City Commission - Regular Meeting

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I call this Tuesday, March 10th, 2026, city commission meeting to order. Will you join me in the flag for to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [clears throat] All right. I see Chaplain Pete Mayo, will you come up and lead us in a prayer?

Yes. Thank you very much. Let us pray. Blessed are you, Lord our God. With a firm reliance on your help and blessing, we come here to serve the people of our Pittsburgh community. Assist us to listen to each other with patience and kindness. Help us to recognize your kingdom in our midst. May we each know and feel your Holy Spirit abiding within our hearts. May we be mindful of the needs of the most vulnerable among us. We give you thanks for the freedoms we share. Help us to preserve them. We pray this in the name of all that each of us hold sacred. Amen.

Thank you. Thank you, Pete.

Thanks, Pete. All right. Before I we move into public input, we have a book here that I Chris Benerelli dropped off at the bus barn. He wanted me to share this with all the commissioners. In this book, it it shows and talks about all the good works that's been done at the Mount Ali Cemetery with the abbey and the straightening of stones and lining everything up. Very informative. Uh, you know, John Knap was a caretaker for 25 28 years at Mount Olive and he with a limited crew, which was him and somebody else, two guys. They did what they could. You know, they did a lot of this work themselves. They didn't have the support of the city back then. Not a lot of money went into the abbey, but uh, fortunately, we have a different crew. And if you've driven by or drive through it, take a look at all the good work these people have done. And uh if you want to look at my book, I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there that uh it's, you know, they've done a lot of hard work. So, I just want to recognize the efforts that's been put in out there. So, we move on into public input. Is anybody want to come forward and and speak in public input? Okay, come on up. State your name and address. Hello, my name is Elizabeth Peters. I am a Pit State student in the dorms at 1807 South Locust Street. I come to you commissioners to uh ask for you to keep in mind the continued struggle of the seka um cap packed bus and their uh financial

struggling now and in the future as the budget is continued to uh be discussed and those plans evolve. I ask that you please consider including fully funding the bus in those plans. The bus is incredibly important to everyone in Pittsburgh, especially those who are disabled, who cannot leave their homes, who cannot make it to the grocery store or the doctor without it, who cannot enjoy the community that everyone else has access to because they cannot leave their homes. And even though you may say, well, there is an option. The caravan has an option to get to the doctor. Unfortunately, that's not really feasible for a lot of people because it requires planning up to several months of in advance because the wait list is that long when you need to go to the doctor because something goes wrong and it's not quite wrong enough to call an ambulance, but it's something you need to get to the doctor pretty immediately. you can't really call ahead two months in advance because you need the doctor right now. So, but with the bus, you can hop on the bus and you can get to the doctor that same day. So, I ask you all to consider funding the packed bus and it's in making sure that that investment goes forward for our most vulnerable. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Brian Martin and uh 122 Deer Creek Lane here in Pittsburgh, Kansas. Tonight I'm here to talk to you guys about the need for soccer fields. So, I'm something I'm very passionate about and when approached if I would come tonight, I was very uh honored to be chosen. So, soccer fields are an investment in tomorrow. I'm thankful to see kids active in any sport. If they're playing baseball, volleyball, soccer, basketball, I'm thankful to see that. I want to see our kids active. Um but the what I want to come and talk tonight about is soccer is growing. There's no time like the present. Um everybody's aware. It's all over our supermarkets. What the summer's bringing to Kansas City, the World Cup, and it's a big big deal. It's uh the world's sport as we all know. So, just to put it into perspective a little bit, um back in February, we had the Super Bowl, and the Super Bowl drew 100 to 200 million viewers. The same day there was a Premier League matchup between Liverpool and Manchester City that drew three times or more the amount of viewers. So it's a nation or it's a worldwide sport. Um and the money um nationwide is going towards it. The interest nationwide is going towards it. Uh for example, 13 years ago there was one MLS club that was worth 175 million. There [clears throat] are now five MLS clubs valued at over 1 billion and the top one is worth 1.45 billion. So lots of money and interest going to it. But I'm not here to talk about the nation. And I'm not here to talk about the world. I'm here to talk about um the interest in

soccer and the need for a place for our kids to play. So, um I coach the iguanas, the uh so six and sevenyear-olds is who I coach. We teach fundamentals and we have fun. My goal, I tell them, is to teach them some fundamentals, but also let them have enough fun that they want to come back the next year. I want them to be active. I want them to be out there running. Just in this last session, we went from 16 kids under my team to 29. So, it's an 81% increase that we had just from last fall to this spring. So much so that we have to we've now got another team. I've recruited another coach to help me coach these kids and make sure that we have enough space for them. So, kids want to play soccer, whether it's at recess, on a competitive team, or anywhere in between. Um, one thing that I would really love to see reestablished in Pittsburgh is a place for kids to play where we can have wreck soccer around. So, it's all it's like all um sports. We've got the wreck leagues and we've got the competitive club teams that travel and I just I would love to see something here. The interest is undeniable. Um, the health benefits speak for themselves. Kids outside playing, we all can agree on that. um being active and the demand for space is present and evident as all my predecessors coming before me to talk about soccer fields. So the next 3 months uh we're going to my family and about another 100 plus iguanas um drive from Pittsburgh to Joplain every single Saturday to play soccer. And I've got two boys in it. One's on a U12 team which is under 12 years of age and my other one that I coach is U8 which is under 8 years of age. We drive over there and inevitably we wind up staying all day because we've got a game in the morning, a game in the afternoon, and we end up patronizing Joplain

businesses. Um, and that's my family. We've got 100 plus other players that are doing the same thing. We're leaving Pittsburgh to go play in Joplain. So, I grew up in Columbus, Kansas. Everybody knows where that is, but um they had a great soccer program then and it's even stronger now. The town of Columbus is about 3,000 people and they've got 140 plus kids out every fall for soccer, recreck soccer. They've got a dedicated park for it. Um, which is basically a field with a little concession stand and uh bathrooms in the middle. That's all it is. And um I used to drive over there and coach. So I wanted I know there's been options. I know, yes, there still continues to be to some extent, but um we would drive over there and coach and and play until my kids were old enough to start playing iguanas here in town. And it's just I I want it to be here. I want it to be here bad. And I think the uh financial benefits of bringing people in are uh undeniable. So, we've got the the need and I I don't know the space. Um, I'm sure my predecessors have addressed that. Um, but to bring that in and have Pittsburgh as the SEK hub. We've got it in Joplin on the other side of the border and we're going over there, but now there's teams like Columbus has a team, Parsons has a team, Baxter's getting a team, all these places in southeast Kansas instead of all of us going over there, maybe we could come here. Um, and then when we're here, those families like mine are spending money at our restaurants. They're spending money at our stores. are fueling up um their vehicles here in town. Um so there's the financial benefit that I just went through. But I just I want to finish by saying I we don't put our kids in youth sports because they're the next LeBron James. I mean, we put them in youth sports because we want them to learn discipline. We want them to learn to win humbly and lose gracefully. We want them

to learn hard work, perseverance, resilience. We want them to do whatever they can do to better themselves as a person on a team. Want them to learn that teamwork component. And whether it's baseball, and like I started out saying, whether it's baseball, whether it's soccer, whether it's basketball, I'm just here to have kids be active. I want kids to be active, and I want kids to have a place to play soccer. The demand is growing and um I think it's undeniable. So, um, with that, I say thank you.

All right. Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to speak in public input? Seeing none, we move to the consent agenda. Item C is pulled from the meeting tonight. Is there any other items that need to be pulled? I would move to approve the consent agenda minus item C. Second. Been moved and seconded to approve the agenda consent agenda. Roll call vote. Brooks, yes. Hike, yes. Yes. Perry, yes. Yes.

All right. Moving to special presentation. Pittsburgh High School launch program. Students from Pittsburgh High School launch program will provide their development plan for the vacant lot located at Second and Walnut. Good evening, mayor, commissioners, and we're excited to have two of our students here. um they're going to give you a little update on a project that they have and uh many students before them have worked hard on coming up with a plan and um we're excited for them to present to you this evening and um they will be available to answer any questions and so will I. So come on.

Hello. I would like to thank the mayor and commissioners for making time for us today. Today we will be presenting the Coalard, formerly known as the spot. This project began with the idea of a community green space located on Second and Walnut Street. This will be incorporated into the linear park system which includes Emirate Park as well as Minor Memorial. This project originated in 2021 with the launch class. The city of Pittsburgh came forward and asked them what they could do with this space. They then decided on the previously mentioned community green space. After they had their idea, they then worked on demolition of the property. After demolition was complete, the property was transferred to the city of Pittsburgh's land bank where Building Health then took ownership of it, and they own it to this day.

Over the past years, we've had many concepts for the coalyard. As of 2021, we had the 2021 PSU construction class helped make a the first design for the coyard. In the very right, we have some kiosk in and pergolas that we planned on having people come in and sell their own products. In the bottom right corner, we had a building that would have been used for storage and/or bathrooms. In our next design, we removed that bottom building due to water runoff and bathrooms already being nearby. We also removed the kiosk, replacing it with a concrete pad. We also decided to to curve the sidewalk to allow it to connect to the linear park system and the Miners Memorial Museum. As of 2025, we scrapped a lot of that idea, replacing it with a driveway for food trucks to come in and use our electrical plugins to sell products during events like 620 day. Following feedback from local community organizations, we decided to move to a dog park instead of a community green space. We decided to use decided to you to do five trees on the very left to have shade. Two two sections for dogs. both small and large and concrete on the very right. We have two g or three gazeos donated by a lo local community business. We have two two benches that we plan on using plan on getting by either support by community members and or don and or donations. Reasons for the change [snorts] due to our a lot of our past designs had concrete which is really expensive. Removing a lot of the concrete reduces a lot of the price. This will also allow the space to be immediately used by people on Broadway andor downtown. This allows people to come in and play with their pets, play with other people's pets, and have their pets use the restroom, get outside. We've received some We've received some data from the Ronald Ronald O. Thomas dog park. This shows the daily usage

over the past year. As you can see, a a lot of the day, a lot throughout the day, people come in to use the dog park, but people do come in closer around 5. That's where a lot of the hot usages.

Uh we have some more data from the Ronald O. Thomas dog park. We have a line graph that shows the use usage of the park throughout the year and a bar graph shows the usage throughout different years. As you can see, the average is about 10,000 visits or so. The launch class has raised $75,000 in revenue through many different local organizations. They then use that money for demolition of the property. The demolition was originally estimated to cost around $25,000, but due to a lot of excess concrete as well as a mine shaft being discovered underneath the building, the price really hiked up. Our remaining funds is $26,100, and the estimated cost for the dog park is $23,000. Here is a more in-depth estimate of the dog park costs. We will need fencing, which is $25 per foot. This will cost $10,375. We are wanting one dog fountain, which is $5,000. Plumbing, so we have access to water on this site, which is $2,000. Our five trees will cost $1,175. [clears throat] Black LED lights will be $4,000. And then solar gazebo lights, which is $450, which totals are $23,000. I would like to thank you all for having us today. Is there any questions?

Donations like say for instance you know those trees you had on the side. You ever thought of maybe planting a tree in somebody's honor and maybe taking a donation for that maybe to cut some cost or talking to some the people that you are going to need to further it seeing if they'd be willing to donate their work type thing. Awesome about that. Thank you very much. Um,

I like this concept the best, but the food truck one was cool, but it needs to be a bigger spot. There's a lot more need for more than three trucks, but it's a great concept and you guys speak very well. It's very hard for you to get up in a podium and do this in front of a lot of people. Thank you for your time and your effort. Thank you very much. Congratulations on raising the 75,000 that you did. That's amazing. Impressive. So, the numbers that you guys came up with with the travelers that run through the existing park, where did you get that information from? Uh, one of our community members had emailed us the data for [snorts] the Ronald Thomas. Ronald Ronaldo Thomas.

Ronaldo Thomas. Sorry. It's it's our platform that we use, the Placer AI platform. So, it tracks cell phone data. So, it tracks visitors on site usage. Yep. And we can do that for any of our parks or any location in town. So for business visits, uh vehicle traffic visits, things like that. So that's the Placer AI. That's super handy. And as far as your your cost for the uh what you're looking at now for the new construction, is the cost of placing everything involved in that? You guys are under budget right now. So is it does that include the installation or is it just the price for the the materials? I believe it's just the price of materials. We have not done labor. What about upkeep of the property after the fact? Uh the property is going to be transferred to the parks and recreations.

So I believe they will be taking care of the property once it is finished. So it would be a city park and maintain like a city park. Yes. And we could probably even get some uh most of the city parks that we have. The equipment gets [clears throat] put in by the city staff because we're going to be liable once it's in. So I'm sure we could help you with any of the installation. But great job and u very good and what a journey. This is a 4.0 or something like that. I don't know. But it sounds like we've landed somewhere that we can all be proud of. So, great job. Thank you very much. Keep us posted. Thank you very much. Thanks. [applause]

All right. Moving to consider the following. A variance variance request CLHJ LLC 425 East Jackson. Consider the recommendation of planning commission/board of zoning appeals to grant the request submitted by CLHJ LLC for a setback variance at 425 East Jackson to allow the construction of a new duplex. So zoning board didn't see any problems here. I know Dexter wasn't there. There is something that we did ask we were going to ask for you guys to look into. We had a lot of the neighborhood citizens talking about what they wanted us to do was kind of stop it because it was going to cause a more a worse water problem than they have already. We don't feel like that's going to affect it anymore. And the gentleman that is putting in the duplex is if there's a water problem, he wants to get it dealt with. Also, the neighborhood said the city comes out and fixes it all the time, but it's still I guess it gets a couple feet deep right through there on that Jackson Street. So, we just ask that you guys look into it or check it out for

Is it coming from the intersection? I honestly don't know exactly where the water is down through the ditch. The only big question I had for this one, u we we've seen a few of these. Is there intent as part of this to put onsite parking somewhere for both duplexes or is there going to be just on the road? This one has a driveway is concrete driveway dedicated both sides cuz he's trying I guess there's some duplexes nearby that they park in the street and he's trying to resolve that and not have any cars in the street. Reduce the number on the street. Is it the code to have it like all concreted between what's there like garages in the front or something like that? They have the garage in the front. They're fully concrete.

Make it all pretty much all concrete. As long as he's got good drainage. Did you say several neighbors came? Not se uh I think three households came to speak about it when they raised that question about drainage and it was all about the water issue. So whoever's putting it in assured him that they he would take care of the problem. No. No. He just said if there was a problem he would want it also fixed.

I'll just kind of address the drainage in that area right now. So that area sets kind of at a high point almost where it's at. And so you'll see Jackson Street draming back to the back to the west and then some of the rest of that runs off to the north gets a little flat. It's it's not curb and gutter. Um Jackson has a little Jackson has curb and gutter with brick, but then whenever you go back to the east on uh smelter it gets there's open ditches and some clover pipes and so you get some stuff that floats in. But overall, I don't see an impact to what they're building

of going to exp. There was already a house on this site with a garage that they tore down before. So, the overall impervious area impact is is not going to be a factor. And they're not building a commercial structure. They're they're going back onto a small lot where they were. So, that was already pretty impervious to begin with. So the drainage in that entire area, I know as you get down closer to Millers, we kind of have a spot in there that doesn't drain off real well um as you get further down smelter. So there there are some issues in that area for drainage. We won't deny that. But there's that's a historical

master plan problem that's going, you know, it's not it's not like Joplin used to be, you know, 30 years ago. So thanks, man. Thanks, man. All right. It was it unanimous. Move to approve. All right. Been moved to approve by Cheryl. Second. Second by DJ. All in favor say I. I. Both same sign. Thank you. Motion car. Pass.

Item B, deposition of bids. Disposing of the bid 616 North Broadway roof project. Consider staff recommendation to allow the bid for the complete removal and replacement of the roof at 616 North Broadway to Ridgeline Roofing of Joplain, Missouri in the amount of 127,064. Uh good evening, Morers. Again, we're so this project ongoing. So the next phase was to bid out the roof. We obviously knew there was holes in that. Um we've bid out the roof. Uh we received three bids um three competitive bids um for this project. We have double checked and uh double checked references went through the scope. Um it is uh we we recommend the award to Ridgeline Roofing. The references checked out um similar projects repeat owners. So we feel pretty confident we we played in the local preference um as Mid America was the second bidder on this project and even with the local preference cause Ridgeline is still still lower. Um this project entails basically stripping everything existing on the roof off uh replacing it in entirety. We allowed for approximately 2200 square ft of roof decking replacement. Knowing the holes in there, there are some unit cost. Um there will be some additional costs because we do know that there will be some roof trust cords um or the trust the structural trust cords will need to be replaced and we have some unit cost prices that were bid into that that we'll have to account for as well as some possible parapit capping or wood blocking required for flashing. Um we obviously don't know the scope of that but um we do have the bit the unit cost put in for that and then for any additional decking above and beyond 2200 square foot which is approximately a quarter of the building to be which

should account for the um northeast corner and the southwest corner the where the existing holes are now. So we we feel like we've covered our bases um and the contractor proposed they think they can get work done in 21 days. We'll see how the weather goes this spring, but um we feel pretty good moving forward and I'll entertain any questions. Well, that's what I was going to say. It's it's the lowest bid plus the 21 days I think is a little bit it seems aggressive, but I mean that's I mean if they really get after it, there's no reason why it can't. I mean, well, that's what I'm saying. You know, the rain is coming and the quicker we get it on Yeah. the better. Yeah. Way better deal. the weighted bit that you're talking about, the local preference. How much of a dollar figure are we talking?

If I put 3% on the 127, that comes out to 130,875 and 92 cents. Okay. And he's only 9,7. Mid America roofing bid was. It's a $6,000 difference. They were 136,829. You got a company that's local also that's paying taxes, sales tax, lives here. I just I I wonder tell me about it. Why? Why? Uh job I'm follow we're following the policy. If you guys choose to tell me to move forward with Mid America, we can I'm asking just I'm trying to understand it. Oh, I don't know. You'll have to That's That's their bid. It's

No, I'm at the difference between the bids is only $9,765. So, you're talking the 3%. Are you talking about the overall cost on the 3% for a local? Yes. If you put 3% on top of the low bid, then that is the allow amount that we can award to America if they were that low. But it's not 3%. 6,000 is 3%. 3% to double check. 3765 off the mark. Okay. That's what I wanted. 5%'s the preference, but it's still above that. Oh, it's five. Okay. You change that to five. It's a third of the time, which he's over five, too. So,

okay. Thank you. I didn't understand that. So that's why I wanted with these bids. Did was there additional conversation about the additional needs that may come up? Did each one of these companies come up with possible areas that they would have to ask for more? No, we we dictated that. You

we dictated We dictated We knew we were going to need potentially additional decking. So we asked for that as a unit cost. We knew that the wood blocking that holds your gutters and downspouts on the back of the building was probably not in great shape based on history. So we added an allowance for that as well as parapic capping around the top where you attach your flashing. So we added that as unit cost and we knew that the roof trusses or the c the top cords were shot in a couple places. To what extent we don't know but we know there's at least a few of them that are going to have to be replaced. So we added that as allowance. Yep.

I I'm I'm a little bit shook in that uh we're not going with our local guy even with the difference. I know that you have to go that bids are bids but you know that guy does have he spends a lot of money. I don't disagree and again you're the commission. You can choose to tell me to do something otherwise but I I have to recommend what's on policy. I look at the 39day difference in estimate too. What happens if you go over the 21day mark and then there is noies on our contract. We we suggested they they we didn't dictate the days. We allowed them to write in what they thought it would take. And this doesn't allow for change orders either, right? Or does it? It it does because of the unit cost.

Okay. And I don't anticipate I mean it's a roof bid so I don't anticipate anything other than needing to address the trust cords, roof decking or wood block. Are we looking at just temporarily shoring this up or are we looking longterm? No, this is a complete new roof. This will be a complete new tpo roof with two inches of insulation, the replacement of the decking that needs to be. So someone will have a turnkey roof that whatever penetrations they need to put into the roof, they can put into the roof whenever they design whatever they want underneath. Well, something I asked Darren in our meeting earlier this week was to get uh documented footage of this process of the like ter.

Yeah, they pass that along. We'll get some we'll get some drone footage of everything. I'd like to see everything as they pull it out, what it looks like, and then, you know, obviously once it's replaced, and then even in the interior, you know, do a compilation, put it all together so we can show this to people how dramatic it looks like inside. Most of the stuff's been taken out from the inside though, right? Yeah. The inside's emptied out now. Yeah. What what I'm hearing from Doc and Cheryl is the local guy, you know, he pays a lot of sales tax in in the city. I was just wondering if if we went back to that local guy and said, "Hey, can you do it in 21 days instead 60 days?" Is that a possibility? I can't go back. We can't can't change it.

I mean, the problem with the bid is it's there's proposals and there's bids. This is a very strict bid with conditions and if we we you can do whatever you want, but when we start not taking the low bidder, we're going to start losing biders on stuff and we need to be real careful that we all know. that. But still yet, that guy pays a lot of I'm not saying you can't do it. I'm just telling you it's, you know, I don't know where you guys are at on it. That's close. It's a lot of days. It is a lot difference for a difference of $9,765. What about the guy pays sales tax here. He pays property taxes. He has a lot warranties for this type of roof.

It's all dictated within within the spec. And so it's going to I mean it'll have a one-year workmanship and then a 15-year um tpo the material and that rolls in with the land bank ownership and then it rolls back into the new owners. Yeah. It'll be transferable. Yep. So you're saying the days is the only difference. It's apples to apples on the bids other than the days. $9,000. No. No. I meant the days. Everybody's doing the same work. The days. Yeah. Everyone's doing the same work. I didn't I didn't I didn't put out a proposal

that said, "Tell me what you can do to put the roof together." I put out a very specific proposal that said, "I want 2 in of insulation. I want 2200 square foot of decking. I want TPO roofing with this mill and this thickness and this warranty and the flashings and gutters and everything." So, we dictated what that what we wanted to be in based on what you specifically said. They were the one that came the closest or is right on the mark. And then the bonus was the days too. The bonus is the days. And I'm not familiar, so pardon me, but the bid process for something like this, how much time do we do? They have to formulate their We had it on the street for a month, didn't we? Yeah.

Pretty close. Yeah, it was on the street for almost a month. We did a we allowed for a walk through or a visual if whoever wanted to come look at it again. Um, in fact, we had three I wasn't there. We had three different contractors show up whenever we allowed for the open access walkthrough. Um, who didn't end up bidding on the project, but we did we solicited to 60 companies. O over 45 over 45 companies plus some other phone calls and plus trade trade plan rooms and everything. I mean, we we put it out there as much as it could possibly be out there. And you got three.

And we got three. But to your point, 45 people and only three bid anyway. So, I mean, you got to run off 42 biders if you take the low bid. I think Henry was going to say something about low bid. Well, I mean, it you have to have a I guess you could rebid the project, but uh when you've got your your bids already taken, you run the risk of of some type of legal action to uh to essentially stop the award of the bid to the second highest bidder if the first bidder complies with our bids.

I mean, I appreciate the local [clears throat] aspect and want to support local, but I think we got to respect the policy that we have on the bidding project um in this case. um you know if we want to change that moving forward but I don't I can also tell you there were mid America was a little bit lower on the unit cost but I ran in I ran some whatif scenarios on the unit cost of what I think worst case scenario of replacement for the wood blocking the decking and ran some of the numbers on that and still ridge line still is the gap actually widens when you talk about notifying people I've heard you say this before

you send out what emails If we we have list we have some list of contractors um in a database

that we will send directly to we we pull license the whatever license we want from building services we'll pull their contractor list that are licensed in the city of Pittsburgh [clears throat] um we've got historical biders or whatever we'll check um if we get a plan room if we hit to like the Tri-State Contractors Alliance in Joplin their plan room Dodge um there's a couple different plan rooms out there that we'll I mean that follow the city clerk. We'll also send it to them. Um there's a lot of different services out there on the contractor side that puts it out there. But and we'll check we'll go through like in the roofing case. We also there that's all listen licensed through the state of Kansas. So we went through some of their database and looked through anybody that we thought had any kind of regional regional aspect to this as well. So,

so if we go with this low bid, what what total amount of money has this building cost? If if we go through my Well, contractually, we're going to enter in for $127,064 in in collectively. Yeah. Kim's got the numbers, mayor. Oh, you mean the whole total? What What are we in for less than 200? Well, she's working that I just crunching numbers over here. What are you talking about the difference between the two? No, I mean the total everything that we've done all the work completed today. 1,000 something to triate 250,000 to and

so so it'll probably once we do let me get my breakdown really quick. Okay. So, currently we have about $349,122 in the building with engineering cost, environmental, and stabilization. Then we have $210,000 of that committed from a private donor. So, that puts the city in right now at $139,22 before the roof cost. So, if you add the $127,000 roof cost, it's about 266122

with a new roof cleaned out, stabilized building. So the land bank board would then um take anyone interested in developing the building and buying it from the land bank. They will present to the land bank board and go through the application process and then the land bank board uh would have to have a minimum of that amount as the price for the building. Then that there's a memorandou back to the city meaning if the land bank board sells it for that or more then we get our cost recouped back to the city of Pittsburgh. You say that cost would be they'd have to have it appraised or how do you know what they're going to try to sell it for? Well, the land bank would have to sell it for what's in it, which is going to be the 266. Okay, I see. But

I guess my my other question was what in the heck is it going to take to fix it up or anything? And and I know you you said there's a lot of grant money out there. these contractors know their grant money and and I think my comment to you was yeah a lot of these developers like to use everybody else's money if they can do it also so

well and a lot of it can be tax credits a lot of it can be grants but I think it depends on the end use so if it's going to be housing and commercial development if it's going to be all offices if depending on on what the end use would be and that's what's great about the land bank board is they'll be able to hear all of those that um um that process allows for Dexter and Building Services to also review the plan the development plan to make sure that it's kind of it's going to work uh and that it would that it would uh be passed through the city. So, there's some nice um coverage there and we have a great land bank board that would be um really beneficial to evaluate anybody interested in development and then of course at that point I can help uh with grants or any kind of um help on the development project itself once we know what they want to do with it. And I think we talked about this before. If there was somebody interested in buying it, they won't come to the revolving loan fund for more money. That whatever 266,000 would be that,

right? Right. So, if they if they paid the land bank for the cost we had in it, let's say at 267, um, and they're going to uh do housing or offices or create jobs or any type of downtown development, they of course could come to the EDAC. Yes. and request 10% of their total project cost. If that project is a $2 million project, then they can request 10% of that. So, there are some incentives still for development of the building downtown to save it and put it back on the tax rolls and in productive use. Not directly the purchase of it though, right? No, it would have to be on the back end.

Could they use the RID for the second floor? So, if they're going to put housing on the second or third floor, they could use the reinvestment housing incentive district or what you all would know as the RID, which was rule housing incentive district. Any downtown building can be the reinvestment housing incentive district. So, the HVAC, plumbing, electrical, any kind of upgrades from the second floor and third floor would be reimburseable over 25 years in a RID as well. All the structural needs to get people to those locations would have to be done on the contractor's side, the developer. Developer side, right? Yep. So I know there I don't know if this has happened here but I think there was talk if somebody would be interested in that the city would give them that building and offset the revolving loan fund or is that

so the land bank board owns it now?

I mean you could you could theoretically work with the land bank. It's it's not a city the land bank is separate from the city. So they c they currently own it. So them putting it back into um functional use by either selling it or giving it whatever. But that was the general consensus was us. You could theoretically um forego anything from the RLF and just say 10% of 200 2.6 million is 266,000. That's all workable. But I mean at this point the other thing to point out is it when it fell over it was going to be threequarters of a million dollars to clean it up. And at some point with all incentives, um, as much as we may not like them, imagine in 10 years when it was off of the when it came back on the tax roles and instead of having to clean it up, we were actually getting taxes from it. But I think that's a I don't think we've had a deal like this, Chuck, where we could have a give you a clear answer. But I think the land bank is one of our

possibility it could. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely we've talked about it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it just the end question is what will it be and how much will it cost to get it there and then I think we can work with incentives to help people to because we want to see it back in productive use and we need it back on the tax roles and people occupying it and using it in a safe manner downtown. Try to sell it now until the roof's on, right? No, this is this is the last stage before I mean to get it sellable. Yep. Yep. And so the new roof obviously that was the the problem to begin with. So, I think it it makes a lot of sense to get that fixed and it also makes it a little more marketable. Um, and it's safe and keeps it dry. So, have you had any interest whatsoever uh in that?

I have. Yeah. Just a couple. Two local and um one out of out of town. Just asking, inquiring, wanting pictures. And then it is on the uh Kansas Department of Commerce has a uh vacant building registration. So, it is out on that. Um and they've asked for more information uh interior, exterior photos and things like that. So, it will be out there. Um, the goal is to market it and and get her back into use. So, having a brand new roof on it will look a whole lot better. Help market it. Circling back to the the work being done for this. The the lowest bid. Um, they're calling for 21 days. So, when are they able to start as soon as possible? Is this I know we got to deal with the weather and everything else, but

yeah, we'll have to get contracts. There is a requirement to have a bond inside of this. They'll have to put that on. We'll have a pre-construction about how they'll facilitate the work. So, it still may take a little bit before we get big going, but uh we'll we'll I mean we'll execute as quick as we can. How long has the city been dealing with this so far? How long this building? Yeah, I was in fourth grade. Um I mean, it's been it's been a year. When did we get it? Oh, yeah. We've been My involvement has been I know there's some quite a while. Remember that building? I mean, we started talking about it last spring whenever it was spring rains. I know that about trying to get it back going. I mean, we were we were bidding the first initial stabilization back early last spring.

Yeah, that was a show place of Pittsburgh when it was Yeah. And it's a you know, you have to remember, I mean, there's an 8,500 footprint on this building. So, even on the residential side, there's at least 16,000 ft of buildable space in the other two. And there's already an elevator shaft set up for I don't know the condition of the elevator, but I'm gonna assume it's probably marginal at best. But there I mean those are some amenities that aren't, you know, you don't find everywhere where you talk about accessibility and things that are available to help make that space even better. So, um there's some there's some definite neat aspects to this building. Probably several people's first elevator ride ever. Oh, yeah. guarantee sneaking in the hotel best and taking it all the way to the

walking through. It was hard to imagine what it used to be going there and buying books with my father. You know, it was it's insane seeing the floors gone and and you mentioned all the people walking around and all the different businesses and all that. So, yeah, we definitely like to see it back in function. It's occupied by pigeons right now. They're enjoying the space. Um but it is um definitely needs to be brought back. So, why don't we all go see it in a month when it's done and check it out because it'll be it's amazing from where it started. It was Wow, they're bad. I'd move to approve the request item B. Second. Been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. I. All oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Thank you.

Thank you. Item C, aerial fire apparatus contract change. Consider the fire department staff recommendation to change a current order for an aerial apparatus from a custom Pierce 107 foot model to an available stock 107 foot Pierce unit. Chief,

good evening, Mayor Commissioners. Uh, so as you can see, I'm requesting uh a modifying uh the contract we currently have with Conrad and Pierce Manufacturing uh to go from a fully customized uh 107 foot uh Quint apparatus to a stock apparatus that is uh will be available in about 7 months. Uh if we continue to go with the current contract, we can expect delivery of the customizable apparatus in about three and a half years. Um and I'll be honest, right now our apparatus cannot uh wait that long. So uh I've been working with Conrad. They've made some changes to the stock apparatus, get it closer to what we originally um speced out. Um, and so it right now it's going to be 100% um in line with our uh operations uh and about 80 85% uh to the customizable part that we've already speced out. So u with your permission, I'd like to change that.

Chief, one of your units is down, right? Yes. And that one unit that I have also worked um because there was some changing in with the waiting how long we had to wait for this um we were getting a little bit more of a discount in the original contract. Um the current contract has a little bit less of a discount and so what I did to offset that was uh to work with them to uh take that uh unit and actually get a trade-in value of about $65,000. So what's the net what's the last dollar? How far away? The only thing we need to do I I need approval for tonight is $6,83.7 to make the change in three in two years. Three and a half year how long? Three years or seven months.

Three and a half years minus 7 months. So whatever that difference is so what I'm reading here is basically same motor. What's what's the difference in the trucks? So really the only the main the biggest difference in the truck is the original truck that we had specked out had the rear steer feature on it. Is that controlled? It's not a tiller. No, it is not a tiller. It's a mechanical rear steer. Um, so basically as you're turning right, this the rear tires will be turning a little bit left just to kind of, uh, control the the turn radius of the apparatus.

Um, so without that, um, this truck that we're ordering is about 3 and 1/2 ft shorter, um, and also about 11,000 lbs lighter. So going without the rear steer feature is not going to be that big of a deal. So [clears throat] that's that length would have to have the re real steering in the rear the the for that truck you the first one. Yes. Yeah. It would have needed the rear steer and with with especially with the extra weight because the way the tires would drag as it would go around corners, it would require the rear steer. But making this truck lighter uh and shorter negates that. And the truck you're trading in is basically just sitting Yes. not being used because of all the problems.

It's it's Yeah, it's got a myriad of problems. Um, now when we go to uh trade it in, we will have to perform a uh pump test and an aerial test within 30 days of the trade-in. Um, so we may have to do a little bit of repairs to get it those tests to pass, but if we were going to replace this and put this back into front line, we'd have spent a lot more money to be able to do that. And I just honestly don't have the faith that we we could do that in financially wise. So, did it pass the pump test the last time it was tested?

The last time it passed the pump test in 2025 um in May. So, it's about a year. So, it was ready for a new pump test anyways. Um, so we're going to do a kind of a preliminary one before we don't have to pay the money for it to get it done officially. Uh, just to make sure that we understand all the problems with it. Um, I know there are some issues with some valving we might have to change. Um, but overall it's going to be a um, it shouldn't be too big of a an issue. So, we can do that pump test. We well we can we can do the pump test in house but unofficially when we go to do it to sell we're going to have to do the pump test officially and have to bring in a third party contractor because I thought the way we used the pump test

with the 2,000galon per minute pump we couldn't use the the setup we have at STE that's two for that was 1500 gallons a minute. Yeah the sister where would you do the 2,000 gallon or that's not a 2,000 that's not 2 gallon 1500. Yep. So that's still we still we can still do that at the sister and behind two engine but or engine too but um yeah it's you guys still do pump testing. Mhm. Yeah. That's a good valuable tool for young firefighters that's becoming drivers apparatus operators to understand that system of what you have to do to get it to pump water. Absolutely. I mean there's all kinds of things we can you know we can teach them and and you know with the trying to draw a vacuum and everything else. It takes a lot of work and you really get to know the the pumps doing that.

Yeah. Is the work that needs done on an existing truck that's um appreciated, is it stuff you can do at operator level or is it something you have to have a third party come in and do specialty? Um well, to be honest, I'm not 100% sure yet until I really start tearing into it a little bit more. Um but I think most of the work we can do in house, especially the valving change, those kinds of things. Um if we have to do something where we might have to replace the the governor, that might have to be something we we send out or at least get a module to swap out. Um but I'm not 100% sure yet. So I don't I don't want to make any commitments exactly of what we can do, but most of it I believe we can do in house. Got a general bid process for something that What year is the truck that you're talking about the trade in on the 2008 Rosenbower? It used to be.3.

I have a finance question. So taking delivery of a new truck almost two and a half years sooner. I know we' talked about I I think the public safety sales tax was making this possible. Is this is that is that any concern having to come up with the money quicker? Basically, we had to come up with the money for the original truck ahead of time. So, is this the same place? This is the same uh Well, the trick is Yeah, the trick is this is the same company that's building the truck, but we're also getting the lease that we were already entered into and you've made payments out of it.

Is the same company and it's basically the same lease. The chiefs just negotiated that we could just put the right VIN number in and that identified as the right truck and that was the difference in the trade in and everything and why we have seven 8,000 bucks and then maybe some cost for valves if we need the pump test failed. Yeah. But yeah, we're you said we'd already made a payment on that original. Where does that money go? Does it still stay with it? Oh, it's part it's just counted as part of that in effect is not changing at all. It's just we're getting the truck this year instead of But no worries about getting it sooner than expected. Additional costs are changing the funding stream the way it works.

N we went through know Jay Jay kept yelling at us because we he was like you got to look at the lease guys and and chief's like I need a truck last night. Um but we got the lease company was basically local. I mean it was I think Commerce and they were they were really um friendly. We told them we were trying to do this is pretty unique. I mean, how many you've you've probably bought 12 trucks in your lifetime, and we've never swapped one that we currently had a lease for, but it worked out well. So,

when you when you le lease purchase a vehicle, and we usually do this when there's there's this cost associated with something, when you do that, you have to typically lease a specific vehicle. Usually, he has a VIN number associated to it and everything. So, and if you make a change, that lease doesn't hold. In this case, we didn't have a VIN number because the vehicle wasn't built yet. All right. So, we were able to swap it out, but we had to run through some other hoops with the leasing agency, which is Clayton Holdings, which is part of Commerce Bank. So, we had to do some some foot footwork on that. What did we pay for that truck 18 years ago? I'm curious. Oh, jeez. I don't The Quint 3, huh? You remember Quent 3? What would how much did we pay for it back then? I can't I can't recall what we paid for.

It's amazing. Do does other firet trucks made in that year have problems like we're experiencing? Uh, yeah. Yeah, I mean there there's been some other issues besides just the the manufacturing of the truck um from from what I'm being told. Obviously, I've only been here 2 months, so I'm still getting a lot of the history of this thing. Uh but yes, I mean there it was there's some known issues with that. Most firet trucks have a 20-year expectancy and then they're rotated out. Yes. Actually, actually even less um depending on call volume obviously other if they knew they had a problem for 08.

Yeah. I mean there's and you know you can even go out into the market right now and there's used used you know 2008 Rosenbower quints out there for sale. Um so I mean it's it's something that's still a marketable commodity but I think we've just had unfortunately you know these things are completely customizable. I mean they're literally built from the chassis up and so anything can happen if somebody has a bad day that day and we you know wires it wrong for that day. That may be something that that comes up later on. But um and it's not endemic to all those. And this is a Pierce, right? The one we're purchasing. Yes. Yeah. And you know, I've been on the fire department for 25 years. And the Pierce was the truck we wanted, you know, for our department. But where's this truck going to be housed at, Chief?

It's going to go to Quint 3. Quint 3. Station three. Station three. And and I know we've talked about this. My concern is having a $2 million truck. How many calls percentage-wise is EMS calls?

Well, we're honestly we're fairly lucky compared to other uh fire departments. We're a little bit lower. We're around 60 to 70%. Most other places around 80, a little bit higher. Um so we're our percentage of EMS calls a little bit differently. Um the biggest thing that we are not a transport agency. Um we are just a first response agency. So we we go and provide and wait for uh Crawford County to come with their ambulance. Uh so a lot of that is the uh when we go we're going on the higher acuity calls. Um and so those are the kinds of things that you know we're going to be looking at later on. Um we're going to have a discussion with Carford County EMS to maybe identify some of those calls that maybe we can drop off of or maybe we can uh change a little bit different on our response model. Um but that's stuff that's all still on the table. I haven't we haven't gotten there yet. I know that that's your call, but like we talked and I've said this before, $2 million trucks running EMS calls

is not a good thing. Yeah. You know, I think you have to have the manpower and I mentioned station one. You can run that with a couple guys in a pickup because you get a truck this size and you're running whether it's an EMS or fire call, [cough] that's a lot of weight. Yes. you know, and it's it's it's a danger, I think, that big a truck running 70% of the calls for the citizens out there. You know, a lot of citizens not paying attention to begin with. And, you know, I just see, you know, it's less of a a risk to the citizens if we use a smaller truck on 70% of our calls. And plus, it's not $2 million truck we're wearing out running. No, I understand. We think about that. And it sounds like you are fair.

Yeah. It's one of the things I am going to evaluate the staffing models um when once I get into it a little bit more and we'll discuss this a lot more and go to a lot more detail when I I come up here to do my budget presentation. Um but yeah, it is absolutely something we're looking at um the way we we staff the different uh trucks and everything like that. So, well, I'm not saying you know that truck being out of station 3 if it was a code naturally they're going to go. But if it's just a routine EMS call, you know. Yeah. And there's things we can do with you know rescue 7. Question. If your guys get there, you got a code what he just said. to your guys get there first. What do they do?

So, we have, you know, automatic external defibrillators. So, we can hook up the pads, we can perform CPR, we can start that process. Um, you know, depending on where the the closest ambulance is, um, you know, we may be there for a little bit, but we'll at least get that process of CPR started. And that's going to be the the main thing to to get that um the early shock and defibrillation to get that going so that way they can, you know, to to start that. We don't do IVs or anything like that?

Not yet. So um we it's one of the things where I'm we're currently working on. We've had some discussions with um Dr. Steman who is our medical director. Um we are getting to the part where we right now our BLS is going to be pushed up a little bit and then after that we start getting that into uh to to focus a little bit more and then after that then we can start looking at EMTAs which that can start doing the IVs and those kinds of things. It's going to be a couple years down the road. Um it's it's you know we we kind of just getting there but it's something I'm we're going to be pushing forward. Good eventually. We're the mercy of the ambulance wherever that is. Like you said, we can we can be more qualified, but you're on that scene.

Well, the the ambulances are going to be medical. I mean, paramedic. So, we don't we're not going to have paramedics yet. We're going to, you know, work up for first the BL the, you know, the basic and then the advanced, you know, EMT. Um, maybe someday we'll get to to the paramedics on, but we are still on the scene and we are still performing the the life-saving measures that we can. Chief, for the people that are listening are here, the BLS is the basic basic life support. I'm sorry. Yes. I make sure some some people acronyms I do. Yeah. Yeah. I have a tendency to do that. So the ATLS Yeah. AC So on the response time for receiving this um how long does it take to put it in full service once we receive it?

So once we receive it, we're going to have to do just initial drivers training. Obviously we're going to have to make sure everybody does, you know, knows how to operate it correctly and that sort of stuff. But it should be pretty quick. I mean we'll have to do a little bit of tool mounting, that kind of thing. But within a month, I would say of of receiving it. Pretty quickly. It's generally ready to go. We just got to train our Yeah. So, I mean, we're going to and and we know we as we go out there, we're going to go out to Wisconsin as they're the the mid we call the midpoint inspection and then the final inspection and we'll see it being built. We'll make any changes or catch any mistakes that are while while it's being built. Um, and then we'll when it make sure that once it comes in, we'll actually have it's it'll be ready to go. Uh, like I said, we may have to do a little bit of tool mounting and stuff when we get back just to make sure that we have things in the right place that that works for us. Um, but that should be pretty quick.

They come down and pump test it and a test it before we accept it. They will pump test it at the factory. Oh, at the factory, not down here. Yeah. And and they will give us a certificate of pump and and aerial test before we ever leave Wisconsin. Are you are you currently fully staffed your department? We are. Uh so right now we're in the process of hiring the uh the deputy chief um fire marshalsafety coordinator. Um and then we had the interviews for that this week. And then we also have one vacancy for a firefighter that we're in the process of going through applications for now. Okay. Thank you. I'd move to accept. Oh, second. [clears throat] Been moving and second to accept this. All in favor say I. I. Thank you, chief. Thank you.

Real quick before he walks away, I mean, the chief said he only been here two months and he immediately um was inherited Quint 3's problems and I kind of challenged him and he went with his uh firefighters and they came back and said, "I think we got a way through this and we can save a bunch of time." And then it was just all about the money. But he did most this on his own and want to make sure he gets credit for that. Well, our apparatus committee did did most of the work and I I couldn't have done it without them. So, well, like you just said, Darren, I met with him at station one, went through station, took a tour, you know, all of us need to do that. I like and I need to get with you or all of us and look what we've done at three, I mean two and then three at some point because Yeah, you guys, you know, yeah,

doing a good job. So, anytime you know where you at. All [laughter] right. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Resolution consider approval of resolution number 1300 allow authorizing certain public improvements and providing for the payment of the cost thereof.

Hi mayor and commissioners. Um the city for a long time has been in the uh a cycle of of selling bonds approximately every 10 years. uh we we've limited our bond uh uh terms to 10 years and that gives us a little bit more flexibility in terms of how we use a bond funding. It also makes our bonds more attractive in the bond market. A shorter term it's more attractive. Um so what we're we're at the stage now where we're we're at that cycle now where we're looking at selling bonds again. Uh the staff has been working to put together a prioriti we're going through our priorities of our projects looking at what we we really need to have done as quickly as possible. Bond funds are unique. It's a unique tool that municipalities have. They allow us to uh do major projects that aren't easily fit [snorts] that can't easily fit into our operating funds or from our other traditional funding sources. We've put together what we consider to be a great list. I did walk through provide you with a kind of a cover memo as well as the a schedule of what a bond sale looks like, the process we have to go through uh and also a list of the bond projects that we're that we're proposing here. we're asking you to approve tonight. Right? You'll notice that in the uh in the the schedule, this is the first step in the bond process. The bond process is is getting the approved list from the governing body. So, we're and be glad to answer any questions you might have. I didn't know if you wanted did you want to add anything to that?

I was I was just going to explain um Jay's kind of headed this up. I have a little bit of experience with bond selling, but it's been like 20 some years ago. So they they do it regularly. So I've just kind of let him lead the process and I'm learning as we go. Can we uh explain to the public how the bond process works and the benefits to it? I know there's been a lot of media coverage on what's going on in Kansas City, the Chiefs, and some people are afraid of it. Some people are, you know, just against it because it's the Chiefs. But can you explain a little bit how that works for the community that we're in?

Sure. Um well, first of all, bonds are paid back by a debt service fund. All right. And what we've tried to do over these years is make sure that that that service level stays that that the mill the effect on the mill rate is is is nil. It doesn't have any effect on the mill rate. So what we so when we sell bonds all right uh we put together a list of projects total that up and we take that that package uh to the marketplace and we have a financial adviser that that kind of walks us through that. We don't take them ourselves. We they have we have to have someone who makes that market and who goes who goes there and sells the bonds and they and we also work with our bond council as well to set up the proper legal documents and when we do that we'll we'll we'll go to the market and we will get bids back from people who are interested in buying our buying our bonds right and uh they will give us different uh interest rates and we basically will choose the lowest interest rate to pay back those bonds and and uh and they will give us upfront they will give us the money in this case it's $6.5 million All right. They'll give us that money and then we'll start a payment cycle to pay back those bonds. Uh and we have a set term for those for the repayment of that bond. And that's going to be 10 years. All right. That's what that's what we've traditionally proposed. Again, makes it a little bit more flexible for us. It's not the 20-year bonds or 25-y year bonds. And these are paid back specifically from a mill levy that has been about the same for many, many years. All right. And we're trying to and our goal is to keep it the same.

Yeah. And I think that's really the beginning of the process. I was reading um the paper the other day at another town and the question from the commission was look did you come up with a list of projects or did you come up with the funding you had and put a bunch of projects that you could afford in there and that's the way we do it here. We've always we've had about eight mills that's pro when I when I first got here that was like seven and we go back and forth between the operating budget. If you take a mill out of the operating budget to put it into your debt service to cover it, then you just cut your operating budget. And in order to make it what it needs to be, you have to raise the mill. So early on, we just said basically eight mills. And so the the valuation, the first step we do with our bond council is because this stuff's real heavy and we don't do it enough to be great at it. So we always contract with the lawyers to do it, but is how much can we afford and without changing that mill rate. And so that's how we ended up at the 6.5 million. And that's uh and then we went backwards with Matt and Kim and police and fire and everybody and said, "Okay, we we're going to present our CIP in another probably the next meeting and there's I don't know how many hundreds of millions of dollars of projects on there." So, this is the group that we came up with. We thought we have some roads, we have some fire needs that we haven't been able to get to. We have some airport needs that you heard today that we haven't been able to get to. Uh we have two very important intersections that serve the high school students off of Free Kings that we haven't been able to get to. And we think if we can get those intersections done, then we can apply for grant money to get the cheaper part, which is connecting the road, putting their shoulders on. So, a lot of thought went into this. We do have a signal at Third Street, which is right in front of where the Kel building is going to be. There used to be a signal there. Um we took it out, I don't know, before I got here. Um so, Matt's helped us repurpose that. So, there will be a signal that's a safe crossing for people there getting across Broadway. And the um final thing is some athletic fields and and the the the big one that jumps out there is um the softball field at Lincoln Park and

the two big baseball fields at Lincoln Park would have turf infields now. They already have grass outfields. So, we wouldn't have to cancel tournaments every time it rains because it's too muddy. And we've got a uh while we will have to bid it, we we we may know a local um turf company that has told us that um they're going to work with us and we think the money the million dollars that's in here for that will get those three fields done. So it's a pretty balanced list, but there's always 100 other projects that you know we want to get done. So you're talking about eight mills on this. It's it's eight mills right now. It's been eight mills for 12 years. If if if we lower the total mill, would if we decide to do that, what will

it would come off of the the only mill that we would have on the table um legally would be the operating mill. There's there's a mill that goes to the library. There's a mill that goes to the debt fund. And then there's the mill that's in the operating budget, which is about 35 or something like that. That's the mill that we're usually talking about when we're talking about the mill for operating. And that's where that 1.152 ex that that's in the that won't affect this that that will no legally once we are obligated to do this which is why we have a strong bond rating. It's because they come in the creditors and check and look at our cash flow look at how the city's run look at our fiveyear forecast and five-year plan our budget and look at how well we've kept that mill and if we've struggled to it

I know you you you just listed a few things I ran through a few thing that this will cover. Would it be too much to ask if you read off everything that this is going to so people will understand what what we're looking at what we're going to do with this money? Uh,

sure. Be glad to. We we have two. We have two intersections. Thank you. We have two intersections. Uh, one at Free King and Atkinson. All right. And one at Free King and Quincy. They happen to be some of the most dangerous intersections in our town. We have issues at Atkinson with trucks going off the road. It's it's it's happens all the time. The trouble is we don't they don't always make police reports when they do that. Uh but they go off the road a lot and we get we hear that all the time from the from the industrial areas down there. Um and we also have a dangerous intersection. We actually had a fatality at the Can I stop you on the intersection because some of that Sure. Isn't it that part of that intersection belongs to the county? Are we going to do half of the road belongs?

Yeah. I was going to say how does that work? Well, um I think we all sat through the county presentation with us in this room. Um if we wait on the county, it's not going to get done. That's why it ended up on the bomb list. We were tried, we wrote grants for years to try to get them done through grants, but the federal money kind of went like that after the pandemic. And so that's a great question. Can you tell the amounts as you go through these so people understand?

Oh yeah, sure. Sure. The uh the freak king and Quincy intersection that totals about 820,000. We have engineers estimates on all of these. By the way, the uh the Freing and Atkinson intersections about 950,000. Again, these are these are very steep, high, you know, the the there's very should there's no shoulders. It's very steep. We want to fill those in, put some shoulders in, make the turn radiuses much safer. So, those are the two those are two uh intersection projects that are on this list. All right. Um the other another one we have was we actually talked about it earlier tonight. there their their pavement that's in front of the city's uh small plane uh hangers, right? Uh that area is it's asphalt right now and it's uh it's gotten to the point where the planes actually blow up dangerous sections of asphalt and gravel. Uh it's falling. It's really deteriorated badly. It's become a serious safety hazard. So, we also are including for a total of about 1.3 million uh making that entire area, that whole taxi lane uh cement, all right or concrete. It'll be concrete and they'll won't it'll be good for hopefully 20 years after we do that.

You can't use federal money to do that.

And that's and that's one of the points that we we definitely want to make here. The taxi lane is not something that the federal government will will will give us funding for. So we can't just let it deteriorate. It's a major expense. We're very hard for us to find it in the operating budget. So it becomes a it comes as a candidate for bond funding. Right? That's that's what we do. So that's that's uh that's three. Um the ballfield turf Darren already talked about that's about a million dollars for the to turf the infields and three we we cancel a lot of tournaments because it rains and it's been very painful for the parks department and painful for the tournament people uh when it rains over weekend and they have to cancel everything send everybody home we lose revenue as a city tournaments are great revenue generators for the city and when we have to cancel them it's it's pretty devastating for us so we'd like to turf at least three in fields at the ball fields park

about a million dollars about roughly 300,000 about for three of them about $300,000 per infield. These are not big fields, but Jay, how are you going to protect the investment after it's down on that? Yeah. On the turfs on the That's the parks department. We've done we've Yeah. Well, like JC's has got fence and locks and gates and everything, but those three that you're talking about, how are we going to protect? Well, they could anyone could get into JC Parks as well. We don't we don't actually anticipate or see a lot of of of vandalism at at those kind of parks. We have we will definitely put cameras up. We will definitely light them. But uh but yeah, I don't think we can stop.

I think the biggest change, Cheryl, is going to be um concessions in the dugouts and not letting them spill cheese and coke and everything all over because, you know, when it's dirt, who cares? But right now, we've got an investment and we need to protect it. But it's a great question. We'll work. We'll we'll change our practices. How many tournaments have been booted because of the rain over the last say five years? Well, that's a good question. I wish crew the guy to ask is probably Well, guy ask was is no longer working with Chris. Sorry.

Uh I know last year four of our bigger tournaments got cancelled for the and actually we've already had a softball tournament this year. We had a rain pop up and the championship game got cancelled then. So, it's a big problem. The main problem is people don't want to come from out of town if there's a risk that their game will get cancelled. So, they're going to make plans to be here if they there's a chance of bring out. So, yeah, it's just just curiosity. Y thanks. It's significant. Thanks, Chris.

Um, we also are adding uh we added the concrete improvements to fire station 2 and three. Um, we have a we've we've been toying with this for a while now and we've we've brought ideas up internally about how to find funding for it. Again, these are if we again it has reached a level where it's appropriate to be to be bonded and we just like to get that that project done and take care of those issues. The tires are really expensive and we're just chewing them up. They're driving over gravel. Um, one of the things that uh that I think some people here in the community will be happy to see that we included in this bond sale is a is a soccer field complex. All right. Um, we uh we have that's all we can say about that. Yeah. We we can't really It's a work in progress.

We we we've agreed not to to talk about the the whoever's giving us the land. Uh but that is is going to be nearly a million dollars about 975,000 that we've estimated at this point just for two fields at this point. We'd like to think two fields now, but room for three. Two for what? There'll probably be three. There won't be turf, will they? No, they'll be sad, but but uh but we hopefully can find some money for for turfing at least one of them. All right. So, we can again, you know, have a in rain. Rain won't be a problem. That's all predicated on

a contract we haven't yet signed and development [clears throat] costs and the weather. So the next thing that cut you off, the next thing on the list is a automated meter reading equipment. We currently have a automated system. Yes, we do. We do, but we don't have all of the pieces that allow us to collect all the data. All right. So, this will be buying that buying that equipment. What pieces are you talking about? The meters. We have a lot of radio read meters. Is the truck The truck's had a problem for a while. So, what's what's [clears throat] the issue as far

I'll let Matt talk about this. So, Okay. So, over the last however long I've been here, when I started, we were about 50% drive by truck read, which is an AMR system. We've since then converted to um the 100% AMR. What we're talking about tonight for this purchase is basically the black box that right now we have a one-way signal coming from. And in the last 5 years, we've been converting from there to go to an AMI, which basically we have the hardware in place on the towers. This has been a 5-year program. We worked with census metering setting up. We have it in place. Um, when we made the conversion from the AMR to pick up the smart points into the AMI, we've lost basically those 3,000 mters. So, some of the problems we've had with billing and some other issues have been software related technical glitches and they're not consistent either because we're not getting the same addresses all the time. But anyways, we're we are currently we have the software online. We're seeing as of the other day, we are seeing roughly 6,000 meter accounts. And we are currently in the background right now bridging the gap the gap between um our accounts and our addresses tied to those meters and making sure everything's verified to pull that into utility billing, everything like that. What this 700,000 does is by the remainder those boxes are roughly 140 a piece and we need around 3,000 of them give or take um to pull this off. We will actually put them in place ourselves. We'll work through all that process inhouse. Not a big deal. Um but that will that will allow for everything else to be picked up on our AMI software and as we move forward that's going to be better for the customers. We'll be able to set sensors, alarms, accounts. We've got some training set up for the end of May to start working through how to use our software, what that's going

to look like on, you know, some customerf facing and and do some other stuff. Um, so it's it's going to be a neat deal. It's a it's been a a long time pl coming, but we've done a lot of it inhouse and we've done a lot of savings by being able to do it in-house and do it through a stage process. And there was a certain time after COVID and you got the chip the whole chip deal like we didn't even get MXUs for I don't know it's like two plus years that we were waiting on MXUs. So it was we kind of that kind of delayed this process. But as we were having the bond talk, that that's where it came up. If we went ahead and could put this money into the into this sale and get this, we could go ahead and purchase what everything else we need to finish to get this thing finished off and we'll accelerate our our gap coverage on getting everything into an AMI system. So

So that will still be read by somebody driving around in the truck or you can read it from video. You pick it up from the tower. So today we can pick up 6,000 meters from the tower. Okay. Now I can see the meter and I can see the blackbox device that tells me what their IDs are and I can actually even find them on a map. But right now they're not linked to accounts or addresses. So that's the problem. We're we're still waiting on trying to get all that data synced back up. So you're saying the 3,000 boxes. Yep. Hooking them up. Yep. And then reading them from the tower. Yep. Then you'll have what? 8,500 then? Yeah. That's approximately how how many accounts about the trucks that read them that drive around.

Well, we're we're still going to have some work before that. But I mean, we're still going to have service work. Those things still fail roughly. We we have about 400 meters. We have approximately a meter or an MXU that fails a day. Mhm. Around. But I mean, we'll stop. So, what about the trucks themselves that are reading it? Do you have a problem with them right now? the equipment inside of the truck right now. We've had Yes, that is outdated technology. Um that we're kind of living living with band-aids right now. Um but the bigger problem that we're having at the moment is not even we've got the hardware working, but we have a software glitch somewhere whenever we changed into some smart points and we can't find the bug because we'll take care of the immediate need.

But then down the road there might be something else then. No, everything will be you won't need anything. Okay. So, tell me the problem about the trucks that the reading trucks because a lot of people, you know, call and say that they have a leak, but they don't or they got an E on their bill and it's an estimated read. And how did you alleviate November, December, and January sewer charges if the trucks had a problem during that time frame? So, we have historical. So, there's a lot to unpack there real quick.

Okay. Um so the short answer is is our financial billing system does the estimation um from there and putting that and it's not great and we're fixing the financial management system that we're going to remedy that the estimated read. So we have basically 24 25 books that we read divided into three different zones that all have somewhere between 300 and 600 accounts that we read in driveby format. of that. Some books will pick up 100%, some books will pick up 70% and some books will be some variation in between. Um the books that we're having, they're not consistent either. Like sometimes we'll get a book where we had 100% may go down to 80. Some the next month it may go up to 90 or 100 again. So, we're getting and we're trying to get back out with some of our staff as we can and get back out and stand on top of the meter, take the take the take the read like we were doing, drive by and get in the account. And we're now that we have the now that we can see the accounts online, we are trying to do some of that from a computer station trying to pick them up that way and trying to find everything that's been overestimated or we we are really trying hard in the background and it's just a lot of staffing issue to kind of work through this. the estimating charges that's done by the software that's set on the books and and and there we we've we get issues. Um

so at that time the sewer charge for November, December and January, you know, if there was problem with the trucks that was reading them and it was reading zero consumption, but it the average I don't think it's supposed to be for a year. Oh, I mean it's supposed to be for those months, but they can have they can have previous year or previous account. Um, but if you had a leak during that time, it would if you had a leak in that time and it shot up and then came back down, it can but that could happen. Not just this year, that happens that that's been happening for the last however long. If you have a leak in those months that drives your consumption up,

we got to flag that and identify those. So, that's Yep. I have a question on reading them not with the truck but from city hall I take it. And so if somebody doesn't pay the water bill, we send somebody out to shut the water off. Correct. Then they come in and pay the bill, then we send somebody out to turn the water on.

Can that be done uh from city hall? Can you shut water off? Turn that is directly. Now what we can do if we don't shut the water off and we do an occupancy change instead of someone out and going out and check checking the read at the time of the occupancy change we can do that from city hall. So we do eliminate there are some savings in that where the whoever is working the desk and then they do an occupancy change they can get the reading on the account right then and there instead of sending someone out but that function is a function of the meters and I don't ever foresee okay in my lifetime that ever being something we pursue but it's not like the electric company where they can go [clears throat] yeah we're slightly different yeah so

any other questions thanks for answering all my questions yeah no problem Okay. All right. And one final project that I didn't mention was a a a passenger traffic signal at Third Broadway where the new Kel School is is going going to be there. We just It's a pass it's a pedestrian safety thing. All right. So, that's the only thing. It's a rather small project about 55,000. But be before we move to approve which I will

I got a couple you know u that traffic on third and Broadway. I don't know why that was ever taken out because it is a traffic hazard when you're trying to pull out and see if somebody's coming. I understand why you're putting it back in because you're going to have some college kids walking through there. And what was you saying another one will be so they can activate it themselves if they want to. No, it won't be one of those. It won't be one of those. It will have p it will have the ped crossing. Yeah, just not push button. So all these are good projects. Mhm. How do we prioritize them? Or do we do a couple of them at the same time? How how do you figure that out?

We're going, man. We get a check in June for six and a half million bucks and we are most of these have been engineered, designed, planned. So, they all could be happening at We're going to do them all. We'll do them all. We'll do them all as soon as we get the money. I got a question just outside this scope from Atkinson on Atkinson from free kings to Rouse. Is that ever on the radar? That is the smallest road for semi- traffic all the time with no sides. getting your exercise routin right past like the guard pit plastics vinyl plex big trucks all the time

longterm we have estimates for like real real improvement if you set it on your hands for another month or whenever I'm supposed to present that is on the list for a small mill and overlay this year and I was like just to wow it is on the radar as as well as Quincy um to try and do a a small mill and overlay both those roads um between Rouse and Free Kings um which is just going to really kind of Quincy's got some settlement issues going on in Atkins. This is full of powles um and we know that. So we're going to try and bridge it for a while and keep chasing the overall big project's like $7 million. Oh, really? Just for that from

for one mile and the same thing with Accason is one side ours and one side front or the majority of it's ours. There is a small snippet that's that is front neck right there at the corner, but um the majority of it is ours. I'm surprised for as many semis that go down there daily on that stretch that you aren't replacing that road more often. Well, we've patched we patched quite a bit. Yeah, but it's getting worse. Didn't we write a grant for that intersection and the raise? It was included in million dollar. I mean, it's Yeah, it's it's Thank you very I just I wondered I saw it the other day.

It's ours. It's a that's a real question. But I tell you one thing though, one of the things that we get as an in an incentive for us to receive grant funds if we can show that we've spent money on the intersections. All right. So all they're doing is connecting. So it would be the domino effect then. Good. Well, I I move to approve unless you guys had any more questions. Second. It'll be moved and seconded to approve. Uh all in favor say I. I. All oppose same time. Motion carries. Thanks a lot. J. Uh, Dexter, could I bring you up and answer a question? Call me out.

The other day I was over I overheard uh one of our local businessmen say that uh somebody said, "Well, did you get a permit?" And he said, "No, I never get a permit." Do we have a problem with getting city permits to do things? Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's a big problem out there. Okay. People don't get all the permits required. Okay. So, what do we do? I I I would probably ask for your support and when we do go after them because that's really our job in building services when we catch you. So, um support us. You know, we're going to take people to court. We're going to try to prosecute if that's what you want us to do. We're asking that you support us.

What's What's the number one reason for an issue with with permits in your I couldn't tell you. They just don't get them. They just don't get when I when I got here before Dexter was here, we the board gentleman that had Dexter's job

had he had been doing it so long he literally was just chasing trying to catch people working without a permit. It it was and he and I and and he couldn't let it go. Um so when Dexter got here, I was like it go it exists, but you've got Saturdays. I mean, there's just a lot of reasons where people know when we're working, but um I try not to have them just go crazy because you'll spend all day hunting people trying to and that's I mean, it's unfortunate, but it's not something I want them spending their time doing. They've got way more to do than me. So, do we do we have an issue with the requirement for permits being too stringent? Absolutely not.

We have went so far backwards and got to remember permits and inspections are public safety. You know, we don't talk about it. We talk about the fire department. We talk about a police department, but building permits and inspections are public safety. We need to encourage that. We have went Darren has taken us with software. He's given us all the tools we need. What we really need is support from commissioners to get out there and help get your permits, get your inspections. Um, and let's do things right. Are people getting permits and not getting inspections or is it just a not Absolutely. Yeah. All these things are subject to open records. Anybody can pull an open record. You can find out if your contractor is getting permits. I hear it all the time that well I thought my you know homeowner said well I thought the contractor had a permit and isn't that really the the rub is everybody plays that

everybody plays somebody else I thought the the homeowner had it well I thought the contractor was pulling it and Yep. So, what's the current cost for a permit on uh if you're doing a job that's under $10,000, it would be under 60 bucks. Be $60 and it goes down from there. Now, over if you're building a house, I think Dustin's here or did he leave? He just left. I mean, you can get into couple hundred for a permit to build a new house. It's not astronomical though. Absolutely not. In comparison across the country, we are way low. I think at one time we we looked at it here, we're at the same we were in 1970.

So, we're pretty low. Turnaround time opposed to 3 months is uh 3 days, 3 hours. We're pretty quick. And you had a non-aggenda item, didn't you? I do. If we're on non-aggenda, are we at non-aggenda? Mayor, I have one thing. Okay. kind of bring up bring up um you know for years

we've all said we're going to reduce cost to the taxpayers and we've been looking at ways to do that and I don't want people [snorts] to think we're after them but you know we have been looking at uh credit cards and some of the uses of the credit cards you know I think that's an area that we can maybe reduce cost with the uses of the credit cards you know we have a policy What I'm seeing is we're not really following the policy. There's certain things they could do. Do you think it the policy is working, Darren?

I've gone um so I think I've the pec card started before I got here in 2002. In 2012, we kind of vamp we we kind of did a best practices and gave out more of them. So, like we said, I think we had 92 people out of the 300. And then depending on what finance director we've had, some of them are like, "This is crazy. We need to just give out 10 to the department heads and let the department heads, you know, give it out, which administratively and and an auditing wise is a problem because once you have a pecard and other several people start using it, you lose." We have in fact a decent system um in my in my mind about catching fraud because we've done it a few times. But I have talked to the staff recently. I told them I said, you know, I get the feeling um with talking to several commissioners, maybe we we talk about how we could get down to 30 and maybe talk about being real stringent on and and and and I know I said it the other day and I honestly believe it. I think, you know, somebody grabbed me this week and they they're like, I they know there was a bunch of information requests for people's pec cards and they were like, I'm really worried because we worked 16 hours the other day at at the at this venue and and I bought and I'm like, you know, we can do better on our end of of of tightening up the policy of of probably when you buy food for people. I mean, that's always been something where I always kind of liked being able to say if your people are having a hard day or a good day and you want to take them out, don't worry about it. But if if it's you know if it needs if you guys want to reel it in I mean I think Missy's um I haven't really talked to her too much about it but the staff understood you know if we need to get down to where there's only we have 14 15 departments that there's only the director maybe an assistant but there are circumstances where in utilities and things that people need to be able to buy and the revolving accounts that

existed at businesses were very problematic. So we kind of went this way but we'll do whatever you want. We know we know you're you know you take it serious and we want to do what you need.

I don't want employees thinking that I'm against them having some kind of a recognition for years of service or birthdays and stuff like that. But there's a lot of things that I see that we could do better at. So that's what I'm I'm ask and you you seem to think that we can also I'm asking could you set that down with staff and come up with a I don't know if it's the same purchasing policy on credit cards and like you said reduce that number. I think the problem is too many cards. It's in my opinion it's hard to keep track of. You know, when I was on the fire department, the fire chief had a card and there was one card at the fire station for whatever shift was working. And if we needed something that shift, got that card and we went and purchased it. We, you know, made sure no sales tax, everything you needed to do, we brought it back, we coded it. The battalion chief was his card. He was in charge of it that day. He checked it, initialed it, and sent it to finance. So I you know I think we just need a better way of you know come up with some plan. If this is a plan let's reduce the cards. I don't know what some you know what the card number needs.

Can we let's think about it this way. So if you have 90 cards and I think we said the other day the spend was 966,000 for the year. So it's less than 2% of our overall spend and it's the stuff people need every day to do their jobs. If you take the if you cut from 90 to 30, you're cutting twothirds of the cards, but you're not going to cut twothirds of the 966. Why don't you let us come back with some recommendations on card numbers and maybe a little tighter policy around when it's appropriate to buy a meal or or whatever. But but I think overall it does work. But we I think with Missy here, I mean Missy, I don't know if anybody knows Missy's tracks track record, but she literally found a couple of million dollars of fraud in one of her previous jobs. So, um I think she's a good person to kind of rally around and let's let's come back to you with something that you guys can consider.

Well, I agree with you. There's going to whether you reduce the number or not, there is going to be certain things that we're going to spend the money on that we need, but I agree with you also. I think there has been some fraud happen because of this. We've caught it. Yeah. I mean, and we and and that's, you know, waste, fraud, and abuse are the three things in your political science classes you learn about. So, we take them real real serious. But yeah, I mean I'm glad you said something. We're going to move that way. I'm going to bring back to you probably a revamped policy in a couple of meetings and just see what you think of it if that's okay. I mean,

yeah, I think by by um making it sorry by by getting a little clearer policy, I think that will help. Um the one two things that I I don't want to happen as a negative to changing things is we had um I think it was like the Napa store where we got several invoices and Megan in the AP office she was trying to figure out whose they were and she sent it to this department. They said they're not her so not theirs. So then we sent it here. Those invoices circled back around about three or four times and nobody ever claimed them

because they didn't sign the sheet at the store. And so that's what we that's why we went to pec cards is because if it's their card, we know they spent it there. So by having a shared card, are we going back the wrong direction again? And I I think it will I think as long as we have have good policy and a stringent policy on that, I think it would be okay. But any any bigger purchases, wouldn't they be requisitioned? Because requisitions are 5,000 and over. Yeah. I was the ones who requested these and as business owner I'm just looking at from that standpoint I was amazed at how much I seen in here that was

probably not according to policy and there was a lot of descriptions left off and this has nothing to do with you but I'm just saying that

there's some people that are meticulous then there's off the reservation the other way and then people who are using them are creatures of habit breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they're still getting paid. I've seen that snacks, drinks, and then one person in particular was buying stuff, and uh I just didn't understand how somebody didn't catch it. And if so, plumbing parts, uh, drain cleaner, ant bait, pool supplies, chlorine, shock, stuff for a pool, screwdriver, uh, silicone, shirts, diapers, pampers, powder, formula,

and I just thought that that person should have been reeled in, and I want to know why they weren't. [snorts]

We're going to jump in this. I I was also appalled by what I saw on some of these cards. I did pull a bunch of cards myself. uh to go through this and coming from uh military perspective and the defense travel system, there are checks and balances. There's seven people that have to approve every purchase to the dime to the penny. And if it's not right, then every person in that line takes responsibility for what's been purchased. Um I know this is different environment and I'm I'm navigating that, but walk me through how it works. Like again, there are some things on there that absolutely shouldn't have been on there, but a city employee has a card, makes a purchase. Walk me through approvals, signing off, who's involved, and I miss you weren't here for some of this stuff. A lot of this stuff. So,

the current policy right now, how does it work? The same policy. Yeah, it's the same. So, um I might make sure I get this right. Jared receives the statements on these and then he sends them he breaks them apart and sends them out to the departments or to the the pecard owner and they're supposed to provide all their documentation for that and um I'm I'm not sure 5 days is it 5 days they have to turn yeah I don't know back to the department person I mean we spend it's like payroll we have to remind everybody every week to process your payroll we have to remind everybody every week to turn in your receipts I mean it's people the policy of having the privilege having the credit card. Oh, yeah. We I mean, finance takes it serious. Jared's

So, the if it's an abuse of a credit card, then what's the consequence? The the I don't I don't know which one you're looking at, but since I Well, I'm not naming names, but I'm just saying the ones that you just named were all common to one employee at a time where um Jared came in and said, "Hey, I you know," because he looks at all of them and he's like, "These don't look right." Oh, and then you're talking about Jared who's a Peterson in the finance department.

So he so he went through and and said, "Hey, you know, and and we met with the employee and said, you know, it's hard to get good employees sometimes." So we said, "Is there anything else you need? We we found this. Is there anything else you need to disclose?" And and then we moved on from there. And then then when the next month came in, it was clear that we had to take action. So I mean that is the process working. It's not if if if anybody else I don't have a pool so I didn't buy them for

Jared is is a very good employee has been there for a long time. He's the one that identified that and a couple other instances and we meet with the employee and we take the appropriate action and that really all I can say but I don't I don't want people to think there's 14 employees that bought pool supplies. No, no, there's not. I'm just saying that there's stuff in here that I've seen and I just wondered this went on with this certain card long time, not just a month. It was several months. It was several months. And so why was the

That's what I'm getting back to like the there's supposed to be checks and balances on purchases. Um you know, one of the [snorts] and I'm I'm going to bounce around several cards, but one of the cards had a close to an $800 total. um several purchases at different locations and there were no receipts, zero. And it was paid for. Yeah. How does that I mean it's after the fact if you think about it. You get these receipts after the fact. So I mean every you can keep asking them to turn in their receipts but at some point well I would think if they didn't have a receipt for it and they spent the money that's coming out of their pocket in my opinion. If you can't justify Yeah. And to that point, we'll have to see what the policy says.

That point to Cheryl's point, hey, you know, this went on for and we also recovered all that money. I mean, we're not we're not How did How do you do that? Well, I mean, you want to go into executive session? No, but I'm saying, trust me, we got the money back. I mean, that's my job. And in finance and HR, we're like, we got to get this money. I mean, we take the city's taxpayers money very seriously, but I'm not going to get that far involved in it. But you have to trust me. What percentage of the ones you've gone through do you think that were Well, I'm I'm just saying there's there's some that I'm saying that it's outrageous the amount they're spending. Well, not the the one guy that we're talking about, but but the ones you read off were the

Yes, that was the employee, but he should have been fired in my opinion because he didn't follow the p there's rules on the purchasing policy on the card as I was reading that. there. I mean, that's my opinion. I think he should have been fired. That was the only one you found. I was told I can say that he was I mean, and we were reimbursed. I can't say anything else. I mean, yeah. So, that that's that's

but otherwise reeling in 92 cards and or else making sure that they absolutely know what it's for and why and that you have to have the documentation. If you don't have the documentation proving what it went for, then they're responsible for it and it it should come from them. I mean, I think if you don't that's part of their job. I think if you don't have the documentation, you probably ought to reimburse the city. It's it's that I mean, I don't travel, you know, I travel with you guys two or three times a year. Tammy is not friendly. I mean, yours are great. She makes sure that we She's like, we have there's some people that are meticulous. That's what I was meaning. And then there's some that like and there's no

no no consequences for bad behavior whenever that's what you're supposed to do in order to have the card consequences. I mean and then people who don't work for the city anymore, their cards need to be deactivated and they needed to be shredded because well you're going to look at we have a policy. Are we doing that yet?

That doesn't need to be changed. Just it what I've read in that policy explains it. How could you not understand what that says if you got a card? So, what I'm asking you to do is sit down with your department heads and limit the number of cards. I I don't think limiting the number of cards is going to create a problem because it never was when we I was there. And if Matt I am not going to ask you to walk back up to the podium, but I've looked at his receipts from the wastewater treatment plant, I mean water treatment plant, and whoever buys it, it's coded. They initial it with their initials. Matt initial which should be the supervisor initials it also. Then you send it off to finance department. Am I correct? Only thing I could ask for you Matt is that treadmill that's out there that should be put in public works for all employees that can use that. Not bought for one employee. That's just my opinion. What about the ones of the fire department that

that can be used if they if they go in there and they but you know fire department's unique though station one has it in the living quarters isn't there isn't that where that's not that's not an exist outside the living quarters I think oh there's no place I mean they put a lock on the living quarters out there

the the treadmill is in the upstairs of the chemical room at the water treatment plant and we don't have coded access I mean we have the gate but it's the same code that every employee gets to whether they go in my building or the 23rd Street dump. So, the public works employee and if anyone else in the in the city wants to use it, that's fine. It's not behind living quarters. It's up there. There's some other gym equipment that that has been bought by the water treatment employees that are up there, but any employee in the city can go to the water plant if they want to. We we we're not exposed to living quarters. We have someone there 24/7 all the time. We're not running around in shower towels or anything like that. So, I mean, they're more than more than welcome to use that treadmill. [clears throat] Um, it was not built for one employee. It's bought for the department.

That's my concern. It's in the chemical room. So, you know, I know we got great employees, but if we have somebody that's not a great employee and they go out there and assess the treadmill, who's to say they can't mess with our water? We have We have a camera, they're not going to like that in a in a chemical room, right? Well, that's where it's at. I'll We can put it in the basement. I can put it on the first floor. We can put it I can put it in an entrance. We can we can do 75 other options with that. We're driving down this long lane.

Yeah, it's not and I and I will make one since I'm up here again um just because I have roughly 20 employees that have credit cards inside of that. I I will make the point on my side that um reducing the number within even our department is painful. The reason we have that many is because what ends up happening is what they've already explained. If I have one card, then I have everyone driving across town to come get me to get a card and then bring it back. And then you don't know who's you have someone using a card that's not accessed, that's not named on it. It's not not accountable to that employee or even with a supervisor. So, we typically have it at the supervisor level and then either a supervisor, my maintenance technicians have them. Um, we do have another employee at the water plant that does that sends a lot of samples off FedEx consistently. Um, so those employees or if the supervisor is gone for the day, he's not leaving the card on his desk for anyone to walk in his office and walk off with it. I mean, it's staying with that employee that's responsible. Their names on the card when we get the credit card statements, they're responsible have those receipts with those. So, I don't necessarily know that reduction of the number of credit cards, but what they're talking about. I passed and we're all kind of throwing Nappa under the bus here about this whole conversation. General machinery, Battery Mart, anybody the fire department walked in and bought four del batteries. I passed a battery mart invoice around

75 like the plate at church trying to find a responsible owner before we did it because whoever's working behind the sales counter doesn't put that information in there. It doesn't verify. That never happens. And so we had a real problem with open accounts that we were passing around $15 to $200 invoices that no one wanted to own up to and they're going around the vendor's not getting paid and we don't know where it goes. And so that was why we kind of pursued the credit card. Matt, can we do this?

Why don't Why don't you just give us a month? Why don't we just give you the pecard receipts every month for a couple of months and see if that doesn't help us make people understand that you know you got to turn it down. I mean we we have great employees on the average on our employee on a scale of 1 to 10 our our employees average an eight but we got some threes. We got people that come to work for two days and they don't ever work here again. We're not giving them pec cards, but let us but thanks to what you said, why don't you let us try to enforce what we have right now a little better and give you the receipts for a month or two or four or five or six and and let you see that uh before we because Matt's bringing up a legitimate concern. I mean, we're going back to if more than one person has a card, then it's going to get real tough. But I think we need to enforce it better. It sounds like I mean, you guys are all saying you need to enforce it better. I didn't realize um you know I went through I I got asked to provide five years of receipts and and so I went through all five years and there was probably three where I was like you know I don't know what I do at Chili's I must just dine and dash because I got out of there three times and Jared usually comes in and says hey man where's your receipt but can we try that step first and you guys see it

yeah I think set the expectation that maybe the food and the snacking thing isn't something we're going to maybe it got a little long let's bring that back in and just maybe control I think is the Maybe you guys look at it and see. Well, like I said, that policy I don't how you cannot understand what he's writing. It's a pretty simple card for but we also have one. I mean, and Jared's not here, but um you know, it takes I don't know how many days it takes, but Jared's on it. And and I I thought I thought we do a pretty We have a lot of them, but we have a big spend. We've got a $70 million budget. So, I think we can do better, mayor, is what I'm saying. If you give us a chance,

I got involved in the credit cards. I heard about I I heard nothing about this from you with the abuse abuse. I was at the bus barn and a woman knows that we're looking at somebody said look at credit cards. So we're looking at credit cards. She comes up to me. I'm not going to say the individual. What about that guy? I said what are you talking about? So I looked at those and I'm thinking yeah there was a problem there. Man, you know, just like I said, employees ought to know that you don't go for breakfast, lunch, and supper and change somebody else. Oh, I'm going to use my car today. You pay for this meal. You know, I and buy toothpaste.

And I don't hear I hear what you're saying, but I don't understand, you know, other than going out of town for training that naturally the city needs to pay for your me. If you're in town and you're working in a with a group of people for 4 hours and you decide to go eat lunch, why why are we paying for that? You know, you shouldn't. And that's that's why I brought up last meeting, do we have a current policy that tells them what they're not supposed to spend it on? And and what what does the employee know they're supposed to do with it? We don't have anything currently in place for that. We don't have anything written. Right. So,

I've shared that policy that if you're in town, and we went through this with HR seven, eight years ago. I said, "If you're in town and you're at training or whatever, you're you buy you're buy we're not buying you lunch. I'm not going to buy you lunch to go to." But yeah, it's a good point. The policy says prohibited purchases and this is not an allincclusive list. Please check with the department director of finance and so it it says it here. I think they just Well, we've also had four of finance in the last five years. What's our What are we looking at? Yeah,

legal stuff aside, and I'm sure we can have attorney explain it to it, discussing what fraud and what has happened and say in the last two or three years, how do we do that as a commission? How do we get that information to review so we have a better idea of what's been done for the last three years? Well, you got 15,000 pages and that's the I just told you that one. Have you looked at them, doc? Have you requested any information about

No, I haven't. So, I'm asking how do we get a better idea of the overall scope of what's happened and what hasn't happened? So, we have that same argument. We have the fraud that has happened and it's been dealt with. We a city employee was fired due to his actions. Um, from what I'm seeing, there's substantial I mean, there's there's a lot of money involved with this, but if other things have happened that the city has gone after, like as a as a for instance, if somebody steals a trailer from the city right now, goes into a city lot, takes a trailer, we find out who it is, we're going to go and prosecute them. Yes. That's the process. They stole something of value. I I don't see this any different. If you're spending money on these cards for non city business um and hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month on lunches kind of looks that way to me, but there's no policy currently to govern that. So, how do we how do we get as a group, a working group, a better idea of what has happened in the past

to give us some tools to work forward? What do you mean? How is there not a policy? It's right here in the policyy's there, but the policyy's there, but it's not being informed. Are you insinuating that we didn't that we don't I'm asking is there other instances where somebody has misuse the cards and they've been dealt with or not to similar similar

if if there was it happened at the department level and I wasn't aware of it because the one I got the only one I've seen since I've been here that was flatout pecard abuse we've described and answered. I mean, I I I think that's the question is you're looking at every everybody somebody requested a year's worth of pecards. Somebody requested five years of my pec cards, five years of Jay's pec cards, five years of Henry's pec cards. I don't know what you're looking at. I don't know who requested any of that. I just know we we we provided it and it and it was it was a it was a pain to do. So, it sounds like the staff's under the impression that none of them can be trusted. And I'm telling you again that we have a policy that we have the finance department is checking. I don't think anybody finished answering. Somebody spends some money. It goes to the finance. Their director is supposed to look at it, sign off on. They're supposed to have a receipt. It goes to finance. If finance sees something fishy, it'll make its way up to me. And in my all my time here, I've had one instance that that happened and it was a year or two ago.

So I I don't I don't want the staff to think that your interest in pecards is because you don't trust them. It's because you want to control the spend by by requesting them. My start of the pecards had to do with the intendant looking at the budgets with these budget meetings and then PE cards are a way to spend money within those departments. That's where I started looking and I want to look at every department of course and and drill down to what's being spent where, you know, what's common, what's not. Um, and then it started to evolve. So, there's lots of money being spent on, I don't know, call it concessions. Um, but there's no policy telling people, hey, you can't buy your lunch or your breakfast every day on your government card or your

There's a very informal policy. I think everybody in this city knows unless my directors are sleeping at staff meeting that people aren't buying breakfast, lunch, and dinner at on PE cards.

I've got roughly six hours on these cards so far of my own time looking at uh expenditures, point of sale, time frames, uh whose names are written on the receipts. Um very I mean there's a lot of receipts to include some of yours that don't have details. They don't have the descriptions on what was spent and what the reasoning was for. So, as a whole, as a city, we need to have more detail detailed information on these cards, on the receipts, and the process needs to be more stringent. And I know we've looked at um I don't know, I don't have any cards now so far, and we're going to keep looking at cards. I'm going to keep asking for them. I know I I want to see where the money's being spent from the city.

I think he said he's going to give them to us. I don't think you're going to have to ask anymore. Right. Well, I mean, I've already asked to have them, but I mean now I mean moving forward, I think I think we're going to

Yeah, I've told you two things. I told you I spent two days going through my PE cards and I told you there was three or four of them that didn't have anything on them. So, I'm also a person and we have not a million dollars worth of pecards expense. If we want to spend our time doing that, I told you I'll give you at the end of every month you can have all the PE cards and go through them. But, um, nobody's challenging that you that you don't take it serious. I'm just telling you I think the pecard process is a best practice and it's something that takes away the multiple people spending on one card or one revolving account at Napa and I'm sorry to Napa for the fifth time that we're keeping you but um there's ways through this. It's not it's not um but what's important to know is we don't leave this meeting today with um anybody thinking that there's rampant abuse at the city of their pecards. If you can give us a specific list since you've been going through it for so long, I think we could get you answers to your list, but I don't want to just have a broad stroke of

I don't I don't think we're saying that, Darren. But what you just said that? No, what I'm saying is I'm I'm finding that there are there's lack of information as a whole, not as just one person and give me specifics and we'll look those up. I think the pro the problem is the process. Yeah. You know, the problem is the process. We've got the ordinance can be refined without any question. But perhaps you know something like reverting back to the military. If you get

we have what was called a property book and you took you took those things and you signed off on the bottom that you understand what you had. Maybe this a sheet of paper to a new employee or the present employees that lists all the things that they can do with the PE card and not do with the P. Maybe we change the policy and say if you're going to buy food or drink, then you have to have your director's signature

instead of just going into what I was getting to before I got cut off is I I would like to see some additional training for the employees so they have a better understanding of what is required for the policy. What's the minimum that's supposed to be on there and alone that what they're authorized to spend it on? I mean, that's that's what makes sense. I mean, we we have 92 cards. roughly 300 employees. That's a large number. So, I am for reducing the cards the safest way possible to keep things running and keep the city functioning. Uh but also we've identified issues with the cards uh in within the last year and and moving forward we can we can adjust a lot of this to make sure it doesn't happen moving forward. That's what I was getting to. Um we have a lot of options here to do better with these.

And I think you said you're going to do that, Darren. You're going to sit down with the staff. you're going to go through and I I still think we need to reduce the number of cards. I think that's workable. Uh but I don't I guess you're going to have to if the employee can't understand what the policy is, you're going to have to sit are you going to have to sit down with every employee and try to explain what the policy and just like you said food, you know, if you're in town, you'd know. Uh yeah, there's certain things you would think they would know without having to be

The city has I don't know what 14 15 departments. Um we give our department heads a ton of discretion and that's how we get department heads and keep them because I'm not standing over them all day. Um they're all going to watch this and they understand what's gone on for the last week with all the requests for the PECARD information and it and and that it's brought the city to its knees. I think we have their attention. I think the easiest way um I think Matt brings up a good point about the number of cards. I mean, are are there too many? I guess that's relative, but the responsibility is going to rest with the department heads to account for the money that's spent out of their department like it does with everything because to your point, if somebody gets on a skid steer and breaks it three out of four days, they're probably not going to be working here the next Monday because we just can't afford them if they can't figure out how to safely operate that. So, um, pecards are no different and yeah, we'll definitely take a look at it and I'll come back to you guys with probably a combination of policy changes and and the number of cards and and I do think there's something to be said for um it it seems to me like the biggest thing that um has the has the ch has has the most people the most commissioners looking is, you know, intake of food. When are you I mean, when are you eating? Why are you eating? Where are you eating? Who are you eating with? So, um yeah, we can do work on all that. That's That's

Well, that's I just want to thank Jacob and Tammy cuz I've asked for cards and they've done a lot of work providing me with those cards cuz I'm old school. I'm looking up papers and and they've went out of their way to uh to help me understand the process. So, I also want to make sure you know that come up to the mic because they can't hear you at home. Jared, thanks Missy. Yeah, I just want to make sure Jared Peterson gets some recognition because he spent hours and hours getting that ready and then sending it on to these guys who also spent hours and hours. So, I think it was a team effort. Jacob spent six days. So, what I'm saying is

Sorry, the employees know we're looking at cards. They should know that, you know, without being told what they can spend it on. But what I would like to see, which I've asked Tammy, I don't need, you know, what's this gonna I mean, it's going to show who's using the card and what they're not using it for. I would just like to see the same pieces of paper on every, you know, like we did tonight. We had to approve expenditures, you know, for the what was it for the month or for two weeks or whatever. The Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, what's wrong with looking at that? You know, you have they're already printed out for you, right? No, not in detail. Not in detail. Mine's on a thumb drive. I Tammy gives me a thumb drive.

When I ask her to print them out, she did. Otherwise, you see And if I see anything, I just I print it out myself. That's the point I'm getting at. Every purchase has been approved by a city commission since 2002. Yeah. The question is you I mean, we haven't you're not used to looking at them. So, whatever

you guys are seeing, I'm like, if you can if you can be specific and say, "Hey, I don't like this." But there's um I've got a lot of faith in the staff that there's probably a good explanation between almost all of it. But doesn't mean we don't need to change the policy. And I think it starts with the things that we all know, which is if you're going to buy food and beverage, you probably need to have author, you probably have to have your department head signing off on it because they're probably the one that's going to tell you, "Look, that's not what you know, when I first got here, we found a house um that was abandoned." And we we went into it and it was full of tools, power tools, stain, the tool boxes, the nice ones, and the guys were like, "Man, this is awesome. We could really use this at the shop." I mean, this is 15 years ago. And I explained to him, these are the taxpayers tools. They're not our tools. There's just an education. I mean, everybody's different. Everybody comes from a different background. And we need it sounds like we need to do more and more educating. But if if you can be more specific on what you're looking at, I can at least show you.

I think there's an explanation. If there's not, we can find it. But I think it starts with just letting you see them every month for a while. Something get used to it. You know,

Mr. Seigley said last last meeting I believe uh was looking at marketing money and having the departments focus on amount of money in their budget make it a line item and that's their marketing money for that year for that budget window and I like that idea because then it puts you in a window of you know what you have to spend so if we do that and then use that towards these cards I think um if if a lot of these I mean the reasoning of the notes for what the was spent on it was for, you know, meeting with people and marketing needs, you know. So, if there's a budget for that and they're tracking what they can spend, then we have the ability to have more control over, have better visibility, if you will, as opposed to it being a $5,000 card, it gets paid off every two weeks and that just rotates throughout the year. So, I do agree that that's a good idea to put some control into this.

I think there's a lot of people that are doing the right thing with their card. they're following policy and it shows. And then there's some that need talking to my dad here and say, "Hey, I gave you this and you're not doing it for the right reasons. You're not using it for the right reasons." And uh I think retraining these people would would be very beneficial. So I think you said give you a month, you're going to come up with a the policy, which I don't know what else you's a big I think it'll be it'll be a start and you guys can tweak it. But let us know and look at reducing. I I I think we should reduce these cards if we

just my thoughts and lunch time you come back with something and uh we can look at it. We hear you loud and clear and we'll come back with some recommendations. Also, if we're going to reduce cards, then we need to see a listing of who's got what departments have the cards and what they're using them for because we don't want to cut and then say, you know, two months from now say, "Oh, buy this or this pump didn't work because we couldn't get it." Being able to requisition for stuff, too. That I could see that.

I mean, Matt brings up a good point. So, we'll have to work. I mean, we'll have to figure out. I mean, we have 300 people out there basically just doing stuff and they need stuff to do it. So, we don't want to hamstring their ability to do that. But I do think um I think there's something about categories, you know. I mean, mine's pretty simple. You know, like Cheryl said, just so you know, I think yours was pretty impressive. I travel and and you know,

yours was you'd always write on top the ticket. I'm not worried about that. I'm also under a bigger microscope than you know you know we get a new supervisor they get a new employee and pretty soon it's like have we really trained them on the policy yeah they sign it when they get signed up so we'll do a better job on that but we will come back to you in a month with some recommendations on all three of those things

just to follow up with that food thing I'm thinking dctor you guys on the trash route I say trash route that's what I was on when I was a kid they're not hey guys let's go to let's go to Applebee's for lunch you know They're not going to do that. They're going to And Matt, your guys out there working on the roads, streets, water, sewer lines, whatever they're doing, they're not going to stop. Hey, let's go have a $100 lunch. So, they know, you know what I'm saying? So, it should be the same for everybody. If those guys are not spending $100 a day on food, other people should be. And on the same side of that is if if Matt decides his guys have had an extra long day and he wants he's the department head and he can do it and he can be held accountable for it versus somebody else. So yeah, we'll work on

those guys aren't abusing it. Sounds good. So in a month time, you're going to have something. Are you still coming up? I don't want to. Still more work to do. Uh well, I really only had one thing. Quick followup, but that story you just told was my story. So you really undersold it. Um and I appreciate you not naming names, but it was me that came to Darren uh years ago. Well, I've been here going my 12th year and uh bunch of stuff in an old house that was donated to the city and I and you know where I come from, Cheryl. Yeah.

Uh boy, I'm looking at all this stuff saying, "Man, how do I get a hold of this stuff?" And I'm not going to say the exact quote Darren said. It probably wouldn't be appropriate. This belongs to 25,000 people. Don't take anything out of that house. It doesn't belong to you. Doesn't belong to the city. Belongs to 25,000 people. That's the same attitude I've seen in 12 years. So to hear the pecard thing and see the beating he's taken and probably the rest of the staff's taken is pretty rough. But uh the second thing I had was uh about a month ago I brought an ordinance to you guys that was a draft for containers. If you guys had a chance to look over that I was hoping you would email me, contact me, maybe come in and see me. I talked to Darren about that. Okay.

And because I've had citizens ask me about that. I said, "No, I know we have a draft of ordinance when you said whenever we want to act on it." Uh, are we We're in the feedback mode. Yeah. I'm just looking for looking for a direction. Which direction do you want to go? We want to go with Do we want to change it? What do I like it? Why don't we do it at the next meeting like it is? And then Well, what Okay, let me let me I don't know that this is the right meeting to sit around and hash out every little piece of an ordinance. You're talking about

what I'm No, that's what or look at what I was hoping to get some feedback. Do you even want to allow them? Is it something you want to have in town? Do you want to regulate them a little heavier? Oh, yeah. I I just need some feedback to get you a draft with Henry's help that I can come in and ask for approval, but right now I don't feel like I have that. What I've heard from citizens, they want it regulated. Okay. So, yes, definitely. That was something and I again if you were looking for direct feedback that's a you know fall on us or not getting back to you. Well my whole job revolves around enforcing ordinances that you guys pass. So I I never want to step out there to the citizens and say hey I made this ordinance up. I'm working at your direction. So

how many with going around driving around and what's out there now and pulling your data. How many containers do we have on the ground [snorts] right now? 50 60. So what happens if we do have an ordinance and they're not where they need to be? Can we make them that's what this rough draft that's what's in this rough draft. They would have so much time to get that time frame to be able to and justify them there using them for you think that two weeks from now it could be on the agenda and uh you know in two weeks from now I have my big presentation and I'm not looking forward to that either. I would rather

how about a month out and then if there's any tweaking to do to it then we do it the following two weeks after that. Is there is there any concern that you can see we we've I I think we've all kind of filled the calls and had conversations about this. Does it need a public hearing for people to come in and talk about it? Would that benefit

the process is to have it on the agenda and then under public hearing. We've lifted all time constraints. So, anybody should be able to come in and say anything they want about anything that's on the agenda, which I would hope a draft ordinance would get somebody's attention. um we just need to broadcast the formal public hearing formal public hearings are around um legally required bonds that things like you know but we every every meeting is a public hearing. We just need to make sure people know Dexter put the ordinance in the packet [snorts] and it's going to be heard in a month and give us your feedback because we don't have to do anything that night. We just want to get feedback and your feedback's the first one we want so we get it close to what you want.

Yeah. and and feel free to email me or come in and see me if you want to talk about something or see how some of this works. Let me know and I'll go over whatever you want. I just need a direction. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Dexter. Dexter, can you email the draft to us? Absolutely. I think Didn't we get it already? Yeah, but but I can email it back to you. Yeah, let's do that and then it'd be easier to reply to maybe. Anything else? I do two things. First one is something Dexter said. We're not

No, no. About taking a beating. The employees are taking a beating because we're asking questions. It's only because nobody's ever asked questions before. And if you're doing the right thing, you have nothing to worry about. It's like telling the truth. As long as you tell the truth, you never have anything to remember. And when we see something wrong, we're asking questions because we're going back to the cutting expenses because we started out in the whole $27,000. I don't like that anymore. Then I wouldn't want to do that in my business. But there's some things when you question them, it's because you just don't understand how come they get by with it all the time. Whenever there is a policy in place, and I think this policy is good. It's just not across the board. Like he was saying, there's people that are not getting the luxury of some of these people in these papers here. Other departments aren't having that luxury where and they are creatures of habit. They get the same stuff every single day or they're getting a wage plus they're getting paid to go eat somewhere and it's not for business purposes. It can't be. There's too much of it. And I just that's all I want to say about that. My second thing is I saw something in the newspaper Tammy put in and I don't know if everybody knows about it because if you don't get the paper but it was a notice to property owners and persons in charge of property. I think everybody needs to know this. All property owners and persons in charge or possession of any tract, lot or piece of land in the city are hereby notified that all trees, hedges, hedge rows, hedge fences, shrubbery growing in the parkings between the sidewalk, driveways, streets, or on private property adjacent to any street uh what's my place? Sidewalk or alley shall be trimmed and maintained. So the foliage, boughs, limbs, and hedge height does not obstruct the free and convenient travel

or vision along a sidewalk, street or alley. If the owner or person in charge of any property shall fail or neglect to cut and remove any foliage, boughs, limbs, and hedge fence height obstructing the free and convenient travel or vision along a sidewalk, street or alley as herein directed, the city shall proceed to cut or trim such foliage. The cost and charges therefore against the respective properties which if not paid will be certified to the county clerk for collection with other special assessments as provided by law. And then it was signed and dated March 7th and uh Tammy put that notice in the paper. You're not going to get a letter. You're not This is the notice to everybody in town. And I'm I'm reading it because I screenshotted it. But I just want people to know that this is important. I'm sure it's for trash trucks going down alleys, people not being able to see around a corner because their hedges grow out over the sidewalk, but people need to be aware that this is in play. And so if you don't get a notice and you get a charge, this was the only notice that was as I'm is this the only notice? So, did anything go out on the city's website about this to notify the public or it's just it's the requirement is to put it in the paper legally

and uh channel 6 on Cox. I would love to see having rolling information like this. I've been watching the same loop all the time of uh that they have on right now. But I think that'd be a great addition to have what's going on in Pittsburgh or things like this. I mean, it's there and I've watched the same lof for months and months. Can somebody I would love to see that happen that doesn't get the paper and doesn't look at the website. Could that notification, whatever you read off, Cheryl, be put in water bill. Everybody gets water bill, don't you? It could be on the city's website. It could be on

a water bill. Sounds good, but it gets so expensive to put in the water. What about just changing the content of channel 6? Uh, who's is that um the information person? Oh, maybe it it might be simple, it might not be, but it sure would be great and not outdated stuff on there. Well, that's not anything different than they they should be doing anyway, isn't it? Notification. I would just like to see that change if we can. And I'm not gigging anybody about it. I'm just saying, hey, can we Yeah, I wrote it down. I don't want to beat anybody up. You're not beating anybody up. I wrote it down. All right, that's my last bullet, maybe.

And thank you to everybody who's doing, like I said, the right thing. I appreciate you. No more. Before we close out, too, uh, I'm just looking at my notes. Um, I want to thank Missy for putting the finance stuff together for these u budget meetings. Can we get a physical copy of the slide decks for the commissioners as well prior to the meeting so we have visibility of that and then we can come to the meeting with it and throw it in with the the uh agenda packet if it's available. Do you want to say anything about the new deadline since please [laughter] since you're the one stuck doing it? Our goal is to have the agenda out Wednesday prior to the Tuesday meeting.

Very good. Thank you. Thank you for that. Gives us more time to review the information, ask more questions, and get more involved in what's going on. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Anything else? There's a motion to adjurnn. I know we don't want to. Second. We move and second. All in favor to say I. I. I. Motion carries. You're journed.