City Council - workshop

We'd like to call this meeting to order and inform the public about the location to open this meeting to act posted in the council chambers and accessible to members of the public. At this time, can we have roll call, please?

Greenquist. Arns.

Here.

Webb.

Here.

McCarthy. Beckman. Here. Jensen. Lenge. Here. Hildebrand. Here. Mayer.

I'm here. Unlike everybody else. All right. That being said, we'll go into the review and discussion of the 2026-2036 capital improvement program. And Lyle will lead us with that.

Good evening. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Lyle with Operations Guys for the City of Norfolk.

We are going to go through this process right now. For everybody that's familiar with the historical CIP spiel that I'm about to give, you are sure welcome to skip ahead to page 10. Of 36, don't do it yet, please, Jessica. Jessica's gonna be running the monitor. The screen's up here for your monitors and for the citizens to tune into. I recognize that some of those letters and numbers are gonna be kind of small, but we can perhaps zoom in, and the folks that are tuning in at home will hopefully be able to see that on their big screen as well. But if you're familiar with the CIP and you want to jump ahead, skip to page 10 of 36. I'm going to do the overview of the CIP, the process, the budget, the timeline, and the anatomy of the document. And then the council, perhaps citizens, will be the drivers of the direction and the depth of which we go into the CIP. Also to mention, new this year and an agenda item that's on here, the airport's going to talk about Justin Martin. from the airport's gonna talk about the airport CIP to help with that communication and bridge the gap between city and airport. So that'll be the last agenda item. So the big question is, why are we here? What are we doing right now? This goes into the budgeting process and it's already taken place and it's time for some public discussions. For now, let's look at the budget cycle on page five, which she has up there and Jessica has up there. And we always wanna begin with the end in mind. So, In this circumstance, we're going to talk about September, which is not that far away. In September, the budgets get approved. October 1 starts a new budget. We do a prioritization shortly thereafter of quarterly purchases for the divisions, primarily geared towards general fund, but all divisions go through it. That does a couple things. It spreads the purchases out over the course of a year, so it's not all at the beginning and it's not all at the end. It has timing considerations. So if, say, two divisions are working on a specific project or could use a certain piece of equipment, we can prioritize when that piece of equipment gets purchased so it falls in line with the other projects. We also have to factor in delivery nowadays. Ever since COVID, sometimes trucks or ambulances, they take months or years to arrive. And in the event of a crisis, for example, COVID, we can pump the brakes on purchases, non-essential purchases. We're moving into January, February. We talked about the council retreat and how imperative it is for staff to understand the council's direction, desires, what they want to see accomplished. It's imperative for the council to be able to see what the division heads see as important and upcoming within their divisions and to balance that in between. March of 2026, this year, we had a strategic planning session that was facilitated by MPPD, which can be found on the next page. Don't go to it yet, please. But for those viewing in their individual packets, the strategic planning priorities are depicted there. In March through May, the council retreat takes place. A memo gets sent out to the division and department heads asking for their 10-year outlook for the CIP. They get to put in there where they think their purchases need to be placed in accordance with what they see at this date and time. In that March-April timeframe, the CIP team comes together. We meet, generally speaking, about four times, and we have meetings about two to four hours per session to kind of get it all situated and somewhat assembled. At that point, around the end of April, first part of May, the document, the CIP document you're looking at right now is about 90% complete. It's put on a shelf until we get through the budgeting process, until we get to these sort of meetings, or until we get towards the end of August, September, when we might have to revisit it. Also around that May, June timeframe, Divisional budgets get sent out. So that's where Randy, in the future, John will be sending out the memo to the divisions to say, what are you going to need for this next coming year? And revenues will be reviewed and discussions will be had with the city administrator. We're ahead with city administrator Scott Cordes and the applicable staff where the first round and sometimes two or three cuts have already been taking place. July, even though we're not in July yet, we're dang near, we're close to it. It's when the public meetings begin. Today we're talking about the CIP. If you're making notes on future meetings, jot down July 8th and 9th. That's when we'll start talking about the divisional budget meetings. We'll have another meeting around July 27th. If we have to have more after that, we'll do that, and similar to what we've done in the past. Another date, if you're writing stuff down in your calendar to remember, is August 20th. August 20th is when the county property valuations will be released, and that'll play a big part in the budget. Can you go to page, actually go to page six, please, if you would, to touch briefly upon, that's the council priorities that were settled upon in March of this year, listing one through 10, and we'll touch briefly upon some of those as we go through this. Continue down to page seven as we get into this document. Let me get there. This is gonna look a little bit different than what you've seen in the past. This first one, if you'd zoom in on the pie chart please, Jessica, thank you. What you'll see here is this department summary, and we talk a lot about percentages and where money falls per division, but you'll notice that Less than 20% falls into the general fund divisions. Almost 38% is in WPC. WPC plan expansion was your number two list of things on your priority after the strategic planning session. Continue to the next page if you would please, Jessica. At the top here, you will see it says by funding source. So before it was by division. This is by funding source. You can see all the funding sources that come together to make a city operate. One question that I know potentially could come up is what is other funds? What are other funds? Other funds makes up a substantial portion. Things like donations or perhaps a real fire contribution for fire support. With the new spreadsheet, with the slightly modified way that the CIP is set out, we don't have the cheat sheet in the top right corner of the abbreviations with other funds and grants and so on and so forth. So this is a breakdown of what those funding sources are. Next page, please. Sorry, one more page. Okay. Generally speaking, it looks similar to what was had in the past. However, this is the meat and potatoes of why we're here tonight. For those that are tuning in and learning about this for the first time, this document is a dynamic document that's meant to look at purchases for the next 10 years across the city. It used to be $50,000 or more, but recently last year, I think it was the first year we started with $100,000 or more. So anything less than $100,000 is generally going to be falling into the divisional budget. So you could see some percentage changes. If you're a person that concentrates on the percentages, that could be a reason why. Everything's still depicted in the budget, it's just where. But generally speaking, $100,000 or more capital items. As previously mentioned, there's no funding sources depicted in the top right corner. They are all now depicted with the item itself. To look specifically at the anatomy of this document, you'll notice at the top it says projects and funding sources by department. At the bottom middle of this page, it says page one of 16. There's two portions of this CIP in this packet. Also I should point out, generally I'll be talking about bottom right corner, page 10 of 36. So the whole packet is 36 pages. This is page 10 of it, but page 1 through 16 that Jessica was just pointing to before is this portion of the overall packet. If you're interested in seeing the breakdown by funding source, that can be found on page 26. For those that are familiar with the way the CIP layout is, you'll see again At the top it says project by funding sources. We'll get to that after a little bit. Now that we've identified the title of the chart, we're still on the correct page. Starting in the left column you see departments. Break down by division from top to bottom. The second category, so take for example the first one out of the chute there, administration. Network switches and replacement? Yep. Now has a project number of admin 2027-01. That gray column is what we're going to talk about next. Excuse me, it's not gray on yours, it's gray on mine. But prior years, prior years. We're going to skip from this page on page one to the next page. If you would scroll down towards the bottom there, Jessica, to flood control. Talk about this very briefly. You see the flood control project, which everybody knows is a very important element to the community. All the way to the right side, you see it's 10.5 million. And where does that 10.5 million come into play? Because a lot of projects, not just this one, but many of them take months, oftentimes years to unfold, and this is a good example of that. 10.5 million anticipated costs for the flood control recertification. That 10.5 million, comes from this. Now, if we go back to the left to the prior years, it says 1.9 million, almost $2 million. That's what's been spent up to this point. Next year, 1.6 million, and then almost 4 million, and 2.3 million, or 2.4 million, and a half a million. The unspent portion, the 1.6, the four, the 2.4, and the 1.5 is gonna come to $8.5 million. that needs to be spent yet, that will be spent yet, anticipated to be spent. That combined with what has been spent already is where we come up with 10.5 million. For another example of how this document works, let's go to page 13, page 13 of 36. Specifically about the middle of the page, Skyview Park Trail Lighting Phase One. Right there where Jessica has it. Using this as an example, because this will be something that's coming fairly soon. Anticipated costs of $165,000 for the total costs. However, it's coming from multiple funding sources. In this case, below it, you'll see depicted below Kino funds of $95,000 and other funds or donations of $70,000. that 95 and 70 equates to 165. That's where that number comes from, and it carries across clear to the right. Finally, before we get into the depths of whatever it is you want to talk about with this document, I want everybody to remember that this isn't necessarily set in stone. So if Will has a dump truck, or Nate has a mower, or mower's probably not a good example, but a piece of equipment that is anticipated to be replaced in 2030, but it's causing a whole bunch of problems and it's more of a maintenance nightmare than anything, we can bump that forward. Likewise, this is not an infinite amount of money that's available. This document and that spreadsheet that goes into making this work works best when we as division heads and staff can plunk projects in 10 years out and have them trickle in to a budget as the time comes forward. It gets problematic when we try and insert a substantial amount of money a short time out, one or two or three years, because there's only so much space to be had, so much plate space and so much food that can fit on it before it spills out. So if something comes to pass where we have to insert something a couple years out, something else needs to be modified. That's kind of the general overview of the CIP and how we got here today. We'll take whatever questions you have or comments, thoughts, opinions, as well as from citizens. We'll modify as needed as we go through the budgeting process. There's a very high likely we'll have to come back and do this, look at this a little more. And then come September, which isn't that far away, we're gonna revisit this topic again and approve it along with the budget prior to October 1. And then we start the whole cycle over again.

I got one quick question for you. Go ahead. So just for example, you got the bottom page, you got Tazuka Park City Network. It says fiber. Kino funds, right, yeah, just on the same page, right there. $130,000, and that shows $130,000 in 2031, right? So in my two, just so everybody's on the same page here, those Kino funds are going to come out of the 2030's budget, for the 2031 expenditure? Or are those keynote funds being periodically supplemented until 2031?

Oh, are they being raffled basically? Yes, right. Okay. I assume it's part of .

So we have the projection, so we just make sure that as the keynote funds come in that it will, there will be enough keynote funds there when that expenditure needs to be made.

So it's not just a given, like what I asked was 2030. You just automatically grab $130,000 out of the 2030 Kino funds that come in. That's not the way it works. Right. Because you're speculating for 10 years. So you're reserving those funds for the next 10 years to cover that.

If we know that there's going to be a larger expense in one year, we might have to save up for a couple of years.

Right.

So in the CIP, the... projects that are designated keynote don't exactly match the revenue that we're expecting to come in in that year.

Right. I'm just trying to paint a picture here. Sure. You're trying to, the way you're doing your expenditures and how you're gathering the funds to pay for those expenditures.

Yeah, you're right. It's a projection. I mean, we, we budget, take for instance, fuel where we try and guess the average dollar amount it's going to be for a gallon of fuel for an entire year over the course of time. And that's, you know, you factor in how much projects may be related, how much snow we may have to move. You know, it's, it's, we got to have something. So we got to, you know, and, do our best to project as much as we can, but the chances of the fuel cost being right on, next to none.

It's kind of a living and breathing document in a way because, for example, you look at a few years ago when the YMCA was building their field house and came to us for funds for that. We went and found some Keno dollars that were basically set aside for trails at the time. We utilized those funds at that time And then those trails got kicked down the road a long way. So that's kind of just, you know, just trying to illustrate how this is all. Sure.

That's a great example of how, if something else gets inserted, something else might get moved. That's a perfect example.

I do have a question for you since you have this screen actually pulled up there. Uh, can you explain the prior years, like the 66,000 allocated under that adult softball field? What is that $66,000 for everyone?

The exact amount, Nate, you remember? So that's how much has been spent prior to, and hopefully Nate can come in off the top rope and help us out.

Yeah, that's the design fees that we're spending this year, and we did put that in the budget in the keynote last year, and then the actual costs were projected into this next year. And so they're coming up. Yeah, and then For like the city network fiber. That's something we would like to have done this year, but that's the soonest we had funds available In the butt within the budget, so that's why it's pushed to 2031 Because we'd like to get network out there at some point It just goes to show you how how in-depth this is and

when you would like to get something done, but you're literally pushing it back five years just to get it to fit.

So, I mean, it's just pretty complex. I like the new format, though. I like the new format that they put together here compared to the old one.

Well, you can thank Sheila for that.

Yeah, looks great.

I guess I have a question. Yes. I'm just looking at, like, some of the expenditures. I just pick at an apartment here, nothing general. Just say the street department. So they've got projected... like a snowplow for 2028 for $430,000, but then they've got another one for 2031 at $430,000. And you kind of see that throughout. How are they projecting that far out with the cost? I mean, they seem to be keeping it the same. Is there some rhyme or reason to that?

This is a really good question, actually, because the other thing to keep in mind here This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the spreadsheets to make this come together. There's the keynote component. There's a long-term financial plan. There's all these elements that come in from the revenues that make this balance. And that snowplow that Will's going to buy now is not going to be that same cost in 10 years, five years. There's going to be an escalation factor that goes along with it. So there's this component. This isn't the inflated one, is it? So there's this one that we see here, and we have another one. in-house that has inflation factored into it for future costs. So this is how this works. Taking that example, if he looks at how his operations are taking place in the city, and you can see the age of some of the trucks that are there. We have a great staff that really squeezes out every ounce of life out of this equipment. If there's a piece of equipment that's cycling out and we're replacing it and we get a cost back for whether it be a dump truck or a fire truck or whatever it might be, we take that as kind of a recalibration and project that forward with whatever inflationary factors that go along with it. So if we're going to go from, and not to say that this would happen, but if we're going to go from tiny, a whole bunch of tiny dump trucks to a bunch of big ones that takes 10, 15 years to cycle out those other ones. The city is a, it's a battleship. So it takes a long time to turn anything around and change those direction versus like a private business. It's just operated differently. So when those trucks or trailers or pieces of equipment come in, we do our best to update what those costs would be and then put an inflationary factor onto them as well. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, so like I said, the 2028 was the same cost as the 31, though. So the inflation factor, I guess, is what I'm asking because it's like they're the same cost. So how in the world do you actually assume that they're going to be the same cost?

If you're going to buy a jug of milk, there's going to be an inflationary factor that goes along with it, all things being the same. if that dump truck is going to have the same horsepower and same capacity and same payload or whatever else, it's basically a big jug of milk. And we'll put in there, is it 3% roughly for each year? So that when that truck gets replaced, say that 2026 truck gets replaced and none of us are around yet in 20 years, maybe some will be around, but I won't be. That amount that's factored in is already in place in the CIP. So even though it shows the same here, there's only so many things that we can show on this document that is without complicating things, I guess, for that matter. But it's a great point. But yes, it is factored in. That price escalation is factored in. Thank you. Do you have any other thoughts or comments or anything, Steven?

Yeah, Sue, it's just a complete different report that we have that has the inflation in it. And just for simplicity's sake, we don't include that in the agenda packet. Got that. Makes sense.

Okay. Thank you. I would just add that when staff is putting this together, what they know is what it costs today. And so we ask them the spreadsheet that the general division heads are working in. They're just plugging in today's cost across the 10-year period. And then behind that, we have the ability to plug in whatever inflation factor we feel is necessary. I don't know that we necessarily put a different factor in year to year. I think we put in 3%, 3.5%, and then that factors that out over 10 years. But for simplicity's sake for staff, they know today's cost, and we just ask them to put that across 10 years, and then the spreadsheets do the work.

put it in perspective, it's challenging for the division heads to figure out to put a budget together now for one that's going to start in October for things they're going to have to buy November, December, next August and September. Well, this is even more complicated to predict what industry may be coming or business, how the city is going to grow or expand whatever other projects that could be related as well. So it's It's the best stab at the long-term future financial purchases.

Maybe we need to hire a fortune teller on staff that we can just... Let the minutes reflect.

Other questions or comments?

Explain to me prior years, that column. At the bottom there, for street expenditure, we've got $2,401,486. Is that expenditures expended or those expenditures were approving this fiscal? Because then I look at 2027 is that are we calling this coming fiscal of 2026 dash 2027, 2027. You see what I'm saying? Are we, I just need to, cause in my mind, I'm looking at, I'm going to be focusing primarily on prior years in 2027. As we go through this, the rest of the stuff is great that you have it in there, but it's, it's what it is. These, those few things are for this year's as we focus through this year's budget. those particular line items become very important, or rows become very important.

They do.

So those are my, does that make sense what I'm asking here?

Yeah, let me rephrase it. So the columns in the, the money depicted in the prior years column, in this case, $1.9 million and $424,000 or so. Right. Is that recoupable or is that committed?

Is that, which budget does that land in is what I'm asking? Is that this coming fiscal? Or is that last fiscal? I'm sure it's a little of both.

It's probably some of both.

Is that the number we should be focusing on for this year's approval?

I think this column, the prior year's expense, whatever's in there is either already spent or committed to be spent. And it's there for informational purposes so that somebody...

So when you say committed, voted and approved to be spent.

So take fire truck, for example. It may take 18 months to get here. We committed to purchasing it, but we could be in limbo. We haven't actually wrote the check yet.

So prior years, has that been voted on and expended up until the end of this year's fiscal is what I'm getting. Are those the numbers we approved when we passed last year's budget?

I would say... Do you want to answer that?

Sure.

Yeah. Yes, so they would have been included in last year's budget, but oftentimes what happens is we're behind on a project and that whole amount that's budgeted isn't going to get spent. So it's what we're estimating to spend through the end of this fiscal year, through September 30th, 2026.

I understand the check hasn't been cut. I'm just asking, has it been voted and approved? to be spent is what you're saying with the prior years?

It would have been included in the last year's budget. Yeah, okay.

So now as we move on to 2027, this is what we'll be looking in this upcoming fiscal, in this current budget we're talking about. Yes. Essentially.

Yes.

For the major expenditures.

Yes. Okay. So, but you look at something like that, to say exactly $1.977 million, that's exactly what it is? Probably not 100% accurate. Could be a little more, could be a little less. So to say that's exactly what it is would probably not be an accurate statement, but that's a ballpark of what it is.

Thanks.

Other questions, comments?

With our budget concerns, has anything in the CIP been changed to kind of address some of our concerns with this fiscal budget we're going to be approving? Department head's gone through this and said, hey, we're going to push this off. Or has this been the same CIP that we've looked at previous years?

So let me go back a little bit here. In that earlier part of the year, we send the divisional, the heads up to all these divisions saying, here's what you submitted last year for CIP. What are your projections this coming year? They submit them back based on what they need within their divisions. then we, which includes Scott, I, Steven, Sheila, Randy when he was here, John in the future, Jessica joined us in the past, sometimes some other staff join us, will sit down and go, okay, do we have room for this? We might have to bump this out or back or how important is this? And that's what takes place over those four meetings of three or four hours each, is that tweaking and modifying. So to answer your question, has anything been changed? Yeah, there's been a whole bunch of stuff that's changed to the tune of 50, maybe 100 staff hours tweaking to get to this point right here.

It would be nice to, I guess, know what that was so we can understand what you guys are...

Moving and changing and the amount of money we're saving going into this fiscal by I think we can maybe do that when we get into the Department budgets the next we could probably Yeah, so we have been tracking everything we've been changing and you will see that at the upcoming work sessions next week There will be an entire cuts and adds and changes spreadsheet easily available for you

Other questions, comments? So are we doing items now or not?

No, you can bring up, if you got an item you were interested in.

And I'll touch on a few that, as I reviewed it over the weekend, some things that came up to me, and I'm going, okay. On page 12, we got the Winter Park bridge and sidewalk. It's a $388,000 item. With 238 from federal grants. Do we have the grants in hand or we anticipating them?

Yes, that would that was that's the RTP grant and we would have brought that to council about a year It's been about a year ago. So it's been a while since we've seen right it's just now coming to us coming to actually get the project moving forward. And that was awarded. And that's also part of the Briggs and Barrett project. They're doing a memorial garden over there. And so we're leveraging the sidewalk work for that project for the grant. And that's why we were awarded that.

Okay, so we do have the federal and state grant land on the way to that. Yep, it's all ready to go, yep. Okay, so do we know where it's going? Or is there any plan or anything on it yet?

Haven't started the design work yet. It's on my...

In my mind, just working with some of that stuff, If we can get a bridge for that, I would be quite happy. Yeah, yeah. Because I don't remember what the dollars were on the bridge that hopped across at Johnson Park there, the pedestrian one, but I don't think the 238 caught that.

Yeah, this is a little bit different bridge. We'll be bringing that forward here shortly at some point. I don't have that design work yet, though.

Okay.

What else you got on your list there, Councilman?

I noticed the, yeah, the police stuff just reflects the construction progress moving on forward that way. There's one where we have, oh, meter upgrade to AMR. What the hell is that? Page number for us, please. 19. Page number 19. Because we're budgeting between 340 and 420 over the next 9 or 10 years. And it looks like we're just starting this year.

Yeah, so what that is is automated meter reading. So this is our meters are over 20 years old in the residential and commercial meters. This is a new meter system that can go in there. They're data logging meters and they have data antennas throughout Norfolk and they can be instantly logged in right down here to the billing department. So it eliminates the meter reader, eliminates some of the service calls we have out in the system as far as final onlys. They can do all right here at the office.

So How long have they been in the CIP?

Oh, this is a brand new item.

Brand new item?

Yeah, a new item. We've got some of the meters out there in the system right now. We're just using them with the drive-by radio system. We've been doing that for the last five, six years. Technology is there. The meters, the older meters that we have are obsolete, so we've been starting to put some of these radio read meters in right now. We're just trying... kind of make that movement to do everything now, update and whole system. And then maybe that'll be the bridge to get us to monthly, uh, water meter readings. So the buildings instead of being bimonthly, we can move to a monthly process.

Not to hijack your, your question, Jim, but I just wanted to jump in and get a little extra information. Um, So is that expense already calculated in the revenues?

Yeah, it's in the utility revenues right now. And it's distributed over both water and sewer revenues.

Other questions for Chad?

The watering loop on Omaha Avenue underneath the flood control, that's looping over to the stuff that's coming down from the north there, I'm assuming?

Well, actually, right now, it's in the master plan right now to connect it from East Omaha Avenue over to basically where the Prime Stop's at. It's just an additional loop, so we have three river crossings there to the east side of the river. Master plan's reflecting that just for improved water quality and service. Okay.

They were on a deadhead, weren't they?

Yeah, they currently are right now. Basically, right where you got the animal shelter, that's a dead end right now. So we can bring that underneath the river there, tie it back in, so we have that loop going there.

Anything else? Yeah, but don't go too far.

It's just a new item Lyle on page 16. I think it's underneath the It's m45 or 451 Extension of West Highway 81 on the race grant 75 is that design or is that actual construction or what's What item number again, I'm sorry One two three four five six seven point down M-451, Industrial Road Extension, west of 81. I know it's not a lot of money. I was just wondering.

Sure. Let me answer that. Just as a point, too, since we no longer have numbers on the far left side of this sheet, if you look at Lyle's hand right there, it says 2027-10. So as you're looking at these and want to call our attention to one, could call out chaff 2027 dash 10 and that'll that'll direct us there thank you um this is this was put in the budget a year or two ago as a cost share with the county to do a study for the industrial extension of industrial highway to the west okay so we haven't We haven't done any kind of contract or memorandum with them yet. Last year, we chased a raise grant with the county, with Madison County and Pierce County. That did not happen, so we're currently having the discussion about reentering an agreement with them to engage in that study.

Then CHAP 2027-17. You think that's going to happen this year or not? Next page. I'm going to sit on 17.

I don't think that that's going to happen this year. I recognize that it's in the budget. We will look at that as a function of that raise grant and just see how that's going to work. I do have some conversations most recently with the DOT and the railroad department on that. There was a little bit originally the conversation was we were going to close that as a street But potentially allow them access to the compound as a driveway or something across there Doesn't sound like the railroad necessarily would allow that so I need to get back to the table and have some Conversation if that's still desirable if they can't have a driveway there, or would they just as soon leave that open so I

But do you anticipate it happening in 26, 27?

I don't anticipate the construction happening in 27. If anything, there might be a little bit of design around that, but that's probably something that I could move to 2028.

Yeah, because Sue and I and Jeff sit on our Railroad Transportation Safety District, and at our last meeting last year about this time, that came up and said, hey, is that going to happen? Because they have to budget a whole lot more

Yeah, it's there probably in case we get a green light and the state would allow that. We could start to move that forward at least with a design component or something because we would have to obviously reopen park. So it's possible we could expend some funds this year, but I wouldn't expect to expend all of that this year.

Because that's just an at-grade, isn't it? Or is that, I need to drive by and see if that's home.

That would just be an at-grade crossing, yeah. And with the link grant, you know, we're just starting the design on the link grant and that trail up there is the trail on the west side. It's on the east side. You know, how does that play into potentially closing that and reopening park and... I'd like to get a little bit further down the road with that design, or we're just kicking that off. So it'd be nice to get nine months into that before we made any decision here.

Steve, is that McKinley-Taha, is that to tie in those base future softball fields that we're going to be doing there at Taha, that $150,000?

That would be the final design for realignment, McKinley and 5th. And then down the road, we see chasing grants for some support dollars on that to get that work constructed.

So it's like engineering costs.

The $150,000 engineering costs. I think right now what's happening is about 30% design just so we can get the fields. We know what elevation.

Yeah, some of those bigger projects you see broken up over the course of years. If you go down to CHAF 27-22, good example of got to do some planning, got to do some work, and we got to do a year of touch-up work to finish out a project. So we try and spread them out the best we can to anticipate those expenses.

And kind of just to go back, maybe to answer a question that you were asking, Mayor, A lot of times these funds are funds specifically on the project side. On the equipment side of the CIP, this is all about cash flow. It's all about a 10 year cash flow. We put so much money into the budgets and then we gotta cash flow that out over 10 years depending on the cost of the project or the cost of a piece of equipment. Lyle talked about, we might pull the trigger on a dump truck. You might approve that this year. We write a check for, eighty percent of the cost or something but we're still carrying twenty percent into the next year upon delivery of the vehicle on projects uh... it might be engineering costs so there's a contract that's awarded as an engineering cost probably a good example would be the flood control system so we've had numerous amendments to the engineering contract on flood control over the last four or five years so Every year the prior year keeps going up because of the engineering contracts And then we have construction costs built out over about three years there, but that would be Once once we award the contract that would be locked in the year we award the contract But it might take us two or three budget years to expend all that Hey Lyle just for

clarification sake we're on this page so like item 18 and item 24 large ticket items it indicates in their other funds can you just kind of explain sure what you mean by the other funds so in the previous portion where we talked about actually let's just go to page 26 if you would projects by funding sources

Other funds would be things that fall into place like, that don't fall neatly into assessments or whatever it might be. Things like donations or as we talked about earlier, rural fire board might kick in some money for some fire equipment. So depending on what the project is, the other funds is elements that aren't neatly falling into grants or council priority dollars or anything along those lines. Kind of a catch all. So what Jessica's going to there now is basically the contents of the same document broken down by funding source. So if you're interested to see That's what the page that she has up there. What exactly goes into a public safety tax anticipation bond? This would be the page for you. You can go and see all the future expenditures of what will be used for public safety tax anticipation bonds. Public safety has the unique opportunity to levy purchases for or bond purchases for some of their stuff, similar to what flood control can do. And this portion of the document, that next 10 pages, gets us up to page 35, at which point it transitions to the airport. So if you have any other questions about the city CIP, I would say Justin's done a great job of trying to bridge the communication gap between the airport and the city. And it's great that he's here tonight to be able to talk about this. Yes, I realize that's kind of hard to see. Jessica, can you zoom in on the left portion of that, please, for time being? Very good, thank you. And actually, since that's an agenda item, we better let the citizens weigh in before we go to this.

Any further questions from anyone up here? Okay, anybody from the public come forward now?

Jim McKenzie, as I was going through this, the one question that kept coming to mind was what are the budgetary costs and the property tax implications of each line item or project? And or what are the water and sewer rate increase requirements to pay for those capital improvement items? I think that would be a helpful Addition to this process to understand when you're looking at these costs what? What is it going to cost the citizens? It's easy to look at all these numbers across on a sheet and say yeah, these are all great things to do But what is the cost of the citizens of each one of those projects? For instance the 1.1 million dollar land acquisition Might be a great idea, and I might be very much in favor of it, but What how are we going to pay for it? And what's the property tax implications of that? How much will property tax need to go up to pay for it? The flood control recertification has to be done. We've been talking about that forever. An additional bond issuance of about 8.5 million at 5% over 20 years makes a $675,000 annual payment. So you're going to have to increase property taxes by $675,000 a year to pay for the bond. for the flood control recertification, unless you're gonna come up with that money someplace else or cut something. So landscape master plan, we've got $350,000. How does that compete with our other priorities? We've got $6 million of public safety anticipation bonds, which will be an annual payment roughly of $475,000 a year. Those are all things that are probably necessary. But again, these are all items that are pushing on our budget. And how are we going to pay for that? I see $33 million of revenue bonds in water and sewer, excuse me, water pollution control and sewer. If you're amortizing those at 5% for 20 years, I see a $2.6 million annual bond payment just to pay for those. If our current annual revenue of water in the sewer department is $6 million, and now you've got an additional $2.6 million to pay for those bonds, you're gonna have to raise your sewer rates by 40, 45% just to pay for those bonds. So I just throw those numbers out there as I was calculating and looking at this saying, what's the implications on the taxpayers of each one of those items? Or what's the implications on the rate payers of each one of those items? And I think as we look forward, it'd be nice to have something to say, This is what the implications are for our budget. We really don't have that in this document.

Jim, you've been around for a long time. Have we ever had that with the capital improvement budget? No. So it would be a whole new type, you're asking for a whole new type line item for discussion.

Yep.

Because essentially tonight, we're just looking at, in my mind, I'm looking at 2027 on here. Yeah, we've got stuff that goes out to 2028 and all the way to 2036, but 2027 is this year. And so when we go through department budgets, each one of these is going to be listed within those budgets. And I think that's the time we typically talk about the implications to property tax, sales tax, indebtedness.

The reason I'm bringing that up, Shane, is where we're at right now with our budget. Our long-term capital improvement, or excuse me, our long-term financial plan said we got increased property taxes by $2.6 million. we've been spending and spending and spending and not really understanding the implications long-term of where we're going. Here's an opportunity to maybe adjust and say, okay, what are the long-term implications of this capital improvement plan? So that's why I'm bringing it up because of where we're at budgetarily.

That's fair. The thing that I'm getting at, though, is we are in 2026, 2027 now. If we're going to go through this whole budget process, the rest of these meetings, and keep pointing back to the stupid stuff that we would, what you're going to cover, so the stupid stuff that was done then, we're not going to get, all we're looking for today, we're trying to get through this, and then we've got to make decisions on what 2026, 2027 is going to do, what that's going to probably test. What happened in the past, like it or not, it's over with. We can't change it. We have to adapt and overcome this year's, I would say that's what this year's budget is. It's adapting and overcoming this. where we're at, and I'm not going to blame it on any sort of process or whatever, but we're here today. And so now we're trying to find, we're going to be trying to find solutions. I would plead with you to come up here and help us try to find solutions instead of coming up and saying, well, why'd you do that? Why'd you do that in 04? Why'd you do that in 2022? You see what I mean?

I've been providing solutions for the last four years, and a lot of things that we could look at cutting, and none of it resonated. And My recommendation, this is a solution, is that we look more deeply on a capital improvement plan and we plan for what the implications of that are on our taxes. This is a suggestion. You're saying I'm not coming up here with a suggestion. This is a suggestion, not this year, but I'm saying as we move forward, let's plan this.

How do you anticipate that looking like when we go through the capital improvement plan without going through, at the same time, through the particular budget that affects it? I mean, I get what you're saying, because this, to me, makes a lot more sense, this new breakdown that we have this year. It's easier to follow than we've ever had before. So I do like that. So I'm asking, so you're looking for another line item on here that would indicate property tax mill levy increase or indebtedness, boom, bond for this.

Yeah, as we look at this, it helps us to see these are the things that we're planning on doing for the next 10 years. Let's understand the implications on our rate payers and our taxpayers.

Is that feasible on this sheet, I guess? I'm just...

Probably... Let's put the mouse on the wheel and think about this a little bit.

Okay, well, it's a suggestion. We can look at it.

I don't know if it's something we can factor into this sheet as much as perhaps a cheat sheet of some sort that gets incorporated as well. Do you have other thoughts? Yeah, we'll have to think about how that would work, because get the intent. I understand the intent. Yeah, I do too. The financial implications, but making it jive to where it's easily processable, we could possibly do something.

Well, I've been around for a while. I had a heck of a time trying to follow the old plan. The way this is laid out right now is, Fairly easy. My mind can wrap around what's here. It says a lot.

I think it actually might help. I'm not sure we can nail that one right in the head, but I think it would help city staff to know when they're asking for something what they're actually asking us to do. What are we increasing and by what percentage and how much and is that reasonable?

I'm more than happy to bring up the 10-year projection on rates for water and sewer if you guys want to see those.

We have a meeting set aside for that.

Okay, and I'm good with that. I mean, this is, again, you know, this is what we're presenting.

I guess what we're trying to do with the intent of these meetings, I guess, with tonight's meeting, we're trying to spread out, give ourselves a little bit of time to digest, and then come back with questions at the following. So this one gave you an opportunity to look at these particular capital improvement plans that are going to be budgeted. in this fiscal within each department. Now you know what each department is looking at budgeting within their expenditures. And so besides obviously wages and whatnot. And so once we get into those department presentations, because of this meeting, you should be very well aware of what they're gonna be talking about asking for, because it's in this plan. If that happens today or happens in 2027, or gets kicked out after 2028, we'll find out then. So I guess that's the intent. Sorry, Jim, if I came across as putting you down a little bit. I was just trying to make the point that the intent is to kind of explain to see this. I think we're a little excited to show off our new spreadsheet here. But it's a good suggestion, something we could work towards. But I just don't know how we do that in this particular spreadsheet. But maybe there is a way to get to it.

Well, I think this, you know, we're projecting five years, six years out. This is just to say, okay, they made a comment earlier about how they'd like to put in fiber now, but they can't because it's not available for five years or six years. So it's allocating and designing a roadmap, I guess, if you will. But come budget time, that's when we're going to decide whether or not we can afford to spend $278,000 on a field, right? That's when we'll figure that out, but right now, this is a roadmap, and I guess I give the staff a lot of credit for as much time as they put into this, because this is tough. I mean, it's a big, complex...

It is. There's a lot that goes into this.

Hey, my name is Dale Coy and I was just sitting out there trying to get a feel of what this meeting is supposed to be about and I Think it's supposed to be about a roadmap. It's the one in one six year capital improvement project plan So I think Jim's comments were relevant that looking forward. We're looking at the roadmap It would be informational to find out where those funding sources will come from now with your comment Shane that we're only looking really at 2027. To me, that says that this meeting's about we're already starting the budget process, which I would say is probably not true. To me, this is a planning session with a roadmap. We're planning for our future, so I think Jim's comments are relevant. If we're making a plan, we can adjust the plan going forward. I think it makes perfect sense that we need to find out. I think we've struggled with wants and needs, and we have a nice list of all our wants, but we need to start focusing on needs because we have definite budgetary issues going forward. What you guys faced last year, in my opinion, you're going to be facing that for five or six years because of the spending that we've done in the past. But like you said, Shane, we can't do anything about the past, but we can learn from the past, and we have to plan for the future. So that's my only comment. Sitting in the audience as a citizen and listening, I thought this was supposed to be a plan, a roadmap for the future, and it sounds like we've already started the budget process.

No, my comment, in my mind, I'm looking at the column 2027, because that's what I'm voting on. I appreciate the fact that everything's projected out there. But those things to me are just magical numbers out there that are being put in place that could be spent or may not be spent. You've seen them. You've been around a long time too. They get moved around or whatever. So in my mind today, that 2027 stuff is what they're going to be coming to us and asking for coming up. So I'm focusing on, I'm dialing in on that part. The rest of the stuff, that's great. Thank you for putting it out there. and projecting where it's going and how it's going to be allocated. We're looking at those, but to say what we're to say today in 2035, uh, that 358,000 is going to be spent on like sewer extension. I mean, who honestly knows for sure. That's all. That was what my comment is.

I appreciate that. But like I said, this is a plan. I think Jim had a suggestion that could improve things for citizens and for you guys for understanding, the long range plan. The other thing that, I mean I've been engaged in this for over 20 years. I've kept up with it, I'm engaged. And the thing that worries me it seems like in the last 10 years, I'm not sure that we have a set plan. It seems like it's grant driven. I would like to see a set plan. It seems like all we do is go out to get a grant and then that's our plan. Just for an example, the bridge that's going in at Winter Park. Right now there's seven bridges between Benjamin Avenue and Norfolk Avenue. Do we really need another bridge? A half million dollar bridge when we don't have bathrooms at that park? When I was in Ward 1 the first time I had a friend that lived in Ward 1 and he called me on a weekly basis because kids were coming from Winter Park to his house to go to the bathroom. When we redid the library, I pushed to have the library bathrooms on the north side so they could be open to the public for the tennis courts. And now it's even more relevant with the park that we put in with no bathrooms. Those are the kind of things that, in my mind, I'm thinking forward all the time. We have two bathrooms with stones throw away at Johnson's Park, but we took a bathroom out at Taha and we can't afford to put one in. We're building a new softball complex. That's all I'm saying we I think I think that we need to focus on a community what we need I don't think we need to chase grants for improvements There's a residual cost I've said that to you guys before Johnson's Park is beautiful. I grew up at Johnson's Park, but Johnson's Park is probably costing us four to five times as much as it did in to maintain it as it did before. And that's a cost that nobody sees, but it's a cost, perpetual cost going forward, and it impacts what you guys, the decisions you guys have to make. That's just a feeling that I have planning going forward, so. For what it's worth, thanks.

Appreciate your comments. Anyone else?

Okay. We're ready to transition to the airport?

I think so, unless there's anybody else. Any more comments? Not seeing anything. Let's go on to the, yeah.

Scroll down to that last page, if you would, please, and zoom in on the left half. But this is why we're here, for input and discussion. All right.

All right, as you can see, I put together the CIP for the airport. Our CIP is driven by the FAA and the NDOT. It's not driven by, well, they're driven by projects that we need to do at our airport, but the FAA places them on what year they think their funding is gonna become available. So that's why these are listed where they're listed. these projects are. Now, there's some pushback on like 1432 moving, we might be moving that runway project out if we can because we do not want to We could lose part of our runway if we did it at that time frame. So we're going to try to do a maintenance. And that's where item number two, it's a crack repair maintenance. So hopefully we can push that project out even further. That's our hope. Because that is a lot of funds that are coming up in a short amount of time that we would have to bond some of those projects. All of them except for the terminal project would be 90% FAA funded.

So that's where the 10% you see in the brackets there?

So we would fund 10% of that total cost. I still had the old way putting this together. Yeah, I need to get a hold of Sheila and see if she can add me to the new CIP form.

So pretty much everything on here is, most everything on here is rehabilitating runways.

Correct. Because we are doing our airport layout plan right now and we did core sampling of our runways and our runways are 24 to 22 years old. Um, that's another thing. The last time they redid the runways, they redid both runways together. I would like to push those apart 15 years preferably. So that way you have some gaps the next time this comes because coming up with $30 million for the FAA and then do DOT is a lot of money too. They don't want to put that much money in one airport all at one time. So,

Can you move out to the years you're projecting here? When you're projecting your big expenditures?

Yep. So the first one would be 28-29. And that's the runway 220 reconstruction. And that's a projection for a complete rehabilitation, completely ripping the runway out and rebuilding it. I have we're in the process of selecting engineers and some engineers are saying We might be able to get away with a mill and overlay and it'll last 20 30 years and that would be probably half the cost so I want to Definitely go down that path and see if that's a viable option right For this coming fiscal year, we have the money in our account. The next project, the 27-28, we will have the money in our account to be able to fund that to the 10% we need to. It's not going to be until that 28-29 where we're not We could possibly have the money, but right now, as it stands, we wouldn't have the money. But it wouldn't be like a significant bond. It'd be probably $200,000, $300,000 bond, not a... Okay.

Thank you.

Yep.

Other questions or comments for Justin?

Yeah, Justin, I'm going to ask you to speak a little bit about the importance of maintaining our airport, maintaining our runways, in terms of attracting traffic to our airport, the importance of getting traffic that has a choice that's flying from Denver to Chicago that can stop in a half a dozen different airports to refill. Could you talk about the importance of keeping our airport attractive to those aircraft?

So one of the things that always gets brought up about the airport is the fuel prices, right? Everybody always asks the fuel prices. Last year, that was one of the first comments that was brought up to me was the fuel prices. Well, the reason why we have to be competitive in this area, because they do have options. Now they can even go to Wayne, because Wayne put in, they have a jet fuel truck now there. So we need to be competitive, because we need to bring those aircraft in here. Because if we don't bring aircraft in here, We don't have enough impacts on our runways. Our runways get narrowed. Our runways get shortened. Right now, that's one of the things with 1432. The FAA wants to knock 800 feet off of 1432. Well, what does that do, right? Well, that means certain aircrafts can't land there anymore. We have a jet out there right now that if we don't have 5,000 feet, they don't really feel comfortable. So they might leave. And that's one of our big businesses in Norfolk.

So the first time I was hearing that before, I've gone through your guys' budget for a long time. That was the first time that was ever brought up was just at a meeting maybe a year ago or so. It's very interesting that that's how many airplanes are coming in and out and coming and going, or it's how they recognize what you need for your airport. I mean, it makes sense. Right. I didn't know why, you know, because obviously every time you're here, every year I've ever sat up here, Your fuel costs. What's going on with your fuel costs? You can raise the fuel costs up. You can afford this. So I never had heard it from that sort of angle, that with cheaper fuel costs, we get more landings, we keep our runways this wide, this long. I think it's a very important point to be made, especially for elected officials when looking at their budget.

That's exactly why I wanted to be here tonight. That's exactly why I wanted to be here tonight. Things like this.

Never would have, never would have, didn't know that.

I agree, Shane. I mentioned that too. It's like I didn't know that. So that explains a lot on the gas price.

Yeah, because I would ask about your fuel cost. What are you doing? Why don't you raise them?

And everybody wants commercial service back. We cut those runways, you're never getting commercial service because you're never going to bring those runways back.

So you're telling me we should have a visitor rate and then a home rate?

That might not be the greatest.

So you're saying once, say you lost some of your runway, it'd be tough to get that back after you lost it, correct?

I mean, well, you're talking probably 25 years before you do another reconstruct on your runways. So if you're saying 25 years before you even revisit it again.

So it's a generational thing. Yeah. Yeah.

And one of the projects in here is moving our ASOS, which is our weather service. It's because our taxiway would have to cut right through where our weather service is if they cut that 800 feet off the runway. So we have to spend a bunch more money just to move something because... The engineer put 26,000. As I've talked to more people, they're saying probably closer to 60,000 just to move that weather station. So we want to keep our runways the length they are and the width they are. So we need that traffic. So I'm trying to market our airport to different companies to fly in here more frequently. This year I've added three new air tractors, services, spray planes services, which the bigger spray planes count as heavy jets landing. So we want those to come in and out of our airport.

We get a lot of overnight packaging, like UPS, none of those, don't get a lot of that here.

UPS and FedEx have stopped flying into the small airports. Okay. I take that back. Occasionally, like Christmas, UPS might fly in here, but for the most part, they've stopped. Our biggest customers are corporate jets. The other day, we had eight corporate jets on our runway, or on our apron. So we need the corporate planes to keep flying in, so...

Well, I guess that's a real informational thing, and I found it out at your meetings when I was out there and attending that you are able to track, and that's going to tell the FAA and the DOT what they're going to let us do. Our two runways out there are just over 5,800 feet, and so then you go to... You go to Columbus, and they have one runway that's 6,800 feet. So they're starting to pull in people that have a grasp of the one that way. But otherwise, you go to Grand Island, they're 7,000 foot and 6,600 foot. So we're at a disadvantage. And if we lose footage on those runways, it's more than a generational thing. Because it's, you know, it's like, it's the hope that we would get commercial service back. Okay, we've gone through one generation already.

We're very fortunate to have two runways for a GA airport, to be honest. Most, like Columbus, they don't have two runways because FAA won't fund two runways. So just to get them to fund two runways is a lot. So now we just need the traffic to justify it.

I appreciate your budget, your CIP budget very much. And when we were at your meeting and your board reviewed it, it was really clear. Thank you.

Anything else for Justin?

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Thanks a lot for coming tonight. Anyone from the public? One of the questions for the airport, please come forward now. All right, Lyle, what else we've got?

I think that's a wrap mayor. Unless there's any other final thoughts or questions from council. We'll pick it up again in public. We'll have a city council meeting on Monday, obviously, and a couple budget meetings shortly thereafter.

Let me repeat the dates.

So they're going to be next Wednesday afternoon beginning at 4 and next Thursday afternoon beginning at 4. And these first two meetings are going to be the presentations. We'll come back at a later date.

Let's explain that presentation process a little bit, too, what we're doing a little bit different this year as far as when department heads come up. how that's going to look.

Yeah, so all the divisions, departments will be depicted over those two days. They're going to come up and talk about the meat and potatoes in their divisions. And if there's specific questions, to help them, to help us, if you have questions that you know about that are geared towards certain divisions, please let us know or please let that division head know so that they can do all their research coming into it and answer your question to the best of their ability. versus having to maybe go back and do some research and then come back at a later meeting.

Would that go for the public, too, if they want to email that department?

Yeah, I would say absolutely. You see something. All the division heads are accessible to the public. So if there are citizens that have a question about maybe a topic in the agenda from tonight or something that's going to be depicted in their budget coming forth at that point, if it's not clear, ask about it. There's nothing that we're trying to hide, nothing they're trying to hide. There's a lot of stuff that gets packaged up into tiny little words, like you can see here, with not a lot of opportunity for explanation. So if there's questions that anybody has, please ping the group, ping somebody, so we can be better prepared. And we're gonna try and roll through those fairly quickly. So we're counting on your questions.

All right. Well, I think it's important for all the department heads, if they're asking for something, And it's going to increase property tax that they have an understanding of what they're asking for and why it's going to increase property taxes. Okay. So do their homework. So if they're going to ask for a half-million-dollar piece of equipment, put that to property tax. If you're going to ask for wages, put that to property tax so you know what you're asking us. I think that this budget cycle is going to be tough. And so when we're asking for things, they have to know what they're asking the council to do. What they're going to ask us to ask of the people.

Yeah, this will be a tough budget cycle. And they're going to talk about what's in their divisions, what they need, and we'll see how the chips fall. But you're going to hear from the heart and soul of them. Anything else? Okay, we're good.

All right, one more time. Anybody else have anything to say? Seeing none, we're adjourned.