City Council - Regular Meeting

ask Alderman Peerkey to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

First item is to adopt the agenda. Are there any So moved by Alderman Allers. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Eckert. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. Consent item is to approve the minutes of our last meeting. Step increase for Finance Officer Lori Kneebone, step seven. to 83, 394, and 96 annually, and approve Maggie Siegel part-time EMT step one, $12 hourly, and then approve the bills if you've had a chance to look at them. Are there any questions on any of the consent items before you? Seeing none, I'll take a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Moved by Alderman Yates. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Behrke. Any further discussion? Signe, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. Visitors to be heard. I believe visitors are dispatched here, and I make for the road construction project. So, we will skip the visitors to be heard spiel, and move forward to administrative reports. Most of my report will come in agenda items. Cole and I have had several meetings, and I know we'll be talking about some of that here coming up, and whether it be airport, whether it be cemetery board, those types of things are gonna be in the agenda here. So with that, I'm just gonna move it over to Cole, and I'll talk about those items when they come up on the agenda.

Yep, I'm kind of in the same boat as Mayor Dan, but just a couple more announcements and updates on things. One, the city council has been invited to an open house at the Wholeness Center. The open house is on Thursday, September 10th, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., so it's going to be a rolling stop at any point in the day you want to. If for some reason you want to go as a group at a specific time, we can sure do that. I set the post-announcement forum, but if you want to do that, let me know, and if not, feel free to stop in at the Wellness Center anytime between 11 and 6 on the 10th. If you don't know where that is, I can sure show you. But I wanted to let you know that those folks did extend an invitation to the city council. Kind of housekeeping thing, our next regularly scheduled city council meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 8th. Due to the Labor Day holiday, it will be at 6.30. Obviously, per precedent and in accordance with the policy manual, the city office will be closed on Labor Day. Kind of an announcement type thing. Just making sure that you folks are looked in on the details. Talked to Chase this morning. Sounds like he's going to work on the sprinkler system slash topsoil seating replacement at the fire hall for the fire station, I guess, our new fire station. Tomorrow morning, as long as the wind behaves, he's going to go spray all that grass and weeds with Roundup to get a good kill on it, just to make sure that when we put the new sprinkler system in, we don't have a bunch of weeds and other stuff we don't want in our soil that's mixed in there. So you'll likely see the grass turn dormant at the fire station within the next week or two. Don't be alarmed. That is planned. And once that turns, he'll go in there with the skid steer and scoop up all about a couple inches of dirt, three-four inches of dirt, and then replace it all with new that hopefully grows our grass a little bit better. And then obviously the irrigation and the seeding will follow in that process. Last thing from me, September 12th, the City Council has been invited to the Warehouse Contributor Appreciation. It's an event at the Community Center. It's a Saturday, I believe, from 545 to 830. They're going to do live music and food and maybe some recognitions of some folks that gave towards the project. But you've all been invited to that, and if you have any questions on that, let me know. If we do end up having anything resembling a quorum, I will get a notice of quorum out on that as well. But that is in September. I'll announce it at the next meeting, just to remind everybody. That's what I had for my report.

Okay. Any questions for Cole or myself? Seeing none, I entertain a motion to approve the administrative reports. So moved by Alderman Fargen, seconded by Alderman Ahlers. Any further discussion? Seeing none, any All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. Going to old business, 2027 dispatch agreement with Moody County. Cole, do you want to kick it off? Do we need to take that off the table first? Oh yeah, before we discuss. Yeah, I'll entertain a motion to take the Boone County Dispatch Agreement off the table. So moved. Moved by Alderman Behrke. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Farjan. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. for action on this necessarily tonight. I know Alderman Nibbling has some fairly strong feelings on what the council should do. I don't want to necessarily speak on his behalf. But we did have another meeting with Marty and Sheriff Wellman last week and of course our EMTs and Zach was there with us for that meeting. We met here just kind of I think Marty and Sheriff Wellman wanted to just let us know what recommendation they were going to make to the County Commission tomorrow morning. Did want us to be surprised by what they were going to recommend and invited us if we wanted to come to attend. We could Pending what we do tonight and what we do in the future with that contract my guess is yet to be determined and But I know Cole took some notes because we wanted to be very specific about what they wanted to do. And just basically their recommendation, and Cole will reiterate this, is they're recommending no change and staying currently the way things are. I felt it was a fairly good consideration. were ready to answer their concerns and those types of things to kind of state where the city was at. And I thought those that were in attendance and Cole did a nice job kind of presenting the city's case for why we were looking at this. why we thought it was worth the time and the effort for both governing bodies to get together to discuss this, which necessarily hasn't happened up to this point. did indicate that they are not the decision makers and that that elected body and this elected body at some point should get together and I think Cole and I agree that's what we've been trying to do for the last several months is to have a commission to counsel an elected official meeting to just kind of talk out some thoughts on that so I'LL PROBABLY ADD A LITTLE BIT MORE AS WE GO ON, BUT I THINK I'LL LET COLE SHARE KIND OF WHAT NOTES HE TOOK, AND WE'LL GO FROM THERE.

THANK YOU, MAYOR DAMM. YEAH, AS THE MAYOR KIND OF SAID, WE DID HAVE THAT MEETING, AND I TOO THOUGHT IT WAS A PRODUCTIVE MEETING. I'LL GET TO SOME OF THE SPECIFICS I WROTE DOWN IN A SECOND. The Commission has requested, or I guess they've informed Marty and Sheriff Wellman to ask us to be in attendance for tomorrow's meeting, Commission meeting at 9. I apologize if you already said that. So what I guess I'm looking for from the Council tonight is some direction. Like Mayor Dan said, you don't have to make a decision. But what we probably need is some direction on how we engage in that conversation tomorrow morning, knowing that not all you folks are going to be here. And we'd like to represent everybody's kind of opinion, whether it's a joint opinion or everybody has their own, at least to further move the conversation along. As we've kind of been in the data collecting stage for the last month or so, we just finally had our meeting with the presentation with everybody. Going back to what Mayor Dan alluded to, which is some of the notes I took during the meeting, they're pretty brief, but I do think they'll give you some insight into where at least Sheriff Wellman is on the dispatch agreement. That way I can very clearly articulate to you folks where he's coming from. I didn't want to distort anything that was said, pitch it one way or the other. I just asked him to, in plain language as he could, tell me exactly why they wanted him to stick with their current arrangement. Number one was fear of Watertown raising rates. There's been conversation amongst county folks the last couple months about how sustainable it is for Watertown to keep the The 9-1-1 contract is simply at the 9-1-1 surcharge collection and then the 361 per resident on the non-emergent side, which I'll talk about the non-emergent side in a second, but that was the number one concern is there's potential that Watertown may someday raise rates. Two was proximity. If you were to switch, you'd prefer to switch to either Lake or Brookings County just because they're geographically closer located to Flandreau. We didn't really go into details of what the advantages of that would be with that closer proximity, but that was one of the reasons that was given. And then the last reason, the third reason that was given was he wasn't sure how much one dispatch center could handle. WATERTOWN CLEARLY HAS A LARGE CALL VOLUME, BUT I DID INCLUDE AN ADDITIONAL PACKET, WHICH IS AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC IN THE BACK, SOME INFORMATION ABOUT HOW WATERTOWN HANDLES THAT CALL VOLUME. YOU CAN SEE THAT THEY'RE AMONGST, I THINK, THE TOP THREE OR THE TOP FIVE IN THE ENTIRE STATE FOR THE STANDARDS, CALLS ANSWERED WITHIN 20 SECONDS, AND THEN CALLS ANSWERED WITHIN 15 SECONDS. BOTH OF THOSE EXCEED. I CIRCLED THAT ON YOUR CHART THERE. AS FAR AS I CAN TELL, the quality of service in Watertown is outstanding. I think they do a really nice job, so my concerns there are minimal from a data collection analysis point of view. So those are the three reasons he gave me. I wanted to take, if I could, Mayor Dan, a minute just to kind of walk through this packet a little bit. There's kind of three tenets that we have talked about or you folks have talked about throughout this process, one being one of the financial benefits of switching to Watertown, two being what quality of service impact would result as a consequence of that switch, and then thirdly, and I leave this more in your folks' court, is what's a fair arrangement amongst Moody County, the city, the tribe, the other communities within Moody County, is the deal we have on the table fair right now for everybody. So I'm gonna focus more on the first two and then I'll I'll let you folks discuss the third and overall where you stand. So first with the dispatch financial fact sheet, I put it together as plainly and as simply as I could. So it's fairly easy to follow. Watertown would do our 911 dispatching for a simple transfer of our state of South Dakota 911 surcharge funds. As you all likely remember, that is a $2 charge on each cell phone or landline within Moody County. In 2020, Uh, five that totaled $104,269. So Moody County as a whole was to transfer that money over to Watertown. They would take all our emergency calls. So all our police calls for service, EMT, ambulance calls, uh, fire calls. That would take care of that, uh, a little bit more, um, complex, or I guess confusing, because I know there's been a lot of folks confused on it. They would additionally offer non-emergent dispatch. What is a non-emergent dispatch? It is the process of receiving and managing requests for public safety or community services that do not require immediate threats to life or property. So maybe somebody hit Cole's car last week, and Cole wants to follow up with the local department to say, hey, was everything filed? My insurance company needs it. I can call that line immediately. Maybe Zach and Molly are shaking their heads and this is a bad example, but it's not an emergency thing. Somebody answers the phone, picks it up, and says, yes, I can help you with that and get you directed to the right individual. Currently, Moody County does this for us, so any call at the city office after 5 or on the weekends, someone calls down here and says, hey, I need to... My power's off in my house. I'm trying to get ahold of somebody that'll forward down to the dispatch office. Then they have the cell phone numbers for all of our power linemen or our water sewer guys or anybody who may need, or anybody who can help with problems like that. Watertown is willing to do that same exact thing for us at a cost of $3.61 per resident within the St. Lawrence. As of the 2020 census, Leningrad had about 2,372 people at a contract cost of about $8,000. Does that make sense to everybody, the non-emergent stuff? Okay, cool. So jumping down to the cost comparison, under our current model with Moody County, the city in 2027 will be paying $71,560 under the Watertown model, discounting the surcharge fee that would be transferred over if the whole county went, because obviously that's not money we have to spend anyway. cost of flanger would be eight thousand five hundred sixty two dollars for a total savings of sixty two thousand nine hundred ninety seven dollars quickly running through everybody else the county would have a savings of approximately seventy two thousand if they switch and the tribe would have a savings of about $19,000 if they switch. I've had conversations with Sheriff Wollman and Marty about what it would look like for those folks if they were to switch because there is some concerns that they wouldn't have as significant savings as maybe we would because they feel they may need an administrative person in the building staff during the day, eight to five, or have two or three people that they could have coverage throughout the hours. Not being an expert in that field, I think maybe there's some ways that you can minimize that and they can still realize some financial savings there. But then again, that's up to them how they want to handle that. Something that was mentioned during the public meeting was equipment costs. So as far as on the equipment side of things, from what I understand, the switch over to Watertown would be fairly simple. The only thing we need to purchase is three ROIPs they call them, which stands for Radio Over Internet Protocol, that's the transmitter. We'd have to put one on each of the civil defense towers within Woody County so then they can then communicate with Watertown. We've been told that those run somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 each for a maximum total of about $15,000. We had a follow-up conversation with the Watertown folks and the state 911 coordinator. And that individual informed us that the state would more than likely reimburse whoever bought them for the full amount. That is a grant that the South Dakota 911 Commission has the authority to give for, especially for consolidations, they call them. They've prioritized consolidations as being important for South Dakota with several small 911 PSAPs. within the boundaries of South Dakota, so I have full faith that we would get reimbursed, or whomever bought them would get reimbursed for that $15,000. Any questions on the financials? I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on the operational side of things here, because I think the presentation that Watertown did did a pretty good job of explaining some of the advantages that maybe Watertown has over our current arrangement. But you can see full-time dispatchers on staff, Moody County has four, Watertown has 14. Moody County exclusively has one dispatcher on at all times unless there's some sort of an emergency. Watertown typically has three. They will tell you there's times that they have two, if someone's gone on sick leave or vacation or something like that happens. But typically they're running three, and on their best days they're running four. And you can see, I'm not going to walk through all the numbers with you, but you can see Watertown does take a larger call volume than Moody County. But on average, those are answered a little bit quicker than what Moody County is currently answering. Any questions on the operational side of things? Obviously there's some technology things that Watertown is doing with live video capabilities. They do do the emergency medical dispatching and then also assistance in emergency fire dispatching which Moody County would like to do. Last conversation I believe Mayor Dan Troy said maybe they were gonna try to start that back up again but as of late it hasn't really been in practice or something that they're typically doing on calls. Yeah, it's about it. Only other major difference is maybe the dispatchers in Woody County are doing a little bit more administrative work in the Sheriff's Office than what the folks in Watertown are doing just because of the nature, the size, I guess, of each organization and the roles that those folks have within each organization. Other than that, I can skim through. That's the dispatch contract history. You're all very familiar with it. We currently have a formula in Woody County that splits up the calls by percentage And that's only for the salary, not for the equipment costs. Other than that, that's kind of what I had to share. But just to reiterate kind of where I started, going into this meeting tomorrow, I think the commission is going to want to see some direction, which way the city's leaning, and I would ask that you folks at least give myself and Dan and these folks and whichever one of you decides to come with us if you'd like some direction to help guide that discussion a little bit. So just so we can keep the ball moving forward, because we are in the middle of August and obviously the contract expires at the end of the year, so.

Okay, Wes or Zach, you guys have anything to add to the mix?

The only thing I would have is there's kind of two sides. If we would go to Watertown, we're going to get better equipment, probably better personnel, and it's going to save us over $60,000. Our service is not going to get worse. At the bare minimum, it's going to be the exact same service that we have now. More than likely, it will be better service. On the other side, just specific law enforcement where we utilize the sheriff's office for booking and all of that stuff, I don't see potential issues utilizing the Sheriff's Office the way that we need to if we would go to Watertown. I personally would like to stay with the Moody County Dispatch specifically for those reasons. It's just I can't justify it at spending $72,000 a year with the price only going up every single year. My personal opinion would be there needs to be a way to figure out how to utilize the Moody County Sheriff's Office as dispatchers at a greatly reduced cost because we do have to go from $62,000 to $8,500 to get better service. There needs to be some sort of wiggle room as far as billing my department.

Okay.

The only thing that I'll add is, I mean, the key takeaways from this is obviously the cost savings, and then we would get more dispatchers on duty at one time with water down. For example, on August 13th, Scott and I on the ambulance were dispatched to a medical call in the 300 block of Pipestone. When we arrived, it was an elderly person that had fallen with some bleeding. She was injured. A neighbor came running up to me in the ambulance because we got there first. We actually beat the PD there. And she said, look, I'm on 911 and no one's answering. And I said, hey, you know, sometimes it gets kind of busy in there. Sometimes it's just one dispatcher. But she was concerned. I passed that information on to Sheriff Willman. But that's an example of when there's one event going on, it's very easy to get overloaded in there. I've been a dispatcher before for relief. When you have a structure fire going on, you're trying to dispatch fire. You're trying to tell your law enforcement where to go. And then the 911 calls don't stop for that same incident. This is an example of that. Multiple people calling in on the same incident, and there's only one person available to pick up the phone, use the radio. In a perfect world, there'd be more dispatchers here in Moody County, but we just don't have that.

Okay.

Council comments.

I do. Just to rebut a couple of things that Sheriff Wellman said, worried about the price going up. Well, we've seen the bar chart sitting here of what has happened with Moody County. Taking a 90% jump one year, and we're up over $70,000. We don't know where that's going to stop. And I think it's just going to continue, because now we have the ambulance, so now they have more leverage. And we aren't, now we aren't, prior to this we weren't treated as a customer, in my opinion, because they knew we didn't have an out. Now we have an option. And I think in the savings that we have, if we're going to be frugal with the money that the city has, that when you look at the total cost and things, we can maybe work through the booking part of it, or what have you. But I'm really a proponent of going that way. When we listen to, and Sheriff Wallman will tell you, he doesn't make the decisions. But he's sure trying to steer us in one direction or the other. But I think we need to listen to ourselves and look at the numbers. Be responsible to our people and get. The other part of it is, when you look at down the list, that cold. When you look at comparing Moody County to Watertown Regional, when you get down about halfway through that page, if you're looking at it, it's on the back one like here. There's a lot of no's over here on the left. A lot of yeses over on the right, and those are essential type services, in my opinion. Maybe in the future, if they'd spend some money, they could bring the same thing out of Moody County, but we're not seeing it because they don't have to listen to a customer that they don't have to impress. saying it kind of bluntly or whatever, but that's truly the way it's been. I heard prior meetings with them. What are they going to do? We're going to raise it anyway. That has been said in that chamber. We don't need to be treated like that. We can get better. I don't think we have to worry about it going up. I really do think that it's more viable than doubtful. So that's my three and a half cents.

All right, thank you. Any other comments? Hubbard-Fargent? I agree with everything Mr. Berkey has said. You know, Marty said this a couple times in open meetings, and I see, I'm thinking for the chart here too, I have it on paper here, but they raised it, doubled it for no reason at all, they said. They just felt that they needed to double that in there. They gave it to Whitman, I believe it was. He sat down, so it must have been Don Whitman. He said, you've got to come up with something better. So they go behind closed doors, they cut the figures, so they started doing calls, you know what I'm saying. Well, according to them now, Because we went to Watertown. They say it's going to cost, there's no savings to them, $150,000 to $180,000. Well, what's that telling you? They've been overcharging us for all these damn years. I voted against this at least the four out of the six years I've been here in the city council, and I'm going to do it again. Whether we stay with Moody County, that's fine. But that rate can come down lower, like a possible risk. Maybe they want our $4 a person there to come down to. There's wiggle room here. If not, I say go to Watertown too. But I'm willing to work with Moody County and stay here, but the rate's going to come down or I'm voting the other way. Okay. Any other comments?

Only thing I will add, Mayor Dan, if I could, just to supplement that conversation, not taking the stance one way or the other, but the conversation that did happen in our last meeting, as Mayor Dan said, with me, Dan, Troy, Marty, Zach, and Wes, I forget who it was. Marty did pose the question, well, If we were to bring it down, what's a fair rate? And I sat and thought about it, and I said, well, frankly, with the Watertown kind of contract on the table, I'm not sure what that number is. Because if we were to go that rate, assuming the service would stay the same and things Zach's concerned about would be worked out, I don't know if you can accept anything less than $8,000 a year because that's what you get with Watertown. And again, that's a big assumption assuming all that stuff works out and everything goes according to plan, but to be blunt, at least I didn't have an answer for that question because the whole Watertown thing kind of changed the perception on what the best model is for doing this. I said last year, I think maybe we could have came up with something, but now it's a little bit, Fuzzy because we have this contract, potential contract on the table that for $8,000 a year we'll do your non-emergent and your emergent. So just an observation I made during the meeting and something to ponder.

Only Hayden.

Okay.

Just one quick question. What's the tribe's stance? Have they said anything? Are they just waiting to see what we decide?

I haven't heard anything from them directly. According to Marty and Troy, they have signed their contract for 27th. I don't know if they've had any discussions. I don't know if it's made it to the tribal council or if they just kind of ordered business, signed it every year. I can't speak to any of that. Okay.

I just had another thought, too. Because the county decided not to do the ambulance anymore and the city picked it up. We're doing the county. If we go, we have fire protection for the county, the city being in, contracts, things like that. We've got ambulance countywide. They're gonna have to pair off a part of that 911 money. That's gonna have to go with us. in my opinion, because it's only right. So that's another additional reason with everything that we provide now. We can be the big kid on the block because that's where we're at. That's where they wanted us to be, so we can drive our own ship here, I think. So, anyway, that's, it's more than just the little, than the 911 numbers of the city. I think the rest of that should have an impact, too.

Okay. I have a question for Zach.

So say they won't let you book. What would we have to do so you could book here?

I don't know. I don't know that they can refuse us to book at their place because basically any arrest that I make or my office makes, as soon as that arrest is made, it is a county expense. Everything goes through them. The county is required to do the mugshot and the fingerprints and if they're a felon to get a buckle swab. Everything ultimately is a county expense. reason you know a thing that they have to do we just have always done it for our arrests if for some reason there's something i'm missing like their fingerprint machines everything has to be digital now i know those are expensive i'm just going to throw it and i'm going to say fifty thousand dollars is what it costs for one of those but that's more or less one you have to get a new one. But yeah, I think everything has to, the sheriff's office has to do all of those things. My office just does it when it's our rest.

Yes. Well, that's what I was getting back on these calls. This is how they structured it. They went by calls there. They weren't going by their manpower or what uses they're getting from their people, right? They're using for their breathalyzer permits, walk-ins, and that. That's what I'm saying. I think the table can be turned. They're using the manpower when they're not on 911. We're not using it.

I'll just add kind of maybe where I'm at, being in all these meetings for this long and negotiating this and this and other contracts with the county, I don't have any indication that the county commissioners themselves are against meeting with us or this type of thing. I think they have been open to that. It just hasn't, we haven't had the opportunity, not that we haven't requested, but either hasn't been presented to them or whatever for them to meet with us. But, I will say that it was interesting or at least positive that Sheriff Wellman and Marty both were agreeable to looking at consolidation as long as it wasn't with Watertown. You know, they're willing to consolidate with Lake County or Brookings County. So, that was promising. That, I really, I do believe that whether you like it or not, regionalization of 911 is a reality. And so I don't think this is a unique discussion that other counties are gonna be having across the state as they look at getting affordable 911 that can be quality for their area and those regional centers I think are gonna be the answer. Right now, visiting with Representatives from Lake County a little bit. You know, they're just getting ready to take on minor County and Brookings County right now It sounded like they would they would take Moody County if we all came together They didn't want just playing that was news to us that we found out in the meeting also At a minimum tomorrow, I mean I understand the costs and we had the, I had the discussion with them of why I feel that sometimes Flandu, we feel like we're an island compared to the rest of the county. And treat a little bit different and how we get charged things compared to the rest of the county as a whole and They're like well because law enforcement well we have law enforcement we pay for that so there should be some savings there Because we have our own PD that the county's not having to have to do But I'm not sure that we're being recognized for that So have we not had our own PD I suppose paying them to do certain things the county doesn't have to do. So maybe, I think we've kind of got three options here that we could do. We could say, you know what, effective 2027, we're going to Watertown, period. The next option is is that, okay, we will stay with you for 2027 with the understanding towards a consolidation plan for 2028 whether it be with Lake Brookings or Watertown and the third option is is that we continued with them for 2027 but maybe to try to make this more equitable and fair to both governing bodies, we go on an approach and we say that we will provide the county ambulance service, you provide us dispatch service, and we're even up. You know, they gave us 35,000, we're giving them 70 for dispatch. Maybe we ask them for an even up for the two services. I don't know where that will go. I did throw that softball out a little bit in the meeting just to see kind of what the temperature was of Marty and Sheriff Wellman. And I think the comment after that was, well, this elected body here and that elected body there need to get together and figure this out. Well, like I said, I'll go back to that's all we've been trying to do for the last several months. So that's kind of my... And with the tribe, I've not had a chance to visit with newly elected Kills 100, Chairman Kills 100. On these types of issues, I know he's getting settled with a lot of different things, but I plan on having a meeting with him to talk about ways we can work together and and of course chairman kills 100 did serve on our ambulance task force I believe and environment I mean so he's been active with the city working with us on different committees so I would my hope is that that relationship and that working relationship with him is good the other thing to remember is there's two new County Commissioners coming out of the county come January Both of them have said several times, they're open-minded to things that the county, if we can, we should work together. We're not that big. The tribe, the county, and the city, we work together, good things happen. We try to do our own thing, it just becomes sometimes cost-prohibitive and not a good path to look forward. So, I think... For me, I would be a little reluctant maybe just to change just the city of Flandreau going to Watertown. It could be done for Zach's department, it's probably easier, but for the ambulance and the fire, it's a little bit more sketchy just because of the boundaries and those types of things. I think for dispatch types of things. But I do think that we are well within our realm to say, hey, if we're going to do this, our expectation is we're looking at consolidation. We still think there are some positives. Not just money. Not just money. It's the service itself. We think it may be better through a consolidation. I'm not saying that the dispatchers are doing a horrible job right now. It's just that I think sometimes with technology and using all the resources you have, sometimes it can give you better service. And that swapping service for service, I think, brings down the cost that we're paying them. And then we're not asking them for $35,000, and it's kind of an even up for at least 2028. That's just my thoughts. to work with them to kind of see what that dynamic changes or does to the commission. Alderman Beardy. I just got another thought.

Okay, I don't think that getting any negotiating done with the with the county commission at this point in time. They're the ones that raised it last April. I don't think they're going to all of a sudden say, well, you know, we should probably reduce that. We can maybe cut it because that's not their history. I don't think we need to look at them that way. I think they're not going to. Tomorrow you can find out. But I think from this point on, we should stop listening to Marty and Troy. And listen to the commissioners because they're the ones that the people elected to make these decisions And you know so what those guys are telling what those guys are doing they are not policy makers but one of them one of them Enforces the law and the other one is supposed to be you know an assistant to the commissioners but I Guess if we don't want to do anything tonight I would say when you go to that meeting tomorrow, which I cannot be, I would listen to them. If we don't get any satisfaction, like a big reduction in this and a promise to go forward with better technology, I don't see how we can treat this any other way than take our community save money, get same or better service. So those are just my thoughts on that.

Yep. Cool. Final side note, just listening to Mayor Dan and following along, if we were to switch to either Madison or Lake County or Brookings County, the price is likely to be significantly higher than what we get with Watertown just because it's fairly new to them. I believe what we found out is It's a percentage deal, I think, maybe, where they divide it up by percentage and everybody just shares costs, where Watertown has kind of a blue-pin print that maybe benefits us more than them, hypothetically, even though it does benefit them because there's just more revenue coming on to a service they're already providing. I like the example that Charlie Van Dusen gave at his presentation. It's like Walmart or Costco. We can do it for cheaper because we're providing more. It made sense to me, at least. So just keep that in mind that those are definitely options. But the model is out there for Lake. of how they would likely do it, and it is significantly higher than what we get with Watertown, and Brookings remains to be seen, but absent a special reason, I don't think they have an incentive to give us a very good deal price-wise, just because it's a burden on them to take it on, and they haven't done it before, and so on and so forth.

Do you need some sort of a motion for?

Oh, I don't think so. Sorry, I'm going to cut you off. No, you're good. I just think that knowing where everybody is, even if it is on an individual basis, everybody has a little bit different idea. At least Dan and I can go over and say, look, here's how the conversation we had kind of went. This is the direction maybe we can see them going. If you folks want to make a motion, you sure can. but maybe it would be in everyone's best interest, including Moody County's best interest, if we just kind of went with a general, I don't want to say consensus, but idea of which direction we think maybe we'd like to go. That's fair.

Yeah, that's good. Yes, Alderman Eckert. If we go with this, is this a year-to-year contract then? So say five, six, seven, eight years down the road, if we went with Watertown, Madison made

I have an answer to that. I have the contract in here. I don't know if it's any, I think it's a multi-year. I think it's like a... Was it a three-year? Two-year? No, this is... Three?

Two years. Two years, okay.

Yep. That'd be... And I get why they wanted two years. They're going to do it to get you in and get you working on it. One year just doesn't make sense. It's too much work to get you in for just one year. Get you into two years, they can make those adjustments they need to make in staffing and stuff. That's the contract they have with Hamlin County, I think, in 24. So, I guess for consensus of the council, I mean, obviously I'm hearing we think we need a better cost savings or cost reduction moving forward with our contract for one. So, I mean, however we get to that, if there's a number they can give us, then I guess that's the number we can bring back to talk about.

would like to see, or at least from what I'm hearing, a commitment to furthering the technologies we're using and the trainings we're using and things of that nature to elevate the level of service. Yes, out in the back.

If you want to stay here, I think we should. So they should make a step to move up to the better technology because for what's being paid. I don't

And to be fair and to be clear, they have nearly, with the exception of maybe the text and video thing, they have all the technology that Watertown currently has. It's just not being utilized at the same level. That's what I understand. So maybe at one point it was. What I understand now, it's not being used. So there is obviously potential with that, and maybe not significant cost that they'd have to incur on their end to do that. It's just more so a willingness inside the department to push it that way.

I would, if we're kind of done talking about this or whatever, I've got a little bit of a motion I would make. Okay. All right, don't be scared. I would say we table this again. Okay. Until we hear the commissioners tomorrow, what their proposal would be. Table it for one more meeting, and then we've got to roll with something next meeting. Okay. So table this, my motion would be table this one more meeting, find out what the commissioners want to do, and then we'll, we're not going to, I can't put it on forever and ever here. But we know we want to save some money, we know we want to, whatever. So that was a long thing there, I understand.

Let's just table it one more meeting until we hear from the commissioners. To table the dispatch agreement. Yeah.

Last side note for me, and this is just a housekeeping thing, if we do get some clear direction from them tomorrow on what their expectations are, what they'll see happen, it is a three-week break for our next council meeting because of the long month in August. So it's possible, depending on how timeline goes and how quickly they'd like us to move, we may have to do a special, just putting that on the table just so you folks are aware with that long timeframe. Okay.

So we have a motion. Is there a second? Next to the second. Yeah.

So... I agree with this part, but it's just like the county commissioner, like we were tonight. We never got together. You think they're going to decide right out there that you're going to negotiate? I think the board or somebody's got to meet and have a special two, three here, two, three from there. We're going to hash this out, you see, these meetings. What I'm saying, tomorrow's going to be all new for them. just like what you proposed, maybe the ambulance swap for this or that, or reduce it to such and such amount of money, or to go to Watertown. They're at a standstill too much. They gotta think of it too, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I think you need, not a quorum, but two, three people here, two, three people from them there, and hash some of this out. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. But I go along, what table we got tonight?

Okay, before I get a second. Yes, I guess my thought would be, I think we should approach it as we're going to pay the 2027 and intend to move the following year, and then depending on what they can come up with, so we have a, not an ultimatum, but it's out there. We intend to move forward with them in 28, unless something changes.

I don't like that. I'm going ahead one way or another.

That's what I'm saying. I mean, then they have adequate notice. Right.

I mean. But you want to be at the same cost. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Paying, us paying $71,000. Right. Not asking for them, not asking them to reduce what they charge us. Right. Okay.

Only thing that's going to change as this discussion goes along, to follow up to your point, is we are moving close to the end of the year. So someone's going to have to move or blink at some point here, which I'm not disagreeing with anybody, but that is the only thing that's going to change.

I'd say we can't have a special meeting. Yep. If you think you can move, I second this motion.

Okay. So we have a motion . A tabling motion by Alderman Berkey, a second by Alderman Farjan. All in favor say goodbye by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. All right, it'll be an interesting meeting tomorrow with my friends at the courthouse. All right, moving forward now to new business, Shane with IMAG, Utility Improvement Project Update. Thank you, Mayor and Council.

I'm glad that I'm just talking about construction administration. We've got a lot of teeth showing here. All right, I hear. so I'll just paraphrase from that. If there's any questions that everybody has, I'll pause a couple times to make sure you get your questions asked. Work completed in the last two weeks. H&W has been concentrating on a much smaller area. They've completed all of the water main on Broad and on the block of Elm. So really all there is remaining is some sewer work sewer main work and water main work on the one block of press between Elm and Broad. So there are a few blocks of water services yet to install pending passing bacteria tests. So once those tests pass, they have green light. They may have gotten green light today, I just don't know. I know as of Friday they didn't have it. So there's currently two blocks of water main, or one less than that now, one sanitary sewer, all the mains in should be finished replacing the service lines. Claflin has been hit and miss on the project the last couple weeks, but when they're here, they have been getting some positive work done, bringing gravel to the project, and generally getting things put back together after the utility work. Clark Drew Concrete has been very active on the project, getting a lot of pieces put in place. They've done a very good job of filling the gap between the grating and the asphalt paving, because now we have more blocks of asphalt that may be ready to go. So very pleased with Clark Drew. The last two weeks, both construction is not on the project. So skipping ahead, Are you jumping ahead? That was the last two weeks. Now that Mike's primed the pump here, proposed for this week and next week, H&W again is going to continue to work on buttoning up the utility service lines that need to be installed. Primarily that's on Elm, a block of Crescent, and two blocks of Once that's all done, then the utility work's wrapped up and we can just move on with restoration work. Claflin, again, like I said, has moved into the blocks as the utility work wraps up and has been getting some positive work done. We were looking at getting two more blocks of elm ready for asphalt paving, so far, As of today, we've got one extra, so we do have one extra block that's ready for asphalt paving, so that's a good sign. Overall, there are seven blocks of street grading and base remaining to be completed. That might be down to six now that that one block is done. Generally speaking, that's Broad Avenue, four blocks, Prairie, one block, Elm Avenue, one block, and Crescent Street, one block. And Clark Drew moves into those areas as they are ready to continue with the concrete work. Bo's Construction showed up this afternoon, and they have started the asphalt base on center. And as I understood when I was driving up here, is that they're trying to get the base lift on center between Broad and Elm done yet tonight. So that will be done. We don't know if they're going to put the second lift on that block or move on to base lifts on other blocks. But generally speaking, there are two blocks of element already, two blocks apart, and one block abroad. So the block abroad is centered to wind. So by the end of this week, we'll have six more blocks, maybe seven, of asphalt coverage of the project. So that means that there's gonna be about seven blocks left at the end of September. So it's a sprint from, and that's six weeks away, so there's a lot of work that's gonna happen in the next six weeks. And at the last public meeting, we talked about now that all these parts are moving all at once everywhere, because we can't stop work, we can't hold up utility work, we can't hold up street replacement. So the access in and out of individual homes and certain blocks of the street is going to be hit and miss at any one time. So we've asked a lot of patients for the public, always pay attention to what's happening in your block and what may be left to do in your block. Because you leave for work at 8 o'clock, no guarantees you're going to get back in your driveway at 5 o'clock. Just saying. We're at that blazing all-head limit. all ahead full on the project. So we did warn them that that would happen. We talked about the other things that are the expectations of life now. You know, it's mail service, it's Amazon and parcel services, it's if there's a daycare carpool or a school bus that has to go down through the project, all those things could be hit and miss at times. To take the route that they want to take, they may have to take the longer route, is all I'm gonna say on that. So it's an evolving project. They have come back in and started to do some more seeding work, which is very nice too. They've been spraying some weeds and getting ready to do some seeding, so that was positive this last week too. So, I will pause again. Questions?

So there could be parts of the project that are not paid by the end of, before they shut down? Will all the projects be paid by September?

By the end of September is the goal, yes. So the project official close date is October 31st. So what we expect to have is all of the asphalt work scheduled for either the end of September or early, early October. And then when they get that done, it's just the touch up on, we have put street signs back in, we've got to put finish up the seating, if it's not already finished. It's all the dust-up work. You know, the yard that they've been using for their staging area is going to take a lot of work to clean up. Thankfully, it wasn't in pristine shape before, but...there's a lot of things that consummate completion of the project.

So, realistically, we're kind of reaping the rewards of going a little longer into last fall. Remember when we extended some things and let them go a little further? That's kind of paying off when you only got two weeks or maybe one week of digging left to go.

Yep, you're right, and I want to give the contractor credit because we rode herd on them the last project, and we rode herd on them last year, and the light came on a little bit sooner for them this year. They got that second crew in here fairly early. They didn't wait until July. They got them in here at the end of May, I think it was, and so that accelerated the point where we're at now, but like I said, It's going to be minor chaos right now for the next six weeks, because we're going to have five contractors. We're going to have seating, we're going to have grading, we're going to have concrete, we're going to have asphalt, and somebody putting up signs and stuff. So there's lots of moving parts. And one other... And I don't want to go into great detail, but at the last public meeting, the Lutheran Church did ask us a question about an AA route along the west side of the school, part of the church, excuse me, on Wynn. And we went out after that meeting and checked the slopes, and it's not ideal, but it fits the criteria. The alley entrance at the south side of the church property is flat enough, it's less than a 5% slope. So we could designate the parking stall next to that apron as a route to get around to the front of the church. So we would have one on each end of their block, so to speak, or their property. We'd have one at the corner of Wynn and Elm and one at the alley. that greatly improves the overall function of somebody of need. And I got to thinking about that too. The church, when it comes to funerals, if they just slightly change how they line things up, rather than going straight in the front door, they could realistically stage those casket bearers from either end of their block. Now that's up to them to decide what works best for them. I'm not going to go into, you know, nitpicking, but there's gonna be two routes that are gonna be as good as we can provide for the ADA route. So I feel a lot better than I have for a long time on that subject. And they were going to meet, and I have not heard anything from them about a decision on how they wanted to approach the ADA access on the north side of the building, but they did promise that they were going to give us an opinion on that. I look forward to hearing what that is. I'll take a step back. They may have told others on my team. I just don't know it personally. That's all I have.

Any other questions? From an emergency services standpoint, I just kind of want to have an idea of what roads are going to be

with asphalt completed on this section because we're waiting on a secondary one later, right? Yep. Okay, so Park Avenue will be done from wind all the way to summit when this is done. Elm will be done from wind, no, from center to wind, and then it'll have one block on the other end that's done, right? I don't know if it's the one next to Summit, or if it's the one next to Prairie, but one of those blocks. If it's the one next to Summit, they're done. Is it? Okay, so it'd be the far west block of Elm. Then center's gonna have paving on it, and the west block of Broad, between center and Wind, will have asphalt on it. Okay, so center and Broad. basically going to be done and reopen again. Okay. Yeah, that intersection, I've been chiding on a long time to get that back into service. We've got a large apartment complex there. Yep, absolutely. So we'd like to make it a little bit easier for us to get there. Me too. That's all. Any other questions? All right, thank you. So, I'll see you in three weeks. And a lot, a lot of work will have happened in that three weeks. Unless it starts raining every other night. But it's been a while coming, but having no more digging holes after a week or so here, that's gonna really help.

Shane, with the extra week in August, will we have a public meeting then, I think scheduled for the 26th, then will we have a week off?

Probably. Okay. And that attendance has really dropped off. Yeah. Now that we've kind of gotten to a certain point. But if you hear of any questions from the public, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'll still provide answers even if we don't have an official meeting.

Okay.

So, yeah. Well, it's, you start to see the light at the end of the tunnel, so.

I'm climbing the ladder out of the trench, so to speak.

Literally, almost. All right, thank you, Shane. Oh, footnote, we are working on, there's a handful of miscellaneous work items, again, that weren't in the original plan. You keep finding new stuff, like two-inch service lines that we didn't know were there. So, we'll have a change order involved in the next payout. Thank you.

Have a good rest of the evening. All right, next item, Duncan Park Warming House Demolition Bowl.

Yep, thanks, Mayor Dan. I'll be pretty quick on this one because I know we've exhausted a lot of energy to this point. I think there's also a little bit more coming up here, but there was a request made by City Alderman to look at demolishing the Duncan Park warming shelter. Looking at the picture, it's not in terrible shape, but it's not used and it's not really accessible. That door doesn't have a handle on it. The guy's gonna just have it locked up. My understanding is that that was primarily used for a warming shelter for when the ice rink was in play. Like two years ago, maybe the guys tried to resurrect the ice rink and it just didn't quite work out for them. So I don't know if that's in the near future unless somebody really wants to see it. But the question before you folks is whether you would like to see that demolished or not. I will tell you that it would be pretty straightforward to knock it down and haul it off. We have the equipment on hand and the guys on hand to do it. major cost would just be, or not major cost, the cost of doing it would likely be a dumpster rental to put the debris in that can't be put in the rubble site. So I'm guessing somewhere between $150 and $300 for the dumpster rental. Okay.

Thoughts, comments? Well, the building is just a hiding place for I walked back there and there was some whiskey bottles and stuff laying there. It just makes a hiding place for it. With the building out there, the whole park would be more accessible for anybody looking that way.

Yeah, I don't know. We haven't used it in years. Yeah, it's... Jacob tried two years ago, and I don't know if it was a bad winter where the ground was thawed and it was absorbing the water faster than it would freeze, but if you ever want, I think if this body or anybody in the public ever wanted that ice rink to come back, we'd probably have to do some modifications to it to get it to hold water a little bit better. Right. Okay, on with your team.

Having never been in there, it doesn't look to me like it's the greatest warming kind of a shelter anyway. There's usually a lot You know, it's all, no window, no, I mean, what's in there to warm up with? Well, they used to have a little heater in there.

I don't know. Air propane.

The only thing it was used for smelled like crap because everyone just peed in the corner. There you go. That kind of helps. Okay. Pretty much helped Mike.

Well, we have to have a motion then.

I'll make the motion. Motion by Alderman Eckerd to demo the Warming House. Is there a second? I'll second. Second by Alderman Ahlers. Any further discussion? Signe and all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Next item is overdue business utility accounts. I'll just preface it by I would say it's not our goal to pick on any businesses or any individuals on the standpoint of utility bills. We have tried to be, I think the city and staff has tried to be accommodating and understanding that sometimes circumstances come up that you need some time to make a payment, and I think the city staff has tried to do their best to work through those situations. obviously our ordinances you don't pay your bill we shut you off period that hasn't been our practice not criticizing that that's not been our practice but it does leave some leeway of subjectivity amongst employees to have to make that decision do I shut them off don't I shut them off do I Don't I give them time to pay? So I think that the council has an opportunity here to put some thought into how you want to move forward on utility bills. I'm visiting with staff here. I think they would appreciate some direction so that they could say, hey, this is the policy, and if you don't like it, You can come before the city council and plead your case. But I know Cole's pulled together some examples and we kind of maybe treated, well we have a little bit treated individual accounts different than business accounts. But I'll let Cole kind of talk a little bit about it and then we can see what further direction we go.

Thank you Mayor Dan. So yeah, maybe we'll just start with like a hundred foot view of utility bills and kind of explain the process just so everybody in the public and then everybody on the council has just a quick one-on-one how the process kind of goes. So on the 25th of each month, bills are typically sent out somewhere between the 25th and the 27th, sometimes a little earlier. Ordinance requires they be sent out by the 1st. So if folks receive their bills on the 25th, those utility bills then become due on the 15th and become delinquent on the 16th. So reading the letter of the law, as Mayor Dan said, at that point the city does have the right to shut them off. The practice historically has been that on the 16th, We start generating what we call door notices. Pink slips. Yeah, disconnection notices, I guess you could call them. The little yellow door hangers that they hang on people's doors. And they hang those up, what, Laura, a few days before? It's the pink slip for a stick. Oh, the pink slip. Sorry, I skipped a step. There's a pink slip that gets generated on the 16th that goes out. That's going to be tomorrow. Yeah, so those go out on the 16th. And then if we don't get payment by the 25th, the door knocker goes on. We put those out the 24th, I believe. And then if they don't pay or have a promise to pay, which I'll get to in a second, by the 25th, they're disconnected. That's typically the case on the residential side. The business side is a little bit different, as Mayor Dan said. We'll get to that in a second. But something that I think maybe we need discussing or looked at, especially if we're developing some sort of a policy to help staff be more... Consistent, thank you, with how we handle these things is some guidance on the promise to pay. So what's the promise to pay? Cole is late on his utility bill. He gets the pink slip on the mail on the 16th. Cole calls to the office and says, hey, Lori, I'm sorry I missed my payment. I would like to arrange a promise to pay. Lori will say, Cole, how much can you pay? I can pay $100 every week for the next three weeks to pay my $300 bill. Sign off on it. Okay, sounds good. We'll mark you down for that. Oftentimes people do make those arrangements and pay out as they're supposed to. At certain points it doesn't happen. It unfortunately happens quite normally. And then the staff is pushed into a position to say, okay, well, we just promised to pay. Do I shut them off now? Do I give them an extra day? How do we handle that? And the promise to pay actually at least goes back to 2001. I did some little researching. prior to the meeting here and actually what used to happen is folks used to come before the council and ask the council to arrange a schedule with them at their normal meetings and I imagine at some point the council probably got a little bit fatigued doing multiple promise to pays at every meeting and delegated that to staff. I can't find that policy anywhere. what I included in the packet, which is kind of the sheet. I'm guessing when that transition happened, this sheet was generated. I'm sure it's somewhere out there, but I couldn't find it. So that's the promise to pay. Are there any questions on utility bills generally? No? Okay. Which kind of takes me to where I wanted to go tonight, which was first we'll discuss the would like to discuss the business side of things and then a few folks would like to work on some changes generally across the board either getting more teeth for the ordinance because the ordinance is fair nothing it says it says that bills are due on the 15th and they're delinquent on the 16th that's it um so looking at the commercial side of it um there's kind of three and again just to echo what mayor dan has said we don't want to pick on anybody But I think in the in the pursuit of Transparency and understanding where we're coming from a staff bring this up. I think we probably need to discuss some of this with you folks So the three examples I'll go through the first one Would be grizzly meats they've had a delinquent balance since February 2027 which totals or 26, sorry, 27, 2026, which totals $27,191. There was some discussion between the customer and the city on certain things on the Electric side, as far as is the amount we're billing correct? Is the transformer putting off correct voltage? To date, everything we've tried has not shown that to be the case. The specific question, that's why I brought Tom here to answer any questions on specifics, but just a few things. We switched the meter out, I believe, right? And then we tested the new meter. We tested the CTs. We purchased about $5,000 worth of equipment to measure the voltage going from the transformer to the building to make sure that the voltage wasn't dropping, causing compressor damage inside the building. All that has shown that there's really nothing on our end that would result in any damage to the building or rates being incorrect. So that's kind of how we got to where we are on the amount of the bill, just by that took about three to four months to kind of disclose some of that information. looking at the next kind of one if there's not questions on that one as of now i'll circle back to it at the end but the next one and this is another example of kind of what we deal with on the business side mad mary's has ceased business operations and they have a remaining utility bill that exists with the city as this is kind of the risk we run working with folks from time to time as we obviously with every fiber of our being want these businesses to remain open and remain successful but as we allow those balances to grow and become delinquent we expose the city to risk as far as loss on that due revenue. I plan to work with City Attorney Matt on what are options there as far as recouping some of those funds. I don't know exactly where we stand, but that will come to the council later when we have more information on the best route to work with that individual to try to, again, recoup some of those funds for the city. The last kind of example I wanted to give was the Elk Creek and Seto. They also carry a liquid utility balance, but they continue to make regular payments. And all this is reflected in your packets. If you go to, I think there's like 20 pages of things. You can see a lawyer went through and highlighted all the payments that have been made and then kind of the final balances. So we work with those folks on a weekly basis just about to say, hey, here's your bill, what can you do? And they've slowly been working that down. That's the ideal scenario when somebody gets delinquent on that bill is that we're able to establish that KIND OF PAY SCHEDULE AND HOPE THAT WE CAN WORK TOGETHER TO STICK TO IT AND GET THAT DOWN BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY AT THE END OF THE DAY AS A CITY WE WANT TO SUPPORT ALL THE BUSINESSES THAT DO BUSINESS WITH US AND THAT'S SOME OF THE THAT'S ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS ABOUT HAVING A MUNICIPALLY OWNED UTILITY BECAUSE I CAN TELL YOU WITH NEAR ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY IF IT WAS AN IOU IF IT WAS I'M NOT GOING TO NAME ANY NAMES BUT PRIVATELY OWNED BUSINESS THE MINUTE YOU'RE DELINQUENT YOU'RE SHUT OFF THEY DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE A BUSINESS IF YOU'RE AN INDIVIDUAL SO THAT'S THAT IS ONE OF THE BENEFITS THAT WE HAVE IS TO TRY TO WORK WITH THESE FOLKS Again, it's staff trying to make the best decision for both the city and the customer when we're kind of going through these delinquent bills. Just to kind of close up that discussion on the three examples, absent a payment tonight, before, or right at 8 tomorrow morning, Grizzly Meats will likely be disconnected tomorrow morning. I had sent two letters over to them, sent certified in the middle of June, and then at the middle of July. I had a conversation on Friday that has not resulted in a payment, so just letting the council know that that's likely on the list tomorrow morning, unfortunately, unless we can arrange something else. Has everybody followed me to this point? I know we're kind of going like this. So generally, going back to what Mayor Dan had talked about, is there some changes you folks, knowing that information, is there some changes you folks would like to see? Obviously, we can try to work those up. Likely, it's looking at an ordinance situation versus a policy, I would assume. I don't know if that's the case, but maybe that makes the most sense to just build it into the ordinance so there's little to no leeway if we decide to develop a little bit more strict policy on how to handle those things. But again, that's up to you folks to do so. Yeah, did I miss anything there again?

No, I just think it's hard sometimes to explain to the business community or the individuals that I get shut off but because of a business, I don't get shut off. And the other businesses that are paying, I mean, once they're incentive to continue to pay, and pay timely, yeah, they get a penalty, but, ah, the city, I can go six, I can wait, you know? And so, I appreciate the city wanting to work, you can go 90 days or six months without payment. I think that we need to, 30 days, okay, but after 60 days, maybe you're shut off. And in the scope of the electrical budget, These dollar figures might not seem significant, but they are significant, because those are dollars that we can use to reinvest in the community, and so when we aren't able to recoup those, that 27,000 or that 5,000 or that 10,000, whatever it is, those are significant dollars that go a long ways in our community. And I just... I don't think that we need to put some clear direction or teeth in our ordinance that gives staff the vehicle they need to say, boom, here it is. I don't mean to be not compassionate. I believe that Cole and staff have tried to work with overdue accounts and with mostly success getting them paid, but there's times when it just isn't gonna work and we need to be able to make sure that the city doesn't get so far behind that there's no hope of that individual ever getting caught up, whether it be an individual or it be a business. So that's just my two cents worth. then I guess it's up to council if they want to add anything else or direction for calling them to move forward and put some ordinance change together.

Yeah, Alderman Farge. Do you like working with what they've done on the residential? If they missed one, you don't try to pay your full bill for next month and work on your, would you like that?

It's over 60 days behind.

Right, right. I think that's, I agree with you there. I think I, if I could. Yeah, yeah.

If we were to go along with the promise to pay on the business side and can implement that fully as we do with the individual side, I think where you can most help staff is to write into an ordinance or a policy that says, look, you can establish the promise to pay, but if that person, because we do time, date, you need to come in at this time in the state to pay, I think you've got to give staff no room to say, look, they don't show up. And then there's...

Yeah, I was going to say, I think that becomes the problem. The promise to pay is a very nice option for people, but it's really a lot to manage because there could be a lot of people on promise to pay, and then as soon as their day comes where they're supposed to come in to pay, then they don't, so then we shut them off, And then they get on the phone instantly. Now I'm talking more residential now and not business right now because we haven't typically been shutting businesses off. They get right on the phone and they call right away and say, oh, my electricity's off. And we say, well, yeah, you didn't hold up your promise to pay. And they said, oh, I'll come in tomorrow. And then what's kind of been happening is then we turn them back on and it's just like, well... I personally think some payment should have to be made before.

Right.

And it's a waste of time for staff and for everybody.

I think, too, that it really hurts the individual, the resident, too, if we keep on letting them promise pay, and they keep on getting farther and farther behind, like you're saying. How are they going to make that up, right?

I'll depart you. I agree with you. That's what I'm saying. That's what I was getting back to. Then I was going to go back to residential. I agree with you. Once you make this contract, or the thing, if they miss it, I'd say the contract's void. You know, I think you should make that change. Two, three times, it's out of the line. So I do think you should change, or something that should be, I think should be changed on that. I like your, I like this residential thing where they got problems, pay your current on there, but if they miss it, I'd say she's done. Until it's paid in full.

Okay. I think after 60 days, they should have to pay the current bill plus some of the old every month. And if they miss by a day, just go check the power off. We can't do anything to turn it back on until we actually receive total payment.

Yeah, and it becomes a it does it is hard because we do have a lot of accounts that have gotten pretty far So it's pretty unrealistic to say well you got to pay all this or you're getting shut off I mean you kind of know that that is not going to be realistic, but I don't know how else to clean it up without doing that because if you continue to allow He's promised to pay us over and over and over. Like Tom said, people are not going to get caught up.

I think it's time to just nip it in the bud and, you know, like you guys were saying, just make a rule and go from there.

But, I mean, potentially if we can circle back around to the business aspect of it, too, because I think what is also hard in our office is there's been this protocol that we can't shut off a business because they're a business so if they are late on their utility bill and we shut them off then they can't make money so how are they going to pay their bill back that's what we've been kind of going by in our office which is why we've been getting some larger balances on some of these businesses so I think that is another area where we would like some direction do we just treat businesses and residential everybody's just treated the same or what does everybody think about that

I think they should be treated the same. I mean, if they make the promise they're going to pay on a certain day, and they don't do it the next day, everybody's in trouble. I mean, we've got to really draw the sign.

I think there ought to be a limit. If you get to $5,000 and you own a business, you can't pay that. You're not going to catch up. Just like you're not doing nothing. I'm gonna close my business in five years, so I won't pay my utilities. My business is closed, who cares?

You just said that on the phone.

I don't care. That's what it all makes me feel.

Exactly, right, yeah.

You know I could the only challenge was setting a dollar Linux. I toss that around my head to what's an appropriate amount There's some businesses Whether it's $3,000 bill a month, and then I might own a mom-and-pop shop. It's $300 it is hard to use that but I 100% follow where you're going with that It's there's got to be a threshold that once you meet it.

You're done Or if it's the 60 days yep, you're gonna meet that threshold

You can incorporate the promise to pay, but in the short term. And then put teeth in it.

Yeah. We can try to build in some more limits because I think, again, A lot of this goes to staff discretion, which we've talked about staff discretion, I don't know how many times over the last four years, because we just, I feel like Flandreau as a community as a whole, we're pretty nice, friendly people, and we want to help people, and I think that we've, over the years, just accumulated so much discretion that occurs, I think we've limited a significant amount of it through discussions since I've been here. I think even if you can limit the amount of time somebody has to pay back, because I think what's happening now is, I hate using these abstract examples, but say Cole owes $750 and he makes $200 a week, I promise you I'll pay $50 a week for the next seven months. doesn't really catch you up but we get caught in this trap where you're trying to work with people but it but and staff has the latitude to do so but at some point maybe there should be some guidelines to say look if you do a promise to pay you have a month or you have 60 days has been turned around you have 60 days to pay back the full balance plus keep current on your bill or we're not going to let you sign that promise to pay and that's something i 100 can work into a kind of written policy or ordinance i'll work with matt on what would be the best for that but

we can we can lay that out explicitly for staff so they know what the guidelines are on that if they get a certain dollar amount behind is there and they don't pay is there any way we can put a judgment against the property if they would happen to sell the property and we would get something back on it i mean Yeah, you can... What's the cost of getting an adjustment? I mean, a judgment.

It would depend on how, because you basically, if it's under $12,000, you can sue it out in small claims court. Right. And then you're going, you have a trial before the magistrate judge. If they show up to contest it, it's a little more expensive. If they don't, it's fairly straightforward. You get the judgment, and then you have the ability to levy the judgment. You're one of however many creditors, so you'll be unsecured, and you'll be standing in line wherever. But, yes, it's possible.

If we had a judgment on a business, Would that work on a business that's renting a place that you're doing business in?

You wouldn't be able to let it out on the property. Not the real property that you're renting, but all the assets of that business. That's the age-old problem, is where to squeeze on a stone.

I suppose if the business is way behind

they would probably think about yeah a lot of their assets are probably collateral for something else but yeah these aren't fun discussions necessarily to have as a council but unfortunately we're running a business too and therefore we have to be respectful of all of our our people that do make their payments on time and that isn't necessarily easy for them to do either but they faithfully do it, so I think Cole and staff can put together this promise to pay type thing with maybe a 60 day provision in it before they're shut off and then come back to council and they put it in ordinance type form for us to look at at our September, right when we put it in ordinance, Matt? What do you think? Probably, in my mind, that's what would make the most sense. Okay, all right. And then come back in September and take a look at it and see where we are. In the meantime, I guess, you just have to make the call of kind of how we go, how we go, until we get that new ordinance in place.

Yeah, on the business side, those are the only ones that we have any significant overdue balances on, so you all are aware of those folks. And in the memo, and then as well as talking to you folks, I kind of think explained how we're handling those. So as long as there's not any objection to any of those three, we'll keep handling the individual accounts as we've kind of explained, and then we'll stick to the plan with these three, unless something dramatically changes, then I'll keep you up to speed.

Okay. All right. Any other questions on that? Anything else coming for the council?

We passed that, Dr. Parkhill, but I did walk around there and look at that building today. And since I got the superintendent here and Cole here, I looked at the electrical boxes on that building, which is going to get torn down. I don't know if it's hot or not, but I'm thankful, too, that some boxes are, I don't know if they're hot or not. We'll take a look. We'll take a look on that, just to see.

I asked James about it the other day, and I'm not sure if he wouldn't look at it, or not. But, yeah, we'll take a look at it. Yeah, they're damaged, and I'm sure they're...

Right.

There's three lights on top of that pole, they should be repaired, or fixed, or something, so... Okay. And, I don't know how you, I suppose a sensor on them, or?

So, oh, on the pole, there's... Yes, there's

I don't know how big they are, or how much light they do, they look like they're real big, but they would probably make a big difference, I mean, that basketball court is going to use them. Yeah. For sure. Okay. All right.

Well, I am going to adjourn the meeting