City Council - Regular Meeting

Are you covering for Keith? Yeah. Okay. Oh, yes. Is the on air on the lights broken at the moment, like, so you're on.

All right.

I'd like to welcome everyone out to this Rexburg City Council meeting. We're going to get started. Mayor Merrill's out of town, so I'm conducting for him. We're going to start with a prayer by Councilmember Teejan and then the pledge by Councilmember Reeser.

Dear Heavenly Father, we're thankful for the opportunity we have to be able to gather as a City Council and as residents of Rexburg. We're grateful for this opportunity that we have for our great country and for the laws and the Constitution that we have held. We ask that thou please bless us and guide us, that we might be able to make the right decisions this day, and that we can be able to honor thee and to honor Rexburg and what it stands for. And we're grateful for all that we have, and we say these things in Jesus Christ's name.

Amen. You can rise for the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for

Thank you very much. We'll have our roll call of the council members by Mariana.

Council member Johnson.

Here.

Council member Tejan.

Here.

Council member Reeser.

Here.

Council member Riggins.

Here.

Thank you. And both council members Colin Erickson and Eric Erickson are away tonight. Um, we now need to make a motion to amend the agenda as per Idaho state statute seven, four, two Oh four, four B um, to add item five, um, a consideration of a burn ban enacted by ordinance and to suspend the rules of the motion passes. So do we have a motion on that?

Our agenda for July 15th, 2026.

Thank you. We have a motion. Do we have a second? I'll second that. Seconded by council member Tijan. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Are there any opposed? Okay, that passes. So we'll add item number five to our agenda. Next, we have a welcome of a new employee, Statler Gould. Hopefully I said that right. If you're here, do you want to come up and introduce yourself? He's from Streets and Sanitation.

My name is Statler. Streets and Sanitation.

Awesome. Anything else you want to tell us about you?

Boy, I don't know.

That's fine. We're just glad you're here. Thank you. Yeah, let's give him a hand.

Thanks, Statler.

Okay, next we will have a consideration of a temporary open burn ban that would be effective July 15th through September 30th, 2026. It would be designated as ordinance number 1354 if it passes. There's also a recommendation to suspend the rules and consider it third red. So our fire chief, Corey Child, is going to share some information with us on that one.

for hearing me tonight. I have a few slides to show you just to give you a prior informational update and what's bringing us to you tonight to ask for a burn ban.

Madison County entered burn ban today. The county commissioners passed that ordinance on Monday with a Wednesday opening date for their burn ban. And there's a name difference between burn ban and burn restrictions. Burn restrictions, It continues to allow several types of burning to take place. We suggested that we go into burn ban, which is complete no flames, and I'll explain that in just a minute. So this map is produced by the Boise Interagency Fire Center. This happens to be the drought map, and you can see our area, our entire county is in extreme drought, which would be D3. That's part of what drives us into the burn ban. The other thing that drives us in is our three to four week temperature outlook. Again, you can see eastern Idaho is above average, pushing into the well above average. And what that means is, you see where it says equal chances? Those are equal chances of being normal, what their 10-year average is. We're far outside the norm of being what our normal averages are. And so those indicators, again, heighten my awareness and bring me here tonight. Another slide, this is produced by the Boise Interagency Fire Center as well. All of the red areas indicate that in July, if you had a fire start, of any type in the wild land, it would most likely grow into a large fire. So you see all of the state of Utah. And we know what Utah has been experiencing. And you see all of southern Idaho with the exception of the Wyoming border, which is Teton County all the way down to Bear Lake County. But we are clearly in that. And then you go into August and we get all of the southern part of Idaho. And you can see where that red is. This kind of tells the story as to where my firefighters will be fighting fires in the month of August. And then you go into September and we don't get any relief in September either, according to predictive services. So the outlook is not pretty. We have a call every Wednesday at 1030 in the morning with all the fire chiefs in Eastern Idaho and our federal partners. And we go over our fuel moistures and all of the indices that we look at. And to be perfectly honest, our indices We're OK today. The feds chose to hold off a week from going into burn ban, but they're right there at the threshold. And, you know, we all woke up this morning and we saw cloudy skies and it was drizzling a little bit. And you think, oh, you know, the threat is over. And then you come out from your office this afternoon and it's. raging hot and the humidities are 20% and we're right back to where we were. I'll just explain one thing about fuels. Grass is a one-hour fuel. Ponderosa pine is a thousand-hour fuel. And what that means, I'll just explain grass. An hour worth of rainfall, constant rainfall, will totally saturate a blade of grass to where it can't hold anymore. And hours worth of sunlight will also take all that moisture away in one hour, right, in grass. Versus a ponderosa pine, it takes 1,000 hours of each to change the fuel moisture in the large pine tree. And so even though we may get moisture tonight for the next five days with the monsoonal moisture that's here, We're not going to get a lot of moisture, nothing to change our values. It will taper things down a little bit. But when things warm up in the middle of the end of next week, we're going to be right back to where we are. So this fire was last Monday out on the desert. And the amount of resources that went into stopping that fire to save the homes in Plano was phenomenal. The price tag is $600,000 that we spent on resources all the way from large air tankers to helicopters to single engine aircraft, bulldozers and 60 or 70 firefighting personnel on the ground. Here's another picture of some of the air tankers that we ordered up to suppress that fire. So all of this, I constantly watch what's going on around me to see what's going to happen to me next. Over the weekend, July 4th weekend, Manan Butte had two fires, one west of the Butte Trailhead that was five acres. And I don't know if you've been up, but one at the trailhead, the West Trailhead, which was two acres. One was from exploding targets and the other one was from fireworks. Both unreported. Responsible parties left the scene on both of those, as well as the gun range. The responsible party left the scene of the gun range as well. So that, given the indices and the things that are going on around us, that drove us to go to the county commission and ask for a burn ban in the unincorporated areas of Madison County. They agreed and made it very strict, which is really the only burning you can have is your barbecue in your backyard. Everything else is restricted. And I've, believe me you, over the years, I've heard everything. Do you mean I can't have a weenie roast in my backyard, right? Right. Well, it was a simple hot dog roast in the backyard that caused the Thornton fire. And we lost nine structures in the Thornton fire. And I could go on and on with lifting exceptions to this or exceptions to that because people desire this or that. I get it. It's hard. In this van is also fireworks. And I know we have a holiday, July 24th. I'm sorry we're there, and for the good of the public, we need to stop fireworks and do our part and be responsible with both firework sales as well as the ignition of fireworks for that holiday. In your packets, I believe you have the current language for fireworks. The ordinance, with the exception of City of Rexburg being inserted, the language is hopefully the same between the county and the city. We'll go to Sugar City next week and ask for the same ordinance when they have their city council meeting. So with that, I'll rest and happy to listen to any questions you may have.

Thank you. Does anyone have any questions for Chief Child or any discussion on this item?

Real quick, I'm just curious what other counties are doing outside of our fire district. Are they conducting similar bans?

They are. Teton County will go in next week, I believe. And then Fremont, Jefferson, Clark, Bonneville, Bannock, they're already in burn restrictions. And they, granted, they went in fairly early. I watched the indices. I don't like to push our public into burn ban unless the indices are saying it's time to go into burn ban. they went in due to feeling and what was going on around them. I kind of wait for the indices.

Thank you. Anyone else? And so I assume if this passes, it will be pushed out on every platform we have to the public.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. Well, if there's no further discussion first, we need a motion on what would be ordinance 1354. And then we'll talk about suspending the rules after that.

Okay. Well, I will move that we approve ordinance number 1354 and institute the fire ban from July 15th to September 30th, 2026.

Okay. And I think that's next. That's next. Okay. Thank you. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Okay. Council member Reagan seconds it. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Are there any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. And now we need to suspend the rules. We need to vote on suspending the rules and considering this third red right now. So does anyone have any questions on that? Okay, do we have a motion to suspend the rules?

I have a motion to suspend the rules and consider this ordinance third red

Okay, so council member Riggins made the motion. Do we have a second?

I'll second.

Okay, second by council member Reeser. Any further discussion? Okay, we'll do a roll call vote on this. So Mariana, if you could.

Council member Johnson.

Yes.

Council member Teejan. Yes. Council member Reeser. Yes. Council member Riggins. Yes.

Okay, the motion passes and it's considered third read. Thank you.

Thanks for your support.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Next on our agenda, we have a public hearing. And this public hearing is for approval of fiscal year 2027's budget. It will be designated as ordinance 1350 if it passes. So our CFO, Matt Nielsen, might have some info on this. I know we've talked about it quite a bit. Do you have anything else to share with us?

I won't go into too much detail. How's that? So this budget is for fiscal year 27, which basically runs, well, it does run from October 1st through September 30th. of 2027. And then the total is $95,281,200. And the general fund, which we always have a pretty good interest in, is in there. That's just over $20 million. And this budget would include $80,000 in contingency. And we are dipping into our reserve about $735,000, which does put us a little below our policy. We try to keep a reserve of between 25% to 33%. That's going to put us close to 21%. And so other than that, full-time requests, there's just one position approved in this budget. There is a cost of living of 2.73 and some increases for health insurance and then lots and lots of capital construction projects, you know, from streets to water to wastewater. We're not showing in this budget any additional debt, taking on any additional debt. We're probably a few years out on that. But the one thing I would say is that as you look at our cash reserves in those respective areas, if this budget happens, those are dropping fairly substantially. And so anyways, that's what it is. This, of course, is the public hearing for it. And any questions?

I've got a couple just real quick questions. First, what agency was the new full-time employee approved for? I forget.

So that's Wastewater Collections.

Okay. And then the second one is, because you've got to just keep reminding me of the difference between regular accounting and government accounting, because obviously there's a little bit of a difference. Last year, it looked like our budget was $118 million, and now it's $95. My understanding is that's because of different monies that are moved around for capital projects, why there's such a variation in those two numbers. Is that correct?

Yeah, mainly. And then you're going to see later tonight, we're actually going to reduce that $118 million down pretty substantially. Okay. There was a combination of things like one really big thing that happened is we had to amend the budget over $5 million in the general fund for the ice rink donation. And so it's just things like that. Construction tends to increase your budget quite a bit because what happens is we have a construction fund and then you have all these funding sources that come from reserves or operating funds. And those are essentially, you know, those revenues come in, then they're transferred out, then they show up as a transfer in. And so you almost get a double hit to the budget, if you will, if that makes sense. So yeah, does that help?

That does help. That just reminds me to make sure that what I was thinking is correct. So thank you.

Okay.

Any other questions for Matt? And we did spend a lot of hours discussing this budget already. So I feel like we have a pretty good understanding of it. Now we need to have a public hearing for this approval of fiscal year 2027's budget. And during the public hearing, residents will have the opportunity to speak either in favor of this ordinance or in the neutral position or not in favor of it. So we'll declare this public hearing open. Is there anyone who'd like to speak in favor of this ordinance? Anyone online? No. OK. Seeing none, is there anyone who'd like to speak in the neutral position? OK. Seeing none, anyone who'd like to speak against this ordinance? OK. Seeing none, we'll declare this public hearing closed. So we're looking for a motion to approve this ordinance.

I move that we approve ordinance number 1350 and consider it first read.

Okay, thank you. Moved by Council Member Teejan. Is there a second?

All second.

Okay, seconded by Council Member Reeser. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Okay, the motion passes. Thank you. Okay, now we have a time for public comment for items not on the agenda with a three-minute limit. These are for issues that might be considered for discussion on a further or on a future agenda. Is there anyone who'd like to speak?

Thank you. Excuse me. My name is Mitch Nivar. Do you need my address and all that stuff? Okay. 10 540 South 5600 East Rexburg, Idaho. So thank you. developer and remain the major owner of rexburg west development but it's a it's a beautiful project out west of town and the city you've been so good to help us promote that project and i think it's i think it's wonderful it always takes longer than you'd hope and always costs more than than you would you would hope as well but things are moving along we've We have 18 total lots out there. Four of them have been sold. And Dr. Fulmer, the original building on the corner, beautiful business, wonderful relationship. Dr. Jackson, dentist. Just completed a beautiful building right on the corner there. It's just beautiful. He's put a lot into that and he did some extras and we appreciate that. And then the two lots between Sutton and Simmons, the accountant and financial firm, are building that building. And it's a beautiful building. It's well under construction. So most of our main street is viable and moving. But we need your help. We really need your help. We're getting some real negative feedback traffic and parking and impact in that area. And parking is always a struggle. It always will be. And we have short streets there. And it's easy for people to park there and leave vehicles overnight and do those kind of things. And I've talked with Natalie and Because the streets are deeded to the city, we have no control over the streets, little influence, and that's kind of my whole life is little control and no influence. So she suggested that we need to approach the city and see if there's – interest in helping us create an ordinance or ordinances to help us with the current situation and the future, because it's going to get better and worse, that combination. So specifically, there's a lot of construction going on, and it's easy for them to pull off their, park all their equipment. Last week, there were about 12 construction projects equipment parked on that street right in front of these businesses, all the way from pavers to rollers and those kind of things. And it really isn't negative impact on those businesses that are trying to keep it open for their customers. And, you know, I understand they're good people and they try their best, but they leave a mess, you know, when this equipment comes and goes and it's It's hard for us to get them to clean up after themselves. And I guess probably even the more important thing, we feel like it's dangerous, you know, with that equipment and people moving in and out. And we just don't want people hurt, our customers, our owners, those kind of things. So there's some things that we would like to suggest and maybe introduce and see if we could, Spencer, help us and have a work meeting or something, whatever we need to do to kind of move along. To be really brief, there's five items. Sorry, my voice is going crazy. There's five items we'd like to consider to some degree. One is no trucks. We've got a beautiful area there. And on both our entrances, we built these beautiful medians. And they're just great. And we want them to be inviting. But they're not designed for these trucks and trailers. So we get trucks that... drive over the curb, drive over the irrigation things and plants and everything else. So it's a bad thing. So no trucks possibly. The other thing is it's a really fast, quick shortcut if you're going to Hibbert to dive into that subdivision, zip around the corner and back out on 12th Street. And that's really not what it's designed for. And again, concern more about safety. It's not a huge volume of traffic that I'm concerned with that. But as those cars go in there, they're concerned from going from A to B, and they're zipping through there. And again, I think it's a potential safety issue. So possibly no through traffic. Then the other is no overnight parking, which would help us with... You know, a lot of people will come and they'll park it right now there's two or three vehicles that have been there for several days, and they're just parked there, and it takes up space and those kind of things so consider no overnight parking. And then lastly, the real. ideal and desire of the street parking is for the businesses, their customers. And so if we could restrict that, I know that's a little difficult to do to two or three hour parking between seven in the morning and seven at night. Those kind of things just keep the visibility open, make it accessible, help us encourage other interest in developing into the property and more importantly, I think help with safety. So if, if I could, that's my, that's our request. Thank you.

Thank you. So would Justin or Alan or Spencer or someone be able to follow up with us on that in the future? Yeah. Okay. Thanks so much.

Exactly. as to what property is dealing with.

So we know that.

Is there something I can do to follow up? Or am I just out of order?

We'll hear from them at some point.

We'll discuss it.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you. We appreciate that. Is there anyone else who has a comment they'd like to make? Okay, we'll move on to our committee assignments. If any council members have anything to report on their committee assignment. So let's start with council member Tijan. Thank you.

So grants, we were rewarded the AARP grant for 15,000 for the nature park to redo some sidewalks there. So that's exciting. The Mayor's Youth is not meeting because it's summer. So we'll be picking that back up in August or September. The ADA Oversight Board, where I think we are still looking for another member. Is that right, Deb? We're still looking for one more member so that we can move forward with meeting there. And then the Historical Preservation Committee met and toured the Tabernacle. And they've also were, I think they went to the urban renewal meeting today to, to talk more about the historic seminary building.

Thank you. Do you have a timeline for the nature park grant?

I don't. Thank you. And Mary's not here. So we'll get one later.

It has to be done this, this has to be done this year.

So yeah.

Great.

So thank you. Okay. Council member research. Do you have anything to report?

Just that the Legacy Flight Museum, I was out of town, unfortunately, and I couldn't attend, but they had their fly-in. Deb, I understand it was a success. Do you have a rough estimate of how many people may have attended? Okay. All right, great. So, yeah, hopefully that'll continue. But other than that, none of my committees have met.

Thank you. Do you have any reports? I just really fast. I did attend the Legacy Flight Museum breakfast and there was somebody there who they came up from Utah and they come up every year just for the this event. They travel all the way up. So I thought that was really that was pretty cool that they were doing that.

Awesome. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Riggins, do you have anything to report?

Yeah, Urban Renewal we met today, had our monthly meeting today, discussed downtown, especially the property where the, call it junior high school, high school, whatever it used to be, the same group that came and presented to us two weeks ago about preserving that seminary building came in and presented today. Again, we were pretty clear with them and that the city, we can't own the building. We just don't have the finances to own it. So if they want to keep that building, they're going to have to get private funding for it and so on. So we met with them. Also, We discussed quite a bit of the University District, which is University Avenue going down by McDonald's and so on, and the widening of that street. There's businesses that are coming in that are under contract. We were not given the names, but again, Urban Renewal will be assisting whoever purchased that property and so on and the widening of the roads and bridges and other things that will have to go in in order to make that road, by the way, it should have been anyway, to make it wider and so on. So lots of things going on in our community and those two districts, there's a lot of things going on, University District and downtown.

Thank you. And my committees didn't meet, although we should be having a report from our LID committee in August. And Mariana, did you ever decide if we were going to have one final meeting for the LID committee in August?

Yeah, if you guys want to meet, we are.

Okay.

Yeah, Keith wanted to just make sure with you guys. I think that sounds great.

Okay, so we'll have one more meeting on that, and then we'll present to council on that. Okay, next up we have our staff report. So we'll start with our CFO, Matt Nielsen, for the finance report.

All right, I've got quite a bit tonight, so I'll try to go quick. So I just want to, just an update too, as we talked through the budget, you guys had talked about forming a, committee to look at options. So we have six individuals that we've identified. Our plan is to have our first meeting at the end of July. So basically the 30th of July.

Is this the police station? Is that what you're talking about?

Police station, yeah. So hopefully in August we can come back maybe with an update. And I think the idea is that committee will work through things. They'll come back and report to the city council and Eventually a decision can be made.

So I just want you to know that there are a member of city council on that.

Yeah. So we, so, uh, yeah. Yep. And so, um, our thoughts were, and we can change this if you want to. So we've got legal. So Spencer on there myself, uh, Josh, in talking to Josh, Gary and himself is who we wanted from the police side. And then we have the mayor and then Council Member Reeser. So, kind of. And then I've been asked a lot about like the financial outcome of the 350 celebration, I would say on that, uh, maybe give it about a month because those expenses will continue to roll in. And then we can kind of give you a more accurate report on that. And so, but maybe just make that an agenda item sometime in probably the second one in August would probably be good or something like that.

That sounds great.

So, okay. So as far as the financial reports go, I'm actually not going to pull them up. Um, You guys have them there, but you what?

I already did it.

Oh, she's got them. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. So we're three quarters of the year through, right? And so as you go through the percentages, we're at 70, or that should be about 75%. We're actually about 36% spent. A couple things. As we go through the budget adjustments tonight, once we look at the budget adjustments and then if you accept the amendments to the budget that would be next month, this report will kind of clean itself up a little bit. And so, because you've always, I've been highlighting for a long time now, like, hey, we've got to work through the fire issue. the FIRE respective funds, right? And so we've done that. Now we just need to formalize it. And then as far as investments go, not a whole lot to update. You know, as we are reinvesting, we just reinvested a CD this week. We're actually getting pretty decent rates, kind of in the low fours still. And so we're just kind of hanging steady. And we're, you know, for the most part, kind of in that 12 to 18 month. Sometimes we're snagging some that are in that two to three range if we can get that 4% plus. And just working with our, continuing to work with our managed accounts. And so I think we're in good shape there. Yeah. I don't have anything else unless you guys have specific questions on the finance report. Okay. Let's move to the, I think it was budget adjustments. So with the budget adjustments, so there was a lot here. And so I would probably say, let me run through them quick. And if you guys have questions, just dive in. And then What we do need is a motion to accept those budget adjustments and then assuming that those are good and you're good to move forward, then we'll move into the amended budget proposal. So, Deb, I'll go as quick as I can, if you can kind of just roll down. So this first one is the general fund. There was just... A lot of this, this one was related to Gatsby and lease purchase finance. So one thing that we've started doing is we used to lease our police vehicles and then there was a residual value at the end. And so you could either buy the vehicle or sell it. We're actually extending the terms as often as we can now so that we can continue to use those vehicles. And we extend them out to the point that basically we own them or we owe a dollar. And so because of that, Gatsby has all these rules that makes us account for it a little differently. And so that one's what that is. And then there's also some increases in some revenues. That I just was able to reduce what we had to use in the carryover to balance the budget. So that was a good adjustment there. Streets, same thing. We had an increase in revenues over what was budgeted in franchise and clawback fees. And so we were able to transfer an additional $370,000. in the budget to Fund 43, which is street reconstruction. The next one is the ice rink. I think this is the third time that we've revisited the ice rink. We had to establish it in January, February. What we're seeing there is we will probably subsidize that about $110,000. So if you think about that, that's from February through September. And so that, as we look at that going forward, we have it in the budget next year as also being subsidized for some capital needs. And then I think as you guys watch those financials, as we get a full year of history, that's the point where we can do some analysis and decide where Is this something that we want to run year round or do we want to look at a season? So this would just increase it a little bit there. And we were able to increase it by reducing some other expenses in the general fund. And then there was some additional revenues. So one thing we are seeing is that they are actually bringing in a fairly... actually a lot higher amount on rents than we anticipated, but you don't have the public skate as strong in the summer, which we kind of anticipated that as well, that that would drop quite a bit. But the rents are pretty strong, actually, even through the summer. The next one is...

So, Matt, when will we revisit the ice rink and determine...

So, I mean, I think right now our plan was to run it through the fiscal year, and then you would be really in the core season at that point. And so I think as you get through probably to early... Probably either later in the year, calendar year, early next year, calendar year. I would probably look at it because you're going to want to give several months notice if you are going to close it for the season in the summer.

We have a new manager there, right? We've got to give them the opportunity to make it happen.

Yeah. Yep.

And would the oversight committee be brought in to look at that? Or would it just be like the whole council when you say look at it?

It's however you guys want. If we want to start at the oversight level, we can. And then we can bring a report to city council. I mean, it is a pretty big decision, I think. And so I think the city council would want to be involved in that.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, the next one is police impact fees. We have had actually an increase in police impact fees. So all I'm doing here is I'm moving some of that extra money over to help cover the cost of that ground that we bought over at the Pioneer Road. And so this next series, there's going to be several here. These are all related to fire. These are reductions in the budget. So remember, we passed the budget as if they were going to be under us. And then, of course, they were moved to the fire district. And so now I'm essentially reducing those. And so one is the fire building reserve fund. One is the Joint Fire Operating Fund, and then there's the Joint Fire Equipment Fund. Some of them will have a little bit of budget because there was some carryover, and we have to go through a process to dispose of those operations, and so there are some actual entries. Fire District is the next one. It's kind of the same story.

Does that go into the general fund? No.

The, you mean the payments in the future or yeah. Yeah. So, so how we were doing it before, if you're talking, are you talking about the city share of what we pay? Okay. Yeah. So what we pay for city fire before we were transferring it into that operating fund from the general fund. So now it's no longer a transfer. So I've created, um, it's a division. I think I called it. Oh, one four 80, um, And that's basically, it's an expense to pay for those operational costs for fire that the city is responsible for. So it's still there. It's just not a transfer anymore. But then the other thing is, is you have to remember, we also have the budget there for ambulance district and fire district that we will no longer have. Building reserve fund is... What this is, is this is a reduction. So with the police bond not passing, we just are simply reducing that budget, not anticipating spending that. The balance will just carry over into the next year. And then this kind of the same thing here with the street impact. We had a reduction in the budget because of a project that That 9th East Bridge, so from Barney Dairy over to 7th North over the Teton River, so that section of road and the actual bridge over the river, that got pushed to next year. So I'm reducing it, that portion of it here. Water, same thing. We had a big project that was pushed back, and so there's a reduction there. Sewer was actually an increase. And so this is the scope of the work on the project for the headworks increased. And so what this is showing is an increase of about $966,000. And then it shows the respective funding sources all coming from the sewer capital reserve fund. So next one is another fire one. It's the wild land. So it's a reduction of budget. Parks is a reduction because we did not move forward on the Steiner Park yet. And so that one is pushed to next year. And then same thing for trails. We had several big trail projects that are mainly being funded by federal grant. And those were pushed as well. And they're added back to, well, some of them were added back to next year.

So nothing on Steiner is going to happen this summer then now on that Steiner Park?

Yeah, the only thing that might happen there, and I don't know if we'll get there, is we are trying to design the sprinkler system. And if we can get that designed, once the canal water stops running, we want to make sure we set that pump.

So are we still flood irrigating that?

Yeah, I think they are. But then we're also doing sprinkler when... Yeah, and the main design of the sprinkler, the biggest part of that's going to be actually the five acres behind the canal. And that side is what Urban Renewal is contributing to fund. Okay. Okay. And then Parks Construction Fund, we had two projects. And I think I've been mentioning this in the reports several times. So the Pickleball Court Smith Park obviously took longer than expected. I believe they started on that this week. They were supposed to anyways. And so hopefully we'll get that project finished up and we can do a grand opening soon. kind of of that over there but i mean i've seen we've only had four nets up and i see people all the time over there playing already so i think that would be a good project and then of course the other one was just completing that park storage shop that carried into this fiscal year the money for that was there in the park construction fund we decided And then Fund 42, this is also a reduction because that project did not happen. And some of these look like they're repeats, but it's because one is the funding source and one is the construction fund. Streets, so LIDs, this one basically shows $2 million of additional funding needed to complete the LIDs. And that was largely because LID 54 just took so long to finish that a lot of it happened in this fiscal year instead of last year. This one we've already talked about. This is that 9th East Bridge project. This is the construction side. And then airport, huge reduction there. because we had in the budget the acquisition of land, and that has also been kicked down. That's actually been kicked down to probably 2028 at the soonest that we would do that. But we do have an agreement in place on that already. We're just working through with BLM when and how that will happen. And then wastewater, this is the construction side where that additional 1.8 million is coming in for the headworks. This is the LID construction side. So that's where that $2 million is being spent for the construction. And then the last one is we had a little bit of carryover. Remember, we stopped billing for the street lights. We do have a little carryover. So we are going to continue to just pay the maintenance of those street lights until that fund is either used by that or projects and so forth. And that's it. I think there's 23 of them. So I guess, are there any questions on that? And I think what we'd be looking for, if there's no questions, is just a motion to accept those budget adjustments.

Are there any questions for Matt on that? OK, then we need a motion to approve these final budget adjustments for fiscal year 2026.

I move that we accept the budget adjustments for fiscal year 2026.

Okay, we have a motion. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, seconded by Council Member Riggins. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Are there any opposed? Okay, that passes. And now we actually need to set a public hearing for the amended budget for fiscal year 2026. That would be on August 5th, 2026 at 6.30 p.m.

Yeah. And then I'll just show you just real quick. So you have the one pager Deb just pulled up a second ago that shows, but essentially we're going from an original budget that we passed of $111.2 million down to about $104.5 million roughly. And on this other report, I just want to point this out. So this report, if you're wondering, OK, what changed, this is by fund. So any fund that changed, this notes it. I'm not going to go through them all again. But if you go to the right, I think it is interesting to kind of look at the totals. And so as you go to the bottom, you'll see that of our budget, 64% of it is related to public works. administrative overhead is about 7%. Building safety accounts for 1%. And then parks, rec and cultural arts, that 15% is abnormally high because of the ice rink budget adjustment. Usually that's substantially lower. And then you got public safety that accounts for about 13% of the total. So- That's all I got.

Thank you. Any other questions before we make a motion to set this public hearing for August 5th? Okay, then I would accept a motion to set this public hearing.

The chair of fiscal year 2006 amended budget on August 5th, 2026 at 6.30 p.m.

Thank you. We have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Seconded by Council Member Teejan. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I forgot to ask for any further discussion, but I think we got it covered. That passes. Next we have Jed Platt from Cultural Arts. He has a review for us of our Flood 50 events. Thank you.

Thank you for your support in helping us produce it. I believe in your packets you have an outline of our expenditures. We're happy to report we were under budget due to generous support from businesses, other organizations, individuals, municipalities, and a lot of in-kind donations as well, including BYU-Idaho. It's at the end, so when I get there.

All right, so we'll just shut that off.

I'll ask.

If it happens, okay?

Okay, great. So an event 50 years in the making. I won't take 50 years to retell it, but just a couple of highlights from this event. It seems like our community, there's a defining moment of the flood and people refer to either things that happened before or after the flood. It really is part of our vernacular and the fabric of our community. Our story with Flood 50 event started actually in 2020. with the renovation of the Romance Theater when we started that project and it was uncovered a flood mark or a water line in the Romance Theater. And so we determined at that point, this is a story to tell. It is literally in the fabric of our community. And so As we've been working on this for a long time, we wanted to make sure that those stories were told. And so in this event, we focused on three main pillars, remember, connect, and serve. And those showed up throughout all of our events. There on the left is a picture of the Romance Theater at the time of the flood, the cleanup. And as we discovered that water line, it kind of became the launching point. And so above that is the exterior of the Romance Theater. When you walk by, you can see a discoloration at five feet. And so we continued that five-foot marker or water line all up and down Main Street, if you noticed that during the last month. And then those became site sources for storytelling of what businesses or experiences people had being downtown. We had walking tours and also BYU-Idaho participated in identifying places on campus that played a major role in that story. It was fun to bring back the era and to help people reminisce. There was a reenactment of this photo from 1976. Those that were in that original photo flew in from all over to recreate that. BYU-Idaho's fashion department hosted a fashion show. We had a car show on Center Street and a 70s concert to kind of get us back into that era. It was a lot of fun. It was also just an avenue for people to share stories, personal stories. A couple of years ago, in anticipation of this, we produced the documentary Flood of Memories. That was shown throughout the week at the Romance Theater, as well as three other documentaries, free to the public. We had discussion panels from engineers, and then a companion book to Flooded Memories was released. And we had a great discussion about that and those stories. And due to, again, generous donations, that book was funded for printing. And all the proceeds from that book sales go to the renovation of the tabernacle. which really shows the commitment of our community to our community. Also shown in this slide, we had an individual who, again, people just came in that week with a story to share and many of them had never shared their stories before. The gentleman in the lower right brought in these photographs and he said he was a high school student who had been returning from Canada from a student trip. They stopped at the Teton Dam. He took a picture that day, flipped it over, and it said June 4th. So it was the day before the dam broke. And as you look closely at the picture, there are two caterpillars on that picture. on the dam. And he's like, I did, you know, we just took our picture and went on. And one of those people is Jay Calderwood up above, and he was able to share his experience, firsthand experience of being, and that was actually his tractor. He got back on that to tell his story. It was interesting throughout the week. Well, prior to and working up to it, we had a lot of volunteer support. And after we received this photo of June 4th with these tractors on it, two days later, one of our volunteers said, my grandpa worked on the dam. In fact, the day before he was on a Caterpillar. And I said, I just got his picture. So it was really cool to connect people's stories who came through. We had a couple who came for the event in honor. It was their 50th wedding anniversary. They were married on that day in the Idaho Falls Temple. They had traveled from Washington State. It was their closest temple at the time. And they shared that when they were being married, someone came in and said, there's a flood in Rexburg, the Teton Dam is broken. And they said, we had no idea what they were talking about. We weren't from the area. And so we left. And a few days later, the call went out for assistance in this community. And the plea was, you can either send money or come and volunteer. And they said, we were poor newlyweds. We didn't have money. So we turned our car around on our honeymoon and came back to help. So that was a great story. We had other people fly in from back east who had been students here at the time and they said this is part of our origin story for our family. We had local people with kids and grandkids wanting to share their experience. We had an art show. These pieces were inspired by stories of the flood and some are now part of our permanent collection for the museum. Um, we were able to open our new museum exhibit, uh, and love that it's, that it's interactive, um, that if people want facts and figures about the flood, they can Google it, but to have an experience or a chance to tell their own story, we're, um, grateful that we have a place to collect those stories, um, right here in city hall.

Oops.

It was awesome to be up on the river. They had a ribbon cutting for the new overlook. If you haven't been up there lately, I highly recommend that. It's a beautiful area and it was wonderful just to celebrate the Teton River itself and the majesty of it. We did river floats, had great participation in that activity. We had a lot of fun. In addition to a lot of the hardship stories, people just said, what could you do after crying is just laugh about it. And so we had opportunities for them to reminisce that part as well. BYU-Idaho hosted Mudfest. We had the Flood Mud Queen pageant. And so it was just a lot of fun that week as well as reminiscing the stories. As I said earlier, a big focus of this event is on service. Henry B. Eyring, who was president of Ricks College at the time said, a crisis doesn't create one's character, it reveals it. and through this flood experience i think one of the character traits that was revealed in our community it's this sense of service and so a lot of preparation and during the week was dedicated to service there in the middle slide that notebook is a log from the from 1976 of volunteers who came it will say you know a bus from the from north ogden with 64 people, and they were assigned to Sugar City, and this is how many people they helped. And it's page after page. So to honor that legacy, we focused a lot on service. We hosted service nights at the Romance Theater. And then there on the right, we had an opportunity to do food drive for some of our local agencies, such as the soup kitchen. The goal was to fill our orange wheelbarrows 50 times that week, and we met that goal. And then we culminated everything in the celebration of service at the Eye Center. It was a spectacular event.

And I have just, let's see.

We do have a video of the whole thing. I won't play it now, but we're just finishing some editing on it and it will be available on the museum website for people to enjoy.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

They've got their own way, she says to me.

And some way, she says to me.

You've got your own way, she says to me.

You've got your own way, she says to me.

It's so awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you. So that they can spend their Thank you.

And so if any of you hadn't had a chance to go through the exhibit, love to give the council a tour at some point. So, thank you.

Does anyone have any questions for Jed?

No, no questions.

Just the expression of gratitude for all the work that went into it and the fact that you We're below budget is incredible. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. That was wonderful. Okay, next up we have our public works report with, I believe, Justin.

But the first item we have under public works is we need to set a public hearing to close out LAD 54. So that was last year's LAD. So we need a resolution to set that public hearing.

Does anyone have any questions for Justin before we do that? All right, then I'd entertain it.

I believe so.

Yeah. Any other questions? All right, I'd entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion to approve a resolution number 2026-10 to set a public hearing to close out the improvement district at LID 54 for August 5th, 2026 at 630 p.m.

Thank you. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Okay, we have a second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Are there any opposed? Okay, we have that public hearing has been approved to be set for August 5th, 2026 at 630pm. Okay, looks like next we have approval of a water department building remodel in addition bid.

Yeah, so this is a project to remodel the east end of the water department building, the interior, and then to add an addition on the west end of the building. And really the purpose of this is to... expand the building to have more space just for growth into the future. So we'll have plenty of room and office space and storage space for the water department. We received Seven bids. The bids were pretty close. They were higher than what we had hoped, what the architects had estimated, but the bids were pretty close together, which showed us that that's really what it's going to cost to make these improvements to the water department building. Okay. I think we're trying to pull them up. The low bid was Headwaters Construction at $1,674,156. the architects had estimated 1.1 million. So, I mean, we are half a million high, higher than what we had hoped for these improvements. But you can see we got lots of bids and they were pretty close together. So we feel like it's probably, that's what it's going to cost to make these improvements.

Thank you. Are there any questions for Justin or any discussion on this?

Did you have enough budgeted for this?

So the budget, I think, was around 1.2. So we're going to have to do a budget adjustment to move funds from other water projects. And you'll be able to do that? Yeah, we've sat down with Matt and talked through it. Questions?

Questions? Okay, then I'd entertain a motion to approve this bid.

I'll go ahead and move that we approve the Headwaters Construction bid for the Water Department building remodel.

All right, we have a motion. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Okay, any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Okay, that passes. One more thing from you, right, Justin?

Yep. So this is the traffic signal on the southeast corner of Porter Park. So second west and second south. So we need to make improvements to that traffic signal to bring it up to current requirements. We're replacing the controller, adding additional heads on the poles, extending some of the arms so we can have protected left turns and improve the pedestrian crossings and all of that. That's a signal that's been there a long time and it's like a hand-me-down signal that came from somewhere else. So it needs some improvements. And we got three bids. The low bid is Arco Electric, $216,500. And it's lower than what we thought the bids would come in at. And it's within the budget. So we propose that we award that project to Arco Electric.

Are there any questions? Yes.

This is, let me just make sure. So it's southeast, right? So it's the desert books? Yeah. Yeah, okay.

So another question. Is there going to be a dedicated turning lane, did you say, now on that intersection? So it's not just changing out the lights. You're kind of reconfiguring how the intersection works as well?

No, but we're adding heads that have the green arrow because right now that signal isn't capable of doing the green left arrow.

there will be a turning lane.

The lanes are already there. It's just adding the protected left turn. So the lanes there, they just haven't been able to... Yeah, we're not widening the intersection at all. It's all within the existing curbs.

Any other questions or discussion on this? Okay, then I'd entertain a motion to approve this bid.

I'll make a motion that we approve the second west and second south traffic signal improvement bid, came in from ARCO Electric.

Okay, we have a motion, is there a second?

I'll second.

All right, any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that also passes. We have no mayor's business, obviously, because the mayor's not here. I do have a question for Justin, really fast.

I've had some questions about how far the construction is going on Main Street. Is it stopping at 12th or is it going beyond that?

It's going beyond 12th, I believe. I believe they're going past or down to where the road starts to bend to the west. So past Mother Hibbert's store to the west, down to where it bends, I believe that's where they're stopping.

Okay, just right there by Mother Hibbert's.

They're not doing anything with the lights there at that intersection.

Right.

Improving the pavement, just repaving. Yep.

Any other questions for Justin?

Okay.

All right. Thank you. Next on our items for consideration, we have a staff recommendation to approve amending the dates that fireworks are for sale in the city of Rexburg to start June 23rd and end July 10th as per state statute 392-6061. And Spencer, I believe, has some information for us on this.

Very quickly, this is just compliance with state law. So again, as we go through legal audit, again, we want to not contradict Idaho state law. And so again, I've worked with Deb. She brought this, again, a number of things to my attention that we're working through. And so we put this in front of you for consideration, again, with just strict compliance with that.

And can you remind us what it was before when it ended? 26, I think.

Yeah.

Okay. Any questions for Spencer or any discussion? So this goes into effect today or...

Well, it actually is going to affect the 18th.

But to that end, I think that what this council just did with the fire department.

So like with the fire ban, there's no more sales of fire. I'm just clarifying. Will they still be able to sell their fireworks with that ban?

think that it's a ban on selling. Yeah.

You just can't shoot them off anywhere around here.

And again, when this was... I think there's been some precedent here for the local sellers that they've kind of had this extended window with the city of Rexburg. As Deb and I talked about this last month, we understand that there's inventory, things like that. And so in fairness to them, rather than just kind of pull the rug out from under them, I said, you know, we won't have this come into effect necessarily at that time. But after this year, the party's over. Yeah. No fun police around here.

Any other questions or discussion on this item?

Well, this will be, and this will be a set from here forward, right? It'll be a, okay. All right. I guess our 24th of July people will just have to buy them before the 10th, right?

Well, it's not, it's not legal to set them off in the state, right? After that, isn't that what you're saying?

I think it's just the sale. It's the sale.

Just the sale. So you can still set them off if we didn't have the ban, I mean.

Well, we're going to have a ban this year anyway.

So you can sell them in July and you can actually sell them for New Year's. But nobody wants to open up a stand in the December January for some reason. So it's just not something that we do or have done.

Not yet. Matt and I have some ideas.

So this isn't changing the days that they can shoot off fireworks. It's just changing the cell of the fireworks, right? Okay.

Correct. And again, when somebody would ask why we're doing this, it is simply because we are aligning our city ordinance with state statute.

Spencer, is this going to coincide with what Rigby and others are doing, or are we going to be kind of the first to go forward with this, or do you know?

I think we've been the outlier, to be honest. Oh, okay.

Okay.

Okay. Any other questions or discussion? All right. Do we have a motion to approve this ordinance?

I move that we approve Ordinance 1353. and restrict firework sales from June 23 until July and July 10.

Thank you. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? I'll second. All right, we have a second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Are there any opposed? Okay. That passes. Um, we do have one second reading. This will be for ordinance number 1352, which was a rezone from light industrial and medium density residential two to community business center zone at approximately fourth West Moody road. Um, does anyone have any questions on this? Okay. We have a motion.

I'll make a motion that we, uh, What are we doing? Ordinance number 1-3-5-2, rezoning from light industrial to medium density to community business center zone at approximately 4 West Moody Road. Did I read? Yeah, I said ordinance number 1-3-5-2.

I consider it second.

We got that. Okay. We got a motion. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Okay. We have a second. Any further discussion? All right. All in favor. Aye. Are there any opposed? Okay. That passes. We do have a couple of third readings. We have ordinance number 1348, which is to vacate a portion of the sky metals plot at approximately 1228 stone drive. So any other questions or discussion on this? Okay. Do we have a motion to consider that third red? I move that we consider ordinance number 1348 third red. Okay. Thank you. We have a motion. Is there a second? All right. We have a second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Are there any opposed?

Yeah, me.

All right. Okay. The motion passes. We have one more to consider. Third red. That's ordinance number 1349, which is a rezone 509 and 539 Southwest from high density residential one to high density residential two. Any questions on that? Okay, do we have a motion?

I'll make a motion that ordinance number 1349 be considered third red.

Thank you. We have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay, we have a second. Is there any further discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

Are there any opposed? Okay, that's considered third red. Our final item is to approve our consent calendar, which includes items which require formal city council action, but they are typically routine or not a great controversy. Individual council members may ask for any items to be removed. And this also includes the minutes from the fiscal year 27 budget for the fire department and the approval of our city bills. So any discussion on that? Okay, do we have a motion?

I'll move that we accept the minutes and pay the bills.

All right, we have a motion. Do we have a second?

I'll second that.

All right, we have a second. Any further discussion? All right, all in favor? Aye. Are there any opposed? Okay, that passes. Is there anything else anyone needs to bring up? Okay, well, we stand adjourned. So thank you very much.