City Council - workshop

Good afternoon. I would like to call to order the Hutchinson City Council budget study session September 10th, 2026. And before, I guess I need, I just need to basically start out with reading a statement. Before we get started, the City Council is aware that a number of union contracts remain outstanding, and we recognize both the importance and the time-sensitive nature of these issues. Our union employees deserve clarity and resolutions, and we do not take the delay lightly. I want to assure our workforce and the community that these contracts will receive the focused attention they deserve very soon. We are committed to working through the remaining issues in good faith and moving toward resolution without an unnecessary delay.

We want to thank you for your patience as we work to get this right.

And then before we get started on the actual budget study session, we as council need to make a motion to recess into executive session pursuant to the personal matters of non-elected personnel, exception KSA 75-4319, and in order to discuss matters The open meeting to resume in the City Council Chambers at 1 16 p.m. Second Before you vote, can you matters of what? Oh, sorry Just guess a personal matter non elected officials. That's the matter. We're gonna discuss So I just need a second second Yes

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Okay, so we can get back to the budget discussion. I think Angela was the first one to come up, and I do know that we have to, with outside obligations for council and some of the staff, a hard stop at four. So just so everyone's aware.

Okay. Um, I don't have a formal presentation today, but I do have some options and points of discussion that council members and others have brought up to me that I want to go through. Um, the first one is that internally we've decided not to take over the fuel based operations at the airport. So if we reduce this, it reduces the revenue 2.2 million, the operating expenditures 2 million, reduces salaries 216,000, and reduces the MRF contribution for FBO equipment by 160,000. So the net change for the airport would be 176,000. So that money would stay in the general fund and help our fund balance there.

So what does that take the airport's budget back to?

I did not look at that. Sorry. It'll be comparable.

Because I think they were, what, 700, was that right, 700 and some thousand without that?

Let's see if I can get there quickly.

$500. Last year it was $753,000 last year, I believe, or this year projected.

So it would be comparable.

Okay.

So the top of page 177 in the budget, it would go from 3.1 million budgeted to 176,000? Not to 176,000, but the net change to the general fund would be 176,000.

That's going to reduce the expenditures there by 2,376,000.

I'm on page 49 on the airport fund.

Oh, okay. I was looking at 177, which is the municipal airport fund.

I'm on 179, and I think that... Yeah, the total expenditures for the airport would be $769,000 approximately. So just slightly higher than last year.

Okay, yeah, those numbers match up. They're just on a different page.

And council members have expressed support for the airport to hire their vacant positions. to help with maintenance, appearance, and other things like that. So that is something the airport director is aware of, and as long as no one disagrees, he will plan on doing so and hiring that position.

And that was a position you already had currently? It's currently in the budget, yes. Yeah, and so basically we're just going back to add that position back in.

Correct. We'll just hire that position, yes.

And so the savings that would have been seen by having that position not hired, but funded for this year, does the airport fund get to use those in a different way or how is that?

So usually how that happens is, um, if there's unused salaries that they want to use, usually it's for like miscellaneous contractual, they decide they didn't have an employee, so they need to hire work. And usually that's something the city manager can give them approval for. I think in this case it was to kind of help with our general fund balance situation. So, I mean, that's a discussion we can have is whether we just bank those savings or whether he can use that elsewhere.

Okay. I think that would be something that I'd... in the absence of a city manager, I would be open to hearing how that could be used to better the airport or sweep it back to the general fund. I think either of those would be wise.

I would say please go forward and hire that person. We've seen some needs out there that were pointed out through this big discussion about the FBO and all of that. So I think that we're running on fumes out there.

Alex Stang, Airport Director. If you have any questions, I'm here. I think, yeah, absolutely, added personnel and equipment. Those are the two big things for the airport and its condition right now. And then, of course, material funds. So with what is in the budget right now minus what we're cutting out from the FBO, I think that gives us a good start.

By losing that, how long have you been without that position?

Um, it should have been filled back in 2024 when I started initially what was budgeted for 2024. I wasn't here for that budget season. Uh, it was a manager position and two operations technicians. When I came in, I held off on hiring it just so I could get a idea of what was going on at the airport. and decided at that time it was more valuable to reduce that manager position down to a maintenance supervisor position and hire another operation technician because Two people for 1,300 acres is a lot. I mean, we've got over three miles of runway and six miles of fence, and about 180 acres of land. Woodland that needs to be cut down.

So yeah a little bit of history on that back in 24 many of us saw the need to try to promote the airport and With his hiring he was going to be the director possibly go out promote try to sell land or lease land and Promote businesses to come build on the airport. We feel like we felt like at that time. I won't speak for anybody here now There were two of us that felt like that was a very underutilized piece of our town. Yeah. That had all the upside potential. And, and, uh, that was the idea that, that the director would go out and sell our airport and our city. We would have a manager there that would help with the day to day operations. So that's the history on that position and why it wasn't ever filled. You've explained. So yeah, Any other questions?

The question I have is, so we're pulling this money back that was going to be used by the FBO. Is there any equipment that you need? I mean, I know you have some equipment budgeted, but is there something you could use that would be beneficial that we could maybe add? I mean, because I can understand if I'm asking for... this proposal to do the FBO. I'm not going to ask for other stuff, but now that we're not asking for that.

Yeah. Um, I'll definitely have to look at our five year, uh, especially municipal equipment simply because I was trying to spread as much as possible. Um, our, The one thing I see right now is that in 2028, I have the zero turn mower planned. And this year, our finished mower, it's a John Deere. It's been a bit of a black hole. What is the estimate for that in 2028? I've got $35,000 here for it. I think I can find something.

Is that something that you could take? That was the question I had too, Mr. Chairman. Is that something that you could take the budgeted salary from your miscellaneous contractuals and use for that MRF? Because that's your MRF for 28.

I mean, that would be up to Angela and whoever the city manager was. we could potentially absorb that 35,000 somewhere.

Um, and that would give you, I don't know what salary set aside, um, for that position that wasn't filled is, but that would eat up quite a bit. I would imagine of what was left over and your new person's going to need, um, supplies and whatnot. So, um, is, is this amount here adequate for, what you're imagining they would need to accomplish next year?

The major piece of equipment we absolutely need is already in here, and that's the field tractor and the mower deck. So that's my biggest concern. Second up, we have the offset flail mower. We could scratch that if you wanted to, but that was basically giving us the capability to get deeper into the ditches. We had damaged one of the tractors last year by trying to get into the ditches along Airport Road. But yeah, if... If the numbers work out, we would definitely appreciate a new finish mower. And that's primarily used to get around the taxiway lights, the runway lights, some of the business frontage areas. It's just a smaller mower that we can get into the tighter spots.

And I'm not a lawn guy. We have two of them up here. $35,000?

That's not enough, probably. No, it's probably not. If you can, the last one, well, that's not enough.

I mean, I would almost like to not wait until 2028. If we can make something work where he can have it now and use it.

I can get some better numbers, and I'll pass them through, Angela.

Yeah, I mean, I think you get the idea here. We're all, I think, in agreement that we want things better out there.

Okay. I mean, I just feel like you need the equipment that we need to get you the equipment you need. Okay.

And trading the FBO MRF equipment for your MRF equipment, I think, is a good tradeoff that if you're... I mean, that was $160,000 of MRF equipment. I would imagine that you prioritized the FBO stuff ahead of yours in this budget, considering that it was more timely. I don't know what page your other MRF projects are on. The field tractor was $80,000.

So right now, 24 foot mowers, like 34,000 is that that's the one, right? I'm sorry. What was that? The, the, the 20 foot mowers, like 34,000. That's the ones you're talking about in the Murph.

Um, yeah, the 20 foot mower. That's, um, that's the deck for the field tractor.

Right.

Uh, So 2028 we had planned for the zero turn, but it's looking like we need to replace, replace our finished mower sooner than that. Um, I mean, what I could possibly do is pass up on the flail mower for now and use that in conjunction with 35,000. Um,

I would rather see you keep the flail mower that you need.

And just offset the cost from the offsetted FBO equipment.

Well, yeah, that's what I'd rather keep what you have budgeted now.

Okay.

And if we were going to do 160,000, let's take, let's do, I don't know. These guys can tell us more. What? 40, 45 out of that 160 and leave that in the budget to help buy a zero turn mower that he needs. What are you talking zeros?

I mean like size.

Um, 60 inch, 72, probably 72. Okay. Uh, we don't necessarily want the bat wings. Right. Um, so I think you're basically using that to just know up around, um, your facilities and stuff like that.

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. It's, we use the tractor for the big stuff. So you're probably talking 15 to 20,000, maybe 25 tops. Yeah. Okay.

So it would be reasonable to leave in there.

The one 60 that we were cutting for the Murph and just put that towards your Murph would one 60 would cover everything that he's trying to get at the 80 for the field tractor, the 35 for the zero turn radius mower. And then you, you said another dollar amount for the flail mower.

Just clarify. So you're saying leave the whole 160 in there in the budget.

You could.

Yeah. I just didn't know if we wanted to take some only figure out approximately, say, $40,000.

Well, I think with the unknown of he doesn't have an exact dollar figure on the equipment, give him up to $160,000.

Right now, I think we're at $142,500. So throw, what's a conservative number?

$25,000. I mean, $25,000 on that. Okay. Throw another $25,000 on there. Yeah, so it sounds like you're about right there.

So... 167.5.

And that would be the 160 plus the other you had budgeted, right? Because we had the 160 budgeted for the FBO, and he also had his other budget.

Yeah, I'm saying the 142.5 is the field tractor, the mower deck, and the flail. Let's throw another 25 on there for the zero turn and just go with that number. And that still reduces the Murph ask considerably. I think that sounds like a good idea.

Yeah, I agree. I just want to make sure you have enough money to get those items that you need for sure. So,

I don't know if you remember, because I've been here a long time. At one time, we were looking at solar power for nighttime to charge the battery systems up, turn our system power off, and let the solar power, the batteries that charged up over during the day would run the airport because you have night lights that are staying on. I used to work on all that. I remember all that. And at one time, we was going to put a solar farm out there. So I don't know where that went to, but I like that idea.

So one of the things I've, you know, lofty ideas, daydreaming until we get to that point. we've got a section of land that's really unusable for the airport and that's the, the old OB landfill. Right. Um, and we're working to clear cut that over the next two years. Um, ideally I haven't looked into it much further. That could be a great site for a solar farm since we can't really utilize it for anything else. Um, So, yeah, that's something I've thought about, would like to do more research on.

Well, I know we talked about it one time because I'm an electrician. They went and talked to me about it. And that power system you have there where all the system where your lights are at?

Yeah.

You stick your system in there and it would shut off at nighttime and you'd use the charged battery off the solar power for the nightlights.

Yeah, you can either bank the power or you can put it back into the grid. That's correct. And recently the FAA has kind of determined their process for approving that stuff. So it's more feasible now than it's ever been.

But it would save us some money, electricity most definitely. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

All right, council, any other questions?

Do you have the direction you need?

Sorry, I have to log in again. So the next topic to discuss, I've had a lot of questions both from the public and some from council members asking about salaries. And one of the ways this comes up is what are our biggest expenses and, you know, Where is the money in the general fund going? Well, most of the general fund money, usually about 70% goes towards salaries. And some of the questions I received are, you're offering 5.5% average raises next year. What does that look like if you reduce it by a percent? Because remember, these wages are just compounding, and we've been giving over 4% raises since 2024. In my opinion, if we were to offer 5.5% raises, we could not continue offering raises at that level without raising the mill levy or cutting services or cutting staff somewhere. So I ran some numbers, and it depends on how you want to reduce that 1%, because what we're proposing for 2027 is... different. We're not doing the comp study because there wasn't enough support for that with unions and staff wise. So what we're proposing is doing a two percent cost of living raise at the beginning of 27 and then doing about a three and a half percent average merit. And so you get your merit raise when your anniversary date is. So If you cut 1% on the merit, then you're really saving like half a year's worth of salaries. So a full year of salaries in the general fund for 1% would save $308,000. Some of that gets allocated to the utilities, water and sewer. Some of that is reimbursed by fire district number two, and some of that is reimbursed by the county for dispatch. So that net savings would be $264,000. So the questions that have come up was if we do then offer a combined average raise of 4.5%, do we still remain competitive? And so Renee might be able to speak to that a little bit more. It's probably going to depend on the position largely based on what the comp study produced. Some positions are probably going to be more competitive than others. So I don't know if Renee wants to add anything to that or if you have additional questions about that.

Sorry, what was our trend before 24? I'm sorry, I'm putting you in the spot probably.

Yeah, I just went back to when we started increasing raises. I believe it was probably 3% or so. And I know when we first started offering those higher raises, it was because we had offered lower than our market raises during COVID.

Okay, thank you.

Not being here historically very long, I can't answer a lot of that back. But I do know the city that Angela's referring to, we did go out and they gave us a lot of detail. Most of our employees that are covered by a union. The fire and FOP we spoke to first, they weren't willing to, maybe not willing, it wasn't as attractive to them the way it was going to be set up. They preferred to go with the step system that they requested or had in place. SEIU, due to a situation, we hadn't had a chance to finish negotiations with them. Hoping that comes up soon and that was going to be a discussion. I do know that I came in late in the year, past budget time. There were no salary renewal or reviews prior, shortly that year when I came on. and we did not do any cost of living or salary adjustment to the schedules. We left everything in place that was the year before. So the merit percentages, the salaries themselves, the beginning and top stayed the same. So my hope was to at least make some changes on that since we weren't able to do anything for, that would be for SEIU and non-union employees. But then going forward, depending on budget, there are some positions that we probably would really like to look at that maybe have been held back previously. I don't know that we can look at all of them. A lot of that was going to be dependent on the budget, because I knew discussions were happening that went to sales tax came up and things that was just something we were just going to have to wait and see what happened. But we are not, I will not say, we were not way out of line. with the market necessarily, at least overall. I think most of our positions are in line. There are some that we probably need to look at at some point.

This is the comp plan or the comp study that we did in 2024? Yes. Okay. And I recall doing it. And I recall the process. How far out did they basically project for our steps? You said that there was a while where there was no change to the top and bottom of the steps. Was that comp study in particular the one that changed the steps, or was that something else?

No. I guess I'm confused on the question. Sorry.

You said that two of the unions didn't prefer the way that the steps were, but that wasn't from our comp study from 25, was it?

Correct. It is, yes. What we presented was the study itself, their process. It's a very, very large process and there would be a lot of changes among personnel as far as Some of it was based on comp studies. Some of it was based on compression. There was quite a large, but it involved a significant change in the way we handle steps, merits, anything in salary. That's something that... I was not able to get enough support behind to put it in place. The fire and FOP take a significant number of employees under that union. Neither wanted to go that direction. SCIU initial conversations with them was they would prefer to go back to a step system instead of the merit we have in now. But again, that wasn't a discussion that we were able to finish up. So the system that was proposed was not something that was widely accepted. There's some great information there, some processes that we can use going forward, so it's not a complete loss, and it is something we can still go back to at some point going forward. It just kind of came at a difficult time with everything else.

So what you guys are suggesting is a 2% cost of living and a 3.5% merit. And that saves us almost $300,000.

No, that is what's in the budget right now.

Okay.

If you were to reduce that to maybe a 2% cost of living and a 2.5% merit or some combination, that would save about $308,000 in the general fund.

Okay.

So the wiggle room lies in the average merit raise. Okay. And shifting, so basically we have 4.5% to play with. The savings would vary because if the heavier part is the average merit raised, then that's the thing that would fluctuate. But if everybody gets the same COLA adjustment, then that's a set number and that would eat up that savings. So I guess the... It's hard to make a decision when we don't have, like, if there were a widget that we could slide around and say, here's how it saves. Give us a dollar figure.

Yeah, exactly right. It's hard to ever give an exact number. And you guys know how that works. It's get as close as you can.

Yeah.

And that budget also is.

Oh, so sorry.

And also, I mean, that budget is assuming we keep every position filled all year long. I mean, that's just. Worst case scenario, best case scenario for employment, but worst case for, you know, and that's not going to happen. But ideally, we always want to try to plan for assuming everything is full.

So based off that information, Angela, is that something that you, because I know we had talked about this before, is that something, if we went to that two to two and a half, is that something you're comfortable with with our budget, with that number, or do we need to look at that a little bit deeper? Sure.

I mean, I bring that up as a discussion point and I know like everything, I mean, we have unions to negotiate with, but if, My understanding is if you say we have to do 4.5% because we need to raise the general fund, that that's what we would have to go back and work with. I know there's a whole lengthy process, and I don't want to speak for Renee. So it's not necessarily that we're suggesting this, but just as a discussion point.

Yeah, and I'm not trying to discredit the staff because they are the backbone of our city, and so we want to make sure they're taken care of. However, I just want to make sure as a budgetary item that we're doing our due diligence to make sure Yes, we can sustain doing what we're going to do. So that's why I'm asking that question.

I think I would rather see it flipped and see a 2.5% COLA and a 2% average merit raised. I think that gives staff the assurance that they're valued and that they're – I mean, even that doesn't keep up with inflation, but it leaves less to the unknown because if the biggest part of your raise is guaranteed, I think that's the steps that – means we're negotiating in good faith.

Oh, I'm sorry. No, I think that was one comment that was made from a few of the SEIU staff that I talked to and some of the non-union that, from what I understand, when the scales were designed previously, they fixed the bottom step and the top step, but nobody in between, so nobody actually... got moved up in comparison. So that was, I know, a very nice gesture, I will say, or a good option for the staff because then everybody at least kind of gets that movement and it gets our scale moved. And then obviously then they still can work for that merit or stuff, whatever it is that they're going to be on.

So in that scenario, Stacey has suggested we're looking at $200,000 to $250,000 savings that we can put into our fund balance.

Yeah, if we're cutting it based off the merit, it might be like half of that for $27,000, but then half of that carries forward into $28,000. So you're already like eating into $28,000 budget when we commit to that, if that makes sense. But that's what would be for a full year even even if we did

The 2%, the 2.5 colon, the 2% merit, that still brings us down 1.5% from the 3.5% of the average merit. So heading into the 2028, your merit raise, because that's based off of their anniversary date, that's the one that's going to, I mean, the 2% is going to eat up less than the 3.5%. So I think that gives us a little more stability heading into 2028 also.

Yeah, I think that sounds like a really good idea on the way to approach that too. So you have any more comments on that part, this part? Council, any more questions on this part of it?

I know that Angela wasn't asking for specific motions on some of these items, but if everybody could just give a nod of consensus, that way she knows that this is how we want to move forward. Thumbs up.

Because we're on such a time crunch, I don't want to come back on Tuesday.

You got my nod. You got mine too. I can agree to that.

Okay.

Renee, I got a question for you before you leave real quick. We have very many vacancies. How is our look?

Good. I mean, you know, we always have, you know, five or six here and there. But, you know, three years ago when it was 29 or whatever it was, it's like, you know, we're not, there's nothing outrageous. Good. So, yeah, we're good.

Good.

The next topic that had been brought to my attention was removing the assistant city attorney. And so this was originally brought up last study session or the last time we discussed the budget. The original goal or what was discussed then was to cut the assistant attorney and then contractually hire out some of those basic duties such as creating ordinances and resolutions and they had proposed setting aside $80,000 to hire that to an outside firm and so the assistant city attorney with benefits and a phone allowance and everything that salary is $163,000 and then the $80,000 would have uh, raised that. Um, so the net savings proposed then was 83,000. And so going into this, I don't know if we still need to keep some in contractual to hire out, um, any services we might need. Um, but those were some things that were brought to my attention.

Yeah, we probably need to keep some of that so we can hire out contractual type stuff. Um, I do know that for sure. Um,

And I think when the city attorney position comes open and somebody is looking at it, if they know that they have a good cushion of contractual services that they can tap into, I think that makes the job easier. more palatable for, I mean, you don't have the person in your office, but you have someone that you can call and reach out to for all of that stuff. That makes sense. And if we don't use it, we don't use it.

The plan would be to leave $80,000? Yeah. That's what they had originally estimated was $80,000? Yes. Okay. For contractual services. I'll give my nod on that. I'm good with that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Another topic that was brought up was the use of the existing stormwater funds and how we are funding it with these new sales tax. So in the proposed budget we had suggested transferring 2.1 million from the sales tax to the new sales tax funded stormwater fund and then funding normal operations out of that new fund to keep it separate because of legal obligations from the old stormwater fee fund. So one topic that was brought up was can we use the reserve balances and the old stormwater fund maybe at least for a year and redirect some of those funds to help us restore our general fund balance. So to do this, here are some ideas. We could use $418,000 of that to fund Gulf, and that would indirectly raise the general fund balance, that $418,000. About $60,000 of that could be used to fund the street operations, and then we could transfer another $496,000 to the general fund to help support park operations. And then if we wanted, so sorry, the total of all of those is $974,000. So that leaves you another million that you could either use to support stormwater funds or you could use it for possible CIP projects. You could use it for pavement marking. I think that would qualify under streets. You could use it for brick streets or sidewalks. So the pavement marking was something that had been cut from $250,000 to $150,000. The brick streets was something we haven't added back into the budget. And then the sidewalks of $200,000 was going to be bonded. So those are some suggestions that I would have, or ideas anyway.

Because we've got – I was trying to find that. We've got about, what, $7.5 million in the current stormwater fund?

Right over $7 million, yes. Okay.

And so we do – it's not like we don't have some money there to use for that. So then basically you'd be – okay.

Yeah, for the historical stormwater commitment, which is the one with the limited scope.

How did you, so on those allocations of Golf Street, General Parks, how did you come up with that determination of why those amounts for those specific line items?

So for golf, that $418,000 is what the general fund is transferring over to the golf fund. So it would just replace what the general fund is transferring there. For street, the same thing. I had just put an even amount transferred from the new sales tax into the street operating fund. And so the difference there was the $60,000 that was going to come from the general fund. And then for the transfer directly to the general fund, I added up all the operating budgets from true park operations. I didn't include park maintenance or park admin or like Memorial Hall or the sports arena. So I was looking at the zoo. I think Horton Forestry, I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the other one, but I had looked at what I thought would actually qualify as parks operations and not the maintenance side of it. And so the difference between what those operating costs are and what we're already transferring into the general fund from the stormwater is the $496,000. So that's where that idea came from, is that that would be the difference in making up that park operations.

Okay. So the $418,000 transfer to the Gulf, is that the operations transfer? Okay. And it's 419, is that the annual transfer that offsets operations?

Correct.

And you can't use any of that money to build back up the reserve fund, though, can you?

So the way the ordinance was written, technically you could use it for just about anything. If we want to... Remain in the spirit of what we publicized we were going to use it for street parks and stormwater then these things are what would qualify as that but there is a a clause in there that it could be used for other things. And I believe the reason we put that in there wasn't to be dishonest, but just in case we had an emergency or something like that, that clause was wrote in there.

Well, I know Stacey brought up in the last meeting talking about the length that we could operate off of what our reserve was. And so that's why I was looking at going, that would be a way to build that back up. But I just didn't know if that was something we could do or not.

I think that's the ghost of Paul Brown in the room, and he intentionally worded it in a way that it would give us some freedom if we needed it. But it was worded in a way that people understood it easily, and they could say predictably, these are the three things that I'm saying my city should prioritize. I think that as the public has become more aware of the financial situation of the city, putting it in the reserves is something that absolutely makes sense for us. It would help. I mean, it would raise our reserve by almost 50%. So the $1 million. So I think that would be a smart move. Because if I'm understanding, you said the $974,000 is... Or did you say that that's the total? Was it one total or is it one plus 974?

So we were going to put 2.16 in the stormwater, but if we wanted to redirect that, the things I identified were 974,000.

Okay, got it. So we could still do one million into the reserves and then have up to $974,000 to play with. knowing that the So later on one of the things that that I know we'll talk about is the golf course master plan and The idea there is that we would basically, instead of doing two phases this year, we could do one. Last year, we did not fund a phase. So the work that was completed at the golf course last year is what was funded in 25. So in 27, there would really not be any work done at the golf course because we didn't fund it in 26. I think this 418 to golf, yes, we're transferring out of the general fund, but it feels like, I don't know, could we not do the transfer? Does the golf fund not have the funds in it to?

No, there are several funds which we only fund to get them to a zero balance at year end. and the golf course is one of them. So they don't have anything in their operations to fall back on if we don't make the transfer.

And so this money is all going towards operations then, correct?

Correct. So on paper, at the end of the day, if we're doing 418 to golf to offset operations and then we're doing one phase of the golf course master plan on paper, it's still going to look like we're giving $600,000-ish to the golf course. And that's a cut of quite a bit because the CIP for the golf course is, I think, 600 even.

Yeah, I think it was like $660,000 or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah, $660,000. But, I mean, the difference is one is for operations and the CIP was for master plan projects.

So is that something you were okay leaving that?

I feel like we don't really have a choice.

Yeah, that's kind of what I think, too, because it's more of an operational thing, not a...

I mean, it does keep $418,000 in the general fund by taking it from the sales tax. The thing I would like to see... increased as the streets part. Sorry.

Sorry to interrupt. Justin Combs, Director of Parks and Facilities. On the transfer to the golf course, that's always a very conservative number. If you look back historically, we've been closer to $200,000, $250,000 for that transfer. We are very conservative when we estimate our revenues for the year. I would be shocked if the number at the end of 2027 is actually $418,000, but that's a number that's in the budget. That number sounds big, and when you look at actuals from previous year, it looks out of place, and that's the reason, because we want to be really conservative on those revenue numbers.

Thanks, Justin. Council, do you have any other questions for Angela on this item, if this is the direction we wanted to go?

I would like to see the streets section increased. I know that that's something that we as a council get a lot of feedback and criticism on, but it's also very important just for regular maintenance and maintenance. The brick streets was cut from the 27 budget entirely. We still set aside a very small amount that we always do, but brick streets as a line item as a project was removed from the 27 budget, right?

I can't remember if it was removed or just we didn't request that to begin with. I'd have to look.

I ask about this, Stacey, and I think staff needs clarification on what we're wanting to do with the bricks. If it's a mill and overlay of the brick with asphalt, that's one thing. If it's restoring a brick street, that's a completely different thing.

Right, I agree, and I think that that's not something that I... know how to make that decision. I think giving them money and letting them decide what's most appropriate would be the best avenue.

Well, yeah, that's fine. My goal here is to do more things like we did on Avenue B right up the street here. Mill and overlay those bricks unless a community or a block wants a special on their taxes.

Just being blunt. Yeah. Cecil Weibel, Director of Public Works. That's kind of some information we were going to bring back to you is some options we've been working on. Really, the three options that really, really stand out is you either reconstruct the brick streets as is. That's the most expensive, labor-intensive thing we can do to them. Brick streets last a long time, but when they do get to a certain point, it is very expensive to get them back to a good, crisp brick street. The most cost-effective thing would be to do mill and overlays on those. But there are some historic districts and other neighborhoods that might want to keep that brick look. So an option we were looking at would be we could do stamped concrete, stamped and stained concrete that would have that brick look. It is still more expensive than asphalt, but way cheaper than actually maintaining a brick street as a brick street.

And that would satisfy the Landmarks Commission, the historic one?

I still need to do some checking with Matt's crew on that and make sure how that fits in. We haven't brought that to them yet. The other option that kind of ties into that is there's been some cities in the past that have done like an accent piece, if you will. The intersections would either stay brick or stay stamped concrete, while the rest of the long run of the block would be asphalt. So it still kind of gives them those looks. But those are some options that we would look at. It would really tie in just for an equivalent. I don't have an exact number in front of me. But it would be starting to tie in like what we would do for arterial street maintenance as far as cost goes. It would fluctuate a little bit depending on which method council wanted to go for. But that's the kind of stuff we would be looking at in the future. So if we are wanting to put some money into brick streets, I would say right now it would be pretty close to looking at a project would be equivalent to what we do with arterial streets right now. And we can scope that up or down depending on how many sections, how many blocks we want to get done in a year-front time frame.

Well, I mean, I'll speak for me. I just want to do more of what we did. If we can fit that into the regular street budget – I think there's at least two of us up here that will be watching and seeing what's going on with Brick Streets.

Yeah, I would say right now what we had for arterial streets currently, I would say if we upped that, I don't know if doubles the right amount right off the top of my head, but if we did that and the plan was accepted by council, then that would be a good starting point to say we could really hammer out some brick streets fairly quickly. It's still going to be a long process. There is, Evan can correct me if I'm wrong, what are we looking like, 13 miles of brick street in town? Give or take. I mean, it's... And they're all different widths. I mean, it's... So, yeah.

Cecil, I live on B Street. I live right on B Street. The thing I see about them is that... they give. You know what I mean? You have to pull those bricks up, put new concrete, or there's a lot of them like this. So that part where it's really bad, you'd have to take the bricks out and put new concrete under it, right?

Well, depending on how bad it is, so what we did over here on B Street recently, we only had like maybe two or three locations that we had to do that. What we did is we went in with a leveling course with the asphalt on the rest of it. So some of the imperfections that aren't too dramatic and we make sure they're good, we can do a leveling course and then come back with a final course of asphalt. And that's way less time consuming and labor intensive to do. But it would still be a case by case. We would have to look at these streets to make sure.

Yeah, I think it's something we need to look at too because I know the brick streets are kind of cool, but it's just so costly to actually do the brick versus the asphalt.

I mean, and we know this year's budget's already going to be tight. In all honesty, my suggestion would be if we put something in maybe like $100,000 this year to let us go fix some of the worst of the worst and then readdress this issue next year where we can give you some actual better hard numbers on what a big project would look like.

Now, by fix, you mean mill and overlay that block.

No, I'm talking about right now. We would take some of the worst of the worst locations and we would do a full depth repair We do that with in-house staff We would do a say a 10 by 10 section of the worst spot of an area dig that out pour concrete We would pour the concrete with stamp concrete We could get a lot of those really bad areas done. But if you're talking full blocks My numbers not big enough You know, I'd rather

If that's the case, I would rather kick it a year and take that $100,000, if that's what it is, and put it into fixing it correctly instead of wasting that money.

Yep. And that's what I say. If you're willing to give us a year on that budget, because this is a big budget item, we could definitely come back with a proposal on how to get, and I could have a number on what it would take to look like to fix all of the brick streets in town and have that number for you. I just don't have it at the moment.

Is it something that we could do $100,000 this year and with the understanding that work won't be done on the brick streets, but that that would be banked for the next year?

That's what we've been doing in the past with some of the smaller amount anyways.

With the 25K that's been continuously put in? Yeah. And I know it doesn't go far, but I think if we did this small amount this year and then next year we would increase it, I think it at least gives you a tiny bit in the bank.

The street division is already doing those same fixes now on some locations. If it gets to be a safety hazard, we do that fix now. That's what I was talking about. We would buy those locations that are becoming a safety issue. We're not talking about fixing something just so we can come fix it later. Those safety places. If we can do that and come back with a full-scale plan for you, we could have a full-scale plan for you for next year and what that would look like to fix all of the brick streets in town.

I like that idea better of pushing that money onto the next year if we can do that. Um, it sounds like a good idea.

Well, and if we're just making the adjustment within the $974,000 figure, um, I guess we have to figure out what are we taking it from or are we going to adjust it and take it out of the 1 million that we're putting into the reserves? Because if we're staying within the nine 74, um, We've already heard about the golf fund, but we haven't heard anything about the park operations amount, and that's the largest item on there. That would be the one I would imagine we're pulling from. And Brick Streets was also just one of the options that Angela mentioned the other one that I wrote down was sidewalks. Our sidewalk improvement program is $200,000 a year. In the grand scheme of things, it makes an impact, but it doesn't do a whole heck of a lot when you're talking about linear feet. But yeah, I think to make the decision, we would need to hear about the park operations part.

I haven't ran this by Justin, so I'm kind of blindsided by this. But this is really just like his park operating budget that we would be supplementing.

Yeah, so essentially it's, you know, if you look through horticulture forestry, probably Fun Valley, golf, we were talking about golf. So it's just supporting those that ask for the operating dollars. So I don't know that it was specific line items within those. It was just supporting those general operation funds. So again, yeah, this is the first I've heard of this.

Would that be, is that salaries or is that projects or?

Well, if it didn't come from a specific line item, then it could be all of that. It would just be supplementing salaries, commodities, miscellaneous contractuals, anything that comes out of the operating fund. So everything outside of capital outlays and equipment.

So is that something you could pull $50,000 out of each and transfer out? I know this is catching you off guard, but just asking.

Without knowing which funds exactly those came from, if it was Fun Valley Park, I mean, I can do some work for sure. I would just have to know exactly which, because I have 13 budgets for parks and facilities, so I'm not sure exactly how that was divided out, so...

So, Scott, are you thinking that instead of 418, it would be 368 on the top line?

Yeah, if that's how the allocation would work. If he came back and said, yeah, no, I really would rather you pull 60 out of this one or 40 out of this one just to kind of – or maybe that's not – I don't know. That's what I was thinking, too. So I'm just throwing out a number, just kind of like you're not sure either.

So essentially – just to make sure I'm following you – essentially you're asking me to – to reduce my general fund ask in those budgets that Angela targeted for the 496 and 418. So if I can reduce those budgets, essentially, it would reduce the transfer from the stormwater fund. Does that make sense? The transfer is not tied directly to salaries. It's not tied directly to commodities. So I would have to go in and look at the overall budget for Fun Valley for horticulture and forestry and just essentially skinny those up.

Because basically it's us asking, is that something you could pull, say, $50,000 out of each? If not, we'd have to go back to what we're shifting to the general fund to go, no, it needs to come from there. It's just an ask, I think, more of a question.

So I think, I was thinking of it a different way. It's not asking you to cut the 50 from your budget. It's just saying that, You would still get that from the general fund. It's just saying that the storm or the sales water tax wouldn't offset your request by that amount. So you would still be able to request the 490. It's just that it wouldn't go from here to here to here. It would just go to here, and then yours would be 450 instead of 490. Yeah.

So the overall impact of that then would be on the general fund balance. Correct. At the end of the bottom line number for the general fund. That's what I was imagining.

So you're not being asked to cut 50K from a budget that we literally just threw at you like five minutes ago or idea we just threw at you five minutes ago.

So in that scenario, yes, that would just reduce the general fund balance. Whereas in Scott's scenario, the mayor's scenario, then that would reduce what we're taking from the sales tax. So there could be more going to stormwater or another fund without impacting the general.

Yeah, I think I was going the wrong direction with that. Okay. Yeah.

So two different questions. Yeah.

Okay.

That would be something, since we have a week to get this done, if everybody's in agreement that it's more about changing around which funds it's coming from, not necessarily cutting operations. Those are two different ones. One's a big blip on me. The other is Angela just kind of...

For me I want to stay within the law, but I want to increase the Ending balance a reserve fund. That is the goal. I think for me that is my goal we want Bigger reserves for our bond rating aka Credit score for the late people. Yeah, I mean that's most important and

Yeah, that was kind of my biggest goal, too, was just to get that fund balance back up because of the comments Stacey made. And our other meeting is like going, okay, so what do we have to do to make that happen? Because overall, to me, that's kind of an important goal. I think that's your direction, I guess. Sorry, I took you down the wrong path.

Okay. Before we move on, can we just spit all those final numbers? It was 368 to golf, 160 to streets, and 450 to park operations. Is that still...

Okay, so, yeah, I'm not matching those. Golf, I have the 418, and then are we wanting I'll talk about the golf master plan separately. Street, $60,000, and then general fund, $496,000, and we're wanting to cut that to $446,000?

So if we took $50,000 from golf and $50,000 from park operations, as Justin said, the golf operations is usually in the $200,000 to $250,000 range, and that the $418,000 was really conservative. And again, this isn't asking him for a cut. This is just shifting what fund it comes from, then you could do 160 for streets, taking 50 from golf and park operations.

Okay, I understand now. notes here. Kind of back to that pavement marking, are we wanting to increase that $100,000 too? I think that was the general consensus and we could use some of this money to do that.

Where are we at right now on budgeting for pavement marking?

$150,000. $150,000. It was proposed to increase that to $250,000.

And in talking with Cecil, that in the, hold on, let me get to the right page. In 2027, if we took- What page is that on? Oh, 460.

460, thank you.

In the CAP, yeah. So that would, this was the project that he had talked about, and he can come up and speak to it if he's in here. Oh, there he is. This would be increasing our contractual commitment But basically, we're getting the job done, and we're kind of front-loading the work and the understanding that we would eventually bring it in-house. Can we talk about this?

Yeah, so over the years, this has just kind of got something. A different process was tried. It was an epoxy paint and other paints that they just don't last as long. So our stock in the streets has just kind of gotten behind. This is a plan to... get us ahead a little bit, use some contracting and labor to help us get the street markings back where they need to be, while we're going to simultaneously be bringing this back in-house and doing it with city staff. But this will help us get caught up, and then we would be maintaining it in-house. It's a thermoplastic. It's a long-lasting street marking material.

And is it the product that as it wears off, there's other reflective stuff underneath it?

Yeah, so this product is like a 15 mil, I think, layer of thermal plastic with glass beads embedded inside of it. So as a surface wears off through either traffic or snow removal or whatever it is, that new layer of color and glass pops back up. So it does keep that reflectivity through the whole process.

Now this 250, would that be used to buy the melter or whatever you need?

This right here would be used for using contractors to get us ahead right now. We currently have a melter. It's an older one. We're working to see if we can fix that or if we're going to need to buy a new one. But that would be in a MRF in a year or two to see where we're at. But this is to get us back on track.

You and I talked today, but if we spent $100,000 to buy that melter you need, what would it take to get up and running sooner?

We're going to be working to get ourselves up and running, too, but we're so far behind. Even if we had a machine right now, in-house staff couldn't get caught up fast enough. This is to get everything kind of caught back up, and then we will take over. We're looking at maybe this process two to three years of using this, and then we'll this line item will pretty much go away and it'll just be part of the normal street maintenance budget. I gotcha.

And so if we increase it, increase that by a hundred thousand, where's that money going to come from?

Right now?

That's just asking. We're trying to increase the fund balance.

I mean, that's something we could use what was supposed to go to the stormwater fund to supplement if you wanted. Um, There's probably some other line items in the CIP you could cut as well. I think some of those will be discussed. So I don't know that we have to decide like right now. We can just note that that's our intent. And as we start discussing these other things that... Potentially might get cut we can See how we can work that in I think it's important.

That's what the public well I was gonna see someone more questions to you.

Sorry. Sure. No, I so if we if we didn't spend that 100 the extra hundred this year, I mean Do you think you'll have your melter up by next year to where we could actually use that money to actually doing it in-house versus contracting out so it would be more beneficial to us so you can put more money towards that or no?

I think that if we wrote this in a way where we could look at if we had that money – I'd have to check with Angela to make sure we're okay on that. But if we could look at using a portion of that to get us ahead with the contractor and see what that new melter would cost us where we could get going quicker, that's definitely an option. I would still suggest right now to get us caught up for at least two years having a contractor do some of that legwork for us just to kind of get us ahead because we are so far behind.

Because we've got $150,000 for $27,000 and then $250,000 for $28,000. When you hire a contractor for the year, how much can they get done doing that type of work?

It's all based on linear feet per line. So depending on the street, do you have a double yellow, a single yellow, chopped? Is it parking stalls?

Where's our biggest need, I guess?

I mean, it's going to be all the arterial streets in town, really. The newest street in town that doesn't need it right now is probably going to be a majority of Main Street, but after that, yeah, we're going to start needing that in a lot of locations because the locations that were done, even though they're fairly new streets, was that other process of epoxy paint, and it just does not last as long. The street itself is in good shape, but the markings are faded. It's kind of a wholehearted effort.

So $150,000, how many linear? I'm just a guess. Just throw a dart at the board.

Just a guess. I would say that should be able to do the equivalent of probably Main Street from 4th to 30th. Okay.

That's every marking on it. That would include the parking stalls and everything on something like that.

Yeah, anything on that kind of street. I'm using that as a good example because I think everybody knows where Main Street is. That gives us a good example, but... That's a guess right now.

No, I understand. I'm not asking for a hard number. I was just kind of an idea.

Yeah, that's what I wanted was an idea.

Because, I mean, I would rather, I don't know, I'd rather push that off, adding the $100,000 to that and pushing it off a year maybe. I don't know. It's just me thinking, the general fund as well.

I feel like we've made, we've found savings in other areas that... yes, we could potentially push this off, and yes, there's some efficiency in having your own machine, but I hear what Cecil's saying as a cry for help, that we are so far behind that we will never get caught up, and yes, I could buy my own machine, but buying my own machine and doing it in-house is an eight-year project, whereas hiring a contractor to do it for two years and take a huge bite off of it makes it a four-year contract or a four-year project once we get our own machine. So I feel like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like what you're saying is if we just do the 100, it's too small of a bite. It's not really going to get us anywhere.

So to be honest, once we get this machine and everything in place, this is an every year thing for us. The street department's going to be laying thermoplastic every year once we get it going. There's always new streets put in or overlays or something done. That's another side of this is ultimately we'd be looking at is it more cost efficient right now when we contract a street to be overlaid. We also contract striping with that. So one of the things we're going to be looking at in-house when we get this equipment all up is as new streets are put in, do we still continue to contract that? Is it cheaper to have them do it while they're here? Or is it cheaper, more efficient to have it done by in-house staff? So when we get that piece of equipment, that's really going to get us going on seeing where we can start saving money in the future. We are behind. Right now, I don't know if 100,000 difference is going to change that from a four-year to an eight-year cycle, or if it's going to knock it down to, is it a 10-year right now, and we're going to cut it down to an eight-year cycle. I don't have all the hard numbers in front of me. We're really trying to map out all the streets in town and what condition they're in and how much thermal that would be. The $100,000 would help us, whether that's used towards getting the equipment or used towards getting us set up. We always have that opportunity to come back to you in two years and say, we are still farther behind than we thought, and we need to try to maybe a third year of having a contractor, but we don't have to have that answer today.

It seems like your staff would be pretty busy with, as we do get the machine and we start doing things in-house, it seems like you would stay pretty busy with with the restriping after the arterial maintenance program runs through each summer.

Yeah, and that's the other thing is this is a seasonal thing. There's certain times of year we just cannot lay the material. Asphalt temperature has to be at 50 degrees and rising. So it pretty much knocks out at least a third of the year that we can't even do it. And then any day with any kind of moisture or rain puts it out, we can't put it down either.

I'd like to see an additional $100,000 in there. I've heard from citizens, you know, why aren't our streets striped? I think it's an easy win and people will notice. And you've described the problem to me well enough to justify it that we need to catch up. And so that's where I'm at with it.

I think where I'm at is I think we give the nod for the extra $100,000 right now. And as we go, maybe we figure out where we're going. where we can cut it from there. But I can I mean, I think it is an important thing and our streets need to be marked and

And I can definitely look and make sure as long as it doesn't do anything. If that extra $100,000 can be used for either the equipment or continuing more striping, I will run the numbers to see which one of those is more beneficial to give us a head start. Because if it is getting the equipment and we can still have a contractor as part of that while we're simultaneously doing it in-house, maybe that buys us that time. But I don't have that answer for you today.

I can live with that. You said that, Greg, about people talking about our striping in town, and I've heard that too.

I don't agree with everything that people tell me, specifically potholes. I feel like we have pretty good streets, but the striping, I wholeheartedly agree. It's like, why wouldn't this ever strike? It looks bad, and I think people notice that stuff real quick, and people want to notice things.

Well, I agree with the $100,000, too. What I hear mostly with people coming in is our streets. Striping is a big part of it, so I would have no problem with the $100,000. But I have a question for you. Once we get this program going, are you going to need more employees once you get this street thing going? Are you going to come back with us in a couple of years and need more employees to keep it going, or what?

I think that question really comes down to how aggressive do we want to be in the future. If we're looking at doing a lot of stuff in-house, we are starting slow, but as things add, I mean, We take on a lot with that division already. It's the same division that's doing the mowing of the ditches and grading alleys and everything else. If we tie a crew up on striping and another crew up on asphalt work, then it is a possibility in the future. I'm not going to say we're going to be ramping up right now. I'd like to see how this plays out and what we do. So, at the moment, I'm not going to ask you for that, but it is a possibility to look at. But I want some numbers behind that before I bring it to you and say, hey, this is how much more we can do if we add, you know, another four employees. Right now, I don't have that ask or need.

I guess just something that came to mind. So, you think by us buying our own equipment, striping around, using our employees, we could save money?

Historically, we used to do it. 15, 20 years ago, we did it all in-house. When I first started Citi, that's what we did. Something changed. I don't know if it was a change across the whole country or people started trying to use a new piece of equipment, but the epoxy paint is something that we don't have and couldn't do. And then after seeing how long it lasts, I personally just don't like it anyway. So I've been really pushing to change back to what we do.

But from what you see, is it cheaper to do it in-house or is it? Would we be better off to hire it then?

No, I think if we have the equipment and the personnel, this kind of process is always cheaper and better quality to do in-house. When I say better quality, I'm not trying to ding on any contractor. But if we have that one-off that we decide last minute, hey, can we add this in, that's a change order and all the other things that go along with a contractor. If it's our own staff, it's just, hey, buy another pallet and let's get going. If we have good weather, we can extend our season longer. You can't do that with a contractor because they've got their own. So I think we can get more done in-house just because of those options.

And then if you have a warranty issue, you're waiting on the contractor to come back and send someone to look at it, and then your project manager is tied up taking pictures for the warranty work. If it's our guys, you just send the crew over to take care of it, and then it's done, and you're not waiting until the next season to fix the things that went wrong on last year's project. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of efficiencies in having our own staff work on that stuff.

Well, generally speaking, there's more items coming up talking about pulling back in some contracts. The number was thrown out. It's about 30% more. And I don't know if that applies across the board, but it's usually 30% more for some contracted services than if we did it in-house. Because I asked... you or David, that question this morning.

Yeah, and that's an average depending on what it is. But, yeah, I mean, having somebody else do the work for you, there's a cost because you're paying their overhead as well.

And to your point, the work is there. The work has to be done. We'll figure out the best way to do it based on your recommendations. But I think dumping some more money in there, Scott, is probably an easy win.

Oh, I'm okay with it, yeah.

So the next topic that has come up was can we restore the two construction tech positions that were removed from the 2027 budget? An estimate of the cost of those with benefits would be $172,000 with approximately $103,000 being paid from utilities. for net cost to the general fund of $68,000. The thought behind this would be that we would be able to save on contractors that we pay for these types of services. And then also there was a request to add two project managers potentially, one to be paid out of the general fund and then the other one to be specifically for utilities. So I don't know if you want to expand on this.

Yeah, I've talked to most of you. Steve, I didn't just talk to you about this. But there was a push at one point to try to pull some stuff in-house. And then through attrition, we had some people gone. And then in an effort to look at budget costs for 26, some positions were not filled. These are some positions that... Through talking, it was talked about just eliminating those. After talking with staff, I would like to see about having those two positions, at least those two put back in, and then possibly two project managers, one for the utility side and one for the public works side. Those are designed to try to help us get some bandwidth for Evan, for our engineer, to help let him do more of what the engineering job he needs to do and let these project managers and others be able to handle some of the day-to-day paperwork and going out and checking on things to help buy some bandwidth. I know in the future there's also some looking at, you know, as we do more of these projects in-house, there'd be a look at possibly additional staff within engineering, but right now these are the ones that we kind of brought up that Angela's already had a chance to at least look at the cost. So is there any questions you guys would like to know about Why we're looking at that?

I know that in talking to department heads about this, it's very beneficial for us to have those positions. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we contractually with, to like outside firms, I think we saved about $360,000. Is that about correct?

I think that's the number we had saved when we first started removing some.

So I think that was in the talking of like, we're moving away from not moving completely, but as much as we can, because you look at that savings, we can put that and have that in house. And then sometimes talking to staff too is like, sometimes when you have somebody not in house, um, you lose some translation. So sometimes it takes longer to get to where we need to get to that. It costs us more.

It's kind of the same thing I was talking about with the other contractors. I mean, they're here in-house. You go grab them, you need something, they're right there. If you're dealing with a contractor, and we have really good luck with some of our contractors we use currently, consulting agents, but they're still not here. So getting them something to look at, or they may be dealing with another customer and they can't get to you at that moment. Just having that in-house staff gives us that flexibility to move on projects quicker, faster, and move. Our engineering staff isn't just looking at street projects and stuff. They look at utility projects. They look at planning and zoning projects. The park department, they help with that. The engineering department is truly, kind of like IT, they are truly a helping department. On their own, they've got their own smaller tasks, but they really help every other department. Making sure we have that bandwidth to keep up with everybody else's needs is where we're trying to look for these positions.

And I think by adding those two, I know there's some work that we need to get done, and we can't do that because of this as well. So, I mean, it's something that I'm totally in agreement and moving forward with this.

These tech positions, where are they at? Are they engineering or where are they at?

Yeah, they're the ones that go out and, like, watch these positions are the ones that watch contractors do some of the work. Inspectors.

I think that when we raised our water rates in 2026, part of that was the promise of delivering better services and addressing aging infrastructure. And without the engineers on staff, We won't be able to accomplish those things as quickly. So I fully support this. I'm glad that we talked about this. I think this is going to help get us ahead. And hopefully we don't have a backlog to work through. But I know there's a lot of projects in the pipeline with utility and water. And hopefully planning and zoning is going to be busy with some kind of boom soon too. So yeah, I think this will be really beneficial.

Yeah, absolutely.

Good afternoon, Count.

Evan Patterson, city engineer. I know when budgets are tight, you have to make sacrifices. And while they may affect your departments, if it's for the best of the city, we're always prepared to join in and do what we can. So knowing that all of you and the rest of the staff... support my group adding personnel really has a huge impact on us and we're really grateful for your guys's trust and i promise we will do our best to maintain that trust so thank you all very much thank you thank you you can thank your boss for pushing back a little bit

The next topic in line with that is could we push off buying the asphalt distributor and paver or should we go ahead and purchase that? So I don't know what your thoughts are or what questions you have for Cecil about that.

Do you know what page that's on in the budget?

I know that Cecil and I have had lengthy conversations about this machine, and I think starting on working on parking lots and a way for us to – I know we talked about doing on the – I know we talked about on, like, the Martinez Trail.

3M2.

the concrete option versus the asphalt option and I know the concrete option is going to be a lot more expensive but where we have this machine and we have the staff to learn how to use it and everything else I think it's I was really pushing back on this machine and the more we've talked through it I think the more it makes sense but I do want the rest of council to weigh in on this too because I didn't think it was a necessary thing we needed to have and one question you asked me that I did find out there is a possibility for anyone

If you rented it for a full season, you're looking at well over $100,000 just to rent one. And then it goes back. So the machine itself we're looking at is $600,000. It is a pricey piece of equipment. But most of these pieces of machinery last for years. I mean, it's 10, 15 years, especially how we would use it. The APACs of the world and stuff that run highways, they may go through a machine every three to five years, but for what we're gonna be doing, we should be able to make this machine last 10 plus years, I would hope. So yes, if we rented for six years, We're gaining four years for free if we pay to buy it. I know that's just an option to look at, but the long-term goal is to be able to do parking lots, the Jim Martinez Trail, some of the other hiking bike trails in town, but also getting away from Chip Seal in residential. And after a little bit of time for my staff to train and get how to use this really well, we would start taking over the residential streets overlays as well. That would be a 20-year project to get them all done. So it's not like we're going to just knock them all out in one year. But the cycle we are looking at would be like a 20-year cycle. We would still keep our eight-year cycle we're currently looking at, where a third of that area would get done then, along with some other treatments we would also do in-house. I believe it's called a... Cape seal type of thing where we put some asphalt coating down, but it's not no aggregate to maintain those streets, but that's the longterm goal is how we can do this and save money and have a better product with, especially within the residential streets and our parking lots. But, um, definitely won't answer any questions you might have.

And I know that the other question was too, I I'd made was the, the size of roller we had in house to be able to use, to, to, coincide with that? And I question, like, do we have a big enough machine? And you came back with what your information was on.

Yeah, so, I mean, we currently do have a full-size wood also, a highway-sized roller. I mean, it's able to do, I think it's eight foot wide, six to eight foot wide. It does three passes to get a whole lane on a full-size street. So, same size big contractors would be using. So, there's not a question of that. And the one we have is still in decent shape. We would probably have to look at upgrading that sometime in the future maybe three to five years depending on what happens with it but yeah the the two big ask is for this would be the actual asphalt lay down machine and the um distributor truck, which is actually what hauls the oil in and out. And we've already checked locally. Obviously, we have an asphalt plant here in town. If we didn't have an asphalt plant here in town, I wouldn't even have brought this up as a possibility. But we have an asphalt plant in town that they're not going anywhere. And then there's an oil distributor we can get to that's within an hour drive. So same thing the county is doing. The county is currently using their own asphalt lay down machines as well. So a little different beast doing it in town versus a county road, but something we would still be doing.

Justin Combs, Director of Parks and Facilities. I just wanted to point out we've got two projects in the CIP that we cut the dollars amount specifically because of the asphalt machine. So those were the Jim Martinez Trail. We originally asked, I believe, for $500,000 and we cut it to $250,000. And then some parking lot repairs we asked for $200,000 and we cut it to $100,000. So between those two, We cut $350,000 out of our CIP because of this machine. So that takes up a big chunk of purchasing that machine.

I mean, for me, we've been discussing this for quite a long time and I've had all my questions answered at those previous discussions, but I know we're taking a hard look. So I respect the conversation, but I feel like I was excited about having this machine. I feel like it's money well spent. He just, I don't remember that piece of the discussion earlier, but... That's a good point.

I think what I like about it is you were saying you can narrow it down, make it wider. What is it, 8 foot?

I believe the machine we're looking at can go down to, I think, 8 or 10 foot, which would be for trails use, and then up to 15 foot, which would be able to be, like I said, doing parking lots and street lanes.

So that, I mean, it gives you a wide variety of...

areas you can surface yep and there again it's back to that same comment we made when we're talking about like the thermoplastic you know having this in-house we have a brick street we want to go cover ourselves in-house we don't have to make sure that the change order if we decide we need to add another you know 100 feet to this project it's in-house we just we take care of it right then and there

Well, I'm excited about the Martinez trail. I know it's not concrete. It'll be asphalt again, but it's been asphalt for how many years and we're getting by with it. We can start over and get by with it for another 15, 20 years or whatever. And by having it in house, if it deteriorates section, I, I can't imagine how much that would do in a day. I mean, would it do a mile a day of eight foot? I mean,

Yeah, it all depends on how many trucks you throw at it. Highway crews, they do a couple miles a day. They may have 20 trucks lined up waiting to go.

That's exciting for me. I know it's a chunk and it would help the reserves, but I think maybe we're going to talk about other things that might help that. I think. I don't know. I'm anxious to hear.

I think that I remember the parking lot and the Jim P. Martinez savings, and I feel like right off the bat, you have a third of it paid for in savings just on those two projects alone. I understand they're multi-year projects, but I think that's a significant savings that justifies the machine and all the things that go with it.

And, again, if we can learn how to use it and we save that 25%, 30% of hiring outside entities, I think that's a smart move as well. I forgot about how much we were going to save on those two projects, too. Again, there's been some good conversations about it because I was not for it in the beginning at all. So thank you, Cecil.

I think one thing I'd say is that the reason it's going on is that we have a good maintenance department. Our garage keeps this stuff up. Yeah, absolutely. Without that, we'd have to send them out to get fixed, and that would be very costly. So we have to give kudos to our maintenance department mechanics that keep this stuff going. Absolutely.

That covers all the operational things that I have on my list. The next few items I have are capital improvement projects that have been brought up. The first one was the bike park project. Somebody just requested that we review that and what that is and if it's needed.

Towards the back.

You got it with 277? Should be 260. Huh? Oh, 260,000.

277 page number, yes.

Sorry. Sorry. Was there any type of grant money or anything for this project?

Not on this one.

Not on this one. And I know we've had conversations about this, that it does bring people to our park and town to – because it's kind of like not very – I mean, it's pretty unique, I guess, for what I'm trying to say. And so I agree with that, but then I'm like going – I look at it and go, well, could we spend that $260,000 somewhere else or build something back up? So that's my two cents about it. I'm not a bike guy. I mean, I bike, but not – that type of bike. That's not my type of skill set. I think that's Stacy's skill set.

I just dabble and get hurt.

I'm happy to answer questions specifically about what that project is, but the other thing I wanted to bring up is for all of my CIP projects this year, I listed them all and gave them to Park and Forestry Advisory Board and had them rank them. High priority being a five, low priority being a one. And so that's how the list was developed. That's how this project was moved from 28 to 27 was because it ranked really high by the Parkland and Forestry Advisory Board. So we developed that board. That was one of their call lines. That was one of the things we wanted them to do was to work on CIP projects. So it's not just me sitting back and saying, hey, I think this project's more important. It's getting the board involved. um to look at it so but essentially what that project is is just a second phase of the bike park we are the only asphalt pump track in the state of kansas there's a couple other communities that are looking at them and there are only a handful of dedicated bike parks in kansas there's one in johnson county i think pittsburgh has one and there's used to be one in emporia but it's fallen under disrepair so this just adds to that to that amenity so

I don't know. I just wanted a conversation about it.

Yeah. I mean, it would be nice to have, but, I mean, we already want to look for $100,000 to add to the, I guess, the striping. I think this is something we could pass on in a year. This is fun.

Okay. So this would be a bonded project. Oh, this would be a bonded? Okay. I don't know that I have the list of cash-funded CIP projects handy to...

There aren't a ton.

So what you're saying, just so... To kind of summarize what you're saying is removing this project from the budget doesn't actually save us $260,000 because it would be bonded and it wouldn't necessarily just come out of the budget for this year anyway.

I would say it a little bit differently. I would say it would not impact our general fund balance at the end of the year. So it is real money that we would spend and bond and pay that back over 20 years most likely, but it would not impact a $100,000 change to the general fund.

Well, I know we were kind of pushing a little bit, too, to actually, I won't say quit bonding so much, but to where we can pay some of this out of cash. Is that even an option to do that, to where we wouldn't have to bond something like this for 20 years, to where we could just say you pushed it a year and it could pay cash for it? I'm just asking a question. I know we'd kind of been trailing that way a little bit, but I didn't know if that was something we're going to get into deeper going forward or not.

My intent would be to keep pushing to bond less, yes. So there is a possibility that if we push this off to 28, maybe we could use the sales tax for it. We do have many projects that are funded by sales tax in the capital improvement fund right now. So if we wanted to pay with this from sales tax, I'd have to do some looking to see if there's something else we could shift.

I'd be in agreement to kick this down the road a year.

One thought. I'm sorry.

Go ahead. Well, one thought I've had is, you know, we're projecting, what, 8.5 or 8.9 million to come from sales tax. Honestly, what I'd really like to look at is, after we get a year of sales tax under our belt, we find out how much I honestly predict it's going to bring in more. I mean, I just have a hunch. And I feel like in a year at that point in time, we take and we look how much extra, and I consider it like my home budget. I pay my bills, pay what I need to pay, and then at the end of the day, if I got extra money, then we can, you know. So I think, I feel like that's the way we ought to look at it. And maybe in a year, if we bring in an extra million or something or make an extra 500,000 on that, we could look at.

putting that towards something like that. Well, I appreciate your optimism, but sales tax receipts are trending down.

No, I'm going to be encouraging people to buy, buy, buy. You need two Pepsis, two candy bars.

I will say that I think it was in March I mentioned, I don't remember what month it was actually, but I mentioned the transient gas tax that we would be able to go from Based on the state statute, we'd be able to go from the 7% that we're at now up to the 9%. And when I brought it up, we didn't have time to dig into it because it was the middle of budget season. So I know that that's a conversation that we're going to eventually pick up. And my rough estimates on that is it brings us about a quarter of a million dollars in And it's something that we would plan to sunset after the second golf course or golf tournament in, I think, 2032. But that there is another income stream that we potentially have ahead of us as a city that our residents wouldn't be paying, but our residents would see a direct benefit because we could use those funds to... fund more of the the nice-to-haves it has a specific tie to funding tourist projects and that kind of thing so I'm sure Justin has a whole dream board of things that that we could put it to so There there's potentially additional relief in the future Even if our sales tax proceeds go down I

And did the state change their cap on that? Or did we just need to take action on that?

We just need to take action.

I thought we were maxed out.

We may have been at one time, but we're not right now. We're not currently. A lot of municipalities like up by Kansas City just did it in advance of the World Cup. And they got a good amount of money from it.

Put that on a future agenda item.

Yeah. So are we in agreement that we're going to move this?

Take it off? I think so, yeah. Well, I don't have a problem with holding it back one more year. You see how we're sitting with the new tail stacks coming in?

So the next project was the Cary Park master plan, golf course master plan. So we did, just a little bit back history, we did completely cut that project out in 2026. So in 2027, we've asked to make that piece up. So the ask there is $660,000. I did, if we chose to maybe cut that back to half to 330, so just a normal one year funding, The impact is it just pushes the construction back a year, which will cause prices to go up 10%, 15%, 20% on irrigation parts and supplies and sod and those sorts of things. So that would be the impact of cutting it back. I would definitely not advocate to cut it completely out again. I think that really sets us back since we're so close to being done. We just have the holes 10, 11, 12 left, so one construction phase left.

And this is just to complete the master plan at the golf course. It seems like a lot of money.

Our strategy has always been to budget for half of a phase per year. And so every other year, then between the two years, we have enough budgeted to complete a phase. It keeps it in front of city council every year, not every other year. And then also just kind of levels out where it's coming out in the budget. And then from a playability standpoint, we don't want to be tearing the golf course cup up every winter. We want to give it some time to heal, give our players a chance to play without being under construction.

Well, I'm not a golfer, but I'm okay with keeping that in there. I feel like we just made a cut to a facility, and if we're this close to the end, that's just how I feel about this item. It is a lot of money, and it seems like... I don't know.

Justin, what's the final year of the master plan? Because our CAP only shows to 2030.

Yeah. So once we have holes 10, 11, and 12 finished, I think we can have some conversations about some of the last phases. One of the phases was the software upgrade that we already did. We were able to do this year with the donation that we received. And then I believe there was another year of just catching up with sod. So we were in a process of converting from Bermuda to Zoysia. So one of those phases, those end years, was a conversion to more Zoysia. So I believe, and I would have to double check all my notes, if this stayed at 660 for 27, that in 28 we could build this phase and we would be done with all the infrastructure changes to the golf course. That would essentially wrap it up. In the plan, there are those couple other phases that are not irrigation related, those sorts of things.

So 10, 11, 12, is it more irrigation related or is it more...

Both. So what changes would be made on 10, 11, 12 to... Yeah, right now we're working on two concepts. So one concept would be just to rip and replace the irrigation and then make some minor changes to the greens and tees, but keep those as three holes. Our second concept would be to take holes 10 and 11 and combine those to a single hole. So now that becomes 10 and 11 instead of 10 and 11, or... Yeah, 10, 11, and 12. And then so we would lose a par 3, what's currently hole 11, and that par 3 would move to the green of 14, so between 14 and 15, which is the phase we just completed. What that does is it spreads our par 3s out a little more evenly throughout the course. then adds a little bit of length overall to the course for our really good college players.

We just completed 14, and we're going to tear up the fairway?

No, we would not tear it up. It would go on the end of it. Okay. Yeah.

How old is the irrigation on that?

I'm sure it's... I know parts of it were done in the 80s, and then parts of it even earlier than that. We still have cast iron main lines, so...

So is that, are they having a ton of issues with them?

Not necessarily a ton of issues, but we do have more brakes on the older stuff than the new. Right, of course. The other thing that we're doing with this conversion is we're converting all of our heads. So it's a golf course style head that's a head and a valve together with our new system. So we don't have to turn on the entire fairway. If we have a hot spot, we can turn on one valve, one head. So it gives us a lot more control as well.

I don't know. I'm a golfer and I know what the revenue generation is for the course and I know how much pushback we had because of what we spent last year. That's my only pause. That's just my two cents on that. If the irrigation system was in disarray and it couldn't operate, stuff like that, maybe I'd have a different opinion on that. But that's kind of where I'm at with this part of it. So that's just my two cents.

I would caution that if we continue to push that back. we are going to get to that point that it's, I know. Yeah, I get that. And it's just going to get more and more expensive. So it's, it's kicking the can.

I know it's, it's, it's one of those things where we spent that money last year and we got kind of the pushback to go, maybe if we push it another year, we would get, I know it's, I know exactly what you're saying.

Cause now we've got 15 holes with, with relatively to brand new irrigation and three that's on, you know, 40 plus. Yeah.

This is one that I would like to see cut. half it just seems like there's a lot going to the golf course when we consider the offsetting of the budget this and then the the water reuse project that we haven't talked about I mean that's a lot of money that's going to the benefit of a golf course that I know people use it, and it brings people from out of town potentially, but overall it is not a moneymaker for the community, and I know that municipal golf courses aren't, but this is something that I would definitely cut in half.

What do you mean cut in half?

Like you'd take it to 330?

Yeah.

But I don't know that you could actually do this cut in half to achieve what you're trying to do.

It would just push construction back one year.

Oh, I got you. Okay, I understand. Okay, I understand.

So you would have no construction in 2028? Correct. Okay, because we're already not doing anything in 27 because we didn't fund it in 26. So you would have two years of non-construction, but you would be banking that 330. Correct. So then in 29, when that came...

28 or 29.

Yeah. Then you would have your full 660.

Which it will be more than 660 at that point, but just the nature of it.

Well, my thing on it, I never played golf until I played golf with Mr. Meggers there. That was something else. I took one shot. He showed me at a tee-off. And then I became the driver after that.

So we offer golf lessons if you'd like to come out to the park.

So it's a lot of money. I agree. It's a lot of money, but I don't know if we can afford to put it back another year. I mean,

The real cost is just the increase in materials over that year. It's not necessarily that the system's not going to blow up in one year. It's that we'll pay more for all the irrigation parts, for the pipe, for the sod, those sorts of things.

What if you just, I know this is not part of your golf master plan, but what if you just redid the irrigation on those instead of doing anything with the teas or the greens or any of that stuff? I know it's going to get away from your zoysia conversion. It's just a question.

I mean, that definitely would save some money by doing that. I think those three holes would stand out a little bit as not being the same look and feel as the rest of the course. And the logic was if we were going to tear the course up to replace the irrigation, let's go ahead and make those playability improvements. Because realistically, are we ever going to come back? to do those improvements once the irrigation's done. So this is kind of the best opportunity to do that. And it'd be a lot more costly in the future to come back and say, if we want to replace the green and I'll replace it in a second.

But you could do that in stages, though. That you go, hey, we're going to replace 10 green or whatever, and I'm just spitballing.

Yes, that could be an approach, yeah.

I'm fine with half of it. If that's what the majority wants, I can go along with that. I think that... It will for sure move forward, especially after the U.S. Senior Open and everybody's excited about golf. It'll sail through approval with the council.

So what are you agreeing to, Greg? Half of it or just not do it?

Well, what Stacy said. No, no, you just... Half of it? Basically, you're pushing it out a year. It still gets done.

So cutting the request in half, pushing construction back in.

Yes.

Those were all the capital improvement projects that I had noted that people had questions about except for the Cary Park reuse project.

I think David was going to give us some insight on that.

Yes. David Gwynn, director of utilities. My big ask for this is don't squash it, because if you squash it, then we can't even apply for the grants. You'll have plenty of time to squash it down the road if we decide we don't want to do it. The reason why this makes sense for Justin, it's a $14 million project in total. Seven of that is ours. That's the SRF side of that. That's the big ask from utilities. We can essentially get done with all the math, rough math, we can get a $14 million project if he gets this stuff for his grants for $5 million with the overlap and then we got the forgiveness and then with the money that we save on the RO water that we don't send to Cary Park that we can sell back to the city.

And what were those numbers that you...

I thought I was spouting on it.

Yeah, I mean, because it's kind of an important thing, too.

I get a little lost here, but the loan is for 7.2. So the life of the loan, 2.84 interest, that's roughly 8.2, but we get a million worth of forgiveness. So that brings it back down to the 7.2. The 1,500 homes and the 2 million of RO water that we don't send over the course of that 20 years is $2 million worth of water, roughly. So $5 million and nothing comes out of the general fund to get $14 million worth of work at the park. Does that make sense?

Because how much we're paying for the water currently, you explained that as well too.

I believe it's all city. Like every building, I don't know how you would categorize that, but it's $0.06 per HCF, and it actually costs $1 for us to produce it. So that's the savings on our end that brings you the $2 million, if that makes sense.

Yeah, and so the only reason I had you come back up, too, to give us more insight on that was because the explanation I received was if we don't get the overlap, then the other project just goes away.

If he doesn't get his funding, I don't do this.

And so that's the only reason I'm willing to explore this is to go, if we can get X and we can do this, then I'm willing to. And then at that point we can actually look at it and go, then we can decide at that point if we want to do it, yes or no. That's correct. We're still not committed to it.

No, we're not committed to anything until we sign on the dotted line for those SRF loans.

One more thing. Can you put the rumor to rest that we're doing this for some kind of data center?

Yeah, we're not. You can't.

Okay, but why can't we?

When you apply for these SRFs and you sign all that dotted line, you're saying I'm using this money on X. So in this instance, we're using it for reuse for Cary Park. So a data center, it doesn't matter if a data center comes in and somebody buys some land along the way up through here, they cannot tap on and use this in any kind of a way. We would have to go back to the state. And ask the state, hey, can we, and I don't even know if that's possible, really. That's just kind of speculation going on.

I just wanted to clear that up because there's people that think that we're doing something.

Whatever we say we're going to fund this with, that's what we have to fund it with.

Yeah, and we're not tapping off of this line to do other things. So to your point last week, Stacy, it is a very expensive water line. to water the golf course. But I think it's so transformational for Cary Park that it's worth this.

And it is more than the golf course. The golf course is the biggest user there that's going to draw this, that does draw this from us. But there's more fields there. There's all kinds of irrigation that is not just the golf course. So there's more to it than that.

And I think this number may not be right. Is it 660,000 gallons? What is that number of use?

No, I think it's 400-some thousand that you use a day, 400-some. I don't remember.

I knew it was somewhere in that range, and I just wanted to let go. If we get this, it's a depletion of the aquifer that we're not depleting of 400-some thousand gallons of water a day.

Yeah, it's in that 400 to 450 gallons in July and August. It's a peak demand is what we use out there.

It's just something that I would like to look at and we're not committed to.

The other thing is, too, on the National Park Service grant, there will be multiple opportunities for council to vote and approve that as well. So even by allowing it to still be in the budget and proving it in the budget, there's still other check-in points. We'll get notice. So if we're awarded the ORLAP grant, at the same time, we would get the notice to proceed for SRF loan. So those two things would happen simultaneously. So all that would have to come back to council to accept the loan and then to move forward with ORLAP.

And this SRF loan is not going to take away from any of the other projects of water going to homes in our town?

No. So there's different categories where you apply for SRF loans as well. In this particular category, this is on the wastewater side. This was one of the only ones. I think we had two, correct, Evan? Two of them that hit above the line. And that's why we moved forward with this one. It is in, we have it built in on our rate structure, so that's not a pinch point on our end. So it doesn't take away from anything that we can do, like for the foothills and those folks that, you know, for that SRF that we just had the community meetings on that stuff, panorama. Those are two different buckets, and there's multiple buckets.

And for further clarification, this doesn't really affect the general budget.

It doesn't touch the general budget. Correct.

I mean...

Okay.

Right. And we've already done some work towards this.

Yeah, we've spent, okay, so we've been talking about this since May.

Right.

We kind of felt like this was the direction everybody wanted to go, so we started pulling the trigger on some of this and setting some of this up and hiring some consultants and stuff. So we've spent $120,000-ish, I think, on this all together. Yeah, all together.

Oh, so it's across all of those? Yeah. Okay. So it's not just specifically this project only? That money isn't spread across?

Well, it's on this project. It's on this project. Okay. From both of us.

I think that may include all of the SRF applications as well. I think it does, yeah. So it's the – we have four SRF applications that we're going to be submitting next month, the two for the neighborhoods, the one for the reuse line, and then the sanitary sewer aligning project for next year.

Okay.

And then I think – I don't remember if the 120 included any of your ROROP stuff as well.

Thank you. Mm-hmm. Keep saying that if he doesn't get his money, what money does he get?

So if he doesn't get the grants, so essentially if we do this, say this all works out, right? He gets his overlap or however his grant funding stuff works. We get the SRF, and then that's where that kind of breakdown I just did where we get to the $5 million.

Yeah.

We have to have a match on that ORLAP, and that match is that $7 million. So he's basically spending $7 million. I'm spending $7 million. We can use that as a match towards that ORLAP grant.

Now I got you. All right.

And then so he will get essentially $14 million worth of work done for $5 million. That's rough math. But that's what we've come up with.

So if he doesn't get his $7 million, then you just lost the $7 million. I'll be $14 million.

They just don't do the project. Right. We spend money in a different way. And I think I have like $800,000 is all I have in $27,000 for this because I don't think we're spending any money, real money, until $28,000-ish, something like that. So it's, but I also have, you know, I'm going to have to kick and try and do something different if we don't do this because I don't want to continue to send RO water for irrigation at six cents per HCF if I can do something else, well two or, you know, whatever, bring something else up. So if you squash that money out of there, then I don't have any money to even do towards that, which would be a whole different conversation, but.

Well, can we leave it in there for now?

I have a couple of questions.

Yeah.

So, and this would probably be for Justin too, but so McQueen Fields is just north of the golf course. I don't know what hole that is. The east side of the golf course. And then there's a playground right in the middle of there. It's the blue and green ones, two to five. Would you consider irrigating around that playground?

Not that one because of where the water line will come in on the opposite end of the golf course. So we would also irrigate with this project around the bike park and the playground that's there. We would also irrigate around stromal fields, so the two fields that are there. And potentially we would look at... The soccer fields as well, that one's a little bit the wrong direction, but to see if we're close enough that we could tie into. But to get all the way to the other end of the park, we'd have to run that non-potable line all the way around the loop or right to the middle of the park. So that one would not be for this phase. I do think I see in the future a future phase where we complete a non-potable loop. And so we're irrigating everything in Cary Park. other than the zoo and inside the fence at Salt City Splash with non-potable water. But that's down the road.

How about Bud Dayter?

So now that we've converted to artificial turf, there's no irrigation there anymore.

Well, an idea that I thought of is, I mean, where that pond's going to be, you go straight east and you could water Public Works down the road.

Yeah, so Public Works, my building, has irrigation. The soccer field, so Centennial, and then the soccer field, all that. So if we run a line that direction, we can grab quite a bit more. It opens the door to do that for sure. We're sizing everything to know that. But the golf course is by far the largest user. Even if we add all those other systems, it doesn't even come close to the golf course.

So I think that the thing that catches me up is still simply that this is, I mean, it's still $5 million and I get that it's not directly coming out of the general fund. It's not Not doing this project might not increase our reserves, but this is still a lot of money for a 20-year payout. Spending five saves us $2 million over 20 years. I mean, I know everybody else on the council is for it. I'm still not really in favor of this. And I get that there are safeguards in place and guarantees that it wouldn't be used for what it's not being said it's used for. And you know I love the parks. I love investing in our parks, but I just don't love this idea.

Can you imagine how different Cary Park will be?

Yeah, I get it.

I think staff, sorry, I'm not trying to.

No, you're fine.

I think staff is just asking for the opportunity to at least try it.

Yeah, no, I get that.

And if that, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And then at that point we could still, if you go, hey, it's still not good for me or a council or a community, then we can shoot it down at that point too.

We have plenty of time to X-nay it down the road. This is not a, hey, we're going to do this just because you guys pass it through.

Yeah, so. I just think that any way we can help conserve water. I mean, yeah, I agree. I don't want to spend $5 million either. But if we can conserve water, and I honestly think if we can get this project going and get it done, that it can lead to a lot of other things. There's other things in town where we can look at saving water, reusing water. And I think if we can be successful in something like this, I think that's going to – to me, and I don't know for sure, but to me it seems like that would open us up to, hey, this community is doing this. You know, we apply for more grants later on. And, I mean, that's way down the road. But anything we can do to save water because that's – right now it seems like that's the biggest worry of everybody.

Right. and the well two idea stacy we talked about that the other day i shot out a million to you i was about a million short on what that would cost so it's somewhere 1.5 to two just bring a well two there so i mean it's and you know and i think you know you're you're saying would save about two million dollars yeah but i think that number could probably end up being bigger yeah that's just that that's literally i mean once we get water to that pond

You know, I think what we could do later on with that, you know, there's a lot we could.

I will say this was pitched, I believe, back in November to a U.S. senator and our representative man. And they were like, you're wanting to do what? And we're just like, we need some help with this. And I think part of the reason it hit above the line is because we're trying to do things that people are wanting in the world we live in today.

Yeah. There's other communities that actually do this very thing, too, in Kansas. I think Hayes is one of them. Yeah.

No, there was somebody who said, hey, you guys need to do this. I said, oh, we're trying. So anyway, it's exciting to kind of be on the cutting edge of maybe it'll work, maybe it won't.

Right. It's just water's something we're going to have to we need to really look at how we're using it and what we're doing with it. We're okay, but Long term, nobody knows. So do what you can when you can.

Yeah, because we're spoiled now and we don't know what the future brings.

And you don't know. So that's kind of our stance. We're trying to...

I think it's good to be proactive and try to reuse it.

Got anything else for me? Does that cover everything correctly? Because I know I just kind of ran through that.

No, I covered everything for me. Okay.

Okay.

Well, I will give a nod to keep it in.

I will give a nod to keep it in.

I give a nod to keep it.

Those were the topics I had noted to discuss. Are there any other questions that we can answer for you?

Yeah. What are your projections based on this conversation? Are we going for 17 days now, or, I mean...

Well, rough calculations, I think we've increased our general fund at least $1.2 million. Great.

And we're not increasing the mill levy?

No, flat mill levy.

So we are staying flat? Because we mentioned that $100,000 for striping. Did we figure out where we were going to get that from?

It just comes out from the other cuts.

Did we make enough cuts to get that?

I think so.

I guess we made it from the several places.

I'm curious at the end of the day, and you don't have to answer this now, where we are on net full-time employees, plus or minus, because there is folks that do not want us growing government. I think we've had a discussion here about Maybe we are growing government a little bit, but we're cutting out the 30% markup on a private contractor. So.

Right.

Yes. I'll have to compile all this, and I'll do that as quickly as I can so I can get it to you before Tuesday.

Okay. Great. Council have any other questions for any staff or anything?

I do want to just touch on what Greg just said. Yeah, if we're looking at how many employees do we have year to year. But I don't think that that's really what you judge government efficiency or a good budget on by any means. All that is is one lag measure showing you how many people you have working for you. And I think the most important thing is Are we delivering the services that we promised? Are we maintaining a good budget? And are we helping our residents live the quality of life that we're promising they should have and could have in our city? And I think at the end of the day, that's what really matters, not do you have 42 or 41 employees in a department. Because the capacity that's going to be added just by... The three engineering or the couple of engineering folks is going to help every single department, and I know that's going to move us as a city.

Well, it's going to help, and it's actually going to save because you don't have to contract it out.

All right. If there's nothing else, thank you, Angela. Thank you, old staff, for what you brought to us.

If that's it, then I guess we can move to adjourn.

Second. Yes.

Second. Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.