City Council - Regular Meeting

from the 6-16 meeting. Make a motion to approve the minutes from 6-16 of 2026.

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

Yes.

No bills. Karen? No bills. We'd like that. All right. Public comment? Anything that's not on the agenda?

5 minutes Did you not get a letter from our attorney? No, about what? You did not get a letter from our attorney? About what?

about this issue. That we've been up there and looked at it several times and our engineers have concluded that there is nothing that we have done wrong. The plan that Black Tie submitted was to the specs and we're not going to change the retention pond or anything. It's in.

I'll try and find it and print it out.

Well, that's kind of surprising if you didn't get that. It's dated June 30th. That's a week ago.

I've had checks lost in the mail for two months. That's not great sometimes.

Do we have your right address? 47016 256th Street, Crooks? Yep. 57020? 020? Yep. Yeah, I mean, when we stated in the letter, really the conclusion when it comes to the end, if you want, I can just probably... This is the last paragraph. City has done all that it can do. You don't agree with their engineer. This is Tom writing this. Sorry, so I'm reading this in second. person or third person. They're engineers and their findings and conclusions and there is nothing the city can do about that. Nonetheless, the city wants you aware that they have addressed this issue multiple times and will not address it further unless there is engineer verified documentation to counter the city's engineers and their conclusions. No further response will be forthcoming from the city. That's the last paragraph of the letter.

I don't know. I'll tell you. I'm getting flooded out every year. I gave Justin my yield maps and stuff to show him. That's what he wanted and I showed him that for the last six years. We talked to Justin out there with a fat stopper involved. He issued the same thing. He said the same thing of concerns I had.

All right. I guess that's it. I guess I'll have to live with it.

Thank you. All right. Next stop. Oh, we got one more. Julie. Say who you are, please.

Julie Anderson. I have a couple questions. One is I had texted you about the mosquito thing, and I literally have not planted the rest of my garden yet because... The mosquitoes are practically eating me alive. I've seen a lot of people posting. I called down. I don't know who I talked to. Their comment was, yes, we've been spraying. And I said, on Mary Lane? Well, she didn't know. I mean, Sioux Falls actually has a website you can go to. You can punch in. It tells you where you've been. I don't know why we waited. When I texted you after that meeting, you said they were going to start.

They were spraying. They've been spraying, Julie. What do you want me to tell you? You want me to follow them around and make sure they come to your street?

But maybe they should have started earlier. We actually had jamboree days in town.

I don't like losing my sense of humor over this stuff. We don't have millions of dollars to have a website and track our...

I'm going to throw in one thing here, Mayor. So... So the city has been spraying. I've got mosquitoes at my house. I hired a pest control company to come out and take care of those. And I've got a person. My number's on the city council website. And he put up these buckets that he sets them up in my yard. I don't even really see them. I think he's got one or two set up. He checks them every month. And they take care of the mosquito issue. So the idea that if you have mosquitoes on your yard, that's your property. It's up to, in my political or in my philosophy, it's up to you to take care of that problem. Now, if you go back to two or three years ago, the federal government used to give money, okay, to communities. There was grants that we kind of, were in partnership with the city of sioux falls that ended with the trump administration okay so if you have a mosquito issue on your property my opinion is it's your problem just as much as it's my problem to to pay and take care of them okay so but these buckets we put up they weren't spraying for them so there's no like major chemical thing It was cost-effective, it was affordable, and it seems to have worked. My wife is like the anti-bug person. Go ahead, Craig.

I was just going to say, when we spray at night, everything's documented. The roads that we drive down are documented. The spray is only going to kill bugs that are flying at night. If they're in the grass, it will not get them.

Well, this is the worst they've ever been. I disagree with that. And they go by on 38. I mean, I see it here and go. I have not seen or heard them once. I don't have them over.

So I live on 6th Street, just like two blocks from Mary Lane. I have no mosquitoes on my property. So what I'm saying is that this is not a city issue. If it's on your property, that is for you to handle. But I can give you a really good recommendation, a cost-effective recommendation. Solution to fix that.

I would call you, text you.

Yep, my number's on the website. You go in there, you text me or call me and it goes through everything. But I will get you that person's number and they will get something set up and it takes a couple weeks for it to take effect. But it does work, okay?

Okay, you said you had two, what's the other?

Yeah, the other thing is, and Alex will maybe address this, but the fireworks thing. I actually ended up calling in because they were shooting fireworks all over, all through the night, of which I will say when I called, within 45 minutes, I assume somebody must have gone and talked to them or maybe they just quit on their own. But I'm curious why there's some ordinances we feel we need to abide by and other ones we let go. But like he said, Alex might be talking about it. So it's bad timing that I'm talking before he is. And I do commend him for 45 minutes later at stopping, whether it was because of somebody talking to him or on their own, I don't know what it did.

All right. Thank you. Thank you, Julie. All right. Anybody else? Let's move to applications, agreements, hearings, resolutions, and ordinances. We have second reading of ordinance 772. No changes from first reading? Any action? This is the change from residential to residential high density up behind Western Meadows.

I'll make a motion to approve the second meeting of the Resilient Ordinance, number 772. I'll second that.

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

Yes.

All right. Let's move to reports. Alex, you're first up. All right. Minneana County Sheriff's report.

I like the structure of this, like the heading with the sheriff's office. That's a little different. So here's the deal with that.

I'm trying something different. It's going to take me a little while to get it just the way I want it. There's not a few pages here. Yeah, we did, too, when we were at it. I will condense this.

Looks like you guys have been significantly busier.

Well, here, I'll explain this here. So just to go over some of the things, the significant stuff that we had. Since I'm in town, I've been going after some different warrant suspects that we have in town here. We've gotten quite a few. Traffic stops were down, and I'll explain that here too. We got 24 from last month. I think it was 46. Accidents stayed about the same at 6. As far as we know, we didn't have any crazy injury accidents or anything like that. We've been checking the bathrooms in the city parks every single night. We have... We have 28 check securities in the parts for the bathrooms, making sure there's no vandalism there. Page two of my scroll. There's a DWI arrest that was made in town here. Juvenile delinquency is going up just a little bit, just because it's middle of summer here. Parking violations I've been getting after. One of those turned into a warrant service. We had a few burglaries and a couple of stolen vehicles in town as well. The total number of calls was 223 just in the city. The way that our dispatch works, it's very particular on where the calls are and it'll code it either the city or the county around Sioux Falls. So when I put my map out a little farther for the greater hartford area things that i still respond to call numbers went up to 446 literally double that um so We've been very busy with that. I think our number of traffic stops just around, probably about just 68 and 24. So we're significantly more busy, the event's July now, or it was June and we're coming into summer. Julie, as far as the ordinance stuff goes, I was not working on the 4th, but I can say, They were extremely busy with those fireworks calls. And I'm sure it took our deputy a while to get around to dealing with that. But yes, I received a few complaints myself that it took a while to get those calmed down at night.

I know in Sioux Falls they had over 300 of those.

Yeah, it's crazy. I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but I know just talking to my partners, it was a very, very busy day and night for those guys. But yeah.

How about scooters, little mini bikes, all that good stuff?

Those are going into, I'm going to figure out how I'm going to classify those in my report here. So I have them right now. I have a few of them under traffic. I did a few traffic stops, and then I also have them under traffic. I believe it was traffic hazard is what I'm starting to call them now. I had several of those that I actually called out on. A majority of those kids, I'm just stopping out at the park and at the middle school during the day. And when I see them riding around and telling them, we have to stop this, you've got to be careful because we're getting tons of complaints going through. And I've been talking to several parents A couple of parents were not so happy that I was talking to them about it, but that said, it's probably better than having your kid get hit by a car.

I have to say that I had a phone call from someone, and they were like, I'm watching the deputy right now talk to kids about the scooters made double riders get off and they were so happy. They were like, this is so good to see. They were, and I said, well, It's a difficult balance.

It's been a tough one. I think the golf cart stuff is starting to calm down a little bit anyways. But the scooters and the e-motos are the ones that I'm having a big issue with because they go as fast as a car. Parents are buying these for the kids. On the box, it doesn't sit. There's no regulations on them. It's just, take it out of the box, you put a couple wheels on it, and... you're off, and these parents don't realize that those are illegal for anybody who doesn't have a driver's license to ride, you know. And they have to have, depending on how big they are, they have to have registration. The riders at least have to have a driver's license, wear a helmet with number 18, eye protection, all that. And I've gotten several of those where I haven't seen the kids ride them again. But, yeah, it's been a challenge for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the alternative, we don't want to have a catastrophe. Man, that would just...

Absolutely. It's going to happen.

Yeah, I know. It's going to happen.

But if we can... Maybe we've got to get a few deputies that can set something up. We can get a few deputies and do a little saturation out here for the scooters and the bikes. I mean, whatever we've got to do. So I've got a question.

I know we've talked... You know, it's kind of interesting. I've been here for three years. Three years ago, this was not an issue. It did not become an issue until about a year ago, it seems like, where these things... Was it a year or two ago, maybe, where these things became... Five years ago.

Really? Oh, gosh.

Yeah, they've been here, but they really, I think... It's really picked up in the last couple of years.

I think they're more affordable now. Yeah, you're right.

So my understanding, and I have to be reminded on this, because all my neighbor kids, I've got three neighbor kids, they all have them, and that's fine. And they're relatively safe. They don't wear helmets, but that's not my job. Tell them to wear helmets. But it's my understanding that legally, these scooters cannot be on the road.

So there's a legislature on that. The scooters, in a lot of law enforcement eyes are considered motor vehicles. They're actually not considered motor vehicles. They are their own classification called electric motor scooters. So take an electric bike. They can be on the road if they want. Legally speaking, yes, they can. They have to stop at the stop signs. They have to be on the right side of the road. They can't be zipping in and out of traffic like they normally do.

Okay, so one more thing, and you brought up an interesting point, and I think it would be good, and I'm not saying like every month, but maybe, and I'd be curious on the council's opinion on this, of course, like... three or four times a year, it'd be nice to see a map of just Hartford, the city. And maybe with your software, you can pull this up of where are the most calls coming from? I think I know. So I'm not saying every month, but maybe just once every three or four months. With the report, you have a map pulled up. It shows those bullet points of where. A heat map. A heat map. Sure. You know, it'd be cool to be able to see some other data. Like, this is good.

Yeah, this is very confusing to read. I'm not used to looking at what it is. Yeah, I'm going to get our software. One of our IT guys is going to help me. Like I said, we'll convince this guy. Cool. Thank you.

All right. Anybody got any questions for Alex? Could we get some undercover kids maybe to see good influences on these hooligans? I wish.

I've been telling them, you tell all your buddies the rules. Hopefully that will subside here and get a couple of my guys out.

Good enough. All right. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. All right, Michael, you got here just in time. You rushed from your other meeting. Probably got a speeding ticket. Good timing. I bet he didn't stop at the stop sign either. I'm just guessing. Stop at every stop sign. All right, we'll go to the city engineer report. Michael, go ahead.

Good evening, everyone. Report is in your packet. On a general engineering update, you have that stormwater retention memo that we'll talk about in a little bit and then continue to review site plans and flats as they come in. On the project update, Western Avenue, I've been coordinating with the contractor to get that updated. get that project closed out do have all the quantities from them get everything coordinated and expect the final payout and change order at the next council meeting on the mickelson road shared use path to continue to work with the state and some adjacent line owners just on giving us more space between the roads more separation there so we'll keep moving there We'll skip Kelly Avenue for now. Under Route Lane and Diamond Trail intersection, did provide those 60% plans at the last meeting, as well as the cost estimate for the 60%. Since then, have received the geotech report. As I noted at the last council meeting, what we had estimated in the plans and that ending of probable cost was based on city standards. After Geotech came back, it was noted that the soil would be able to reduce that section slightly, albeit there were areas that Geotech was a little concerned that there might be some poor subsoils. just some just some fat clays there that are susceptible to frosty so we've got some additional areas of over excavation and replacement with some additional granular material included in the plans to account for those similar to what occurred on western avenue south of old In addition, just to provide an update on the budget. So during the Wunderbohm for design proposal, you know that it increased by, 33 is over 30%. 30%, yeah, although it was only, you know, $10,000, but percentage-wise it was a significant amount. So looking at that, our construction estimate in the capital improvement plan was about $250,000, whereas the 60% progress, that was about 390. A couple notes in there just on what had changed, one of which was the water main, which was a direct result of the citywide water model identified that section of pipe as being 8 inch. Since that is part of the run of pipe that would serve south of the interstate and the rest of it is 12 inch, saw this as an opportunity to upsize that just to ensure that pipe has the maximum capacity when that area to the south develops on top of not wanting to tear a brand new road, new intersection to replace those utilities. And then the second item, about $40,000 increased costs. Just talking with Craig and Teresa, our original capital improvement plan estimate just went to the south side of the inlets on the north side of the intersection. Just talking with them, some of the patching and cracking that had gone on there. I saw it as an opportunity to extend it to the north. Those aprons into those inlets are in pretty rough shape. There's some exposed rebar. So discussion was had and kind of and decided to add it to the plans as since we're in the report, thought it would be efficient to do so.

So. I support these increases. It's not sexy. No. But there's definitely a water issue there. So it's necessary. I'll be ready to go to bed here.

shortly shortly yep so kind of looking for council's buying on this just make sure you know scope is good before we finalize the plans with the increased chat it sounds like here on board is there any opposition to the increased scope there i do know that if it is constructed this year it was not in the this year's city budget it was planned for construction next year um just for council's right i know uh

It would be my opinion, unless the markets change, that there's some opportunity maybe to, if we can get it out there, to get it done and get it done below the cost estimate even. I think, in my opinion, time is of the essence. So let's get it done. That's my two cents.

Because if there was ever a time when we were maybe at a spot where we can do it right now, if we could find somebody that would be willing to give us favorable bid, this would be a time to get it done.

One last thing I will note on that is we're going to get televising information on the sewer. Just once it's similar to the water main, just make sure that the sewer is in good shape. We need to discuss that with the city. This Thursday at our meeting, a television quote came in a little higher than anticipated.

You said televising? Yes.

Okay, what does that mean? Yes, yes, sorry. I'll back up. So first day, they cleaned the sewer, so everything's clean. We can see better. And then they basically have a little RC car with the camera on it, 360 camera, they drive it down the pipe and we watch the videos and check if there's any defects in the pipe.

At the same time, we're going to have to do with the clay pipes we have in town, just to make sure that they're still holding together. So if we find an issue, make sure we can keep it under CRP for down the road and all that stuff. So just examine them at the same time.

So just noting that because should we find any issues there, we hope not considering, I don't think as well, but that sewer was installed 10 years ago. But just want to verify and make sure. That would be a little bit out of scope, a little bit of extra time needed, but I still think it's a relatively small project. Contractors can knock it out fairly quickly.

On that, how far, do we have to extend the 12 and maybe you said this but that 12 inch water main how far north does it have to go so it's from the intersection of diamond and which is like the intersection that runs by tamin oil right the gas station right okay and then south to the root trail and root lane intersection so it's 300 of some people okay you know and there's no reason to bring that north at all

No, to the north, it's 8 inch, and that is based on the water study. That is more than adequate to serve that residential area.

OK. So based on your dates there, Michael, it looks like you're going to have the final design done mid-month. So I'm assuming by the next meeting in July, you'll be ready to give that to us to prove it for bid. Is that the plan?

That is our goal, yes. Like I said, if televising comes back and we need to add some sanitary, that may shift it in a week or two. Until the first meeting in August. But generally, I would say the schedule is within a week or two. Right. Yep.

Perfect. How much money do we have in our water? I know we have about, obviously this is a significant underground utility upgrade, so I'll be curious. Is there money in that?

What's that? 2.4 million.

Okay, so we can obviously utilize some of that, or I don't know how much of that is spoken for, but it's not in our budget.

That's got to cover O&M until the end of the year, what we have budgeted, but I would think there's plenty to... to absorb this extra cost.

I think we're in great shape right now.

Short answer. Now would be the time when we got a Torah to do that sizing versus then we're ready to go. Like I said, when and if we need to go to the south.

All right.

So we don't need action tonight, but I would assume that the next just awareness and general acceptance of the added scope from the CIA. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

I guess I will circle back. I was late because I was talking to the township. Just have a few developments on the fringes of town along township roads and just wanted to get in front of them. Talk about future city utilities within those right of ways just as as we look ahead we want to make sure we don't assume it can go on the right away and then township for whatever reason says no it's got to go outside our right away um then we'd have to go get easements from all those landlords so meeting generally went well they just asked to be kept in the loop as um some of those development requests so i think it was a successful meeting awesome um all right you had a couple other items on there you wanted to talk about first one was the uh landscaping

options for our new lift station? Correct.

So our formal council's request, our landscape architect pulled together the attached plan, which I believe is in your packet, primarily to provide some screening behind the Hartford sign from the lift station. So this, we got some photos out there. They did a nice little photo, nice photo shop job. And provided, got a quote from Smith Family Farms. They're the ones who provide all the boulevard trees in the city. So talking with them, some of the the cost i'm not sure pretty sure where the where the cost was expected to be i know some of the trees were perhaps a little spendier than anticipated um some of that is truly due to inventory you can't just go and get a six-foot tree it's got to be a few years old um there's uh had our landscapers talk about some alternates to some of those more expensive items um based on based on what they currently have they're just concerned of some of those alternates you know either attracting deer and then you end up with they call it a lollipop tree or you know the tree wouldn't be as as wide when it's screened and you'd be able to see the lift station you know between the rows of them so we can certainly follow up with them continue to look for alternatives.

So the cost estimate, just so you know, came in at $9,824. For what? For the trees in this little. For this landscaping proposed with these trees. Just the trees, yeah. And that does not include any landscaping rock, right? Correct, yes.

So this is just the trees and the shrubbery. Yes, I've heard it myself, I apologize. I think it's kind of high. So some of the trees are over $900 a piece. So would we do the landscaping ourselves? I mean, we do a lot of things ourselves. We build sheds, we don't. No, I mean, it's a serious, you know.

I mean, I can landscape, you know. Not very well, but. The estimate does include installation plus a one-year warranty. What's the price?

Because I'm not seeing any of these prices. Oh, yeah. She just gave it to me. We just got it.

So the $9,000 was installation.

They have it on Friday or on Thursday.

That's putting the trees in but not the rock.

Right.

Yeah, so what it includes is purchase, delivery, install, and a water warranty for all the plants that they would provide install. And then as well as a chemical treatment to remove undesirable foliage and backfill with new soil. That's taken straight out of the quote.

So that's just short of $10,000, you're saying?

Yeah. Like I said, we'd still have to do any landscaping, mortar, or rock. So you're probably looking at $10,000.

Minimum, $10,000. I honestly don't think that that's too out of line. When I go to landscaping and, I mean, we just did some landscaping in our backyard and it's outrageous. I don't, I don't, I guess I don't, for... this size of trees, I guess I wouldn't have bought any glass, personally.

Well, if we were gonna take an area with one of our welcome to live lively signs and doll it up, that would probably be that one or the one out here by the, coming off the interstate, which is kind of in a tougher position to do this. The nice thing with this is, We own the land, right? We can do basically where we have the other signs, we're basically in somebody's right-of-way.

We just got an easement plan. Yeah.

The only question I've got, driving that every day, is where are you going to stop seeing it and where are you going to start seeing it again? Because you come around that curve.

Yeah.

And I wonder if it's going to be 300 yards that you're not going to see anything, and then all of a sudden there it is again. And then coming from the other direction, you're going to see it all the time.

Right.

So if you're trying to hide it, how long are you going to have it?

Oh, sure. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. Oh, right there. You got to scroll over. See this line down there below? Just move that over and you'll see that. There you go. I didn't know that until a couple meetings ago, I don't think.

I mean, I agree with you, Michelle. So this estimate is for the trees. the install of the trees, one year warranty, and then it's up to us to secure our own, you know, landscaping border and rock, right? Am I understanding this? Correct. So you're going to have probably 15 grand. I mean, if we contract that out, I mean, if we find somebody who's going to come in and put rock or the, I mean, you're gonna have more than likely 15 grand into it. I personally, I don't know enough about landscaping and like what it costs for trees. I haven't done that stuff, but it would be nice to, if we knew a few landscapers that were local or semi-locally just come in. have them give bids to what we're looking at doing. Because right now, I don't know what to compare it to. All I have is this one estimate, this one provider of trees. I don't know anything else than that's their cost. So I know that there's at least one person I know who runs somewhat of a local company. So I would like to, before we make any thumbs up or thumbs down, it'd be nice to see a couple other people to come in and give a price for the whole entire thing, for landscaping rock, the edging, trees, all of that. That's where I'm kind of at.

I'll take a different approach. OK. And to your point, Craig, it's really not for the benefit of the people leaving Hartford, but it sure makes a nice presentation if you're coming into Hartford. I had a similar size landscaping project, cost $3,500 like six years ago, and now it's without $900 trees. And so that does present a nice screening wall. We as a council have done a lot of necessity things for the community. This would be certainly a nicety. and I think it sets kind of a nice tone for Hartford. When you come in that way, it looks nice. And so I would propose that we allocate a budget amount, an amount that we're, not to exceed amount, and then encourage it to be put out for bids and then we can select. Yeah. Is that sign lit? Yes.

Okay.

here's a here's a dumb question first and foremost i like that that idea um your typical landscaping company who is not you know who isn't growing those trees can they still get the warranty Can they? Okay. Cause I didn't know if it's, Hey, we supplied the trees. We, we only get, you only get the warranty if you install them, but those landscapers should be able to get that as well. Yeah. I think that's a good idea.

And the pricing. I guess you're right. Okay. I received a three year warranty. Okay. Many of them.

So I think we should put it out to bid and see what happens.

I just make a motion to be the way you'd like to see us proceed. I make a motion to approve up to 12,000 and not to exceed $12,000 for landscaping improvements along highway 38 near the lift station.

And that's for all inclusive rock edging, or is that just as for the plan as presented?

Okay. Do we really want the trees? Could we eliminate the trees and just do bushes?

That generator stands about eight foot above grade, it looks like.

That is one of the questions I had. Our landscape architect said you have to get rid of those or swap them out or something. It's not as... as big of an diameter, then you're either going to see through or you're just going to see over top of it. And it's going to be a few short shrubs behind the sign and then a little ditch right behind it. And to some point, it meets the purpose of the goal here. There's just a block out, which is to the next ball come and do some screening.

Could just plant a bunch of thistles there in the ditch and just forget about it. Wait, that's last year's photo. Never mind.

Well, we have a motion. Did anybody second that?

I'll second.

All right. Do we have any more?

I wouldn't mind if the bids had a, you know, a lower, you know, if they could have two bids, you know, like, with all the bells and whistles and the big trees, and then maybe a lower cost option, like an A or B. One with trees, one without.

So we have nothing around the sign right now, right? It's just dirt, right?

When it sounds like, no, I get where you're going, but it sounds like the point of this is to block out the generator. And so if you have one without trees tall enough, It's going to defeat the purpose of the landscaping in general.

I get it. But when I drive by it, I really just sort of see that sign. It is one hectare right there.

I know, I'm kind of like, is this a big deal or not? I don't drive 38 that much, but I don't know if I care enough about it.

Well, you'll get a chance here in a minute.

Oh, but I'm speaking my opinion. I know, I know. You'll get a chance here in a minute.

Here's the thing, I can tell you that when I, we go on a ton of road trips, and when I come into a community, what i enter into that community determines whether i come back i can tell you that there are so many different things where i and i will take video it's probably because i'm on dhi too but i will take video of downtown i will take video of signs and i will take a look at it and then i will we will map whether or not we want to come back to that community and spend more money based on your first impression very much so

That's a good point. They make an invisible cloak you can throw over.

All right. Any other discussion? Let's get this thing going. No other discussion? Let's vote. Carlson.

What are we voting on?

We're voting on not to exceed 12,000.

As it's presented right now. I'll say yes.

Sean. Bowen. I'm going to say no. No. Keel. Yes. Parachuk. Yes. Schilling. Yes. All right. So we got four and one. We good?

All right. Well, there's another option to just shut the light off and then at night...

One of the neighbors across the street has asked me about that. That light is pretty bright. Yeah.

You can paint the thing black. All right.

I don't know how far do we want to go on the next one on the detention pond. We can stick to the one pager if you'd like. Next up, we wanted to talk about stormwater detention ponds, ownership at this point strictly for discussion only. Michael put together a one-page summary followed by a multi-page, all of the detail. Let me just throw in a couple of things. This comes about from a conversation we had with a new developer coming to town and they're going to have to have an attention pond on their property or in their development. And the comment was made, when we sell the last lot, we're going to be gone. and we're not going to want to come back and deal with that detention time and i was of the camp that said we should not take them on and that conversation that day i actually changed my thinking on this deal that we need to at least have the discussion so that's why we're where we're at Because as we continue to grow, we're going to have more of these situations pop up where we're going to have bigger developments that are going to have their own detention ponds and we're going to have to know how we are going to deal with them. Okay, now I'll turn it over to Michael.

Yes, so as Mayor Jones noted, this came to be just based on the discussion we had with the developer, then the question was raised if the city wanted to take them over. So what we did is we looked at both South Dakota codified law as well as See other cities in the area, Sioux Falls, Tee, Brandon, Harrisburg, and Brookings. See what they're doing. for a comparison to get us started and look at those types of things. So codified log does allow cities to establish a stormwater maintenance fee, stormwater utility fee. They're slightly different from codified log. That's one that I'd probably defer to Tom for understanding because one of them has a limit on what you can charge. The other ones are to cover a set of costs. So when we look at other cities' approaches, Brandon and Brookings both charge a flat fee to all the residences, $5 to $6 a month. Whereas Harrisburg, Sioux Falls, and Tee I have a formula that they use to determine the fee. It is based on the land use, which in essence is the zoning. Is it commercial, industrial, single family, multifamily, so on. There's a unit financial charge, which is truthfully just a multiplier that they use in tandem with the lot area. to come up with the fee. So in that table in the middle of the one page summary, you can see the fee generated from each community for various lot sizes. So. Additionally, we found Sioux Falls has planning fees for their stormwater utilities and their basins. One fee for single family is about $2,600 per acre for single family, and then the detention charge is just shy of $1,000 per acre when the development is planned. So for, oh, let's see. We talked a lot about Thrill Creek recently. I believe their second phase is about 80 acres. In that scenario, you know, that would be about $3,600 per acre if the 1,000 suit falls, which is, I don't know, $300,000, $200,000 just to plant lots. Hartford isn't quite there. Sioux Falls has those imposed because they have regional ponds that treat hundreds if not thousands of acres within the city. Think about that large pond south of, is it 57th on the east side of 29? South of Texas Roadhouse. So that's one of the city's regional ponds that is funded and maintained through those planning fees within that basin. treats water from developments shedding to that area. That's not to say that those developments don't have their own basins. That just helps attenuate it because they have additional circumstances that require some of those additional stormwater requirements. So based on this, as Mayor Jones said, we're looking for the council's input based on this information. One, the city would like to go down the route of taking over ownership of stormwater ponds in the future. And then two, if so, what does the stormwater fee look like? How does that get charged? What amount is it? And then secondly, you know, what ordinance or design standard changes need to or should occur that help city staff better maintain these ponds to ensure that they are functioning? So the second items are a little bit down the rabbit hole. It still hinges on that first question of does the city take these over? But certainly on the next hill there are things to think about.

And this is only for future ones? Not anything existing?

This would be existing as well. That's a whole conversation. That's another rabbit hole that...

Because what do we got, Craig, that we'd have to look?

That's much harder to answer.

So right now this is just new. We haven't touched whether it's going to go to existing. Correct.

What do we think we have for existing that we would have to consider?

I'm sorry.

Yeah, but if we can take the letter, that's a pretty small room.

Yeah, I've seen it. Six or seven probably.

Six or seven ponds.

That's existing right now? The worst thing is the ones that are existing are kind of overgrown. They need work just to get them back and maintained properly and everything else. So if you have a developer that's already out of that area, you're going to have a hard time getting them to come back in and create a detention pond.

And that's really what... Can you give me an example of an existing one?

The ones right over here are maple bass off local.

Yeah.

That mess up there with all the trees in it. That's one of probably the worst ones right now.

For this particular development... I thought I read somewhere it was like $170 per resident. Is that right? Is what it would be? I mean, that's what the year would be to cover this cost or no? If it's city wide, you said it was like $5 to $8 per resident.

I don't believe I had that in there. At the end of the full report, I'd estimated what it would cost the city to maintain a pond per acre for each year, and that was about $1,400 an acre, based on my assumptions there. One thing I will note is this is intended for more of the residential ponds where residential homes, private development ponds on private sites such as Central States, Black Tie up north. It is our assumption that those remain private since those ponds only serve those businesses and those ponds.

Right.

So how is that? Go ahead.

So you call those are B and P ponds, right? Or not? Are they called...

So in the situation like I'm just thinking of black tie and so you made a comment that that or Trying to think of another kind of industrial area where there's a pond

what you would say is that, so black tie, that pond serves black tie. You would agree with that? Okay. let's say Jans Corp, I'm just using them, or Turtle Creek, use whatever, you know, new developer on the residential side. So, but let's use Jans Corp or Maple Pass. I didn't even know that there was a retention bond over there. So would it be consistent to say that the people up on Maple Pass, so your businesses, your apartments, you would say that, they would also be the primary beneficiaries of that pond as well, right? Correct. So where these ponds are located, the people within that general area, they are the primary beneficiaries of having that pond. Is that a logistical conclusion that I can come to?

Well, the thing about ponds are those they're designed for downstream. to protect the downstream flow, so I mean.

One thing I will say to your point, John, it's not just the general area, it's within the drainage basin, so that on all of the plans that we receive and review on behalf of the city, those basin areas are delineated. So roads are crowded, water sheds each way. There may be a drainage basin where one side of the street goes to one pond, one side goes to the other. So it wouldn't necessarily be, oh, this house is right next to the pond. That might not be in the basin. So it'd be within the drainage. The overall drainage basin.

It's a lot more technical than just where that house or that building is at. Yes. And this is where I kind of, because this is a pretty robust, I think, conversation once you do some research. Because let's just hypothetically say that us as a council say, you know what? Every resident in the city of Hartford is going to pay $100 a year to maintain these ponds. And I do have somewhat of an issue saying, OK, so I live on 6th Street. And so now I'm paying a fee for something, let's say, further from me up in Jan's Corp. So I'm on 6th Street and Western. And now I'm paying a yearly fee for something in Jan's Corp. Because like if you go down like Oaks Avenue from north to south, Oaks Avenue goes, it rolls downhill to the creek, right? And so where I live, anything north of me, I have a little bit of an issue. And this even goes to Turtle Creek or anybody south. you know, like why would their yearly thing go and pay for development on the north side? You know, because they're at the bottom of where it typically drains. I'm just throwing, I just want to cause some like, because like this is a lot more,

So that's really why, that's why I said, I mean, we're not going to solve this.

We're not going to solve it tonight, but like this isn't black and white. Right. What I'm thinking is that there's a maintenance fee for these, for these ponds. I mean, either the city pays for it or, but okay. So this developer looks like it came up that they wanted to get out of this. I mean, out of the maintenance fee.

Either get out of it or they have developed in other areas where they saw it was different.

So what I was thinking, could we charge these developers to get out of the maintenance thing? Is to set up a fund or let's say it's $100,000 to take 5% of that and then we continuously use that five grand to help clean up the ponds. Where they set up a fund to be designated for to use interest and everything that we can use to clean up the ponds. But I don't know how, that might be cost prohibitive to a developer, but if they want to get out, instead of maintaining it, maybe that's something that they would do.

And not to open the can of worms, but there's three pages in the full report.

Oh, it's a crazy.

You read the full report. Like I said, there's a lot of information to discuss. We're not going to solve it.

Right. We're not going to solve it tonight, but we're here.

I guess step one is, are we interested in pursuing, taking over the maintenance of detention pods? Because in history in the past we have not done we have said your pond city's not going to take them over but after more discussion how good a plan is that in the long run because like you said developers come in once they get done developing their last lot they're gone and then they don't get taken care like craig says and then there's issues there so we're not currently unmaintained yes exactly so we have that so maybe for the long term we need to look at something like this part of that how we ever we set it up you know maybe

What also doesn't happen is nobody sprays for mosquitoes in those privately owned areas, right? So it becomes more of a public nuisance than, well, it's your neighborhood's issue. And so that $100, to your point, $100 that may be paid by you to maintain all of them in the community provides a safer community because there's less mosquitoes, less chance of West Nile, and those sorts of things as well. It's just a different way of looking at it.

Yeah, no, I can see that. So we have existing ponds. And I understand that there's like this, I think one of the pros of the city taking it on is that those are maintained from a visibility perspective. Obviously, there could be ongoing cost with the engineering associated with that, with the dredging of that, with the reconstruction of that, And so right now, hypothetically, let's say we had a development that was developed 20 years ago and they had a retention pond that was not functioning in the proper way. What action can we take as a council to fix that?

If it violates a property maintenance ordinance.

And who's accountable? I mean, like who would be accountable for that? The land owner. The land owner, like right, butting up to it or like the people within that?

Somebody owns that lot.

So somebody, so when these developers build, they sell through lots, is it typical for them to remain ownership of those? You know, maybe it's one acre or half an acre. So we can actually go after the person who owns that detention pond, sorry, that, so we can actually, is there a mechanism in place?

But there's legal fees associated with that too. If you make them the city's, then you have planned maintenance. You plan for that maintenance and it's not an unexpected expense. Just my two cents.

But it is an increased expense because you have your mowing, your upkeep, you have your potential, you know, You're right. You should build a plan for it. It's not like, oh, one day that detention pond isn't working anymore. Right. But there is.

You know it's going to silt in at a certain level every year. And over the course of 10 or 15 years, now you got to start thinking about.

I have one last question. One, correct me if I'm wrong when I was reading this, is one of the benefits of the city potentially taking it over is we get to set the design standards for those ponds. Is that correct?

Correct, yes. We'd have to make some changes. We'd probably have to make some changes. We would recommend some changes, yes. And the developer would have to follow. Yes.

Or the current owner.

If they wanted to turn that new pond over to the city, you would have to comply with the design standards. And we review it.

Just like we do everything else, basically.

And there's other municipalities that could work in it. Admittedly, Minnesota. There are some municipalities that require as-built surveys of that pond to ensure it has the capacity and storage and everything that is needed to make sure that no pond functions on the back end after it's done.

Correct. Maybe less maintenance. Yes. the ponds that we currently have that are not being maintained and maybe not up to a design standard. And so we could set a higher standard for new ponds that in turn could have a little less maintenance potentially, but yes, our existing ponds, may require a little bit more expense to get it to where it needs to be if we decide to take all of them over.

Yes. So I'd say a lot of the existing ponds I don't want to speak for all developers, but based on some of the discussions we have, they see ponds solely as an expense and not a necessity of the site to control the engineering system to protect downstream. And so those are to dominate as efficiently as possible, try to keep the footprint as small so they can you know, maximize the total area to be sold, which I don't believe in the slightest, but that just leads to perhaps some steeper slopes, making it more difficult to maintain.

And then does the developer sell the existing pond areas, the old ones? Do they sell those? Is that something where they, like, we charge them to, you know, to take that over? Do we own that portion of that land now?

We've only taken over one that was given to us because they didn't want it. And they are tough to maintain because if you have a wet area,

or whatever that road is.

Yeah, that's the one we own. It's okay to mention Minnesota when you're talking about water. It seems like they figured it out. I mean they have their county ditches. They seem to have sorted that out years ago. But again, when you see the Traco and they're cleaning that out, the real question is who's paying for it? And so that's really where we're at.

I got a quick question. So if we were to take over ownership of the current ones and the existing ones, the developers still pay to build that retention pond or is that now a cost? So it's kind of like a road, right? I guess the developers build it to our code, and then they hand it over for maintenance?

Correct. Once all the punch list items are done, then we take ownership. Yeah. After about 10 years?

We did not get it to standard before we took over.

Right. i'm trying to think in the last uh in in the years that we've been here we've probably talked bonds not many times two or three times last you know really the hadf uh yeah two or three times that we've actually in 10 years i mean it's not like we talk about it naps landing whether it's a detention or a retention yeah and they've determined that it's going to be a retention yeah So they actually made it into a water feature basically at their, yeah. Well, I guess, let's circle back.

So really the,

What I was intending or hoping that we'd get accomplished tonight, at least to start the discussion, is this something that the council really has a feeling that we should continue? And if that's the case, then we really got to start boiling it down to what do we got to, what do we want to look at? How is this going to look? How are we going to handle this? How are we going to, if in fact we do look at taking over the existing, how are we going to do it? So if the council has an appetite that we continue this conversation, that's what I guess I'm looking for tonight.

I think we need to, and I think if you think big picture here, if you want to develop Hartford in a reasonable, controlled manner and not have developers come in and cherry pick lots that don't have detention ponds on them, or required detention ponds. The city has to have this figured out, otherwise they're just gonna skip over those.

Because really it does lend itself to developers coming in and buying multiple lot spaces. Not that that's what we're 100% aiming for, but we have to have that thought in mind. I think so. Right? Thoughts? Should we keep plowing forward a little bit? Because what we'll do is we'll just tell Michael to cut his four- or five-page report down to... Just keep throwing us in the chat GPT until the paragraph.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's an interesting discussion because who would have thought? I mean, it's not cut and dried. I would rather just say, let's keep it the way we're doing it because I've been on here for three years and this is the first time I remember actually having a discussion about it. But that doesn't mean a hill of beans. And so I'm interested in starting a kind of a slower conversation about this, not coming to a quick conclusion. You know, because there's so many factors. Like, what do you do? To me, it's easy to figure out, what are we going to do with new ones? Like, that's kind of easy, but it's with the existing ones. Because I don't want to take over six or seven that are complete dog crap.

I think it would be handy if we take a map and mark where they're all at. Yeah. And you guys just drive by them and see what you think. I think so, too.

I think they're starting it really slow. Yeah.

I'd say let's formulate some next step information, Michael, Craig. Get us some of that information. I'm not looking for opinions on what to do.

I'm just looking to see what our options are.

Because I lean more towards the opposite way of why not control anything in the future. We already have seven. Why not control? We have a little bit more of a say. Right. Moving forward.

But it's those seven, that's where that robust, that's where that starts then. So I agree with you, I think it's easier to say from here on out we're going to do this, but it's the six or seven, not knowing those costs of what would have to be done. Because obviously we would want those current owners to get those things up to code, up to spec, so we don't take on a bunch of ponds. Next thing you know, we've got a bunch of ponds that are out of code, that are not functioning properly. So that's where I caution at. I want to take a balanced approach. It's going to be hard to...

down the road, we don't, and I'm not for maintaining them, but if we don't maintain them, if the company comes in, builds a bunch of houses, builds a detention pond, goes bankrupt, or quits their business, the city's stuck with them.

Right. Not to standard.

Yeah. A whole other set of issues. Right. Yeah. We got to have, we're really at that point where we got to really look at this thing and say, do we want to create the standard and do we want new ones built to a specific standard? I think we're, Michelle, you're right. I agree with you. But I do think we have to look at the old ones too just to get everything on.

I was just looking at the ones up on Western Meadow, and they sold that to Nielsen when he bought the rest of the land.

Or even as a member of the city who is a house owner and has that around their property, coming in concerned about something that's not being maintained around their property. Who is in charge of it? So I don't know. I'd love to see where they're at because I'm just not familiar. And I'm not familiar with what they look like. So, yeah.

Yeah, it's been a while. Nobody on this council, I don't think, has had private homeowners come in and say, hey, I need you to dredge out my backyard. Yeah. That's a whole other topic.

We've had that discussion. Yeah, we've had that discussion. Yeah, we've had some interesting asks. Let's just put it that way.

Right. That's what I try to avoid.

Wait, I'll claim this one as my idea. So it's Travis's. You have to say it. We should do another golf cart trip like we did that time. This would be a good one to jump on the golf cart trip. I dropped that about two weeks, like eight weeks ago. I was like, hey, we should do another golf cart trip. No, you didn't. I don't remember that. All right. As far as next steps. I'll get it back. Yep.

Any additional info on what they're doing out there in terms of design standards, specifically? It was a very vague statement. Just some clarity with you.

Also, it would be nice to see some code violations. This would be a question for Kyle, but with the existing ones, what code violations have we had?

I think the biggest thing is that, you know, they're not being maintained, they're not being mowed.

Okay, so if they're not being maintained, they're not being mowed, then we should have code violations on, you know.

Yeah, like that. We've addressed it with Western Mills. Okay. We've had to do it. Yeah.

All right? We good? You got enough info to move us forward? Michael, you think? I think so, yeah.

You think so or you know so, Michael? We need to feel confident here.

Oh, we're confident. Okay. McKenna's taking notes over here. She knows. She's got it.

Existing ones and get some more information on that. Yeah. Just baby step it forward.

Well, thanks, everybody, for the comments. I think that was one of those that we kind of had put off. Time to talk about it. All right, you got anything else, Michael? I believe that's all I have. Wow. All right. With that, we'll move to Craig's report. City Superintendent, what do you got for us, Craig?

Just some updates. So a crack seal that's been completed for this year, and then most of it's going to be roads that, well, slurry seal next year because you always crack seal the year before. We're going to be doing a little bit of mastic here next Monday or Tuesday and getting ready for slurry seal later this month. For a wastewater facility, we did get a permit from Danner for our biosolids to handle them. That's just going to be something now that we'll have to get filled, get it online so we can fill out the permit. It'll be once a year at the beginning of every year, we'll have to fill that out, which shouldn't be a big deal. Parks, the Frisbee golf pads are completed, and then land, dirt work, powder, all of the seating. So as everything else is in there,

Did we get the cameras for the parks yet?

Yeah, I just talked with the gentleman to get an ET at them. He thinks the equipment will be in either later this week or early next week, and then we'll schedule an install. That's pretty quick. Hopefully within a couple weeks.

All right, any questions for Craig? We were talking trees earlier and the lift station. I believe the conceptual plan for the wastewater treatment facility included some screening vegetation along the north side of that as well. What's the plan for getting that?

I know there are some trees kind of on the drawings and that stuff.

I think that just on the conceptual plan.

Yeah, I don't know. I would fully agree with that. Yeah. If we were to do it again, I mean, I think that plan should have maybe a wall. to screen all of that stuff. It's really, as far as buildings go, it's kind of attractive, and then you've got that generator sitting out there on the north side between the building and the interstate. It's really an eyesore, but in a good way. It's just not attractive. Now, I get it's a wastewater treatment facility, but if we put some vegetation, some trees along there to grow out, we could certainly put something together in the budget for next year.

All right, Michelle.

I just had an ask if you could. I had one person stop into my office at Deer Hollow that is a tenant. And then I had another person that stopped into my office that's not a tenant. And on Opal, I think it's Opal. So if you're driving and you turn, I think it's Opal. And then Rood Lane. As you're going north on Route Lane, the very first fire hydrant there in the street, there is like a water, it says water, but the little cap is constantly off and in the road. And then people will put it back. I'll put, it doesn't stay there. And so I was, kind of drove around jumped off my truck at a couple other places and i was like i think that's supposed to stay in the road and not come out and so i i just thought maybe you could check yeah well more likely it uh got hit in the wintertime with the plows because they do everything kind of shift yeah yeah bust that cast you know so we can go in and replace that cast i appreciate it

I got a couple quick things. I went on my yearly bike ride. Colton Road to Quickstar and as we know that's always an issue on those bike trails with gravel. I mean it's i think that's just something that needs to be almost checked weekly or bi-weekly probably bi-weekly tons of gravel okay i mean it's obviously when you get up towards um that first house they're heading you know there and then that's probably most of the driveways it is but i you know i'm driving i'm driving the bike and people are running it's you that that trail is used a lot so i would love to see just something to where that part of that trail is is clean because it was an issue last year and probably years before that before i said anything um so i'd like to see that maintained um another thing i was at the pool yesterday did we make any progress on a bathroom or on a toilet part partition for the thing that we talked about a few weeks ago nothing yet no okay yeah so i'd like to see that because that's My company will donate a partition if it's a cost thing. You walk right in there. It's so crazy. You've got to think about it. You've got little boys going to the bathroom in there. This is a major privacy thing. I'm going to get a little bit more urgent on this, but I want that taken care of this summer. And then on the park bench in Turtle Creek, I know I texted you about that. Was that ever looked at, at Turtle Creek, the park bench that was, the concrete was coming out? Yeah, we had to reset, get it reset. Okay. Cause I don't know. Cause I'm sure. Yeah. I was like, how do you do that? Do you just, you have to nail the concrete off or do you have to just dig it down deeper? You know, that's like third on the list, but I'd like to see that. Like I said, that part of the trail cleaned off and I want a bathroom partition. I'm gonna fight that tooth and nail until it's done. So next meeting, if it's not done, then I'm going a little bit harder on it because it needs to be done. It's a cheap fix. It's simple. If it's a budget issue, I will literally donate a partition to get that fixed.

we'll take you take care of it make the check payable to me we'll do where would a person find those conceptuals for that wastewater treatment facility i've gone back and dug around it looks like links are broken now

All right. Anything else for Craig? Good enough. Thank you. Next we'll move on to Karen. Yeah, my report's in the packet. No updates or anything to add unless anyone has any questions.

The 600,000 we got for the community access grant, that goes to, yeah. That's kind of nice.

I think with that project, between that, you know, we've got a re-loan, we've got the other loan with it, that sort of loan with it. I think between, when it's all said and done, we haven't paid the final payout out of it now, but I think we will be long in that project, so those funds can ultimately be transferred to the general fund to be used if you want to pay off the loan. We can have that discussion once we completely close out the project. We know our final cost.

Great. Pay them off as quick as we can. All right. Any questions for Karen? Anybody? All right. Teresa, let's move to your report.

I don't have too much to add either. Just noting on the cybersecurity stuff again, I did put in your computer box, I sent out an email with my updates, The draft plan for our cybersecurity plan is in your computer box for you to review. It's several pages long. It's kind of a template from another city. It's been reviewed finally by our RIT. I'd like you to review it because I'm going to put it on the agenda, kind of go over all this stuff at our next meeting. But I want to give you some time to review it. Also in there under cybersecurity is we had the two assessments. We had the one from DSU and the one from Homeland Security. The reports are in there with the recommendations. And to go with that, those have all been reviewed by IT as well. We've had the discussion. We have kind of little checklists of things of how we're going to address all the recommendations on it. A lot of them are fairly simple fixes with IT to make changes in how stuff's set up. We are going to beep off our firewall that will address a lot of things that are recommended. But that checklist is in there, and I'll work with IT to start getting those things off the checklist and that will address everything brought out by those two recommendations. So that's in there too for you to look at. So we'll kind of go through that a little bit at the next meeting as well. But I did put them in your computer box to give you guys time to review it a little bit before we talk about it at the next meeting. we'll have any update on any of the grants. You know, we put in for that GFP1 for the trial going up to the sports complex. Haven't heard anything yet. Usually those get out in the July timeframe. So I'm hoping this month maybe we'll hear something on that one way or the other. And then I would give you an update on the cameras. Like I said, we expect those to come in the next week or so. So any questions for me?

Any questions for Teresa? All right, thank you, Theresa. I see we have one item we want to discuss under your report, and that's the proposed letter that we're going to send to the Kelly Avenue residents regarding our one-way

test one-way street test yes so i think you know we kind of reviewed the conceptual plans or the suggestions our options i guess we say about kelly avenue and we decided at the last meeting that we'll do maybe a test run on the one-way option so you guys want me to put together a letter to the residents that letter's in your packet i just want to make sure that all looks good to you if it does we will get that out this week still. And then we can hopefully then start about, you know, obviously we'll need a little bit of time engineering to get some signs and some markings up and maybe we can, you know, midway through this month, run it for about a month, get feedback on it and we can go from there. But I guess at this point, are we good with the letter going up to the residents?

I think it should come from Craig.

We could put his name on that. One idea would be just to maybe put

picture of what it would look like so that they can visualize it or hey go to this link it'd be nice i'm just trying to you know if i live on kelly avenue and i get this letter i'm like how is this even going to look i think it would be nice for them whether it's a picture of the letter or something on our website that they could go to a link and just see what it visually looks like to have an idea, but that's just my opinion.

Could we pluck that one picture?

I would send it right with the letter.

Then we'll put Sean's name right next to Craig's. That was my idea. Boy, I'm glad I have no good ideas.

I really like your second to last statement.

This may be one way to solve your problem. That is so good.

If you could put thank you to your attention to this matter at the end of it. No, let's leave that out.

We'll leave that out.

We'll add the picture and we'll get them out then.

All right, perfect. Let's hope the mail gets there.

Yes, exactly.

Too soon.

Do you need a motion? That's as good with me. I mean, it's not like it's the next. I think we've already agreed that we're doing this. Just wanted you guys to see this so you know what's going on to the residents. All right.

Let me call the ward one, city council. We know what they're talking about. We do.

All right, in our own business we have one item and it's an update on the Chamber Block Party America 250 Hartford 130. I wore my brand spanking new t-shirt Saturday to the Menno, South Dakota, 4th of July. And we probably should have thought about this. We should have had the date of our event on there somewhere. Because everybody said, oh, did you guys already have your event? I said, no, it's coming up on the 17th. Oh, it doesn't say that on your shirt.

I take a look at it though. But of course, that's, you know. Hey, that's a great shirt.

When did you do that?

The next time you wear your shirt, just carry a sign with you. Oh, I should. Yeah, it's the 17th. I should have.

Those sold very well. They're almost all done.

Yes, they are. They're not really. They're nice shirt. It's really a nice shirt.

I wore mine already once. Jill said she's getting some response for additional raffle prizes, so that'll be awesome. ISG is going to send their drone crew and shoot footage. That'll be fun. ISG is also... sponsoring a portion of the fireworks we appreciate that so should be awesome 17th six o'clock

I'll be there.

Be there. Did you get Benjamin Jones to show up? I think Ben's going to come. Last I talked to him, he's going to come. He's on the list. He was just eight days. I follow him on Facebook, so he was just eight days out of the deal in Washington, D.C. He ran the South Dakota booth at the All-American State Fair. Ben's a good guy. All right. Anything else on that? Good? All right. Let's move to new business. First thing up, review the July 1 notable law changes for cities. And really no action. We just wanted you to review those. And last night, if you recall, I misread one of them, so... I've got that corrected in my mind, but the way Senate Bill 47 reads is when we go now into executive session, we can't just do an all in favor aye, we have to do a roll call vote that is recorded in the minutes. Not for Do we have to do the same coming out of exec? I don't know. Did you read that? It doesn't really say it.

You come out and you're reconciled.

It's secret until you're out. Right. But to go in, you have to have it proven and recorded. Okay. Yeah. So, anything, Tom, that you'd like to...

In the absence of any... I mean, if it's voiced unanimous, in the absence of a unanimous vote, then we'll call it.

Oh, I see. So I do not have all in favor, and everybody says aye. Aye. I'm okay. And if it says nay. If someone says nay, then you've got to do a roll call. Okay, gotcha. That's not the way we got this word in here.

No, that's not the way I was. I was kind of with you on our name, and I thought you had to do a roll call.

Yeah, because the way it is. is that I thought I would have to do it every time. Think of the amount of time that I'll say over the course of a year. Oh, yeah, it does say down here in the Municipal League's deal. Yeah. Tons of tons. Yeah. All right. Any questions on that or anything? All right. Next one. We're going to review, approve the SMGA slash HADF contract. an MOU memorandum of understanding with the city of Hartford. We've been talking about this for a while. This is to contract in joint effort with the Development Foundation with Sioux Metro Growth Alliance to supply a economic development specialist or person for Hartford, not only to work for HADF, but also to work for the city. There was a couple things in the contract that we changed.

Has this been reviewed by our, I mean.

Have you looked, I don't know if Thompson.

Yeah, I've looked at it. Yeah. I don't know if there's any, it's the issues of the conflicts that are addressed in there, I think. Yeah. It's been problematic potentially in the past.

Yeah. So there was a couple things on the payment and how it was going to be paid that we've corrected. I think this is kind of a typical model for Sault Metro.

And Tyler did say they kind of use this model with all their cities.

When you say model, you're talking contract? The contract, yes.

The concept of how they're delivering the service. Right.

They typically do a three. We told them it was a yearly renewable basis, so we had the wording. to reflect that we're renewing this.

And so I was gone during the meeting in which we approved this. Now I was, just for the record, I was in favor of what the council approved. Is there, I guess a question I have is, so we're paying half of this, half of this bill. Why are we, Because my understanding is that the SMGA employee is working on behalf of the HADF, correct? Am I right on that? They're not working on behalf of the city. Why are we even reviewing this contract if we don't have any authority over that? So I'm just curious on, if we don't have authority over that, why are we actually reviewing this contract I don't know if we have to vote on this.

Because we're spending money on it.

We spend money on a lot of stuff that we don't review. The MOU is between the city and HADF, though.

And the contract refers to the MOU.

The memorandum of understanding that is the second document is between the city of Hartford and the Hartford area development foundation.

Okay, so this is a contract between us and the HADF. Yep. And we signed both documents.

Yep.

And the contract refers to the MOU that's between the city and the HADF. So we do have to sign the MOU.

I'm following now.

My question is regarding the compensation. And Arden and I talked about this a little bit. But this year it's very, it's obvious that HADF is paying $25,000. Hartford is paying $25,000. Now the funding request that the HADF brought forth last night was for 25,000 to pay for the SMGA contract. With the way I read this contract, we are still on the hook in 2027 to pay $25,000 to SMGA for this contract. Is that true? Am I misunderstanding that? Or is that correct? Would we essentially in 2027 be paying the full $50,000 just funneling $25,000 through HADF?

So I can tell you that I processed some of that last night, and I was going to wait, because I had already read through the meeting for tonight. One of the things that I've thought about is that's a budget request that can be denied because that's for 2027. So that would be after. I mean, this contract is only through July 15th of 2027. Right. So the budget request that they're asking for is what I was guessing, assuming, and I wanted some clarification on, is that... That budget request would be for the following year's contract. And so that would be the council's decision then on if that budget request is approved of for that $25,000 that they're asking for, for the year of 2020, July 16, 2027 to July of 2028. That is what they're asking that. $25,000 for, which is, I can tell you right now, I'm not for. I like the half and half. But that is how I read it.

Is that correct? That's the way I understand it, is that the ED funds, the $25,000 we put this year, will pay out this year for this contract that will run until mid-year next year. And the way I understood it, too, is the AGDF, yes, is requesting $25,000 for when this contract runs out for the next contract. That's the way I understood it.

I'm in favor of this year's contract.

And really, based on our discussion last night, we have not made any action on that 2728 request. So we have time to, if we need to clarify to make sure that that wording is correct, we can surely do that before we get to our budget.

And as Michelle pointed out, it's a budget item. Even as that, you still have to... Release the funds next year, yes.

This contract that we're asking to be approved tonight is what we've been discussing. 25 from us, 25 from them.

Right, with the ED funds that Carl budgeted this year with their proposal.

Correct. Yeah, and this one runs through, to your point. July of 2020, yes. Yep. Yep.

And that gives us here.

You know, I think what's been skewing my thinking a bit is initially, I think he was looking for like a two or three year contract. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's right.

Okay. Yes. He tipped, they typically SMGA typically writes these for three years, three years. There it was.

I know I scrolled past it. The term will terminate. This, this agreement will terminate on July 15th, 2027. Right. And we have that. We changed that to a year. Yeah.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, then we have the MOU, yeah.

So I've talked through this with Tyler several times. So I think what we've done here is what the council's intent with our economic development funds to get us to this point.

I noticed an area where it had said that we may need to provide space, office space. Will they have all of their own? We do not need to provide any office equipment.

no anything outside of just a space right i saw that too we had a call with tyler he says actually at this point they're not anticipating the city to provide anything no space equipment supplies or anything he says maybe say they need to come in and do an hour work or maybe want to come use the council room. For a meeting. Bring their computer. Just some place for them to sit down and do some work or whatnot. We can work that out with them. Not a corporate office space. No equipment. They'll have all of it.

Well, we told Tyler we'll facilitate whatever we need to to make it work. So... All right, any other questions, thoughts, actions?

So we need action on this?

We need to make a motion to approve this.

I will make a motion to approve, sorry guys, I'm looking at the, just gotta scroll up here. I will make a motion to approve the SMGA slash HADF contract in MOU with the City of Hartford.

I'll second.

Any further discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Schilling. Yes. Horachet. Yes. Keel. Yes. Bowen. Yes. Carlson.

Yes.

All right. Next up, discuss billboard options. This is one we had briefly talked about when the Lagoon land became no longer necessary for the city to own and the 501c3 Gateway Hartford Inc. was established and the land was transferred to them. The city has contracts with folks, businesses that have billboards on that land. Now, as you can imagine, we have billboard leases that are coming up for renewal. So, rather before then and we're right up against the wall we felt we should probably talk about this and see what we want to do i would like to terminate them and

And I've talked about this before. I think that's really good property. I love what Book Your Billboard has done on Interstate 90 heading into town. And I know that we as a city won't do it because we don't own that land. And I'd like to end those contracts. I'm just going to speak openly here. I know that's kind of surprising. It is, really. I'm shocked. I would like to have those contracts end as soon as possible. And the only reason for that is is that as I'm driving into Sioux Falls, I love what some of these billboards, whether it's Lamar or Book Your Billboard, of what they're doing. They've got nice, huge billboards, great marketing, great advertising, and I would love to see that space utilized for something like that. Because I understand if we extend these things out, if we extend these things out further, now I don't think we're gonna have that land developed for years to come. It could be five years or three years or 10 years. But I don't want to, I don't know. I've always been in favor, not always, but I've said it before publicly. I would love to see that the billboards handed over to a private entity that specializes in that space to take that over and for the city to relinquish control of that. And maybe it's, I don't know how that works. Maybe that's the... whatever we call it, Gateway-Harford, be able to lease that land out. I've been doing some research on this, but a lot of those landowners to my understanding that own that land and have billboards, they lease it out. It's a form of revenue for those landowners. And so I'm a huge proponent of letting whoever owns that land, whether it's GHI or whatever, would love to see the city just end this whole billboard thing. I just don't think it's the city's best interest to be in charge of that, to be doing that. That's my opinion. How do you propose we replace the revenue these generate? Well, we don't charge enough, to my understanding. If you do a market analysis on this, what we're charging, and I get it, you know, I want to help out our local businesses, but I don't think us being in the billboard business is one way of doing that. I'd rather charge a little bit less per linear foot on the maintenance, on the street maintenance fee versus, you know, if you want to, I don't see that as a city's function as owning and operating billboards. So I'd rather see us take a, you know, go another route into helping out people. Okay.

Can I ask what we charge?

Not enough. It's pretty cheap.

It's pretty cheap? I mean, it depends on what size they... I got the sheet here. I'm sorry. So basically our East space ones, if you get a full billboard, it's 300, half a billboard is 150. Now, yes, sorry. And then the West space ones, we just rent a full one. We won't break it down and it's $300 as well. That was decided back in 2024. And when we did do, reach out to see what rates are. I agree. We are low.

We're at 50%. I got one quote and I'm not going to do one, but I, I, I got one quoted to me on interstate, you know, as you go to I-29 and I think a static billboard is what they call it. So that's one with, you know, your name on it or, you know, it's not, it's not the electronic one was for sure that five to 600 range for sure. Like that was like,

I know you're lower, and I think the thought at that time is it is generating some income for it, but it's also giving our businesses kind of a break, because it's usually the Hartford community that's advertising there. Like I said, we do have the lagoon land. If we want to Eventually, we need to be off. This isn't our land. Eventually, we need to be off this land. What they decide to do with it, that's them. We do have the lagoon land. One option is I could do some research on what it would cost to put billboards up there, whether they're which isn't a real good design, just because they're not real cost-effective, or whether it's a digital one. I could do a little research on.

Yeah, but then it's a GHI land, though.

I'm talking about moving it on our new wastewater treatment.

Oh, got you.

Moving off of that.

Chair, would that be a distraction of going? on the I-90 with a digital billboard on our wastewater treatment plant?

It's zoned industrial. You can put billboards on it.

Yeah, they do it everywhere.

There are DOT regulations. You've got to be so far off the road. You've got to be so much higher. I mean, you've got to be all those regulations. Right. And they're scrolling. They have to be.

for so many seconds before they scroll and scroll.

So we'd have to meet all of that, like all the other billboards.

No one's contacted you?

I've talked to like two different billboard companies. No one's reached out to you, huh? So tonight, really, we were just, thank you, Sean, for your comments. Our first one really comes up the end of September, so I wonder if we should, I, I guess I'm a little bit on both sides of the fence. I hear you when you say we shouldn't be in their business, but if we're going to do it and we're going to stay in the business, I would rather see us do a really, really, or get in, contract with somebody that would have a really nice that's what i'm saying i think that this is a gh so like the city state ghi out of it i would say if the city wants to lease or get in uh contract with a billboard company rent them a spot at our but we can't we don't own that land no i'm not talking that land i'm talking our wastewater Treatment plan. Okay, but this is this is all that. Yeah, there's two separate deals We got to figure out what we're going to do with these contracts which you made your I Want to see out of the billboard game because we've got and I'm saying yeah, okay Let's talk with somebody and see if they would want to lease the spot from us and put a billboard on.

I 100% agree Yeah, so GHI needs to have on their next agenda for their next meeting How they're going to write these billboards. I mean, what are they gonna do? What are they gonna do with them? Right, so that's their problem.

But also you guys are, you know, or DHI is going to remediate that land. You're gonna have a lot of earth work. Oh, sure. We know that.

Yeah, like you can't say, okay, hey, we're gonna contract with Lamar.

No, you know, and then all of a sudden we gotta move a bunch of dirt work. That's gonna affect that.

That would maintain what's there. Right. But, yeah. to your guys' point to look into to replace this revenue.

Yep, if we could lease out some land to a company, we're just leasing that land.

We're not in the business. They're selling the billboards. They're doing all this stuff.

But now if we were to do something on our current wastewater treatment facility, I would want to, as a council, if we were to contract with ABC billboards, I would want... I don't want pornography or anything crazy. No, I'm being serious. We would want some restrictions on what that billboard is.

We won't have to recreate or reinvent the wheel. They're heavily regulated. There's all kinds of stuff in place already. It's very turnkey.

You know, you could try selling the naming rights to that wastewater treatment.

The what rights? Naming rights to our wastewater treatment. Oh, that would be good.

There goes my idea.

Okay, does that give you enough information? No? No.

Back to, so the billboards that are coming up, you know, some of them are going to expire. Most of them read 60 days prior. We've got to let them know whether we're going to terminate them. Correct. I guess we're going to renew them, basically. So do we want, now the only way we can renew them is that we've got to get permission from GHI. We're not renewing them. If we really do a year at a time.

So I'm going to make a motion.

That's fine.

I don't think we're going to need a motion. What you need to do is send them all a letter to the landsman's hold.

And here's your termination. That's the direction I need. I need to know if we're terminating them so I can let them all know that. Yes. Or, okay. I mean, because they'll then expire.

Because technically we can't make decisions on land we don't own.

So I just wanted to clarify, are we going to let them terminate or are we going to try to do year by year, which I'm not suggesting we do either. I think let them terminate and then if we do want to look like, look at billboards in the future, look at something on our land. Correct. That's the direction I need it.

If I know somebody that owns a billboard company, can I have them reach out to you for discussions about those in the land? Absolutely.

So we can gather some information. Okay.

You got what you need? Claire's mind?

No, that is what I needed. I need to know what to do with these current leases. So perfect.

Before I get chippy again, let's keep moving. How's that sound? Next item on the agenda is to set the budget date for the 2027 budget meeting. Theresa's boiled this down for us. I think we take her resignation. Oh yeah, that was a couple of things she said. Did you respond to the one Doodle? I think so. The date she's recommending is August 26th, which is the Wednesday night, last Wednesday of the month. I like that. How's everybody else feel? So what's the proposal here? This is the night we do our budget. No, on what day though? August 26th. It's a Wednesday. There's a map. There's a calendar right down below. Right there.

I won't have levy information until after the 15th. You're on vacation?

So we've got to do it after 15th. I always do at the end of August because that's when all the public school kids go to school and we go on our vacation. I would say go. You don't want to hear all my no votes.

I didn't say it out loud.

I'm going to phone in. That's what I'm doing.

I think the phone's going to be busy that night.

I mean, we can't look at the 17th and the 19th. We'll just have back-to-back meetings that way. Yes. Just like this week, but any of them work for me. 17th, 19th, we'll do the 26th.

17th works. 19th does not.

I'm a yes on the 17th. I'm a no on anything after that. Let's do the 17th, then we'll have back-to-backs, just like we did this week.

How are you, Daryl?

Daryl, you all right? He's retiring. Of course he's all right.

He goes to Italy and stuff.

17th is good. 17th.

What time do you want to do it?

6 p.m. for a budget. Noon?

That works for me.

What day is it? 17th? It's a Monday. Noon would be awesome, but I'm pretty confident most people can't make that work.

I could.

We're going to have to increase our pay.

We're going to start meeting at noon.

Wait, Michelle can make it work. Daryl can make it work. Travis, I know you can make it work. Let's go. You're my question. Can you make it work? You're still on the clock. Well, I would never.

Are you guys okay with 6 or 6.30 a little earlier?

Oh, I was here this afternoon.

To be honest, I'm on a fixed income, and it's directly tied to how much I work. 6.30?

Then you have to work late on Monday, okay? 6.30? 6.30? Sure. 6.30 on the 17th. That's fine.

Does someone want to make a motion for that?

I'll make a motion to set the budget meeting for 2027. So it's a budget for 2027 for August 17th at 6.30 p.m. Do we have a second? Second.

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

Yes.

All right. Looks like we got through everything. Do we have anything for executive session?

It's nice having a bunch of retired folks. You're close enough.

We have the executive session for personnel.

Motion to enter into executive session for personnel. Second. All in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we're good? Is that your official outfit?

It is. I call it a ninja, but there's three of the pajamas. Ninja. I have to go to work.

You look like you're in scrubs.

Do you work overnight?

I do. You are in scrubs. Yep, I am in scrubs.

I'm not on my way to work.

Are you going to be late? Any actions from the council?

Motion to offer candidate A up to the maximum amount discussed for the position of the wastewater treatment facility.

Do we have a second?

Second. Second.

Any other discussion? Hearing none, we'll vote. Carlson? Yes. Mullin? No. Keel? Yes. Horacek? Yes. Shelly? Yes. All right. Any other business? I entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?