Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'm just going to keep talking. 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. 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. Would anyone like to address the council? Is this budget-related?

Because we can technically... Would you like this to speak during the public comment, or it's more budget-related?

I mean, if you're asking about budget... Okay. Well, if it's on the agenda, we'll have to do it at that time.

I think we'll just speak on it once we start budget, if that works for you.

We don't even know if we're going to touch on that tonight.

Well, I think we probably should since we have a large audience. So I'm not sure if you guys would like to or not. Okay. So let's do that. We want to just knock it out real quick. Let these guys come up there and talk about stuff that works for you guys. Okay. All right. Council budget work session. You guys have anything you'd like to discuss before we let the eager looking tennis team come up and talk a little bit. All right. Why don't you come up?

Hi, I'm Neil Larson. I'm a senior at Mitchell High School and I've played tennis for seven years. The bottom eight courts are super important to me because that's where my tennis career started in sixth grade when my neighbor asked me if I wanted to try it out. The safety of the courts are super important to the younger girls because if they're cracked, they're not very safe to play on because they could roll their ankle or have an injury. And we want them to keep coming back because we want a safe environment for them. They're also super important to, like, everyone because there's summer events. It's really important to the community, and it's really important to all of us because we like to go out and play at night, and that's where the lights are at. So, yeah, I mean, they're just really important to all of us because that's where we all started on the bottom eight courts because – varsity practices on the newer courts and that's where we all started our careers so they're very important that we keep safe play and like able to keep playing at night especially with the lights thank you thank you

Hello, everybody. Mayor, city council members. My name is Jacob Dahmy, and I serve as the current president of the Mitchell Tennis Association. I'd like to thank the student athletes, families, and community members who are here tonight in support of the Tennis Court Construction Project. The tennis courts at Hitchcock Park are far more than just courts for high school matches. They are a community asset that serves residents of all ages. Each year, our facility supports park and recreational youth programs. Mitchell High School boys and girls tennis, adult leagues, tennis lessons, tournaments, and open recreational tennis and pickleball play. This year alone, approximately 80 youth participated in park and recreation tennis programs, 44 people participated in summer leagues, several community members have used the tennis courts as pickleball overflow, and dozens of student athletes represented Mitchell High School on the boys and girls tennis teams. We also hosted four tennis tournaments throughout the summer that brought participants and visitors to Mitchell from across the region. 49 participants at the State Farm Tournament, 36 at the Mitchell Tennis Classic, 48 at the Mitchell Summer Doubles Tournament and 104 participants at the Take the Cake Tournament. These courts serve hundreds of people each year and provide opportunities for recreation, competition, youth development and community engagement. The problem is that our courts have outlived their useful lifespan and continue to deteriorate. Missing chunks of concrete, uneven surfaces and large cracks are now affecting playability and creating safety concerns. This is no longer simply a problem that can be addressed by resurfacing. Instead, the solution requires new construction. In fact, we have already experienced at least one incident involving a high school player who suffered a head injury after falling on the deteriorating court surface. Mitchell Tennis Association also recently approved reinstating the Mitchell Tennis Classic as a USTA sanctioned tournament on a one-year trial basis. Our goal is to attract additional players and visitors to Mitchell and continue growing the sport locally. However, sanctioned tournaments attract many players from larger communities who have access to newer facilities. We have a legitimate concern about whether those players will choose to return if court conditions continue to decline. At the same time, construction costs continue to rise. This is not a new issue. The Mitchell tennis association has been discussing court agreements with the city for several, several years. We've attended multiple city council meetings, met with city staff, discussed options with the parks department and continued advocating for long term solution because we know that delaying the necessary action only increases the eventual cost. I'd also like to remind the city council the partnership from when the newest courts were constructed in 2016. The city council contributed approximately 125,000, the school district contributed approximately 75,000, and the Mitchell Tennis Association and community donors contributed approximately 131,000. In summary, the tennis community contributed nearly 40% of the total project cost. When compared to historical recreational projects in Mitchell, private donations have funded roughly 22% of projects on average based on city project data. THE SENATE'S COMMUNITY STEPPED FORWARD AT ALMOST DOUBLE THAT LEVEL BECAUSE WE BELIEVED IN INVESTING IN THIS COMMUNITY ASSET, AND WE CONTINUE TO BELIEVE IN THAT PARTNERSHIP TODAY. TODAY, ONE OF THE MTA BOARD MEMBERS AND I SPOKE WITH BOTH DR. CHILDS AND MR. OBLIN, WHO INDICATED THAT THEY ARE FULLY SUPPORTED OF THE PARTNERSHIP AND PROJECT AND INDICATED THAT THEY WOULD CONSIDER OR PRESENT A LARGER REQUEST TO THE SCHOOL BOARD IF THE ENTIRETY OF THE EIGHT-COURT PROJECT WAS COMPLETED AT THE SAME TIME. HOWEVER, THEY INDICATED THAT THE COMMUNICATION CHAIN FROM THE CITY WAS LACKING, AND THEY DIDN'T HAVE CLARITY ON THE total project costs or duration their donation could be spread across. As the city has already invested several thousand dollars in engineering drawings from SPN for a new eight-court design with updated parking, we asked that the council to build on that investment and move the project forward. This issue is also bigger than the four courts currently being discussed. Over the years, Mitchell has lost more than 10 other tennis courts throughout the community. Hitchcock Park is now the last remaining public tennis facility in Mitchell. If we fail to maintain and invest in these courts, we risk continuing a trend that has a gradual reduced recreational opportunities for both the current and future residents. This is a difficult pill to swallow when the city is proposing a $1 million splash pad directly adjacent to these deteriorating courts without any additional parking. The current eight court project includes the parking adjacent to the splash pad, That could potentially be a win-win for both. This is our request. Include the tennis court improvements in the city council's capital improvement planning and work with the school district and the Mitchell Tennis Association to develop a path forward. The tennis community has shown up before. We have invested financially. We have volunteered our time. We have continued advocating for this project year after year because we believe these courts are worth preserving. They serve our youth. They serve our student athletes. They attract visitors to Mitchell and they serve the broader Mitchell community. We respectfully ask for your support. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you.

I can give a little background history. So yeah, we brought this, I mean, we've been talking about this for like three years now. Last year, we approved design fees. Those were done. Joe, correct, jump, or Mr. Schrader, jump in on this. The number was 2.1 or $2.5 million. I think it was 2.538. And that was a lot. And then, so I said, well, maybe we should look at it again and back some stuff off. And then we ended up maybe getting to four courts, which I know is not what everyone wanted for like 1.3 million. And when we were doing the budget this year, it's just insanely hard to try to squeeze an extra million in there. We do have capital funds available for future capital projects. If you guys would like to entertain that, I think the tennis people are pretty adamant about this year. And I guess that's for your guys' consideration. That's the background.

And I guess just to clarify the comments made as well, Park and Rec has had conversations with both Mitchell Tennis and the school district and had a small commitment. Kevin can speak to that, but I believe the school was $75,000 spread over three years and there was a $10,000 grant. Those were also included in the revenue, but they were removed when the tennis courts were removed. So that would be a total of $85,000 towards the one point. It was $1,138,000. For the four courts?

Yeah, for four courts. What was the eight courts with the parking lot? 2.5. 2.5, something, yeah.

Did I underify on that a little bit?

Sure. Might as well get all the information on as fast as we can.

So I did talk with Dr. Childs and Mr. Oblin today, and they said that they didn't receive like a formal request from the city. So they were told, and I'd rather have him say this, but just to kind of parrot it, he said $75,000 because they needed to have a number to throw into the budget last year. And he said, you know, I didn't know how much everything was going to be. I was expecting that from the city. Hadn't been readdressed. He said that $75,000 is a starting point. but he would certainly like to increase that. He would bring that to the, to their board essentially. But he'd also like to know how many years they could pay that larger sum over. But he did say that, you know, construction costs are rising. He'd rather do it once, do it right once. And he'd rather do the full eight, even though it is more expensive. Um, he was expecting, you know, mobilization, some of those other cost savings would come down there. So, and then the other piece too, we've worked with Kevin on it. We've got a grant right now for about $35,000 per court. It's looking like we would most likely get that from the USTA. $35,000 per court for all eight courts. Correct. Okay. Yeah. Which is pretty nice. And then we also have contributions from the Mitchell Tennis Association. The other piece, I mean, we are certainly open to fundraising for it, but without really knowing that, you know, definitions on this is what the school district will do. This is what the city's open to. This is what we are. It's tough for us to start that. So we can move the conversation further and get kind of definitions that would be preferred.

Yeah. I did talk to Dr. Childs and I did ask him, I asked him for way too much money and then we kind of settled at something and then you're right. Yeah. We just kind of, it got really expensive really quick and I'll just kind of, you know, okay. Well, this is going to be a very long and boring budget session for you guys. If you don't want to hang around, it sounds like you guys just wanted to come here and show some support.

So for the public's information, this is just a work session by the city council. Any final decisions won't be made until the first reading, which will be in November. That's when the public hearings would be on the first reading.

Thank you. Okay. Long in budget. Okay.

They thought about sitting here. Yeah.

So yeah, like I said, I mean, it seemed like a really tough budget year. Maybe it wasn't. I don't know. It just seemed like it was hard to scrounge up an extra million this year. So you guys just take that information and do what you'd like. All right. Open for discussion now amongst council members.

For anything.

So what you gave the other night, Stephanie, is pretty much the background. And I don't know if anybody else has anything to add in order to kind of kick us off. But there isn't anything else you guys need to interject?

It's been very in-depth so far.

Okay. Well, I will start it then, if that's okay. Okay. questions that you may have had in the last presentation okay um in looking through and and i know the comment was made as far as the real estate tax is concerned as far as the um the the growth we got the on page six of the proposed proposed budget we've got the um 2.5% for CPI, but it doesn't include funds for growth. And I would like to have you step through that, Stephanie, of really what that means and then the potential dollars that's associated with that, please.

Okay. I'm going to beg patience with everybody. I'm trying to get this to a way where I can see what I'm doing and still see the boards here.

And you should know, too, and everybody knows this, but I think it's still worth repeating, is we have a balanced budget.

Starting from a balanced budget, correct.

So if we want to add anything, you either have to increase revenue or decrease a project or expenses. Or take from reserves. We just need to keep that in mind, that it's got to be equal. Okay.

Thank you. Okay. So it's always kind of a little bit difficult when we start with discussing what the levy is going to be because we don't actually get information from the county until we just got it last week, I believe. So I did send out or I did put together a summary. I'm going to make this a little bit bigger again. I apologize. I'm doing my best here. Okay. So I can see up here. So the additional growth, we received a growth number of 2.17%. So that growth comes from either reappraisal throughout the county, but it's also new construction, and it would include any tips that are coming off that were now being dissolved. So I did go through and I calculated what it looks like if the city is to take growth right now. Our levy is 4.265 per thousand. It would go to 4.172 per thousand with growth included and would add $152,810. Without growth, you can see the levy if you did not accept growth would be 4.086. I did give you guys an example of what that looks like just using Myself as an example, my property taxes didn't, or my assessed value did not go up this year. And I showed, hold on. I believe it was a decrease of about $30,000 on the assessment of my house. So if someone's assessed value stays the same on their house, they would see their city taxes pay go down. Again, the mayor's proposal currently does not include the growth. This is something you should probably give us direction on tonight because we'll have to prepare the resolution for Monday's council meeting, correct? Yeah.

It is on the agenda for Monday night's council meeting at this point.

So, I guess if you don't take growth, you're short that $152,810. We don't have it currently factored in. If you do include growth, we'll be able to add that as revenue and you could also then add corresponding expenses.

And correct me if I'm wrong, that theoretically is the 152 for every year after that.

Correct.

Yes. Yes. So we've got to keep that in mind too.

And I did put together a, Michelle and I were talking a lot about levees last week when we got these numbers in. See if I can make this big enough. So this just shows what our tax levy has been for the city of Mitchell from 2010. We're at $6.36. And now, like I said, proposed in 2027, if you were to accept growth would be 4.172. I did also, I thought I had these in here, but I'm not seeing them. Oh, right here. So here you can see how that looks like our levy going down over the past several years. And then here, if you wanted to look, the blue line would represent our levy decreasing over time. And then the orange line here would be growth. So you'll see we had a big period of growth here in 2022, that looks like, and the levy going down at the same rate. And then I did give an example of, I think this was my house up here. $32. I was right. So my 2026 assessment, if you were to look at my taxable assessed value times the levy, my taxes owed in 26 to 27. So for me, without an increase in assessed value, my taxes would go down $32. I can answer any other questions here you may have but yes there's been several years where we didn't have any growth at all or very little growth if you can see this is one of the higher our our average over this period of years which goes back to I think 2010 is 1.85 percent so this year was above that average it's higher than it's been since 2023 we did have a couple tiffs come off off the TIF, you know, the 20 years, so it dissolves. So they're being added into taxes as well.

You know, Jeff, jumping onto what you mentioned about, it's obviously for future too. It's each year, you know, corresponding after that. We had discussion years ago when Mayor Siebert was sitting over there. And I think somebody from the council proposed not accepting it. And he, as a mayor, referenced to us that if you do pass on it, keep in mind, you can never get it back. And I think that was something where the council decided to swing their vote the other direction and accept it at that time. But it was a point, like you said, if you pass them this year, it's passed for every year to follow. So keeping that in mind to council as we decide.

And Stephanie, correct me if I'm wrong, since you've been here, we have always taken the increase and Michelle's been here during that whole time period. Yep.

I mean, you can see here. Sorry, you can see down the line what that's resulted in every year. Both the CPI would show a column.

It's not showing on the screen.

Man, I thought I just switched it so it would be showing both so I could see. Hold on. Okay, so now hopefully I can see it. There we go. So here you can see this has been the CPI from 2010 going up to 2027. And then column H would be your growth. So yes, we have accepted that every year for your total tax increase. This isn't a significant amount in taxes arc. Sales tax increase is usually higher than what we see in property tax increases, although next year we are projecting a flat increase because of the way it's been pretty volatile in 2026 for sales tax.

So in your example on your home, if we took the increase, your property tax actually would not increase unless your assessment increased, right? It's just returning back to normal.

Correct. Because our current levy is $427, and it would be going down to $417. So my personal, I'm just using myself as an example, would go down $32 for city taxes. Now, if the county levy goes up, if the school levy goes up, that's a whole different thing. But just for what the property taxes are that you pay to the city. because the levy is going down either way.

I would say saving $32 on a $350,000 house compared to losing $150,000 to the city, I don't think it's worth it myself. $32 wouldn't get you a happy tank of gas.

And we all talk about, and everybody, they tennis just talked about it costs are not going down they continually go up and we have we unfortunately we have to fund it and that's it's sales tax and property tax and i'm just looking when stephanie brought up our percentage 31 of our of our revenue that comes in is from property taxes so It's not as large as, like you said, the county and the city, I mean the school. But in all reality, it's pretty substantial, $7.2 million. So I just find it hard to not keep on the course of just continuing to increase. And then whatever the assessed value is, that's what it is. That's a county. We always get blamed for it. But in reality, it's the county that obviously goes through. So I don't know how we want to do this, either mayor or Mr. President, but can you make motions or do you want to do by consent or what are you recommending, Justin?

It's really however the council wants to do that. I know, Stephanie, it probably works best for you to get a vote on individual items like that. But if everybody's in agreement, then you don't have to do a roll call or whatever. Voice vote.

There's really no vote. Yeah, if everyone agrees, it just changes.

So the only time I ask is just to make sure we're responding to the majority. So if at least five of you have spoke up that you're in favor of changing it, then I know we move forward with it.

I'll make one comment before you decide. So you guys seem to have a different outlook. The comment was made, we lose $150,000. I looked at it as everyone saves money on their taxes. It may be negligible, but that's just how I was thinking. But you decide what you want.

I do think there are some items in here that are coming up that are up for discussion that... can you know this is an item that's not necessarily it is reducing their sales tax or sorry their property tax liability but it's not it's only doing that if we don't don't approve it i mean they paid what they paid last year given their assessment stays the same their property tax is the same there are items in here that we are going to be voting on that are actually going to raise their cost of living um year over year to me this isn't one that's raising the cost of their living it is staying the same so um You know, if it was raising the cost of their property tax overall, I would feel differently, but I would agree with Jeff and Marty and whoever else, and Kevin, who spoke up and said, you know, reducing it is a little bit questionable when the cost of everything else is going up.

All right. Stephanie's looking for a thumbs up, thumbs down, I'm guessing.

I am. Is there anyone that is... I heard... include girls from jeff jason and marty and kevin and kevin okay that's only four i would agree with that there's a majority i would agree also and i also would support it okay okay next

I guess I'll jump into it with the tennis team kind of brought it up and we are talking about, you know, increasing costs and expenditures. You know, I think it's a I'm looking at just the one right off the bat that they mentioned was the splash part. I want to say first, I think it's an awesome idea. I have some concerns on its execution. My first concern, I know maybe you have some additional information to be able to provide. I have a family member who works in Worthington, and they have a splash park they put in about 2022. The cost was roughly about what your cost is put at, but my understanding it is, in some conversations with Stephanie, I think there are some things maybe that aren't existing on this current plan. Please tell me if I'm wrong here. Currently, there's no plan for the water, correct, that's going down the drain in the splash park? What do you mean there's no plan? the water's being sprayed into the air, going down and draining into our sewer, correct? Correct. Yeah, I know, you know, the example I was using, very similar to the photos you submitted, but they have a water recirculation system. They're using only about 2,000 or 3,000 gallons in a season, and it's filtering the water. Obviously, you can't have kids playing in the water and then just recirculate it back through without any type of filtration. I don't know what that system would cost, but I have a suspicion that it would come in way over what the million dollar budget is saying.

I think it's like double that.

Yeah. And I, yeah, it's like double. I just, it's not just the cost. I mean, like I said, I think it would be great. My other concern is with the pool right next door, you're going to see seven, eight year old kids getting dropped by their parents left there, the pool to take their younger children over to the free splash park. So now we've got unattended children there, um, I'm not in love with the location in Hitchcock. And the example I use is not that Worthington is the end-all be-all, but they chose to put theirs next to their lake for young kids who can't swim, for example. I just think there's too many up in the airs for me to support that project this year, considering the expenses we've got on this budget. I would love to see that maybe earmarked for future budget discussions down the road when our budget maybe has a little bit more flexibility than the tight budget you mentioned this year. So that's just kind of my personal opinion on that. I guess I will add on that example, their budgetary maintenance. I think they scheduled last year $20,000 on maintenance for their splash park. And that's increasing this year as well. So there is that added cost of just maintenance alone. And then, of course, there's a recycling system. So I don't even wouldn't even begin to venture how many gallons of water that thing is using a day. I know how much my yard costs to water. So I can assume tens and tens of thousands of dollars in water costs associated with that, too.

You know, I would be for that project because I think it's needed in town here, but the location, I would have to agree with Jason, is not ideal. I think it would take away from the Hitchcock Park. It would take away some of the patrons from there and take some of the revenue that's generated there because people would use the flash park because it's free instead of going over towards Hitchcock Park. I would propose a different location and that location will probably be Cadwell. I think Cadwell is used quite a bit during the summertime and there's tons of people there all the time. If we're going to do that project, I think it should be Cadwell.

I will say this, this project, I always like, this is probably one of the top things people ask me for. And that's what our job is to represent the people that ask for it. And when someone reached out and said they'd give a quarter of a million dollars, they preferred to Hitchcock. I don't know if they would support it if it wasn't at Hitchcock. Just throwing that information out there.

I wouldn't disagree with you. The one in Orlington gets used tremendously. So it's not that I think it's a bad project. I just, right now for me, the lack of information available on this project, I mean, if we commit to it and it ends up running double, I mean, I think we're gonna find ourselves in a tough situation. So with the impending lake project on the docket going forward and everything like that, we just have so many unknowns. We don't know what that bid's gonna come back at. I would just personally prefer that it be maybe push down the road a little bit.

Didn't we have some bids on it, Stephanie, at the plaza when they proposed that a year or so ago?

We didn't have bids. There was a proposed project, and I think it included $350,000 for a feature, but it was really three things that looked like a leaf that kind of rained down from the top that you could control whether it was a mist or a rain or a downpour, and it could be locked on or locked off. And it was also a pass-through system.

Yeah.

Not to the extent of what Mayor was talking about.

Much smaller. Is it sure or is it not sure that the indoor pool had pipes stubbed out for a splash park so it could recirculate?

I believe to the south of the building because that's why there was a door included on the south side by the glass.

Yeah. You'd have to go through for parking. Yeah.

I think for me, as I look at the splash pad, recirculation is something that I would want to have unless we're putting in a park that could utilize that water in a place where you're dumping it and then using it for irrigation in the park itself. Certainly having a splash pad that just dumps water into the sewer. seems mighty wasteful to me long term. I also think that as you look at locations, the three locations that make sense to me, Cadwell was certainly on there. Northridge Park was a location that I thought made sense because you have a lot of parking there and it's during the summer typically is when the splash pad would be used and that parking typically is not used at that time. We'd have to obviously talk to the school about that as a part of If they would be okay with that people parking there during the summer, I also think if we figured out a way to make it as a part of the corn palace Plaza expansion. That location for regional visitors city and guests makes a lot of sense. I wasn't a fan of the water feature. But I think if we built it out into a whole park, it would make a lot more sense than the water feature, which just felt like an afterthought in the current design or the previous design for the Corn Palace Plaza.

Did we look up recycling the water and using it for irrigation? Because we already, I mean, we essentially...

Yeah, so there was examples of some other city communities in state that are doing that now. And they do it in a place where they're already paying for the water. So that takes the water, puts it into a holding pond of sort, and then they irrigate from that pond. I think Harrisburg was an example.

You're not wasting any water. You're just putting it on the grass.

And so I guess the last location that I thought of, if that's the system we're going, would be the soccer complex. As we do the lake project, that facility is going to need water. And so that would be a good option for that facility to have, or like we're putting in water infrastructure there anyways. And so, or we would need to come up with some kind of plan for watering. Hopefully that might be an option.

Yep. And then long-term that would not really result in a cost savings for you because we currently use like water to irrigate the, the, so you would have a cost, a construction cost increase, but you won't really have the operational savings.

Yeah.

From recycling, just from hands-on experience, you were talking a whole other headache and a whole lot of expense. I know a nine-hole golf course that's putting in now, it's a little bit bigger, but they're spending $850,000. But you've got to have the pond, you've got to have the pump, you've got to have labor. Plus, you've got all your valves and your heads out there to reuse it. And the pond's got to be so full. But that's a whole other headache that I don't think I would be in favor of. But as far as the splash part, when I see these tennis people come up, we got so many things, I think, that need to be upkept. I'd have a hard time voting for something new in the park systems when we cut so much stuff that I thought was very important to our parks. And the tennis courts, when I was on the park board, I walked through them. They were in need. At that time, I had a couple of the tennis people, had tennis people involved, you know, said that, now this is over a year ago, that an indoor tennis facility in their mind was way more important. than redoing tennis courts. That's one person's opinion or two people's opinion. So I would be in favor of taking that money and keeping up the stuff we have over at New. And I really like the Splash Park. I stopped, I don't know how many people stopped by Levitt down there. And so we stopped by three weeks ago. Swim and Pool just closed. So it was probably two weeks ago. 95 degrees and it's full. And so I just walked around and talked to all the ladies there. They all liked it. They all used it. You know, it's free, you know. And it was full. I go, how long do you stay? He said, well, they're all little kids, you know. And they had guns where you could shoot each other for the older kids. I mean, it's a pretty cool deal if you haven't ever been. And so they...

Water guns.

I think that's where I'm at, too, is it's kind of a wants versus needs thing here as we go through our budget. And I want it as badly as you and everybody else does. I think it would be awesome. It just sounds like we need some other things first. To Dan's point on the tennis courts out of curiosity. You might be able to speak to this. When we did our city tour, we went by the tennis courts and the pickleball courts. The pickleball courts had lines and lines of cars. I think all eight of them were in use when we drove by. Looked about two of the tennis courts were in use. And I'm not saying they don't get used. Out of curiosity, would it affect the tennis courts if they're redone and all of them are painted with additional lines? Does that cause problems for you guys if they were to be used as pickleball courts as well?

Kevin might need to answer that, but I think some of the tennis grants that they were speaking to makes it so that you can't stripe them for other things. That's correct, yeah.

Kevin, has there ever been anything on the usage percentages? And it's an impossible question as far as the city using it to the school for its amount of use in tennis courts.

I don't have any figures on that.

I'd be interested in hearing that.

What was your question? How many people use it? I think Jake might have had some of that.

How much the school uses it and how much the city uses it. I know they've got boys in the spring and girls in the fall.

Yes, that was actually something that we talked about today. So the school district does have the highest utilization of it. Their kind of answer back to that is it's a public facility. Anybody can use it at the same time. Mitchell Tennis Association probably uses it about as much as the Park and Rec Department does. And then to your point about the pickleball, the tennis courts currently use this pickleball overflow. They have been, and that's kind of why they also started to deteriorate. So what we've seen, so with this grant that we're looking at, you actually can't have the pickleball lines, but people just take painter's tape and you just put it out there and you get your catch in line and you can play. So creative ways around it.

Back to that, how much competitive golf is in the summer compared to competitive golf? Tennis. Sorry. How much competitive tennis, tell what I was doing all weekend, right, is used in the city? Does the city have competitive tennis?

No. It's just the park and rec that the city uses that for. So Tennis Association does four tournaments throughout the summer. And then we've got the leagues that are out there.

And then they also have like a – But there are city-run leagues.

Nope. All of that is through the Mitchell Tennis Association. So we do pay a fee to the city every single year from that league. Like I think it's like $17. It goes up a dollar every single year.

Which is basically that city in my mind. Yeah. So then, yeah, fair enough.

Yeah. They don't necessarily expect you to know, but I think you coach for tennis at all? Are you just involved? Do you know what other schools are doing for their tennis courts? Are they using public facilities? Do they have their own tennis courts? What's that look like? Great question.

So we actually talked about that today. So it's kind of split. So I would say that double A. If you're a double-A school, typically you own your, like the school would own and operate their own courts. And that was something that we kind of talked about. Would the school be open to that? They said they would, you know, they don't want to throw away, you know, having two school sports, right? But at the same time with the city, there's a great partnership already there. The maintenance is another concern, you know, every about five years to consider that.

Yeah, because years ago, before you were born, probably, they used to have tennis courts just north of the high school, you know, the north parking lot. It used to be tennis courts over there.

There was tennis courts there over at Dry Run Creek, I was told, kind of over by where, is it Cubbies is that? There were two tennis courts in there. So we're down, like, those are the only 12 courts left in Mitchell. Because the initial intent, I was told, was that every quadrant of Mitchell would have somewhere to play tennis, and then they just didn't receive the funding, and now that's where we're at. So...

We did. I don't have it with me right now. I think last year, Council, or two years ago, Council had me do a comparison of the number of courts in each city to look at the... I could pull that out and send it out to Council again.

Ken looks eager.

Yeah, I'm... DEBATING IN MY MIND, PART OF ME REALLY LIKES THE IDEA OF THE SPLASH PATH FOR MY GRANDKIDS THAT COME BACK, GIVES US SOMETHING TO DO. I THINK IT WOULD BE A GREAT ASSET FOR THE CITY. but it does add to our annual operating costs. And I look at items in the budget that didn't get funded. We've got a short list of furnaces, windows, flooring that needs replacement, and they're not getting funded. And furnaces and windows lower our future operating costs, and we're not funding those projects. And I just think it's a matter of priorities. And for me, it doesn't hit the prioritization for this year.

One of the things that I would like to talk about adding back into the budget is the refurbishment of the flooring in City Hall. I think that that is beyond past due. Can I just jump in real quick on the splash?

I just wanted to ask a question. On line number 103, we have refurbished play features at outdoor pool, 15,000. Can somebody explain, is that the zero?

Inside the pool itself, but Kevin can speak to that.

Yes, okay.

Kevin, do you have a microphone?

I do have a microphone.

So the question is, what is the $15,000 to refurbish the pool?

I believe that was the spray tower, repainting that because we had budgeted or refinishing it like we had the water slides this past year. But that wasn't included in the budget this year. So some of those features that are painted that just need to be brightened up again and have extended the life of those.

So I think in the budget, there's several things. One is to fix all the stuff at the bottom of the pool, like the plaster, the tile, and stuff like that. That's in there. There's also the bridge that goes across. It's like a marine blue. And then also, yeah, there's like a large mushroom-looking thing out there that was not epoxied. It needs to be repainted.

And the water walk pad.

And then there's those four little things.

Right. Yeah. So not that that would replace the splash pad, but in reality, we do have an outside feature for kids but they have to pay an entrance fee obviously to get in and that's was my question is in a roundabout way is is is there any way of adding new features in the pool or is that pretty much with um the plumbing and so forth you're limited to where those located we would need to speak with associated pools who designed that to see how much space we would have and if there's any ada requirements or anything to know that for certain

yeah tie it into the existing plumbing correct okay okay all right

Uh, so the flooring in city hall, I think that especially as you come in the back entrance of this building, um, the tile work and things, as you walk through that doorway, um, is not something that I'm necessarily proud of. And I think that as you have guests and visitors, new people coming to town, that's potentially one of the first things that they're going to interact as they come turn on their water and sewer. And so I think that's something that needs to be updated.

The only comment I'm going to say is if you're going to do any of the tile, you should really do all of the tile. It's asbestos tile.

Oh, yes.

And it should be addressed at the same time.

Correct. And that's the line item in the budget is all of it, correct?

Right.

And so it was removed previously, and I think we should put it back in.

So is that number 21? I would agree with Tim's recommendation.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Did we take that out because we were considering replacement of City Hall two, three years ago?

Seven or eight years ago, yes. Since seven or eight years ago, yes. Or 12. It's needed to be done, but we kept pushing it off because thinking we were going to end up remodeling or reusing or moving the space. I think we're to the point where we need to address it.

I agree.

That's great.

Yeah, it's definitely nice, sir.

Right below that on line item 22 is repaint and repair walls in City Hall. I mean, should we just do that as well as replace the flooring? Because I agree that, you know, people come in here and they see if they don't see buildings that are kept up and maintained, it doesn't give a good image to the city.

I would agree. And that was part of what you were pointing out, or at least during the tour. I was trying to, yes.

Yeah.

Okay. And I would agree with that also. Yeah.

I think if you look at the baseboard that goes along the flooring too, we had a water issue here. How long ago was that? I don't remember where a pipe burst in the back hallway and it flooded part of City Hall. Some of that was replaced. Not all of it was. The carpet was all wet. Not all of it was replaced. We have carpet pulling apart in the Public Works Office just because it's so old. It's all in pretty poor shape.

Hold on a second.

Yeah, it was in the wintertime because the pipe froze because the doors left opened up to the armory. So I only heard, just for clarification, I heard Tim, Jeff, Dan, and Kevin on the flooring and Ken on the walls.

If you need another one, I'd be with Ken. If you're going to do the flooring, you might as well be doing the walls at the same time. That's where I'm at. If you do it, you do both. I agree with them, too.

So since we kind of touched on this campus here I Really believe that we need to move forward with the deferred maintenance on the corn palace and so The items that we've got listed here, I believe, is 9, 10, 13, and 20. So it would be bleachers, the HVAC system, the gym floor replacement.

The gym floor is in down further, though.

The gym floor is confusing because it looks like it was taken out, but originally when the budget was submitted, they had it in there twice. They had $185,000 to just replace the floor or $375,000 to do the floor and the subfloor. We currently have the floor and the subfloor in. That's why I took the $185,000 out. You didn't need both.

Perfect. Okay.

Obviously, the dollar amount for some of those items is pretty big. I know the Corn Palace can be a pretty hotly debated item. All the reports we hear, they vary dramatically, but at the end of the day, all the reports we hear is it does provide some sales tax revenue for people traveling to the Corn Palace, regardless of where they're from and the distance they're traveling. My concern with not up keeping the corn palaces, if it goes away, we don't currently have anything in place, any projects in place to replace the corn palace and the sales tax revenue that it does bring to this community. So I don't know how much longer we can go deferring maintenance until it's unusable and have no plan in place to draw people to town. So the HVAC one scares me a little bit. I don't know if there's any types of changes that can be proposed to that, to bring that one down a little bit. I would be with Jeff on that. It just, it seems like it has to be done. We've kicked that can down the road a long time.

Uh, and somebody who has attended many events at the corn palace recently, um, namely the concerts, one of the most, uh, heated feedback points that I got was how hot it was. And so every single person I said, uh, during our upcoming council budget sessions, I will be in support of replacing and updating the HVAC. And I hope that you fill the chamber. which I think the last few, no, you guys are still tennis. Okay. I thought maybe Jacob HVAC. Okay. But I do think that it's something that is actually more for local residents than it is for anything else. Like this isn't something that like HVAC isn't going to bring in more tourists to the corn palace, but it'll make local events better for the residents of Mitchell.

And I'm going to echo with you, Tim. That's one thing, too, when I was participating in some of the events down here is the complaints that we get from the HVAC system and too cold or too hot. Well, it's never too cold, but definitely too hot all the time during the summer months. And even during the wintertime when you get a basketball game that has good attendance in it, which obviously we see that quite a bit with Wesley and the Colonels, it's far from comfortable in there even during the wintertime. So I think we definitely got to move forward with trying to get this updated.

I have a clarification. Did you also say the free elevator?

I didn't put that in yet.

Okay.

I heard Justin say in this one, so I just wanted to make sure.

Oops, I'm sorry. Yes, I meant to include that one also. And the thing about it is we have been hearing reports from the Corn Palace that we're on borrowed time. And we don't know if... When it's going to, we got three boilers and one's down and decommissioned. And so this theoretically is what I feel a very important project. We've been saving and saving and saving for years. This is our event center. This is who we are. So unless we decide not to invest into the Corn Palace project, then I think it's probably just the start of its finish. So what I feel is we've got the funds and Stephanie can kind of walk through the dollars, but we've got some funds that we've already put into reserve. And I think that's where we would utilize those funds and be able to get these projects started. And we've worked, we had a meeting, the mayor organized a meeting with, with our engineers and started kind of looking at it and what we can do. And so we've started the process. So I think we feel pretty good about the numbers. I would think, I mean, they're not going to be exact obviously, but they're, I think they're pretty good estimates that we're coming back or at least, um,

I think they're conservative because we did add contingency on there. I guess one thing that Nick had pointed out in that meeting, and Joe, you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong, but they said we'd be at least, that you would not be able to do an HVAC project in 27. You would likely be bidding because of the delivery of the equipment. So it wouldn't be completed in 27. You're likely looking at 28. The rest of the items, and I'm sure Dave could tell you this too, I know Mayer worked with two different vendors on state bid for bleacher replacements. So that's probably something that we could buy off state bid. The freight elevator would be another thing that we'd have to go out for bid for. I don't know what the timeline looks on something like that.

Yeah, I know there'll be some comments. The Corn Palace always draws a lot of comments. But I just think with some of the budget meetings we've had with Stephanie, and you talk about the majority of our tax dollars or sales tax revenue coming from people close by to Mitchell. Well, they're traveling here for high school basketball games. I know Mitchell High School doesn't play here, but there's plenty of basketball games being played there and so on and so forth. And I just think If the Corn Palace is unusable and those people start finding new places to play, then that's another thing we're losing as well. So it looks like it's probably closer than it is further away from happening.

Dave, how important is the parade elevator as far as priorities out for the Corn Palace in your eyes?

I had to make sure my mic was on. You know, for us, it really is. It's our storage. That's the only storage we have is the basement. So there's a semi-load of water in the basement. There's... all 1,300 chairs. There's 50 racks of tables and all the banquet setups. Plus then it's used also for the gift shop, their storage in the off season. So when that's out on the floor, we move everything to the back and vice versa when it's not.

And then Dave can probably fill in more of this, but it's my understanding there's a motor within the elevator, and when it goes down, we actually have to remove it and take it to someone to be worked on because of the setup of the current elevator.

Yeah, I think it was probably month two last year when I started that we had to take it to armor and have the brushes and some of the motors redone on it. The other issue with it is... we're creating, it leaks oil like a car, imagine a car. And the more we use it, the more it seems to seep a little here and seep a little there. So we're refilling that a lot. And that's on the RAM that powers that up and down.

I did have a question on the maintenance. I dealt with enough elevators at the Rury building to know that it's a pretty specialized market. And when you call them, it's expensive. Are you guys spending a lot on outside of what I would say outside of service repairs, like repairs that are not just general service every year?

Yeah, you know, you're right. There aren't 20 of those businesses out there that are looking for work. So the price typically is, I would say, on the higher end of that because it's a specialized service anymore. We are currently doing what I would consider, other than the motors, general maintenance to it. But the general maintenance is pretty frequent as well. It's more frequent than I believe it would be if it was corrected.

So I have a question for you. So can we get some of this stuff that you need, the cost down for it? You know, we're going to spend $5 million. That's $5 million going into the Corn Palace. That's pretty much all our reserve and another million from the lake, what Kevin just told me. That's a lot of money to go into the Corn Palace after we spent years and years pouring millions of dollars into the building and it's still the same. We're not generating millions of dollars out of the Corn Palace every year, maybe a half a million if we're lucky, and we want to spend $5 million to it. I just don't see the feasibility of that. So, I mean, we won't do a million for the tennis courts, but we want to spend $5 million into the Corn Palace, and that's everything we have. If we can get the cost down a little bit, can we? This is my question to you.

I think the answer is probably going to come from the engineers on that, the architects. They're out there doing the measurements and the mechanicals and all that stuff. And then once they get that information, I don't think Dave has that information.

So it's my understanding, the $2.8 million, which was the base cost of the HVAC, that came from Johnson Controls looking at our existing system. What does it cost to replace? Then there's design and contingency added on top of that because we're going to have to pay for that cost. I do think, at least when it comes to bleachers, I think Dave found, I don't know if he got a cheaper price when he looked at the state bid contract or not, but that was a rough number. Obviously, as you get into it, those could come down. But I do think the HVAC is a conservative number because you've got to have the budget funds to start or you're not going to be able to come up with it to add to it.

Correct.

I mean, it could be more potentially.

Yeah, there's contingency built into that.

Right. About 5% to 10%?

I think it was 12%. 12%.

So as a person who comes from the utility industry, I will tell you that I looked at the expense for utilities on the corn palace, and this year it's budgeted at $98,000. Okay. That heating system is probably 30 plus, and I'm saying probably 40 plus years old.

Some of it.

And you could probably cut utilities there by 20% or more every year after this and avoid costly repair bills, which sounds like we're setting ourselves up for if we don't address it. My question is, we've got two projects in the budget that are over $6 million each, two street repair projects. And I don't know, I'd like to ask the mayor, is the goal of the city to have two major street replacement projects every year? And I'm sure that's an ongoing thing that we can hardly ever catch up with, Joe. But maybe it's a point where we have to at some point look at Maybe not this year's budget, but the following year's budget saying we're going to take one street project out and we're going to put this corn palace heating system in. Or maybe we're at the point now with the situation with our heating system, maybe that's what we have to do in this budget. And Mayor, I'd like to get some input from you on that.

I think one of the reasons our heating and cooling costs is so expensive in the corn palace is because there's no insulation at all in the attic, like whatsoever. So everything you're sending is going right out the roof. That's probably something we should really take a look at is like spray foaming. Uh, second is the two infrastructure projects that everyone really liked. The engineering department really likes to engineering, um, infrastructure projects. Now those are not coming out of the budget necessarily. Those would have to get added on to the water sewer rates. So it's not, I mean, there's obviously that's not a real fun conversation to have either, but those would be offset by consumers using it since those are enterprise funds. So it's not coming out of our capital budget.

Yep, exactly. There's no general fund money going into those two projects.

Yeah, so they're just completely separate buckets.

Although we have had conversations, do we keep doing two a year or do we move to one a year moving forward after the push we've made?

I had the same conversation with Joe. How important is it? And I think you said it was a four-inch water main on Juanita? Yeah.

And both 1st and 6th, they're both 4-inch lines. 4-inch lines.

Yeah, we don't do anything less than 8 anymore, if that's correct. We still do 6.

Does the interior of that 4-inch line look like the one in the mayor's office? Probably.

That's what I'm saying. So, clarification, Mayor. The water rates play for the sewer and water infrastructure that goes in the streets, but there must be some city funding that goes to pay for the asphalt curb infrastructure.

the utilities split that cost of the road on top of the utility work.

Water pays for water, sewer pays for sewer, storm sewer pays for storm sewer, and then they all split it for the asphalt repair.

Thank you.

Joe, is the quality of life of anybody on the service end of that project suffering currently due to the project not being completed or anything along those lines that you can speak to?

I don't think quality of life would be affected by holding off, no.

If either one or both of those projects were held off on, do we fall behind on infrastructure? We made a lot of progress here. Obviously, we've had some pretty significant expenditures in the last three years on those. It might be kind of nice if we're not going to fall behind. We don't want to not do a project for 20 years like we had done. Um, if we're not going to fall behind, is there a possibility we kind of have a little cooling period on our rate increase for a year or so and pick right back up where we left off?

Yeah. In all honesty, I kind of felt like this conversation was coming.

Um, we knew it was coming.

Yeah. If we, if we did have to wait a year, I don't think that's a deal breaker. Um, we still have a lot of water main in the ground. That's 1935. Um, We've actually been noticing that our water main breaks have been from the 60s and 70s-ish. So it just kind of varies. It depends what happens. It depends what kind of winter we have. As far as serviceability goes, we don't actively have complaints necessarily in these areas. It's just what you've always had, so I don't think they know any different.

And I know Stephanie's got the numbers for water and sewer. I don't remember if we're talking about that on next Monday or not. If we do the sewer rates, it would go up $1.72 and $1.53 or something per user per month, something like that. So it's definitely not a, nobody wants an increase.

I believe it's a 5% in sewer and a 3% in water for next year.

For these infrastructure projects or just total?

These projects too, yeah. The surcharge is right on what you were saying, but the actual overall rates would go up 3% for water, 5% for sewer.

I think you had estimated like $32 per household on average. Was that per year? Was that about right?

I think it was that.

Some of that area per year. One of my concerns we got is... Is the infrastructure passing up? And if not both projects, but maybe if it's only one, because as I've sat here for 20 years, we've always been heavy on infrastructure and we'll never, ever catch up in any one of our lifetimes. There's always going to be infrastructure to keep on chasing. So when you ask, is it going to hinder us on passing it? The answer is yes. We will never get caught up. I mean, there's always going to be something that we've got to repair and keep on pulling infrastructure out. When we get done with these and you can circle back around where we started at how many years ago and start doing those, because now they're 40 years old. So we want to bypass one of the projects. I just don't think we should go zero on it. I think we need to try to keep something moving forward in those areas that are more of a priority or maybe we're doing some additional construction work in a certain area. That's nice just to keep that sort of all down while it's happening kind of thing and move things around. But I don't think passing up on city infrastructure is going to be going to fare well within the public. because that's one thing the public doesn't like. They like good roads. They like good sewer. They like good water. And when you pass that up, they're not happy.

Joe, we've been hearing from the people in Miller Street south of the jail there. When's that on schedule to do where it floods so bad down there? Mike, we got pictures. When we got four inches last week, we had a bunch of pictures again from them.

The Williams and Anderson intersection is currently not scheduled.

Have we gone to the county and made a formal request for the ability to try and get some of that land that we need for that?

A formal request, no.

If I can aid in that formal request, let me know.

So circling back on the corn palace, I firmly believe that They put together pretty conservative numbers. We're never going to know until we get it bid out. And I know we can't do it all in one year. But of the four projects that we just discussed, if I added it up right, it was $4,659,000. And Stephanie or whoever can double check that. But in the meantime, what I would like to do is earmark that in the reserve and then Whenever they can get the projects done, it sounds like part's going to be in 27 and part in 28, and that's fine. But I would like to set that money aside with the reserves that we have been saving over the years and, again, bring our corn palace up to the level that I think it should be or a lot of people think it should be because, in reality, we really do run the risk of this thing going down, and then we've got a huge problem.

Jeff, I just need to confirm I'm getting them because I'm not getting the same number. I had the bleacher replacements and the HVAC and the freight elevator. Is that correct? The gym floor is already included.

The gym floor is, yeah. Yep, so it's 4.28. Okay. Have we ever gotten cost estimates for adding insulation?

to the Corn Palace.

I can get that. That should be simple square footage. I think that's great.

It would lower our heating, cooling, equipment costs because you might be able to get by with smaller equipment if it was actually...

I think the only thing you could do is spray foam the roof because there's like a six foot gap and there's so much stuff laying on top of the ceiling. Right.

I get that it's a huge expense and this isn't this isn't just that Sean's just anybody else who, who feels that it's too much money to spend on the corn palace. I mean, it's a huge number, but I, to Jeff's point, if it goes down, I don't know how we replace the income to the city. Especially not on short notice. I mean, you're not going to come through and do a proposal for a new event center in a year or two. It's going to take a ton of time to get that up and going. And right now, it's what we've got. And if it goes under, we'd have no replacement plan.

Can I jump in just for a second, too? The other thing with the system, just so you're aware, on heating and cooling, it's a 24-hour reverse system. So if we're heating, say, in the spring, which is when we get complaints that it's too hot, it's because if we turn it over to air conditioner at 8 o'clock in the morning, it takes till 8 o'clock in the morning the next day to go to air conditioning and start cooling the building. We turn it off. and hope that the coolness of whatever is natural air conditioning. But that's, as you're talking about some of those, you know, complaints, that's what we, it just takes 24 hours to shift it.

I wonder if the new system would be like that. It's like a reverse heat pump. You know what I mean? I suppose they could isolate them. I don't know anything about that.

I think it has to do with the boiler being on or off.

One of the things that I've thought about with this project, as a possibility is using some of the entertainment tax funds in the future to offset or pay into the reserves to replenish that fund. And so I would like to look at being creative with how we're paying for that project, not necessarily just as reserves, but if we could figure out some kind of reserve or bond issue that we're using the entertainment tax to repay that bond as a part of future capital layout, I think that might be better than just draining the reserve in whole.

I think what I've heard is Jeff, Tim Goldhammer, Jason, and Ken in support of those deferred maintenance items. Oh, and Marty?

Myself also.

Okay.

I'd be in favor of that.

Okay. And you want me to look at a couple different repayment options, whether it would be like an entertainment tax bond, or even if you're doing the design this year, paying for what you do this year, and then the rest out of current cash coming in from entertainment tax in the next year, or bonds?

Either or. Either or, just what it would look like. I think you're probably still like a deposit on a house, paying it down a little bit with some reserves, but I think that... We have that fund available. It's one of the things that, since it is our entertainment venue, that that fund can be used for, and so we should take advantage of that capability.

So you should have... Maybe a combination. Let me look at this one more time. I was going to say, you should have about $500,000 a year out of there that you could commit, whether it be a repayment or a debt service payment, I think.

I just knew that in this year's budget, we're using $375,000. I think that's how we're towards the replacement of the floor. So we're using that fund for that purpose already. And so we could use that if we're not paying for it until 28 as a part of that earmark, that capital for the Corn Pell specifically.

To clarify, the $375,000 on entertainment tax is out of that dedicated reserve and entertainment tax. So out of current cash this year, we have $346,000 going to a splash park out of entertainment tax to park funds. So you know that you would have at least, you know, $350,000 a year that you could use towards that. As far as the reserves for that, we had, oh, and I don't have it on here. Hold on. So in the entertainment tax right now, you had dedicated $600,000 for capital improvement Corn Pals facilities two years ago, I believe. We show $375,000 coming out of that towards the floor. You still have $225,000 earmarked in there that you could also apply. So you'd have the 225 out of current reserves plus another 350 to 375 a year out of current cash as well. But I'm hearing I should come back with funding scenarios that would show how that's covered.

I would certainly appreciate that.

Is there anyone in favor of the splash park just so I can have the conversation?

I think what I would be in favor of is design for implementation so we can get better numbers, working with a design group of some kind, and then looking to see what the actual numbers come back for recirculation versus non-recirculation. And I don't know if we need to pick a location before we can do that, but some kind of design phase for potential future use, but I don't think I can support it as it currently states with so many questions and variables year to year financially.

I would think we need to pinpoint a location before we spend money on design because I'm going to guess the location, in my mind, would alter the design. And I heard just four different choices of where. So I would think we'd have to put a location before it would be in favor of it.

So do you guys have a location in mind that you could all agree on? So we know how to design it.

Or the other thing is we can get some feedback, but if we, if we can allocate part of, of the money for a design and, and then we can work through the location, I don't know, would that there's location actually going to hinder The actual design itself? Depends.

I don't know. I mean, at some level, I don't know how much.

Well, I think at the very least, if it's a recirculation system or you're repurposing the water, that automatically is going to dictate your location. I mean, so there's obviously costs associated with that, too. Right.

I would like to get some input from Kevin, maybe give him some time to think about different locations, pros and cons that he could come back to us with. I'm certainly not qualified to pick the best spot for it here in Mitchell.

I'd also like to get the park boards input if they have a, you know, I don't know what future design plans that that board necessarily has for their facilities, but If there's things that we don't know about, I don't want to say let's put it on top of something that they had a design that just hadn't reached my ears yet as a part of that.

And then before we finalize the budget, at least we can get somewhat of an estimate of what a design would potentially be. And that's something that maybe we can consider.

Do you have one from Lyle or Confluence? And then there's another guy, but he may not be registered and saved.

I don't know if he gave me a design estimate or if he just gave me a broad estimate of cost. But I can look at that.

Perfect. Kevin, has this been discussed at any park board meetings?

Not as of recent.

And then... I mean, this just goes without saying, but I just want to make sure, especially for new members, that I'm pointing this out. When we're talking about the splash park, the only amount that you're saving out of general fund current revenue that's going towards that project is, I believe, $20,000. I'll look here. because the rest was funded out of reserves, a donation, and entertainment tax current cash. So I just want to make sure you're not using that to balance other things in the general fund because there was not a significant amount coming from the general fund for the project. So if I go on my major projects, we'll see $26,250 is what the general fund was paying towards that project.

So, Jordan, can you follow up with your donor if another location would be acceptable for them as well?

I will.

Well, let's talk about the bathroom in Drake Field. That's horrible. You got people going in there on their cell phone with the toilet. You can't use the toilet, I think.

Mayor, could you or Stephanie, in some of the discussions I had heard, explain that grant? I don't know if it's Kevin or you, that grant opportunity on that. I think you had proposed renovating it and then the grant could kick in and it'd be a full redo. So this was in the budget two years ago, right?

And it got cut, the Drakefield. So then Kevin Nelson looked up and said, there's a grant, I think, out there for $185,000. You're in the ballpark. It's around 180, 185, which puts the total price at 333. And so my background is remodeling places that look like junk. And this is right up my alley. I figured we could probably get it done for 150,000 because it's a little bit of plumbing and some fixtures and some paint and some wall, you know, do that stuff. So you could probably get it done for that. Well, you could get a grant and just redo the whole thing if you wanted to. So if we don't get the grant, the funds would be available to remodel it. If we do, we would just tear it down. I'm very conservative when it comes to taking money from the federal government. That's why I said let's just remodel it, but everyone's got their own deal.

Kevin, when will you know on the grant?

We won't know until next year, right? Correct. Correct. Actually, December, they would let us know, but it's after the budget's approved.

But I will say, park and rec should have, they'll have unexpended health insurance money this year. So if the grant came through and that's the direction council wants to give, you could supplement some of the unexpended 26 budget into 27, right? Yes. To make sure that they had the full amount to build new if they get the grant.

Something needs to be done because it's embarrassing when you have people from out of town that come out there and they can't.

And it is proposed to remodel. So either way, whether you get the grant or not, you're improving the facility.

Yeah. Yeah. Whether you get the grant or not, you're going to get something. It's going to get done either way.

So 150 is currently in. And what you're saying, Stephanie, is we really don't need to quit. Go up to the $165,000 or you think they're going to have it?

I know they will have $15,000 that they could roll into $27,000 if they need it.

Right. That would be my direction would be is let's try it for the grant. If we don't get it, let's renovate it.

Yeah, I thought that was a great idea. I don't want to take words out of her mouth, but you had proposed the idea to move forward with the renovation and then if the grant kicks in, tear it down, which I think is a perfect idea.

I guess to clarify, anytime there's a grant that you apply for, it's council's decision if you're moving forward with it or not. So even at that time, you guys would say, we don't want the grant. We still want you to remodel it. But either way, you would have the funding in the budget to improve the facility, which needs to be done.

Yeah, it definitely needs to be done. Perfect.

Okay. An easy one.

If we're going the route of using the possibility of a design and not implementing the splash pad, I think one of the things we should look at is trying to get, I don't want to say more serious about the numbers with the Tennis Association, but at least look at if there's a way forward where we could include something, even if it's not actually breaking ground next year, but where we can earmark some money aside because those projects are eventually going to need to be completed.

All right. Anyone else? Marty looks eager. Eager. Okay. I saw you hovering.

One thing I want to take a look and see if there's any consideration or if there's any support for it. I mentioned a little bit a while back to Joe and I can't remember if I tagged you in, Stephanie. I apologize if I did not. But I'm looking for a lake. I don't know what title would be as a supervisor or whatever it is. Somebody that basically will specialize or be 100% advocated to Lake Mitchell as in doing what is currently going on. We have Mr. McLeod that has been great for the city on making areas around the lake look superb. And those people that have drove around Lake Mitchell and noticed that a lot of areas that have been cleaned up and able to be utilized, there were so many spots around Lake Mitchell over the years I've grown up that you couldn't even think about utilizing and fishing from or whatever it may be. But all of a sudden now you can. And as you drive around, it's just amazing how many people we see at the banks and the shorelines of Lake Mitchell because you can actually use them. And the things that Mr. McLeod has done over the past few years, I can't give enough kudos to what he's done and what he's done for the city of Mitchell, his own sweat equity. He's actually put some cash in some of these areas. And his time of doing that, I'm assuming, will come to a little bit of a slow or maybe a halt at some point in time, as in what he wants to continue doing or what he can continue to do. And a few conversations I've had with Mr. McLeod would Love to have somebody take that baton, kind of hand it off to somebody else of the city aspect where they can continue to do what he's been doing or other areas too, but sort of just keep that plow moving forward on things that need to be done and keeping the lake to what it's being brought up to. We all know we're going to eventually do a drain and do a huge investment in the lake. And one thing I think would be very interesting of us as a city is is if we let everything that Mr. McCloud has done and opened up and made usable to just regrow in with what has happened over the last 30, 40 years that I was born and raised on Lake Mitchell. And now that he's got it to that point, and there's several areas to keep on doing, if you don't keep up on it, we all know it just grows back in a hurry, the vegetation does and everything else. And I think we need to keep it where it's utilized, where we can keep on using it the way it's supposed to be used, especially with this huge investment that the community has voted in. So I would like us to try to budget personnel. I don't know what that dollar amount would be. Obviously it'll fall into a line item of specifications, but they would be solely in charge of Lake Mitchell as we do in other areas from Cadwell Park and things like that, that this person's job is to do that. They could actually start in the near future. It would be something that we could fund for 2027. They could work hand in hand with Mr. McCloud over these next year or two or however many years. I don't want to speak for him, how many years he plans on doing what he has been doing for our community, but sort of learn from him, learn the volunteers, work with the volunteers, get to know them because obviously you're going to need these volunteers. It's not something that the city can do by themselves. It's a volunteership that make it happen. And whoever this new person that is running that spot needs to make sure they get to know who these people are and continue that as each year goes along. And when the lake is drained, when I did talk to, and we all know too, when I did talk to John about it a little bit, He said there's so many areas that they can't get to from the top side, but they can get to it from the lake side when the lake is down. He goes, the areas that need to be sort of resolved, he goes, will just double in size when they're able to do it from the lake side. So he goes... you don't need to wait till after the lake is refilled up because you need to have somebody when the lake is down also to take care of some of those as most of the property owners out there will be taking care of their own personal shorelines we need to maintain our shoreline too and you can do it a lot better when you're in the water or in the shoreline instead of above it so um i'm really pushing that we can try to fund uh this person for Not just right now, but even for years of commitment for the city, showing that we support what the community voted on, and we're showing some support that we are going to continue to make Lake Mitchell beautiful and continue it as great again. I don't know, Kevin, if you've had any talk with John Cloud or not, but I don't know how many years he's going to continue to help out the community with his own time and some of that. But I would just like to see us continue as a city showing the citizens of what they're putting in there for this lake to continue to make it beautiful. So has there been any discussion with you and him at all?

John and I speak weekly, just to know that there's a special inspiration that comes with a volunteer and volunteers following another volunteer. So it will be a challenge to find a paid person to have volunteers follow them to start with. Next is equipment. Right now, we have to wait until there's dump trucks available from Public Works to be able to haul and move stuff. So I appreciate the thought of more staff out there is going to make it easier. There's still coordinated schedules on making things flow as well. So it's something to think about and to put our foot into, yes.

Yeah. And I know we have a lot of coordination going on. And one thing by getting this person on the ground now is, like you said, the volunteers, they don't come overnight. You can't put a position to have volunteers. But let's say if Mr. McCloud is going to be doing this for the next two years and we have our person know getting educated and also meeting this group of volunteers and keeping that flow going uh that handoff will be a lot easier than us coming into the dark is what i'm getting at so i really think we need to get involved with him on the ground then we can wait later and say hey let's take this over because it ain't gonna happen that's it's a waste but if we can get in there now um and assist them and learn what's going on and learn how it comes together like you said you know working with the other city entities on dump trucks and removal they put them here We got to take that hand off slowly over a period of time. We can't just go in there in the dark and expect we're going to know what's going to do.

Sorry, I'm just trying to make sure I've got my notes of things of what I've got. I did list, I'm trying to track all the discussions that come up and you guys will get an updated list with from tonight's inclusion too. So if you're not seeing me at something that I should have, just make sure you let me know here. I'll try to track them.

I would like to add to the budget some funding for Project Lifesaver. It's a project that is ran by the Mitchell Police Department. which is for DaVinci patients and kids with autism. Dean, can you explain a little more about that program?

Yes. So, Project Lifesaver is a program in which the participants are fitted with a transmitter that the police department is able to use to track them had they wandered away or get lost. I apologize, I don't have the exact number of times that we use it per year, but it is several. Currently, there are several people on the program. We have eight transmitters. We keep one transmitter in reserve in case something goes wrong with one of them that is currently deployed. As far as dispense goes, it is a One of the cheaper programs we use for the community benefit, each transmitter costs about $350. And then the annual operating cost is relatively minor, low as well. It's $200, $300 a year for batteries and bands. But I actually do not have any idea where the money for this funding originally come from for this program. We've looked and we cannot find whether it was a grant or as a private donation. We just don't have the record of that. It's been around for about 15 years, I think. we'd like to expand it in the coming years, at least double it in size. It wasn't very well known that this program was offered by the city. It kind of wasn't publicized a lot. There's been some recent people who have helped spread the word of it. We've had a lot of interest in it. Where I noticed the program really benefiting is, especially with the younger autistic children that use the program, it really has It saves one of these kids where we find them quicker. It is really a good program to the community.

So what it is is basically a wristband with a transmitter that allows them to locate someone who has a need, whether it's a special need could be an older dementia patient or an autism child. As you can see, we have budgeted for this several years. There were several years where there wasn't any activity or any funding spent. Other years when it's very small, because our understanding, looking back at the budget, those smaller years are when we've just replaced wristbands or batteries. And then when you see the larger charges is when a transmitter was bought. I think you estimated $3,000, Dean? Yeah.

What we're really running into is our transmitters are all in need of being replaced, and the The bracelets are the transmitter case. They get gross, they get dirty, they get scuffed up. Like I said, I believe for $3,000, we could replace all the transmitters and then still maintain the same operating cost that we do a year. And it really would have very minor effect on the number of officers that are deployed.

Do guardians apply for that for somebody? Is that how they get one?

Yep. So there is an application process and an agreement. You know, they have to agree that if the transmitter is lost or damaged, that they'll replace it. But we get recommendations through people get referred to us through the schools, the Department of Social Services, through the medical centers. And it's generally with the people who have already shown a tendency to wander away or to run away.

There again, it's maintenance again, and for $3,000, that's nothing if you save some kid's life that wanders off it. So I think it's probably a no-brainer. I mean, we've got to keep up with our maintenance stuff.

Is there anyone against the $3,000?

I'm not against it, but I do think you could look at the AFA, the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, I think it is. It does have grants available to purchase and replace those transmitters, and so that might be an option. to offset those costs or even grow the program more quickly. And so I would be happy with the funded amount, but then also I think that would be something to look at, either matching funds or the possibility of growing. AFA, Alzheimer's Foundation of America.

I'd like to see two things. Are we done with that?

I didn't hear anyone say yes.

Is anyone opposed to it? Nobody's opposed to it. Move on. Okay. You have the floor, Dan.

Thank you.

Two things that were in the budget that got cut. Um, one's the home run fences chain link at Drake fields. Um, Kevin does have pictures of it by the next meeting. I'll have them available to look at it. It's curled up bad. Um, I don't know if Stephanie ever hands it. You probably didn't have them pictures, but it's curled up bad. We've got college teams playing their home runs. Balls go underneath, but people slide to get. They've taken steel hooks and pounded it down to get the chain link to come by. It's an embarrassment to Drake Field. That fence is not a lot of money, $13,365 to replace. The poles are good. The chain link just needs replacing in the home run. And the other is a home run fence for Cadwell. It's lived its life. It's 70, 50, whatever, two, three years old. The tin is sharp on the top. There's also pictures of that that Kevin has available for the next one. The poles are getting rotten off. The top, it's... I got them right here. There's the home run fence on the top of Cadwell. And on the top of it, if you see the top middle one, that tin will overlap. Some of that's up a half inch. It's five feet, six feet high. It's a hazard as far as somebody getting cut. If they jump up over in the right spot, they will get ripped. They never put a cap on this when they did it. So they put like a six by six pull down the middle with two sides and a 10. And that was just original to my knowledge. The fancy, it's leaning, not as bad as some of our softball fields are leaning, but I really feel it's time. And it is expensive. And now we're getting to see an upswing in baseball and Mitchell. And hopefully it's going to grow even more. But the home run fence is in bad need in both places. The chain links for Drakefield is a no-brainer. It's not a lot of money. And... And I would really like to see the Cadwell fence get put back in. Now with the advertising coming up, you know, there was debate. Kevin can throw in on this. Wood, tin, you know, whether you do it. Tinnitus lasted 50-some years. That was a good part of tin. Most of it, wood looks nice. From Pierre, the average is 7,000 a year to stain it. They stain it every three years for 21,000. um the whole fence is covered with advertising so you don't see the tin so um you know you can go to the level you want um that part's debatable but that's the price they came up with i would really really like to see both them added back in did you have any uh did you find any of the of the drake i don't have that Okay, I might have got that. Kevin, was that an email to me?

I did not bring in any chain link fence photos to step me up.

I must have got it from Roger. Okay. That's fine.

So the estimate of 225, Dan, is that the fence all the way around Cadwell or just the home run fence?

Correct me on this. Kevin wants to answer that.

It's the fence all the way around, including new gates, with the exception of the gate that was just installed, that counterbalance gate that's off in the northeast corner of the field. That one is new this last year.

All the way around or just the home run fence?

All the way around.

I know the fence was put up in 1972. It's outlived its life expectancy. I know that for sure.

I'd be in favor of both of them. I would be in favor of both of them as well.

I would do.

Is there anyone that's not in favor of it? Let's do it that way. I have a question to ask regarding the fence. Maybe Dan can answer it. You're on the board for the Association of South Dakota, right? Correct. I know the state collects a lot of revenue from the Amateur State Baseball Tournament that's held here. Is there any ability with the consistency at which Mitchell is holding this tournament and paying them revenue the tournament brings in to provide any type of resources, maybe establish the park as their permanent site for the state amateur tournament or anything like that that we can look at. I mean, it seems like Mitchell's probably paid them a lot of money over the years for hosting this tournament. I understand that anybody who hosts it would pay them that money, but it would be nice to see them

Actually, Mitchell, don't pay them. The gate is ours. It depends on how you look at it, but it does bounce around. You'd get one vote from Mitchell every year, but there is... I'm assuming you'd have the sunshine in the Pony Hills, but there is people from other parts of the state. Everybody's representative, and Mitchell, since... Their first one, I'm going to guess, is somewhere around 1980. And right after they built this, I actually was here in 76. But that's probably the first one. And, you know, they went probably out of the last 10 years, I'm guessing we hosted nine. Went to Brandon a year ago. But, yeah, as far as them throwing in, that would be a hard sell. We're a nonprofit. And they did donate before it was on. I don't know if that was Friends of Baseball or the Amateur Baseball Association. They did donate. Kevin, do you remember on the shade structure how much? You're not involved in that.

Mitchell Baseball Association? Is that what you're asking?

Yeah, how much they gave to the shade structure.

So the total cost was $640, including the shade structure and the press box. Mitchell Baseball gave $200,000 toward that.

Okay. South Dakota Amateur Baseball, four of the friends of baseball might have donated a metric. I think they gave $50,000. I think it was $50,000 if I remember right. I don't think so. I think it was. Anyway, I can get that for you.

Yeah, you don't think there's any opportunity for any funds like that potentially to help offset that?

I'm not at liberty to say it, but I would say it.

I might be fired after one year.

We are a non-profit. Will they donate? Let's just say in three years it goes to Brandon. You heard what happened to Brandon's breast box. It just got burned down. We can discuss it, but it would be minor.

Do you think there's a chance that that project cost could come down if it's just the outfield fence that we're looking at replacing or does the entirety of the fence line need to be replaced?

I'm going to guess the outfield fence is probably 1,000 feet. Kevin, do you remember the exact? And I'm going to guess you're double that to go all the way around.

You're in that ballpark, but I would go out and look at that fence that faces the south along the parking lot if you're going to say, let's just replace just the outfield fence because you stand along it and look down and it's a wave of broken posts and the way it leans.

If you do it, you might as well do it right and do it all because it needs it.

I said south side. I meant west side.

Yeah. And they do have, it's a major problem, but kids jump over them for foul balls. And they go up and over top. And you've seen the top of them. There's 10 on the top. And they put the picnic table, you can move the picnic tables, but they put the picnic tables up. And now you give $1, $2 foul ball, keep foul balls. They're jumping up and over the fence to do it. And... And that's an issue Roger says we have to stop it, but we have to figure out how. Eight feet is the answer, probably. Okay, so is there no support for that?

We're going the easier side rather than asking for eight. We're asking for the opposite.

I wouldn't say that I don't support it. I'm just interested in seeing potentially some of the other options that were proposed here, maybe just the outfield fence or something along those lines. Bite my tongue over here after asking for $4 million for the corn palace.

You know, the Exchange Club has been very generous to Cadwell Park, but they just spent a lot of money on the new structure where their food is this year. And I just seen they gave a huge donation in the last month to someplace. I don't remember where it was at.

I remember, too.

Yeah. So, you know, I don't know if they're tapped out. They... They work out there and donate all the money back into Mitchell. I mean, it's a great organization. But they spent, I didn't see their budget because that's not of ours, but I suppose it's 70 feet long, a shade structure, and a shelter over the cooks where they sell beer and stuff.

Where does the revenue for the advertising go?

At present, that goes to Mitchell Baseball.

Or Pella City Baseball, depending on who sells it.

It's a shared use though, right? Now that there's, for the advertising on the back fence, is that just one entity or is it?

That is under discussion right now. They're having meetings on that right now for what goes forward on that. Because now we do have two baseball organizations and discussion of the bison coming in. So within the next two months, I'm guessing they will be.

It's not the city though, probably, if that's what you're looking for.

Yeah, I was just wondering if there's an opportunity for that portion of that revenue to help pay for the fence they're hanging it on. Maybe not.

Like a purchase of brick for the wall type situation? I mean, with the support that Mitchell Baseball has, maybe somebody would be interested in purchasing permanent space on the wall in exchange for certain lengths of the fence?

Mitchell Baseball did commit to paying toward the fence, but a dollar amount was not listed.

I mean, you guys have heard of the Green Monster. Maybe we just need the Greenway Monster out there.

Okay, so it doesn't sound like there's enough people against it to take it out. A majority wants to put it in. How's that? Any affirmative?

That's where you're standing. That's assuming the corn pellet stuff is coming out of different funding sources. Sort of short, just so you know.

So another topic I'd like to bring up is the contribution to the Mitchell Area Development Corporation. I see that we've reduced that funding by $100,000 and plans are to take that money and create an employee position for the city to do economic development activities. So I'd like to learn more about what type of a position that is, what kind of a job description that is, what kind of background we're looking for that person. I'm gonna assume that the Development Corp would have to reduce their employee workforce because of the lack of the funding. So it would be just moving a position from across the street to here. And I don't know if that's necessarily a, if the person here would have the same resources and the same background as what's over at the Mitchell Area Development Corp. So if someone could give me some background, I'd appreciate it.

So, yeah, we had this conversation a little bit ahead of time, so then I thought about it a little bit more. So my theory was if we could bring in someone whose sole dedication is to nurture leads, you know, whether they come from the state or they are just people that inquire to the city or they're people that require friends, there would be one person that just nurtures leads, you know. From a background of sales, you have to nurture leads constantly in order to get new businesses, new industry, new housing, all stuff like that. And I lost my train of thought. I think having one person solely dedicated with absolutely no other distractions whatsoever with an accountability to the governing body, if it's government tax dollars, they should be accountable to the taxpayers through the governing body. That's just my opinion. And I think We looked at a $60,000 salary maybe, and there's wages and benefits and all the other carrying costs that go above to get to the $100,000. I'm only worried about what I'm in charge of, I guess, would be the simple way to explain it. The three top things I hear from people is they want lower taxes, which is not always possible, but it's what they would like. The water rates are high, and they want more things to do, more businesses, more shopping, more food, more stuff like that. I think this, executed properly, would solve many of those problems. One, we could have the industry, the retail. the housing that people are looking for. Two, we could have more users to help spread the cost of the water rates and, if done properly, the tax roll. So I think one person fully dedicated with an extreme level of accountability to this governing body who represents the wards and the citizens is, in my opinion, I think what would work best for economic development.

So if you feel really strongly about that, Jordan, would you consider continue supporting the development corp at the level they were at and then asking for the additional $100,000 to put another economic development person on board rather than... keeping our efforts basically what I see is the same with the same number of people. Maybe you're providing a little bit different focus for one of them. But economic development is a marathon. And you've got to be looking at every option. And I think you know that. You're telling me that. So what I'm saying is can we continue to support the development corp and all the efforts that they're doing You know, we got a new business park. We got community of the year not so long ago. We got a lot of good things going here. So can we continue to support the development core? And if we want to do more above and beyond that, can we talk about that?

Yeah, I would have no problem with that at all. I just want to see a blossom.

This may be a silly question. Is there an opportunity for, if you think you can find this person potentially that is so driven to find a successful lead for our community. I don't know how you would budget the item. Is there an opportunity to pay this person on a commission basis? I would absolutely love that because there are people that do that. I don't know how you would do that. I don't know how you'd structure it either, but paying somebody to potentially get us no results seems kind of like what you're saying happening currently.

And I do have friends that are in the consulting business that do get a headhunter fee if they land a project and bring it to a certain town, but.

would rather not to ken's point i think it's hard to take away funding from the mitchell area development corporation when they when they not only serve a purpose for our community but also a legal purpose and they're in you know our south dakota codified law for a reason so that we can utilize them as a vehicle for other opportunities in our community too so reducing all of their funding or nearly all of it and losing employees is a tough spot to be in

One of the things that I was hoping would happen tonight is we could set the date for subsidy application discussion specifically. And I don't know if we have that date already picked out, but so that way, as we speak to a subsidy, those entities could be here as well to provide feedback. I certainly think that this is a conversation not necessarily tied to that, but my hope is that we could have that finalized as well.

I think they would also like a date. So that sounds like they've been asking.

Do you have a date in mind of subsidies?

I don't have anything planned. I did ask for feedback of how you guys want to move forward. We have, I'll pull up the schedule.

Do we need the subsidies to come here and present? I mean, they all got all their applications.

That's completely up to you guys. I mean, you have every bit of information they sent. You have their financials. You have their applications. It says what they're trying to accomplish with the funds that they're requesting. I've seen council in the past do it both ways. You used to take three hours and have every subsidy present, and then you've had other years where you guys just have them here. So if you have a question about a subsidy, you can ask them to come up and speak to those questions.

I like that idea better. You have them here, and if you have a question, you can ask them. If not, some are pretty easy, like the firewood. That's pretty easy, I mean.

And they did put a ton of work into those applications. I mean, I've got a paper version of it here. I mean, they've given you a ton of information.

Well, if you look at it, obviously, there's some that were funded to what they're asked for. And I don't know if it's obviously the mayor and whoever else, the committee that did it. And obviously, some of them asked for a little bit more in the application, but you came back and gave them what they had in 2026.

you know everybody was plugged in at 2026 levels except for the one-time funding request this year right then there's a couple that were removed completely looks like obviously horseman's taken away so building on that mitchell area story maybe it's only a few people yeah well that's what maybe three or four that community theater didn't apply i don't think is there anybody that's that's against the 27 proposed budget so that if we agree at least to say if the fire works, that number we have no issue or problem with so you don't have to show up. So that's what I'm wondering.

That's what I'm getting to. We don't need to.

Yeah, so if there's any of them out there that you're uncomfortable with with the 27 proposed budget, I would say let's raise our hand and let's have them here next time.

And again, what you're going to want to look at on this sheet is in this column, it shows what they were approved for 2026. And then this is the proposed, they should match here. Some of them asked for an increase, but they were plugged in at last year's level or this year's level.

And if they would want to come and ask for maybe an additional amount, then that's their prerogative. But if we're comfortable with what the 27 numbers are, which ones are you not? It sounds like, and I agree with the Development Corp, I think it would be a good discussion to have them here. And then I'm comfortable with the rest of them as they're proposed.

I'm good with them too. Just looking at them right now, I don't see any that stick out that would propose a problem anyway.

But if they want to come and ask for additional funds, then that's what they can, obviously they can do that.

Anybody have a problem with any of them?

I'm okay with the 2027 proposed and having MADC come in and speak to theirs.

Let's do it the next meeting.

No, before our next budget hearing.

Let's do it the 28th.

Then we have time.

And it's up to you.

I mean, it's obviously up to you guys if you still want to have these dates. We just have some proposed. I guess if you want to, you may not be through your list, but we already do have a list of items that you want us to bring back to you information on.

I'd say the 21st. Let's just have a regular council meeting. You can't get much done in a half hour.

Other than they can come back with the different options that we're kind of. asking for. There's one topic that might take a half hour. Bring us up to speed and then maybe the 28th we can resume and have the subs come.

Clean up our list a little bit. Yeah, I like that.

Okay. So I'm going to... We're moving forward with the subsidy discussion would be on the next full work session, correct? Which is not the 21st because that's just a partial, the September 28th. Okay. And I should ask MADC to be present to answer questions, correct? Correct. Thank you. Okay.

Should we ask? I'm sorry. I know the horsemen said they were only asking for one time, so that's why I cut it.

And that's where I'm thinking, Mayor, is this is the number that we're leaning toward now and is in the budget, but if you...

So should we invite them is what my question is.

They can come in.

And then same for the Historic Society. They have a very small request, but...

I'll just do the same notice I have done in previous years and say it's the council's intention to discuss subsidies on September 28th. You may or may not be asked questions, but you should be there in case you are.

Just tell everybody? That's probably the...

Guaranteed.

He said guaranteed.

I'm sorry, that's an error.

Hold on. No, that's right. 26 is 25. I'm sorry. 26 is 25.

Or you might want to send some out so you ask for 14-3 and we're going to guarantee you 13. Maybe they won't show up.

Just send them all the information and let them make their own decisions.

I will be watching online, but I will not be available that evening. But I think it's still fine to have it with 28. I'm going to be in Minneapolis, but that's okay. No, I'm going for a conference on pork. I'll be touring a hog facility during that budget. And so I don't know that I'll have access to my cell phone. Tim's recruiting his own business.

Okay, anything else?

Let me go back to the number you said our difference is right now.

138.

131.

So one thing that I added while you were talking, when the mayor got through his budget, there was about 7,100 extra that we put into contingency that would put you over the 2026 contingency level. So I added that as coming off to help you balance. But it would pay for the $3,000 for the lifesaver and whatever else the difference was, which the mayor had talked about today. So... So this is just additional. We put it into contingency because he ended with a tiny bit of a surplus when the mayor got through his budget.

We don't need to spend it all. 131 was our difference. And what numbers did you adjust as a new profit, new revenue?

That's 152. That's included in it.

And nothing for the splash pad yet.

There is no general fund cash going towards the splash part. There's about $26,250 that I'll be able to add in. Okay. But I don't know if I heard. Maybe I should go back and revisit that one. I was going to ask.

I didn't know if I got a consensus.

Yeah, I didn't get a consensus on removing that funding. At least not that I noted. Okay. So if you want that out, I could show the 26, 250. We would just go like this.

Yeah, I apologize.

I thought there was a majority that were saying to back it out. Maybe not.

What is the majority? Let's just go around the table and ask.

I think that design phase or coming up with some kind of design for the project. is something that I would support, but funding the actual, I don't think it's gonna be built in 27 anyway, so.

In 26-250, it's probably not gonna be enough for your design, I would assume, and that's coming out of reserves and dedicated reserves. Only 26-250 is coming out of general fund. So do you support doing that design out of, I mean, out of reserves somehow?

I would say the entertainment tax would be a good, because it's their money.

We do have money coming in from entertainment tax. Yes. Okay.

I would share the exact same opinion as Tim. It's not that I don't want it. I just don't think currently it's something I can support.

Well, I think the good thing about it is, and I've heard positive about it too, Mayor. And I think the good thing about it is us, you know, proceeding forward with something. I mean, it's not that we're saying no to it. We're saying yes to it, but it's just not. next year for a million or actually probably do it the right way two million dollars and say let's let's get this ball rolling it's it's going to be a great project communities are like it tourists kind of like it so i did just something that we're uh putting a foot forward so what should well i don't know if we just do we decide what our budget is before we send it to the designer or we just say designer how many dollars does this cost what's your guys appetite i should ask

I never tell a designer to just shoot to the moon.

I think that having a ballpark idea for design is a good idea. But when we did the Corn Palace Plaza expansion, I thought there was a really good conversation with the design team where they brought in and literally laid out the plaza. And we did a bunch of different renderings and drawings and those kinds of things. And so, again, I don't want to limit the possibilities of what the splash pad could look like. Because my nephew, all of five years old, sent me a very long voicemail about options as far as whether it should be splash features that dump versus whether that they spray. And in case you're wondering, five-year-old nephew Goldhammer is a dump fan.

I don't feel like I want that.

So by doing this, we would be keeping $150,000 in entertainment tax for the design of the Splash Park.

I'd like a little further clarification if we're done with that subject. On 147, I don't know which one is field A. It's dugouts. Replace backstop and dugouts on field A. Is that baseball, I'm assuming?

Correct. It's right behind Cadwell, and it would be in the corner of Minnesota and 15th.

Yeah, so it's not one of the four plexes. It's one of the single fields.

It's one of the ABCs.

Oh, right behind, right north of Cadwell.

Correct.

Yeah, on the corner.

There's pictures of that. You definitely have. Right there.

Yep. Right here. You're just looking for clarification, Jeff?

Yeah.

Okay, anything else?

One of the things that I noticed on there was the Dry Run Creek restroom. Is there plans to make that accessible via sidewalk?

So the discussion we had was we don't know how much it's used all the time. And yeah, there's no sidewalk. There's actually no sidewalk at all along the entire park, which is...

Yeah.

It's probably something we should take a look at. Can you zoom in on that picture? But, you know, the thought we had was rather than tear it down, because I don't know how much use it gets, it can be a tremendous amount, is go to just two single family rooms where it's like one room accessible by a wheelchair. You could go in, lock the door, and then you just have your own spot. But yeah, I don't know if we have a sidewalk in there, but what is it like?

I'm going to pull up the overview so you can see how far away. I think I did provide an update on that as well. There's no sidewalk in the surrounding area. And I think Kevin said to connect to the bike path, you'd actually have to zigzag down because of the elevation wouldn't meet ADA.

And then the sidewalk would go just directly to the street because there's no adjoining sidewalk. So it's kind of interesting.

Right, so it's about 50 feet to the street from there. And to go down to the trail, if you've scooted over the trail along the street, even the trail going down to the rest of the trail isn't ADA that slope going down to it.

Where are we at?

Right down the corner, right there. Go to your left, move your mouse to the left. See that red dot? That's it right here.

So you can see there's no sidewalks anywhere in this area. And This is the elevation I think you were talking about, Kevin, right? Yeah.

That's correct.

I shouldn't say there's no sidewalks in the area. There is one on a cul-de-sac we found right here with three new houses, right, Kevin? Yeah. But for the most part, there are not side blocks in that neighborhood.

Okay.

Anything else? I'll be quick. Number 160, Joel, the street shop addition. Which one is that? Is that where the old treatment plant? Is that where we were looking at? Or is that the one out at the 8th Street?

I believe that's the one at 8th Street. Okay.

I think we had this right here on our tour. on the side of the street shop here? Correct. That allows for another bay.

So is the old treatment plant, is that one in here also? No. That's not.

Correct. That was also $500,000.

Okay.

And the reason for that is, you know, if you look at the comparison between the two buildings, this improvement makes it so that the city can do more work because the mechanics can work on more equipment. The other building, redoing the water treatment facility, is really just moving the traffic from where they are now to the new location. So when we were weighing cost benefit, this one had a greater citywide benefit.

This would be the only bay that would fit the fire engine. Yep, that makes sense. That's a good project. And then the other one, what is number 62 then?

New addition to street.

That's because it's being funded out of more than one department, I think. Let me look here.

Number 62, is that the same project?

I'm assuming it is. Yes, and what was the other number?

142. 160.

Yes, and that's because of this. So that's my error the way I have that shown. Here's why. Here's the breakout of the cost. Part of it is general fund, part of it is sanitation fund, and some of it is water fund. But the total cost of the entire project is $600,000.

Okay, gotcha. All right. And then one other last one, Mayor.

You take all the time you want. I'm used to long meetings.

When we obviously went through the public safety building, that place is really, really tired. And I know we're taking a look at possibly police moving, which I think it's good to at least look at it. But... I think it was an indication that regardless if the police move, the fire probably wants to stay where they're at, which is a lot less expensive of a project if we do that. So I guess I would like to take a look at is the fact of maybe doing some of those improvements, knowing that we're going to be in that building that's either with both of them or at least one of them. But like the windows and...

48 and 49 under police.

Yeah.

And then fire would have been.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. 48 and 49. Yeah.

I think we should do 50 as well. And I would say lighting on the outside of that building is a safety issue for us.

And when I walked into the female facility in there, that was really tired. I just feel that that just needs to be improved somehow. But that's just my personal feeling. That was pretty shoddy. And obviously, funds are not unlimited, so I understand. But in all reality is... When they are there, whatever the number of hours, I think we at least need to have it somewhat nice in the bedroom facilities.

I mean, for fire was the bathroom remodel. There wasn't a request for improvements in the dorm area that I can see on here, unless I'm missing it, Shannon. Okay.

Nope, that's correct. There was just a bathroom remodel. We had not even discussed the carpet that you guys saw at this point.

And then the other thing I just want you to keep in mind that we have six extra staff in there right now. And that's going to change once the second fire station is up and operational. So it makes sense also to maybe see how that functions when we get our staff assigned to the permanent locations. Yeah.

What is the expected completion? Refresh my memory on air station two.

Do you remember?

Joe or I can probably kind of speak this, but tentatively the end of 27 and the beginning of 28. Okay.

So, Shannon, I'm going to circle back to what Jeff was talking about. The room where the little dormitory room where the ladies are at, that... Yeah, I would never be there myself. So, I mean, if they're going to do something to it, I mean, to make it more user-friendly and with two of them in there or whatever, I mean, we can't be talking about a big number here.

Right. I mean, it's got to be a minimum. So, the other thing you've got to keep in mind, too, is we don't know where staff are going to be assigned yet.

Correct.

So, you might have some reshifting of things as well.

Carpet would go a long ways.

Yeah. I just wouldn't do anything. I wouldn't call it a female dorm for sure, unless you know, you know, who's going to be assigned where, when the new station's done.

Right. Yeah.

Flooring is flooring, though. Everyone uses that. Well, that's what I'm saying.

I respect that. So, I mean, the room needs to be done something with. That's what I'm trying to say. Even if it's used for a dormitory room or if it's used for something else. something needs to be done in that room. So that's why, I mean, I was, I was looking at, it's gotta be such a minimal number. I'm talking a couple of grand, three grand or something like that. It's going to go a long ways just to make that.

I don't remember what we had.

Otherwise close the door and lock it.

I don't remember what we had off the top of my head when we, cause we just did the, the, the male dorm carpet this last year, I believe it was four or $5,000. And we, we did the removal of that. But again, it would be relatively cheap. I'd imagine. Yeah.

Right, and the thing about it, if it's used for staffing or a dormitory or whatever, we've got to do something with it. Otherwise, close the door and lock it because the room is more than unusable. I'm just saying, what's a little bit of money to make it better for whoever's in there for now or later or whatever it's going to be used for? It's still going to be a gain for us.

And the other reason why those items were taken out is they're pretty small, and we know that police and fire are going to have leftover health insurance money that they could do a supplement in 27. So that was part of that thought process as well.

As long as you're talking about that facility, something that came to my mind on that tour was, and I don't think that necessarily for this year budget, and as we look at what the new facility brings and how we open up space in that building and what we could do with some of that space, because I would love to see an improvement in their workout facility. I know that they're using the space that they have to the best of their ability right now. I think that's a polite way to say that, but I think that in the future, I would love to have a dedicated workout space that's a little bit more aesthetically pleasing than what they currently have. Not that a boiler isn't fun to, I'm sure, run, and it's a good view, I guess.

I think that's what the new one's like.

And also the building at the Park and Rec, Cadwell Park, that one was removed also, I'm assuming. It wasn't requested this year. It wasn't requested.

They said they got denied like every year for like seven years.

I was going to look at that one.

Good job, Kevin.

I would like to circle back to dry run. The reason I bring up the ADA compliance of that bathroom is would it be better to look at potentially and wait a year for that and then look at moving the location of the bathroom to a place where ADA could be more accessible as an option for better use in the facility. Currently, I don't believe that bathroom is by the playground equipment or closely adjacent to it. or some of the other features that that park has like the skate park or the t-ball diamond it is right kind of in the middle of those features but if we looked at like the parks department what gets the most use maybe moving the facility to a location that makes more sense would get more use than out of that facility as a part of investing in the future of that park

Jeff, what else you got? Anybody else before we wrap this up?

Anything else for these guys? This is

I just didn't know if everything was clarified for you on your end.

The only thing I do hear, and I think I didn't talk a lot afterwards, is with the police and fire department, we knew that we could supplement in 27th. Are you wanting to add those funds in, or would you rather go that route? You brought up these three things, 15,000 of those, scoring...

for us new members.

Could you clarify how that process would work?

My microphone's not on. 2026, we'll be doing a health insurance holiday for the last few months of the year, which means the city's contributions towards health insurance will not be deducted from the departmental budgets. Shannon and Dean and I all just talked about this recently. One of them has close to $250,000 that will be left in that budget unspent. The other one is over $150,000 that will be left unspent. I just thought that could be because we were trying to get to a point of being balanced without using reserves for ongoing maintenance. By using the unspent 2026 budget funds, it would still get the projects done without having to cut anything out of 2027 because we know those funds will not be spent in 2026.

Does that make sense? I understand where the funds are coming from, I guess. How does the fire department allocate those funds when they're available to their project?

They will do that in April of every year. So after March, April, when we close out the year, it's just one of the requests that they'll make as part of the supplemental appropriation process. And if they know the direction from council is moving forward, we can start planning that way right away.

I would say let's do that. If there's extra money, they ask for it in April. Yeah. Oh, is that the easy part? It's when they're going to be asking.

Yeah, they know the process. We just basically wait until the books are closed or final from the previous year so we can ensure that we're ending the year with a structurally balanced budget and that that truly is a surplus before we allocate it for 27. Is that clear as mud? Yeah.

Simple. Got it. Yep. Thanks. Anything else? Anybody got anything else? Okay, we're adjourned then.