City Council - Regular Meeting

There we go. Good evening everyone and welcome to the Alvette City Council. Um, can we please have roll call? Mayor Clark here. Chairman Prom while here. Council member Solomonov here. Council member Pashan Helman here. Council member Lewis here. Okay, we're going to open for communications. Are there any any communications to share? We have no written communications. Okay. Can I please have Officer Clark welcome the third up to the office so we can square this young man in.

Uh, right there is fine. Thank you. to have another wife here. Two. Yes. Two. My other supervisors.

Thank you. a little bit about you so everybody knows what great impairment is unmuted.

Joining our ranks on December 18th, 2025, Clark Welcome graduated from the St. Louis County and Municipal Police Academy. Clark is 25 years old and is incredibly grateful for the support of his wife Melody and his two daughters Savannah and Margot. They are the reason he has been able to pursue his goals. Their encouragement has carried him through every step of his journey. Clark served in the military since 2018 and is currently serves with the Illinois Army National Guard as a CBN CBRN, a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear specialist. Say that a couple of times. Okay. Um, his time in the Army National Guard has strengthened his sense of duty, discipline, and commitment to protect others. In Clark's free time, he enjoys working on personal projects as well as contributing to open-source software. As Clark enters the poling policing field, he is driven by genuine interest to engage the community and strong dedication to helping ensure that everyone makes it home safely. Okay. All right. So, I need you to repeat after me, sir. I and state your name. I

do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I possess all the qualifications that I possess all qualifications to serve as police officer for the city of Eloet. serve as police officer for the city of Alvette St. Louis County, Missouri. St. County, Missouri. And that I will support the Constitution of the United States. That I will support the Constitution of the United States and the State of Missouri and the State of Missouri and the charter and ordinances of the city of Eloet. City of that I will faithfully discharge the duties that I faithfully discharge the duties of this office by abiding by the law enforcement code of ethics. of this office by abiding by the law enforcement code of ethics. I recognize the badge of my office. I recognize that in my office

as a symbol of public faith as a as a symbol of public faith and I accept and I accept it as a public trust to be held and honored. And I accepted as a public trust to be held and honored. Congratulations, sir.

Sir, and I understand that your constituents weren't able to make it because of some sickness in the house. That's all right. Yeah, I got a gang over so I understand. Let's get a picture together, shall we?

Get out of there. Just one sec. sir. Glad to have you. Okay, at this point we're going with the city manager report. Good evening everyone.

Okay. Uh welcome to the first uh council meeting of 2026. Uh we have a couple of things this evening. Uh first and foremost, we'll give you an update of Olive Crossing. So uh lot 3 is moving along. So the tenants are working on their respective spaces. So Paris Baguette and Brass Tap. Um, Olivet Brass Tap has a Facebook page and they're sort of posting some construction uh pictures every once in a while. So, if you're really interested in seeing uh their progress, I would encourage you to follow them um on Facebook, but they are both working on their respective spaces. Uh Tropical Smoothie, we have issued their permits and Verizon, we have also issued their permits. I think they're also working through getting some of their mechanical, electrical, and plumbing permits through St. those counties. So we would expect once those to be um issued uh more work to be started on those two tenant spaces as well. And then again there is just the one remaining uh vacant tenant space uh for lot 3. So as you can see this is an aerial photo that uh one of our inspectors Mike Hotstetler um took today. So this is uh very upto-date uh photos and so you can see that there's uh a lot of activity there uh on the site. Uh lot five is the uh what was originally planned to be an office but will likely be um two restaurants. So we've been talking about the progress of the restaurant and the vice president who came in. Um, so the tenant and the owner are negotiating a lease. So they have exchanged um [clears throat] edits to a lease. Uh, they're likely going to be for another

couple of weeks back and forth. Um, but once they get that lease finalized, then we will be able to announce uh who the new um the new restaurant will be in the city. So as soon as we're able to announce that, we will do that. Uh, lot six is the hotel. It did make it all the way through PCDC with approval. So, staff is waiting for the construction drawings to be submitted. Um, they do have a deadline per the most recent development agreement that they need to start grading on the site by January 31st. So likely what grading is going to mean is um removing they have about 1,200 or um truckloads of dirt that need to be taken off that site. Uh they have an open grading permit so they don't need anything from us to start uh relocating that dirt off the site. So, we have been poking the developer uh to get that started and that um the weather has been beautiful to be moving dirt.

Uh so, we uh there's an expectation that things starts moving. You say that number 1200 1,200 that's what they told me. 1,200 truckloads. It's a lot of dirt. That's a lot of dirt. It's a lot of dirt. And likely what happens is um they often try and find another construction site that needs dirt. So that's often what they what they will do. So that is weeks of again lovely. Yeah, weather is beautiful. Snow tomorrow. You just don't know. You can still dig dirt.

Um they don't have to be done by the 31st, but we need to see some progress. So they're aware of the deadline. And then of course lot one and two this is the Aldi which is complete and then lot four is uh the Clover which is also complete. Uh upcoming events tomorrow morning uh is coffee with the mayor at Five Oaks and our guests are the owners of Paris Baguette and the owners of Brass Tap. So, we would encourage people to come out and meet uh our future um business owners here uh here in Olivet. Uh the pet adoption event that originally was going to happen uh after Thanksgiving was rescheduled. It's going to happen this Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. uh up at Five Oaks. Uh this sort of is very timely uh as St. County, the uh shelter is doing some construction uh and they are at a point where they uh they need to adopt out as many dogs or find as many um foster homes as they can so they can continue that uh interior renovation and construction. So, if you are at all able or wanting to adopt a pet, we'd certainly love to see you at Five Oaks this Saturday. Um the annual citizens police academy is going to start back up in February. This is a cooperative with uh area law enforcement agencies to give citizens an opportunity to see uh what it is like to be a police officer. So um we would encourage anyone who is interested to sign up. Um the city of Creve Corps handles the signups. So you can either

follow the link that's provided or the QR code. Um but you will land on the city of CRE core page and that uh you are in the right spot as they are handling uh signups for all of the the agencies. And then uh we had three blood drives here uh at the city center in 2025. And uh we had a goal of 60 units of blood. And um the citizens actually we exceeded our goal. We had 78 units out of a goal of 60 units and those 78 units uh have the potential to impact 234 patients. So we just wanted to say thank you to everybody who came and donated uh and helped us exceed our goal um for 2025. And then again, I just encourage everybody to sign up for the Alvette Weekly, which is the electronic newsletter that goes out every week. And then here are the upcoming meeting dates. And just a note that city center will be closed January 19th in observance of uh Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Uh five Oaks, the hours at Five Oaks are not affected, so they will be open as normal. So, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Do we have any questions from the council? Okay, then uh we'll move on uh for our city council reports and we'll start with uh council member Solomon. I have no report for today.

Okay. Uh we'll go to council member Kate Pishon Hillman. [clears throat] Um, two things, not from meetings, but one just I'm really happy to report. Um, you may remember months ago when the fire department was decommissioning fire hoses, um, we were able to partner with a business in St. Louis or a nonprofit um with circular STL and they are looking into ways to reppurpose those fire hoses into bags and koozies and um so it's just it's fun to create a new partnership and avoid some um items going to the landfill. So, we'll kind of wait to see what goodies those things are turned into, but their goal is to hopefully turn them into things that could also be uh used by firefighters.

So, very cool. Keep us posted. Yeah. And then the other is just um a heads up about the climate action summit that's taking place January 29th to the 30th. There is a special track in that climate action summit for uh elected officials and local governments and that's organized through one STL part of the east east west gateway council of governments and uh Wu is hosting um not at their main campus but another site. Anyway, that's all for me. Okay. Council member Lewis. Uh no updates since PCDC's uh hasn't had a meeting in a month, but we'll have one this Thursday. Okay. Mayor Pro Tim.

Uh no no um meetings at this time. All right. I don't have anything to report as well. Um so we're going to from hearing from citizens and I don't see anyone in the room at this time. So we'll move on [clears throat] to the presentation and approval of financial statements and audit for the fiscal year ending June 30th 2025. Coming to the microphone is our department manager for finance, Mr. Darren May.

Good. Uh thank you again. My name is Darren May. I'm the finance director for the city. We have a short presentation here. Uh uh this is a followup from what we heard from uh Allan with UHY last week during the work session. Uh so uh let's go to the next slide and we'll just get started here. Uh remind everybody we have three primary documents that we use for a lot of our financial planning. Uh this is the audited financial statements. So the only thirdparty look we get at this stuff and then in uh in June we talk about our budget and our capital improvement plan. So with that uh let's go to the next slide and it's available right now but we don't have anybody in the audience. So um it these are all available the all the archives back 10 10 or 11 years are all in there that's 109 pages let's go ahead and go to the next slide but you can see the cover there 109 pages we'll just talk about a couple uh just to and then to summarize uh since the work sessions aren't recorded uh we do have uh Allan told us about an unqualified clean opinion which is uh good and then um it is 109 pages because we have some uh advanced uh kind statistical section in the back and more budgetary comparison schedules uh throughout and it it's uh the certificate of achie a achievement is kind of the gold star for reporting for uh uh governmental reports. Uh this will be our ninth year uh to receive uh receive that award um management report which is online. I won't go over it there, but you can see there there's uh no recommendations on kind of improvements that they saw, no findings, and then uh no difficulties with me uh or the staff in preparing the audit. So, all good news kind of housekeeping stuff. If we were to go forward, go ahead. Let's go one. Not much there, but uh the management discussion analysis is first. If we only have 15 minutes, I'd ask that we read these first 10 15 pages. Uh but the highlights you would see there that um $2.2 2 million worth of grants were

administered. Uh the opening of the um trails and sections of the Centennial Greenway or sorry, yeah, Centennial Greenway Trail, which is part of that $2.2 million in grants. Uh our net position decrease $440,000. However, if we were to take away the TIFF notes, um it would have been a $5 million increase. Uh and then just to kind of recap where we're at, there are $24.1 million in uh TIFF notes and unpaid acred interests that sit on our uh the governmentwide which is the full acral uh balance sheet and it really drags down uh the like the net position inside of that on that statement. Um if we were to take that away uh and the reason I would we would so kind of classify that is um the city will never have to actually repay that itself. Uh once the tiff expires, then uh so does the debt. Um from there, $293,000 decrease in our general fund fund balance. We'll talk about that in a second. Uh overall in all of our governmental funds, which would summarize all of our financial reporting that we talk about every month, would be a $253,000 increase. And so um it we'll go with some of the other themes we'll talk about in a little bit. We concentrate a lot on our general fund. It has a lot of our operations and a lot of money in it, but we have other special revenue funds that are mostly sales taxes and other kinds of taxes that we can use as tools um and ask to help with operations oftent times. Um and then the other kind of big uh item that sits on a balance sheet from a governmentwide is a statement of net position is um the pension items which is pension assets and then those liabilities. In all of that, we had a 10% improvement in our net pension liability. So, kind of the bad side uh to $9.1 million. So, between $25 million at 24.1 in TIFF, $9.1 million in net pension liability, it turns in um I I want to say someone in

the negative 2600 in kind of this unrestricted um net position. And so, um with those things, two things uh again, TIFF would have to never have to be repaid. Once it expires that disappears and then the net pension liabilities are uh difficult to manage in one year over even short even medium periods of time. Uh they also get paid out over long periods of time. Something to manage but not something that we kind of would manage at the um near-term policy level even even at in my level or even at staff level. It happens at council and at that pension um that pension board level. Something to discuss but we won't be discussing it uh much more tonight. So, uh, at our highest level, let's go one more, uh, slide. We can see, um, this is a lot of what we saw last year. We have confirmation, uh, of of a transition that's happened, uh, with our financial statements and within the city kind of operations itself. Our capital projects are are largely grant funded. Previous to that, they would be um they were a lot of debt or bond funded between the a lot of the parks, this building, and uh, and at Five Oaks. Um, now we're transitioning into big capital items are grant funded. Uh, we have some matching inside of there. We have some costs ourselves. Uh, what we're going to be looking forward towards to is the cost share. We're right in the middle of it. We're going to see more of that kind of thing. Uh, North Price are redoing North Price Road. It'll be largely an NSTP project and we're putting in some, but also grant funded itself. We can't fund these things ourselves oftent times. Um, our sales taxes have waned. Um but they are recovering a little bit and we have we're looking toward the future for some more um expectant growth with some of our developments. Uh five Oaks has opened but there's little change um otherwise. So the drag that we had is still kind of the drag that still remains um and something that we'll be

um talking about in the future. Uh we remain in front of a amid grants funded boom like I just said most of our capital grants will be done through through uh capital items. The projects will be funded through grants. And so from a high level, our expenditures are continuing continue to face inflationary pressures with wages, um, with the things that we buy. Some things we don't buy very often, but when we now we've had to buy them over the two or three or four years, we see that the the prices have increased and those bleed over into our budgets and and those nickels and dimes add up. The uh revenues like I said are expectant on on a lot of this redevelopment. Uh the sales tax waning not unique to us. Expend uh inflationary uh kind of pressures. That's not unique to I said there. So one thing that is unique and kind of adds a a real brightness to some of these charts we're going to look at is that um we have businesses that are opening. We have people that want to build here and that's a really um provides a lot more uh in some ways unknowns but in other ways um it it can make you a little bit more comfortable with some of those expenditures going up in that that gap. Uh our reserve policy will will govern this in the meantime and that's what we've been talking about for the last year and we'll continue to another big highlight I guess at the highest level is that our parks foundation here is reported here for the first time. it gets kind of shoved in the back because it's a non- major fund in page 6263 but that's um it is with our reporting or financial reporting um and it will remain that way. So uh for uh before I go any further you can more than happy to raise your hand or just peek your eyebrows is all it takes sometimes. Okay, good. uh statistical se let's go to the next page in the back we get our financial statements and a lot of the components over time and we get them over 10 years and you can really show and you can really look at uh maybe

different ways to look at a set of numbers. Unfortunately the uh way the governmental uh financial statements are set they're one year. They're not even comparative with the year before. You could compare budget to actuals later on. Um, but the only chance you'll really get is with a statistical section in in the back. You'll also get some debt related information over time and some of the overlapping uh debt, which is how much does um a citizen here, how much do they have um the debt load of the Leoo School District along with St. Louis County? What is it per person? And it's can be um it it's a little trivial to us um but you know the rating agencies do look at that stuff as far as uh what should we look at uh for the future.

So we show great growth over the last 10 years. Um the on top of that is great growth in our expenditures and our revenues. This the core revenues are fairly stable and the metrics look fairly stable. When I say that is um a lot of our sales taxes, while they have went down, the special revenues have stayed pretty pretty um pretty even. Property taxes continue to go up. Our valuations continue to go up and the usages in our utilities continue to to be stable. Um so like I it says there, we have our our special revenues. So, our special revenues are the the extra sales taxes, uh, capital improvement, we have a storm water park sales tax, we have a fire operations sales tax. Those are special revenues because they're dedicated for a special use. Uh, those are outside of the general fund. And again, they kind we don't talk about them a lot, but they are uh being asked to help. Uh, and they are they do show growing fund balances in inside of that, too, which is uh good because those it's on the recovery those sales taxes. One thing I asked uh I spoke about last week uh after Allan had kind of done with this thing is is on page 10. And so let's go to the next slide and we'll kind of look at this. Now the dark lines I know there's a lot going on. The dark lines which is red and blue are what's are the chart that's in in the on page 10. So what I did is I took the the budgeted numbers at that time and and kind of overlaid them on that same chart. And what the the big note here is that in FY26, the very end, they all match. This is what we budgeted. This is what these looked like when the day that we approved the budgets. And then we see uh actual results in these dark blue lines. And they all kind of uh tell a story. So we'll take apart uh one at a time. Let's go to the next slide. And this is what it looked like when we budgeted this. And

they're really close. this court is

we I will only note that in FY21 is really close to FY26. In FY20 and 21, we were seeing a a weighing in our sales taxes and in FY18 was when the sales taxes began. So in 18 they happened quickly. I wasn't we weren't sure if they're going to stay in 19 and then in uh we budgeted somewhere close there and then they gave out in 20 toward the end of uh 19 and then in 20 and 21 really weren't sure what was going to happen during uh throughout the uh pandemic and so we get uh negative budgeting and so in 26 was the same as as as 25 and we kind of face the same things of how much is enough and how much is too much and how much can how long can we continue this Um, so with that, let's go to the next slide and we'll look at just our expenditures. And there's a reason for that, but mostly because this is a little more boring. On the expenditure side, uh, the highlights that we see here that create a lot of these big gaps. In FY20, we had a heavy turnover in our fire department. And then in FY24, which has another bigger gap here, uh heavy turnover in our police and fire department or sorry, in the police department, that continued into 25. And then uh in FY25, we had some uh a lot of part-time wage variances as we've adjusted to what is happening at Five Oaks. And so it creates gaps inside of our expenditures. Now, this is just one side, but you can see these are all, you know, fairly close uh to what we get. But if we go to the next slide and on the revenue side you can see huge variations. Now this can be caused by lots of things. Um but uh first and foremost are we okay? Your monitor died.

Okay. Okay. Good. No, you're fine. Just want to make sure we get enough uh time to pay attention. The um sales taxes in FI18. So in 18 we see this is the first year of our of the big increase in our sales taxes. This is the last time we'll kind of see this chart. If we were to look at it before you'll see this huge climb up to where the these levels that we're at right now. 19 uh pretty close but we see those sales taxes on the actual the dark blue line actually kind of go down a little bit. And so that affects your budgeting for the next year and that's why we see that gap. But lo and behold it held out. they were waning, but in FY20, this was increased by uh 300,000, which is about one of those little ticks right there on the chart because we sold city hall. So, if we take that away, you see this dip a little bit. And then the in FY21, we see um also a pretty decent gap there. And that's because late in the year, we received uh about 500,000 in uh CAR's Act funding. So, there's two little blips on this uh two little notches inside of that blue line that that raise it up. 22, nice boring year, and we were actually pretty close. In 23, late in the year, we see there's a gap there. In 23 it accelerated as everything kind of worked its way up and but we received um a cell phone a settlement in our from from the cell phone companies uh for non-payment of taxes that had been going on for seven eight something odd years. And so why would that increase in our budgets? We didn't predict that. It's because we thought five Oaks was going to open. So we made we were right really close in FY23 but for all the wrong reasons. It's a onetime revenue source. The other thing I'll note as we get these things usually when you see a late a big revenue source like that you'll see a budget amendment because there's probably something we want to spend it on right somebody like a one-time thing

let's spend it on something these all came uh in like uh April and in May and so some of the times even in June so we weren't even able to to like predict that it was going to happen and then do a budget amendment to spend it. So what that does, it all goes into the bank account and we continue on with our spending. Um and then we're talking about the next year's budget which uh we in general won't do much for for deficit spending. So in FY24 then what do we see here? This huge gap and it looks like we're driving this place off the cliff. Um the community this is the first full year of our community center. So we had some advanced costs. It opened in November. our cost began here in September to kind of uh open and prepare that. It was also um some of the like upfitting and general items that we had thought would have been included with uh those bond funds. There was no more bond funds to spend. So they ended up uh sitting here in our general fund. And then in FY25, we would have had the same deficit sitting here without the reallocation of the ARPA funds. So what we see is this gap here in 25 and into 26. And this gap remains today. Uh and it's largely caused by two things. One, the opening of the community center, that subsidy, and that decline in sales taxes. And so these are things we're going to be continuing to talk about. And we're expectant that these things will go up. You can see where we expect the line to be here on this light blue line. So more variability, all with a story. Uh, and like I said last week, I don't expect you never expect onetime revenue sources. Um, but there's been there's a lot of them in this chart that all adds up to this is why we have this larger fund balance. And so now with our uh so let's we're going to look at uh go one more slide

and we're going to look at it one more time about what this looks like in a and it's a mess. But reason it looks mess and it's kind of dirty here is because they're all so close together. These things don't end up these gaps that we get even in uh like FY25 and and uh the budget for 26. These uh the one for 25 is listed there like I said is about $300,000 and this is on you know 89 $10 million worth of revenue. And so like I said they're close and it makes it hard to really read what's going on. But if we go to our next slide, you can see then it converts into something like this. And this is takes just the FY26 budget. It has a 25 audit, the 26 uh then budget. And then we can see that uh kind of declining uh blue line that we've been talking about for we're pushing it a year now and we'll continue to kind of talk about it about what it means. Now, when we, if you remember, in June, we approved a um a budget that was out of compliance with our reserve policy. But lo and behold here, if we had had our crystal ball, we would have um we would have actually been in compliance. And I'll reiterate those things. Um that the reallocation of that ARPA money really boosted up in in the neighborhood of three or $400,000, 500,000. Uh it increased that fund balance just with the the stroke of a pen. Um in FY26 we had this uh um an upswing in our revenues with the open of Aldi and when in governmental accounting you get to count the first two months of the current fiscal year. So it would be July and August you get to move them back because of when they those sales occurred at the cash register. And so um we get to count those. So we had an upswing that increased that fund balance. And then if we were to look at our expenses for FY26, our workers comp, um we didn't get the balance, the the actual update of the the rates um until uh after our budget was approved just a

day or two after. So we were signaling that we had been signaled that it was going to be 20% 20% and it ends up being about 10. So uh that's savings that we'll will carry into for next year. it wouldn't necessarily be reflected in this uh in that blue line quite yet, but as we enter our um budgeting um season, uh we'll be taking a look at those things. So that is uh what we see last week was Allen looking at 6 June 30th of 25. That's 6 months ago. What does it mean for today? and we can kind of see what what it means and um hopefully we can get uh at least maintain our confidence in our budgeting even though we said we're out of compliance even though we have some of these uh deficits I think it's under control and we can continue this line right here for about 15 years just like that and so we have time we can see what happens at our at our developments we can see what happens uh at five oaks and we can adjust our expenditures as we as we go forward

yeah what do you they continue in line for 15 years because I'm seeing in 5 years we're almost right at if I'm reading this right we're about right at compliance but another year after that we could be out of compliance correct right and so the the difference is reserve policy compliance versus like out of money and that's why agreed I guess I'm always of the view and think will agree with me but like yeah so it's and I know it's not for tonight but just how do we make that line stop going down of course at the end yeah and and how much is enough and at what point should we and and what happens. How do you make that line go down? You make that line go down by increasing revenues or cutting, you know, expenses or a combination of both. And um you know, not not go down, but not stop going down. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I understand what you're saying. And uh that's what the things we we need we've been kind of talking about. We talked about it at the beginning of December. Should we change uh how much is enough? Can you remind me again what the reserve policy percentage is? Sure. It's 50% in f the current year. So FY26 and 50% of expenditures as we project into the for Oh, so 50% of the general fund. I mean, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Is that what you referred to as the floor? You could. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

And so we could establish a floor of of um 5 million. You know, that would be like a true floor that would never really move. Like we want five million bucks in the bank because I think we could, you know, get through about anything when it comes to that. So again, tonight, this is kind of a summary of of of where we've been and maybe where we're kind of heading. Uh and so as we begin budgeting, we begin some of our goal setting process. Um and we can um make better decisions and and maybe be more comfortable with with uh what that line looks like in the future. And you know, what should the line look like? What should the orange bars look like? And can you remind me, Darren, is that line um based on assumptions that what happened this year will happen next year for the foretermining the

the way that that largely they're uh we'll say like 1 to 2% increases in revenues and then 3 to 4% increases in expenditures. Okay. uh it it varies a little bit and we can definitely get into those kinds of things as we uh and those things we talk about with some of our our budgeting exercises just to make sure because I can I can make that number we can make that that line do a lot of things with just a you know a a one or two% will do do a big difference in that well and I think about like for example the hotel and potentially the restaurants or whatever it is. Yeah. Do we make say well it's going to be more than 1% because that's actually you know three big things opening up or something like that. You bet. So, uh, those are really big key assumptions to to kind of do,

but are they usually included in here or no? You're more conservative, right? Uh, those are not in there. There is no hotel inside of this. There is a Irvington Place an increase in uh, in the property taxes that's going to open and it's going to be, you know, it's going to be taxed. Okay. Uh, and so if it's out of the ground and uh, usually it will occur in inside of our um, our reserve policy, our forecasting. So, I'm gathering and I'm not disagreeing with you, but you're less concerned than we are partially because things change always, right? So, we'll adjust and we'll kind of see and we know we know good things are coming potentially. So, I know the numbers and I'm comfortable. That does not mean that you have to be comfortable with that. No, but it makes me feel better if you're than if you're scared. So, you know,

and that's right. If we had no idea, you know, if we had an RFP going over here and the developer just went bankrupt. Yeah. And the banking is troubling. I you know I think we have a different conversation if we don't have people building uh apartments and if we had no to to me my bigger concern would be is if we had no foresight into future revenue growth other than hope or tax increase or something like that but we have projects we know are coming they're not built yet there you things happen delays happen people go bankrupt etc but that's at least a positive trend that isn't part of here yet so to your point some some leniency to say what happens in a year or two kind of watching it is.

So, for example, as we come uh you know, we're going to have a couple sales tax generators coming online here in the next couple couple months and we'll be including those in our uh our forecasting. They're not in there at all right now. That's good to know. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And so, we can talk about what those what those mean. Uh that's uh you know, part of part of forecasting. Yeah. Good. Uh the only thing I would ask if we go one more slide is an approval of the audited financial statements as presented. I'll entertain a motion. I'll make a motion to approve the audited financial statements as presented on January 13th. Second. Can we please pull the council? Council member Lewis. Yes.

Council member Pashan Helman. Yes. Council member Solomonov. Yes. Chairman Prom. Yes. Mayor Clark. Yes. Motion has passed. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. All right. So, Mel, uh, we're going on to item number seven, the pension board appointments. Are there any presentations?

Um, just a short, not even really a presentation, um, but just a confirmation that, uh, at the work session last week, the council interviewed, uh, candidates for the pension board. There are two openings. And so the staff is requesting a motion to appoint Mr. Nate Mahoney to the pension board for the term that's ending uh July 31st, 2028 and then appointing Miss Chasse Smith to the pension board to complete the unexpired term of Mike Rendenburgg uh ending July 31st, 2026. Okay. Are there any questions from the council? the very small detail, but Mike Verenberg's last name is misspelled. Has an extra N in there.

We will take that out. Okay. Well, I'll entertain a motion to approve. I'll make a motion to appoint Nate Mahoney to the pension board for the term ending on August 31st, 2028 and appointing Chassis Smith to the pension board to complete the unexpired term of Mike Bradenberg ending on August 31st, 2026. Sorry, July 31st. Thank you. 2026. Second. Okay. Can we please pull the council? Council member Lewis. Yes. Council member Pashan Helman, yes. Council member Solomonov, yes. Chairman Prom, yes. Mayor Clark, yes. Motion has passed.

Were these people notified already? Yes. We've taken care of all of that. All the candidates have been All right. So, part eight is hearing from citizens. Seeing that we have none, at this time, we'll go on to item number nine, review and acceptance of minutes. Um, are there any corrections in the minutes that anyone has seen? Okay. I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes. I'd like to make a motion to approve the minutes uh from the council work session on January 6, 2026 and council minutes from December 9th, 2025. Second. Okay. Can we please pull the council? Council member Lewis. Yes. Council member Pashan Helman.

Yes. Council member Solomonov. Yes. Chairman Promo. Yes. Mayor Clark. Yes. Motion is passed. Okay. And we will now pause for the city attorney's report. No report this evening, but we do need a just a brief close session pursuant to subsection 1 of61021. All right. I'll entertain a motion to go into close session for attorney client privilege matters. I'll make a motion to hold an executive session pursuant to the revised statutes of the state of Missouri section 610.0211 0211 legal action or litigation and attorney client privilege matters. All right. Can I have a second, please? Second. All right. Can we please pull the council? Council member Lewis.

Yes. Council member Pashan Halman. Yes. Council member Solomonov. Yes. Chairman Promile. Yes. Mayor Clark. Yes. Motion has passed. The regular meeting is now closed and we're going into close session. Please. We are now reopening the meeting. No decisions were made. Um I will uh entertain a motion to adjurnn. I make a motion to adjurnn. Have a second. Second. So be it.