City Council - Regular Meeting

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

Okay, Mayor Jones. Here. Hill.

Here.

Carlson. Here. Prachak. Here. Schilling. Here. And Bowen and Mattson are absent with notice.

All right, do we have any additions or action on the agenda for tonight's meeting?

Motion to approve agenda as presented.

Second.

Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson.

Yes.

Keel. Yes. Horacek. Yes. Schilling.

Yes.

How about the minutes from the 5-5-2026 meeting? Motion to approve them.

Minutes from 5-26. Is it 5-6? 5-5-26. 5-5-26. Cinco de Mayo. I'll second.

Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Schilling?

Yes.

Horacek? Yes. Keel? Yes. Carlson?

Yes.

All right, the bills are in the packet. Any action from the council on the bills?

Motion to approve the bill as presented.

I'll second.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson. Yes. Keel. Yes. Horacek. Yes. Schilling.

Yes.

All right, public comments. Any comments from anyone who is here that's not on items that are not on the agenda? What's that? What she did? Are you on the agenda? You're not on the agenda.

Are you just... Yeah, I think I want to be on the agenda.

Well, we're in public comment right now. Do you have something you want to comment on? Uh-huh. All right. Step up to the podium if you could. Give us your name so we got it for the record.

I guess I'm curious about our ordinances because they don't seem to be being followed and or when they are, it takes months until something finally happens and it appears that some people here at City Hall are not familiar with the laws of how things work.

Okay, is this the situation you mentioned to me the last time that when we first met? This is the house down on Mary. 402 Mary Lane. Yeah. And I'm not familiar with exact, I haven't done the research to find out what's exactly going on. But according to what you told me, the house next to her was turned back to the bank.

Yes, and I think it went through a sheriff's sale. Yeah.

Yeah.

on February 11, which means they can't do anything for 180 days. And I'm not happy living with that until August. And I fought this all last summer when there was problems there. And they didn't seem to want to do anything until I continued to pester them. And then finally it was, oh.

And who were you pestering?

Kyle. OK. And then when it came down to it, then they finally said they would do something about it. But then it got so tall, they had to bring a bush hog in because a lawn mower couldn't handle it anymore. And then they bolted, the owners had the gate in the back bolted, and then the city couldn't decide if we had the right to go into that property. I'm like, well, then I guess we should all just build fences around our house and bolt them shut if we can. So by the time they did it, I mean, the dandelions in the weeds, how tall were they when they finally came out and fixed it last year? As well as that they just did this weekend when I was out of town.

I don't remember what they were last year. I don't remember what they were last year.

The guys went in their mowers and e-lips and that stuff. I'm not sure. I wasn't in there to see how tall it was, so I couldn't tell you. Okay.

Well, I have a text from Kyle that said they couldn't do it with a lawnmower because it happens too tall, and now they had to get a mow shot. And I'm from the farm, so I happen to know where the mow shot is.

All right. No, we had mowers in there.

I'm just going by what I was told would happen.

Okay. Hold on one second. So... Who are we talking to about this? The owners or the bank or who is?

I reached out to the county and they just gave me a name. So I did a Google search.

Can't find him.

I found a business with the same husband and wife name from Watertown, but it's back in 2018. I sent them a letter and hopefully they follow up here.

Okay.

I told them to give me a call if they're not the owners.

They're not the owners. They can't be the owners until August. It will not get transferred. 180-day redemption mortgage. I was in banking for almost 30 years. 180-day redemption mortgage means it does not get transferred over. And yet you're sitting here waiting for the water to get turned on by someone. They can't turn the water on if they want to. They don't own it.

Well, Julie, like I told you, the city's not going to just go on some property and assess it. We don't know who the owners are.

It doesn't matter who the owners are. That's exactly my point. We have an ordinance that says if you don't move your line and it's this tall, then the problem with that.

Okay. And see, that's the problem. They went through this sheriff's sale. There's no clear owner to it yet because the property hasn't transferred. And it won't until August. So there's no clear owner. Hold on. Hold on.

Okay, Teresa.

Yeah, so like I said, that's the problem is that it went through the sheriff's sale. Obviously, the old owner's They're not doing anything. It won't transfer over for another 180 days. So we're kind of in a limbo state here. And I understand her reasoning. You know, 180 days, that grass is going to be crazy again. So I understand, you know, her reasoning on why you have to get something done. The only thing we could do is try to find, you know, contact who went through it, see if we can get something done. And if we can, we'll have to go in again and abate it ourselves and put it against the property.

Well, technically, they don't own it.

Right.

So it's no skin off their back. What's the Sheriff's Department say to us? Because they're the ones that sold it.

I have not talked to the Sheriff's Department, so I don't know. I have.

But somebody mowed it when I was out of town. And I don't know who, my neighbor across the street said it was somebody that did not have a city thing on their truck. I've been texting Corey and saying something to the number that I had, but I didn't know if that was his number. And he's not responding to any of them.

According to people that owned it before.

Correct? And now, still do. Still tech law. Until August when it can get transferred to Mark and Sarah Tech's loft.

But I thought they, it's, has it been sold or no?

It went through the sheriff's sale, but like I said, it doesn't transfer for 180 days.

Oh my. I know.

It's kind of a, so here I sit and all of Mary Lane is not happy. In fact, many of them would have been here tonight, but they had kids' baseball games. that says Mary Lane, we're here.

All right. We're not going to fix it tonight. We should probably talk about this and see if there's something we need to do. All right?

I just figured, I do have a call into his Reliant Bank. It's where he worked. He has retired from there, but he goes in almost every day. And so I did leave a message yesterday that when he comes in to call me, because I live at 400 Mary Lane, and he and Sarah bought a

Anyone else? Seeing no one else, jump up. We're gonna move down to applications, agreements, hearings, resolutions, and ordinances. First up, special event permit for Jamboree Days. We have three items that we're gonna discuss. Leah is here.

All right, so in the packet, you should have gotten not only our applications, but also our schedule for what we're looking to do. A couple of them were still in red because we were trying to get confirmation. Only one of those is in red, and that would be cool. There are other ones since I sent this last week have been carried forward. The main thing that you'll notice on our application that's a little different is we're going to try to fill in that gap on Saturday where it gets really quiet in the park. So we're going to try to have some fun with some golf carts. We don't know what it's going to do. We don't know how fun it's going to be, but we're going to try something just so we can try to fill that gap and to also include a little bit different activities during the day. Other than that, the scheduling on notice is pretty much the same. We haven't veered too far off of it. Like I said, the only quite outstanding thing on our schedule right now before we send it to Princess, but whether or not you guys would be willing to do some of what you guys did last year, on that day yep anybody got any questions what's the was the pool utilized by a lot of people last year I don't know if you guys got a report for that day or not. I asked about it. The last time I asked you guys hadn't gotten a summary yet.

She gave an end of year summary and we have figures for every day. I'd have to pull it to see what she reported to us. How many of those are because they attended Jamboree or not. There's no way to know that.

I can tell you that Saturday was over 100 degrees. It's hard to get you buried behind them when it was over 100 degrees. Because we even did a crash course run around to get a mist sprinkler thing that we could set up that people could walk through. And looking back at pictures, I'm like, well, that was utilized more than I thought it was.

All right. Does anyone have any questions? We see, we noticed something in your summary, Teresa. Travis, yes.

Just a minor typo.

Yeah. It says up here at the top, approval of release 2025 Jamboree funds for 5,000. Ooh, oh.

15, it should be 26, but 15.

All right. All right, so we need to approve the special event permit. We also need to approve the application for special malt beverage so you can sell beer in the park. And we need to release the funds. We can either do them as one motion and approve or deny all three, or do them separately.

I'd like to make a motion to approve all three of the January items.

All right.

Second.

Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Schilling. Yes. Horacek. Yes. Keel. Yes. Carlson. Yes.

How about the pool? The pool wasn't pointed out in the application, so are you going to allow that or not?

I'd say we can probably let them have free swim that afternoon. I'm going to make that motion.

I'll make a motion for free swim Saturday the afternoon for January 8th. What is that, June 20th? June 20th. Yep.

Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson? Yes. Keel? Yes. Baradjic? Yes. Schilling? Yes. Good.

I have to see it for my notes for when I do the, is it the pool one to five, or what's the hours during the day?

Probably. Is it the same as last year? Yes. Yeah, one to five.

Then I think it's one to five.

All right.

All righty. Thanks, guys.

Good enough. Thanks, Leah.

Have a great one.

You bet. Next up, we have a 710 public hearing to review approved garbage license for that guy with the trailer. Also in your packet, this is roll-offs only, correct?

Yes, roll-off only.

And you got all the license fee and everything checked out, Karen? Great.

And everything that's required.

And this gives us how many total? Do we know? Do we have that count?

Let's make five, isn't it?

Let's make four or five, yeah, I would think. Okay.

What's necessitating this request? Is there a shortage of garbage haulers?

So like with this one, he just came in. He was noticed at a resident and he didn't have a license. So I think residents are Googling and calling these companies that have these roll-offs, asking them to come in. And they come to Hartford and then, like this one, we happen to see him or somebody happens to see him and report him. you know, knows they don't have a license. Then we contact them and say, you know, a nice license is needed.

So in this instance, is that residents doing some construction that requires a building permit or?

Yeah, whether it's construction or cleaning.

I was just curious if there's something the city could do proactively to get the information in front of the homeowners. These are licensed garbage haulers in town.

Yeah, yes. I mean, it's on our website. Every new resident comes in, it's part of our little packet that here are our licensed garbage haulers. That's all given to them when they come. They can find it on our website.

Got it. So Travis Harvey, do you have concerns for the people who are established here and have been good garbage haulers? And then would this dilute the... I mean, if we have... I'm just curious.

Yeah, we're a small enough community that I think for the five or six that we currently have should be adequate. Not that this gentleman isn't reputable. We haven't had any issues with them, the current ones. In my opinion, it potentially... causes maybe unnecessary wear and tear on our city streets, if this is maybe someone who's gonna overload those roll-offs and things of that nature. Don't know this gentleman from any other role. Just asking the question, how do we proactively maybe get in front of this, because this just happened last year as well with a different company.

I'd say we've probably done two or three of them that way that people called in and said, hey. Right. You know, we can throw it in our newsletter to see if we can get kind of the word out that way. We do have, you know, only certain companies that are licensed at the time.

So it would have been better to

Or maybe the, so as a licensed electrician, if I go to Madison and work, I need to have a license. Now, maybe the right thing to do is just work until you get caught and then pay the fee. That's what I'm just trying to put myself. as a city council person as well as a business owner. The business owner takes a certain liability to, I would say, educate themselves and understand the laws and the rules of the community that they're working in.

It would take a while to guess that every community has a requirement for licensing their garbage haulers. I'm pretty sure all of them do. I think most haulers would know they need a license in whatever community they go in. So if they're not, like I said, they're trying to come in and not get caught before they get a license. Could be a little of that going on.

This isn't a local business. This is not a business to Hartford, this gentleman, this business. Yeah, they're not local to Hartford.

He's out of Sioux Falls. I would take this one step. I mean, we'll decide on this tonight, but I think in the future, it'd be nice to see these before we got to the point where we're going on the license. I wonder if we don't need to take that next proactive step. Let's have a discussion as a council. Are we ready? You know, do we need six or do we need seven or do we need eight? Maybe that's the conversation that we need. Maybe that's the conversation we need to have soon so we kind of have that set. Now, I'll speak for Sean since Sean's here. Well, you know, it's a capitalist society. Who's to say we should be limiting how many of them should come?

Yeah, or you take the obey for forgiveness or ask for permission. Right.

Right. I would rather try to get in front, at least maybe have a discussion. Is this something that we need to look at and say, okay, wind's too many. Right. That's what I'm saying.

And maybe to add on to that, how do we let the community know? Do we have to send something out at the beginning of every year in the mail? How do we let the community know that they need to use one of our licenses? one of the licensed providers because I can tell you I probably wouldn't know this. And I do think that it does fall on the responsibility of that business to be honest and to do the legwork and know that they probably do need a license no matter what community they go into.

Like Teresa said, I think most don't know that.

Yeah.

So it's the... All right. So what do I want to do with this?

to be the right thing at least now. And then if we discuss it later on, maybe for next year, to limit the garbage.

That's fine, good. So we got a motion and a second. I need a second.

I'll second the motion.

All right, any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Schilling. Yes. Horacek. Yes. Keel. Yes. Carlson. Yes. All right. Got that. Where are we at?

I do think, though, that we should put that.

On the agenda at some point, let's have that discussion. Yeah.

If that's our limit, how many, how do we educate? And you know what? Maybe it's a higher fee if you come in after the fact. You come in and you know as a garbage hauler you're supposed to have a license and you already came in without a license and you're asking after the fact, maybe it's a higher fee.

Alright, next up we have a 715 hearing. About five minutes late. How's that sound? This is for a special wine license for Converse Wine Company. They attend our farmer's market. They do... samples and want to sell models of wine. Is that correct? Yes. It came last year to the market and they must have pretty good success. They like coming back. So.

I'll make a motion to approve the special wine license for Converse Wine Company.

Second.

Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson.

Yes.

Keel. Yes. Horacek. Yes. Schilling.

Yes.

All right. Next up is first reading of ordinance 770. This is our fines and fees. There was two specific that we made changes to. One was remove the verbiage for family cap on season passes. And secondly, we changed verbiage on on-premise full-service restaurant liquor licenses. This is first reading, so...

I'll make a motion to approve the first reading of the ordinance 77B.

I'll sign it. Any discussion?

We had a pretty good discussion about this last meeting, so I think we worked it off.

All right. Hearing nothing else, we'll vote. Carlson? Yes. Keel? Yes. Horacek? Yes. Shelling? Yes. All right. Next up, special event application, Hartford area fire and rescue. for their Public Safety Day on August 22nd.

My name is Shanae Billy.

Hi.

Hi. Hi. Hi. We just wanted to get permission to have our special event, the Public Safety Day, down at the fire station. And we just wanted permission to shut down the streets from, I think it's the corner of Kensington? Kingsbury and Western, right there on South Street. And I put the time in for 8 to 2 o'clock, but I think it will be a little bit afterwards, more like 9, 9.30ish, and then it could be earlier after our cleanup. We're not at 12.30. All right.

All right, similar to what you've done in the past, this is always a great event. A lot of people show up.

Motion to approve the special event application for a Hartford area fire and rescue public safety day on August 22nd as presented.

Second.

Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Shelly? Yes. Project. Yes. Eel? Yes. Carlson? Yes. Thank you.

Perfect. Thanks, guys. You bet. Thank you.

Next up, review approve updated special event application for chamber block party slash America 250 slash Hartford 130 event. Jill is here.

I'm back.

Hi, Jill. Hi. How's it going? It's going awesome.

We didn't change a lot. We extended the closure of main and added the fireworks and the entertainment. So there's not too terribly much difference, but we resubmitted it for accuracy.

Okay. The date change and the time change. Yeah. We were on that Wednesday. Yes.

So we'll be on Friday instead of Wednesday. And then we put it back just a little bit for the fireworks so the fireworks can be right at the end. So 6 to 9 instead of, I believe, we had 5 to 7.30 or 5 to 8 before, which made it a little later so we can line it right up to dust and do the fireworks and...

And I'm sure there's other details that will get worked out as we get closer.

Yeah, and everything, I mean, the big things are taking care of the fireworks are lined up. The entertainment is lined up. Our normal block party activities are all confirmed. We're just waiting on the meal. AT THIS POINT TO CONFIRM WHICH VENDOR CAN DO THE MEAL. BUT WE HAVE THE HIGH SCHOOL BAND WILL BE THERE. WE HAVE ARTICLE LIKE THE TRAIN WILL BE THERE, FACE PAINTING. WE'RE STILL GOING TO ASK FOR THE VEHICLES THAT WE HAD LAST YEAR FROM THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. the Sheriff's Department. I know Goose RV has Casey's Sprint Car for Creekside. So we'll ask for the National Guard to be out here as well. And I believe Roxy told me that the American Legion has agreed to do the presentation of the colors as well when the high school band does the Star Spangled Banner. So a lot of that stuff's already lined up and confirmed.

National Guard for crowd control?

I mean, you never know. No, they were there last year and they brought Lisa Humvee and they did the cornhole wards, but I think we're going to try to get them to bring someone this year. It's the recruitment office.

Got it, yeah.

But I mean, they can hold double duty. Didn't see that coming.

I got a question. Yes. For the band, what are you thinking about power?

The band, that's a logistic conversation that we just discussed this morning.

We don't have any current power downtown.

We see you run pretty good extension cords from these light poles over to the city hall. We could probably do that.

Yeah, there was one on this budget.

So that's something we're going to have to figure out. And Teresa was at our meeting this morning for events in our case, so there were a few things that we talked about there.

There's a generator for the lift station, right?

We could run a generator. We've got two of them. That would probably be the easiest and the easiest to do.

At least ideal, but yeah, for sure.

We could get it back far enough. We could probably get a... Humboldt's got that extension with the plug-in for 50 amp on it. We could run that and get the generator away from there.

Right.

We'll figure it out.

The guys that are playing won't need them. They won't need a ton of power. A couple of them. Brass instruments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brass holes. Yeah, brass holes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they won't need anything. Put somebody on a bike.

Get together if you want. If you can give me the contact for them so we can find out for power and stuff.

DO WE NEED TO REAPPROVE THEIR CHANGES?

LET'S REAPPROVE THE UPDATED SPECIAL EVENT APPLICATION, AND THEN WE CAN TALK A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT BUDGET AND THAT.

YEAH, OKAY.

SO... A MOTION TO APPROVE THE REVISED SPECIAL EVENT APPLICATION FOR THE CHAMBER BLOCK PARTY AND AMERICANS' CELEBRATION. SECOND.

ANY DISCUSSION? Hearing none, we'll vote. Schilling. Yes. Farage. Yes. Keel. Yes. Carlson. Yes. And then we want to talk a little bit about funds.

Like Jill said, they had their marketing meeting this morning that I was at and talked about a few things. You know, the Chamber, their block party, they're going to do pretty much everything that they've done in the past and they'll be responsible for that. So like their member booths, face painting, the kids train, all the vehicles and stuff, as you mentioned, lining up, the band, American Legion. We talked about Since we talked about having a free community meal, we're not going to do food vendors because usually they have food vendors come up. Some of the members, when they put up their booths, might give like, I know like one of them gives away ice cream or popcorn. I mean, there will still be some of that going on, but as far as any, you know, actual food trucks out here, we're going to do our community meal instead. So, you know, that would be a little different for them. And then They usually do a DJ, which is kind of a cheaper cost. But since we're going to do the band this year, we talked about splitting that cost. So they'll still put in something for music, entertainment, but then the city will pick up. So I think what is extra over and above the regular block party, we talked about the fireworks. Jill's in discussions with getting that lined up. That's going to be $5,000. And we talked maybe splitting that cost with the chamber and the city. The band, Jill thinks we can get sponsorship for that, so hopefully.

I don't think the band is that big of a financial constraint that we can't get that sponsored. Right.

That's a thousand dollars, so we think hopefully we can get sponsorship for that. Probably the biggest cost is going to be that mill, that free mill, and we haven't got a quote on it yet. Casey was there from Sunshine, you know, we were thinking, hot dogs, chips, cookie, pop, or water with it. So, you know, kind of basic meal. But Casey was saying, what, $5 to $8?

Yeah, we were thinking, like, to tentatively guess it's going to be between $5 and $8 if we do, like, per person meal for that. And so we had talked about rather than just we're just doing this free meal to, like, cap it and say, like, the first $500. are free and then after that whatever food vendor we go with can continue to sell what they would like to sell um but i think if we don't cap it we're just going to get a revolving door of people wanting meals. So you kind of have to end it at some point.

And I suppose that's all going to depend on when we get a firm cost. Yeah. Maybe, you know, because like the cut-down meal probably will be, you know, before we were talking possibly burgers and stuff in there. Right. But if we just stick to hot dogs, maybe. Yeah. You know, it can be on the lower end, hopefully.

I think we probably need to firm that price and then we can decide if we're going to.

Yeah. Another extra cost would be we talked about getting a couple portables on town because they had just, you know, the businesses had restaurants. But we figured if this is going to bring in more people and be a larger event, we should probably get a couple portables for outside. I did get a quote on that today. Get a handicap one and the regular one, it'd be 350 for the event. So that's not a huge cost. And then the other thing is, you know, we talked about doing free giveaways, maybe like every half hour, you know, two or three items. Hopefully we can get some donated items for that. We've kind of talked about, you know, with our, a couple of free pool passes we could do, buying a couple, We're going to buy a couple extra flays to give away. So, I mean, I think we can do some reasonably cost items for that. So we kind of do what we had discussed. And I just put in a dollar amount for the meal, $7, just kind of going on the high side for $500. It comes up probably to around $9,000 would be, you know, city share of splitting kind of the different stuff. We do have that $10,000 budgeted in marketing and promotions. So I think we could... I think we have budget money there for it. And if we're gonna, like I said, have a celebration event, if it doesn't come around real often, the 250, the 130, we should probably make this a big doing. So that's kind of what we're looking at probably on the city side somewhere prior to that nine, $10,000. If we can do it for what we got budget.

I agree.

And that being said, we haven't even put out the information for sponsorships. Right, that's true. Should more of it be covered through sponsorships, then that would just be covered through sponsorships. We were just looking at it realistically from, like for the fireworks, for instance, what was covered for the fall festival. just taking that amount and being realistic for us. That full amount wasn't covered, so we just took an it for that. And that's where we said, like, if we could tentatively split that in half just to make sure that it's covered. But if we get the sponsorship for it, obviously, then that's a non-issue. But the meal would definitely, that has never been in the budget for the block party. We always take a hit on the block party, so. But we would do all the marketing for it. We would do the radio ads for it with Town Square Media and promote everything. as well like we normally do. We'll do the posters and the door hangers and get all that stuff out there.

Just a random thought. I was thinking about it actually this morning in the shower. But you know how Hometown Christmas does a lighting competition throughout Maybe we, just a thought, I mean I'm not going to tell you what to do, but maybe so that we could get the community more involved, maybe put a competition out there to decorate with flowers at your home or lighting or whatever, flags, and maybe have a community-wide, to encourage You know, a little bit of confidence. Yeah, encourage the celebration throughout the neighborhoods within the community. And maybe there's something that can be a prize for, you know, the winner that could be announced at the block party or something along that line. But just a little bit of thought.

Good thought. Bonus points for bunting. Bunting. Bunting. Wow. We need bunting.

All right, so what's the council think on this? We should probably at least at minimum allocate some funds so we have it set aside. You know, like's been said several times, this only comes around, you know, there's not a ton of us that were here in 50 years ago that were here for the 200. I was already old then.

So we're looking for maybe an amount of funds.

Should we just say up to?

Up to. I would say an up to amount would be good. And then, like I said, we can continue to work with the chamber, see what we get for sponsorships, see what some of the quotes come in, and yeah.

Is 10,000 too much, or should we keep it at that?

Should we keep it at that? Should we keep it at 10?

I think we got that budget. I say if we keep it at 10, I think that should be very good. Let's do that.

I'll make a motion too. continue the Hartford celebration event and approve a budget of 10,000, up to 10,000.

Yep. I'll second that. Any further discussion? That should be all right for you guys. I'll give you a little, so you know where you're going. And then you'll go to work on getting sponsorships and getting this taken care of.

And I think this will be a much more heavily supported than typical just because

Yeah. All right. Hearing nothing else, we'll vote. Carlson. Yes. Keel. Yes. Horacek. Yes. Shelly.

Absolutely, yes.

All right. Anything else? Jill, are you good? No, I'm good. All right. Good enough. Thank you.

For now, they put a picture of, this is what our designs are going to be. The blue looks much bluer on the computer. It's kind of pretty dark. Did you see these? But I think, yeah, this morning they showed her. So we'll get those coming. Those will be downtown. And we got flags on order as well that was approved at the last meeting.

And I know at DHI, we went and picked out all the flowers for the pots. And we're doing red, white, blue. Oh, cool.

Yeah. That'll look nice. We're going to put these on the banners out here.

And then we just confirmed that we'd still get our veterans banners up.

Right. Through the fourth, and then we'll put these up after the fourth. Yep. Okay.

Thank you very much.

Awesome. All right. Let's move down to reports. First up, we have the fire department report. I believe the report is in the packet, and they have a request. And it's not coming next month, is that right? Is that what I remember?

It's every quarter beginning, so yeah.

So. And they have a request in for their budgeted allocation to be released for $95,000.

Yeah, it's this year budget funds.

already been budgeted and approved, or budgeted.

And on Monday, I mean, I put in the most recent financials we had from them for the packet on Friday, and that was the end of year one. On your desk there, they did give us a more updated one as well. I received that on Monday, so they wanted us to pass that along to you guys. So that's a little bit more current.

Okay.

I love seeing they're more active on Facebook. I do love that. I love seeing the things that they're doing.

All right, do we have action on the request?

I'll make a motion to approve the release of budget allocation for 2026 in the amount of $95,000 to Herbert Area Fire and Rescue.

Any discussion on this one?

Just remind me what the additional... So we're contractually obligated for 80. What's the additional 15 for? Again, I mean, I know we budgeted for it, but... That's what they requested.

That's just what they requested. Instead of the 80,000, they requested 95,000. And that... is for operating and their equipment replacement. They get separated. They haven't done that in the last couple of years. It's just been.

They give it to us in one loan.

It's above and beyond the 80.

Yes, it's above and beyond.

And that's above and beyond the 80,000 because, like I said, we're contract.

So really it's 175. Right.

Yep. You're right. It's 175,000.

Because we're contractually obligated to pay the 80. 80 and the 95.

That's for the loan agreement for the new building. This is their operating. We're paying the loan on the new building. Right.

Yep. We good? Hearing nothing else, we'll vote. Schilling? Yes. Perroncheck? Yes. Keel? Yes. Carlson? Yes. All right. Next up, building inspector report. Kyle?

I believe Paul and I's reports are in your packet. Do you have any questions?

So if you can, when you have conversation or anything on that earlier from Julie, make sure you let me know if you can. One of you two. So I know that we've followed up on that. All right, anybody got any questions for Kyle?

That situation we talked about earlier. With the trailer, I guess there were trailer issues. Yep. One was resolved, one isn't?

No. Deputy recognized me, I'll address them both tomorrow.

Got it. How about on Southeastern? I forgot to follow up on that one. Okay. All right. I'll make a note. That was on you. You don't have to follow up if you don't want to. That was your recommendation. That sounds good.

All right. Good enough. Thank you, Kyle. Next, we'll move along, as we always say, to the most exciting time of the night, engineers report.

Good evening, everyone. Report is in your packet. Continue to review site plans, class, and public improvements as they come up. In addition, we've been working on that strong water management strategy. a stormwater-contended pond memo as discussed at a previous council meeting. We anticipate having that later this week or next for council review with sufficient time ahead of the next council meeting. Moving on to project updates. Water rec facility is moving towards closeout. Just getting a few items wrapped up there prior to that one being completed. Western Avenue followed up with business owners and the contractor on Friday. Just regarding some of that seating that is coming in a little poorly just due to the late season when it was placed. So planning to give the contractor a call in the morning to get a schedule and timeline there. Knowing that's going to be received and needed in mode to ensure that gratification. The Mickelson shared use path design is still underway. We're working with the state on some of the environmental letters submittals as required, and then just design updates. So that one is moving along well. Next is the Kelly Avenue drainage study. So those visualizations that we discussed at the last meeting were provided to council for review. Currently working through some stuff with Therese and Craig, just looking at next steps there with those residents, seeing if we can get some movement going or what they want to do. Lastly, the newest product is the Rude Lane and Diamond Trail Intersection Reconstruction. Survey was completed last week. Design actually started today. We anticipate a review set, 60%, called preliminary plan set for council review at the second meeting in June. So, that one's moving along well. That one, we can. Council approves it with the target of fall construction, you know, price dependence. That is all I have in my report. Happy to answer any questions.

I don't know if you recall, ISG had put us in for an award for the American Civil Engineers Midwest branch, and I'm going to Des Moines tomorrow to pick up because we won one of the top awards for our wastewater plant. Deb and I are going to run to Des Moines tomorrow, pick that up tomorrow night at the banquet. Take the city car. I'm taking my Honda. That's nice. I guess this would be what they call on my dime, other duties as assigned. So it should be fun. One of them's got a fresh training fluid.

Yeah, he had some work done.

And hopefully we'll get that mounted right out here by all our pitchers so it'll be pleasant enough. That's cool. All right. Thank you, Michael. We'll turn it over to Craig.

I'll start with roads, and then we've got some stuff later that I'll bring up for quotes and that stuff. Precon for Slurry Seal, Michael actually went to it. I was all getting roads in shape, and it sounds like the end of July is what that's going to be scheduled for. Moving on to, the rest of the lot of stuff's in my report. The water, Eric did pass his water distribution class one, so he's got that one taken care of. And then, moving on, for the lagoons, we just got our last samples back in for discharge. They did come in low. Sample came in good, so we can discharge. I got a hold of Danner this afternoon. They contacted me back, and we got permission to discharge, so it depends on the weather. This will be our last discharge from our ponds out there. We will keep the permit in place until construction starts out there, just in case we would end up a ton of rain and have a foot of water, each one or two more feet of water, and we need to get rid of some just for evaporation purposes. Otherwise we'll be discharged, we should be, there's only about, an estimate of about 50 to 17 million gallons in that pond, so we should be discharged and done in about three weeks. And we'll be completely done for what we can do with it.

And this is pond, though, farthest away?

We got it in two right now, yep. So the other ponds have been dropping about three quarters of an inch every three days, about a quarter of an inch a day, within the number of operations. We're going to let Mother Nature take care of the rest of it for us.

Good.

And that's all I got, Mary.

And also, Craig did not mention, Craig passed his Series 3 for wastewater. So we found that out. He told us that today. That's awesome. Now we have two, what do we call you, Series 3, is that what you call it? Class 3. Class 3 operators on staff. So that's gotten nice. Congratulations on that.

I'm glad I don't have to take it again.

I've got some action items coming up. First one is crack ceiling quotes. I did get a couple quotes. Brett Meadors has been doing our work forever. He's the lowest quote. He kept it the same as last year at 90 cents per foot. and we always get, we have so much money in the budget, and we make sure that when we do it, we do the roads we have to get done for slurry sealing next year, and then whenever we have extra, we just hit some roads that need to be hit, so we always stay under the budget with that number, so.

So do we want to do these, we should probably do these individually, right?

Yeah, probably.

Do approval, okay.

Motion to approve the quote for crack ceiling from highway improvement at 90 cents a linear foot up to the budgeted amount of $50,000. Second.

Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson? Yes. Keel? Yes. Horacek? Yes. Schilling? Yes. All right. How about the second one, Greg?

Next one is highway improvements also with mastic repair. and that's by the pound, $1.65 pound, and we do have a budget month for that. And what that is, is we'll get some areas where the trenches will start to settle out and stuff like that, and we'll put a thin layer in there. I gave him some crap today about if you need to improve this skill of laying it down a little better is in Nicholson Road, so he's going to come back in and dress up in Nicholson Road because that looks like . So he's going to be doing that. But he's been doing the mastic for us for quite a few years. We did a bunch of stuff on Main Street many years ago and it's holding real nice, so I'd like to work him again on that.

Can you tell me what mastic is?

It's asphalt material. It's about the same as a crack ceiling. But it's used for filling bigger areas, thin areas, but bigger areas.

The crack ceilings and the toilet paper stuff, right? Yeah. I don't know what else to call it. Is that what you call it, the toilet paper stuff?

Yeah, they roll it when they, for the cracks, they do a rubber three-quarter inch by three-quarter inch, then fill that in, so it's actually getting a good seal back in that area.

And then they blow it all over, everywhere, right? Yeah. They crack seal it, and then they put the toilet paper down, and then that blows everywhere.

You got your grindings out there for about three weeks before we can sweep it, because you don't want to take the, catch the rubber, you know. But, yeah, this would be for the vastic part of the door.

All right, how about action on the Mastic one? Motion to approve the Mastic quote from Highway Improvements up to our budgeted amount of $10,000.

Second.

Any discussion on this one? Hearing none, we'll vote Schilling.

Yes.

Horacek. Yes. Keel. Yes. Carlson. Yes. All right, and the last one, Craig?

Last one is what we call a bank water, but it's actually... Chloride and lignin tree sap is for the gravel roads to keep the dust down, plus stabilize the gravel roads. We've been doing it for many, many years. Bumby Gibson's been doing it for a long, long time for us, probably 20-some years. This price is $0.05 more per gallon than what it was last year. We do have a budget for that, too. And he is the only one that does have the product that we like to use on the roads.

Six cents or five cents?

Six cents? Oh yeah, six. That's why I had problems with that test.

Wow. Just the whole check-in. Six cents. It's up six cents a gallon. Is that right? Yep.

And we usually have enough in budget to... Do all of our gravels, parking lots, sports complex, keep that dust back down. And then in the fall, if we need to do a second application on certain roads, we'll have enough for the budget to do that.

Gotcha. Motion to approve the Megwater quote from Bumblebee Gibson up to our budgeted amount of $45,000. Second.

Any discussion on this one? Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson? Yes. Keough? Yes. Horacek? Yes. Shelley?

Yes.

All right. What else you got, Craig?

That's all I have unless somebody has questions for me.

Any questions for Craig? When will they pour this concrete back in here?

We are going to be doing that tomorrow if we can get concrete. They got it all prepped today. We are actually... We've got some concrete work that we're doing at Turtle Creek for some benches for player benches and we're going to put a fence in front of it too so we can finish that field off a little more. So we're going to do one of the pours there and then do the concrete here and then tomorrow or Thursday we are going to be pouring the other pad up there at Turtle Creek and then we're going to jump over and do the pad for the drinking fountain at Turtle Creek at the dog park area there. Busy, busy. So that'll be done. Weather looks good as long as they get concrete, which we never really have had problems through cold and pretty mixed concrete. So we should have that for tomorrow.

Do you have that 2020 pickup about upfitted now?

I told him he's done. You need some tools yet. For the most part, the truck's done.

Who's that, Eric? I was just noticing.

You still blow budget with it. I told him, I said, you're having a lot of fun at custom truck equipment. He wanted the full use of the bed, so that's why he put that slide-in bed toolbox, basically. It was still full access for any footbeds. Sure.

Just checking.

All right. Thanks, Greg. Thank you. All right. We'll move over to Karen's report. I don't see your cover sheet in here. Usually you have that. Or did I miss it? Don't you usually have a sheet that says how much sales tax money we got? Where's that at? 72. You got robbed. I got robbed. It's not in mine.

That's interesting. Oh, you must have been old because it wasn't in mine.

Huh. Look at that. It's not there.

Did you like save yours after you... I don't know. I can't answer that question. The first time we put the packet together, it wasn't in there. That's the sheet. I didn't have it in mine. So, yeah.

That's no sheet. I thought maybe Karen was, I thought something.

Oh, you're mad at times.

You didn't get any of it?

No.

I don't either.

No sheet?

No sheet. I don't get no sheet. So it's not in your packet? Are you in the box? Are you in the box? Or did you save your packet?

No, I went the long way.

All these technical questions.

Go to the box.

I'm sure it's there somewhere.

Anyway, you've got to open it up at 6 o'clock when you're eating supper.

Then everything's in there. That's when everything's in there.

All right, Travis, tell us what it says. It says it's all good and we've got a lot of money.

Sales tax is still trending down about $50,000.

But I kind of take that with a grain of salt, depending upon when the money hits the account. I've heard this before.

Okay.

But it is, I think it was about $19,000 lower at the last report, so last month.

It is trending now this year, unfortunately.

So spend local, right?

Buy local. So I'll give you updates.

I just recapped the bills, which you guys already saw those. The auditors here were here Tuesday and Wednesday last week, and they got everything they needed. They'll do the rest of the work. finish the audit from their offices. And I'll give them what they need via email. The election, I just provided some key dates since we're kind of getting into election season. The notice of vacancies of the open seats went in the paper last Friday and it has to go again this Friday for two consecutive weeks. Just as a reminder, the terms that are open, Carlson's seat is a one-year term. Kiehl's seat's a two-year term, Darrell's is a two-year, and Madsen's is a two-year. Those would be the ones that will be the earliest date. You're stuck. Wait a minute. The earliest date candidates can begin circulating is July 3rd. They've got to be back August 25th. Deadline to register to vote is October 19th. as well as absentee voting starts on that date. And vote in person until right up to the election, November 2nd, the day before November 3rd is election day. So there's that reason.

If I don't forget to pull my petition. It's not all doom and gloom. We have a million dollars more in our general fund than we did last year at this time. But we've done nothing but spend money. We're still very fiscally responsible. That's all I got. All right.

I do have a couple action items. All right. The first being is the customer deposit account with Interstate Bank has one check in there that hasn't cleared it yet. Right. It was a refund that was written back in January. Person moved. It's the balance. $14.08. We've reached out to them several times. Rondo's tried to call them two or three times and sent letters, gave them a deadline, have not heard boos. So we're just wanting to write that check off so we can close out that account.

This is the last one at First Interstate? Yeah. Okay.

The last.

Motion to remove outstanding check 4314 from the city books. Second. Any discussion?

Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson? Yes. Keel? Yes. Horacek? Yes. Schilling? Yes. All right. What else you got, Karen?

The South Dakota Governmental Finance Officers Association holds a school every year. Kind of at different spots. I haven't gone for the last several years. I kind of look at always the agenda items and decide if it's worth going or not. A lot of them are out west. They kind of bop around the state. But this year it's in Okoma and I would like permission to attend. It goes from June 10th to June 12th. Wednesday to Friday afternoon.

We haven't asked you to speak. You've been doing this a long time. You've got a lot of experience.

No, I do not public speak.

Should we throw your name in? Should we call them and throw your name in? No. Okay. Motion to approve Karen Wilber attending the finance officer school June 10th through the 12th in Oakland.

Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Shelling? Yes. Project? Yes. Keel? Yes. Carlson? Yes. All right. Anything else, Karen?

No, that's it.

Anybody got any questions for Karen?

We'll miss you.

Yeah, for two days. All right. We'll move to Teresa's report.

Not too much to add. Cybersecurity, it's been in IT's hands for a while yet. I've been trying to prod them along. They promised me by the end of the month they will have the action items. They'll address the things that were pointed out during our assessment or whatnot and then they'll have the review done of our cybersecurity plans and then I can present it to you guys. So hopefully I'll have that next month for you guys. I just want to point out, I gave you a little update on the grants we've applied for. Mayor Jones got a check, a $2,500 check from the Hartford Community Foundation. We applied for that grant and received $2,500 for it. That's going to go towards a new dishwasher at the Senior Center. Kind of talked to Craig a little bit. Right now it's working okay, so... We will continue to get what life we can out of it, and we will keep these funds for when we do have to replace it.

They're not getting any cheaper.

No, they probably are, but we'll see when it starts acting up again. Basically, the only thing, we don't want to put any more repairs into it. Still taking... I'm looking for applications for, you know, the new position at the wastewater plant. Do not have anybody right now that's a viable candidate, but continue to advertise for that. Summer help, as I mentioned before, we have all our summer help hired, like lifeguards for the pool and public works. We still do not have them. somebody for the park rec program and director. I do have one gal that I am going to interview tomorrow. Do you kind of put any position with park rec? So I'm going to see if she's a viable candidate for the director position and we'll go from there and have that discussion at our next meeting because we're kind of coming down to in June we kind of need to decide if we can move forward with the program or not because there's you know, planning to do supplies to order and that kind of thing. So, you know, I've got to get word out to people if it's a go or no go. Hopefully I'll have the next meeting have that discussion.

How many youth does that affect?

I think they usually have around 100-ish participants. It's divided up between three age groups. Each group comes for an hour and it's just in the mornings of that. But I would guess right around that 100 mark that we get participation in. I know the ones that attend. It's a good program. I like it. It's just... So we'll see what comes out of that. Give you a little update about the Sam Asim development. He is looking at still discussing possible tips, so just keep that on your radar. That may be coming before us at some point. He's going to kind of reassess it. Planning and zoning right now, if you've been watching the planning and zoning minutes, they are going through a couple of requests he's had for his third phase as far as variance and whatnot. Planning and zoning, like I said, is reviewing that now. They'll have a recommendation and that's going to ultimately come to you guys. So that will probably be at your next meeting agenda. So just kind of give you a little heads up on that. One other thing I did also want to bring up, so we had the do a poll out there as far as when we're going to hold the special meeting for the budget request. Basically, We looked at July. We looked at every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday in July. We basically got one date that we can have a quorum. We're always going to be missing somebody. There wasn't a date that everybody can attend. But it looks like right now it's going to be July 6th is when we will have a quorum and then they're present. Otherwise all the rest of the dates we have one where Arna can't be present and we don't even have quorums on any of those. So Mark your calendars, July 6th, and we'll kind of plan on that.

Seven, we figured, right? Or six? Yes. Seven?

7 p.m. is what we're talking about. As far as time. I'll make sure I do get it on your guys' calendars and do an invite, but I just want to give you a heads up on that, what they came up with.

Good enough.

I, too, have an action item. Kind of coincides with Karen. So there's the finance officer school and then there's the human resource school. I'm part of that organization. She's part of the finance officer school because I deal more with the personnel or whatnot. They kind of hold those two schools at the same place back to back because a lot of the smaller cities just have one person that does it all. So that week, same week, June 9th and 10th is when they do the human resource officer school. And then, as she just mentioned, they do the finance officer the 10th through the 12th. So I would like to, too, go out to Oklahoma for the human resource part of it. It starts at noon on the 9th. It goes to noon on the 10th the next day. I'll be coming back. She'll be driving out to get hers for the finance officer, so I'd like to attend that one-day event, too. It is overnight, though, so I'd like to move for that.

All right. Action on that request.

I'll make a motion to approve Teresa Seidel to attend the South Dakota Governmental Human Resource Officer School June 9th and 10th of 2026.

Second.

Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson? Yes. Keel? Yes. Horace? Yes. Shelley? Yes. All right. Anything else, Teresa?

Teresa, could you give us some information for maybe just email it to us regarding the pool's policy on daycare? Oh, that's right.

Yes, we did pass that daycare policy a few years back, if you kind of remember. I'll send that policy out to you guys.

So that policy's been in effect?

It's been in effect.

So there hasn't been a change from last year?

No, we haven't changed that policy since it was put in effect probably six years ago, whatnot. Okay, okay. Basically, it states that if you have a group mainly over so many kids, you need to coordinate a time with the pool manager. I think it's 25. There's a number.

25, I think, is the number. If you have more than 25, you're just limited to 25?

Yes, per session, per time. Otherwise, we get too overwhelmed with... you know, several groups coming and we don't have enough lifeguards to, you know, cover it.

I forgot about that. Yeah, no worries.

Yeah, I'll send out the update that.

It'll be in the box. No, that's not it. That's revenue. Okay. If you could send that, you know, that'd be great. Thanks.

All right, we're going to move to new business. We have one item there tonight. That is to, hold on, let me see if I can read it correctly, review, discuss economic development proposals. As you know, we've had groups come and make presentations on our budgeted $100,000 economic development fund. We asked everybody to put in an application. They've done that. At the last meeting, I asked the council to rate them. They have done that. And tonight, we're going to discuss only. We're not going to make a decision tonight, because I want to have everybody here when we do this. Because with four of us here, if one person doesn't like something, it's going to be dead. And I wanted to give this an opportunity for everybody to have a shot at this deal. So I'd rather have six people sat in there, if you're wondering why we're not. We knew we were gonna be one short, and then Sean had his, Sean's wife had her baby, so that kind of took us down here. We couldn't control that. All right, so. I'm going to just throw this out maybe to the council to see if...

So what we're looking at here is the compilation of all the council members when we see these scores. Right. And you did get a response from all seven of us.

From seven of you. There was one response I didn't, so basically... Yeah, so total possible score.

Did you include me in this, mine's in this number? Yes. Okay.

So we're just missing one.

So it's five, council.

And the mayor.

And the mayor. Yes. Got it. Okay, thank you. Thanks for being here. Sorry, it's a little anticlimactic.

No action tonight. So just to kind of, that total score then, since there were seven of you and each category could have possibly, you know, 70, you know, Right. As their top score. The total score is, that you see there, is out of a full score of 540 is, you know, if you got 10 all the way in here.

Okay.

And obviously, this is just an aid to help with the discussion. It doesn't bind you to anything, I guess I should say.

So what are your first thoughts with the scores? I mean, I look at the portions. Two are clearly ahead of the other two. Are you thinking that when we get to an approval point and make an amount, are we going to do these singly or do it all at once? I was thinking maybe since the two maybe are up ahead, maybe we can do it individually and see what we have left over. for the other two and maybe that. Just break it up a little bit instead of one solid piece.

And we don't want you guys to think that we're stumbling over this deal, but this is a first for us. We haven't done this before, so it's going to be kind of a walk before you run a little bit here. Because we were really trying to figure out how we were going to, that's how we came up with putting the numbers to it. Because we needed some way to quantify how we all felt. Right? Does that make sense?

I'll be honest. This worked out pretty well. The numbers don't lie, so to speak. They are what they are. And they're all blended, right? They're not weighted, they just are what they are. Yeah, yeah.

And if any of you, I don't know what other comments we would need. We've had you all have reported. Other than you, Tyler, you were the only one that hasn't Thanks for coming out. Don't jump too quick.

But I would say it looks encouraging for all four that they're going to get some funds.

Yeah.

It's hard to tell how the council will go, but it looks like I would think that it might be a little, at least partially. That's a little bit like when we had the discussion when we were talking to the people that maybe you wouldn't get the entire funding, but what was important and what would be worked out. Yeah. To me, it looks encouraging for all four that they're going to get some quantity of money. I would agree. Who are you, ma'am?

I'm Lori Gratz. Okay. If you don't know me, I'm Lori Gratz. I'm the current choir director at West Central, middle school and high school. You might be wondering why I might be here in support of the West Central Music Association input to what you're having a meeting at right now. Well, first of all, I'm actually a mother to three of the students. three students at West Central, two of which are currently in band, and one who's going into fifth grade next year and most likely will also participate in band. I support this. As a mother, I want all who are interested always to be able to get an instrument into their hands and do something they've waited to do their entire elementary career, not just my children because they're a music teacher's kid. Mr. I, Ms. and Mrs. have all done a lovely job at making playing an instrument very appealing to all, not just naturally music-inclined students. The benefit of music education spans a lifetime. I'm sure you know that. Once they know how to play something or sing something, it can't be taken away. I know you know, but you probably know, our community was selected as a Best Community of Music Education from the NAMM Foundation. something we're trying to celebrate at our school. It's the 10th year in a row, and we're actually only of two districts in South Dakota that was selected this year. And only about 1,000 have been awarded this year to the nation. So pretty awesome. And that's not just an us award. It's a community award, as there are many aspects that are measured, including community involvement in the application. So your support. our community in the years to come. I also come to you as a quieter teacher in support of students playing an instrument because my students, who are both quieter and band, are almost always my strongest musicians because of the connection of the voice with the instrument. I dare say, I can't actually quote him, but I would say the same thing about our shared students. These connections that the students practice create deeper thinkers, More compassionate humans and honestly students who have the avenue to make music are statistically higher achievers and better centered individuals, which can only benefit our community's future. So regardless of the help or not, our program will continue to look forward to serving Hartford and Humboldt by performing and representing our town. We take pride in this, not just for us, but for where we are from. So thank you for considering supporting the Central Music Association.

Thank you. Yeah, Brad did a good job last time of giving us all the stops. Yeah, if you were going to start again, we were probably going to have to, you know.

Teresa, for our meeting next time, can you print these score sheets off individually?

So we can see them side by side, so we can lay them side by side?

That'd be great.

Yeah, I thought about that too. It'd be nice if we had them on, either on almost a spreadsheet kind of deal so we can look at them all together. That'd be easier. I will say, and I don't get to make a motion or make a vote, so... I need to say that, preface that all the time. But my whole thing with this is to look at what is our return? And I get it with all the good stuff that it does for the kids, but we have to look at it from a city standpoint where we're giving money. What, you know, can I look at the citizens and say, this is what we did and this is what we gave in the band? And I have to have that answer to when they say, well, why? you know, other than, hey, it's great, we got a great band, blah, blah, blah. I gotta be able to say, we gotta have a return. Oh, no.

No, you're fine, you're fine. I'm not kidding. Angie March, I am the Music Association grant chair. Okay. So I apply for the grants, mostly. Brad and Emily took over on this one because I was slumped. Sorry, public speaking is terrifying for me. As you all know. I just wanted to point out tonight that Well, we talked about the Chamber Black Party and reforms every year. Right.

And you want to know what? I think that was my, you always take credit for all the ideas.

Tracy, that was my idea, wasn't it, when we met?

This is all I did. We do the memorial celebration. We do jamboree days. We never ask for anything in return. 33 of the 92 students that graduated Saturday all had high honors, 3.5 and above. The majority of them were band students. They were choir students. So I just want to say, I hate that we fell to number four, because we do give back to our community. Our kids are always front and center. When there's anything that is city related, our kids are there. So I just wanted to say.

I don't think anyone said you fell to number four.

When we look at the list, we did look at the notes. We tried to do our due diligence and make sure we're well informed. I just wanted to say all of these celebrations that our city has, we're giving back.

And I'm tickled that they're coming to play for our block party, to be honest.

I do have to say that when I was scoring and I was going through your guys' request that I was looking at economically what it gives back, what it does, what's the benefit of giving this money, what is the investment back into Hartford. And as a huge lover of music, played violin since second grade, I think that we may not see a immediate physical return instantly. But when these students that have music in their lives or even like my daughter who was not one that was in sports, she excelled in music and the arts. They excel and they bring back. They can be our future business owners. They can be our future, you know, still in a different way. So I think, you know, we do need to look outside of the box of, you know, does this actually bring money instantly back into Hartford? Probably not. But for future, it potentially does. And whether that's music, whether that's music or whether it's any other, you know, situation, if we're putting our putting money towards something. Now, I'm not saying one way or the other, but it's just something that I looked at when I was scoring because I did have to look at, okay, does it really? No, not like in the immediate, but when we look at down the future, As far as people who stay within our community, potential business, is that, you know? To your point, it clearly... Well, that's not against our community.

I just want to say... We moved here four years ago.

Right. I know the merch for this district is sort of why, but our kids are heavily in band and music and sports, but that was our balance was... because of the band program. So that's why we moved our family to this location rather than Sioux Falls and us commuting to here. So that's where we brought three kids into the district.

And we won so many competitions over the last three years with Mr. I and Bands. I know Lori won many competitions. People see that. They move to our community because we excel. We have good fine arts programs. To your point, again, Michelle, I mean, you're absolutely right. People do look at our community and go, is that something I want for my family?

Well, the big draw will buy people coming somewhere.

Yeah.

And when the van shows up, all the parents and the grandparents show up, if you're looking for that economic instant, there's your money coming to your... You need to set up a tip jar, I think. Yeah.

What can you possibly add, Brad? I'm not saying that in a mean way.

I'm not going to go on for 20 minutes.

Okay, good.

You know, in my words, similar to what's been said, three minutes. Oh, no, two. Economic development in a small community doesn't always start off with a new business or a large project. It begins with quality of life. We build trails around here and that has no really economic development for like riding bikes and walking. It all comes down to quality of life. People live in communities for our strong schools or safe neighborhoods, parks, and opportunities for children. Strong middle school and high school programs are an important part of that as well. They build teamwork, discipline, responsibility, and pride. We talked a lot about that two weeks ago, so I won't go into that again. Beyond that, the band program does develop that workforce. We talked about that, so I want to remind you guys of that, too. We talked about top performing students, and that leads right over to Sunshine, Kitsarash, Jerry Quinn, et cetera. And then I just want to highlight too, I know this was brought up, but a great example, the band's participation, 250th celebration. It just goes to highlight that the music program is highly respected. People look forward to not just the performance, but also represents local pride, bringing people together and helping create that shared experience. and again you're not always going to see that quantified you have to look at it from a different perspective when communities invest in quality of life programs like music people are more likely to stay raise families contribute to their local economy and more importantly return back to that community later in life small towns even improvements can make a ripple effect within the community and again i know that's kind of what you talked about michelle's you know, that initial front of your . We see that return on investment six, nine, 12 months later. You're going to really see the money that you invest in the band program five, 10, 15 years down the road. So those are some slides I wanted to reinforce.

All righty, great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, Tyler, we're going to.

May I?

Just real quick.

I won't give you the two and a half minutes if you weren't here last time.

It's OK. Well, that's probably all I need anyway. So Tyler Orson, Smith and Rope Alliance. I just wanted to take the opportunity to, first of all, thank you guys too for the live streaming capabilities. I was able to, although I wasn't physically in the room two weeks ago, I listened to the whole thing, including the 29th of March presentation before. Just wanted to be able to present myself here too to just be on hand in case you guys had any questions about our proposal. Certainly we're no stranger to Hartford. We think economic development, community development, the quality of life, the momentum that you guys have as a community on a lot of different fronts, we want to continue to assist that wherever we can. One of those functions too, especially when we have this part-time staff role where we're dedicating more boots on the ground and time working on all sorts of things, that's where we can partner up with the chamber on events, that's where we can partner up with business retention, business expansion, you name it. And then even on the other, like seeking one-time or ongoing grant opportunities, we maintain a database for federal, state, local, private, foundation. I don't like dollars, but the American Revolution has a big one that's all focused on America. 250 this year, and we just talked about that earlier. Anyway, so again, that's another function that if we have the opportunity to play a bigger role here in Harvard going forward on the economic development front, we're happy to help explore

Just because I wasn't here at our last meeting. And so I just want to clarify your position. So this is a position as a part-time position as you being an economic development liaison or? Can you specify a little bit more?

Yeah. So Symmetra Local Alliance, we're a team of about five or so. Five or six is kind of as it flows. This is a program that we launched about four or five years ago where kind of meeting communities where they are when they need additional, maybe it's not a full-time position, but they need that additional administrative support to focus on all things that come to development. So Lenox, I think, was one of our first communities. They're still with us today, too. They end up being an S&GA regional employee that's contracted out to that community that is essentially dual-padded. They're an S&GA regional employee, but two days a week, they're the Lenox Area Development Corp Executive Director, for lack of a better word. Given some of the changes that have happened here recently with HADF and with the community, there's kind of a unique need and an opportunity where our organization can, in addition to me and our team members, there would be somebody, an actual specialist that would be assigned that would be brought in would be the economic development administrative person for HADF, but then also would be the liaison for all things economic development too. Would be coming here on a probably a monthly basis or as needed to share just economic development reports of what's happening and what's going on and that kind of thing, just like you get some of your other standing reports.

So then maybe a rounder question, maybe not necessarily for you, but When our economic development position was no longer, was that something that was, because this was prior to three of us for sure being here, was it ever discussed to refill the position? Was it ever advertised to refill the economic development position within the city as a city employee? And if not, why did we not?

Great question.

Because I'm looking at why do we have two different economic developers. We've got Amy Farr at HADF and then another one. Why would we have, you know, so that's where I'm kind of looking at.

It was discussed, but to your point, Amy Farr was still functioning in that role as economic development. coordinator for Hartford, but not specifically employed by Hartford. So it seemed redundant to bring SMGA in at that time to fill that role specifically. That was my personal opinion of the matter. And now that she's vacated that position.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah. Oh, OK. You've got a lot to get up to speed on. Yeah.

I did not know that. Okay. That probably answers a lot of your... That probably answers a lot of my things. Because I'm like, why do we need to pay two? Not that we pay, but why would HADF pay and then we pay?

Two or three weeks ago. I mean, it's relatively... It's been within the last month. Okay, I get it. That clarifies a lot. They took a different position. Yeah. And Tyler and I, early on, had had that conversation because he knew that Amy had left also.

I understand.

Okay. That helps. Thank you.

That fills a hole where I'm like, I don't understand why we would do this.

Not meant to be a duplication. Again, just meant to actually be kind of a tailor-made fit that maybe is good for the community and help build synergy and momentum.

Okay. That helps a lot. Thank you. You bet.

All right. Amy, got any other questions for Tyler? Good. Thank you. And thank you all for coming. I think that answered the questions that the council really needed. That's why we wanted to do this. We wanted to give everybody a shot here. But I didn't really want to have the vote because I don't want to put it in a position where if somebody has a bad feeling about something, it would be dead. And I didn't want to do that.

Yeah, you understand all four of us would have to vote yes.

Yeah. Because the way our rules run, when we have a six-member council, we've got to have four no matter what. So if there's only four of them here, one can make it go upside down.

I don't know if we'll have a quorum or we'll have a full council next week either. But we have five of them. Jeremy, are you going to be gone when I have that? I have, like, June 2nd, Daryl's going to be gone, and Sean may not be here either.

I think Sean told me no. I might be too. Oh, jeez.

I'm sorry. Or might I have a meeting? I have a meeting.

It may be the second meeting in June.

Yeah, I'm not going to be here June 2nd.

I'll be coming back on a motorcycle trip.

We better talk about changing the meeting date. Again, thank you guys for coming, but I wanted you to understand that that's why we did it this way, because I want to make sure that we have a chance. Everybody's here. When we make decisions that really affect the community, I want to make sure that we give it a fair shot. I don't want to do it halfway.

That's good. with any far vacating that position yes we're not paying out a salary or the city's not paying out a salary for that position is that create funds for the fund? No.

No. It's been well over a year and a half since she has worked for the city.

We didn't budget any funds for economic development in 2026 specifically for that role at all. And that's where these funds came to be. That role, she went to work directly for the HAD. Oh, within days after. Yeah, but that was in 2020. Four.

Four, right? More actually. Yeah. So. And really that's why, and that's really why SMGA, and really why this thing came to be, because we were at a position where we had that funding. But SMGA is involved with this because now they don't have a person any longer and how can we move this thing forward?

A quick synopsis, at budget time, HADF had asked for some funds. Michelle specifically had asked them some pretty candid questions. Didn't quite get to where they were at with their ask, with their spend, and so it wasn't going to go anywhere, so that was my bright idea. to do this thing. Let's just get it out there and see what happens, at least to the budget.

Well, we wanted to open it up for AJDF to still have another chance to come back and make a better pitch. Yeah.

So really, that's why this thing is where it's at, I guess, would be the best way to say it, right? Does that answer that?

Yes.

All right. So thank you. Watch the press releases. We'll let you know when we're going to have our meeting and we can get everybody here. And of course, you know, us retired guys, we should be able to be here any time, Darrell. All right. Good enough. What do we got? We got one more item left on the... Oh, yeah. Okay, hold on. Let me get to new business here and we will... Our last item on the agenda is we received again for the 21st consecutive year the Secretary's Award for Drinking Water Excellence in South Dakota, which is a testament to our public works staff and to Craig that we do such a great job. And I'll just read a little bit of this. It says, congratulations to you from DANR, which is the Department of Ag and Natural Resources for the state. For 21 consecutive years, Hartford Public Water System has met the requirements of the Safe Water Drinking Act and the State of South Dakota's regulations. It's our pleasure to present Secretary's Award for Drinking Water Excellence, which recognizes your system, and the systems operations specialists who have demonstrated excellence in water system management and maintenance. Congratulations, Chris. So.

I mean, are we getting plaques for these, or?

I don't think we get a plaque for that. We get a really nice letter.

Because, I mean, we are winning a bunch of awards. It might be nice to have them, you know, in the room here, dropping up their plaques. We're all in a box. We had them kick us out. We had a plaque last year

to put up for our 20th. The rest are just certificates. Yeah. Probably on special years they give it.

I know the walls, I know there's not a lot of room in here for accolades, but.

We have them one time until it's been taken out.

You know, but that's two for just in this meeting room that we picked up. Oh, yeah. I don't have a problem with, you know, So we're just laying that. So like you said, we have.

Yeah, I know what this deal is going to be tomorrow night.

I don't feel it.

It's a great idea. Do we have anything to go into exec?

Yes, personnel.

All right, we need a motion to go into executive session by someone. Motion to go into executive for personnel and economic development. And we'll let them.

Second.

Michelle, second. All in favor? Aye. Thanks, you guys.

Now we've got to kick you out.

I sound worse than, like,

I was way worse than this, so. Oh my goodness. So, and I've been on NYL for five days, so. Heavy wounds. I'm slowly. All right. Do we have any motions from the council? I forgot what the motion was.

I motion to give Eric Loftus a pay increase of 5% because he's completed his trial, his six month probationary period. And then to give him a 50 cent an hour increase because he passed his class one certification.

Second.

Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson. Yes. Keel. Yes. Horacek. Yes. Shelley. Yes. All right. How about a motion to adjourn? So moved. So I can't make it, but yeah. Motion to adjourn. Second.

All in favor?