Council - Regular Meeting

Join us in our opening ceremonies.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Join me for a moment of silent prayer. Agenda item number three is the approval of tonight's agenda. I don't think there's any Changes so Agenda item for Madigan and yeah, we have some new employees. That's new faces in the city and introduce

We have three new employees and we're actually going to have one sworn in here soon. So, Alisa Smith is our new receptionist. Face as they walk in. She's at our front desk. She is a recent grad of Central College. She and her fiancé are in town, Xavier Peterson. So she has a business management degree from Central, and it's originally from Ohio. So welcome to Elisa. Carter Hubbers. He just joined the park and rec assistant. Thrown right into the fire with all the rec stuff going on, the summer rec. So appreciate that, Carter. Thank you. He and his wife, Tyra, live in town and recently graduated from Northwestern sports management degree.

I don't know how you got that all, but that's okay. We're glad you did.

Glad you're working for us. Yeah, me too. And finally, Luke Dionne comes to us from Brookings and originally from Orange City. moved back with your family, and recently bought a house, but experiencing apartment life for now, right? Yep. For now. Yep. And I think you just joined on July 1st, right? Yes. Your first shift. Yep. So we welcome all three employees.

And we'll welcome Luke up here. I'm going to swear in, not at, at you, Luke. Why don't you come right up here? Yeah. Then Sarah will get a picture, too, I think, for the papers. I didn't do this last time. I'm going to have you raise your right hand. I won't have you stand on one leg. All right. I, Luke DeYoung, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of Iowa, and that I will faithfully and impartially, to the best of my ability, discharge all the duties of the office of police officer in the city of Orange City, as now or hereafter required by law. I do.

I do. Welcome. Thank you. Yeah.

And then it comes to you. He has a signature. Set it down. Good to have you here.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for taking the time to stop in here.

Yeah, absolutely.

takes us to agenda item number five which is citizen comments the time that we allow for Orange City residents to speak or ask questions to the City Council if it's a non agenda item I'm not sure if anybody's here to do that today so we'll go ahead and go to agenda item number six exhibit one in your packet and it's approval of the minutes from June 15th 2026. Kent, are you? Oh, that's the minutes. You're the money. Sorry, my fault. Is there a motion to approve the minutes? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now it is Kent. Exhibit 2, financial report. I was just so excited to see it, Kent.

All right, this is, it wasn't at the last council meeting, so we're doing the approval of May 31's financial report snapshot of cash. A couple things. In April, we paid it in May, our insurance, basically all insurance except health. comes due in April for the city. So like property, auto, workman's comp, liability, umbrella, that kind of stuff. So my point of that is 295,000 came out of the disbursed under the general fund, so annual premium, and then there was 227,000 that came out of the four utilities below. So just FYI, that's why the numbers are low. different this time. And then we collected about $80,000 in property taxes. That went into the general fund under received. And then the other share of that is $55,000 under debt service. This is half of that $80,000, so to speak. The difference went into the general fund. And then electric, you can see cash just went down. And just a couple of comments for the reason why. Dutch front for $100,000 got paid out to access, and then $80,000 was insurance for the electric, and then a $10,000 interest expense for the bonds for the electric comes due on May 1. Last comment that I just want to make is under the general fund, under clerk's balance there, it's $4.4 million. should have in March you know we did all the bond deal for the aerial ladder so that part of the I guess saying it's a little high compared to a year ago from a snapshot and there's two reasons one we closed on some bonds in March and those bonds some of those bond monies got put into an escrow account until June $100,000 in an escrow account that's sitting in the general so to speak. June 1 we paid out or transferred that $800,000 to the debt service to be paid out. So when you see June's it's going to be reduced by escrow account of $805,000 and then really shortly the final payment for the area ladder will be made and that's $696,000 and change. So I'm just saying there's about a $1.5 million because of the bond sale and all that money sitting in there. So it's a little higher than normal. That's all I have. So the debt service, the $100,000 disbursed payment is actually bonds that got paid to It's part of our bond payment for June 1, but it goes directly to REC. And so that actually got dated. I dated that on May 31 to get it there by June 1. And then the last part, pretty self-explanatory, under the capital projects for dispersed, the 7th Street DOT project is 7th Street there with engineering. and a payment to Vanderpoel for 98,000, and then the rest is engineering. And then under project 304, the 25,910, that's canal second edition engineering and Madison Place. That's all I got, unless you guys have any other questions.

Any questions for Kip? What's that? A lot going on. There you go. That's right. Good stuff. So is there a motion to approve the Treasurer's Financial Report? So moved. All those in favor signify by saying yes.

Yes.

All right.

Exempt three is agenda item number eight, which is our monthly bills from June, from May 19, 2026 through June 23, 2026. First page, back engineering.

I usually give you a breakdown of what that is. The first line there is the drawings for the police department, police department office that Peck did some plans for. Strategic planning is the second line. Third line is just general engineering for some storm sewer for 66. The 36,000 is 7th Street DOT. The 13,503 is Canal Second Edition, and the last line there, 6257, is Madison Place. And then, flipping through, hopefully most of these made sense. If they don't, holler. I'm going to page five, Heemstra Lawn Care. It's a little higher than normal. You know, they do some mowing at the event center, do some up-style and spraying. But the 9260 was for striping some lines for a festival on Long Street. So I just wanted to call that out. And then, I don't know, let's see. Oh, the other payment on page nine. We always do interest payment to... For the MOU agreement that we had with Orniston Development Corporation, every six months we pay the interest payment there. So on page nine, you see the two payments for the profit and non-profit. So OCDC, payment of 53 and change, and then to Orniston Development, just a couple down there was 11,008. So that is from January 1 through June 30 on the loan balances on those with Iowa State. Last page, page 10, Rasmussen Mechanical Services. It's the middle of the page. We started a maintenance agreement for the pool. So that is our spring maintenance agreement. It's a semi-annual. So we do it like in the spring and then winterize it basically at the end of the year. And last page. Sue oil on page 11. I just want to give us higher. It's basically May and June fuel bills for $18,000. I believe that's all I have. Yeah. President Wong, the three sets of bunker gear for the fire department, is that because of the new truck, or do we try to update those so many every year? Three sets each year is kind of what we throw in the budget, so we're going to replace them with three sets.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Kent. Okay, I'm going to choose to approve some other bills. Item number nine, electric lighting position.

Yeah, Jason isn't here today, but we will be tabling this for now. We had several good applications, but the the first candidate that we made an offer to need a little bit more time to consider the possibility there. Really excited about the position, just would require relocation. But we do have other folks on the list as well, so we'll probably wait until next time. That's encouraging too to have. Yeah, it really was.

So we will table that one. And agenda item number 10 is code enforcement officer position.

Yes, after several weeks of interviews and considering several candidates, we are recommending the hire of Brian Tooker to code enforcement officer. Brian has worked for two main employers over the last 20 years, Pizza Ranch and Pella Windows. bounce back and forth a couple times between each one. Most recently, he helped manage the Vermillion Pizza Ranch and kind of He did a minor overhaul there, and he brought that to a successful organization and is ready to kind of off-board that. He comes with some sales experience, some construction experience with the Pizza Ranch organization, and certainly some interpersonal and other soft skills required for this position. So pretty excited about Brian joining the team.

Do you have a start date for him?

Later this month, I believe it would be July 27th, so he needed a little bit of time to transition out.

Thanks again to everybody that stepped up and picked up the loose ends that had to be picked up or taken care of. Yeah, they're smart in not calling me, that's for sure. But that's good. So we need a motion to approve Brian Tooker as code enforcement officer. Move. Support. Questions? All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries. Agenda item 11 is we received a renewal application for a Class C retail alcohol license from the Roadhouse and a Class E retail alcohol license from Dutch Smart Foods. And knowing Janet, everything is in order and in place, so we just need a motion to approve those renewals. Move. Support. All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Yes, follow up with a little discussion that we had at the last meeting regarding the hotel-motel tax. Appreciate the discussion with the council and some of the background with that. A couple questions that came out that staff researched a little further, and one of the questions was what are some of the other uses of the hotel-motel tax monies. The Iowa code says that half of the collected has to be used for tourism-related events, and that is for tourism-related purposes. And there's a laundry list of things in the Iowa code that it can be used for. Other towns use it for community events, wayfinding, improvements to trails and pools, other things that can attract people to town, monuments, art, agriculture events, those sorts of things. We sought some guidance from our attorneys about that and they feel good about where we're at with providing an economic development incentive to the local hotels. They've also recommended that we work through a development agreement for that purpose and the city staff will be developing the terms of that and provide a recommendation in the future for approval there. I want to make sure that it's good for both the city and the hotels in town. So I certainly welcome any other discussion or input on that, but that's just some follow-up for that topic. Good.

Questions, comments?

Thanks for doing that. You said half was for tourism.

The other half can be for any city-related purpose. So we'll be coming back with some additional discussion items in the future.

Okay.

Thank you. We've got a couple other items, too, there. So just looking ahead at the calendar, next Monday is the Mayor's Cup. We have a couple folks involved in that and appreciate Ryan and the Mayor's work on helping organize that. That will be next Monday afternoon. And then July 22 is the Customer Appreciation Picnic. It will be city staff and city Ask the council if you're available as well to help out with that. So we'll reach out regarding some open slots for volunteering on that. A couple project updates. Seventh Street, we've been told by the contractor that they should be returning to town soon. I think they had intended to last week, which it's a good thing they didn't with the rain that we had. It could have been pretty tough. You'll notice that there are some golf carts out by by Florida and 7th Street, and that is for local residents as they're going to the west as that road is reconstructed there. So it's moving along. Madison Place is moving along nicely with utility construction. solar is really doing well there. A couple private developments, the Vision Builders property did well. They have their streets paved and are working to close that up. That's made really good progress lately. Our prairie as well is I believe they have construction started on six of their buildings, on all six of their buildings. One is really nearing completion, so let's see that from the highway. And then a little update on trees. I know there's been some damage around town. We were fortunate that we didn't get hit like several area communities with some of the storms. So that was fortunate. We are going out for bids for the last bit of tree removal for the ash tree project.

How many do we have left? Do you know?

Probably a couple dozen. We'll also be addressing a few trees in the parks, and then there's a waterway by the cemetery that will need to be thinned out as well. So we've budgeted, I believe, $70,000 to $80,000 in the last few years for that project.

Janet? Good, quiet 4th of July weekend. Good, quiet 4th of July weekend.

Yeah, very few complaints.

Good. Kent? Anybody else? Ryan? Hey, Ryan, I have a quick question with the Mayor's Cup. If any of these units are working, May I be so bold to invite them to come out to eat if they want to, just to see some people?

Lunch at 11.30. Yeah. If you want to join a team, just send me a note, and we will find a spot for you. It's next Monday, July 13th. Lunch and then what dinners usually? Lunch at 11.30, tee-off at 12.30, and dinner at 5, whenever the last group comes in. Okay. We'd love to have any of the council members.

Yeah, yeah. Even if you want to just come out, it's a good way to meet some of our people. We have Woutz just doing the lunch, right? And Foxhole.

And Foxhole for the first time will do a buffet dinner. Yeah. And we get an update from the mayor.

Yeah. Probably written by Ryan. No, I'm kidding.

we'll have some three sessions of training for our firefighters, and then our current aerial, 5-6-2-1, will be going to Salix. And then we've also contracted with them that we'll go down there and do a full day of training for their firefighters down there. Great. And then we'll probably have open house, whatever, and have people come and take a ride. Great.

Good.

I'll be up there.

Council, Andrew. I have nothing.

i know you're shocked it's like the first time that's ever happened but i don't have anything mark um we have not since then last time but um obviously with adding brian now we'll have our full committee so yeah he's on that too isn't he yeah that's in the code is him mike and then myself and two at large basically so we'll get we'll get him up to speed and What is your usual meeting?

Or isn't there? Just when it's needed? Okay. That'll be good.

So, good question.

Anything else? No. No. No. Good. No. No. I don't see anything either, so we can have a motion to adjourn. So moved. Support. All those in favor say yes. Yes.

Thank you everybody.