City Council - Regular Meeting

That's fine.

Berenstein?

Here.

Bertrand?

Here.

Rayford?

Here.

Shaner? Scott?

Here. Can you stand for a moment of silent prayer followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, please?

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

Before we start, I just want to say that I know many of you are here for stormwater rates. And historically, under presentations, it's only presentations. It's not input. But today, it is for input. You don't have to come up under citizen concerns. You can wait until the actual stormwater rates come up on the agenda if you want to speak on that, OK? Just so you know. Okay, consent agenda today's items two through 12 D. You can consider those to pass unanimously unless a separate roll call votes asked for by a council member. If you want to speak on an agenda item, please come up as I read that item. If you want to speak on an item not on the agenda, And not on stormwater come up under citizen concerns Remember to always state your name. I'll move the consent agenda second reading of the City Council minutes of August 17th 2026 He is the resolution adopting plans and specs for the Expo Center Drive sanitary sewer main relocation for the Gordon Drive Biadoc project Four is a resolution scheduling a public hearing on the revisions to the administrative plan for section eight housing choice voucher program. Five are actions relating to grants. A is a resolution authorizing a submission of a healthy homes production grant application and authorizing the city manager to complete the grant certifications. Marty or Jill, a quick question on this, Jill.

So these funds were already programmed. What if it's not awarded?

Jill Wondershide, Neighborhood Services Manager. We programmed the match for it already, so that's the CDBG funds. We have not programmed the funds we're applying.

Thank you. B is a resolution approving and accepting the agreement for the award of the Economic Development Grant from MIRD for the rehabilitation of 525 14th Street into 24 permanent supportive housing units. C is a resolution authorizing the Environmental Services Division to submit a grant application on behalf of the Environmental Advisory Board to MIRD to assist in purchasing 115 replacement lids for the downtown trash receptacles. Six are actions relating to agreements and contracts. A is a resolution granting a permit to Metro FiberNet to maintain underground fiber and related facilities in the area of 5101 Sargent Road. B is a resolution approving a contract with RP Constructors for the Bridgeport West Lift Station Emergency Repair Project.

Is there any additional work required on this project, Tom? Gordon? I know this was an emergency project. Tom Pingel, Public Works Director. What was the question again, Craig? Is there additional work that's going to be required?

Yes, they're still working. They'll be working for probably another six to eight weeks. We're expecting probably 200% more than this. Okay, thank you.

The resolution is approving Amendment No. 3 to the Master Services Agreement with Paymentus Corporation. D is a resolution approving a service provider agreement to C.W. Suter & Son for the Art Center Water Softener Project. E is a resolution authorizing and approving a contract termination agreement with the Iowa Economic Development Authority and Cargill.

So when we terminate this contract, can we redirect those funds unilaterally or I assume we can't? Once you give it back, it's got to stay back.

Chris Myers, business development coordinator. The city doesn't have any funds into this project.

But we can't redirect the use of these? No, we can't. This was project specific? This was project specific.

This was awarded to the company.

Okay. Thanks, Chris. F is a resolution approving amendment number one to the service provider agreement. I got to go back. I'm sorry. D, I need to abstain. I'm assuming there's a bond on that. I need to abstain. I'm sorry. F is a resolution approving amendment number one to the service provider agreement with quality striping for the airfield painting and water blasting project at the airport.

If this project is tied to Nexus, why is it coming out of operating funds from the airport?

It's not tied to Nexus. This is just part of our standard seasonal painting that we have to do for markings on the airfield.

I guess my question to that

It looks like it was what a like a 63% increase Was that just unforeseeable or yeah, so we tried to delay as much on the main runway painting as we could anticipating This current year would be the construction year that the funds didn't happen. So additional painting was required.

I

So it's going to be coming out of operations. Is something taking its place?

It's possible. It's early in the year, so we'll try and find those sources to just do a transfer instead of an ad. These are inspectable items, though, so these are sensitive markings.

To Aik's point on amendment number one for $63,000, it says this is a quantity adjustment for painting services. Just over $52,000 covered costs for runway painting in preparation of the Nexus program. It's still not covered under the federal funding?

No. That was just meant, I think, as a discussion of the construction of the Nexus program. If the runway would have been constructed this year, we wouldn't have had to have that additional painting. Okay. Thank you.

And it's better than when we painted it ourselves and got it wrong, so this is a lot better deal. D is a resolution awarding a sales and service agreement to Access Systems for 24 sharp multifunction printers and a five-year maintenance agreement. H is a resolution awarding a sales order agreement to Visual Edge IT for five Lexmark multifunction printers, one HP-managed multifunction printer, and a five-year maintenance agreement. I is a resolution awarding a purchase order agreement to Century Business Products with three Casera multifunction printers and a five-year maintenance agreement. J is a resolution approving the contract and performance bond with Knife River Midwest for the Hamilton Boulevard resurfacing project. Can I ask that this item be pulled for a separate vote?

Is there any discussion before I call the roll?

Okay.

Berenstein?

Are you asking for it to be pulled or the vote? To pull that out. This is the vote? No.

Correct. Yep.

No.

Bertrand?

Aye.

Rayford?

Aye.

Scott?

Aye. Seven are actions relating to personnel. A is a resolution amending the position classification manual by adopting an updated job description for the position of gardener. B is a resolution amending the authorized personnel complement position classification manual and salary schedule by adding underground utility supervisor and reclassifying for full-time labor supervisors to underground utility supervisor. A, your actions authorizing payments. A is a resolution approving fund transfers for the month of July, 2026. B is a motion approving the list of July claims, total expenses and receipts. Nine are actions relating to properties. A is the resolution inviting proposals for the lease of land in the Donner Park Urban Renewal Area, announcing the intent to accept the proposal of SkyWest Airlines and schedule a hearing. The property is a storage shed just south of the terminal building at 2403 Aviation Boulevard. Why is this only a six-month lease, Mike?

It's a seasonal lease. It keeps our equipment out of the winter weather.

Out of this winter? Okay.

Thanks.

B is a resolution approving and accepting a residential purchase agreement from Ada Thill in connection with the Highland Park area project and an authorizing payment. The property is a portion of 3530 West 19th Street containing Burton Street. See as a resolution scheduling a hearing on a proposed amendment number one to the amended and restated combined Central Sioux City CBD urban renewal plan for the combined Central Sioux City CBD urban renewal project area. The property is located along Pierce Street and Iowa Street.

I know this project is only to set the hearing date, but is there somebody here that can present the specifics of the proposals related to each parcel? And if not, we can do it in two weeks, but... Thanks, Renee.

Renee Billings, Economic Development Manager. Urban renewal law requires us to add it to the urban renewal plan, so when we come back with a development agreement at that time, all the project details will be provided.

Okay. Thank you. Interactions relating to purchasing A as a resolution awarding a purchase order to Clary Safety Equipment for black line monitoring devices and equipment. B as a resolution awarding a purchase order to Ed Stevers Ford for two Ford F-150 4x4 super crew trucks. C as a resolution awarding a purchase order to Dakota Supply Group for utilities field office fire hydrants. 11 are application for alcohol licenses. Ms. Clerk.

The city clerk's office would request a motion to add a liquor license, a Class C retail alcohol license for work and church. They applied this morning. Their event is Saturday, so I apologize for the late notice.

So moved.

Second.

Bertrand?

Aye.

Rayford?

Aye.

Scott?

Aye.

Berenstein?

Aye. 12 are boards and commission and committee minutes. Anyone to be heard on any of those items, please come forward. If so, if not, we'll vote. Passes 4-0. Recommendations of the Board of Adjustment. 13 is a motion acknowledging the Board of Adjustment actions from August 11, 2026. I'll move it. Second. Passes 4-0-14 is a hearing and resolution approving plans and specs for the Midtown Terrace Project. I'll move that. Second. Public hearings now open. Anyone to be heard? Seeing none, the hearing is closed.

I just have one question, Mayor. Okay. Jill. And again, it's just, you know, if we don't, or what is our, I guess, all-in cost and what funding would we use to absorb any gaps?

Jill Wanderscheid, Neighborhood Services Manager. The bids open September 1st, so we'll have the final numbers then. The funding sources that we have right now are National Housing Trust Fund and city home dollars that we're also putting into the project. So depending on what the gap is, if there is a gap when we bid that out, we'll have to see. We've also applied for federal home loan bank funding. So there's some opportunity there. So we're kind of waiting to see what happens on September 1st.

But Jill, is the federal home loan bank affordable housing program, is that a grant or is that a loan? And is it a loan, is it favorable interest rate or is it market rate?

Yep, so it's a forgivable loan. So no interest, no payments, just recorded against the property.

Great, thank you. Yep. Thank you.

Did that come up and I missed it?

No.

Councilman Berenstein, can you hit that button one more time for me?

Passes 4-0-15 to hearing and resolution approving the sale of the vacated south half of the 1904 South Ruston Street, authorizing indeed the petitioners Roger and Jacqueline Edwards. I'll move that.

Second.

Hearing is now open. Anyone to be heard? Seeing none, the hearing is closed. Passes 4-0-16 is a hearing resolution accepting the proposal of Bishop Helan Catholic Schools for the sale of the vacated East West Alley adjacent to 1213 Grandview Boulevard in the combined Central Sioux City CBD urban renewal area. I'll move that. Second. Public hearings now open. Anyone to be heard? Seeing none, the hearing is closed. Passes 4-0. 17 is a hearing and resolution approving a proposal to sell those vacated portions of West 19th Street, Colorado Avenue, adjacent to 3530 West 19th Street. The petitioner is Ada Thill. I'll move that.

Second.

Public hearing is now open. Anyone to be heard? Question. Why is it a buck? Because it's a mess out there. Houses are built on streets, and streets are built where houses should be. Yeah, I know that. Why is it a buck? This has been a 30-year project of trying, because she gave us some. They're trading property out there just to get deeds that mean something.

All right, well, the rest of us are paying two bits a foot. I wouldn't mind seeing that buck once in a while either.

He was the one earlier that gave us stuff to get the street. All right, I'm good. That's why I asked. Great now. Anyone to be heard? Hearing's closed. In the next 30 years, you can work on trying to get all that straightened out.

No, I appreciate the effort. I just know whenever I try to close something, it seems like a dollar seeing you put that out there.

There's going to be a whole bunch of those because Burton Street was platted wrong for 100 years around here. Yeah, sit down with Steve and he'll walk you through it. He's still in there. Citizen concerns are any I should say the boat was for zero any citizens to be heard on an item on other than stormwater Okay, we'll go to building permit update and

Good evening, Daryl Bullock, Inspection Services Manager. Last week, last week and a half actually, been a little slower there, so we've been on a lot of calling back on older permits and things like that to try to find out where we're at. We have a couple of projects coming up very time sensitive, so we're trying to communicate as fast as we can with them. We've been waiting on a couple of them. We're calling back on we want to move quickly forward with them. During the interim also in the last week, we've had another meeting with the software company, which went very, very well. We had a lot of homework to do. The homework came back very positive for us. Brittany in our office did a fantastic job of getting that in, so the point we were actually able to save a couple of hours of training time. just by moving forward with additional work on our end without having to pay the consultant for training.

Also identified a need to have utilities involved.

Yeah, that was my next. Yeah, we're utilities department will be doing their own permitting portion of this, so they have not been involved in the meeting, so we reached out to them and had they had a couple of representatives there so that They're able to understand the permitting process and how this works. We're going to walk them through everything that's been behind on so that they can do that. Right now, they're still tied to the inspections department, so they can continue to put permits in until they're up to speed and being able to take all responsibilities for that. They have some homework that we'll have to help them through to match their contractors and their permit types and the fees, schedules that go along with that, but we'll work together with them to get that done.

Will that extend your... What you're anticipating would be the phasing?

No, I think we caught it early enough that we're at a position where we can work together and help them out and get there. I think we'd have had a problem if we'd have gotten to the end, and then all of a sudden we make the changes, and then they're not able to put permits in. So now is the time to do it.

I think just an example of how, as we've gone through this process, we've tried to cross department lines and get everybody involved in solving the problem.

No question. So on the residential side of the permitting, I think that we've made huge strides. I really do, on the residential side. We're pumping it out, we're getting it to the field, and everything's getting out there, and there's so much flexibility, it's been good. I guess where it's starting to bubble up are the phone calls that are starting to come back, calling for meetings, as I was on the commercial side. And so with this new sophomore software, will it... Will it limit what our reviewers are going to be able to look at? Are they still going to have the latitude to dig as deep as they want on those plans?

Yeah.

You see where I'm going with this? No, I understand. If we're programming this on the commercial side, I mean, do we dial it back and say that it takes, I don't want to by name, but it takes our reviewer off the hook and say, I don't need to be looking at door handles. I don't need to be looking at, you know, those type of things in depth. Is that going to, does this give it the ability to curb that back and get it to the field? It gives us. We're bubbling back to that, those days a little bit of. Yeah.

Sure. I mean, one of the things that it will do as we move forward is we're going to, depending on how sensitive we set the parameters for submittals, there's a lot of you'll see on here that the documents were submitted, but they weren't complete documents when they were submitted. We can set it. So they have to be a hundred percent complete before they did that. Now is that good customer service? We have to start balancing that. You know, where did we, can we get partial submittals and we can get started with it? Can you face this? Can you face them? That's what we're looking at doing. And we're trying to get, we're shutting a few things off. So it is not going to be as cumbersome for people to submit online because we want them to use that because that allows them to Each type of permit has different responsibilities. So there's different departments that are responsible for each type of permit. This will actually trigger emails to the responsible department if we turn that on for that particular permit. So let's just say one of them happens to be where building department, fire department, utilities department, planning department, all of those have to be involved with this permit. Every one of those departments will get the same email at the same time when it's submitted. So there's no delays of transferring it from one department to the other. Everybody can start at the same time. How intense we put that as far as demanded requirements, because people are going to have to start understanding some of the things that we don't necessarily And it's not public knowledge, necessarily, how these things get trained. Some of this stuff has advanced so much. And one of the things that, and please don't hold this against me. I'm not for it in any way, shape, or form. But there's a lot of communities that have started doing contractor licensing. Part of contractor licensing is to go out and actually study and be certified in the same code as what the municipality. So in our case, it's the International Council. So the contract would actually have to be licensed in that. In doing that, it helps with the submittals and they know everything, all the nuances that have to be submitted. That's not something I'm looking at requiring here because it does become very cumbersome. But if you have benefits, sure it could have benefits. Absolutely it could. But I think it's going to be more detriment than positive. So we're going to keep that away as long as we can. We have to keep that back as far as the requirements coming in so we can learn and teach those things so that the submittals come in a little clearer and faster, and we're able to respond easier.

So is there any, and I'll get off this, guys. I'm sorry, but this is... No, it's all right. We had that really good grading permit meeting this week, and I don't know if Gordon's in here or not. Tom, you were in there. I thought it was a really productive meeting. We actually brought most of those guys in and discussed revamping that whole side of it. And the other part is... talking about stamped plans. So on the commercial side of it, I'm gonna go back to what I talked about four months ago, is if you're bringing in that stamp set of plans, is there gonna be, does a sophomore allow to say, okay, here's the requirements or stamped? And if you hit the stamp button, it takes that, because it's all about liability for the city, right? to some extent, and quality of the product. What I'm saying is, can we have it where, on the submittal side of it, by phases, that you go to a point where it's like, okay, you need this, this, and this, or submit a stamped plan for this phase of it. And that takes that whole review process kind of off the hook. from a speed perspective? I just want you to think about that.

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I do that is a concern for not just the city of Sioux City, but pretty much any city that actually has a plan review system in place, unfortunately, there are engineers out there that will sell their stamp. And they don't necessarily know what's going on. So then at what point do we still become liable? Because we said, you know what, we knew it was bad.

but we didn't do anything about it. But on the flip side, again, and you and I are on the same page on this, on the residential side, but on the same side of it, I'm not sure the city is really, I mean, it goes back to that stamp. It goes back to, you know, and they had a really good idea that came up in the grading side of it is maybe having us carry more longer term bonds. which I think is another viable option. For another $100, you extend a nine-year bond, and it takes us off the... Because it's civil. The city's never going to get sued anyway. It never has. I mean, I don't know if we've named it on... Nicole, how many of those have we had? A lot? I mean... Not a lot. It always goes back to it's a private issue. So all I'm trying to help facilitate is we're building this program of a way to get that commercial out the door more and to accept that engineered stamp more like other communities do. And I'll get away from it.

One of the big things right now we've got is we've really started to try to make more communication back and forth with them. And I'll give you, for instance, right now we have one that's been going on for multiple months. And quite frankly, the building owner and the design professional just aren't on the same page. We actually had a meeting in the building, walked away with a plan. That plan was submitted and then the building owner said, well, this is not what I wanted. And now we're back to ground zero. The two of them have to talk and get it on. I can't move it any faster along than when I get the document finally that says, yep, this is what we're going to do. So we'll still have a few of those. But moving forward, we're going to continue to try to make it faster and faster.

And I did get my letter from ERA. I got a guy getting out there going to mow my weeds when it's on court. So I got somebody lying there. Let's not blame ERA. That one came through. It just takes a little time there. I didn't get my letter.

I didn't even know. So I'm headed that way. All right. Thank you. Any other questions for me?

Thanks, guys. Civil service hiring process.

They're not crazy weeds, they're just a few.

I had to go back.

Open. There you go.

I don't think you want me talking about storm. Okay. Janelle Bertrand, Human Resources Director. I've been asked to present a presentation on the civil service hiring process. So the purpose and foundation of civil service is it looks at merit and fitness, testing, and it has eligibility list. Civil service is designed to support hiring based on merit and fitness, not favoritism. It was put in place in the 1930s and it's in our Iowa code chapter 400. Testing is a common method used to establish merit and fitness. and I'll talk a little bit more about that. We do have eligibility lists once all of our applicants have met the minimum qualifications, completed and passed the required testing. They are placed on what's called an eligibility list that is then presented at our civil service commission meeting and our commissioners will approve the eligibility list. As I said, Iowa Code Chapter 400 defines civil service commission and the commissioners and the civil service process. Not every position is covered by civil service. Excuse me. For a complete list of the exemptions, those can be found in chapter 400. But at a very high level, our part-time positions are not civil service covered. Those that are grant funded and those that are appointed by boards and commissions, such as the Human Rights Commission, the Art Center, the museum, those positions are exempt from the civil service process. Again, for a complete listing of exemptions, you can refer to Chapter 400.

For all boards and commissions or those that are actual? I mean, there's a difference between a library board and a museum association board.

Library board has more, and you might have to help me, has more language in the Iowa code where they have more rights than what we do, but our library positions are not civil service.

Okay, but our

the museum because they're governed by different laws than I they are non civil service I think any administrative boards are not civil service thank you and how do you manage the grant funded positions because aren't some positions receiving state and federal funds and others are just either out of the general fund or an enterprise fund those positions are identified for us those like a lot of

housing positions are grant funded. A lot of jails are grant funded. I would get that information from either finance or the department head.

Thank you. When you talk about civil service board or civil service process, and we have a commission, civil service commission, so that means that they're involved. At what point do they have to sign off? Do they get involved? We keep using the word civil So when does a civil service commission get involved and what's their role?

I will try to cover that a little bit later. But if I don't, great question. If I don't provide your answers, please refresh my memory. OK, because some of that is covered later. The Commission is made up of five citizen volunteers who are appointed by City Council. They help ensure that testing procedures are properly carried out and they remain neutral throughout the process. The city proposes testing and hiring processes. The commission reviews and certifies the eligibility list, which is made up of those who pass examination. And the commissioners may attend and participate in any of the examination processes that they would like to. We always invite them to be a member of the scoring panel. And so it just depends upon their availability. Let's see if the next one.

That's after the first screening. No.

Maybe this, let me talk, I'll answer your question. When a position is created, say a brand new position is created, I determine by looking at the Iowa code, does this meet any of the exemptions? If it doesn't, I create a job description, which then comes to you guys for approval. After that, it then goes to the commissioners for them to grant or approve civil service status. At that time, the department will present, there's rules that every civil service commission has to have, such as what is the passing score? How many people do you want on the eligibility list? What type of testing process do you want? So that is presented to the commission. Once that is in place, then my department will advertise, review any applications that come in for minimum qualifications, determine and schedule the testing. The applicants move on to testing. It's scored. Whoever passes the test is placed on the list that is then presented to the Commission.

So when the 19 sent in their application or applied, before any of them were discussed on it, before any of them were evaluated, the Civil Commission was brought in?

Are you talking about the police chief?

Yeah, that's what we're here today.

I thought we were talking about.

We are, but I mean, I'm just, I'm applying it to real world.

Okay. So what your question is, when was the civil service commission brought in? Yeah.

Were they part of the process at 19? Or were they part of the process at a line or 11? Or when, when did they come in and start the, this? So, cause we're doing under civil service.

I believe them before this.

What? Where they were or that they're supposed to be. Where were they? When were they?

As she's saying, like to.

She's walking through that part of creating the exam and looking at But 19 or 9 The process was created if the police chief is what's considered an entrance position, which I cover that a little bit later but again, the police department has a chapter 400 waiver or entrance positions So the list does not have to become certified. They get a qualified applicant list, which is different.

I think in this case the commission was involved in approving the testing process.

Right.

Only. Because of the waiver rules.

Because of the waiver.

Okay. Continue. That's fine. I'll come back to it.

Like I said, we advertise the position applicants must apply and meet the minimum qualifications to be considered to participate in the required examinations. Qualified applicants complete the examinations. All examinations have to be completed. They're scored, and it depends on the rules. Some you have to pass every piece of the examination, but each position that is covered under civil service has rules associated with it. Passing candidates are ranked. They're then placed on the eligibility list that is presented to the commissioners and that is certified. After the certification is done, the list is then referred to the hiring manager for him or her to begin the selection process.

Can you just talk about I guess a little bit about the testing side of it, like where that comes from.

Where the tests come from?

Right.

Sure. Theo might want to help me a little bit with some of the law enforcement tests.

Some of the law enforcement tests we get- I mean for anybody, as it relates to civil service.

From a law enforcement position. Some of them come from a company that's specialized in law enforcement. We do contract with a company called eSkill, which is a testing company that has hundreds of test questions for a wide variety of positions that the city has. Some of our performance tests we write in conjunction with the manager and supervisor. Our fitness tests are the same way. Am I missing anything, Theo?

And to that point, each person that is applying for a civil service role has to pass or get a score of 70 or above.

Right, whatever the rules are, that's correct.

And if they don't get that 70, it stops for them.

That's right. Like I said, we have different types of examinations associated with each different position. And that is identified in the rules for each civil service position. And they're written. There's an oral exam. There's a performance exam, which has to do with driving and operating equipment. Our field services people do a lot of the performance test. And then there's also physical agility. And those are specifically for police officer, firefighter, EMTs and paramedics.

And all of those are scored?

Yes. Are some pass fail?

Yes, some are pass fail. Yeah, that's the scoring, pass fail.

OK, some have a percentage score associated with it. Others are just pass fail.

Where's that in the stage? Is that like a nine?

It's in the rules.

I mean, I'm trying to figure out worry in this. I mean, the part that scored or not scored, where is that in our process? So I'm just trying to figure out where, why it went from 19 to 11 or whatever the number was. Where does the subjective pass or not fail come in? Where people get eliminated?

Well, they were, people applied. Yeah. They were, then my office reviewed for minimum qualifications. So that was, did they meet the min quals or did they not? So then we got a pool of 19.

That number was reduced based upon qualification.

19 people met the minimum qualifications for the position. So then we needed to determine who are we going to invite for the civil service exam. And so the 19 got brought down to 9.

That's what I meant. What's the process between the 19 and the 9?

We look at creating... Say who we is so they know. Oh, sorry. The assessment panel, HR staff.

Can you go back one page? Can you go back one page? Because I think that is a part of your... Is a part of that for you.

The for police chief the the testing process was an assessment center. It was a presentation and oral examination and a written exercise. So there were three components and it was quite exhaustive. It was a two and a half hour process for each applicant and to bring 19 people here to test for that process would be days. And we used. The recruiter, we had myself, two department heads, and a police chief from West Des Moines. So you're talking about people to get them away from their work site to come here to be a panel member for the assessment center. So we narrowed down the assessment center and my staff and the recruiter, we created screening criteria to whittle down the pool from 19 to a more manageable number of nine.

And was the civil commission involved in that?

No.

Okay.

And in the past, you have invited civil service commissioners to sit in on some of the... That's right.

Yes, we have.

They could have been, because I was on the civil service commission when we hired a fire chief, and I actually sit on one of those committees back in the day. So a civil service commissioner can be part of it, whether they choose to or not. But you, I mean, we had fire chiefs, lots of fire chief applications on that particular process. and you couldn't bring them all in. So you took, there were ways to grade them and they add the scores up. Then when you get all done, you add your scores up again and grade them who's one, two, and three, and four. It's a long process.

And I too have said, matter of fact, our current front chief. That's right.

Did that answer your question?

I'll wait. I'm just trying to figure out when the commission got involved. If we're calling it a civil process, when did they get involved?

The Commission developed and approved the rules. That was their involvement. They did not have a commissioner that wanted to sit in on the assessment center. So there was no commission involvement after. They were offered the opportunity, but no one participated.

That's because you gave up three days of your life. Right.

To that point, because if you sit in one day, you have to sit in all the days. Right.

And a lot of times people have jobs, so it gets hard for someone to get a commissioner to leave their job for three days to assist us. So we are always trying to look for people that have a flexible work schedule to serve on our commission. Eligibility lists are candidates who pass the civil service examination are placed on an eligibility list. They're ranked according to their final score. And the final scores include examination plus veterans points, if they have any. And depending on the classification, the eligibility list may contain 10, 20, or 40 names. That's also part of the rules that are established up front that the commission approves. And then only candidates named on an active eligibility list can be hired during the period that the list is valid.

And Janelle, would you explain, I guess just for the public's benefit and those, the distinction between a civil service determining who is legally eligible for consideration versus management determining who's eligible?

I'm not sure I'm following your question, Ike.

You talked about that list being provided, but what's the difference between, say, that list and civil service saying, okay, you have to hire from this versus, say, a Mike saying, I'm just going to hire from... Who I want. Right.

So the eligibility list, most of them are valid for one year. There's... Fire and police have some promotionals are good for two years, so any vacancy that a department has within that 12 month period that the list is valid, managers have to hire from that list. You can't reopen unless you have a chapter 400 waiver, which I'll talk about that in a little bit. Here are tight. I just talked about that next slide Generally, they're a year promotional or two years and then fire and EMS have some unique ones where they're three or in length a list may be exhausted sooner if Candidates decline a job offer or fail to respond and then at the point of exhaustion That's when departments can re advertise publicly or internally if it's promotional Entrance exams or entrance positions are open to the outside, to city employees and anybody on the outside. Promotional positions are only open to permanent city employees. And so we make that clear in our postings. We do provide veterans points to those people who are on the eligibility list, five points if they're honorably discharged, and then an additional five if they have a qualifying disabled release. So what happens after the examination? It's scored. Failure to pass one part in some examinations may result in failure of the entire exam. Process and that's what happened in our current process with chief. There were three parts. They were graded separately had to pass every single type of The written the presentation and the oral you have it's not may it has it's a failure to pass one May so it's not May Well, it depends on the rules As you might take the average of all sections or you have to pass all sections. So it depends on the rules. I Passing candidates are placed on the eligibility list. They're then referred to the hiring manager, and then the hiring manager may interview candidates or make a hire, depending on how many names you have on the list. A manager is not required to make an offer in the order that they appear on the list. In 2023, there were some significant law changes. This is where the Chapter 400 waiver comes into play. Specifically, it's Iowa Code Section 412A, hiring practices. A certain standard of civil service hiring regulations can be temporarily suspended for a maximum of one year, which is what we do. We come here, the departments that want to have a waiver, we present it to you. And then you guys vote, yay or nay, are you going to offer the waiver.

So on April 7th, we passed this, right? This waiver.

For which department?

For 400, for the chief.

We've waived it. No, we've waived it. Three or four times. We've waived it a couple of times.

It says motion on April 7th in the minutes. It says motion to certify the eligibility list for the police captain. I'm assuming that's, we waived, that's 400. Captain and chief are different.

No, there is.

That's the captain. No, the chief one was on July 13th.

Of 25? 26. 26? That could be.

Yeah.

I feel like it was a July time.

This was what we did for the captains.

Yeah. I believe in July. That sounds about right.

Okay. So, but by doing that, all we waived was the pool, right? No. The list.

You waived the eligibility list. The list does not have to be presented to the commission for approval. Everything is the same up until you get the names on a list.

So we didn't waive the chief of police and the fire department, the 40013. We didn't waive that in that same action. We didn't waive the process of hiring.

No, the process is still the process. That's what I'm saying.

It just doesn't get certified by the Civil Service Commission. They have to, on a list, they have to certify it. But that gets waived because you're bypassing the Civil Service Commission. And also the length of how long you have to keep that list open.

Right.

If police department did not have a waiver, the list for chief that we have today would have gone to the commission. The commission would have... certified it, then we would have had to make a hire from that eligibility list for the next 12 months.

Yeah, I get that.

Okay. I wasn't sure.

I'm just trying to figure out how we went. I'm not even confused. I'm trying to figure out what candidates did we miss out. If they all were eligible at 19, where's the subjectivity? The subjectivity is from 19 to 9. I'm trying to figure out how we missed out.

No, they weren't eligible. They were still in the testing process.

This is common HR practice. When you have a large applicant pool, police records tech, 70 applications, it is not feasible for a manager to interview 70 people. So you create what's called screening criteria. We did the same thing for the cheat. You create based on education, experience. certifications, training, you put together a matrix and you assign points or you figure out who are your top people you want to invite in. Now, say for example, out of the 19, only three people met our scoring criteria. I would say we need to adjust that. We need to invite more people than three, because that's not a very big pool. I mean, it's not just, oh, I think this person is good. You apply the same criteria to all 19 applicants. So I think I've talked about the, we call it a qualified applicant list instead of an eligibility list for those positions that have the waiver. We needed to make a differentiation. It's still a list, but we were trying to make it clear as to an eligibility list means civil service, a qualified applicant list means those that have a waiver.

Was the chief? This time, the same qualification specs that we've hired Officer Mueller with? I mean, were they the same job description? I mean, were the qualifications the same?

I believe so, but I'd have to look. I know the job description, I believe, was updated. I'm not sure if they changed. I can get that for you.

Was the assessment panel testing similar?

Yes.

But you probably didn't have the waiver then, right?

No.

I know this seems really boring, guys, but there's a logic to this. I think if we're going to start this thing over, which I think what was kicked out of this process was weak, and if we're going to start over, it would be nice to understand the process because clearly I don't think a lot of us understood how we got to where we got. So that's all I'm trying to do is I'm just trying to do the process, guys. That's all I'm trying to do. Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks to thanks to thanks to you holding up alright sending your son to school.

Well, I've done the day.

Gets better, trust me. Go ahead guys.

Captain Bertrand Uniform Patrol Captain. Sir Heather Lewis.

Officer Sassman City people.

If we may, you guys have heard me blab far too much. I thought we'd let some of our boots on the ground folks come today and give you a perspective from the people that are doing the work every day on this. That'd be great. I got a whole list of questions for now. Go ahead.

We have a whole list of answers.

Go ahead.

We were told that you guys had questions, so we came to answer, but I suppose if you want to start with questions, then we can go.

Well, you know, typically we get updates from either the captain or the chief, so if there are no updates, then...

I was going to say, just in those updates, and I know we've talked about, you know, we talk about the contacts, we talk about cleanups and and those engagements. You know, where are we at, at least, I guess, in knowing individuals that we've had contacts with or in those things, where are we at with ensuring that maybe they have a permanent solution or they're not people you're continuously contacting or having those contacts with?

So we maintain our records. We do a lot of reports. Anybody we have contact with, we document, report kind of where the status is with them. Some days they just don't even want to talk to us, but we still document that and report that. Through the reporting, we are able to narrow down who the people are that just absolutely don't want services, the people that are pending because of either they don't qualify for certain things due to age or or whatever, but then also the people that are nearing services or if they get them, we track that as well. So in tracking the ones that just outright refuse our services, we try to take a different approach with them.

What's that?

That a lot of times leads to enforcement.

We have 37 people right now that flat out refuse.

Services and so the number in jail they saw that on the sign that the bus tickets. I think we bought 211 tickets So that people are looking for more help or support outside of our community so that that's a win that given given the people to help that they need there and The other one is, I think you physically, the community can physically feel the difference of what you guys are doing. I really believe that. I think the panhandling is down. It's very more isolated, but it's sporadic. I think we've got some signage that's going to continue to enforce that. Don't give if you don't like panhandling, which is a smart message. The other thing is, the question I have is, so you've identified, I think it was the last report, was it 202 still on the street? Something like that? They were identified, they were just still on the street, and they're... Unhomed, is that the new word we're supposed to use?

Unhoused.

Unhoused, that was close. So I want to go back to the question of why I think, what I want to ask you guys personally is, so you're engaging these people every day, right? So what's their solution? Even if they're not engaging, what's their solution? It's an enforcement? Because my next question was, out of those people that are still on the street, what percentage do you think of them are using drugs? that they got some type of an addiction problem, some type of a substance issue. I mean, you tell me.

A lot of them do. Of the 37 that just flat out refuse any help from us, most of it is drug and alcohol addiction or mental health. We have had people that we've sent to rehab who were willing to go, so good thing there. We do have MCAT that rides with us, so we do have mental health services available when we come into contact with somebody that requires that. Mondays, Siouxland Community Health has been riding with us in the mornings. They have a PA that goes out. We give low-level medical help to people. She'll do wound care, set people up with appointments to come into the clinic to be looked at so they get established care. That helps with housing if you have established care and all your paperwork in order.

So what can you legally do if you think that person's on drugs? What can you legally do to see if they have drugs?

Just because we think they are?

No, if you can see they're on drugs, yeah.

You know they're on drugs?

I don't know. I mean, at some point, I mean, all I'm saying is that it still is against the law to have large amounts of drugs on you, right? Yeah.

We would have to develop, in talking to them, probable cause, reasonable suspicion to believe that they have something on them before we could search them. We just can't. go around searching people.

I get that.

I think so.

No, but I think there's also suspicion. I mean, there's also, if somebody's whacked out.

We have to be able to articulate it for it to hold up in court.

Right. So what's the solution? As a community, we're just going to live with, this isn't on you guys. I'm just asking, what do you want to tell the community right now about the 200 plus that are just on the streets living?

I don't think there's that many on the streets.

That was the report we got.

I don't know how the numbers come about for the report that you guys get, but I don't know if they're saying that unhoused.

They're counting people that are in the shelter. Yeah, if they're saying they're unhoused, they might be staying in the shelter.

Yeah, I don't think there's 200 people just living.

Because they're often doing the counting for us, correct? The shelters.

Yeah, it's the gospel mission or the warming shelter.

Correct. And those people aren't the ones that we're encountering? Every day we don't go to the shelters To offer service because the services are already going there and doing that so we're not counting The people that are staying in the shelters that we're not encountering some of them we do encounter they get kicked out of the shelter or Choose to not stay there any longer for personal reasons, but yeah 200 on the street. I would not say is a fair number and kind of to go back to the enforcement part. So if we encounter somebody that is causing problems, that is doing illegal behavior, then we take the enforcement side of things. If somebody is on this list that they're not abusing drugs, they're not breaking laws, they just don't want to have an apartment, they don't want to be alone, whatever the reason may be, and they're not breaking any laws. We're very limited at what we can do, and that's why our lieutenant right now is working with City Legal to try to address some of those issues of subjects that are trying to take up residency in our parks on the City Parkway. In trees things like that so we're they're hard at work trying to get the ordinances updated that are going to address some of these issues that That do come to us that citizens don't want to see the messes on the city streets and in the parks and those issues That was my next question.

So what are you seeing with encampments? What are you anticipating for the fall and early winter? What do you think you're gonna see?

I would say since I started this in November, the encampments have gone down, especially on city property. Right now, of the ones that we know of, we only have one that's currently on city property, and we're taking care of that. The ones on private property are more of a challenge, but the word is out there that we can't have encampments on city property, so I feel that that has caused a change in the numbers that we've seen. I think it's decreased significantly.

So we did a ride along with Council Bluffs last Thursday because they have what's called a hop. Theirs is the homeless outreach program. So they have two officers like we are and some of the same services and they have a lot of the same problems that we do. So we're not special.

Did they limit hop to their downtown sector as well or did they broaden a broader scope?

I think they're citywide, but what they've done, and I don't know if it would be feasible here, but they've taken sectors down by the riverfront that are city-owned, And they've allowed unhoused people to post tents there, to live there. And they believe that it was fairly clean. We took a tour down there. It was pretty clean. They've been policing it. It's just a way, like I said, I don't know if it's feasible here. It's just a way for them to put everybody in an area and then their neighborhood services goes there and sees the people and medical goes there and visits with the people. So they're all in. Not all of them. They have the same where people just don't want services. But they're there for the services to go meet with them and talk to them there where they're at.

So I've talked to a couple of judges and just compliment you guys that the paperwork is starting to follow the lawlessness a little bit. You know what I mean? So that was one of the complaints four or five months ago was they're saying if you want us to do something, the paperwork's got to be better to let us do our jobs. And they're saying they're getting better paperwork, that they can actually enforce the laws. And the rule of thumb is if you can get an adjunct away from his stuff for 72 hours that his whole outlook, his or her outlook on the community looks a lot different if they're removed from their addiction for 72 hours. So I would just stress to continue that with these 37, is what you're saying, that they need to figure out what help they can get because the street is not a home.

I will say of that 37, three of them are currently in inpatient treatment.

Good.

Prior to the heart, there was a big problem of which maybe we didn't have a good handle on. They've done a really excellent job with drilling down on what can be done, what can be helped, and what can't be helped. So the people that are up for help are getting it. Their benefit extends beyond the police department in that they're bringing together other agencies. We have a meeting tomorrow morning at 7.30 at the PD if you guys want to attend. It's usually very well attended, 30-some people from various social agencies. So that coordination... Is that part of the coalition or a separate meeting? We consider it just heart meeting. We've had it kind of from the jump, and it follows this meeting just as a matter of practice. But we'll have a whole... the whole group represented will be there. Everybody out in the community and really what that's doing is these two are leading the charge where we've in some ways become the defacto leadership of it and that's fine. They've put time and pressure to it and the results are there. What's left is obviously uh... enforcement for the people who just refused to but just follow the law obviously homelessness is not a crime but nor is it a pass to break the law and victimize people so we stood up uh... a problem or implicit unit p o p And we've been doing some dedicated enforcement targeted action in the downtown area. We call it District 3 in District 4 and we've been really been just targeting that and we hope to get him out on bikes. There's some people we need to get trained or retrain back on bike patrol, but look for those seeing those folks in the near future.

What do you need? From us.

Social security to not take forever to help us get people's documents when they lose them, get them stolen. That's probably a biggest hurdle for us is just getting things for people.

Are you managing that process for them or are you working with the social service agencies to have them conduct that?

Try to.

We work with multiple agencies to accomplish that and it does take a village at times.

So I always hear this phrase that homelessness is not a crime. Well, it's not. You can be called a thief and it's not a crime, but the act of stealing is the crime. And in homelessness, the act of drugs, the act of breaking and entering, the act of messing up somebody's entryway because you've got to go to the bathroom. So, again, sometimes I get a little queasy when I hear that phrase. It's not against the law because it's the actions. That's why they're called that is what they're doing. You guys are doing a great job. I think the city's looking cleaner. I think the community's feeling it.

I want to just keep our foot on the gas and I will say talking with Council Bluffs they have theirs isn't called a warming shelter I forget what their building was called but it's an overnight shelter only they allow people to sleep there overnight and then they put them out in the morning and when we talked about our warming shelter and the things that they're doing for the community with the tier system and If you're on the tier system, you're working towards bettering yourself. So when you are out there, you have a plan of action and they were very impressed with that.

So there's a very different from ours. Did they think they were going to convert their system from a...

They want to come here and ride with us for a day like we did with them. So we welcomed them to come and we'll show them around. That'd be great. Good idea. Hopefully they can get ideas from us.

Did they say that when they do that shelter when they kick him out? Where do those people go right on their streets? They go on the street, right? Yeah, absolutely.

One thing I would that we've been trying to work towards this public restrooms downtown, not just for unhoused people, but for everyone. That's that's something that would be great if we could get some help with.

Yeah, makes sense.

Didn't we try that? Yes, we've talked about it.

We had one.

Did it last like 12 hours?

No. It lasted quite a while.

And what the coalition that supported that, that place that there, said that they did not have any issues with vandalism or anything like that. The problem was getting it cleaned out. Like they were having difficulty with the services that were supposed to come and clean it out. So that's why they didn't do it again.

I think it's a good project for review by downtown partners to work with the city and see if we can come up with some.

Be safe.

Good job. Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you.

Thank you guys.

Come along with us anytime you want.

Absolutely.

Aramontang Environmental Services. On that bathroom, we actually met with the EAB two weeks ago, and I did talk to somebody that was on that board that had the bathroom back behind BA's, I think it was, like back in that alley. And they had volunteers that were cleaning it, but they were having trouble with the hauler that was like sucking it out and like cleaning it that way. And so that's why it got removed. But we are trying to get that put back there. So we are working on at least one back there if they'll continue cleaning it. So we were trying to work towards that.

All right. Thank you. Let's broaden the dialogue era. And let's include downtown partners in some dialogue as well to see if we can have other locations.

I think Drew was going to loop them in because he was on that board. And I'm not sure what board it was. It was whoever had it before.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Teresa Fitch, Assistant City Manager. I am here to present the stormwater rates. I will go over kind of the process of where we got where we're at, give you the options that we gave you initially, and then ask for direction. I do also have a sample of the city's bill. I think that was requested last week to see what it looks like so that we can go through that as well. So in the beginning, the first time we discussed this was on February 3rd at one of the budget hearings. We discussed the need for either stormwater rates or how we were going to fund the stormwater projects. It was requested at that time that we bring back a memo on the 18th, which was the wrap-up. At that time, we gave you several options. And then you chose an option at that time. We brought it back, and it was implemented on July 1. So then today, we're having discussion. So right now, we did implement the 300% increase. So the options that we gave to you, there were three different options, and they each came with an immediate increase or a phased-in increase. So the three options were a 300% increase, and that was an immediate increase. It included all of the CIP projects, the Bacon Creek culvert, and the stormwater master plan. So that is what council voted on and approved. They requested at the budget hearing that we bring that back. We brought it back and it was heard here and approved. So we moved forward with that on July 1. The second option is a 150% increase. That option includes the current CIP and the Bacon Creek culvert. It did not include the master plan. And the third option was a 30% increase. It included only the current CIP. So I do want to note that the items that are not covered under the stormwater fund are actual general obligation bonds, which are property tax funded. So those were the discussions that occurred during the budget hearing that we either have to bond for these items, and those are property tax funded, or we have to increase rates. So those are the options. This is the phased-in approach. So the phased-in approach still, again, same options, covering the same things. Option 1, we had a phased-in approach that had a 50% annual increase. As you can see, by FY31, your increase was significantly higher than it was with the one-time increase. Phase 2, again, 30 to 35% annually. You ended about where you ended with the Phase 1 immediate increase, yet you did not cover all the CIP projects still and all the items in the CIP. Phase 3 was a 7.5% to 10% annual increase. Again, you ended at a much higher rate as well.

But the Funding includes all of the future projects that are in the CIP. Correct.

Yep, for the five years, yes. So that large Bacon Creek culvert project, that's the $40 million, that includes this to pay for the debt service for that, yes. So I just wanted to give an example of the phased-in approach. Though it seems like the better approach, in the end, the user typically pays more. So in this case, on option one, which you chose as an immediate increase, it was $9.00 to average on $9.09 a homeowner. If you'd have done a phased-in approach, it would have been $17.24 by the end of that five-year period.

Well, not necessarily because you still can cap it, but that's what it would have been had you done the whole thing.

Well, you could have, you're right, yep. Sorry, I went too fast. So this is just a summary of all of the different options. So option one had the immediate and the phased in. Option two has the immediate phased in, and option three has the immediate and phased in. You can see where they all end. So option one, the immediate, which covers everything, at your FY31, you are the same as you are in option two, phased in, but it does not cover everything. So, as you can see, the immediate increase tends to cover more at a lower ongoing rate than if you were to phase it in over time.

And, Teresa, just to reiterate, you mentioned the impact on property taxes. Can you just kind of reiterate that and what that means?

Sure. So that Bacon Creek culvert is a $40 million project. So that $40 million we would have to go out for general obligation bonds and that $40 million would have to be covered by property tax. Also with that $40 million what makes it extremely difficult is that we don't have a large bonding capacity. We typically bond for about $25 to $30 million a year. Spreading that over two to three years, that would reduce the other projects we would be able to do within the city with general obligation bonds that are funded by property tax. So if you look at RCIP, when we come to you, about half of the projects are just annual maintenance projects that come. So immediately you're close to 15, $20 million out of that 30, that's just annual projects that occur, the maintenance projects. So it doesn't give us a lot of additional bonding capacity and it increases the property tax.

And some of the projects are required projects as well. The Bacon Creek Conduit is the biggest piece of this. I don't know what the percentage is of that, but some of these things aren't just wants. They're requirements.

Yeah, they're absolute needs. That is needed for the wastewater treatment plant. It's flooding. There's a gamut of things that that covers.

Well, we did a similar project with the interstate. 15 years ago. It took him 15 years to build the thing thing. But anyway, we did a similar project. We had to cash the state out when we got done. Yes, that was that means is some project that you might want to do. You're not going to get to do.

Yes, that was SRF loans was about $43 million between water and sewer and it is was revenue offset. So we did have to increase our sewer and water rates to cover that and we are still paying for that, right?

Yep. but I'm just saying that a lot of those bonds are going to be paid off here.

But those are revenue generating bonds through water and sewer. They can't be paid. These can't be paid from water and sewer.

So they're just different. We tackled these big problems in the past. We cut back on other things that we have to do. That's all.

Sure. Yep. And that's an option.

And Teresa, what portion of your capital projects relate to the Gordon Drive Viaduct?

Well, I guess the Baker Creek culvert does in an indirect way, but we have within this project right here, the Viadoc, we have $9 million for storm sewer.

And so with that stormwater, I guess, fund, currently what do we have in that fund?

We are not an enterprise fund. We do not fund our projects with the stormwater. We do minimal transfer outs because it doesn't sustain itself. So an enterprise fund would be like a water and sewer fund that sustains itself, which is the intent, is that we can cover our stormwater expenses with the stormwater rates and not use property taxes.

And currently, prior to, you know, now, where were we going or where were we?

Well, we didn't cover any of the project. I mean, we may have covered about $500,000 of transfer out each year, and that's it.

You'd be doing property taxes. Yes.

So, I mean, we have years where we have $25 million worth of stormwater expenses coming up. So 29 and 30, both are $25 million years, which includes the culvert and the Viaduct expenses. So those are your biggest expenses that you're seeing here.

So really it comes down to either we increase here or we raise property taxes.

Right.

Yeah. Or deflect projects.

Yes.

And does that include like when we have situations like pipes busting underneath the streets and that's an emergency repair?

Yep, that's annual maintenance or emergency repair that we fund every year. So that's in that $15 to $20 million that I was telling you that we, that's the general maintenance for the city. So that doesn't give us a lot of capacity. So this is the recommended, so staff actually recommended option number two. And this was given to you as just an estimated, what the estimate of a property would be. These were properties we just looked at, commercial non-profit schools and different sized residential properties. And that was the annual increase that was provided to you in the memo in February. We tried to do our best to try to find some properties. There's always going to be those outliers that outliers that are hard to identify, but this was kind of the general consensus of what the annual increase looked like it would be, and that was option number two, which was 150% increase. So I just wanted to you to know that that that's initially what what staff recommended. So with our recommendation and option number two, we as a city would have still been the sixth lowest throughout the state. So at this point now, we're about third. We are the fourth largest city. So we're right where we should be or appears where we should be.

You know, it's amazing. Ankeny is at the high end. WHICH IS AMAZING BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE STORM SEWER PROBLEMS BECAUSE IT'S A NEW COMMUNITY. BUT THEY'RE EXPANDING. SO EITHER GOING TO DO PROPERTY TAXES TO EXPAND OR DO THIS TO EXPAND. BUT THAT'S AMAZING BECAUSE NORMALLY A NEW CITY NEVER MAKES THE TOP FIVE LIST IN ANYTHING. SO THAT'S KIND OF INCREDIBLE.

THEY MIGHT JUST BE SETTING SIDE MONEY FOR LATER. THEY'RE GROWING SO FAST.

Do you know, in looking at where our rate is applicable to other communities, do other communities apply a cap?

What do you mean, a cap? To the residents or?

To the residents and the commercial properties.

I don't know that, actually, off the top of my head. I know we do have a cap on some of our different properties, but I don't know that. I can get that information for you.

How you put a cap on, then you're discriminating on rates. I didn't think you could do that.

How do you do that? We do that for like farm. There's specific ones that we do it for.

Well, you can do it on farms because different class. Right. You're classing them, but you're not. Correct. Can't discriminate or somebody's bringing a lawsuit.

Right, yeah, so that's the only time which we do that. We have a lot of different calculations. We actually receive their code from the county, and that's then how it's determined. So we have found, in probably the last couple weeks, people calling that maybe what your property is coming over as isn't accurate. So we've worked with them to try to work with the county to make some adjustments to that. But that file is generated from the county. So if it's wrong with the county, it comes to us wrong. And sometimes people have never noticed it because the rate hasn't been high enough to really raise a red flag. But now people are starting to notice. And then we determine that our weighted factor is inaccurate or runoff factor is inaccurate.

typically outside of we have seen very few on our end that are problematic typically it's the classification of the property so so if properties have either a private detention pond or a public detention pond are they taxed in this is the rate the same

Well, they are. It comes over the same. We did have one this week that there is an appeal process that the city manager can hear and see your appeal, and we did go through that process and successfully was able to update some of these based on that appeal process. They were able to prove to us they have a large detention pond on a large property. They had a very small amount of property that was a building and or concrete. It was about a 15 and a half acre property, so we were able to make an exception for them. After the review, but there is an appeal process that you fill out and you provide for us a map and you know documentation So it is possible when we in the city manager does hear those and see those and then make adjustments as needed I've that's the only one that I've actually gotten an appeal on we've had a couple of people we have an assistance from process that if you qualify through the county for the the and disabled credit, then you automatically qualify for a credit through the city. And so we just take that for what, if the county has approved you, we utilize that to give you your credit, which is up to $120 a year. So we've had probably 10 of those, maybe, I would say. I don't know if it was here, but probably about 10 of those. I think in the past, it's always been available. It's not something new, but in the past, the dollar amount's been so low that people just have never ever even filled that out, but it's always been an option and we've had maybe 10 or so people fill those out. So and that is actually something that's approved by the county and so we don't really go through an approval process. It's a part of already part of legislation and then when it comes to us and they proved us that they've been approved through the county because they've done all those measures, then we just automatically move forward with the credit.

So I just have just one question. And maybe you don't even have this information. But like just for the average household, what would the total monthly utility bill increase or what would that increase have been? Not just stormwater, but total overall. And I'm just looking for that cumulative increase.

So, well, this is specifically for stormwater. So it's really hard because right now is a high watering time. So people are getting high bills because it's the summer. And so the stormwater actually increased, and it was like, I'll have to go back and look exactly, but $9.09 is what it increased up to in a month. And it was like $2.37 prior to that. So that's what the increase for just storm was. But I think you're seeing you have sewer increases that are occurring that are in place already that have been approved. and increased water usage. So across the board, there's been an additional increases that have occurred, not specifically just for storm. Yep.

I think mine went up, I think it went to like 70 bucks, but I got quite a bit of land.

That might be why.

Water's like 220. Your storm went up? Oh, okay. Your storm went up to $70, you think? A month? Seems like it went up quite a bit, but I anticipated it.

Okay. I can look into it for you.

Well, it's right. I'm not saying it's wrong.

So now we're asking for further council direction. I think there's been some discussion on what you would like to do moving forward. I've had conversations with the council on whether or not you want us to bring it back with a different increase. There was a request on whether or not there can be adjustments made to the bills or to... accounts, that is extremely difficult because it's a manual process. So it's 30,000 accounts that we have to manually go in and make adjustments to, and I'm not sure what that would look like. But we certainly can look at bringing back a different option if you want to change that option. It has to come back, it has to be approved three times to increase the, or to change the ordinance in place.

I would like you to look at two things. as long as you're asking, then we'll talk. But I'm more of a phased-in guy than I am Let's nail them type of guy. The other thing is I think the one thing I've processed is we, if you have a very large piece of ground, you get treated as the same as a guy that has a 5,000 square foot lot basically.

No, there is a different.

9,000 square feet or whatever.

So if you're 30,000 square feet or more, your factor is different. So it's a third of what the factor is if you're lower than that. So your factor is 7.5. is your factor if you're below the 30,000, but if you're above that, you're at 2.5. So you do get credit for that. It's just that you have a much larger square footage in the calculation.

But what if a guy's got 20 acres?

That is taken into account. Again, if it comes over to us as the correct property code, it is taken into account. So like the first 45,000 square foot is calculated at a runoff at 2.5, and then 395,000 square feet after that is calculated at 1, and then anything beyond that is calculated at 0.25.

So some of these people that have large tracts of grounds at least should be getting a hold of you to make sure it's coded right? Correct.

Yes. And that coding is all based on what the county codes it as. So if it's a single family, it's a duplex, what is it?

Okay. I just want to make sure they understand that.

Yep. So you should get credit for that.

Okay. You guys want any other questions for Teresa? Okay. We'll open it up to the public.

Do you want me to go through before we open it to the public? I thought you were done. That's okay.

I do want you to go through the line items of the bill, please. I'm going to do that really quickly.

On the back of your bill, there's an understanding your bill. This is kind of hard. I tried to blow it up as best I can, but it does describe to you exactly what each item on your bill is. The one thing that is not on this bill is the opt-out. That cost is not on the back of your statement yet because we pre-ordered that paper for a year. So we have an order that's out once this paper is gone. It will have that opt-in, that dollar that explains it, and I have an example of that too. But on the back of this, it does explain exactly what each one of the fees and how it's calculated. So I wanted to just bring it is on the back of everyone's bill. Of course, it's not your bill specifically, but it is a sample bill that you could correlate to your bill on the front. And this part here, that e-bill opt-out fee, a dollar, that is not on the back as understanding your bill, but it will be added the next time we order the paper. We order it in bulk for a year. So I just wanted to, and I just took this off of somebody's bill so you can see what it looks like. That's all I have.

That's great. Thank you.

Go ahead. My name is Mike Hendrickson. I'm the representative for the Sioux City Schools. Is this thing on?

It is.

Better? Okay. So my name is Mike Hendrickson. I'm a representative of the Sioux City Schools. We got our storm sewer bill. We were paying $4,330 a month for storm sewer. Now our bill went up to $16,000, a little over $16,300. That takes us to $195,000 a year when we're struggling already. There's gotta be something. And some of this is gonna, we're gonna have to, the school's just gonna have to make the museum pay back a little bit more share than what they normally do.

Could you repeat what you just said, please?

I said some of this has to be billed back. You don't need to speak. Some of this, a little bit of this gets billed back to the museum. And our deal is we're probably going to have to make the museum pay a little bit more for their share. Because right now we do not have in our budget $195,000 for storm sewer for this year.

So is that... Isolated to that building.

That's downtown or you know, this is all Yeah, so we went basically from 48,000 a year to 195,000 here and actually if you calculated out our our bill went up 305 percent And we're struggling we got the school is allocated to Three and a half million for capital improvements for their schools because our schools are falling apart especially in HVAC I was hired to Evaluate all our HVAC equipment went through all the buildings You know three of our high schools were built in 1970 what 72? East High still has the same air handling it same ventilation system it had in 72 So we're looking at spending you know, conservative money, bringing back the high schools, are we going to build new high schools?

Didn't you redo north and west? All the air handling's new on those within the last 10, 12 years, right?

20 years. I thought that when they had the ARPA funds, they did some of the... They did.

They did. They replaced the chillers at the middle school.

They did north high and west high.

Back in 2005. 2005. Had new rooftops on 2005 at West and North. Some of the COVID money went to putting air conditioning in the gyms at the high schools and then the three new chillers at the middle schools. But we're also looking at now spending a half a million dollars. We're going to have to replace the chiller at the East High. We got eight schools where the energy management system is no longer supported and outdated. If it fails, we're kinda screwed, the classroom's not gonna have heat. They're talking about, the last quote we got is 250,000 a school, upgrade the energy management system. And I know this might be a sore subject, but at some point here, the school's gonna have to spend a million dollars to replace the heating plant, heating and cooling plant at ESC. I KNOW AT SOME POINT THE DNR IS GOING TO MAKE US CAP THAT WELL AND STOP USING IT, WHICH IS GOING TO PUT US IN A BIND. ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

put me under. I'm Nancy Schulenberger. I'm back to revisit you. When I opened my customer service bill on August 8th, I could not believe the 300% increase in my stormwater bill after researching the public published explanation of that fee increase I couldn't believe how misleading the wording was and I have found that as I've contacted people throughout the city even today when I contacted my banker to make sure that my figures were right that I was going to present to you he said what 300 percent increase this is I can't believe this so this is still not part of the education. Since then, I found that increase even more believable for the two reasons that I will enumerate here. One is that your Sioux City stormwater program states, quote, to comply with federal regulations, the city of Sioux City is required by law to provide public education and involvement. and I have found that that certainly has not been the truth. Sioux City has not been educated about the fee increase or about where that considerable revenue, which obviously we need in a variety of ways, brought in will be spent. We've been paying runoff fees since 1990, and I have never seen itemization of the expenditures of those fees. excuse me, many Sioux Citians use automatic withdrawal. They still don't know that this is happening. And many of us have felt that we should be able to depend on the Sioux City Council to let us know when and why across the board changes are being made. Just today, as I say, when I called the banker about this 300 p.m. increase, even a financial person in town couldn't believe that it was happening. although I had actually contemplated going door to door, I asked my sister to go along with me, I don't feel it's my responsibility to uphold that federal regularization documented in your program. I repeat that item number two, 300% increase seems beyond the pale, and I appreciate the instructions that we have just been given in explanation of that. The July, by the way, increase of Des Moines for stormwater is 6%. And I know we can't compare necessarily to Des Moines, but that certainly is a rather different item. If I go to the grocery store today, and my husband didn't want me to say this, he says, well, they're not going to worry about that. But I think the public needs to know, if I go to the grocery store today to buy a $7 loaf of bread that I got last week, and it's $28, that's pretty off-putting. financially and i'm going to wonder about how that possibly happened the city demands that i pay four times my previous bill if we use the highest interest rate recorded and this is why i called my banker during the covid 19 which is concerning for all of us of 9.1 percent it would take 15 years and eleven months to get to what you want me to absorb in one month if we did at a three percent rate. And I should have known about the six percent that they contemplated. I could have included that. My in-town friends are incredulous when I tell them that I have for all these years been paying six hundred and seventy one percent more than they have because I live on an acreage. And my point there is that my impervious surface in my acreage is very minimal, and 50% of my acreage being native prairie. It's soaking up a lot of that runoff. To quote flucity.org, the stormwater program update Historically, when it rained on the prairie, the majority of rainfall soaked into the organic soils, and as soil surfaces are paved over or built upon the rainfall, pardon me, are built upon, the rainfall has few areas to infiltrate into the soil. That's part of my reason for my concern about why the acreage owners have to pay so much more. I've researched to learn that the fee will be utilized in part for CIP, Capital Improvement Program. I do have a comment. We have recently noticed, for example, that some of the Capital Improvement Program jobs that used to be done by the city are no longer. One of those is the ditch clean out along Memorial Drive and Stone Park Boulevard. That used to be done by the city. That has been handed over to the people who live there. Excuse me. How much of the stormwater fee will go directly to the maintenance and improvement of the pipes, manholes, and stormwater inlets in Sioux City? How much of the previous payments that we have made have gone directly to there. We would like to know if this stormwater fee is exactly that. A special concern is the fact that we have no indication of how much money this will take in. So if I calculate just the number of owner-occupied houses plus the number of businesses, you will see that you're going to take in about $218,000 a month. Add now all the people that are renters, 11,400 renters, and you're probably going to get in approximately over a quarter million. I'm sure that's a low number. One repeated question is, why did the stormwater fee need to quadruple our bills at one time? We've had some instruction about that. Your answer, however, in print is, quote, it allows the city to address immediate stormwater infrastructure needs and reduces the need for repeated annual increases, unquote. My questions then include, has the upkeep all along of the stormwater sewer system suddenly fallen into such hideous disrepair and back work? And how can you guarantee that this is a one-time increase when you will eventually not be on the council anymore? I don't think that you're all going to outlast me, but not necessarily the rest of us. To quote SiouxCity.org, the stormwater program update, quote, historically when it rained, the stormwater On the prairie, the majority of rainfall soaked into the organic rich soils. As soil surfaces are paved or built upon, and we know this, the rainfall has few areas to infiltrate. Again, I'm looking at acreage owners and agricultural owners in town because my pasture is about 50% native prairie, and that grass is soaking up a lot of the soil. stormwater runoff that otherwise might be. The residents who do not recognize the quadrupling of the runoff fees as problematic are perhaps forgetting about the 2,622 Sioux City businesses that will now have to pass their increased fees along to us. And as I hear about the school systems, Our taxes are going to have to go up in a relationship to what they're going to need to do to pay that. Thank you.

Nancy, first of all, the question that I was asking about the acreage is because of you and Mr. Protector sitting there. I didn't know if you guys had had taken advantage of that. And I don't know what the program is. That's why I was asking Theresa.

So I would suggest- And I did appreciate her saying that. And obviously I also, excuse me, Bob, for interrupting you. But obviously I also would hopefully qualify for the elderly credit as we look at this.

Anyway, that's why I was asking for the acreage, because I see some acreage owners, to make sure that you are asking that question, to make sure that you are qualifying for that. That's one of the reasons I wanted to ask that. Number two, just so everybody understands, what we collect in stormwater utility tax today comes nowhere close to the stormwater projects we do. It's coming out of your property taxes. I misunderstood the $300,000. Not anybody's fault but my own. I'm taking full responsibility for the vote I made. But one of the reasons I support it more than having it on your tax bill is, even though Mike doesn't want to hear it, we tax nonprofits, churches and hospitals and schools. with the stormwater tax that otherwise would fall just on property tax owners. Because they're not subject to property tax. Because they're not paying taxes. So that's one of the reasons I support it. I remember I was here when we did the first one and Mildonan was the CFO at the hospital and he told me that was ridiculous that they would have to pay that. But Hospitals and schools and all those things take a lot more fire trucks than other businesses do, and the only way you can get any kind of help with city projects is a utility tax like this, unfortunately. So anyway, we spend way more than we collect. With the Bacon Creek project coming on board, we're going to spend way more than we collect with this. Even at that, there's still going to be things that will have to be taxed. So that's why I'm We're spending it all, I can guarantee you, but we will have and make it available to the public the amount we collect, Teresa, and the amount we paid out last year and the projection of how that will be so that everybody has that available to them.

OK, thank you. I do want to say it is in the budget book every year to put the stormwater so I can provide that.

Somebody like me can read it.

Yep, absolutely. You can see the revenue that comes in and the expenses and and to answer your question. I'm 100% of what's collected goes into a special fund that will fund stormwater expenses only comes out.

Yep, appreciate that goes in separate. It doesn't get intermingled and it goes out the same way.

In the next five years we have over 70 million dollars in expenses for stormwater. So that's why the large increase Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks Nancy All right, thank you I live in the vicinity of the lady who just spoke, and he answered a lot of the questions, and I appreciate it. I'll look into the acreage thing. But I came here to complain, so I don't want to miss my opportunity to do that. I know Heidi's going to ask you for your name.

I'm so sorry to interrupt you. Could I have your name?

Yes, I'm Dan Elliott.

Thank you.

Yeah. I guess what I would say is we're like the anti-school or the anti-church over there on Memorial Drive because I don't really know what city services we're actually benefiting from on that road. I don't get any water services at all, right? I have an incredibly dangerous... Okay, how's this? Okay, okay. Well, you know, we have an incredibly dangerous ditch that My family maintains that I can't let my kids mow the front yard, at least most of it, because they might roll the thing into the ditch. In fact, I think that happened to somebody on our road years back. So I think if we're going to end up paying for this ditch, and we're paying the same types of fees people in town are, are paying for their much fancier stormwater treatment. It would be nice to get a little maintenance from the city on that. I was pretty curious about how it's, and perhaps it's a moot point now with the acreage discussion, but how it's determined, is it determined based what we pay on the total acres or is it based on like how much frontage space we have on the road?

Square footage.

OF THE ENTIRE PROPERTY?

I THINK SO, YES. I'M PRETTY SURE IT IS. IF YOU LOOK AT THAT CHART, IT GOES BY SQUARE POOTAGE OF YOUR PROPERTY.

I WOULD ASK AS A CITIZEN FOR YOU GUYS TO MAYBE THINK A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT HOW YOUR charging people in our part of town. Our properties are very weirdly shaped, and very little of our property is actually sloped towards the city road, Memorial Drive. The rest of that water is staying on our property, like was pointed out. and we maintain all that and take good care of it, and it's virgin soil, so it just soaks it right up super fast. So I guess that was why I came here to ask, was just perhaps some reconsideration of how some of these acreage properties are being built, and perhaps for some help, if we are going to be charged for a ditch, to get some help.

I believe that's why you have the appeal process, right, Mike? True. You bring those, your examples. They're special circumstances, that's

Okay, cool. Yeah, I didn't know that.

So if you've got your own retention pond and things like that, it does make a difference.

What about a creek that's dry? But I mean, it's very clear where the water's going. It's staying on our property.

It's just... Again, I don't know the field process, so...

Okay. And then, yeah, some help with our ditch to maintain it. We used to live in town and there was a lot of infrastructure to carry that water away, but now we just have a ditch that I maintain and... We'd love to get some help. All right, thanks. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm John Schulenberger, 4001 Prairie Vista Drive, Sioux City. I may be criticized a little bit for my brevity in this, but I just assume keep it as tight as possible. My subject is protest. The suggested increase of 300% or 400%, depending on how you use your math, and math not being considered, to me, the new fee is... four times greater than it was on the original basis. To me, the base is ludicrous and totally unjustified. And with that regard, I thank you. Thank you, John.

Good evening. I, too, will be brief. My name is Tina Hall. I live on Buckwalter Drive in Sioux City. And I also have an acreage. I second everything that Nancy Schulenberger said. I have the same concerns. And also, my property has 15 acres of native prairie that's never been tilled. So I have just a very small footprint property that's not permeable. My objections are the notice, the not getting notice, the amount of the increase. My income isn't changing any, and although my rate is going from $134 a quarter to almost $600 a quarter. So now my annual bill is going to be $1,600 more than it was before. And to be able to prepare on a monthly basis and such for things without the notice is problematic. Everything's going up. And even if you can say, well, I could afford to do it, It's unjust from my perspective. I will also visit with the staff person about whether or not I qualify for any of the acreage things, but thank you for listening, but I do object to the amount of the increase to me is relatively outrageous. Thanks for your time.

Thank you. Thanks, Tina.

I'll follow in the brevity part. I'm Doug Palmer, sixth Red Fox run in Sioux City, but I'm here to talk about Tegra Corporation, which is more commonly known as Big Sioux Terminal, and the Palmer Candy Company. So I'll be the commercial guy. Everybody's homeowner so far. So I've learned a lot today, but we've seen an increase, an increase, at Tegra of $57,500 today. And Palmer Candy, we've seen an increase of 16,300 per year. So this is a significant amount of money. I understand the purpose, and we'll be looking at maybe an appeal on part of it, because at Big Sioux, we maintain our own sewer system, and we actually have DNR stormwater permits to manage our water. So maybe there could be some consideration, but we'll go through that process. uh... my question would be is there a sunset on this or some sort of phase out because we talked about some significant nearby expenses but is this going to be a rate that lasts forever or after these significant the seventy million dollars is done will the rate drop back a little bit and um... also Gosh, I guess that's really all I had because you've explained so much, so I understand a lot better. But it is a significant opportunity cost for us. It's $76,000 that we don't get to use to do something else, new products, new services. You know, it really cuts into the bottom line. So thanks for your time.

Thanks, Doug. Doug, while you're walking away, I'll just say that with regard to your comments and all of the others, I think part of what's very helpful is to get Teresa's explanation, what we discussed during the budget cycle, but to take the practical applications and implications into effect, better understand them, and start visiting with Mike to try and define what the process is going to look like.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to stand before you. My name is Chris McGowan. I serve as the president of the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce. We're located at 101 Pierce Street in the heart of downtown Sioux City. Just wanted to share with the council that... We've received quite a few messages, inquiries, text messages, phone calls and emails in the very immediate past. There are a tremendous number of concerns about the amount as well as the time related to this very significant increase. I'm here today to remind each of you that we have a professional partnership and a relationship between the business community and our government, and we certainly will do everything that we can to help communicate with the business community some of what we've learned today. But if I could appeal to you and ask you very respectfully, to take the time to communicate this information in a comprehensive and clear way and slow the implementation. I know that there were several different proposals that were presented in terms of all at once or phased in, phased in over time. But any time that you have a 300% increase, we must reasonably expect people to recoil and to say, why, why now? And when they are very significant landowners or have very significant bills, are there ways that we can implement this over a period of time to allow them to properly budget and prepare for these kinds of expenses? Thank you.

Chris. Chris, I would... Show us what your recommendation was and the difference that would be. I know you had it up, but I just want to see that again. So basically, if we do yours, it basically doubles the rate, not quite.

Right.

Not quite double at this particular point in time. Right?

So ours was option number two. So we wanted you to do immediate option number two, which would be $5.68, which, yes, it would have been doubled.

It would have been doubled.

Well, a little over double, yeah. It was 150%. So you'd have 150% on top of your base.

Okay, it's going to be more than double.

Yep.

But you could do a graduated in to still get to your 568 like you could double and then.

Yep, I do want to note that option two doesn't cover everything, so it yeah, though we'll get to the same end. It still doesn't cover everything, so that's your give or take with them.

Question it's on phase. If we go to phase three.

The- Face, you mean option three?

Option three.

Yeah.

Which I think probably is the popular option in the room, including for me. Let's go back to the big ones that we have to do, the Bacon Creek project, because really it's about- You got to do two then. So option three does not cover- That's what I'm saying, option does not include that at all.

Or the master plan.

So if we went to three, then does it push it to- Property taxes. Property taxes, okay? So my question is, Does option three keep the nonprofits in this?

They're already in it.

That's what I'm saying. It's in?

They don't get it.

They are, but they only get a 30% increase. So the taxpayer will still bear the largest cost. And that does not include the nonprofits because they don't pay taxes.

Well, I know a double or one in the 150% increase is not. but it's a heck of a lot better than 300%.

I want to stay on option three then. So if that stays there, because you put it in there for a reason. How do we get to the stuff that we mandatory have to do? That's what's thrown in our lap. That's what's thrown in our lap. You guys know that, right? That's what was presented to this council. Here's the bills. Here's what we have to do.

Right now, option three was a step up from what we do right now. It'll actually cover some CIP. Right now, general fund, which is the property tax covered, covers all of the CIP. Typically, most of the CIP for... for stormwater. So that was the first kind of step. The second step was to get the current CIP and Bacon Creek, that's option two. Option three was covering everything, the master plan, Bacon Creek, and the current CIP. So the annual, the stormwater master plan, which is the master plan throughout the whole entire city, on top of the Bacon Creek and the current CIP. That's how we came with our options to try to stair step in, adding some of the CIP for each option. Then it was dependent on what councils comfort was on whether or not they what they wanted to fund with what the reason we recommended option 2 was because the Bacon Creek culvert is the largest expense and there's concern that it that it will. We won't be able to do other maintenance projects within that.

How long? How long would Bacon Creek hang around linger?

What's that statement is never going away.

I know that, but I'm saying is that if this expense could you carve out that project or not? Is that legal?

Well, that's kind of what this does. So what will happen when somebody asked, will the rates ever go down? What we do is we look at what we have for our requirement for our coverage, which is the 12 and 20 percent to cover our. And at that point, we would set rates based on that. So if we start to get too far beyond that, we have to lower rates to stay within where our fund policy is. We have to.

So just listen, this is never going away.

Well, I don't disagree. Let me tell you that.

I was here when we did it the first time. We did it for Perry Creek. It's not going away. There will always be storm projects. I think you have to be honest. It's not going away.

I don't disagree, but it was put in place for Perry Creek. We've had one increase in all of those years.

It's not going.

Well, no, but on the flip, but hey, but on the flip side, you can sunset things and force the future council to vote it back. I know that's the way it wasn't done in the past. I get it. It's all been done, been there. Everybody's done it. But I'm just saying is that if you if you sunsetted something and said, OK, if we carve out the 40 million of it and if it's a six year plan, then make the council in six years renew it.

So this actually would be in place. So the expenses is in 29. It's a 10 year. So it'd be 39 would be your year or 40 somewhere around there would be a year.

Sunset the whole thing. You're still going to need some water.

That's why I just was saying the specific project. That's why I was trying to carve. I'm just brainstorming. I'm just saying is that that's that's the monster in the room that we have to do, right?

Yeah, and I guess I don't know between now and then what could come up that would require those expenses. So that's what's difficult to share today because I don't I don't know.

This will also help us have something so when we do have those when those issues those issues come up in those emergencies that we are dealing with and I'm not making promises, but the hope is that if you know we have people that don't have ditches that and items like that that are not currently being maintained.

That's where this monies would come from is to do those types of things that we currently don't have the funding to do.

I would, here's where I would be. Everybody can offer their own opinion. I would like, I mean, I think we have to double it today. I know you don't want to hear that, but I think you have to double it, which is better than four times. And then I would like you to phase it in to get to the same dollar amount in year 2031, so everybody knows what to budget for, to get to the same dollar amount, show those increases over five years, And it obviously won't necessarily be 568. At your 2031, right? And but at least that gives everybody, especially business people and farmers. The chance to budget for that.

So you want it to cover what option two covers?

Yes, OK.

I just wanna make sure I got that right.

And at least then people have something to look at as to what it would be each year.

So phased in option two, I actually, we have that. It will, I mean, that's what it will do. It will be immediately, you'll see where it phases in initially over time. Right there. I can go back.

So you're going to be seven?

Well, you're going to look at option two, immediate and annual.

Yeah, but you're only doing 306 the first year. I'm talking about doing double the first year.

Oh, double the first year. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying.

I'm sorry. Then look at it.

Okay. If I can do that.

Because you may not be 909 when you get done.

Right. You're right. If you do initially up front. Yep. Right. I can do that. Yep. We'll just change it.

Teresa, how many pennies on the property tax do you got to do to make up the same difference? I'm just asking.

Oh. I'm trying to think of what our debt service would be. You're probably looking at... Well, it's not pennies, it's dollars.

That's what I'm asking. Is it bucks, pennies, or dollars? It's what percentage, right?

Yeah. So debt service, you're probably looking at... eight dollars for I mean it would go up significantly because we're looking at a two to three million dollar debt service each year once you get out that far not initially but in the three to four years so boy you're on a hundred thousand dollar property you're looking at seven or eight dollars and it's not shared equally right for those I get that yeah I'm just asking I mean put it out for everybody here this is those are our options I mean And actually, the way it is now, they actually have less of an impact, and nobody wants to hear that, because everybody else does share in the expense. Otherwise, 100% of the taxes are to the tax-paying entities.

So, I mean... What are your ideas so that you can put it out there so we can have people have this?

So right now I have everything that's covered in option two in the first year doing 100% increase, but phased in to get what we need within five years.

That's what I'd like to see.

Okay.

I think the other option is I'd like to see phase three. I'm not trying to make more work for you, but let's just make it transparent. Option three, which does include everything, and whatever the difference is, what is that going to cost in property taxes if it is non-spread? And I'm not advocating that's property taxes, but if it's a stupid number, it's a stupid number, but

You said option three with everything?

Yeah, roll it all up. But no, you'll see the difference. Option three is not going to have everything. So the stuff that's left out, what would we have to raise the property taxes?

What's left out is going to need to get...

It's going to keep the rates then down. It's going to keep the rates down the lowest for everybody. And then, you know, to make up the difference in that, is it a buck or two? And then... Then we make that decision as a community.

And we're going to have a discussion tomorrow morning about our 2% cap on top of that. So our flexibility on that is limited.

But you don't know until we see the math. And the math might be stupid, but let's look at it.

Okay, I can bring both those back. Do you want me to provide a memo, come back to council? What's your preference?

We'll come back as soon as you have it at a council meeting. Let's get it out to the public ahead of time.

Yep, I can do that.

Just want to briefly add again, Chris McGowan, Siouxland Chamber of Commerce, 101 Pierce St. Certainly recognize that this is a difficult issue. But we want to give credit where credit is due and say thank you for listening. Thank you for asking Teresa Fitch in her capacity with finances for the city to take another look at this and please know that we stand prepared to facilitate communication with the community and in particular the business community when these things arise again in the future. Thank you so much for listening.

And I think you should look at the Chamber of Commerce because I think when they remodeled, they put a lot more concrete. I don't think we're charging them nearly enough, so let's make sure they're... All part of a concerted effort to beautify downtown.

Okay.

All right. Thank you for coming. Appreciate your comments. Scott, yes, Scott. Yes, Scott. Come on up. Come on up.

My name is Scott Eldridge, E-L-D-R-I-D-G-E. My home address is 2827 Memorial Drive. And my businesses are at 2501 Hamilton Boulevard and 3224 Gordon Drive. Firstly, I want to thank you council members. I absolutely could not do the job you guys do. I'd go crazy. But I prepared this speech, five pages, And I went over it 15 times a day, so I've got to say something. But I'm going to change it quite a bit because a lot has been said. One of the things, and I guess Chris is going now, but he's still here. Oh, yes, okay. One of the things I would say as a member of the Chamber of Commerce and as a local businessman, I have been approached seven times over the last two years to sell my businesses, and my properties. Four of the seven were equity firms, private equity firms, and all seven of them were from outside Sioux City. The reason I say that is it's getting harder and harder for a local businessman or local businesswoman to run a business in Sioux City. I'm not saying that these aren't justified cost increases. I am concerned as a trained accountant that it came up all of a sudden like it seemed to, that this wasn't addressed five years ago or ten years ago. I don't know if it was a department head, if it was a city engineer, if it was a city council. I don't know. But between my businesses and my home out on Memorial Drive where I don't have Fire hydrants. I don't have city water. I don't have city sewer. We do have good fire department and police coverage, so I have absolutely no complaints there. But we don't have a lot of the things the city has. And like Nancy said, my property is pasture. But between my businesses and my personal property on Memorial Drive, it's almost $8,400 a year. That might not sound like a lot to a lot of people, but to a small business person it is. And I kind of have gotten into this point where maybe it's time for a 74-year-old grumpy old man to face the fact that small business people can't afford to do business in Sioux City. And I don't mean that as a threat, and I don't mean that as an insult to any of you. Several of you I know quite well and appreciate you. And you know I appreciate you. But this kind of stuff, hitting a businessman as hard as it hits me, literally I could tell you exactly how much more I'm going to have to charge per tire just to cover this. And there's a point where maybe somebody else better be doing it than me because I'm running out of gas. But I do appreciate you listening. Thank you. Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Scott. Good to see you.

Hello. My name is Kevin Small. I own properties at 2018 Indian Hills, 3650 Glen Oaks, and 2210 U.S. Business 75. I'd like to talk about 2210 U.S. Business 75. We figured out our square footage. We have over 40% pervious soil. International Building Code says you have to have 32%. Where I'm going with this is it seems like you're punishing businesses for having hard service. When in order you have to have a business, you have to have hard service. If you want to retain business in Sioux City, you're going to have to do something about this storm water. And And I think people really need to know when this is going to sunset. So whenever, which, uh, when you pick or don't pick, we need to know if it's going to, we're going to have to budget this stuff for the next three years, four years, five years or what. Uh, I like Sioux city. I've been here my whole life. And I just said last time when I was, you weren't here, Bob. Uh, uh, I do probably 80% of my business outside of Sioux City. And I'd rather do most of my business in Sioux City, but if we go through with this, we're shooting ourselves in the foot. And I just hope you, I hope, I plead with you to think about it and hopefully you do the right thing because As a business person, we can't mark up our product 300%. Mr. Bertrand can't mark up his house 300%. I can't do it. I can't raise my leases. And I got leases out there that are long-term. And I can't come up to them and say, hey, we want 300% more. So... I hope that you see where we're going with this too. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.

Brett Watchorn, Ever Present Thorn. Once again, this whole thing, I've been listening. I haven't been able to make it, but today I forced myself because this is ridiculous. Every time these increases come up, there is no end date. This nice man said the same thing I was thinking. When will it end? When will they go back? What will they be rolled back to? The answer with government normally is never. So set a definitive end date. That'll help a lot with any case you decide to present to the people. Beyond that, the same thing for the property tax. Any property tax increase should be set with a definitive end date. If you can't give that, don't do it. And then thank you, Bob, I will say, for pointing out the actual problem here. We are clearly spending more than we take in. For a business, that wouldn't work. Why does it work for a city? It's insane. We need a rebalancing to get down to a point that we can actually afford within what we already take in. All this money that we're taking is extorted. 100%. What happens if someone doesn't want water service at their house? It gets condemned. The city takes it. What happens if somebody doesn't pay their taxes? They go to jail. It's extortion, and you need to remember that overall. Thank you.

Thanks, Brett.

Can I ask one question regarding... You've got to come to the microphone, Nan. Back up. Sorry. You can come back up.

Hi, I'm Karen Quirk, and I live out by Stone Park next to my sister Nancy Schulenberger. And I want to say that I agree with Kevin. It's hard to run a business in Sioux City. I don't do it, but I see a lot of business owners that have. My brother was one of them, and Jeff worked at that business too, Jeff Olson, my brother-in-law. And I think this is going to be a real hardship on businesses. It's going to be a hardship on people that own acreages. I know a lot of them. Tina, Nancy, myself. Even at 150%. Because it hits us, those of us that have more property. And I know you're making compensation. to lower it right now. But wow, that hits us hard. Those that pay $2.98, $0.89, whatever the lower fee is, I understand that 300% didn't bother them. They said, oh, well, it's only $9. What's that mean? Well, it's not $9 for us. $70 for us, or for some of us, $140 a month for us. Or the schools, obviously, almost $200,000 a year for them. It's hard to run a business, obviously. We don't have all those lovely Yonkers. We used to have Fantels. We used to have Martins. We have wonderful places to shop. Where do we go? Omaha, Sioux Falls, other places. And we shop online now. So I'm just saying, the bigger people that pay higher rates are going to be hurt. And it's going to be the large property owners, acreage, that type of thing, and it's going to be businesses. It's going to hurt this town, and pretty soon properties won't be worth things like people that say acreages aren't going to be worth things when you go to sell them. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

No. I'm sorry. I have one quick question.

I'm very fortunate to have received this brochure from Theresa.

And I would like to know why we jump in auction option two to option three without a 100% increase. And I don't know if you can answer that or not.

Do what now?

Well, option two is 150. Option three goes down to 30. And I wondered why that 100 wasn't.

That's what we're going to start with is 100 to start is what I asked for.

We arrived at those to try to cover certain CIP projects. That's how we arrived at the 30%, the 150, and the 300 to actually cover certain items listed in the CIP.

So the 100% did not cover the, couldn't cover the Bacon Creek.

But that's what I asked her to do, Nancy. So when she does it, she'll get it to everybody. But that's what we're going to start with at least. Thank you.

I didn't know if I understood that correctly from you.

So he's going to start with 100% and then gradually into knowing the fifth year that it will cover the Bacon Creek, the option two. Okay. Thank you very much.

Nancy and all, we're going to do a much better job of communicating the issues and the substance of the reasoning.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Andy and Dave. Yeah.

Okay.

My name is Don Van Rookle. I got a question. You're going to charge the church's money too? They've always been paying it. But you're going to double their... My water bill and my building in my jolly time went from $9 to $75. So now I'm paying in my house, I'm paying double. But my problem is I built that building 40 years ago. There's a drainage ditch there, and I'm surprised Jolly Time ain't here asking that question. What are they going to pay? That drainage ditch by my building all the way down to the dike river has never been cleaned, touched, or anything. There are more fallen trees in that ditch. If we ever got a six-inch rain, Jolly Time and I am going to be drowning because there's no drainage. We're paying extra now.

Where's your property on flood?

4201 41st Street.

It's where they did the new street by.

Yeah, and when they did the new street, they pulled the trees out and dumped him in the ditch. Yeah, I wish somebody would look at it. It's terrible. Might get it and if we ever had a fire. I don't know how you're ever going to put it out.

Thank you, thank you. Anyone else? Okay, council concerns. Mr. Bertrand.

You know what? It's been a good meeting, and let's have a good week.

Craig. Just very quickly, a recognition of the 25th anniversary of 9-11 is this week, and just wanted to recognize that.

Ike.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. You know, I've said this before and I'll say it again. I really appreciate our citizens coming out and engaging with us. You know, I, like Bob, you know, I will take responsibility for this. And, you know, one of the things that we've learned in this is, you know, there are some blind spots for us. And we're thankful that, you know, we get those. And sometimes it's later than it should be. But we always appreciate, at least I know when I ran I ran on the fact that I would be responsive to our citizens. Again, thank you for engaging in us. We're going to always try to get it right so that we can be an effective and efficient city and do the things that we need to do so that Sioux City is a great place to live.

I'd like to reiterate, we had pool closings are even worse than stormwater attack. We had a meeting with pool closings last week, and the thing about Sioux City even today is that the citizens are still very civil, and I appreciate you being very civil, and I appreciate it. We didn't get to talk the other night about the people there, but they were very civil, and that doesn't happen very often in government anymore, so thank you for the way you conducted yourselves today in an area that you were emotional about and we understand. So thank you. And with that, I'll move we adjourn. Second.

Rayford.

Aye.

Scott.