City Council - Regular Meeting

Mayor Sashow.

Here.

Council Member Kozad.

Excused.

Council Member Erdiales.

Here.

Council Member Caper.

Here.

Council Member Garcia.

Vacation.

Council Member Boyette.

Present.

Council Member Parks.

Excused. All righty. 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 counsel from the podium. The counsel will not take action at this meeting in response to any public comment. Do we have anybody who wants to get up and talk? Seeing none. Next one on the agenda, presentation of possible action on a request for in-kind services for fee waivers, Morgan County Fair. Mr. Waite.

All right, good evening, Mayor and Council. How is everyone tonight?

Awesome.

Good. The first one that I have up in front of you guys tonight is for an in-kind request for Morgan County Fair to borrow our picnic tables for the fair this year. We've had no problems with them in the past. We'd like to continue working with them, so asking that that would be okay with you guys.

All righty. And those are $9,450? Is that what I got?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Any tender resolution?

Your Honor, I make a resolution to approve the request for in-kind services and fee waivers for the Morton County Fair as presented.

Second. Okay, I get a resolution by John Caper, second by Brian Year of Dallas. Roll call, please.

That resolution carries four to... Four.

All right. Zero. Presentation next on the agenda, presentation of possible action by resolution on request for in-kind services and waivers for the fall harvest car show. Mr. Wade again.

Yes, sir. So the second one I have for you is the fall harvest car show. Um, in your packets, you have the application as well as the in kind requests. Um, we are requesting to waive the fees in an amount of $8,082.75. And just like Morgan County that we've had no issues with these guys in the past. We'd like to continue working with them if we can.

Awesome. All right. Entain a resolution.

Your honor, make a resolution to approve the request for in-kind services and fee waivers for the fall harvest car show as presented. Second.

A resolution by John Caper, another one by Lauren Boyette. Roll call, please.

That resolution carries four to zero.

Awesome. Thank you, Mr. Wade.

Thank you, guys.

All right. Next on the agenda is the ratification of emergency expenditures for the storm sewer repair. Mr. Linton.

I'm glad Parks isn't here tonight. Good evening, Mayor, Council. Tonight I have in front of you, May of this year, we had a moderate rainstorm in May and causing the 96-inch storm pipe on the south side lateral to wash the ditch out. They reached out and formed the city that repairs had to be made immediately as they were running water in that ditch. So the ditch company spoke with RBE Excavation, and he performed the work. The cost of materials and labor to remove existing 96-inch pipe and install the 96 RCP were $245,636. Staff is requesting council approval of the ratification of the emergency expenditures for labor and materials needed to repair the storm sewer in the amount of $245,636.

Awesome. This is one of those where when it happens, there are certain things that we have to be able to get fixed and everything. And so procedurally, what I do as the city manager, it was my, they contacted me. It was 6 AM on a Sunday morning. I remember the phone call. And, um, I, once we knew that the expenditure was going to be well over the $50,000 mark that we can do internally, um, I called the mayor, asked the mayor for emergency authorization to get the expenditure. This is one of those that the longer that that ditch stays out of water, the more potential we get of being, you know, in the middle of a lawsuit with the ditch company. And so getting it fixed so they can get back in and get their crops watered was the paramount situation we were in. So. That is just a very, that's our largest storm pipe that we have in our system at eight foot in diameter. And so it was, yeah. I stood in and couldn't touch the top.

I got a picture.

Do they repair or replace that?

In this case, the original pipe was corrugated metal pipe. and it was because of the the water situation of the ditch leaking on top of it eventually just corrodes out we had fixed this once before where we'd gone in and patched it back with concrete and flow fill over it and it's lasted for a while but then it had another failure point in it and this time luckily the damage that incurred because of the water went right into our reclamation yard and that's just a big pond down there anyway so it didn't damage anything we just took all their extra ditch water in there and so but yeah so we went back with concrete pipe that way it will not deteriorate because of the water conditions and we just replaced the last 120 feet of the line yep 100 yeah 120 feet close enough great thank you all right entertain the resolution

Are we, I guess clarification, are we doing that through RBE or are we just doing it as open?

So the invoice that we received is from RBE. That's how you want it worded. Yep, that's how we want it worded.

Your Honor, I'd like to approve the emergency expenditure for labor and materials to RBE Excavating for stormwater, I'm sorry, stormwater piping in the amount of $245,636.

All right. I have a resolution by John caper. Another second by Brian here in Dallas. Roll call please.

That resolution carries four to zero.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Alrighty. Next is, uh, next on the agenda is a public hearing, um, public hearing ordinance, 1337 amending chapter 21 of the Fort Morgan municipal code by adopting the reference to the 2020. Oh, we got to do him first. we're doing right okay all right okay okay uh the international building mechanical code fire code existing building codes residential emergency conservation code 2023 colorado code of electric ready and solar ready codes a bunch of stuff this is a public hearing please keep public comments to the issues before the city council each speaker is asked to limit the comment to three minutes unless the speaker is representing a group of citizens in which the event additional time may be allotted. Please respect these limitations. I reserve the right to limit public comment that is inappropriate under these guidelines or otherwise improper. I also reserve the right to limit testimony or questioning that is repetitive, communicative, or argumentative. or not pertinent to the issues and set a limit to the duration of testimony. If I determine it is necessary in light of the number of persons that have signed up to testify. All right. First issue legal notice, Ms. Curtis?

It was properly noticed on June 3rd on our website.

All right. Next in the presentation in the order, Mr. Watkins.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. The approved the proposed amendments to Chapter 21 of the Municipal Code. Building regulations were presented to City Council at the June 2nd City Council meeting. City Council approved the first reading of the ordinance for the amendments to Chapter 21 and scheduled the public hearing and second reading for tonight. To recap what we went through the other night, I'm not going to put you to sleep this time. Recent mandates passed by the state of Colorado require any jurisdiction that adopts or enforces building codes and makes any changes to those codes must adopt a minimum of the 2021 international energy conservation code or a newer more stringent energy code along with the 2023 model electric ready and solar ready code if this is not done by july 1st then the any code changes would then mandate us to adopt the model low energy carbon code by the state of colorado the options that the building department looked at were to option one adopt the 2024 icc building codes including the 2024 international energy code along with the model electric ready and solar ready code prior to july 1st 2026 This option would be most beneficial and cost effective for contractors, homeowners, and developers. Option two was to keep the 2015 ICC building codes and adopt only the 2024 international energy conservation code along with the model electric ready and solar ready code prior to July 1st. This would create significant division between the building codes and the energy code. And contractors would likely have to invest significant amounts to meet the more stringent energy codes. Option three would be to do nothing. In that case, since the electric code is adopted by reference, when they change as soon as this fall, then that would force us to adopt the model low energy carbon code. The recommendation of the building department is option one to adopt 2024 building codes and international energy code and the mandated model electric ready and solar code city staff request that city council approved by resolution ordinance number 1337 on the second reading amending chapter 21 of the Fort Morgan municipal code with amendments as presented.

All righty. Thank you. Next, we'll hear any public comment. Is there anyone here who wishes to speak on this issue? All right. Seeing none. Is there anyone else in the public who wishes to speak on this issue? I'll ask the city clerk if any oral or written comments were submitted to the clerk's office prior to this hearing.

There were none received.

We will now proceed to council discussion. Are there any questions from council or any discussion from council?

I guess we have our fire marshal here. Is there any concerns? Thank you. Okay. You were here. You had a reason. Thank you.

If there's any further discussion by council, I will entertain a motion to close or continue public hearing.

I'll make a motion to close the public hearing.

All right. All in favor? Aye. All right. Council action. Ms. Williams.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. You had a duly proper public hearing tonight, and your options are regarding ordinance number 1337. Let me know if you have any questions.

All righty. Any further discussion? All right. Entertain your resolution.

Your Honor, I'd like to make a resolution to approve ordinance number 1337 on the second reading, amending Chapter 21 of the City of Fort Morgan Mutual Code with the amendments as presented. Second.

All right. I have a resolution by John Capers, second by Lauren Boyette. Roll call, please.

That resolution carries four to zero.

All right. Next on the agenda is the 2027 budget calendar. Mr. Yeah, I'll kick things off there.

So, yeah, I'll have Casey will come up first and we're going to we always start in the utility funds just as kind of so you guys know where we're coming from. As we've started into the budget process this year, we've started meeting with the utility funds first. And my my directive to the to all of the managers as they prepare their budgets is to come up with a budget that is close to a zero change with what was presented in 2026. So we're trying to hold the line as tight as we can and see where we end up. There are some things that have to be adjusted up just because that's the way that it works in the utility world. but we've also made adjustments from the original presentations to some of them. So what we're bringing to you tonight is hopefully along those lines of what would be a zero change budget for 2027. We are talking with the managers in each of the meetings about how this could change. We may be coming back to them for changes to the 2027 budget, depending on what continues or doesn't continue to happen over at the Cargill facility, because that could have a dramatic effect on what our budget looks like for the next year so anyway so we will start we're going to present what we think is a budget that will work and will balance based upon a fully functioning cargo facility in the city of fort morgan so we'll start with the electric fund first i'll let casey go through the revenue projections

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. It's pretty easy on the electric revenue. We already had the rate consultant come in and give you guys a presentation. So we are budgeting based on their recommendations on that rate study. We haven't gone through and officially done the resolution to change those, but this is based on that recommendation of a 9.5% increase on... the rates for electric and other than that i i just took pretty much average or conservative um on like what we expect on investment income or anything like that that's all just based on historic numbers the only big change is going to be our rate increases any questions any questions guys okay

Very good. Then we'll go ahead and move on to the actual electric fund itself, and John Bain will present that.

Mayor, Council, so let's see if this will work. I'll just go through the changes. Is that okay with you guys?

Yep.

Start at the top, go down, purchase power increased. By a little bit. Not much. That's still an estimate. You just never know. Next one down, maintenance of the system decreased by $100,000. That matched our spending, what we have for the last couple of years. So it's more accurate. Go down to the maintenance of meters. Reduce that to match our spending. So we're tightening things up to see what we normally spend. Keep going down. Tools and equipment. Reduce that down by $20,000. Match your spending again. So just by training for the last couple of years. Employee recognition. Lowered it just a little bit. Just to match what everybody else is doing in all their departments, so it's all fair. Next one is maintenance of vehicles. We had to increase that one. We are... spending that much on our equipment we our trucks are about 10 to 15 years old we're not trading them in like we used to um they're just expensive so now we're we're maintaining a little bit more um just what cost uh covey's done a really good job in the street department to help us out keep the cost down but that's what we're working on um maintenance general property deduction there no nothing planned right now that's just pure maintenance of the complex and electric area Yard, warehouse, all that good stuff. Uniforms increase just by a thousand bucks. It's just a cost. It's just FR clothes are just expensive as you guys know. Street lighting. We lowered that one down to match what we have in the budget last couple years. And that street lighting budget, it's actually like most of the time it's when cars hit the poles. That's what we spend a lot of the money on. And then we go to the insurance and try to get money back. But That's the line item that we take that out of. QC's increased, match the spending. Now we're done with education and training, increased by a few thousand bucks. A lot of apprentices travel, all that's more expensive, all that good stuff.

So that's why there's an increase there.

all right in lieu of taxes same uh all right substation so that number that's there should be good but we'll probably carry some money over hopefully to finish it we have uh the transmission line poles show up in january so we have to get those installed transmission line february we commission it march 1st hopefully energize it that's the schedule right now for the construction Next week we're starting to put the fence up. There's cages out there right now. We're going to start the dirt work for the cement, get that cured, get the transformer set, all that good stuff. So if you guys drive by, that's what we're doing out there now.

Go on down.

Transformers increase. Basically cost materials, steel, copper, everything that's expensive. That is to buy any new transformers. If some business comes in, that's what we purchase the transformers out of. Usually, you know, if it's a bill, we get it back. But that's the line we use to purchase transformers. AMI metering. This will do about 500 to 600 meters. Then next year after that, we'll have another 500 or 600 more to go. And then we'll have an AMI in every meter in Fort Morgan of electric.

Fiber extension.

This is the maintain aloes, the backbone fiber we have for aloe. Anything new coming in, any maintenance, that's that light on there. And that's it for, I have for increases or decreases. Any questions on anything?

Nope. Just maybe remind everybody that this comes out of what we pay for electricity and stuff, right?

Yeah, so this is the electric fund itself. Money in, money out. Yeah, there's a large part of that that is the money in and the money out. It's the purchase power that he referred to in his budget. That's the bills we get from WAPA and from MEAN for the electricity. Okay. think but now we will move on to thank you john yeah um we'll now move on to utility billing years ago we've set up um different departments that we felt would be under the utility of the electric department utility billing is one of those it's a balance with their expenses where when the other departments need to use that we have an administrative allocation so You see all their expenses sitting on the electric side of the ledger, but there's also monies that come back from the other departments, including the general fund and whatever else may be connected to that. And so whenever you look at the budgets, you can always see how tight it is to the rest of the city by the administrative allocation. So don't get too held up. on that. This is in the electric fund. Should it be somewhere else? It's just this is where it's been for a while, and we continue to just mess with the administrative allocation, making sure the other departments are funding the department correctly. And you'll see that with some of these other ones that we do tonight, too.

Okay, Your Honor. Um, well, we have Miss Edson back up here. Can you address back on miscellaneous revenue under your Sorry, different folder. I know electrical revenue. The PFM investment income?

Yes.

So in 25, we're at $650,000. Sorry, hard to see those commas. Yeah. And then we were proposed at $150,000. I just kind of question, what is that? Where's that money coming from?

So those are our investments that we have. So I'm proposing for 20, well, it was 150 in 2026 for the budget and 250 in 2027. I'm being fairly conservative. If we get more investment income, that's great, but I don't want us to balance our budget based on an expectation of investment income that's going to come in or not come

But as far as the money. In short, it's the money that we hold in reserve for that utility.

So has the pot size changed?

Yes. Oh, yeah, because we spent almost $6 million on a substation. Okay. That's what I was kind of looking for.

Yes.

That's why we're not seeing the revenue that we had. Exactly. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. I just wanted the clarification.

And I tend to budget, especially revenue on the more conservative side, and if we get more revenue, great. But I don't want to expect more revenue, especially the economy's been a little up in the air lately. Up and down.

I'm liking it.

Yeah. I'm not going to turn away any of that revenue.

Thank you.

All right. So are we ready for utility billing? We are. Okay. So kind of like Brent talked about earlier, there's some expenses that are just naturally going to go up and we had to increase. And then we looked for in these departments areas that we could reduce on to keep our budget overall flat year over year. So I'll start with credit card charges. People, more people are using credit cards. Some of our fees have increased from the banks. So we just basically kept it where our expenses were in 2025. budget it there. Data processing is our software maintenance. So Cassell is our main accounting software that everything runs through. And then ITRON is the meter reading software. And we're expecting increases in the costs of those. So we in turn reduced our budget for office supplies. We're just going to try and reduce where we can and we haven't been spending all of our budget anyway. Postage we kept flat. While we're on the topic of postage, we're talking about, we have an inserter machine, a large machine that helps us insert all the bills into all of the envelopes. Ours is getting pretty old. And we've looked at the possibility of replacing that versus outsourcing the printing and mailing of bills. So that's something we're still kind of examining and looking at. But on first glance, the cost would be the same from like our maintenance costs would be the same because we don't have to buy ink and we don't have to buy envelopes. And they get a better rate on postage than we can get because they're doing like bulk bulk mailings so we wouldn't have to pay for the inserter and then our maintenance costs would stay relatively the same so we haven't we haven't moved forward with that but just so you know it's something we're looking into we also think that there's potential we mail it here we gather it at the post office it goes to Denver then it comes back here if we outsource it we think that people might get their bills faster just because it can be at the post office quicker there and then return to people. So just so you guys are aware that that's something we're looking at. Let's see. Telephone, we took out in that line. We don't have a cell phone for the manager for that department anymore. We left fuel and oil the same. Employee recognition, this is another one where we're just trying to align it so that all the departments are getting per person the same amount to spend on recognition. So we reduced that. maintenance equipment a vehicle we reduced we got a hand-me-down vehicle we use a vehicle for meter reading that's what it's for for our department we got a hand-me-down vehicle from light and power last year and so now that we have a new or new to us vehicle we don't think we'll spend as much on maintenance maintenance of general property we increased that's where we have like pest control and cleaning services and stuff like that kind of had just increased Uniforms, we reduced. I mean, our employees don't always have to wear a uniform, and so we're just trying to look for places to save. Education and training, same thing. We've been staffed for quite a while, so I'm comfortable reducing the amount that we'll need to spend there. And then conferences and conventions, we just took that out for 2027. We'll just not attend a conference to try and save some funds. Any questions on that?

On the, when we go out and check meters, once everything's up to smart metering,

There's possibility that we will just because of the enormity of our service area. We have gas meters all the way out by the water treatment plant. So we're working with our smart metering company to see if we can get the ability to grab those readings and bring them all the way back into town. But we're still trying to figure out, first of all, how much is that's going to cost? So there will be a large part of the town that we should be able to do with smart meters and not have to send the meter reader around like we do right now. But I foresee the situation, especially when we get zero reads and things like that, we have to go back out and hand read their meters. And so you're still going to have some vehicle time, but we should be able to reduce it a lot once the smart meter system is up and running correctly. Okay, we will move on to building maintenance next. Sorry.

Oh, yeah. Inventory.

I have inventory. Oh, you have inventory.

I got inventory. Sorry. Do inventory. I will stay up here for inventory then. Sorry.

Okay. So similarly, we have some increases and then we're just trying to reduce where we can. So We'll start out with data processing, Cassell, which we use for accounting there too. Our annual fees are just increasing. So that's a reflection of that increase. And then so we reduced fuel and oil. They don't really use a lot of fuel and oil. So we're just trying to base it based on what our usage has been. They have a forklift and That's basically that. And they have a truck that they will occasionally deliver product. Like if Jill or Brent here needs something, they will bring it over. And then maintenance of general property. We have a couple of things going on there. We added a pest control just to try and keep mice down in that whole complex and other critters. And then last year we'd added some money for new racking. So we took out the new racking, but then we added a little bit for pest control. And then uniforms, we reduced a little bit just to try and find places to save. And education and training, we reduced that as well. They do a couple of training courses every year, but most of them are online now, so it doesn't cost as much. Any questions?

Nope. Okay. Now we'll go to building maintenance.

Good evening. You'll see we don't have any changes to the actual usable line items. We'll flatline pretty good on this one. The only difference you'll notice is there is a raise in the depreciation. That represents a truck that was purchased a couple years ago that we just didn't, for whatever reason, didn't have reflected in last year's, and we're just getting that online. So that's something we can't control. But beyond that, pretty cut and dry. Fix what we can. It's okay. You can blame Casey. Oh, sorry.

Didn't mean to throw her under the bus.

That's all I got.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, guys. Okay. Now, next we have the utility director.

It sucks getting old. Good evening, Council. Again, pretty cut and dry, just like Matt's. There is a reduction in the office supplies, and then we had to budget rent. I guess I wasn't paying any rent. And then reduced again in the utilities. Was it utilities? I'm telling you what, I got to take these glasses off. It was in the telephone. Reduced in maintenance. That was an increase, not an increase. It just wasn't budgeted in 2026, so it's budgeted in 2027, so I pay my fair share of maintenance as well in that building. So, pretty simple.

All right.

No huge increases. Yeah, our buildings, depending on who technically owns them, the electric department owns some of the buildings, General Fund owns some of the buildings, and so we have formulas for square footage used and everything, and that's why you see rent coming from some of the departments and not some of the other ones. Okay?

Okay. All right, good. Thanks, Douglas. Thank you.

Would the man behind the screen step out, please? Nelson, you're up.

Nobody's going to tell him, though.

uh good evening your honor members of council um not really much has changed in my budget some stuff has gone up some stuff has gone down um our client access licenses which is where we pay for our software has gone up um i expect microsoft and google to increase their prices because you know of course they will they're um yeah so they're shoving ai into everything and hemorrhaging money and then passing on the cost to us. So that's fun. We've also increased the amount for our PCs. The cost of memory has shot through the roof. I don't know if we're going to be able to do the amount that we typically do. We may have to throttle back on memory or start targeting some of our heavier users for replacement and leaving others behind. Something I'm not terribly happy about, but we'll do what we have to do. But there's some speculation that memory prices will come down sometime in 27 when new fabs go online. But I don't know, unless the AI bubble pops, I don't really think it's going to happen.

i guess that's pretty much it i mean not much has changed so any questions no sir no sir okay great thanks guys okay thank you thank you very much um and before we leave the um electric fund we have the public works budget that was left out of your electronic packet that's in your table file and so we'll have tom come up and do the public works budget

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'll just go over the highlights like some of the other ones other staff did. We reduced spending in office supplies to kind of match what we think we're going to spend for maintenance for tools and equipment. We reduced that LIDEM as well, again, just anticipating that we don't have to buy very many tools. We did have to increase under maintenance. I get to cover some of the radio costs, and that added about $1,200 to the LIDEM that we just didn't have budgeted for 2026. And then I reduced uniforms about half because I really don't wear very much that is a uniform like some departments. And with that, I can answer any questions.

Any questions, guys?

Thank you. Very good. Thanks, Tom.

Thank you.

Yeah, and that finalizes, that's the last one that's considered part of the electric department budget. So that's all the sub-departments that fall underneath the electric fund. Okay. Now we'll move on to the gas department, and Casey will handle the revenues first.

The gas fund revenues are pretty easy. At this point, we don't have any rate increases planned or expected. So I pretty much took what our actuals were in 2025 and left them, you know, kind of rounded them and adjusted them. And then again, with investment income, I stayed on the more conservative side, didn't make any large changes there. So does anyone have any questions?

Okay. We'll have Tony come up and present his budget then.

evening everybody i my data processing had to bump up a little bit just because of the technology and my puc's peas bumped up a little bit um uncollectible accounts we lowered and that's pretty much the gist of it i left my telephone the way it is because we're actually we're utilizing our tablet now with the gis we're taking it out to the field and so that's why i left the phone because just for projected increases on the telephone bills. Very good.

Any questions guys?

Thanks Tony. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Very good. The last utility that we cover tonight is the sanitation fund. I'll let Casey do the revenues and then we'll have JW come up and do the expenses.

All right. Hello again. I adjusted the sanitation rates based on what we just had for a rate increase this month. So I increased that line item. And then other than that, we left everything the same.

Okay, come on up, JW.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm here to present our 2027 budget for sanitation. Most of our line items, we were able to reduce them down just as much as we possibly could. One that we kind of put back into the works is on our employee testing, and that's basically for our DOT physicals that the drivers and stuff have to take. We reduced our spending in advertising to kind of match up with what we did in 2025. We were able to take $2,000 off of our data processing. That is for, like, program subscriptions and stuff for Bob's diagnostic tools and stuff. And we're actually being able to partner that up because most the diagnostic tools that we have now, we can use for streets. And we were able to absorb that into streets is already going to be able to cover most of that. And everything else is pretty much how we just skimped it down as much as we possibly could. On our trash containers, we're going to try to leave that at 40,000. Hopefully, in the next years or two, we'll be able to go out and get some more three-yard containers, but we're going to try to make do with what we have right now. Right now, we've got them all. stored at the Burlington facility to be put out onto auction. But I think we're going to go through those first and kind of take the best of the worst and try to make them work. But our maintenance of containers, we left that the way it is because it will still need to put lids and plastic lids and maintain them the best we can.

Very good. Appreciate that.

Yeah.

Okay. Questions?

Thanks, J.W. All right. Thank you very much. Very good. Thank you, J.W. That wraps up tonight's budget calendar, and so we'll be back in two weeks with more.

I'd like to say thank you, guys, for cutting what you could because we absolutely have no clue what's coming in the pipe except for the sewer guys. But I appreciate it. I really do. Thank you. That's it. All righty. All right. Next on the agenda tonight is consent agenda. Ms. Curtis.

Thank you. Your consent agenda is nine a and B the approval of the disbursements and payroll for may and the approval of the minutes of the June 2nd, 2026 city council, regular meeting all matters listed under an item nine 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, entertain. Resolution?

Make a resolution, Your Honor, to approve the disbursement payroll in minutes.

Second.

All right, got a resolution by John Capers. Second, White, Bryan, New York, Dallas. Roll call, please.

That resolution carries four to zero.

All righty, reports.

Brent? okay i got a couple things what's um the next meeting uh right now we've got uh normal business and then we have we'll do a quick presentation of the draft of the 2025 financial audits um and then on the budget calendar we have the basically the water and the sewer funds and the associated departments with that and then an executive session with a check-in with the police chief and right now that's your major items for two or three weeks from now. Sorry, three weeks. A couple other things in your package. You'll see that the sales tax report is in there for the first four months of the year. The tracking for that third of the year is kind of if you were compared to what we budgeted, that was what we were budgeting. That has the increases that we saw with the change in the sales tax rate. I will remind you that Cargill was fully in operation for the majority of that. So we still have not received reports for the months that will start to affect us with the Cargill being shut down. The other thing, good news. We've joked about this. We've got the $53 million in bonds that we needed to. We closed on that. And so we're now the happy owners of $53 million, but also in debt to $53 million because obviously we've got to pay that back. and so but we have the funds now secured and ready to go they're in the process of getting the bids back on the construction and so hopefully sometime in july we'll be bringing the construction bid in front of council for approval and they can get started on the improvements out the wastewater plant in the meantime we do get to invest that money it's invested with pfm that you were talking about earlier and so we will get to draw interest on that until we need to use it so Just we will wanted to point out you guys should have in front of you your packet for CML next week. Jill's got everything in there for you. If you've got questions, contact me and we will talk about it. Myself and Matt will be there next week with you. And so let us know if there's anything that we can help you with. The last thing I was going to talk about just in a follow up of the conversation that we had or some of the individuals that came to the council meeting last week and where we are with Cargill and the Teamsters and their ongoing issue. First of all, have no idea where negotiations are. So don't ask me. I don't know. So we're hoping that they're working things out because the sooner they can get that plant back up and running would be better for all of us. on the issue of that was being brought up about the porta potties and everything. The I finally sat down with the Teamsters and talked to them about what their concerns were and everything. We're not in the business of supplying port-a-potties, first of all, for people. And so I think that was some of the confusion was that why hasn't the city supplied this? And the fact of the matter was is that their first request was to use a piece of city property that we typically don't use for public, for any type of public. And so when they asked the first time, I said, well, that's not a public property. piece of property. I mean, it's our facility, but it's not public facing. And so therefore, you know, we won't do that. After the comments that were made in the council meeting and after discussing things with the Teamsters, they were trying to figure out a way to squeeze the porta potties on the road right away over there. And after discussions with them, I just felt we were getting into a situation that was going to be very unsafe if that's what they were going to insist on doing. And so I talked to the Teamsters and said, let me get some paperwork put together and see what we can work out. So we have now given them access to the unfenced portion of the parking lot at what we call the Burlington facility at 1320 East Burlington Avenue. They can start using that piece of ground when they feel the necessity to move their protests over there. And so the agreement, basically it is just a liability waiver is what they signed. They're acknowledging that if anything happens while they're on the property, they're the ones liable for it. It has an exhibit map in it that just shows the corner that we're allowing them to have access to and the fact that it's for their porta potties and support vehicles. So the ones that have the water and the Gatorade and everything for their protesters when they're over there. And so we've gotten all that signed. They've gotten it back to us. We paved that road over there last week because you guys approved that change order. And so that's all now done. And so it's situated that if the Teamsters wish to be back over next to the Cargill facility, they can move back over there and they have room for potties and stuff. um obviously they'll have to contract with somebody to provide porta potties but they can now do that and i feel comfortable that you know their employees will be safe while they're over there doing that so Yeah. And other than that, we're just continuing to work with everybody on this and have discussions with them about when the park has public events going on in it and everything. And the last two TNL events that we've had, they've ended their protests at about 5 o'clock. And so none of the protesters are down there marching around when we're having public events. And so I appreciate their thoughtfulness on that and allowing us to have an undisturbed event going on. Yeah. But for now, that's the updates on all that.

Awesome.

Okay. Thank you.

I just want to talk a little bit about the animal shelter, first of all. Last two months were the first two months of full data that we've gotten. We've gotten a little better of an idea now with where we are. And we're probably on pace to bring about 500 animals a year in there. So we're kind of getting an idea what that takes. As a result of that, you may have seen that we just opened up another part-time position at the animal shelter. Um, and I want to make make it clear that we are in talking to Brent and Jennifer. What we're really doing is we're reallocating some funds from the police department for another program we had. We're very fortunate. We've been fully staffed for a while. We have a recruit program that we have in place to cover as soon as somebody were to resign we'd have somebody we're ready to send to an academy so we're kind of ahead of the curve there we did have somebody resign that today was his last day of employment but our recruit will be going to the academy in august we had another recruit position that we just never filled because we didn't have the need and we're going to be taking that position and not filling that position and instead moving that over to the animal shelter in the short term So it'll be about a 15-hour, 20-hour-a-week job over there. But with the two ladies that are there doing a phenomenal job with one and a half time, you know, one full-time, one part-time employee running that shelter seven days a week, I think it's been pretty impressive. But knowing that they have to take time off and other things are coming up, we're going to have to find some coverage for that. I THINK IT'S JUST WORTH NOTING THAT AND ALSO WE ARE STARTING TO SEE SOME OF THE REVENUE AND STARTING TO GET AN IDEA FOR WHAT THAT COST IS GOING TO COST US AS WE BUDGET THAT'S BEEN THE MOST COMPLICATED PART NOT KNOWING HOW MANY ANIMALS ARE GETTING IN WHAT THE COSTS ARE GOING TO BE FOR VET BILLS I WILL ALSO SAY A couple weeks ago, we brought in four animals for another law enforcement agency after they were removed from a home. Those four dogs, three of them, ended up testing positive for parvo. So we did have an outbreak. They are being treated, and they've been isolated. So we haven't seen it outside of that. But, of course, that reiterates what we always say is getting your animals licensed and returned. We don't want them in the shelter for that reason. I mean, they can bring parvo or your pet. ends up coming home with those diseases and things that we do everything we can to prevent that exposure. But of course, that's more likely when they show up in a shelter. So we're dealing with that. That will be charged back as restitution for those individuals because those animals were sick when they came in. But that's kind of where we're at right now.

Awesome. Okay. Jill did meetings and announcements.

Okay. Um, on June 22nd, there is, um, a planning commission board meeting at 4 30 PM here at city hall on June 25th at 4 PM. There is a museum heritage foundation meeting at the library museum community room on July 3rd. We are closed in observance of independence day and July 7th. We'll be back here at 6 PM for the council regular meeting. The bid that is still open is for the wastewater treatment facility expansion project for the construction of it, and the deadline has been extended to July 9th at 3 p.m.

Awesome. Anybody from the back? No? Okay. Uh-oh, Tony. Tony's got it. Oh, yeah. Oh.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. With the nice weather coming around, the gas department will be out, and I'd like the public to know and you guys to know that we're going to be out leak surveying. There's going to be a guy carrying a little blue box around, and we'll need access to your backyards and stuff so we can walk your service lines just to make sure we don't have any underground leaks that need to be repaired or leaks on meters or whatever. So I've been working with Casey, and she's working – Not this Casey, the other Casey. Social media Casey. And she's going to get some pictures on Facebook and stuff like that. But just want to make people aware with all the ring cameras and everything. Nowadays, you know, we've been getting multiple calls making sure that we are legit. But yes, we are legit. We are walking around doing our leak surveying. And if you do have lock gates or whatever, we will tag the door. And we'd really appreciate it if you would give us a call back and schedule a time with us. So we can get in your backyard and do our due diligence to get our surveying done and everything in a good amount of time. No. We're on the northwest portion of town. So we'll be okay. All right. Thank you, guys. You bet. Alan, you're a regular. You have anything?