City Council - Special Meeting

There were 344 claims opened and managed by a risk management coordinator, both work comp and liability claims. We opened 450 pro-law matters in our office. And a pro-law matter is when there's any item that involves substantial work. It's an agreement, bid, legal question. If it's something that we spend more than 30 minutes of time on, we'll open a matter in order to keep it for the future. We reviewed 123 contracts that were for department director signature, which the council never even sees. There were 572 criminal citations and complaints, which caused us up to very little work to a significant amount of work. And we staffed at least 140 meetings. Our basics of our budget, similar to other departments, our people make up 94% of our budget. We have five attorney positions, one risk management coordinator, who is Stacy Wolf, who's been with us for a long time, and one admin assistant. And we leverage the remaining 6% of our budget in ways that hopefully provide maximum value to our staff and to our clients. Here's a comparison of our budgets from this year and next year taken from the mayor's budget booklet. As you can see, personnel is staying primarily the same. That's the vast majority. Like I said, 94% of our budget is for our personnel salaries and benefits. And we divide out the remaining 71,000 to pay for additional services and costs. This year, we've kind of moved money from professional services and from training and education in order to have sufficient money for supplies and also other operating expenses. And the last column, other operating, which has gone up 18.4%, the bulk of that and how we've kind of had to scramble a little bit to fit an additional cost into our budget is we are... At the end of last year we upgraded our Westlaw package and Westlaw is our legal research package and we hadn't made any changes in a long time and as you can imagine the resources that are available related to AI and AI-assisted legal research are valuable to our work, valuable to making sure that we're efficient, and they also are valuable to Westlaw, and so we're paying $12,000 more than we had been before.

Ms. Cushman, Chair recognizes Councilor Stroman.

Thank you, Chair. Carla, on the personnel budget for 2027, does that include the positions that you have yet to fill, the two attorney positions?

Yes, yes, that's for seven personnel. Currently we have two open positions, so hopefully we will bring a couple people on shortly. And that's for a full staff of seven.

Okay, so you accounted for that, so we don't have to worry about an additional, okay?

Right, correct.

Thank you. Correct.

Councillor Maher.

Yeah, my question is, do I occasionally use external law firms for cases? Mm-hm. Is that not included in your budget?

That's a good question. We do have some amount of money for professional services. Generally, when we have outside counsel, Most of the time, I would say insurance is paying for that outside counsel. And if insurance doesn't pay for it and it's directly related to one department, that department will pay for those professional services. So we have currently one. If Public Works is being sued about something, then Public Works will pay. Well, that would be covered by insurance. If Public Works has brought a lawsuit like I'm thinking about the one on behalf or concerning Catron Boulevard, the cost for the attorney's fees comes out of the public works budget.

Okay, thank you.

There are times when we have provided for legal services out of our budget. It's just not a very big line item. So it kind of is more suitable for one-off situations where we have a small bill rather than a long-term contract with an attorney.

And we'll move back to Councilor Strowman. Thank you, Chair. So if you have a claim that you're presenting on the behalf of the city and you hire outside council, do you pay them at an hourly or is it on a contingency rate? Or how does that contract look for the outside council to pursue a claim?

Generally, it's an hourly rate. To my knowledge, we don't have any contingency agreements with attorneys. I'm not saying that we wouldn't do that, but generally, the claims that we're bringing are just not really suitable for contingency matters.

Okay and then so my firm just received a letter which I think that most firms probably did in town about a collection action and you're just basically putting that out for bid you don't have a set rate it's kind of you'll see what kind of proposals you get?

That's exactly right. Okay all right thanks.

Please proceed.

I don't have any other comments on this one. I just wanted to, my final slide is just talking about future opportunities. Since we're talking about 2027, I mean, really in 2026, would like to hire two new attorneys to fill out the team, and we're in that process right now of doing interviews and hopefully finding two great team members. We also intend to review and assess our risk management services. and just really look for what are we doing well, what could we be doing more, how would that impact our budget, do we need to bring on a new FTE to provide additional services in the area of risk management. We currently have one person who's dedicated to that job, although we have other outside counsel and insurance agents and other people who are working on the city's behalf, but I really want to do a close look at um how other cities do it how we are doing it and seeing how we can do more and so maybe in 2028 there will be an additional ask from our office on that on that grounds and then you know something else that we're we're really looking at and we're working hard especially since we're down attorneys is really leveraging um our westlaw resources and other resources um to use AI and assistive AI to improve efficiencies, do document review, start us off on our legal research, and just do some of the front end work that we can finish up in order to just improve our efficiencies and improve, give us more time.

Mr. Stroman. Thank you. Concerning the leveraging of the AI tools, have you had them, had AI draft contracts so you can look at them and try that out? My son showed me how to do that. It looks like it has potential. It's not a final product by any means, but.

Well, certainly Westlaw will do that for you. We always work through Westlaw just because that's protective and it's confidential. It's intended to deal with legal services, and so it has that confidentiality piece that's essential. I think what we're really using it for is really reviewing other people's contracts, flagging issues, doing a compare of our contract versus what they've proposed. I don't think that anybody in our office has used it to draft something new, and I think that would be probably down the road. So but when you're talking about reviewing contracts, somebody else's contract, I mean, it can flag the issues in a matter of minutes, where it would take us a long time to go through. Especially, yeah. So that's where we've primarily been using it. But we're exploring it. And the other members of my team are really excited about it.

think that's a wise use of it I think the operative word like you have in here is secure so yeah to review somebody else's product that would be fine you know but we have to be careful if we are using it to create our own product Absolutely that is all I have Any other questions from council?

Councillor Armstrong

Hi, Carla. Thank you. How close are we to finding those replacements?

The position closed on Monday, and we went through the applications today. We're making calls for interviews, hopefully in the next couple weeks. What was the response like? It was less than we had expected, but we have some really good candidates. Excellent. So cross your fingers.

Okay, great. Thank you for what you do.

Is that confidential? I mean, I just want to know, you can tell me yes or no. Has any physician council presidents who don't have law degrees but always aspired to be a lawyer, have they applied? Rejected in screening.

I can tell you no council members have applied.

Thank you, Carla. Thanks. That wraps up item one. Going on to item number two, the 2027 community development budget presentation by director Vicki Fisher. She might not be. We're running ahead of schedules. Should we? Okay we will move to number five the 2027 finance department budget presentation by director Daniel Ainslie.

He wanted to say the best to last.

Okay to proceed? Okay to proceed? Yes, sir. All right, thank you very much. So we just wanted to start with our mission statement as a department is to proudly and professionally provide service. and support to the Rapid City community with accuracy, integrity, innovation, and transparency. Those are really values that we try to live by every single day. And so I think hopefully you can see that we do try to look very strategically. And so that's why I did schedule us to ensure that we would be last. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out. But that was made strategically to reduce the most possible amount of questions. But it seems best laid plans are laid to waste. In any case, we do have our city clerk's division, just to kind of briefly go over the different divisions within our team. The city clerk's division maintain all of our official city records. They issue a large variety of licenses, minutes for city council meetings, the board of equalization hearings. They completely staff that as well as prepare that, meet with hundreds of property owners and residents. And I do want to highlight that we have had a collaborative partnership with the library. That has resulted in a shared FTE. It's reduced .4 FTEs from the finance budget and then .6 FTEs from the library. and saving the taxpayers of Rapid City a little over $100,000 annually. Accounts payable, and okay, we're starting to have some of our staff come in. Just want to recognize our two deputy directors here. Accounts payable, it's very important to note that they make the payments for all of the city departments over a third of a billion dollars annually. That's for payroll expenses, capital improvements, supplies, also do all of our debt payments. That's a significant task. Maintain our ledgers and also our ERP system. And also now is being tasked with developing a centralized purchasing system as well as our internal review system. Something that I really want to highlight that I think is really important is when you look at the staff that we have that are doing accounts payable and accounts receivable, the staff that do that day in and day out. We have 12 that are performing that task, again, with a third of a billion dollars annually. That's equivalent to less than 10% of a staff member Dealing with a million dollars, that's kind of a metric that the GFOA uses to see how efficient your staff is. So when you can see some of the other communities in the Black Hills and you see how efficient our AP and AR staff are, they're doing very, very well. Next, accounts receivable. Accounts receivable, and again, this is important to note, receive payments across the entire city. It's not just utility bills. But of course, are receiving the payments for our utility system. But we do that for all of the departments. Looking at what we have done over the past year, we have significantly increased the options for payments on a monthly basis. People are able to pay electronically now. There's a variety of ways that they can make automatic payments. We also have a voice over internet so people are able to make payments via the phone and we have hundreds of people that do that on a monthly basis. They do billing across the entire organization, manages our bank reconciliation. Just to put that in perspective again, on an average month we have anywhere from 20 to 60 million dollars of transactions that go through. If you think about how challenging it can be sometimes balancing your own checking account, imagine doing that with thousands and thousands of times of entries. And that is done continually. I wish Tara were here to really recognize all the work that she does with that. But does a tremendous amount of work. And I think what's important to note is the precision that has to be done with that to make sure that we are able to pass our audits. And that is done routinely day in and day out. In addition, accounts receivable as well as accounts payable. So really it's Tracy and Tara do our cash audits internally across the organization, all the different departments. And Tara also maintains our cash flow analysis. And that has become a far larger issue than what we've done in the past. And I'll explain why that's a an additional burden that really has fallen onto Tara. But it is for good reasons, but I want to make sure that she's recognized for that. Grants and Strategics Initiatives. My apologies. Jamie, who heads that division, is here. Important to note that they have received $24.6 million in grants that have been awarded. We have 38 active grants. And in addition to doing grants, which is what that division was initially created to do, now they're taking on a lot of additional strategic initiatives. That includes things like the new website development that is going on. the traffic cameras that are being set up, our meeting management software system that we are hopefully going to be implementing perhaps later this year. FEMA, that is a tremendous task, all of the windstorm reimbursements that is being handled, vision funds, all of those sorts of things. But if you strip away all of that project management that is being done through that division and just solely look at grant awards, we have about a 14 to one return on investment. So I think that has returned a substantial a substantial return back to the community itself. Additionally, we directly administered the RSVP program that impacts all of Western South Dakota as well as Pierre. We have 560 volunteers that provide services to 49 different locations across Western South Dakota. And also we implement the community development block grant program We are beginning to focus more and more of that program on parks capital projects. We are doing that for a variety of reasons, but we are starting to see some substantial increase investment in a lot of our aging parks throughout the community through that. Next is our Community Investment Division. The Community Investment Division now manages all the CIPs across the entire organization. Previously, about 12 months ago, they just oversaw the public works, but now doing the complete litany of capital improvement projects, whether it's fire, parks, and all of the others. Additionally, and this has been a significant movement, is trying to develop new sources of CIP funding to ensure that growth is paying for growth. And this really has been a significant achievement, I think, within that division, is trying to identify ways that we can actually pay for the new infrastructure that is needed, that is owned by the community, and have that be paid for not out of our cip because our cip for years largely has been spent expanding our community that means that we're not able to use our existing cip to rebuild our existing built environment so there has been a a conscientious effort to try to find additional revenue sources to pay for that new growth areas and you can see a list of different projects that are being funded now through TIFs over $63 million. That is a substantial amount of projects from parks to fire stations to police precinct, a lot of roads. All of that is being done without tapping into the CIP so that we can redirect the CIP to fix our aging roads and to fix our aging parks in our community. Additionally, that division oversees more than $60 million of loans that have been provided by the city. To put that in perspective, an average commercial banker in the community, that would be a full-time position maintaining a portfolio of $60 million. That's something that that division does. Also, the division oversees the financial oversight for three different business improvement districts and also manages the opportunity capture fund and the life safety loan program that we have. Treasury services and this is what I was trying to allude to before with Tara This has been a lot of additional work That the entire finance office has taken on Tara now does a lot of additional cash flow analysis to see the free cash that we have available and that free cash instead of historically when that would be parked in checking accounts, earning very little interest. We are investing that. We are limited by state statute for good reasons in what we can make investments. We can't purchase Bitcoin. We can't buy equities or anything like that. But we can buy treasuries. We can buy CDs. And so we have been a lot more aggressive with that. And you can see over the past three and a half years what our returns have been. So far this year, we It has been looking very good. I think we're going to see an awful lot of some additional interest revenue as well this year. But I think that's important to note that that really has been a team effort. Dave does a lot of additional work now that has been brought on from that, as well as Tara, as well as Mike. Those three really take on a lot of additional burden from that. But I think you'll see overall that that has returned literally tens of millions of dollars to the community. A lot of that is in our general fund and has paid for our expansions of public safety, but it also has gone to our enterprise funds as well and has been a substantial revenue stream for our various enterprise funds, including airport, including water and wastewater, as well as become a significant funding stream for our capital improvement projects.

Councillor Stroman.

Thank you, Chair. Daniel, can you attach a percentage to those bar graphs? I mean, in terms of, like, 2024 looks like it's the highest, but I don't see. Do we know what the rate of return was?

So we were at $12 million, and we had about $220 million, so 5%. And again, we're not going to be able to maintain that because interest rates have fallen. So please understand that as interest rates fell, we're not going to be able to maintain that. But we're not going back to the years of 2011 and 2012 and previous years when the city would make $200,000, $300,000. We are making millions of dollars now. But again, that results in additional workload that's being done by Tara, Dave, and Mike. Thank you. Absolutely. Councilor Biberdorf.

Does that principle stay protective then for infinitude? So that principle is just going to stay there? Are you ever putting some of the earnings back into that? Or how do we grow the principle?

We end up spending the principle with our ongoing operations. And so in order to do that, we would have to adopt smaller budgets. I mean, our interest income is a sizable portion of our revenue each year. And so in order for us to increase that so that we had a larger amount to invest, we would have to invest less money each year in our ongoing budgets. But this really has been largely how we've been able to pay for additional capital projects and additional public safety hires that we've made, things like that. Additionally, with the Treasury Service, we've been a lot more aggressive with trying to, number one, we have refinanced one bond issuance that has saved the city or the rate payers of our water about one point, sorry, my glasses aren't quite strong enough to see the print, I think 1.4 million. And then we also have been able to take advantage of the SRF program that saved rate payers, I believe, $2.3 million, and then also right now we're working collaboratively with the airport on a bond issuance there where we are using the city's credit rating to reduce the interest payments that the airport would have to make if the airport would otherwise issue the bonds on their own. That's the same thing that we're going to end up doing about this time next year. when we proceed with a bond issuance for the indoor field house. When we look at that, that bond is going to be paid for through the hotel bid number two. However, the interest rate would be incredibly high on that because they don't have a longstanding history. And so we'll pledge instead our sales tax so that we can make use of our very high credit rating and then allow the airport, I'm sorry, allow the hotel bid to reimburse the sales tax bonds.

Councillor Stroman. Thank you Daniel I recall when Councilman Lehman brought up the idea of bonding for the airport expansion and there was a discussion that we had about whether we we are not even bumping up against our bonding authority though correct we're still safe in terms of of what we can do and if we have additional projects would be we'd have room to work

Yes, absolutely. I don't recall off the top of my head what our total available is, but it's hundreds of millions that we have available. Not that I am encouraging us to do that, but we do have that available if necessary. So in addition to our day-to-day services, the Finance Office has brought innovative strategies to expand the resources available to the community. We have been doing that without raising taxes. When you add the savings that we've made through some of our new issuances that we've done, as well as the grants that we have brought into the community, the interest income, as well as the additional infrastructure investments that we're able to make now through TIFs, That's a total of $129 million of new revenue to the community over the past about three years. I don't want to say that we'll be able to duplicate that exactly over the next three years, but I do want to make sure to recognize that that has been a substantial amount of work that's been done by the team. And by doing that, we also have not been adding on additional FTEs to be able to complete that. But we are very focused on trying to find solutions that bring additional value to the residents of Rapid City. Some of the budgetary changes, if you look within the finance office, we do have a personnel increase of 280,000. just to make sure everyone is aware of that. The reason for that, our budget analyst is being transferred to finance from Public Works, and so there's a reduction in Public Works by one FTE, and that has been moved over into the finance office. And so finance technically has one additional FTE, but that's not a new FTE overall for the city. We do have one FTE, though, that is new, that is in the proposed budget, I'm sorry to say this, but Dave Juhasz unfortunately will be retiring sometime late 2027, early 2028. That is a very key position. He does a tremendous amount of work for the community. It's really because of his work that we retain our very high credit rating and we want to ensure that we have a smooth transition. So with that, we would like to hire an individual to be able to work with Dave so that when he does actually leave, we will have a smooth transition. As I've described, we have a lot more financial intricacies compared to what the community had four years ago. And we do not want there to be a hiccup that will end up reducing our overall bond rating or anything else. And so even though there is an extra FTE that's in our department, I just want to make sure everyone realizes that by 2028 or so, that would be dropped off. And so we'd be back to FTE neutral. Within the professional services, there is a fairly large reduction. That's because we are reducing the grant contingency from $500,000. Instead, we've included the additional grants that we are anticipating. The other operating increases are $364,000. Really, that's coming because we are directly implementing several grants within Jamie's division that they are directly overseeing. And so those costs will be coming out of the finance office And so that accounts for those increases within the operating line items. Other than that, our budget is essentially the same as what it is in 2026, which is very similar to what it was in 2025. Some of the coming changes. We... are looking again at succession planning that we've brought up before. We are also focused on doing some internal review that will be head by our deputy finance officer. Tracy does a tremendous job of trying to ensure that the residents and the taxpayers of the community receive a fair deal. And so that will be a tremendous task that we'll be fulfilling across the entire organization. We are also looking at some enhanced payment options. That is for our vendors so that we can pay them more quickly, but also we can hopefully receive some additional rewards through those payments. Our centralized purchasing system and travel, centralized travel accommodations for the entire community or for the entire organization. That is going to be done by our existing staff. And so we have an MOU that we've been negotiating with AFSCME that would allow our existing staff to have some additional career enhancement and development and be able to do that without hiring additional staff. And then also financial analyst, that financial analyst is on board and will be providing hopefully some additional resources as we look at rates across our parks and recreation divisions, as well as developer fees, impact fees, as well as our interdepartmental fees. And with that, are there any questions?

Councillor Maher.

Yeah, I have a question on the reimbursement or the TIFs. So I know that they pay off on an average of 12 years, which is great. They come in better than expected. But how often does a city actually receive that calculation? Is it after the two property tax deadlines or? I mean, is the county looking at our TIF district and say, here's the tax bill for this TIF district?

Each month when we receive our property tax disbursement, it includes any taxes that we receive within those individual TIFs. And so with that, we can see the overall trend and the payoffs. And so Mike does go through and updates how quickly they're being paid off compared to what we had originally anticipated. Usually we're not able to do that until a TIF has been established for about four or five years because it does take several years for the actual construction to happen and for the actual assessed value to start increasing. Just because a TIF is approved, it doesn't create the additional revenue. We need to actually see the roads get built and then the structures be built and then the assessed value increase and then the taxes be paid. And so usually within four or five years, we're able to really see what the overall trajectory is of the valuation of the TIFs.

Okay, thank you.

Councilor Stroman. Thank you, Chair. Daniel, I appreciate the in-depth and precise presentation and the work that you do and your staff does day in and day out. I appreciate that you mentioned even a 0.4 FTE savings would be approximately $100,000. That's worth mentioning because if we could do that in more places in different departments, we'd be talking some real money, I think. And I'd also just like to say that I feel like you as since you've become the finance director you have been performing above and beyond what a typical finance director would necessarily be expected to do and I just appreciate that I feel like you've done a lot to educate the council and the public and come up with ideas to make us more efficient and I just hope that you'll just continue to do that And if you have to reject Mr. Juhasz's resignation, that's fine.

Thank you very much. But truly, the work is being done by our team, which does a great job. But I also did want to clarify that $100,000, that really is the combined savings between the library as well as finance. So it's not just 0.4 within the finance. That's $100,000 from the library as well as finance.

Thank you, Director Ainslie. I'm not seeing any more questions up here. And just a shout out to Mr. Juhasz. During my short tenure here, you have been clearly an expert and a pro. And every time I've needed your area, you've been extremely helpful. So thank you for your service, sir. And that'll wrap up item number five. Next, we will move on with number two. And Director Fischer, I apologize. We got a little ahead of ourselves, which sometimes we have a tendency to do up here. So I'll read in number two is the 2027 Community Development Budget Presentation by Director Vicki Fischer. The floor is yours, ma'am.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my apologies. We were planning on meeting at 345, thinking that the attorney's office would at least take 15 minutes, but I appreciate that you did bring it right along. So this is our 2027 budget proposal. Please note that our overall budget for the entire department is $11.2 million, and that includes 73 FTEs. I wanted to share this information with you. I think it's important that you keep this in mind as you're looking at all of the department budgets. In the last 25 years, the population of Rapid City has grown by over 45%. In addition, the acreage that we have annexed in, the total size of the city, has increased by almost 42%. This information matters, and if you'll allow me to make my presentation, at the end I'm going to explain why. Our department consists of eight divisions. You will see that they are diversified in nature. We are not just a one interest department. Planning and building services go somewhat hand in hand. But over the course of time, we have brought on code enforcement, parking, and then most recently, RTS and GIS. And we welcome them aboard. And it's been a great collaboration. It's amazing how all eight of these divisions work very well hand in hand. Because of the committees, boards, and commissions that we service, the staff that we have are putting together agendas, doing minutes, holding public hearings for 11 different areas. In addition, all of the divisions provide services to the city council. The first division that I wanted to review with you was building services. As you all know, Kurt Bechtel is our building official. Kurt's been with the city 34 years. We currently have 11 FTEs in this division. Besides Kurt, we have two plans examiners, six building inspectors, and two admin. What's important about this division is that we have seen an increase in the number of building permits, sign permits, substandard structures. This is also the division that does off-premise sign inventory. We also do contractor licensing. If we look at the chart at the bottom of the screen, it identifies just the growth in one year from the number of permits we've issued, the fees that we're collecting, and the overall value of the development that's happening. The first six months of 2026 has been the highest in the record keeping of Rapid City. This city is in a growth spurt right now, and there's no sign that we're going to see that being let up. I always like to look at the housing index. That's really a good indicator of where our economic stability is. So of our permits, 61% are residential, 39% are commercial, and of that 61%, the majority of the residential is, of course, apartments. but we have grown in the number of residential permits that we are currently issuing. That is a great upward trend. And over all the years I've been here, this being my 31st year, every time we see that uptick in residential units, we see the rest of the economy come forward with it. I'd like to point out that so far in 26, six of our building inspectors, the total number that we have, have performed right around 46 inspections. We anticipate that they will perform around 10,000 by the end of the year. This is important because for the most part, we do same-day inspections, and it's something that we're very proud of. We always do an inspection within 24 hours, but in almost all instances, if you call our department, that same day we go out and do that inspection, and that's how we keep progress going forward. And this is something that Kurt has taken pride in and ensured that his division continues to do that over the course of his 34 years with the city. Current planning has five FTEs. Jessica Olson is our division manager. I apologize, she couldn't be here tonight. She has, with herself, counted three planners and two administrative assistants. For the bulk of what you see on your city council agendas regarding rezones, PLATS, sometimes an Appealed Plan Development or CUP. This is the division that's put that project together. So in addition to that, they are reviewing their eyes set on every building permit, similar to the plans examiners. and the inspectors in building services. This is called the hamster wheel division. Every two weeks is a submittal deadline, and every two weeks we've got to get ready for planning commission, while at the same time we're getting ready for city council. In addition to those duties, you also see many of the ordinance amendments that you're reviewing come out of this staff. One of the things that we've done of late, and in part because of Councilman Temang, Um, we were posed a challenge. We created a vacation home ordinance and we don't want it to be an ordinance that just sits on the shelf. We can't register vacation homes until they're licensed by the department of health. They are understaffed. So we have been working with the secretary of DOH and are entering into an MOU, which you will see that says, let us help you. We are training the planners in the field to do inspections for one year to assist DOH with licensing all these vacation homes. Only one year, and then we put it on the secretary to go before state legislature for additional funding so they can secure the additional staff. And our team, not only in this division, but in the project planning division as well, raised their hand and said, we want to help get this done. So they've somehow fit that into their busy schedules and they're out doing inspections in order to ensure that we do get everything licensed so that we seek compliance with the vacation home ordinance. And we want to thank you. for making that a challenge for us because it definitely got things done. Some of our projected strategies for 27 is to finalize that MOU with DOH and also we want to look at what ordinances are needed to embrace that mixed use concept that we saw encouraged in our recently updated comprehensive plan and also to create easier avenues to dangle carrots for affordable housing projects. And so that's going to be a deep dive into the zoning ordinance. And it's something that's on our to-do list as urgent for 27. Long range planning, Kip Harrington is the division manager. Kip's been with us for many years. Many of you know him. He comes to several committee meetings. For the most part, this division is funded 81.95% by the Federal Highway Administration. and Federal Transit Administration grants. They reimburse our budget by 81.95%. For 2027, what that means is that the overall budget of this division, including salaries and all other expenditures, while it's In our budget as an expense, we will be reimbursed back by the state, or by the feds, an amount of $762,639. The city amount that we will be out is 167 and some change. So keep that in mind when we get to the end of this and we try to quantify why our budget has been slightly bumped upwards. So in order to secure this funding, we have to host the MPO. Well, Kip and his one other staff member, there's only two employees in this division, all of the MPO projects for all of the MPO area are filtered through this division. And we have to do that. We have to be able to facilitate those studies, which means that we've got to create the budget dollars for them. in order for us to secure that funding. And of course, we are the largest city in the MPO, and we don't want to lose that authority to do it. In fact, I serve as the executive director, which really means that KIPP is in charge. So this is also where our transportation, our major street plan sets. Transportation planning in the city begins with this division. And you've seen different changes throughout the course of time with where those major street connections should be. Those studies are done in-house for the most part by these two staff members. They also do residential and non-residential growth analysis and projections. That is that long range planning aspect of it. And as a part of that, then they bring forward land use plan amendments, which is basically known as the future land use plan. to encourage and promote those growth patterns that they see. And then they also are in charge of census information that the city is required to provide and the demographics that go with that. Our long term plans for 27 is to bring forward implementation of studies that you approved that were brought forward by the MPO last year and this year. which include the railroad relocation and railway alignment study, traffic signal optimization study, and the microtransit feasibility study. And we are excited about all of these. These are game changers for Rapid City. I want to see how these get implemented. We're going to talk about the microtransit feasibility study when we get to the RTS slide. Project planning. Marlo Capsa is the division manager, two FTEs with one vacancy, three planners when that vacancy is filled. The duties within this division are historic preservation, both structural and signage, the coordination of our surrounding growth patterns and the redevelopment of the city, that is something that initiates in this division and there's collaboration with the transportation planning at the end of the day. The creation of many of our ordinances and amendments to ordinances originate in this division. Annexations fall under the responsibility of the staff. And in our larger annexations, we have to do in-house annexation studies. That's a very big lift when we bring those forward. Implementation of the comprehensive plan update. You recently saw that ANDA approved our 25 comp plan update, which was primarily authored by Marlo Capsa. And as you know, it was a national award-winning document. So again, the dedication of these planners to the commitment and core of what is planning in Rapid City is the best that I've seen in the 31 years that I've been here. At one point in time and for many, many years, the ADA coordinator responsibility sat in the HR department. There was a request that went out that said, maybe that's not the right department. Is there anyone else that would take over this responsibility? Marla was the first one to raise her hand. And she is now the ADA coordinator for the city. This is a huge lift, a very time consuming task. We take this very seriously. We've had a kickoff meeting. We've asked every department to designate an ADA go-to person, because ADA starts with all of us. We all need to know it, and we all need to assist. When we look at where our 27 goals and priorities are, you'll see that ADA transition plan update is one of those goals. And a shout out to Jamie in the grants division. She helped us secure a grant. so that we can help fund that update. And then we want to implement those changes. This is something that is federally required. It sat dormant for years. And it's something that under Marlowe's leadership, we've had a great start to it. The future land use plan was not updated as a part of the comprehensive plan. So we have launched that project. We are setting up meetings in individual neighborhoods. We want to see what neighbors think is working and not working, what uses are missing, where do they have needs. You will be invited to those meetings as well. Usually we work with the school district and we get access to an auditorium and then we do open houses. We hope that you can join us. We're going to be doing that yet this year, but analyzing it and adopting the plan in 27, we have not created historic preservation design guidelines. It's something that the HPC has talked about, but we are now in 27 going to be launching that project. That'll be a big lift as well and a lot of collaboration, but we want to bring that in over the finish line. And again, This is part of the planning team that raised their hand and said, we want to help DOH. We want to make sure that our vacation home ordinance isn't something that just sits on a shelf. So just noting that for two planners, and we do have a vacancy that will be filled, and it'll be the first time we're moving a position from one division to another because the tasks and duties under this division just seem to continue to grow. As a part of our budget, please note that we do have access to $26,000 federal grant for the historic preservation component of our budget. We do get reimbursed that amount code enforcement, John Olson division manager. He has three, uh, code enforcement officers. As you know, they enforce the nuisance ordinance. Your grass is too tall. You didn't shovel a sidewalk. You've got debris and junk in your yard. They also have partnered with the planning division and assist with zoning compliance. So what that means is that if we get a call that someone says, hey, my neighbor is operating an illegal use in their garage, which unfortunately does seem to happen routinely throughout the city, John and his team help us. They partner with the current planning division and they address that issue jointly. They also assist us with side and code compliance. There's been a new graffiti plan stood up in the city. John and his team are instrumental to bringing that forward. We did a pie chart of what types of violations that they are currently addressing. And you will notice that the year to date total for 25 is significantly higher than 26. And that is because we didn't get any snow last winter or spring. And we have had no rain, so we don't have as many lawns that are growing out of control. What that has allowed us to do is become more creative. And that leans into those collaborative duties that John has stood up that include police department, fire department, parks and rec, and sometimes even the attorney's office, building services as well. And that's where we've gone out. We are assisting, not assigned, but we assist when complaints come in about cars being parked too long on a street, someone storing their boat on a street and it's impacting a site triangle. The substandard housing may be due to a fire damage or just lack of maintenance by the landlord. John takes lead on getting the doors open for us to get in and take a look at those. High crime areas. When the chief of police says, hey, we are getting more and more criminal activity in this area, we put together our own SWAT team. And it includes building services, code enforcement. It includes police, fire, attorney's office. And we go in jointly. And when building services go into these areas, and sometimes if we can get inside of a structure, the building inspectors go in too. And we then cite the owner for violations in hopes of improving that situation. we had a discussion the other night and at length about star village that is an example where it took all of us working together and in that case the finance department jumped in and we got to show you the list of issues so that we can get some of these areas addressed one of the most exciting things that john was partnering with to Initiate is the ignite program. This is a huge savings for the city So we take those that are in the ignite program they are required to be supervised while working, but they are not paid by the city and John uses them to clean up right-of-way and city property the city actually owns thousands of properties not all of it falls under the purview of parks and rec to address when the public would complain and hey, why isn't the city mowing or getting rid of weeds on our own property? We try to stay ahead of it. And John has taken a big bite out of eliminating those complaints this year because of that IGNITE program. So we've seen wonderful results because of it. Strategic goals for 27, we want to advance that IGNITE program. We want to see what other areas we can use them in. And John is, in some instances, able to use them for graffiti removal as well. But it's limited where we can use them. Proactive code compliance. This is huge. You saw in that first graph, the city is growing. It's also aging in place. Our number of substandard structures are growing as well. We need to be more proactive instead of reactive. And if you bear with me, there's a plan of what we can do when I get to the end of this presentation. What we've done in other divisions in order to reduce violations is public education. And John's been putting together a public education component whereby we use the city's communication division to get PSAs out so that people are made aware in advance You can't park your boat in a street right of way for a week. You can't park your car on your front lawn. It's amazing how many people don't realize that you can't do those things. So education is crucial in these cases, and hopefully that will address some of the minor issues that we have to deal with. Our average violations per year is over 1,600. And again, remember, for FTEs. parking operations, six FTEs. Anna Gilligan, division manager, does a stellar job in this area. She has one admin and four officers out on the street. This is an enterprise fund. And if you look in the bottom right-hand corner, you can see our year-to-date enterprise account is significantly higher than it was last year. And you're going to continue to see that because this is the success of this division. Our budget demands are significantly less than the revenue we bring in. That's the way a division should be operated. So this has been a winner for us. As a part of what we will be doing in 27 is to replace our aging parking meters with parking kiosks. We've taken this to the parking advisory board. Our IPS meters, while at first seemed to work quite well, have become problematic over the last 10 years, extremely costly to continue to maintain. And some of them is just we have to replace them. What we have seen across the nation is communities converting to kiosks. And if you've been in the parking structure recently, there are some parking kiosks existing there. When we do stand up these parking kiosks, you're going to see additional room on that right-of-way, and we can look to see what else can we do to improve the uses that the public might enjoy in our downtown core. When the kiosks come into place, we are working with the Public Works Department, and we're going to change the angle of the parking. How many of you have parked downtown, and you go to back out, and you can't see if there's cars coming or not. That's the angle of the parking. And if we change that from 45 to 60, That issue goes away. We will lose one parking space per block, but the safety wins. So the parking advisory board has supported this move, and that's something that we're excited to see in 27 as well. Up in the top right-hand corner, you can look at the statistics for all of the parking that is monitored by the parking enforcement officers. Besides our metered parking, our leased parking, our two-hour parking, They also maintain the parking structure. Our surface parking lots that the city owns in our downtown area and the parking structure, the maintenance falls on this division as well.

Excuse me, Director Fischer. Greg Stroman.

Thank you, Chair. Vicki, we were talking about the angle of the parking spaces. I know that on St. Joe and Main, it looks like there's hash marks at the end of the parking spot now to indicate hopefully a limit of how far the back end of your vehicle can stick out. Is that enforceable? I mean, I like the idea, but if you're on one of the outside lanes, you still inevitably run into two or three where you have to kind of veer out into the next lane to go around it.

It is enforceable, and that's exactly why we did it. Even without that hash mark, if someone pulls in and the rear end of that vehicle intrudes into the driving lane, We go to all kinds of measures to try to locate that driver so that we don't tow the vehicle. But we do tow because it is a hazard. We put the hash mark down. Again, working with Public Works, Matt Lehman, our traffic engineer, so fantastic. We'd like to adopt him into our department. It was a minor expense to have that physical line drawn because a lot of the folks said, I didn't realize that I was extending into the travel lane. So that can no longer be the excuse. However, when we change that angle, it will be rare that a vehicle, it would have to be an extended crew cab with a long bed that would extend into that driving lane. all had that situation where you're in an outside lane and you've got someone in the lane next to you. If you don't stop and wait until you can scooch over, you would hit a vehicle. And that creates an unsafe situation. And there are times when a driver isn't paying attention and they do hit that drop hitch ball that's on that extended crew cab. And then we've got two vehicles that have been damaged. It's a great question. Thank you. So our 27 goals is to replace the kiosks. And then we started working on that in 26. Where are our next parking needs in our downtown area? What are the trends? What businesses exist? What streets do we have sufficient parking? What streets are we lacking parking? And remember, we set up this enterprise so that we were gaining capital every year. Because the day may come where we need to go out and look at buying additional property for additional surface parking. Or maybe a surface parking lot that we currently have is underutilized because it's the wrong location, and we need to figure out how we can get that swapped out for something in the right location. So all fun stuff, and these folks that are in parking love parking, so it's something that I think that we'll take advantage of and see some movement as we go into 27. Rapid transit system. This is a division that we just got last year. And it is a service that is increasing in popularity throughout the community. When you look at the ridership information, right now our year to date total is 132,500. That's an increase of 30,000 passengers. Over the same period five years ago It's becoming more and more popular. It's not just those that don't have transportation that are using our RTS It's those that are choosing to use it for various reasons one of them being environmentally conscious and the cost of living and this saves them money on their vehicle and fuel and And so we're looking at ways to put out PSAs to encourage others to join us. It's fun. Come take a ride on an RTS bus. Exciting when we set up the Youth Ride for Free program. And it is well received. And we transport many youth. For those children, in some instances, that don't have a way to school. So it's something that we've had in place for some time. And those numbers continue to grow each year as well. We currently have six rapid ride routes that are available. Those are fixed routes. And we have 12 paratransit routes. So this is where our dial-a-ride comes in. We know that there are many areas of the city that we don't service. We know that there are additional projects coming into the city that warrant additional transit consideration. So one of our goals in 27 is to review the transit, the micro transit feasibility study and act on those recommendations. and probably look at additional grant funding. We anticipate that it'll be more shuttle buses, so it'd be smaller buses, but they'll be less expensive to purchase and maintain. Some uses that we know right now, we've got earmarked. We know there's a medical component coming in on Mount Rushmore south of Catron. We want to be able to service that area. The sports complex, Haysapa OTP Community Center. There are other areas within the city that need service now. So, of these 34 employees, 26 drivers are a part of that team. We currently have six openings. And part of the problem with not being able to extend our services right now is getting folks into those positions. Last year, and even the year before when I was the interim public works director, RTS was under my half of authority. I reached out to HR and said, let's do a market analysis. These drivers are CDL. They require to have a CDL. And because they are passenger vehicles, that's a special license. In addition, it has to have ADA training. So we bring them in, and with our most recent bump for pay for performance, we just now crested $20 an hour. And we just can't get anyone interested, for the most part, in these positions. So right after the first of the year, I did meet with HR. The market analysis has been complete. I'm just waiting on... the application of that analysis based on our actual employees and their experience, their years of service, et cetera, to see where we can bump this. But that starting wage, we've got to entice people to be interested in taking these positions. A lot of individuals will come on board, it's a holding spot for them until they can find that better job. So the turnover is atrocious. And again, we have six openings that we just can't get filled. So that's something that we're working on right now. If we can get that addressed yet this year, we want to come back and see where other areas in the city could we be providing additional RTS service to? And Megan is adamant about pushing this forward. So stay tuned on that one. Hopefully we'll be able to move forward yet in 26, but in 27, based on the microtransit feasibility study and the shuttle bus type implementation, I think it'll open the doors for not only those uses that we've identified, but uses that we don't even know about yet. GIS, I think we all just consider GIS rapid map. Don't you love it? When I started working here, there was no such thing as rapid map. And when you wanted to check zoning, you went to a wall where the official zoning map was. And if you wanted to look at an aerial, you had to go get Sidwell books that were on hangars that were about the size of this tabletop. So one of the requirements was to be a planner, you had to be able to lift 50 pounds, because that's about what they weighed. We've come a long way. GIS is a joint operation with the county. RapidMap starts with tax parcel information. And that's put in there by DOE. And so that collaboration is great. And even though our budget shows the overall cost for GIS, we do get reimbursed back slightly more than one-third of it from the county. So consider that too when you look at our overall budget. But I think that there's so much that GIS does in particular internal to the city to increase workflow. Lead pipes, the Fed said, you've got to track lead pipes. Reach out to GIS. Get them the data, and they track it. One of the things that we thought would be interesting is, let's put our rapid ride routes on GIS. And we have now a layer on GIS where you can click on it. You can see the routes. You see when the buses arrive and depart. Kip and his team said, let's put traffic counts on GIS so that if you're a developer and you want to know what traffic is on a street, you open up RapidMap, you go to that layer, you click on it, and it tells you up-to-date traffic counts. So again, Angie Tallon, who is our division manager, is so open, she and her team, to trying to provide service to anyone that needs it, and it's been used more and more throughout the course of time. I think that in addition to all those that I have mentioned, when we look at some of the services in collaboration that are used by 911 and emergency services, things that you wouldn't even think would be crucial, but GIS has found a way to be an asset in so many areas. As a part of our 27 goals, we're looking at bringing forward new aerial photography and building footprint data. And that building footprint data is strategic in so many ways. Think about it, when we're doing a drainage basin study update, We need to know what impervious areas exist. That footprint will help us. That puts us further down the line. We recently had a meeting with Public Works. We are looking at standing up a citywide enterprise asset management program. It will be housed in GIS. I asked Angie, I said, are you really willing to take this on? Because this would be every city asset, every structure, every infrastructure, every vehicle, and what's the projected life of that asset? And she said, absolutely. And I can't tell you that it's going to be a collaborative effort and a shout out for public works. This is something that they sat down with Angie. They've put together a plan. And I think that it's going to be cost saving for the city going into 27. So our overall budget, we have an increase of 3.9%. We have the same number of FTEs that we had in 26 and 25 and 24, and I can keep going on for several years. But for the most part, remember, we have to run the MPO projects through our budget. There's a significant increase from what we ran through in 26 versus 27, but we're going to get reimbursed right at 82% of that. In addition, our interdepartmental charges were increased and the $500,000 kiosk purchase. That's a one-time purchase. When we stood up the parking meters, we paid $900,000 for it. We currently spend over $120,000 annually for maintenance on those parking meters. The software and maintenance projected for kiosks going forward is going to be about $70,000. So while it's a one-time expenditure, long time we're going to be saving some money so the point i wanted to make was showing you that growth analysis and the point that i wanted to make with all of the duties that my team has is to to then state that In the 31 years I've been here, the original community development team, the three planning divisions and building services, has not had an additional FTE in over 30 years. Our building permit numbers, our number of inspections, our number of development applications have quadrupled. The staff has just risen to the occasion. When we got code enforcement, and it's been several years, we've since annexed additional acreage. We've since seen the city age in place. We still have just three code enforcement officers. I'm not asking you today to put new FTEs in my budget. I have a plan. Daniel has hired an individual that's going to do a rate analysis across the city. But in particular, for my purposes, he's going to be looking at the fees that we collect in community development, building permits, sign permits, development applications, to name a few. They've not been raised in over 40 years. So we are not covering the cost of doing business with the fees that we are collecting. When we, what was that Daniel said? Let growth pay for growth? When we adjust those fees, we will be generating additional revenue. We anticipate having that rate analysis completed by the end of 26. When I can do projections on what that additional revenue looks like, I'm going to be coming back to you, perhaps as a supplement, and I'm going to be saying, based on the additional revenue that this increase in rates will create, I need additional staff. I need two additional code enforcement officers. I desperately need another building inspector, and I need another plans examiner, and most urgently, I need another planner. That's five. Now think back how many years this department has gone without an additional FTE. Since I've been here, there's been one, and that was a parking enforcement officer, which is an enterprise fund. I've allowed our budget to stay in those constraints to the greatest degree possible, but I think we're at a point that if we want to continue to provide the services we provide with quality service And we're at a point that if we continue to put work on staff, we're going to start making mistakes. And that impacts the image of the city as a whole. So I'm asking you to allow me to complete that rate analysis with the finance department and then be open to the idea, if I can demonstrate to you that we can create the revenue, I'm going to be coming back to you saying, let's add some additional staff.

RICK MACLENNAN. Councillor Strowman. Thank you, Chair. Vicki, what does the department do with parking? We spent $900,000, you said, to get those parking meters up. And so if we remove them and replace them with kiosks, what happens to the old parking meters? Is there any use or resale value, anything like that, to other municipalities?

A slight resale. Is that something you're looking at doing? We won't take them to the landfill. We will definitely try to turn those around for some level of profit. That's a great question. Some of the parts, and that's where those parking meters do become beneficial to other communities that have the same IPS meter. Their track record, they do require a lot of maintenance. If they can get existing meters and pull those parts out, there'll be a market for it. We'll definitely put them up for sale.

Councillor Maher.

Vicki what's the status? I know we the council approved you to get the the e submission of building plans And they're supposed to be shared internally electronically Yeah, what is that complete or almost and? Shouldn't that improve the efficiency?

It will but it still requires the review of the plans examiner's and the planners they're just doing electronically instead of on paper documents and in fact I Other than our wonderful Kurt Bechtel, we're basically east of middle right now. So we review everything using Bluebeam. But Tyler was purchased. Jessica Olsen is taking the lead. Our current planning division manager is taking the lead, working with Tyler to create individual applications for every application that we process. But in the meantime, We've created a path forward where everyone sends everything electronically and one hard copy for Curt.

And is that saving developers time by not having to do the paper?

Yes, absolutely. They love it.

Okay, thank you.

Councillor Armstrong.

Thank you. For years, I have wondered why we don't have five code enforcement officers. If we have five wards, Logic says we should have five code enforcement officers. Is it a matter of just staffing or you're just being very wise with your budget? Explain that to me.

Well, so the way we do our budgets now is we're provided an allocated amount that we can use. And I can't do the operation and add FTEs under that allotment. That's why you haven't seen that in there. I did visit with the finance director, and I've yet to introduce this idea to the mayor. But my run is going to be, if I can show that we're creating this additional revenue, I want more FTEs. We need them. But I'm willing to show it, and I know we can. Again, think about it. And I wish Kurt could have been here this evening. He could tell you story after story. When we're working on a commercial building permit for a big box that's across the nation and it's the first time they've come to Rapid City and they come to pick up that commercial building permit, sometimes they laugh out loud. It's like, that's all you're charging? Our fees are so stagnant that we're leaving so much money on the table. And our taxpayers deserve better than that. That's money that if we capture, growth paying for growth, that we could put back in services to the general public. So I'm very grateful that Daniel has hired this position. And he, just the other day, which is what triggered me to even bring this forward today, said, Vicki, we need to set up an appointment with you and Dan. so that we can get your rates reviewed and adjusted as quickly as possible. When we get that done and I can show that additional revenue, I'll be knocking back on your door. The problem is I've got staff that are on burnout mode. And in my 31 years here, and I'll speak to the planners that I work with so closely, this is the best team of planners the city's ever had. I don't want to lose them. We just keep asking more of them. We're limited in what we can pay them. We don't do overtime So it's a big ask and I don't want to start losing them Thank you Councillor Evans

First of all, I do think we need to review that fee structure. I think you're exactly right. I also do think it's ridiculous that over the years your department has not had any FTE additions that would match growth of the city and I think those need to be addressed. I do think though that when we get those, we need to see the results. that come from that additional charge. And a couple of the things that are my pet peeves in the city, as you know, because I bring them up with you all the time, things that are seemingly so easy for other communities in regards of code enforcement sometimes in our town seem to just go by the wayside because they're not a priority. This parking in people's front yards all over the city, something you don't see in Casper, Sioux Falls, Fort Collins. I can't name any other city where you see that except here. It just happens here because it's not been a priority. So we talk about extra FTEs, getting additional code enforcement. Then we need to do something with it. Also, I get a little concerned when we talk about urban planning that we're still being directed by the developers and what they have to sell and who they're going to sell it to and maybe that's part of the deal. It's always going to be that way. I do really think we need to direct that planning with any vehicle we have to do that through ordinances or the major city plan or whatever we have. I'm particularly concerned when something like a giant hospital comes in and says they're building this. on the southern perimeter of the town, which if I was in college doing a study and that was my project, that's like the single worst location for that particular facility. If you look around and where the growth is and the traffic and servicing other parts of the hills, That's the last place I put it. But that's where it's gonna go and I think it's gonna become a planning nightmare for us over the next few years because somebody came in and found a piece of land and it's going in there. I keep watching the corner of Anamosa and Haynes and how little by little a house disappears and the lot's vacant and another house disappears and the lot's vacant. And so I see that, okay, what's the plan of whoever's buying that up? Probably to encroach, and rather than have an arterial that passes through a neighborhood with traffic flow that's quick, and it goes all the way from the Civic Center up there to the commercial area, no interruption, I see, okay, this encroachment. Is somebody going to want to put something there that's going to start, you know, leapfrogging backwards to our downtown and just cause more traffic flow problems. So these little things that really affect the way the city functions, I think we need to have ways of managing them so that we don't create problems that just continue to be problems for the future. So I do agree you guys need more staffing. I hope we get that done. But I also agree we need to figure out ways to be more efficient and use the laws we have and the ordinances we have to, you know, make the city grow the way we want, not the way a developer wants. So that's all I have to say.

Mr. Chair, if I could address. Yes, ma'am. Councilman Evans. Well, you know, Bill, I've always said you should be a planner. You've got great analogy. I always appreciate our very candid and open discussions. You and I never could find that bush we're supposed to beat around, and I appreciate that. I think that the update on the future land use plan will be strategic on where we help steer where those growth patterns are. And again, Marlo Capps has taken the lead on that. We need you guys to participate. One of the reasons I think we won a national award on our comprehensive plan update is because all of you looked at it, most of you provided comments wanting certain topics discussed and addressed. And at the end of the day, it is a well-written document that is extremely comprehensive. Let's do the same thing with our future land use plan. Bill, I hope that we can see you at a lot of these meetings. Let's have these discussions so that when we come back to council and we look at what should the growth trends be in certain areas, what should that dynamic look like, we come together to ensure that that happens. If we do get, and this is the importance of, yeah, don't give us additional FTEs and not see the end result. How long have we been talking about updating the landscaping plan? You and I have known the difference in the character of a city when we have a landscape plan that creates streetscaping, where we have tree-lined streets. Now granted, we're going to have to collaborate with Public Works to say that in that boulevard area there's room for utilities and trees do other communities do it we can do it too we don't have the staff to tackle that monster but if we do get another planner that's one of the projects that i want to see come forward parking is another one we need to address our parking plan how many times do you drive around town that you see pavements of asphalt parking lots that are being underutilized We over park many uses. There's very few that we under park. And we need to open up this thing called shared parking so that if we have two uses with alternate hours or limited overlapping hours, we allow them to share that. Right now, that's not happening. Some will push back on this. Some will embrace it. But we are willing to do that in-house study, look at where we need to be, compare what other cities are doing. These are the kinds of things that We get passionate about, but we just don't have the staff to get in there, do the research that's needed, and bring these over the finish line. Additional staff will help us get that done. And participation from council. We need to work together in order to successfully bring these things over the finish line.

Thank you, Director Fischer. From my standpoint, your logic tracks beautifully. Increased fees lead to increased revenues, especially if they're from the 1980s, which means we should be able to get more FTEs. But I would just add that I only speak for myself, but when we look at FTEs for code enforcement, FTEs for RTS, I think I certainly feel those are areas that warrant investment. You made a great case about the expansion of the city. And I think both of those are absolutely critical to the nature of our city going forward And I would encourage you to be brave because I think you understand your budget and your needs Incredibly well, and so regardless of fee revenues I think those are areas that are worthy of investments whether that be a supplement or that be an addition I speak for 10% of the council up here, but that's my opinion.

Mr. Chair if I might add I did share those numbers with the directors at a directors meeting the other day and And several of them said, we wish that information would have been presented to council as we were making our presentations too. And it's true when we expand like this fire department, police department, public works, the demands of those departments, it increases as well. And so that's something we need to keep in mind is while that budget number is one thing, providing quality service to the citizens of this community is essential for Rapid City to maintain the character and charm of the community that we live in.

Yes, ma'am. And I look forward to being proven wrong about the vacation home rental enforcement. I think you're going to do it. All right, that's, oh, I'm sorry, Councillor Meyer.

Thank you Mister chair, so I didn't know if there is more I that one tactical question. Your downtown I guess our downtown revenues projected to increase about 51% in 2027 is a similar to how we talked about the utilities where we have to have a balanced budget and we're not actually projecting more just were balancing.

And the finance director would like to weigh in. Yes.

Thank you. What I said made sense up here. If you want to explain it better, since that was a few days ago. But just for anybody watching or if anybody didn't see. Sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, state statute requires that revenues as well as expenditures are equal. And so we present the revenue as equal to the expenditures when we know that the revenue coming in for some circumstances, especially in our enterprise funds, are going to be higher. they're saving that for future capital projects in 28 and 29 and 30, whatever that happens to be. So the only way we could truly show on the budget what our anticipated revenue would be is if we had an expenditure line item that would say savings or uh... escrow or you look at different cities they come up with different ways to say the same thing the problem is when you do that then there are individuals saying oh you're saving uh... a half million dollars if you're saving a half million dollars instead you should reduce the the fees or the the lease rates or the whatever else by that amount so you have two options we can increase the the expenses by a savings line item but then you have individuals that don't understand that and are concerned with that and say you're overcharging or you can just show that revenue is going to be what our expenditures are it's it's not the clearest process but that's what we're required to do i hope that makes sense

I see no more questions. Thank you very much. We can move along now, or if the council wishes, we could do a five minute recess. I have a motion and a second for a five minute recess. All in favor? Any opposed? We are in a five minute recess. Meeting will come to order and we'll proceed with item number three, the 2027 airport budget presentation by executive director Patrick Dame. The floor is yours, sir.

Mr. President, members of the council, I appreciate the opportunity to present the airport's budget today. You know, we have had some great years here. As we look at 2025, we closed with a record number of total passengers at 905,000 passengers. We do support a large economic impact for the region through the, you know, access to tourism side of things. So, and we do support a good majority of western South Dakota and several other states from our drive catchment area. The role of the airport, really, we consider the airport, consider us like the mall. I know I've made this pitch to a lot before. We tend to work a lot with developing infrastructure, doing air service development with our partners, the police department, the fire department, safety and emergency response, along with our operations department. We are staffed around the clock. And then working with the municipal government as far as being good stewards of the community on that. Our partners that we work through individually manage their services. You've got the airlines, the security screeners, also general aviation. The concession and rental, which includes our dining, shopping, car rentals, one of our most profitable portions of the airport and then our construction trades that we do with our partners who help us out with construction. So based on that, In terms of, we do have federal grant assurances, and they state that the airport shall be as fiscally self-sustainable as possible. You guys will hear me say that a lot. I do tend to talk about that. Key word on there is as possible, but we do pretty well. The Rapid City Regional Airport is operationally self-funded and receives no city general fund dollars for our operating budget. Keyword operating budget on there as you guys well know with the terminal expansion The airport is funded through the federal government with and other grants in terms of state our rental car income rates and charges parking our Primary sources of income and you guys will see that as I move through here We currently today have five airlines soon to be four as Allegiant and Sun Country are combining Neither one of them are pulling out, but they're going to combine services there. We see a lot of our success based on the geographic isolation of Rapid City. With our catchment area, we draw in customers from about 225 miles. Based on that, we have very little leakage at 30%. If we were located in Michigan, a lot of those airports are seeing anywhere from 60% to 80% leakage to other airports. So that gives you a good idea of where we stand in that. We do have a lot of seasonal pressure on that. More than 70% of our operations come between May and October on that. One thing that I would make note on this is, you know, under the air service development side on there, we do present to the airlines in terms of how we think they can fly our market, but ultimately it's the airlines that make the decisions on that. Again, I mentioned five major airlines. You can see the routes that we've got there. The dashed ones are seasonal routes. The solid ones are the normal routes that we have coming in on a daily basis and an annual basis. Portion of it based on the airport's departments. We've got a great staff 35 full-time employees We have a landside maintenance department that takes care of a lot of our custodial and building maintenance in the terminal Our airside maintenance department which takes care a lot of the airfield our administrative staff Which is fairly small which you see when you whenever you come up to the office and? Our operations staff tends to do all of our compliance with the FAA. We have tons and tons of compliance documents that get generated on an annual basis and gets checked every year by the federal government.

Excuse me, Director Dame. Chair recognizes Greg Stroman.

Thank you, Chair. Sorry to interrupt, Patrick, but I see the slide here that's up now, and so my comment is coming up. This Rapid City Airport sign where your crew is at, we've got to be able to do better than that sign.

I know. I'm trying. Okay. It is one thing. Ten years ago, I would tell you when I started there, that was one of the things I brought up, happened to be the person who designed the sign. I didn't realize I suffered from hoof and mouth disease on that one. So I have similar sentiment. Just the size, I mean, yeah, OK. We want to work towards it, but I've got a few other things that we're working through. 2028 budget, Tony said. So I do hear everybody loud and clear on that one. In terms of our funds, we've got three operating funds with this. We've got our operations and maintenance, our seven cost centers in there, are the terminal, runway, land side, north building area, aircraft rescue, firefighting, parking, and administration. So we break those out in an effort for us to be able to work with the carriers in terms of they pay for the runway and terminal. If we do fall short, for the most part, they do pay for the shortfall that goes in there, but it's our way of dividing it up so we're able to divide those costs to pass them on. with our carrier agreement. We do have, we usually try to stay out of private business, but we do have eight T hangers that we own at the airport and have done some maintenance to over the years. We've fixed them up. We did get them out of a lawsuit back when I started. So we do own and operate those hangers. We also have the quick turnaround facility. That's basically the car wash facility and that is rented by the car rental agencies and they pay us on a per click basis to use the car wash and their cleaning bays uh... are for capital funds uh... we've got our our normal capital fund uh... our p f c fund which is passenger facility charge that's four dollars and fifty cents per ticket uh... our cfc uh... charge which goes on the car rentals per day uh... and also our airport improvement program uh... f a capital fund which will usually see is in the negative uh... on that one the uh... report comes out every month Basically, that is our reimbursement account that our federal grants move through. Our total operating budget, you can see total operating revenue of $14.7 million, expenses of $9.4 million, net income of $5.3 million. As Daniel mentioned, we do show a balanced budget in here, but we will be saving for future capital that goes along with that. Our capital budget as you can see we do have a rather intensive capital budget and as we move into the terminal project that continues to grow Through this so this is what we expect to spend Reasonably within the 12-month period as we start the next phase of the terminal project so again total revenue total expenses in our income level that's there and Daniel we appreciate your your explanation of that because I know that's something that we've talked about a few times. Again, as we look at a line item budget for the airport, one of the things I point out here is, you know, back when I was young in the industry, I went and watched the MSP director speak and he said, I run a parking garage that happens to be situated between a few runways. Our airport is no different. Our parking revenues are very important to us. They do fund the airport's operating budget from that, and you can see from that standpoint, two of our largest revenue streams are the parking lot and the car rental, both associated with the terminal, and then our landing fees with the carrier. We do have the terminal O&M, which is the rents that are paid in the terminal, but that's where the bulk of the revenues come from for the airport.

Do you feel that rideshares present a threat from that standpoint, Lyft, Uber, once it becomes more mainstream?

We get revenue from Lyft and Uber, so they're not a threat to us. Does it have the potential to bring down our car rental? It does. We have not seen an impact since we got operating agreements with both. We've actually seen them all increase in their use and revenue streams.

The overnight parking folks, I imagine that's a significant piece of that. I just wonder how many people will start relying on Uber or Lyft to drop them off. as opposed to parking for two or three days.

Typically, I would say that the bulk of our parking is people who aren't coming from a reasonable ride on an Lyft or Uber. So from that vantage point, when we look at dollars coming in from outside of Rapid City, we probably have more parking dollars that come in. And we could quantify that, more parking dollars that come in from outside of Rapid City than people that are in Rapid City.

Thank you, sir.

Yep. Operating expenses, obviously personnel is our top expense on that, followed by supplies and then our professional ARF services that we get from the city on that and I won't bore you with the details on the expenses. uh... terminal expansion project one uh... seventy point four million dollars we've moved on to phases two and three of that project uh... we are currently are going to be opening the uh... eastern half of the ticket counters uh... later this fall uh... and will also be opening the tsa checkpoint as well so those projects are moving along nicely i'd like to be quicker because we're really tired But we continue to slog ahead on that project. In the meantime, we are also moving along to the terminal expansion, the concourse expansion. That's $110 million gate expansion. We did just take our CMAR proposals this week. And we'll be interviewing CMAR contractors. We currently have four proposals. And so that project is quickly moving ahead. Design is up to about 60%. design development as of today. I actually got the documents on that as well. So as we get the CMAR started, we will go through and nail down the rest of the project. The building itself, we're looking at about $85 million. Those will be some of the first numbers that you're seeing. There's additional apron work that still is going to have to be done that'll get us into the neighborhood of the $110 million.

Councillor Stroman. A couple things real quick, Patrick. With the merger of Sun Country with Allegiant. How many ticket counters are you anticipating having up there or are you gonna have an extra one in case you get another airline in or?

So there's 10 blocks but each block has multiple places to check baggage at. So we're actually in the process of meeting this week and next week with the air carriers to see how many they're actually going to want. I do anticipate that regardless of what we have, we will keep spares in place. The whole point of this ticket counter expansion We didn't do a huge expansion, but we made things more flexible. We're going to be moving towards a common use system, so carriers will be able to expand and contract their operation as they need, and we can change ticket counter occupancy faster in the future. So we're trying to be flexible, and yes, we will have some set aside that will be spare empty counters.

I appreciate your explanation about the terminal expansion. I have a question about where are we with the runway? Are the runways in shape? Are we going to be getting federal dollars for those? Is that in the future somewhere where we're going to have to work on the runways?

It is in the future. We are discussing, and the FAA was here last week, the week before, And that is a topic of discussion that we're moving towards as well. With that particular portion of the runway redevelopment, we're looking at the options that are there, but all options still point towards what the selection was in the master plan of building parallel to the existing runway and constructing a new runway because the notion is that either way that project's gonna be $100 million.

That is all indications.

You're welcome. Good questions. Capital improvements. You know, again, we're working on terminal one now. We're heading towards project two. The terminal apron expansion and then as we, member Stroman mentioned The runway is where we are turning our focus to you're going to see us in the next three years start the environmental assessment on that And it will be a very high priority project for For our state once we move into that piece of the project So with that I know I've taken questions along the way I rolled through rather quick. I'm at 14 minutes. I promise 15 and if anybody's got any questions. I'll take them I

Councillor Meyer.

Thank you Mr. Chair. I think just an acknowledgement I flew back from a trip last Friday at about 1230 and it was packed like I don't think you get another person in there and so really excited for this and yeah great work. Thank you.

Thank you. I would mention you know it's kind of amazing to me. We get through this time of the year and the terminal is really looking worn down. And this project can't come at a better time. It's getting tired. It gets trampled down through this time of the year. Carpets are harder and harder to keep up. And it's amazing that the last time we did this was 2012 when we did kind of the refresh on it. And I almost have a little bit of a hard time kind of looking around going, boy, we need to get through this a little bit quicker to get things looking better and to get more space because it is like you're sitting next to your best friend very closely when you're in the old room.

Thank you, director Dame. I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say you got a lot going on and we're rooting for your successor. Thank you.

1504.

Well done. All right. That brings us to our last item, the 2027 library budget presentation by director Terry Davis. Floor is yours, ma'am.

Good evening. I had not anticipated being your wrap-up presentation, but here we are. I don't know if I can... Let's see, I don't know if I can do the same thing that Patrick did, but I'm not gonna set my timer. We'll give it a try. So the budget being proposed to you is the one that was approved by the Rapid City Library Board of Trustees. It is their statutory power to approve the library budget, but then of course we present it to you because you are the ones who appropriate the funds to us. The library's mission is to connect the community to education information and inspiration. We don't set any limits on what somebody's education is, what kind of information they need. We do our best and our utmost to provide the resources to the community that they are requesting. We do provide accessible and equitable resources, and I think the key word there is equitable. Public libraries don't care what somebody's educational level is. We don't care how large or small their bank account is. If they come into our facility with questions, that question is important to them for a variety of reasons, and it's not for us to question that. We just help them out as we can. The numbers here are from 2025. We did have one million checkouts, and that includes the physical items like books, DVDs, Wi-Fi hotspots, tool kits, all kinds of good stuff that we check out, but also it does include our e-resources, e-books, and e-audiobooks, and our streaming and downloadable videos, which are, the e-collections are some of the most popular. We had nearly 97,000 pushing on 100,000 research database uses. And that sounds very librarian-ish. But I would like to focus on two of those databases that we have. One is for, it's called JobsNow. And you can sign up. All you need is your library card. You can go to our website and sign up for an online coach. And that online coach can help you with looking for jobs. How do I search for a job? How do I get through the application? Reviewing your resume and giving you resume tips. Doing practice interviews for you. So that's the kind of resource that's available through one of those databases. A similar one provides homework help. Grades K through college. If you need help with math or history or chemistry, whatever the subject is, you can sign up and be connected with a live tutor. It's not 24-7 service. I think it's like from 2 o'clock to 10 or 11 o'clock in the evening, but it's great coverage and great help that is an example of some of the research databases that we provide. Well over 17,000 event attendees. Those are events for all ages. We do a heavy focus on early childhood literacy. You can see an example of our story times there. We also do a lot of STEM and STEAM education for all ages. We've had STEAM activities for adults, which have been quite popular. And local interest topics, whether it's Custer State Park coming up and presenting or the Raptor Center coming, We'll also have musical events and seasonal events for the community. And then approximately 42% of the community members in the Rapid City area have library cards. That's a nice number. We like that number. Of course we would like to see it higher than that, but it's a pretty decent number as far as library services go. The value of the library services, we calculate this every year, and again, these are from 2025 statistics. The total value of everything that we have itemized here that was used, $43 million. That is a tenfold increase over what our budget is approximately, so that's pretty good value for money as far as we're concerned. In 2026, well, I'll say all the time, we look for budget and service efficiencies. We continue to calculate ROI on any number of things like the databases I mentioned. We look at that on an annual and sometimes every six months we'll look at it and determine is this the best value for money? Is this the best resource we can provide for what the public needs? In 2026 so far we've been able to make really good strides in operational and budget efficiencies largely due to the transition to centralized city maintenance. That has really been a benefit for us. We did lose FTEs in terms of our org chart and those costs were not They didn't disappear, but they transferred from the city library budget to the maintenance division. But what it's allowed for is real efficiencies in getting the services taken care of. An example is last year when our boiler pumps went out, if it were up to me to try to find what the problem really was, who's the vendor we should talk to, what we need to do for repairs, is this really the right thing to do? Maintenance took that on, and they got a very timely and cost-effective, I think, response, and they were also able to do some of the labor, so that was a savings as well. More recently, they proactively identified that some bearings on an HVAC unit were going out, and that was able to be fixed before it caused a complete failure of that equipment, which would have resulted in higher costs. And then as Director Ainslie mentioned earlier, I think you mentioned this, we are sharing staffing with the Finance Office. This has been in place for I think just about a year now. When we discovered that we really did not need a full-time person in the library's business office to do our financial operations, Director Ainsley stepped up and offered to collaborate. And since then, we have been sharing an FTE between the two offices. And it's worked really well from our perspective. He says it works well from his perspective. And I also appreciate how it has given me a different insight and understanding of finance office operations. I think that helps with the communication and the workflow as well. And then finally, this is a very librarian thing, but Every item we purchase is cataloged so that it's findable in our online catalog when people want to look for it. We had been purchasing cataloging records from a service to the tune of almost $50,000 a year. And we dropped that service when that contract ended earlier this year. We are now purchasing catalog records essentially right along with the books or the videos or whatever it is that we're purchasing. And we're getting those from the vendors. So that $50,000 hasn't entirely dropped away as a savings, but it is a lower cost option when we purchase the records directly from the book vendors. So that was 2026, our 2027 focus is in these areas as you see here. One of the things we didn't list on here is that we will be looking at the strategic plan again. Our strategic plan is concluding in 2027, so it'll be time to develop a new plan for the coming years. But one of our 2027 goals is to look at community access. And I've mentioned this before, we are looking at putting book vending kiosks in neighborhood areas. One area will be the new fire station seven. We're also talking about having one at the sports complex. And I'm also communicating with other entities about putting them in other different community areas. This addresses some of the issue with transportation that Director Fisher mentioned. Not everyone can get to the downtown library. It's also a way to provide resources without building a branch, having staff in attendance all the time. So it's very cost effective. And a kiosk like is shown here can hold up to 200 items. Somebody will scan their library card, open up the drawer, take out the books they want, close the drawer, and it will scan all of what's left in the machine. And what is gone will be checked out to that person. They can also return materials there. So it works both ways. Oops. We're going to look at doing a space utilization study for our first floor. The last time this was done was in 2016. And this year with the change to the main floor in terms of the restrooms and it will change access to our main floor meeting room and also the maker space area is different. It causes us to look at The remaining flow of the space, does it really work for the way the community is using the library? What do we need to shift and move around? One of the things that's been identified is that with the construction that's going on now, we lost two of our four study rooms. And that has already been an issue. Those study rooms have been highly in demand and having only two that are upstairs in the kids area is not sufficient to the need. So we have identified freestanding study pods that won't require any kind of construction. But where do we put those? So if we plunk them in the middle of the room, is that really the best space? Is it sensible for the way the public is using the space? So that's something we're looking at. We are talking to a vendor right now who does library use configurations like this at no cost. The implication, of course, is that we will purchase their products as we go into this, and we are not planning on purchasing a lot, if any, new furnishings. So I'm not sure how we'll get there with this vendor, but we'll take a look at it anyway, and if we need to look at different options, we will do that. We also are working to enhance the quality of life for the community. Earlier this year or late last year, I don't remember now, we put in a blood pressure monitor station so people can check their blood pressure and recognize if they need to contact their primary healthcare provider. We refer people to the 211 helpline all the time or do information searches for them. If we can provide a kiosk for them, that would be a good self-service option for them if they choose to do so. And then I mentioned the study pods and the quiet study spaces. We have community organizations who meet with their clientele in the library, whether that's Oyate Health or Monument Health or Complete Health, different organizations like that, other social services agencies. They come into the library, meet with people, And they talk about things that are quite private sometimes, so they do need quiet spaces to work. And then different opportunities to expand information and knowledge in the community. We are looking to continue what we do with digital literacy assistance. This is critically important. when we have on a weekly basis people coming into the library with emails they've received that are clearly spam emails, phishing targets, and we try to work with them and educate them about what to watch for and how to verify the information they're getting online. Because the library is a community hub, What are other things we could provide that we're not doing now? We're open seven days a week at this point, so would it make sense to have one of the motor vehicle licensing kiosks in the library? We have a lot of people every day who are coming in there. Why not allow them to get their license plate tags while they're in there? I've already referred to the private and study meeting areas that we're looking at. And then just a simple thing like online technology conversion tools. Surprising to me in 2026 how many people still have VHS and cassettes and they're looking to transition those to digital formats. Rather than purchasing that equipment themselves, why don't we add something like that to our archival room and give them the opportunity to do those transitions in that area. So our budget request for the general fund is about 3.88 million. If I have done my math correctly, that is about $175,000 less than last year. And the reduction is largely due to that transition with the FTE for maintenance and also for the business office. We do have county and library board budgets as well, and proposed total of all those budgets takes us to 4.27 million, so obviously the city general fund is the greatest portion of our funding, which we are appreciative of. Thank you, and if you have any questions, I'll be happy to try to address them. Councillor Meyer.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I feel like, I mean, I love our library. And they're the original data centers and probably the only data center that I'd really ever be supportive of or go to bat for. But maybe it's the elephant in the room. Can we talk about how conversations with the county are going now versus last year?

Well. We were told earlier that we would hear by the end of July where they were with their funding proposal, and then of course things went upset at the county, so that's been a little bit delayed, but they did now adopt their provisional budget, which includes $81,000 in funding for the Rapid City Library, which is all that is possible through their reduced budget. library levy. They reduced that levy last year and I think the total that they get through the levy is about 140 some thousand dollars. So the cost for providing service to the almost 4,500 county residents who have library cards with us would be about $570,000. The library board's budget request to the county was $373,000. So getting $81,000 at this point is putting us essentially in the same position we were in last year. There are choices to be made. We figure out a way to come up with quarter of a million dollars additional funding or look at doing what we were doing last year, making significant cuts, which is hard because we've already kept some of the cuts we had made last year, and then charging fees for county residents.

More to come, probably. More to come.

It's all choices. There are choices available, but which direction those choices take is up for discussion.

Thank you.

At baseline right now, do we have members outside of our city, other counties or municipalities that are paying fees for library cards or library access?

If people live outside of Pennington County, there is a fee for library service.

Is that logistically difficult to operate? So if there's like another municipality that wasn't part of this, is that something that is burdensome to operationalize or to maintain?

You mean, is it difficult for us to track that?

Yeah, and make sure that the fees are up to date and the tracking of all that.

No, it isn't. The system we use for checkouts in our patron database, it's a fairly robust system, and it is easy to track in there. We can determine... for people who live outside of Pennington County, for example, when those cards expire and that's automatically set. We could track in there if they have paid the fees or if they have not paid the fees.

Good, let's make sure that's tuned up. Yeah. Councillor Stroman.

Thank you, Chair. Terry, it seems like, you know, historically, I think a lot of public libraries were established by private donations, Carnegie or whoever. He wasn't, I didn't know him, but I knew his little brother. Do we have an active charitable outreach? I know we got Friends of the Library or Library Foundation. Do we have anything like that that's bringing in substantial funds for improvements or operations?

Thank you for that question. Yes, we do have those two organizations. The Friends of the Library run an ongoing book sale and the revenue they generate through that comes back to the library in a variety of ways. All of the prizes and awards that we give away for summer reading program or reading incentives Those are paid by the Friends of the Library. Those prizes do not get paid by tax dollars. They fund an educational reimbursement for staff. So if staff pursue continuing education, whether working for a Master of Library Science degree or some education that is related to their job, They can get a partial educational reimbursement from the Friends of the Library. That's been very valuable to another number of people. We have, I believe, eight staff members now whose jobs do not require a Master of Library Science degree, but they have obtained that and largely through the funding provided by the Friends of the Library.

Have you worked with our grants division? Jamie is like an ace. She's always finding money for us. Is that something, somewhere where we could supplement the budget for the library?

The challenge is getting grant funding for operational funds. If we had specific projects, such as the library foundation is currently paying for the landscaping projects at the library, that's a specific project. If you're looking for operational funds, the chance of getting grant funding for that is pretty remote. We have, however, worked with both Jamie and probably mostly Katie in the grants division on a number of projects. And we do have small grant applications out right now. We've got a... grant in with the, it's called Pizza Hut Slice of Literacy grant, and that has been submitted. That is for a story walk program. So again, it's very project focused. It's a literacy project that would be out there in the community, but it's not operational funds.

Director Davis, thank you for taking care of the library. It's a precious resource for us all, and we wish you success.

Thank you, and thank you all for going through this process.

Yes, ma'am. All right, and that brings us to final discussion and direction. If there is any of that, we're happy to hear it. Otherwise, I'll look for a motion to adjourn. So moved. I have a motion. Second. And a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We are adjourned.