Aberdeen City Council - Regular Meeting

Call this meeting to order. Jordan, would you start us off with a roll call?

Please respond by stating present Councilmember Ronan. Present. Fulberg.

Present.

Wiebel.

Present.

Ward. Present. Johnson. Present. E. Conger. Present. Nelson. Present. Norvstrup. Mayor Shoneman.

Present. Please stand with me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

Slight modification for this week's agenda. There was a misspelling in the Council packet that's on line 25 of page 1900 176 boy, this is a big packet Dakota is misspelled should be da COTA H But I take a motion to approve the agenda with that slight modification move to approve second motion Ward second econ girl in favor please say aye opposed nay motion carries next item is the approval of the minutes of last week's meeting which took place on July 27th I'd take a motion to approve the minutes second motion nelson secondly belts anyone have anything to contribute as it relates to last week's meeting minutes all in favor please say aye aye opposed nay motion carries as well we have one speaker for our open forum we all know julie johnson julie welcome appreciate you oh you're just signing in that you're here well julie is here for anyone that didn't notice in the background Wouldn't observe that sheet about four times. I was so sure that you were gonna be speaking with us here Well open forum is closed in that case. We've got two items in our consent calendar one is a Application to permit alcoholic beverages on city property and the others to set a bid date for our street maintenance concrete repair project I would take a motion to approve our consent calendar items so moved second Motion, Ronay. Second, E. Conger. Anyone have anything, abstentions or anything? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. Thanks for joining us. Next, we've got a... old business item it's possible approval of a second reading final adoption a petition to rezone property at 210 and 316 roosevelt street north this is the industrial uh the development corporation's industrial park addition the part that will be facing the street and it's not here but i see eric over there eric did you get any public comment or anything in the in the last week

Well, I was out for most of last week, but to my knowledge, there wasn't anything.

All right, any changes to the ordinance since we've had our first reading?

No changes.

Okay, I take a motion for the second reading and final adoption.

Move to approve.

Second. Motion Nielsen, second Econger. Any last words? Jordan, would you give me a roll call vote on item A of our old business?

Councilmember Ronan. Aye. Fulberg. Aye. Leibelt. Aye. Ward.

Abstain.

Councilmember Johnson. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Nielsen. Aye. Meir Shoneman.

Aye. That motion carries. Next we've got a possible approval of a second reading and final adoption of a similar ordinance. This one is the same property but adjacent. This will be the... Territory to the east and it is the industrial Segment of this park Eric any public input or changes to the ordinance voted on last week same as a previous item No, no public input or changes. I Take a motion to make that final approval so moved second motion second Nielsen anyone from the council Jordan would you give me a roll call vote then please?

Councilmember Nielsen. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Johnson. Aye. Ward.

Abstain.

Councilmember Liebel. Aye. Fulberg. Aye. Ronan. Aye. Meir Shoneman.

Aye, that motion carries as well. Finally, a last item of old business is a possible approval of the second reading and final adoption ordinance 260703. This rezones from municipal to R3, a house just off from our old public works facility complex on 3rd Avenue Southwest. Eric, anything to make note of before we take our final vote on this rezone?

Same as before, no changes and nothing of note as far as public input.

Move to approve.

Second. Got a motion from Councilwoman Liebelt and a second, Councilman Johnson. Any final thoughts? All right. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote on item C?

Councilmember Ronan. Aye. Fulberg. Aye. Liebelt. Aye. Ward. Aye. Johnson. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Nielsen. Aye. Mayor Shoneman. Aye.

That motion carries. We'll move along to the three items of our new business The very first item that we'll be discussing here tonight is a possible approval to pay request. It's for the Aberdeen Public Works maintenance building It's four hundred forty nine thousand thirty four dollars and ninety eight cents. It's to quest construction City engineer leaf is here to walk us through what that expense entails

Yes, there's a few different items that Quest is requesting for general requirements, bonds and insurance, part of that mobilization, concrete, rebar, structural steel, stockpile materials mostly, and then some special construction items related to the paint booth. So all items that we reviewed and requested documentation and we received and staff recommendations is your approval.

I'll move to approve.

Second.

Got a motion from Councilman Johnson and a second Councilman Ward. Anyone from the council have any questions? Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote then on that pay request?

Councilmember Nielsen? Aye. E. Conger? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Ward? Aye. Liebelt? Aye. Fulberg? Aye. Ronan? Aye. Mearshawn? Aye.

Aye, that motion carries. Thank you. Next, we've got a possible approval of a pay request. Number one, it's for the sanitary sewer lining improvements. It's $179,708.67. The company is Municipal Pipe Tool of Hudson, Iowa. Leaf, how's that looking?

So this project is close to complete. There's some minor remaining work to do. It sounds like that will be done next week. So this takes this project near completion. It looks like we're going to run a little under budget, which is good.

Move to approve. Second.

Got a motion from Councilman Ronan. Second. Councilman Ward, any questions for our city engineer? This one, easy peasy. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote then on making that pay request?

Councilmember Ronayne. Aye. Fogberg. Aye. Liebel. Aye. Ward. Aye. Johnson. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Nelson. Aye. Mayor Shoneman.

Aye. That motion carries. Next, we've got a consideration of a request to waive a building permit-related fees for an affordable... Housing process. Oh Ben Ben is here joining us. He is the recipient of this request and Eric since Ken had brought it forward you care to set up an Explanation for that and we can bring in Ben if he needs any make any clarification so Benjamin Ida's recently contacted the city in regards to constructing a 20 unit housing projects that would be income and rent restricted and

Project is proposed would include two ten ten two-bedroom units. Excuse me in ten three-bedroom units with an estimated construction cost around 5.2 million He's applied for some housing tax credits and supplementary funding through the South Dakota Housing Department Authority This process the projects are scored against each other's they look for local financial contributions such as wave railed building permit fees and Um, typical fees on a project like this would be about $40,000. Um, so he's requesting that we waive the initial two, uh, 20,001 in building permits and associated fees. Um, in effort to facilitate more affordable housing in Aberdeen, the community development department recommends that the council waives the initial $20,001 in building permit fees. If the process is successful in obtaining the tax credits that are applying for, uh, the remainder of the fees would be paid at the time of permitting. So we would recommend approval of the request.

Thank you for that clarification. Eric, can you tell us, was the property from Stencil Homes, did we undergo that same process for those guys?

That was not done with tax credits, I don't believe. I think that was, at least to my recollection, I think that was facilitated with TIF to bring in the infrastructure, but I don't think the actual construction itself was.

Oh, the project that we just approved to go before South Dakota Housing Development.

Is that, I thought you were referencing the four-day project? So is there?

If I could clarify.

Maybe you're on, maybe clarify, yeah.

Approval we had last week for the just to allow them to move forward with financial assistance applications with the South Dakota housing That's not the same as this approval tonight write the tax credits, but that was a stencil project last week No, no, but what I'm clarifying is art is their Application fee going to be in building permits going to be waived as well or hasn't that hasn't come before us there hasn't been any request for anything like that

that i don't think that that would necessarily be one that we would waive but i guess we'll find out when we make the request sounds good mr mayor go ahead along the same lines um ron are are we also approving the same thing that we approved last week for stencil here today no i mean don't do we have to give approval to this request

Um, dude, okay. Last week required a resolution in order for South Dakota housing to be able to process an application for financial assistance. That's separate from what we're doing here tonight. This is Mr ID. I think is going through through for. formal federal tax credits. And this is an approval process. And part of that is local contribution. And local contribution in this instance would be the $20,001 in partial waiver of the building permit fees.

Sounds good. Thanks for that clarification Ben I would just like to add that we're appreciative that you're moving trying to move this project forward or in desperate need of affordable housing here in town So looking forward to this project moving forward anything you want to add before we take a vote No, just that I appreciate you considering this request It's a important project in in the area obviously and

I would welcome any questions you may have. I provided some information in the packet, but I'd welcome any questions you may have and thank you again for considering the request. And I guess before I, before I end 1 thing, I will add the other project that was actually, I followed along on YouTube last week that. From my understanding, I don't see an application or anything. They're using a different type of funding and what we're applying for is a competitive process. The low income housing tax credit is a scarce resource. And we're competing against other projects and frankly, other cities across the state. And this is. One component of their scoring in the application that would make this project in Aberdeen competitive for these resources. So thank you again. accepting this request and for hearing me tonight. I appreciate all of your time.

Ben, one question I've got for you. I believe in our conversations last year when we had talked about this, you had made mention of other communities in South Dakota that you had constructed projects in. Could you identify those communities for us?

You bet. We have projects in Vermillion and Brookings.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Anyone else from the council have any questions? Okay, Chad?

Hey Ben, Chad Nielsen. Quick question and before I ask the question I just want to say I absolutely fully support the project and the affordable housing which we definitely need. With waiving the permit fees, is your kind of business model, do you retain these and manage them, or do you sell them off after construction's completed?

That's a good question. We retain ownership, so I'm the developer and owner, but I use a third-party management company and a third-party construction company to build it and manage it. We're actually planning to use a local contractor, so it'll be professionally managed by

Actually, they're the biggest affordable housing management company in the state Costello out of Sioux Falls Thank you Appreciate that clarification if there's no further questions Jordan Would you give us a roll call vote then on the request to waive the building? I'll move to approve Oh, yeah, I guess we need to second got ahead of myself there Well, I'll count that as a motion from councilman Ward and a second councilman Nielsen now Jordan would you give us a roll call vote?

Councilmember Nielsen.

Aye.

E. Conger. Aye. Johnson. Aye. Ward. Aye. Gleebelt. Aye. Fulberg. Aye. Ronain. Aye. Mears-Hahneman.

Aye. That motion carries. Ben, thanks for joining us tonight. Thanks for moving this project forward. Next, we've got a review and approval of our claims and payroll. Payroll period is July 26th through August 8th.

Move to approve. Second.

Motion award, second, Econger. Jordan, would you give us a roll call vote then, please?

Councilmember Ronan. Aye. Fulberg. Aye. Leibelt. Aye. Ward. Aye. Johnson. Aye. E. Conger. Aye. Nielsen. Aye. Mayor Shoneman.

We'll abstain at the payment to sewer duct, but aye for the remainder, and the motion does carry. Bills will be paid next. We've got a city manager's report, and it looks to be a good one with the first drafts of our city budget in front of us here. Dave.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Thanks for the vote of confidence. Appreciate the opportunity. In January, we started to talk about budget and we started planning, excuse me, and working with our department heads. But I just would like to say that, you know, with the first year in this role, I inherited a really good budget. It was well planned and designed so, you know, Keeping in fashion, that was our goal, to be responsible and do the best we can. I want to give some credit. Nothing good is ever built singularly by one person. It takes a team to put the budget together, obviously. But I want to recognize a few people that contribute to this significantly. So Marie, our assistant, does an amazing job. She really does help. keep the continuity and flow of this going and the communication and information working, and she's responsible for a lot of the things behind the scenes, so she deserves high praise and credit for the work that she does on this. I really appreciate that. Jordan, of course, year after year has done an amazing job. He's been short-staffed and tasked with a lot of things, and I can honestly say his efforts with this budget have been a result of putting in extra work, extra time, nights, weekends, and holidays, so thank you, Jordan, for all the work that you've done. I'm going to talk about the booklet here in a second a little bit, but the format is going to be kind of a hybrid of a design between OpenGov and some of the things you've traditionally seen in the budget book. But I want to recognize Amber for her work on some of the formatting and some of the things that you'll see in a new piece to this budget book. And then I want to thank the department heads, the people that are doing the work, that are managing our budgets and our people and day after day delivering on the mission to make the city work and providing good outcomes to the citizens and being accountable for the dollars that are entrusted in the budget. And really that's what we're talking about, being trusted with what the city gives us as resources to do the best we can and deliver on the services and day after day make those dollars work you know, for the goods and services and be responsible for that. So as we talk about this budget tonight, I just want to kind of explain. Jordan and I will be giving an overview. So there will be other opportunities in the city manager's report to talk about the operations piece and the capital improvement program. You know, as I'm giving you this big book with a lot of papers in it, don't expect you to have all the questions tonight so we want to continue to engage in this but i want you to kind of take uh your your a week or two to kind of look through this and and we'll meet in the future and other city managers report to kind of address some of the questions you may have and opportunities or challenges you have for us to do a better job so with this format there will be some things that look similar to what you've seen in last year's budget book and there'll be some things different but really This format consists, or our book consists, of four different pieces. The first section in this book displays our financial condition, and it's how we build a budget. The second component to this, this report illustrates what our budget does, how we're appropriating our funds. In essence, we're showing our work. The third piece to this budget book is the capital improvement plan, and then the last piece, section four, is something new that you will experience this year, and that's department budgets. In this new piece, we see this as an opportunity to use OpenGov to kind of show you, year after year, what the department budgets have done. You can kind of see, I believe, from starting in 2024, year after year, what those budgets have entailed, where we've made priorities, and how we perform on that. You'll also see on that there'll be key performance indicators. So every department had an opportunity to kind of highlight what they're doing with their department, how they're finding success, and how they're finding opportunities. On the back part of that, I just want to say that this book is something that you can mark up. It's not perfection. Some of the back part of this has been formatted for our online opportunity. About two weeks ago, OpenGov gave us the keys to be able to put this online. So it's kind of formatted to go on our website. And I would like to say with OpenGov, it gives us a lot of opportunities. It gives us a lot of analytical capabilities, capabilities for us to generate reports and see different things that we typically haven't had with our financing software. And then ultimately, this will be put on our website so our citizens can kind of engage and see exactly what you're seeing. at any given time kind of understand what our budget is and where their dollars are going. So ultimately this will be on our website and be formatted, but I just want to kind of give you a brief overview of that. So with our 2027 budget, our total budget for next year is going to be $182 million, $721,458. So let's talk about the numbers just a little bit. As I talked about last year and the solid budget that was built, i'd like to talk a little bit about you know in 2026 our budget from the general fund and usually when we talk about budget we talk about what the general fund does for us and primarily where um you know we're pulling from to support our operations and maintenance so last year our budget was about 4.3 or 44.3 million dollars and this year it increased to about 48 point $2 million, yeah. And our budget was pretty consistent to what it was last year with the exception, there were a couple increases that you'd notice from the wages and benefits, and then airport construction, the $4 million storage facility that we're building out there for the equipment. But the way the budget works is obviously you have to have revenue to support your expenditures. So every year, Jordan does a great job analyzing the revenue. But as we're doing this and as we're making our budget, we request our department heads to submit what it is that they feel are going to make their operations and maintenance work. And this year, when we received the budget request from the department heads, we had about $2.6 million that we had to reduce to be able to get to that number where we could support our budget through the revenues that we have. So again, sometimes it's a difficult process to challenge ourselves to do better and find the money to make our budget work. But again, we had to reduce our budget about $2.6 million to match the revenues that we had. And with that, there are a few things that were important to me when we built the budget. One thing I didn't want to do was tap our cash, unassigned cash, to support our budget. I didn't want to do that. We want to continue to build our reserves. We do use reserves for our budget. For instance, the CARES reserve, is used to fund a portion of the police and fire wages and some capital projects. But it was important for us to kind of be sustained and not continue to dip into reserves to build our budget. And tonight, I'd like Jordan to talk a little bit about a couple things here on how we look at our revenue and how we do forecasting and how we see the next year. So Jordan, if you'd want to talk about revenues and how we kind of build our budget and do some forecasting, I'd appreciate it.

Sure. Thank you, Dave. Before I begin, a few clarifiers. We operate on a calendar year budget. The various charts and tables within the 2027 budget report make reference to general supported funds. General fund supported funds include the general fund, the parks and rec fund, and the airport fund. As a reminder, in 2015, or excuse me, 2025, the city council consolidated the parks and rec fund into the general fund. Some cities run our airports through the general fund some cities run them through enterprise funds We may be the anomaly but reporting in this manner allows us to have more meaningful comparison with other cities The primary purpose of my report this evening will be to discuss the general fund supported revenues that support the 27 budget proposal Exhibit 3 goes on to illustrate the specific components within our general government You'll see that $48.291 million figure used a few times throughout my presentation, and that's what I'm referring to here. What I'm showing here is exhibit three. There are numerous exhibits within that area, so you'll be able to see the general fund and 101 general fund and 215 airport together and independently for that comparison. Again, one of my favorite types of graphics that I compile is this kind of, it's called a tree map. It illustrates the various revenues by category within our government and what percentage each revenue category has in our budget picture. This is the same data reported on exhibit four on page 50. This specific example is on page 59. The funding that comprises our general funds is made up of three nearly equal pillars. The first pillar on the left is sales tax, excuse me, property tax. The pillar in the middle, that's sales and use tax. And the remainder is other, which includes federal and state aid, fees for services, transfers, and contributions. Typically, they're roughly 33% a piece. This year is a little different due to the large federal grant we'll be receiving in the airport for that airport project. Sales tax are an indicator of the health of our local economy and allows comparison with other governments. We see ebbs and flows in conditions and changes in the balance change how and what we do. Looking ahead here, this will show the revenues by category, excuse me, expenditures by category. This is the same data presented on the previous slide, but for expenditures. This is from Exhibit 9, which is on page 60. And the categories are by expenditure class, kind of by departments. The color doesn't correlate with the previous slide. They're simply the same color palette. And if a budget does anything, it communicates a community's priorities. So this is what we're illustrating within a budget today. Again, that's Exhibit 9 on page 60. I'm sometimes asked if it's realistic to expect that every year will be better than the year prior in terms of sales tax collection, to which I say no, but there's a strong trend line that goes through the dot-com bubble burst through 2000, through periods of war, financial crisis, and the pandemic to present day. This chart shows collections and sales tax from 2000 on the far left to the current day in the far right. Pretty indicative of a trend line upward. Here's a close-up of the past few years. Very flat growth with some wobbles, but generally trending upward. While it's not realistic to expect every year will be better than the last, here I can show you it's not always the case, but it's hard to miss the overall trend. As you know, the city receives bimonthly transmittals and sales tax collections, and those collections lag two months from what the actual activity occurred within. I'm always waiting on the latest numbers, but can only report the data that I have for the current month. So the most current data that I have in using our budget collections are from July. And I'm trying to use that to extrapolate in a year that's a year away in a different Who knows where we'll be in terms of economy, but this is what I have. Up until 2023, we included audits in our monthly reporting data. But since then, we've separated that as a figure in reporting it separately so we don't have as many false swings in reporting and collection data. It's impossible to view this chart, but I guess my point here is that I'm compiling and using it for reporting. Within this report, what I'm trying to illustrate is different methods of reviewing and reporting our collections. The first column takes into account the monthly collections. The second column takes into account the figure from the first column as a percentage of the total year-to-date collections. The third column compares the first column to the actual collection from the prior year, so you can kind of get a sense of where we're at. You might notice that December is an anomaly at 35%, which I've kind of referenced a few times. That's an outlier, but again, that's the data that we have. Taking a three-year average of each month's collection, I'm using that to project what each portion of each month represents as a portion of the year as a whole. And based on my estimation, I'm projecting that we're at roughly 57% of our annual collections. To peel the onion a little deeper, I've used the monthly projections from the previous slide to track the variance between the projected and actual receipts. Again, this kind of can illustrate how much of an anomaly that first month was. This visual attempts to illustrate the last five years and each month is represented as a portion of our annualized collections. Again, pretty good trend line. We have a pretty solid understanding of what might happen, but of course, who knows what the economy might do. So you get a trend line and we build a projection based on that. Putting it all together, this page quantifies the random facts that I presented to suggest that we're on track to meet our 2026 proposal and on track to build a proposal at 12.7 in sales tax revenue for 2027. For 2026, I projected a 4.2% increase over 2025, and if current economic conditions hold, we're on track to exceed that. Our 2027 budget shows an increase of around 2.2% over our projected 2026 receipts. And again, this is another exhibit from our budget. This is exhibit four on page 50, which shows that, of course, taxes are only a portion of our revenue, roughly two-thirds of our revenue, but the largest share, which is why I went into so much detail today. So with that, I'll hand it back over to Dave, unless there's any questions for me.

Thank you, Jordan. To summarize that, you know, as we see the increase in sales tax, and we also understand there's a slight decrease in property tax, we understand that we're in a good position. But I believe this proposed budget puts us in a good position in many different ways. I would say that in many different ways we tighten our belt over many different departments in some categories. You know being responsible and understanding that the sales tax is a projection and we can't predict sometimes the inflation when it comes to goods services and materials so being in a position to Have a conservative budget strategy and why spending allows us to address those uncertainties when they occur I'd also say that We're in a position that our debt limit is very low if you've studied our debt limit year-over-year we're well under the threshold where we'd like to be. So having a conservative budget with those strategies and being in a position where we have a lower debt load or debt capacity kind of gives us the opportunity to grow in the future when we identify strategic things that will make our community and city better. So with this budget, again, being conservative and being able to be resilient across the board will make a difference. As we're talking about our budget, I'd like to talk about our capital improvement program. So on page 61 of our booklet, that's where our program begins. And this year, as we designed our capital improvement program, we had the addition of LEAF to come on board with our team and give us opportunities to kind of talk about opportunities and how we wanted to do things. But I will tell you that When we looked at our capital improvement, there weren't any big changes. What we looked at doing is funding the things that we've experienced year over year. We've invested this year. We continue to invest in our roads, our utility and sewer systems, our water plants, airport, public safety, and our culture and recreation. There weren't any major road projects like you experienced this year with the Dakota Street project. We're in a year where we're not funding our major road construction. So we basically maintain the status quo, but we kind of are going to continue to invest in the things that we need to do year over year. There was also an opportunity to kind of look at our CIP from a different perspective or viewpoint. Having Leif come in and his experience over the years, And working with Jordan to understand how we can improve our CIP and how we could basically track our project activity. That's been a challenge over the years where you might see an allocation where we have a fund balance, but it's been difficult year over year to kind of track the activity in that. Jordan, do you have any thoughts?

Thing that you want to speak to and how we improve that piece sure I'd comment that if you look at the category that's excuse me the categories presented in front of you You'll see we're budgeting by budget functions that align with what we do standard budgeting so that will help us better track activities as they Occur throughout the year within each of these proposals or rather with it within each of these programs You'll see separate pages that summarizes the activity within each proposal as you always have So very much the same documents as before you just have a little bit of different structure behind them

thank you so the investments we're going to make in our capital improvement program next year is right now we have a water reclamation project that's occurring and that's in two phases that first phase was a major commitment by the city council in in our budget dollars that phase one that we're in right now is was costing an estimated 94 million and that work continues right now and will continue into 2027. phase two which is being designed, will be something that will occur in probably 28 to 29, and that's going to be a $30 million addition to this. We're doing well in this, but at the same time, we have to fund another component to our water reclamation. And I've talked recently to Banner, our engineering consultant, who's helping us manage this project. And they're going to be coming to a city council session in the near future to kind of talk about where we're at in phase one. and what phase two will look like and if you recall in our rate study and and we talked about the rate studies that they help us complete that that rate is will be included in that phase two piece to the water reclamation plan so we're in a good position there work continues but just to remind you know our citizens that that's a major investment in our community that will take our community down the road in so many ways and it was a necessary investment We're going to continue to invest in our water treatment plant. Obviously, the water treatment plant operates and it's a critical resource in our community and we have capital that are invested in that next year. But as we talk about our treatment plant, we also want to talk about the WINS project and how that's going to ultimately bring a water fee to our treatment plant. Just want to update you a little bit with some of the things that we've been doing with the WINS project and some things that have some relevance to the budget. And right now, currently, we're engaged in two different processes with our WINS partners. We're doing a rate setting study with AE2S that will develop our financial policies, cost allocation methodologies, and will provide us a rate setting approach that promotes equitable cost recovery and avoids cross-subsidization issues. subsidation of our partners. So we're working on a rate setting study right now and that's being done and there'll be some workshops that the city council can engage in as we're working through that. And then the other piece we're working on with our WINS partner is the water compatibility and blending study. It's really important that we bring the water into our plant that water's compatible. And that's going to be a major component with that. And then, of course, we're going to start talking about the engineering and how when that pipeline does get close to Aberdeen, how is that going to come into our water treatment plant? So having our new engineer on board is going to be at the front and center of that particular piece to that. And then we'll also be talking about a facilities use study with our water treatment plant to determine how to continue to operate efficiently, but when that wind's water feed does come into our plant, how that's going to occur. So we've got several different things that will be occurring with our water treatment plant. So the two major investments in reclamation and our treatment will be strong and kind of be first and foremost as we're looking at our capital plan for next year. some of the other things that we're investing in are the aquatic center pool lining this year we were able to maintain our pool but we had to patch that and it's really at a critical place where we need to reline that that's going to be about a 1.1 million dollar project the other things we're going to be doing with culture and rec is looking at opportunities for the buildings that we have on our inventory we have the washington street gym we have our civic arena where we're doing an assessment not only in the washington building but the the arena So there's going to be some things that we're going to be talking about in 2027. They're going to have some probably some major decision making on where we want to go in the future for these facilities. You know, we're going to be investing in the public workshop facility. That's going to be a major improvement to our community. Not only does that give the adequate space to our workers, but I also believe it's going to increase our work capacity. And it just provides a modern space and more of an opportunity for us to be more efficient from a public work side. I talked a little bit about it already, but the airport snow removal equipment building is going to be designed. That's about a $4 million project. And then, of course, again, the routine things that I talked about that we do year over year with the maintenance and repair of the chip ceiling, the mill and overlay, the maintenance on our stormwater and sanitary systems, our manholes, curb and gutter, sidewalks, and our lift stations. So we've got a lot of work that we're going to be doing, and we're looking forward to doing that. I mentioned that we were not doing a major road construction project next year, but the dot is coming in to do the reconstruction of the bridge over 6 Avenue. We've had some input on the design for that. There's not going to be a significant contribution from the city per se on. the financial piece to that bridge, but we are trying to gain some input so that bridge is going to exist for 6,200 years. So that's going to be the major project. That's going to be kind of what I would consider a partnership with the DOT in our community. And then, of course, we're going to continue the Moccasin Creek dredging project. As we've experienced the rainfalls this year, we can understand how important drainage is and how important that waterway is to our community as kind of a quality of life issue, but in many different facets. So next year, we're looking at targeting a couple different locations, specifically south of the Melgar Bridge and taking that that channel all the way to the intersecting county roads so we're going to continue to invest in the moxa creek dredging and the shoreline restoration and then ultimately we're going to invest in public safety year over year we invest in public safety and we enjoy the services they provide our community the fire department on their capital improvement progression have two ambulances that are going to age out so we'll be looking at purchasing a couple ambulances and i want to talk about again i've made reference to this but we're at a place where We've maintained the status quo in the capital improvement program, but there's an opportunity here with our new engineering team and organizational change that we made with uncoupling some of the operational responsibilities from the city engineer to review and assess a lot of different things. there's a lot of infrastructure in our community that needs fixing and updating and repairing we all know that that's it's it's a given it's expected but sometimes when you have somebody that comes in and they they take that position this is a new opportunity a fresh set of eyes to look at things so i would say 2027 is going to be the year of evaluation and determining priorities. Working with LEAF, we're going to be doing a lot of assessing on the things that we have, and there's a lot of fixing that we're gonna need to do. So it's gonna be impaired upon us right now, as LEAF has already taken this position to kind of figure out where we stand, to kind of gain an awareness and then start planning for the future. And that's really where we're going to be, a lot of the work we're going to be doing in 2027 is planning. We have the interior drainage study that's going to occur. That's going to have a major impact on our community. Now we're going to protect the flood levy and keep the certification and the homeowners from mitigating flood insurance. And then we have a sewer system study that's going to be occurring. And the interior drainage and the sewer system are kind of, intertwined, but the source system study will give us input on what we need to do, where we need to fix things, and the most important things that we need to spend our money on first. And then there's an opportunity that will, you know, every year there's kind of a discussion on vehicles and equipment. So this year I funded less vehicles. We made the decision that we would fund fewer vehicles, maintain the ones that we have, and then kind of challenge ourselves and some of the major departments to kind of come up with a fleet management program. Every year we talk about vehicles, and we know the expense, and we know the maintenance that goes into that, but we kind of tighten our belt there, and I look for the opportunities to work with the department heads on coming up with a better fleet management program and kind of look for different ways we can be more efficient and kind of have a longer life on some of these vehicles. So I just want to talk a little bit about some of those things that's related to the capital improvement program. So I would just say in general, it's – some of the similar things, but we're standing in a position where we're going to do a lot of evaluating and then next year talking about the things that we need to do in the future to kind of fix and grow. One of the things I would like to always talk about when we're talking about budget is the investment in employees. So obviously last year, with our labor union and police and fire negotiating this year. It's always important to have the best people on board as part of our team. We want to attract the best people. We want to retain the best people. So this year's budget continues to invest in our employees. Through competitive wages and benefits, We feel that we're very competitive with other cities and we provide an awesome work environment. One of the things that contribute to one of the major expenses in personnel services are benefits. So last year, the city hired a health insurance broker to kind of help us analyze where we're at with our self-funded health insurance program and find opportunities. Ultimately, what we'd like to do with our health insurance self-fund program is continue to build a bigger fund balance or reserve because we want this to be a viable insurance program that lasts into the years. And through this, We were presented some options with health insurance that will provide employees this year a high deductible plan that will also allow a health savings account. So we're looking at options for our employees there. And next year, again, there will be a step increase. And again, we're in negotiation with our police and fire. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that. We'll have more opportunities to kind of talk about the operations and the CIP and then other managers' reports, but for all practical purposes, this is kind of a quick overview of where our budget is, and I look forward to engaging you and taking questions. I will mention that the promotional fund was due today, and we are receiving requests for that. And pretty soon this week, I will probably send out to you a packet for you to be able to do your evaluation and assessment of the promotional fund requests so we can kind of start assigning what we would like to see for those funding pieces to that. And for all practical purposes, I'd like the council, once you receive the packet, to return to me your priority list of how you're going to allocate and your priority organizations by August 28th. So we'll send the packets out to you, give you a template of the organizations that have made requests, the funds that they're requesting, and then if you want to do your work on that and kind of give us feedback on how you're going to prioritize that. If we could have that back by August 28th, that would be great. And then ultimately what we're looking at doing is having, again, our meetings to talk about the budget, having our promotional fund piece designed and in place, and then what we'd like to see is having a resolution prepared for our budget ordinance by September 8th. And there's a lot of things that are happening right now with the city, but I'm confident in my city manager's report that we'll be able to talk a little bit more about the operations and the capital improvement program as we kind of progress through this timeline, as we're talking about data set of ordinances, and we're also going to be working with the police department on a couple things. So I want to make one note that doesn't necessarily have some budget relevance, but it does. So over the last many months, we've heard a lot about... the housing shortage in Aberdeen. And we acknowledge that. We want to tell the community that we understand that we're in a housing shortage. In the 2024 housing study update, it presented us a lot of suggestions and different things that we need to do for housing. I just want to tell you that I'm very optimistic and excited to kind of talk about what we're going to be doing in the near future, working with Mayor and Amber and other city staff to kind of talk about some potential projects to help alleviate the housing. It's a major, major consideration in our community. It has relevance across the board on many different things. I'm speaking to the community to let you know that it's not falling on deaf ears. While you haven't seen anything allocated in the CIP for housing per se, we are working on that, and I look forward to kind of explaining to the council and the community more on what we're going to be doing for affordable housing. So with that, Jordan, do you have any final thoughts or anything that you want to say? All right. With that, I'd entertain some questions that anybody might have after this overview of the budget. All right. Well, I look forward to engaging you in the next city manager's reports, and we'll talk about this. And, of course, anytime you have a question, as you're looking through this, feel free to reach out to us and ask for those clarifications on your questions. We'll be happy to answer that. And thanks for your patience on this. Pretty soon this will be on our city website. And then with no questions, I think I'll move into a couple different items from our manager's report. Yeah, please. Yeah.

And Jordan might be the one to answer it. Is there an exhibit in here with the reserves? I didn't see anything.

In the financial section, roughly page 18 or so, that would best describe the financial debt position.

Oh, the unassigned fund balance? OK, thank you. Correct.

Any other questions? Great. All right, so I just want to remind the council on August 17th, we have that work session to talk about license plate readers. Chief John is going to come in and talk to us about that, bring a few people that are industry representatives, and we'll kind of have an opportunity to hear that and evaluate that and address any questions or concerns that could exist for that. Also on August 17th, we have the data center ordinance. And Ron, do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Yes, Dave, thank you. So, Council, I recall as we were walking through the timeline, establishing the timeline for approving some type of data center ordinance, the question had come up what you know what how who are we going to be hearing from at the for the data center industry representatives and how is that going to be screened or otherwise filtered you understand that folks here at City Hall aren't really in that we don't move in those circles so we are trying to identify people who might have something to to present to this council and to inform this council we're aware that there are you know, various presentations that have been given out there. I understand that both the, there was a presentation at Northern State this last, in September of 2025, that there have been presentations in Vermillion with data center folks. And so we're reaching out. to see if we can find some people who work in that industry. We're aware of at least one gentleman who has been working and developing. I think he's more in the software side, but he's very familiar with what data centers are and that he would be a person who I think may have an extended presentation of approximately 30 minutes at the August 17th meeting. At the same time, we're trying to identify additional people within that industry and other people from a governmental background who might be able to answer questions and be online. We're considering discussing... with Danner, with the folks at the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, that they might have someone available online to answer any questions regarding permitting. We're hoping to see maybe somebody from the PUC be available to answer questions about, you know, just that electrical side of the equation. Also, Northwestern Energy, we're approaching them and asking if they would have someone who could present and answer questions from this council. We would like to, and we'll see if we can find somebody in the sound engineering background who can give us some information about noise and vibration. and again all of this is moving very quickly the public thinks this is a this is a a long time for us it's a very quick short time that we're trying to put all this together but what we will plan to do is present to the council probably the weekend before that august 17th meeting and a list of who we have been able to get who we think will be able to appear. We would invite people in that data center industry, consultants, persons who actually are developers, maybe in the construction side as well, who would want to potentially speak to reach out to us here at City Hall, either the city manager or the city attorney's office, to see if we could accommodate their presentation as well. But I would like to say that this is a very clean, sharp, focused group of people that we have in mind, but we don't at this time. We're still in the process of trying to identify those people who might want to come. In whatever context they would be here, whether it's personally appear via Zoom, we anticipate that we might have a lot of questions that are not answered. And that there might be some, um, some submissions afterwards. After that meeting from those folks that might help inform us as well. And again, what we're looking at for August 17th is that would be part of the regular city council meeting. Obviously, anybody who wants to come and attend a council meeting may do so, but for the purposes of that section of the agenda item, we'll be speaking only with folks from the data center industry to try to give us some information. This would also be the time, I think, for the mayor to call for a special meeting on September 14th. presumably at 5.30, that's for the input, I'm sorry, August 31st, I'm sorry, special meeting on August 31st for input from the business interests. And we were in contact with Tim Hannigan of the Aberdeen Development Corporation, and with Gail Oakes of the Chamber of Commerce. So we have folks that we think will be willing to come in and visit. They will also potentially be a clearing space for persons who might not want to comment publicly. So we'll work with those organizations and see what we can bring to you as far as input from the businesses. But that would be on August 31st. We would ask that the meeting be at 530 at the regular time. And that one we anticipate could occur here in this chambers. For the September 14th special city council meeting involving input from citizens, we're gonna ask that the council, that the mayor hold off on making that call right now because we want to see if we have maybe another venue that might accommodate a large group of people at that time. Obviously, if you folks decide you would prefer to stay here, that's something you can do, but we do wanna find out if we have another location that would accommodate a larger group of people and make that an option for you for that September 14th meeting. Again, 530 is what we're anticipating. All of these meetings will be at the regular time. So, Mayor, I would ask that you call the August 31st special meeting at this time. We'll make arrangements to get that agenda set up for you.

All right, let's make this official. I guess we will call the meeting for August 31st. This will be to talk to business leaders throughout this community to garner their input on data center and the economic input from their perspective. That will take place at 5.30 p.m. on August 31st.

Thank you.

Anything else, Steve? Yeah. So the last thing I'd like to talk about, each week I think it's important to give kind of an update on a road construction given what we're doing right now. And, Leif, can I turn that over to you to kind of give us an update on the 8th Avenue corridor?

Yes. All right. So some of you may have noticed, public notice, some of the changes have gone. Most of the biggest concern of the public has always been Roosevelt and 8th Avenue closure of that intersection in certain directions. And when we last visited, there was questions about the railroad and their schedule for completing their work. And as far as an update goes, so last Thursday, the railroad was on site and installed the planks for the crossings. And then on Friday, we were able to install the asphalt on 8th Avenue east of Roosevelt. And that is currently open to traffic between 3M and Roosevelt. The contractor has started work on the concrete for Roosevelt itself. The anticipated schedule from the contractor was two weeks before that would be open to traffic. They're anticipating or they're hoping for sooner but what they've given us is two weeks and that's weather dependent. We hope to see it open sooner but that's what they've given us for now with the goal of School being open, or being open to traffic with school being open, it's obviously with commute and the congestion that takes place with that morning commute and school traffic on Roosevelt with students heading to the high school is very congested, and it'll just make that issue worse on Dakota and Brown County 19. So that's our goal there. And then DOMI has closed 8th Avenue west of Roosevelt between Lancelot and Camelot for the levee crossing. That's a project unto itself. There are certain requirements that go into that that we have to follow the U.S. Quorum of Interest. U.S. Corps of Engineers, there are rules and regulations in that crossing and there's just certain nuances of that that doesn't make it a speedy process. The contractor anticipates to have that open to traffic in two weeks also with the same timeline of targeting prior to school, which I believe the public school starts on the 18th, that Tuesday. It may be sooner. Can't make promises. The goal is to have at least head-to-head traffic back. All traffic removal won't be done at that time, but have through traffic, through all directions, out of intersection by August 17th is the current goal, if not sooner.

So Leif, I had taken a look at that Roosevelt yesterday and there was, it was awaiting concrete at that point. Concrete has been poured at this point and there's two weeks for the curing process or it is being prepared to be poured?

It's been prepared to be poured. They started pouring the concrete or they started forming for the concrete today on Roosevelt. They poured last Friday, I believe, some of the fillet sections to improve pedestrian crossing on the intersection. While we were waiting for the railroad, additional improvements were added to the scope that we have on forced time that we didn't request, but we were forced upon us. So we took the opportunity to make additional improvements while there was closure there for that pedestrian crossing, and that might have been what you're seeing there. And far as Roosevelt itself, south of 8th Avenue, that's anticipated two weeks.

But that's two weeks for the poor. And then I thought previously you had told us it was about a two-week period of time for curing.

What we've... Typically what we would see is seven days is kind of the general on the cure process. So a week to prep and pour and then a week of cure time, depending on mix, depending on the concrete breaks. And we will direct the consultant to sample and take those concrete cylinders and then break. And if we can open it sooner, we will.

well but for the foreseeable future roosevelt north to 8th avenue east is open it's open to the west too but it terminates at at the uh levee yes yeah all right two more weeks people will be thrilled to hear it right are you guys up in there in that neighborhood all right any questions for relief

I think it's staving off dementia. You know, you get used to patterns, and you've got to change your pattern every day. So it's good for our brains.

I don't want to be the one doing that.

Yeah.

I think Tiffany would approve.

Okay, good. Good, good, good. Yeah, and if you read the official city announcement on the thing, it's going to take such focus that you'll definitely stave off some of that oncoming dementia. lot of moving parts a lot of moving parts appreciate that the update always disappointing when things carry on a little bit too long but sometimes factors as it be uh necessitate late opens um hopefully by school hopefully by school anything else before we close out this meeting i would like to say something uh this is a beautiful proposal book for our budget but i'm in particular

I really like the aerial shots that are throughout this. I mean, it really, they're very professionally done and it really shows you what we have. I think it's great. Very proud.

Well, I tell you what, Amber and Marie probably need the biggest pats on the back for most of that stuff, but I know that they feel free to use images from here, there, and everywhere. And I provided a few myself, but yeah, those two ladies especially.

Yeah, proud, very proud.

Very good. Well, I take a motion to adjourn the meeting. Move to adjourn.

Second.

Motion, Johnson. Second, Wood. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. We are adjourned.