City Council - Special 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. All right, Theresa, please take the roll.

Okay, Mayor Jones? Here. Carlson? Here. Bowen? Here. Horacek? Here. Schilling? Here. I know Matson is absent with notice.

I did not hear from Travis, so I don't know.

Hopefully he's just a little late.

Yeah. All right, do we have any additions or actions on the agenda?

Motion to approve agenda as presented.

Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson? Yes. Bowen? Yes. Prochek? Yes. Schilling?

Yes.

All right, no minutes at this because it's a special meeting, public comment. I think these guys are all here for some other reason. Or they just showed up to see us? Maybe they just showed up to see us? All right, this is our budget meeting. Just to give you guys a little background, we had discussion, hi Blair. We had discussion about seeing if there's a way we could streamline this meeting rather than have the budget meeting drag on and on and on. Let's try having a little conversational meeting and have everybody come in. We'll talk about the request. If council has any questions, we'll get her all out and get her all talked. So when we come time to do the budget, I'm anticipating that we're going to be able to get it done in four or five hours. No, not very long. I hope. All right. So that's kind of what we're after tonight. So if there's questions for you guys, we're going to just fire away. So when it's your turn, we'll probably ask you to get up to the podium so we can keep track as we're going through. And we'll get her going. Hopefully we can get everybody out of here in a short time. We put Keith last so he wouldn't have to worry about it. First off, happy 250. Happy 4th of July. Glad you guys could all give us a little time on a Monday night. And we'll go ahead and get rolling. First one on the list tonight is the Humboldt Ambulance Service. And Tim is here. And on his way to the podium, because he just loves coming and talking to us.

Tim Eden, Humboldt Barron Ambulance.

How are you?

Excellent. With that, I assume you got our budget request? Yes. Okay, you got it.

Want to have a copy of it?

We got it right in front of us. There you go. So how many fire ambulance? I'll tell you what it says. They are requesting for the fiscal year 2027, 32,500. And that is up from last year about 7,500. Last year it was 25,000 here? Yeah. Well, look at that. Full service. And Tim, just give us a little background on the reasoning and why you're asking for the increase.

We are trying to move our paid staff, which is our medics that we have on 24-7. What we were paying our medics, frankly, I So long, I guess put it that way. This last March, actually at the beginning of the year, when we were doing our budget stuff, we also looked at, we go to the townships, municipalities, and also talk to the county about funding for the annual. We did up everything for the townships. We cover in the ballpark, I guess, including a little bit of McCook County, we covered about 320 square miles So we're 200-some miles of the western third of Minnehaha County, as well as we get into McCook County, just due to the natural boundary of the Vermilion River. It's a little quicker for us to get there than it is for Salem, because Salem takes care of McCook County, or most of McCook County. So we went to the townships. We did a significant increase there, probably to the tune of about 60% of what we were charging. I visited with every one of the townships that we cover, and there's 12 of them that we have either all or portions of. I told them what we were doing it for, and it was strictly for staff. It is not going towards paying, it's the first Monday.

Don't get into the day. Why is it five minutes late?

I'll talk to the mentor at our mentor meeting next week. So with that, Like I said, what the money we collect from the townships, municipalities, and the county all goes to pay staff. That will, by the time you do 24-7 on that and obviously run into overtime, run 12-hour shifts, it'll go north of $200,000 is what we spend on staff. We currently... alongside the medic that we have on staff. Some of us are dumb enough that we hop in and go on to the ride, I guess. So the money that we're asking in an increase, it isn't as much as what we jumped the townships, but we said we'd maybe walk, not run at this thing. So thus the increase, because we want to increase the pay for our medics. I said in the past that we don't get called up to say, hey, you want to come over for cookies? When we get called, typically it's something back. Our medics isn't necessarily a high volume. We run in the neighborhood of 300 to, say, we monetize 340 calls per year, calls per service. But it's kind of a low volume and high stress. And to borrow a quote from one of the members of the Sheriff's Department over at a budget meeting in the county, he said, once you get good people, you've got to pay to keep them. He said, if you don't, they're no longer. So we're trying to get, I don't know if it's such a thing as keep everybody happy, but we're trying to get to that point. Thus, the request for an additional $7,500 over last year's budget.

How many calls in the city of Hartford are in 507?

Last year was 212 of the, I want to say, and I'm going off of memory now, 220 calls we had. 212 were to the Hartford city. We do not rate it down. If you want it broke down, it isn't going to be me, but I will pick one of the medics. Here's a low-stress job. You can sit and tabulate that stuff. But, so we do not break it down by townships or, I guess that'd probably be the way to say it, except, you know, they work to go out of the county. And we also, we are the backup ambulance for Salem. So if they're busy, we do go to Salem and we're also providing advanced life support for Parker, Marion and Bridgewater. So if they have a call that's going south on them, they call in and ask for, center is where we usually meet up and then our medic hops in with them and then we follow along to fetch our medic home but in a nutshell that's what we got going we constantly look for grants we got one going right now um portable radios that we carry um a little over 12 000 bucks a piece now for the ones that we put in the grant for if we don't get the grant we're not getting those radios yeah so We don't spend what we don't pay. Ambulance-wise, we are looking at a committee. I guess it's July already. We're going to form a committee here this month at this month's meeting to see about maybe purchasing a new ambulance or at least specing one out. Last talking with the salesman, he said, if we order today, we will see it in two years. So that stretches it out a little further than we'd like to hold onto the ambulance, but no issues with this one right now. But with that, we figured we'd better get moving. If we are going to order one, they said, at least if we order, they can keep us a spot in line and that way we're in the building queue, I guess. So, but nothing has been done there. Last we talked, getting one, Very similar to what we have right now, but I said it'd probably be around 350,000. And currently, the last time we traded our ambulance, much like what we have right now, the best deal we could find was we sold it privately for 35,000. Those things dive off in a pretty good hurry, but this one is, as we said, I think it's the last one. It is once in a while. We'll go on Sundays.

All right. Any questions for Tim? Well, I think I say that typically with you guys and with the fire department, when we need you, we need you. They're very bad. Like you say, we're not calling to see if you want to come for cookies. All right. Questions, comments? Not? Good. Boy, that was too easy. And we probably will. No, we won't. All right, next up, Hartford Area Fire and Rescue. We have a couple fine folks here. Fire Chief Todd and Money Counter Jim. James.

All right, well, thanks for the opportunity again. just like Tim stated, that you received our purpose, our justification letter, and our budget. There's a request for that. As stated within the request, this year we are requesting $100,000 as our request. Percentage-wise, James can speak accurately to the percentage increase on that as compared to last year by percentage-wise. Our request for community and consistent with the growth and the calls for service as well as our future plans for where we see Hartford area fire and rescue within the next 10 to 15 years. So with that in mind, we're actually sitting in a very strong financial position, as you will. But we have a lot of big ticketed items on the radar. We just purchased and we're thankful for the city of Hartford for their financial support for our new engine. But that being said, we also have a ladder truck that's in need, that's our next big ticket item. That is actually, we're making conversations, or having conversations with, identifying which route we're gonna best go with that. It is unlikely that we are gonna purchase new, because the reality is that the cost of that is well over a million dollars. But we're seeking some good, solid, prospects for our new apparatus placement. Our other financial support comes through very much like Tim stated with the townships. We had our township contract meetings in March, which was consistent through all of them. For the most part, it was just a very consistent request and we were granted those requests for those townships. is like I said, consistent with what we believe is to support sustainable fire and EMS service for the citizens of Hartford and the community by which we serve. And with that in mind, you know, I also understand that I just took office here in January and there's been a lot of things just put in front of one of the things that I identified was we really don't have a very good projected plan. I mean, what does Hartford Fire and Rescue look like in another 10 years and another 15 years? So on our board meeting last night, we're gonna, we will be putting together a strategic planning committee and identify, I mean, big picture items such as what staffing looked like looking at a paid staff of some sort. I don't know what that is, but, and what are our apparatus replacement costs. And if you take even just our engine and our ladder truck, we're looking at over $2 million worth of just replacement costs with that. That's not something that you just ask for a city council or any entity overnight. So I trust with our financial statements that you're seeing that we're making strides of need isn't so sudden and so taxing on those entities. So other than that, 206, 207 calls within the city of Hartford last year accounts for 55% of our call volume within the city limits of Hartford. So.

Perfect. Two comments. We also budget for you guys for your building. It's $80,000 a year. Every year I ask the number so I actually have it ahead of time. So it started in 2011. We've made 15 payments. We have nine to go. So we're finally under 10 payments. So we're getting that whittle down.

All right.

If I'm still mayor when we pay that off, we'll probably have to burn the mortgage or we'll burn something.

I'll just ask for additional coverage for that. Oh, yeah. Wow. That might be another one. Wow. I didn't see that coming. I didn't see that coming. If you're still mayor, then it's going to be like weekend at Bernie's. You're just going to be here. Wow.

You're not going to prop me up.

opportunity again, and like I said, our budget request is pretty consistent with cost of living and just operating costs in general. Nothing really significant in my opinion, so if you have Any further questions regarding our budget?

Anybody got any questions? When you guys get into your planning session, by all means, if you have any questions for the city or if you'd like any of us to show up or Teresa or, you know, we'd be more than happy to come and sit down and talk about that. I think that'd be actually probably a pretty good adventure.

I mean, we're literally going from administration to administration from the chief by one of a vote and then wondering, like, what am I going to do now? What has Brian started? what we'll be moving forward to and what's our five year plan look like for for growth of our organization to provide sustainable service. So we hope to get that into some sort of a formalized plan, or at least a guide, so that way as administrations, if they change, they at least have something to start with instead of starting from scratch again. So I think that's just good responsibility to get back their money to do that.

I'll say this. Anything else? Not? Good. Thank you, guys. Next stop. Lisa Helvig with Hartford Hometown Christmas. Oh, and Sherry.

Oh, man.

Wow. And Sherry Golden. Your name's not on the list here. I would have, you know.

Yeah, Sherry Golden.

I'll add that to the, add that to the, okay. All right.

So yeah, everything's mostly the same this year for a $3,000 increase. Mostly that is due to three items. Storage unit fees, higher insurance costs, and we've been paying more for facility usage at the school than we've had. kind of depends on administration on what we get paid, but it's kind of consistently been, the last several years, a little bit higher amount. So just those three items that we can't really budget elsewhere for, those are just kind of administrative. So that's basically where the $3,000 is coming from. I mean, obviously we are, Costs are going up so far. We've been able to still do sponsorship fees have been right around 20,000 from the businesses and about 1800 and vendor fees for the vendor show. It's kind of hard because our bulk of the money comes from those sponsors fees. So when we're planning, when we're planning, because everybody's getting hit with higher costs. And all of our businesses, right? And so we really feel we're going to see the fiddling hit on that. Yeah. And so there's a chance we may have to try to make some cuts in some areas, which is hard to do. It has to go where and how and all the things that maybe we have to consider.

Yep. Everything is, I mean, it would be crazy to say if we didn't realize that everything is going on. And you guys, for years, have put on a great event. It draws a lot of folks to town for one day of hoopla. Is that a good word?

It's kind of a Christmas movie word, hoopla.

Yeah, any questions for the hometown Christmas folks? Maybe it's based on what we're seeing across the board. I don't know that I, I don't think, I don't see that we're online, so, yeah.

All right.

Thank you. All right, next up, Fresh off of their event, Hartford Jamboree Days, Leah and? Rachel. See, I asked, so I knew Sherry's name.

yes very fresh off of it yes so i think we're a little caught up on sleep finally yeah it's a good event this year so kind of going in line with other groups just up a little bit because of expenses have a lot of our revenue outside of incomes as well from sponsorships

I know it's kind of a, it's always a subject you guys don't like to talk. Is there ever any talk about moving it back downtown to dance?

Not with the staff that we have, no. Just because of the setting up the fence. But for the car show and stuff, too. We do have a motorcycle class in the car show. Okay. So, yeah. And we had quite a few extra that we haven't had in the past. So, I'm eight weeks into my role.

Actually, you'll see me more now for some of my favorite events. I'm really excited for the block party, the ball festival.

We do appreciate you, Lan. That's the plan from the get-go. So, we really got to...

Yeah, and then the application process for the next pistol starts September 1st. Yeah. So if you're doing some things, you can't. The EPA considers the site intended.

Right. Can't tamper with it.

Yeah. Crazy. It is crazy.

Crazy, but it's a good race. Yeah. Keep moving it forward.

Yes. Anybody got any questions for Keith? Yeah, I think there's a...

Appreciate everybody's time.

I think the master plan make any sort of a... What am I going to translate? Public rollout?

And if so, have you gotten any feedback from that? Yeah, not yet. Okay.

Oh, for sure.

And the other piece of that is the Crescent Land, the CNC ,, which makes this a little unique because it's a private public district, if you will. So that piece will move along faster than what the lagoon project will. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, I think . And we've had, there's been some great conversations with Senator Thune's office as they've been very instrumental in this deal kind of from the beginning with the regionalization money and the whole thing that they put together. So we've been in contact with them, but we're right now trying not to, we don't want to play that play that hammer until we absolutely get to a point where we have to, and then we'll try to have the senator pull some levers for us if there's any possible way we can do that.

So. If we said we were going to remediate three reflecting pools, would we have any more success? Just disregard that question.

All right. Anything else for Keith? If not, thank you very much. Thank you, guys. Thanks.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, that's, man, we moved through the list in about 50 minutes. That's pretty good. This format might work.

This might work. Well, it gave us a chance to get everybody's information. You bet.

Thank you.

All right. Here we go. Thanks, Blair. Thanks, you guys.

You should just probably see me with Manny General, right?

We're still being paired publicly, right? Yeah, no, we're still on the line. On the line, as they say. I think we have that, don't you think? Or should we go into it then? Teresa, would you like to keep it on the line? Or on YouTube, should we keep it, you know, streaming? Or should we cut it off and go to exec?

Motion to go into executive. Second. I don't think we can do that.

Oh, yeah. Executive, we have to be publicly.

Non-executive. Yeah, we don't have. Non-conversation. Yeah, okay. We can just send a meeting. We can quit streaming, though.

We could just send a meeting. Well, then. Absolutely. We can quit discussing on your own. Oh, okay. Thank you. I don't think so. We'll do it if we do, we'll do it tomorrow night.

Sounds good. All right, somebody would like to make a motion to adjourn?

Motion to adjourn. Second.

Now, can I clarify? I read through the stuff for tomorrow night's meeting. There has been a change. Is it only for exact that we have to call each individual? Not for just closing the meeting? Okay, so then I will say, all in favor? Opposed? Same time, motion to adjourn. Okay, now you can click her off. Yes.