City Council - Regular Meeting

Call the order for a Watertown City Council meeting for August 3rd of 2026. Please rise while Hank Rosso, the chaplain for the Watertown Fire Rescue, leads us in prayer.

Thank you for joining me. Our Heavenly Fathers, we come to you this evening. We're so grateful to you for all your goodness. We take for granted so many gifts. And, Lord, especially as now we recognize tomorrow is National Night Out, and we thank you for law enforcement in this area and how they watch over us. I pray for your protection on them and loving their families and keeping them safe, God. And, Lord, we're sorry that we sometimes take for granted these fine men and women who we look to. God, I also want to say thank you for those in the city hall offices here today. I was thinking of them today and what a wonderful job they do, their commitment and dedication. And, uh, all the administrative tasks, the different ones, and we also kind of look past that and not realizing all the details that come to make this city as great as it is. And finally, Lord, we also reach out to you because we have a request tonight. These horrible fires that are burning up in the Spokane area, so many people evacuated. We pray that you would protect each and every one of them, especially Caitlin tonight, Lord, and that you'd watch over her and those that she loves. And we thank you for your presence here and for the love we share, this love of community and this love for you.

graduated our field training program. I happen to have an officer at work. The gentleman said, well, I'd like to tell you that you hired a guy last night. I told him he stopped. I'm not getting a call from him, but just talked to him. The gentleman decided to

Officer Gable, just take this opportunity to introduce yourself to the community. What interested you in law enforcement? Um, maybe something interesting, you know, quirky about yourself or just whatever comes to mind.

Oh, well, like, like Kirk was saying, grew up on a family farm, um, and, uh, out in the middle of nowhere. So I was like telling people, you know, Watertown is big city living for me. Um, yeah, went to Lake area for law enforcement. Um, Just kind of always had that thought in the back of my head, just even as a kid growing up. Thought it would be an interesting career path. I like helping people, so it seemed pretty fitting. Something quirky about myself. I mean, I know Dan was saying... about all these guys back here having gray hair, and I was, I don't know if you caught it, but I was telling them I got some gray hair, too, up there, so. I fit right in with them, so.

Well, I'm sure you'll get a lot more.

Well, if it all stays and turns gray, I'll be happy with that, as long as it don't fall out, so.

Well, we'd love to have you. You look extremely young. Would you pass a compliance check in this town?

I would think so. I'd have to pull out my ID.

No, we're very happy to have you. Thank you so much for joining the crew here at the Watertown Police Department. It's a fantastic crew. I know Chief Toomey says it's the best in the nation. I'd definitely put it up against the best in the nation. So thank you for joining us and making us stronger, and you've made a great first impression.

Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we will do a presentation and acceptance of the 2025 audit from I'd Bailey given to us remotely by Brian's Stavanger So we'll make sure we get me okay, yes we can I will share my screen

Can you see the presentation?

Yes, we can see the opening screen, City of Watertown, South Dakota Executive Summary.

Wonderful. Okay, well, good evening everyone. Thank you for having me. My name is Brian Stavanger, as mentioned, a partner with Hyde Bailey, ultimately responsible for ensuring that the audit is done properly. And then we can get to the end of it and issue our opinion on your financial statements. I will walk you through the executive summary. And as a reminder, this is year number two of Ida Bailey's relationship with the City of Watertown. So I was in person last year, if anyone remembers that. Doing it remote, of course, this year. But year number two went much smoother. NOT THAT YEAR NUMBER ONE WASN'T GOOD, BECAUSE IT WAS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD FOR A NEW AUTO RELATIONSHIP, BUT I TOLD KRISTEN AND ADAM AT THE UTILITIES, IF YOU THINK YEAR ONE WAS OKAY, JUST WAIT TILL YEAR TWO, AND WE CAN CONFIRM THAT IT WENT SMOOTHER, AND WE'RE LOOKING FORWARD TO YEAR THREE GOING EVEN BETTER. BUT I'LL WALK YOU THROUGH THIS. THIS IS A HIGH-LEVEL SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS FROM 2025. A FULL DOCUMENT IS ISSUED prepared by Kristen that's referred to as the ACFR, which is the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. I think it's just short of 160 pages in 2025. So this really summarizes that ACFR, but a lot of good information and good details in there if you were to read through it. SO I KEPT THIS SLIDE IN THERE JUST TO CONTINUE TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU'RE ALL FAMILIAR WITH IBELE, TOP 20 ACCOUNTING ADVISORY FIRM. WE WORK WITH OVER 1200 GOVERNMENTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND VERY HAPPY TO CONTINUE TO WORK WITH THE CITY OF WATERTONE. THE SERVICE TEAM WAS ACTUALLY THE EXACT SAME AS THE 2024 AUDIT, WHICH MAKES IT LIKELY CONTRIBUTED TO HOW SMOOTH IT WENT. SO ALL FAMILIAR NAMES AND and FACES working with Kristin and Adam to get things done. What are the audit objectives? At the top there, the first three, or the three bullets, those are the same objectives, or I'm sorry, standards that we followed historically, and really no significant change from year to year, but there are three different sets of standards that we follow when conducting an audit. As we go through the audit, we're obtaining reasonable but not absolute assurance. that reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements or that ACFER is free of material misstatement. So really all that means is that we're not looking at things 100%. We don't go through every single transaction. We do it based on risk assessment and sampling, and we have to get to a level that we can be reasonably assured that the ACFER is correct. So ultimately, what an audit comes down to is you are seeking our opinion on your financial statements. The city received, once again, a clean, unmodified opinion. So that really means following all the right accounting rules, financial statements, or that ACFER does not contain any material misstatements. All required disclosures are in there. So a clean, unmodified opinion over the ACFER. At the same time that we're auditing all the activity of the city, there's also a requirement to do a specific audit over federal funds. There's a $1 million threshold. If you spend less than that, you are not required to have this. But you can see on the right, expended over $13 million in 2025, triggering that audit, that federal audit, which is consistent with previous years. Usually the city does have this federal audit. This is very... focused on compliance, making sure you're spending the funds appropriately, as well as internal controls, making sure that not one person is doing one thing from start to finish. There's always multiple people involved. An unmodified opinion on that audit as well. As we go through the audit, we also have the opportunity to observe and confirm potential findings. These are actually the exact same findings as the 2024 audit. Part of the reason being that by the time we got through the 2024 audit, timing-wise, it was much later than anticipated. And really, I think by the time we got done, it was like three-fourths of the way through 2025. So really not enough time to get changes implemented. But we've talked a lot with Kristen and Adam and Alan on how we can avoid these going forward. So material journal entries, we just help propose some adjustments to the year-end balances for accounts payable, compensated absences, and leases. Segregation of duties is really a recognition that Kristen is handling all the year-end reconciliations, adjustments, and related journal entries. So just ensuring that someone else reviews that before it's done. There's a good plan in place to have that happen. And then on the federal awards, there was a reporting finding and really just a lack of a formal review documented. Again, all the same as 2024 and really have a good game plan going forward to make sure these are alleviated. So before we get into the numbers, I'll pause and just questions on the results.

Council, any questions? Okay, no.

Okay, we will continue on. So this is for the entire city, unrestricted cash and investments. So we exclude restricted balances, which are usually related to some sort of debt service or debt obligation requirement. So those are excluded, these are unrestricted. Broken down between proprietary and governmental, a description of those at the bottom. Really consistent, especially the last three years. 2022 was a bit of an uptick. There was a bond issuance. It just led to some increased cash in the governmental funds at the end of the year. But really, if you look at the last three years, very consistent in the cash and investments, just under $100 million citywide. Now we'll focus on the general fund, the general fund, the main operating fund of the city. Take a peek at revenues for the last nine years. Slow, steady growth, 2020 jumps out as what happened. And I bet you if I gave you one guess, you would get it right. Just a lot of COVID funds coming in in 2020. And then it continued to kind of normalize in 2021. And really it's remained, for the most part, pretty flat the last three years. A slight uptick. overall in 2025, but for the most part, fairly flat in the revenues. So as you collect those revenues, the next slide is really how you spent them. Expenditures, much like most governments, most businesses, costs just continually increase. You do your best to keep them where they're at, but you've got to pay all your wonderful people. And then just supplies, materials, and other operating costs just usually continue to go up. So nothing really jumped out from year to year, just kind of year over year continued increases on the expenditure side. At the end of the year, you're going to have a fund balance. There's a variety of reasons why it's important to have a fund balance. a positive fund balance. It's really your reserves that you have remaining at the end of the year that you can utilize going forward. Fund balance is not as straightforward as it could be. There's five different categories. Really, I'll have you focus on these last two. ASSIGNED AND UNASSIGNED. ASSIGNED IS AN INTERNAL EARMARK. SO YOU INTEND TO SPEND SOME OF THE RESERVES ON SPECIFIC ITEMS, BUT IT'S NOT LEGALLY RESTRICTED. IN FACT, IF YOU DON'T END UP SPENDING IT ON THAT, THERE'S NO REPERCUSSIONS. SO REALLY ASSIGNED AND UNASSIGNED ARE THE TWO CATEGORIES THAT WE REFER TO AS UNRESTRICTED. EVERYTHING ELSE HAS SOME SORT OF RESTRICTION TIED TO THEM. SO WE'LL LOOK AT ALL THE FUND BALANCES NOW ON THE NEXT SLIDE. And you can see for the most part, most of your fund balance historically has been unassigned or assigned, very little in restrictions and very little in non-spendable. But overall, for the most part, if you look at six years in a row, fairly flat, so very consistent, which is good to see, not significant increases or significant decreases. This is really the result of the annual budget. maintaining against that budget. The best way to analyze a fund balance, because these are raw dollar amounts, is to look at that as a percentage of the expenditures or essentially the percentage of the budget in the general fund. So, as mentioned, this includes both assigned and unassigned together. and that represents at the end of 2025 about 61% of your expenditure. So realistically, if you had no revenues coming in, you could continue to operate in that general fund for just over seven months. That is what that represents. So not a lot of fluctuation here, a little bit of an uptick in 2020 and 2021. It's really likely a recognition of A lot of the federal funding that came in and then kind of spent it over the next few years. For the most part, it looks like on average you're between that 60% and 70%.

So what's a good spot to be?

I'll tell you, most cities target a minimum of 50%, but really there's no right or wrong answer. What we like to see as auditors is consistency, and that's certainly what we've seen here. We're going to move on to the Capital Improvement Fund. I'll pause again and see if there's any questions.

I don't see any.

Okay. Capital Improvement Fund. For this one, we're just going to look at the ending fund balance. That's really, you know, what do you have at the end of the year in that Capital Improvement Fund to be utilized going forward? Most of it is assigned. So again, like internal earmarks for what you want to utilize it for. In 2025, you've got some assigned for ice arena, for advances and for other miscellaneous items. And then the restricted is a requirement for debt service. But again, kind of common theme here on a lot of what I'm talking about on the graphs is fairly consistent. So good to see that. We'll now take a peek at the WMU funds, electric, water, and gas. We did combine them all together. The beautiful thing is, well, at the top here is revenues. This blue one here, expenses, and then the difference between the two is your operating income or potentially loss, but you can see it's in a positive, all yours being presented. All three funds are profitable. Operating income really goes to the following, or I'm sorry, If you were actually to add back appreciation, which is a non-cash expense that is included in here, so if you wanted to look at it more on a cash basis, this roughly $10 million in operating income actually goes up to about $13.5 million. So good, really strong operating results allow us for continued investments in infrastructure and WMU historically, and they continue, Don't tech don't typically issue as much debt, especially compared to other utility city utility areas. Except the water fund does have a little bit, but this really allows for that real cash basis type. Investment in infrastructure. A positive net position here for all three of these WMU funds continues to increase. This is a little bit different than fund balance because this actually includes all infrastructure, capital assets, machinery, equipment, roughly 68%. of this total is actually tied up in capital assets. The rest is probably more your true reserves. But typically what we would see here, as long as continued investments are made in infrastructure, this usually does continue to go up. So very common to see that. Following a very similar pattern is your end cash investments. All three funds at increases during 2025, You can see just under $50 million in cash and investments. Move on to the sewer fund. We're just about there. Sewer fund, much of the same. Having outside of right here, having an operating loss, profitable ever since then, and really continues to have a good, strong profitability in 2025. If you were to add back at non-cash depreciation, this number, which is roughly 2.9 million, actually goes up to about 4.7 million. So overall, continued strong operations in that sewer fund. Here on net position, went up quite a bit this year. Just due to infrastructure. I mentioned WMU and their percentage. I think it's 68% is what I said in the sewer fund, just because you've got a little bit more debt that you take on here. It's at 92%. So almost all of this is really related to infrastructure. Year-end cash and investments in that sewer fund continue kind of the pattern that started in 2022. Some good, good, strong cash and investments. There is a portion of this that is restricted. $6.3 million is restricted for debt purposes, but otherwise continue to have good, strong cash and investment position. With that, I have reached the end of the presentation and a final opportunity for questions.

Council, do we have any questions for Mr. Stavanger?

Councilman Mormon. Just one quick question. And I just remember this from last year, the presentation. They had told us kind of with the money we have, how many months or how long we can operate. Just wondering if you have that number this year too or not.

Yes, let me go back.

Last year, I think it was about nine months. I'm just curious if we're kind of staying at that same range or not.

Yeah, yeah. It dropped down a little bit. It's just over seven months is where you're at. Last year was about eight months. Really, the last three years prior to that were about eight months. So it dropped a little bit in 2025.

Thank you. Councilman Jerns, did you have something?

No?

Okay. Council, any other questions? All right, thank you very much. I would like a motion to accept the audit. Motion made by Councilman Shetty, seconded by Councilman Hoyer. Any discussion on that, Council? Hearing none, the motion is to accept the 2025 audit from I.D. Bailey. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion carries. We're on to 11A, a first reading of an ordinance number 26-29, establishing the zoning designation of R1 single family residential district for, I'm just going to say, an area south of Prairie View addition. We will go to our community development manager, Brandy Hanton, to describe this.

Thank you, Mayor. So this was before the Planning Commission at the July 23rd meeting, and it had a unanimous recommendation for approval. It is a small portion of property, and if IT could pan to page 24. Then we can pull up the vicinity map It's adjacent to city limits and the purview Addition is to the north this portion is thirteen thousand five hundred and fifty seven square feet it'll be added on to the existing lot that it is adjacent to within city limits by a development lot agreement and And the main purpose for it is to utilize the area for an accessory structure as the property owner owns that entire four acres within. That's shown on another subsequent map on the agenda packet. And with that, I'll stand by for questions.

Thank you very much. Council, this is a first reading. No action is necessary, but questions are encouraged. Councilman Hoyer.

The only question I had, Brandy, was were they reserving the extra space yet just for pasture use, essentially? I was just curious, since they're just taking the one section, I see that it's for an accessory structure. Makes sense with the 35-acre rule, but curious if that was kind of the intent with the other sections.

Yeah, it will just remain the A1 agricultural use that it is in the county.

Sure, thank you. Councilman Peterson. Okay. Any other questions? Okay, we will see this back in the next council meeting Item 11 B is a first reading of an ordinance of the city of Watertown amending chapter 7 on bicycles and other personal conveyances of Title 19 traffic of the revised ordinances of the city of Watertown We'll first go to our city manager stagger Thank You mayor members of the council tonight we have before you a first reading of some changes to our ordinances and

in Title 19, Chapter 7, addressing bicycles and personal conveyance vehicles. I think most of you will recall over the course of the last year, we've had several conversations on this topic. And I will say we are bringing this forward to you today that there isn't a clear answer of right or wrong as you consider this. This is something we're asking you to take a look at some tweaks and changes that might be better than what we have today. But as I've sat behind this microphone and said several times in the past, this ordinance alone isn't going to resolve some of the safety issues that we are seeing in the community with the use of personal conveyance vehicles. Assistant Chief Remmers will walk us through the details of the changes. However, I just want to point out the real change of substance in this is a prohibition of operating the personal conveyance vehicles on sidewalks in the business district in the downtown area. It is a few block area bounded by First Street West, First Avenue North, First Avenue South, and Second Street East is the area that would be March with a prohibition on operating these vehicles on on sidewalks With that I will turn it over to assistant chief Remmers to walk us through the details assistant chief Remmers

Sure, thank you, City Manager and Council. This started a little over a year ago when we started noticing an increasing amount of both complaints of scooters and conflicts between motor vehicles and scooters and bicycles. Both of those numbers had been going up steadily over the past five years. In response to that, Chief Toomey and I did a little walking tour of the downtown area and met with I think it was more than two dozen businesses. It just kind of popped in and said, how do you feel about this kind of stuff? And we didn't get an overwhelming majority of people that said we definitely need to do this or we definitely need to do that. There was certainly somewhat of a split, but everybody agreed that we needed to do something. The issues that we posed or the potential solutions that we posed at that time or just kind of talked about were One of them was the prohibition of wheeled vehicles on the sidewalks downtown. That had a majority of the business owners that said, yeah, I think it's time to do something like that. Some of them didn't feel necessarily very strongly about that because they were aware, as we were, that if you prohibit them from being on the sidewalk, you're doing one of two things. You're either forcing them to walk their wheels or ride them on the roadways. To that end, if this goes through, what we intend to do is to put a campaign out there, much like other communities like Aberdeen, Brookings, Sioux Falls, and Rapid City. It's a walk your wheels campaign. We're not saying you can't have your wheels downtown and you can't get to the stores downtown. It's just that when you get to that area, step off and walk at that extra block to the shop. I mentioned that crashes involving, it's listed in the state accident report as pediccyclists, but that would be, that includes bicycles and scooters. We've seen an increase in those. Just this year, we've had five already that involve scooters alone. two of which resulted in injuries. Our complaints have gone from, you know, in 2019, 12 complaints of scooters. That was before these things took off a lot, up to 48 last year. It just kind of went steady every year. We're at 35 so far this year, and we're, what, about halfway through the summer, so we'll surpass the 48 from last year. Actually, technically, I think it's 36, because Chief Toomey took a phone call today that involved some misdoings on some scooters in the downtown area from one of the council members. So this was current as of earlier today, but... So what we were posed with doing was to try to craft an ordinance, and with the city attorney's help, craft an ordinance that basically prohibited wheeled vehicles on the public sidewalks within that business district that City Manager Stagger referenced. Pretty small section of town. So these things in city ordinance, in existing city ordinance, are called personal conveyances. And essentially what we're talking about here in that definition is inline skates self-propelled or non-self-propelled scooters. We eliminated electric wheelchairs and other mobility devices from that definition for obvious reasons. If we're going to prohibit something from there, we don't want to prohibit somebody with an electric wheelchair or such from being in that area. So we're good there. But basically, we have bicycles, e-bicycles, inline skates, roller skates, self-propelled, non-self-propelled scooters, carts, toy vehicles, skateboards, and other similar devices. For the most part, that list is essentially duplicating what these other communities around us have. I just looked at Aberdeen's ordinance again today and it was pretty much identical, those devices. Those specific devices tend to change over time just because motorized foot scooters didn't exist when this ordinance was first drafted, I'm sure. So basically what we're doing is we had to define what type of vehicles we're talking about and then Step one of this was in 1907 oh one to find what types of reckless things that we wanted to prohibit and this is where You know you can't operate them at a speed that is More dangerous and that was in the existing language from before you could never operate these devices So that's not really changed that much as city manager stagger alluded to the the big changes in 1907 02 the operation on sidewalks where this says that for the first time that you can ride these wheeled vehicles on sidewalks It's not in the downtown business district that you would be asked to get out and walk that wheeled vehicle We're in the process of securing some stenciled signage that we would paint on the sidewalks similar to what Brookings and Aberdeen Brookings and Sioux Falls do, or just a little signage that gets painted on the sidewalk that says, please walk your wheels, as a reminder for people to do that. The remainder of the Chapter 7 under Title 19 here, there were some changes, but it was all just language changes to make sure that our revised definition of Motorized foot scooters and roller skates and that kind of stuff matched up with what is with what the modern-day language is So there's not really you still can't ride more than two abreast On bicycles or any other vehicles like that. So basically it's largely unchanged for the the meat and potatoes of the ordinance It's just that one thou shalt not ride on sidewalks in the business district. I With that, I would be happy to stand by if any of you have any questions. I'll do my best to answer.

Council, this is the first reading, and as you heard Assistant Chief Remmers and City Manager Steger say, they are looking for input on this. And I know that a lot of work has already gone into it. But Councilman Shetty.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for your work on this. I've got one question and then one observation for us to think about as a council. So the question would be, We've had some more instances where accidents or whatever you said have spiked a little bit. What about like ticketing? Have our officers, I mean, the public is seeing people running through stop signs or going too fast on the scooters or whatever it may be. As a police force, have we been able to come across these folks ourselves and ticket them?

We've come across them. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any tickets issued. We made a concerted effort starting this spring when the weather got nice. We gathered all of our patrol staff together in individual squads, and step one was doing some training with our people to ensure that they knew exactly what the current status of state laws and city ordinances are so that we could give a unified message to people. The worst case scenario in our mind, well, the worst case scenario is an injury or a fatality that One of the other worst-case scenarios is you have Officer A telling little Johnny that you can't do that, and then a day later, Officer B tells little Johnny you can't. So we needed to make sure that we had a unified message. We hit it with social media. We've done podcasts. In fact, we had Dustin from one of the bike shops here in town on a little podcast that we talked about the status of e-bikes and everything else. So as of right now, we've made a concerted effort to educate the public We haven't made an effort of enforcement.

Actually, that makes sense. Appreciate that, the education part. Of course, on the cuff, it's like, well, are we going to start enforcing? But yeah, that makes a lot of sense as a team there to educate. So appreciate that.

One thing I would add, too, though, is that a lot of the potential violations are being committed by 6-, 7-, 8-, 10-year-old kids. I don't know that anybody wants this to Start enforcing that kind of stuff or even if we have the legal power to write a ticket to a seven-year-old Our primary concern is the safety of the kids and if we can get them to stop that behavior and have a chat with mom Mom or dad that's that's a win for us, right?

That'd be the goal is that whatever it takes to get their attention Hopefully it's not like you're saying the fine whatever it takes to get their attention so but my now my ops for another angle I know whenever we work on Well, sidewalk ordinances, for example, there's perspectives we don't think of. That's why it's good to have more people involved as we work through the pros and cons. From my perspective on the downtown, when it comes to these personal conveyances, there are some folks that use three-wheel bicycles that will pedal the downtown area. That's kind of their place. They live downtown, and that's where they pedal. It would be more dangerous for them to be on the street, I would believe. It's kind of hard to walk a three-wheel bike. And plus their physical ability, for some, it's not. That's why they have a three-wheel bicycle. There's one gentleman, like I can think of right now, that stops by Access Ministry, our building there, once in a while and comes in. We get him a cold cup of water or a hot cup of coffee or a little bite to eat. And that's kind of a quality of life for a gentleman like him. And so I guess I know, and I know another gentleman that since passed him last year, but boy, for years he was, that downtown was kind of his, that's where he would pedal and even sit on corners and just people watch or go down to Thursday Night Live. I know a gal just here this year bought a new three-wheel bicycle, lives downtown in an apartment, and I'm just saying it's more than a one-hit, you know, more than a one-person thing that... How do we how do we figure that out? How do we not affect their quality of life without yes? I understand the enforcing I don't know if we put something in there about three-wheel bicycles If it's or if there's a I don't know I'm just trying to figure out that but that's something that it's gonna be harder for me to vote for this Currently how it's written just because of what I see from the another perspective of the community Anyway, just want to share that with the council and if there's any more thoughts on that. I

Councilman Hoyer. I'll toss a couple things out just because I'm the council member who called the one in today. They weren't on the streets or on the sidewalks. They were in the public restrooms dragging their scooters around and their bikes around in the public restrooms. I just called that in because I see the gal that cleans them every morning. And so out of respect for her, I didn't want to see more burnouts on the freshly redone floor in there. That's actually kind of what sparked the redo of the public restrooms is that some kids have taken e-bikes in there and just ran the back tires and did burnouts on the tile floor. So just trying to out of respect for her. But to Dan's point, I'm just curious if we could create some language maybe because it's basically being used as a mobility device. It just happens to be a partial mobility device. And I know what Dan's talking about. I've seen individuals do it too. And that's not who this is aimed at. This is more so for kids that are getting up there in that 20, 25 mile an hour range, anything above 15. And so that's some of the challenge. But to your point, I do appreciate that you brought up that Aberdeen has this in their business district. Brookings has it in their business district. Sioux Falls has it in their business district. And I just think about people walking to a breast and then a bike coming up behind them that's not saying on your left and stuff like that. So it just gets a little congested. It's just a safety thing. But in general, I just appreciate the rewrite. I know that these essentially already are on the books. This just adds a little bit to it. And yeah, it's just a challenge finding how do we enforce this? Where does it lay? Ultimately, it's a public safety thing. I appreciate you guys taking a look at it. I just always think about the folks opening up a door on a blind turn and then clipping a kid on a bike with a glass door. It's not your sidewalk in front of your house where your door is. 30 feet off the sidewalk. It's literally right there. So just some things to weigh out. I mean, it's definitely going to be a big decision. I appreciate, though, that the solution's a pretty affordable one, just some extra signage and education. So thank you again just for all your work on it.

I was just pleased, Councilman Hoyer, that the report wasn't on you on a motorized vehicle downtown.

No, I stick to the road.

So, Council, any other questions? So, Councilman Shetty.

Thank you, Mayor. I guess one other thought is what about if Councilman Peters is down there giving one of his little takes with training wheels and give them a ticket? Okay. You know, again, I'm not trying to nitpick it, but it's like, Are there instances like that too where it's like man? How do you how do you word this to where you can?

Sift out some of these some of these things so my best Answer to something like that is our officers encounter things that are technically illegal non-stop all day every day and they're very good at using common sense and discretion to know like what what the law or the ordinance was intended to prohibit and what In that situation there if councilman Peters is down there with a little tyke on on a training wheel thing I can't see a scenario unfold where one of our officers would ever issue a ticket in that situation Much the same as the the other incident that you were talking about there With the three-wheel kind of a almost like a mobility device You know that those aren't two people that are causing complaints to be called in or aren't causing dangerous situations and

That'd be why I guess, and that's kind of what I was wondering, of course, unless somebody calls in and says, hey, then you kind of have to enforce it. But we've got to make a judgment call, right? That's what we do all the time, I'm sure, in the police force, and rightly so. But is there a way to do the wordage in there?

There may be something. That's one of the things that I don't think that we considered with. We knew that this was messy as far as trying to, like, we recognized that we couldn't include Mobility devices or wheelchairs in there and still prohibit them So there might be some opportunity to add some additional language in the section where it says this does not include devices such as that I don't know what officially they were called that we could do a little research into that and and Potentially have some modifications made Assistant chief would there be

a way to possibly with some of these people get them some kind of identification where they can register at the police department so that they know, you know, everyone knows who they are. I mean, we already know who they are. You already know who they are. You're not gonna stop them anyway, but just to make it legal, And then also for anyone who questions it, then you have that cover.

Yeah, and that process isn't in place right now. We would have to create something like that. I think the rewrite or the language change that you're referring to, Councilman Shetty, might be simpler than trying to create from scratch an exemption card or some type of a thing that way. Mm-hmm.

It's tough because those of us who have paid attention to the problem know the perpetrators, and it's tough to come up with a law that stops the offensive actions without infringing upon the freedoms of the people who do abide by the law and pay respect. I would like to invite Dustin Lindner up here. I know that he has been talking with the police department, and he's encouraged a lot of his customers. Dustin, would you like to come up and say anything to the council?

So I'm on top with... Just please announce yourself. I'm Dustin Lindner from the bike shop.

Thank you. But I stand on... Dan and Michael put big things out there. The other thing is a lot of the people that are causing the issue, I think it's going to get worse if we do stop the riding on the sidewalks because they're going to be on the road. Our biggest thing is we went from single-way roads to two-way roads. We don't have the roads that Sioux Falls has. We don't have the roads that Brookings has. I hear so much about Sioux Falls and Brookings on this, but they have so much more multi-use trails than we do. I think if we start eliminating skateboards off the sidewalks, we don't have roads downtown to ride skateboards. We don't have the roads to ride the inline skates. If we start taking like the kids, like on the one that I saw online today, said the kids' little toy cars. If you take that off the streets downtown or off the sidewalks downtown, that's a lot of kids, like their families go downtown and that's when they're bringing them down. It's not like the kids are riding them there to be on the road or on the sidewalk. There's a lot of things I think that our downtown is not made for. And I've seen so many accidents almost happen or happen on bikes downtown. Because the cars are backing up, they don't see it. Or you have cross traffic backing up and they don't see these cars, they don't see the mobility scooters, they don't see any of that stuff. So just thinking about the customer base, the pedestrians, it's going to be a tough way either way. But if we take these six, seven, ten year olds that are riding their scooters on the sidewalk and put them onto the road, that's going to make it so much worse. And I think we're going to have more accidents because that's the ones that I'm seeing doing the burnouts on the sidewalks, doing the burnouts in the side of the roads, not doing the stop sign. The people that actually buy these e-bikes, e-trikes, there's more normally e-bikes and e-trikes that I see. they're buying to use as transportation Jenkins they got the three-wheel trikes I can't see them pushing their passengers down the sidewalks just to get them by there's just so much that it's a messy subject all through all but I just think we're gonna have to figure out a better way of explaining it because One shop's going to come out and get mad that some kid on a 12-inch bike is riding his bike down the sidewalk with his family, and they're doing nothing wrong. But I think that we have to go a different way about it, because if we just start saying you can't ride bikes down sidewalks, you can't ride them down the road either. I don't want a 10-year-old riding his bike down the road, because they pay less attention than we do. And if all of a sudden a kid gets ran over or something, That's the thing that I think about all the time.

Mr. Mayor, I have a question for Mr. Lindner and perhaps Mr. Peterson. Is there an industry standard width for a standard bike lane? For instance, if we were to have a dedicated single-file bike lane on our sidewalk system, what would that width be? I believe it's four foot. Okay, thank you.

So that would be the biggest thing. Council, any other questions? Councilman Mormon.

Not really a question, just a statement. I don't have a crystal ball. I can't see the future. But I think the e-bikes and the e-scooters are just going to become more and more and more popular, especially with $4 a gallon gas. I know for myself, it wouldn't take very long if I bought one of these e-bikes or e-scooters, if I drove it to work and back. to my house every day where I would pay for the e-scooter itself just by the gas savings. So I'm a little bit hesitant looking at this ordinance to just do a full-out ban on this stuff uptown just because I think you're looking at a mode of transportation that is just going to become more and more and more popular for people's means of getting around. So just something that I'm thinking about as I look at this ordinance. Councilman Peters.

Thank you, Mayor. I've got a question for the gentleman standing there. Not to put you on the spot, but you're in the industry. Have you seen language from other communities that you like or that you think could work in Watertown? I think your comments are good for us to take in, and I agree with some of them. I'm just curious, have you seen any language that you think you can get on board with based on where things are at today?

One of the things is that we could take both together is... take the E part of it and actually take the electronic part of it, like the electric scooters, electric bikes, and walk most of those down. I think if we eliminate everything else, I think it's going to hurt the downtown more often. Follow-up, Mayor.

So just so I got that right, you're saying leave bicycles to be able to come downtown and ride on the sidewalks, but then remove the E bikes? Yes. Okay, got it. Thank you.

Councilman Hoyer. And I would comment, the majority of complaints that I receive, because I'm pretty easy to access in the downtown to complain to, it's e-bike related. It's e-bike, e-scooters primarily. It hasn't necessarily been, it's never once been a three-wheeled bike. I haven't seen a power wheel in the downtown ever in my seven years of living here, so I haven't seen that one happen yet. You know my kids use their scooters and stuff when we walk the dogs downtown so like That's not your threat. That's why I do one or two if there's a way to better hone in on where the actual issue is Which has been the higher speed vehicles? bikes I get a little Question Marky on just because you can get to a pretty rapid rate on those and the corners are blind and So that's something to take a closer look at. And I agree with you. I don't want kids necessarily going down our lanes downtown. I would point out in Sioux Falls that they have two-way roads on Phillips that do this. And that's more narrow than our road, but still point taken. Same time, I think there's a solution here that's in the middle somewhere, to Kyle's point, just finding where it's at. Also, I don't want us as a council to extrapolate it to all of Watertown. It's not the whole community. We're not putting a prohibition on these things in Watertown. It's just in an area where you're sharing doorways, more pedestrian traffic than is standard, just making sure that's safe. Because the way it's written, I believe right now, it's already when pedestrians are present, you're supposed to dismount the bike. And so it's just better educating the public. And again, I don't think the intensity of enforcement is going to be like, this huge crackdown. We're tackling people off bikes. So I think there's a good solution here that we can find still. Councilman Shetty.

Just one final thing. Um, so yeah, on this discussion, the e-bikes, uh, and the speed that they can go to without even paying attention, um, the alleyways. So being on the sidewalks and yeah, those alleyways, that's, I would think that would be a, quite an issue, uh, in the, down the road here. So, um, That's where I can see this the sidewalk issue downtown even with the alleyways I agree on the streets people backing out Creates a challenge as well, but I almost those alleys I know there's people driving through them alleys and you're flying by we've had instances where there's been close calls or potential hits I don't know so yes, just to keep that in mind too in this Thank You counsel any other questions

All right. I would encourage every member of council and in the community, if you're watching this, please share your input, your opinion. That's what we're trying to get to here. Is that correct, Assistant Chief? A lot of work has gone into this already. I mean, it's been a couple years in the making, I think. So a lot of work has gone into it, and I think we're closer now than what we have ever been. And we just have to come up with something that can help the situation. So thank you very much. Item 12A is a second reading of an ordinance. Providing for a supplemental appropriation for the general fund and capital improvement fund as well as budget line item transfers finance officer Bob zine Take it away

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, in front of the council is the second reading of our budget supplement ordinance, as well as the budget line transfers. There was no changes from the first reading. Again, this is just kind of a mid-year cleanup. Everything that's on here had already been discussed at some stage, and it's just to kind of help those budgets get realigned to help the departments out. So if there's any questions, I can answer them. Thank you.

Thank you. Council, can I get a motion to approve the ordinance? Absolutely. Motion made by Peters, seconded by Shetty. Conversation, questions? Hearing none, the motion is to approve the ordinance. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion carries. Item 12B is a second reading of an ordinance amending the zoning map of the City of Watertown for lot 6 of Juren's Schulte Industrial Edition from I-1 Light Industrial District to C-3 Highway Commercial District. We'll go to our Community Development Manager, Brandi Hanton.

Thank you, Mayor.

If IT could pan to the vicinity map. So this property is along Highway 81 adjacent to 14th Avenue Southeast. It is being petitioned, this is the second reading, to be rezoned from its current designation of I-1 Light Industrial to C-3 Highway Commercial. The current use of the property is for a hotel So this actually brings the property into conformance and also follows the comprehensive land use plan and is conforming to the district requirements for lot size and setbacks. So with that, I will stand by for questions. I'll add this was recommended unanimously by the Planning Commission at the July 9th meeting.

Thank you. I will open a public hearing on this matter. Is there anyone who would like to testify? I'll close the public hearing. Council, can I get a motion to approve the ordinance amendment? Motion made by Councilman Peters. Seconded by Councilman Hoyer.

Council, questions, comments? Councilman Shetty. Just a comment. Just to clarify, it's not Juran Shetty, so it's not... No conflict. Yeah, no conflict, exactly.

All right. Any other questions or comments? I feel confident just doing a voice vote. All those in favor of approving the ordinance amendment, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion carries. Item 12C is a second reading of an ordinance, a zoning text amendment to creating Chapter 21.33CD Campus District. Manager Hinton.

Thank you mayor, so this is the second reading as discussed previously the campus district that has been Noted in our comprehensive land-use plan that it would be helpful for our community to create such a district So that is what we're looking at doing here today this allows for large institutional or educational medical facilities within our community to be able to utilize a zoning district that is applicable to What they actually are to really facilitate orderly development With the various requirements that we have listed in the ordinance IT if you want to go to page 54 or 55 this would be an example of a Lake Area Technical College or the hospital campus within our community being able to Utilize our look at rezoning their current designations into the one uniform campus district a campus district does require ten acres per property so not just any Property has the ability to rezone to this designation But it should facilitate smoother development going forward of these types of campuses so with that I'll stand by for any questions Thank you.

I will open a public hearing on this would anyone like to testify Close the public hearing council can I get a motion to approve the ordinance amendment motion made by councilman Hoyer second by councilman councilman Peters council questions or comments Motion is to approve the ordinance amendment. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion carries. 12D is a second reading of an ordinance zoning text amendment to creating Chapter 21.21R3S, Congregate Living Residential District of the Revised Ordinances of the City of Watertown. Manager Hanton, back to you.

Thank you, Mayor. So this, again, second reading of the creation of the R3S, the Congregate Living Residential District. This is in relation to the campus district, and this is to allow for a little higher density, regulated differently from our current residential districts, to look at dormitory-type facilities and to allow for those types of districts being implemented. And with that, I'll stand by for questions. This was recommended unanimously as well by the Planning Commission.

Thank you. This requires a public hearing. I will open one now. Would anyone like to testify? Close the public hearing. Council, can I get a motion to approve the ordinance amendment? Motion made by Councilman Hoyer, seconded by Councilman Shetty. Council, comments or questions? Councilman Hoyer.

Just want to commend you guys again. It's this kind of outside-the-box thinking, finding some ways to get this done, that's really going to help the university and a few other potential uses later on. So just, again, thank you for all the work you put in on it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments? The motion is to approve the ordinance amendment. All those in favor of that, please vote aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Motion carries. 12E is a second reading of an ordinance zoning text amendment to chapter 21.10 summary of district regulations to include a new CD campus district and R3S congregate living residential district. Manager Hinton.

Thank you, Mayor. So again, this is related to the creation of the new zoning districts for the congregate living and the campus district. I noted this on the first reading, but just to be fully transparent, because we are amending this section, which is 2110, includes the chart we had other areas that we had discussed previously about amending with Planning Commission and City Council through other projects that have come forward and as well as cleanups so if IT if you could pan to page 64 I just want to show here the addition or changing the the densities for the r3 district slightly and including the studio apartment and then as well creating an incentive for parking underneath the same roof for multifamily projects or Yeah, really just to incentivize that for the overall parking requirements and And then just adding in the 9-foot, 4-foot alley setback for accessory structures in this area because it just was omitted when it was approved previously. So with that, I'll stand by for questions.

Thank you. I will open a public hearing. Would anyone like to testify? I'll close the public hearing. Council, can I get a motion to approve the ordinance amendment? Motion made by Councilman Moorman, seconded by Councilman Peters. Questions, comments? Thank you very much. All those in favor of approving the zoning text ordinance amendment, please vote aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion carries. 12F is the second reading of an ordinance zoning text amendment to chapter 2190, definitions to include terms associated with the CD campus district and R3S congregate living residential district. Manager Hanton.

Thank you, Mayor. So once again, IT, if you want to pan to page 69, this is very straightforward, just new definitions that will be added to chapter 2190 for now with the campus and congregate living districts. So that is, I'll stand by for questions.

Thank you. I will open a public hearing. Would anyone like to testify? I'll close the public hearing. Council, can I get a motion to approve the ordinance amendment? Motion made by Councilman Hoyer, seconded by Councilman Shetty. Questions or comments? I would just like to reiterate something Councilman Hoyer said earlier. We're kind of going through all of these with the campus district, but we already had a first hearing where a lot of good questions were asked. It's already been through the Planning and Zoning Committee that approved it unanimously. I think this makes a lot of great sense for the community, makes a tremendous amount of sense for Lake Area Technical College, and by helping them, we're helping all of Watertown. I know that seems like we're kind of going through these, but we're going through them because they're a good idea. Any other questions or comments? All those in favor of approving the ordinance amendment, please vote aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion carries. 12G is an approval of a resolution vacation of an alley located between 7th and 8th Street Southeast in Block 7 of Davlin's Addition. Manager Hatton, your last one of the night.

Yes, I was going to say, last one. So this is a vacation request for property located, and I'll have IT, if you could please pan to page 73. It runs northern and southerly adjacent to 8th Street and 7th Street, or eastern and westerly, well, of 10th and 14th Ave.

I think I have that one wrong, 10th and 11th Ave.

So just south of the old Shopko building, the 14-foot alley is unimproved and many of the properties are owned by the same property owner on each side. There are utilities within the alley, so if vacated, we have worked with WMU, Watertown Municipal Utilities, and would retain a 20-foot easement over the entirety of the 14-foot alley. That would be just to allow for additional room for them to work if they needed to get into that area and then but it also allows for the property to go back on the tax roll and for the adjacent property owners to utilize lesser setbacks So but that'll stand by for questions Thank you.

I have to open a public hearing and I will do so now Anyone here to testify? I'll close the public hearing. Council, can I get a motion to approve the resolution? Motion made by Councilman Moorman, seconded by Councilman Peters. Council, Councilman Hoyer.

The only question I had, and again, I'm pretty fine with this. So in the event that they do expand the property, because that's what it says in the first bit here, We'll still have access and have it worked out. I think this is what you were saying, but I just want to make sure that if they decide to push out over where the alley once was, if we had to, for whatever reason, get under some concrete to do some utility work, that shouldn't be an issue.

No. And the 20 foot is sufficient because today they only have 14 feet. The only difference is that then you have a setback from the property line. So this larger easement, utility easement that will be retained over the alley if vacated is sufficient for what WMU needs to continue servicing those utilities.

Okay.

City Manager Steger. Mr. Mayor and Council Members, I'd also point out that Not too far to the west. There's also the 7th Street southeast Right-of-way, which is currently unimproved We do want to ensure that we retain that for any future drainage projects that might be required in the area And we are through this action Thank you any other questions or comments

Hearing none, the motion is to approve the resolution. If you're in favor of that, you'll vote aye. If you're opposed, vote nay. Finance Officer Bob Zien, please call the roll.

Okay. Hoyer? Aye. Moline?

Aye.

Mormon? Aye. Jurins? Aye. Peters? Aye. Shetty? Aye. All in favor?

Motion carries. 13A is an approval of a resolution of intent to enter into a lease agreement with Dino Air LLC for city-owned real property located at the Watertown Regional Airport. Finance Officer Bob Zien, back to you.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, in front of the Council, this is just the first step of the actual lease. So part of our leasing of land is essentially to do the intent, the resolution of intent. So that's what this is. This will come back before the Council then for a public hearing on the actual lease agreement on the 17th. So if there's any questions, I can answer them. Thank you.

Thank you. Council, can I get a motion to approve the resolution? Motion made by Councilman Schutte. I need a second. Seconded by Councilman Moorman. Thank you. Questions or comments? Councilman Hoyer.

The only question I had with it was the rent automatically increasing by 2%, just as inflation is usually 3%. Do we feel like that's sufficient? I assume we do, since that's where we went with it. Or is that just what we have with every one of us, too?

I'll give an answer. No, it's not sufficient, but it is longstanding airport policy. And going forward as we continue to study practices in the airport, I do anticipate we will eventually replace current leases with leases that go off of a fee resolution schedule versus a low escalator. But this is actually continuing a lease that the lessee took over from another party, so he's asked for equivalent terms and conditions.

No, that's fair. So then going forward, we'll look to try and establish a more solid fee schedule?

Across all of our leases, but there are quite a few that go back a long way, so it will be a lengthy process.

At least it's not $1 for 99 years, so there you go.

Any other questions or comments? The motion is to approve the resolution of intent. If you're in favor, vote aye. Opposed, nay. Finance Officer Bob Zien.

Okay.

Hoyer.

Aye.

Haleen.

Aye.

Mormon. Aye. Juerens.

Aye.

Peters. Aye. Shetty. Aye. All in favor.

Motion carries. 13B is an approval of a resolution of the City Council of the City of Watertown adopting governance policy GP-02 regarding gifts, donations, and naming rights policies. City Manager Steger.

Thank you, Mayor. This is actually the second policy that we are bringing forward. You might recall a few meetings ago we brought forward a policy on sponsorships. The previous council had passed a pretty comprehensive governance policy and then subsequently rescinded that policy a few years ago. And I think there are some mistakes made in that that comprehensive policy didn't give you as a council an opportunity to adequately consider what was being proposed and what is in it. What we found is there's some things that just with the revocation of the past policy that haven't been addressed. And so we intend to bring forward to you in manageable size chunks policies to address areas such as the agenda tonight, one at a time as individual policies versus a blanket omnibus policy just covering all sorts of things that were in the policy in the past. So the first one before you is essentially a policy that allows myself and staff to accept gifts of up to $100,000. It isn't uncommon to receive gifts. Most are not in the $100,000 range, but this just leads to the efficiency and some standardization in terms of how we process and accept gifts to the community. City Manager Steger, I want to make sure that everyone knows, because you're saying accept gifts.

Accept gifts on behalf of the city, not gifts to particular people. These are gifts to the city. The way that you had said it might have left some people open-ended on that, and I want to make that very clear that these are like donations to the ice arena or a park or a playground. So sorry for interrupting, City Manager Steger.

I'll stand by for any questions.

No, and I do apologize for interrupting, but I just wanted to make that clear for everyone who might be listening. Council, before we ask questions or talk about this, can I get a motion to approve this resolution? Motion made by Councilman Moorman, seconded by Councilman Peters. Council? Councilman Hoyer?

Sure. I just want to say I really appreciate you guys coming forward with some of these things. This should help so much. And you'll see with these other ones too, but just some efficiencies in how we do things. And so giving you guys the ability to actually just act on a day-to-day basis, I think it's going to be very beneficial to the city. So thanks for identifying some of these things. Because again, it's under $100,000. It's going to probably be OK. But again, it's on, as Mayor Holien said, it's on behalf of the city. I bucked at it when I first read it, too, and I was like, okay, I really need to read this. And then, yeah, so good to go.

Thank you, Councilman. And just to explain to people who might be tuning in, there have been times in the past where but i'm just going to use the parks and rec department because there have been i remember several instances where people wanted to donate aid bench at certain locations and the red tape and the time that it took to traverse that donation of a thousand dollars three thousand five thousand dollars was just to the point where you would drive anyone away who wanted to do something nice for a loved one or for the city, for that matter. And there's a lot of organizations in town that would like to help the city as well. And we don't want to make that difficult for them. And this allows us some common sense procedures to make that easier and still has some council oversight. And especially for the big ones, it definitely comes in front of the public. So that's some of the impetus behind this. Council, any other questions or comments? The motion is to approve the resolution. All those in favor will vote aye. Opposed, nay. Officer Bob Zia.

Okay. Hoyer.

Aye.

Pauline. Aye. Mormon.

Aye.

Jurins. Aye. Peters. Aye. Studdy. Aye. All in favor.

Motion carries. 13C is an approval of a resolution establishing standing council policies. City Manager Steger.

Thank you, Mayor. Again, this is a policy action that we are taking. Some of what you see in the itemized one through six items are just repeating things that we've had in previous resolutions. The two that are new include, number one, a designation of the official newspaper of the city of Watertown. And then secondly, authorizing myself as a city manager Review and approve claims bills and payroll for payment today. I do that You each receive a copy of the bills and payroll And claims for payment in advance of council meetings And we have historically placed us on the consent agenda at council meetings this just removes it from the consent agenda as an item we will still publish and All of the bills and payroll as we have done in the past so it's a pretty minor change on that particular item I'll pause and if any of you have questions on items two through six I will take them and then perhaps we can come back to number one because the publisher of the Watertown current is Present and would like to make a few comments

Thank you. We can do that, City Manager Steger. But first, I need a motion to approve this resolution. Motion made by Councilman Hoyer, seconded by Councilman Peters. Council, we are dealing with items two through six.

Councilman Hoyer. So the major question I wanted to ask on this, just as someone who has dealt with the city in this half, like part before, will this give you the ability then if you're working like with vendors or like contractors to not cut the check at the end of the month, but actually just be able to respond to it in a more timely fashion or does it not change that process?

It does under item number four.

Okay. That's good. That's how I read it. I think that'll be just so beneficial to the city in general to be able to act more like a business would and just pay the bill when it comes in instead of making the contractor or whoever we're working with wait the entire 30 days for it. So that'll be great. Thank you.

Any other questions on two through six? We'll go to item one. City Manager Steger, did you have anything else to say on that?

I will. Troy McQuillan is the publisher of the Watertown Current. The Watertown Current became eligible last fall to serve as our newspaper of record. State law essentially determines the maximum rates that a newspaper can charge. We spend about $25,000 a year on legal notices. We have been with the Watertown public opinion for quite some time. We're not going to really see a significant change in the fees other than the current is going to prepare the affidavit of publication at no charge versus $5 that we currently pay. What we will see here, though, is a change in the service level where we will be able to work with local staff to ensure that we're hitting publication deadlines, where under the current, not the current, but under the incumbent, it is oftentimes problematic trying to hit tight deadlines. I'd also say I want to recognize the publisher. He's been very professional in how he has worked with us in this process and kept a clear separation between the business side of his office in the editorial side of his office, and that was great to see and great to work with. So with that, I'll let you ask Mr. McQuillan some questions.

Mr. McQuillan, I will grant you an open mic.

Thank you very much. I am Troy McQuillan. I am the 100% owner of McQuillan Creative Group, Inc. out of Aberdeen. And we have been, we're no stranger to Watertown. We've had marketing, creative marketing clients here in Aberdeen for, I mean, here in Watertown for quite a while. And back in 2023, In response to the fact that the Aberdeen American News, the Waterton Public Opinion, and the Sioux Falls Argus Leader were all owned by Gannett, and kind of just kind of withdrawing their editorial concentration on each community, Aberdeen's office completely closed. I think the Public Opinion's office completely closed. And a lot of people came to us encouraging us to produce a local newspaper, which I have no journalism background whatsoever. But we have an amazing creative staff who could figure the nuts and bolts and details of how to publish a newspaper, plus the fact that both Public Opinion and the Aberdeen American News had amazing staff just laying in the sidelines, just looking for opportunity for work and to continue their journalism careers. So we started the Watertown or the Aberdeen Insider in 2023 and it took off. It was an amazing success and it still is three years later. Joel from Office Peeps, who I've been working with for years, suggested that we replicate the model here in Watertown. And Brandon Heim reached out to me, and he helped me get introduced to lots of the players in the community and be hooked up with Roger Whittle. And we now currently, as of today, have a staff of six here, full-time employees. Roger Tucker, who recently joined us. Well, not recently. It's been a year, hasn't it?

Yeah.

Laura Moore, Jen Penley, and Ed Sales, and Barb Andrish, as our office manager and circulation manager. And I think that's everybody. And we would greatly appreciate the opportunity to be the paper of record for Watertown, and I would take any questions you have. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. McQuillan. Council, any questions or comments? City Manager Steger, I know that you had mentioned the amount that the city spends in official announcements or these requirements. How much was that again?

The estimate is about $25,000 a year. It can vary from year to year as sometimes we've got more publication requirements just due to development opportunities going on in the community.

Thank you. Councilman Hoyer. I just wanted to take the time to thank you for putting your investment in Watertown. You know, having a truly local newspaper that's showing us sport events, what our kids are doing, the forensics team going to state, all those things was sorely missed. And so having that back in our community just adds so much to our culture, our sense of community, and our connectedness. And just wanted to say thank you for putting that in.

Council, anything else? All right. The motion is to approve the resolution. All those in favor will vote aye. Opposed, nay. Officer Bob Zien, please call the vote.

Okay. Hoyer.

Aye.

Haleen. Aye. Mormon.

Aye.

Jurins.

Aye. Peters. Aye.

Shetty. Aye. All in favor.

Motion carries. 13D is an approval of governance policy GP04 regarding fixed asset capitalization and insurance policy. City Manager Steger.

THIS IS THE FINAL GOVERNANCE POLICY BEFORE YOU. THIS IS AN UPDATE OF EXISTING FINANCE POLICY THAT GOES BACK TO 2015. THIS REALLY STREAMLINES AND DEFINES WHAT LEVEL OF ASSETS WE CAPITALIZE IN THE BOOKS AND RECORDS AND HOW WE TRACK DIFFERENT ASSET CLASSES. THIS IS A RECOMMENDATION OF EID BAILEY, OUR AUDIT FIRM AS WELL, THAT WE REFRESH OUR POLICY AND THEY ARE ALIGNED WITH WHAT WE RECOMMENDED HERE.

Thank you. Council, can I get a motion to approve the policy? Motion made by Councilman Jurns. Seconded by Councilman Hoyer. Council, would anyone like to say anything? All right, the motion is to approve the policy. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion carries. City Manager, do you have anything to report?

I do, but in shuffling these pages, I've lost my notes. Okay, I'm good. As mentioned previously, we would like to hold a work session in August. I haven't heard back from many of you on a good time. I'd suggest maybe we try for a Wednesday. I think Wednesday, August 26th might be a good time that would allow us to cover about four topics. One would be the CIP plan. The second would be refresh the council priority projects. We'd like to have some discussion on sidewalk policies and then come back to just a little more detail on infrastructure costs and funding formulas in general as we've talked about in the past. So feedback on that would be nice. Also for the public, I'd like to talk about existing ordinance and erosion control measures. We've been seeing some issues on Lake Compesca where there are several projects in process with no erosion control in place at all. And these are often small projects less than an acre that are not required to have permits. However, by ordinance in Chapter 23, they are still required to have erosion control measures to ensure that sediment and and the earth isn't ending up in Lake Compesca and So there are several that that we will be taking a closer look at but tonight Just want to ask residents to take a look at your projects and please do the right thing We would rather have you do the right thing then come out with enforcement and so this is just a reminder of what the right thing is and what the ordinance does state and National Night Out is tomorrow night at Stokes Thomas City Park. It runs from about 5 to 8. Following Thursday, August 6th, is a Midco Free Day at the Bramble Park Zoo. And so we've got plenty of opportunities this week to get out and enjoy some community amenities and support our first responder team tomorrow night. I have nothing further.

Thank you. City Council, does anyone have anything

topics for a future discussion Councilman Mormon Just wanting to let city manager stagger know that I may be coming to you with Setting up a meeting with a couple individuals that are looking at seeing what it would take to build a indoor tennis facility looking at like a public private partnership obviously with the way money is right now would be definitely heavy on the Private partnership end of it, but just letting you know that in hopefully in the near future There'll be a handful of individuals that are going to be coming in to have a meeting about that with you Council does anyone else have anything to mention?

We do have a reason to go into executive session tonight to discuss personnel matters. We do not intend on taking any action when we get out. Can I get a motion to enter into executive session?

So moved.

Motion made by Councilman Jerns, seconded by Councilman Peters. Council, all those in favor of going into executive session please say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Motion carries. I'll say good night and God bless you, Watertown.