City Council - Regular Meeting

and I will ask our finance officer, Lori Nebo, to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. All right, first item is to adopt the agenda. Are there any corrections or changes to the agenda? Cigna, entertain a motion. So moved. Moved by Alderman Yates. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Fargin. Any further discussion? Cigna, no. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. I might sound bad, I'm not contagious, but I might be a little hacky, thanks. So those of you listening online, I apologize for that. Next is the consent item, approve the minutes of our 8-17 meeting, approval of Heiberger and Ahrens for the EMTs, part-time. and then approved temporary on-site, on-sale, special alcohol beverage for El Reconcino at the community center, Jacob Community Center, on September 19th, and then an opportunity to approve the bills, which you've had an opportunity to look at. Are there any questions on any of the consent items? Senator, do you have a motion to approve? So moved. Moved by Alderman Nibling, seconded by Alderman Ahlers. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. I'll open the public hearing for the temporary on sale alcohol and beverage license for the warehouse for the event to be held at the Janefield Community Center on September 12th. Any comments on that? That's the warehouses, I believe their appreciation gathering for donors and stuff for their, yeah. Move to approve. Motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Eckerd. Any further discussion? Signed and all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. Visitors to be heard, I believe everybody's here on maybe agenda items, unless I'm mistaken. Just here listening. All right, perfect. Then I will skip visitors to be heard, and we will move to administrative reports. Several meetings coming up. I know we have a cemetery board meeting tomorrow. We have a housing meeting tomorrow. Airport bid openings on, I believe, Thursday. So a lot of meetings and stuff that I'll be attending or have been attending. with coal as we kind of gear up for these future projects and kind of see where we are with things we're trying to get done here yet this year. I know Shane's here to talk about the project, but I think the project helped share the love of the mud and sludge all through down through our office and our buildings about a foot deep, everything in there is all mud. So something did contain it on Pipestone Avenue, we're not the only ones Ekrem's had their whole inside flooded with a foot of water throughout. It was up to almost their doors in their back parking lots. It was kind of an ugly, unexpected thing to deal with, but we're dealing with it now. It's Mother Nature. I can't blame anybody for it. It just is an unfortunate circumstance. I'm sure we're not alone. Pat Kanz next door and others probably had some of the same sludge and issues that they're dealing with now and cleaning up. Other than that, that's everything I have at this time. We'll have future reports on all these meetings that are coming up to report back to the council. So I'll turn it over to Cole.

Thanks, Brendan. Just a couple things from me. One, at our last meeting, the council voted to remove the warming shack at the ice rink in Duggan Park. That's been demolished and hauled off and cleaned up pretty good. We did end up leaving that pad there for now. When we go in next year or look at next year going in to put in new playground equipment, maybe we'll take it out, maybe we'll leave it. We'll see how that kind of works out with what equipment ends up getting selected that way. As Mayor Dan said, Airport Board met earlier tonight and the Cemetery Board tomorrow. Just two quick announcements. I believe I said them last week, but I'll just remind everybody. The warehouse is doing its appreciation event Saturday at 5 to 8.30, I believe. The notice of quorum for that has been posted in the window as well as online on the website. And then the Wholeness Center is kind of doing an all-day open house, 11 to 6 p.m. If any of you folks are interested, stop by the Wholeness Center between 11 and 6, and I think they'll give you a tour and a little explanation on kind of what services they provide and things of that nature. So that is Thursday at 11 it starts.

That's all I have for my report. Okay. Only question I have, and maybe Jacob, how big is that pad? Is it a... I would say about 16 by 16 at most. I just don't know if possibly maybe a shelter could go there or something, like a little picnic shelter or something like that, maybe utilize that pad or something like that. Possibly.

There is some cracking in it. I don't know how.

It should be, I'll look at it here tomorrow.

Yeah, I think it would be okay in there, Dan, but I can't say that for sure.

Just thinking of maybe a possible use down the road. Yeah. All right, any questions for Cole and myself? Seeing none, I entertain a motion to approve the administrative report. So moved. Moved by Alderman Bierke. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Yaten. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. Old business, the 2027 dispatch group with Moody County. I'd entertain a motion to take that off the table.

So moved.

Moved by Alderman Allers. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Nibling. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. Just briefly, I'll just kind of kick this off here. We've had another meeting. I want to thank Commissioner Inking and Commissioner Hemmer and Marty for meeting with us here a few weeks ago as we tried to try to find some resolution or some agreement that we could agree on moving forward for dispatch services for 2027. I know we're late in the year. And my hope is that going forward that this discussion will happen at the beginning part of the year as we try to find a solution maybe for emergency management, shared cost agreements with entities, the elected officials, the governmental entities going forward. We're not going to reach that tonight and it's going to take some collaboration with those groups, the elected officials sitting down at the table and deciding what they want to do. So my recommendation is tonight we try to see if we can't come up with a proposal to present to the county commissioners for them to make a decision on. I thank them for taking 5% or so off our agreement and lowering our amount to $5,000. So they did make some effort and some movement on lowering the cost to fly-in group. But I know that there are others here with maybe a proposal or engage in the conversation so we can maybe get something passed tonight to continue to further this discussion. Whatever is decided tonight, I am competent is not an end result or a solution. It is only a temporary agreement for next year. So hopefully these groups will sit down earlier, like I said, and really put some additional thought into emergency management services as a whole and how we disperse and share in those costs and provide that quality services to our community and county as a whole. So with that, I open it up. for any further discussion or proposals to be put on the table. Alderman Fargent.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit for a while, but I did sit down with them, and when I'm about to propose, all the figures come from them, pretty much. They claim if we go to Watertown, they wouldn't have the savings like we would, because they'd still have to run their office to fertilizer 24-7, warrants, walk-ins, just do day-to-day business scheduling. And they brought up it would cost them, well, to run that, it'd run about $150,000 to $180,000. So that's telling me You've been paying for quite a bit of that. You know, that's county business. So I thought, well, I'll split the difference. That's $165,000. So on that total, their figures come to $344,000. That doesn't change a bit. That's what it costs to run the dispatch. $104,000 with the 911. That comes to $240,000, like their figures. I say they... 165,000 take off at the top. That leaves a total of $75,641. Using their figures, the city uses 39.5% on calls. The tribe uses 11.5. That would give us 39.5. That gives us $29,991 for what we should hold. I might just go with that figure back to him.

And stay with the county. So we have a motion by Alderman Fargen explaining his formula that gave us a number that he'd like us to present back to them for 2027 dispatch services. Is there a second on that and then we can go into discussion? I'll second that. Okay, seconded by Alderman Fierke. Now for the discussion. questions, everybody understand what, how Alderman Fierty. Yes, Alderman Fierty.

All right, so what we're thinking here is we're gonna make an offer to them of $29,000, that's our. $29,991, yes.

And then we're gonna wait for them to react to that or whatever.

when off of the nearly 80,000 that they're gonna ask us for next year, what was that number, 75, 70? 71. 71, okay. Of the 70,000 last year, they took 5,000 off as a proposal.

And they added that up first.

Right. Yes, yeah, yeah. So we gotta back it up a little bit here. And this is where I gotta come from when I, March, I believe, was the meeting that you had watched, Mike? Was it in March or April? And they were debating what's going to be the raise to us at that time. Comment was made in the meeting, what are they going to do? We're just going to raise it. So this is what we're going to deal with continually every year. no matter if we talk them down to the $29,000 or if they just stay at the $66,000 or whatever the $5,000 are. We're not treated as a customer, and I think if we go after the public and how we should have our due diligence to the public, we can't continually roll the money out into their office unless they go with the figure you're talking about. to be fair. So if we don't get anything back from them on that, then I see no other recourse, but we go to, it's not like we're going to bad service. We're going to get good service. It isn't going to be seamless. So I'll back you on the try for this, Mike, and we'll see if they react to it, but I'll bet they don't, and I don't think that We're a customer. All the people in our community are customers, and they're not being real fair to us, as has been in the past, and I don't think it's going to change in the future from what they've done. My two cents.

Okay. Were you going to say something?

The only thing I was going to say is just make sure everybody understood that we are using the formula that they originally used. have used since 2016, except we're just plugging in instead of the 30%, we're plugging in the $165,000, which is halfway between the $150,000 and $180,000 they thought it would take to run their office without us being a part of it. I just want to make sure everybody understands that. This isn't a totally new formula, it's just that number's being plugged in instead of the 30%. Yeah, we're just plugging a different number into their formula. Yeah.

Hold it a minute, please.

I support this, but I think in the future, looking at history between the county and the city, we need to look at overall entering into a cooperation agreement with the county for emergency management services, whether it includes dispatch or just for ambulance and fire protection. And to come up with the, you might have formula here, which is good. There's all kinds of different formulas we use for coming up with an agreement with the tribe for fire protection. That was based on assessed valuation, or not assessed valuation, but valuation of all the property. So for ambulance and fire protection, if there's some way next year that we can work on a cooperation agreement get started earlier in the year working on a cooperation agreement and all of us come together with some formula whether it's based on number of households based on population or whatever so that we are going through this every year for ambulance and fire protection but if we go this other route may happen with dispatch that won't be part of the equation.

I do have another question. How does the delay and the I can't say it any other way, yanking around gold, with our budget time. How's this, we're going to come to the...

It certainly throws a wrench in it, depending on how long we kind of go back and forth. Laura, what did we say the date was?

I think we'll be doing a budget workshop in the middle of October. In about a month from now would be... when we would like to have our budget kind of buttoned up to present to you guys for approval in November. That's kind of our timeline.

Probably a week or two prior to that would be nice to know what ballpark we're in.

So here's my additional thing. Whatever the protocol, the way you go through it, do we need to put an end date on we need to hear back from this by this time? You know what I mean? So we don't go. As far as the budget, trying to figure out what that's going to be.

They met this last... Did they go every two weeks? Every two weeks. Okay. So they'll have one more meeting in September yet.

Well, their budget's almost done, too, or pretty much done. I think they're going to want to wrap it up one way or the other, too, on their meeting, I would think.

Do we want to put... that date in your motion?

I guess it's kind of our motion now. Well, we could just say we'd like a response by your next scheduled meeting, by the next time you guys meet or something like that. I just don't have a count on what date they're meeting.

Oh, yeah, as far as putting an exact thing on it? Yeah, at your next scheduled meeting.

At your next... At the conclusion of their next scheduled meeting. Yeah, by the conclusion of their next scheduled meeting. By the 22nd. By the 22nd.

I'm sure we'll hear back one way or another.

But yes. So then...

Did they just meet? They met last week. Last week or today? Last week.

So they're going to meet next Tuesday, right?

The 29th? 15th. Oh, 15th. Sorry. Oh, it's okay. First fell on Tuesday.

Yeah, I mean in my, and I'll just go back to even kind of just echo a little bit what Alderman Ible kind of got at too. And I think the commissioners that we met with, think it's important that we meet and it's been productive and that working together is the way to work through these types of things and they know they have three new commissioners coming on so that will change the dynamics as they get put into these conversations and their thoughts and stuff like that. That's why my hope is that we can get through 2026 keeping dispatch where it is, getting an agreement for 2027, and then working with the commissioners, the new commissioners, and us in 2027 to come forward with a meaningful formula that we can get done for 2028. ultimately that would be ideal if we could do that but we'll see if this motion passes and this proposal goes to them i guess we'll see what what they want to do going forward for 2027 because we know that If they take this as $30,000 more than they would have had if they had gotten offered nothing, and that it also, if they don't accept this and the council then votes to change dispatch services we know that the budget deficit that that will also create for the county that's not our intent we want to work together we just got to find some common ground and maybe this they'll accept so any other comments on this So I guess if both the second and the first agree to put additionally into their motion that a response is requested by the conclusion of their scheduled county commission meeting on September 15th. Okay?

Yep. All right. Mike says it, so I'm still seconding him.

Yes, yes, out of a dibbley. Can we have the motion repeated?

Yep. Motion by Fargin, seconded by Bierke to present an updated proposal to the county of $29,991.79 for the 2027 dispatch agreement with a response requested at the conclusion of the September 15th commissioner meeting.

Is that right? Okay.

Is that the motion?

That is the motion. And I think that if how we got to that figure, we could definitely send our info sheet or a recording of it and they could listen to that also. One of the benefits of having a recorded meeting, they can listen to it and look at it. And if they have any questions, I guess they can reach out to Cole or myself before their meeting. All right, any other comments on the motion on the table before us? Seeing none, entertain all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Moving forward to new business. Shane with utility improvement project update.

Thank you, Mayor, Council. Always good to be here. I handed out council meeting update. I'll go through that first, then we'll talk about some other items that aren't specifically on that. We'll need more discussion, but. Work completed in the last couple weeks. H&W got all their water tests done and the service lines completed, so then they started cleaning up their utility work and just general project cleanup. Claflin continued to work on grading and shaping on Broad Avenue from center to summit and some on Prairie. They've also continued to do some backfilling of curbs creating for concrete work. Clark Drew continued to do some miscellaneous concrete work as long as it was available to them at times. I think they left the project here or there and came back, but they didn't work continuously the last couple weeks. Lowe's Construction was not on site. IMAG has continued to come up, make trips up to update staking for grading and blue tops for the gravel and curb and gutter work. Work proposed for this week and next week, H&W will still have a presence around here. They're cleaning up their staging area yard and assisting with the cleanup after the rainstorm a little bit and just general project cleanup. Claflin continues to shape and grade. They need to get a few more blocks ready, then they'll start graveling everything in advance of the concrete work. Right now, I could be off a little bit here, but I count five blocks of street grading and base work to be completed. That's two blocks of Broad Avenue, one block of Prairie, one block of Elm, and one block of Crescent. Correct. Clark Drew primarily has a lot of curb and gutter work on broad left to do and probably some miscellaneous curb work here and there on prairie and elm as well. That block of elm by the church primarily and then the crescent from elm to broad. Those are the blocks that need the curb machine, and that curb machine is scheduled to be brought back to the project late this week, so we'll probably be employing that thing next week, weather permitting. Bose Construction, round three of asphalt paving is scheduled for September 29th. However, the rain showers that you experienced this last weekend may impact that a little bit, but we're still getting our heads wrapped around Some awful wet spots out there, as we would expect, and they did a good job of dewatering most of those today, but there's still some pretty sloppy holes that are going to take some time to dry out, so we'll see how that goes. We'll ask for updates as we get closer to the end of the month. Seeding, restoration, they've done a pretty good job of catching up and got most of the seating done that was ready to be seated. Obviously there's gonna be at least those five or six blocks that have not yet been able to be seated because the curtain and gutter work isn't finished. So with that, I will pause for a moment and ask if there's any questions on any of the topics I just talked about. Questions?

I have one. Okay. When you're redoing the boulevards, are you just putting the clay soil and stuff back in, or are they bringing in fresh black dirt?

They're bringing back in the dirt that they salvaged off the boulevards as they went through the project initially. So it's not exactly yard for yard the same dirt that goes back in, but the dirt was collected off the yards in the boulevards to bring back in, and that's what's being brought back in. So if it had rocks or sticks or whatever in it before, it still has a few rocks and sticks. Okay.

I thought they were bringing in fresh dirt.

If they run short, they'll have to bring in some fresh dirt. Right. But I can't say for sure if they're running short or long on that material right now. Generally speaking, at this point in the project, I wouldn't expect them to be short, but in the next five blocks, they could end up short. In other words, you salvage stuff, but you can't always salvage and replace 100%. There's always some waste, let's call it.

I'm just hopeful that the stuff they put back in there is going to grow the grass.

Yeah. It's essentially the same material that was there, so... Not saying it grew grass real well before, but it should be worse. Right.

But it's kind of a hodgepodge because they put it in a pile. It is. So it's not my exact dirt that's going back and forth. No, right, right.

Yep. It gets put in a pile and then redistributed back out.

So it's wherever they happen to be. Right. So whatever the bucket full is.

If at my yard I used pristine black dirt... I can't expect that pristine black dirt to come back. That's just the nature of the business. But it is the boulevard. Yes, it is. Whatever is in the public boulevard is saved and going back. As a general rule, that is true. Okay, if there's no other questions, there's a brief topic. When we were wrapping up the water service work, The Lutheran Church did have a bad experience with some weather warnings. Our project observer and the city, Tanner, was on the site when they made that connection. And nothing unusual or out of the ordinary occurred that we believe led to dirt getting into that line. So as I understand it, there's not been a definitive determination. The church had hired a plumber to go in and take care of all their issues, and they've kept the city and the contractor apprised of what's going on. Is that correct? Cool. So still more discussions need to be had to resolve that. I just don't know that we definitively decided that the workmanship on the project led to the cause or not. Because we're connecting to older pipes. and we don't know what the conditions were in those older pipes. A lot of times what happens is, and I'm not saying this is an exact scenario, but we hook up a new pipe to an old pipe, and when we recharge the line, it breaks stuff free that might have been in the existing line, and then it travels through the building and causes issues. So again, we haven't definitively had that answered, a common occurrence. Now, in some older meter systems, we always had a screen at the meter or the service connected to the building. And in your case, your meters don't have that screen in it, so it does allow that material to travel throughout the system wherever the water drug the material to. So, anyway. We're expecting to hear more. That conversation has not ended. I just wanted to update you that it's occurring. I have not heard of any specific access issues, although I'm sure there's been a few here and there, given, especially like this weekend with the rain, that there's people that couldn't get in and out of their residences because of the storm. Has the city received any specific complaints or anything that needed to be dealt with? If you do, just pass it along and we'll try to deal with it. Okay, so we'll talk about the storm last. We did prepare change order number five and payout number 15. I hope nobody falls out of their chair when they hear about the dollar amount on the change order. They did address all the new unaccountable bid items. We allowed them to reuse some asphalt millings instead of gravel to save the city level. We haven't realized the savings yet because we just paid for the asphalt and had not deducted gravel part out. So that will kind of be an offset later on. The city did request a new fire hydrant at the corner of, what was it? Wind and Park. Yeah, Wind and Park. So that's included in there. We ran into a few two-inch water services that we have now incorporated into the job. And then of course it's just, we wanted to capture all the work that has occurred that went beyond normal bid unit quantities too. So that's all included in here. What you do not see in this change order is the final change order when we get to the end of the project, we'll then take all of the stuff that we haven't spent money on and pull it back out. So this 201,000 is to pay for all the work except into the project now, and then the final change order at the end will deduct all the stuff that we didn't incorporate into the project. So there'll be some offset to that. So just wanted to be transparent on that, that we're not just building this thing up, it's also gonna come back down. We just didn't go through that work in this change order. Any questions on that? I'll be even there? I don't know if you'll be even, but it'll be reduced.

I can say that. But you're not going 200 over in the final number? No, no. It's going to be, I understand what you're getting at.

Right, so like, as an example, we had a lot of water fittings that we were going to have to lower down below the sanitary sewer, and we made adjustments in the project along with the contractor to eliminate those, so those will get deducted out of the end of the project when we're done. And there's some other bid items that we didn't use, so they just get reduced back, and like I said, there's about, I think $60,000 worth of millions in that change order, and that, will end up, you know, result in a savings to the city because we used millings and not virgin gravel. So there will be savings there. Any questions on the change order? Nope. Go ahead. Okay. Alright, so then including the work in the change order, we prepared application for payment number 15. Digesting that out, it does result in a Payment on the sewer side of the project of $576,153.19. And on the water side is $599,108.96. So any questions with regard to the payout? And you've received all your ARPA money, right? Yes. So this is all SRF loan.

So then the reason that my number is different from Shane's is because we also had to include our engineering costs in that, which Shane doesn't like to talk about that when he's talking.

I will never advocate for my own bills.

But that's the difference in the figures there.

Correct. All right, so if there's no questions on the payout or the change order, I will then pitch that I may recommend approving both documents. And if you're not ready to vote on that now, I understand that you can vote on that later. No, we usually have time as we go right now. I just have one more, I want to talk about the storm topic after that.

So first item then is that change order five, utility improvement, project increase of 201,391.15. Sewers portion is 75,606.95. Water portion is 125,784.20. So that's the first item we'll deal with is the change order. Any questions? I now entertain a motion to adopt, approve. Moved by Alderman Farge. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Nibling. Any further discussion? Signed and offered by saying aye. motion carried next item is pay requests utility improvement project water number 28 and sewer number 15 and these figures are only not for cost they also include engineering fees so the number for 28 for water is 626-618-96 And for sewer number 15 is 599-433-19. So just wanted to be clear that those do include the engineering fees on top of that. Any questions on those two pay requests? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve. So moved by Alderman Yaten. Is there a second? I'll second. Second by Alderman Owlers. Any further discussion? Signe, in all favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried.

Okay, so I made a comment on the asphalt paving earlier. So I just want to be clear that the contractor's current schedule has them coming September 29th through October 5th. But The rain showers that hit Flandreau, not only hit Flandreau, but they hit the other communities where other people are working over your whole contract may or may not be impacted by it. So at this point in time, I just want to be cautious that we're holding them to that schedule, but they'll probably have to ask for some slippage. Shouldn't be alarming. We still have a whole month after those dates that were mentioned to get this project paved. So I'm not excited right now, but if we get rain day after day after day, as we can sometimes in the fall, then that might slip. But right now I'm not panicked. But there's a lot of days that can be raised. So we get the gravel in, we get the curb and gutter in, then the paving's gonna happen. We'll be at the finish line soon.

Yes. So how many blocks are ready to be paved now as of today?

As of today? I would say no. Because they paved up until the very end. If anything, there might be two. But they're shaping and getting ready for gravel over the majority of the five blocks that I talked about. And it won't take them long to put the gravel on it. because they put, I'll be clear, they put gravel on portions of it, but it's not ready and tolerant for even curb and gutter work. That process still has to happen. Then the curb gets put in. Then they reshape the gravel and pave asphalt.

So there's... So if anybody asks, none of the roads are ready to be paved at the current time? No, I wouldn't say that. And the soonest they will be paved is the 29th of September. Yeah, I would say that's a fair guess. Okay.

Good question. Good clarity. That's why I wanted to be clear because if anybody's listening to this meeting, we have a benchmark goal and the weather may be impacting it. That's all I really want to make clear. So, you experienced a terrible storm this weekend, and I feel a lot of empathy for the community, because I've seen it happen way too many times. There's two things that I want to point out, and one is that's a storm that nobody can afford to plan for. It's a large event that storm sewers, quite honestly, typically aren't designed to handle that level of storm. for that duration. What, do you have four inches in about two hours? Is that what I've heard? Yeah, so that's a pretty substantial storm. We get flooding all over Sioux Falls when those type of events happen. And even smaller events will cause that in certain parts of Sioux Falls. So, the thing that I will acknowledge and quantify is that some of the mud that got associated with that water no doubt came off the project. But by no means did all of it come off the project either. We have two specific locations where the project area drains to low spots. That's at the intersection of Wind Park and Crescent Park are the two primaries. I would say Bates is another one that can get some water off down from the south to the north there as well. I wasn't here, so I can't quantify it or try to gather how much did come off the project, but I can assume that mud came from everywhere when it rains that way. It's been so darn dry that the surface of the ground was nothing but powder and dust, and when it rains that hard, it's gonna get carried away to someplace. And like you mentioned, Mayor, that your office was impacted. That's at what, is that center? Second, second center. Second center, right. So that's a full block west of the project, so you know that that water probably didn't come straight out of the project down there. by your office, so that water came partially from the projects and partially from somewhere else. I did dig out some maps and looked at the general area. The largest storms were, it does come up from wind all the way down by the river. Is that Third Street? Third Avenue? Anyway, and then it comes straight up wind and it splits by the courthouse on the south, end of the block of the courthouse and it goes a block east and it goes a block south.

Because that's where the cars got stalled in third and center. They tried to drive through it. Two cars got buried right there in the water.

So by the southwest corner of the courthouse is kind of where the storm sewer splits into two pieces. The larger pipe goes to the southeast and terminates at the corner of Crescent and The other pipe terminates right in front of the attorney's office at the intersection of Wind and Park. That line, if I recall correctly, is only a 12-inch storm sewer. So that's the smallest pipe anybody would design a storm sewer for anymore. So that thing has a very low level of service at the intersection of park and wind. The one that goes over to the other intersection is a much larger pipe, but it also drains a much larger air area. So it would not surprise me that in that trunk system, all the way from third and wind up, every time there was a catch basin, the water probably squirted out the grates because you are funneling way too much water into the system. And if you think about the relief from the intersections that we talked about at Park, those two intersections and the river, that's probably, what, 50 foot of height difference? So by the time it gets to the end, That thing's a fault structure. So, again, I didn't see it, but I've seen those type of storm events, and they'll lift the manhole lids off of manholes and all kinds of stuff. So, again, my empathy on the community having to deal with that, but those are unrealistic storms, and the only thing that I would say is that it just caught us at a bad time on the project, than the fact that we had a bunch of loose dirt that could get collected by the run-on. So with that said, we did dispatch the contractor up to try to clean up stuff. They did a pretty good job today, but they still got work to do. And if anybody was impacted by it, I feel sorry for them, but they just didn't. plan for those events. And I guess if nothing else, it realizes a pain point that in public meeting that Cole and I sat in, some of the people noticed that we weren't doing storm sewer work because we applied for utility work, not storm sewer. But it shouldn't fall off of our radar to someday when the city wishes to afford it or address that, that we could could look at things and what that means to me right now is first step is if we ever think that you want to make that pipe bigger when if and when they do highway 34 maybe we just get a bigger pipe for sure underneath highway 34 so you can extend it both directions from there going forward in That's an item that Cole and I have been talking and trying to strategize about. So it's not that we aren't talking about it. We've just got to get all the ideas together. Any questions on that? Did you have any problems? that we had the sewer system buttoned up well enough to where that didn't also get impacted. It's just the surface water flowing. Good. All right. That's all I have.

Thanks, Shane. Thank you. Thanks, Shane. Next item is the structural assessment of 217 East 2nd Avenue, which would be the old fire hall, city office building located next to the Crystal Theater. We did hire a structural engineer to go in there and kind of look at it. give us an overview of what the recommendations, what would need to be done to save it, if it's worth saving, those types of things. I know Jacob was there, went through it with them also. Some of the council members have been in the building, in the basement, those kind of things, or upstairs in the building. And now the adjacent building was tore down. Of course, we kind of have an eyesore on the side of the building there where the two buildings were connected. So I guess it's just kind of an opening discussion on kind of thoughts for that. I'm always the optimist, the preservationist, that I hate to see old buildings go. If there's a way we can preserve them and keep them or maybe somebody else would invest the money to do that this building presents a couple issues because of the adjoining walls with the crystal theater jail there and the plumbing and those types of things and if it was tore down would need to be addressed but yeah so I guess I just kind of open it up Cole anything to add before we

No, one thing I would say, Mayor Dan, is something to consider is with the budget coming up in the next month, you all, as Mayor Dan said, certainly do not have to decide that one way or the other, but Lori and I will need to put something in the budget that addresses this, because in the structural assessment, Mike did say that some action needs to be taken on the building in the next six to 12 months, otherwise you run the risk of the floor falling in or something not good happening structurally. So just keeping that in mind as we're kind of talking about what our options are for that structure.

So it's kind of like, Cole and I talked a little bit. If you were to demo it, it might be a $90,000 deal. To fix it, to do a roof and that siding might be the same type of money to preserve it, but that wouldn't fix everything inside, but that wouldn't get the leaking to stop on the top. And it would at least shore up that side wall. If you were to do everything that needs, you're probably looking at maybe doubling what it would cost to demo it to repair it. But we don't have exact figures, but those are kind of the preliminary figures that Cole and I have talked about for that particular building. So I guess as we're going into budget, it's a good time to talk about this and see what what we want to do with that building or if we think there's a use for that building or if we think there's a use somebody else would have for that structure. Any comments at this time or you've had a chance to review it but I guess we'll need to have a pretty heart to heart decision or discussion probably within the next before our budget starts, so we kind of know if we need to put some money in there for something. Alderman Berkey?

Just a little comment or question. What's it been used for lately? I mean, it really hasn't had any usage other than there's one fire wagon in there. Is that about it?

Yeah, the Crystal Theater has all the antique crystal chairs, the side metal.

Oh, those are for storage then.

Well, they have upstairs for years. The only valuable thing up there is those old side metal that, if nothing else, scrap iron, but there's people that have said they would give... $700.

You're talking those scrolling kind of... Yeah, they're all decorative and those, they're all up there at the top.

And I would agree, nothing's been done with it, but I think the thing is we've spent so much time dealing with adjacent property. Yeah. seeing what would happen if that came down to this property that we've never let the public know that hey if somebody wants to use this property but to let somebody use it we got to make it safe so that's led us to the structural engineering report so we kind of knew what might have to get done if that were to be continue to be a functional building for whatever use it would be going forward Yeah, there's just some fireman stuff in there right now, a few city stuff in the very back, and crystal theater stuff upstairs. Cole?

I was just wondering if it may be helpful, since Jacob's here, if he just gave a quick overview of what he kind of saw in there and what the engineer shared with him. So I think we're looking at a couple different things structurally within the building that we have to look at within the next year. We're going to try to save it or demo it.

In my personal opinion, it does need extensive model work. The first thing that would have to be done is that rough. So the first thing that would have to be done is that rough, because the rough is a key issue. And I can't give you a price on the roof, but I called a few people and they haven't been able to make it up. But it's going to be pretty expensive. It'll have to be completely tore off and then redone. And it also depends if they want to do it with the brick falling apart around the outside. So that would be the first point. And then the main beam on the first floor, pulling the floor up, is... probably down three inches, maybe more. And that's from the rotting floor. And the floor upstairs is also very bad. The original floor. And that's also not to take into account that the, you've seen the pictures, but the tuck pointing in the back is, that whole back wall around the whole building needs to be re-tuck pointed and that's a lot of work too. and I don't have any numbers or anything like that for you guys.

But I suppose somebody could put a sheathing on it and could battle it around and not tuck point it would be an option.

It would need to be tucked. Tuck point anyway. It's very bad in the back. Very bad.

How do we deal with this? I don't know. I guess, in my opinion, I think there's a lot of buildings in town, older buildings that aren't used. So I don't know, preserving another one would be a wise decision financially. So I guess I'd be in favor of not getting down, you know, making it work in terms of plumbing and whatnot with the crystal. But even a parking lot for when there are productions would be better than I think. I'm going to try to repair. I just think there's too many that are unused.

Okay. Any other general comments at this time?

Alderman Vargin. I agree with Alderman Eaton. I think it's seen as good times.

for some years, really, except for storage, cold storage, and that ain't nothing, you know. A few fire trainings, we did smoke up the basement, did some rescue training, but.

Alderman Eckerd. I think we should get a quote, so I'm gonna take it, tear it down.

I do have one internal quote. I obviously can't say what that is publicly, because if we do bid it, then everybody would know what it is. I can tell you it's in that 50 to 90 range that I said in the memo. Well, that's a wide enough margin.

Ultimate knowledge. I would say we could tear it down. If we need storage, it would be cheaper to build a new storage building than to fix this one. what we need for storage.

Well, Cole, you could do a request for proposals for demo evade.

If we commit to putting it in the budget, I could get I can give more estimates. Again, I don't think, unless we're going to commit to doing it, I don't know if we're going to release those amounts publicly because if we don't do it, then we decide later we want to do it, everyone's going to know what the bids were and it's usually not the best deal. Right.

Yes, Oliver Farge.

So, the old jail house that's Krista Owens, right?

We lease it for a dollar for like 100 years. You mean getting that money?

You didn't do that building, right? Yes. So, and that's crap. You got a basement, you can lay the sewer line in there, then a new water line up to the curb, you don't do that, but you got a common wall, right?

With the jail, the back, yeah, the back, yes. Two. Two, yeah, a whole wall with the jail, right.

We tear the building with that stand?

That's our only bathrooms and everything.

True.

And that sticks out there. You'd have to build up a heap or something.

I have not looked on that side of the wall to make that assumption.

The sewage comes out into that room.

There's a gap between the crystal theater and the jail wall that all the plumbing runs down in. So the wall that connects the theater or that is a separate, but then you have all this exposed stuff here that's the side of the jail.

So definition of what I'm saying, everything's got to be coordinated, still needed, the water, sewer.

Yeah, we have no other restrooms or anything.

The basement's already dug. Right. Get a new line in there, blah, blah, blah. But I think there needs to be interest, too, while you're doing demo, what I'm saying.

Okay. Yes, Alderman Eckert. When you go in there and look at it, it looks like they just cut notches into the old fire hall and put the joists in there for the jail. So you'd almost have to leave that part of that wall of the old fire hall to support the roof of the jail, the old jail.

Yeah, that I'm not positive. Yeah. But I know we put, we just put, not too long ago, we put a $20,000 or $25,000 bladder roof on that jail.

But if it just sounds like it's just junk stored in there, we don't have to put another building up to store junk in. Antiques. Oh, I'm sorry. No, we're not looking at a building right now, but it's possible.

I think before we would vote to demo, I think somebody needs to go and look at that connection to the jail and how that affects that area so that that could be addressed in the demo. So it's not just the demo, it's the adjacent building.

Yeah. I would recommend, it's actually, I don't think, Okay, we have a motion by ultimate gate the table is there a second Second by Alderman Eckert all favor signify by saying aye.

Aye. Opposed?

Motion carried. Next item, change order two, Chip Seal Project Aztec decrease of $1,377,000. Nicole?

Yeah, if it's okay with you folks, I'll just cover them both together at one time. So this is for our... with Aztec for the chip seal project that was originally started in 2025 and finished in, I believe, April of 2020, or June, sorry, of 2026. They did a long stretch of 3rd Avenue along with portions of West Street, Wind Street, Prospect as well. The original contract with those folks was for $35,027. We did the change order last spring to include an additional $34,209 that you folks approved earlier in the spring. Change order number two that Mayor Dan is referencing is to decrease the contract by $1,377 just because they used less quantities than they had originally thought. So looking at everything in a whole and recommending that you folks approve both the change order and the payout. Final construction costs are $67,859 And then if you add in our engineering costs of $5,010, it brings the total project expenditures for both the 25 and 26 chip seal to $72,869, leaving about $7,130 of our $80,000 budget that we had for 2026. So we're well within that budget for this fiscal year. Okay, any questions on those?

So we'll have to have two motions, one to approve the change order Second by Alderman Ahlers. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Next item is pay request number one, Chip Seal Project for 67,859.7 to entertain a motion to approve. Moved by Alderman Dibling. 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. Next item is Resolution 202613, authorize the city administrator or city attorney to execute FAA grant agreement form.

Thanks, Mayor Dan. If you folks are okay with that, I'd like to take this opportunity to talk both about this resolution specifically, but also the project generally and some updates that I've received since Thursday afternoon, after the packet was sent. First I'll talk about this resolution, Resolution 2026-13. I received a correspondence from an individual with the FAA, middle of last week, stressing the importance of myself and the city attorney being given the authority to execute grant documents associated with the project as soon as we receive them. So the way he kind of made it sound to me is that sometime on the 10th, which I believe is Thursday, sometime on the 10th or 11th, I'm going to receive an e-document to be signed that day. From what I understand, it's near the end of the fiscal year for the federal government, and those folks want to get those documents back in hand as quickly as possible. So what Resolution 2026.13 is doing is giving both myself and the estate attorney authorization to sign those documents that and that brings me to the i'll pause there for a second is any questions on that resolution specifically i think it'll make more sense when i kind of give you the background of where we are with the project as it stands funding wise good okay so um As you all likely know, on this Thursday, September 10th at 11 a.m., we are planning to open bids for the base bid and the first alternate bid for the project. Originally, Helms had bid this as a base bid, which includes the runway, grading, aggregate, earthwork, drainage, all that fun stuff. Moving dirt, we'll call it. for the new runway. Alternate bid one originally included the surfacing for the new runway, the asphalt surface, and then pavement markings. Alternate bid two was the connector taxiways and then the parallel taxiway work. And then alternate three was the remaining sections of the parallel taxiway and the connector taxiway. The FAA informed us in the middle of last week that we likely would be receiving $3,783,947, which is a bit short of what the total project would be, hence why we are now, an addendum has been issued for the bid. that removes alternate two and three and focuses solely on the base bid and the alternate bid one. So the grant that we will receive from the FAA on Friday, I believe, will be for that $20.7 million, and that's what I'll be signing for if you all approve Resolution 2026-13 tonight. Now, to be clear for the public and for the folks in the council who maybe are curious how this works, it doesn't mean that we won't be completing alternate bid two and alternate bid three. That just means that's likely to take place next year with a separate federal grant at a new reimbursement rate. As the 97.5% reimbursement rate, it will be going away in 2027 and reverting back to the 90% federal, 5% state, 5% city match on these federal grants. Any questions so far? That's a lot of numbers. To stress this as clearly, nothing has significantly changed at this point other than the fact that how the order of operations here, instead of one large contract, we're likely going to have two construction contracts with two separate grants and two separate years. Make sense?

Yeah.

So I guess to wrap this up, because I know it's been a long meeting already and we still have a little bit left to go here, I recommend that you approve Resolution 2026-13 to authorize both the city attorney and myself to sign all the grant documents with the FAA.

Alderman Hiblett? Do we have an opinion from the airport board on this?

Oh, to support the resolution? Yeah. Any support? Yes, sir.

Thank you. With that being said, I'll make a motion to adopt resolution 2026-15, authorizing the city administrator and city attorney to execute the FAA grant agreement. Motion by Alderman Dibling.

Is there a second? I'll second. Mayor Keet, any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Final item for tonight is approval of the 2025 audit prepared by

THANK YOU, MR. MAYOR. I DIDN'T INCLUDE THE ENTIRE AUDIT IN YOUR PACKET, BUT IT IS AVAILABLE ON OUR WEBSITE. IF YOU WANT TO READ THROUGH IT, YOU SURE CAN. WE'VE SWITCHED TO CATTLE FOUR SINCE A COUPLE YEARS AGO. THEY'RE NOW DOING TWO AUDITS FOR US. THINGS ARE GOING VERY WELL. We do have a few findings, but some of them I think are just things we're gonna get every year because we're a small office and we don't have enough people to oversee all the steps that we do, but we have implemented a few checks and balances that have been suggested by the auditor, so I think we'll get that cleaned up as we continue with them, but otherwise we are in good standings. If you approve this audit, we'll get sent off to the state, which is required, If you have any specific questions, I can answer them. But otherwise, I would recommend approval of the 25 audit.

Okay. Are there any questions on the audit? Yes.

The governing body, do we approve the audit or just accept the audit?

Well, basically you're approving your governance letter, the representation letter that is included. I included all seven pages of that. To me, that's kind of like the summary of the audit, basically. I don't think you can probably discredit the actual audit because the numbers are what they are. I think you're basically accepting the work that was prepared by the auditor.

You're accepting the That's what you see.

Yeah, sure.

Just to be, yeah. Yeah. That being said, I'll make a motion to accept the 2025 audit prepared by Heather Thornton.

Okay, motion by Alderman Nibling to accept the audit report. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Fargin. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Seeing no other further business to come before the City Council, I will adjourn the City Council meeting at 7.