City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, I'll go ahead and call to order tonight's meeting for Monday, July 20th, 2026.

Yes, sir. That's Pastor Dave. Say a prayer. Dear Holy Father, we come before you tonight. We just ask that you would be present in this meeting. Help us make wise decisions. We pray for proper decorum tonight, that people would be able to speak their minds without fear of argument. And Lord, we just pray that your spirit would be present here and keep it positive. In Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, I will start requesting for a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Mr. Mayor, the consent agenda is not right. It has four to zero and all five of us was here last meeting. We can't hear you.

Which minutes?

minutes that was for the consent agenda.

Okay so the consent agenda here has two sets of minutes. There's the minutes from the meeting on the 6th and the minutes from the meeting on the 15th. On the 6th. On the 6th there was only four here and then on the 15th there were all It's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda discussion all in favor I see that we have a few public comments here and several speakers i'm going to rearrange that a little bit if everyone's all right with that and have our two primary ones that we have coming today speak first to be mindful of their time we have someone from bg consultants good evening mayor

City Council. I'm Jason Hoskinson, engineer with BG Consultants, and you've got some information in your packet. I also handed out some with the document with the paper clip on it. It's got some color photos in the back that we'll get to. I just kind of want to run down some of the projects and different things that we have going with the city right now, give you a status update, maybe get some direction on a couple items. Just start right down from the top to the bottom. First item, the filter building roof replacement project. I've actually got a text on my way down here tonight. We got the contract books and everything back from the contractor. So we'll be double checking all that and the bonds and everything. Get that over to the mayor for city signature and then we'll start coordinating with the contractor on material deliveries. working with the guys at the water plant on project schedules and kind of taking that towards the next step of implementation. So that's all I got tonight on that one for an update, unless there's a question about the actual roof replacement. The next one kind of ties into that, and I really don't have much of an update on that, but that's the backup water supply. Last I knew, the wholesale district had their engineer working on their hydraulic model. They're working on getting some information that they can propose to the city on what a supply to the city would look like. Yes, sir.

I talked with Harry Smith over there at District 13, and they said that they got their study back.

okay awesome awesome so as soon as we get that and I'll work with the mayor you guys be able to see that of course and then I'll review kind of what they're offering or what they're proposing and how that could fit within the system and we can kind of work down a path there and see if that's something that's something that makes sense for the community to pursue so that's on the backup water supply the next item here infrastructure evaluation for a potential residential development south side of town there i sent over uh just our standard agreement to propose to work hourly to help help the community out be the city's engineering representative to review what they're proposing and and how that would relate to your sewer your water and sewer system what that connection what those connections would look like Again, proposed it hourly, not to exceed $5,000. I mean, if it's just a couple of evaluations and whatnot, it might be more like $500, but depending on how many revisions and reiterations and back and forth we go into those meetings, I'd be available for that. But that's kind of the gist of that one. That one, if there is no further discussion or questions on that or any questions of me, that one, in order to engage our services, would need a motion from the council.

Council want to move on that at this time, or would you like time to actually review this in full and then put it to the next agenda?

I'd like to have time to review it myself.

Everybody else agree on that?

Yeah, I'd prefer to put it under review and have it on the next agenda. Okay.

Sure thing. Yeah, that's fine. If there are any questions, feel free to reach out to the mayor, reach out to me directly if you do want to or however you want to handle that. But like I said, it's basically just here to help you guys evaluate what that development might look like and how you can serve it and what that may look like as far as the impact on your system. So that is that one. Okay, the Stege Lake Dam Repair Project. Included kind of a brief update on this. I think for your last meeting if you're able to see that Kind of going backwards on this. So last year there was a leak around the Spillway weir wall staff replaced or dug it up fixed it plugged it temporarily Council directed us towards the end of last year to work on trying to get a contractor in place to really dig it up compact it and put it back the way it was originally built originally designed and I've been coordinating with DWR, they have concerns about doing that. Basically, they've got at least two times if not three times that that leak has happened like that and they're concerned that it's just putting something back is not really fixing the problem and not correcting an issue that's arisen a couple of times now. We're kind of at this conundrum of DWR is not going to permit digging into the dam to try to compact and replace that without some type of engineering design. We know what's out there has had multiple, I hate to use the word failure because it's not a full failure. It's a leak, it's a seep, it's a problem. If it doesn't get addressed when it happens, it could become a bigger failure of the dam itself. wanted to get some feedback from the council tonight. If this is something, I don't know where you're at as far as comfort wise on the budget, you know, typically what I would see with a dam of this type would be more of a drop inlet structure with a pipe through the dam. And then you'd have that full embankment, all that soil there to resist the water going through the dam. Right now you have, a large dam embankment all the way around to the spirit spillway wall. And then it's basically half of the embankment. So there's not as much soil there to resist the water. And I think that's why it's all, you're having this problem with a continuous seep every couple of years, three, five years or whatever it is that keeps blowing out. So, um, obviously going back and taking out the wall, putting in a drop inlet structure pipe and embankments a whole lot more money than just digging up what you have and re-compacting it. So, I guess I'm at a point here where I would need some direction from the council on how you'd like to proceed with this. If you want to look at pursuing a more in-depth type of repair replacement project, if you'd like to table it, if you'd like to visit with DWR directly, there's some different options there.

Does DWR have grants available for emergency grants or something like that?

not really no there there's a couple of programs out there but not really for this category or this this particular dam unfortunately no there's not a lot of grant funding options out there i'd say table it until we figure out our budget that's what i would say because we don't even know what our budget's going to be yet so until we figure out our budget i would say just we have to table it Yeah, I haven't put much effort into this at all. No bills yet. We haven't really done anything other than trying to reach out to DWR and get it moving forward. So it sounds like the table's kind of the consensus at the time. So I'll do that, bring that up in another month or two here, a couple months, and we'll see kind of where things are at.

Okay, thank you, sir.

The next item, I brought along some preliminary plans for the KDOT cost share street project. And the second page of what I handed out tonight is actually an opinion of probable construction costs based on where we're at with the design. So we're getting pretty close to the end of designing this project. Again, this is the street improvements on Cedar Street from 4th to 10th. and then on Ash Street from 10th, there by the high school, all the way down to 17th? 17th Street, past the high school and swimming pool. There's a good portion there kind of towards the south end of the high school going south where the road's pretty much blown up. That'll be full depth replacement, fixing the base, replacing the base, ditch grading on the whole project, regrading the ditches, getting the drainage where it needs to be, and then patching and overlaying all the streets. Well, not all the streets, but the streets within that area. Bringing it to you tonight for an update that is funded 85% by KDOT for the construction phase up to a total construction cost of $726,000. And as you saw on the back page there, we're currently estimating about a $700,000 construction projects. We're right in line where I would expect the budget and costs to come together. So we're sitting pretty good there. um next steps on this will be to final up the design i would anticipate two to three more weeks to wrap that up and then we'll be ready to advertise this and get bids and then bring bid results back to the council so can you elaborate for all those guys out there how that grant works sure i can yeah so um The KDOT cost share grant is a reimbursement program. So the city basically pays for all of the design, the construction administration, and the construction cost upfront, and then the city can ask for partial reimbursement requests from KDOT as the project progresses through construction. And so KDOT will pay 85% of that total construction cost. I don't recall the exact numbers in the math off the top of my head, but I wanna, well, I guess I could do the math here real quick. Let's do this real quick. 700 times .85. So on that $700,000 construction contract, as the city makes those payments monthly towards the contractor, towards the end of the project, up to about 600,000 of that will be reimbursed to the city. So you gotta have the cash up front to make the payments. And then you'll get reimbursed for that on the backside basically as construction is complete.

So we have to have it bid out by the end of August?

Yeah, we can ask for an extension from KDOT if that's the council's desires. But yeah, the goal would be to bid it out by August, this August, and then bring the bids back to the council to consider awarding the contract. and then it'll progress forward kind of like on a roof replacement where council will award the project to the low bidder. We'll work with the contractor, usually takes a couple of months for them to get bonds and contracts, KDOT approvals and everything in place for the program and for the project. And at that point, we'll then look at schedules with the contractor. It might start work at the end of this year or most of it might actually tail over into spring of next year. And that's when the big invoices will come due is once they start work. They'll do a month's worth of work. We'll check the invoices, make sure what they're asking for is appropriate, submit that to the council for partial payment as they progress through.

Wasn't the original design 1,200 feet of Cedar Street?

The grant application was 4th to 10th on Cedar.

When you talked to us about it, you said 1,200 feet of Cedar Street. All of Ash and 1,200 of Cedar. That's what I remember.

Yeah, I'd have to check back through my memory. But yeah, I look back at the grant application, what was submitted to KDOT, and it was 4th to 10th. From what you were thinking, would that get us from sixth to tenth or? Something like that, yeah. Okay. That's always a possibility to, especially if prices come in where they, you know, depending on where they come in at, if it's some dollars we can shave off and it makes sense, we could look at cutting those north two blocks off. Any other questions on the cost share project at this time? So that one, like I said, we'll be getting that out to bid here within the next, I'll say four weeks, within the next month, and then bring bid results back to the council for the next action on that project. Then the last item I've got here for you is an update on the municipal swimming pool. And that's, color photos are attached here in the document. and i'll just kind of step through this with you there's a few things i've labeled this as draft i want to have some discussion with the council about what we're seeing and kind of what direction you might want to think about and understanding your own budget session maybe it's a table we reconsider it at a later date but so we went out there met with mayor alex was out there a number of city staff we reviewed the site There's a few, well, there's a handful of things. A lot of it's just typical of what we'd see with an aging facility, right? It's been there a long time, things crack, things settle, things shift, things move, it happens. Needs some TLC. There are a few things, though, that we saw. One in particular, and I think I've mentioned it in a prior update, one concern we had was with the domestic water supply, and that's number one on my bulleted list. I'm gonna kinda go down the bullet list here real quick. we had kind of done some math and testing on the water meter flow. It was losing about, there's about 10 gallons a minute leaking under the building. Um, and that's ultimately seeping through the foundation drain, the sump pump, and then pumping down and going through the sanitary sewer system. You know, that's about, well, it's 14, a little over 14,000 gallons of water a day. It's like 10% of your city's usage. So, um, that's a pretty significant water loss. Um, Don't know exactly where it's leaking. It's somewhere where the domestic water comes in and then goes out through the building. But we are suggesting that get replaced and fixed. As we start to peel back that layer of the onion, there's a lot more layers that get exposed on domestic water through the building. Right now, code requires hot water to all the plumbing fixtures. That's not there, especially in the bathrooms to all the laboratories. So if you're fixing some plumbing there, maybe we look at moving the scope of work, continuing it on and replacing the piping inside the building. Another more significant issue we found with the roof, it's leaking, there's soggy and soft spots up there. The roof membrane, the flat roof membrane is, I don't want to say shot, but it's about there. We're recommending a replacement on that. I don't think we need to do to this like what we're doing with the water plant building where you take the roof off and completely replace it. This is one where you can modify some things. There's a thermoplastic overlay that they can put and reseal things, fix that up. Fairly low cost. That's going to be like a $25,000 to $50,000 range cost to fix the roof, seal some of the leaks that are coming into the building. There's a number of other things. The sidewalks around the north side and the west side of the building have settled and are draining back to the building and there's water getting into the building. Again, it's concrete floor, concrete walls. You're not getting wood rot and things like that from it, but it's less than desirable. Once you start getting into some of this stuff, then you get into ADA compliance. Once you pass a threshold of improvements, you need to deal with ADA and provide an accessibility. Right now, the men's restroom's not accessible. There are accessibility improvements to the women's side, but not the men's side, so that would be something that's probably gonna have to happen with modifications to the building. Pool plumbing and equipment. Based on what I saw, your equipment's aging. It's functioning and it seems that the guys and gals can operate it and get it working. If you are going through a more significant rehab project or replacement project, it might be worth considering replacing the pool equipment, bringing everything up to new, especially if you go after some grant dollars. We'll talk about that in a minute. There may be some opportunities to upgrade the the equipment and the plumbing. There's a number of valves on the system that don't work, don't operate. There's a return line. We think it's a return line that we're not really sure where it comes from. There's not really any record planes or anything on the pool. So there's a lot of just kind of head scratching. But if you, again, if you go through a process to really fix up some of the issues at the building and around the pool, Maybe putting in a gutter return system on the pool to get a better circulation back to the pool. A lot of these things can be addressed in a more larger rehab type project. One thing we did observe, there's the kind of the shallow pool, the kiddie pool on the kind of the northwest corner there. We're not really sure if it's used much. Don't believe the way it's tied in. It's probably operating as it was originally designed for the plant, but for the pool system, but know that might be an opportunity where you could eliminate that maybe do maybe more of a splash pad type structure provide some improvements there again you know thinking if money was no issue right you could do these improvements so there's a number of issues there that we did find I've tried to list them out as best as possible as far as dollars go if you were to try to tackle all this and do a splash pad and try to replace all that you're probably in the one and a half to three million dollar range to keep this pool, upgrade it, and fix it. Department of Commerce has a CDBG program that would provide grants specifically for pools. I think this could be a competitive option if you wanted to pursue considering that. Those grants are typically 75% grant, 25% local match. And again, you would Well, a community in the past on those CDBG program projects has worked with Gary Spoon out of Southeast Kansas Regional Planning, and they could help you administer the grant, apply for the grant, administer it, go through that process. But that's kind of where we're at. For what we're seeing, just if you were to do everything on the list, you're probably in the one and a half to three million range. Now, if you wanted to just step back and say, well, what's the most critical, we could talk to you about that. We could have a sit down and be kind of, well, what if you just did the roof? What if you just did this? And kind of piece and parse a few things together. One thing I'd be, I'd advise you on, though, is as you start doing that, that's dollars spent on the pool that then is not used to try to match and leverage towards a grant. So just as we think about that moving forward, Have that on your mind, I guess. Any particular questions on the pool that you might have of me? There's some big dollar costs overall. I think there's a number of smaller things that might be able to be tackled. But again, if you throw $100,000 at a bunch of small things, would that $100,000 have been better applied towards applying for a grant and really fixing the whole facility?

All right.

Thank you. See you. Have a good evening.

You've got to remember, this is just the start of it, OK, guys? As we're discussing tonight, we went ahead and published the R&R at a higher rate because we were under the time limits of the state. If you don't meet those time limits, they throw you back a year in budget. So we had to meet that requirement. And so I believe what you did is you went ahead and published right now with an 8 mil increase. And that is just a published, okay? We got to understand that they published an 8 mil increase does not mean when it comes down to RMR, public hearing, then we can't go down. That means we can't go above that number. So no matter what we talk about, what we see here, this meeting really isn't to discuss that yet. They will have a public forum in which you can allow citizens to sit down and express their concerns, and you as a council can decide if you want to come back down from those eight mills, if you feel like you could afford it, what have you. So with tonight's numbers, what you're going to see there, I've got one more copy. I would like you to look at this page first. This is the state one. And if you flip a couple pages, we're going to dive, we're going to skip past some of that detailed beginning stuff. And if we turn to page six, it looks like this. It's the beginning of the general fund. What you're going to notice there is three columns. The first column says 2025. So that's the numbers that came out of the audit that I came back and, you know, I came and presented a few months ago. So those numbers are directly out of there in the state format, just line by line just like they were there. That's why we're talking about the audit being in the presentation. It is just because we want to be able to follow that format when we do the budget. The second column is a projected 2026 number. Now what everybody got to realize is that is a guess of what's going to happen in 2026. None of us have a crystal ball. So what we did there is we've taken your 26 and I would call it an educated guess of what's going to happen. Because we know our taxes. We know our motor vehicle. We know those numbers because they're like motor vehicle, those recreational vehicles. They're given to us ahead of time. They're estimated by the county. They send them to us. So we kind of know that they're going to come in really close to what the county's estimated. Because the state's given them those numbers. As you're glancing down through there, like sales tax. We have a history of sales tax. You can see in the audit in 2025, we collected $315,000. We went in and downloaded the state payments thus far for 2026 and said, how much are we going to get in 2026? We took that times two, because we're in June, they made six payments to you, took that times two, and then you take your sales tax and you put one half of it in the general fund and one half in the for construction of streets. So when I say that number right there is an educated guess, you can see in 2025 it's $315,000. I really think we're going to get about $317,000. And that might be a little bit of a conservative number. It might be more. But the problem is it's a guess. It could be less. It could be more. It could be less. Now we did that with all of your revenues as you go down through there. And we project that out into 2027. which again is another guess. It's a budget. We're trying to determine how much money we're going to have, how much tax we need, how long we think we're going to get. And so as you're glancing down through there, like the first set of taxes there, those are all predicted by the state, predicted by the county clerk sends them out to us the first of July. Like I said, the sales tax number, you can see it went across the board there, franchise taxes. we projected $50,000 for 2026, we're going to project the same thing for 2027. We don't foresee any change in the franchise tax world at this moment, so it should come in approximately the same in 2027 as it did in 2025, and what we're thinking is going to come in in 2026. We do not include any state grants, because like that state grant of $14,000, we don't know if we're going to get a state grant. Those are the small grants, those are Click it or ticket grant sometimes. We'll get a small seatbelt. Bulletproof vest grant. We'll get some of those small grants sometimes. They're always a reimbursement. A reimbursement is a budget extender. And so we really don't have to take them into account until the day we get the money for the grant. And then it extends our budget. So we don't need to include them in this publicly approved budget. Does that make sense? Because it's a grant policy. And state statute actually specifically exempts those from budget law. As you're going down through there, you're gonna see all those different revenues coming in. Bottom line, second line up from the top, you can see total receipts in 2025 were $1,069,000. Those were actual receipts that we got in the bank. 2026, we're projecting $1,087,000. The 2027 column, though, if you notice up there, the X is in the ad valorem tax line. That's because we're trying to predict how much we need in property taxes. by doing this budget. So you can see the budget revenues are $558 but you can see we normally get about $500,000 in property taxes. So again I think we're staying pretty conservative with our revenues to what we think are going to come in. We don't want to over budget because if we over budget we're not going to have enough cash to pay the bills. So we've got to make sure that we've got to be conservative when we're looking at our numbers for revenues. Then the next page Same thing. These are the expenses. These are by department though. Like the general government. You can see we spent 354 in the audit for 2025. We're projecting we're going to spend $367,000. That's a bad number to point out. I'm gonna talk about that first line, we're gonna talk about it on the next page. Because the state of Kansas has some requirements. The police department. We spent $420,000 as a total in the police department in 25. 26, we're projecting we're gonna spend $437,000. For 2027, we've got 456. So we're projecting out what we think the expenses are gonna be. And if we turn to the next page, that details that out like the audit. Let's concentrate on police department for just a minute. Police department, personnel services. Personnel services, that is anything that has to do with an employee. That includes wages, that includes fringe, that includes anything that has to do with an employee. You can see we spent $311,000 in fringe and payroll in 2025. We are projecting to spend 327 in 2026. Now before I say the next number, I want you to realize, in the state of Kansas, we are not like a county and we are not like the state. We are not bound to budget by line item or by department. If you go to a county level, they are bound by department. So any decision we make by line right here Once we establish revenues on that prior page, it just changes another number here. Because if we decide we don't want to give the police department something, we've got to take it out of another area. Because we are doing what they call zero-based budgeting. But in all of the departments here, this is a budget. It doesn't mean it's guaranteed. You can say yes, you can say no, you can say minus, you can say plus 100. We gave everybody a 5% raise in this budget. Budget. Just so you know. It's a budgeted raise. Does not mean you have to give it to them. You could give them a 10% raise. You could give them zero. You could cut everybody's pay by 5%. Whatever you do, though, in that line item, because we are zero-based budgeting, just changes another line. So if we're going to add or take away from one of the lines, it's going to have to go to another. Does that make sense? Because the state of Kansas requires zero-based budgeting. Look at that general government line, capital outlet line, that $127,000 number. That number, for lack of a better term, is what we are estimating your cash carryover to be at the end of 2017. with a mill acres. That's why that budget looks bigger for general government on the prior page, because it includes that capital outlay reserve number. We do not want to see you spend that money. But we have to budget it to spend it. That's state law. You're going to see that in all the funds we talk about here. State law requires us to do zero-based budgeting, so they require us to budget everything So that 127 number is in the budget, but we hope you don't spend it. Does that make sense? All right, so I want you to flip back a page now. Back to the totals line. It's actually one line up from the totals. Ending unencumbered cash balance. You can see in the 2025 column, two lines up from the bottom, it's $122,000. That's the cash that we carried over from one year into the next year. Gotta have cash on hand. State law says we can't make a payment unless we have money in that fund. So we have to have money to carry over until we get our first tax payment. We can't spend all of our cash, or we can't legally make payments of bills in January. So we carried over $122,000 in 2025. Right beside that, you can see the 2026 projected carryover. Then your projected carryover there in 27, we've got projected at 127. That is with the eight mil increase in there. So the eight mil increase has got you budgeted to stay pretty low, if that makes any sense. However, the eight bills that you're increasing changes the taxes by approximately, this is a round number, approximately $30,000. So if you decided not to go above R&R, we've published above R&R, but you can decide not to, it's going to decrease that cash carrier limit. That 127 number? That number then goes down by $30,000, or a number in between. You can decide five minutes. You can decide anything below the eight minutes that you published. So that cash carrier then would be $30,000 less than $97,000. Just so you know, the eight mils is bringing in $30,320. On average, one mil on a $100,000 house If they have a $100,000 house, we'd have to pay an additional $92 in tax to bring in your $30,000 as a city. I googled what is the average value of a residential house in the city of Pleasanton, and it said it was $120. to $100 a year in taxes by having this 8 mil increase on a $100,000 house. But like I said, you could decide to go less. You can't decide to go more. That will be done at the public hearing. Once you sit here, you've got to open up the public hearing. Let everybody give their piece. and then you decide as a council what you want to do at that point in time. You'll have to reprint everything and get it submitted to the county, but that's not a big deal. Questions about the general fund there? Shouldn't be any surprises. We took the 25 numbers, projected them to 26, projected them to 27. That cash carrier looks pretty reasonable to me. You literally, in my professional opinion, think you could probably get away with not increasing animal care over the 97, because we're not in a bad spot yet. You're spending a million dollars a year, that's almost $100,000 a month though, so we don't want to get too much of it back. We're spending $1.1 billion, that's $90,000 a month. So by not increasing the meals, you're going to be back down to about one month's worth of reserves, Which is going to make January tight. Because you can't make those January payments until you get that first tax payment. If you're out of money in the general fund. You just gotta watch out. That's state law. It says you can't issue money if you don't have it in the bank. And the banks buy fund. We don't just get to call the bank and say, how much money do we have? It's buy fund. So we gotta remember that. Questions about the general fund? All right, two pages back to page seven is the bond and interest fund. You can see the payments this year. We just really, those are all transfers in from the utility funds. So there are no taxes involved with those, but you can see we have $222,000 principal and interest. don't have to flip back to that page but if you flip back to page four all of the different loans bonds that you have are listed back in on page four that you could see okay page seven or actually eight the next page has got their streets and highways again revenues are projected This is where you're putting one half of that sales tax money because we promised infrastructure and streets with that 1% that we got passed. So going back down to that bottom line, two lines up from the top, you can see in 2025 we carried over $741,000. The spending continues how it is with just our street maintenance. We'll have $1,108,000 at the end of 26. then you flip up to that capital outlay number again, because we do that zero-based budgeting, we think you're gonna have $1.3 million left at the end of 27. So when we're talking about that 15% match with the state grant that he was just talking about with streets, they're expensive. But here's where that money's at, how we can afford to do that. We have $1.7 million there, but you could hear how many blocks was he doing for, $800,000 that he was doing that. It's expensive due to our streets. But you do have some street money there. Not too bad a position there. What I might say, I'm not your accountant. I can't make any management decisions for you. I'm your auditor. I'm helping you with your budget here. That sales tax was passed as infrastructure and streets. We've put it into the street fund, so we can't take it out. But what you could do is take part of that $317,000 and start putting it into a infrastructure sales tax fund or something. That would need to create, pass an ordinance to create a new fund, and you can start putting money aside for the pools. And so you could literally, you could start setting some money aside for other infrastructure projects like that.

Food for thought. Wasn't that grant made specifically, voted on the citizens, specifically for the roads? Yep. The other grant. One of them is streets only. The other one is for streets and improvement.

Okay. What I seen was infrastructure and streets. That was the one from 1995. And that was a 1% sales tax. I was told that's why we're putting one half in here and one half in the general. But I would think you could take some of that infrastructure. If one of them truly says, we probably need to go back and renew them, that's for sure. But if one of them that sales tax money will go to the side for infrastructure, which would be like buildings, those kind of things. But we've done, per se, reserved it by putting it in the special highway fund because there's no But we could start setting a little bit of a percentage, come up with some kind of formula to determine how much it was that. And start putting in a new fund that you could maybe help fund some of that tax. It's food for thought. Top of the next page is your VIN inspections. It's a new fund that just happened last year. The state statute says you have to put the VIN inspection fees in another fund, and then they have to be used for capital outlay with the Food Department. You can see there they're building cash up. They haven't spent any of it yet. By 2027, we'll think they'll have about $13,000 of VIN money there. Next page is your water utility fund. Water sales are always really hard to predict because a wet year, a dry year, always comes into play because it's based on gallons we sell, not based on just number of customers we have. It's not like a flat percentage of the value of your house or anything like that. It's based on usage. And truthfully, believe it or not, we do 49 other cities, and it really does play a big effect in it if we have a dry year versus a wet year. It must be something about people watering their lawns or something. So it's really hard to project water revenues. Now you did increase water rates. I believe I looked back, I think it was January of 24, if I remember correctly, you raised water rates. And so your water fund sitting there, if you look again, I'm looking at the second line up from the bottom, you ended the 25 audit with $30,000. We are projecting 2026, be down to 16 but if you glance up just a couple lines up that's because we have budget and that was in last year's budget so we went ahead and left it in there as the projection it's putting fifty thousand dollars or a lot of profits into the sewer fund the state statute allows that because they say once you spend the money of a utility fund once you pay all the bills of that utility fund you can use the profits for whatever you want the problem is we have aging infrastructure Got to save our money. So the water fund's down to $16,000 at the end of 26 because we're putting some money into the sewer fund. Something to watch, though. I think Kyle forgot to mention this to you when we were talking. If you look at that three lines up in the bottom, we've got projected dispenses of $438,000. Go-to line is down, your 26 budget authority is on 417. So maybe before December 31st, we probably need to think about amending that budget. Budgets are usually amended based on, because we haven't already used them, rejected. But we probably ought to talk about amending that, and mainly because we're putting that 50,000 into the pseudo-probability. The 27 column, you can see we've still got the 50,000 going into there. But again, our capital outlay number, which is what I say our reserve number for the water fund is 22-4. So it's back up. Because we do make a little bit of profit in our water fund. Not a lot, but we've got to build some cash in. It doesn't take much for a water line to break and for it to cost us a lot of money. Water fund, I feel like, is not sitting in bad shape. Especially if you take into consideration the fact that we're transferring $50,000. That is the phone that's a little more concerned. You can see in 25, we ended the year with 19,026. We're projecting it to end with $117. That's even to put the 50 in there. 2027, we have to put the 50 in there and come down to zero with projections there. So if I wanna get shot from behind It's going to be because I say you should probably think about it at some point. Can't do it tonight. It's not on the agenda. Erasing sewer routes at some point. You've got the bond payment out there. That bond payment's $167,000. Sewer doesn't work. Then the next couple pages are the non-budgeted funds. Those are not required by state statute. And as you glance down through that bottom, I'm looking at the very bottom line, like law enforcement. They have some donation accounts, some donation money sitting in there, about $5,000 they could spend. Christmas decorations, $5,483. Angel tree. We've got all your different funds there. Now what you should note is that we do have a couple of savings. equipment and police funds. They're the last two copies on page 12 there. So you have a little bit of money sitting aside for equipment. Those are a savings account but specifically for equipment. Can't spend it for infrastructure. But that counts as a truck. That goes. I'd say the police one is a police car. 26 ain't gonna last much for a police car yet. Keep putting money aside and hopefully when they'll be able to filing the setting money these are basically savings accounts that the city set up for those two different farms page 13 continues on with those the name kind of helps you define how you can split it all right then let's talk about page 15. Page 15 is what's going to get published in the paper. It shows that you're publishing an eight mil increase. Again, this is where we can come back down if we have to. This is a budget. This is preliminary. It won't be finalized until after you have your RR hearing and your budget hearing. By looking at that, you can see our mill goes from revenue neutral of 84 to 92. Revenue neutral means that we issue the same dollars, not the same mill. So that means the valuation went up, so our mills actually go down because it's all based on valuation. State law now says you have to issue the same dollar amount to be what they call revenue neutral. Your revenue neutral rate is the 84 mills, which would get you the same In theory, tax your citizens the exact same dollars as the priority. I know they always hear mill levy, which mill levy going down, they're going to think their taxes went down, but the value of their house went up, so the dollar should stay the same if you stay rid of the neutral. But we're talking about increasing the 8, going from the 84 to the 92. But you've got a three-year history or the two years of history before that. You can see they were at 79 mills and you brought in $693,000 in 25. You issued 88 mills last year and brought in 816 was levied. And then we're proposing 895 this year at 92 mills. That other worksheet I gave you is really where our numbers came from, where you can see some history of where it brought with it. And you'll see some notes out to the side about what we used or how we came up with some of our numbers. But the majority of them are based on 25 because you do not have, we didn't have May numbers yet. And so we used 25's budget to come forward. We usually take May's numbers Because that gives us a better projection of 26 and of what's going on in 26 and understanding levels. We didn't have that. So we did it based on the prior company results. That trends in history for expenses. Again, you can always come backwards the other way. I remember that when we have your public.

I have a question on page 15. The Consolidated Streets and Highways. Is that a miss? Is that a typo?

Unfortunately, it's... I think that's what it's called up here in front too. That's like a pre-printed name, Consolidated Streets and Highways. That's what showed up on page... That is the state... This is a state tech clip. So sometimes we get forced to choose their names. I will see if Kyle can change that to your true name. That shows up in the audit.

Okay. Because I just noticed it was high throughout the whole thing.

And that's because we're budgeting to spend all of that $1.7 million that you have saved. So it looks like it's high, but it's because we want a budget to spend it. We want a budget to spend it since we have the street projects. Yeah, you've got street projects going on, you have a street project, you could go ahead and do it. Okay. Yeah, most of the time those K-Link grants are pretty quick when they come in to do them.

With that, doing the street projects, will that drop the mills?

Street projects does not affect tax dollars. That is not tax money. That is your state gas tax. Every time somebody puts gas in their car in the local, in the state of Kansas, not just in Pleasanton, the state of Kansas, somebody puts gas in their car, some gas tax goes to the state, that we all pay. The other half is the sales tax in which you're collecting through sales taxes, not through property taxes. So the street projects do not affect the mill levy or the taxes that your citizens are paying with property taxes. It affects their sales tax because we have a 1% sales tax out there that we're putting aside for those streets. But no mill levy is used for streets. what is the next step now for well you public you went ahead and you sent your letter to escape or to the county brought with me a budget timeline you got to publish before 10 days and then you need to have your public hearing for r between august 20th and september 20th you'll have a public hearing on that and then you need to do a roll call vote make sure that roll call vote is documented Out of the 49 that we do, we had two last year that didn't document that roll call. The state kicked it out because they didn't have documented roll calls. So make sure you do the roll call when you do the R&R. Then you will close that session. Then you'll have to open it up through the budget hearing because you're going to have two different hearings. So you've got to realize that. You're going to have to know about property taxes by themselves, the R&R, and then you're going to have a separate one for the rest of the budget per se. But here's a timeline for you. This is for you. There's a bunch of checklists on the back. That is available on the state website if you need it. But there's a copy for you. I'll put it out on the copy so you have it. But public hearings, the next spot. Actually, publish in public hearing. Got to be published 10 days prior to our public hearings. Actually, I think it's maybe twice. We need to make sure we follow that. Follow that timeline. If you have questions, call her up. Skylar knows exactly what's going on. He's my budget maker. The mayor's been working with him closely on some of the projections.

Any other questions?

Thank you very much, sir.

Okay, we'll roll back to our public comments. Thank you everyone for your patience and all that. Okay, for public comments, I'll remind you, you have five minutes to address the council. First, Theresa Miller.

That gentleman basically said everything I was going to say, with the exception of two things.

I listened to the budget thing Wednesday night, and I was so concerned that this gentleman cleared a lot of it up. Hopefully you all heard everything he said. And that is, you don't have as much say-so as you think you do. The state recommends what you have to spend, whether you like it or not. And mills don't have anything to do with taxes. And you can't change the valuation of the houses. Nobody can. So that's, I wanted to say that. And then the other thing is there are so many of us that are so upset and concerned about this no employee situation. And the reason we're really upset about it is because our stars and stripes, we had no help. We have general Pleasanton days coming up and the mayor has specifically asked me to ask the council members to please volunteer your time to help us because we need something to improve the attitude in Pleasanton. It isn't good now. and we need to improve it. And I think you guys could be a big part of that by helping with General Pleasonton Days. But before that, we're all concerned because there's nobody working here. She'd been doing everything. I've been here several days to help her. She's doing everything. and you tabled raising her pay. She's still doing everything while you all tabled that. I just want you to think about that. You pretend like you're her, which is what we're all supposed to do. So I'm just your conscience here. We need to be serious about this. It's not a game. And it's not about personal wants. We elected you all. So we don't work for you, you work for us. And I just wanted to remind you all of that. So when I hear on budget, I'm not voting for that, I'm not voting for that, you need to know what you're talking about when you make those statements. Please do some research, real research, online, go to the statutes. All this stuff is there for you to see, seriously. And I was kind of concerned about statements about, well, we'll get bids. We don't like this engineer. We want other engineers. I must explain something to you. You don't get bids from engineers about all the jobs that Pleasanton has. You're lucky that somebody comes here and wants to help you with it all. We work with engineers in the several million dollar situation and we have trouble. So we have to have respect for who we are and what we need. And I think he's doing a great job For the mess that we're in, and that's the other thing that scares a lot of us, is that if we try to lower everything, so as you keep saying, and the budget thing, and I understand what you're saying, but this is a living city. It has to eat or die. have money to pay the people to do what we need them to do. And as much as we would like to make it less, the state has made laws to say, you can't. You have to spend this much. And that's what he was explaining to you tonight. Because if you don't, it'll just go somewhere else or come out of somewhere else. And we're all very concerned about this $97 an hour. That's not good. And it's been a month So some decisions need to be made and they need to be made now. So no more tabling stuff, as long as you all understand that. I'm done.

I have a question for you.

Yes.

So you said you've been here helping her.

Yes.

So let me repeat my question.

Please.

So everybody can hear me.

Good.

You said you've been here helping her. Yes. So what have you been doing?

cleaning, everything that she won't have to do or nobody else will have to do, answering phones, doing stuff on the outside, buying things that they need. Would you like to know what I did for Stars and Stripes?

No.

No, I didn't think you would.

So what, you've been answering phones?

Yes.

Mr. Mayor, who gave her permission to come in here to answer phones? Because is that a... All I do is answer it.

I don't talk to them.

Is that a... Don't we have to have an agreement or something for her to come in here because she's not an employee? So did you give her permission to come in here? Because I didn't know about it.

Well, when the phone's ringing off the hook and there's only one person to answer it, what are you going to do? All I do is ask them to hold. I don't talk to them. You have one person for this city, and it's your problem. You created the problem. So how dare you? Yes, you did. The three of you did when you voted to get rid of Becky. She was willing. Stop yelling at me. Would you ask them to stop raising their voices?

Let me clarify. Becky was retiring on her own accord. Correct. We chose not to reaffirm her. That's not firing her, which you're going around telling everybody in the city.

What would you do if somebody told you... Let's maintain proper lower voices, please. What would you do if someone said, we don't want your contract up? She was offering it...

it was to train it was to train okay how come my whole point and i've been bringing this up the whole time how come there hasn't been any cross training in this whole whole city at all there hasn't been no cross training hall what do you mean there's no cross training in this city whatsoever who are you paying to do that Well, don't you think that the city administrator, if something would happen to the city administrator, we wouldn't be back in this situation right now? Come on.

But nothing happened to the city administrator. Order.

Order. We're done with that. Okay. And I can guarantee that the employees of the city... We'll tell you that there's been plenty of cross training. There was just some areas within. The city administrator position that was not cross trained, but it was understood that the people that were appointed to city clerk and deputy city clerk, we're going to have that city administrator until her retirement in August. This council choosing. Excuse me.

No.

No. You listen to what really is. So, you all chose not to consent to her reappointment. That led to her leaving.

On her own accord.

On her own accord. Which is understandable in many aspects. To the point that then that left the two people that were appointed to these new positions not having the person that was going to finish training them for those positions. Those are the simple facts.

That then led... Pardon me. How come the simple facts is when you asked a clerk if you'd been trained at all in the past, the answer is no in that position for safe work?

the city administrator office yes was not when some of it when one moved up from city city clerk up to the administrator seat she said she had zero training like seriously okay um carry on we're getting out of hand we're we're getting lost in the the reality of what has happened here so let's move on with our next person um ryan copper copper 208 west park street northern kansas

I brought some examples here for you. This is a fresh sealed bottle of water. This is water from the tap at my house. This is water that you guys tell us year after year. It's safe to consume, safe to bathe in, safe to cook with. You want the God's honest truth. I feel guilty giving this to my dog. Okay.

I don't know about you guys, but I take a shower to get clean.

It's not very reassuring when you get out of the shower, you grab a clean, dry, fresh towel, you bring it up to dry off and it smells like dirt. You go put your clothes on, clean clothes out of your closet, they smell like lake water. You smell yourself, it smells like you've been in the lake for the last 12 hours versus the five to 10 minute shower you just took. That's unacceptable. And to charge me 110 plus dollars a month for that water should be criminal. Cause I won't drink that. You guys say this is safe to consume? Show me, consume it. I wanna see it. No takers? Didn't think so. But that's fine, you can probably go to your house and get the same thing. So, no problem there. Number two, this tax levy, the mill increase, I for one, Before I ask where that new tax revenue would go, I'd like to ask where our current tax revenue goes because I don't see anywhere in this town where tax revenue is being spent effectively, wisely, or anywhere at all. You come onto our roads, they're a disaster. Our sewer system is trash. Every time it rains, the northwest corner of my yard floods out almost over the road because your system can't handle draining it. Our city parks go unmaintained. I have a good buddy that lives close to Dunlap Park up here. He got so sick of the grass being two feet tall that on his own time, his own personal mower, his own personal gas, his own personal trimmer went over there and mowed the park. That's ridiculous because you guys have people on your payroll whose job it is to do that that's paid from taxpayer dollars. So I ask you again, where's the tax money going? It's absurd. Our baseball field goes unmaintained. You guys might mow it once every two weeks for us, but in between that, we have to mow it to make it playable. I don't know if you've seen a baseball roll across an outfield where the grass is 12 inches tall, but it doesn't work. We're trying to have a baseball game, not an Easter egg hunt. Um, I just don't understand where the tax money is going. We don't really see any of it happening around here. Um, it was two seasons ago. My wife and I came in here to handle some things with the PBA financing and we asked for running water out there. It was brought to a vote. It was approved. There was a budget allocated for that two seasons ago. They're still not running water out there. So I asked you why. That's all I have.

Howard Brown.

Howard Brown, 601 West 14th. I was here about a month ago about vacating the alley through my property. My property lies between 14th and Park Street, and then it's west of Sunset, which is a vacated street. You said for me to check with the utilities as to their opinion of what, how it would affect them. I contacted Crocan. He called me back, or the supervisor of repair and construction called me back and said no problem with gating, fencing that property and gating where I want the alley vacated. They have the right to go in and out of there. There's no problem if I put a gate up. He said, the only thing is call 8-1-1, you know, call the dig safe. Not a problem. Called Evergy. They put me to the real estate person and he sent the information to the supervisor of construction and repair. And he called me right back. And he said the same thing. It's not a problem. We can go in and out of there however we want, even if you put a gate there. He says, my only problem is if you decide to put a lock on it, you call me so we can put a lock on it too. I said, we put our lock on it. There's no problem at all. He said, if we don't get a lock, we have a problem. We'll have to cut the chain. It just delays it. He said, we have the right to go in and out either way. So I'm back. That's what the utility company said. I'm asking for a resolution to vacate that alley through that property. What was the address on that again? 601 West 14th. And the property lies between 14th and Park.

And there's an alley between it.

And then the east side of it is Sunset, which is a vacated street. And the west side of it, I think, is Walnut, but it's just a big drainage ditch. It's not a street.

Is that vacating something that the council wanted to move towards? We would need to get an ordinance put together for such. Would you all like that drawn up and so forth? Yeah. Can you draw up an ordinance for that for us, sir?

Jessica Huntley, 605 East Broad Street here in Pleasanton. Okay. The water is disgusting. Yes. I have talked to the water guy. I did talk to him. Yes, I did. He has elaborated a lot to me about different things. But he's one person. You guys have got to do something about getting more people. You do. Because one person can't run the whole city. He can't. And because of that, you're allowing the citizens to sit and drink filth. I'm sorry, but like, I'll say, for example, like I just went to court and I have to pay fines. I have to come see Morgan. But I had to call her to come in and pay. because I couldn't even get in the building to pay my fines. I'll be darned if I'll get a warrant put out for my arrest for my fine not being paid because we can't even get in the building because there's only one person maintaining the office. That is not fair to our citizens. And that's not her fault either. But this bickering and feuding and just going on and on constantly and nitpicking each other, you're running your employees off. You are. You're running out of everybody that sits up here right now. I can tell you there's one person right now that I've actually had a conversation with that our conversation has stayed between us. You know, he has been willing to walk me through and understand what's the process people think. And I will not call him out. But I will say this. He's about the most up respecting person I know that sits on this board right now. I can't say that for the rest of you. And that one person ought to know who I'm talking about because of the fact he is very respectful. He does listen to the citizens and he wants to help address it. But when you all don't want to work together, it's never going to happen. I literally, this water is so disgusting. I had two little teacup chihuahuas in my house. Within 30 minutes of giving them the city water, they're seizing on my floor and I've lost both of them now. They were given to me as a present. I don't have the money to replace those. But like if we, when we mess up and we do something wrong, we have consequences. I think you guys need consequences. I mean, I do. I think this council needs consequences. I think maybe you guys should pay our water bills. For the whole city, I think you guys ought to. Because I'm not going to pay a water bill for water I can't use. I fill up my swimming pool and I have used a whole box of shock. And it's still green. This is ridiculous. And it's time after time after time after time. You guys are beyond out of control. Beyond. Enough's enough. I'm not going to sit back and watch any more employees walk. I won't. You've lost pretty much all your cops but Tristan. You got poor, which you guys were lucky and about pushed him to the brink. Now you got poor Morgan here who's about to Hurwitz and about ready to just say the hell with y'all and walk out the door too. What's next? You know, maybe the certain council member that sits up here, maybe he's ready to say he's going to throw in the towel. He's tired of the BS too. Then when you do talk to somebody, whether it be the mayor, as the most recent incident, I called about my water and then I mentioned something about parasites. It got totally flipped around because somebody that sits on the board's child posted and plastered my name with that conversation. Totally unacceptable. Do not tie my name unless you know the whole conversation. I had already talked by the time I seen the video or the message or the writing on Facebook about my name, I already talked to the water guy and already got it figured out. So why would you tie my name into something? Don't bring my name up. If I have something to say about something, trust and believe I'm going to be right here in front of you and I'm going to say it to your face. That way everybody can watch it on here and then I can get the messages afterwards saying how good and how proud they were of me for coming in here. Because you know what? People are tired of it. I think, how many of you guys are citizens in here? Are you guys tired of the water? Who's ready to go on strike? Are you done tired of paying water bills? Anybody done paying water bills because of our water system? Because we don't know how to fix it or clean it or change it or do anything. You guys are so worried about budgeting and fixing up all this other crap. Fix our water that people drink and cook with and bathe with. You know, start putting our safety first. Stop putting yourselves first.

Thank you. Thank you. Lene Solins.

Mine's very tame compared to what is happening tonight. Not that I'm not in agreement with it. It's just that that's not what I came for tonight. Came for about the Stars and Stripes. And I do believe if you're going to come and complain about anything, if you're going to give negatives, give solutions. And so I'm going to try, and we'll see what happens. It was the 250th year. It should have been something. It should have been. We sit here and do the Pledge Allegiance, you know. And talk about our country and it was pretty sad. It was pretty sad. Do not know why, all the reasons. That's fact is, is that the city needs to be aware that they need to step away from the events. The city has a lot of other problems to do. Let committees do this. Let them step in and do this. We are the ones that are wanting to be and have vendors in here to make money. Let us make the decisions. We come to you for road closures or permits that might be needed or access to electricity, you know, the logistics of it. But let somebody else do the planning. You all don't have time for that. Not going to be you, Morgan. But anyway, there were positive things about the festival, if you will. The phone party is a big hit. My grandkids loved it. It's always the second time I think we've had it here. It's a very good thing for the kids. And I really appreciated the fact that the city fronted for all the kids to have either face painting or a tattoo and didn't have to do that, but I did appreciate that. But when you think about it, I know our church had a booth for VBS. I know that the tattoo lady was there. Forgive me if I don't know of anybody else because that's who I saw on Main Street. There might have been one or two others, but that was it and the phone party. I do know that there was a lunch. or dinner, I'm hoping to see that there's so much more time that goes, that we can realize there's so much more time that goes into planning if you want anything to be a success. Anything. It's a must. I'm not coming to just give the negatives. But let's think about some solutions. The parade. I'm not going to talk too much about it. I know that Rose has always done the parade for general Pleasanton days. There are so many different ways to encourage an invitation sent out to different entities other than a couple of businesses on Main Street. There's so many ways. Thank goodness Tristan drove the car in our parade on Fourth of July, else there wouldn't have even been that. There was the fire trucks, which I appreciated that very much. Also, the fire department with the water. That was great. But the parade, I think a parade should be the start of the day. Invitations should go out to local bands, classic car people, contests for the ATVs or golf carts or bikes. Get everybody involved. There's so much that could have been into that parade. Then you go into the afternoon. Then you go into activities and vendors. I'm going to tell you, I was introduced to a lady in Amsterdam who has done their festival for 40 years. 10 people run that whole thing. That is a town of 210 people. Look at how many we have. And we can't get volunteers. We've got to start doing better at getting in organization and We have no self-esteem in this town, none. And it's just fading and fading even more. And we need to be proud of where we live. My family goes back 150 years here. I would come up from Texas and spend my summers, and now I'm here. And I tell you, there's a lot that has changed, a lot. Now, I agree, fires have taken our main street more than once, and I've seen many of them. But we have so many issues that we need to take care of. But building people, making them proud of this town, it has to start there and then maybe we can get together with some of the other issues that the town has. There are so many things that could be good as far, like the phone party, the fire department with the water, branded backdrops for people to take photo shots. Amsterdam does a Nerf gun course that they say is fabulous. I haven't been there. I'm going this year. That's in September. I'm going to go and see what all that they do. They have music all day long. There's no reason. I know everybody's going to say, well, that's money, that's money. There is some money involved, but there's also a way to get these things done through donations or tiered sponsorships, kind of like what General Pleasanton does. Trucks, we had one food truck. There should be several. We have, they come here to town already. So, why weren't they here? You know, I do realize there's other obligations, but that's why planning now is the important figure here. Then there should be a first aid station. There should be misting stations because in July, well, we know what happens there. My point is that things should have started being planned the day after Stars and Stripes this year. I would, I'm just blown away at what Amsterdam can accomplish with 210 people. And they don't draw. just people in their town. They're drawing from Lacing. They're drawing from Pleasanton. They're drawing from Rich Hill. They're drawing from other communities that will drive because it's fun and they have a community that seems to be getting along very well. I don't know. Was there a budget for Stars and Stripes? Is there like a line item for events like that? Yes. Okay. And so that's a starting point. And I do know budget is the big hot topic right now. Like I said, I'm willing to offer solutions. You guys have my paper. If you don't want anything to do with me, that's fine. Take some of these ideas and put it with somebody else. I am offering to leave this up for next year. I don't do that very often. I got lots on my plate but I am offering to do that but I won't do it after August if you come to me after August and ask me to do it I won't do it because the planning needs to start now so you guys have that thought you know think about it um

With the council's consent, I would love to appoint you to that right now. Absolutely.

Well, I will do it if I can get the information from y'all on budget when it gets, you know, some kind of idea. I need to know where to start and a date of what next year's will be. But I would love to do that.

Would the council like to go ahead and look at the date for that for next year? Sure. The primary reason we haven't been able to have it on the 4th or the day before the 4th or around the 4th is the persons setting off the fireworks. We had not been able to find anybody capable of doing it on those days. That's why it had been the weekend before the 4th.

So do we need to get with him? to figure out that part of it first?

It would be if the same person is going to do it again, then yes. If there's somebody else that can do the fireworks display, that has been the primary issue with what day we're having it on. Is that something that you would kind of want to head up looking at what day? Would it be good to have it on and if we can get fireworks done on that day?

I'll give suggestions and you can see if you can line up your person. I don't know anything about the fireworks themselves, but I can certainly give you a couple of days.

I mean, we could probably even put out a request for someone that is capable of doing it to be able to do it on next year, the Saturday before the 4th is. the third. So if we wanted to try to do it on the third, then we could put out a request to somebody that could do the fireworks on that day.

Yes, sir. So I was going to ask the question. So we have a fireworks wholesaler that owns property like just east southeast of town, but are they able to provide fireworks or are they able to

That set them off for the city providing the fireworks versus the pyrotechnic certification and licensing needed is different. Yeah, it's sure. Does it have to be insured and a lot of other things within all of that?

I'm just thinking that's a little a little provider. So I don't know if that's something that's forever report.

I can ask and see what his qualifications are as far as being certified.

Okay. If you would do that, let me know. That'd be great. I'll also put out to, uh. A couple and see if it is available for the 3rd for next year, which I know he has his license.

What is she talking about?

Yeah, but I don't think they will do it though, but they always have a big thing on the on the.

Will this be the third? Saturday the third? It's always worth asking. You don't know until we try. Within that, I'll also say that if anybody is willing and saying they would love to help head up and lead General Pleasanton Days, that would be fantastic. Because right now we have a few people that have said they would help with a few things, but we really need somebody heading that up. that would like to do so.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Rose Troth. I live at 105 East Second Street. My last parade, I had 103 entries. We intend to do more this year. We are halfway on our go. Michael is working on one end of the country, and I'm on the other end of the country, so we're busy. It takes a lot of running around, different towns and parades, postage stamps, mailing out letters and flyers to invite everybody to our parade. We want to have five categories, making Kids Flow Entry our main feature. Our prizes will be first, second, and third. We are asking for $875 for prize money, the use of the city speaker, and Main Street to be closed off at 8 a.m. October 3rd. Any volunteers would be well appreciated. We'd like the city council to put a float or something in the city to represent our city that we are so proud of. We need volunteers to help sign up and line up the people, because they all swarm in at nine o'clock. It takes a lot of manpower to get these people to come to this city. Michael and I have been working our little butts off, so we would appreciate if we could get some help to help us out.

Lene, would you be interested in helping Rose this year or you want to just? I wouldn't because I think that this is really hard.

I wouldn't. I'm sorry.

Our main part is can we get some money from the city to help for prizes?

Last year in the year before the city, um, as a whole, as a total towards general customers engaged in a 1000 dollars.

I make a motion to allow general plus the days up to a 1000 dollars.

It's been moved and seconded to allow up to $1,000 for general pleasant and days. Any discussion?

So you don't need that $875? You just want the $1,000?

Well, we need, because we're going to give prizes. That would be perfect. But Michael and me, we will go out and earn it if we can't get some money from you guys. I mean.

No, you're good. I was just asking.

Yeah.

We don't have up to $1,000. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. For general pleasant and days as a whole. towards just the parade.

If you don't think we need to give third prizes, we'll just do first and second.

What would be good also is General Clessington, days and years past, has also used tiered donations from people, businesses and so forth. Starting that and doing that would be a good way to do it also because then they're advertised and they're announced.

We've been advertising. Have you noticed our new banner out there on Napa? Thank you.

All in favor? Thank you. Julie Whitehead.

Good evening. I am Julie Whitehead. I also own Lynn County Soccer Association, which I'm going to bring up two things before I bring up what I'm really here for. Um, I found out recently that you guys have soccer fields that why are we not utilizing? Because I don't know. I have all the equipment and Lacing kicked us out because apparently they didn't want their revenue from our games and our parents and everything brought in. Um, I'm all for kids, I'm all for community, and that's the main reason I moved here is because I heard that this town was pretty awesome. I will tell you that there is a council member, could have put his life on the line the other day helping out with the tree that we had to take down from one of them falling in my yard. I don't know the guy. I don't even know his first name. But he showed up and he didn't hesitate but to run. Second of all, I've sat back there and I've listened and I've met this gal on a few occasions, not purposely. I mean, other than having my water turned on, but I put an application after I was, I don't know, intimidated or probably was meant to be intimidated by another council member. Um, I still put an application because I feel like I would be an asset to this town for a position here because I'm not biased. I don't play favoritism. I don't put up with bull. And it takes a lot to run me off. And I have an extensive background with experience. I did hand in my application for a couple different positions because this lady does it all and she shouldn't have to. This is a community and I don't plan on moving out of here no matter how much people try to run me off. I don't do the gossip and I don't do the drama. It's all about kids and family for me. Second, actually third. So on June 13th, I was contacted by the contractor I hired to do some updates on the rental property that I have moved into on 609 East 7th about some trees and some brush on their property. I hadn't moved in yet. I was just doing some work on the place because it had like 30 years of cigarette smoke and a whole lot of stuff that needed taking care of. And I get this note the contractor sent me and said, please remove your trees and wood from my property. Okay. So I started asking around because if somebody has an issue, I want to know who it is. I face it head on. Well, I had made it to Pleasance in an hour after I received this only to be stopped by a gentleman. Jason Jackson apparently owns the property to the west, west, west of my rental property. And I'm saying west, west, and I'm going to get to the point. Anyways, he voiced his dissatisfaction about the stuff on supposedly his property, and I said, I'm just the tenant. I haven't officially moved down here yet. Why was this not brought up with the landlords when that dub wide has been there for two years? And most of that tree stuff has been there for two years. Granted, every time it rains and the ground's soft and the wind blows, there's more stuff that comes down. I'm just the tenant. It's on file who owns the property. June 21st, I came down again and another major tree behind my shed that had just got put in two days prior had fallen. It's being worked on to be taken out of there. I contacted the landlord about having it taken out. July 5th, I officially moved in. I remember the date because I got pulled over. July 15th, a gentleman who was in a skid loader on the west side from my rental lot, so I walked over to speak with him about the brush. I was informed the week prior by the surveyor ladies where the property lines are, and lo and behold, there's a guy that works for the city, and he happens to own one of the pieces just west of my property where all the brush is. Anyways... We handled the situation. He was working on getting it removed. July 15th at 4.15 p.m., same day, 30 minutes after the gentleman leaves the West property. There was a smaller dark blue SUV that passed by my house a little bit slow, turned around and came back and was just a little past my driveway and taking pictures. And I have two children at home. And I walked out there to find out if I could help her. and she introduced herself as a city council member and said that she had three or four complaints about the brush and wanted to know who the brush belonged to although if you're on the city council and you know i live in a rental house and i even stated that i'm a tenant why am i being harassed because if a complaint is coming in about a rental property that's not the tenant's job to take care of it It should go to whoever the codes lady is or has to do every job. And the landlord should be contacted. That's a landlord issue, not a tenant issue. But to be harassed about brush and who owns it. And even though I gave the information, I felt like my privacy was violated. So I just wanted to make you guys aware. It doesn't run me out because I don't put up with nonsense. It was already being handled. And yes, I have a pile of stuff Before I moved down here, I was told that we could burn just like household stuff, like dressers, whatever. And then I was informed where you couldn't. So 30 minutes before the council member decided to take pictures, it was already addressed that it was going to be picked up and taken to the landfill because I didn't have any access to be able to haul that stuff off. So it was already addressed. Didn't need to take pictures. Didn't need to harass, especially when everybody knows who the property belongs to. So it's fantastic. But I'm still not gonna be ran out of town because I really feel like this community can come together. And we still should be utilizing the soccer fields.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Does anyone know what the story of the soccer field is as to why they ever stopped being? I know there's still references.

I heard there was a soccer field out there and they're still artists. I don't know if they're still there. Is there

I have the steel soccer goals for every age group and the U19 aluminum goals. I have all the equipment. If we have fields, I know that a lot in this community would be grateful because my neighbors that live behind me, actually, they had coached one of my teams, the other teams. They didn't know who they were.

And are you willing to head up looking at seeing what we would need out there and all that good stuff?

Absolutely. And I was telling Jimmy when he said, why are we not utilizing the soccer field? I would love to see it come back. The first year I took it over from Lacey Soccer Club and turned it into Linguine Soccer Association, we had 16 teams. 16. That makes... Great revenue to any community. Unfortunately, they didn't want it because they didn't want to interfere with their events. I mean, I think this is a great community and I think it would be great for families.

Can you bring a proposal to the council of what we would need to move forward with that?

All you have to do is know and make sure.

Okay, absolutely. You want a rough run down?

Can I ask a question about that? A little bit. Yeah.

So the water meter that was there with the proposal of getting water off the baseball field, you were going to take the water meter at the soccer field and move it down to the baseball field, correct? So how is this going to affect that?

We always use porta potties, but we didn't really.

Well, we did too.

We have a past, we have a former council member here that has more information.

Uh, basically what's offered people that were running is that they just don't feel part of those. The water you're at a soccer field, we have this bathroom inside that building right there. That's really the only thing that water goes to. Uh, they actually built a bulk toilet out there just to basically hold the ground that people use for that one inside the building. So that water meter pretty much is not going to use anymore. So just a little back to back.

Thank you, sir. Do Public Works have another plan to get a water meter for the ball field and keep the one out there at the soccer field?

so basically the building or the concession stand is what it was is become a storage unit so it will have to be cleaned out obviously and any and all plumbing that was in it is probably I'm going to say trashed by now it's been

How many years since it shut down? So it probably crashed.

We will have to address the doors because it has been broken. People have tried to kick the doors in several times and it shows. As far as the nets, what netting is out there, the goals are trashed. Most of them was PVC. I believe there's three old benches out there. Probably going to be within our best interest to pull them and rebuild them.

Jimmy, if you would at some point go out there and create a report of what needs and not half speculation and half not at the moment. If we could just get an actual list of what we might need to get that up and going on that end of it. Uh, that would be good. I, I understand that she is saying that we can get things going and everything, even with what we just have. I'm on the grass and getting this stuff and she has equipment there.

Also, Mr. just to let, you know, most of the fields there, the 1, right behind the building is in good shape. Was in good shape the top 1 on the North side of the building, but the lower 1 is where we use fireworks to take a lot of things to probably have to do a lot of work out there.

He's not wrong. It's pretty bumpy.

Okay. So if you would like to take a closer look at those fields and tell us what your thoughts are on those and what we might need to do also, we can get all that information back together and put this on the agenda moving forward too so that we can kind of see where we are and what it actually is going to take. Motions come forth for a 10 minute recess. I'll second. It's been seconded. All in favor? Aye. Returning here at 8.01.

and you need to show them all the way down. . . . . . . .

What?

Okay, do I have time?

I know where I'm at. We don't know. Saturday was my Saturday boss. Celebration of life. And then, of course, . So much longer to catch up. They have to. I mean, I think it's .

I don't know why I can't tap. I don't know why I can't tap. I don't know why I can't tap.

You're not the welcome wagon when you give her stoppers.

Thank you.

Do you need something? Call me. Thank you.

Yeah, I know.

I'm just saying, I can't go in with the attitude. I mean, I don't have any employees.

First of all, two guys, trophy.

Yeah, she can.

oh yeah right

I haven't gone that way. It's out in Napa.

My guests are just walking.

I'm not sure. Which is it best of? Okay, recess ended.

Resuming normal meeting.

We have next Aaron Boley.

Good evening. My name is Erin Boley, and I live at 605 East 9th Street. By now, most of you should know who I am. If you don't, I don't know what to tell you. Tonight, I would like to speak about something very important to me. Safety. I'm sure this topic is very important to all of you. Right now, I just talked to Tristan tonight, actually. Right now, our police department consists of one part-timer that seems to only work one day a week. And... our chief, Tristan Snyder. He has been very loyal to our community and every citizen knows his name and knows his face. I feel safe when he is around and I'm sure many citizens feel the same way. He genuinely cares for the city and its people, but he is only one person. He can only show up to so many calls, investigate so many cases, be on shift for so long. That man like the rest of us, has a family who he should be able to spend time with. But because of this council's neglect and disrespect, many have resigned, leaving Tristan to carry the weight of the whole department on his shoulders. Even with the one part timer and himself, we do not have enough officers. We should be investing in our police department, not defunding it. You all don't like his overtime, but you push new officers away. We cannot expect one man to protect an entire city around the clock while criticizing him for the hours reality requires. The effects of being understaffed extend far beyond emergency calls. For over a year, while I was a minor, I was sexually assaulted by an adult coworker. That investigation remains open. And my concern isn't only for my case, it's for every person waiting for justice. When there are not enough officers, things naturally fall to the back burner because there are only so many hours a day and two officers, one being a part-timer, cannot be expected to do it all. I urge this council to rethink how they speak to people, realize that this issue is a huge problem and allow for money in the budget for reality, not the fantasies you all seem to make up in your minds. Contrary to your beliefs, there is crime in this city. Drugs, alcohol, traffic, domestic violence, and sexual violence, all of which require a police department with more than two or three officers and certainly more than one full-time officer. Thank you to our police officers and especially to Tristan, for the dedication you've shown to this city. I cannot thank you enough for all that you've done. May God bless you. I have nothing further to add and I'm not taking any questions at this time.

All right, Dakota Holding, and I now live at 105 East Broad. A lot of you probably know where I work now, and it is kind of a bigger deal in the situation that we're discussing with budgets here. I work for the county appraisers. So I'm the one that gets to come to your house, take your pictures, measure your house. While I chose the job I chose, and I get that. I love the job that I chose. I love getting to see the community. I love getting out to talk to people and getting to hear people's stories. But the problem is, it's like, where do we plan for this town to go? We have no, it feels like we have no direction. Like what is our long-term goal here? Do we want to keep the city going? Do we want to see the revenue coming back and things like that? So I have concerns about the proposed budget. The increase is because many residents that I have talked to and that I have seen are personally seeing or not seeing improvements in our basic city services. I'm curious to know why the increase in budget when we didn't have hard numbers from each department, which the guy earlier said, it's not like the county. We don't have to have it from each department, but we have to have a general idea. And you have to know, what does the water need? Obviously, somebody here tonight, and if you look on Facebook, it is all over. The water, it's a problem. I mean, I have five kids. I have kids that has a kidney disease. Very bad problem. I have a kid that has type 1 diabetes. And the water here is not adequate to give to them. It's a problem. So the question remains is like everybody asks, well, what is our money here being used for? Well, I don't know. Maybe we all as town people, citizens here should speak up and ask like, where are all of our budgets going? What is the next step here? Why are we in the situation that we are in? Had the yellow water and the brown water problem. It's all over there. When will we see a real solution for our city water? That gentleman said raise our sewer rates. We can't raise our sewer rates when we're having the same issue over and over again. I get the water problem outside of town is a way bigger issue than we can go with. But, I mean, it's not you guys that decided to not go with, what was it, District 13 water supply issue? It wasn't you guys. But, I mean, it's kind of an us issue now. It's kind of a you issue now that we've got to figure out. I'm sorry. Let me figure out where I'm at. So as we increase this budget, what are our mill levies going to look like at the current rate? And why among the highest are we in the county when we have so little to show for it? Residents deserve an explanation why our tax burden continues to rise while basic improvements remain limited. I also have questions about the personal costs and understand the city clerk position is open. Looking at the outside company, for more than $90 an hour, would our council explain whether that arrangement cost is effective and what steps are being taken to ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent responsibly there so on the mill levy thing we have so many empty businesses up on main street that are being used for personal property i mean if you drive down main street how many of those are residential I mean, if you look at, I mean, you all basically own a house. So you get a card in the mail, it tells you on the back of it how much is going towards that. Do you pay 11.5%? Or are you a business that pays 25%? I mean, it's a big difference there, guys. That guy was saying the mill levy, okay? So, I mean, I don't know how many of you guys actually own an $80,000 worth house. My house is 191. I mean, I can say that it's not, I mean, okay. So you do that. And then, you know, so $175,000, you're paying $4,034. Yes. Does that come with tax assessment? Yes. Question your government. I mean, are you questioning your appraisals? Are you questioning you guys? Like the whole town here? Like, why are we not questioning the bigger picture here? I mean, mill levy is gonna go up. It's gonna go up quite a bit. So why are we allowing our main street to be residential and not businesses? I mean, 25%, you think about that. We have land out by Casey's. Why are we not trying to bring businesses down here? I mean, bigger picture here is like, everybody wants their taxes to go down. I get it, but we can't. I mean, and I get the whole not staying revenue neutral. an eight thousand eight mil increase that's substantial for here i mean you're paying four thousand dollars in taxes what happens when that person's paying six how many people locally really have a house that's worth sixty thousand dollars i'm sure none of you guys do i mean i know where most of you live $60,000, okay? If you live in a $60,000 house and our mill rate goes up, I mean, that's what? That's 0.200464 currently. You can raise that to what? 2.250 whatever 64. I mean, do the math. Like you can do the math. It's easy. You know, take your house times 11.5% times that new mill levy. That's what your taxes are going to be. It's a problem. I mean, and I get why you can't say revenue neutral. We have to have money going forward. I understand that. But guys, it's a huge increase. And I chose the job I chose. I know that 100%. And so when I go knock on your door and I have to come up to you and tell you what I'm doing here, people are pretty pissed off at me. I'm not going to lie. I have to explain to them. Well, you know, X, Y to Z, this is why. Double check your stuff. Do what you're supposed to do. But I mean, also the city, something's got to change here. Residents work hard for their money and it's difficult to support the higher spending when the roads are continuing to deteriorate. We heard from the guy, I mean, we don't have that budget right now currently. I know we're doing the 1% increase to get there, but we're not there. Our city's paying premium taxes without any results. I mean, look at what Johnson County's mill levy is. Pleasanton's not that far behind. That's a high concern of mine. I mean, we have nothing to show like Johnson County does. Our town's a dying town. People are wanting to jump out of this town. People are like, if I could sell my house, I would. If I could get what I need to get out of it to come upside down, I would sell it and be out of here. I love our town. I don't want to see it go. I love, my kids love it here. I mean, it's just a problem. Like that gentleman said earlier, population is key. Our population isn't really growing here and people are wanting to leave. It's a problem. I just, guys, it's a problem. And I just hope you guys see that there. I mean, I'd love to take you along for a day of what I do and be surprised what people have to say. I mean, you had a whole room of it tonight. I just, it's a problem, guys. So thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Jake Mattingly, 64 West 14th Street.

You know, I come up here to actually jump in this council's rear end with both feet, and I'm going to end up defending you in the beginning. So, kind of ironic. To give a little history of this council, I don't think some people understand, four of you have been up here, what, four months? Maybe five months? So it's pretty hard to blame this council for the things that have been happening in this town for the last couple of years. The only person that's been up there for a significant amount of time, Rochelle, And if anybody wants to say she's a problem maker, I mean, she's asked a lot of questions. I served with Rochelle on the council for two years. Got along great. That council got along great. We had differences of opinions, but we worked them out. Everybody worked towards the same goal. That is not what's happening with this council. That is not what happened with the council from last year. That's not what happened with the council from the year before last. I don't know how people could come up here and blame this council, you five people, for all the disagreements and problems. I want to talk about fireworks. We have to pay somebody. We had a fire department that was shot fireworks. 100% agree. That fire department had problems. They weren't responding. They needed to do something. Came up with a solution. We got seven people. Let's go. We got more people that's going to respond to us. Seven people. I brought up seven applications. They're all on the fire department right now. We've had 100% call response since the fire department was reinstated. We didn't have to run off the last four firefighters that were there. Those firefighters came in, they shot the fireworks for free. It wasn't just going out there shooting for free for a couple hours. It was hours upon hours of setting out in the sun, putting together an electrical shock trailer and somebody in the guy's driveway that donated the trailer and donated his driveway and donated his time. Donated steaks, maybe a few beers along the way. But we did that for free. Now, you guys pay somebody to do that. We had whatever money went to fireworks went to the actual fireworks, not to pay a company to come here and do that. We want to talk about water. Now, I'm going to put down Josh back there. It takes care of water now. I don't even know if the guy is certified yet. He's trying. He's a new guy at it. So we had cross-trained people here. We had two people that were water, that were water, too. Both of them ran off. That was way before this council come in. One of them, I stood right in here and listened to the mayor and the council member accuse him of what I call domestic terrorism, sabotaging the water plant intentionally. That guy left after that. The last time I talked to him, he was getting on a jet, being flown across the country for training for Coca-Cola. Sounds like he did a pretty good job somewhere else. The second guy that was here, He left because of differences with the city government, not the council, and it was the council before this, and he works for Mountain City now. So to blame you guys for the things that have been happening for the last two and a half years is ludicrous, in my opinion. So maybe we should, there's a common denominator here, guys. I'm not gonna point it out, but there's a common denominator, what's been going on for the last two and a half years. So with that said, now I'm gonna jump in the council a little bit on this tax stuff. So one of the things I always said to new council members when they come up here was when you do something, you need to be able to state why. You need to be able to justify. When somebody hits you up at Casey's or the store, you need to ask them. When they ask you, why'd you do this? You need to give them a reason for it. Rational people, even if they disagree with you, if you give them a reason for it, they're going to accept it. There's some unrational people here. You've met one or two of them tonight that don't really accept anything you're going to tell them. So I'm going to ask you guys to justify to me why my taxes should raise at all. Because here's the history of this two and a half years. And I love telling this story because anywhere outside of this town, nobody else believes it. We had a backhoe, multi-purpose thing we used for water line repair, sewer line repair, road repair, street cleanup, multiple things. We got rid of that and we bought an excavator. Not a mini excavator. That's just an excavator, guys. Set out here outside of City Hall. Everybody went out there and looked at it and said, hey, that's nice. Oh, crap. We can't take it up and down the road. It'll tear everything up. And we don't have a trailer to haul us. Now we have to go spend thousands of dollars to buy a trailer. Trailer goes out to look at the brand new trailer. Oh, crap. It's a gooseneck. We don't have a truck that can pull a gooseneck. So now we've got to go out and buy a truck to pull the gooseneck that we have to maintain and insure every year. That's not fiscal responsibility. That is fiscal stupidity. That happened before you guys was here. Councilmember Shrek Heiss has pretty much fought what I call most of the stupidity here. I'm not here with the benefit of the doubt. I'll be against that too. That was before you guys. That $100,000 piece of equipment set out at East Lake for 10 days, a week and a half. The fact that it was not stolen, when you can go on Amazon and buy a general key for those things, is amazing. The fact that it has windows still in it, that's a miracle. I hope you guys appreciate it. How can you do that and justify to me I need to be forced to pay more taxes? My neighbors and friends, my mother-in-law included, had trash piled up in their front yard from pleasant cleanup days for almost two weeks. That used to be a two-day job. Three days if we had a lot of rust to pick up. Two weeks. Our school was interviewing prospective principals. Those people drove past piles of trash in our citizens' yards to do that. That was a great look. Is that a justification to force me to pay more taxes? Our pool, three weeks late opening, and you can say it was rain or whatever, I've lived away from that pool for 26 years. I don't care if it was Bill Anderson, Joe Whitaker, Casey or Joey, people got out of that pool a month ahead of time. We had lifeguards out there a minimum of a week ahead of time getting the building cleaned up. I didn't see anybody out there until a Tuesday before it was supposed to open. Three weeks we didn't have any pool for our kids. Is that justification to force me to pay more taxes? We have a business back here that had their employee out there pulling weeds from the middle, from Main Street. Not the sidewalk, but from Main Street. Had their employee out there shoveling dirt and muck out of the gutter so their customers didn't have to walk through it to get into their business. We used to have barrels on Main Street for trash. We used to have half barrels on Main Street that had flowers in them and took care of for beautification. They're gone. It's out of justification to force me to pay more taxes. One gentleman even brought up Our citizens are mowing the city parks so their kids can have somewhere to play, using their lawnmower, their gas. The city's government response to that was, hey, we appreciate it. Get your butt up here and fill out a liability waiver form. So if you get hurt doing the job we're supposed to be doing, you can't sue us. Is that a justification for you to raise my taxes? And it's not you're not asking me to pay, you're forcing me to pay. Right now, you guys are the federal government, in my opinion. No offense, you're the federal government. Messed up the gas can, the light bulb, almost bankrupted the United States Postal Service, and they spent billions of dollars on an Department of Education that hasn't raised a single metric in 40 years. But by God, if we just give them a little bit more money, they're going to figure out how to fix the weather. That's pretty much the same promises you're trying to make by saying, hey, you give us more money, we're going to fix stuff. The way money has been spent in this town, you guys need to figure out where the hell it's going. Last budget I was part of, and I sympathize with you guys. I did 13 of these budgets. They're a pain in the rear. I still chuckle when somebody comes, I ran a business. I know how to do a budget. Not a municipal budget. I think people don't understand that sometimes, how difficult it is. And you guys are trying to do it without even the basic numbers of departmental budgets. I don't even know how that works. Last budget I was a part of, 2024, we budgeted for a city administrator. A city administrator with payroll, payroll tax benefits was almost $100,000. We had four officers back then, and that's another thing. Hey, you want to talk about officers? We had Mason Roberts, Ivan Squires, Charles Stokes, and a heck of a good guy back there in Tristan Snyder. Those three officers are pretty darn good people. One was fired, two of them left because of the way they were treated. Way before you guys, so I don't know how the hell you guys can blame, anybody can blame you guys for that. We budgeted for four officers. I don't think you guys have ever had more than two. So those two officers, conservatively, were $60,000 a piece. That's $220,000 of payroll that we budgeted for in 2024 that you guys don't budget now. $220,000. Where the hell is that money at? Where is it being spent? You guys need to figure out where our money's being spent before you start talking about raising our taxes again. I mean, I don't give a damn about any mills. I don't know how you raise our taxes as much as you did last year. I mean, and not have enough. We shouldn't be talking about going over the R&R right now. We should be talking about getting way underneath of it. I mean, sorry, trying to remain calm here, guys, but damn. My house, I'm paying, my escrow right now is more than my house payment because of my taxes. That is ridiculous. And I'm tired of it. I know how things used to go here. I know how crazy thing is when, We all got along up there. The people is up here complaining about how everybody doesn't get along. We're the ones calling us a good old boy club because we got along too well. So, you know, if people go bars, they're going to bitch because they're too heavy. So just please, guys, think about us. I'm lucky I have a disposable income. What about people like Rochelle's mom? Some of your families, they're unlimited incomes. They don't have the money. They're looking right now at how to pay a water bill, how to pay their property tax and not lose a house that they paid their entire life for. So, thank you for your time.

Thank you. Along the same lines, we move into talking about the city clerk appointment and help with the budgets. You all have actually got to hear from Jared Gilmore and Phillips on how they're helping us with the budget on that. Um. What I would love to see is if we're going to bring anybody in for anything, I would love to see us bring somebody in to completely redo the entire city budget to reallocate it. Absolutely. Completely. Like, rebuild it, take all the labels apart and rebuild it and know every nook and cranny that every dime is being spent in. Yeah, we need to know because yeah, I think for too long it's been going in too many.

uh directions there's too many this over here this over here this over here and they have to put all right back into one neat package so i'll make a motion we find somebody to pursue that avenue i second it i do believe that's what intern solutions does You need a motion on having interim solutions to do that?

So the motion is on the table to find someone that can come in and work on redoing the entire budget. It's been seconded. It's up for discussion at the moment.

It's up for discussion. I believe we should follow with what interim solutions can do for us. I mean, they're well versed in all the aspects of city government on budgets and finances and the whole line of arts. It's what they do for a living. I think we ought to pursue them.

Okay. Within the interim solutions thing, the city treasurer gave me a couple of questions that she had in that respect. Would you like to come up and read those questions?

You can go ahead.

Okay. It is, how is paying a company $1,000 per day, $97 an hour plus mileage plus possible hotel, financially responsible with taxpayer money? Wouldn't it be better stewards of the taxpayer's money to get help with the budget and hire to fill the clerk position versus spending thousands of taxpayer's dog money a week? question number three is why are we not looking into other options as well and comparing the cost this seems like a more responsible thing to do with taxpayer money I guess that's under the idea that if interim solutions does this there must be other people that do it too why are we not entertaining more bids on that yes I think they do

from my understanding they've done a city clerk city administrator and a financial and most of it is done online so and it would get us get us going in the right direction that doesn't mean that we can't until we can find someone else so the they did give a proposition um a potential

contract on that I did meet Tina the proposed city clerk she is currently the city clerk of Crane Missouri and she said that a lot of what she feels that she could do to help us could probably be done virtually as opposed to her traveling here two and a half hours away and all And she has specific days that she's able to help us. And the proposal that you have is simply to help us finalize the budget itself for this year. That doesn't put us any closer to having city clerk. That doesn't put us any closer to filling those positions and all also. I also have a proposal. From you all from a Kansas city clerk that is willing to bring, uh, come and do a workshop with council on how the budget works, how to compose the budget. And she is willing to teach a city clerk how to do that portion of it within that that is laid out before you within that. all so those are ways that we could deal with this redoing of the budget completely I don't know that a single city clerk experience unless they are super super super to redo an entire city budget it might take more of a well knowledgeable accountant within city budgets workability Those are one things that we could find out from interim solutions, what that would look like and how much it would cost. And I can contact them amongst the others as the motion on the table is to find someone that can help us redo the budget completely. So I would look into that and bring those potentials to the next council meeting for that.

Would that also entail trying to find another city administrator

and in that same avenue if that is the council's desire to seek another city administrator we could go that route i mean i think we need to hire i mean like another city administrator or like city clerk to have to do both probably right now because it's like everybody's the same she's the only one here we need to get that

like even another person being able to help in the office at the time being could do with that i do have more information regarding applications and so forth that have come in for city clerk which is what the next executive session is in regards to for the motion on the table that has been moved and seconded to find someone to come in and completely help redo the budget all in favor

any opposed is that all in favor i'd also like to make a motion for us to find the city administrator because i think you know we're falling into a hole without becky as it is and we need you know someone that's going to be able to do

we have one and now that we've lost one we run a hole there is a motion just made to find a city administrator is there a second for that you say we're already at We're kind of looking to see what that was going to be and so forth. So, at the moment, motion dies for lack of seconds on finding 1, if I can get a motion for a 10 minute executive session for non elected personnel for potential appointment.

Make a motion for 10 minutes of session for not like the personnel.

Okay, all in favor. We'll return at 841.

What do you think they're going to charge us to do from scratch? I think we should hire an accountant at a firm that's here in Kansas.

We had a good time.

There you go.

I wish I was there. I wish I was there.

I wish I was there. I wish I was there. I wish I was there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. or So he's working under John Aaron and that's what John Aaron does.

I thought so. And then the barrel of this stuff, and John told me. And John, he told me.

What is it about them Texas women?

I don't even know. I don't even know what you did down there.

You said it long enough.

I was born in Kansas. But first half of my life, I lived in the Dallas area.

Then the second half, and then we're off. We didn't go back there. I didn't take one. I didn't realize And they're all, remind me of military graveyard. Nice and neat. You know, they're bold, well-tasted carrots.

I'm not kidding.

One of them was, I think, Miller Farms, Miller Farms. What I've heard there.

If I had seen him get it out of the trunk, I'd say, Brian, I drank it out of it after he drank the water. If he could have been there with the glass and set it in the corner, I would have been drinking it. And I hope he's got it.

I've seen you drink some rock booze. Yes, I have. Here's the bottom line. It's an every year thing.

They turn it over. Absolutely. I helped Ben build that damn thing.

It's not a good thing to do. On highway jobs, I worked every week.

It's a constant. Okay, the fishermen's going out there looking at that. You've got to drive out there looking at all that floating. Look at all the stuff. There's stuff under the water. Manganese.

That's one thing. He's not smart. No, it's not one of these kids. He's on Doug Smith. Doug Smith was out there, and he would die down there. Do you know where the beds are? Yes. He had a big old wire brush, you know, and he cleaned all the grating. And, you know, he's the only one that's gone down. They hit me up one year. I said, oh, you've got to pay your damn money. Because all the power, all the pumps there, you've got to turn it off. Off to go down there. Because they'll suck you right down in there. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, you'd be stuck to that. Yeah. My boy. Oh, I don't know. I think it is.

Well, see, we just did a way to go to fire. They seem like the same way. All the years with all that water coming up. Yeah. What year is that? I like with Bill. I'll tell you exactly what and i'm saying that was about 1964. yeah

I know, in 1970, I know that same quarter plan was right there.

See, I got a name in 78. Started working for Clarkson Construction Company. And Benny Larry got the contract to remodel mine. I helped him.

And what year do you think that was?

Oh, let's see here now. 69? No, I got a name in 78. We're going.

Can I say it right now?

No. 78, I'm saying probably, see, So you would come back down here in 86, it'd be about like 88, 89.

So 1988, right? Right.

And there's a Hymn Technicolor here too. Because I worked with Clarkson when I was the first operator down here, when we did the bypass, the first bypass. I can tell you we're a slug of old time. Bricks were buried. Really? Yeah, it's got like four Scott Pittsburghs. Yes. at the south end of that concrete plant. I don't want to bury it.

Concrete plant?

Yeah, it was there now. Maybe in big slabs.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Probably there. Yeah, you can see Clarkson's bottle back there from a little old lady. She lived in Kansas City. And they bought it for the dirt. Oh, okay. All right. Well, like that pot, that pit.

Mm-hmm.

Well, you might have to start off and I think we've been pushing them cats down there and loading us. Well, you might have an area that's probably about 10, 12 feet or something.

It started raining.

We scoot over. What did he say? It might be two feet. I wouldn't take the motor at all.

She doesn't know what you did.

No. I told you. Well, now I'm talking about work. We've got a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Not cool.

Yes, that's right. That's the only new tractor. My grandpa was the next John Deere. Well, here. Yeah. And he wouldn't take a baby. He didn't have a good old friends.

Well, every program was a deal. Oh, party. Yes, man.

I remember all of that.

Thank you. What's that?

Oh thank you. Thank you very much.

Executive session ended, no action taken, resuming normal meeting.

I would like another 10 minute executive session, non-elected personnel with the mayor and the lawyer and without Morgan.

Is there a second?

I second.

Okay, all in favor? We'll be back at 8.52.

Please say a few words of excuse for the public to hear. I'll excuse myself due to being too close to the mic.

Oh, excuse me. She's too close to the mic, so she'll excuse me.

Me, co-maker? Huh? Me, co-maker? No. Hey, what do you think of me? It's so nice to talk to you. Make coffee.

You mean drink in the club? Oh, shoot, man. Make my wife spend money, bitch. Wouldn't bet for that.

That kills the manganese. Manganese!

Oh, that's when he had run over here. Yeah, that's when he had run over here.

So, it took two days span for the chemical, all that chemical is two days not in the water, to be treated out of the water. So, it wasn't that Josh did or I did. It was that pump quit. It was a failure.

So, because we found it that morning, we took that after he burned it. He took immediate action.

And we did what we could do, and we got back the whole line here. And he's been back washing, adjusting that thing, because the old pump was built on it. So we got that pump where it's going now, and he just now got it kind of calibrated for the chemical. Now, how many miles does that take from our pump water plant? So think about this little thing. It's over 10 miles.

And he said, I think he said around three miles. Well, it would be. Yeah, I'm thinking about that.

So think about it. That's the compressor on top. Six-inch range. I think it's a six-inch range.

But you have to go three miles. But do you remember? Not exactly what year it was. Year it was. Drought? Yes. There's nine of them now. Yes, there is. And you go, right. From the staff. But the walk-in. Yeah, the walk-in.

It's not the walk-in.

John Johnson. Johnny Reed. The discipline is great. The walk-in is on top.

But the walk-in, it's just too different. It's better.

I've got four words to say. Let's make all the ring Do you know Connor?

No, I don't think there's a picture of that.

Yeah, I've got a kid.

Hey, you're pretty good. I was going to ask you that. That's what I want to meet him. You know, I've been wanting to talk to him.

He can have a little chat with me.

I'll be back. I'll be back. And you're a new driver. What's that? You're a new truck driver. Maybe. My times are busy. No. No. Anyway.

No. My husband built a trailer.

Yeah. So did he. So that's why. He was a carpenter. I was an operator. I did highway and fireman.

That's what I did too. No.

That's it. That's it. Hopefully, it'll be enough that I can .

And when they tell me about that, it's the air compressor . And so, That's why there's, yeah. Was that build up on there before?

Okay. I guess. Oh, yeah. The thing is, it's going to be. No, no, no. Really. So, I was like.

and see if it keeps coming down, break those down, I'll just, I don't care what the tricks are or not, you might have to do it afterwards.

So. Oh yeah.

You ready?

Yeah, because it will do a drip down before that. So go ahead, yeah, go ahead.

You can press it. Yeah, something special. Just

Anyway, yeah.

That confuses me.

I've got to get that fixed. Thanks, Anita.

Quick change of time. what do you mean Which one's that? The crank? Yeah. Yeah. We don't use it. We don't use it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Executive session ended. Resuming normal meeting. I make a motion for three minute executive session for non-licensed personnel for appointments.

to include Sandy, or the whole council, the mayor, more walks, and the lawyer. I have a second.

You said how long?

Yeah, I said three minutes.

Three minutes. All in favor? We'll move back at 8.55.

Connor Hackey is here.

He thought you had money. Okay, cool. They're not on here, but you're on. Oh, I got it.

Just talk to him. Talk to him. Well, that's the connection. Okay.

Hey, hey, hey. Yeah, go for it.

Go for it. I wish I had money. Yeah, we can go over here.

Go for it.

I can't believe how many kids were at UPS. How many was the count? I don't know, but there was a lot.

I quit counting at 28 because I could only see myself.

Okay, good.

Because I could only see my side.

I'm sorry, don't worry about where all that crap is.

You'd have to show up.

You know where the bear is.

We're going to take it backwards.

. . . . .

.

.

All right, executive session ended, resuming normal meeting. Do you want to let the council know that after an interview with Caymani Davis, that this deputy city clerk and I had, we did hire him to help with the mowing. So we'll have another hands on deck starting tomorrow. Part time starting tomorrow with that, so that moves us forward with that. Still waiting to hear on the other position that was granted by council for hiring. Okay, departmental reports.

So between the dates of July 1st and July 19th, we had 186 calls for service, 12 citations, 39 traffic stops, 20 fishing licenses checked, two drug cases, nine case reports, and 12 call outs. Calls for service included abuse, five ambulance calls, two disturbances, two other drug cases that are being investigated, two domestics, one structure fired, three juvenile incidences, two mental health cases, one protection order violation, one shoplifting case, two theft calls, six check welfares, one dog bite, two compliance checks. So far, theft-wise, I've doubled in the last month and a half compared to what I had the last five months prior. I mean, all I can say is it's lack of manpower and being in the area and being seen. So that's the only thing I got for us there. Mental health and juvenile incidences have also continued in the city. Month so far puts the department dealing with 34 juvenile incident cases and 21 mental health crisis cases for the total year. So far in the last month, five weeks, give or take, I advertised on KPOA, Facebook, Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, newspaper. I mean, this is literally all I got. There's one certified person that would have to be a conversation. There's two uncertified people and one of them didn't even show up for their testing date. So I have one person right now that is currently in the testing process and eventually will be in the interview process. I guess I'm coming to you guys to see what you want to do. My thing is, is you guys said that you wanted them in town or close to in town. So I didn't go to Miami County paper. I didn't go to Bates County. I didn't go to Anderson. I didn't go to Fort Scott, Pittsburgh, wherever. So I don't know what you guys want me to do. I mean, I'm going to redo the advertisement on all those places because all of them have now come up. to where they aren't going to be on there anymore. But I don't know where you want me to go. What you want me to change? I mean, obviously pay and stuff like that would be your guys' purview.

This is... A couple things. The theft is up all over the county. So it's just not pleasant.

I've never said it was just doubled.

Is this the 1st time that you've approached the council with the applicants? Yes, okay. Do we need an executive session to go and see what he what he has?

Not really. In typicalness, he doesn't approach the council with applicants. He vets them and he brings them to me if he feels that they are worth being appointed. And then at that point, we would bring them to council for appointment. Okay. Because there's no reason to go through and look at a whole bunch of stuff if they're not going to meet what he's looking for and. Would be suitable for the city.

What what's going to happen to the dog?

The dog is either going to be given to somebody else, which right now I'm the only person you have for goes back to Texas.

goes to you we have to send you to training for two weeks right yep so at that point we're either police officer full-time officer for two weeks on top of or loops in the top yep and did barton sign a two-year contract with us he did not have one in his file whose responsibility is

those contracts are with their paperwork for health benefits and stuff like that and their taxes forms and things I don't I don't do any of that that would be the city administrator they're the ones that handle all that paperwork I can do that The contract itself, so there's lots of things that we have to do while it's here. We have to send in pictures of what it gets, videos of training, stuff like that. In regards to the dog itself, if our canine officer leaves or gets fired or is unable to do the dog or loses the dog because of some reason, we either have to send someone down there, pay for the training this time around, or it goes back to Texas.

How much is the training?

$6,500.

So again, is that something that we need to vote on, on what to do with the dog? Yes. I make a motion that we send the dog back to Texas. I'll second.

Moved and seconded to send the dog back to Texas. Any discussion?

Yeah, when are we going to pay for him to take it down? Does that be the right thing to do? I just want to put that up there.

Well, what do you just drive? What do you drive his personal car? What do you drive? Um.

You can drive a patrol car that the dog is suitable to be in.

Yep. Use our field card. Yep. So it wouldn't be a mileage number.

It would be on the clock.

It would be on the clock, yes.

How long will that take? I believe the facility is ten and a half hours away.

So it would be two days. They'd ride down there and stay in that company?

Any other questions or discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Passes four to one.

Uh, I have officer highly's resignation letter. Uh. He says during his tenure here at the Pleasant Police Department, I've appreciated the opportunity to serve the community, work alongside dedicated colleagues, and grow both personally and professionally. I'm grateful for the experience, challenges, and lessons I've gained throughout my time with the department. My decision to resign is not a reflection of the police department, my chief, or my fellow employees. In fact, my chief has been an exceptional leader who has supported me through many challenges. and have had the privilege of working alongside dedicated coworkers across multiple city departments. They have made my time with the city meaningful, and I sincerely appreciate each of them. Unfortunately, my decision to leave is based solely on the actions and culture created by the Pleasanton City Council. Throughout my employment, I have witnessed an environment in which employees often feel undervalued, disrespected, and fearful that even minor decisions or actions could jeopardize their employment. A workplace should foster trust, professionalism, mutual respect, not an atmosphere where employees feel they must constantly look over their shoulders. I've also become increasingly discouraged by what I have perceived to be a lack of transparency and accountability with city leadership. The treatment of employees combined with decisions that appear inconsistent with the best interests of the city workers and the community has made it difficult for me to continue serving under the current governing environment. Additionally, I believe the city's expectations of its employees has become unrealistic. Public service requires dedication and sacrifice, but employees should not be expected to devote every aspect of their lives to their job at the expense of their personal well-being and families. City employees are professionals and human beings deserving a healthy work-life balance and the respect that comes with their service. It is disappointing that these circumstances have led me to this decision because I genuinely enjoy serving the community and working with the outstanding people within the police department and other city departments. My resignation is not because of them. It is because I no longer have confidence in the leadership and direction established by the Pleasanton City Council. Please accept this letter as my formal notice of resignation effective August 1st, 2026. I sincerely thank the police department, my chief and fellow employees for their support, friendship and dedication throughout my time with the city. I wish them nothing but continued success and safety in the years ahead.

Chief Wisdom?

Forgive me for my gear, I just got back from a call. Just before the meeting started this evening, I handed a budget for my department to the mayor. And this was myself, the assistant chief, and a couple of my captains sat down and we just kind of did a blind line item per what we needed for the department whenever we went through this. So you guys can look through that. Go over whatever you guys have concerns about at a later time if you want to. We can do it now. It doesn't matter to me. I can tell you last Saturday we performed hose testing. We started at 630 in the morning trying to beat the heat. So if anybody drove by and saw us out here with all the hose laid out on the ground, we was hose testing. We had a total of nine 50 foot sections of inch and three quarter, which is our attack line, fail, burst, leaking. whatever you know the coupler the coupler sliding on the ends of hoses so they will not pass hose testing and one 50 foot section of two and a half inch failed hose we still have a lot of hose over there but you know whenever you look at my budget you see there's a line for new hose i was predicting some of my hose was going to fail also last saturday we moved our um deal for spraying water for the kids and handing out popsicles from Main Street to out to Steggy Lake. I talked to the people that was out there. They had some kids show up. They had some adults that played in the water as well. So, you know, I just want to put that out there that we're going to continue to try to do what we can to Make the fire department as part of the community and try to give back to the community because the community gives to us a lot Other than the and I saw on the agenda on unfinished business there is about the Bathroom situation. That's the only other thing I had on my list That's I'm totally good with that if you are I I can tell you we've had somewhere around four or five structure fires this year. I don't have an exact number. number but i can go get that if you guys would like me to break down kind of what type of calls we've had but i have not been able to wash any of the new gear yet so what my concern is i need to get it cleaned so it doesn't wind up looking kind of like this old gear that i'm wearing right now This is still in spec and this is still good gear, but I want to try to keep it looking clean and new as possible. So, you know, whenever I'm bringing up the washing machine slash bathroom deal for the fire department, this is to, you know, part of the grant that we got for the gear was we got a washing machine specifically for washing the fire department gear. So we need to get that in service.

And you all should have gotten a bid from A to Z plumbing, $5,000 for that.

Did you send it off to the email? It went in your email.

I will say that the fire department has volunteered to build the room so we can save money there in the fire department building the room but there's going to be specific things that we can't do as volunteers uh wiring you know wiring the plumbing things like that we can't do but you know we can put the room up and then get all of the let all of that stuff get done and then we can finish it out and get everything in working order but um you know my fire department firefighters have stepped up and said they are more willing to Once we get the wood to build it, that we would spend a day or a couple of days or however long it takes us to get the stick frame up.

Jimmy, does the city have like the materials and stuff that would need to box that in?

We don't have a whole lot of plywood. Jeremy went and got some plywood a couple weeks ago for the box folder for the collection basin of our cookies. As far as actual plywood, we don't have a whole lot. What was down at the shore building was not in very good shape. It got wet. We do have a boatload of stuff in the shop. I don't remember what's up there. It ranges all the way from 2x4s to 2x12s. So we may have most of what we need wood-wise.

And I'm sure... um i i do have people that have offered to like the electrical wire that we will need they're going to donate that uh electrical sockets the boxes everything um they will all have uh from what they told me they will all have like home depot stickers on them where they're buying them it's not just something they're pulling out of you know there will be new new sockets new wiring and everything to assist with getting the cost down you know I got to say, we got a good bunch of people in the city of Pleasanton. So, you know, they are trying to do their best in helping the department out.

So then this bit here, just kind of the piping situation and the grinder pump?

Yes, that bit. My biggest concern whenever I first thought about this was Getting water to it is not a big deal. PEX pipe, you know, I can run PEX pipe, I can crimp hoses and stuff like that. Getting the waste water away from it and where it needs to go is not in, you know, that is not part of mechanicing on cars, so.

And to be fair, was this put out for other people to bid on as well?

The information was put out for people. This is the only one we got back.

When was it put out? I don't remember how long ago it was. Before Candy left. Yeah. I can reach out to others, but that's just going to keep dragging this process out. I don't want you guys to make a decision if you're not comfortable with making a decision, but the more times we reach out to other people to get estimates, we're just dragging the process out even further. so what is it that you actually need from us to get that done um the um i've got to be able to get the waste water away so i'm going to have to have some company come in to whatever the grinder pump you know it was originally talked about maybe trying to put a drain line in and and hooking into drain line going away from the building or grinder pump or something like that to get waste water away from it That's going to be more than what I can just check off and what I can do. So I'm going to need city council approval for getting funding for that. I have had a couple of people contact me about that are certified electricians. They haven't, you know, we haven't just sat down because I don't know how. how far away the box is or anything like that for running electricity. So I need to get with certified electricians to see if, you know, what they're going to charge to want to, you know, whether they run the wiring or they're there and I run the wiring, whatever, you know, I'm going to fall back on their licensing, so whatever they want to do there.

So what are we talking about cost-wise?

What do you need from? This plumbing, if I remember right, was right at $5,000. If we can get most of the material donated, you know, if the city has some two-by-fours and stuff and we got to buy some plywood, buy some sheet rock and stuff like that for the inside of it, you know, I'm going to say... Alex, I'm going to depend on you because I don't buy plywood and sheetrock right now. Is that, you know, let's say a 10 by 10 room. You're talking, what, $500, $600 for plywood and sheetrock estimate? You know, I'm leaning on him because I don't buy it, you know, that stuff regularly. So, you know, we could be closer to... seven between seven eight thousand dollars just trying to put in a room to get this washing machine up and working with where i'm at with my budget right now from talking at the last council meeting um we're going to be awful close at the end of the year You know, I think it was said last council meeting I was at 21,000 left. I've got truck testing, pump testing that's in September now that I've got to pay for this and SCBA. that we're working in there. So we're talking, I think pump testing last year was somewhere around $3,000 to have it done. Don't quote me on that, but I think that's about what it was. And then I have basically, let's see, we're almost into July. So we're almost five months left in the year of running calls. last meeting we was projected to run 56 57 calls uh but you know halfway through the year where we was at so you know if we have two-thirds of the stations show up that's going to eat up a lot of my budget in a hurry i know you said that um if you went and after this and i'm saying that's going to prolong it but

And we're only like, we're almost to August, so I think that, I just don't think we're close. I'm afraid it's going to run short.

Believe me, I've been trying to crunch numbers as close as I can to see where I'm, where we're going to be at. I did get an email back from Weiss. Last meeting I brought up the SCBA. I reached out to two other companies. I got a email from Ian Goodyear from NAFCO it was like $9,800 for an SCBA I've got a couple of people that are trying to find some refurbished stuff right now so you know I hate to push it off but maybe that could be pushed off for a little bit longer was this on that grant

the washing machine washing machine the washing machine was on the grant i have to have some place to put it that is heated so there's what i'm trying to figure out is where where do they put the grant money that was the thing that i was going to ask and we can pull it out of there if there's enough left well and then they

The gear that you bought on the grant money too.

Well, I got four sets of gear on the grant money with the washing machine.

Oh.

And then I got four, you know, we had started last year about getting pricing and once we was... this grant went into effect, we was trying to match gear as close as possible, which they basically give me the same gear at a little bit of a discounted rate for four sets of gear. There was $12,000 last year that was supposed to be put in special equipment that, from my understanding, was going to go towards the four sets of gear that the city department was purchasing.

And Missy, did we ever get a chance to look and see if that was in the expenditures that we had listed or if it was? Okay.

No it wasn't or no you didn't? We didn't get a chance to.

So we do need to look into that and see if it came out of the wrong thing or if it was included in that. quick how much had been spent yes there was that would make a difference for us to worry yeah by far by far that would change a lot of things yes so if that 13 was included in that budget expenditure and it hasn't been actually from your spendable budget this year then they thousand to do this would be available to get present with that yes so is that something that the council to not prolong the situation longer would want to put forth the motion that if that was misgrouped and the money is there for them to be able to proceed with that

I'd like to see it myself. I'd like to know what's in there and what was taken out.

Yeah, because I'm not going to just sit here and say, yeah, it's there and it's not, and it's really not, because I have to see it too. Because as I'm reading right now, on this budget that she gave for the current year of SMH, for 2026, the fire department only has 18,242.

Yes, that was one of the things I noticed as we were going through, that would have to be changed.

And then for the budget for the 2027, they only gave them $23,498. Yeah, so that's going to have to be changed. So, yeah, I'd have to see the numbers. Do you remember off the top of your head how much the grant was?

The grant gear? No, I never did ever know a total on a grant. I reached out. I apologize. I sent an email to Andrea at... the fire marshal's office and that's who the grant was through to find out if the money was paid up front by the fire department and there was a reimbursal and she sent back and she said no that was a the grant gear and the washing machine was direct from the the company that did the gear right straight to the fire marshal's office do you know do you remember when we applied for it I want to say March of last year. June. No. Give me just a minute. Let me see if I can...

Okay, so...

But the Grand Southwest was awarded to you in 2026, or was it in 2025?

The, um, the... Yes, it was 2025, because November was the, like November 9th of last year was the date that they decided what departments got it on, so it would have been June...

if it was a state grant there's zero in there um even if it was federal there's nothing in there okay now trying to get to that the way you worded your question to her as to how that was prepaid to the city

or not you said that she said it went straight to it went straight from the the company that sold the gear straight to the fire marshal's office it did not so it never passed to the city it never passed the only thing that um that they required for the the departments that got it they wanted packing slips to prove that we did get the stuff And we sent most of ours in. There was a few that we got misplaced, but they went ahead.

But somewhere along the line, we would have gotten something that said how much of the grant we were awarded.

We did get an email on how much the grant was rewarded for that stuff, but we would have never seen the money go to the city if they paid for it direct.

On December 8th, I reported that I filled out the grant for seven sets of gear and a washing machine of last year. And most of the time, like June is whenever the grants come open, June, July is whenever they, I can tell you that's when they come open this year. I may have to have him read this. Um, December 15th of 2025 is whenever they reported to us that we were, Pleasanton City Fire was one of 29 departments that was awarded the gear and a, they call it an extractor, not a washing machine. 29 volunteer fire departments in Kansas for a total of $500,000. So depending upon how many sets of gear each department was granted, I do know that there was, we were one of four extractor washing machines throughout the state.

So you got 500,000?

That was 500,000 total. And that was split up of 29 different departments throughout the state. I totally understand. I mean, believe me, I'm worrying about this already, of not having enough at the end of the year.

Yeah. I might wash the table this one out so we can get all the information together.

And I can probably help the treasurer out a little bit because I think I still have the email of whenever the four sets of gear, the bill for the four sets of gear come in because it actually come to the fire department and then I forward it to city administrator or...

I think at this time we just got to figure out, you know, get a better grip on our finances, understand where the money's at. And if we have to, we can always pull from somewhere else.

I hate to take it out of special equipment, but if we, you know, because that special equipment is there not just for gear, but, you know, one of these days we're going to have to either do some, you know, knock on wood. We don't have any major issues with the truck, but, you know, at some point we may have to think about having to replace the truck.

Can you find out what's left over from that draft?

I can whenever I'm done here, I'll go next door and feed through my emails and print that off and bring it back over if you guys are willing to. That way I know whenever the bill was sent from Weiss to the City Fire Department.

And while you're doing that, you said you had four to five structure fires? Yes. Did you have any other... things going on besides structure fires?

Lots of medical calls. We've had one vehicle fire. We've had a few carbon monoxide detectors going off, smoke detectors, potential structure fires, electrical smells in houses, things like that.

How did you guys work together when you had all your structure fires in place? Well, I can tell you the last one. I'm going to say we worked well together because from the time of the page,

to truck getting on scene was six minutes. From the time the truck getting on scene to fire out and starting mop up, which is hot spots, was five minutes later. So from the time the page come out to the time fire was reported out was 11 minutes. You know, I can tell you whenever we pull up on a scene and there is a building that's completely involved and flames are 20 foot high, the adrenaline kicks in. Do we always do everything right? No. And I'll be the first to admit that. But I'm going to say that 11 minutes from the time of the call to the time the fire reported out was pretty decent.

Do we have a motion on the table for tangling by John?

Good point of order. There is a motion on the table. Is there a second for that? I second it. All in favor of tabling that? Any opposed?

Just give us more info and more numbers. I think we can make it better.

and i will go over i'll go over and start putting some lists together to on what kind of calls we've had how many of each and you know i will try to get something for you before you guys are done tonight mill levy or are you talking iso rating no milk I have people that I depend on that know that, so I will confer with them. Okay.

One last question. On the SOG, did you ever get that where it says approved?

Yes, and I thought I re-sent that to you. Okay.

Because the last one I have from you says July 7th, 2026.

If it is not, I do know it was updated that night. I thought I sent it to your email, but I am not finding it. So I will get that sent to you whenever I walk right over there.

It just needs to make sure that it says approved July 6th, 2026. Okay. I just want to make sure we all have the same copy. Once I get that, I'll print one off to have in office here also.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

All right, thank you. Okay.

It is very late. Mr. Hickey.

I'm not sure if you were here earlier whenever VG Consultants was here. He did bring to the council a proposal of what it would take a contract for us to look at to find out on how much would cost a proposal for contract of what it will cost for us to approve them to check on the viability of putting the infrastructure out there to do that. So I do want to let you know that that happened today. And did you have any other questions, comments, or anything that you'd like to say to the council in respects to this?

I guess I just want to see about seeing who we could work with in the city as well to start applying for grants and start looking for that because there is money available to cover some of these costs or to cover all the costs for either upgrades or surveys or anything like that. So I guess just make contact with whoever I need to to get that process started because the longer way, the longer it takes to get anything done. I'd like to have something going for the end of the year to get started on it. I have not yet because I was, I guess, waiting to see what my next steps were, what I needed to go from there, how the correct process is before, I guess, overstepping anywhere that I try to be.

well i know we have the application the uh contract in hand to look at to approve the next meeting um or make adjustments to at the next meeting for bg consultants to be able to look into that i don't think it would be beyond for him to start talking with the county of what it would take from their side to get that process rolling there and then we can meet at on that too.

Okay.

And I will call you so that we can meet up and discuss some of that. I have a couple of ideas that I'd like to give you in respects to those grants.

Okay. Yeah, because I'd like to do that because I know you guys are concerned about the budget. So if we can find as many grants as possible to cover that, if not exceed it and get it moving, because I know that stuff's going to take some time as well to get it in the process of starting and stuff. I guess let me know who we need to talk to for that. I guess I don't know who will be that, who does that process of applying for grants. Because I can't do it. It's got to be through the city to apply for it.

At the current moment, that will be me. And I will give you a call tomorrow afternoon.

Okay. That'll work. And then I guess if you guys have any other questions or anything, I'd be glad to look into them or get them answered or to get something moving. Because I know this was back in May when I was here last time. So I'd like to... move forward and get something going before. I'd like to get a foundation started before the end of the year, so.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Three.

Oh, three.

Hello, I'm Skylar. So I just came here, asked if I could host a car show. It's at the park on 6th Street, and I'd like to close the road down. It's in between. It's Kansas Road, it might be. Kansas Street or Kansas Road. It would be on October 31st from 2 to 6 p.m. And we would like to do a burnout contest. There is a concrete pad there. Me and Alex have kind of chatted about it and whatnot. That would be something we could do. We could donate some of the money towards Pleasanton to give back. It's going to be a donation entry with a food drive, so all the food will be donated back to the community or the local church. But other than that, that's honestly all I was wanting to ask.

I was thinking the donation could be donated to Sixth Street Park, at least. That's kind of what I was thinking.

That'd be fine. Just to bring something into the community. She said October 31st, 2 to 6 and 2. Yes, from 2 to 6 p.m. 2 to 6.

And you'll go trunk or treat, right?

Yes, so from 2 to 4-ish, we'll do like the cars and the burnout contest and whatnot, and then do the trophies, and then probably after that we'll do the trunk or treat for the kids. And I'd say about 6, 6.30, that way the kids can still trunk or treat around the town and whatnot. You guys don't have to make a decision today. him over some big uh concrete blocks and whatnot if needed i could definitely figure something out for that cause okay yeah so the concrete pad that he's talking about was where uh jimmy was it's like dad's shop was there was like a old like shop garage and they were done

that we everybody's willing to do so that's why i thought it'd be good idea there it wouldn't be blocking nothing wouldn't be turned up a roach

And also, I would be interested in helping for the general Pleasanton-based car shows. Do you guys need help with that? Excellent. Because I run the Midwest Showstoppers car show group. We have an online page, and then we have a Facebook group as well.

City equipment.

I think Jake Madigan said it all about city equipment. I still, I have a hard time swallowing that you yourself want to protect the city assets, but yet we leave a $100,000 piece of equipment at the lake for over 10 days already. That needs to be back in this damn yard tomorrow. And I'd like to know why it's sitting after so long.

The wife's been out there for so long, we can have, is Jimmy still here?

He's right there, yeah.

I do know that equipment across the country is left on job sites with the jobs being done.

That's fine, but that doesn't have any kind of GPS or anything else with it to protect it.

Actually, I also. It gets your boat to have GPS. Is it active? Yeah. They are active. out. But in fact, you can call a cat. They can tell you where it's at. They can tell you what's low, if it shoots a code, or anything like that. They can actually tell you how many RPMs in front of them are. As it's doing.

What was the purpose of leaving it out there so long?

Because I have other things to do out there. In fact, I got two of them done today. One was pulling One of the old concrete picket cables. It had been split, busted. I don't know how it broke, but blades were busted on it and it needed to come out of the ground. So it is now out of the ground. That there's an old tree stump out there that they were going to burn it. I don't agree with that because obvious reasons. I don't like burning stumps. I'd rather dig a hole, get it out and build a hole. They're both down.

Is the equipment back in the town then? Or is it still out there?

It's right back there. The other thing is it's really hard to miss.

I didn't look, so that's why I was asking. I still think it should have been back here after being done with at one time.

I do also want to point out if someone ever tells you that they've tampered with city equipment, that is a crime and should be reported as such, not ignored. because we don't need people admitting to that and then not a follow through. It's like, why are you touching our equipment? Don't do it. I don't care how curious they were. They don't need to. So I do agree with council. It would be best to not have the equipment left for extended periods of time where it's not under watch. The fact that it does have GPS does very help a lot with that. Track it down if it does wander off.

But we should never leave it in a position of wandering off. It could have easily walked off at any point in time. Somebody could have damaged it at any point in time. It's not like it's sitting down at Cookies where everybody's driving by.

So if we're going to be so anal about protecting said equipment, Let's go across the board. Build a building. Out back. Big enough to house it, dump trucks, all the attachments, tractors, all of it. Because half of our assets are sitting in a building that, frankly, we can't get in and out without unloading the building on a day-to-day basis. We need a machine shed. Point blank, plain simple. We looked into it yesterday. or last year cameras don't matter cameras don't matter if everybody's worried about keys to these machines and they can walk off and this that and the other they can do it out here because the one gate that we do have back there hasn't shut in probably 15 years other than that we have an access point there we have an access point right here they cannot be gated anybody can come in here and go and come and go as Many times they want to. Cameras are not. The only thing that a camera's gonna do is tell you after the fact. A machine shed that's lockable, securable, and then has cameras in it, guess what? Will stop somebody from getting into it. A lot better than just a window and a skid steer, or a window and a tractor, or a window and a dump truck, because let's face it, if you're gonna be stupid enough, break windows on city or government property, you're going to hotwire the damn thing and you're going to take off in it. And on top of that, we have one tractor sitting outside. Guess what? Any John Deere key from about 1984 and newer will access it. As long as it's got battery, fuel, and tires that are aired up, it's going to go somewhere. Same way with all the implements. Old Ford key. That's what the blue dump truck takes.

I think we should just be better about finding where our equipment's at and taking better care of it as much as we can. I mean, we've paid so much money for it. All the equipment's here. That's what I think we should do. I've asked for documentation on the equipment being taken care of, and I didn't get any of it.

Did you get that together, the...

There is no getting it together. It's in the books what we have. That's all we have.

Well, then I'd like to send to us, please, a copy of it.

Okay. That's going to be interesting because it's in a book.

Probably an easy way to get around that would be just to go through the areas that are and take pictures of the last few pages of each of them.

I mean, we can bring it over here and put it on the Xerox machine, as far as that goes. Also, and I don't know what is going on with this machine. For the life of me, I do not know what's going on with it. The hydraulic fluid, I can explain why it's low. It's the attachments. Plain, simple, short, sweet, straight to the point. Oil, if it was a break-in lube, I could see that going down a little bit. Didn't take a whole lot. Antifreeze is what concerns me. I filled it up twice now.

New skid steer.

I contacted Caterpillar. Contacted their maintenance. Their technician. He said he don't know what's wrong with it. I don't know where to go from there. Other than have them come get it, take it down there and look at it. I don't know.

I would think.

Well, it's already thrown in the code anyway, on the door.

Okay. Well, it should be under warranty still, so let's have them look at it.

Well, yeah, it's got just over 100 hours on it.

So let's do that as quickly as we can with it. I know that puts us out of use of it for a little bit.

I've put maybe a half gallon in it so far, three-quarter-ish.

That's still a lot. Yeah. For new, it shouldn't be doing that. It shouldn't use any. Let's contact them and see what we need to do to get that looked at, fixed, or replaced if they can't figure out what it is.

My understanding was that if we had issues or something, they'd come down and get it. That's what my understanding was. I mean, am I...

I think more than anything, that depended on the issue that we had with it. Now, if it was something simple, I think they was going to come down and take care of it there. If it was something major, then it'd have to go back, obviously. I mean, I can't find any place that it's leaking.

Well, I consider, I don't know what's wrong with it, an inappropriate answer on their behalf. Yeah, me too. It's their job to figure out what's wrong with it and make sure that the equipment that we're buying from them is functioning for what we need. So let's contact them and press that to get it done.

I'll get a hold of Bob tomorrow, see what he says.

He is our primary sales rep. Yeah, because nothing's even hit the break-in hours yet.

No. like i said as far as the oil i can kind of see that if it's a break-in lube diminishing a little bit i think i put half a quart or so in it yeah i'm just saying that's what i noticed so okay thank you jim there was a department report sent out

This is a good time to refer back on the Hancock and the city clerk that can come down and train. Is that something that we want to move forward with on that budget help and so forth on those contracts that you all have? Yes.

I think so.

Can I get a motion to move forward with both of those?

I make a motion to move forward with Hancock's finding someone to help with budget.

Now, is this helping with the budget or the temp clerk? Because there's both of them here, so that's why I want to double check.

So, um, Interim Solutions was providing a clerk to help with the budget. A temporary clerk to help with the budget.

And that's still the...

I've been waiting for that to get close enough to grab it.

That's still the $97 an hour. That's $97 an hour. Yes. to see us spending that money like that.

But you have to understand that we have to have help given our budget. And so we don't have anybody to help right now. It's just temporary. Yeah, it's high.

Because we do have the $97 an hour one. There's a temp clerk that has the experience and everything for that. And then we also have Mrs. Wade that has said that she would come down and train also. You have both of those contracts that were emailed to you.

We already talked about the budget, how we're going to have someone outside the box. We need to do that first. If we try to work on our budget now, it would be pointless to work on our budget when we're trying to have somebody to re-instruct.

Wade. Wade, right?

Wade, yeah.

Yes. Is...

This is like a workshop, isn't it? Yes.

It is a Budget 101 for the Governing Body workshop, which is about two hours, and a Budget Preparation class for the City Clerk, which is about four hours of Budget Preparation class for them to learn how to do it. So that's a total of $625.

How much is she going to charge to come and help

So that paper, that itself is not listed here. That would be a separate thing. This was an initial concept of teaching them how to do the budget, how to make sure that we get our budget done.

process of that anyway so should we just wait till that process and then because we could do that this week so do you want to push this to a special meeting i would because we could have the interviews and the uh potential hire done this week if we really want to do yeah And then the budget, we want to satisfy someone to re-instruct it. So we don't need help right now until we get the re-instruction back.

Unless the total looking at that can be done by the Intersolutions person also. Which I could ask. I mean, I would ask. They're already on the list of people to ask in respects to that.

So I would ask them and see if they can re-instruct the budget. Because they re-instructed them to help us move because they know what they broke.

Yes. So right now the motion on the table that's been seconded is for moving forward with the tent clerk helping us with the budgets. We need to vote on that then at this point.

No, I'm going to follow with what Alex is saying.

Okay. So do we retract the motion then?

Retract my motion. I agree with what you said because that's a lot of money and we've already made the decision to move forward in other avenues. I think we ought to follow through with that first and see where it goes before we go this direction. This should be at last resort.

Okay. Thank you. Mr. Dean, just checking on there, the retraction of that would be the way to go in this case? Yes. Thank you, sir. I want to make sure we're doing it all So that I have it on here twice. I thought that was a good time to go back and check. And so we want to hold off on setting the next budget workshop.

Uh, could you pick that special meeting? Yep. I just want to make sure we get everything we need to talk about in the special.

Okay, we had talked last time about putting it on the agenda for this time for pay for treasurer and a pay rate increase for the deputy city clerk with all that she has been doing. How is everyone feeling on that? What are they looking at there?

What does she make now?

Right now you make 1834 now 1834 now

And she has been covering court clerk, deputy city clerk, filling in for everything. She is actually still the codes enforcement officer because that was never removed from her.

Did we have to vote on her taking for a temp position for city clerk? No.

mayor can elevate her in a temporary situation like that this position she's going to end so you don't have to vote to take her in or out but you can just do that administratively okay well i mean if you guys objected obviously you can object to it but as long as it was done as an administrative decision then it's it's fine to do it that way well i didn't know that our codes and by virtue it doesn't say anything about inter you're talking permanent appointments yes you would have to you have to uh confirm or provide consent to the appointment um but if it's just an interim that you don't have to do that yeah by virtue of the office of deputy city clerk she covers for the city clerk in her absence and in lack of one that would be announced itself i just want to make sure that we do we have a pay matrix

I think this is a pretty good song.

Can you get those off the printer, please? Can you get those off the printer, please?

The deputy city clerk and the court clerk is not listed on here specifically.

The deputy city clerk starts at 17 an hour. with the years of experience that she's been here it would be just under 18 an hour but she's covering more than just the deputy city clerk she's been the court clerk and mr mayor can you please reprint that because utility water goals were in the printer

$24.50, $25 an hour.

Then are you going to keep her at $25 when we find the city clerk? No, she would have to go. We would have to adjust it back down.

Because her duties would be less.

Would it not make a little bit more sense to put her in something that would be more sustainable?

Because I was thinking, like, 2035. just so then we don't have to bum her back down after.

The other thing to do is we could either bump that up a little bit more, or we could bump it up a little bit and offer a floor covering. Flaps would be awesome.

a bonus for this time that she's been uh 25 but i don't know what the pace go so a second year a second year certified municipal clerk is 2040. and with the duties that she's been covering and everything i don't feel that that would be terrible

So 2040

starting on the new uh the new pay period that starts today because pays the payroll will go out tomorrow so you want to back that or just start start start out there today Is there just one or two? There's just one.

Those two pieces of paper.

That's a continuation of that.

That's okay. Well, we figured it out anyways.

Okay. What are we going to read? 2040, as you're taking notes there.

starting as a new pay period today.

Do we need to make a motion for that?

I would like a motion for professionalism.

I made a motion for pay increase to Morgan Watts.

Been moved and seconded for a pay increase of $2.06, taking the pay rate to $20.40 for Morgan Watts. Any discussion? All in favor? Four for, none opposed, one abstention. And for the city treasurer that has been coming in and helping in this time and all, thoughts regarding what to do there?

I would like to know exactly what she has done the whole time that she's coming in and helping. So we can have a better idea instead of just saying that she's coming in and helping. So I would like to know exactly What she's done, and I know that she's signed a check, but I do believe there should be three people signing checks, not just two. There's three people signing checks.

All city checks require three signatures.

So who signed it? Morgan and her and who else? Myself.

Missy helped me do payroll. She helped me pay the bills. Is she bonded?

So she is automatically bonded with the city workers as she's been appointed as treasurer.

Is she bonded through our insurance company?

Through our insurance company. She's automatically, yes, a treasurer.

So what has she been doing? I mean, because there have been some... Okay.

Do you want to repeat that again, please?

She has been coming in and helping me do payroll.