City Council - Regular Meeting

I don't believe we have for about 20 minutes. Pledge allegiance please. I pledge allegiance to my

the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Public comment. Is there anyone in the audience? We have a couple to be read. Dear Mayor and City Council, thank you for the attractive and engaging place you have made at the site of the new Parkland and Hamilton schools. With time and proper regular care, the trees will grow and the other flora as well to offset the loss of the morbidly painful trees that were removed. Maybe a plaque can be placed at the marker from the gates. Preserve such giants in our city's future, please. Thank you again to all the citizens. And that's just so the council knows that you all got me, but I've been gathered. Or it wasn't an email, it was an actual letter. This is in regards to the flood safety cameras again that are being installed in our city at taxpayer expense. This means that our road is...

I would like the council to approve these cameras prevent crime before and after installation.

If this cannot be proven, why are we continuing to pay $150 to $300 per month for a camera, plus reinstallation costs to insist and penalize them, which is happening all of the time? We have numerous examples of police and city employees continuing that system to track spouses and girlfriends without approval. I will wait patiently for your response. Links and videos are in this email. Thank you. Any further public comments? Hearing none, we have no questions on the agenda as far as we know. And we'll move to our roundtable discussion. Budget work session number one. First off, Bruce and Bob.

I'd like to thank you, Carol, for your participation in this conversation.

We had no very good news at your place. You made a very successful front sale. And as you recall, it was to reimburse ourselves for the purchase of the river station. And our ordinance that the council adopted was stating that we needed to be under 6% on the vids and the low bid came in at 5.87%.

So we are not taking any further action. The staff is recommending that the mayor host this event and write in the documents.

And we hope to propose a no-sponsor within two to three weeks to reinforce ourselves and run this cash flow down the street.

Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations.

And then we'll be right into the discussions. As Bob and Mayor said here, this is our first budget session for 2017-2019. And as we proceed over the next couple of hours, which could be three, I'm hoping to, we are not asking for any decisions tonight. to present our recommendations for more. And as most of you recall, and to bring all of this up, always keep the budget off.

with adopting a strategic plan, which we did earlier this year.

Then we jump right in and begin comparing the CIP projects that help achieve and support those goals, because most of them are better than the other projects.

So tonight, we are wanting to accomplish four main things. Number one, we're going to review the three-year CIP plan for 2017, talk about the change in projects, And as you know, this budget makes up about 40% of our overall annual budget with big dollars that we're talking about tonight. And I do have to say that staff are Laura and Laura, Eric and Denver, lots of staff.

I've been working on this for the better part of 60 days.

We've done a lot of work to build this together. Then we are going to review the impact on our fee structure in the Enterprise Fund, which support and pay for these projects, in addition to reviewing the Sanitation Fund.

Following that fee review, I would like to take the remaining time, whatever time that is, and review the impact on each of the funds that are affected. So we're talking about NYPD, MFT, and all of those. And then lastly, I'd like to have a very brief review of our July 26th amendments, since we're already halfway through here.

And just so you know, prior to getting to that, all of our funds are in very leachy. So we'll talk about that at the very end of the night.

So to get started, I'll have you look at our very first slide, which is an overview of our projected fees for 27-29.

AND I WANTED TO START IT OFF WITH A PLEASE TO REASSURE YOU THAT AS WE MOVE THROUGH ALL THE PRESENTATIONS THAT WE ARE FOLLOWING PLANS. HERE WE SAY THAT ALL THE TIME.

WE ARE FOLLOWING THE PLANS THAT THE COUNCIL RELATED LAST YEAR REGARDING THE PAY INCREASES.

AND WHAT WE'RE TALKING HERE IS WPC 6% BEING THAT THE PAY FOR SOUTH FLORIDA

Water at 2%, stormwater and sanitation at 2% as well. Overall, I put in two slides here. This first one is our projections for 27-29, and we're going to talk about this over the course of this month.

But I know you'd be anxious to know what the impact is.

And for 2027, you'll see that little red, bolded cell up there. On a monthly basis, by 2027, we anticipate these to be $20.90 per month. And amazingly, that's actually slightly lower.

If we flip to the next page, it's slightly lower than what we had projected last year. Again, you have to follow down the 27 column.

We had projected it to be $4.14. We're coming in at $3.90, and it's primarily 100% due to a reduction in the surcharge for the water.

Just the timing of getting the projects done, we don't have to pay for some of the loans.

That gets put in place.

So with the fee that we have shown you, it's put in place on a monthly and annual basis. We have not changed. And so that's all for me to start off with. And so with that, I'm just going to let the lawyers just kind of jump in and start looking for projects.

Did your staff refer to them as the lawyers? Oh, please don't. L-W-L. L-W-L. L-W-L. L-W-L. L-W-L. L-W-L.

Okay, so I'm kicking it off. My plan is to start off with some general statistics and information about our spending and our payment condition index results, and then go into specific projects. So here's a list of the categories that we break down our projects into. We have the maintenance and capital categories. Maintenance programs vary from pavement markings, Joint Cracks Healing Passion Program, Traffic Safety Initiatives, and Asphalt Overlay Maintenance. Asphalt Overlay Maintenance is our newer program to pave over sealed-boat streets, so we don't install sealed-boat vehicles. Instead, we put a thin layer of asphalt over it to make it look like it works. And then we have our capital projects, which are bigger projects from rate disruptions to asphalt resurfacing, new traffic signals. So here's just an overview of our street network. We have 230 centerline miles of city hall roads and alleys that we maintain. We have our streets rated in 2023 and again earlier this year. It was the same company that did bulk ratings, IMS. And they specifically look for two things. The first is all the PCI, which is the payment condition that's between zero and 100. It's the payment score, basically. And the second is the percent of backlog, which is a streak that's more than 40 PCI. So they consider that 40 PCI kind of a critical threshold. where if the street drops below that, it's no longer a big candidate for maintenance. So the goal is to keep your PCI size with you and your backlog as long as you can. So here's some results from 23 to 26. Our PCI stayed fairly steady, 62 to 61, so that's good. However, our backlog did increase from 16.3 to 20.4. I'll give some reasons in a second why I think that happened. So back in 2023, IMS presented to council their findings, their PCI findings for that year. They did recommend spending $7 million annually to run some of my improvements. Here's some actual numbers. we spent between 20 24 25 actual numbers and 26 what we project to spend by the end of the year so from 5.8 million to 7.3 to this year 6.4 so we're spending more than we used to but still not quite to that seven million dollar one thing i want to point out is what's shown in this invite chart This shows the split between street reconstructions and street resurfacings. And then you could see the figures below how much it costs to reconstruct the street versus resurface the street. So in the past three years, we've focused the majority of our street money towards reconstructions. Ours is going to go a lot further, shift that property towards resurfacing. So that's what we're doing. So moving forward, we're going to suggest kind of switching gears a bit towards maintenance techniques, which is something that this IMS consultant recommends. And it's a standard in engineering practice. Fix your street before it gets too bad. It's a lot cheaper and easier to take a good street and make it excellent than it is to take a horrible street. So the consultant has laid out a five year plan, which they're going to present to council, I believe September 1st. So you'll get more details on there

I know we'll answer that later, but I don't have any indication of how that breaks up. We talked about what we had to do, the constructions on the material. Yeah. What I'm trying to say is we wanted to, because like, But also, I'm sure my street's pretty bad. But also, it's a dead end with 40 people driving by that big bottle of smoke and all the traffic that we get. So it looks complaining about that condition.

Yeah, it's a transitional thing. We can't just put a switch and go straight to this model. We still have those streets that need to be restored. So we've got to kind of balance how we move forward in this and how we move forward in our city.

um my question is similar but more what percentage of these 230 miles or alleys versus neighborhood and right here from a minor major arterial because they were going to be lower priority and i don't feel that they should be treated at the same rate as about 12 avenue They are bringers. And I'd like to know how much, how weighted are they?

That's an easy thing for us to break it out as far as like collector and arterial roads and alleys.

And we can resurface alleys in-house in some cases that is a lot easier and cheaper. And we can do a lot.

I know you haven't gotten to this slide yet, but we're ready.

Okay, so this is just a slide showing what the benefits of being a manager is. It's a lot easier to fix a street that's not in horrible shape. Part of the reason is because water infiltration is the end of the streets. So if you could seal it up, seal your cracks, put fresh surface on, that water can be treated, especially in a freestall climate like ours, it will save a lot of money. So what you'll see changing tonight versus what you've approved a year ago, the 2027 CIP doesn't change very much because we've already begun the survey and preliminary assignment. So we're proposing to keep that basically as you saw it last year. The main changes will happen in 2028. So for 2028, we removed all the reconstruction projects we had in the post and shifted them to 2019 and beyond, and then flipped to just resurfacing.

Thank you for how you laid this out for us. Because in my head, I'm like, all right, so we were doing great with investing in streets, right? Funding going towards streets. And then all of a sudden we allowed sidewalks to take precedence or not precedence, but to grow. And then we add a 27 quiet zone. So obviously we need money for that. That impacts the economy. in our businesses and all those kinds of things, but is there a possibility for us to shrink the money towards sidewalks? And for, we've gone up against the issue that I recall, some of us first came on council in 21, people sort of tried to make an argument that like, you can plan for all the streets, but you're not going to get done. I feel like you're planning for the streets and they're getting done.

I don't think they are too. We've increased our projects substantially.

Yes, it's not like in 21.

So is it? So for 26 to 27, why the sidewalk number is so high is because of the match for our federal projects. We got those two years. So we have this year, we've got that trail. Yes. And then you got on the trail and the next year we have a street skate and a park. So that's what 26, 27 are skiing. Yeah.

So it looks more like 28, 29.

That's what we want. Yeah, I sort of feel like it's a shame that we've got to push it backward even if we can look forward to some good impact and if there's any way to change that up and seven is everything already engineered and planned no no but as far as the the two big sidewalk projects with federal money in them and i also see like we're finally going to take on parking ramps and all that that's a that is where some of that money sorry i'm going to parking ramps with on the streets

ONCE WE GET PAST THESE SIX YEARS TRYING TO FIX UP THOSE RENUPS THEN SHIP THEM THAT'S A NEW FUNDING RIGHT WE STARTED THAT WITH JUST THESE ARE PERCENTAGES YEAH I'M ASSUMING THAT THE BUDGET BETWEEN 24 TO 29 IS NOT THE SAME AND SO THE 24 NUMBER COULD BE MUCH SMALLER so relatively 27 could still have a lot more money for roads so it looks like we've lost ground but not in an actual dollars is that an accurate yeah yeah and i included there's nothing that i changed in this slideshow with what we saw and it includes that okay

So things to consider.

IMS will present the five-year payment maintenance plan to council, hopefully September 1st. However, we can't call it to a T, because we do have other things to consider, mainly the ongoing lead service planning process. So that's the three-to-ten-year project. So we need to be mindful of when we resurface the roads to make sure that the water surface lights are in person. So we're going to have to take a plan and kind of pick and choose within it.

As we're shifting to more resurfacing as opposed to construction.

I mean, certainly we don't want to be resurfacing a street and have to cut a line right through it right away. But It feels like it would be less of a concern of surgeons that would be here.

And you're right, it would be. But the lead service line program is going to move a lot faster than we will with the free services. So we're not going to run out of time. So we just want to share a couple items. Broadway or CIP funding was deferred for other projects. The first is $1.8 billion for the drainage project, 49th Street, 2nd Avenue. And then the other is the parking ramps, which is annual for six years, which I'll talk about later. So here's a slide I adjusted. I realized yesterday that buttons in your packets didn't have the full legend there in the lower left corner. So this is something that I asked IMS to prepare to show council the effect of increased budget numbers, just so you can do a deal and spend your money on streets. This is the effect. So they went from 7 million up to 10 million. then down in the lower right corner is what we proposed to spend on roadways that basically keeps us level sort of right it's the yes this combined with switching to more of a resurfacing model those two things in mind should move this is great start with this we'll change some parallel the long wall it is is it i i remember this conversation i was getting something close to residents but um um

Am I correct in sort of summarizing that, like, even if we had to do, right? Wouldn't that almost tie the hands of future councils with the amount of investment that would have to go with doing it like that? Like, is it more prudent to use money wisely now on a steady increase versus all of a sudden Even if you could do all the engineering at all, even if you could do that at that level, it requires sustained investment because otherwise you'll have all the roads breaking down at the same time. Is that a wrong assessment? I guess it depends on what the council's goal is.

It's the goal to get to the blue line and stay there. And yes, there will be an increase in investment in perpetuity.

Did we ask questions on this slide? So we're at 8 and 12 million. We are exceeding what their minimum was and doing the research. We're above their minimum, but not nearly what an excellent score they gave us.

Yeah, we're between 8 and 9 million on average. they're projecting after five years on PCI would be between 60 and 61, but our backlog will go forward somewhere around 19.

Are there other cost saving measures?

And I'm just going out of the box here and I've suggested reducing lane sizes that save us a foot or two on a lot of roadways as we can so that the future cost is not larger. I mean, There's other ways to make a dollar stretch further. And is this kind of on the radar at all?

So we are reconstructing a room and we always look at the bed and we can't reduce the size. We're just resurfacing the rink. Definitely.

I think we might have to look at how to meet some of these other things. I think this is great, but we've got to see it a little more in the end. They'll tell us how to do it. That is perfect, but I don't think we might have that knowledge.

Categories.

you try to give us four years of cip whatever it was sorry 1923 before we instituted this year i just i think that's also sort of how it feels measured right because we could beat ourselves up for coming down

how much of this is inflation and cost are we getting 50 of the work done or twice the money because costs have gone up

It feels like our goals that we set years ago were under the assumption that things were what they were. I don't want to spend $20 million a year, but maybe that's the equivalent of $10 million.

I think we should consider that.

Transition to actual project lists for the next three years. So the first two slides are our maintenance projects. This state, it's a state year after year. Annual program for striping. Every other year we can join CME. You can see the list over here. So these are our standard months that they usually end in here. This is for 2019. And here's list number one, 27 projects. These have stayed, for the most part, consistent from what we saw a year ago. A year ago, however, we did just have a blanket project for asphalt resurfacing. We haven't done that for these facelifts and interfaces. We've done this list on the homepage. There is one reconstruction project we are pushing on to 2030. That is 10th Avenue Place, North 11th Avenue. That one requires a significant utility investment. And there's no dire need, for example, this year or next year. I think that's what we're going to do. So that's essentially what we're going to do. We're just going to push it back. Our budgets. Here's list number two, 27 projects. You'll see everything in red is federal dollars contributing to said project. So we have River Drive streetscaping next year, Morgan Park, trail, sidewalk programs. I've got some maps and basic slides to go over some of these. Quiet Zone is scheduled for next year. Here's a map showing some of our 27 projects based on the West.

Oh, I'm so sorry. So this is 27 projects, basically the West half of town, several resurfacing sites,

Both of our resurgencies next year will be in the west half of town, only because of the following kinds of resurgencies. So that is how we fix those trees. East half of town, double reconstruction projects, 41st Street from River Drive to 4th Avenue, which I know has been on purpose for many years.

So that one will get done next year, and they will have a shared use gap with some tracks.

There's a section of street done by Jefferson School and some as well, so that will be pre-constructed. Then we involved intersection projects and .

Here's just a graphic of our River Drive streetscape project and its limits.

I see a sidewalk and streetscape being elements on both sides of River Drive between 12th and 19th. Project will be constructed, it will be staged in such a way to try to keep as much pedestrian access as possible. North side and then south side, vice versa. And then at the intersections, I imagine two corners, one corner. Here's that sidewalk infill project by the high school. It is on city property. So the last several years we have pulled back from sidewalking bills. We focused on funding more on sidewalk replacements. However, we feel that this is a worthwhile project at this one time. As we all know, 34th Street has traffic lanes that shift for parking and for bike lanes. So if we install this path at 10 foot wide, we can eliminate the on-road bike lanes of 34th Street and send all those bikers to the path, because it'll be 10 foot wide all the way. Therefore, we can straighten out the traffic lanes, and we can increase the journey lane length going into the base .

That's, I think that's a great project. Also, when you consider the achievement, some of the districts have I know it's one day a year, the homecoming parade, but there are other activities and traffic that touches that area. It's safer even later to get from anywhere, toward the library, toward the high school. I just want to say, I agree that sometimes the short term, I don't think it's to get to the high school.

Sometimes I should bypass the university because it's a big, long traffic.

I can't go by there. I can probably go by there if I want to go. for your work this week, so I appreciate you taking the time.

Quick question. You were looking at me. I knew you were talking about it. I'm just thinking about it. I hate zigzagging, but that's a different conversation. Will the shared use path have markings? The current, what I assume is the shared use path east of there, that is maybe just an 8-foot sidewalk that this will connect to, doesn't feel like a shared use path, but it could just be because they're marketing staying. I hate it. I mean, if we're going to go this route, I think encouragement is the best. And it is a long, long segment. So I think it's a good idea. I just wonder if there's any way to put center stripe lines or if that's out of the question all the way to 41st Street. If you know I'm talking about man, what are your thoughts? Maybe this is a conversation for David.

I think that was quite well made. It was just like Indianapolis. Did I tell you that was? Carmel, Indiana, with an amazing Fenway bike that just ran in the end of the park. And the signage was incredible. Not only on the back, but, you know, any kind of signage where more people would come on, it's better than being like, here's a huge sidewalk. And then people are like, why do you have such a huge sidewalk?

And that dashed line sends a very clear message that this is a two-way direction. And maybe a couple bike here or whatever. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah.

I just put in this line because it's a big project happening this year. It's artist rendering, but it still looks like a giant retaining wall. And to find some project to schedule it.

Talking about the original They want to celebrate that. We have a concert. that i mean in the city we should be celebrating that education we could do that

project for next year, there'll be upgrades to five crossings through downtown. I wanted to point out a couple of things that have changed or have been added to the project. The first is we will be installing a fence on the railroad right away, which will be 15th and 19th Street. So that already exists. So we're going to continue it down to 19th. And then we are also going to at a shared use path and making the street right now connect some of those types of roads.

So if you remind me, are these all of the crossings that are going to be through Gardner and Deschamps-London after? I thought we were going to go a little bit farther west to, like, to 7th Street, because there's still two more crossings that, you know, go into the 4th Street, and they continue to be there.

people live right across the street so i wonder why we would send them down to the people right and we we originally started uh we looked at first which we share with rock island that hasn't no then there was six that i think so i mean we tried we went to the fra i mean the principal goal was to take care of the indian area downtown That's how it got narrowed.

It doesn't mean you can go back later. I grew up on 3rd Street. I think it's unfortunate that we would go down to where I actually was. There are residents of Direction.

I don't understand that, but I just think that's... We're transitioning to our 28th F1 project. You'll see this is where the Changes are going to start happening in one of these streets that we had originally proposed to cross out. We're transitioning to a six and a half billion dollar resurfacing program. Individual sites are to be determined based on what we complete with service funding next year. Here's list two. Same thing with our Cycle programs, you'll notice some ridge maintenance projects, which we'll talk about that more in a subsequent slide. And then I don't have any maps for 28 because I don't need the sites this time next year. I'm going straight to 29 capital projects. So these are a lot of the projects that are new for 28, which are happening here. several, so there's several reconstruction sites. And there's also a large resurfacing site, resurfacing project. List number two. Our regular things, we do have some, we're proposing to paint some lights in a large hot pipe. Those streetlights in that lot are ours. to extend their length. And then for the ramps, 05, 06, and 29.

Here's a map of the 29 projects.

The black lines are reconstructions. Blue squares are intersection improvements. We do have the intersection of 19th Avenue and 16th Street closed. intersection. i think it's great i think it qualifies if we could make it

This is smaller in our circle.

We told them to go small. So that was all of our projects. And I just have some slides with funding. So here's a slide showing our sidewalk and path funding history. I should have said history and future. This is from 24 to projected 29. We do, we are proposing $300,000 in CDBG funding, we'll continue to decide if we can place this in 2017-2019. Here's a slide with some information about our city-owned parking ramps. We call them three downtown. We are on a six-year repair plan to bring those up to current standards and improve their condition. So my 2030 will be done. Can you remind us why the 26 project is different? So we deferred 26 to help fund the drainage project. And we're providing the proposed recommendations for 26 and 27. Here's just some information about our original bridges. We are very lucky in that we only have eight bridges. That is maybe a fair amount of size. And most of them are bridge-shaped. So three of them have been identified for some minor defections. So that is that bridge maintenance project that we're getting for the next eight.

So I wanted to bring up some information about some

Alternate funding that is available right now. The first is surface transportation block grant funding. So that is money that is divvied out by by-state. And we compete with other Illinois municipalities in the Quad Cities for their funding. They have identified $2.6 million a year, I think for the next three years. So I'm just going to go ahead and flip to the next slide, because it has a location of what we claim to apply for for that funding. So some resurfacing sites, it has to be arterial or collector roadways. It can be mobile roadways. So there's sections of the Old Town Road around 41st Street. You can use that to put in sections of South Street. And then the other funding that is available is Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program funding. So then that is federal dollars. This is the funding that came from the path that's going on on 19th Street right now. And then Gregory Rice, Tracy, that's all right here. They have increased the limits this time around, but we can get up to $5 billion in the project, just to be free. That money can now be used for anything between the curbs, is what they say. So any road work is not . It's not . And you cannot apply for maintenance dollars in pathways . I'm very restrictive, but it's very . It's a great program. Consulting person guidance from counsel.

So I've had this idea and I said it before, but I learned this from David Dreyer. When we connect all these segments through multi-use over time, they get adopted or used for. We heard that comprehensive plan feedback we had a few months ago. People were really starting to use it. So I had this thought. Why don't we connect Riverside Park to the next school along 34th Street? We already have on the west side of that road, there's a path and kind of a path with some weird infill patching. And then there's an issue with a slope that would probably need some reconstruction there. But it sounds like a great opportunity since they don't want anything in curves. at least to get us to 12th Avenue, so that we could then address connecting Avenue of the Cities to them at any time. Because if we can get people to our parks on fires, I think that says a lot about the city and the amenities. So I think, I love that idea.

I think the reason I think the number one thing I'd say is connections. You know, I know we have challenges with that. if we can find something along there that's like that's pretty good

eric i think we are planning on doing kiwanis trail enhancements in a couple of years uh the the floodway some sort of bridge or something we're planning on doing so it really is

I mean, that in some areas, that's all. I have thoughts on that first section under construction now, which gets us to the area. I don't think I'm going to read this to 16. I mean, I think we can find a way to understand the improvements.

I know all the places to fill in the infections. We're going to have to be taking shoes about which ones we can track. My only concern there is if you start talking about it, but it's now opening a whole million dollar trail. And so that's just a balance. And it's what we're at for it.

same time we're going to get 500 but it's like but then you can't spend it on any other trail so in my own instance the reason to take that policy is huge i the coaltown road slash 38th avenue discussion i would plug to connect the bridge going over john deere road to the rest of the amenities But I don't know what the term is for these paths.

And I believe her because people walk on a boat path. They're all over them.

People walk in the grass there. And so it's already being used. And frankly, there's an entire trailer home down there over the village. And they don't have a lot of access outside of that area. I found that out the hard way when the river was flooded. I tried to get through. And it took me a long time to find a way. And I ended up having to ride on Cooldown Road on the grass to get out. So I think providing access for people to get out of the hallways. And as we're putting in Texas River Mills and trying to activate that area model, adding pedestrian path and connecting it to the one that we built 10 years ago.

That's the thing. Pedestrians seeing me should be the driver. Yep. As well as just connecting a particle network.

there's always people there like trying to like start through um through the intersection and drop it right there so i don't really kind of wait up

I mean, I know that there's a bridge not too far, not too far over, but. Yeah.

So I'll take a closer look at these suggestions. See which ones fit best with the different requirements. We have our first webinar. That's probably all I have. I think I got enough feedback. Questions to be basically answered.

WHAT IS PLANNED FOR 2026 THROUGH THE 2029 BUDGET? capital, concentrating, and I'm just going to go over some of the three bonus views. At 26, really looking at the traveling screens, I'll show you a picture of those in a minute. The traveling screens are where the main water, when it first comes in on the intake, that is what actually will turn out some of the larger redifference in the water. Trailblaze cranes are very important to our initial water production for us, and we need to be creating redundancy in that system. We also, you're going to continue to hear a lot about our PFAS, which is the chemicals that we need to get removed out of our water, and it's a major project that we're planning for. It's approximately $3 million. We have a little bit And what was originally contemplated and taken into consideration was maybe suggesting $2 million. But upon further refinement, and in particular with CMT, who is our consultant, it's upwards of $300 million.

And then it's about $500,000. So it's a little bit over $500,000 more than what we were originally starting to conceive this as we built the studies.

then also we continue with our collectors projects we have the three collector locations that were just called this year one is at the phony building and then with each of the fire houses this is going to help us with our water building projects with getting more um more accurate building and then also reduce some of the need to have people driving around you know we're still always going to have to do that it'll just help us with more accurate And we're also contemplating and getting geared up for, and it's actually starting to look at that in 27, and then working again with our collectors in 28, but a meter replacement program. A number of our meters now are reaching their use of life, we're exceeding their use of life through our lead service program right now, and we are gaining access into people's homes. We are replacing strategically those meters and So we've started to do that systematically, so we're not interrupting residents twice. Having done other native programs elsewhere, it can be very challenging to give it some change. So we are trying to do that for a two-pronged approach. And then continuing to look at our water treatment plan, and following that plan prioritization. And then as Laura's already mentioned, we have a number of our maintenance programs that you're going to see on our CIP projects that we'll continue to do. Our blood service replacement program is in that. We're going to talk about that when we get into these. Daryl and I are going to be doing that. And then also just some continued maintenance. One of the things that I've been working with, because it's very important about our distribution manager, is really looking at most robust program water main maintenance how are we going to be located in a couple spots and to better identify what we're seeing schools not checking this any of you with all of the watering i hate to say but we always not going to do um the number of watering rates here's some of the projects that i just mentioned to you 2026 this is a picture of our traveling screens We have to do a full replacement. Screen number two does not operate at all. Screen one needs to be rehabilitated. You can see those are both circa 1975 to 77. They have more than reached their use of life. And those are projects that we're looking to get designed as we're, I'm actually looking at right now, the strands. In 27, we begin working on our PFAS removal, which is required of the IPA. That's a very large project. It's to remove, as you all have heard, those forever chemicals that everybody likes to call, as we all call them, towards the emergency, emerging contaminants. And then another one that has really become top of mind is in 2028, we're looking to plan for the removal, or excuse me, the replacement of our HVAC in our administration and in our plan. And we continue to spend $42,000 to $45,000 a year just to maintain these. In actuality, we're limping those along. They may have to be even... brought into 2027, but right now we're doing everything we can to help them with their academic studies right now. Those are absolutely necessary to keep our lab Here is an overview of our led service replacement program. We have been very, very heavily involved with this project. We did secure what we call our fiscal year 25 funding. We're actually doing it now. It was delayed with the state last year. We had one of our contractors move themselves. We had to go out with people for all of that. Finally got that grant. We have been heavily involved in this project for about halfway through. I will tell you we're looking to replace about 400 services there. We've been receiving a really good response rate. Miller has been doing a fantastic job in getting some of that. Also, our administrative staff has been working very hard to do what we call a scrub of who owns what, working very closely with our property management companies that are in town. as well as working very closely with finance in updating our billing as we're finding errors and discrepancies in updating information. So it's been a lot of effort put on the upside of that. Fiscal year 26, we just are getting ready to receive those loan agreements, getting prepared for that. That's $8.2 million there roughly, and we need to replace 851 additional services. We also received, through Senator Sorensen, our lead service grant for the 15th Street community. That is pretty much complete. We actually have completed all 66 services there. We have some money left over. We're actually pulling back to the US EPA to see if we can, with the additional money still there, can we expand the program boundaries. Don't know the answer to that yet, but we're certainly not wanting to give any of that money back if we absolutely cannot have that happen. With fiscal year 27, we were not approved for the law for fiscal year 27. What I discovered, there was a project plan that was put together years ago that put a cap on the number of services that we were asking for. We had actually, because of success, exceeded what that number was. I'm working with Robinson Engineering right now to update that program, that project plan. The state, they're learning right along with all of the municipalities. They now have said, when you put in your program plan, you put in as many lead services can be done. You don't put a number anymore. Before, when this was submitted, they wanted a number. Now they're telling consultants in cities, as many as you can get done. Because we've actually been raising the question Even with our Miller, the Miller brand that we have right now, we have been very successful in getting things done. We've had some cross savings and efficiencies, how we're laying this out. Right now we are capped on how we utilize the money by the number of services. So we might do a great job managing the budgets and working with the contractors. And I want to also give a shout out to Aaron and Laura's team, because there is a lot of collaboration there. is going on between water and engineering on these projects and we are doing construction management in-house for instructions that is safe to see quite a bit of money actually um and in doing that we're going to have somebody left over again we don't want to give back so we've been talking to the state how are you managing that and we're not getting very good answers right now they're saying oh we might be able to do another So there, as I mentioned, learning right along with us and how to manage this project, we are certainly trying to maximize those dollars as much as we possibly can. So with that, with the project plan getting submitted, the state does have what they call surplus funds every year, where other municipalities might be returning monies back, they'll redistribute them, or maybe they're going to try to see if we can secure that for 2027 and have something appropriate However, we are looking at 28 and 29, again, another $3 million for each of those years and looking to provide about 300 services, excuse me, to be replaced for you. You will see by 2035, we have to have all of those services replaced per the requirements. And Carolyn and I will be talking about that soon. This is another map that is very helpful. We've been hearing about our CR boilers that go out or cautionary boilers, CR water mains. This map is a heat map that helps us to identify hot spots. We have used that map to share with the engineering, and as you put more talk in her presentation, we work very closely on where we're going to be disturbing streets. We're going to have to do patches. We want to have forest projects that come behind, or engineering, excuse me, engineering projects come through and resurface through after we've been in there already doing the work. That's in theory what we plan. Sometimes water main breaks occur on these streets that we can't predict as best as we try. And these hot spots help us to do that. It's also going to help us to look at where we continue to try to identify better ways to find out what might be needing to be replaced, where we are seeing a clustering of breaks, what might we be able to do from a preventive main. Here is just an example of one of the mains On 16th Street at 38, it was over there by the Walgreens. All four lanes of that traffic were full of water. It was quite the sight. I have to say, Walgreens was very, very understanding working with us. We were very closely with businesses when we had to interrupt them. They were very, very understanding. If this was a linear pipe split, and those occur, that means we have to disturb a much larger construction here. I want to give an example of that. For example, since 21 through 25, on average, we have about 72 water main repairs that we've had to do. So just some years are a little less than others.

This past winter was very severe for us.

This again is another identification. We're again looking at just first quarter, so we can keep consistent blocks of time in the winter, but you can see with emergency lead service replacements also being required. We have weeks that we are learning of either for laterals or off domains. When we run into a lead service, we have to realize that that's disturbed. And then you also see in the other graph, again we're showing exponentially what's happening with water water main repairs again just looking at snapshots of the first orders 24 25 and 26. now i'm going to turn to our water pollution control fund and here i've identified But again, in here, you're going to see the majority of the dollars that are going for our plumbing equipment is really for our South Slope project. That is, by the way, I have your report on track. We had great progress. You can actually see buildings being constructed. Greg and I were out driving in the ballpark on Monday meetings with contractors. And what we identified is everything we see now will almost all be below ground. So a lot of the magic and a lot of the money that is being spent there right now is all below ground. And then when you go out there, you're going to see all the magic is down below. It's very interesting to see how it's all being started. And we also have added ongoing maintenance to our new stations. is something we've been really concentrating on, looking at the stations and making sure that we're keeping those in a well-maintained state. And so now the repairs are being done for that. There were a number of items that were not contained within our EPA loan that we had, such as furniture, some skates, certain equipment. We'll see that that's being planned also within this project here. We've done this half the plan. Oh, I failed to mention. Back in the water, if you haven't heard anything, I know Dawn, you're here. We got the VFW, V-O-V, Variable Frequency Drive, VFD, grant for the water treatment plant. And I failed to mention that a minute ago. So that's $191,000. So kudos to Dawn for helping us do that. But that will help us with the efficiency, yes. And I didn't want to forget that before I got to work. You can tell everyone what I'm saying. And then... For this year, we have $950,000 investment for the Texas Row House. We're going to be putting in that lift station there. We're working very closely with the engineering in that project. And then from 27 through 29, it's our standard maintenance programs that we've got in our stores. So it remains, I should say. Okay. There's our pictures of our water treatment plant. We also have our North Slope Plastic Removal. Again, that was a requirement. That project is going well on track. We're ahead of schedule a bit. It's going to be done by November and well within budget.

So the under construction has done a stand-up job on that project.

This is some of the lift stations that we're talking about. They don't look like a whole lot. There's a whole lot that goes on both sides and that operates those lift stations. That's the mechanics of it. And now we're going to go into storm soup. And I'm moving fast, but they do this. We've got a lot more to cover yet, so I'm moving fast. In the stormwater, you will see it's pretty lean. It's for capital equipment. It's looking at the pump station. We moved that out one year because we really needed to support any other vehicle equipment and vehicle for stormwater for their maintenance operations. And again, on the capital projects, you'll see when we actually have our contribution that goes towards engineering projects and then also our storm light. So it's maintenance work that's done. And then this is just a few pictures of some of the drainage improvements that we're doing. Again, these are some of those silent services. Nobody thinks about the ditches until it starts to rain, and then the phones go off.

So staff has been very diligent in making some of our ditches and very proactive with that. And then there's that .

And then I'm walking through very quickly to give you a snapshot of some other things that staff is talking about. that we will need to plan for in future years. And the line room, which is the cone any of you have seen when you walk through the water treatment plant cone, but also outside will store the line. That is a very critical process for us on softening the water, which also helps to align our water main. That helps us to have on-way maintenance of our water mains and extends the life of the pipes. So lime operation is extremely critical for our water process. And then also the chemical feed equipment. This is another project that is all within our water treatment master plan. These are a couple of the priorities that are coming. unless there's any questions i ran through that very quickly for time's sake okay well first slide talks about our parks and recreation

It was adopted in February of 2024 with a projected amount of $1 million for current air and capital investment. This was adopted in 2024, but since they were working on it in the better half of 2023, we're actually able to implement it starting in 2024. So we're going to be here three, basically 11 years. So far, this plane has been working very well. We have a lot of public input when this was going on. We've tackled a lot of big projects over the last three years. Some really big projects. Some of the projects that are running now. The majority of it comes from a plane. It talks about giving some funding to our facilities. They come to us every single year in the past and say, hey, would you consider funding for a rough replacement? Would you consider funding for HVAC? And there was no real way of judging who we should give some money to. It was basically in the past we got to this first. The plan talks about putting money in there every year, having guidelines, and having a batch to look at what we can do, what rates it are, what is the safety hazard, what is the aesthetics, and things that we've funded in the last three years, HVAC, electrical, let's say, everything that's a brick and mortar. You know, we do picnic table upgrades, bench upgrades. We've been doing that since about 2017, 2018. Everything is getting switched over to metal. By switching picnic tables over to metal, maybe not sound like a big deal, but staff are spending a lot of time here in the wintertime bringing them in, replacing pieces of wood, painting them. So switching everything over to metal saves us a bit, makes our parts look better.

the next couple of years, we'll be wrapping that up.

Since 2017, we've only had to replace one metal thinking table because I assume someone put a fire on top of it and the rubber metal coating melted. So overall, we have over a hundred metal things in our system. The Herald's Landing, the new dock there, that dock has taken a beating over its lifetime. Anytime the river comes up past 10 feet, it catches a lot of debris. A lot of staff time to remove that.

We're looking at a, it took a really bad meeting a couple of years ago.

We were able to fix it back up. A dock that is easily pulled into the land. It's almost kind of like an accordion kind of thing. Also making it more accessible to the water with kayaks new ADA launches, you know, taking something from engineering and doing some design work ahead of time for a maintenance shed at Oversight to be replaced with a maintenance shed at Mowley-Villano down the road. Since we've done so many great projects over the last five or six years, we're starting to go towards the smaller parks. So this year, we did work at McCandless, Stevens Square. Next year, we're doing it at Kiwanis and Optimus. We're calling those park refreshments. The playground is within our life cycle, so we're not replacing them, but we're updating sidewalks, fencing, benches, and we're going to do a survey to each one of those. Within probably four or five blocks of each park, and ask them what they'd like to see. five or six different examples of low cost projects that we can do with that green space, or would they like . So those are two of the smaller projects, two of the smaller parks that we'll be doing next year. And then a couple of years ago, we presented a feasibility toward Green Valley softball complex, which is variable value. It's like a $112 million were to redo the whole thing and so over the next couple of five to six years we'll have projects here okay so next year we'll be changing structures as far as that plan and then uh ben butterworth parkway that playground is our next playground place that includes over the surface i've got a picture of it right here we were fortunate to buy a couple of these pieces last year because we will see the 50 000 grant towards the end of the year to purchase it. The tower on the right side is the most inclusive tower that Play and Park Structures has ever made. So there are very, very, there's a lot of different transfer stations that people are able to wheelchair up to and get into. Some of the other pieces that we're buying, so that tower is made for 5- and 12-year-olds. The smaller playground is made for starting at two years old all the way up to 12 years old. That is a rain structure. It's kind of hard to see, but you're able to wheelchair it up into that. There's several different areas of play. You also have a mirror go-round that you're able to wheelchair into. A wheelchair-accessible teeter-totter, same with the Those are called astral pods. Kind of a weird structure in the back. There's a couple of transfer stations as well. This will be our most inclusive playground that we have. This is Ben Butterworth Parkway. It's our busiest park network system with almost 450,000 visits per year. This playground is one of the reasons we're here. so this will also have important place uh surfacing we'll actually work in our favor so when it does flood we're able to power wash it off and put it back up bloods mulch floats away we have to remove the dirt the mud and then re-bulge it to explain so this is going to be kind of our highlight project for next year it's going to be I did want to give an update. We are applying for the 2027 fossil light grant. This slide is old. It continues to change until we have our public hearing every couple of weeks. Right now, we're looking at doing some educational signage out there, shade structures, accessible multi-use trail. So we're changing a volleyball court into a that. These goals are all related. As part of that, we're going to do a trail that gets up to that and gets to the back of the quad as well. We're also looking at replacing the playground, the 5-12-year-old playground, as a possibility as a backup to round that out. That's still to be determined. We'll have our public input in a couple of weeks, and then we'll actually bring it to City Council to review. Something I wanted city council to consider. So 1719 Fifth Avenue was purchased a couple years ago in hopes of doing a joint venture with Western for child care. Since that is no longer a move forward, I asked Bob if I could explore doing a pocket drum. downtown, because we really don't have a lot of space downtown other than Steven Square that just I talked to him about presenting to SSA 5, SSA 6, and the downtown merchants and kind of get what their view was of what that space should be, because I want this part if it moves forward to benefit them. And I gave them an example from Michigan on the right hand side, it looks very similar to the piece of property They turned it into an area that helps the downtown businesses grab food, grab coffee, go there to be able to be outside.

They kind of lack a lot of outdoor dining options, so you could be able to take your food and your coffee and whatever.

Presented to most organizations, they absolutely loved it. They would like a small little stage to be a part of it, so there could be a poetry reading, open night night, comedy, something a little like that. So something to consider for some type of design funding.

Down the road, I want to use this schematic design as a fundraiser. How will businesses help or vote to fund this project?

SSA 6 voted so much they would like to talk about funding some of it down the road as well. The second picture on here is something that we were talking about at Bee City. And Don actually played around a little bit with Jack TV TV. Not quite to scale. But this used to be the location of the Paradise movie. And the Spotlight, one of the owners of Spotlight, shared some pictures that he used to get. So it kind of popped up that Paradise Park kind of made sense. do some type of themed murals of the year. I presented that name and absolutely loved the idea. So this is just another rendering that could be some kind of council consideration, which could be a really cool spot to do.

I love that reference to the arts, because that movie, when it's anchored by literary arts with an atlas, and then if you have theater and had self-conservatory moments in the ballet and all that, it makes sense that there's that awesome arts and history there.

I would laugh if you didn't believe that, but I've had several people

We'll do that area as a campus, right?

It's like a global campus for, when I look back at the Arts Commission's creative public arts plan, that wasn't included because we didn't own the property. We have regional examples where it's like canyons and airways.

I hope that we do incorporate art into that site because of its location.

terrible if it's older because um it's the front door of the dispatch office building it's all the businesses down there um i'm glad we own it and i'm glad we're moving forward i'm glad we're carefully considering it would be a miss to not coordinate any of that with oh for sure that's uh something that was discussed with the downtown returns

So I ask a few questions before wrapping it up. For QANUS and Optimus, are we reaching out to those organizations and ask if they want to help fund these? Have they said yes?

We have not reached out to them. We have talked to one of our board members that just So with that in mind, with Optimus, I know because I live near it, the pavilion, I don't know what we call it, the shelter.

It's been there since I was in elementary school. Has there been thought about expanding it? It's a very used park. And I know one of the... downsides was well we made it back but do we need and that's like do we really need plumbing when there hasn't been and since forever just to give more picnic tables shelter and opportunity to congregate so you're kind of thinking of what people are thinking it's allowed to help those organizations make that experience just like at riverside and then i guess with paradise park my biggest concern is that we have rivers had to redevelop we have all these incentives for development housing is a number one priority for this council we have a place that used to have a building it was a movie theater but still people want to move downtown and I know that Streamline had their students do mock-ups for housing in that spot. Why are we pushing so hard for a park when there is a park at Stevens Square? There's a park that encompasses the entire northern part of the city a few blocks away from the river. I don't think we have a shortage of green space downtown. do have a shortage of housing, and a part will be an ongoing expense, even in its most responsible form, with no greenery and no maintenance, it will still require maintenance, graffiti removal and other things. Whereas housing will generate room. So my preference is housing on that spot. I don't want to get too vicious about it, but I feel strongly about it.

What do you take in? I think counterpoint that there was supposed to be another housing. It's been more than two projects. They encountered issues with the neighbor, right? And that's partly why that project doesn't exist. So are we going to continue to fight for a really small square foot, if you will, for new units? and have it be empty for however long it takes to get the housing project going there, or are we going to put it into good use? That's 100% going to be an amenity, especially for the housing that's right across from it. There's plenty of other places. Like, our housing need isn't just in downtown. It's the whole city. So you don't have to look at every single spot in downtown as a housing project.

We can go back and forth. I just thought I'd put it out there. I want to make my point known. This doesn't need to be a park. It could be housing. It could be 12 units within current height standards without much of an issue.

It could be large 3-4 bedroom. That could generate decent rent for whoever owned it. And we have representory buildings which would fall into this game.

So we're kind of Pissing away at that opportunity for a part that, again, won't generate, in my opinion.

Anyone want to express any interest from my personal, my office? I like talking about it, too. I think exactly what goes in there and how it's considered. Students had looked, I mean, I'd love to take a wider view about it in some way, but they know it's kind of a lot of small little space, but I think it's also a place where really big, you know, so many times we're like, you know, I mean, I like that it's a little more adult bench space. I think that makes sense in the area of the playground or something there. It's just multiple. It's only 45. I mean, I explored that before. I spoke a lot about it. It's just not, it's not really, that space doesn't really pay for anything else with it. I like that direction. I think as we put that out in the world and see it, if there was so many things that had been developed, I don't think maybe I'd say it or talk about it, but if it's not there, I'm not sure it's going to work.

I think I shared with the whole council in the email I shared with you, and this is probably about me, but it's not a stupid new public art commissioner that shared a really great idea for a small brick-and-mortar shop. I don't remember what they were, but shops, micro shops, basically, where they can go from having a studio in their home to having an actual brick-and-mortar studio. And with them, you have cool little, almost like in the park, kind of experience for entrepreneurs. So there's an entrepreneurial piece that could be in between what you get if you're paying for housing versus what you get for a car. And I don't know where that information is sitting right now, but it has been shared with everybody. It's based on a situation like that in Sterling, Illinois.

And so I think that that deserves some kind of advice from the city.

Of course, of course.

That idea was really interesting. The town just bought a bunch of top sheds and set them up in power and their rent was, you know, abysmal.

How much?

But it's like, and especially in the summertime, it becomes an activated destination for people to go to. I like that use. You could incorporate public art in there too and help. And I've seen work with restaurants also. But like, I don't know what the standards are, but yeah.

I like it too, because the square footage that a small entrepreneur like that needs is not a whole storefront. I mean, looking at the gallery gallery, the gathering gallery, they can't find stuff that they can afford in the place that makes sense for a partisan thing, right? I have hope that they will, but for small entrepreneurs that have a cool well-designed space you don't want it to look terrible right and looking so very and reflective anything further basically i'll say about this a bit what you can afford we're kind of discussing a lot earlier

People from the business I say, some of the no job persons who are part of the design process actually have a public input. We wanted to benefit the businesses. Okay. How do you know where to see the environment? Staff is looking at 28. Anything in that plan, if you think it's that hard property, if it's like less program, we could fall under this one. But are we thinking about that? Like I said, it's like a design process. Make sure that it doesn't have to be a specific thing. That's it. There's a lot of different projects that we could actually look to insert.

But it's going forward.

It's very, it's very, it's very, it's very tough. I think that's going to happen. Uh, he backs off the 2829 budget. Once again, several of the first ones are repeat. 28, 29 will change. Projects will get shifted around based off of things that come up throughout the year. For example, the Harold's as well. But 2028, we're looking at doing some, we start budgeting some trail maintenance. Some of the trails on that mother earth and some of the other ones that we've done in the past. We want to do the preventative maintenance Also look at Sylvan Island. We start really getting towards 2930. We've almost hit almost every single part of some sort of nature. That does not mean that we're done doing this. At that point, then we'll look at security lights, north sidewalk updates, bathrooms. We'll really start fine-tuning some of those parts of that, yeah. You'll see how many units dropped in 2028, 2029.

Those have been in the budget for probably the last decade.

They keep getting pushed back. But I will say, for example, we've got a $125,000 backhoe that we created.

So it sits out all year long. We have headstones that sit out all year.

So things that should be inside That's why we're hopefully going to get to that. Green Valley, once we do the shade structures, we're going to upgrade the sidewalks and then the concession upgrade. The concession upgrade in 2009, our biggest revenue source is concessions.

It's around $3,000 to $350,000 a year. We've been very well with what we have.

This time we'll take our last presenter. Oh, no, we have two more. And if we could go to the very last page. Just very briefly, I'm going to give you a quick update on my hand shows. And first of all, I have to say, Eric's doing a great job managing As you know, other than property taxes, revenues are pretty low. There's charges for services, but there's a limit on how much you can really increase those. So primary revenue sources to taxes, and as you know, last year, in the In fact, we've been trying to increase it about 3% here, which is actually under $100,000. And so we reduced it last year. If you take a look at their operating expenses going forward, Eric is presenting an operating budget that on average is only increasing 2.3% in a year, two years through. That's something we're going to have to continue to monitor. We have included the potential of the increase in property taxes at the very recent level of each of those three years. And we'll talk about that in October once we actually get our tax values Going down to its in blue there, you'll see the transfers in from the CIT fund as well as the general fund. There's 400,000 from CIT projects. And then there's the general fund, a million dollars. And those are flat revenue sources. So the only one that's making any movement at all is its property.

And then the ending fund balance as we head into the 29-year, it's got some excess reserves right now because of capital projects being carried over in 2016.

But by the end of 29, the fund balance will be at 22.78. So that is the end of the first section of the presentation. So we're going to wrap it up and move on to the next one. Go ahead. And so the next one is our B-reviews.

We're going to show the impact of this project and what it does, what the effect is on her.

And some of these, you've already seen some of these slides. They're looking so good. So just, again, highlighting a couple of the major areas of global making investments right now at our power pollution control facilities. At South Slope, as you know, that was driven by nutrient discharge limits and aging equipment there. We received an IEPA. And we've got $120 million in the 30-year term, 129% interest, which is remarkable. We have IHC that is our contractor. We've helped support it a bit down to $132,862. 3.4 is contingency. And then we also have design. And that's what makes up that 420 million. And then, as I mentioned, we have begun construction. We have 25. We are well on track. You should know, Kalina. because we'll get a little bit of a slow start, but we're making progress now. More slope I already mentioned. We anticipate that completion in November of this year. And then our collection system, we're going to do a third year of slope testing. That is going to start in August. RJN is coming back for a third year to do that. As a recap, sewer revenue fund, we have our wholesale regional customers, we have our residential, and then we surcharge certain customers based on the strength of their waste, such as laundry, restaurants, grocery, bakery, and freeways. Sewer recommendations. We are looking at the sewer rate, a rate increase of 60%, which was implemented for retail wholesale, as Carol said. stay in the course that was what was planned um another six percent was planned for 27 through 29. we had seen that again last year still staying the course with that um and industry standard used to be about 30 percent plus or minus qualifying for that then this is what's giving you a proposal what we're looking at for the rates as we mentioned the base charge would be going up six percent it's what you see in the green um and then the commodity rate which will be going up in addition six percent this chart helps you to see how we compare to our surrounding communities. We appear to be right in line. Davenport tried to get hold of the numbers. It was hard. Some of these numbers are difficult to do the conversions because everybody does their sewer rates and their water rates differently. So we did the computations. Some are harder to find. Private companies aren't as readily available to share some of that information. So we have to do a lot of digging to do that. but try to give you a comparison here between Davenport, East Berlin, and Rock Island. We're right in the right APB with our surrounding communities. Again, you'll see in red what we're looking at in 27, and then what we're projecting at 28, 29, which again is that 6%. I was just going to say, so I might add, other than Davenport, I don't even compete there. Other than Davenport, which right now we don't look at it, Currently, even with our 666, we are still still working on it.

Carol, I have a question for you. As a member of the council, when we see Davenport, of course, it's an Iowa American Water Works Association. So the rate that we're seeing here that you used somehow, it is quite a number, obviously.

But they're spreading their rate not only over the city of Davenport,

also the city of so you're looking at over 150 000 customers so there's really no direct comparison this is the history that you prepare This should be increased in the sumo rate. At the very last line of the day, we're going to show you how long it takes to stop. But individually, by year, this is our projected increase.

For 2027, in the sumo fund, if we increase the rates in the yellow box, if we increase the rate 60%, that will give us an additional $608,000 in 2018.

And again, we are working our way up to, in 2031, we are going to have a debt service agreement on the federal bill exceeding $5.3 billion. So it's incremental, incremental, incremental. And I'll work on it. Moving on to stormwater. Historically, the utility, stormwater utility, created in 2002, moved to Utilities Department in 2019. Since that time, we've made an effort to make stormwater utilities sustainable with the sustainability plan that's coming forth in the council. There's a large share that has been talked about in the stormwater community.

It's a very important thing to move forward in our organization.

The plan was approved in 2023. There'll be more information coming forward with ordinance revisions that came out of the master plan this year. You will see those back in November. And then here we're seeing the proposed monthly chargers for the 27th. Again, this was all in the agreement with what was in our plan last year. So if anything, the 2%, excuse me, the 2%, which is on the next page, this is some pictures of some of the projects that we've done with those funds. It's a pretty lean budget and staff has been very efficient with what we're doing for maintenance of some of our ravines and our embankments. And then here, as Carol mentioned, it's a close 2% increase to 2027. And again, you'll see in the charts where we're showing comparisons, we are again very comparable to what we are seeing with our surrounding communities. And then this is a slide that has been in this presentation a couple of times to give you a couple of years now. to give you an understanding of how we do that for larger tracts of land, how we can do that. And again, comparable to what our surrounding communities are doing. And then here again, the historical overview of all of the rates that we've had over the course of the years. And Carol has carried down below in the yellow, you'll see the true percent and what that means for us on an annual basis. For two more things, the GE rate has been increasing, but it's only 25 pounds now.

We get to our water system.

Water debt, water treatment plant debt, meter replacement debt was retired in 2020. We're just in time for us to start talking about meter replacements in the coming years. Our lead service line replacements began in large scale in spring of 26, and will actually continue to 2030, 35, as you will see here in a minute. We have our water treatment plant facilities planning was completed in fall of 25. That plan that was prepared by Strayed is what our guiding was to help us identify priority strategic investments in the next five to 10 years, which we already tried doing all with you, what that was. um and the council had said there were 36 property owners who had responded and actually had prepared to replace their life service lines prior to the council saying we were going to pay for those staff reached out to all 36 homeowners of that 14 actually sought reimbursement some had gotten grants or didn't seek the reimbursement we have closed out that program so that is done so we have 14 residents some didn't have the documentation we needed to make sure we could document that it was actually for the led service money actually had a few people documents that weren't necessarily applying with our project here so um we're happy to report that we are not done with everything But here, we are showing here, this is a new chart that we put together.

And what this is showing is that since 2004 through, we kind of cut it off at 2022, comparison purposes, we have been on a trend where we are actually producing the usage

that's going down, but with billable usage by 1.5%. And so, if you look at that trend line, what that means is basically over the last 20 years, our usage has dropped 3%. The last how many years?

20.

The last 20 years, it's dropped 30%. And as Bob said, actually, that's just a good thing. I mean, from a standpoint of, say the worst thing. Yes.

I mean, water conservation. Yeah, water conservation, that's right. All of the technology, the process, everything is designed to distribute water. Even though there's flow like down here in Rockwell, maybe we should sell them for water. We could sell it, but that same blue line here applies to us, and also applies to the paint. So, I mean, it's a lot of diminishing return. We're going to produce what we need to produce. The question then is, will we continue to produce production? Will we produce production? We need to look at that from here. That's just what's on the line.

But this is showing, as you know, the last couple of years, we've been increasing our water fees by 2% a year. The usage is going down one and a half, so we're really only making up about half of a percent. And it's not sustainable regarding the need for our operating zones, the labor costs, and the activity of our aging infrastructure.

This is the argument. Yes, because we've lost population over the last 10 years.

It's just slowly small, but slowly. I just wanted to give you a snapshot. And as we go forward in the next couple years, we need to be looking at some alternative brands and not just having to rely on Google. And then The next one I'm going to have everybody put this together.

Again, this is just to kind of give you a feel of where we're going.

And we're all educating the person that we're doing. We'll tag teams. What Carol and I have been working on together is to give you a snapshot from 2025 to 2035-36, what our Let's Service Line Recognizability Program needs to look like as we're thinking through not only the financing of it, but what do we need to complete in order to be in compliance with all the regulations that are coming through the US and IEPA. So what you see up on the very top line in yellow is the amount of grants we know we've received for 25. That's a grant that we received from the IPA I mentioned previously. We're doing about 400 lines currently. We're in that project. We also received that $625,000 from the Sorenson grant. We have completed 66 flood lines. 26, we have another 851 lines on tap that we'll need to start, which will be a real big lift for this next coming year. Shared in 27. We're hoping to get some money. You can see that remains to be seen. We're really working hard to try to get some additional money. But then you can see in 28, here in 2035, projecting out that gradual increase of 3 million, 3 million. Now we bump up to 8 in 2030 because we need to start going back to replacing about 890 a year to be able to accomplish at the end of 2035 approximately 6,700, 6,800 lead service lines that need to be replaced. And I need to share that that number is somewhat fluid because every year when we have, we call them one-offs, when we have the main breaks and we discover watering, the water lateral lines that need to be replaced, we replace them at a time. Then also as we're working with the field crews and looking at what is physically out in the field and continuously updating very old data. And as was mentioned when Warren was talking about street CIP programs, in order to take advantage of these grant programs, There are certain census tracts we have to stay. So our concentration has been in those census tracts to begin with so that we can utilize as much of that money as possible to stretch city dollars before on the back end, we're going to be getting into areas of our community where we may not have as much luck or be able to satisfy grant requirements. Requirements would be a better way to say that in order to satisfy that based on census tracts. So that's why you're seeing somewhat areas that we're concentrating on. It's not because we're ignoring all the parts of the city. It's just to exercise the use of the money as much as we can. And so what I also wanted to show, as we look at those three-year peace candidates, what we've always seen in the past is the amount for increasing fees per year. So if you look at that middle line, and this is the surcharge, you'll see in 27, it matches up with that sheet. talked about previously, we're only going to be going up 7 cents.

And then we're going to go up to 72 cents. And then 40 cents is going to be 29.

And then going forward, you can see the surcharge. And this is on a monthly basis.

What I never really predicted to you before is the cumulative effect.

So now with a clear line, and that monthly charge and cumulative is adding up a

from 2026 to reach $8.01. So within 10 years, it's not happening tomorrow, but over a 10-year period, we will need to increase the surcharge to $8 a month.

Pay for these lead lines on an annual basis, go down to the bright green, you want to put it in bright yellow, up to 96 dollars potentially in 10 years just to pay for the service line and then i'm not trying to get there that is as you know these loans that we're getting are for 30 and 40 years so it will top out in 2036 but we'll continue on for another 20 to 30 years

But they have zero interest in it. No, correct. We're trying to grab as much money. Correct. We have to do it. We are hopeful the money continues at 70% or at least a little interest.

The alternative is finding that response in our... If you look in the second row down, the loan amounts that we're looking at, net of the forgivable portion in the description, we project $58 million over 10 years. We're thankful that those loans are real. We just wanted to give you guys a good feel for that. I know I never want to have some things.

It's not happening. And the idea of other communities we're doing at our.

They're all they're all different communities are funding them all different. This is in our community. Many communities are supporting that 100% such as. But across the country, exponentially, we're seeing water rates increasing up to three, four, five degrees in a much shorter period of time than what we have been doing. You have been very, very pragmatic in looking at a gradual increase so it isn't a major impact. I was talking to someone else in our community, and they're looking to increase like 40% their rate. And then we started having a conversation of, what's it going to do with all your inability of people to pay bills now we're shutting down water now we're turning back on water you're going to have to increase the staff to do all of that finance with all the customer service so it's really a larger issue and as we're presenting to you the larger picture the gradual increase has the less has the least amount of impact to our residents but there's an impact to residents and then it's coupled with aging infrastructure. Because even though we may have a need to sell less water, we may be selling less water, our system is our system. You're not going to be able to all of a sudden stop and not do this main or cut off this part of our system because it's water looped system. And we still have to have investments in a water treatment plant because we have to produce six million gallons of water. Now that's why we continue to explore regionalization, water supply, are there ways where we can partner with our sister communities, sister and brother communities, and ways to be more efficient and how we're not only doing water, but sewer as well, as we consider all of that. And it becomes a regional approach and how we're going to do that with sustainability of our infrastructure.

I appreciate bringing all those numbers to a stand. The waterfront is an enterprise . People may complain about how much it costs and where it is, but I would not let anyone say that . I also think what I think about increases . For me, my goal is always that whole picture.

total of our fee increases under $100,000. That's always the option for an electable. And that's inclusive of property taxes, fee increases and all that. We know that there are fee increases, and that's not going to change.

And it's, as you said, we've been planning for years that the Department of Commerce will always let us know about it. Way back before we were required to get started,

So I'm just thinking some of those things through.

It is a normal thing to say, and if people pay their fortune, they didn't always have, but we'll just have to balance all those pieces in order to get anything.

I just wondered if you might say something to that. Hopefully the grants increase. If I may, we're working right now with our consultants to see if there's an opportunity to secure some low interest rate monies there as well. In fact, if that's another project plan we need to be putting together, we need to give back to Tulsa so you can see what we can afford. And the dollar amounts, they've utilized that to try to secure as many grants as we can.

Thank you.

There's those next couple of slides. which will show you the impact.

And the good news is on this slide right here, as we're starting out, we're seeing some increases.

If you look at the bottom line there, we're 27, 28, and 29 at the bottom. We are the lowest in Davenport, East London, and Rhode Island. So even though we're going to do increase in our maintenance, we still are lower currently than our surrounding areas.

It makes you feel like you've got a little wiggle room.

Take it away. Just make sure you speak up.

Sanitation funds, just a quick review of what's in that fund. It's refuse, recycling, and should be noted that recycling contracts will be the first It's a 10-year contract. That contract will be at, frankly, about $7,000,000 that year. So we are going to go back out to bid. It makes me more nervous to see the price of that for 10 years, to see the cost of the cycling. So I'd like to do an analysis to see if I can bring it in. I don't see the problem. Just for comparison's sake, that's not what we're talking about. Just to be clear with you guys. Also, rush collection, hard waste, bulky waste, and lead vacuuming for cost or seasonal waste is also . The fund itself, we're going to continue to follow the plan at 2% for 2027 to 2028. After talking to Carol, we are recommending an increase of 3% in 2029. So help us maintain those cash reserves as we are seeing operating expenditures at the local level as well. Anecdotally, for our automated side builders, within the last seven years, those have increased about $100,000 per trial. So we're probably still projecting those for next several years. Outward comparison's sake, we are still very competitive with other communities in flood cities. We do have room. Recycling contracts do go up slightly. I think our service does not suffer because of these rates. This is just a breakdown between refuse and recycling. Again, it's a very modest increase each year for refuse. for 2029. And then the increase for recycling has again modest over 2029 itself that will be determined by either the recycling contract or bringing it back to us. In terms of fee increases, we are currently reviewing those looking for yard waste stickers, walk-through waste pickups as well. We're slightly behind other communities with walk-through waste collection. So we are looking at those rates. Here we, it's just a breakdown though. Now we get into the fun part.

i'm going to try to get some energy because i know everybody's feeling tired it's been only two hours we're working i'm going to give you very big news as we go through these slides very quickly okay are you guys are you with me yeah okay okay because if we can knock this out it's a huge it's a huge lift is going into the 27.9 budget that if we kind of have a really good deal where the enterprise funds are, then we can concentrate on the rest of the operating. Very first fund, I'm going to go very quickly. CIP fund that funds all of Laura's projects are made up of two main revenue sources, our home rule sales tax, as well as all of our utility tax. This fund, if you look at the bottom line, and I'm talking the bottom red line, if you have it in front of you, it is right on target. Between those two sources, we try to keep about $600,000 in the fund balance. Everybody with me? Try to keep about $600,000 in the fund balance. For 2026, we have capital outlay. It's kind of the middle of the page of over $16 million. We had some projects that were deferred from 25 carrying over into 26. Primarily the Arsenal Bridge is one of the very biggest projects. But going forward, we're right on target with everything that Afora has laid down. We are projecting that the home rural sales taxes, the revenue on the top line, is going to be going up about 2.25% a year. Very achievable. That's a conservative estimate. And our gas and electric, we've actually budgeted it You'll see 2.3 million for each of those years. So we are hoping, even if, well, first of all, we hope the revenue is going to go up so that we can potentially even add more projects. We're being very conservative, so we feel confident we will be able to complete the projects that's presented in CIP. So just mirror everything I've just said for MFT. Those fund balances, if you look at the very bottom of the page, over to $800,000. Our fund balance policy is trying to keep a minimum of $300,000. We've actually been trying to keep about $500,000 more. And the reason why is so that we can easily accommodate change orders that come through or special projects that come up throughout the year. Like all of a sudden we need to do a special project. We've got a little bit of money here. Our MFT revenue that's been flat and flat over the last few years. And that's also a reason we're just trying to be conservative. We want to make sure that we have funds available to complete the projects. Any questions on those two? The water fund, go two down, one more. Nope, I'm sorry, one back. We always like to concentrate on the cash flows. And in the water fund, We've been talking about the lead service replacement lines, the surcharges, and everything that's happening in the fund. I'm going to take you down to the green line that has the red box. We anticipate at the end of 2029, is everyone there, that our cash reserves are going to be gradually going down to about 25.4%. That is the actual minimum that we want enterprise funds to be. We don't want to go down to 20. Because if we have breaks or any problems of any sort, we've got to be able to cash flow. In order to get us there, right now, based on what we know, has increased, again, chemicals, increased labor, increased utility costs. And we've got a lot of professional services that were paying for design for projects coming in. We believe we may need to increase rates 3% and 4% in 28 and 29. We are good for 27. We're staying in the course at 2%. So as we get better information, as we get into those years, we may be looking at 3% and 4%. In the water fund, 1% increase equates to about $100,000. So when you have a water break, for instance, that 1% can get chewed up. And it really is depending on how big it is. I do also want to highlight, I'm going to go quickly. It's not highlighted there, but about six rows down, you'll see projected PFAS settlement money. We've been getting some significant settlement money that we knew we were going to be getting, and we're going to continue to get this triple down over the next 10 years, depending on when we are actually needing to implement a replacement of the PFAS. We may be coming to council if we can secure a 0% or low-interest loan, because as Laura said, that project has grown from $2 million to $3.5 million. We may have council consider, again, this is another whole year out, so it's not even in 27, a whole year out. We may consider trying to get a low-interest loan using the settlement money, if we can get it for 30 years, 50. pay back those few years, and then that will help us keep the increased fees down. We're just going to try to spread our minds, just so you know that's out there. But it also is a matter of if there is anything.

If I may, Karen, what I've learned is that it's very competitive with those low-interest loans, and the EPA is really identifying communities where they've had violations for PFAS. So they're giving the money there first. The fortunate side is we have not had that. We want to keep it that way. We teeter-cold sometimes, but we have not had that. We have to put those all out on the computer every quarter. We provide all of that on our social media. But we monitor that very closely with that. We have great lab, great bar staff. So that's what's allowing us to have been effective in the chemicals. We're seeing exponentially chemical prices increasing, and that's exactly what helps us with our water quality.

Again, I just want to also state that the main goal of each one of these enterprise funds, so all four of the enterprise funds we're talking about tonight, number one is to set a break-even on the operating so that we have fees that pay for our operating, our labor, our operating costs. Number two, that we have cash reserves to pay cash for any of our capital projects as needed, and then also have money available to pay for any loans, debts, funds. that payments that we might have. So we try to keep that fee down as low as possible. So if you go down two slides, David, there's all the, for the next three years, as Laura's already gone through, all the capital that is the main driver in that fund. So it's funding all of that with those fee increases. And I'm going to go right into WPC. So if we go to the next cash flow, David, 20 more now. Perfect. That's it. And again, I'm going to have you go down to the blue. I get green lined if you're with me there. We anticipate by the end of 2029 that our cash reserves are going to be about 88% of our annual operating. Again, we're trying to up those fees so we're able to pay debt services coming forward in 2031. This fund is It's absolutely working as land. I don't anticipate there to be any problems. Very steady revenue stream. We talked about how we have already committed ourselves to those fee increases, and they're pretty much locked in, but they're working. They're doing the job. They're paying for the capital. So unless all of a sudden we have a huge change order, and I mean massive, that would be a... Don't say that. No, but I mean, right now we are budgeting... You can't come at bay, so no. Right now, the Southfield project is $132 million, and we have $120 million in loans. So over five years, we're going to be drawing those reserves down about $12 million. So everything's worth it. Any questions on WPC? We will hop right to the cash flow on stormwater. And stormwater, again, we're going to go over to 29. One more down. One more down, sorry. There you go. If we take a look in 2029, we anticipate with the plan in place with all the capital projects that were presented, we will have about 30% in our cash reserves in 2029 if we have that 3% increase in the outer year. And 30% sounds like a lot of money, but if you look at the cash flow, it's only $400,000. So that can be chewed up. In a hurry, again, if there's a project or anything like that. But this fund is working very well. It's getting a lot done. And I don't know what else to say on that one. And then lastly is our sanitation fund. And again, it's being managed very well. We'll take a look at that very last. Yep. Thank you, David. It's in golden and red. You see that in the 29 for the cash reserves. We've got 778,000 reserves in 2029 for about 52%. And you would say, well, my word, why are we talking about raising the base 3% in that year? It's because we're trying to save money because in 2031, two more years out, we have projected $1.6 million to pay cash for three new hackers. that are about 550,000. So if we just incrementally keep that B, you know, it's working great. We don't have any bumps in the road. It's not working very well. And so the final sheet is, if we take a look at those fees again, you kind of see, right there. That's what we started it out. Again, no surprises for 2027. We're staying the course with the 6% for WPC for 2027, 2% in water for the general operating, a surcharge of 7 cents for the first round of loans being paid back, 13 cents in stormwater for 2%, 24 cents a month for sanitation. And those four funds, if we stay the course with those fees, are balanced. They're balanced for 27 and they'll be balanced for the next three years. We feel really good about that.

Basically call it a straight line projection methodology as compared to what we were in 2021. It really is a race from all over.

It's much easier, and I know it's hard as well, but if you just incrementally just do a little bit of an increase to stay, you know, So that's all I have on the fee review. And in two minutes, I can tell you about the amendments. You don't even have to open your book. It's hard to believe. We have hit the six-month mark of our 2026 year. I literally can't believe it. Halfway through the year, the budget amendments as presented, and there is, if you were to print it out, it is an inch thick. Everything you want to know about the amendments are in this book. BUT THERE ARE NO SURPRISES. WE HAVE ADJUSTED EVERYTHING FOR COUNCIL ACTION THAT HAS OCCURRED FROM JANUARY 1 THROUGH JANUARY. WE HAVE TWEAKED SOME OF THE REVENUES, AND WE DO HAVE SOME REVENUES THAT HAVE FALLEN A LITTLE BIT SHORT, LIKE OUR HOTEL-MOTEL PACKS. THOSE TYPES OF THINGS, BUT THEN THEY GET OFFSET BECAUSE SOME OF OUR LICENSES AND PERMIT MONEY IS OUT. But it's all kind of balanced out. The net result is our general fund. We got adopted it to be at 22.1% within our fund balance range. 22.1. The amended is actually 23.2%. I'm praying to be in the year within that. But everything, it's going very well. And there's all the funds we couldn't compare. We already went through all the enterprise funds. but there's some small loans, you know, some of the grant funds that vary ever so slightly, but there's no, there really is no, there's no surprises here. Your directors are doing a great job. I'm happy to answer any questions, but it's all here. It is all clear. And we would like this to be on the agenda in August. And then we'll kind of wrap those numbers. And this is the first round of amendments. We'll amend it again in November. But it helps us with the budget so that we get everything squared up before we present. Anything further from the council? Hearing none.

Is there any public comment at this time? Is there miscellaneous business? I'll save it for next. One second.

I will be gone next week, sweating profusely, riding in my bike across. It's a hilly ride. Very hilly this year.

Great public and private investment recreation.

Fantastic. Thank you.

I WILL ALSO BE GONE NEXT WEEK, BUT I WILL BE IN CUBS COUNTY.

I WILL BE HEADED INTO THE INNOVATION PROJECT AFTER THE MEETING. THERE WILL BE A FORUM. ALL RIGHT. WHAT WAS YOUR UPDATE?

JUST A LITTLE QUICK UPDATE. WE DID RECEIVE AN INVITE FROM MAYOR CHRIS. I, the next year, they said they put it on the calendar that don't work best for June 14th to the 17th. So 14th is on that day. If there is interest in pursuing a visit, officially delegation visit, please let us know. just and if you were yellow then you'd have to leave on saturday evening saturday afternoon evening of chicago arrive here sunday morning and then they will transport with the delegation that must be pulled down to frankfurt and thursday and go back and leave on my birthday come back on friday then putting that out of the minds for it. That didn't come in what we tried to do.

Any other staff updates? Yes. I actually do because I forgot to mention this. Does council want to stick together again on CIP to review it or are you comfortable in the past? Laura has written a resolution to come forward with you so she can start the design and engineering on the projects of 2027.

And then of course during the year if there's ever any changes we can always amend the budget.

That does give her a job. And then regarding the enterprise fees, are you comfortable, like what we've done in the past as well, to go ahead and start processing? There's two readings to the ordinance to get the fees increased prior to January 1. This is only for enterprise funds. So we'll bring those forward and we'll kind of knock that out for the budget. I appreciate your patience.

Nice job. Thank you very much.

Happy Lent. You have a great day. All right. No executive session. We need a motion to adjourn.

Second.

All right. Back to executive judgment. All in favor? Aye. All in favor? See you next week.