City Council - workshop

Our devices that we're able to put on our patients in cardiac arrest and set them up to be able to just mechanically do CPR, hands-free, be able to have more time, use drugs, do other things, carry them on the device. It's a really incredible device. We currently have six, and they are near the end of their service life.

here in the next couple of years, and this was a good opportunity to try and get some funding to do. It's a match.

It's a 5% local match. And that total is $1,501. Do you guys have any questions?

Questions for the chief or staff?

Go ahead, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chief. I could have done some research beforehand. Apologies, I didn't. But I take it the outcomes from using these devices are similar, if not better, than .

It's all automated, and it gives the providers time to focus on other areas, IV access, IOs. And when you're moving the patient it continues to just go with the manual of just the rescuer doing it. You have to stop the patient so it's it starts and it does not stop until you turn it off or take it off.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Chief and you might not be the right person to ask. Do you know if there was anything else in the room Health Transformation Act that any other departments could have utilized?

You know, I I know other departments know about it and we just discussed it with mutual aid partners and there's a pretty broad array of things that you could apply for. We looked at a couple different items and and we came to the conclusion that this was going to be the best one. Others.

Thanks, Chief. Have you guys always used the Zoll ones? Or it looks like there's a few different folks in this industry, physio, control, Lucas device. Do you guys have any experience with that? Did you compare and contrast the two?

Yeah, we've demoed a lot of them and landed on the Zolls. They're the most user-friendly. They've got really good customer service. good maintenance plans, and they've been the most reliable for us in the past.

Any others? Council supportive of moving forward with this? Thank you. Thanks, Chief. All right. We see a remodel.

Thank you, Mayor. So, Director Johnson, I believe, will lead this conversation. We are fully aware, Council, after our recent work session, the fact that we are entering phase three on the CBC, Casper Business Center, or I believe referring to it as our Justice Center remodel. And tonight, Jill will have a series of other professionals participating in the meeting via video to help us through the conversation about funding for phase three estimated at $15 million. In addition to the work session recently, we did engage with your council subcommittee in July also to seek their advice and direction. before coming to us a full body this evening. So with that, Jill, it's all yours. Or Alex, were you going to have Alex go first? Am I out of order?

That's okay. Mayor, Councilors, we were going to start off with an update on where the project is at. Oh, great. And so Alex is going to help me with that.

Mayor, Councilors, currently the CDC project and remodel is bidding for Phase 3. We anticipate to get a full 17 and to hopefully get some good pricing and then hopefully get a contract several weeks after looking through those to get a guaranteed maximum price for the project, hopefully being under $15 million.

Questions for Alex?

Hold on one second. Go ahead. Thanks, Mayor. Sorry, Alex. Was that 50 you said? 15. Gotcha.

For Phase 3.

More in line with my expectations.

I will say that the current schedule for the work is planning to have completion by the fall of 2027 for Phase 3. Phase 2 is currently wrapping up. of that work completed. Some of it will transition over in phase two into phase three, but hopefully by October of 2027, the work will be fully completed in a functional building where occupants can, police department can move in and use the building.

So we're currently out to bid for phase three. What if by chance, or do we have already a guarantee that it won't be over 15 million, but what if it came back at 17?

Mayor, Councillor, if right now we're, if it did come over that amount, we We'll have to see what could be cut out, potentially. That's the advantage of having a CMAR, so that we can look at those bids and select certain work packages that offer some potential savings to the work. But otherwise, I think there are some contingencies, potentially, that could be used, and I'll answer that for financial. If it did come over, we would look at what we could do to value engineer some work out to lower those costs.

Any others?

Yeah, go ahead, Pat. Could it also possibly mean eliminating a whole board again? Potentially.

Potentially, we'd try and not do that as much as possible for functional building, but that could be an option.

And when did you say, maybe it was in the memo, but when did you say the bids would be back? Was it September?

So we plan to get the bids next week, August 17th. currently when it is, yeah. Potential that there could be additional questions that need answered and we could amend that addenda for it, but currently right now, it's next week, August 17th, which I think is Monday next week.

Okay.

Anything else?

Mayor. Councilors. So this evening we'd like to review the financing recommendation for the phase 3 of the CBC remodel project. We're trying to turn the Casper Business Center into our premier police facility. So phases 1 and 2 of this project have been funded and they are currently underway. So we really don't need to do anything with those. I want to really focus on phase 3. So at the July 29th, 2025 work session, Council was provided with financing options for phase three. During this work session, Council approved moving forward with investigating issuing certificates of participation, which you'll also hear me call COPs or COPs. We are looking at this, it's a lease type of financing arrangement, and we're looking at it to fund that $15 million shortfall to complete this project. At the task force meeting that the city manager has already spoken about on July 10th of 26, the group reviewed several funding options, including the COPs. We also looked at using perpetual care funds. We also looked at evaluating whether other resources could provide funding for this phase of the project. It was determined that the issuance of the COPs is still the best solution. With rising costs, the task force questioned whether the $15 million was going to be sufficient or maybe $16 million might be a better amount. This is a question that staff would look to council to provide direction on. I want to remind you guys, though, when we talked about looking at COPs, we also talked about doing a $5 million line of credit. So we have the line of credit in place. So if we had contingencies which exceeded that $15 million, we could look at that line of credit to provide funding for any additional contingencies that we may have. It would be staff's recommendation that the amount of the certificates remain at the $15 million. Our municipal advisor has prepared four different scenarios for the COPs. They've done a 20 year for 15 million and 16 million. They also did a 25 year for 15 million and 16 million. That council can consider. So over the last several council meetings, council has approved engagement agreements with expert firms, which will help the city issue the COPs. And Mr. Mayor, I would like to turn some time over to Ms. Maddie Prodanovic. And I'm sorry, Maddie, I probably destroyed your last name. She's with Hilltop Securities, and she's going to kind of walk the team through introductions, the process for the issuance, and a general market overview for the certificates. Maddie, I'm going to give it over to you.

Great. Thank you, Jill. Good evening. Thank you for having us. As Jill mentioned, my name is Maddie Prodanovic. You did a great job with the last name, Jill, from Hilltop Securities based down here in Denver. And I've obviously joined by several other folks here that are working on the city's behalf. to put this central transaction in place should the council decided at future meetings to move forward with the transaction. We have prepared a brief presentation that I will go ahead and share my screen for that we're going to walk through this evening. Starting with the purpose and agenda, as Jill did a great job introducing, we are here to talk about the potential issuance of certificates of participation to fund Phase 3, For the renovation of the new Casper fully police facility, Jill, as she mentioned, has obviously been giving lots of updates on this over the last over a year and we've been communicating with her throughout that process to provide that financial updates as needed. But we are finally in a place where if the city is ready to move forward and continue with phase three and fund that portion through the issuance of COPs to actually start the financial issuance process, which is what we're going to walk through a little bit here this evening and obviously hopefully answer any questions that you may have. We also have some folks on to talk about the market and a little bit of the detail of the documents that would be presented at future council meetings, just to kind of preview that process for you all. So starting with the finance team introductions, I'm actually going to hand it off as we kind of work through this list here to each of these individuals, each firm, but the trustee has a representative on the call this evening, so I will cover for them in that regard. But I will start it off by handing it over to Rick Thompson with Hathaway & Coons to introduce himself.

Maddie has told you about. And we will be preparing the key documents, including the lease, the trust indenture, the COPs, as well as the council that will opine as to the validity of the COPs and as to their tax exempt nature. Thank you.

Thanks, Rick. And then I'll hand it over to Maria and Dean with Butler Snow serving as disclosure counsel. Maria, you're on mute.

I'm Maria Harwood with the law firm of Butler Stowe. We are based in Denver. We have a longstanding municipal bond practice that covers a lot of areas of the country. We are going to act as the city's bond council. Sorry, I don't know what we're doing, apparently. We're acting as the city's disclosure council. Disclosure council represents the city. and assist them in preparing offering documents that will be used to market the bonds to the public. So we will give you advice on complying with the federal securities laws, and we will help you put together an offering document that describes not only the structure of this transaction based on RICS documents, but also information about the city, its finances, and any risks that might be associated with this transaction. Also on the call today is my colleague, Dean Hurt. He is also acting as disclosure counsel. We'll be working together on this transaction. And we have the team here needed to put this together for you guys. We'll be working with staff very closely on collecting information. And you all are more than welcome to review this document and provide us with questions or feedback.

Great. Thank you, Maria. I'm going to skip over US Bank for now. I'll circle back to them on the next slide. But I will pass it over to Robin Moore with Piper Sandler.

Hi, everyone. Good evening. I'm Robin Moore with Piper Sandler. And I'm on with my colleague, Andrew Ma. We are both out of Denver, although I've actually done a handful of bond issues over the years in Wyoming. And we serve as underwriter for the COP issue. And so what that means is that We are the firm that helps the financial advisory municipal advisors. So Maddie and her team and Jill and her staff to structure the bond issue. But then it's our responsibility to go find all the investors that collectively will provide the funding for the project. So unlike a bank loan where you work directly with one bank, we are what's called an investment bank. So we reach out to a variety of investors, including individuals. So you all can buy bonds or COPs, mutual funds, insurance companies, bank and trust departments, pension funds, all of those collectively will provide the funding in aggregate for the project. So our role is to serve as that intermediary between Casper and investors. So nice to meet you all tonight. And we will talk a little bit later about what the bond market's looking like. But happy to be here and appreciate the opportunity to work with you all.

Great. Thanks, Robin. And then last but not least, I obviously introduced myself at the start of the call, but we are serving, as Jill mentioned, as the city's municipal advisor. In that regard, we do have a fiduciary duty to the city to act in your best interest and So we assist in reviewing of the documents and consideration of the rating agency that we'll be approaching. We negotiate essentially on the city's behalf with Piper in regards to the pricing that Robin just discussed and really try to act as kind of an extension of staff to Kindly to Jill as we go through this process to help with the issuance of the COPs. Um, and then finally, um, us bank will be serving as trustee for this transaction. Um, a woman named Jennifer Petruno will be the primary contact there. Um, we've worked with her a lot and she's, she's really great at that role. Um, the trustee in this instance is really important for the issuance of the COPs. They are the entity that the city is leasing the leased property to, um, in terms of the COP and then leasing it back to create that structure that, um, is the underlying legal structure for the financing. So they will be involved. You'll see their name on a lot of the documents that Rick is drafting as those come to future council meetings. I will also note that we did help with a brief request for quote process for that position to assist the city in finding a qualified firm with appropriate costs. Okay, so moving on to the next slide, this has a little bit of an overview of what everyone here kind of just kind of went through and provided a little bit of background, but this just provides some text that provides a very high-level overview of what each role is. There's obviously a lot of folks, a lot of professionals on this call to help the city with the process, but we all do serve a very unique position in regards to the issuance of COPs and have distinct roles from one another, so did just want to provide a little bit of that background here for you all. Okay, so moving into the overall anticipated timeline and financing process here. So we are obviously sitting here on August 11th at your work session. The plan as of right now, should the city like to proceed with the COP issuances to start the ordinance process with the first reading on September 1st, second on September 15th, and then the third on October 6th. As we're working through the city council process, there is also a behind the scenes process that will be happening as it relates to the actual issuance of the COPs, which primarily revolves around the drafting of that preliminary official statement that Maria described, which is the disclosure document for the COP issuance, which is what Piper then uses to actually market the certificates to investors through the process that Robin described previously. There is a lot of work and back and forth that goes into that. Along with that, we will then be working with the city through the rating process, which I'll talk about in a little bit. These will be publicly offered securities, so they will be rated. And so we'll have a little bit of time for that. And then our current targeted pricing date, which is when interest rates would actually be locked in for the COPs is October 20th with a closing shortly thereafter with funds provided by the end of the month of October. As Rick mentioned during his introduction, there are a handful of legal documents that the Council will be considering at these meetings. The primary one, obviously, is the ordinance that authorizes the actual issuance of the certificates and then the underlying legal documents that establishes the legal structure for the financing, which includes the indenture of trust lease purchase agreement and then the site lease agreement. For the credit ratings, the city obviously does not have any publicly offered securities currently outstanding. So this is all kind of going from scratch. And so as part of that, we will be getting a rating for the city for the first time. We have worked with Piper Sandler to evaluate anticipated rating outcomes based on the methodologies that are published by the rating agencies. Moody's and Standard & Poor's are the two primary agencies that we use for general government credits, particularly for financing, such as the one that the City of Casper is considering. Based on that preliminary analysis, we do anticipate a rating in the low AA, high single A rating category for COPs. What I will note is that a COP credit rating is typically one notch lower. So, you know, from a AA3 to an A1, as an example, from Moody's or a AA- to an A+. for S&P from the issuer credit rating, which is the implied general obligation bond rating of an issuer, And that one nosh distinction has to do just with the implied risk that the rating agencies assign to the annual appropriation nature of the obligation. So that is not specific to the City of Casper. That is a nationwide thing and something that we deal with throughout the country. So I did just want to note that. From an overall financial review perspective, from our initial analysis with Piper, The city's in a really strong financial position, really great credit fundamentals and metrics. The potential weaknesses or exposure that we see, not just with CASPER, but other rated entities within the state are really, really reliant to the underlying economy and concentration in oil and gas. So that is very standard for the area, as you might expect, but does increase. come with that a little bit of potential credit weakness. Otherwise, your financial statistics are incredibly strong in the high AA, if not even AAA category. So we are in the beginning stages of that analysis, and we'll work through that process in September. Based on our current timeline, we do actually anticipate having that rating back prior to the third reading of the ordinance. So that is something that obviously we can follow up with in the future once we have that back in hand. Okay, so moving into the market update, I'm going to talk through the preliminary financing scenarios that Jill mentioned, and then I'm actually going to hand it over to Piper Sandler to go through a couple of market update slides. So on this slide, you'll see the four scenarios that Jill mentioned in regards to both the terms of the duration of the repayment and the 20 versus 25-year term, as well as the amount, so our 15 versus $16 million project fund amount. I do have a few assumptions listed above primarily the payment structure in that we are assuming level annual payments. So essentially payment is approximately equal every year. But for that final year for the legal structure under COPs under state law, we do have essentially what looks like a double payment on that final payment date. And then we are also assuming what we consider a standard prepayment option. So unlike your mortgage where you can go refinance at any point in time when interest rates go lower, investors of municipal securities do like to have a little bit of protection from that prepayment or refinancing. And so most municipal securities are sold with a 10-year call option, meaning within that first 10 years, we cannot refinance. on a tax exempt basis. But we can do so at any point in time thereafter. So either prepay or refinance, really starting at that 10 year call date and beyond. And it is not just a one point in time as in you know, on June 1st of 2036, if you don't hit that date, you know, you lose the option. It is really that on that date and any date thereafter. So we do have that flexibility built in. We have talked a little bit with Jill about potentially looking at a slightly shorter call option. So ability to prepay what we would typically say from a market standpoint is that maybe in the kind of nine year timeframe, maybe even eight years, We don't necessarily see a penalty from an interest rate standpoint for having that slightly shorter prepayment option. Anything shorter than that, we would see investors push back a little bit and demand a higher yield essentially for that shorter call option. So that's something that we can continue to evaluate as we move a little bit closer forward. through the financing process. I'm not going to go through the numbers here, but what I will say is when we ran these at the end of July, we were at what I'm hoping is the high watermark from an interest rate standpoint. For those of you that follow markets, as you might imagine, rates have kind of been a little bit all over the place and pretty volatile over the last A few months, but particularly towards the end of July, we did see a pretty large adjustment, particularly in tax exempt rates. We saw rates increase about 40 basis points over that month. We have gotten that a little bit of that back. So rates have actually come down from when I ran these numbers are the city's overall borrowing costs are about. two to three basis points lower than what you're seeing in this table. But this is, again, as I'm saying, hopefully the higher end of the interest rate cycle. That said, obviously, we are subject to markets such as CPI, as an example, which comes out tomorrow, and as well as potential exposure from a market standpoint to what's happening in the Middle East and Iran. And as oil and gas prices change, so do interest rates and borrowing rates. So, At that, I'm actually going to hand it over to Robin and Andrew with Piper Sandler to go through a couple slides about the market.

All right, thank you. First, before I jump in, any questions about the fund structure or any big picture questions about the market before we just jump in and give some overview and highlights?

Yeah, Pat. Yes, if you could go back one slide. Yes.

Here we go.

Yes, thank you. Couple of questions. Thanks for the clarification on the double payment. Could you flesh that out a little further? That's not acting like a balloon. And how? How does that actually work?

Yeah, so I'll start and then I can hand it over to Rick if there's some questions on the legal nuance side of things, but essentially from a there is a legal case theory that, again, Rick can go into the detail for that, to sort of purchase the building back or the access to the building back, that payment needs to reflect a material payment amount. And so while, as you might imagine, material is not necessarily defined anywhere, I think from a legal perspective, what your bond council has settled on is that that final payment is equal to approximately twice your annual payment. So as an example, if and your regular annual payment is about $1 million a year, then that final payment is $2 million. So it's not quite a balloon payment in the sense that typically when we would see a balloon payment, it's almost like all of the principal is coming due at that final maturity date. But it is a structured, larger principal payment at the very end that would be required to be paid in that fiscal year. But Rick, I don't know if you have anything else you'd like to add there. You're on mute.

I think you did an excellent job of outlining that.

That requirement comes out of a Wyoming Supreme Court case in an attorney general's opinion where the court held that it was not a true lease when the lease, the property simply conveyed back without any consideration being paid at the end of it. It had to be a substantial amount. The attorney general's opinion gives us a safe harbor by defining that to be twice the average annual rental amount. And that was used by the state of Wyoming when it constructed a medium security prison on a lease revenue bond. So there's precedent for that. And we have the attorney general's opinion giving us comfort. But unfortunately, it is a requirement that we have to meet to be able to stay law compliant.

Okay. Thank you. So I know we really didn't contemplate below 20 years. But noticing the interest rate cost from 20 years to 25, jumping up, you know, not a lot, but would 15 years, I don't think we could afford the payment, but would 15 year bring that interest rate down, say a half a point?

Yes, likely. I think the last time that we ran the I would say like a year ago, I think we were running a 15-year scenario and there was about, I think, probably a 30 basis point difference, 30 to 40 basis point difference between that 20-year and 15-year scenario. How much of a benefit right now is really dependent on the slope of the yield curve today. And it does flatten out a little bit as we go further out. But in that 15 to 20-year range, you probably would see a pretty good savings. But to your point there, it does increase that annual payment. But that is certainly something that we can evaluate if that's of interest.

And then my last question, I think, is on the 10-year call options. So we would definitely need steady in it for 10 years. And then the call option and being able to redeem what happened after that, am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, exactly. So, you know, it's not exactly 10 years. We normally pick a payment date. So if we assume a June 1 and December 1 payment dates for these COPs, let's say December 1st of 2036 is your first call option. So up until that point, you know, there's really not necessarily an option to do so on a tax exempt to refinance on a tax exempt basis. You can defuse the certificates in advance, but it's usually not very cost effective because you do have to put those funds in an escrow through that call date as opposed to like a pay and cancel type of a situation. But then any point on or after December 1st of 2036, in this example, the COPs are eligible for prepayment or refinancing. So if the city has available cash and wants to pay them off, it can choose to do so at that point in time. If there's some cash that's available but not sufficient to fully pay them off, that cash can be applied. towards a refunding to lower the annual payment as well as the interest costs. Or if there's no cash available, you can do a traditional refinancing to just lower the interest costs and lower that annual payment just like you would with a mortgage. And as I mentioned, we can evaluate shorter call options, particularly if there's a thought on the cash side of things that funds would be available to prepay this or pay this down sooner than that 10-year mark. There is just a bit of a cost-benefit analysis. You know, we don't typically advise to pay for a short call option. So, say, example, like a five-year call option, you're going to have a higher interest rate for that. If you don't take advantage or use that option, then you're sort of paying a higher interest rate for no reason, right? So, we just kind of want to be thoughtful about we can certainly push that a little bit to a point where we determine that maybe there isn't an interest rate cost to the city to have that shorter per payment option while giving the city a little bit more added flexibility. So we can certainly evaluate that if that's something that's of interest to the city.

So, and then you just mentioned something that, so there, is there two payments annually

Yes, semi-annual payments. So we are currently anticipating a June 1 and December 1 payment. Some municipal securities would have a semi-annual interest and then annual principal. But again, to make this look, you know, to meet the legal structure requirements for this to be a lease, each payment is approximately equal. So we actually have semi-annual principal payments here as well as your semi-annual interest payments.

And I noticed the first payment on the 15 million was 435,000. So that basically is the partial year. Is that correct? Yes.

Yes. So we are assuming an interest only payment in June of 2027. So within the city's current fiscal year. And yes, so that would be essentially like a partial payment. And then we would resume kind of the normal payment schedule beginning thereafter with the first full payment beginning in fiscal year 2028.

Go ahead, Maddie.

Okay, and we'll hand it over to Robin.

Yeah, thank you. So Maddie had mentioned that rates have moved around a little bit. Interestingly, so we're all the way on the right side of this curve here. This shows interest rates. We are actually in the municipal bond market or in the tax-exempt bond market. We're actually almost exactly the same as where we were a year ago. This is 30-year if you look at the 10-year curve. tax-exempt index. So, these COPs are going to be tax-exempt. So, investors who participate in the COP issue will receive interest without paying federal and sometimes state income tax on their investment. So, this allows the city to borrow at a lower interest rate. So, most of us have heard of US Treasuries, that's a taxable index. We use an index that's generally tracking the US Treasury index. It's that MMD, it's called Municipal Market Data. And so that's where we look to, in part, to determine what the interest rates are going to be on the city's COPs. So if you return to the next slide, the demand for municipal bonds has remained strong. And that's a big driver of what the interest rates are going to be and how successful the city's COP issue will be when we go to sell these. to investors. So despite the global backdrop of inflation concerns and the US-Iran conflict and the Strait of Hormuz and oil prices and weaker than expected jobs numbers, we are still operating in a very strong municipal bond market. We don't see that changing even in the last, if you look back to last year with some very significant disruptions like tariff announcements when we invaded Iran, the municipal bond market maybe bought for a day or two in these extreme conditions. situations has remained very strong. So it's hard to know exactly what rates are going to be a few months from now when we price these, but the strength of the bond market and the COP market we expect to carry through. This chart here, this is just a demonstration of investors either putting money into the bond market, which is a good thing because that means there's money for them to invest or to purchase your COPs. That's the blue lines that go up. That means there's more money coming in. On occasion, we have not enough money, money coming out, and that's the orange lines. So you can see we've had a very healthy bond market from a demand perspective. On the next slide, we show the... rate forecast expectations. So a lot of times when we talk to city council, they ask, well, what will rates do? Kind of interesting, no one exactly knows. There's still a one to two rate hike expectation from the fed for fed funds that is being priced into the market although if you saw the jobs number came out that came in weaker than expected and you know the data is is being looked at very carefully um this sort of new fed administration is a little bit less vocal and verbal about what they may or may not do but um you know we're still seeing a expectation that rates will likely stay relatively consistent, possibly a rate hike over the next 12 months. But again, the municipal bond market is driven by a number of factors. So we expect it to remain strong, rates might move around, they might go up, they might come down, but we have a very strong feeling about how this will be received when it comes to market in a couple of months. And that's what we have on the market, but I'm happy to answer any questions or go into more detail if you have any questions about the market or the COP structure or the rating process or the documents.

Any questions?

Yeah, go ahead, Pat.

So is it usually individual investors or is it banks or is it brokerage accounts?

Yeah, it's a little bit of all of that. Interestingly, and what's good for the city is that rates are low. So we do see some individual investments. We usually don't see many because rates are low. The bonds or COPs are sold in $5,000 denominations. And so the bond market is typically made up of a small portion of retail or individual investors. And then most of the investors are going to fall into what we call more of an institutional category. Mutual funds, insurance companies, pension funds. We do have banks, and banks sometimes purchase on behalf of individuals and sort of lump those investments together. But I would say the majority of investors tend to fall more on the institutional side. The one thing I will add is that if it is important to the city council and to the community to be made aware of the sale so that they have an opportunity and knowledge about the transaction that's to come, we can put together an ad that you can put in local newspaper or local media that gives notice to individuals that they can either contact us or contact their local broker to get more information about the sale. They would have to make a purchase during a bond sale, which is a COP sale, which is about an hour and a half or two hours that's allocated specifically to your cop transaction and that time period is when investors put put their orders in for the cop's so we would want to make sure that they had plenty of notice to know about the transaction read the documents and have the process in front of them to make that make that purchase other questions from council so i think that's a great idea i mean just

just for folks to have an opportunity, whether they take advantage of it. But the other thing I guess, is there any worry? I mean, I'm not really that worried about it, but there are people running for office currently worried about things like China purchasing part of this and for let's say BlackRock?

China might not purchase, BlackRock probably may purchase. When we look more to the global investors, they are looking at transactions that are typically over about 250 million at a minimum. So global investors likely won't be purchasing these, but we do have like a BlackRock or other institutional accounts that would be interested.

Any others?

Thank you, Mayor. Maddie, was there anything else? Are you all done?

Nope, that is it. The floor is yours, Jill. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you for the team to provide all that great information. Hopefully that was very helpful to council. So of course, if we issue cups, we need to have a revenue source to pay for these each year. So historically, the city has considered direct distribution one-time revenues because we never knew from year to year if the funding for direct distribution might continue in the state budget cycle. So for this reason, the cities always use these funds as one-time revenues to offset one-time expenses. So in the latest state budget, the legislature actually codified direct distribution at 8% of the state share of sales tax. So while this is still a volatile revenue source, the codification should give comfort that we'll have that funding year over year and kind of changing that from a one-time revenue into a recurring revenue so staff would propose that we would use the funds from the direct distribution receipt that we receive to pay our annual lease payments and in fact in the fiscal year 27 budget the estimated first payment is included as being paid from direct distribution And with that, that's all I have for you guys for tonight, but I am happy to answer any questions. Yeah, Amber. Question on the last point.

In our direct distribution funding that we get, how much room do we have after we've covered our rec investments and other major expenses that are currently coming out of our distribution?

Mayor, Councillor, we typically spend about $4.5 million Our rec subsidies and health department and all of the other obligations that we have. So we typically get a little over $6 million and we have for the last couple of years. We've usually got a little bit of room in about two to a half million dollars.

The questions for Jill.

So. On timing of all of this, I mean, can we hold off a week as far as the $15 million versus $16 million until we have bids, preliminary bids, or my understanding, this doesn't count against our debt ceiling, but does the line of credit count against start debt limit.

So Mayor, Counselor, I'm not sure if the line of credit does. We'd have to look at that. It's really based on what we use to repay that line of credit. So let me take a look at that. Right now, we don't have any funds that we've used out of the line of credit. The challenge with delaying making a decision is going to be the timing of when we need to get all of these different pieces and parts going. So we do need to be on a schedule to get the three readings of the ordinance done. We are trying to make sure that we issue these financial documents by the end of October so that we can have it available when we are starting to spend that money. And so that's really the timing, which is just making sure we have all the pieces completed in order to get that money in-house and be able to spend it on the project.

Others. Yeah, Michael, not. Thank you, Mayor. Not a question, but just I just want to say for the benefit of people in the audience or. That. GOING FORWARD, THIS WILL BE AT THE END OF THE MEMO, IT POINTS OUT VERY CLEARLY THAT THIS WILL BE AN ORDINANCE. WE'LL HAVE THREE READINGS AND THREE OPPORTUNITIES FOR PUBLIC IMPORT. SO JUST WANTED TO MAKE THAT CLEAR. AND JUST TO GIVE PEOPLE A TIME TO KIND OF DIGEST THIS AND, YOU KNOW, GET INFORMATION AND THEN IF THEY HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT IT TO SHARE WITH THE COUNCIL.

THANK YOU, MIKE. So the recommendation is for Council to approve or to move forward with the amount of $15 million to be repaid over $20 million. Any discussion? Comfortable? That's the direction you're looking for, right, Joe?

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

To end the ordinance?

Yeah.

Okay. I think that's the best option.

Okay. We're good with it.

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. And thank you for everyone online.

Thank you, Maddie. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you all.

Have a good night.

Thank you.

Right.

We get our judges here today. Just want to know if you have a setup for this. OK, this is their quarterly update. So if you want to come up, judge hand.

Thank you.

Good to see you.

Good to see everyone.

We'll just do a very quick update. We don't have a whole lot to share with you, but just wanted to let you know I think things are coming along fairly well. Got into a regular schedule. We attended one conference together. We went to the Municipal Court Conference in Lander, which was my first time going. I found it to be very interesting, informative, very heavy focus, of course, on DUIs and DUI courts in different parts of the country. I thought it was very valuable. And then there was a treatment conference last month here in Casper. I was unable to attend. I don't know, Judge Hand, if you were able to attend. I would have liked to have been there, but I wasn't able to make it.

The treatment court conference is for treatment providers, probation officers, case coordinators, and judges. And it's really probably geared more towards the treatment providers and The thing that I take away from it as a judge is we don't tell the people what kind of treatment they need. We refer them to the experts and the experts make the decision. So that's my takeaway from that conference. But it's a good conference. There's judges and probation officers throughout the state that attend. So it's a good opportunity to meet with people. And I think people are pretty aware of our diversion court program that we have going on. Seems to be working well. And again, I thank the council for the opportunities that you give our defendants to get some treatment and benefit financially from that. Get their lives back on track.

Just echo that as well. It's a voluntary program, but I think for those folks that do participate and take advantage of it. It's definitely an asset for them to be able to have that opportunity. So thank you for that. And then I don't know, we're currently reviewing the bond schedule. Hopefully we should have that updated soon. And just plugging away with ordinary everyday affairs. I guess if you have any questions for us, we can try to address those.

Does anybody have any questions for the judges?

Yeah, Michael. Thank you, Mayor. Judge Hanna, I'm curious, at the treatment conference, were there other municipalities either in Wyoming or elsewhere that presented that talked about diversion specifically? And I'm just curious if they did it differently here.

Yeah, thank you. I don't know that there were any other municipal courts present there. I think Casper was the only one. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure we're in only municipal court care. And it wasn't specifically geared towards diversion. The diversion program is just kind of a tool to get people in to get the help they need. But it there, you know it's intertwined so.

Thank you.

Yeah, I saw your hand. So, um, training was mentioned. You know, we're Was any of that helpful to you? Yes.

So I did, through the National Judicial College, I did an online course. It lasted probably five or six weeks. Every Friday they had an online kind of group lecture by different faculty there. I did find it very, very valuable. I got a lot of good resources that I was able to retain and can refer back to. So I think it was valuable and I appreciate that. You guys making that available to me. There was additionally homework. Completed so.

Thanks for the update. You mentioned diversion court. I'm remembering Beckham, one of our liaisons to the opioid settlement. Can group and at the time that we were soliciting proposals for those monies, forget who the representative was from the Toronto County Diversion Court or Drug Treatment Court. I don't remember what the actual name is, but they had mentioned at that point that funding was essentially preventing them from getting more people through that program. I guess. I don't know exactly what relationship you guys have with that program. Again, we're talking about two of the things that I feel least educated about high. the finance and bond market and stuff, and then also the courts. So my question is, do you see that as a obstacle for getting more people through diversion court? Do you see that on your end, a lack of funding? Does a lack of funding prevent you from letting people go through diversion court? I feel like your hands are ever tied in that regard.

I don't particularly. And I don't know, again, it's probably my ignorance because I don't know how the treatment providers are being compensated for their services. But again, as Judge Malone said, it's voluntary. So defendants, if they choose to go through it, they can pick whatever treatment provider they want. And I know a lot of folks are going up at Central Army Counseling Center And I guess just behind the scenes, I presume that they have some grants or funding mechanisms where they're being reimbursed. But it's not something that the court ever has to. It doesn't come out of our budget. So I don't feel like we're limited by it.

So as a follow-up, if you don't mind, you do not encounter defendants who you think are eligible and would do well in diversion court. you can make those rulings and there's nothing like you don't feel like people that would be successful through that program. You had to divert elsewhere for any reason.

In fact, I would say that probably the majority of the folks that were trying to get into the residential treatment or encouraging them to. I would say the majority of them are indigent, so I think there's there is. funding sources that are out there. But again, I just don't know where it's coming from.

Any other questions for the update? Yeah, go ahead.

I mean, I was like asking you guys trends, patterns you're seeing, anything noteworthy since you gave the last update that is unusual or atypical, or is it all pretty status quo?

My sense is it's status quo. You know, we always are talking about theft. and there's a lot of theft. As of July 1st, the legislature changed the law, so now it's three theft charges, and you're looking at a felony. So that's a new change. It used to be five. I'm hoping the word will get out. People will start using better judgment. But I haven't. I don't think we've seen any significant drop.

my more much more limited experience as I would say that would be the same same observation as well.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

Anybody else.

Thank you guys thank you for coming in. I'm glad that the training has been beneficial and being able to utilize that for further development. So if there's anything from the City Council or anything you guys need from us don't hesitate. DIRECTOR DEWOLF.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate you all. All right. Vehicle stacking. I'm going to hand that over to you, Madam City Manager.

Absolutely. Counselors, of course, you asked for us to bring this topic forward for some discussion. The reason that we are going to talk about traffic counts and vehicle stacking tonight is, of course, there is... No allowance in your code right now for really considering vehicle stacking requirements when a building has a new tenant take over. It only right now in your code requires any evaluation of drive-through stacking for new development through site plan. You are unpacking right now whether you would like to allow drive-ups on liquor stores, which would be a change from previous years. And as you know, we do see areas of the community where vehicles do stack at drive ups and protrude into public areas such as public streets or shared spaces. And so based on that on the ground reality, you'd asked for us to talk to you about this tonight. Your presentation will be two part and I want to advise you that first part will be the last part of your written material. So I'm going to give you some page number references so we don't confuse you. Public Services is going to speak first to vehicle stacking and traffic studies. And that is on page 17. Excuse me, page 19, if you go to page 19 in your packet. and then we'll backtrack in the packet when we have the community development department come forward and speak specifically to stacking ordinances and what that might look like. So with that, I will bring Krista up and just remind you that we are on page 19 in your packet.

Hi, Krista.

Hey, dear counselors. Thank you for having us here. And as Janine mentioned, we're here to provide the engineering aspect of the traffic impacts that resulted in some stacking issues. So going into what typically triggers traffic impact studies, when we have new developments, zone changes, change of use, these are things that allow us to look at a site more closely. And currently what allows us to initiate a traffic study would be more than 75 peak hour visits to a site. This is a pretty high bar. This is a lot of traffic that you may not typically, you know, that we think that wouldn't impact or that would impact just that facility. But if we get into smaller sites, this can go off into the public streets and have more impact. What we are seeing is the need to potentially change our ordinance to allow for a tiered approach to give us a little bit more oversight on these. We could potentially have site plan reviews and commercial building permits as a trigger. And the first aspect of this would be an initial screening. This initial screening would weed out all of those businesses that would have very little traffic, very little impact. to the sites. We would then have a level one where we would have focused traffic analysis. This would be a lower cost bar for businesses that could have greater traffic impacts to their surrounding areas so that we would make sure that we're covering all of our bases, making sure that they're not going to impact too much and that we're properly addressing the traffic needs in that area. without such a high cost. A traffic study can get more costly. And with a higher need and more traffic from that initial screening, we could then implement a level two comprehensive traffic impact study. in alignment with what we currently do now. So what this proposal is, is giving us some medium ground to one, reduce costs for businesses and two, give us a little bit lower threshold to look at what the traffic impacts are, potential traffic impacts are for businesses in the area. Now with that, I'm going to let Liz speak to stacking and I'll be around for questions

Council, this takes you back to page 15.

Mr. Mayor, members of Council, I'll let you all get to that memo. Community Development is here tonight with our memo asking for direction on potentially looking at a code change to address staffing, stacking, not staffing, stacking. So with the direction requested, A little bit with the memo refresher, and I felt the city manager hit that very, very well, but currently our code does not have a minimum stacking standard, or does it provide a mechanism to evaluate stacking when existing buildings change tenants or begin operating a drive-through use? And as Janine said, we've got a little bit of both going on with the growth that we're seeing commercially. And having buildings that are repurposing What their uses are, we ourselves as the city have bought a building that we are repurposing the use of. So it's wonderful to see that. But at the same time, that repurposing and reuse doesn't always trigger site plans. And what's also noted in the memo at the bottom of the second page is that site plans are only required for new construction and not for changes in tenants or businesses. And for this reason, many drive-throughs have been put into service without our city knowledge or oversight. And so what the city manager indicated, as well as what Krista alluded to, is that staff does see a need to really review the code and bring forward a recommendation, some code language changes to you all. Looking at triggers, building permits might be the one that we would like to look at and bring forward to you. And... We're also, with stacking, and you all see it around town, we've got what's referred to in my correct language, the high volume quick serve, as well as the low to moderate use. And I think there's both of them out there. We all patronize both. But at the same time, there's no standard out there. We did our research. Craig actually did it and just went nationally and looked at what does the, what happens around the country and the institutions that we work with. There are no standards. So we're starting kind of at ground zero with this, but also we need to kind of look at what the type of use is because maybe a stacking of 12 vehicles would be appropriate in some cases, but not in a, POSSIBLY ANOTHER CIRCUMSTANCE DEPENDING AGAIN ON THE USE. SO WE HAVE TAKEN THIS EXERCISE, REALLY TALKED AND VETTED IT TOGETHER WITH OUR TEAM MEMBERS WITH PUBLIC SERVICES AND SPECIFICALLY ENGINEERING. WE'RE LOOKING AT THE OPPORTUNITIES TO DO A LOT OF COLLABORATION THROUGH THE INTERGOV SYSTEM SO THAT THERE ARE MULTIPLE EYES CHECKING THE PERMITS WHEN THEY COME THROUGH. looking at site plans so that there is a review process because this is new territory and yet we're excited this is great commercial development that we're beginning to see with Casper we've wanted this for a long time but you know we Craig and I'll get calls on a lot of different kinds of businesses and drive throughs are a big one right now but again where they want to locate and sometimes it is reusing an existing building kind of changes the metrics a bit. So tonight with our direction requested is to kind of share with you our desire to go back and look at potentially doing some code changes working again internally with our partner departments and looking at what the trigger might be. And just to throw that out, we did talk a little bit about the building permit being one of the triggers. So, and I guess at this point we would entertain questions from you. Alex and Craig are here for some of the technical aspects and then Krista and I more from taking direction from you from a policy standpoint.

I have a question regarding high volume, low volume. How do you go about deciding whether or not a business is going to be considered high volume or low volume? And how do you know? how do you, you know, you don't know until it opens. So how do you go about that? Do you even know yet? Whether or not you're going to do state questions.

Craig's a good guesser.

I mean, there's other questions.

We did go into that in a little bit of detail, but honestly, I don't have the answer yet. We talked today about an aspect we hadn't even thought about before, which was the new trend of people ordering on their phones and just picking it up, which can be high volume, but it's very, it's quick. And there's some businesses that have kind of slow service and maybe not quite the volume. So there's a lot of aspects that we haven't really worked through that we're going to have to dig into.

That's what I figured.

To add to that, Craig had a meeting today with a developer and We thought about asking them, what do you expect your traffic to be in an hour? And can we hold them to it? No. I mean, they could blow out their bowls and surprise us all. But that is one of the questions that we've talked about internally, is at least trying to get it quantified that way, kind of through the site plan process. And what we have is a pre-application process where we meet with an interested party to start to get some information.

looking at the business or the building permit as a trigger, trying to kind of think through like, what that would capture and what it might not capture in terms of triggering that for us. So it seems like it, it could be that Buildings with existing drive through, for instance, may not trigger that if there's only cosmetic, you know, re re skinning of an existing property. But and so I think you know that's a vulnerability. I guess of that trigger, but otherwise anything that was adding a new drive through window would. That would trigger right, so something that had never served that purpose before would trigger, whereas right now it wouldn't, right?

Mr. Mayor, Councillor, you are correct. And again, if the previous drive-through was just, again, handing three things through a window versus making something, we're talking about that aspect of considering what the use, the business use would be. We all go to drive-throughs with prescription medications and that sort of thing. That's pretty quick. Well, sometimes. It can be a really long process. But again, the idea through a prescription is it should be quick to pass it through. We've ordered the prescription, handed through, versus making potentially a food item of some nature. So that's what, again, we've begun to talk through the use. But again, to get more eyes on this, too, so that we know that engineering is looking at it from truly a technical standpoint. We're looking at it. through our department with land use and how much is going to be necessary for stacking and tying up property. But we're also, and Krista alluded to this, we want to be business friendly. So we don't need to put a bunch of red tape onto this or cost to small businesses to be doing this. So we want to be cognizant upfront that we're getting the answers in the pre-application kind of process. And then that gives us a chance to look at the site and the land use from a community development perspective and make some decisions with that applicant.

Okay.

And I hope I answered. You kind of did that and then added some other.

You did, and I think adding the potential review around business uses can fill in some of the other things that might be slip through a building permit. But I guess my question there is I'm not totally familiar. At what point are we reviewing business use? Is that necessary for all I mean, absent a business license process, right that we don't have right now like is in what circumstances is the use being reviewed versus not being reviewed?

I hit that one critters. Right now on new construction, we're looking closely at the use, but remodels and repurposes is not triggered that whole full review process. And yet we are beginning to see more and more of repurposing of vacant properties. And so this is, you've all seen it around town. Oh, what's going in there because it's an existing building. So It is that because it's only been on new construction for the site plan piece. We've not always had the building permit as a potential trigger. And we are reviewing Chapter 15 code revisions that's coming up. You'll see that on your grid and we're seeing some opportunities to try to begin to tie some of that into this too. That'll be September issue.

So, I mean, it sounds to me like, and I know that it says business license question mark in our memo, and I know it's been a potential recommendation that's been coming up. I'm trying to get my arms around, is there another vehicle, or really, is it sort of impossible to capture the new businesses moving into existing locations that maybe require only very minor changes to the building that wouldn't trigger a building permit. Is there any other way that you can see to capture sort of that set that would fall below the threshold of triggering a building permit? Or is it really only business licenses that exists in that space?

So Alex and I have not talked about this yet, so my apologies, Alex, but put words in his mouth. Yeah, the state uses an access. Permit process and that's that's. Something that I thought. when a new business comes in and they're using a curb cut access to our street, and if it's a significant change of use, then possibly using an access control permit is another vehicle. I don't know if that's possible. I don't know. That would, of course, be a major change from the way we've always done things. Just like you, I've tried to think of different avenues because there is I think most businesses probably do get building permits when they move into someplace, but it doesn't capture 100% as you've noticed.

Thank you. If I could just follow up, I think Craig is absolutely correct. And I think what I would say to your question, Counselor, is you see in the memo they proposed, well, maybe an access control permit, maybe a building permit, maybe a zoning or use permit of some sort. We talked about today, you know, asking the question of our liquor license holders, do you have a drive up? All of those are ways that if you had a stacking ordinance, we've talked about integrating that into all of those areas. But I think the real answer is all of integrating it into all the areas that we do touch is imperfect. And the 100% gold standard is business licensing. But if you wanted to take that that secondary step as a Council and have a stacking ordinance, we would do everything we could to integrate that through the remaining sections of code to tie it to other permits that we may have. So we would be doing the best we could with what we have.

So. Liz, I want to.

I'LL TAKE YOU BACK PROBABLY 12, 13, MAYBE 14 YEARS AGO.

I WASN'T BORN YET.

GOOD TRY. SO, ON THE STARBUCKS ON CENTER STREET.

2012.

AND SO, IF YOU REMEMBER BACK TO SOME OF THOSE CONVERSATIONS, I HAD DEEP CONCERN And I didn't know there was such a word as stacking. But how that would block the entrance to the hotel after, like today, it's construction. But it turned into a real problem, still does, backing up into 2nd Street. in both directions sometimes.

Are we still on Starbucks?

On E Street. On E and center. Not second. You said second. Sorry, you misspoke, but we knew.

We're tracking. She was clarifying. You were talking about a different Starbucks.

So, and then I'll use a different example. The Starbucks on the west side, In conjunction with Kadova and Sutherlands in in Sutherland. So the difference there that I see with that traffic pattern is they're able to back up into Sutherlands parking lot quite a ways and non MP traffic. So is there a way? To also be cognizant those those were new builds. They wouldn't have. Triggered any anything back then at that point in time anyway, but would they? Is there a way to also separate out in? I like the curb cut angle that would trigger some of these access points. You know. Is that a differentiation factor if it's blocking street access? To another business. And does it need to be made major street like Center Street? Where E Street I don't see is. You know it's as big a consequence, but accept it. has turned into a consequence, you know, for the operator of the hotel.

I have a remedy for that.

Pardon?

I think I have a remedy for your longer queue in the alley. You know that little cut alley that's right next to theirs?

I tried to get that paved also. It would make it easier. It's part of the deal, but the city didn't go for that. Okay.

Different council. Do you want to answer any of Pat's questions? I mean, will you please answer his questions?

I'm putting it in the stack. Mr. Mayor, Councillor, I just wrote that down because I do think that's something that we do need to consider is the blocking of access to other businesses. When Starbucks, when we did that deal, We had asked for the estimated traffic. We knew there were going to be peak hours, but we'd asked up front, and that particular Starbucks blew all of their projections and was the number one entry in their entire chain, was that little store. But they have continued to be amazed at that. But I did write that down, Pat, because, yeah, that did have – a negative impact on the access to the hotel. We had a little wiggle room with that unpaved alley, but for the most part, yeah, it did queue up in E Street. And I know we had done a lot of traffic crash data to make sure that we haven't had the incidences there, and we haven't. Have we had near misses? Yeah, but we haven't had the actual, I think, one. In that particular intersection, but we all see it at 8 AM every day so. But I did write that down because that is an important consideration from that.

So then the the other thing I mean Center St definitely major 2nd St definitely major. And see why, but I think more is my guess is more is coming. You know, and. So how does like scooters? On see why. I don't know if there's been. Any any? Problems there. Wendy's definitely on see why. And I've never seen it back up on see why. They've got enough space and they 10 if they've got a big Big line tend to back up towards Walgreens, right? So they've taken advantage of themselves or people. Versus some of the other people recently.

That aren't thinking that way.

Yeah, so. But. Yeah, just if those those could be considered possible.

We were talking today, Mr. Mayor, even again, Craig alluded to it, the apps. So many of these restaurants and drive-thrus that we pull up to, it is just constantly with the pre-orders and They move fairly fast, but there is such an increase in that type of pre-ordering that it has added the traffic too. So it's a different time, and I do think we are going to need to spend some time looking at this and talking through it with you all.

Jenna.

So my question was just going to be, When you think about backup and kind of putting all of the businesses, different types of businesses together, another thing that you might think of is even schools are a drive-through in pickups because they definitely stack in backup and down in those neighborhoods and things too. So, I mean, how do you? That's all they you know for during school time. So and a lot of I mean but everybody knows that when you're by a school you're going to deal with the traffic. But at the same time it's just another thing to think about I guess is how all those go.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Very good point. Counselor I know PD has been working with our world with Summit Elementary.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Yeah. Because a lot of times they can't and same problems. They can't get into their driveway. They can't park. They can't, you know, so it's exactly the same. It's just a different type of business, different type of business.

Yeah, Michael.

Thank you, Mayor. I don't know if this question for you, Liz or Craig, but I know that even though there's no, there's no national standards that exist for this, but I'm just wondering if it would be possible or is this something you've already done about Kind of just researching what I would call best practice. What maybe what other communities have done? Because I I agree with what you know the local context and volume and that kind of thing are really key factors. There's no one size fits all, but I'm just wondering if you know maybe some research of you know, say. Similar size towns in Colorado or Montana or. Idaho or whatever and how they address.

Councilor, so we did do a little bit of that, but admittedly, we need to do more as we dig into this a little bit. We didn't want to spend a whole lot of time. This wasn't something you guys wanted us to tackle. But yeah, we're going to spend a lot of time looking at other places. I would note, though, a lot of these things are, a lot of the existing regulations are based on kind of an old way of doing things without the apps. So in some ways, we may be breaking a little bit of new ground here.

And I just wonder, I saw your, and you mentioned it too, Liz, about the, you know, being business friendly. And I think that's absolutely essential. And I think part of that, being business friendly is being, you know, friendly to your neighbors, whether they're business or residential. And because I can't imagine a new business, you know, knowingly wanting to You know, is that, you know, start a business and where their neighbors are going to be their residential or business are going to be as that everything that you and we touch.

Yeah, it's always a balance. Yep, absolutely. Overall good and private property rights.

Sign a contract of the cowboy ethic building permit. Be a good neighbor.

Amber, Kyle and Pat. So go ahead, Amber. Just general comments. I think that I like the sort of approach. I think that that is sensible. I think the real question for me is, is what scrutiny exists around sort of like self reported projections, right? Because just starting any business, like I can say anything like that, to get financing to get those, we're gonna have a million customers, or I'm gonna have eight, you know, like, and depending on the context, I think like, you could, you could say whatever you wanted. And so I do think like, some sort of like more robust system, like, give me three comps around town or something like that to just try to like, ask people to, to be realistic. And then maybe it's some sort of, you know, staff weighs in. And if if the business disagrees with their categorization, then they have to do the study to to appeal it or you know or whatever and like if you know that the city sort of categorizes and if they disagree with that then maybe there's some sort of uh appeal process and they can provide additional evidence that supports you know a different categorization but but I do think if you know there's there's some risk that if people know you know if I'm this busy I'm gonna have to pay for this big traffic study but if I'm just here you know uh a tendency to want to be categorized that way, even if that's not going to be true. So I think that's going to be a sticking point in the tiered approach. But I do, if we feel like we can get some, like realistically achieve that, I do like not burdening businesses that are going to have very minimal impacts with a lot of extra hoops to jump through. So that's my general impression of the... proposal as it stands right now.

Thank you, Mayor. Thanks. And the information. You know, I do feel like we have an obligation to do what we can to help mitigate this sort of thing in the future. My worry with kind of the current approach is that it's all kind of based on land use. You know, we have a local business owner. Well, I will not name, but they've been very transparent with us in regards to what their drive-through looks like. And I was just refreshing my memory. You know, they believe they take two to three minutes per customer and turn 20 to 30 cars per hour, which isn't really that much. You know, typically we only require it if it's 75 plus, right? Correct. So my concern is that... You know, designating businesses is like high volume. You know, some businesses just take longer to serve their customers and kind of churn vehicles. And so my concern is that. Unless we get really, really prescriptive with kind of designating businesses in certain areas, we're not going to achieve the outcome we're looking for. I was doing some research and a lot of other cities are utilizing what they call a drive through management plan. You require a certain level of vehicle stacking spaces, but so as not to be friendly to small business and not burden them with making their entire lot parking spaces to line up vehicles. You can put in place a drive-through management plan where if they have four or more vehicles stacked in their line, that necessitates them to have an employee run out with a tablet and start taking those mobile orders. or that requires them to put another staff member on the register. You know, they have to make operational changes, which seems to me more of the issue here. You know, it doesn't seem like the reason that we're having this conversation is because there's so many vehicles coming through this drive-thru and causing traffic congestion. It seems like it's more so, you know, it just takes a while to churn through these customers and they just kind of stack up over time. And so I would love for city staff to do a little bit more research on these drive-through management plan kind of philosophies where it's essentially an agreement with the business owner that if your line gets to a certain period of time, you have operational adjustments that you make, whether it's adding people to the register, making a runner go out and start taking those orders so that you can churn people through the line quicker, having an area set aside where you, I know sometimes when I go to like Dairy Queen or something, and the food's not ready, they make you drive up and wait. So like designated waiting periods. But I like that approach because then you're not necessitating that people just simply build more space for stacking vehicles, which they might only need during the very couple peak hours during the day. Like I would hate for people to be forced to build out all these stacking spaces and then not use them for 90, 95% of the day. I would love to see them pivot more from an operational point of view to handle those peak hours and then that way their layout, their vehicle stacking is not overkill for the majority of the time that they're serving customers.

That's great.

Pat.

So Amber referred to the traffic study. So Mayor Mrakas, Is it the intent to have the operator. Mayor Mrakas, Do the traffic study and. Mayor Mrakas, Are we splitting the cost, which I don't think spare but.

Tanya Hertz, Mayor counselor as the memo alluded to, we have an ordinance where. the property owner is responsible for the cost of that traffic study. We are the ones who contract with the traffic study engineer to make sure that it's impartial and, you know, not based off of exactly what the customer might be wanting. So, that's where we get the buy-in, but we do not bear the cost of that.

Male Speaker 1 Yeah. And then, you know, In the memo you mentioned Chick-fil-A and the one in Cheyenne. Also is kind of a frontage road there with Menards. Yeah, and so they. They're able to do. Some side side stacking in and then. Plus they've got 22 drive ups, yeah, and then. But I'm wondering if Fort Collins has something, because I believe when that Chick-fil-A opened, it was bizarre, I guess.

I'm glad you mentioned Chick-fil-A, Councilor, and Councilor Jensen mentioned Seven Brew, which I think both those chains generally do a really good job managing and it kind of goes back to Council Gamros point about operational. So I really like that idea. I hadn't heard that before, so that's something I'm definitely going to look at. I think so much of. It's not a spacing issue, it's a management issue. So. I think the goal is always going to be not to, regardless of what the adjacent street is to never impact the street. That's that's going to be the goal. regardless of whether it's a busy street or a local street. But I think we're going to have to think outside the box a little bit about how we get there.

Questions?

So just trying to wrap my head around, what do you need from councils?

go forth.

Okay. Just to get the feedback and go forward. Yes. Okay. Sounds good. Go forth and figure it out. Is everybody okay with staff? Yeah, Michael, you had something.

Well, I was just going to say, you had three questions at the end of the memo there, but one of them was about what triggers the, and I think you have enough information for that. Okay. Okay.

Randy, where's your hand up? I'm sorry. I didn't see it.

Brandy. Hello. Can you hear me now?

You're very quiet. Speak loud. Can't hear you very well.

How about now?

Oh perfect better.

OK, I don't know why my Bluetooth is not connecting properly. So before we move on, can you tell me how? What does a business license look like if we were to start that process now?

Through you, Mayor, Councilor Haskins, a business license would require anybody doing business or any entity doing business within the City of Casper. They would be required to get a license before initiating that business within our jurisdictional boundary. That's a really generic description. Obviously that can come in many, many iterations, but typically a comprehensive business licensing program is Much like I just described right now, the city of Casper does require licenses for just a few, a handful of select businesses, but not a general business license for all businesses. Yes, you want to add anything?

Many follow up to that brandy.

Yes, just one. So if we were to. Consider that would we have current businesses become licensed early moving forward?

I'm noodling now mayor, but I would say you know you have thousands and thousands and thousands of businesses operating within the city of Casper. So if you were to implement a general business license requirement, we would want to be strategic about new businesses as of some effective date having to be licensed and then maybe through a series of grandfathering and post hoc dates. getting existing businesses operating within the city in a step-by-step fashion, compliant with that law, likely over a period of time is what I would suspect. Part of the reason I'm saying that is not only that you have thousands of businesses that would have to comply, but we would need to, as well, phase in staff likely to handle a program of that nature. The alternative, of course, councilors, you could just have a hard, fast state, you know, January 1st of 2030. All businesses must be licensed and let people trickle in, but I think typically that kind of approach doesn't is not as successful as maybe we would want it to be in getting 100% compliance by that drop dead date.

Thank you.

OK, this is all further questions. Sounds like. Move forward with what you need to.

So to clarify, Mayor, we will, staff will do significantly more research around how to manage drive up type uses and potentially a stacking ordinance. What I suspect we'll do is we will really research and bring back to you a recommendation of what we think would be workable for CASPER and based on your policy input provided to us today. likely in a work session to bounce concepts off of you. We probably will not go so far as you know, drafting a final ordinance, but following that work session we would be likely drafting and bringing forward a first reading.

Reasonable.

I'm talking about work in your office so I should get your buy in and I see the staff are OK. We talked about it a little bit today.

Thank you all. Thank you staff. All right, so let's go ahead and go into our gender review. Got a couple of meetings next week. A couple items, so I don't want to hand that over to you.

Yeah, I have a couple notes handed to me here by our chief of staff and clerk's office. So let me point out a couple things on the August 18th agenda. About halfway down under the local 904 uniform, you'll see a granting of an alley vacation within block eight. I won't read it to you. Apparently that has been moved from the 18th. It'll occur on the subsequent meeting. And then below that, Ward Bird's rental agreement, I believe is possibly in question and could push out.

Mayor, City Manager, Looks optimistic that we could get it on for next week, so I'd say absent some snafu, we should add it.

Okay. All right, then that will likely stay. Otherwise, everything on this list should be in order for the 18th. I would point out the resolution on the 5th set, or Neutrona 1 set, as scheduled for this evening. And those are probably highlights from two weeks from now.

I hope it's for the 18th. Hopefully get everybody out fairly soon. I mean, usually the things come back fairly slow, but by about 8 o'clock, usually we'll have that. So hopefully we'll get out.

Yeah, and we've worked hard to keep this short and sweet and to the essentials.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Questions about the agenda? Yeah. So to... THE PUBLIC HEARING FOR DOWNTOWN HOTEL, THE URBAN RENEWAL PROJECT. SO I'M ALL IN ON THE TIF AND ALL OF THAT. SO I DO HAVE STILL HAVE AND AM HEARING CONCERN ABOUT THE PARKING SITUATION. SO I DON'T KNOW, I HAVEN'T BEEN TOLD WHAT AGREEMENTS THE CITY HAS ALREADY MADE. THERE'S APPROXIMATELY, I WENT IN AND COUNTED, AND AS CLOSE AS I CAN TELL, THERE'S SOME PLACE BETWEEN 320 AND 340 SPOTS, INCLUDING THE HANDICAP PARKING IN THE So, and I am guessing with 120 rooms that there'll probably be 80 cars and employees on top of that. And, you know, my understanding is, I guess I just like a better understanding what we what we've already agreed to. On the parking.

So.

Case being it's public hearing, so in case anybody. Ask a question, maybe we've got some answers. So. And then the next one is I've got a question on the second reading on the liquor ordinance changes. I'm sure you've all gotten the letters to look identical from two separate operators and then a third one today from HOMACS with concern. So I've done a little research In I just like verification that possibly Carla could call or. Down to the liquor division. As far as I know. Resort liquor license came into effect. Sometime before the year 2000. And it. provided for off premise catering. And to my knowledge, it was worn out of Jackson. In particular, and so. Number one, I'm curious how many there actually are anymore statewide. I don't think it was a thing. here in Casper until probably. It's been more than 10 years, but in the last 15 or 20 years. I know I had to sell my full retail license. We've we sold the Parkway 11 years ago the second time. And so. in in get a resort license and flight and got one. But. You know the new builds obviously have gone that way and. I'm I'm sure we'll continue to. But so that's a question I've got in the other is is to the liquor division. Is there any other municipality? that has done what Casper did. To the knowledge of the statewide association, he thinks Casper is the only municipality that did that and just didn't update. But I think I know the answer to why they didn't update. Number one, nobody was asking for a resort license. Number two, 20 years ago, even 15 years ago, we had a very strong liquor lobby within the city, the dealers themselves. So I think it's the other issue, so. not trying to discount any anybody what any retailer said. If if we could get just some confirmation on that.

That be something you could send to the council?

Yes, yes, absolutely. Licenses.

In.

So last question around that is if your council so decides to not move forward with the resort license being able to cater, I hope that's not the case, but just to be prepared, maybe this is more of a question for city attorney, how do we separate? I mean, I've gotten no pushback on the drive-up window issue, but the way we're doing this, we're updating the ordinances. It makes total sense to me to combine, but how would we proceed if that were to happen on, say, second reading, which we could defer to third reading?

Mayor, Council, I think it would be a simple amendment to the proposed ordinance changes that are before Council. So they are connected under the same reading, but if Council so desired, you could amend it to back out the changes to the resort license and move forward with the changes to the liquor full retail drive-ups, so.

Anything else before we move to council and round the table? Yeah, Kyle. Thank you, Mayor.

And thanks, Councillor Sweeney, for bringing those two things up. I appreciate you doing that. I did just want to make sure you saw an email we got from our city manager one week ago regarding the parking. She was referencing our 2018 urban center parking study and kind of gave a brief overview of that. But also, that's a study that I've revisited since the discussion about the boutique hotel downtown, I think is probably the best source of information we have regarding number of available spots downtown. But the long and short is that the study found that we weren't anywhere near the 85% occupancy rate, and that was before we redid the Goodstein parking lot. So my guess is we're even lower now.

I did. Thanks for pointing that out. And I did read that. I don't know. being it was done in 2018, I just... I mean, just this weekend, I mean, without the hotel, I mean, when there's events, whether it's Gaslight, David Street Station, if the lyric gets to completion, I mean... we're going to have more than a 45% impact. So that's my concern, let alone a new hotel.

Fair concern, but also I would say it's a great opportunity for our downtown. We've got to figure that out, right? Which is hard. Yeah. Go ahead, Michael. I'll get you, Ken.

Kind of related to this, Mayor, I just went back and looked at the MO email that counseling reference.

That's a 2018 study.

Is it, would it be prudent to update that? I defer to you.

Yeah, no, I appreciate the question. Thank you. And I'm only hedging because, um, you know, I did talk to staff about this and I read it myself recently. And as I said in the email, um, From that 2018 study, the only major, so it counted both your on-street parking as well as your off-street surface lot parking and the vertical parking structures available. We sat and kind of brainstormed, well, what has changed since then to try to ascertain if this data is still relevant? And what we came to the conclusion of is, well, the thing that has changed largely is the addition of the Thyra Thompson building, which added a little bit of parking around that building. But we couldn't think of any notable changes that would invalidate the data. So I share that with you only because, you know, part of my city manager brain wants to say, yes, we love the most current and freshest data that we can have. But it also is a value-based decision, right? Do we want to spend the money on it if we think we have fairly good, robust data right now? So staff's consensus is it is still viable data. But if the council wanted to redo that study, I certainly wouldn't argue with you. It's just a matter of what it would cost, and I would suspect it would be at least a few tens of thousands of dollars, maybe a little more. That being said, the MPO did conduct this study originally, and so we could certainly look at what funding, if any, they might have to help with that.

I just wanted to close by just my strictly unprofessional eye, but... down Friday night was if you were down there. I was down there in that area by that parking lot on Friday night and it was crazy that the big parking lot appeared to be full. You know. Recounting, but I did and then I thought about what you said about the Thompson parking lot and and thinking back to the conversations we've had with some of the lyric folks. I think that's part of thinking too for. If the lyric does really come to fruition. Taking advantage of all that. And you know, kind of over between city parking garage and the Tyra Thompson building parking that overflow what I'm kind of wondering. Probably too early to tell at this point, but what I would guess is going to probably happen is that is going to want to make some deal for. 3040 spots in that lot. I don't know it could be well wet, but for at least for valet, if not for overall parking, but. And you know, just to block those off. I mean, that's just what I've seen happen in other in bigger cities. You know, so. have a reserved section for their customers. And then, then the downtown, you know, concert traffic would would probably need to help. Just my untrained eye.

I forgot to mention something that I thought about for that email, which I will mention now. But I think one thing that we also want to think about as we think about parking and you're seeing this kind of happen all around as the, all around the country, I mean, is the now availability of ride sharing, which used to be such a dense urban area, big city thing. But now we see ride sharing and gas for people are Ubering and that sort of thing. And so, you know, maybe mold that over as you think about what level of parking is needed and appropriate. So, yeah, that is a factor that, I don't know how you'd ever capture contemplate in a parking study. Certainly people are moving around differently than they used to always driving their own car.

Could be a boom for right here.

That's true.

My next job. So along the same thread is what I was going to speak on in. We want to. Think about forward thinking into the future, but about I don't know if you need ordinance or what, but I always wanted a trolley down here or a bus or a shuttle bus because it would also pump up the usage of the parking garage and this would go and help the hotel and just the development and the concerts and the lyric and all of that. But if we had a shuttle, whether it be, you know, a visit Casper bus or the hotel shuttle bus or, you know, like I said, a trolley, but if they picked up, and just did that route from the parking garage because people can generally walk to one section of downtown but people frankly they don't want to walk there's a handful that will but they generally don't that's why I think that they're not using that parking garage and so if there's a designated pick up spot that picked him up at the garage a little shuttle bus and brought them down to the Goodstein lot to drop them off or dropped them off at the Thompson State Building and back down to David Street or something, you know, just even one parking drop off point at Goodstein. They can walk the rest of the way to where they need to go. But I think that would utilize the congestion. I mean, that would stop the congestion downtown and utilize the parking garage. But and I don't know if we need ordinances to run shuttle buses right there or trolleys or special things. I wouldn't think so, but I don't know.

Always do a hayride.

Yeah. Well, and horse-drawn things. I mean, that's the thing, too, is they used to have those little bike carts. We had a couple that had a few of those. And it's that kind of thing that we need to start kind of thinking about. We're growing, and there's an opportunity for a lot of other little businesses to make money if they want to start You know, and then with your ride share, have that pickup point and signage. Like, here's your ride share. Here's your drop off point where there's maybe a special little parking alley or line. Like when you go to big concerts in the cities and stuff, you know, where they drop it off and pick it up and people know. Yeah, that's exactly. Exactly. We're going to stack. We're going to stack.

My only pushback around that is if you go to bigger cities, you have to walk two, three, four, five blocks.

Okay, well, we can pay 80 bucks. And pay 80 bucks.

And so the difference is that you have two or three blocks of free parking, especially on the weekends. I think people need to get into the routine, too, to understand that it's okay to walk. Now, if you're disabled or if you're older, 100%, I get that. But also the same thing of people that are healthy and can walk two to three blocks is to me, especially with free parking, is a heck of a deal for our city. So that's my only pushback.

My pushback to their pushback is there's that handful. Again, they're not going to. I mean, they're not doing it right now. You can die on that hill of saying you're going to walk and we're going to change the whole feeling of how people have their attitude towards walking. And I hope that a lot of them do, but I still Don't think. And if there's a way that they can, Liz already had started at her department where they're stamping, you know, the passport and they get, what do they call it? It's linked out on it where they give them a sticker, validate. Yeah. Validate their parking or give them a token and they get a ride for those businesses, you know, and then they use the lot that it's getting paid for. But I mean, there's ways around it, but there's a lot of people who won't. But as much as we want them to be healthy, it's not Denver. We're not Boulder.

People will drive around the block.

The ones who will walk will walk. The ones who won't. People can get used to it.

Yeah, my two cents is there's always going to be that small contingency of people that insist they can never find parking. I went to a job. There was 3,000 people downtown.

I parked right in front of Steamboat Deli. I walked a block.

It was not a big deal. So 5150 festivals this weekend. So I guess I would encourage folks to go out. That's one of the David Street Station biggest events of the year. So I guess spend a couple hours downtown and get a get a sense of how many parking spots are available. I'm going to go with my family. I can guarantee I'm not going to walk more than a block. But I think you bring up, you know, I think there's lots of opportunities for entrepreneurs to do little bike carts. I mean, you mentioned a shuttle. I don't think that's something that the city necessarily needs to engage in because I see Farron Rodeo shuttle people from the the Toronto County School District training lot. I see Wyoming Symphony Orchestra shuttle people from the Big Lots parking lot when they have their concert in Washington Park. And so I think those larger events can certainly offer that and it would make for a premium experience, but I don't necessarily see the city needing to take it.

I wasn't saying city pay for it. It's like Visit Casper or the hotel shuttle or somebody else's shuttle or a trolley. I mean, there's just ways to utilize that parking lot. Maybe the DDA wants to shuttle people.

I don't know. I would encourage folks for 5150 Festival this weekend. Parking lot is free on the weekends. Park in the parking lot. It's shaded. Your car is going to be nice and cool when you get in it. In the parking garage.

That's great.

I do it all the time.

Okay. Let's go ahead and move to council around the table unless anybody has anything burning. Okay. We'll start with you, Mike McIntyre.

I don't have anything.

Well, I just want to I attended the reception of the Nicholas and for me to kind of get a chance to go see that it's pretty incredible. I think Zach Collins exhibit coming down this end of this week, though, I think. But but even kind of. Exhibit of Indian artifacts, Indian artifacts. It's worth seeing. Some incredible textiles and brass vessels and so forth. They're just incredible. And then let's see. Oh, I'll be attending the State of the Community lunch tomorrow? Thursday. Thursday. Thursday. And then just to tell you what's been on the PEOPLE'S MINDS THAT I'VE BEEN TALKING TO OR GETTING E-MAILS FROM. SO I'VE HEARD ABOUT E-BIKES THIS WEEK. I'VE HEARD ABOUT THE RESORT LIQUOR LICENSE AND ALL THAT. AND THEN, LOVELY ENOUGH, I HEARD ABOUT RACCOONS AND PIGEONS.

AGAIN!

THAT'S WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT.

AWESOME.

THANK YOU.

PAT, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING?

So last Thursday select water met in. Late in the afternoon the topic was on stormwater, so I think there's more to come. My opinion. Well, I better leave that alone, but. Hopefully. I mean, Senator Crum has done a really good job of trying to balance everything. And I know he ended up a little frustrated as many of us did towards the end. And then I went to Nimi's thing Friday night Pretty remarkable. They had to go to a celebration of life after that, but so I didn't get to enjoy some of the food that they had prepared. I did not get to the Sun Ranch on Saturday. I didn't either, so I just. On Saturday. Did get to the I reach fundraiser that that was nice. At the M. And then this morning I had. DCBA kind of wrapped up and wrap up conversation on crazy days. In I think it was. a huge success, talked about dates for next year already, and they're working on the Christmas season. So, next. And then this morning, I also had, well, I, the week before I had a senior district meeting in, And so I had asked at that meeting if there was any way that the senior district could ask the assessor for an estimate if the possible. On the November ballot is the constitutional amendment to reduce residential property. Tax by half. and how that might look and impact. And it appears for the district currently, when we first started working on this, the estimate was right around 1,750,000. Then with the long-term homeowner and the 25% and the cap, Um, all of those things combined took us actually, um, their estimate ended up a little higher. We're currently at about a million four. Uh, but if this additional 50% comes off, um, uh, it'll take, take the district down to estimate. It's all estimates because there's so many what ifs. Around 1,000,001. And. So long story short, I'm wondering and I I talked briefly to Jill. Maybe refine what that means on our eight 8 mils. You know, truly what would that would mean to the city? That 366,000 in reduction times, that's one mil, times eight is about 2.8 million effect just on the 50%. So, and then I also got, I think you all did, a letter on the 8th Street, And I just wondered if there's a way to get that demolition moving quicker on the 8th Street property that's referenced.

I'm not sure what property is being referred to. Thank you. Yeah, I think we talked about this a few weeks ago. That's not the ones that you're working on.

That's a recent letter that I thought came from St. Mark's Church.

Mayor, Council, this is one that had been determined to be a dangerous building. There was an outstanding tax certificate sale for taxes, and so we had been in discussions with the purchaser of that certificate and I just I think last week approved the notice to move forward with the abatement at demolition. So I think that is moving forward at this point.

I'm not sure if if staff had seen that letter. I think Jackie Jackie was copied but. I don't and maybe it was just work one. Did you? OK, so in the I I think I had referenced it before a couple of weeks ago, maybe. And then lastly, Mary and I just don't know where to go with this and I should have asked you before this, but it ran out of time so. Even from this sin reference, the hammock over use. uh, group, he had, David has resigned from that, uh, from that board. And so we, um, and I, I tried to reach out to, uh, Jim Milne, um, as the representative from the county, um, and, uh, Rob Hurlis, our executive director, um, Did talk to Michelle over at the County. Two ways to do it. We can recommend in David's term was the short term and it's up at the end of the year, so we can recommend a candidate at a board meeting which probably will happen tomorrow night at her regular 40. And. Then. Bring it back to the respective bodies, but they the other way is. If that's. If we if we have a candidate which evidently we do will win. Then I believe it works for brick and bombing and manages the new apartment complex. Word believes.

the executive board, which I'm not on, but believes that he would be a good candidate to fill out the rest of the term. Yeah, perfect. So I'll touch base and then I'll also talk to Jim, but sounds like you guys are going to make a decision tomorrow. Maybe bring a recommendation.

Yeah, perfect.

If that's yeah, I'm great with that. But I think Jim would be. I don't want to speak for Jim. Yeah, I'm comfortable with that.

being it's just such a short-term. Otherwise, if we take it to interviews, then it'll be... By the time we point somebody, the year will be over. Yeah, that's correct.

Okay.

Yeah, go ahead. Councillor Sweeney, you mentioned projections for the decrease in property tax to the city if the November ballot initiative passes. and that you had spoken with Jill. I just wanted to clarify what you're looking for. Are you looking for more? So we did talk about this during budget, and we do we were projecting a $1.1 million additional increase or decrease if that passes. Are you looking for something more than that? I just want to make sure we follow up.

Mr. I don't think your projections are correct.

Ms.

So you think Jill or our finance folks may be okay. And she knows why, and I can circle back with her based on your conversation.

I hope.

Okay. Okay. I'll follow up with her.

If I presented it properly.

Okay.

Unfortunately, I didn't bring a copy for myself of the memo I left with you. At another meeting.

Thanks. I'll talk to her a little bit.

Okay.

So you think that $1.1 million less is too low it sounds like.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF Yeah based on one mill just for the senior district 366,000. So if you multiply that times 8 that's more than 1.2. It's like 2.8.

DIRECTOR HARRIS Yeah well and that's just the one year change. Of course we we are already down I don't even remember I want to say down 1.75 or 8 I think so. Okay I'll follow up with her. Thank you. I THINK EVERYTHING'S BEEN COVERED THAT I SAID, SO I'M SORRY.

DON'T BE. KYLE. THANKS, MAYOR. JUST A COUPLE THINGS IN OUR METRO SITREP REPORT. IN OUR BACKET THIS WEEK, IT WAS MENTIONED THE SAFE HARBOR PROGRAM, WHERE A RESIDENT CAN RECEIVE EMERGENCY SHELTER SERVICES FOR THEIR ANIMAL UP TO 30 DAYS WHILE THEY FIGURE OUT, YOU KNOW, THEIR TEMPORARY KIND OF CRISIS SITUATION. I HAD NEVER HEARD OF THAT, BUT I THINK IT'S AWESOME, AND SO I JUST WANTED TO SHARE, MAKE SURE EVERYONE ELSE WAS AWARE OF THAT. Pretty cool resource for the community. And then Lastly, I just wanted to remind people. Yeah, I mean lots going on this last week. Josh Weathers free downtown concert Thursday. I was up at Lindsey Stirling Friday at the event center and that went very well. So lots of fun stuff, but not much city obligations. Thankfully, so just a lot of fun. We want to week. Nothing in the way of reports. Just wanted to remind people this weekend is the Rotary Club of Casper Duck Derby at Crossroads Adventure Park. The proceeds of that are going towards rehabilitation of Crossroads Adventure Park. So, yeah, Metro is an awesome, Rotary is an awesome organization that maintains Bridal Trail, built the bouldering park over there at Crossroads, originally built Crossroads in 2004, I think, 2007. and just do a lot of good for the community. So just want to remind people of that because proceeds are going towards rehabilitation of what I think is arguably our most popular park. That's all I got.

Thank you.

Thank you. Just a couple updates. I had an opportunity to swear in two officers on Monday. Fantastic, Chief. Can you say, I know Burns was talking about, I don't know if you just wanted to chat really quickly about where on paper, where we're at, how the Delta's been. Does that make sense, Chief?

Mayor, Councilor, yes, it does. So scoring two new hires, they'll go to the Academy on the 27th. And then on the 24th, at 107 on paper, authorized 110 right now. So the three that'll be coming in next week are all laterals from Louisiana. One's from Louisiana. One is from Arizona. Jefferson County Parish in Louisiana, one from Arizona State Patrol, and another from Minneapolis.

I just want to recognize the chief, and I also want to recognize Officer Burns, who's taking on the recruitment. And I don't know what you guys are doing, but it's been great. He's doing an amazing job. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. JUST A COUPLE OTHER THINGS. I'LL BE SPEAKING AT THE CASPER YOUTH LEADERSHIP CAMP TOMORROW, WORKING WITH 12, 13, AND 14-YEAR-OLDS TO TALK ABOUT LEADERSHIP. I'M GOING TO HAVE THEM KIND OF GO THROUGH A SIMULATION OF BEING CITY COUNSELORS AND TO SEE WHAT THEY'RE GOING TO BE ABLE TO DO FOR A PROJECT, HOW THEY'RE GOING TO BE ABLE TO FUND IT, AND SO FORTH. I HAD THOUGHT ABOUT DOING SOMETHING LIKE THAT, BUT WE'LL SEE. I also had the opportunity to be a part of the ribbon cutting for the new tennis courts over there. That was fantastic. Counselor Sweeney was there. So that was wonderful. And then finally, I was able to testify today for the joint judiciary for the House Bill 93, which is the transparency and access to court records. Good news is it failed. Eight to four was too excused. And I want to give a special shout-out to Fleur, who helped put together the talking points and helped together my comments, which was fantastic. Eric was there, and Leticia was there as well, and Eric and the support of them. And I think this was a good thing, good, solid. Everybody was on the same page from all the way up, all the way down. And I think it was very convincing. So, I don't know if you have YouTube on the same thing. Awesome.

That's all.

Okay. That's all I got. Thanks, everyone.

So the bill would require all the courts to provide live feeds to all court proceedings that would be streamed on the internet. And we would have to digitize and make every court record piece of evidence searchable online. So really onerous requirements. $100,000 would be allocated for the entire state. $100,000? That should be enough. Yeah. state level courts estimated it would be multiple millions of dollars.