City Commission - Regular Meeting

turn on my microphone. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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.

All right, roll call.

Steadman. Here. Zundel. Here Erickson here Jorgensen here Jardovic here.

Alright, the next item on the agenda is the to approve the order of the agenda.

Motion to approve second.

We have a motion in a second. Any comments? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Opposed? Motion passes approval of the minutes from the August 3rd, 2026 Commission meeting. So moved.

Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Any other comments? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes. Item F, the building permits.

Commissioner President?

Yes.

I would like to recuse myself from voting on Item F, the building permits. All right.

A QUESTION ON THAT, MAYOR GERDAVIG. OKAY. I DO HAVE A, MY NAME APPEARS ON THE BUILDING REPORT LIST. I'M GETTING A DECK PUT ON. OKAY. JUST WANTED TO THROW THAT OUT THERE. EVERYBODY CAN SEE MY NAME. I'LL BE VOTING ON IT. ALL RIGHT.

I MOVE THE BUILDING PERMITS. I'LL SECOND.

Okay, we have a motion in a second. I was trying to determine if what she said, I didn't quite catch it all, but we're going to go with that being the motion in a second. Any other comments? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. All right, the consent agenda, items A through M. Motion to approve the consent agenda. We have a motion so good in a second. Any questions or comments? Alright, and I feel like I've asked this before, but do we need a roll call vote on this one? Alright. So we'll jump to a roll call vote.

Steadman yes bundle. Yes, Erickson, yes, Jorgensen, yes, yes.

Motion passes alright onto the regular agenda. Item number one public comment. I don't. I believe we do not have anybody signed up. Alright, and there are no public hearings, so we will jump to item number three. The second reading of a 26-5 Sandhills 9th edition. Aaron Nelson, director of planning and zoning.

Alright, good afternoon. So item three is a request for subdivision and zone change from agricultural to LI light industrial to accommodate industrial redevelopment of the southern portion of the Sandhills archery range, as well as some adjacent parcels of land. This item was presented at the August 3rd Commission meeting in full, at which time a public hearing was held and the first reading of the rezone ordinance was approved. There have been no changes to the proposal since the last meeting, and so the request of action tonight is to consider the second reading of the rezone ordinance, final approval, as well as final approval of the Sandhills 9th Edition subdivision plat and associated agreements. Happy to answer any questions you have for staff. Otherwise, that's the recommendation. All right. Anyone have any questions?

I'll make a motion to approve.

All right, we have a motion to approve. Second. And a second. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, we'll jump to a roll call vote.

Steadman? Yes. Zundel? Yes. Erickson?

Yes.

Jorgensen? Yes. Chertovich?

Yes. All right. Item number four, update regarding short-term rental licensing. Aaron Nelson, Director of Planning and Zoning.

All right. So item four is just a quick status update to the commission regarding the city's new short-term rental licensing system, which went into effect July 1st. This was a request by Commissioner Jorgensen. So I can report that as of today, the city has received 12 applications for short-term rental licenses. Of those 12, nine have now been issued. Two are currently in process, and one has been withdrawn. Also, I'd like to note, as noted in the staff report as well, staff is working to identify unlicensed rentals that are currently listed for rent in the city. Our intention would be to send out notification letters to those property owners, just notifying them of the rules and providing some instruction on how to apply. We'll be giving them 30 days to come in and make that application. So this is an informational item. No action is being requested, but happy to answer any questions or any follow-up discussion commissioners may have.

One quick question. So are we going to, on an ongoing basis, kind of do some searches to try to uncover new properties that have... Is that the plan?

Yeah, we certainly can. I mean, we'll see. Our intention was to give it one month, see how much voluntary compliance we get, and then kind of assess where we're at. So far, I think we've identified maybe a handful, five or so that are currently unlicensed. So to our knowledge, there's not terribly many out there. Our hope is that we can bring. But it probably changes on an ongoing basis.

So I mean, periodically, at least it might be.

Yep. So I think that's something we would do informally. Our intention is not to set a certain date every year and go after these folks, but more of an informal type process for sure.

Can you tell me what the cost was for the application?

$150 for the year for the year, yeah.

Sorry, no, no, no.

So the eight licenses have been issued there. The fire Department's been through there. They met all the criteria and stuff like that, correct? Yep, OK, thank you.

Mayor Druidovic, if I could. Aaron, can you remind us one more time, why are we having a separate licensing process for short-term rentals as opposed to long-term rentals?

Sure. So there's kind of a long history here, and I didn't include all that in the staff memo in terms of the history, but going back a couple of years, I think there was some discussion amongst the commission at the time some concerns regarding a lot of parties, different things going on at short-term rental properties. And so the intention or the direction from the commission at the time was to basically explore options for addressing the situation. Staff put together an initial memo, policy memo, that outlined a couple of options. One option being to kind of beef up some of our nuisance codes. forget the second option. The third option being kind of a full-fledged licensing apparatus to police it that way. The Commission ultimately decided on option three and directed staff to move forward on drafting a short-term rental ordinance as well as a licensing requirement. There was some back and forth between the Planning and Zoning Commission and City Commission. Ultimately, the City Commission established a short-term rental committee I might be mixing up the timeline a little bit there, but there were two commissioners and I think three staff on that committee held a couple of probably five different meetings open to the public to engage in some conversation. And so that's kind of how we ultimately got to the short-term rental ordinance. In terms of your question, in terms of why short-term rentals and not long-term rentals, I think we maybe touched on that a little bit. I'm looking at Commissioner Jorgensen because he was on the committee.

So part of it also was short-term rental. We won't collect any lodging tax. And then I think the other part was... So the police department knew, and a short-term rental, we wanted to make sure it was inspected. You know, there's fire codes. You know, you list six bedrooms and you don't have egress. Methods to make sure it was like a motel. So there was some regulation over it. And then, like, notifying the neighbors was a big part of it. We did send a questionnaire out, or had it online, and I don't remember how many responses we got. But... So now we know the address is we send the notices out to the surrounding, you know sides and back So and then rely on PD to if they know there's a law party if they ask the question is this the VRBO or Airbnb and it's not on the list We can address it Maybe one thing to add to I think part of the concern early on was kind of the more transient type nature of short-term rentals versus longer-term rentals there was some discussion on you know, is this a

really a commercial type activity taking place in residential neighborhoods. It's more kind of like a hotel, if you will, than a residence. The distinction is anything 30 days or longer is generally considered kind of long-term rental, and that's treated just like any owner occupancy as a residential use. So that was also a distinction that was made early on in terms of why we're focusing more on the short-term than the long-term.

Awesome. I appreciate it. I think the ordinance is really good. I think it could have been a little bit better, but I think it was really good. The only other question is for all the people that aren't listening but may listen in the future. Why would you, what would be an incentive for them to obtain the license? And just for example, could they note that on their listing that they are a licensed operating license? entity or you know yeah yeah along those lines.

I believe we have some language in there that they should have their license number posted on their advertisements but yeah some of the benefits are the public safety inspection that the fire department does so people that do rent from a licensed renter can know that they have gone through that safety inspection they've got all the you know, fire alarms, extinguishers, all that good stuff, exits noted. Thank you.

amount of people that are non-related so you couldn't have like four or five couples that were brothers sisters so we I think we looked at what five other towns that made ours awesome I mean all of them had a good piece yep so we tried to just just verbatim what other people were doing already no thank you thank you I appreciate it any other questions all right Thank you. Thank you.

Item number five, document ready site process for former city lagoon areas. Casey Sanders-Berglund. Good evening.

Do you have the mouse? The keyboard's under here. Just use that. Thanks. Okay. Tonight I'm bringing forward, or excuse me, Mayor Gervais, commissioners, today I'm bringing forward an agenda item regarding the former city of Lagoons and some potential next steps. As you're all aware that the city recently completed the growth area master plan. You know, as you probably read through that, part of that plan indicated that we should pursue something noted in there, a shovel-ready site, otherwise known as a handful of different names, but also a document-ready site, in which this area has been being decommissioned by the city staff in the last handful of years. In the last couple months, during a site visit with some site selectors and our partners over at the Greater Fargamore EDC, we had the opportunity to sit down with the mayor and kind of inquire a little bit more about what does the Site Ready program entail, and kind of hear one-on-one from a site selector that does this work across the nation and learn a little bit more about the advantages of not only this program but what potentially West Fargo could glean from it. Moving forward from that conversation, coming to tonight, kind of the purpose of bringing this to you is to allow the Commission to hear from one of our partners, Ryan, at the Greater Fargo-Moore at EDC, so he can share a little bit more about with you all and the public about what a document ready site really is and the intentions of kind of pursuing a certification, how West Fargo could benefit from that. Additionally, after we hear from Ryan, the purpose of this agenda item is to request a task order for more engineering. But before we get to that, I'm gonna welcome Ryan to the podium. And Emily, you might have to scroll for him.

Thank you, Casey. Mayor Jurdovich, members of the Commission, my name is Ryan Ossine. I'm Chief Business Development Officer with the Greater Fargo-Moorhead Economic Development Corporation and West Fargo resident for what it's worth. And so Casey stole a little bit of my thunder. I was going to distinguish a little bit, you know, what is a document ready site? What does that term mean? She did a good job covering, you know, the other names that these sometimes go by, certified sites, shovel ready sites. And so We've been developing this program with some of the site selection consultants that Casey mentioned, a gentleman named Phil Schneider, who's a former Deloitte consultant, member of the Site Selectors Guild, and so he had helped develop a certified site program for Xcel Energy, and we became aware of that relationship and you know, went down the path of developing a relationship with him to help us build this program and then not only build it, but then to certify the site. So that's a relationship that is kind of evolved and he's now with a global site selection firm that's called Global Location Strategies, which is based out of Greenville, South Carolina. So a globally recognized site selection firm. So we continue to grow our reach with that relationship as well. So started down this path four or five years ago to develop this program. And really what it's designed to do is um kind of eliminate a lot of the uncertainty that comes with uh the site selection world and and kind of compete on a uh at a global level uh in a way that maybe we hadn't been previously and so this was um to our knowledge the first um certified site program within the state of north dakota um and certainly within the region so um I'm happy to go into a little bit of what that entails in terms of the information and some of the engineering and technical reports that are gathered as part of that process. We work with our consultants to kind of develop a scoring system that's standardized. across the the site selection industry so when we provide them with information on a site they're looking at a lot of different criteria it's the you know everything from the zoning what are the surrounding uses how far is it from different you know transportation nodes from from intermodal logistics from interstate from rail All of that has a score with it. They look at, you know, the geotechnical studies, wetland delineation, ESA phase one, cultural assessment. And so all of that goes into this database and they have a process for scoring that. And the output of that is, you know, if we achieve a certain score on a site, it's a platinum level, gold level, silver level, and bronze level. That's not to say that a gold-level site is better than a bronze-level site. It's just that we have more information detailed and gathered and confirmed on that site. And so you might have an interested party come in and look at a bronze-level site that's got rail, and for them that might be more important than a gold-level site that doesn't have rail because they're operating in an environment where rail is critical. At the end of the day, this is about speed to market for site selectors and companies who are looking across a national marketplace or maybe an upper Midwest. And it's kind of like resumes. If you've got a job posting and you're trying to go from 20 resumes to three, site consultants and corporate decision makers are doing the same thing. They're going from 30 sites and they're trying to get down to three. and then they go do site visits at those three sites and so they're going to look at information like this and say this one has these uh requirements that we need it's got rail or they're going to look at it and say we have three sites that are or five sites that are equal and two of them aren't certified and so they may just get thrown out because there's more certain uncertainty with with those sites so it's all about being competitive it's about marketing the sites that we have through our different channels which is site selectors it's going to events and being able to have portfolio of sites that we can show and try to attract investment to the marketplace. And then I would say the one other area where it's really important is we get, I would say, between half a dozen and a dozen RFPs throughout the year, and there's usually one to two week, we're lucky if we get a two week turnaround on that, and that could be a value added ag processing, it could be a manufacturer, It, you know, crosses a lot of different industries. We never know what we're going to get. And so those condensed time frames, it's sometimes very onerous to go out and call a bunch of landowners and our friends at the city and call up the utilities and try to determine, you know, is there enough water at this, you know, site that we've never looked at before? You know, where's the nearest power supply? What's the maximum capacity they can get to? So that's also helped us in responding to those those quick turnarounds on those RFP's and be able to respond to those and again be competitive. So I'm happy to answer questions, talk more about the program, how we got here and how we work with our partners at the city level.

I'll start with a question that I personally know the answer to, but I think it's good to talk about. So, I mean, today, if you're at an event and you're talking about some of these sites across the area, I mean, there are, you know, document-ready sites in Fargo and Moorhead and Kindred, none in West Fargo, correct? That is correct, yes. So, from that perspective, we're kind of missing out on an opportunity in terms of... attracting some of those businesses that might be looking specifically for that kind of site and so forth, correct?

Yeah, I think when it comes to, again, the decision makers, whether they're site selection consultants or whether they're working directly for the corporation or business that's making the decision, They're looking for certainty. Again, there's great sites in West Fargo. There's great sites in the metro area. I would say we have a much cleaner product to present when we have a site that's certified and has all that information ready to go. And so, yeah, I mean, for us, there's been a real advantage to being able to have that and front face it and engage with site selectors and respond to RFPs. And so we have intelligence on some of the sites within West Fargo and more broadly in the metro. But there's there's a lot of things that change from month to month and year to year especially in a market that's this dynamic that's that's growing where there's new developments and so even even if we have a site that we knew something about a year ago or six months ago we've still got to go back to the city we've still got to go back to the landowners we've still got got to go back to the utility partners and verify that all that information is is accurate and correct and up to date and again We're happy to do that for the right client and the right project, but if we're competing just to stay on the list of that project's interest, then the time frames are very condensed for getting that information conveyed in a timely manner.

Okay.

Commissioner Jorgensen.

Which engineering firms put these together?

So there's a lot of Brown Intertech You know more engineering certainly I would be capable of doing that We The way the programs have worked so far is landowners. So all of the sites in our portfolio are privately owned. And so those landowners have gone out and commissioned those studies. And so I bought up Brown because I know that that was one of the firms that's been used by a previous company.

I guess the reason I'm asking about something that would be familiar with it versus us hiring more and having a learning curve, you know, and learning curves cost money. Do we have a budgetary number for this project?

Yes.

Thank you, Commissioner Jorgensen, for that question. Matt Prochniak is here from Moore Engineering that can also answer this, but Moore Engineering Has done this work is doing this work There's a couple sites that they're currently working on that are a thousand acres from my understanding for it They've got an environmental team for it. And then the other reason to bring them in particular in on this specific project is they designed the lagoons. They've also been part of helping the correspondence between us and the governmental units that have overseen the decommissioning of the lagoons. So they have a lot of inherent knowledge on this site in particular, including the adjacent project to the Drain 21 that's going on and just Anybody else, we would have quite a learning curve for them to just get up to speed on the site. So that's why it is more specific. And we do have an MSA with them for it. But yes, they have, they are in the business of doing this.

No, great comment. I just, I mean, good clarity. First it wasn't, they hadn't done one, so now it's clear. And then back to the budgetary question.

Matt gave me the thumbs up, so I...

Do we have an estimated dollar value that?

So I can tell you what an estimate is on the studies. Yeah, so I would say it's anywhere from, and these are general numbers and they change from year to year, $35,000 to $75,000 for all the studies. But this is certainly an environment where um you know anyone that's pursuing a document ready site can choose do they want to do the es esa phase one do they want to do the geotech do they want to do the wetland delineation all that's going to contribute to the the end score and so if you're looking at it saying you know i don't know that we want to bear the cost of those and we'll be certified at a bronze or silver level that's certainly the you know the option of the of the um owner of the site that's gonna be certified. And the goal to doing each of those steps is to remove a hurdle down the road that might be the reason somebody goes somewhere else. Yeah, and I would say with a site like the Lagoons, there's obviously, I think we know there's some extraordinary remediation and probably- There's some secrets buried in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mayor Drudabeg, can I ask a question? I know in our economic development committee meeting, someone had brought up a really good point or comment about just the comment of maybe engaging kind of the geotech side of things to start with, because we may get to that point first and then realize, okay, it's not packed enough or it's all going to have to get dug up and repacked or whatever else. Is that a consideration in doing this? Or if we are approving something like this, are we approving kind of the whole process start to finish?

If I could take that one, Commissioner Zundel. It was brought up at EDAC is from one of the members of EDAC that maybe the first step it would be to just let's just do the geotech work because we have brought in a half a million yards of fill from the FM Diversion Project. That is, there is some validity to doing that. However, there are some certain things that you can't do in the winter. The environmental portions of it, the wetland mitigation portion of it. So right now, to answer the other part of the question is are we approving the whole thing right now? We're not approving moving forward with anything. The action item for tonight would be to pursue a task order with Moore Engineering Tonight is more to get a little bit of a scope. Do we want to go full-blown? But what would it take to get platinum status? Do we want to just proceed with the with the geotech portion of it in discussions with brawn with this with a site this size? They're estimating is probably going to be close to 50 bores out there There is another site in Morehead where they've been doing roughly about 30 bores with the different things with that. And that alone, just the geotech from Braun to do that work was in the neighborhood of that 30 to $40,000. So we're expecting that we, again, we'd probably have 50 bores across the entirety of this site. So the total cost for it yet to be determined, but the number that Ryan gave for a site of this size, just in discussing with the geotech engineer with Braun, is that we're probably closer to the number that Ryan presented just to get the geotech portion of that done.

And just to clarify on that, we're talking specifically about the approximate 200 acres on the south side of 12th Avenue and the quarter section that has been decommissioned on the north side of 12th Avenue. Correct. Not any of the but there's three other cells that are in, two that are functioning and one I think in the decommissioning process. It's not those three cells, correct?

Correct, right now cell seven is the very north one. That's in the process of being decommissioned by Public Works. The other four, that quarter section as you stated, they have been decommissioned. The three cells, 8, 9, and 10 on the south side, as well as the quarter section square area.

So approximately 360 acres is the footprint that we're talking about.

Yep, exactly. And then the anticipation would be is what we find there is fairly assumed that would be also found in the new areas that we decommission into the east. The only thing would be is... whether a site selector is going to verify that or if they should trust that, but that's something that we can scale this at a later date. If we get through everything and we say, you know, that wasn't such a painful process, we should, after we get everything done there, depending on, I mean, by that time we might actually have a user or a developer that wants to pursue it and there's no need to continue on with the effort on those lagoons being decommissioned. But right now we are not scoping anything in those three. We just assume what we find here is there. But just kind of going back to your cost question, Commissioner Jorgensen, I would anticipate if we just did the geotech work, that probably is looking more in the neighborhoods of that $40,000 or so. But if we just do that and we don't move forward with the others, we will have to wait till next spring to do the wetland mitigation out there because you need to see current vegetative growth and we've got about a month, month and a half window to do that work as well, as well as the phase one ESA too. So some of it needs to happen.

What is the total timeline from start to finish if you were, because we know now you're talking about winter, so what is the timeline? Are we talking six months? Are we talking a year to get this done?

I would probably ask Matt to verify this, but obviously the data gathering would happen in the next couple months. Talking with Ron, they are into October with just their drilling equipment. Then they have to bring it in, analyze it, come out with their reports. And so with that, the other portion of it is sometimes the environmental takes some time. You have to send off notifications to different organizations, wait for their responses. Typically, there's 30 days for them to get back to us. If they haven't gotten back to us, we're able to assume that it's not. But when you start talking state historical preservation, that type of thing, they normally have a longer leash on a time frame. And as we found with the stockyards, the state historical portion of that site, just the The geotech work for that site, that actually took quite some time, a number of two years probably by the time that we got some agreement with them on what to do with it. So I would expect that if we were to begin, say we were coming forth with the task order at say the next commission meeting and that gets approved, I would expect that it would probably be closer to that nine month process. I would expect that we would be done by probably this time next year, we would be able to be in the pamphlet and that would be the goal.

I would think the geotech work would be very important. I think of the lake under Fargo that's over in the Meadow Ridge area. Look what that's doing now to those developments. How many years later? I would think the lagoon would be the first thing somebody would ask. Is that really stable for me to put this giant building on? So if you don't do that work up front, they're going to ask for it anyway.

Yeah, and I would just say we're not dealing with Greenfield Fields here that we're doing it. I mean, developers are going to hear former Lagoon. They are going to ask the questions.

This is pretty key to making it marketable.

Absolutely. In my opinion, I'm not a realtor, but in my opinion, if I'm anybody looking at this and I hear Lagoon, I want to know answers to a lot of the standard questions. So I think all the things that Ryan covered that they would be covering to get a document ready site, those are all the questions we're going to get. And as he stated, if we wait until we get the question and it says, okay, in about nine months from now, we should be able to nail this down for you, there's chances that we miss out on that opportunity.

Commissioner Zundel, did you have a question?

I was just going to say, I agree with Commissioner Steadman's comments and I know I tend to lean towards, I think we should just start with the geotechnical because I think that's going to answer a lot of questions and who knows, maybe getting that information would change what we're doing in the other lagoons that are still yet to be fully decommissioned. But to me, and maybe there's a way to phase this where we're not doing the whole thing, but if it's not stable to build on, this is kind of a big expensive piece to kind of being a block to something that could be built on top of it. And then I guess my other question would be, or comment, and maybe starting with the geotechnical is, I don't know why we wouldn't wait to have this assessment done on the entire parcel of land so that it is there just upfront. So I guess those would be my two things. I tend to lean to just let's start with the geotechnical because I do think this is going to be a way bigger price tag just on some of it alone. And I think that's going to be potentially one of the biggest barriers of if we're even able to do anything with this space at all.

Commissioner Jorgensen?

Yeah, I guess I'm still concerned about the cost. I'd like to see the cost in front of us. I mean, we're using taxpayer dollars here, and it can't be an open checkbook project. I mean, I understand we're gonna take steps, so if we do okay this tonight, would they be able to have,

We would be approving the cost in the next meeting, correct? Correct.

Tonight does not spend any money. This is more informational to inform the commissioners of what is a document-ready site. And the approval that we would be looking for tonight would just be to work with Moore Engineering to bring a task order forward. And the discussion that we've had tonight is exactly what we were looking for. Say the commission says, you know what? First things first, let's just do the geotech work. Then we would be working with Moore to just bring back a task order to coordinate that geotech work. And then after that's done, then we could proceed with something else. I would just say that likely it would be next spring by the time that we're proceeding with any kind of wetland mitigation or some of that environmental. Which that's, if we have time, we have time. I mean, we do have We do own the lagoons and it is our timeframe that we wanna work with. So whatever the commission is comfortable with is what staff would be directed to move forward with.

Okay, I'm more on board with that. Oh, sir.

Mr. Erickson. Mayor Geraghty, thank you. Dan, two questions, one substantive, one process. Are we looking at this because this is city-owned land, number one, which is probably a yes. And then would we do this same process for privately owned land for like a landowner? No, we wouldn't do that. That would be the landowner's responsibility. And I just ask, so the next time this comes up, then I just have a foundation to understand this.

So why we're here discussing the lagoons tonight is because it is city-owned property that is able to be developed and we want it to develop properly and we want basically the best end result for the use of the lagoons. So, and also, one of the reasons that we've kind of held off until this point is we were working through the growth area master plan that did have into it a section of what should we do with the lagoons. And with that growth area master plan, one of the action steps that was presented at the end of that document was move forward with basically getting the lagoon into, I think it stated a shovel ready site, but as they both mentioned, shovel ready also means certified ready, document ready. So we're all talking the same language. Basically what the Growth Area Master Plan said is move it forward to get the documents prepared to make it marketable. And so that is the ultimate goal here. It's not for us to determine exactly what's going to happen here, but it's basically for us to be able to say to potential development or developers or businesses, here's what we have and Say we were to just put it up for sale on the market, somebody that's looking to purchase it, they might not, say no just for a bid, they might not bid as much if they've got risk involved with the questions of the geotech portion of it. answering some of those questions, it might, it could lower their bid because of the results of what we find out of the geotech, but at least everything was open and everybody knew what they were getting into. Or it might solidify that, hey, we can build in a swamp with girders if we need to. We just need to make sure that we know exactly what we're getting into. Anytime you lower the level of risk on a potential It generally speaking allows the bidder to or the purchaser to be more comfortable with the dollars that they're spending towards the site. So that would be the first question.

Perfect. And so substance, right? The reason I ask is because it seems inevitable on that land you would have to take core samples. You'd have to take soil samples at any point in the future. whether the cost of that is bore by us as the landowner or the future developer, would we ever put that, or would we ever have the expectation that if a company comes in and wants to develop the land for whatever reason, that we would expect them to pay, or that would always be bore by us as the landowner?

Not necessarily. So let's just say that we wanted to go out and just list the land for sale for somebody to come in and build business on it. And we would be able to choose, you know, a national RFI request for, you know, intentions of what they would do and how they would develop the prop. Basically, you send it out into the ether and you say you have 10 different developers that come in and say, here's what I would do with it. Here's what I would do with it. and the city gets to pick, this is the best use based off of what we want to see on the property. Say that they were coming in and they just wanted to purchase the land, they could just come in, they could do whatever diligence that they wanted to make sure that they can build a building on it. This isn't done for everything. Another reason that this is basically come to light was the meeting that we had with the site selector with Ryan and the EDEC was there is that pamphlet that's in the packet. When they are out marketing all these document-ready sites in the Fargo-Moorhead area, there is nothing there that shows that West Fargo has anything for them. And one of the comments the mayor made is we should do something to be able to get on this list so that way we can take advantage of the marketing efforts of that agency to help promote West Fargo with it. And in doing so, all we're probably doing is answering a lot of the questions that they would have anyways. But let's just say Microsoft wanted to come and build a campus. They've got engineers, they can figure it out and do all the different things. I have no idea if the data center that's going up near Harwood found a document ready site, but as fast as that thing came and went up, I can't imagine there was two years of prep on that site. I have no idea, I'm just guessing with that.

Just to add my context from the meeting we had, I mean, to me, 360 acres is a major financial asset that we have. And ideally, we don't wanna own it, right? And there's an opportunity cost to continuing to sit on it. And so it's trying to get this site in as ready of a position as possible to where it can be in the market and be attractive to potential businesses that are looking to expand or potentially move to West Fargo. So I mean, I think it's a really good step from that perspective.

And I agree, and that's the reason I asked is, you know, understand the implications of not acting too. Taking the core sample seems inevitable in this space. Should we do it now or later?

And us answering that question probably arguably increases the value of it to the potential buyer. We might not recover it as a line item that we see, but it's very likely that we actually recover those costs in some future transaction with this property.

I agree. And only other thing? Process. Task order, when I see and hear task order, I assume that there are two, more than one vendor, and that task order that we're delivering to the vendors, there's a pool of vendors, and we're asking two or three vendors to give us quotes. Is that what we're doing with this task order, or we're just choosing more right out of the gates?

Right now, with the inherent knowledge that Moore has of the site, it's being proposed for tonight for the action to work with Moore Engineering to provide us with a task order to do this for us. The commission can choose to go through an RFP process where we would basically advertise it and let others bid on it. Not that somebody couldn't come in and lowball it or whatever that they would want to do to probably do the work. But they're going to have to get from Moore Engineering decades of knowledge that they have to get to the baseline that Moore is starting at. And so that's the inherent value of just hiring them. It's probably gonna go faster and more efficient. Can any... Could Houston come in and do this? Probably, absolutely, I think they could. But they would ask a lot of questions that we would probably have to go to Moore Engineering to answer. They've topoed the site. They filled out tons of permits through the Corps for the decommissioning and the adjacent work to the Cheyenne Diversion, for example. And they've been a partner with us in the process of our decommissioning. And they're just very knowledgeable of what is going on with the site. Any additional questions?

Commissioner Jorgensen.

Just to take off of the word you used, you said attractive. I've seen, sat in the meetings, what are we going to do with the lagoon where the salt shack is sitting? I'm sorry, what? Proposed, what, you know, in several years, what's being proposed for the salt shack?

That would remain in the city property because just west of the Salt Shack is our SA-40 lift station, the sanitary lift station that pumps everything from West Fargo to Fargo. And the pipes that are coming into that are 40 feet deep. So we would need to not only maintain ownership of that, but we would need to maintain ownership of some of the land to the west of it. So that way, if we ever, heaven forbid, have to dig up the 40 foot deep pipe, we would need to have enough room to work on it and we wouldn't want that to develop. So the other thing is, is the Mapleton connection that's going to be happening. is going to be connecting at that same spot they won't be going directly over the existing pipes they would be installing their their force main just west of it far enough out that we wouldn't disturb it through maintenance of our existing piping so knowing that that piping is going to be coming Cell eight is the first cell adjacent to SA40. When we're out marketing this or whatever we wanna do, we would maintain ownership and eventually it would be platted or left within the city's ownership, whatever land we feel that we need to keep to own and operate and maintain that lift station.

Well, I think we'd wanna be a good neighbor also and tell them what our intended plans are, that inert landfill.

Yeah, there is right now they've been there's been discussion of cell eight potentially becoming an inert landfill. That's also been discussed that maybe that should move north of 12th Avenue to keep the southern cells that have been decommissioned one continuous opportunity if there is something that needs to come in and use up that amount of land. So I know there has been discussions at Public Works to take a look at just north of 12th Avenue and not adjacent to SA 40 to potentially get get that inert landfill off of 12th. So that way, when you're driving through either a commercial or industrial corridor, you don't have a landfill right adjacent to it. But they are looking at that area. They're also looking at, are there other areas in the extraterritorial boundary? But as soon as you get in the extraterritorial boundary, now it's not under the purview of the city and you have to go through the permitting with the county, which can add another level of complexity in the permitting process to be able to get that inert landfill

Yeah, I guess, I mean, if we go ahead with the core sampling and stuff, I'd just as soon exclude that lot until we have it, you know, I don't want to go core sampling and then we put the landfill there and there was no reason to core sample it.

I think, you know, in the discussions we've had, it's, if the right business were to approach us and want to buy that, the inert landfill very easily could be moved into one of those cells to the north. So it really kind of depends about the outcome and potential business opportunity that there is down the road. Yeah, Dustin.

Sorry, I'm gonna interject here. I know Matt's coming up to the podium too, but I just wanna go back to the task order that is being requested tonight. I believe we could work with Moore Engineering to structure a task order so that it outlines a scope with a critical path. So questions like how long will it take? What are the important measures we need to take now if we wanna be complete by a certain time? And we can put an a la carte type task order together and let the commission then decide. We wanna select this, ITEM AND THIS ITEM BECAUSE WE KNOW THAT IF THEY'RE NOT DONE BEFORE DECEMBER 1ST, WE'RE MAKING IT A LITTLE BIT MORE COMPLICATED THAN WHAT WE NEED TO TONIGHT.

TONIGHT, WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR IS TO JUST REALLY JUST APPROVE THE ASK TO GET A TASK ORDER, WHICH THEN WE CAN DISSECT A LOT MORE IN TWO WEEKS.

100%. YEAH, ABSOLUTELY. AND THAT INCLUDES THE LAND THAT WE'LL ENCOMPASS HERE AS WELL BECAUSE WE MIGHT BE A LITTLE FURTHER ALONG IN THE DECOMMISSIONING THAN WE THINK. So again, I think tonight we're just asking to move forward with working on a task order which we will lay out an a la carte menu of here are the various tasks that need to be done, and here's the critical path method to get them done. So before Matt jumps in to answer a question.

Can I make that motion? I was going to say, do we want to pull this back to? Very clear statement. I wish it would have been the first statement.

I will make that motion.

Not to cut you off, Matt. Second. Amy? Amy?

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify. So let's say we were just going to, were, there was interest to just do kind of this geotechnical stuff. Would we still need a task order for more or would we just work directly through Braun Intertech to get that completed?

Commissioner, I think part of the question that still needs to get answered is if there's other aspects of work that need to get done yet this fall to stay on a critical path of having this whole thing ready within 9 to 12 months, I think that question still needs to become, or come before the commission as a whole. And so.

If we can see that in sort of an itemized fashion.

Yes, we can itemize that out and bring that at the next meeting here. Here are the tasks, here's who will complete them, here's how much, here's how it affects the critical path. And again, have that collective discussion.

I feel like you're defining you're defining a critical path of nine to 12 months. And I think my curiosity is piqued because where did that critical path come from? Because that's the first time that I feel like I've heard that.

No, just to clarify that, I'm just using an example. It's an example. So again, we'll bring forward what we think all of the aspects of the work is needed based on, you know, working with the EDC and those that have are the experts here. Here are all of the tasks that need to get done to become a platinum status document ready site. And of all those tasks, here's about how long they take to do. Here's when you have to work on those things. and all of that collectively will build a critical path. Now whether it's nine months or 19 months, I don't know. I'm not an expert in this, but I'm just suggesting that at the next meeting we'll have a more comprehensive discussion as to what all the tasks are, how long they'll take, how that could affect the entire project, and then ultimately what are those costs.

I mean, this is the first new chunk we're looking at developing, and all these meetings we've sat, and the city learned a lesson the hard way back in the early 2000s, because they went too fast, it wasn't planned, so here's the first one, and we're trying to ramp up and get stuff done, and get it done, and get it done, and get it done. So I'm not sure about putting timelines on hitting them. It is what it is, slow and methodical.

Alright, we have a motion and a second on the table.

If I could ask one more question, please do Dustin. There will not be $1 of public money spent to procure this task order, correct?

Correct, as far as I know, we're going to ask for engineering to develop a task order. I don't believe that's going to cost him. We're not paying more engineering to write a proposal for us, right? No, got it.

Alright, any further conversation?

So we have a motion and a second to request a task order for our next meeting and we'll continue the conversation then. Let's have a roll call vote.

Steadman? Yes. Zundel? Yes. Erickson?

Yes.

Jorgensen?

Yes.

Chertovig?

Yes. Motion passes. I think we just need some direction.

We didn't have no direction right now.

10 minutes ago, but thank you. All right, item number six, 2026, Pavement Conditioning Index, Jerry Wallace, City Engineer.

Yes, thank you, Mayor Jerdavig and commissioners. I'm here before you tonight to essentially talk about everything you ever wanted to know about pavement ratings. Essentially looking, the ask is we're looking to spend $37,125 to hire a company called CityLogix to drive all the roads that are improved in the city, so minus the gravel, and then put together various metrics focused on pavement conditions, but with a few additional tools as part of their software package. As the packet says here, pavement condition index is very critical in us planning with Public Works. Essentially how we're gonna program out our street improvement projects. Traditionally, you can see that they score zero to 100 is poor or failed to good, excellent. I believe we've been doing this work, the earliest I've heard is that it started in 2016, was again performed in 2020. Here before you again tonight, six years later, to look to have it done again here. Ideally, I believe we'd like to move towards doing this once every five years. just for your information, like the city of Fargo does theirs about every five years. So nothing out of the ordinary there. Essentially, once we get the data, that will help us immensely start looking at two areas of the city uh essentially um you know again as the the cover sheet explains here kind of have two two different things going on where we have uh newer areas of the city that you know we need to work to try to preserve uh because you know roadway assets are our most expensive asset out there and then we have other areas of the city they're a little older a little more gentrified but could still potentially benefit from full depth reclamations or full depth reconstructions in areas where there may or may not need to be additional utility work done. But again, getting this data is extremely critical for us to figure out what we want to do, when we want to do it, and where we want to do it. As far as financially paying for this work, Public Works had recommended they had about $30,000 in their professional services budget that they would be more than willing to throw towards this. They're full agreement that this is one team, one effort here. We definitely need this work done. And they had commented that the remaining shortfall of a little over $7,000 could be reallocated with a budget adjustment from line item 657, which was just their equipment leasing item. I believe they underused, I think, the graders last winter, just using less than they thought they would have. So there is some additional funding available there. With that, again, I just advocate that this is extremely critical information that we should be looking to get, again, every five years. I did, for your information, provide a pretty commonly accepted deterioration curve for the types of treatments that we'll be looking to program for asphalt streets. Once we get this information, some of the fixes for concrete pavements are a little different, not exactly apples to apples, but the information again will still be very important. to assess all the roads in the city that are improved. And with that, I'm available for any questions you may have.

I was just curious, in 2020, what process did we use? Sort of, you know, the fact that you can have a camera go and look at all these roads and the depth and AI to me is amazing, but what did we use in 2020? I'm not 100% certain.

I was very loosely involved in the work back then. But I believe there was a pretty common to have a van that has a downward facing camera and multiple sensors to drive around, essentially collect all the data that way. I will say this one is unique in that I believe out of a lot of the sensors, cameras, LIDAR units, things like that are mounted on the top of the vehicle. But I believe the technology is there that it shouldn't matter at this point. But it is I guess a little unique in regards to the way it was done last time.

Is this company being used somewhere else besides I mean in the area that we spoke with that they like the results when they were done?

I do not believe they had anything in the immediate area that they'd done, but there had been several cities in the Midwest where they had worked and they provided references.

I think it's amazing.

Right?

I can't imagine 20 years ago what we were doing is someone looking out the window, looking at the roads compared to... With a notebook and a pen. With a notebook and a pen writing down there's...

It was a lot more recent than 20 years ago.

Yeah, crazy. And $35,000, although it's a lot of money compared to what it was, 200 miles of roadway, is that what I read? Does not end up for every mile. That's not very, I mean, very cost effective.

We think so as well.

Thank you, Jerry.

Yeah, you bet. Other questions?

Mr. Mayor, if I could?

Yes.

I'm going to go back to Commissioner Steadman's question. Just for context, I pulled up the proposal that we approved in 2020, a little bit different technology, but for the most part, same results. We approved that contract for $74,500. So I think the advancement in technology has made it a more efficient process. So again, I think they've got a good contractor here and excited to get that work done.

All right, so we are looking for a motion to create project number 9076, accept quote, and authorize the staff to purchase PCI survey of the roadway network.

I'll make that motion.

We have a motion. Second. We have a second. Any further conversation or discussion?

Manager Dvig, last question for Jerry. Jerry, is there any, sometimes projects can exceed the ceiling that they propose. Is this one of those that could ever seemingly exceed 37 grand?

I was told this is the fixed price for the contract. Okay. I guess never say never.

Yep. Okay. Thank you.

You bet. Great question.

All right. Roll call vote.

Stedman. Yes. Zundel. Yes. Erickson.

Yes.

Jorgensen. Yes. Jodovic.

Yes. All right, item number seven, resolution authorizing the issuance of improvement warrants. Katie.

Thank you, Mayor and Commissioners. Before you is a resolution to issue bonds to finance the improvements in improvement districts 1345, 1353, and 2290. The city is pledging special assessments for debt service on those bonds. They were sold today. This is John Lunby from Colliers, and he can talk more specifically about it. But generally, they were sold at a premium. The interest rate's 4.44%. They're 25-year bonds, but they'll be callable first in 2034, so you'll be able to do that. I'm available for any questions, but Mr. Lundby is also available for specific sale questions if you have those.

All right. Thank you, Katie. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the commission. My name is John Lundby. I'm with Colliers and Bismarck, and I'm pleased to be here before you this evening to present the results of the public sale that we conducted this morning for the city's Refunding Improvement Bonds Series 2026 issue. Very pleased to I'm very pleased to report that the sale was very successful and the winning bid resulted in a true interest cost of 4.447 to the city on a 25 year maturity. These bonds are callable in eight years or 2034 and the final power amount of the issue was $8.71 million. As far as the sale goes, we received six bids from across the country including Milwaukee, New York City, Chicago and Dallas. It's a strong response from the market. And it's coupled with very competitive bidding and it reflects the financial strength and quality of the city of West Fargo. We engaged Moody's to get a public debt rating for the issue and Moody's reaffirmed the existing AA3 rating with a stable outlook for the city. It's an accomplishment of which the commission city staff should be very proud. Instead, Twitchell, as your bond council, has prepared the resolution for you and for your approval tonight. And with that, we'll move forward to finalize all documentation for a timely closing on Monday, August 31st. And just lastly, I'd like to thank the commission, Dustin, Willie, Sarah, Katie, for all the work in getting this put together. It's been a pleasure working with the city again, and I'd stand for any questions that there might be.

Any questions?

Mayor Jernovich, go for it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Katie. I think I know what's going on. But if you could, for the average listener, and for me, for my benefit, explain like I'm five what we're doing here, if you could.

Sure. So the city has projects, street projects that they're doing and they intend to special assess those projects out to the benefiting property owners. The city in most cases pays cash for those expenses and the month costs are complete or near complete. The Special Assessment Commission is engaged to certify those specials. We then look to the bond world for issuing that debt. because it's the lowest possible cost of capital of public finance debt. You engage a municipal advisor, such as myself at Colliers. Worked with the city for, 30 plus years, I would say. But we go out and prepare what's called a preliminary official statement. If you think about it, it's a prospectus of the city. So if you buy a stock, you get the full prospectus of that company. A preliminary official statement is that for bonds. We work with the city in finalizing all costs of where we want those assessments to be spread, in this case, 25 years. We engage public debt rating agencies to then get a public rating of that debt and of the city to entice the lowest possible cost of capital by engaging the most wide pool of potential investors. And so we put that preliminary official statement when it's ready out to the market for them to then bid on that paper. And so you're gonna see, you know, anywhere from, I think three is kind of the minimum of a public sale. It's kind of a good solid bid. Today we received six. In prior years, they've been as high as nine or 11. Not to get too detailed, but the winning bidder put together a syndicate, so a group of investors to buy this. And so it's not just one investment firm that bought these bonds, it's actually 24.

Meaning that it's appealing, it's valuable debt.

Yes, because we're getting that lowest possible cost, right? These investment, it's a blind bid. They don't know where XYZ firm came in at in an interest rate. And so... Hope that answers the question, but in a nutshell, that's...

It's impossible to ELI-five that, but that was good. That was good. Other questions?

All right, this is an actionable item.

Move to approve.

I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Any additional questions? All right, let's do a roll call vote.

Stanman? Yes. Sundell? Yes. Erickson? Yes. Jorgensen? Yep. Jodovic?

Yes. All right. Thank you. Moving on to item number eight and well actually also item number nine. Closed executive sessions. You have that in front. I need a motion for the first one.

Well, in order to kind of expedite this, can we lock them together at the same time rather than walk back in, walk back, walk back in, walk back out?

Yes, but I'm going to make sure Katie gives the nod to OK, but we need two motions.

Yes, please. I'll start with motion on engine item number 8. Close access executive session pursuant to NDCC 44-04-19.15 for purposes of attorney consultation regarding fire hazard violations at 1042 7th Ave NE. And I'll second we have a motion in a second.

Any comments? We'll do a roll call votes.

Steadman yes. Yes, Ericsson yes, Jorgensen yes. Yes.

You got the hardest job here, Rory.

I motion agenda item nine, close executive session for purposes of negotiating strategies and attorney consultation for reasonably predictable claims regarding Brookwood Estates LLC and Brookwood Estates MHC LLC in accordance with NDCC44-04-19.125N9.

We have a motion in a second. Any comments? Hearing none will vote.

Steadman yes. Yes, Erickson yes. Jorgensen yes.

Yes, alright. Our regular meeting both stand and move into executive session.

Amy, I think you'll have to jump out of this teams meeting and into the other one. Hope she already did.

Yeah.

Now you're good.

Yeah, way more authority.

You don't listen to me.

You said we're good? Yeah. All right, we'll call back to order our regular meeting. City Administrator's Report. Oh, no, actually, we need a motion, don't we?

Sorry, I'm jumping the gun, Rory. On Agenda Item 8, I make a motion directing the City Attorney to commence civil proceedings in the District Court to abate and enjoin the fire hazard violations at 1042 7th Avenue NE in West Fargo. Is there a second?

Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll have a vote.

Steadman? Yes. Zundel? I don't know if she ever joined back into this. I don't see her.

We still have a quorum.

Yeah. Okay. Erickson?

Yes.

Jorgensen?

Yes.

Chertovich?

Yes. Motion passes. All right. Now onto the city administrator's report.

Thank you, Mayor and Commissioners. I'll be really brief. I know the mayor's on his way to Bismarck tonight, so I'll take my list of 12 items down to four here. Update on the budget and specifically the financial stability group that we talked about when we approved the preliminary budget. I'm happy to report that we did have an initial kickoff meeting last week with senior directors and a couple of our department heads and a lot of good stuff coming up. Specifically, the Next steps are gonna be to focus on putting together an education package on our compensation and benefits. What do we have? How does it work? How does it compare to other local jurisdictions? All of that could work. So Beth has been diligently putting a lot of information together and I think that'll be a good logical starting point to just build a foundation, not only for a commission, but also the public to understand what do we have and why and how does it work? How does it compare?

Does that you make sure that that includes vacation and sick time or if we're on a PTO plan or not PTO plan? Because that can be very costly if we are rolling over sick and vacation days in those Maxis.

Yes, yes, including. All of the vacation accruals, retirement insurance packages, everything that comes into. compensation and benefits as a whole. Yep, we'll all be packaged into a, how does it work? What do we have? How does it compare? All that good stuff. And then additionally, Rachel and Beth have also been working on the employee survey. So I believe they have a draft ready and hope to get that out either later this week, if not early next week, just to get that process going as well. So we will engage our staff, all of them, and have that information available to the Commission. where I'd like to take these, again, the compensation information and the survey, I'd like to schedule a time to have a workshop with the commission, a public, you know, the regular commission meeting is maybe not the right form. I'd like to have a really sit down, kind of like our onboarding session where we can sit around the table and really go through this in great detail with the right department heads at the table to help explain that. be looking for email correspondence over the next few days as to when that may occur, but I anticipate that occurring before our next commission meeting. So sometime between now and September 8th, we'll have that workshop. So with that, any questions? That's all I have for you.

Thank you. All right. Any correspondence? I'm assuming no.

Yeah, wait a minute. I don't have any correspondence, but I do want to, Emily just reminded me, our next mission meeting is on September 8th because city offices are closed on September 7th for Labor Day. All right. But no additional correspondence, right, Emily?

All right. Any non-agenda items? Motion to adjourn. Is there a second? Second. We stand adjourned.