City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Monday, March 23rd, we'll call the mayor city council meeting to order at 6:30. We'll start with the pledge. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Any additions to the agenda tonight? I have no additions tonight. Acting mayor, I'll look for approval of the agenda or motion for approval of the agenda. Motion second. Motion and second. All in favor say I.

I. Motion carries 4. We'll open up for public comment. If anybody has anything to say before we go into business hearing none, we'll close for public comment. Anything on the consent agenda that needs to be pulled for further discussion. Hearing none, I'll look for a motion to approve approve the consent uh consent agenda. Geez. Motion second. All in favor say I. I.

I. Motion carries 40. On to business items. Business item 10, presentation of the 2025 audit. Thank you, acting mayor. I'd like to introduce Bonnie and Robbie from our uh auditing firm, Abdo Iikeny, and they will be here to present the 2025 audit. Welcome.

Perfect. Thank you so much. Um we are going to go through our audit presentation which is a summary of the more detailed uh financial statements. Um this and if you have any questions as we're going through this please feel free to stop us and we can touch on anything as it comes up. Uh we are in a draft form right now. There's one piece of information we're waiting on from the state of Minnesota fire relief pension plan. They expect to release that in late March or early April. Uh once we get that information, we'll be able to finalize the report. We don't expect any changes from the information we're going to cover tonight. Uh so everything that we talk about will stay the same. It's more just getting some some of that pension information updated with some of the new numbers from the state. I'm going to start by going through our audit opinion and the more of the technical side of the audit and then Robbie will take over with some of the u financial trends. So, I'm going to zip forward to page three of the presentation for the audit results. We do have two audit opinion letters within the financial statements. The first one is the independent auditor's report that is required by state statute for you to have an independent audit uh come in annually and audit your financial information. And we also review your internal controls and your processes and make sure that everything is working as it should and there's no internal control deficiencies that we need to report. We did provide a clean opinion on your financial statements. U meaning that we were able to obtain all of our audit evidence. We didn't run into any significant issues and we did not see any balances that were uh misstated. And for internal controls, we did not note any um significant new deficiencies or anything any processes that were not being followed. So your internal control structure uh looked really good and was being followed as it should be. We also review compliance with Minnesota statutes and did not note any issues. So, as a city, you have to comply with a

lot of different state statutes around how you do your council meetings and uh bid your projects, pay your bills, and no issues. So, really good year from a compliance aspect. We do have two findings in the report, same as the findings that we had last year. Nothing to be overly concerned about, but just areas that we need to note due to the limited size of the staff in the in the city hall. uh there's not a lot of people involved in the financial internal control processes and because of that there's more risk associated with your financial transactions. So important to think about that when you're approving projects and bills and going and and talking thinking about uh all the different financial areas. Again, nothing new uh but just two areas that we do have to point out annually and here they are 2024. So same findings for 24 to 25. I'll hand it over to Robbie and he'll go through some of the financial information.

Yeah. So, this first slide here shows the general fund fund balance as a percentage of the budgeted expenditures. So, in that yellow line up top, that's going to be the budgeted expenditures in the general fund over the last five years. And then the orange line will be the percentage of your expenditures. And then the black line is your fund balance policy which is 50% of your following year's budget expenditures. So we can see that mayor has been above policy over the last five years and the percentage has increased quite a bit over the last two years up to about 109% this year. Um and then if you want to go forward a slide we can see kind of the reason for that increase and that's because fund balance increased about $243,000 in the general fund this year. Um that's mostly just because there was an excess of revenues over expenditures. Um and the reason for that is because there were positive variances in both the revenues and expenditures just meaning that there were higher than re higher than budgeted revenues and less than budgeted expenditures. Um the area that kind of had the largest variance in revenues was building permits. And then for expenditures, it kind of varied between a few different departments, but the public works department within the general fund had the largest variance there. We can move on to the next one. So then this slide just kind of shows a trend over the last three years of the city's general fund revenue sources um by the type. Um not a whole lot to go over with this one. Just kind of one thing to note is that the taxes revenue as you can see went down from 2023 to 24 and 25. And that's just because after 2023 the city kind of started allocating a little bit more of its levy towards the capital funds instead of just directly into the general fund. And then the next slide here is kind of again just showing some trends over the

last three years just related to the general funds expenditures um by department or by function basically. Um not a whole lot to note with this one just kind of more of a visual.

And then separate from the general fund, you have a few different special revenue funds where the balances are restricted and committed. And we like to um show this separate from those general fund balances. So you can see what you have outside of that everyday operating fund. And for for your EDA, not a lot of change. And then also you have a fire department contributions fund. Uh they can see the balance stays relatively consistent. Not a lot of activity going in there. And then next is your capital project funds. So again, separate from your general fund, main operating fund. And as Robbie noted, you have tax levies directly going into these to build up for those capital reserves. And there you can see over the last uh three years how those capital fund balances have changed. A couple funds were um started recently and then closed out. So like that park improvement fund is at zero at the end of the year. That was intentional an intentional decision by the city to use those funds um and grant grant money for ongoing projects that were completed. And then next is your debt service funds. So this is a a list of all of the non-utility related debt and when it matures. You can see that you have two obligations that mature February 1st, 2026. So those are those are done uh now and then that debt service is going to go down in 2027. The bottom chart um is an interesting illustration of what how do our requirements change over the next few years. And you can see with those 26 obligations going off, it stays relatively consistent until 2034. Your final bond that you have issued as of December 31st, 25 U matures in 2041. So that goes out quite a ways. And then next is the water fund. The water fund top chart here is looking at how much you have coming in from receipts compared to how much you're spending on operating cost and

dispersements. and it helps illustrate how much um you're able to cover and build up those cash reserves. The operating receipts have not been quite sufficient to cover all of the costs and the and the debt in that fund. There was some um interest revenue and some connection fees. There's about 40,000 in connection fees and special assessments in 2025 that helped bridge that gap. And so your cash balance didn't decrease as much um as you would think just based on that operating look. So you were able to keep your cash balance about 430,000. We have a minimum target balance on these utility charts that we'll go over. And that's just a really a general recommendation so you can see um gives you some idea of do we have enough cash in this fund to cover our operating operating costs. We always like to um caveat this with it's important to think about your upcoming capital needs. That's really one of the most important factors when you're thinking about your utility fund cash and I know that that is something that you guys talk about uh regularly.

So the next slide is similar to the last one but just for the sewer fund. Um, one thing to kind of note with this one is that 2025 was the first year in a while that the city was not collecting any property tax revenues or levies in the sewer fund. And we can also see that there was also no debt payments being made in that fund. So that was why. Um, but with that we can see that the operating receipts were higher than the operating costs in that fund. And that's kind of reflected down below with the increase to the unrestricted cash balance there. And kind of with that line that the minimum target that Bonnie was mentioning, this um the sewer fund is quite a bit higher than that kind of minimum target that we have in place there. And the next one is just the storm water fund. There's not a whole lot of activity in this fund. Um the general or the operating costs are have been historically low kind of except for 2022 when there was a little bit of some project costs in there. Um but again, historically those costs are pretty low and that's kind of also reflected down below with the um cash reserves there.

And then here's a look at all of the funds together. So, um this is a helpful chart to reference when you're thinking about the total cash that's available to the city and where most of it lives. So you can see that the general fund does have a a really um good cash balance that has been increasing and then most of the city's cash is within those utility funds to use on utility capital operating costs. So here we have a couple charts um showing some information related to taxes and the tax rates. So the chart on the left shows the city's tax rate over the last four years compared to two peer groups. Those two peer groups are class 4 cities which are other cities in Minnesota basically of the same size and activity of mayor and then also other cities in Carver County. Um the black line then represents mayor's tax rate over those last four years. Um mayor's tax rate in 2025 was about 37.8% which is trending downward. Um kind of also just compares to the peer groups also kind of trending downward but again it looks like mayor is a little bit lower than those peer groups too. And the chart on the right shows um the shows how the city's total property tax rate is divided among the different taxing jurisdictions. Those jurisdictions are the city, the county, the school district, and then some special districts that the city resides in. Um and then the line represents all class four cities of Minnesota here. Um, the main thing with this one, I guess, is just to see that the orange bars on the bottom are mayor's city tax rate again over the last four years, and that is below the class 4 city average on in the state. And this last slide shows um just a couple trend information related to expenditures in I guess the whole city. Um, the one on the left is the current expenditures per capita. So, mayor's

current expenditures were $469 per capita in 2025. One thing to kind of note with these two charts, too, is that we only have comparison data through 2023 available from the state. Um, so it's mostly just kind of to show some trends over the last three years or five years, sorry. And then same thing on the right. Um, that one's just showing your capital expenditures per capita. And in 2025 was $275 per capita which is down from the previous year. And this would be governmental activity only. So it wouldn't include any of the water activity in these charts. Does anyone have any questions or would like us to uh go back to any of the slides?

No. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Any questions or further discussion before? Nope. And I'll look for a motion to consider approval of the 2025 audit. Motion. Second. Motion and second. All in favor say I. I.

Motion carries. 4 Z. Business item 11, informationational update on general and debt service fund balances available for transfer. Thank you, acting mayor. Uh now that we have the audits on the books, we can talk about some of the uh notice that in one of the slides here, I'll go back to it. This one right here with the general fund. You can see that over time um we were floating a little bit above 50% but it's been trending upwards and 20 3 24 and 25 it started jumping up. And so our minimum fund balance policy says we need to keep at least 50% of this as cash balances or or uh cash equivalents or well above that uh just because we've had good years of revenues over expenditures, revenues coming in over budget and expenditures coming under. So, we're at a point where uh city council can consider making transfers out of the general fund into other places for other purposes. We also have had two debt service that they mentioned that were defeased or uh pay paid off this year. And state statute requires that cities uh levy 105% of that just because in some years some people don't pay property taxes. So, you have to ensure you have enough to make those debt service payments. So statutoily we're required to levy 105% to cover that. In reality how that generally works is at the end of the debt service because you've been levying 105% you generally have money in there that is left over and those funds can be transferred out for any purpose the city council deems fit. So when we take a peek at that uh for the general fund uh the ending

balance and this is for the end of year 2025 according to the audit uh the balance was sitting at 1 million234,763 and so 50% of that is it's 50% of next year's budget. So when we take a look at that and we call that our funding ratio. So we take a look at that. I've broken it down here in 5% increments. So, if if you wanted to keep it uh fully funded at 100%, you could still transfer out almost $99,000. And then as you go down to the floor here, if you want to take it down to 50%, you'd be transferring out $666,872. There is no requirement to transfer it out. It's simply available for council to do so. uh to any of these figures you would add 38,59115 because that's what's currently left over in the bond two bond funds combined. Um my recommendation is we stay at about that 75% level. 50 is bare minimum. Uh the state auditor's office generally recommends between 35 and 55% at any given point. I historically have always liked to keep a healthy fund balance in there just in case. Um, so 75 is about where I rest, but um, that decision is wholly up to council. So if you're looking at it from that standpoint, uh, at 75% if that were to be chosen, adding in the, uh, bond funds, you'd have $421,518.15 to transfer out for other purposes. Again, not required, but it's available if there are projects we may be looking at. And there are couple of them that would be good candidates. Um some that I mentioned, there's been talk of wanting a sidewalk from Casey's down to Dollar General. Uh this was a project that came up after the fact. So this would be a

great use of those funds to construct that without impacting any of our CIPs or the or the anything below that 75% in the general fund. um we'll be talking about at the workshop, but uh reconstructing part of the trail along Highway on the east side of Highway 25, starting to break up a bit and a chunk of it. So, that would be a good one. Uh as we've seen in previous years here, the fire department's PAR fund has been underfunded. It's been slowly catching back up, but you could put a uh a contributory amount above that. So, instead of trying to ride that 100% funded ratio, you can get it above there. So, there's some cushion in there that could ride investments better and then hopefully allow us to get back towards starting to raise that pension benefit for the fire department as well because that hasn't been changed in a handful of years just because investment gains haven't been keeping up to keep that fully funded. And then whatever potential projects city council outside of that may have interest in doing, you could or you just transfer to any one of the CIPs um for any of their projects. If you think parks needs more, if you think asphalt and uh trails and sidewalks or streets or anything like that. So not looking for a decision tonight on this. This is moreformational to say here it is. Uh this is the funding levels we're looking at and um we'll go from there at some point in the future. So for now the money will sit in the general fund and it can be transferred out at any time as council wishes. Any questions on that?

Okay. So the 75% the transfer amount would be 382. Yes. Plus 385. Okay. Explain. I don't understand the 38591. the 38591 down here. Yeah. So, um I'll show that right here. So, here's the slide on debt service from Okay. the audit the two uh GEO improvement 15 and the GEO equipment certificate 2028. Those both matured and were paid off February of this year. Okay. Because we levy 105%. Now that they're fully paid off, there is monies left over in those funds.

Okay, got it. The combination of those two is going to be your 385 or 5915. So that's what's currently sitting in there that would be added to whatever funding ratio amount the city council would be looking at. Um, do we have ideas? I I like the three ideas so far that you've kind of thrown out. I do like those. Um I know we don't have any idea of what Casey's to Dollar General would be. Um but like the parah do we have an idea of what is needed to get that kind of where we feel better about it? So the nice part about this is we're not in any rush to get these monies transferred out.

Right. I was just curious if you had any thoughts just because So we'll have a good idea of that in September. That's when par they'll have the report at the end of August generally speaking where we get the updated what the investments have done and what the total contribution is.

So we'll know that in September this year. Um we're going to talk about the uh highway 25 trail project tonight and then here in April May whenever things get good enough um Phil and I will be walking that Dollar General route. There's it's an interesting project. Uh there's the ditch. You have utility boxes there. You have very mature trees that are there. So, we need to get out walk it to figure out what is this sidewalk going to look like and what the scope of work might be on the whole thing. But we plan to have that preliminary work started in the spring.

That would be just like a trail city maintained, not homeowner maintained. Uh that entirely up to the city council to decide, but it would it would be nothing for us to take our plow and go south a little ways because we take it north that whole direction, right? But yeah, I just struggle with homeowners that have been there for so long and then all of a sudden, you know, we put it in for the whole community use and then say you have to Yep. But then how is that any different than the sidewalks? But that's a further discussion to have. So now we got to decide. Do we want asphalt? Do we want concrete? I mean minutia.

Right. So what do I do about item 12 since he is running late? Uh just move it. Item number 12. I think we just go ahead and uh delay on that. Okay. We have uh the good uh Representative Nash. I I know he was going to be a little bit behind here, but he said he would be making it to the meeting was his goal. So, I think we continue on with items and if he comes on in, then we can He left the capital at 6:04, he said. So, hopefully All right, on to 13. Informational update on fire department street dance and mayor rising community festival.

Thank you, acting mayor. Uh as everybody's aware, the uh fire department is looking to align their street dance uh with the mayor rising community festival. They've got the date on the books obviously to align with that festival and Chief Metzel is here to give an update on that planning process. Thank you councel. So yes, currently what um we are looking to do um we have don't have both contracts signed but looking to have a couple bands that day. Um one starting at 4:00 um playing for three hours and then an additional band after that um for another three hours. Um, in speaking with the Rising Community Festival, uh, committee, um, you know, part of our concern a little bit was timing. Uh, you know, the car show crap, all that starts early in the morning and typically in past has ended around 2:00. Um, what do we do with that, you know, time in the middle? Um and uh from from talking what they're looking at doing is trying to uh spread out some of their activities, child activities, because some of it sounded like it got um bunched up pretty tight far as their twins clinic and the pedal pole and they had the bike rodeo. So, they were looking at trying to spread some of that stuff out to um try to lengthen that kind of time period to transition um well into when we would have the uh

the ban start to try and not have a a dead period. Um so, working on uh that committee with that. Um our plan is to, like I said, have a band up at the community center. um and city park area. Um tentatively right now probably a band located um on the back uh north uh west corner um back in there kind of out towards then the parking lot on a pointer.

Point it. So in this area here having the band set up um you know then with crowd area would be in this area um is kind of the plans. Um just got to verifying and from what I believe we can pull uh power um right here I think from uh the community center that the needs for the band. Um so that is kind of the plans. Um any questions as far as that is concerned? community center bathrooms or gonna do biffs.

I think we will. Yeah, we'll bring in um biffs similar to what we did with um when we had the 125th celebration I think would be most uh ideal. Mhm. Um I guess it would be up to council whether they want to keep this open or not, but um yeah, for sure bringing probably more few more biffs than you know typically we do that day.

Is there a plan for like a similar like pork chop dinner or are we just going to extend? you're just going to extend uh serving um you know we have the hamburger stand and stuff so we would serve that throughout the uh day and the evening. Um we are going to be meeting with that um committee again and uh determining whether we ask other vendors if they want to stay the entire day or not. Um and so um that's kind of our next meeting with the um the uh Ryzen Community Festival Committee on their thoughts on that and if any of those vendors would want to dedicate more time to that or not or if it would be solely just um our burger stand and stuff. So that's to be determined. Yeah. Um we do um anticipate or like to um you know getting the liquor license uh of selling beer u kind of throughout that um day

and you answer questions. You answered my biggest one with the gap. That was going to be my first that was kind of my concern a little bit, but from what they're um trying to do is spread some of that stuff out so there isn't quite um because in talking to some people that yeah that you know they had a soon as they were done with the twins clinic then they had to run their kids over to do this or that some of that stuff was kind of right on top of each other and they didn't have time to just do whatever. So hopefully that spreads out the day a little bit better. Um, kind of ties it all in. Hopefully it goes well. Looking forward to it. What are we doing with parking?

That's a great question. Um, because really like it's just street parking because we'll be taking up the whole parking lot. Um I guess yeah that is one concern of yeah where do you do street park you know parking do you we do continue to park you know the car show once those cars are gone do you continue to park in the you know on that grass area um that would be question for for you guys um I see that as one possibility um we could otherwise

look at doing that oneway situation too like we did at the fire station you know I think that might be a little more difficult as that's a county road oh yeah I see that being your best option but didn't we didn't we ask to close that for the bike rodeo last year they they did yeah we closed a section of it section yeah I don't know that that gains you enough spots, right? Um I mean you add in you know 10 more vehicles or something, you know, which a lot isn't enough. So a lot of mayor residents are just going to probably walk. You are going to get Yeah. a fair amount of people.

If there's people coming for the ban, I mean, how many cars parked last year for the, you know, the fire department one, you guys had that one empty uh lot full and the street was full. Well, that that grass area fits a lot of cars. But do we have to get a that's city owned, correct? That's not that portion. Zion could certainly give permission to park down here as well. I know they do for the car show. Yeah. And then pray that the ground is dry. Yeah. And I mean, I guess I haven't myself I don't know if anybody else has has kind of I mean, when the car show is on, I mean, what is parking like for that? I mean, is there Blue Jay's full?

Is it I mean, Blue Jay is full, but that's kind of the extent of it or not. Kind of few of the offshoots have a few cars on them. Maybe some on Main Street that walk over, but very few. I mean, if you have a band like Foreplay, I would assume it'd be more than just Mayor residents. Oh, yeah. Flying in. Um, with the addition of the bans and the alcohol and all of that, what is our security on this? What do I mean, I don't think we've needed much security in the past, but this kind of changes it a bit. Um, do we have anything in place?

So, I guess that would be my question to you guys is what what do you want to see for um securement? I've been to I've been to stuff where cities don't have any you know type of securement and I you know you go to others and it is all fenced off. So what what does a city and from what I have asked around it's typically up to city's um preference on what you do for that. Well, I'm assuming that would be my question to you guys, I guess, is what are you looking for? Um

I'm assuming they're IDing and wristbanding. Yeah. So, I mean,

I guess um in years past when the baseball club would have alcohol, there wasn't too much, but now we're having a concentrated effort on a street dance. So, I'd say you don't necessarily have to have snow fence because that's going to be very difficult to install in these areas at the fire department is a lot easier. Had more natural the building itself and you already had a fence around uh the property line there. I think if we were to take traffic control structures, cones, barricades, and just delineate this space down here, I'm not too worried about the park space over here and delineate delineate delineating off that. So, if we have people milling about in this general area, barricaded off here just to make sure people are in the streets and then I'll be requesting from the sheriff's office, a deputy maybe two,

just to be around. Yeah, I like that idea. Yeah, I don't think I don't think it Yeah, I think that just the world's changing. Yeah. And with this growth, I don't think you can be too careful. But yeah, keeping people off of the street if they happen to have alcohol, the barricades should do a decent job of that. And then if they're milling about the park area, that's fine. Yeah, because kids are going to be running around. Yeah, lots of kids. when they had base when the baseball team played, people had beer walking around the park anyway. So, it's not terribly different than what's been done historically. All right. Was there a cover last year

cover? No, I don't remember. Okay. No, it was just as right now. Yeah. So we did I mean we did kind of had it off you know and it was just at that point it gave us a spot to wristband them there but uh for this we would probably just uh if somebody does come up to purchase you know they got to get wristbanded first before purchase. So that makes sense. Sounds okay. Thanks Andy. I like that we're going to make it a big all day thing. I think that'll be successful.

So, we have time to secure all that other stuff in the future then. Yeah. Okay. Well, should we move back to item number 12 since I see Jim has joined us. Welcome, Jim.

Good evening, members of the council. Sorry to be a little late. things went long and crazy at the capital and I'm sure you're all shocked to find that crazy is at the capital. It's new. We're trying it out. But, uh, thanks for having me on, State Representative Jim Nash. Um, where to start? There's been a lot in the news that you've seen, but I think one of the things I want to talk about with you all are, uh, some of the things that you're going through as an employer. I want to talk about the paid family medical leave and I know that I've I've talked about that with with folks from around the county and how does it impact not just employers in the city of mayor but also the city of mayor and I I think there's a real concern that we're trying to address. We're heading into a part of the year where we begin negotiating with the other side. Um the problem is they don't really want to negotiate on this as you know as the you know both from fire and city and workers. Um if you have an employee who perhaps last year had a child they can take up to 20 weeks off this year and they uh they have to continue being paid. and uh administrator Johnson, you're probably dealing with this or at least a breast of this, but you can you're going to you're on the hook to pay for that and then obviously you're going to need to do the work. So, you might bring in somebody else at the same time. So, you're paying twice. Now, here's the part that many people have thrown things at me. It wasn't my fault because I voted against it, but uh you're also on the hook when that person comes back for the replacement person's unemployment. And you probably knew that.

That's great news. No. So that's a that is a a problem that we've been trying to get addressed to say not just for you all but also for the employers here in town is this is absolutely untenable. You cannot make this work. You know, you think of the public schools or uh who Watertown mayor Waconiac because you've got kids that are going to to both. City councils can levy as you all did in December, but school boards can't. So, they would eventually have to go to some kind of of an operating referendum and if they're on one that hasn't yet expired, they've got a problem. So now you have another issue that is being brought to bear by something that in my opinion look it it it's based in something that I think is admirable to say we want to take care of our employees but as a person who as a recovering business owner because I sold my business but if if you have a key employee you take care of them. you find a way to say, "All right, Chad, we're gonna we're gonna make sure, you know, look, you had a you had something happen in the family. Uh, we'll figure it out. You go take care of family. We're going to make it work somehow. Maybe you work a two-day week or you go do something." Well, now it's a one-sizefits-all for everybody. 20 some odd weeks off and you're paying their replacement and then when they come back you also get the bill of the unemployment but there's also leadup costs. So you're paying in now and I don't know what your number is but you're paying in and if no one takes advantage of it guess what that that money doesn't come back. So I don't know what happened with your levy relative to the paid family medical payments but it's real. So that's one of the things that we've been fighting. We've we've been trying to get an exemption for certain size of business to say,

look, if you're an escort, if you're a pass through, if you have five employees and they all happen to be of the last name Jackson because they all are the same family, well, it's a lot like handing each other 20 bucks to say, "You go take time off and then when you come back, I'll go take time off because we want to take care of mom." There was no consideration of that when this bill became law. And as we tried really hard to say one, you're not really getting as granular as you need to. Um because these small businesses, and we have them in every city here in Carver County. Main Street, Minnesota is filled with family-owned businesses that may have five employees and they all have the same home address. We're not thinking through the details that we absolutely have to think through. We're not thinking through the difficulties that a school board does or we're not thinking through the difficulties of what happens to a city council that has to levy uh and what does that do to the taxpayer at the end of the year because now they're they're on the hook for it. So we we talked about all those things and I I swear I felt like I was a little kid and they were patting me on the head like, "Oh, aren't you cute? That's so nice that you say these things, but shut up and go away." And as all of you know, I'm a little on the blunt side. So um here we are. So, what are some of the other issues we're working on? Well, um taxes in general have gone up and we're suffering from that. And it's not just uh from the state, but counties and other folks who are now the recipients of additional costs like yourself. You have to pass that along because that's just how this works. And when it's originating in St. Paul, nobody is pointing the finger back at them saying you gave this as an unfunded mandate, which in the previous trifecta, there was a lot of that. Um, let's move on to the other popular topic that fills our our news screens at

home is fraud. Waste, fraud, and abuse now is in the neighborhood of nine some odd billion dollars. And if you if you follow me on social media, you see that I have been fighting this every single day. If as a chair of state government finance and as the majority whip, we we talk about this on a regular basis, saying somebody has to take ownership of this issue. And here in Carver County, we would find somebody and say, you know, this is this happened on your watch and you got to own it. and being good Carver County people would say, "You know what? You're right. I I messed up. I'm going to take ownership." They're playing hot potato down there so much. Nobody wants to own this stuff and everybody wants to kick the can down the road. And when we have brought reasonable solutions, we get shut down because we're in a tie, as you know, in a 6767 tie. I need one DFLer to come over on our side to say, "We're going to do this." Now, fortunately, last year I had a bill that was House File Three that gives the Office of the Legislative Auditor, and I'm sure you've all seen some of their reports because they actually make the news, and thank God that the news is now at least admitting that we have fraud in the state of Minnesota. The Office of Legislative Auditor is probably the premier watchdog in the state of Minnesota. and they dig in and they find all the uncomfortable information and then they publish it in a report and we try to do good pieces of legislation off of that. But what I was able to do is to require internal controls to be reported back to the office of the legislative auditor much like you have to do to a lot of well back to the council first and foremost like here's what we did here's the things that we implemented and now we give a report back to the council not that hard but you would have thought that I was asking you know to have your

left arm and we finally got it done but as we continue we have tried to push for an independent uh office of inspector general to come into reality. The Senate and I it pains me to give the Senate credit because it's really hard because the House and the Senate as we all know the House is better. Um but the Senate actually passed uh a bill and it was 60-7. So only seven dissenting votes came off the floor in the Senate. They fired the bill over to us. It came into the possession of my committee. We tried to move it out quickly and the other side of the aisle has shut it down for the last six weeks and I have brought it up three times try to get it passed. But on the agenda tomorrow in my committee on my last gavl day before we go to um deadlines, we are going to once again try to make the case that an independent office of inspector general that isn't beholdened to the governor and has law enforcement capabilities so that if they find something, they don't have to go to the to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and say, "Would you please, pretty please do this thing over here to arrest these criminals. and have the governor possibly say no, it's going to be an independent organization that has the ability to subpoena, to arrest, and and pursue all those things. The other important thing with that bill that we're trying to make sure gets done is that the person who occupies the role as the OIG is not appointed by the governor because that's a lot like nominating your buddy, the fox, to watch the hen h the hen house as you're off doing other things. So, we've tried to make the case to say we don't want that because we'd like to have an independent objective person who really doesn't have a political ideology much like the OA who said you did something wrong and now we're coming for you and we're going to

get to the very bottom of it and once we get to the bottom of it, whoever is on the bad side of the ledger, we're going to arrest you and then we're going to prosecute your crimes. Now, I'm maybe apparently an old-fashioned kind of guy and think that's a good idea, but for many, they have been fighting that very thing to say, "No, no, that's bad. We we don't want that." So, that's where we are on that. Should we pause for questions or No,

I'm quite enjoying this. Um I I let's talk infrastructure. So we have been we have a we may have a bonding bill. So as you also have seen in the news that we have a structural deficit on the horizon. And a structural deficit as you know is when you have more obligations and you have money coming in the door and you're going to have to figure that out. Well, um, when we talk to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, it doesn't always register that we have this problem. And they're looking at today saying, "Well, in fiscal 26, we have this cash surplus. So, let's go on a shopping spree." But when we point out in fiscal 27, which when does that start, administrator

for the state? August.

August. August. So we we are saying, "Hey, hold on now. Let's not spend every dime that we have because the fiscal year 27 starts in a couple of months. I mean, we're going to be on the water fishing. They're they want to be off spending money. We're saying, "Hey, you have a surplus right now. You should tap the brakes and hold on to that." Or we also have another couple schools of thought within our caucus of we should buy down things like tab fees for people to lower that. So if you have cash and you can offset it in such a way that um you can reduce the burden on motans that's another conversation that we're having. So those are things that right now are in negotiations. We don't know where it's going to go. Once again, we need one Democrat vote to come along for the ride to say we're going to give tax relief or we're going to preserve what little cash we have to offset the potential structural deficit or the likely structural deficit that we have coming in fiscal 27. Here's where I'll just give my most of this has been factual, but here's my opinion. We spend too much money in the state of Minnesota. We rely heavily on the taxpayer. And as you remember, we had an $18 billion surplus and that got spent on stuff. You know, I'm sure we've all taken our kids to the grocery store, go to Mac and Tunes or go somewhere and you say, "Here's five bucks." And they just that's the most money they've had in their pocket in a while. They just spend it on whatever. And you can't necessarily say, "Oh, what did you get?" You know, and they pull out some gum wrappers and, you know, maybe a pack of baseball cards and you can't really say that you got anything good. That's what happened with the $18 billion. Because that wasn't enough, they decided then to raise another $10 billion in new taxes.

And so now we've had a 28 billion shift from where we started off three years ago. And on top of that, there's another roughly two billion in use taxes. So if you have something that's delivered from Amazon that is over a hundred bucks, guess what? You're getting hit with a a delivery fee. So, the key is to to to only order $49.99 or $99.99 and avoid that. It's silly. Um, and as your representative for the last 12 years, I try to convey to them down there, this is not how people that I represent think. It's just not. We don't look at every last nickel and figure, let's just buy every shiny thing that we can find. We try to make sure that whatever it is we're buying makes sense because I've been in the center chair and I've been in the city council and when when you're looking at what do we have to do? Do we need a new firetruck? And the answer to that is always yes, we need a new firetr, right? Yeah. Um or do we need a new lift pump? Do we need a new water tower? Do we need something? We don't think, oh, we'll just have the taxpayers pay for it. we like ask ourselves how does this actually work? How is it going to work? And do we rather than do it right now say you know what we're going to put it in a CIP fund and we're going to fund it at X dollars every year and then eventually we'll get there and in between now and then we'll figure it out. How do we make do? Well, that's not how a lot of people think. And I want to share with you just how important it is to make sure that we don't go back to that philosophy of spending. And at the last evening last year in special session, there were three prominent DFLers who stood up and were talking about generally the first year of the

the session and then the evening of special session. They said the biggest regret they had was that they were not able to raise taxes. three of them, one was the tax chair and two others were prominent members of their caucus. And I I have to tell you that should alarm all of us greatly because I don't think motans have a problem with buying the things that we have to have. Like if a if a if a pump station goes down, guess what? We have to replace it. If a city truck goes down, if if you have a a plow go down, guess what? You have to replace it. But we have a we have a spending problem on things that we need versus things that we kind of want. And what I have long said uh when I was mayor, I used to take my wallet out of my my pants and thump it up on right where you're sitting there in Laconia uh and say this is where all tax dollars come from. Never forget that. And that's kind of what we that's where we find ourselves is we have forgotten where the tax dollar comes from that gets spent in St. Paul and I have been fighting the good fight. My colleagues and I have been fighting the good fight. We're very grateful that we're in a tie because now for the last six years we were saying no and it meant nothing. Now we say no and they have to pay attention and we are able to respect your checkbook a lot more than than has been done in the last six years. So, I'll pause now because some of you are glazing over. Uh, and I'm happy to stand for questions.

Do you see for the Minnesota paid leave thing that percentage going up for the amount of applicants since Yeah, thank you, Council Member McNilly. Yes, I do. So, if you if you've been watching it is overs subscribed immediately. It was oversubscribed within the first day, I believe. They're like, "Oh, look at that. It's it's it's going really well. Let's good job. Um, now the one thing that I will admit that I was dead wrong on is that the software actually launched well.

I was very suspicious because I work in the IT industry and I'm like this is doomed. It worked, but now we find ourselves to where it is overs subscribed and overs subscription means only one thing. um that it's going to drive premiums up and the premiums that are budgeted now are not likely to be the premiums that you talk about in the preliminary levy in September or the final levy of December because I mean for me my employer tried to give me a benefit by paying a more than the share they're required to pay and uh I then am taxed Mhm.

on the difference. Yes, you are. So, they were trying to do a benefit to me by paying more and I paid less, but then the difference I pay taxes on. I don't know if people realize that. Well, it goes back to my thought is having been an employee or employer and employee, but I know that if you have somebody who is absolutely indispensable to your organization, you're going to figure it out, right? you'll just say, you know what, they are integral to what we do. We'll find a way as opposed to, well, we'll just pay everybody as much as they would like to take off. And how prep Now you've convinced me to jump back into it.

Sorry. The connection that you have to be able to actually be the person who takes the time off is incredibly strange. So, you could based on the law, you could be dating somebody whose mom's best friend nextdoor neighbor's dog walker falls and breaks their leg and you can take time off to go and care for them. It's that tenuous really. And we pointed that out to them like, "Oh, it's going to be fine. It'll be okay. You don't have to worry about me using I'm federally exempt. Okay.

I I mean I think it I mean there are people that do need to Yes. this. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying for myself, right? Like I'm paying for it and I know that percentage is was very low, but I know that it's just going to go higher based on what I'm

Well, and for example, there were there are private options that can be obtained. There are insurance markets like the the AFLAC and other places like them that you can get a supplemental insurance policy to say, "Hey, I do a dangerous job. I might go down and my employer may not pay all of that. Uh, I should probably do that." But now what effectively is happening is you're being forced into it and any liability is going to happen on the taxpayer. So let me let me mention one other thing that just came to mind that a lot of cities have asked me about is the social districts. I don't know if you all have talked about social districts here at all.

Not a whole lot. Okay. So social district has happened in other cities and it's effectively you buy a cup at a certified uh vendor and you can walk up and down the social district with a drink in your hand. Oh.

So it's happened in other places. Um, our my goal, the members of my caucus's goal is to say we don't want to be in the business of doing oneoff approvals for cities around the state. We would like to set parameters and let cities do that. I didn't know if you guys had been talking about it, but if you do, um, stay tuned. We're trying to to fix that. So that if you have a social district or a place that makes sense to walk like a nickel dickle day in Waconia, that would be sort of how it would work. So other questions? Um I you don't you haven't asked the same thing. I'm you know you know me.

I do. I've got it all in here and you text my opinions. You send me text messages. I just have one more. I always have questions. Um, so we just had prior to you coming, we had our audit um, review. What I struggle with is, you know, as a city, we have to have a private entity audit our financials and we do have a couple things, you know, that get pointed out, but why doesn't the state government, because that's what you're talking about that you're trying to pass as having an independent

Sure. audit like why they're holding us like it's a state statute that we have to provide a private audit. Why aren't they? Well, to some degrees the state does there's a thing called the single audit, okay?

That the state auditor is responsible for managing but I if and I think you all know me well enough that I hate spending money. Uh unless I'm it's fishing gear and then let's go. But um if we are to spend a dollar of state money, I think that it makes sense to put more money into looking at what's been going on and how do we answer back to the people of Minnesota that we've done it right. Sorry, it's holiday season already.

So there are multiple audits that happen, some internal, some external. Uh the legislative auditor. So it's a misnomer there. People think the state auditor would audit the state and that the legislative auditor would audit the legisl legislature. It's the other way around. So legislative auditor scrutinizes departments and agencies and the governor's office and then the state auditor actually audits cities, counties, school boards, soil and water. And I'm sure you've had your reports, your audits go to the the state auditor for um the least digestion. I don't know if they've come back and done a bench audit on any of your audits, but they they can if they chose. Y

but there are there are great needs to dive deeper into one the fraud, but also to say for other agencies that haven't had they haven't been in the news yet. Um, for for me, if we're going to spend money, I would appropriate some money to say, "Let's audit everything and let's go deep and let's hire like the meanest auditor we can possibly find that doesn't know the meaning of the word no." They just keep going. Because I get emails and I get text messages and I get phone calls and I get stopped at the store or I get stopped at the at the fair or whatever and people like, "I am fed up with this. Please for the love of Ludafisk dig into this and give us an answer. So for our caucus we we want answers.

So what steps I mean is there any new way of trying to um speak to the other side? It's become very black and white, right? Um everything you say clearly makes sense, right? I mean it's common sense. You don't have the money, you don't spend it, and you save to spend. And you I mean these are common things we're all brought up on. But yet you've got another side of the aisle that's just like, I don't care. You wear red. I'm not listening to you. So, I mean, how is there there has to be some kind of new approach, right? Or and maybe there's something you guys are already trying. I don't know.

So, what I would say on on a lot of these things is what you see in the TV news isn't always what always happens. So, there are a number of DFLers that have come over to to put up votes for things that I've done. They put up a vote for my House File 3. That's how it became law. So, we're now digging deeper into the internal compliance of the state. They recognized that my bill made sense and they said, "Yes, we'll vote for the Nash bill." Other things that I've done, I think some of you have seen that I' I've in recent years I've been working on uh a lot of child abuse issues around uh mandatory reporting and other things because as a kid that was abused for 17 years, I finally decided to start talking about it and we've made some substantive changes. we were able to get votes on them, but the TV news doesn't always do that because what's more fun? Seeing two sides get along on some issues or Nash beating the crap out of the other side of the aisle. Now, that still happens. Don't lose faith. I still do that. But, uh, there are times where we get together and move the ball for the benefit of Minnesota. as it relates to spending issues, it's it is very hard to get together and talk about one, we can't spend money that we don't have or two that when when money goes missing or fraud happens that that's not acceptable. And for the longest time, they didn't even want to admit and the governor didn't want to admit that there was fraud. It's just 200 million. It's just small.

Jeez. Well, when you see story after story after story after story after story after story that are all in numbers that are in excess of what the governor says has happened, you begin to call shenanigans and say, "I I don't believe you. So, it's now time to get to the very bottom of what's going on." And look, I I I spend time in Carver County. You guys have seen me all over the place. People stop me and usually words that start with F are what comes out of their mouth. They want to know what's going on. And we have to give an answer back to the people of Minnesota as to what's happened to the the money that has been lost in fraud. Because as you saw maybe over the weekend, there have been a new a couple of other programs that have been found where $8 million goes out the door and then the courts say, "Oh, you only have to you have to pay 1.2 million back." Well, now we're we're paying criminals to succeed. I don't get it.

There's no accountability. No. I mean, if I did that, I'd have to pay it back and and fees. Yeah. Right. Or spend time in jail. Correct. And a lot of this is stuff that we can't get back because it was used to buy land or other things in other countries and it's very difficult to get that repatriated. Oh, is it a matter of you're guilty slap on the hand and we never see money again? Is that the reality of a lot of it? Well, council member Fouch, that's a great question. So, it depends on who's the prosecuting attorney. If and I'm Man, that just you just said it right.

Here all night on this conversation. If if you are prosecuted today in Henipin County under Mary Morardi, you might get a juice box, a blanket, and a hug and get kicked out kicked back out on the street and like, "Hey, don't do that. That's bad." Um, we have to have greater accountability for for the prosecuting county attorneys who take these things on. And you know what? If if if Carver County Attorney Mets said, "Repent Nash, we need more money to prosecute crimes." Guess what? I would vote to give him more money to prosecute crimes because if if there's no deterrent, if there's nothing out there and you truly do in my example of get a juice box, a blanket, and a hug because we want you to we want you to feel special. We want you to not do these things again. Sometimes crimes have massive punishments, but we have not been doing that. People need to be held accountable for what they do. All of us who are elected, we're held accountable by the people who sent us here to do our respective jobs. We're accountable at the ballot box. If you do something that's criminal, you should be accountable to to the county attorney or the district attorney or whomever. That's not happened or it hasn't happened to the level that it needs to.

Any other questions? No. You have a tough job. Yep. And thank you. I'm just dumb enough to love it still. Well, thank you for fighting for us.

Yeah. Uh what I would say is if you have the opportunity, come down. It is truly a remarkable place. And it isn't always beat up on each other day. There are days where we actually do a lot of really good things. But if you if you've never been to the cap, you should come. I will give you the the best tour of your life. will take you up to the top to where the golden horses are. I'm happy to take you there. Um, it is it is a great honor to serve in this capacity. I truly love it. My wife says I probably love it too much, but um I I enjoy fighting on your behalf. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. Anything else?

Well, u my internet my my phone is still published to the internet. I'm I'm dumb enough to do that as well. So, if you have questions, I think all of you have my cell phone. Um, don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much. Have a good night. All right. On to business. Item 14, consider adoption of resolution approving the Carver County Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Thank you, acting mayor. Uh every five years the Carver County Emergency Management Office uh works on updating the uh hazard mitigation plan and they get together all the cities and the jurisdictions and we assess threat levels uh for various risks. Uh for mayor specific we our biggest one was going to be uh severe weather, thunderstorms, wind storms, tornadoes, winter storms, ice storms, things of that nature. We also do include in there the others extreme heat, cold, flooding, drought and handful of others. Uh the big reason we do this one to have a plan in place um to tackle goals and preparing ourselves. And one thing uh the city has done in the past that's um I think the most apparent is we have backup generators at all of our major facilities so that if we do have a disaster, those kick in if we don't have electricity and we can keep offering uh services and keep those going. Uh the other big part is if we do have a disaster happen, this allows us to apply and get that FEMA reimbursement funding because this is one of their requirements in order to do so. So, uh, Chief Metel and I participated in the update process here in the last, uh, year, year and a half when they started this. Um, and we've got our side taken care of and the rest of the cities all did theirs as well. And so, one of these final steps here is to formally adopt the Carver County hazard mitigation plan. Any questions? All right. I'll look for a motion to approve resolution 2026-4. Motion.

Second. All in favor? I I. Motion carries 4 Z. All right. 15. Consider action to reschedule April 27th, 2026 city council meeting.

Thank you, acting mayor. Uh the uh Watertown Mayo School District would like to come down and have a school board meeting uh at our facilities. The rub is is that their uh school board meetings happen in the same day date in the same evening as we have city council meetings. They have requested to come down on April 27th. So it'll be next month uh second meeting to have their school board meeting here. The mayor and I talked about it and we said yep, we could uh accommodate that. So we will simply need to choose an alternative date to have our city council meeting on that. That' be the uh fourth Monday in April. Uh, we could certainly go to the 28th on that.

I'm fine with the 28th except garage sale starts the next day. So, anybody having one? Uh, I will not be here that week. I can make it work. Otherwise, 29th, 30th, um, can be really any of those days that it works out for council. 28th would probably be the best of picking out of those. Yeah, we'll just do it right away. That Tuesday. All right, we'll anticipate the 28th then. Do we need a motion on that? Can certainly have one.

All right. So looking for a motion to reschedule the April 27th, 2026 council meeting to Tuesday, April 28th. Motion. Second. All in favor?

I motion carries 40. All right. On to city council reports. Anything? Council member Fouch. Uh we had an EDA meeting last week for the first quarter and we discussed uh the two P applications we had uh for grants and what we're going to do with not requesting money for next year. Other than that, I got nothing. Council member Jackson,

uh, the grant we were considering for the trails, we decided to turn down because it would the amount that we would have to match it would eat up most of our budget for parks and wreck. And we decided to focus more on um future plans of working on kind of overall city improvements with benches and lighting and things of that nature. Um, we also spoke on the uprising. Uh, mayor uprising. Mayor Rising. Thank you. I need to go home and go to bed. Um, we talked about that. Um, yeah, just the big one was saying no to the grant at this. Oh, and we did talk about fencing in the splash pad, which we are looking into prices for that. Uh we've had a lot of families reach out and say they see it as a safety hazard for their kids to not have some kind of barrier to slow them down, especially with the improvements to the parking lot and whatnot. So

really. Okay. So, we're considering it. We're getting prices on what that may look like. Council member McN. Uh everything Sam said about the EDA, I don't really have anything to add. Um but I do want to say that I see people out on the Frisbee golf course a lot. Yeah, it's really good. So, it's kind of fun to see. Yeah. Good. I think it's neat. So, I just want to mention that for park board that pass it on. Yeah. And I will look for a motion to adjurnn. Motion. Second. All in favor? I. Motion carries 4. We are in there. Moving on. You don't get to leave yet.

City council workshop. I get to leave though because it's my birthday. Call the meeting to order at 7:41 p.m. Thank you, acting mayor. Uh, first item of business we have here is uh the trail uh highway 25 trail rehabilitation project proposal in the packet. Uh we've get back to here, shift around here. We've identified a section of the trail on the east side of Highway 25 between uh Casey's and about the end of the storm pond right around hereish. the second light pole. Um, there's a number of Yeah, it's bad

shoots that have come across that have heaved. You can see where the blade has gone across and tried to smooth it out unintentionally just to cut that down. But yeah, it about ends right about that post is where it clears up or gets better I should say and it's not quite as bad. Well, I think from that poll to the other street was redone when we had to fix when MDOT had to fix some heaving on 25 right outside the lumber yard. So, but yeah, that's really bad. I walked that and if you're not paying attention, you would it is a trip hazard or the scooter catches it. Oh, yeah. Yep.

Yep. You can see it in the photos here that were included in the packet. Especially here when you started getting a look. Yeah. It heaved up in a bunch of places. So brought this concern to Phil, our city engineer, and we've been working on putting together cost estimates. What we look at doing is that section, taking the whole thing up, making sure the subgrade is good underneath there, and then paving entirely new along that. How do you uh because I feel like, you know, this is not a very old trail. Is it do you make do you do thicker asphalt or is it the base that's really the issue?

Um it seems like the base and I think what Nick was getting at it seems like maybe some roots are coming and then start coming up. So some some some trees are more susceptible to being more on the surface which caused this. So we'll cut that out. We'll clean that out. If you can see the beaver took out a couple of there. So, we'll cut that all out and we'll build it back and make sure that answers your question. Uh, yeah, it just cuz I feel like we've redone sections and I just don't feel like they've really been done appropriately to eliminate this for a longer period of time.

Well, the good thing is it'll be a longer stretcher will help. You can get really the equipment you need in there to really clean it out versus just some sort of kind of a spot repair. So I think with that that might help with some of the smaller patches longer term solution. Perfect. I also think in the future after this is redone public works will put this on the annual calendar to keep the vegetation down. We have the brush hog that could easily keep that under better control rather than letting it grow up allowing it to shoot more roots out to possibly undermine like it has done here.

Okay. Is this something we'll get quotes on fairly quickly that it could be done like Yeah, I was trying if authorized. Phil, your microphone. Thank you. Uh, if authorized tonight, I was going to try and get this out tomorrow to a few contractors and then have it back on the 7th. So then that could be brought in front of you all uh on the 13th was my hope. Okay.

And then um it's still pretty early for some construction. We'd probably give them a big window just to hopefully get a best price that we can. Um knowing there's a few days to to with the the garage sale and community rising, we try and avoid those days. But that that would be our plan. And we have this in the budget. This isn't I mean if it is upwards of that this is where we would be looking to use those uh surplus funds y to cover this because this came up as a concern and we didn't have anything uh budgeted for it. If we didn't it would have to come out out of one of the CIPs

to take care of it. But since we have the surplus funding in the general fund this would be a great candidate for it. Yeah. I mean, this is it's not safe and a lot of people use it. I think some other considerations Phil and I were talking about um just with the oil pro oil prices fluctuating recently depending on how the quotes come back, if it's looking high. It's a project maybe we look at putting off for now until things settle back down and then maybe reapproach in the fall late summer to see if prices are better that way.

Was that something we can level off with big grinding wheels or stones or anything like that to at least even it out temporarily? Uh this winter, as you can see, I've done a pretty good job trying to do that and it's well with legit like concrete grinding. Nick the trail guy. Um, it's been like this for a while. So, I think if a handful of months isn't going to change too much at this point, um, I don't want to go throwing money at repairs when we're just going to rip it up and redo it. Fair enough. I think if we can mark them.

I was just going to say, should we paint them orange at least? if we could because yeah, I know that when we were trying to find problem areas when we were redoing the mill and overlay and cold water, we had white paint and just to mark them so that the contractor could come in and see. Just so that people's eyes are knowing that there is a and we could get out there and take some marking paint and mark the heaves in there if we can't if this is a project that can't get done due to the cost. Right. Okay,

so that's the scope of the project. Um, as we saw in the memo there, we're looking at doing that with the cost approximately 60,000. That's uh conservative figure given prices of asphalt and how they've been fluctuating. If I remember the original we had looked at before fluctuations, I think was 46, something like that. Really high. Yeah, I I believe you're right. Something of that nature. So, we'll see how they come in. Hopefully, we get a nice good one and a good competitive one and then we can execute sooner rather than later. But, yep, we want to approach this with the city council. Phil will go out and get those quotes. Should be ready at the next meeting. Sounds good. Excellent. Any other questions on that?

Nope. Thanks, Bill. All right. Item three, consider strategies for labor negotiations including negotiation strategies, development or discussion of labor negotiation proposed. That's the land of negotiating authorized by Minnesota state statute 13D.03. So yes, for this portion, uh Mike would normally grab it, but u since yeah, I'll cover real quick. We'll be going to close session under authorization of Minnesota State Statute 13D.03, 03 which is to consider strategies for labor negotiations. So uh for those who may be watching this is our last item after we come out. We'll be immediately adjourning and there won't be any further items.

Yeah. I was just going to say

thanks guys.