City Council - Regular Meeting

This conference will now be recorded.

Okay.

Good afternoon and welcome to our regular meeting of the Elko City Council for July 14, 2026. All board members are present. And at this time, I would like to invite Lieutenant Daz to lead us in the pledge.

to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right, this is time for comments.

Thank you for that.

This is time for comments by the general public pertaining to items that are not on the agenda this afternoon. I will limit public comment to five minutes. And then if you would please sign in as you conclude in the back, there's a board back there. Dr. Kapurski, welcome.

Thank you. Scott Gaworski, 878 2nd Street for the record and I rise on behalf of the Elko County Republican Party. First, I just want to say thank you to the city for the dedication ceremony for the Declaration of Independence sculpture downtown and everything that went into that. The Mayor Pro Tem served as a master of ceremonies for that. It was very much appreciated and a good mark here, I think overall for the city of Elko. Also wanted to invite any registered Republicans. Our next quarterly central committee meeting will be Saturday, July 25th at 9 a.m. over in the county commission chambers. And finally, with the general election coming up, We're expecting to see a lot of the Republican candidates here through Elko. We'll be sure to pass on the information as we receive it from the campaigns. People are invited to come out and meet and talk with them. You can keep an eye out for any information we get on Facebook or on our website at elkonvgob.org.

So thank you. Thank you for that. All right, public comment, anyone else?

Hello, my name is Erica Wright and I'm a concerned local citizen. I live on Ash Street next to the City of Elko Cemetery. I was at the last town hall meeting two weeks ago reporting on the wet decorations that have accumulated mold, rot, and stagnant pond water. I'm concerned every day when I drive by that the decorations are still there and there's a festering infection brewing under the surface. I strongly, strongly recommend that the City of Elko please halt all watering of the cemetery grounds. The sprinklers are aimed at the branches of the trees, infecting and killing the bark, and the hose pressure is so intense it's destroying the old tombstones from the early 1900s. I know this is probably an oversight, which is why I'm here to report this, because I'm here on the ground able to witness these things. The engraving of stones from the early 1900s are no longer legible and covered with permanent white drip marks from the water. And now there's green algae also growing on the vulnerable gravestones. So the tombstones are being destroyed by the sprinklers and the excess water. The water is sprayed all over the decorations. The water accumulates in the water votives, creating stagnant, horribly smelling pond water, and the metal signs are flaking. And the amount of water and duration of spraying floods all of the sidewalks. The flooding of a graveyard can have dire consequences, as the very old caskets and dead bodies can leach toxins into the stormwater drains that can affect local ecosystems, as well as us, evaporating into the air, and it's hard to filter out. So I conclude by strongly recommending halting all sprinklers to avoid destroying trees and tombstones, as well as removal of the infectious decorations. I hope and pray someone listens to me today because it's a problem and it will only get worse, destroying the very old cemetery, tombstones and nature included. Thank you for listening. And on one other separate issue, I had questions regarding what is labeled as irrigation boxes and the legality of five installed by a landscaper behind St. Paul's Church. Just regarding what authorization is required to install such equipment that includes water valves and electrical cords in the ground. Because it's all private property, it's church property. I'm here as a concerned citizen. They have hired a landscaper and I'm curious about what is the authorization for such an installation because I see these boxes around the city, but the five plus boxes in such a small lot behind a church seems kind of excessive and I'm a little skeptical of what those would be for. and also his excessive trimming of the trees. So I humbly ask for investigations that the church property, but also the neighboring environment is not harmed by whatever they're doing with redirected water behind St. Paul's Church. So again, my name is Erica Wright. Thank you for listening. Hopefully I was under five minutes.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Wright. All right. Public comment. Anyone else? All right. I'll go ahead and close off public comment and I think I'm going to skip ahead to personnel and we have several employee introductions. I understand that Mr. Soros is not here this evening, so I'll go ahead and kick it off with the fire department. Deputy Chief Finley.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of Council. I have the honor of introducing our newest career firefighter, Thomas Zysnak. I'll let him tell his history, but in the short time he's been with us, he's pretty intense, but he's got a great drive and professionalism, and we think he's going to do great things for the city. I've never had one of our new hires before our recruiting process and everything where I've received so many random recommendations from just random Elko and Spring Creek citizens just talking about his character and talking about his willingness to serve. So I think that he's going to bring that service to the citizens and we're excited to have him. So great.

Thank you, everybody. Good evening. My name is Thomas Sustak. I am the new hire for the City of Elko Fire Department. As a brief introduction, I'm originally from the Chicagoland area. I've been a resident of northeastern Nevada for going on seven years now. I originally came to Nevada for a job in wildland fire, which I did for five seasons before I worked in agriculture for several years. Elko in the greater northeastern Nevada area, I would consider my home now. And many of the people in this town have become very close friends and in a lot of ways, my adopted family. And as a probationary fireman, I look forward to serving the place that I call home and the people that I consider family and really close friends. So thank you for your time. And I look forward to seeing all of you throughout the community.

All right. Welcome, Thomas.

All right, and we also have someone here from the landfill. Shane, come on up.

Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor and members of the council, I won't go into depth like Joel did. We recently had two openings at the landfill.

One was filled by Mr. Casey Berger. He's been here for approximately six days, I think, on the job.

So he's quickly learning and adapting to the landfill environment. And with that, I'll turn the table over to him.

Hi, I'm Casey Berger. I grew up in Elko. I've been here about 30 years now. Went to high school here. And I'm just happy to be working for the city of Elko now.

Thank you. All right. Let's go back up to our consent items. We have three items on our consent agenda. I'm going to hold item C out for discussion on that.

Would you like to do, Officer Sherwood, three items?

I can certainly do that too. All right. We have a retirement here of over 20 years in law enforcement, and that is Patrol Officer Sean Sherwood. And we just want to thank him for his dedication to law enforcement. And Mr. Sherwood, I'm sorry that I didn't have the opportunity to work with you. Shane, would you come on up and just say a few words? I'm sorry, because I'm empty handed. We typically have And I think that Chief Ward must have that. And he's unexpectedly gone today.

Yeah, so you got me. I apologize for that. But first, I want to start off by congratulating Sean on an outstanding 20 year career in law enforcement. I first met Sean when he took my position with the city of Carlin in 2006 when I left to join the Elko Police Department. And although he only served with us for six months, it has been a pleasure and I'm fortunate to call him a friend and a colleague for the past 20 years. Throughout Sean's career, he has demonstrated a true commitment to the communities he has served. He had an exceptional career as a school resource officer and was instrumental in establishing and building that program into what it is today. His dedication to our youth, our schools, and building positive relationships with students, staff, and families have left a lasting impact on our community. Sean, I want to thank you for your professionalism, your friendship, and your countless hours you dedicated to serving the citizens. It has been a privilege to watch your career and to have you finish your law enforcement journey with the Oka Police Department. Congratulations on your well-earned retirement. I wish you and your family nothing but happiness, good health, and great adventures in your next chapter of life. Your service and your friendship over the last 20 years will be greatly appreciated. Well, I don't have a whole lot to say, but everything that I've worked on and did here in the community, I'm extremely proud of and I hope that I left a little bit of an imprint on some of the people that I've dealt with and that have dealt with me. And I appreciate you guys allowing me the opportunity to retire through the city of elko it was a it was a short time but it was a great honor and i thank you guys great thank you

All right, let's go back up to consent items five, A and B. Can I get a motion on those please?

Mr. Mayor, I'll move to approve the consent agenda items A and B as written. Second.

All right, all in favor of consent items A and B signify by saying aye. Aye. And I also vote aye for approval. all right item c we've had some input some spirited input from the public on this item and that is review consideration and possible approval for the ogle police department to apply for the u.s department of justice project safe neighborhoods grant this is a no match grant with an anticipated award ceiling of seventy seven thousand dollars in matters related there too for possible action. The Elko Police Department is requesting approval to apply for the U.S. Department of Justice Project Safe Neighborhoods PSN grant. Grant funding would be used to support the implementation of a block camera safety program within the City of Elko. This technology will serve as a force multiplier for the department allowing investigators to solve crimes more efficiently, improve response capabilities, and proactively reduce violent crime throughout the city of Elko. Investment in this technology will strengthen public safety, support ongoing investigations, and provide long-term crime reduction benefits for the community. Lieutenant Das? I think you said we have a representative from Falk on board?

Yes, we have a representative by the name of Katie that works for Falk.

Katie, can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you.

And we can hear you.

So our goal is to... I wanna start by saying first off, our department's down seven officers. We've never been full staffed except one time in my 20 years working for the city and that was in 2008. Since 2008, we've never been full staffed. So we're down seven officers currently and two officers who are on long term leave. That's nine officers total. That's two patrol shifts for our department that we're down. So we're trying to make up with resources such as FLOC where we can in those efforts. some past history that could help us that would have helped us if we had a program like flock we have two unsolved homicides and one missing person in the city of elko that had something like flock there's a good possibility that we'd be able to solve those murders or at least give us a lead to start heading down where we have no leads right now um i'm going to hand it over to katie because katie has more information i do on her programs and she works for flock and she can answer any questions better than i can

Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you guys this afternoon. Katie Dauphine from Flock Safety. I'm on the public affairs team. I'm happy to be a resource and answer any questions. But similar to what I said, Flock is a resource for police departments to solve crime. It's a tool for law enforcement to objectively gather evidence and help reduce crime in your neighborhoods. And so I know you might as well have specific questions on the technology. I'm happy to answer them and address any concerns you may have.

Great. I have a couple of questions for you, Katie. Some of the concerns from the public involve just invasion of privacy. I think that many people don't know exactly what it is. And can you describe how law enforcement utilizes your systems?

Yeah, so using the ALPR, the license plate reader technology, the technology is set up where it takes a picture of a vehicle signature and public-facing document, which is your license plate. And so if you're driving down the street, that's what it would gather. And how it works effectively for law enforcement is if there's a car driving through your city that is on a hot list as a stolen vehicle or they're wanted for a serious crime, police can get pinged. in that moment and say this suspect is wanted for a kidnapping, for example, and they're driving on Main Street, here's their coordinates. And so that's how law enforcement can quickly address any crime that's in the city. Like I said, this is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. There is multiple courts who have unanimously agreed across the country that the ALPR technology used for evidence is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. including the 9th and 11th Circuit Courts. So both on the local and federal levels, courts have unanimously agreed that ALPR technology does not violate Fourth Amendment rights.

And it's my understanding that the way that it would be used would be that if there was a suspect There would have to be a warrant and there would have to be a court order with their license plate number in order for that to be entered into the system. Is that correct?

Yeah, it would be if a suspect was driving, say they stole a car in Washington and they were driving through Nevada, they would have to be on that hot list on that FBI stolen vehicle list or something like that in order to get pinged. Um, I will say the other benefit of flock is helping solve current crime that's happening in community. Um, a lot of the questions that we get are, um, does flock captured more information than is needed? Um, no flock captures the vehicle signature and the license plate information. However, the reason that the benefit is if a victim is a, um, there's someone that's a victim of a hit and run, for example. They're not going to remember all seven or six digits on that license plate, but they might remember that there was a roof rack on a 4Runner and that was the person that hit them in traffic. So while they might remember a partial plate, there's other things on that vehicle that would be on the back of the vehicle that a suspect or a victim can remember. that would be useful in investigation that law enforcement can use using the flock technology. In addition, I do want to stress, I know this is something that has also been brought up as a concern. The standard that we practice is a 30 day retention period for all images on flock cameras. And so why that's important is because That 30-day retention period was set based on how long crimes can take to solve. Homicides, I believe, and Lieutenant can fact check me on this, I believe they're on average a 27-day period to solve a homicide or those more serious crimes or we're right in the middle of summer, everyone's going out of town. If your house is robbed when you're out of town and you come home, it's nice to have that information to see maybe there is someone who is driving in and out of your neighborhood that doesn't typically do it, and they can pull that flock information to help law enforcement solve those crimes. All the information after 30 days is permanently deleted. There's no backdoor way to access it. The only way that the information would stay is if it's actual images used in a evidence for a police case. And so that would be up to the police to retain that information, not block.

So it's a system that links to a database and unless that particular license plate is in your database, everything else is just noise. Is that correct?

Correct. And so this would be no different than if you were standing on the corner taking writing down everyone's license plates. This is all public information. And so if you're pinged because you have a stolen vehicle or it's a kidnapping suspect or a silver alert or a litany of other things, that's where the technology is especially useful because law enforcement can get real-time information on when the suspect is there.

And what about your database? How is your data secured?

Yeah, so once the image is captured, everything from when it captures on that camera to when it gets to its endpoint is an end-to-end secure base. So it is transferred to the AWS GovCloud, which is a server that government agencies, Department of Defense contractors, highly regulated companies from industries like finance and healthcare also use because of the compliance and security measures they have to house the sensitive data. In addition, Flock holds CJIS certifications, criminal justice information certifications, to house the sensitive information. in addition to SOC 2 Type 2 compliance and NDAA compliance. So we hold ourselves to a very high standard knowing that this is information that is sensitive that we house, and we make sure that all of our security measures that are in place to protect this data, we're holding ourselves to that standard with our certifications.

And I have several letters here that I'll read into the record. in a little bit, but one of the individuals indicated there are lots of documentation of these cameras being misused and easily able to be hacked. Can you address that concern, please?

Yeah, absolutely. We are aware of some claims on social media and others that are saying that flock cameras can be hacked. We have not had a hack happen. When we see these claims online, we take them very seriously. And so, for example, when there was a YouTube video posted, I hacked all these flock cameras. We had an independent agency out of the Miami-Dade Electronics Crime Task Force, which is used for like the FBI, Secret Service, very high standards in electronic crimes, investigate these claims, and they were found false. In addition, like we take, like I said, any hack accusations very seriously. And so we also have... auditing firms like Bishop Fox that will do penetrative testing on our system to make sure we are meeting the highest standards so we do not get hacked. No company will ever say they're hack-proof because that's just not the case, but we do everything we can in order to prevent a hack happening to any of our agencies or customers.

All right. And does anyone else have any questions for FLOC representative Katie?

I have a couple of comments that were given to me, so I would just appreciate if you could address these comments. The comments that I received were, again, with the overreach of the information that would be received by the cameras in regards to someone, let's say, doing a traffic infraction. They were speeding and then all of a sudden they get a speeding ticket that is mailed to them in the mail because of something that the camera caught. Or I'm trying to think of the other one, but can you address that one first?

Can I address that, Katie? Absolutely.

Yeah, thank you.

In Nevada, it's not legal. We can't legally send tickets through the mail. It has not been approved through the legislature yet. So there has to be a program in place through the legislature for us to even implement that. That's not something they do through FLAW.

So and Shane, the other comment that was made to me was along those lines as well. It was about registration. So like they're driving down the street, the camera catches their license plate and notifies that they have an expired registration. Same thing that they get a notification in the mail or a fine in the mail because their registration was expired.

That would be against Nevada law. We cannot do that.

I appreciate the comments.

And also I wanted to jump in really quick. Flock cameras do not, ALPR technology does not capture speeding. We're not a speed camera. In addition, any image that's captured on the flock camera is not associated with the driver's personal information. So we don't have vehicle registration. We don't have driver registration. We don't have any personal information that's associated with the driver.

Is there been any kind of study on locations where these would be placed in ALCO? and the need for them, or is it just kind of a, everybody's doing it, let's do it kind of thing, or is it that we actually study this out and see that we really need them? I've had a lot of people calling me, and of course they were concerned, and you know, we don't like to official any of us what they're saying, and they're concerned that they're wrong and they're down on us. So has that been done, those two years?

Um, Lieutenant, you can, you can jump in cause I know you've been working directly with our, um, our mapping team, but when we, um, work with an agency, we try to figure out the best points of egress and ingress of where the highest tracking points are in your city. Um, for example, if you have a neighboring town or someone that, you know, we get a lot of traffic through there, that's how we figure out, um, the best points of access for these cameras while also making sure they're not, um, infringing on private properties or anything like that. Lieutenant, I'm not sure if you have any more specifics on where the cameras would go.

Yeah, obviously, I mean, right now I'm not pointing out where they're going to go. They are in high traffic areas, not residential areas that we're looking to put them, where we get a lot of traffic flow, like IEDs, state routes, stuff like that, where we have a lot of ingress and egress.

And does the state have to approve us to have those on those state roads? So they need to be in on this conversation?

That I'm unsure of. I can get you an answer to that, but I'm unsure.

And we work closely with departments. If we're fortunate enough to get everything approved by your council, we work closely on the permitting. And so working with your state departments of transportation and your public safety is to make sure that we make it as seamless as possible and we can get the technology tool up as soon as possible for your community.

And we tend to ask how many cameras are in question here? 13, 13 cameras. Okay. At this point, I know board members might have other questions. This might address some of the questions that they have. I'm just going to go ahead and read. a few letters that were submitted this afternoon. Good evening, city council members. I'm writing to express my opposition to the proposed use of flock surveillance cameras in our community. One of the things that makes our area special is the value we place on independence, personal responsibility, and individual rights. Nevada has long carried a don't tread on me spirit and many of us choose to live here because we believe in limited government and protecting personal freedoms. While I appreciate the importance of public safety, I do not believe expanding surveillance is the right path for our community. Technologies like flock cameras collect information on the movements of everyday law-abiding citizens, and once this type of system is in place, it becomes much easier to expand its use over time. I encourage the Council to carefully weigh the long-term impact on privacy and civil liberties before moving forward. I believe we can support law enforcement while also preserving the freedoms that make our community unique. Thank you for your time and your service to our community. Respectfully, Cynthia Shedd. Dear members of the Elko City Council, my name is Matthew Shedd and I am writing to voice my strong opposition to contracting with flock industries to track and gather permanent data on law-abiding citizens. Due to my work schedule, I am unable to attend this meeting, but have a right as a citizen to make my voice heard. While I understand trying to add a layer of safety to our community, especially with the high incidence of drugs and DUI in the Elko area, this is not the easy solution that it appears on the surface. The amount of cases popping up around the country of misidentified vehicles, harassment of law-abiding citizens by law enforcement, and the data breaches that have leaked to foreign entities makes this a potential legal and civil rights hazard in the future. Besides these cases, the fundamental premise of technologies is that municipalities are able to outsource public safety away from the amazing members of local law enforcement that live in these towns and cities by utilizing constant surveillance on citizens it assumes guilt and is therefore incumbent on citizens to prove their innocence a direct violation of the fourth amendment which states quote the right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized." This right is not to be infringed in the name of convenience or safety. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, they who can give up essential liberty to obtain little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Matthew Shedd. And this is another letter from a Spring Creek resident. Jessica Lacey. Hello, I am in severe opposition to the police department's request to get flock cameras. These cameras violate our rights as citizens and are a severe overstep. There are lots of documentation of these cameras being misused and easily able to be hacked. Elko County does not need this and does not need to be spied on by the government. It looks good on paper, but it results in a huge overstep. These cameras result in people tracking and loss of life, liberty, and freedom for citizens. Please vote no. Thank you. And that was the final one. Anything in there that either of you would like to address?

I would like to address the violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court has already ruled on this type of case, not necessarily about cameras, but they ruled in Kansas v. Glover that there's no expectation of privacy when it comes to your license plates. Those are visible to everybody. Everybody can see them. So the fact that this is a Fourth Amendment violation is not accurate. And I can respect people's opinions and their desire not to be in favor of flock. And I don't have an issue with that. The issue we have is some arguments are made off of feelings and not facts. And these are facts. This is not a Fourth Amendment violation. As Katie pointed out, the Ninth Circuit, which is one of the most lenient circuit courts in the United States, has ruled that this is not a Fourth Amendment violation. And so the Supreme Court has upheld that. So that part is the hardest part when it comes to. this argument of the violation of the Fourth Amendment. We're not searching anybody's car. We're not seizing anybody's car. And so this is just taking a picture of your license plate and not giving information. I mean, obviously, we could run the license plate and get the information to who owns that vehicle, but FOC doesn't have that information. That information, again, is only stored for 30 days, and it can be shortened or extended based on jurisdictional laws or the local preference.

And I'll also jump in regarding concerns about abuse of the block system. That is something we take very seriously as well, which is why we built in guardrails within our system to ensure that if abuse does happen, that it's called out immediately and your system administrators who use the platform can specifically see that. Um, every time someone looks up a plate in the flock system, it has to have a reason, a case number and the officer who did it. And when they did it is also logged and it's never, that's never something that's been able to be deleted. Um, we also have what's called an audit assist tool. So if there is an anomaly of searches, say someone is searching a license plate 30 times. That would trigger in the system that would go to your system administrator, whether it's your chief or someone high up in your department to say, hey, this officer is searching for a plate 30 times. You might want to talk to them and see what's going on to see if there is potential abuses in the system. Because we understand it's sensitive information for sensitive reasons, and we want to make sure that abuses don't happen. And from there, if an abuse were to happen, that is up to your department's policies from enforcement. While it is unfortunate we do see these happen, the guardrails that we've built in place and the transparency we have in the product, make sure that we can call that out and making sure that we can make sure your department is aware of them.

and katie when um a license plate is entered into the database does flock audit to make sure that in fact that there's a um a signed warrant by a judge uh so meaning if i'm sorry that would be if a flock if someone is driving down the street who's wanted for an arrest that it hangs in the fox system is that your question In order for license plates to be entered into the database, is there some kind of audit process to make sure that what goes in there will pass muster, that it's legit, that it absolutely has a legal premise for being there?

If it's associated, like I said, in the FBI stolen vehicle database or something like that, that means that there's cause for that person to be put into those FBI databases. That is not a flock database. We simply belong to access to that database so we can get that information pinged to our system.

If that makes sense. Yeah, so if we have a homicide suspect that we're looking for, what we would say is we'd enter it into the FBI database that we currently use. this vehicle is wanted for homicide. We're looking for this vehicle. And that's where it would ping on a flock system. Hey, for instance, I can give you a specific instance that recently happened here. Just over a month ago, everybody got a ping on their phone about a child abduction in Carson City, Nevada, correct? An Amber Alert. An Amber Alert, yep. So that plate was put into a system to look for, hey, look for this plate. That went into the flock system. Because of flock, that child was found in Los Angeles County because it hit on the flock camera, which alerted the deputies in Los Angeles County. They were able to get that child taken in safely and the suspect taken into custody. So that's how it works. We're not entering misdemeanor warrants and saying, hey, I'm going to learn out for this vehicle on a misdemeanor warrant.

That's not what we're doing. So it links to the FBI. Correct. So there's. So Elko PD, for instance, would not have the ability to. to put plates in that system. Is that correct? Yeah. Only if they went through the FBI. Correct. Okay. All right.

And one thing I want to, I'm sorry, go ahead, Lieutenant.

You go ahead.

Oh, I just wanted to discuss the data that your agency actually owns as well. So I wanted to move on to a different topic. If that's OK. One thing I just forgot to mention at the top is that Elko owns 100% of your data. Block does not own any data that you work with. We don't sell data to third parties, and that's a common misconception out there. And that's clearly stated in your MSA in agreements with us. And so I do want to say there's misinformation saying that we have some ownership of your data. That's 100% untrue. You guys own 100% of your data, and we do not sell it.

and does the grant include um storage space if if we're in charge of the data then you know i think it's based on a cloud system right yeah you are not in charge of your data the data is housed and it's called the aws gov cloud um and this is a a cloud system that

like government agencies, Department of Defense contractors, highly regulated companies in highly regulated industries like finance and healthcare also use this type of cloud system because it's so secure and operates with such a high data security standard.

Okay. Any further questions?

What is the cost to the city per year to have this program active?

it's 34 000. so we pay 34 000 every year to have access to correct for the cameras and the grant is for three years is that correct it would cover the cost for three years yeah yes

Does that grant include the installation of the cameras or just the equipment itself and service? It's everything.

The initial grant is for $76,915. My understanding, I did not sit on the last two calls, but my understanding that is everything, covers everything. After the three years, then we would be responsible for $34,000.

How many cities and departments have dropped the system? Say in the last two years, I've heard Texas and Ohio, California, a lot of people try it and then they don't renew.

The number I don't have off the top of my head, but it's been a very low number compared to the amount of agencies we do serve across the country. We work with over... I'm sorry?

What's the reasoning why they're dropping?

There has been... Rightfully so. There's been a lot of public tension between technology as it comes to policing and making sure that everyone's data is secure. And we are needing that moment and we're making sure that we are addressing constituent concerns and addressing council concerns about this. I think that as there's more unease about maybe federal government tensions or other things, sometimes people just wanted to take a step back and evaluate the technology and go forward. However, I do say confidently, we have met that moment. We have the most transparent, accountable license plate reader technology, and we work to make sure that we have as much transparency going forward and everyone's data is secure.

Thank you. You know, at this time, I think I'm going to open it up for public comment on this item. If you have questions or concerns, please come forward.

Yes, for the record, Scott Gaworski, 878 2nd Street, and I rise on behalf of the Elko County Republican Party. First of all, I just want to thank the mayor for going ahead and polling this for separate discussion off the consent agenda. I think the questions raised indicate that was probably the best option to get through this. As we made clear in separate correspondence with the members of the council earlier today, the Elko County Republican Party at our county convention in February 2026 uh adopted a resolution uh opposing mass surveillance systems such as uh flock cameras being proposed here um i respectfully disagree with miss uh dolphin a and the lieutenant uh about how settled the law is on this i can't really comment on that because this isn't the proper form uh but i do want to emphasize i think there are some real problems this rises In the case that's been discussed, or the situations being discussed, such as stolen vehicles, Amber Alerts, confirmed drug traffickers, where there's already a pre-existing warrant that's been issued, it probably is not a Fourth Amendment violation. But to take one of the examples that Ms. Dauphiné went ahead and brought up in the case of a burger relief that happens in June. within the 30-day window in the police department is able to go through and identify suspicious activity in the neighborhood. First of all, that assumes that any type of analysis being done on this data is not just limited to pre-existing license plates. Otherwise, such an approach would not work. Similarly, with the use of flock cameras to do stuff such as identify partial license plates from accidents. So I think it is a bit incorrect to state that this is limited solely to pre-entered license plate numbers based on the testimony presented here. I think there's also another problem when we talk about the possibility of ancillary operations. And what I mean by that is the fact that we might be tracking the police, presumably we use this not just for immediate detention, for instance, a stolen car where you want to get it off the street, but presumably could also use it for warrants of surveillance. That is drug traffickers trying to identify patterns, movements, so on and so forth. And that brings the possibility of identifying, and the Lieutenant can correct my terminology, co-conspirators, right? So it's quite possible, for instance, a series of cameras placed around Elko might identify unusual traffic coming in and out of a neighborhood in close association with a vehicle being monitored that now become in effect possible people of interest to the police. And at the basic level, it would seem that the first thing you'd have to do is you'd have to tie the license plate to people, for instance, to identify that they live in the neighborhood. Moreover, when you get into issues of 13 cameras, the possibility of tracking movement across the city becomes very problematic. Again, the examples given here were based on immediate detention of criminal activity where it weren't already issued. But the possibility of tracking people to establish a pattern that then one can get a warrant is very, very concerning, particularly since this is an issue that the Supreme Court has been much tighter on outside United States v. Jones from 2012 in relationship with GPS tracking without a warrant was considered to be unconstitutional. Tracking a vehicle without a warrant across multiple cams also would seem to fall under this thing, which would open up the city to these concerns. So just to reiterate, we do stand opposed to this process. A lot of it has much more to do with the possibility of mission creep. None of this is intended to be a slide against our police department. We have nothing but respect for them. But this does open the door to some very questionable uses that we are not comfortable with. Thank you very much.

All right, anyone else on this item? Come on up, sir. And we'll need your name and address for the record. And then if you could sign in in the back when you're done, please.

Tyler Lennox. I live at 2305 Pratt Drive. And at a time when our sovereignty is under attack in so many ways, flock cameras are not a risk not worth taking. system has too many vulnerabilities which are easily exploited aside from big tech pushing to put us in digital prisons like china these systems can too easily fall into the hands of bad actors as you you can go watch ben torton on youtube hack into this system in under 30 seconds I mean, what an amazing tool for human traffickers. It's too easy to get through. It's insane. I mean, and if anybody thinks it won't be used for political purposes, then why does the CEO, Garrett Langley, refer to anybody that opposes block as terrorists? It's on video, too. I don't know. There's... A lot of communities are already canceling their Flock contracts. Denver removed all their cameras. Others like Cleveland voted to cancel their contract and Flock just left the cameras on. So is it really for us or is this all for them? And they're saying they're not selling it to third parties, but isn't the federal government a third party from the county? If they're supposed to be for us, then how come so much other stuff has access to it? And I don't know. $3,500 a camera just to run the thing, that's a lot. Then you're going to have people going and cutting them down, of course. It causes all kinds of problems, brings in bribery and all that to keep it going because they're making a killing off of this. I don't know. It's not something we need in Little Elko. I don't think we should be going down the same road as the CCP. We shouldn't be using that as our model. They literally called their surveillance system Skynet. Yeah. so i don't know that's that's what i have to say on it but thank you guys for hearing us out there's a whole lot that that don't they won't hear us out could you tell me that name of the person hacking it on jordan what was the name online uh ben jordan on you can find him on youtube ben jordan okay thank you no problem all right thank you guys mr weiner jim weiner two three seven eight corning

So knowing I was going to be here, I've had people submit questions and information to me to make sure and bring up. So this screenshot I was sent appears to be from the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU. And it goes on to say, so I'm reading this, you guys can think about what this says. Organizations like the ACLU have criticized FLOC and similar vendors for facilitating mass unwarranted surveillance of civilian movements. Consequently, some users, and this part speaks to what Councilman Stone was saying, some users such as the Los Angeles Police Department have chosen to end their contracts with FLOC, specifically citing civil liberty and privacy concerns. So I don't know if you have to vote on this issue tonight, but in the non-public world, in the private world, before we enter into things, we'll talk with current, we'll get a list of the cities, in this case, that they use, municipalities, and make inquiries. How's it working? Is it working good? Is it working the way they said it? List of users and a list of people that have left it so you can say, Why did you leave it? Wasn't it worth the money? So I would say get more information before you make a decision. This person's concern seems to be coming from information the ACLU has posted. So a question of the sales person for Flock might be, are you guys getting aclu feedback and have you had large places like the los angeles police department leave and can i get a list of your current uh i keep seeing vendors but it's the communities they're they're working with that you're working with and ones that have left so then someone within the city can do what we do in private enterprise and that's talk to these people and get the straight and skinny on it and maybe more insight will push you to making a decision one way or the other

All right, thank you. And just to be perfectly clear, this agenda item, we are not approving or disapproving a flock system. The police department is seeking, they're requesting approval to apply for a grant to the US Justice Department. And we don't even know if we get the grant or not. This is just for permission to apply.

for the grant this is not permission to implement anything so i wanted to make that clear oh one thing i wanted to address uh on the doctor's comments um in order for us to know co-conspirators we would have to be able to see who's driving the vehicle that's my understanding with flock you can't see who's driving a vehicle you can only see a license plate So, yes, you could track if we were tracking a drug organization like the cartels that we currently have living in Elko County. I hope nobody's naive to that. If we were tracking somebody from that organization. Yes, we could say this play. How many times does this play come from? the Rendon area to, or the Osano area or, you know, North side or wherever it's coming from to Elko, we could track that. Yes. We wouldn't be able to track who is driving that vehicle. We could track who the, what the vehicle is. So we don't know co-conspirators. I don't know who's driving that vehicle. And I can also tell you this. We can get more information out of your vehicle. If you get into an accident, it could tell me what you were doing exactly at the time you were driving it by downloading the software inside of there. So I can get more information downloading from your phone. knowing exactly where you were and what you were doing at a certain time, downloading that. And yes, I would need a warrant to do that. But in a criminal investigation, if I have probable cause, it's pretty simple to get.

All right. Any further public comment? Go ahead and close off. Public comment. Claire, you spent your career in law enforcement. What are your thoughts on this?

Well, the concerns that citizens come forward to as far as, you know, if somebody runs a stop sign or speed or something, we're going to go after a racial citation. I'm glad we got that cleared up because that isn't what the intent of the whole system is. The whole system is to catch bad guys is what it is. And if we'd had the system in place, say, clear back in the Ted Bundy days, we'd have probably ended up getting him long before he ended up killing more and more girls. Because he went all over the United States. They couldn't catch him. It is a tool. I think it'd have to be monitored very closely and to make sure that it's not abused. I think a lot of the concerns, people just aren't do which it does license place i mean you go when you leave here today go to walmart guess what you're on camera go to home depot you're on camera i don't care where you go on the city of elko you're on camera you know do i like that not necessarily but it's the way it is now and uh I don't know. I just hope that the people that are so dead set against this never have a child that gets abducted and where we could use it to track that child and bring that child back to the family in one piece. That's all I hope. That's all.

You know, I've been working closely with the police department for the last eight years as the liaison, along with Claire, and I know how stretched thin they are. You just heard Lieutenant Daz indicate we had seven or eight vacancies. I was at a First Tuesday event a week ago and it was hosted by the Nevada Highway Patrol Department of Public Safety. They have a 51% vacancy rate. The Sheriff's Office is down staff as well. I think we need to provide any kind of tools that we can to help these departments to leverage the resources that they have. And I would be in favor of at least giving it a shot for this grant. It doesn't cost us anything to apply for the grant. and there will be a public hearing if in fact we were successful in in getting the the funding for this and there would be a decision made at that time whether to go forward on this or not and i i think at that time we'd have a lot of people encouraging us to go forward with this. We've heard only from individuals that oppose it at this point, but I'm sure that if you did some polling, there would be a lot of people in the community in support of this. So I think we should at least move forward with seeking the grant funding.

And also give us the time to answer Mr. Weiner's questions. Maybe we can get some more information. So on the cities that are using it, it's had good luck. And the cities that aren't using it, it'll buy. And I think that's worth looking into. Give us some time to do that. When you apply for a grant, it doesn't take It doesn't happen overnight, obviously. If we apply for it, then we can make the decision if we get it. If we don't get it, then it's a done deal anyway.

I will gladly get on the phone with FLOC, find the agencies that use it, find the agencies that have left it, and call those agencies and bring it back to the council to report the findings. I'm totally transparent. Anybody that wants to come to my office and have a discussion about this, we can have a discussion. All that I ask is it remains civil and that we We have facts over feelings.

Lieutenant, I do have one additional question. This grant that you guys are requesting to apply for, is that the only use if you were to receive the grant that it could be applied to? Or could this be applied to a different safety system for public neighborhoods for their safety concerns?

So I think because we've specifically lined out flock, it would have to be that. If the council chose to not go forward with this program, we can pull the application and rewrite it for another program is what my understanding is or a different type of program.

Ready for motion? I sure am. Okay. This time, and hopefully this will line up what my thoughts are. At this time, I would make a motion to table this till the next meeting. And my reasonings are, and the findings are, so one, we can talk with the state and have their opinions on it. To also be able to check out the users of this program and what they've done with it and both the good and the bad, who's left and why they left. And also be able to get it out to the public a little more, possibly in the newspaper to get their opinions and table it to the next meeting so then we can have a little more feedback before we can make a decision is what I would like to see. Okay. When is the grant deadline?

The grant deadline is, I think they wanted it in, I'm not quite sure. I'd have to get back to you on that. Sorry.

I mean, do you think it's within two weeks?

um i think it's already coming up but if we had to pull our application we could pull our application and not go forward with it okay all right um we have a motion is there a second i was looking at your motionship okay all in favor of the motion say aye aye aye

Any nays? Nay. And I also vote nay. All right. Motion fails. No, it's tables. Thank you. Thank you for that recommendation.

Lieutenant Tass, can you check on that date and please let us know so that if we need to expedite this, that we can. Thank you.

All right. Let's go to appropriations. We have... several items on there from several different budget years. We have regular warrants for fiscal year 2025-2026 in the amount of $690,318.32. So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. And I also vote aye. Fiscal year 2026, 2027 payables in the amount of $1,146,916.71. So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. And I also vote aye. And then we have hand cut checks. This is for both fiscal year 25, 26 and 26, 27 in the amount of $2,203,118.12. So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. And I also vote aye. And then there was a reimbursement for myself for a trip that I took to Carson City to meet with Nevada League of Cities and Governor Lombardo. And that is from the previous year in the amount of $318.20. So moved. Second. Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. And I'll abstain on that one. All right, let's go to appropriations. Item B, review consideration and possible award of a bid for the 2026 convention drive project and matters related thereto for possible action. Council approved the solicitation for the 2026 Convention Drive Project on April 28th, 2026. Four bids were submitted and reviewed by the city staff. The bids received range in value from $1,005,773.05 to $1,777,000. including the one bid alternate. All four bids were deemed responsive. Staff recommends that the City Council award the contract to Element Construction, the lowest responsive bidder, for $1,005,773.05. Paul, what's going on? We have four bidders. and four responsive bids. I don't remember.

That never happens, does it? I don't know. Maybe they're figuring it out. So yeah, this is for our convention drive project. Pretty well spelled out and what you read off there, unless you guys have any questions.

All right, I have none. Anyone?

Just to refresh everyone's memory, can you let us know what the original engineer's estimate was on this project?

The engineer's estimate was $1,068,000. We budgeted $1,075,000. A little under budget.

Good. Thank you. That's good.

Yeah, that was good figuring on that. Comments or concerns from the public on this item? All right, hearing none, is there a motion?

I'll make a motion to award the contract for Public Works 2026 Convention Drive project to Element Construction as the lowest responsive bidder for $1,005,773.05, which includes the one bid alternate. Second. All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. And I also vote aye. Thank you.

All right, thanks, Paul. All right, unfinished business, item 9A, review, consideration and discussion and possible appointment of one member to the Ruby View Golf Course Advisory Committee and matters related thereto for possible action. Ruby View Golf Course Advisory Committee currently has one vacant position for a two-year term set to expire on December 31st, 2027. During the recruitment period, staff received two letters expressing interest to serve on the committee. One from Mr. Jim Romero and one from Mr. Don Dwyer. James.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of City Council. So we have two interested persons wanting to serve on this committee. I wanted to give just a brief background on how the different positions on the committee. So it's a five-member committee. We have a council representative who's Claire Morris. We have a men's association representative, a women's association representative, a junior golf representative, and we have an at-large position on the board. This vacancy is that at-large. Chris Johnson resigned his position earlier in the year, and that's the one we're looking to replace tonight. I believe both applicants are in the audience. At least they told me they would be here. So hopefully you've had a chance to read their letters and get a little bit of background on them. But feel free to have them speak to you, tell them a little bit more about themselves, and maybe ask them some questions as well.

All right. I'll take them in order if they feel so led. Is Jim Romero here? Yeah. Come on up, Jim, and give us the pitch. Why should we hire you? This is your job interview.

Yes, I know this is where the public positions take Chris Jones' spot. But right now, I'm the president of the Men's Association. I've been there for, God, I can't remember, five years or something like that. I've gone through the low parts of the golf course with Duncan in there. I've been trying to push this golf course outside of Elkville City limits. On our big tournaments, I travel. I spend my own money on gas to sponsor tournaments, get players to come in. On our men's association, we push to get junior golf, high school golf. We want to keep the future and we want to keep this golf course. There's a lot of things that I could see the golf course going. I mean, that the golf course is coming around real good. this position this board this council board that you guys made is probably the best thing i think the city could have done for this golf course because now players can come to the members of the boards and bring up their concerns and a lot of players come people come up to me because i'm the president like i said you got to go to the council and so i think it'd be better you know kind of now if i got on board i could bring up these issues instead of going, you know, pass it on, pass it on. So that's about all I got.

All right. Thank you. Is Don Dwyer in the house?

Hello, Don Dwyer, 223 Airy Lane. So thank you for allowing me to come and talk. Really interested in joining the advisory board. I feel like the golf course is a great asset to our community and would love to be a part of helping guide on some decisions and how we can continue to value that asset within our city and help it grow and improve. uh through my experience i've been on you know different uh leadership positions as well as other advisory boards for academics and uh you know enjoy being a part of a team being able to come up with new ideas and out of the box thinking on how we can make things improve as well as being able to collaborate and you know work as part of a larger team and be able to provide uh advice and and information on you know collective thinking so know being able to take in all kinds of different information and be able to look at how that affects a whole group and and how do you provide that information and make the best decision based on the information that you have so you know i've been in this community for 20 years moved here when i was really really young as you can tell but uh you know really would look forward to being a part of of this group so thank you all right thank you all right um

I think I'm going to have to. I don't spend a lot of time golfing, unfortunately. Not that I wouldn't like to, but I think I need to lean on the two golfers here on the board and get some input from them.

Calling me a golfer is kind of a stretch of the term itself, but I do spend quite a bit of time at the golf course. Jim Romero has been very much involved in it the whole time I've been up there. very involved with the men's association. He's concerned about the golf course. It's definitely going in the right direction compared to what it was a few years ago. And it's getting a lot more play. If you don't have a tee time right now, you're not going to play, which is good because that's what we want is to get as many people through that course as we possibly can. And as a result of that, I mean, it's nice. We got two people that put in for the position. I don't know Mr. Dyer at all, other than what I read. Very impressive. But I'd have to lean before Jim Romero just because of his background and what he's done with the golf course so far.

All right. Go for number two. All right.

With me, Jim replaced me as the president, and I basically had to step down off of there because of being on the city council. So Jim's done a fantastic job. He has a passion for it up there. He truly does. And I truly think he would be excellent on there. Mr. Dwyer sounds like he's got a passion as well. But again, I've never really sat down and talked with you a ton about it or something like that. But again, I'm going to have to agree with Claire. I think Jim would be good. I think he would be excellent in the position.

I guess the one concern I have is that the men's league already has a representative on the board. And so I would have to lean toward Mr. Dwyer. And so I guess that's because it is the at large position. And I respect your opinions from your dealings with Mr. Romero.

Question if he takes if we decide to go to the gym on this, does he have to leave his other position? as president or is that kind of both?

I don't know.

I know nothing about golf. I can't get through. I can't get through the windmill. Windmill at the Miniature Golf is my limit.

It's an only advisory board.

Okay, good. That's great.

It has nothing to do with the financials, I don't think. They really have no.

They would probably be no better than I would. Whatever the advisory board decides on, it comes to us for final approval. Okay.

Dave, do you have input?

So maybe I need a little bit more detail about the other position. You're talking about whether he'd have to leave as the head of the men's league? I think that was the question. And what are his obligations there? Is that a city sponsored? Because I'm not a golfer, and so I think that that's...

The men's association finances that. They have dues that...

they put in a bank and take care of that they have a board a treasure and things like that it's a private organization yes yes okay so it's not city sponsored uh i i am i don't i don't think so i don't think there's any rule against him occupying both positions at the same time now if there were some sort of a pecuniary benefit or something like that that he it sounds like all of this is just volunteer work and so there's really no sort of uh financial benefit to doing this. I don't think that, you know, I'm kind of thinking in terms of like the Ethics in Government Act, and I don't think that that would create a problem from what you've explained to me.

The only benefit you receive is you get to work your butt off and get paid nothing. That's the impression I'm getting, yeah.

And your complaint department too. Pretty much, yes.

So my only commentary is, Mr. Romero, I don't know you. I'm also not a golfer. I do personally know Mr. Dwyer, and I know that he's done some great service for the community. And I also kind of lean a little bit along with the mayor that there would be a small conflict of interest as Men's League already has a representative on the board, and I'd like to see some diversity in there as well. But just kind of my comments.

All right. Any comments from the public on this item? room is silent all right um is there a motion mr mayor i move to approve jim romero to fill the uh making position we have for the golf course advisory committee all right is there a second i'll second that all in favor say hi hi any nays

I'm gonna say nay.

And I'll say nay too. All right. Congratulations, Mr. Romero. And thank you both so much for stepping up for public service. We greatly appreciate it. These advisory committees are very essential to running effective services. So we greatly appreciate that. All right, so let's move on to new business. Looks like we have another board vacancy here. Item 10A, review consideration and discussion for the appointment of two members to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and matters related thereto for possible action. Since advertising for vacant positions on the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, staff has received three letters of interest from Jay Holladay, St. James, Jay Holladay, let me try this for the third time. This is really spaced out here. Jay Holladay, St. James, Chelsea Williams, and Bailey Billington Benson. The appointments will be for the remainder of the terms expiring

on june 30th 2027. james thank you again mr mayor and members of the city council this is a similar item to the previous one however this is a completely different advisory board this is the parks and recreation advisory board we had a vacant position for a little bit a while due to a member moved out of state and so we originally going to advertise for that position and then unfortunately we had a long time serving member who on who passed away recently fred badia and so that created two vacant positions on the board and tonight we have three letters of interest I believe at least two are present here in the room, and I believe that one will be joining us remotely. That would be Chelsea Williams, Jay, and Bailey, I believe are here present tonight. So I think they're all in a position to where they could introduce themselves and also take questions.

And then Chelsea is not online.

Okay. All right. Let's hear from Chelsea first.

She's not online.

Oh, she's not online. Pardon me. Okay. All right. Let's go ahead and hear from Mr. J. Holiday St. James. Oh, my apologies. Ms. I butchered your name trying to read it with all the spaces in it and then I had insult injury did that so my apologies.

So I'm Jay Holliday, 129 Glen Vista Drive and I applied for this position. I'm from a military family and in the military it's not parks and recreation, it's moral and welfare and recreation. So the Parks and Recreation Department serves as more than just a place to physically get out. It serves as a community meeting hub for businesses, social groups, families. And I also feel that it kind of works to eliminate some economic barriers that we see in Elko, such as kids accessing the resource of recreation. but also civil groups locally, like feeding families in the park, school meals during the summer, things like that. So I think that the parks and recreation has a lot of potential to do more than just be a playground for the community. I also have a lot of board experience, primarily in children's nonprofits, 501c3s, and I currently own founded St. James Tonics. The whole vision behind that is that recreation and health shouldn't be separate. We offer elevated adaptogen drinks for wellness, focus, things like that. And just going along those lines of, health and recreation shouldn't be separate. I feel that this position really fits my personal and professional goals and that I hope I have a lot to give back to the community. I previously founded workout groups, Busy Mom Gets Fit down in San Angelo, Texas, and look forward to supporting the programs that are already there on the vendor side, on the community services side, and also on the physical health and recreation side. And I'm open to any questions. Thank you.

All right. Not at this time. Thank you for stepping up. And then our second candidate here is Bailey Billington Benson. Come on up, Bailey.

Good evening, everyone. Again, Bailey Bellington Benson, 2767 Copper Trail. I am a born and raised local resident here. I did make the mistake of moving out of state for a short time and then we righted our error and moved back home. I grew up. in these parks and mentioned Fred Badia and he's actually a relative of mine as well. So being able to follow in his footsteps and help serve the community is near and dear to my heart. I've served on the Arts and Culture Advisory Board for quite a few years prior to moving. So I'm very familiar with how all these departments and advisory councils work. I've also in previous lives in different working careers, I have worked with the city parks and rec for a lot of community events. So again, I've got a lot of previous experience working with the department and I just obviously have a strong love of this community. It's my home. So any questions?

Not at this time. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And is Ms. Williams on? She is not online. Okay. All right. Well, I think that makes it easy for the board when we've got two vacancies and two applicants here in person. Any thoughts from the board on this? I'm good with that.

I will make the motion to appoint two new members to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board for the remainder of the term expiring June 30th, 2027. Those two members being Jay Holiday St. James and Ms. Bailey Billington Benson.

All right. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second. All right. All in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. And aye for approval. Congratulations to both of you.

Can I just make a little point of clarification on the term? This is a little, typically these are four-year terms. When we have vacancies or we have resignations, we reappoint for the remainder of that term. So this will be basically a year term. Both of, all of our board members are eligible to reapply when that is up. Similar process. So thank you.

right thanks james all right we've got a um public hearing coming up at the bottom of the hour and um i think probably we'll just go ahead and take a break and go into public hearing at 5 30 so i'm going to call for a recess 10 minutes this conference will now be recorded happily we have just one item on our public hearing agenda actually are there two no just one uh item a review consideration and possible action on resolution number 1126 a resolution and order vacating a portion of river street right-of-way consisting of an approximately 1700 square feet adjacent to apn001-630010 which is located within the city of oakland nevada to the budding property owner iva christensen trustee of the pamela caldwell family trust dated may 28 2020 filed and processed as Vacation 126 and matters related thereto for possible action. NRS 278.480 states, if the governing body is satisfied that the public will not be materially injured by the proposed vacation, it shall order the street or easement vacated. Kathy.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, thank you. I just want to point out that In all of our old mapping practices, we were dedicating right-of-ways that were extremely wide. We are not dedicating right-of-ways of that width now. So all of our tree streets, all of River, Douglas, all of them were extremely wide when they were originally dedicated in the original maps of the City of Elko. So with that, we have narrowed up streets with our curb gutter sidewalk construction based on what our master plan calls out based on the classification of that roadway. And it then leads approximately 10 feet from the back of the sidewalk to their existing property line. Well, we're not going to turn River Street, this portion of River Street, which is only a block till it hits a dead end and turns. We don't have any plans of turning this into a three-, four-lane roadway at any time. So this 10 feet, in staff's opinion, is excess right-of-way. It's not necessary. And we do support the vacation of this because what that does is that moves that property line from where it is existing to out where it's going to be at the back of the sidewalk where they're installing the new sidewalk along River Street. So it is then part of their property. It's then taxed as their property with property taxes, but it's also the ability of them to be able to landscape it, maintain it and move forward with their development. So we are in support of this vacation. We do believe that it is excess right of way along River Street and that it will not injure the public.

all right um questions or concerns from the public on this item um council questions or a motion please mr round move to adopt resolution number 11-26 which approves vacation 1-26 okay is there a second second all right all in favor of the motion say hi hi and i also vote aye for approval All right, and now we can go back up. now that we've had our public hearing and we can hear item 10B under new business, review consideration and possible acceptance of a grant of easement for public utilities over a portion of River Street adjacent to APN 001630010 between Iva Christensen, trustee of the Pamela Caldwell Family Trust dated May 28, 2020, and the City of Elko matters related there to possible action. As part of the approval of Vacation 126, the City of Elko has requested that a public utility easement be granted over the entire portion of the River Street right-of-way, which is proposed to be vacated by Resolution 1126. Kathy.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thank you. When we receive an application for a vacation of right of way, we have to notify all of the public utilities within our community. And when we notify the public utilities, we have a form that they need to fill out that states that they are requesting an easement or that they are not requesting an easement. And if any one of them requests an easement, then we do require this area to have an easement granted over it. Keep in mind that that 10 foot that we just now are vacating is now going to be what would be required as setback anyways. So they wouldn't be able to be built anything in that area in this particular zoning district. But there is a utility in that area so therefore the utility companies have come back and said we want a public utility over that easement over that area so this is granting that public utility easement from the property owner to the city of elko it does allow any public utilities to then occupy that 10 feet area So we do have Southwest Gas is not satisfied with the grant of easement document that we have provided. So they are requiring that the property owner also grant them an easement as part of this. And we will make sure that that easement is, we're working with the applicant now on that That easement will come back to the city of Elko. We will record that at the same time as as this grant of easement. So it all gets recorded and we're we're aware of they're getting recordings.

So that doesn't need to be mentioned in the motion.

No, it's just I mention it for you because it may be a while before we get that grant of easement back from the applicant.

All right. Questions or concerns from the public on this item? Aye. Hearing none, is there a motion?

I'll make a motion to accept the grant of easement for a public utility easement as presented.

Second. All right. All in favor, you know what to do. Aye. And I also vote aye. all right uh that brings us down to item 11a resolution and ordinance review consideration and possible approval of resolution number 826 resolution providing for the transfer of the city's 2026 private activity bond cap to the Nevada Rural Housing Authority and matters related thereto for possible action. And Jan, do you want to introduce our guest, Mr. Brewer, right?

Yes, Mr. Bill Brewer, who is the Executive Director of the Nevada Rural Housing is here to present.

Thank you very much. I appreciate this opportunity. I am Bill Brewer, Executive Director for Nevada Rural Housing. We are here to request a transfer of the city's bond cap. Just for your information, we've been in business now for more than 50 years. We've had our single-family housing program since 2006, so 20 years. Over the 20 years, we've issued about $2.5 billion in mortgages. That's with a B. About 11,000 homebuyers assisted during that time across the state. So really a substantial program. We assist 1,300 rentals every year. We have about... Eight hundred and fifty-one housing units across rural Nevada, with another five hundred expected in the next couple of years. Since two thousand and six, Elko, the city of Elko, has benefited from a hundred million in mortgages to 425 home buyers. So a pretty good return to Elko also. That's with about 15 million in transferred bond cap to us. So for your $15 million investment, you've gotten about 100 million in mortgages. for your people here in town of course just a reminder bond cap is stated in terms of dollars but it's not really dollars it's it's the opportunity for the city to issue tax exempt debt it's allocated by the national treasury and the state reallocates part of that to each local community and County And so Belco receives almost a million and a half in the transfer. We're asking to transfer that to NRH. That way we can combine all those transfers from other communities and really get some good work done with our single family housing program. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

How many years you've been coming out here, Bill? It's been a few, Mayor. It has been. I'm not going to see you next year. I'm getting retired by the legislature. I'm sorry about that. I'm retiring myself, so it'll be somebody else anyway. Okay. Well, good. Well, thank you for coming out every year. This is a great program for first-time buyers. I think it really helps accelerate the amount of time that they can reach their goal of home ownership. And it's an incredibly creative program too, to utilize something that we're not utilizing at no risk. Which is pretty nice. It really is. Definitely. All right. Any questions?

Questions or concerns from the public?

Hearing none, is there a motion?

Mr. Mayor, I'll move to approve resolution number 08-26, a resolution providing the transfer of City's 2026 private activity bond cap to the Nevada Rural Housing Authority.

I'll second that.

All right. Motion in the second. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. And I also vote aye for approval.

Thank you, and happy retirement to you. Thank you very much. I have some cards here, too, for quick links to our housing programs, our rental program, and also the homeownership program. I'll give it to your clerk, and whoever would like one, that would be great. Awesome. Thank you very much.

And Marissa, does the Realtors Board have that information, I would hope? Have you ever had any clients that have tapped into that?

We have. We actually have. And I think you've presented to our board previously. I believe it was Mr. Hickey that presented to us.

all right we have here item 12a petition appeal and communications review consideration and possible approval of a variance related to the improvement of the existing structures located at 729 douglas street from Section 385, subsection 3 of the Elko City Code, which stipulates a lowest floor elevation requirement of two feet above the base flood elevation, allowing the building to remain at the existing finished floor elevation matters related thereto for possible action. The property owner is proposing building and site upgrades to the existing structures and property at 729 Douglas Street. The estimated value of the remodel exceeds 50% of the estimated property value. Therefore, the development is considered substantial improvement and floodplain management code applies. The owner's engineer has filed a variance request to maintain the existing finish floor elevation, which is 0.3 feet to 1.7 feet above base flood elevation, rather than the two feet above base flood elevation stipulated in code. And I'll just indicate on this that I am an acquaintance of the applicant and staff is recommending approval on this. I will not vote on it, but I have no problem presiding over this hearing.

I do need to make a comment as well, Mayor, that I do have a pecuniary interest to the engineer and contractor that is working on this project. So therefore, I need to abstain from any commentary on this.

All right. Anyone else wanting to bail out? I think that leaves us. All right. Kathy.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thank you. You know, it's interesting because I've been here for many, many years and we go years without having a variance on a FEMA. variance for a property and then now you've had two in the last two months of City Council meetings. So this one was triggered because of a permit that comes in for a remodel on this property and it is partially in the flood zone. And this particular property, keep in mind that the variance pertains to this parcel, this APN. There are multiple structures on this particular parcel, and they all have different floor elevations. But the way our Elko City Code reads that the Elevation of that floor, that finished floor elevation must be constructed two feet higher than the base flood elevation. And FEMA requires that it be at or above the base flood elevation. So they all meet, all three of the finished floor elevations that have been provided by Lana Carter here in the audience for this application, they all three meet the FEMA requirement. but none of them meet the City of Elko requirement. So the variance is really to meet the City of Elko requirement. And as stated, there is one that is just 0.3 feet off, and then there's another one that's 1.7 feet off. So keep in mind that this variance is for the entire parcel. It's not based on each building, because all three buildings would be included in this variance with the approval. And it would be for the 1.7, which is the maximum variance from the Elko City Code for this variance.

And it's not like as if you can lift the building up and jack it up.

You can't. And they meet the FEMA requirement. They just don't meet the City of Elko requirement.

Questions or concerns from the public on this item? All right. Hearing none, if there are no questions, I'm ready for a motion.

And Mr. Mayor, I move to approve the grants related to the substantial improvement located at APN 001358006, including 729 Douglas Street from Section 3-8-5, Subsection 3 of the Elko City Code, allowing finished floor of the structure to remain at their existing finished floor elevation of 0.3 feet to 1.7 feet above the base flood elevations. Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye abstain. Abstain. All right. Motion passes. All right. Subdivisions. Item 14A. review consideration and possible conditional acceptance of subdivision improvements for the copper trails phase three unit one subdivision and matters related thereto for possible action on september 9th 2025 the city council approved the final map for Copper Trails Phase 3, Unit 1. Subsequently, a performance and maintenance agreement was executed on September 12, 2025, requiring the developer to complete all subdivision improvements within 24 months. The developer has requested final acceptance of the subdivision improvements. City staff have reviewed the project and determine that the subdivision improvements have been substantially completed in accordance with the approved plans and specifications. City has received the required certification from the engineer of records certifying that the improvements have been constructed in substantial conformance with the approved plans. A final walkthrough of the project identified eight remaining punch list items that must still be completed including installation of a street light and mailbox completion of water testing documentation monument stamping manhole cleanup and grouting hydrant curb painting and construction of the required hammerhead turnaround To guarantee completion of the remaining punch list items, the existing performance bond will be reduced to $20,065.50, representing the estimated cost of the unfinished work. The developer shall also provide a 12-month maintenance bond in the amount The maintenance period shall commence upon the city council's acceptance of the subdivision improvements provided that the maintenance security has been submitted to and approved by the city. No certificates of occupancy will be issued for lots within the subdivision until all remaining bonded work has been completed to the satisfaction of the city. The remaining work includes the punch list items identified during the final walkthrough. Kathy, again.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thank you. Don't blame me for the long agenda item. I did not write that.

Did AI write it?

No, I'm just filling in today. There's some other initials on the bottom of that. But I just do want to say, you know, we're super proud of Luke. He was paving one of the first ones of the season this year instead of the last one of the season. It's a beautiful job. It's a great subdivision. We're super excited to start issuing these permits on this because it will be a smaller lot size and it's going to be a different product. So we're excited for that. So with that, the city felt that it was a great product. We received all of our certifications. The items that were remaining were minor enough that we feel that substantial completion is warranted and we will hold back that money until it is final. This does allow the developer to start obtaining some building permits.

I just wanted to confirm with you, too, that the gravel turnaround, the pavement sets in this letter that would be completed or at least, yes, that's completed by today. Has that been completed? It did not get completed today. Am I allowed to ask questions? Do you have a date of when that's going to be completed, Luke?

So it's I mean it's there it's just it needs to be cleaned up and I needed another load of base to finish it up and my dump truck went down so I would like to say, actually, I'll probably, and then I would have my, I was going to have my guys go get it out of my dump trailer and flat tire. So hopefully this week, that's how I'm, I mean, I was shooting for the beginning of the week, probably the end of the week, hopefully soon.

I don't have a date. Certainly by the time we have our next meeting though. Yes. Okay. You'll, you'll commit to that.

Okay. Okay.

All right, any other questions for the applicant? Any questions or concerns from the public on this item? All right, looks like another nice project, Luke, that'll bring smaller size product onto the market. I think there's plenty of demand for that. I'm no realtor, but I would imagine there's plenty of demand for a lower priced product right now with the cost per square foot being what it is. So thank you for your continued investments in the city, and I will entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor, I'll move to accept the substantial completion of public improvements for copper trials phase three, unit one. Authorize reduction of the performance security to $20,065.50 for completion of the remaining punch list items. require a maintenance bond in the amount of $39,996.23 for a 12-month maintenance period, and direct that no certificates of occupancy be issued until all remaining bonded work has been completed to the satisfaction of the city.

All right, is there a second? We have a motion and a second by Claire. All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. And I also vote aye. All right. I think that we've covered everything on the reports. I'm sure I'll be corrected if I haven't. I thought the fireworks show was really nice. It was kind of a pivot away from the regular. I know that the Lions Club took over that responsibility. And it's a big lift putting that program together each year and hopefully it'll be able to continue flourishing and growing in the future. Saw the fire trucks that was strategically stationed there by the Basque House. I think that was a great place to to have that, and there must have been a hell of a lot of illegal fireworks going off. Everything outside of the fairgrounds was illegal, correct? That's what I thought, yeah. And there weren't any fires? Oh, three, okay.

At least there's none by my house this year.

There was a lot of activity going on up there on the reservation.

They stayed pretty active until about midnight.

All right. And it's been really quiet the last couple of weeks and I had a vacation in there. So I'm rested and ready. Anybody else have anything else?

Yeah, I have some, not some concerns, but some concerns from some neighbors. And I think we could fix it just by some, get some information out to the users. Because we know everybody, we're doing the, Water meters, yeah. And not one person has complained about the cost of water. I mean, they realize that the water is going to go up. There's no answers for buts. know not one person has mentioned anything but what they don't understand and i think we can fix it just by for some public service announcements or getting getting out in the in the view of transparency that because their sewer bill also went up four times you know and people don't understand that they look at their bill and they say holy mackerel my water bill went up and i understand that because i'm watering my grass Why did my sewer bill go up? I'm not using the sewer anymore. The irrigation doesn't go into the sewer, so they have questions about that. I think we need to be a little bit more transparent, explain to the people what's going on because it's It's caused a lot of issues. I'm sure that the people that are next door have probably gotten a lot of slack from it too, but I think it can be fixed. It just needs to be explained better to the public what's going on. And I don't know what the answer is and I... Yeah, Jim, come on up.

I gotta talk to Jim a little bit.

That's Silver Plants Water, a $60 to $70 million facility. Dan can answer that question better than I can.

yeah that's probably about right yeah it's a multi-million dollar facility but i do i do agree i think that It isn't necessarily, I think what I'm getting from Claire is it isn't necessarily about the rate or what it is, but we need to communicate out in front of it. And we've been really communicating about the water meter install, but not about the sewer rate impact. And so I'm glad you worded it that way. And I think we can definitely do some of that, especially with our door hangers and some different things like that.

I mean, when a sewer bill goes from 50 to 200 in one month, that's a substantial increase. I mean, people look at their bill and they think, holy mackerel. You know, like, I understand the water usage, and I haven't heard one complain about that. They understand, you know, they're going to take care of the yard the way they see fit, and if it costs them more money, then so be it. But they didn't understand the sewer side of it.

Yeah, that makes sense.

don't know how big your neighbor neighbor's yard is but it sounding to me like he may have a water leak and because that'll drive his sewer rate up as well and so um please have him get a hold of us because we now have access to our system to where we can actually look at their flow per hour and see if they've got a water leak if their meter goes to zero at any time they don't have a water leak but if it never goes to zero you've got a water leak, which can cost you a lot of money. And it could be as simple as a running toilet, right? And so those are concerns that we definitely want to hear about and take a look at. But I want to, just as an attempt to clarify how we bill, in this, we do not ever bill 100% of how much water you use for your sewer. So in the wintertime, We can safely say that close to 100% of all the water that you use goes as it goes in your sewer right. But so we discount year round 53% we charge sewer at 47% of your water rate usage so even in the winter time you're getting. only being charged 47% of that rate for the 100% of water that you're using. So somehow we have to account for that loss of 100% in the wintertime for revenue. So that's why we discount to try to make it even year round. And none of this was put in there by the current people or the current city staff. This was all voted on in the code a long time ago. We are currently having our consultant that's helping us walk through this process, look at the sewer rates and look at what other entities are doing across the US and how they're trying to build um effectively and evenly throughout their their um their communities there's been a number of different ways that he's he's seen um and again we're that's gonna we're trying to change the code so that we we have it uh it's more consistent of course that's going to have to come in from the board to approve so we'll bring back a multiple options for the board to look at and try to come up with a rate. What I will tell you is the preliminary numbers that we're seeing is if we go to a flat rate sewer like we have been for the customers that are paying the flat rate water right now, we are going to have to raise our sewer rates. And we may have to do that anyhow, because one of the things that we've noticed is as people use less water, we are getting less revenue off our sewer. So we've already noticed a little bit of a dip there. So I don't have all the answers. I'm just trying to bring that information out for everybody. So I'll field some more questions if anybody has any.

I'll just say my residence is on a meter and in wintertime, it's like $27.

Yeah. Now, if we charge 100%, of course, it wouldn't be that, right? So we've talked about a reduced rate in the wintertime, or I mean, in the summertime. and then 100% in the wintertime, right, where you charge for the sewer. That way everybody's paying. Again, we don't have all the answers yet, but we've talked about different avenues and different things that we can do. So, Jan, if you want to make a comment.

Yeah, I just also wanted to add that I think that the water department as a whole we need to wait about a year or two to see where the revenue is going to come in our anticipation is the revenue is going to go down because use is going to go down but we're also hopeful that our costs will go down because our pumping will go down and so um all of this is estimated based on use and people discovering they have leaks that they never knew they had. We've already run into some of those. Thank heavens. And so we're saving that water. And so that'll be helpful. But I agree with Claire. I think we can get some communication out there, whether it's in emails or letters or door hangers or different things. I think that we can definitely get some communication out there. One more thing that the contractor is estimating at this time is that if the water usage continues to decrease, the sewer rate is actually probably a fair rate is more of a 64% versus a 47%. That doesn't mean we're intending on doing that. I'm just saying we need some history, I believe, before we can really make those decisions and bring them to the city council.

Nicole, can you guys bring up this on the city website? It's under... Is it under the water department? I think it's under finance.

Right at the bottom.

I think. No, that's not it.

I think it's under the water department.

There it is. So this is a helpful tool that Julie put together that will help you if you are trying to figure out how your water bill works and why it's billed the way it is. If you scroll down a little bit, you'll see in the wintertime, if you look at the graph, how it'll drop off. And this is, I don't know whose water bill she used. you know, it drops dramatically in the winter time. And I'm not sure what happened there in January, but it looks like they might've had maybe a little bit of a water leak. So that's one way to look at this. Now, if you go back up to on the left there, if you change like 27 to like 30 and then click off of it, that'll see how it changed the total bill at the bottom. That kind of helps you. And that goes on per 1,000 gallons, which we still build per 1,000 gallons, but we monitor per gallon. I'm not sure if that makes any sense. But that way we can catch leaks and things like that, right? And people having issues with their meter.

If someone has a leaking toilet, how much water could that consume within a month, do you think?

Well, uh, I think they can run up to like four or five gallons an hour or, or more. Some of them depends on how bad they leak. Right. So some toilets I've seen, you know, you'll hear them every once in a while, you know, and fill up, those are probably leaking half a gallon an hour or so, but they can leak a lot of water. And it's amazing. If you add that up, if you say four gallons an hour and you add that up by 24 hours, By 60 days or 30 days in a month, that can add up quickly. And a lot of gallons can run through a leaking toilet.

Like Jim said, the registers are using registering gallons instead of 1,000. So it's registering everything, even the low flows.

Good. No good point on that. All right. Anyone else? Thank you.

Mayor, it's always amazing to me when people say there's nothing to do in Elko. We've got so many things going on. With Convention Center, just a few things in between now and our next meeting. Elko Trail Fest is the 23rd through the 25th, which is going to take in the whole county, all trail rides all over. So a lot of fun to get involved with that and still are signing up for that. Chamber of Commerce has the Sherman Dinner on the 25th. This weekend is the Relay for Life at the Adobe Middle School is where it's been moved this year because of the track situation at the high school. So it'll be there from 10 to 10 on that day. Family Resource Center, they're putting on a couple of days of concerts this weekend. So they support that. And then last weekend, just some numbers that are great, Art in the Park. We were able, at the convention center, to pull up numbers on that for just Saturday. We couldn't get Sundays in yet, but just one day there were 6,800 people went through that event. 18 and older, so you figure probably 2,000 kids do. So there was 8,800 people went through that on Saturday. And the ratios and the numbers showed a lot of people, heads and beds, a lot of people from out of town, California, Florida, Washington, all over the place had come here for that event. as well as the surrounding areas of Winnemucca. So yeah, they did a great job. So that's a great event that happened. Also, just real quick, and you're probably going to talk about this, I got from a business owner, they're just wondering for the DUI checkpoint, is that on certain days or is it all month? Or they're just kind of wondering, and it was a restaurant owner that asked, so I just thought I'd ask so they kind of have an idea.

This is the initial one that we're doing. This one's going to be this weekend for now. Depending on how the program goes this weekend, we may do more in the future with joining forces program that we belong to with the Nevada State Police and the Sheriff's Office.

I think it's a great thing. Is it literally like places you'll be stopping people to be able to check them or you just kind of keep an eye out?

Yeah, so there'll be an actual stopping point where we... It'll be random. It won't be every car stop, probably. It'll be a random checkpoint.

Great idea. Thank you.

And Lieutenant Daz, could you explain what the justification is for this program?

Yeah, so DUI accidents are up even in the city. Just in the first five months, we've had, and mind you, most of our speed limits are 10 miles an hour. We've, I mean, 25 miles an hour. We've had 10 DUI-related accidents. So that's a lot for us. And the Highway Patrol has seen an increase in DUI related accidents out in their areas that they cover. So our goal is to try to lower those numbers and make the community safer.

Thank you. And that was just in the first five months of the year? Is that what you said? Yes.

Okay. And most of those are in the residential neighborhoods. So that should be worrisome for citizens. Yeah. All right. Thank you.

All right. Anyone else on the board?

I do just have a quick announcement that the Arts and Culture Advisory Board has two vacancies currently. So if you guys have anyone who may be of interest, please send the letters of interest to Annette, our city clerk, so that we can get those vacancies filled. We've got some really fun projects that we want to be working on. So we'd love to have a full board to do that.

And one thing I just remembered, I attended the play that's going on at the college right now. And I went to the matinee on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. And that will be continued into this weekend. And that's at the college. And tickets are available online for that. Jan.

I just have one announcement. Just for the first time since the MRG started, we have for the return overnight a negative for one month. So anyway, that was nice. Yeah, we finally had a the load factor that covered the MRG, just for the one month, the quarter resale money. But anyway, I just wanted to announce that and thank you to everybody in the public for supporting the airline.

Jan, I had a complaint from a member of the public. they said, well, why didn't the city put out any flags for the 250th celebration? And I know when that was done in the past, I think DBA was the driver on that. And so I think that's just something to keep in mind in the future for 4th of July is it'd be good if city staff could put some along the main street at least. And I talked to Delmo about that. And the last he knew there were flags above the restroom at the parks building, at the shop in the park there. So I don't know if they're even there anymore.

I am not aware of that in particular. We don't store American flags at our maintenance shop. I know that there was a lot of cooperation with Boy Scout troops in the past. I know Jeremy Draper was involved in heading that up when he was here, and they did that for a couple of years, and I'm not sure why it hasn't continued.

All right. All right, and then, Jan, you and I will have to pick a time tomorrow we can get together to go over some of those numbers. Dave? All right, Annette.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of council. I just wanted to give you guys an update. Shiloh Inn has paid their transient lodging tax in full through June, so they're all caught up. They actually caught up their business license, but they still haven't caught up with the county. So the county does have that property, but they're still operating.

They're current on their utilities still?

No, they are about two months behind right now, but I'm assuming they're going to keep that going. Okay.

And I know that there were a few problem delinquencies on lodging taxes. Has there been any movement on the other properties?

Yep. Roadway Inn completed. So everybody's are up to date now. Roadway just needs to finish June, which is due tomorrow. So they've already sent their paperwork. They just haven't made their payment. So I'm assuming they're going to get that in. And then I'd like to let you guys know that we did file a bankruptcy on Baymont in 2024. And I received the check yesterday for the months of April, May and June of 2024. So that was a good thing.

And did they get a business license finally?

Yes, they're all they're all caught up and they're being current now on their. And I just wanted to remind all the candidates that tomorrow is the deadline for your quarterly contributions and expense report. So just a heads up. I will probably send an email out tomorrow for all the candidates also.

And that's for candidates only? Yes. Okay. We're safe, Claire.

I did it anyway. She tried to find me one time and I'm not doing that again.

All right. James.

So today I opened up Six of the five pickleball courts. The reason the other five have not opened yet is we're still tidying up around the site. We've got some landscape improvements to do, and we just don't want to be disrupting play over there. But all 11 courts should be open by or before July 23rd for the senior games, even if we have a little bit of finish up work to do there. My goal would be to bring final acceptance of this project at that first meeting in August. That's what we're shooting for. But everything has turned out fantastic. The basketball courts across the street have been open for some time. And if you drive by there mainly in the evenings, it's packed over there. The handball court was opened and playable for the 4th of July celebrations. And then shortly after that, we did put a coating over that and that's now open for play as well. On another note, we moved the goats on our grazing program. They are down on the river now and they will remain down there until about mid to late October and then they'll go home for the winter. And this weekend is hopefully our final softball slash baseball tournament. June has been a complete month. Every weekend there's basically been baseball or softball tournaments here in Elko. And This will wrap up this series and give us a little break for a while, but it's been fantastic to see a number of teams come into town, a lot of local teams, and just all of our baseball and softball fields being utilized to that level. I don't think we've ever had them all crammed into 30 days like this before. So the park staff has done a fantastic job with that. And anyway, I will be going on vacation starting tomorrow and won't be back until the 24th. If you have any concerns, you can contact Joe Carr while I'm gone. He will be gone for most of the week next week. But there's always Mandy, Austin. department taking over from joe so we we feel like we haven't covered but if you need anything reach out to either jan or one of those individuals during that time thanks all right yeah all right jeff um i got a couple of questions for you that um

the the new development um across the street on it's on ruby view you know where the condos are there was a contractor doing work behind there and it doesn't look like anything's uh happening back there what what's the situation on that uh honestly i don't know

but they're in the permitting process, so.

And I heard you had a preliminary report based on the audit that was done, but the consultants on your... Not that I'm aware of. Jan may know something about it.

Yeah, so they sent me an email. was it, I think Friday night of the mapping and I'm just kind of starting to look through that and I sent it to Dale who's out of town. But that's about all we've received so far. Okay. But it looked like a good product and so, yeah.

Great. And you've got your new inspector on the ground?

He's doing a great job. Good. Yeah, he's fitting in good. Good, glad to hear it. Yeah, yeah. Paul?

um when do you expect uh construction to start on convention way i believe i believe it was middle of august okay um i think we gave them 90 days and that puts us right to the end of the asphalt season the 90 days hopefully they can get it completed well in advance of that hopefully we're not pushing that limit this year right okay that'll be nice to get that done i drove down there

today and I did not take a straight line. I was winding around potholes. So that'll be great to get that fixed. All right, thank you. All right, Tim. We'll see you in the morning. And you'll have those harnesses? We'll get you in there.

You might not get out. I'm just kidding. So we have successfully completed all commissioning practices for the exit 298 lift station so tomorrow at 9 30 we're going to do a start up and um have a little ceremony and everybody's welcome to come out and tour that look at it look around and if you want to go down in the the dry pit we'll put you in a harness and you can climb down in there and or you can look from this top on the tube

You want to live dangerously? No, it's not sewer. It's a dry pit. If it sees sewer, it's been a bad day.

Oh, come on. There's been no sewer run through.

No, no, no.

How long before customers start hooking on to that?

As soon as we notify them. Okay. So they can start hooking on. So I had a conversation with Golden Gate today, and they actually paid their permit fees. They're probably chomping at the bit.

Yeah, they're going to. They are, yeah. What was the total cost of that project, pray tell, the haul in?

I don't have that in front of me. More than I wanted to spend, let's just say that. But it's a good project and I think it'll be a good benefit to the city. All right, thank you. All right, Andrew.

Hi, council. uh city of elko how's everybody doing again so uh meter pits or meters all that fun stuff um we have 3 100 meters in so far um and also we're installing pits as well we're quite busy so i do want to say shout out to the street department for helping us out today for the leak on silver street i'm pretty sure everybody saw on the interweb That people were complaining about the leak that was there, but it was only out there for a week and it started off slow and started getting some steam. But, you know, you have to call before you dig. So it takes time for everybody to get their locates out there and all that fun stuff. I know that there was some concerned citizens and business owners that wanted to stress their opinion about how they felt. But we're doing everything we can. We are the water and sewer department, so there's a lot to handle. And there's a lot of different programs going on besides just the meters and everything like that. future uh future developments that are going on that um you know more and more you'll find out about throughout the years uh but if you have a concern or you want to talk or anything feel free to call the city call my office and we'll talk we'll talk about Talk about water movies, you know, Water World, Water Boy, Major Pain. It's not really a water movie, but it's a good movie. Saw it the other day again. But I want to let you know, we're out there. So you don't have to make assumptions out there. There's no fluoride in our water. We have very, very good pure water here in Elkville. So if you have any questions, please ask. Don't just make assumptions and put it out online. We're here. That's what we're here for. Another thing it's kind of like with the sewer, it's sticker shock. People are actually looking at how much water they're actually using. When you're flat rate, you're letting the hose go and you don't know. So actually having a meter there is, It's taking. It's like seeing your gas going. It's like, wow, that's getting up there. So just let you know, you know, conserve water. There's people we're seeing in the meters already. They're watering twice a day and they don't realize that it's a lot. Twice a day, every day. That's a lot of water. You're going to find out when you get your bill and your sewer is attached to it currently right now. That's really why there's sticker shock, and that's just going to happen. But again, if you have any questions, feel free to call. I'm here to talk. If you have any questions.

all right drink water okay it's good it's good see what's really good thank you for fixing uh silver street you have to take some heat off of me so thank you and oh speaking of water quality that a report came out and i was glad to see that there was no um violations on that the only thing that you know we get hit with is just the the sentiment that we have in our water throughout Northern Nevada, the well water. All right, Chief Johnston? No report. No report. Lieutenant Davis?

The only thing I have is that UI checkpoints, so we're urging everyone to copy that. All right.

Forever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, have a designated driver. Kathy? All right. And I think I got, oh, Candy, do you have anything?

Mayor, I just looked up when we did substantial completion of exit 28, it was $4,794,000. $4 million.

$5 million.

All right. Big ticket item on that. All right. Final public comment. I think there's public comment. Oh, come on up, sir.

You just have to have a microphone whether you're here or over there.

We'll need your name and address for the record, please, sir.

Yeah, my name's Freddy Garcia, a local resident here in Elko for the last 39 years. Worked for Newmont Mining Corporation, Nevada Gold Mines, retired. I just want to say good evening to the council here, the people here. I just got a complaint about a home right here on 6th Street. It's 1446 6th Street. For the last two years, I've been a victim, and this woman right here has been a victim, and several of our neighbors have been victims from squatters at this house at 1446. They've recently shot out our windows with pellet guns. took shots at me personally. The guy, uh, his name's, um, his name's, um, Noah Edward Weiner. Uh, Tyler J. Ingram just sent me this letter. He's, of course, you know, he's the district attorney and, uh, he's looking into, uh, My concern is why I'm here is to see if there's any way we can get these people out of the house. There's no running water in the house. They've taken over the house. They've got buses coming in from Oregon just blocking people's driveways. They're lighting fires in the middle of the night in the backyards. I've got pictures of their trash. They're burning all the garbage. back there. Myself, I've had to call the police or the fire department several times over the last couple of years. Of course, they've shot, they're shooting guns and they're out of control. Last year, they got on top of my house at 5 a.m. in the morning and I called the police. They've got all the records of what these people have been doing for the last two. They're victimizing our neighborhood. And they've shot Sonia's windows out of her truck, her boyfriend's truck, my car just recently, and a halfway house across the street. and there's another person. They've shot all of our windows out. Her house has got three pellet holes in it just recently. I watched them take the gun, and they arrested the guy. This weiner's in jail, and I can tell you, he's the one that keeps getting off. He's the one, and him and his brother, they're bringing all these riffraff people from everywhere, and the house was owned by... um barbara eric at one time and it was her son robert young that passed away two years ago and has unfortunately his mother passed away and after that the squatters moved in and just took it over so i'm here to find out if there's any way that you can put pressure on what's I've talked to the gal that was married to Robert Young and he, she told me that she does not have the money to put it in her. It's not, the house is not in her name. He didn't put it in her name. So she's unable to, there's back taxes owed on the house, she told me. She says every time she goes to try to get into the house, they violently attack her and they will not allow her to get into the house. So it's it's we're all victims here. And you know, being a taxpayer of the community and Sonia and my and several of the other people on Sixth Street and Sage and the street streets, we feel like we're being victimized. And we just need to have below in the local police, they know they've been there enough and they've got records of everything that's been happening at the house. And it's, I mean, they've been I don't want to say it, but they use the bathroom in bags and throw it over into the alleys. And it's disgusting. It's out of control. They need to do something with that house. Fence it off. All the windows have got boards all over everything. The front doors. No, go ahead.

It doesn't have a front door right now. They ripped that off. There's about a foot of trash you can see in the house. Like he said, there's trash everywhere. It's just making our property value go down. Also, there's an elderly woman who lives next door to them and she's scared to even go out in her yard because she doesn't know what they're going to do. There's about six people squatting in there right now. The police are there at least once a month. The fire department, animal control, they have a dog that they abuse. They're not taking care of it properly. All the neighbors are fed up with it.

Yeah. so I just talked to one of the neighbors and I was mentioned to Sonya that just today that she witnessed one of the guys pick the dog up over his head and slam the dog onto the concrete that's that's terrible should this should not be happening in Elko and and it's it's got to stop we're victims here and it's they they've got to do something with that house you know getting on my roof at 4 4 a.m in the morning and it's just not right. So anyway, I think you look into this and putting pressure on seeing how they can get them out. And I understand that and I get it, there's laws. And those laws are brought on in northern Nevada. And they come from probably another part of the state that people, you know, voted on to get getting those laws implemented. So But Elko County, it's horrible watching that go on in this community.

Yeah, I'm sorry that you're having to deal with that. Thank you for bringing that to the board's attention. Could I have both of you sign the sign-in sheet back there because you did the public testimony? And on the record, Sonia, can we get your last name, please? Can you give that address again before you leave? 1446 6th Street. Yes, sir.

Can you give that address before you leave? Sorry, Mayor.

It's right here. Actually, it's 1416 6th Street is the house. 1416 6th Street.

I thought it was 1442.

I wrote down 1446. I wrote down.

You said that the former owner was Robert Young, correct?

Yes. Yes.

1446.

It's 1446. I apologize. I apologize.

This sounds like something for code compliance. Kathy, I know you're not the person, but you have the most knowledge of this. If there's a residence that has no utilities, is that something that can be condemned?

Okay.

And Jeff, is that an onerous process to get it condemned and get it sealed up to where

If the county, if they're delinquent three years and the county has, I guess, receivership of it, can they not take steps to close that off for public safety? we'll bring that up when we speak with the county about this okay all right um thank you we're on it and um we will do whatever we can to see that that gets from immediately letting me voice my concerns and so on you as well so and and i have i've got a hold of lisa campos all right she's come down lisa has and i've talked to her she's shaking her head and it's just horrible over there what's going on so i really appreciate you helping yeah well that's what we're here for thank you for uh bringing that to our attention that's the the purpose of public comment so thank you all right anyone else and can anyone talk that all right well i think with that we'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting at 6 36 p.m thank you everyone have a good evening