 2 million 500 or something like that. We have to put in that, pay for the land, pay for gas and electric. Those aren't covered here. Pay for engineering. So there's a lot of things that still are to be paid for. But I think that somewhere in that ballpark would be a close estimate.

And if I can add, one of the biggest price point struggles right now is that entry-level home, right? We saw an increase where it used to be closer to $250,000 for an entry-level home, now much closer to that $350,000. And at that price point, the competition's there, the frustration's there. So the benefit of this would be to actually allow for new construction to be a possible grab for those people that are in that price point. And obviously the longevity of someone owning a home, a new construction home, versus maybe a starter home where you have to fix up a lot on Brigham Young, right? So definitely the benefit there for what we're seeing from the stats of WCDA and those coming out.

So OK, thank you again. Go ahead again back to so they ask. Through the Business Council is for.

Infrastructure it's about 11 million that they ask is. And our process is we missed the first deadline so to back up and I'm not sure I had this figure right Liz. It's like how much does this state have to give way altogether on this stuff? Drew told us.

I think it's like email.

I think it's 80 million. I think they have 80 million, which I think is going to be snapped up in about two seconds. OK, so what happened is they had the first round. The applications were due in. August. And we missed that deadline, so that our next deadline is to apply in December. So I think what's going to happen is with this very first round, a lot of that money is going to be gone already, OK? And I think that once it's gone, I don't see the state coming up with another $80 million that they're going to start. So I think that's a great time for Casper to be proactive in something where sometimes it feels like we get left out.

Mills had their application, too.

Oh, okay. Mills had their application, too. Evansville had an application that got put in, and Oh, I didn't. I'm sorry. Let me finish answering this question. So the business council looks at it. Should we have to submit it by December 1st, I believe, is the date. They look at it by mid-December, pass it along to the slipboard. So we don't think we're really going to hear anything back on an approval. We'll hear the first thing, which, personally, I don't think that's going to matter. I mean, I think that that isn't going to matter. The slipboard will be making the decision, and that's probably about March. We'll probably hear something March or April. And then this project wouldn't even probably be able to get built until 2028.

Spring of 2028 would be the ideal start time.

And what we talked about is if it went, there's some things we could do preliminarily potentially in 2027, but we won't even hear about if Casper got granted that or not until spring.

No, go ahead, Pat. So is this up on top of the ridge?

No, it's over the ridge. Have you driven up Goodstein?

Yeah.

So if you drive up Goodstein, you'd see some townhomes on the left. There's a string of, like, salmon colored. I think they're painted now, but they were salmon colored. It's right behind there, so it's not on the ridge. Oh, okay. So the hill stays there. In fact, one of the things that... Erin and I could look at doing, and we've talked about this a little bit, is that whole hillside could be something we could donate to the city, which again, that's one more of those things that can people that trespass on that piece of land currently. So I know they like it. I know people like to hang out on that, on that ridge.

Total available 75 million. You were very close.

I'm going to get Kyle and I'll get you.

Go ahead, Kyle. Thank you. I might have already answered my question rereading the memo, but for clarification, the city match would be going towards utility and street construction. Is that correct?

Water, sewer, asphalt, curb, gutter, sidewalk.

Okay. have a question for Lizzo so maybe any other questions for the or if you guys want to interchange I just want to make sure you know we're logically consistent and stuff is that I don't I don't remember us helping construct sidewalk that's the one I have the question about so do you mind providing clarification on like other times we've matched for construction of sidewalk and stuff It's an allowable expense in the grant for Drew.

Yes. It's an allowable expense in the grant from our business council representative. We have not done one of these building resilient communities grant yet, counselor. We did the community readiness grant for the property across from the event center, which was the last BRC grant Well, actually, it's going to include a trail now around. That's what we're working on too. Yes.

Just add to that. You know, typically, if there wasn't a grant counselor, the developer would be required to build and dedicate the street curb gutter and sidewalk. And that publicly accessible infrastructure would be in the cost of the grant. So I guess to your point, never having done a grant like this before, we've not built that before, but we do require the builders to build and dedicate that up front, and it is within the cost of the home. In this case, we would be partially lowering the cost of land by not having the builder build that and pass it on.

Thank you. That was my understanding. Amber, I'll get you.

I don't really have any questions other than I don't see a lot of wisdom in the Business Council just morphing one acronym to be a whole new grant program, so we have to figure out which BRC we're talking about, but that's not your fault. I just want to say I think the thing that is most compelling to me is I really love the mix. I think that is the way ahead, and so I really appreciate the smaller homes. As somebody who specifically sought out an 800-square-foot home so that I could afford it, and I could afford the maintenance on it, and I could afford to keep it up the way I needed to keep it up. I think that that, for people in my age group and younger, I mean, I think that's the reality. And I think that the options are just really limited for that. So that especially appeals to me, seeing that as part of this. But yeah, I think the mix is really compelling. And I think the numbers you have here that kind of skew a little more towards some of those multifamily, tiny home, twin home type things. I just think that that's going to be what makes it attainable for folks. So I really appreciate that. And I think, you know, I'm thrilled to see that there's some investment coming from the state in this arena. And I think we should absolutely go for it for Casper. So.

Lisa, remind me. where the tiny homes are going to, yeah.

And if you look at that, so let me just be really clear. Again, this is just a draft, okay? Those lots are too big for tiny homes. Right now, that's one of the places we'd probably pick up additional lot availability would be if you put an 800 square foot home on a set 8,000 square foot lot, that's too big of a lot, okay? So we have some work to do there, but what happens is what Again, preliminarily, I didn't want to spend seven fortunes with the engineer to lay this out. So I said, just put some stuff down there and minimize the street expense because this is residential development 101 for you guys. You minimize the street expense and the length. You make sure every street is serviced by houses on either side of the street. So we're trying to minimize the request for the grant, right? Have less streets. But we also have to weigh that out then. Well, is it a stupid lot? Is it a stupid decision? And what we don't want to do is have an 800 square foot home and have all these 800. And then, oh, over there, oh, you're in one of those 450s. We're not doing that. It'd be like, 800, 450, 600. Everybody is the same. I mean, they're all, they don't look the same. The houses look all different, but they're not all the same size. So we're not trying to get like just that size in one little stretch. We're trying to mix it up.

Thank you, Mayor. Question, I was going to ask this earlier, but you brought it back to the top of mind. Is there, do you see any potential for the city or would there be any impact on lowering the cost of, especially like these tiny homes and some of these more entry-level homes? Can the city decrease lot size to make the land more? I know you're talking about subsidizing land, and I guess I'm still trying to wrap my head around what that looks like, but if the city were to adjust its zoning regulations to reduce the lot size, is that helpful at all?

100%. Potentially. Again, if you take us So the outlines of what you see here, that's all I have to work with, right? There's a drainage canal over to the right of the yellow. I mean, there's things there that I can't, I have to work within the confines of what there is, right? So, but if the minimum lot size were reduced, if you guys change zoning or had a special tiny home zoning or something like that, there's so many things that could happen that reduces price, okay? So a while back, this is probably, myself, probably 15 years ago, when tiny homes were just new, I'd come to the city and said, would there be any way we could do something like container homes? But that didn't, the answer was no. Okay. And I get that sometimes, you don't get everything asked for. But the thing that happens is it's always this never ending balance of like, how do we get prices of things down so that they're more affordable? And it's just done nothing but get worse. Okay, so to answer your question. Let me think you had three of them in there.

About zoning zoning and subsidizing.

Oh, so let me get your help. You get your head wrapped around reducing the land because you're that's not what's that what you're reducing is the cost. The price of a lot. Okay, that's what so the land cost me what it costs. I paid surge daily a way too much money for this land that has nothing to do with anything. But I do have to get some sort of return back from at least get my money back from it when I paid so. We're not asking you to reduce the price of the land. What we're saying is this grant reduces the infrastructure cost, which reduces the price of a lot that people get charged. So it's more attainable, right? Makes the cost of the homework. Did that help at all?

Does. And now like. Yeah, I mean, I'd be curious. And this is probably another question more for Liz's team. But you know, I'm very interested in seeing what we can do. I don't know what the conversation was 15 years ago, obviously, none of us were on it, even us old timers over here. But I'd be very interested in looking at like, what potential the city has to do things like reduce lot sizes for tiny homes or adjust regulations to allow for more like What are those called? Accessory buildings that the mother-in-law home?

I'd love to see you do that.

I guess I don't know what. I definitely would like an official vote.

To give some kudos to you, though, Vice Mayor, I think your minimum lot size right now is 4,000 square feet for residential, which actually is fairly progressive. I mean, to my knowledge, there are only a few communities in the state that go lower than that. And that's been a new thing for all the reasons you just talked about that's occurred in the last few years. So there's room to move there and go smaller, but 4,000 is pretty respectable, I think.

I thought the engineer and I thought it was five. These are all based upon five, so we came up with a couple more. But to answer your question about ADUs and multi-generational, it would be super interesting to you guys to know how many people come to us looking for an ADU or a lot where they can do an ADU or multi-generational housing of some sort. And so that would be really nice if we could really explore that going forward. On some of these, obviously with an ADU, you have to have a decent sized lot. Well, that would happen in the orange section or the blue section. Those lots are deep enough to accommodate an ADU. The multi-generational thing, how many people can live inside of a house, how many families, that would be, interesting. I know that it comes with some hair, too. I get it. But where we get a lot of requests for that.

If that was something that the council was able to take up in time before you got too far down the road on planning for this project? Is that something that you would see as relevant to this specific project? Or would that be subsequent projects, you think?

So when it comes, no, it'd be relevant, really relevant. And an ADU all by itself, if we just, that's called an adult, what's it called? Accessory dwelling unit. So generally speaking, a lot of them are, I mean, I shouldn't say this because then some people think they should just be the size of a shed, but they're not very big. I mean, they're usually just like a tiny little studio looking thing where, so that the mom or Hopefully it's the dad and the mom gets treated better. But the point is that they can join in the rest with the family by having their own private space, but yet come inside for whatever else. That would be 100% helpful. Because we don't, obviously it's not allowed now. And two, that also matters when we go do covenants and things like that. So you have to address all those kinds of issues. So yeah, it's relevant.

Yeah, I mean, I'd like to explore that not only for for parents, but for all the adults living in their parents basements currently that, you know, don't have a path, but would like some space. I think that, you know, that's a super, a super interesting thing for me as well when we think about this.

Yeah, Lisa, thanks for being here. Both of you. I'm Very exciting. I just want to go back to you mentioned that timeline. I realize, of course, because best case scenario, I guess, but so were you saying you mentioned 2028? Were you talking about to begin construction or to be that would be first occupancy? That would be a goal.

Again, construction of the infrastructure. OK, so here's the way it kind of goes. So we won't get. News if we even got this OK. In the meantime, then we'd still have to go through. Make sure zoning is right. Make sure the plat is right. That's one of things we could do is reduce time in that, but I think the line at state statute you guys can work. You could help have your people to state help us get that anyway. Shorter times for plat approval and things like that. Zoning proof that takes forever. It's very annoying, but you go through all that and then we could do. We could start some work, so maybe some grading could happen fall and through the winter, fall of 2027, winter of 2028, with the infrastructure going in and being completed, there was no way they'd get pavement in before August of 2028. So the goal would be that we would start building houses August, September, October, you know, of 2028. Okay, thank you. And we've already, just so everybody is clear too, on the YDOT thing, which sometimes people kind of get a heartburn when we bring up YDOT, They've been nothing but awesome to work with, by the way, and I already have the permit for the entrance onto Wyoming Boulevard. So that's usually a big stumbling block in this kind of a project, but the permit's already done, so that shouldn't be a problem at all.

So would this be a new entryway?

Yep. So if you think about how there's a pork chop, as they call it, which is that thing that sticks out in the noise of everybody at Blue Ridge Coffee, how you can only turn right.

when we

concern of mine when considering developments. And yeah, when you look at this area, it's a large map of residential with just a huge pocket of nothingness in the middle. So that's another thing that I really appreciate about this is making use of land that, you know, has not been put to use.

Okay. Yeah. Will the lots, will you sell to lots to other developers or builders? strictly your own group?

I haven't got that far. I mean, you know, as you guys know, most of the developments I do, the builders that I represent, as we represent as realtors, are the ones that build there and buy the lots. I haven't got that. We haven't got that far. Thank you.

What do you think, Aaron? I haven't got that far.

Thank you. Direction from us, correct? Everybody good with this?

Yes. And then can I also, you know, I am very interested in discussing accessory dwelling units and potentially decreasing lot sizes. So whatever shape and form that materializes in.

Already wrote it down. So we got two directions. Bonus directions.

All for that bonus. Somebody go with that direction too.

Thank you for the thumbs up. Thanks, Aaron.

All right. Teared water rates.

Council will let Krista bring up our consultant from Rappaport. I'll say no more. I'll say it all.

Mayor is in this conversation. on tiered water rates.

Test?

All right. Four weeks ago, we had a conversation on tiered water rates. And we talked about how what Ref TELUS had put together was based off of the cost of service and was revenue neutral. One of the trepidations that council had during that time was the multifamily user class. had asked for more details before making a decision. And part of that is that this class has a lot of diversity, making the data hard to understand and evaluate and compare apples to apples. So Todd Cristiano with Reptiles and his team worked really hard and dug into this class and even looked at per units at all around town. And so I'm going to bring him up to present on their findings and hopefully gain your approval of one of the two alternatives that we're proposing for this multifamily approach, in addition to shared structure as a whole.

Good afternoon, Mayor, members of council.

Well, good afternoon. As you may recall, I was here just about a month ago to talk about some new water rate structures. Today's presentation is going to be focusing primarily on multifamily, but we'll take a few slides to kind of jog our memory as to what we talked about last time. Then we'll jump into some of the results that we found with multifamily. And like what Krista said, I mentioned before, multifamily is a really difficult customer class to find the exact

right structure and they say in this business there's no silver bullet, there's no public right structure, but you can continually refine the one you have to get to where you need to be.

Quick study recap. We'll talk about the multifamily alternatives and some of the additional work we have done based on the request of council here tonight. And just further considerations to think as you go through this, deliberating on family right structures. We talked last time what a rate structure study was. It's all about balancing the community objectives and we had identified those here. Revenue stability, essential use affordability, cost recovery between classes, and we're going to go into a little bit more about cost recovery between classes in the next slide. Cost recovery within a class that means customers who use a little bit water versus high demand customers. Conservation and obviously ease of understanding administration and implementation. Our rate structure study here, we obviously came to you last time with these tiered structures. We had single family, and then we had multifamily rate structures as well. We're focusing on the multifamily tiered structure. So this slide's a little bit busy, but we want to focus on one thing here, and that's the cost proportionality between customer classes like single family, multifamily, commercial, so on and so forth. And so we did this thing called the cost of service analysis. And what this cost of service analysis tells us is the cost to be recovered from each customer class based on how they use the system. And there's some things that we think about and use to help us determine those costs. Things like the demand, the average and peak day demands of these different customer classes. How many customers are in the class? How many meters and what size of meters are in the customer class? We talked last time about commercial having a variety of smaller and larger meters. And that plays into it as well. And from all of that, the costs are going to vary by class. And that represents the cost to provide service to each class. And real quickly, I'll just show this here. This is a demand profile. It's 12 months of demand for residential, multifamily, and commercial. And basically illustrating that these customer classes are all placing a different demand on the system. As you can see, in the summer months, there's higher demand. In the winter months, there's lower demand. And depending on that demand profile is how costs are going to be allocated to those customer classes. So it's just an example there. This next side of bullets on the right-hand side, I'm going to go into just a little bit of detail. I won't spend too much time there, but it just shows the complexity and the level of detail we go to to help arrive at the cost we need to recover from each customer class. It's from those numbers that we can then design the rates and the numbers that are in the rate structure. So the first step is determining how much revenue do you need? We have our O&M. We have our capital costs. We have debt service costs. We have some miscellaneous revenue that comes in, and the net of that is the amount we need to get from rates, single-family, multifamily, commercial, parks, and all that. We take those costs we have in our budget, our revenue requirement. We assign them to different facilities based on how that facility influences that expense. So, for example, chemicals are part of water treatment. So all the chemical costs would go in this kind of water treatment bucket. Electricity cost pumping uses a tremendous amount of electricity, so electricity costs would go in the pumping bucket. So we go along there. We might have T&D staff that are out maintaining mains. That cost would go into the transmission and distribution bucket, so on and so forth. Once we put them in those buckets, we know that each one of those facilities, such as a water treatment plant or storage or distribution mains, they're all designed to do different things in the system. Water treatment plant is designed to meet maximum day demands. Pumping might be designed to meet average day, max day, and max hour demands. Storage is designed to meet fire flow, perhaps. So on and so forth. So we take those costs that we put in each one of those buckets, and we try to assign it to these, what's the cost to provide average day demand out of a treatment plant? And we do that for all those facilities. Well, we also know that if we can assign costs and state them in terms of the cost to provide average day demand, the cost associated with providing max day demand, the cost associated with billing. We also know that customer classes have average day demand. Customer classes have peak day demand. Customer classes have bills and meters. So we've got our numerator, costs. We've got our denominator in terms of units, gallons per day, numbers of meters. We can then proportionally allocate all those costs to the customer classes, and that's what comes down to And so that bottom line there, number five, where it says residential, multifamily, commercial, and irrigation, that represents the total cost made to cover from each class. And that's why last time we were here, all the rates were different for each one of the customer classes because, A, they all had different structures, and B, different cost requirements. So that was just something we wanted to point out. We didn't get into too much detail last time. We wanted to point out that there is this logical process that we go through to methodically assign costs to various customers. Again, here's your current rate structure. It applies to all customers inside city, a flat charge of $11.54, includes 1500 gallons of water, the minimum allowance, and then we have this tiered structure over on the right, and this applies to all customers, regardless of whether you're commercial, residential, irrigation, what have you. The proposed customer classes, we talked about this. We came up with residential, multifamily, commercial, churches and schools, irrigation, and city parks, and We're obviously focusing on number two today, which is multifamily. So let's get down to it. So multifamily statistics, like Krista said, we went and we pulled all the assessor data and we linked it to your billing data to the best we could. We had a really good match with that. And so we try to link up the number of units associated with every parcel or every account. Now there are some complexities because sometimes there's a parcel with multiple buildings and all the buildings have different units on them. So we actually had to go in and look at some of those individual units there. And sometimes there were a couple of parcels that had like a thousand units for some reason, which seems a little wonky. So we had to go in and look at those. So it's the best we could, we linked that up. So that data is available. It just needs probably to be cleaned in the future to look at that. And we use that data to look at how different size complexes would be affected by this tiered range structure. So we had a strong match and so we had, we came up with 725 that matched. There are probably more, there are probably more out there, but we had a good representative sample. And a majority of these are duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, fairly small. There are a few larger ones, larger apartment complex that share vertical and horizontal walls. And we found out that looking at that data, that the average usage per unit is around 3,500 gallons per unit. I think I said 4,000 last time.

It just varies year on year.

So real quickly, this just gives you an idea of how many complexes by number of units there are. So what this says here, the two, four, six, eight, that's the size of the complex and the bars represent how many complexes of that size based on what the assessor data set. Now, obviously some cleaning and things and verification is very important because there may have been some changes that weren't recorded by the assessor. So, for example, duplex, we show 212 complexes that are duplex. Our proposed service charge, again, is staying the same. We're not changing any of that. We went through those bullets last time about what we were trying to accomplish with the service charge. It does vary by meter size, and that does include multifamily as well as the other classes. So one of the things we came to you with was alternative one. This alternative one is what we showed to you last time. And there were some questions about, well, could we adjust this a little bit to kind of even things out for some customers and things. At the time, we didn't have any data on the number of the complexes by unit size. We just didn't have the data at the time. So we were kind of flying blind there and not understanding how many units there were or complexes by units. So this was the original rate structure. It came to you with zero to six, which is included in the service charge. 7 to 50, 50 to 140, and greater than 140. And what we were trying to do with this, because we didn't have units, and we're not going to be billing based on units, trying to capture kind of the indoor usage at a lower cost and kind of the higher usage. But because in that previous slide, you saw we had a lot of duplexes and triplexes and not so many of the large complexes, but it's still this huge spread. And when you look at the total use per account, there's a huge spread. So we try to capture all that in one rate structure can be a little bit difficult. So that means that over time, it's one of these things that they'll have to be some adjustments and things over time once you get a real good handle on how all of your multifamily units or complexes are operating or using water. So here's alternative two. And the big difference here is, here we go. We've changed the first tier and second tier. So it's zero to six, seven to 70. 70, 140, and greater than 140. And you can see on the right-hand side, I have those two columns colored pink. What that does is it allows more volume to be captured in Tier 1 because we're going from 0 to 50. We're capturing 0 to 70. So there's more volume that's going to be built in that tier. We've just expanded the threshold. And then the rest of the same, 70 to 140, and then greater than 140. And so the first question is, Before the first question, one of the things is that by having this tier structure, obviously it better addresses some of the customer equity here between the larger and smaller complexes. We're still trying to encourage wise water use. And the key thing is we're trying to have the tiers, the lower tiers are promoting essential water use. We're providing water service, essential water service at the lowest possible cost as long as good service will And there can be disparities between the existing smaller and larger structures. It's just the nature of multifamily. We're trying to accommodate a duplex as well as a 177-plex. And there's only so much balancing that we can do. So the reason is, well, Todd, why didn't you change all the tiers? Why didn't you add five more tiers? Or why didn't you change it to 160? Well, we could. But the It's like levers. You pull this lever, this other lever goes this way. So by an example here, we went to zero to 70. By putting more volume in tier one, that's a lower cost volume. You're charging between, you're charging 687, I'm sorry, 550 between seven and 70. So between 50 and 70, they're getting a lower, let me see if I can explain this better here. When you look at the alternative one, when you hit 50,000 gallons, you start paying $6.78. Alternative two, when you hit 50,000 gallons, you're still paying $5.50.

So at 20,000 gallons, that represents approximately 5% of additional volume.

So if you're charging 5% of your volume at a slightly lower rate, what's going to happen? The other rates have got to go up. So it just kind of shifts things back and forth a little bit. And what we found with this is that it was kind of a sweet spot around 60 or 70. By changing or looking at the higher tiers, it didn't really do much for us because, A, there's not a lot of volume in those top tiers. If you look at Tier 2 and Tier 3, there's very little volume. And typically, when we look at a tiered structure, whether it's indoor and outdoor, those top tiers are usually designed to really – Hammer home, the conservation message is usually not too much volume there because you don't want to risk too much revenue instability of that customer reducing and causing too much reduction in revenue. But so when we looked at zero, six to 50, six to 60 or 70, 160 or 71. all kind of produced a similar outcome. It just shifted a little bit based on your total usage. So, you know, in this example, a customer uses 50,000 gallons, they might see a slight decrease. But if we change the tiers, then someone used 75,000 gallons, see a slight decrease, but the person with 50,000 gallons might see a slight increase now. So it's kind of like whack-a-mole in a sense. But the thing is, as you learn more about your customers and learn more about how they're using water, you can further dial that in. And that's perfectly normal with a new rate structure because we don't know how customers are exactly going to behave. Plus, there's also weather issues as well. If the weather turns much hotter over the next couple of years or something, that could be something you need to look at and review. But So this is kind of an example of one of many alternatives that we could look at, and you just see a shifting of who's paying more and who's paying less. But we did want to keep that minimum service charge or the minimum allowance in there to 0 to 6,000 gallons. If we increased that minimum allowance to say 0 to 20, that's all in the service charge. So we got to recover a lot of that 30%, 30.8% through the other tiers. So yeah, it's great. We get some essential usage, but now once you click into that second or third tier, you're going to make up for it really quickly. Unfortunately, that's just an inherent give and take for a tiered structure. So we had a couple examples last time, and this is a new example. What we're doing here is I showed you an example before that was an actual, three actual customers. Here, what we've done here is taken, looked at a similar usage profile for a multifamily customer and just increased the usage based on the number of units they had. So for example, 3,000 gallons essentially is indoor usage. So this is a 12 unit. We essentially said, okay, the indoor usage in the wintertime is 3,000 gallons per unit. So for a 12 unit complex, it's 36,000 gallons. And so we follow the same demand pattern. And what I'm trying to show here is that given the same demand pattern, but different units and total usage, here's what the bill impacts would look like. So the zero to 70 or alternative two, which is on the far right, the dark green, it does go down a little bit. So it's kind of capturing these examples here kind of in the sweet spot a little bit. There aren't a lot of customers that are way high in the over 140,000 gallons and that sort just 9% of volume. So a lot of customers, when you look back at that graph, we had a lot of duplexes and triplexes and things. The sweet spot of that 50 to 70 is kind of what we saw where it was getting the most impact for normal sized complexes. So this just gives an indication that with that, with spreading that a little bit, we do see a little bit of a decrease from the alternative one we showed you last time. Not a lot, but it's, it's, Shifting the cost a little bit and maybe smoothing it out for those mid-range, lower and mid-range customers. Similarly, this was the actual customer example. And we talked about this a lot after the meeting. And we have the 12-unit, 18-unit, and 24-unit. And something looks wonky here, right? The 18-unit, why is it so much lower than a 12-unit or so much lower than a 24-unit? Well, what we found out is that this 18 unit probably has a separate irrigation tap versus these other two. There aren't a lot of those, but it still indicates here that based on their usage, they're kind of in that sweet spot too with that alternative too. So just wanted to put that back up here with alternatives too, but also It's got a separate irrigation tap, and that's something to be cognizant of when adopting this rate structure of looking at how many complexes do have separate irrigation taps, and does there need to be a push to move more people to separate irrigation taps? Again, multifamily, a lot of things to think about. Alright, here's where we got into the nitty gritty here, and if you had a chance to read the memo, this is a summary of this. What we did Is we calculated the annual bill. For a complex. Under the existing rates 12 months calculated bill for each month, added it up to get an annual bill. Did that under alternative existing rates? We did it and owner alternative one and alternative two. But what we want to show here is what's the average monthly change? So we took the annual bill from existing rates. We took the annual bill from the proposed rates were divided by 12 to say this is kind of the average monthly bill change for the year, average monthly. And then we grouped it and said, all right, well, let's count the number of accounts whose average monthly bill change was zero to $5. And how many customers are going down between zero and $5 on their average monthly bill, right? And so you see this, spread across here and you see, well, 309, everyone's bill is going down. Well, whose bill is going up? Is there a lopsidedness here with losing money? Are we not recovering our costs? The interesting thing is, is that, yes, there are a lot of customers that are going down because the duplex and triplex make up a majority of the customer distribution. They don't use a lot of water, so you think about that zero to 6,000 gallons. A duplex uses about 3,000 gallons per month per unit. There's 6,000 gallons. Okay, so yes, we're going to have a lot of bills going down a little bit, but the ones that are going up, they're going to have a much bigger increase, like really large complexes. So it kind of balances that out a little bit. And completely normal for a multifamily structure when you change lanes. especially with the current rate structure you have now having a minimum allowance and there's no class basis. So just a big change, a big change. Now, keep in mind that this is only for one year. If you were to implement these next year, you'd kind of have this teeter-totter of some folks going up a lot, some going down a little bit. But after that, any sort of revenue adjustment you make after that, 5%, it's just everything increasing by that 5%. You have this disparity of of different types of increases. So, you know, we've looked at this, and we were unable to do this before by not having the units be able to tell us, because in your memo, we broke out this graph. This is an aggregate graph. We broke out in the memo, hey, how are the units, the duplexes changing, just the duplexes, and how are the other ones changing as well? So that provides some better context of how the multifamily structures are being used or how it's impacting the different types of customer classes. So I think it's very telling. It just allows us to dive down deeper than where we were last month. Boy, that was it. Faster than I thought. Shorter than I thought. So a lot of information there. The graphs we did provide in the memo are complex and take a little bit to get oriented to. But we thought that that was probably the best way to show the distribution of the level of impact based on the size of the complex. And again, a fixed tiered multifamily structure does have its advantages, but there are also things of other consideration. And again, multifamily is a tough class.

I'll open it up for discussion and questions for Todd.

So. First off, I understand multifamily isn't the same as commercial. I would classify a hotel as commercial versus multifamily. Is that correct? So I don't remember in the initial study that all of these different tiers actually do to hotels in particular. They're a very large water user. They are.

They are. I believe in the last presentation, I had an example of a real hotel for commercial customers. I think I had a hotel in there. Because of commercial, that's a uniform rate structure. They've got a separate rate structure for them, and it's just uniform, dollar per thousand gallons, doesn't matter how much you use. for that exact point is they use a lot of water, but they're pretty consistent. Their demand pattern is not curved like you see these other classes.

So a hotel by doing that for commercial, it's probably a better way to recover the cost from them. So it's a uniform structure.

So we're only looking at these rate tiers for residential.

residential, single family, residential, and then the multifamily.

Single family, sometimes they're classified both as residential, but here we're saying single family being a standalone dwelling unit versus multifamily, which is the dwelling unit's share wall of some sort.

Other questions?

So maybe of staff, but somebody had contacted So this isn't the first tier great study. My understanding that the city's ever done.

Mayor, counselor, my understanding that this is the first tiered structure that we studied that we have done. We've had the old rate structure for well over four years.

So. Um? Maybe I misunderstood what he was telling me, but this has come up over the years before. And so I probably misunderstood, but each time council basically resisted going this route, but I don't know.

I don't know if anybody has any historical knowledge.

We've been here about 15 years, and neither of us have experience in this. Jolene?

I don't ever recall her name. We're studying.

but it sounds like the concept first was just on three when we first commissioned Raftelis.

So that's been discussed for a couple of years, but I don't think we've ever commissioned.

I think so. Yeah, maybe I can get something out of it. Appreciate the information, Todd. I feel like we just got a lecture from Pete. Very dense. Still trying to digest it. My question is, you know, I totally understand kind of the logic behind everything, pulling the levers. Somebody's got to pay for it. So if you reduce costs over here, it's got to be borne elsewhere. So I understand the logic of that. I guess I'm still struggling to, though, reconcile the fact, like I took my bill the last time you were in front of us with the proposed changes, and my bill that month would have gone from $35.98 to $32.34, so essentially $3.60 savings for somebody like me who was using less than the 6,000 gallons, I think, or right around the 6,000 gallons. But it looks like in this multifamily you know, uh, alternatives and stuff. Um, you know, I took the 24 unit example that you had there, um, with a one and a half inch meter average monthly use for the complex 92, you know, it was a second. Oh, the second graphic actually, uh, like an $80 difference between all the customers. It seemed like it was going to be a $5 increase per unit. customer. Yeah. So I think that's the one I'm talking about. 18 units. Yeah. So I took the 717. I'm using alternative two because that's the lowest one. So the 717 minus the, you know, 602, which is the existing, it's 115 difference divided by 24 units. So that's like a $4.79 increase for all of those tenants. Is that, am I correct in

Assuming the math is correct, yeah, it's going up. One thing to notice is that they're using about 110,000 gallons a month, so I bet you in the summertime they're using more and getting past that 140,000. So what you don't see here is what the profile of usage is.

If they stayed at the 110,000 each month, that bill would be lower, but it's probably the summer that would possibly kick it over.

Okay.

Again, I don't think this is a question you can answer for me, but I'm trying to decide, is the cost savings for folks like me in a single family residential unit without much usage, is the cost savings for somebody in my situation worth increasing the rates for somebody in a multifamily unit who probably is less able to weather financial circumstances than myself? that's what I'm having a hard time with is I love the fact that it would reduce costs for folks who don't use much water and live in a modest single family residential unit but I'm struggling with the fact that it would biometrics I'm looking at raise costs for people renting in a multifamily complex so again there's not even a question there but

That's what I'm doing. Yeah, we love it. Thank you. Make this easier for us. Your residential is going down, has nothing to do with multifamily going up.

We talked about cost proportionality between classes, whole cost of service. We figured out here's the cost we need to recover from residential. Here's the cost we need to recover from multifamily. And then we've got these costs. The rate structure is simply how are we going to get from residential? They're kind of independent. And the way that we calculated the cost we need to get from single family and multifamily. It's all looking at those demand patterns and the number of accounts by meter size and number of bills and all that stuff.

So the fact that your bill is going down in residential doesn't mean that we're taking the delta of that and pushing it on to multifamily. That's the important thing about cost of service is that if you didn't do that, be really easy to start. We'll just kind of put this cost over here and move this cost around over here with the cost service we delineate. We did the study.

We said we need to recover X dollars from residential and design the rates from that. We need to recover X dollars from multifamily to recover the rates to meet that cost.

So that kind of hinders this robbing Peter to pay Paul type thing of cross class subsidies. So

The fact that your bill is going down is really more a component of how much cost was allocated to residential. In fact, you're going to a tiered structure from the current structure you have, which based on the one you have, one for all classes, you've got a minimum allowance there. It's a big change. It's just a big change there. So I'm not sure if that helps.

It does help. Thank you. I don't know, I'm feeling especially slow. I don't know if all my colleagues totally get this, but.

This is like a rates classic in 20 minutes.

Todd, I think maybe, Vice Mayor, Mayor, if I could, I think maybe this is being confusing to folks as you talked about shifting costs. in the chart on multifamily, but you were talking about shifting costs within the multifamily customer class. That's correct. Yeah. And so did that confuse, is that where you thought it was shifting costs from multi to single family?

I guess I just don't understand how, you know, in this graphic that you've shown right here, it doesn't matter which alternative we go with, uh, it's raising costs from multifamily and, uh, So I guess my question is, knowing that they're kind of separate buckets, are we able to implement a tiered water rate structure for only single-family residential and not multifamily, or does it have to be an all-in-one?

You can certainly have a separate structure. That's the beauty of the cost services, that you've identified a cost based on your pricing objectives of affordability or commercial. It might be economic development or something. You can design whatever rate you want. That's the beauty. You have this cost from each of these buckets of classes. How do you want to recover the cost? It's still cost of service. You're still being cost-based, and that way you know that you're not over-recovering or under-recovering from a certain class. So you don't have to have a tiered structure for any class. You could have a uniform structure. You could have a flat charge and just charge people $50 a month and say, that's it.

2000 for a single family unit. Yes, that's her face now.

OK.

I just didn't want to use the wrong number when I asked the question, so I'm sure I didn't come up with this all on my own. So my question to you would be why would we not go? This is a duplex, so two units that's 4000 three units 6000. Why not 2000 allotted per unit 2000?

That's certainly an option. There are rate structures like that that scale based on the number of units you have. So if you had a zero to 2,000 gallons and then over 2,000, that was your rate structure. For a duplex, it would be zero to four, and then over four, for a tenplex, it would be zero to ten, then over ten. And that's certainly another rate structure that can be implemented on multifamily.

Do you have any idea? Sorry. Do you have any idea if we were to do a per unit structure, maybe similar rates as to the single unit, obviously different rules based on cost, but similar-ish, a per unit each rate step?

Would it be way more expensive or less? I'll surmise here, and I'll shoot from the hip a little bit, that if you were to set

If you were to set your tiers in multifamily on a per-unit basis, in theory, to where you recovered the same percentage of volume in the tiers for single-family, so let's say tier one in single-family covered 40% of volume. Take your first tier rate times 40% of the volume. If your other tier structure for multifamily recovered the same percentage and

both multifamily and single family had similar demands or similar cost characteristics, the rates would probably be very close. However, because you're doing this on a charging by meter size, there's only one meter size for the duplex. So when you divide the bill up into how much per unit, you're dividing the service charge by two or divide by three or whatever.

So the ultimate bill per unit is going to look lower than single family. spreading out the service charge cost across actions. So. That is that is a rate structure that's out there.

Or what we've got here. Based on the data that we have available to us, the assessor data was something that we pulled together. It's not something that the city has. It it takes it does take a much greater level of effort.

Implement so it's balancing administrative fees and all that stuff. Makes it somewhere you want to know.

At least two questions. First one is zooming out when we did the. Analysis. Cost we were trying to recover from each class. Are. that comes to multifamily are with this structure, are we trying to recover more than we have been recovering in the past? Or is it about the same as what we were recovering or less? Or where did that analysis land in terms of what we're currently recovering?

That's a great question. And we have the number.

I can't recall what it is, but I believe that the change was not significant. I mean, like, you know, greater than 10% or something.

baseline. We can get that information too. I mean, it's we've got the custom class. Because I think residential, I think single family and multifamily kind of moved a little bit in a similar direction.

If you look at that chart that I had up here earlier. This here.

I think it's the recent data. That chart there at the bottom you can see I believe multifamily two bars that are close together.

Yes, so they have similar demand characteristics, so that would infer perfect work that the costs are tracking similar where they need to be. But the delta between what you're recovering now to what you're getting, what you need to be recovering under cost service, I'm not sure the change we can give that to you. I don't want to quote a number because I might be completely wrong.

OK. That's helpful. My second question is it's probably. But it's a lot to look at, so I'm hoping you can just help me. It's it seemed like across with alternative to at least sort of across the entire multifamily class. that we would be looking at a change of plus or minus $5 per units, like per units bill. So some of them went up $80, but they had eight units in there, or they went up $200, but they've got a lot of units in there, right? So if I divide that equally across every tenant that would be in there, it seems to me that we're looking at about Some people are going to save up to $5 or a little more. Some people might pay up to $5 more or a little more. But it's sort of – that was the range. Nobody's bill is spiking $20 on a per-unit basis, right? So the shift is not that – it looks more dramatic for larger complexes because it goes up by hundreds of dollars, but it gets divided by more. Yeah. So it seemed like it was sort of a window of plus or minus five ish dollars for the bills in multifamily units.

That sounds about right. Because we didn't look, we didn't take these bars and then divide by the number of units.

Anecdotally, that makes sense. I would say then I'm comfortable with that type of shift in range. It's not super dramatic. I do, if we're not trying to recover more money from that class, though, I do also see some potential wisdom in just implementing in single family first and letting us try to sort that out. Because to me, like multifamily, they just have less control over how much water their complex is using. And so for somebody who wants to save money on their water bill, they only control a portion of that unless they have a separate irrigation tap but they can't necessarily control what the landscaping at their complex looks like and that sort of thing so like I if I want to save money on my water bill I just stop I just let my lawn look like it does right now but for folks in other complexes like they don't have that level of control and so it makes me a little reticent to you know saddle people with higher bills that they are not directly able to influence one way or another so I'm relatively comfortable with that range if we want to move forward with it, and I also would support like a phased implementation approach to this tiered structure as well. You said that better than me.

One of the benefits you brought up a good point. My math is correct in my head that there's not been much of a change in cost recovery between the current structure versus the new structure that transit you could do transition quite easily.

Yeah, since there's not a major gap that we're trying to fill there, then it's like no change in that class wouldn't necessarily leave us at some sort of dramatic deficit that should be analyzed to make sure it's all penciling out, right?

So when this all started in, I guess 23, if I'm understanding correctly, what was the goal? What are we trying to affect?

And I'm looking to staff more than... Mayor, Councilor, what we're trying to affect is making the community THE LOWER RATES FOR THE LOW WATER USERS MORE AFFORDABLE OR MAKING THEM AS AFFORDABLE AS POSSIBLE WHILE ENSURING THAT PEOPLE WHO HAVE A HIGH DEMAND, WHO HAVE LARGE TAPS INTO THE MAIN ARE PAYING FOR THAT LEVEL OF SERVICE THAT WE DO HAVE TO PROVIDE FOR THEM BY HAVING A ONE INCH, ONE AND A HALF, TWO INCH, THREE INCH METER. AND BEING ABLE TO, RIGHT NOW, THEIR SERVICE CHARGE IS $11 AND CHANGE. no matter what their tap sizes, but their demand on our system is not proportionate to that $11 if they have such a large tap. So this is putting it back in scale with their demand and their use.

Yeah, go ahead, Amber.

Is it fair to say in that scenario then people with the standard size taps are currently subsidizing the folks with larger taps. That's absolutely correct. Okay. So that's what we're trying to find balance in. Yeah.

Go ahead. I guess I see it as trying, well, I shouldn't say that.

So having had large taps,

I guess when I get the water bill at the hotel for $12,000 or $14,000 in a month, is that not enough?

Mayor, Councilor, because commercial is going to be a different class than single family or a multi-family, that's going to be a straight based off of consumption and somewhat on the tap size, but it's not going to be tiered in the same structure. But similarly to a residential or a multi-family, if your hotel has a three-inch tap, you have much more demand than the fab shop or the electrical shop that just has a couple bathrooms And so it is pushing that cost more proportionately to where the demand is.

So I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but you mentioned size of tabs. It's all relevant on multifamily. Whether you're talking about hotel or multifamily in the rate structure, because large complex, like way out east, or Blackmore, or some of the older ones, Quail Run, and whatever they're called, off of 15th, which I consider multifamily. Maybe that's not in the model, but Those have got fairly large taps, I'm guessing at least two inch to service that large of a facility. So I believe the conversation is relevant when it comes to that, so.

Mayor, Councilor, you're right. As you get to those larger complexes, they are going to be larger meters and these are costs, right? But also if you've got 24 or 40 service, units in that area that service charge is being divided by all of those units so ultimately i actually still think for those large units your per unit service cost is probably going to be in line with your regular residential would you Yeah, it depends on the size of the meter and how many units you have, but you're because it's divided among those. I think that it drops that per unit cost instead of having just that. One entity mindset, I guess.

I would just piggyback on what Krista said. You know, I think the the primary difference between what an apartment unit residential unit would use. In terms of domestic water usage, the way I think of it is that is water that households use for drinking, cooking, bathing, washing clothes, like living. Where the hotel, the water use there is one commercial, so there's a charge for that, and it's not that basic. I'm trying to think of the right word, and maybe you have that word, Todd, but it's not domestic water consumption, like the basic level of water consumption you need to survive, if you will. So usually rate analysts look at that very differently than they do for commercial customers, although it's kind of similar, right? You're still taking a shower at the hotel, but that's a one-off from what you expect just to live your day-to-day life in your home. I don't know if you have a better word for it. Retail. Retail. That's it. Retail versus sort of domestic home consumption.

Yeah.

Yes, I'm I'm probably looking at this all backwards, but. So we've increased the water rates 8%. We're going to take another 8%. At the beginning of next year. So to. Add insult to injury. going to start this tier. And at the same time, we increase the next 8%.

Mayor, Councillor, they are usually done at the same time. And one of the reasons that the typically done rate increases in December is that it doesn't hit at the same time that the irrigation irrigation season is going And so they do align. It doesn't mean that they have to align.

Yeah. The proposed rate structure that we put together replaces the next 8% increase. So there would not need to be any increases to rates if this schedule is adopted to replace the current schedule. That being said, if we try to do this, parse it out, single family first and multifamily later, we would have to reevaluate that and come back to you with what a multifamily right might look like.

As a flat rate. Yeah, this is the. Yes.

Yes, this was designed to recover the same amount of revenue as the proposed next 8% increase would have received. If we get Amber, then I'll get you, Brandi.

Yeah, I just want to add, just I think philosophically, this doesn't feel like a tack-on to me in addition to the rate increases that we've had to make because many people see their bills go down in this model. The people who see their bills go up are people who are irrigating heavily, predominantly. For the most part, other people who are using water for the day-to-day living in their home either see no real change or see some decrease, which I think reduces potentially some pressure on folks who are on fixed incomes and that sort of thing as we have tried to course correct on our rate model that we've been using and have had to make some relatively large increases. I think that this is a way to reduce pressure on the folks who probably have the least capacity to absorb higher water bills. And so, you know, again, I think that the, to me, it seems like the swings are relatively small for most users. I think the people who will see a significant increase will be people who are landscaping large lots. Yeah, brandy is going to bear most of this cost. So to me, to me, it really seems like the reduce some pressure in some areas where we've had to increase utility cost pressure in order to, to get our rates to where they need to be to maintain a system that we need to maintain. So I see it as a win for many of our users, not Every single one, as we've seen, there are some nuances and those costs go somewhere. But to me, they're being pulled predominantly away from people who are using water just for their personal uses and towards folks who are using it for what I would consider more like luxury purposes.

A couple questions. So just to see if Pat and I are on the same page, I'm going to hypothetical you. Hypothetically, Parkway, because I can't remember what it is right now. Parkway uses the exact same amount of gallons of water as pick an apartment complex the same price. Amount of gallons right now. Who's paying more for that exact same amount of water? People or the hotel? Or the apartment or the hotel right now?

Commercial rates. Under the existing structure?

Existing. Yeah, exactly the same. If you use the same amount of water, they'll pay the same, regardless of tap size or meter size or anything.

So they pay the exact same. So they're getting paid for water.

They're just using water and paying the exact same amount.

Whereas the tiered structure, maybe the people that just are living there will pay a little less, and the hotel might pay a little more. But they're unrelated, other than commercial, might pay a little more for the water.

or the car wash that uses all the water might actually pay for how much they're using rather than just whatever.

Kind of, sort of, yeah, maybe. Okay, so then my understanding right this second and where I think my brain is sitting, commercial I'm fine with, we were pretty much all fine with that last time. Single family, feeling it. My multifamily really lies in, right this minute, a duplex, two families. I am 100% comfortable with the fees for the taps and the sizes. I have nothing there. But if two families get 6,000 base water, I only get 2,000 base water. If I had two families, I would be four. So I really don't love the 80 people living here. We get 6,000. We have four, I'm sorry, two family people living here. They get six.

I don't love

So I still don't love how the multifamily is being figured out. Size of the pipe, no questions, don't care, do you? I don't have any objections to that. But the base amount of per month water for two versus, how many apartments are in an apartment complex? 50, maybe 12, I don't care, 20. Apartment complex of 20 versus duplex house of two. I don't love that they get the same amount. I would really like to see what the other options for that are if anybody else cares. But that's really where my discomfort is. Actually, right now it feels like I should live in a duplex. My water bill will be cheaper. I think that is the advantage of duplex living. I mean, if I will use more water in one house that counts as two, I use more water and my bill will be cheaper. Look at me. I'm going to call my house a duplex.

I support my water bill going up.

But, that's really where my brain is struggling with multifamily. I'm good with everything except that the duplex and the apartment complex are treated the same.

Mayor, counselor, I agree. As the engineer, I like to things to be precise and it's the imperfect nature of binning multifamily because you do have going from duplex up to however many units that are served on a single tap. Unfortunately, the nature of trying to make it work for the type of structure that we're proposing. How hard would it be for us to find out how many units are in per house? Like, is that like a really huge ask? Mayor, Councilor, this is something that we discussed at length and in conversations with Shane and Ethan and Todd, it is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours because it is not information that we have in our financial system. And then looking at the assessor's information, there is good information there, but being able to quality assure it, quality check it, making sure that it is accurate and people are getting the correct bill for how their system is tied. Let's say you have a large complex. It could have one building might have two separate And so we would actually have to go in and actually audit those types of things to be able to make sure that we, if we wanted to go with a per unit type of billing basis, it would be a very heavy lift administratively.

Other questions?

Okay. Where's council land? Lots of different things.

Please pass. So I'm going to be in. As it's been described from previous council members to me. We have looked at this issue in the past. Who I respect a great deal. It can be used. I'm not going there, but can be used as a tool, depending on how you look at it, is redistribute. I don't believe that's what we're doing. Fair analysis, but I'm just, I don't think we're being unfair to the residential folks at this point in time. In the end, on the multifamily, the tenant is going to end up paying more. Because most large apartment complexes include water, sewer and trash within those complexes. So The only way on property tax and those type of utilities that the landlord pays for is to increase rents.

So for me, it's a no. Other things on the table? I heard Amber say a couple things, Brandy. I like alternative two.

I think it's more fair than if it balances things out.

Feel that way too. If we're going to roll everything out at once, I think that I feel better about that further analysis and the adjustments that were made than I did when we initially talked about this. So if we want to roll the whole thing out, I could be convinced either way if we should go in a phased approach or if we should do it all at once. It does get a little wonky then. So that would mean single families would move to this. Multi-families would get the 8% increase theoretically, rate increase that would have to stay intact probably to keep up with alignment of things. So maybe that's more headache than it's worth.

I've been trying to formulate what my question is, but I think I landed on here. So, Ethan, I just kind of want to go back to clarify what you were saying about the rate increase. If I understood you correctly, this rate, and again, I'm kind of like the others, I'm mostly concerned about the multi-family. Is it, are you saying it would be this if there were any rate if there is a rate increase reflected in whatever option. And again, depending on the size of the. The service unit can be. Complex. That that would be the next rate increase in in January. Instead of the across the board, 8% Mr. Members Council.

Yes, the the rates that that wrapped house put together generate the same amount of revenue as the rates would have increase in January. These rates, if we adopt them as is, there would be no need to do a rate increase on top of that until the following year or the following rates setting schedule. Across the board, in all classes. I would add to that, if we do try to parse this out and phase it, I don't know if our existing rates recover the same amount of revenue as last year. post rates do. So we would have to work with Todd to determine what. Yes, I'm I'm I'm clear on how phase this approach to do just single family. And we would have to determine what a rate increase would be for the rest of the rate payers.

Yeah, yeah, that would be an interesting comparison to see this one with the 8% across the board versus implementing the tiered structure. So I guess my other question is, and I realize you get a bunch of numbers to fill the crunch there, but is it conceivable then that some of these classes of service could in January, if some are seeing an increase, some would see a decrease or no increase at all? If this is the new structure?

Mr. Mayor, members of council, members of the board. I would expect in January a lot of people will see decreases because all usage is very low. Especially in the tiered structures, you won't see people hit those higher tiers necessarily until it becomes summer season and start irrigating, outdoor use. And at that point, many of the customers, I think, Todd, more than that in single family.

And it's mainly speaking about the implementation of the new rate system, whatever it is, whether it's the 8% across the board or the...

If it's 8% across the board, then all rate payers would see an 8% increase on there.

But beginning implementation in January, if we were implementing this multi-tiered structure, then... Some may see an increase, some may see a decrease. Yes, OK, primarily depending on their tap size. Sure, sure, OK, thank you. That's the part that I was. Put together.

Case yeah, I have one last question.

I think one last question. So I'm going to say Blackmore to my area. Do they have a meter per building or a meter per entire facility? they have one bill or a bill per building that we're figuring these numbers on?

Mr. Mayor, members, council, it is different with almost every single apartment complex, how they are metered and how they are served. If they have separate buildings, some buildings have multiple services, some have one, even a fourplex. Some fourplexes have four services and four meters and some have one or some have two services and two meters that are split between two. So that's what Krista was referencing with, a very heavy lift for us to charge per unit.

Even per building, we can't even consider, I can't say, well, each building is pretty much a good comparison because there's one on each building because we have no idea at all.

It's all different. Every structure that was built was built a little different and served a little differently.

Life isn't easy. I mean, I knew you didn't have the answer, but I can't even come up with any way to try to help anyone in a multifamily.

You're on your own. Well, it sounds like to me, and anybody push back on it or tell me I'm just, other than Pat, it sounds like Pat's all out on it, but alternative to enroll it all at one time. Is that where I'm hearing? Seeing a couple of thumbs up, seeing some head shakes, Kyle.

I just, I feel like I do not understand it as much as I'd like to cast an informed vote. I mean, to Amber's point earlier, my goal with the tiered water rate structure would be to incentivize water conservation, to decrease bills for people that are using it for cooking, hygiene, basic life amenities, and then to increase it for people that have the very large yards, the fountain in the frame yard, whatever. My heartburn about this is that it seems, unless I'm misunderstanding still, it seems to increase. I don't see decreases for people living in multifamily units, which is the concern for me because people living in multifamily units. Yeah, there's actually a lot of decrease. It just depends on the number.

Everybody on the left-hand side of that. All the four who haven't. So that total number.

Okay, gotcha. So it's the people that live in the very large complexes that would see the increase?

Is that what it is? Okay. Kind of. So. It doesn't break out what size of units those are. It's just the total number of these.

Mayor, Councilor, in your work packet, there was some graphs that were separated out, the increases and decreases based off of unit size. I believe it's farther down. There's the appendix. Keep going. Right there.

Okay.

So I guess one point of clarity, I guess, is so if you go with Tier 2, which seems to be consensus, so the single family unit rates, depending on your usage, would most likely go down. And Ethan has mentioned that if you go with Tier 2, there's no 8% increase. So there's no free lunch. So who's paying the 8% if residential is going down?

Mayor, Councilor, we do have some residential going down, but we do have some residential going up. And Todd can speak to it a little bit better than you.

20,000 gallons, what's the demarcation?

There's two things. One is the cost we're assigning to each class, the total cost. Some of those classes go up and down, and then the how we're recovering it affects individual customers. So it's possible when you are switching the rate structure of the current one to the proposed for single family, there are going to be some customers that go down, but there's going to be customers that go up. Now, here's the other thing. We talk about customers going down, residential going down because they only use 3000 gallons of water and all that stuff.

Well, we have to consider the summertime too. So they might go down in winter time, but they're probably going to go up in the summertime, so that kind of offsets that a little bit, but overall they may not be seeing as much of an increase over 12 months because some months go down. That's why it's difficult to look at on a per bill basis and say, well, all of residential is going down.

Well, everyone uses a different amount of water, especially, you know, It's a little complex there. It's difficult without seeing all the data. It's difficult to know percentage people going down and up without seeing all the detail.

Thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Todd. Remind me, I took notes. Well, number one, your presentation that you gave to us, I think it was back on July 28th. That's where all my notes are from. I don't find, did we get that PowerPoint in

It is. I just I just actually was looking at it myself. It's on the website. Yeah, but I think it's over in the more tab on the right hand side.

OK, thank you. So the notes I made at that time was that. You know, 55% of bills are 4000 gallons or less, and any residential bills with less than 20,000 gallons a month in usage will decrease. Is that correct? Bills with less than 20,000 gallons of usage monthly will see a decrease.

No, I don't think that's correct.

Oh, okay.

Because I'll have to look back at what the rates are. But I know they're at least $5, and that's kind of what the top tier is in the existing rates. So I'd have to look.

Well, to me, it felt more straightforward with single-family residential, like To me, it's easier to tell like what's a modest amount of water usage for single family residential and what's luxurious. It gets a lot dicier with the multifamily and I think that's why I'm struggling so hard with it because thank you, Krista, for pointing out this appendix. Looking at the appendix, it essentially, again, apologies if I'm misreading this, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like for people that are living in multifamily complexes with two, three, four, five to eight, Eight units or less, your bill's actually going down with very few exceptions. But folks that are living in nine to 20 units or over 20 unit complexes, they seem to be experiencing the highest increases. Am I misreading that?

That's correct.

Okay. So I guess that's, you know, to me, I don't make much of a distinction between somebody living in a duplex or living in Quail Run. but it sounds like the folks living in Quail Run are going to have an increase where folks that are living in a fourplex are not. And so that's what I'm struggling with. To me, there isn't much difference between somebody living in a large apartment complex or living in a small one. And I guess that's my issue with the current proposal in front of us is it doesn't make that, it makes the distinction where I would not.

I did find the slide that you were referring to and I think he was accurate. This is from.

So uses you yeah uses above 20,000 will see an increase OK. Alright, OK, I didn't know my notes are not totally far. Yeah, but that was a number of families.

So, yeah, I mean, that one's much more clear for me. Like when I was doing my own analysis, I think I used 6,000 gallons even in the peak of summer when it's 95 out. Again, I'm not watering my front yard, so it's a little skewed. But I went back historically like five years. I never used anywhere close to 20,000 gallons. That's just anecdotal. That's just for me. I know that's not necessarily representative of every single family residential. But to me, 20,000 gallons feels luxury. Like it feels like you'd have to be watering some pretty big yards to get above that. Or you had a leak undetected. We had a leak, which happens. You got personal experience, Pat? So yeah, to me, that's just a lot easier for me to digest and consider the multifamily. I'm just still having a really hard time trying to figure out if that's fair and equitable for some people. It benefits, but again, the folks in the larger apartment complexes that don't necessarily use more water, they're just part of a larger facility. They're seeing an increase, and that's where I'm struggling.

I'm a liar, so I do have one more. And I think maybe Kyle and I are really close to the same page here. So what if we separated, pick a name, but what if we did, Google says small complex, like two to four, duplex, threeplex, fourplex, whatever, small.

You can go up to 10. I don't care. You guys pick that.

Versus large, like the Blackmores and Silver. And we do two separate scales for the smaller people versus the larger people. We know where the big apartment complexes are. If we just generalize, big complexes, right? Houses with lots of families in it kind of scenario. Is that something we could consider that would make this hurt less? in our opinions i mean the reality might be that it doesn't hurt that much which my other i'm sorry and i have another one and if i don't stop talking it doesn't count as two right is it 35 per bill or per person bill like per per apartment unit so it's okay so 31 big apartment complex above 35 is kind of a is it close to 35 or is it close to 350 what's above 35 look like Because if it's 10 complexes, that's $3.50. Yeah.

So that, yeah, we don't know the number of units that are within that dollar greater than 35 there.

How much above 35 is my question?

Oh, in terms of the dollar increase? I'd have to look.

Is it 350 or is it probably close to 35?

No, it's not close to 35. I just don't know what the number is, but I know it's great. Okay. That didn't solve my so that I'm sorry if you number of large complexes are offsetting many, many smaller complexes.

Going down OK, so I go back to can we separate the four plexus from the 30 plexus?

Go. Question Mr Mayor Members Council for Council and maybe for Todd,

Impossible. Flat rate is very common. Sometimes duplex is rolled into single family and it's just treated like single family.

They do operate fairly similar. Sometimes, so the uniform rate is completely normal. Sometimes multifamily is rolled into commercial, but I think there's enough of a distinction there to have it separated. Some utilities do the

working with the city of Westminster, Colorado, and they're doing that. So a uniform rate is perfectly fine because at the end of the day you're recovering that class cost of service. The rate structure is just merely how you getting it.

Right, but within that the rate structure gets folded into the rate structure.

That's not a mathematical thing of those policy objectives like conservation or essential use affordability and that sort of thing. But with a uniform rate, no matter what the rate is for multifamily, if you have a 6-inch meter and you have a 30-unit complex, the cost of that 6-inch meter is divided by 30. So even if their volume rates were a little bit higher, it still might come out to be a lower bill. It's inherently kind of affordable and more essential use affordability there. Uniform rate is just as applicable as tiered structure or per unit tier.

So if I heard you right, a flat rate is possible for multifamily.

Yeah, absolutely. We'd have to see the analysis, though.

The analysis, yeah.

Because I don't know if that could make everybody's bill.

Which goes to the phase part of it, yeah.

It would, those bars would crunch together a little bit. We'd see those would go down on the ends. We'd see more and more of those go up. I don't know if it'd be, that's what you'd expect. Because the average.

Pat, you had something. Oh, sorry. So, Mayor, in my opinion, you've got the votes for Tier 2. And because this is becoming circular. So, the only caveat would be that you hold staff accountable. Said there won't be the 8% because contained in the structure of Tier 2. So no coming back for spilled milk, if that's the case. It'd be an opinion. I'm still a no. But so that you can try to . Sorry.

OK.

you're kind of having some heartburn with it. So I would make the offer alternative to roll it out all at one time. If I have the votes for that. Oh, Mike's not here.

I mean, personally, I would like to see the third alternative of a flat structure for.

To see a. Okay.

Not to drag it out, but this is. a lot of information. So I guess I want more.

So what you're saying, if I'm wrong, tell me. So alternative two, but do a study on the flat rate for multifamily. Is that what you're saying?

Well, that would, it would be an alternative three. Alternative three, sorry. Like adding an additional alternative. I think we can get rid of alternative one.

Right.

But I think the difference between alternative two and alternative three Is the multifamily all in multifamily? Yeah, I don't think we need any further analysis on single family. My opinion.

The other options for multifamily.

Kyle, I know you were the one.

Yeah, I mean, I again, it's a lot of information. Seems kind of ironic to ask for more, but I certainly don't feel as informed as I. I'm always trying to be mindful that we don't pass policy that has unintended consequences. And that's my concern is that there's a lot of potential for unintended consequence here. I was running, you know, I think, uh, Brandy, you were trying to get earlier to what the increase would be to people living in multi. I mean, that exercise I was running through earlier figure two on page 11 of our packet, it kind of gives us that information for a 24 unit facility with a one and a half inch meter. average use of 5,000 gallons per unit, it would go up $115 for the 24-unit complex divided by 24 units is $479 a unit, which is a lot more than the 8% that they would get dinged with if we just rolled out the flat 8% increase. So, yeah, I mean, my bill would go down, but other people might see, other people in a multifamily unit would see a 10% to 15% increase, and I don't like that at all.

I don't even think my bill is going up that much. And again, I water in December.

You use more than 20,000 gallons?

I mean, I am not prepared to give you a number. But I did water in December. So my bill is going up and I deserve it. But I mean, if I live in an apartment, I don't have a yard. But I might have a swimming pool. But I'm hesitant to ask if a swimming pool is included in this water bill or if that's a separate water bill. I just don't even want to know at this point. I'm afraid to ask.

If I could jump in. I was going to ask you this anyway, but I wonder if the council would, if we go do additional analysis. I wonder if you are interested in us looking at some of the larger apartment complexes that have recreation and landscape elements on site. I wonder if If that is, you know, you think of two plexes, duplexes, twin plexes, three plexes, four plexes, very few of them in my mind that I can think of just off the top of my head really have outdoor amenities. But the larger complexes have many. They have landscaped recreation areas. Some of them have pools. And so maybe we could break a few examples out like that. Todd, do you think that would have worth for these folks to help differentiate between maybe some of the more affordable apartments at home versus those that are maybe more higher-end living.

We can certainly do that. Maybe that's an option to look at separate irrigation taps or something. It's just a matter, I don't know how we would sort out those large.

Because they don't all have irrigation taps.

Some of them might. We came across a couple that had. I'm not sure what they do, and I'm not familiar with the area, so I'd have to rely on Ethan to tell me.

Yeah, please. It's also very difficult, like we said, because every apartment is set up differently. It's very hard to compare apples to apples. Even if you're looking at the big complex, it may have 10 services serving four buildings versus an older apartment complex that might have one big service versus eight small ones. So apples to apples just gets very, very difficult.

there. Ethan, thank you to that point. Looking at this 12 unit graph. So is it possible that it's 120 unit complex that has 10 different tabs and it's being categorized as a 12 unit even though it's gonna you guys make this really tough to break out where there's multiple buildings and stuff but that like Kristen even said it's

That kind of stuff needs to be verified with the buildings and things because it might be a unit that's a garage.

Sometimes we found some of that. So you'd have to spot check that.

So that was very clear. So I just kind of talked a little bit with Chris on the side. And Chris, we had kind of talked, do we just hold off all of it and then look at, do an analysis on everything so we can get back about the multifamily? Would that be your suggestion?

That would be my suggestion.

Okay.

Yeah, go ahead. From Ethan's point, older construction, I'm guessing is totally a deal. floral gardens right here. I'm guessing that they may have two, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised they have one. And some of them like quail run. I need to have staff spinning their wheels trying to I DON'T KNOW IF THERE'S ANY RECORDS LIKE THAT OR YOU HAVE TO MANUALLY GO OUT TO BLACKMORE AND COUNT.

MAYOR, COUNSELOR, WE CAN LOOK AT A FEW OF THEM. IF WE LOOK AT ALL OF THEM, IT'S GOING TO TAKE MONTHS AND MONTHS AND MONTHS, BUT WE CAN LOOK AT A FEW KEY USERS. I can't remember my names right now, Gale Gardens, but look at a few of these and provide examples of how they're set up, whether they've got one meter, two meters, and then you'll be able to provide that information.

Yeah, I mean, I think I want to avoid getting us into a system where we've got to have that level of detail exist. I'm just wondering if we can most closely approximate the load on the system by dealing with putting a lot of kind of like weight into tap size that, you know, a fee service fee per tap size, and then some sort of per gallon usage after that. And then it just, if there's 24 units in there and they're, they're not getting kicked up into higher tiers when it's all these individuals like using that water essentially, you know, it's, I, I'm not sure, but to me, like, I don't want to load this down with tons of complication. But I agree with Kyle that these are really a lot of individuals' water use choices being lumped together in a lot of ways. And that is hard to make fair, I think.

So you're saying a top-sized structure

Yeah, rather than tiers going up, it's just, and maybe it includes zero water in the service charge, that it's just like, here's the fee to have anything, and then we bill for everything on top of that, and that way we don't have to try to differentiate of like, what's the baseline water usage, because we can't really know that, because we can't really know how many units are in there. So it's just like, service charge, that covers your tap, and the expenses associated with us dealing with that tap and that line. And then everything on top of that is just whatever per gallon basis we decide on.

So we have direction to go forward, do some more research, bring back some more complicated numbers and graphs.

Bring back any ideas you like. We're very open. And if you want to bring it back around December,

DIRECTOR DEWOLF. I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY.

I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY. DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF. I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF. I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY. DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY. DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. I THINK YOU MEANT JANUARY. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. I THINK In the future, anything on the grid, anything in future Council meetings, questions? I would like to see if we could put on the schedule.

If the rest of the Council is interested, I'd like to do a tour of the racetrack. It's one area that we don't pay much attention to. I've had a couple of people that are involved in races wanting us to go out and look, so. See if anybody has any interest in us doing a couple of field trips, three or four of us at a time. Yeah. The roundy speedway thingy.

Okay.

Council okay with that? It's an option if you want to do that. Sure. They can send out an email maybe, invite. Okay. Great. Thank you. Anything else on the agenda? All right, let's go ahead and go into council around the table. We'll start with you, Mike McIntosh.

I got to go to the firefighters ceremony today. We have 23 firefighters that were honored today. Got to see if one of mine gets his badge. He's a newbie. He has an additional plus. He speaks Portuguese, so that makes him even more special. But it was a neat ceremony. It was great to see the families of the firefighters. And another one of my friends was in the color guard, calling the color guard. I had to give him a bad time about being a Boy Scout. But it was great. And then... National Day of Service, which falls on September 11th. This year, JustServe is going to be doing a project on September 12th from 9 to noon. Encourage everybody to grab a neighbor or a friend and pick a spot in the city and do some cleanup. If there's somewhere in your neighborhood that you want to clean, we're going to have a group of people meeting up in the morning and going out to just going in and cleaning up their neighborhood. That's all I got.

Okay. Brandy. I had a public health meeting. It was a Thursday. So last week. And they did their community preparedness drill. I didn't ask if any of you guys attended to that. I think we all got an invite, but I wasn't here. So I wasn't there. I don't know if you were there, but apparently it went really well. And if the city has an anthrax issue, I think only one person died and it was the first person. They fixed it. Nobody else has to die. We are ready for anthrax. That was the gist of what I got, which according to the public county health officer, Dr. Dell, that's a really good number. And some of the people waiting in line got Narcan training scheduled. So go everybody. That's all I have for that. I do have an ask. I would like to know if we can schedule a work session. before I'm gone since I'm asking. That's if I get gone. Also vote for me so I don't get gone. I don't want to get gone, but if I get gone, I'd like it to start before I get gone. Anyway, e-bikes. I am hearing about it so much. I just really would like the word to not exist. Also, I mean e-bikes and all other devices that formerly or futurely may be called e-bikes.

I think it's on our agenda already.

I didn't see it. If I'm wrong, then Thanks for the last time.

I'm just following along with Kyle.

I was glancing and I didn't see it. Maybe I'm a dirty liar and I don't pay attention well. But if we could talk about it and whether or not we're waiting on the state or don't want to wait on the state or.

Well, if I could, Mayor. So I've been trying to keep you all updated by email. So I've sent a lot of information over the last few months and the chief has helped with that. We are, in fact, waiting on the state. We understand that they may legislate around this, and so for that reason, the city attorney, myself, and the chief have not brought you any changes to municipal code. If you would like a work session update, we can do that, and we can freshen the information that we previously provided, for sure. Waiting on the state for how long? Well, what we understand is, unless the chief wants to correct me, but we understand potential legislation in the upcoming session. And of course, that's a ways out, and it wouldn't take effect until July 1st, if they pass something. It would not take effect until July 1st of 2027. And I know that is a ways out. And we too, at staff level, are hearing concerns around the community that

Oh, hey, Chief.

As Madam City Manager said, the intent behind us waiting is kind of holding the cards close to our chest. We don't want to put something out in an ordinance and then have to walk that back or appeal it if the state comes out and says something different or if they have something in place. There have been several municipalities around the state that have put an ordinance in effect, but they're not dealing. They're smaller, more intimate municipalities, and it makes things a little easier to navigate that. we'd be advocating for, at least from where I sit, is something along the lines where you've got to wear helmets if you're under a certain age, you have to go through a bicycle or some type of safety class, things like that.

Yeah, go ahead, Kyle. I didn't mean to cut you off. I was just hoping that we are, you know, if our belief is that the state legislature is going to take it up in the next session, I would love for us to be advocating for the things that we'd like to see at a local level in the interim. to whatever extent, and I'm happy to testify in support of whatever we'd like to see, but I would like us to have a seat at the table because I do not have a ton of, you know, I have more faith this year than I did last year, but I just don't want to let the state legislature determine what that statute is going to look like all on their own. I would love to have the

So I guess the question is, do we want to have a conversation, put it on there to have a conversation about what the city has been doing or talking about? Or sounds like from the chief, you know, we don't want to, you know, go too far into the weeds on that waiting for the state legislature. But I agree with Kyle. It's certainly going to be something we definitely want to push for the legislature this year. And I do have some more confidence than I have in the last couple of years.

You know, if the Transportation Committee has looked at anything.

Yeah, Council, as I understand it, the Director of Wyoming Park or Pathways, I believe, brought something up to the legislature and the judiciary at some point, but I'm not entirely sure what that package looks like. I had some initial talking points that I poured to Ms. Jordan to share with the group on. kind of some of the things that they wanted to see as well. But what I wouldn't want us to do is jump down the road of putting things in place just as a air quotes but like a feel good ordinance to say hey you can't do this if we don't have the enforcement means to carry that out. So I want to make sure at least from where we sit in the enforcement side of this is that we do some have some intentionality behind this things that we can absolutely enforce. educate the public, educate those folks that are writing those implements, and make sure that they understand the consequence of their actions, if that makes sense. And to get folks that are calling this in to actually be willing participants in that judicial process as well, because oftentimes by the time we can get there, we don't witness it, and then those folks that are calling this in really just want us to drive through the area and they're doing it.

So we're chasing the wheels a little. wagging your finger at the kid.

So we really need to come up with a holistic approach and using our SROs that we have in the schools to educate throughout the year. And so internally, we've had conversations, what would this look like? And even kind of kicked around some ordinance and talked with Eric and his team a little bit about some of that other stuff as well. Happy to continue that conversation because it's frustrating for us as well.

Sorry, I don't mean to ask, but we understood that we would have, that the Judiciary Committee would receive some testimony on August 10th. Did you hear anything from them? Because I have not. I have not. Okay. So we thought Judiciary was going to have some folks advocating around this issue, but I'll go see if I can find whether that happened or not. I could share it with you all.

So why don't we make the recommendation that we'll have staff come and just give us a briefing Have that opportunity that's on the radar. That we are going to, you know, definitely have some type of advocacy, especially when the legislation comes, and that's going to be something we're going to push in the new year or so.

Police initiative starting tomorrow. Areas one and two is tomorrow, which means we'll be hearing about e-bikes tomorrow.

Quite a bit, I'm sure.

It's the main complaint in my area. Areas 3 and 4, Thursday the 27th. Areas 5 and 6 on the 28th. That's my last push. Chief, you and me, we'll talk e-bikes tomorrow, too.

Looking forward to it, Matt. Thank you. Matt, do you have anything tonight?

Patrick.

A couple of things. I'll just pass around the scorecard, Ed. IS A CASPER BOARD MEETING TODAY AND WE DID SOME DESTINATION MARKETING FUND DEALS, BUT THERE'S A THAT YOU PROBABLY WILL BE VERY INTERESTED IN. SO I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT. WE WANTED TO MENTION THANK YOU, BRANDY, FOR BRINGING UP MEETINGS WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, AND FRIDAY NIGHTS. I BROUGHT A FEW SCHEDULES OF THE CELTIC FESTIVAL, AND GOVERNOR SULLIVAN WILL BE SPEAKING AT NOON ON SATURDAY. I THINK EVERYTHING IS AT THE RAM COTA THIS YEAR. So, and then I was curious on, there's a joint minerals and appropriations meeting on the 28th. Williams speaking on our behalf. I didn't know if, The larger municipalities have been asked to weigh in.

So if William's taking care of everything. Do we know anything about?

I'm sorry, what was this in regards to, Pat? The Joint Minerals Business and Economic Development Committee plus the appropriations are jointly in particular about the business council. And this is basically the agenda for both.

Pat, your question was, is WEM doing anything? Is that what you said? Or do we, should CASPER looking at our WAM experts.

Yeah, it's not ringing any bells for me and it's been a while since we've gotten a legislative update from our regional representative from WAM. So yeah, sorry Pat, can't tell you.

From my standpoint, city manager's office has not had any contact from WAM with respect to testimony at this upcoming meeting.

Good. And usually Ashley will reach out and staff asking us to testify on certain things.

And then I've got to check, I guess, with the County Commission on the Amoco reuse appointment. They did make a recommendation on Will Reese. uh, to replace, uh, David. I haven't talked to, uh, I don't know if Jackie or any staff have reached out to Michelle over at the County Commission.

Not heard anything. I'll, uh, I need to get back to Casey, um, and I'll touch base with him and find out and I'll reach out to Jackie on it. But thank you for giving me a heads up on it.

Um, and then on the gaming, um, Next Tuesday at 3.30, you need to be at another meeting at 4 o'clock. So I can briefly be there, but I believe the other meeting is more important, tax revenue-wise.

Councilor Haskins, would you have any proposition to moving the meeting up by a half hour, if that works better for Councilor Sweeney? I think we're scheduled at, let me go double check before I misspeak. We're scheduled at 3.30, we can meet at three.

Can you see three as well? Yeah. Okay, I'll move that then and then I'll do that right now. Anything else, Pat? No, I think that's good enough.

Okay.

Amber. had LGBTQ advisory on Friday.

We spent both of that going over the bylaws, draft, some of my least favorite type of work to do. So it was a dry meeting, but we've made some progress on those, giving some consideration there to meeting frequency. It seems like kind of the workload of that committee is slower now that we really kind of have our processes down for MEI and some other things like that. So we're considering potentially going back on meeting frequency and meeting less often, but we're flushing out the bylaws right now. And then I want to draw public's attention to an opportunity for public input. with the MPO on Thursday, August 27th from 4.30 to 6.30. This is regarding the Amoco Road corridor study, looking at Amoco Road from Poplar Street to Bryanstock Trail. The open house will take place at Gruner Brothers on Thursday, this Thursday from 4.30 to 6.30. So you can come learn about that study and provide input on the study that will ultimately come before council for adoption.

If you time it right, you can leave. Get a beer? And go right up to the Fort Wyoming Center.

There you go.

The Police Department Area 3 and 4.

Look at that. We make an evening of it. Yeah.

Councilor Sweeney, to your earlier point, it was about joint appropriation and minerals committee this week.

So yeah, there was a email from Kyle Butterfield, our regional WAM rep, legislative rep. He sent it on August 3rd. It's definitely on their radar. They said they're going to be watching it, but I don't see a call to action. So I imagine they'll have a presence there. But yeah, it wasn't necessarily like rallying members to advocate one way or another. I think they're kind of taking a watch and see approach. Yeah. Thank you for calling out the PD area initiative meetings. As a reminder, those are from six to seven at the Ford Wyoming Center at the Three Trails Meeting Room. There was a memo from Liz on this topic in our information packet, but a number of us, including city staff, were at the kickoff event for the Wyoming Housing Network Goodwill Landing Affordable Housing Project last week. I think it was Wednesday. This is the, as a reminder, this is the four acres of land on the Mesa Dale Soul property behind Griner Ford that we sold about a year ago. Then had all the major stakeholders, including Goodwill Industries, Wells Fargo. The Collective Health Trust was there in their hands design team and Casper College. It was great to be able to have direct access to the people on the ground and their vision for the project. I'm really interested and hopeful in the building material. Another reminder, it's the high performance structural cellular concrete. And they essentially just fill it in between wooden molds. They're also working on a concept to manufacture panels of this material so that it can be deployed across the country for people to be able to kind of exponentially grow the capacity of that kind of work and not be just relying on this one team to provide this housing. There was a panel after that open house that included Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs. So it was cool to get his perspective as someone who's kind of become an ambassador for blue collar middle class philosophies and the more rural parts of the country. And the event capped with a $1 million grant from Wells Fargo to the housing network for the project. So that was cool to see. The governor was there, yeah. Beefy panel. I was reading the Cowboy State Daily article that published while we've been in this meeting. Apparently Chevron plans on bringing down the $11 million Wind turbines east of town with explosives this week. So I guess if you hear loud noises, feel vibrations on that side of town. Sounds like they just issued a press release and stuff, so notice that that's going on this week. And then calling it out for you, Pat, our September 1 packet. That agenda's huge, so I imagine our packet's going to be beefy. So bring your reading glasses and set aside a few hours. It's going to be a big one. That's all I got.

Just a couple items today, swearing in for three lateral officers, right, Chief? Sorry, that was good. Yes, Mayor. So the three, so one of them's from Louisiana. One's from Louisiana.

One is from Minnesota, Lakeville area. And the third is from Arizona.

So I think, what did you say? We're two down?

You will be, you think, two away from fully staffed before too long.

I believe it's October. I don't remember the date off the top of my head. Sweet. Actually, with conditionals, you could be full staff. Awesome.

Congratulations, Chief. Great work. And Officer Burns has been pushing that from his recruitment. So I think at this point he's showing off. I told him that on Monday.

We're grateful to have him. Absolutely. Thank you.

Thanks, Chief. And then I think that's all I got, actually. I thought I had a couple. That's it. Thanks, everyone. Oh, sorry. Janine had something.

See, I already forgot. I just have a quick question for you all, and it pertains in part well, not in part, but largely to a bill that the legislature is looking at. I think Appropriations is reviewing it, but you've all heard about the Consensus Revenue Block Grant Program that used to exist in Wyoming. Does that ring bells generally? I intended to possibly write a letter to our delegation saying that the city could benefit from that Consensus Revenue Block Grant Program if it were reinstated. But when I reviewed the bill earlier last week, I noted LSO is asking the committee to clarify what local governments are. Does it include special districts? And so I wondered, we don't have to talk about it quickly, but just by way of information, Wyoming has over 600 special districts, and I don't know how many of those are in Natrona County. program historically was limited to incorporated municipalities and the county. If we, if they broaden that to special districts, it will really basically water down the amount of funding that would be available to incorporated municipalities and the county. So I guess I generally would kind of like a little sentiment if I were to say that we think extending that to special districts is not in the spirit of the original program and would diminish the ability of that program to help cities, is that okay? Or am I going to be out on a limb with this council?

So I think they're taking that up.

Yeah, it's this week. And I didn't intend to testify on it.

It was more to... Lam is going to say something, it looks like, and County Commissioners Association.

I was more concerned about informing our local congregation because I think this bill will make the floor and If this committee is going to talk about it, I wanted our delegation to be informed. So I wasn't talking about testifying at appropriations, but just making sure our folks are lived in.

I don't know how this council feels. I mean, I saw a lot of problems with the current bill. Yeah. And it's pretty complicated, pretty quick. The Madden formula was... But it was a little complicated, but it worked. But our delegation is going to change pretty dramatically. So I don't know is it valuable. I think there's going to be a lot of moving parts. after November 3rd, and so I don't mean it. It's probably worth putting something out there, but will some of the outgoing legislators in the House give it any consideration? I don't know.

That's a good point. We do see a change in leadership on the horizon. I just, it could be controversial because I know that our fire district is struggling, right? And many of the districts are going to struggle if the property tax is cut. And yet, you know, with 600, you know, I don't know. It's going to water it downward. Yeah.

Hardly be any money for anybody. Plus, they're only talking 50 million.

Right. Right. So it's not a lot to split with municipalities and counties. So, okay. I think I'm comfortable with that.

Me too. Yeah.

And you send the letter to two groups.

It's not a bad idea.

Yeah, that is not a bad idea. Okay. Thank you for the quick feedback. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be out too far.

I too went to the swearing-in. I got there late. So it was amazing. Many of those young new firemen have little kids. So they are helping. And I'm sure the police department's the same thing. Our census data for our school districts.

Thanks, everybody. Have a great night. Thanks, Steph.