City Council - Regular Meeting

I mean it's Excuse me. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I am also disabled, but yeah, I'll make sure. Aaron, can I keep this one? Nope. Okay. You can have it after the break. All right. Well, I'm also a little weak. Do you need another one?

What's the other number?

By any chance, do you have extra one of these?

No. Let me take a picture of you. Okay. You make it so hard for me. There you go. Thank you.

so we have to go up to voting to suspend the moment that we move it again or no we move it first

Okay, so we don't need a separate motion. So when we get to that one, since the staff were asking for it, we're going to bring it up.

I thought there was some sort of, like, panels going to that.

They covered the entire basement. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. We actually had a conversation on that.

All right, thank you.

I know you are. I just love to see this. It is for me too. That's good. That's a win. I like your haircut.

Where does it came out?

It's great.

I've been worried about the geese with all those lily pads because I saw 20 of them.

just making their way where they could.

And people have told me, I agree with you, you need to think about it. Just like the technical. You also were telling me not to. Okay. How many years?

I should know that. That's one of my favorite places to work there. Thanks for saying that.

That's a moment I will never forget. Julia either yesterday. That's the front of my mind now for the rest of my life. And it's a compliment to you. They are.

Thank you. Thank you. Please sign here. It was the language. I saw the amendments. Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. a little bit of an evening presentation Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Judge decided he was given a little bit of a lift.

There were like four places that day that I could have gotten a parking ticket. They did, but also I think for things like special events, it might make sense to have a check for a special event.

Nice.

I'm going to pay it. But I'm not happy about it. I know it's not your fault.

Thank you. What's that?

It's just about .

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yes okay

Do you know if they're going to talk about it? I don't think so. Thank you. Yeah, well, I'm writing about the story for tomorrow about a couple things. They're doing a first read on the compost ordinance, and also because they're in community, they're going to get it.

I was going to talk about the amendments as well. It's about, I mean, it's hard to cut off his name, but we

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.

Greger.

Here.

Johnson.

Amboga.

Risen.

Miller. Here. Orth.

Here.

Otto. Here. Reed. Here. Schoen.

Here.

Serrano.

Here.

Werthmann.

Here.

Thank you city clerk and welcome everyone to the Tuesday, July 28th meeting of the Eau Claire city council. Um, this is our, uh, legislative session. Uh, and first, first item we have on our agenda is the consent agenda. Um, this is items number one through eight. Um, and so we'll be considering this all at once. Um, And if your item is on the consent agenda, please know that unless the item is pulled out, all items will pass or fail on one vote. So do council members have any questions about the consent agenda or wish to remove any items for separate consideration? All right, then on a motion by Council Member Serrano and seconded by Council Member Brewster, the consent agenda has been moved. Is there any discussion of the consent agenda? All right, seeing none, City Clerk, please call the roll on the consent agenda.

Council member Brewster.

Aye.

Greger. Aye. Mboga. Aye. Miller.

Aye.

Orth.

Aye.

Otto. Aye. Reed. Aye. Schoen.

Aye.

Serrano.

Aye.

Werthmann. Aye.

All right, and that passes unanimously. Next item is our, we have one proclamation tonight, so we have Lieutenant Jesse Henning here to accept a proclamation on National Night Out. So I will go up and read it. So whereas the National Association of Town Watch is sponsoring its 41st Annual Nationwide Crime and Drug Prevention Program called National Night Out, America's Night Out Against Crime, and whereas the National Night Out is designed to heighten crime and drug prevention awareness, generate support for and participation in local anti-crime efforts, strengthen neighborhood spirit and police community partnerships. And whereas it is essential that all citizens of Eau Claire be aware of the importance of cooperation in crime prevention programs for neighborhood safety and the impact that their participation can have on reducing crime, drugs, and violence in Eau Claire. And whereas the Eau Claire Police Department, Eau Claire Parks, Recreation, and Forestry Division area businesses, and Eau Claire neighborhoods play a vital role in assisting the Eau Claire Police Department by supporting a healthy and safe community. Now, therefore, I, Jeremy Greger, President of the Eau Claire City Council, on behalf of the entire City Council, do hereby proclaim Tuesday, August 4, 2026, as National Night Out. the city of eau claire and do hereby call upon all residents of eau claire to join together for games food music inflatables and more from 5 30 to 8 p.m in carson park in support of a national night out against crime thank you for coming

Thank you very much, President Greger. As you said, National Night Out is a great yearly tradition that we've held in the city of Eau Claire for a long time. August 4th, next Tuesday from 5.30 to 8 p.m. in Carson Park, come join us. It's a great community event. We can't do our jobs in law enforcement without the partnership from our community. And those relationships that we're able to build at events like National Night Out are a huge part of the step in the right direction and continuing in the right direction in this great city of Eau Claire. So come meet many city employees. Again, like President Greger said, we do have inflatables. So hopefully some of you can join us in the inflatables that we have there. Great food, great prizes for the kids, and just a great time for us all to stand together. So again, thank you very much.

All right, thank you so much. All right, so moving on to agenda item number This is the first item on our business agenda. So this is a resolution to approve the redevelopment district identified as the Riverbend Redevelopment District proposed by the Eau Claire Redevelopment Authority. And a 2 thirds vote of the elected members or eight affirmative votes is required for adoption. via Wisconsin Statute 66.13336B. And we have Community Development Director Aaron White here to present on this item.

Thank you, Council President Gregert and council members. I don't have any additional information to present yet for either item 9 or number 10, but we'd be happy to answer any additional questions.

OK. Are there any further questions? And I can perhaps just read the, well, so we have another item, number 10, that is just a different redevelopment district. So we'll cover that next. But is there, so we will move the item so we can discuss it. So on a motion by Council Member Werthmann and seconded by Council Member Orth, This item is moved. Is there any discussion from council on the River Bend Redevelopment District? Council Member Brewster.

Thank you, Council President. I have an amendment that I would like to make to both 9 and 10, but we'll start with 9. So yeah, we wanna add some language that talks about equitable development into the introduction section of the Riverbend plan. Say, development in the district shall be informed by principles of equitable development, for which the purposes of the plan shall be understood as a planning framework designed to revitalize neighborhoods without displacing or excluding long-term residents. It ensures that investments in housing, business, and infrastructure generate tangible economic and health benefits for the original community rather than solely catering to new wealthier arrivals. The guiding principles are as follows. Number one, protect and preserve the original community vulnerable tenants and homeowners from displacement. Number two, encourage the participation of local and regional developers and investors. Number three, engage the impacted community early in planning and decision making. And four, emphasize local businesses, revitalize or vital neighborhood services and first time entrepreneurs.

Okay, so we have a motion to amend from Council Member Brewster. And there are copies of this at every desk. And it will be identical for the next one too, so I probably won't read the entire thing again. Okay, and Vice President Schoen?

I'll second that motion.

Okay, so we have a second from Vice President Schoen. Is there any discussion on the amendment to agenda item number nine? Councilmember Werthmann.

Yeah, I would like to support this amendment. And it's something that I think will help us, as these redevelopment districts get off the ground, to think about both and. So how do we revitalize, energize, bring in more investment while at the same time investing in the homeowners that live there, the already existing community businesses? How do we help folks who maybe need that support to keep their places affordable while also seeing the benefits of investment. I like how this sets up as not a combative relationship, but as a collaborative relationship and seeing how we can do both things. And it, it's something that I think is incredibly important. You know, We've faced a little bit of this tension in our downtown area. While everyone agrees the investment has been incredibly important, it also has created a bit of tension among people who maybe have more wealth to be in these places, and doesn't always spill over automatically to lift all boats, but I think requires intentionality. That's what this does as we go forward on these two RDA districts. So I will be supporting it.

Okay, thank you, Council Member Werthmann.

Councilmember Miller. Thank you, Council President. I agree with the language that's provided in this motion here. Just I was wondering if we could, so I don't want anything in this motion to be considered exclusionary or disparaging. I support the item presented and the four points. I'm just hesitant on the phrase rather than solely catering to new wealthy arrivals. Because before that, it says insurers' investments benefit the original community. And I think we said period there. I don't want to have any, like I said, disparaging language. I mean, we do want new people to come to Eau Claire. And we want people of all economic strata to come. So I think if we were to remove, rather than solely carrying to new wealthy arrivals, it would still maintain the original intent and not disclude anybody from Eau Claire with the language. So I would propose maybe that could be removed if the Movers of the motion would be open to that or if not I could move it separately But just asking them overs movers if that could be excluded perhaps councilmember Brewster yeah Would you be open to just dropping wealthier rather than solely catering to new arrivals?

Does that get get you closer to where you want to be I

If you, I'm sorry. Council Member Miller, yeah. We shouldn't really be talking to each other, we should be talking to the chair. Chair, if the mover desired to keep new but would be open to striking wealthier, I'd be okay with that. Slight amendment just to not disparage any particular economic classes from this motion.

I would consider that friendly.

Vice President Schell.

Thank you. Yes, I would accept that as well.

okay so it has so there's a friendly amendment that is included that just strikes the comma and the word wealth here from that first paragraph of the amendment is that that's accurate it sounds like um So we will discuss the amendment without that word. And Council Member Otto.

Thank you, Council President. I, too, will be supporting this amendment, in particular because it recognizes these zones as a bigger, well, as a part of the bigger city, as a part of the city as a whole, because when other places have these redevelopment districts and there is displacement what usually happens is that the displaced people end up moving to other neighborhoods and creating a ripple effect and this helps us better prepare for any potential ripple effect and prevent it in other districts and neighborhoods within the city so I think this is fantastic and I appreciate the people who spoke to the community about this and drafted this amendment

Thank you. Council Member Serrano.

Thank you, Council President Gregert. Yeah, I really appreciate that, too, and I appreciate Council Member Otto's point. The fact that, well, this one and the next items are both pretty large redevelopment districts, I think it's particularly important that we include this item inclusive approach to how we do redevelopment. And I think it becomes kind of a statement of values for us as a community and the kind of city we're really trying to continue to become. So I'm actually excited that these RDA districts are large and that they will all kind of have this kind of inclusive approach to them.

Okay, thank you. Any other discussion on the amendment? All right, seeing none, city clerk, please call the roll on the amendment.

All right. Council Member Gregor.

Aye.

Johnson. Aye. Amboga. Aye.

Miller. Aye.

Orth. Aye. Otto. Aye. Reed. Aye. Schoen.

Aye.

Serrano.

Aye.

Werthmann. Aye. Brewster.

Aye. And that amendment passes unanimously. So now we're on to the resolution approving the redevelopment district as amended. And we can further our discussion here. Council Member Werthmann first.

Thank you, Council President. I am really excited about both of these plans for different reasons. But I think first and foremost, one of the first ways that people often experience our community is actually through this Riverbend district. For me, it was coming to school at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. visiting with my family. But we have many visitors that come in off the highway that utilize a lot of that corridor, thousands of people, probably daily. It's how they experience it. And right now, it needs help. And this RDA district, which I know a lot of work has gone in from our director, as well as the economic development staff, our RDA itself, in drafting this, our city staff, and of course, our incredible advocates in our community thinking about how to make this the best it can be, points toward, I think, a really exciting future for this area that not only makes it better for business and a new investment, but I think will make it better for quality of life throughout that corridor. And so you think about walkability, you think about right now how it lacks shade from trees, how there's huge moats of highways passing through, all the things that make it a kind of a difficult place to live. and experience a good quality of life, I think of this RDA district as helping to address, helping to bring in the kind of money, investment financing that we need to make it an exciting place and to make it a more welcoming place that people experience as they come into our community. Because to me, that's oftentimes how people think about your community and whether they may even want to move there is sometimes how they experience it as they come into the area. Not to mention, of course, the university, the medical district, and the different pieces there. I'm so excited about this, what it can do to help kind of revitalize. This is a huge deal. This RDA district, both this one and the next one, are huge deals for our community, and I just want to share my gratitude for all the work that went into it.

Thank you. Vice President Schoen.

Thank you, Council President Gregert. I also am really enthusiastic about supporting this RDA district. I think about, so one of the more recent and notable RDA districts in our community at Cannery Park and how transformative that was for the community. And I'm really, really excited to see what this district will become. I think there's so much potential there for the entire community. As Council Member Werthmann pointed out, I think there's a lot of economic development growth potential there. But additionally, I think about, I mean, as the name of the district, it's the Riverbend District. It has a lot of waterfront available there for us to do some really amazing things and increase accessibility. And so I'm really, really just, I can't wait to see what this is. And I know it will take a while and it will require a lot of input from the community, a lot of collaboration. But I think that there's really, really exciting things awaiting for the whole community with this. And thank you to staff very much for all of your efforts on this.

Thank you, Vice President Schoen. Yeah, I too am looking forward to getting to work on this. The I served on the redevelopment authority when we were, it was probably discussed years before I was on the redevelopment authority, but it was exciting to talk about some new areas of town, particularly because at the time I was representing District 3, which included this whole area on the city council. And it was an area that was going through a lot of change. The Shopko had closed, and then later on the hospital, the Sacred Heart Hospital, and there was Ron's Castle Foods back in the day. There was a grocery store that kind of helped anchor that neighborhood. Now there's no grocery store, so... So that's something that the city being involved and the RDA being involved can help address a food desert as part of this as well. So that might be ultimately one of the most important reasons to be intentional in this area. Yeah, unless there, it looks like we have Council Member Miller.

Thank you, Council President. And before we move further, I thank Council Members Brewster and Schoen, Vice President Schoen, for bringing forth the motion. There was also input publicly from the Jonah Affordable Housing Task Force, and we had a number of community members from them speaking to this and helping craft this motion. And although it was read into the record, the first item here was protect and preserve the original community, vulnerable tenants, and homeowners from displacement. So I really appreciate that. the community bringing forth this equitable amendment to this redevelopment plan that will be also in the second one coming up here.

All right. Thank you, Council Member Miller. Any other comments before we move to a vote on agenda item number nine?

Okay.

City Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Johnson. Aye. Newboga. Aye.

Miller. Aye.

Orth.

Aye.

Otto. Aye. Reed. Aye. Schoen. Aye. Serrano. Aye. Werthmann. Aye. Brewster.

Aye.

Greger.

Aye. And that passes unanimously. OK. we're moving on to agenda item number 10 resolution to approve the redevelopment district identified as the core reinvestment redevelopment district proposed by the eau claire redevelopment authority and this requires a two-thirds vote or eight affirmative votes as well so um Are there, I guess, I'm not sure if Director White, if you have anything you want to add. I know you've presented on this many times. But yeah, are there anything to add?

Happy to answer any additional questions. I have nothing new to add to this.

Any questions from the council on agenda item number 10? Okay, thank you so much. So... Let's see here. On a motion by Councilmember Miller and seconded by Councilmember Johnson, this item is moved. Is there any discussion or amendments? Looks like there is from Councilmember Brewster. Thank you, Council President.

Yeah, I would like to add the amendment that I put into number nine into number 10 as well. Once again, stripping the term wealthier from the place where it was stripped from in the original rather than solely catering to new arrivals. Otherwise, it will read exactly the same as the amendment to number nine.

Thank you, Council Member Brewster and Vice President Schoen.

Thank you. I will second that motion.

OK. So we have another amendment. Exactly the same as the last one on the previous agenda item. Is there any discussion on the amendment by the council? All right. Seeing none, city clerk, please call the roll on the amendment.

Council Member Amboga.

Aye.

Miller. Aye. Orth. Aye. Otto. Aye. Reed. Aye. Schoen. Aye. Serrano. Aye. Werthmann.

Aye.

Brewster.

Aye.

Greger.

Aye.

Johnson.

Aye. All right. And that passes unanimously. So now we have an amended bill. Agenda item number 10, the resolution to approve the core reinvestment redevelopment district. Any discussion on the

the uh on this particular agenda item we have council member worthman thank you council president uh appreciate the recognition this uh much of this district um stretches within my city council district um and some of the things that i think about are the fact that Just the way that Eau Claire developed with an industrial core for at least a century of our city's history, logging and manufacturing the tire factory, et cetera, those things really helped kind of I would say prop up our community through those periods, but I think everyone can see, and it's part of what this addresses, the fact that those are now transitioning into newer, more vibrant neighborhoods. And so you think about the North River fronts, you think about East Side Hill along the river, Eau Claire River, on the other side near the factory, the whole Birch Street corridor. You think about these are some of our most diverse neighborhoods in our community. And I think in Eau Claire's history where some of our often overlooked neighborhoods in terms of the investments that they received, oftentimes more sort of wealthier neighborhoods, areas of the community, Southside, et cetera, got a lot of support and love for parks and trails and all the things they need. This is a way of recognizing that we have work to do, not only in addressing a lot of old housing stock, but in thinking about all of the other connecting pieces that make neighborhoods great. I think about Birch Street and the incredible reconstruction that happened last year. to help a neighborhood connect with each other to more safely cross the street. Those are the kind of small things, for us maybe it seems small, that are large things in our neighborhoods. When people are able to safely be in their neighborhoods, safely go to a park and enjoy that park because it's been remodeled, see a problem property that has often gotten a lot of service calls, you know, revitalized. Those are the kind of things that make neighborhoods so much better, bring investment into neighborhoods, and really turn them around. With this amendment, I think it's all the more important that we're thinking about that equitable redevelopment. I'm again excited for this. It has a totally different, in my mind, kind of a different scope of what this investment is going to mean. But my hope is over the next 10, 20, 30 years, folks that live in some of these older neighborhoods really start to see different pieces start to change and I think improve the character of their neighborhood. I'm going to 100% support this, and I'm really excited, again, for what this means for our city and traditionally underserved and less invested neighborhoods. That's all.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Werthmann and Vice President Schoen.

Thank you, Council President. I am also excited to support this agenda item this afternoon. I think it's really exciting in particular because it's a strategy that not many communities in the state are using with their RDAs to develop a large district like this. I know of at least one other community in the state, I don't remember, somewhere in the Fox Valley, Appleton maybe that has a district like this and I just really want to applaud and take a moment to appreciate staff and RDA members For being willing to pursue kind of a creative and less traditional RDA district approach and echo a lot of council member Werthmans points that he raised about the potential here and you know feeling really proud of our community that we can invest in and in all of our neighborhoods in equitable ways. I think that's a really big deal.

Thank you. Council Member Orth.

Thank you so much. Yeah, as this is my first opportunity to be involved in a redevelopment project, it's extremely exciting and I too wanted to just thank the RDA and the staff and Jonah for all of the efforts that have gone into this. It's It's very exciting and I appreciate it.

Thank you. Any other discussion from council before we move to a vote on agenda item number 10? That's for this core reinvestment redevelopment district. All right. Seeing none, city clerk, please call the roll.

Councilmember Miller? Aye. Worth? Aye. Otto? Aye. Reed? Aye. Schoen? Aye. Serrano? Aye. Werthmann? Aye. Brewster? Aye. Greger? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Mboga? Aye.

All right. And that passes unanimously. All right. We'll go on to agenda item number 11, resolution supporting STATE FUNDING FOR LOCAL PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENTS. AND THIS WAS INTRODUCED BY COUNCIL MEMBERS MILLER AND ORTH. SO YOU'RE WELCOME TO PRESENT COUNCIL MEMBER MILLER.

THANK YOU COUNCIL PRESIDENT. I'M THE CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE ON THE Board of Health for the Eau Claire City County Health Department. And this resolution is being considered by many counties and cities across the state as an effort with the Wisconsin Counties Association and the League of Wisconsin Municipalities as an effort to prioritize how local public health is funded in the state of Wisconsin. State funding for Wisconsin Public Health Department is 49th in the nation out of 50 states, where the bulk of the funding comes from either local municipalities and counties, so the city and the county fund it through our levies. And then also the health departments also have to constantly try to secure grants and other nongovernmental organization fundings. And every year it's a new cycle every time they try to – to throw up all the needs that the community has via getting only a percentage of the funding from the local, virtually nothing from the state, and the rest through grants. What this resolution would do is that we would join a chorus of counties and cities across the state asking legislators to re-examine the funding. The resolution asks that The increase in funding comes from the Wisconsin general revenue as opposed to the local levels. Doing so would also alleviate stresses on local governments to fund the health departments because more would be done by the state. So this would help the cities and the counties as well because it would shift the burden of the funding from local to state. So I am predicting this for consideration for the council to send this message to the legislator to reexamine how the funding is done in order to both benefit the health department and also the local municipalities and counties.

All right.

Thank you, Council Member Miller and Council Member Orth.

Thank you, President Greger. I'm pleased to join Council Member Miller in bringing this amendment for your consideration. Our health department and health departments across the state have had a high return on investment even though they're at that 49th lowest in funding in our nation. So I applaud that what they have been able to do with their unreliable resources, sometimes unreliable, and still to put forth as they do. And especially that this resolution calls for the funding to be outside of local tax levy is extremely important to me as well. So I am pleased to second this motion for your consideration.

Okay, thank you so much. So this would be motion by Councilmember Miller and seconded by Councilmember Orth that this item is moved. So now we can fully discuss this item. So I appreciate the introduction from both Councilmembers Miller and Orth. Any other discussion from council on this resolution supporting funding for local public health departments, state funding for local health departments? Council Vice President Schoen.

Thank you, Council President. I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate all of the really good work that our health department does. It's something I know I've met with our health director, Giese, in the past. talked about that with her and I'm always so appreciative and encourage other council members always to take a look at what the health department is up to because I think they're underappreciated for really progressive and innovative upstream strategies they're using to help the community in a wide variety of issues and so I'm very excited to support this resolution and wanted to just take the opportunity to appreciate staff for all the good work they're doing.

Yeah, thank you, Vice President Schoen. Yeah, I appreciate the work that has gone into this, you know, through Board of Health, through the county as well, bringing, and then Council Member Miller bringing it to the city. You know, and we have, this is in a sense being proactive with the state budget coming up and an election coming up too that we're thinking about the issues that, and the funding priorities that really would have the biggest impact on our and making sure our voices are heard as a community. And once the resolution passes, there's certainly other things that we can do to use the resolution going forward to advocate. So I appreciate having this opportunity to vote. Is there any other discussion before we vote on the resolution? OK, city clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Orth.

Aye.

Otto. Aye. Reid. Aye. Schoen. Aye. Serrano. Aye. Werthmann. Aye. Brewster. Aye. Greger. Aye. Johnson. Aye. Nimboga.

Aye.

Miller.

Aye.

All right, that passes unanimously. OK, so now we're going under the category of ordinances for action. uh this is agenda item number 12 ordinance amending table five entitled yield intersections of the code of ordinances of the city of eau claire to add yield control at several intersections and this was introduced yesterday but i believe uh our engineering director leoness has potentially more to add. There was a follow-up email as well, is my understanding.

Correct, yep. This morning I sent out a follow-up email related to this agenda item. There was a question related to what were the safety concerns at the yield intersections At each of those locations, the safety concern was called in by residents of near misses in motor vehicles. So I just wanted to add that as a response to the question yesterday. And I can take any other questions if there are any.

Thank you, Director Ness. We have a question from Council Member Worthen.

Thank you, Council President, Director Ness. As I understand it, We had done a first ordinance change of a number of different intersections. This seems like a second wave. And as I've heard you say, there's a third and maybe even a fourth wave of intersections that we're going to be looking at coming up. Is that still the right understanding?

So initially we did look at stop controlled intersections throughout the community and introducing the stop controlled at those locations. Now at this time I'm bringing forward the yield controlled recommendations for intersections and the other intersections that we have evaluated we are not recommending any control at this time. We still take calls related to safety concerns and we will add those to our list moving forward and we will evaluate those and continue this process of bringing forward any control changes that we would recommend at different locations that are called in or become a concern based off of other input as well.

Could I follow up? Yeah, please. Was the intersection, which is within my district and my neighborhood, Lindale and Roderick come up for consideration? Because I think I have called that in from a couple near misses that I've had. Is there any chance that you looked at that intersection particularly?

I would have to go back to our records because there's many intersections that we've looked at. So if we haven't, we will add it to our list to move forward on. But I can get you information on that. Thanks.

All right.

Thank you. Any other questions for Director Ness? Okay. Thank you, Director Ness. Thank you. We will move this item on a motion by... Council Vice President Schoen and seconded by Council Member Amboga. This item is moved. Is there any discussion of the ordinance to add yield intersections? Council Member Otto.

Thank you, Council President. First off, I appreciate Director Ness and staff for bringing this to our attention. I was just thinking about the cost angle last night about the cost of all these extra signs. Well, I think a single emergency call would far exceed the cost of the signage. So if this prevents that, then this is the most cost-effective thing we could do as a council and more ethically, you know, it will make our city safer for our constituents. For this reason, I think this is a great thing to pass. I look forward to voting yes.

Thank you, Council Member Otto. Any other questions? Comments from the other discussion from council? All right, seeing none, city clerk, please call the roll.

Council member Otto. Aye. Reid. Aye. Schoen. Aye. Serrano. Aye. Werthmann. Aye. Brewster. Aye. Greger. Aye. Johnson. Aye. Mboga.

Aye.

Miller. Aye. Worth.

Aye.

That passes unanimously. Next agenda item is number 13, Ordinance Amending Table 8, entitled Parking Prohibited of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Eau Claire to Restrict Parking on South Dewey Street from Better Way to 140 feet North. And we have our Director Ness here to present. If you have anything to add.

OK. Nothing to add to this agenda item, but can take any questions if there are any.

Any questions from council? Council Member Mboga.

Thank you. Thank you, Director Nuss. I'm just wondering, did you consult the library? I can see the library doctor there. Did you consult with them?

We did not consult the library on this just due to they were in the design process with the Dewey Street reconstruction. So they were aware of the bump out changes on Dewey Street at that time. and then we're not changing any of the parking stall numbers with this proposed change.

All right, thank you, Director Ness. Thanks. So on a motion by Council Member Otto and seconded by Council Member Reid, this item is moved. Is there any discussion? All right, seeing none, City Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Reid. Aye. Schoen. Aye. Serrano.

Aye.

Werthmann. Aye. Brewster. Aye. Greger. Aye. Johnson. Aye. Mboga.

Aye.

Miller. Aye.

Orth.

Aye.

Otto. Aye. And that passes unanimously. All right, agenda item number 14, ordinance amending chapter 10.48 entitled Truck Traffic Regulations of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Eau Claire to restrict the route along Fall, Summit, and Spring Streets between Birch Street and Bellevue Avenue. And we have Director Ness again to see if there's anything to add or any questions.

Yes, last agenda item for me today, and there were two follow-up questions that I wanted just to bring to everyone's attention. Birch Street, the RFBs that were installed with the reconstruction project, were placed at Franklin Street, Balcombe Street, and Fall Street, so there was a question about Putnam being an alternate route for truck turning traffic, and it is actually a wider street that would be able to accommodate those trucks. and then also related to the knockdown of the RRFB at this location, there was an additional pedestrian refuge island added on Birch Street at this intersection. We have equipment within the island and then on either side. The post and equipment that was hit by the tracking trailer was on the southeast side of the intersection and really related to installing the pedestrian refuge island at this location, it did limit the truck turning radius availability for that movement. So that is really the driver of introducing this restriction for the trucks at this location.

Okay, thank you, Director Nuss. Any questions from the council? All right, thank you. Thanks. So on a motion made by Council Member Serrano and seconded by Council Member Brewster, this item is moved. Is there any discussion? We have Council Member Miller.

Thank you, Council President. During last night's presentation, Director Ness mentioned that she had reached out to the trucking companies involved in this intersection to talk to them. Before this, I just wanted to say thank you for reaching out to the companies. It's always great when our community members and partners hear about stuff that's happening at City Council ahead of time so they are prepared for it. So that goes a long way. So thank you for doing that.

Thank you, Council Member Miller. Any other discussion? Okay, seeing none, City Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Schoen?

Aye.

Serrano?

Aye.

Werthmann? Aye. Brewster? Aye. Greger? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Mboga? Aye. Miller? Aye. Orth?

Aye.

Otto? Aye. Reed?

Aye. And that passes unanimously. OK, thank you. Next agenda item is number 15 ordinance amending chapter 10.24 entitled special parking restrictions of the code of ordinances of the city of Eau Claire to create Quick stop parking and we have our parking administrator Aaron Ross here to present.

Thank you for joining us. Good afternoon council members The only thing that I have to add is I did send out a clarifying email this morning with the map and I apologize for not having the map last night for you guys and I also wanted to add that none of these quick stop spots are replacing loading zones. They're in addition to. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, thank you.

Council Member Johnson, do you have a?

Council Member Brewster. Thank you, Council President. I was just wondering if it turns out that we need more or fewer of them or to have them moved around. Is that something that's done administratively?

Yep, it can be very fluid and I think in the email I noted that there is one business that's asking about having one added down by the corner of Riverfront Terrace and Madison Street.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Mboga.

Thank you, Council President. I'm wondering... uh because it's experimental can you can you guys in like six to 12 months come to city council and tell us how it is going just wondering absolutely okay thank you okay uh council member worthman thank you council president uh mr roth's one of the things that you touch on in your email but maybe you can

explain here as well because this came up last night with the public hearing is the enforcement part of this yep um but essentially that there will be mechanisms for enforcement beyond just um people reporting um that the technology is there to do that yeah we currently have two hour parking enforcement so this is the same thing it's just 15 minutes instead of two hours

Thank you. Council Member Miller. Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Mr. Roth. This might have been mentioned earlier, but how would these spots be designated? Would this have a signage at each spot, or is it markings on the ground? How will these be denoted?

Yep, there will be signage, and they actually have a car designated, and it says quick stop parking, 15 minutes.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any further questions from council? From Council Member Mboga.

Thank you. I'm just wondering, in any system, in anything you do, there's people who abuse the system. The people will cheat on this one. People park 20, 15 minutes, move around, wait, and come back 15 minutes. How can you guys detect them?

Sounds like a cat and mouse game. It's going to be hard. It's kind of an honor system. Don't abuse it. And if you do notice somebody that is abusing it, reach out.

All right. Thank you for coming up. All right. So on a motion by Council Member Werthmann and seconded by Council Member Orth, this item is moved. Is there any discussion on this item? OK. City Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Serrano? Aye. Werthmann? Aye. Brewster? Aye. Prager? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Mboga?

Aye.

Miller? Aye. Orth?

Aye.

Otto? Aye.

Reed? Aye. Schoen?

Aye.

All right. That passes unanimously. So now onto the category of ordinances for introduction. We have agenda item number 16, ordinance amending chapter 10.24 entitled special parking restrictions of the code of ordinances of the city of Eau Claire to amend city hall parking hours and clarify overnight parking exceptions. And uh we we can entertain a motion to suspend the rules to vote on this item but we just need a two-thirds vote uh council member uh miller i see that you're here i'm sorry do you wanna do you wanna read all the ordinance for introduction first and then i'll uh i could read them all is that the most proper way to go that's traditionally i'll throw it first and then we can consider that so okay hold off

Thank you for that.

So I will read. So I'm going to read all three of the ordinances for introduction. Number 17 is ordinance amending chapter 8.32 entitled management of waste and recyclables of the code of ordinances of the city of Eau Claire to create a comprehensive organics management and composting program. Agenda item number 18 is ordinance to text amendments to Title 17 land development ordinance and the official zoning map. And so going back to, is there, yeah, Council Member Miller, would you like to make a motion?

Yes, thank you, Council President. On recommendation of city staff in order to have a consistent implementation of paid parking on August 1st, I would like to suspend the rules and take up item 16 for action tonight. I'll second that.

Okay, so we have a motion by Council Member Miller and seconded by Council Member Brewster to suspend the rules to take up agenda item number 16 tonight. And I don't believe that there's discussion on this, so we can just move to have City Clerk, if you could please call the roll on that.

Council Member Werthmann. Aye. Brewster. Aye. Greger.

Aye.

Johnson.

Aye.

Amboga.

Aye.

Miller. Aye. Orth.

Aye.

Otto. Aye. Reed. Aye. Schoen. Aye. Serrano.

Aye.

All right, that motion to suspend the rules passes unanimously. And therefore, we can discuss agenda item number 16. I'll move. So moved by Councilmember Werthmann and Councilmember Brewster seconds. So is there any discussion by council of this or by the movers?

Council Member Brewster. Thank you, Council President. Yeah, this is just some clarification aspects of this that I overlooked when we voted at our last meeting. There was some lack of clarity in one of my amendments, and this is just cleaning that up to make sure that – staff know what the intent is and also make sure that the fire department has access to that lot overnight, despite the no parking for anyone else.

Thank you, Council Member Brewster. Council Member Miller?

Thank you, Council President. I see that Mr. Roth is the staff person assigned to this. I don't know if he has anything to add. Just give him the opportunity to add anything. If not, he can stay where he is. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, thanks for that, Council Member Miller. Um... Any other discussion before we move to a vote on agenda item number 16? OK. City Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Brewster.

Aye.

Greger.

Aye.

Johnson.

Aye.

Mboga.

Aye.

Miller. Aye. Orth.

Aye.

Otto. Aye. Reed. Aye. Schoen.

Aye.

Serrano.

Aye.

Werthmann. Aye.

All right, and that passes unanimously. So Council Member Werthmann, or do you?

My apologies.

So the other two agenda items that were read earlier, 17 and 18, we will take those up at our first legislative session in August. So we are on to announcements and updates by the city manager and the city council.

Council Member Brewster. Thank you, Council President. I just wanted to thank everybody from staff and council and the community that showed up at the inaugural Eau Claire Water Street Fair on Thursday. Turnout was incredible. Weather was incredible. Good time was had by all. Had great, great help from city staff and in the streets department and the police department um everything went went very well and we received a number of uh of emails from people encouraging us to continue to hold that event in the future so thanks for everyone that helped make it a success all right thank you council member brewster council member worthman

I wanted to follow up on that and thank our law enforcement and our first responders for support during the Eau Claire Festival. It was a very hot couple of days, but it seemed overall to run smoothly, and I saw a lot of our Eau Claire Police Department. folks out and about during the two-day concert. Just want to thank them for being there on scene. And then, of course, all of our Parks and Rec and the people who help set up and get everything ready as well out at Carson Park. I know a lot of work goes into doing that, but I got to imagine there was close to 5,000 people, maybe more, that were there over that weekend. And then what was also additionally great was just to see everyone enjoying our downtown and being a part of our community, so many folks from out of town. So thank you to all levels of our city government and all departments who helped support that Eau Claire's Festival for making it a success. Thank you.

Thank you.

There was 9,000. Oh, wow. Okay. I was just eyeballing it. I got the count wrong. I don't know. It feels right, though.

In that range for each day, yes.

In that range for each day. Wow.

Great. Yeah, city manager. Council Member Orth, yeah.

Maybe I'm stealing city manager Solberg's announcement here, but I just wanted to say congratulations to Ty Fadness on his promotion. That was effective today. He's a resident of my district, so I thought it was appropriate.

Thank you for that. Yeah, I believe our city manager will announce this as couple of these other things too so I'll hold off but it again I want to mention National Night Out you know as a something we talked about during our during the proclamation but that just as a reminder that's this coming Tuesday a week from tonight from 4 30 to 8 at at Carson Park so that's certainly a great event that attracts thousands of people to Carson Park yet again so and it is an event organized by the city so wanted to plug that again I also just wanted to just, it was about yesterday that there was a tornado that hit the Fox Cities of Menasha and Appleton and other communities in the area and just wanted to express, you know, just well wishes to folks, you know, who are dealing with that. you know, challenge in those communities. And thank you to all the first responders and everybody who stepped up and is helping out in Northeast Wisconsin right now. And it's a big challenge. And our thoughts are with you in that region of the state. And we'll pass it on to City Manager Solberg.

Thank you, Council President Griggert. Yeah, I would like to congratulate Ty Fadness on becoming our next Community Services Director. He assumed his new role with the city this morning. We're very excited to have him aboard in the new position. We're still working to come up with an official name for him. Lane Berg had a number of names. So far, we're slowly coalescing around Mr. Tai to honor Mr. Lane, but when something gets finalized, we'll make sure the council is aware of that. And then I also wanted to thank staff for the Water Street, the help with the Water Street Fair and also the Eau Claire Fest this weekend. There was a lot of planning by a lot of staff and operational help over the last, Eau Claire's Festival, I think, did we start in January with that? Maybe December? Pat Newkirk was kind of the spearhead with organizing that, with reserving all of Carson Park, which was the first of its kind for since, you know, perhaps fireworks. So thank you to everybody that helped with that. Just a reminder, Thursday morning we have eggs and issues. A few council members have signed up. If you're interested in going, let me know and I can get you signed up tomorrow. Just another reminder, Tuesday next week is National Night Out. And then Director Winters is looking through the budget. Budget is very tight with council travel and training budget for this year, but there have been some interest in conferences and meetings this fall. The League of Wisconsin Municipalities has a chief executives meeting August 20th and 21st, and then also their fall conference October 7th and 9th. As well as there was interest in the National League of Cities City Summit in November So we're checking the budget and we'll get back to you to see what we have that might be able to match council interest in attending those And then we have two work sessions tonight how one to talk about one of the newly created RDA districts and possibly a sub district and then another to talk about funds for services and facilities that we will use for the operating budget. That's all I have. Thank you. Great.

Thank you. And just one other kind of reminder for folks that was in an email from City Manager Solberg and should be in your calendars as an invite is the City Council Academy which will be Tuesday, August 18th from 5 to 8 at the Chippewa Valley Museum at Carson Park. So I'm just going to keep doubling down on Carson Park as a longstanding resources in our community. So any other announcements before we move to our work sessions? OK. Unless there is an objection from council, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. We can take a five minute break before we start the work sessions.

So yeah, I'm going to reach out to you. I got a Peter said that's been working out pretty heavily this week. So I'm going to see where they're at. I'll give them a call and let them know what we're on track for. If there's a resolution Ned was leaning towards, we might pass that along. But he's still doing some big work. I'll get that update in the morning. I'll let him know that.

Yeah, there's some things they need to do to work out, but it seemed like it was a rough one.

Yeah, we think so too, but we'll just do some confirmation of that.

Yeah, we'll, we'll.

I will let them know. I will touch base with them tomorrow regardless. Even if it's to love, know that. Give me a couple more days. I will touch base with them tomorrow.

Sounds good.

Thanks.

Absolutely. Thank you. at this point Thank you. Oh, I was wondering. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So that's the secret word. So,

I think for some reason I am interested in bringing some amendment and I already have some language I've been working on so I um it's a little complicated but like it's like three or four sections that just need a small tweak a table and a few other things so um let's not cross that bridge unless we have to but I do I would want Because it's not only them, that would be an impact that I kind of feel right now. Even down the road, I might bring forward language that makes it a little more permissive to run small cottage businesses in neighborhoods. I don't know, as a policy. Cool. Thanks for your work on the RDA thing.

Are you pumped? Oh, we're really excited about that. I was trying to email with Kendall and Billy. Good. It's a huge deal. We were very excited.

I tried to elevate it as a huge deal. Yeah.

people understand this lets us do so much more work because it's not oh we finished our two blocks we're done until whenever again so there's there's a huge amount of potential across decades very very excited absolutely

Yeah. Yeah.

All right, let's get this work session going here. So our first work session is on RDA subdivisions, and we have our community development director, Aaron White,

introduce this work session. So thank you. Absolutely. And just 15, 20 minutes ago, you thought you were done talking about RDA districts for a little bit. So this one is actually, I just want to chat a little bit. This was referenced in the core reinvestment district that there was the potential for sub-districts, and this area was actually identified within the work plan as a potential sub-district area. And it's kind of gone on to the radar because there are some facilities that are in this area, some buildings that are looking to be coming up for sale that have reached out to the city and talked to other folks. So we just want to kind of get this on council radar for some general feedback on some of this region that we're looking at. And again, it's kind of that southern Barstow district. It's most of south of Lake Street. There's a lot of potential redevelopment spaces down there. And one that's been coming up, and I know that most of you have walked a facility, is through the YMCA and what they're looking to do in terms of new facilities and what that looks like for them and where they potentially go. So wanted to just get some general feedback from council in terms of direction. So they are looking at a lot of different options within that space in terms of developing on site. Is it a renovation or is it a tear down in building on site? Is it new location? What size should it be, et cetera? From our standpoint, that is riverfront property, and it is a space that the city has typically tried to help facilitate redevelopment along our river frontage as prime real estate investment and prime real estate potential. So that's part of what has kind of gotten us involved in that and the one of the specific questions we're looking for is there to what level of interest or some interest in working with the YMCA to try and facilitate them doing a new facility in some form. The RDA may play a role in that and could be a vehicle to help make that occur. The the site would be likely from the RDA standpoint an acquisition and a tear down a redevelopment first spinoff for new development at some point in time The requests that had they've thrown out with their current idea was looking in somewhere in the neighborhood of three million dollars We are looking to see what the value of that space might be from a redevelopment standpoint and as we're doing to some of the other areas But that's kind of one of the initial things we're looking at is to kind of weigh council's thoughts on that space as part of a process that maybe the city gets involved in assisting this project moving forward through the acquisition of the land and facilitating redevelopment in that area. So I'll kind of leave it there to start with and would invite feedback or questions or any additional comments from St. Andrew Solberg, who's been involved in these discussions as well.

Yeah. Thank you, Council President. I think I remember last year, me and the former City Council President . We had a conversation with Derek White. Is that the staff? And as we walked, I think what she told us, I didn't like it. For me, I think they wanted to build I think the territory they want to build, like, where it would be up, like, on, like, the second or first floor, then the, is that, which street is that, uh, uh, ground? Then the ground would go around into underneath. I think I, I did like that.

It's quite potential. I don't think they've finalized a design or a concept. That's certainly something that they've looked at, but they're also looking at what the facility needs to be and what service it needs to provide. So I think design-wise it is open. A three-story structure has been built in other communities, and we have seen some examples of that in other communities, but it's not necessarily their final product or their final facility here. And I think City Manager Solberg has some additional information as well.

Yeah, I just wanted to add that we had talked to them about Graham Avenue and restricting traffic flow on those. And it's really not something that staff would favor with Farwell Street going on a road diet and the additional traffic. And we're gonna go down to one lane each direction on Farwell Street that City Manager Hirsch had in the budget last year that we're looking at. So we wanted to make sure that we had Farwell, Barstow, and Graham going into the downtown and coming out. Roughly equal in capacity at that point because far well wouldn't be the larger one of the of the pairs.

So Let's see I'm just gonna try to keep track of the order that lights go on so come come some member Otto.

Thank you First off I do notice that this is pretty close to Plank Hill and my comment is I I'm thinking the East Hill Neighborhood Association might have thoughts about how close it is to Plank Hill and why that wouldn't be included. I can kind of see that just looking at the map, why it's not included, but it might be something to address for constituents. And I'm wondering why those lines kind of veer around the senior living apartments, or if they were considered to be a part of it, or if they're doing just fine along with the development immediately to the north

So the district, as we drew them, we really looked and captured some of the specific sites that we know are coming forward for sale. There's been offers, and the Leader Telegram has considered selling their facility. They don't use it to the extent that they used to. The Wilson Park has an opportunity to potentially be reconfigured or redone as a part of a district. We've done park work, either rehabs or renovations in other districts. So it's included in there. We have a number of surface parking lot spaces in there. Anytime surface parking lot exists in the downtown, it's looked at from a standpoint of, is that the best land use for it? So that district is also intended to kind of capture some of that. So that's some of why we drew those lines out the way we did. There's been a number of conversations on the Schlegel Mills lot in the past. What's the ultimate use for that site? Does it stay parking? Does it do something else? So that's kind of defined some of the district there. We typically haven't, we didn't look at or hit any spaces that we know are doing well or are well operated that there's no concerns on those. It is in the broader district as well. So should something change later, that core reinvestment district could come into play and things can still be done, or RDA could still serve a function moving down the road as well through the broader district.

Vice President Schell.

So I have just a few thoughts. And I missed the very opening, so apologies there. But I've also, just for clarity, met with somebody from the Y in the last maybe nine months, it was a while ago now, and talked about some of their organization's visions and what they're interested in. I am open to it. I think it would be great to revitalize that portion of downtown. But I do think one key thing in my mind is especially if we are investing in that in some way, I want to see some community access to that space. I think about like Sonnen Tag, for example, and the city contributed funds and we don't have like open gym open to the public for that. And so anyways, I just feel really strongly if we as a city are committing funds to a project like that, that I would want to see some community value as a result of that. And then I also am just wondering like in conversations that staff have had more recently, if the Y has information about like, I mean, do they have capacity with, Private funding and philanthropy like how critical is it that we would be a partner in that?

Those are all my thoughts We certainly have been talking to them extensively with their team about what their capital stack would look like and they would have a heavy lift for a philanthropic fundraising to fill out their investment on that the the role the city would likely play would be more of acquiring the site and then the city does what they do through the rda or otherwise with that space and then the art the y would do what they do where their final location goes again that that location is up for the air um if it's in the if it's an rda project say that was to be acquired by the rda then it would be part of the rda's process determine what's the best use for that space in that area with the neighbors and the other activities that are involved and we'd go through the same type of

planning process and community outreach for those areas that we have say in the cannery district so that would be part of that process should the rda be part of this or this becomes a project we're involved with can i make one more comment yeah please okay my only other thought then with that clarification is from like uh environmental contamination remediation standpoint i would have a lot of concern about the cost of the city acquiring that property um I'm just wondering if staff have information or if the Y has provided any information about asbestos or other abatement-related issues that way.

We are actually going through that process with our EPA Brownfield Assessment Grant. So it is one of the projects or sites that's being evaluated looking at what potential, like you said, asbestos remediation or any of that work lead abatement would be required as part of that.

Council Member Serrano?

Thank you, Council President, or Jeremy. So this sounds, just in listening to your answers to the other questions, still very open-ended. Again, you're just kind of mapping out a boundary and saying this could be a sort of sub-district. But then you also said something about $3 million. And I'm just kind of trying to connect the specificity of that dollar amount. What are we really talking about for that dollar amount? And it seems like we're still not really, we don't have a concrete proposal. before us of the city's involvement, so I'm not sure. Are we just kind of brainstorming here?

Absolutely, that is definitely part of it. And actually, maybe City Manager Solberg might have some better input on that.

Yeah, I guess what we were hoping for, and I'm aware that the YMCA has reached out to a number of council members here. And first, with the creation of the redevelopment district, Aaron and I and Steve, we've looked at this in the past as kind of an area that might be a good TID district or redevelopment in the past. So RDA created the larger district. So that's part of the core district where it was more surgical, but it still allows for a development like this. So we wanted to just see, number one, is the city council interested in focusing like we had in North Barstow or Cannery District in this area? And then if that's the case what we need to do is you know from a city is start to establish some Properties that we control that could be redeveloped and it just happened to line up That idea of looking at this as a sub-district lined up with the YMCA looking for somebody to purchase their property so if the answer from the council was we're not really interested in this area it makes the discussion around the YMCA, a different discussion. So we're kind of looking at it as the YMCA is a parcel that would be available to purchase, much like the Leader Telegram is listed for sale right now, that we could bring forward to council to start generating some properties that we could to kind of kickstart the redevelopment. As far as the three million, there were different dollar amounts that were thrown out. If it was something that the council was a yes on both of those questions of number one, yeah, we are interested in hearing more about this. It's not a binding tonight. Yeah, this is an area that we think could be improved and yeah, as long as Leader Telegram, as long as the YMCA is looking at selling, then we would schedule a closed session meeting with council to get the bargaining parameters about specifically dollar amounts and we would have market values that we would have in that area and then we would take that in closed session. So the three million isn't an offer, it was a number that was just, kind of thrown out or discussed that they would possibly be looking for. But council would, we would, we would have that discussion with council what you're comfortable with in closed session. So I hope that helps. Yeah.

Do you, do you think you could speak to the boundaries, particularly that were chosen? Like I'm particularly interested in like that, the Eastern and like, Do you always use streets as the boundary? Because I see that there's like houses and then the executive center building are not in it, on the east end of Dewey. What are some of the things that were considered in terms of defining a boundary or what is traditional in terms of defining a boundary? Is it usually a street?

Streets are the cleanest way. They're the easiest to identify within a map and identify within a narrative. And that applies whether you're talking RDA districts, you're talking tax increment districts, whatever you're looking at. Those are very clean, well-defined boundaries. You can use lot lines. It gets a little harder to describe those and map those and delineate those. But that's why streets tend to be focused. And again, the area we're looking at is that there's three areas specific that are listed for sale or potentially for sale. YMCA was identified. Leader Telegram is listed for sale. And the Metro and the old abandoned dry cleaners on Graham Avenue are all listed also for sale. So those are three larger parcels within an area of this defined area that become anchor properties, anchor parts that could play a redevelopment role down in this area. So what we are looking to do is kind of capture some of these main areas that we know their spaces are available, that are looking to turn, they're looking to potentially be other things and it helps spark the conversation again this is this is not a formal thing that we're proposing just this is an area that we quickly defined to see as as say manager sober referenced what's the council's you know preference what's your temperature on looking a little more in-depth in this area as opposed to some of the broader districts

Council Member Brewster, do you? Thank you. So given those three buildings, is there anything that, you know, if we were to acquire them, would the idea be to just raise them or try to find somebody to utilize them or in the meantime utilize them ourself? You know, I mean, like, would we put storage in the YMCA building until we could figure out what to do with it or... Anything like that? I mean, would there be a benefit to us in the short term other than just holding onto the land? Because I do worry that if we don't get sort of the issue we have with homelessness and sort of the focal point of services that's in that area, I'm not sure spending a bunch of money on land that we're hoping to redevelop around there is necessarily going to be the best investment.

And that's a great question. There could be potential short-term uses for the city needs. We always have needs of storage. or office space or whatnot as a temporary use. It'd have to be evaluated on a property by property basis. Some of them may not be able to do that. The former dry cleaner space, that's a brownfield site. That obviously wouldn't be a secondary use. All former dry cleaners have issues with them in terms of environmental. The metro, they haven't completed the renovations from the fire that occurred. Three years ago expired permits and it's still not been redone So its usefulness would have to be determined in terms of a short-term use the the other facilities, you know anything that was required Certainly could be evaluated for for what we could do with them and how they could serve city needs prior to any type of resale or redevelopment Councilmember Miller

Yeah, thank you, Council President and Director White. Thank you. Yeah, I would be interested in, you know, pursuing and investigating these areas. You know, Lake Street is kind of like the de facto, like, downtown is North Lake Street. And although it's a downtown area, you know, it kind of abruptly ends. The vibrancy declines. And we have three properties coming for sale. That's, you know, you never know when properties are coming up for sale. You always need to give a good look at if this is the moment to buy it or invest in it or redevelop it. The Metro is kind of a gateway into downtown. As you come across Lake Street, it's sitting right there, and it's been sitting idle for a number of years. The YMCA, we're always looking for riverfront property, so this is definitely an opportunity to acquire more of that. And the Leader of Telegram thinks about almost a whole city block, so these are great opportunities for us to look at redevelopment, so I think this is a smart plan to continue forward with.

Any other questions or thoughts, I guess, as we discuss this? Council Member Serrano?

Thanks, Jeremy. I'm echoing what Josh is saying. We have a lot of just bare concrete in this space, whether it's empty buildings or big surface parking lots. And even Wilson Park being sort of this little precious green space there. I think all of this could really benefit dramatically from some reimagining and some creativity. So I like this particular delineation of an area to look at and I guess take to the next step, which is where the creative ideas come forward.

Council Member Brewster? Yeah. I'd be interested in taking a look at it, devils in the details as it is with everything, but it's not, it's an optimistic maybe, I guess, for me.

All right, Council Member Otto.

To the optimistic maybe here, I mean, Lake Street is not pedestrian friendly. It takes forever to cross it. So it is a definite barrier that we'd want to consider breaking down if we want to unify these into a coherent downtown. I'm curious... Could we anticipate other mini-districts forming from the large district in the future, or do you see this as a special case?

There's certainly a possibility for that. The smaller districts and the sub-districts, as were kind of envisioned by the board, would be to maybe do what was traditionally what the RDA did in their districts. It's acquire... within a small confined area, a number of parcels to clear and remove a broader blight or to open up for a broader redevelopment or kind of a catalyst redevelopment within that area. So it's not needed to necessarily do that, but if it's something that's looking to track very specifically in a small area, the sub-districts help define this is a space that we're gonna lay out a very specific pathway to see a catalytic type of redevelopment occur within these areas that then has benefits across the district. As the district's defined, going after, you know, identifying a single parcel, whether commercial or residential, is certainly within the scope and the work plan that was identified and just approved this evening. So we have some flexibility there as well.

Council Member Orts?

Yeah, given the three buildings that are currently available, I think it sounds like it's an opportunity. and I think it could be a very exciting development. I don't know, you mentioned dry cleaners and you mentioned brownfield and I don't know what, but what brownfield refers to and I don't know what the laundromat building is.

Absolutely. So dry cleaner operations, typically dry cleaning uses a lot of fairly harsh chemicals in their process to clean clothes, to do the dry cleaning process. You tend to see historical older dry cleaners when they are idled and they come up available. There's issues in the soil. There's remediation of the soil that's going to be needed as part of that. And those facilities, the way they're designed, it's hard to repurpose those. Typically, old dry cleaners are torn down and turned into something different because of what might be found in the soils.

So the particular building that is being referred to is just south of Shift on Graham Avenue? Yeah.

Is it, it's just an empty building right now? Yeah. Okay. Correct. All right, then I know which one it is.

Yeah, it's kind of behind Sojourner House, too. Calling it a building is kind of generous.

Maybe that's why I was wondering. I didn't recognize it as a building.

It's been unused for years and years. Yeah. Yeah, Council Member Omboga?

Yeah, thank you. I'm just wondering, do you know the price of all these properties or reparations?

No, we haven't started looking into that. We do know what's been posted up. The Leader Telegram is posted on a local realtor site. What did they post? The last number I saw, it was between $1 and $1.5 million was their asking price.

So it doesn't necessarily mean that's... Is that like one account, two accounts, or what?

It is about, I believe it's just under half an acre. The facility is about 40,000 square feet under roof, plus the sublevel, plus the parking across the street from it to the north. They own a small parking lot as part of that parcel. We haven't dug too deeply into pricing or anything as the city manager referred to, even though the YMCA, that number, that $3 million number was a number that they were given by local realtors who said, oh, that's a $3 million property. That was a fairly off-the-cuff comment. We will dig into that to see what that really is, if it's something that we pursue. But we've kind of given an initial look at it, and these are ones that have some potential. So we just wanted to start the process. And if council's interested in digging a little deeper, we can start refining what these values might be, what they would realistically be acquired for, and see where that goes moving down the road.

councilmember johnson yeah i just wanted to second what josh said i'm in support of this i'd like to see it move forward get additional information yeah and personally i'm supportive of looking at it more and yeah just because there's this area hasn't really changed all that much over the last 15 or 20 years, while the rest of the downtown has changed quite dramatically. So it seems like it could use some extra attention from the city. I know the Third Ward Neighborhood Association boundary is roughly in that southern area of this district, so I think it'd be good to engage with that neighborhood association on this as well. And there is a decent amount of housing that is affordable in this particular area. And we've discussed that as part of those amendments of equity and how to be cognizant and proactive about that. The housing that is kind of toward the west of Wilson park is, is quite old and, but quite affordable. And then there's also some that's in the block South of the Schlegel milk lot and South of the YMCA. So, um, and then, yeah, there's, but their biggest new investment was really that Wilson square apartments, um, just North of Wilson park. And that probably wouldn't have happened if it weren't for Wilson park being there as kind of an anchor. And so, I want to, I guess my priority would be to protect that park as like a historic, you know, park in the city. It was the location of the original Eau Claire County Courthouse and then became a park presumably after the courthouse that was built in the 1870s was constructed, so across the river. But there's... But yeah, I'm supportive of looking at it and seeing how the city can be a catalyst, and RDA can be a catalyst in particular.

Any other thoughts or questions from council or city attorney Nick? I just want to share one. I heard some framing of the issue, I think, from Council Member Serrano that matched well the status and what we're asking for. concepts and a period of imagining and looking at possibilities. It is not necessarily putting the city into buyer mode on any or all of these properties. That's a very different step and certainly one that would look at fair market value and not only potential value, but as Vice President Schoen noted, demolition value and the cost to remediate the site, which then is a negative from those numbers, of course, as well as other potential approaches to take on properties that might be public nuisances and might qualify for raise orders or other enforcement actions. So there's a number of different approaches, both acting as sort of a private buyer, but that's gives you the most leverage but is always the most expensive, to our different regulatory functions, to then also our planning and our encouraging function of looking at a space and planning it and offering up options and encouraging and inviting the private sector either invest in their own property in new ways or to get new investment into these areas. And any and all those tools may be at our disposal. And then final thought, I think that Council President Gregert noted of connections nearby and residential so I think not perfectly but the area is roughly drawn to avoid impact on too much existing housing with the notable new housing right in the middle of it but it is adjacent and has the potential to connect other existing so not only I would point out the Third Ward to the south, but also the East Hill to the east. And so you have potential connection corridors as we've been looking for throughout our downtown redevelopment of how to invite people into our waterways that in generations past had been blocked off. So how do you bring yet another neighborhood maybe down that East Hill into a corridor towards the Chippewa River in a new way, especially if the YMCA property is being opened up and reimagined. And certainly any of that work would be informed by existing comprehensive plans and documents, including ones that speak to our riverways and encouraging public access and openness to them in as many ways as possible. while noting that we of course need the increment of private investment. So thinking back to our Phoenix Park redevelopment, we did that opening up public access to the Chippewa and Eau Claire River while working with an RCU as the major financial driver of that project. and certainly in a sub-district like that, you've gotta balance those competing directions of trying to open things up and add a lot of nice new public amenities while definitely needing the private investment to fund it.

I have a wild thinking, very crazy thinking. Our police officers, Do we pay for the police officer at the, is that a county building or a city building?

We pay rent to have the police officers in the county building over there.

That's what I'm talking about. If the city council ask we buy this land, can we build a police station there to save that money we are paying the county?

That sounds like a manager question.

And a quick reminder that we jointly funded that law enforcement facility. There is an element of lease there to maintain the space, but the space therein was a capital project jointly with the county.

I think if you would ask Chief, there are some operational benefits of cooperating there, but we certainly could have a city presence in this area, neighborhood services or housing authority is at Park Tower. So there could be, you know, Even though we mentioned North Barstow and Cannery, every district will be its own district, so it could grow into something very unique and special. I don't know that I would be proposing to build a new police station when we have a couple of fire stations that have been requested.

Yeah, there's all sorts of possibilities in that area.

OK. Well, it appears to be support for moving forward. So yeah, thank you for the presentation and the focus on this. And yeah, anything you want to add about About timeline or anything?

No, there's no timeline on this. I think we got good information to start doing some further investigation. If any of you have any thoughts or ideas in regards to these areas, feel free to pass them on to myself and my team. I'm on the team, and we'll definitely throw them in the mix, and we'll keep the council updated.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So the next work session is on recouping. costs for services, and we have our finance director, Kitsie Winters, to help us through this work sessions. Okay. Thank you, Director Winters.

Good evening. President Greger, council. We're here tonight to have a brief overview on kind of what I would call the community services fees and get a little feedback. So I'm going to have Dave is going to start for us, and I'm going to do an overview of each area. And we have Patrick here for any questions.

Yeah, I just wanted to, you know, kind of like I described when I sent an update out to council, we have one thing that we're really trying to focus on with our budgets and the fee and license schedule that comes through with our operating budget every year is we're trying to increase increase fees gradually with inflation if they're already at a level that they should be at or that are appropriate. So we don't all of a sudden find ourselves 10 or 20% behind what they may be without having an adjustment for five or 10 years. Some of our contracts with the services we provide through our recreation division, some of the fees for renting our facilities, renting park space, have had contracts that had a set fee at the time And then as the fee schedule has increased, that percentage of recouping has gone down. So something may have been signed, you know, 10 years ago to 75% of what the fee and license schedule said that fee held flat. The yearly fee of that field has gone up and now they're only, we're recouping 20% of that. So one thing that we're looking at here is what is the, what is the city council and, and, Pat, and I just want to thank Pat and Kitsie for, they've put a ton of hours in, and Ty has been a part of this, and Ben Spinell, of showing the council different percentages of recouping from where we are currently with different groups, and they're all over the place, from 20% to almost 80%. Where generally does council want to be? Do we want to be a city that tries to make the facilities and the rec offerings and access fees to like Fairfax Pool very affordable and it would be a lower recoupment and the city would subsidize more and then that affects obviously the operating budget and staffing levels or do we want to try to recoup more of that and that gives us more flexibility for staffing and balancing the budget And if the answer is to recoup a higher percentage We obviously can't go and double rates overnight so what kind of a time frame do we want to transition and to that higher recoupment rate, three years, five years, seven years. So Pat has worked through these, Kitsie's worked through these to kind of give you an idea of what it means because a lot of these agreements will end up coming back to council and I don't want to have agreements coming to council that don't follow a general framework of what your values are for that. So when we come back to council, we'll negotiate with those groups and work within our relationships. But we want to make sure that everybody, at least generally speaking, is on a similar page when they're presented to council. So that's kind of what we're looking for with this. And it's really important because we have to adjust the operating budget around what the anticipated revenue that we would have with this. And with that, I will turn it over to Kitsie and then Pat.

Thank You Dave so tonight we're gonna go over the process some strategic goals the fiscal strategy that I'm looking at the plan overview and then the next steps So our fee schedule process aligns with the budget and The departments have the meeting with the meetings with finance director and the city manager They align their strategic goals within their department departmental needs, so we evaluate what they need, what they want, what the CPI has done to their budget, to their departments, if it's still fiscally viable to maintain those operations within their departments, and then also looking at the user relationships and maintaining the use of the recreations, parks, and I'm talking about all the specifically just those programs this evening. I'll be balancing the budget over August and September. The final review, I would call it, by the city managers the last week of September, and then city council will receive the operating budget and fee schedule in October.

Can I ask a question?

Yeah. Why is the focus more narrowly on parking?

Council Member Werthmann, we just need the microphone access there.

Just the question is, why is the focus more narrowly on parks and recreation versus all of the other fee areas?

Sure. That's a great question. You're going to have user agreements coming to you. More specifically with that innovation funding grant and soccer. It's also one of the areas that Wouldn't be statutorily obligated, so we need to show you kind of we're giving you a two-year follow-up on the parameters that you've given us before where we're at now and So kind of setting the table on the next steps of the soccer agreement and also talking a little bit about the budget in an area that's not statutorily obligated but would be more than likely reduced just because of the current budget situation. So I'm not gonna read through our strategic goals, but one of the things we do talk about kind of behind closed doors are where can a family go for free within the city of Eau Claire and where can that be affordable? So we do look through all lenses, not just the fiscal lens when it comes to these decisions. The strategy that I'm using, we're anticipating and planning for the future program needs. So where are we gonna be five years from now? I'm looking a little bit further than that, but the question I'm asking tonight is where's our target for 2031? Do we want to retain that existing programming? And if so, these are the steps that would be recommended for that. Align the recovery rates for programs within the fee schedule. Like Dave had mentioned, you know, some are recovered at 78%, some are recovered at 22%. What do we think about this? Define consistent areas of program subsidies. You know, do we want to subsidize children's programming higher than adult? I mean, that's one of our... Focuses behind the scenes as well operationally. I think we want to focus on the kids That the issue I keep addressing is that catch up on the catch up on the CPI increases So you've been very supportive of me bringing you the CPI increase for all of the fees every year Saying okay the CPI went up just under 4% this year. I'm gonna And for the 2027 budget, I'm going to be bringing you a substantial amount of fee increases across the board at 4% for a lot of the city services because that's what it's costing us to provide those services. So if you do not keep up with that, then we're having a... I want to prevent those harder discussions in the future where I'm saying, ooh, that... if we want to maintain that service level, maybe we need to increase it 10 or 15. I don't like those big numbers, but if we keep up, kind of like those water rate increases annually, it's 4% every year is a little bit easier to swallow. Right now, I'm focusing on these six areas. Hobbs, 78% recovery rate. Fairfax, and these are for the 2026 budget. So, Fairfax pools at 50%. Recreation programs, 37%. Stadium and ball fields is at 22% overall. Soccer, 33%. And pavilions, we need a little bit more... determination there, but we're targeting, I believe the expense is around $150,000 there, but we will address that more thoroughly next year. So, I'm going to go through each of these individually, then I'm going to summarize, you know, kind of go back to Hobbs, and then we can talk about those individually. So 2026 subsidy for the entire Hobbs budget, $275,000. 2025 came in a little bit lower. So that, again, that's just the budgeted amount. Patrick's continually making those operational efficiencies. We're looking at a 0% subsidy for 2027. We did discontinue those innovation grant discussion programs. And as part of those discussions with users, they had expressed an interest to work with advertising. They have a better mechanism than the city. to solicit advertising for the building. So we would like them to focus on that. We're going to explore paid event parking during events only to offset a fee increase. But the fee increases are a little bit different for Hobbs than they are for other budgets, because it follows a hockey season. So we do have the January rates that would have a proposed CPI increase, but we'd be looking at a full 0% subsidy for Hobbs in September of 2027. Fairfax Pool, again, a 50% subsidy, $222,000. That one has continued to really go down. We're making a lot of operational efficiencies there. This is one that has been a council priority to keep the fees low. Looking again at targeted increases for the 27 budget, and what I mean by that is no price increase for the annual pass. So for a family of three, that's still 175, to put that into perspective. The 2026 fee is $5.50 for daily admissions. We'd be looking at the price increase just on the actual daily admission. And so again, back to that question, where do we want to be in 2031? We stick with our 12% increase on revenues. It takes the daily admission from $6 next year all the way up to $8. But we do keep those at round numbers. Recreation, 2026 expenses are 900,000. In 2031, if you just use the annual inflationary factor, we'd be up to a million dollar investment in recreation programs, that's just the expenditures, if you weren't collecting any revenue. So we run about a million dollar rec program at that point. We are seeking donations. We talked lively about where can we do that. We have limited staff capacity, but just trying to do some brainstorming there. They're continuing to make operational efficiencies within that department. Looking at targeted increases again for the 2027 budget. And just for perspective, 90% of the programming in recreation is a summer school program. We do receive a pass-through of DPI money for $45 from the school per user on those enrolled students, and Patrick can talk a little bit about that if you have questions, but we are requesting more of a pass-through. We don't know if that's approved yet, but requesting like $50 per student. Part of that requirement is we do purchase supplies though to go with that, so that's part of why we're subsidizing the program. We still have that scholarship program, so we offer discounted programs to children in the school district, and I believe that applies to the pool as well. We're looking at focusing on a subsidy mainly for children's programming versus adult. Moving away from the percent recovery, like you must recover this amount on adult programming, you must recover this amount on children's. So the 2031 goal is to be at a 60% recovery rate in recreation programs, and that would be an annual of 15% increase in the fee schedule. Again, remember 4% of that is just the current year's CPI. Stadiums and ball fields, again, that's one of our lower amounts that we're collecting for providing that service. It's 22%. We have an investment of $556,000 within this budget that's scheduled to go up $120,000 by 2031. Excludes soccer park, we do still seek donations for this. Continually making operating efficiencies on mowing or seasonal staff. Potential for user groups to assist in field striping has been mentioned to offset some of the costs that the city does have and does provide. An example of one of our contracted users expressed they pay $800 a game, close to 100% recovery within their contract, We do have other users that don't necessarily have contracts, they're using our fee schedule, and those are the ones that have kind of slipped to a different level of recovery. So that would be Eau Claire School District, Cavaliers, American Legion, and we're gonna kind of look at those amounts, because we're recovering those at 15 to 37%, just for example in baseball. Carson Fields, we're going to create a separate budget for tracking. We also are thankful for the Visit Eau Claire contract negotiations. So part of that is that destination development funds. So 60,000 of that within the negotiated contract. similar to those other municipalities, will be going towards some of our areas that draw overnight stays. So I'm applying that to the Carson Park budget. So it's kind of going to be part of our math when we look at those price increases, is where is that money going? So that's kind of helping. That's helping balance our operating budget. That's gonna go up to 150,000 in 2028, and then that contract is gonna get negotiated. So again, it's very important to keep that in the contract. I just wanna put that out there that we're using that for the Carson Park program for events like we just had this weekend. So our 2031 goal is 60% recovery on the stadiums and ball fields as well, so kind of aligning that. This one would require an annual 15% increase in revenues, adjusting the fee schedule only, so not the Eau Claire Express contract per se, but it would be adjusting that fee schedule, and again, 4% of that is just the annual CPI. SOCCER, RIGHT NOW, SO CURRENTLY WE WERE AWARDED THAT INNOVATION FUNDING, THAT MONEY HAS BEEN SENT TO THE CITY. THE USER GROUP THAT SIGNED THE CONTRACT IS TO BE MAINTAINING THE FIELD THAT I BELIEVE TO DATE SINCE JULY 1st WE'VE BEEN STILL MAINTAINING THAT FIELD. THAT GROUP DOES DESIRE FOR THE CITY TO RETURN THE INNOVATION GRANT FUNDING. and also allow the city to continue to mow and continue to operate. So there's a desire on both sides to discontinue that discussion. We are going to start the next steps with speaking to that group about that. We will bring you a contract or a grant. Would you like to? You can keep going. Do you want me to finish?

Oh, my light's been on for like 15 minutes. Sorry.

I thought it was just this one.

I just want to talk when you're done. Oh, okay.

All right. So with SACA, there's a desire on both sides to return to how everything was on June 30th, let's say. So, we'd want to bring that back to you, but part of that is we're going to work with this group to negotiate fee increases as well. I'm returning close to $50,000. Right now I have no subsidy in soccer due to that contract that's signed, plus I have innovation grant fund money. So, we need to work with those user groups on their percent of recovery. That group also, similar to the advertising sales discussion, has the potential to offset those fee increases. We're looking for guardrails here. We have a five-year goal. Rather than just saying, okay, we want to keep that zero subsidy that we have right now, we are conscious of that relationship and would like to work with them. So we would start out with a goal of five years. to recover 100% of the individual group usage. We'd have to refund that innovation funding grant. Annual increase would be to be determined. We could set that evenly with the groups or that could be tiered, for example, where it's front loaded or in loaded. The contracts will be back to city council for review and potential, then I would need your guidance to discontinue the grant funding as well and refund that.

I was just going to jump in and add a quick thing with that contract with Eau Claire United. We have met, Pat Newkirk and I have met with the group there, and we've told them they need to have a letter signed by their board seeking to revisit that contract for city council. So that's what we're awaiting, an official action from their board instead of a discussion with those. We'll be bringing that back to City Council. They actually had some ideas for potentially a longer term contract to replace that. That would help open up for additional grant funds. But as soon as we remove ourselves from that contract, if it's a mutual removal, then like Kitsie had said, we go from a 0% subsidy to... having to get back to where we are now, but we probably would have a better relationship with that group and it would be a little bit easier to work with them. We did maintain, our parks folks maintained the field to make sure that the coop tournament went off without a hitch, the national one. We felt that was more important than getting into the weeds with this, but If they don't maintain it, then they'll be found in breach of contract, and that will be a different action that council may have to take if they don't follow through on their obligations, and they don't provide us with a letter requesting to withdraw from it.

And unfortunately, I would have to send them an invoice for the costs, and I would definitely have to refund the innovation grant.

So we're working sensitively with the group to get it as congenial as possible.

And just to put the fee increases in perspective, one of the individual groups, if you did the math, not saying they'd pass that all to the user, it'd be about $5 per participant on an annual basis. The other user group, if you just look at the tournament, I don't have individual data for that, it'd be about $25 increase per tournament group. But again, I don't know if both of those organizations will pass the fee increases off or if they'll use some of their donated funds as well. Pavilions and parks, that was another council priority since I've started here, keeping those costs low. We have made some operational efficiencies there, which are kind of interesting, and I thought you might find of interest. The two hours between reservations, previously we had that every hour, so our park staff on overtime would have to go out there and clean before and after each hour. with those reservations. We had a previous two hour minimum rental, which we changed to three. Now that did not have a negative effect on the rentals. It actually had an increase in rentals after 300 hours. That kind of shows you what Pat and his team are looking at. Behind the scenes to make sure that these operational changes that we make or that they make are To help save the budget aren't having that detrimental effect to the community We are holding open one full-time position in the parks budget They'd still like another one on top of that Just to meet the goals of their department one of the items we can do and can be part of this discussion. Overtime, we have two full-time employees on overtime, just using maybe one overtime full-time employee to have that supervision level and usage of seasonal to pay a little bit less. to keep our costs down. Operational efficiencies have been made, but we're still subsidizing at about 150,000. Again, we're going to fine tune that number next year. We're still looking at a 12.5% fee increase. I didn't want to over or under report what those look like, so I did put a slide in here showing you what 12.5% sounds like a lot, but it depends on the fee that you're looking at. So again, the administrative focus that we're taking, it's really important that we maintain our field quality, but also maintain those programs. Annually capture the CPI increases. I really appreciate that support. We'll continue to bring the annual CPI increase through with the fee schedule and into the budget. If we don't continue with just the minimum annual, we do regress on programs, so that's the offset. We do have to reduce the amount of time it takes us to serve the public or start looking at some of the non-statutorily required areas and start reducing those. This year, part of our solution is holding open positions, but we can only do that so much. So we're gonna take a little bit harder look at that over the next month. But tonight we're kind of addressing that catch up prior year CPI increases. So that's kind of more of what I'm talking about is kind of closing that gap. We still want to maintain the existing relationships and accessibility to all the city programs in the fields. We can stay within our fiscal policies and spending targets. So there's our net new construction this year for perspective is around 662,000 is about the estimate. It's about half of what I would like. So half again of what it was when I started. So it's nice when that number's over a million. We're gonna have a little bit more challenging of a year. So next steps, I'm going to propose a 2027 fee schedule and I need a little bit of guidance this evening and then we're going to bring you contracts for review like Dave mentioned and those will be coming to you as we go, but soccer's going to be coming to you. We'd like to get that finalized sooner than later. So again, and I think the best flow here, do we want to go one by one? Do we want to start with Hobbs to kind of keep it organized?

Maybe let's start with, we had a couple council members that put their lights on early, so maybe we start with those just because they may be more general. Okay. Council Member Brewster, you were the first. Yeah, thank you.

I was wondering if, you know, if, you know, I saw 15% increases on that. I wonder how detrimental it would be to the budget to just, you know, keep it above where CPI is but have it do like 10% instead. So then we'd catch up maybe in 2033 instead of, 2030 or something it just you know like what we're going through as a city is is like absolutely normal like every organization that I know of is having funding issues and it just if we can if we can do it a little bit more gently while still getting to where we need to be I wonder if it's if it's worth that extra effort

Sure, we do have scenarios for 10%, 12.5, and 15. We did work together on those. Ideally, we want to just have these programs for free. I think it's the desire of the department not to increase fees ever. And I respect that, because they're awesome programs. We're looking at, I guess we didn't do 10%, I mean 12.5 I guess is the lowest that I recommended to you. And are you saying generally all over these six areas or just the certain ones that had the larger numbers?

Yeah, I mean, I guess for me, I would say the closer they are to 100 already, maybe try to keep the increases as low as possible.

Sure.

You know, but like for, you know, the ball fields or whatever, maybe that's a 15 and maybe Hobbs is like, you know, seven or something because they're already pretty close to...

That's kind of where, I mean, Hobbs was at, I believe it was, we already have a 7% in for January and I think you proposed 10 for September, is that correct? We've looked at a lot of numbers this weekend. So what was the fall? So 3% in September and then the dollar per event.

Patrick do you think you can actually come up?

I think that one specifically would hit your 10% target, but we would want to implement the $1 per hour event parking so it wouldn't have to be higher. So we did try to mitigate that, find that solution if that would be acceptable.

Right, and if you'd like me to repeat that. Yeah, that would be great. So the last year's budget cycle approved a 6% fee increase for Hobbs ice rental rates effective September 1st of this year, actually through August 31st of next year. What we would propose to do is add an additional 7% on January 1st. also institute our excuse me dollar per hour event parking essentially for college and high school games and tournament weekends so not all the time not nearly all the time and then an additional three percent on september 1st of 2027 based on what we're looking at right now and then as kitsy said that that that would get hobbs within single digits of percentage of full recovery at that point.

That one I think you've been a little bit more, I don't know, between Patrick reducing expenses and finding efficiencies and just been more strategic on those contracts every year, you've been closing that gap.

And like Kitsie had said earlier, Pat is working with the groups to give them opportunities to have additional revenue that could offset like in hobbs case the paid parking so we haven't had the we haven't had the staff availability to sell advertising for the backer boards so the groups are probably better positioned you know groups or businesses in the community are more willing to pay a little bit more to help support youth hockey than they would be to support the city of eau claire selling that same backer board so they have an opportunity to go out and and work with some of their sponsors and work with some of the businesses to help offset their fee increase and Pat's been working with them on soccer too if the soccer agreement is revisited. That would be a chance for them to have advertising that you see in and around naming the fields and so forth that would help lower the effect on their participants but still help us increase the revenue that's coming to more accurately represent what it costs to provide that service.

Yeah, Council Member Otto.

Thank you, Council President. So this is just a big picture thought. So earlier you mentioned prioritizing children versus adult programs for lower recovery rates, which I'm fully on board with that. I wonder if there's another axis of priority here in that some of these programs I imagine don't generate secondary fees from hotel overnight revenue, and some probably do, and I'm thinking about last weekend, Eau Claire's Festival, and maybe some of these are a net gain. I don't know. I don't know if the external fees have been generated. I can't imagine it's something you can precisely measure, but maybe that's another point of consideration when talking about recovery fees.

That has been, I mean, Hobbs has an event that I know Visit Eau Claire has spoke about. The COOB tournament and then also, well, items like this weekend. And I believe you have that, there's another event at the soccer park as well with the Mung Festival.

Yep, Mung Fest this past summer.

And most of those would be special events, which would recover our costs outside of just your special events team. We don't charge that much for the administrative time ahead of time. We talked about that today, that maybe we should recover some of the admin time on just like a... Eau Claire Festival event. I mean, it was my suggestion from a fiscal standpoint, but is that event fee maybe, should that be higher than $70? Maybe should that be like 500, you know, or 1,000? Because it's taking a year of planning, whereas, you know, the downtown Fall Fest, that's still a $70 fee. Things like that, so. Thank you, yep.

Council Member Umboda?

I'm just wondering, Casey and Patrick, have you guys, I think especially Patrick, have you guys reached out to, like, Ukraine, United States, or perhaps there's a lot of hockey clubs there. Each of them, we are planning to raise some fees and to see which reacted in a positive way.

Well, I think at this point right now, we've definitely reached out, you know, and Dave has as well, to the soccer organization, especially the one that is contracted, I believe it's United, that's contracted to be operating the field at this point. So... Our next step is to say, hey, right now we have a 0% subsidy. This is our proposed fee schedule, and we're going to go from there with the guardrails from this evening. I had offered a 5% or, excuse me, a five-year, and that's, you know, and city manager Dave has as well. So we're looking at a five-year recovery. on those rates um so then then we want to go to those next steps i don't want to to count the

I think the staff wants it back as well. I think these conversations will be hard just because of the

Of all of the operational changes, I can't speak for the groups themselves. I mean, these fee schedule changes are jumps. But again, they're covering 100% of their usage, their field usage, and they're getting to that 100% over five years. So that was kind of the guardrails we were looking for.

But my comment, just a comment. It would be nice to reach out to them and say, because of inflation, everyone knows inflation. Everything is going to sky. So because of inflation, we are tending to do this one. So they are aware. They need their mind. Before the contract, they know that it will be an increase, but they don't know how much.

And I think we don't sell the fact that we do create efficiencies behind the scene. We don't even have time to tell you that we create efficiencies. So, but they're doing that, plus there's a clerical issue with the spreadsheet. So those costs have came down, so it's not as high as what originally the 193,000, it's down I think about 170,000, I want to say.

And we're also working with soccer for that. With their soccer tournaments, they can make up a large portion of that deficit if they charge for parking at their at their tournaments, which is free parking. So, you know, we're, we're, Pat is working extremely hard trying to jostle and hold positions open at seasonals where he can work with groups, you know, in the ball fields to stripe. But we're also trying to give the opportunity with what we can to the user groups, you know, through concessions or through advertising or, If they're having tournaments and they want to charge with their tournament fee, $50 for the tournament per team and then $20 if you're going to park in the lot, that's an opportunity. That would be relatively small if you're talking for a team to pay an extra $20 for parking, but it would be huge for that group to help recover. So we're trying to squeeze everything we can to keep the actual yearly fee so it's not doubling in two years or three years on there.

The last one, I will say, but it's not here. I think I've talked to David. If they have the lights at night, we make more money. Because when it's too hot, people like to play late. So think about that one.

That was one thing when Patrick and I met with United two months ago or so, where instead of a five-year agreement, they had thrown out very, very early. If they have a longer one, then it opens them up. If they had a 10-year contract instead of the five-year currently, then that opens them up for funding from FIFA and other groups for the lighting bleachers that they throw out. There may be a possibility that a better deal than we have now comes out of it. We don't know where that is. We haven't started talking numbers. We just wanted to, number one, give council a heads up that they verbally expressed interest in withdrawing from the contract, but we haven't seen anything in writing. And we haven't talked five years, three years, seven years for the free schedule. We're waiting, like Kitsie had mentioned, waited for tonight from council to say, well, that's a little bit too fast and too steep a climb, or yeah, we're comfortable with this before we get into the details with that.

So actually, I wanted to talk a little bit about the, I guess particularly the realm of the pavilions and parks because one of the ones I'm concerned about is the farmer's market and like their agreement coming up and like you know that structure was It wasn't super expensive to build maybe back at the time that it was built, and it probably would cost like maybe 10 times more today, even though it's only like 20 years old. But I'm thinking of those user groups and just kind of using the farmer's market as an example, where it's like it's something that, is kind of special about Eau Claire. I mean, a lot of these groups are, but it's not just like a recreation thing. It's partly a survival thing for our community, whether that be the vendors and cultural asset that we have and just how people can afford to have healthy food and have access to healthy food. So there's a lot of events that happen at our parks that are important in different ways. But it's hard to figure out how we can maybe prioritize certain ones or the others and still be fair at the same time. Like that's the, that's the, that's kind of the challenge that I just want to put out there is like, how do we, how do we recognize the fact that, you know, the farmer's market helped to fundraise for that building. Right. But then they also are use it, use the building very frequently during half the year. And it's like, how do we make sure that, that, The farmers market is still strong if we're going to talk about major increases in their

yeah no that's a great question i think um prioritizing use is where those those agreements come in and those rates um there we have started repairing that pavilion um just a little bit here and there um but that's the volume discount i guess is my easiest and simple description you know when you we bring a contract to you that's where that you can kind of prioritize that use. But Dave has the best analogy on what this farmer's market specifically would mean per user, per both.

Yeah, I forget. The farmer's market is one where a high percentage is a low dollar amount. Because I think, what is their yearly fees? And I know we worked through it with Phil.

Is it like 15? Last year being the last year of their 10-year agreement, it was $3,300 per year.

So last year was $3,300 a year.

And when that was set, it captured 10 years ago, it was capturing 75% of the cost. A 22% discount. And now it's like a 70% discount because the fees in here have gone up. And that fee structure was the same so in the in the in the farmers market It's open 75 days a year if there's an average of 20 vendors there you have 1,500 days Vendor days that are there so a 1500 vendor days and their current fee is $3,000 if you double it that's a hundred percent increase But it's only two dollars per vendor per day that they're out there. So it's a small dollar amount but then when you compare a $3,300 contract to $133,000 subsidy in soccer, we're not gonna balance the budget on Phoenix Park, on the farmer's market because it's just such a small dollar amount. But in principle, to try to keep our agreements with different groups, whether it's a, you know, $160, $162 per day for that, or it's $800 a day for a field, if we tell users of the field, you know, we're looking for 75% of that fee across the board, if that's the, direction for council so and what we would ultimately like to get to with the agreements is just to say all right we'll set up the agreement you have a bulk discount um council you know we'll present to council your contract for the next 10 years is a 25 discount over these rates and then these rates before you are adjusted with inflation so we never get we never go from a 22 discount to a 70 discount over the course of a

So we've been getting behind, so that's why we're kind of in these situations. So when the contracts are coming for renewal, we've got some larger numbers. But we're trying to put them into perspective here, like a per user, like the dollar for the soccer per child or $25 per team.

50 cents a child at the pool. Yeah, yeah. Because it means different rates mean different things for different participants. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I guess I also had some questions about the farmer's market. And there are a lot of, like, probably, I mean, just the list of positive externalities from that is quite extensive. But at the same time, it's also, like... for-profit entity right like the well the organization I believe is well a non-profit but then the vendors exactly that's I think all of them are it is a commercial enterprise as opposed to you know some of the you know youth sports and stuff that are that are not I don't think that means that we need to go after them with a chainsaw or something.

I think when we minimized it down to like it's $1 to $2 per booth on an annual basis. I mean, that's why we wanted to give you that perspective because it sounds so big.

If I could add a little anecdote, you know, operationally... we still have to do the same things whether the entity is for profit or not for profit. So from our perspective, it's still the same input regardless. But completely understand and acknowledge that all of the different activities and facilities and participants that are doing the things that we have to offer are receiving benefit out of them that we strongly feel also benefits the overall community. Going back historically over the time that I've been here, Council President Greger mentioned the farmer's market and the benefits to the community that that has from the availability of local food. And right in town, I can read a laundry list of benefits to individuals participating in recreational activities and childhood development for kids, for example. Council Member Otto mentioned the economic impact or he was starting to touch on the economic impact of things like the Eau Claire's Festival or the Eau Claire United Tournament or Babe Ruth Tournament. And all of these things weigh into it. They're really hard to measure. And we also still have to be able to keep operating it all. So that's the million dollar question that we're trying to solve through all of this. So it's really, really challenging. I don't think anybody in the room wants to make anything harder for anybody. We're just trying to come up with the best solution that maintains consistency for the community over the long term.

I suppose you could do a .

So one of the things that I'm trying to consider is just that ability to pay piece of it, where I feel like groups maybe have more ability to pay than individuals. So the individual family that may rent a park pavilion needs to have to make sure that the pavilion, like the smaller pavilions, for example, are maybe more accessible and then kids of course from ability to pay standpoint is important to me in terms of having that be more affordable too so those are that's one of the just ways that I look at it and

yeah i wonder if there's a way to um do something like for example at fairfax you know like let's say you know by nine days get the tenth one free kind of kind of thing like that if you know if you have a little receipt thing that you keep or something like that just like or uh you know if you go with a group of friends like buy four entrances get the fifth one free or something like that just people that you know, keep the usage high and also give people the opportunity to find ways to save some money. I'm not sure what that would look like with any of the other facilities, but maybe something like that's an option.

What we do have, and it actually applies to any of our drop-in activities, so this could be open skating at Hobbs now, too. We call it the Rec Pass, so it's 12 punches for the price of 10. And then we also have it as an individual use as well. We got feedback that people wanted to be able to buy drop-in admissions to give as gifts on a single-use basis. But the Rec Pass works at the pool. It works at Hobbs. It's the same thing as buying 10 admissions, basically. Um, the pool membership is, is designed around like the frequent users at the pool. So, um, you know, sort of like a, maybe a golf membership that you could have where if you go a lot, it makes more financial sense for you to buy a membership. Um, but I, you know, I, I think we're at a point with the membership fees, which is why Kitsie mentioned, or excuse me, director Winters mentioned not wanting to, um, raise the the membership fee i think we're seeing where the 85 to 90 day pool season i think the community's kind of maxed out on wanting to pay more for a membership so i that's why we're we're intending on maintaining the membership fees but indexing the daily admission fee at the pool

Yeah, I think it makes sense for frequent users to try to make that, to keep that the same. I think that's good. Any other thoughts? We kind of lost half the council here. Yeah.

We have quorum. Look at that. I guess just...

For me, I understand the necessity of doing this. I just say, you know, try to keep the increases as minor as possible while still getting closer to that goal. And also I had a question. Have you noticed, like, an increase in... like pool usage since under 18s can ride the bus for free?

We actually have seen a definite increase in the bus ridership to the pool. So there's a couple pool bus routes. So the magic pool bus, they call it now. That's awesome. Kudos to the transit team for coming up with that. Oh, that's so good. We were not clever enough to come up with that. But we've definitely seen increased ridership to the pool now that youth are able to ride for free. And that pool bus route is designed around our daycare days where Tuesdays and Thursdays there's a lot of child care organizations that bring kids to the pool in large groups. And those routes are designed around getting close to many of those so that those kids can all hop on the bus. So that's been working well.

So does it mean that the pool usage is up?

I think the pool usage is pretty consistent from year to year. The big, not challenge, but the big variable is the weather. If it doesn't get hot over the summer, fewer people go to the pool. If it's super hot, more people go to the pool. If it storms a lot and we have to close, there's less time that the pool is open. So it's very, very weather dependent.

To go back to transit, I just wanted to tell you that Katrina had reached out to me on June 19th and was so excited about driving 329 kids. This is the first time that we've had over 300 kids in one day in years. The beginning of the year, we were excited to have 200 kids in one day for the first time. So it was cool to hear.

Fairfax pool is a great asset And I mean another you know we talked about the benefits of the different things in our world and

parks and rec like another benefit of the pool besides it being you know a fun thing to go do it's also a great way for people to go cool off if they don't have air conditioning which is very important as well so you could almost kind of think of it in the same way as the farmers market for accessibility to food too but for getting cooled off when it's super hot mm-hmm yeah for sure and that that's It's always an underlying thing for us is the importance of safety in the water with the two rivers here in town. That's why we are very, very serious about swim lessons in the community, and that's why we've always been heavily involved with them as we have, so that we can teach people how to be safe in the water, especially when they're young, and then hopefully that turns into...

fewer instances of our colleagues at the fire department having to go do what they do so yeah so council member reed did you yeah um thanks jeremy i um i just want to ask why and maybe you said this already but why is the stadiums and ball fields only at 22 percent is that a reflection of keeping it accessible or is it something else?

Sure, so I'd say that's primarily a function of longer term agreements that were set far in the past, similar to the previous farmer's market agreement. Hobbs has basically indexed the fee schedule for ice rates up consistently over time. So that's why you see that cost recovery where it's at. Most all of the stadium and ball field use is tied to long-term agreements. However, part of this conversation that Director Winters mentioned is we also will be working through new agreements with many of these groups. So looking for some guidance on how to structure them to meet the goals that we have to meet.

I hate to say it, but what about paid parking for stadium and ball fields?

So we have thought about that. That comes with additional challenges. There are challenges that will come with that at Hobbs. One of the things that I view as a challenge related to paid parking at those locations, not including Carson Park, so I'm talking about the youth facilities that be Jeffers Park, Mount Simon, Fairfax, those groups all help build those facilities and they are the user of them. So it would be, I would say, especially challenging to say, okay, now you also have to pay to park here as well. So we've wanted to try to avoid that in any way we can.

Yeah, that's, I think we're all kind of worn out with paid parking. We are, yes.

That's why I said I hate to say it.

But I myself, if it came to parking, I would much rather have it be an opportunity for the user groups to do that. So if you're the express and with the contract for Carson Park, you charge your patrons for the parking lot. If you're Regis or the Blue Golds playing football out there, you have the ability to set up paid parking to go in there instead of us doing it as a program. Charge them higher rates that reflect their ability to recoup some of those costs instead of us putting the kiosks in. It was talked about earlier this year about paid parking at Carson Park and at Hobbs, and one of the things that Pat was working with the user groups at Hobbs was Well, you know, you probably can get away from the paid parking if you're effective at selling advertising and your concessions can offset some of that. So I'd rather go that route than to have us in there. But it is something that's unfortunately on the table, you know, if we just have to. But it's definitely not something that we would bring to council with glee or as a first step. It's the first option that would be if we're getting pretty desperate and it comes down to people or paid parking for that.

So then just a clarification, the paid parking at Hobbs would be through the organization and not through the city?

Yes. The revenue is going to pass through into our budget, but that would offset the fee increase that Patrick's providing. Is that the best description, Patrick?

Close, yes.

We're hoping with Hobbs that if they have events at Sonatag, and they spill over into the Hobbs parking lot, maybe we can capture some revenue from that event to help our groups using our stuff. Okay. We'll see.

Cool.

Well, you know, I think there's generally support for, I mean, I do kind of agree with Aaron that, you know, trying to. There may be certain instances where we may want to elongate that from five years to like seven or something. I'm not sure if that makes sense.

So I think I'm going to run through here next steps because what I'm hearing is, well first in primary I did bucket out soccer a little bit different than the rest just because of that innovation funding. Hobbs is getting closer to closing that gap, but I do see your point and I think we're on We're on track with what Aaron Brewster had mentioned with a 10% there, and then they're having the ability to break even with the tools that we've talked to them about, and they've avoided innovation funding, so I don't know if that one's kind of on track with that 10%. Is that something that we're kind of trying to stay around that target there? 4% is the CPI.

You're the numbers person. I guess my thing is just keep it as low as you can and not make it exceptionally difficult for yourself.

Yes, because I know in turn it does make difficult conversations and a lot of emails and a lot of conversations, but we thought it'd be very valuable. And I'll email you this presentation, but just to hear what does that mean per child or per user group to put these large percentages in perspective. pool from what I'm hearing we're we're kind of okay with that that direction it's kind of we do put intentionally we don't increase down to the penny just because of making change right and we have to make sure I won't shake that cashiers can properly create the right amount of change so whole easy dollar amount is very key yep

I mean, I guess if there was one that I could pick to keep as cheap as possible, it would be Fairfax.

Okay.

I think.

I've had that consensus before.

Patrick was talking about it as on some level a safety issue if it gets really hot. Yeah. as somebody that has really valued his knowledge of how to swim and has used it successfully at several points in his life. I'm talking about myself in a weird way right now, but I would very much like to figure out a way, if we could, to make sure everybody has a chance to learn how to swim. Because then, you know.

So keeping swimming lessons as affordable as possible as well.

Yeah.

Okay. Because those are in the recreation budget.

Don't we get something from DPI to help with swimming lessons too?

It doesn't meet the cost. I mean, that's 45. Patrick's requested 50 per student. But we're subsidizing that whole program of recreation for

you know we're recovering 37 percent of the cost of the swim instruction cost recovery is far higher than the 37 percent that's cumulative of all of our activities and programs um not quite at a hundred percent but i'd say off the top of my head in the low 80s for swim instruction and that said the cost for the participant is zero right No, there is a small registration fee for swim instruction. I want to say, I think it's $7 this year per eight session, 50 minutes.

That's affordable. We can't raise that $7 because we're giving the $50 or $45.

Right. If we were to raise the $7, we would have to spend the same amount of money to be able to charge that higher fee. That's one of the tricks of the school district partnership. So that's why we've been working hard on trying to get donations to be able to buy materials and supplies that doesn't come out of our budget, which we've actually been making progress on too.

So I'm hearing to keep Fairfax pool daily admission maybe and swimming lessons that are very affordable.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, the daily mission because of the pools. All the other things are year long where it's pool in the summer and you're finding stuff for youth to do in the summer. So yeah, keeping the daily rates as low as possible.

That's one of them we wanted to stay away from paid parking at as well, just internally. Recreation, again, swimming lessons does fall under that. We are requesting more from the school, again, for the DPI funding. Our 2031 goal is 60% recovery. That'd be an annual about 15% increase in the fee schedule.

I had something to say about that. This is something that we can track, right? Like if we do a 15% increase next year and then we have like half as many people involved, we might look back and be like, okay, we took that a bit too far.

Well, yeah, that's part of why I was mentioning the changes with pavilions, just to show that they're looking at. Sometimes Patrick might want to drop one program that has no attendance. instead of increasing the fees overall. So that's where your operational management comes into play. So they do make those efficiencies behind the scenes that make sense for their program. So he might not want to try to increase the full 15%, but if it's maybe in certain areas and lowering that swim, keeping that swim low, there's a lot of things behind the scenes. But again, charging. Part of that, too, is the theme of charging adults more, I think, and then children, keeping the children affordable. Because we did, we used to have targets on how much to collect from kids' programs and adults, and I think we're kind of steering away from that and just focusing on the kids through that operational consensus, so.

Could you do like a date that you can pass?

Could you do a daily family pass for 25 or something like that in case somebody has a whole bunch of kids? Because that could get really expensive.

I think there's a scholarship program too, though. I mean, it's something we should look at, but then the scholarship program helps with Eau Claire Area School District children that are enrolled in the district that can get a percent discount on recreation. So that might help another way.

It's slightly different than that. So the school district program is its own, heavily discounted set of programs that the how you get that is if you are a school district resident if you pay your taxes to the school district through state aid yes our scholarship program doesn't apply to those programs because they're already so heavily discounted it's only for programs that are not part of the summer school program all year round and then also season memberships for the pool so Right now that discount is a 75% discount on whatever the sticker price is for the thing. And we track how many of those there are each year and then the value of that discount. I think we had about 240 scholarship activity registrations and or pool memberships in 2025 and the value of that discount was like 23 or $24,000.

And so that's one of the numbers too that can be adjusted, the percent scholarship on the program to help offset some fees as well. Stadium and ball fields, that one. We again are close on Express. Those other items we're still going to be kind of working through. So I think something that'll help us going forward, you know, even 10 years, probably more so 10 years down the road is having those contracts indexed to the fee schedule, like Patrick's saying. So Hobbs was like that. and you look at that percent recovery rate, now we look at these where they're having those set amounts, just like the farmer's market. So we do need to recover at the minimum our CPI. So 4% CPI increase, so the catch-up proposal in stadium and ball fields is around 11% on top of that.

In the theme of charging more for adults and fewer for kids, the school district being included in the list of the Cavaliers and the Legion, maybe you can try to not bump them up as much as you might the Cavaliers or the Legion, given those are the more adult teams.

And that's something we haven't discussed with any of them at this point, so they might be hearing it tonight, but I don't know what those conversations have been in the past. But that's a good proposal, too, depending on how they're funded and if they have ability to pay, too, as well, or donations.

We can look at that. I guess the trick is similar to Hobbs. It doesn't matter if it's eight-year-old kids on the field or the ice, or if it's the university, it's still the same cost for us to operate it. So I look at athletic facilities as... The fee is the fee for the use, and then the differentiation with adults and children has almost entirely been on the recreation activity side of things, like our athletic leagues that we operate that people participate in, significantly higher fees for our adult soccer league as opposed to youth, for example, so... we do have that separation in place. So there's some nuance in it related to age depending upon the type of activity there.

I mean, we could definitely look at applying that same concept, though, to ball fields.

For sure.

Yeah. Soccer, this one is very confusing, but I've talked about that one a little. So if you want a recap on that one, let me know. I don't want to repeat myself too much. But we think we have a good path forward, and we'll be requesting a five-year recovery for 80% of the field use. We use the field 20%, so it's kind of a little bit more of a discount that we're kind of passing along to them. And pavilions and parks, what I was hearing is the smaller pavilions, we need to maybe be less aggressive on that recovery. And we do look at these overall as a whole. So maybe some of those larger rentals, those are the ones that might be okay to increase.

It is, we get 30% of the 8% of the room charge.

30% of 80%. I love things like that, yeah.

30% of 80, yeah.

Okay. Okay. So at this point, I mean, this path forward retains the Parks and Recreation's budget. We are holding open one parks position right now. We'll look at kind of splitting that over time and stepping into using a seasonal maybe for part of that to help contribute to keeping costs down.

functionally in terms of service reduction.

It's going to be, yeah, they've already, we're holding open a position right now. There's less mowing. We were just talking a little bit about they would like another entire FTE for Half Moon Beach for the weed harvesting. So, yeah, it does mean a lower level of service within parks.

Yeah, I mean, as a percentage, it should be about 6% reduction in staff. in terms of full-term staff. But if we gain two seasonal six-month positions during our busy season, it should be a net gain for productivity. And it should be inconsequential in terms of the standards to which we maintain our shelters and our pavilions and our lawns overall. So it's, I think, a pretty reasonable consideration. That would be one less full-time body in-house for, like, Parks helps out snow emergencies. Most park staff come in. A handful of them are dedicated to the four-mile loop that is really high maintenance to get down to bare pavement every time for a paved running trail. But a lot of park staff hop in a streets truck and help them, too. So it's a little bit of a reduction to the pool of folks who can participate in a full plow, but it's you know, one less body in a pool of 60 or 70. So it's less, as a proportion, it's less impactful to that part, but it is still, plays a part in it a little bit. But yeah, 6%-ish reduction in full-time staff for parks is what it equates to.

And I think what I've heard you say, too, is you prioritize high traffic areas.

Yeah, I mean, as we've added... like just in the last handful of years, Jeffers Park, Cannery Park, Princeton Park, We have no more staff to maintain, so we're spending less time. We're just not doing things in some more aging facilities that get fewer reservations and less use. And we put more effort and care into things that are more highly trafficked. If you draw a radius around downtown, it's Cannery and Owen, Boyd, Carson, of course. They get a lot more attention. What's that? Yeah, Phoenix and then some of the peripheral smaller facilities get a little less attention. So the grass gets a little longer in between mows. Maybe vandalism takes a little longer to clean up. But we find ourselves more in a reactionary position where we get reports of vandalism. We get to it when we can. rather than sort of opportunistically looking around to see what needs to be done in a park. We're just there to keep it presentable. And that's kind of the position we're operating from right now.

And I just wanted to point out that these positions, we're not eliminating them. We're holding them open with vacancies on there. Because everybody is working extremely hard, like Phillip said. So we hope to grow back into it if we have local finance reform or if there's if there's other levers that the state gives us to pull Will gleefully fill those positions with With actually, you know, just frankly benefit benefit earning middle-class jobs that can work for the city because I think that's that's not our not our main focus but I think that's something that we can provide the city as opposed to two temporary positions to have a job that you know can support that family with health insurance and stuff so.

We are making plans to balance a budget for the next few years and I mean one of the options too if you ever do have to go to a referendum I mean I think parks should definitely be you know having a couple FTEs in either streets or parks you know it definitely

But it needs to be one.

So I mean, we're starting those discussions, but for 27, all areas are holding open positions? and we're gonna get to the point where we see what next steps we have, but all this is part of the build, I would call it. And then in 2028, we're looking at self-insured to mitigate that 15% cost with 15% increase on health insurance, because it will be substantially higher in the subsequent year if we don't make those steps. So we're.

Very fortunate we have that 15% renewal for next year.

A lot more, yeah. So we are making those steps, but it's not just parks that is temporarily holding open those positions. It's important to take that back with you as well, so. All right, I think we've got our marching orders, if that's. And I think as far as next steps too, I know we talked about, we did this two years ago. I think if we're staying on the same course, we're gonna bring you a normal fee schedule. If there's something out of line, we will let you know. If we need help, we will let you know. But if we're just staying on course, we'll treat it as part of the normal budget process. This one is a little bit higher of increases, so we wanted to talk to you about that. Get your blessing.

great thank you so much for playing that all out yeah thank you okay yeah we're officially done yeah well until next tuesday

strategically.