City Council - Regular Meeting

Did they get the recording light to work ever? Yeah, they did. So they've got this working now? Yeah, that works. I don't know. Yeah. Thanks. You know, we don't have any batteries. Any I'm going to turn this on until you need it. Yeah, just throw it up there for now. Right there. See themselves.

Good, how are you, Eric?

Good. Yeah. Is the mayor back?

Is the mayor here?

Oh, he just left that list.

He's not coming to?

Nope.

He's skipping the budget meeting.

Yeah.

If only I could. Okay.

June 17th. If you could lead us in the pledge.

Okay.

Great.

I don't think Colin's going to be here.

I saw Bill earlier.

Bill should probably be here. I know Dave won't be.

Colin's not coming?

I thought he told me he was going to be out of town. If I remember right. I thought he

I mean, maybe I'm thinking wrong, but nobody said that. Well, if I read this right, I don't understand. Is that right? We're, our budget is Where'd it go?

Total up top.

We're down $23 million?

What? That's cheap, $23 million. $23 million it's down from last year?

Yeah. But we have to amend. last year's budget still, and it's going to drop quite a bit because remember, we had all of the fire and ambulance services.

We need to pull some of that back out because we didn't end up doing that.

So the number's going to be smaller? Smaller, yes.

It's going to come down. But I haven't went through the final amendment process, but yeah, it's going to come down.

I mean, substantially down?

Well, I mean, if you think of that, $10 million now? Maybe. Because if you think of that fund, that fund's huge. Because you're doing all of the expenses for fire district, ambulance district, and city fire combined.

And so that's all in there. You've got wildlands in there.

It's a pretty big fund. You've got the fire district in there. It's a couple million bucks. We did have some budget that has to stay in there because we

We had to do what we call a disposition of assets where we basically write up a check essentially to zero out the account.

And so I got to go through that whole process. That's my next budget process. And then you do have a few, we're trying to think what else could be major in there. There might be a few super big sewer projects that didn't quite happen that could come lower than that.

It was a big budget though. Like the 118 was huge. And it's bigger than what you passed because we increased the budget. Oh, and then another major, major ice rink. Yeah. And it had $5 million. $5 million. Budgeting. Yeah, that's going to be it.

I just did the Bud Museum and the guy there didn't know that I was the old curator. So it was like really interesting to like be given a tour and be, I was like.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, did you pay? Did you pay?

I did pay.

How much was it?

It was $4. Me and my husband both went, so it was $8. And I was like, if that wasn't worth $8. It's a little high.

I think he does have some, I mean, some of it's pretty interactive.

But having the guy follow me around, like it was like, he was like right there with us. It doesn't give you a lot of like latitude to want to stay or feel like you can like stay and do the things. So I would maybe encourage not having somebody write with somebody. Maybe they were trying to get us through fast because we came about 3.20, but I don't know.

Let's just get an Xbox. I'll be in the corner. I don't know.

Do you know what I mean? I was like, I don't know. It was good to have that, but at the same time, it may be a little bit... Anyways, that's just an experience thing. Yeah.

It was good, though. Once we get started, something that you guys can kind of think about, I am going to just ask the city council before we start, kind of like high level, if there's specific things that you guys want to make sure that we address specifically. And then if I'm already addressing them in the paperwork, I'll say, okay, we're going to cover things that we're not addressing. I'm just going to want to know. And then we can try to.

They can't cover all 100 and whatever pages.

I was trying to figure out how you're going to cover 400 pages.

136 pages in two hours. I can't even remember how big the budget was.

Are we supposed to go get dinner now or at 5?

No, they're going to bring it at like 5, 5.15.

I'm confused because we've got two emails.

At least that's what they asked me and I said, why don't we dig in for a little while and then we'll take a break.

Okay, that's good.

We've got plenty of time to take a break, I think.

Where did my stuff go?

It was surprising to me the differences in city governments and, you know, some of their priorities, some of their – Oh, like from AIC? Yeah. Just the way they approach things is different.

We are such a much bigger city than a lot of them.

Hello, dear friends. How are you?

Nice to see you. Ready for a marathon tonight? You ready for a marathon tonight? We're ready.

We're ready to go.

I've been running solid since we got back. That's only going to take three and a half minutes.

By law, we have to look at every account on 136 full pages.

And that's the right way to do it.

No, he's gone. Thank you.

I can't remember which one it was.

Make sure they know that. Oh, yeah. You mean on the... That?

Yeah. On the Treasury report, there was like, there was one that was like, they had spent like $1,000.

I can't remember. Oh, on the report. Yeah, the Treasury report. The Treasury report. Oh, I got it right here. I was going to ask you about it today. Yeah.

If that was just a typo?

No, there's...

There's a park construction. 1980 Park.

Yes.

Yeah. So what I have to do there... How's that possible? Well, it's possible because basically there was, well, no, there, well, there was no budget. So we had 5,000 in the budget and we did the pickleball, but we were supposed to do it last year, but this fiscal year.

Okay.

And so we, that's a budget.

So yeah, we got to do it. It says it's like 1500%. Yeah. It's like 19. And I put, that's why I put on my notes, B-A-G. adjustments okay so that makes sense so but yeah it's just the timing right you're always like we have the best intentions but yeah well it's just i was just looking at that i was like oh that's yeah it was high there's usually always an explanation i'm not usually worried like this in case somebody yeah and that one yeah you guys will address that and he's got to come back and finish it still too so Yeah, I mean, I think so.

I'm going to go. Colin's online. He says he's waiting for like a code to get on.

Hey, Colin, can you hear us? Yeah, but he says the voice can't. Youth can't. used to say scout camp. You can accept the invite now. Hey, Colin.

Because I think it's just the four of you.

I can hear you now.

Can you hear me? Yeah.

Where are you at, Colin? Okay.

Colin, can you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you. Where are you at? I'm over here in Star Valley. Oh, good work. I'm in charge of this. Star Valley. I'm in charge of this. You're cutting out. It's uncool. Yeah.

We must not have very good internet and servo.

Yeah. Okay. I just texted Brianna. We just want to start. What do you guys want to do? Well, yeah, probably.

Good just to go. That way, if we don't run up against the clock, I have a feeling we might.

Okay.

Is Diana going to be here today?

I don't know. For sure.

She's responding right now. I'll tell you what she says.

Dave is out of town. Oh, he is. Yeah. Colin. So with Colin, we've barely got a call.

So she said she'll be here in a few minutes. She's stuck in the traffic.

That main street is going to be pretty backed up.

Should have rode the bike.

So do you hear me better now?

That's much better.

Okay.

Yeah. Should we begin? Yeah. I'm good to start. Okay. Well, let's begin the city council meeting and turn the time over to Matt.

Okay.

To work us through it.

Yeah. So obviously there's lots of documents if you want to dive into details. And I can pull up any budget discussion funds, areas, whatever we want online. Okay. And so before we jump in, a couple things. Number one, I just want you guys to just throw out if there's like a certain topic related to budget that you're like, let's make sure we talk about this. Just throw it out there. I have like discussed police station options. So we'll hit that. Make sure we hit that at some point. Yeah. And then I have, I've tried to add a little bit for utilities, capacity fees, those kind of things. We'll hit that section. I don't think I have necessarily anything specific about the police building in this packet, but we can pull up some information and talk through that. Anything else that people want to make sure that we have? Or do we just dive in?

It looks to me like we're going to hit the things that...

Okay. All right. So this first page, the reason why I have that on there is just kind of gives you a roadmap on what the process is that's left in the budget. Oh, she what?

She says the food's ready.

Oh, we're eating right now. So should we just go eat? Do you want to go for a little while?

Let's do the first page and then we'll... A couple pages, okay. What is it, page 102? And then the detail, right?

Yeah, maybe I'll go through that real quick. So the only reason why I show this front page is you can see that we're here to June 17th. Really, this whole process will take through September 2nd. One thing that Councilmember Erickson and Teejan were talking about earlier was, is that high budget for 2026 correct? And right now it is, but we'll see some changes when we come back to you with the amended budget that will actually bring those numbers down. And then, of course, there's several public hearings that still need to happen, including the utility rates, this actual public hearing on July 15th for the budget. And then there'll be another public hearing for the amended budget. And really, that should be it. So flip it over on the highlights, total budget as proposed. And keep in mind that this is just as proposed. And we'll show you how we kind of got here. You guys really have the power and authority to recommend changes. That number can change. But we have to know what that is today so that I can advertise it in the newspaper for a public hearing, or at least hopefully within a week. So you can see operating budget, we're at about $43 million. And that actually came down a little bit. and some of the reasons for that like we some of the transition with the fire affected some of those numbers is probably the biggest thing and then cost came out before yes where you have a total budget 95 million yeah down 23 million yes um will will the will the public know why that 20 why it

why it reduced $23 million. Is there enough information for them to recognize the fact? One, to recognize it, the fact that it is

down 23 million yeah and the reason why um if they really dug in yes but as they we go through the budget amendment process that will add clarity because we're going to reduce that 23 million even down farther but some some of the big reasons um you had a five million dollar amount for that ice rink we had to add this year And so even though it was a donation, it still has to show up in your budget number for $5.2 million or whatever it was. And then another big reason is just the changes with the fire department. Because we used to have all their budgets.

Makes sense.

Okay. So operating budget, about $43 million. COLA is in there of 2.73%. We still have that, a fairly large increase on health insurance of 22.5% in there. We did get, our report this month was that that trended down over the last month. And as we talked with the agent, we're just like, we're gonna push it clear to September to try to re-bid because every month that we can trend down, the more room we have to negotiate.

Yeah, I mean, my understanding is that there's been some pretty heavy health expenses in the city. And some of those are going, kind of going away.

Correct.

To some extent. So, I mean, a 22.5% increase, that's... We're certainly going to shop that, right?

Yeah, so we can put it out to bid.

Because that's huge.

That's huge because of the fire department though, right?

Well, that didn't help us because your group size went down. And I mean, they're generally healthy. I mean, I can't say they've always been healthy. I mean, they have their share of claims as well. And so, but those are a couple of things that we'll look at. And as we get closer, our agent can kind of give us an idea of whether it's worth shopping or not. But right now, yes, in our initial conversations, it's, hey, you got to come down a lot, select health, or else we probably will shop it. And so, okay, so general fund is about 20 million, just over 20 million. It accounts for about 21% of the total budget. We put 80,000 in the contingency. And in order to balance the general fund, we had to show a carryover of $735,000. So basically that's $735,000 that you have to dip further into reserve just to balance that budget, which puts us at just under 21% in reserve. And our policy has been to try to keep it between 25 and 33. So how does the $80,000 compare to other funds?

years of the virus contingency?

It's pretty close. Some years will be more like 150. Originally, we wanted to try to get it to 100,000, but we lowered it just a little bit as we cut some things out. But the other thing that we've done in the past that's kind of a big deal is if we can, for some reason, and I could not get this on Percy's website, but if we can figure out like if Percy, for example, says, hey, we're not going to raise our rates, we're going to defer it another year. or if the health insurance comes back at 16%, in the past, what I've done is I've went in and I've actually done a budget adjustment to reduce people's spending budget and then increase contingency. And so I'm hopeful that that will happen again.

So this increase in health is an estimate.

Totally an estimate. Yeah, it's an estimate, but it's a pretty... I mean, it's a pretty analyzed estimate based on what we have in savings, what we're setting aside, looking at a fairly large increase, not only for the city, but also for the employee side of things. Now, the employer covers 86% of the cost. So in order to keep that ratio where the employee covers 14%, you actually have to have a bigger increase on the employee side than the employer side. And we'll go through all of that as we get closer so that you guys are aware where we're at. Okay, and then I want to talk a little bit about property tax. I would say if there was actually one... like positive growth area on the revenue side, property tax actually came back pretty good because new construction came back much stronger than prior years. And I would anticipate new construction will be pretty strong for several years going forward as well. And so we had a total projected increase in property tax of about 5%. Remember, by state statute, you can increase it by 3%. So the difference, that 2% difference is because of new construction and annexation. And so that was a positive. One negative, which is in there, is your sales tax was super flat. I'm projecting a 1.9% increase, which is, what was it, 60 to 80,000 bucks somewhere in that ballpark. So it's not going to help us much. And then as you go into the next section, I can't remember where I talked about it. Yeah, I think it's right here. So any more questions on general fund? Can I jump into streets for a second? So streets has actually a tremendous amount of projects in this budget. It's about $22.5 million. But one thing we are going to experience is about a 26% decrease in what fuel tax next year, according to the estimates from the state, which is like, I think it was almost $900,000 reduction.

Is that due to legislation? They cut the fuel tax or is it, or is it, uh, there's less trucks on the road?

What's no, I think it's, I think it's just due to, um, My understanding is, so they were giving us some extra money the last few years, and I think it was coming out of their general fund, if I remember right. And so because of their budget cutbacks, they've reduced what they're going to send. And so I think we're really honestly probably just getting our typical gas or fuel tax amount with none of that extra money.

So what it was a few years ago is what you're saying.

It what?

Comparable to what it was a few years ago then, is what you're saying.

Yeah, before they started doing that extra amount. And I have a projection sheet, if anybody wants to go through it in detail, that AIC sends out and shows it by the quarter. And so you can see where that reduction kind of comes in. And it's across the board. You can talk to Madison County. You can talk to any entity. We're all seeing huge reductions there. And I know the state, you know, it was quite the struggle for them to balance their budget as well.

Is there any way of knowing whether they're robbing from Peter to pay Paul? I mean, is all this taken from us to construct these major projects in the Boise Valley? Is there any way to know if that's the case?

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you could dig in and probably determine that. I've not done that to that level.

It'd be something to talk to our legislators about if we see that that's happening.

Yeah, and it would be a good question for them, right? They may know exactly why.

And that's a huge decrease. That hurts.

Yeah, it definitely hurts. Okay. And then part of, I wanted to add this year in that section, like, hey, where's this 22.5 million coming from, right? Well, about 6 million of it is from carryover and streets. We have a very healthy carryover right now. You'll see later, as I show you forecasted carryover, that they're essentially spending almost all their carryover. And then you have federal grants. We've got about $5.5 million in there. Urban renewal has over $5 million in there. And then franchise and right-of-way charges are about $1.7 million. So those are kind of your core revenues that are paying for that. Major street construction projects you can see there. We do have a fairly large number really on LIDs. And so $4.6 million in the budget to finish out LID 55, which is the one that's going to start this summer. And then the new one includes Trejo Street, 4th West, 5th South, and 1st North. And that could change between now and the time that you do those LIDs and But we're going to budget that way, at least recommend that at this point, if we're going to include those streets. And those were the streets that were included in that five-year plan that Keith presented, I think, two meetings ago.

How does that compare to last year?

It's a pretty big number. But last year was large as well. It was... Let me just show you. It's right here. But we've had a couple of pretty big ones. So... Yeah, so this year is really big. Right now we're forecasting over $5 million going to LYDs.

Yeah, it's a bigger than.

Yeah, last year was, I can't remember.

Like what projects? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, total reconstruction projects.

Oh, I don't have it right in front of me, but it was mostly those LIDs. So I can, let me just pull the expenses here and I'll tell you. This isn't all of them, but reconstruction is about 6 million.

In 26.

26. And then about 5 million in 20, next year.

They're actually down from last year's.

Slightly down, yeah.

But still a big number.

Yeah, the really big one next year is in fund 44, which is showing right down here at 10.9 million. It's the 9th East Crossing and bridge that would connect Barney Dairy to 7th North, right? But that one also has some really good funding partners. It has 4 million from the federal government, 4 million from urban renewal, with basically the remaining coming from what we've saved in impact fees. So... You do have a traffic signal where Home Depot has just broke ground over by the temple. So that would be in there. We do anticipate half of that cost coming back from urban renewal, but you're going to be waiting a few years before you see that. Because they're going to really be tapped out after covering the cost on that sewer line, their share of that cost. And then you do have Second East and Yellowstone where that's part of a federal grant. 1.6 million. So that one, if you think of going down second East, you go over the railroad tracks, there's no median for a little while. So it's helped, it would help widen the road out there, put a median, like a middle lane. Yeah. Yep.

That can get kind of confusing in there.

Yeah. Like if people are using the middle lane right now, they're actually on the other side of the highway. So, uh, okay. And then, um, There's a few, I'm not going to hit every single one. If you guys want to jump in, personnel we'll cover later. There was five requests and we're saying approve one. And when I say we're, that is a recommendation to balance the budget from myself and the mayor.

And you say we're going to talk about those.

Yeah, we're going to go through them in detail. Utility rates we'll go through in detail. And Then major construction water projects on that next page. You can see there's a few, actually not like a crazy amount there, but a few million dollars worth of projects there. Sanitation has a few smaller ones. Now, wastewater will continue to have some fairly large projects with the bulk of them being at the the plant itself about 4.82 million there, almost 5 million. And then they have a couple of a big, fairly good size, uh, adds up to about 825,000 for those two lift stations. And so Adara, which they, I think they were able to, if I remember right, I think they were able to get their whole dug before the sub came up. And then you have the other one over by, um, trellis right there by the highway in Main Street, I believe they had to halt theirs. I don't think they got it done before the sub came up too high.

Just quickly, as I was reading through this, I was wondering the other day, the wastewater budget, do they have funds budgeted in here to get that up to standard because of that lawsuit and all that kind of stuff. I mean, are we going to be able to, are they going to be able to meet the requirements from the federal government, state government on that?

Well, I don't know that this year's budget alone is going to do that. It'd probably be a Keith question, but I know that the projects that are in the capital improvement plan will get us there. It just might be a few years. Okay.

And so they're going to be working.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we're going to be working directly with DEQ, right? Rather than being in a lawsuit. And, you know, some some things to keep in mind, like we I know that on the big headworks project, we had applied for a loan from DEQ, right? And if I remember right, I think Justin told me that we ranked like number 16 and they awarded up to nine. And so we were pretty close and that was before all this happened. And so as we continue to apply for that, that's actually the best way for us to fund it rather than a revenue bond, because typically those come with lower interest rate, longer terms. And sometimes they come with principal forgiveness, which is essentially a grant. So if you remember, the water is on a 1.75% for 30 years. That was a DEQ loan. And it forgave $2 million in that project. And so as your finance person, I'm actually hopeful that we'll get that loan versus trying to go out and get a revenue bond that will be likely more expensive interest rate. Okay. So as we go through here, I'm not going to hit too many of them. I am, we are going to talk about the police station. So it's up to you guys, if you want to talk about that now, or if you want to hold off. Um, but I do have a section in there that talks a little bit about it. You want to hit that now real quick, or is that something you want to cover after dinner? They said they brought lunch and dinner and it's ready.

Quick question. Do we still, is that committee still functioning? that was, you know, to kind of prepare the bond?

Yeah, it can be. The last time we met was at the end of May, after the bond election we met once.

Yeah, I just wonder what their take is. You probably know. You're on that committee, aren't you?

Well, I didn't hear about any meeting after the bond, so I don't think it was on that committee. Yeah, it was just the council members on it, or?

It was just that typical Thursday meeting that we did at 10 a.m. And so we were doing a Thursday meeting. We actually had it on the schedule every week. But it was mainly, honestly, it was mainly with staff and consultants. So Headwaters, Zions, Portman Square, just kind of wrapping up things with all those groups and settling up.

I'd like to talk about it now. I had a conversation with Josh yesterday, so I actually have quite a few questions.

Yeah, I think it's great. On that meeting, it was the ones that was going on for the bond committee that was doing the advertisement for the bond. It wasn't the advisory committee. I never knew about it, so I wasn't there.

Yeah, so that's true. Sorry. It was the one that we did every week for the police bond. So it was like a coordination meeting between consultants, staff. We would basically go through everything we were posting on social media, planning, how to get the education out there to the citizens. So the one where we formally come together, yeah, we haven't done that.

And the stuff I heard from Josh, I was thinking it would have been really nice if council members were there. for that conversation. I don't know how far in you are on those plans, but I would, which plans that Josh was telling me about with this new city hall. Oh, well, I hope council members are involved in that. Yeah.

And then no, no group has met on that.

Okay.

So, but I do want to talk about it.

Yeah.

So I think that's a great, that's a great starting point. Let's talk about it. Yeah. So, so one of the things that, um, There's lots of moving pieces here, right? But we have been setting aside money, and that fund has always been called for municipal, city hall, or police building, right? And we've been doing that, what, five years or something? We've been putting money from the general fund in there. We're also putting money from impact fees in there to help cover the purchase of that land for the potential police location on Pioneer Road. And then another part of that is that fund, and you can see it online, I pulled it up here, has also purchased the land in the downtown, the whole 0.75 acres. And then you have close to the five acres on Pioneer, right? Those are all moving pieces there. What I have done internally, and I have talked to Josh about this, I have talked to the mayor about it, is I've went in and did an analysis of said, what if we were to go back to what we had originally discussed three years ago, which was potentially looking at building a city hall slash office building. and then moving the police potentially into this building. And really, it is a better option than even saying, well, let's go buy another building that exists and remodel that building because we already own this building. And so you would have that added cost. Now, there's three kind of major things that I think you have to understand between the difference between building a police building and a city hall. Number one, you have to understand all of your funding sources. So when you talk about building a police building, you basically have two funding sources. You have the general fund and you have police impact fees. That's it. When you're building a municipal building that is like a city hall that houses all of the departments that service all of the departments within the city, So for example, overhead departments, you think about what are those major overhead departments? Finance, you've got HR, you've got your department, you've got legal, you've got IT, et cetera, et cetera. There's a few other smaller ones. And so you guys are well aware that part of our revenue source in the general fund is an overhead charge to those respective departments. Another big one that I missed is building and inspection. not an overhead department but they're charged in overhead so as you think about well who do we charge and who are we talking about for funding sources if you build a city hall you have you could have the building department participate you could have water sewer sanitation participate you could use general fund dollars that participate And then you have a few other smaller departments. Like you think about like shop or engineering that we house in city hall. Those are overhead departments. Now they have their own overhead rate. That's not part of the general overhead rate. And so my point is, is that, you know, instead of having just two revenue sources, now all of a sudden you're opening it up to a handful, probably, you know, six to eight different potential revenue sources. And then the other thing that you're doing is you're looking at how much money can I come up with for a down payment? Well, if you go and you want to build a new police station, you have about $1 million right here. Plus you own the land. And we know that that new police station, when we went through that process was close to $18 million, right? I can't remember if it was 18 or 19. And so my point is, is that there's a pretty big deficit in what you have to borrow. Now, the other thing we know is that if you're building an office type space, an office type space is cheaper per square foot. And so now you can get crazy and make it more expensive. And, and if you do, then you may put even that possibility out of what we can afford. Right. And so, so my point is is that I believe in just doing kind of an internal assessment of what departments would need to be in a city hall and I believe that based on the square footage analysis that I did, which is very quick and dirty, I think you need to go through a whole formal process if that's the route you want to go, that I believe you could probably build something for less than $11 million. But I also believe that you could probably come up with almost half of that with a down payment, which now means that if you're borrowing only $5 or $6 million versus $14 or $15 million, Now, all of a sudden, that annual lease appropriation option becomes viable. Because when we ran the lease appropriation option for the police, it was like an $800 to $1 million a year payment. When I run it for $5 million borrowed, it's more like $380,000.

But you're missing the renovation of a building that's going to cost $2 to $3 million.

Well, and I want to know...

I'm not, though. I can show you how.

How do you come up with the down payment? Like, we're sitting here talking about how tight our budget is, and we don't charge millions in overhead costs, right? We don't charge $5 million to our departments in overhead costs. So how could you come up with that kind of a down payment? And I even... After it failed twice, to me, this is more of a viable option, but I just have concerns because I think to residents, that looks...

poor that we tried to bond for a police station they're not going to understand that then we're like oh but we can build a new city hall with our budget and i'm not saying we can do it for sure i'm saying that we would have to go through a process a planning process and an analysis to see if it's even feasible but you're saying we charge that much overhead to all those departments to come up with several million dollars so we charge it's right here i'll just show you um so it's on this this screen up there So overhead charge right now in the proposed budget is about, oh, you can't read that screen, 2.7 million roughly.

A couple of years of that and you're at 5 million.

Yeah, but here's the difference. I'm not saying that we charge them that down payment up front. I'm saying that they pay their proportionate share of the down payment out of their own reserves up front. And then over the next 20 years or whatever the life of that lease is, you would include it in the overhead rate. So if your payment was $380,000, then you would be adding maybe $260,000 or whatever that is to the overhead rate that you would collect back from those respective departments. Does that make sense? Because they're basically 69% of... city hall um the the business or the departments that are our overhead departments is being covered by that overhead rate and so that means that you would have to pay in fact i just let me grab this these are mine i won't spill um So basically, if you had a $300,000, and I'm not just making this number up, by the way. I worked with Michael Keith from Zions to get these numbers. If you had a $380,000 lease appropriation amount, that means you would owe that much money each year. Over 20 years, basically, in my calculation, which we would, as I said, we'd have to go through and vet and make sure that everything... pencils out and is correct as through a planning process, 69% of that annual payment could be covered in the overhead rate, which means that the general fund's picking up maybe around 125,000 bucks a year.

So Matt, are there other, are there more creative financing options for a municipal building than there were for the police? I mean, is there a difference?

Well, the difference is your funding sources. That's the difference.

Okay. What were we using the overhead before? I guess I'm not understanding. Where did all that overhead money, what was it for before then? I guess that's not making any sense to me. What was that?

No, the overhead money that comes into the general fund is what helps balance your general fund.

But I'm saying, how can we afford to just take that money and then put it towards a building? I'm so sorry. I'm not understanding.

What I'm saying is if you do a lease purchase option, you're going to add that to what we collect on overhead. So in other words, instead of 2.7, you might be charging 3 million every year for 20 years. Does that make sense? Does that make more sense? And then the down payment, we would look at their reserves. So for example, if streets is one of those that we have an overhead, right? We would have to probably go to streets and say, hey, You need to put a proportionate share of a down payment on a new city hall that houses all of those departments that support those overhead.

So then you are taking money from each department, right? You're going to be taking more money in overhead from each department.

Yeah, you would.

If we afford that, then when we say that the budget is so tight, how are we going to afford that?

That is the process. That's why you have to go through a planning process and you have to determine how much that would be for each of those respective departments. And then you have to sit back and you have to say, do we feel comfortable pulling that much out of those reserves?

Yeah. You do just like the federal government. You just base it on growth. I mean, that's the only... You know, but I think we hope that we're going to continue to grow so that those revenues continue to grow.

But I mean, like we tell residents like we don't have more money in the streets for LIDs. And then we're like, but we do have more money to pull for this municipal building.

Yeah, but we're also saying we're going to pull it like the down payment just one time, right? It's a one-time down payment. You're done with that down payment. It's not, hey, we're going to pull that every year. And then every year thereafter, they would pay their proportionate share. So for example, when I ran through this, their payback on the lease each year would be like $47,000. So it's not as massive of a number as you think, because you're breaking it up between all of those departments, right? And I mean, and there's also some other areas that, I mean, I'm going to be upfront, like I would strongly recommend that the city look at not putting recreation in that building. Because we have an ice rink now. We have a swimming pool over there. We have a parks building that has offices in the top that's maybe underutilized. And so I think part of that practice would be to say, can we better utilize the current spaces that we have and put some departments there to minimize how big that square footprint is, which brings the cost down to what we can afford. And so that's all gonna have to be part of that analysis. And so I guess what I'm looking for is I believe there's a way to feasibly do it as long as the cost doesn't get too much. But I don't wanna just go do it without you guys saying, hey, let's look at that. Let's go through a planning process and let's see if it's a viable option.

And would that include the renovations on the... Yes. Okay. And then I have one other thing that Josh shared with me that he was pretty concerned about. The idea of leaving the arts department in City Hall after it's turned into a police station.

Yeah.

And I don't... I mean, I was trying to look. I can't find another police station in the country that keeps part of their employee. So to me, that's like a non-starter to have the arts department still in... When it's turned into a police station.

And that would be part of the discussion, right? Is what can we afford to keep or not keep?

But police stations don't have other personnel in them. So to me, that would be from the beginning. How could you have arts working in your police station and keep it secure? That's what Josh said.

Yeah, I can tell you.

They're going to do something like that just doesn't happen. So to me, from the get-go, it has to be understood that we're not going to have the arts department in our police station or rec or whoever else.

Yeah, and those are all decisions that may drive the cost up and make it so it's not a viable option.

But it's not viable to have them in there either, I don't think.

I don't know if anyone else would be able to secure a part of the building and have an output. as part of the renovations, separate entrances, just to, you know, and have it totally secure. I mean, it could feasibly be done. I agree. I don't think it's right. I don't think it should.

And it would drive the cost up because you have to renovate because you have to fix the reactors even so people can't climb through and all this stuff. So Josh just had serious concerns about that. And I mean, he is the police chief, so I really value his opinion.

Yeah, and we need to, and that's part of the process, right, is to go through all those concerns.

And he's really, really, you know, he's a, Pleaser. I feel like sometimes Josh doesn't know how to share his true feelings. He wants to please people. He's a very polite individual, but he has a lot of concerns about that.

And as I looked at it, this building is substantially larger than the police building you would have built if you passed a bond. I mean, this is closer to 30,000 square feet. This space over here, if you were to keep it for the next five to 10 years with other functions, you'd still be handing over the police basically the same square footage they would have built in their new building from day one. And then they could feasibly grow into this space over time. And as I looked at it, I talked to Brett and I said, can you close off this whole backside? He said, yes, you can. can you have separate entrances in the front for the two buildings? He said, yes, you can.

Yeah, and that will just drive up the cost of renovations to do things like that.

Well, that would be a wall, a small wall.

You'd have to renovate anyway. Well, I know, but you can't tell me that it wouldn't cost more to try to make them two separate buildings.

How much more are we talking? I mean, is it immaterial?

I'm asking. I'm saying those are the things that we'd have to look at.

Right.

And that'd be the point. We'll look at it.

That's fine.

I don't think it's time. This is time to make a decision about what to point and what to list.

I think that's part of the list. When we sit down and actually talk reality.

Yes. And that's why we need to get a committee and everything. This is just a brief throw out. It's not a decision making now. It's just saying, okay, we need to sit down and say what's feasible and what's the smartest thing for the future of our city.

Yeah. Can we see other options too, just so we can compare, like if we bought another building, you know how we talked about that. when we were looking at viable options before we bonded. Do you remember how that was one of the options? Like, oh, we find a different building and we renovate it. Could we compare?

If we have a building, sure.

Yeah.

We can do that. Okay. So really what I guess I'm asking for is, if you look back up at this budget, hopefully you can see it to the right, I've included... So basically, we're going to carry over a million dollars in that fund, right? we're going to already own the land over here by the school district. We're going to still own the police land, which could be potentially sold off, right? For 1.3 to probably 1.6 million in that ballpark. So I've included in here for next year, I put $190,000 under hired work to simply say, do we want to go through a planning exercise to look at the option of doing a new city hall over on this junior high property and moving the police into this building and then renovating this building over time, which could be phased. Because if you think about it, like, yes, you're going to need probably a few million bucks to do some renovations in this building, right? But then you're going to have impact fees that are going to continue to come in. And so as their demand for more space grows and we're like, okay, we can't have people in this side of the building. We got to give it to the police. Those impact fees could potentially build another phase, right? And so you have to think of it that way as a phased approach. The other thing that I look at is I look at where they are now. from day one, if you move them into this building, they're already in a better situation. Yes, it's similar in terms of some of the insufficiencies, right? As far as security and some of those things, but I believe that those things could be addressed and they could potentially be phased in, you know, as more money becomes available through impact fees.

Matt, I'm all for you know, starting a process to look, but, but as long as we're open-minded enough to look at a lot of different things, I mean, there's, there's a lot of, there's been a lot of discussion about a combined city county building, which to me makes a lot of sense. If we're, if we're going that route to build a city building, let's put, combine it with the county and get some of their money and, and, and, and have a, you know, have a joint. So, Those kinds of things, I think we've got to be open-minded enough through the process to at least entertain those.

And we did buy that piece of property with accounting. Right, so the issue, of course, would be for them to have the money to be building at the same time we're building and all that kind of stuff.

So what I'm hearing is that basically what we want is maybe three to four options of different solutions. You just got to brainstorm. Of how to do this, right? Is that what we're looking for? Is like not just one solution, but two or three other solutions, like up to three, at least three solutions of how to handle this situation. I know that everybody's...

Yeah, I know that there are those who get a little bit blinders on because – Well, I'll just say it. The mayor has some blinders on this because he wants a city building. And that may be where we end up. You know, that may be just where we end up. But I just think we can be a little more open-minded about this and look at other options rather than just going down this tunnel, you know, having tunnel vision. And this is where we want to end up.

Yeah, which is why I asked about it.

I'd rather take a little more time. You know, rather than to try and force this issue in the next 12 months, you know, let's... You said you have some money in the budget to study this, right, Russ?

Is that what you said? Yeah.

Yeah, and can you remind me the state's stipulations that they put on county buildings? It can't be over $5 million if we were to combine with the county? I'm trying to remember what that stipulation is.

Oh, are you talking about...

If it's a county building, it can't be over 5 million unless it goes to bond. Do you remember that from a couple of years back?

Are you talking about the lease appropriation that they would have to go to vote?

Yeah, if we combine with the county.

So if we're using the lease appropriation method, there is, I don't remember, I can't remember if it's the amount or the years that you borrow, but the county, I believe, does have to have a vote of the people to use that lease appropriation method. Cities do not.

So we just have to keep it all out.

So would it be fair then, like are you guys open to maybe what we could do is come back and keep in mind this is next fiscal year. I mean, we could start meeting now, but would you be open to maybe just saying, hey, let's have a group of people, a committee that could help working on these options? I'm all for that. Yeah.

As long as there's multiple options, I'm all for it too.

Yeah. And so, and are there, who do you want on that committee? Do you want it to be similar to what we had before? Or do you want to give it some thought? And then we kind of circle back through council meetings and start to formalize some things.

Well, I think there needs to be council representation, certainly.

Okay.

Oversight committee, I think makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, we have to advertise like that too. So, And that's not a problem. It's just if we only have one or two council members. It becomes a more formal. So we're not.

Is that over three? We have to just put out agendas is what she's saying.

I mean, that's just what we're doing. We're going to advertise it.

That's an open public meeting.

Yeah. Again, it's not that big of a deal. It's just we have to.

So what would it take to have these meetings? without violating the open meeting. What would the makeup of that meeting be? From an interactive official standpoint. One council member?

It's just, you know, you're having, it's a problem when you have two that are deliberating on each other. So, yeah, we've not really been as appropriate as we could.

Okay, that's what I was going to say, because in the past, I feel like we said if there was only foodies...

It's like a decision, right? You can't make a decision. There's still deliberation. Yeah, but that's not... You know, you're

Well, are you guys comfortable if we had one council members and then we just came back with updates through city council meetings?

That council member will be accountable to the rest of us. I'm comfortable with that. I trust any of these guys.

We can put those on your reports that you do every month. I'm comfortable with that.

How about you, Colin? Are you okay with that?

Yes, I'm okay with that, but I think it's going to take more than just three options. I think it's going to have to be a really serious look at now and the future where we're going to go with the police chief in mind and the whole basis of what we need to be doing, not just a patch approach.

I also think we need to include a lot of the different apartments, not just like if arts is going to be put in a different part of the building, arts needs to be part of that. If that's Donella, if that's Jed, whoever that is. But I think we need to like spread it out, the committee, because it's going to impact not just a few. It's going to like we need to have more say from all the staff.

I'm thinking about a committee, right? I mean, yeah. Get somebody who's familiar with building and get somebody who's familiar with real estate. Get somebody who's familiar.

Do we want to open it up to the community? Is that what you're saying?

Get somebody who's familiar with these things that have eyes to see.

I think we need to add the community a little bit.

Are you guys good? I mean, are you good if I work, like, at least start with Josh?

Dave Kuntz, And get a list of people that we think would be good on a committee and yeah and i'm fine with one Council member, but if it really is that we get those updates regularly, because if we're like getting an update after six months or a year of their deliberations and then we hear. oh, we don't actually agree with the direction you're taking that, but you've already wasted a year's time. So I feel like if you're having one council member on there, we're going to have to have really regular updates.

Just make it a council, every council meeting.

The council member has to, there has to be at least one. So if the council member who's assigned can't go, then somebody, one of us needs to attend. We need to have at least one.

Yeah, I think that's great. I think that's the process.

The once in a month. at the beginning you might not have more than one.

We probably don't need every two weeks.

No more meetings. Don't meet for six months and then bring us what you've been working on really hard. I totally agree. It's just a waste of time.

I appreciate this. Where I think I can come in and help you is we can look at the options. And then I can say, I believe that these are your funding sources and this is how much it would cost. And I've got Michael at Zions that said he's more than willing to help give us kind of estimated costs based on what we would borrow. And it depends, right? And that's why I keep going back to remember your funding sources, because if we do go look at an option, like let's say that, Melaleuca building or another building is available in the downtown and it costs $6 million to buy and $6 million to renovate, I can already tell you that if it's a police station, you can't afford it because we've already went through that process. And so that's my point is we'll be able to bring you back the funding sources and how it could be paid for legally.

It'd be nice to have somebody on the committee who is excellent at diagramming words, right? Who can put a flow chart together for you, who can show you, I mean, what you were just sharing with us, for example, if we have that on a flow chart, if you are able to show that, then you can see it, right? So somebody who's willing to, you know, who's good at it, you can... diagrams words right just helps you helps you see yeah and let us and let us yeah remember it will

but let us remember what was our number one goal here is and what's our need is the new police department i mean they're they're years past they should already had one that is our number one goal is to get them the facilities they need to make sure our city stays safe so yep okay we good there good okay um just the last two things

on this summer and then let's take a break. So parks impact, or so parks, I just want to bring up that the Steiner Park in the budget is for the back half to be developed next year. And then the front half, all we would probably do is do the path to connect it to 5th West so that all those apartments, neighborhoods there could connect and use that park. And then the other thing with the park is this next year, we have this huge Porter Park irrigation project, which I'm going to show you in more depth later. But that's like a $610,000 project that right now is being funded half by a grant from the federal government, which means that you have to come up with $303,000 out of your general revenues.

This is what we voted on here a few weeks ago, right? Wasn't it? He spoke about it. He talked about it. Keith brought up. Yeah. Yeah.

It's basically to get Porter park off of there.

Yeah.

their well and onto the irrigation water, right? And so keep that in mind. That's part of the conversation. We'll talk a little more about it in a minute when we get there. And then there's pretty minimal capital that is currently in this budget. Now, there was more capital requested for cultural arts. There was a lot more. And I'll go through and show you what they requested and what we're recommending you approve. But part of that is a fairly big amount for the Tabernacle of $285,000. Well, the good news is I believe they're going to carry over over $170,000 from donations raised and grants because they got that Eccles grant for $100,000. And so they're pretty well on their way to hopefully raising enough to just do that with donations. And so that's great.

That's right, the bathrooms though, downstairs.

Yeah, it would just be probably the bathrooms and connecting it, right? Like a hallway or whatever.

And you're going to show us what's recommended for this coming high school year.

Yep, we're going to look at it here in just a minute. So then we have the ice rink in there. Ice rink, there's a subsidy obviously on that. We've got it at about $135,000. And there is a Zamboni in there. We did lower, I think from 65 to 50,000 in the budget. And then Rexburg Rapids has a really big capital project to replace the boilers. So 225,000. And you will see Rexburg Rapids is going to take more transfers in the future. And you'll see that that increased as well. Gulf has quite a bit of capital, but honestly, Gulf, the only thing that we're asking from the city is to set aside $40,000 for irrigation replacement. And that's it. So, okay. Do you want a break? Let's go. Or do you want to keep going? I don't care.

What time is it? We can bring it here and keep talking. Yeah.

Yeah.

for Saturday morning. You need, I have like, you know what a camera is? It's a, yeah, it's a hot box. It's a box that you put pans in and keeps warm.

All right.

That's the fun part.

Do we get Bill? Colin, you back with this? Did you get your dinner? We can't hear you.

No, I didn't get no dinner, so I'm starving. And yes, I'm back with you.

There's plenty in the other room, Colin.

There's always got to be a smart aleck.

Let's jump in. This next section is really focused on the general fund because of course that's the most difficult and hardest to balance each year. So Colin, I'm on the one that says general fund balance carryover. So as you guys look at that, I just want to kind of take you from where we were to where we're headed. So 2024, we carried over about 5.8 million in the general fund, which is about 30%, which is great. That's within your 25 to 33%, right? 2025, we carried over about 29%. And then at the end of 2026, we were actually budgeted last year to be below the 25%, if I remember right, but I believe we're going to be just over it. And then when you guys look at this, when I do this forecasting, you have to keep in mind that if it's in the budget, then I'm going to assume it's going to be spent. And so when you look at 2026, right, it's like, well, we still got four months left in 2026. And so I have to just estimate that, hey, if it's in there. Now, if I know we're not going to spend it, I take it out of the forecast. But for the most part, it's typically conservative in the sense that generally we will spend a little less than what I show. Now, if we were to take all of the budget requests that came in for 2027 through the budget meetings, we would have dropped that reserve clear down to 14.72% or just over $3 million. And so as the mayor and I looked at that, we came in with some recommended cuts, which we'll go through in detail here in a minute. And essentially the question was, how are we going to balance a deficit of $1.8 million? We were able to come up with cuts that brought it down to about 734,000 that you would have to carry over. And even with that carryover, you'll still be around 21%, which is still under our minimum reserve. And it's still trending in a bad direction, right? Which basically signals to me that we're probably going to have a few very tough years to balance this budget, especially if we actually have a recession and sales tax goes down, which is a real possibility. And so... So keep all that in mind. Now flip it over, unless you have questions. Okay, flip it over and look at the transfers. So when you think about, well, where's all this general fund money going? Well, outside of really the difference of what it costs to provide all those overhead departments versus what we bring in on overhead rate, This is where that money's going. And you can see in 2024, we transferred out 4.2 million. In 2025, it was 3.2 million. 2026, we forecast about 3.4 million, 3.38 or whatever that is. Yeah, 3.38. And then in 2027... if we accept this recommended amount that we're going to show you, it would be about $3.15 million. And so as you look through there, obviously your biggest one is your fire. So it's about $2.2 million. And Part of what I had to do is when you think of FIRE going forward, FIRE is actually no longer a fund transfer because we don't have that within our purview anymore. They have their own funds. So I actually have to call it a contribution is what I have to call it or subsidy, however you want to call it. But anyways, that's your biggest number. And then as you go down through that list, you can see – you know, where all the other numbers are. But the newest one, of course, is that ice rink. So you can see that 134,800 that I was talking about earlier. And so really, as you guys think about, hey, maybe we don't want to take those recommendations that you're about to show us, but we do want to make sure that we still cut out that amount in the budget. These are some of the areas where you can cut it. And so we can dive into those if that's what you want to, if you want to go back to those. So any questions on that?

Matt, is the ice rig being open all year? Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think if, as you guys go forward, if you determine after running it this full year. And you're like, it's probably not worth it. That could save you a little, right? You could potentially save some there.

Do we know what the numbers have been for this last month with it being summer?

I don't have the final numbers for last month, but I believe... I believe last time I saw it, because they were still working on their rentals. I believe last time I saw it was around 20K, which I think is about a $5,000 drop from the prior month, if I remember right.

And that's all revenue, the 20K?

Yeah, that'd be revenue.

Okay. Sorry, just in the fire station, you know? Yeah. Are we going to go through what they asked for, this budgeting? Or is that mostly just personnel? Or did they ask for...

We're going to hit it just a little bit. But they did not ask for any new personnel. And they asked for about a 4% increase, which honestly I thought was pretty reasonable. Okay. If you flip it over, I want to take you through reserves for a second. So when you look at the reserves in the street fund, in 2024, we carried over $7 million. In 2025, we carried over $9.3 million. I think by the end of this year, if they spend everything that's in the budget, we'll carry over about $6.3 million. Next year, if we spend everything in the budget, I think you'll carry over about $400,000. So, I mean, we are spending that down. Same thing as you go down, you're going to see this trend throughout all of these. So, sanitation, you can see where we were in 2024. We were almost $2 million. By the end of 27, I think we'll be at about 536. Now that one, we know why. It's because we saved and built that new shop for sanitation for them to be in. Water, I want to point out the biggest thing there to me that kind of stands out is the capital reserve fund. So you can see that we went from about 9.6, I'm projecting us to go clear down in the five and a half million range by the end of 2027. But you're basically gonna run out of money in your capital reserve. So it will almost carry over nothing. And that's the same story for sewer. So when you look at sewer, sewer is substantially dropping. I mean, they're going from almost $11.6 million down to $3.8 million. But same story, capital reserve is pretty much 100% spent. And so those... I mean, there's pros and cons to this. There's good things and there's bad. The good thing is, is that you had the money available to pay for those projects. And there was a lot of big ones. The bad thing is, is that if you look at the capital improvement plan, those projects keep coming. And so you will, and I've mentioned this several times, you will have to look for funding for water and sewer probably within a few years.

And that would be in the form of a revenue bond?

Either a revenue bond or if we can get it a DEQ loan would be fantastic. Revenue bond does not require a vote of the people. It requires judicial confirmation. So you have to go through a process, go to a judge, and they have to say that this is ordinary and necessary and you're authorized to borrow money. Yeah, and banks and financial institutions, they're comfortable with it, right? Because they know that you can set rates to cover that repayment. Okay, so here's the cuts. So as you look at this, I'm going to go as quick as I can. So airport relocation reserve, we wanted to put $30,000 in. We're recommending that we only put 10,000 in. Part of that is because they have over a million dollars. We're investing it very well. And so I believe they're going to increase it probably 50K, even with us only putting 10K because there's tons of interest being earned. Airport operations, we reduced that by 9,200. They had... a security system quote that was huge. And we, we said, Hey, let's, let's either reduce the scope of that project or let's look for an alternative system. And that savings would be for us and the County because we split costs between airport construction and operations and then air.

Yep. At some point in this process, I think we need to, reevaluate that additional consultant, what, that we hired for the airport relocation?

Oh. Yeah.

And that is, you're going to have to, you're going to have to show me, the airport board is going to have to show me that he is what we're paying him. We're getting something that we're moving this project along better than we would have done without him.

Okay.

And that's, you know, that's 75, $80,000. Yeah.

Yep. Right. Yeah. You're right on. Yeah. And we, and we're paying half that. Right. So. Okay, so ball diamonds, I pulled out. They wanted to do dugout enclosures, so we pulled that out. We just felt like it's great, but it's not necessary. Cultural arts subsidy. So what we did there is they were asking for a subsidy of about $146,000. We reduced it to $131,000. And how we did that is we increased the transfer from arts promulgation by about 10K. They could afford that. And then we're basically saying, we're going back to their department and saying, you could either cancel something that doesn't produce revenue or you can produce revenue. Maybe you get contributions, but we're basically asking them to come up with that $5,000 difference.

For those events? Yeah.

It doesn't have to be these events. I just put those events on there just as an example of three events that have no revenue. And so, I mean, if they said, hey, let's not do Oktoberfest anymore, that'd save you $5,600 of direct costs.

They're already not going to be doing any musicals or any plays or – so – I'm just wondering if we take away these events, then what is the Culture Arts Department planning to be doing?

I mean, the biggest thing they do, right, is manage those two buildings. Okay. And there is, I mean, we do have some of our own events in there. And then a lot of it's just managing the groups that rent them.

Okay. So we wouldn't be hosting. So if they don't find sponsors, then we just won't have any events for the next year.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, I'm only saying 5,000.

Just clarifying.

I'm just saying, we're just saying, Hey guys, find, you know, do something different for this 5,000, you know, whether you find a sponsor for one of these key events or whether you, you charge, it's kind of like what we did with Tabernacle Orchestra last year. Remember we went to them and we said, Hey, something, we got to charge for tickets or admission because we need to generate some revenue. And they said, well, can we just raise it with contributions? And we said, yeah, absolutely. And that's what they did. And so it's kind of that same thing is where we're not, we're not necessarily saying this is what you will do. We're saying you need to find $5,000 of either savings and expense or increased revenues.

I guess I'm just a little worried about like if we if they don't find a sponsor for like Oktoberfest or something that that this because that's something that the community really looks forward to and it's become and if we're starting to cancel all these events then it just looks bad too like that those are things that the community like to do it shows that we do you know what I'm concerned about that if they aren't able to find a sponsor because we've really hit our sponsors really hard

Yeah.

Last year. And so I'm just a little concerned about that. And I think that. It's going to be being creative, of course, but, and I'm not, I'm not opposed to it. I'm just, I'm just putting forth a little concern.

Yeah. And that's where you guys, you know, can voice your opinion. Like if you guys feel like, Hey, no, let's keep doing tuber fest. You know, you need to voice that concern or that, or sorry, that consideration. And, but I, I think that our point is, is, you know, we're not going to adopt this budget for. that we three read it, right? So we're several months out. And so we're just saying, hey, look through your budget, find 5,000 bucks. And we just felt like that was reasonable.

But can you help me understand that? I'm sorry, I'm not understanding the recommendations 131 and the total request was 146.

Yeah.

So isn't that more than 5,000?

Yeah. So I said it really fast, but I recommended that we increase the subsidy that comes from our promulgation.

So that's the other thing.

Yep. Okay. Customer service, we just, oh, I didn't put what it is. So we reduced that with some part-time wages. Same thing with finance. When we get down there, there was some part-time wages. Deborah and I have worked out. Something where we're going to share Marcy up front and she's going to start doing some more finance things. And so we worked out that. Economic development. They originally needed a subsidy of about $4,000 for their entrepreneurial programs. I am recommending to them that instead of subsidizing MEPI for $10,000 that helps sponsor those, that we only give them $6,000. Or we give them $10,000, but they put $4,000 back into the entrepreneurial programs. And part of that is we are providing the workforce behind that, fully subsidizing those employees. It's a pretty reasonable request. Overhead charge on engineering. So you can see, as we made these cuts, just reduced some of those expenses and so i showed that there uh financial management i want to talk through that so you had a little bit in part-time labor a little bit in supplies and travel the big one of course is the roof reseal and resurface so we cut out the 150 000 to basically redo this roof Because we felt like we needed to move forward on this HVAC replacement project first, because that may require them to cut into that liner. And I talked to Tim. I had him go up and look at it. He thinks we're fine to hold off until that project's done, and then we can reassess. So that was $150,000. We did leave in the HVAC, as I just mentioned. Now on fire, the only thing that we showed there for savings is... We want to go back to them instead of putting 40,000, we want to put 30,000 into the building set aside for them to, they're looking to save money to do the addition on their downtown here building. And when you think about that building, you got to remember city pays one third, fire district pays a third, ambulance district pays a third. So we're all basically putting in that 40,000. We're going to recommend that we do $30,000 and then we're going to recommend that they subsidize it more with their wildland fund, which is a great way because that wildland is, you know, that was one of my, one of the things that I didn't love about the fire budget process and I'm going to recommend from them is they never actually showed us a line item breakdown for wildland. They just said, they showed it in summary and And my point is I just want to make sure that they're paying their expenses, they're bringing in their revenue, and then they're benefiting all three parties. And so I'm just recommending they increase that transfer to the building. I think it's a fair request.

That's a great one. Sitting in that meeting and then choosing to remove that, that's not going to count as part of a budget. Are you kidding me?

No, it has to.

So that's a really good.

Yeah. And that, that's one of my requests back to them. We have to let them know by the 20th, if we're going to cut some things out. And when I reach back out to them, I'm going to say, number one, let's reduce this. Number two, we still actually want to see the wild end budget. Cause we never really saw it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Um, okay. Flight, uh, sorry, I'm going to skip the ones that we didn't change. So golf irrigation system, we were going to try to put aside 60. I reduced it to 40. I think that's fine. Golf is pretty successful right now. And we've been able to ramp up from their operations, what they put in there. And so I think it's fine. We're still setting aside hundreds of thousands of dollars a year into that, which is fantastic.

Yeah.

We would recommend that they do that as well. Yeah. We always try to match each other. So, okay. And then we looked at HR. HR is able to drop it because of all this turnover that we are now know, you know, who the replacements are. I think you guys are going to meet Brandon tonight. So that was about 15 K and then it had requested a new employee. We will go through in detail all the employees as well in a minute, but that was 101,000. We recommended that we just continue to use part-time as we have for now. And so anyways, that's 101,000. And then we did small bumps on some infrastructure there. And as those things come in, I told Todd, like, if we really need that money for a server, come to us. we can do a contingency adjustment if it's necessary. Marin Council, this is a really big one I wanna talk about, and I'm gonna show you this in a couple pages too. So if we are to determine that that pump house on second east and first south is actually the city's from a financial standpoint, I would highly recommend that you sell it. And that is something that you had already surplused before we got into the whole deed thing. stuff and uh so anyways i just want you to keep that on your radar that you know potentially that's 300 000 plus that you could put back into your general fund to help build it back up i will say this the historical society though has been kind of talking with me on a monthly basis about the pump house and they are are they feel that the council kind of already

not promised it to them, but that they were in favor of them having that when they made that presentation. So I'm just, I'm just, this is the conversations I'm having. And so I'm just, and I'm just letting them know I've, I've been pretty blunt about it with them that it's probably not going to happen, but he anyways, like because he came and did that presentation, he felt that the council was in very favor of that. So we just need to be careful of how we handle that.

I'm just as a, Yeah, no, and that's fine. And I think if there was a way, like for them to raise money and buy it, you know, that's a different conversation, right? So the problem I see is from where I sit is you cannot afford to buy another public building.

No, we can't.

With no revenue source. I mean, we got to take care of the ones that we own. Okay, so then I'd cut out a little in travel and training with the mayor and a little bit in part-time labor with parks. I feel like we're fine on both those. The other thing that I did on parks, if you flip the page, and this is where you guys might not like this, so let's have some conversation about it. So we've been setting aside money in the Parks Capital Reserve Fund for several years, generally around $50,000 to $100,000 a year. We had set aside a fairly big chunk a couple of years ago for pickleball. So we're going to have about 162,000 in there. And that's even after converting Smith Park Tennis to pickleball. And so I strongly recommend that you use 132,000 of that towards this Porter Park irrigation project. And then just leave about 32,000 or 30,000 in carryover in there. Because really that, you know, we kind of filled that pickleball need by converting the Smith Park. And we are, by the way, going to, he still has to come and do some fixes and resurface on that. So it should only get better. But I mean, if you've driven by there, I mean, people are using it and we only have four of the six nets up right now. Yeah.

Yeah.

But what are your thoughts?

I've been by there at times and there's no one there, you know? So.

Noise that it makes.

Yeah.

And we're going to buy, I told John, let's go ahead and buy. We're going to buy two, two sides that face the, where the houses are to try to lighten that, that noise.

When we, when we started at this road, There were limited opportunities for pickleball in town.

Yeah.

There's a lot more opportunities out there now than there were then. Right.

Yeah, I'm fine with it. But you left my skis alone, right? Your what? You left my skis alone at the golf course though, right? Yeah. For now.

Yeah, they're there.

Yep.

Okay, so you guys are good to keep going? Yep. Okay. Parks capital set aside. We're, we're not going to set anything aside there. Um, so let me talk about police for a minute. So police, they, they had requested three new full-time positions. They had a priority of detective, then patrol, then parking attendant. Those are kind of the big ones. Um, so obviously like the top one there, you can see the 121,500. I'm not going to hit all the little ones by the way, but if you want to talk about them, we can, um, And then the parking attendant one, you can see we saved about $48,200 if we cut that position out. Part of the reason why is that's about a $93,000 position, but they were like, hey, if we have this position, we can issue more tickets and bring in more revenue. So they offset that difference. But we just felt like we probably shouldn't approve any new positions in the general fund. And then in the big one down below, you can see is the detective, which is their priority. They've expressed that. That was about $135,000 to add that position. Um, and then we also cut out the, the Pharaoh scanner in detectives. That was the one where we said, Hey, let's have you go reach out to other communities. Let's see if we can share the cost and then come back to us, you know? And so maybe, you know, for example, if they could go to Madison County and say, Hey, will you cover half the cost?

So what is the scanner?

It's for like investigation of the scene. And it's basically, it's like a camera system. We'll just call it that. That basically scans it all.

Yeah, it goes, you map up the whole crime scene where everything's at. And it shows kind of more realistic exactly where it is. And you go back and make that crime scene exactly. Yeah.

So kind of like in real time?

Yeah.

Borrowing, right? Isn't that what they said?

They what?

They've been borrowing one, right? Isn't that what they said?

I think so. Yeah, when they need it. I think they have a, didn't they say Bonneville County has one?

I think so.

And the state police has, and they bring the state police in or the Bonneville or Cuddle Falls.

But I do have a concern about the detective position. I just want to say. Yeah. Because I talked to Josh about this, and I think. he told me he talked to Colin too. I don't know what his thoughts are after talking to Josh, but he feels like he has concerns about the detective position. And I guess to me, I feel like we're increasing our population, but we're not, I know because the money is hard to come up with, but I don't feel like we're keeping up with our police positions to match the population. And so to me, I feel like that one's really important. And I don't know how you, I wasn't in the wastewater, so I don't know how he made, determination that that one was more important but like to me the police are one of like the highest priorities because our community needs them and when we were in those meetings and they went through what they need to do with the byu idaho devotionals and things like that to me i feel like they need that detective position yeah and i and i think that part of what i i would say the message that the mayor and i would probably share with them is is

If there was a way internally to use the budget that they had and increase the number of people in that department, I mean, that would be the ideal thing, right? Do I know if there's a way to do that? No. Do the detectives have to be the ones that do the BYUI devotionals? I don't know that answer. Maybe there's a way to do that through community policing or another division and reduce that burden. And so I think that what we're saying is because of the financial position that we're in, we want them to kind of take a deeper look at, is there a way to maybe prioritize that with the money that they have, right, that's available? And maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But we're just kind of saying that financially increasing the budget that much is probably not something we can do or would recommend at this time. But if that is there, then maybe they can figure that out.

And I met with Matt on this. I have a concern with that, too. And I brought up several times with Matt. is when we move a detective over to drugs and move a detective over to child sex crimes, we lose a detective. So I was worried about that, too. I think Josh needs to come back and maybe say, hey, I got to have it because this and this and this. You talk about some funding coming in from a grant. Let's look at that. Can we get half of it paid for by a grant? Yeah. So I'd like to see that. I'm worried that we're undermining our police department if we just not give them something. And maybe it's not this year, but at least next year, we need to step this up because we're increasing so rapidly. They're going to be buried more than they are now.

Yeah. And they, and they had said, right, that they may be able to get a grant.

Yeah. But Josh said it was an ice grant and he doesn't know what the requirements were. So he's right.

And I think, and I guess what I would say is let's follow through on that. Let's see what that grant is and then come back and let's see if, you know, if that's 30, $40,000 a year and you guys are like, you know what, let's do this. then do a budget adjustment and approve it. But I think we need to go through that process.

I think it's prudent to go back to Josh and say, Josh, this is reality. We just don't have money. Which I did. You do your due diligence. You go out and then you come back and show us that that that we're going to be in real deep trouble without that position. Then we'll, because we got time, we'll relook at things. Maybe we can move things around a little bit. But I think it's good to put the ball in his court, let him see what he can do internally, if anything. And if it just doesn't work, then come back to us and then we'll.

But can we hear that report before we start voting on this? in our public meetings from Josh. That's like in a month, right? Can we hear before then?

So the only way you could do that is you would increase it now and then you would increase the carryover on the revenue side. So if that's what you wanted to do, you could do that now. Or the other approach you can take is that you have them go back, look into all those things, and then they come back to you at the beginning of October and say, hey, we can't make it work. Here's what we found. This is what we need. And then you could do that same budget adjustment.

Why was wastewater chosen over the police department?

So wastewater is a little easier because they have a revenue source, right? And so they have a rate. You set a rate. And so we felt like it was okay to increase that because we could cover that in the rate. Unfortunately, I can't do that with a general fund. I'd love it if I could. It'd be great. But it was just because of the funding source. It was just not there.

So can that be made clear to Josh, though, that if he feels like he can't function without it?

Yeah, I think so.

And I don't know what you meant by the community policing, but I mean, like, As a mother with children in the public schools, I'm really happy that we have officers at the school. So I wouldn't want to take an officer out.

Oh, yeah. And I'm not saying permanently take him out. I mean, I think he was only saying on that handout that it was about 120 hours that they do a year up at those.

Yeah. So you're saying you'd use someone just for that one part of what the detective did?

Yeah. I'm just, I'm just saying like, is it more important to have the detectives work on detective stuff? And it could another division cover up there. I'm not saying I know that answer. Yeah. I don't, I'm not a police officer. I'm just saying.

Police officers in my children's schools. No, no. Yeah.

And I'm not saying take them out of the schools. I'm just saying, is there a way to, to prioritize that department over maybe a different department and allocate some of the resources here to there? So they have what they need.

And I mentioned this to Matt, they maybe could do it during the summer, but during the school year, I don't see, I was over the community policing. I don't see them doing it during the school year. That'd be very tough, but maybe during the summer to, to alleviate that stress on them during the summer, maybe.

Okay. Well, let me, let me talk with Josh and, and I think what we do is just say, Hey Josh, you, you look at what you can and, And within the budget we're allocating at this point. And then if you feel like we can't get there, you can't get the additional grant funding, et cetera, et cetera, you can always come back to the city council in October. Maybe it delays it a month, right? Instead of hiring in October, maybe hire it in November. That saves us a month anyways. And so is that okay with that approach?

Yeah, as long as he knows that.

Yeah, I'll chat with him.

I feel like we can't neglect the police to the point where we can't keep up with our population.

Yeah, I'll talk with him on it. And then you guys are welcome to talk to him as well. Okay. All right. Ice rink. So that one also had the security cameras, was extremely high. So we ratcheted that down. And I think what we're saying is we either – Maybe we go down to one or two cameras. Maybe we use some aftermarket ones as well. We're just saying, find an alternative solution for now.

That's fine. Oh, can I ask one more question about the police though? Yeah. They left everything in for their dash cams, right? That we talked about in that meeting.

So we reduced, that's the one that, I'm just trying to find it. That was patrol. So it's the one up there that says small tools SWAT under police patrol on line 37. So we reduced the total down by 12.3. So they were asking for 157.3 and we reduced it to 145,000. And so we just said, hey, look for areas that you can save. Maybe not necessarily the video camera, but maybe there's other small tools because there's certainly more than just the cameras in that budget. Yeah. Okay, ice rink. I already talked about the reduction for Zamboni. As you go down that list, there's a small one for Rexford Rapids, not much. And then romance theater. So Jed wanted to remodel downstairs for a catering and rehearsal space. We took it out, 20,000 bucks there. And then there was in the romance theater, if you flip it over, There was an $18,500 request for the three windows in the back. We've talked about this one for a couple of years. We cut that down to 15,000 and we're also hopeful that he'll continue to apply for grants that can maybe help supplement that. And then we also cut out the chandeliers. He had 25,000 in there for the lighting where basically as you look up on the ceiling, I think there's six of them possibly, I can't remember. Did I write it here? Four large, four small. So there's eight. We just said, hey, let's cut that out. Look for grant opportunities at this point on that. And then they wanted to replace the TV marquees, 50 grand. We basically said they're Use them till they're dead.

They're getting close.

Tabernacle remodel downstairs. I reduced it by 15,000. So from 300 to 285. That one we're really saying don't start on until they raise more money anyways. And so they've got some money to raise.

So you're talking about the whole downstairs?

No, no, just the bathroom.

Just the bathroom area, not the reception area.

No, yeah. I mean, if we can do more than the bathroom for 300, yeah.

So the bathrooms are going to be 300 is what you're estimating. 285 is what we're moving it to. Just the bathrooms.

The hallway. Basically, imagine coming down the stairs. You make that right down to the bathrooms, just kind of finishing that so that people can use those as a bathroom.

Is that providing a way for wheelchair access down there? Or are we just going to have them use the bathroom upstairs? No.

So part of it is we would look at your upstairs bathrooms and potentially make those an ADA bathroom.

But you're saying they already have 170K from donations? Yes. As part of that 285. Yeah.

I'm projecting they'll carry over 170 with a hundred thousand of that being that grant from Eccles.

And so, but then they're going to need that. You're saying that the rest of that would come out of the budget.

Yeah.

And that's another one. I, I don't have a problem waiting on that either. I mean, to me, that's not a priority.

Yeah. And I think that's, that's basically the message, right? That we're saying is you can always spend what you raised, right? And so if they come in and they're like, hey, Matt, we want to put this out to bid. We only have $170,000. I'll be like, great. See if you can do it for $170,000. But if it comes back at $500,000, it'll be like, looks like you got to keep raising money. Okay.

So you're saying a zero from us, basically.

Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, we're still subsidizing the building, right? But we're saying we're not going to subsidize that capital improvement. No.

Are we anticipating that the HVAC will bring down the cost of like the heating and things over there? I noticed like in the line budget that it was still like pretty high.

I was a little reluctant for sure to change it. Because AC, right? If you run an AC in the summer, that's pretty expensive. I mean, it's a difference between natural gas and power, right? Typically, natural gas is a cheaper source, right? And so I was a little reluctant to change that until you really go through it somewhere. Okay. Okay. And then there's a couple of trails. Okay. I didn't want to completely take that out, but I took it from $5,000 to $2,000. But Trails has a very healthy reserve. We've got plenty of money for the projects that are in there. And we included even that Porter, or sorry, Steiner Park project using some of those funds. And so I feel like they're in good shape. And then keep in mind, we also put $30,000 from impact fees in there every year for those projects. And most of those trail projects are being 93% funded by FAA grants right now. Or not FAA, but federal grants. And then I did a... This city hall police reserve, I took it from 150 to 125. And then I dropped the contingency from 100 to 80. So now if you look at down in the blue, so basically after all these changes, we were 1.8 million short at 14.72%. We cut out a million 25 in expenses. We increased the revenues because of that park transfer, right? That $132,000 for that Porter Park project. And then we had to increase the property tax projection. So I got those numbers. And then I had to reduce the overhead rate just a little bit because I had to recalculate as we cut out things. So total carryover needed is $734,700. And then if you look down below, projected carryover at 27 is 20.81. And if you look all the way down, if you were to really be able to sell that pump house for 300,000, you would be at 22.31. So any questions on that? Nope. Okay. I'm going to keep going because we'll run out of time. So this next one, I'm not going to spend time on unless you have a specific question on the department one, but I put it in there as a method for you to just kind of see what their two-year change is with or without the cuts. But anyways, that one... I'm not going to, we could take a while on that one. So I'm going to skip it unless you have specific questions that come up. So next one is the personnel requests. So I just want to show you what those costs. So in the general fund, if we would have approved the IT position, you know, that was about 121,000. And so we said, pull that out. One thing to keep in mind with IT is right. We talked about this overhead rate. So if you do hire an IT, there is some revenue source that comes back, right, from the overhead rate. Doesn't cover the full cost. But I still felt like we needed to not approve that for the same reason as the police as well. So police, as you look there, you see the priorities, like definitely the priority for them was detective, then patrol. A detective is about $135,000 in the first year. Patrol, you're looking at about $121,000. And then that parking attendant was about $93,000. Now, of course, they had factored in some increase if they did hire a parking person. The one thing I want to say as well is that that patrol one is tough because we hired three patrol officers in the last four years, new ones. And we have a grant. And that grant stops in 2027, at the end of 2027. So we're already going to take a hundred and something thousand dollar hit to the general fund in reduced revenue from that grant. And so I was like, I don't think you can afford to lose that revenue plus add another $125,000.

And then there's the- He's actively pursuing other grants.

Yeah.

To continue that, we're hoping.

Yeah, I don't know if he is on the personnel other than the ICAC grant, right, for the detective position potentially, if he can get that, which would be awesome. Like if he can come back to us and say, hey, they approved 30,000 a year, that makes your decision a lot easier. There's the operator and training. So that's about 93,000 per year. So really pretty slim recommendations when it comes to adding personnel. All right. If you flip it over.

Really fast with IT. What was their, are they, why, what's the need there, I guess?

So they, I mean, officially they felt like they needed what's called a technician, infrastructure technician. And they just felt like there was enough demand on all their other full-time employees that they needed someone pretty soon with that specialty. Yeah. I had the conversation with Todd. I was like, are you already doing that with your existing employees? Yes, he is, but it was more of freeing up time for those employees to focus on other areas by having an infrastructure technician. I think he was okay with it. I think he understood it. He may come back next year and say, I need it now.

So this is somebody to help with like the streetlights and what infrastructure?

No, no, not streetlights. No, it's strictly just everything IT. So database, infrastructure, connections, networks, those kind of things.

Server.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I think it was more of a... a need to, that they're spread thin, if you will. Right, right. And we need to free up some of their time.

Okay.

Okay, so if you flip it over, capital assets, I'm not going to go through every one, but I just give this to you so that you kind of have an idea. I put to the right what's supported by general assets. revenues or the general fund. And granted, some of these expenses have been saved for. So like, as you look at like Brecksburg Rapids on the second page, 225,000, well, that's definitely been paid for by the general fund, but it's been done by transferring money over many years, right, to build it up. And so it gives you an idea of where those capital expenses are. So if you get to the last page, you can see it's a pretty substantial number, about $39 million in what we call capital assets. All right, let's jump into rates real quick. So Rexburg Utility Rates. So AIC came out with a study. They emailed it to me a few weeks ago. So I took their study. They had a few cautions. They said, number one, every city provides a different set of utilities to fit their residents' needs. So there's no one size fits all model. And then they were very clear that we advise you not to set your rates based on what other cities charge. By law, a city's utility rates must reflect the cost of operating their specific system, its unique needs, and future expense and then system upgrades. And setting rates based on what other cities charge can be a tragically costly decision. So really, you should follow your rate study, which, of course, we just went through. And as you look at this, we are one of the 11 Idaho cities that fall in that 15,000 to 50,000 range. And we're kind of on the upper tier of that, threshold of that. but 10 out of those 11 cities responded. So it was pretty good. You know, you had 91% response rate in our category. So if you flip it over to water on the next page, what they did, they didn't look at like a large user. So they looked at a user of 5,000 gallons of water on a three quarter inch meter. So this is like a typical resident that probably doesn't really have a yard, right? So these rates are at 2025. The rate that I'm going to show you at the end is if we were to adopt the 2027 rate that would happen in October. So you can see that the average rate for a 15,000 to 49,999 city is about $32.06. If we take our current rate, we're at 2407. If we take our rate in October, we're at $29.82. So it just kind of gives you an idea of where we would be, which is still, what, $3 under that average. And so I think we're a pretty reasonable place on water.

That's the cost per year, right?

That's the what?

That's the cost per year, the $29.

No, that's the cost per month. That'd be your monthly cost. Okay, everybody, that makes sense? And then so kind of the same theory on wastewater. Wastewater was $55.61 in that category. This year in 2025, January, we changed that in January. We're currently at $47.48. After the study, if you guys adopt it, we'll be at $46.80. Okay. And I know that's lower, but we know that the average is closer to 23,000 gallons in our city because people water their lawns. But we just wanted to show you the comparison to the way they did their study. So once again, we were quite a bit lower than that average. Solid waste is a little different story. So I don't know why, but their study... They did it based on a 65 gallon trash bin. And I was like, doesn't everybody have a 90 gallon? But anyways, we have a 90 gallon, 38% bigger, right? And so just keep that in mind. We also provide recycling service as part of our trash service. So the average was $18.82. You'll see that we, if we adopt the rate in October, I'm just going to jump to the bottom. would be at $29.21. But if you take the recycling out, $20.81. So we're a little bit on the high side there. And we know why. The number one reason why is what your counties charge you for tipping fees. And we're a little on the high side compared to a lot of other counties. And there's not much you can do about that.

So without recycling, is that like, do people, can people opt out?

No, we're not giving them that option, but we've talked about doing some surveys and considering it and we certainly could.

So it would still be lower if we just went strictly to garbage and no more recycling, it'd be lower is what you're saying.

Oh yeah. It would drop quite a bit. Now there would be some added costs because that, that would then be going to the transfer station, right? Instead of the recycle bin. Yeah. But that would add our revenue too. So we would take your money. So anyways, we did this scenario and it's been several years since I've done it. But I think the first time I did the analysis, we would save, it was like 225 to 240,000 bucks a year, if I remember right. And that's been several years ago. And so, I mean, it is no small number.

I just, it seems to me like we were sold a bill of goods with the county and the new landfill. I mean, I remember those discussions and it was, oh, we're going to be able to save so much money by not going to Jefferson County. And I just, of course, you know,

Yeah, and in long term, they may be right, right? Because they can control that cost going forward now, whereas you can't control that cost if you're going to Jefferson County. So, okay, I'm going to skip the next one. I'm going to go right to the beautiful colored Rexburg utility sample bill. So keep in mind that this comparison is from when we changed it last, which was January of this year, to if we change it in October. And the reason why I'm going through these is I actually won't be here on the public hearing next council, but Keith and Noah and others will be there that can answer questions. But this is what you're deciding in that meeting. And so the rate change for a typical resident is, would be about a $5.83 a month increase. So from January to October, right? And 4.3%. A typical apartment complex increase would be closer to 10%. And then a small business or a Rexburg business example with a small meter, three quarter inch meter would be about a 9.2% increase. And then keep in mind that the other thing that we're doing is we eventually want to go to the So remember, we talked about multifamily, commercial and residential. We can't do that right now until we go through a lot of programming and updating. And so we advertise that at the $1.15 on the volume rate. But as we incorporate that for commercial and multifamily, they will drop a little bit. And so these rates are a little high, but that's what's going to happen in the beginning. And then as we put those things in play, they'll save. They'll start to save a little. So any questions on that one? Okay, so if you flip it over, I... And I showed this to Colin earlier and I was going to call Twin Falls and honestly, I didn't have time to. So as you look at this comparison, what this is, is this is a single family dwelling. What would they pay if they wanted to build a new residence, right? In impact and capacity fees, right? Now, these rates, I went and I looked and all of these cities that are represented here, I would say that honestly, a majority of them probably haven't updated these rates for probably three, four years. Some of them did update them last year. And then the one on Twin Falls, I almost want to pull Twin Falls out because I need to give them a call. They show their sewer at 513, but I almost wonder if the reason why is I think they might have a regional sewer plant somewhere. And if that is the case, then it may be very well that you're paying 513 to the city for collection, but then probably paying an additional amount to the treatment side through the contractor. So I need to verify that. But with Twin Falls included, you can see the average impact fee is quite a bit higher than where we sit. So we're at 2610. Average comes in at 6500. with post falls kind of being the crazy number, to be honest, it's super high. And then as you go down and you look at capacity fees, We are pretty close to the average. My guess is that we'll be at or lower if what I'm telling you about Twin Falls proves to be true. And you can see there, once again, Post Falls is the biggest, one of the biggest. But even some of our neighbors, right? Pocatello is about 10,470. Idaho Falls was about 4,365. Chubbuck, 5,600. And then some of these others are like cities, like Provo. I don't know why, but developers oftentimes want us to compare to Provo and other university places because they're probably used to developing in those places. And keep in mind that that's if you guys adopt these new capacity fees at $2,151 for sewer. $47.27 for water. So once again, I feel like if you take the total, it's not terrible. Now we have not updated our impact fees for a while, and we will be bringing those to you in the fall, probably at the, I'm guessing.

These are based on any size single family dwelling. Yeah. Tiny home to a half acre lot.

yeah um paying fees pretty much okay yep because typically they all have the smallest meter anyways yeah and so yeah and that that's why that's why sometimes when people come in and they're like hey i really want to get a one inch meter and it's like i don't think you do because that's that whole conversation we had about being able to hit the peaks if somebody has a one inch meter then that means we have to be able to provide the volume for a one inch meter And so there's an added cost because that means we have to have more water in storage. We have to be able to pump more water to be in storage, et cetera, et cetera. And that's why that base rate is higher. Okay. So the next one's just simply, it's just the graph. It's the same numbers, but a graph. Okay. I do want to show you, I almost, I almost elected not to show you this just because we don't have impact fees done. but I'm gonna show you anyways. So a single family, if you guys adopt these changes for capacity fees, you're gonna go up about 3,700, or sorry, 37%, about 2,600 bucks, okay? If you flip it over, then you get into the multifamily. Multifamily is not quite as bad. And that one is, it would be about a 15% increase or $425 per unit. But then when you look at dormitory, which is on the right side, remember we do dormitory by the bed. So the increase would be about 10.3% or $109 per bed. This one, sorry. Let's go on quick.

These comparisons you showed us are based on the newly not yet adopted rate, right?

I don't know if it's the last one. I'm on that one.

The comparisons are based on the... If we adopt it. Yeah, and keep in mind that they may adopt changes as well. Because I'm using their old number. so did you talk about the single family one on here that i missed yeah i wouldn't quit let's pull it back though i can pull it up you're talking about this that increase that says like 96.7 i'm just confused about it oh yeah yeah i can go through that so so what it is is is water if you guys adopt the fees which are going to be on that public hearing um So we have that public hearing on, is it the 1st of July, Debra?

I think it's- The stuff we talked about at that work meeting.

Yes. So if you guys adopt that capacity fee for a single family residence, it's going to go from 2403 to 4727, which is a 97% increase in water, right? And then the capacity fee for sewer would be about a 15% increase. So overall, and this is what the developers care about is just give me the overall. It's gonna go up about 38%. Does that make sense? Yeah, just capacity. These are not your monthly fees. These are only to buy. It's basically to buy in, right? To our system.

And so when we had that work meeting, the reason we didn't see that 90... I don't remember something as shocking as the 96%, but that's probably because we were just looking at the total, right?

You were just looking at the recommended rate. We were not comparing it to the existing rate.

And so I wanted to show you the existing compared, right? Okay.

So yeah, and it is. It is a big increase, but as you saw in that comparison sheet, water is typically substantially more expensive. And... And I think that, because right here, right, you saw, am I saying that right? Yeah, not substantially, but it's more expensive than sewer typically for connection fee. And so anyways, make sense? Yeah. Okay. Any questions on the single family or multifamily or dormitory? Okay. The last one is commercial and residential. industrial. So there's two pages there. So remember, we have both rates. And the only reason why we have both rates is because we do impact fees. They're a little different for police and fire based on institutional and commercial. So this one's a little tough. It's a really hard comparison to give you because There's just a wide swath of how these changes, these rates change, particularly for impact fees for streets based on the use, right? Like if it's a car wash, it's going to be totally different than if you said it's a business building, right? And so what I did is I just kind of said, hey, I'm going to give you a general office building example at a thousand square feet. So pretty small office building. That's probably going to go up about 9.1% on the capacity fee, right? And then impact fees, of course, wouldn't change. But, oh, I'm sorry. I did the wrong rate. It's about a 61% increase. Get that right. Sorry. Now, the gallons per day rate is a 9% increase. And that's because if you look at the gallons per day, You're going to go from $1.33 to $2.59. And that's a big deal for a big user of water, right? It's going to cost them more in those capacity fees for water. And then for sewer, the rate actually drops from $11 to $10.86 that you see there. And So yeah, as I mentioned before, like it depends on the use and how much they're using. Commercials, you have to just take it case by case. That's all you can do. And then institutional is kind of the same thing. It's almost a repeat, but the little bit different percentages just because the rates are slightly different for police and fire. Okay. let's just use that as a comparison does that help does that help you guys kind of understand where we were and where we're going though if we adopt those okay all right so the next one is um i don't i don't want to get too in the weeds on this but i just wanted to include the process that you can kind of see the process we go through for charging overhead and um I mean, when you look at some of these overhead departments, some of them are a little tough, right? Because you look at like economic development, right? Well, there's a cost to economic development, but should I be charging that to the golf course? They would probably say no. Yeah. Then there's one that's like legal services. Well, that one's pretty obvious, right? That should be covered. Same thing with finance, same thing with HR, same thing with IT, in my opinion. And so there's a couple of things that you guys just have to keep understanding is that just because we calculate the rate doesn't mean that we necessarily charge the full rate. And so as you go down where that green is, you can see... What we do is we pull in those operating budgets. So here's the people we charge overhead to, right? So it starts at streets. You can see the utilities there. And then it goes all the way down to the building department, right? Well, if you look out to the right, This is where we have kind of these political battles, I'll call them. So if you look at the actual second from right, you look at Gulf Teton Lakes and Gulf Legacy. Well, when I calculate their overhead, if I include everything but... Well, so if I include this overhead, let's just put it that way, you're close to... $200,000, right? That I could potentially charge them. But we don't. We charge them, if you go over there and look, we charge them $52,000 plus $11,000. So $63,000. So we really are kind of discounting that in a way. But I can tell you every golf meeting that I go to, it's a budget meeting and the county says, you're charging us $63,000 to do what? And it's like, well, I should actually be charging you $200,000. So that's just something that I want you to understand that there's some give and take. The other one is fire is a big difference. So fire has come out, basically. So we're only showing about $5,000 in the budget because we're essentially going to be doing very little for them next year. And then the other big one that I started the conversation with this year is GIS. So as you think about GIS, we have a joint partnership with the county where we basically take the full expense minus the whole $600 revenue they bring in. We divide it in half and we each pay our share, right? Well, the argument I made this year is I said, you know, we've been given away $80,000 a year for overhead. And, you know, their response was, well, we do things too, you know, maybe we need to take a deeper look at this. And I'm like, well, you don't do payroll and you don't do HR. And to me, it was like saying, you sure you want to take it over for 20 grand? And I'm not saying we want to go there, but I started that conversation with them. I talked to Commissioner Smith and I said, hey, let's continue to have these conversations because I think it is very fair that the city collect some of that overhead rate back. Because if you don't, it just puts that much more strain on your general fund. And so I want you guys to just be aware of that process and that some of those things become... more political questions than anything. So if you flip it over to page two, I just wanna show you on the GIS overhead charge. What I did is I actually, originally in the budget meeting, I said I was gonna charge 25%. Well, I decided to charge 50% and I did not charge the county, but I had the city cover their half of that overhead rate through our regular overhead process. The what? The city's half. I just want you to be aware that that's a topic that I have on their radar and I think we need to talk about. I think it's fair. The next one, I'm not going to go through it, but these are just gives you an idea of the Madison County joint ventures, things that we do with them. I give that to them every year just so they know how to budget those respective amounts. So I'll get back to them because some of those amounts have changed since our department meetings, and I'll give those to them. Okay, statement of understanding budget management. This is – I actually – the only thing I did here is I changed the language under capital purchases to reflect the new purchasing policy that we adopted like a month ago. So basically what I'm saying is that – If there's expenditures or sorry, shortfalls. So for example, if we hit a recession and we're like, hey, we're going to lose a million dollars in sales tax. Well, we're going to have to go back to some of these departments and make some decisions to cut back. Um, capital purchases. There's a process where it has to come to you if it's over the two 50, because we have to go through the whole procurement process and you need to approve it and et cetera, et cetera. Hiring of positions. We're basically saying if a position vacates, meaning somebody retires or terminates, whatever it is that the mayor can, um, you know, go say, Hey, let's get that out. Let's rehire that position. Then we will come and report to you guys those changes, but we won't give power and authority to the mayor to say, we're going to add a new full-time position. You have to have that authority to approve that. Does that make sense? So, and then that changed. The only thing I changed was that procurement $250,000 amount from the prior year.

Because what was it before?

I think it was $100,000 if I remember right.

Yeah, I thought it was a lot. It was that resolution that we just passed.

Yeah, because the state raised it from $100,000 to $250,000.

Oh, it was probably the meeting I was on the last time.

And we raised, so yeah, we raised our whole policy. And so we don't, like, for example, we don't require people to get bids if it's under 10,000 now. So things like that. Okay, so this last one, finish on time? Pretty close. So this last one is really what I would put in the newspaper. And so we would put it in the newspaper twice. Public hearing would be on July 15th, which is already on their tax notices that it's here at City Hall on July 15th. And then we are required by law, we have to show the revenue for property tax. But other than that, you'll just see a revenue and expense for all the respective funds. that we just kind of covered. And then if you go to the last page, you know, that's where we get that 95, 281, 200. So that would be it. And so, I mean, unless you have further questions, I'm just basically looking for, are you comfortable to move forward with publishing it in that manner and having a public hearing? And then you will have the opportunity to three read the ordinance, you can change it. You cannot increase it. And so if you guys feel like you need to have something in there right now, we need to change it right now, unless you want to do another public hearing, which we've had to do before. I try to avoid it. But anyways, that's kind of where we're at.

My only thing is what I already said, that detective position, I think, really comfortable putting that in. But if no one else agrees, then I'm going to see what Josh says and do a budget adjustment.

It's up to you guys.

That's where I'm at. I'd like to see Josh re-look and see what he can do. If he can't, then we'll step up.

And then are you good to address it with a budget amendment in October? So, I mean, it defers it a little bit, right? Everybody okay with that? Okay.

I'm good with that.

Okay. Well, I'll chat with him, and that will give him an opportunity to kind of look at ways that they might be able to move some things around internally, and then maybe he comes back with a different cost proposal, right?

Okay. From my point of view, Matt, nobody enjoys this process. It's just not fun. But it makes it doable when all the work that you and all the department heads have done can make this all come together. So hats off to you. Thanks so much.

Yeah, no problem. I actually like it. It's one of the responsibilities I like. So I just want to put that on the record. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's how we'll move forward. Appreciate it. We probably should have you just do a, do we have an action item though? Maybe we don't. Okay. That's okay. Well, that's fine. Would you, you will make it formal by adoption of an ordinance, right? So you've got a process to do that. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Can you give our own number? Ready?

You're good to go.

Okay. Well, welcome everyone to our city council meeting this evening, June 17th, 2026. Appreciate all of your being here. We've just concluded a work meeting with our chief financial officer who's steered us expertly through our 2027 budget. And it's been a big job, but we're nearing the end of that process. We would like to begin this meeting with a word of prayer, as is our habit. And we've asked Councilman Riggins to offer that prayer. Following that, Councilperson

Who's the council? Council member.

Council member will lead us in the pleasure.

Father in heaven, we're grateful for this opportunity to meet together as friends, neighbors, as a city council. Grateful for the opportunity that we have to live in this beautiful place. We're grateful to be surrounded by so many good people. We ask you to bless us as we meet together tonight, that we may be able to listen carefully, be able to respond wisely, that we may be able to be guided and directed by the Spirit in all that we do. We love thee, we're grateful for thee, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Amen.

Please stand.

I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. We'll have a roll call, council members. Just for your information, Mayor Barrow is out of town tonight, and he's asked that I conduct tonight's meeting as council president. And we have council member Colin Erickson on Zoom listening in. He'll be participating in the meeting. And council member Reeser is excused. He's in Germany.

Council member Johnson. Here. Council member Tijan. Here. Council member Riggins.

Here.

Council member Colin Erickson.

Okay, we'd like to begin our meeting with welcoming a couple of new employees to this group.

Is it on?

Oh, no, it's not. Sorry. We'll welcome a couple of new employees. Brandon Smith, new to the HR department. He's got some big shoes to fill. And then Christina Gilman in the planning and zoning department. So, Brandon, if you'd like to take a moment, come to the dais and just kind of give us a brief introduction.

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Brandon Smith. So, HR director. I've been here about a week. So, luckily... Terry was very gracious, and she's going to spend the next few weeks still employed. So we're going to have a great transition, which has already taught me a lot in a week. I've been out, met with a bunch of different departments. So it's been really cool and refreshing to meet a bunch of employees and just kind of see their dedication to the city. I came from kind of the private sector. So I worked at a local bank for about 18 years. 15 of those was in HR. So I got a bunch of HR experience, and I'm my career here city um personal note mary got four kids uh i'm not watching their sports i'm coaching their sports so that's just what what i love to do and and forever ago got got started in it and it's just kind of kind of kept with me so um yeah just a little bit about me great thank you uh yeah i grew up in otto falls okay yeah so i went to school here in rexford college uh quite a few years ago

But yeah, so definitely familiar with the area for sure.

Love it here. Really, after I graduated, moved away, didn't spend that long away, came back to the rural world, kind of raised my family. So I've been here ever since.

Great. Okay. Well, thank you. Thanks. Welcome. And Christina, if you could introduce yourself to us.

I only lived in Idaho Falls since February when I got married. So my previous position, I worked for the city of Eagle, Boise area. I've worked there for about eight years in Parks and Rec. So it's definitely a transition. I'm learning different things. I don't have any kids and we just love to go camping and it's all new, but it's exciting.

Great. Well, we're excited to have you with us, helping us navigate the growth of Rexburg. And so thank you for your willingness. Okay, we'll go to item number five on the agenda. That is a public hearing. This public hearing is to vacate a portion of the Sky Meadows Platte of the city of Rexburg at 1228 Stone Drive. And this action will be designated as ordinance number 1348 if the motion passes and considered first read. So Alan, from our planning and zoning team, Commissioner, if you'd take us through this. I guess technically we've got to open public hearing at this point, so we'll open this public hearing.

I'm just getting the map up so we can show you where. Yeah, please. What has happened here is in this situation, we're looking at this area right here. And this is part of the whole Sky Meadows subdivision. They completed that first part of it, and they're now coming in and going, we want to make modifications to it. Recently, just a little while ago, they had this rezoned LBRT, and you guys were aware of that. One of the things that the person that's looking at purchasing that.

This one ran on to a neighbor's property. They had signed on the plot that they were okay with that, but now they have decided to not. Be involved so they would like to vacate this because these are public roads and it's already dedicated to the city. that they need to be vacated so they can come in and redesign this to fit within those parameters better. And so that's what they're asking you to do tonight. Just vacate it, takes it away, and then they will submit the whole new application for a new subdivision to go in there. So that's what they are asking for.

Okay. Any questions of Mr. Parkinson?

Do we have... input from, from anyone in the area that we care.

We have not had any correspondence on this. And so, but it isn't a published, it isn't a public hearing. Sorry, my mistake. So, yes, but we have not received any correspondence at this point. Okay.

And get the input. Yeah.

Yeah. OK, well we will thank you. We will then go to the public input portion of our hearing. Those will first ask those who would be. In favor of this action to come forward and and express themselves. Then those who are neutral to the proposal and then those who are not in favor, opposed to the changes. So is there anyone here who would like to speak in favor of this proposal? Yes, please. If you'd like to come to the dais here. State your name and your address for us, please.

My name is Jordan Charrington and my address is 1227 Stone Drive. And I'm in favor of the vacation of this flat. Just a couple of months ago, the planning and zoning committee decided to rezone the remaining part of the undeveloped subdivision. And that was met with overwhelming support from several members or owners, property owners on Stone Drive. And I think it will be well make sense that the farmer is taking back that portion that actually was initially decided to give to the city and the current plot doesn't allow for the full capacity that LVR do zoning would allow for.

Okay.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in favor of this proposal? Okay. Anyone in the neutral position? Yes.

Can I read a message from someone else on the street?

I think so. Can she?

I don't know.

Spencer, can she do that?

Please just...

So basically, you'll be...

Okay, so he's unable to make the meeting. It's Jason Hunt, also lives on Stone Drive. He lives on that upper part. So it's actually the south across from the south, like the north, but the south part of it.

Okay.

Okay. His hopes and concerns, or he hopes that the There will still be some larger lots, so there's less digging. He wants whole line road traffic to be considered, and we need a walking path along the line for safety, which I believe is in the development agreement. Hoping for some level of covenants. We currently have covenants, and I guess I'm not sure if those will go away. And then he likes his view of the temple and he'd like to keep that.

Okay. Did he say whether he was in favor or was he in favor of what the meeting allowed, which is to vacate what's already planned?

Yeah, so I've talked to him a few times and he's been pretty neutral. He hasn't expressed

Yeah, I have a major concern, except I know that he really likes his view.

And I know that he has trouble with his irrigation or irrigating his grass. So there's a water station, I think, planned.

that the developer will have to put in.