City Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome to the September 8th, 2026 West Fargo City Commission meeting. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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.

All right, roll call.

Jorgensen?

Present.

Erickson?

Here.

Zundel? Here. Stedman?

Here.

Jardovic?

Here. Next item is the approval of the order of the agenda. Motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Approval of the minutes from the August 17th meeting.

Move we approve.

Is there a second? Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Any comments? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Next item is building permits.

I would like to recuse myself from voting on this matter.

All right. Is there a motion?

And I will second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. Any comments or questions? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Next item is our consent agenda, items A through G. Motion to approve. We have a motion to approve, is there a second? Second. All right, any questions or comments? Roll call vote, please.

Jorgensen?

Yes.

Erickson?

Yes.

Zundel? Yes. Stedman? Yes. Drudevig?

Yes. Motion passes. On to the regular agenda. We have our public comment period and from my understanding, there were some people that signed up, but they signed up specific to either the items of the budget or Brooks Harbor, which are both public meetings. So if I'm wrong about that, please let me know. So I don't believe anybody's here for public comment tonight. Did you sign up?

All right.

Is it, what's the topic? Does it fall under the budget in any way? All right, well. Then I guess we can, if you're okay with that, we'll take that during the budget public hearing. Does that work?

I mean, I think that's fine.

Okay. All right. Perfect. On to public hearings. All right. Item number 2A, public hearing and first reading of A26-15 Brooks Harbor 5th edition, request for zone change from PUD to R2, Aaron Nelson, Director of Planning and Zone A. Good evening.

So item 2A, this is a request for approval of a zone change from PUD to R2. This comes to you with a recommendation of approval from the Planning and Zoning Commission. The subject property is located at 2250 Fifth Street West, which is just east of Brooks Harbor Elementary School, as you can see on the aerial photo in front of you here. The proposed rezone is intended to accommodate the proposed residential development. The subject property is currently within a PUD, or Planned Unit Development, zoning district. And this specific PUD currently allows for a two-ring hockey facility, as well as three commercial slash office buildings which was approved, I believe, in 2020 or 2021. The subject property predominantly abuts the P public facilities zoning district on the north and west, which is where a park district maintains a trail as well as a playground facility adjacent to Brooks Harbor Elementary School. And then on the south side, five homes within the R1 zoning district abut the property. The proposed R2 zoning district, excuse me, and then to the east that pink area there that you see is COP, which is our commercial office park zoning district. The darker red further to the south is a C light commercial district. So just to give you some context for the area there. The proposed R2 district is a residential district that is generally considered to be compatible with other residential districts as well as some of those more light commercial and office type uses. A public hearing was held at the August 11th Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. Public comments received to date include concerns that the R2 district would allow uses such as townhomes, concerns with rental housing, concerns regarding overflow parking in and around the area, and also concerns that development would exacerbate existing traffic issues in the neighborhood. When compared to allowable development under the current PUD district standards, development under the R2 district regulations, is anticipated to result in less traffic impact to the general neighborhood, is one item of note in the staff report there. Regarding the comprehensive plan, there are probably two key themes that staff would point out. On one hand, the city's comprehensive plan seeks to grow the city's commercial tax base, as well as to grow the ratio of jobs and businesses in relation to the population. But on the other hand, the plan also recognizes the need for housing and also encourages a diversification of housing product within the city. Overall, staff finds that the proposed rezoning is consistent with city plans and ordinances as outlined within the staff report. The requested action tonight is to hold a public hearing and then to approve the first reading of the rezoning ordinance. And so with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have for staff. And actually one more thing I will add is Also included in the staff report, there is a conceptual site plan that the developer has included for reference. I think one thing worth highlighting is that with the proposed, the request to rezone the property to R2, that does not lock them into this specific site design. They would be allowed to develop anything allowed under the R2 district standard. So that was a point of discussion during the Planning and Zoning Commission, the applicant I can let the applicant speak for themselves, but they did indicate that they're putting their reputation on the line in terms of kind of promising that this is what they're going to develop. And so that does directly tie into some of the concerns from the public that we've heard. So with that, happy to answer any questions you have for staff.

Is there, I guess with the site plan that they've submitted, is this compatible with R01 based on lot sizes?

So the proposed layout that they've provided at least our understanding anyway is that the proposal would not be to subdivide the property. It's all one lot today. And so what you'd have is multiple units on a single lot. It's not something that our current zoning ordinances really comprehend in terms of a development product. And so it is somewhat left to some interpretation, but it is most similar to like a condominium type development or multifamily. when you have multiple units on one lot, that's generally considered multiple family. So short answer is no, staff doesn't believe that this would be appropriate for a R1 type district due to that fact, unless we wanted to look at maybe some slight tweaks or something to the ordinance to clarify that.

Do you have any idea if the developer is agreeable to doing this under a PUD so that there's a guarantee that this is exactly what's gonna be built?

The developer did actually request PUD a couple of different times over the past, let's say three or so years. That went through the Planning and Zoning Commission. I don't believe it ever made it all the way to the City Commission.

But that was like a very different presentation of what they were submitting versus what's getting submitted now.

That was a townhome type product that they were proposing at that time through the PUD process. So I'll let the applicant, I guess, answer that in terms of if they'd be willing to do that currently.

Mayor Dyrdek, thank you. Aaron, would this proposal that we've got up on the screen right now, would this fit R1 zoning?

No, since it's all on one lot, that's where it kind of falls into that multifamily type category. And so multifamily generally is not allowed in the R1 district. There are some exceptions for a conditional use permit for limited unit sizes and things. Once you get into the r2 r3, that's when you start to those districts allow specifically for multifamily type Development, okay Thank you.

And so if if just hypothetically if this was zoned r1 would the the driveways that run Along fifth right there. Would you be required under West Fargo 2.0 to have those driveways there? I remember I watched the P&Z meeting and in order to do this development in accordance with that plan, the driveways have to be along 5th. Is there a way to deviate from that at all?

Yeah, maybe a couple of comments. Excuse me. One is when it comes to traditional single family, I'll call it, the ordinance is written in such a way that it assumes that single family will be fronting a public street. And we have various requirements in terms of access and things. Sometimes we have alleys, sometimes we have a street. But for the most part, whatever street the lot is fronting is where driveway access will take place. In this situation, since it's all on one lot, like I said, it's more similar to kind of a mother-family or townhouse type development where you have internal circulation, internal private driveways that are not public streets. And so you do have some units that might front or face internally to that internal circulation system with single points of access to the public street. The previous cases that you're referencing from a couple of years ago, those were actually some recommendations from staff that the units face outwards towards the public street so that you don't see the backs of the units fronting the public space. You don't see backyard trampolines, whatever else might be in somebody's backyard. You get more of the residential type aesthetic from the public space. So there's no requirement that the driveways be on the street.

And just my last question, Mayor Jernovich, if I could. Could you fill us in historically over the past couple proposals that this landowner has proposed? We're at 31 units now. What did it start at, and where are we now in relation to that? Do you know? And that may be a better question for the developer.

I might defer to the developer on that one. I can't recall the unit count off the top of my head.

Okay, thank you.

I forgot a question, sorry. Do you know what side of the street is parking on, on Fifth Street?

I believe it's prohibited on both sides of the street.

I'm not exactly sure as far as what it's currently saying.

Is there a neighbor? The neighbor in the back looks like they might have the answer. Do you know... Let's say you could park on a side of the street. Let's say it's the side of the street that the driveways are on. Do you have any idea if there's enough room for cars between any of these, like even between the units? Because I'm assuming if they're not parking on the street, is this street gonna be a public street that's coming in here or is this all gonna be like HOA? So I'm assuming it's not gonna be wide enough to probably park on these roads.

And here's where, again, The request in front of you is a rezone to R2, and so staff has not gone into any level of detailed review on the proposed site plan. It's purely conceptual at this point in time. If the R2 district were to be approved, they would have to apply for a billing permit or billing permits in order to allow construction. That's the point in time when staff would be doing a review to make sure that they're meeting all applicable requirements, generally speaking. all of the parking standards are required to be onsite. And so we would be requiring at least two parking spaces per unit onsite.

But that would be met with a driveway?

Driveways or garages, yes.

So there would not be any, because it would be R2, there wouldn't be any requirements for spacing. Is that different than R1?

Spacing for driveways?

Or in between driveways or like spacing in between units or?

Yep. Driveway spacing is dictated based on the classification of the roadway as opposed to the zoning district for the most part. I believe 5th Street in this area is a local street, and so the spacing is very minimum in terms of what that would be. It would be typical to any residential local street.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

I just had a quick question. There's a lot of comments about parking and also the traffic flow. So how did you address that? Considering the schools next there and I think just for kicks came up that they didn't have places to park even with that and then adding all this extra parking. So how did you address that when they were? Or is that too soon to have that conversation?

No, that's definitely been a conversation throughout the history of this area, and so there definitely is traffic issues in this area today. You know, it's to a certain degree outside of the specific request for E-Zone. It's more of a neighborhood-wide issue with traffic that we're dealing with in different conversations in different ways. I think in terms of the staff report and the way that staff kind of approached that question is comparing what is being requested to what is allowable today. And today what's allowable is a two-ring hockey facility and I think up to 17,000 square feet of commercial space. which could potentially have much more traffic, impact the traffic in the neighborhood, a lot more traffic generation than something like a residential type development. So that's, I guess, so far as the staff report has laid out, what we're really comparing to is current conditions compared to the request in front of us. This application is not going to fix existing traffic issues. That's a bit outside of the scope of this request is what I would say.

I have confirmed that it is currently signed on parking on both sides of the street right now.

Thanks. Thank you.

Any other questions before we open the public hearing?

All right.

Well, with that, we will go ahead and open the public hearing for the rezone of Brooks Harbor Fifth Edition. Is there anybody who would like to speak? already down this path.

My name is Sarah Griesbach and I live at 606 23rd Avenue West. My home is adjacent to this and as I had mentioned at the planning and zoning meeting you are considering the zoning not the conceptual plan here because even if the developer you know gives his word on what this could be he could still just turn around and sell it after today. And then he's kept his word because he didn't do something else in that regard and then like it's been stated I included a supplemental piece to my previous comments like they just mentioned There's no parking on either side and also that's where the school lineup is So consideration for how the sidewalk would look with people parking in the driveways and kids trying to get home for the day It would be very congested and one of my other neighbors mentioned in the winter time quite the snow pile up there So you already have the school line and then you're adding in a other issues like this. But just again, we talk about traffic all the time. It's just a very congested neighborhood with very few exits out. So saying it's not going to add too much more. I mean, why add more problems at all? So that's about all I've got to say. I included other things in my comments, but...

THANK YOU. SARAH, IF I MAY ASK YOU A COUPLE QUESTIONS. SURE. MAYOR GERDEMEG. PLEASE. SO YOU CAN SEE THE PICTURE THERE. HOW DURING BROOKS HARBOR SCHOOL PICK UP AND DROP OFF, ABOUT HOW FAR, IF YOU CAN SHOW US OR DESCRIBE?

I JUST SAW ON FRIDAY, IT KIND OF GOT PARALLEL WITH THE BRIDGE. I MEAN, IT REALLY WRAPPED AROUND AND IT SEEMED LIKE VERY FEW WERE EXITING AS MORE KEPT COMING. That was just my observation on Friday. It did wrap around quite a ways.

Would you say that it makes it all the way down to just for kicks or does it not reach?

I haven't personally seen it, but my neighbors have said it stays long for a long time, like it's very slow going.

And the only other question is parking. Just for kicks, if they have an event, how would you describe parking? the parking situation when those events occur on your street?

Well, it's typical North Dakota. Every single person drives their own car. I mean, Just for Kicks is a good neighbor in itself. It's been a good fit for families, but everyone parks along 23rd Avenue West, and then it's hard for us as neighbors to get in and out. If just a regular neighbor on the street has their vehicle on the street for a brief time, it's blocked up all the way down. It's It's not an everyday thing, but when it happens, it's significant.

Last question. I'm asking you to speculate a little bit, but if there was R1 housing, if there were just single-family homes, would that help ease the congestion in the parking in the area more so than these 31 units that are proposed? Yes.

I think single-family homes would be a good fit, and the ownership has the value, too, rather than rentals. In the past, they've been pitching three-unit and four-unit plexes. So, I mean, that's rentals. But then this is also proposed as rental. But having single-family homes where there's ownership and those kids go to the school and everybody's part of the community and stays put for a while, that would be the value of single-family homes.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak on this issue?

Good evening, Ryan Downs. I represent the developer and the applicant for this property. Just happy to answer any questions. Some good questions were asked to Mr. Nelson here. So happy to clarify anything or anything that you wanted to bring up.

You asked a question, Commissioner Zunda.

I know you've done the PUD route before, but that was very drastically different. So I think this is a Gigantic step in the right direction from what it was before But I do share some concerns that if we do are to What you were presenting before could obviously be presented or you get down the point, you know things change sometimes not foreseeably So I guess would you be open to submitting this under something like that so that there could be I mean It's just it's such a complex parcel, and I think you know that probably by now. I guess, are you open to that?

The PUD route is, like you know, very invasive. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of money. So it would be detrimental to the cause for us to go through that process without any assurances that it would go through, right? Because This property does have history where, you know, it hasn't gone the way that the developers wanted it to. So, but if I may, I mean, I can expand on how we arrived at this particular layout is, you know, as Mr. Nelson said, I mean, it is an HOA concept. So it is a non-dividable community. So, I mean, the intent of it is to provide housing that you know, creates a different option that isn't existing within the area right now. So these are all slab-on-grade patio homes that basically cater to a demographic that is either an aging adult, people without children. And the reason why we got to that point is because there's really two key things that, you know, as I talk to neighbors and I talk to the folks that design this property is that, you know, the school district is crowded, the whole school district, not just Brooks Harbor Elementary, right? So typically people that are gonna move into a property like this are gonna have either no kids, maybe one or two kids, right? Because these are either three bedrooms or a lot of these might be two bedrooms, the way it's laid out right now. But that also transposes into traffic, right? So if you look at this, there's a traffic study done in about 2002 or 2003. And if you put, you know, because this site could probably accommodate, I would say, two commercial buildings, right? And the traffic, in and outflow on a daily basis could be about 600 cars with that. On a residential community like this, where potentially the people that are living in it, maybe they have to get up and go to work, maybe they don't. But if you have 31 units, I would say the maximum amount of traffic coming out of there at a peak time would be 60 cars. That's probably the worst case scenario.

I'm not sure if you've driven in this neighborhood during the peak times. I drive it every day. I drop my kid off at that school. I drive Fifth Street. It backs up often behind the curve as it sits now. I also just listed my home in Brooks Harbor. I had three offers in one day, and the resounding thing was that everybody wants to live in Brooks Harbor neighborhood, which is great and amazing. It's a great place to be. I think it's hard to speculate on who's gonna be there. I think you are gonna get a lot of families because there's just so many people that want to be in that neighborhood for the great school district. It's gonna have a playground in its backyard. Literally, it's gonna be right next to the school. This is way better than what you had before, but I am very, very concerned of anything that doesn't look even remotely like this. So I have a lot of trepidation because 60 cars in the morning when we're backing up in roundabouts in both directions, It is, and I know we're not voting on the site plan, I understand that, but even in R2 where you're having the concept of multifamily homes over commercial, I think it's potentially problematic for this parcel specifically. And I think a traffic study in 2002 compared to what it is in 2026 is going to be, I mean, we've identified this area as one of the, I would say, worst traffic areas that we have onto Cheyenne and everything like that. So I'm not arguing that commercial would be Any better, I'm not arguing that a hockey rink would have been awesome. I wasn't a part of that decision at all, but I have a lot of reservations on any type of multifamily going in.

I agree. I drive by the site two times a day to go to work. And I drive through there all the time too, just because of this project. But I think the point I'm trying to make is that that's the worst case scenario. IF YOU PUT, BECAUSE SOMETHING WILL EVENTUALLY GO ON THIS LAND, RIGHT? AND I WOULD SAY THAT ANYTHING COMMERCIAL, ANYTHING MORE THAN WHAT'S LAID OUT TODAY WOULD BE DETRIMENTAL TO THE TRAFFIC SITUATION. This is the most responsible approach to it. And hopefully you can appreciate the thought that went into catering to a demographic that doesn't drive, maybe doesn't have as many kids. A two-bedroom home is probably tough to raise a large family in, right? So the bedroom count is really one of the things that doesn't stand out on this is that, yeah, if there's townhouses, maybe there's four bedrooms in there, but This approach is really the path of least resistance to, I think, the two key issues that I heard through this process.

Eric. Please. If I may. I apologize. I didn't get your name. Ryan Downs. Ryan. Nice to meet you. Can you, I asked Aaron, just for the history, what did you start at two to three years ago and where are we now? as far as terms of number of units.

Yes, so I think, and I kind of stepped into this just about nine months ago. So as far as I understand, the history of this, of course, was originally the, I think it was a community center, hockey arena, and then the hockey arena fell through for various reasons, of course. And then not a lot of commercial appetite for this area. It's not at a main thoroughfare. So then the idea came into residential areas. and residential for various reasons. But it was originally planned for about 54 units. And so that had been very packed and it would have gone against what we're trying to do here today. And then I got involved and brought it down to I wanna say 45. met with the neighborhood got feedback and in and honestly what you're seeing today is actually the manifestation of one of the comments that I received is why can't you build a I believe you know 55 plus community which this is not a pure 55 plus community, but it is the concept of it and so Staggering down all the way down to 31 units with much fewer beds is you know where we're at right now Okay

IT'S HELPFUL FOR ME TO HAVE THAT HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING OF WHERE WE'RE AT. SO YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH THE COMMENTS ABOUT PARKING AND TRAFFIC. WHY JUST CANDIDLY, WHY DIDN'T YOU DO WHY DIDN'T THE OWNER SUBMIT AN R1 PROPOSAL? WHY ARE WE LOOKING AT R2 INSTEAD OF R1 KNOWING THAT WE HAVE the all the challenges it's one of the last developable areas in brooks harbor one of the most challenging nukes in brooks harbor i have uh... I commend you and I commend the Planning and Zoning Commission for putting all of the effort into it. But just candidly, if you could tell us why R2 instead of R1, knowing those challenges.

I believe and I think maybe you can help explain kind of what we talked with at the Planning and Zoning Department. But the R1 zoning, the lot sizes would not work on this property. This concept right here would not work. The other point of all this too is that these are houses that have a low entry point of cost, right? I mean, you can get into these houses at a lower value. Because this is all private infrastructure that goes into this, those lots would have been substantially much, I mean, they would have been expensive, very, very expensive for this area of West Fargo.

So on that front, how many single family homes do you think that you could fit in the area? Just speculate.

Yeah, I mean, it'd be a wild guess for me, but I'd say 20, 20 or so.

What are the average price points for these units? Do you have a range of where they'll be at?

I have an expectation, and I would say right around 350 to 325. It depends, right? Some are going to be two bedrooms, some are going to be three. I mean, the other thing that I haven't said yet that I have to say here is that, I mean, this is a full service community, right? It's an association. There's snow maintenance, lawn maintenance, professional care, right? We're looking for... This is a concept that you've seen in other parts of West Fargo. You've seen it a little bit in the wilds area. There's a community that's a little higher end, or much higher end, I should say, than this. You're seeing it out at Horace. But there's nothing on this side of West Fargo that has something like this. This is one level living. It's for people that maybe can't take care of the of the snow or can't take care of the yard maintenance and things like that. So it all comes into this concept of, you know, kind of an easier way of living essentially. And so putting it into this association makes where the R2 zoning, I believe, you know, through these conversations of trying to make that work kind of come together.

Okay. Thank you.

How many of these are you guys going to list for sale versus rent?

Yeah, great question. It honestly depends on where the market is at. We want to sell these houses. That would be the ideal situation. But if the market is soft, I mean, it sounds like if you're listing a house there and it went like hotcakes, I mean, that could be great, right? I mean, it could be a really good situation. I get nervous, too, about kind of where our economy's at. I look at the interest rates on a daily basis. It I don't know. I mean, they'll see how next spring looks. I mean, it could be slow. You never know. But the intent is for these to go out and sell. You know, I mean, and these will be built in phases. I don't think we can build 31 at a time and flood the market like that. So put five or six up at a time, see how that goes, put five or six up, and just kind of keep stepping that up.

What would be, I mean, you have a fairly developed site plan that you're submitting. As far as costs, what would be, what else would be needed at this point to run this as a PUD versus what you've already done now? I guess, what do they not have that they would need to have to submit this exact same thing as a PUD?

I mean, I think as far as a PUD goes, I mean, we have to put everything as far as aesthetics on the building, right? I'm not 100% sure what the residential PUD requirements would be.

Yeah, I can step in and answer if that's okay. So for a PUD, generally speaking, the purpose of the PUD is to allow for unique development types that don't fit nicely into any of our pre-existing zoning boxes. And so typically when someone comes in and requests a PUD, it's because they need to modify one or multiple different standards within one of those PRE-EXISTING ZONING DISTRICTS. AND SO THE WAY THAT THE PDD IS STRUCTURED IS THE INTENT IS THAT IF THE CITY'S GOING TO BE MODIFYING THINGS AND ALLOWING A UNIQUE PRODUCT TO TAKE PLACE OR BENDING THE RULES, IF YOU WILL, THE EXPECTATION IS THAT THERE'S A GIVE AND TAKE. ULTIMATELY THE CITY, THE PUBLIC IS GETTING A BETTER PRODUCT AT THE END OF THE DAY BY GOING THROUGH KIND OF THE, LIKE WAS MENTIONED, THERE'S SOME EXTRA STEPS, A LOT MORE WORK INVOLVED, A LOT MORE DETAILED REVIEW IN ORDER TO KIND OF JUSTIFY THAT EXTRA EFFORT looking for something better at the end of the day. And so I think with the previous request for PUD for townhome product, kind of the compromise at the time or the request at the time was just some higher end building product or exterior materials, for example, I think is what we had on there previously. So that's not to say that that's necessarily required, but it's what the ordinance asks for. And so that is negotiable as part of the PUD. The PUD is intended to be kind of a negotiation between the developer and the city. So.

I think what I'm hearing is maybe not a lot left for this.

No, I mean, for me, the letter of the ordinance, it requires an ordinance be drafted that outlines any amendments to zoning district standards. It requires some site plans such as this to be kind of adopted as that PUD plan. And that's really the extent of it. So in terms of your question, I think what you're getting at is, yeah, we have a lot of the material that we would need in order to process the PUD application.

We've been really dominating the conversation on this side of the table. Good questions. Do you all have any?

Any questions?

No. So were you thinking, Amy, that having the PUD, then they couldn't change the site plan? Is that your concern? Yeah.

I'm very uncomfortable with broad spectrum multifamily on this lot. I'm not comfortable with that at all. I think that would be a disaster. I think...

Well before we, I mean is there anyone else? We are still in the public meeting place so any more questions for Ryan?

I just want to make a general comment. One I appreciate that I know you talked with the school district and that building currently is really full and I think this option worries me less than having the option to 54 family homes because we could have two to three or four kids in each of those units. I don't know how the school could accommodate that. So this actually would fit that area better. and take some of that pressure off the school. And we talk about affordable housing for our seniors, maybe as they move out, then that helps open up more homes for our younger families that they may be in starter homes. So I do like that.

All right. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak to this topic? Please.

Hi, guys. My name's Miranda. I'm with the builder, Brookstone. to kind of answer a couple more questions that have been previously asked. So why we went this route, well, originally PUD, now for the R2 zoning. The question why we didn't go R1, we've had a lot of conversations trying to meet the comp plan. So looking in that area, if you kind of go on the GIS or the zoning map, you'll notice there already is a lot of R1 zoning. And so to meet your comp plan that we want a variety of homes and availabilities, that's why we went into a little bit more, or... density high residential area so that we were giving variety to that development in this area. So like Ryan had mentioned, we were at 54 units. We went down to 49 units and now we came to a slab on grade. All of those townhomes were a four bed option. These are a two to a three bed option. So again, we're just really bringing that density down while trying to have a higher density of than what's already in the area to meet the comp plan. Going back to the questions regarding what would be needed for a PUD, we would need floor plans and elevations, correct? That hasn't been needed?

It's not required, but it's always nice to have.

Okay. Just so some of the things that we had to do on the last PUD, we had to kind of show how there was added stone, the materials, things like that. So that's where we are bringing up the conversations of the additional expenses is having to go with an architect firm to create the renders. And we did get a pretty light one that was convenient to show in here, but if we had to get a little bit more down to the higher materials, the additional stone, things like that. That's where the costs are kind of coming into place. All right.

If I could, Mayor DeBaker. Go for it. Thank you for coming up and providing some additional context. So I understand the diverse housing stock, you know, policy goal that we're trying to achieve. If Ryan, he just said, right, that the single family homes, if we went that route, it'd be 20 to 21 homes. So it's a 10 house difference. What in your mind... Does the R2 zoning in this plan, the challenges on that elbow with the cars backing up from the school pickup, would R1, would single family homes still have that same issue there, you think?

I would say likely, yes. I believe when we kind of first started looking at entrances, those were the two locations that we were directed, was right at that elbow for a street entrance, and then the one on the south. Is that right?

I don't recall those specific things.

I believe those are conversations that we had, what we wanted to look at roadways.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

And in regards to the parking, the plan of those floor plans, it would be a two-stall garage and then parking on top of the driveways. So in reality, you're probably getting three parking spaces per unit. So parking for that development specifically, we would be exceeding by far parking requirements. All right. Thank you. Thanks.

Is there anyone else that would like to speak to this topic? Last chance. All right, hearing none, we will close the public hearing. Any additional questions or discussion?

I, Mayor Gerdavig, if I could. Please. I, at this point, I understand time is of the essence to build. But the challenges with parking and the traffic congestion, in light of those concerns, I am in favor of this project. The challenge is truly the individuals that provided public comment have been experiencing WORKING WITH THIS DEVELOPER ON THIS AREA OF LAND FOR MULTIPLE YEARS AND THEY SEEM RECEPTIVE TO THIS IDEA. I'M RECEPTIVE TO THIS IDEA. I HAVEN'T HEARD ANY VEHEMENT OPPOSITION TO THE PLAN. THE CHALLENGE IS, WE DO, I THINK, AT THE PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION MEETING, I THINK IT WAS CLEAR THAT THE TRUST IS ESTABLISHED BETWEEN THE PLANNING AND ZONING BOARD. or the city and the developer. I think the only last little piece of surety that I'd need is to get something memorialized to guarantee that this plan is what will go in this area because it is one of the last developable areas in Brooks Harbor in a really tight pocket with a lot of challenges. So in light of that, I WOULD MOTION TO DENY THE REZONE, BUT SIGNAL TO THE DEVELOPER THAT VERY CLEARLY, IF THIS IS IN A GUARANTEED DOCUMENT THAT WILL, THAT GIVES US SURETY AND THE ADJACENT LANDOWNERS SURETY THAT THIS IS THE PLAN THAT WILL PROCEED, I WILL SUPPORT THAT PLAN.

I WOULD SECOND WITH THE SAME SENTIMENT.

ALL RIGHT. We have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion, comments?

I'm just curious if you can do that. If you rezone it for R2, can you tell somebody they can't make changes or do we approve?

The motion was to deny the rezone to R2.

Can we ever require? the developer to give us 100% without no take backs? In a PUD, you can.

In a PUD, yeah. I mean, I think that the direction is that, and not to speak for you, Commissioner Erickson, but is to deny the zoning to R2 and to provide sort of the direction that a PUD would be, would address the concerns that you both brought up.

Yeah, that is correct. Is that a fair characterization?

Yep. Any further questions, comments? If not, we have a motion and a second.

To deny, this is tricky.

Yes, a motion and a second to deny the rezone and to sort of, I guess, present it as an R2, or excuse me, a PUD, provide that direction as the alternative recommendation. Yes. All right, you're up.

Jorgensen?

Yes.

Erickson? Yes. Zindel? Yes. Steadman?

No.

Jardovic?

Yes. Motion passes. All right. The next public hearing, as if that one wasn't fun enough, is on the first draft of the 2027 preliminary budget. Did you have any comments, Dustin, before we open the meeting?

Yes, good evening. Thank you, Mayor Joerdebeg and commissioners. So this is the hearing on the preliminary budget that was approved during the August 3rd commission meeting. So this is an opportunity for the commission to receive comments. But again, those comments are to be towards that preliminary budget that was approved. The next item, item three, is where we will discuss the first draft of the final budget, but again, today's hearing is specific to the preliminary budget. With that, any questions I can answer?

No?

All right, with that, we will open the public hearing for the draft budget for 2027. Is there anyone in the room who would like to speak? Don't be shy. Come on up.

My name is Cameron. This is my first time making a public comment. It's nice to meet you all. I live up in northern West Fargo. I wanted to discuss the flock cameras in our budget and their effect on the city. The city pays an annual contract of $100,000 to have flock cameras in our city. While some of that is covered by grants, around $30,000 of that, the majority of those payments is from our police budget. That money is not insignificant and could be diverted to much better alternatives. Flock cameras utilize AI technology to provide constant surveillance. We have seen many awful examples of how this technology can lead to dangerous situations. In Arkansas, a flock camera misread a license plate, and this led an officer to hold a young couple and their baby at gunpoint, believing that they were dangerous criminals because of a flock error. There have been numerous arrests in states like Georgia, Kentucky, and Wisconsin because officers have used the system to track exes, romantic interests, and follow personal vendettas. Even our neighbors, Fargo PD, made national headlines when they held a woman from Nashville for six months because AI thought that she was a dangerous criminal. She had never been to North Dakota before. All of these examples happened this year alone and does not include other examples of accusations or instances that have gone undisclosed. AI use in law enforcement has shown to be dangerous, unstable, and unconstitutional. The Fourth Amendment reads, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The flock camera tracking our every movement to create a database of our daily ongoing is an assumption of guilt. The purpose is to assume that everyone is a criminal and therefore track their movements. This is an unreasonable search and seizure. It's an example of overstep of government, and it's a 24-7 officer. Except it is not a police officer. It is a third party, untrustworthy business. Flock keeps his own database of everyone's movements. It's a business that profits off of watching you. There is one right outside of my apartment, and it knows every time that I leave and return to my house. And so I ask each of you, would you consent to me standing outside of your house, pen and paper in hand recording every time you leave and return to your house, store that information in a database that may or may not be protected or sold, and possibly use AI to determine that you are a criminal that must be arrested at gunpoint? So far this year, over 50 cities and counties have gotten rid of Flock and its peers. I urge you to do the same and save that money in our budget. Lastly, to clarify, I did not write this speech to attack our police. I trust our police. I trust you to do the right thing. I have so much faith in our police that I believe in their ability to protect West Fargo without the overstep of a 24-7 unconstitutional surveillance system. I appreciate your consideration, and I'm open to any questions.

Thank you.

I appreciate it, thank you guys.

Come on up.

Good evening, Mayor Jurtevich and commissioners. My name is Max Gluckert. I am the president of the International Association of Firefighters Local 5307, the West Fargo Firefighters Union. I wanna thank you all for the opportunity to speak in front of you tonight. I'm coming before you all to express the Local 5307's disappointment in your decision not to hire any new firefighters for the 2027 year. While Local 5307 understands budget constraints and the 3% tax cap, it is the lack of discussion or information that truly disappoints us. At the August 3rd meeting, the decision not to hire three FTEs was made with other decisions wrapped into one motion to approve slide deck four of the August 3rd agenda packet, which included five different bullets. Each of those bullets deserved its own time and discussion much of the conversation that happened at the August 3rd meeting was about Cola's equipment funds and other benefit packages While those other listed items are very important to us, very little time was spent talking about the impact of not hiring three FTEs. Our overtime rate currently is through the roof. Employees enjoy working some overtime for the added income, but we are starting to see burnout. NFPA 1750 says that you should have 21 firefighters on scene within eight minutes of a single family home fire. Do you mayor or commissioners know off the top of your heads what the minimum staffing is for West Fargo Fire? It's nine. Nine firefighters, that includes a battalion chief, which leaves us with eight firefighters and three apparatuses staffed. Multiple days, we are at minimums. At the August 3rd meeting, many times you commissioners said that more information would be great on multiple topics, but hiring three new firefighters was the very least discussed topic. City Administrator Dustin Scott even said these decisions can be made with the final budget, and we really don't have to make that decision tonight. Not once was the public safety sales tax talked about as a source to fund this. Frankly, I can't even find how much that gets distributed to the fire department. As it's stated in the 2026 final approved budget, public safety sales tax is transferred to the general fund for operational costs of both police and fire departments. But I'm unable to find an actual line item showing how much goes where. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's not easily accessible for me to find. Why was the dollar amount not talked about in this discussion, but property tax was heavily scrutinized? Additionally, it was stated that the property tax revenue is only 47% of the annual revenue, and that number would change after the roughly $800,000 from economic development sales tax came into the general fund. Four firefighters should be the number on every apparatus in the city of West Fargo. Firefighting staffing levels are not just a number in a city budget. They're a difference between life and death. I urge you, Mayor Jurtevich, and the commissioners to rethink your decision or find another way. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Any questions?

Thank you for the comments. Thank you for the comments. Thank you for your passion. Thank you for your service. Thank you. The budget constraints that we have now in the new economic environment, just for your information, do you realize that the possibility that adding full-time employees to the budget could take away from our ability to give current employees increases in salaries.

I understand. I don't mean to come with a gripe without a solution either. I understand that. I ask that we reevaluate it and look at different ways, right? Where the whole amount of the public safety sales tax money is going, I don't know, because I believe it gets put into the general fund and where it goes from there, I'm not sure. It doesn't mean it's not tracked. I just don't know where it goes. The amount we're paying in overtime, have any of you guys looked into that monthly? I'm not going to say that right here, but I'm just saying, right? We started looking at salaries and our overtime. We enjoy overtime. We really do. But I mean, I think I worked an insane amount of it last month, so. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

I want to be clear that I know multiple I think I can say confidently everybody at this table has spent hours talking about this topic. It's not been at this podium, but I do want you to know, I myself had a two or three hour meeting with Chief Fuller on the firefighter budget alone. I have spent hours in Dustin's office talking about it, and I'm pretty sure I can say everybody's sitting at this table. So I do want you to know that it's not like we were just like, oh. We don't want more firefighters. That's not the issue at all. My question for you is on the overtime, how much of your overtime budget is due to people being on like FMLA or temporary restrictive leave versus a permanent problem that's going to continue?

Very little, I would say. We have two people on light duty right now. We had had previously a historic high rate of light duty, so when you're looking at FMLA and stuff like that. Luckily, Chief Fuller is really great. People who are on light duty, he finds 40-hour-a-week jobs for them and transitions them into a 40-hour employee, so they're not getting any FLSA overtime. They're just getting their regular 40-hour pay.

But that would shift the requirement to meet a minimum for other people who have to work more overtime.

Correct, correct. The overtime that we're seeing majority are people filling shifts because we have vacancies right now. I think I probably worked 200 and some hours overtime last month.

How many current positions do we have open?

We have a max of 12. We have a minimum of nine, max of 12. We have a few positions open. We've done some interviews, but we're still seeing, I mean, one person gets sick, one person calls in. It just triggers this whole domino effect with the way the staffing is for a fire department. So I can come back with a more collective answer what it looks like. And Chief Fuller's been great fighting for us and standing up for us. He's been awesome. We just, we wanted to come forward and express our concern. But yeah, it's a large amount of people filling shifts to just get to minimums. We are mandoing too. That's happening almost every other week probably.

And that's, I guess, what I'm curious about is how many of it is due to, okay, obviously if you, well, let's say you have two people out of however many, that's two people that you're going to have to fill 40 hours of overtime automatically to be at a minimum, I would presume, combined with open shifts that we're currently filling. So I think some of the concern about the position is how temporary is the amount of mandatory overtime that's currently happening versus a super long-term solution. The other thing that does feel very unsustainable is that it's not just approving those firefighters for this budget year. Hiring four firefighters is hiring them this year and then next year with their COLA and their step in grade increase and then a year after that and a year after that. Some of the concern is also, obviously we've had some conversations about sustainability because we do want to prioritize our current workforce because the other complaint that I hear is that people are leaving to lateral transfer into other agencies.

Yeah, we've lost three people probably in the last month or two.

So in order to prevent that, it would be my hypothesis or guess that we want to prioritize taking care of the people that we have really well right now.

I 100% agree.

So that's difficult. So when we talk about, okay, yeah, what is a half percent of COLA? What is a percent of COLA? and you compare that to the cost of new employees, that's a big consideration for us because we value the people that, I mean, I can't speak for everybody. I know I value the people that work here every day who show up 24-7, 365. That's a huge ask. Mandatory overtime? Super stinks.

And that's not where, I didn't want to make the whole discussion be on COLA and benefits and wages today. That wasn't the goal. It was just the, I wanted you guys to rethink, reevaluate on the hiring of three. And I know you talk about years in the future. Well, years in the future, three could turn into six as the city grows. So that's the only reason I bring it up.

No, I just, I wanted you to know that THIS WAS NOT SOMETHING THAT WE JUST DECIDED ONE DAY IN A MEETING. THIS WAS HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS OF DISCUSSION AND CALCULATING NUMBERS AND LOOKING AT OPTIONS AND SOLUTIONS. IT WAS NOT A...

THE OTHER PIECE THAT REALLY TIES INTO IT AS WELL IS THAT HOW WE HAVE BOUGHT EQUIPMENT IN THE PAST HAS BEEN THROUGH INCREASES IN THE GENERAL FUND AND THE TAX RATE. SO WE HAVE TO SET MONEY ASIDE IN AN EQUIPMENT FUND. but we won't have fire trucks in the future for all of our firefighters to use. Because we can't increase, we don't have that flexibility anymore, and so we have to set money aside, and that was one of the big impacts within our budget was to make the appropriate cuts so that we can start funding an equipment fund so that we can replace engines and so forth at the appropriate time. So there was a lot of conversation that went into it, but we greatly appreciate your comments tonight.

I appreciate your guys' time.

Thank you. All right, please. You can state your name and address for the record.

Yeah, my name is Matt Slocum. I live at 1112 39th Avenue West. I've lived there for over 20 years, taught in the community for a while, have kids that go to the school district and worship in the community too. And I'm here to talk about flock cameras. I want to start with a joke that I kind of gave to Commissioner Steadman that said, my words are my own and should not represent my employer or my wife. a little bit of laughter, maybe. Okay, anyways, I'd like to thank People's Time for their time here. Thank you, Commissioner, Mayor. I'm here to speak about the flock cameras also, like camera did. I want to preface this by saying that I have nothing but positive things to say about Commissioner Nielsen, the police officers in West Fargo. They've all been wonderful to us. I sent an email about this about a month ago and received a very professional email back from Commissioner Nielsen, so thank you, sir. In the line item for the budget, it's on page 22, line 428. I think this is what references flock cameras. It says service agreements and contracts. I just don't think that we should be spending money on something that is a potential Fourth Amendment violation like Cameron shared. There are significant concerns about infringement on people's freedom. The Fourth Amendment says that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or thing to be seized. I think we have this illusion now we're living in this rapidly changing time where we think AI is somehow better, but there's a lot of mistakes with AI. I see that personally when I look up information. I see that professionally. I see that when we look at how flock cameras and other AI tools have been utilized. In Minnesota, earlier this month, there was a person that's employed by a website that evaluates cars that, due to a flat camera error, was pulled over at gunpoint and pulled out of the vehicle. And that's his job. That type of thing, I think, really destroys trust in law enforcement. And I just think there's too many errors with it to rely on it now. There's a case in Florida of Lindsay Isaacs who spent 13 days in jail when her Durango was flagged near a fatal hit and run. Witnesses described a maroon vehicle instead of a black one. She had no damage on her vehicle, and she spent 13 days in jail because of an error in a flock flag. Chrisanna Elser in Colorado was falsely accused of stealing a package. You can find that video online. There was a sergeant that said in the video that he was 100% certain that it was her, and they refused initially to look at evidence that she had from her own car that recorded her footage to show that she was innocent until eventually it was dropped. And then Cameron also mentioned other concerning tools that utilize AI. And he brought up the case of Angela Lips next door in Fargo. The former Fargo chief of police, Zabalsky, partially blamed West Fargo For using a different tool called clear view which Nielsen later on that day Disputed and I I believe chief Nielsen in this instance But it's just an example of a potential error with an AI tool and that for the city of Fargo is going to probably cost millions of dollars So I would be concerned as a taxpayer also that should an error happen that could cost a lot of money for this city despite the bigger concerns that I have regarding personal freedoms and liberty and There's a couple of Supreme Court cases that were recently decided that I think signal that the Supreme Court is going to rule against the utilization of flock also. One I would bring up was in 2018. It was Carpenter versus US, where the court ruled that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements. I think that would include movements in vehicles, because it says the whole of their physical movements. Additionally, this term in 2026, the Chaudhry versus US case involved accessing people's historical location data through a Google locator on their phones, and the court ruled that that's a Fourth Amendment search. So I think that flocks should go under the same scrutiny that to get that data, there should be a warrant. It's a Fourth Amendment search, in my view. Again, despite I've had wonderful interactions with West Fargo police, they're great. I just worry about the infringement on personal liberty. If you look at history, if you look at what's happening currently in China, other places, mass surveillance is kind of coming in. There's instances of governments not just in China, though. People often think, oh, this is something somewhere else. This could happen in other places. But it happened. just in our bordering city with a similar piece of tool. And I don't think that West Fargo Police right now is utilizing it in a way where they're intentionally trying to infringe on people's rights. But I do think that those court decisions and some of the practices are an infringement, and that probably is going to get ruled on sometime. I also, like I mentioned, think that the potential for errors that could lead to long-term problems for people not trusting the police, and then also for financial responsibility for the police should someone get detained because of an error, that could be a big deal. So I wanted to conclude this by saying there was a slogan called defund the police. I personally think that that's foolish. I think we should give the police more funding. I think the officers should get raises. I think they should hire officers more. I know you're all operating in budget constraints and that's hard and all that. I've got three kids, my budget's smaller, but I get it, right? The money's tight. The firefighters, same thing. Those guys were wonderful. They should be supported as well. I just don't think that the flock cameras are the way to support the police. and I'm concerned about how they could be utilized either now or in the future to further limit individual liberty. So with that, again, thank you. I've enjoyed this process. Does anybody have any questions for me?

Thank you.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Any other public comments? David, you wanna? You guys decide.

I was looking forward to paper rock scissors or something.

This is normal height. Dave with the 2421 McLeod Drive East. My comments I hope are brief and more mundane than anything else. So here this evening. THREE COMMENTS. FIRST, IT'S DISAPPOINTING THAT RESIDENTS DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO SEE THE EXPENDITURES RELATED TO THE OTHER FUNDS THAT THE CITY HAS UNTIL AFTER THE FINAL BUDGET IS APPROVED. THEY'RE PUBLISHED WITH THE BUDGET. WE CAN'T SEE THAT INFORMATION AHEAD OF TIME SO WE CAN COMMENT ON IT. The second issue is dealing with confusion with health insurance. It's been said or put in the budget that's a 10% increase that's being budgeted on. But if you actually look at the department by department expenditures for health care in the budget and you add them up for this year, for 27 and 26, it's actually over 15% increase. So I'm just wondering which one it really is. What are we really approving here? Because those numbers don't, those percentages don't jive. So something seems really incorrect and I hope that would be corrected before the budget is finalized. Finally, I know each of you received a copy of the budget book from West Fargo TAP and know our concerns about the top 10 expenses representing 80% of the expenses within the city, which means it's pretty difficult to cut a lot of other places, most of us add in other places when these top 10 are challenging, especially when three of those are expenses that really Fargo dictates to us. Four of those top 10 relate to personnel. And no one's asking for a reduction in forests or anything like that. So it doesn't leave you with very much to look at. But if you look at expense number 10, the 10th largest expense that we have, it's recycling. That's the low-hanging fruit, as I mentioned to Mr. Scott, as we met at a meeting recently. It's the low-hanging fruit. Originally, when we started working with waste management on recycling, the city was getting money in return, like a refund, because some of that recycling could be sold. So revenues actually came back. Well, that didn't last very long at all because the market changed. Right now, glass isn't worth recycling. We end up compacting it with other materials and shipping it all the way to the Twin Cities, where 25 to 30 percent of that material, which has now been tainted, is still thrown into a landfill. Our own public works and reports show that we're collecting less recycling each year. Analysis that we did three years ago showed that the cost of collecting recycling was four times the cost of collecting our normal waste. My suggestion is that we really look closely at why are we recycling. What are the benefits versus the benefits that we could gain elsewhere, like fire protection, perhaps? What's the intent of my bringing this up? Just coincidental timing. So I always suggest that recycling, I've been recycling advocate since most of the people in this room were born. But we have to have a chance to be able to say, wait a second, the markets have changed, demand has changed, the cost benefit analysis has changed, everything we do with collection is the wrong way to collect it. And that's not me, that's just, you go and look at how recycling is done, we do it the wrong way, and it's more expensive. With those comments, I think otherwise the budget looks like it's been pretty well prepared. A lot of time goes into it. I know a lot more time goes into it on your hand. Thank you very much for listening.

Thank you.

Comments?

Thanks for allowing me to speak. I didn't realize there was a formal process or... sign up for that. But at any rate, my name is Dave Larson. I live at 749 15th Avenue East in West Fargo and a couple other people spoke very eloquently about flock cameras and certainly I have concerns about them as well. And I understand we're in a budget year for 2027 and a preliminary 2027 budget has come out and the West Fargo Police Department is requesting funds or there are going to be some cost to support and maintain the flock camera system. And Tyler, I know you mentioned that budgets are tight. And my recommendation would be that whatever the budget is that the West Fargo Police Department submitted, we reduce it by an amount that covers the cost of maintaining and supporting the flock camera system. I'm totally against flock cameras. I believe it's mass surveillance. We live in the United States of America. It's not communist China. And I don't want my city tax dollars going towards mass surveillance. That's all I've got.

All right, thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else who would like to make comments on the 2027 budget? One more time, is there anyone else who would like to make a comment about the 2027 budget? All right, hearing none, we will close the public hearing. And... Justin, I guess item number three is just kind of a continuation to review the first draft of the 2027 final budget.

Yes, thank you again, Mayor Jernabeg and commissioners. So I am Happy to walk through the first draft of our final budget. So all of the changes that were approved with the preliminary budget back on August 3rd have been implemented, and we have also now put together all of the revenues and expenses for all of the other funds. So our other agency funds, the special funds, all of that other information is now available. The full draft of that final budget is now published on our website and available to the public. What I have for you tonight is just a few slides to kind of walk through the high-level aspects of the final budget, and then I will stand for any questions. So again, to recap, the preliminary budget that was approved. We have the transfer from the economic development sales tax. We have the moving of the City Hall lease payment into the general fund. It was previously in the reserve fund. adjusted the COLA from 3% to 2.5%, the removal of the three fire department new FTEs, and then establishing a deferred equipment fund. Additionally, the Commission did give direction to start looking at long-range financial stability planning. There has been a working group that has met a few times now, and we've actually been preparing information for the Commission In fact, we did have a workshop with two of our commissioners last week. I thought it went really well. We look forward to future workshops and information to better inform not only the commission but also the public so that there is a full understanding of what goes into our staffing costs and all of the financial planning that we do. Additionally, we've had a survey open to our staff and that survey is going to close on Friday the 11th. happy to report that we have had a great turnout so far and look forward to additional responses. So with that, moving forward, this is just, again, a reminder of what was approved on August 3rd. And now specifically, the changes that are reflected in the current draft of the final budget. There was a transfer of the interest revenue from the reserve fund into the equipment fund. So when we did move all the changes that we had, in fact it's a little better shown over here on this slide, so that net position in the general fund of $636,000, well, for the most part that has been moved into this deferred equipment fund, but the accounting practice to do it is we have to find the actual money sitting somewhere and move that into this new fund. So our finance director and I, we decided that we will take it from that interest revenue that was going into the reserve fund and just move that now into the deferred equipment fund. So what you would find in that final draft budget is a deferred equipment fund that has not only the $854,000 of revenue, but also the $265,000 expenditure item that has also been PRESENTED OVER THE COURSE OF THIS BUDGET PROCESS. ANY QUESTIONS ON THAT BEFORE I MOVE INTO THE NEXT BULLET? OKAY. SO THE REDUCTION OF THE COLA GENERATED A $2600 REDUCTION IN THE LIBRARY DEPARTMENT EXPENSE BUDGET. NOW, THE LIBRARY BOARD HAS THE AUTHORITY TO SET THEIR BUDGET. The city commission then establishes the funding for the library board. But what the library director decided to do then is use that savings to increase their book purchases. So that is something that would be vetted through with the library board. But again, it is a change that is reflected in the final document that is available on our website. And additionally, again, all of the other funds with their associated expenses and revenues are now available. And so where we sit today with, again, this is a first draft of a final budget. This is where all of our major funds are sitting. So again, now our general fund has a net position of $0. That's a balanced budget. That's where we need to be for Returning a final budget to the county per century code and then our utility funds do have a net position Over a million dollars that is by design so that we are building reserves into our utility funds And then of course the library fund is also still balanced and that is their budget as established by the board and the airport currently has a net position of eighty seven hundred dollars and And at this point, the idea would be to move that money into their reserves. So with that, I'll just round it off with a reminder of our next step then is we need to approve the final budget before October 10th. Our next commission meeting, well, we have one on September 21st, but the next commission meeting where we would propose to bring the final budget back for consideration and final approval would be October 5th. Again, we could schedule a special meeting before or after October 5th if needed, but at this time I anticipate bringing forward what you're seeing here tonight, maybe with a little further refinement, but really not changing much of the dollar amount and ask for approval on October 5th.

Any questions?

With that, any final questions?

Commissioner Erickson, you look like you have a question.

So we just had a bunch of public comment on the budget. One of the topics that we talked about during the financial sustainability working group that we had, right, is salaries and COLAs. And the the pay structure and formulas that, the step and grade programs that we use here, as we move towards October 5th, those are gonna be the highest priority things to understand if that needs to move anymore. Can you give all of us here in this public hearing, can you give us an idea of how to better understand the compensation structure that we have, and if you could give us like an average of what, between COLA and grade and step, what the average employee is getting in relation to the, I know, complex step and grade program. But could you give us an understanding and the public an understanding of what we're doing in the budget with the step and grade program and our COLA that we've approved preliminarily?

Well, I'm gonna answer that with a question. Just to clarify, you're asking what does an average employee get for total compensation within the budget? Or are you asking how the salary and structure works?

Dustin, so you're familiar with how it's been stated in the public that average salary increases year over year, average six to 8%. Some more, some less, it's an average. But just to address that, where are we in this 27 almost final approved budget? Can you give us a sense, can you give the public a sense of where we're at with our salary structure and what the average increase is per employee? Of course, it's going to vary widely, whether you're a police officer or whether you're just about to go up a level in your management or not. It's going to vary widely. But can you tell us what you, in two minutes, what you told us in two hours? Best you can. Because it really can be condensed into a couple of ideas, right? A couple simple ideas. And I think it really helped solidify that for us.

Yes, I will absolutely try my best to get this into two minutes. First of all, the grading step. salary structure is a very intentional design meant for planning and budgeting and being transparent with how we are paying our staff. Within that structure is a range of progressions through a step system. So that's where an annual increase does depend on where you're at in your years of service. Of course, as you are initially starting out, you're on the lower end of your salary range, and so an annual increase is going to be of a higher percentage, but as you progress through that, your annual step increase is going to start to decline in terms of percentage, right? So if I had to put it into an average, what does an employee get? An employee that is still progressing through their 11 steps is gonna see an average of around three and a half percent or so plus whatever COLA. And again, that is very dependent on several factors, but it's around that range. So that's the grade-in step, the salary component. There are other factors, of course, things like the health insurance. Right now, we are budgeting a 10% increase to the health plan rates. Now, when it comes to budgeting, the actual expenditure of paying for health insurance, that is, again, dependent on what plans staff are taking. What are they electing? And that changes year over year. So while the increase to the rates are anticipated to be around 10%, the actual budgeted increase will depend on, again, the elections that staff take. So overall, again, staff are gonna see both an increase with their salaries, but they'll see increases to their health plans and things of that nature. If I was keeping my internal clock going, I think I did that in about two minutes and four seconds. That's helpful, that's helpful.

We'll play the tape back later and really time it out.

So again, that workshop we had last week, that information, we're gonna work on making that available to the public. And like we've talked about over the last few meetings, we are gonna have additional sessions. That session was really focused on the grade and step system and that structure. Future sessions, we'll dive into other aspects of our compensation. And then as work progresses, we'll look at Financial forecasting, what does it mean to add new staff right now for the city in say three years, five years, 10 years?

And what impact does that have on current employees, right? If you're forecasting that future impact of adding FTEs on our ability to compensate or adequately compensate current workforce.

Right? That'll be part of the forecasting. Yep. What we are fully confident in right now is that we are confident that what we are bringing forward as a budget for 27 is the city is in a healthy financial position. What we want to learn is what does it look like in three or five or ten years? And that will help guide us into future years planning. So right around January, we start planning for the 2028 budget. Well hopefully we'll have some of this information together so that it'll guide our discussions and decision making through that process. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions on the budgets? Otherwise this is a non-action item for tonight?

That's correct.

All right, hearing none, we will go on to item number four, the 2025 audit presentation. Thank you. I must not want to hear what you have to say. I will wait for the room to clear. Please go ahead.

Good evening, Commissioners and President and Commissioner Goedewijk. Before I present, Our auditor, who will be presenting the executive summary to you regarding our 2025 audit. I just wanted to take this time to acknowledge and say thank you to my staff in the finance department. They did an excellent job this year at gathering all the information that the auditors requested and answering all the questions that they had. So in our particular order, I just wanted to say thank you to Rose, Rosalind Dort, Alicia Skulski, Sarah Katermes, Janda Erickson, Lisa Breyer, and Jody Rowe. They're a great team to work with. I am very lucky to have them. And with that said, I'd also like to give a thank you to other departments that assisted. Director of IT, Ryder Howitzer, Director of Human Resources, Beth Wigman, and Erin Nelson, Director of Planning and Zoning, as they all assisted in gathering some additional information that was requested as well. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce to you Brian Stavanger. Unfortunately, John Hagan couldn't make it tonight as he had some personal matters that he needed to attend to. So without further ado, here's Brian.

Welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me. Brian Savanger, partner with Ide Bailey, here to report to you the results of the 2025 audit. What I have prepared to present is what we refer to as the executive summary. It takes a lot of the high-level information out of the full audit report, and in most cases will give you up to 10 years' worth of comparative information so you can see trends kind of where you are at. previously and where you ended in 2025. The audit report itself is more of a standalone one year look. So it really focuses on 2025. There's a small section in there that has some information on 2024, but the benefit of this executive summary is to give you up to 10 years. So I will walk you through that. I'll pause periodically for questions or comments and get you on to your next agenda item. The audit results, a clean, unmodified opinion, which is really what you want when you seek out an external financial statement audit. That means you're following all the right accounting rules, everything within that audit report is fairly presented, and based on our procedures, we believe no material misstatements to those audited financial statements. As we go through the audit of the entire city, there's also a focus on just the federal funds that are expended. That is a requirement from the federal government. Any entity that spends in excess of $1 million in their calendar year or fiscal year triggers this requirement on federal funds or federal audit. It's very focused on compliance, but also internal controls, just making sure that Again, the federal government, as they pass money down to states, local municipalities, school districts, counties, that it's being spent the way that they intend it to be spent. Expended just under $3 million total in 2025. Also received a clean, unmodified opinion on those federal funds. As we go through the audit process, at the conclusion of it, we potentially have findings really in two different areas, financial statements and federal awards. Start with the bottom one, federal awards, no findings there to report, which is very, very important. That means based on our testing, we did not identify any noncompliance. did not identify any issues or concerns with the processes or controls in place to receipt and spend those funds. So very, very important to keep those, not only a clean audit opinion, but also limited or no findings. On the financial statements, we did have two findings to report, very similar to previous years. These findings are much more about I. Bailey's involvement in the process of not only audit, but also the kind of closing of the fiscal year. We do assist with a few year-end journal entries, a lot of them higher level, not things that Willie and everyone else in the finance department is doing on a day-to-day basis, just a requirement at the end of the year. We help with the calculation and reporting of that. IN CONJUNCTION WITH REVIEW AND APPROVAL FROM WILLIE AND OTHERS. WE ALSO PREPARE THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS, SO THE FULL AUDIT REPORT. EIDE BAILEY PREPARES THOSE. WHEN WE DO THAT, WE ARE REQUIRED TO REPORT THAT TO YOU. THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT INVOLVEMENT FROM THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT, FROM DUSTIN AND OTHERS, BUT THAT'S REALLY JUST A TRANSPARENCY ISSUE. SO OUTSIDE OF THAT, NO SIGNIFICANT ISSUES IDENTIFIED. BEFORE WE GET INTO NUMBERS AND GRAPHS, I'LL PAUSE FOR ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS. Keep cruising. Cash and investments. So this does include all funds, all activities, general funds, special funds, revenue funds, broken down into two different categories, proprietary and governmental. Really, the difference between that, proprietary are funds that are more, the revenues are more of a charge for services, so it's a usage-based model. Governmental is really everything else. Property taxes are the main funding source. Intergovernmental revenues, state aid, federal aid, that's really the distinction between the two. You look at that graph and really, I mean, for eight years, it's been fairly consistent. This is a snapshot in time at 1231, so there are going to be fluctuations depending on what's going on right around the end of the year, but for the most part, pretty consistent on where those are at at the end of 2025. You know, it's important, I think, from my vantage point, we're looking at the dollars, we're verifying the dollars on that previous slide, that they're accurate and are recorded appropriately. It's difficult to understand, well, what does that really mean? Is it good that we have that much money? Is it bad? What does it mean? A real quick, easy way to look at that or analyze that is the liquidity ratio. And that really looks at what do you have for current liabilities? What do you owe for typical monthly accounts payable? Any salaries and other compensation payable? Any long-term debt that's coming due in the next year, both principal and interest? Compare those liabilities to what you actually have for cash on hand. Really the bare minimum that a city like you would want or anyone operating a private business would be 1.00. And what that means is that for every dollar that you have for a liability, you at least have a dollar of cash on hand. So you can cover your payments with existing cash. You don't have to dip into any short-term debt or anything like that or worry about making payroll or those long-term debt payments. That really is the bare minimum you wanna be at. You can see really the last, what is that, six years, been right around four, even up to five. So really what that represents at the end of 2025, you're just under 4.00. For every dollar that you owe in current liabilities, you've got $4 in cash. So not only do you have adequate cash to fund that, you've really got a nice cushion there in case anything else were to happen. So that's a good, easy, quick look at what do you have on hand, an ability to repay or pay debt, as well as other obligations, a good, strong liquidity ratio, again, at the end of 2025. We'll dive now into the general fund. So really the main operating fund of the city. These are revenues as well as transfers in. So your typical revenues, intergovernmental licenses and permits, taxes being the most significant portion of revenue streams in the general fund. On an annual basis, there are other miscellaneous items that come through the audit, as well as any transfers in. Those are really a representation of, I think, the top two categories in those graphs. The last couple years, there's been some significant, I would call them unique transactions, and I would call them really almost accounting anomalies. It's not things you would budget for, and I wouldn't suggest you ever budget for them, For example, this building that you're in, accounting requires that in the year that you enter into a lease agreement, the full value of that lease agreement is recognized in the general fund as both a revenue and an expense. Silly, I know. Net effect is zero. I would say it artificially inflates your revenues. So in 2024, you see that white there, that is, I think it was just under $8 million of recognized really commitment over the long term of the lease. You'll see the same offset on the expense side on the next page. So that's really important to remember because even up to five years ago, those rules didn't exist. They're pretty new within the last few years. So I always want to explain that, that that's really a non-cash transaction. It's the full value accounting requires that to be. Recorded in the year that that agreement is entered into so overall if you kind of take away that You know some growth good growth in taxes and fairly steady on in the other areas On the expenditure side as well as transfer outs you can see that big white piece in 2024 that's really the offset for that silly accounting entry that is required to be made. If you take that off and you just analyze more of what your budgeted type items are, slight uptick overall, but in each category, these are some pretty broad categories, just little upticks, which we would expect in a growing community like West Fargo. Yes.

Maybe just a quick question. I'm wondering, you know, as we let the public look at this audit report, if it would be beneficial that when we have big things like that, there just could be a notation so that everybody else knows what that is. Because I noticed it right away, and I'm going, okay, there's got to be a reason for it. But it would be nice if it actually said that right on the chart to reflect that's why one, especially with the new standard. But I can't be the only person looking and going, what happened in 2024?

Yeah, what I'll do is make that revision, provide that to Willie and make sure that an updated version is provided to the public.

Let me make note of that so I don't forget.

Any other questions? Okay. At the end of each year, typically and hopefully you have a positive fund balance. That really is a representation of really reserves that you can carry over into future years, referred to as fund balance. It's not technically cash and investments. Usually it's close to that, but from an accounting perspective, there's a lot of different types of entries that don't affect cash. So a fund balance is not entirely cash and investments. It really is your reserves going forward. Governmental accounting is never simple, so there's five different categories. I'm not gonna go through them all. I'm just gonna point out at times there will be funds that were received that are legally restricted by outside parties. Usually those are federal or state aides that are restricted for certain areas. that is going to be a category within the fund balance that is really set aside, saying you don't have access to spend on anything. But outside of that, most of the other areas are really considered unrestricted and can be utilized going forward on whatever you would like. This is the look at total fund balance. You can see in the general fund, really, you just have a small amount of non-spendable, which is really a representation of either existing inventory that has not been used yet, inventory which could be supplies and materials, also any prepaid type items. Those are considered non-spendable. They're very insignificant. Overall, they are included in each one of these graphs, but they're so small you can't even see them. So the vast majority of this is unassigned or really unrestricted, can be utilized for whatever you want going forward. There has been some fluctuations in the last four years, and these are, again, the total dollar amounts. What's important to do and what we do every year for you is provide you that as a percentage of your budget. So you can really look at what do we have in reserves compared to our annual budget or our annual expenditures. You can see for the first six years of this graph, well over 100%. 100% would represent one year's worth of your budget, I think there was just a change, a philosophical change four years ago as to how you would really manage that general fund and especially the fund balance. So while it did decline significantly compared to previous years in 2022, that was still a very strong 82%. a dip down in 2024 to under 38%. I would say that's probably getting into the, if that's gonna be more of a trend as opposed to just a one year standout as an auditor, we would be having these discussions with Willie specifically, probably Dustin as well as, that's getting to be fairly low for a city of this size. It's not a lot in reserve. So it's good to see that back up to just under 70%. And so really what that means is you could operate without taking in any revenues for about 70% of the year if that were the case. Generally speaking, what we see, cities usually have at least 50% in reserves. A lot of cities don't have formal policies. Some cities do, but usually 50% is kind of the minimum that we see. Counties, similar. school districts usually are a little bit lower, just the function of their budget and what they're doing. So to see that back up to just under 70% I think is a good strong indication of strong financial condition at the end of 2025. We looked at the top 10 cities in North Dakota, population-wise, the average is actually 68%. So you're now right within the average. So that will fluctuate depending on different things that are going on, but I think a good strong spot to be. Questions?

Mayor Dernabig, if I may. Please. So this year in 2016, when we were 170, is that legal? Even be that, to have that much in reserve for a public entity?

Do you know, just off the top of your head?

Potentially. It perhaps was legal at the time, maybe.

Potentially, it could be interpreted as outside of the legalities of reserves that cities can have. Probably around 20, I think it's 2023, the State Auditor's Office actually put an emphasis on wanting external auditors, so they reached out to us as well as any other firm or individual that was performing audits and said, hey, we want you to take a closer look at the language within Century Code. The language does have some flexibility, like if you have future projects that you're, but I would say if the state auditor had been looking at that much closer back in 2016, I'm not gonna say it was illegal, but I think there would've been a lot of pressure to do something about that. And I don't unfortunately have the details of what the requirements are. They're a little bit more complicated, but that is being looked at. Okay, capital projects fund, just a quick look at expenditures. Really just an indication that over the last five years those expenditures have been very consistent. here's the ending fund balance in those capital projects fund. So really a big change happened in 2020, from 2017 to 2018, there used to be like a philosophy of we're gonna fund projects really internally upfront. and then we'll recoup through debt issuance when they're done. I can't remember the specific project in 2018, but it was significant enough where that just wasn't feasible. There wasn't enough cash on hand. So previous, we as auditors were never concerned that it was in a negative because we could see the process take place. I would say it's more, this is now more consistent with what we see elsewhere to really bond or issue debt for projects ahead of time, get that cash on hand, spend it rather than internally finance it. So the last eight years, that's really what we expected to see once we had that understanding and expectations that it's really gonna be pretty minimal, hanging right around zero or up to $10 million, but just a change in philosophy there. Water and sewer fund, these are combined. Green representing operating revenues. The next line representing expenses excluding depreciation. Depreciation is significant in these types of funds. Those are non-cash items. And so really when you include depreciation, it typically does, you can see on this graph, the very bottom line does include the depreciation. It was over $10 million in 2025. So while that is required, by accounting standards. We also like to break out and show you, you know, if that was excluded because it's non-cash, you are operating at a surplus every year of this 10-year graph. Net position, very consistent. Net position here in the water and sewer funds is different than fund balance because a lot of this net position is actually kind of built up or it's an investment in infrastructure. So infrastructure, vehicles, equipment accounted for differently in these types of funds and really that most of it is tied up in that position. So I definitely don't want you to interpret this saying we've got $300 million in cash in that fund. That is not the case. Most of that is representation of infrastructure. So good to see that being steady. If that were declining, that would probably be an indication of a couple things. Maybe a significant population decline, meaning there's just not as much infrastructure needs out there. Or there's deferred infrastructure or there's infrastructure needs that are being deferred, pushed off for whatever reason. So to see that consistent is really a good sign of a good, healthy water and sewer fund. Your end cash and investments, you can see, very consistent there too. Again, that's a point in time at 1231, so that will fluctuate a little bit. But overall, very consistent for the last 10 years. Garbage fund, a similar setup here. Operating revenues, operating expenses. This garbage fund typically does operate very, very close to break-even. You can see you'll have a surplus in one year, maybe a deficit in one, but for the most part, you're hovering right around that break-even, which is really the intent of a fund like that. Net position, similar, a lot of that in infrastructure, some of that in cash as well. There's cash in investments for the garbage fund. Okay. Any other questions, audit process, audit results, anything I talked about, potentially anything I didn't, take those at this time.

Are there any questions?

I just have a comment. Thank you for putting this together for me. The visual slides really do help, and I really want to make sure that we understand this isn't an easy process for our staff to go through. It takes a lot of time and commitment, and to come out with a clean audit finding is fantastic. So thank you to our entire staff and I, Bailey, for helping us get through this process and making it a little less painful.

Thank you. Agreed. Any other questions?

Are you needing a motion to approve the audit findings? I WOULD MOVE TO APPROVE THE OUT-OF-FINDINGS. I'LL SECOND.

WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. ANY FINAL QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? HEARING NONE, WE'LL JUMP TO A ROLL CALL VOTE. All right, on to item five, 826-13, Hope Lutheran Edition, Request for Conditional Use Permit for Signage, Aaron Nelson, Director of Planning and Zoning.

All right, good evening again. So item five is a request for a conditional use permit to allow a sign to be illuminated and of an increased size within a residential zoning district. THIS APPLICATION COMES TO YOU WITH RECOMMENDATION OF APPROVAL FROM THE PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION WITH CONDITIONS. THE SUBJECT PROPERTY IS LOCATED AT 4905 NINTH STREET WEST, WHICH IS THE SITE OF THE HOPE LUTHERAN WEST CAMPUS, WHICH IS CURRENTLY UNDER DEVELOPMENT JUST NORTHEAST OF LACOSTE ELEMENTARY, NORTH 52ND AVENUE THERE. THE PROPERTY IS CURRENTLY WITHIN THE R1 SINGLE FAMILY, OR EXCUSE ME, R1A SINGLE FAMILY, OR SINGLE FAMILY DWELLING ZONING DISTRICT, EXCUSE ME. And the proposed monument sign would be 12 feet tall with a total of 70 square feet of sign face area. So without approval of a conditional use permit, the maximum sign size would be eight feet tall with 32 square feet of sign face area. So eight beats the maximum, they're asking for 12, 32 square feet is the maximum, they're asking for 70. A public hearing was held at the August 11th Planning and Zoning Commission meeting at which several residents spoke in opposition to the proposed sign, citing concerns with size and lighting in relation to visibility of pedestrians and just general incompatibility with the character of the neighborhood. The criteria for granting a conditional use permit is outlined in the staff report. Of note, staff finds that lighted signs can result in safety hazards for nighttime driving and can impact the residential character of a neighborhood. As such, staff recommends brightness limitations of 0.3 foot candles above ambient lighting be placed on any condition of approval. The other item of note in the staff report is that this type of request is not unique. The city has seen a number of different condition use permit requests for larger signs or illuminated signs or even electronic messaging centers or EMCs, which are those LED signs that are particularly bright and also flash and change colors. This is not one of those signs. The applicant has provided some renderings of the sign here as well as an update to the Planning and Zoning Commission packet which is this rendering of what the sign would look like at night so you can kind of get a sense of which parts of the sign are actually illuminated at night. And then overall, staff finds the proposed conditional use permit request to be consistent with city plans and ordinances as outlined within the staff report. And the requested action tonight is to approve the conditional use permit and then the associated conditional use permit agreement with the conditions noted. Again, that primary condition of approval would be to restrict the brightness of the sign to 0.3 foot candles above ambient lighting. Comments that were received in writing are included in the meeting packet. So with that summary, I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have for staff. Are there questions?

Quick question. Aaron, did I see that they can't have the lights on after 10 o'clock too, so there wasn't an all-night thing? Because I think that was part of the concern as well.

Yeah, that was a point of discussion that came up at the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. The applicant did indicate that they would be willing to shut off the sign at 10 p.m. However, that was never a recommendation that was included into the Planning and Zoning recommendation to the City Commission. And so that is something additional. If you wanted to add that as a condition to the conditional use permit, we could certainly do that.

Do we have those restrictions on any of our other signs that are currently in the city that we turn them off in a certain time?

We do, yep. I think 10 p.m. is relatively standard. Every conditional use permit is relatively unique. YOU KNOW, WE'VE GOT RECORDS OF THESE THINGS THAT GO BACK 20-PLUS YEARS, AND SO THERE'S BEEN SOME VARIATIONS IN THE CONDITIONS AND THINGS, BUT I THINK 10 PM IS PRETTY STANDARD IN THAT REGARD.

THANK YOU. OTHER QUESTIONS?

MAYOR JORDEVICK, AARON. THE NOTES THAT YOU HAVE HERE is did you find in your research, it wasn't abundantly clear in the notes that similar signs, similar size, similar candle exists within West Fargo. Did you find anything recently that, are there like signs in residential areas that are 12 or 15 feet high, whatever it is, are there like circumstances to support this? Have we done this before?

There are, and thanks for the question. Within the staff report, I think there's some call-outs to some specific churches and schools and things that have received conditional use permit approvals in the past. They're not overly detailed. Credit to Lisa Sankey, our planner in our office. She's been a planner on staff for quite a while, and she has a great memory. So I did ask her to pull together a few examples here right before this meeting. And so just, I can just, and run through the list if you'd like, but maybe just to pull out some examples here. Red River Reform Church, looks like they've got a 50 square foot sign, nine feet high, that's the church on the north side of West Fargo High School there. Hope Living Baptist Church, 41 square feet, illuminated in an R1A district. Shiloh Church is in a residential district, Summit Church I think is what they're called now. They actually have a 33, .75 square foot sign with an EMC. I believe that one's relatively tall, too. That's the pylon sign. It is adjacent to the interstate, which is unique to that church. Hulbert Aquatic Center, they've got one of those electronic messaging centers across the street from residential there. Blessed Sacrament, St. Andrew's Lutheran, Hope Living Baptist, Meadow Ridge Bible Chapel. Prairie Heights, again, it's a 15 foot high sign, 60 square feet in size with an EMC. That one's a little different in context in that it's adjacent to 32nd Avenue, however. Holy Cross Catholic Church, 39 square feet, seven feet high with an EMC. Faith Lutheran. They've got two signs that are each 43 square feet.

So quite a few of those are smaller in square footage and or on more major roads. Yep, it's a mixed bag, yep.

What did you say the lacrosse sign was?

Because that's relatively new. Yep, looks like that one was from 2017. The conditional use permit at least was, and that was 39 square feet, seven feet high with an electronic messaging center.

So a little more than half of what this one is. Mm-hmm.

I sometimes find myself slightly frustrated with the concept of, well, we've always done it, and then I just feel like that's the excuse to just continue doing something that we've always done. I don't personally like it. I feel like this neighborhood has been extremely consistent and persistent with their messaging, that they have no interest in further what they feel, and I tend to agree, commercialization of their neighborhood. I feel like conditional use permits from my understanding are supposed to be kind of few and far between and if we're issuing them at the rate that we are doing in residential neighborhoods I feel like we should look at some type of zoning change. So I just I'm personally not I'm not in favor of this. I don't think the neighborhood is in favor of this so I I'm disinterested in this personally.

Commissioner Jorgensen? I motion to deny your request.

I would second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. Maybe just a comment if I could. Yeah, please do.

Thank you. So when it comes to conditional use permits, thank you for the comment on, should be a few and far in between. I think from staff perspective, what I would comment on there is the conditional use permit, they're allowable in the zoning district as long as they meet all the conditions. And so those conditions of approval are outlined in the staff report. And so if you do want to make a motion to deny, I would just... recommend that you tie the recommendation to one of those criteria as the reason for the denial.

What page is that on there?

I can scroll up to that. If you can kind of see that. Emily, if you can zoom in on that box there. Okay.

THE SIZE AND THE LIGHTING.

YEAH, I WOULD SAY THE SIZE AND THE LIGHTING.

SO NUMBER 6 IS SPECIFIC TO SIGNS, AND THEN NUMBER 9 IS SPECIFIC OR A LITTLE MORE GENERAL IN TERMS OF COMPATIBILITY WITH ADJACENT PROPERTIES.

AND NUMBER 9 WOULD BE THE OTHER ONE THAT I...

I WOULD AMEND THE MOTION TO THAT.

I would be very agreeable to that amendment.

We have a motion and a second. Commissioner Erickson?

Yep, just a comment. I support the motion. I think the challenge with this is the lack of proximity to a major corridor. It is smack dab in the middle of all residential areas. I DON'T, IT IS, IF THERE IS SOMETHING THAT IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE RESIDENTIAL AREA, THIS SEEMS TO FIT THE BILL.

I WOULD AGREE. I HAD THE THOUGHT THAT THE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS THERE FIRST AND THEY MADE A CHOICE TO MOVE IN THERE. IT WASN'T THE OPPOSITE. It's not like the church was there and then the neighborhood developed around it, which might lead me to have a different opinion. Otherwise, I would agree with you.

So they can still have a sign. It just can't be 12. It needs to be a smaller version.

Yeah, and so there's two components to this conditional use permit. One is the size and the other is the illumination at nighttime. So maybe just a point of clarification if the denial is for both of those requests.

Do we need to, in this motion, to include that if they, even with the current sign as they're doing, can we limit the time frame? Even though we're denying the increase, can we still request that it be at 10 o'clock?

They wouldn't be allowed to have any lighting without a conditional use permit. It would be completely dark at night.

They would have to come back for a conditional use permit in order for it to be lit. Oh, to be lit, so they could do that?

Okay.

Yeah, so maybe just point clarification here too. So if you want to approve the lighting for a limited time, you know, that might maybe I'll defer to the city attorney, but that might just be something that could be handled now as opposed to having to come back with in terms of modifying the lighting going into winter Wednesday night church.

I'm not sure why we need to rather than just the size.

I'm a no on both personally.

The motion in the second is to deny based off of both the size and the lighting. Any further questions or comments? Do you have anything else to add?

No, I just, I think that most, You know, most of our schools are not necessarily that, but most churches have a sign. And when you talk about funerals and people trying to find going into residential neighborhoods, the people who live there might know it, but anyone else coming in, they may not know that that's where the church is. And I don't think that lighting for led, especially for the few hours at night is a bad thing. So I think it's a little disappointing if I were the church to be excluded from having a lighting, someone could see me at night. And considering we're dark at 4 o'clock coming up very shortly, I don't think that's too much to ask. So I'm in favor of the size reduction. I'm just not sure we should put the requirement on the lighting.

Mayor Druidvig, if I may, on that point, just a point of clarification. Absent a cup, they will still be able to light their sign, correct?

No.

Oh.

need a conditional use permit or one of the provisions of this conditional use permit to light the sign at night i think the church is a gigantic church smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood that i think anybody could find regardless of how dark it was out they're like the only the school is obviously there but your sign in that neighborhood is not LIT, NONE OF YOUR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND NEIGHBORHOODS HAVE LIT SIGNS, ACCORDING TO THE BUSINESS MANAGER WHEN I HAD ASKED ABOUT THAT AS WELL FROM A SCHOOL'S PERSPECTIVE.

ALL RIGHT. WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. WE'LL GO TO A VOTE.

JORGENSEN?

YES.

ERIKSON? YES. ZUNDEL? YES. STEDMAN? YES.

Motion to deny, passes. All right, item number six, 826-12, North Pond at the Preserve, 19th edition, request for subdivision approval and encroachment agreement, Aaron Nelson.

Thanks, sorry. All right, thanks, Emily. So item six is a request for approval of a subdivision replat. This comes to you with a recommendation of approval from the Planning and Zoning Commission. The subject property is located on the 300 block of 23rd Avenue East. This is the Rivers Bend Medical Park property located along the south side of the interstate there, just west of our location here. The proposed subdivision is intended to replat three existing lots into five new lots for future development. The property is currently within the C, Lake Commercial Zoning District, as you can see on the map there. A copy of the subdivision plat is included in your packet here. I know it's kind of a busy plat. There's a lot of easements and things encumbering the plat area there, but essentially the lot lines is what's changing. There used to be three lots within the boundary of this plat. With this replat, there will now be five lots. Additionally, there is need for some additional right-of-way along the north side of 23rd Avenue for basically to fit in the sidewalk in relation to some of the existing street trees. And so there is some additional dedication of right-of-way that would accompany this plat. One of the things to note in relation to the dedication of right-of-way is the fact that there are two existing signs located along the right-of-way line. or in proximity to the right-of-way line, one of which will be encroaching into the right-of-way upon dedication of the extra 10 feet there. And so there is a encroachment agreement that also accompanies this plat just to document that encroachment, just basically noting that the sign was there prior to the right-of-way and outlining the details for how the city and the property owner is going to basically manage that into the future. Additionally, there is a subdivision development agreement, which is pretty standard for all of our subdivisions. The main reason for that agreement is just to outline the nature of the private drives that are internal to the subdivision, mostly just wanting to make sure that those drives are maintained in perpetuity. Overall, staff finds that the proposed subdivision to be consistent with city plans and ordinances, as outlined in the staff report. A public hearing was held at the August 11th Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, at which there were no comments. So the requested action tonight is to approve the subdivision plat and the associated agreements. With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have for staff. Any questions?

I'll make a motion to approve.

We have a motion. Is there a second?

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any final questions or comments? Hearing none, we'll go to a vote.

Jorgensen?

Yes.

Erickson? Yes. Sundell? Yes. Steadman? Yes. Jardavig?

Yes. All right, item number seven, 2026, Centerline Striping, Jerry Wallace, City Engineer. Got that tie on now.

Right.

Appreciate it, Mayor Jarevich and commissioners. I'd like to think there's nothing too overly controversial about this item, so I'm gonna try to be a little quicker here with you tonight. But essentially what this boils down to is we had a developer, Enclave, acquired a parcel just north of the Sanford Clinic there, and they were looking at putting in some multi-family apartment, townhome mixture of things.

We're on the wrong item, I think.

Oh, geez. Sorry about that. I would expect to get stranger looks, I guess.

No.

Okay, I apologize about that. Essentially, this item in particular, looking at conducting centerline striping throughout the various places in the city where Public Works has determined it's needed at this point in time. We went out, we solicited quotes from four different contractors who performed the work. We received one quote back. As a result, some of the, I will say that the prices we received were on the higher end. We were not as excited to see that, so we did have to peel out some of the work. And essentially, Street Department, Public Works is going to be repainting some crosswalks and That type of striping that they can perform in-house relatively easily. But with all that being said, essentially looking for approval to use the $127,717 from capital improvement sales tax to fund this round of centerline striping in the city. And with that, I'm available for any questions you might have. Any questions? Yes.

Move to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any additional questions? Hearing none, we'll go to a vote.

Jorgensen? Yep. Erickson? Yes. Sundell? Yes. Stedman? Yes. Chertovich?

Yes. All right. Motion passes. Item number eight, Cheyenne Riverside First Edition Traffic Study. Jerry Wallace, City Engineer.

Again, now that you've heard half of my spiel on this, I'll try to finish up. But again, apologize for the mix up there. Essentially, Enclave ran into some roadblocks with concerns from a lot of residents about potential impacts from this proposed development to traffic in the area. And at the time, when they were approaching the Planning Commission for this, they had a simplified traffic study done that essentially said the area doesn't function perfectly as it is, but we feel relatively strongly that what we're proposing here isn't going to significantly worsen that. And through multiple discussions after that planning commission meeting. We sat down with the developer, we had some conversation about, you know, maybe this needs to be a more in-depth study, you know, that might have multiple components to it where it's, you know, what are, you know, some of the needs that may be required for the development there should you know, Planning and City Commission allow that to proceed, but well as, you know, taking a holistic look as to are there improvements that the city should be entering into based on the existing conditions out there already? And so with that, they've agreed to essentially enter into this preliminary work agreement where They will essentially put up the dollars to fund the study and we'll see what the study returns as far as recommendations. If you're not aware, in the future we are gonna be looking at improvements to 13th Avenue through there. There's a big corridor reconstruction project coming. It got us thinking that holistically again, should we be looking at You know what type of access you know would be suitable for the site You know there's this is the intersection of two collectors and two arterial streets Should there be you know potentially and one thing we've kicked around in-house now is should there be a lane added so that you know along with the left turn lane when you're going south on Cheyenne Street up to 13th You know, we have the left turn, we have the through, should we add another lane that could function as a right turn and through? And we're hopeful, I think everybody's hopeful that this study will answer a lot of those questions. So with all that being said, Essentially, either the developer will fund this study or we may see that there should be some specific improvements that may need to be or should be incorporated into a future project, in which case we would probably just roll that expense into the project, district, et cetera, et cetera. But with all that being said at this point, I would stand for any questions you might have. Questions?

How long does that process take?

As far as the study? Yeah. I'm not sure I saw a specific timeline. It looks like we should have the final report by the end of November this year.

It's a good place to start.

Absolutely.

I'm appreciative that they're willing to do it. I think there's some, yeah, it's not a great intersection as is, and I'm thankful that they took the feedback that they heard in all of those public sessions and at the meetings and are doing something with it. So I commend them for that.

I'll motion to create project number 9077, approve preliminary work agreement and authorize a traffic study.

All right, we have a motion. Second. And a second. Any further questions or comments?

Mayor DeVay, quick question. Jerry, is this something MetroCOG captures or is it not something we could capture from MetroCOG products?

Traditionally, I would say, you know, they're pretty heavily focused on traffic counts. They did get us, I think, some of the data that pointed, I can't remember the exact year of the study, but I think it was somewhere between 2019, 2021 maybe. And I think they were used. You know, don't quote me 100%. That was kind of early years of my time at the city. But that's something they traditionally are involved with, traffic counts. And As far as this, this is probably not quite the point in time where, you know, they would get heavily involved. But, you know, it's things like this where, you know, when we have our next meetings with them, we would start, you know, including them in that, you know, feedback loop of, hey, we're looking at this, you know. So just keeping everyone in the loop.

Cool.

Sharing that information.

Super helpful. I'm on MetroCOG. Still don't really understand what they all do. So this is helpful. Thank you.

Absolutely. Great question. All right, any further comments or questions? Otherwise, we'll go to roll call vote.

Jorgensen? Yes. Erickson? Yes. Zundel? Yes. Steadman? Yes. Jodovic?

Yes. Sorry. Motion passes. Item number nine, Lagoon Property Economic Development Readiness. Dan Hanson, Senior Director of Community and Development.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and commissioners. At the last commission meeting, we had Ryan Ashheim from the Greater Fargo-Moorhead EDC come and talk to us about their document-ready site program. That request for him to present was based off of we had actually had a meeting with him and a site selector that came in and was talking about here's what potentially developers would look at when they're developing a large area and to get it document-ready. I've obviously got the cover letter written, but I put together a PowerPoint that I think kind of takes us through a lot of the highlights with that. So I don't know if that really is good. and run this one here, but so yeah. Just wanted to give a little bit of a very quick background just to get everybody, the commission and the public up to speed on where the lagoons are at right now with their decommissioning. Over the last several years, Public Works has been actively involved in decommissioning a lot of the cells of the lagoons. Of the 10 cells that we have, eight have been decommissioned and there is one that is in the process of being decommissioned and one that is going to remain in use. That way when we have the high flow rain events that we can not have to try to pump all of that to Fargo and retain some of that. Next slide please. This slide shows all of the lagoons that are in red have been decommissioned. You can see the one in yellow is the one that they're currently working on decommissioning and the one in green on the east side That is one that is going to be remaining in place. And the other thing that I really think is great about this slide and what it really points out is there was a lot of discussion about the half a billion yards of fill that we requested from the FM Diversion Project. We had a contract with them for them to deliver us clean clay fill, not contaminated, and they satisfied that by delivering it. Public work works placed that fill over the lagoons. But what you see in purple is actually those are the areas that were actually covered by the clay fill that we got from the FM diversion. So nothing, no cell north of 12th received any of that fill. And if you see that purple line that goes across the bottom of cells numbers eight and nine, that purple line actually continues on through cell number 10 that was an area that got approximately say eight feet of fill placed in it because of its location next to the Cheyenne diversion and so that way we were able to fill that area up completely so when someday when those cells do get uh developed, there wouldn't need to be any work being done in those areas. So a lot of that fill did get placed in those three cells on that south edge, and that took a lot of the clay that was given to us. Cell number 10 is the only one that actually received additional fill across the entirety of it. Approximately a couple feet of fill went across that site. And it was placed in lifts with a sheep's foot, which is a compaction equipment from the, you know, Public Works when they replaced it so So the vast majority nine of the ten cells did not get any fill placed in them In any of the developable areas of it and in the developable areas of cell number ten basically it was a couple feet spread across that and also when the first the cells were first designed they weren't They weren't dug into the ground eight to ten feet. They were only dug in below the existing ground if you strip the topsoil a couple feet and then there was berms placed on the sides of the cells to be able to fill that up. So I know there was a discussion and we covered this a little bit later too about do we want to take a look at just doing a geotechnical analysis of are these lagoons developable based off of the fill that we received and placed and I wanted to give a perspective that Hundreds of acres of the lagoons did not get that fill. And in the developable area of cell number 10, it's only a couple feet of clay, which if there's a building that's going to be slab on grade or something, there would absolutely maybe need to be something done with that. But any kind of a frost footing, any kind of a basement would go through any of the fill that was placed in it. So my personal feelings is, we proceed with the geotechnical analysis, we're going to get a report back from Braun stating that all of the decommissioned lagoons will be developable. That's my personal feeling. Obviously, they have to do the work to prove that, but one, to provide that in context, and also it's important just to point out that little, it looks little, but those are big sites. That strip of purple along the bottom side of those cells is where a lot of that went. Next slide, please. The growth area master plan that just recently got completed in July of 26, it did identify the lagoon site as a near-term focus area for development. And I put a clip in there from the growth area master plan that basically states as such, I won't go through the process of reading it all for time's sake, but it does state that this is a corridor, this is a property that is wanting to be developed for that. And on the next slide, they actually show here's an example of what it could look like if it developed into some form of a commercial business with emphasis on street fronts, you know, having the buildings and then having some transportation network that accesses the rear sides of buildings. And so that was just an example from the growth area master plan of what it could look like. And then there was three recommendations that came out of the Growth Area Master Plan. The first one was resolved. They stated that the city may have some internal needs that they want to do with the lagoon. So we should really identify those, determine the city's needs for them so that way when we do go out to find what type of a developer would want to come in and develop that. That way we could be very specific with them and confirm the areas that are available for the private development and not just put out the whole lagoons as a whole and then later on tell them, yeah, but we want to keep this piece for that. So that's what the resolve part means. The prepare part is kind of what Ryan was talking about when he said to get that shovel ready. or document-ready status. The other thing that I did mention was to analyze the transportation and regional connectivity to the site, which we would obviously do with that. Basically, 12th Avenue is the connectivity to the site, and then we would have to take a look if they're accessing it from the Raymond Interchange or from the east, how are we going to get there. That portion of it isn't necessarily part of this document-ready site, but it is something that we would want to take a look at. when we find out what it's going to develop into, basically based off of how many trucks, for example, are going to be going in and out of there or what type of a facility is it. But it did mention in the growth area master plan a couple different things that basically lend itself to be shovel ready. And then the last thing on the next slide that it shows is that after those things are done, then we can go out and market the site. It said that we could either solicit developer interest via expressions of interest or request for qualifications, processes, establish a strong brand, define the market potential, you know, what cities, I'm sorry, industries are we looking to bring in, outreach to brokers, site selectors, and what incentives potentially is the city willing to offer to entice development into that area. So we have some of those answers crossed. The bottom line from the Growth Area Master Plan Resolve, again, that just removes some ambiguity about the asset itself. Prepare, it removes the risk for anybody considering it, and that's really what the Document Ready site does, is it just tells somebody that wants to come in, they're looking at sites all across the nation, and a lot of them are greening fields. Ours is a lagoon. They're going to ask questions, and this does basically answer a lot of the frequently asked questions that we are going to get. And then the market part, again, that converts that de-risked, well-defined asset into a visible competitive developer interest. Each step, it states in the Growth Area Master Plan, is dependent on the one before it genuinely being complete, not just started. So getting into the next step, a document-ready site. Why would we move the lagoons to be a document ready site designation? Well one of them is when we met with the site selector in the greater Fargo-Moorhead EDC is that they're actively marketing the metro area and the sites that have been brought to a document ready status. And so they're actually at different conferences around the nation and being part of that program, getting something document ready, we would be included in their marketing efforts and that would be basically free marketing for our lagoon area to all of the different entities that they touch. They mentioned, Ryan mentioned that site selectors often get a hold of them and those, many of the requests are very time sensitive requesting information. Hey, we're looking at a lot of different sites, get me within two weeks the answers to these questions. With a document-ready site, they can say, here's the packet. Without the document-ready site, we can say, we can figure it out, but we don't have the information at this time, and then they move on. Currently, as presented by the EDC at the August 17th Commission meeting, West Fargo, we do not have any properties included with the metro area's existing document-ready sites as marketed by the EDC. So again, what does it do? It removes the risk, some of the risk, much of the risk to the developers and the site selectors. It helps our lagoon site compete with others at a national level. And again, speed to market. They take a look at their information of a lot of different sites. And a lot of times what they do is they start with 50, they'll narrow it down to five or 10 or whatever it is. And basically the way that they narrow it down to is, What are the ones that don't have a lot of risk and it's worth putting our time and effort into identifying is this a good site for our development. So basically it answers a lot of initially frequently asked questions. And in fact, next slide, is that the city, I mean, we've been contacted over the years by many different entities asking us, hey, can we buy the lagoons from you? Some of them contractors looking for lay down yards, some of them developers wanting to eventually develop it. We've always said, let's wait and see what the growth area master plan does. We wanna make sure that we're doing it THIS IN THE RIGHT WAY, AND WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO FIND OUT WHAT IS AVAILABLE FOR US IN THE MARKETPLACE SO THAT WE GET THE BEST THING FOR THE CITY AND THE BEST USE THAT WE WANT OUT OF IT. BUT AGAIN, JUST FOR EXAMPLE, IN THE PACKET HERE, RECENTLY WE GOT REACHED OUT TO THE CITY, AND I JUST PUT IN THE NEXT SLIDE, HARD TO READ, BUT that is the information that they requested from us of what do we have on the on the lagoons and if you read through the questions that they asked us basically they said is it a document ready site and had a couple different uh... questions as well uh... that aren't there but things that we can deal with or get to but excuse me What this does is it just really creates a real-life example of what happened two weeks ago. If we were document-ready, we would have been able to provide a lot of that information to them. So at the last commission meeting, the city commission approved us working with Moore Engineering to produce a task order in order to get the site into a document ready status the task order that's in the packet identifies several different things that need to get done one is after it's all done they would come back with a technical narrative that discusses what their findings were to package it all together the six or seven different things that were identified geotechnical investigation phase one environmental assessment, phase two, and then a wetland delineation assessment, cultural resources assessment, threatened and endangered species assessment, and an ALTA survey. Those are the things that if we get completed, we would be able to do it, have a document ready. One of the things to mention is that also at the last commission meeting, Amy, you were remotely, you were asking about what are the things that we need to do in order to do this, and Dustin had mentioned The task order is going to come back and lay out basically a critical path. These are the things that we need to do before the next thing. And essentially what it came back with is all of the things that we're talking about here are mutually exclusive of the others. They can all be done independently of them, with the exception that the Phase 2 environmental assessment, while it can get started, there are some things that are done in the Phase 1 environmental assessment that could potentially change the scope and add some things to it. But all of those things can get started independently. So what you see in front of you as far as all those seven different things, that's an a la carte menu of what we would like to proceed with. They do in the task order state, here's the estimated dollar amount that it's gonna take for each one of these tasks. And I'd like to make it known that those dollars that you see in the task order are hourly. Those are not lump sums. So say for example, the wetland delineation. Had a question today come in. What happens if, you know, this is a lagoons, there's no wetlands in the lagoons. Why are we, why do we have that dollar amount on the wetland mitigation? Well, potentially on the periphery of the lagoons where there's some ditching and things like that, that could be what potentially might show up as a wetland. And If it does show up as a wetland, we have to request jurisdictional determination from the Corps. Basically, what that is saying is, is this a waterway that is connecting to one of the waterways of the state? If they make that connection, then it's jurisdictional, and there's different mitigation measures to go with that. If it comes back and it's not jurisdictional, then basically they're stating that, yep, it's a wetland, but we don't mind you disturbing it because there isn't the connectivity to that water. Getting into it, again, the technical narrative, and I won't just read through all the slides, but again, that is going to have a lot of different information from the findings of the different tasks that they're going to go through and study. Historical information, existing conditions. identifying the permit requirements. They're also talking to utility companies to find out what the current thing is. Say we have a fiber line that runs through the middle of it that we're not sure about, but it connects airports or something. Well, that is a big difference. So there would be discussions with utility companies there. And then eventually in the end, we have GIS and CAD maps that would be produced. So the geotechnical investigation, again, that's working with Braun Intertech, who has done majority of a lot of the work around the lagoons and for the city in these areas. They'd have some locations that they would take the boring truck out. They would do some bores. They're going to find out what the existing groundwater level is at. That's something that people want to know when they're building buildings. Is this on top of a swamp? Is it 50 feet to ground water? What does the ground look like? What is it composed of? And that's going to answer the question what fill was placed where and how much is in there and eventually that geotechnical investigation is going to come back and state we feel that this is developable or possibly come back and state that it might not be developable. This is one of the things in the a la carte menu that does need to take place before winter conditions or once the ground freezes and snow out there, obviously, then we're probably waiting till spring to do this work. The phase one environmental assessment, think of that as more of a desktop review of all things environmental, checking out with all the different type of requirements, historical records review, site reconnaissance, coordinating with Braun on the investigative work, And then the final report documenting the sources, findings, conclusion, providing professional opinion regarding any potential environmental concerns. They take a look at a lot of historical photos with that. They take a look at a lot of things and they start to try to identify is there potentially anything out there that we can find at our desktop that is going to say that there might be some environmental concerns that we have out here. Again, that also needs to take place before winter conditions. So if we don't move forward with that piece of it, we would be doing that next year. Phase two that is more of your intensive field sampling laboratory testing We have lagoons. We want to make sure that we're telling people we don't have sludge that remains out there All the sludge was either non-existent or it was land applied it was Farmed and it was it has basically been identified as topsoil now because it's been farmed for a couple years with the exception of the lagoon that we're in the process of still decommissioning so And then again, just the sampling of all the different things that they can sample in the soils and the chemical analysis of that. This is another task that would need to take place before winter conditions if this is something that we choose to move forward with. The wetland delineation, it starts again with a desktop delineation. They take a look at historical photos, they take a look at as-builts, how the lagoons were built, existing topographical maps, things of that nature, and identify where are there depressions, where could there be some areas that could potentially be wetlands. Once that desktop delineation is done and those areas are identified, there's a field crew that goes out just basically check for hydrophonic soils to see what type of grass is growing there. Are these grasses or plants native to wetlands? If it is, then it's a wetland. It needs to get mitigated. We need to find out if it's jurisdictional or not. Again, this needs to also take place before winter conditions. And also another thing is if we wait on this, you also have to wait next, if we wait till next year to do the wetland mitigation, or determination, you would have to wait until all of the plants are growing again. So it's likely probably June by the time we can get started with this work if we don't begin on that this year. Cultural resources assessment, that's literature review per SHPO guidelines. An intensive field survey if there's any archaeological investigation leading to an inventory report. Another question we had today was, this is a lagoon site, it's already been tore up, what potential architectural things or cultural resources are out there. One example of historical photo was there was an old structure that was on the west side of it that was tore down at one point in time. I know that it was tore down, it doesn't exist today, but do remnants of it exist? Does the SHPO, do they feel that that's something that needs to be investigated. You never know what they're going to tell us that we need to investigate, but they identify any potential impacts or future mitigation requirements for that. Again, this is another thing that would need to take place before winter conditions. And then the threatened endangered species assessment, that's the one that we don't have to do right away. That's something that can be done. A lot of that is a desktop literature review and also That's something that is basically done through a computer at a desk. And it's probably, if I remember correctly, the cheapest thing on the task order. Lastly, it's an ALTA survey. ALTA survey, it just sets the legal boundaries. It identifies anything that's on the site. And there obviously is field work from a survey crew that's needed for that. So all of these things, if approved, it is estimated that all the work would be completed by the end of January 2027. So moving into next year, it is estimated that we would be able to move forward into 27 with a document-ready site in our lagoon area. And they do... Moore does use sub-consultants. I mentioned Braun Intertech. Also for the cultural resources consultant in situ, architectural, archaeological consulting is a sub that they use for that. And then the other thing is, as we mentioned, well, can we just work with Braun on the geotech ourselves? Moore doesn't mark up their subs for this project or any of the projects in recent years. Their subs, when they bill Moore for their work, It's just a pass-through on their invoice, so it wouldn't cost us any more or less to work with them directly, but in the geological investigative work that they need to do, more is going to need to be involved as far as staking out some things that have, where there's a Drain 21 project going on that they're working with the watershed district on that they need to stake the limits to stay out of that. They need to stay out of the area adjacent to the Cheyenne Diversion. and things so, and then we would have them stake those areas out. And then also eventually when Braun does get their report together, if we move forward with more doing this work, they would still need to coordinate with Braun to get that work incorporated into the report. So just having them work together seems to be more efficient in my opinion. And that's a lot of information I've been trying to talk as fast as I can.

I was just hoping there's not 27 more slides. No, I'm gonna keep this under.

I'm going to keep this under an hour, I promise. Next thing is questions on anything that I presented or, again, anything in the cover letter, which pretty much most of that was covered, other than the fact that the intention would be to pay for the cost of this change order using economic development SALES TAX FUNDS, SO IT WOULD BE PAID THROUGH THAT BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THIS IS. IT'S CREATING AN AREA FOR FUTURE COMMERCE, AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THAT FUND IS FOR.

JUST A COMMENT, DAN. FROM MY PERSPECTIVE, THE real estate asset the city has. I think we have a vision for how we want it to be developed, and I think this is kind of a necessary step, as you said, to remove the risk. And to be quite honest, I think if we spend these funds, I think we get it back long term. By removing that risk, we're likely to sell the property for more down the road. So I actually think it's a good investment. Any, yes, and I think we sell it sooner and can realize the benefits of that that much faster. Does that set any questions?

It's just going to be more exposure. Do you want them to go through the slides again?

I'll make a motion to approve.

I am happy to go back through and slow down a little bit. We have a motion to approve. I'll second. We have a second. Any further discussion?

Thank you for the thorough conversation.

Is this? So everything goes perfectly? We've got a document ready site by December 27?

We would have it by the spring of 27. The task order, if you see, has all of the tasks completed by the end of January of 27. So theoretically, if everything goes splendidly, no surprises. February, we would probably still be packaging it up to get the marketing part together for it. because we do still want to get it to the EDC and get them to grade it. They grade it based off of what we've done to become a gold, silver, platinum. We want to be platinum.

Okay. All right. We have a motion and a second. Hearing no more comments, we'll jump to our roll call vote.

Jorgensen.

Yes.

Erickson. Yep. Zundel. Yes. Stedman. Yes.

Drudovic. Yes.

City Administrator's Report. We're getting a little punchy up here, so...

Speaking of punchline, I had a really good punchline to start this off, but I think I'm going to spare you that. So with the Lagoon discussion, I did want to offer that Matt Envik has plans on giving a thorough update on the progress with things like pictures and a little more information on how the decommissioning process has gone. So I'm not sure when he would plan to do that, but that will be coming in our upcoming meeting here. The other update I got for you is just a reminder that we have our employee appreciation picnic on September 24th from 4.30 to 8 p.m. at the city's Plaza at the Lights. It is a sports theme, so wear the favorite team gear of your choice. Happy to end on a positive note that we're celebrating our staff here in a couple weeks. With that, I'll stand for any questions. All right, any correspondence?

All right, any non-agenda items? Hearing none, is there a motion to adjourn? We stand adjourned.