City Government - Regular Meeting

Fifth work session of city council.

Just a quick announcement here. The mayor is not in attendance with us tonight. Her husband passed away unexpectedly last Thursday and so we just want to share that information with the public and send your love and support her way. We have got Will Bowling online and Brandon Newman online, who we are going to celebrate the other side of things, who's with his family to celebrate a birth. So we'll go from there. And I'll turn it over to, oh, we don't, do we need to roll? No, no roll on this. Thank you, public comment. So next up is public comment on non agenda items. If there is anyone with us who would like to share public comment on non agenda items. OK, so no one online. We will move on to our work session, which is the auditors report to City Council and I don't. Is that Jen? Are you kicking that off for us? Alright, thanks so much. Welcome up.

Good evening, honorable vice mayor and council members. While I imagine all of you have recognized my face by now, I don't know many of you very well, so I would like to introduce myself. I am Jennifer Mollenberg, and I'm the newly appointed controller here for the city, working out of the controller's office, aka finance office, aka accounting office. I've been with the organization for three and a half years and I greatly appreciate the opportunity to continue on this journey with the city. If you are all like me, it feels like we just wrapped up the fiscal year 25 audit and our auditors were standing in front of you presenting a clean audit report in February. However, similar to the line from the Steve Miller band song, fly like an eagle, time keeps slipping into the future, and we are deep into closing the fiscal year 26, which ended on June 30th. And as a reminder, our fiscal year runs from July 1st to June 30th, so a couple months ago. Tonight, we have Abby Hagerman with Klinger Hagerman, our auditing firm here that was awarded a three-year contract in the spring of 2025. And she is joining us to provide you with our audit plan for the City of Laramie fiscal year 26 audit. So therefore, unless anyone has any current questions, I would like to turn the podium over to Abby.

I see no questions. Welcome, Abby.

Good evening. Perfect. Jennifer, thank you for the lovely introduction. uh honorable vice mayor and city council members thank you for having us tonight um oh perfect i even get to click my own my own slides here that's wonderful all right so like jennifer said it seemed like we maybe just wrapped up but here we are again uh time does just keep slipping into the future we're excited to get rolling on the 2026 financial statement audit we've already met with jennifer and her team a couple of times just to do some touch base check in see how things are going And a part of that process allows us to be able to come here tonight and to communicate you. This is the audit planning side of things. We're going to go over the scope of the audit, what my responsibilities are, what your responsibilities and management is, the audit strategy, where this planned scope comes inside of it. So what are we looking at? What are those components? um the timeline when is this thing going to kick off which it's kind of here right but formally when does that begin and when do we plan for issuance there so that all of us can really have christmas that's always the indicator of a successful year is when we get it out before we go on holiday we'll talk a little bit just as a reminder about independence it's the cornerstone to an audit to ensure we can provide opinions and then the last slide will just show you a little placemat of all the faces that are going to work on the engagement So we're here tonight. Like I said, we're going to talk about the audit for the year-ended June 30, 2026. Professional standards do require that I come here and I talk to you so that we can discuss our professional judgment, any estimates judgments that we're going to be using inside of that financial process. So we're happy to be here. The scope of the audit. So what are we even doing, right? Everyone says, oh, I'm not good at math. Oh, I'm not good at financial statements. Well, you don't have to be able to read every nitty gritty detail, but it is important to understand your auditors. What are we doing? What opinions are we providing? And how are we conducting those? so the financial statement audit that's the big chunk that's the media that comes out of the financial statement audit it is conducted in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards we are engaged and i'm going to read this it's really wordy but it's important for us to see it that it's the audit of the financial statements of your governmental activities the business type activities and each major fund and the aggregate remaining fund information including the disclosures that collectively comprise the basic financial statements of the city of Laramie Wyoming for the year ended June 31st So it's not just one fund, it's all funds, and we present them based on if they're governmental or business type. So there's a lot of components that come into it. That big audit is conducted, like I said, under generally accepted auditing standards. Now that would be the same generally accepted auditing standards if we were a for-profit business or a non-profit. However, because we are a government, thankfully the state of Wyoming has said, you know what? Go ahead and perform that audit also in accordance with if the control system is really good, we can rely on controls that helps us with the efficiency of the audit. We don't provide an opinion over internal controls, but we do provide recommendations or if we have findings, those are discussed. The other piece that is special to government auditing standards is this laws and regulations section. So we spend additional time obtaining assurances to whether the city really is compliant with outstanding laws and regulations. It could be anything from, are you filing? payroll taxes on time? Are we submitting to the state on time? Are we doing grant compliance work? Are we following our own resolutions or ordinances? Those sorts of things. So that's the specific piece that's on the side of the government auditing standards. If we were to find something in laws and regulations that would come to the attention, it would be disclosed inside of the financial statement opinion.

Abby, I've got a quick question for you. So is it typical for organizations, whether it's governmental or nonprofit or whatever, to hire, like we have contracted you for three years. Does that make more sense because you are able to know what you tested last year and then the additional years you test something different to make it more strength strong?

Absolutely. So it's always painful to change auditors. And it's not that a new auditor is hard or your old auditor was easy. It's just that with time comes all of this knowledge. When we rely on internal controls at an organization because they are strong enough that we can gain that assurance, if we have three years we get to kind of lean on that unless the process has changed so three is a really sweet spot we always say that's when we really know where the skeletons are it's really know where all the hard pieces are so it does that contract over more than just one year does allow us to kind of change our audit approach to hopefully hopefully leverage the efficiency of the audit um but obviously if something changes in the system then we still have to go back and do that but Absolutely. Consistency inside of having an auditor year over year does have its perks because it's a lot on the finance team. They're doing their everyday job. And then to have an auditor come in, there's a lot to learn. And Jen and I have learned a lot in just the last couple of years as she's cycling into really taking the reins over that. So she'll probably say in another year that, yeah, it's not scary anymore. I know all the things.

Thank you.

All right, the last audit that you guys have there we go, is a single audit. It's conducted with uniform guidance. What is that? That is because the city is lucky enough to be the stewards of federal money that is spent on various projects inside of the city. But when we spend more than a million dollars, it used to be $750,000. A long time ago when Jen and I first started, it was $500,000. This is the first year that the city will have a single audit subject at a million dollars. But the city has spent more than a million dollars, so the single audit will exist inside of that. This is a compliance audit. This is where we have a report called the schedule of expenditures of federal awards, the SIFA, and it's detailing us all of the different federal money that was spent during the year, what programs they were under, and based on this really mathematical flow chart, essentially we pick a certain number of programs to audit. And so we provide an opinion over the schedule of expenditures of a federal awards, but also with your compliance over the material items that are to be tested with respect to a grant. So we have the financial statement audit, we have gas, which is a bolt-on to make sure we've got laws and regs and internal controls. And then the last piece, you spent more than a million dollars, single audit as well. The only thing you guys don't have is a passenger facility charge audit because the airport isn't inside of you guys. That would have been the only other bolt built on that we can have. But the uniform guidance compliance audit does have an opinion. We do look at internal controls just like we did on the gas side. no opinion on internal controls, but if there were issues, we would definitely communicate that. So now we know what we're doing, whose job is to do all of the things. What are the responsibilities? City council, so those of you sitting here and also those in management. So I know we have city manager Fieser on board. We have other members of staff here. So management is also included in this. It is the city as a whole, those charged with governance and management to design and implement effective internal control systems so that we're safeguarding the assets, we're allowing for the presentation of our financial information to be compliant with the reporting requirements. So with GASB GAP, you're following laws and regs. That's a responsibility for all of you as well as everyone internally. We wanna make sure that the programs that are being conducted inside the city are in compliance. And that would even be if we didn't have a single audit, right? We are working to ensure that we are compliant with all the money that we are stewards of, whether that be federal or local, right? If for some reason anyone in this room was suspected, you know, suspects fraud, knows of fraud, it is the expectation and your responsibility to communicate with the auditors immediately on that. We have to know that. That changes the risk profile. It helps us also potentially help you with next steps if there was something going on as CPA auditors. we do the financial saving audit. If for some reason we found ourselves in a situation where there was known or suspected fraud, we'd be leveraging other types of accounts to come in, maybe a certified fraud examiner, but we don't know any of that unless we're told that. The objective of the audit is not to find fraud. We plan our audit with fraud considerations and fraud risks at play, but really most of the fraud is actually gonna come from someone internally blowing a whistle, finding something that wasn't correct. That's an important thing. We hope it never happens, but certainly those conversations, it's a two-way street. We want to make sure that we are in the know if something like that happens. Fraud sounds like a big scary word. It could maybe just be noncompliance. We just want those things communicated. Nobody wants to find out on the back end. This is not a situation where you ask for forgiveness. We should just talk about it as soon as we know. We thankfully haven't had any of those issues in the past, but it's just important to understand if we find ourselves in that situation, a phone call to pick up and call me is the right move to make. Obviously, there's also a laundry list of other things that need to go on. These are the main highlights. If you are looking for exactly what your responsibilities are in very audit termy language, those are all outlined in the engagement letter. Obviously you're on the hook, but I'm also on the hook too, right? I have responsibilities back to you. So my responsibilities at the end of all of this, we have done sufficient work to provide and express an opinion as to whether your financial statements are presented fairly and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles under the purview of GASB to make sure that the users of our financial statements really can read them and gain assurance from them. My responsibilities don't relieve you of your responsibilities and your responsibilities don't relieve me. So we're both in this together working towards an outcome, which is the compliance to ensure that the audit is completed no later than December 31st. That's a state statute requirement. Also, because you guys elect to participate in the GFOA's act for submission, it also has to go by December 31st. How are we going to get it done? How does the audit work? So the audit strategy, if you've been here a long time, you start to hear kind of the same terms over and over again, but every year we look at it and we say, okay, what did we learn last year? What do we know this year? And we talk about the same things. We're going to come in and we're going to look at examining things on a test basis. The test basis is because I cannot sit with Jen all day, every day and look at every transaction the city makes. That's, That's just silly. That's a waste of time and resources. There's a control environment in place for her to do her job. We're going to come in and on a test basis look at that so that we can make sure that the amounts reported and disclosed in the financial statements can be supported. We have to understand and obtain what has changed, what is different, and how does the city function. There's obviously been some title changes that have happened. There's been a reorganization inside of different departments. We go in and look at that. We have to find out, has the internal control structure changed? Well, maybe it was Gen Wade that used to do it, but now Gen M does it. Maybe the process isn't different, but the person doing it is different. So we have to gain an understanding of all of that. Otherwise, we don't understand how to go in and find that audit evidence to support our numbers. Now, when we look, everything we talk about is that the financial statements are free of material misstatements. Well, how can a material misstatement happen? They could happen because we are human, right? Accounting is getting more complex. Everyone is being asked of more. We're trying to do things in more real time. So sometimes errors just happen. Or maybe what we thought we knew one year doesn't seem quite right when we reapply that standard the following year. So errors sometimes just happen. There could be fraudulent financial reporting that could cause a material misstatement, never what we want, but that is the underlying, you know, could be one of the things that would happen. We could misappropriate assets. All of a sudden things are just going out the door and someone has a really nice house or, you know, governments typically don't have as much on the misappropriation, but certainly it's something that's still there. And we watch for that. And when we talk to different department heads, we ask those sorts of questions. How are people getting things out of the city? It's maybe not cash at the drawer at utility buildings. Is it expensive parts? Is it tires? Those sorts of things. Certainly material misstatements could also happen because we violated laws or regulations and we did things that we just shouldn't. That could even be on the side of compliance things. We came out and you guys approved a budget to appropriate a certain dollar amount and we just didn't go through the process to get the budget amended. So now we have to look at, oh gosh, does that raise the risk for an opportunity for a material misstatement to happen? So if we go through this process and all of a sudden we have significant issues or findings which we have never had, we would communicate that to you guys right away. If it's something just that in the normal course of business we find, oh gosh, maybe this process could be improved, we had a minor issue on something, it would come at the close of the audit. But know that we understand and we respect very deeply that you are those charged with governance. You're the ones who hired us. So if there is something that needs to be communicated that is of any seriousness and outside the normal course of an audit, you'll be communicated with immediately. That's not something that we're gonna find out when I'm here on my RAP meeting and I bring something to the table that you weren't expecting. So that communication happens throughout. Like I said, we haven't had a lot of issues in the past. We don't anticipate that either, but if something came to be, you would be communicated to directly. Our audit focuses on higher risk areas. Remember I said I can't sit with Jen all day, every day. So we have to come in and figure out, well, what should we look at, right? I can't look at every transaction. What transactions maybe are more complicated, right? So we go through this little list. We look at last year. Have things changed? Okay, we compare all the time. Whoa, there's a new fund. Oh, we got rid of a fund. Oh, man. you know a couple years ago it was the you know the the health insurance um looked different right we have opeb that went someplace so we think about what did we do last year well what's different this year sometimes we can answer those things ourselves sometimes we just have to go directly to the finance team for assistance on that We also look at just the inherent pieces of things, right? Some stuff is really straightforward. Well, when we get into complex business transactions, we have to look at that and say, okay, well, if it's a lease buyback, if we're doing bonding, maybe those are areas we should spend our attention on. So it is risk-based. If there's new developments in the industry, if we know all of a sudden, like when forever ago when landfill closure became a hot topic, we had to spend a lot of time there making sure that everybody understood how that was going to work. If there are recently issued accounting and financial statement guidance, we always look at those areas. GASB 103 and GASB 104 are applicable for this fiscal year. It doesn't mean much to you guys and you don't need to go home and read them. But 103 is the most challenging per se. It's not overwhelming like anything we've seen, but it will look, mean the MD&A, management's discussion and analysis has some new information. So we'll want to make sure when we're planning our audit strategy that we give ourselves time to ensure that the internal team may, you know, made all the check boxes, made sure they complied with GASB 103. 104 has some capital assets and tangible items that will need to be looked at. But we have to look at those and that will help us tailor where we're going to spend our time on the audit.

I'm going to interrupt you for just a minute. Councilor Doherty.

Can you remind me, Gatsby, generally, is that generally? Governmental Auditing Standards Board.

Governmental Auditing, no, Government Accounting Standards Board. And then ACFER, can you remind me what ACFER? Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. Thank you. Sounds like something Jen says a lot.

Thank you for interrupting asking. I don't mean to be alphabet soup.

Yeah. Thank you. Vice mayor. Uh, thank you for the presentation. Sorry to interrupt again. You're fine. Question. This just made me think of, you know, we're working with cleaner hangar men for multiple years. If there are changes in something like that, is that something you guys communicate in real time and look for on our behalf?

Yep, that's great. That's a great question. So because we meet kind of throughout the year because, you know, the audit never stops. It feels like sometimes we do. We try to be really proactive anytime something big is coming. Lease accounting was Gatsby 8796. That was a big undertaking. And so we tried to make sure like, hey, are you looking at that following through? You guys should be really proud of your finance department. They're the easiest ones for me to come in and talk about it. They already know. They already know what's coming down the pike. They already know that they need to be looking at, do they need to have new resources there? Some of our smaller municipalities we work on, they lean more on us to tell them that these are coming, but thankfully your crew knows well in advance, they're already on their radar. And then we do talk about it. Like, what are you doing? Are you worried? Are you concerned? And we'll talk about independence a little bit later, but It is something that while we have to remain independent, it doesn't mean we can't talk through transactions or implementations of things. It's okay for us to talk about general knowledge. I just can't tell you how to skin the cat. We can talk about like, yeah, that's one way. yep that could be another way that seems like it's compliant seems like it's in the spirit of what the pronouncement is saying so so yes so we help our clients inside of that which is nice when we build that rapport you know year over year we can help watch that to ensure that they are making strides to when the day comes and we have to present that in an audit but they're ready to go

Thank you. And also the slogan of the audit never stops should be on some T-shirts. I know. That we all wear because that's a great one.

Look out, Jen. Your team might get us some shirts.

All right. I think we're good to continue.

Perfect.

All right.

All right. So also inside of that, we talked a little bit, you know, significant accounting principles and policies. We look to see if anything has changed year over year. Most of the time, the reason things change is because something like a GASB pronouncement. But if they change the way, you know, they were doing an estimate over something, we would want to know that and we would consider whether or not we needed to look at it. We're going to look at the control environment as a whole. What's that tone at the top? How are you guys doing here? Do you take financial reporting seriously? What's going on in all the other departments? That's an important piece for us to understand because we all know if there's not a good foundation, then how do we build that house to stand upon? We look at IT structure and controls. We looked at that a lot during the ERP implementation showing us, you know, who has control of what, who, you know, how do we tell, who has, you know, permissions to do things. So those now that have been put in place, we're just running updates. Has anything changed? What's new? And then we do continually throughout the financial statement audit, we talked about material misstatements, right? Well, I have to have some number in mind where I am okay if we maybe have errors up to a certain dollar amount. Now, if I get in there and things start to look weird or something's new, we continually monitor to ensure what we think is material is correct and accurate to provide the support for the public users. So what is our planned scope? Well, all right. Our initial assessment we've gone through, we've had discussions with Jen and her team. These things might look scary. Please don't be scared. There are some things that become risks to an audit because that is just the inherent risk of an audit. So fraud risk is something we always have to look at. It doesn't matter how perfect our controls are, how much we've had, you know, past fraud involvement or we've never seen that out of you, we're going to judge, we're going to have professional skepticism inside of what we do. Fraud is tough because a lot of times that means collusion has happened and I can't prevent that in a control system because that means someone broke the control system. Fraud risk is always there. The next one that says internal control over financial reporting, That one ends up in there because we have to worry about what's called management override of control. And that's just an inherent risk to all audits. And that's where we do, you know, say, okay, well, you know, I was supposed to have this approved last week, but so and so wasn't here. Would you mind just signing it or whatever? so we always look at that we've put implementation of GASB 103 it's new it's different we have to make sure that they work on the MDNA there's some new terminology in your business type activities is it a subsidy or not and then subsequent events I'm not scared something's going to happen after year end but you guys are busy busy people doing lots of different things so we always look to see What happened after year end? Because we might need to tell the users of the financial statements that something big has happened, whether good or bad in the sense that we got more debt or if a contract fell through, we're always considering those things during our planning. Overall timing. So we're going to do all those things. We're going to look at the control environment. We're going to go through our planning processes. We'll begin doing the actual nuts and bolts testing where we're getting that test basis audit evidence. We're currently in the planning phase. September, these ladies are working so hard, you know, Jen and her team to get everything closed for the year. In for-profit businesses, they don't often close immediately as well. It just takes time. Government is also complicated because we have this 60-day window that we have to make sure we let time elapse so that we can ensure we've appropriately accounted for what we need. They're working through their year end close. We're doing, you know, like our documentation of planning in August and September. We will come out on site wherever Gen M's office is currently living at that time to do the field work, the testing. That's where we might be out and about. We might be over at utility billing. We might be with public works. November things get really serious and hopefully by the Thanksgiving time is when that ACFER from these guys is really getting put together. We're feeling really good. We're ticking in time, getting through that final phase. And then the conclusion and issuance is in December. Obviously, the earlier the better. That's always our goal. Like I said, it's jokingly, but it's true. Once we finish that audit, we all kind of feel like we can breathe that sigh of relief and we can go on holiday with our families knowing that the fiscal year has been wrapped. Issuance will include both the ACFER which must go by 1231 and then we always issue a separate compliance report and that's where those internal control reports show up. The schedule of expenditures of federal awards will sit inside of there and if there are any findings associated with that. So two things come, it's still the whole package of the audit. We would be remiss if we didn't talk about independence. When we dated our engagement letter this year, it was August 7th. So it was just as of recently, it does talk about our responsibilities in ensuring that we maintain independence. That really is the cornerstone to be able to provide an opinion. So we really, every year when we re-accept, even though we're in a three-year contract, we are looking at who is on the job. Is there anything that would impair our independence? Are we, you know, are we, not able to be unbiased? Are we not able to exercise professional skepticism? So we take that seriously. And so that is all spelled out inside of the engagement letter. If you're looking for some light reading, again, you could go in and check that guy out. Last slide is the audit service team. Familiar faces that you have seen on here before. Micah and I are still here. We did add a partner last year. He sits actually, we now have a little Colorado office in Greeley. So he will be a technical partner. So if we have issues, in just the reviewing do we feel like all the you know eyes are dotted t's are crossed he's there to assist melissa has been on site with us before um aaron has been with us um off and on he's really great he actually works out of texas for us um but i would anticipate we'll have melissa for sure on site and then micah and i will be we have some other staff that are kind of behind the scenes working as well. But these would be the faces that you would see on site. So I would entertain any questions. You've been very patient while I work through and talk about all of it. But we just appreciate everything that the finance team does. They do make our job easy. They are a client that takes you know, financial reporting really seriously. So you should all be very proud of the product that comes out in the end. I, you know, we just look forward to it every year. And we're really grateful for the opportunity to continue to serve the community in which we live too. So any questions I'd be happy to answer.

Councilor Doherty, thank you.

Well, for one question is we have a financial issue Finance Committee on Council. So three of us review all of the expenditures every month. That's not an internal control. That's just icing on the cake, right? That's not something that's required.

So it actually does have a lot of meat in it. So while yes, there's a lot of process and procedure that has gone through, you guys still are the ultimate yay-nay. So we do look. So when we test an expenditure, we do see if it was approved in the Finance Committee that it came before you.

And then the fact that looks like our checkbook is online now, does that help too as a control? I guess it's not an internal control, it's inviting the public to see our checkbook.

Sure, so it just enhances transparency for you guys to say, yes, we have these audited financial statements. If you want to go in and see that detail, it's there for you to look as well. We've always had access to that as auditors, so not new, but it does speak to that control environment that we talked about, which means you aren't afraid to pull back the curtains and show those things. So while it's maybe not a box that I'm checking on a control step, it's still a part of that overall system and your commitment to financial reporting and transparency.

Great. Oh, Councilor Shumway.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have a question. Many contracts that we have have penalties that are built in, and there are times when contractors go over the... time that they have guaranteed that they would complete the project, so there's penalties with that, other penalties that come forward. If we do not collect those penalties, is that treated as fraud?

No. In accounting, we're a little bit of negative Nancy's in the sense that we don't recognize positive maybes. We always hope in the accounting, we always go off of what we know, so we wouldn't prematurely recognize the revenue on that contract from an accounting standpoint until we know that it's measurable and determinable and will be collected. I can't speak to the city's actual internal process on how you guys manage that. But from an overall standpoint, we don't recognize revenue unless we know. It's measurable and determinable because we don't want to be in that situation where we said we were going to do it and then we didn't.

Does that answer your question?

And I don't know if you have anything you want to add to that?

I don't think so. The only thing I would add is typically... Jen, do you mind coming up?

Thank you.

The only thing I would add to that is you could, we pay attention to those types of things because you also have compliance that you have to follow with the contract specifically. And so if for instance, there's a contract that says if the contractor is running late on meeting their deadlines, we have to withhold liquidated damages, then we will do that per say per pay estimate or whatever is stipulated in the contract.

Thank you Other questions from Council All right public comment on this work session I Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here again. I think we, I mean, I always enjoy learning the process and having you all and your expertise and professionalism. So we sure appreciate it.

I really appreciate all the questions and hanging tight on what is sometimes a dry subject. really good questions and I like it I like that we're having the conversation it's not scary auditing shouldn't be scary and we're here to answer your guys' questions and we all have the same goal in mind so you'll see us around over the next few months obviously at any time during the year if you ever have questions or concerns you can always call us it doesn't you know just have to be when I show up two times a year we are engaged to work with you at all times so we're here if you ever have questions so thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your evening

Great, thank you very much. All right, so that ends this work session. So we will move on to city council updates. And who wants to start? Who's ready? Jim, go for it. Councilor Freed, sorry.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. That's quite all right. No worries. Well, it looks like Wednesday, August 12th, Park Streets and Rec Board did not have a quorum. We were scheduled to go look at the new opening of the bike park. We did not have a quorum. Councilor Bolling was going to fill in for me, but didn't have to because we didn't have a quorum. On Thursday, August 13th, the Ranch Advisory Commission met for our quarterly board meeting and we had a great discussion about the future of the ranch. It seems to be a topic all the time. Maybe asking for more research to be done and different ways that we can kind of protect this that the city has to ensure that we have water, as well as utilizing that area to its fullest. So really just continuing up on work and reporting from the awesome work that's happening on the ranch, but more to come in the future. Also on the 13th, Traffic Safety Commission did not meet because there was a snowy range road presentation about the road work at 5 o'clock that day. So the Traffic Safety Commission did not meet on the 13th, but also on the 13th, the Railroad Depot Board did meet, and we talked about some really cool things. They're doing great with their bookings. their social media presence. If you guys don't follow the Laramie Historic Railroad Depot, you definitely should. They have some awesome videos, and they're getting a ton of engagement that way, and just some really cool things happening for the depot. So that's it.

All right, thank you, Vice Mayor. I just had one. It was the Planning Commission meeting last evening. It was about as short as this meeting, so pretty nice. Labonte Park and vicinity rezoning 42 parcels from R2 to R3 just to pretty much make all the same around there. So there was some questions from the public. Some of them got the letters and thought that they were gonna develop Labonte Park into apartments and that's not the case. It's just to bring everything back into the same type of cohesive unit. So had some good conversation there with that. Some good questions by the Planning Commission members, but that's all I have. And it passed.

Yes, go ahead. Council Fried.

I think you guys want to follow up to Council Lockhart. I live in that area and we got the city notice and the neighbors were really excited to hear what's happening in my little neck of the woods. And we're really appreciative that the city reached out. So I forgot about that. So thanks, Council Lockhart. That's great.

Councilor Newman, are you available to provide an update?

I don't think I have any updates other than I became a grandpa at 649 this morning. Yay. Other than that, no updates.

Great. Councilor Dougherty. I went to the Public Service Commission today just to kind of reiterate our letter. I doubt it did any good, but one of the members said it's good to hear a different perspective because everybody else there was cold, cold, cold. So it was good to be there. So I just pretty much said what was in the letter except abbreviated. Thanks for being there.

Councilor Shumway.

I have no updates. Councilor Eagle.

Thank You vice mayor I also don't have any huge updates I will say just thanks to the community we moved in all the new freshmen over two days this year this past weekend instead of just one it was a big lift but I saw a lot of students kind of frequenting the businesses downtown and yeah it was fun and I'm tired thanks

Uh, counselor bowling. I don't know what, how your connection is, but if you have an update and feel like your connection works, it's all you.

Thank you. Can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Yeah. Uh, thank you. And I apologize about being on video there. I'm in Newfoundland and the wifi service here isn't terrific. But the vice mayor and I and the mayor met last week with the West Side Overlay Task Force, and we're working on now five sort of action items, and we have another meeting coming up next week. on Tuesday, next Tuesday the 1st. And so I will keep people updated on that. And that's it for now. Congratulations, Councillor Newman.

All right, and I had a few meetings. I attended the fire and building commission and they basically just went over kind of rules around, you know, that we all go through when you learn like the procedures and what you can and can't do. And Nancy came in and gave them a quick update. They've been through it before. So she kind of gave an abbreviated version of that for us. Let's see, DDA met and appointed someone to the parking task force and then completed kind of the work for the downtown development or the downtown plan update. The previous meeting, we had a special meeting for that. I got to attend the bike park opening on Saturday and so did Councilor O'Doherty and it was so cool. It was really, really cool. So many people were out. Jen was there. And I was telling folks at the city, I'm not a huge bike rider, but I decided because they were giving lessons. And so I tried the pump track and I thought I was going so fast. And I am fairly certain I was not. But it felt really fun and fast. So I highly recommend it. And then I felt like there was one more thing, but now I have lost it. So I think that is it.

Yes, please. I just wanted to add about the bike park. I ran into a friend who was watching her grandkids go up that hill. And they're pretty young. I don't know, like 10 or something. And they're going up that hill and then coming down and then riding up that hill like... I mean, I couldn't do it. Well, I never could. And the father said that he's a climber, but now he had to switch because they pretty much live at the bike park now. His kids want to live at the bike park. So I think how fit they are to be able to do that, it's just a wonderful thing for our community.

The only thing I see now is we need some shade out there. It was hot. But big, huge thank you to all the Parks and Rec folks who are out there and helping run that, to BikeNet who was out there, to the Wyoming Parks, oh gosh, Wyoming Recreation, Wyoming Outdoor Rec folks. They were there as well, and they provided funding, part of the funding for that. So big thanks on that. And I think that's... It so we can at this point. Oh agenda review real quick. Anything anyone sees on the consent agenda that you feel like may need to be pulled off. OK, other questions. Okay, good. Oh, yes.

I just wanted to shout out Vice Mayor. I don't know if it's our city clerk or whoever, but for putting the draft agenda on the work session agendas. I know we've heard some feedback from members of the public that would like to know what we're looking at up here. So just grateful for whoever instilled that, the mayor, vice mayor, city clerk, but it's great.

I smear through you, please. It's been happening for years, but I appreciate the feedback. No, it's okay. But I do appreciate the feedback on that though, to know that it is something that the community is looking for because we're looking for avenues like that all the time to try to help make it something that they find more easily. So if they know that on Tuesday nights when you have work sessions that the draft agenda is going to be included, that's great. Good for them and good for us to know that they're looking.

Thank you for educating me, City Clerk, on what I must have been missing for a little while, but I do appreciate it.

Well, to be fair though, Jim, I feel like we really look at the item on the agenda and we know we're going to see this, so we don't necessarily look for it because we know it's in front of us. Yes, City Clerk. One more tidbit.

So when I post the agenda on Fridays, it's not available yet. Because on Monday is when we meet with the mayor and vice mayor and city manager to set the agenda. So if they look the Friday that the work session is posted, they're not going to see it yet. But if they look the night that you meet, we do have it available. So that could be the difference too, is that maybe they're looking when it's posted initially. And so they haven't seen it attached to the agenda. But if you tell them Tuesday, go look.

See, that's what it is, Jim. You were just really eager and have been looking every Friday. And so you've missed it. So there we go. All right. Unless there's anything else, that is it for tonight. Thanks, everyone.