City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay. Okay.

So, is that something that you currently have, like a supplier that you're kind of asking us to be, what we will do is hold our players and have them experience a lot more.

So, this year, this number is one major, so there's enough there for whatever reason. Correct. So, it's gonna be, it's gonna be less. Right, yeah.

. . .

. . . . Thank you.

Where are you?

We'll see.

We're trying to throw an effect on Water Street, so last step of the way. It's been really fun planning. We had another, I think the first Water Street meeting on Monday, so it's a new firm that they were gonna financially support. The cost is the same. Thank you.

There's no opportunity to change. So, but if you say that, what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

What are you going to do?

What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, are you tired? Yes, exactly. No. No, she has to go on the first part. She's a video. So she's a video. So you're ready to... I see. It's like HR. Yeah. Did they get that wire out? I got that light apart. So I got the wire out. Yeah, totally molded. I'm just gonna be quiet. Do you think you would go for golden? I'm only here Good, last time we went to eat.

I'm a mess today, I had to come in with a water stream.

It's okay, we have room for two. It's a little dirty, but.

I saw him today and he looked terrible.

Thank you. Oh, yeah. I'm sure we'll be on time. Right. Right there. Yeah. Yeah.

I've been vending for over 20 years now.

So it's so nice now that I'm living on the street in New York City.

It's like, I get to sleep on Saturday night. I don't have to do that. I don't have to do that. Thank you. Oh, lovely. Thank you. This meeting of the Eau Claire City Council will come to order. Please 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.

City Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Brewster?

Here.

Gregor?

Here.

Johnson? Inboga? Miller?

Here.

Orff?

Here.

Here. Michonne.

Here.

Serrano.

Here.

Werthmann.

All right. Thank you, city clerk. And welcome, everyone, to the Tuesday, June 23, meeting of the Eau Claire City Council. This is our, so first we'll actually go with our consent agenda. So the folks who may be here for that, that's items number 1 through 18. Please know that unless an item is pulled out, all the items will pass or fail on one vote during the consent agenda. And then you're welcome to go if your item passes. But you're also welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting. Do council members have any questions regarding the consent agenda or wish to remove any items for separate consideration? Council member worth.

Yes. Thank you council president Greg Gert, please Remove item 15 from the consent agenda Okay.

Thank you. So we will remove item number So you see 15? Yeah, so item number 15 also that is a resolution authorizing fierce freedom to conduct Oh freedom Fun Run and Fest on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 in Carson Park. So let's actually vote on everything else but that first. So then on a motion by Councilmember Serrano and seconded by Councilmember Brewster, the consent agenda minus item number 15 has been moved. Is there any discussion by Councilmembers? OK, city clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Brewster?

Aye.

Greger?

Aye.

Miller? Aye. Orth?

Aye.

Reed? Aye. Schoen?

Aye.

Serrano?

Aye.

And that passes unanimously. And now we'll take up item number 15 that was in the consent agenda that I had just read the resolution authorizing First Freedom to conduct O Freedom Fun Run and Fest on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, in Carson Park. And I don't think we necessarily need to introduce the item any more than that, unless anyone has any questions. But we'll move. So we'll move that item. So on a motion by Councilmember Miller and seconded by Vice President Schoen. This item is moved. Is there any discussion? Are there any questions on this item number 15? All right. Seeing none, city clerk, please call the roll.

VICE CHAIRMAN MILLER?

Aye.

Miller? Aye. Reid? Aye. Schoen?

Aye.

Serrano?

Aye.

Brewster?

Aye. All right. And that passes unanimously. Thank you, city clerk. So that concludes our consent agenda items. And I'll go into a certificate of appreciation that I'd like to read and invite Scott Rogers to the front. Whereas in 2002, Scott Rogers and his family made Eau Claire their home, quickly embracing the community and dedicating themselves to helping the city grow and thrive. And whereas through both his professional leadership and volunteer service, Scott became a tireless advocate for Eau Claire, its residents, businesses, neighborhoods, and future. And whereas Scott played a significant role in the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce, serving as Chair of the Government Affairs Committee and a member of the Board of Directors. And whereas through his work with the Chamber, Scott has helped champion many initiatives that strengthen the Chippewa Valley, including legislative advocacy, transportation improvements, housing initiatives, tourism, promotion, downtown development, and support for projects such as the Confluence Project and the UW-Eau Claire Science and Health Sciences Building. And whereas Scott has consistently worked to bring people together in pursuit of thoughtful, practical solutions that improve the quality of life throughout the region, leaving a meaningful and lasting impact on Eau Claire and the Chippewa Valley, And whereas after more than 12 years of dedicated service with the Chamber and decades of civic leadership and advocacy, Scott is now beginning a well-earned retirement leaving behind a legacy of collaboration, vision, and deep commitment to the community he proudly calls home. Now, therefore, on behalf of the City of Eau Claire, its residents, businesses, and community partners, we extend our sincere appreciation and gratitude to Scott Rogers for his outstanding service, leadership, and unwavering dedication to promoting and strengthening the City of Eau Claire. And with heartfelt thanks, wish him a happy and fulfilling retirement. Congratulations, guys.

Thank you.

I have a really long speech. No, just kidding. Believe it or not, and thank you, Council President Gregert and council members and city staff and others who are here. Believe it or not, I've spoken to this council a number of times over the years, and I'm not usually nervous, but I am this time. When Council Member Amboga called me a few weeks ago and asked me if he could do this or if you could do this, I was really surprised and really humbled by that. However, I thought it was worth talking about and how other people can be involved in our city. Since my family and I came to Eau Claire 24 years ago, I've really been continually inspired by how much people here really do care about this city and this community. We really have something special. It's been the work of many hands that have led to its vitality. Of course, there have always not been just opportunities, but really a lot of challenges. And that really goes from the response of the community before we moved here to the uniral closing and just this afternoon we had exciting announcements about the future of the former Sacred Heart Hospital facility and During my time here as a citizen. I felt called to play some small part in addressing the issues trying to apply my skills background and my interests and You know that I became involved in the chamber first as a volunteer then as a staff member for 12 years and with that experience I think it's worth mentioning that the members of a business community here in Eau Claire Really do care deeply about our future and they'll continue invest their time and treasure to move it forward Just like I know that all of you care about our community, too I thought about the last line of this and I do have to say that although I've retired You haven't heard the last of me As a private citizen, I expect to continue to weigh in on community affairs, play a role in some of the issues I care about, especially transportation, downtown, and housing. And you actually got an email from me today about the passenger rail project. So I do have my wife Shirley here with me. Thanks. I've enjoyed her quiet support, and you should know that she appreciates this city as much as I do. And we're fans of it whenever we travel somewhere else, which we like to do. And we always say, like, you know, if we didn't already live here, Eau Claire would be a place we'd want to visit. So anyway, I'm humbled by this. I hope I haven't taken too much time in my remarks, but I am deeply appreciative of it. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you so much, Scott. And our Vice President Schoen has some things to share.

Thank you, Council President Gragert. I did want to just take a moment, Scott, to recognize one of the things that's mentioned in this great certificate of appreciation is your advocacy for housing. I first got to know Scott through his role as a commissioner on our Housing Opportunities Commission. And I just really appreciated your thoughtful engagement and balanced approach to difficult conversation and challenges. And I'm really grateful to hear that we have not heard the last from you yet. And I look forward to your next chapter. And I'm also very proud to be your representative as a District 1 constituent. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice President Schoen, Council Member Serrano.

Thank you, Council President Greger. I have to – well, there's so many things to say about Scott, but I just really want to call out and personally thank Scott for all the ways in which he has helped the city and even myself personally. You've really helped to educate me on so many topics that really, you know, are – nuanced and more complicated than might seem at first at first glance and i i really appreciate our conversations uh and finally uh so much appreciate your advocacy at the state level on behalf of the city really you know when we think about your role at the chamber it was a very much a leader of eau claire at the state level And you were just unrelenting in your advocacy on so many things that affect all the residents of Eau Claire for what we can do and what needs to be done at the state level. So thank you so much personally.

Thank you, Council Member Serrano, and Council Member Mboga.

Thank you, Council President. You were reading my mind. That's exactly what I wanted to say. Scott, thank you so much. For me, I would say it's not about Eau Claire, it's about the Chippewa Valley, the entire Menominee, Osceola, Lake Hardee, and the Chippewa and Eau Claire. standing up for us. And I hope people continue and we wish you strength after strength so that we can still make you a wisdom of every day. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Rimpoga. And yeah, Scott, I think we've known each other almost 20 years now. We were both involved in Clear Vision on the issue of transportation. great pleasure to meet you through that and see your persistence and being able to work together for so many years and have many years ahead working together to improve the community and yeah I really wanted to shout out the Chippewa Valley Rally as another piece of your chamber work and community work and I'm sure that'll be something we all ultimately see built up even further because of the foundation that you that you brought to that. And, um, you know, really excited to have you bring a passenger rail to Eau Claire with so many other people, uh, and organizations that you've helped start and that you've, um, you know, any, anything we can do to, to help, we will, we will do our best to be, to be able to keep up with you and, uh, and your passion for that. Um, and yeah, thanks so much. Um, And Council Member Brewster has something to add.

Thank you, Council President. I just want to say this is a little bit of a lighthearted story. So my mom was an instant coffee drinker. And so Scott served me the first cup of coffee made from actual beans in my life at Gloria Jeans in the mall when I was a freshman at UW-Eau Claire. And I just want to thank you so much for that.

Speaking of laying the foundation here. Wow. Well, thank you. Yeah, I wish we didn't have to continue to regular business, but thank you, Scott, again. So our first item under ordinances for action is item number... 19. And this is actually our only item for ordinance action. So this is ordinance amending table 8, entitled Parking Prohibited of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Eau Claire to Add Parking Restrictions on North Star Drive and Bobby Street for Increased Traffic Safety. And engineering director Ness is here. We did get a presentation yesterday, but happy to hear what else you might be able to add.

I had one follow-up question related to the signage. And just to be clear, the parking prohibited would be no parking at any time around the corner. It would not just be during special events. We want to keep that vision corner clear of traffic any time of the day. So otherwise, I'm available for any other questions if there are any.

Thank you for that, Director Ness.

Councilmember Miller. Thank you, Council President. Director Ness, thank you. So the only signs put up, you know, signs on posts about the no parking, any sort of curb markings or just the two signs? I can see the reason for no parking, but it's kind of an odd place for no parking. And people have been going there for years to kind of be educated and aware and the visibility and, you know, is there any way to bring attention to the new signage?

We would start with no parking between signs with arrows directing in between the two signs. We can put flags on them temporarily. That's typically how we bring attention to new signs in areas. If we need to, we can paint curb, but we're trying to minimize the amount of curb painting so we don't have to continue to update the curb paintings.

Okay, thank you.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Miller and Director Ness. Any other questions from council before we move the item? OK, thank you. So on a motion by Councilmember Amboga and seconded by Councilmember Reed, this item is moot. Is there any discussion? All right, seeing none, city clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Rager.

Aye.

Mboga. Aye. Miller. Aye. Orff.

Aye.

Reid. Aye. Schoen.

Aye.

Serrano.

Aye.

Brewster.

Aye. All right, that passes unanimously. All right, so under the category of ordinances for introduction, I will just read the two items unless council members want to suspend the rules to vote on either of them today. So item number 20 is ordinance amending chapter 10.24 entitled special parking restrictions of the code of ordinance of the city of Eau Claire to remove block face parking in the downtown business districts and add paid parking to City Hall. And then item number 21, ordinance amending the official zoning map for the western portion of 1718 Warden Street. So those items are now right into the record per se as introduction. So, We can now move into announcements. And after that will be our work session on the capital improvement plan. So if there are any announcements or updates from the city manager or city council members, perhaps we'll start with Council Member Serrano.

Thank you, Council President Gregert. I just really want to call everybody in the public's attention to the very significant announcement today about District 900 on Claremont Avenue. I had the privilege of being able to attend kind of a big event today. There were a lot of members of the press there, so I anticipate there will be a lot of people journalism written about this big announcement. It's huge. It will have very, very long-term impacts for the city. It's so transformational for what Sacred Heart Hospital was, a vacant building for a few years, and now for what that space will become. I'm super, super, super excited about everything that was announced there today.

Thank you, Council Member Serrano. Any other announcements from council members? I guess we'll move to our city manager, Dave Solberg, who has not gotten an updated name placard yet. It still says interim on it. Yeah. So we will work on that.

We'll work on that.

Very exciting to have the interim title off the city manager title.

So, yeah, I guess I'd like to congratulate HeartWorks and the 900 district also. A great organization. Great building full of potential for Eau Claire's future for the next hopefully 50, 75 years. I'd like to thank Aaron White and Bill Youngberg with our inspectors trying to help them. And they got a shout out at the ceremony today for being helpful with building inspection issues, zoning issues, whatever they needed to do to help get the building off the ground. that their staff has been working overtime on. In the update that I sent Council on Friday, I accidentally got the Board of Health and the Housing Opportunities Commission mixed up on there. What I meant to say was the Board of Health has a meeting tomorrow on Wednesday instead of the Housing Opportunities Commission. I apologize for any confusion for that. I would like to note that this coming Saturday, DECI is sponsoring sidewalk Saturday downtown in the bid districts from 10 until 8. We have Ms. Felton spoke last night about downtown parking. So I do have an update on the downtown parking implementation and timeframe. I was working on that today, but I was not able to get it to set out to council. So I will get that sent out to council, but we are in good shape for an August 1st implementation date. And just to remind everybody that we have an extra weekend between council meetings this time around. So next council meetings will be July 13th and 14th. That's all I have.

Thank you, City Manager Solberg. And, yeah, we do have that three-week gap, which doesn't come often. And in the middle of that, we have the, 4th of July celebration, so certainly wishing folks a safe and celebratory holiday and the 250th for the country. And with that, I'd like to move us toward our work session. But I think we officially have to adjourn this meeting. So if there is no objection from council, this meeting is adjourned. And we will take five minutes to kind of get ready for the work session. And the public is very welcome to stay for this.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Sure. Yeah. Thank you.

Oh, I don't know what I'm saying.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I can just use my reference. I can figure it out.

Yeah, we connected. . . . . . Thank you. the association okay

We were, we were.

Thank you. All right, we're gonna start our work session in about 30 seconds. I don't know.

Okay.

All right. So we're going to get started with our work session on the capital improvement plan here. So we have Director Kitsie Winters, our finance director, here to continue our conversation from yesterday. So yeah, we're certainly ready to have you start. So thank you. Yeah.

Well, great. Good evening, council. I'm going to try to not repeat some of the information I've already given you unless it adds value. We are here for a second and final work session tonight before approval, which is on July 13th and 14th. I do want to focus the whole CIP is 305 million. That's about 40% higher than 10 years ago. There is inflation in there, but we have a numerous amount of large value projects or large dollar projects that are in there, which is out of the normal standard average CIP. In 2027, we have just over $60 million investment in capital infrastructure. Of that, focus on sewer, water, transportation or streets, land building and equipment, and storm would be our top five areas. What we try to do on the financial piece of it is keep the borrowing down to keep the impact to the taxpayers or the mill rate or the tax rate at the lowest possible amounts. A portion of that 31% is tax supported. We'll work through those current interest rates this week. Those are kind of going to hold steady it sounds like. We're using about a million dollars of general fund, so that's cash on hand or unassigned fund balance this year. So we're kind of trying to step back into that, but we'll see how our financials are annually. That could increase borrowing on those subsequent years. Like to keep at it about 24 million on an annual basis. Outside of the large projects I've spoken about, you do have an investment in water, kind of a new item there with the Chippewa River Crossing, so that's exciting. That is very, very exciting. And I'm gonna say, Director Berg, this is his last council meeting, so I'm gonna point to him to explain all of the projects at CMF this year that I usually advocate for. Lime tower replacement, and we're also replacing a well outside of, again, all those standard projects. We talked about headworks, a lift station, some processing equipment within the sewer plant. Gibson parking ramp, we can talk a little bit about that later with questions, but you are making an investment in some of your surface lots in the community. We are looking at funds on hand for the Schlegelmilch lot, but then these are the next three that are on the schedule. Police, investment in police safety equipment, fire safety equipment, so all of those are things that are just needed to do their work to keep them safe or keep the public safe. One new item also of value is the two transit mobility vans, so that's two of the smaller vehicles, so looking at kind of that, I want to say with VIA, kind of that type of service, but having smaller vehicles, smaller footprints, so that's something that Ty or Katrina can explain a little bit further. Hobbs, we do have an investment in a feasibility study, and then also into some infrastructure repair that's just gonna keep the ice cool and frozen, and just investing right in that building. One of the fun items, this is the every three year DNR program for the trail grants. So it's a $230,000 grant so we can make a bigger impact on trails. So this is the larger one and we'll have a $230,000 match. And that's kind of what we use to invest in our trails in the area. We do have some park projects there, TID improvements that I did talk about, but we are gonna begin design of our project plan over in TID 16, which would be the Shopko Plaza area. We do have a few roundabouts there within the plans, but I don't think we're going to need them all now. With that, that's some of our larger projects that I did speak about. I don't have any amendments. We have been talking about some, but I will let you guys, you can bring those forward and discuss those a little bit today, or I can as well. We did have one that was proposed for the passenger rail, and our investment is one of the cities on the list, but we are gonna approach that outside of the CIP process. just in case you've received emails on that, so it doesn't have to be addressed today. The CIPs went through all of the respective commissions, and again, that's approved on the 13th and 14th. So I just wanted to open it up to our directors then at this point, or questions or anything that you want me to speak on. The larger items, what direction you'd like from me tonight?

yeah council member serrano hi um how do we address each other work session okay whatever hi everybody um i'm curious i don't know if maybe uh ty fatness can help the two trans mobility vans is there i love that we're doing this but i'm kind of wondering is there a plan around how we might use those and what that might how that might impact i know it probably came before transit commission but i'd love to just get a little update on that is that possible yeah that would be great yeah

Thank you Council Member Serrano for the question and happy to be here. So for the 190,000 for the two transit mobility vans, it wouldn't be for microtransit like it was with Northern Light, it would be more so for We have some current paratransit rides that are always from one location to another one, and it might be more efficient to use our own vehicle internally. And then also, it's nice to be able to have smaller vehicles to be more convenient if it's, say, a route that needs, let's say, buses full and we need an extra vehicle out. We can activate one of those vehicles to go out on a road and help out. And you wouldn't need a CDL, so it really could be anybody that goes and helps out for that particular moment in time. And also supervisors could use the vehicles too when they're not in need. So it checks a lot of boxes, but it wouldn't be for, I guess, what we would typically know as the microtransit. It would be for kind of something a little bit smaller. Okay.

But we don't have any particular routes that we're looking to service with these smaller vehicles just yet. I mean, other than this paratransit example you gave.

Yeah, because the way it works out with our paratransit contract is they're what are referred to as subscription rides, and that means that it's basically the same time there's a pickup and the same time there's a drop-off, and it might be more efficient to just have our own vehicle that takes care of those rides rather than paying the $40 per ride for paratransit. Yep.

Thank you. I think that's great.

Any other questions on that?

Uh, I sort of curious about it a bit more too. We discussed it at transit commission. Um, cause we reviewed the CIP and we did recommend it. Um, but the, so like part of it, I think is that it seemed like sometimes the, Like we have a lot of buses that are out for maintenance and sometimes we even have to have those not necessarily maintenance in house. Can you explain maybe some of the shortages of bus vehicles that we sometimes run into from that perspective?

Yeah, we have 22 buses and the most we have on the road at any given time is 16. But if there are buses that are out of service for preventative maintenance or larger problems, and sometimes they have really big problems and they are out for an extended period of time, we do run into the Like we've actually been pretty consistent with being able to keep buses on the road. Our mechanics do an incredible job of ensuring that they do. But there are times when it is a little bit dicey with the number of extra buses that we have. So a bigger fleet would help facilitate that, ensuring that we don't ever have to not have a bus out on a road because we don't have enough buses.

And then one of the things that also just comes to mind, and I'm not sure if this is appropriate use of these vehicles, but sometimes we have council tours or maybe a commission or maybe new employee tours and stuff. Is that a potential use, having a flexible vehicle that maybe you don't need a CDL driver for to be able to just kind of get people out to things around the city?

Yeah, the rule with the FTA is that we can't take business from the private sector. So, for instance, we wouldn't be able to provide shuttle service because it would be competing with local businesses, but we can provide, and we do actually have buses out on the road if If there's a city tour or a local group that comes to town, then we're showing them the city, then it's allowed to be used for that purpose. Okay.

Yep. Great. Any other council members have questions for? Okay. So maybe we'll focus on council questions for Ty for now. So Council Member Brewster.

Thank you. I was just wondering if you could give us just a brief overview of what, like how many passengers one of these would fit. Is it similar to sort of the Abbey van situation, or are they a little bit bigger, more like the sort of accessibility school bus kind of thing, or if you could just kind of describe.

Yeah, I would have to see specifically what the purchase in mind would be, but I believe the cutoff is 13. So anything above 13, I think, is what you need a CDL to transfer people. So it would be less than that size-wise. But in terms of specifically if it would be a cutaway or if it would be a minivan, I do not know. I would have to look.

Yep. Anyone else on Council Member Serrano?

Can I ask a quickie? Are they wheelchair accessible? I mean wheelchair.

Yep, that would be a requirement. They would have to be wheelchair accessible. Yep. And just one other question about it for me is about, I know we're trying to push the envelope on electric vehicles or plug in hybrid vehicles and stuff. Are there vehicles? that are in that kind of mobility van category that we've looked at. I mean, it would probably only be able to get one vehicle for the price of two.

Yeah, I have seen some electric cutaway vehicles. They do exist, and I do know that there are even companies that you can purchase the electric van, and then it will retrofit the vehicle so that it becomes ADA accessible. So that's an option, too. It's something that could definitely be explored. you know, check another box for what the city is looking at in terms of sustainability. So, um, yeah, I think those options do exist, but like you said, would be a little bit more expensive.

Cool. Thank you. Yep. Thanks for diving into that. That one. Yeah. Uh, council member and Boga.

Yeah. Thank you for transparent. Can you try to, For my knowledge, try to school me a little bit for my knowledge. Everybody's listening. How much money do we spend in terms of gas for these, you said 22 buses? Yeah. How much do we spend a day or a month? Because now we are talking dollars, is that right?

yeah so if you think one bus right now a bus is close to a million dollars um the way fda funding works is we're able to get reimbursed for eighty percent of it so it's only a twenty percent local match so about two hundred thousand for a bus um When you think about how much they run, it's actually a relatively small per hour cost for the bus. A bus might run, some of our buses have been on the road for, over 10 years, 14 years even. And that's accumulating a lot of miles over the course of its life. So on a per day, it's actually really small. It's not as bad as you think it would be in terms of a per day cost, but I don't know off the top of my head what it would be. Yep.

All right, thank you. I think we'll go on to more other topics now. Just thought of another one, if that's all right.

So the mobility vans, are they eligible for the matching funds, or is that only the large scale?

Good question.

Yep, they're also eligible. Oh, interesting. So... Is that our portion of it then? So are these vans like... Nope, that is the total cost.

And then the way the FTA funding works is you have to spend it and then you reimburse yourselves for the expense. Sounds good. Thank you.

Cool, thanks so much. Vice President Schoen, you have another topic related to CIP?

Yes, not for Ty.

Thank you, Ty, so much.

Thank you. So I'm wondering... I don't know actually what the rules are. I had been in touch with staff about an amendment, which was noticed. So I'm curious to know if we can talk openly tonight about the amendment and get broader input from council on some of that. That'd be fine. I'm seeing nods. So I'm wondering, Kitsie, if you wouldn't mind. I mean, I could talk about sort of the general vision or like... objective of the amendment, but then if you want to share about some of the financial sources of how we could move funds around and what the impacts might be, is that okay?

Sure, sure, and I think that the focus was on the affordable housing project. The original request was 250,000. I've heard a couple of requests, I guess, from multiple council members, 250,000 to 500. Right now we don't, we encourage council to reduce one project to pay for that, and we try to keep that within that same spending limit. The reason I say that is because we've got a significant CIP, we have borrowing tied to the project, the affordable housing project already in addition to all of our safety equipment for police and fire. That was a change that we had to make. So we're borrowing for as many things as we can at this point. So it's our only tool. So what we like to look at is trading. $250,000 to take that to $500,000 in 2027. That's something we talked about options for like possibly just our routine maintenance account that replaces our furnaces and our windows or parking lots. We have a lot of capital investments so that's one we could use to accommodate that request and that's borrowing as well. So we try to match up the funding sources because I couldn't remove a water project for example to pay for affordable housing so then that's that's where I kind of offer some advice there too and I had did mention as well that 2027 is the budget you're approving so and it's kind of a kind of a blessing I guess would be this best described for 28 through the the rest of the remainder of that so we can start planning we need to start making changes or doing things. So you're more than welcome to amend those. If I do not have a funding source for the fire station for the additional 10 million, I think we would probably look at, I mean it's the city manager's budget, but my financial recommendation would be not to do any other projects that year if I have to fund an entire fire station outside of emergency ones, emergency equipment. So that's something to keep in mind as well. On increasing the scope. So that's just my recommendation.

Yeah. Thank you. I was gonna say I've been in touch with Kitsie and there were yeah started maybe increasing 2027 for the affordable or books the flexible housing fund balance from 250,000 to 500,000 I also requested that staff consider increasing that from 250,000 to a million dollars and And so I wonder, Kitsie, could you just talk a little bit, it sounded like we could potentially source, so it would be a $750,000 increase in 2027, and that could maybe reduce the building maintenance and road resurfacing accounts, and I'm just curious if you could share what that would look like, and then I would also love to hear from council whether council members are amenable to reducing those accounts in order to increase flexible housing fund.

Sure, we do look at some of the, if it's a smaller amount, we looked at a few multiple different projects. If it's a $750,000 project, you would need a reduction to offset that. We look at the larger accounts, so when I look at building maintenance, I do have some leftover funds, but that's unfortunately not due to decreased need. due to capacity of staff. So we do have the aging infrastructure, but I do have some funds that I can apply towards that. I wouldn't want to cut a full $750,000 from that building maintenance. I think we'd want to blend that. One item we can possibly move back as well is the city council audio in here. We have $40,000 this year and then borrowing attached. I think it's about $250,000 or $240,000. in the CIP, we can look at that, pushing that out, just due to the staffing and a lot of other projects they have right now. And then streets, we have kept that static. Director Ness can talk a little bit about the road investments. We've kept that at five million. So the borrowing power or how far that money's going, I mean, it's going less and less each year, I guess, of an impact. But we have had the local vehicle registration fee on top of that, so we've been able to use I guess the four operating buckets I would call to extend the useful life of the road, whether it's mill and fill, overlay, we've increased every year by a mile, but we're not increasing our resurfacing. So it is kind of a very aggressive approach, but we are being able to take more of an investment. So I'd recommend a blended approach, but I would have to take the money from one of a few of those projects as well. And I don't know if there's any smaller ones that Dave would recommend too. We talked about it, but that was at the smaller, the 500,000 level.

If you try to fill it, it's harder to get to 750 than it would be 250, but there are, I know there's solar-powered signage is a small item that's in the engineering budget, so that could be something that would be $40,000 a year. At the end of the five-year program for that year, there's plankill improvements that are planned. Mount Simon boat landing restroom. Not sure what the condition of that, that's in the out years. And I'm a little bit better with the engineering ones than the other ones, just because I spent time in there. You could squeeze potentially a little bit out of the bridge maintenance account on there. Director Ness just received a grant for the HSIP program, but that's funded every year, not every year. do we get a grant for that so that could save somebody? So I think you could take a few thousand here, a few thousand here, a few thousand there. And then when I also talk to my counterpart at the county in Altoona, when we're talking about affordable housing and helping with the unhoused, I always try to challenge them to say, If the need out there that the community came out and said yesterday was a million dollars, they're requesting a million dollars. I don't know if they're having that same request at the county board, but if we could, you know, if we upped it to 500,000 and then publicly challenged our other counterparts to... meet us there, leverage our $500,000, maybe the county could put $500,000 in, maybe Altoona can spare $250,000, so we can still get to that amount that was requested, but we wouldn't have to leverage all of it and try to get those. And then one thing that we were talking about, it would help guidance-wise where you would like, if you have a preference, the funds to go in that flexible, would you like it to go through the HOC route, or would you like it to go through... Housing Authority, because they have a very good program there. Would you like a different type of program, almost like a CDBG type allocation for Habitat for Humanity? If you have ideas how you see a use for that funds, that would help us with the narrative on that in the budget as well.

That is a capital count as well to add. So there are guardrails I have around what we can use those funds for. So I know I've worked with Billy Huffer quite a bit on what we can use those for and getting approval on those.

An example would be there's a very, Strong need for transitional housing for the unhoused right now, but that's rent so the capital could buy an apartment building But it's not appropriate to use it for rent because of the parameters that kissy has to specify when she issued bonds Because there's different bonds for streets versus trails versus park improvements when the bonds are sold so that's it's not really a staff decision it's It's the industry, I guess, decision with that. So that's one thing to differentiate that with the capital funds. If you wanted to put it towards operational type things, that would be your rent or something like that. That would come out of the operating budget. That would be the next budget we're examining once the capital's approved.

Okay, so I'm trying to somewhat keep track of who's had their light on for a long time. I know. Okay, so if we want to kind of dive into this amendment idea around housing, that would be maybe what we focus on for a bit. So I think Council Member Brewster had his light on a little bit before some of the others.

Yeah, thank you. So we have a pretty substantial fund right now. And how much of that has been spent? I mean, is this more than we can actually spend at the rate we're currently spending? Because my understanding is there's still quite a lot of it that hasn't been spent. And so... Maybe we have it available, but if we borrow it and it just sits there, is that a good use of money either?

No, I don't. A few different things there. We have to borrow on shovel-ready projects. Sometimes that shovel gets put away the day after we've borrowed the money, but plans can change. But yes, they need to be shovel-ready projects. In this interest rate environment, I don't want money sitting because we're earning more interest than we're paying, so it's called arbitrage, so I have a penalty on that. We also have a policy to use those funds with under three years. So at this point, I don't believe we've used any of those HACC funds the last time I looked, just about a month ago, because they're working on the guidelines. I can start looking at that, though.

One other question, if I could. I guess this is more of a comment than a question. I guess with the vehicle registration fee money, we're tied to using that for transportation-related projects. i would kind of be low then i think it would not look especially good if we were to just like start using that more like like exclusively like the ratios of what we're using change so we can pull money out of there to do other things um this is supposed to be like on some level to help us save money by getting more ceiling done and expanding the life of the roads and i think pulling money out of there to out of the roads and transit and anywhere else that's being used to do this. I guess I would think very hard before being in favor of that.

Sure. That is something we can look at. We'd have to be publicly transparent, but yeah, and it can't be used for snow plowing or street sweeping, but we can apply it to any other transportation related item or we already are using it for some of those capital items that the streets budget used to be able to pay for and now they're unable to. We'd have an additional maybe $400,000 worth of room in the transit budget that could be, we could use that to continue to pay for transit.

All right, so Vice President Schoen, do you want to?

Yeah, I would like to offer, so previously in prior CIP budgets, funding was awarded to this account and it was used to help subsidize Prairie Heights and the Eddy. and provide affordable housing units there. HAWC has been reworking their scoring criteria, which is why we haven't had a call out for new projects, but absolutely the commission would advocate for more funding. I guess I can't speak on behalf of the commission, I would say there's definitely a need and I've spoken with other community members that are really adamant that this need exists and we need to also provide adequate funding levels in order to solicit meaningful projects. And so I think right now, once the rubric, which I believe is slated to come to council for approval in July, looking at staff, maybe some nods, we'd be able to go out for a call or request for proposals And I anticipate there's a lot of conversations happening on Hawk and unique and innovative housing concepts that would be eligible for this type of funding. I also think about the RDA districts that we'll be considering that would also be an eligible way to pair those two efforts together nicely. And I just want to right size the resource. So that would be the only comments I have to offer there.

okay so that was going to be my question was um what is the difference or you know what what would be any kind of constraints we would have we allocated to flexible housing fund versus rda because it seems like that rda money could be used to rehab and and could have a lot of the similar objective meet some of the similar objectives in terms of what the community is asking Does it make sense? How constrained are we if we budget for some of this? Can then it get moved to RDA or if there are opportunities that come up or does it make more sense to allocate some of it to RDA first?

I don't know. I'd probably recommend it. RDA funding would be easier to use. I think it can.

To use because it's fewer constraints?

Yes. They're usually capital in nature. in that regards, and I think they, I think there'd be less internal control issues. I'm just, I guess in conjunction with the CDBG grant and other items that we have in relation to HOC. So I guess operationally that would be my recommendation is to look towards a specific capital investment like the EDDIE or the pre-pandemic ones that we had started on.

Council Member Mboga.

Thank you. My question is for Peel. Peel, can you come up front, please? I need to understand that endeavor, but can you speak more about the housing? Like, in a nutshell, you know, we have a lot of people on the waiting list. I mean, maybe apartment we have. And are these apartments affordable? And what do you mean affordable? Affordable is $200 a month or $1,000 a month? What is affordable?

Well, affordable by definition would apply to everybody. It's 30% of your household income being spent on housing, including utilities. So if you make $1 million, 30%. $10,000, 30%. Low income, which we typically consider 60% or below, that's where we're struggling to meet with new housing. New housing being built without like a duplex, a twin home without any profits or anything is still over $300,000 just to build it. I think funding like this would be most effective in like LIHTC projects or looking at rehab with the new RDA district. um helping to remove some blight so that more land is available similar to the excess land project i think using funding in connection with the excess land project to build housing that could then go to like the Housing Authority, but a million dollars would build two single-family homes. It would be much more effective helping with light tech projects and stuff like that, produce more units.

Karen?

Yeah, I guess... Wearing wearing my you know economics degree hat I just think of a lot of what we're doing with regards to some discussions about light tech and everything like that and And even a lot of it is is just like subsidizing a Facet of the economy where businesses aren't paying their employees enough to live and everyone is paying for that and then we have money that we have to find to do this. I'm very in support of us finding money to do that. I would be much more in support of us finding a way to do it so it's in perpetuity. My understanding with a lot of the LIHTC projects is that they have a set period of time for which it has to be affordable and then it no longer has to be.

If I'm wrong, I'm happy to – I think that's – is it 30 years usually for those or – for LIHTC projects? Yeah.

The initial is 30 years. They can renew if an additional or at the end of that first contract, they can choose to make it more concrete.

Sure. Okay, so we could put money into that, would help potentially for 30 years, 80% CMI, potentially 60% CMI. I'm not seeing too much LIHTC below 60% CMI. And then, or if we did something and it went into the Housing Authority's portfolio, it would exist there as long as, the as long as the house lasted as a house or apartment building or whatever so yeah I just it just I would want us to use our money as effectively as possible to have it be useful for as long as possible and that would be my thought on that

I would just make one comment relates to LIHTC. LIHTC projects are currently the only ones that are hitting anything below 60%. The two LIHTC projects that we have active, they have a percentage at 30% CMI, percentage at 40 to 50, 60, and then some at market rate. They're the only ones that are doing that. To get below that, it does require some sort of a state or federal program heavily subsidizing it. The best we're getting right now at the natural market are some of the projects that Markell has done that are 60% CMI rent rates, and those have actually creeped up a little bit, so I'm not sure they're even at 60% CMI anymore. It requires some sort of federal state program to get down below there, and LIHTC is one of the few programs. We're not seeing Section 8 housing really here anymore, so it's one of the few programs that does. But you are correct, it's not forever. If they choose not to renew the contracts, they can go to full market rate at some point in time. Thank you.

Vice President Schoen.

I wanted to try to stay on topic within the bounds of the work session. But in regards to the scope of the amendment and some of the work that HAWC is doing, I mentioned they're revising their scoring rubric. And it prompted one other thought that I want to share briefly, which is another use of the funds previously in this line item went to Eau Claire Area Among Mutual Assistance Association. to maintain affordable housing, so is rehabbing existing affordable housing and keeping people in their affordable homes and or apartments permanently. And that is something, the scoring criteria that Hawk is working on has been revamped to help ensure that the use of these funds would be able to be used in those types of situations and that those types of projects would be scored highly in addition to projects that would be LIHTC projects that would create higher volume of units. So I just wanted to mention that, I think the reality is just our community is in a housing shortage. I know I think Larry you brought up how many families are on the waiting list for housing. I just think that as much as we are able to make that a priority within this budget we should. And that's the intent of the amendment really. And anyways, I don't know that I heard a whole lot from people other than there's maybe some hesitation around reducing our road projects budget in order to allocate more funding here. But I would say I personally am okay with reducing our road budget in effort to make sure more people stay in their homes and create new housing opportunities in the community.

I guess I was wondering about, I mean, I think it might be helpful for us to know, given that this is a five-year CIP, like when some of these tax incremental districts are going to close and be able to be used for affordable housing. Because maybe some of the conversation could be about, what is the bridge to that point? And what are some of the programs that we may want to create and actually start funding now a bit more before we have the larger influx of funding So that's maybe one way to look at it in terms of the five-year CIP, because I think it's about five years out for some of the major ones, right?

Yes, the next one that'll close will be to number nine. We are looking at speaking with the joint review board to potentially transfer the increment into another blight district. So we will get their permission on that at the next upcoming joint review board, but that's five years out. And then because it's closing after the legislation, you'll have two years of increment that you can put towards affordable housing. So it'll be around 2032 that I'm planning on. Then to date, we'll close after that. That one was a different, that was a blight district as well. And that is one of your larger ones. But it's all outside of the CIP in the 30s, I'd like, I hate to say, but.

Council Member Werthmann?

Thank you, Council President. I support us increasing this. These are just hard decisions because budgets are about choices and about what kind of community we want to be. We want to pay for all the things. We want good roads. We want our water clean. We want all of these important things. I've seen this affordable housing fund put to good use, especially, I would say, well, being gap financing for a number of projects, but then also this work to help the Hmong Mutual keep some of their people in apartments that needed renovation because of mold. And I remember it was something like instead of their rent going from 600 to 900, the fund was helping to renovate through this flexible fund. And so a whole lot of people could continue to stay in their apartments. To me, those things matter, and if you say what are our priorities, heck, even if we're at 500K or a million on this, we're still only a percent or two of our entire CIP over the next five years. I think it's important that we figure out a way to make this a bigger priority. So I support overall. I'm glad that the HOC is redoing the criteria. I know that takes a lot of time and work. But hopefully it can happen soon. So I'll be a supporter of an amendment.

Okay, so I think, Clara, you were probably next.

Yeah, I also really support the idea in principle of more support for housing as a community. I'm just a little still wondering, Kitsie says, RDA would be easier and I'm I know I don't understand all the details and I'm not sure I necessarily need to dive into all the details but to what degree does that you know impact how we you know I'd be happy to be a second on an amendment but I kind of thinking that if the RDA is Gives us more options given that we still don't quite have like shovel ready projects Necessarily that if that if that makes more sense and kind of still I don't know if I can ask a question directly of council of Jess, but I'm kind of wondering what her thoughts are about that There's a work session.

I don't know if we want to talk to Aaron wait about the difference between the You know, the functionality within the RDA, kind of the cliff notes version of that versus the using it within the HOC funds. You do have a million dollars left from the 2026 project within the RDA, so you can have more buying power with that. You also have funding left from 2025 from the flexible housing as well.

I'd probably specify the major difference would be execution. Whether it's the RDA or the Housing Authority, they have existing programs, and they execute their own program with their funding. The RDA, or excuse me, like Housing Authority, they have a rental assistance program. They have a rehab program. These are defined programs. The more money they're in there, they can already put that money out immediately. RDA, assuming the new districts are approved, they have a program planned to execute on their own and will be able to execute as an organization. the the process for the flex funding you're waiting for someone else to bring a project and then it's weighed and measured to see if it's something that the community likes and it's a recommendation then goes to council then council has to determine is it something like is it something they support then it's approved and then you're waiting on somebody else to execute and then you fall to make sure did they execute according to contract terms the two organizations are either city direct city organizations or directly facility affiliated their whole mandate is to do what they are defined to do by the city through their their respective areas so it's a little more direct and definitely more nimble thank you that's helpful yeah i think i'm more inclined of maybe going with one of those already existing organizations to be able to like just do more of what they're already doing

Okay, I think probably Council Member Mboga, you're next.

Yeah, thank you. I'll be supporting. I agree with Councilman Whitman, what he said. But my question I would like to ask, I wish we have a tone here so that you can answer for me, but I think Alan White, you can, I think, try to answer this question for me. Ms. Alan White, can you come forward, please? So I have this crazy idea, but I don't know. So I've been thinking, this idea came after council said. So if this business come to a claim, they hire our resident. And the resident have to stay somewhere, but they don't have affordable houses. Can we tie them when they come and say, listen, if you have business here, you have to put $20,000 to afford a house. Can we do that?

It would be difficult to link that together and make a requirement. Potentially, if... And this would be more of a legal question than anything. If we were providing a specific amount of assistance, that could be a conversation. That's actually a conversation that our staff has been having with businesses for the eight years that I've been here and for probably a decade prior to that in other communities. Businesses used to do that regularly housing, you know business housing employee housing Some of the businesses are now starting to swing back that way We have whole neighborhoods in this community that were built under that premise and we are encouraging businesses to look at that How much we can force them to do it. That's probably more of a legal question whether it's a defensible It's getting there

Council Member Reed, you haven't had a chance to speak yet.

Yeah. Thanks, Jeremy. I was just curious. So last year, the council approved 40K to Sojourner's House. Did that come from this fund, the Flexible Housing Fund, or did that come from somewhere else? I believe that might be CDBG funding.

I'm not 100% sure, but the housing fund didn't pay anything to Sojourner.

There was a pass-through grant that happened, and then the participatory budgeting did pay for solar, but nothing from the housing fund that I'm aware of.

We had a rather unique amendment by former city manager Hirsch that kind of shifted a few different funding sources around and combined the flexible housing CIP item we had in prior years so I think part of that we'd have to research back on that one because that one we have to remind ourselves on but yeah that wasn't city funding yeah Was that 24 or 25?

That was last year over the summer, I believe. We did $40,000 to help them stay open for the summer, but I'm not sure what funding that came from.

That was ARPA, I want to say. That's my first, because we have the cooling, the warming. Yeah, I would say ARPA in that one.

Yeah, Vice President.

Yeah, I wanted to respond to Clara's question about RDA versus Hawk. And I guess I'm curious to know if we put, if council supports an amendment and we increase the allocation for 27 to the flexible housing initiative line item, I don't know, I mean, maybe staff can help me understand how much flexibility we would have available to us after that to shift funds between, I mean, I think that the scope of the work the RDA is doing falls within the umbrella of the purpose of this fund, but also I wanted to offer that the way I think about the two different things of if we give it to increase the RDA fund versus if we increase the Flexible Housing Initiative fund, RDA has a very specific purpose and the way they operate in terms of establishing their districts and using those funds to purchase and acquire properties Anyhow, the Flexible Housing Initiative Fund would allow for things that are a little bit more creative. We talked a little bit about the ECMA project where it's keeping people in their homes and keeping people in their affordable housing and actually it was, I liked what Andrew was saying actually about that where we can't offer people rental assistance with this money but in a way that's what this project when ECMA did. We kept people's rent from going up through investing in capital projects through the HOC funds and what they oversaw and council ultimately approved. So to me, it's two different strategies or approaches to housing. RDA is definitely, you know, has, plan in place and can run and start implementing if if when council approves that new district, but I Would say that within the flexible housing fund minutes in the name. There's a little bit more flexibility There's more creative solutions that can be pursued and I think there's potential to impact more homes You know, I know that Billy mentioned, you know, a million dollars could build two single-family homes but I would I think about all of the other types of projects that are much smaller dollar amounts and how far that could go for more people in the community. So that's what, anyways, I just wanted to respond to that.

So the one thing to be aware of with the narrative for the Flexible Housing Initiative Fund, it does say use of funding should not, or specific use is to be reviewed by the Housing Opportunities Commission and approved by the City Council. So it says funding can be used for a variety of initiatives to help address issues with housing insecurity in our community, but it does say specific use should be reviewed by HOC. So if you desire to have it go like the Housing Authority or the Mung Mutual Assistance Association are allocated like we allocate some CDBG, it still looks like in the narrative that HOC would have to approve that instead of going through the rubric. If you wanted to... have that flexibility, then I would say specify, set aside X amount, distribute it in conjunction with CDBG applications where there's energy efficiency navigator. Same program for Mung Mutual Assistance Association got some money from CDBG, so you could also go that route. Or if you're comfortable with all of it going through and requiring HOC approval, then it looks like if the description is wide open, it just has that step in front of it.

My understanding is HACC, the rubric ECMA did apply and used the prior scoring rubric that HACC reviewed and then that was approved by council. So I would see no reason why we couldn't allow the same thing to happen again. And I mean RDA could apply for funds from HACC and they could score whatever the proposed project would be and rank it amongst other applicants and I don't know. Just, yeah.

I mean. We could also have it go half to HACC, half to RDA, too. Or some portion, maybe some of it even goes to the Housing Authority, I don't know.

Even the Housing Authority, yeah.

I mean, it seems like, I mean, one of the concerns I have is the amount of staff time and also for applicants and volunteers and the public, like, to be able to use this money, like through the system that we have, like, I know that there's a whole, you know, effort to try to maybe to rewrite that. And that takes a lot of time too, but like the, um, I've liked having the flexibility. Um, but I just wonder, you know, how much time and attention this has had to take over. Like we've had this fund now for five or six years, I think. And we, And when was the last time we even dispersed any money? It's been since 2024.

I think some of the items, when it was combined, the one year with the energy efficiency navigator, that came out of there. But I think we were looking at pre-pandemic contracts that came out after the pandemic and after I'd started in 2022. So we were using old affordable housing funds at that point. So I still have some of the 2024 funding on the books as well.

Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of in, so what Council Member Brewster mentioned just about the longevity of the funds, like being able to have an impact, like the more ownership I think the city has, the better. and using existing programs, just because we could create 10 different methods for housing, and it could really give us more options. Right now, we already have three major ones, is my understanding, if we have housing authority and RDA and this fund that already exists. So we could potentially. So the proposal seems to be focused on the flexible housing fund at this point and just making that larger. So just to clarify, that's what you're proposing?

OK.

Yeah, I'm open to maybe, I guess I'll have to work with my seconder, figure out exactly what we want to bring forward as a proposal after council's given input, which is helpful. I'm open to some split between RDA an increase for RDA and the affordable or flexible housing initiative fund. But I think there's clearly a need and to me it's something we really need to do. And I guess I appreciate everybody's input. I mostly was wanting to understand what source of funding council was open to reducing an effort to increase these other balances.

Yeah, we haven't dove too far into that subject yet. So does anyone have thoughts on that? I mean, I know that some of the parks projects have been mentioned. Yeah, the streets are a concern to me because of the way we have increased vehicle registration fee and where people are paying extra to hopefully improve our streets, right? And so, yeah, anyone have any other thoughts about things they would be up for reducing? Nobody has thoughts. So is it OK to ask who would be the definitive seconder that Vice President Schoen could work with most closely?

I volunteered to be a seconder. Now I kind of feel like I'm getting bogged down in some of the weeds and details. And I do value everybody's thoughts on kind of Where do we want to put money? Things that are ready to go, things that are going to be a little bit further down the line. But I'm happy to work with Council Member Schoenberg if other folks want to, I mean, I don't know.

Yeah, does that sound good to have? Okay, so, I mean, when do we, so we have this three-week gap here, which helps between now and the next council meeting, but that would still be required to have an actual proposal within a week and a half, if not sooner, right?

We'd be looking at the eighth if you would like to get something in the agenda packet for the public discussion. I do have some time in between there. We can work on the language. Again, we have that $250,000 amount. We could chip away at a few different items. If we're looking at finding 750,000, that's when you're looking at reducing streets and building projects is probably the, and we can also look at the council audio too, just because I think it's, It's working right now and there wasn't the parking, when I spoke with the IS director, he talked about it not being the top priority this year in 2026. We were gonna use that $40,000 I believe was in this budget for planning and then the design of everything that we needed and they have not started that yet, so. That's 240,000 there too, so I guess it's, I'll have to work with you though on some of the offsets and what that amount drives that discussion.

Okay, Council Member Orth.

Was the amount that we're talking about, the increase from 250 to 500 or 750, Only, what we're talking about is only for 2027 though.

Okay. Correct.

So beyond that, we then would just keep the 250,000 as is in the CIP currently.

Right now, the directors submit those projects to the city manager. I guess my only reasoning for looking at 2027 is that we can change those in 2028 through the rest of the CIP. Other future councils can change those. And I'm concerned about the year with the fire station in 2028, that I'm gonna have to change quite a bit of things. It'll really disrupt operations for a year.

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm very much in favor of adding a significant amount to the flexible housing or however this goes. I spent the last few days reading this and I thought I knew a lot, but I don't. So as we're kicking around all these different terms, I'm like, wow. There is a lot of avenues, and I really don't know anything about them, so I don't feel like I can speak to beyond that I'm in favor of increasing the dollar amount as far as input about where to take it from. this all seemed very valuable to me. So, yeah.

Yeah, are there, so I know we have a lot of other stuff in the CIP, so, and we have a lot of our department directors here, If there are any department directors that maybe want to speak to anything or things they want to dive into more, this would be a good time, I think, to do that. Oh, yeah, Larry.

Our police chief.

Yeah, if there's any council members that want to prompt a particular director to come up, that is fine, too.

So thank you, Police Chief Mark.

I'm always a student of life. So the thing that I always worry, when I see police, they give people tickets. Then I ask myself, when you give a day, do you know how many tickets people get? And where does this money go? Does this money go to general fund, or can we use this money to do what?

Off the top of my head, I can't tell you or recite back how many citations that we issue in a day or annually. I can look it up and get back to you on that. As far as how the money, where it goes as far as the general fund or where it goes to, I'd probably defer to Kitsie on that. And we probably would require some further research I will say that most of the money from a citation both a city ordinance citation and a state uniform traffic citation There's quite a bit of that money goes back to the state for court fees As well so the percentage of it that comes back to the city is actually rather rather small and a very small percentage But we don't we don't see a ton of it. So

The citation revenue does go back into the general fund. It isn't a lot. The mid $100,000 is speaking to me, but again, that's contingent on being able to have full-time staffing in the CSO. that would make the biggest impact. So we've seen peaks and valleys on that based on the current staffing in that level. So it wouldn't be, it is not something we use to pay for an FTE, for example. I wouldn't call it dependable or something that I budget on because I think the end goal is corrective action and compliance and not making money off of citations for people for our department, so. It's just helpful to have that, you know, kind of, if other lines are short for the year, I guess, is how I treat it.

Yeah, there are some ethical and legal concerns with enforcement action geared towards generating revenue, so. Just in the moment of pause there, I did kind of dig something out of the back of my brain there, but it's just more of a general number. Last year we conducted about 27,500 traffic stops. So that was a very high number. That was a significant increase. We had more staffing. And to Kitsie's point, we had more staffing and more officer time available to do that. But of those 27,500 traffic stops, about 50% of them we issue a citation. So officers have discretion. And whether they issue a citation or they issue a written warning, all of our traffic stops, we do issue some type of paperwork geared towards corrective action and improving safety. Now the bond amounts for them varies on what the offense is. But I can do some more looking to find out specific numbers.

Thank you, Chief Rokas. Yeah, thank you.

And I think we do have...

Chief Jagger here, we've been in kind of the planning stages of the fire station. If you do have any additional questions on the necessity of that, now is your time to kind of speak with him about that. But we will have further information that we can share as well.

Chief Jagger, yeah, it would be great if you came up maybe and spoke to that a bit. I mean, one of my questions is about the just identifying a location and paying for the location and like how that ends up and I know that can be a sensitive topic when we're talking about, and we have money for land purchases too. So just trying to figure out how the pieces come together.

It really depends on where that is. So emergency and operational need, which Chief can talk about, determines the location for the best response time, and then that depends on is it in a TID district, for example, isn't it? Could that be donated land from Mayo Clinic, for example, or not? What are the expenses with demolition? on any building we have, relocation, items like that. So we're still in those phases right now, but we're working at the best operational direction that that needs to be. That is separate from the CIP project, but it really just depends on where that lands in order for me to give that answer. So there'll be more to come in next year's CIP about that. Hopefully we just have the funds on hand. Okay.

Yeah, Chief Janger, is there, yeah, I guess maybe you could just give an overview of the project in terms of why it needs to be as big as it is, perhaps, and what would operate out of there?

Sure, so there was an independent study done in 2014 when we were considering going from a six-station footprint to a five-station footprint. And at that time, it identified the need to keep six stations, and then should people there be such a time that Station 2 is remodeled or replaced, because it was built in 1941, that it should be relocated due to response times across the river. Now, response times equal to basically the time you call 911, by the time everybody dons their gear, gets on the truck and reaches the identified location. And that's per NFPA 1710, which is industry standards. And when we did that study, it identified that on the west side, we have a coverage gap where we don't meet those response standards. And so as we continued to look at this project, in 2016 we came across station two and said now is not the time to take a capital improvement project on for that. And we subsequently took some dollars and remodeled station two, kind of improving the living quarters, doing a bunch of light remodel projects. With that, though, I mean, I can speak to quite a few of the deficiencies. I can speak to why the renovation is needed. Some of the biggest things are it doesn't meet the international building codes any longer. It is not ADA compliant. It does not meet current NFPA standards for health and safety recommendations for personnel. It is undersized even for the type of apparatus. We just had, unfortunately we just had A couple accident reports coming over the weekend because when you're backing a truck in and it's the only way to get it in the doors, you have less than a foot on each side. And it actually caught the folding down stairs a couple of times and scraped the stairs up. And as we do what we have to do, truck checks, on a daily basis, when we pull them out of the station to do the truck checks, we're already impeding into the lane of traffic there. And due to the fact that the bridge is out, we can only turn one way, which adds response times to that west side currently. And so that's one of the things related to that. Some of the challenges, like I talked about, there is no training room there. That is our central located station, and we have to, right currently we go to station eight for any department-wide training, which was well-built and well-constructed. So we have to there, and we recognize the fact of when we want to hold department-wide training, the best location would be centrally located. so we can respond out to any type of those emergencies. We talked about the ineffective personnel decontamination areas. Currently, all our gears located on the apparatus floor, that's no longer a standard. When you remodel and or build, that's allowable because all the contaminants of the exhaust as you leave the stations get in your gear and then off gas throughout a period of time which increases negative impacts to your health health and safety Benefits there the battalion chiefs watch office of where they sleep because of as they manage their shifts also located on that floor With no negative pressure there. So all of those Carcinogens are in his living quarters for that if you've had an opportunity to tour that station it's not necessarily gender compliant we have one bathroom for the seven daily people staffed there we have one living quarters with bunk rooms where we have dividers and curtains but not for privacy that provide limited privacy but no decompression time the workout room is also compiled in that area So when for instance when we go to a fire one of the things that we we do is make sure Personnel can take showers when they come back at the carcinogens out Before they are put back in service to go to another call. There's one shower for those people to work through So there's some difficulties there related to that as I mentioned response times and And the key element of that is that NFP 17 cents, 10 standards requires four personnel to arrive within 50 minutes, 90% of the time. For that west side, we don't meet that currently. And chances of survival on an EMS incidence decrease every seven to 10% for every minute without CPR or an AED. So those are substantial things. Your basic life support should arrive within five minutes. Again, something that we don't meet based on the thing. When we looked at identifying additional locations for that, the response criteria is number one for us. The size and scope, getting back to your original question, as I've kind of skipped around a little bit, for an admin station that provides the service that we do, we're actually on the smaller scale of other competing cities our size or larger for an admin station, so we're trying to really be efficient as to how we build and what we build in there. Right now, conceptionally, I know Director Winters has a picture of what it kind of looks like, It has some amenities that if the project needed to potentially have modifications that could be removed but by and large it's it needs to be a 50 to 75 year building as you see this one was built in 1941 and has to Accommodate the growth within the city and a possible consolidations in the future should we have any shared services? and go down that route And the final element to that is one of the things that we have to be cautious of when we have dignitary visits or anything like that are bridges. And should we have a major failure or a bridge construction project where we couldn't do that right now, extended response times because we only have a certain amount of fire stations located on the opposite sides of the river. So all of that hopefully will answer some of your questions. Do you have more specific questions to aid in this project? To put it in perspective, the footprint is similar to fire station number 10. And 2018 when we built fire station number 10, the cost of construction was just under $200 a square foot. Currently, if we were to approve the project today for next year, it's about $400 a square foot. If we wait to 2028 to build it as forecasted and understood, you're looking at $550 a square foot just based on inflation costs. Director Winters talked about we are applying for grants on a regular basis to offset this cost. Our strongest next step is land acquisition. So the new grants that will be coming out in the spring, one of the questions is do you have the land appropriated for the project. We've had to answer no twice. Now your strongest is always in your third application process and that would be a box to check. And speaking with city manager Solberg, he's made a valiant effort and will continue to be pursuing options for us so that we can check that box and hopefully, whether we get the 10 million or five million, but we can help subsidize the project through the grant funding.

Thank you. Yeah, it was helpful to know where that land acquisition kind of fits into. That means we're getting closer to this thing when we're talking about such things. That's good.

And it has been a project that's been part of the CIP for numerous years. And willingly, we understand the financial impact that it has on the city. And we recognize, similar to this year, it was slated for 27, that should the need arise because there are other projects of importance, we can move it. But it does need to be relocated and it does need to be built. And the longer we wait, the harder that financial decisions will be for all of you as it comes to that time. Any other questions for me?

I've also heard about

know the potential need for yet another fire station at some point in the next decade is there so one of the things that we are tasked to do as directors is kind of uh aid the city manager in upcoming projects in the future and we know that through potential development of that west side as it is part of the strategic plan of the city if that is fully develops in the manner in which is forecasted over the next 10 years Due to the geographical response times, you'd likely have to add a seventh station out in that area. And one of the things that we've been asking around the state are what are some of the costs that could offset that. And working with Director Winters, we've talked about impact fees and other things that we're going to be doing some studies on to see if we can do. So when that time arises in that next five to ten years, hopefully there will be some funds in reserve that would help offset the cost of adding, of building a new fire station. But in addition, finding money for personnel. and what that looks like. But that is just based on the nature of calls that we continue to receive, the volume of calls that we receive, and then the geographical layout of the city, and adhering to NFPA 1710. We just wanted to put it out there as a thought so that when we are developing that area, if we have the ability to either purchase or maintain land, the project will be successful in the future at less of a cost. Any other questions?

That's all I have. Any other questions for Chief Jagar? Thank you for your time. All right. Thank you. Are there any other directors that council members have questions for? Any questions for our for KITC or other ideas?

Council Member Miller? I think you can come for about 45 minutes. I had a question for KITC, I just remembered what it was now. I think just in passing you mentioned that there's about a million dollars maybe allocated from the general fund to go into the CIP. I was kind of curious, how does that compare to other years and then, you know, given the fact that we have tight budgets all around, you know, you can't borrow for the operating budget, so is it, what's the rationale for taking a million from the operational budget and put it to the CIP when you could borrow instead of doing that?

Sure, there's a couple things there. We used to use around a million dollars annually. You want to look at how much is coming back in from the prior year and you're current in those activities. There are some items that you can't borrow for, so we have to look at funding those with unassigned funds or cash, unused tax dollars. The other area of focus we'll be looking at with that, I'd have financial recommendations for still continuing an investment in risk management and also starting, I'll have an actuarial study done, but starting with the self-insured fund and dedicating some of those dollars. Those aren't necessarily renewable Our police departments getting closer to full staffing though. They were the contributor primarily the champion of the unused tax dollars, but unfortunately that that was always based on overtime and and not having adequate staffing. So we'd roll back a million dollars of unused tax dollars. But we wanted to offset and keep the taxes as low as possible the following year. So we are getting back to that. By not doing any of the projects in the CIP, it does not help balance the operating budget. What it can be used for in place or the previous philosophies that we've used over the last couple years would have been one-time service modifications. So if we have a one-time investment, for example, on the high-speed rail, that would be a use of those funds. But I can't use that same million dollars to pay for 10 employees. So it's kind of what I would describe as an unbalanced budget because it's one-time money that you're hoping will last you and keep rolling forward. But at this point, we're in a good position where we can use those funds, I guess I would summarize. The other option would be one-time service funds, but again, all of our needs are not really necessarily one-time at this point.

Okay, thanks.

I had a question just about Some of the new dynamic that we're in, having passed the zoning code overhaul and, like, certain things. And Chief Jagger actually mentioned this idea of the impact fees. And, like, one of them that I believe was created as part of that was related to parks. So is there a fund that's starting to build up? like that is reflected in the CIP to like actually support parks or is it more operational or like how does that work?

Sure well step one is usually an impact study our auditors will require this if we start expanding those impact fees it's something I'm looking at as a solution for the fire station that would be out over 10 years. So I'm kind of planning also for the next 10 years after what would be presented before you. So I'll sort of study on that. The funds do have to be used around eight years. they cannot be for existing maintenance. So I couldn't use them, for example, for Carson Park. But if you're developing a different area or a different park, we could look at those items. So City of Madison has a rather robust impact fee budget, and theirs is really interesting to look at. But theirs is housed in the CIP, so I would do the same.

Okay.

But yeah, nothing substantial yet at this point, but I am... I was going to do a study this year just to support what we already have and then I was going to bring that forward under the suggestion of city manager Solberg to look at part of our fiscal stability study. So it's one of the tools, it's one of the levers I can pull. When do we want to pull that? When do we want to start building that fund?

Okay. Cool. Well, I think we're ready to wrap up the conversation. Anything else that you want to share about the timeline? Because essentially, the intent is to have the final public hearing on the 13th of July with the

vote on the 14th and any and the amendments would be due on the 8th I would say by the 8th yes if you want them in the packet I do have some scheduling conflicts so I know Thursday morning I have some availability and just reach out to me if you want to set up a set up a time Assisting with those the holidays in there too. We've got some other obligations But I we definitely like to help you with the language on those And I do have a spreadsheet I can email as well if that's of any value if you want to dig a little deeper in the CIP with the funding sources You know one one resource that I would appreciate in the given the amendment being proposed

being crafted is just a full list of all the money we've set aside for that flexible housing fund and then where the money has gone and a bit of detail on those projects that they funded. I know we have that somewhere, but it'd be nice to have that. Sure. Yeah. cool well i think this uh work session is adjourned and uh hope everybody has a nice evening thank you

Thank you. I think they're nervous. I think he's gonna miss this. Thank you.