Administration / Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

All right.

Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to a meeting of the Administration and Public Works Committee for Wednesday, August 12th, 2026, here in the Wildwood City Hall Community Room. Ms. Mathis, would you please take roll?

Council Member Owen?

Here.

Council Member Trottier? Here. Chair Attenberg?

Here.

Council Member Doddwell? Here. Council Member Means? Here. Council Member Rambo?

Here.

Council Member Krantz? Here. Council Member Alvers?

Here. Super. So it sounds like we have a quorum, so that's always a good thing. Next, we move on to approval of the minutes from the July 2026 meeting. Does anyone have any comments, questions regarding the minutes from that particular meeting? If not, I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes made by Council Member Meehan, seconded by Council Member Kranz. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Matt has his hand raised. Oh, sorry. Matt.

Yes, I was just letting you know that I'm here. I wasn't a panelist when you did roll call, so I am on the meeting.

Perfect. Thank you very much. All right. All those in favor, I think we did the ayes. Any opposed? Abstentions? I have to abstain. Okay. Abstention from Council Member Rambo. Motion carries. Minutes approved. Moving on to public participation, we have one gentleman here in the room. Do we have anybody online, Ms. Mathis, that you can see? I can see.

Okay.

Lou Solomon.

Can I possibly abstain until after you talk about the deer issue? If anything's needed, I might save you time. I might not say anything then. Is that possible? We don't have a deer issue on the agenda, thanks. Nothing on it? No. Okay. All right. I'll let you speak then.

Okay.

All right. Very good. Well, thank you for coming anyway. Saved you a lot of time. All right. Super. Thank you. Okay. So, uh, since there's no one online, then we'll move on to administration. And the first item is the targeted workforce analysis and review of contracted services with in-house staffing. Uh, we will turn things over to the city administrator on this topic.

Thank you, chair. Uh, updating this more of a primer memorandum tonight, but I wanted to bring this to the committee's attention given that, uh, had had this at a previous committee meeting to look into the construction engineering cost doing an analysis on that but we've also had requests about this the staff levels in general by the committee but also the council so we wanted to make sure we were answering those questions but the key that we were looking at when we were thinking about what positions could make sense for the city is that we do have a tight budget we're about to be entering the budget season we're starting to close some of those documents now to start working on the 2027 budget and We're looking at it from a perspective of, can we find some positions that might be able to save the city some money versus adding capacity that might take more away from the city. So nonetheless, this memorandum kind of goes into detail about our model. It has worked pretty successfully for 30 years. At the end of the day, when the founders had incorporated well, one of the main things that were discussed was we will be a contract-based city. So the majority of the actual field labor that takes place here in Wildwood are handled by our contractors that have their own insurance, hire their own employees and handle their affairs internally. That said, we do have a small army of project managers here at the city and a couple of them are sitting next to me today, which oversee this contract work on a day-to-day basis. and pretty much make sure that the work that's being done in the field is up to the city standard and to the spec of something we had actually designed and put together. But just making sure that the work is not complete and is completed in a proper state. When looking at this and trying to figure out if there are positions that could be potentially added, that also could offset themselves. It's a tricky analysis because when you start peeling back the layers on some of these positions, You have to take into consideration the capital investment up front that would need to take place to really give them the equipment needed to get to the locations while it's a pretty large city. So getting around is one. The insurance requirements, some physicians also would require potentially have some type of union membership, an electrician, which we'll bring up tonight. So there are some more nuanced considerations to think of. But just to give a general framework of some of the work that we have contracted here in the city. It's listed out in the memo too, but just in general, the mowing contract, we've been doing a pretty good job at that. Help us in both works here. We're actually able to identify the areas that we mow. We have a square footage for each area and we actually bid those out as a total instead of having an hourly base. So we have made some improvements there. That said, obviously you can always keep building upon it. We can get into the mowing question of would it be beneficial to bring mowers on We have a preliminary analysis of it. The landscaping maintenance is another that we've looked at and talked about over the years. Tree removal and vegetation work. I will say that the city arborist that we brought on has saved the city quite a bit of money. He requested the use of a chainsaw, which obviously we don't want to have. him out there doing a large amount of work that two people would need to be doing. But when it comes to a small piece of brush that's broken into a trail, a lot of the times Mike takes the initiative, goes out and removes it himself so he doesn't have to make a call over to our contractor to come out and get the service ticket charge on top of the labor that gets charged on top of it. So it does show that in limited capacities that you can save a good deal of money if you have someone on the team that is out there looking at it. So that's a positive example in the right direction. We also have sidewalk repairs. I'll also point out, just give us some kudos to the team today, but we had some trip hazards that were needed to be addressed. We didn't have all too much more money in the budget. We have already programmed the trip hazards that needed to be addressed this year. So Destin actually went out and passed a few trip hazards for us. So nonetheless, just wanted to point out that team does go out there and do some of these things. They're more so the ones that one person can handle when you start getting into, you need two, three people. That is when we usually deploy our contractors out in the field. Uh, same goes for pretty much all street maintenance to storm related cleanup that we do snow and ice removal. Uh, it would make a note that snow and ice removal definitely would. We have a very large benefit as a city, having those as contractors, just because we don't have to maintain that sheer number of equipment. When we call in the calling for the help, when we have a big snow storm, we have access to 40 drivers, 40 plow drivers per the contracts that we have on, on file. which in order to get that from an in-house personnel perspective would be quite a feat. And that's more than almost, it's almost double what we currently have for full staff. So nonetheless, just pointing out some of the We want to look at this, but we also want to be realistic on the cost on the back end if we were to bring something in-house. Some others that we looked at that could potentially be entertained is that we do have for our larger capital projects, we do bring on a construction engineering consultant that goes out and just makes sure that the the project is done within the spec that was designed. And they also do the testing and reporting that's necessary to maintain the federal funding that we have in place. So that could be something we would look at. One question right now is if we have a consultant that we actually can get reimbursed on from that federal grant, because they encourage that work to be done. Obviously, the reporting is mandatory. So that is a reimbursable expense. We think it's possible to do that with an in-house employee, but that is something we'd have to work through as well. But just wanted to Point out that one item. Some things to keep in mind if we were to bring someone online in some of these positions, just some background stuff that is a little bit more than just their compensation, but health insurance, the other benefits that we provide, payroll taxes that we do pay, retirement contributions, workers comp that we have to pay for each employee. any training and certification to be necessary. If they need a vehicle, which a lot of these would need a vehicle, the equipment necessary, the tools that would be necessary, fuel for the vehicles, the maintenance of said equipment. The list is pretty extensive to actually put someone out in the field. The good news about how we run it today is that we have individuals that take on the liability of being out in the field and they are the ones that have to make sure that that person shows up. They have a contract. we hold them to the contract, and then they have to respond in a certain amount of time. The question that sometimes gets raised is, hey, can you have quicker response with your own staff? Well, you do have a little bit more control, but We have found historically that our contractors, if we call them to get out in the field to address a trip hazard or go out and stripe an area that we got to complain on, it's done in a relatively short order same week. So the responsiveness, we have seen some success, but really when we go into what type of assets are we maintaining that may be worth examining, one that has come up since we've seen a lot of our streetlights, we have over 800 in the town center area in our parks alone. One that we had looked at and just seen that over time, the life cycle of our streetlights, they're kind of getting closer to the end. And Destin could tell us even more about it. At the end of the day, they are having more issues. We're having to send folks out to troubleshoot. And those costs for the electrician is going up. And typically, when you see that decrease in a given year, we end up having to spend some on our traffic signals too. So there's a couple of different mechanisms at play, two different consultants that you would use for that as well. One's just the electrician to take care of a street light. The other would actually work on the timing mechanism. And we want to keep that with an engineering consult to be able to do that. So nonetheless, did want to bring this to the committee's attention, request feedback in general on looking into a few different positions that would be able to kind of make their make their way back, if you will, when it comes to revenue and expenditure. The electricians won with us having so many streetlights. We tend to have one down at all times. There's one down always. We always have, you know, another work order being issued. The same could be said for the lights here at the municipal building, Kevel Pond School that we maintain. We also have streetlights that are located in our parks that can use consistent maintenance. And One thing that that individual could in theory do, the streetlight doesn't care if it's winter, summer, or spring, so it's not one of those seasonal positions that will have pretty hard deadline and cutoff period. That said, the electrician component would also require us to discuss whether or not we'd have to work with a union in some cases. So there is some drawbacks there too. But when it comes to the sheer number of streetlights that we have, we also want to look at in the future. We'll talk about this later for the Capitol. But having a program that slowly converts our lights to LED right now, a lot of them are based, they're incandescent or they are sodium based. They are a little bit less efficient. efficient as they could be. And then they do require a little bit more maintenance. So nonetheless, something to look at and consider moving forward. That one might have some decent potential if we can figure out the issue with the labor components and also the insurance for the individual going out there. If there is an issue that happens, that would be on us. The city would be taking liability. The seasonal mowing and grounds maintenance, we had looked at that too. We've looked at that at every now and then just given that that is one of the large expenditures the city has is maintaining a large amount of parkland and right-of-way space When we looked at it, the main thing is the seasonal nature of the job. It's not necessarily bringing them on board. We could probably find the employees to do so, but the administrative work on the back end to make sure you're filling those rosters each year. First of all, you'd have to establish how many people would be necessary to properly clear the areas that we have. I mean, it's a very large number of spaces that we're cutting today. And then on the back end, you'd have to recruit those individuals each year because we have almost like a blackout period where grass doesn't grow. between the late winter months. So nonetheless, that one seems but also could have some drawbacks. And if you're not able to fill those positions, you may still have to bring on a contractor anyway. So may point to the contractor based model still working well, especially given that we had changed our approach in a few years back to allow, we'll put out a total number of square footage. We give every space that we cut and then the individual bids on the total year versus giving us an hourly rate and then chipping away at it. So just wanted to point out some of the improvements that have been made over the years. landscaping and horticultural maintenance that also has the seasonal nature to it we do do a lot of weeding mulching in general when we have our playgrounds we mulch them each year so there are some efficiencies that can be realized but once again it comes down to us having a kind of a blackout period over the winter they could potentially assist if you keep them on with putting together some you know some of the RFPs for some of this work when we actually need it. But truthfully, it is difficult to justify during those winter months, unless they have specialized skills elsewhere, where you would put them. If they obviously have the skills to do something else in-house, then that would be great. But you won't find a team of those individuals. It would be kind of give or take. And then during the summer months, we would need them dedicated solely to cutting grass every day. Then lastly, and if Mr. Brown wants to add anything on this, he's more than welcome, if the chair's permission, but the construction engineering and the capital project field work, that one, if we could confirm that it could be reimbursed, we did have a part-time position that did this for us a few years back, and If it could be reimbursed, there could be some cost savings there. That said, the one question that would be brought up again is if this person is an engineer, they could definitely help with permitting work. There's other work that could be assigned out because truthfully, during the spring, summer, and fall, that's usually when we're doing the majority of our construction, doing the larger projects. If you don't have a project in the field, you don't necessarily need that person out there doing the reporting work. So there would be heightened times where that individual would be stretched very thin, you know, time like now where we'd have 109BA going on and Old State Road doing both of those, kind of driving back and forth would be a, you know, be a tall task. But on the flip side, when we get into winter of this year, those projects have been concluded, that individual would work on closing out the project, which would help. And, you know, they could definitely help out, but the other side would really, they would, do they have the credentials to review permits at that point in the engineering side? So, yeah. Overall, when looking at a lot of these positions, we can do a deeper dive, bring up the financials and try to do an estimate and do an analysis. But it seems like some of these have, it looks good. But when you take into account the cost of onboarding the individual, the background cost of the employee, and then also the cost of the equipment necessary and the insurance cost. It starts to make the case a little bit more difficult to bring the individual on just from a preliminary look. We might go in there and do a further look on some of these and see that it could very well work. That's what we wanted to ask tonight from the committee. Should we proceed with looking into some of these positions? And if not, we have some of the others listed too, but wanted to go over the main ones. If not, then we will take that direction as well. Thank you.

So first, it says that this council requested this. Was this something that maybe was requested before I came that we looked into this?

Yeah, there was more of a discussion. There was definitely a request to look into the construction engineering component to see if that could be itself its own position. So that's where it kind of originated. And then there has been discussion about just staffing levels in general. So we wanted to, from a staffing perspective, given that we're about to enter budget, we wanted to provide rational information ideas to the committee here and then eventually to the city council. If we're going to add a position, you know, make sure that we can justify that position with some type of savings, just given the current fiscal reality. So that's where it kind of came from. Okay.

So then you've listed like four opportunities and another four beyond that. But you also say that it's going to take a bunch of your time to do the analysis. So if we're going to do this, can we just target maybe one function that you would think would make sense and do that analysis if we decide to move forward? Because clearly, I don't think it's in our best interest to have you guys digging down on four or eight different potential opportunities because We wouldn't pull the trigger on all eight of them anyway. We might pull the trigger on one if it's economically makes sense. So I think we would want to just have you focus on the one that you think makes the most sense. And I would think one that would be not super capital intensive. One of my concerns with all these mowers and trucks is where are we going to put them up? You know, because we don't have a big storage building that I'm aware of. Again, I'm new, but I don't think we have anywhere to park a bunch of trailers and trucks and you know put mowers inside in the winter when they're not being utilized.

Yeah we have the salt storage facility over at the kelp property but other than that it is very limited whether we have space to store things so we right now we store a lot of our roadway equipment in the garage area the corral we call it and it is fenced off it's locked everything along those lines but it does it's kind of it's tucked into the corner of parking garage and quite frankly if you were talking about large you know heavy machinery equipment it would not So you're hitting on the right note. And if we wanted to look into a few of these, that would be preferred to just the ones that the council and the committee here believes may result. We can give the recommendation on which ones we think might have the most turnaround. But I would agree that doing all eight, we're not going to hire eight people. So that would be best.

Council Member Meekins.

Yeah, if we win that direction, what's the timeline for staff to return findings approximately? It depends on the number, but I would say we could have it back in, you know, two, three months. We try to do it during, like bring it up during the budgeting cycle, probably October when we review the offer. So that would be fiscal year 27? Yep, it would be fiscal year 27.

So I don't know who had their hand up first. It was Council Member Krantz or Council Member Trier. So I yield to Council Member Trier. So Matt, you're up.

Thank you. So my, I guess, opinion is consistent with Councilmember Owens. I would focus on one and I would eliminate the seasonal workers out of this. I don't, I think that's a valid outsourced utility. I don't think we need people, you know, we don't need full-time staff to mow grass, et cetera. You mentioned engineering. And I'm curious if your proposal to have a part-time employee makes sense, but is there a way that we can have a dual function there possibly? Go ahead.

I was just going to say, and when you say dual function, we were thinking at least something in-house and during the heightened period of construction, we'd probably have that individual obviously out in the field. But then if the individual were to come in during the winter months, it would be more focused on, you know, reviewing permits and kind of helping with some of our engineering review that we do in general and capital planning as well.

So that, yeah, that's, I agree with that. I would not focus on seasonal staff and I would look for somebody that can be a Swiss army knife. And the engineering one kind of stood out to me. So thank you.

Councilman Kranz. You mentioned the electrician, Tom. What I'd like to see is how much we pay here for electricians to, you know, we could justify putting the job on. So that's what I'd like to see first before I decide. If we pay half a million a year for electrician in our contracts, maybe it's for something to look at, you know.

It is in the $100,000 range. I can pull up the more specific example, but it's not half a million dollars.

It's not $200,000.

It's $100,000 or $200,000.

So it's probably better to contract it then. When you add the benefits in, the retirement, insurance, yeah, okay.

So we need some equipment for that, too, because they need a lift of some kind.

Yep, you need a lift. You could have it be just like streetlight maintenance, and the electrician most likely wouldn't touch our streetlights. We would have to leave that to an engineering firm and consultant as well. Rick can speak on that further, but that's something where you don't want to mess with the timing, and that's just too big of a risk. You don't want to have that fall on the city's head where the streetlight's no longer operating functionally, and we break it beyond repair. But yeah, you would need some type of lift mechanism and also a way to get that lift around town too. So like a bucket truck would most likely be a remedy there.

Well, you would need not only a bucket truck, you would need the tools from the bucket truck. And then you would have the question, what happens if the electrician is sick for a few days and maintenance is getting backed up? Besides that, if you do have him doing replacement work or... replacement parts, then are we going, what is the procurement process going to be for those replacement parts? Are we going to keep a stock or an inventory here? So there's a lot more than just having a truck and an electrician on board. I just say that because that's the industry that I came out of, working with electrical contractors and electricians.

It seems like a lot of the stuff we'd want them to be doing is stuff that is time sensitive. And so then you're constantly going to be having to have a third party backup for them.

Council Member Rambo, you raised your hand a couple of weeks ago.

That's fine. This is a good discussion. I I agree with Phil and Matt that we probably ought to focus. What I would hate to do is paint Tom into a corner and specify which one. I think he should have the flexibility to take a preliminary look at all of these. I think we can cut out the mowing one because, as everyone has said, we would have to buy 100 grand worth of mowing equipment and store it in half of the year and so forth. It just doesn't make a lot. whole lot of sense to me. It may to the folks that do it on a daily basis. But what I would say is the landscape maintenance, that's a different skill set. And in the winter, they could concentrate on parks and maybe working on the trails that get eroded over the course of the summer and so on and so forth. And I could easily see that being a full-time job. It's just a matter of putting dollars to it and finding the skill set that's a bit more flexible, but it's really the same stuff. Anybody that can do mulching can use a shovel, et cetera. And so the electrician may... My first glance was the electrician has some legs, but... Again, we have union issues. I used to in early in my career, I used to have to have a union electrician follow me around, didn't know the first thing he'd sit there and read a book while I was doing my work. But the union mandated that somebody, you know, supervised low voltage electric, you know, electrical work and so forth. And so there's union issues, the insurance industry. i don't think the equipment is as much of a factor because you can run to chaseco or you can run to home depot and you can get a lift that will do 100 of the work that's needed it's just a matter of um you know do you need it for a month at which time you get a cheaper rate and so on and so forth and so um then the same thing with contract engineer uh in slack times, that person could easily help with even with code enforcement. And so because the code enforcement folks, they seem to be behind all the time. And so I think that might have some legs as well. And so my bottom line is, is if I had my druthers, I would say, Tom, look at, look at, take a preliminary look at these and see which one is the most going to be the most fruitful make sense to everybody else.

Council Member Trottier, you have your hand up.

Yes, sorry. In my initial comments, I failed to mention that in my opinion, the electrician and the obligations that that individual would have, I do not think that the city should incur those liabilities for an in-house staff. I think we're well suited sitting or siding with contract resources for that.

Thank you. Other questions or comments?

Council Member Kranz. So Tom, is there some occupation that we're spending a lot of money on that we really can justify?

The limit has been popping up as of late is that electrician role. It has its downsides too.

We don't think that's necessary for electrician.

Not necessarily.

Is there somebody else you're looking at?

The construction engineering is an interesting one to look at. If we can be reimbursed, I think that could prove financially viable and also having some more control.

You can justify it on money?

Yes. If it can be reimbursed by the project grants that we do have. Because right now, the consultant gets reimbursed. We get reimbursed on those costs for the consultant. But Then we pay for them at a capital improvements. Yes. Versus.

Yeah. Well, there's a question there, which is a big difference. So be honest here. There's something that we could just kill this right now. Is that, would you recommend that?

I would say if there, if there's one to look at the construction engineering one could be helpful because it doesn't come out of operating. Rick breaks a very good point. The operating budget is the one that's razor thin each year. We actually did a great job last year. scaling back our capital improvement budget to meet the demands of what we're needing in the community, but also being fiscally fiscally responsible. That said, if we were to bring this one question I would have is bringing this person in house. for the construction engineering, you would start paying for that outside of your general fund. And that would cause our already razor thin margin to become thinner. So that's the one, even if you get reimbursed, it doesn't help that the revenue is still staying stagnant because where we're paying for it, if that makes sense. So that'd be the one I would say to look into further if there was one. And landscape, I would almost say with landscape, could you tie that in with, because the department agrees that code enforcement could use all the help they can get. So is there a way to tie that in as well, whether it be through the construction engineering or be through, you know, a landscape, you know, individual that works on that, you know, kind of helps in Mr. Walsh's department of public works. Maybe there's a way to kind of have a jack of all trades as being mentioned. Is this worth your time then? I think for a very limited, possibly looking at, you know, The construction engineering component for reimbursement reasons and also looking at the code enforcement side of it. And that's really that side of the building.

Being tight with the budget now, we'd be adding.

That would be adding. I'm not sure that's wise right now.

What action were you looking for from the committee tonight, city administrator?

I was just getting more generalized feedback. This was something that was brought up. We wanted to make sure we addressed it and had it brought to the committee's attention so it wasn't dropped to the side. That said, if the committee would like us to do a little bit further research, bring that back and have the numbers associated with it, we can definitely do that just for the construction engineering component, maybe the landscape component, and then also show how that person could be a switch army knife, if you will, come up with what roles and responsibilities could in theory be and see if that's even feasible.

So are you looking for suggestions from us regarding the one, two, or three positions that we want? Not necessarily.

If that's the committee's desire, we would be happy to hear them and work from them. But that said, the department is more so looking at, you know, we could use the help. That said, with the budget constraints, that's what always makes the staff hesitant to make a recommendation and say, hey, we'll bring on additional staff because right now the general fund is tight.

So the general fund is tight, but some of these positions, we pay third parties out of the general fund. So if it economically is a wash, then whether they're permanent or whether they're outsourced doesn't matter. So the razor thin budget thing should be taken care of. And the fact that we won't do this, this is going to cost us. Yep, and that's what we're trying to do. From that perspective, I don't worry too much about the budget aspect because we wouldn't want to do this if we're going to spend more money internally than externally. So I'm not worried about that one. But on the construction management one, since we might be putting money into a bucket that we're placing on the capital side today because we're spending money out of a capital budget for consultants, and now we'd be putting it in the operating, Then I do think we have to evaluate on that one, whether or not we're going to get reimbursed. If we're not going to get reimbursed for that one, then it sounds like that might be a showstopper to begin with, because we unfortunately got to keep the money in buckets.

That makes perfect sense. Okay, so now that we've had this discussion, what action are we taking going forward?

In that case, if the committee would be so obliged, we could be directed, the staff could be directed to look into that construction engineering position, see if it can be reimbursed, see what that role and responsibility could be, and then possibly tying it in with could that person serve as an extra set of hands in the code enforcement world as well.

So again, when we say reimbursed, it's not going to cost the city any money?

Well, it will cost the city money. It's more so reimbursed at the percentage at 80% of what we spend. What do you figure it out? Well, we pay right now. I mean, it ranges, but it's over $100,000 typically for the construction engineering services that we have on our projects. We do get reimbursed on that an 80% clip. That said, you know, That's where I start to see if we can be reimbursed that that individual could technically add value back to the city and be a net positive when it comes to the balance sheet.

All right, Council Member Ramble.

Yeah, first of all, this was good work. I meant to say that at the beginning, but... I am interested in making a motion, if that's appropriate, that we ask Tom to look into this. And the idea is that or the theme would be look at the dollars, come back with the rough dollars on whatever you've looked into, and then come back with a recommendation on the low-hanging fruit. Can that be made into a motion, Amy? Okay. All right. So your motion is to proceed with, have Tom proceed with. He seems to have a good handle on the dollars. And so I'm just saying, bring us back the cost and the potential benefits and a recommendation as to what to pursue next. what position to pursue next.

Okay. Very good. Second to that motion. Do we have one? Council Member Rameen seconds. Okay. So does everybody understand what the motion is that has been made in second? Yes. All right. Very good. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Motion carries. Very good. All right. Moving on to item B, review of the fiscal year 2027 capital improvement plan. And City Administrator Lee, I believe we turn this back over to you again.

That is correct. Thank you, Chair. And switching gears on you a little bit, going from operating over to capital. Last month, we had a discussion of our capital improvement sales tax fund. It really was a more focused discussion on the TAB, Mark McIntyre, capital scoring matrix and from some pretty good feedback we got from the committee, there was a discussion of how our criteria had pretty much was weighted 18 to 118 be in the highest score multiplier, if you will, and going all the way down to join a school that you open that yeah. 18 being the top, being the master plan, is it explicitly listed in the master plan being a major driver all the way down to one, which was more of the recreational tourism aspect of whatever project you're considering. When looking at those factors, there was concern that we might be weighting the tourism side a little bit too low, the ones that are a little bit closer on the low end considering, and it's a truthful fact there that it is an 18X multiplier from master plan down to one. So there was a request to consider keep the format relatively similar, but then to group the criteria and assign a weighting value to them to make it a little bit more evenly distributed. So the department did just that. Tonight, Exhibit A shows in the report, Exhibit A shows the former version, and the real difference is the top row that says rating of criteria. The second one, you'll see that it is based on a different set. Second. It says assigned group weight now. Main thing is we went from 18 down to one, so 18, 17, 16. Now we've grouped them into five different categories and actually taking advantage of this opportunity to work within the system, we actually created a little bit of a framework for how we group them as well. So you'll notice that five are grouped together, then it's six, then it's two, two, three. I know that doesn't look perfect, but when we are looking at this, one of the issues that I had identified, the department identified was that they don't, we didn't want to mess and we didn't get direction to mess with the order. We didn't want to say, okay, well, to make it more convenient for the grouping, we'll move master plan one back or master plan up front. We didn't want to do that. So we created lines, if you will, where logically it made sense and we could group them based on a set of criteria. We came up with exhibit B in the report that really kind of creates a tiered grouping system that we would hope we could solidify tonight, use this for 27, and then carry this forward as well. We do think that this is a really good way to approach it. It just adds another wrinkle and another explanation to our residents that may want to know how we work on our capital planning. So the first grouping includes the master plan, public safety, financial capacity impact, overall benefit to the city, and the five-year strategic plan. Really, that's asking, and we were able to group that based on necessity. We call it our strategic foundation, and it really is answering the general question of do we need to undertake this project and why do we need to undertake it. Going to tier two and, and just sorry real quick back to that. That is assigned a weight of 12 so to make the five different groupings work. We wanted to use a waiting system that if you use 12345 you could have the same situation that you have before it's a little less but the goal here is you have a three x multiplier now from the top tier to the bottom tier whereas before it was an 18 x multiplier. So those bottom criteria are now getting a little bit of a jump in weight while also recognizing that the strategic foundational criteria are still the most important. Just a note there. But then project readiness and sustainability, really asking the question, can the city responsibly complete this project and support the resulting asset over time? Really love these components that we added in last year, but the ongoing expenses, I think it's a really important question to ask ourselves. What are the maintenance costs we're adding to the ledger by adding this asset? The urgency and timing, do we have a legal issue coming up? Is that a safety impact? Is there a trip hazard that is present? There's multiple factors that can lead to that, but what is the urgency looking like? The external funding feasibility, that's always nice to have too, because if you have an offset from a different either through our TIP program that we apply to, or if you have a grant source that can help fund a large percentage of it. First of all, it'll obviously boost that score for that criteria, but it also boosts the financial capacity impact score as well.

Can we switch maybe to looking at exhibit B versus this one? I think we've all kind of conceptually understand that one, but like looking at this one so we can see the prioritization philosophy with it might make it a little bit better. Yeah, that sounds good.

So we're on feasibility and we're at external funding feasibility. So going back with that, you'll get a, if you have a grant that's covering, you know, in our case for the TIPP, we can have an 80% match from the federal government on those projects. That's obviously going to make it score a little bit higher. It also actually benefits the financial capacity, which is part of tier one and gets a 12. If it as a multiplier, that is not looking at just the cost of the project as a whole. It actually compares it a little. It does. It takes another step forward and looks at of the amount of revenue that the city has in its capital improvement sales tax fund, which is approximately $3 million each year of what, amount we're planning to get, what percentage of that is taken up by this project. So it tries to account for projects that take the whole capital budget in one fell swoop. where it's beneficial is that if you have grant funding associated with it, you'll actually see that represented in both the financial capacity and you'll see that score impacted, but you'll also see that the score for the tier two and the 10 that would go with it, the 10X multiplier, they would actually have two beneficial pieces there. Once again, giving high priority to projects that take as little city dollars as possible while also forwarding its objectives. So just a note there, risk mitigation kind of goes with the urgency and timing just a bit. But once again, risk mitigation is more so. Is there a serious issue out in the field that we're addressing with this? And kind of ties directly with urgency and timing too. City-owned infrastructure, this was an important factor that was added in last year. We were discussing this. This was an important component brought up by the council. Just making sure that future capital projects, given that we only do bring in about $3 million each year, we leverage that typically each year to get grant funding through the TIP program. to stretch our dollars further. The reason why we bring this up is that the council wanted to make sure that we have some type of way to grade the project based on, is it in our right of way? If the city owns the asset, it's going to get a higher score in that criteria versus something that is not on the city's right of way. So there are projects that we've done in the past. We've worked on the 100 work. There's an argument to be made that we actually attracted MoDOT to come out here and do a lot of work. when we did that. We have worked with our partners to improve the accessibility of the city. That said, this at least has a little factor that just controls for are we contributing to a project that's outside of the city's right-of-way, meaning, i.e., that's not the legal obligation of the city to make sure it's perfectly aligned, fixed, whatever it might be. It doesn't necessarily mean the project's not a good idea, but it just controls for that factor. The legal implications question, very important, too. This was a staff recommendation from last year, but it's really asking, and the thing that we keep running into, how much right-of-way do you need to acquire? Is it controversial right-of-way? Do we see issues with acquiring it? Is that going to affect the timeline? They're very practical questions of, if we do this project, what happens next? And it's trying to control for that up front so we can at least identify it. All right, then moving to Tier 3, which then gets a priority multiplier score of eight. It's just a validation. It would be better to say community validation, but we call it stakeholder input. And it does this project have the public support of both the business community and the residents of the city. So if we have a project that is being asked about by residents consistently. It's a constant item that's brought up public comment or just through individual conversations with the residents. And it's been a big issue for a long time. Obviously, the community has communicated that they want to address it. That's going to score higher there. And typically what we'll do is review former public comment cards, things along those lines, the feedback from open houses for similar projects to kind of see how the community has responded to previous conversations about this type of thing, or has anything been explicitly stated by the community asking for this today? That's just one. And then the other is the business needs economic development benefits of it as well. That one is a little bit more complicated, but if it's something that the business community has asked for, Typically what the city does from the economic development support position, the best thing we can do is provide the infrastructure necessary to support the business. One thing we were able to do is we extended the sewer line through the neighborhood improvement district and through the town center sewer district down Manchester, provided a lot of businesses down that street with sanitary sewer and has kind of opened up some additional possibilities for them. But also the city has built some streets here in the town center area that have served and helped serve a lot of the businesses within the community. So those are just examples, but overall, if the business community is expressing a strong interest in a certain project being done, whether it be to help their, you know, give people to their, one thing that we've talked about consistently is the Main Street Extension. You know, businesses have mentioned as well that there's strong support for it. It'll help pick up some traffic, provide another route for folks to take, and it will help guide folks actually through the center of the town center, if you will. So that's tier four. That's the we would say tier three stakeholder input going to tier four. It's just more so getting it some some additional still important but supplemental benefits or drawbacks. We had this title this community systems impacts and The question we're trying to ask here, and there's a typo, it says it does, does, we'll fix that. Does this project address a demonstrated community need or have public support? And that includes whether it affects the environment, is it a stormwater improvement, et cetera. Is it something that residents have brought up and it actually addresses the issue at hand and also the traffic impact, which typically plays a large role in all of our projects, but can be encompassed in some of the earlier criteria. And it's just another added bonus. If we can see improvement to our traffic flow, then that's going to be a good thing. And we want to make sure we assign it correctly. So that gets a six. And then the last one is just a community enrichment and appeal. We kind of subtitled it the community experience and does it enhance the city's character, improve the quality of life for its residents. And that's where we can get into some of the more Still important, but less so than whether or not it's the main goal and the master plan. We have culture and host. Does it support and help identify the city's culture and historical significance? Does it help support a historical project? Community morale and beautification. We've done that before on Route 100. We've done landscaping to beautify the area. Then the tourism and recreational impact. That is also a helpful tool. Does the project help draw more folks to Wildwood? One being Route 66. It's used some of the efforts we've done there. It helps draw individuals from across the region down to Wildwood to check out the area. And also just frequent some of the businesses along that as well, which the businesses have communicated that they are appreciative of those efforts. So just to tie into an example. That said, the department's presenting tonight the framework and the goal is tonight to get the committee's support. If there's any questions or any issues, we're happy to address them here. And then the goal would be to come back and bring the completed version B, so exhibit B with the groupings. We'll use that for this year's analysis and we'll have that back to you in September and then we'll be working towards budget in October. Thank you. If you have any questions, please.

Questions for Mr. Lee? Council Member Means.

So there's two frameworks, the 18 to 1 and then I believe 18 to 1 and then the 12 to 4. Both frameworks are going to be analyzed and then brought back. Is that right?

Yep. So when we do, the good news here is when we go through and score it, it doesn't actually change the actual score that it gets, the 0, 3, 5, or 9. Where it's going to actually show up is the overall priority score at the end. So really, it just messes with the formula that spits out the very end total. That said, we can compare those two to see how it differentiates. He was asking if we were planning on using both methodologies for 2017. No, I wanted to see if it was going to be compared. That was something that, given that it's not like we had to do double the work either. We can just put it in, and then that would be more than fine. That was actually listed here, too, that we'd be happy to, when completing this, bring back both versions. Tonight, we're going to request that we start with the grouped version as the one we're going to use, but we'll definitely include a copy of the 18 through 1 to show those two differences. We'll just make sure to kind of de-highlight it, if you will, so you can have that comparison. Councilman Kranz.

So this basically is the work here to get done next year, right? Yes. Okay. Is this going to get done, you think? Pretty sure? Yep. What if something comes up we're totally unaware of?

How do you deal with that? If there's a project that comes up, the council has the authority to change the budget if needed. If there's something that comes up in 27, you know, where we have to address it immediately, we would bring that to the council's attention and then there would be a request to amend the budget to do that project.

How do you get, if you have something going on on this, how do you do that?

If I have an item I want to put on on this. Is this the council? This could be, that's tonight. If there's any requests to have something scored, if the council, also just so the committee knows and the council knows, we had opened this up last year, but if the council or committee members want to also score themselves, the projects listed here, happy to provide the Excel document that has the working equation too, so you can see it as you fill it out and the scoring rubric, if you will, too. So more than welcome to do that. And if there's a project, then with the chair's permission, that was also an idea tonight,

if there's anything that needs to be scored and to bring it up now and we could have that included in the review councilman bro so i think what maybe what mr councilman means was referring to is i think last time we we month when we talked about this we talked about maybe having you bring back the 2026. oh the version the version and putting putting it into this Is that easy to do?

So you're just saying take the scores from 2026 and update them using the new matrix?

Yeah, we can do that. That's not a problem. We can look at what we did and had scored for 2026 under the new methodology and see where it changed things to make sure. That would help us understand do we like the impact of the new model before we go all in on it.

Thank you. It's not a problem. So City Administrator Lee, what you're looking for from us tonight is a motion for you to

Proceed with the weighted grouping methodology, the revised methodology, we can call it. And then also tonight too, if there was any, this was kind of like the last call, if there's any projects that you would want, we have the projects listed that we plan to review for 27. If there's anything that isn't included that you want included in that review, staff's open to hearing that today. We can talk about it tonight. And then if the committee agrees, we can have that on the list as well. Okay.

Would somebody like to make that motion? So motion made by Council Member Owen to proceed as suggested by City Administrator Lee. Would somebody like to second, please? Second by Council Member Means. Any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Motion carries. Thank you.

Can I add one note on that? Absolutely. I just wanted to say thanks to the committee. Appreciate it. And I wanted to thank last year's committee, too, for working through this. It's been a process to get done. But last year, we saw some really, you know, they had to make some tough decisions. Obviously, we created the unfunded needs list that we continue to use as a repository of projects for future consideration. But generally speaking... We had a ton of projects budgeted in our five-year capital a couple years back, and this was kind of the school of the committee, and the council's endorsement allowed us to really readjust and align it better with the community. And just the department appreciates the feedback and work the council's done with us to kind of perfect this process.

All right. Thank you. Moving on to item C, which is municipal building access and site improvements. It's an action item here. And I think city administrator Lee, you may have alluded to some of these things on Monday night. Yep. If I remember correctly. So turning things back over to you.

thank you chair um so a couple things in this report tonight did just want to provide a general update on some of the efforts we've been doing here to make some improvements city hall we do have a decent chunk of change uh 300 000 budgeted for fiscal year 2026 for improvements within the city hall um so that does include a bunch of projects that are going on behind the scenes right now and once we have you know bid documents in and everything like that and actual bids on the table we'll be bringing those back to committee so i just wanted to give an update there but some Before you get $300,000, I'm looking at what we just talked about previously, so I'm seeing $150,000. That's for 2027. Okay.

Yeah. So this is $300,000 per 2020. Yep. Yeah, so that said. We cut our budget in half for next year.

No, we had before this last year, we had had. very minuscule amounts in that fund. I think it was 50,000 last year. And before that, we created the fund in 0.25 to start addressing some of the issues we have here in city hall. And quite frankly, it's on the list tonight and just some of the updates, but we've got a leak that continues to be a problem in the back hallway of the police station. We've done, you know, two engineering analysis analyses in the past, you know, five years trying to look at the issue. We've had multiple contractors come out to assess and see if there's a way that they can see that what could be the problem. There's multiple opinions now thinking that the sidewalk might be the issue. So there's a lot of ideas in the air, if you will. And We have a current engineering firm looking at removing that entire basin in the back of City Hall completely away from City Hall. So there's a couple of things we're doing. That's going to be when if that comes back and we're able to properly do it and store more water upstream and the village green property. And then effectively get rid of the water storage right next to the buildings foundation. That's going to be expensive project and in 2020 not 27 but 2028 we have a decent chunk of change. I think it's almost a million dollars budgeted to do a major project like that. It was more of a placeholder. We don't have the exact cost. But the idea is in 2028. We should have that analysis done and we should be able to address it. That said, before, just to make a note, we had some projects, as you'll see in the report tonight, that we needed to head off this year after kind of spending some time identifying them. And the plan is we're moving our way to have that done. That said, it was almost taking a look at finish these next year, make sure that didn't happen, got the address. And if any project might be you know, sitting there and not completed this year, then the department will bring back that. We won't, it's not going to be pushed off the table. We'll probably come back and say, hey, could we adjust that because we're not spending this year. Yeah. But one of these two, just to kind of get into the meat and potatoes of it, we have the Village Green obviously built on the west side of the municipal building. Do you mind bringing it up? I don't think I have a picture of that. Aerial of the Main Street, please. I can kind of describe it first and then the next. The drive aisle on the adjacent to City Hall on the west side, it did not have the same improvements that were done to the park property. And over time, it's, you know, the whole parking lot is eventually going to need to be resurfaced. We're making sure that the construction work on Village Green gets done, but that will be worked into the plans after we've kind of concluded our construction traffic that need to come back and access the area. That said, there's the sidewalk on the west side of the building that's adjacent to the drive aisle. You can see that kind of a tree lawn there next to a sidewalk that's on the west side of City Hall. There's a pretty steep grade change between walking if you're walking laterally across that sidewalk maybe from the concert venue over to the city hall maybe you're cutting across there is a nice little divot that occurs there it is a bmp that's been identified it's supposed to be a drainage soil yeah that's what it's supposed to be in between there yep right between the drive and the sidewalk it's a very small area yep rick did you want to add anything on that too i mean we're

Well, it doesn't provide good access for pedestrians accessing Village Green, particularly at night. I think that's the concern. The question is really what to do with it moving forward. Do we try to make it safer? Do we spend money on it in the short term? What are the options to avoid it being a hazard, frankly?

Yeah, and what Rick is saying is that during the concerts taking place here, Typically what happens, there's a street light here, but you have bushes here that kind of make it obstructs the light from being able to properly, you know, give illumination to the entire sidewalk. What typically happens at night, though, when the concert concludes is that folks start departing, but typically what you'd want to see is that everyone goes on a single file line and walks on out, but that's not typically how the concert ends. It's a large conglomerate of humans that just move to the east. And a lot of folks try to cut across this area here this swale and what tends to happen is there's a pretty steep cut off from the street here down into the swale and then as you get up to the sidewalk it's just it's a pretty nasty lip and someone could get their foot stuck up on it. What is the um height or what is the um measurement? Four inches down and four inches it could at some points it could very well be three four inches. Yeah, so it's a pretty steep change. If you put it in the center of this, it's probably even more. At the end of the day, when you're walking, and feel free to take a look, when you're walking this way, you could potentially get clipped on this piece of the sidewalk and trip. And what we're... Yeah, not a good thing. And what we're trying to do is, can we address it in the short term? Obviously, we can work in some long-term improvements to it. You can kind of see it here. But before, this wasn't necessarily as big of an issue because the sidewalk was very underutilized. At the end of the day, there weren't all too many people walking that direction and crossing over. There wasn't really a need. But since we've started to have concerts there, we've seen that kind of additional traffic. And along with just the recreational park use that happens every day, there's more people that use it to kind of cut across. At night, that's where the biggest concern lies. In the daytime, people can tend to typically see it and see that that is clearly, you know, it's tempting to be a swale there. But the idea that was presented to us from, you know, our contractor that potentially addressed this issue is, You know, there are a couple of trip hazards within the sidewalk itself, so we would want to level those out. But then going in and actually adding a gabion rock in between to really better define that swale. So that would change kind of the functional layout of the city hall building in that green area where the grass is. You'd practically be adding a gabion rock there to align with the swale. That said, that would almost serve as a more of a barrier to folks. that are walking back or walking to, to not cut across. The idea eventually would be as well, you have this sidewalk and you have the ADA entrance to the park over to the right. We would also potentially add in in the future, striping that goes, there's like a center, I don't think it goes back there if it's okay. In that center aisle there for the parking lot, there is a small lift that was constructed as part of the park. The idea would be to have almost a crosswalk striped to that center aisle, and then you'd have it striped over to the ADA. So we'd have a better guidance for folks to come in and then get to the park if they need a wheelchair accessible entrance. But also, if you had the gabion rock there almost serving as an obstruction, those folks would be somewhat forced to go around, and it would no longer be treated as kind of a cut through. That's been the bigger concern at night. But I guess we can answer any questions on that first. Yeah.

Yes. Gabion would replace one trip hazard with another trip hazard. It just absolutely would. And so... I'm the last person in here to advocate for reducing green space of any kind, but we have an opportunity there to just kind of slide the whole sidewalk over, put in a curb and have it nicely curved on both sides and have a bit wider sidewalk to provide better access because a curb people understand whereas a gabion rock ditch, It's going to cause problems. And so rather than being four feet wide, maybe it could be six feet wide. We gain a foot on the opposite side or something like that. I'm not trying to redesign on the fly. I'm just saying I'm mostly suggesting that the gabion would be a problem for sure. And we might as well clean up the east side of the road and make it as nice looking as the west side.

And Rick, how wide is that distance between the pavement and the sidewalk? I'd say three feet ish. So I guess I tend to agree with Councilman Rambo. I see putting the rock down, people walking up to it and saying, oh, with one step, I can make it across that and help the kids through the ankle.

It's going to be one set of problems for another. Is there any issue? I mean, obviously the cost would be bigger, but the BMP component, is there some consideration there too, Rick?

So yeah, we'll have to figure that out. The stormwater BMP, it's supposed to collect the stormwater in that area and infiltrate it into a bed, a storage bed, literally underneath that sidewalk. So that has to be considered. Either we'd have to relocate that or if we keep it in place, the thought that keeps coming to my mind is permeable concrete, either in terms of a sidewalk or a widened driveway with a curb. so that we retain the ability to suck the stormwater up and get it into the drainage field that's there right now.

I think you can engineer it better than your concept. I mean, I really think it's an opportunity for you.

We could clean it up and make it safer. It would cost some money.

That would be... So there's some sort of drain basin underneath the sidewalk where the water starts to collect into? Yes, there's... So if that's the case, could you... You know, go back to having the sidewalk with water inlets that flush the water from the street into this water basin. Kind of like a, almost like a drain, but it's just draining it into the water basin. Channel drain.

Some way to get the water into that area would be what we'd have to determine. Whether it's permeable concrete or some other means to get it into that.

And I mean, that usage on that side isn't, I think permeable concrete could be a good candidate there. It's not, it would get used, but it's worked decent in the off Manchester too. So that it's an option.

It's an option.

It's concrete.

It's concrete. It's a specialty concrete that allows water to drain right through it. We've, we've used it with mixed success. It's not real friendly. available in the industry still, but it's a really nice, if it works, it's a great tool because it just sucks the water up. Typically it's an option for stormwater handling. And when we do it, we put a, a three foot deep bed of granular material underneath it, which stores the water and cleans it, but it just sucks right through it.

So Rick, I can't help but key in on the word you used, phrase mixed success. So it sounds like, so what's your confidence level on that product?

Well, so we used it on the Manchester, most recent Manchester streetscape project that was completed in 2020. And we had a variety of resultant finishes to the concrete. It's not smooth concrete. It's not something you want a roller blade on. We got a few complaints, but not many. And mainly it was, I want a roller blade and I can't, because it's rough and it's not, it doesn't feel, if it's not finished as well as it should, it won't feel as solid underfoot. And that's the downside. So if you walk on it, you may not like it. But practically speaking, it works for a sidewalk. It's again, it's not hard concrete.

It's going to work when people are stepping on it in the dark and mass coming out of the concert. I think it would be fine in that regard.

It's just more so, it's a little bit more tacky, if you will. You can really kind of feel it on your feet. It's a little bit more rough. That said, it does function as a sidewalk. It's just not as finished, if you will. It's not as great as finished.

It doesn't provide as much of a finished product. It doesn't compare with the nice new concrete we placed in the village green.

Okay.

More non-slip, though, right?

Definitely more non-slip. There is something to be made there.

Council Member Ramble.

Yeah, especially on a hill. I think it's an appropriate place to use it. But I wanted to ask Rick, there are numbers painted on that sidewalk, like 2.3. The top one is 6.2, as I recall. What the heck is that? Because it looks like it's a little buckled and we have to work on it anyway. What's been done over there?

Well, that's the work of Scott Hummel, our street superintendent. He was checking the cross slope of the sidewalk. Oh, okay.

Yeah, that's why I figured it was slope.

Okay. I'm pretty sure he was noting the cross slope. Okay. So, right. So typically ADA, you need to be under 2% for a cross slope. And so I think he was finding that it was much steeper to that. And I think that's what's going on is it's been washed out a little bit. And that material is coming down towards the street and across the locates become more steep.

And kind of going back to it. I mean, tonight we were planning on providing like the, we have a cost assessment, but it would include that Gavian rock. I think from the committee's feedback tonight, creating that barrier may not be the best approach. And we may need to look into having, whether or not the impervious asphalt could work there and come back to the committee. But main thing is we, we have a concert coming up. The plan is going to be to have, you know, an officer kind of designated there at the end of the concert, just make sure people are watching their step. We'll have a cone or two out there, but, We don't want to necessarily close the sidewalk. That said, we're going to be expediting the review and work to get this done, just given the amount of people that are coming and going from the Village Green at night during the peak time after the concerts.

Is there anything we can do to light it up a little bit better after the concerts to put some temporary portable lighting there? Do you have any flashlights?

We could look in to see if we have some additional. Councilmember, I was going to say stand up. We could have, and the thing is the officer, we talked to the captain on this too, is that after the council, there's already officers in the field, but as the concert kind of comes to an end, an officer will make their way over to there. They'll have their light. They'll just kind of be guiding people, telling them hopefully to go around. The hope is that they go around the actual stage structure. They come down the ADA ramp and it kind of gives you a natural perspective at that point you kind of naturally would go to the sidewalk instead of trying to cross over. But we have seen time and time again that folks just cut across because it's the easiest path and least resistance. And the biggest concern we have is just given that it is a decent change. The thing is, it being designed to be a swale wasn't probably the best idea. A swale at that location was the best idea in the first place, given that you had a sidewalk just adjacent to it, if you ever had plans.

Probably have never, very seldom got used before the Village Green.

That is clear. Originally worked, but Village Green has kind of highlighted a deficiency.

So one thing I would say too, as we work to fix that, if there's a way we can use that part for replacing, if we do this permeable concrete or regular concrete, if we can make that section at least ADA compliant, will that get us in compliance overall? Is that a wide enough section that then we would have ADA compliance, even though half the sidewalk is going to be out of compliance?

I think the goal would be to make it all ADA compliant. If the cross slope is too steep, we need to address it. That would be ideal.

Mr. Brown, doing the impervious concrete, is that going to take the current project costs roughly? Do we have a rough understanding of what this may cost now? I just want to make sure that we're gripping the No, not 2 million.

Well, I would say we've expanded the scope a bit from what Teehill quoted. Yeah. So it sounds like we might be putting back more sidewalk than we have now. So there's more square footage, plus if we do permeable, then that's going to drive the price up as well.

Was the 16,000 going to replace that whole sidewalk? So the road itself was going to take pretty much that whole line right there. It was going to replace that section of sidewalk. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Here was also addressing. HAB-Masyn Moyer- It was taking apart pretty much that whole line of sidewalk and then also installing the gay being rock in between the two. HAB-Masyn Moyer- And then readjusting the drainage that we have as they were ripping it up, they found the drainage problem, they would be able to address it there and also the full quote there's another 4400 addressed a sidewalk entrance making on the green side. bringing that down to be a ramp to make it, you know, pretty much we'd add additional crosswalks. It does not include striping in this proposal too. Then we'd probably come back and do that later.

Um, but it's actually, that can be done. I also noticed that the 26, 625 didn't include $3,800 or whatever that was. Yep. We, that one, and thank you for calling that out. Um,

That cost is for another sidewalk concern on the other side of the building that is not- So before we move on to that, Council Member Rambo- Yeah, very quickly.

We decided that the Gabion Rock idea was infeasible, which sort of negates this quote. And so I'm not feeling so bad about adding to the cost because you're fixing some other problems. You're fixing a drainage issue. It's very unsightly right there. This is our brand new park. We can clean all that up. We can make it ADA compliant, improve the drainage and so on and so forth, sort of in one fell swoop. And so I was, it's not... We're going to talk about other issues before we make a motion on approving this sort of en masse, right? I mean, it's not, you're not looking for a motion just for this part or are you?

Tonight we were really just focusing it. The other stuff was more just giving it updates, but the other, and if there's a stairway out front, stairway out front was the next thing to talk about.

Okay. Okay.

But if there's going to be, since this is kind of a drastic step difference than the Gabion Rock install, we could entertain a motion for this and then do a second for the staircase issue. So that's up to you.

Councilman Rowan, you were starting to make a comment, but I kind of interrupted because I didn't want to come get a dumb staircase.

Okay. All right.

Thank you.

So we've had no injuries so far here, right?

There was a, what brings this up, a lady did, she didn't get hurt in a severe case, but she did scrape herself up and broke her glasses by catching the lip of the road. So we want to address this as soon as possible. We've marked it with cones and We've called attention to it. We'll have an officer there, but we definitely, there's a set of urgency on the project.

I mean, for the next concert, can you just stake it and ribbon it to kind of force people around it?

We can explore that.

There may be some folks may complain about the aesthetics.

I know that's, we can't care about aesthetics when it comes to safety. Right now, we have some cones out there. The idea in the daytime, we've It really hasn't been all too bad because folks typically take the time to walk around it. It is the nighttime where I've seen it.

One thing, if we can just light it up. Get a little portable generator with a portable light or something and put some light on it when people leave. I think that might get us through until we can get it fixed. Sounds to me like probably the problem was the person couldn't see it because it was dark. If we light it up, that might get us through.

Is the stairway by the Mayor's Grove well lighted? I'm sorry, I'm jumping in here, but we're talking about... And I'm wondering, because at certain events that I've been to, people use that stairway a lot. They know it's there, and oh, this is a shortcut.

Yeah, it's relatively well-lighted. You've got the lights down at the carport area. You have the lights, kind of the auxiliary lights coming from the back parking lot. I've been back there at night, too, and you can see, but it definitely does have – that wall kind of cuts off the light a little bit. It's not perfectly lighted.

We probably should look at that as well. Dustin's going to be checking lights tonight, so he can go check it out. Did he get that one, though?

Where are you? All right. Yeah, so in that case, I guess the department, if the committee so desires, we could request a motion now for just this part. We'll break into the next part. in the consistent with a look into the bigger picture here of possibly using some type of impervious rock and asphalt to close the gap here still have the drainage be there and address any issues but don't use to give you a rock is the main thing that the committee did the city teams taken from this and we can come back with an alternative solution and what that cost and so somebody like to make that motion.

Council member Rambo makes the motion to proceed with the investigation of using the impervious materials. Second by Council member Owen. Discussion. So is this going to get taken care of or are we going to talk about it some more later?

We'll probably have to come back with a quote for doing the surface. Yeah. That'll have to go to council. So we'll, what we'll do in the interim is for concert, we'll light it up. We're obviously there on site. So we'll be able to control that environment a little bit more during the day. We'll probably have the tone continue to be there. And at the same time, we'll, need to just make sure that we may entertain something like the staking or something along those lines in the interim just to call attention to it so folks don't try to call us.

Just for my benefit of learning, is this going to have to come back to us, then get approved by council?

In theory, it should. But if the committee were, you know, it could go to council too if it was of an urgent concern, if the mayor's permission to put it on the agenda. But typically, our plan would be to come back to this committee. And then typically, our meetings are before the council meeting. It's the week before this month's a little different because of the election. Uh, but if we were to have this at a, at a committee meeting, we could have a quick turnaround to have that subsequent.

Sounds like concert series is all going to be done and over before we get this taken care of either way. So maybe it's not going to become a, such an urgent issue because we're going to miss the urgent deadline and then we can do it to a normal program.

Yep. And, and for back to school, um, obviously we'll have the cops there and the main thing, but what we've been looking at too is just with the Celebrate Wildwood event, and this is what really adds the urgency, we may need to entertain, you know, some type of staking or something like that. Or maybe we can come up with a more creative way to kind of exclude that zone because the plan is to have, um, practically vendors and things like that in their back parking lot. You'll also have vendors in the front. You'll have the concert area, of course, filled in. You'll have the bounce houses on the park property. So it's going to be kind of a full-on system working around City Hall. So one thing that we may just want to call to attention is there's going to be a lot more foot traffic on that section of sidewalk. So we might have to do something to be creative to kind of block it off for the time being.

We vote on that motion. We did not vote on that motion yet. So all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Motion carries.

City Administrator, back to you. Thank you, Chair. All right. So the second one we wanted to talk about today has been a pesky issue we've been dealing with since the building was built. But more recently... was just something that was part of our program for the 2026 year. And we wanted to start looking at how could we even address this issue, because it does look like an expensive fix regardless. If you notice when coming into the building on the north side of the building, the staircase in front, the building was built with a large footprint. It's two stories, so you needed to fill in a lot of space. And it covers a large stretch of Main Street. That's the staircase now. And the issue that we have currently is that this staircase, and you can't necessarily see it from this angle, but over here, you have the road that was built before this building was constructed. And then we built the building. The building is set at a lower grade than the road. So this staircase, ADA is over here. You can access and get up there and go around. But this is imagine this being a very short lip and then all of a sudden it just slowly gets bigger to the point where now it's two steps over here. The steps are different heights. The steps are different heights. It's weird. It's weird. It looks dangerous. It looks dangerous. It's weird. It... say it's dangerous, but it's not the way that most folks would want to see it. There is some liability there that the department's identifying as, hey, let's try to knock this out, figure out a solution.

Aren't we going to end up with stairs on the sidewalk if we fix this? The stairs on the other sidewalk? No, the sidewalk going in front of the stairs. Because how do you change that?

Well, we have some conceptual drawings that could in theory be used. What the problem is is that you had the building stretched so far out here that over, and you just, there's no way to do it while lining it up with the road. So where this does it is it makes it a more defined area and it's kind of level out a piece of it. And there's two options. One that the department somewhat believes is a little bit cleaner looking. Can you zoom in Destin to the actual photographs here? So this is the solution that a rendering came, a rendering that they, that are. Okay. So this here is a one-step solution that puts in two planters, if you will, and kind of carves out that area that was shown before. It's just one large slab of concrete with multiple joints and kind of creates more of a landscape area to guide folks up and down. And then with the one step, You pretty much account for that grade change by installing these two flower. And the other side, this is a different solution, not as, this personally is a little bit tricky as well because you have, once again, three different options for stairs. and which is what we're currently having right now, it helps call them out more definitively. In that case, you know, middle is two, one, and three. But this solution here seemed to account for it and then have it be consistent. So there's not an individual that maybe was watching a friend or someone walk up, they see him go down two, they think two, and then they go down to three. That said, when looking at it, and Rick, if there's any disagreement here, let me know, but this was some of the solution. looking at as possible idea to address this issue. It's not going to be cheap. We're going to have to rip up some sidewalk to do so. And it's going to take a little bit more planning to get an agreement and an agreement, get some quotes on it. But we wanted to first bring this to the committee's attention and say, hey, is this a a proper way to address that staircase? Do we think that this is the right direction? If so, we can start executing towards getting bid documents put together on it and then go out, get a cost estimate, come back and see if this is what we want to do. There's not necessarily anybody that has submitted claims or any negative comments about it, but it is something that's been brought to our attention by other council members. It's been noted by staff. It's something that we've kind of always wanted to take a look at. This is where the public enters their building.

You've got to have it. Has there been any falls?

There hasn't been any falls that have been recorded as a claim in the last five years, but nonetheless, it is something that former council members that have been on the council for a long time had related to the department that this was an issue even back when we opened, that the insurance company was a little bit skeptical of even covering us. That was what was claimed. That said, right now, our current insurance does not have any exception for these stairs. If someone fell, it'd be covered. That said, it's something that we want to look at a little bit further. This is what we're trying to do. But with it being the primary entrance to City Home, the vast majority of residents that come here each day, they come in through the first floor. I think that having that be one option, not having a couple, even if you have to make it a little bit different looking out there, it is well worth it in the sense that you won't have anybody tripping and falling. Where the department really gets concerned is that we no one had any incidents necessarily, but we had a large voter turnout at the election that was hosted. The city was willing to allow folks to come in and vote early and also vote during the day of the actual voting day on election day. But There was a large, large line going out the building and then curling around, which is fine. Sidewalk can accommodate it, but just given the amount of mobility that takes place right at that step, people moving around. Something's going to happen. It's bound. I'll make that motion.

So what is your motion? It's to move forward with these designs to discuss and bring to city council eventually, I guess.

Okay.

So we have a motion on the floor. Do we have a second? Seconds. Okay. So now we're open for discussion and comment.

So I'm just not understanding how, quite honestly, how when the sidewalk behind all this is sloped and the reason we have the stairs that graduate down is because the sidewalk is sloped behind it. So you got these pretty drawings. But the sidewalk still slopes behind it. So you just created like a lip here or something. This is not doable. Neither one of these are doable.

Well, I would say they are concepts. And I would agree with you that there needs to be a little more work done to show how much we'll have to work from the sidewalk to the step. To do it right now, the goal is to get rid of the partial steps.

Yes.

Either configuration. If we have one flight or three flights. But to do that, I think they're going to be less wide. So the actual stair is going to be narrower to allow it to tie in and then work back.

So I think we're going to have slope on here. There has to be. I mean, it's just, you got to conceptualize this. It's very clear that behind it is sloped and now you've made these visually level. It's not practical to do it that way. So we've got to figure out what we're going to do with the sidewalk because you almost are going to have to add step, a step on the sidewalk somewhere behind it to get that sidewalk flat to come to flat stairs.

So, I mean, Well, the other thing you have to work it in though, cause you have the ADA entrance on the side, but then also the flat side that kind of builds into it. But the idea here is the concept of getting it at least. And if it's not perfect, I mean, we'll have to keep working at it, but taking it from right now that it goes from, Point two of a stair to two stairs that the one side to the other. Figuring out a way to make it one step or two step, whatever it might be, but having it be one set so no one is confused. And if it has to be at somewhat of an angle.

So you're going to all of a sudden now you're going to have slopes. Anywhere in there, you can have funny slopes and funny stairs. So let's not go from one thing that looks bad to one thing that just now looks bad a different way.

You can't tell that from just looking at it here. Just conceptually. I'm saying I can't see it looking at there. How can you?

You can't. I mean, this is behind that. You're making this look like it's all going to be nice and flat right here.

But behind there, the sidewalk. So let me step into the conversation here for just a moment. And let's go to our expert on staff and get his observations here. He looked at me when I said that.

He makes a valid comment. And I'm not disregarding it whatsoever. We need to look more carefully at that very issue. I I think the way it's portrayed might be a little bit optimistic in terms of the trade-off, you know, we're going to, where the goal is to get rid of the partial step, end up with a design with either one step or two steps and then warp it back. So there will be a warping from the sidewalk to the step. And yes, it might be actually steeper than it is now in that area. So what is the maximum slope we would be happy with? So there's needs to be a little bit more design done and nail down those elevations and figure that out. I think we just wanted to get some feedback. Is it important to develop a plan that we can, build once you have a full step versus the partial step option that we have in place.

So I guess what I'm going to do is interpret this then as a very rough initial concept that requires more development before we can really make a judgment on what it is.

We just didn't want to spend, you know, keep working with a consultant on it. I just think we're going to

We're just going to spend a bunch of engineering money to find out that Going to go from one bad option to another bad option. Yeah.

But maybe we can figure this out. That doesn't happen.

I'm more confident than you are in that.

I just think we're going to get to where it's going to cost a quarter of a million dollars. We're going to spend a quarter of a million dollars to get this entrance changed when we have a $3 million capital budget. But if we needed a little bit of work to figure that out, that's fine. It's going to be a half a million dollars.

I was going to suggest that you kind of try to focus on we've already made a motion to look at this try to focus on concept B because having one step that's consistent and so forth it seems to make more sense and also having those planters that offers us a better opportunity to satisfy a field because the sidewalk can slope behind that planter and virtually I think was the probably the idea anyway. And so it can easily be done. My comment was going to be, I like the planners better on concept B for an additional reason that this horsetail out here in front scouring rush it looks like hell it's horrible the planters look gorgeous we have done a an excellent job with the flowers we've got wildflowers blooming in there all the time it looks really great and then you look behind it it's nothing but these this weed infested crap And Horsetail was just the wrong choice for that place. We could dig that out as part of this project and just put something else in. Wouldn't cost much money and do the same sort of landscaping and just clean up the entrance in general. Again, the... The biological component of this is going to be cheap in terms of the overall project, and it would really, really clean up our facade.

So this is the entrance steps and beautification project. Does everybody know what I'm talking about? No, I know exactly what you're talking about. I agree with you. Yeah. Okay. So Council Member Rambo made the suggestion that we go with concept B, but that was not part of the original motion. So do we need to amend the motion or can we just? If everybody agrees, then we just give you guidance.

Is there a second to the motion?

Yes. He didn't know. Did he? I got a motion he wanted to make. He didn't make a motion.

We made a motion and we had a discussion. We're in discussion.

Yeah, we're in discussion now.

Gary, if both the folks that made the motion are comfortable with that change, then that would be fine. But if not, then we might want to go back.

So I don't remember who made the motion in a second. I made a motion in a second. So are you both comfortable with going with concept B?

Well, I don't think we should restrict anything right now.

This is all conceptual. We've got some ideas, and you guys are going to finalize it and bring it back before it goes any further, right? Add your thoughts to it. Okay.

You see what they're saying? No, I was providing guidance to Tom. I think the crew over there agrees with that guidance. Everyone here kind of seems to agree that one, two, and or three steps is not as ideal as one step if we can make that happen. So it's just, again, given the guidance, but I'm okay with the motion as it stands. Okay. All right.

All right. Very good. Okay. So any further discussion on the motions? Then all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? One opposed. Council Member Rowland. Any abstentions? Commission carries. Good discussion on that. Another item there too, Chair.

Absolutely. Just a note on the report too, covering a couple of general updates. It's included there, but we did want to just mention in the front area, we have the HAB-Jacques Juilland, Metal structure it's almost like a it was meant for plants to grow up and buying some profit I don't know why, but the metal structure in front of the building on the north side, if you look out. HAB-Jacques Juilland, You come out turn to your right and see it it's rusted it's kind of been dilapidated over time, the committee this committee previously it said hey. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Go ahead and put something together to possibly remove that or at least painted so that's in the works we're putting together bid documents for that. HAB-Jacques Juilland, we've got quite a few other projects actively in the works, right now we're still investigating the water damage, we have an engineer designing the re putting that water upstream like we had mentioned. We have the roof that's going to be cleaned before Celebrate Wildwood. That's a pretty easy one to do. We have the HVAC system repairs that some have taken place to date, but some still are pending later this year. We have our HVAC duct system will be cleaned out later this year as well in the fall months. Don D' spiral staircase we're working to figure out the best way and who would be the best context to try to contact for the bid documents themselves, because it is somewhat specialty work trying to find a wood Smith. Don D' The metal structure doesn't need to be adjusted, but the wood on top of it is somewhat dilapidated needs to be stained at least and some of it is cracked. So fixing that. The front entrance there obviously was already noted. And then we did have TSI come out and have checked the city audio equipment in the council chambers. We are getting a quote to not necessarily redo the entire system in the council chambers, but to update the back end equalizer and audio processor to pretty much take away that issue we've been having where it kind of cuts in or if we've had some where some mics work a little bit better than others. That's all stemming from the back rack, if you will, the actual equipment that processes the input. It's just outdated. It was installed in 2013. So relatively, when you look at the whole cost of outfitting that room, we'll plan to probably keep the microphones the same and have just all the back end items upgraded with the intent that we can do a more full upgrade as we get some of these other projects addressed, but this will at least clean up all the sound And we'll actually set us up. So we've requested in this proposal is make sure we address the performance issues we've been facing, but at the same time, making sure that when we do go to upgrade it with possibly new audio and visual equipment, because we could install a camera in the back that zooms in on people as they speak. And that's something that other cities have done. We can install another camera that automatically transitions over when the public speaks at the podium. There's some ways we could really enhance our YouTube videos that we submit and publish out to the public. That can come still, but the main thing is trying to address the technical difficulties we've been having. There's a quick fix to that and also a long-term plan to address both the camera and the equipment back there. So I just wanted to make a note there, too. But we should have a quote now. It'll be coming back to this committee as well.

So question for you, thought just occurred to me, we have an ad hoc building committee in place right now. How is what they're doing different from what we are discussing here tonight?

It is very similar, and they actually cover this. The main thing that the department wanted to bring up tonight, given the time-sensitive matter of it, was the issue with the sidewalk and the stairs here, because those have come up relatively recently, and we had updates. But the other, we're just giving the committee as a generalized update before the council as well.

All right. Perfect. Before we leave this topic, any other questions or comments from anyone? I have a question.

Generally, cable doesn't fail. It's the connections. And so as part of this project, could you ensure that they're going to wring out the cables? And they might want to re-terminate everything.

Sorry, I didn't include that. The plan? No, if you've got it covered, then you've got it covered. No, no. And that's a very important thing to say because Part of it will be like I can show you in the back rack what we're going to replace, but I've also requested that we have it rewired. So all of our stuff that we see out there, that'll stay the same, but cleaning up the wiring both at the table that runs the show and underneath so that really we're going to try to tuck those wires in so that no one that might be sitting there might accidentally kick it and then it disconnects. We're going to try to take all of that, centralize it, and just run it through the back. We might have to. cut a small hole in the wall or something like that and repatch it. But overall, it's going to lead to a much better system and way easier to upgrade. Right now, the way it's wired is very, it's almost like they went out of their way to make it more difficult. They put it underneath the, it's actually underneath the dais. It's not ideal. Okay. That'll be coming.

Bob, it sounds like a project for you and I to come in and do. Yeah, we can, I got this. We don't even have to buy any equipment. Hey. John Potter, All right, so I just moving on now to item number six public works status report on city improvement projects see administrator I believe you get to take a break here and return things over to director brown.

Council Members chair provided the update to you for this month, frankly, this is, I think, a pretty much identical version of what was submitted to Council on Monday night. So I don't think there's any new information to add. We had some discussion about 109 BA and Old State Road shared use path on Monday night. I'm happy to address any further questions you may have about either one of those projects, or any of the other ones that are on HAB-Jacques Juilland. : The schedule, I know that's number own is interested in progress with the 36 and three seven we're just done a lot more straight road I. HAB-Jacques Juilland. : don't have a lot of progress to share with you tonight on that other than I do expect to bring it back to you potentially next month with more information on that improvement project to share. I think so with that, I'll wrap. If there's any specific questions, I'll be glad to do my best to address them.

Can I add a quick FYI? Absolutely. Thanks, Chair. Just a note, too. It's not 100% confirmed just yet, but there is a high likelihood, and it was mentioned on Monday night, but that crosswalk at Lake Country Lane It's would most likely be a decision that the council to whether or not it's going to be taken on by the city, but from all indications, the county is not willing to pay for the maintenance and operation of that RRFB in perpetuity. So I wanted to just kind of confirm we've had some further discussions and it does seem like this. If we wanted to have the crosswalk there in the RRFB system, it would be something the city would have to install, of course, and maintain in perpetuity.

So not to put anybody on the spot here, and it's something we're getting bold you to, but city take responsibility for that.

What are we taking a look at in terms of cost, roughly? So the main thing is, well, if it gets hit by a car, which in that case, I don't mean that could happen, but not as big of a concern where it's at. We would have a $5,000 deductible. So that would be one thing. If every time it gets damaged, it would be $5,000 deductible to fix. That said, you know, after 10 years, that's when we typically see, Rick, can you confirm that 10 years it takes?

That's kind of been our recent experience with these installations is you can figure roughly 10 years life. That's what we're seeing. And then you need to replace a large part, most of the equipment. Like $30,000 to do an RRP.

And we have to pay that?

Yeah. Our plan was already to install it originally in the conceptual design. The county had kind of given a rough go ahead of, yeah, that's fine. But then when we actually came up to permit it, pulled the permits for the project, they had issue with it. They said it didn't meet their warrant requirements. And they're somewhat correct in the sense that there are only 24 houses there. So the peak number of users using the crosswalk at any given time does not meet what they typically would put an RFP. But it's more so from the city's perspective, just we had it on the plan set already.

We wanted to get used by anybody else on that side of the street. Is it just basically going over to that neighborhood?

It's just connecting it. So I would say that the only folks that would necessarily use it consistently would be the 24 homes in the neighborhood. There also is an RFP being installed in this one. We are installing and paying for the installation, but the county will maintain it and operate it, is the one at Lakeshore Meadows. So we've got a conclusion on that. There's two RRFBs being installed. That subdivision has quite a few more residents that would be using it. But truthfully, both in this instance, they're just servicing the neighborhood that stretches back there so they can access with a guided and also noted and signed crosswalk over to the new.

And they can't get up to the. Because there's no sidewalk.

No, there's no sidewalk there. It's, it's a, yeah, it. Without it. I mean, quite frankly, if say the RFP wasn't installed there legally, they would still be able to cross at that intersection. They just wouldn't necessarily have the actual sign signage. That would be necessary. That would flash. And one thing we could do still, even if the county doesn't permit it. It doesn't mean if we can't budget long-term. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Is have the have some type of ramp included there. She may know where to cross. So we at least know the safest place to cross this right here. There's some things we can do that said it is it is, we would be one of the HAB-Jacques Juilland, Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the county. Specifically, we don't have all too many situations where we're maintaining their equipment. Typically, we've done projects where we build it, but then they they are the ones to take ownership after.

I think that's fair to say. In fact, we've partnered with them, I don't know, was it three or four years ago? So north of Ridge Road, there's an installation in place. At that location, basically the city paid for the equipment and And I'll take that back. They may have paid for the equipment. We installed it. But we're not on the hook for maintaining it. It's accounting's domain. So you're saying the county isn't for this, right?

No. They don't mind us doing it. And we can figure out the engineering to do it, it seems. There is some work that needs to be done there. And we're working to finish that now. But they are pretty much making the claim that, hey, this doesn't get enough daily peak users. So therefore, you know, you can put it on there at your expense we'll let you do it as long as it's safe but we're not going to pay for it with any any county money that was there are you recommending the city pay for it that is the question for the council but that said it would be the first time we would deviate from our it's a more of a custom not a policy but we've never taken ownership and maintained a county asset long term we've done projects but it's not we're taking over this space in perpetuity

So are you looking for a recommendation from this coming out.

This is just an update for information. Yeah, we'll have to come back once we have something. Well, first of all, we need the actual design of it to be formally approved by the county for a permit, but that will then have to come back to the city council because we'd be taking ownership of that crosswalk practically updating the maintenance agreement.

Do we have other places to get to our trail systems where they would be similar situations where people got to cross over a road to get to them. And now we've set a precedence where people are going to come back and say, well, I want you to put one on our road off of Shepherd or wherever one of our other trails is.

We do have a policy for establishing these. We could. look a little bit further at that. But nonetheless, this really is coming from this crosswalk. We had the public open house. When we first designed this, there was a RRFB plan. Because when you look at Lakeshore Meadows, it's a decent sized subdivision. There's quite a few houses in there. I would probably say it's anywhere between 7 to 100 houses in the neighborhood. If you go down there, we had that included in the plan set. HAB-Jacques Juilland, For the entire for the majority of the time we were planning it so that one was kind of set in stone that said, we had the open house and. HAB-Jacques Juilland, houses for this trail and the feedback we received overwhelmingly from the residents on Lake country lane and. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Meadowside Ridge was that hey you know we're right down the street we don't have access to this trail that's being built this lovely trail you guys are doing, thank you, but. We don't have necessarily the access to it. The council, listening to those requests, then did request that the department then include this RFP at this location. And at that point, that's actually when the county said, in concept, it looks good. But then when we actually push comes to shove, when you pull the permit, that means they're signing off on ownership eventually. That's when they started making them.

I saw a couple people stand up and leave the room, and I am inclined to declare a short five-minute recess for anybody else that needs to do so, including yours truly. Then we can come back. I don't think we're too far from. Thank you.

You get your chest out.

Drinking.

If you're doing more. So I'm pretty small.

Oh, yeah. So, yeah, older public safety. If you think you're making a big deal. So maintenance cuts.

You're going to do that every 5,000. It's a recommendation.

Here's what I want you to do for me. And this is in my opinion, the last time I've been right now, they're going to get something that over to the bigger name as far as recommending.

So I think he's a travel legal. What we would do if we don't, I talked to him. He's in a position.

so it would still make the connection you know right it would still give them like the ramp to get on there's more construction going up and then from there yeah it's it's a it's what you do is

are all back.

So we will continue. So are we done with the update on the city projects? So I just think that we're gonna have some updates on those next week, maybe next week. Okay, so then moving on to the moda supplemental agreement for Valley Road project action item.

I'm John Potter, Chair health members, hopefully, this is a fairly easy item, so you know we are working on design of our valley road permit project, right now we are. John Potter, Currently, trying to acquire easements for construction for that project, as we went through the design, we found it necessary to essentially request an extension.

John Potter, Hold on just for a second gentlemen.

John Potter, Just clarifying where this is yeah. I don't want to start off on that side.

So the Valley Road project, to be clear, is from White Road up to Strucker Road. That's the road that runs along the middle school. It actually has Clarkson Valley on one side of it for a fair amount, but that's where it is. So we are working on design and currently acquiring easements. We did have to request a one-time extension for the project earlier. Honestly, it was probably close to a year ago when we actually did this. Through MoDOT and East West Gateway, the extension was granted. So we are working towards having the plans completed by the end of the year, essentially admitting it until next spring for construction next summer. To formalize the extension that has been granted, we must amend our current agreement with MoDOT, which covers the funding that we're getting through the federal government. We will get about $800,000 in federal funding for this improvement project. So what we are amending tonight and asking for is moving forward with a supplemental agreement with MoDOT, which will essentially address the revised schedule for the project. and update it to the extension that has been granted through East-West Gateway earlier, really last year. So that is the recommendation is to move forward with the supplemental agreement with NOAA. Specific questions that you have, I'll do my best to answer them.

Don from Rowan. I know under utility coordination had a preliminary date of 4-26 and moved to 6-26. So that date's already passed as our new finish date. So we probably just need to make sure that date gets updated.

Well, understood. That's why I was kind of making the point. This actually all transpired a year ago. It just takes MoDOT this much time to get around to saying, hey, we need to update our existing agreement. So these are the old dates. We got to update these dates then. So the attachment A is the current schedule that we got the extension for and we are working towards. So I thought we've been working towards this for some time because it's... it was it was approved earlier and now we're just finally getting around to doing the paperwork to add it to the agreement to formalize the history of those six tournament rules yep i think he's right correct me for a moment this is this is the document oh wait no sorry but i mean maybe i'm confused i just i just saw a 626

and state on the revised timeline. Everything else has been moved to 27 except for that. And I thought this was the Schedule A one-time extension form.

Is that the last extension form, not the updated one? Right. So basically, when this was granted, we said we would do the utility coordination work from April to June of this year. The schedule preceded those dates.

You're going to update this in the new agreement or what?

Yes.

Yes. That's what I was confused by.

Other questions for Director Brown? So, Director Brown, you're looking for a motion to proceed with the supplemental agreement, is that it?

I'd like to get a motion, yes, to proceed with the execution of the supplemental agreement. If the motion is approved, it will go to the City Council for formal approval.

All right, so would someone like to make a motion for Director Brown to proceed? I'll make the motion. Motion made by Council Member Owen. Do we have a second? Motion seconded by Council Member Krantz. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Very good. All right. Thank you. That moves us on to the, let's see, proposed vector control agreement with St. Louis County. Another action item.

Chair and council members, this last item is came through an agreement that we've had in place sometime with St. Louis County for vector control services. Primarily, this is mosquitoes. Thankfully, we don't get any calls to my knowledge about rodents, but it could deal with that as well. But most of the calls that we get from mosquitoes come in and we basically transfer them. I don't know if you've gotten too many of the summer at all. It varies. Some years we get a lot of calls about mosquitoes. We forward them to St. Louis County, to our contact with the county, and they address them. They do come out and they spray based on their investigations throughout the course of the summer. So this is an existing agreement that we've had in place. It's for five years. Essentially, this will be the next five-year period if we choose to renew it. And so that is the recommendation from the department is to move forward and to continue the agreement with St. Louis County to provide vector control services to the city on a contract basis for the next five years.

So questions for Director Brown. Council Member Rowland.

So we've had this in place before and we've been covering it with the $7,500.

It's a fairly minimal expense every year. Depending on the calls that we receive to residents, It's been about that amount or less.

The only thing I saw on it that I wasn't real thrilled about, but they give us a starting rate and they have the authority to increase it to whatever they want. And we've contracted for five years. So I guess we can cancel it in 30 days, but change it from $144 an hour to $500 an hour. And then I guess we just have to cancel the contract because there's no tie-in on increases to any sort of CPI or anything. But again, because we have the 30-day out, I guess that's fine.

That's the main control that we have is that they almost do this as like a, quite frankly, this was something that they didn't even really have this formal agreement as much, but they would just request the funding. I think they're trying to formalize it. That 30-day out, be something that you know coming this time next year when they're planning to do it bill us they would submit to us what the cost is and then we'll come back and we'd come to the council and say hey we either need to do this ourselves or accept this higher rate but fortunately it would be nice to have it attached to a cpi you hope is that this this rate has remained but this rate has remained relatively consistent um over the last, you know, five or so years. I haven't seen them necessarily adjust at all too much, but this very well could be, you know, given the county's had some, they're having their own budgetary issues and they very well could be trying to make sure that everyone, any service that they're providing, they're getting their full amount back.

As long as we get 30 day, that's fine. That's just one thing. Now this is a, they have the right to make changes.

That's correct. It's very, and I could see, I mean, it is something where anything with the county, we're keeping an eye on because obviously they're,

to make sure that they get a return on their space too. Any other questions or comments? Councilman Bertrand.

So it's $7,500 once a year.

Is that what you're saying?

I live, there's a pond behind my house that I haven't seen a mosquito in five years. I don't know what happened to the mosquitoes, but I haven't seen them where I live. Thank you, Batson. They do a good job.

That's it, bats are your friends. Is there any brush around it?

No. Okay, well then that's the thing. If the sun gets to it and the air circulates, you don't have a mosquito problem. It's just when it's grown up.

It's typically going up in standing water and shallow standing water.

And they need something, their larvae has to kind of connect to the side of the brush if you will.

Well, this is spraying and larvicide. There are EPA registered larvicides that are perfectly healthy for everything. And they only kill mosquitoes because they get in their gut and poison mosquitoes. They're specifically targeted at mosquitoes, but spraying. even the best EPA registered insecticide kills a lot of stuff it shouldn't kill. And they try to judiciously apply it in places where it's needed and so on and so forth. So I think I'm going to abstain because I don't want to get in the way of this and be the lone voice saying no, but I'm not going to vote in favor of spraying. There are better ways to do it. So anyway, but rather than go down that road, we'll just leave it at that.

So the proposed factory control agreement requesting authorization to execute the agreement for St. Louis County.

Is that correct, Director Brown? So if the committee approves the motion in favor of moving forward, we will be let this to the council for approval of the agreement.

So would somebody like to make that motion? Moved by Council Member Kranz. Do we have a second?

Second.

Council Member Owen? Aye. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Abstentions? I am abstaining. Thank you. Council Member Rambo abstains. OK. Moving on to topics for inclusion on future agendas. There's nothing there at this point in time.

Council Member Hubbard. I have a couple of questions that could either fit here or miscellaneous, whatever would be appropriate. It's only just going to take a couple of minutes.

OK.

Either way. if you want to talk now yeah okay yeah yeah go ahead so the board of public safety doesn't like the police contract that was forwarded to him so um let's talk to mr kranz about it the path would of that would be they give their recommendations and then it comes to the city council then so there was yeah there the uh

MMPW committee opened and discussed it. Their recommendation was filed. Of course, that went to Board of Public Safety since it is a police matter. And technically, the report, kind of a cumulative report, would come back to the full city council for consideration in the work session. What was the controversy? Can I ask? Not a controversy. It was more so just looking at the cost structure.

Well, Captain Mundell made a recommendation. that reduced it by four officers. And with his recommendation, that's what we voted for. So was, so maybe a little clarification here.

Was it Captain Mundell that made the recommendation? Yes. Or was he asked if he could do the job with four or two officers?

No, he made the resolution. Because I made the motion and I asked him, I asked him, you're okay with making this recommendation? And I even asked, would anybody lose their jobs? And he said, no. And that's why I'll never do it again. I'll never do it again. I feel a little set up, actually. You'll have a chance to go down, I thought. No, but I feel a little set up. There's a council member on that board that was on...

previous one and he's he's getting some heat about it i think so i guess um to the city administrator's point you know that will come before i understand i i was just kind of

making sure I understood the path. It didn't come back to us anyway, but I'm just not happy with what I'm hearing. What was the Board of Public Safety's concern that you didn't like?

Because you're cutting some police officers. So the Board of Public Safety, I don't think we're talking out of school. They're always going to air on the side of maximum safety. So they're probably always going to be naturally reluctant to cut or see a cut to any members of our WAP precinct. Right, right. But yeah, but you know, and I think to your point, Council Member Albers, you know, when that would come before the council, I would be interested in having Captain Mundell, of course, I guess now it would be Captain Ostendorf, come to the microphone and express their feelings on this. Is it doable? Would there be any, so, I mean, there's still plenty of opportunity for discussions on this.

Okay. That's a good idea. That's a good idea.

Yeah.

Got a question about that. There seems to have been a, a shift toward the, traffic speed control on 100 and 109 specifically that are coming directly from the county as opposed to Wildwood police officers providing that service. Is that an accurate?

There has been some additional resources used to help with speed enforcement, but that's just part of their routine, the county's routine operations. So it's not a... No, no, no. No change has been made. And that will come to the Folk City Council. There is a vote that would take place at the council to consider it. Actually, very helpful information. This will be distributed to the council. The St. Louis County Police Department did a call analysis to... better understand the needs based off call volume and the distance that the officer has to travel during the five-beat shift. And that report will be submitted to the full city council. It was pretty much saying that 2.6 officers could technically be reduced to still meet that call volume. But that said, the report will come forth soon. So we'll have that. Actually, I think that'll be with the mayor's permission to come up with a very soon agenda because we actually had to get the contract number from them for 2026. We need to have that locked in. And we've been with the transition of the new captain. That'll be a pretty quick discussion we'll be having with them actually next week.

But the officially endorsed position if the position officially endorsed by our outgoing captain and our incoming captain, that would hold enormous, um, carry enormous weight, at least to me.

But they'll tell you it presents some challenges to them with scheduling and vacations and sickness. And there may be days where you don't get the five beats because of that, because they're short on people. So, um, there's a risk there. And, um, You now have security over at Deer Birds. You got all these many bikes and scooters, all this construction going on, parks. I mean, I wouldn't want to see a cut in our police budget.

Okay, that's all I had on that. Mr. Lee, the last component of the survey is still forthcoming to you, you said, and that'll be brought to the September meeting? Yep, that's correct. Again, what's the path from there? Are we going to be able to vote on Anything at that point or?

Yeah, so at the end of the day, so that'll be the work session. We'll come back with the final report, which, I mean, the results, you know, the results won't change. They're already in. What Professor Naines is completing now is an analysis. We had, I think, a little bit over 200 responses in the open-ended section. So a lot of people shared, you know, longer responses about their feelings. That information will be shared along with information on the margin of error, the 95% confidence interval of the survey, how representative it is of the whole city, the representation of the actual parcel size distribution, and then also representation totals by ward, which aren't technically statistically valid, but the city representation is statistically valid. So I wanted to point that out, but that's really the data that's going to come forward in that final report. That said, when that goes to the city council, it'll be a work session item. And then the council is at that point able to make recommendations based off the information provided or any other recommendation. So that said, it doesn't have a direct now vote on this. It's just presenting the report. And then if the council wants to make an adjustment or take any of the information from the survey and decide to amend the code or anything, that would be the appropriate time to do. But that would also, just a note too, we had discussed this as this was all ongoing, that if a change were to be made to the actual size distribution, I think further research would need to be done at Board of Public Safety or something along those lines to make sure do you define the contiguous landmass for like aggregation if that's a solution that's considered by the council uh how do you want to replicate that and then also uh there is an interesting zoning quirk that includes some information that hunting and wild i think it's a exact wording is hunting and wildlife management is a actual use listed on our three acre lots in our nu non-urban um think it might be on the R1 as well. But if we change that, we might have to update the zoning code to be reflective of any regulations we change elsewhere as well. So there would be some procedural steps and there's a change to be made.

This would be a quick one. When do you see the review process coming around for us to be involved with? For And reviews to help with the reviews of the different personnel.

Oh, that is handled by the chair of this committee and the mayor concurrently. And it should probably soon.

I thought there was discussion last time about trying to get it earlier. It was kind of later last year.

I don't talk with the chair here, but technically that is something that's handled by the chair and the mayor and goes out to the council.

Okay. Your point usually is pretty late in the year. I thought it was almost too late last year and we talked about it, but I could be wrong. I don't know. Okay.

Good point.

And then the last thing, and maybe this for you, Scott, should reviewing the attorney services for the city, will that be on the agenda next September for our?

It will not be on the agenda for September. I will not be here in September. So you will be chairing that particular meeting.

Oh boy, I can, no, I'm kidding.

But to answer your question, so I have already had two in-depth conversations with the mayor and two in-depth conversations with the city administrator on proceeding with gathering all the information that we would want to start taking a look at where we're at on that particular topic. It's probably going to be a lot of in-depth research and So I would not be surprised if, um, the city administrator did not have all that completed by September meeting. But I mean, there's nothing wrong with him giving an update at the September meeting with where he's at in the process. Would that be fair statement to the administrator? Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, we can kind of tell you where we're at, but you know, some of the things we're taking a look at doing is, um, The current contract has been in place since 2015. I believe there's only been two increases that have been authorized by the council in the fees for the current legal council. We'd like to find out when those were, what type of a percentage increase took place so we can get some perspective on how his costs have gone up with the city. We do know that evidently we are the lowest revenue producing municipality that he provides legal services to, and it's just because of the increases in his fees that have not been authorized. Back when there was a group of council members in place that some of you may remember was affectionately referred to as the cabal, there were a number of proposed increases that were floated before the council and they were always turned down. Now, in conjunction with that, what we're going to do is gather information on what are... what are the fees being paid to the current city attorney for his legal services that are provided to other municipalities so we can do some comparison. Now, that may not be an apples to apples comparison because some municipalities may be smaller, some may be larger. We also want to compare with the legal fees being paid by other municipalities to their legal advisory attorneys. One example might be to compare ourselves with Baldwin since Baldwin is roughly about 31,000 people, so roughly about the same size. We are, however, keep in mind that Baldwin has a lot more commercial activity than we do. Again, that may not be an apples to apples, but again, it gives us another reference point. We're trying to develop as many different possible reference points as possible. you know, in order to make an informed judgment. Something else that we want to take a look at is what are the current legal issues, long-term legal, what do I want to call them, council member? But long-term litigation proceedings that we are in the middle of right now, because obviously- Sure.

That's been brought up in some of my conversations. Yeah. We don't want to change- I do understand that, especially with what we talked about. Right.

uh monday monday okay so so yeah so we're trying to come up with every possible way for every possible data point that we can uncover in order to proceed with this uh my last conversation with the city administrator was just this afternoon on that topic and what i'm going to be doing is um preparing an email just confirming those points to him not so much that I need to use that in order to follow up with him but just in case the question gets asked down the road you know where are we at with this how soon did we get started with this we will have that documentation in place because what we want to do is avoid some of the misunderstandings that took place with a similar motion that was made to admin and PW last December to do some vetting of possible inclusion of the bow hunters into the city's deer culling efforts. And we found out that back at that point in time that nothing was done for probably about a three month period. And then it was dumped into the city administrator's lap with only about 30 days to go before the deadline. So I want to make it clear to everyone involved, we are not delaying in proceeding with this. We are getting started within 72 hours of the motion that was passed on Monday night. In fact, we're getting started before I have even seen the actual official copy of the motion that was passed on Monday night. So we're well underway.

OK. And a yearly review is supposed to be done for the charter on this, too. It does say in the charter. And we've never done one since I've been off here.

Yeah. And I haven't read that, so I don't know what the charter says. So you're one up on that.

Well, we do vote to reauthorize though, right?

Every, every year during the sliding season. Yeah. Is that, that is to review?

I don't know. I'm just saying, I'm just suggesting that, that, that might be, I don't know.

I'm just saying it's, it does say it, you know, so whatever. So that's the thing, I guess maybe the, so maybe you've hit on something, um, important here that maybe what constitutes a review needs to be defined.

Maybe it says a little more in there. I don't know. I forget, but it does say something. Sorry to take a few more minutes. That's all I have. No, that's okay. That's all I have. That's a good question.

We'll move on to Move on to miscellaneous items. I just have one. I don't know if Council Member Kranz, you and I had talked this afternoon about this situation with the bank and the street lights and so on. And I think. Oh, I discussed it with Mr. Thomas. You already did. Yes, I did. Okay, perfect. And then I have just one more question. Something I noticed this morning when I was out for a ride. As I'm on Manchester Road down here and I head west, when I cross 109, there's a button I can press at the signal in order to be able to cross over and continue heading west. But when I come east, I did not notice any button that I can press in order to change the signals. So I just wondered if maybe Director Brown could comment on why that isn't the case.

I suppose that request could be made to Modot. The reason it is because there's a crosswalk on that only on the one side of the intersection. So you got it correct. There is a push button that should go westbound. The crosswalks on the north side of the intersection, the home one. So coming back westbound, there is no crosswalk on that side. So We can, you can do that yourself too. We can bring it up to their MODOT's attention and request they do something about it. It may not be a quick fix, but we can ask.

I mean, a bike is a legal vehicle, right? You're supposed to stay, you're supposed to adhere to the traffic laws and so on and so forth. And you could veer across into the opposite side and go on the crosswalk if you want to. just going to have to stay there.

You probably know this. As long as a car shows up, you're not really getting any special favors by pushing that button necessarily. If no car shows up, then you might need that.

The issue is as you are heading eastbound, No, I'm familiar with the problem.

I know exactly what the problem is. It's just that I just ride as though I'm a car, a very slow, obstructive car. And, you know, I don't have a problem. I just wait at the stupid light. If there's nobody coming, I go across.

We're good. Okay, so next meeting date, Tuesday, September the 1st, 2026 at 530 p.m. We'll get a break for me and Councilmember Albers will be front and center. I debut. Yes. So unless anybody else has any questions or comments, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn by Councilmember Crayon, second by Councilmember Albers. Non-debatable, thank goodness. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Opposed, we'll stay. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.

John, great conversation, right?

I got one second.

The picture's out of the way. Yeah. Thank you, Sarah. All right. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm sorry. You know, if I had.