City Council - Regular Meeting

Let's all stand for the pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call. Mayor Sasha here. Council member Erdialis here. Council member Caper here. Council member Garcia here. Council member Boyette here. Council member James Parks here.

All right. Next on the agenda is public comment audience participation. For items not on the agenda, public comments are limited to three minutes per speaker. Speaker must sign in on the sheet next to the podium and address the council from that podium. The council will not take action at this meeting in response to any public comment. Anybody want to come up? Ready, Pauline?

Yes. Um, good evening, mayor and city council. Um, my name is Pauline Ryber, and I am part of I'm a facilitator for a local group called Family Leadership Training Institute. It is a class that's offered here, a 20week civic um engagement class that's offered. If you've been on city council for a while, we usually come once a year. This is our night of learning about our local government. So, with me, I've got this year's class. Um we also practice language justice in our class and it is a taught in both English and Spanish. So, we have brought in an interpreter with us. um people that need interpretation are wearing headsets like this so that they can simultaneously hear what is being presented in here. Um also this time I did bring this is our little pamphlet that tells about our projects because every family leader that is in our class here will be um working on a project. And I apologize I only brought one but I did bring um Katrina King's card from the family center. So if you want to know more about our class and I'll share.

Thank you ma'am.

If you want to know more about the projects that's last year's class this year has a totally different project set that they're working on. But that tells you a little bit more about the class. Also because we are in class right now. I just wanted to let you know we're going to leave about uh 650 so that we can go back and learn more and discuss what we've seen here. Um, so that's about the class. Um, wearing a different hat for a few minutes. Um, I'm also from United Way and I wanted to personally invite everyone on city council to United Way's town hall that we're hosting on Thursday night. It's going to be at the fieldhouse from 5:30 to 7:30. Um, and our topic is about local housing. So, you are all welcome to come and join us that night. Thank you.

Thanks, Bonnie. Bye. We have anybody else? All righty. Next on the agenda, uh, presentation and application on city council vacancy in W one. Um, do we have anybody? Todd, if you'd like to address council, you got about five minutes, right? Mayor, council, I don't know that I need five minutes. Okay. Um, so you don't have to start your timer. I don't think it'll take that long. Say we did.

Uh, no. Uh, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I know I have a lot to learn. Worked in the state for the last almost 20 years. So familiar with government and the fact that there's a lot that goes into decision-m processes and a lot of things that are unseen. So, I'm I'm excited to to see and learn some of those for our community here and I'm grateful for the opportunity again and uh yeah, I'll do what I can to to be a productive contributor for our community. Awesome. Thanks, Todd. Yeah.

All right. Any opportunity for public comments? Um selection of a new council member? probably won't be any, but I just did want to point out for the public and for our media that's sitting here that Todd was the only application that we received during this process. So, it's um Todd is the guy that's on your ballot.

All righty, council. In front of you, you'll find a ballot and uh of course it's yay or nay. Um go ahead and fill that out and um pass it on down. What's that? You get a lot of Well, at least one. Yeah, I'm sure that's at least one.

Eight nos. There were six yeses. Yeses. So, it's unanimous that Todd is council member for Ward One.

Congratulations, Todd. kept it warm for you, Todd.

Yeah, we need a green get a green chair. All righty. Roll call. Miss Curtis. Okay. Mayor Sasha here. Council member Kad here. Council member Erdialis here. Council member Caper here. Council member Garcia here. Council member Boyette here. Council member Parks here.

Alrighty. Next on the agenda is proclamation affirming April is child abuse and prevention month. Good evening. My name is Suzanne Brown. I work for the Morgan County Department of Human Services in um child protective services. All righty. I got a proclamation I need to read to you. Yes, please.

Okay. Um affirming April is child abuse and prevention month. Whereas children are key to the state's future success, prosperity, and equality of life. While children are our most precious resource, they are also our most vulnerable. Whereas children have the right to thrive, learn, and grow to their full potential. And whereas the prevention of child abuse and neglect strengthens Colorado families and communities and ensures the opportunity for children to develop in healthy trusting families, schools and in neighborhoods where that constit Yeah. builds the foundation society and whereas we must come together as partners to keep children safe. ensure the voices of children are heard by all the extending help hand to children and whereas each of us play a role in prevention preventing of child abuse and neglect. We encourage anyone concerned about safety and well-being to to report to 1844 CO4 kids. Whereas I call upon the community members to provide safe, stable, and nutrienting relationship and environments for our children free of violence, abuse, and neglect, we can ensure that Colorado's children will grow to full potential as the next generation of leaders, help to secure the future of this community, state, and nation. And now whereas to be resolved that I, Doug Shazo, mayor of the city of Fort Morgan, hereby proclaim April 2026 Child Prevention Month.

Thank you, Mayor Sasha. Um, I don't know if you have any questions, but I just want you to know that we work very well with the Fort Morgan Police Department and they are always there to assist us. And um, I'll give a shout out to uh, Chief Parks because we also work very well with Wiggins. Um but thank you all for um making this a proclamation.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next on the agenda, uh, presentation of popular action by motion on appointments of members to the Main Street Advisory Board. Miss Engle, you have,

good evening. The Main Street Advisory Board exists to cultivate a vibrant downtown that honors its heritage, champions its unique businesses and historic properties, and enhances the downtown experiences that make Fort Morgan a place to shop, work, gather, and thrive. Per the recent bylaws adoption by the city council, the board will consist of eight members with three-year terms. We received applications from the following individuals whose staff would like to recommend for approval as a Main Street Advisory Board member for either a two or a three-year term. Lynn Deal uh who is on the um Fort Morgan Historic Preservation Board. Susanna Spears with Morgan Community College and Case the Center for um arts and community enrichment. Alicia Stewart, uh, building owner and business owner in downtown Fort Morgan. Diana Schulty, downtown business owner and building owner. Leah Labonte, downtown business owner and building owner. And Lindsay Brunts, um, downtown business owner, um, and building owner, and Brent Nation, city manager. Copies of their application for appointment were either provided in council packets or in your table file. Staff feels that these individuals represent one of the identified stakeholder categories and will provide the most inclusive involvement of downtown and community partners to meet our community's vision of Main Street. The proposed board members were also involved in the organization and initial application to the Department of Local Affairs in order to receive the Main Street designation

and therefore are familiar with the direction and operation of the board. I can answer any questions if you'd like. Any questions, guys? All right, Brent. So, make this right. We just make a motion. Yeah, you just need to make a motion that you appoint to accept all those. Yeah. To accept all those. All right. Make a uh anybody want to make a motion? Your honor, I'd make a motion to accept all the applicants. Second. Okay. I have a motion by Jim Parks, another one by Brian Urielis. U all in favor say I. I. I. Any naysay? Looks like we got it. Great. Thank you. You're welcome.

All right. The next one is the presentation of pos possible action by motion on appointment of council liaison to the main street advisory board and museum heritage foundation parks and rex board. Now I have talked with Lauren Boyoyette. He is prepared to take on the main street advisory board. And uh Todd I'm sorry you're the little guy on the totem pole. So you get the Heritage Foundation and Parks Recreation Board is um Brian, you're in Dallas. Do I have a motion? Your honor, I'll make a motion to approve as presented. Second. All right. I have a motion by John Caper, second by Jim Parks. All in favor? I.

Any nays? All right. Congratulations. uh presentation possible action by resolution on the demolition of the street and sanitation building. Mr. Underwood.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council. Uh yeah, I'm here tonight seeking approval for uh to move forward with the streets and sanitation buildings demo project. This of course is the buildings formerly used by building maintenance the streets and sanitation departments here on 131 and 121 State Street. Uh this will be a big first step towards essentially getting everything ready for expanded parking and for future use of that property. As you can see, we went out uh for bid on March 6th and held a pre- bid meeting March 19th where we had 22 contractors in attendance. Uh we held the bid held the bid closing on April 10th uh receiving 12 proposals. One aspect that makes this project a little unique as we will be tying in some asbesus abatement for three of the five uh structures. That's probably why you see such a wide range in the proposals. Uh some of them abundance of caution, others not so much. And in the end just all depends on who you get a hold of and who's doing what work. So staff are requesting tonight for council approval to accept the Morgan Sand and Gravel bid in the amount of 94,491. Not only is this the lowest bid, but obviously it's the lowest local bid. Something that we always like love to do when we have the opportunity to do it. Uh the work is scheduled to begin probably as soon as we can get the asbestous baitment started as well as finished. Greg felt confident that he jumped right on it on that one. But anyone who's ever dealt with asbestous, sometimes getting that company scheduled is a big first step. So I'll entertain any questions.

Are they uh sure 94,000 compared to the rest of them? I I checked in. Okay. I I called up confirmed everything. You know, one big difference you got to understand with a few of these companies manpower, but also too uh certain companies aren't planning on taking those to the landfill because they can crush the material, recycle and reuse. So, at roughly $45 a ton, that's a lot of savings for a company that has the ability to basically keep the product and recycle it. I missed what you said for uh start date.

Uh as soon as we can get someone on the asbestous, Greg, it implied to me that as soon as we get approval, he'll reach out to schedule the asbestous abatement. And so, it could be as early as a week, it could be as much as a month. And then they'll have to have access down Main Street to get out of town. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Brett. Those are details. We We knew that this is going to be close, but we are fairly confident that Yeah. the asbestous work is probably going to take about the same amount of time it gets us to having Main Street open again.

Yeah. And and again, I do want to stress we we did our due diligence. We reached out to all the companies that were in that lower half that we were looking to consider for the project confirming that they did have the asbestous abatement as part of their costs. You'll notice some of the lower ones, Mr. Mayor, in the 120 range, those are companies from Vale Conifer. So, you think about their logistics for mobilization, their fuel costs. So, when you compare it to then what Morgan Sand and Gravel has in, it's a pretty reasonably close bid when you break it down to that extent. Okay. Okay. Is there going to be any designated parking for fire?

Yes, they will coordinate with those have the control for them to come in through that alleyway access.

Yeah, we've they keep asking over and over again and I keep telling the chief, yes, we are going to designate parking spots for the fire department. We are in the process of doing the engineering work on the lot so we know how to get the drainage to work correctly. and part of the that engineering work. Uh I think it's western engineering that we're having do that. They're gonna then designate the parking and everything for us as we move forward. Um I've talked to the new chief a couple of times about how many spots we think we want to designate as you know fire vehicles only but closest to the building obviously and and whatever works for them. We have to maintain that one fire lane through there also for the big ladder truck. That's the other thing that will have to go into the design, but yeah, we're in the process of having all that work done as we speak. So,

all right. Thanks. Yep. All right. Uh, I will entertain a resolution. Your honor, I'd like to make a resolution to accept the bid from Morgan Morgan Sand and Gravel in the amount of $94,491 for the demolition project for the streets and sand sanitation buildings. Second. Okay. Go ahead. All right. I have a resolution by Jim Parks, a second by Lauren Boyette. Roll call, please.

That resolution carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Uh, next on the agenda is a presentation and possible action on a resolution approving the 22nd interim agreement for the participation in the Northern Integrated Supply Project. Mr. Nation.

Okay. Thank you. Uh use this as an opportunity to do a little bit of history work here with where we are with NISP. Um obviously typically we've done a new interim agreement every year following the calendar year. Um because of some of the design challenges and things that were going on with the project at the beginning of 2026, we actually did a an amendment to the 21st agreement. We moved forward with that at the beginning of this year, but now staff is ready and they need more money for the next stages of design um that we're going through. And so this is kind of a midyear interim agreement, but it's it has all of the full bells and whistles when you read through it, everything that's in it. Um but this will get us the rest of the main engineering work to finish up all the design work on the big dam at Glade. Um, it also finishes up some of the environmental stuff associated with the highway movement or the power line movement. Um, and it gets us really close and ready to pull the trigger on full construction in 2027 is where this is getting us to. Now, the other piece that I will throw out there because it's obvious when you start reading through this, when we started with the NIS group, there were 15 of us that were members in the group. Um there has been some realization by some of the participants that maybe NISP isn't the option for them any longer. And so you will see that there is now just nine of us that are left. Six have left the group um completely. And so we're now down to the nine that are really committed to seeing this project through at this point. There will probably be some other changes to the entire scope of the project because of the six that have dropped out, but right now we're moving forward. Um there's still enough demand for the water to build Glade, the

big reservoir, and that's the part we're interested in. We need the storage. Um I'll talk about that later in my report to council. Um how we don't have storage for any of our water right now. And so Glade gets us that component that we don't currently own. Um just in the bucket basically. And so things are evolving rapidly with NISP. I'm hoping by the end of the year things will be pretty well solidified in what it looks like project costwise and what it looks like to our rate payers and things like that. And so the next you know eight months are going to tell a lot with this project. So but this is that interim piece. They need the funding from us to move forward with this. As you see in the last page, our P portion is $1.7 million and change. Uh we had budgeted close to $3 million in the budget, so we've got more than enough cover this in the budget. So happy to answer any questions?

No questions. So this contract through the end of the year, right? Yeah. This basically just takes us through the end of 26. Yep.

But you said we'll know more in the next eight months. Yeah, it's as we get towards the end of the year, it'll become obvious they're trying to figure out if we can get away from doing the interim agreements at the end of this year and just go into a full-fledged aotment contract. So, a legal document that will just tie us to the project with all the certainty of this is what we're going to be in debt to and things like that. And so, we're getting real close to that point. Um, we've flirted with it in years past, but this is we're at that point now where we're going to have construction numbers here before too much longer. Any other questions? Okay, entertain a resolution.

Your honor, I'll make a resolution to approve the 22nd interim agreement for participation in NESP. Second. All right. I have a resolution by Jim Parks, second by Brian Dallas. Roll call, please. That resolution carries unanimously.

Thank you for that. Alrighty. Next on the agenda, first reading, ordinance authorizing the issuance of wastewater enterprise revenue bonds and set public hearing for May 5th. Mr. Jation. Okay. Very good. So you guys have your option. We can go through the four-page memo in great detail or the 67page ordinance in great detail. Let's do the full.

Very good. Um I will go ahead and this is just a continuation. This is kind of the next step that we're moving to. As we discussed with council um several meetings ago about moving forward with bonding the project out at the wastewater plant. Um this is the next step that we have to do. And so we need an ordinance in place that allows the city of Fort Morgan to start basically jumping through all the hoops that it takes to take out bonds and go into debt um in the wastewater fund. And so I can't say enough about the the work that our um legal team is doing that they're with Butler Snow. Um we hired them last year to help us through both this and the swimming pool financing. Um the amount of detail that it takes is just um it's mind-blowing at times how much goes into it. We have if this moves forward tonight, we will have meetings to set up where we talk to rating agencies um to get our bond ratings and everything put together and then the whole effort goes into us going out and getting bonds. And so this ordinance is the the step that gets us to where we can go in that direction. you will see numbers in there that are slightly bigger than what we discussed at the as the project cost. Um the attorneys and everybody are trying to make sure that we have enough latitude that as we move forward and we get those final numbers for construction. We don't have to come back and redo all this paperwork. We're setting kind of an upper end to where everything that we're hopefully having to go out and bond will be less than these numbers. But you can go through there and it see it speaks to the actual maturity dates of the bonds and what we can and can't do. I mean, the big high points are is that we're looking at in this paperwork a potential of $54 million total. Um, then the total payback amount is well over $und00

million after the we pay back the bonds with all the interest. Um, the other thing that it's doing is it sets a maximum interest rate based upon where the the markets are at right now. Um, and then it also the biggie that it does is it uses the pledges of our sewer revenues to pay the bonds back. That's the other piece that we have to be able to demonstrate. The way we're going to pay this debt back is through basically assessing the users of the sewer system. And so all of that is in there and spelled out. And so, um, that's kind of it a nutshell. Um, we've got representatives from Butler Snow on the call and also from Piper Sandler that would be happy to answer any of the technical questions, but I think on a high level I've I pretty much covered everything. Um, so be happy to answer any questions or I can defer to Andrew or Dean I think is on the on the calls. Is it okay?

I just got one. Um, so we lock it in at a certain bond rate. Once we go to the market, then it gets locked in. They have to the team does the offering and then that's when it gets locked in. And so what you see in front of you is just a what we feel would be a maximum rate that we wouldn't exceed once we get into the market. Okay. Okay. And that never goes down, right? It always

So what happens is we always have the option to refinance the debt. And so if if something changes, we have that option available that we can go back in and redo those bonds and hopefully get a better deal on it. But that just is market driven into the future. We some of the some of the debt on the water project when we originally built the water treatment plant, we did go back in and refinance that at a much better rate. And so um so it is possible to do that. There's options. Yep. Okay. And Brad, this is a 30-year. Yes. 30 years, right? And how soon are we going to lock in?

So, we start the process almost immediately and so it'll be within the next um I'd have to look at that calendar again that's in the memo, but it's in the next like 30 to 60 days where we'll be doing that. Is that correct, Andrew?

Yeah. and and actually the process really started in February is when we started uh drafting all the bond documents and all of that's going to culminate in into a day we call pricing day which is as uh Brent was referencing that's the day we kind of lock the interest rate in on the bonds. Um currently we're on track to price the bonds on June 2nd. Um and after that day uh the interest rate will be locked in. says the maximum annual and total repayment is um shall not exceed $4 million annually. How do you in a a simple uh explanation, how do we come up with that number

and what could that number range?

Yeah. So, what we do is we uh we help city staff come up with a plan of finance that includes a a structuring for the bond. So, uh, how much debt service are we going to repay every year? Um, and the the plan of finance that we've put together is a structure that, um, produces debt service payments, principal interest payments that go up for the first 10 years and then level off after that. And at today's rates, that uh level off is at about 3.5 million of debt service every year. Um, but these parameters are obviously higher than that. And that four million amount is a figure that we came to based on uh building in an interest rate cushion.

So today that the annual debt service is about three and a half million but we incorporated a cushion of about 100 basis points or 1%. And with that cushion the annual repayment would be about 4 million. So that gives us a little bit of flexibility. Thank you. Okay. This has definitely been a team effort between Butler Snow and Piper Sandler and then Casey and the finance department here and the rest of the staff that's been working on this. It's been an interesting process to go through. Obviously, the city hasn't taken out debt like this in a long time. So, it's all new to the current staff. New to me, too.

Um, can you advise me what the current um market is?

Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, our most recent, uh, run of the numbers has the interest rate at about, uh, 4.9%. So, well under that 6%, uh, parameter that you're seeing in the memo and the documents. Um, as the market kind of evolves over the next few weeks, that's likely to change. There's a lot of conflict in the Middle East that's impacting the markets right now. There's macroeconomic factors, uh the Federal Reserve, you know, if they're going to implement rate cuts or not. All of that uh will impact the the final interest rate that the bonds earn.

Yay. Okay. Oh, yeah. Every time I watch the news at night, I it Yeah. Either makes my blood pressure go up or down, depending on what I the news is. So, Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. What are you looking from us here? Um, this is a it's an approval of the first reading at the public hearing for May 5th. Yep. Because I don't have resolution or anything on my sheet. You I'm sorry. It is You do have to do it by resolution. Okay. Okay. I didn't have that. Sorry about that.

All right. You're fine. All right. Okay. I'll entertain a resolution. Your honor, I'd offer a a resolution approving the first reading an ordinance authorizing the issuance of wastewater enterprise revenue bonds and set a public hearing for May 5th. Second. All right. I have a resolution by Lauren Boyette, a second by Jim Parks. Roll call, please. That resolution carries unanimously. Okay. Thank you for that. Andrew Dean, thank you for stopping in tonight. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, sir. All right. Consent agenda, Miss Curtis.

Thank you. The uh the consent agenda, the approval of the dispersements and payroll for March and the approval of the minutes for April 7th, 2026 city council regular meeting are in your packets. All matters listed under item 15, consent agenda, are considered routine business by the council and will be enacted with a single motion and a single vote by roll call. There will be no separate discussion of these items. If discussion is deemed necessary, that item should be removed from the consent agenda and considered separately. Okay. I'll entertain a resolution. Yeah. I'll make a resolution to accept the consent agenda A and B. Second.

All right. I have a resolution by Jim Park, second by Brian Dallas. Roll call, please. That resolution carries unanimously. All right. Mr. Nation, what you got to tell us today?

Okay, it's on um let's hit on the May 5th agenda just real quick. Obviously, we'll do the public hearing for the the wastewater bonds that we just talked about. Uh that uh starts mental health awareness month. So, we'll have another proclamation. Uh we'll get back to our business of the month. Uh we'll also um do inkind um uh the fee waiverss and everything for Bobtock which is coming up. So sure Pete will be there to take notes on that. Um I also this didn't make the the agenda that you have in your packet but I will also be bringing an an extension request um to the fall line um development group. Um, it just came to me late Friday when I was driving back from Glenwood. Uh, Nenah's office has been really good and already got us the paperwork, but we'll bring that. Uh, they're requesting a 90-day extension to um the diligence period for the potential purchase of the corner of the old Cold Connect down there. Um, so we'll get into the details of why they're asking for it, but I had a long conversation with developer. I was on the road and so we'll bring that to you in two weeks. Uh and there's also a special use request for uh cell tower that has gone through planning commission that will be coming um on that meeting too. So uh that's the future agenda items. The couple things that I have that are uh not on that um you know let's talk about everybody's favorite traffic nightmare right now. Main Street. Uh we're moving forward. Um, this has just been one of those projects I told you it was going to be painful at times and it has been painful, but uh, we are getting through it. They've got over half the pipe now installed. Uh, they've made some decent progress. Um, we had the officials from C DOT come out

today because we keep changing traffic control plans so often because of some of the things that we found. Like Monday when they got in there, we were trying to keep that northbound lane open for vehicles. uh they had part of that lane completely collapse into the trench. We were fortunate not to have a car driving by on it when it did that. Um so we immediately closed down to vehicular traffic because we couldn't afford to have somebody slide off into the trench. Um so we're adjusting as the conditions are forcing us to adjust. But tomorrow, uh crew number two will begin up on Riverview Avenue. So we'll actually be putting pipe in in two directions. At this point, if everything goes as planned, um, we still have about another month of of construction down there. But once we get the pipe in, then we can start focusing in on getting the asphalt patched and everything. We did have a good meeting with C dot today. Um, at first I think they were a little bit concerned that we were changing things so much, but I think once Lou and and Ben came out, it became obvious what we were struggling with. And so I think they've they'll go back to headquarters in Gley and show support for what we're doing here and and they want to see it done too because we're putting in a large piece of this project for them. Let's be honest, this if they would have fixed the interstate back when they were going to fix all the interstate through here, that pipe under the interstate would have already been upsized. But it wasn't. So in order for us to make it work on our end, we had to upsize the parts that go underneath their for their infrastructure. So, um, so that's moving along. Um, we're also moving forward, as you notice, with waterline projects. Uh, State Street has, um, began and then we've got the other ones that will follow that one. And then the other thing, um, I told the mayor that I would talk about this. Um, watering restrictions. Where are we at with that? Um, honestly, um, we we waited on our potable water

supply, which is our drinking supply, to hear what Northern sets the CBT quota at for the year. And a week ago, Thursday, they set the CBT quota at 80%. Um, we are we can make 50% or more work easily. So 80% is more water than what we can that we can use it. It'll put us in the market where we'll be leasing. Um, most years we lease a lot of our excess CBT water to uh a dairy up in the front range that needs it usually to make their operations and everything work at the dairy. And so we try to keep that in the a community if we can. And so we will have water to lease, but we're being very cautious with what we do. But at this point, it doesn't do us any good to implement restrictions in the town. We don't have a big storage bucket for excess CBT water and so if we don't use it, it just gets reallocated back to the project next year. So we basically kind of lose um some of that water. So we try to gain a little bit of finance financing out of it by leasing it out for the season. Um the reason that I said I would talk about this for sure tonight was that uh there's been some people noticing that we're selling a lot of water at our bulk water station. Uh the comments on um Facebook have made the implication that we're selling it to the oil and gas industry, but we're not. The water trucks that are buying this have come in and talked to us. We're actually helping them build the massive solar fields out by the power plant. They're using this water to help stabilize the roads and everything they're building out there. Um we've got it, so we're selling it. And the water that we sell at that bulk station, we sell it at more than four times what we sell it to the average consumer in the city of Fort Morgan. So, it's a lucrative situation for us to have. So, we're more than happy since we've got it to sell it. Um, and so, but we monitor

that. We know exactly how much is going out. Um, I know some of the people on social media are worried about what we're doing, but we're on top of it, trust me. And so, but um I think the main thing is is that we do not have any watering restrictions in place for 2026 with the city of Fort Morgan. We always encourage people to conserve water. I mean, we live in a desert out here and everything and so conservation is a good thing. Um but we just don't have any reasons to put in place any restrictions this year. Okay, that's all I got for you. Anybody calling your desk? Yes. Feel free to call my desk and I'll have a direct conversation with you. Yeah. Any more for Brent?

I gota qu Brent. Um next week or Monday is that meeting for uh with the builders on that House Bill 22. Yes. With the electric on that. Yeah.

The um so that will go back July 1st of this year. If we do that, we will. We we we're going to have a talk about that internally, and we're looking at um some different things. There's a push that may force us into legislating it, but we also have the ability to not do it, but it's going to take some legislative action by this board in order to make that happen. And so, part of the conversation that we're going to have with the contractors on Monday is how do they feel about these changes and everything? and then we will make a decision for sure which direction we're going. But yeah, any more for Brent? Chief Sharp.

Thank you, your honor. Just a couple things. Um I think you all know we spend a lot of time with outreach in the community trying to figure out what the community is looking for, what they want from us. And I think there's two things we hear repeatedly. Um traffic and drugs are two things that we hear across the board. You saw my fiveyear strategic plan last year. And in fact, this group here was part of that five-year strategic plan. I met with them and got information from them, and these are things that came up in that group meeting as well. But, um, things that we I just want to point out, I did send it in my bi-weekly report to you, but a couple things that we're doing. Uh, we've focused on traffic a lot over the years. That's been our primary focus. We were down as many as eight officers from what we are now. So, when you're going from call to call and you're trying to work traffic, the ability to work traffic is is depleted. when you have less staffing. Um, our staffing levels over the last year have really increased. Over the summer, we got six new people out of training and all that. And we finally in uh two weeks ago um got our last one out. So, we are now fully staffed. We started a traffic unit. So, we have one person that's doing nothing but traffic, which is a huge impact in that one guy can easily do 150 to 200 traffic contacts in a month. So, you see those increases. And I just as an example, we started this last week. In one week, we've had 235 traffic contacts. So, we're still seeing about a 7% ticket rate. We're not writing huge tickets. It's not a money maker. This is a way to try to slow people down to try to get people in compliance with traffic laws. Of course, we get some arrests out of that, whether they be DUIs or we had a felony arrest on a stolen vehicle. Some of that stuff happens as well. So, um something we are working, something we focused on and we will continue to do. And then the other thing with the drugs, as you know, last year uh we added a drug detective. This year in our budget was a K9. Uh we are in the process of getting that K9. We

selected a handler in the last couple weeks. Uh one of our vehicles that is being upfit that we're going to pick up in Virginia hopefully in June is what they're saying. Will be upfit for that K9 vehicle. So we're in the process of finding the dog for that handler and and getting kennels and all that stuff set up. So, we will be adding a second K9 as soon as the car comes. So, hopefully by the end of June, which is what we're being promised, and that means June of some year. I'm not sure what because we've always been pushed back on the cars, but um we are getting closer to that. So, I just wanted to give that update. Those are things that I know have been a priority of of council and the public as well and and that's something we have been working for and we're at that point now. That's all I have.

How's your um report system going? It's actually going pretty well. We're having little minor problems, but overall it's gone gone extremely well on our end. Okay. I know our record staff is extremely happy with the ability to do some of the things that they're able to do. Awesome. Good to hear. All right. Uh, next on the agenda, bids, meetings, and announcements. Miss Curtis,

thank you. There are two bids uh currently open right now. It's the 2026 on call HBP paving services bid and it closes May 1st at 3 p.m. And then there is also the 2026 HBP paving projects also closing May 1st at 3 p.m. The Museum Heritage Foundation meeting is at the museum community room on April 23rd at 4 p.m. Planning Commission is here at city hall 4:30 April 27th and the Main Street Advisory Board meeting is planned for here April 28th at 8:30 in the morning and then we'll be back here May 5th at 6:00 p.m.

All righty. I guess uh this meeting is adjourned. Thank you all for coming. Hope you learned something and we will take a quick recess and come back for work session. Yeah. So, we'll come back and do the workshop. That's for the budget and everything, but we do have food. Um, so if everybody wants to get something to eat, they can do that. And so, well, not I didn't plan on the entire class eating with us. Sorry, Pauline. Yeah. Make sure the interpreter got So, those of those people that are staying for the workshop, we should have food. All right. Meeting a journey. Yeah, we got Yeah. What's up?