City Council - Regular Meeting

Make sure I don't have anything going on. I have guys ready. All right, we're going to go ahead and go. Uh, we will go ahead and call city council regular business meeting to order. This is Thursday, December, not December, it's January 15th. Forgot to change that on my notes. uh at 5:00 pm roll. Council member Borjan here. Brown cool here. Porter here. Mayor Phillips, I am here as well. We do have a quorum. So we'll move on. Uh item number two is pledge of allegiance. Would you please rise and say the pledge?

I pledge to the flag of America and to the stands one nation.

Okie dokie. Next, approval of the agenda. Would anybody like to move any of the consent agenda items to the regular agenda? Hearing none. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda? second. Okay, got a motion by M key, seconded by Bourjon. All those in favor say I. I.

All post same. That motion carries. Item number four is a dedicated work session. So, this is a dedicated work session for mayor and city council. Look at all the people that we have here. Uh the regular city council meetings uh will begin following this work session. Tonight's topic is the fiscal year 2027 budget. and we're ready to start our fiscal year 2027 budget review. Uh I'd like to take a moment and let our citizens and businesses know that all the details for the city budget are available for review and discussions. Our city manager and finance finance director are always willing to answer questions about the budget. Taxpayers can also call uh department heads, myself, council uh to talk about the budget. We love to have that feedback. Uh the process for budget review uh will be similar to last year. If I can find my curse, forget that. Uh we're first going to get a general overview from city manager and then our finance d finance director is going to provide information about our current and future uh finances followed by a review of the capital improvement plan. After that, Jean's going to review the administration budgets with individual department presentations to follow. uh council, this is a great time to ask questions and get clarification. Uh if you're thinking about a question, then likely others are thinking about it, too. Uh so feel free to ask and I I encourage you to ask. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Luke Manager, our city manager or Luke. [clears throat]

Thanks, Mayor. I'll say it again. Um this is a great time for questions. I think that uh it's helpful for us to talk through things, make it more like a conversation as opposed just a one-way communication. So, I'm going to get started. Um, one thing I try to tell people that especially for Go ahead. The Zoom doesn't have the presentation on. Oh, see, I said I was going to get kiss. I didn't ask her. Do you know how to do that?

Thank you for noticing that. It's on this screen that you have to cast. Yep. And you have to cast screen two. Where's your mouse? It's on the other screen. So that's like your second. So you got to drag it all the way. Yep. Got it. It'll usually put like a green halo around that screen, won't it? It's casting, but I need to share it to Zoom. Correct.

Right. And then will you hit slideshow? So, you got to take your cursor all the way over to the other screen. Hit slideshow. Top right. There you go. Bingo. Sweet. Good. Thanks, Lindsay. Sorry about that. I was a little slumpy.

Thanks for catching that. [clears throat] Okay, so for council members, we're going into this. I know that we have some council members that have gone through this a couple times, some new council members. So, I'm just going to be really clear and um explain your key decisions. We can get all the way down to zero in uh zeroing in on expenses, like really small things. We can have discussions about paper clips if you folks want to get in that deep. If you don't, if you want to see more at a high level, what I try to do is guide you to a few basic things to really focus on. Number one, which capital improvement projects do you want to move forward? Number two, what is our base wage? So, that's like our cost of living increase for all the uh all of our staff. That's the key number that's used to calculate um where their wage adjustments are going to happen as of July 1. Do you want to lower the tax levy? And I'm very specific with those words, not to say do you want to lower taxes because an example I'm going to give you is everybody's taxes are different. Even if we lower the levy, make an attempt to lower taxes, another taxing authority could raise their taxes, thereby offsetting anything we do. and the total tax bill paid might actually be more than the previous year. So, a lot of factors that go into that. That's why I specifically say, do you want to lower the tax levy? And then finally, direction on staffing. And those are a few of the slides that Gan and I will go through towards the end of the presentation. We do a [clears throat] staffing plan and part of that staffing plan is the recommendation of what new staff we would hire in the upcoming year. So, those are the major uh discussions. You know, the thing that I wanted to put on here to make sure you understand is that uh as elected officials, you are ultimately the guide on what happens in city government. If you have goals that you want to accomplish, you instruct us as such and we will accomplish those goals.

All right. So, very generally speaking, taxable valuation and Norwok is moving in a positive direction. We are a growing community which is quite healthy. Gan will go through those um those specific percentage growth, but it's very positive. It's a positive outlook for our community. A few dash lines that I show on there. So, the two lines that you see, the red line is our uh our debt service. That's the one that's not affected by TIFF, and that's anything uh any new taxable value in the community throws into that debt service. So, that red line is a better overall indicator of growth. The blue line is our general fund. That's where when we do TIFF projects, um, that comes comes off the top of our general fund. So, we see a little less dollars. There's a couple points in time uh where those white dash lines are at where we retired some old tiff which means that those new dollars that used to be going back to either a private developer or being used to pay for some infrastructure in a development uh when that concludes. So now those dollars are flowing back into our general fund. So that's why in those two fiscal years we've saw a pretty significant jump. Uh the yellow line is just indicating that the year that we're going into which is fiscal year 27.

Luke, can I ask a question there? Like if we would plot like and I don't know who we want to compare ourselves to, but like a Carile or Urbandale, what would their lines look like compared to ours? Do we know?

That's a good question. Um, I would have to guess that um, so I'm going to say like a a Grimes, a Walke, they probably have a steeper curve. Uh, you see a lot more housing, uh, higher density housing going in those communities. Carile being a smaller community, uh, they're not yet seeing quite that pace of growth. Uh, Indianola is a little bit further uh, far removed from the metro. They're seeing less of that growth as well. Certainly, those communities are still growing. They'd probably be a little uh the two that you're talking about would probably be a little more flat.

Yeah. I just don't like if we were to compare who are good and what would it look like comparable, right? So now uh another way to put that is if you're a person uh for example, our state legislature uh the governor has said that a high priority is to reform property taxes. So what they might say is what looks good to them is a flatline. Yeah.

Guess it's all depends on your perspective on what looks good to you on that slide. Being a city manager, it's nice to see that trend going upward. So what's on the horizon? I just mentioned this property tax reform. Uh this is the exact same slide last year. It didn't change anything. [laughter] Last year there was all kinds of bills that came out. Gan and I put a ridiculous amount of time in reviewing those bills, what how it might impact our budget. Uh we spent a lot of time providing information to our legislators, of which I'm very impressed. They absorbed that information and I think they used it. And I'm already starting to see some new legislation coming out this year, which fingers crossed things are looking better than some of the uh proposed bills that we saw last year. Uh my other prediction is that if we do see significant property tax reform that likely we start getting to the point where there could be some service cuts in our community. I don't believe we're talking about staff reductions, but I think that we would end up with some kind of service reduction. And I say that because our community is growing enough that we're going to need the staff we have. It might just mean that we have to be a little more flat and uh on that line of adding staff. Could that also mean higher fees?

It could it could mean higher fees. Absolutely. Which might be a way to offset service cuts if they're not being offset with property taxes. It's a very good point. So, I did two slides here. So, I had a a personal uh discussion with one of my family members that doesn't live in Norwalk. They actually live in De Moines. and we started talking about the it was right after elections and I asked, "Hey, did you vote for the school bond issue for the city of De Mo and they have a young child in school?" I thought for sure the answer was going to be yes and it was no because property taxes are going up too high. He said, "Really?" I said, "It kind of surprises me a little bit." And um we had a little bit more discussion and I gave some perspective, but she was talking about the valuations for property went up. So in the next week I did research and I know where I can find her address and exactly what they pay for property taxes online. Went in looked at the numbers and they didn't go up by that much. So I pulled up my own numbers on my property and looked at it and they hadn't gone up by that much. So then I went in and I looked at my escrow and I noticed that my escrow had increased significantly. Pulled out my property taxes. What's remaining is insurance. My insurance used to be about 14 to 15% of my escrow bill. It's now over 40% of my escrow bill. My insurance had gone up over fivefold over a period of about four years. So, I reached out to my family member and I said, "Hey, take a look at your escrow because what I see on your property taxes, they haven't changed all that much." Sure enough, she responded. She goes, "Yep. I went out and looked at the insurance." She goes, "That I did not realize our insurance had gone up by that much." So, then she checked her taxes on a property that

they own in Iowa City and it was the same thing. The insurance had gone up significantly. Both properties, they use escrow. So, that kind of got me thinking about just taking a couple properties and trying to show you how things can vary between two homes. And so, I have an average home one and average home two. And it just so happens in both of these properties, I know for a fact they have done no improvements inside or outside of their home. So, that part is stable because that can make a difference in the taxes you pay if you made improvements. Also in these two these two homes I compared their city property tax to inflation. So on this graph that you see the blue line is associated with the total valuation of that property over eight years. So if you look at the numbers on the right hand side that's uh those are dollars goes all the way up to I think 450,000.

[clears throat]

The red line is inflation and the green line are the actual property taxes paid to the city. Reinforce we're talking about just city property taxes here. Uh the amount of property taxes they paid as a percent change each year to compare it to inflation. What you see for um property number one is that there is one two times over the past eight years that the change in their property taxes in uh exceeded inflation. So two times that that happened. The other and and this one because I only went back to 2017. Uh so the other five times the change in city taxes were less than what inflation went up by. So when you hear people say and I think I just heard the governor say it the other day that government is out outpacing inflation for our community this particular property that's not the case for home number two. There are actually three years where this one did exceed inflation. And you might expect to see those green bars look identical for both properties. The reason that's not the case is first of all, this property is slightly lower value, but their change in valuation was larger from the year 2020 to 21, that big revaluation, one of the big revaluation years. And because theirs went up as a larger percentage, then their city property tax percent increase was higher. So in that big inflationary years, their theirs were slightly higher. But nevertheless, more years than not, our change in city property tax was less than inflation.

Any questions about that? The next thing I want to go over, [clears throat] so we did envision uh 2035 and within that we established a number of goals and each council member was assigned a championship for each one of those goals. So you put those goals together and then you think, okay, this is great. We're asking uh staff to go out and accomplish these things. Many times there are finances linked to each one of those goals. So what I wanted to do is to show you for each one of these which projects or what costs within the city are helping to support those goals. So the first one is the um master plan uh updates. So within the CIP uh project CMDV2202 uh these are the planning studies uh that will allow Luke Paris to get started to go out and update those that master park uh and master plan. The next one's kind of a big one. This has to do with our uh southwest corridor out to Interstate 35. And we have several projects listed each one of those out. Uh these are all major projects. the ones that start out with SAN or sanitary sewer. Same thing with water. And then the last one there, uh, the STR, that's a street project. So each one of those are also projects that are supporting that particular goal. For walkability, the main project here is the Great Western Trail Connection uh for Western Norwok. The one that uh Jason is primarily the champion of right now. We don't have a a CIP project or necessarily dollars in the budget. My guess is Holly probably has some funds in her budget to help

with this. Uh but for this particular project, it's primarily staff time and organization. Ed, mission accomplished. Um the last one, and for those that you don't that don't know that one, I'll go back for uh the highway 28. There was an idea that maybe we should look into a transfer of jurisdiction of Highway 28 so that that would be taken over by the city of Norwok so we wouldn't have to go through the DOT for certain permitting. We could maintain that road just as we see fit. Ultimately through that research it was discovered that hey maybe that's not a good idea right now. Maybe revisit review it later in the in the future but right now it's not the best idea. The last one is our balance of tax base. The goal was to have 30% of our DA tax base come from commercial and industrial. Uh commercial industrial pays 90 cents on the dollar. I know a little bit less than 90% with the anyway too many details. Uh 90 90 cents on the dollar compared to residential that I think this year it's down to 44 cents on the dollar. So for every tax valuation dollar, we're only getting 44 cents compared to the 90 cents from commercial industrial. So the more commercial industrial you have, the more balanced tax base and ultimately the less cost for everybody. So uh you'll see a lot of similarities. In fact, all similarities with those uh major infrastructure projects that showed up for the I35 interchange and that southwest corridor because ultimately that's where we have the opportunity for a lot of light industrial growth. Okay, big topic jump. Uh so if you remember I said one of the key things that you need to focus on is what that base wage adjustment will be.

Each year we look at a number of different factors. We look at uh what kind of wage increases we agreed to for our unions. We look at inflation. We look at what other communities in the metro or kind of our competitors are giving for wage increases. I made a note of those few of those things below. Uh within just the past couple days, I've received feedback from a number of other metro communities and I have found that that average was probably closer to about 3.9%. Carrie, I don't know if you've heard anything any updates. Uh, so what we're seeing is an average across the metro is a little bit higher than u than what I am proposing our base wage. However, if you recall, we just made some adjustment with our deferred comp, which the city is now matching up to a certain percent uh depending on years of service. So to me, that certainly should be a component of that wage adjustment. So ultimately the the recommendation is 3%. Uh we went to our uh policy admin workg group and asked them for some feedback and we dove into the weeds a little bit more but ultimately this uh was the result of all those discussions. Any concerns, questions? Is that too high? Too low?

We're still keeping an eye on comparability for different positions, right? Every so often we go back and check. Yes. So this is a separate topic variability. Yes. Thank you. And Carrie, uh even though maybe it's not as deep of a dive each year, there are some years that painfully going through and researching what all those comparable positions are like that big wage study we did 2022.

2022. Just as a way of background, one of the things happen sometimes in city government is we can get out of alignment with the communities around it because we're busy trying to save money every year and then when that happens you tend to lose people, you know, and when you hire a new person and somehow that salary goes up even attract them. So generally speaking over the years we've tried to be comparable of those communities around but so it's just something to keep in the back of your mind you know as you think the thing we talked about in the policy group too right like headcount ads other budget right like did this fit in be fiscally responsible right and I think as we look through the rest of the stuff like you ask is this good can't answer that question until you know the rest of the story right but it seemed like good for where we were at right in You know, and another comment on that, Andy, is that the budget that you will see in front of you tonight and our next budget season, next budget presentation, it includes an assumption that 3% is that base wage adjustment. But realizing that there is some merit on top of that depending on performance reviews. Some people could be as high as did we have just over 4%.

Yes. uh for some of them most falling in that about 3.75% range. So the budget you're seeing is an assumption. In other words, we have to start somewhere. So if you come back and say raise it a percent. The balance but we're balanced budget we will be presenting would be off. That make sense? [clears throat] Yeah. the 3% especially with the the factor that deferred it deferred yeah uh seems reasonable what I'm seeing in the private sector like other words

thus far things can change but that's three three and a half% so uh going back to so Andy said I think is a a good point that it really depends on everything you see in the budget If we need to make some adjustments anywhere during this process, if you decide to make some adjustments, we can certainly do that. I would echo George's kind of like private sector, the company I work at, right? This is very comparable to like what our what our bucket was for for merit increases too. So,

yep. So, I'm going to conclude just by reiterating what those key decisions are. Uh the first one would be really taking a focus on those big CIP projects. Sometimes it's tough. The more zeros there are on a project, the harder it is to comprehend. And sometimes it's easier. I know it is for me. My home finances don't have that many zeros. And sometimes it's easier on some of those smaller numbers. But those big projects are the big decisions uh that should have a lot of thought from the folks.

Yes. Can I mention when we're not talking about the CIB actually tonight, it'll be part of the overall decision of the budget. We'll bring that forward uh forward in February. I will be sending out documents for you to review. It has gone to the finance, but tonight is a okay actual decision on CI.

Thank you. Uh so then again, talking about the base wage adjustment, uh do you want to lower the levy? I think part of what you're going to hear from Jean is explaining what your options are as far as adjusting that tax levy. And then finally, direction on staffing. Any other questions for me? If you kind of loaded that number with a deferred comp, right? Like I know it was one, two, and 3%, but I don't know the average tenure of staff and the uptake of it, right? Like that's the hard thing. It probably gets us to three and a quarter, three, 3.4. I I don't know. But that's something we could look at it as well too. Right. Right. So that might be a fairly easy to number at least come up with an average of tenure of staff. Sure.

Yeah. The uptake is the hard part, right? Like you don't know what people are going to want to contribute and be a part of, right? And what our match would be. Yeah. We could probably give a low and a max. Okay. All right. Jean, I'll turn it over to you. We'll give you a flight 12 would be good.

Great. Okay. Start with our assessed value. uh our cust value is 100% values of all properties in Norwok on average over the last 10 years from 2018 to 2027 which will be next budget year we have grown assessed value uh 12.2% 2% on average. So really good growth. Uh speaks to the financial health of Norwok. We're definitely growing. No doubts. Um 10-year average for taxable. So this is you know after the roll backs are put in place and the other credits. Um we have grown an average of 10.8% a year. What can be taxed and um this is you know what can be taxed and what the revenues are based on. In another slide, I will talk about actual revenue because there's been some changes to to this as well. So, the breakdown of the three classes of property over the same amount of time, residential has grown on average 9.5% a year, commercial 15.7% and industrial 44%. Uh, Michael Foods uh from 24 to 25 their value increased 23 million. So, they're really driving that industrial number. So um if you wouldn't mind slide 13. So this taxable growth number which is 9.07 this is from this current year to next year. So this is just one year growth is 9 uh just a little over 9%. Which is really good. This taxable growth is the most critical factor with regard with regards to our budget numbers and uh our ability to pay for ongoing projects, finance projects, and initiate any new projects. So, it's

a really good number. Um, but in all actuality, the revenue growth is 5.9%. So, for the two new people, um, in 2023, House File 718 changed how much taxable growth that we're allowed to capture. So, of this 9%, we're getting about 6%. Um, it essentially reduced it by 3%. Uh the rule is if any city grows greater than 6% which Norwok has in the most recent several years um then your tax revenues are reduced by 3%. So last year's tax rate was $7.63. This legislation will automatically reduce it to $741 per thousand in our general fund. If we were getting that same amount, we would be getting an additional 200,000. So this year, we're going to get 381,000 new dollars. This is much better than last year. Last year was about 200,000, but with the re-evaluation year, we were able to capture a little bit more. Um, so we're at 381,000. Again, if we were, you know, could stay and maintain that 763, we'd be looking at 580,000. If we were still at the 810 limit, which we had been for ever in a day, I don't remember it ever not being 810, uh we would be getting about 630,000 in new money. So the decisions would be easier under those um scenarios, of course. Um in addition to that uh reduction of 3% the recent legislation also lowered commercial industrial industrial roll back a little bit. The first 150,000 of

taxable value on commercial industrial pro uh properties is subject to the current residential roll back. So that first $150,000 gets rolled back all the way to the 44% residential roll back and then the 90% kicks in. Um incidentally that uh average is about 87% and that's um Iowa Department of Management um prediction or estimate. So, this new legislation in 23 has been backfilled the last two years. Under a current proposal, um it looks like they'd like to remove it. If that happens, that'll be about $45,000 less to our budget. In addition, the commercial and industrial roll back that went into effect in 2013. So, commercial properties and industrial properties used to be taxed at 100% of their value. 2013 they lowered that to 90% and they have been backfilling that ever since. Um, however, the last five years they did a phase out. So, it was as high as $180,000 at one time. This fiscal year will be our final payment which is about 37,000. So, just kind of whittling away um a little bit at a time. Uh they also did uh with the 2023 legislation is they did a homestead and military credit um expansion. Military credit used to be partially funded by the state and is no longer. Neither of these expanded benefits for um Okay, so the expand I should I should mention the homestead homestead exemption for property owners 65 and older uh was added and then the military service one was expanded. Neither of

these are being backfilled and is about $90,000 less. So just a little update on those. Um, also residential roll back as we mentioned decreased 289%. So properties will be taxed at 44.53% of their value as opposed to 47.43%. This is the second lowest of all time. Um, this this means Norwok needs to grow by 3% just to stay on top of roll back to give you some perspective. Again, the $381,000 in new money, the total general fund budget is about $12 million. So, $380,000 is about 3% of increase. The general fund budget is mostly personnel. Um, our wages are about 7.5 million. Tax revenue to the general fund is approximately 7 million of the 12 million. So other revenues include garbage which is essentially a pass through uh license and permits building permits uh ambulance fees, ambulance contracts with coming and Martinsdale grants interest income intergovernmental reimbursements. Uh we have two SRO school resource officers that the school pays half of wages and benefits and then um fieldhouse and pool revenues make up about 4 and a.5 million. Uh slide 14. The state of Iowa breaks down municipal budgets by core areas is what they call them. It's a little bit different. We we follow similarly but we do a few things a little bit different. Um they break it down by public safety which is fire, EMS,

police and building department. Uh oh and E911. So Westcom and as you know our building department falls under our community development department. So just a little bit different but in the state budget forms you'll see building department under public safety. Uh culture, recreation is library and parks and wreck. Community and economic development is one area. And then administration would be elected officials, city manager, finance, city clerk, human resources, legal, and IT. And those are all in one core area, administration. So, with all of those areas, 380,000 new dollars, it's it's kind of, you know, makes some tough decisions. Uh, living wage adjustments for staff, maintenance of equipment, uh, inflation for supplies and equipment, uh, and then, you know, continuing education and training for our staff, all included in those budgets. Slide 15 and 16 U shows in a pie or a pie chart what our property tax revenue by class is. So in 26 um our residential which is our current year we're in was 85% commercial 10% industrial 5%. If you go to the next slide you'll see

before you go remember the goal was to get to 30%. Yes, between commercial and industrial. And I have one other question. So on the slide before you said 384,000 of new money, so to say, but 7.5 million is salaries and we proposed a 3% raise. So that's 222,000. So y do the math, right? We're talking about $160ome,000, right? Absolutely. Yep. This is the biggest [snorts]

and I'm going to touch on that. [laughter] Um the next slide you'll see we're making progress. U we went from 85 commercial to 79 or I mean residential 85 to 79 commercial 10 to 14% and industrial 5 to 7%. Excellent growth numbers. We're doing what the elected officials have asked which is balance the tax base to move toward 30% commercial and industrial value. We're moving in that direction. However, as you know, on several occasions, I I keep mentioning I don't believe we should hire new staff. We don't I don't feel like we have the ability to do that. Why would I make this statement if to this effect when in fact the city is clearly growing? I mean, we're growing. Um, so you look at the next slide. We're growing. It's wonderful, but it's a long game. And I can't emphasize this enough. Um, I've mentioned this in the past, we have two new people. Um, the reason I indicate why I believe we should hold off on new staff other than what's recommended in the budget, which really doesn't affect the general fund a lot, um, is if you look at slide 17, this demonstrates that the revenues from the added growth are not yet being realized in our general fund. As far as revenues to the city for on andm costs, the reality is at this time commercial and industrial revenues are being diverted elsewhere. 75% of new tax revenue from commercial and industrial is being diverted to the TIFF fund in the form of rebates, grants, highquality jobs programs, and principal and interest payments for

infrastructure incentives with debts being paid out to as far as 2042. Based on this and forthcoming legislative changes, the city may need to take a deep dive into our financial policy and incentives. Another reason I mention no new staff is I really feel that we should take care of the ones the people that are here. Um, if we hire new, that takes away from the revenue to take care of the people we already have. I also think you hire someone and we don't have the money down the road because of legislative changes, it's even more difficult to let people go. So that's another little reason for me. Slide 18. This just shows taxable values by class. This shows the dollar increases. So residential increased 55.5 million, commercial 59.8 million, and industrial 29.2 million. The next slide, it's I always have to comment on this sometimes. I wish we could get the residential just off this chart because that commercial number and industrial that angle of those going up for our community is huge. We have massive residential growth, but that is such a big step. I just wanted to reinforce that. Yeah, great question though, right? And Jin brings up a good point. Like take the stuff that Holl's working on. The time to realize stuff that we might do in the next year, whatever, isn't the next year, it's seven years or I don't know the right number, right? But this graph might still go like this, but it's a long time before we realize those projects, right? That's the interesting factor though, too. I think there was a time when we really did need to incentivize more and now we

can maybe take a look at that and do a little bit of money back for services. Um slide 19 and you can even go to slide 20. Um the city has a a general fund reserve policy of 30%. We are meeting that although there is a proposal in the legislature to go to 10%. So a maximum reserves we could have audited reserve%. Yeah I hope they get if they do that I hope they phase that in.

Yeah that would be that would be good. Um we are meeting that reserve as of now. what we you know the reason we go 30% is we we try to uh utilize this for like unexpected expenses. I believe in 20 or 21 did we have a tornado come through

and we used you know some funds for that. Um also one of the most significant factors when determining our bond credit rating is the amount of reserves we have in the bank. uh banks and investors view this as favorable and the interest rate we receive is in large part due to this as well. So we get a lower rate um and probably more bids uh in the market. Um slide 21, 22 and 23, we'll go through those. Um, these demonstrate the tax difference on an average value home of $375,000 if they received a five, a 10, or a 15% increase in their assessed value and the city kept the levy at 14.88. And I'll emphasize this is only the city portion. This doesn't include the school or the county or DMAC or any of those others. So slide 21. Uh this if a homeowner in an average valued home a 375 in Norwok had a 5% increase in their assessment, they if we kept everything the same, it would actually decrease their bill $37 a year. So if you don't you got a 5% assessment or about three bucks a month. So pretty steady. If you go to the next slide, we're looking at 10% um increase in your assessed value. This would actually increase your tax bill by $86 a year or about $7 a month. The next slide shows a 15% increase. Um if you had a 15% it would be at $211 a year or about 17760

a month. Jean, I what I recall is you said that you uh you made contact with the county assessor and they said if they had to throw an average on the home, it was somewhere between the 10 and 15% range. Yes. On the valuation. And Yes. And she said, "Let me reiterate, I'm not super comfortable giving that number, but that's the best they could come up with." Right. And when we went out, Gan and I checked probably a dozen properties, residential properties that that we felt hadn't changed in value in some other way. Some of them were under a percent change. Some of them were around 5%. Yeah,

I think we only found one that was higher than 10%. Um, [clears throat] [laughter]

which is fine. Um, I actually on uh I didn't put it up there, but I did if you wanted to know what it would be to decrease 10 cents. Um, the difference for um at 5% would be $5 lower a month. At 10% would be about $5 more a month. And 15% if we lowered it a dime, it'd be about $16 a month. So, we're we're talking a $160 a month. Um 10 cents would have to come from our debt service fund if we did that because it's not subject to tiff. So it's easier to make that adjustment there. Um it would probably allow for an additional 1.5 million in project funds. I am not recommending doing this but wanted to give you an idea of what 10 cents could could mean to the city.

That's a 10 cent levy reduction. Yes. And the and it would be the debt service fund. talk about staffing. Is that the next slide? Yep. And I can go through these or I would love if you would do that if you

So there's several slides here. This is part of the five-year staffing plan that all the department heads and Carrie put a lot of time into. There's a lot of justification that goes in this. And I can't reiterate this enough. I've talked to the department heads. There's a number of department heads that are asking for staff and we've had some pretty intense discussions about what we can or can't do. I have encouraged the department heads that even though Gan is making her statements about concerns with adding staff, even with my recommendations here, our department heads know this. I'm still encouraging them to take the time to make sure you understand what their staffing needs are. even though some of them don't line up with this recommendation. With that being said, so on the far left you see the department name and then below the uh department name it identifies a title for a position that they're requesting. Then there's a a cost in there. Jump to one that where there's actual request. Uh and then the next column where it says fiscical year 27 recommended uh that's my recommendation and this recommendation is what is reflected within the budgets being presented. So if there was something that showed up here for example in the library if you said hey we want to add that materials handler that 14,290 would have to be fit into the budget somewhere. Okay. With that said, uh, administration community development and economic development, uh, there are no current requests, uh, for community development. There is some heads up that in future years, uh,

that may actually come forward as as a request, but currently nothing there. uh for fire EMS and Chief Porter will go into more detail as it will any of the other department heads reflective of this. Uh but a change in a captain status as well as implementing a STEP program yields a cost of about $24,000 of which I am recommending that be approved. The note that I wanted to make is we currently have a fire department that is not unionized. if they were unionized, they would fight hard to get a STEP program implemented. And that is very common. Same thing in the police department, same thing in public works. So, I feel like that request is quite logical. Uh for the library, uh there's a $4,000 request for circulation supervisor. And um go ahead. Go ahead.

If I can help with that one. Um, when the council previously approved the circulation supervisor position and hire, uh, we had hired that individual with a job description that did not go through the wage study. And so what we found through, uh, looking into it after the wage, the formal wage study was done, we were very underpaying that person. So we have done a I think it's a 2year step, Carrie, is that right? About a year and a half. a year and a half to get that individual up to where they should be assuming uh we go ahead with the FY27 recommendation of 4,000.

So, and that's um thank you for the clarification. You might look at this and say, "Oh my gosh, we only pay a circulation supervisor 4,000." It's just a portion for whatever the adjustment is. Same thing with the the captain position. Uh the summer intern is something that previously that's been covered by the library foundation which is amazing. Um so we're proposing that that continue for parks and recreation. They're looking at a programming intern. Uh that term intern is something that can be hired maybe to fill a gap um if some if we have staff that are off for a certain period of time. Intern is also something that tends to be yearbyyear. So, it's not like you're bringing a full-time staff person on where having to reduce that position in the future would be a problem. So, you're really only making a one-year decision uh each year for an intern. The park technician, this is also something where it was approved for April of 2026. So, go back a year and we said, "Hey, we'll do a midyear higher." This is asking to accommodate the remaining portion of that. Uh this is also a position the parks and public works do a great job of working together. So there's some support uh through mowing rightaways and some other assistance to public works. So they're actually offering to offset some of that salary from the public works budgets between I think road use tax.

Yes. Okay. Also, I should mention um Dakota did indicate that he believes the part-time amount will be reduced by 10,000. So, that could potentially be 39,000 instead of 49.

Uh now, there is a future request uh also a park technician one that's a second position. And I just want to draw attention to the notes there that say additional parks coming online. You folks have heard me say this several times before. Each time we do a new development, we see a new park come online. That park has to be mowed, maintained. Uh that takes a significant amount of time from staff. [snorts] Uh for the police department, uh Chief Staples, I know that he receives pressure from a number of different angles, both to add staff and not to add staff. So I think he'll do a good job of explaining to you why it's why he brings forward these requests. he feels it's important to express the needs of the community. Uh ultimately what was recommended in that budget was to allow the hire of a records clerk. Uh he had 9100 in there originally, but I think after um there was a little bit of discussions he reviewed and he felt like 8,000 was adequate. And last is the public works department. Uh we currently have a person that does building and grounds and um kind of just planning ahead. A little secession uh planning into the future is really where this budget comes from or where this position comes into play. And I think that this is also funded not just from public works budgets but also from general fund because this person services the fieldhouse some time at the library here at city hall all the

currently have it 75% out of the general fund because it works with all the departments and then 25% from public works. Okay. So the total for all those positions requested was about 382,000. Uh the total of what's recommended is about 158,000. question. Should we see the the park and rec employ that is going to be shared well not shared paid for partially by public works. Should we see that salary in this in these dollars?

So if So Andy, you were doing some calculations of how many general fund dollars are available. So, you're looking at this and wait a second, that number is higher than what he said when he did his calculation. That's a good point because of that total 158,000, that is not all coming from the general fund. We could break those out into each item if we wanted to. This is just an overall staffing review, but the total amount impacting the general fund is not that total amount. These are only general fund dollars in the No, this is No, there's some park uh public works money. Okay. And there. So that's from a number of different funding sources to cover that additional staff.

Quick question on the public works department. The this one was 16,630. Yep. That's somebody's leaving and somebody's coming back on. Why is that such a large number? You know that you're going to hear Greg talk about this. There's no requirement for somebody to say when they're retiring. It'd be great if they give us advanced notice, but in some cases, we might get a two-eek notice. Nevertheless, we have some staff that do share, hey, I'm thinking about this. It's a good time for us to start planning ahead. Uh when you've got a staff person, you absolutely want a new person to spend some time with training. It's good to have overlap. Okay.

I could argue that that 68,000 is maybe a one or two year expense and then it would drop off. Okay. Make sense? That's it. That makes sense.

Maybe this is confusing for me, but it's kind of along the lines of Tom asked, right? Like I was doing the general fund calculations in my head and some of this is that, some of this is other budget. Like I almost want to see a burndown of, you know, like what do we have available in general fund and this positions are asking for this much and so now we have 80,000 left in there by the time I have these positions, right? versus like you're just asking for these and I don't exactly understand where the money's coming from. But maybe that's me and I'm new, right? So that's what's hard for me in this perspective. If it would not be if it was just staffing, Gan has those spreadsheets. It's probably a matter of pulling that in.

I think I think what needs to be considered is the revenues as well. So, uh, as far as fire and EMS, Jyn's new revenues are going to cover every bit of then that's a different perspective at all. Completely and you're going to see that when she That's her budget next time. Yep. So, you make a valid point. It just occurred to me. You definitely need to see the other side of it as well. And you will. We will bring that all together. Like, I look at this and it doesn't seem unrealistic, but it does if I think only we have $360,000, right? We don't because you you have money that you're getting paid for by other cities or other things, right? So, yeah.

Yeah. I'm just could be help note on that slide that the impact of the general fund certain dollar amount of that source from the general fund. Would would that make it clearer maybe and the balance from other funds? Right. Once the once you see the revenues Yeah. from different sources, then you'll understand how we can balance that out. Ed, when I um when I get the complete staffing plan document compiled, I hope to bring to present that or provide it to council um next meeting and it'll have the spreadsheet and and I'll make some updates so that that's more clear for you. General fund versus enterprise funds. Good. Thank you.

Any other questions at this time? This is just the first of many discussions that are in the budget. Capital will be a big um discussion and I will get those to you. What I will send you is a document that's this big with all the projects over the next five years, but then I will send you what we're recommending to be active. Um and the finance group has met and made the recommendations as well. Oh, we will set the public hearing for the CIP February 5th and then we'll have the actual public hearing the following. So, you'll have a full month to take a look at those projects.

Luke, can you go back a few slides? I think it it was when Jean was talking about revenue has went up over the 10 years, right? Keep going back there. Like, do we know like what like so taskable growth has been 9% as we've gone? like do we know what our our expenditures over the same time have went up year-over-year because like you kind of want to see that together, right? It feels like sure I can provide that that 9% though is year over year. If we know we've had spikes or valleys like is it growing consistently or not that that's something I when I look at my budget it's like what what what is that same thing doing? Right.

I can tell you without a doubt we've been growing um in both areas but that 9% is just a year-over-year. Yeah. Um, so I'll get you like a 10-year history of where we're at because hopefully those numbers aren't starting to get a lot closer to each other, right? Yep.

Tax rate are we looking at? I mean, then you don't have to make the decision tonight. um maintaining leaning in that direction or would you like to see a a reduction? be my personal opinion be nice to maintain the same I just do the budget do what we got to do to be the best we can be and then see what the is my personal opinion I think I'd be hesitant on changing the rate right now with the legislature just getting spooky

I agree I I have a question for Holly when she said like, you know, our incentives and other things like what's your uh natural reaction to that? Yeah, I'm kind of glad you brought that up. [laughter] Things a little different.

I think that candidly, I think that economic development and commercial and industrial developments are the lowhanging fruit. It's easy to grab at those and want more from it. Um, and I think across the board other expenses and programs don't really get looked at too much, but economic development and commercial industrial developments and projects and growth, that's brand new for the community. Um, so whether we're only getting 25% of that for a few years or 100% of that for all of the years, it's brand new dollars that took effort to get them here. So, I think we need to be a little bit careful when we we think about either doing away with or completely slashing some of the programs that we have, which there's only a couple. I know that the high quality jobs grant was mentioned in that, but I think we've given away $6,000 of that in like seven years. So, that's just a dot. But in terms of TIFF, you know, TIFF gets used for primarily public infrastructure. And so it it sounds like it's an incentive and that we're just giving these dollars back to private developers and private projects, but it's being used for public infrastructure that opens up other areas for more new investment, more new tax dollars. Um, and we see new dollars from that regardless of how much tiff they get for how long. And I think we the city has been smart about how we've done tiff way back when. I think Jean alluded to it. There was a time where we had no commercial. So we had to be a little bit more aggressive. We did some grants but even then when we did grants they were at time of co so the building had to be constructed and open and then we still reimburse ourselves that grant through their new tiff now we only do tiff rebates and we only do I think our top has been like 75% and we tried to stay around 10 years or 15 years we've got a couple bigger ones from several years ago but Michael foods key player I mean that was the biggest incentive package we've ever done and they are the most valuable project in Warren County so that paid off. They've all paid off. So, I think just keeping that in mind, all

of those different the bigger picture with that I think is important. So, take the deos thing and we're going to talk about $8500 tonight for them, right? Like would that have changed their opinion to come to Norwalk? No. Yeah. With tax abatement. It's a big help. It's a big help because we've incentivized that area and now we're giving tax abatement and a I mean, it's just one after the other. I feel like let's keep a little for ourselves. And I will say Michael Foods, we're still paying um

u and the their value increased, but so did their rebate. We went from 65% rebate to now we're paying 80% rebate and we're still paying on infrastructure that we put in there for several years. So it is a long game. I'm not saying it's bad. I just want that's why I keep saying that about staff. I want people to understand that and that's not anti that. I just there's a reason financially for it. And I'm not trying to pit you two against each other, but I think it's valuable insights from both of you. Right now,

different lots of debates. Um, I went ahead and showed this is general fund uh since 2014. Budgeted expenditures, actual expenditures, actual revenue, and then budgeted revenue. So, this is a spreadsheet. We keep we call it work session data and there's probably 35 graphs in here and it drives Gene nuts and I love it. Oh, I like it. I like it.

Yes. Like 18 and 21 are great, but like what happened in 22 when the the revenue like was below the expenditures? That's a tough year, right? So, yeah. Do you do some planned use of reserves when the reserves get to a certain level? um we do plan to use those so we don't have to tax as much. That's kind of a strategy there. Okay.

Yeah. The one of the great things anytime you see that blue line come in at the top 2018 2021 and then pretty consistently uh for a couple years just here in the recent past. Um those are reserve building years and we get too far above 30% at some point even we're operating outside of our policy and if our policy is 30% we end up with 40% reserves somebody say why are you hanging on to that that amount of money

I will say before that legislation we were consistently lowering our tax rate I think when I started in 15 it was 1669 and we're down to 1488 and I have no doubt We would be decreasing it every year if we were not restricted to revenue growth. I think you said one year that we kept it the same, but we could have dropped it 60 cents or something like that, but it didn't make sense to do because because of legislation. All right, administration.

This won't take very long. There's not a whole lot in here. Um, we have the spreadsheet coming up there.

Executive administration. The first spreadsheet covers the city manager 25% of his wages and the elected officials. And then any like training or allowances. We do have some money in there for if there's a labor relations issue. Uh we've had in the past that we we needed some money and we didn't have it budgeted. That and the consultant fees if he doesn't if nothing comes up those don't get uh used. This is a increase of about 5.9% mainly uh in the wages line area. Felt like it was in line uh with the growth numbers of 5.9%. Next is finance. U that's about a 4%. This covers uh 50% of my wages and 40% of our director of in uh information.

Why can't I What is your title?

City internal. Director of internal operations. I apologize. I drew a brain something there. Director of internal operations and city clerk. Um and then any like education training and then PFM consulting fees of about 2,000. There's also insurance uh property and liability insurance in there. Basically that covers several uh departments and areas. This was about a 4% increase. So I I have a general comment and I didn't get through all these but there was definitely I went through some of these and I looked at them where we had places where actuals were something less than the the budgeted number and then our new budgeted number was more than the budgeted number that we had before. And so like my boss to me will just rake me across the coals and I'm going to ask the same out of you, right? Like so you had a budget and we spent less than that and now you're asking for more and you couldn't even spend the budget you had. What are we doing? Right? And so you better have some good plans of why that budgeted number should be more than the budget that you didn't even spend before. And that goes for all of the

the areas, I guess, right? Because I saw it in a few places. Yes. And so sometimes there's reasons for that. We know that something's going to happen that's hasn't happened yet. And what we do try to do if we can is lower another area. Yeah. To offset it.

We try our very best to do that. What was the number? Trying to remember. I want to say it was about mid year last year. Maybe some of the department heads even remember. Uh but Jean came to us and said, "Hey, if everybody can find a way to not spend this many percent out of your budget, it would allow for this." Whether it was a a staff change somewhere or to not have to amend the budget. Um, but those are situations where we will see staff come in and uh department heads will say, "Hey, here's a line item. I'm I'm really going to hold off on doing this. So, I'm not going to spend those dollars so I can turn back more money as requested by finance." And so, you might be seeing some of that, too, where then in the next year either they're doing catchup, but they'll have explanations under on why they did that.

But like, get my perspective is maybe just as an outside person in the community, you wanted 5,000, you only spent 3500, and now you're asking for seven. what are you doing? Right? Like that that seems really weird from a a city perspective, right? We also strongly discourage any idea of use it or lose it. Uh I've I've had complaints uh from people about that that well it's the end of the year. You're just going to rush out and spend your budget to show well look I spent it all.

We [clears throat] try to stay away from that. If you don't need it, please don't rush out. We have more staff that I think what they do is they wait till the end of the year just in case something bad is going to happen and then okay now I can go out and make this purchase.

Yep. And the next budget you're going to see is a good example. It's under city hall. Um if you go way down to the very last it says capital improvements. We had budgeted 50 but we spent 150. And that is because the airport, we're giving them $250,000 over five years and we've been putting $50,000 a year set aside uh from lost and they did not invoice us the last two years. So I finally called and said we need your invoice and it was 150. But that money has been in the general fund waiting to pay that bill. So that's one of one of the reasons things like that can happen. Sometimes people won't invoice us until after the end of the year. So then it doubles up. Could be another reason too. This budget, if you look at it, it looks like a much larger increase than it it truly is to the general fund. So the loss dollars, we when we go through the capital process, we divide those up in various ways. Uh we happen to for fiscal year 27 put 150,000 in this budget for a generator for city hall. We've kind of been putting that off for a while. and then a sewer jeter. Um, this one's kind of funny. Uh, we just been having some issues with our restrooms here at city hall and we keep having to call and have them come in and um, so we decided if we buy a sewer jeter, we can use it for all the buildings and what we're spending here, it'll pay for itself in two two and a half years. So, and that is also lost money. So, if I took out those two items that where there's actually a transfer coming in, the actual uh increase to this budget is about 4%.

And loss money for any of the citizens or businesses that are watching this is local option sales tax. Thank you. So, it's a separate revenue source that comes from sales tax. When you buy goods, that extra one 1% that comes to the city, the other portions go to the state school

and we'll get about 1.8 million. Now, last year they told us to plan for a 13% increase. Think we got about seven. This year they're telling us to plan for a 2% decrease. So, I've kind of kept it pretty steady, but we are on pace to get more money this year. So, that one's kind of we don't know, but we have an estimate. But, it's been really a good thing for the city. We haven't had to borrow as much money and we've got to pay for some items that are shorter useful life like police cars. You don't want to borrow a long-term debt. You know, those only are good for three or four years. Um, parks, vehicles, there's lots of things we do with that money. So, it's been a really nice addition to our budget. Uh the final one for administration is information technology. Uh Tim Guyire is uh an actual full-time employee for the schools and then a couple other staff. They help us out. We pay them 125,000 a year. It's a real bargain. Um they do a lot for us. This budget actually is decreasing a lot by 22% and that's basically hardware uh cyber security needs. This year we're putting in um computer hardware, network hardware for 125,000. Next year the request is much less. We don't we don't need as much. Um the 68,000 there's some cloud storage and Microsoft service uh server licenses. So that's going down. And then I try to as much as I can give detail of what we're spending the funds on uh for consultant and professional fees. There's a lot of software in there

and Tim maintains somewhat of a separate, it's not a separate CIP, but he has kind of a separate list just for him to keep track of all the IT needs. Those bigger projects get pulled into the CIP. Otherwise, they're funded through this budget, right? The CIP mainly are those capital equipment numbers. The consultant is the general fund numbers. U and Tim and I have sat down and we have like a 10-year outlook. Of course it changes every year because as you know it is changes constantly. So um so this budget actually has a reduction

questions on administration. Sounds good. Thank you chief.

Chief you're up next. Great. All right. While he's pulling that up, um, thank you for the opportunity to come in and talk about the police budget. Thanks to Jean for all the work she does to make it easy on the rest of the department heads. um when we prepare um Jean really is a valuable resource for us and I can't stress enough to you how much she really does to make it so that we have a easier time. Um for those of us who aren't math majors or accountants, having Jean makes life a lot easier. So um before I get started on the actual budget, just a couple comments about this past year. I'm excited about how the police department has uh operated this past year. Um we started a strategic plan, a five-year plan. Uh I've been working on an update to that, going through and seeing where we measured up with the objectives we put in that plan and and we hit about 90% of the objectives of a five-year plan in the first year. Um so that was very exciting for me. Um I also um excited about our national accreditation project. Kala is the name of that organization and we uh are we had hoped to have our first mock assessment of our standards uh in 2025 but we didn't quite make it. Um but we're going to schedule that start scheduling that mock assessment uh at the end of this month. So it'll be very interesting to see how other people outside our organization think our standard our policies and how we operate measure up to the national standards. Um [clears throat]

a different thing for us over um this past year over previous years was that we operated at or near full staff for most of the year. Um that has been a noticeable change in stress level for the officers. Um not having as many overtime shifts to fill because of lack of staff. Um you can really notice it in the smiles and the laughter in the hallways. Um, so I appreciate the council u who authorizing the funding to be able to hire and send officers to the academy and buy officers new uniforms and uh everything that it takes to to add a new position or replace position that became open. Um, and then lastly, uh, we'll talk about advance hires a little later, but in July, uh, the council authorized the police department to advance hire two police officer positions due to, um, pending retirements that we anticipate happening in this calendar year. And I just want to say that the first of those two um, advanced hires started the academy on January 5th. Um and the second we hope to hire sometime near the end of March. Uh she is a certified officer uh from another community in Iowa. Um and that allows us to not have to send somebody to the academy, pay the academy fee or the training wages um for somebody for 16 weeks at the academy. So that would be a big benefit for us

and the time.

The time. Yeah. It saves us four months in training time. Uh so with all that being said, I'll move on to the budget. um salary being the first line. Um that salary number uh does not um include uh well let me rephrase that. The salary number within that is a reorganization of the supervisory component of the police department. We currently have five supervisors uh in a reconfigured manner. We'll still have five supervisors. The titles will just be different. um some of the positions will get reorganized. I'm telling you that it's costneutral um it's costneutral uh change but I'm telling you that because at some point in April most likely uh carrier will bring you wage scales um and the job descriptions um and the pay ban for um new supervisory ranks. So um because of retirements the change doesn't affect the budget. Uh the person leaving makes enough money that the person's uh the new structure uh fits within the within the amount it costs to supervise the department. Um also in that salary number is the advanced hires. Um hopefully they will both be um retirements will happen but there's a little bit of cash little bit of money there to support the advanced hires if one of the one or both the retirements don't happen as early as we anticipate. Um so um after that uh you'll see part-time wages of $8,000. That is what uh Luke mentioned earlier about uh part-time records clerk. Uh currently we have one person doing office uh and

administration work in the department. That person uh has been by themselves a one person shop for um the last 12 years or longer. Uh that person the main thing they do is support the number of officers. The number of officers has increased from 13 to 22, but the number of people doing administrative support has not increased. That is causing a backup of some work that needs to get done. Uh and this hopefully is sufficient funding um to be able to provide some relief valve for our administrative needs. Um then the rest of the budget um is just general um expenses that uh we have every year. There's some slight increases in some of the budget categories. Uh unless there's questions, I don't think it's necessary to go through each one and explain them. Anybody have any questions on what's in there?

Okay. What's not in the budget? um is funding for uh additional officer positions. Um as you saw in the in the hiring staffing plan, uh I requested two officer positions to be created and added to the department. They're not funded. uh and I understand why they're not funded, but I want to talk to the council uh during this budget talk about about police staffing and and the challenges behind that. Um we have a cops grant. Federal government awarded us $250,000 to help pay for police officer positions that ends up funding about 45% of the salary of the officer over the course of three years. um doesn't pay for all of it, pays for about 45%. Um that grant has deadlines that we have to meet if we are going to uh use the funding. And to accomplish that uh without asking for an extension from the grant, we would have to hire the two officers by September 30th, 2027, which is why I put them in my staffing plan for 2027. Now, I'm I understand and I support the decision to not fund them here today. Um, however, one thing that I need to say, I feel the need to say every year is that if the council authorizes a new position at the police department today, and that funding is available July 1st, it's not until the next April, April of 2028, before that officer is working and on the road. So, there's a year lag time from the day I advertise for a position to the day an officer graduates from field training. And that year lag time causes issues in being able to run a full a fully staffed police department,

which is why council authorized the advance hires uh back in July that we just started in January and we'll start again in March. So, while I support the fact that with the budget unknowns and with the state legislature unknowns, um, we do have a grant that would assist us in paying for new officer positions. We may have more retirements than the two that I anticipate. Um, there may be a person who resigns. There's no indication that that's happening, but it could happen. And so I'm saying that well right now I I support a no new police officer staff. I'm saying that I may come at some point during the middle of the budget year and ask for staff because of unforeseen circumstances and because we have the grant. So I just wanted to put that out there. The other thing that's not in the budget is funding for our flot camera program. Um that's a strategic decision. We don't know uh exactly what the funding request might be for that at some point next winter. Uh we don't know what the program will look like, whether we want to decrease the number of cameras or add the number additional cameras. We've been getting financial support from the county attorney uh for the last year on those cameras. What the financial support continues to be is an unknown. Uh so I'm not comfortable asking for money to be budgeted for something. I can't tell you what it's going to cost with any reasonable certainty. So, you may see uh me come back next uh winter and ask for um additional funding for the flat camera program, but for right now, I can't tell you what that would be or when it would be or if it'll be.

So, what is that? The block camera program is the license plate reader uh cameras that we have around town. But I will say just uh uh just this week uh we got a hit on one of the cameras for uh the registered owner of a vehicle being wanted. Uh the officer was able to find the car and arrest subject. So just this week uh we had a great success success story. So if there are no questions about the police budget, I'll move into the Westcom budget. I got just one quick. Yes, sir. When would you have to write that request if you delayed using the cops grant? uh for for a um

timeline.

So, uh the cops grant the way it's set up is uh it gives you 60 months to pay an officer for 36 months. And so with that, you need to hire the officer before end of two years of the grant period. It's five-year period. You have to pay somebody for three years. that end of the 2-year period is September 30th, 2027. However, they may give us a um an extension of 12 months, which would push that to September 2028. So, the deadline to um hire without asking for an extension is next September. Um but then if with an extension, there would be another year.

Okay. You'd have to put that extension in what about three months before They don't ask you for they don't ask you for the extension until you obviously need it. So, it would um it would we would go on and let's say we've hired somebody in December of 2027, which would mean we'd need a two-month extension. As we approached the end of the grant period, the original grant period, the grant monitor and I would discuss the need for an extension and then they would grant it. Thank you. Chief, what was the difference between actual and budget this year? Because it looked like actuals compared to six budget were pretty off, right? Um, like scroll up, Luke. Right.

Say that again. I'm sorry. Um, like it seemed like were we way over budget for the police budget for this fiscal year? Like was it like 260 and we spent 320? It was at the top of the spreadsheet, I thought. Oh, you're talking about the wage just in general, right? like right there pre12 number versus the 240 number isn't that so that's actual revenue ah okay from fiscal year 25 and then budgeted revenue for fiscal year 26 okay there's a reimbursement there I don't know what that's for but those are uncommon 75,000

the reimbursement is a uh police car crash most of that 75,000 is a police car cr where insurance reimbured it. That'll do it. Y and I'm glad that's not a budgeted revenue.

Okay. So, the police department budget uh also contains the Westcom budget. Um and that it's not really the police department budget, but it's in my budget presentation. Um we have a public safety budget and the public safety budget uh is the things that are shared between the police and the fire. Uh so those are payments for um Westcom or dispatch system. Uh building repair for the public safety building, insurance um for the public safety building, electric gas for public safety building. Uh that's the uh public safety budget here. um Westcom number um fluctuates what it actually ends up costing us because we're we budget for what the maximum cost will be and if they can't keep their staff up which they struggle to do every year the actual expense of Westcom is lower. Um I can tell you that Luke is chairman of the management committee is doing a bangup job trying to keep um expenses low. Um the service we get is topnotch. Uh we're getting a we're getting a good bang for our buck. Um and the city manager, our city manager is doing everything we can to keep those expenses as low as possible.

There's no other questions. I'll get out of your way. All right. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks, Alex. Jeez. Love you tonight.

Well, I just like to start out by expressing my gratitude. And I do this every year. And Wayne, wherever he's at, always rolls his eyes at me when I do this because he thinks I'm being mushy. But it's just true. I know that we're all grateful. All of our departments are very grateful to work for a city such as New Orle. Um, but we're just really blessed to have the types of jobs that we have in a community like this. Um, which is also, I believe, in one of the best states in the US. And that becomes clearer to me every time I travel elsewhere, especially overseas. And we do have some really good friends overseas with our sister city partnership and they relay that pretty often. So, thank you for allowing us to work for you and to serve the public. Um, with that, since my budget is really easy and pretty small, we'll go quick. I'm just going to touch on a couple of numbers that I think you'll find interesting. Our annual report was included in your council packet, which is where I'm drawing this data from. So, I won't go through accomplishments or projects or anything like that from last year since those are listed in the report, but I'll just touch on a few really kind of fun numbers. In 2025, Norwok welcomed 24 new businesses. Those are brick and mortar. approximately 350 new jobs, 266,000 square feet of new commercial industrial space. We had a 63% increase in value for new commercial development and a 64% increase in value from new industrial development, adding a total of $99.5 million in new value and over $3.5 million per year in new taxes. I think most impressively though is that the changes that we've had from 2016 to 2025. So my team has been tracking these numbers since the economic development department was created, which is why we have that kind of year span there. Might seem kind of random, but in the last nine years, Norwok has had more than 37 new commercial and industrial facilities constructed, completely changing and improving our visual landscape and adding an abundance of new goods, services, accommodations, and recreation opportunities to our residents and

visitors. Our commercial improvement grant program added over $3 million in new value and improved 24 older commercial buildings, transforming uh Norwok's historic downtown Founders District. Industrial values grew from four, this is huge, from 4.7 million to 83 million. Commercial values grew from 45 million to more than 176 million. Total, this added almost $210 million in new value and approximately 7.7 million in new annual taxes. Obviously, we know we don't get all of that, but we get portion of it and it does go throughout our our community, our county, our schools. 800 plus new jobs were added to the area. Over 100 new businesses open their doors and Norwok was featured 340 times in positive news stories across 13 media platforms. That doesn't include the international news stories which we did make or any of the school related articles just our development. So all of these changes, growth and new dollars benefit the entire county, our schools, the de mo metro region and the state. I'm proud to work with all of the wonderful departments and of course I'm especially proud of my talented economic development team Chris Catalo Tailoo and Emily Donahghue. As for our budget, again, it's pretty small. Um, which I'm proud of. So, it only moved a tiny bit from uh fiscal year 26 to 27, specifically 2.8%. Um, I think that we should be the smallest department, and that's good because we're economic development. So, in both staffing and in budget, your economic development team um should be the most critical of tax dollar expenditures other than maybe the finance director and city manager. So our job is to generate new revenues and only spend dollars where a return on investment can be shown. The line items that changed from last year are are mostly under the payment for services. We did have an increase of course in the the staff wages but [snorts] under the

payment for services which are broken down on the page. uh my portion of the VNK budget increased by 3,000 per year which of course is due to just we use a lot of engineering services um for the various projects that we work on. Um one of them just kind of undertaking the the largest development in Warren County up and coming uh is the southwest development corridor which includes a 2900 acre annexation the den industrial park extensive new infrastructure and a 300 acre techbased development. Uh there is one new line item, Catch De Mo, which is 3,000. That's actually paid for through our new hotel motel taxes, which is a brand new revenue stream now that we actually have hotels. Um Catch De Mo is the entity that generates leads and recruits large events to the metro area and markets all available member venues and hotel accommodations. So, we just felt that this was really a critical organization to join to help our two brand new hotels, Norwalk Central, Fieldhouse, all of our business um community to just thrive even more.

So, we didn't that one actually used to be 27.7%. And it was lowered down to 25%. It was kind of a whole region, metro region. We negotiated that down.

We negotiated it. Yeah. Yes. You were part of that. Thank you. And uh so we no longer have a $1,000 payment per year to Bravo because we ended our contract with that organization last year. Again, we were trying to give a little take a little. We wanted to add in uh Catch De Mo was very important and we just had to cut somewhere else for it. And again, because we're focused on return on investment when we spend money, we knew we'd get that through Catch De Mo. So, uh, one item increase that I will be requesting for this next fiscal year, I didn't see it on the, uh, staffing documents that, uh, Gan showed, and I think it's because I'm not asking for a new employee. I would only be asking for my part-time technician position to move from part-time to full-time. Um, and worked really hard, you know, to always be super careful with the budget and just, you know, not be overstaffed. I don't want to be overstaffed. I don't like the thought of that. Uh but as you can see, we have a very small department um with a very big responsibility and being adequately staffed as we continue to grow the community and economy is really critical. It's also incredibly important to keep the super talented and extremely valuable people in Norwok and not lose to another community, a big sphere. So we're competitive. Um I do know recommendations are to have somewhat of a hiring freeze. I understand that. We know there's legislation coming out that we're unsure of. So, I would never want to go against internal recommendations. So, I'm willing to cut other areas of my budget to fill that little gap. Um, and I know it's not all from the same, you know, budget areas, but again, it'd be money back to the overall city budget that could be used for other needs. So, um, I know we'll talk about that in future meetings. I just kind of wanted to give you a little uh viewpoint of that to the future as a request. So other than that, if there's any questions

for services and it comes over to the right, it says tiff on budget for service 100,000,00 are those all tiff funds that are used to pay for payment for services. You see up top there's a an in and then there's an out 115 two is a transfer in from tip that pays for all of those all those listed down below everything down below. Yeah, those are all listed out. So the money that goes to WCDC, NPO, chamber partnership, uh fireworks, you know, all those things, right? Right.

And I would like to call out partly because we have our amazing chamber director here in the audience. I just wanted to point out to her specifically there is $19,000 here for the chamber that you had asked, you know, just to make sure. So I wanted to show her that that did get included in the budget. It's there right now. If I had to shave off other areas to move my time person to full-time or we just had to because of whatever could happen in the future would not shave off chamber chamber and the greater de mo partnership have been really really critical in the growth of our economy as well here in Norwok. So

would you [laughter] not

yeah I have thought about it. I would say I would shave down investments in some of the areas that are a little bit more community-based. They're important. We want to support them, but um you know, we have a couple in here like Celebrate Norwok, Hometown Pride, Fourth of July fireworks. Those are all wonderful things. Um but those are also community events, community um programs that aren't directly related to the city. We we support them. and we give them money for it, but we're not running those those um events and we're not getting revenues back from them. I think they're still good to have, but if we had to cut funds, those would probably be some of the areas that I would look at.

I have a question in a popular topic. I would love to know if there was a happy middle between incentives we've been giving and no incentives at all cooked turkey, where would that lie with the intent of still bringing in more businesses? Yeah, I would love to know that. And you don't have to answer that now, but

yeah. No, I think that's a good question. And I mean we can certainly look at scaling back because I know incentive is kind of a broad term but really what we use for incentives are kind of two things. So I know we have our our tax abatement program the five-year sliding scale that's always been a part of the city. That's not something that I came in as a department asked for. It's just a standard in place that new commercial industrial um developments qualify for if they're not getting tiff. So that if the council says, "Hey, we just don't like doing abatement because, you know, we're we're not getting as much money as we do when we do rebates, they want to do away with that, we can do away with that." I mean, I'm not I'm not entirely opposed to it. But really the only I guess true incentives that I work with in terms of development agreements and helping new businesses establish here and helping them offset some of those wildly extreme costs that they have those first 5 to 10 years of new business is tiff rebate. And that's again giving them giving them back a portion of their own property taxes that they're generating. So their brand new dollars and then um our commercial improvement grant program and that's been cut in half for a while. we had 150,000 a year total to give out for any of the the new commercial improvement grants. Then that got come back to 75,000 a year. So that's pretty little and then what we get back out of that is pretty significant because they have to spend the same amount of money that they qualify in a grant for on improve physical improvements on their building. So that increases the the taxable value, property taxes. Um if we had to scale that back again, we scale it back again. But on tiff rebates, I do think we need to be really really careful with that one and maybe we drop it down to instead of doing 75% for big or good projects, maybe it goes down to 65% is our max. I'm not opposed to looking at some of that stuff, but I have a different perspective from the private business standpoint. I know some

of you have owned or ran or managed businesses and you understand the the cost that goes into it, the risk that goes into it. It's it's it's your own dollars. It's private dollars. is not spending somebody else's money or spending tax dollars. It's your own. It's your livelihood [clears throat] and it's huge costs. I mean, to build a new building today, it it's it's amazing. Anybody can make it work. So, I feel like when we help and we give them back part of their new taxes that they're paying for a while, it's just helping them to be successful quicker and then they always end up reinvesting in their community somewhere. They always do. So, I just I want to be a little bit careful how much we kind of grab at that because I feel like they do pay exorbitant cost across the board, federal all the way on down. And, you know, I don't know if anybody else owns businesses, but you get taxed and charged and feed all over the place. And it's it's scary for them. It's risky. So if we can do anything in those first, you know, three to 10 years in their formative years to just help balance that out a little bit, I think in the long run, we make out wildly. I mean, just the the long-term benefits is is huge. So I think for a middle ground, yeah, maybe we just look at the number of years and then the the percentage amount that we do for a rebate. But again, each project is so unique and everyone is based on the value of it. So are they bringing really high quality jobs like the status on a project we're working with 80 new, you know, full-time jobs that are all engineering and above. um are they is their taxable value so significant that even if we do give them 75% for 10 years, we're still getting this monster um new addition to our our budget. So, I think it's nice for council to have the ability to be flexible in that because if there is a project that comes along that again kind of like this data center project that

we're working with that comes along and we really really want it here bunkies or something down the road, you have that flexibility within the current policy to stretch if needed. And again, we use so much of that rebate on public infrastructure. And so this current the biggest project that we're working on now, they're getting no incentives. We're not doing tip rebate for them. And this will be the biggest investment in our our community in Warren County, probably even the region for many years to come. Um, so I don't I'm not opposed to looking at things and and working some numbers. I just hope that everybody really understands the scope of it and how we use it. Luke, has everybody like have insight on the council to the data center like what that could possibly bring as far as tax revenue and like to the effect to the general fund because before we make any changes like I was pressing on this too, we should understand what that impact could be because to Holly's point, it's pretty sizable, right? And so like that's a pretty big thing that could sway our opinion on what we want to do with those incentive programs.

Yes. tapping into some of that, which is what makes me think, do we even need to offer them in the future if we're already getting this huge project and advantage and what's bringing them here that wouldn't bring other people?

Yeah, the data center sphere is so unique because they Yeah, they're in their whole billionaire kind of world. So, that's a little bit different. Um but you know you're um like a sports campus or a restaurant or a medical facility, you know that that's different. Those are kind of singly owned or owned by a small group. Um it's just a little bit different where they might need a little bit more of that offset for a few years. But yeah, data centers are kind of their own world right now. I guess to maybe say my comment different Kelsey like the amount of revenue that that's going to bring maybe it allows us to continue to do for these smaller businesses non-data center that aren't going to be thousands of hundreds of thousands of dollars millions of dollars of tax revenue because we still want to get other commercial and industrial businesses like maybe where they need these incentives to have these businesses.

I interpreted what you were saying was kind of more on a case by case basis with new entities coming in.

Yeah. And with the tiff piece of it, and I know legis the legislature always looks at it every year. There's a couple people there that just don't understand tiff, but then they get such a wild fight back from everybody in the state that understands it and how how beneficial it's been to the state of Iowa that they leave it alone. But um yeah, if we mess too much with tiff or kind of how we want to use it, that also restricts the city outside of what we call incentives. We use tiff all over the place. if we want to use it for an infrastructure project that's got nothing to do with a current development, we can do that. And so, a lot of that is used towards that, not just incentives. And so, with this data center project, again, us not using uh the tiff to rebate them, we're going to use their tiff to do other infrastructure projects and that whole southwest corridor, that'll benefit 17,000 acres in the long run. Um, so we have that ability to use that. It doesn't just go back to these individual businesses. So, I would just um yeah, keep that in mind in the future when we're looking at the policies. And that's speaking of policies. Holly and I have had a number of discussions about this. We've discussed that what we want to bring up at some point in time. Mayor, you've probably already heard us talk about this that sometime spring after this legislative session has concluded, we would like to get together and and do a little more soularching on our financial and economic development policies to see if anything needs to be adjusted. I feel like that's probably one of the best times to have go into depth on these type of things because right now before we know what the legislator is going to do, it's possible they make some of these decisions for us. But nevertheless, once that session's over, we already have it on our schedule to get together and review.

And I would hope that we would do that across the board, all programs, all projects, all places that the city's spending money in because again, you know, we need these private investments. we need these businesses investing here. So, if we're always just um kind of taking away or kind of attacking that one area, that's that's the area we need to be spending money in our community. Um that we get money from the jobs, we get local option sales tax, now we're going to be getting hotel motel taxes. There's all these other uh revenue sources that add to the economy. So, again, I would just want to make sure that it's across the board. We're looking at everything and not just our investors. Anything else for Holly?

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Uh Jean, library time.

Good evening. On behalf of the staff and the trustees of the library, I would like to thank you for your continued support of the library. I know we're kind of a challenging department because we have a separate board of trustees appointed by the council and we have bylaws, we have all of the other things and we also strive to uh be a free public library that is there to provide services, collections and programs for the public good. So, we don't take in a lot of fees. Uh, but we do feel like our public is very appreciative of what we do and we couldn't do what we do without the support from you. So, tonight is all about numbers and I would like to remind you of a few of the library related numbers from our year in review. This was in your board packet a few months ago and I also shared it with Kelsey and with Andy during your orientations, but I wanted to freshen it up for you. Nearly all of the usage data that we track has increased over the last fiscal year and it's demonstrating that the library is relevant and being used consistently by our residents. Uh in the last fiscal year, our in-person visits, so the number of people through the doors were up 15%. Our online visitors were up 81%. That's uh number of folks who come to our web page and utilize our downloadables. Our reference questions answered increased 179%. The computer use and one-on-one technical assistance appointments increased 20% and 80% respectively. So, we have some very computer literate folks in our community. Program attendance increased 28% with over 26,000 people attending our 866 programs, classes, and story times. We also had users borrowing over 126,000 items and that's a 7% increase. So across the board, I won't go down with all of our stats, but across the board,

most everything was increasing. Um the bottom line, our residents are coming in and they're utilizing those services and collections and programs that you're helping to fund and finance. Um, one of the things that I would like to talk about a little bit is to let you know how proud I am of our library staff. They really are our number one resource. They are a big expense, but that is uh pretty much with any business or government or anywhere. Um, particularly I wanted to mention that some of them have been recognized at the state and national levels and I couldn't be any prouder. We have one who has a committee appointment with our state association. We have one who has a committee appointment with the state library and one has been asked to present at our national conference. So super excited for that. Um going into the budget lines themselves, one thing that I would like to mention is that the library that we have here operates with a fairly different model than other libraries do just because of our size um and the way the the facility is structured. So, our part-time staff are doing a very large percentage of the uh types of work as opposed to the full-timers and the things that they do up at the front desk that it's unusual for any library to do this. They're doing the library card registrations, the check-ins, the checkouts, the reference help, the technology help, and they process all of the new materials that we get at the library. and they work the front desk doing all of the things at that time. So, one of the reasons why uh they're so valuable is just because they have such a depth and breadth of uh skills that they are providing. The rest of the staff are doing administrative tasks, making sure the bills are get paid, the polit policies uh flowing out and being

enforced. um also collecting the materials and ordering them and providing all of the programs that the 26,000 people come to. Um in our budget request, you will see that we have an increase in the part-time line that is somewhat significant for our budget overall. I wanted to mention that that is due to the training needs. We have to hire some substitute staff from time to time. When we hire substitutes, we end up having to train them and that requires off-es time, but then they also shadow on desk and if they're shadowing someone, then we're paying multiple people at one time. So, that helps uh them to learn better. In additioning to that to we also have a uh potential staff member who is going to be going on parental leave next fiscal year. So we would like to plan for that by being able to hire to cover uh those services. So we just didn't want to have to come back and say, "Hey, there's a baby that's going to be on the way." So um we wanted to plan for that now. Um, and the rest of the lines, I'm happy to answer any questions about those. There's some very minimal increases on there and a couple of decreases. Um, but really overall, given the size of facility we have, we can't go too big. We don't have much more staffing space. We don't really have much more collection space or programming space. So the budget isn't going up uh too much because we don't have anywhere to go with it. Um yes,

one particular line item I could have you focus a little time on it is the county contributions and how that's has changed over time. I know you've been active in that process.

Yes, I have. Um it's similar to um working as you folks do with the uh decrees that come down from the state legislators. And so the county uh has an approach where all six libraries in Warren County, we work together and the county supervisors give us what we like to call a reimbursement for services, but it's not a true reimbursement to the dollar. Um, and then the six libraries divide that sum up based on circulation to our rural patrons. So really the county supervisors funding is uh supporting our rural borrowers. It's not the folks who come in the door and use the Wi-Fi or come to programs. We're already doing those things anyway, but it just uh the only way we can really get a number on how many users we have is by checkouts of the materials. So last year they did give us a reduction because they had a reduction in the amount of money that they had to be able to utilize.

So every city, every municipality, county government are required according to state law to provide library services. Correct. So it's a mandate. We do not have the option to say we're just going to not have a library. Correct. There is no requirement on how much. correct is paid. So go ahead.

It there's a lot of different levels with it and so the county has this reimbursement contribution however you want to look at it and they are setting the amount. Um this year we are asking for I believe a 10% increase in what we got last year. Um the past fiscal year, Norwok's uh percentage of incur or excuse me, percentage of checkouts to the rural patrons actually went down. Indianola was the big draw last year. I have no explanation for that. Um so it's hard for us to anticipate what it is that our city is going to get. Um there's also some other complications because um for example, we just received notification that Aworth was not going into contract with Carile anymore. It's not a huge amount of money, but that would have allowed the Aworth residents to be able to check out from our library because there's a statewide program called open access that allows every one of you to go visit any Iowa library, show your ID, and you can get a library card at any of those libraries and you can check out. You bring it back to Norwok, we return it for you. It's just a giant reciprocal agreement that we have so that you can check out that much more stuff. you have the the availability to that much more information. If we were if any library pulls out of the open access agreement at the state level, then that means all of our residents in Norwok would no longer be able to go and borrow from other places. It doesn't work out really well for people. So I feel like in fiscal year 25 the amount received was 59,000.

Yes. We budgeted 64,000 in fiscal year 26 assuming that there would be a little bit of an increase coming from the county where in fact as I understand it actually went down. It went down because the circulation for rural patrons was not there. Mhm. So it went from what we expected at 64,000 actually went down about $10,000 what they gave us in a previous year $10,000 less in a year when we only had 200,000 of new revenue. But they haven't paid anything yet.

No, I have contacted them. I have to do this every year to say where are the checks and the check is on its way. Usually they pay text in the mail. Um, they usually send it in early December and then again in May and it's usually with a little poking to remind them that there's an invoice out there.

What What percentage of checkouts do you think are coming from residents outside of Norwell? I don't know that I can give you a truly accurate number of that, but I can get you that information that I don't know. I can tell you that our power users are Norwok folks. Yeah.

The the caveat to that is that it was when I started. So it would been five years ago. Um Norwok was contracted with Coming actually contracted with us. I need to reverse that. And then they contracted with West De Moine. We end up losing money because our contract was for more than we actually get reimbursed through the open access program. We only get about 38 cents back in open access per checkout, but the contract was for more, especially now that Humming is growing. So, we are uh considering having a conversation with about opening that door again. They have expressed an interest. Um they actually came to us and said, "We think we'd like to come back with him." which was I think great because um West De Mo is obviously a much larger library and much bigger collection but they like to come and see us

like related to a conversation we had last time. So yes, thanks thanks for bringing this. Absolutely. This is always fun to see what's going on the these types of programs I' I' I'd kind of like the same type of information. How much how much or what percentage of the attendees to these types of programs come from outside of the outside of the city? We don't take any types of registration that has that kind of information. Most of our programs are walk in. Yeah.

Um just because anytime you do a registration then people are like, "Oh, I didn't register. I'm not going to go or I don't want to be bothered with registrations." So we really find that that tends to disincentivize people to come in. So we have not done that. Okay.

Um I can say that when we did switch over this last fiscal year, we had to cut off access to the Libby app to anyone who was not living in Norwalk. And most of the folks, we did actually phone everyone [laughter] um to let them know so that we could tell them how to uh connect with their home library for their Libby so they didn't lose their holds and yell at us. Um most folks were from the area and they were like, "But we thought we were your home library. We thought that or that you were our home library. We thought that um we were supposed to be working with you." and they had no idea that they actually had contracted with West or yes, West De Moines uh 5 years ago and they're like, "But that doesn't make any sense." And so, and they're they're coming to us.

And not that they're not using the other ones, but that is kind of the beauty of public libraries. You can visit them all and you can check out all the things. Right. Does this 5.99% increase the trust going the trust funds that are used going up or that's just the impact to to us? Just ask. Yes. The trust which is actually the library foundation combined with some outside donors. They are the ones who fund the two interns. Yep.

Yeah. I'm gonna feel like I need to say one more thing and then I'm gonna let it go. You know, Holly gives some real numbers up here and the numbers that she gives of what development happens in this community. All of that value goes to provide the county government with a huge additional the portion that is it's exempt from tiff that goes into their capital projects. They get all that increase in revenue. It's it is a bit considerated

to see this library lose that amount of revenue with the amount of additional taxable value goes into the total county. That's a great point. As a percentage of the whole county, I would argue that the amount we're adding, anybody else pays in comparison minus the data center in West Mo. Yeah. So, it's it's a little frustrating that there's that decrease. What can we do about only talk with our county board members and express ourselves. Yeah, they like political support.

They will be contacting me in the next two weeks for us to go in to make our request for reimbursement. If one of you would like to accompany us, that would be great. We do have another council person coming from the big town of Milo, but um they have a really compelling case there because it's a small enough town that the director there knows that almost everyone who comes to the programs is a rural resident. So, if that's going to happen before we get the percentage number back, I I think I think we need to have that before you go and ask for yours because our residents pay a certain amount per thousand for library services. County residents should probably pay that same amount. We should know what that same amount is so that when we go ask, we can justify that amount. helpful to have that because then it really shows them the discrepancy between the two.

Yeah, that'd be a good way to go and kind of build equity like we did with emergency services with Yeah. doing the same thing we did with fire. Yeah. EMS overcoming. My perception of going to the county supervisors in the past years has been that they feel like the libraries are here asking for a handout when really what we're doing is we're asking for a reimbursement that we had this many of your folks and I don't think that that understanding is entirely there. So maybe having it in a different language or with with some different voices would be helpful. What is it?

Uh last year they gave us a three-day notice. So, it's going to be sometime before Yeah, it's going to be sometime before the end of this month, I'm anticipating. So, I can go back to the office and look up the information for you and email that out and work with you and whoever would like to accompany us. You're more than welcome. No. Okay, I will do that. Going to be on a Tuesday morning or Tuesday afternoon, right? Yes. We're we're usually in the morning. [laughter] Okay. So, yeah, block off your next few Tuesdays. I'll try to assemble some information. So, I'll do my best to join you. If I can provide any support, I'll do that. That would be lovely. Thank you. That would be very helpful.

I'm curious why you think coming contracted with us online in the first place.

The only the only thing I can think is that they are a larger library. I do know at the time um West De Moine was reaching out for different revenue sources. the director who was there during that time has since taken a different job in Wisconsin and nobody there is able to give me an answer on what happened there. I can say that West De Moine has a much larger staff so they are able to offer I would say about once a season they will do a story time at Rose Farm and we don't have the staff to be able to do that but their folks are already coming to our things so I don't doesn't make sense.

More of a contribution from column. They want to pay it. So they left. I don't think they want. I don't I don't know. I am not sure because they never even opened any negotiations with us. I found out through Luke who said, "Oh, by the way, did you know?" And I was like, "Wait, what [laughter]

story I told you about a previous mayor?" Just was in there. That could be part of it, too.

Um, any other questions about the line items? If not, I'll close up with just a couple other things. Okay. Thank you for that conversation. That was very good. And I look forward to part B. Um the only other things that I wanted to comment about were a couple things that were brought up tonight. One is that um it has worked really well, at least in my eyes, to be splitting the economic development technician um position along with um a circulation technician that uh is the same person and we're splitting that person uh 50/50. It is wonderful to do that, but I do have to support that. This is a really great staff person. I had her first. [laughter]

Um, but I do have to say that uh that half a position, should this happen, we would backfill the position because we do need the staffing. Um, that person has been helping with a lot of our financials and some recordkeeping and a lot of other great stuff, but um, it's definitely citywide necessary types of things. and also the mention of the public works position that there were questions about as well, the possibility of having someone to help with some of the session planning and some of the other work that is done. I cannot tell you how critical that position is. Um because when I went to library school, I didn't learn about fixing windows or HVAC or plumbing or concrete or parking lots. Toilet that's been a problem lately, toilets, pest control, all of that. And so it is wonderful to be able to contact um public works and they send that person over and they handle it. They know all the things or they know who to call. So, if I were having to do that, it's not a good use of city time or funds for me to have to flounder around or any of the other department heads who are running a building. Um, so please do give that one some serious consideration because we would all benefit from that. So, okay, thank you very much.

Thank you. Before the next coming up, go ahead, Luke. I just want to make the note that the county supervisors, they have been good partners. I I don't want to give the impression that it's a that there's anything terrible about that group. This one particular line item. It is a little frustrating, but they really have been a good group for us. Sorry, Luke. All right, Luke.

All right. Well, thank you for uh the opportunity to present to you tonight. Um I had a couple thoughts as we were going through a few things I just wanted to share uh quick before we dive into things. Um, probably about an hour and a half ago, we were talking about the time to realize new revenue. You were looking at that chart where commercial industrial was finally bumping up and everything and it made me think back to the time when I drove down here to interview for this job and the things we talked about in that interview and the things that the city was doing at that time that led to these things that led to those two numbers going up the way they have. So, just a little perspective that sometimes we're a big barge, you know, we just got to change course and we'll start getting there, but it takes a while to do. Um, so just wanted to to to kind of put that perspective, you know, um, a lot of projects that we're doing now been in the works for a long time. Um secondly on the idea of uh you know staff service cuts and those things um one of the things we talk about and hear a lot about in the community I'm guessing you guys probably have too is that we like Norwok's small town feel right like we don't want to lose that and that's a struggle with our growth the things we bring into town things that people want us to bring in town uh coming to a kind of uh agreement between the small town feel and that growth But another thing I think that small town feel uh that we're able to give is our customer service. Community development's a heavily customer service uh focused thing. Um a lot of our departments are and I like to think that we have a friendly small town customer service feel and as we grow and as we're limited in our ability to do things, I'm just kind of a little concerned that we're going to lose some of that, you know. Um, and that's not a line item that you guys are ever going to have to ask be asked to say cut this or cut that. It's just going to be a function of we've got people that want to do

their jobs, they want to do them well. And the function of doing that with less resources means we pro uh give less time and attention to some of those little details. Um, you can if you got elderly parent in town, you can come into city hall and our staff will take their phone from them and clear out the hundreds of notifications and help them set up their water bill, right? So, you know, it's those little things that we take pride in doing, we want to keep doing and we're proud to be able to do. So, uh, with that, uh, community development budget, um, pretty simple. Uh, first thing, there's two different budgets that you look at. One is community development, the other is the building department budget. Why that is is because of how the revenues we bring into the the the department work. Our building department revenues have to go to the service that we provide for building inspections and building permits. Um Gan mentioned earlier in the state level that's actually part of the public safety um component and it is public safety. I think a lot of times people forget that but we're out there making sure that buildings are safe in the first place. Um, community development wise, um, also just note that technically the smallest budget, even though as an apartment we have two, um, we come in, I think, at about like $20,000 less. Um, but that's really just the wages and uh, salary and staff support for our city planner, myself, and our admin assistant that does a lot of our um, work on the planning commission. budget-wise. Um, let me pop over here. Uh, something to pay attention to, especially for our new folks. On the revenue side, you'll see $250,000 of revenue. And then down under consultant professionals fees, you'll see another $250,000. We do as part of our review process um pass through of engineering review. So, Vinster and Kim is our engineer. We

incur a cost to have them look at a site plan. We pass that cost on to the developer. So, that's kind of a net neutral thing. We're not really bringing in revenue to that and we don't really have that expense. Um, it's a pass through through the city. Uh, our charges for fees and services, that's simply our uh development fee that we charge for plats and site plans and resonings and those. So, not a lot of revenue there, but we do bring some in. Um, budget-wise, uh, pretty much the same from the previous year. We do have under our consultant line item um $75,000 added for a study um that we referenced I think earlier as part of our uh master planning work um wanting to do some studies of the S-curve area and then $15,000 to do some additional office work. We just uh last year year and a half ago, you know, did remodeled all of the offices. um our admin folks, the three folks that work up front really sacrificed a lot to make that happen. And just as we've used that space, we've come to realize that maybe there's some things we can do to make it a little more usable. Um and selfishly, one of them's also for me, uh the walls of my office are about the thinnest thing you've ever had. So having any kind of meeting in there without disrupting people is pretty challenging. Um, so we're going to do some soundproofing and uh some additional office work to give some uh better space for folks to work. Questions on that before we go to building.

The only thing kind of to point out that big number at the bottom, it looks like compared to the others there was a 29% increase. Uh, Gan, I think what you're showing in here is if you pull out the local option sales tax numbers, it actually goes to a six and a half.

Yeah. really the the I believe the local option sales tax was the study and then um the that office remodel is really what we're looking for as uh a new thing in the department under community development. Um building department uh revenue-wise again uh we try to try to make sure that our uh revenues are matching what our uh expenses are going to be. Um, that's purposeful because uh we're supposed to be spend we can't be charging more for a building permit than it costs us to administer those and do the inspections and all that. Um, most of this again salary and wages. Um, no real large increases. Um, just would call attention, I guess, to where we've upped our allowances for uniforms a little bit to get our inspectors some safety gear. And uh we had brought on two new inspectors recently and so our training budget had been a little bit higher. We're starting to pull that back now as they have gotten uh their training done. So that's it.

One of the things to express, in fact, Luke, I'm surprised you didn't mention it. We've had some situations in the past where there's a request to wave building permit fees. It seems like an easy request. Well, I didn't want to talk too much up here. [laughter]

I don't want to get you fired up, but I do want to reinforce that when we have those requests come in that any approval there, it's a little bit different when we're talking about the um uh the other incentives that we talk about. Those are all new dollars that are flowing in. In this situation, Luke has to try to predict what revenues are coming in and that goes into revenue and that offsets our property tax dollars. when we wave those fees, it makes those actual dollars coming in less and so there's not as much offset to our general fund. So, I'm just trying to reinforce, please be cautious about considering waiver of building permit.

Um, one other point to waiver, we've not we've not had it in a few years. We do have a policy where we wave uh permit fees for the school. Um, so we felt like that's an important part of the community, one of the reasons why people come here. Um, so we do provide them that service. Though when we do that, we are incurring staff time and resources to go inspect all of that. And you know, sometimes that's a small thing. Sometimes it's the NPEC or some large or a whole new school and there's a lot of time that staff needs to spend at that, you know, we aren't going to be recouping through uh permit fees. Um, the other thing I would note, um, you'll see as we go through this budget process, um, we did fee updates. Uh, some of you that, uh, were here at the end of last year, maybe you saw that on the agendas, we updated some of our, uh, just standard permit fees. Um, I am going to be bringing forward a update to how we calculate our building permit fees to have it match more annually with what our building department budget is. Um, in the past we've just kind of let those numbers stay for a while and then when we felt like, hey, we should look at that again, we'd review everybody else and we kind of set ourselves in the middle. Um, the International Code Council recommends that you do it annually, you update your data tables annually. Um, so we're going to look at doing that this year, which should give us the capability to make sure that we do have the dollars to spend for the department. questions for Luke.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. And that concludes our budget discussion for the evening. Bad.

Uh item number five on the agenda is welcome guest of public comment. Thank you for being here tonight and listening to the budget discussion so far and being here for the rest of uh our normal business meeting. Uh at this point in time, we'd open up the deis to address council and mayor for uh any non-aggenda items. Maybe three minute time limit. Uh realize we can't take action on those since they're not on the agenda and that would be an violation of open meetings law. Also, if you'd like to comment on any item in the consent agenda, now would be the time. Do we have any takers? part. [laughter] Okay. Uh we'll move on. Item number six is the consent agenda. Uh can I get a motion for approval?

Both second. Motion by Bourjon, seconded by Micki. Lindsay, would you please call a roll? Council member Bourjon Cool. Yes. Mine. Yes. Porter. Yes. That motion carries. Item seven is old and new business for consideration, discussion, and possible action. Item A is a resolution approving the site plan amendment for Cedarbrook Place. So, the folks at Cedar Brook Cedarbrook Place would like to build a storage shed. Uh, so we need to approve a site plan amendment before they can start that building. Luke, anything to add?

That's really the gist of it. It's um kind of on the west side of the property by the parking lot between um the kind of middle two buildings. Any questions, discussion from council or public comment? Hearing none. Can I get a motion to approve the resolution as presented? Have a second. Second. Who's that?

Oh, okay. Uh, so motion by Porter, seconded by Micki. Any further discussions? I have one question. Sorry. Yeah. Is like on It was just up on what the building look like. Is there any rules on like amount of stone or that it has to look like the other buildings or anything like that in our in our what you know what it what it has to conform to? Not on the like accessory side just it I think it's got siding that's a similar color to the buildings but it there's not like a that building has stone and other things but nothing required on this. Okay, [clears throat] that's a good question. All right, any anything else? Lindsay, would you call the role? Council member P. Yes. Mine. Yes. Porter. Yes.

Borjon. Yes. All right. That motion carries. Item 7B is a resolution accepting the Dun property plat 2 public infrastructure and releasing the performance shity. Uh council has approved the final plat uh here and we accepted a bond in lie of construction of public infrastructure. Public infrastructure has now been completed and the owners would like council to accept the infrastructure and release the shy bond. Luke, did you think about that? That's the gist of it. All right, Tony. How's public infrastructure look? You are muted. Oh, you know what? What? Can he unmute?

Oh, thank you. That was not on purpose. I promise. Oh, I had a hot flash there. Couldn't couldn't get unmuted. [laughter] Oh, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. The public infrastructure looks good. They they've completed all the punch list items. The council has our letter recommending acceptance of the public infra infrastructure. Uh they perfor they post a performance bond for this plat. So, we're recommending release of the the performance shy as well. All right. Any discussion, questions from council or public input? Uh, can I get a motion to approve the resolution as presented? Motion. Second. Second.

All right. Motion by Cool. Seconded by Mine. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Lindsay, would you please call role? Council member Mine. Yes. Porter. That's Borjon. Yes. Pool. Yes. All right. Motion carries. Item 7 C's the second reading of an ordinance amending the official zoning map of the city of Nor Iowa by amending the Brody's landing plan unit development regarding bulk regulations for decks and land use parcels CD and E. So this change will allow decks and parcels CD and E to extend within 10 ft of the back property line. So we approve the first reading at our last meeting. Luke, anything to add? Nothing new. All right. Discussion from council or public input. I get a motion to approve the second reading.

I feel like Jason was still on the fence on this one. He's not here to discuss himself, right? But yeah, it is what it is, right? So, okay, got a motion. Anybody want a second? Second. Okay, so motion by Porter, seconded by uh Cool. Any further discussion? Would you call roll? Council member Porter? Yes. Or John? Yes. Cool. Yes. Mine? Yes.

All right. Motion carries. Item seven, future agenda items. So, the purpose of this item is for council to give direction to staff by way of motion to have items placed on future agendas. It's not for the discussion of the merits of the item. It's just to get it on to an agenda so we can discuss the the merits of the subject matter. Any future agenda items?

You know, mayor, one thing I was thinking about, I don't know, is it so much an agenda item? Maybe it is. But you know, I was listening to the governor's speech the other night and I had a good stiff drink too while I was listening to it. Anyway, and one of the things that she emphasized was uh trying to make uh a cooperative way to provide services, you know, consolidation of services, collaboration services. I wondered if it might be possible for you to ask the staff to maybe get with the staff of neighboring communities thinking particularly coming but perhaps some of the others too to explore if there are any possibilities there where we might be able to look at doing that sort of thing with them.

So yeah, that's good. That's a good point. Uh, mayor of Vindy Nola actually kicked off some meetings last year where let's see, uh, Marwak, Carlile, Andy, Nola, and Milo are all we all got got together and we're in the same room for several meetings to try to discuss and find ways cooperation. So, that's going to happen. It It may lead to something on the agenda, but right, you know, do a little prep work maybe. Yep. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yep.

Okay. Anything else for future agenda items? Hearing none, we'll go to item eight, council inquiries and staff updates. I'd like to remind everybody this portion of the meeting is much less formal. Uh you can hear some back and forth banner and general joking around. We think that can uh build camaraderie and cohesiveness between staff and council. So Jim, we'll start with you. Uh no, don't have anything. All right.

I don't have anything. I maybe Jim would brag about the fact that I had to buy him lunch really because the Hawkeye uh Husker trophy I should say Hawkeye trophy anyway fast again to the Hawk party. Yeah for football it's you know it's I would have mentioned the 20 years now we've had a traveling trophy. What's that about 20 years now we've had a traveling trophy. originally traveled to me quite a bit, but then here towards the last few years, it's been going the other way. It's in my office, though. It is in city hall now. So, if anybody wants to see the magical the magical trophy, it's there in my office.

But there is a basketball trophy coming up toward the end of the season. I'm feeling pretty optimistic. [laughter] Anyway, I think you'd have the advantage on that. Other than that, I had the first uh library board meeting and that went really well. Got a chance to meet them. All right. And so we're off and running. I'll learn a lot at the library, I think. I think. Yep. That's it. Oh, one last thing. My daughterh.

Yeah. She won business person of the year for the chamber. Nice. So, if y'all want to go to the banquet, you get to hear her speak. All right. Yeah, I told her I said the best part of having a good speech is having that introduction and that conclusion really close together. All right. Anyway, that's all I got. Good advice from a seasoned pro. Uh, uh, I guess I can take Ed's advice. Uh, thanks. We had 221 building permits in 2025 for residential. That's all. Thank you for coming. Thanks. Uh Tony,

nothing else for me. Mayor, thanks. All right. Uh Chief, nothing tonight. Thank you, Chief. Nothing. Dean, [laughter] nothing. Marissa, nothing. Jean, uh just a reminder, the mayor pointed out that the new calendar is out. So, please check that out for events. And there is also a fundraiser coming up for the library. It's a trivia night, and you get to come. And there's uh I think there might be a city team cuz I are on it so far. So um yeah, we could use some more brilliant minds and you get to come and eat three different soups and have a good time in support of the library. So join us. What kind of soup? Uh I have forgotten already.

Okay. Pretty warm. We'll put it that way. Nice. All right, Lindsay. Just one thing. With the exception of CD, the wall project is scheduled to be finished by the end of the month. So hopefully by our next council meeting, we are no longer closing. Good deal. Andy,

I have a follow on her question or comment and I sent Luke a message about the wall. Um, I think it looks great. Way better than what it looked like when it came in. I do think that maybe it's personal opinion and I'm picky. the Norwok uh logo on it. When you drive in from the north to the south, it's backwards, right? You have to like think about how you read it and it's down to up versus up to down. And so like drive by and look at it, right? Like when you're driving in, just look at it. I I sent Luke a picture while he was ice fishing and he went back to the perspective and looked at it and it's how we designed it,

but it just seems weird. Like you'd want it to read right as you come into town, I feel like. Right. And so just thought it was interesting, but it looks way better than the fences ever did. Right. So nothing positive there. That's great. All right. Thanks, George.

I do have a few items. First, uh, thank you, council, mayor. Great discussion, awesome questions on budget stuff. Uh, that helps us and staff really does enjoy answering those questions. Next legislative update. We're now in that season where we're starting to see quite a few bills drop rapidly. For some reason, I feel like if there is a bill that gets passed on property tax, it'll probably happen pretty quick. Just my guess. So, what we're doing as staff is going through and reviewing some of those. If they're really meaningful, we're trying to put together a summary and then we'll ship that off to you for review and try to make it easy to read. Obviously, you're welcome to read the entire bill. Sometimes it it reads like stereo instructions. But anyway, we'll get those updates out to you next. Uh I'm looking at Mel and I'm thinking about the chamber banquet

that we have a number of tickets that are included with our membership in the chamber. So if anybody would like to attend, please Lindsay, I think you sent out an email to council. You told me about it. We have one five right now taken of the seven. pulled out, but I have like 10 tickets set aside for Okay. the last little bits.

Okay. Excellent. So, uh sounds like maybe we're concluded on that. So, that's good. And then the mayor is finalizing uh who will go on our DC trip. I believe two or four uh total of four. And uh so he's putting that together. Uh so we'll get once we find out some dates we'll confirm that with uh either staff or elected officials whoever he decides to pull together. Okay. And that trip will be June 3rd through the 5th just to uh that's all I have. I'd entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motion second.

Okay. Motion by seconded by Micky. All those in favor say I. I. All post same. Motion carries.