Village Board - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

Welcome to the village of Cottage Grove Village Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday. This meeting is a hybrid meeting, both virtual on zoom with the link at the top of the agenda and in person at Village Hall. It is 633, so I'll call the meeting to order. We have a quorum and the agenda was properly posted, so will stand for 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. All right, we'll move on to number four, the public appearances, public's opportunity to speak. We ask that you say your name, your address, and limit your comment to no more than three minutes. We'll start with individuals who have submitted a wish to speak form and are present at today's meeting, open it up to anyone else in the room, and then anyone on Zoom. And if you're on Zoom, we ask that you hover over the React button and use the raise hand feature so we can unmute you. So we do have one wish to speak form. Janine? Janine, sorry. And then just use the person speaking button to turn the microphone red.

OK. Good evening. My name is Jeannie Dudek. I've been a resident of the village for 19 years, residing at 711 Killian Trail. And I'm asking the village board to pause any further installation of flock safety cameras, pause the renewal or expansion of the flock contract until the village conducts a full public review. I want to be clear, I support our police department and the use of effective technology to solve crimes. My concern is not whether flock can be useful. My concern is the amount of information being collected, who can access it, how long it's retained, how it can be shared, and whether Cottage Grove has adequate oversight over that information. Kaj Grove is currently operating seven flock cameras with additional expansion planned, but I want to look at what's happening around us. Dane County ended funding for its flock system this year. On April 16th, the county board removed $80,000 from the budget and prohibited further spending on flock. Dane County also disclosed that its sheriff's office had granted access to data from its 24 cameras to more than 140 law enforcement agencies. County officials cited concerns about the inability to confirm that shared information was not being misused. Monona chose not to renew its current flock. contract mcfarland had also budgeted money to purchase flock cameras but after dane county and monona stepped away mcfarland decided not to move forward its police chief cited both the shrinking regional network and growing resident concerns about privacy and data sharing. Stoughton has now terminated its flock contract. Corona and Common Council voted not to renew its flock contracts. And Fitchford adopted a resolution to discontinue flock. So my question is, what do these communities know about know that Cottage Grove should be examining before we install even more cameras. We also need answers about our own system. Village records contain residents in inquiry reporting that Cottage Grove has sharing relationships involving approximately 1485 entities. Who exactly has access to our data? Can outside agencies search information collected by Cottage Grove? What approval is required before someone searches a vehicle's history? How long is that information retained? Can a person's vehicle history be used to reconstruct patterns of movement? and what contractual rights does FLOC have regarding the use, transfer, analysis, retention, or potential monetization of this information generated by cottage grow cameras. These aren't hypothetical concerns. These are communities throughout Wisconsin and the country that are now reconsidering these systems because of questions about data sharing, privacy, retention, and the misuse. So I'm asking the board to take a couple steps. First, pause the installation of any additional flock cameras. Second, pause the renewal and expansion of the flock contract until the board and the public can review a complete contract, the complete contract, amendments, data sharing agreements, retention policies, access controls and audit records and third evaluate whether college growth should discontinue flock entirely if adequate privacy and oversight protection Cannot be guaranteed and this isn't again. This isn't about pro police or anti police It's about responsible government our neighborhooding neighbor neighborhood communities are demonstrating that municipality can reconsider surveillance technology when the privacy, data sharing, and accountability questions become too significant. And we should do the same before we spend more money and install more cameras. I believe this board owes residents a clear answer to one basic question. Do we know who can access this information that's collected about people driving through Cottage Grove? What can they do with it? How long is the data retained? What happens to that information after it leaves our community? And did the village board specifically authorize this level of data sharing? Until we have those answers, I believe the responsible action again is to pause, reassess, and ultimately consider removing the flat cameras from Cottage Grove. Thank you. Thank you.

Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak? Is there anyone on Zoom that would like to speak? Not seeing any hands. We'll move on to number five, discuss the minutes of the village board meeting on August 17th, 2026. Are there any corrections or comments? Otherwise we can move on to consider the minutes of the village board meeting on August 17th, 2026.

I move approval of the minutes from August 17, 2026. And I'll second.

Motion by Severson, second by Murphy. Any debate on the motion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. We're going to move on to number seven, unfinished business. First up is discuss the MOU for the roof vent prop. Our village attorney is in route, so I think we've all seen this before. It's the MOU is attached as a PDF. Are there any comments on the MOU? Seeing shaking heads, we can move on to 7A1. Consider the MOU for the roof vent prop.

I'll move approval of the MOU for roof vent prop as presented.

And I'll second motion by Merle, Erlandson second by Murphy. Any debate on the motion? All those in favor.

Aye.

Opposed abstain motion carries. Um, number eight, new business. We are flying through tonight's agenda, um, discuss prohibiting village staff and elected officials from signing non-disclosure agreements as part of their official duties. Um, this is a memo from trustee Murphy and myself, um, which is linked in the agenda. and we felt that it was important to bring forward. I don't know, Trustee Murphy, if you have anything specific you want to add. This has come up quite a bit in our data center discussions, and I know that it's been kind of a topic around the country and states, and I think that it's setting kind of good precedent to have a policy like this.

Yeah, I think it's helpful for us to give us clear guidance that it's not something we're allowed to enter into and for staff as well. So I think if those are expectations, then we should have a policy and put that in writing and make it official.

Yeah.

Chris.

Yeah, I just wanted to thank you two for bringing this forward. I think this is a good measure for transparency and for accountability. I don't know what the motion's gonna look like, but I just wanna make sure we include any appointed officials, because I don't wanna have something come before a planned commission and have that not included, so just make sure we include elected officials, staff, appointed officials, anybody acting as an agent of the village.

Was gonna say I think it's good too. I'm glad you guys brought it up And I was gonna ask legal who's on the phone Are there uses beyond because I know you guys really called out like real estate development that sort of thing Are there any other things that might fall under our purview that we should also open this up to? So, I don't know if Larry can answer that Yes, can you hear me yes we can

Okay. There may be some other things, but I think this sends a pretty good message as it is. You know, it's just that nobody's ever forced to enter into an NDA, and I think that general policy would certainly indicate that there should be pause for anyone to enter into it, even outside of this context.

JP.

Again, I appreciate both of you bringing this forward and just echo what's been said already. But I would say in many ways what I'm hearing and what I was thinking is just a broad policy. Let's not even state the reasons, keep it intentionally broad. And I guess for discussion purposes, is there any reason we would see the need for an NDA? Do we want to give ourself an out? in the policy.

I think we have to make sure to exclude anything that falls under the state statute for closed sessions. But other than that, I don't know.

I would agree with you, JP. I think leaving it more broad might get to some of the uses that I was thinking about. So I think that could be the direction as long as legal thinks that's OK. And I think you're right, the closed session, pulling that out somehow.

any other discussion on this with this so uh as presented the the request recommendation is for a policy is this is that Would an ordinance make more sense for this? Or is that not something where we can put this? I'm just checking. You're shaking heads at me, which is fine. I just don't know. What force does a policy have versus an ordinance? Or can we not do an ordinance so it has to be a policy?

I think it should be an ordinance. I mean, that's kind of the law of the land that governs how we operate here in the village.

Larry, can you weigh in on whether this can be part of an ordinance change?

Yeah, I'd actually have to think about that a little. There are some. I mean, I think it's an expectation. It's sort of an. You're almost as a policy, adding it almost as an ethics requirement, whether it's policy or ordinance, I'd have to think about that. What would be the most appropriate way to approach that? I know that from a staff perspective, it's fairly easy because it's as a policy. It's it's established as a. really an expectation of this deployment, that someone not do this. So that side, I think it makes really no difference whether you did it. I think we really have to give some thought as to whether we could, you know, require, let's say, for example, yourselves as village board members, as elected officials, to choose to or not to enter into something like that, and whether we'd have the ability to do that. So yeah, we'd have to, we can give that some more thought.

Can we make it a policy with an eye to make it an ordinance to give them time to look into it so that we can do something that? Like Larry said, it'll probably take effect immediately for staff, but it feels kind of a gray area if it's just a policy for whether that actually binds Village Trustees, since ultimately we answer to the voters. I don't know that we necessarily answer to a quote-unquote policy. We're not bound by that, but we would be bound by an ordinance because that would have some kind of penalty if we violated it. So in my opinion, if we want to give them time to look into an ordinance, I think it should be. We should start with a policy and give them some time to look into it to be an ordinance.

Yeah, I think that's a good step forward.

And we can do both at the same time. I do think that...

You know, it's very likely at this point that I would say that I would conclude that an ordinance would not be appropriate, not for the reasons that you've said. I mean, I understand why everyone said it would be preferred, but I just don't know that this village board can obligate its own officials in terms of what they do in terms of how they communicate on matters. I think as a policy, it establishes expectations, but like I said, we can certainly look into it and report back maybe along with policy when it comes back to adoption.

All right, let's move on to the consider portion of this agenda item.

I make the motion to establish this as a policy for all individuals that represent the village. So that includes staff and committees. And at the same time, we do work towards the amendment. And then I'm also going to throw out there that we also include this in the handbook among other documents as well stating that. So everything's all up to date.

With the exclusion of closed session items?

With the exclusion of closed session items? We don't have to mention closed session. I apologize, I meant to add that in when I was talking before, but that's already covered under the law.

Sorry, you were cutting it in and out, but what I heard is we don't need to add that in. It'll be part of your direction that you'll bring forward for the actual policy when it gets adapted.

Yeah, the closed session is a separate area of the law, so We wouldn't have to going into closed session session is not equivalent to entering into an NBA.

I'll second motion by JP second by Stella. Any other debate on the motion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. We're going to move on to the annual review of village consultants and service providers. We're going to give Ellers a pass for right now, and we'll let you go right before the FMP. So we'll have Baker Tilly go first.

Okay, that sound good? All right. Well, thanks for having me tonight. My name is Amanda Blomberg. I'm with Baker Tilly, and we are an audit and consulting firm or advisory firm here in Madison, Wisconsin. If you want to move to the next slide, we have... We're really proud to say that we have a lot of professionals dedicated to the public sector. And so we've worked in the public sector for many, many years and really feel that it's one of our specialties that we can provide to our client base. We serve about 3,500 clients in the public sector nationwide. Our firm has grown significantly in the last 15 or 20 years, and we work with clients all across the country, with staff members all across the country as well. We specifically have about 350 employees working in the public sector teams across the country. But we do have a significant presence right here in Madison and in Milwaukee and then up in the Eau Claire area as well. So we do have a nice coverage of the state of Wisconsin. MADISON IS KIND OF WHERE OUR PUBLIC SECTOR WAS BORN. SO AGAIN, WE HAVE A LONG HISTORY OF PROVIDING THOSE SERVICES IN THIS AREA. THE TEAM THAT SERVES THE VILLAGE FROM AN AUDIT PERSPECTIVE IS BASED OUT OF MADISON. I LIVE IN THE AREA. I PERSONALLY OVERSEE THE AUDIT ON AN ANNUAL BASIS. WE HAVE THE TEAM MEMBERS HERE THAT COME ON SITE TO PERFORM THE AUDIT FIELD WORK. Also in Madison, we do have some other team members as well, a variety of advisors in the economic development world and other types of services as well, whether it's utility consulting or IT analysis and risk analysis as well. From our perspective, the services that we're currently providing to the village is basically the annual audit of the financial statements. So that includes all funds of the village and the utility funds. So we have coverage across all of those activities of the village. We issue our opinion on those financial statements. And then we also issue an ancillary report on internal controls as just kind of a part of the audit process. We'll wrap that process up with a presentation to the Village Board on an annual basis. So you might have seen me here a few months ago presenting on those results. There are other statutory reporting requirements that we have provided in the past, such as tax increment financing district reporting, state reporting to either the PSC or to the Department of Revenue. At this time, village staff actually takes care of that reporting on the village's behalf. A couple of things that we did do during the year, one was we completed a dissolution audit for TID number five that just closed up. This is a statutory audit requirement. And then on a regular basis, we provide advisory or general consulting as needed by the village. And we also, as new reporting requirements come out, we also provide tools and templates as needed as well to just help with the implementation of some of those more complex areas. The objective of the audit is to provide reasonable assurance that the financial statements are materially correct. So again, village staff prepares those financial statements using the information from the accounting records. We review them, make sure they look good, put our opinion in there. We typically issue an unmodified opinion, which is the highest level of assurance that we can provide. So that's typical from year to year. Internal controls, I mentioned that earlier. We do identify and do some analysis of the internal control structure. you know something you might have noticed if you've been here for a few years is you know the level of internal controls has kind of changed over the years it used to be you know a few more weaknesses in there and that's really been cleaned up over the last few years as well Going to the timeline, this is kind of what our timeline looks like. So late in the fall, early winter, we are looking at completing some preliminary field work, get a few things out of the way before March comes along when we're working on lots of different audits during that time. We'll spend a few days out here completing our final field work where we go through a bulk of the audit work. And then we are doing our wrap-up procedures. We're reviewing the financial statements prepared by the village staff into April. And then May, we're issuing those final reports and other deliverables as needed. And then we come back out to do a presentation of those financial results. Just to mention, I had said that we do a lot of audit work in this area. We also have a pretty robust advisory practice that also provides non-audit services. A lot of that, especially in this area, tends to be in the economic development consulting world. We know you're a growing community. There's a lot of stuff going on here. And if you're ever at a point where you find you need some additional services or advisory services, feel free to reach out at any time. I think a lot of times we don't think of the audit firm as having all of those different capabilities, but we certainly have some experts in those areas as well. Yeah, I lost my train of thought. But any of those areas that if you find anything, feel free to reach out and we're happy to try to connect you with the right kind of people there. Oh, what I was gonna mention is that we do, do a pretty robust process of ensuring that we're maintaining our independence if we're providing any sort of advisory services as well because that's really important obviously the audit comes first and foremost so we want to maintain that independence regularly and so we make sure that we're you know putting those safeguards in place to make sure that we aren't um you know jeopardizing that at all So again, take a look at the list. If there's anything you wanna reach out to us for, please, next slide, you can reach out to either Andrea, who is a principal with Baker Tilly, or myself as a managing director and overseeing the financial audit. So any questions?

Opening up to questions for Amanda.

I just have one. So you mentioned that you're independent. If a trustee, for instance, had a question about internal controls or something of that nature, is it appropriate for us to contact you directly to bring up any concerns? Or how does that line with the independence work? He's giving me a thumbs up. Okay. Not saying that I would. I'm just saying I don't know how that works. But if they're independent of us.

Independence from, they would not want to put themselves in a situation where, like they rely on our business in order to stay open like so then they would have uh incentive to give us an unmodified opinion in that case but i would say um and i try to do it when new board members start giving amanda's email address phone number any concern please reach out to her um that does not need to be funneled through myself or or matt if there's any internal control questions um residents we don't we're not going to have that that direct contact obviously reach out with us to concern but we want to make sure that you guys feel comfortable asking questions um especially if it's an internal control matter thank you any other questions for amanda thank you for coming all right thank you all right up next is general engineering

I'm Mike Parrott. I'm the Director of Inspection Services for General Engineering, and this is Jim Trubian.

Jim Trubian, your local inspector, is here most of the time.

Yeah. So I know some of you are familiar with us, some are not, so I'm just going to pretend that everybody is starting from scratch. So a little bit about General Engineering to start. So we, as a company, started in 1912, as the name would kind of indicate, as an engineering firm. And then in multidisciplinary in 98, I actually started doing building inspections. And it was quite literally two guys and just a handful of community, I think 10 or 12. And since then, we've grown quite a bit, especially over the last five to seven years. We currently work with in excess of, this is 350, but it's in excess of 360 communities right now. And we have a staff of approximately 53, I guess, as of today. And that's inspectors, full-time, part-time, plan reviewers, as well as administrative staff. So it's been great growth, and we've enjoyed expanding territorially. If you imagine the state, we're as far up as, I guess, a little bit above La Crosse. all the way down through the center part of the state over Grant, Prairie du Chien, Rock, Dane, Columbia. So strong presence in the central part of the state, really. We also work with the state. So we have some state contracts. We currently are the Commercial electrical contractor for the state for 28 different counties where communities aren't delegated So we have a quite a robust Commercial electric In good portion of what we do is the inspections everything from you know, the Amazon fulfillment center out here to someone's small deck on the back of their house and And with that broad scope, it takes a full team, and that's One of the advantages I think that we bring to every community is you have Jim. Jim's very knowledgeable, he has a lot of things, but when you get into some of these bigger projects, it takes very specialized individuals to do it. Commercial plumbers, electricians, structural engineers. We have all those on staff, which is super helpful. We actually began working in Cottage Grove in 2019. is when the contract was signed, but primarily in 2020 is when we really started. Jim is your local inspector. He's here to answer questions most days if he's on vacation, which he has one coming up. We do support him with staff. If he gets busy, we have other inspectors that come and work with him. So it's more of a team approach. We also have something I'll discuss in a little bit is More administrative staff to support the inspectors to try to take that load off of them for Some of the the front end of the permit process So We do, as far as what we provide for inspection related things, it's pretty broad. We cover really pretty much everything from, like I said, your residential, so new UDC homes, additions, everything that you might think of that a person would do that's a homeowner, decks, those types of things, accessory buildings. We also do quite a bit of commercial, as I mentioned, the Amazon Center out here. But that could also be just a small change in a local restaurant or something like that, white box. And that's all supported with plan review. And a portion of that, which is something that we've switched to this year, actually it's been in the works, we've been doing it for a couple of years, that I'll talk about, is kind of a cursory plan review. I'll discuss that a little bit We also in addition to you know kind of what you would think of inspections commercial residential plan review Jim also answers, you know, he does code enforcement for the village when requested Quite often I think we've done one for a while but we assist a lot of our communities with Rays inspections, that's that dilapidated old building, commercial house, whatever. We assist with that quite a bit. I somehow got to be the guy that does those. I've done too many to count. But a lot of little ancillary things that we do as well. I thought it might be kind of fun to see the permit activity. So as the community is obviously, you guys have grown quite a bit. So in 2023, you were at 369 permits. And this year, when this was printed, it was 549. And I asked Jim and we're in excess of 600 permits. Now this year is skewed because you had a hail storm. So a lot of those are more administrative. Roofing, siding, those types of worker permits. Yep. But there has been, I look back further, there's been some steady growth in the community for sure. What's changed since last year? I kind of hinted to it earlier. So with all the different types of projects that you have, It's a lot for the inspector to know everything, also get the inspections done, do the permit intake, issue the permits, follow up on phone calls. It probably comes as a surprise, but not everybody always concludes accurate information or all the information needed for a permit. So we have developed permit tech positions and they do a lot of the legwork up front and the result is more consistency. They perhaps have a little better hands-on when they're talking to people, maybe more, they don't feel quite as rushed as the inspector might be trying to get that information. And then once they have collected all that information on the front end, then if there's plan review, so like a new home, then it's ready. for Jim to take over and to do his thing.

Streamline process quite a bit. It's helped a lot in my end.

Yeah. The main goal was to get the inspectors more time to do what inspectors are supposed to do, which is inspect. And I think in that respect, it has really helped a lot. Something that doesn't necessarily affect the village so much, because you're bigger, you do have your own zoning that you do, but we offer that to communities as well that perhaps aren't as, a lot of our communities are smaller. You get out in the rural areas, they just don't have staff. So we provide that service for them. I'd mentioned earlier, so we do a cursory review and that impacts, it's something that we added last year fully, but it's something that There's been an uptick in commercial projects as well, not just in Cottage Grove, but throughout the state really. And some of the wins for plan review, does it need plan review? Does it need full plan review? You know, that's a question that comes in. So if it's a commercial project, we send it right to our plan review department. We have a dedicated plan review. They look at it. And the main goal is to look at that. project and say you know ask some questions if there's not enough information they'll call verify some things and then if the path is for full plan review if we're delegated to the plan review we'll do it if it's in a community that's not it will direct them to the state and then if it doesn't require you know full plan review then it can just continue on the path to normal permit issuance. And that's the main goal there again is to just kind of minimize any mistakes, have more continuity and a better flow to the whole process. Yeah, and this is the next slide. It's just kind of what I was just been talking about. It's really the whole goal is to build around and off of the inspector and just allow him really more time to do inspector things. For those of you who might not know, so for permit, that is a good portion of what we do, the permit intake portion. So someone applies. Part of that intake process is sometimes it's really easy. Contractors that do a lot of work, they know what they're doing, you know, for the most part. But someone who maybe, you know, this is the only project they're going to do, you know, They don't necessarily know all the steps. So we have online, which has actually been great. A lot of people requested, even some communities that haven't adopted it yet. They're warming up to it. But it saves a lot of time. But it's not just you do have someone that they can call. So they can talk to Jim, or we can direct them to one of the permit intake people. and they do a great job, they can answer questions, they can expedite it, they can say, hey, you're missing the contractor info, or you're missing whatever piece of that puzzle is, and get that. Then we go along, once that's done, Jim will take it, or one of our other people will go and review it, and then once that's all squared away, then the payment and release, which you do internally here, Yes, yeah. Some of our communities don't, but it's nice, it's better, and I think the community access has been, which I'll talk about, has been a better tool. It allows you to be a little more robust. I jumped ahead earlier, so we'll skip the next slide, which is the cursory review, technical screening.

I was gonna throw in too that the review process that Mike's speaking of is typically more for a commercial project than your home-based or residential projects. we review or I myself review the typical residential projects, but plan review Mike is speaking of is typically your commercial projects, whether as Mike said, just a small remodel in a restaurant or Amazon size project.

And it is also with a plan review, sometimes what would be considered residential, And there's something called a separated building. So those get pretty, they get kind of convoluted and complex. And those, you know, the normal inspector can lean on the plan reviewers for that as well. And actually some of the homes that we do, they're small, I mean, they're light commercial projects. You'd be shocked at how many 20,000, 15,000, 10,000 square foot homes are built in the course of the year. It's a small percentage, but there's a lot. I'm always blown away every year. And some of those, we'll run them up to our structural department to review, which is super helpful. The community access portal so what that does is that allows the community to actually access our file maker system, which is where You know Jim works out of every day all of our inspectors do so each of our inspectors has a tablet And within that, there's lists of the various inspections. You log if there was an issue, if it passed, if not. It has all the contractor information for that particular project, the homeowner information. We can email from it. If it's an electric service, which most projects have, any scale of project, it automatically, we have that information in there. So if it's Alliance or MG&E or whomever, um you put in a little information automatically goes out to them which they love we love it it's helped a lot and part of that is also the community access you have access to portions of that you know you don't get into the notes portion of it because we don't want anybody you know changing the notes um but you can you know somebody a lot of times people will say hey i don't think there's a they have a permit over at one two three blueberry lane you know they can uh call the community, ask, they can look it up, say, nope, there's a permit there, and there's been inspections, those types of things.

These appraiser also has access, so that's saved. Yep. A lot of calls to me, and they have easy access to plans and improvements that are done to houses and such.

Yep. So yeah, it's a good tool. Like I said, it's permit status, you know where that's at, the fees have been paid, and then we can release the permit.

Mike, if you don't mind. Yes. I think I want to touch on a little bit more. This makes, so property records are forever records. So this is where the permit process, being able to pull the final permit, put it into our property records. Like you mentioned, it's accessible to associated appraisal because we want to make sure that those records are accurate. They have the most up-to-date information. So we switched, I believe, two years ago now to completely using this, except for one-off instances? I think it was two years ago. And have had a lot of success with it. If people have questions, we try to bring them in and help them with the process. And I think we've kind of trained most people who are filling out applications. I've had to jump in there a couple times for raise permits. That's a fun process. So really appreciate you guys taking the lead on the, I guess I didn't know what it was called, community access portal. Yep.

Yeah, it really is a great tool. And every community that's adopted to it has really enjoyed using it. And it wasn't without a few hiccups along the way, too. But we've listened, we've changed things, and we continue to evolve as far as what we're doing and how we approach really everything inspection related. Yeah, I mean, again, it's better for the, you know, I can summarize, it's better for the applicants, it's better for the municipal staff, and it's better for the inspectors. It's just less bottlenecks. Like I said, it's not without challenges. Every, you know, some people aren't quite as maybe tech savvy as we'd like them to be. And again, sometimes there's just a learning curve. They don't deal with it every day. But for sure, the people that pull permits on a regular basis, it's really been helpful for that. They enjoy it. Yeah, and then just moving forward, we're gonna continue to grow as the village grows. There's additional services you need. We're always willing to do what we can for the village. We're gonna focus on more clear routing of our inspectors. We're kinda headed a little bit more towards, because of the volume right now, We used to have an inspector that he did everything. Years ago, home builders, maybe two guys got together and they built a home pretty much ground up by themselves. That's great. You can get a good product, but you just can't do a lot of it. So we had to change from that model. So as I mentioned earlier, Jim's the primary guy every day, but he's also supported by other people that you might not even see that come and do inspections. If the load gets a little heavier, if it's specialized, and we're gonna continue with that and try to build upon that. And just more listening to the communities and more visibility as well. Do you have any questions for Jim or myself?

Thank you for coming.

Questions? I do. A resident asked me this, so I'm going to ask you. Are all of the inspections on site?

As far as?

Well, like every, you know, we talked about the increase, the 600, the roof, for instance. Like, is Jim getting up on every roof and inspecting? Okay, so can you maybe talk more about what's on site?

Sure.

I'll speak. and no inspections required. But I think just about everything else, we would go make a site visit. And then the process is you take out a permit, and then the vendor or the homeowner calls for an inspection. And then we go contact me and set up a day and time, and then I go and inspect.

So of those 600 inspections, are those including the admin type inspections like roofs and siding? So how many onsite would you guesstimate that you do?

Three quarters of them. Okay.

Off the top of my head.

Okay. I'd just be curious to know that number.

And those are just permit numbers? Yeah. Inspections, inspections, number, and...

Oh, yeah, that's, you know, a new home permit probably has 7 to 11 inspections. It's not just one inspection.

That's provided they get it right the first time.

Yeah, so it'd be great to have the data on the inspections in addition to what you provided with the permits. Just to kind of know, like you said, if a home, and we're building 20 homes this year, that's X number of inspections. It would be nice to have that data.

Thank you. We don't collect all of that. We actually were working on that as much for ourselves as communities. But we can get some of that, but we don't collect data on every single inspection that was done. I mean, as far as the numbers, the count goes. Okay. If that makes any sense.

They're tracked through my program. Through your program. So every inspection, I make a visual inspection. A site visit, I go to my tab immediately and say it was electrical. And when we click on that, a list checklist pops up. I check what was done. I can make it red if something was done incorrectly so that the next time where another person comes on, they'll see that red and go, hmm. And they can go and say, okay. I need to recheck this because it wasn't done correctly the last time. So we kind of have that redundancy too. And that's how we track our individual inspections.

Yeah, no, that's great. And what I'm trying to get at is like the number of inspections, like matching it up with what we're billing, for instance, and how that kind of process works and just trying to get an idea of how many physical inspections you have to do in a year's time.

Yeah, so from a billing perspective, it's a little different. So a building inspection, because we use Amazon for everything, we collected that entire fee up front. But we also, they have a fixed dollar amount that we give them as part of that permit. So we remit 85% of the cost of the permit back to GEC. And if it takes 1,000 inspections, we still pay the same cost. We're kind of at a fixed cost there. I know some communities, you have an hourly rate. Some communities... You kind of have it structured a little bit differently. As I think we saw in the graph, the variability has made per hour, or like saying you had to be here two hours a day difficult, because sometimes you guys are here a half hour, some days you're here for multiple hours.

Usually a typical day, probably an hour and a half to three hours in the village.

And Cameron, maybe this is an internal discussion, because I know a resident brought up that they were paying the permit fees, but that wasn't necessarily translating into inspection, and what is it for, and just kind of wrapping our arms around that a little bit more. Yeah, and we can do that outside of you guys, so thank you.

Any other questions? Heidi.

Thanks. I just had some feedback. Over time, we've transition to the online permitting process and I really appreciate the relationship to kind of grow and make You know use of your services easier for staff builders residents everyone to recording in progress And then

I lost my train of thought. Well, that's OK. We've all heard me talking.

Stay tuned for Village Voices 2027. Thank you for coming.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, squeaky chair, you're up. We have Stafford.

I do have a squeaky chair, and I'm a very fidgety person. I don't need you to. All I know is I can't do it. So there's a theme in these reviews. A lot of the services that you use talk about having a team. And I think that's a good thing. And we certainly strive to be that team also. Everything is so specialized these days that it's difficult to have any one person have the experience or the knowledge to do what's needed for a community anymore. And so we sort of build our municipal team around having that what we call a deep bench. And when you look at the scope of the different topics that we work on for the village, you don't have to pay me to learn about an obscure area. For instance, I had to ask a partner in the last year to help with a fundraising FOR THE VILLAGE. She works in almost exclusively in that area in terms of how you set up entities to accept donations and the tax effect of those things. So whether it's real estate, contracting, or any of these other obscure, seldom used areas of the law in the municipal context, we have people who can cover it. We have about the same number of people as we had last year, although we've grown a little. Go ahead and go to the next slide. I did add pictures this year. Primarily because Ian on the right side is doing more and more work for the village. And for those of you who have been at plant commission, you've seen him a few times and he's been here for a few meetings. One of our excellent newer people. Next slide.

There's no volume online, so we're going to just take a pause and check attack real quick, if that's OK. Sorry to interrupt here.

I'm almost done.

We could actually repeat.

Just so the board knows here, we did order a tariff, which is what basically codes and puts volume on online.

That should be up and running here in the next

I'll tell Rick that we paused on the pictures because he was embarrassed that they were in there in the first place. Go for it. Okay, next. THESE ARE SOME OF THOSE AREAS THAT WE WORK IN. I THINK ON THIS LIST, THE ONLY THING I HAVEN'T TOUCHED FOR THE VILLAGE OF COTTAGE GROVE IN OUR SIX OR SEVEN YEARS HERE IS FAMILY LAW. WE CERTAINLY REFERRED SOME PEOPLE TO THE FAMILY LAW TEAM, BUT EVERYTHING ELSE ON THAT LIST WE'VE DONE FOR THE VILLAGE IN ONE WAY, SHAPE OR FORM. NEXT. I've already covered it. Next. Two more slides, I think. No, I was saying there's only two left. And you have these in your packet and we don't need to spend more time on this. We really do have the advantage of really working directly with every one of you. Some of those service providers, that's not the case. You can always ask us questions and reach out to us for things you need. But what I put together was just a list of generally here, the kinds of work that we do and then some specifics that off the top of our head, took more of our time over the last year just as examples. That's on the following slide, but it's in your packet and we'd be happy to answer any questions now or anytime.

Questions or comments for Larry?

So Larry obviously takes care of general legal matter. Axley takes care of in instances when Larry and his team have a conflict of interest. And Axley hasn't presented in service provider reviews. That request can obviously be made from the board. So other than that, can I ask Larry some more questions?

Okay, go ahead Paula. I was just gonna mention, I think you had ordinance violations and I think we talked about the potential of farming that piece out. Where are we at with that?

That's been something, you're talking about municipal prosecution. Yeah. Yeah, that's something that we've talked about. For a firm like mine, it's somewhat hard to fill those shoes. There's a lot of smaller firms that would be happy with that work, and we'd be very happy to talk about that, it's sometimes more cost effective to use another entity that isn't building the bench that we are and focusing on the way we are and the things we do. But we're happy to do it, and have been doing it for a long time.

The stage we are in right now is having a conversation with the judge, because a judge oversees that. And we want to make sure we have, ultimately the board can decide, I believe, what attorney is used. But just wanted to get some buy-in from the municipal judge. Yeah, and appreciate you guys. And to be honest, that was a recommendation if it was something that we were looking, because again, it's a smaller piece of business that was recommended to us by them, making sure that we're being areas of cost savings we take advantage of.

We don't like to charge you any more than we have to.

And that's why we like Ian working on our stuff.

Any other questions or comments, Larry? All right. Well, like I said, we'll move Eller's annual review down to under budget review committee. So we will move on to new business C, which is discuss notice of termination of an MOU for GRS's polling location and looking to give direction for a new location. I'll turn it over to Lisa to kind of brief us on this one. And I know the village board did receive copies of this in emails prior, so we are all aware of it.

Thanks, Cindy. Yep, in the packet you have the notice from the school district that they want to terminate the MOU. In there is a memo from myself kind of laying out how this came about and where we're at today with the termination and the recommendations from staff which are laid out in the memo, but what I'm recommending is that we request reimbursement from Winona Grove School District. We shared costs for an ADA door on their building. I'm also asking if we can extend the termination from September 1st, 2027 to December 31st. It may be a mute point, but if there were a special election that would come about in 2027, because it is an off year, For elections, we would potentially have a February and April election, but we could have something that pops up. So it would be nice to have just a little bit more running room at that location. Then for you all to think about, and this hasn't happened yet, but we'll be evaluating the municipal services building and the new police station for potential future polling location. With that, which I laid out in the memo, It's not just going in and looking at it and saying, yeah, this is great. It is doing an accessibility checklist on it, then getting it to Wisconsin Election Commission for their approval that it meets all of the requirements for ADA, and then coming back to the village board. We do have 30 days prior to each election for the board to decide where those polling locations are. it would be my hope that we do that much sooner than 30 days just because of communicating to the public. The other request in here is to develop a communication plan much of like what we did when we brought on the second polling location so that everybody in the community is aware of the change because for many, many years this was the location and to date we still have people that come here And don't check on my vote prior to going to their polling location if they're in question. So there is that confusion. So those are the recommendations. I'm open to any questions. I'm planning to do the accessibility check at the MSB. Obviously the police station is a little bit harder because it's not there yet completely. So there are caveats with that. So kind of have to wait for completion. And I know the questions, one of them may be, it's a brand new building of course it's going to be perfect but there's a lot of logistics with it and measuring and making sure everything is correct for ada so that will be forthcoming to you all great discussion from the board um lisa what uh for the msb because i assume

Like you said, the police station's not there, so that would be what we'd have to use even if we got this extension to December, I'm guessing, right? What part of the MSB, like are we going to put it in the Parks and Rec garage thing?

Sure, great question. Right now, without going through and measuring, I've had some talks with Sean and Trista, but it would be the programming area in the last... Bay, I guess, or last area of MSB. So behind where Trista and Riley have their offices. So we have that bigger space where they filled in the loading dock. So it's all level surface.

I've been there. Yeah. For a bunch of programs. Yeah. Okay. Is that, I mean, that's, that's enough going to be enough space to fit as much as we've currently fit in in Granite Ridge.

Well, nothing's going to compare to what we had at Granite Ridge. That was the location, great location with the gymnasium because not only did it serve as our polling location, it also served as our contingency plan. So meaning if this location would go down for some reason, we could house everybody at Granite Ridge. So that's another caveat of thinking about where this plan moves. So to answer your question, It probably wouldn't cover all the village, but it is a much larger space than this current room because there are requirements of how many booths you have for registered voters. So we would love to have just one, but logistically village hall is not large enough because we couldn't fit all the booths that are required on election day.

So building on that, do we like... Do we need to look at an alternative to that? Is that also part of our direction? Or is that... I mean, do you estimate that's going to be sufficient at least to get us by until the police station can be evaluated? Or do we need to be looking for a third option here?

I think that... And correct me, Chief, if I'm wrong, but I think substantial completion is second quarter of 2027?

Supposed to be first quarter of 2027. Probably wouldn't be fully up and running until second to third quarter.

Right. So if the stars align and we don't have anything special, which probably won't happen, but we would want to be prepared. we would be fine because if the plan goes, the MSB would be there, but then the police station would be up and running by 2028. So we would have all of the answers and we would know which location is the best option. And as far as your question, to give you a little history, as far as other locations, when I first came to the village, um seeing what was happening and and growing and seeing the space that we had i had reached out to all the other churches the schools for a second pulling location to try and vet that before the school eventually did say yes and the answer was a resounding no from most of those people so the While it would be great to have other locations in the wing, I'm reluctant to have a location that we don't have control over, meaning that the village doesn't own, because then we're at the mercy, and as we're having this effect today, that makes it a little bit more difficult.

That makes sense. I won't bring up Taylor Prairie then, and I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

I guess I'd just add that we just put this in place a couple years ago, so this is extraordinarily frustrating to have to re-educate all the voters on where their polling place is. I know this is no fault of anyone in this room, and there's a lot of factors outside of the control of all entities involved, but I think that It's frustrating, and I'm glad that we have time to make a plan and that you're already talking about communication plan because the worst thing, we don't want people to be like, I don't know where I'm supposed to go vote, so I'm not going to. So I really appreciate talking about that plan in advance. So I'm sure we'll find a good solution, and thanks for your work on it, although it was kind of unexpected to have to. Thank you.

I guess thinking ahead because the budget cycle is just around the corner and on the memo it said request for the communication plan but is also I mean, thinking about MSB, I'm guessing we might have to do some things, such as I don't know if we have a fully ADA-compliant door, if it's in that same space. So I'm just wondering if one of the other items we want to include is an additional budget ask for making sure the space is compliant in there as well.

So I think, um, that will be more coming, um, once I'm have the time to get to the accessibility checklist. Um, that is one thing for sure. I can tell you right now, there is not an ADA door. Um, there is a work rounds. We could have stabbing staffing at that door so that they're there to open the door. Um, should the need arise, um, that has its own caveats, obviously. Um, so it would be ideal. and useful probably for other reasons to have an ADA door. But yes, that will be one of the things that will be looked at in that accessibility. And so that will be coming way before the budget, I guess is part of your question, so that we have that information going forward.

And I think we've had so many big projects come through over the last two years. We have a good idea of how to communicate. I feel like we are so much better at it than we used to be and have every tool in our toolbox to make sure that residents know. And I would hope that the communication plan would include an ask that the school district also help us communicate since it won't be a location anymore and a lot of parents use pick up or drop off along with voting at the same time. But I'm in favor of requesting reimbursements for the village taxpayer infrastructure that went into that building as well. The negotiating an amendment to the MOU to extend the dates, I did ask on July 21st, 28th, something like that. I did ask Tanya to please consider that for this specific reason, and they ignored that. But I would be in favor of reaching back out and asking for that, maybe with additional explanation and including this memo. Okay. And I am definitely in favor of keeping it in-house. And I know you said Taylor Prairie, and that's going to potentially be a school. I don't know. That's not a direction. We're not going to flip-flop and have a polling location open in 2028 to only close again in a couple of years. That's too much for the community. And keeping it in-house with our infrastructure and our IT and our people is the best way to go. So looking forward to seeing your budget request. Chris.

So for the request reimbursement for Manana Grove, do we know about how much we would be requesting?

Yes, and I don't have that right in front of me, but I want to say it was...

It was like $1,500 at the most.

Yeah.

Okay.

Any other comments, questions on this? Otherwise, we can move on to the consider portion. All right, let's move on to the consider.

I'd make a motion to follow the staff recommendations in the memo regarding the switch of our second polling location.

I'll second.

All right, motion by Murphy, second by Erlandson. Any other debate on the motion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Aye. Abstain? Motion carries. We have discussed block party application for September 19th, 2026 on Paris Lane.

You all were emailed the application last week. The departments did

review this and all approved of it the fire department ems public works and police department straightforward black party application any comments or questions on the black party application otherwise we can consider the black party application i'll move approval of the block party application as presented and i'll second all right motion by erlinson second by murphy um any debate on the motion all those in favor aye Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. All right. Item E, discuss Resolution 2026-14, recognizing Hispanic Heritage Month with the resolution in the agenda. Any comments or edits to the resolution? Otherwise, we can consider Resolution 2026-14.

Move to approve resolution as presented.

And I'll second. Motion by JP, second by Murphy. Any debate on the motion? There is going to be a new story walk put up that goes along with this resolution. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Aye. Abstain? Motion carries. We can move on. We're going to, I think, move on to roll call voting just so Lisa has access. We don't have to do it. I think we got it for this one, but. Okay, we're gonna move on to reports from village boards, commissions, and committees. First up is the budget review committee. Budget review met on Tuesday, August 18th, 2026 with our primary goal of reviewing and recommending the 2027 financial management plan, which is in our agenda tonight for a discuss and consider. But first up, we will invite Greg to give us an overview on Ehlers and then also present the financial management plan for consideration. Bye.

Good evening, I'll start with the Ehlers Services overview. Ehlers is an independent municipal advisory firm. We are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board. As a registered municipal advisory firm, we have a fiduciary duty to represent the best interests of our clients. What that means practically is we have to put the interest of all of you as the village, as our client, ahead of our own interests. In terms of our municipal advisory experience, in terms of the team that's just focused on Wisconsin municipalities, we have over 200 years of combined advisory experience just within our Wisconsin office alone. Many of us that work at Ehlers previously worked in city, county, or other forms of local government. We have several former administrators on staff, finance directors on staff, so bring a lot of that practical experience to our work. We also have a fiscal consulting team, which provides some specialized services, particularly in the area of utility rate studies and other fiscal studies, which provides over 150 years of combined experience. And then we have a disclosure specialty team that helps with the post-issuance, debt issuance responsibilities of the village in terms of doing annual disclosure reports, filing reportable event notices where applicable. We handle all of that on behalf of the village. We also have a team designated to arbitrage consulting. Arbitrage deals with managing the investment proceeds from your tax-exempt borrowings. rules and the tax code that govern how those funds can be invested. We have a team that exclusively focuses on arbitrage compliance. And then we have an investment advisory team that exclusively focuses on managing investment portfolios for public entities. So really, Ehlers focuses exclusively on public entities and local units of government. We do not represent private entities. So for example, you will never see a representative from Eller sitting across the table representing a developer. We only work exclusively for local governments. Our advisory team, there's several of us that you've seen at meetings over the years. I've had the privilege of working with the village since Ehlers began several years ago. And then you see several of my colleagues as well. John Cameron focuses particularly on the utility rate studies and impact fee work. And then my colleague Harry Allen kind of doubles up with the work that I do. Harry was here presenting the financial management plan to the budget committee. So we're kind of the primary advisory team, but as I mentioned, we have a large team that helps us do our work and helps support Village staff. The main services that Ehlers provides kind of fall into these four areas, debt issuance, economic development, financial planning, and investment advisory services. So for debt issuance, when the city issues general obligation debt or revenue debt, we assist the village with the debt issuance process and represent the village throughout that transaction. So we do all the financial modeling necessary to issue the debt, assist the village with the presentation standard and pours and then execute the sale and facilitate the closing. The post issuance compliance, I mentioned that briefly. There's annual reports that have to be filed that all investors can review to keep current on the village's financial condition. We assist the village with that effort and then I mentioned arbitrage responsibilities and then we also act as paying agent where we help facilitate payment of DEBT SERVICE PRINCIPAL INTEREST PAYMENTS TO THE DEPOSITORY TRUST COMPANY, WHICH IS KIND OF THE CLEARINGHOUSE FOR ALL MUNICIPAL BOND PAYMENTS. IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, WE'VE ASSISTED THE VILLAGE WITH TID CREATIONS AND AMENDMENTS WHEN THE VILLAGE HAS UNDERTAKEN THOSE ACTIONS. WE ALSO ANNUALLY PRESENT AT ADJOURNED REVIEW BOARD MEETING UPDATED CASH FLOW PROJECTIONS AND HELP THE VILLAGE SATISFY ITS ANNUAL MEETING REQUIREMENTS TO GIVE ALL THE OTHER TEXTING JURISDICTIONS UPDATES ON THE TIF DISTRICTS. And then as needed over the years, we'll evaluate specific development proposals. If a developer comes in and requests money for TIF assistance, some proposals merit kind of an independent review, so we will do that on behalf of the Village. We have a team that focuses on that work as well. Financial planning, you'll hear me talk about the financial management plan, so we won't need to focus on that. I mentioned water and sewer rate studies in addition to long range forecasting. Again, we have a team that kind of specializes in that work, just looking at PSC data for the past several years. On the water side, Ehlers, at least as far as firms that do utility rate studies, has done more utility rate studies than any other firm in Wisconsin for the past several years. And then the impact fee studies, we presented those to the village as well. And then I mentioned the investment advisory services have a team that's exclusively dedicated to help manage debt proceeds and general fund proceeds. So kind of the timeline in terms of kind of how these services have evolved over the years, we kind of started our existing relationship with the village back in 2014, which really kind of focused on initially the debt issuance services and then also the investment side. We currently manage about 16 million, so a portion of the village's investment portfolio, we started the annual financial management plan process back in 2016, was involved with TID district creations and amendments in 2018, and then recently did utility rate studies and impact fee studies. So really, as you can see, a lot of the services that we provide are interrelated, that's not by accident. We really try to focus on services that kind of complement each other to kind of provide comprehensive financial and advisory services to the village, because really a lot of these areas overlap. Economic development strategies require financial planning and may require infrastructure investment, All of that kind of requires kind of a comprehensive look. We feel we're very well suited to kind of provide that cohesive and kind of coordinated and collaborative efforts. But really, you know, I have appreciated our relationship with the villages over the years. I, again, feel privileged to have really been with the villages long as Ellers has been involved here. So appreciate that ongoing relationship and appreciate the relationship we have with staff as well. Very good staff here and we're appreciative of the collaboration we get to embark on them annually. So I'm happy to answer any questions.

Are there any questions from the board or comments about Ehlers in general? Paula?

I feel like I'm the only one asking questions, but when you... Is that a... for the service depend on the amount we're financing?

It's a flat fee but it's dependent on the amount of financing. So the same holds true for your bond counsel and disclosure counsel that kind of provides specialized legal services. They charge a flat fee as well. The borrowing amount can play a factor into that but it's all flat fees.

Okay, I guess my question is you're advising us on the amount of debt to take out, but then you're also responsible for the debt we take out and are paid upon the debt we take out. So I guess I'm just like, how is that independently investigated or right? Because obviously you profit from the amount of debt that we take out. So how do we evaluate that?

Sure, so I mean our fee is contingent on the debt issuance going forward, so I mean if we do the planning and the village decides not to issue the debt, you don't pay us anything. So we're only paid if we actually execute the transaction. So again, we have that fiduciary duty to represent the village's best interest, and so we provide our recommendations, we make very clear what the tax impact is going to be as a result of that, but at the end of the day, we don't authorize the debt issuance, you do.

So really that responsibility ultimately lies with you Thanks, thanks Greg over the years the information you've provided to us has helped us navigate a lot of different you know decisions we've had to make here and understand what that means for all the taxpayers in the village and I think your presentations are very helpful for us and members of the community to access those presentations and understand the decisions that we're making and what it means for them. So I very much appreciate how everything's organized and I think helps the community and the board understand what the impacts of each thing is. So thank you.

Thank you.

And I'll echo that in saying that over the last however long I had been on budget review before being on the board, so the last six years, I think I've sat down with both you and Cameron every single year to go over this kind of one-on-one too. And so I think that that's also something that any board member could do in order to feel comfortable making decisions going forward. So I recommend that. Thank you for doing that every single year over and over again. Any other comments or questions? Otherwise, we can dive right into the 2027 financial management plan.

I guess I just want to comment. So we really started doing the utility rate or the long range cash flow analysis specifically with sewer. As I communicated in email, we're seeing some pretty significant increases year over year over year over year from Madison Metropolitan Sewer District. So what this planning does is it really makes sure that every decision we make from a village perspective, is thought through several times before we move forward, especially on the sewer side, just because of We don't want to constantly have five plus percent increases on our sewer utility, but ultimately we're getting 10 to 12% increases passed on to us by MMSD. So what it does is it allows us to structure projects, structure rate increases, structure when we're doing things on the sewer side. And then as Greg will get into it in the financial management plan, how does that affect everything overall? The utilities was added to the financial management plan. I think now two years ago. And I just think it makes the document that much more meaningful. So I really appreciate Greg's team and John working together. The team that is not here, TME, is on the investment side. I believe she's working with Logan now, I believe. But what they do is, like Greg mentioned, not only do they manage the debt proceeds, and primarily why they manage the debt proceeds is the arbitrage piece, because we have that IRS legal compliance. But they'll recommend... when to invest with them and when not to invest with them. So right now our savings rate at local banks is really competitive because of our negotiated interest rates. That hasn't always been the case. So kind of being a proactive approach to that has been really helpful and I think has set it up to success. I mean, it was as recent as five years ago where we were averaging between $10,000 and $50,000 of investment income. We're now $2,000 to $3,500 a year of investment proceeds. So not only having the interest rate that we're getting on our deposits in our banks, but a strategic investment portfolio has really gone a long way of cash funding projects and minimizing taxes. And again, if you guys want the investment team to come and present, right now Greg is representing himself, the utility team, and the investment team.

Tell them I did a good job. Well, I appreciate the opportunity to present the financial management plan. As I mentioned, this started back in 2016. And before I go through this, I do want to emphasize that while this has become part of the village's standard financial practice, not every community does this. And certainly not every community has done it for as long as Cottage Grove has. And this has been routinely reflected as part of your positive management assessment by S&P. Because again, not everybody has a track record of going through this exercise. WHILE IT'S KIND OF BECOME COMMON PRACTICE HERE, I DON'T WANT YOU TO THINK THAT EVERYBODY IS DOING THIS BECAUSE EVERYBODY ISN'T. SO THAT'S TO YOUR CREDIT. SO REALLY THE OBJECTIVE IS TO REALLY LOOK AT KIND OF A FIVE-YEAR PROJECTION WHERE THE LEVY AND TAX RADIUS PROJECTING KIND OF AN ALL-IN SCENARIO KIND OF BOTH ON THE OPERATIONAL SIDE AND THE CAPITAL SIDE. THIS REALLY SERVES AS A KICKOFF FOR YOUR 2027 BUDGET. Process so we kind of start now, and then you'll go through the details as you go through the fall I've mentioned your rating with S&P the village has a double a stable rating It's had that same rating since 2017 some of the credit strengths that S&P notes in their credit report or your reserves or fund balance your general positive budget performance which means you have positive results generally not as spending more than what you take in. And then they do mention, and these are their words, a sophisticated financial management framework and proactive policies. It's, again, that history of the long-range planning that you've undertaken. So some of the credit weaknesses, as you've undertaken some larger facility projects and increased infrastructure investment, that's increased your debt burden. So they've made note of that. But while you have undertaken some large projects projects and what I call legacy projects such as the police station, types of capital investment you're not doing on a routine basis, your credit rating was not changed. So that's a positive. So get asked often what can move a rating up, what can move a rating down. There are multiple factors that influence a rating from financial factors to demographic factors. What S&P cites, and this is not an exhaustive list, it's not like one of these things happen, that your rating will go up, or one of these things happen, it'll go down. They just kind of highlight some of the key factors. So what can move the rating up is kind of income metrics. They compare your income metrics not only statewide but nationwide to similarly rated peers. And then what could lower the rating is if your reserve levels, which is kind of viewed as your primary financial credit strength substantially decrease or your debt burden becomes highly elevated beyond where it is presently. But generally the assessment by S&P of the village has been very favorable for several years. In terms of fund balance trends, so your unassigned and assigned fund balance is a percent of total expenditures. So we show that here on the chart. We note that the 2024 general fund expenditures kind of included one-time inspection services related to Amazon, which impacts that fund balance percentage. So that was kind of a factor because your expenditures were higher in that particular year. But you can see that the city has historically been above 30%. going all the way back to 2020. And so certainly when S&P looks at your fund balance, they'll look at your policy, but they're also looking at where you're staying at historically, and they like consistency. I mean, that's what rating agencies like, stability, consistency, predictability, and this chart certainly illustrates that you've experienced that with your fund balance, which is your strongest metric that they've identified and the one that you have direct control over. We'll talk about levy limits throughout this presentation, what levy limits are. They've been around since 2005, gone through various, some statutory changes, but for the past several years, really what the levy limits mean is that your prior year's actual levy can increase by a percentage greater than your net new construction or zero. And then there are numerous adjustments that allow you to increase or decrease your allowable levy. So what is that net new construction percentage been for the past several years? We show here for the 2023 levy, 2024 budget up to the current year. So you'll see for the 2027 budget, your next net new construction percentage was about 23.924%. That's largely driven by Amazon. So even though Amazon is located in TID 10, it does impact your net new construction for levy limit purposes. So that's driving your allowable levy increase for the 2027 budget, at least what's for the portions due to net new construction. in our analysis will look at a lot of tax rate projections and in terms of how the methodology that we used to calculate those tax rates uh... we look at we look at equalized our market value and your kid out values so really you let you have your property tax levy that goes against all value in the village excluding your tax increment districts. And on your tax bill, you see an assessed value and you see a market value. Market value is the same as equalized value. Those mean the same thing. So we're using the equalized or market values because those are kind of finalized as of January 1 of 2026, which will impact your 2027 budget. So you'll see over the last several years, you've had very healthy growth in your equalized value, the tit-out value that went up 20.5% from 2025 to 2026. We're being very conservative in terms of our growth projections. So from 27 to 28, we're just projecting that increase at about 6.5%. won 3%, and then about 5.9% going forward. So we don't, you know, while you've had healthy increases the past several years, we just don't want to assume that that's going to continue at that level. So we're being very deliberately conservative.

And I think, Greg, too, the net new construction figure that you're mentioning, we've seen historic, like, frankly, historic net new construction percentages. Obviously, as the net new construction dollars assessed value and equalized value grows it takes more new construction to increase that percentage so adding you know 264 000 264 million dollars of new construction you know to get the same five percent three percent increase in that new construction the more value you need So we feel, and we have seen kind of just an overall slow down in construction and frankly, things coming forward. So the 3%, the 2.75% thereafter is a relatively conservative approach, but I would not expect You know, we might have used 4% in the past and hit 7. I would not expect that here. This is going to be what I believe is going to be much closer to that percentage. Now, things that could change that is the development comes in, bigger facility, et cetera, comes in, and you might see a one-year spike. 2031, you'll see a potential little blip with TID 6 closure, but then no additional TID closure until 2038 or 2039. While net new construction was great, the economic change and what we were projecting TID out kind of total value was about 90 million dollars less than anticipated. So that's fairly significant and we'll kind of touch on that as we get further in this presentation. Which was just a result of some projects that were located outside of a TID not moving forward or not moving forward at the pace that we believe that they would have in the last FMP. Then back to you Greg.

So in terms of the operational side, we do do a line item forecast that's detailed, looking at all of your line items and your general fund revenue. But we kind of present this at a high level. As you get into your budget process, you'll kind of look at things on a line item basis, but we really want to focus on five-year trends. But we use a conservative projection methodology on the general fund projections. Your shared revenues, which are shared revenues from the state, uh... transportation aids we have those kind of increasing at about two percent per year uh... your special charge for refuse and recycling also at two percent per year and really most of your non levy other non levy revenue sources uh... permits and fees for example kind of remaining flat so you see fluctuation those are other revenue sources certainly year over year but generally speaking you're not seeing you know significant changes absent you know an amazon project that comes along where you can see a big spike in your inspection revenue but otherwise your revenues are fairly consistent year over year So in terms of that line item projection methodology, we kind of assign what we call a classification code to each line item on the expenditure side. And so we assign kind of some inflationary adjustments based off of kind of how we've seen things trending and get input from village staff to just kind of model this out going forward. So in terms of kind of the general fund, this is the big picture. So again, this is all based off of a line item detail projection. So from 2027 all the way out through future years, you'll kind of see how the general fund levy has changed historically from 2024 through 2026, and then how that's projected to change kind of going forward. So again, this is based on a balanced budget. So we kind of project those non-levy revenue sources, project your expenditures, and then your levy is what is essentially needed to balance the budget because you're required under state law to have a balanced budget. Next, we want to transition into the debt portion of your budget. So this is a summary of your existing debt before we look at the impact of future capital projects. So your total gross principal and interest payments on your general obligation debt is in the far left-hand column. And then the Village budget several non-levy revenue sources to help pay a portion of that debt. So debt that's attributable to your TID districts is paid by TID revenues. General obligation debt that was issued to fund water and sewer projects are paid by water and sewer revenues. And then premium is the money that's in your debt service fund that by under state statute has to be spent on interest expense. And so when we look at your levy for debt service in your 2027 budget, it was approximately $2,882,000. And then this net tax levy, that shows what your levy would be for debt if we didn't fund any other capital projects going forward. We'll look at the impact of new debt in a moment. And then the tax rate per thousand of value. And then just for every $100,000 of taxable value, it shows how much of the village's annual tax bill is attributable to debt service. So for every $100,000 of value in your 2027 budget, about $243 goes to pay existing debt service. next we just have kind of a summary of the capital improvement plan that's kind of listed uh... so this kind of encompasses a lot of different types of uh... capital items your vehicles and equipment uh... some of your road work and related trail projects and sidewalk park improvements uh... facilities and vehicle and equipment uh... so we have kind of lump sum numbers identified for vehicles and equipment and then some specific infrastructure projects are mentioned as well. So we've factored all of these projects into the capital improvement plan, understanding you go through a review of this, a prioritization of projects as part of your annual budget adoption. Again, this is a planning tool to help you see where things are trending. You know, you're not, you know, by approving this plan or agreeing to move it forward, you're not committing to really any of these projects. All of that happens at a later date when you approve your CIP, and then each debt issuance has to be approved separately by the village board. And then we also kind of list the water projects. As was mentioned, that's kind of part of the separate utility. Financial management plans, all of this was incorporated into the long range cash flow for the water and the sewer utility. So you'll see some of those projects are funded with cash, some are funded with debt. The debt kind of impacts this plan in terms of the village's general obligation debt limit. And then similar on the sewer side, so some projects financed with debt, other projects just funded with cash, all of this was included and incorporated into the long range forecast for water and sewer rates. So in terms of kind of like high level amounts, in terms of what's identified in your capital plan, so these are the total borrowing amounts that are identified from 2027 through 2031. And this includes those projects on the charts for water and sewer utility projects that were shown as financed with general obligation debt. And then we've just used flat interest rate projections for future debt issuance. So trying to be conservative, these rates are higher than what you would see in the market today so again similar to the operational side and the valuation projections we're trying to be conservative so in terms of kind of looking at that cip and just how the debt gets repaid so while all of it is considered general obligation debt which legally is backed by a property tax levy the village budgets other revenue sources so not all of your debt is actually repaid by the levy even though you're legally able to repay it all through the levy. So you'll see in 2026, about 48% of your debt is repaid by the levy, about 43% for TIDs. And then you'll see the TID percentage really kind of starts to decline as a lot of your existing TID debt is paid off. And then your utility portion of geo debt for utilities remains relatively consistent over the planning period. So in terms of kind of where the levy would go for debt service if you funded everything that's in the capital improvement plan. So we have your existing levy for debt service that was carried forward from that existing debt chart. We have your tit out equalized value projected and that's at those conservative percentages that Cameron was mentioning. And then we just show your gross principal and interest for debt issuance from 2027 through 2031. Again, this is a plan, it's an illustration. You're not committing to any of this, but if you did, this is what it would look like. So we have water and sewer revenues paying their share of debt. And so the debt service is structured, so the levy increase year over year is at a kind of consistent amount. So it's about $800,000 per year from 2028 to 2031, and then the increase from 2031 to 2032 is about $437,000. And then this planning model ends in 2031. So your next debt issuance would be in 2032 if you're issued annually. which would impact your levy in 2033. So you'll see the debt service levy is projected to decrease in 2033. That's by design. So if you did issue future debt at the end of this planning period, you've got room to kind of layer that in. So when we kind of look at the debt issuance, and I'm going to kind of go back a couple of charts, when we look at these dollar amounts, I mean, it's fairly consistent, but then you have some years where There's some fluctuation in these dollar amounts. We're structuring the debt so you have that consistent levy impact year over year. What we're trying to avoid is the debt service levy fluctuating wildly year over year. So trying to give you some consistent budgetary amounts, even though the amount that you're financing, if the full CIP was funded, you know, varies year over year. We're trying to structure the debt so that levy impact is consistent. So all general obligation debt, regardless of the repayment source, so your debt's repaid by levy, TIF, utilities, if it's issued on a general obligation basis, legally, it is subject to a statutory debt limit, which is the amount of principal that you have outstanding of general obligation debt cannot exceed 5% of the village's total equalized value. So at the end of this fiscal year, The village has about $47 million in general obligation debt outstanding. That puts you right at 50% of your debt limit. If everything was funded in the CIP, including the utility projects with general obligation debt, you'll see for the next several years you remain right at that 50% threshold. And then it kind of starts to decline into the mid and lower forties. So in terms of your debt limit and kind of your, you know, that capacity utilization, you know, that's certainly within a kind of a comfortable range in terms of your legal limitations. really about the fiscal impact and whether or not you want to repay that debt. So just because you have capacity doesn't mean you should issue the debt. Really, again, your debt is driven by infrastructure, investment, and capital projects. That's all the village is issuing debt for. As you all know, when you go through your annual budget process, you're trying to strike that balance between maintaining day-to-day services but also investing in infrastructure because the infrastructure is not going to go away neither is the village so i mean that obligation is going to exist going forward so he's trying to strike that balance So this chart kind of brings forward everything we've been talking about up until this point. Again, this is kind of an all-in model that just kind of takes everything into account, the full CIP. So again, you'll go through your budget process. Typically your levy comes in less than what we're forecasting, but you'll go through that process here this fall. So a couple of things to point out. So everything from 2023 to 2026 is actual in terms of your total property tax levy, which largely consists of your general fund and debt. Those are your remaining two levy components. And then we have the equalized value projections. CLC from 2026 to 2027, your tit-out value went up 20.53%. that is the impact of the closure of TID 5. So with the closure of that district, all that incremental value returns to the tax rolls. So that's really what's largely driving the uptick in that value. So using this model as an illustration, so even if your levy went up about 24.6% from 2026 to 2027, your tax rate per thousand was $5.49 in 2026, it would be $5.68. IN 2027. AND THEN YOU'LL SEE HOW THAT'S KIND OF CHANGING GOING FORWARD. SO, AGAIN, THIS IS FULL FUNDING OF THE CIP, KIND OF CONTINUATION OF OPERATIONS. IT'S KIND OF THAT ALL-IN MODEL. AND THEN YOU'LL SEE THE TAX RATE PER THOUSAND. AND THEN FOR EVERY $100,000 A value, the last line on this chart kind of shows what the village share of the total tax bill would be for every $100,000 of value. So again, this chart is just for the village. It's not representing the other taxing jurisdictions. In terms of levy limits, as I mentioned, really levy limits are driven by net new construction. You get a one-time levy limit adjustment the year following TID closures. So the closure for TID district number five increases your allowable levy by almost $311,000. That's in addition to your net new construction amount. So you're not only seeing that value return to the tax rolls, ELIGIBLE TO CLAIM AN ADJUSTMENT TO INCREASE YOUR ALLOWABLE LEVY. AND THEN REALLY THE ADJUSTMENT THAT THE CITY PRIMARILY UTILIZES YEAR OVER YEAR, WHICH IS NO DIFFERENT THAN MOST COMMUNITIES, IS YOUR ADJUSTMENT FOR GENERAL OBLIGATION DEBT. SO ANY GENERAL OBLIGATION DEBT THAT YOU ISSUED IS LEGALLY BACKED BY AN IRRAPABLE TAX LEVY, SO YOU CAN LEVY WHATEVER IS NECESSARY FOR YOUR GENERAL OBLIGATION DEBT. So the city claims what adjustment is needed to have its actual levy and allowable levy be the same. And we show that projection going forward to just determine compliance with levy limits. So we wanna make sure that, you know, The plan could be funded under levy limits as they exist presently. And as you'll see, this is where those forecasts for net new construction come into play, where we're trying to be conservative in terms of those future projections, not projecting out levels that you've seen in the last couple of years, even though your net new construction percentage this year was kind of at record levels, largely due to kind of the first valuation for Amazon. So in terms of that same numbers just illustrated visually, so in orange is the tax levy, so this is the total tax levy. General fund and debt service just kind of shows the projection history from 25 and 26, 27 going forward is a projection, and then that tax rate per thousand is projected as well. So that's the same that was on the chart, just shown graphically. I want to touch on each of the TIF districts. So TIF district number six currently has about three million of incremental value. It pays for a portion of the debt service for that district. The village has covered the remainder of that through the levy or other funds. That's projected to remain open for its full maximum life until 2031. TID district number eight has about 4.3 million of value. It's final year of increment collections in 2039. The village has what are called pay-as-you-go development incentives in place. How those work is there's a development agreement in place with a specific developer within the district that they get a portion of the tax increment that their project generates subject to conditions in a development agreement. Those development incentives have a cap If the developer doesn't generate enough revenue to pay the incentive up to the cap, the village has no responsibility to make up that shortfall. So it really kind of shifts the burden onto the developer to get their incentive. It's paid out annually based on the amount of taxes that they actually pay each year, and that's a condition in your development agreements. They have to pay their taxes in order to get the incentive. TID 9 has about 49.1 million of incremental value. It can collect increment until 2039. The primary expenditure for this district is some debt that was issued for land acquisition a few years ago. The district is generating enough tax increment to support that debt. And then TID District 10, the incremental value as of January 1 of this year was over 400 million. So that's representing largely the increase due to Amazon. The final year of income at collection is 2039. The main expenditure in that district is development incentives related to Amazon as well. It's also that pay as you go arrangement. So they only get the incentive up to a cap if they generate sufficient revenue to pay it off within the life of the district.

And Greg, if you could go back real quick. TID 9 and 10 will likely see amendments for consideration in 2027. TID 8, 9, and 10 will see amendments 30% audits in 2028. So those are our kind of next compliance steps for those various districts. The TID six final audit would be scheduled for 2031, similar to TID five audit. So those are all, those are typically communicated through joint review board and then pass through updates to the board. But I just wanted to make sure that the board was aware that we may see an amendment for eight, for nine and 10 coming up this year.

And by amendment, those are amendments to the project plan. We can't make boundary amendments due to the amount of value that we have in our TIF districts. But those amendments will reflect way better than anticipated revenues in those TIF districts, but also corresponding larger projects. So it's good news and has been communicated to the Joint Review Board the last couple years.

And that joint review board meeting, the annual meeting for this year is gonna be on October 1st. So that's coming up in a couple of weeks. So just to kind of summarize, kind of at a high level, so again, this is a planning model. It's an illustration. You'll go through your annual budget process. We'll kind of go through this more in depth, but as a kickoff to that process, we'd like to kind of present this multi-year plan. So with everything, kind of your operations, full funding of the CIP, the average levy change over six years is about 12%. average change year over year and then the average equalized tax rate per thousand over a six year period is about six dollars and thirty two cents and then your maximum utilization of your geo debt capacity if you funded everything uh... in the cip that's really you know it's not going to be any higher than it is presently uh... you kind of remain at that you know fifty percent level even for the next couple of years even with additional debt being issued So this is again kind of intended to kind of provide kind of some long range projections as you start getting into your annual budget process. So I'll pause here, see if staff has any other comments you want to add before we get into any questions.

You betcha. Greg, if you could go back to page 10, please. So one of the positive things that I had missed when working with Greg on an update related to personal property aid in TID 5 that now shifts to the general fund. So with any recommendation tonight, I'm proposing adding $62,000 of... Intergovernmental revenue with a corresponding decrease in property taxes of $62,000. That's made up of roughly $50,000 of Act 12 personal property aid and $11,000 of regular personal property aid. On page 12, Kyla and team has started on As every, some projects in this plan require engineering in the prior year to start. So you're ready for construction that prior year. Whenever that happens, that's requested in the budget. So the 2026 budget had Ali and Main Street in there. So we have some numbers refined. So for Ali Street, we have, UPDATED NUMBER 750,000 AND SOUTH MAIN 650. SO THERE'S A NET PLUS 35,000 IN THERE. JUST BECAUSE IT'S RELEVANT. ON THE WATER SIDE, UPDATED NUMBER 770 FOR ALI, 745 FOR MAIN, NET POSITIVE $25,000 in expense. And then sewer, $610,000 for Ali and $560,000 for Main. $247,500 less than what was in the plan. So again, any recommendation with this plan, I would ask for those numbers to be revised. Additionally, Kyla secured some LRIP funding in 2028. So there'll be a corresponding $50,000 less debt required on that 2.1 million in the annual road program. Not shown in this plan, but again, just want to make the body aware. There are some fire apparatus that will be funded with Pleasant Springs funds. I don't have specific assets identified in this plan. Additionally, as you'll see tonight and through EMS's budget process, they're periodically funding improvements with cash on hand. I don't have the offset negative for that in this plan. And then lastly, There's a $400,000 street sweeper purchase that is factored into the vehicles and equipment purchase here. I'm very happy to report that that's almost 100% funded with a combination of general fund surplus, I WOULD LIKE TO SAY THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. I WOULD LIKE TO SAY THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. THANK YOU Yes, they're authorized to spend up to a dollar amount, but making sure that returning every dollar possible goes a long way. So would expect that final borrowing amount to be significantly less. And that's the last thing for consideration.

And then there were, at Budget Review Committee, there was no public comment, and we haven't received public comment on the FMP, so I just want to make sure that the board knew that.

Open it up for... And then at Budget Review, it's kind of in the interim process. At Fire... And at Parks and Rec, they started talking about possible master planning for that area. There's failed pavement and other things that need to be issued, corrected outside of just the structure. the hamburger stand, if you will. And so before making an assumption of what we think should be fixed or corrected, looking at holistically, kind of in discussions with Kyla, just thinking kind of temporarily fixes would be anywhere between $50,000 to $100,000 depending on what we want to do in that area recommending that at this time because yes that that is a significant dollar or not an insignificant dollar amount but that's something that could be added back uh later um in the plan if the board wishes or we could bring a final 2027 budget with those improvements in it but that's not currently in the debt. The intention would not be to take out debt for that cost. We would try to find the funds on hand for that minor improvement prior to a large improvement.

Comments, questions, suggestions for alterations? Casey?

I think just a general common feedback. As you said at the start of this, Greg, what Standard & Poor's and other auditors look at is this consistency and stability. And I think it's really remarkable that one of the biggest takeaways from this is that despite you know, two very significant outliers in new construction with Amazon and in expenses with the police station project. We are able to stay so stable and consistent with with our budget, with our levy and so on. We aren't having to, you know, dip into this newly allowable levy, we can stay the course and stay steady and continue to have this really stable rating. And so I commend you and staff in all departments for keeping things this level. I think that's... that's what you know what makes the difference for everybody's tax bill at the end of the day is is that kind of uh consistency so i think that's really good to see in these numbers here any other comments or questions otherwise

I guess I do want to comment on the, again, this is sometimes in my position, the difficulty on putting things in the schedule. So obviously through budget review committee was asked to put what was recommended in draft form for the emergency service building. As if this improvement would happen today, the cost share is 50-50. So that would be $3.4 million for the village, $3.4 million for the town. So that's what's currently in this plan. So if there's going to be a material change on that, how that is funded. Additionally, there was four different suggestions in the draft plan about what to do, maybe a remodel one year and then you stage another improvement another year. So that final... amount, how it's gonna be funded. I think there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. We had talked previously about an impact fee for our portion of that improvement. Again, that would only be able to cover the deficiency, not the current. So those are all things that have to be worked out, but that's what the point was of the illusion is the current language in our agreement is 50-50. If for some reason we would be asked to pay more than that, in my opinion, there would need to be equity interest change where we would absorb some additional equity interest in that building if we're being asked to cover any remodel or addition costs.

Yeah, that's based on the current draft and what we know as of right now, and that might change. It probably will change.

Paula? I have a list of questions, so I don't know if anyone else wants to go first. OK. I guess we'll just start at the top. So the AA stable rating is good. How do we get to great? How do we get to the AAA rating and realize maybe some potential interest rate benefits and other things? Like if you had to give us the top three things that we as a village board could do to get to AAA, what would they be?

I don't want to give the representation that I think you'll get to AAA. I'm not saying you can't, but I mean, there's a lot of factors that go into that. I mean, there's a level between where you're at now and AAA, so I mean, it'd be more likely to say what would need to happen to get from AA to AA+, because then it goes to AAA. So that's probably more a realistic objective. So I mean, I think in the report, I think what they've noted is over the years is, First, no decline in your current financial strengths, so your fund balance remaining consistent. I think they've noted kind of income metrics, which are much harder for you to control directly, but I think the other factor that's a positive is you're continuing to see growth. I mean, they're going to see the increase in values as a result of the Amazon project in terms of the TOTAL VALUATION OF THE VILLAGE, SO THAT'S GOING TO BE A POSITIVE. I THINK MAINTAINING YOUR CURRENT FINANCIAL STABILITY AND NOT SEEING ANY MATERIAL DECLINE IN THAT, AND THEN CONTINUING TO SEE SOME HEALTHY GROWTH IN YOUR TAX BASE, THOSE ARE THE ITEMS THAT WE CAN KIND OF PUSH. I NEVER WANT TO SAY WHAT CAN MAKE THEM, BECAUSE IT JUST DOESN'T, I WISH IT WAS THAT SIMPLE. IT JUST DOESN'T.

Unfortunately, for the things we can control, so they make the scoring rubric available online, SMP. So I kind of went through the exercise, okay, if we can't change anything like the income and institutions, is it the institutions? Institutional framework. which is essentially being a municipality in Wisconsin. We are flirting with AA+. I'm a little bit worried about doing the jump roping back and forth between AA+, AA, because we are very close from a metric. And one of the things that I've talked to S&P over the last two years was they're aware that we're A LITTLE BIT HIGHER FROM OUR POLICY PERCENTAGE ON OUR RESERVES. BUT ONE OF THE THINGS IN THEIR RATINGS FRAMEWORK IS NOT ONLY A PERCENTAGE BUT A DOLLAR AMOUNT. SO OUR DOLLAR AMOUNT IS NOT SIGNIFICANT. I'M JUST GOING TO USE SOMETHING THAT LET'S SAY MSB WENT DOWN. WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH IN OUR RESERVES TO COVER EVEN REMOTE. SO THEY VIEW THAT AS KIND OF A MATERIAL RISK. The other way would be to use some of those reserves. So if we would have a deficit in our general fund, we get, they have a rolling, I think it's either a three or five year average where you have to have 2%, you have to have a surplus of 2% of your revenues compared to budgeted, which I think is kind of weird that you would want, you would wanna say I'm gonna budget this, but I'm actually gonna exceed 2% of, and so that's the kind of framework that I don't want, And I don't know, Greg, if you have experience with communities on the fringe, that bouncing back and forth because we do something that's in the best interest of our residents. So it might not be in the best interest of our residents to hold that extra $300,000 or $400,000 in reserve, but that might be just the difference between AA plus and again, in one year. I don't know if you have experience with that.

Yeah, I think it comes down to, again, kind of showing a plan and articulating a use. I mean, if you had a period of time where you had some reserves and you were going to use it for a specific purpose, but it maybe dropped that metric, but they can understand what it was for, they're going to somewhat take that into consideration. So there's the quantitative side, which you articulate very well, but then there's the qualitative aspects where they want to hear your vision and rationale for why you're doing what you're doing and the in my opinion, the rating agencies over the years have become a lot more receptive to that, because I think they, particularly here with Cottage Grove, where we can demonstrate that this is being looked at in a multi-year context.

And frankly, I'm pretty frustrated at the population metric that they use. They're still using, I don't know, was it 7,000 or 8,000 in the last, and Wisconsin DOA independently publishes that information, and that has a direct impact on our debt burden, So to me, we're essentially being punished until the next formal census or wherever they get that information.

Yeah, the American Communication Survey. Which is so dumb.

It's frustrating. And then Greg and I have talked about potentially inviting S&P out to the village now that we've realized what we've kind of... been telling them over the couple years about all the development that has happened as a way for them to not only, you know, because it's their job to be independent, give an independent assessment, but if they can come in and actually see all the progress, we thought that there could be a benefit to that as well.

Thank you. Can I just add something? I guess in my experience with the census, just before we get away from that, other states, you can have a special census and update your population counts, which can affect federal funding. And I would imagine things like this also. But Wisconsin state law doesn't allow for that. So I mean, there are so many things that are out of our control, that being one of which we could always relay up to our legislature to maybe change.

Sorry, I have one more quick follow-up with Cameron. So you were talking about inviting S&P out. Would that be a cost on us to do, or is that something that they would kind of cover in there?

There's no added cost. So they charge a flat fee when you do a rating, and so if they come up here to do an in-person tour, there's no added cost for that.

And just a note too that we did have an increase from, we were double A minus at one point and improved at double A.

Okay, thank you. Next question, page six. The allowable levy increases over 600,000. Can you, Cameron, walk us through what happens if we don't levy that full amount in terms of carryover, the number of years? Can you just kind of walk us through that process?

Yeah, and I think, so page, 20 is probably a better page to kind of see this in how it's calculated. So essentially, if we didn't take a dollar of debt service adjustment, we would likely not need to increase the levy by 680 some thousand. However, for next year's budget, our base levy is 2.8 million. So when I mean base levy, that's what we communicate out. Roughly half of our levy is applicable to net new construction. So if we were able to increase our allowable levy from 2026, which was 6.5 million times 23%, our increase would be substantially more than what it is with the 2.8 base. So we want to take advantage of and add to that base. We want to increase our base as much as possible and reduce what we're requiring to utilize the debt levy adjustment. And so if for some reason you would choose not to increase the base portion of the levy, you would be permanently forgoing levy capacity, which it essentially would mean we would be projecting as early as 2028 or 2029 needing to go to referendum to cover operating expenses. Does that make sense?

I thought state law was different in terms of carryover and that there was a time frame.

So typically on a levy limit worksheet that you don't have a carryover in your worksheet unless you're not utilizing the levy limit adjustment for debt. So if you kind of fast forward or rewind back to 2015 or 2016, we had some carryover levy in our levy limit worksheet. We don't have that. We have gotten to the point where, like many communities, not only are we levying what we can in our base levy, we're also levying taking the debt service adjustment for capital, because a lot of the capital things have been pushed to that allowable debt service adjustment. So really, when we go through the budget process, finalizing a levy and then kind of Greg and I work on the levy limit worksheet and fill it out what's in the best interest for the community going forward.

Okay, page eight, it talks about increases and it says non-levy revenue sources remain flat. Why is that and is there any opportunity for us to grow that?

So that's primarily modeled that way because it's the conservative approach. I could say permit revenue increases by five or 6%. What happens if we miss that is we're now projecting a worse levy or tax impact in future years as opposed to coming back with better news. And so typically what will happen is if you see in the future property taxes and be like, oh, this is really ugly, And then you asked me, OK, what are things that we can do? I would say, OK, well, this is based off of flat. If we increase permit fees by 2% or we increase something else by a percentage. We could come back on how to improve that. So it's kind of actionable items. It kind of gives us time. Another one would be park rentals, impact fees, things like that that would come forward. I will say that for parks and rec specifically, we budget for those programs to break even. And so even if we don't protect the revenues as going up, the revenues and expenses increase at the same. Really, the only cost that hits the levy is the cost for our rec coordinator and parks and rec staff, which is why we have a difference between residential and non-residential rate. I know that's always a hot topic. But that's where, again, if we want to work with our partners, we can say, okay, Town of Cottage Grove or Town of Sun Prairie, if you want residential rates, this is your buy-in, $20,000, $15,000 to get those rates. And that would be something that we could definitely explore with direction, hopefully.

And it's something we did in the past, and I don't remember what year we stopped, but I remember at one point, my last tour of duty, the town was giving us an amount. 2012. Thank you. Okay. So just as I was transitioning off the board. Okay. Thank you. That's good to know we have that in our back pocket. On page 15, over five years, there's $36 million in GO debt on there.

Correct.

Okay, so is it possible based on these assumptions to also put another document in here right after that, that looks just like that, but then it looks like also it includes the interest. So you know your total cost of that borrowing. Is that something we could do?

Oh, I see what you're talking about. So like for 2027, you would put $10.4 million. Right? So that's also on page seven, but just to put it in one place?

Yeah, I mean, ideally it would be nice to see it in that aspect, because the sheets with a lot of lines, people kind of gloss over. But it's also the cost of borrowing, right? Like, when we do borrowing for a consumer, we have to tell them their full disclosure and the full cost of what that borrowing is. And just having that more prominently in this document, I think, would be good.

So if you look on page 17, so for each of the borrowings, principal and interest, the total is right here at the bottom. So that's the total amount of principal and interest that you're borrowing for each of these issues.

Yeah, and I guess I was looking at it year by year. Sure. And again, pulling it out, and I'm especially thinking of our residents. Like we said, there's no public comment on this, but this isn't the easiest document to discern. So I would love to see what's on page 15, just have an added column, total cost of the borrowing over the life of the loan, something like that would be my preference. I also think, I mean, obviously I know that I have a little different appetite for debt than a lot of the board members. And I appreciate Cameron, you saying about cash funding, the sweeper EMS. It's always been my hope that EMS would be self-sustaining with our run fees and we're darn close, I think. So I'm happy to see that. But I also would like to see if there's ways that we can tie in some cash funding of smaller capital projects so we can reduce the debt borrowing on page 15. So as we go through the rest of the budgeting process, I'd love to see if we can tie in some cash funding. And then the last thing is I think it would be helpful, especially for... Maybe it's a separate graphic or a separate document, but what is the actual impact on the homeowner, right? So modeling out a projected tax bill each year through the next five years with the debt and where that's at. I know it's buried in bits and pieces in the document, but it'd be helpful to just call it out as its own graphic. Yep, and so... And I understand it would only be our portion of the tax bill.

Oh, yeah, and further so, with the timing of the revaluation, that number, the median, because that was what we kind of communicated last year, the median number is more meaningful than average. So as soon as that median... dollar amount is finalized on September 30th my intent is to add we have a we have that page um to add that kind of back to that document and if the board wants that to do it in an amendment sure if they just want to bring it as an update I can bring that forward but the intent is to bring that back additionally um either this week or next week they do a final enrollment counts final final enrollment, and final aid calculation to the school district. I want to get an estimate on the average tax bill and the median tax bill for homeowners out as soon as possible, just because I think that information is important to know. And so because of the TED closure, a lot of moving pieces with that on what their generalized aid specifically is going to affect on the school portion of the tax bill. But I want to get both the median for impact on what we can control and what special for this year what homeowners can expect for the people in the monona grove school district and if people are in the sun prayer school district which i believe there's like three um i will do those calculations special for them and one one note on uh cash funding which we used to do much more of in fact we

Rarely, if ever, outside of maybe fire apparatus, did we not pay cash for things like equipment and such. But with levy limits, that's just, you'll see. In fact, there could be one-offs where we do a cash drawdown of reserves, but that's gonna have the counter issue of working against our bond rating. So you can't really have both.

JP.

And just to follow up on Paul's last comments, folks can probably see that I believe on page 17. Page 17, the table on the far right side has annual taxes of impact in there. So while it's not in that broken out grid, like you were asking, it's still very much there. So I just want to call that out for those that are viewing this document now, that's there on that table.

Yeah, and again, that intent is that page is supposed to be there. I just wanted to make sure I was putting, because what I have found, that 315,000 average, when I looked at those same properties, I saw them all over the place for changes with the 2026 revaluation. So I want to put things in 2026 terms. um and so if you if you have your revaluation notice and this is what you got this is kind of what to anticipate um so that that will be coming down the pipeline and again unfortunately with the timing one of the strategies there's a definitely a tax impact is we could do And frankly, we've done it with water and sewer. Times when we've had to borrow for equipment, we've essentially cash-funded by borrowing it for a year. And it still allows us to take the levy adjustment because it's a long-term debt, but you're not paying interest over... seven years you're paying it over one so that's definitely a strategy that we can bring forward um so uh with that direction you know we can kind of look at what our final 2027 vehicle and equipment purchases are and come with options during the budget and kind of maybe what that that impact would be that's a good idea

i love that because that gets that gets us what i'm trying to get at is what are we paying over the life of the loan um so i think that would be great and i have one more last question um so do we or do you greg and cameron do you stress test these projections so cameron you in particular mentioned the slowdown um in construction and and our growth projections. So do we stress test? Okay. If our growth slows down, what does that look like? Or if the municipal bonds go to a 7% interest rate because the macro economy is taking a nosedive, which we've seen in the past, what does that look like in terms of our borrowing?

Yeah. So we capture that in the economic For the equalized value, I think it was 3%, and then you used 3.13% as your economic adjustment. That is likely way, over the course of five years, a 3% year-over-year economic adjustment is very conservative. Typically, for net new construction, the only time we add it kind of bank on it is we know it's approved so with there's a subdivision on average twenty permits get polls okay we're gonna we're gonna based value on ten permits to kind of back down uh... as far as uh... ted closures will wait until the board has been either taken action or has indicated that they're going to take action on a specific year. So TID 5, for example, could have got extended one year for affordable housing. It was very clear early on in the process that the TID needed to close as soon as possible to provide some tax relief. from a bond perspective i don't know do you want to touch on that i think five percent is significantly higher than we typically have seen or we have seen five percent of interest rate you have projected yeah so i mean in terms of kind of stress testing it i mean in terms of the interest rates that we're using we're already building in rates that are higher

If it goes to 7%, I mean, that's a substantial increase over where we're at presently. And so, you know, we'd react to that if something like that happens. But, you know, we're already building in rates that are appreciably higher than what you'd see today.

We basically build the plan as a whole conservative to the point that it's the worst case scenario. Not the absolute, I mean, you could dream up a worst case, but it's the most reasonable worst case scenario.

And I guess the most stark example, that's why you saw the police station at $23 million. It went down to 16.2. We try not to bring a plan forward that will significantly change for the worse. And so if for some reason interest rates would come down in the next prioritization process, I would likely recommend a reduction in the amount of, I would work with Greg and say, okay. If we don't want to really blow up our parameters, what do we need to decrease the amount of principal that we're issuing each year, and what does that impact have on the plan? That might be a year that we're skipping doing road repavement. I don't know, Greg, just because I haven't had as much experience with the refinancing. Most of my career has been after a lot of that impact, but typically you would probably build call terms in rates when you hit that 7% where you can call it at four or five years to refinance it at significantly lower or pay off.

All of the villages debt has optional call features. A lot of them are maybe seven or eight years from date of issuance. And so if interest rates drop, you have the option to refinance. If interest rates go higher, they're fixed when you sell the debt and you keep the existing interest rate. So it's really entirely at the village's discretion and market conditions if you're going to refinance. But that's the benefit of municipal debt is when you issue the debt, your interest rates are fixed even up to 20 years.

Are there any other comments or questions or moving items around in the FMP? Otherwise, this is a consider.

I just want to go back to the cash funding portion because I think it's beneficial to understand the various factors at play because I think that there's been a narrative at times that is accusatory of a cash and spend and borrow until our capacity. I think our financial management process has really narrowed down what we want to prioritize for investments in our community. And if you look at the capital improvement plan, we have various lengths of loans that match the useful life of the equipment or the maintenance that we're doing. We're talking about millions of dollars of projects so that amount to pay cash for these large projects is not really very realistic to look at in this plan. And so we have taxpayers paying for the equipment that use the equipment while we're paying it off. So we have the direct beneficiaries paying for that equipment while it's being used. So that's one way to look at it. how each of these is funded. And we also have just the realities of our structure and the realities of the costs of things. I mean, costs of repairing a road or buying a snow plow or buying a ladder truck have just grown exponentially in the past. you know, something that cost $100,000, you know, 20 years ago, you know, may cost $500,000 or $600,000 now. So we have, you know, pairing all of these different factors into play. I think we have a very, I think actually a very slim capital improvement plan that really covers our necessities. We've gone through many meetings to try and talk about and through committees on what projects to prioritize here. And yes, I think it's fabulous when our staff find other funding mechanisms, grants. We have performed better than expected, so we're able to to pay cash or partial cash with things. So I think we've demonstrated that our staff is doing that. And so we don't have to take out debt if we don't need to. I think this financial management plan really lays out kind of the conservative approach that we're going to try and make the numbers better than this, but this is kind of the long-term range planning. And Greg, do you have very many municipalities that are able to cash fund very many things?

For the reasons Matt cited, it's really the levy limit constraints, and I think that's kind of been an unintended side effect of levy limits for 21 years, is that there's no exception for cash financing equipment. I mean, if you could cash finance capital assets, you get no argument from me, that's the best way to do it financially. YOUR LEVY FOR CAPITAL COMPETES DIRECTLY WITH YOUR OPERATIONAL LEVY AND SO IF YOU WANT TO INCREASE YOUR LEVY FOR CAPITAL PROJECTS BUT ALSO BEING EQUAL YOU'RE NOT SEEING OTHER REVENUE SOURCES TO FUND YOUR OPERATIONAL BUDGET YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE CUTS IN YOUR OPERATIONAL BUDGET UNDER LEVY LIMITS. that's a meaningful constraint for levy limits. And so, as you pointed out, we're trying to amortize the projects over their useful life, but all debt doesn't have to be even debt five years. I mean, you can issue debt for one year and a day and pay it off. And that's what some communities have done for items where they've cash funded it, but they're converting it to debt, so it's exempt from levy limits. So I kind of call it near cash financing. You're incurring some interest expense, but that interest expense may only be outstanding for a couple months. You can issue a debt obligation in October prior to, adopting your budget it could fund a year's worth of vehicle and equipment for reasons i won't bore you with you want that to be outstanding for at least a year and a day so it's long-term debt you make it prepayable at any time you collect your tax levy in january you pay it off so that that was outstanding for four or five months so yes you had four or five months of interest expense but you're getting close to cash financing. So those are all levy limit strategies. It may sound like a game, but I mean, you have to work within the legal constraints.

One last question. So you work with a lot of other municipalities. I'm guessing some around our size of 9,000. How many of them are carrying $51 million in debt around our size?

I think in terms of your size, in terms of where you're at with utilization of your debt limit and what you funded, I think it's not as unusual as you think or may think. I mean, you have to look at what you've invested in. I mean, you've invested in some significant facilities over the years. So some communities may be out of that cycle. They may have invested in their facilities 10 years ago and so they're not seeing that level of debt that you're seeing so it has to be somewhat put into perspective of not only the amount of debt outstanding but what are they what have they funded because those legacy projects the police stations the municipal services buildings yes you had to incur those costs but that's not routine costs that you're incurring so you know if i look at your debt burden and you know if everything was funded in this plan which You know, it usually isn't. You know, you're at that 50% of your debt limit for, you know, when the rating agencies look at that, that isn't, you know, they have not found that unmanageable. It's elevated from where it's been, but that's because of the projects that you've taken on. But the planning is really what kind of won over the rating agencies. I mean, they saw all this years before it happened, and that's the key.

I think one of the things that we struggle with, or I struggle with, is we have an elevated geo debt percentage, but that unfortunately doesn't take into account revenue debt that we aren't issuing. So if we take this plan and take out what we'd be issuing, if we reduced it by $6 million for planned water and Another 2.5 for sewer. I think that puts us, when comparing to other communities, a lot closer to expenditure. I'm also. and Kyla for the water and sewer because we are at a state with our utilities that now is the time for a really good, robust, planned maintenance period because of the age of our system. There are so many communities that I used to work with that were playing catch up. Because they took the easy decision for a rate perspective. They didn't take the long term. So they have massive, absolutely massive capital expenditures on the water and sewer perspective. It sometimes is, especially on the water side, a tough decision to do those improvements and do those means, but you'll save cost in the long run on the annual operating cost. There will be, if for some reason the state changes their program, We just haven't been able to apply for their rate reduced program. We have a couple revenue bonds that are that way, but essentially if the market was 5%, we might, through that program, you could issue debt at 2.5%. Well, unfortunately, we can't. We don't qualify because of how we prioritize according to the state's criteria. So if we took out revenue bond, instead of 5%, it would be maybe 5.5%. And then not only that, we would also be hit with the additional debt covenants because it's not backed by the full faith of your tax dollars. So they essentially make you hold... revenue, a lot of it's like 1.1 or 1.25 of your annual debt service in a reserve. So that's the definition of holding onto cash, just to hold onto cash in my opinion.

And again, with a good chunk of our debt being for the currently being constructed police station, but timing that debt to come on when we're closing a TIF district and having the overall tax bill be some level of a decrease. I mean, when I talk to colleagues, They can't believe we can add a $17 million asset and reduce taxes at the same time.

JP, do you have a final comment? And then we're going to move on to the consider portion.

Yeah, so there's just one thing I want to call out quickly, Cameron, in a short answer. Because you just mentioned how we are using GEO debt instead of revenue debt. And you kind of alluded to it, but I just want to make that very explicit. In a short answer, can you explain why we are using geo debt versus revenue debt for those projects?

less, investors view it as less risky. So if it's, if when we're taking out the debt, the board's saying we will cover this with property taxes if rates aren't sufficient, they view that as less risky than covering on rates by yourself. Because there are instances, and again, those instances maybe are more real today than they have been, where you have your treatment plant or your well being taken out by a cyber, or you can't do billing for a year, Those are real risk from rating agencies, so they factor that in, but you'll always have the ability to, again, you're pledging that you're, regardless of what happens, I'm willing to pledge to make this payment.

And many of those rate payers are also taxpayers, so it's also the GO debt is lower interest rates, so it's better for the overall, but...

It's lower interest rate. I mean, if your tax base is large enough that your 5% geo debt limit really presents no practical financial constraint, those communities finance everything with general obligation debt. You're really only managing it because there's a limit, but for very large communities, they would fund, if they had to issue debt for their utility projects, they would fund it all with geo debt because the interest rate's lost.

Okay. Let's move on to consider the 2027 financial management plan.

I'd make the motion to approve the 2027 financial management plan with Cameron's adjustments to, there were a couple adjustments you had.

Holly and Main Street updated amounts. which will be presented on September 16th to Utility Commission and Public Works for updated numbers. And then the additional $62,000 of intergovernmental revenue with a corresponding reduction of $62,000 in property taxes.

Thank you.

I'll second.

All right, motion by Murphy, second by Erlandson. Any debate on the motion? We'll do a roll call vote.

I was just going to mention, I think we could do more work on this. Obviously, I made some suggestions to different pages. But I think also that I would like to see more of a focus on debt, my appetite for this amount of debt. And I know I added to it with my vote on the police station, so I take responsibility for that. But I think good is the enemy of great, and there are things we could do. I would also like to see modeling for the two scenarios I mentioned with stress testing. A larger interest rate as well as housing. I think the housing crisis of 2009, if that were to happen again, I think we'd be in a world of hurt. But I would like to see more work before we approve this tonight.

Is there appetite from the board to change the motion?

Otherwise, we'll roll call vote. This is Renee. I would be in favor of Paula's suggestions of amending the motion and looking deeper into this. I, too, am concerned about the debt load.

Yeah. I don't think that's an amendment to the motion. It's just a reason as to how you'll vote.

Yeah, right. Okay. Thank you for clarifying.

Motion to all stay is roll call vote.

Benzo?

Nay.

Erlingson?

Aye.

Cal Nelson? Aye. Murphy? Aye. Severson? Nay. Stoa?

Yes.

Villavicencio?

Aye.

Motion carries. All right.

Thank you, Greg, for presenting everything. Thank you. All right. Deer Grove EMS Commission is up next.

Yes. We met on Thursday, August 20th at 630, and it was a pretty extensive meeting, and I have pretty extensive notes for it. We approved the minutes from the previous meetings. I'm sorry, prior to that there were no public comments. We discussed the July financial reports and as well as write-offs and aging accounts. The aging accounts had increased higher than normal due to both there was a very busy July and then there had been an issue with the way Dean was billing with their member numbers. They changed them and gave people new cards, but didn't tell anyone else, which is very confusing, but that was still getting resolved between us, Dean, and Medicare. So that contributed to that. With the staff report, a couple of things highlighted that, Let's see, a commission member had asked about when we do mutual aid for concerts or volunteering event assistance. Chief confirmed that doesn't cost us or make us any money. We break even. Chief also highlighted many other events in Cottage Grove and beyond that Deer Grove was present at, educating the community, especially kids. And then we also discussed the changes in staffing, turnover, hiring, and resignations. Casual and volunteer positions are fluid, but that's expected. We had a presentation about the CARES Registry, which is basically taking a statistical look at how well we respond to cardiac arrest events and just comparing us to the county and to the state. And I encourage folks to take a look at that presentation from the EMS meeting. I remember Corey who presented that went into a lot of great detail, but the biggest takeaway was that we have the numbers to show that we do have a really good survival rate for cardiac arrests in Cottage Grove, and that's really encouraging. The portion about the amendment I will save for later because I believe since all of the previous discussions about that have been closed session, this one will also go to closed session. There was also the resolution for the ambulance, the striker purchase. Chief clarified that the full funding for this is from the FAP, an unassigned fund balance, so it's internal dollars. It's not coming from us or any other municipality. It's preserving the purchase price right now, and we can cancel at any time and don't have to pay until it's delivered. We approve the capitalization SOP to be in line with state and county standards. Some of the hardship waiver SOM is just formalizing that, yes, we're following the federal standards. We discussed the lateral transfers allowing Chief to consider experience from previous and comparable positions, because right now that's not technically possible. And then we went over the 2027 budget. And that is the largest portion included here in the packet. Broadly speaking, things are staying relatively the same. Some mandatory costs are increasing, like insurance and the like. The only budget initiative is increasing the pay for casual staff, since it has not changed in two years. And then, yeah, we'll have the two sub-items. Then on that, we adjourned. I think that's all. Unless you have more to add, Chief. I hope I got it all.

No, I think Casey did a good summary. The other factor that we pointed out from the staff report is we're trending towards almost 1600 calls for the year, which is roughly a 10% increase from years past with the statistical anomaly that the Village of Cottage Grove is actually behind call pace. So the increased call volume is happening in other places than the Village of Cottage Grove, at least for this part of the year so far.

lead us through the resolution.

Okay, a bunch of what Casey mentioned already is that we're planning to replace our 2017 ambulance in 2028. But because of its age, the hope is that we will process this so that we take delivery of it in January of 2028. so that literally it's gonna leave us to go get remounted next fall. So as part of our budget, we've added in there the $150,000 to cover the first half of the remount process, which typically is the purchase of the chassis cotton load system. We can't pre-order the chassis and defer delivery to lock in a price, because Ford and Ram and Chevy, that's not how they roll. Luckily for us, Stryker does have a little bit of a process where we can commit to the purchase now and delayed delivery until we need it next fall and lock in the price prior to their scheduled increase that will happen on October 1st. So we're able to lock in at the price that's in here at $68,800 and not experience our next price increase, which their general price increases are 8%. So if doing math, that's almost $7,000 we're going to potentially save. which I think is good for us. We can delay that delivery till next year. We can commit to this now and not have to worry about paying for any part of it until we take delivery. And as also Casey had mentioned, at any point in time, we can also cancel the order and have it be of no expense to us. So the ask would be that we are able to commit to this purchase, delay delivery until next year.

Any questions for Chief on this? Then let's move on to the consider resolution.

I'd make the motion to approve resolution 2026-08-20 regarding the striker medical equipment capital purchase as presented.

I'll second.

A motion by Murphy, second by Erlandson. Any debate on the motion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Roll call.

Benzo? Aye. Erlandson?

Aye.

Kell Nelson? Aye. Murphy? Aye. Severson? Aye. Stowa? Yes. Villavicencio?

Aye.

Thank you all. It's still the eighth.

All right, amendments to the Deer Grove IGA, something that we had talked about before. There's an attachment of the history. I'm not sure if we need to go into closed session for this. We could probably stay in open.

We have quite a bit to do before that decision can be made, even if some people want to. So let's go through it.

Yeah. Go ahead, Casey, over the memo.

OK. so yeah this is basically so i included just the history of uh what the ems commission approved in may uh and then added in june um which were lines from as directed by the village and by the town and then what we here at the village board approved in on the july 20th meeting instead and sent back to the ems commission um I mean, so the bottom line for this is that what the EMS Commission approved and sent to us originally requires that either the chair of the commission or the EMS chief confirm that legal... CONFIRM LEGAL ISSUES, GET SENT ONTO LEGAL FOR REVIEW AND FOR BILLING. WE SENT BACK THE WORDING WE PUT THAT WE SENT BACK SAYS THAT THE EMS CHIEF OR COMMISSION CHAIR SHALL FORWARD THE ISSUE, MEANING THEY HAVE TO. THEY DON'T GET TO SAY, WELL, NO, THIS IS SOMETHING WE DON'T WANT TO SPEND MONEY ON WITHOUT THE WHOLE COMMISSION WEIGHING IN, ET CETERA. I mean, essentially, the commission designed this in the first place in May and June, and maybe this didn't come across in the July meeting, but basically the problem right now is that any single commission member can... Even with like a limit of two hours or an hour or 15 minutes or whatever a bill can be racked up with no control by by the joint body and that's That's the problem that was them to be addressed. So what we sent back in July doesn't address that even with the time limit on things and so we're effectively bringing this back to clarify this. The other municipalities were pretty firm that this wasn't, this is the opposite of what they intended. This doesn't do what was trying to be done here. And if this comes down to like a reconsider or re-ascend, like that's what I'm asking for at this point.

So I think the language accomplishes two things. So one is that the request for legal goes through the chair and or the, and or chief, and it gets forwarded to the entire commission so that everyone is in awareness, so it's good communication. And then, you're right, the second part was the ability to used time, and there's a budgeted allocated amount of time for our legal services, which has been exceeded now because of the exception for this, we had two billable hours in there before. We went down to one, this body went down to one, majority went down to one billable hour, and now that is probably the most contested portion of this at the commission level. Because if one person is going to legal for one hour, and then the next person is going to legal for an hour, and then the next person, then it's just kind of a rolling thing. The legal bills at $395 an hour are constantly accumulating. And you hit that $5,000 budget quite quickly, as they did earlier this year.

Yeah, just to clarify that number, we're at over 7,000 now, although some of it hasn't been finalized, but yeah.

We also talked about how this hasn't been an issue in the past, but it was an issue in the last year. And moving forward, it could possibly be an issue in the future. And so it's an important thing for us to hash out and bring something back to them.

So I'll just jump in real quick. So this discussion is great to continue as it is. The only reason we would be justified to go into closed session is if we wanted to establish a negotiating strategy with our other partners in this service. So keep going. If there's a point where one of you thinks we want to establish a strategy, you can ask and make a motion to go into closed session.

I think if having the ability for village members of the commission or any member of the commission to ask legal a question is something that we feel like is not negotiable, then I think we need to look at the one billable hour and come down in that and ask the commission if they would accept something at a smaller time limit. Does that make sense to everybody, I guess, first? I know it's been a lot, back and forth, and this has been ongoing for quite some time.

So, a couple things. The $7,000 also includes collective bargaining, so that's probably a chunk. No, that doesn't include the, okay. All right, well, never mind that. I was the one who was pretty firm that a commissioner should have the ability for one hour, because not only do they pose the question, but you have to give the attorney time to answer it. And so the answer may not be immediate. It may be, I have to do research, I have to look into that, like Larry told us earlier about the ordinance versus policy and the NDA. My concern with that is neither the commission chairperson nor the chief is a lawyer. And so there has to be some ability to raise legal issues immediately and not have to have a simple majority for that. Because again, with three municipalities, two, two, and two, if we have a concern as the village, but the other two don't have the concern, then our concern is not raised. And then are we paying through our attorneys to have to analyze it? So I think having legal is the cost of doing business as an EMS service. And unlike us, where we have an attorney present, and we all have the ability to reach out with questions, they don't have that. The EMS attorney doesn't come to every meeting. They don't have that ability. So I'm firm on what we approved earlier on this with the one hour.

I guess the problem we have right now is we have our partners that are really seeking a change because they see from their perspective a problem that would become problematic for our relationship in this joint service. I mean, they wanted to see 15 minutes. Is that what they were hoping? I guess you said everyone is aware and the ability and reduced ability to use time. I think it's in our best interest to work with our municipal partners to find a common ground because I think that's in the best interest of the district and for us within the district to work with our municipal partners to find what best works. So I guess I'm trying to understand like what, how, What they're looking for from from that meeting.

I mean 15 minute was was sort of what Cindy and I offered as a as an alternative to this Having it go through the full body as a further compromise What the other municipalities do want is for the full body to weigh in on these issues and so again, I mean the In Paul's example, where if it's two, two, and two, two municipalities are one way and one is another, If that's the issue, then that's going to be something specifically affecting that municipality and they then can and should use their own legal services. The point of this is to restrict what the EMS commission and the EMS district uses for EMS legal services. If there is some issue where the town feels that that there's a town interest that's not being adequately represented, they should go through their town legal services similarly with us and so on and none of those avenues are closed with this. The only thing that this does is make sure that since this is a three municipality intergovernmental agreement that the full body weighs in on these things rather than an individual member from an individual municipality having the ability to do this.

I think minimal amount of time still gives us the ability, you know, you still have the ability that everybody knows that legal is being contacted for a particular issue and perhaps it's then yes, legal needs to be at the next meeting or yes, it needs to be on the next agenda. And then there's the authorization for if the majority of the commission is like, yes, this is an issue and we want this pursued, we want this initiative, we want whatever it is, then it goes through those proper steps. Um, I think, The relationship we have with Deerfield and the town is important in the commission and how it operates successfully. you know, I think it's in our, everyone's best interest to work through, you know, some type of a solution here. And I think that coming down in time to, you know, we threw 15 minutes out or 30 minutes or whatever it is, 15 minutes might be a good starting place depending on how you all feel. But I think that that's a good compromise that still gets, has everyone still has the ability to, to function in the right path. Chief. We aren't letting anyone in the background speak tonight.

It was an omen. I wasn't supposed to talk. Okay, so the point of clarification on $7,000, that is our total legal bill and what we've paid to our attorneys for the year thus far. Not about any one specific issue. It's for every operational issue that not only the commission has sent, but I have sent for legal purposes. So it's not just any specific issue. It's every part of our legal requests. I think one of the most important perspectives that I gained from our meeting about legal was that the other two boards and their members don't have direct access even on their own municipal board to legal. That gets funneled through their board chairs. So they're only requesting what they're accustomed to at their own board. They don't have the luxury of a smiling Larry or Rick at every single one of their meetings, they do business with a different model and they were looking to reflect what their normal business model is. I felt that was a good perspective to take from the meeting to pass along so that you all had that similar perspective.

I mean, I do appreciate that, and I know the model, right? And I get that, and I do value the relationships as well. But I do think, you know, we're the largest payer as a municipality. We carry most of the liability because of that. Up until I guess not long ago, we were the biggest user, but now we've fallen behind. So I think there's a lot of weight that goes with that. And our model as a board has been to really rely on our legal. And I think that has probably saved us in terms of decision making. And again, I think there is a cost to doing business as an EMS district. that is separate that should cover those things. Because if it were running as a private ambulance company, you would have those things kind of set aside. So I get both sides, but I do think there needs to be some recourse for our village representations. Because at the end of the day, We're responsible to the taxpayers of Cottage Grove, and if things are happening that may have an impact on those taxpayers, I think we need to have the ability to make some decisions or just even ask questions of an attorney. I'd hate to see us take that away.

Is there appetite from the board to... Revisit the time the majority of the board interested in revisiting the time are we I mean our options are we can Send it back to the EMS Commission with no changes Which won't be acceptable to our partners, which we are We only have we may be the biggest user and the biggest payer, but we still are just a third of the Commission voting And that's the reality of that If there's interest in reducing the time, I think that that's a compromise that the other municipalities would appreciate and we could potentially come to some sort of agreement. I'd be in favor of 15 minutes.

I'd be in favor of it as well, but I will stress again, that is yet another compromise, not what was requested. Like when it comes to the actual motion here, I would be motioning that we approve the amendment as it was presented by EMS in June, which is the, as I included in the memo, that will be the, hold on. So that is the second page screenshot because it says first considered by the commission for approval. So I highlighted it there. It is the combination of the May text and the June 18 text on the first page of my memo. But again, that's.

Chief, is that what the other two municipalities have approved? Is the June?

They approved the revision.

Yeah, so the June part is the revision. The May was the... also has the first considered by the commission. June added the two end sentences where if the legal issue involves potential litigation or an immediate legal risk, a member of the commission may request the EMS chief or chairperson to forward the issue without commission approval, and then any request shall be distributed to all commission members concurrent with request, which I think is yet another good out where if If an individual commission member feels there is something that is that important, they can still make that request. If it's an issue about the chief, they can request it to the chair. If it's about the chair, they can request it to the chief, and either of those can make that decision to afford it on. That's still two further ways that an individual commission member could put things forward here. again it just doesn't require our our partners to foot bills that did not get voted on by the commission i i still think that's the more important part that's what i'm going to be motioning i would just add to that in that modification that involves potential litigation or immediate legal risk

Even though I worked as a legal assistant for attorney, I don't think I would feel comfortable even knowing that. That's the question that I want to ask of the attorney. And again, I go back to the training of the EMS chief or chairperson. If I'm coming to them with a request and they're looking at it, it could be a subjective request. whether or not they forward, and I think that's the flaw in this system. I also just really wanna highlight that when this was written into the intergovernmental agreement several years ago, Matt kinda touched on it, there's a reason why it was written that way, and it was to give our village board representatives an opportunity to afford those legal issues. And so we're kind of reversing course from where the board was years ago, and yet we're still under the same governance model. And I know when I voted to have additional funding for PAA to look at the governance model, this is part of the reason why. With us being the largest payer and the largest user most of the time, and only having a third authority. that's weird to me. And so I'm hoping PAA has some recommendations in that regard. But I think we should honor the original board and the IGA that was written. And all the municipalities agreed to it at that time.

And I think that because of what's happened over the last year is why they feel the need for the edits. And they... Obviously, this was a big enough deal that it became the last however many months of going back and forth to trying to come to some resolution on it. Because the other two municipalities feel very strongly that I would say that they feel that this has been abused. and abuses the budget and they're not interested in having increased budget lines for legal just so we can use have that service available at that level or at that kind of free will. So I think. I know you wanna maybe go back to what Deerfield and the town have already approved. I think a really good compromise is having that time, a little bit of time built in. Because it does honor the original intent behind the IGA, but has the additional protections of kind of going above and beyond with the use from commission members.

Can I ask Larry, how much can you get done in 15 minutes?

Honestly, first of all. Almost every attorney bills in 6 minute intervals. So so. But I think that. You know, I've had conversations with most people on this board. It really just depends on the issue, but I think in terms of flagging. Oh, you know, perking your ears up and saying, yeah, this is something we should look at, that I could get that sense in 15 minutes or less. It really depends on the complexity of the issue. And there isn't going to be research done at that point, like you said before. You're not going to be. you know, well, let me get back to you on that and let me dig in a little bit, that's not gonna be enough time to do that. But if it was, hey, this happened, I'm worried about X, I think that's something that you could develop a pretty good idea of whether it should require more work and more analysis.

But then the idea is that it goes to the commission as an agenda item and is discussed, there's a closed session, or however that works, but then there's direction from the entire commission to pursue that.

Yeah, so it really depends on the complexity of the question and how much information is brought with the question, you know?

So could, rather than, if we compromise on time, could part of the requirement be, say you move it down to 30 or 15 minutes, and that there's a requirement then for the attorney to come to the next commission meeting to flesh out that issue? Could that be part... What I'm afraid is gonna happen is that it doesn't get taken seriously. They don't forward it or they forward it or it goes to the full commission and there's no kind of resolution. So how do we get the attorney at the table to talk through commission member A's concern? How can we tie that in?

I mean, again, that's exactly.

I think that's a shared, like the chair and the chief putting the next agenda together.

that is also like that would be immediately incurring a significant expense for the attorneys you know full time at the meeting however long that is and and and so on like that that immediately goes past 15 minutes um to an hour or two hours

But at the same time it could be one of those where as much as I appreciate having Rick and Larry here in person having them virtual as well can accomplish the same thing and thus reduce the billable hours in there. So I would say having them present in quotes in some way shape or form for that particular agenda topic. is doable. So I wouldn't automatically just jump right to the full meeting, which can last hours in there. We can find ways to make it a little bit more manageable.

Yep. So some of those things that any of you might raise we can address through, I'm not talking about the amount of time now, but I'm talking about whether someone needs to be present, right? We can address some of those things with some research and an email. I think what it really boils down to is the situation, what I'm hearing at least is a situation where there's a commissioner that has a concern and it isn't shared. and that results in, let's say a question is asked, the attorney says, well, there might be an issue there and it's forwarded on to the commission chair and the commission chair says, we're not gonna worry about that. or doesn't put it on the agenda or doesn't further it or maybe puts it on the agenda. Maybe you go to chief and chief puts it on the agenda and the body doesn't vote in favor of spending more time. I think that's pretty normal in terms of governing bodies and that could happen here, right? It certainly could. I think that that is pretty normal that if we don't get the direction to move forward on something. It's a little bit more complicated when you're talking about the things that Trustee Severson's talking about where it's like you have a significant concern about sort of the health of the entity and its liability. But I think that even is, is relatively common that it still at some point gets to a majority decision. Whether that's the attorney answered the question in two hours and there's an answer, we should be protecting liability in this way and spend money to do it, and people decide not to, or earlier in the process there's a red flag, we haven't evaluated it, and we decide not to continue the evaluation. That can happen in either of those contexts. At some point, the expenditure of resources would be a majority decision. I think you're all just wrestling with where that point is.

I'd just like to confirm that I learned something tonight. That we could build in tenths of an hour, which is six minutes. So 15 minutes, I'd make that 18 or 24 or something like that. We all round up, too, Chief.

No.

OK, so where are we as a board?

I'd be fine with presenting to the commission 18 minutes instead of the one hour. Instead of an hour? Yeah.

I'd be fine with 18 minutes.

I would also be fine directing the 18 minute change.

Notting. Right. So there is a consider amendment. Do we need to motion that or just bring that back to the commission? Because the commission will have to revise and then bring it back to this body.

I think I would take a vote.

Go ahead. So currently, you'd be taking the July one and just striking one hour and replacing with an adding in 18 minutes, right?

So July 20th strike, so it would be not to exceed 18 minutes.

Yeah, 18 billable minutes instead of one billable hour. Right, 3 tenths.

There's enough nodding heads. Let's move on to the consider amendments. So there's a formal motion.

I just had one other question quick. So is that that the whole commission will be aware, wasn't that also something? Is that included?

Yep, so then the next sentence is that the chief or the commission chairperson will notify all of the commissioners. All right, thank you. So let's move on to the consider amendments portion, entertain a motion.

I'll make the motion to adjust the July or the latest draft of the amendments and with the adjustment of one billable hour to 18 minutes or whatever is the appropriate terminology to accomplish that.

All right, is there a second?

I'll second. All right, motion by JP, second by Murphy. Any debate on the motion? Otherwise we could roll call. Benzo?

Nay.

Erlingson?

Aye.

Cal Nelson? Aye. Murphy? Aye. Severson? Nay. Stoa? Yes. Villavicencio?

Aye.

Motion carries. All right.

And Chief, I'll put an email together with you and Carrie just so that it makes it onto the next agenda. Let's move on to Cottage Grove Fire District Commission Report. Heidi.

Thank you. We met on Monday, August 24th. We went over the chief's report, which was attached in the packet. We talked about the roof vent prop MOU, which we approved earlier tonight, and the town had that on their town board meeting for consideration tonight as well. We talked about next steps for the bay floor repair at ESB and there was some there's some damage near a drain kind of wear and tear And they're gonna work on getting some quotes to fix that since there's kind of some cracking concrete and put that in the budget for next year we talked about recent trends for false alarms and we went over a number of statistics for false alarms, how it's been since we implemented the new kind of permitting process that we're starting to go into for alarm systems that are tied in with auto emergency response if you don't decline the response or declare it false. And so the weighing Making sure that if someone, like providing the service to the community that if someone's alarm is going off, they come and investigate. It may be a malfunction of their alarm. A lot of people may not know that that's the reason why they think that there actually is an emergency. And also weighing that against actual, you know, false alarms that should be prevented. So how do we balance those two things going forward knowing that there will be some false alarms but trying to get residents to acknowledge when they should be disabling their alarm system or putting in the code when you were cooking something and smoke went off and kind of understanding the differences between like a shared space in an apartment building, like a stairwell, and if the alarm's there versus in unit. So continuing to work with the village on education, which we've been doing, and adding in newsletters and mailers, and educating people with alarm systems, the fine process, and the police department's been issuing any citations as needed for that. just continuing to talk about this subject and how we can improve it moving forward. And those were kind of the main topics for our meeting. Our next meeting is Wednesday, September 30th. We're going to be talking about the budget will be the main topic for that meeting. And then we also had another repair that we'll also be talking about next meeting as well. I don't know if Renee or JP have anything they'd like to add from the meeting.

No, I do not.

Neither do I.

Any questions for Heidi? All right. Utility Commission.

Utility Commission had a special meeting on Wednesday, August 26th at 430. We... So we discussed the comprehensive review of the recurring water discoloration issues as directed by the village board the general Consensus among commissioners was that we wanted to make sure this was as independent as possible So we wanted to try to remove Excuse me and remove staff involvement as much as we can just to sort of separate that so that I There's a clear delineation. So what we decided on was getting proposals from groups, and then the commission will decide on that next time. We did receive the proposals on Friday. that we will discuss again on the 16th at the next utility commission meeting. And as directed, we will get updates to the village board on the next village board meeting on the 21st. In addition to that, we're still getting water updates weekly from Kyla about that stuff. We also discussed how to pay for it. There was no appetite among the utility commissioners to have the utility commission pay for it. And then we adjourn.

Comments or questions on utility commission? All right, how about report from Parks, Rec and Forestry, Heidi.

Thanks, we met just after that meeting on Wednesday August 26th we approved the minutes we talked about an update on a cottonwood tree Potential policy or ordinance we had some concerns from a resident about cottonwood tree that produced an excessive amount of cotton fluff this year and concerned that it was a fire hazard in particular and Reza was interested in us looking at a complaint driven ordinance that someone would need to either treat or remove a tree if it became a nuisance So that's something the committee's asked staff to look into. The committee seemed interested in getting more information about a potential ordinance and what that might look like. So Sean's doing, Additional research, staff did provide a memo and our forester was there to talk about. It's attached in the packet if you're interested in the memo. Kind of talking about the pros and cons of what that would look like. And staff ultimately wasn't recommending moving forward with an ordinance, but the committee was interested in looking at what an ordinance would look like. Do you think I captured the direction enough? I don't know. I think so. Okay. The Juniper Fields Parkland planning process will kick off in September, and Blake at Strand will be at the September meeting to talk about that. If you recall, outlaw five. that's adjacent to the Thayden Conservancy natural area. The neighborhood was interested in perhaps also contributing financially to a sign in that area, talking about the history and the conservancy and the natural area and the historical horse farm land that was in that space. So to have kind of a one of our park signs explaining that. So the committee looked at that and Shawn is gonna look at what the budget looks like and if any neighbors were interested in contributing financially for that as they indicated in the past. We also talked about Fireman's Park. We've talked about the asphalt kind of failures in that area and trying to get the committee to kind of discuss what the next steps might be. Do we want to either just make the minimal repairs, replace all the asphalt areas? And if we want to do that, do we want to get the stakeholders together to talk about if there's any other changes that we might want to make with the configuration of the park before we spend a significant amount of money on repairing the asphalt. So the committee, which of course we have some stakeholders that would be present anyway on the committee, which I think as a longstanding member, which I think is very valuable, As we look at that those options so the committee ultimately asked Sean to bring back for the budget season some numbers for just the minimal amount of repairs and then kind of all the current failing asphalt repairs so like a bigger holistic project and to you know, not pursue more of a large-scale reimagining with the stakeholders at this time. So those are kind of the two options that the committee was interested in seeing in the budget process. Then we went over Sean's report, and there's a new 3D printing and geology programs that we're doing. So those are the two noteworthy ones that I wrote down. Otherwise, we have a lot of other great programs as well, and the guide came out, the Village View, with our programming, so check it out. If you have any questions, let me know. Or Sean, if you have anything you want to add.

Yeah, I guess I would just like clarification because we did receive an email from fire department leadership that had expressed interest in long-term planning for that area. It seems like the fire department president does not support that and I'm wondering where that changed and if we can have staff reach back out and kind of get some more clarification on why master planning isn't something that's being advocated for. especially knowing that we're gonna potentially spend $100,000 on some asphalt repair. And if we are talking structural changes, I think master planning is an appropriate step. And so I'm just wondering where the disconnect is. Would like some clarification on that.

That's my own comments.

Anyone else have comments or questions? Ad hoc housing chapter committee updates. CHRIS.

WE MET ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1ST AT 630 FOR HOPEFULLY THE LAST TIME. WE APPROVED THE MINUTES FROM THE PREVIOUS MEETING IN MARCH. WE SPENT AN HOUR AND A HALF HAMMERING OUT A LITTLE BIT OF FINAL WORDING AND APPROVED A QUASIFINALIZED CHAPTER AND IT WILL GO TO PLAN AT OCTOBER FOR A PUBLIC HEARING AND THEN WE SHOULD SEE IT IN OCTOBER, NOVEMBER.

Questions for Chris? All right, reports from village officers. Village attorney. Village administrator.

I always gotta be ready for that quick Larry report. Gratitude and thanks to the fire department, police, EMS for their swift efforts with Cozy Nut Cafe. fire that occurred yesterday. The police department was there to evacuate and the fire department took care of the fire, of course, and EMS was there just in case there were any injuries or anyone needing attention. Thankfully there was not, so thanks there. received a nice note from residents thinking our public works crew for some. They were out trimming trees and they had a this resident had a huge wasp nest in the in the tree and our crews out there too. Take care of that as best they could and I to my knowledge no one no one has any workers comp claims from these things or anything so everyone everyone say if they were able to knock it down. With with their equipment in a safe as safely as possible and so that all. All went well in the resin was really happy because they were it was a pretty notable hive and they were not able to be on their front yard so. Anyway, and then in this case, last but least, my service anniversary to the village. Because of those two, hard to really follow that up, but I had my two days ago 15th year with the village, so. Anyway, that's all I have, but can take questions.

Comments or questions on the tracker or the report? Okay. We are at Cameron. Stormwater communication plan.

Okay, perfect. I'll make this short and simple. The memo has a lot of information in it for two reasons. It lays the timeline out for the remainder year. It also is to help kind of communicate where we are in the ordinance drafting process, taking the feedback we got from prior meetings. We have to start with something. So just wanted to be very transparent with what's being worked on. If we need to add something to the next board meeting to refine this, we can do that, but this is what we're starting with. And really kind of devises it into two buckets and then a general bucket. So happy to answer questions on the proposed communication plan, additions, deletions, other ways that we can get feedback to residents. We're currently $24,000 under budget on the stormwater feasibility plan. And when I mean under budget, I mean of the $85,000 that was budgeted as part of the $100,000 overall budget. So one thing that we're having Strand help us with is because of the tiered approach, refining some of the parcels and properties as well as some of the commercial credit policy items to help provide support. for the creation of the stormwater utility. But hopefully overall, we'll be significantly under budget on this item as well.

All right, this is a discuss and consider.

I move approval of the stormwater utility communication plan as presented.

I'll second.

Motion by Murphy, second by JP. Any discussion or debate on this motion as presented? Any additions, subtractions?

All right, roll call vote. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

The only thing I want to mention is last year the board had extended the open period for the splash pad. To date the splash pad is at budget for water and sewer consumption purposes. So currently the plan is to keep it open, but understanding that that is going to have cost overruns. If you'd like us to close down and shut off the splash pad. You can give that direction, but just wanted to make you guys aware that that would be to expect.

Is there any interest in closing the splash pad early? I'm seeing shaking heads. No, okay. Otherwise, discuss and consider the bills list.

I just want to make a note, this will probably be the first time I ever vote against the bills, but I believe the items for total water treatment systems, I inquired about this last year, and it's to provide bottled water to the staff, and I remember asking the question at that time, what should I know about our water? I think that our staff should be drinking the water our residents drink, so for that reason, I'm going to vote against the bills list.

entertain a motion on the bills list.

Make a motion to approve the bills list as presented.

I'll second.

Motion by Murphy, second by Erlandson.

If there's any questions, I'm happy to feel like something was alluded to there as far as something that there's nothing anyone needs to know. staff didn't have access to any cold water, so just from the faucet.

And there's an absence of a kitchen here. They've had bottled water for forever.

I think that's a very common. When we got a new fridge, we got a fridge that didn't have an ice maker or water at it. So anyway. nothing to do with water quality. It was just an amenity that got approved in the budget, and it continued. Nothing more than that.

Roll call on this one.

Benzo.

I just want to say that that's a great sense of entitlement. Most of us don't have access to cold water in our offices. You can get a little mini refrigerator, and my vote is no.

Erlington?

Aye.

Kell Nelson? Aye. Murphy? Aye. Severson? No. Stoa?

Yes.

Via Vicencio? Aye. Motion carries. All right.

Correspondence. J.P.?

So I'm just going to take this moment to say how much I appreciate and some of our residents appreciate not only the police department but Kylo and Public Works for kind of monitoring the intersection Wheelbridge-Taylor and Main Street. As school opened up during this first week, I personally appreciated Chief using his loud booming voice to help corral folks to get used to the new flow pattern i will say due to myself having kids going to that school i was able to observe this first week plus of traffic pattern and feel like and appreciate how much the residents and couch grove as a whole are kind of adjusting to that to the point where the flow was pretty close to normal in the last few days so using that turn lane the kind of the parking lane into the turn lane has really helped with that on top of the parking lot element in there and so i've heard lots of compliments and understanding as people adjusted to that change any other correspondence upcoming community events

Coming up on the tail end of Rockin' and Bakken and Community Night Out, which thank you to all of our staff that worked hard to make sure those events came together for the community. They're working on putting together a touch truck, which is Saturday, September 19th. And I know that there's lots of kids fascinated with large equipment that will be very much interested in checking out all those trucks up close.

Any other community events?

Can you just confirm where Touch a Truck is this year, please?

Granite Ridge.

New location at Glacial Drumlin School. And from 10 to 11, there's a no noise hour. So if you have sensitivity to noises, come early.

That's a cool event. That's how we referred to CGS for the longest time, was the Touch a Truck place before we got into school. future agenda items, all things budget coming up. Anything else of note?

I'd like to add removal of flat cameras to the agenda, please.

I'll have an annual development presentation.

Piggyback on that. Sorry, I was just going to check when So LEC is going to be right after the 21st meeting. I was going to bring something to LEC for that. Would you want to wait for it to happen at LEC, or do you want it on the 21st prior?

I think we could give direction to LEC. So I would say put it, still have it on your agenda. But I think, you know, we've had the conversation both at LEC and the board level before. So, you know, we could certainly give a recommendation or, I mean, obviously we're the body that approves it or not. So whichever.

Sure, just checking. Having it on the 21st is fine with me.

All right. We do not need a closed session. We don't need to come out of closed session. So I'll go with number 14. Motion to adjourn.

Second.

Murphy and JP, non-debatable. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, state. We're out.