City Council - Regular Meeting

Roll call, Ms. Curtis.

Mayor Salshow.

Here.

Council Member Kozad.

Here.

Council Member Erdiales.

Here.

Council Member Kaper.

Here.

Council Member Garcia.

Here.

Council Member Boyette.

Here.

Council Member Parks.

Here. All righty. Next on the agenda is public comment on 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 the podium. The council will not take action at this meeting in response to public comments. Do we have anybody that wants to come up? All righty. Seeing none, the next on the agenda is approval of the minutes for July 16. Ms. Curtis.

Thank you, Mayor. The minutes of the June 16th meeting are in your packets as presented.

All right. Entertain a resolution? Your Honor, I'll make a resolution to approve the minutes as presented.

Second.

All right, I have a resolution by caper, second by Jim Parks. Roll call, please.

That resolution carries unanimously.

All right. Next on the agenda, recognition of business of the month. Miss Engel. Good evening.

Good evening.

Our July Business of the Month honoree does more than sell houses in Fort Morgan and Morgan County. The business has spent countless hours on building relationships, donating talents and funds, and making opportunities possible. The list of local organizations and nonprofits that have been touched through its generosity over the past 12 years is almost endless. Lions Club, Rotary Club, Spares for Share, Sarah House, The Brush Rodeo, The Cattlemen's Association, Vision of Trees, Prasher Dasher, The MCC Foundation, Turkey Trot 5K, Morgan County Family Center, St. Jude's, Thursday Night Live, and many area schools and churches. As one of the owners noted, we wanted to emulate and occupy a cornerstone in the community, and one of the best ways to do this is to give back through support. Tonight it is my honor and privilege to announce that Century 21 Cornerstone has been selected as this month's Business of the Month recipient for its valuable contributions to our community. Each month this distinction is given to a Fort Morgan business that excels in such areas as pride in their business, top-notch customer service, operational growth, active involvement in area organizations and programs, and community contributions that assist in creating a better quality of life. 21 years ago, owner and real estate broker Mary Walter attended Morgan Community College and acquired her real estate prowess through its certificate program. The real estate industry allowed her to still get to work in the dirt, as she affectionately refers to her family farming operations background. Husband Adam joined her a few years later, and the duo hasn't looked back since. In 2012, the Walters had the opportunity to purchase the office building located at 930 Main Street and pioneer Cornerstone Realty. The full-service real estate company not only aids in the buying and selling of residential properties, but also has agents who specialize in marketing ranches, farms, and estates. They offer property management and landlord onboarding services as well. In fact, after acquiring McPheeters and Arrow Realty three years ago, they became the largest full-service property management real estate office in the county with the management of over 300 doors. Some of Century 21 Cornerstone sales associates also specialize in commercial listings as well as fine home and estate listings. Their services are not confined to just Morgan County either. The real estate office has clients statewide and can assist with property transactions throughout Colorado. A couple of its broker associates are bilingual and can assist those who prefer to communicate in Spanish. Like many industries, the evolution of the real estate market, with its constant changes and challenges, led our Business of the Month recipient to adapt and revolutionize by recently partnering with a national firm, Century 21, in order to have access to technology, marketing, lead generation, and agent coaching. With this affiliation, the business owners hope to be able to pursue new possibilities and continue its operations. and continue to grow its operations. Investment in brick and mortar operations is important to the business owners, and when the opportunity to purchase the nearby Pepe's Coffee operations became available, the Walters became proud owners of another type of service-oriented business. They strongly felt that the operations needed to remain locally owned and operated. In addition to the business's strong adherence to service commitment, the real estate operations are focused on quality. All of the 10 associated real estate agents at Century 21 Cornerstone are Realtors, meaning that they are members of the National Association of Realtors who adhere to a strict code of ethics and high standards of conduct. In addition to their professional licenses, they have taken additional steps towards the dedication and professionalism in the real estate industry. Recently, the real estate industry recognized Mary for these characteristics with several awards, including the Century 21 Quality Service Producer Honor that recognizes agents who deliver exceptional client-first service and prioritize communication and trust in their relationships as measured through client satisfaction surveys. Additionally, Real Trends Verified honored her as well. This award highlights the top 1.5% real estate professionals in the country based on production and sale performance. Homeowners and sellers alike have positively commented on the operational culture of the professionalism, integrity, respect, and customer experience when working with Century 21 Cornerstones agents. As Raul Sanchez notes, best experience trying to buy a home, and we know how stressful that can be. They go at your pace and are truly there for their customers. Anyone looking to sell or buy, here you go. They are very helpful and make themselves available all of the time. Please join me in congratulating and thanking our July Business of the Month selection, Century 21 Cornerstone, for the outstanding efforts and contributions this business provides in order to make Fort Morgan a great place to live, work, and enjoy. And Mary is here, and I will have her introduce several of her team members that accompanied her tonight. And turn it over to her.

Good evening, everyone. I am accompanied by several members of our team. I've got my husband, Adam Walter, our daughter from Archeries here from 4-H. She just had to be to join us, Maura. Stacey Martindale, our sales associate and property manager, Shelby Rappenecker, Marco, and also our maintenance manager, Jesse Flores. I really don't know what else I can add after Sandy's kind words, other than to say how truly honored and humbled we are to receive this recognition. On behalf of everyone at Century 21 Cornerstone, thank you to the City of Fort Morgan, to the Fort Morgan Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Fort Morgan Times. For partnering together to recognize local businesses through this wonderful program, it is a privilege to be selected. I'd also like to personally thank Sandy Engel with Economic Development. Sandy, thank you for your encouragement, your support, and for all the work that you do every day to help our community grow and thrive. We truly appreciate you. For me, this recognition is especially meaningful because Morgan County has always been home. I grew up just south of Wiggins on my family's wheat farm, and that sense of community is what inspired my husband Adam and I to build our business here. When we began this brokerage, we weren't simply operating or opening a real estate office. We were making a commitment to serve the people of this community through honesty, integrity, and genuine care. One of our favorite sayings at Century 21 Cornerstone is, we are your real estate relationship. Those aren't just words to us. The relationships we've built with our clients, many of whom who have become friends, lifelong friends, are the greatest blessing of our work. This recognition belongs to our incredible team. Their professionalism, compassion, and servant hearts are what has made Century 21 Cornerstone what it is today. And I am so grateful for each and every one of them. Finally, thank you to all of our clients who make this wonderful community, who are in this wonderful community and for trusting us through some of life's biggest decisions. That trust is something that we never take for granted. From Adam, myself, and our entire Century 21 Cornerstone family, thank you for this incredible honor. We are grateful, humbled, and look forward to continuing to serve this community for many years to come. Thank you and God bless.

All right, thank you. Next on the agenda, presentation of the 2025 final draft. Mr. Nation.

Yeah, I'm going to handle this. We usually do the audit in two steps. We bring you a copy that you can start digesting because there's a lot here and a lot of numbers and a lot of information. And so tonight, Casey's out of town, so I told her I would handle this. So you have in front of you on your table file a printed out version of the audit. You can dive into it. We won't get into the 100 plus pages of it and everything. If you are looking for the highlights from the auditor, you probably want to get back into, I think it's page 89 is kind of where their discussions are about their findings and stuff like that occur towards the end of it. Casey did want me to point out that there are a couple audit notes that you're going to see in the compliance section when you get back there. We always hope for a completely clean audit and everything. These are new auditors. We've found a few things that they wanted to take note of and everything. We haven't been caught stealing money or anything like that. It's how these things are being booked. One of the things that we had done in a previous year was the way we were handling auditors. The loan money with Acadia Farms for the Bijou subdivision had to be changed and everything. The auditors will be here in two weeks to explain it in a little more detail for you, but that's in there. We had a misstatement with the way we were handling the rent payments with Cold Connect, with their old facility that's noted in there. So just a misstatement type of thing. You will see in the back that there's corrective action on all this stuff that they have suggested that we do. And Casey's already taken note of all of it. And then the other thing is, is we were involved in what they call a single audit because we had received $5 million in the way of money through DOLA for the Gateway Housing Project. And so we were working as a pass-through agency on that. So we were taking the money. It literally sat on our books for about 10 seconds. And then we shifted it off to the ownership company of Gateway so it could go towards all of the improvements that you're seeing over there. It was a grant that came. We mistakenly reported that it was all state money that was being passed through, and when it came down to it, DOLA was passing through money from HUD. So HUD passed it to DOLA, DOLA passed it to us, we passed it to Gateway to pay for the project. And so that was a misstatement because it was federal money, and so you will notice that in those notes that are in the back and everything. So like I said... It's not that they found that we've esconded with money or done anything like that. It's just the way we've reported some of these things that they've taken note to. It's also part of the reason that I know Casey wanted us to probably look, you get very comfortable with auditors after you use them for a while and sometimes maybe a little too comfortable and so that was why she was ready for us to reach out and go with new auditors so we could have a little fresh look at our books and define things like this and make sure that we're doing everything correctly. So they'll be here in two weeks to answer any questions you have. But for now, you have this in front of you. Please enjoy. If you need a reason to fall asleep, start reading it. And save your questions for two weeks from now. Okay? Great. That's all I've got. Thanks, Brent.

All right. Anybody have questions for Brent? You got one? Oh, okay. All right, next on the agenda, number seven, presentation to modify the 2027 budget calendar. Mr. Nation.

Yeah, if you remember last month, we would have been bringing in the water and the sewer budgets for discussion tonight. As you guys are aware, I'm calling an audible. It's with everything that's happening with Cargill and everything, the city of Fort Morgan needs to be ready for, like I was explaining to the employees yesterday, We need to plan for the worst in this case. Hope for the best and plan for the worst. And so tonight, I just want to go over what my directives for 2026 are. My directives for 2027 are now with all the departments and their budgets. And we will be completely redoing the budget calendar. I will ask for formal adoption of that at the next meeting. But I just want to go over and make clear, and I know with the press here and anybody that's watching online, so they're fully aware, the city is planning on going. Just with everything that's happening at Cargill, we've now gone 75 days with no production out of the plant out there. It's well over two months, two and a half months now that they haven't produced any beef out of this facility. We're definitely feeling that in the 2026 budget. That's a lot of lost revenue just directly with utility sales. The indirect ramifications to losses and sales tax and everything we won't feel for a while, but it'll start to hit us. And so as I was explaining to the employees yesterday, immediate into effect for 2026 is an immediate hiring freeze for the city of Fort Morgan. We're also freezing any remaining items that are on the capital budget that haven't been started or approved by you guys for processing. So like the Strictly for Streets contracts have all been approved, we'll finish paving all the roads. So people don't need to worry about the streets that are tore up and things like that. And we have other contracts that have been started through the capital process. But we also have some capital expenditures that have not been started and those will be froze for the remainder of the year. I'm also asking all the departments to cut 5% out of their 2026 budgets with whatever items that they have remaining that they can cut and see savings of 5% to their 2026 numbers. For 2027, and this is where the budget process is basically starting over for some of the departments, we will still keep the hiring freeze in place. We are requesting that the departments take their 2026 levels that are in the budget and reduce those by 15%. 15% is what I feel is a conservative number to reduce because of the direct impact of if Cargill doesn't open, we're going to probably see a loss of revenue to the city of Fort Morgan somewhere in the neighborhood of about $15 million. We're a $100 million budget. If we've got to pull $15 million out, I need 15% from everybody to make that work. And so that's the directive to the departments. We will start having managers meetings to discuss those. I'll be very blunt that those type of cutbacks will probably require reductions in force. So we will be potentially looking at some layoffs that are associated with this. I'm working with Jeff and his legal team right now on the legal procedures for layoffs and things like that. So we're getting the right advice as we go into the discussions with the departments. I wish there was better news, but that's where we're at. And like I said, in order to be responsible to the citizens of the town that are still wanting services out of us, we've got to make sure that we are in a position that the budget that we're producing is a budget that we can live with. And if Cargill doesn't work out this labor dispute, they don't reopen anytime soon we've got to be prepared for that and that's a huge impact to this little community it's not something that i ever thought i was going to have to do as city manager but it's where i'm at and it's the most responsible thing that we need to do so so we'll bring for formal adoption the reworked budget calendar at the next meeting and then starting in august we will start having the budget excuse me the budget presentations that have the reductions in them that we feel are necessary to make this work. So, wish I had better news than that, but that's what I got for you tonight. So, we'll cut her short unless you got any questions for me. Any questions?

All right. Thank you. You bet. Thanks, Brent. Next on the agenda is bid meetings and announcements. Ms. Curtis.

Thank you. There are still just one bid currently out, which closes tomorrow at 3 p.m. It is the City of Fort Morgan Wastewater Treatment Facility Expansion Project. And then our next few meetings coming up are tomorrow, July 8th, the Airport Advisory Board meeting at noon out at the airport. July 9th is Historic Preservation Board meeting here at City Hall at 4 p.m. And there is also the Senior Center Board meeting July 13th at 1 p.m. out at the Senior Center. July 16th is a Golf Course Advisory Board at 3.30. July 20th is the Library Advisory Board meeting at 4.30 at the Library Museum Community Room. And then July 21st is our next City Council regular meeting here at City Hall.

All righty, any questions? All right, reports, Mr. Nation?

I've said enough tonight.

Mr. Sharp? First, I want to make sure you had enough chance to look over your financial audit. Do you guys need a couple more days for that, or are you good? I just want to bring up a couple things. I know over the last year we've talked a lot about some of the high visibility things we've been trying to accomplish in the PD. About to put out stats. It'll probably come out again tomorrow, but to highlight a few things. Last month, in June, we handled over 3,000 calls. We're looking at record numbers on a lot of this stuff. Over 3,000 calls for service. We had 603 traffic contacts, which goes in line with one of the goals you set for us with making sure we have a traffic safety plan. We've been trying to really work different parts of town, so I think most people will say you've seen a police officer everywhere. We've been trying to be everywhere to figure out where those biggest problems are so we can come back with some answers as to where we need to focus our attention. 316 community policing contacts, which is getting out of the car and actually having conversations with people, whether it's I think we've seen on Facebook one of our officers playing volleyball with the group and some with kids doing other things, just positive community policing in there as well. So 15 DUIs last month goes hand in hand with some of that traffic. So I think I just wanted to bring that out. I think that's important to know some of the stuff that has been going on that we've been focusing on for some time and certainly plays into what we're trying to accomplish. The other thing I want to talk about is our fireworks calls. I know this is a thing we get every year, lots of them. This year, between the third and the fourth, believe it or not, we only had 33 calls, which is considerably lower than usual. That doesn't mean we didn't have fireworks going off all over town. We recognize that, and in the country, and we know they were still going on last night. We continue to work them. We wrote several tickets, but what's interesting, I actually had a map through our system, set up a little report, and Interestingly, we had tickets written literally all over the town from Cheyenne Street over on the southwest to Saunders and Carroll and over to, you know, Ensign, Wilson, apartments all the way down over here. So they're everywhere. And I know there's a lot that we didn't get, but I think over the last few years, we've really focused. We've even had special operations trying to go out over the previous nights and try to cut that down. I just want people to know we do take it seriously. We do work it. And we do know that we don't get all of them. So maybe we're making progress. Maybe we're not. But there's definitely a lot of fireworks. But it did seem to be a little better on our side this year, although being in my house, it sounds the same.

So.

And that's all I have.

Awesome. All right. Next on the agenda is executive session for the discussion of a personnel matter under CRS section 246402 subsection 4F and not involving any specific employees who have requested discussion of the matter in open session. Any member of this body of an elected official, the appointment of any person to fill an office of this body or an elected official or personnel policies that do not require the discussion of matter personnel in particular. And this one is check in with the chief of police. Do I have a motion to move to go into executive session?

Motion to move. Second.

All right, I have a motion by Jim Parks, a second by Brian Uredalis. All in favor? Aye. Anybody say nay? Looks like we're going.