Board of Aldermen - workshop

Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Hunter.

Alright, we are Facebook Live for our work session that is in preparation for our recess meeting of July the 21st. It's coming Tuesday. So, I will call the work session to order and our first We'll order of business here is a presentation by Matt Dowell of the Triangle Regional Airport. And he's going to give us, it's in your package so that information is available. I don't think we've talked about it or alluded to it. But he's going to give us a presentation and hopefully a little bit of an update on the upcoming ribbon cutting. How about that?

Yes, thank you so much for having me. Absolutely appreciate y'all taking the time. Obviously with me, Frank Childs, y'all's representative on our authority board. John Kroll, our attorney, Merrill with the league. So yes, surrounded by- Wait a minute, time out.

The attorney is here? Why is the attorney here?

So he helps us draft all of our resolutions, right? Okay, all right. Just checking. Thank you. Yes, so I've been very supportive. Thankfully, we have him as the expertise on the legal side when we ask for resolutions. But I did want to give you all an update. Obviously, we've had a year of service with American Airlines. We're really excited about that. One of the other great things I wanted to mention was that we had Purchased the land that you all supported us for. So the last time I was here, 109 acres of land for development sites, we were able to actually purchase that with your support. So very thankful for that. Couldn't have happened without that quick support to be able to compete with the private sector to have that land acquired. Since that time, obviously air service has been going on and we've had seen a need for support of air service basically due to, for their second year, due to the spike in fuel costs. So what we're asking for today and part of your resolution and support letters is to help us secure our agreement for the second year of service with American Airlines. They've been running around 70% their first year of service. We've seen year over year growth the second year. So in May and June have been into 80%. So that's really good. But we are asking for 60%, which is a participation of 20% of the 300,000 that we're trying to raise to secure American Airlines service for the second year. If they need the funds, just like the first year, we had right around 1.25 million that they could use as they were getting established. This is for the second year establishment period.

And we have seen, well, give us the trend line, please, for their success rate, let's say, since they initiated the service.

Sure. So they started back in May. They were right around 60%, started getting into 70% later in the year for 26, and then this summer is really when we've started seeing them get up to the 80% month-over-month growth, so 10% higher than last year.

Okay, and what's the break-even?

So break even is gonna be in the higher 80 percentile is normally what we see. And right now they're also adjusting the prices as we've seen fuel costs, especially aviation fuel, has doubled. They pre-sell their tickets, so they are having to make up some ground there by raising fares. when those prices go up, but it's an adjustment period right now.

Okay, and so this is a May to May to May?

Correct, if we can. Yes, for their second year of service.

And do we anticipate any reason for us to be supportive of a third year?

You know, normally as far as air service development goes, it's a two-year process. It's sort of the maximum that we're allowed to give waivers, and after that it's normally sink or swim and up to them to break even on their own.

Okay, I would have expected that. I didn't know if there was any language that said that specifically.

It's really DOT. It's what we're allowed to do as an airport to, right now, we waive fees, for example. That's what we can do. We can help market the service. And really, that's just for the first two years of getting established. That's DOTs.

And I think you've come to, we're the last group you've been able to come to.

Yeah, obviously we would come first. It really depends on everyone's schedule, right? So, yeah, we've been trying to get on everyone's calendar, so that's correct. Everyone else is supported up to this point.

Good, good to know. Okay, any questions of Matt? Because I still want you to tell us about your ribbon cutting, but any questions regarding the additional funding support? Alright, would you tell us about your ribbon cutting and your jetway and all that sort of business?

Thank you, yes. So we've been trying to expand the terminal to meet some of the demands, the growth. We've been around 50 years, so obviously when the terminal was first created, we didn't have larger jets, we didn't have quite as many passengers as ever coming since we've been growing with additional air service and Delta has been growing with us over the years. There was a need to be able to offer additional amenities, more space for everyone to accommodate the larger aircraft. So we've been able to add over 8,000 square feet to the terminal. We have more hold room space. We have a jet bridge. We have two escalators. We have a new elevator. So we're excited on the 24th to invite all of y'all to come to the ribbon cutting to see these great facilities. We're excited for passengers to start using them and the community to see what GTR has out at the airport that people get to use.

How much has been the investment over the last 10 years or so?

That's a really good question. So that particular project was a $12 million project just for adding the jet bridge, the escalators, elevator, and then adding room on the second floor. This year, we're adding another $10 million worth of improvements on all kinds of different things from the fuel farm to our FBO to our pavement to our lights. So a lot of it's spread out, but in the terminal specifically, it's finishing that $12 million project.

And the one that was named... Yes, Stuart Baines. That's right. That was several years ago. That was a large project. It was.

That was about a $6 million project.

So y'all have been very steady in getting good grants. We have. So we've been very fortunate. In fact, we are, what, the busiest? Third busiest in the state. Small commercial, yeah.

That's right. Yeah, so you've got Jackson, Goldport, and then GTR is third busiest in the state.

And I think that speaks very highly of the region and also of, obviously, your stewardship and... Mike's as well over the years.

We've got a great team, great board, and yes, we continue to invest where, you know, to meet that demand of a growing area.

Yeah. And is there a further expansion, runway expansion in your master plan, shall we say?

So that's one of the things we're looking at is to do another master plan. Now that we've acquired land, we have started to see the boundaries of the airport as we get aluminum plant on one side, steel plant on the other to try to do another master plan. We do have room for another runway, for example. Parallel or cross? This is going to be a parallel. Parallel, okay. Crosswind is what we had before we did some land swapping and stuff, but it allows for more maintenance to be done while continuing to keep the airport open. Yeah, well, north-south is the better choice in place.

Okay, all right, any questions? My aviator friend over here, any questions? No, no. Is that jet bridge going to be available for something other than the Delta American flights, for example, an athletic team that comes in from? So it'll be still available for those?

Yeah, so it all depends on timing, right? So it's really going to be first come, first serve with those. But yeah, we're hoping that American, Delta, and then some sports teams, if they need it, can actually use it as well.

Okay. Well, that'd be good and like a good first impression. That's right.

Exactly. Okay.

All right. Cool. Anything? Anybody? Well, that was painless. Thank you, Matt. I appreciate you being here. Guys, I appreciate what you do to support the airport. So thank you. All right. Okay, we move to our agenda and we have two sets of minutes. Mr. Huskisson, you're all good with those? Henry, you good? We're letting you room with your rooms. So okay, consent for those two? All right, I've got, I know, four employee introductions that I will make. Anybody have anything they want highlighted under comments for any reasons? No? Okay. And we'll see what happens between now and Tuesday night. There may be other things to talk about. Public appearances, we have a gentleman who is wanting to, Mr. Banks, Jermaine Banks, has a request for a discussion around transparency around crypto-Bitcoin mining. potential investors and impact. So that topic will be probably with us for a bit yet. Mr. Pokop's, or Alderman Pokop, we'll do it formally like this. His town hall was very interesting and I think you had a good number of comments on that and Chris and Stephen Kackelman made great presentations. We need to go on a road show with that presentation in other locations. We have to figure out another audience to go to. Then public hearings, we have a second public hearing on amending the rental housing section. I have not heard from anybody particularly about it. Has anybody else around the table heard from anybody about it?

Airbnb emailed me. Well, yes, they did. I wanted to see if they could help with drafting our...

Yes, we did have a, but local. No. Put it local or investor, that sort of thing. Okay. Well, this will be our second public hearing and possible consideration. I know, and I thought the vice mayor was going to be here, I know that he had asked about increasing the rates. And so I don't want to ignore that request, but I do want to see, does anybody have a desire to go differently in terms of the numbers? Right now it's a $15 registration, and that's annual. So I thought that was a fairly reasonable way to just set up a registry.

For what we do. For what we do. I think it's appropriate. Yeah.

Okay. So any feelings otherwise? Because I can draft something that gives an alternative. You want something with a higher rate? All right, do you want me to take what he had sent me about an opportunity? All right, we can do that. Let me make myself a note here. And then public hearing for amending several sections of the UDC. Daniel, would you come provide your summary a little bit, please, sir?

This is kind of one of the standard updates that we do from time to time. This particular one has 20 proposed amendments in four different categories. There's four corrective changes. This is just correcting stuff that's already in the code. There are 12 updates to existing requirements. Some of the stuff's pretty minor stuff, like adding a graph and kind of explaining fence height, fence location, that sort of thing. And then updating the technical codes, there's only one of those, and that's just changing the permit period for all permits to one year instead of having different types of permits at different expiration dates. And then three new requirements, one relating to lighting in the form-based district on the sidewalk, just making sure new buildings that are commercial have some sort of light source going down on the sidewalk to make it a little brighter. establishing underground utility requirements for all new developments, any development that triggers site plan approval, and then adding standards for the temporary 5G

uh antennas uh that come with these festivals instead of doing the cows like they've done in the past the new thing is to put a temporary 5g thing on hold that they take down at the end of the event okay all right any questions about any of that we'll this will be the first one so we'll have a second one and we'll make it some feedback particularly on the underground electrical so All right. Thank you, sir. And then next, the under board business is the resolution to extend the additional funding to GTR for the air service for the $60,000 mark. And that will be in the next year's budget. So can we get consent on that one? We've got to wait. You're going to wait? All right.

Okay. Well, I tried.

All right. under airport we have renewing the general liability and hangar keepers coverage for the airport consent for that okay and then five board members they're going to go down to biloxi i believe alderman brooks is going to is going to go down there with them i'm going to go down there with them okay good keep straight that's it for that one travel for those guys And then the final plan approval. Daniel, would you just possibly Edward, share some of that.

So the minor subdivision is taking a slot three of the North Star development and then carving out a little section for a lift station.

Yeah, it's the Jersey Creek lift station.

The lift station plus the associated easements to access and work on.

right um and that's much better for us just from the that service is the north star park and also just picking up a good piece of the tab associated with that lift station so um and this is just it's a rehab we're rehabbing that lift station just moving it just moving it we're rehabbing as well we're upsizing it and rehabbing what else

That's primarily it. Upsizing it for more capacity and then moving it to the east about 500 feet or so.

To the east of where it's currently located on the westernmost side of the North Star Park. Right. So in Merrill that all fits with everything that works for the link and...

Correct. Edward. Managing all of that. Correct, yes. Edward had sent us all the layout and the proposed easements, and they're just temporary until we were to locate a tenant on that site, and then we would move that easement so that they could access it another way.

Yep, and OC is on board with it as well. So, can we consent for that one? All right, thank you. Engineering. Chris? I have wanted you to share with the board this particular program because I don't think we've ever heard of it before.

It's a new one. It's been out a few years. Nobody in the state of Mississippi has ever gotten one of these grants.

What if they've applied for it and just been denied?

I don't know as far as that goes. I just know nobody's been successful or I don't know my portion of it. So this is the Advanced Transportation Technology and Innovation Grant. So what this is looking at is trying to get folks to be proactive on putting new technology into your transportation system. We've talked to MSU with the smart bus system in Jeremiah. And then also with game day traffic, what we're looking at doing is trying to, so right now the game plan is to update our signals as we can afford. I can feel Mike smiling over here. So instead of that, what this would be able to do is the technology that we're putting on 182, we'd be able to use that same technology on all our major corridors at one time. So we'd be able to upgrade it at once. And then this would be where we'll be able to monitor everything from a central location. And then instead of getting random calls of, hey, this light didn't work or this didn't happen, we'd have a report every morning. Hey, this many people got left on red here. This is what happened. Then also with is the AI technology. So currently whenever you come up with timings for an intersection, you have to pay an engineering firm. They look at about two days worth of data and make decisions. This would be able to keep up with counts constantly and then be able to look at trends over time and be able to have timings for game day weekend, timings for this. is they'd be able to maybe flip those switches and then also you'd be able to keep up with your pedestrians, your cyclists. So pretty much you'd be collecting data constantly for all of your transportation is what it would be for.

SDAI stuff.

And so also with MSU, they were willing to look at dynamic parking or seeing some things. So we're going to try to see what we can fold into the grant for it. And then also, like I said, the transportation portion and also the fire piece for our preemption as well. So trying to look at response times and then have it holistically looked at.

And we put a number to this?

So to do all of our signals and have some money for that, and if it's looking for fire, it'll probably be five to six million is what they'll usually do grant-wise. So what we were looking at is kind of doing the ones that we would be doing for the next three years and using that money out of bond funds and use it for a match for us. Since we have to really apply really quick, and then hopefully the MSU piece of that as well would pull down some of it, but that's kind of what we were looking at to try to be able to jump. It's due July 27th, so right after this. Next week. So we just learned about it last week. We've talked to MDOT to kind of let them know where we're going because Highway 12 is their corridor, and so kind of looking at that. They're all for new technology and investment into their corridor as well, but we'll have to do some coordination for their corridor.

So essentially what you're talking about is flipping the bond funds that you had designated for signalization improvements on Highway 12 and some other spaces to the match for this grant which would allow you to cover a much larger area. The other thing is at some point are we going to have an in-house traffic? Are we pointed toward having an in-house traffic analyst position or fold that into Somebody else's job?

We've looked at that or tried to figure out how we do because when we get done with it, we'll have a very top-notch system, but you've got to be able to run it. Some places, Auburn outsources it, and so what they actually do is they have a company that does that constantly. So there's somebody that's watching it all the time. So that runs about $50,000 to $70,000 a year for that portion of it to actually operate it. Of course, that doesn't replace boots on the ground. Right. So we still need to have signal tags and having those type pieces. But that would be an option. Or hiring somebody in-house kind of depends on which way you want to go. But pretty much we have options as far as once we have the whole system to be able to do it. But operations, we do need to be thinking about how we need to handle that whenever we get there.

Because that's one of those things that it's easy to get swept up into the initial capital improvements cost.

If you can't run it, it doesn't do you good as far as that goes.

Anything else that we would need to be thinking about in terms of operations?

That's really the main thing, but then also the new technology, to give you an example, the radar. So everything, whenever you go to an intersection right now, if you look up the corner, the little white boxes, that's radar detection. What we're looking at going to is cameras. Radar is about $50,000 intersection. Camera is about $15,000 intersection. So what I'm saying is that we are doing a lot of new technology. The technology has come down in price. We're not making it where the maintenance side or the replacement, but it is like a computer. You get so often years out of it, you're going to have to be upgrading. Sure. That five to $6 million also includes it's not all just the technology portion. A lot of our intersections don't have pet facilities, and so that includes being able to do our pets as well. So what I'm saying is it's not, oh, I've got to do $6 million worth of work every 10 years. It's been much lower than that once we have Our pedestrian ramps aren't going to go away. They'll be fine from here on out. So it's kind of getting everything up to there, but we do need to kind of have a budget line item to be up there as we go. Okay.

Is that going to cut Jason or the electric department, electric division out of the loop of having to be participating in the signalization?

Well, it should make Jason's job easier as far as being reactive right now and not knowing about it. And so then also trying to figure out how to help on that piece of it. But it does not replace, you know, having electrical, having people to be able to fix things as they break.

Okay. All right. Just curious if we were cutting them out of the loop for some reason. Because I think he'd be delighted to be cut out of that one. I think he would.

Hopefully this, like I said, instead of being reactive and something happened, we'd be able to know about it and kind of schedule it better.

I'll move on. And that was what I was going to ask.

If that program has AI built into it, would there even be a need to outsource any of that?

So just like everything else, the AI pieces and parts of it are going through. We're only, say right now it's me and Steven. So you got two people and I'm sure y'all get calls and you pass them on to us.

No, I pass them to Mike Brooks. I know my role. She does. I do.

So that portion of it, you know, it is that we'll be able to do some of it, but having somebody that can go and do those type things. the fifty thousand dollars you know what a signal technician or somebody that does that so richland has it in-house because they do that completely in-house and they have one man that does nothing but signals but richland the amount of traffic that comes through is actually not correct so that would be perfectly fine to figure out but once you figure out the cost of the salary then you figure out purge all our other pieces and parts we need to run all those numbers and see what makes sense.

And if there's something else that person could be doing, because it's probably not a full-time position.

And we've talked internally about trying to see about, so Stephen as an example, he's gone to the Temple classes to work on the island, so you see that we've tried to help supplement Jason. Jason's trying to keep all the power on across all of town as well. So we've tried to be more independent and try to help out Jason and not put it all on Jason's shoulders with everything that he's got to do as well. But we definitely can look and figure out ways to do that and have the options and weigh them. Great.

Can we do consent for that one? Consent. All right.

Awesome. Clock ticking. It is. We've got to win the grant first.

Then consideration of accepting the public infrastructure of Country Club Estates. That has passed muster all the way around, so we can consent that one. And then last but not least, the overlaying of the asphalt term contract with Falcon. So consent for that one?

That's for Cornish? It says Walton Trail.

That's for the trail. Walton Trail. All right claims docket and then financials anything mr. Corbin that we need to know Okay, and then privilege licenses eventually I'll get used to that Fiscal year audit if you want to share about the audit either Joanna or Or what? Okay All right. Well, good. And have you talked to them about bringing the contract back for the next?

I've started the conversation, but I do not have an engagement letter yet.

All right. Well, no findings. It's great. Consent for that one. All right. Thank you. Fire Department, low quote for their laundry equipment. So I know y'all are excited about that. Okay.

So unless anybody thinks this is a super expensive washer dryer, which it is a super, it's not something I'd have in my house. It's used for their turnout gear. You might want it in your house. No, I probably don't. But it's for their turnout gear.

Yeah, very specialized. Okay. All right. Let's see. Nav, you're up there. Yes, ma'am. We have an inventory control tech. That's a replacement position.

That is Yes, ma'am.

Okay, consent for that one. And then the sanitation worker replacement also? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And then the new one is the landscape architect position within the engineering department. And Mr. Williams, I had asked that you kind of give the board an overview of your vision. Okay, so now you're on the hook. Okay, thank you.

So what this be doing is taking our engineering three position that Stephen Kackelman was in previous now that he's bumped up to associate city engineer. This will be changing that position over to the landscape architecture portion of it. What we're looking at is we do tons of work with the parks department. That would be one piece of it as far as that goes. I feel like we're really becoming known for our parks and our public spaces. So to continue that work, this will allow us to be able to do more of that design in-house on that. And then also as far as streetscape design, Main Street was designed by a landscape architect, those pieces of parks. Those type side, we're a city street business instead of a highway business. So landscape architect has a different skill set than engineers does. So this will compliment what we've got doing and then kind of broaden what we'll be able to do as a department. And then also we're looking for somebody with planning background as well. And so what we want to do is we've got a comprehensive plan that needs to come up before too long. And what we see as engineering department is we want to look at that, including transportation, including utilities, as well as the zoning. So it is a truly comprehensive plan, and that would be that piece of it as well.

And in my experience, it is not atypical to have a landscape architecture working in engineering firms.

No, it is not. So Ridgeland, for example, their public works department head is actually a landscape architect. They actually have about three, I think, on staff in the different departments on that one. So they are, on that piece of it, is standard on those.

So you're not an urban pioneer here?

No, it's not. But we're not on that piece on that one. We felt like we've got the heavy technical side. This will be able to soften us up a little bit better and then be able to kind of look holistically with all our different planning pieces out. So hopefully to look at the vision in the future and also to go on a springboard with what we've done on the public parks piece and keep those going even better than we've got. and try to do our new parks that we want to do as well, to try to have that in the house.

It gives Daniel a little relief too, because I think you've been pulling on Daniel for some of his landscape optics skills.

He has. So with our last grant that we did with the roundabout, all those conceptual designs, Daniel jumped in and helped us out on that one. um if you notice the small beds around town with our bump outs that we've done for safety daniel's helped us with those we're about to redo the hollywood roundabout in-house with chris mileage crews are helping us on the planning daniel did the planning plan for us so those type things so he's been doing a lot of double duty triple duty for us okay cool i'm gonna try to be able to repay this labor as well to help them out consent for that one all right wonderful thank you and in parks we have

I'm so excited. We've got the skate park. So this is the design-build contract. So can sit for that one? Can't wait for that. And that will be done, you think, by the end of the year still?

Yes. So we're looking at waiting for the students to come back in for the public input sessions. So those will probably be September, October-ish on there. They're booked up on construction right now. And they said that they didn't want to be in Mississippi in July, even if they weren't. So they said they'd come to us during the winter whenever everything's too frozen north of it. I think they're in Massachusetts right now.

Sounds like a wise group of people.

So they said that got us on the books for probably November, December, January-ish, depending on what we get done.

Okay, great. Thank you. Sanitation department. Finally, finally, guys, I believe we're ready to advertise for bids for the class one rubbish site for closure so that John Cunningham has prepared that and we can move forward with that one so we will hopefully get that one resolved and off of our plate here in the next twelve to eighteen months consent for that one? consent can I ask you a question do we have any idea what that is going to cost have they given us a more concrete number somewhere in the one and a half see what the bids are one and a half to two million dollar range and we do share that with the county

We should have that much money.

In that account. For our portion.

We have our share set aside.

Utilities, Edward, we have accepting the low bid for the water well. You want to give a little bit of background?

And this is the well number nine, which y'all remember was outlined in our overall evaluation of the need for a new well and then we have obviously another one coming up another 10 years from now so this will set us up for a lot of growth and planning y'all remember this is the second time we bid it the first time we did it uh the bids came back around 4.2 million dollars we went back modified some changes to the plans and also gave a little bit more flexibility on the construction timeline And so we got actually more bids this time, and they were much more favorable from a cost standpoint. So it is a little bit more than we initially anticipated, but I think that's the reality that we now live in with the cost of drilling wells. At least that's the common knowledge that we're seeing from all of our peers around and from our engineering team. So we're recommending to proceed with this with double S in the amount of $3.4 million.

OK. And we're looking for grants to support that. Congressman Guest has been very beneficial to us for some of our water and wastewater requests.

We have. Yes, ma'am. And we put in a request with all the guests through the STAG program for actually well over 10, which is the next one. Some of those grant projects are multiple years to go through the process and to get the funding. This is something that we want to go ahead with relatively quickly. It's not an emergency, but we want to get it done pretty soon. So that is kind of the strategy right now is to pursue funding for that next well with grant funding.

And this one you intend to fund? Through the bonds. Bonds, okay.

Which the STAG grant business kind of brings me. Where are we on the STAG grant that we got for the Bluefield area? That is moving along very... And it's a snail's pace obviously.

It is a snail's pace. And part of the reason why is the stack project is very, very new. And so this is one of the first ones that they've done. So we've kind of been charting the course with EPA as we've been going through it. I anticipate that we'll start to sign on that. William's actually here. We're about ready to start design. I think we're through with all of the initial preliminary work, which is quite a lot, because it's federal dollars. So I would anticipate, what would you say, timeline-wise, between this five?

It's really going to depend on getting an executed grant agreement from EPA. If you're at that stage, I think we're just waiting on maybe a few kind of technical things on the EPA side. The grant agreement should come to the city Hopefully within the next 30, 60 days. And once that's signed, we can execute and move forward.

Hopefully have the design done by, you know, third quarter, fourth quarter of this year, with construction starting shortly thereafter. It's a relatively simple project. It is. It is, which is kind of why I was surprised that it's just taken quite so long to get it going. The process has been the challenge in kind of navigating that. Okay.

All right.

William, were you here to, in support of John's, the Class 1 rubbish site issue at all? No, not at all. Okay, I didn't mean to ignore you, because I just took it that since John wasn't here, but I thought maybe you might have been. No, that's fine.

I was here for the well and water treatment plant.

Okay, all right. Thank you.

Yeah, so we're at SS Inc. I know it's the lowest, but is it the lowest and the best?

And you know why I'm asking that question, I think. William has done some reference checks on them. They've been in business around 10 years or so, drilling wells. They were also the low bid for the Clayton Village well, which is under construction now. So they, I think it was, they probably gave a competitive bid because they were already in the area. The other bids that we got were from Thompson Water Service. I think that we're recommending SS. This is not going to be the first rodeo. This is not us, but you've got my interest, Pete, because I had somebody ask me the other day, was Clayton Village underway with their water tower? Is the well going to be co-located with the water tower? think they're on the same side okay okay and so they they are actually moving forward we we know they're moving forward with their well okay same contractor they're under contract i don't know about the tank okay we've talked with double s and that's how we got the information about that is they shared that they were the load bidder and they're doing the work and i want to say that they're doing it this summer in the fall

Well, I just think it's wonderful because, you know, that will allow that area to grow in ways that have been impacting us as a part of that annex territory. So I'm delighted that it's there.

I don't know the details of the size of the well and the status of the tank, but I do know the double S is doing well.

Okay. Is Neil Schaefer overseeing the engineering associated with that? For Clayton Village? No. We do not report for Clayton Village.

Who's their engineer?

It's Cook-Coggin. Okay, I'm sorry. I apologize if it was Cook-Coggin. I'm just trying to get as much information as I can get. be excited about it um okay consent for the all right thank you sorry kind of lingered on that one for a while didn't we uh engineering services agreement with ag utilities and that is now at will gent they've changed their name is that correct they have they've merged with another company this is just a housekeeping to um to modify their engineering services agreement with their new company okay all right consent for that one all right thank you and last but not least uh task order number six amendment number one for the professional services for the SRF.

So test number six is to do the design for the water treatment plant that will actually serve well number nine. We're making good progress on that project. We've been in the design. I'd say we're pretty far along on it. The way that you want to sequence the well in the water treatment plant is you want to dig the well and understand the water quality first and then finalize your design based on what you actually receive out of that well. Because believe it or not, even wells in different parts of town, even from here or from the location where this well will be at the ops center to our nearest well, which is at Curry, there may be differences in the amount of different amount of iron, for example, that the water has there. So this is a test well? It'll do a test well and then we'll finalize the water treatment plant. So in other words, we have a little bit of time. We're proposing to apply for some drinking water state revolving loan funds, which is a low interest loan through the EPA for the water treatment plant. So the process is you have to actually submit your project and get it scored and rated. And if you rate high enough, you become eligible for that fund.

And you said there was a possibility for a loan forgiveness on that?

There is on some of the SRS, but we talked with the director of this funding. We aren't it? They don't feel like there will be much loan forgiveness for this round. Okay. Just thought I'd ask.

Yes, ma'am.

And the water treatment plant, this will be for well nine, but ten as well. Right. Because this one plant will be for both of the wells that we're drilling, correct?

It will. This... Yes, the building will be for both, but for this project we will probably only build one filter and the building that would accommodate both. So there will be some additional work that will need to be done when we build well 10, but it will be

easy compared to 15% of this. So they're going to be in close proximity to one another.

That's our current plan. Anticipated to be. Yes ma'am. Right. On the ops center, if you know this big triangle, so we'll have two wells on either end of them. They're separated by about 800 to 1,000 feet, which is acceptable. But again, that's, who knows, 10, 15 years down the road.

Or sooner. We can get some funding. Okay. All right. Consider that one. All right. Thank you so much. And that takes us to the end of our agenda, which is got lots of stuff going on. So thank you, everyone. Have a great weekend. And we have a tournament going on this weekend.

Colby Huffman's fundraiser tonight.

And Colby Huffman's fundraiser tonight, Rick. That's right. Starts at 5.

So have a wonderful weekend.