City Commission - Regular Meeting

Mr Mayor, thank you. Has anyone ever objected to these? I'm guessing no, but I'm feeling compelled to ask.

I'm not aware of any either. I hadn't heard anything either. Just curious. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Mr. Mayor, well done to have a public hearing during a public hearing. I will make a motion to approve the assessments, please, sir.

Mr. Mayor, thank you. This is more of a question for our attorney. So I notice a 0.75% interest rate, and there are some pretty big numbers on this list. Is this century code that limits that? Because frankly, I'll quit paying my bills, and I'll just take the 1%, and you guys can assess me, and I'll put that money in a money market account.

Maybe for next year, but just something, and I think you understand my math on this. We can only charge .75. The math says don't pay, and that's not great. So thank you both. Thanks, Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Mayor, and if I'm reading this wrong, I'm happily corrected. If not so paid, the amount shall bear an interest rate not exceeding .75 per annum. Oh, over the average net interest rate. I'm guessing that'd be LIBOR? What would that rate be? I would think that's correct. Okay. That makes more sense. So I'm going to guess anyway. Sorry, Mr. Mayor. Thanks. That's fine.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm wondering, Angie, if In the last few years, and then going into this next budget cycle, we have some pretty substantial modifications in our utilities rates and billings and so on. Do we have any idea of, would you know, is this number growing? Is it reflective of, are more people challenged making their bills? I'm just wondering how that's looking as trends go.

Thank you. Commissioner Strand. I'm just wondering, is there any hardship declaration people can declare or apply for assistance?

Reduction on yeah, the properties and I'm the good guy and it you never win Thank You Commissioner turnburg may I ask a question mr. Mayor of Miss Perlis just to clarify or perhaps Ian you could clarify for me as the property owner aren't you the debt collector? Isn't that your responsibility, being a property owner and then having rentals, is that you collect the debt from the renter? And I'm just clarifying, I don't know.

mr mayor thank you as i'm looking through my agenda i think this is one of the topics i emailed you on regarding the floor plan correct so commissioners if you take a peek at this form it requires the applicant to have a two scale reference with a floor plan and a site plan and a north compass and all that sort of stuff And I think you noticed from the packet, it's basically a hand sketch quickly drawn rather hastily with no scale, no anything. All of that's fine. But just know that I've actually volunteered my time to help small business owners on my own dollar to create a two-scale plan. And

Thank you. I'd just also like to acknowledge it's important and it's good to see us blacking out personal data about people, their driver's license numbers, and some of their contact information. I'm appreciating that.

Mr. Mayor, thank you. As our team members said, gratitude to all the work that went into this and the painstaking questions that I asked a goodly number of you. I know they were sometimes a little bit awkward and uncomfortable. Forgive me for learning. Forgive me for my private practice and how I've done things in the past. This budget works. Much like the weather outside, it's a bit foreboding, though. Commissioners, Mayor, we have holes in this budget. We have opportunities to fund optional things like the Fargo Dome, Newman Field, but we have required things that we still do not have acknow

Thank you. It's no secret that Commissioner Peterson is just such a shy person. I want to acknowledge your contribution, and you're rolling up the sleeves, and you're pushing us, Commissioner Peterson, to really go further. You stirred the hornet's nest many times, but you showed balance. Commissioner Turnberg, I want to acknowledge your steadfastness of expectations that the community also holds for public safety. You helped us hold our feet to the fire for that. Commissioner Gullickson, you're just the epitome of balance and poise and helping us find calm in the storm. So all of you played s

Certainly. I'm glad we're going down this path of solidifying incentives, and I'm sure we're all hearing from people that are just anti-every incentive right now. So we have to really dot our I's and cross our T's and get it right if we're going to be doing anything that's diminishing the public receipts of monies. So I have some questions, if you don't mind. And these are in no particular order, but one of the questions, Nicole, is, for example, what if it's determined that the owners of these buildings actually led to and contributed to the blight that then they're coming to get an incentive

So I'll say it differently. If we find and learn that a property that an owner is coming to get an incentive for, if they actually let it go into blight, They didn't improve it, they didn't take care of it, they didn't upkeep it, and then all of a sudden we're facing the need to address the blight. I think that should be a measurement that we consider when somebody's asking for incentives. I'm not so sure I'm ready to vote on this tonight, but some of my questions might maybe stir some more conversations. That's one of them, is we've had those examples of people who let them go into disrepair,

Commissioner Turnberg. So I agree with Commissioner Strand on all points. And is anywhere in this looking back and seeing if the people that have gotten the incentives are actually doing what they promised? And if not, they should be paying immediately. Do we need to table this and have further discussion to make sure that the parameters are very precise? because the public is sick and tired of tax incentives for businesses. And I think we need to make sure that, and this is just, we're just giving the directions, so we're not approving any incentives, correct? Right, so, but I agree with you,

One thought that occurs to me is I was able to listen in on their meeting and my ears were perking up at several points that were being made, you know, with regards to look backs and claw backs and butt fours. Maybe we should just have a group discussion about this topic and incentives in general before we're approving or not what's in front of us moment present. Because once this is approved, I want to be able to vote for our policies every time. If our policies are clear, then that leads the way to action that's based on policy. I still have some questions I'd like answered about these polic

Mr. Mayor, thank you. Commissioners, great questions. This does a couple things, I think, in my mind. It starts codifying what's been transpiring over time regardless. We've given out 25, when I say we, the City Commission, have given out 25, 20, and 15-year incentives, and I think those will yield, and I'll get somewhere with this, Commissioner Strand, to your point. I think those yield a net loss to our taxpayers, and this is the important part of that. Your question, Commissioner Turnberg, you hinted at this too. I think that Our team members, in concert with the EDC, are preparing sort of

Thank you. You know I'm not so certain how many proposals are in the mail but if uh if we could get a few weeks or maybe up to a month for us to all get on the same page i would i would appreciate that i think there's you know there's i have other note wordsmithing notes in this document but but it's not really the time for us to to climb into the weeds and look over this word or that word tonight. Those are conversations I'd like to have us have. Could we have a joint meeting with this Economic Incentives Committee or all of us have a brown bag? Just to have a moment to ask my stupid question

We could certainly have a meeting before the end of October. Just my suggestion, but just as a commissioner strand suggested.

Mayor, I move that we table this only for no more than a month, maybe less, and if we could reconvene as a brown bag with our members of the Economic Incentive Committee and others that, department heads or spokespersons that should be involved, let's listen and learn and make sure this is, if we could do that in the next two weeks and be back, I'd be okay with that too. But I'd move a brown bag

Mr. Mayor, thank you. Great idea, Commissioner Strand. And like I said, I took notes on what you said. So I think these are good questions, valid questions, and I think that would help our team maybe a little bit, too, to have a greater consensus. Just I'm not talking for you, but if I was you, I'd be saying, I sure wonder what those people are thinking. So within that brown bag in a legal meeting, you can actually hear what we're all thinking. So I think there's some other good things that will come out of this as well. So thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Do you have any idea from the, I know it's a North Dakota DOT, but any idea on the interstates?

Mr. Mayor, thank you. A busy couple weeks. I won't get a whole lot into it because I saw most of you at most of those meetings. The one question I have, though, I'm going to the Chamber of Commerce leadership activities Wednesday afternoon. Is anyone else going to that? I don't want to have a quorum. Okay, so I'm the only one there. Perfect. YWCA meeting. Commissioner Gullix and I are going to team up and meet a couple folks from South Fargo, see what's what. Next week it's going to be a good learning opportunity. And then just for the sake of The order, I've applied for leadership within the

I am glad to say that the budget is done for now, but we begin work on 2007 currently, today. So we're all in agreement that this will be an ongoing process. process that we will be working on throughout the coming year. So we do not have, and even though it's been a long process, it still feels like a rush at the end. So a lot of time has been spent on this, and that is, I'll keep it short for now tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Just a quick word on the budget. In my 11 times voting for a budget, I don't think I've ever seen a unanimous vote. till tonight. So that's really an indicator of our ability to try work together. Only note to make with my liaisons reports is the Board of Health will be meeting here on Friday at noon, October 2nd.

Thank you. Let's see. I attended the opening of the Skyway at the airport, so that was a good time. Saw several of you out there. MetroCog had a growth summit, which is kind of a state of the cities and how things have grown and just kind of getting their finger on the pulse of the needs and the wants of the community. And then I also attended the Community Housing Needs Forum out at the new Parks and Rec And Mayor Beauches was there as well. Nicole Crutchfield, our planning director, was there. And it was some good conversation discussing housing needs in our community. Thank you.