City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, it is 5.30, so I will go ahead and call this meeting to order of the Torrington City Council. This is Tuesday, July 21, 2026. Good evening and welcome to all. We have here this evening, as is usual, Mr. Ryan Kaith from KGOS, KERM Radio. This meeting is being broadcast live on both radio stations, KGOS and KERM, and also on YouTube, and it will be up on YouTube. So welcome to the press. Our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance, and I've asked Councilman Dennis Kelly to lead us. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next item are the mayor's informational items. Please take note. Our next council meeting will take place on Tuesday, August 4, 2026 at 5 30 PM at the picnic shelter at Jordan park. So next, uh, council meeting at the picnic shelter at Jordan park. This has become a summertime tradition for council. We do this in conjunction with the Torrington police department's annual celebration of national night out also at Jordan park. The City of Torrington is now accepting applications for a journeyman lineman at the City Electrical Department. This is a full-time position with an excellent benefit package. For more information, contact Scott Sides, SIDES, at 307-532. In addition, the City of Torrington is now accepting applications for a heavy truck driver in the Streets and Sanitation Department. For that, please contact the City Deputy Treasurer at 307-532-5666, extension 3009. Applications for both of these positions are available at City Hall or on the Torrington City website at www.torrington.com. torrington.wi.gov. Both of these positions will be open till filled. The City of Torrington is an equal opportunity employer and maintains a drug and alcohol free workplace. The City Street Department has completed its road improvement project on West 11th Avenue from Highway 85 to West A Street. This is the street between Olsen Tire Company and the Fresh Foods on South Main Street. The city street department is also out and busy grading alleyways in town. The East D Project is progressing nicely. The work crews are now north of 28th Avenue and working toward completion at 30th Avenue. The East D Project is from Highway 26 on the south to 30th Avenue on the north. It covers the entire length of East D Street. New water lines, new sanitary sewer lines, new storm sewer lines, new sidewalks, curbs, and gutters, and of course, the new street pavement. Thursday, July 30th, 2026 is Goshen County Day. The annual parade down Main Street is set for that morning, July 30th. Please note that July 30th is a holiday for county and city employees. City offices will be closed that day. Please enjoy our annual parade and all the events at the Goshen County Fairgrounds. especially with the hot weather and lack of rains. Thank you, Lord, for the rain last night. Please take care not to leave pet food and water outside overnight, as that tends to attract some unwanted visitors, such as raccoons, possums, and skunks. As always, please slow down while driving. Please take extra care to watch out for motorcycles, electric bikes, and scooters, bicycles, and pedestrians. Please do not use your cell phones while driving. Please continue to have an active, fun, and safe summer. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is approval of the consent agenda, which includes minutes from the July 7 26th council meeting is published. Mr. Mayor, I make a motion to approve the consent agenda. All right, I have a motion from Councilman Deal to approve the consent agenda. Do I have a second? Second. I think it was Councilman Warren. Second, Councilman Warren. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the approval of the consent agenda as presented, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, signify by saying nay. Hearing no nays, the consent agenda is approved. Next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda.

Mr. Mayor, I would move to amend the agenda by adding item 4A, consideration of suspension of liquor license, and further approve the agenda as amended.

All right, I have a motion from Councilman Victorin to amend the agenda to add item 4A to deal with the suspension of a liquor license. Do I have a second to that?

Second.

All right, a second from Councilman Kelly. All right, I will call for a vote. All those in favor of approval of an amended agenda, to include item 4A, to deal with suspension of a liquor license, and the rest of the agenda as presented. All those in favor of that, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, signify by saying nay. Hearing no nays, the amended agenda is approved. Next item on our agenda is what we refer to as the public forum. If I had a taker for that, I would see a form filled out in that black box in front of councilman Warren. I don't see one, but I do like to explain this item on our agenda. This is for non agenda items. There is a time limit of two minutes and the speaker must sign up before the meeting. This is a time for the council to listen. No action will be taken. So in the future, if anyone wishes to take advantage of that, there's that opportunity. in the public forum section. All right, we are now down to our action items. The first item under action items is a special event permit. Doug Mercer with Scotts Bluff Valley Street Rods. SVSR is requesting a special event permit for a classic cars on Main Street event to be held on September 12th, 26, from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. The applicant is requesting approval to close the public street on Main Street. from the intersection of Main Street and Valley Road to 22nd Avenue and on the additional areas to the east and west as specified on the map submitted with the application. The applicant is also requesting to have the special event permit fee waived due to the fact that the event is a community event hosted by a nonprofit organization. So with that long introduction, but long but sufficient, I would call on Chief of Police Matt Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. We've had this event for many years. Doug and Ed and their teams do a nice job running it successfully and safely. A couple of changes this year that I wanted to walk through with you. Primarily, the club would like to do a little different parking setup than they have done in the past to allow a little more space for people to walk around the cars. And so they'd like to extend the parking area north one block to 23rd Avenue. That will eliminate some public parking for the event, but we'll gain some of that back because we will not be closing City Lot 6 on the east side of the theater. All of the events that were previously planned for City Lot 6 last year are being moved out onto 20th there. I don't think that that's going to be an impact as long as those businesses provide a signature that they're comfortable with the street being closed up to 23rd. The traffic plan works well. It really doesn't add or take away access. I wouldn't anticipate any problems. We've got the same safety issues or the same safety protocols in place that we've used in prior years with utilizing vehicles to help to reinforce road closures to prevent any sort of a drive-through risk. There will be a bounce house as there have been in prior years. right there at the half block on West 20th. Nebraska Highway Patrol is also going to do their simulator this year where they bring in a golf cart and allow folks to experience what it appears to be if you operate a vehicle impaired. And then Scott's Bluff Valley Street Rods is obtaining an umbrella policy for the event in the amount of $1 million. That has not yet been obtained. They are in the process of getting bids on that, but they will provide it prior to the event taking place. I think the final thing, well, two final things. We did look at the cost for the event and what those would look like coming together. Because this event does require a lot of barricades and some layout on it, it does take a little more staff time for streets to put that together. So we're looking at about eight hours of staff time for streets. That comes up to about $265. We're also looking at, oh, I see I have a typo here. It's going to be five rollout trash cans, not eight rollout trash cans. Those are running $39 a piece right now. Since Streets is already doing a delivery, they propose that we do that for $20 a trash can rather than the full 39. So that would put it at $100 for the event. We've got just a little bit of time for us in setting up and taking down barricades and a little bit of staff time for some additional cleaning at the restrooms downtown to keep those operational. The total on that comes up to $470.34. SVSR is going to provide some portable restroom facilities on the south portion of the event to make that a little more accessible to folks. And then we would have to have an approval contingent on signatures because we are still waiting for signatures on this. Doug and his team felt like it was better to wait until August when they were a little closer to the event so that folks would be more comfortable approving the event. With all of that, I know Ed's here, and I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm sure Ed is as well.

We're going to invite you up, Ed, but come on up. But while you're coming, Ed Kime coming to the podium. So this motion needs to be contingent on Doug or Ed or whomever getting the notices out to the merchants and such, right?

We'd have two contingencies. The first would be for the delivery of the certificate of insurance that they are in the process of obtaining, and the second would be for the delivery of the signatures. Okay, so two contingencies.

Insurance policy and the... Notice to the signatures. Notice to the merchants.

Yeah. And I believe we've done that in years past with the club. They always follow through and have done a great job on that. I don't have concerns. But Doug does particularly like to wait until August. I think he probably does a little promoting and signature at the same time, which is just fine.

OK. And regarding those city costs, $470.34, I know last year Doug agreed to pay those.

That's to my knowledge, yes.

Yes, we did.

Okay. All right, with that, Mr. Keim, go ahead.

So the additional streets, what that would allow us to do is we generally bring cars down the center lane. And we would like to extend so that we can possibly not use that center lane. We'll use that as a backup if need be. But this will allow us to pull cars out from the curb so that the public can walk behind the cars without having to step up onto the sidewalk and back down. This does a couple things. It protects the participants' cars. They're very picky about their cars, understandably so. And it keeps the public slightly away from that curb so that there's not a tripping hazard. School buses, when we run those, we have to make sure that the bus is far enough away from the curb. to prevent a tripping hazard, this would be like that. If we get enough cars, we may have to use some of that center lane, but it's our goal not to. That'll extend us a little further. The businesses that are further down to the area we extend it to, those aren't actually open on Saturdays, so it really should not affect them. I think we should be fine that way. We really enjoy putting this show on. It's a lot of fun, so we appreciate you always being willing to work with us on it.

And I know Doug reserved the date last February, maybe.

Well, he did. We have to put it in the Street Rod Association's booklet. So we have to have those reserved way in advance so that it gets into that. And that goes all over the Western United States.

All right. Council, any questions for Mr. Kime?

Nope. That was easy.

Thank you. Thank you. Any questions for chief Johnson?

I, Mr. Mayor, I did have a question for Mr. Kimes. I'm sorry. Can you come on? Yeah. Um, does the club agree to the stipulated costs? Um,

In the proposal? In the proposal. Yes. Yes. I think actually, didn't we not already sign that and turn that back in? Doug had me sign it. I didn't know if he turned that back in or not.

I see your signature here on the permit application.

OK. So yes, he and I talked about it. And yeah, that's fine. All right. It's not an unreasonable cost. OK. All right.

Thank you. All right. With that, we are on item number one request for a special event permit and waive the special event permit fee that do pay the additional city costs. Do I have a motion?

Mr. Mayor, I will try to make this motion. I would make a motion to approve contingent on the Scottsbluff Valley Street Rods maintaining an insurance policy and getting the merchant signatures to us that we grant this permit, waive the $200 fee, but expect that they will pay the city fee.

All right. Well stated. We have a motion from Councilman Deal on item number one. Do I have a second? Second. Second from Councilman Victor. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I will attempt to restate this motion and call for a vote. We have a motion to approve the special event permit for the Scottsbluff Valley street rods contingent on getting the notice and the signatures of the affected merchants and contingent on presenting proof of the liability insurance policy and to that the the gospel Valley street rods will pay the $470.34 in additional city costs. That's the motion. I have a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I won't repeat that, but I'll call for a vote. All those in favor of that motion on item number one, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, signify by saying nay. Hearing no nays, that special event permit is approved, contingent on getting notice to the merchants and approving that to the chief, and approving you've got liability insurance, and paying the $470.34, and the special event permit fee is waived. Thank you.

Thank you.

all right we are now on item number two school resource officer intergovernmental agreement between goshen county school district number one and the city of torrington and for that i would call on chief of police matthew johnson

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This is our annual contract agreement for the services that we provide in the county for school resource officer. Officer Alex Irons is assigned to assist at the Southeast schools and also at LaGrange. He's done a great job on that for a number of years now and has an awesome relationship with the kids. So this is really beneficial for everyone. There are a couple of items I think I suspect all of you will recall this from last year. There are a couple of minor changes that I wanted to draw your attention to. Under paragraph 1B, romanette little i, romanette one, I did add in just a note that the jurisdictional agreement will need to be updated after the election takes, or after the change in the guard, if you will, takes place January 1 of 2027. The current MOU that we have with the sheriff's office expires when the new sheriff takes office. So we'll need to get that updated. The other item that I wanted to draw your attention to is paragraph J on the second page. The district is working to manage some of their FERPA requirements. And so including a school resource officer in their FERPA agreement allows the officer to access school records, but still protect those records. We work on that with our other SROs as well. I don't see that as being a problem for this agreement. If you have any questions on that, I'll be happy to answer. And then the final, just kind of minor changes, was on the third page which would be, let's see here, paragraph D, romanette V. So it's just how the school resource officer's hourly rate is calculated, and it just explains that the city will do what we do already, which is provide the number of hours worked in each date range. If the district has any questions about how that was calculated or what services the SRO provided during that timeline, we can obviously provide reference. But all that's required by contract is that we list the date range and the number of hours that were paid in that date range. And I touched base with Ms. Bobby about that to make sure that that does not cause a problem for our billing purposes. Other than that, this is what we've done in the past that has been very successful. So I'd be happy to answer any questions.

This comes up every time we do this. He's an SRO, school resource officer. He's doing law enforcement type activities. He's not doing anything to do with school discipline.

That is correct. And I think it's important to note that. Police officers can get in trouble if they're attempting to enforce school discipline using law enforcement authority. So we are very careful to keep those two items separate. um we can assist with school discipline if there's a safety concern but other than that school discipline is for schools to deal with and law enforcement issues are for police officers to deal with and alex irons has agreed to continue doing this yes he loves it we'll have to beat him off with a stick someday probably he really enjoys it and he's good at it and just for the public's

This is an agreement between the city, the county sheriff, the school district for an SRO at the Southeast Schools and LaGrange School.

That is correct. Yes, just those schools. And Chief, we do have a vehicle for Alex to drive now that is more dependable.

We have had one for a couple of years now. He's utilizing an old Dodge Ram pickup from the sheriff's office. It's got some miles on it, but it's still clicking along pretty well. So we'll keep running it until it's no longer serviceable. In the agreement, the district does take care of fuel costs and repair costs to the pickup. And I know during the course of this last year's agreement, they've made a number of repairs that were reasonable in cost to keep that vehicle functioning effectively.

Chief, are you aware of any more movement from the state legislature about school resource officer funding in the new recalibration?

I have heard that that was up for discussion, but I don't know where it's landed. If you have information, I'd sure gladly take it. But I know the district had concerns about that in terms of how that was going to land for their ability to continue to fund this spot and the other two SROs that we have. But I don't know where it's landing right now. We've gotten a solid commitment from the district that they're going to continue to support this program because they see it as important.

And I think, I mean, the way I read this, this is 100% paid for by the school district.

That is correct. Um, the district pays a hundred percent of the costs for Alex. Um, they also cover a 15% service to, to the city. The reason for that is that we have to train Alex, which we, we pay for. Um, we also have to, um, do administrative duties for Alex managed payroll, um, take care of the uniforms, everything else. Um, so they, uh, uh, they, they do pay for all costs plus plus 15% for the service.

And then it looks like this has already been through the school board process. And Superintendent Kramer has already signed it.

Yep. It was approved by the school board and ready for our signatures.

Shane mentioned that the Sheriff's Office was in on this too?

Yes.

What is their involvement?

So there are technically two separate memorandum of understandings that work or that make this program work. The first is this agreement, which provides the contractual service for the school district and lays out how they reimburse us for the costs that we incur. The second is a jurisdictional agreement with the sheriff's office. Because this is outside of our jurisdiction, we have to operate under a jurisdictional agreement with the sheriff where he grants jurisdiction to Alex to work outside the city for Southeast and LaGrange. So we could only maintain this agreement as long as that agreement stays in place. And I have spoken with Sheriff Fleener about that, and he is in agreement that this is a good program that he'd like to continue with.

And under the agreement, Alex is a Torrington police officer under your command.

That is correct. That is correct. And as you said, he's able to work outside of the city limits because of this memorandum of understanding between the PD and the sheriff's office.

Yep. This came up because the sheriff's office did not have the staffing to provide an SRL. And so we had worked with Alex quite a bit for he was a reserve with us and then became a pro renata officer. And it just worked out really smoothly to have Alex maintain his employment as a police officer and serve in the county for the contract SRO position.

Any further questions for Chief Johnson? Item number two, school resource officer intergovernmental agreement. I would entertain a motion to approve the agreement and approve my signing of the agreement.

Mr. Mayor, I would move to approve the school resource officer intergovernmental agreement as presented and further approve your signing thereof.

All right, I have a motion from Councilman Victron and item number two to approve the school resource officer intergovernmental agreement and approve my signing of the agreement. Do I have a second second second Councilman Kelly? Any further discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Item number two, all those in favor of approval of the school resource officer intergovernmental agreement and my signing of the agreement, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, signify by saying nay. Hearing no nays, that school resource officer intergovernmental agreement is approved and I will sign it. Thank you. All right, next item on our agenda is item number three, Resolution number 2026-09. authorizing submission of a state and local cybersecurity grant program, SLCGP grant application for the design and installation of a supervisory control and data acquisition. That's SCADA or SCADA network for the city of Torrington electric utility system. And, uh, Mr. Eddington is not here present, so I will go ahead and read that resolution by title. It's resolution number 2026-09, a resolution authorizing submission of a state and local cybersecurity grant program, SLCGP, grant application for the design and installation of a supervisory control and data acquisition SCADA, S-C-A-D-A, network for the city of Torrington electric utility system. And with that, I see we have Chuck Canyon here, the emergency management coordinator.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. We joke in our in the emergency management line that FEMA is actually an acronym for federal employees making acronyms. So with us bringing this program forward, this grant program is something relatively new. It was created last year. The City-County IT Department has taken advantage of it last year to purchase a great deal of equipment, a very large grant that they are still fulfilling right now to create the backup location for the City-County IT network storage. This grant speaks to the electrical distribution network that the city owns. SCADA is a system that tells you what's going on within the system. and gives you some moderate control activities. We have a SCADA system in place for the water department that has data entry points or data, not entry, but data monitoring points, basically in all functional aspects of the water system. Anywhere where there's a pump, a controllable valve, or a well field, the wells themselves, these things are all connected to a SCADA network. that reports it to a central location, and that central location controls operation of the network. With the electrical department, we're not so much looking at control of it, although it's possible to be able to advance into that, but what we are looking at is the supervisory part of it, where if something happens, such as a suicidal squirrel, They don't actually have to wait to get a phone call from dispatch and get paged out because there's an outage somewhere. What will happen is they'll get a message that says this circuit has been tripped for some reason. So they know exactly where they're going as they roll out on the call. They know that they're going to this substation, this point, this circuit, and they can start searching that circuit for the fault that caused it. We believe that this will make the system stronger in terms of notifying them of any fault. They can monitor voltage and amperage in the system so they can see where there are problems starting to occur and remedy that before it happens. Excuse me. The reason cybersecurity is involved is because the electrical and water infrastructures within municipalities, especially small municipalities, are quite the foreign target right now. That was one of the reasons we upgraded. We received grants in 2020 and 2021 to upgrade the water SCADA system from the State Homeland Security Program because we needed to bring it up to current levels of cybersecurity. This system is a little bit different because they don't actually have a SCADA system in place now. So the idea is to create the baseline system with this grant and also provide for intrusion detection and substations, a little bit of security monitoring and stuff like that. Kind of a complicated thing. The number that we applied for, the 528,000 change, was a number derived from providing the information. Superintendent Scott Sides from the electrical department provided pictures, basically, of all the equipment in all the substations. sent that over towards a vendor that was willing to work with us in Casper to try to get a handle on what it would cost to build this system. I would consider this to be a multi-year grant program in that we would not be able to, it's not something I think will happen in a single year. because there's lots of stuff to do. We have received an email that the homeland is interested in the project. In a sense, it has passed the first hurdle. So we know that they're going to be looking and studying it more in depth. With that notification, they're very clear that they may choose to fund part or all of the project. There is no required match. So if they choose not to fund the entire little over half million dollars, we can build out a system to what they fund us for, which is what happened with the water SCADA. We had applied for x amount of dollars to do a complete change. They gave us some of it one grant cycle, and then they gave us the rest of it in the next grant cycle. With that said, I'll stand for questions. And Mr. Sides is standing behind me. So you want to get technical into what it takes to provide power to 60 or 6,000 residents and 1,000 or so living outside of the city limits that get our power also. he might be that person to question.

Don't go anywhere, Chuck. But I'll invite Electrical Superintendent Scott Sides up, because I wanted him to come up and get his perspective on the ground sort of thing. That was an excellent explanation of this grant, Chuck. And first of all, does anybody have any questions for Mr. Kenyon?

Just other than the competitiveness of the grant itself, do you know much more about that?

No, I don't. The state gets When FEMA or Homeland comes out and says, we're giving $300 million out, there's always the state pulls a section out. Sometimes with these grants, there's minimum cutouts that every state gets at least $20 million or something like that. I don't know if that's the case with this grant or not. I do know that last year, You know, the college applied for money and got money, a lot of money. And the project that the city county IT department is doing, that the county's managing that grant, there was a lot of money in that, too. So this program is not outside of some of the asks that have come to the state for the thing. And since it is, it's kind of a limited program because cybersecurity. So nobody's going to be buying. pickup trucks or buying, sorry, chief handheld radios with this grant. So it's very limited in scope. And SCADA is one of the particular things that's called out in the Notice of Funding Opportunity, which is the rules of the grant, what we call a NOFO. It clearly states that SCADA is something that they're targeting cybersecurity for.

Thank you, Mr. Kennedy.

Is that a half a million dollar figure? Is that just a guesstimate of what it would be if it did today?

It is kind of a guesstimate, yes. The person that gave us that estimate reviewed the equipment that is in our system through the photographs that were sent, giving serial numbers and age of equipment, all that stuff. is was consolidated, but like any major project, there may be some things that pop up that surprise everybody. So we had originally believed in an initial discussion that the reclosers they're called, which are the circuit breakers for the system, we thought that we didn't have the ability to get data from them. But then we found out as we were getting into the engineer that we were working with said, oh, yeah, we can talk to that. We might not be able to control it, but we can talk to it and get information from it. And getting the information is half the battle.

So if we got the $528,000, the city could be in liable for more than that to finish the project?

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

The $528,000 is a grant.

Right.

Then if it comes down to do the project, the city could be liable for whatever that extra cost might be?

We would not proceed with the project without the grant award. And again, if we get a grant award that it is less than that, we are not under obligation to complete a project past that. If that makes sense. And if it becomes a $650,000 project, we can choose not to do that much of it to back up to whatever is awarded and then go the next year. The nice thing about it is there's five substations. So maybe we do the three main ones first. And the older ones, you know, we'll tie those in a little later on. The big thing is creating the backbone because we have to create a network between these locations, whether it's by radio, like the water department uses a two-way VHF or UHF radio system between the points. But this may be connecting to fiber in the area or something like that. Or radio is a little difficult when you've got... 34,500-volt conductors hanging around. It becomes a little more of a problem. But these things are all stuff that will be defined in a much closer manner as we move forward if the grant is awarded.

All right. Superintendent sides. So first of all, thank you for cooperating with Mr. Canyon to get the photos and all the data he needed to submit the grant. So how would this work from your perspective?

Well, Thank you, guys. First of all, a big shout out to Chuck. I mean, he found the grant and did basically all the work. It would be huge for the city of Torrington Electric Department and the city itself. I mean, instantaneous data, safety. I mean, it's kind of endless, really, with it. It's like going from a flip phone to a smartphone, that kind of thing.

This would get us up to where? Powers that be would like everybody to be, right? Because we do have cybersecurity threats and all kinds of threats. Okay. All right. Any questions for Scott or Chuck?

I know this is cybersecurity, but what's the possibility of the vulnerability to hacking the system? Is that going to increase our vulnerability there?

Currently, right now, there is not a network for the electrical. So there is no possibility of hacking our system right now. WAPA, the Western Area Power Administration, they could possibly be hacked because they have computer controls on a network for their SCADA stuff that feeds the city. One of the basis for looking at this is these substations have become targets. There was an incident in North Carolina, I believe it was, two years ago, where a person went and shot one substation and then went a number of miles down the line, shot the other one. Another one, and it took a large area of the county out completely because, unfortunately, these transformers, you don't pick them up at the local electric supply. And if you shoot it and knock the cooling system out of it, the transformer can overheat, things like that, catch fire. So part of that is people wanting to do bad things to the substations. But then also, that's why we're concerned with the security intrusion detection and things like that, although I think you've got to be crazy to walk into one of those things when it's hot. With regard to the cybersecurity side of it, the system as designed would meet current cybersecurity standards, which is why we upgraded the water system five, six years ago to bring it up to current cybersecurity protection.

And that was my question. Uh, if we do get this and do it, we would obviously probably need to be connected to fiber or something because as you mentioned, radio frequency, we have to create a network, all that sort of thing at a substation. Uh, would that make us more vulnerable since we would be connected?

Um, we would be dependent on making sure that if the fiber was public network, so to speak, You know, like paying for a service as opposed to owning a fiber. We would have to have the full cybersecurity equipment on each point. Similar to, you know, the city county network today. We are passing data over fiber that is owned by someone else. And there's other traffic on that fiber because we can't honestly afford to have our own dark fiber, you know, where we control it and nobody else uses it. So that type of security is always an issue and always a concern. And anything that we do, this would meet whatever the cybersecurity standards are of the day that the system is going into as opposed to something in the past.

Just the same concerns that a private citizen has with your home network.

Absolutely. And the beauty of this, if I understand, the city could elect to just have a supervisory system rather than a control system.

Yes, we start with a supervisory. And then because, quite frankly, the control side of it would probably require, what do you call it? A lot more equipment.

Form 7, was it? Yeah, Form 7s, yep.

Form 7 equipment to be able to control things remotely. Yep.

Which, I mean, in the long run, I think would be super beneficial, just safety reasons. I mean, once we had a tree trimmer get in the line and we had to drive to the substation to shut it off, and that way we could literally do it from a computer, you know. There's good things and bad things about everything, but it'd be pretty awesome. I mean, that's a lot of money sitting there in those substations. And we do weekly substation checks, and we could do it twice a day just off the computer, just a supervisory way, too.

OK. Any further questions for Mr. Kenyon or Mr. Sides? All right. Thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you. Thank you.

Alright, we are on item number three resolution number 2026-09 authorizing submission of the state and local cyber security grant program application for the design and installation of a supervisory control and data acquisition network for the city of Tarleton Electric Utility System. I would entertain a motion to approve the resolution and approve my signing of the grant. Of the resolution, I guess.

Mr. Mayor, I'd make a motion to approve resolution number 2026-09 and your signature there too.

All right, I have a motion from Councilman Deal and item number three to approve resolution number 2026-09 as presented and approve my signing of that grant. Do I have a second?

Second.

Second from Councilman Kelly. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for vote. Item number three, all those in favor of approving resolution number 2026-09 regarding this grant and my signing of the grant, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, signify by saying nay. Hearing no nays, that resolution is approved and I will sign the grant. Next item on our agenda is item number four, resolution number 2026-10, amend the 2026 fiscal year budget. And in the absence of Mr. Eddington being here in person, I will read the resolution by title. The resolution reads as follows. City of Torrington City Council meeting, July 21, 2026, resolution number 2026-10. Whereas the general fund received unanticipated revenue, and whereas certain budgets had expenditures in excess of the budgeted amount, Whereas Wyoming State statute prohibits any officer or employee of a municipality to make any expenditure or encumbrance in excess of the total appropriation for any department. Therefore, be it resolved that the FY 2026 budget for the City of Torrington be amended as follows. I would call on Mrs. Strecker.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This time of year, I am Looking at the budgets really close as expenses come in, and I did notice that the fire department is going to go over. Currently, they have $172 in their budget, and there are still some expenses coming in. I need to adjust that budget in order for us to approve those bills in the next agenda item, because we have to have a budget in order to pay those bills. So if you have any questions, what we're doing here is we did have some air conditioner repairs that were not budgeted this year. And so we're adjusting for that amount. out of the unanticipated revenue we had some extra revenue in our sales tax revenues so I'm just taking that revenue and adjusting the budget for the fire department

All right and I know you've been in contact with our auditor and he's approving of this yes, and you've been in contact with our city attorney yes, he's approving of this you've been in contact with me and I'm approving of this and it's something that has to be done to just get things squared away.

Is this 2 separate items were dealing with. So your condition in one for the fire department.

So the air conditioning is for the fire department. So they had it repaired.

Oh, the air conditioning one is for the fire department.

Yes.

Yes.

Not two, one, fire department and its air conditioner.

Right.

I'm going to go out on a limb, and I assume these repairs were obviously unanticipated or an emergency kind of situation.

Yeah, and fire chief Jeff Schick is here, I guess, to explain some of those things. But yes, I believe they were failing, and they did call to get them repaired. And thank goodness, because this week has been brutal.

Well, and just as you all know, having gone through grind of the budget process. We're stuck with dates. You know, our fiscal year starts on July 1 of the year and ends on June 30 of the year. And I know Lynette is busy during that whole budget work session process with the department heads. Make sure that I'm not getting stuff in after the second meeting in June and That's what happened, I think. Yeah, in in short, I know Fire Chief Schick had. I talked to him about it. And Lynette talked to him about it. It was kind of a learning experience and. So there you go. And this is the way to. Resolve the issue that we have for auditing purposes and so on and make sure that that squared away. All right, any questions for Mrs. Stracker?

Well, how is it that we go about doing this process?

Well, I'll let Lynette answer that. But first, I will say I will, at a point here shortly, ask for a motion to approve resolution number 2026-10 to amend the 2026 fiscal year budget. And then put it up for a vote.

But that doesn't include the second one, does it?

OK, good question. If the council approves item number four to amend the 2026 budget, then this extra bill that she passed out tonight will be asked to approve the bill and pay the bill.

But I can't approve the bills or pay them if there's no budget appropriation. So we have to adjust the budget to amend it to increase it, to increase their budget. Which would then authorize the payment. And then authorize the payment of the bills. That's why they're separate. And the reason I did the air conditioner is this was the unexpected emergency that made them go over. So that's why I'm adjusting for this, so that we can pay the telephone bill and the other things listed there. Travel.

It's a two-step process.

This is the first step.

Yep.

The building, the fire hall, is the city's. Am I correct in stating that? Yes. So we are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the building?

Yes. I see Mrs. Stricker nodding in agreement. Any further questions?

I have one more. Go ahead. Just because I'm curious. Go ahead. Hypothetically, what if the budget amendment was not approved? What happens to the expenditure that's already, or the services already rendered to the city? Then what?

In that case, we would be over budget. And the auditor would make a finding on the audit. And it would not. work well for us with grant applications and other things to have a finding on our audit. We are technically have to pay these bills because we contracted for them.

And it's the law to have a balanced budget.

That's correct.

And there's fail-safe options in the statutes, right? This is not the first time this has ever happened to a municipality. You hope it doesn't happen very, very often. But there's a way to deal with this. Because as you all know, Lynette will be seeing the auditors here in a couple of months. And all that stuff has to be squared away. And we do well through that. Since I've been mayor, and you guys have been on, we've done well with that audit. And we want to continue to do well with that audit, because as you say, that helps us in getting grants and loans and so on to be squared away with our budget.

Yeah, if we don't pay those bills, we'd likely be sued. So this will solve the problem, and it's open and transparent to the public. Yes, we went over budget, and we're adjusting the budget.

Most recently, we've amended the budget, such as like with the pool repair work.

Right.

Large substantial amount of money that we brought into the budget to spend that was unanticipated.

Yeah, and when we do our budget in June or approve it for July, a lot can happen in a year that I can't anticipate, that no one can anticipate. And luckily, we did have some extra revenue we could take this out of, so we didn't have to go into reserves. So that's good.

Well, the fire department actually has a budget, though, doesn't it?

Their budget is in our budget. Yeah.

So we just need to amend the budget by what, about $9,000 something?

It's $6,842.27.

Well, the other one's $2,100, isn't it?

Those are the bills that have come in so far, yes.

But the budget will have to, well. It'd be about $4,000.

So it's not going to be exactly. They'll have a little bit extra in case something else were to pop up.

But these bills for the fire department will come out of the 27 budget?

The 26 budget.

26.

Yep. OK. We are still backdating any invoices dated June 30 or before. That is part of being on the accrual accounting system. So that's why we have no choice but to pay these in that budget.

I think I got it figured out.

The expense is going to be incurred in the fiscal 26 budget.

Yes, it is.

All right. If you gentlemen don't have any further questions for Mrs. Strecker, we are on item number four. Resolution number 2026-10 to amend the 2026 fiscal year budget and approve my signing of the resolution.

Mr. Mayor, I would move to approve resolution number 2026-10 and further approve your signature.

All right, item number four, I have a motion from Councilman Victron to approve resolution number 2026-10 to amend the 2026 fiscal year budget and approve my signing of the resolution. Do I have a second? Second. Second from Councilman Deal. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. Item number four, all those in favor of resolution number 2026-10 to amend the 2026 fifth-year budget and approve my signing thereof, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, signify by saying nay. Hearing no nays, that resolution is approved and I will sign it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next item on the agenda is the amended agenda item for a, uh, to, uh, To suspend the businesses that?

Stating that they have provided the notice, and they would not be allowed to serve liquor until they have restored their status with the state. And we are notified of that.

OK. so liquor sales would stop upon service of the notice by a local pd officer that's correct and then they could get out of that fix by taking care of the sales tax hold notice yep that part of it all goes through the state we don't we don't have anything to do with the sales tax tax aspect of it we are just notified by the state when they're not in compliance So we're just looking for a motion to suspend here, and then if it passes, then, and I think we're mandatory that we do suspend, if that passes, then Chief Johnson can instruct one of his officers to make service on the business, and it's out of our hands then, right? And they're not allowed to sell until that's taken care of. Yes, sir.

So if we approve this and you send them over right then when you give them the vapor, that's what's selling liquor?

Yeah, that'll be taken care of this evening. Literally this evening, they'll get notice. Provided they can be contacted.

All right, any questions for either Mrs. Cervantes or Chief Johnson? All right. I would entertain a motion to suspend Thirsty's Liquor License until they take care of the sales tax hold notice. I would entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor, I'd make a motion to approve the suspension until the sales tax is paid.

All right. Item 4A, I have a motion from Councilman Deal to suspend the liquor license until sales tax is paid. Do I have a second? I would second. Second from Councilman Victor. Any further discussion? All right. I'll call for a vote. Item number four, a all those in favor of suspending the liquor license until the sales tax is paid, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed signify by saying nay. You know, nays that license is suspended until the liquor sales tax notice for sales tax is paid. And you will do what you said, right? Yes, sir. Thank you, Chief. All right. We are now on Item number five, approval of the bills from July 8th, 26 to July 21 of 26. And with that, I would call on Mrs. Strecker.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. So attached to your agenda was a list of bills. And I also sent out another list tonight, two lists for your approval tonight, one for the fire department and one for the rest of the city of Torrington's bills. So I'd be glad to answer any questions you have on any of those bills.

May I ask this? So are we going to need two motions, a regular motion to approve the bills? And do we need a separate motion on?

No.

OK. Just the bills as presented?

Correct.

On the first set of bills at the bottom of Bivens Construction, Flat River Dentistry water improvements. Is that what we just put the water lines in? Is that what we did? Was that for the sewer too?

That is just for the water line portion. We paid for the sewer line for a separate account.

This was where we were really concerned with a tight...

utility easement in that area right correct the water line is actually in the shoulder of the road it's on the west side of west c street and there's currently you know fiber optic and other types of lines going through there is that why the electrical department had to hold that one pole up i see a nod of affirmation from the back

And I probably should know, but this has nothing to do with the bill. I'm just trying to figure out what a squincher is. Does anybody know what that is? Okay.

And every now and then, I like to point this out on first set, page seven, those payments to New Hope Counseling for individual counseling sessions. Those are always paid for. We're always reimbursed by that grant. So for each of those payments for that individual counseling, we will be reimbursed by way of a grant.

Mr. Mayor, if there are no more questions about the bills, I'd make a motion to pay the bills as presented, including the one for the fire department.

All right. We are on item number five, approval of the bills from July 8th, 26 to July 21 of 26, including the bill for the fire department. Do I have a second?

Second.

Any further discussion, gentlemen? Hearing none, item number five, all those in favor of approval of the bills as presented, including the fire department bill, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, signify by saying nay. Hearing no nays, those bills are approved. We are now on public comment, and Fire Chief Schick is here, and I know he'll give us a fire report.

Evening, Mayor, Council. Pretty mild. Seven total calls, five city calls, two rural. Nothing too pressing. Just gearing up for some extensive training the next few weeks for the end of July and all of August. That's about all I've got for you, gentlemen.

Appreciate that. Any questions for the fire chief?

I won't say the Q word, so. Thank you, sir.

All right. Any further public comment?

I have a public comment, Mr. Mayor. Last city council meeting, we accepted graciously a donation from the Shriners Club for, I believe it was 130. 132 or 3. Passes to the pool, or they were children passes, I believe. Yes. And appreciate their willingness and support there. Want to extend a thank you this meeting to Pinnacle Bank. uh, who in some way followed suit. Um, but through their own way, um, I believe the employees there at the bank, they put in a, into a fund so they can wear jeans to work. And then they use those dollars to, uh, go toward, go towards a good cause in the community. So they graciously purchased 125 passes at the pool recently for, I believe that was last week maybe. But, uh, Nevertheless, I want to appreciate their generosity to the children of the community, or in fact, probably even anyone that day that took part in swimming. I know the pool's been very busy the past week or so, especially in this heat. So anyway.

Well, I appreciate your mentioning that. And I did want to let you know I talked to Shay Bates, the Shriner that sort of was behind all that. And he was very appreciative of how all that worked. And he said they were looking to do it again next year. So I wanted to pass that on.

Speaking of generosity at the pool, Mr. Mayor, I should mention that the police chief has his ice cream day coming up pretty soon for the kiddos.

I think that's Friday at 2.40. I don't want to steal your thunder.

Friday at 2.40. We'd love to give as many kids ice cream as we can. It's our Cops and Cones event for the afternoon break at the pool. Did I say 2.40 or 3.40? You said 2.40. Good.

I'm tired. And then, Chief, I'm going to put... On the spot in a good way. I know you have active threat training going on. Can you just give us a, well, I think we all know, but the public could just a brief rundown on that.

You bet. Today and tomorrow, we're running through our annual active threat training where we do kind of a school threat based focused. Doing it up at the college this year. Today we had nine police officers. Tomorrow we'll have 12. The goal is to bring police officers from anywhere in Goshen County. So we had Highway Patrol, Goshen County Sheriff's Office, and our agency. We do about an hour and change of classroom training, and then about three and a half hours of scenarios. I've got a series of three really dynamic, challenging scenarios for police officers to work on. A lot of great tactical skills, a lot of good tools and techniques, and really the biggest theme is bringing everybody together with common experience so that if we have a crisis in our community, we can respond to it effectively and keep people safe. So it was a great training today. Everybody's tired, but we were blessed with some cooler temperatures, and it was just a great event today. So looking forward to tomorrow.

All right. I appreciate that report, Chief Johnson.

I was going to say, I had the opportunity last year to observe it. It's quite the undertaking.

It's a lot of work, but it's well worth it.

Yeah.

Having police officers get that level of training is really important for the safety of our community. So thank you.

All right. Any other items during public comment? Seeing none, I appreciate everyone's attendance. We have completed our agenda for this evening, so this meeting is adjourned.