City Council - workshop

agencies will make presentations first and for timeline purposes it will be ideally 10 minutes or less for the outside agencies so 10 minutes each and then following that We'll be staff hearing a direction from council on how to proceed with the proposed budget, whether there are any amendments you all would like to make and stuff like that. So with that, I'll turn it over to you, Mayor, to bring up the outside agencies.

Yes, so I think I've got Startup Hutch first, is that correct? All right, would you like to come forward and give us your presentation?

Thank you, Mayor Meyers. Thank you, Council. All right, so Startup Hutch is, first and foremost, entrepreneurship. is the story of Hutchinson, from Emerson Carey, to the Dillon family, to Idea Tech, and all of the other businesses that have shaped our community. So many of them were built from right here in Reno County. Our mission at Startup Hutch is to inspire, educate, and connect entrepreneurs, supporting them as they start, operate, and scale their businesses. Through this work, we are building a stronger Reno County for today and future generations. We are an entrepreneur support organization known in our world as an ESO, serving Reno County and the greater region. Founded in 1987 as the Quest Center for Entrepreneurs, we underwent a rebrand in 2020 to become Startup Hutch. We are a 501c3 nonprofit and we are independent. We are housed at the Hutchinson Community College. We're officed there. And we are funded primarily by the city and the county, as well as the community foundation. Our team consists of myself as the executive director and Christopher Acker, our program manager. The two of us run the organization. Our work can be sorted into four core pillars. Partnerships, capital access and loan partnerships, programming and coaching and advising. We'll talk about each of these a little bit as we go through the presentation. Our partnerships power the work, so we partner, of course, with the city and the county, but also we work very closely with the Chamber of Commerce and Greater Hutch, who you'll hear from today, about some of our work with Elevate Reno County. We work closely with the Hutchinson Community Foundation on many of our programs. which we'll talk about later on. We partner with Network Kansas to administer loan programs and some youth entrepreneurship programming to the community, local banks and lenders to administer funding to entrepreneurs, and we partner with national and regional organizations such as Heartland Forward and Nextus out of Wichita to bring resources into Reno County for small businesses. 2025, at a glance, we served 203 entrepreneurs. We delivered 224 coaching hours, and you'll see this in our annual report. Entrepreneurs accessed nearly $500,000 of capital through our programming, and we delivered 15 workshops. As far as capital access and loan facilitation goes, we have funded – here's a couple of examples you can see on the slide. The MAT received $145,000 in Network Kansas funds. Forged Automotive this year received $150,000 in Network Kansas funds. And the Tipsy Owl and Boozy Badgers Lounge received $30,000 in Startup Hutch funds and $31,000 in Network Kansas funds. These are gap financing programs. So what happens generally is a bank comes in and there may be a gap between the amount of collateral that's available and the full needs of the business. So we can provide that additional capital. It also reduces the down payment necessary. It comes in at a lower interest rate, which is more friendly to the entrepreneur. We host a monthly networking event called Entrepreneurship Connections. Many of you have been there. It's on the fourth Tuesdays, 5.30 p.m. This month, we're featuring Tanya Witherspoon. We're bringing in an outside speaker from Wichita to talk about her work in AI and infrastructure. We host many workshops. Here are a few examples. We have a rural workshop series where we've been going throughout the county to host small business workshops to kickstart small business growth. We're hosting Entrepreneurial Business Basics Jump. It's a 12-week program this year. This is our big program of the year. It has an AI component, so it teaches entrepreneurs how to use AI tools to accelerate their business. And it's essentially a boot camp. It goes through the fundamentals of operating a business. And we host Who Owns the Ice House, which is a program designed to teach entrepreneurial thinking. So it's sort of a pre, these programs kind of work together. So Ice House would be the first course people take, and then they would go into Jump, and then they would start and grow their businesses. We also have some specialized programming. We'll talk about it momentarily. We host a podcast called The Hot Seat, where we feature, we do this once every month or two. We'll feature a local entrepreneur. Sometimes we'll bring in outside speakers. We have had an increased presence in the city this year. So I took over in May of 2025. And our programming has grown in that time. Over the last year, we hosted Who Owns the Ice House? We hosted a marketing workshop with the SBDC out of Wichita State. And we hosted an AI workshop with Troy Tabor from Wichita State. We have plans to do more of this kind of work. But this is some of the stuff we've done over the past year. Some additional programs that we offer, we have a mentorship program where we connect aspiring entrepreneurs with trusted local professionals for guidance and support. We have a website program where we help new businesses launch professional websites, sophisticated, simple websites. We charge $100 for annual hosting, and the design work is complimentary. That's to help people get off social media where they're relying too much on Facebook. We want people to have a foundational marketing presence online We're very excited about our housing entrepreneurship program this pairs with the work the city has been doing around with neighborhood evolution We are working with Jim Groover to run a two-year pilot program focused on subcontractor development so building up our base of subcontractors and some GCs and And so it's an experiment. It was funded by the Community Foundation, and we're launching that in October. So we'll do that this year, and then we'll take what we've learned and do it again next year. And then we run our Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge annually. This had a hiatus, and we've restarted it this last year, where we work with high school students who have entrepreneurial ideas, and they can go and compete in state. We also have some cohort-based boot camp programs such as Who Owns the Ice House Jump, and a new program we'll be launching next year called Avanti, which is going to be a twice-a-year boot camp, six-week program. A couple of success stories locally. All-Pro Heating and Plumbing, this is a transition story. With support from Startup Hutch, Bob and Sarah Hyatt purchased All-Pro Heating and Plumbing from a retiring owner. This kept jobs in the county and the business operating and servicing Reno County. And we're very excited about Forge Automotive on South Main. This is the corner of Main and Bigger. Forge Automotive secured a $150,000 Network Kansas loan and is renovating what was at one time a gas station into sort of a community-focused automotive shop that'll have some DIY elements and a very neighborhood-focused on that block of South Main. And I'll pause there. I think that's the end of my presentation.

So thank you Thank you Just a silly question when is the Automotive shop gonna open I've been hearing about this for a while.

I think they're targeting November Okay, but you know that was at one time what they had said so yeah wishful thinking always I

I just want to say that you used the word experiment, which in leadership circles we use a lot. But in the government world, it gets a bad rap. And I think, if anything, the Quest Center as it used to be and StartUp Hutch as it is now has been an experiment all along. And I think you have a lot of success, foundational success from the past that kind of project you forward in a lot of recent experiments that are doing the same. So I think the success story is way heavily in your favor and the local impact that you're able to have keeping jobs here, creating a job pipeline. all of that, starting with entrepreneurship support. It's a really cool program. Thank you.

Thank you. We're working hard to cultivate a network where folks who've done this in the past and have worked with us many years ago, IdeaTech is a great example, can give back through our programs.

Questions? So are you funding more grant opportunities out there available?

We're working on it. And in particular, what the grant opportunities fund is our programming. So it allows us to be creative with our programs. But generally, it doesn't fund our operating expenses.

No, I figured that. I just didn't know if there was more opportunities out there that you could go after or not.

We're always looking.

Okay. All right, I guess if there's any more questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm not sure who's coming from the chamber.

There's quite a group.

Field trip day. Field trip day.

And you're the leader of the field trip today?

Well, I'm the leader of the presentation today. Is that the one? Yes, it is. Okay. With the team at the ready for any additional questions. We're going to try real hard to keep it to 10 minutes.

Do you want me to start the timer?

Do you want me to? I can try.

I have one right here I can put on the screen.

Oh, that's even more terrifying because then I can see it.

I won't do that to you.

I'm Katie Fallon. I'm the Executive Director of Economic Development with Greater Hutch. The rest of the Greater Hutch team is here along with Deborah Tufel, our President and CEO. of the chamber, and then Greater Hutch and Visit Hutch as well, here to present our budget request for the Greater Hutch Economic Development Organization. So you have this in your packet in full size. So I might tip a little quickly through some of these, but if there's anything you want to go back and review, they're going to be right in front of you as well in your packets that also include our investment prospectus and our impact survey, which we will reference in here as well. But we're looking at a level funding, $200,000 for our operations budget for this next year. And to kind of go through this, I'm going to tuck into Elevate Reno County and our different funding partners you can see in that top right, which do include the city of Hutchinson, Reno County, The community foundation, South Hutch, Startup Hutch, Greater Hutch. And that is the focus that we had over the last year at the end of this last capital campaign, which we're now fundraising for our next capital campaign. And we're now in the implementation process for the strategic plan, Elevate Reno County. It has the vision of being a vibrant, resilient Reno County where everyone thrives through those five goals of high wage jobs and quality investment, the robust talent pipeline, our flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem, which you just heard about from Graham, with Startup Hutch, modern sites and infrastructure, and then our vibrant quality of life. And so what you're gonna see is on the next slide, the first goal, along with the three colored lines are what you see for the goals for the next five years. Then underneath that, the accomplishments we've had over the last five years in the previous campaign of Reno Rising. Of that, you will notice that our goal for 2020 to 2025 was 400 jobs. We created 600 jobs. We had 1.2 billion in capital investment, along with our multitude of BRE visits, RFPs, site visits, and backstage pass visits. That then culminates in this pipeline. So this is 2025-2026 BRE business retention expansion and recruitment pipeline. So the left chart is all of our local expansions leading to all of those different jobs and local investments. And then on the right, you can see that we have 18 ACTIVE PROJECTS IN OUR RECRUITMENT PIPELINE WITH ROUGHLY A BILLION-PLUS OF TOTAL POTENTIAL CAPITAL INVESTMENT, 1,000-PLUS OF TOTAL POTENTIAL NEW JOBS. AND THEN WE'VE HOSTED 13 SITE VISITS WITHIN THAT RECRUITMENT PIPELINE TODAY FROM 20, 25, AND 26. SO THERE'S A LITTLE OVERLAP WHEN WE GO THROUGH OUR CAPITAL CAMPAIGN. IT ENDS AT THE END OF 25 AND 26, BUT THERE'S KIND OF like I said an overlap of those visits take place over the last year and a half when we printed our prospectus to now so it's a continually evolving piece of our pipeline there and to showcase how this ends up being an overlap we actually have two ribbon cuttings that just happened in the last few months for Gun Bros and Apex Shears for their new regional headquarters and those started in 24 and then culminated in the 2026 ribbon cuttings and 2025 ribbon cuttings to showcase how long those projects can take in the BRE sector, and then the patients we also have to have in our recruitment sector for how those tend to take place throughout the years. The next goal is our robust talent pipeline. You can see there we have our three goals to upskill our workforce, bring them above the ALICE threshold, and then attract and retain skilled workers, along with our accomplishments over the last five years of 2,700 CareerQuest students, our physician recruitment events, 350 signing day participants, of which we had 90 this year alone, our workforce roundtables, our Talent Micro site, and our Make My Move efforts that we've been at for the last couple of years. This is a photo of our 2026 signing day, along with the full list of workforce development programs supported by Greater Hutch, of which we've added and subtracted from over the years based on the needs of the communities we serve here in Hutchinson and in Reno County. To dive a little deeply in there, to our 2026 signing day on May 13th, of which we had 90 students, we have moved nine of our 10 households relocated to Hutchinson and Reno County for Make My Move. Six new employees qualified for the Reno County Grant Superior Boiler for relocation. Two applicants pending approval in the Plum Creek development for housing. And then the biggest piece was that we helped testify and push HB2596 for the Prison Housing Pilot Program to add affordable housing to Hutchinson and Reno County. passed into law off the governor's desk in April of 2026, which will allow partnerships with Hutchinson Correctional Facility and Kansas Corrections Industries to build those affordable housing units for Hutchinson and Reno County for the next five years to prove that it could potentially be used as a statewide initiative for other communities across the state after 2031. The biggest piece of this is they will be paid a living wage for the HCF residents. In the program, they'll get an opportunity to earn a certificate in construction or HVAC or electrician all those different pieces required to build a home that can help reduce recidivism if they are able to parole out, if they're in that particular pathway within there. And this picture is actually of William Badu, your new housing coordinator, who is one of our Make My Movers. Goal four is our modern sites and infrastructure. We've invested in, as you all know, we've invested in infrastructure to support growth, particularly for us out at the Kimbell Industrial Park through water roads and power, preparing those sites and buildings for our industry clusters, and then the next five years optimizing the potential of the Hutchinson Regional Airport. In addition, we do a lot of marketing and promotion for real estate and other programs across the state utilizing location one information systems or Lois, Zoom Prospector, and then directly through greaterhutch.com. Site selectors find it through Greater Hutch or Zoom Prospector or Lois, and that is the different ways that they can access the flyers we have made internally for our product on Display for Marketing or other buildings in the area that are on the different Zoom Prospector Lois websites to get in touch with us to help grow their industry here. Just a reminder of that $1 billion of investment, that is Evergy. The other $200 million is VRE Local Expansion Projects. As we all know, it's 705 megawatts. It'll be 500 construction jobs, 20 to 40 permanent jobs with that $90,000 average wage, and that total investment of $1 billion. That actually culminated in the second step for us. We were able to attend the Kiewit Supplier Opportunities Event in Wichita, connected them with local suppliers in these categories, along with quite a few others that were on the prospectus list they emailed out. And we actually just saw, was this yesterday, Laura? The Kiewit truck is now here in town and we connected them as well with the Meijer Landmark and three of their project managers, project employees are going to be renting out of the Meijer Landmark for the duration of the build out for the Evergy project. Leads us to the vibrant quality of life, which is where the rest of our partners come into play. And that is how they are able to help push up all these other initiatives that we are here for. But we're also going to work to provide the quality housing options, child care, family friendly, healthy amenities, beautify the community, and eliminate blight. And as you can see, there's the growth that we've had in those positions through the last five years. Additional marketing that does happen, we are a part of Team Kansas that operates with Kansas Commerce. We've attended SelectUSA International Trade Shows, Industrial Asset Management Conference, also known as IAMC, ICSC, MUJAC, PROMAT, and then regional site selector events with Team Kansas and Greater Wichita Partnership. As Graham mentioned, we are also part of the Heartland Forward see our community which is big for us in the database portion. So we attend the office hours and those data points that they provide for us are really helpful when we are communicating about our community, how great our community is to folks from outside our community. Along with site location partnership and again, relisting those website and real estate database opportunities. This next piece you have the full printout for in your packet, but this is the economic impact summary. And the biggest things to note here are what we have highlighted. Those are, we have this run for Greater Hutch and Startup Hutch during the strategic plan process. So these are the two different impact levels you see from both organizations here locally for jobs and capital investment commitments down there highlighted at the bottom. But this is the one that's really interesting, as we've been presenting to our different groups here, that for every $1 of investment, Greater Hutch generates $2,100 in economic output, $341 in additional workers' earnings, and a permanent direct job created with every $2,698. And that just has potential to grow as we have grown our team and continue to push forward into the next phase, which is elevate Reno County. Additionally, this shows you the city of Hutchinson and other cities' benefits, costs, and net benefits over the first 10 years of this impact study through the different projects between Startup Hutch and Greater Hutch and then the total together. Again, thank you for your continued partnership and working together to grow Hutch and Reno County. We couldn't do it without all the partners listed above, and I will stand for any questions.

Thank you. Do you have any questions?

You did great. Thank you. What was your funding request from Reno County? Reno County this year was $100,000.

Okay. And are any other municipalities in Reno County? South Hutchinson is one that we request as well. We're seeing them next week. So South Hutch, Reno County, and City of Hutchinson are the public funding sources.

And what are you requesting from South Hutch?

South Hutch is $15,000 this year. Five-zero? One-five. Okay. And that's listed in that slide, too. Yeah, I just don't think we have last year, but sorry you have the big one you have this whole thing in a big one.

Sorry Yeah, my apologies this one.

Yes, so we have 215 for South Hutchinson, Reno County 100,000 Yeah, of course And then our private sector makes up the other two-thirds Any other questions council

All right, thank you, Katie. Thank you. All right, Enrico.

Oh, Angela.

I think at this part I just kind of want to remind you that we have set the revenue neutral rate hearing for September 1st at 530 at our normal council meeting. And we have given notice that our mill levy will be flat this year at 42.096 mills. And then we'd like to follow up from any questions you have regarding the last budget meeting. I know there was a request to increase the pavement marking in the CIP program.

I have a question about outside requests before we move on to the CAP. Oh, yes, sure. If that's okay. Okay. So what was Startup Hutch's request from last year?

From last year?

Up at the top of your head. I believe it was $90,000. And they're asking the same. $95,000? $90,000. $90,000, okay. $90,000.

And Elevate Reno County...

I'm sure it says in the page I have it.

We say level 200 to 200. Yes. Okay. So my question is,

there a way to calculate like cost of inflation that kind of stuff that because a level like nobody is operating on an actual level uh budget from year to year right now so what if that number were adjusted for inflation what would it be if they were requesting

I mean, just year over year, I could see between a 3% to 5% increase, like with inflation. I think that they've been, the Chamber's funding has actually gone down over several years, and Startup Hutch was in the process of trying to slowly ramp up what they requested, but have remained flat. I think their intention was to get about where we are now and then remain flat. Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions for Angela? I mean, I guess I would ask a hard question to the Chamber. You know, you are the Reno County Chamber of Commerce, and we have one of the biggest counties in the state. They're only being asked for $100,000. The city of Hutch is being asked for $200,000, double that. And a lot of these projects are out in the county. Some of them. I wouldn't say that. I mean, I don't know how to ask this. I mean, do you think that's equitable?

I could go back and kind of recap some history. Historically, and I've been here nine years, so I inherited this program. And when I came here, Reno County was funding economic development to the tune of about $24,000 a year at that time. And the city was at about $80,000 to $90,000 per year for Greater Hutch. And last year, well, over time, we have obviously tried to kind of make that a little bit more equitable. There was a time where it's not apples to apples because we took on the downtown hutch management for a while. So last year when downtown hutch funding went away, we discussed actually creating a vice president position, which has now turned into an executive director position, which is what Katie holds. And the city, in taking away downtown funding, reallocated that funding for helping support the additional position. Obviously, we're taking on a lot more with site development. But we have been asking the county to increase funding. So over the last two years, the county was at $50,000 a year. That is where they are at in 2026. Obviously, we just reported that we're asking them for $100,000 next year, which is doubling their funding request. I'm not very confident that we will get all the way to that full funding, but we did try to toe the line with the Hutchinson funding in line with what we have been operating on this past year. With the increase, we were at $200,000, and we're trying to stay at level funding with Hutchinson and ratchet up what we're asking the county to do. Now, the population of Reno County is about 60,000 and Hutchinson is about two-thirds of that. And I would say especially because the industrial parks that we often aim to fill are within the city of Hutchinson. We do impact programs out across the other communities But I feel like the lion's share of projects that we're going to land often do happen within the city It was kind of an anomaly the a pack project happened to be just over the line remained in the county so they issued the IRBs But the jobs obviously that they create impact the community jobs that are created in Haven impact Hutchinson so so from a population standpoint I feel like it is equitable because 40,000 of the population base lies right here in Hutchinson, and so the other 20,000 that we serve out in Reno County kind of makes the 200,000 from the city, 100,000 from the county actually a pretty fair alignment if we get that. This year, we actually... Council Member Goss brought up a good point. It is almost impossible to operate at level funding with costs going up, insurance goes up, everything goes up. The way that we've gotten around that without having to ask you for additional funding is to backstop that with reserves from the Chamber. So when I made my budget presentation to the Chamber Board last December, we actually made the decision that we were going to backstop Greater Hutch up to $100,000 with Chamber reserves rather than going to the governing bodies to ask for it. This year, we're in the capital campaign mode for the full Elevate Reno County strategic plan, and we're fundraising on behalf of Greater Hutch and Startup Hutch for the first time ever, and we're actually going out to the private sector and asking them for more. I'm very hopeful we'll get there. We've set a goal at $500,000 a year for the next five years, so a total of $2.5 million of funding over five years. We are at about $1.3 million. We're partway through the campaign, and so I'm hopeful that we can hit the $2.5 million number, but there is always that concern that the dollars have to come from somewhere. My hope is that we continue to deliver. We've beefed up our team. We're courting more projects than ever, and that you can see translates into economic impact for your coffers.

And how much is in your reserves?

We have nothing left in the Greater Hutch reserves. We don't operate with any reserves within Greater Hutch right now, so it's really Chamber of Commerce reserves, which is a whole different fund, but our board supports that. And we have about 300,000 of reserves at the Chamber. which we also get to do things like putting new air conditioning units on our rooftop and pay taxes on our building. You know, sometimes we have capital improvement needs of our own, too, that those chamber reserves are used for.

Gotcha.

Any other questions?

Council, any other questions? No.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deborah.

Okay. If there's no other questions about, um, outside organizations, do we want to continue with the CIP or do you have further questions?

Um, when is, when, when do you need to have our suggestions for CIP like the last day? Cause I like the idea of the County, you know, they look it over and then they send emails, which is what you were wanting us to do, which I have failed. I have looked over part of it. Um,

Sure. We do have some time. We have until September 1st before we set our actual mill levy. We can reduce it from what we sent to the county at that point, or we can adopt the max that we sent. And then we have until October 1st to actually turn in our budget to the county. So we do have some time. We have like all of August to go through that. We'll have to publish our notice of hearing mid-August. But we wouldn't have to have hard numbers for our CIP program at that time. We'd probably want to have a very good idea of where we're headed and how that relates to our bonding capacity and things like that. But we would have some time to look this over more. And my next steps would be normally to give you the entire proposed budget with all the funds in it and more depth to it. And department heads can look over it at that point, too, and to look it over and see if there's anything we need to adjust.

I don't know how the rest of council feels. I have a few questions about some of these items. I don't know if now is the time for clarification on bike park improvements, for example, Martinez Trail improvements, for example.

I guess Justin's here, so I didn't know who else was.

Is that okay? Yeah, that's fine. I mean, if we have answers readily available. I mean, this was also to seek feedback if there's anything glaring that you don't want in there or further clarification on or I like what I see. Truly just a feedback session.

I have a question for Cecil. Is he here or like?

It should be.

All right.

So what's your question on the bike park? What is it?

Well, we just put in a pump bike park for $300,000 and now we're wanting to put another $260,000 into a bike park.

Yes, so this would just be kind of the continuation of the bike park. And so if you can picture where the pump track is now, if you go back towards the south, we have the railroad track. And so this project would then build a series of either two or three jump lines. So these are hard surface paths that have a series of berms and progressively more difficult jumps that kind of bring you from that elevated area by the railroad track. So we build that up a little bit and then you kind of use gravity to kind of feed down back towards the bike park. So this is just kind of an extension or the next phase of the bike park. And so this is kind of the next, as far as building bicycle skills, this is kind of the next progression in line. So you get comfortable with the dirt outer skills loop, then you move to the pump track itself. And then you move to something a little bit more challenging is what this is.

I assumed you fought hard to keep this right there.

I'll tell you, I mean, obviously everybody knows that I'm a cyclist and I love this kind of stuff. This was the highest rated project, first or second highest rated project by the Park and Forestry Advisory Board. They really see the value in the pump track. They see that it's being used, especially by that middle school type age group. I mean, it's getting a lot of use by them, also by younger kids And like the fact that this is kind of the next progression up to kind of keep the momentum we have with the current part kind of moving forward so people don't kind of stall out from the skill level or get bored with it, so to speak.

Us elder millennials also enjoy it. And I was hoping you would say that the next phase would be easier because the current phase is really hard.

Yeah. So the idea with the jump lines would be there would be a beginner and probably a beginner and an intermediate. We probably wouldn't go to an expert level. Still, it means somebody who is not comfortable jumping could still ride over the jumps, not actually jump and catch air. So they would be tabletop type.

You can ride over the jumps. So you can ride over them.

I think it's one more way that – Cary Park and the city differentiates ourselves from the other communities around us because nowadays like the Salt City Splash isn't the gym that it used to be with McPherson and Salina and Goddard all having pools and like bigger and better versions. But the bike park is something that right now really sets us apart. And I've been down there and talked to people who've come through from out of town, from out of state, just to bike. Or they were traveling through Kansas and they read about this on a Google or on a biker's forum and they stopped in Hutch and stayed the night and ate and did all the things. So I do think that even though it's a park amenity, I think it's also a quasi-tourist attraction because it It's kind of living in both worlds.

I do like what's coming with the zoo improvements and even that. I'm not necessarily opposed to it. I just, you know, there's a lot of pressure to build up our reserves right now. And part of this discussion is because I went for a bike ride today for an hour on the Martinez Trail. My teeth get jarred, and I don't mind that. It just gets me a better workout, I suppose, because my jaw's clenched the whole time. But I just wonder if money ought to be moved, and we ought to. And I know that we're getting this new paver, and hopefully that helps some of that.

Anyway. That leads to my question with the Martinez Trail, which is what, page 80?

Yeah, it's half a million dollars. 85. 85.

Yeah. So... That was one that Cecil had mentioned might basically be rebid or recalculated once we have the equipment for it. Would it be an advantage to us to push that off for one more year? until we have the equipment and it's up and running? Or are we thinking that this is a piece that we would be using as a test along with the parking lots?

Yeah, I think the logic there is we would use some of our maintenance type parking lots as our beginning test. So if we mess those up, it's not a huge deal. And then we can graduate to the trail before we graduate to streets. So this is kind of that intermediate step. So I wish Cecil was here to answer the question about timing. So I do see the logic of potentially pushing it back. But then the ZAT slow our training, our in-house training down by a year before we're ready to go on the streets. So we did trim this up a little bit. The original ask was 670. We trimmed it down to 500. I'm really hopeful we can actually do more than I anticipated. So the original number The 670, that was over three years, so that was in 27, 28, and 29. That was to convert the entire length of the trail to concrete. And so now if we're taking out the cost of labor, so to speak, and only doing material cost, I'm hopeful that we can go a lot further than I anticipated than just a third of the trail. Now maybe this $500,000 could do half of the trail. We haven't done the math on it to figure out how far that will go, so...

So are we going to use the paver to make the trail asphalt, or is the goal to do the trail all concrete?

So we're shifting gears on that. Okay, that's what I thought. Yeah, so I should explain that a little bit better. The reason we were going to go to concrete was because it's a surface that we can maintain in-house. So if we have a major crack, if we have... you know, a root pushes something up, we can cut that out and pour it concrete. We can't really do asphalt repairs in-house now, but once we get the lay-down machine, we'll be able to. And so now keeping it with asphalt and keeping that lay-down machine, we'll be able to make those repairs in-house. So that's why the shift. And asphalt is a better... running and cycling surface. Well, especially running surface. It is technically softer than concrete. So the reason really for the switch is now we'll be able to maintain it. Okay.

And that project includes bringing parts of it up. Yeah. It's not just resurfacing.

In this year's budget... I want to say it's $50,000, maybe it's $100,000. I'll have to double check. But we've got money budgeted this year to do essentially, call it a master plan, but really it's to redesign the entire length of the trail to look for those opportunities to get it outside of the levee, either put it on top or put it on the outside. So that was the goal for this year. And then starting next year, we'd start the construction over the next two or three years. That's it.

So while you're up here, I know we got some pushback on the, and I know it's the Gulf Master Plan, but I know we got some pushback on last year. So I kind of wanted to, I guess, now that we have those two holes done, you've upgraded the irrigation, correct? Yep. What, is this developing two more phase, another phase two, two more holes, is that correct on that? Yeah.

so in the budget there are two phases left the first phase that's budgeted for construction in 28 would be holes 10, 11, 12. So that completes the master plan. That gets all the irrigation upgrades. The additional phase that's on the end would be to go back in the holes that we did not convert to zoysia grass that we kept Bermuda to upgrade those and then also to make some upgrades to the driving range. So that's the phase that as we go along, I think we can discuss it. It would be great to have the Zoysia performs better for win or kill, those sorts of things. But after this current phase that we're budgeting now, the infrastructure improvements will be complete.

So what's the $660,000 for the upcoming year?

Yeah, that's the funding from 26 and 27. So it was cut out of the budget in 26. And so instead of sliding everything back a year, we just doubled up on 27. So we're not continuing to – I mean, price of irrigation heads, all that stuff is just going to continue to decline.

And, I mean, that's true for any other project that's being delayed as well. So is there a tradeoff of – Extending the golf master plan by a year and then taking like you know if we did almost a level funding and it was Sorry Closer to 370 350 around there in 2027 and then adding on for another year You know that gives us I don't know, that would allow us some wiggle room to kind of shift some of these projects around because also the other department's argument is, well, everything's more expensive if we delay it as well.

Yeah, the consequence is just the delay by a year. But, yeah, you're right. It would maybe free up some additional capital for other projects in 27.

And then once these improvements are done and –

2030 I guess that closes the door on this master plan is that correct okay and again that that last phase I think is when we we can talk about whether it's worth the money to do that or not it was always in the plan so we kept it but when we get to that point we can have that have that conversation so

So on the irrigation side, what's left to finish then? I know you've got those other three holes that we're going to read your irrigation on, but what's left to upgrade the irrigation from what we did last year?

The only thing that's left is 10, 11, 12. And then we left a stub. So if we renumber and we add a part three between current holes 15 and 16, that stub is there. So we can just tie on and irrigate that piece.

So we did use that money to upgrade our current computer system, I guess, to run all or not. I'm not sure if that's a timer system or what.

Oh, the software. The software.

Did we upgrade that with this last year's funding? No.

I believe so. I will follow up on that.

Because I knew that was part of the conversation we had last time was, like, if we wait and something crashes, we can't upgrade it.

I don't want to speak incorrectly here, but I believe with the donation we were able to do that. But I will verify that, and I'll get that. Okay. I thought we did. I just want verification. I think you're right, but I don't want to misspeak.

Because I knew that was a critical thing that we could upgrade because of the current Windows system and everything else, too. Yeah.

Yep.

Thank you. That's all the questions I had for Justin. You guys have any more questions for Justin? I think Cecil's up to the plate now. Afternoon.

What questions do you guys have?

Well, I totally agree with Stacey. And some of the reason for the discussion on the park thing is I want the public to see things that we're doing. And I totally agree with Stacey. We need to move that striping. We need to start that ASAP. I've heard about that now for two or three years. And it seems like an easy win for us and not a lot of money. Yeah. That. And then I guess maybe the reason I'm questioning... bike park and those things is, you know, how many people are going to use that and, you know, is it just for a few amount of people? I think a lot of people use the golf course. I think more people maybe use the Martinez Trail. That was my question. But that's my only comment for streets. I mean, you know, this is one of the things people expect of us to have good streets.

Yeah. So we had had it in the budget. I think some stuff got moved around. But, yeah, I agree. I think getting that striping in is definitely something that we need to get ahead of. We have a plan to that initial ask we were asking, I think, for three years to get us caught up on striping. But after that, that would all revert to being done in-house.

Okay. I don't remember where it's at here, but anyway.

Page 86.

86, thank you. On the wrong page. No, move the, the problem, and I'm sure this makes Enrico cringe, I'm thinking move it all over to 26, but that means we need to find things to move or push off. But even if we spent half of that, people might notice and appreciate it, so.

We've done some very recently that we were able to tie into. We had the contractor here in town doing woody seat that had some last bit of striping. Oh, yeah? So we were able to do an add-on to that with some other money out of street to get at least some of 17th and Plum, 4th and Plum, 11th and Plum, places that had been really faded, especially going up towards the fairgrounds. We were able to at least get the double yellow redone on those intersections. And those are done now. Awesome. But, yeah, there's plenty of striping to be done throughout the whole town.

And I will say to Mayor and Council that we can easily incorporate the half for striping. That's not going to break anything. But it was mostly in the event that if the Council wanted to front load a lot of things to 27, that's where it would start to break down. And so I was just trying to be mindful of what's being shifted. But, I mean, certainly incorporating half of the original request is not going to harm anything.

Okay.

Yeah, it feels like there might be some way to split the PAVEMENT MARKING REFRESH PROJECT AND THE JIM MARTINEZ TRAIL IMPROVEMENTS, AGAIN, IF THE TRAIL IMPROVEMENTS RECALCULATION COMES BACK MUCH LOWER AND WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT A $500,000, LET'S SAY IT WAS, YOU RECALCULATED IT AND IT WAS CLOSER TO $250,000 BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE HALF, THEN, I MEAN, THAT FEELS LIKE THAT'S SOMETHING WE CAN MOVE AROUND. And I don't know, moving the golf master plan seems to me like something that I would like to see shifted one more year. Splitting the 27 expense in half and then extending it one more year.

Any more questions for Cecil?

Yeah, Cecil, I've got a question for you. Do we have a striping machine? Back when I worked here, they had a machine that did the striping.

So we have a thermo machine. We have it laid at Fort Lane Thermo. We do need to update the pre-melter. So right now we're limited in what we can do. Basically, whatever you can get in the hand cart, you can go and do that, but then you have to stop and wait for that to re-melt. The pre-melter that we had has since aged out, and we are looking at that. I think we were looking at pushing that in, like, maybe 2008. That would give us, like I said, we were looking to front load some stuff with some contractors to get us ahead of the game and then buy this piece of equipment in 28 or 29 so then we can take over and continue doing it ourselves. We still have the ability to do some of it in-house. What we're running into on some of the streets is the street itself has to be To use thermoplastic, the street itself has to be up to a certain quality. If the street's too old, there's no longer any asphalt at the surface, the oil itself that you have to heat up to bond with. So on those streets, we're trying to tie those into when we do a reconstruct or an overlay, then we do the restriping at that point. And the paint we can use is a very short-term, and when I say very short-term, traffic paint doesn't last forever. month under heavy traffic. So it does a quick striping, but it doesn't last. All of our new plans, we're moving back to doing it with thermoplastic, which is a very long, robust product.

Engineering. The traffic signal poles, are these like Imminent dangers are something we can put off. I'm just trying to find more cutting, but I mean, obviously somebody smarter than me has determined the Northeast traffic pole needs replaced at $142,000.

Which one was that one?

It's 5th and Adams. 5th and Adams? Yeah.

That one's been hit numerous times. Oh, okay. The side of the pole itself has been dented in, and it would be almost impossible to have a structural engineer tell you that it's safe at any point. Is it going to fall? Probably not. Okay. But if it gets hit one more time, it could definitely fall or a heavy enough windstorm because it's a cylinder. And once you dent a cylinder, it does lose some of its strength. So that one, unfortunately, when it's been hit in the past, we weren't able to catch who did it, or we would have been able to do an insurance claim on it. So this one's been hit and run many times in the past, and that's why we're replacing it. That engineering estimate does have some lead way. So we're looking at another one that we're doing at 4th and Adams this year, and it's coming in a little cheaper than we expected. So we're able to try to get that done. Now, the one at 5th and Adams, I don't guarantee what the price will be next year. There again, like we've said, everything goes up in the cost. There's only like three companies in the U.S. that make these poles. Steve's dealt with them. So when those three companies kind of have a market, so how do you get those poles anywhere else? Yeah, exactly. And ordering them out of country is just not feasible because the shipping at that point would just be ridiculous.

And I don't want to go down rapid holes, but I do have a question. What is going to change at 4th and Adams? You're redoing that?

Well, we're repairing one of those poles that also had been hit numerous times. And we're moving it back.

That's not what it says. It says street revision.

That was, so this year we're replacing the pole. Next year we were looking at actually looking at that intersection and updating how traffic rolls through it. Do we need to move those lanes? Do we need to extend that, be the north, sorry, southwest corner? That's the pole that's always getting hit. That is still technically listed as a truck route. I don't think that intersection was ever truly designed to be a true truck route, and that's why it's getting hit. So we're looking at widening that intersection for semi-traffic.

Okay.

Is that the one that's over there across by the Pizza Hut? Yeah.

The other, yeah, west of Pizza Hut.

Yeah. Is that pole within six foot? It's got to have six foot clearance from the curb so people can turn.

It don't right now, no. You're going to move it back? We're moving it back. We bought easement last year.

Okay.

So we had to purchase some land to get that. But, yeah, we were planning on moving that. That's moving forward. We just actually went over the plans this morning with that.

On that one there, you are extending the arm, right? Yes. Because it's going to move your arm distance back, too. Okay.

Yeah, that way we're still covering both lanes for the turn lane.

Okay.

And then the, what do you see, Avenue C to be alley work is $150,000 in 2028. Why is that in 28 and not in 27?

I think actually we were removing that completely. That was something we were looking at whether originally we had talked about whether that alley needed paved, do we need to do something different with the side of it. I've been working with Justin's crew on how they're going to be able to mow that. We think we can do some stuff in-house and that alley will just stay a dirt alley. So I think we can remove that completely.

All right. Questions for Cecil? Nope. Thank you, Cecil. Yep. Anything else you'd like to discuss budgetary-wise?

No, I'll look through the MRF later and see. I mean, I know how hard you guys have worked for this and LMS, so I don't want to micromanage everything.

Do you have anything else for us?

No, I just appreciate the comments or the compliments on that. And on the MRF, yes, a substantial amount of effort went into that as well. Jesse gets a big head whenever I mention his name during a council meeting, but I really do appreciate his effort on... really working on our fleet and managing expectations for department heads. Um, so I did grant him like no authority. So if there's a department head or someone within a separate department that wants a new vehicle, just because that he is authorized to say no, um, if they have an issue, they can complain to me, those types of things. And so he really is making sure that whatever we're replacing, we truly need to be replaced. And so on the Murph side of the house, we have that tightened up pretty good. AND I WILL SAY, TOO, ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE It's like no good deed goes unpunished, where say if there's an extra vehicle we have in one department that another department needed and say that original department wanted to replace it, well, if we transfer that over to the other department and then the original department still gets their new one, instead of just having one vehicle that we're insuring and managing, now we have two. And so in certain instances, our fleet has grown a little bit, and so that is something that we are managing to make sure that it doesn't just get continued bloat. So we think we're helping ourselves, but then when you really look at the bottom dollar, it makes it more expensive. So we are managing that pretty tight as well. But, yeah, on the MRF side, I feel really comfortable with that.

call this meeting to a conclusion.

Thanks for all your hard work. Thank you.