City Council - Regular Meeting

City Council order, would you please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. As required by section 84-1412, subsection A of the Nebraska statutes, Notice is hereby given that a copy of the Open Meeting Act is posted for your examination on the wall inside the door to the City Council Chambers. Before we have roll call, I'd like to welcome all of our guests to tonight's meeting. Could we have roll call, please?

George Klein?

Here.

Dean Shepherd?

Here.

Mark Graves? Here. Kevin Alexie?

Here.

Clay Anderson?

Here. Do we have a motion for approval of the agenda? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. I'll second that. Motion by Clay, seconded by Shane to approve the agenda. Could we have a roll call, please?

Oleksii?

Yes.

Anderson?

Yes.

Klein?

Yes.

Shepard?

Yes.

Grace?

Yes.

We have a motion for approval of the consent agenda.

I'll move to approve the consent agenda. Sorry.

Second that. Motion by Mark, seconded by Shane, to approve the Consent Agenda, which includes minutes for the City Council meeting held June 1st, the Monthly Treasurer's Report, the Monthly Water Report, Fire Department Membership Update. I'd like to note that there are 43 active members, so there is room for seven more. As we've had experience, they're certainly valuable. Special designated licenses have been administratively approved at the Chadron Chamber of Commerce, Band Zone, Bordeaux, and Railroad Park on July 9th, 16th, 23rd, and August 20th. Friday's 120 Bar and Grill, Favorite bar, Bean Broker Coffee House and Pub and Wild's Bar and Grill for the Fur Trade Community Festival in 100 and 200 blocks of West 2nd on July the 10th and 11th. Anyone have any questions about any of those items on the consent agenda? If not, could we have a roll call, please? Alexi yes Anderson yes fine yes Shepard yes, yes Okay I am be on the agenda as a public hearing on regarding a liquor license application for a retail Class C beer, wine, spirits, on and off sale liquor license for C's and B's LLC doing business as the Roost on Main located at 164 Main Street. We have Kind of a summary of it, the last one that I remember seeing was at least 20 pages long with a lot of detail about the background of the applicants. Does anyone here want to talk about your application? Please come up to the podium. Identify yourself and your address and tell us about what we're doing.

I'm Sheena Wright. We will be opening the roost on Main with approval from you guys with the liquor license. I moved here four years ago with my husband Brandon. He transferred with the Forest Service and I recently, well I worked at the hospital up until recently when I left to take over the roost and start the rebuild on that.

Okay, at the agenda meeting, the chief said that since you're buying an existing business, you could be operating, but have you started operating yet?

We have not because we're remodeling on the inside. We do have the temporary permit right now, but we haven't started selling anything because we're doing a remodel on the inside. We're cleaning a lot.

Good, good.

You listed your intended date to open as May 15th. Do you have a revised date?

Yeah, we're hoping for the 4th of July. We're just waiting on the bar top and some other things to come in.

Do you have like a bar of food? Yeah, it'll be a food. Kind of similar to the different menu.

No, it'll be more of a different menu. It'll be hot sandwiches to start. And then Brandon will be retiring from the Forest Service hopefully in the next three years. And then we'll revamp and add some things after that. And then we have three kids that will come and help in the summer. And our twins are seniors this year in high school. So the plan is to do a sports bar and food and watch them as they continue to go.

Well, I'm sure you're aware of it. We give a recommendation to the state and they make the final decision.

Yes, Inspector Woods is coming tomorrow to check us out.

And for this type of thing, we rely heavily upon the chief of police and his police officers if they have any comments that they care to air or...

Hello, how are you? I'm Rick Hickston, Chief of Police.

This is the first time we've met. Really? Yeah, I'm Rick Hickston, 125 Main Street, representing the Chatham Police Department. I have no comments. I don't know the new owners. I certainly welcome their business to our community and look forward to working with them, especially being neighbors down the block from them. So I'm sure we'll become acquainted.

Yeah.

All right.

Seen him in passing at the hospital, but other than that?

We're always at the hospital. Oh, yes, you were. Yep.

Anyone have any other questions?

Sounds positive. We need another heating establishment in town. Can only eat at so many places so many times before they get old.

It's nice to see the buildings filled up downtown. Good to have new owners.

Thanks. Thanks.

Excited to see what all you've done with the inside.

A lot. Torn some stuff down, cleaned the kitchen. It's been the most of it, actually.

Is there anyone else in the audience, in the chambers, that would care to address the application? This is a public hearing, and I failed to mention the time. It was 6.03. 6.03. 6.03.

Okay.

No one has any other comments. We'll close this public hearing at 6.07.

I'd introduce resolution, oh wait, no, we're good? Okay. I'd introduce resolution 2026-45 and move for its approval. I'll second.

Motion by Shane, second by Clay for Resolution 2026-45, which is to approve the liquor license application for retail Class C beer, wine, spirits on and off sale liquor license for C's and B's LLC doing business as a roost on Main at 164 Main Street. Since we just had the public hearing, we'll go right into roll call.

Olexi?

Yes.

Anderson?

Yes.

Klein?

Yes.

Shepard? Yes. Graves? Yes.

Okay. Next is presentation by Michael Holbeck from AMGLPC, the presentation of the audit for the 2024-2025 fiscal year. Good evening.

So I'm going to start with the bound audit report that you guys were handing out before the meeting. I'm not going to go through all of it. I'm just going to hit some of the highlights. But here are the page numbers I'm going through. If you have any questions, just go ahead and ask them. So we're going to start on page two, the independent auditors report. Underneath the opinions of paragraph, we had an unmodified opinion. It means everything was presented fairly, no material statements. That's the type of opinion that you want to have each year. Jumping back to page 11, on the bottom there, we have a list of some major capital asset events for the year. Just some of the bigger ones. We spent about $137,000 on some ADA improvements at the Plaza restroom. $309,000 for airport snow removal equipment, $210,000 on a loader for the street department, and then about $370,000 on some street improvements. The middle of page 12 has a table of the city's outstanding debt. So September 30th of 2025, the city had $3,279,000 of debt compared to $4,242,000 the year before that. So our debt decreased by about $964,000, or almost 22%. Jumping back to page 16, this would be the balance sheet for the governmental funds. They are on the accrued basis, but only showing current assets and their current liabilities. There's not going to be any long-term debt or capital assets. This would be debels, cash, current liabilities. The general fund had total assets of just under $4.4 million. Of that, about $3.7 million was actual cash. $377,000 of liabilities leaves about $3.8 million for fund balance or equity. Street Fund had just under $1.2 million of total assets. Just over $1.1 million of that was in cash reserves. Only $34,000 of liabilities, leaves $1,158,000 for fund balance. The Capital Projects Fund had $410,000 of assets. That was all cash, only $2,000 of liabilities. Economic Development Fund had $685,000 of total assets, $568,000 of that was cash, about $32,000 for liabilities. The Debt Service Fund had just over $1 million in assets, $925,000 of that was cash, only $1,400 of liabilities. The Quantic Center, about $1.1 million of total assets, $980,000 of cash, only had $2,500 of liabilities. And then those other governmental funds will be just the smaller ones, which include the community development, Kino, infrastructure, transportation, and the grants funds. They had total assets of $500,000, about $63,000 of liabilities. Page 18 is the revenue and expenses. The third line from the bottom shows the change in fund balance for the year after any operations and transfers. The general fund decreased $335,000. The street fund increased $134,000. Projects increased $216,000. Economic development increased $40,000. Debt service increased $156,000. The aquatic center increased $228,000. And those other funds decreased about $34,000. Looking back to page 20, this is the balance sheet for the utility funds. Again, these are on the accrual basis, but we also have the long-term debt and capital assets all reported here. Water Fund had total assets of just under $4.3 million. Of those, about $922,000 were in operating cash reserves. $251,000 of liabilities. There's just over $4 million in net position or equity. Then the Wastewater Fund had almost $4 million in total assets. Its cash reserves for operations were $1,627,000. Just over $1 million of liabilities. There's just under $3 million for equity. Page 21, revenue expenses for the utility funds. Again, that third line from the bottom shows the change in net position. That's basically, again, the net increase or decrease for the year. The water fund increased $52,000, and the wastewater fund decreased $202,000. On the wastewater, I'll point out halfway, the operating income loss, it did lose $88,000 from operations, and that's going to be due to depreciation. We had $329,000 of depreciation expense that created the loss. Page 22 is the cash flow statement. About halfway down, it's indented. It shows the increase and decrease in cash and cash equivalents. The water fund cash reserves increased to $158,000, and the wastewater fund decreased by about $79,000. I'm not really going to go into any detail on it, but I'll just point out that it's in there back on page 64 and 65. We do have some additional detail on his non-major governmental funds. And then right behind that on page 66, we do have the revenue and expenses for each general fund department. So the admin, police, fire, ambulance, communications, airport, library, parks and cemetery, and the swimming pool will all be broken down in some detail there.

Well, Michael, I spent a little time going through this this afternoon and I got back to this page and I had to highlight, um, the costs of the airport, the library, the parks and swimming, uh, cemetery and the swimming pool. Are those kind of in line with other communities?

Um, I'll answer that question. Okay. So yeah, so I'll address that here coming up here in a little bit, George. Any other questions on any of that so far? So in addition to the actual audit report, there's a couple letters to me in a minute. There's a two-page letter that says we don't have segregation of duties. We're never going to get rid of that comment. It's just not feasible to have enough accounting staff to have true segregation of duties. We do have quite a few staff, and we split up the duties the best that we can between those. There's always going to be stuff that just gets handled by one person too much. Like I said, it's not feasible for a city our size to have enough staff. You guys, as a council, just need to remain on the oversight. I think we've done a good job of that. Having George involved is a great resource. So just continue to help with the oversight. In addition to that, there is a four or five page letter. on the third page of that is where we would have any of our audit findings or recommendations so we had 10 findings or just suggestions i'm not gonna go through all those some of them are pretty minor number two were going through the capital assets and the payables i mean there's a lot of expenses that have been accrued back from the prior year i just want to point out if those expenses aren't incurred at 9 30 you don't need to report a liability because we did have a big adjustment for those on the next page You can jump down to number seven. We talked about this a year ago, the 2.5% fee on the credit card and debit card transactions. It's supposed to have gotten into effect on October 1 of 24, and it just took us a long time to get that implemented. And then September 25, I don't think it was implemented on actually all locations quite yet. Number eight, there was one employee that was underpaid by $0.33 an hour. We just want to make sure that we're following our pay scale on that. The last one, number 10, not all the departments are turning in the receipts timely. We should be trying to get all the cash into the city and deposited as timely as we can. It really shouldn't be sitting around at any different location.

So number nine there, there's one check that was not signed. It had no signatures, not just one?

Yeah, I don't believe it had any signatures on it.

But it went through.

But it went through. We should be signing all the checks. The bank should be not letting checks go through any signatures. It happens, but yeah. Any questions on any of that? The last thing I'll go over then is the little two page benchmarking that I had handed out prior to the meeting. So our firm does audits for roughly about 85 cities and villages across the state. We cover an entire state of all sizes. We're by far the largest municipal auditor in the state. We do close to about 30% of all the audits in the state for cities and villages. So what we do, since we have a lot of data to pull from and a lot of experience, is we just compare you to a different city or size. So we just pull data from all the cities at 3,000 to 10,000 will be the peer group you're in. there's 32 cities in that group we don't do all 32 but when we look at some of these other revenue items that will be all 32 that we're comparing you to when we look at the expenses it'll just be the ones that we actually have the data for that we do audits for so the average population in that group is 5 435 your population is just over 5200 so we're kind of right there with the average population the average valuation for a city in that group is 448 million On a per capita basis, it's 82 million per person in towns, 82,000. Our valuation is 322,000. On a per capita basis, it's just under 62,000. So our valuation is pretty low compared to other cities our size. So number one, the unrestricted net position compared to total net position basically tells us if the city has adequate resources to meet its day-to-day obligations. We look at the government-wide or the city as a whole. We recommend 35%. You guys are at 22% this year. I'm actually down just a little bit from 23% a year ago. And that's just due to the government activities, which are the general street tax-supported funds. On those ones, we recommend 25%, and you're at 16%. We just have a lot of restricted cash. We have a lot of assets, but it's a lot of restricted cash. We look at the street reserves, the debt service, economic development. We have a lot of cash, but it's all restricted. When we look into the actual detail for that general fund for where the unrestricted cash would be, we're in pretty good shape on that. So even though these percentages are lower, I'm not worried about it just because we do have so much cash in those other funds. For the business-type activities or the utility funds, we recommend 40%. We're just over that at 43%, so we're in good shape. Number two looks at the top three sources of revenue for just the governmental activities. Your biggest source of revenue is going to be sales tax. The average city year size is $426 of sales tax revenue per capita. We're at $471 this year, up from $455 a year ago. So we do have really good revenue. We're actually the 10th highest out of those 32 cities as far as sales tax revenue. And one of the few cities across the state that I've seen where your sales tax revenue actually went up this year. It's kind of been the trend statewide. Sales tax revenue was down for whatever reason. You guys actually had a little bit of an increase this year. Property taxes, the average is $286 per capita. We're at $260. A year ago, we were at 253. The state allocation, the average is $215. We're at $250 this year, up from $233 a year ago. Number three looks at the detail for the larger state allocations, so the highway allocation for the street funding. The typical city year size is $153 per capita. We're quite a bit below that at $132. Then the equalization, there's a formula. It's basically state aid that equalizes property taxes. There's a formula based on population, valuation, and then your own tax levy. So because our valuation is gonna be so much lower than the average city yard size and population, we do qualify for more aid. So the typical city of yours has to get $61 per capita. We're gonna get $108. So that kind of helps up, makes up for our shortfall in property taxes that we can't generate just because our valuation is so low. Number four looks at the governmental spending. And George, this will answer your question from earlier. So this excludes capital outlay and any debts, which is going to be the operating expenses. So the admin, the average is $90 per capita. We're at $147 this year, over $129 a year ago. Police, the average is $225 per capita. We're at $289 this year, over $279. And you guys are a little bit higher on the police. And honestly, my averages here are probably a little bit low. I haven't updated them for these last couple of years. The police costs have just gotten so much higher the last couple of years. It's a statewide deal. I mean, it's just hard to get staffing, so you're having to pay more, training more. So the police, we are a little bit above. We've always been a little bit above, but we're probably not that far above. Fire, the average is $70 per capita. We're at $18, up from $17 a year ago. Communications, the average is $70. We're at $107. The transit, the average is 10. We're at 38. The airport, the typical city year size will spend about $30 per capita. We're at 103. So this 103 doesn't account for any additional revenue. We do have a lot more revenue that comes into the airport. Three includes all the the cost the fuel purchases the operating cost that's all included in there So it looks like we're a lot higher than the average, but just because we just have a bigger airport We have a lot more traffic that goes through there than a lot of cities your size The library, the average is $60 per capita. We're at $73 this year, up from $71 a year ago, so a little bit higher there. The ambulance, the average is $15. We're at $9. The cemetery, the average is $60 per capita. We're at $73, up from $69 a year ago. And then the pool, the average is $30, and we're at $77. Not a lot of cities have it as nice as what you guys have here in town, so that's why we're so much higher on that spending. Did you have any additional questions on any of that, George, or did that kind of answer?

Yeah, we need to be more efficient.

So a lot of these governmental expenses Could some of these numbers be off by just the dynamics on how we're set up?

Yeah, I mean, your city's a lot, I mean, when you look at the population, it's pretty average. But you're a college town, and it's just a little bit of different dynamic than a lot of cities your size. That contributes to a lot of, like I said, the airport. We have a lot more traffic that goes through this airport. So this doesn't account for the additional revenue that we're generating on that. The swimming pool, there's not a lot of them that have an aquatic center like you, if any of them in this group, probably. So that's why we're going to be higher there. Like the parks and the library, those are going to be pretty similar across the state. But especially the airport and pool, you guys are going to be a little bit different. Number five, when we compare the outstanding general obligation debt to the valuation, basically tells us if we have too much debt. Anything below 3% is excellent. We're at 0.72, so we're in that excellent category. Number six, when we compare the unassigned fund balance in that general fund to the general fund expenditures, basically tells us in that general fund if we have adequate resources. We recommend 30%. You guys are at 33% this year. I'm down from 47% a year ago. So we did spend down the jar from cash over there. Number seven, we recommend having 12 months of operating expense reserved for the street fund. You guys are at 14.6. Just a little bit of an increase from a year ago. We're at 13.8. So good cash reserves in that street fund. Number eight looks at the property tax levies. So the... The average for the peer group for your general levy is $0.35. Our levy is about $0.40. The additional $0.05 for debt service is the average statewide. So they have a total levy of $0.40. We're at $0.40. So we're just a little bit above the total average levy. But the general levy will be the seventh highest out of those 32 just because our valuation is so much lower. We have to just have a higher tax levy to get those tax dollars. Number nine, we compare the net depreciable capital assets to the original cost. This will tell us how old the equipment and infrastructure is. So the lower these percentages get, the more important it is that we have cash reserves to maintain those assets and potentially replace those. So we recommend staying over 35%. For the government activities this year, you're just under 50%, and the business hyper is at 31.6%. So we will have just a little bit of an equipment replacement reserve suggested for the general, and then a pretty good reserve for the utility funds when we talk about those here in a little bit. Number 10 looks at the utility rates when we compare the net operating income versus the total operating revenue. We recommend a 15% return on those utility charges, generate cash for operations, debt service, equipment replacement. This year, your water fund was at 10.3%, which is the best it's been in the five years. You go back to 21, we were only at 2.2%. So we've seen some improvement every year on that. Even though we're below what I would recommend, we do have good cash reserves in that water fund, and we're still generating pretty good cash from operations. So I think those rates are probably okay. You always want to be watching those utility rates because when you get behind, it's hard to get caught up. So we always want to be watching those. Then the wastewater fund, again, we recommend 15%. This year was a negative 8.9%. A year ago it was negative 13.6%. 23 was the only year it was positive. We were at 0.84%. So that's one that we definitely want to keep an eye on. This negative return is just due to the depreciation. We have a lot of depreciation. We're basically just not building up reserves to replace those assets at the same rate that we're charging them off. The wastewater fund for you guys for operations, we have a really good cash reserve in that wastewater fund. So again, I'm not saying to increase those rates, but just keep an eye on those. Number 11 looks at the debt coverage ratio, which will tell us if our rates are set high and if it actually serves our debt. So this should be 1.5 or higher. The wastewater fund this year is 1.35, which was up from a year ago. We were at 1.1. So again, that would suggest a rate increase, but I'm not going to say we need to. We're pretty close on that. Number 12 looks at the cash reserves. For the general fund, we recommend an operating reserve of $2,355,000. The equivalent place reserve of $280,000 based on our calculation from number nine up above. So total reserves of just over $2.6 million. We've got $1.5 million in the general fund, which is down from about $2.2 million a year ago. We do have an additional million dollars that we've assigned for budget stabilization. The budget we'd adopt for 9-3-26 was going to spend down our general fund cash reserves by a million dollars if we'd spend everything. We typically spend well under our budget. So a year from now, we will have more than that 1.6 million in that general fund. If you'd add that back in, we'd have that operating reserve. The equipment replacement reserve, we'd basically have most of that. But you can see going back to like 22, we had over $3 million in that general fund. We have spent that down some over the years. We still have accurate reserves there, so it's just a matter of we just want to keep an eye on that. And if we would end up overspending or spending our cash reserves down to a million dollars each year, it wouldn't be too long and the general fund wouldn't be in very good shape. So we just want to make sure that we go through the budget process, that we try and get to a balanced budget in that general fund and then stick to that. and then the business type activities recommend 815 000 for operations 400 000 is restricted that would come off the books in a few years when you actually have the the wastewater debt paid off and about 2.6 million for equipment replacement so total reserves about 3.8 we're just under three million dollars The replacement reserve is going to be hard to meet. Not a lot of cities can actually meet that reserve. The important ones are going to be the operating and restricted. And between those, there's only 1.2 million. We're at 2.9. So we've got more than enough cash than what we need for operations and restricted. It's just that replacement reserve we don't have. You can see going back to 21 we had about 2.4 million of cash reserves We've added five hundred thousand to our cash reserves in the last five years So again, that's right said earlier Even though some of these other numbers would suggest a possible rate increase the fact that our cash reserves are in such good shape So overall We're in good shape really probably just that general fund that we have spent that down over the last few years i would work on as we go through this next cycle trying to have a somewhat of a balanced budget in that general fund just to maintain maintain those cash reserves that we've built any questions

I have a question on this last sheet, on number 10, the water, just so I understand it. So the state average is about 33% higher than what we're charging. Is that how I understand it?

Yeah, so the 15%, that's not an average. So some of these are our averages and some are just our recommendation. This 50% is just our recommendation from what we've seen from our experience. That's kind of where we should be. from other communities yeah based on other communities and just yeah so you're you're 10 yeah you're about two-thirds of what it should be right but with the cash reserves that we have in that waterfront and the fact that we're continuing to build those reserves yeah i'm really not worried about those because you talked about staying at staying up with the not getting um behind but it doesn't yeah it doesn't look like we need yeah so the water fund we've seen improvement there every year the wastewater is the one that we probably want to to keep an eye on and i just don't want to get to a point where we actually start losing cash from operations i don't think we're terribly close on that one the wastewater fund we just have a lot of debt service that we pay out of there We generated $200,000 of cash from operations. We did transfer $158,000 out of that into the capital projects. And your debt service is about $178,000, but that gets paid off here in a few years. With those cash reserves that we have there, I don't think a rate increase is necessary based on these numbers. But you just want to keep an eye on it. And if we do start losing cash from operations or we aren't generating enough cash, you'd want to look at that.

Thank you, Michael. Always a relief to have it done.

Going on to item E on the agenda. I'll introduce resolution 2026-46 and move for its approval. I'll second.

Motion by Kevin, seconded by Clay. Resolution 2026-46, which is to accept the audit for the 2024-25 fiscal year. Since Michael was just here and we had an opportunity to question him, I think we'll just go to roll call, please.

Alexi?

Yes.

Anderson?

Yes.

Klein?

Yes. Shepherd? Yes.

Graves?

Yes.

Okay. Item F on the agenda, John Reed from NNDC.

Hello, everybody.

Hello. One thing I've learned in my history of public speaking is never follow an audit report. It's hard to be. Anyway, I try to keep this month really short because I think I put you guys through the grinder last month. But starting off with business assistance, we are still working on, I really want to get our funds out and into the community working. And so we have two opportunities right now. And about three hours ago, I took a meeting with somebody who's expressing some interest in the Safeway. so we might be able to help with uh i mean that project's really big but we might be able to help with some remodel efforts and possibly some hiring and training efforts if that goes through that's a a long process but uh really good news on uh on that property. I'd sure like to see you get that back filled as soon as we possibly can. So we're also networking really well with our sister agencies and getting the word out that NNDC is available for a lot of resources and marketing through the programs that we have for our membership, as well as the community. And the message is pretty straightforward. We're ready to help you and your business grow. We've got the funds and we've got a network in place now that's communicating really well and working towards that end. So I'm really happy with the progress we're making in our networking efforts. Housing assistance. We had an organizational planning session last Thursday. This is to help plan for the Six Regions One Nebraska Housing Roadshow. They're going to bring that here to Chadron the end of July, early August. And it's basically, we went to this event last month in Gearing, and what they're doing now is they're taking it into local communities throughout the western Nebraska. There'll be a total of four. Chadron's going to be one of them. We're going to have the event at the Platte Valley Bank Conference Center they'll the people from six regions one Nebraska will come up and do their presentation to all the all the key players in the construction and and housing industry I imagine the city's gonna want to be involved in that as well because there's gonna be a lot of discussion about where the funding is coming from and the the the builders that are interested and have had success and can come and show. We actually attended an open house in Gordon on Saturday and Sunday for one of these projects that just finished up. Beautiful property, duplexes. They're building three more in Gordon over the next two years. They're really nice facilities, and I think they're gonna get them backfilled really quick. I think they're gonna sell pretty fast. Really, really nice properties. So I can't, I'm not in a position to take the lead on these efforts and it's not really, you know, completely within our wheelhouse anyway, but I really want to support the housing efforts that we're going to be making over the next couple years because I think it's key to our economic growth anyway. The new tab for housing resources is up on our website now, looks really good. These are just hot links to address some of the questions that we get, that my office gets from people looking for down payment assistance, relocation assistance, that kind of thing, that Make My Move website. website is also now included in that as a resource in that page we got this month alone we have we have acquired 28 new followers on our facebook page which is the most and we've had in a three-month period and we've done it just the last 15 days i think it has something to do with the fire in crawford because we were sharing a lot of information as that was going on but we got 28 new followers i checked that right before i came over today And the next thing I want to do, outside of our spotlight on the Good Life effort, which is, again, focusing on local businesses that we want to highlight that are also members, one of the other things that I really want to highlight bring to the fore is that we're going to have to rework our linkedin page and we only have one employee that's me but the page itself really if it looks good and really talks more about what we do right now it's just our header and a couple lines of of our location so we really need to use that resource a little better than we currently are. So that's gonna get updated. We'll use, once again, Golden Shovel Agency. They're great for that. I've gotten three calls already about Pizza Hut Classic. So I wanna say I think this is one of the best ideas. There's this guy in Ohio His name's Tim Sparks. He owns a company called the Dalen Corporation. And what he's doing is he's following behind Pizza Hut, closed about 200 locations nationwide over the last year. And what he's doing is going in behind and buying up the properties and converting them into like late 80s, early 90s style Pizza Hut. So you get the checkered tablecloths and the candles on the table, the salad bar, the pizza and pasta bar. My understanding is that place was hopping pre-COVID with the salad bar and the pizza pasta bar. And so, as you can imagine, he's probably got 100 towns knocking down his door trying to get him to come in and backfill the Pizza Hut. But I did have a conversation with him. I sent him the information on the property and just basically explained to him, this is a college town. If you open here, you won't be able to fill the need. People really want that option here. So I think that's the best good news for that location I've had since they closed. And then we're also, outside of the Safeway opportunity they got this afternoon, we're also working on, there's a model called Retail Strategies by this guy named Elliot Cook that develops a structured call and awareness process with companies that would specialize in backfilling those type of properties. I'm not 100% convinced that we'll see anything within the next year through this effort, but we've got to do something because that property's got to get backfilled. If anybody wants any information on it, just give me a holler, I can show it to you. Or if you want to stop by, I can show you what we're doing on that. But I just started that over about two weeks ago. So biggest thing that I've been working on since our last meeting was the revision of our bylaws. That was a very arduous process. Our bylaws hadn't been updated since 2016. There were some things that were out of date. There were some processes that were out of date, some things that we need to be doing, and some changes that needed to be made as far as disclosure and that kind of stuff. That's finally done. That's been sent to the board. They'll have it in hand for about two months before we have our next meeting at the end of July. And I'm really glad to have that off my desk. That was quite a process. The next step, we'll do the employee handbook and our loan processes. Outside of that, I think that's really all I got this month. Does anybody have any questions for me?

So about the Safeway building, have they been talking to the Safeway Corporation?

No, no. I'm under an NDA with Safeway, so there's not a whole lot I can say publicly, but I can tell you that they haven't really advertised the property very well, and I'm not 100% sure why that is. I don't know what their thought process is there. You really got to dig to find that listing. It's not listed in any regional commercial real estate clearinghouses or any of that stuff. It's not on Zillow. It's not on Redfin, it's not anywhere like that. They've got a broker in Denver that they're using right now. And for whatever reason, it's not real high profile. They haven't done anything. They're doing the same thing in Scott's Bluff. They had two stores down there. I think everybody knows this story. They closed one. The one that's closed is still closed. They're maintaining it, but they're not, again, they're not marketing it. They're not advertising it. I don't, I'm not 100% sure what their thought process is there. So my position is I take an opportunity like what came up this afternoon. I'm going to qualify the guy first. I want to make sure that I want to see his business plan. I want to make sure that what he's plan and do is viable and needed and that type of thing. Because I don't want to send him everybody that knocks on my door. I want to send them like the qualified, you know, the Glengarry leads, if you will. So hopefully I can get a little more engagement out of both Safeway's property management firm out of Boise and their real estate people out of Denver. Kind of, again, I'm not sure what they're thinking. So... Did that answer your question? Yeah, absolutely.

Can you say if the interested party is retail grocery or something else? No, it's on retail.

It would be retail grocery. And it is local, which I really want to. I'd really like to see somebody local go in there, too, because they're going to understand the market a little better. And I got some idea of what he's thinking of, but it's going to take a good sit down to make sure that it's qualified. Anything else?

I don't have anything. Thanks for coming. Yeah, thanks, everybody. Appreciate it. Thanks, John. Okay, Item G on our agenda.

I'll introduce Resolution 2026-47 and move for its approval.

Second that.

Motion by Mark, seconded by Shane for Resolution 2026-47, which is to allow the Chatham Chamber of Commerce to use Railroad Park for their 2026 Bands on Bordeaux, which will be the four dates that we mentioned in the approved special designated licenses, in addition, August 20th, which is kind of the welcome back to school for Chatham State College night. So, anyone have any comments? If not, do we have a roll call, please?

Alexi?

Yes.

Anderson?

Yes.

Klein?

Yes. Shepard? Yes.

Grace?

Yes. I'd like to introduce resolution 2026-48 and move for its approval.

I'll second.

Motion by Shane, second by Kevin, which is resolution 2026-48, which is to approve the request for a proposal for an I-11 dispatch furniture replacement for the communications department's unauthorized notice of bidder, vendors. Chief, front and center. Oh, okay. Gail, front and center.

Yes, we're looking to replace our dispatch console.

Introduce yourself first. Say it loudly. Speak up. My wife is at home and she wants to hear you.

I'm Gail Cattell and I'm... here to try to sell you a dispatch desk. Communications supervisor of course for the city and as well as the county. So anyway, our dispatch desk currently, and you call it a desk but it's a, 16 foot long by 8 feet wide piece of equipment really for us. We don't call it a desk, we call it a console because it contains, what does it have? Seven computers, 16 monitors sitting on it. um two operating stations uh one for each dispatcher that usually just one is working up but um last week there's quite a bit of time that two were on it um the old one's kind of long in the tooth i think it's 20 approaching 25 years old i'm not exactly sure what year it was put in and um some of the material the desktop is blue it's wearing through in places and showing the white underlayment of whatever material that is um there's some upholstered parts on the side that upholstery is coming in threaded and falling apart and A big thing about it, we can't clean it and control the dust underneath because there are so many cables turning haphazardly right and left and up and down. And our computers sit in there too and they breathe a lot of dust, so we're kind of concerned about that. the newer desks that have storage consoles for the computers, cable runs for all the various cables that go to the monitors. And we're just looking to get something nice with an entire surface that raises up and down as opposed to a small one right in front.

So have you seen other installations?

Yes.

Other communities?

ours is similar but it's old the newer consoles completely surround the operator in a u-shaped form and we kind of yeah we're kind of like in a c not a u um

They're probably in a more square room where yours is a rectangle.

Yeah, we want to go to two single units as opposed to ours is one double unit. We also would have trouble servicing one unit or one half part of the desk have you to do flooring, painting, or whatever. There's so much equipment on it that has to all be moved. And Moving the equipment's the easy part. You have to maintain at least one working dispatch station at all times.

So in the normal building process, the owner usually comes up with the idea and then has an architect or engineer kind of design it to what they think they want, and then it goes out to bid. But we're going to skip that and jump to what vendors believe that works the best. In going over the information, I read this, quite a bit of it, on page four there it says, procure the highest quality, and to me that's kind of subjective. I would replace that with high quality. You know, the highest is, We have plenty of money, so we want really, really nice stuff. That'd be my interpretation. I would suggest that when we send that out, we replace highest with high quality.

That would be absolutely fine. It's just we don't want any,

I don't know how other individuals view that.

We want it to be nice and look nice, of course, and be durable for the main thing is it has to be durable.

Yeah, durability is more important than appearance.

You can't say we didn't get our money's worth out of the existing console because it's been running for close to 25 years.

And you said the county is going to pay for part of it? Is that right?

Well, county will pay the equipment part. We'll have to have technicians come in and create a temporary dispatch in our back room in order to change the desks out. As we do that, we'll replace the flooring too. We have a threadbare carpet that's been in there just as long as the dispatch desk. And carpet really doesn't last 25 years. It's at the point where it's threadbare and next to nothing left.

Are you going to put something other than carpet on underneath then or?

No, we're thinking of doing heavy duty synthetic tile under it.

Well, this is in the approved capital budget. Anyway, and if it helps facilitate the dispatch of our police officers and fire personnel, I think it's well worth the...

Appreciate that. Just to help Gail out a little bit, in reference to your question in reference to flooring, I've already ordered the flooring for Morford's here locally. I have price quotes. I've already got that built within my building maintenance already this year, and I'm going to expend that out of this year's budget. So it's already in the budget for the flooring. Gail is right. This is a pretty big project. We're going to move our dispatch center for a few days and actually collaborate with all the entities that get the flooring in within a certain amount of time and put the desk in and take the old one out. So it has to be done within about a two, three day period in law and coordination. So it's a big deal because we've got to move the 911 center to the back room, all the computers to the back room to have operations up and running 24-7. So this will be good. This is something that's going to last us another 20 years probably, just like this desk did. It's just that time. That desk, that console to them is what a patrol car is to me. When I get a patrol car that's got 180,000 miles on it, it's time to replace it. It's kind of where this desk is at. and we appreciate the fact that it's already in budget and that we're looking to do this and get this done for the community. It'll serve us well for a long time.

The carpet's at 200,000. The carpet's rough.

It's rough. But we'll get that fixed up right.

These workstations have kind of grown over time, is that correct? Like the number of displays, the number of computers?

Yeah, you used to have one or two displays You had a radio and another one that ran your record keeping system, whatever that was. Some of it was file card clear back when this desk started. They were feeding file cards into typewriters and typing it out and then filing it.

30 years ago.

Now we're We've got, like I said, there's three computers on each station and then we share one between the two stations to run the displays on the wall. And on top of that there's eight monitors for each station. And it's so wide that the desk, the part that moves up and down, if you let it down below the height of the rest of the stationary table, then the edges of the monitor stands will catch that and they'll start tipping the monitors in. So if you're not watching what you're doing, you're gonna tip the monitors over on each other. That would be bad.

Link, thanks for your presentation. All right.

Thank you.

Okay. With that being said, can we have a roll call, please?

Alexi? Yes. Anderson?

Yes.

Klein? Yes. Shepard? Yes. Grace? Yes.

Moving on to item I.

I'll introduce resolution 2026-49 and move for its approval.

I'll second that.

Motion by Shane, seconded by Mark for resolution 2026-49, which is to approve change order number one to Fuller Construction Company for the 6th and Maple Street repair project. And Janet has some information to give us.

So this change order also goes with the next resolution, which is the final pay estimate for 6th and Maple and as Katie and I were talking about this when this came in that Dave Coe would not have done a change order here because the quantities are listed within the project anyway, and it would he would have just adjusted the quantities and final doubt on the final pay estimate but with what MC Schaaf did was they took the quantities, decreased them, so you have a change order that is a decrease of $2192.38, and then you'll see that decrease change order number in the final pay estimate, which is your next pay item, which decreases the contract document by that same number, 2192, for the to pay out the final bill that we owe Fuller. And what it basically is is the sod that was placed in that yard and the retaining wall that was finished up and reconnecting some sprinkler heads. So the project is complete.

Nice to see a change order in the opposite direction for a change.

That is nice. That is correct. I agree.

Okay, any other questions or comments about that? Could we have a roll call, please?

Olexi? Yes. Anderson?

Yes.

Klein? Yes. Shepard?

Yes.

Graves?

Yes.

Okay, item J. I'll introduce resolution 2026-50 and move for its approval.

I'll second that. Motion by Kevin, seconded by Clay to resolution 2026-50, which is to approve payment application number three final to Fuller Construction Company, LLC, for the 6th and Maple Repair Project, and that's in the amount of $3,622.48.

So as I previously stated, with that change order, we now can pay out the final that we owe Fuller Construction for this project in the amount of $3,622. It's all done. So I would suggest that we go ahead and pay it.

Anyone have any questions? If not, could I have a roll call, please? Thank you. Yep. Thank you.

Alexi?

Yes.

Anderson? Yes. Klein? Yes. Shepard? Yes. Grace?

Yes.

And I can make a comment about that project. We hated to spend the money, but 6th Street is so much better than it was when it got redone here like five years ago. That grade was not correct. Much better intersection. Yeah. Okay.

Item number K. Introduce resolution 2026-51, move for its approval. I'll second.

Motion by Shane, seconded by Kevin for resolution 2026-51, which is to approve plans of specification for the Chadron East Tank interior recoding and authorized notice to bidders. So...

Torrey Zuber, utility superintendent for the city, 1590 South Maple. We're looking to go out to bid again on July 14th for trying to get a new company to come in and Again, repair stuff inside that east tank. We've had some issues with that in the last few years, and we're hoping to get somebody in to get it fixed right, be done with it for a while.

I don't have the plan specifications in my book because it's rather thick. We elected not to print it out, but... Um, could you tell us kind of what the problems are with it? Because we just had that work done.

Um, yeah, recently we had some touch-ups done, um, with some coatings on the inside on the walls, a little bit on the floor. Um, we've had some, some, I don't know what you call it, degrading of the paint and stuff inside that we've had to redo. Um, then we also found this last round um we've got some structural members on for the roof that are degraded with some rusting and stuff like that um that we're concerned about a little bit um that we need to get addressed and taken care of so it can last another 20 25 repairs on that

support for the, you said the roof.

Yeah, it's the roof members where the roof is all attached. It's kind of a web.

And that wasn't evident when we just had that worked on a few years ago?

That was not noticed at that time. So now that we've noticed it, we're going to correct it.

So what percentage, we've had this done before, so what percentage needs to be redone? Is it like a complete revamp of the interior of it? Is it the spots of it?

So yeah, if they're going to do the roof, we've been told to, they might as well just basically redo the interior completely and be done with it that way. So... Yeah, unfortunately that's where we've come to, so. There's no real good way around it, but hopefully we can get things corrected and go from there.

And a project like this cannot be done in cold weather, right?

Correct. It has to be warmer weather and stuff for the paint and everything.

There's a good chance that this might be a 2027 project?

Could be a possibility that, yes.

But it's still usable? Yes, it's still usable.

We have it back online. It's online now. Yep.

Anyone have any other questions for Tori? If not, could you have roll call, please?

Alexi?

Yes.

Anderson? Yes. Thank you. Klein?

Yes.

Stepper?

Yes.

Grace? Yes.

At this time, we're going to review Resolution 2026-40 regarding firework restrictions. Our fire chief is here, and I ask him to come and tell us what the fire department views our conditions are.

Mr. Mayor, Brandon Martins, fire chief. I know last council we talked about doing the third and the fourth for the 10 to midnight for approval and then allow the sell during the full term. Obviously some events have changed in the last week kind of things have Happened just west of us. I would like to, you know, currently we have the county's support as far as shutting the burn ban down. No fireworks allowed in there. Sioux County is going to do the same suit. So our neighbors are doing the same things. If we do something in the city of Shattering, it puts kind of an island and it's going to make it more difficult for the law enforcement and the sheriffs to figure out how we're going to facilitate that. So it would be easier on my end and unfortunately I'm sure it's not what the vendors would like to hear but if we just be done with fireworks this year. The fire that happened over at the Crawford area that was a one lightning bolt that hit a post and that knocked the staples out and had Multiple starts off of that one lightning bolt and that's why it took off so fast multiple other things added to that obviously rugged terrain wind a lot of things like that, but We've seen what one start can do And I do appreciate Mike Jancic coming in and I know this with the vendors there's there's some questions, but it would be a If we could just not do the sale of it, it would probably be the easiest instead of doing sale and then not allowing fireworks, because you're still going to just encourage some people to come through or they're going to take the fireworks somewhere else. So I believe in what I was talking with prior with Katie, it does say that the city can adopt and have the regulate the sale of it as well.

So we would have a city ordinance allows for the banning of use and or sales due to weather hazard conditions. so we can do that without what you should do is amend the resolution you've already approved amend the resolution to ban the usage and sale of fireworks for the 2026 season that's what's been done in harrison sioux county's talking about it crawford meets wednesday to talk about what they're doing so they those counties banned both sale and use we No, we don't have this. We don't have sales in Sioux County. Oh, okay. We come over or go somewhere. We go to Wyoming. It looks like everybody's shutting it down, George, especially with the incident that's 40,000 acres have burned since last Tuesday.

Yeah, how do I come up here and say, yeah, let's shoot them off? I mean, I'm not being mean to Mike, but I mean... I mean, the Fellers are still going to be out there. I mean, these teams are going to be in town for another two weeks. Heck, if we catch another start, then those guys are going to help go out to those fires, too. So there's a chance that that team might not leave for a little while, too. And I know Brandon Wright here might have some more input on that. But as far as I'm concerned, I know this puts Mike in a tough spot, and I know he's got some fireworks here, and I do apologize. I know we kind of had some discussion prior, and we were trying to meet everything to try and keep things happy. But like I said at the last council meeting, we were going to try and revisit, and we revisited, and there were some large events that unfolded.

The belief is it's June 15th and we're in August 15th fire conditions right now on a dry year.

Generally, this is when we would start our fire season. This is generally mid-June is when we're going to start. Two weeks prior to that, mid-May, fire school is usually kind of a wet time frame. We had the Ashpole fire that was very heavy activity at the same time as the Grizzly Bear. The same night as the South Fork Fire, the fellers went out to three different starts from those different. The boys went out and knocked out the small ones, and then we tried to do what we could on that one, which here we are.

On a, on a wet year under say the best conditions, uh, you mean how many fires are we looking at from fireworks or fires?

I'd say you're going to have two or three dumpsters, um, for sure each year. Um, and then I would say there's probably one or two, um, Roman candle, um, or some kind of, but we've seen the sticks get knocked over and go into houses. I mean, but that's, you know, all accidental. But I mean, I would say on average through the fireworks, you're going to probably have a couple, two, three dumpsters and maybe one or two related.

You and I talked about it. We'll take all the golden candles off. Yep. Yeah, for sure. Or anything that's.

Yep. And Mike's been very supportive of being able to, the fire marshals is only going to give you a list of so much that they want to go as a state level to ban. And then locally we can revisit that too.

I guess my concern in asking that is, and you're kind of hinting at it, but the resources could be elsewhere. You, these guys, people out fighting right now, could be needed elsewhere come July. Oh, yeah. Still in our area, but we're creating potentially...

Two fronts. Yeah. The ICP at the college for the South Fork has been a blessing as far as being able to get some more local knowledge and be able to go over there. Yeah, those teams, when they come in, They're going to be able to stay for an extended period of time, and they're going to downgress or degress that fire and try and move it down to, there's different levels of fire. Five would be a local, four would be a little bit larger, bringing resources in, and three, and they keep going from there. But anyway, they're going to try and get that fire down to hopefully a four level towards the end of this weekend, first of next week. We'll see how things go. If you pull up the map, the black is those containment lines. There's still a lot of red, a lot of hot, a lot of, moving parts the next couple of days, obviously red flight effects. So there's still a possibility that things can move around. I know The Harrison boys, I don't think they've really left a whole lot off that fire. Crawford, similar.

We haven't been off it yet.

No. And Chadron went over there for structure protection on top of the other things that were going on. I know the county rolled over there. I remember I talked to a county commissioner, and I said, I need four motor graders to go to the golf course and start pushing dirt right there by golf course. Those are the conditions that we're in right now. And in another two weeks, I can't say it's going to get better.

I think I saw your personal truck for a week down at the fire department. Yeah. That means you were not at home.

So do we need a, if we want to do that, a simple motion?

I think I'd make a motion to amend your resolution from usage for those two days to a ban, an absolute ban, of the sale and usage of fireworks for the 2026 season.

Has everyone had an opportunity to speak?

Yeah, I don't know what you guys want to hear. If you've got any questions, I mean, Brandon and I did talk about that if we do continue this, and we do shut it down to a couple days of shooting, that we would take like Roman candles or bottle rockets or anything that we felt was going to be a danger off the shelf. But, I mean, I can't control what people do either. You know. I mean, I would like to see what we originally talked about, the third and the fourth. But I understand totally what Brandon's talking about, too. I guess it kind of leaves it up to you guys. It kind of hurts, but I'll live.

I appreciate that, but... I would rather be safe than sorry. I would like to make a motion to amend resolution number 2026-40 which allows discharge of fireworks on July 3rd and 4th of 2026 to include ban of sale of fireworks in 2026 and not allow any shooting of fireworks during the year. the normal firework season. I'll second that motion. Okay, any discussion about it? If not, could we have a roll call, please?

Alexi?

Yes.

Anderson?

Yes.

Klein?

Yes.

Shepard?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay. Now we're on item M. Ordinance number 1448 is before the council for its first reading. Please read ordinance number 1448 by title.

An ordinance to amend chapter 16 traffic regulations, article four rules of the road of the municipal code of the city of Shatter, Nebraska to enact section 16 dash four 21 engine breaks, Jake breaks in section 16 dash four 22 violation to repeal all ordinances and parts of ordinances and conflict therewith directing the publication of the ordinance and prescribing the time when this ordinance shall be in full force and effect.

Okay, discussion. I would think that we'd have some people that want to give their opinion.

Well, I would like to report on what I was asked to do at the last meeting, which was to contact the Nebraska Department of Roads about grade changes on both Highway 20 and Highway 385. And so you have in your packets what engineer Doug Hovitt sent to me. And the grade coming down the hill on 385, he broke into three different sections. 10th to 8th is a 1.4% grade. 8th to 6th is a 4.1% grade. And 6th to Highway 20 is a 3.5% grade. So none of coming down that hill is greater than a 5%. In fact, the place that is the most change in elevation is on Highway 20. and that is between Pine and Oak, and that's a 4.5% grade change. So everything within the corporate city limits is less than a 5% grade, which is what basically our conversation was about at the last meeting. And then he goes on to elaborate about um, what other communities do and federally mandated law about Jake breaks. So that little bit of conversation there that was not what I asked for, but he gave so good information.

Yeah, thanks for doing that, Janet. No problem.

And then also, I don't know, Katie, you put it in their information about the planning commission two years ago, the research that they did, and then they came back with a recommendation to the council that their research they recommended to regulate jake breaks at that time in March of 24. Thank you.

Anyone else want to speak up about it? The information from Doug Hobart was very good. Informative in reading it.

if no one else was a comment about it so well so like so this is there uh like as far as jake breaks if if it does go in a rule goes into effect there's are there like fines associated with this right now Or is that?

It's in the ordinance. It references our fee schedule.

Oh, yeah. Okay. So we'll just use that. Okay.

Typically, the court will decide on the fine for an initial violation and set it, and then we'll let the PD know, and they can write it down. We'll probably make it waverable.

It's not an automatic amount. It's always set by the judge.

Set by the court.

Yes.

Generally what the judge will do, mayor and council, is we'll talk to him about getting a waiver and he'll let us know. It could be a $50, it could be a $10. But with that, just realize it's going to be steep because court costs are increasing as of July 1. To 95 dollars?

Something like that.

Yeah, per ticket. It doesn't matter what you get rid of it for. So you get a $10 headlight violation, you're going to throw $95 on it just for filing.

I would believe this would probably be a $50 to $100 fine, just my guess.

Yeah. So it'll be enough, whatever the judge decides to tell us. It'll be enough to make the charge.

The court calls will undoubtedly be more than the fine. Yeah. In most cases.

Yeah, but the judge will set that, and we'll work with it. Yeah, yeah. You guys choose to pass this.

Chief, he notes in here law enforcement is the way to encourage compliance, but law enforcement has other responsibilities to the community.

That's true. We can handle what we hear and when we're around. So we could, you know, as well as I do, I could be on the south end of town out by Hidden Valley, and we're going to hear it, but that doesn't mean I have time to get to where it is and bring it over. But I have witnessed it personally, and when we can enforce it, we certainly will.

And does it seem like an additional burden or something?

No, it's just another way for us to pull over our car and make contact with people. And we can make that a positive contact or it can be a ticket. I mean, either way it's going to be positive because it's going to hopefully deter what's going on. I think there needs to be an education piece to this, though. However we can get it out, social media, news media, let's let everybody know what we're doing as a community so that it's kind of fair to everybody. Yep, I agree. Thanks, Chief. Thank you.

This is the first reading of three, so there will be more discussion about signage, so on and so forth.

Okay. If there's no other persons that want to speak right now, Ordinance Number 1448 has been read by title on its first reading. The second reading of Ordinance Number 1448 will be on July 6, 2026. Item N, our claims. I would like to make a motion to approve the claims as presented to us. I'll second that. Motion by me, seconded by Shane. I wanna call a couple of attentions, items to your attention. The one to AMGL, if you remember from prior claims, the total amount for the audit was $38,400 and we have paid some in advance. And I had a question about the Brennan Electric, that included for $14,338.89, and it said the new building. I assume it's the building that was new three, four years ago and not the upcoming new building, or is it?

It's the new street shop building that was just built this last spring.

It's a new service, and we look up for generator and lights. Oh, okay.

Okay. And we previously mentioned in a previous meeting the Aquatic Center had some extra repairs for the boiler, amounted to $2,579. Okay. And the one to claim from WFI in the amount of $34,646.70, but that does include, it said on the invoice, three pipe repair at $4,750 each. You want to have anything on that, Tom?

Right. When they go in there, they're able to televise the pipes themselves. This is for all sewer lines. They can do that for any lines that they can get their cameras through there. But in place of us going ahead and tearing up alleys or streets or anything else, they're able to do what they call a lining of the pipe itself. And they can do that without doing anything other than putting a pipe in there, have a fiberglass, it sets. And then that pipe is actually repaired back to its normal status, if not stronger. So it's a huge cost savings as opposed to opening up a hole, having it exposed for X amount of time, fixing it that way. This is a very, very cheap way of fixing pipes. We've been doing this for... what, 10, 15 years now.

So they put like a fiberglass liner?

Yep, fiberglass liner. They'll go in there with a bubble and they'll blow it up. It's very interesting as far as how they do the whole thing, but it is a very economical way for us to fix a lot of piping in town. Now, we can't do it for every single break that we have, but this is for anything that breaks, from connections to even some taps that are no longer being used. We can go ahead and fill those up, and it's a very economical way for us to do that. Some of that pipe's been in there since the 30s, 20s.

It's cool if you have time to come down and look at some of the cameras.

So it kind of almost makes it seamless.

Yes, that's what it is.

Yep.

And they can do it up to six-foot lengths. Is that correct, Tori?

Yeah, I think six.

And... maybe eight footers but so if there's anything extended longer than that they have to go ahead and or will have to contract it to be dug up and done they're also able to do some different um sizing other than what we have currently um i believe they can go up to 24 inch if if i'm not mistaken last year right the biggest one they've done for us for us out here so and the 14 inch line i mean that's an expensive pipe for us to do It's way cheaper than us digging it up and then trying to do it with the manpower and such to do it.

So can it be a complete collapse? Does it have to be just a crack?

It has to have some structure to it still, unfortunately. If it is a complete collapse, it's usually... after the fact is when we find out on something like that. So that's why when they camera it, they have them camera it, clean it, and then they inspect it for cracks or anything else. And a lot of this is preventative. Areas that is just a proactive measure for us to take care of potential issues down the road from their expertise and with what Tori and Janet inspect the camera work on it. All of that is able to be done through those processes.

Well, and when our auditor was talking about the sanitary sewer and not upping the cost of sanitary sewer pricing, what he left out was the cost of all the projects we've got coming up for sewers. And this is one of those costs, you know, fixing all this pipe without tearing up the ground. So we increase this line item a little bit every year because we keep finding these areas that have decayed. The 400 or 500 block between Chadron and Moorhead, that alley was just Just every other, every 25 feet or every 50 feet, we had to repair, repair, repair.

Yeah, that was the 500 block.

500 block between Shattern and Moorhead. And that's where we had kind of a sinkhole in that alley. And we ended up having to fix the alley too, but by sleeving the sanitary sewer and then coming back and fixing the alley above, it still saved us money without having to tear up the whole alley. So we find these things every year. And we had in camera the one, two, and 300 block here between Maine and Bordeaux because we thought there might be some issues after this last storm. There weren't. But they still cleaned out the pipe and looked at it because we hadn't gone down these alleys for a while. But we rotate where we go every year. And if we have problems,

you know we will come back and revisit them too because our our pipes are 80 years old or better the other thing too that tory and his crews are doing too they're inspecting the manholes and instead of us replacing manholes they're going back in there with the lining of the manholes which is uh another five they got johnson controls

Johnson Service does that for us. It's a high-strength grout, special grout they put in for the brick stuff. They can grout all that.

You want to watch that? That's really cool, too. So if you want to watch that, they're going to be doing that probably next month.

I'm guessing that Monty should be calling me, yeah.

But it's a huge cost savings for us to reline those things as opposed to going ahead and putting them in.

Especially the old brick manholes. So if that's something you wanna watch, that's really cool too. But we have the tapes, the filming on the befores and afters with this fiberglass piping too.

They can actually rebuild the benches where the flow line is and stuff like that also and repair all that in place.

And the biggest thing is- Oh, Katie, it's interesting, isn't it?

Katie watched one with me about a week and a half ago.

There is no disruption to the citizens other than maybe a couple hours here and there. Otherwise, if we're down for, we could be down for several days while we're trying to get these things fixed and we have to do bypasses.

Sanitary sewer, that's where it's at.

Okay. Anyone have any other questions about any of the claims? Could we have a roll call, please?

Alexi?

Yes.

Anderson?

Yes.

Klein?

Yes.

Shepard?

Yes.

Grace? Yes.

Okay. At this time, anyone wishing to address the council on a matter not on this agenda may now do so. Individuals are allowed a total of three minutes to speak. Do we have any takers?

As of my understanding, we're going to have a

You approach the podium. Emily wants to hear you talk. Tell Emily to go. I can't do that.

Is it my understanding there's going to be a drone presentation during fur trade days?

That is something the Fur Trade Days board is working on. There is a, I think it went live today for viewing. There's an auction online through Arnor Auctions to help fundraise to have that drone show at Fur Trade Days. It's Pretty cool thing that we've seen in the area, but have never had here before.

Those who want to buy fireworks could put money towards the drone thing.

They could do that. It will accept direct donations. There is a page about it on furtradedays.com, and there's plenty of posters around town about that fun drive.

Thank you, Carolyn. Any other comments? If not, city manager report.

Thank you, Mayor. I just got a couple quick things. Just reminding everybody about the weeds, grasses, trees, everything. We just want to make sure that people are going around. We do have our community service officer that is doing that. With that, process, I just wanted to remind the general public and our council too, we've got only four dial trucks. And the last week they were out every day. And a majority of that was all trees and brush and such that was being delivered to Swan's facilities out there last week. So with that being said, we're having a huge demand for a lot of our trucks. just want to tell the public we appreciate them getting everything cleaned up as quickly as they want to but we only have so many resources available and so if they're wanting to use some of the city trucks just be patient with us as we get ready to continue doing some of those things and just just help us out just realize that if you ask for a truck today you may not get it But we will work around people's schedules the best we can to just get those going. So that was something that Dustin did ask me to do. And there is going to be some updates on the pickleball and the playground equipment as far as that project here in the very near future, meaning hopefully this week, that we'll have some more updates and we'll send that out to the council. But just wanted to let the public know that we're getting real close to getting that all going. Thank you, ma'am.

Thanks, Tom. Okay, going to council closing comments, and we'll start with Kevin.

I guess I just want to say, you know, additionally on this deal with fireworks, you know, it's a tough decision, but we've got to take the word and advice of our experts, and... You know, remember that this fourth and, you know, this country's birthday is about us as people, and we can celebrate that in different ways, and, you know, maybe that'll have a different feel to it, but... We gotta respond to the reality of our weather in our area. If Chief of Police said, don't drive down this road, it's dangerous, I think we would take that at face value and detour around somewhere else. Chief Martins is telling us, don't go down this road, and I think that's ultimately the right decision to make. That's all I got this evening.

I agree with Kevin and Brandon and I thank you guys for all you've done. You guys crews must be tired along with everyone else out there. It is a difficult choice to ban the fireworks this year. I think ultimately this is the best choice for us as a community in our area.

Okay. Sunday, yesterday, I went to a garden party out at the Dodge County Museum. Now, whenever I say garden party, I think of Rick Nelson's song. It just hits me. And I can sing a little bit of it, too, but I won't do that.

Okay.

And three individuals received Quilts of Valor out there, and congratulations to them and thank you for their service to our country. And Roger West was recognized for his volunteer work. And there was an interesting presentation about the wording for the Pledge of Allegiance and how it transposed over the years. which I thought was interesting. And I would like to bring everyone's attention to the raffle that's being conducted by the Chatham Volunteer Fire Department for the Bronson family. You can get a Traeger smoker, and then when you win it, you can put something in there and invite me to come over. And then I appreciate the Dawes County Commissioners putting out their information that asked the whole county to refrain from using fireworks during this terribly dry period. And of course a thank you to all the firefighters and Have a good 4th of July and be safe out there.

I'd just like to use the platform to point out, and I'm sure I'm missing a lot of people that I haven't seen, but I witnessed something this week and I thought, man, we've got some good people in Chatham and these are just the people I witness. But I saw Ron and Becky Bowles, after one of the fires on Friday, said, we're going to go make some breakfast burritos for the firefighters in Crawford. And I think they made 100 and some. And that same evening, Don and Stephanie King just pulled up cash and said, here's some money that you can use towards that. and I know there's a lot of other people that do that and that's it's very warming to to know that that's the type of people that live in this community so helping out and hope you can get some rest Brandon because I know you've been at it for a long time and I also would like to make a shout out to For the Keep Chatham Beautiful, there's electronic recycling day. I believe it's June 27th from nine to two at the Chatham Event Center, so.

Well, just like Shane mentioned, there's a lot that goes behind the scenes with the firefighters. Of course, everyone sees the firefighters along Highway 20 and Alliance and Hemmingford and wherever coming in to help. But there's a lot of people behind the scenes, businesses that donate, private citizens that come and make donations. food or help out in different ways. So it's a group effort, and I'd like to thank everyone that has participated or helped out in some way. And along with the fireworks, I realize that's going to take away from some people that sell fireworks, but on the other hand, there's those people that are out fighting the fires, and a lot of those They're away from work, and they're not getting paid, and they're not seeing their families. So I mean, there's two sides of it as well. And so I think we all agree we did the right thing. It's unfortunate that there has to be a downside to it, but there is. So I guess that's all I have.

OK. I'll make a motion. We adjourn. I'll second that. Motion by me, seconded by Shane. Any discussion on a jury? No. Roll call, please.

Alexi?

Yes.

Anderson?

Yes.

Klein?

Yes.

Shepard?

Yes.

Graves? Yes.

Thank you all for coming and staying.