City Council - Regular Meeting

Larry. I'm Larry Joy. I live at 504 East Washington. I've been here quite a bit over the drainage issue in my part of town. But um actually I'm here tonight for you, James, for by next council meeting. I would like to know how many projects voting make are addressing right now for the city or projects or whatever. I just want to know how many or is in front of on their plate. And I I'm sure you don't have the answer tonight, but I'd like to have it for the next meeting if that's possible. Six. Six. Okay. All right, that's all I got. Thank you.

Thank you. On to the consent items. Move to approve. Second Aaron Holtz. Hi, Jackson. Hi, Sloan. Hi, Winkleman.

Hi. Under new business, item A is resolution approving the amendment to the SRF fund to authorize 1 million loan forgiveness. Yeah. So, the uh the documents in the in the packet today. What what this really does is Yeah. It it authorizes a million dollars worth of loan forgiveness through the SRF program. Okay. So in total, the city had borrowed what would be a total of $19,750,000 for for that sewer plant project. Okay. At the beginning of of the project, the city had applied for and received then this million dollar forgiveness. Okay. And then as soon as the project was done and complete and all the paperwork was all finished up, we were eligible then to receive this million dollar forgiveness. So, that's what we're doing tonight is accepting that million-doll forgiveness, rewriting the loan agreement for a million dollars less than what it had been before. Uh, everything's in order and, uh, in this case, some very good news and and ready to proceed.

Make a motion to approve. Is that Winkleman? I was second. Okay. Winkleman. Hi, Sloan. Hi, Jackson. I Aaron Holtz. Hi. Item B is resolution approving $75,000 economic development forgivable loan agreement with Owens and Sun Rentals LLC.

Yeah. The city received a request for a $75,000 forgivable loan for the East Lincoln Way Rehabilitation from Dan Owens. Uh he purchased a property at 600 East Lincoln Way and uh has plans to start two new businesses there. gutter business and a spray foam insulation business. And uh is intended to remodel that building, finish, put a roof on it, do some insulation, some heating and cooling, some additional repairs, um which would um would be a total investment over $250,000 in the building. So, um the uh downtown building committee did review this application and would recommend it for approval. Well, even though the name says uh rentals LLC, these property, this particular building will not be rented out. He'll be operating, he'll be the proprietor of those businesses.

Yeah, that LLC is just the owner of the building. But yeah, he's he'll operate those businesses out of that building. Any questions? Move to approve. A second. Sloan. I Jackson. I Aaron Holtz. Hi, Wkelman. IMC is resolution approving $75,000 economic development forgivable loan agreement with Chad Salone.

So, we city also received request uh for economic development forgivable loan agreement for 75,000 for the construction of a new building for uh storage for Sloan Plumbing out on East Lincoln. Chad has any more details on that if you'd like to share? Um, I'm just out of room. Need to expand some operations and I got the land out there and instead of junk flat land, we're going to develop it. Is that where you're at now? No, it's a different location. I see. I tried to add on to my building and I was told no. Oh,

so Chad's on the downtown building committee. So, they did not review this application. which I think finance committee looked at it instead and uh my understanding they did recommend the approval of this forgivable loan. Yeah, we did. I'll move to approve second. Sloan abstain. Erin Holtz I Wkelman I Jackson

I. Item D is a resolution determining compensation for volunteer firefighters and officers. Uh Jack Williams, Jefferson Fire Chief. Uh I asked Taco with Scott uh Luke Winkleman and Chad Sloan about um increasing the fire pay for the volunteers. Just uh the amount of time that we have to put in to stay compliant with Iowa and federal code. It's actually 24 hours a year. I only need 10 a year for law enforcement. So, and that's my full-time job. So, it's getting really hard and uh to find people that want to volunteer knowing that they're going to have to work at least 24 hours of training every year just to be able to respond to structure fires. And then the uh the officer pay, I asked for an increase there because the amount of workload that we're doing as as officers has uh tripled in probably the last 10 years. And and by tripling, I mean we have to do all the fire reporting to the feds to make sure they know what kind of fires we had, how much damage there was, how many acres were burnt, how much value of the house was destroyed or value of property. And then just keeping track of all the training records is just it's become a lot of work to where it's nearly a full-time job.

Is that where um kind of the big jump for the secretaries coming from? Because it's a lot of paperwork to keep track of and all that stuff. Yeah, it's a ton of paperwork to keep track of. When was the last time that these uh stipen rates were adjusted? Uh I can't actually we got we went from 15 to 20 per call I don't eight or I would have I don't mind 8 10 years ago and as far as that uh the officer's pay actually decreased approximately 16 years ago.

Yeah. Townships share in the increased cost. Do you know the township? Yeah. Put into the formula. Yes. It's included in the formula that we use that the state provides to use.

You want to talk Jack a little bit about training and that we have we require a firefighter one designation and what's involved with that? How many of your folks are at that trained level right now? Cuz we do this will propose a change in in fee from a basically a new a new firefighter would that currently is paid $20 gets bumped to 25, but then anybody who's at a been trained at firefighter one, their their response then is $30. So, can you talk about firefighter one training and how many you have? uh the firefighter one trainings uh I want to say it's 180 hours of training that they have to go through before they can actually respond to and help with a structure fire. They cannot enter a house or a building until they've been at least trained to firefighter one. So it is a huge dedication. It's about 3 months 3 hours every Wednesday night that they have to go through and our bylaws require that they have to be through it within the first year. Uh currently we just finished a firefighter one certification training. So uh including Mike Rossith who is in the consent items. He sat through the training just so that he would have it if he was uh got approved to be on the fire department. So technically every one of us as of today would be certified to or trained to firefighter one.

And how how many more hours do you have to do to maintain firefighter one? 24 hours a year. 24 hours a year. Okay. Yeah, it's 24 hours of structural firefighting a year minimum to keep your training certificate. And you mentioned that I believe in one of our committee meetings that you were experiencing uh turnover over the years. That Yes, we're normally at 28 firemen and I believe adding might might put us at 24 and we've been as low as 16. How does that I I mean I'm positive Jefferson has but how many more does Jefferson have than any of the other communities for fire?

We actually have less than Grand Junction but we have more than Scranton Shredddan and Payton. We're probably twice what Scrant Scranton Shardan and Payton are. And if there was a fire in Shardan, surely Jefferson gets called too then, don't they? Most most of the time.

Jefferson gets called pretty much to all the cities when they need help just cuz we have we train all the time and we've got decent good equipment. So, and we all get along like one big fire department. We've utilized them when we have the when we had the Larry's fire, Larry's Restaurant and Bar. We've I we utilize Carol and Pora fire departments for that one too. So it's it helps maintain a good working relationship and we help each other when we need it and it saves on cost.

Was that was a week or so ago I sent a semi-trail I think full of equipment and then some of your firemen all put all of their gear on. That's part of that process. Uh that that's extra. the trailer. We had a twotory live burn trailer here. Okay. That uh we have three instructors on the fire department, so we're able to get stuff like that. Okay. A lot of the smaller departments don't have instructors,

so they're they don't have access to that without paying an instructor to come and do it. So, we try to we've had the smoke trailer, which is a it tells us as leaders in the fire department if a person can go into a smoke filled environment where they can't see their hand in front of their face without panicking in a controlled environment. Uh the trailer that we just had here, the twotory live burn trailer helps us uh decide, okay, when the flames roll over the top of them, again, it's are they going to panic? Are they going to do what we've taught them to do? And again, that was uh all the fire departments in the county were present. Maybe not all their members, but some. And then we I think we had all the fire departments here through firefighter 1. So we do I would say 98% of the training for the entire county right here in Jefferson.

What's the minimum age to become a volunteer fire person? Uh our bylaws, we just changed it to 18.

18. We've considered doing the junior fireman project a couple of times, but it's I I don't think it's worth the liability. If if we had more people show up during the day, I'd probably be all for it. But and then outfitting them with gear and everything is just extra cost that we don't have the money for, especially with the price increases this year for gear and air packs. You remember the there was quite a few of the grants at the uh Grow Green that exclusively went towards Turnout Gear because that's they not only have an expiration date, but they're pretty pricey.

Yeah. I mean, fire gear 5 years you have to get rid of it. And with Jefferson, I rotate four sets of gear every year. And so, as long as I'm able to keep that, we should never be out of compliance. and it's spending $12,000 versus $75,000 all at once. I move to approve the pay increase. Second. Thank you. Thank you. Sloan. Hi. Wkelman. I Aaron Holtz. Hi.

Jackson. I item E is consider the hiring of Quinton Spack as a street maintenance worker. Yeah, Quinton would be proposed to be hired for as street maintenance employee. Wage is 2550. Um actually started yesterday and off to a good start. I met him at the shed yesterday. Really nice guy. Good guy. Yep. Move to approve. I'll second. I'll second. Wkelman. Hi. Sloan. Hi. Jackson. I

Aaron Holtz. Hi.

Under reports item A. Jim. uh the risk and resilience assessment and the emergency response plan for the water department. Our uh uh water wastewater staff will be starting that soon, coordinating with the public works director on getting that information going. Uh the tower inspection project, our coding specialist staff will are working on scheduling projects for this summer. So at this spring and summer, uh don't have a date yet on that, but should be seeing that here soon for when they're going to be here. Uh the airport project aviation staff is working on that. Uh they had started working on the pad. There was a subgrade issue. They're working on a resolution. Uh we're expecting some a change order item for some uh subgrade the subgrade issue and a tile to address that. and then also for removing the removals of the existing concrete out of the project and city staff will take care of that directly. Um and then I think we're also working on applying for the state grant uh for replacement concrete that we didn't get last year. Um that's coming up soon. Uh drainage district 57, our egg drainage staff is working on that. The modeling is about 90% complete. Uh preliminary plans are about 75% complete. Report is about 60 65% complete. Uh we should be completing that here in the next uh month and are looking to present that report to council for the second meeting in May at this time. Um, Doc Stadium, we'll be starting the design on that soon. And Westwood, uh, layout is about 90% complete. Uh, we'll be setting some meetings with some of the property owners that have

contacted us about issues on their properties and getting in touch with them and then continue working on quantities and the plan sheets and getting those all finished up. Uh right now the schedule is to put plans on file with the city uh at the second meeting in May. Um have a public hearing at the June 23rd meeting. Have a bid letting on July 1st and consider the bids at July 14th and hopefully have a uh August or September start date on that. Okay. Roxanne, no report. Davis, no report. Scott,

just an acknowledgement that all that noise that you've been hearing during the meeting, of course, today is them working on the roof at the fire department, and uh they were there yesterday and today, and I would anticipate they're getting very close to done. So, it ought to be done here anytime. Um my oh the only other thing um other than some library discussion I'll leave that to Darren but uh would be uh our our leadership team for for the city. A lot of us folks are going to AI class tomorrow. So just exploring you know kind of widening our uh our thoughts a little bit about what we can do with technology and AI. So we'll be doing the class tomorrow.

I have a whole classroom of kids that could teach you everything you want to know about AI and challenges. And seeing Greg's not here, let's go to the departments. Uh Mark Chad, addition to the roof getting replaced out there, we've also had 10 windows recently replaced here in city hall. So, um, we've been replacing about 8 to 10 a year for the last three or four years. I think there's 13 left out of the 45 to 50 total, whatever it was. So, making progress.

Thank you, Harry. Nothing additional to Chad. Um, I just like to thank all the fire uh department guys for what they do and you know the the amount of training and classes they have to go through to do what they do. It's I it's a very large commitment and we you know when we need them we need them and we should all you know thank them from time to time and let them know they're appreciated for everything they do.

Yeah, I echo that. Lou. Uh on the 6th, uh Joanie Ers had her small business uh task force or committee here uh to interview small business owners in town. Uh attended that just essentially it was a factf finding information gathering uh for them to take back and hopefully advocate on the part of small business owners in our area. So that was a beneficial meeting. Um then then we had the uh Grow Green Awards ceremony the other night and uh very thankful for that $50,000 uh contribution that they made towards the city.

That's it. as Scott mentioned last night was the library architect's unveiling of the of um the plan for the new library which I there'll be you know it's hard to say without the diagram there but you'll be able to find it online and in various businesses but I would say it's a wonderful melding of uh kind of exposing the Carnegie part to more sightelines along with also modern things. So, it's a nice mixture of 1904 and 2026. Um, in regular library news, two bits of good news. The Carnegie Foundation, um, maybe you know the figure, I think it's $10,000. Um, which I looked up is the exact same thing that Andrew Carnegie gave to build the original library in 1904. Of course, that went a lot farther then. And um the other is a Mrs. Warren that uh left in her estate to give 485 libraries in the state of Iowa almost $1,000 and we were one of the ones that was uh chosen to get that. I don't know if she ever saw our library, but

very grateful. Yes. So, and I have no report. So, we're done.