City Council - workshop

Good evening and welcome to tonight's study session for the Kurtzville city council. Please be joined by so many folks here in the room tonight. Um, because I imagine for a lot of folks, this is your 1st, personal study session. I did. Boston's our stage manager here in the back there. He'll let us know when we're ready. All right, so we're resuming our meeting here, as I was saying, because so many folks, I don't know if you've attended the study session meeting before you want to talk about how this works. We have several items on the agenda this evening and the study sessions each month is an opportunity for the council to hear from staff and invited guests on particular issues for discussion. We don't vote on matters during these meetings. We do sometimes offer direction on things. What this does is it prepares us for our regular meetings, which are held twice a month that have issues that are voted on. And there's an opportunity for public input on those matters as well. There isn't an input in an opportunity in these meetings for public input tonight. But if there is something that you're hearing from, and you're going, oh, I'd like the council member to know about that, reach out to a council member and share your ideas and thoughts on that 1 via email or to meet up with them. Particularly, I'm imagining most folks are here because we're talking about data centers in our community and that also involves the county commission. And we have invited the county commission to speak with us tonight because they play a part in that conversation as well. So, I encourage you to reach out to your members of the county commission to share your thoughts and ideas on things that are discussed here tonight. So. With that, we'll go ahead and get started. Rodney, our deputy city manager, will be helping us run this evening's meeting and going through all the agenda items with city staff. So I'm going to turn things over to Rodney. Good evening.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. And so we do have a lot of different topics, not just the data center on the agendas for this evening to take a look at. So we will get right into it. So the first thing is I'm filling in for the city manager this evening, both the city manager and our executive director of K Ready and Mayor Anastasia Tiedemann. recently attended a, it was a data center summit that was put on by a few different organizations, MML being one of those, as well as the Missouri Association of Counties and the Missouri Association of School Administrators, where they provided a lot of information. Also, our county commissioners attended that meeting. And so what I thought would be best is if we let Anastasia come up and talk a little bit about what she learned at that particular meeting. And then maybe after that, we'll bring county commissioners forward and then just start a conversation.

Hi, everybody.

Good evening, Anastasia. Hello.

All right. So the Data Center Summit was Wednesday, June 17th, just outside Jefferson City. There were one, two... three, four, five different panels that were part of this data center summit. So the first one was a local perspective. And so the biggest takeaway I got from this, so there were two people really on this panel. One of them was the vice chair of Loudoun County, Virginia Board of Supervisors. So Loudoun County, Virginia has the highest concentration of data centers in the United States. Their population is 450,000 and they have 250 plus data centers, which I was like, wow. So a lot of his presentation was about the history of that, how it got started. The first data center landed there in 2000, and it's just been going up ever since. So a lot of the takeaways out of that session were regulate. If a community is being approached by data centers, really you want to put things in place as far as regulations go. Noise, manage the noise, the decibels. um the power usage the water usage are they doing open loop or closed loop um he reported that further just because the council's here to learn i'm sorry when you're gonna say things like closed loop and open loop could you explain those out for everybody okay well i'm not an engineer but i'll do my best okay so with an open loop center the water comes in and cools all of the machinery and then goes out again and with a closed loop the water comes in And is recirculated. So you get a big usage of water in the beginning. And then as the water evaporates, you know, you get you'll have to add some more water into it. But it doesn't use as much water as the like the ones that started in Loudoun County back into the 2000s. So, it was interesting to learn all about that. It was interesting to learn about some of the tax benefits to the county. So. Sorry, I have 9 pages of notes here and my handwriting. Okay. They were talking awful fast. So. $26 in taxes paid by the data centers was equal to only $1 of public service cost. And with the manufacturing company, he said that ratio was more like four to one. So that was interesting. He talked about the setbacks and the emissions and the facade and what the building would look like and how tightening up all of those things has really helped them with their enormous amount of data centers in their community. We also learned, and a lot of this was a repeat throughout all four or five of the sessions, so they also talked about the kind of developers that would approach a community. There were pretty much three tiers. There was a horizontal person, and that was the one who was really looking to secure the land development. This person was the one checking out, hey, do you have everything, and do you have interested sellers? And then you have the vertical developer who was really After the land is secured the vertical developer is the builder, he is the one who builds the data Center and then. After the data Center is built, then it is usually leased out to someone at the end user, so a lot of the hyper scale ones that we're seeing that we're hearing a lot about it's a lot of the Google and the Amazon and. And, you know, the bigger usage and but there are smaller versions as well that have existed for years, which are just, you know, hospital records, credit card processing, you know, the things that we rely on every day.

So when you talk about hyperscale, we're talking about like some of the large ones that have gone in recently in the Northland of Kansas City, Montgomery County. Yes. And we heard from them. We heard from them as well.

So. We also heard about infrastructure update upgrades, and they come with a lot of the deals, which is a lot of the 1 of the reasons why a lot of the rural communities are welcoming data centers is because they will help with the transmission lines. They will help upgrade the electric infrastructure. They will help all of the water upgrades because they need them as well. So in a lot of our smaller communities, the tax dollars won't pay for that or it may take a very long time for that. So that's one of the reasons why they are coming to our smaller communities. All right. So then the second session, and if I'm going too long, please feel free to cut me off. But I highlighted some stuff that I thought was interesting. So in the second session, it was called Understanding Data Center Requirements, a Local Government Playbook. And this was a three-person session. This was a three-person panel with someone from Google, someone from Amazon, and someone from the Data Center Coalition. So the takeaways from that are we are seeing an increase in demand. U.S. has 40 percent of the global market of data centers right now. We will see 80 gigawatts by 2030. And I apologize for that note. I don't really have a context for that. There are 45 percent. There's 45 percent more usage of online U.S. households. The average U.S. household has 21 percent of connected devices. And the main driver of all of this is really the digitization of society. So we're looking at streaming services, Netflix, ChatGPT, online purchasing, all of those things. Most of the build out is for cloud infrastructure. And it looks like even though we're building out at a huge pace, we are still not meeting the demand. So they talked a little bit about national security and how having data centers in the US is important at some level to our national security. We don't want to export everything over to another country. They talked about the cost of infrastructure upgrades. They said, and this is true, Energy rates will continue to go up with or without data centers. I don't remember the last time my energy rates went down. I'm just saying they emphasize that data centers pay for their own costs. They pay a premium. They bring energy and bring their own programs to the community. They. They assist the community, you know, they pay for the little league teams and all of those kind of things to support the community. They want to have a real partnership with the community and they want to be good stewards is one of the messages that this session talked about. Okay, they touched a little bit about nuclear power, which I don't know if anyone's been following that conversation. They're talking about nuclear power, and the timeline for nuclear reported by them is extensive. Federal rules can be challenging, and it may be, depending on what stage that nuclear power plant is, if it's just been decommissioned, it would be quicker, but it may take up to 25 years to permit a new nuclear facility And that could be because of a variety of factors. They emphasized that economic developers and communities should ask the tough questions. And then they answered a question about how many people are actually employed by a data center. And their answer was everyone is different. So it depends on the design, on the type. Will it be a training hub? They talked about the mega sites and they said it would be the high hundreds to a thousand, but it's slow growth and it would be developable in phases. They talked about a ratio of nine jobs for every one job at the data centers. There would be nine jobs in the community after the center was all built out. So they talked about how in the beginning with all the construction, there would be a lot of jobs created with, you know, all the construction going into it. But then once the data center is up and running, they said on a hyper center, it would be, you About 400, but it could grow to 1000, but for every job that there is there 9 more in the community. So they, they gave examples of, like, in some of those larger facilities, it would be administrative assistance. There would be a cafeteria on site. There may be gardeners or, you know, people landscaping and things like that. So, just you're like, what would happen to. A regular office building is, is that kind of thing what they were talking about?

Hey, Anastasia, I have a quick question for you. This is Kabir. Can you hear me?

Yes.

You may have already talked about this. I may have not heard it, but, um, you mentioned, you know, Virginia has quite a few data centers. Now, I know that data centers. Um, you know, they generate a lot of, they have a lot of resource consumption that's. Based off of the amount of traffic that's going through, you know, you're using AI or using a cloud service. Um, and and so it's all dependent on that. Um, so would a data center in northeast Missouri do we have. Um, how many data centers do we have in Missouri? Do you know roundabout?

I don't I'm sorry I don't know.

Because that would that would tell you kind of how much. How much usage this data is set or that's for each would be. Um, because it doesn't have to go to a different location. So I was just curious about that.

I know that most of the data centers that I have seen are larger ones. I mean, we hear them all in the news on the St. Louis side, Montgomery County, on the Kansas City side, Smithville. I'm sure there are smaller ones, but it's really these hyperscale ones that are making the news nowadays, and that's the ones that everyone seems very, very concerned about. I know that doesn't probably answer your question, but I... I hope that, I don't know, I can research a little bit and get back to you. Would that be all right?

The internet says, for whatever the internet's worth, there's roughly 92. but I don't know if that's how accurate that is. It's from the data center math, which seems like a pretty good source.

Mine's 50 to 92, but that'll be hard to count on. Yeah. That's cool. All right.

Anastasia, go ahead and continue.

Sure. Okay, so then we were moving into the resources panel, and one cup of water equals 10 searches. So, John, you just used up one of your searches, like one-tenth of your cup of water there. I didn't get a lot of takeaways from this particular session because a lot of it were repeats and a lot of it was depending on the data center, the size, the volume, and things like that. But they did say they are coming and there are benefits, so make sure your community is prepared. There are benefits, but there are drawbacks, so they wanted to make sure that everybody has things in place to control the data center. Get expertise early. They talked again about water consumption. Tier four, which is emissions. has to be a stricter emissions policy. And then concentrate on the long-term impacts. What are some of the long-term impacts for the community? And is a data center going to help that community? Rely on your SEDS, which is your Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy. You know, is this a good fit for your community? Okay, and then we got into Warren and Montgomery counties. which was... They were very, very excited about their data center, but it hasn't been built yet. So they're excited about the prospect of it and what has been, you know, in contract so far.

When you say the they on this one, this is the Warren County Commission and the Montgomery County Commission? Yes.

Who's the they? The they is Mark Nelson, who is a consultant, the presiding commissioner in Montgomery County, the mayor of the city of Smithville, which is on the Kansas City side, and the Warren County, R3, it doesn't have his title. I think he was the superintendent. Okay. Okay. Okay, so $3.3 billion in property tax to local jurisdictions in Montgomery City, I'm sorry, Montgomery County. They're already seeing the ripple effect in retail and hospital. On the Smithfield side, the city revenues are increasing, small businesses are increasing, sponsorships are increasing. And he made a point about, you know, we send our kids off to college and we hope that there's, in their chosen field, that there's a way that they can come back and practice that in their community. And he was excited that now, because of the data centers and the technology, that for the kids who are going away studying technology-related things, that there's a reason for them to come back. They talked about no incentives. Don't offer any incentives.

You mean financial incentives from a governmental agency.

Exactly. Mm-hmm. use community benefit agreements and public infrastructure I'm sorry public interest for public infrastructure upgrades or other things that you might need Warrington schools reported that their former budget was 40 million and now it's going to be 120 million they're going to be able to better pay their teachers there's 200 million of building projects that they're planning construction all kinds of stuff They report that people are going to be paying their lowest tax rate possible. In Montgomery City, they have three school districts. Their current budget is $16 million, and over a 25-year period, that would be $1.4 billion. So they seem to be super excited about all these numbers and projections that they've been offered or talking about.

I think they're along I-70. Yes.

And there's two centers going up, and I think they're right across from each other. Like one's on the north side of I-70 and one's on the south side. One's Google and one's Amazon. So they're getting, like, double whammied all at once.

Did they talk about doing training, too, for trade training and stuff like that? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. And then the last was about legal infrastructure. They encouraged communities to modernize your zoning codes, to talk with your, not legislators, to talk with your lawyers about community benefit agreements and what that might look like. It could vary by community. Put safeguards in ordinances moratorium is not always the answer. And they talked a little bit about the legal stuff with that. And then they also talked about the. The other things that Loudoun County brought up in the beginning, like limiting the decibels and what does the building look like and how far away is it? Do you need to put up a barrier? All kinds of things like that. So I would say it was really interesting. It was really interesting. I learned a lot. They said that it was going to be, you know... and non-biased, I think that it skewed a little bit towards the positive.

That's going to be my question. I hear from some elected officials who feel like they're benefiting from the tax revenues. We hear from industry on this one, but it didn't sound like there were a lot of presenters on some of the concerns.

Correct. And in that one panel, you know, with Montgomery County and Smithville, those aren't built yet. So I'm wondering, you know, what that's going to look like. So once it's built. So I don't know. I've been doing some research on my own, and I continue. So if you have any questions, I'm not the expert, but I will try and find out for you if anybody has any questions.

Would you explain your role specifically to everybody in the room, too, of why you're talking about it tonight and why? The fact that if there was a data Center that was interested in the Community that they may reach out to somebody in your office version.

Sure, so my name is anastasia i'm with personal regional economic development, my job is economic development, so my job is attraction I look for businesses business attraction. If we have manufacturer who's looking for a new spot who needs a new facility. we're looking for like a call center or something like that and a lot of them reach out to me i'm the point person for department of economic development and missouri partnership they have the leads they're the ones who are attracting people to missouri and once they have a project they reach out to me and say hey this particular project needs x amount of water needs x amount of energy needs x amount of acreage do you have that in your community and How many workers they would employ and all of those kinds of things. So I, I get a lot of those leads and I respond to them now a lot of times. I mean. Sometimes they, they're not a good fit for our community. Sometimes we. We have to opt out because we don't have what they need. We don't have rail. We're not part of the Mississippi river. So, um, but for some of the smaller ones, you know, with that fit with our workforce and what our community can provide a lot of them reach out to me. 1st. So. Um, so it depends. It depends. So there are some data centers that have been around for a very long time who are like, it looks like an office building in the city of St. Louis. 1 of the panelists was saying that that was her 1st job. She worked in. It was, I don't know, 5 stories high and it was, it was a data center. just look like an office building in St. Louis. So it kind of depends. Everything in the news right now is really about those hyper, those really large ones that need large tracts of land. But there are smaller ones anywhere from 10 to 40 acres. And where would they go? For a smaller one, M2, I think, is the zoning, is what I think the city was talking about the zoning. There's only a few. There's not very much in town that could support that. But, I mean, in the county, I expect if they wanted something larger is probably where they would go. They like to be located near a transmission line. A lot of times they'll build their own substation. They also have, you know, they try to... I don't know, from what I've heard that they have, they have green energy directives as well. So they're always trying to, the technology is always getting better as they move along, but it could be, I mean, it could be anywhere. And I don't want to scare people by that because I mean, with the way that the zoning works inside the city, it would be really up only on industrial road.

And so what harm does it do to the environment?

Um, so it. So, as far as the environment, go goes as far as the water goes, my understanding is when the water comes in, they could use gray water if they wanted to, and they would convert that to whatever kind of quality of water what they would want. But that would be something that their responsibility would be. That would be their responsibility. Or they could take clean water in the closed-loop system. When the water comes out, I'm told that there are other things in the water, so it would have to be mitigated. I'm not sure if that's a word I want to use, but it would have to be re... Reconditioned in order for it to go back into the cities, the city's water supply, but those safeguards are in the city limits are already in place for our manufacturers. So, you know, we have food manufacturing and food manufacturers use a lot of water and that water when it comes out of the plant isn't always clean. But the city does have safeguards in place that that they are required to clean that water to a certain level before. Uh, putting it back into the city's, um, water supply.

Some of the other concerns would be, um, you know, oftentimes we're talking about these connection to municipal water or digging for their own sources of water. Is there risk of contamination to some of those water sources? Um, noise pollution becomes a concern. Um. Energy consumption, and even if we have centers that are generating their own electricity, then what does. The admissions look like from a place where it's generating its own on site. So, those would be some off the top of my head and stage anything more you would add to that.

They talked about sometimes there's lights. around the facility. There's emissions, which are the noise level. And then there was something about it and I didn't quite get it in my notes. Use tier four and it's some kind of a filtration system. It's a generator. Okay. All right. So use tier four generators, not tier two, which hospitals are on tier two, but like diesel facilities are on tier four.

Very quiet. Yeah.

Yep. Setbacks, screens, facades, how will the building blend in, that kind of thing. In Loudoun County, I guess that their zoning permits them to be in office parks, but our zoning does not do that.

To be clear about your leads, has anybody reached out directly about an actual project?

I've had a few calls about data centers. A few were not, I think they were really just speculators. They didn't, they weren't legit. There were a few that were, but for some reason, I mean, the project has not moved forward. I do not have an active data center project. I want to make that very clear. There is no active data center project right now that I'm dealing with.

And part of our conversation tonight can hopefully be about how we made this commitment last week and want to make sure it's probably made again that whatever conversations were to happen in the future that those would be transparent. Oh, absolutely. There. So, um, because there has been quite a bit of consternation of some communities that have not worked in that manner. Okay. Keep cutting something off over here.

Did you, um. have any thoughts about they were talking about well how long these places be there wasn't a was there wasn't really a solid i listened to all the video the whole thing yeah um there was no it's like is it going to be 10 years it's going to be five years 20 years 30 years it's like there didn't seem to be any kind of you know solid answer on that it's like this is something we're going to be here we're going to stay here and it's a lot of investment if somebody's going to only be here for five years rather than something that may have 50 years

Right. No, agreed. They didn't really say how long it would be. It seemed to be for, I don't know, in perpetuity. I don't know. The contracts, they didn't say anything. Like some of the solar contracts, I think, are in like 30 years or something along those lines. But they didn't say anything about the length of the contracts.

Mr. Rodney, this is... Oh, sorry, John.

Go ahead. Go ahead, Kabir. You're good.

I was going to say, so this is more of a... what we're doing right now is kind of understanding at a very high level of, you know, what data centers in general, but this is a hypothetical where there's nothing actively in the works, but if it does come up, about the framework in which we kind of proceed, essentially. Is that correct?

There's nothing going on right now. Yes. That's what we're hoping to look tonight is what direction do we want to start giving to city staff on? Sure. We're going to have to build in some processes for if and when this comes up, how this gets reviewed. Um, you know, what, what are the limitations we can put in place? Um, so, yeah, that's exactly where we're at could be a high level conversation. But at the end of the day, how can we start getting towards more of the nitty gritty? Um, so that we, as a council and the community understands what this would look like.

Do we need or want any new ordinances?

Yeah. Our county commission had the opportunity to attend. I was curious if there's anything that you all wanted to talk about that you took away from this particular session. I'm done and then segue into that. Where is the county's thinking on these at this point?

Well, so, when we seen that data center summit was posted, we said, you know, Mark, would you go ahead and introduce you? Oh, yeah. I'm Mark. I'm the presiding commissioner for the county. This is my 2nd term and we're about to try to get reelected. So, anyway, we're, we want to talk a little bit about our trip to Jeff city to the data center. There was a lot of resistance down there when we pulled in and what do you mean by resistance protesters protesters? Yeah. So, anyway, we got through it was a private or anything. Okay, they got our names. There you go. There's a private event though, because they didn't want, you know, to be disturbed in presenting the data that they had. And I'll say this as, as anastasia said, we have no knowledge of any data center. Coming to county, I'm not, we're not saying it. There's not, but we do not know of any, we never sign. There have been counties that have, and we've had a lot of reports about. Counties having data centers, and we've reached out and talk to them. Um, there was a couple of young ladies came up to the commission's office a few weeks ago and. We're concerned about data centers and want to know what we can do about it. You know, there was a lot of conversations come up. They had a lot of examples about counties, you know, moratoriums. Uh, you know, we have no county zoning, so that was brought up at that data center summit is county zoning is not the answer, but it's a tool in the tool chest. I know county zoning, like, if when the wind project came in, when they found out scholar county, that zoning is about ready to pull the plug on the project. No, they'd probably go to another county if we had county zoning. So we contemplated. Looking at if there's enough interest in county zoning, and we would put it on a ballot. But so far, it's really looks like there's not a lot of interest as far as. County wide zoning for everything, but there are for, like, solar and data, which Montgomery county has county zoning and they got. A couple of huge data centers, because the where they're putting them is something commercial. So, county zoning doesn't always stop everything, but it does give you a tool to say, hey, you know, what, what water are you are you putting out into our streams or the setback needs to be this much or the noise level you could. Have ordinances that would address that.

Well, the other thing that zoning does is it allows for at least how we utilize it here within the city limits. It is allows for things to go into the appropriate place. Um, so, for example, we were talking earlier that, you know, right now, the zoning that would be looked at for that would be an industrial zoning and not next to somebody's house and not as next to somebody's church or whatever that might be. Um. Is it would county zoning allow for then the zoning to say this would be geographically an area where where projects like this and other industrial projects could go.

Yeah, we don't know exactly. How that would work, you know, I mean, I don't think Montgomery county zoning. Uh, is where it should be if you're going to say you have zoning, it should have some. Bite to it, I believe that you could have rules and have enforcement. They don't really have that. Um. We did do a lot of other research and 1 county that the ladies brought up that they just passed the moratorium on data centers. Well, I was Buchanan county and we called them. Had a good conversation with the 3 commissioners. And the data center that they got, they said the guy that was building it came in and he said, hey, we're building the data center. We're breaking ground today. And they built it, and they had a public hearing, and it was 850 angry people that showed up. And it was pretty rough, they said. But in the end, it's a five-acre data center, and they're like big pods out there. There's nobody even working there. So I know there's a lot of different kinds of data centers. I don't know, like say these great big 2,000-acre data centers or this five-acre one. Depending on, uh, I guess what's needed for to transport data, but we, uh. We learned about everything Anastasia talked about. I do know a little bit about the closed loop cooling system as craft has. I worked out there for 30 years. They have closed loop cooling system. It's a glycol loop. that runs out in the wintertime into the condensing towers and it'll take the heat out of the glycol. And in the summer, they'll have to run water over that. But it's got makeup water. It's not like it just runs down the drain. So evaporated cooling is what they use for that. The glycol that's in the closed loop is tested and chemicals added. So it doesn't have bacteria growing. But if an event that they ever have to purge that out and they do occasionally that doesn't go down the drain, you know, unless there's some kind of an accident, right? The city has a sampling. Uh, sensor. All the influence is leaving that plant at a craft. It doesn't test the sewer test. There's 2 separate lines and test what the wastewater coming out. Uh, if it's got too much sugar or salt or blood in it. The, it's it senses that and it says, okay. We're going to find craft foods 20,000 dollars this month because we had to spend this much money to treat that water. So, in the event that. There would be something in the event like that that was sampling the water to tell you if there was something not going correct. There was a lot of conversation about the history of data centers, how they were when they first started. She gave, Anastasia gave the example of the county right north of Washington, DC, a population of 450,000 people. There's 250 data centers there, and some of them have been there for 30 years. And it was a horror story about what the first ones went in neighborhoods. It was real noisy. The, the residents had to pay for any infrastructure upgrades for water sewer and lecture electrical that all got passed on. To the taxpayer, which that's all they say now that. That doesn't happen. So. We don't have any experience with data centers, but we're just going off of what everybody's telling us. So we call the other counties. 1 county did sign a non disclosure agreement. And I would never, we would never do that. I know sometimes if a business is coming to town, nobody talks about it because they don't want. Let the cat out of the bag before everybody it's going to work. So, the non disclosure agreement, this 1 county sign was about a road and. It really looked to me like there wasn't really a thing bad about that, except they signed a non disclosure agreement, which it acts like you're trying to hide things and we never be on board with that. And we hear. This guy sold his farm, you know, and this guy signed it up and we don't. We're the last ones to hear when when they want to do a project, they finally come to us and say, hey. We, uh, we want to put this facility in, we need to use your road. We want to cross the road here at the power line. Um, and we negotiate, you know, how much that's going to impact us. It's usually a monetary positive up front and then agreement. It says you're going to put this these roads back to as good or better than they were before. Our last project out here that we had to deal with. Did not go well. And we wound up taking a big settlement from them for them to walk away and we're currently putting things back. Like, they need to be.

Solar project. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's up to the county commission not to stick our head in the sand, but to. To address these issues and take care of the county residents best we can. And I think we've done a good job at that. Stay on top of these things. But now we have 3 more solar facilities that are. In the pipes here that we're gonna have to deal with over the next few years and. Takes a lot of. It takes a lot of time and a lot of conversations and dealing with these. Contractors and developers make sure they do what they're supposed to do. We are also. Not happy with the legislation that got passed in 2023 where. These date well, it might be a data center too, but it's definitely on solar facilities. They got exempted from use and sales tax.

By our legislators are at solar, but it's not a data center, but a data center would probably follow the data centers are in there too. Okay. I just want to make that clear other parts of the state.

It's mining operations, things like that. You know, it's breaking a lot of counties and our association of counties is not. They promoted the bill and so they're not really helping us. Do anything with it, but we are, you know, we've testified in front of committees and.

And when rallied other kind of that work, though, when Anastasia, you're talking about school districts, bringing in tons of additional revenue. Are they are these these. This is just on the construction. Oh, just on the construction. Okay.

So that's where the use and sales task could be millions of dollars. And that's then after it's built that parts done, but the revenue still. Comes in for schools and any other entities that get a real estate tax.

You've mentioned moratorium was brought up in some things. Anastasia talked about. I've heard of other communities that have done moratoriums on things. I'm curious, James, you're on the line and James is our city attorney. He's with lobby and associates. There are municipal lawyers for the city of Kirksville. What is it? Is a moratorium something that cities can do? What are the legal questions and concerns there? I bring this up for, I think we have some decisions to start making on zoning within the city limits. Obviously the county has some conversations to have on that one, but a moratorium seems like a, to be honest for me, a dubious and cheap way out of a tough conversation. And I'm curious legally where you stand on that.

Uh, well, thank you mayor and council James Clark as you said, mayor representing, um, city of Kirksville and also with municipal law. Um. Our firm has been contacted by a number of different cities, uh, just for the public's awareness. We represent. About 100 different cities in Missouri and some in Kansas as well. Um, obviously not all of them are working on this issue, but a number of them are dealing with it. And there are some cities that are asking us to work with them on a moratorium language, which and again, I think sometimes the term can be a little bit misleading. Uh, you know, we hear the word moratorium you think well, that means that. The city would never consider now, or any time in the future, um, any kind of development like this, which is not not actually the case. Um, a moratorium really this is going back to something that Anastasia, I think, brought up it. It gives a particular city the time and space. To come up with what it feels are the appropriate regulations, you know, whether that be zoning with the other guidelines that it can look at. Before it would consider any application. So that's really the purpose is to again, as I would describe it, give a city time and space to come up with what it feels are appropriate regulations again, even in a situation where there hasn't been a live application submitted or activity that's yet started in that particular community.

appreciate that and the reason I bring this up and I think for all of us to think about and talk through is I'm going to use a Silly example if we were to put a moratorium on building a movie theater in town, right? That would be it wouldn't be saying we would write a law to say that movies theaters are illegal in the city of Kirksville Because that isn't something that cities do it's not within their Abilities to just say nope that is not allowed What you're talking about is a moratorium is about giving space and time so that processes can be created out. For example, creating the zoning that would be appropriate. Would it require special use application to put all of those things in process to where a conversation and the decision could be made? But simply just placing on the books on a city's court of code laws. This sort of thing isn't allowed that is not something that communities do. Am I understanding that? Right?

Yeah, you, you are and so, you know, what most communities are looking at is. You know, maybe a 6 month period of time, perhaps a bit longer, but but typically, I think the outside would be like a year and most cities are looking at a time period of that length or shorter, which is what we're talking about in the cities that are looking at. And some studies have placed some more terms in place, but again, they're looking at a shorter timeframe than 1 year or less typically.

And could a developer challenge that moratorium? Is it actually legal to do that?

I'm sorry, Rodney. I'm not sure.

I'm sorry. I'm asking if that moratorium could be challenged legally by a developer.

You know, I think there's always a chance that anything a city does in the way of regulation, including this type of regulation would be. You know, would be challengeable. Um, I think. You know, a city that has, you know, that adopts a moratorium with. I think pretty good and tight whereas language and pretty good and tight. Rationals that support the moratorium language are going to put, you know, put that community in a stronger position legally. Then someone that just kind of slap something together and says, well, you know, no applications until 2027. I think it has to be thought through, but I think there are ways that cities can do it to limit limit any potential legal exposure.

If you shorten the time, then there's no point in challenging in court. So take too long to get through the quarter.

There is that a part of this brings in on our zoning and how it works. And I'm not sure if Ashley or read might want to speak to this a little bit, but. As things exist now with current laws in the city of Perksville and zoning the way it is, if a data center, a small 1, because again, we don't have a lot of parcels of land available within city limits. Actually, is there anything on the books right now that would stop a data center from coming in or give the city council a mechanism to stop said thing?

So it would be a stretch, which is why I think it's important and why whenever you'd like, I can speak to how we need to update Chapter 44 zoning. So Section 44-126, the permitted use table. So as it is now, though, it would be more difficult.

More difficult to stop?

Correct. But what we want to do is... change that.

So an example, we'll go risque here for a little bit. 20 years ago, there was conversation about a strip club.

Yes, that's right.

Right. And there was no mechanism within the city to say, you know, no strip clubs in a commercial area. So the city did something. How did that work? And is... We're all giggling a little bit here, but is there a connection here? We should be looking at it as a council.

Yeah, we were both around then. So to make a very long and sordid story short, basically the Planning and Zoning Commission took it upon themselves to not completely, kind of to some of your earlier conversations, not completely ban adult entertainment in the city of Crookstable, but rather relegate it to an M2 heavy industrial zone. that was only permitted per the city's permitted use table, which again is at 44-126 in the municipal code. If you have that on your phone and you're looking at that, perhaps while you're watching this at home or out in the audience, you can view that permitted use table. And so they made that allowed only in those zones. So that's what they did then.

Special use permit required on those?

You know, I'd actually have to double check that. We haven't had one come across our desk. But certainly that special use permit is part of this conversation whenever we want to have that.

I have a couple questions for Mark. Mark, right now in the county, if someone bought the property and wanted to build a data center, they could do it tomorrow.

That's right.

Okay. And then you said for zoning in the county, you said take it to the ballot. That's something voters have to approve?

It would be a vote of people for everybody countywide in all the, you know, Kirksville. All their county, which does include Kirksville. All their incorporated areas would vote on that. Well, I want to talk a little bit more about one of the things come up about Buchanan County. We called Buchanan County Commissioner Paul Icock, and we went into length about what we're talking about here. And he said that we asked him... What happened? They said we did a moratorium after the 1 was already started. Just to make sure that if another 1 came that. You know, they'd have some leverage to say it was, and it's basically a study session. It's not going to stop it, but it gives you time to address, you know, what's this going to do to the community and what do they need? And, you know, there's legal legal ramifications as well. So they said they called 3 different lawyers. The 1st, 2 said, you can't do it. You're open yourself up for legal battle. The 3rd, 1 said. Well, you can do it, but you're probably going to get sued.

So, I'm not sure it goes back to my questions on the moratorium as we just talked about within the city limits. There's nothing that would prevent somebody from going into a properly zone area on that right now, because there isn't a special use permit attached to that. So there is no mechanism for a yes or no vote from the council. barring that putting a moratorium on their moratorium on what? Because there's no there's no application process in place. To me, it seems like that's a toothless Yeah, so what's the point of having a show rather than it's an actual legal device?

Yeah. And I think if with zoning, you have more tools in your chest to regulate at least setbacks where it's going to go where you can't go. So, you know, I don't think that county zoning would ever pass countywide. You know, I don't know.

For this issue, it's, I mean, there's some pretty upset people.

But you can't just go for data centers.

I know, I know. But yeah, I agree. You know, this may be worth taking to the voters.

There's two ways to put zoning on the ballot. One would say, hey, we want county zoning. Do you, yes or no? The other one is to build a plan and tell everybody exactly what it's going to be, which would take quite a bit of time. And by that time, You know, I don't know, it might be too late for everything, but there's definitely nothing we can do to stop the solar facilities. It's already building. I think the tax and incentives being cut off will be a big 1. You know, this 458Million dollar project, they got 40% tax credit and I for the solar's related.

I know, but on data centers, that's a different deal. And so it's. Where I'm at with it is it seems like we need to be taking some action at the county level so that there is a mechanism to have these conversations about things. Otherwise, we're always five years away from being able to do anything about it.

If you look back, even since I started eight years ago, there's... The thing we were dealing with then was a transmission line from a 161 to a 345, which enabled all these solar facilities, the wind project. And now they're building four circuits coming out of here, out of Zachary substation connecting a grid. So there's a lot of activity here that we're having to deal with that nobody ever even heard about 10 years ago. So, or maybe somebody heard about it, but we, the county didn't.

So you're saying that if somebody has enough money, a company that has like the billion dollars or whatever, they can just come in and put it in?

Pretty much, and they're given, we heard they bought somebody's farm for an outlandish price. We don't know that for sure, but probably true. But we do know that there's three more solar facilities gonna be built in this county. And it's gonna, right now this one out here is 250 megawatt. The others are 140 and 200 megawatt and a 40 megawatt. So it's gonna be taking up another 3,000 acres probably by the time it's done.

It sounds like there's some difficult conversations that have to be had about having the freedom to use your property as you wish property rights county.

Or I had a quick question for James real quickly. We're talking. About moratoriums and different communities, but is this ever brought up in other communities in terms of how do they, how, how do they actually turn it? Is it. Is it a function of, you know, any kind of business that wants to come in? Um, we need to know, you know, what kind of utilization is going to be taxing the infrastructure. So, for example, we would have to have an additional understanding if something comes in and takes up X, percentage of our water capacity or the grid or whatever it is, then that warrants an additional, not a, not a tax. not stopping it, but kind of thinking through it. Do they make those types of things into moratoriums or is that something completely separate?

So council councilman, I think that's something separate. I think the moratorium just essentially will say. And I can certainly get the city some examples, you know, certainly for further review of some cities that I think have have put them in place. Um. It's it's more about just a general statement. Um, it's it's obviously it has to be specific enough to define. The type of use we're talking about, and I was just looking through because Ashley mentioned that I was looking through that. The current zoning ordinance that you all have, which covers a wide variety, of course, of uses, but, um, but, yeah, no, we wouldn't get into probably the level of detail councilman pencil that you're asking about in a moratorium. No, um, it would be probably more general than what you're getting at, but it would certainly. Have to be specific enough so that everyone's clear on the type of use that we're talking about imposing a moratorium upon. Until that expiration occurs, whether it's 6 months after the council passes something, or whatever time period the council felt like was appropriate for that for that particular moratorium. That makes sense. All right. Thanks James.

I guess the question I might have for us broadly, because I think we're starting to get into mechanisms, is as the City Council of Kirksville, as the Adair County Commission, as two elected bodies who probably need to work in tandem on this, do we see the attraction of data centers as a positive for our community? Do we see that as something neutral that's worth investigating and go with? Or do we see that as a concern that needs to be rallied against and we've got to figure out mechanisms there? Curious where we are at as as as legislative bodies on that.

I'd sure hate to see him cover up another 2 or 3000 acres of good farmland. You know, and that's kind of what's happening now. Yeah.

I think there's so much to figure out. Just to explain to everybody, we also have the other two county commissioners here, Gail McInerney and Bill King, that are participating in this conversation. And earlier, Ashley Young came up. He was our community and economic development director. And so he'll be giving some insight specifically on the zoning portion of this.

We heard that whole meeting that you guys went to. We so much listened to. It was just nothing but positive for them to me. We need to look into, well, what is the other side? What are the negatives? What's the cause? So there's a lot of work to do on this.

Yeah, I mean, there could be some positive things, but if they're contaminate no groundwater, then that's not good. And then there's a lot of horror stories out there and we've seen a lot of posts on Facebook and we actually kind of research some of that. Some of it's not. All true, but it's partially true and, you know, like an accident happened or something with a lot of them are using the wastewater, you know, and then I think in 1 instance, it wasn't treated right and cause some other problems and that did contaminate some potable water. So. there's whatever it is, whatever we're dealing with, whether it be craft foods or transmission, global transmission or whatever, we make sure it doesn't harm the environment. You don't want that, we don't want that. So we can't tell people what to do with their land, we can't right now. So that's kind of where we're at, but we will engage.

So I think, you know, Gary, your thought too, are they all bad? I mean, I think if we have a lot of control, Over how big they are, where they are. You know, learning some of these things about what they meant and things like that potentially there's some scenarios where. It could potentially make sense. I think we have to that's a possibility. I think my concern right now is that everywhere I think probably around the United States. There's a lot of communities having these conversations. And there are going to be communities that do something about it, be that cities or counties. And they're going to put in place deterrence or things that control how those are going to come in. And then there's gonna be other places that don't. And the other thing we know about data centers is there's about to be a whole lot more. And so what these companies are going to do, you know, whether it's Amazon or whether it's Microsoft or Google or whoever, is they're going to come into the places that offer the least regulation. And they're going to build really big ones and they're going to build a lot of them. So we can, you know, you can say zoning is hard to do in the county. And I get that. I'm not arguing that it's hard, but I'm telling you, if we don't do it, I'm fairly certain they'll be here, and they'll be here pretty soon. I know in the city, at least, I want to do something to make sure that if one does come here, we make it very specific about how it's going to be. But I would hate for the county, which is 100 yards from some of our city houses, that there's one right there with no rules.

Of which the city of Kirksville, with its zoning, has no ability to regulate.

And so I would really push us to do what we need to do to make sure that we're educated and we're making good decisions and we put in place some good rules. And I ask of you guys, how can we be partners to help you do what you need to do to protect all of our good neighbors in the county?

What I'm not hearing from the, from the council is that the 4 of us could be a year on the line. So I can't see your face, but the 5 of us aren't running into the warm embrace of data centers at this point. Um, and would like to make sure that and would love to hear some more from city staff on how we could build out the regulations that would allow for this to be. Controlled limited in some big ways am I miss reading. My fellow council members on that at all.

No, I, I think that, um. I mean, obviously, we need to look at in terms of, you know, not just 1 or 2 years down the road, but, you know, 20, 30 years and it's what redundancies do we have in place for our community to have success now? Data centers may be 1 of those things, but I think we're very early in the conversation. So I'm, I'm in favor of having the discussions. That would allow. opportunities but in a very structured manner that doesn't negatively impact our community or our county um but i mean i think we do need to look at these opportunities but just in a very controlled manner so yeah kayla you were going to say something else well i was just going to was it about 10 years ago kayla would you go would you go to the mic i don't have the exact date hi my name is

Kayla McHenry, and I'm a county commissioner. Was it about 10 years ago zoning was on the ballot? Is that how long ago it was? And it was voted down. So that's something that we as a community, if we want to go that, we have to talk to people and we have to educate it. Because as Mark indicated, it's not just zoning for data centers. It opens the door for a lot. And a lot of the folks that I've talked to are adamant no on zoning because they don't want us coming in. I mean, once the... Once the horse gets out of the barn, right, then lots of things start happening. And they're really worried about those what-ifs. And so we need to educate people about how we could do it and what we might do. Because right now, the folks I talk to, it's a hard yes or it's a hard no. And so we really have to communicate, especially since it has been on the ballot in the years past and it was defeated. So... I just want to point that out, that it's something that we, as a community, everybody is going to have to talk about, right?

What does that process look like if there's not a predetermined zone plan already outlined whenever you take that to the voters? So what's that process? Maybe last time it went up.

That makes it sound like you want us to want to make income tax. State, you know, we don't really know what it's going to look like.

So they'd be giving the authority to you all to make some decisions on their behalf. Yeah.

So what if the board is the 1 person from every voting district. Elected so that that. Planning and zoning board, the county planning and zoning group that would help with, I'm sure legal counsel a lot on how to build that. And, like, say, you can't just pick out solar or data center and just say. No to that. But there's a lot of good things come out of it. But the problem is, right now, we might be fine. About 10 years down the road, we've got a different group of people in here that don't want you burning your burn burkle out in the county. Because people do, you're not supposed to, or you can only have so many chickens. There might be. They might get really harsh and so that's something to think about. But I think as long as people. Are engaged in those voting districts, they can kind of dictate what happens with that with what the regulations are. So that would be people that won't be engaged in the community and really.

I think it's worth recognizing for everybody that, you know, we talk about the county and the city, but those borders are very porous in a lot of ways. Right? Um, we're talking about, you know, if there are concerns about. Water contamination. Where are the different parts that exist outside of city limits? Where are they within the forest lake watershed? Where are they within the hazel creek watershed? Those areas exist outside of city limits, but if there ends up being a concern from from a data center, or any. Type of facility that would come in that impacts then everybody's water for the whole county because I'll take my pills later. It impacts all of us, because we all use the same water source and we're all pumping that out for everybody. These, these are not just limited issues. So, again, start of a good conversation here and Kayla to your point. Yeah, there's going to need to be a lot of education on this 1, but to John's point, I think. We probably we need to move forward on that 1. so there's a mechanism on this just. Having the laws, a fair attitude on this 1, I think is going to going to burn us in the end.

If we take it to the ballot in November, you're truly just asking for the blanket yes or no. And probably even April, right? Because it's going to take a little while to figure that out. So that's going to be the hard part, that quick going to people, you know, the ones that are anti against it, it's going to be kind of hard to help them understand what could do for them. So.

So you've heard me now, I've not been excited about a moratorium, but I am curious about, And again, we're going to get into some specific things we could be doing a resolution. Right? Um, that's, you know, if the council were to issue 1 to say, you know, at this time, we are developing our protocols and practices on this 1, and we are not. Interested and excited about anybody pursuing something within the city limits of Perksville. Um. That shared with our economic development folks to so when Anastasia gets calls, she can say, look. Council's not hot on this idea right now. They're trying to figure stuff out if there was something from the county as well to say, you know, hey, I've also talked to the commission and they've issued a resolution on this and they're not hot on this either. They're not looking at incentives. They're going to drag their feet on this for a while until they figure out their stuff. Is that a mechanism that would allow for us to take the time to craft out what needs to be done for us? Probably in a couple of months we can have stuff on the books and ready to go. It's not going to take very long on that 1. but when we're talking about zoning at the county level, this could take some significant time. I don't know, but I think we'd be willing to put forth a resolution. Would you all be willing to put forth a resolution?

So you're saying some sort of example would be a moratorium, possibly.

Again, I don't think your moratoriums have any will. I think they're just paper.

I mean, we could do a resolution, but I don't think we'd have any.

There's no legal authority that comes with that either, but it's more transparent about what it is. And it tells and messages out to outside entities and to our economic developers that, Hold off. We're not ready for this yet. And you've got to wait for us in order to get some stuff going. Because right now there's nothing holding anybody back. Bill?

So you guys. Oh, yeah.

If you'll head up to the microphone. Sorry. Thank you, John.

Bill King, First District Commissioner for Hedera County. So you guys control all the water, even out in the county. Can you just say we're not going to provide water to people? I mean, is there a legal part of that? No.

I mean, I think if we start picking people who get water and don't get water, that's...

Well, but I mean, you're talking a difference between a house and something that's going to use a lot of water. And you, I don't know how much water you guys have, if you're even capable of doing that. But if you're not capable of doing it, because like up in Schuyler County, They're not allowing anybody to sign up water unless somebody comes off the water.

What we have is an agreement with Rural Water that we are selling X quantity, and then it's up to Rural Water to decide how that gets utilized.

So they might decide we can't supply you. Maybe they don't have big enough money.

But again, you're going to have to come into what's legal and what's not, right? It could become discriminatory in that sense of who's... Suddenly, they're kind of rule water board is picking and choosing who gets water. That's dicey right again. I think. Having an actual plan that we can be actionable and work from is a much safer mechanism than hoping that they're kind of rule water board. Well, they definitely should be part of it. Oh, absolutely. But I don't want to put this whole decision to the folks on the water board. right but if you don't serve i mean you're right now you only give them so much water right right so in court in order to go out in the county you'd have to probably give them more water unless they're going to dig into aquifers right i mean i think half the reason everybody's in this room and scared about stuff is helicopters are flying around looking for aquifers right you're gonna start drilling exactly so and maybe Water boards have nothing to do with this in the end.

Well, but my point is something like that. If you're not going to give any more water to the rule water, then that's something else that that's going to at least postpone.

I would agree if you didn't have enough water out there, they probably wouldn't want to come in there.

I think the dnr commented that if you pump over 45 gallons per minute in state, Missouri, you're supposed to have permanent. Nobody does. But so something like that is, you know, you know, some. Industrial facility, they have to pay attention to that regulation.

Just like, well, Rodney start talking this through. We've obviously had a staff report that we've had a chance to review on this 1, start talking us through what some mechanisms might look like for. The city government to start to take some control on at least things within our city limits.

Sure. And I'm going to have Ashley come back up to talk into a little bit more, but I think that from a staff perspective, we also. Don't have an appetite for a moratorium. I think we're doing the work right now that a moratorium for some of these communities, the city of Lawrence, Kansas, just passed a 24 month moratorium with some of these larger ones. I have no idea how they're going to legally be able to keep that for that long. Um, but. We're doing that work now. This is great that we have city council looking at this and the kind of commissioners and go into these educational sessions, be it that they may be a little bit more in the positive light. But having these conversations now, before there is a project that is coming, before we're making some sort of reactionary decisions, you all are taking a look at this proactively and that's great governance. So from a staff perspective, we're happy with that. But we also don't feel there's really a need on a moratorium as long as you're doing this work. We've taken a look a little bit at the current zoning. M2 is what's outlined in the the actual report materials, and it's a pretty small... What does M2 mean again?

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, so what we're proposing in discussions in community economic development involved, obviously, this is a possibility that we need to be prepared for. So M2, we have, of course, zoning in the city. We have zoning. And for those of you who might not live this every day, that basically determines what you can do with any given land in the city. We have zoning districts. R districts are residential districts. C districts are commercial districts. And M districts, oh, O is office. Don't have a lot of those. But then M is industrial. We have M1 light industrial. We have M2 heavy industrial. And so our discussions have involved allowing data centers in only M2 heavy industrially zoned districts after going through the special use permit process. So Those two things coupled together, a heavy industrial use along with a special use permit would guarantee transparency, multiple public hearings, notifications of property owners in the surrounding area. The special use permit would also allow the governing body to place restrictions on that use when it comes to setbacks, when it comes to screening, when it comes to noise. It also would only be approved with input from our local public health agency, the Derry County Health Department, along with the Kirksville Fire Department, etc. So a very extensive, involved, and intense, transparent process with the whole community. so that is it really in a nutshell how would that work well any revision to chapter 44 zoning of course would have to first go before our planning and zoning commission again with a public hearing and robust discussion before that commission before it would then be recommended to the city council for their review and again more public input so very transparent very public process unfortunately we've missed the publication deadline for the august planning and zoning commission meeting but of course We haven't for the September meeting, so the next regularly scheduled meeting for Planning and Zoning Commission would be Wednesday, September 9th. So it is not inconceivable that we could have a draft ordinance prepared and ready to go for the P&Z's consideration on that date, on Wednesday, September 9th.

When you talk about a special use permit, is that a process that is universal for, because we do special use permits for Airbnbs in the community.

We do, right?

Yeah, we do. When we do a special use permit and someone comes into the office, is that a standard form? And so it's about going through the process and then it's about what's on the regulations and books for it. Or is there a special... special use permit for every kind of special use out there to where one is, this is the special use permit for data centers, and here's where we've agreed on everything that's going to go into that.

There is one special use permit, and that discussion about what the requirements are is for you all with recommendation from the commission, from the Planning and Zoning Commission. Unless... You pass an ordinance in that would presumably be a part of Chapter 44 zoning that outlined those requirements in advance. And I guess to kind of continue to pull that thread, we would certainly advocate for that in any draft ordinance that went before P&Z. Much like, again, we mentioned earlier, the adult entertainment businesses. It's funny. It's kind of a well, it's about the best example we can think of. It's something that's specifically outlined in Chapter 44. These are the requirements that exist for that.

Okay.

So, yeah.

I think we would be... excited to see that move forward, to work with that timeline of getting to the September P&Z meeting so that council could take action on that. And opportunities for input on that would be appropriate for sure. And I would say, again, to folks here in the room who are very frustrated because they can't talk at all tonight, and you've all been wonderfully quiet and nice folks tonight, those are the sorts of things to reach out to us as council members. What are the kinds of things that would be important to see in that? So when we start to come up with You know, what does a responsible 1 look like? What would be the mitigations required for the type of thing that might possibly be considered? And then what would be the things that would prevent the sort of place things that would be coming in? That would be inappropriate for. So, it's worth thinking about and sharing with your elected officials on that.

Absolutely actually what part of the city right now are into.

So basically, just if you're on Industrial Road, say, north of the intersection with Highway 6 and south of the intersection of Cable Street, the land to the east... A lot of people might not realize where this is, but the old railroad right away, it runs behind all the commercial development.

Yeah, I could use the map.

Yeah, like behind Home Depot in that area. So all that land between Industrial Road and the development on North Baltimore. That is the land that's zoned M2 heavy industrial in the city of Kirksville.

Now, with anything, an applicant could come in and say, you know, this currently, here's this big swath of land. It's zoned R1. I would like to go to the Planning and Zoning Commission and have that rezoned M2. They could. They could. Now, that's why there are processes in place. That's right. That's why there's a Planning and Zoning Commission who would hopefully go, gee, putting M2 right next to a neighborhood sounds like a terrible idea. Absolutely. And there's a city council that would go to as well.

there are processes and regulations and state statutes in fact that govern that process so per revised missouri state statutes any rezoning of property in the city would have to be in compliance with the city's future land use map that future land use map is a component of the city's comprehensive plan. Ours is called the Think Kirksville 2040 Comprehensive Plan. It is illegal to rezone a property that does not conform with the future land use map in that comprehensive plan. So if somebody bought a big parcel of land next to your house and it's zoned residential, and they're like, hey, we want to put a plant that makes ethyl methyl death right next to your house, and they applied for a rezone, it would be illegal for the city to do that. So, I want to make very clear that yes, there is a very robust process for reasons in the city of Kirksville and it is also a very public one with multiple public hearings and opportunities for input and what have you.

And I bring that up because John was asking aware currently there into zones. It would be very unlikely that there would be additional expansion of him to within the city limits.

Very unlikely. Yes. You know, never say never.

The most likely scenario would be an M1 that would convert to an M2 through a very extensive process.

Immediately adjacent to existing M2. Correct. Could not rule that out.

Yeah. Very good. So, that pretty much covers everything I was going to talk about it is what Ashley's outlined sound agreeable to all of you to that. We can move forward with that to go to the September planning and zoning meeting and then take the appropriate steps. Whether that be a council study test, it would be a council study session and then another talk about it at a council meeting. Does that sound.

Yeah, I think so. I think the conversation John and I were just having was, you know, we talked about how some of the stuff that Anastasia went through and things like that was very pro data centers. And we were just kind of thinking, I don't know if city staff is able to find anything like this or if there's an organization that would have more of the other side or community communities that have experienced this that maybe haven't enjoyed it so much you know what what did they learn because again it's not so much that like we go everything's terrible but it's what do we need to learn if if we do go down this road at all or if the county goes down this road at all that we can go okay how do we how do we do this right if it does come to adair county or it does come to the city of kirksville And we just want to make sure we have as much information as we can as we're going through this process. So that would just be the other thing I would maybe ask if that information can be found and shared with us.

It may be difficult in Missouri, but we can reach out and see if there's some of those that have been around for a while, some of the pros and cons of what they learned. typically if you these are the type of things that go to sessions at ICMA or your state conferences that rather than it's a wow this was terrible we really screwed up it's usually a this these are things that we learned from from when the data center came so maybe that's something that we can find okay present to you all and then also for everybody that's what's watching home or in the in the crowd the links to the sessions that would or talked about lots of times are actually on page three of the study session materials. So if anybody would like to take a look at those, they're available to the general public.

Anastasia, from your perspective, I floated this idea of a resolution out there to sort of state where we're in a holding pattern on this right now. Do you see that as something that's necessary or do you envision in the next three months that you're not likely to have someone coming forward with a project like this? I'm just curious. what your thoughts are on that.

Well, it's hard to tell whether someone will come forward in the next three months or not. We have a lot of the power that data centers are looking for. I don't know if we're set up for any scale or anything like that. It would help me to tell people, hey, we're thinking about it right now and we're going through the motions of putting some

Putting some rules in place, so it would help me, it would help you if there were a formal resolution that stated council's opinion on that. When I think I would ask that we could have staff help us to draft something along that line that we could pass at an upcoming meeting. Um, even as early as next week. Can work on that lovely and then that can be something that we can share with Anastasia and other partners that kind of gives a sense on that 1 there.

I think one other thing to look at, too, is maybe is reaching out to AMR and Tri-County locally. What does that look like for us here with them locally? I'd like to find out that. Not from somebody in St. Louis, from here. It's like, what does this look like locally for us? Is this something we can do? Is this how it's going to affect us financially? All that. So that'd be something that we may want to reach out to, too, if we can.

Anastasia has two members of her K-Ready board, one who serves with Tri-County, one who serves with Ameren as our local folks on that one, and they could be invited to participate in a study session as we're discussing this.

Sure. I really doubt if they .

Really quickly, the resolution's not .

Sorry, Kabir, you're cutting out.

The resolution would not be binding if that's what you're saying, Kabir. It's not like an ordinance.

Kabir, I'm sorry, you're cutting out. Do you want to try again?

Yeah, can you hear me better now?

Yes, I can. Sure.

Okay. But it's articulating the communities for or against something, but it's just we want to take the time to understand something. Is that basically what we're hoping to get with this resolution?

Yes. Yeah. Asking folks to hold off because we're having conversations.

Okay.

Yeah. Lovely.

Uh, I guess, yeah, on the, on the whole thing, like, you know, I think 1 of the things that people are concerned about concerned about the environment and concerned about the power they're concerned about how this is going to affect our. Our pocketbook as individual systems and families and so I think anything else about that in terms of. How do you handle water rates? Do we have any real influence over electrical rates? You know, or do is that something that's handled at the at the state level with the, the commit the public service commission or whatever it's called? um and so i think anything else about that would be interesting to know and even if we if we don't have influence okay you know but at least we know um you know um you know some some parts of these things are just uncomfortable and frustrating and that's the way they end up but at least we would know where we sit on that and as much as you can get us something that would be interesting to know i'll just say you know we want to get the county commission it's just transparent questions on

And back to Gail's point on that 1 there, if we can be partners in the education on this, right? Because if this is something that you all can move forward, and I think the 5 of us agree that it would be a good thing as county residents ourselves. We'd love to be a part of that and helping to educate the folks on why this would be something appropriate to vote for that allows us as a community to have control of our community and what this looks like. So we'd want to be strong partners on that. Ashley, something else?

Ashley, go ahead and tap that mic again.

Are we back? Yep. All right, great. So one quick note on utility rates. I just do want to mention this because you will hear that in the state of Missouri, it is illegal for utilities to pass along the costs of developing data centers and serving those data centers to all of the customers of a utility. And that is technically true. There is also a big loophole. The cost of development of new energy generation can and most certainly will be passed along to the customers of that utility. So you will hear that from those who are in favor of data centers, right, that it's illegal to pass those costs along, for utilities to pass those costs along. Big loophole there. Just want to make sure everybody's aware of it.

And even if power generation is independent, we're seeing several that are going to independent. How is that being generated? If it's a natural gas, what does that do to my natural gas rates here in the community?

Don may he sent her representative Don may he's office and he said the exact same thing. Did he really says we're going to build this gas generation plan and making raise the rates right? There's nothing anybody can do about it. So now we're all at the will of that. So they are building natural gas generators. That's the quickest thing. That's better than solar, I think.

Rodney, anything else from staff's perspective on this?

I believe so. We have lots in the room, but I think everybody's weighed in one way or another. And I think that we have direction from you all and a resolution and then also... Working towards those changes or proposed changes to the zone.

Appreciate the staff work on that. Appreciate the commission for joining us. Anastasia. We're glad to have you here with us tonight as well. We're going to move on to our next topic. Everybody's welcome to stick around for the rest of the agenda. If you didn't want to, you're welcome to leave at this point. That goes to the commission and Anastasia as well. So.

it is equally exciting city-wide addressing well it's pretty they're all going to sit right back down director thank you thank you very much all righty well ronnie why don't you go ahead and take us on to citywide address yes i will just get straight to it with it looks like reed is outside currently so once everybody's finished this is an update of an ongoing uh discussion that we've been having and here comes reed come on up we're going to talk citywide addressing

I'm definitely speaking to a smaller crowd tonight. Yes, you are.

Don't take it personally.

They're definitely not here for me. So the last few months we have spent a lot of time in several meetings going through our street list. Staff has generated a list, and it was – Eye opening, I guess, is probably the best term or one of the best terms for the inconsistency we had across the board for street names. You know, one of them that got me was North Centennial, known as Avenue from childhood. But most of the people on North Centennial had street names. as their official address. We don't know exactly how there was discrepancy between all the sources we checked. We don't know if it was user input on maybe the county GIS or some other service, but As my staff report says, we have notified 429 people. And with that, it was very interesting. And only two, maybe three people contacted us with any concerns. Our changes were very minimal. Typically, it was adding an east, adding a west, north, south. Sometimes it's changing avenue to street. But, you know, we probably went through 40 or 50 addresses at most each meeting, you know, and we looked at it and our administrative assist specialist formulated a spreadsheet and she had it down to, On Centennial Street that there were, let's just say, 39 addresses and 37 of them had street as a name. So we always tried to whatever the change was, tried to stay with the majority of the street. So there was the least impact to the citizens in the area.

So you're telling me Centennial is now Centennial Street? It would be Centennial Street.

So we do have quite a few other changes that need to be made. Those will have to be done by ordinance. And with that, there'll be. Considerably more than 400 letters sent out to the property owners at that time.

What's the difference between what was able to be handled administratively, which is versus what needs to be handled by ordinance.

That's a good question. Maybe Ashley could speak better to that. But typically, if it wasn't a north, south, or a street name, there were some actual spelling corrections. Was it Bob White was one word in some places? And it's actually two words. Those will take a minute or... ACT BY COUNCIL. I DIDN'T LOOK THROUGH MY LIST TO GIVE YOU OTHER EXAMPLES THAN THAT. DO YOU WANT THE COUNCIL TO KNOW WHY IT'S IMPORTANT AS WELL? Well, not just life safety. Get the fire truck, get the ambulance there if needed. But just in general, everybody today has got a mega computer in their hand, and they type in a certain address, and we found discrepancies with Google. We also, the MSAG, the Master Street Address Guide that 911 uses, we found a lot of discrepancies between that. We've actually, even since our meeting, have found unique property that is on the corner of Manor and Manor Crest. and in on most resources we found it was addressed off of i believe manor but the county had it as a physical address of manor crest and a site address as manor so in that one we sent a letter to just the county because that's the only source we found that had a discrepancy We spent a lot of time on this, and we're going to spend a lot more time on this. But then also with this, we have generated five new addresses for new single-family homes as well. But as the report states, that just our 429 is 53 times more than we did last year. So it's, again, it's neat, I guess, or interesting that we didn't have more people, you know, object to the changes.

Well, I appreciate you getting into the fine nitty gritty details on all of this, but it does matter at the end of the day. And this is work that if we don't do, we just kicked a can on it there. So appreciate the work of you and your team in getting this accurate. Accuracy matters now more than ever. Exactly.

And then it'll, it'll be accurate whenever there's a new address assigned, because that happens in the county permit besides bill or I'm not sure if they need a building permit, but they decide to build something out in the county and. You know, armor services board, the signs that address to it, it'll match the others that are around it.

Yes. And some of our. We have some roads inside the city limits that were county roads, so they still go by that address system as well. So I believe there was a couple of those that we've also made minor changes or are going to suggest minor changes to.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you much.

Great. Next, we'll move on and talk about speed limits and some special districts. Mary had brought this forward to you a while back. There are four different types of districts that we talked about with the business zone, hospital, school and park district. And some changes were made to some areas of parks. especially on osteopathy and there's been some pros and cons to that uh some cons if you drive it every day it's a much slower driving than it used to go but pros and that we're likely starting to um see some better safety awareness in those areas so uh went along and and uh you know city staff or the city manager has directed scott to take a closer look at these and then come up with some more consistency as well as language that could be adopted by you all so take it away scott

Good evening, Mayor and Council. This is much more exciting than data centers. So just to start out, we did look at all the different zones as far as speeds go. For the business district, we're leaving that geographically the same as far as our recommendation goes. We may just change some of the description of it to eliminate some of the old railroads, but we'll leave it geographically the same. As far as the others, so what's the purpose? What are we doing this for? It's to give us some objective descriptions of things. In the past, we had a system that there was kind of a hodgepodge here and there as the councils over decades kind of changed different zones here and there, added, subtracted things. So to make it more precise, we just kind of broke it down into just specifics as far as the zones go. Park Zone specifically, 20 mile an hour, but there are some qualifiers in there, some real descriptions that I want to get into as we move on. Another important factor is it retains flexibility for the council, so if there is something in there that a citizen brings up or you drive past and go, that doesn't make sense, it does leave some flexibility for the council to look at this in each individual site and make changes as needed. And expected outcomes, we're looking at just enhanced safety for children in parks, people going to the hospital, and just kind of make it so that it matches what the state laws say, it matches what accreditation says. It also gives the officers a nice, objective, reasonable look at how are we enforcing laws that make sense? Are they fair, right? Back around the current ordinance, like I said, it's been functional for a long period of time, but it did lack some specific definitions as far as school zone and the park district and the hospital zone. There's some kind of tweaks we did in there. Just to flip over the chart on the next page seven, kind of shows you where we made the differences. If you look at the current ordinances, there was no real definition for a school district or park district as far as where the zones start. There was a blanket reference to park district, and it didn't really describe where things started or what the definition was. Just to give an example, you can look at the Bark Park. It's officially a park. But everything that is done there is in a fenced-in area. So it doesn't make sense to actually have a big 20-mile zone right next to that bark park where there is dogs and a fence that prevents accidental overflow. So there's some things we did in there as far as describing the definition of them. K-12 schools, we did change that to where there is an actual definition of what a school is. It comes down to accreditation, recognition from the state as far as what defines a school.

I had a question on that, Scott. Actually, if you don't mind me interrupting. I assume we're not talking about homeschool.

Correct.

My only thought was like approved. I don't know how homeschooling is defined or approved by the state, but you had the term approved in here. I just wanted to make sure that however we're defining that or working with that definition that and make sure it's clear.

Right, so all this does is delineate where the speed zones are. So you can still go to a home school and all of that, and it can be fully accredited and all that, but you can't call your house a school district now. Okay. You can't demand a 20-mile-an-hour speed zone 100 feet both sides of your house because you're homeschooled. Right. That's the definition. It's to break it down to where there's an actual campus for the school.

But it does include private schools?

Yes. Okay. Yes, it does include private schools, as long as they're accredited. Yep.

Okay.

All right, hospital zones again. Hospital zones are pretty well laid out. Zone establishment, so the council deviations that were in Exhibit C, the traffic motor vehicle schedule and hosted controls, that was the previous way. Council now, they retain full authority on how to adjust Exhibit C, but there's just kind of a new criteria that kind of lays out where the signs go. And then we can go on down to school. So this is the actual definition for the schools that's being recommended. It's any public or private educational institution providing instruction for students kindergarten through 12th grade. Any portion thereof is physically located within the corporate city of... City of Kirksville is accredited, approved, or otherwise recognized by the state of Missouri, Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Missouri State Board of Education, or any other authorized state Missouri accrediting agency. So it leaves it wide open for private schools, any church-related schools. It leaves it wide open for once they have accreditation from one of these agencies, then that qualifies as a school.

Um, and then as far as the schools on, um, just a 2nd, there's kind of John to your question earlier. Do you feel that this definition answers your question adequately?

And that's where I'm not sure, because the definition does not include unaccredited facilities, purely online virtual programs without a physical campus in the city.

Does qualify as a campus in the city.

Could it could someone read it that way?

Yeah. And that's my question is, are you asking, and I might be inclined to agree with you, do we need to define out that homeschool is not included?

I think it would be clear, more clear. I think otherwise there's the potential for that. Now, I don't know that anyone's going to go like, I want people going slower in front of my house, but they might. I mean, they put up those signs that say like children to play in their front yard. So that would just be my thought is. I don't know. I think you're saying a home is not a physical campus. I think that's what you're saying. And I think someone could perhaps challenge that.

Most folks probably would not, but someone could. It may be worth adding some language.

Would you like a child minimum or more just language in general? I think just some sort of language that would indicate homeschooling doesn't qualify.

I understand what you're saying, but when you look at the private and public institution, so the homeschool isn't, the institution isn't in the house. That's where the student attends, is in the house. The institution would be wherever they are based.

Unless they're one and the same. Unless they make their own.

It's possible they could use physical materials and not just virtual instruction or something.

So you're looking to exclude single family homes. Right. Or residents.

Yeah.

Okay. Would that include home daycare too?

That I think is in there. Non K-12 child care or early childhood centers. Yeah.

Thank you, Scott. You were at school zones?

Yeah, so yeah, definitions include unaccredited facilities or purely virtual online programs without a physical campus in the city. So again, I don't know if that addresses your home school or not, but we can just exclude residents just as a blanket exclusion. Then it just describes where the speed zones would start. Now there is some notes in here about using flashing beacons and having timed school zones. And I think what we would do in cooperation with the public works director is that we would go out, we'd kind of look at these zones. For example, you look at the R3 campus. There's activities there year round. nights evenings all the time so it doesn't make sense to have a scheduled speed zone there it makes sense to just leave it as this is a big school zone there's nothing going on there but you look at some of the other smaller say some of the private schools or the churches with schools they're only there monday through friday or they only there during certain times we could look at that we could look at what schedule they have so we can make that an adjustment here and there or we could just leave it as just this is a school zone Right. Gives some flexibility. Right, right. Gives some flexibility both for us to go out and physically look at each location and for the council to say, no, this is what we actually want for that area. Same thing with park zones. It does kind of describe what a park zone is. One thing I added in there is that if there is a physical barrier between the general attraction for the park, for example, all the play equipment, swing sets, splash pads, things like that, if there's a physical barrier that's a fence a hedgerow a ditch culvert parking lot or other paved buffer or physical separation of at least 50 yards between that and the roadway if it has those we don't need to go to a park zone in that particular area you look at some of the areas where there's a big ditch or a big culvert or an existing fence like the bark park it doesn't make sense to have a speed zone that drops down when there is a physical barrier baltimore along rotary park you've got a big ditch that delineates out from all of the children's play things exactly i mean you've got the you've got the frisbee golf there but again there's a big ditch big culvert right here big hill so there's not the the likelihood of someone darting out from that particular area is very minimal okay so that's kind of we looked at there as far as what kind of physical barriers are there and again this would be an inventory of looking at them and saying well this

this really doesn't make sense as a barrier or this is a very substantial barrier.

Any questions on the barriers? No. Good thinking on it. As far as the zones for the speed starting, it was kind of inconsistent on how the speed zones started for the parks. So what I did is I laid in if there is a stop sign at the beginning of the road, if there is an existing traffic control device that slows traffic or stops traffic, that's where the new speed zone starts. If there isn't, there would be an offset from that. So the drivers would have time to slow down and make sure they weren't exceeding the speed limit when they hit that actual park zone. But if there is a traffic control device there, like a stop sign, that would act as the slowing mechanism. Then they would start the new speed zone.

On the speed zones, There's somebody that told me, I think it's over by Gardner and osteopathy right now. And this is just something for you to think about that on one side of the street, it says 35, one side says 20. And I understand that there could be times where, okay, you need to slow down because you're going this way and you can speed up now because you're coming out of the park zone. But it could be confusing for the community members to say on one side, it says 35 and on one side, it says 20.

So you look at the direction of travel on those.

Right. Yeah.

So they should be right next to each other. So when you're entering a 20, you're exiting the 35. So you're exiting the 20, you're entering the 35. So the signs will be very close to each other as you enter and exit the zone.

That's the plan for it. You're saying existing there appears to be. Yeah. Yeah.

I just think, you know, it's just something for us to think about as we're putting those up. the proximity of them were on the same street, there's two different speeds, they're going different directions, totally understand what you're saying, but it could just be confusing for folks and just be thoughtful about how we set those up, I think could be.

Yeah, the reason for that is you have to show the actual delineation between the zone, right? So if you have too big of an offset, then that's where the confusion comes in as far as objectivity, where if you have this is where this is the line where the speed zone starts, so you entering 20, you're entering 35 or 30 leaving 20.

Yeah, I think maybe where this is set up, I want to think that if we use the stop sign at Gardner and osteopathy, I think that will solve the issue probably.

Yeah, you shouldn't really see one lane of travel 30 and the other lane of travel 20 passing each other. You shouldn't see a zone like that.

I do have a thought that has to do with this is that if you're driving on osteopathy and you get close to the hospital, you slow down to 20 miles an hour. And on top of that, there's a sign that says hospital. But as we're driving on osteopathy near the park, it just goes to 20 miles an hour. I don't think there's a good explanation for why you're decreasing. So as part of these suggestions, are we thinking to also do Because you see that in the school zones, there's a neon green, the word school. In the hospital, you see it for blue. In central business districts, yellow. If you leave here today, you'll see that. So I don't know if there's a specific color based on traffic code. This might be more of a question for Adam for what park would be or if they could use one of those other existing. But I think that it would help to educate the public why, if I'm traveling 35 miles an hour and it's decreasing to 20, reason being oh i'm getting close to a park and then it's also another reminder to myself i need to be aware of children or ducks or whatever might be coming out in the absolutely yeah well it looks like maybe the the proposal speaks to that and using some missouri or the the unified code on that one am i right on that right but i think that'd be specifically helpful in the area that you're talking about because as you're leaving you're you're increasing to what our standard speed is. The 35 miles an hour is the default speed of the community. And as you're getting in the other side, you say, oh, it's because I'm going into that park area. So it's less confusing to be 20 miles an hour on one side and 35 on the other. It could be a clear wordage that would tell you.

It's probably obvious, but on the stop signs, are you going to put signs there that you're entering to his point? You said that's going to be the starting point is the stop sign there? You want to put your 20 mile an hour sign at that same spot?

Right, exactly. Because again, the stop sign is there to actually slow the traffic down. If you're crossing from a stop sign across that first road and you're going more than 20 already, We're going to have a conversation in the first place. That's a pretty quick acceleration. You can't stack the signs up. You have to have some space between the signs.

Something ancillary to what you guys are talking about on the speed limits and making them more consistent. Has there ever been a discussion Rodney on I see these in different communities, but like, they're called not not the speed bumps that you see when you're going through the high school where it's kind of it's really. I don't aggressive is the word I'm going to use, but more like speed homes. Where you can apply those in different areas, like, I'm making this up. How did you grow over certain areas in your parks where those can be added as well to kind of. tell people like you really need to slow down so not only do you have maybe uh approved speed limit signs but those in addition has that ever been a topic of discussion in the past with the city

only areas that i've seen those used in municip and those are are more to to bring to the attention that there's something ahead like like a stop or or perhaps a roundabout or traffic circle or something like that may be approaching but um okay yeah to put just on a typical side street or something over by maybe trim state university a speed bump would would likely present us more challenges than advantages the other downside of the I'm sure you've engineered many of these.

The other downside, and we've had a request for speed bumps, speed humps and residential neighborhoods, things like that. Looked at, like, Rodney said, maintenance can be an issue. They can be an issue for, like, storm water for drainage. You have to leave channels, like, next to the curb. The other issue is there's no button. If you've got an ambulance coming through, there's no retract button. So they have to slow down just like everybody else. If you have fire trucks, ambulances, things like that. So it can delay. Emergency vehicles as well, so we have not put any in on any city road. We have had requests in the past that kind of explain these same same situations that really the tool for that tends to be more. Enforcement has a better a better impact for that.

I just want to announce to everybody we did drop Internet just briefly. Um, so it was, I'm not sure Austin how much of that was lost, but, um. To sum it all up, speed bumps are not something we're looking at at this time.

Right. That was more just, it's a related topic. I just wanted to bring it up as an ancillary side note. Absolutely. Thank you.

Okay, still on park zones. So if you're going down, you can look through kind of some of the requirements, you know, as far as where the speed zone would actually start, would be at the stop or control device, or 100 feet in advance of that area. So that gives the driver plenty of time to slow down, and it would be signed ahead of time. I don't think there's... A lot of parks that don't have stop signs near them already. There may be a couple out there, but there's not a ton of them. And the termination point would again, it would be beyond the end of the park, but it would give enough time and enough space for the driver to accelerate safely and not have to cover that ground like John does. Signage requirements, just kidding. Just kidding. So signage requirements, again, I've got the playground zone or park zone, so there would be some sort of worded messaging in there showing that you are entering a park zone to eliminate some of that confusion. Qualifying barriers, this kind of goes into some details that I talked about as far as what the physical fence, uh the different type of fences it could be ditch culvert you know good example the fence is the one that runs along um by truman there um it's a pretty decent fence um does leave a couple places people to cut through but we kind of cut down on that quite a bit um and then we talked about the ditching culvert in front of the parks it's just a natural barrier it'd be actually difficult to dart out in front of traffic on some of those areas School zones, hospital zones, not much change except for the definition of a school and the hospital zones pretty much remain the same. It basically protects people that are going to actually in the hospital, slows traffic around for ambulances, emergency vehicles entering and exiting, also for patients that are trying to get in there. Back on the schools, I am looking at some grants for some lighted speed zone signs that kind of tell you how fast you're going. Those have shown time and time again to slow and calm traffic. When you see that flashing light saying that you're going 15 over the speed limit, you put the brakes on pretty hard and slow down pretty quick. So I'm looking at some grant monies to pay for those.

That wouldn't be.

any sort of enforcement-specific, it would just be a... No, it is a radar device that is attached to a flashing sign that has no cameras attached to it, no enforcement capability. It is just a warning for operators to slow down.

Driver information.

Yeah, no artificial intelligence. Draft ordinance language, I did include a copy of just some basic draft ordinance languages. I didn't know if you had any chance to look through some of those and see what you thought might be some changes you can see in those, with the exception of adding the house or the residence for the schools. With that, I'll leave it for any questions.

It's got this comprehensive and I think speaks to everything that we were hoping to see out of it. They're really consistent, um, easily to be able to go out and sign for this. Um, the science becomes an educational opportunity. So people understand a little bit more on this 1 there. So I'm impressed with the comprehensiveness and I don't have any concerns on it. Yeah, thanks.

I think we could bring this next week with some small changes.

Um, I'm on vacation next week, so maybe not.

It'll probably be next month. Sounds good. Enjoy your vacation. Well, Scott's going to stay for the next update, talking about the five-year plan and a little bit about police patrol lieutenant position.

All right, so, um, This is just going to update council and the new council members on what some of the limitations that we have as far as the police department goes. The main one we deal with is one of the biggest frustrations we have in law enforcement right now. Missouri Supreme Court ruling on bail. June 2019, Missouri Supreme Court ruled that when we arrest somebody, we cannot hold them unless they are a danger or a threat of harm to the victim, witness, or the public. or they have a plan to flee and not appear in court, or they have a recent and extensive history of failing to appear in court. Minus those things, any one of those, I have to give them a court date and turn them loose. I cannot hold them. And this is the biggest frustration we have in law enforcement, and it's the biggest frustration that the public expresses to us. Why is this guy back out on the street again? He stole my car. Well, he didn't hurt anybody, and he's not a threat to the public right now. I can't hold him. Or this person has drugs on him. Why isn't he in jail? Well, we arrested him, but again, he doesn't meet this criteria. And this Supreme Court ruling wasn't necessarily a restriction on law enforcement. It was a restriction on the judges. So not even the judges can hold somebody unless we can articulate that one of these three things apply.

And the Supreme Court ruled on this because previously there could be bail associated with that. Yes. And the ruling was that certain folks of socioeconomic class can't afford bail while others can, so it created an unfair situation. Summarization. Yeah, it became a civil rights issue at that point, right?

I believe it. Yeah, exactly. They, they, that was a Missouri Supreme Court that ruled on that until the legislature state legislature puts it into. If they codify it, then we can start holding people on certain cases for bail. But until that point. This is just the. What we have to deal with.

And you're the ones who take the blame on it all the time.

Exactly. And again, it's and I hear the public's frustration on it. You know, you arrested this guy three times. Why is he bad? Why is he still out? Why is he? And it frustrates the officers that they are released prior to us even starting a police report. So we can't even get a police report started and they are back out on the streets. What this did for law enforcement, it took away that cooling off period. When you have someone who is acting out and they're making really bad decisions and they commit a crime, we arrest them in the past that you'd hold them for 24 hours or a short period of time, they cooled off, the public had a break from them being out there committing crimes. Now that cooling off period is gone. They are just released right back out just as angry as they were when we arrested them the first time. Again, this is one of the things we deal with, and I just want to make sure the council understands that if you hear complaints from the public that this person has been arrested and they're on the street, maybe you can explain this to them, because every time I talk, I try and explain this out there so that people understand what it is.

Council has brought this up with our legislators in the past, and to see where they might go on a legislative solution with this, and that hasn't gotten anywhere. I'm curious if your professional organizations, does work continue on that to lobby the legislature for action on this?

Yes, Missouri Police Chiefs Association has spoken very loudly about this. I think it's a political hot button that makes it very difficult for some of them to move forward on it.

What I would say is, I mean, we've talked tonight about several things, but it involves state law. We have an election coming up in this community where we're electing a state senator, we are electing a state representative. These are the kinds of questions to ask folks who come knocking at your door. What solutions do you have available to help with these situations in a way that respects civil rights, but at the same time works for good public law enforcement? So I'm on my soapbox there, but I'm gonna throw that out there. Perhaps you should hop on yours when you meet with a candidate.

All right, and then on to search warrants. This is another one that we do hear a lot of. I'll hear something like, I know that, just give an example. I know this guy's dealing drugs. I see people at his house all the time. Well, we may know things too, but until I can prove it and articulate certain information for a judge to apply for a warrant, I can't go in their house. So just because you know it or someone sees it, that there's people at the house, until we have something more, so we'll take that information and we'll try and build on it best we can. But when it's limited, like there's just a lot of traffic at their house at night, well, It's kinda hard to build some of those cases. We do the best we can as far as who's going there, what kind of associations they have. But again, until we actually build a probable cause statement that we can give to a judge that they can look at and say, that makes sense. I understand why you're going into the house to search. We're tied, our hands are tied. Again, that goes back to the US Constitution. So we gotta respect that as well.

Scott, can I correct that first one for a minute? You have somebody that abuses three children pretty brutally, and they are around the same night. It's just because they're not around those kids anymore? Is that how that works? I'm sorry, what's that? We had a situation where you had a couple abusing those three kids, and they were arrow-eyed, right? They were released on their own with cognizance that same day they were arrested. Is that just because they weren't going to be around those kids anymore? Is there any special circumstances where kids have been so badly abused and hurt?

Yes, yes. There are circumstances where we can go to a judge and ask to hold someone indefinitely, depending on what they do.

That recently happened here in the last couple of years, right?

Yeah, yeah. And again, once we make an arrest, then it's up to the prosecutor and the judges to decide what they're going to do with that person.

So the ones that released him. Right, right.

Yeah, yeah. If there's a child abuse case, we're not gonna release that person because they are a threat at that particular point to the victims. So again, if there's an assault, if someone were to assault somebody, we can state that, look, they're violent, they have hurt somebody and they're a threat to the victim. So we can hold those kinds of cases.

With approval from the court.

With approval from the court, right.

Because ultimately it is the court's decision, not the police.

We can hold up to 24 hours as we go to the judge to get the judge to sign the warrant.

Well, didn't you say the thing was if they were harmed to somebody that you could, then they, that other thing goes away, the thing that they.

If the judge approves it, yes.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it's up to the judge.

Thank you.

Yep. Okay. Any questions on the search warrants?

No.

All right. So update for the police, the strategic plan, we're about almost three years into it now. And I've got some of the statistics from the last year's crime stats that goes towards golden one, as far as crime reduction. And again, We did announce these earlier. I don't have the updated stats because as soon as I bring them out and we got six months left in the year, you just never know what's gonna happen. So I wanna make sure that they're as accurate as possible. You can go and look at real-time stats. It's the showmecrime.mo.gov. That is run by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. That keeps all of our statistics there, generally on a monthly basis. You can kind of look at where we are for the year, our reported crimes. You can look at, I think it goes back about six years now. So you can look at all the statistics all the way back for different categories of crime. Onto equipment, so this kind of meets goal number one, three, four, and five. Some of the things that we did over the last three years to try and update our equipment, we did move to the Taser 10s last year. Again, this is a great improvement as far as officer safety and protecting the suspects as well from harm because it does eliminate a lot of that close-up interaction, close-up hand-to-hand type of thing that we used to have to do in the past. It extends our range out to about 40 feet as opposed to 15. So that really helps us as far as someone that's armed with, say, a blunt weapon.

I'm assuming at this point the new Taser 10s have been utilized in the field at some point?

I think there may have been one deployment, but they make a really, really cool... sound like on star trek when you turn them on okay so they really get people's attention fascinating um the other ones didn't they just had a red light on them okay so these actually make it make a very audible distinctive sound not only for the suspects to hear it and kind of get their attention but also for their officers to understand oh there is now a taser employed employed so um if we hear a pop it's not a firearm so we want to be real cognizant of what's going on yeah you know just for safety all around Another nice piece of technology we picked up was the balance imaging ball camera. I brought some show and tell.

I'm going to sit down so we can take a look at it. I will say real quick, Councilmember Banzel has left the Zoom. Oh, okay.

I appreciate the heads up, Rodney.

Thank you. So this camera can be attached to a leash. It can be attached to a pole. It can be thrown. What it has is a whole series of cameras on there that give us an image that's stitched together. It has night vision. It has a microphone and a speaker on it as well. So when we are dealing with someone that could be armed or barricaded,

We can actually get this through a window or to a doorway, and then we can actually communicate with them and talk to them.

If we have, let's say, an armed subject hiding in an attic or in a crawl space, we can actually lower this down and raise it up on a pole and get a visual on them in a dark area and make communication with them. It also comes with about 13 different languages. So we can speak in different languages, very common police phrases. We're here to help, drop your weapon, come out with your hands up. You're not going to get harmed. Just come out or surrender so we can actually talk to people through this. It does have the ability to be. The image can go to a command center so I can actually be at my desk and see what's going on while I have a tactical team with this out there with one or two of them observing at the same time. So it gives us a lot of options for making contact and communication with people that are either in crisis or violent at that particular moment. And we did move on to load bearing vests. What that did is it took some of the weight off of the officer's belts. Psyduck nerve is a real issue with officers carrying all the weight right at their belt line. We moved up to the vest. So that was a big plus for the officers. Have officers noted? Yeah, they feel that that's been a helpful thing. They love them. They would never go back. Excellent.

Are we seeing less repetitive injury and things like that?

Yeah, you're seeing a lot more. Again, you get that weight up off. What happens is, and I personally experience it, after so many years of wearing a duty belt, you end up with sciatica on both sides or on one side where the weapon is. So that's something that lasts for a really long time. So we're seeing a lot less of that. They love them. They would never go back. Some of the things we did, I didn't include this one, we did upgrade our body armor two years ago to a much, a next higher level of body armor. So the vests that they do actually provide a little bit more protection for them from gunfire. Moving on to personnel, covering goal one, three, and four. Canine Erno is still on the job, still doing a great job, did recently complete full-on training. So he's now a full-on patrol dog to include drug detection, tracking, and apprehension. So he will operate as a full-on partner for the officer, the canine handler.

Has he been here for three years?

Yes. Yep. And she did just have a pretty good size case. They picked up a very, I want to say very large, but about 45 grams of methamphetamine recently in a case. So it was a very good case. Training, we did add quite a few different training methods to include instructors. We added a secondary virtual training academy on top of NPR's training academy. We'd been looking at NPR's videos over and over and over and over again until we could recite them. It was reruns, so... uh we actually moved on to a different company so we kind of intermix those so we get a full uh range of training for our new council members at midwest public risk yes so that's our insurance company our insurance company for these sorts of issues do they partner with a specific training like module uh lexapol yeah they partner with flexible yeah uh recruiting we are um as close to we've ever been to the fall we're we're down one right now i've got one retirement in october so we'll be down to