City Council - Regular Meeting

That's why I don't go to games, I'm superstitious. I lose every time.

Welcome, it is 6.30. We will call the Monday, August 10, 2026 City Council Meeting to order. If you could please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

visible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

And with that, do we have any additions to the agenda tonight? No additions tonight, Mayor. Hearing none, I'll look for a motion to approve the agenda as presented.

Motion. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Motion carries 5-0. With that, we will move to public comments. If there's anyone who would like to discuss anything that is not on the agenda... Now is your time to come forward. Seeing none, we'll close public comments and move to consent agenda. Is there anything on the consent agenda that needs to be pulled for further discussion? Hearing none, I'll look for a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Motion.

Second.

We have a motion, a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Motion carries 5-0. And we'll jump right into business items and start out with consider adoption of resolution, accepting a donation from the Mayor Baseball Club.

Thank you, Mayor. With the Mayor Rising Community Festival, the fire department had a band that played in the evening hours and the baseball club would like to put money towards the invoice of that band. They are unable to give directly to the fire department relief in that fashion. So they have asked the city to act as an intermediary, which we are capable of doing. So they would like to donate $2,000 to the city of mayor and in the resolution of the packet that then directs us to pay a portion of that invoice for that in the amount of $2,000. So it'd be money in, money out.

Perfect. Any other questions? One question I do have, Nick. And one, I appreciate the donation from the baseball club. This is wonderful. What if next year comes around and they are not doing a band? Does this just then go to the relief association or what happens in that instance if next summer it doesn't come through?

So this goes to pay for this year's band.

Oh, to pay for, oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it was for next year's. Thank you for the clarification. That is wonderful. So I do appreciate the donation and that'll help cover some of the expenses. I appreciate any other comments. Did I get a motion?

Nope.

All right. I didn't think so. Then I'll look for a motion.

Motion.

Second. We have a motion and a second. and to accept resolution 2026-6 in the amount of $2,000 donation from the Mayor Baseball Club to help pay for the band from the 2026 Street Dance. So any other questions? Comments? Hearing none, I'll look. We already have.

Wow. I need to back up. All in favor say aye. Aye.

All in favor say aye. We'll get there. Motion carries 5-0. Wow. That threw me off. Thank you. With that, then we'll move to item number 10, consider introduction of ordinance 254, amending the fee schedule.

Thank you, Mayor. Typically, we only amend our fee schedule once a year as we approach the final portions of budget season into the next year. But we've had a situation come up where we're looking to introduce clarity and simplicity to that is a little bit ambiguous where it stands. In our current language on page 7 of the PDF with the ordinance in it, I'll go to that here. Apologies. There we go. We have a line item in there that says right-of-way permit $250. And this line item in our fee schedule, we have fee schedules going back to 2002 on our shared drive that we have access to. We have paper files going back even farther. But just a quick search on the shared drive back to 2002 has this exact same right-of-way permit $250 as you see it in the crossed out there, but as it stands. With the Comcast build out, they've requested a review of that interpretation of it. The interpretation we had was this applies per property, because we get these from Excel, we get these from natural gas, and it's been a bit of a mixed bag in how it's been applied over the years when we started doing some research on it. So we wanted to introduce some clarity on that. We've been utilizing pretty much since the city of Oconee has gone through this process with Comcast, the application, build out all of that. We've looked to them once again. I did some research on some other cities and looking to update how we implement right-of-way permit applications and fees to more modernize it, streamline it, give it more clarity than what we currently have. Since this hasn't been changed in at least 24 years, Since 2002 or even before that. So looking at what other cities do, they typically have an application fee itself for submittal. And then when it comes to things like trenching or boring in the right of way, they have another fee for that, which typically takes the form of a per linear foot charge. This varies from city to city. somewhere between 25 cents to 60 cents was some of that I saw. And then they have a restoration escrow that's with it. So if they bore a trench or whatever, and they don't come back and fix it, we have escrow in hand to then go ahead and do the restoration of those boulevards. So we looked at doing that. Mike and I had a little bit more discussion earlier today on this, and we'd like to propose a little bit of an additional split on the right-of-way restoration escrow on that. And the updated language we'd like to have on there is before we just had restoration escrow of 1500 and that would apply to all, but I'm talking with Mike some more, we feel a delineation between small and large projects would be suitable, especially since we have Comcast coming up in hand here. So we said, um, small projects would be up to 10 properties per application. Those would be a $1,500 deposit. If you have over 10 properties involved in your boring or trenching, then it would be 15,000. We just took 1500 multiplied by 10, and that'll be the escrow. So that 15 will be the rolling escrow we have for the entirety of the project on that. The right-of-way boring fee, the 50 cents, the city of Waconia just implemented right-of-way fees for the first time in 2026. They're using 50 cents per linear foot. So that seemed like a good barometer. to check in on. And some other cities had an allowance for the first X amount of fee, and it ranged from 125 up to 350 or so. So I picked 200 out of there. So if you have boring that is less than 200 feet for what you're doing, there wouldn't be an additional boring charge on that. It would just be the permit fee of 250 on that. Other cities generally had slightly lower permit application fees, but ours has been $250 since 2002 or earlier. So feel like putting that, keeping that the same as it is. And then this will then go ahead and give greater clarity to Comcast and what their fees are going to be for trenching in our right of way. So what that is going to look like if council wishes to go with this schedule is the project is being broken up into three phases. Each phase has about 30,000 ish worth of linear feet of boring that will take place roughly. So all in applications, we're looking at around $45,000 and total fees for the project.

That Comcast pays?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. With this updated structure.

Now, if they don't use it, they get it back.

The escrow they get back. Yes. That just ensures that. And this would be for Comcast or anybody else who does a project. They don't just go skip out. There's a bunch of dirt and rock and grass not growing. This is money. Then we can tap to go ahead and do that restoration work.

How did you come up with those totals? I mean, like what's an average fix on one property?

The 1500, the 1500 that originally came from Waconia. They have 1500 per opening. And then they had a side conversation with Comcast because it was going to be, it was 1500 per opening now multiplied by the thousands of openings they're about to do in Waconia. And that was a tremendous number. So they actually decided to go with, I believe it was a $10,000 rolling restoration. For the whole project than a $40,000 performance bond on that so. Originally, when we were looking at it in this format, the restoration escrow ahead at 1500, because that's what we're calling it had. But then talk about delineating it more in that way.

And some of that keep in mind, like the bottom on the 15,000 that we're getting there, they're going to be doing it in a couple different applications so. If they don't do proper restoration on the first application, they're not going to get approval for the second one. So that's why that 15 grand, if they left every property, all 900 in the community, that might not cover it. But because it's going to be done in different applications, they won't get approval on the second one of the first one we're seeing problems. So we feel that that's a pretty fair, fair amount to take care of what we need to. And a little bit more detail on this. Also, Nick went back and looked at Jaguar. We want to make sure we're kind of doing apples to apples and being fair across the board. Because this was so vague, Jaguar got charged about... only the 250 per, they weren't getting charged $250 per property, which some interpretation could have been. So, which would have come to near $250,000, which seems so out of control extreme for anyone to come in and do a project. People just wouldn't. So, This clears up a lot. It's fair across the board how we've been doing it. As fair as we can be, there is some different interpretation. But with this clarity now, we should be locked in real well going forward for Excel or anyone else who comes in to do anything.

So just playing devil's advocate a little bit, let's say they have 15 properties. So they're at the $15,000 and they don't do two of them. Do you fix the two and then give them back? Or does that mean now...

My understanding with the escrow, we would take what we need to do the proper restoration or whatever amount is left over out of that deposit, if you will, or escrow, they would get that amount back.

So whether it's like five properties or 15 properties, the application fee is $250 for whatever amount of properties they're doing, not per property. Correct.

This is just the application fee.

Gotcha. That makes sense.

Yeah, so any other questions on that before we move forward with that then I'll look for a motion to approve ordinance 254 amending the fee schedule with the right away permit application fee of $250 right of way trench or boring fee 50 cents per linear foot first 200 feet no charge. Right away, small project restoration $1500 up to 10 properties and large project 15,000 over 10 properties. Motion that again we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Motion carries 50. Thank you that we will move to and thank you for putting that together, Nick. With that, we'll move to consider approval of conduit debt financing policy update.

Thank you, Mayor. From time to time, cities get requests. I'll back up even further than that. I believe it was in about the 1980s when the state wanted to encourage cities and nonprofits to work together more on projects. So they put into place a funding avenue where nonprofits could issue debt through cities and take advantage of a city's bank qualified or tax exempt bonding status. And this has advantages because when you're tax exempt like cities are, you tend to get better interest rates on the loans you take out rather than going out into the market on that. So this was an incentive for the nonprofits to work with cities on these types of projects. They're allowed to take advantage of our tax exempt status that gets them a lower interest rate like that. So from time to time, cities will get these requests from nonprofits to go through the exact same process and it's called conduit debt. And the name is exactly as it sounds, the city functions as a conduit for the flow of these funds. The city is not responsible for any of the costs involved. We're not responsible for any, if let's say the nonprofit defaults on the thing, the city is not responsible for any payments. There's no liability to us. The nonprofit pays for all the maintenance and upkeep of the bond for the life of us. They send us reports that we incorporate into our audit files and they're required to give those to us. So the city really has no outlay on this. It was really just to get more of that cooperative working together aspect of it. So we have had a contact from a nonprofit that wishes to utilize us. Well, we got the contact from a TAF law firm and they specialize in bonds in the state of Minnesota and elsewhere. Mary Ipple gave me a call and I've worked with Mary my entire career and she has a nonprofit that's wanting to work with us for some conduit financing. And she had asked, well, what was the city's fee in all this? And so I haven't worked with conduit debt with the city of Mayer yet, so I had to go dig up the policy. So I brought it up. It was originally approved by city council in 2006 with a review in 2015. So it's been a little bit of time since it's been looked at once again. I gave it a review, and the one thing that stood out to me the most on this was the It was the maximum fee associated with the administrative fee. So typically what happens since the nonprofits are getting the advantage of a lower interest rate, there's a lot of savings to be had there, especially when you're talking multi, multi-million dollar projects, that savings or that interest cost adds up quite a bit. So cities charge a fee for being that conduit and allowing that savings to happen. It's very common. And usually that takes the form of a percentage of the principal amount of the loan. So Mayors was one half of 1%, which it can range from a quarter to a full percent. I've seen those in there, but then we have a minimum fee, which is typical. Then I saw we had a maximum fee, which at the time of the current policy is $25,000. Maximums aren't quite as common I've seen in other policies. So I did some research on why it might be 25,000, and I couldn't find a direct reason for it. I contacted about five or six different people who may have had an inkling of it, and they just said, nope, that's just what it happened to be at the time of adoption. And that's what it is on there. So I thought about it more, and if you take one half of 1%, let's see if you didn't have a max, the maximum that a city can offer up in tax-exempt bonds per year is $10 million per year. That's our cap. Anything over that then is taxable above that. So $25,000 represents about $5 million at one half of a percent. Since that number hasn't been touched since 2006, I want to take a peek at that. And so my recommendation is that we up that to 50,000 because 50,000 represents a half of a percent of $10 million. So that's the full bank qualified amount of 10 million to do it by half percent. There's your 50,000. And since it hasn't changed in a long time, that's not an unreasonable thing to up it by. And then we added some additional language in here because we do have nonprofits which are local to a city of mayor. And you don't have to be within city limits in order to do conduit debt. So we wanted to offer up some language which gives a local option. So if they're doing a project in town or we have a local nonprofit that wants to do a project that substantially has public benefit, Then we now have an avenue here where they could come in and make a request to have that fee then reduced. And in the original language, it was on a case by case basis and it was vague. But again, talking with Mike this morning before the city council meeting, We clarified a little bit on that more. So the updated language that we have in here, so the administrative fee, rather than just open-ended, so you could have one nonprofit that asked to have it reduced to $6,000, another could ask for $10,000. So we're looking for a little more consistency on what is that maximum threshold. So came up with $25,000, which would be the original of what it was. So that still offers a nice, healthy discount on the administrative fee for the local nonprofits or an out-of-town nonprofit that is choosing to do a project in Mare. a new project, they would be able to do that, but it offers a nice little cap there. It allows for continuity for future city councils. So we're not getting requests for five grand at 45,000 or whatever it may be. So we kept that maximum. So nobody's asking for anything too low. So if they can substantiate local benefit, we have a little bit of a criteria on there, prove that then we do by resolution to reduce that fee. Any questions I can field from council?

Okay. So, okay. You, this maximum thing.

Yes.

At first you said we had just the maximum of 25. Correct. So then you said we're going to change it to 50. But then at the very end of your statement, you said the max would be 25.

Okay. Yes. Sorry. Perfect.

For local for local people that want to work locally.

So like benefit the community, the old maximum was 25 across the board. OK, there was no local option.

Are those fees due at the front of it?

There is a $3000 fee due at the up front and then once it is all completed and the debt is issued, then they would go ahead as part of that closing. Remit the remainder to the city. Correct.

And we have had local use this a couple years ago and a non-local use it within the time I've been sitting here.

Yeah, I can think of four non-locals that have used that one local in my time. So it's much more... non-local and it's not really benefit they're just really using our great uh ratings we have our bond ratings that we've worked hard to get to and put money you know a lot of effort into that so it's just recouping some of that and The savings are huge. I mean, these look like large numbers, but when you're talking five, six, seven, eight million dollars and they can lower their interest rates two, three, four percent, they're talking, you know, saving $75,000, $80,000 a year, you know, just in interest. So it seems like a high number, but oh, in the grand scheme of things there, it's well worth it for them to do it.

So we're not responsible for the money, but... If for some reason they would fail, does our bond rating ding? Nope.

It's just strictly a pass-through using what we burn.

The amount we can bond out resets the first of the year. Correct. Nick would look and be like, okay, we're not taking out any bonds that would meet the cap of $10 million the rest of the year, so we have room for having somebody else use that allocation. Got it. Exactly, yeah.

And that could be a potential future circumstance where we get a nonprofit that asks and the city is going to do a project. Like, nope, we have to use our, let's say it's a $10 million project. We're going to be using that that year. So we can't have the nonprofit use it.

Yep. So every nonprofit that comes through and wants this, it would be presented to us or is this just allowing it?

It would be presented to city council.

Like they come to the meeting. Yes.

Explain their plan. They explained everything.

Okay. Sounds like a win-win for.

It is.

Yes. For everybody.

It really is.

Any further questions? With that, then I'll look for a motion to approve the conduit debt financing policy to change to a $50,000 maximum for non benefits to the community and non local and keeping the maximum at 25,000 case by case for benefits to the community with Council's approval. Motion second, we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I'll say aye aye. Motion carries 5-0. With that we will go right into City Council reports. Council member health.

Personnel committee meeting, but we're going to be discussing that further in the workshop.

Thank you, Council member fashion.

I attended National Night Out. I thought it was pretty good turnout. It was fun. Yeah.

Perfect. Thank you for attending. Council Member Jackson?

Nope. Meeting next Tuesday.

Parkborn? Perfect. Thank you. And Council Member McNeely? Nope.

Nothing.

Nothing to report on. And I have a few things here. It's been, it was a busy couple weeks. I also had a personnel committee meeting that we will talk about after The workshop will go into closed session. I did attend the fire department meeting last Monday. A couple of things that are going on there is Carver County is changing their paging system for the fire department a little bit. They're going to now go to the initial page is going to be electronic. So as the dispatch has taken the call, instead of getting all the information, then send it out, they can hit a button. and get the initial call out right away to save some time on response. So that'll be one of the changes. We will have to reprogram radios and pagers, but there won't be a need to upgrade them or replace them for anything else to be able to upgrade or reprogram them. And then also they are taking applications to backfill chief to a position for the next couple of weeks. I attended National Night Out also last Tuesday. I thought it was well attended. Very well attended. So thank you to the Mayor of New Germany Lions for sponsoring it and providing dinner for everyone. Thank you to Mayor Fire for being there. Carver County Sheriff's Department was there. Ridgeview was there. Everyone else who attended. Aaliyah was out there giving massages, and there's some other groups out there. So I thank everyone for attending. I thought it was a pretty good attendance. I haven't heard from the Lions on what they thought, you know, if they thought it was successful, but it seemed to be well attended.

They only had about five hot dogs left. Oh, really? That's awesome.

Not a lot. So it was well attended. Then on Wednesday, Nick and I met with the president of the Mayor Rising Community Festival. See where the city is.

Can we help? What kind of involvement can we have?

We really want to see this grow. We love the idea of the band and doing things. We'd love to see it go another, at least another year or two, really try it out, see if we can keep this growing, see where we can help in. We'll talk more about that in the workshop also with some funding and things like that, that we had some ideas meeting with Lauren. And last but not least, I attended the Mayor Lutheran High Science Center dedication on Sunday. Beautiful addition that they added on to really focus on their STEM programs and that. Beautiful classrooms they added, some nice labs, some nice open space with a fireplace and some couches. It was a great turnout, I thought. They did add a weather shelter. And in there right on the new wing, which was really nice. You know, it can also be multipurpose, you know, kind of other than weather, you know, and really provide safety for the students and the staff for any occasion, anything that may happen. Just a beautiful, beautiful addition they put on. So congratulations to Meredith and I for completing the addition. They did a great job. And that's all I have, a little lengthy this week, but like I said, it was a busy week. So with that, I'll look for a motion to adjourn.

Motion. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye.

Opposed, same sign.

We are adjourned. So with that, we can jump right into the workshop. We'll call to order and start with the 2027 budget.

Thank you, Mayor. I think we also get into our fourth year of budget. bring this up here. I'll go through the five major funds and the changes that I've got scoped in for that. There's not a lot of huge movement in this, so this won't be like a really, really long section about it. Got changes, but they're not grandiose in nature. So starting out, alcoholic beverages, looking at reducing that slightly. Since Casey's no longer is doing their off sale, we have a few less temporary permits coming in, just adjusting that to more with realistic expectations of what we're seeing these days. So reducing that from 4,500 to 4,000. Next one on there is local government aid. The state gives us our projections a year or two in advance for what they believe local government aid will be. So we have those projections in hand and those have been incorporated. So LGA is going to go up $3,099 for the city of mayor in 2027. Go down, look at community center rental, looking at increasing that by $1,000. We've seen steady increasing usage of our community center and rentals over the handful of years that I've been here, coming up on four. That's been coming back into popular usage again. So our revenues continue to rise on rentals. So we expect that to continue into the future. Interest earnings, looking at lowering that slightly. The reason for that, this might get tweaked higher, might get tweaked lower, depending on, because we had talked about doing projects with some of the surplus funds that we had from our audit that we had talked about in the general fund. So if we are shifting some of those funds away, therefore our interest earnings will go down associated with that. So that's the adjustment there. Tower and antenna rent up by $1,500, just based on a 3% lift on the leases and the calculations we have there. That's what We can see that steadily goes up over time based on the leases. So adjusting for that. We look at fire contracts. Again, we have the 2027 contracts in place. So this is the scheduled revenue that we are looking at in comparison. Why it's going down a little bit is because the townships aren't building structures on properties as fast as the city of mayor does. And that's the deciding, that's the split factor that we determine that by. So if the city continues to have more structures growing faster than the townships, then we take on a greater share of the total cost by formula. So that's a $765 adjustment there. And then lastly, on the revenue side and refunds and reimbursements under fire, fire department training and insurance reimbursement and anticipating that insurance costs will go up for that reimbursement of the PSOP program that we apply back to each year. So minor adjustments in the general fund. We might see a little bit more tweaks, but I'm not expecting anything really much more major on this. As always with budgeting philosophy, when we look at general property taxes, I always set the next year's budget for whatever we had for this year. And then as we get to the end, that can be adjusted for whatever we need to do here. As we see down here, we're currently anticipating $4,600 in additional revenues from 27 over 26. So if this holds true with expenditure differences, then we would adjust this down to zero out the budget or the general fund budget specifically on that. Any questions on revenues? All right, we'll hit up expenditures next. Again, not too many major changes here. Across the board, I'll make, so I'm not going to hit every single time on these. When it comes to wages, payroll taxes, things like that, I've made across the board adjustments on those. So I just won't rehash those every single time. And then I've also, for insurances, for our work comp and property insurance, I've applied a 4% inflationary factor to that until we get those resolved. That should be coming here in September. October is when we usually get those done. And the renewal's out for the following year. But seeing what the trends have been in previous years for that, I'm not expecting a whole lot more than that. Health insurances also put in an inflationary factor in there based upon what I've seen historically. So I'll more hit on the specifics of those line items so we can just take those in swath. Starting on general fund, looking at reducing the engineering fees we spend per year. Last time we spent 20 grand in engineering fees was back in 23, I believe it was. And then ever since there, it's been about 16-ish thousand on engineering fees. So that's been fairly steady looking at the numbers. So I anticipate that to go forward. So reducing the budget there just because you don't need it nearly as much. FOR PRINT AND BINDING, INCREASING THAT BY 1,000, JUST WITH WHAT WE'RE HAVING IN POSTAGE AND SEEING THE COST ON THAT. INCREASING THAT TO KEEP UP, AGAIN, INSURANCE WITH THE INFLATIONARY FACTOR, MISCELLANEOUS EXPENSES. WE'VE JUST SEEN A FEW MORE HERE AND THERE AS WE HAVE MORE ACTIVITY WITH THE GENERAL FUND. So $3,000 to $5,000 on that to accommodate those costs. Dues and subscriptions, those have gone up slightly. Big one in here is the League of Minnesota Cities annual subscription as a city has gone up slightly. So that'll cover the cost in that. Big one here in transfers is EDA funding allocation. The EDA has decided not to request money from the city for next year. We had low turnout on the grant program this year, and they still have... I think it's about 76,000 in the bank account right now. If all of the grants go through, which there's currently three open ones, I anticipate one may not go through. But if all three go through, they'll still have about 50 grand left in the bank with EDA funding. So they have decided not to request funding in 2027. So we can delete that one out. Down to council wages. I'm just making a move here. MOVED THE THOUSAND DOLLARS TRAINING TO TRAINING AND INSTRUCTION AND THEN THAT INCREASED BY ANOTHER 500, JUST FOR COUNCIL MEMBERS TO ATTEND CONFERENCES, WHAT HAVE YOU, INTO THE FUTURE. UNDER ADMINISTRATION, IT'S ALL BEEN IN THE CATEGORIES WHICH are just generally adjusted. Health, payroll taxes, wages, so nothing big changing in there. On elections, this will fluctuate every other year because elections happen every other year. So in 2026, we have wages for our electric judges, and next year we won't because we won't have elections. We get down to computer support, software support, so this would be for brand networking. Activity has died down over the last couple years, so we haven't been spending what we've had budgeted, which is always a good thing. We're still keeping up on what we need, so reducing that by $3,000 to align more with the costs that we're seeing coming out of the annual IT work. For the community center, since we've had more usage of the community center, that usage has been going up, more people are using air conditioning, more lights are being left on for the events. So we've seen increased electrical usage. So I think increasing it from 75 to 8,500 will cover that. Police contracts that we get from Carver County, they give us these numbers annually. So I've adjusted this number for the increase in the cost of police coverage. We get down to fire protection. We got the report from the para SVF program. They put that out. I think it was in late July. They have that report out to cities. We received it and we had talked about whether or not we're going to add funds or what we're going to do. The decision was made. Let's let it ride. See what the market does. The market came in well, and we do not have a contribution slated for next year. So the market performed, and we're at, I think, now 101.4% funded ratio, which is good to be over 100. It's not that much more over 100. But the key news there is we won't have to contribute anything, whereas in the past we've had those amounts in there. So glad to get back to zero. That's where we really want to be. Training and instruction, increasing that as we look at training instruction costs going up and if we have any new firefighters coming on, making sure we're keeping up to speed with that. Professional services on this, some of the health checks we have along with the medicals and physicals, these two kind of go together on things. So increasing that to keep up with costs. Travel expenses, similarly, this was moved down, or I'm sorry, this was moved to up here No, move to training and instruction. So this was moved up to here for training and instruction. Excuse me. So the 2000 from here went to here. And then general electric utilities, electric usage has been up just a hair, but gas utilities has been down. I think they did some tweaking. No, we did some fixes to the in-floor heating. There were some issues there that we got solved up. And I think that made a large part of the difference in that. So still savings overall with a reduction of $1,000 between the two. And then miscellaneous general, this is where we pay for the Vollmer's insurance. So we're anticipating an increase in that. Get down to highways, streets, and roads for the next one. Just another note for building inspection services, we pin this at $0.30 per permit dollar. So those will float with each other. Since we haven't changed the building permit revenue, this still stays the same. So I always like to make that note of why that number is that where it is. When we look at highway streets and roads, training and operating supplies, increase that by a thousand has been four grand for quite some time and inflation is finally catching up with some of the stuff we're purchasing. So increasing that to keep a pace and then the rest is just blanket with insurance and wages. Then we go down to maintenance building, electric and gas utilities costs have been up a little bit. So those have been relatively minor amounts, 250 on electric and 500 on gas, but anticipating those costs increases on those. When we get to parks and recreation, again, the blanket stuff here, and then we get down to insurance adjusting for that. It went from six to three, because I thought this was what it would, this was the kind of the splash pad year. with the adjustment from the League of Minnesota Cities, which I had penciled in, but then it turned out to be closer to 6,000. So I missed the mark on that. So where I had it was right. I missed that one. And then that's where it's supposed to be.

Could you go back up again?

Yes.

Maintenance buildings. That's public works. Yes. Sorry.

That's the public works building.

Okay.

They're shot by the fire station.

On gas and electric. Okay. And I'm sure I'm missing something. Why is that so low compared to the fire department or the fire station?

They don't keep public works nearly as warm or cooled because you have the meeting room space.

You have the meeting rooms a little warmer and cooler, but the bays, I mean, they're okay. It's strictly that much, like three times the amount.

Is it open as much?

It's a larger space too. Yeah. Larger space. The public works lets it fluctuate a bit more, so it'll tend to be colder in the winter. It'll tend to be warmer in the summer. They keep the doors open a lot, whereas in the fire department, they don't. Right.

To me, the fire department maybe gets a little more traffic in and out.

Oh, I would say no. I would say how it works gets more. Oh, does it?

I wonder how much difference in zoning there is, though. Okay. I was just curious.

It just jumped out at me. Oh, that's a good question. Because I thought the fire department seemed really high when you were going through it, and this one's just seemed.

When you did something about repair, you said something about repairing in-floor heating so that.

Yeah, there was last year there was issues with the in floor heat that they discovered and we got a company that come in that tweaked it up.

In floor heat there.

No, but the in floor heats Corey Fish. I mean, it's supposed to be so you think the fire station would be a lot lower. There was just a huge gap in him, I thought, but OK, fair enough. It is.

Yeah, that is quite a bit.

Yeah, that just doesn't seem right.

It does. It makes sense to me.

It makes a lot more square footage.

Yes, there's a lot more meeting space.

You've got duty crews, you got the ambulance people, so they keep that at your normal, probably temperatures, the bays so that the things don't freeze as much where public works, they probably keep it at 50 in the winter and and we're at 60 at the fire station.

And in the summer, the only place that gets air conditioning in the public works building is the office. Right.

And their office space is really little. That's a big piece right there.

Okay. Thank you. No, yeah, I didn't. It just jumped out at me. It wasn't. Yep. Thank you.

Back in Parks and Rec, we get down, General Insurance talked about that. This is in Miscellaneous. This is where the mayor had talked about support for the Mayor Rising Community Festival. We had talked about having a... We do some funding currently right now. We pay for the mini BIFs and a couple other small things. But looking at doing more of... more financial support to purchase things. Could be any number of things that we would just assume responsibility of paying for it. This isn't a check we cut to them because cities cannot donate, but we can pay for things that we can sign up for.

We thought it was important to earmark at least some amount, and we thought 5,000 was fine for now. We may not even need it or use it. We want to still work with the committee. We're going to meet with them in September again, just kind of get a feel for what they were thinking. try to bring everything together. You know, we really want to see this succeed and keep going and, and really extend it through, you know, morning till, till evening if we can. So we want to earmark some, um, one of the big pieces we're also going to do from a city standpoint is really help with donations where we can get out to our contractors. We can out, so we might be able to pull in enough donations where we might not even need this five, but for budgeting, we thought we'd throw in a small amount, see what we can do.

Um,

You know, there was an effort many years ago for the city to kind of step back from that and let the committee take over. And that was, you know, set up that way. Maybe if we can help on some things, picking up some of the other tab, like Nick says, we can't donate, but we could pay for signs. We could, you know, BIFs we're already paying for. We could, you know, things like that. Or maybe we pay for that push, pedal and pull one thing or whatever it may be. So that is important to really try to keep this going for the community and see what we can do with it. At least give it a year or two and see what happens.

Absolutely.

And then under city beautification, this is typically where we purchase the planter boxes from. And so partially this has been slight cost increase over year, but I'd like to propose we increase that by a bit more so we can buy more planter boxes and put them downtown and add more because they are very nice to look at.

Decorate the downtown just a bit more. Does that also include flags, banners, those sorts of things out of that?

Those, years ago, they would come out of city beautification, but those are now more coming out of streets, repairs, and maintenance. Reason for that, this is parks and recreation, and the street lights with the garland and what have you, those are along the streets. So it makes sense. No, that's perfect. They could be in either or, realistically.

Do we have our little banners up anymore? They're not.

They're being replaced.

Yeah, I got to get it. I feel like we're missing lots of flags and all kinds of stuff.

We got a little bit behind on the flags, but those new ones have been ordered and up kept. The banners that we currently have are falling apart. And I think we've had him for 15 years, just long past their life, so we'll be looking at replacing those and then no changes under compost site. So when we look at the whole thing, revenues over expenditures, we still have 12,000 in the black revenues over If this all held the $12,086, you would simply reduce this by $12,086, and there your budget would balance. So we could potentially see another reduction in the general fund on this end of things. Any questions on any of that for the general fund?

No, sir.

OK. Utility funds, these will be a little bit quicker. Interest earnings on the revenue side for water, interest earnings up on that. THE INVESTMENTS THAT WE'VE HAD, SOME OF THEM WERE PLACED ON LONGER-TERM SCALES YEARS AGO WHEN THE INTEREST RATES WERE PRETTY TERRIBLE. THEY'RE DOING MUCH BETTER THESE DAYS. AND AS THEY BREAK, AS THEY MATURE, I'VE BEEN REINVESTING THEM AT BETTER INTEREST RATES. MONEY MARKET FUNDS, CDs, SHORT-TERM TYPE OF THINGS LIKE THAT. SO THOSE ARE YIELDING BETTER RESULTS AND BASED UPON WHAT FUND BALANCES WERE PROJECTED TO HAVE FOR 2027. NOW THAT DEBT HAS PAID OFF, INCREASING THIS TO 5,000, THAT'LL CULMINATE IN BETTER RETURNS. The big one here is the water use charge. We've been holding this, but in actuals it's been less because this was set for more drought year, which included much higher irrigation use and much higher irrigation revenue. And now that we have a bit more data and the spreadsheets we've been putting together, we've realized we've been budgeting for drought years, not non-drought years. So to be conservative in our nature with the revenues, I'm looking to budget funds as if it was a non-drought year, so low irrigation usage. So if it happens to be a higher irrigation year, we'll see better revenues, but we're not going to be caught short on those revenues in this scenario. So this aligns, it's a big chunk downward, but the mitigating factor we'll see on that is where we get down to debt service in principle. State connection fee. This is a fee that we obtain from each individual user, and as the number of houses go up over time, that connection fee then goes up. This is a pass-through to the state. We do not make money on this. We saw that. Also part of this is when we did the fee schedule, we adjusted it from 81 cents to the buck 27 that the state mandated. We increased that, so we'll see that reflected in here. But it's money in, money out. The city doesn't make anything. doesn't make any money on this whatsoever. It's just a fee we then pay onto the state. When it comes to the water fund, as I mentioned before, we have the debt service dropping off, so it's dropping off quite a bit. So when we adjust down the revenues, there's a cushioning effect here when we have the debt service dropping off on that. Chemical products, prices of these have been going up. We're also having to test a little bit more with the Department of Health. So Those chemicals and chemical products are coming at a bit higher cost adjusting gas utilities up $500 as we just we've seen the cost of gas go up. Electric utilities at the water tower up by 250 as we see the cost of electricity go up every year just adjusting for that as well. Under the distribution, you have the blanket ones here. Auditing services, you're going to see this in the sewer fund as well. I'm proposing we adjust this from $5,000 to $7,500. And how this functions is where we have the audit, there's a set cost for the audit. And the audit covers general fund, it covers debt service, it covers the utilities. And so historically, for many years, they've been contributing $5,000 from water, $5,000 from sewer towards paying that bill, and the general fund picks up the rest. That's been at 5,000 for quite some time, and the costs of audit have not stayed flat. So proposing that we up that to 2,500 and make sure that the utility funds are keeping up with the cost of audits. So we're not disproportionately falling onto the general fund to take care of that. So this is proposed to be increased by 2,500. You'll see that on the sewer end as well, since they both do the same amount. Insurance general cost inflator there, and that's the long and short of the budget. So you see here revenues over expenditures for 27, a big shift in there. But again, you have debt service coming off. We haven't decided what we want to do with the rates for 27. This will get adjusted once we make that decision. But if all stays the same, rates stay the same, you'd be looking at $91,668 in the black. Any questions on water fund?

Just the one question on the state, on the revenue of the state connection fee of the $9,000. So should there not be on expenditures the $9,000 going out?

There should be. Where is it?

I don't see it highlighted. I know it's in here. So it would have been a highlighted one because it would have went up $1,000 also.

You're correct. I'll double check that. Yeah, just take a look at it. Yep, I'll take a look at that. You're absolutely right. That should be reflected. It's somewhere in here.

There's a transfer out right there, but there's nothing there.

No, there's a specific one in there. I just got to go find it.

Yeah, if you can just follow up on that. Will do. Yeah, no worries.

Onto the sewer fund interest earnings. This has been at 45,000 and the interest earnings that we've actually been garnering for these years have been much, much higher. I just haven't adjusted them because I didn't know, you know, we were having the pending wastewater treatment facility project. And if you kick that off, we're spending down quite a bit of our reserves, which is going to change the amount of interest we get on that because you're spending that and it's not invested. But now we know we're not going to be doing anything in 2027. I can adjust those to more actual because we have about two little over 2 million in investments with the sewer fund. So that's garnering a healthy amount of interest on that. 60,000, 60,000 plus per year. Otherwise the rest of these should hold pretty darn steady into there. And then adjustments, cost of electric utilities have gone up. So with the sewer, just cost of electric in general has gone up. So adjusting for that. Biosolids disposal going up 1,000 to match three dumps per year. This edges, we have about three dumps per year. But as we have more sewer customers, we have more sewer flow, and we get charged by the pound of what we take out of there. So adjusting to what actuals are looking at. Electric costs going up. There's a lot of electricity we go through at the wastewater treatment facility. So the cost of that has been increasing. Testing and lab services, increasing that with our new permit that we were issued last year with the sewer plant. There is more testing that we are required to do by the MPCA. They've required that of us, and with more testing comes more cost. Thank you, state of Minnesota. It wasn't really necessary, but they shoved it in our permit anyway. I'm not salty about it at all. Public record now. It is now, and that's okay. So we have increased costs with that, so adjusting that for the state's wonderful requirements. On the sewer and other things, we have the regular ones here. Auditing services, again, you saw the jump from 5,000 to 7,500, so they're bearing their fair share of the burden of that postage going up just a hair there, insurance adjustment. And there you have the long and short of it. Revenues over expenditures going up slightly from last year to this year from 160 to 164 and a half ish thousand dollars. Any questions on the sewer fund? All right. Home stretch the easy ones. Storm sewer fund, nothing really changing on the revenue side. On the other side of things, we're getting close to the end of the project with the restoration out here. We're hoping for another year before we can start asking for the final credits. And so the amount of work that we've been doing out there has been dropping off a little bit since a lot of it's been getting done. So the cost simply hasn't been there, so we're adjusting that down. We really have never used the $3,500 because this expense is generally allocated here in capital outlay when we do stuff. So this really has never been used. It's just a budget item that's been there just in case. But we've been allocating the money here when things happen and then put $10,000 back in there in case we decide we get our results back this year and we say we want to sow in our more ponds next year, throwing an amount in there If that's what we'd like to do. So revenues over expenditures for the storm fund on again 26 to 27 holding fairly steady 75 to 71 ish or an adjustment of $3500. Any questions on storm sewer? Pretty steady Eddie fund and then the final EDA. Again, you see the transfer here dropping off to zero because no allocation is being requested, so they're not looking at getting revenue and then for capital outlay. Normally of that 5048 would be as as part of the 48 to 50 would be what they spend on the business improvement grant program, reducing that down to 20 if they do decide to do another round and make grants. We had two grant applications this year, so we'll see what comes around next year. with funding in the bank to take care of that. Any questions on EDA? If not, that is long and short first look of the budget. If there's anything you guys would like to see on this, questions you come up with later, you happen to be looking at, of course, shoot me an email, text, call me, what have you. Otherwise, we'll look to make tweaks until September when we set our preliminary levy, but things are looking pretty good right now.

It looks really good. Pretty good job. Thank you. Thank you. The only big thing I can see changing is when we get our initial sonar reports, correct?

Yeah, and that would just affect Storm Fund?

Right. But if those come back very full and we got to start planning dredging and things like that, I mean, sooner or later, we're going to have to start upping that now and start planning. And we know what's coming, right? It may be five more years or 10, fingers crossed, but we need to start so that I can see that one starting to fluctuate some, start socking away some money for some of those.

Will we be getting some of those numbers before September?

They should be out tomorrow to do the sonaring.

They're going to do it tomorrow. So however long the report, maybe a couple weeks for the report. I would think so. They should be able to crank it out. And then we're going to try to get together right away with Public Works.

and go over what the data tells us.

Again, we're only doing the four or four of them. I couldn't remember if it was three or four, but they'll give us some good information, I think.

Yeah, I'm excited.

We'll give us direction on it.

I mean excited, but this is something we've been talking about for a while. Right. I'm just really curious to see. Right. So that one could fluctuate, so we should have a good idea.

All right, any other questions on budget? So with that, then we are going to go into a closed session to consider strategies for labor negotiations, including negotiation strategies, development or discussion of labor negotiation proposal. authorized by Minnesota State Statute 13D.03. So with that, for anyone here in the audience or anyone listening, this will be the end of the recording as this is our last agenda item. So there'll be nothing more to discuss. Therefore, we won't be coming back on. So this will be the end of it for the night. Thank you very much.

Have a good evening.