City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, it is Tuesday August 18th. It's the Coeur d'Alene City Council meeting. Thank you for joining us I would like to call the meeting to order with a roll call Gabriel here

Miller? Evans? Here. Wood? Here. Sheckler?

Here.

English?

Here. Excellent. We have a quorum. Our next item is the invocation. Is Mr. Carlson here? I did not see him. He did not check in. So if you will rise and please join Council Member English in our invocation. Thank you.

i would be happy to i don't want us to fall into the pagan practices of all those cities who don't have a prayer so okay thank you father for today and just for the uh joy we have to be part of this city and community and just pray for guidance tonight for what we're doing and to keep our people safe, and especially those who serve to protect us and just serve us in different ways. And we trust to your wisdom. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Christy, will you lead us in the pledge, please?

Yes.

Are there any amendments to the agenda? Item E is public comments. There is a sign up sheet in the back if you've signed up. I do not have the sheet, so if you have signed up, please just come on forward. Let us know who you are.

Good day, counselors. My name is Casey Dolan, and I am a part of Scouting America's older program known as Venturing. Back in February, I had the honor of talking to the executive director of the Human Rights Education Institute, Jeanette Laster. And through her, I have been able to create something called a lending library. The lending library will hopefully serve our lovely community. It is located just right next to the park and pretty close to downtown and North Idaho College. And I am honored to say, with the help of the lovely city, Jeanette Laster, and my lovely family, We have been able to complete this project as of this morning.

Wow, good job.

And then this nice lady, she has some of the pictures if you'd like to see. Great. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Thank you, Casey. And Jeanette, you want to say something?

On the note of the human, the lending library, I just wanted to state that it is, to the nature of the historical building. So even the flagstone and the little brick pieces on it match the exterior of the building. And it has little matching windows that match the exterior of it. So you should really go take a look at it. Did you guys get the picture here? Great. Okay. And it's filled and ready to go for our park visitors to grab or exchange a book at any time. So we're really proud to have Casey's partnership. The Venture Crew meets in our building. And it's their home station. And so we sponsor them. And we just love having them there. And this is a great contribution. We have actually three Eagle projects on the premises. We have the benches that are up front. that were made several years ago before my time. And then we have my own son did an Eagle project and built the mailbox, the brick mailbox that's out front. And now this one is added to that list. So thank you very much, Casey. And I'd just like to give, if I have time, I'd love to give a little report from Idaho with Love, if that's okay. Yay, good. So thank you, Casey. Thank you. As many of you have seen, or if you've been by, the Idaho for Love campaign was a donation drive in partnership with the City of Coeur d'Alene, the Human Rights Education Institute, and the Task Force on Human Relations, and it was a great partnership. We had an amazing turnout. Our community is very giving and generous, and we were able to serve thousands of pieces that went directly into the hands of the Spokane Fire Relief families. Many of the items were turned in that were brand new. We had hundreds of pieces just today that a business owner in town brought their box fan and filled all of the new and gently used bedding and pillows that were donated and all of the luggage. We had almost 100 pieces of luggage that were donated. And there were just tons of bags. It filled the, I will share pictures at a later date, but it filled the box fan. just with those items and some small housewares and appliances. We have been to Spokane 13 times now with full trailers and box fans and trucks. We have done certain areas are accepting the diapers and the wipes and those kinds of things and other areas are accepting the towels and the linens. Shadle High School received nine boxes of winter coats for all ages and And Shadle High School also will be the recipient of all the school supplies that we received because that's where most of the families that need the relief are. And so we're expecting there what is called, what is equivalent to our McKinney Vento here for our homeless students. There is their heart program and we're expecting that to accelerate in their particular school district area right there. And so we're moving some of that product in that direction to fulfill those HAARP families plus the extra fire victims. And so we're on the tail end. We could still use volunteers. We have just a little bit of sorting left. We have some toiletries and we have some miscellaneous things, toys and other things that will be distributed to foster programs in the area. They're pretty tapped out. I had multiple phone calls from the agencies that we worked with. that thanked us and were so generous. There were little hidden cash prizes in some of the things that were sent. And we had several monetary donations. And all of those were restricted to gas cards, groceries, and Home Depot and Lowe's cards. And so all of those will be translated into the form of gift cards. It's really been an honor to have this partnership, and we hope we never have to do it again, and we're not opening a thrift store.

So thank you very much. Jeanette, before you leave, you deserve so much credit for stepping up. We couldn't have done it. It's easy for us to say, oh, the city of Coeur d'Alene, the task force, but the building where you have everything organized, you have the volunteers. You have the know-how and the connections in Spokane. We couldn't have done it without you. And I know that you gave up a lot of personal time for this project. And you've just made a huge difference in so many people's lives. So thank you very much.

We don't work by ourselves. We have over 500 hours of volunteers invested into this program. And literally, people came off the street and said, here's my donation. Oh, I'm going to stay for the next two hours and help you sort. So our community is amazing. They're very kind, and they're very generous, and they all stepped up. So we could not have done it without them. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to make public comment? We'll move on to the next item, which is F. We do.

Oh, please, come up.

I'm sorry. I did not catch you. No. Hang on a second. Hang on. Wait until you get there. All right.

There you go. Hi. I'm Tracy Mack, and I'm just a concerned citizen because I've been researching a lot about flock cameras, and I don't know if that's been brought up here before. This is my first time at a meeting, so thank you for having me. I just wanted to kind of know when I looked up on the flock.org, there were 11 cameras in the city of Coeur d'Alene. And I'm just wondering if you're aware of that, if you, if you signed a contract or where are those private contractors? Um, so, because I believe the public needs to know, um, kind of why they're having, uh, being surveilled. These cameras can lead to, um, false arrests. They can lead to ruining some people's lives. Um, one gentleman, I can't remember what state it was, but he had been tracked 163 times. He's a law-abiding citizen. So I'm very concerned that that mass surveillance is going to be something where our private data goes into a database, and we don't know where it goes from there. There have been, unfortunately, police officers that have stalked exes. I mean, there's a lot of bad things that can happen from this. And there the guys is under safety and APL APL readers licensed Sorry, it's the license readers that that that is one thing but but what these cameras are doing or taking Multiple pictures of a car front and back they can look into your car see what your phone is what you're doing on your phone and They can track you to different places. So this I feel very uncomfortable with, because as a private citizen, we should be able to be in our private areas and be respected. So I was just wondering if you had any knowledge of that.

Well, I'll tell you what. We do have a police chief here, and he just sent us a heads up about that. So chief, we want to come up here and answer some questions about flock. Thank you, Tracy.

That would be great. Thank you.

A little impromptu.

Hello, Chief.

Good evening, Mayor, council members. Would you like for me to address some of the things that she just brought up? Please do. Okay, so the very first thing is the city of Coeur d'Alene does not use any of the Flock cameras. Flock is a brand. It's one of the companies that provides ALPR, the automated license plate readers. And so there is a chance that there are Flock devices in our community that are part of private organizations, but none of those are owned by the city. The city does use ALPR in several different ways from other vendors and for other purposes, but we do not have that particular vendor, which I know has been one of the ones that many of the community members are concerned about. Beyond the information that the council saw earlier, at any time I'd be happy to provide more detailed information about the way this community has used some of those devices since 2007. But the concerns that were just raised, our system does not do any of those things that were just raised as concerns.

We typically, we use it passively, if I understand. There's really no one who's actively monitoring a camera system to see who's going where. It's more of, we need to find this vehicle, this is a suspect, and then you check the database.

Yes, Mayor, that's correct. As a matter of fact, The information only goes into the system from some valid case, from a criminal case. And so one way is that NCIC, which is our National Crime Information Computer, if an officer had a stolen vehicle or a homicide suspect or something like that, they could enter information about the vehicle, not about the subjects in that vehicle, but the vehicle itself. One of our detectives could do that if it was part of a case and they needed to put information in there about one of the ongoing investigations. And then the license plate reader simply sees the license plate and they just tell us that license plate is over here at 3rd and Sherman. And so a police officer still has to go and develop their own reasonable suspicion or probable cause to make a traffic stop and to take any law enforcement action. So there's no There's no information that is in the cameras or is even with the vendor that identifies the owner of that vehicle. It simply says, you said you were looking for license plate ABC123. We just saw it. One of the ways to describe that is almost like a shoulder tap. It's just like tapping an officer on the shoulder and saying, hey, you should be aware of that vehicle that is part of that crime is over here at this location. And then the officer goes and develops their investigative evidence in order to if there was a crime. And if there isn't anything, The vehicle just goes on its way.

Do you care to comment about police officers using it to stalk their exes, stuff like that? How possible is that? Yeah.

So thanks for that. I think that's another good clarification. Only authorized users can even get into the system. And in our case, those authorized users are sworn police officers. And we have a couple of crime analysts that utilize it also in support of the detectives in our organization. And so every search has to be logged. And so you have to say, I'm Greg Yeager. I'm an authorized sworn employee of the Coeur d'Alene Police Department. It logs the date and the time, and I have to enter the case number. or the incident number that's affiliated with that and the purpose for my search. We conduct an audit in the first week of every month that looks back at the last month and our administrative team looks at that to make certain that only authorized users are using it and they're using it only for authorized purposes. And so, you know, there's no way to, well, there's not many ways to stop bad actors. If somebody truly wants to do something criminal, which it would be criminal for them to misuse the information, if they truly want to do something criminal, they may have that opportunity. But the sanctions for that, we have both the state law that identifies how our ALPR systems will be used, and we have department policy. So there could be both criminal and administrative sanctions for anyone who misused it.

Mr. Sheckler.

Thank you, Chief. Could you describe what security protocols are in place for maybe the server or how that data is stored and how we keep that secure?

Yes, so because of many of the things we do in today's world, servers end up being cloud servers. So Motorola is our vendor, and Motorola uses an Azure server, so it is a cloud server. It meets CEGIS certification standards, which CEGIS is the Criminal Justice Information Services standard established by the FBI. law enforcement data when it's stored electronically. And so everything that we do in the police department has to meet a CJIS standard. And so these servers, although it's another party, it's Motorola in this case that we partner with, Motorola's servers have to meet that CJIS standard. They have very robust logical controls, like electronic access controls, as well as physical controls at the site where the server resides. Employees are backgrounded, and so you only have employees in the police department who are backgrounded, vetted law enforcement professionals who are accessing the data. Those at the site where the images are stored also have backgrounds and all of the hardware and software meets CEJA standards. And the other interesting thing is the system only logs the picture of a license plate. It does not have the registration information. So when a law enforcement officer puts that license plate into the system and the camera sees it and says, yep, that license plate is here, It does not establish reasonable suspicion or probable cause to stop the vehicle. An officer still has to go to the area. They have to look at it and say, they have to check that license plate in their normal law enforcement databases and say, oh, yes, that is the license plate we're looking for. It could be one of those things where you have a license plate number from Washington that's very similar to an Idaho plate. If the camera misread that and the officer shows up and say, oh, we're looking for a Washington plate, that's an Idaho plate, it's not even the one. There's not going to be a traffic stop or any further investigation. So if they did verify it was it, then they have to go through their law enforcement access because the vendor does not have the ability to see who the registered owner is. The law enforcement officer runs that license plate or has their dispatcher do it, and then they say, yep, now it's time for me to make my stop and take further action. So the security is really, it's logical, meaning technologically secure, and it's physically secure at the site as well as any channels in our police vehicles.

Excellent. Christy?

Thank you, Chief. You've done a really nice job of explaining that. I've sat in meetings where we've explained it a few times because it's a lot for the public to try to take in when they're not something they deal with every day. And their questions are legitimate. One thing I think you could touch on as well is if you are building a case and you need the evidentiary, value for that case, the detectives are going to have to get a search warrant as well. They have to go through the court for some of this evidence. Not only that, I think you touched on a little bit that the camera takes a photo of the license plate, not the person, not inside the car. We just do not have that capability here.

That's correct. And I did hear that concern and, and Potentially with another vendor, there might be something else. But with ours, it is specifically aimed at the license plate because that's what it's looking for. It doesn't even have the ability to determine who the person is. This is not facial recognition or something else like that. So you are correct. It is aimed at the license plate and gets that image. And we are then able to take that into a case, as you described, if the detectives or an officer needs to develop it more. One other thing I just want to say real quickly, Council Member Sheckler, as you asked, another thing that some people have asked about is what auditing is there on the vendor side. They do subscribe to, they use a SOC 2 auditing process, which is very robust. It's the industry standard for this type of technology. That information can only be released under a non-disclosure agreement. So they also provide SOC 3 audit reports, which could be released to the public. And so at any time, we as an agency or even as a community could talk to our vendor and say, we know how we're auditing things here. We want to know how you're auditing them at the facilities and through your different processes. And they would be able to provide that data to us.

Very good. One more issue that I think Tracy asked was about the flock cameras that were already in the city. Those are not ours. Do you have anything to say about those? The last thing, Mayor? The flock cameras that are in the city, and I've seen this reported elsewhere, they're not ours, but do you have anything to say about them?

I apologize, I don't have any independent knowledge about flock cameras in our community. I do know from my prior experience that flock markets, many of the vendors do, they market to both government organizations and private organizations. So you could have a large retailer that has theft issues and they may choose to partner with flock or any of these other vendors. so that they can track for loss prevention vehicles that are coming in. But I am not aware of Flock in our community right now.

Okay, so it's not a city thing. If they're in the community, it's private business.

I assure you it is not ours. So I'm not doubting that they are here. It's not any part of our system, and I know that for certain.

Very good. Any other questions for the Chief? Thank you, Chief. I really appreciate that you're here. Now, Tracy, if you want to contact us later, because this is not like a Q&A thing, we can follow up with you and make sure that all your questions are answered. Okay, so just hang out for a little bit and we'll get in touch. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Thank you, Tracy. Anyone else want to make public comments? So, all right. Good, we'll move on to council announcements. Any announcements from the city council? Dan?

Well, I would just acknowledge that I'm sure at least a few of us got a nice Superman logo card that's giving us thanks for saying no to data centers, kind of on a similar theme, and signed by the young people. So kind of like a Jerry Lewis telethon is I'm asking the old people to meet or you know step up your game and give us some nice cards from the old people too so there you go anyone else I have a few things to run by so we have some volunteer opportunities in the city

We have some student representatives who could be on our boards and committees. These would be for high school students between the ages of 14 and 18, and they would learn about city government, special projects, and to become involved in the community. These would be for our Park and Recs Commission, Head Bike Advisory Committee, Urban Forestry Committee, and the CDA TV Committee, as you see on the screen there. You would visit cdaid.org, volunteer student representative, which again the link is on the screen. And we also have some opportunities for the general public who would like to serve on some of our boards. We have an opening on the library board coming up. We'll be accepting applications for a vacancy. These are appointed by the mayor and council for a five-year term, and the board consists of five members who receive no salary, by the way. Applications are going to be accepted for that position until Friday, September 4th by email, U.S. mail, or they can be hand-delivered to City Hall. We have a opening on the Ped Bike Committee. This is a member from the retired community. Water Access and School District 271 or a member of the legal community, there are those positions available. An application period will remain open until those positions are filled. The Urban Forestry Committee needs applicants for two vacancies. One vacancy needs to be filled by an entomologist. That's someone who studies bugs. And the application period will remain open until this position is filled. And then we have the Personnel Appeals Board. City of Coeur d'Alene is seeking members for the Personnel Appeals Board to fill one vacancy. This board consists of six members appointed to four-year staggered terms by the mayor and concurrence of the council. Members of the board shall be city residents and more info... no person shall be appointed to the board who holds any salaried office or employment with the city and the application will remain open until the position is filled so if you need or if you desire to apply to one of these positions there's a data sheet that's available and a letter of recommendation is required for some of them and additional documentations it's all on the website cdaid.org government departments municipal services volunteer opportunities. It's right there on the screen for you to mistype into your computer. I also have a rather sad announcement. The city of Coeur d'Alene acknowledges the passing of Peter Erblin, who practiced law in our community for many years and served as an attorney representing the city on numerous matters. Mr. Erblin was a respected attorney who earned the respect of his colleagues, clients, and those whom he worked on behalf of the city. We are grateful for his years of service to our community and for the professionalism and integrity he brought to his work. As noted in his obituary, Peter leaves behind a large and loving family. On behalf of the city council and the city, we extend our sincere condolences to the family, friends, colleagues, and all who knew and appreciated Peter. We're grateful for his service and will remember him with respect and admiration. And with that, I am going to ask for an appointment of John Ingalls and Brian Smith to the Design Review Commission.

Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion to confirm the appointment of John Ingalls and Brian Smith to Design Review Commission.

Okay. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The appointment is made. Motion carried. Moving on to our consent calendar.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar as presented, including resolution numbers... 26-068 and 26-069. Second.

A motion and a second to approve the consent calendar with its resolutions. Any discussion on this motion? Okay, roll call.

English. Yes. Wood. Yes. Evans. Yes. Sheckler.

Yes.

Gabriel.

Yes. Motion has carried. We're on to item H1, which is other business. This is an appointment of Renata McLeod to the Coeur d'Alene Employee Benefits Trust Board. This appointment is being made by the Trust Board. It is not a mayoral appointment.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to confirm the appointment of Renata McLeod to the Coeur d'Alene Employee Benefits Trust Board.

Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye.

Aye. Any opposed?

Motion is carried. On to item number H2, which is resolution 26070, which is acceptance of the bid and approval of a contract with Central Washington Asphalt Incorporated for our 2026 mill and inlay project in the amount not to exceed $244,849. Staff report by Todd Fuser, our streets and engineering director. Good evening, Todd.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. So we... They were getting a project out late. We were a little worried about the bids. The bids came in very favorable, so we were excited about that. Years ago, council approved that we could roll over dollars from the previous year in our mill and inlay line. That's the only line that I can store money up for the next year. We utilize it most years if we see there's a bigger project coming up, so we'll shut off a little early to get a little more money for the bigger project. This year, as the budget process is going, we rolled over approximately $300,000. So once I found that out, we had a couple spots that we would like to address. in Repave. These are past the point of Chipseal. They're requiring a lot of time every year. They're not arterials, but they get a lot of traffic. We are looking, if you look up on the screen there, at Howard off of Kathleen. The old central premix is over here. So we were gonna go up to Bozenco through that intersection, approximately 100 feet. and then we're gonna turn and go out Bozanko to US 95. Our crews don't typically do this work that connects to the highway. It's a lot for us to do the traffic control for that much traffic. So we like to contract it out. This section of road by Fred Meyer there, I'm sure everyone's traveled it. We've patched it and patched it to the point where it's not the smoothest road in town. And so we'd like to grab this one. Last, two years ago, city staff worked on Dalton Avenue and we were able to come from approximately, Across the area, it's just out of the screen, you can't see here, but basically the central premix pit, it was really rough right there, really narrow, so the streets and engineering department paved that in-house. We milled the road and we paved that section. Again, with the businesses that are here, and then US Highway 95, this intersection, we felt it would be best to complete that and have a contractor do the work. At the time we're doing it, we're doing an ADA project. We brought that to you this spring. That work is scheduled to start in a week. We also added these two ped ramps here to get them ADA compliant in this project. So that'll take care of that. Right there is about where ITD's right away ends, and that's where we have to still do the repairs. So anyway... So tonight I come to you with Central Washington Asphalt's proposal of $244,849. This was well below our estimated cost of $400,000. So we are confident that they can get this work done. They're a fairly large company, and we have some high expectations. I'd take any questions.

Any questions for Todd?

Thank you. Well, first of all, you've identified areas that clearly need our attention. But I had a question about a different area, because I'm really wondering what will happen with it now. You know there was only one area in the city that I know of, the old UPS building, that they didn't have to have the paved parking lot. And so that golf course road is a disaster. It's all broken and big ruts. Now that they're not there, does the next person that takes over that building, do they have to finally pave that?

So the next person already owns the building. Oh, who's that? And that is the fire station as well. That would be the Coeur d'Alene tribe. They own that field and those buildings there. With the ITD projects that are happening, and I'm still waiting to hear what they're going to do But the current project that is widening ITD also would bring additional lanes and improvements all the way back to the transfer stations approach. So I mean, that's going to go north quite a bit. We'll wait and see what that looks like. We're trying to partner with them. And so I think there would be some improvements there. I'm just not sure what they are at this time.

All right. Fair enough. Thank you.

I think they have to change the use. So not even just the ownership, I think once they change the use. Well, Hillary is here, and she can explain when we have to put in a paved parking lot. Thank you for being here, Hillary.

Very welcome. Good evening, Mayor and Council. That is generally true that the change of use would trigger that, but the tribe's already been notified, and UPS was, when they were in that building, that they were going to need to bring that up to compliance because it is severely lacking. Right? So any other use that goes in there, they're going to have to... Excellent.

Thank you for being here. But the subject is really this.

Right. I'll make a motion. There we go. We'll get back to that. Mr. Mayor, I would make a motion to accept the bid and approval of the contract with Central Washington Asphalt for the 2026 Mill and Inlay Project in an amount not to exceed $244,849.

And this would be a motion to approve resolution number 26.

That's correct. Thank you.

Thank you. Second. All right. Any discussion on the motion? Okay. Roll call, please.

Wood. Yes. Evans. Yes. Sheckler. Yes. Gabriel. Yes. English. Yes.

Motion carries. We're moving on to item number H3, which is council's homework. And Christy, you asked for this last time, and council was in favor of looking over some items to cut. If we could put those up on the screen for everyone who's playing in the audience and at home, it should be a slide. Is that correct? Joanne, there was a slide put in there.

It's on our screen.

Oh, it's on our screen, but it's not on the local screen. There we go. Here we are. Thank you. We're done. Thank you, Joanne. So what we have here is we have a list of proposed budget cuts that were mentioned in Katie's presentation. The council could discuss this and see if there was anything they wanted to discuss. We pulled the council. The results are up here. for items that we could pull from our budget. According to Katie, there's probably more stuff in there. If you're looking at the budget and you want to find even more stuff to cut, you're welcome to do so. The hearing isn't for another... Is it on the first? The hearing will be on the first, so you have two weeks. So we went through these things there were some comments listed by council members if anyone wants to discuss any of these items what we would do is we would pass these along as recommendations to Michael who is the city administrator and then Process them as cuts to our budget or is there any questions on any of these items or anything Christy? I

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My comments didn't make it because I didn't fill out the form appropriately.

Oh, we got it. Oh, your comments. I'm sorry about that.

I sent you a blank form. Oh, okay. But what my comments were was when we talked to our new city administrator, he had some really thoughtful comments about how every position moving forward in the future that we would give quite a bit of scrutiny to. He didn't call it a hiring freeze. He just called it really responsible monitoring of our positions. And so those were my comments. I liked the direction he was going, and I'd like to support him in that manner.

Anything else? I did want to mention one of my things, or a couple of things that are near and dear to my heart, and I realize that these are not cuts, but the building inspector position, one of the reasons that I sought to increase the fees was so that we could afford another building inspector. Part of the problem we have right now in building inspection, as the developers will tell you, is that We're running four weeks on a residential permit and six weeks on a commercial permit, and this just adds time and delay to these projects, which increases the costs. The builders at NIBCA were okay with our increased fees if the exchange of that was that we could add that other person to expedite some of the inspections so that was kind of my goal with the item for the building inspector which you all want to cut if we did not add another building inspector position then we would need ted is here if you have any questions for him but he told me that if we did not add it we would have to contract out for that uh to have someone else come in and do do those inspections independently

Yes, Christy. Sorry.

I'm sorry, Kenny.

She was talking. I was looking at you. Kenny. So, Ted, is that going to put a burden on you? Mr. Mayor, may I ask Ted? Please do. A burden on you having that third party. Have you done that before? Have you used a third party before for those reviews? Yes.

Yes, we have used a third-party review, but generally it's just for a structural review. Our high-rises, our large podium frame buildings, those have gone out to third-party review, but it's just on the structural side. Where we're looking at this, it's more expanded. It would do the entire review. For example, we would be looking at losing about 50% to 60% of the revenue on that one project for every time we send out a review.

Because that would go to them, correct?

That would go to them.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yes, Christy.

Mr. Mayor, I was just curious. I think the building inspector, if we dig down a little deeper, I'm pretty sure you've said this will pay for itself.

It should. So, Ted, last year your budget was $1.2 million for your department. Was that correct?

For the department, yes.

And how much revenue did the building inspector department, how much did you generate?

It was roughly $3 million.

So I think we can afford it.

Yeah. This year's revenue, we're looking at it, we're anticipating about 2.1 million, 2.1 to 2.2. With the additional fees, which haven't hit yet, we're anticipating an additional 15% at a minimum.

And so that was kind of my argument about that, as well as expediting the process, because the feedback I'm getting is, you know, if we want to make things easier for more housing, for cheaper housing, we can expedite the process, stop with the delays, those kind of things, and if there's anything we can do to... To help with that, that was kind of my thinking. But it's up to council. So any other questions for Ted on anything? Yes, Kenny.

So you have a comfort level that the fees that we raised as a council would help offset that position?

They will. They'll pay for the position. They'll pay for new software. And there will be some extra.

And the software as well. And the software as well. Which is a great customer service project as well, correct? It is. Okay. Yeah.

Now, I really admire what Ted is doing and the direction that they're taking with building inspection. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be worked out, and Ted's right on top of it. And this is also the software. We're applying for a grant for that software, too, correct? Is that the same software, or is it other software?

Yes. This is the software we have a grant, that we have applied for a grant. We're hoping to see the results of that grant here by the end of the month, and we'll know if, you know, hopefully it's covered. But if not, it is also included in the budget.

Very good. Yes. Thank you. If the hiring of that inspector isn't made, will there be inspections that are not completed that would have been able to be timely completed? And if so... How many? I mean, I guess my question is, will those just be delayed and pushed out to the next fiscal year because we can only do so many inspections per month with fewer inspectors? Or how does that work? How would you see that working?

So we do try to prioritize the inspections. If we prioritize inspections, then the plan reviews are delayed. And so that's where... A lot of our concern is right now is because we're running four weeks on residential, six to eight weeks on commercial. We're getting to a point we have three inspectors that are looking at retiring next year. That's half of our inspection staff, potentially a fourth, just if the numbers work out for them. And so not only do we have the issue with losing the – the experience of all these inspectors, which most of them have better than 20 years experience, we have the training side of it. We don't have any overlap. If we wait for one of these inspectors to retire, we have to advertise, which can take upwards of a month. We're looking at probably two weeks to get interviews, another two weeks to get someone on board. So that's two months after someone retires. And we have no overlap, and we have no coverage. And so at that point, we would have to outsource plan reviews.

Yeah. So it's something that I've talked about with Ted. And, Ted, you don't actually have anyone to sub for you. And you've worked Saturdays before in order to keep us on pace with a lot of these inspections. So that was one of the reasons I was pushing for this, just running that by counsel. So heavy-handed here. Yes, Amy.

Mr. Mayor, I really appreciate the additional information. And, Ted, thank you for sharing that with us. I mean, I learned a lot that I didn't. Understand behind just this being on the list. I appreciate you taking the time. I'm ready to make a motion. I So let me take a stab at it if there's no other.

There's one more thing. Oh, okay. So council did mention, thank you, Ted. There was one more thing about streets. So we are going to be taking 250,000 out of streets. Now, Todd told me, you can come up, that we doubled our street overlay budget at NCHIP seal from 750,000 to 1.2 million. And that's where it's been for a couple years now. And you wanted to raise it a little bit. And you knew you told me early on in the budgeting process you were asking for another quarter million dollars But you just didn't think it would go through and that's one of the items on our list now Maybe you want to talk a little bit about what what the difference is between one and a half million and 1.75 million so in today's economy, unfortunately, not as much as I would like but

When I became director, our budget was $750,000, and so most of the time we would do smaller paving projects in-house and big chip seal projects, things like that. The second year I became director, I talked about we needed to up that, and council did approve $1.5 million. Through money that we were also receiving user fees through the state, that actually brought our dollar amount up to $3 million is what we were spending for two years in a row. Fiscal year 26 is the first year we've tried to operate on 1.5. So what that has forced our hand to do, we either chip seal or we pave. the better price comes with volume. So if you do a lot of chip, you get a better unit price if you do a lot of paving. So we split it, we just offset the years. We have a software program that we use to help identify the rating of our streets. It is recommended for a city our size, the lane miles we have, the current pavement condition that we have, that we should be spending five million a year to stay where we're at. So the roads aren't gonna get worse, We're just going to monitor where we're at. So that's the frustration. We try and be creative. If I find an extra couple hundred thousand dollars, we come to you and ask. But that's what they say. I know I'm never going to get there. But the 175 is me creeping up to where I could do some chip seal. I could do some paving in a year. Our new goal that we have is once we pave a street, within three years of the repave, we chip seal it. And a lot of people get frustrated with that, but that's hopefully going to move us from a 15-year lifespan to a 20-year lifespan so we're having more time to catch up on the other streets. We used to chip seal at the very end of our streets' lives, and that only buys you a couple years because they're so far gone it can only do so much. So this last year we had enough money, just small, a bit of information like Wilbur, We decided to do a second layer of chip because we felt we could afford it. That road was about to get to a point where we're going to have to mill it up and start over. But we added a half inch of chip seal to that road. You can't even feel the, I mean, it doesn't look like the same road. So that's me asking, just trying to keep going with the plan of doing a little bit of chip and a little bit of paving. This last fiscal year, 26, we have tried to make do off the 1.5. And we've got some good projects done. But yes, that was my request.

I'd also like to say, so I was reading the budget a lot. And I noticed, so this year, for highway use tax, we collected $4.7 million. But next year, we're only projected to collect 3.5. which is a $1.2 million hit. So I mean, how do you deal with that?

So Katie's the one that manages that. She tells me what I get. I think we implement that in other areas of our budget. This year, I didn't get additional funds to put towards our mill and inlay. So she's great. She forecasts what she thinks coming my way. But right now, what's forecasted for me is to operate off the 1.5. Okay.

All right. Any questions for Todd?

Yes, Kristen. Just some comments, Mr. Mayor. I guess if we put that back in the budget, I'm assuming the deficit would come out of fund balance.

These are the tough decisions we have to make and the cutback to services that are a consequence.

Right. So you've heard me say this before up here, probably way too many times, but everything we do up here is a value judgment. And the value that we're looking for is quality of life for our citizens, our police department, our fire department, our parks, our streets. All of them lead right to a quality of life that we want to provide. Crumbling streets. doesn't provide a quality of life. It's a tough, tough decision to say where $250,000 is a lot of money. But it's one of those things that if you get behind, I think Todd's told us several times as kindly as he can, if you get behind, it's really difficult. Just like if you don't have enough policemen, you don't have enough firemen, it's really difficult to catch up. So I guess I would advocate for taking it out of fund balance and boosting up that budget.

Any other comments? Kenny? I was going to say almost the exact same thing about the quality of life and why people move here for what's out there and for what they get to do here. Can we negotiate that $250,000? You are the council. You set the budget. The thing is I absolutely do not want you to start going backwards because I agree with Christy absolutely. Once you start, it costs a lot more. But, I mean, are we happy with $250,000? Do we want to go $125,000 at least to keep it rolling down the road? Pardon the pun. Forgive me.

Council sets the budget. So anything you guys want to bring forward?

I have no problem with the $250,000. I think it would be awesome if we could. But I just wonder, I mean, we're cutting positions.

Yeah, it's a struggle.

Dan English.

Well, given that, let's make it. deal is you know if we're going to look at 250 I would put 150 of that and I would still I would also put that building inspector back in because again I think that's also a quality of life issue and you know when you think of you know if it's taking six eight weeks you know that's a half a summer building I mean that's I mean that's real real time so I mean that would be kind of a

So... Any further questions for Todd?

Thank you, Todd. Don't be mad, Todd. Don't be mad, Todd. Don't be mad at me, please.

This is what council asked for. Do a little of the sausage up here. And if anyone wants to take, you can take the way the suggestion is written is we can accept the proposed changes. You can add to them or subtract to them right now, or you can direct a city administrator to make the changes per our discussion, whichever is your pleasure. You were ready to go.

I was clear on my direction until we started talking streets. So I don't have a good sense of where council's falling on this. We're just in a tough position, like Christy and Kenny said. And I'm comfortable moving forward with 125.

I can agree to that. I mean, we're trying to move forward.

It seems like that's the consensus. If you want to go ahead and stab at it.

I will take a stab at this. I'll make a motion to accept the proposed changes with the removal of the one full-time equivalent building inspector and an edit to the special overlay program increase to reflect $125,000. And then accept the rest of the cuts? And then accept the rest of the cuts for the proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 to 2027 appropriations. Is that clear?

I believe so.

So what's the net bottom line? I mean, you are adding that inspection? Now we have to do math.

Yeah, she added him back in.

And then half of, okay.

Yeah, I didn't do the math. I'll second that.

So, okay, so I understand we're going to accept the cuts as listed with the exception of the building inspector that's removed from the cuts, which is a negative negative. And then we're changing the increase in the overlay from 250 to $125,000. That still is a tremendous cut to the budget. I'm not adding up the numbers, but it's close to a million dollars. savings on the budget that council just made by accepting those positions or Denying those positions and the other items that are listed So that's that's the hard part because I mean there's I look at anything on this list I mean this this library itself. It was suffering from you know, the air conditioner was broken and And so that's why they wanted the HVAC technician. And we're always behind in the attorney's office, which is why they want that position. I mean, you can justify these all day long, but it becomes really tough because the money's tight. So this is what the public has been telling us repeatedly is like, live within your means, live within your means. Well, this is what it means to live within our means. We have to go through and slice things out of the budget. So does everyone understand the motion then? And it's clear to staff then that what we're doing? Okay. We'll take, oh no, it's an all in favor. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion carries. Thank you, council. Appreciate your work on that. The next item is also up to me because Mr. Dominguez is still in transit from his former location. This is an item that simply sets the public hearing On September 15th, for amendments to our current year financial plan, which is the 25-26 financial plan, these are listed in your packet. And you see what the increase is and what the items are that were added, the grants that were received, other unexpected revenue, and then there's a complete list of the amended budget in there. I'm not trying to... rush through anything it's just that this will be a hearing on that date and all Katie will be here to present the numbers officially you have them we're just setting a hearing and so they figured they would give it to me because it was something I really couldn't screw up so here we are and we would need a uh a motion to set the uh the hearing

Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion to approve resolution number 26-071, setting a public hearing for September 15, 2026 for amendments to the year 2025 to 2026 financial plan.

Second. Motion to second. Any discussion? Then there will be a hearing. We'll do a roll call.

Evans? Yes. Sheckler?

Yes.

Gabriel? Yes. English?

Yes.

Wood? Yes.

Very good. We have a recess.

Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion to recess to August 31st, 2026 for a special call council meeting for the appeal of S2-26 Quartier 2 subdivision in the library community room at 5 PM.

Second.

Motion to second for a recess. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? We are recessed. And that meeting will be at 5 PM, which is not our normal start time.