City Council - workshop

It should be just here. Okay. ALL RIGHT.

GOOD AFTERNOON, EVERYONE. WELCOME TO THE CITY COUNCIL BUDGET WORK SESSION HERE ON MONDAY, AUGUST 24th, 2026, 430 P.M. CALLING THE MEETING OFFICIALLY TO ORDER. ANGIE, WOULD YOU ROLL CALL, PLEASE?

MS. LEE? HERE. CHI? WOLF? HERE. LUCAS? HERE. GERRICK? HERE. PLANNER? HERE. RICKER?

MCNAUGHTON?

HERE. THANK YOU. A CURRENT COPY OF THE OPEN MEETINGS ACT OF THE STATE OF NEBRASKA IS POSTED AT THE BACK OF THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS. IT'S ACTUALLY LAYING ON THE TABLE. IT'S NOT POSTED. Uh, no formal vote or action will be taken at this meeting. This is just a work session. I repeat. No formal voter action will be taken at this meeting. And this is a discussion and presentation on the 20262027 city of North Platte proposed budget. Then you have the floor.

Um, good afternoon council. Um. The 1st thing we would like to do is have the different organizations on the 2nd page of your book with, uh. Ask for the promotions budget to come up and, um. Presents if able 1st will be Lincoln county community development corporation.

Council, Mayor, Judy Clark, I serve on the board for Lincoln County CDC. I'm just up here as moral support. This is Tracy. She started four weeks ago. So she's very, very new and pretty nervous. So I'm going to be here to help her out a little bit. Good? No.

Okay.

I promise we don't bite, Tracy.

She's got a handout to give all of you on what Lincoln County CDC does for the community.

My apologies. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so the first one is essentially a letter that just talks a little bit about what Lincoln County Community Development Corporation is. It values the partnership with the City of North Platte. And down about halfway in between that initial letter, you'll see all of the housing units that they've done over the past several years. Lincoln County CDC was first created in 1995. and they focus on providing housing opportunities for low to moderate income individuals in the community. And recently they have just built or just in the process of building two new houses. And you can see that is the first two pictures on the second page. There's a couple of pictures. The thing that's a little bit unique about Lincoln County Community Development Corporation is they still have to Build a house and anymore it's becoming extremely difficult to build a house to sell to low to moderate income individuals. Um, our bids this year on. These homes individually were roughly around 250,000 dollars and in order to make those affordable for lower to moderate income individuals. Lincoln County CDC will have to take about a $50,000 loss on each of the properties in order to make it affordable for a family to attain a single family home. What else would you like to add? Trying to let her do it. I know, but you're doing so good.

I did include the, we have currently owned 19 rentals. And I just included some pictures of those, which does boost the economy with those with taxes and everything. And then the last thing I included was a picture of an empty lot. that i believe that we have used funding from previous years from the city to help clear that land to be able to build and i believe we're looking at a four one four plex or two two four two four plexes on that lot so i just included a picture of the lot so and i believe we're asking um for 15 000. what we've asked, I believe, last year.

And more if you would like. Yes.

Thank you, Tracy and Judy.

Thank you.

Judy, before you sit down. She accidentally advanced the slide once. Would you go back one? It's okay.

It's a little back error.

Yeah. Perfect. There you go. Thank you.

All right. Next up, Bob with Nebraska Land Days.

Well, good afternoon, City Council members, Mayor Kelleher, City Administrator Grossa, thank you for taking the time to allow me to present to you. I want to take just a few minutes today to sincerely thank you for your continued support of Nebraska Land Days. Nebraska Land Days is proud to call North Platte home, and we truly could not put on this celebration without the partnership and the support we received from the City. From public safety to city services to financial support to facilities. And the countless ways the city helps us throughout the year. Your partnership plays a major role in our success. This year's celebration was another great example of what can happen when our organization, the city, local businesses, volunteers, and the community all work together. Nebraska Land Days brings thousands of visitors to North Platte, creates a significant economic impact, and gives us the opportunity to showcase our community and everything that makes this a great place to live and visit. I also want to thank you personally, each of you, for your willingness to work with us, listen to us, support our efforts as we continue to grow the celebration. We don't take that partnership for granted. On behalf of the Nebraska Land Days board of directors, staff, volunteers, and our entire organization, thank you for believing in Nebraska Land Days and for counting, continuing to invest in the future of this celebration and our community. We're proud to be North Platte celebration and we look forward to continuing to build something. This community can be proud of for many more years to come. So, with that, we're requesting again this year, 11,250 to support our marketing efforts. Our overall marketing budget this upcoming year is going to not quite double, but we're. doing some different marketing things that's going to significantly increase our cost of marketing. And so your contribution to that is very impactful to our organization. So with that, I would answer any questions that you all might have.

Thanks, Bob. Thank you. Appreciate you all.

Gary with the Chamber. Gary, if you'd come up.

Mayor, council members, Gary Pearson present. North Platte Area Chamber Development Corporation. I want to thank all of you for the outstanding partnership we've enjoyed since the time that I've been here. And I know the partnership has gone on long before that. And I think we've fought the good fight together. We've accomplished a lot. I've seen a lot of good growth in the community. No pain, no gain. Sometimes it's a little painful going through all those things, but definitely have a lot of very nice projects in the community we could point to. You see evidence of our work and our work together. Every single day you drive around the community. It's a place I think anybody could be very proud to showcase as showing North Platte off and all the wonderful great things that have happened. Uh, talk to people I've been here for a few years, they drive around, or they come to a reunion or Nebraska land days and a family event or something. Um. The, the compliments they pass forward are are very encouraging and, uh, talk to some recent professionals that went to work in the community and. Uh, they said they had a lot of, um, places they could have gone. And they found reasons to come to North Platte, so I think that's you know we're we're fighting that mentality sometimes that it's tougher to get people to move this side of Kearney on this end of the state, but I think we're seeing evidence of that every single day. I did outline in the three-page letter to you all the significant accomplishments we've had in the last few years, also some charts that show some of the nice economic growth that we've had. Just to talk about a few retail sales in the last 10 years have grown by 51% in the community. Are the construction permit values we've had the 3 largest years in the history of North 2324 and 25 back to back to back. Uh, valuation growth, um, we've seen, um, the time I've been here is about 3Billion dollars on the county level and, uh, 500Million on on the city level. We're working on some very significant projects that, uh. It'll be up to the community if they've embraced those or not, but there's some wonderful opportunities there. Um, we, you know, uh, we started down this path, knowing that unless we address housing, we weren't going to reap the benefits of all our other work and economic development. And, you know, we now have, uh, 20 different housing developments, uh, subdivisions, um, moving forward in the community. If you put all our footprints together, and I'm not saying all of them will be built out or. Happened, but there's about 2400 new housing units there about 800 of them already. been built or in the process of getting finished up. So we've worked hard to get where we are. We want to keep the partnership going strong and look forward to continuing working with you. And it wouldn't happen without you. Wouldn't happen without a partnership. One thing I've found in my lifetime of work in economic development is that when people work together, you put all that energy together, good things happen. and get everybody on the same team moving forward. When that energy starts butting heads and finding fault with different things, that's when you see progress stop. It takes years to build something. It doesn't take very long to tear it down. So our job is to keep it on the right track. We've got phenomenal volunteers involved in our organization, very reliant on them, and a wonderful business community. We've got about 700 business members that support us along with being the economic development arm for the city and the county. And so it's just a good partnership and let's work hard to keep it that way. Thank you for everything that you do as public servants. It's not an easy job. It's tough. Thanks, Gary. All right.

Mona, keep North Platte beautiful.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm on Anderson. I'm the director for keep North plant, Lincoln county beautiful. I've been there for 15 years this year. So excited about that. I think there's probably not a day that doesn't go by that. I don't talk to somebody from the city on a on a project or something that we would like to see done and and they're always answering my calls. Pretty graciously, so, um, I do appreciate the partnership between keep North county beautiful and the city. I think. Programs and projects get done when you have private. public and community partnerships. So I believe that's really important. We're asking for $15,000. That goes as matching for the grants that we get from the Nebraska Department of Water, Environment and Energy. So that's kind of what we're asking for. We do do some grant writing and trying to get some money into the city. through grants that pertain to the environment. So last year we did tire collection event. We had two different grants for tire derived products that go into our playgrounds, our parks and playgrounds. We also do the reporting for the bi-recycled Report and that brings about another six thousand dollars into the city. So We also do reporting for the city stormwater runoff mandates we provide information I guess to the city to do that report so I This year, we are looking at doing a grant for a log splitter as well as an oil collection, a new oil collection tank. The one that we have for the city for the recycled oil is leaking. So we're trying to get those two things done right now, working on the Cody Park fountain trying to get that redone. So we're starting to raise money for that. One of the things I do want to say is that over this last year, we had an increase in recycling from 241 tons last year to 285 tons this year. So really, Happy about that. I think that goes back to we got new recycling bins. We've had a lot of promotion around recycling So and people who are coming into our community I think that makes a really good impression for those people who are coming into the community To see that we have a really robust recycling program People are more environmentally conscious want to live in places that are environmentally conscious. So some of the other things that we've done is Keith Blackledge Park. We just redid the Rose Plum Memorial Garden and Centennial Park. Tree planting on Burlington, trees along Buffalo, the City Hall planting out here, and then we are working with some Northside projects as well. So, I think I've touched on everything. We do get about $225,000 worth of grants in every year for our organization. And then we also do litter cleanup. And we have about 1,500 volunteers that go out and clean up about 360 miles of roads every year. So very proud of that as well. Does anybody have any questions?

Thanks, Mona.

Thank you.

The other two organizations that are listed are not able to be here tonight. I hope to get them here for our actual budget. We may have to actually do the budget hearing. So that'll be at a later date. With that, I would now like to present an overview of the budget. And after that, Tony will present with the ML&W budget. So, mayor and council, I'd like to thank you for your continued support and ongoing work with all the city departments on our year to year financial strategy. I'd like to thank the city team, especially the department has many of them sitting behind us and the staff that continues to embrace the goals of having a. WORKABLE BUDGET AND ALSO BEING VERY CONSCIOUS OF EXPENSES AND OF MONEY SPENT. WITH THAT, I WOULD LIKE TO PRESENT OUR BUDGET PROPOSAL FOR 26-27. STARTING OFF, WE'RE LOOKING TO HAVE PROJECTED REVENUES THIS YEAR OF ABOUT $1 MILLION OVER BUDGET. That should allow us to add somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 into the cash reserves, leaving us with a cash reserve to start fiscal year 27 around $17.6 million. Expenditures are expected to finish about $100,000 under budget. This allows us then to decrease the city levy going into the next year by about 1.35 cents or a little under 4%, going from 35.79 cents to 34.44 cents. over the past since the fall of 2021 that's allowed us to reduce the city levy by about 10 cents or about 22 percent in that time many of you have been on the council for that entire time and so there's a lot of uh credit to all of you and to all the people sitting back here that's allowed us to be able to do that um So 26's performance is looking favorable. We've done a lot of things, continue to do things to look at ways to cut expenses, ways to consolidate things, and also look at how to strengthen our revenue streams. Some of the reasons we have that cash reserve balance, One of the things that our auditors have talked about for years and a number of years ago, we did not have a cash reserve balance. To have about 33% or about four months, three to four months of operating revenue in your cash reserve with the proposed budget we have going forward, that would equal about $13.6 million, which were there. We also know that probably in the next 30 months, there will be, from the Nebraska Imagine Act, some refunds that will be coming to some businesses through that act, which is a state act, but it affects our local sales tax, which could impact at about $3 million over those 30 months. And so we're trying to have the money to cover that. I am asking it's not included in the budget right now, but I am asking the council to consider letting us. Take about 585,000 dollars out of the cash reserves to put into basically our building. I'll keep fun. We know we have some various. roofs that need replaced on some city buildings around town, a couple, probably three HVAC units that are at end of life, and some other building needs that we have, and we would like to have that sitting there so we can get those taken care of. One of those roofs was a roof that about five years ago, if we would have taken the steps then, it would have been about $85,000, and we're now looking at probably over $300,000 for that roof, and so probably should have pulled the trigger then. WE'RE ALSO ASKING FOR ABOUT 320,000 TO FINISH THE FUEL TANK REPLACEMENT PROJECT. WE HAVE THAT IN THIS YEAR'S BUDGET. SINCE IT WILL BE GOING INTO THE NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET, WE WOULD JUST LIKE TO HAVE IT TAKEN OUT OF THERE. THAT'S WHAT WE WOULD HAVE TAKEN OUT OF OUR STARTING CASH BALANCE. SO THAT IS REQUEST. I KNOW WE CAN'T VOTE AT THIS MEETING, BUT WITH YOUR BLESSING, WE'D LIKE TO HAVE THAT IN THE BUDGET COMING FORWARD OUT OF THE CASH RESERVES. JUST QUICK OVERVIEW AGAIN, LOWERING THE CITY LEVY. WE'RE LOOKING AT REVENUES FOR THE COMING YEAR TO BE ABOUT ALMOST 2.6 MILLION AHEAD OF THIS YEAR. AND WE'RE LOOKING AT EXPENDITURES ABOUT 2.76 MILLION OVER THIS YEAR IN THE GENERAL FUND. most of the expenditure increases are from a combination of inflation labor costs insurance both city insurance and health insurance service demands mandates and just our capital needs we've talked about this is a little overview of the different city departments that make up the general fund showing what their change in dollars would be over last year PERCENTAGE OF THE CHANGE FOR EACH DEPARTMENT. AND THEN I HAVE KIND OF A HISTORY HERE OF EACH ONE OF THOSE DEPARTMENTS, WHAT THEIR PERCENTAGE OF THE GENERAL FUND BUDGET IS. IF THEY'RE IN RED FROM 24 TO 25, THAT MEANS THEY WERE ASKING A LITTLE BIT MORE PERCENTAGE OF THE BUDGET. AND THEN AGAIN, GOING INTO 26, 27, SOME OF THOSE HAVE AN INCREASE OVER WHAT THEIR PERCENTAGE WAS THE YEAR BEFORE. we'd like to look at the city budget holistically as all departments working together we are a team some years some departments have more needs than others and so some years our budget goes up some years our percentage of budget goes down and as you can see we have some some departments where their budget ask is going down many are going up because of inflationary pressures and that just varies from year to year which ones have increases and which ones have decreases but We like to look at it holistically and not each department as a separate entity. This is just a pie graph showing the different pieces of the budget for each department. We'd like to look at what our departments are doing. And one of the snapshots I'd like to show is some crime statistics since 2022. You'll notice in almost every category from 2022 to now, they have gone down whether it's disturbances, theft and fraud, trespassing, criminal mischief, assaults, drug violations, et cetera. DUI has actually gone up. sex offenses, burglary, et cetera, but most of them are all trending down. In fact, our total crime statistics in the city are trending down over the last four years, and you can get that from the FBI crime statistics and then the statistics we keep with ourselves.

Can I interject a question real quick? Sure. I don't want to interrupt you.

Anytime you want to question, anybody has a question, please feel free.

I remember in 2000, we were talking about crime statistics a lot at that time, just the economic stuff going on, and I think we were second or third highest in the state at that time. Where do we land at now? Do you have any idea off the top of your head?

I do not know. I don't know if Chief knows that.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

But I know that we were sitting at a much better place than we were a few years ago. Yeah.

I get that question occasionally, so it'd be nice to know kind of where we land in the state. So if you could let me know.

It's kind of one of those general things that you always hear that North Platte's got the highest issue of that. It's always highest in crime. I know that looking at some of the things over the years, we're not even near the top as far as crime. In fact, we're sitting pretty... We're a little higher in property crimes than some of our peers, but as far as violent crimes and those kind of things, we're much lower than a lot of our peers.

You can just figure it out on a state level and send it to me whenever. I would appreciate that because I do get asked that occasionally.

Okay.

Sorry.

No problem. SO AGAIN, SOME MAJOR DRIVERS OF THE BUDGET INCREASES. OF COURSE, INFLATIONARY PRESSURES, IT'S NOT A SURPRISE TO ANYBODY. WE ALL HAVE INFLATIONARY PRESSURES ACROSS ALL CITY OPERATIONS. IT AFFECTS CITY BUDGETS JUST AS MUCH AS ANYBODY'S. 3.5% COLA INCREASE BASED ON FOUR UNION AGREEMENTS. That's on most of the jobs, not every single job, but that's on most of the jobs, we'll have the 3.5%. 15% increase in health insurance premiums over the two years of this current year and the year to come. One of the things is increased volume at the transfer station, which not only has additional revenues, but additional expenses, and so that's shown in the new budget. unfunded mandates, including pension requirements and CIR related costs. And then we have replacement ambulances. We have those two ambulances that were approved by Council three years ago. And they're finally being delivered as like so many things are a big back order on that. And so it'll be they should be delivered in late 2026, which would then have the first payments come in on those. Just key takeaways. We're cities in a strong financial position. We heard that from our auditors as well. Revenues are expected to increase by about a million. Expenditures for this current year, about $100,000 under budget. Looking to add to the cash reserves again, and the preliminary budget reduces the city levy. All these things combined are what we do, what these people back here do, to maintain the services that our citizens expect and that we want to provide for them. Some other slides just to go along with the budget. So looking back since 2014, the green line is the actual city asks for property tax in each of those years since 2014. The blue line would be what the ask would be if we just asked each year for what the inflation rate was in each of those years compounded going forward. The city's ask this coming year is 8.11 million. If we would have just kept up with inflation since 2014, it would be 9.6 million. So I think that shows that we're being very frugal with our dollars. Here's where your tax dollars go. I WOULD HAVE $100 OF PROPERTY TAX, THE SCHOOL, AS WE ALL GET THE BIGGEST CHUNK OF THAT, AND THE CITY, THE COUNTY, THE AIRPORT GOING DOWN TO THE COLLEGE, TWIN PLAN NRD, THE ESU, AND THE AG SOCIETY. THIS SLIDE HERE TAKES A LOOK AT JUST THE CITY PORTION OF PROPERTY TAXES. We took what, I'll be honest, what internet tells us the average home price or average home value is in North Platte. It says for 2026, the average home value is $220,376. That home would have each month, their property taxes for that home for the city would be $63.65. Of that, $63.65 of that home is paying for property taxes for the city of North Platte. $26 goes to public safety, which is police, fire, EMS services. $5.68 to public works, streets, public transit, the cemetery, and the city shop. $1.05 to administration, legal, and finance. A little over $2 to the library. Just about $6 to parks, senior services, and recreation. $1.13 to building and zoning, and $21, a little over $21 to debt service, which is the bonded street projects that we've worked on over the last number of years. And that's basically just bonded street projects is that debt service for that. So that's where the average home where your city property tax dollars go. I wanted to look at where we compare to our peers. And so we took 13 first-class cities in Nebraska. Those are in the blue lines at the bottom. The green line in the middle is North Platts. We sit right basically in the middle of our piers as far as our property tax levy. And then if you look at the orange lines are the 13 largest counties by population in the state, and Lincoln County actually sits right about in the middle of that as well. So I hear quite often, see it on social media, which the mayor tells me to keep off of, people saying that North Platte's the highest property tax city in the country. Well, we're not even the highest property tax city in the state, and Lincoln County is not the highest property tax county in the state. So I just wanted to... illustrate that. I think there's some frugality that the entities are all working to be smart with our tax dollars. This last slide that I have for you, the state has a site where you can look at what you've paid in property taxes on your property for the last 25 years. I grabbed a number of homes all around town. I just randomly grabbed home addresses around town. So I don't have the actual addresses, just basically the streets that they're close to throughout the community and looked at what their property taxes have done since 2006 at this side, going to 2025 at this side. And then this dotted line in here is if we took that average home tax bill in 26 where that average started, and if it just followed inflation where that tax bill would be, it's much higher than any of these. Inflation since 2006 has been almost 60% compounded over that time. The average of all these homes, their tax bills increase an average of 13% over that same amount of time, much below the inflation. Obviously, some are higher than others, but the average bill increase since 2006 to 2025 is $273, not $273 each year, $273 more. They're paying $273 more in 2025 than they paid in 2006 for their property tax bill. Some are more again, some are less. But I just wanted to illustrate what they've done. You'll see one with a huge dip that had the homestead exemption for a few years in there. And I think there was a fire at that home for a while and then it went back up. And if anyone wants to look at that site, you can look at your home and pull that up and One of these is actually mine. I don't remember which color it is in here, but anyway, just wanted to illustrate. So yes, they have gone up, but in relation to inflation, most have not gone up near as much as the inflation rate. So that's the budget in a nutshell. Is there any questions before I turn it over to Tony?

Looks like Tony gets the mic.

All right. Thank you.

That's a hard act to follow, I think.

Mayor Council, again, I'd also like to thank you for your continued support for the utility department for the City of North Platte. I also want to thank my departments that work tirelessly to support the City and the Electric Department, Water Department, and Wastewater Department. People that help combine the budget or put together the budget for you, Scott, Boyd, Elliot, Chris from the Water Department, Doug from wastewater, Don putting together the final say in it. I appreciate all their help. It's my first time. I appreciate the opportunity. And we're just going to kind of kind of move forward. So I wanted to kind of start out because Elaine had asked me kind of to address this again with the, with the rates. I know we're not talking about rates. But there's been some negativity in the social media realm. And so I took John Kraske from JK Energy, his slides on the electric utility. Electric rates are kind of hard to determine with all the different ways MPPD and Dawson charges communities. Um, but as you can see, just on his work, um, with the rate increase, and we don't know what the other utilities are going to do, what pasting is going to do what Lexington is going to do with Dawson and that really going to do. This, this is this does include our rate increases on electric. So, during the winter months in the summer months, we're going to fall right in the middle of that. We're going to assume that on on the electric grades for the other 4 utilities there. that they will also increase over time. Water is a little bit easier. Lane kind of put this slide together. We worked on it, but Sam was also involved because I'm not a chat GPT AI guy, right? But anyway, we got this chart put together and it shows the water and sewer rates Our increase where we're at today, clear the right hand side and then with our increase where we will be starting October 1. Versus about 12. Other utilities, um, as you can see, we're going to still be at the lower end of the spectrum. Um, even though we're raising rates by 6% in the water and 9% in store. Um, so I think we're going to be very competitive with our peers. Kind of an overlook of the operating budget, kind of at a glance. The total operating budget for the four combined utilities is $51,471,203.

That operating budget is up approximately 8.98%.

Um, it gives the individuals electric operating budget 36, 274,535. The water 6,061,083 sewer. 435338 and then the industrial wastewater is kind of an unknown because they'll be ramping up. Um, hopefully after the 1st of the year, um, with the actual industrial treatment plant, we'll, we'll switch from the interim all goes well. Um, 4,781,243. I kind of want to point out that. The budget that we put together, um, is cost focused. And we want to make sure that it also provides reliable day to day services to our constituents. Capital investment focused on infrastructure for replacement and system reliability, I think is also very important. And then just maintaining the financial stability of all the utility operations that we have. Um, we have to be cognizant about. I'm going to just kind of hit some highlights of what's. Um, causing a little bit of the increase kind of like lane done. Um, we have those, uh. Wonderful inflationary pressures also, um, every, everything is is up our costs are up. Um, cost of living adjustment is proposed at 3 and a half percent. Um, health insurance over the last 2 years is going to be approximately 15% is what we're seeing. Major investments in substation and transmission rebuilds, um, the new very sub as you can see is about 3 and a 3 and a half a 1Million that'll go in. We have a switch gear and transformer out at the Lakeview sub, which is about another 3Million. We are projecting to to try to, um, rebuild some, some lines. Transmission lines that are in major need of rebuild, um, for another 4 and a half 1Million dollars. And then the development out on East Philip and Bicentennial are in that area. Um. additional distribution, additional undergrounding that we're doing continuing out in the south part of town and other equipment investments are kind of the highlights. Water and sewer are kind of the same song and dance. We have those inflationary pressures, the cost of living, the health insurance. On the water side, we have maintenance to the water tower that's happening. Main repair and replacement lead line replacement program. It's EPA required. And that's going to drive us to to possibly hire another 4 man crew. So that's in in the water budget and then other equipment needs to. Support that that additional crew. Sewer collection system improvements. We've got the head works building that we continually. is needing work, a major rebuild on the UV system and that upgrade for the end result. We're also implementing a sewer maintenance and replacement program. So this is going to be able to allow us to replace and repair deteriorating manholes and sewer mains across the city. Of course, there's 180 miles of sewer main. There's no possible way that we can do it all in in in 1 year, let alone 10. So this is a long forecasted. Process, but we're going to start that process. You guys. Approved the Philip street. Manholes I greatly appreciate that those were in dire, dire need of repair. And we got that taken care of in this last budget cycle, but this is going to going to move us forward. Wastewater treatment costs are up. And then also the equipment needs for that department. Kind of the priorities and the look ahead that I looked at and our departments looked at. Um, was how are we going to maintain the reliable electric and water service target? Our citizens, um, we had to address the aging infrastructure through plant and capital investments. Maintain the appropriate reserves for financial stability, manage the operating costs by maintaining the level of service that everyone desires and needs. Um, continue the long term capital planning and rate evaluation. Um, the rate study is not only a this year study. Um, but it's going to probably continue to happen as the times are changing on a regular basis. Um, and our end goal is sustainable utilities that can meet the current and future needs of our community. And at this time, if you have any questions, I'd like to attempt to answer them. Mr. Gregg.

Yeah, actually, so reliability is, Councilman Rieker sent me an email and sent me down a rabbit hole of transformers and that fun, you know, giant quandary. Some of those transformers are three years out when you order them. So what kind of redundancy do we have built in in some of those special transformers or bigger transformers where If we have one go, we don't have to wait three years and have a major section down or something. You see what I'm saying? What kind of redundancy do we have built in and how are we getting around that bottleneck? Because that's nasty. That's bad.

So if Scott would come up, he's way more experienced at this than I am. I'm just a few months in. So allow him to answer that question.

We like talking to the experts.

Well, I'm not an expert, but I will give you an answer. So when we structured our system, we built it so that substations can feed other substations. So if one goes down, we have one or two more that can pick up the slack and then call it. We have had one that's been down since January and hopefully by the end of the week, it'll be back up and running, which we've been begging and pleading and whatever we could. And as far as like distribution subs or excuse me, distribution transformers, we do try to keep one of those round that can fit in various places and then order another one. So yeah, it does take quite a while between trucks and transformers. It takes a while to get them in for sure.

What about the other utilities? Are they similar? Because some of the other ones have not as bad as transformers. Is that just ridiculous?

No, it's nationwide. We've actually had, we were looking for just little secondary pedestals this year and couldn't find them. So we actually went to a different vendor and they had some, so we took them. So it's just kind of all across the nation. It's kind of bad. And then of course you get hurricanes and fires and everything else. And then they go, everything goes to them. So,

I'm glad to hear we have some redundancy built into our system.

Yeah, that's excellent. The engineering departments did a great job when we place substations and tie it all together. So it's taken a lot of years, but it's getting there.

Thank you. What about... Go ahead. What about the other utilities? Do they have similar... redundancies built in, because I don't think they're as bad, you know, three years out on some of those transformers, but they still have definite problems.

Correct. Water and wastewater are also very similar to that, and we can reroute water and wastewater. The lead times on water equipment and wastewater equipment are not near as long as what they are at the electrical.

Okay, thank you. Appreciate that.

ahead time mr lucas i know it's been a little while since we've talked about sustainable beef with them being such a significant user of utilities if you would mind giving us just a little bit of a state of the union on how how it's all working now that they're fully operational and ramped up and just if if just how things in general are working at the utility level that's maybe for you or lane or whoever would like to answer it

Overall, I think we're having our hiccups with the industrial plant, the temporary plant, and it's not a horrible thing. It's running, it's treating the volume that we're getting, and it seems to be working really well. I don't know. It is temporary, and so thus the hiccups periodically. Um, I don't know if lane has anything else to add to that.

Yeah, they are largest water user now, so that helps on rate stability and also they are a large electric user, which also. Long term helps us on rate stability also have another large user, but I think, um, you know. The ramp up was nice because it helped us work through some hiccups before things got to full speed. But I think most, like Tony said, the biggest thing is still just getting that plant up and running, which because of lead times is a lot of reason why it's taking as long as it's taking. So I think overall it's been good.

And again, the lead times have to do with blower motors, anything, you know, basically the electrical at the actual physical plant.

Thank you. Thank you, Tony. Thank you.

That's the overview now, if the council has any questions. In that specific budgets, we can sure go into that. If you have anything you'd like to talk about. I thank Don very much for putting this budget book together. She then has to make everything shoehorn into the state. State forms and, you know, we're talking today and. Every city probably does their budgets a little bit different, but we all have to shoehorn them in then to the state forms to get them all to work. And she does all that hard work and I appreciate. That, but if there's anything you want to go into specifics, we can sure do that. If you have a question.

Promotions budget as a whole. So, here's my, my concern, we're about to raise rates, you know, 6 to 9% across all of our utilities for the next 5 years upwards of 48% increase in some areas. And we're pulling $200,000 out of those same utilities while we're charging our people significant amounts. Is there any other place we could pull this promotions budget from? I know you looked into it and kind of did some digging.

By law, it can't come out of any funds that are tax supported. So it has to come out of utility type funds or things that aren't from the tax. You know, that represents about less than 1% of the spend on the electric department, but it is a percentage there. So I wish I had a better place to come from, but I don't.

If we weren't such increasing our rates, you know, it probably wouldn't be a big deal. But we are, and people are very upset, understandably, so I'm upset. I'm not happy about it either, but it is what it is. My question then becomes, so if it can't be tax-based, could it be like in fees and that kind of, could it be there, or is there any way of getting creative, legally speaking?

Good question, Rob. All I looked into is if people do not fund, cannot fund promotions that are based on the general fund budget, so.

Okay, I just, I could see us getting some kickback on spending this while we're raising rates.

It's a good question, Brad. Sorry, Mayor. The question I want to know is, if they were drawing those out, assuming they're going to be replenished, is that correct? Or did I misunderstand?

The promotions budget is a spending line on amount of the electric department every year. So it's just an expenditure that's been for years.

I mean, the reserve and the utility of water, I mean, it's still maintained, is that correct? Correct. Reserve and dollar amounts. We're not depleting that.

Correct, but we're raising prices, so if we can move this over to some other, maybe we could produce that just a hair opposite. I'm not arguing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It'd be a very small percentage of, if anything.

Mr. comment on that. I agree with you, Brad, that it's always been a little awkward to have that go through the utility fund. You know, the history, I would contend a lot of the duties that were being done when the city had an elect in an economic development department. And we had what did we have 1 or 2 employees has spent a while back and we go back to those days that we're doing a lot of things the chamber and then there was a, there was a change of strategy. and a lot of the dollars that there are, a big percentage of them are going to the Chamber and Development Corporation, and they're picking up a lot of those duties that used to be done at the city. In my opinion, that organization's raised their dues and donation levels at a pace where it's probably saved the taxpayers some money. That decision, in my opinion, has probably saved the taxpayers money because if we would have been in housing all that economic development work here at the city, I think our overall costs would have gone more, and I think it's put more back onto the memberships and the donations at that. But I agree that we should keep examining. I mean, all of these activities do tie back to the utility in particular, if economic development is working and going well, we're creating more electrical. customers, but yeah, I think it's good. I think you bring up a good point, and we should just continue to look at that, but I don't want people to forget that we also have what I would consider a long-term cost-saving measure going in here with what the role of the Chamber and DEVCO is playing today versus what they were 15 or 20 years ago.

To go off that, Kai, I do know that the City of Norfolk has internal economic development. I think it's a three-person department, which is about somewhere between a quarter million and 300,000 of their budget just on their economic development efforts, which is substantially more than this.

Yeah, just to add to that, it's funny, we were ahead of the curve in Nebraska with the way that's been worked, I think, and then also the merger of chamber and economic development, and I think there's been more and more more and more cities that have followed some of those practices. But I think it's been working really well for us because I think it's saved some cost at the city and pushed more onto the business community on that.

Historically, the reason why it was pulled out of those funds is because they were the largest that had the most money in it. Exactly. Which made sense at the time, but now it's kind of flipped. Now that we have cash reserves sitting on the governmental side, it might make more sense to look at or figure out a way to move them over there, which in my opinion makes more sense.

We'll continue to look into that.

Okay, thank you.

My memory serves me correctly from the presentation last week, the. The in utility Tony, where'd you go? Just stay right there. You can just not if I'm right here, the, the total utility increase, we were thinking the average home and North was going to be 9 dollars and 54 cents, 9 dollars, 56 cents, something like that. So, removing 1% of that would save. Somewhere around 10 cents a month, right? And a half sense of I'm doing the math quickly in my head.

So, so I actually ran my. Own usage through the new rates to find the increase. I'm pretty average in my house. I mean, my house is 2800 square foot. It's just the wife and I, um, but most of most of my usage, our usage is just average and it was 9 dollars and 73 cents on my usage. My actual usage from the last 12 months.

Okay. So it could vary widely. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Just want to make sure I remember that math correctly. Thank you.

Other questions or comments.

if i may ask real quick and i know we can't um vote on it but when it makes sense before the the budget hearing to add those to ask for the fuel system and for the building um upgrades that we need to put into the budget out of the cash reserves from the council thoughts on that where do where do the repairs need to go on the hvac and the roof again like do you have specific buildings or i know the senior center needs an hvac um fire station number one over the dorms needs a roof the public service building up on the north side of town that steel building where the shop and the offices are that's the roof that i should have fixed five years ago um We have a couple other HVACs. I don't remember exact locations where they're about the same age as the one in the senior center that has gone out on us. And we just know that every year there's a couple other things that usually come up. And so just to try and be ahead of the game a little bit. Obviously, if we don't need to replace those, we won't spend all that money. It's just to have it. have it there ready to go. And then the fuel system, otherwise it comes out of the contingencies fund for the fuel system. And I thought it'd be nice to have an earmarked actually for that out of those funds. So that's, that's the thought on those if the council would agree or not.

Remind us of the total number on that.

It's like 585 on the buildings and about 207, 327 on the fuel system.

So 900,000 basically.

Yeah, roughly 900,000. Okay.

And you're suggesting we would take that from?

Cash reserves. The 17.6 of the cash reserves.

So if we generally thought that was an okay idea, you would adjust accordingly then? Correct. Okay. Go ahead, Brian.

And we're looking at adding 400,000 to 500,000?

Yeah. So basically. So it would be basically. That plus minus about 300,000 from existing. Okay. Would still leave us 16.8 to 17Million somewhere in the cash reserves.

Lane, let's say, and I'm just making up a hypothetical situation here, but let's say that. The council, and you guys felt like we needed to save. 5 to 8Million or 5 to 10Million dollars for the police station project and we needed to have that. Ready to ready to go and. 36 months or whatever the right timeframe would be. How would you see that? How would you see the city going about that? And how does that affect these kinds of decisions?

The great question, Ty. Basically, we just look again at some of our long term expenses, see if there's any pieces that either. Can be put off or maybe we don't need to do. We also look at them. I've come to the council with some of the. land the city's acquired over the last few years that really pieces aren't aren't being used for anything city-wise um we can't see any need for them future that we would look at selling so the public so they can be used again for a purpose instead of just the city having them that that's the two things that come to mind right off the bat probably not the whole amount but it would be somewhat to take care of that

Just some feedback I have. We're in the early stages of this. We've got public hearings and other things to give you more feedback on your question. But I do think the tough part of a police station is, well, first of all, that we're way overdue for needing it, and I think we all kind of agree on that. And It's not the most popular thing because you can't go swimming there and you can't play tennis there and you can't do a lot of things. You can't bike bike there. Well, at least not. You don't want to have to bike there. But anyway, and so I think we should keep thinking about for every capital expenditure project we do. Should we be putting equal dollars or half dollars or double dollars or something like that in the jar to go towards that? Because I just think that project is going to need cash because, you know, not to say we can't finance it, but we don't have a lot of room in the operating budget. And it's not going to be that popular to raise the levy for it. But we need it. We needed it in the past. And it's becoming an overdue need. And so I would just keep thinking about strategies of every dollar we spend in capital expenditures, how much are we putting aside for that major cash need that's going to be coming up.

Thank you.

Other comments or questions?

Just sorry, just real quick on a lot of these. Departments, the workman's comp has went up quite a bit. Is there a reason for that?

I mean, part of that's probably salary increases, but most of the workman's comp premiums are based on salary. if you remember last year we switched workman's comp providers and we went from almost a million dollars a year workman's comp to a little less than 500 000 so there's about a 10 increase this year but we're still about 350 000 less than we were two years ago on workman's comp and part of it's based on what um our incidents and then part of it's based on actual uh Pay out what the actual salaries were spent. And so that's how it's premiums are dealt with. And we're actually looking. Tanner's out actually looking at shopping our workman's comp around to see if we can get any better prices. But we have such a huge decrease last year on workman's comp. I think we're sitting probably about as good as we're going to get, but we always are watching those, but that's where the increases come from. If we've had the last. three or four years we've had a huge decrease in our amount of incidents and also the severity of those incidents which we don't want our people to go home hurt and so we continue to have safety and our safety program continues to get stronger and stronger As we get further away from large claims, that helps drive our rates down as our experience rating, if you will, gets better. So we continue to work on that, and that's part of the reason why we have a very strong safety program that we work. We send out weekly bulletins, and then we have safety meetings with different departments, and we have different things. We had a driving one about a month ago, and we're working on some other things, and so that's helping us to lower those costs as well.

then one last question i had i lost it but i did notice that the sanitation department the amount of repairs on machinery and stuff is up quite a bit as well is there we're just trying to band-aid stuff along the old equipment the transfer station itself was put in in 1994. those cranes that are in there one of them is original one of them is rebuilt we also have one rebuilt that is in um

kind of in our back pockets if we need it. But things are wearing out out there. That transfer station is probably about 30 years old. It's probably about the end of its lifespan. But yeah, some older semis are just nickel and diming us a little bit. And our volume is up. I don't remember the percentage, but we were averaging more than 1,000 tons a week, which A couple of years ago, we were averaging about 850 tons a week. So our volume is also up, which is more trips and more wear and tear on that equipment.

Okay, that's all I had. Thank you. Other comments or questions. Does anyone believe we need to have this meeting tomorrow? If so, speak up please. Okay, we'll cancel the meeting for tomorrow. Just want to call everyone's attention to the budget calendar that was placed in front of you. We did adjust 1 date. We move the meeting that was scheduled on September 10th back to September 9th, which is a Wednesday same time right here in this building special counsel meeting to hold public hearing on the proposed budget. So that's when the proposed budget would be the public hearing on the proposed budget. Excuse me. and then we would reconvene for the regular scheduled council meeting on september 15th as usual okay meeting adjourned everyone thank you for coming there will not be a meeting tomorrow night