City Council - Regular Meeting

That sounds better. Oh, there we go. I thought. Dinner's up there.

All right, Megan, you can still hear us okay?

Yes, I can.

Yeah, everybody went to go get, there's pandex. That sounds good.

Yeah.

back to don't get yourself right. Seriously, I had such a big lunch. I was genuinely not hungry. I invited you. Oh, no, I'm good. Thank you.

Hey, how are you? Good to see you. Good place to come.

How are you?

Good. Are you good? Good to see you. Nice to see you.

Yeah. Okay.

No, no, I'm good. I'm just, I want this. I don't want to take this person out, but I kind of do. I just decided. Yeah.

How are you doing? Good. How are you, sir? All right.

All right. All right, Bill, so is that your serving or is that the buffet?

It's the buffet. Put it all in one plate.

Go back and get some. All right.

Stakes. This. This one. So.

Stress on. Oh, yeah. Thank you. You sure? Help yourself. Yeah. jimmy bacao, jimmy bacao, jimmy bacao, jimmy bacao, out so that was the same well within the administration that's actually seven and a half years hey This is our good news. That's great. For me, for me. That's awesome. Thank you. Oh yeah, that looks like a nice shop. Yeah, that's right. I surprised my wife. You don't expect me to make me feel bad like you don't have a good. Treat today. We made it too. I think I brought one. Matt That was spicy. Which one? I've got a link that I need to bring up for a map. It's an aspect of the GIS system. Greg, Greg sent me the link.

We can log me in if that's better.

Okay. Always good reminder, honey. Yeah. You got volunteered to come in here for help Spencer, right? So probably if you don't. I'm trying to find. Yeah. How far along? Is it? We'll do a little bit space. All the motels are gone. It's got a nice spot to it, huh? Yeah, you expanded any money. Are you back now? Go to maybe we're having the some thoughts. Yeah, what's the? Maybe or Firefox. Edge or not Edge but. How bad do you want to go? say which way you can tell Tammy. Really, Tammy's pushing. Adam. You know what? We can just type in the link.

I don't want to get that big. It is kind of big. Yeah.

hot weather. Yeah, I'm hoping we're okay. So if you got a nice following, get some questions. Associated with this last quarter, this the overall login. Yeah. Oh, it's been a little extra. So this one is going to be pretty solid until the last quarter. And we did have our space. It came out a bad extra. This was a little something there. So we'll just pay it. Well, even some of them, I was just going to go up and say, get my name, get eight rooms. Oh, yeah. All of the reports, they're draining every name. I can think right now. Great. Hey, welcome, everybody.

We're glad you're here.

Spencer to just take a quick minute before our meeting starts. Just for both of us, maybe a little, just a little quick training. We should have done this long time ago, right after the election. It's just for anybody that's new, but we didn't get his own. So we're going to have him just real quick. On, you know, what our meetings kind of should look like.

Just some of those nuances that I think.

It's even going to be quicker than that today, but just a couple things. So. I think that the mayor and I talked about this. I think there's value in having order and decorum in these meetings, just because there's just inherent value with that. I think it shows that they're professional, that they're well organized. And I think it would look well on the city to have it that way. And then number two, from a practical standpoint, it really helps members of staff who are doing minutes. particularly now that AI, the proliferation of AI, if we can identify speakers prior to questions being asked of staff or things like that, they can utilize some of these programs to really cut down on their workload with that. And so Idaho code 5602, the mayor presides over council meetings and sets the order of business subject to the rules that the council prescribes. Okay, so the big one is get recognized before you speak. From a practical standpoint, for instance, if Matt or Keith, we'll use Keith. If Keith's here and say, hey, Keith, I have a question. And then you just ask your question. can't tell you how many times mariana and others will say hey come and tell me who this who's asking this question or who does that sound like or is that you speaking there and they have to go in there and manually do those things if you said to the presiding or to being recognized by the presiding officer you say hey mayor may i have i have a question please And then the mayor would recognize you and say, we'll hear next from council member Erickson.

I'm trying to do a better job of that. Go ahead.

And from that end, I mean, number one, it makes it easier if they're doing those things manually, but then some of those AI programs, it should be able to identify because if you're essentially describing who you're talking to every time, That helps with that process. Number two is more of a nitpicky thing for me. We get in the habit. I don't because it drives me nuts. But we say who wants to testify or not to testify. We don't testify in city council. Testifying if you are sworn under oath or not sworn anybody under oath. So who wants to make a comment? We will take public comment, not public testimony. So we're going to take public comment. Um, or we're going to take comment from city council deliberation from city council, those types of things. Um, there's some certain things. And so, uh, see Devin here, she sent me, we do have a section in the city council handbook that goes through kind of our rules of procedure and reading through them. There's a couple already that I need to update and change a couple of things. Um, but. have her send that out that's a good refresher from that standpoint uh and some of that uh you'll be reminded on some of the things that we really don't talk about much but even just like the order of debate uh maker of the motion speaks first members who have not yet spoken get priority and some of those things i don't think we have those issues here in city council but in some places when somebody is hijacking a meeting and letting you know the mayor or the residing officer is supposed to regulate some of those things where there are two opinions, not have one just take over the entire meeting, give balance and do those types of things. Okay, and the last one is, I would ask that we don't entertain, and this is more of a planning and zoning issue because planning and zoning, they are the public hearings. more and more common, we're kind of giving call outs from the crowd, from the seats. And that just turns into a bit of a mess because even before I can step in, then there's this back and forth that goes with somebody. And again, from a record, the first thing that happens when there's litigation that comes from a decision that a governing court makes is the court going to go through a record, see that. It makes it really hard to get that record when we're just taking call-outs from the crowd. If somebody wants to speak, even if it's a small one, they can come up, they can state their name, give their address, and then pose their question. A lot of the time, it's when the public hearing is already closed. So I'll typically step in. It's becoming more and more common in public and planning and zoning. Two weeks ago, I had somebody, I said, hey, we're not taking comment. Talked over me again, just trying to pose this question. I said, hey, we're not doing that. Rushed me off.

And I had to act like Colin and get real nasty with him first back then.

And not nasty, but I just said, hey, we're not doing this. The time for that, the time for this discussion is over. And then, this is what the record won't show, is then for 25 minutes afterwards, Alan and I meet with him after and we talk about every single question we have. Staff is absolutely willing to talk through those questions, but we have to keep a record later on that. So the big ones, again, the big three takeaways, get recognized before you speak. So defer to the mayor at permission or the presiding officer. I have a question called on so we can get clarity in the record there. And then again, never hurts to have to form. Number two is we're commenting, we're not testifying. And then three is kind of controlling crowd and not taking call outs from the crowd. And again, I'll have Deb send those things out, and then we can have a bigger discussion on this later.

But I thought if the mayor asked me today just to kind of talk on a couple of those things. Thank you.

And the reason I did that is I don't know if you've ever been to a legislative hearing, but there's just this decorum there when they ask to be recognized. And even the speakers who are coming up, they'll say, Mr. Chairman and Senators, blah, blah, blah. It's just really nice to have that decorum. stuff. I will try to make sure I'm looking both ways. I know sometimes when the discussion is with somebody over here, I tend to get focused there and I don't look down this way as much as I should, but I'll try to remember to look down there. You guys have been pretty good about, you know, raising your hand and see that. So anyway, so that's really all we've got for that. Let's just go ahead and jump into our, uh, This is a combined work meeting with the county and the city council. And the first item is that we've added an item to talk about search the port so I'm going to go ahead.

This is a request but count.

I appreciate you that that's your agenda we talked about the weeks ago but all of this.

All of these are prepared to talk about that.

But given the circumstance that happened down in Thornton, after the Hibbert fire, it's certainly instrumental in setting up refuge places. They're here, they're citizens of Rexburg. Sure, even out in town, they are a volunteer organization. And they're trying now, we donated our fire department That's part of a trailer. They're trying to outfit that trailer. They outshined, fire was out there. They outshined across, not with the donation of blood. Preparation service, it's like four hours. And they were there. So what we're looking at, city council saying, we do give to them, Yeah. It's not a large amount. They don't need a large amount.

Talking about their level of activity right now is increasing. They have a teen camp.

Teenagers, parents, first aid, emergency services. It's coming. We're coming here. We're new to consider a donation to CERT.

Well, I will.

I won't say second motion, but I will second that idea. They really are a first class organization. They have a lot of really dedicated volunteers and they help us out with some of our city events too.

A lot of times they're there. and different things, providing support, medical teams, things like that. So I personally, I support them in helping out when we can.

Mayor, can I have... I'm sorry, just again, we're talking about procedure and policy here. We need a motion to amend agenda to talk about this topic.

OK. It was on our agenda, but not theirs. All right.

Well, before we talk about that, I was worried that Mr. Rammel was making all of this presentation because the commissioner. I was getting nervous about that.

That was intentional.

I'm just kidding.

This is, yeah, this isn't God's kid. Since there are rules.

I got to rein him in. No, no, just kidding. Yeah, so I guess we'd probably need to make a motion to amend the agenda to include item number one as per Idaho state statute 74-204-4B. And I would imagine we won't put on that. So I will call the City Council to, I would entertain a motion in front of the City Council to amend the agenda as per the state statute. Is there such a motion?

That most of the number X that would be a good idea. What he says.

Thank you remember Eric Erickson is not present. It's very second to that was. Second by councilmember Reagan when any further discussion on that said he said sorry Siri. All right, all in favor of them into the agenda. Any opposed?

All right. Thank you. We don't need to amend the agenda because we already have it on our agenda. All right.

So anyway, we won't go through the information again. We'll just take that for what it was. So I don't know if there's any other discussion on that that anybody would like to put forward.

Just to put forward to you, we would suggest and encourage this to go back to the City Council and you determine the amount of what As they were at. Yeah, they're there. So if city council is up to donate to that, send to them.

Well, that certainly will merit some discussion. We'll put it on the agenda for a future meeting and have some discussion about it. And so I appreciate you guys bringing that up. And we will make that determination and then move forward.

Mr. Mayor?

Yes. Just a question.

Is CERT a part of a statewide or a nationwide organization?

It's just something that's just developed here locally or locally? I think it's nationwide.

I think it is. Yeah, I think it is.

John Corcoran, he's been heavily involved in many years and really does a good job trying to get, he invites anybody to take that course to be part of that, just be more aware of it. How do you respond to different cities?

If you go online, there's an online course you can take your family through, and it just helps teach you and your kids how to be prepared for an emergency, how to help yourselves and others before the actual first responders get there, because sometimes that's expected.

But it is a nationwide. So do they receive funding, either federally or state-wide?

I don't think so.

I don't think so, but it's all... They do most of the trades up at the hospital now.

They use their conference room, which gives them a nice place to do it.

They do a two-week course in the summer. That's junior high. John has grown it.

My first introduction to it was about seven years ago. And they held an exercise at a seminary.

That gave me an insight into that seminary.

Not historically, but structurally. And they were small. And he has grown it.

It was very

on his way up. He's like, I think he's a regional director. Yeah, he is. He's grown.

So, yes. Yeah, I learned on evacuation. They said their job was to be there first, get it set up, have everybody there until Red Cross could take over. And as Commissioner Dillon mentioned, Red Cross was about four and a half hours late. It was pretty much done by the time they got there.

And when they opened the South big rock fire. There weren't very many people that stayed there, but there were survivors that remained there on the night of the war. They remained there to make sure that those folks had just some peace.

Yeah, I think it's a good organization. Thank you for bringing that up. We will definitely, in fact, it might even be worthwhile to have John or the other gentleman who's in charge of the local chapter to

presentation for us. I would suggest that just to get some more information. I've seen it. I've seen the, you know, different places, but I really don't have any idea of what they do.

Yeah, I think it'd be good for us to understand better.

We don't understand it as well as the county commissioners do, so that'd be good.

All right. Well, thank you very much. Take that under advisement. All right. Item A, then, is review of the West Highway Urban Renewal District plan. So we'll turn the time over to Scott.

Yeah. So I'll kind of kick things off. But we're going to turn it right over to Megan, who's joined us remotely. She's in Boise. She's our attorney for urban renewal and has drafted the plan for the West Highway District, the proposed district. And so, in fact, with that, I will go ahead and turn the time over to Megan right now. Megan, can you still hear us okay?

I can. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, commissioners and council members. Can you guys hear me okay?

Yes, we can.

Okay. When you all were talking earlier, it was a little bit difficult to hear some of the speakers in the room, but I couldn't I couldn't tell you which side of the room is having the technical. So I'll just let you know if I can't hear, if that's okay.

Okay, thank you.

My name is Megan Conrad. I'm an attorney at Elam and Birkin Boise. Address is 251 East Front Street, Boise, Idaho, 83702. Really appreciate the opportunity to present to both the city council and the Madison County Board of County Commissioners This urban renewal plan for the West Highway urban renewal projects. I do want to make it clear that what you're reviewing today and what we're going over continues to be a draft. We want to make sure as we move through this process that to the extent there are any questions that pop up that we can address them on the front end as once we kick off the plan approval process and start moving through all the public meetings, it just makes it a little bit more challenging to address any substantive changes. Not that we can't, but I think also having early meetings and just making sure everybody understands the framework and the scope and the purpose of the plan, it will just help as we move this down the road. Because it's in a draft form, you may have received a draft with some drafting comments in there. And I think it's important that as we work through it, as we finalize the boundaries to the revenue allocation area, and as we finalize the project scope, that we're making sure the plan narrative is properly incorporating in a narrative format representation of the economic feasibility study and the projects that are identified in that document, as well as providing a little bit more background on the current conditions pulling from the eligibility study that was adopted in 2025. So we expect there will be some changes to this plan, but in terms of the substance of the plan and the purpose moving forward, that is what we will be addressing today. And it is pretty firmed up, but just want to have this opportunity for everyone to offer some feedback and ask questions. The goal of this, and I recognize many of you have been through this process before, but is to move this plan all the way through city council consideration of an ordinance so that the plan is established by or before December 31st of 2026. So that's the target of where we are headed. So before you, you have the map of the project area. This is overlaid on the zoning map. So you can see that the majority, and it is a little bit hard to see, but it's this, there's a blue boundary line that tracks around the district. And it's 840 acres as of right now. And it does include a mix of current land uses. It's generally bounded by 1000 South on the Southern end, US Highway 20 on the East, 3000 West on the Western side. and 2000 North on the northern boundary. The mix of uses in the project area do include mixed uses, residential of varying densities, some public uses, as well as commercial. The majority of the parcels are mostly located within the city and or the area of city impact. But we do know there are a few parcels that are located within the unincorporated county that are outside of the area of city impact. As we discuss and as we talk a little bit through this process, the boundaries are getting closer to final, but we are expecting there could be a few changes, although it does appear that any changes that will occur to the boundary are not likely to impact any of the identified projects that Mr. Kramer will go through when we get to that section. And that's a great reminder to me that the agency's consultant perspective planning and consulting, Brad Kramer, is in the room with you all. And as we get to the portion of the presentation that specifically addresses the economic feasibility study, we will be transitioning those pieces of the presentation to Mr. Kramer And then I have a couple more slides to finish up with. But as indicated, it's not expected that any of these changes to the parcels included in the district will have any significant impact on both the revenue generation as part of the study or the plan projects. But certainly that's something that we're continuing to monitor as we find out. So next slide. So where have we been to date? As you recall, and in general, as we talk about urban renewal planning efforts, we do take it in two phases. The first is the eligibility phase. And eligibility is where a third-party consultant looks at the conditions on the ground and makes a determination as to whether or not the statutory conditions are met that would warrant establishing an urban renewal project. So the agency retained... a consultant, perspective planning, and consulting to prepare the study. And that study, the West Highway District Eligibility Report, was reviewed by the agency board and was accepted by resolution on October 15, 2025. Because of the fact that there are parcels that are located outside the corporate boundaries of the city, that meant that the eligibility study also had to be reviewed by the County Board of County Commissioners. and to make the requisite findings that or confirm the findings that were in the eligibility study. That action occurred on October 27, which set it up for City Council consideration of the eligibility study at the time of its November 18, 2025 meeting. And at that time, the City Council did choose to adopt a resolution making the findings and directing the agency to prepare an urban renewal plan. So since that time, efforts have been undertaken primarily to identify the projects to be undertaken during the life of the plan. Because as you know, the statute changed and there has to be greater specificity on the front end of project identification. And so that action has been very thoughtful in terms of coordinating with both, I believe, city and county to make sure that those projects make sense. Um, and also as part of this, there are statutory requirements concerning agricultural operation properties. Any parcel that essentially has an ag exemption requires prop within the last three years requires the property owner to consent, to be included in the district. And to the extent consent is not granted by the property owner. then those agricultural properties are out. They're not going to be included within the revenue allocation area. So that's a fairly lengthy process and having conversations with the parcels that have been identified as agricultural operations, meeting with folks and providing them with the information to make informed decisions as they consider signing consents. So once we finish the eligibility phase and move into planning, next slide, we are officially in the plan approval process phase. And so what has been outlined is the next steps of what I would call the much more public facing piece of the plan approval process. So at the agency's meeting last week, There was review by the agency board of the draft plan, just making sure we're going in the right direction and to prepare a bit for this meeting today. After this meeting and based on feedback received here, the goal is to present a final product to the agency board on September 16th for that body's consideration of plan approval. And if approved by resolution, Uh, the plan would be directed to both, uh, the mayor and city clerk to process the plan on the city side, and then also transmitted to the board of County commissioners to take the necessary steps to, uh, process the plan on that front. To the extent, um, the parcels within the area of city impact, certainly when those are developed, uh, coordinate with the city planning and zoning. But to the extent there are parcels, and there are a few that we've identified that are outside the area of city impact and within the unincorporated county, it is possible that we need to jump through the hoop of a check-in with Madison County Planning and Zoning for a finding that the plan for those parcels is consistent with the county's comprehensive plan. These meetings before planning and zoning, both at the city and or the county, they're not established public hearings. It's just an agenda item on a regular meeting. And the finding is very limited. It is limited to whether or not the proposed plan is in conformity with that entity's comprehensive plan. And typically what we'll see is a resolution is signed has a staff report that says yes this is consistent with the comprehensive plan and then it moves on because of the county parcels in general and this body has been through this step before but the county will be asked to consider an intergovernmental agreement which is actually between the county and the city and then there's a transfer of powers ordinance that that would be considered for adoption by the County board. And so tentatively looking at around September 28th for the board of County commissioners to not only consider the plan, but also that intergovernmental agreement and the transfer of powers ordinance, the tentative date for the city planning and zoning meeting, or I shouldn't say tentative. I believe that that is pretty firm is again, like, discussed, it would be for that body to consider the plans conformity with the city's comprehensive plan. And then, following that, there are two public so following that it's really teed up for city council public hearing on the plan. And prior to the City Council public hearing, at least 30 days in advance, there has to be a notice published in the paper providing notice to all of the upcoming public hearing. And then also a copy of the plan, the agency resolution, the notice of public hearing, and other information that we have available, including concerning the final map and legal. That's all transmitted to the overlapping taxing districts for their review. And then there's a second publication notice of the public hearing. And then again, the public hearing is contemplated to be held November 18th. And then we follow the city's ordinance approval process. Next slide. So these next two slides specifically call the attention to the overlapping taxing districts of the proposed revenue allocation area. So these are the taxing districts for city parcels. And you'll see at the bottom that Burton Cemetery is in italics. So some of the district overlays the Rexburg Cemetery district and some overlay the Burton Cemetery District. And Mr. Kramer will speak a little bit more about this in terms of the revenue generation projection. But for that purpose, the levy rate for the Rexburg Cemetery was used because they're just more effective parcels. So for purposes of a projection, that smaller levy was not used. But certainly it's an entity that we have to give notice to as part of this process. So that's just why it's in italics. Idaho Code 50-2908 identifies with specificity what levies generate revenue for an urban renal area. And so voter approved levies and bonds have already been subtracted out of these total levy rates. And to the extent there are any voter approved bonds during the life of this district, they will not generate revenue for the agency. There's also been a few statutory changes that have some impact here. So for example, the ambulance and fire districts now for new plans moving forward, those districts have to consent by resolution to be included within the boundaries of the revenue allocation area. It's not automatic. To be conservative in the revenue generation model, it has not been contemplated that there will be a consent resolution requested from the ambulance district. And so that's why you'll see a zero there. It's not contemplated that this area will receive revenue from those levies. The school district, the only levy now that drives revenue to the agency is from the tort levy. And you'll see that's a pretty small levy. And if there's no tort levy, then there's no levy that generates revenue. Next slide. So these, just to separate them out, these are the taxing districts that overlay many of the county parcels. So it's the same discussion we had with regard to the city, but you'll see a few different taxing districts, specifically the fire district. And so based on the conversation on the last slide, that's why there's the zero there is for purposes of the model it's not contemplated that there is going to be any revenue from the fire district levy next slide from a legal perspective idaho code section 50-2905 identifies what information has to be included within an urban renewal plan and that it also indicates based on legislative changes, I think in 2016, that that information must be included with some level of specificity. So what we have here on this slide is the factors that are identified by code, the eight factors, and then underneath it provides information as to where in the plan and or the attachments you can find the information that supports this specific factor of code. I'll just run through them quickly because I think it's important to understand how we have broken this out. When we talk about the urban renewal plan, the economic feasibility study is really the driver of the revenue allocation area. That's the work product and deliverable that includes the the identification of the projects, as well as the revenue generation and the cash flow, which shows that ultimately the project is feasible. So a number of these requirements are met by that document alone. But starting with factor one, the statement describing the total assessed valuation of the base assessment role of the revenue allocation area and the total assessed valuation of all taxable property within the municipality That's what's referred to as the 10% test. And so in that case, we are looking at the combined base assessment role of all of your existing revenue allocation areas. And so long as the base assessment role does not exceed 10% of the total taxable value of the city, then you have met that threshold. And because we have both city and county parcels, we're being more conservative by using the total taxable value of the city because it's a smaller number. The statement listing the kind, number, and location of the proposed public works or improvements, we find that in attachment five, which attachment five is the short form reference to the economic feasibility study here. but you'll also see it in section 301 of the plan narrative. And that's one of those sections that is flagged for continued review, because as we move forward, we really want to make sure that the narrative language in section 301 really matches the intent and purpose of the projects identified in attachment five. We've talked about the economic feasibility study, Factor four is a detailed list of estimated project costs. You'll find that in attachment five. A fiscal impact statement showing the impact of the revenue allocation area, both before and after the bonds are repaid and upon all taxing districts. You'll find that information on impact in the narrative form in section 502.8, as well as the economic feasibility study. And just a few comments on the impact of revenue allocation on the overlapping taxing districts. When we talk about impact, what we're really talking about is the overlaid taxing districts deferred benefit to a budget capacity increase from the value that's occurring within the boundaries of the revenue allocation area. So the taxing district themselves are able to establish their budget and subject to and an increased budget subject to the statutory limitations, and then levies to meet that budget need. What happens, though, to the growth within the revenue allocation area, that isn't available for budget capacity increases from new construction until the revenue allocation area terminates. And then that 80% of the increment value flows to the new construction role for that budget capacity increase. So there's more explanation in the narrative on that in 502.8. When we talk about the method of financing the project cost, that's factor six, we really get into the multiple ways that the agency has to fund projects. So one is pay as you go, where funds are accrued over time and saved for that purpose. There's also the opportunity to advance funding for projects through developer and or property owner or other third party, public or private, taking on that project and seeking reimbursement from the agency for identified eligible projects and pursuant to a reimbursement agreement. And then the third is the agency does have the ability to issue debt to, again, advance funds some projects where they might have had to wait until they had accrued the funds. And so any bond issuance certainly has to establish the pro forma requirements of a lender and has to jump through those hoops to move forward. But all of those methods of financing projects are contemplated in the plan. Excuse me. Then there's the termination date. This is a statutory change that has occurred over time, but for quite a while now, a plan's duration is 20 years. So to the extent the plan is established by year end, then the plan termination date would be December 31 of 2046, and the agency would be eligible to receive the final year revenues in 2047. And that's defined in Section 800 of the plan. And then to the extent the agency has or retains, owns any assets at termination, those assets may be conveyed and how those will be conveyed is also identified in Section 800. And there is an opportunity for the agency to retain assets post-termination so long as there's funding sources other than revenue allocation proceeds. to be a source for those assets that are retained. So next slide. I just wanted to show the 10% test here. It's also in the plan document, but this shows that the taxable, these are using the 2025 data because at the time of preparation, 2026 hadn't been fully confirmed. But you'll see that the base values of your existing revenue allocation areas total about $115 million, which 10% of the total taxable value of the city is about $273 million. So it's about 4.2%, so well under the 10%, even if there were going to be increases in value for 2026. So with that, I... commissioners and council members, I would like to hand it over to Mr. Kramer to talk about the economic feasibility study.

Thank you, Megan. I may bounce back and forth.

Okay. So if it's okay, council and commissioners, I'm going to speak to you from behind because I'm going to navigate the slides a little bit back and forth. Although if you prefer me to come up there, I'd be happy to. So My name is Brad Kramer with Perspective Planning Consulting. As Megan's already mentioned, I wrote the Economic Feasibility Study. What I'm going to do this evening is just give you a fairly quick and high-level overview, and then to the extent that you'd like to go into more depth, I'd be happy to do so. Okay. But just so you have a sense for what this is for, really the purpose is to determine if the tax increment revenue generated from private investment will be sufficient to cover the anticipated costs of public and other eligible projects. And so the way we get there is we have to do a little bit of looking into a crystal ball to look at all of the vacant sites within this area and determine, in partnership with the city, what the anticipated development looks like, what its value should look like once it's completed, how it grows over the years. We look at historical levy rates and changes and valuation changes. And then we look at, we identify all of the potential public projects and their anticipated costs. So the spoiler alert is this is economically feasible. The tax revenues are anticipated to cover at least the priority projects and many of the additional projects within the district boundaries. And we did look at multiple And I have a slide that summarizes that. We've already covered the fire district, so I'm going to skip that slide. So one of the things that we did with the city, I wanted to understand how fast these vacant sites within the proposed area would develop. And initially, the city had suggested a 10-year build-out, but because The agency is anticipating a bond to pay for some of the public infrastructure and because we're all – development is subject to changes in the economy, prices, demand. I wanted to take a more conservative look, and so I really broke it into four scenarios, a 10-year, 12-year, 15-year scenario. and even a 20-year build-out to make sure we understood how that bond would be affected and how overall revenues and expenditures would be affected if things didn't build out as quickly as hoped. So when you look at the revenues for all of those scenarios, There's an anticipated $43.5 to $68.5 million in revenues over the 20 years. And I won't walk through all of these assumptions, but they are based on historical data. And so I'm going to skip, keep those numbers in mind, the $43.5 to $68.5. Because as you look at this list of projects, the ones on the top are the... the priority projects identified by the city. They're listed with more specificity, specific intersections, widening 12th and 33rd, for example, a specific lift station, and those anticipated costs. Those priority projects came out to... $27.3 million. And so in all revenue scenarios, those priority projects are anticipated to be covered with the revenues. Then if you look below, there's a couple of things happening there is Because the statute requires that you identify things that you might do, we include lists of more generic things that the agency may tackle if there are enough funds that would also benefit the district. And that list, although these are very much estimates and placeholder numbers, came out to $24.2 million, so a total of $51.5 million in total projects. And so in a 20-year build-out, maybe not all of those projects non-priority projects get covered, but all of the priority projects should be covered and the bond is able to be serviced. I've already made this statement, so the cash flow is sufficient. I know that was a really quick look through the finances. If you have questions or want me to go in more depth, I would be happy to do so, but otherwise I'm also happy to turn it back over to Megan. Yes.

Mr. Mayor, if I may, so was you anticipating bonding for the $27 million only or bonding for more of that? I mean, that's an urban or dual question, I guess. Yeah.

The bond that I plugged into the model was only for $6 million.

And then just do the revenues. Yeah. Yeah, I thought that would be a long time.

I think the idea is to get started on projects.

have we done that in other yeah because a lot of times you have to like you have to go sell a bond to get the cash to get a start able to put in pipes we we have one in the district out by walmart right now

That's one of the things that you'll kind of hear some legislators that are opposed to.

They'll say, well, you know, businesses should just pay for that.

But sometimes businesses will say, well, that's a lot of money that is going to benefit kind of this whole area, not just us.

And if you make them pay for it, a lot of times they'll say, well, we'll go somewhere else because that's just a lot of additional costs that they have to pay. that is necessarily always total amount of it's not beneficial.

So, yes. Is that a general election?

No, no, it's a, it's a, you sell a bond to a, somebody that will buy it.

Thank you.

Right.

You don't have to do elections at all. Any other questions, Mr. Craven? One of the other things that I will point out that I just thought of while we were doing this, and I was thinking a lot of times, because I've been having conversations with some legislators, and one of their big things is, well, cities and counties are losing all that revenue for 20 years. And as I thought through this and all of our projects, I thought, yeah, sometimes there is a project that will get done right at the start, but more often, projects happen kind of towards the middle of the thing towards the end. I mean, like our downtown project, we're hustling to try to get the project done before that district ends. So in that case, it'll be a pretty big project, it will produce a lot of tax revenue. And we'll only have to wait probably one year for it, because that district is going to end. And so if you think about it, you know, most of the time when we get a district in place, it takes a while to start getting projects done in there. So It's really not most of the time, 20 years. It's 10 years, eight years, six years. Sometimes it might be 15 or 16 years, but it seems like most often or quite often the projects start happening more towards the middle to the end, especially bigger ones.

It really makes a difference. Any other questions for Mr. Kramer?

Okay. Okay. Thank you, Brad. We appreciate your time and efforts on this.

It's a lot of really good information. All right. Thank you.

That basically is just information. You saw the timeline on the things we'll have to do from here on out. Oh, Megan, did you have a couple more slides to show us?

Oh, thank you, commissioners, council members. I just have two questions. to whip through really quickly here. We've already talked about the ag consents, and so that is going to drive finalization of the map. But, you know, we are actively pursuing the few final ag consents, and if those aren't obtained, then those parcels will be removed. The other piece of it is, next slide, just a reminder, this is a post-July 1, 2016 plan. So that means the base reset provisions are in place. And what that means is if there's a plan modification by city council ordinance, then there is a risk that the base will reset to the current equalized assessed value of the district, which essentially removes the revenue stream for the district. There are exceptions in that code for what is not considered to be a modification, and it's your one-time plan amendment to add area, de-annexations, ministerial type amendments, and then for existing commercial and industrial project expansion. And I do want to point out, you know, a lot of agency budgeting is based on assumptions as to levy rates and revenue. And so up and down the agency's budget annually is dependent on what those actual numbers end up being. So there's always a little flex in the schedule. So with that, I'm happy to stand for any questions.

Okay, we have a question from Council President Harris.

So, Megan, can I understand that, then, if there is any modification during the 20-year period of time, except for a few of the exceptions, then the base would reset to the current valuations at that time?

Yeah, so it's any modification. Thank you, Mr. Council President Harris. If to the extent there is an amendment by a city council ordinance, so a properly processed plan amendment that goes all the way through the process, if it doesn't meet one of those four exceptions, then there is a risk of a base reset.

So we can't expand it, Riva can't expand it in the future. but it is what it is for the 20 year period of time.

Would it be worth going through those four exceptions real quick just to?

Yeah, so the first exception actually is you have a one time amendment to add area and you can add area up to 10% of the existing revenue allocationary acreage. So for example, if this district stays 840 acres, the parties would have one time to extend the boundary an additional up to 84 acres. So that would not constitute a modification that would trigger a base reset that falls within the exception. But if you did a second one to add area that would trigger a base reset.

Okay, any other questions? Anyone? Okay, thank you, Megan.

Thank you.

Brett, appreciate you being here. And if there are no other questions or discussion on that, we will go ahead and move to the next item on our agenda.

Mr. Miller, is that on our agenda for the 28th?

It is not yet. So I will contact your office and get that on. Yes, go ahead.

I have a brand new urban fuel district cycle. What is a transfer of power? What are we transferring?

Megan, is that something you can help us answer? Did you hear the question?

I didn't. I'm sorry. Thank you.

Megan, this is Commissioner Mendenhall. There's a couple of terms in there that I'm not familiar with. Transfer of power. Talk. What are we transferring? What is involved in the transfer?

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Commissioner, council members and commissioners. I don't have the statute up in front of me and certainly we'll get you a better answer. But in general, what the transfer of power ordinance does is acknowledge that the revenue, the increment revenue from those county parcels is going to be allocated to the agency to perform the implementation of the plan. So it's essentially recognizing that the revenue allocation area exists and that those dollars will flow to the agency.

And Megan, again, as a follow-up, the intergovernmental agreement, what is involved in the intergovernmental? What are we agreeing to?

So same idea, Mr. Commissioner. It's recognizing between the county and the city that that this is established and that there will be the administration of this agency by the agency board and the dollars will be implemented pursuant to the plan. It's all kind of part and parcel of, and I apologize that I don't have it in front of me right now, but I believe the intergovernmental agreement is often the exhibit to the transfer of powers ordinance. And the specific statutory reference to that language is in 50-2906. So the statute requires anytime you do have these multi-jurisdictional plans, that there just is an acknowledgement by the county that, you know, this plan is in place. It's multi-jurisdictional and recognizes that those dollars from the increment are not going to be captured by the county, but will flow to the agency. is generally the purpose and intent.

I'm sorry, this is Commissioner Smith. It's all about the money. It has nothing to do with land use zoning. That's right. It's all about where the money goes.

That's right. Any specific land use, so to the extent a property owner in the county wants to develop their property, they're subject to the overlay of the revenue allocation area doesn't change the process at that property owner would have to go through to develop their property. You'd have to go through your standard permitting and design consideration. The overlay of the revenue allocationary doesn't change that. And it doesn't change the nature of if it's valued as ag, it will remain valued as ag until it's not.

And that's one thing people get afraid of is they think it's going to raise their taxes. It doesn't change them at all.

That does my last question, noted earlier. How it influences impact areas versus annexation. Where this is, there are people who resist. They don't want to be a part of a city. They want to have their rural line. If we put this into urban renewal and we cross those lines of the impact area, does that make it easier for a city to annex properties or does it have no?

I don't think it makes it any easier, but am I correct on that?

Yes, thank you, Commissioner and Council members. So the overlay of a revenue allocation area has no impact on how a city annexes property. The annexation of property is driven by a statutory scheme, and all of those T's have to be crossed and I's dotted, and the overlay of an RAA doesn't impact that one way or the other.

Thank you. Just for context, this is Highway 33 right here, and the county properties or parcels that are not in the impact area are these five right here. so um all right councilmember johnson has a question yeah sorry i just want to make sure i

Is it also included that, so like there's a list of all the projects that would be included in this. And then like, for example, one of them is widening up west. Typically that would come through the council to decide on timing and if that's appropriate. But if we approve this district, then we give the district the ability to make that decision on timing, right? Because then it doesn't come to the council anymore. After that, it goes through the urban utility. Is that right? That's interesting.

Um, Madam Councilwoman, can you please tell me what the project is specifically that you're talking about with regard to timing?

Oh, I was just giving an example. Like I saw on the list, it says why I need 12 plants. That was one of the ones I, one of the ones I remember. But then if this becomes, if we approve this agency, then the council no longer is the one who triggers doing that. It would then be the urban renewal agency, right?

So I would add right there, because that's city streets. I mean, the city still has to be involved in that piece of it. As Urban Renewal, we would contribute to making that happen. So financially, we would support it. but we would not be the ones executing any kind of work done there. There are different types of projects where potentially we're not dealing with city infrastructure directly. It's city assets where the city could be out of it. But in the case of, like you're saying, with the city street, we don't come in and take over that, if that makes sense. Yeah, Matt has something to add.

Well, I was just going to say, I'll just tell you how we've done it in the past. I mean, it always pretty much goes through the city budget because the way that we've been doing those is the projects really are engineered by the city engineers and it goes through the city budget and then urban renewal reimburses for their proportionate share. And the other thing to remember on these big projects like this, it's generally multiple funding sources. And so you're talking city money, you're talking federal money, you're talking urban renewal. And so you all kind of have to come together and put it into your respective budgets.

Thank you.

Good question. Okay. Any other questions?

All right. Commissioners, council members, just a reminder, the North Central had a transfer of powers and an intergovernmental agreement as well. And, you know, when we talk about the transfer of powers, the first section of the authorization in the transfer of powers ordinance just reaffirms the findings that are more applicable, I would say, to the county, or just acknowledging that the adjusted base values of the revenue allocation areas within the city don't exceed the 10%, and that the project is financially feasible, the consents have been obtained, and that the city of Rexburg has the authority to proceed with the creation of But the most important finding is that the revenue allocation area proceeds from the areas lying within the unincorporated area shall be devoted the revenues from that TIF to the statutory purposes as described in the plan and the law and the act. So it's just really acknowledging the ability to establish this plan and how the dollars will then from the increment flow to the agency to implement the plan. But in terms of development timeline, I mean, those factors are really determined as they occur. It doesn't necessarily impact timing unless there's the opportunity to advance or partner in funding. So anyway, hope that helps.

Great. Thank you, Megan. Well, we need to move on for a couple of other items. So thank you very much. Appreciate that information and all the work that both you and Brad have done on this for us. And thank you for being here with us tonight.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

All right. Okay. With that, let's move on to item number B on the agenda, which is the review of the America 250 event. We'll turn the time over to Matt. Yes.

I might not have enough for everybody, but double pull it up. Cheers.

Okay. So as I jump into this, keep in mind that this report is not just the concert event. So this is all events that were part of Independence Day. And I'll kind of point out some of the differences there. So what I've done, I didn't give you, obviously, the full detail. I broke it down into categories. And so as you look through this report on the left, you'll see where it says row labels. You'll see the description. And then as you move to the right, you'll see a column for expense, a column for revenue. and then a grand total. And then we net that down at the bottom. So as I go through this, I mean, obviously the big, big expense was the, we paid 195,000 for the artist that came to the concert. And then I did want to note on the contributions, which are revenues, right? Those I wanted to put the, just the name of those businesses that supported that, because that was a substantial amount. There was 70,500 people. basically donated to help reduce this subsidy. And so we're grateful for those community partners. And some of them were specific donations for, you know, one was for the drone, one was part of the fireworks, and then some of them were just use it however you need to. And then you can see the, I'm just going to hit the big expenses and revenues, but then you see the drone show, you know, it was quite expensive. It was $35,000. And we did get a little grant for $2,500. The fireworks was really $30,000. The portion at the concert itself was about $5,000, and then it was about $25,000 for the other two locations the following night. And then we did buy a flag display. So if anybody saw the flags out at Porter Park, we left those out for probably four days, I think, or five days. And we will continue to be able to use those for hopefully decades to come. And then we did buy insurance for that concert. We just felt like it was just a little too risky not to. So that was about $9,400. Marketing came in at about $18,500. And the marketing really was, you know, we tried pretty much all outlets. A lot of it was social media. You know, we had banners. We had... Electronic billboards. We did some Google stuff. We did radio. You name it, we probably did a little bit of it. And parking security and staff, I kind of lumped quite a few things there. That came out to about $10,000. And then another really expensive cost was production cost. So when you think of production, some of the big costs was the, obviously the biggest one was running the stage. Yes. there was just a little bit of part-time wages that got allocated in not very much it was almost it was very very minimal and so um And then, but honestly, it's a great question because most, I would say like 99% of the labor, it's not in these numbers. These are all direct revenues and expenses, right? And so when you think about this, if we were to track all of our time into this, it would have been a lot of time. I mean, there was a lot of time and effort at both the city, at the highest level at the city, obviously, School district had a lot, county had some things in it. Then the last line that I'll just hit real quick is the ticket sales. That's net of sales tax. We brought in about $200,000. We sold about 5,339. We believe that we had close to 6,000 people in there because you have to remember a lot of tickets were given out like through radio. And so we would give out hundreds of tickets that they would give away as promotions. And that did not come into this 5,339 number. And then, of course, there was lots of volunteers. We had, I think, over 100 volunteers there. We had a ton of employees there, lots of public safety people there. So when, when you drill it all down, um, grand total subsidy that I'm estimating at this point, because I mean, I even got another invoice this week. And so you just, you continue to see them for many months after, but I'm estimating about 98,600 subsidy. So counties half would be 49, three. Now you guys have already paid is 50,000. And, um, You know, when you look at it, uh, total, what we budgeted at the city side, we had budgeted a subsidy of around 48,600. And so we're really close. We're right, right. Fairly close to that. Uh, we'd hoped that it would have been. You know, a little smaller subsidy than that. But, you know, I think it was a great event. It's up to you guys whether you want to do it again. I think it was a tremendous amount of effort. So, but anyways, that's the report. Any questions?

Two seconds, Mayor, two seconds. Is there any questions or comments? We don't have a lot of time.

We appreciate this, Matt. This is great.

It's a good event.

I know I think we would have been much more successful, but there was one thing that we didn't anticipate, unfortunately, and that was we were thinking, oh, Friday night before the 4th, that would be great. Well, it turned out that Friday night being the night before the 4th, made for a really long weekend. And all of the college kids, not all of them, but a big percentage of them, hightailed it out of town. So they weren't here. And that, I think, would have sold way, way, way more tickets if that hadn't been the case. But, you know. So, okay. All right, let's go ahead and move on to item number C, which is regarding parking at the nature park. Can you bring that up on the map?

All right. And by the nature park, the little triangle piece there.

Yeah, that one right there.

So I think as you guys know, the county, that's part of the fairgrounds, that bottom part down there. And you can see that our fairgrounds, we put some rocks along there. He's left that open on the west side for the city or for the parking as well as, I think that's your only access to that shop. It's your county parking lot. So the problem we've been having is when we, a year ago, we decided to close that off. We wanted to close off because we had so much trouble with vandalism in that parking lot. kids going in just flipped it. There used to be a big mud hole there, if you remember, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

They loved that. Yeah. And they just tear the parking lot up like crazy. So we fenced it off, put some rocks in so they can't get on. The problem is now all these neighbors on the bottom here who have freely used that for years and years are upset. And apparently, since we told them no, they've started calling the city. Oh. Yeah, Natalie called me one day and I said, Natalie, it's not open to the public. She says, well, anyway, I won't go into all that discussion. But our take on it is that it is closed. We apologize. Those people can no longer use it. Someday this is going to be sold to a private developer. There is no legal easement for those people to use it.

Which brings up the question, isn't there an easement? Not there. Along the backside? Not there.

Is it in the park?

There is on the park, apparently.

In fact, Evan told me today, if you'll scroll over a little bit, apparently somebody over here owns a skid loader and every once in a while goes over and moves the rocks for neighbors. But he says he went right across your park with a skid loader to hit the path going out because they do have some easements along there.

So that's an easement to nowhere?

Pretty much. That's how we understand it.

It's one of those situations where it's difficult because they've accessed it for years and just assumed that there's an easy way.

If you look at it, motion's come into play a lot. You can see those places. They store their captains. only access they have to get to that. There are gates back there on that, on almost every fence. And that's where they have stored it. Probably when they sold their homes, they told their, oh, don't worry, you've got a nice park there. And it's now become...

So, I mean, too often, we are, even the, you know, you've got the rocks off there, kind of want to put them straight across so that wouldn't even happen.

that guy's access.

I don't know. We have no formal agreement with the city on the use of that up there. We're not going to shut that off, by the way. I told Evan Mates. Public uses that for us. That's not our issue at all. You know, we open up twice a year for parking during the voting period. Other than that, we don't really need it. We have plenty of parking lots for it. But as we get closer to moving the fairgrounds, we would like to get certainly entertained. I would assume you guys would want to buy them. Yeah, I think we would definitely be interested in it. So, you know, if you don't want to sell it off to a private developer, you guys have no access to your shop. Yeah. Because it is a great parking spot for them. Yeah, so just something on your radar. So if you get calls, please tell them it's not a city issue to call the county.

We'll be happy to do that. You live right along there. Do you have any input on that or anybody else?

I think it's just a lot of just not knowing. I've lived in that area for 20 years and I didn't know that that was counted. So I think it's just a part of information and taking it out. And the easement part, I have heard So yeah, again, I think it's just information.

Traders are kind of captive right now. If they want to be able to get those out, can they call you? Absolutely.

Well, yeah. We'll make sure they get out. But yeah, but so while it was open during the rodeo, one of the traders showed up back in there.

was out oh yeah but so it was opened up trainer came back in so they know i wonder if it would be beneficial to produce some kind of an official document from the county that distributed to these people that probably explains and he just says just kind of explains the realities of it and just so that they know and from what we understand from what our attorney has said there is no

You can't, I mean, the one guy that called me said, well, I have a, you know, prescriptive easement right by use, but apparently you can't do that with county property.

That's not a thing.

I've got two legal minds in here, two and a half. I saw Steve walk in. But he says you can't do prescriptive easement against county. So you can't.

Okay.

Anyway, so just because I kind of wondered that myself. It seems like I had heard that. I think we've had that going on City Hall.

Mayor? Yes. There was some discussion on this a few years ago, and I believe whoever owned it at one point gave them verbal permission to use that. I don't think it was ever an established easement. It was just, hey, we're not using it. Go ahead. We're talking 20, 30 years ago. Yeah. I don't know how long the county's owned it, honestly.

Yeah. As you guys know, our current fairgrounds manager is very OCD about his stuff that he doesn't like. He doesn't like it messed up. No. When kids go in there.

Yes, yes, yes.

I was over there just the other day and I saw that and I thought that, I thought, I wonder if we put three of those rocks at him.

Oh, yes. He's probably not a pitcher.

He would see you on camera. Just rotate him and see if he noticed.

Yeah.

All right. So this is mostly information. And I don't know that we need, like I said, we have no written MOU because of that. I'm fine with it, with that continued use of it. It's public use. I don't think I should have that.

Well, we appreciate that. people who want to use it is which of course are people that live in the city and the county absolutely and other places as well so yeah we have no problem with that yes okay well thank you we appreciate that information it's always good to understand those things a little bit better especially when we start getting follows yeah yeah right well we already talked about search so we won't go with that one so thank you everybody for being here and uh we will go ahead now and during this part of the meeting and we'll move into our next part here in a few minutes

Well, I sold this in council. All right. Thanks, you guys.

Thanks, Merrick. Yeah. I stay here. Oh, yeah.

You're smart. That's who I am. Thanks, Fraser. All right, let's see what we got here. Councilmember Riggins, who are you? Thank you.

Wait a second. Sorry, I moved down there. Thank you all so much. Council Member Riggins, would you lead us in the pledge? Sorry, I was off. All right, welcome everyone. We'd like to call this meeting of the Rexburg City Council to order. We're glad to have a fairly full house here. Either we've got a lot of young people that are interested in the civic affairs of Rexburg, or you've got a homework assignment due tomorrow. I don't know which, but we'll take the positive thought and think. We've got future city council members and mayors right here in the room. So thank you for being here to see how your local government works. It's great to have you here. We'll have some interesting conversations and things that hopefully will be of interest to you. I would like to start this meeting with an opening prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag, and I've asked Council President Erickson to offer the opening prayer for us, after which I've asked Council Member Riggins to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. So, Council President Erickson.

Our Father in heaven, we are grateful to be met here this evening as city council citizens to discuss the affairs of our great city and community. We're thankful for the blessings of living in this wonderful part of the world, for the blessings of freedom and liberty that is afforded to us as citizens of this United States and of the state of Idaho and the city of Rexburg. We are thankful for all the blessings that are ours as we live and work together and do all that we can to make this community a wonderful place to live and work. We ask thy blessings to be with us this evening as we deliberate the affairs that are on the agenda this evening. We pray that we will be open in our discussions, that we will listen intently to concerns and needs, and that everything will be conducted with civility and with a desire to improve this, our community. We again gratefully acknowledge thy hand in all that we do and do so in the name of thy son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. All right. At this time, we'd like to go ahead with the roll call of our council members. And we'll ask Mariana to do that for us, please.

Here.

Council member Johnson. Here. Council member Erickson.

Here.

Council member Collin Erickson.

Here.

Council member Reeser. Here. Council member Riggins. Here.

All right, thank you very much. We have a full quorum, so we'll proceed with business. First item or the item number four on our agenda tonight is to welcome a new employee to our city family, city team. And we have Elise Rasmussen back here in the back. We'd like to ask Elise to come up and to the podium and just tell us a quick little bit about yourself and introduce yourself to the council members, please. Yeah, that's fine.

It's nice to meet all of you. I'm Elise Rasmussen. I'm originally from Las Vegas, Nevada, and I came up here for school at BYU-Idaho. I just graduated, well, I graduated about a year ago. I did business supply chain management, and I kind of worked with a few different things. I did insurance. I worked at Enterprise, the rental car place, for a little bit. And now I'm here with the city doing planning and zoning as an admin assistant. So I'm really excited to just learn and get to know all of you guys better.

Okay, thank you very much. We appreciate it and we're glad to have you. So welcome to our city of Rexburg team. All right, let's give her a hand. Okay, and Elise, appreciate it. You've jumped right in and gotten right with things. So thank you very much. We appreciate you. All right. Okay, we'd like to move to item number five. which is a public hearing. This public hearing is to annex property in the impact area at approximately 80 East, 7th North into the city of Rexburg. This item would be designated as ordinance number 1351 if the motion passes and considered first read. We are going to turn the time over to our city attorney, Mr. Spencer Rammel, to just give us a little information on this item before we proceed forward. Mr. Rammel.

Thank you, Mayor. Had a good line of communication with Basic American Food and their legal counsel. Again, there's two representatives from Basic American Tenants tonight. They reached out last Friday with a proposed resolution. I think it's worth discussing and it would be worthwhile to engage in some of that negotiation and that discussion with Basic American and their legal counsel. So I am making a recommendation tonight.

to city council to table this tonight i've discussed it with other members of staff and they are in agreeance and so i would make that request at this time all right thank you for that information and welcome representatives from basic american we're glad to have you here with us tonight so given that information from staff i would entertain a motion to move forward with tabling this item if that is the council's desire is there such a motion

I would move to table this action item that is to consider annexation of the property as stated.

Okay. Thank you, Council Member Johnson. Is there a second to that?

I'll second that.

Second by Council Member Teejan. Any further discussion or questions? Hearing none. Mr. Mayor? Yes.

Is there a... Council President Erickson.

At this point, it would just be tabled indefinitely until we decide to bring it back. Okay. All right. Any other questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? All right. We will table that item until further notice, and we will be glad to have more talk and communication and negotiations with our Basic American folks. Appreciate you being here tonight. All right. At this time, we have item number six, which is a time for public comment. This is a time for things that are not on the agenda tonight. If there's anything that anybody would like to make us aware of, we invite you to come to the podium, state your name and address, and tell us about anything that you'd like to. Is there anyone that would like to make a comment at this time? All right, seeing none, we will move on to item number seven, which are our staff reports. And we will start with our Parks and Recreation report from Parks and Recreation Director, Mr. John Lewis. This is regarding Resolution 226-12, which is to amend the Eagle Park camping use policy.

Yeah, so pretty much over the last couple of months, we've Got a bunch of interesting reports out of Eagle Park and people having interesting interactions with individuals back there. And I've been back there quite a bit the last several weeks, just kind of monitoring some things. And we've kind of come to the determination that we need to make some changes in terms of how we operate that park to make it safer. Just to make it safer for people to be able to go down there. I've talked to a number of people who have said they would never walk down there by themselves and, you know, we want our city parks to really feel safe and that people can go down there and to be able to use them the way that they're intended so. We're recommending that we make some adjustments to the camping procedures out there at Eagle Park, namely changing it to where instead of having the opportunity to camp every single day of the week, we're going to limit that to Friday, Saturday and Sunday on the weekend, which would make it a lot easier for campers. PD and our staff to be able to monitor it, as well as requiring people who do want to camp to display their permit to be able to be there. So it's a lot easier to determine who's actually supposed to be there and who isn't supposed to be there. But essentially, we just want to make it a lot safer. And we think that these changes will help us to be able to accomplish that and monitor that park in a way to where we don't have to expend a lot of resources to be able to do it.

Okay. Thank you for that explanation. Is there any questions or comments from council for Mr. Lewis? Councilmember Johnson.

Yeah, thank you, John. I just wanted to say I've talked to John about this. We kind of ran it through our parks committee. And I think it's a pretty fair balance because there are problems happening there. I think the park's just too secluded. And so this way residents can still use it sometimes. But we have some restrictions to hopefully keep us safer. So that was the hope.

That's a good comment. I like that comment about a good balance because you don't want to be too restrictive, but we do want it to be safe.

And I will say this, you know, when we talked about a lot of these things, a lot of this is, you know, obviously you want the situation back there to kind of improve. And as improvements kind of come along, you know, maybe we can become slightly less restrictive as we get a better system in place to be able to handle that. So. It's not necessarily meant to be forever, but I think this is what's needed now to be able to correct what's going on down there.

Okay, Council President Erickson.

Mr. Mayor, the permitting and the payment for a permit, is it clearly marked and clearly signed down there so that there's no confusion as to whether a permit's even required or not?

So as of right now, in regards to what we're trying to do, it is not, but I will change that If you guys agree to go ahead and proceed with that and everything will be clear and go ahead.

There's no system. You know, when you talk about. The people that use campgrounds are accustomed to, you know, pulling in and paying their paying for paying right there for their spot. Is there is that is that part of the system? It looks like they're going to have to either come to the city hall or or

made electronically through the payment system is that payment system in place yeah so we do currently have that payment system uh ready to go uh to be able to utilize but really we're going about it this way to just make sure that people are checking in with us because i think the real issue is how we have it currently it is kind of on an honor system and a lot of people don't pay uh when they go back there we do have people who do pay uh for it but it's far and few who are actually doing that. And it makes it a lot easier for us to be able to really keep track of what's going on in there. Because like I said, I'm just really concerned about the safety aspect. The last couple of weeks, we've had a group that's been in there that I've gone down with PD, I think on two occasions to try to get them out of there just because they had been there way longer than they were supposed to. And they had a lot of items just kind of scattered everywhere back there. So I'm just wanting to really is really control that as best as we can. And I know it might cause an extra step for people who want to camp, but I just feel like, you know, it's the safest option for us to proceed with at this time.

I think to council presidents, um, I wonder if with the signage and stuff that we have, can we have maybe like a QR code where like if they pull in and they can just pay on the spot rather than having to come to us because maybe they pull in after hours or what? Yes, go ahead.

They have to have a permit. So they would have to have an ability to print that.

Well, they wouldn't necessarily have to print it. They could have it on their phone, right?

We would like for them to display it so it's easy for the police department to be able to verify if they've been there or not. Because instead of having to get out of the patrol car and ask every single person, they'll be able to look at the post that we'll put out there and immediately see. So if people are wanting to reserve those, They're more than willing to go ahead and do it online, but they'll just need to either a printed themselves or be come to city hall and grab their paper. To be able to display, and I think this will help. To deter the wrong kind of visitors down in there. And like I said, I understand it creates an extra step, but I think it will help to. You know, dissuade some of those people from wanting to go back there to do things. Mr. yes.

I love this idea. My only concern goes back to the printing of the permits because we're only open until 1230 on Friday. And so most people, if they're going to, they won't have ability to get a permit if they are driving here to camp.

That was one of my concerns.

So how do we...

So technically, with most of our... Oh, they have to have it printed. Our registration system, you're actually supposed to reserve it, I want to say, at least two days in advance is technically what we have set up. That's a lot of people do come on the day of and we have people in office who are more than willing to be able to help with that. But typically they're supposed to do it in advance. That's prison.

Yeah. My only concern, as long as we have very clear signage down there so that it's very clear and not, you know, they know that they've got to... that they can't just pull in there and grab a spot and spend the night without going through some sort of permitting process.

And notifications on our social media and things like that too. Council Member Riggins.

Thank you. John, what are you doing as far as prices are concerned? Is it going to change?

Prices will be what they are now currently, which I think is $10 a night. We're not worried about the money necessarily. I just want it to be a better process.

I like the process. Question number two, though, on here. Any reason as to why only Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Last year, I'd I was there with my grandkids, right? We were there Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And so why only Friday, Saturday, Sunday?

So part of that thought process on our end was to make it just a lot easier to determine who's been there for what amount of time. Because currently, I want to say seven days is the limit that we have. And we don't have a system where we're requiring people to show that they paid. So every time we go back there, we have to get out and ask staff. So- I think kind of the way that we looked at it was we limit the days and we go down there with PD or our department goes down there. We know if we see tents on the incorrect days and they're not supposed to be there. So it's a lot easier to be able to police that and either ask them to vacate the area or come back on a day where we actually offer it. So that's kind of what we were thinking with that. I don't know if that makes sense.

So were you... Will you kind of study that? I mean, as you go, you know, if we put this into motion, I would like to just make sure that you're looking at it. You're getting a lot of people that are saying, wow, we would really like to be there Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Thursday, Wednesday, right? I hate to... It's a beautiful place to be, especially in the summertime when it's hot, the river's there. You know, I mean, it's just... To close out the other days...

Well, it's not completely closed.

No, no, no. I mean, it does say that it's open until 11. It's day use, right?

Yeah.

But again, if I'm camping and my only days off are between Monday and Friday, the only day I've got is Friday. Yeah.

I think that's a good point, and we probably need to maybe discuss that a little bit more, because I kind of had that same concern a little bit. Council Member Erickson's got another suggestion.

Mr. Mayor, I agree that maybe we need to do something to get a little stricter on that and make up some rules to figure out what we're doing down there. But I would like to see the exact same thing. I don't know why we just do it Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I think we need to reevaluate this in maybe a few months and say, okay, let's get a handle on this. Let's figure out what we can do and then broaden that back out to maybe the only day we don't have off is Monday. So they can have one day to go in there and say, hey, there's nobody here on Monday. We can do all the work down there or whatever it might be. But I like the idea of being a little restrictive and then open it back up and let's use our parks. Council Member Teejan.

I also like the idea of it being restricted, but just a suggestion would be if people are asking and wanting to come on Monday, if we have complaints or different things, we could log that and then we can revisit that and see how many people we actually have. If it's a significant number, we can look into doing that. But if not, I mean, I live over there and there's not a lot of people who are down there except on the weekends. And so I think that's kind of the idea. And so I'm sure that the rec department will keep a log of that for us and help us be able to track that and to see if we do need to open up more.

And then maybe you might have some kind of a special permit or something. Council Member Johnson.

Yeah, I just I think the biggest reason for limiting it is because I don't think our police department can patrol it every single day. And so I think this was one way to hope that we can have more police presence there, because there really are some things that just shouldn't be happening there that are happening there. And then we can revisit it and see if it helped. And I really like the idea of logging it to see, you know, how many residents actually want to use it. during the week? And are they actually residents or are they all from out of the city? And try to find out more of who's using it and when.

I do expect that number to increase as we get it back to a spot to where people feel safe enough to where they want to be back there more regularly. And as I said before, we're more than welcome to revisit this as we kind of go through it and track. But like I said, I just really want it to be safer back there and that's my biggest concern.

Okay.

Well, it sounds like from the comments here, the council is mostly in favor of this with the idea of tracking it and trying to, you know, watch it so that, because I think Council Member Riggins' point is good. I think if there are As Councilmember Johnson said, if there are local residents that would really like to camp for three or four nights and it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or whatever, and that's the nights they have available, I hate to make our parks too restrictive that our residents can't use them. So I think we'll need to really watch that and pay attention to it and see if we can make some adjustments if we need to. Does that sound fair? okay all right with those comments then and suggestions from council i would entertain a motion to approve resolution number 2026-12 to amend the eagle park camping use policy is there such a motion mr mayor i i would make the motion to um to approve resolution number 2026-12 amending the eagle park camping use policy

with the direction, I guess, to the Parks Department to revisit this in the future for further amendment.

Okay, thank you. Is there any, sorry, is there a second to that motion?

I'll second it.

Seconded by Council Member Colin Erickson. Any further discussion or questions? Hearing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, that motion passes. We will go ahead and put that policy into use. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. We appreciate your time here. All right, item B is our finance report with our chief finance officer for the city, Mr. Matt Nielsen. We are going to talk about reviewing and approving the fire department fiscal year 2027 budget.

Yeah, thank you. So probably to start, I'll give a little background so the audience understands this idea, because this is pretty complicated. But the way that our what we call public safety in terms of ambulance and fireworks in our county is we actually have a joint venture agreement. And so when you think about that, there's three taxing entities that are paying into that. There's the ambulance district, which every resident of the county pays into with a property tax. There's a fire district, which is only paid by residents that live outside the city of Rexburg. And then the city of Rexburg General Fund, which is property tax and sales tax primarily, has to come up with their proportionate share for fire services. And then to add another element to that, there's a fire board that administers that joint venture agreement. But that board is made up of a representative from each of those entities. And so as we go through this budget process, we have to bounce these things back and forth between all three of those entities plus the fire board in the mix, right? And so it can get pretty complicated. So what this is, is this is just really kind of a summary. And really all I'm showing you here is what we call the JPA budget, which is essentially the operating budget of those functions for ambulance and fire. And then in addition to that, there's multiple other funds for equipment replacement, wild land, et cetera, et cetera. And so originally when we got the original proposed subsidy for these three entities, it was about $6.69 million. And you can see that the city fire portion was about $2.2 million. And I believe that is what we passed in our budget currently. And then as we continued to meet with them in budget work meetings, some things changed. There were some minor changes. And then eventually they also proposed a new position. It's called the fuels reduction shift coverage, which is a position that can help manage the fuels reduction that happens in the kind of four month timeline in the summer primarily. And then when they're not doing that, they can actually cover shifts, which is beneficial to the department. Now, the good news on that one is there's a federal grant that covers about 48,000 of that. And so that was an addition. And then Over the last maybe six weeks, the city's probably pushed the hardest here. We've been pushing them to do line item budgeting in their wild land because we felt like it was missing some expenses and some revenues as well. And so the fire board met and said, yes, we want to do line item budgeting. Let's get those details. They added those details and Chief Troy Smiskin sent me back on Well, I can't see the date, but 8-26-26, I think it was. He sent me back the proposals and it looked great. I was very grateful that they line item budgeted in wildland. But there was a couple of things. They showed the expenses in wildland, but they didn't reduce the expenses in the operating budget was the biggest thing. And so I'm recommending that we reduce those because now they're being paid by wildland. And then there was a few other things like they hadn't shown the equipment reimbursements that come in as revenue and then go out as expense to the respective entities. So for example, When we send out a piece of fire equipment that's owned by 50-50 by the city and the fire district, we get those revenues back. But they wanted to collect those through wildland and then distribute them back to the joint community. fund for fire which is basically a big savings fund to buy and replace fire equipment um which is not cheap as you know and uh so anyways there was a couple things like that and um I also went through just some recommendations that I know the auditors are going to hit them up with when they do their first audit. And I met with Chief Child and Chief Miskin. We went through these. They felt like these were reasonable. And so hopefully this is what they'll present to that fire board. But what I'm looking for from the city council is your recommendation that these things happen. If they do happen, you'll see that overall... The increase of that subsidy from fiscal year 26 to 27, it actually goes down about 82,000 because they found some additional revenue for ambulance. But when you look at fire district, they would go down about 51,000. And then the city fire would go down about 71,000. It would still give the city fire about a 3.3% increase in our budget. But this would also, if they adopt these numbers that we're recommending, it would allow us to put about 15,000 back in the general contingency, general fund contingency. So I think they're all good things. The meeting I had with them, I think that they're... I think they felt like they were reasonable. So I'm just looking for your recommendation to hopefully make sure this happens when they meet. Okay, thank you.

Is there any questions from council? Yes.

A general question on the it looks like from the numbers that we're paying about a third, which, you know, makes sense. We're one of three entities in this organization. I'm curious, though, as to how that was decided. Is it because we're one third or is it based on the number of households? Is it based on the number of money that's brought in from the different taxing entities? How did that kind of get? formulated?

Yeah, so within that joint venture agreement, there's a series of ways that things will be broken out. So the biggest thing is any of the building improvements that are in downtown here, we split one-third, one-third, one-third. Any fire equipment is split 50-50 between the city and the fire district. Ambulance doesn't pay for that. Any ambulance equipment is paid 100% by ambulance. And then the biggest thing is, as you can imagine, personnel costs are kind of your biggest expenses, right? And those we have an agreed upon amount of 48% is paid by ambulance district. And then 52% of that is split between fire district and city fire. And then there's a formula that... basically takes the assessed values for fire district and city of rexburg with a grand total and it takes the population for those respective with a grand total and then we derive a formula that splits it out so it's really like to figure it all out it takes a giant spreadsheet with lots of different calculations

Probably quite an Excel spreadsheet you got going on there. Thank you, Matt.

It's an impressive piece. It's kind of like artwork for accountants, right? Accountant member Erickson.

Yes, Mr. May. Matt, as I have talked to you before on several times, I like this. I finally come up with a budget. I've said this several times. I want them to live within a budget. We're not opening the bank here. We can't just keep forking out money. I like how they're spelling it out and saying, okay, we're going to set down a budget. We're going to try to save money. We're going to try to do The things out there and what the city can put in for it. We only have so much money to be able to do that. So thank you for doing this. Thanks for getting the information that we can finally see some avenues. Of what we can do. Here's a city to help out that on our third.

Yeah. And I, one thing I'll add is we, we drafted a new addendum, right? For the budget. And part of that, a critical piece of that is that whatever you budget. We put into this joint operating fund. And then they take that amount. And if they manage their money really well in one year and they have a carryover, they actually keep that in that budget. And so it kind of incentivizes them to use those dollars wisely. And then that carryover can be utilized for adding positions or other things. And so that's the approach we've taken. And then what we do, our standpoint from budgeting is we really watch the dollars and the percentage increase because we know what our general revenues are that are coming in, right? And so that allows us to control that to some level.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Nielsen? All right, hearing or seeing none, I would entertain a motion to approve the fire department fiscal year 2027 budget. Is there such a motion?

Mayor, I'll make that motion to approve. All right, motion by council member Erickson.

Is there a second? Second by council member Reeser. Any further discussion or questions? Hearing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, that motion passes. We will go ahead with that budget item. All right, thank you, Mr. Nielsen. I will move to item number C, which is our public works report with our public works director, Mr. Keith Davidson. Item number one is the local improvement district committee report.

all right thank you mayor um so tonight we are reporting on our lid committee um bringing back the suggestions uh that came forth from that committee um So we met six times as a committee. And we started out back in January. And we went through a series. We gave them kind of the background information where streets were funded from, the different revenues that come in. And then we had them come back. We brainstormed different ideas, went through the pros and cons of different ideas of where maybe funding could come from on those ideas and then reviewed those and then came back, put together the presentation and then reviewed that presentation back on August 6th. And so some of the considered options that we looked at, permanent levy override obviously is one of those. Another one is start looking with the state petition for an increase in the fuel tax. So there could be extra revenue coming back that way. Also petition for a local option sales tax. And some of these are long way out to make it would be difficult to do, but we were trying to explore all the different potential options Out there also adjust the frequency or cost sharing distribution was another 1 of those increased allocation for street reconstruction. within the budgetary process. And then also looking at sidewalk replacements, different options there.

Another one that just- Keith, just sorry to interrupt, but I think Council Member Teigen's idea, just maybe explain just briefly for the audience what an LID or local improvement district is.

Yeah, no, thank you. But we'll backtrack up to an LID, local improvement district. So what the city does, it gives the city an opportunity to go out and allow residents and the city to fix, like we mainly use it for, there's lots of different ways you can use it. We mainly use it for sidewalk replacement, curb and gutter replacement in front of, as we do street reconstruction projects, we want to bring those up to a certain standard. And so we do what's called an LID, local improvement district, with that. And so the property owners are responsible. The city council just recently voted to take over the curb and gutter so that property owners are responsible for the sidewalk, as well as if we have to redo their sewer connection. Because on these street reconstruction projects, we won't be back in those neighborhoods for probably 30 years. to 50 years could be. And you'll see later on in the in this presentation kind of how far out the budget takes us. And so we want to make sure those sewer lines are going to last that long because the last thing you want to do is have a sewer line fail and then you have to dig a brand new road. That's the worst thing you can do with a brand new road. And so so the LID also allows for the city to allow for funding. So those property owners don't have to pay that bill right up front. The LID actually allows the city to go out, get funding, and allow the property owner to pay for those improvements in front of their house over a 10-year period. And so there's a benefit and a con, but the con is a lot of people aren't excited to pay for sidewalk in front of their house to get it fixed. It's not one of those things like a new boat or a new motorcycle or car that they're excited about. Generally, sidewalk is not a lot of excitement to fix that. Thank you. Okay. Um, and so we went through those series, but one other one that just, uh, when I was down at the ITD meeting, um, that they just had, was that a week ago, two weeks ago? Um, one of the ones as I was visiting with them, one of the, another option that came up and obviously we did discuss this, uh, with them is, is counties can opt to through a vote where it'd have to be a vote through the county, kind of like a permanent levy override, but you can opt to increase, um, your yearly registration fees, right? Your licensing fees on your vehicles. So a county can actually go in and vote on that and you can increase that to increase the street budget to go in and then pay for different things on street. So there's another option that just came forward that I just heard about. So that's a new option. So there could be other ones that maybe we haven't even thought of before, but... Yeah.

Mr. Mayor?

Yes, go ahead.

Just a question. Have you checked into what the possibility, how much that would raise?

Yeah. So you would set how much you wanted to increase that right on top of the typical registration fee. You would set that through the vote. You would say, you know, if we wanted to do thirty five additional dollars on that and then you can look and see, OK, what revenue would that bring in? What would that do for it? So so through that vote, you just set what that price is. But but we you really haven't had time to. No way. I just barely found out about it. So I was just throwing that out as, hey, there's other options sometimes that come up that maybe we're not aware of. Council Member Reeser.

Real quick, I don't know if you found this out because it's brand new. Would that be a countywide vote or just residents of the city?

I think it's countywide. So I think you have to do it countywide. I don't know how that split would work. I know they did it in Ada County. The mayor sent me over an article just barely on that, the Ada County. But Ada County is a little bit different because they have a highway that covers the county.

And then one kind of follow-up is, would that require a two-thirds vote like many of the other things that we need or a simple majority vote?

That's what I have to look into and see what that requires. But I can find out that information and bring it back if the council wants to look at that option as well. Yeah. Okay. Was there anybody else? Questions before we continue on? Okay. All right, so we looked at those and then the committee kind of narrowed it down to four options, potential options, right? One was set aside a budget for sidewalk repair, a sidewalk cost sharing split. So take on more than just the curb and gutter, do a cost sharing split and then permanent levy override. And then sidewalk cost sharing split with a permanent levy override were the four options. options that we looked at. And so that first one, budget item for sidewalk repair and replacement, the city of Caldwell sets aside $150,000 a year just for sidewalk replacement. So the budgets that you would look at for that would either be the general fund or the street budget. So no additional revenue. It's just you're just taking One money from the budget and then using it for that. So there is that option. Yes, Council Member Johnson.

I just wanted to clarify on that one. And that would be doing it different than we do now because Caldwell doesn't tie it to street reconstruction. So it would be saying... This is when we do sidewalks. This is how many we do a year. We have $150,000 a year to do it. We don't do it when we reconstruct streets anymore, just to have it make sense, because I don't know. It needs a little background there.

No, thank you.

Mayor? Yes. That's Member Riggins. Keith, $150,000 doesn't do very many feet of sidewalk. No.

No, with the cost. So that was an amount. Yeah, which is interesting.

It's interesting that they set aside $150,000, but $150,000 doesn't do very many feet of... So, you know, I mean, it still wouldn't really help us much as far as what we're trying to do, I think.

Yeah, and that was just saying $150,000. So it could be... Depending on what the city council wanted to put in at that.

Council Member Johnson.

Sorry, I just wanted to add one thing to that, too, to help it make sense, too. We could break down all that. I think if you look at it, it helps you make sense. If you break down like this is how much of the total LID is for street reconstruction. This is how much for curb and gutter. This is how much for sidewalk. And then it helps that $150,000. It puts it in perspective for you because it might not be as much as you're thinking. I'm not even saying that that's the best option. I'm just saying that we went through and looked at how like this is how much we spend on this, this and this. If you break it out, it helps you understand it better.

Yeah. Thank you. Okay. All right. Continue. All right. So the next one, right, would just be doing a little bit more on the sidewalk replacement cost sharing. So the city would pick up 30% and then the property would pick up 70%. So that was an option. And then same type of thing, right, just comes out of the general fund or the street fund. Okay. Council Member T. Jim.

That is on top of the curb and gutter.

Yeah, on top of the curb and gutter. This, yeah, thanks for that. So that would be on top. So picking that up. And then the next one would be a permanent levy override. So that'd be right. And this is just looking at sidewalk, right? So we still have sewer lines and things like that. But so that would be funded by a levy override. Basically, we'd be looking at $10 per 100,000 of assessed value on that. I'll have another slide that kind of shows what that breakdown on different properties would look like.

And that would be a vote, right?

And it had two thirds, two thirds, super majority for that. So any permanent levy override requires a super majority vote. And then the last option is kind of a modified with the permanent levy override would be to look at doing the permanent levy override with a A 70-30 split, but this is 70% paid by the city through that permanent levy override, the 30% paid by the property owner. So it gives a little bit more onus for the property owner because they got to pay in. I mean, one of the concerns with the 100% would just be everyone would be coming in and saying, when are you going to do my sidewalk? I'm paying into this. When are you going to come through and do my sidewalk? This has them have a little bit more skin in the game, if you will.

President Erickson. Mr. Mayor, so this has sort of morphed a little bit into just talking about just sidewalks. I thought we were going to look at possibility of like trying to replace LIDs, but this will not replace an LID, right? We still have to have for sewer connections and I don't know what else, but.

It's really would be the sewer connections, right? If you did the 100% levy override and that was going to pay for all the sidewalk and there's going to be times when we have more sidewalk and there might be times we have less sidewalk. Just depends on the street, what's happening, what we have going on. So this is kind of looking at an average on that. And as costs go up, the permanent levy override, I believe you can probably increase it by 3% a year.

Would this also cover driveways if necessary during a reconstruction?

If you're talking about the driveway approach, I believe we're just looking at sidewalk, but then looking at ADA requirements with that. So not necessarily the driveway approach on that. Now, some of them are the sidewalk and the driveway approach, right, when it's against the curb are the same. But when you have it offset, then it's different that way.

One of the... Negative things that would happen if we get rid of LIDs is sometimes, not often, but sometimes we have people that will decide, you know, if their driveway is all cracked up and stuff, they'll replace the whole driveway and they want to put that on the LID system. too, because they can spread out over 10 years. So if we get rid of LIDs, you know, they'd have to pay that cost up front, which might be tough.

I mean, that didn't happen a lot, but it does happen from time to time. Yeah. And with the sewer line replacement, we can't get rid of LIDs. I mean, that would still be a portion of it. Council member Johnson.

I think this is an important thing to point out a restraint that we have is that even if we did the permanent levy override, and even if it passed, it would only be for replacing sidewalk. Because, you know, if we, if we did all new sidewalk, we'd have to do it for like all new developments and everything would just be totally out of control. So that is one thing to remember is that if you don't have a sidewalk, even if we passed that. Love you override. It's not going to help you. It's only to replace sidewalk. And I think that's something really important to remember.

Yeah, thank you for that, Clark. If we passed it real quick, then I wouldn't have to pay for my sidewalk. That's going to go in here pretty soon.

Mr. Mayor, as I remember on all the LADs, those that were constructing new sidewalks, those were the ones that were having to pay

yeah considerable amounts of money right the others were fairly small i mean it's because piece little pieces here and there yeah depending how old it was now there was a little bit right when you get into the 88 environments right where we have that cross slope but yeah for the most part depending on how old it is or condition like that obviously the older it gets the worse condition the more that has to happen on that so okay So we have those, so if you look at, so this will give you an example of the permanent levy override analysis. Right. So this would this would give us a budget of about two hundred thirty thousand dollars. And that's that ten dollar per hundred thousand assessed value. So if you look down at the bottom, it kind of covers over a 30 year what their cost would be on that. So if you look at like a large apartment complex. Right. So you look at something that's valued in the neighborhood of twenty eight million dollars. Right. Over that 30 year, they're going to pay about one hundred and thirty five thousand dollars. over that 30 year period. You look at a townhouse, right, assessed value of 323,000, you're gonna be about $1,500 on that. So you can see a single family home is gonna be about 1,600. So that's a smaller single family home, a larger single family home, right, you're gonna be about 4,000. So it all depends on that assessed value. And then you look at like a large big box, once again, like a $21 million store, they're going to be $103,000. So that just kind of gives you an idea of how that breakdown looks when you do a permanent levy override. Um, and so it was just kind of, once again, you've, you've guys have seen this with our, our street budget, um, past five year average, we've been doing about two and a half million dollars that puts us on track to do our roads every 60 years. About, um, we're seeing that decrease going down to about $2 million. Um, so that puts us on track every 75 years. Right. So it's one of those things that the budget is a big player and how often we can get to different places. Now, obviously, we try and go after grants. We've been successful with some of those to help fund other reconstruction projects. And then if you look at kind of our street operating revenues, we're seeing that decline happening in our revenue. So it's never an easy decision. It's a lot easier when you have revenues going up and you can do more. But the idea tonight was just to kind of go over the options that we discussed in the LED committee meeting. We're not looking for an action item from cancer tonight, but what we'd like to have you guys do is To think about it, you know, maybe talk with. Community members and see if they have other things, but then we'd love to get back together and then kind of have a discussion of what direction the city council would like to go. With that, and I don't know. How soon you guys would like to get back together if you want to have a month or a couple months to get back together. We can do that. We could set up a work meeting or we could do another council meeting. Just looking for council's direction.

Any preference? Council members who were on that committee, Council Member Johnson and who else was on that committee?

Oh, both of you. Okay.

Okay. All right. Any preference would you want? Do you want to think about it for a while and get together in a while? Or do you want to try to get together pretty soon?

I would prefer to do a work meeting probably next month and just really sit down and figure out which way we want to go and then put it to a vote.

Okay. Okay.

And I think if we wait longer than a month, we might lose our momentum. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And I just actually sent you, you'll notice on your phone that Keith was talking about. I just saw that, I think, yesterday. And I thought, oh, this is interesting. I don't know if it's something that would work here or not, if people would vote for it. But I guess it's another option. So we're always just trying to keep our eyes open for other options and things that might work better. in that direction. So yes, Council Member Riggins.

Keith, do you have any idea what kind of time span it would take for if we were to go and plead for the state to raise the gas tax?

It would be a big undertaking.

Here's the reasoning behind it. And I think we all understand it is that all of those are all Great options. Actually, you guys have thought up some good stuff. But it's still all coming from our own community. A gas tax, if we were to get gas tax, it's coming from all over, right? And so you're getting money from outside of Rexburg, outside of Madison County. You're getting money from California, Montana. People that are traveling through are filling up gas here. And so... it's taking some of the pressure off of the taxpayers, us, within the community for that to happen. That's, I mean, whatever it takes to figure out what that would be, I think, again, from my perspective, it's bringing outside, anytime you can bring in outside money, it's going to help the community.

Councilmember Teigen has volunteered to take that to the state.

No, I have not. That is not why I'm raising my hand.

Go ahead.

Do we know what kind of timeline, if we did the permanent levy, that we would be looking into putting that out? Is that something we could probably just discuss at the work meeting?

Yeah, I think we've discussed it at the work meeting. When would be the best time to push that out, right? Obviously, it would just fall on... whatever election was coming up that we would want to push that out. Now, I would highly recommend that we make sure we have plenty of time to get information out to all the voters of how this would work, what the permanent levy override would do, where the money would be allocated for. Make sure we're very clear on that because I think that's important. Anytime you're going out to vote is to make sure we're clear on How that money will be spent. Yeah, that's true. Okay. Council member research.

Yes.

One quick question. And maybe it's not the appropriate time to ask it, but did the committee have a favorite option or were they more like, let's just look up all the options and let the city council decide what they think is best.

Council member Johnson.

I would like to answer that because I think it would help the council members if they could have been in the meetings. I went away not knowing. I didn't feel like there was one. I don't know. I don't know how you felt. There was a variety. I feel like business owners were not a big fan of the 100% because you saw the breakdown that they would pay more. but residents that we talked to were in favor of it. Also, I don't think we had one meeting where we had every single committee member there, and that made it a lot more difficult to come to a consensus. But I think if you asked any of the committee members, they each had one that they preferred, which makes, I think that shows how hard this issue is. I think it's pretty difficult.

Good information.

I would add to what Council Member Johnson said, that I would think that they would lean towards one of the levees. is probably the residents. That's what they were. Either the 100% levy or the 70-30 split levy.

Okay. All right. Any further questions or comments? Well, thank you. Those of you who participate in that committee, we thank you for your time and efforts there as well as the citizens who were on that committee as well. That's a lot of work and time devoted to trying to figure out a way to to do things in a better way um so i guess we will leave that at that and uh one more question yes councilmember johnson do you think it's a good idea to decide on a date for that work meeting now so that people can put it on their calendar so that we have all the council members there like is that something we could do we could yeah we could i would love that um but Yeah, keeping in mind, we probably are going to try to, well, I was going to say we probably want to have like the CERT people come like we talked about and make a presentation, but I don't think we need a work meeting for that. I think we could just do that.

Is the second council meeting in October? A good one. I just think of the first one. Let's look at our calendars. Potato harvest going on. That might be a little more difficult, but I was thinking maybe the second one.

Second meeting in October?

Yeah, second council meeting in October.

Okay, which would be the 21st, yeah. That looks okay. How is everybody for that meeting? October 21st. You good?

You good?

All right. Let's go ahead and schedule it for October 21st. And we'll put that on the agenda. Deborah, would you please send out an invite to everybody for that? Okay. Thank you very much. October 21st. Yeah.

Just make sure that double check. Okay. All right.

All right. Thank you for that information, Keith. We appreciate it. Let's move on to item number two, which is to approve an ITD local professional services agreement for Forsgren Associates to design the Teton River connecting path and pedestrian bridge project. That sounds exciting.

Yes. So if you recall, we received a grant. And so this pathway is on the north side of the Teton River, kind of there by Albertsons heading east. And then with a pedestrian bridge coming across the river there. So we kind of can make it like a little loop, if you will, there. And so what we're recommending that we enter into this contract with forefront and associates. And the contract is stipulated not to exceed.

Is there a map so we can see where you're?

Yeah, we can bring up the. Sorry, I meant to recognize you before we stepped up.

That was council member teaching, by the way, council member teaching.

Yes.

Okay, so we are looking with that grant. We have an existing pathway that you can kind of see right through here. Coming up and then this grant would take that pathway and then we would run it along the river. Or originally, we're looking at the bridge here, but we're trying to see if we can push it a little further and get the bridge over to this side. But the pathway. Would go follow along the river all the way down to this location where we have property from the city owns property with that for that pathway and then would come across and then. This location is the new part that we're just building right now. So that's remember teaching.

there be access for those homes like untangled wood?

Untangled wood, would they be able to access that pretty easily, the path?

Yeah. There's a spot through here that this development's putting in that they could access the path.

That would be up to the development, though, to... Yeah, for that more connected, yeah.

That would be a pretty good spot, though. Okay, one of the things that we have talked about, Council, that you know, you ought to maybe weigh in on or just give me your opinion. And we'd probably refer this to our Parks and Trails Committee to discuss as well. But that is... we've looked at, internally, we've looked at the possibility of maybe instead of doing an asphalt path, we just do what they call a crushed granite path. They'll take crushed granite, put it down, and then put a small gravel and pack it down really good. And in a lot of places, they're doing that because Well, we've got to look at, we've got to have them look at the expense and see, you know, how the expense compares. But in my mind, it seems like over time you would have less maintenance. You know, you just have to spray some weeds once in a while, but you wouldn't have as much asphalt maintenance. So that's something that I don't know if you've got any opinions on. If you do, let's hear them. Yes, Council Member Tijan.

Would it be ADA accessible for people with wheelchairs or would that make it more difficult for them?

Most of the ones that I've seen, like in London, they do a lot of those, even in the city, and they're very solid.

That would just be my only concern, is trying to make sure that it's still accessible.

Yeah, and you'd see a lot of people pushing strollers along on those, and they make them so that they're packed. They're really almost like... Concrete, but you can dig into it if you needed to or wanted to, but it's pretty solid.

Do they become muddy with rain?

Maybe what?

Muddy?

It drains pretty well, yeah, because it rains a lot in London.

Yes, Mr. Mayor.

Yes, Council President.

I agree 100%. We've got to do something different than asphalt because all of the trails are, they're falling apart. They come up underneath them, they're cracking. I mean, when you talk about ADA accessible, I'm not sure you could take a wheelchair down any of the paths that we have without rattling somebody to death. So I think we should look at alternatives. Absolutely.

And good news, just so that you know, we did get a $15,000 grant from AARP. And we just barely found out that we also got, was it $10,000 from Rocky Mountain Power? Or $10,000 or something in that. So to be able to make some trail repairs in Nature Park. So a lot of that asphalt that's going like this, we're going to go and cut it out and replace it. Unfortunately, the $25,000 probably won't do it all. But we'll add to some of that from our parks fund. There are trails money that we have and try to improve those trails that have gone kind of bad. So, but we'll, but so can we, when the, let's see, who is it? Keller? Forsgren. When Forsgren takes a look at this, can we have them?

evaluate both of those options and yeah we can have a discussion on it my one concern would just be plowing it in the winter time if we want to keep that pathway open i'm not sure how well how well that would plow i don't i don't know on that that would just be one one concern i do like the idea because the roots coming up through uh raising up the asphalt i know kids on bikes like to jump them so that i mean there is a plus side yeah but generally it's it's not nice you lose that but

Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Is there any other questions or comments on approving this particular item from anyone? If none, I would entertain a motion to go ahead with this professional services agreement. Is there such a motion?

Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion that we approve the ITD Local Professional Services Agreement for Forest Green Associates for the Teton River Connecting Path and Pedrestian Bridge Project.

All right. Thank you. Is there a second to that motion? I'll second. Second by Council President Erickson. Any further discussion or questions? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Motion passes. We will go ahead with that contract. Any other questions for Mr. Davidson before we let him off the hook here? Second East is open now, at least on.

Oh, second East is open. Good news. Yes. So that sewer line connection is complete and paved back now. Nor second East still has construction going on. All right. Thank you.

Council Member Teejian has one more question.

I do have a question. So when are we starting the construction on University for the light?

For the it's going it's already been up there now yeah for the like I got seven so yeah. Well, that university oh sorry 7000 Center sorry yeah yeah sorry sorry I was competing for the universe, the light on university as I'm sorry. yeah so it's under construction right now okay. Unfortunately, there were some delays in getting the materials in. So they're trying to get the underground in right now. And then they're going to shut down for that when the students come back for that week. And then they'll start back up after that.

So will that road be open when the students are here next week?

Yeah, it's open right now. OK, right now they're just putting in the bases along the sides.

Yeah. OK. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Davidson. I appreciate that. All right. Item number eight is mayor's business. We do have a proclamation. But before we go there, I will just give you a little bit of information on some of the things Keith and I actually attended. Oh, boy, you guys don't want to leave. The exciting stuff is coming up. All right, we'll let you go. We can't keep you here. We can't force you to stay. Thank you for coming. It was fun having you. We appreciate you being here. All right. Yeah, as I mentioned, Keith and I, we actually hosted right here in this room what the Idaho Water Users Association, which is a statewide association. We hosted what they call the water college. Every year they do a water college, which is an educational thing specifically designed for legislators to come to to learn more about water and all that water issues we have. So we spent about an hour right here in this room talking about the different water issues, and Keith gave a really good presentation along with some other folks. from rural water and different organizations and we helped try to really let the future and current legislators know things about water and help them to understand the issues and how we can try to do things better as a state. So anyway, and then we got on a couple of buses and we took them on a tour. We went over to the Walters Pond where we do our recharge and showed them how we do that and then we traveled up around St. Anthony and Ashton and looked at some updated irrigation project things that the state has helped to fund. And it was really helpful. I was interested because a lot of the water meetings I'm in, they always talk about how we can be more efficient with canals, with automation and things. And you kind of get automation, but I didn't really know exactly what they're talking about. And we were able to see some of these big head gates that normally the water masters would have to go out and literally physically pull boards out of the canal to let water go by. And now they've put in these automated stainless steel gates that they can control with their phone from their home and it'll automatically open the gates and close them. And one of the examples they gave us was last year, or maybe not last year, but before they put in these automated ones up on the canal up by St. Anthony. They wanted to do some water recharge to send water out to the sand dunes, out there to the Aegean lakes, because they just let water go out there and it sinks into the ground in the aquifer. But it took them so long to go down and pull all the boards. By the time they got that done, it was like 13 days, and they're limited on the time that they can do that. And so by the time they got them all pulled, the time limit was over, so they weren't able to do any recharge. So now they've got these automated ones in there where the guy can actually just sit in his homers in his truck and he can he can say open and they all just open up and the water just flows. And so a lot of things like that that are really interesting to see and learn about that that can help us be more efficient with our water. And that's what we got to do, because, you know, if we don't have a big snow year this year, we're going to kind of be in trouble with our water supplies next year or so. Pray for snow, especially in the mountains, right? Okay, let's go ahead with Proclamation number 2026-04 is Constitution Week, and it's something that happens on September 17th to the 23rd. So we are going to go ahead and read this proclamation, and then if you feel like it, we will ratify it. All right, let me find it here. I think I opened my envelope from the wrong side. Okay. Here we go. This is Proclamation No. 2026-04, proclaiming September 17th to the 23rd as Constitution Week, whereas September 17th, 2026, marks the 239th anniversary of the drafting of the Constitution of the United States of America by the Constitutional Convention, and whereas it is fitting and proper to afford official recognition to this magnificent document and its memorable anniversary and to the patriotic celebrations which will commemorate the occasion, and whereas Public Law 915 guarantees the issuing of a proclamation each year by the President of the United States of America designating September 17th through 23rd as Constitution Week, now therefore I, Jerry Merrill, by virtue of the authority vested in me as Mayor of the City of Rexburg, to hereby proclaim the week of September 17th through 23rd as Constitution Week, and ask our citizens to reaffirm the ideals the framers of the Constitution had in 1787 by vigilantly protecting the freedoms guaranteed to us through this guardian of our liberties, remembering that lost rights may never be regained. Adopted by the City of Rexburg, State of Idaho on the second day of September of 2026. All right. Given that proclamation, is there any discussion or questions about this before we move forward with the ratification? Hearing none, I would entertain a motion to ratify this proclamation.

Mr. Mayor? Yes, Council Member Reicher. Well, as the one government teacher on here, maybe I should do this one. I propose that we ratify Proclamation 2026-04, recognizing September 17th to the 23rd as Constitution Week.

All right, thank you. Is there a second to that motion?

I'll second.

Council Member Reicher?

Seconded. I think I heard her just beat you by barely. Seconded by Council Member Teejan. Any further discussion or questions? You're welcome to make any comments about this proclamation if you'd like. If there are none, I would entertain a motion and a second on the floor. Is anybody in favor? All in favor. Sorry, that wasn't a good way to put that. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All right. Any opposed? Thank you. That motion passes. Boy, I'm starting to try to go too fast here. All right. Let's move on to item number 9A, which is the planning and zoning recommendation to approve a conditional use permit for for a cell tower and regional business center located at approximately 1450 North, second East in the city of Rexburg. Mr. Parkinson, what can you tell us about this?

Mayor, council members, thank you. The tower will be, they're requesting to locate it Right in this back corner, this is the Walmart store. They want to put it right in that back corner. And it is a three-row cell tower. They've got FCC approval, FAA approval. One of the challenges we come up against was how do we keep this from landing on buildings because it was located within that landing distance. They have an engineer that has signed off guaranteeing that this will fall upon itself and not land outside that zone. And so after that, then we approved it as staff, took it to PNZ, and they are recommending it to you for approval.

Thank you. Is there any questions about that for Mr. Parkinson? Hearing none, I would entertain a motion to move forward with this conditional use permit. Is there such a motion?

I'll make a motion, Mayor. Council Member Riggins. We move forward with the recommendation to approve the conditional use permit, the cell tower, the regional business center, located approximately 1450 North, 2nd East, City of Rexburg.

All right, thank you. Is there a second to that motion?

I'll second.

Seconded by Council Member Johnson. Any further questions or discussion? Yes, Council Member Reeser.

One quick question. Will this improve the cell coverage of my home on the northeast corner, northwest corner of the city?

Well, that I don't know.

I can pretty well almost see it across.

I'm like you. I'm hoping it approves it where I live.

Mr. Mayor?

Yes, Council Member Erickson.

When he was over at the city meetings just to bring up some information, I would sit down and talk to the Verizon, I guess, area manager. And that was one of the biggest thing is they had to find some more locations to put a Verizon tower in the city of Rexburg. And they said, we need some help with that. So they were asking for that there when I was talking to them at the city meeting over in Boise. So this should be a good thing for our city to bring up Verizon. And I think they talked to Plan Zoning, T-Mobile, and...

Well, Verizon has signed. There are two others they are trying to. And they're hoping for the other two. AT&T, but Verizon.

The other thing I do like is it's located in a commercial area rather than in the middle of a residential. That seems to fit a lot better, too. So that's nice. Yeah. Okay. All right. At this point, then, is there a motion to approve? Did we already have a motion and a second? Oh, that's right. And then we had a question. Okay. All right. So at this point in time, all in favor of this action?

Aye.

Any opposed? All right. Thank you. We'll go ahead and get that CUP approved, or we will get it noted. All right. Thank you. Item B is to review the committee recommendation of the police station facility options. So we're going to turn the time over to Mr. Matt Nielsen and Chief Rhodes for this review. Thank you for being here, by the way. Appreciate your time.

Okay, Josh and I are going to... of tag team this a little bit and then um just so you guys know when we say internal committee on this um you know the people that were there so the mayor council member reser was there we had our attorney myself as a cfo and then we had josh and gary so the police chief and assistant police chief. And then we did have, we also invited a few of our consultants, I guess you would say, to one of those meetings as well. And so anyways, as this comes forward, just that was the committee that we're talking about. And so we're going to jump in. Deb's going to pull the map too. So if we need to pull up and show locations, we can. But do you want to jump in? Yeah.

So first, I would just like to thank the support that we've had from the council and from the city as we've looked for different options and we went through the process. this last year and all that we went through in the planning and approvals and trying to work through that. As the city continues to grow everywhere we look, there's still more and more growth with apartments and buildings. And as that growth continues, our need for a facility to accommodate the needs of the people and for our ability to do our job continues to increase. I believe most everyone toured the police department. We outlined just a few of the main things that we are really in a critical spot for timing. So as this continues and we aren't quite sure which direction we're going, and as those years expand out, the need continues to be more critical. The biggest things we face right now are evidence. It is in the basement of their current facility. And we continually run out of room. And we're trying to relocate some of that evidence to our secondary facility over at the training facility. But those needs continue. As we take more calls, more cases, we get more and more evidence that we are processing. The technology, we're at a point, too, with cameras and updating some of our just the main technology that we're struggling financially to keep up with the updates. But the biggest things too right now is our space. Right now we have multiple detectives married up in the same room and it makes it difficult as they do investigations and they're working on privacy with victims and witnesses. Usually, well, it delays a lot of their Their interviews, they have to plan to be in a separate room. With that is our witness interview rooms. We don't have an actual witness and victim interview room. We have a kind of a, we call it a hard interview room. And we have a multi-use conference room that we use as an interview room right now. And we make it work. But as we get bigger cases and have multiple suspects or multiple victims, we're having to use other facilities to do those interviews. So those are some of the bigger things. And then obviously that future planning as we continue to grow as a department and we add more personnel, we are running out of that space for everything from parking to the office space. And I know a lot of you have toured and come through. And here next week when the students start coming back, probably September 14th is the Monday. You can drive by the police station and you'll kind of see the overflow. We'll usually have anywhere from 30 to 50 people stacked up, lined out the door, getting parking permits. And so one of the other last concerns we have is like fingerprints. They're working right on the top of each other in our front office lobby area. And so those are some of the bigger concerns that we have, some of the critical needs that we're facing as we look for timing, as we look for different options for the police station growth. As you all know, we did the general obligation bonds in November, 2025, and then again in May, 2025 or 2026. Both those measures failed after the first one. Appreciate you working with us. We had the survey that we put out and we had a lot of good feedback from the community. We made some adjustments on that bond measure to reduce the costs. That was one of the bigger concerns. And location was one of the concerns. We did all that we could to adapt and adjust to what the public recommended and wanted. And then with that second attempt on the bond, unfortunately, our percentage of voters did go up and the percentage of our yes votes went down. And so that was a concern we had as we created the committee to review what our best options were moving forward. Like Matt mentioned, that's where we pulled together and we've started looking at different options throughout the city, what's best for us, for the public. We've taken a lot of comments, opinions that we took after that second bond. We didn't do another survey after the second bond, but one of the biggest concerns, the feedback that we got back was the location of our proposed location during that, the first two bond proposals. So I'll let Matt kind of explain a little more of the options that we went over as a committee.

All right, thank you, Chief.

All right.

And then as we go through these, so we have three options that we show here. It's not to say that there's not other options out there. And so, I mean, by all means, if council members feel like there's another better option, then let's discuss those, right? And so, but these are the three that we felt like were real options when you look at, you know, where this could be built, how it could be built, how much it would cost. We looked at analysis of down payments. Could you come up with a down payment and reduce the burden of how much you borrow? All of those things were kind of taken into consideration as we looked at these three options. And then of course, we also looked at funding sources, which will be a topic that we continue to repeat tonight. Because, you know, really, you have to look at your funding sources, right? Because it really kind of goes back to what options are feasible financially. I'm not saying they're always the best option, but financially, they may be the best option. And so as we looked at it, here's the three we zeroed in on, and we'll take you through an individual analysis of each. So the first one was we said, do we wait a few years and try to pass another general obligation? And I'll say GO going forward, GO bond, which of course takes a super majority and just build a new police station facility. Because I mean, ultimately a new police station facility would be great in addressing all of those concerns, right? The second thing we looked at is we said, do we look at purchasing an existing building in town? And we looked at a couple sites. One of them, the individual asked us not to disclose. The other one, we kind of analyzed the BMC site because we'd had some people say, well, what about that BMC site? And honestly, I don't even know if it's for sale. We don't know how much it costs. But we did our best analysis that we could. And so as we did that, we looked at existing buildings, buying that, and then renovating slash possibly having to add some additional space that's new space because some of those buildings would be too small right from the get-go. And then, of course, the third option we looked at is do we consider – and we've discussed this. If you look back the last six years at Council Minutes, we've discussed this option. And so we said, do we look at the building of a new city hall office building – And then renovate this current city hall into a police station facility. So really, those are the three options. And so we will take you through option one. So, you know, option one, if we were able to wait a few years and pass a general obligation bond, there's some positives like we already own the land. There is still that concern of where that lands located. Obviously, it's not located in the downtown. But some of the positives are that the police could really have all of their facilities there. They could have their training facility, they could have their offices, they could have public gathering space. Those are positives. And they can address really all the concerns that Josh covered from safety to security, technology, etc. It would be a new construction and we could design it in a way that down the road 20 years from now, we could do additions and expand that building. Particularly on that site because it's five acres. The biggest issues though were that there's fewer funding sources available when you pay for that. And you've got to think of those funding sources as how much can you come up with up front for a down payment, and then how much can you come up for for an annual payment if you were to borrow money. And then, of course, the biggest thing is the timing's unknown. We would have to go back out to vote. It may not pass again. It may never pass. We don't know those things. And so that was kind of our analysis of that first one. And then the other thing that I will mention is that we did, and not in this, we actually looked at it as we went through and considered putting the police station, new police station on the ballot. Remember, it's a while back, but we actually already did look at an alternative funding through a lease appropriation. And it came back at, I think it was 800 and something thousand a year that the general fund would have to come up with. And so it just was not... something that financially we could afford to do and so that's important to remember as well um so then we any questions on option one before i jump to option two or am i good to just keep moving through these yes council member tijan and i'm i'm assuming that option one is based on the the 14 million that we were asking before but that prices could go up

Right. And so that's part of like, if it takes 20 years, it could also increase.

Yeah. And what we did when we get down to that section where we look at initial construction costs, we took everything we had come up with and we added 10% to kind of create a range. Yeah. OK, so I think there was there another hand or are we good? Nope. OK. Option two. So purchase an existing building in town and renovate it into a police station facility. So this one was, you know, one of the challenges is you would have to locate a building that actually exists is Borsell. and meets those needs, right? And so it's kind of, it's a very difficult one because sure, there's some buildings available that may be severely undersized and require a lot of additional costs to build not only new square footage, but renovate as well. And then there are some buildings that are a little bit larger, but I'll tell you the second location that we looked at was primarily, it was a primarily a steel building to kind of give you an idea of what it looked like. I mean, it was a good looking steel building, but there was a lot of renovation costs that would have to go into that facility. And so that's the biggest X factor is we don't actually have someone coming to us and saying, buy this. We would have to go out and search for that and there's some unknowns. The other thing is that option may not address all the current police facility challenges as well. Because until you know what you're buying, you don't really know what the potential issues that are going to continue are. And then this one was also an issue because of fewer funding sources available for that down payment and annual payment. And once again, as we looked at this option, we saw that you you really wouldn't be able to come up with enough funding through the lease appropriation process. So we would probably take a general obligation bond as well. And so so the timing was very unknown. And so so we looked at that. Deb's going to roll that for us. So then we looked at this option three, building a new city hall office building, and then renovating the current city hall into a police station facility. And I'll just say, we kind of hit this on the slide a few down. We've had a lot of people say, well, what's wrong with City Hall? We're not saying that there's anything wrong with City Hall. City Hall is great. City Hall would serve City Hall's purposes for probably decades to come, to be quite honest. But there are reasons why we feel like this is a good option to build a new city hall and then move them into this current city hall and we're going to cover those. So one is, is that the police, if they were to move into this city hall, it's in a central location in the downtown, right? Which is great. Now they would have to still have some of their functions at their training facility, which is down by the shop on 5th West. But in talking to Josh and Gary, they felt like they could move some of those trainings into this building, that this building could serve some of that. But you're still going to have those two locations. this option provides the most funding sources. So from a financial standpoint, this is the best option in terms of coming up with the largest down payment, which then reduces your borrowing and which reduces your annual payments. It creates the least amount of interest to be paid back. And it also creates the least amount of financial burden to the general fund and to the taxpayer if you don't have to do a general obligation bond. Because then you're not asking them to increase their property taxes.

So what are those funding sources?

We're going to hit them.

So that's coming up.

We'll dive in. The other thing is that as we looked at... So this is where, Deb, I'm going to have you zoom in by the library. So we had to look at, well, if we were to build a new city hall, where would it be? What's the pros and cons of that? So as you know, go ahead and just highlight it. So right across from the library here, this 1 and 1 half acre parcel, has been purchased by the city of Rexburg in Madison County. They bought it from the school district. There's been a little confusion. Some people have said, well, no, Urban Renewal bought that. That's not true. Urban Renewal bought the 4.2 acres that's down below that. Where the where the building is and one of the strengths to this location is urban renewal has agreed to come in and put in public parking and when you look at the layouts of that public parking just for flat surface alone. I don't remember the exact number, but it's like 140-something public parking stalls. And so that makes this a very attractive location for any municipal building, city or county, because there would be public parking there that would not only serve buildings here that are new, but also the existing buildings such as the library, the tabernacle. et cetera. The other thing that's advantageous about this parcel is you'll notice on the west and the north, I probably got that wrong. Did I get that right? The west and north side, there's bus lanes. And so that's another positive to these locations. And so as you think about form-based code, Form-based code requires you to build certain number of stories. And so in this location, we would have to build three stories. And so you would probably have somewhere between a 9,000 to 12,000 square foot print times three. And so that is a positive because you're taking a very small chunk of ground out of potential tax generation, if you will, for redevelopment, right? And so, so, and I mean, you got to remember all of this acreage has not been taxable for who knows how long, probably a hundred years. And so, so that's one of the things that's encouraging is if you did build a city hall here, you're taking a very small footprint out of it. You're downtown. Um, Okay, so I'm going to jump back to the slides real quick. Let's jump back to the slides. There's a few other points we want to hit. And so I already mentioned where I mentioned that there's parking that urban renewal will be adding that's all benefits. The other thing that's nice about this option in general is it allows for a transition of the police department to the old city hall once this building is complete. But it also allows us to plan. That's supposed to say first.

That's supposed to be first north.

Sorry, what?

That's supposed to be first north.

Yeah, it is supposed to be first north. Good catch. That's my bad. And it's the piece we just looked at. So... But the other thing that this does is that allows us to go to plan really for both. Right. It allows you to plan for a new city hall and it allows you to plan for a renovation in phases for this current city hall to a police station facility. The other thing that we talked about, which could happen right now, is we have this empty space upstairs. It's been empty for quite a while now. And as we talked through that, the chief felt like there was some functions that they could move over there right away that would help alleviate some of the pressure that they feel. And he can talk more about that if you want to, but that would be something we could probably do right away. As you build out this new police facility, if you go with this option in the old city hall or the current city hall, You know, you have to really look at it as a phased approach, which is not a bad thing, because as you think about continuing to collect impact fees for police, those impact fees could build up over time. And then every few years, you could look at a different project and bring in phases of redeveloping this building and expanding this building. The other thing that's a positive this building is, Um, 1 of the recommendations, and this is getting a little deeper than I probably want to, but 1 of the things we talked about is. The possibility of this, this wing over here could potentially continue to be used for governmental. Services that are not police, and then maybe transition in 3 to 5 years to being police if that makes sense. And so you can kind of phase into it. As money has become available. Okay, you did flip it to the next one. Okay, perfect. Thanks. The one thing that a lot of people don't know is square footage. So this building all in is like 28,500, which is larger than what we would have built on Pioneer Road for both the offices and the training facility. by like 4,000 something feet. And so it's actually a pretty big building that they could grow into. Now, obviously it's less acreage. And so that's one of the things that would be a little more challenging. So if this was to happen, this third option, obviously once all this happened, we could sell off, Well, we could sell the land on Pioneer anytime that you guys decide to. Now, keep in mind that the person that sold that to us has first right to purchase that back. If he doesn't want to purchase it back, then we can put it out on the open market and sell it. The other thing is, is you could sell off the current police station on Main Street once all of the transition has occurred and also put that into the funding. Okay. You know, with this as a city or a police facility, one big thing is that you'd have to make some parking improvements because one of the key things is we're trying to create a secure entry and parking area for the police. And so you want to kind of think about that. So there may be some cost to potentially expand this parking and create that. Um, the other thing that was attractive to the committee was that we knew that at least appropriation purchase option was available if we were to build a new city hall. Um, and the other thing that's attractive too, is you can also consider alternative financing, such as a public private partnership. I'm not as comfortable with those because the, um. I mean, they're an option, but the lease appropriation is a proven model. I mean, that's actually how they built the Idaho Falls Police Station. It's how they built the Chubbuck City Hall and Police Station. So it's a very proven model. Cities can use it without a vote. And then you can borrow money. Typically, you're going to borrow between 20 to 30 years. Um, so roll this down. I think actually roll it up for a second. I think one thing that I didn't mention and keep rolling up right there. So if you were to renovate the current police or sorry, city hall into a police station facility, these were kind of the three, Hey, we got to do these in phase one, address these issues is secure entry in the front. adequate evidence-based and secure parking lot. Those were kind of the got to do those right from the get-go, if you will. So that'd be kind of, wouldn't you agree, those are kind of your big needs?

And a lot of the office space internally, when we look at meeting the needs of those interview rooms, secure, having multiple areas, the current setup of the building could be used without a lot of renovation. Obviously, we have to do some security.

Chief, would you move over the microphone? Yeah, thank you.

A lot of the buildings are already set up with the security cameras that we would continually just use. But specific offices for interview rooms would have to, really would just have to put cameras and mics for those interview rooms. But current space that's already here could be utilized for those interview rooms that would solve that problem.

Yeah, we had a question right here. Council Member Riggins.

In thinking about this, would we need to build a new city hall? We don't need a vote from the public on that?

Not if we use this option that Matt's talking about.

Okay.

Because we can do a lease appropriation, which we will explain where that funding will come from so that you understand that better. But it doesn't come from property taxes, which is what people were really opposed to on the general obligation. Did you have a question or comment? Yes.

Are you going to explain to us why we can't use the lease appropriation to build a new police station? I'm still not understanding that.

We can't use it. We just can't afford it. That's where I said the payment came out to close to $822,000.

But you're going to show us why it's a cheaper payment to build a video.

Yeah, I will. Yeah. So just so you guys know, let me just cover. It's called a certificate of participation if you want to get formal. But the lease appropriation, essentially what it is, is that the local government owns the land. And then what happens is the improvement is developed. And essentially... I'll just give it the basic term. It's basically owned by somebody else, that building, for the term of that. But what happens is every year you have to appropriate in your budget process to pay that lease. And when you appropriate that, then you pay it to that person that built that building. And then the term is at the end of that term, you own that building. So the local entity owns it. So it's basically a lease to own. Now, if you guys, you know, say we got down the road 10 years and somebody says, hey, we're going to give you a new city hall, you know, like the ice rink and we move in there. We can actually move in there. You can say, okay, we're no longer going to appropriate this in our budget. And then whoever built that building has the ability to essentially rent it out through the rest of that lease term. And then we still own it at the end of that term. But what's attractive to people that develop those and fund those is there's very little chance that we're not going to appropriate that each year, right? I mean, it's, there's very little chance somebody's gonna come to us and say, hey, we have a better option for you and it's free. And so, so anyways, just keep that in mind. So let me go through this. This was a huge question that kind of we discussed as a committee is we said, well, why is the new city hall building being considered? You know, cause we need a police station facility. We looked at it and we said, well, this is the possible best option to the taxpayer because we can use that alternative funding like a lease appropriation, and it likely does not require a general obligation bond, which increases the taxes of our residents. The other reason why we liked it that I already mentioned is it's a smaller footprint where you would build the new city hall. And it would be in the form-based code. It doesn't take other buildings off the tax roll. It's located near other public services, as I mentioned. So the library, the tabernacle, et cetera. And if the county was ever to build their building there, it would be located there. which if they choose not to, the city has first right to buy that property back as well. And so the other thing is it's close to that public parking. Another major factor is, as we went through our analysis, the cost per square foot of construction for a three-story office building should be substantially less than what we were quoted to build a new police station facility. And we're talking at least a... probably about a third less. And so that's a very substantial factor as well. And then, of course, this offers the most funding sources, which we're going to hit, I think, on the next slide for the down payment and the annual payments. So let me just show you that. Hopefully it's big enough. So going across the top there, you can see column 1 is a description, column 2 is option 1, column 3 is option 2, and then option 3. And I was going to mention, if anybody wants to pull these up, they're online as well. The whole slide presentation is online. You can pull it up. So as you look at the funding sources here for all three of these options, general obligation bond is totally on the table for all three of these options. You could go do a general obligation bond for a city hall. I don't think anybody would pass that. I wouldn't recommend it. And then the other thing that we can use, of course, is the general fund. And we can use any savings that we've set aside. So you guys know we have a fund where we've been setting aside dollars for a municipal building. So those are all on the table for all three options. Impact fees could really be used for all three of these options. And then grants, CDBGs, grants. Anytime you're doing public buildings or parking, CDBGs are pretty attractive. That's what we had for the HVAC at the Tabernacle. We used a CDBG for this parking lot, that parking lot. We've used them a lot. And so those those could potentially be awarded. You know, you could also look at contributions like we've had people approach the police and say, oh, I donate money to help you build a police station. We might be like, well, this is your opportunity. And then the revolving loan fund. So let me talk through that. So as I went back and I looked at the history. of how municipal buildings have been built in the past. So I looked at this very building. So this building, I think we moved in in 2009, if I remember right. And so we've been in this building, I can't believe it, but we've been in this building 17 years. It's crazy to me. And even if we went with this option, we would be in this building for at least 20 years or close to it. But with the revolving loan fund, what that is, is there is a portion of that that was it was a grant. And so what happens over time is we invest that revolving loan fund. So we invested in two ways. If it's cash, we put it into an investment and we make a return on it. or we lend it out to a business, right? And then a business pays us actually a higher interest rate than when we invest. And so, you know, every couple decades, we're able to build that fund up quite a bit. And so as I looked at that, in 2009, that was actually a pretty big funding source for this building. And when we built this building, when they looked at all of these funding sources that I'm going to show you, they were all a part of that plan. The only difference is they did not borrow money. They paid it all with down payment. And so the ROF, I believe there would be approximately 400,000 available that you could put into a down payment from that. That could work for any of these. So then we get into the, what I call the, we're gonna say the departments that pay an overhead rate. So as you look at those, you have building safety, you have engineering shop, streets, sanitation, water, wastewater. treatment and collections, GIS, airport, and golf. As we go out every year, as you think about those core services that are being provided, we don't just have an accounting department to have an accounting department. We don't have a legal team to just have a legal team. We're there to service these these departments, divisions that are out there. I must have wrote it somewhere else. But as you think about who that is. Oh, thank you. She said it right there. As you think about those expenses that we're able to bill out as an overhead, some of that is executive, that's city council expenses. Some of that is human resources, information technology, customer service, finance, legal, etc. Every year, we bill out for those services. that we're providing to those departments. Now we don't go out and bill it to the police department or the recreation or the parks, because we're all operating in the same fund. They're being subsidized by the general fund. So sure, I could go bill it, but it would just show up as an expense and you'd basically be billing yourself and taking it out of one pocket and putting it in the other pocket. So as you think about these overheads, there's these departments, we could go out to, for example, building safety. We could go out to sanitation and we could say, hey, this is the cost to build a new city hall and your share of a down payment is this amount. And then we would have to come up with what we have to borrow. And then whatever we borrow, that annual payment, they would pay that through their overhead rate each year. So for example, as I went through, I worked with Mike, who was our municipal advisor at Zions, and I came up with this scenario. So for example, let's say that we built a new city hall and it cost $11 million. If we came up with a down payment of $6 million, and we had to borrow $5 million. I had him run it through today's rates. And to do an appropriation lease, annual appropriation lease at 20 years, it's about 4.13% interest, comes out to about $380,000 a year. Well, of that $380,000, I can charge about 69% of that annual amount to these various departments. And so 31% of it is being covered by the general fund. So in that scenario, that's about $118,000 a year. Well, we can come up with $118,000 a year, not $800,000 a year.

Question, Council President Erickson.

I understand that. Where does the department get the money to pay it?

So you'd have to go in and you'd have to see if they have enough money in reserves to do that. Or as you plan over the next two, three years, that becomes a budgeting part of your budgeting process.

We can only raise the tax base a certain percentage every year. I mean, it's not like, I mean, the money doesn't grow on trees. It's got to come from somewhere.

Yeah. Yeah. And to be specific, I would go look at building safety and I would say, we're going to pull this out of your reserve. I would go look at.

They've got to do more with less.

Yeah. But I mean, the thing you've got to remember is they have a reserve to pay these overhead costs as well.

Do they have a reserve to pay an additional amount?

Yeah.

That would be the process we go through. Right. But then that budget comes to us and there's only so much budget.

These are mostly coming from fees, not taxes. You don't wanna raise the fees.

And some of them are a difficult decision, right? Streets, for example. Like you guys may look at it, I may come back to you when we go through these scenarios and I may be like, hey, you've gotta have streets, just as an example, come up with $600,000 for this down payment. It becomes a budgeting question at that point. Like, is that something that you feel like is of value to the community to budget that out of their reserves? And so, I mean, it all becomes part of the budget process, right?

Council Member Johnson has a question.

So, I mean, to me, the council could accomplish the same thing, not with every one of these because I understand like wastewater has its rules and things. The council could say, we're going to shrink all of these budgets, and we're going to increase what we give to the police and we could accomplish the very same thing. You can't some of it, you're wrong. How could we not? Because you're saying you're going to charge them an additional amount of money. And we just got through saying we don't have any more money for streets, but now you're saying you're going to charge them more overhead.

You cannot charge people that are getting water or sanitation or wastewater services.

to subsidize the cost as i just said some of them you can't but some of them you could we could say we're going to shrink the streets budget and we're going to increase the police's budget we have the ability to do that so i'm just saying that that what you're saying i agree with it but part of it we could accomplish the same thing if the council said we want a new police station we could lower some of those budgets we have that ability and we could increase the police's budget and that's something that you haven't said yet and it is something that we could And I just wanted to point that out.

And you could.

Yeah.

I will stand here and tell you financially, politically, good luck.

Well, politically, good luck for building a new city hall too.

The problem that you have is you would be looking at basically taking it from these general fund departments. And you better be prepared to cut out a lot of department services to be able to come up with the cost. And I'm just telling you from a financial standpoint that

You just said that we have to reduce their budgets to pay that overhead.

Well, they have to build it into their budget.

That's the same thing. Not really. That's the same thing. They're not getting somewhere else.

Some services have to figure it out. There's not money. They probably have to bump the fees.

I'm open. If you can come and present that to the city council and how it's going to work financially, let's look at it. I don't know how these things work.

What you're saying, I agree with. Just there's those things that you're not pointing out.

Well, that's because they don't really work. And did you have a comment council member action?

Are you going to keep going through the presentation? I do have some comments, but I'm going to wait till you finish it to the end. Yeah, sure.

So, as you look at, let me roll that. Can you make that smaller? So, and I, and I will say, like. There's a lot of political decisions that are part of this process, right? And there's a lot of financial decisions because if we go through this process and the city council's like, no, we need to have more square footage for this department, this department, this department. No, we don't like that grade of construction. We want the highest grade. This option could potentially also be too expensive. I'm not saying that it will for sure work. We have to go through a process to determine that. But I think it's worth looking at because I think it is a real option that does not require potentially a general obligation bond. So here's the initial construction cost analysis. So obviously these are estimates and it would require further analysis. Option one is probably the closest thing out of all of these options, to be quite honest, because we have already went through a planning process for that. And so option one would be something like 16 and a half to 18 million. Option two, we believe, as we looked at the two sites and went through the analysis, we believe that would be probably your second most expensive option, probably in that 14 to 16 million range. Option three, we believed would be between 13 and 14 and a half million. And as I said, that could change based on opinions, people's opinions on how much square footage each department should have, where the funding should come from, how much down payment we can come up with. We'd have to go figure all of that out. So here's the internal committee recommendation So we're saying pursue option three to build a new city hall office building on first north, I'll correct that, west of the library, and then renovate this current city hall into a police station facility. So if you guys as a city council are in agreement, next steps would be to, we would recommend that you form two committees, wanted to look at a new city hall, wanted to look at the renovation of this building that's the current city hall to a police station facility. And then we would enter into a planning phase that would then determine that square footage need, the potential amounts for funding sources from down payment to annual overhead pay amounts for those borrowings, what you borrow. And then we would look at options for financing. And so we, as we mentioned, lease appropriation option is a proven model that we know of. We have had consultants say that in other states, they're seeing alternative financing, such as a public-private partnership. We just don't have a lot of examples of that in Idaho. And so I think that's the last slide, right? So that's it. Obviously, I'm sure there's questions, more questions, but...

That's what we... Yes, Council Member Racer and then Council Member Erickson.

You know, as the member of the City Council that was on the committee and going to all the meetings and stuff, I still firmly believe that the best... Let me refer it... Well, my preferred option would be to build a new police station, but... We've tried twice. And that's the process of a super majority in the state of Idaho. And that's the process of a democracy. The citizens have said no. And I don't think it will be advantageous or it would be likely to pass if we were to try it a third time. So that kind of sent us, you know, again, just to give you my perspective, it kind of set us on, OK, well, now what can we do? And the most likely option was to find a city building that could house the police station. And as far as I know, this is the only building that the city owns that could realistically house the police. And so unfortunately, though, Obviously, it's going to look from the outside like we just want to build a new city hall. We don't want to build a new city hall. I don't want to build a new city hall. Problem is that all of the city employees are going to be homeless if we turn this into a police station. And it's the only building that we've got that we feasibly can turn into a police station. So if we do that to get an adequate police station to fill the needs of our police force now and into the future, we got to figure out something else to do with City Hall. And I don't know of any building that the city already owns that can be a suitable City Hall. Once we move the police in here, and that means then that we got to kind of sort of figure out what we're going to do a city hall. And the best thing that we could come up with this committee was well we can have to build one but at least we've got some land that we can do it on. It's never been on the tax roll so it's not going to affect the tax rates that are brought in by the city. And so and so we've we've looked at that. And then, of course, with these alternative funding things where we can do the lease to own and we can use some of the reserve funds from all these different departments with their charging them overhead. Maybe we can get then we should be able to get enough for that down payment and then be able to make the rest of it with our general fund. I don't see another way of doing it. Is it my favorite way? Is it my most preferred way? No, because I was all for going for a general obligation bond to build a new police station to get our police force what they needed. It didn't work. And this is the only backup plan that I can see that is feasible. And so I don't think it's the best option, but I believe it's the best option that we have left for us. So that's why I was glad to be on the committee. And these are all the things that we looked at. And that's my recommendation at this point. But if But if somebody else can find a better place to put the police department, I'm in. If somebody else can find a better place to put city council, if we do decide to put the police station here, let's look at it. But from my perspective, this is what we've got at this moment to look at. And that's why the committee has recommended this to go forward. But I agree, there's going to be some political challenges. There's going to be some perception challenges. Oh, they just want a new city. I want a... functional, proper place for our police. Everything else is dominoes. But I don't know how we can combat that look.

All right. Thank you.

Council Member Erickson. Okay. First of all, hopefully I can get out what I want to say and what I have in my mind and my heart here. As I've sat through all this, trying to get the bond and going through this, and I see it as an action item tonight, I don't think we're even close to getting an action item to come up with what we presented right here. First of all, we was told that we needed three to five acres for a police department, flat out, right now with our size of the city. As we looked at this, and as of 35 years of being here in this city, 30 years being law enforcement, We've pieced and patched buildings for our police department. And that's wrong to me. I mean, a lot of the walls and stuff over there, I helped put in. And I would wish the public seen this. Because I think the mind frame would be totally opposite of saying, maybe we need to look at this a little bit different. Maybe there's other things we need to really look for our police department. You know, the chief said it himself. Yeah, we can make this work. So are we settling for a second or third or fourth down here for a police department just to make an office building? I don't think we should do that. We need to make a police department for a police department. This building is never going to be a police department. It's going to be a remodeled office commercial building slapped together. And you're not going to be able to put all these windows, all these walls in there to make them safe in any way or any shape or form unless you put millions and millions of dollars in this. Overall, as I say, this building is not a police department. It's a remodel. It's a patch job to make it work. And I feel very strongly that we need to look at other options, maybe get this out to the public, say, we're in a corner here. Our police department needs another building. They're functioning so crammed in there in a building that's not working for them. And then you look at the square footage, 28,000 feet of office building. There's no 20,500 feet of police department. It's not even the same. As you look at, as you go through this, the cost of remodel. And I think we need to really look at what's it going to do to cost to remodel this as a police department. If we're going to look at that direction for the next 20 to 30 years, what's it really going to cost to remodel this police department as a police department? Making it secure in every way, shape or form as a police department. It's going to be many millions. And then I don't mind going back and looking at what Iowa Falls did. Maybe we need to readdress that, where we can come up with different things. I just think there's other ways we need to look at right now before we make this step to jump up for new City Hall. Just a few thoughts. Member Johnson.

Does anyone else want to speak?

Yeah, I'll have it.

Go ahead. She can go first.

So just for my clarification, this option three is what we're asking, what is exactly what we're voting? What's the action item tonight? Is it to start planning to come up with a plan that will then be presented to city council? What are we voting on for sure tonight? What is the action item?

Basically this. So we would we would enter a planning phase to determine square footage needs, potential amounts for funding sources for down payment, annual payments. And then we would also have these two committees. So one for the police station facility, they'd be looking at how much is it going to cost to do these renovations to make this work in the beginning and then maybe look at a phased approach as those impact fees continue to come in to what we can do down the road.

And then that would be presented to city council to go forward for another vote. So this is not saying that this is what we're actually going to do. This is just we're going to pursue the idea of planning this.

Planning this option. And if through those plans it doesn't pan out or it doesn't work, it doesn't look like it's going to be good, then yeah, we're not going to go forward with it.

I just needed that clarification.

Council member, Council President Erickson.

Okay. Well, I agree with Councilmember Erickson in that we are trying to kind of piecemeal things, but I've got to trust in the committee and Chief Rhodes in his recommendation that this building could be renovated into a functional police department. I gotta trust that they've looked at it and they've decided that's the case. I really doubt the financing option. I mean, this lease appropriation thing, all it does is it moves the burden onto the different departments, which then are gonna have to find some way to either reduce services or raise fees. So one way or the other, the citizenry takes it in the, you know. There's no other way. Yeah, I know.

That's what I'm saying. It's a better option.

It's a better option. But I just don't know how we can rob from Peter to pay Paul. That's my concern. I'm just going to throw this out there, and I know it's not popular, but I've had two or three people in the first initial round of the bond ask me why we don't try and do something cooperatively with the county. I know that the county is looking at expanding their sheriff's department. They bought property behind the courthouse to look into that. So they're going through the same things we are. Has that even been... considered at all having some sort of a joint law enforcement facility?

Yes, we've considered it. We've looked at it. We've met with other jurisdictions that have gone through that process. And one of the issues always comes back to a sheriff is an elected position. It's every four years in other entities when the continual growth is It becomes a battle between who's growing on which side. One of the big factors that I look at in this building, as we listen to the public, the property that we looked at, that we have purchased, it is outside of town. And it's another one of those, we could make it work. We can function. We're going to do our jobs. We're going to respond from wherever we're at. The one thing I do like about this location above any other location, even the school district property, it does take us a little farther away. Right here, we're across the parking lot from the prosecutor's office that we're going back and forth frequently. We're across the street from dispatch where we go and they sign and they do a lot of paperwork for us when we're doing warrants and paperwork. They're across the street from us for the jail. So if we have an interview and we arrest somebody here, we bring them in for interview and we have enough to arrest them. It's across the parking lot. So we have the prosecutor's dispatch and the sheriff's office right across the parking lot. Having City Hall at the school district property, it is also... We do a lot of daily paperwork exchange with City Hall that it's a block away. It's within walking distance if we needed to. Location for me is there's no doubt this is the best location. Totality of the total city budget, that's what we looked at as well. What would cost the taxpayers the lowest amount overall. Those are the things that we consider, too. Of course, I would love a police station with every new bell and whistle that we could. Idle Falls facility is amazing, but even in their facility on the backside of the building, the sides of the building, they had to cut costs, too, so they don't have bulletproof facilities. glass on the backsides. I'm not trying to put that out there for anybody. But when we've met with our consultants, there's different safety measures that we could do to fortify this location just with raised flower pots and ballasts up front for nobody could drive through. It is a solid structure. I know it's not perfect. My biggest concern is if we continually, I think someone mentioned in a previous meeting, just kicking the can down the road, we will continually get into a bigger and bigger pinch and the cost is going to continually increase. We, as a police department, want to be fiscally responsible for the citizens and make sure we're doing the best we can with the resources we have. And we are doing the best we can, and we'll continue to do the best we can. This building, it is not perfect. But I look at, well, as we've looked at the planning, one of our goals is to do more community outreach, more community education. This room right here is that room. Also could be used as a training room. Most of the office space could be utilized. And we talk about the difference between safety. This building would be safer immediately than the building we're currently in. And so I know there's apples to oranges. But as far as the growth, we still have different areas that we could grow into this building. Those are the things that we looked at as we tried to consider the totality of the total cost of square footage for the city hall compared to what it would cost to build what Idaho Falls has with all the bulletproof glass and ensure some of it will have to be part of that building process as we built an entryway that would protect the employees. a gated area for vehicles and parking that's a secure parking location. And then the biggest thing was we met with consultants. There are a lot of entities or agencies throughout the state that have renovated. Core Construction is one of the consultants that we've worked with. They built with Buell out of an old grocery store. Pocatello Police is out of an old... They share a building with their city hall. So I... Of course, I want a new building. I would love a new building. The reason we focused on option three was totality of cost for the city, what it would cost the taxpayers, and the functionality of what we could immediately move into. Most of the office space here could immediately be used without any renovation. There would obviously be some for interview rooms that would have to be renovated. But those are the options. I don't think we do have a perfect option. But when you talk about location downtown, I don't think we have any other options. I mean, in the beginning process, we were looking at property north of town on second east, which there could be some availability. But it takes us farther away from the university where highest threats are for some of the schools and some of the areas that we want to have a quicker response. We did a response analysis from Pioneer Road. And there's a give and take at all of those. And so I do like our response time from downtown area to be able to get to most of the elementary schools, the university. Still, we're a distance away from the high school, but we do have school resource officers there. And our goal is to always have our officers out and about anyway. Those are kind of my core factors that we took into consideration when we were looking at the different options.

Just a last thing. I agree also. I don't think we're ready to make a decision tonight. I think this has got to be something we've got to talk. At least I've got to mull over. And I've got to understand this lease appropriations thing better because I just don't know how that works. That's fine.

Well, that's definitely an option. Yes, Council Member Johnson.

I am really happy that I think every person here wants to have a nice police station. And maybe we might disagree about how to accomplish that. But I think that's a really good thing to know is that we all support the police. But I just, I guess I have concerns because throughout the process, like the last two years we've been talking about this, I mean, there were things that were brought up. And I know, like Chief Rhodes said, this is a safer option, but there are still, I think it would cost so much money to renovate it. And I'm sorry. I don't care how you slice it. If you charge overhead to departments, you are essentially shrinking their budget. There isn't more money to put in there. So it's just another way to say it. And so I would like to see you had all the revenue streams that were available for those different options. I'd like to see a new police facility, just how much it would cost after you added all those other revenue options and see how much we'd need that you were going to take from the overhead. I'd be very interested to see. how much we're talking about there for the lease appropriation for a new police station. I just would like to see that.

For a new building on the property that we bought?

Yeah.

Okay. All right, Councilmember Eriks.

So hopefully I can just say the rest of it. First of all, I appreciate what the chief's doing. I appreciate what this committee has done. They have worked very hard, and I don't want to undermine that one bit. But I think there's so many unanswered questions. That's what I'm trying to say. I mean, we need to get that consultant in here that came down with the headwaters and talked to us and say, look at this building and walk through it. You tell me what it's going to really evaluate cost-wise to make this a police department. We need to have those figures. And is it going to be way higher than we really guess? In my thinking, it probably will be. You know, as you look at square footage, the school district's looking at about $450 to $480 a square foot to build a new district office building. We was looking at $600-something to build a police department. Police departments are going to cost more money. Plain and simple, they will cost more money to build. But, like, bottom line is I... I just feel very strongly that it's time in our city to build a police department from ground up. Working here 30 years and all the stuff we did at the police department to make it functional, to provide the service we did for our citizens because we cared for this community. And that's the bottom line we did. And they'll continue to do that because they care for the community. But shouldn't we give them what they need to do their job if we can in a way? That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah. Don't remember teaching.

I just want to point out again that this is just to pursue planning. This is not saying this is what we are going to do. This is just to give them authorization to make that plan, to answer your questions, to say this is what the overhead would look like. This is what all the renovations would cost, and they could include, I'm guessing, Matt, that we could include to have include Councilwoman Johnson's option. Sorry, I'm getting tired. My tongue is all tied. Option of looking at that, right? Like when we do a presentation, could we include that?

Can I?

Yes, go ahead, Chief.

So during this process, the last meeting that we met as a committee, that consultant was core construction and they've gone through all the initial phase with us. They are one that they've been liaison with other construction companies as they've done other remodels so they they have been here and and they were in support of this plan to make it feasible as a police station we didn't dive into all the details they did offer in this this planning process to do all of that upfront analysis and planning for free that doesn't cost the city anything to present I don't know how in depth they go, but we would have to find out from them more detail. But they have worked through this process in the beginning phases that they would do some of that analysis and planning for us at no cost and no risk to the city. Another thing that we didn't mention, and again, it's not the solve all, but the impact fees There may be some areas in here that we initially may not need right now that I'm okay if we, as a committee, as a city, we would like to see a sally port off the side of the building, a secure area that we can pull in, that we can use those impact fees two years down the road, five years down the road, that those are monies that aren't coming out of any of these other departments in the city, but those are impact fees that are set aside specifically that we have been able to use or allocate towards the improvement of the building.

Yes, Council Member Rieser.

You know, I think, and I appreciate all the concerns.

Whoops, I probably got to be on here.

I appreciate all the concerns of the other members of the council, but I think this recommendation here that's on the slide actually does address that. For Councilman Erickson, Eric Erickson here, he needs a little more time to mull it out. Well, this isn't locking us into anything. But what it's doing is these two committees would actually bring back more information about funding, what it's really going to cost, and how much square footage is going to be needed back to this council before we ever make a binding decision to actually move forward and start renovating anything. And same thing with Council Member Johnson, who's, again, needs to see those numbers. That's what one of these committees would do. If the City Council agrees to move forward, staff would need to enter a planning phase to determine square footage needs and potential amounts for funding sources for down payment and annual payment. So I think that's what that committee would do, is they would have to go to work, roll up their sleeves, and really get into the funding and give us some pretty hard numbers that we can then look at as a council to decide whether or not we want to continue to move forward down this road or if we realize you know we didn't consider everything that needed to be considered here this really isn't a good option i don't think this locks us into anything uh anything that we're not ready to go to yet. I really think that if we do agree to this, even if we agree to this action item now, all it does is it frees us or directs us, I should say, to gather more information, both financially and otherwise, so that we can come back and get a better picture of whether or not this is the best plan that we can come up with right now. So, you know, anyway, I kind of think that going ahead with this might actually help us make a decision.

Yes. Council Member Erickson and then Council Member Johnson.

And I have no problem with that. I like that idea, but I think I just don't want this channels down a path. There's way too many questions out there for me right now on, do we look at what we look at at City Hall? The same thing with the police department. Do we look at, is there other things we can look at? And I think there is. I think there's a lot more things we can maybe look at. If that will do it, I don't have a problem with that, but I don't want this to channels down a road that is really going to dead end us down to a place we really don't want to be?

There's a good concern. Yeah, Council Member Johnson and then Council Member Riggins.

Yeah, I just, I wanted clarification on that because I thought our action item was to go down the road of option three and my, like what I wanted to see is not option three. It's not even on the options. So I don't want it limited to only option three. So if you're telling me that you'll look at these other ideas and help us see how much after we bring in those revenue streams, it would cost to build the new police station. I'm all for that. But if you're telling me that that action item is only to pursue option three, then I'm not in favor of that.

Okay. So, I was going to answer that. So, as we look at the funding sources for the down payment and the ongoing payments, I have no problem saying these are the funding sources that we're recommending. Here's option one, here's option two, here's option three. So, you could see that. That's not a problem. And then we can back into those annual amounts through a lease appropriation.

And that was not mine wasn't an option, though. So what do you do about that? You're going to add it, you're saying? Because it wasn't one of option one, two.

I thought your option was to build a new one.

Yeah. But not with the general obligation.

Yeah. And so we can we can just what I'm saying, right, is I'm saying we can go through the same funding option for option three. And then we'll put it align it for the three options. Okay.

Council Member Riggins.

I've just been sitting here just, and all I can think about is my civics class in eighth grade, and that was a long time ago, right? A long time ago. But I went in and I asked AI just a few minutes ago and said, what are the principal responsibilities of city government? Maintain public safety, number one, right? We may have to get rid of pretty stuff. But the reality is we have to decide if we don't like this option, we got to look at it and say, let's pay for one, 16 million bucks. Let's take it out. Let's take it out of parks. Let's take it out of this. Let's take it out of that. Let's get rid of the pretty stuff and do what we're supposed to do, which is maintain public safety. That's the other option we have. I mean, if we're going to let's let's just let's sit down and take a look at it. Let's have let's have Matt take a look and say this is where money can come. And it's going to cost 16 million dollars to build that new facility because our number one responsibility is to maintain public safety and our officers need a new place. The people told us they want a new police station. They don't want to pay for it. So what they're saying is you figure out how to pay for it out of the tax money that we're already giving you. Let's show them. That's what I say.

Let's show them. Let's get rid of the pretty stuff. I will point out one thing, and I understand everything you guys are saying, and all of you are saying, but I will point out that, and I know it's a little different, but this building was a JCPenney store. And, you know, when you say it's a patch job, I have people come in and I'll say and go, this is a beautiful city hall. I mean, it's turned into a great building and it's functioned very well. And I have no doubt that we can remodel it. And yeah, it's going to cost a couple million, probably so. But we can use those couple million to make it safe, to make it secure. It's in a perfect location. I mean, to me. It can be a beautiful police station for the next 30, 40 years, and it'll be the best economic option we've got. It really is. So, I mean, I guess you know where I stand, but I just think if we vote no on this, we're just pushing the thing down the road and it just puts our police in a worse situation because then we're not going to... be able to move forward with anything. So I don't have any problem evaluating the other options like you're saying, but I think we've already evaluated it pretty heavily. And I really think we need to do something to move forward to get going on getting a new police station. I mean, a new remodeled police station for the police, because I think this can be turned into a very nice police station and we can make it very secure and it can have the functions that we need right here. So anyway, that's my thought. And that's why I would recommend that we move forward with this option. But maybe if you want to add the words to this option of, you know, looking at what it would cost to do the financial things for the other ways, I'm good with that. I think that's great. But I think we've got to move forward and get going or else we're just going to be pushing the can down the road even further. So if there's any, I mean, if you want any other discussion, that's fine. But at this point, I would entertain a motion to consider this. And you can word it however you want. If there's somebody who wants to make a motion to word it a little differently than just what we got here. But I'm open to a motion at this point in time. I think we've visited about it enough.

I'd like to make a motion on this, that we pursue the study of option three. I think that's our concern. We're not committing to anything, but that we pursue what is being asked here. Let's take a look at it. Let's see what it would cost. Let's see what the financing sources are. Let's take a look at it. Let's get a report back.

And to find out more, like Cohen says, what is it really going to cost to remodel this into a secure, successful space?

I mean, just as it's laid out, we're not committing to anything. So we're asking, bring back information so that we can make an intelligent decision.

Yeah. I think that's reasonable. Yes.

Just to clean that up, could the motion state that we, or I can even say I move that we enter the planning phase to determine square footage needs and potential amounts for funding sources for downtown, for a potential new police station? Was that a motion that he made, or was that? Was yours a motion?

I wasn't. It was a motion.

Sorry.

You second that motion?