City Council - Regular Meeting

call this meeting to order. Start with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Next is invocation by Northridge Baptist. [clears throat]

Would you join me in a word of prayer? Oh dear heavenly father, we just thank you for this day. Thank you for our mayor and um everyone around this table who is serving. Lord, we just thank you for the gifts and the talents that you have given them. We just lift up this meeting to you and we ask that you would lead and guide them, give them wisdom and discernment, Lord. You know that leadership can sometimes be exhilarating and exciting and it can also be difficult, Lord. and we just ask that you would give them extra doses of endurance and perseverance as they go forward. We thank you for this this wonderful city. What a great place to get to raise our children, to be with our neighbors, cheer for our teams, live our lives, and get to serve you. So Lord, we just ask you and going forward that you would continue to bless our city. We love you. Amen.

Amen. Thank you. Roll call. I love that. Sabers here. Gold Ammer here. Doer, Mardle, Bington, Baski, Charts here, Smith here. Okay, we have a quorum. Approval of consent agenda items. Items appearing on appearing on the consent agenda may be removed by a city council soul member for discussion at the beginning of formal agenda items. I want to just talk about F. I know they're going to want to wave their fees. My parents gave a check to pay for your fees this year, you guys. Yeah. And Mardle's safe for another year. [laughter] With that happy news, move to approve. Okay, second.

We got a motion in a second for send items. Further discussion. Anyone in the audience like to discuss this? I I think you should make sure that F knows that they are F. I don't think they understood that. Karen Karen, my parents are covering your fee this year, so you don't have to worry about it. Okay. Does she want to talk about the No, come on up. I mean, she is the first Susan would like you to. [applause and cheering] And the first one's in city council meeting. Well, we're going to try and do this one more time.

I like it. [snorts] Thank your parents for covering it. I will. That's all I'm after. [laughter] All right. Thank you. Anyone else in the audience? Jeez, it's so loud. Okay, roll call. Smith. Hi. CHS. Hi. Bathy. Hi. Bington. Hi. Mardle. Hi. Doer. Hi. Goldhammer. Hi. Sabers. Hi.

Motion carries. Public comment. If you need to address the mayor and members of city council on an item that was not on the agenda, excluding personnel items, please come forward to the podium and state your name and your concern. Presentations are limited to three minutes. Items will be considered, but no action will be taken at this time. Mayor Councel Jessica Picket. I am one of the meet directors for the Dakota Rip Tide Swim Team. We have the state swim meet coming up at the end of the month starting on February 26 going through March 1st. I invite the public and everybody to come watch. We actually have some of the fastest swimmers in South Dakota history that'll be swimming at our pool and hopefully breaking some more records. Thank you. Exciting.

Would anyone else like to address the council? [clears throat] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Jesse Straoud from the Pepsi Cola Theater across the street, board member of the Arid Community Theater. Um, I wanted to first and foremost thank from the bottom of our hearts over at the Pepsi Cola Theater and all the board members thank Dan and Brenda at the antique mall. They did a fundraiser on Valentine's Day for us. And that fundraiser was you came in, picked your item, and you were able to do a freewheel donation for whatever items were left in the store. Uh about $14,000 worth of merchandise went out the door.

And of that, almost $3,000 came to us as a donation to the theater. Um so we're going to use that money very well to do some of the things that we have coming up, which I also want to talk about. [snorts] Um, quickly we have auditions for Into the Woods tonight and tomorrow. If you're a singer and you want to be in a musical, we have openings, but also we have uh some availability. We have a kids workshop here starting March 16th. It is free and available to the kids. It's basically free daycare for the whole week from 4:00 to 8:30 at night. We do a a workshop. The kids from the Black Hills Playhouse out in Rapid City come and do this workshop for us. And so we take K through 12 and I think it's up to 50 kids uh we can have on that in that program. Um going back to some of the things that we've been doing at the theater since about November Christmas time, we welcomed Kowanas, we welcomed the arts council. We uh welcomed 401 Create to do their uh Christmas concert with us. Um, of all the things that we did this uh this winter uh season, we did a bunch of fundraising, too. And we were fortunate enough to raise over $4,000 to help the Carnegie with their kitchenette project. Um, we were able to raise uh another through our through our comedy show uh $3,500 for us. Um, see, Ron and Sheila Gates did give us a $3,000 donation towards our roof, which we thank them so much for that. as well as 401 create was able to raise $3,600 for us to help pay for our ADA seat compliance upgrades at the theater. So, we're going to be able to do a whole bunch of stuff. Um, I think we've had about I mean somewhere in 12 or $13,000 worth of fundraising and donations that have gone um here at uh utilizing the middle name at the area community theater community. We've uh we've made

the point to partner with all as and as many nonprofits and other arts related uh programs here in Mitchell, including I think we're going to be having the city's uh theater program back this summer. I believe that's uh might be on the docket. I talked with somebody about that. Anyways, uh we have so many things going on and uh the doors of our community theater are open. Thank you. Thank you. Would anyone else like to address the council? Yeah, I'd like to uh congratulate Dan Sabers on being elected the president of South New Hampshire baseball. The last guy I was there 47 years. I don't know if Dan will make it that long, but [laughter] be about 120.

47. Come on up.

Hi, I'm Elizabeth with Mitchell Mains and Beyond Mayor Hansen City Council. Just wanted to do some fun facts from the burger showdown last month. We had nine local businesses participate and we had over we had 300 3,214 total o or orders which is 25% more than last year. And with that, if we took the average cost of a burger plus a drink, we said 25 bucks. So we say that's about an $80,350 economic impact just from the burger showdown last month. And we're rolling right into Wing of Palooa. And that was even bigger than Burger Showdown in 2025. So we anticipate even better numbers for that event coming up. Super excited. And then next month, just a friendly reminder, we are going to be celebrating women in business. It's Women's History Month next month. Don't worry, we are doing going to do men in June with Father's Day, but you'll be seeing that social promotion going around too. And stay tuned for St. Patty's Extravaganza is on March 14th. It is going to be a downtown pub crawl. There's seven lucky pores with our downtown business owners. So we got everyone to play good in the sandbox again. So that is exciting to have the second annual one. They can find more information on our social media at Mitchell Main Street and beyond or call us at 605994500. Thank you all and have a great day.

Thank you. Would anyone else like to address the council? All right. Hearing none, we will move on to the board of adjustment. Entertain a motion for the city council to recess and sit as the board of adjustment. So moved. Second. Motion second. All those in favor of the motion say I. I. Post same thing. Motion carries. Action to set the date for the board of adjustment hearing 3226. Move to set the date. Second. Motion by Tim. Are we setting the date for both of them? Yes. Okay, sounds good. A motion second. Further discussion. One obstension. Anyone in the audience like to discuss this? All those in favor of the motion say I. I.

Oppose. Same sign. Motion carries. Reconvene at city council. Entertain a motion for the board of adjustment to adjourn in the city council to reconvene in regular session. So moved. Motion by Mr. Goldhammer. Second by Mr. Bington. All those in favor of the motion say I.

I. Same sign. Motion carries. Hearing in action on the following liquor license applications on the application of life life quest for a special event retail onoff wine insider license and retail onoff mall beverage in South Dakota farm wine license located at 401 create 401 North Main on February 28th 2026 for the wine and jazz night jazz and wine night. We'll do these individually move second by Mrs. Turps. Further discussion would anyone in the audience like to discuss this? All those in favor of the motion say I. I. I.

Post. Same sign. Motion carries on the application for the Cornfell Shrine Club for the special retail on on sale liquor license located at the Masonic Hall for March 21st, 2026 for a comedy dinner. Move to approve. Motion by Mr. Goldhammer. Second. Second by Mr. Smith. Further discussion. Would anyone in the audience like to discuss this? All those in favor of the motion say I.

I. Same sign. Motion carries. Approve a 2026-9 agreement for enrolling FT staff, full-time staff in Mitchell Technical College vehicle mounted work platform training course with the funding to be included in the 2026 supplemental budget request. Mr. Nelson, may they council training is to be be provided by MTC. This was not in the 2026 budget request as MTC has not recently offered this training for anyone outside of their own student base. The city will be sending full-time staff from five divisions including parks, sport complex, cemetery golf course, traffic, and corn palace who all use such equipment. The price is the same one lump sum of for for up to 15 people of $2,700. That would be that fee if we if we send one person or if we send up to 15. So, we're sending 15 people. So, we're getting our money's worth. St. Staff recommends approval.

Thank you. [clears throat] MOT charge, second by Mr. Basky. Further discussion. Would anyone in the audience like to discuss this? All those in favor of the motion say I. I. Same sign. Motion carries. Authorization to upgrade ERP Pro 10 with funding to be included in the 2026 supplemental appropriation. Miss Owen,

mayor and council, this request would allow the staff to move forward with upgrading our existing financial software from version 9 to version 10 with Tyler Technologies. Uh to move forward with the upgrade, the city would be required to pay the migration fee to move all the data from our existing system into the newer version. Um the annual maintenance fees that we already paid to encode will not change. Uh we did not originally anticipate upgrading in 2026 which is why it was not included in the budget originally. Um funding for the upgrade would have to be included in the 2026 supplemental budget. We would be requesting that out of the unspent 2025 contingency funds. Uh this upgrade would allow us to improve reporting features. We did find it also does an enhancement to our utility billing software that on a it will allow us to automate a report that we're currently manually having to do. It improves the user experience in the software and it also allows us to enable an employee portal giving employees access to their payroll data. This upgrade would also resolve the issue that we've been having with the fact that we have limited leave codes available in our current version. With the upgrade to encode 10, we'll have unlimited leave codes. So that would eliminate that issue that we're having as well. Um we have not updated our software in probably the the main version of it seven or eight years. So um it probably is due. It is a much more userfriendly version and we're recommending or requesting approval of the upgrade in 2026. I should have saved it. I did list in the staff report, but the cost of the upgrade is $47,880. And it moves our system from a flat file into a SQLbased uh financial software that runs everything we do from fixed

assets, budgeting, um payroll, time entry, utility billing, everything that we do. Thank you. any hardware upgrades? Nope. We'll be able to do The reason why we had kind of been resistant to do this is uh they were requiring cities to go to a cloud-based software to upgrade to 10 and we were really not wanting to do that because other cities have had times where they're down for several hours at a time. Uh we'll be able to do this on our existing servers that we have

and you can start using the upgrade right away. Well, I was optimistic this morning. I was told maybe I'm being overly optimistic. I would say it's going to be at least two months in the conversion. Um, it may take up to six months depending on how fast they go with things. So, um, by getting going now, we'll be able to have access to those new features quicker. Thank you. Move to approve. Motion by Mr. Goldhammer. Second. Second, Mrs. Turks. Further discussion. Would anyone in the audience like to discuss this? I just got a quick question. Who's Tyler Technologies? Is that a local guy? What's that? Is that a local company?

No, I think they they're out of a couple different places, but the financial software, I believe, is in Texas and the majority of um cities are using this software. It's specific for government. So, it's different than the private sector a little bit. Okay. Any other questions? Anyone in the audience? All those in favor of the motion say I. I. Post. Same sign. Motion carries. Motion to enter into executive session according to SDCL 1252 3 consulting with legal council and SDCL 1919502 lawyer client communications.

So movehammer second by Mr. Ricardo. All those in favor of the motion say I. I. Same sign. No action. [laughter] Motion carries. No action will follow executive session. Don't get ahead.