[0:46] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. Did you [0:57] Alan (Staff): Thank you. [2:55] Jennifer Arsenault: We're going to call this meeting to order. Please stand for the pledge. [All]: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. [3:21] Jennifer Arsenault: Um, that's it. Nothing? Oh, I thought you were talking. I'm ready now. Okay. Um, the first item on our agenda this evening is to approve the city council agenda. Does anybody have any additions that they would like to make or subtractions? [3:40] Kathy Weier: I move to approve the city council agenda. [3:44] Bridget Sperl: I second. [3:45] Jennifer Arsenault: Um, if I were to amend the agenda to remove an item, um, could I take an item out of the consent agenda? Yeah. I mean, are you removing it or— [3:58] Kathy Weier: I'd like to remove A from the consent agenda. [4:00] Jennifer Arsenault: Remove to discuss or remove strike? [4:02] Kathy Weier: Um, strike. [4:04] Jennifer Arsenault: All right. Then with the permission of your first and seconder to A, then that's what you would do. [4:10] Kathy Weier: Okay. Granted, I'd like to make a motion to remove A from the consent agenda. To strike it from the consent agenda. I have a second. [4:16] Bridget Sperl: Second. [4:18] Jennifer Arsenault: All in favor? [All Council]: Aye. [4:20] Jennifer Arsenault: Opposed? Hearing none. Motion carries. Thank you. Um, with the removal of A from the consent agenda, did I have a motion then to approve the agenda? Would you make a motion? [4:49] Kathy Weier: I will move to approve the agenda as amended. [4:51] Jennifer Arsenault: Thank you. Second? [4:53] Bridget Sperl: Second. [4:54] Jennifer Arsenault: All in favor? [All Council]: Aye. [5:02] Jennifer Arsenault: Opposed? Hearing none. Motion carries. Um, I'm going to be a little bit slow this evening since I'm also taking notes for the minutes. Okay. So, just please bear with me. [5:21] Ryan Hankins: I'm taking notes too, Madam Mayor. [5:23] Jennifer Arsenault: Are you? Okay. Then I don't have to. [5:25] Ryan Hankins: That's right. [5:26] Jennifer Arsenault: Thank you. [5:27] Ryan Hankins: I thought I'd save you the effort. [5:29] Jennifer Arsenault: Appreciate that, Mr. Hankins. [5:31] Ryan Hankins: All right. Alan, real quick, for the vote on the consent—for that one item, I was a no vote. So, don't put 4-0. I didn't vote. [5:39] Alan (Staff): You—you didn't vote at all. [5:41] Ryan Hankins: I abstain from voting for that. [5:43] Alan (Staff): Got it. Noted. I did not hear that. So, I apologize. [5:45] Jennifer Arsenault: I didn't hear that either. [5:47] Ryan Hankins: I saw you wrote four-zero down. So, I thought I would clarify with Alan. [5:51] Jennifer Arsenault: All right. Then, um— And you did vote to approve the agenda as amended. [5:54] Ryan Hankins: Correct. [5:56] Jennifer Arsenault: Got it. I'd like to open the public forum. Is anybody here that would like to speak? Seeing none, I'd like to close the public forum. Um, so we'll move on to announcements. Um, Kathy, do you want to talk about the announcement at all or read it? Oh, I'm sorry. I put you on the spot. [6:14] Kathy Weier: Um, so the announcement was coming from the parks committee. Um, they're looking for a resident who would be willing to power wash or use an air compressor— [6:30] Kathy Weier: Yes, that's okay. Clean the center of the hockey rink before painting. And did you want to finish that up? So, uh, sure. We are planning on doing a citywide cleanup day on October 11th um at 10:00 a.m. meeting here at the city hall. So, if we can have that coincide um either a couple days before for that power washing to have it ready for us to paint during that or um power washing that day so painting can take place after that would be wonderful. Please reach out to admin@cityofbirchwood.com if you are available. Thank you. [6:59] Jennifer Arsenault: And weren't you saying too it you could just loan the equipment to another resident if you don't feel like doing the work yourself and that would be great also. So, we appreciate that. Thank you. It's loan or activity. I'll take it. [7:17] Bridget Sperl: Right. [7:18] Alan (Staff): And Kathy, if you get no takers, you are welcome to mine. [7:20] Kathy Weier: Fabulous. [7:22] Alan (Staff): I won't be in the country and I have one and you're welcome to use it. [7:24] Kathy Weier: All right. I know how to do that, so I for sure will. [7:26] Jennifer Arsenault: Thank you, Alan. [7:28] Alan (Staff): The tip will cost you, but the print... [7:35] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. We'll move on to presentations and reports. Um, Marcus, our engineer, I believe, has a report for us. [7:52] Marcus Johnson: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, council. Can you hear me in the back? Okay, perfect. Okay. First, uh, on my list is the lift station. Um, payment number three of $66,694.24. That is 75% of what the contract is at the moment. Um, so just a summary of where we're at. We tested the lift station on Tuesday. Everything went smooth. Pumps went in good. Um, and then today we're Thursday. So yesterday, Wednesday, they disconnected the old lift station, connected up to um the force main and it is currently running and performing good. So we're going to run one more um emergency test of shutting the power off, watching the generator kick on, and then testing the draw down. But otherwise, everything's going smooth and we're going to start restoration. Um, any questions as far as the lift station goes? [9:11] Jennifer Arsenault: We have one more payment after this. Is that right? [9:13] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. [9:15] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. And then when do we anticipate the road reopening? [9:18] Marcus Johnson: You saw the schedule? Um, I've been telling people at the latest it's going to be the 13th. So, it'll most likely be um—what day are we looking at that? Wednesday, the 10th. But I'm just cautiously 13th. [9:43] Bridget Sperl: Marcus, will the mailboxes be put back in place on the 13th or by the 13th? [9:45] Marcus Johnson: Yep. Correct. Yep. We won't do it until the roads open just so we don't have to worry about a little bit of a confusion. [10:01] Marcus Johnson: Otherwise, um, yeah, the only other thing on the lift station was we got um one resident um said that there was damage to his property. We looked at it yesterday and in talking with them, um we have a construction allowance built into the project already of $30,000 and rather than have Henches try to restore it back to its original condition because it's going to one—cost what's going—it's going to be a lot more to have them try to do it. We're going to give him a $200 gift card um to restore it himself. And we talked with him about that and he was good. So, I think every everyone else has been generally pretty pleased. [10:46] Ryan Hankins: And just I know there was a—it wasn't accidental, but a—there was a water main break yesterday. It was hit by the excavator probably. Um, is that—I assume the city's going to incur costs there? No? [11:10] Marcus Johnson: No, that'll just all kind of come out in the wash and nothing to worry about. Yep. It'd be just part of their excavation parts. So, um, the city provided this—there was—it was already broke there. So, what happened is with the repairs, you put a sleeve around it and on that sleeve there's four bolts. Well, the bucket caught one of those bolts and it just pulled that sleeve right off. So all we had to do is just pump it down and then put a new sleeve on it and it was back to— [11:39] Jennifer Arsenault: I mean we had a community swimming pool there very briefly. [11:42] Marcus Johnson: Yeah it I heard it did not take long to fill up. [11:45] Jennifer Arsenault: No. [11:46] Marcus Johnson: So yeah with council's approval we'll proceed with that that next payment and— [11:51] Jennifer Arsenault: It was in the consent agenda. You got it. [12:01] Marcus Johnson: Oh sweet. Okay. It is. There you go. [12:02] Jennifer Arsenault: Um, you're all in city business if you want to go ahead and do that. Um, I just have one other announcement and um, the Washington County Conservation District tree inspector, his name is Cameron Blake and he finished the tree inspections this past week and we'll provide the report when he's completed it. So, that has been done. Um, Marcus, you're number one under city business action items. Um, and I guess it's not your presentation, but was that from you, Ryan? Action item number one, authorizing Marcus to attend up to two meetings with the planning commission? [12:49] Ryan Eisele: Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. I wish I would have put in some written doc, but basically the planning commission is asking for an opportunity to have Marcus come in. Um, there's a whatever your meeting rate is for that. So I would just—they have some questions. I move to authorize the Marcus, the city engineer, to attend up to two planning commission meetings before the end of 2025 at the request of the chairperson of the planning commission. [13:29] Kathy Weier: May I get a second? [13:30] Jennifer Arsenault: Second. Um, all in favor? [All Council]: Aye. [13:35] Jennifer Arsenault: Opposed? Hearing none. Motion carries. [13:37] Marcus Johnson: Ryan, do you know when that first—next one is? I know it was I think it was last week was the last one. Do you know when the next one is? [13:47] Ryan Eisele: It's the—it'll be the fourth Thursday in September. So, that's probably the 25th, but I don't think we're necessarily going to send you to that one. [13:54] Marcus Johnson: Okay. Just let me know whatever you're thinking. [13:56] Ryan Eisele: Let me talk—I'm just going to talk to Andy. See when, but I think we're—Jen and I I think are also going to just sit down with Andy and um because of schedules that may be—the meeting would be October when we send you—when we kind of have you come in. [14:14] Marcus Johnson: Yeah, perfect. Just let me know. [14:16] Ryan Eisele: We're trying to kind of—know the planning commission just has some questions on on impervious surface basically and anything else. But I think I would like to just get them to organize what they want for you in advance so it's not just kind of an ad hoc thing. [14:32] Marcus Johnson: Perfect. [14:33] Jennifer Arsenault: That way Marcus can prepare as well. [14:35] Ryan Eisele: Right. Precisely. Yeah. And maybe what we'll do now that I think about it is prepare uh we'll prepare in September and then have you come in in October. [14:52] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. That we can make sure that all of our guns are blazing by then. Perfect. [15:00] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. Um, on to number two. Discussion and possible approval for the city to allow Bolton & Menk to update the engineer's estimate scope and estimated fees relating to updating the capital improvement plan in the fall of 2025 to reflect past changes to the city and adjust the schedule as needed. Um, the rest of this says Bolton & Menk bills based on an hourly rate and anticipates to not exceed $1,500. [15:22] Marcus Johnson: Yep. So, I just threw a number out there just to just start getting that document just up to date with the most recent—that eliminates 2024 and '25 on the maps. And um with me going out and spray painting the road, I'm been taking notes of what it kind of looks like from what I remember last year and if we should throw some streets around. Um, there's a Birchwood court I know are pretty rough. And then the courts along Cedar. [16:00] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah, you lit up my driveway. [16:02] Marcus Johnson: Oh yeah, that's right. Um, White Pine. We were—we looked at White Pine and Halls were all pretty bad. Like, the courts I saw were already milling overlays. So just comparing that and um and then just yeah just updating it um so we can start planning for the project. I don't want to get ahead of myself. So I can just start planning for next year's project already. [16:35] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah, we're trying to be very proactive with our plans instead of waiting to the spring to do it, you know, over the winter. Really drill down on the plans, get our contractors in line and be ready to go. [16:47] Ryan Eisele: So it might look different—your recommendation might look different than the sheets that we've been looking at? [16:51] Marcus Johnson: Yeah, the CIP is meant to be a a annually revolving thing as streets worsen in a year-by-year basis where the goal is to be evolving that. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to evolve it compared to just setting it up, getting lengths, widths and just a general outlook of it all. So, yeah, it's just meant to be continuously just checked and updated. So, as you see um like structure in the road get worse, well then we might have to move from milling overlay to maybe some bigger patches or a reconstruction or reclaim, something like that. [17:36] Jennifer Arsenault: Marcus and I went on a little field trip yesterday. And we were just like throwing ideas around. So, there's a lot of creative things we could do and possibly instead of just focusing um the road repairs and construction in one section of the city, we might be able to do the bad parts in lots of places in the city, you know. So, we have—I think it's a good winter project for us to really talk about and get the most bang for our buck and get the roads looking well. [18:13] Ryan Eisele: Yeah. I—uh, with my thoughts is is when we come and work on the road right out front, it would be the time that we would want to do the parking lot, but we can move it around kind of however we see fit. So, I know right out um in front of the sign it's getting really bad. I planned on a pretty good patch there this year, but I think when a plow comes through, there's a good chance it gets pulled right up again. [18:45] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. So, so when I think about the parking lot, it's probably the most used space that we have in terms of foot traffic. And it is uneven and it doesn't drain well. So, it seems like we would need a bigger project on that. [19:01] Marcus Johnson: Yep. I don't disagree. [19:02] Bridget Sperl: So, can we make that part of what we're looking at? [19:04] Jennifer Arsenault: But when we do our budget talks, we can, you know, talk about that as well. Yeah. How we're going to allocate money. [19:15] Ryan Eisele: Would this revision also include whatever the plan budget would be for the 2026 project too? [19:34] Marcus Johnson: Yep. Well, I'll be part of it. Yep. [19:36] Ryan Eisele: Well, on the printout here, we're actually going by 2025, right? So, it's $67,000. [19:42] Marcus Johnson: Yep. I wanted to get an idea of the CIP update first before I formally proposed a 2026 project. So, or 20—year—we 25/26 project. Yeah. [20:00] Ryan Eisele: So, as far as budgeting goes, you're going to try and get what under whatever we pick for our amounts. [20:06] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. Once we know an amount, then we can go forward. [20:08] Jennifer Arsenault: Um, okay. Then can we have a motion um to allow Bolton & Menk to—or Marcus to update our CIP? [20:17] Ryan Hankins: So moved. [20:19] Kathy Weier: Second. [20:25] Jennifer Arsenault: All in favor? [All Council]: Aye. [20:27] Jennifer Arsenault: Opposed? Hearing none. Motion passes. [20:31] Alan (Staff): Do we want that to reflect the not to exceed amount? [20:34] Jennifer Arsenault: Yes, that was part of it. Not to exceed $1,500, right? [20:37] Bridget Sperl: Do we need to amend the motion or do we want to just— [20:40] Jennifer Arsenault: Oh, I was reading it as it's written. [20:42] Marcus Johnson: Okay. [20:43] Bridget Sperl: Okay, that's—that's fine with me. I'm not that worried about it. [20:46] Alan (Staff): Right. Well, the record at least verbally just reflects that it was an update of the CIP. [20:53] Jennifer Arsenault: So, just clarify. I noticed that too and I just I agree. That's what it'll read in the minutes is that it is not to— I mean, let's just say to Marcus, hey Marcus, $1,500's the limit. I think that's what the proposal was anyway. Not to exceed. [21:10] Marcus Johnson: Okay. [21:11] Jennifer Arsenault: Number three, discussion and possible approval of authorizing the city engineer—City Engineer Johnson—to spend up to $10,000 for the construction inspection of Ty Schmidt's storm water management project. The estimate is based on an hourly rate and includes the following: pre-construction meeting and submittal reviews, pre-construction site documentation, part-time on-site inspection documentation and project coordination, and a punch list final documentation and final quantities. Would you like to speak about that? [21:36] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. So that is—in that 10,000 I'm including what was already approved in that. So it'd be whatever just a little bit of of above what you guys have. I don't fully know. [21:52] Alan (Staff): We approved 7,500. [21:54] Marcus Johnson: So another 2,500. I uh from talking with Lori, we don't have a survey or anything on there. So I don't know how much engineering is really going to be involved because I know we had a curb and gutter and some other things that I think are going to maybe need a survey. So that stuff isn't included because I don't know the contractor yet on what he's going to need. I would think that they would need some of that. So we'll have to revisit maybe if they do, but I'm going to try to make it work without it. But that's depending on how project goes. There's a lot of aspects. That's kind of me assuming worst-case scenario. So that was part of part of that was uh I just gave you guys today the specifications and the contract. So part of my part of my time would have been on that $7,500 and that's already included in that. So okay, be me going out for quotes and then every other part of the process. [22:55] Ryan Eisele: Wasn't some of this um—that 10,000 was that covered by a grant as well? [23:01] Marcus Johnson: Correct. [23:02] Ryan Eisele: Yeah. [23:03] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah. So we can use it as our portion of the match which is 10,000. [23:08] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. I hope I'm significantly less than that just on the size of the project, but I'm still learning the plans and so I I can't fully write you guys a set idea of what is it—it's an up-to-but-not-exceed, right? Well, that's all my contract is with you guys is that—that's what it is because I just know already. But yes, yep. [23:35] Ryan Eisele: Just so I understand, this is related to the project that we're working through with Lori Tella and the Washington Conservation District? [23:45] Marcus Johnson: Correct. [23:47] Ryan Eisele: And the these are funds—we're increasing the previously allocated funds. We received a grant to pay these funds and then we're also expecting to use some funds perhaps from the special revenue fund funded by the dock association for this project and we don't expect any of these funds to derive from the general fund of the city at this time. That's not a question for—I don't—you're not involved in the financial details. I just want to make sure and just for people who are tuning in at home just to make sure you know people know that we're not off-raiding the roads fund for for this, that this is all kind of separate external funding to the city. This isn't coming out of people's taxes. Kathy, would you like to explain? [24:30] Kathy Weier: Yeah, please do. Yep. So, we had a grant that was from Washington Conservation District that's 75,000. And then there was another grant that um we are currently working on applying for that we've been told we are very, very likely to receive and I believe that's Rice Creek. And that one is for 10,000 which can be used as our portion of the match which for the previous one it was a 10% so that'd be 7,500 which we were using for engineering. So the 10,000 can go towards our match from the other one. And the 10,000 is a 100% grant. It is not a um split between the city and the other. [25:10] Marcus Johnson: Yep. And did you guys get the schedule? Is that in in your packet? [25:14] Bridget Sperl: No. The schedule as far as our timeline goes. [25:17] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. So it kind of laid out like what we—where we're... what steps we still have left and what that timeline kind of looks like and rough construction start stuff like that. [25:35] Kathy Weier: And then uh if—if we do need any money out of that, the parks committee has some of the special revenue fund is allocated for surprises. [25:48] Jennifer Arsenault: Um, can we have a motion then? [25:56] Ryan Hankins: Hey Alan, real quick, do we move to add $2,500 to the 7,500 that already exists or is this a separate motion or like we amending the first one just to add $2,500 bucks or do we just— [26:08] Alan (Staff): I don't think there's been a motion yet. I've just got it written down that the ideal motion might be to approve an additional $2,500 for construction inspections on the Ty Schmidt project. [26:20] Bridget Sperl: Um before we do our motion, I would like to point out we have not—we are fairly confident we will receive this $10,000 grant. If we don't, the money is bookmarked in the special revenue for that 10,000. [26:34] Ryan Hankins: Okay. [26:35] Jennifer Arsenault: So hopefully that helps clear up slightly as well. [26:38] Ryan Hankins: So let's just—Ryan, do you want to just make the motion saying that a total of 10,000 including the previously allocated money? [26:45] Ryan Eisele: Do you want me to? Okay. So I move to authorize $10,000 for construction inspection of the Ty Schmidt storm water management project to be allocated from grant funds primarily and secondarily from the parks special revenue fund. And this includes $7,500 that was previously allocated for a total of $10,000. [27:09] Ryan Hankins: Second. [27:13] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. Ryan Eisele second the motion. All in favor? [All Council]: Aye. [27:18] Jennifer Arsenault: Opposed? Hearing none. Motion passes. Um, number four, discussion and possible authorization of $5,000 to Bolton & Menk for the 2025 road project inspection. Like to talk about that? [27:36] Marcus Johnson: Yep, I can talk about that. So, I talked about this at the last council meeting. I'm just confirming that it's about 30 hours. $5,000. Great. Yep. Just total 30 hours. 5,000. That's kind of what I'm expecting for the main services for the construction phase for the rest of the project. So, that's not that's total. So, we—the remaining budget for our design, I'll leave it alone now that we got this in front of you guys tonight and then we'll start off with construction. [28:14] Jennifer Arsenault: When is that construction scheduled to begin or is it not yet? [28:19] Marcus Johnson: Um, so patching is going to be the 10th, 11th, and 12th. They pushed that back um to that date. And then I am still waiting to hear back on the remainder part of it. [28:34] Bridget Sperl: 10th and 11th and 12th of September. [28:36] Marcus Johnson: Yep. [28:38] Bridget Sperl: So will that be um at the same time that they're finishing up the lift station portion as well? So will they be able to tie in that concrete or the the surface for the new road as well at that point or are they going to get in each other's way as they're doing two separate roads? [28:57] Marcus Johnson: Um, I have already kind of figured out where Henches is going to end and where we're where I'm going to start marking. So, it should be separate. And the patching is just two guys and a skid loader. [29:12] Bridget Sperl: Okay. [29:14] Marcus Johnson: Without a truck. So, it's not quite the—two guys, a skid loader, and then an attitude problem. So, it's a little bit minimalist. [29:25] Bridget Sperl: Okay. [29:27] Marcus Johnson: Um, yeah. Shouldn't, but I did let them know about the location. [29:32] Bridget Sperl: Okay. I know you've talked about this before, but refresh my memory. Was the the crosswalk installation down there—is that included again with that? [29:41] Marcus Johnson: That is included. Yep. [29:43] Bridget Sperl: Okay. I haven't heard from I think Safety Signs is their guys. So, I'll reach out to them to see what their schedule is because I don't actually remember seeing that on there, but they did ask me about it. [30:00] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. And then so—do we have all the signs? Do you know or should I check on that as far as—for the crosswalk? [30:09] Marcus Johnson: They're all included in the project. [30:11] Jennifer Arsenault: Oh, okay. [30:12] Marcus Johnson: Okay. Thank you. But I think we talked about doing a walk-through at some point to make sure we're not putting too many signs in. [30:20] Kathy Weier: Yeah. [30:22] Marcus Johnson: Okay. [30:24] Jennifer Arsenault: We should check with um Therese though and make sure we didn't already order those signs because I feel like they may have ordered all the signs last year. Um, okay, we can do that. I was just asked by a member of the road safety committee um when the crosswalks were going to be put in because there were two I guess that were authorized—one at Grotto? [30:41] Marcus Johnson: Yep. [30:42] Jennifer Arsenault: So, do we have any idea when—that's a Jim question? [30:45] Bridget Sperl: Okay. [30:46] Jennifer Arsenault: Of when he was going to get the signs up. [30:48] Marcus Johnson: Okay, great. [30:49] Jennifer Arsenault: Oh, and then the the painting was supposed to happen. If I recall, he was going to do that after the roads have been patched. [30:57] Marcus Johnson: Okay. [30:58] Bridget Sperl: And after the lake links or after these signs are up, then we can figure out where the lake links will sit. Make sure that they aren't too close to each other. [31:06] Marcus Johnson: Yep. [31:07] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. Yep. Perfect. [31:10] Jennifer Arsenault: So, just I just want to be really clear. So the Grotto crosswalk, the signs and the painting go to Jim, but this other crosswalk by Owl is within the project. Okay, great. Thank you. Um, would someone like to make a motion for number four? [31:30] Ryan Hankins: Is um so the number four is the discussion and authorization to Bolton & Menk for the 2025 road project inspection. Is that at your hourly rate, Marcus? [31:47] Marcus Johnson: Yeah, that's at my hourly rate. [31:49] Ryan Hankins: Okay. And could you just talk—give us a little summary of what you inspect when you inspect um for this project? [32:00] Marcus Johnson: While at the—so porous roadways, they'll have to come and spot the utilities in there and then we'll have to have an on-site meeting with the utility companies to make sure there's not conflicts. If there's conflicts, start mitigating those. Um, so there would be that. Otherwise, for this part of the project at least, it's pretty much coordination. Um, and then the pay apps. That's pretty much it. I don't really foresee a whole lot here. Um, because it's just—it's milling overlay. So, when they're milling, I'll go stop by to see how the milling machine's doing. And then when they're paving, I'll probably just send someone—if our inspector is still around with the lift station, he'll um just swing by. [32:53] Bridget Sperl: The Bolton & Menk inspector. [32:54] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. Yep. Yep. [32:57] Bridget Sperl: Marcus, if you're meeting with utility companies, can you ask them to look at the—and I don't know what you call these, but these metal containers for wires? [33:07] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. [33:08] Bridget Sperl: A lot of ours are open or crooked or have been... the handles... into and that would be great if you could talk to them about that. [33:17] Marcus Johnson: I can tell you I'll talk to them about it, but I won't be like—I wouldn't plan on anything happening. I know that the utility companies are really overwhelmed that they're not—unless if it's a gas or power, they're not marking anything. They they just don't care at the moment because they're so far behind. They've come to the conclusion that's cheaper to just fix it than it is to maintain it. [33:38] Bridget Sperl: Maintain. Okay. [33:41] Marcus Johnson: But I'll talk to them about it. [33:43] Bridget Sperl: Yeah, that'd be great. [33:44] Ryan Eisele: Sounds like my house. [33:46] Jennifer Arsenault: All right. Can we get a motion for number four? [33:51] Kathy Weier: I move to authorize $5,000 for Bolton & Menk's engineers to inspect and coordinate the 2025 road project. [34:03] Bridget Sperl: Second. [34:05] Jennifer Arsenault: Second. All in favor? [All Council]: Aye. [34:08] Jennifer Arsenault: Opposed? Hearing none. Motion carries. Number five, discussion and possible approval of 2025 deer hunt dates. Oh, Marcus, I guess you're done. [34:20] Marcus Johnson: Bye, guys. [34:22] Jennifer Arsenault: Thanks, Marcus. [34:24] Ryan Eisele: Before you run away? [34:26] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. [34:27] Ryan Eisele: For our budget for total capital improvement um for budgeting purposes, do you have the number that we were anticipating initially for 2026's project? [34:41] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. Uh, I do—reaction right here. [34:44] Ryan Eisele: And then, um, is—is that still accurate for what we were planning on doing? I guess— [34:50] Marcus Johnson: $68,000 is what we have figured um for next year's project. I think that's pretty conservative for for it. And then I was also planning most likely to work on some storm sewer maintenance. Maybe plan for another 10,000—that 78,000 should do it. [35:10] Ryan Eisele: What we had planned. Okay. [35:12] Marcus Johnson: Correct. Yep. [35:14] Ryan Eisele: Thank you. [35:16] Marcus Johnson: I think that'd be conservative speaking. Um— [35:19] Bridget Sperl: But are there things that we had planned to do in '25 that we didn't get to that we have to bring forward? [35:28] Marcus Johnson: Um, the '25 stuff I just moved to '26. [35:32] Bridget Sperl: Okay. [35:33] Marcus Johnson: So that's what that is. So the '26 stuff is—it's reclaim. It's Wildwood Avenue. And that I plan on pushing back. I—sorry—I planned on pushing '26 back. It's Wildwood because I think that—that's a bigger project. So, I was going to push the bigger reclaims back and work on low overlays that kind of hit some of those areas first to help our patching budget too. So, the '26 project um I plan on pushing back and working on others. [36:23] Bridget Sperl: So like maybe like maybe moving '28 into '20— [36:28] Marcus Johnson: We'll figure it out. Yeah. Everything gets pushed maybe. [36:31] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. [36:32] Marcus Johnson: Just swapped. [36:33] Bridget Sperl: Because some of the years we have um—looks like there's some bigger expenses. [36:44] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. Some years I keep the budget low to build up for bigger projects for the following years and then vice versa. So— [36:51] Bridget Sperl: Is that—but it's a flexible document like we talked about. [36:53] Marcus Johnson: So— [36:54] Jennifer Arsenault: Do we need Marcus for anything else? Thank you. [36:56] Marcus Johnson: Thanks, guys. [37:00] Jennifer Arsenault: Hey, on to number five. Um, discussion and possible approval of 2025 deer hunt dates. Um, Kathy, did you want to talk about this? [37:09] Kathy Weier: Yes. Um, we have—I'll give a little background as well. We had a five-year contract with the Metro Bow Hunters Resource Base that uh this—this year would be year five um for that contract. Um, with that volunteers go—went around and received uh obtained right of entries from I believe it's nearly exactly the same properties as they've done for the last four years um for the deer hunters. Uh, it's bow hunting and then um to enter those properties. The dates that the bow hunters uh proposed for this year's hunt were October 16th, 17th, November 3rd, 4th, November 24th, 25th, December 11th, 12th, and then if needed, a December 18th, 19th. The "if needed" is given as more of a weather issue for any of the other ones. Um, not necessarily that they will automatically use that one. [38:12] Ryan Eisele: So, I've read a bunch of stuff about deer hunts and particularly about with respect to the nature of the Birchwood deer hunt. Um, I'd be open to hearing someone with some expertise address the issue, but my understanding of the research on this is that the deer hunts of the size and nature that Birchwood performs have no more than a marginal impact on the long-term deer population. And so, as a result of that, I would propose that we reduce or eliminate the deer hunting this year. [39:03] Kathy Weier: What are you thinking about—zero dates or one? [39:06] Ryan Eisele: Well, I think it would be good to consider maybe a minimal deer hunt this year, pairing back significantly, maybe down to one day or one weekend to maintain our contract because we do have a contract. The contract doesn't require that we have more than basically one day of deer hunting. So I think that would be my preference here rather than kind of continuing this without you know seeing any real clear results. [39:36] Bridget Sperl: Do—do we know what other communities surrounding us do this? Does anybody— [39:41] Kathy Weier: Um, currently there are no neighboring communities who do this. Previously, Mahtomedi did. They were attempting to get it re-going again this year, but my understanding from the bow hunters is that that did not happen for this upcoming year. Um, last year I will tell you there were seven bucks that were taken. Um, and it is still the most prevalent recommended way to deal with deer by the DNR. [40:18] Jennifer Arsenault: Say a much bigger geography and with much bigger open spaces and the success rate just varies wildly. It depends on weather, it depends on, you know, how many animals were actually born. So, it's a very hit-or-miss process. Mhm. I—I have never seen any scientific—I mean I I've been looking at this issue for a year um researching it, talking to people, other people have researched it and there is no data that shows hunting deer at this small of a scale does anything to um decrease the population. When the DNR does hunts, they do it over like 3,000 square miles. That's a deer management site. This is not even one square mile with our neighbors not doing it. It makes—it just doesn't—to me it doesn't make sense. Like there's no data showing that it is a proven way to handle deer. We haven't had any deer-vehicle issues. There's multiple ways to handle deer eating your plants. Now, there's several products that work very well. I am personally—I am not willing to put our residents—and I know it's like just an off chance that something might happen because these guys are professionals. I understand all that. However, to me, when you do a cost-benefit, the benefits to me do not outweigh the costs because if anything ever happened to a child that just happened to be coincidentally some random freak accident happened, that's devastating and I'm not willing to take that risk. [42:25] Ryan Hankins: So, I'm not—I'm not into it. I guess for me, like like a a deer is not a Birchwood deer or a Mahtomedi deer kind of thing. And it's like the—to my understanding the— [42:37] Bridget Sperl: Wilting deer? [42:39] Ryan Hankins: Yeah, the wilt—uh, their range is pretty—pretty large like a deer's is and it—I don't know, I struggle with that too and I mean to be honest there was a time where I was on a walk and a hunter was dragging a deer out of a backyard. It's not something you necessarily want to see in a residential area. A little shocking. [43:00] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah. And especially for, you know, like a—adult's one thing, but like kids seeing that or... I I'm uncomfortable with that. [43:10] Bridget Sperl: I see it differently and I I absolutely understand where everybody's coming from because I love my deer. They're, you know, I watch them all spring. Um, but um—and I don't care about my plants personally, but I do worry about road issues. Um, and I do worry about uh deer starving because we've had that in Birchwood a number of times. And just intuitively, I know I see the same deer all the time around my neighborhood. So, I have to think that we are reducing um deer that live here. [43:55] Ryan Eisele: I'm guessing there's no natural—natural predators in Birchwood for deer. [44:00] Bridget Sperl: There's no wolves. They're coyotes. And and actually, I dragged uh Nick Nephew helped me drag one out because it was hit by a car this summer. So, we still have issues, you know. I—Sorry. Are you— [44:13] Ryan Eisele: No, that's fine. I guess I'd be willing to authorize October 16th and 17th and invite the—I don't want to necessarily have a town hall, but I would invite um somebody to bring in an expert on deer management um you know before the hunts after that just to advise us that that the deer hunts actually work. [44:37] Jennifer Arsenault: When—when we're—Can you tell us about like the deer starving, Bridget? Because I guess I've never lived here or experienced that where there was a overpopulation issue where— [44:48] Bridget Sperl: Right. And they were really thin and I have to think that some of them died. I don't know. I mean, they just go into the woods, but you could see these deer out there and they were sick. I mean, you could tell. So, I don't know, 15 years ago or so. And if the DNR is telling us that we have three times more deer than we should have from a population standpoint, they're going to have a hard winter. [45:10] Kathy Weier: The the other thing that I would say is when because they've come into my yard, I've I've um uh volunteered it, but they come in at dawn. They are—they are out—not out during the day when people are around. Deer typically aren't daytime animals anyway, right? [45:30] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. Well, oh yeah, they do. You know, some problems—there aren't man-made solutions, too. So I'm—sorry. I'm a hard no on it until I see data that tells me otherwise. I just don't feel like I'm like 60/40. No, essentially for the reasons I listed. I don't like getting—in residential neighborhood. I don't want my daughter exposed to dead animals getting dragged out like in that—in that way. You know, I have no problem hunting or anything like that. Um, but also I—I don't feel like I have enough data to make a real decision regarding this. I don't know anything about deer herds. Are they even—herd? Are they even called herds? Like I don't— [46:31] Bridget Sperl: They usually up in urban settings. If they are given the space, they will yard up and congregate in the winter. That's why they call it yarding up, right? And so you see these little pockets, these little family units. You know, I just live in Dellwood, so I see them too all year long. You know, the weak and the sick are usually weak and sick because they've had a tough summer, so there is not a lot of forage. And then that's combined usually with a tough winter where there's just too much snow pack. So there's absolutely nothing to nibble on and the weak ones don't make it. [47:00] Kathy Weier: Do we get—do we get a count of— [47:04] Jennifer Arsenault: I did a a survey and they last year it was 190 deer. The DNR counted—decided not to do their hunt because it doesn't make a difference and people were not—it's a residential area and we—we are all residential. We don't even have wide open spaces. It's just to me to hunt in a residential area itself doesn't make sense. It's just—go hunt. If you want to hunt something, go out into the country and hunt. Nothing else to say about it. So I want to make a motion. Anybody or do you want to continue to to discuss? [47:40] Bridget Sperl: Well, maybe we should table this to October and— [47:44] Kathy Weier: No, because the dates are already set. I guess how what have— All right. Well, then let's—I'm still making a motion that we approve it. [47:56] Bridget Sperl: I'll second it. To approve all all these dates all the way we finish our contract. [47:59] Jennifer Arsenault: I'd like a roll call vote, please. [48:01] Alan (Staff): So, just so the record's clear, the motion is to approve all dates pursuant to the staff—to the contract um for October 16th, 17th, November 3rd... [48:12] Ryan Eisele: To be clear, the contract doesn't require any number of dates or any specific dates. It requires an agreement on at least one date. So, we could certainly pair this down to one date or one weekend and still be well within the contract. Um, having said that, there's—it sounds to me like there's a motion on the table. [48:32] Alan (Staff): I believe that Kathy moved all the dates and Bridget second— [48:35] Kathy Weier: It's most effective. That's the motion. Multiple dates. [48:43] Ryan Hankins: What risk do we have of breaking a contract? [48:46] Alan (Staff): Well, the contract just says, "Thou shalt, you know, let us hunt, right?" And so you do need to approve some dates. Um, they're not getting paid anything. And so there's really very—I don't know how you'd ever make an argument of damages when it's just an opportunity to hunt some deer with your boat. I think the extent of damages would be some sort of a a stople where they purchase some insurance relying on the contract and they would want... but just doesn't seem like it would amount to very much to me. But, you know, contract is an issue kind of saying let's authorize one date. But, like I say, I think there's a, you know, a motion was made here. So, and if it's the last year under the contract, which I think it is— [49:33] Kathy Weier: It is. [49:34] Alan (Staff): Then it does make some sense to honor the agreement and pick a date and let them come out. And doesn't say it has to be all of them. [49:44] Jennifer Arsenault: That's not the motion, though. And the motion is for all of them at this point. Mhm. Okay, we have a motion on the table and we have a second. You want a roll call vote? [50:00] Alan (Staff): I'd like a roll call vote, please. So, the motion is to approve the contract for all the dates. Uh, how many dates? One, two, three, four, five weekends. Correct. [50:11] Kathy Weier: Five weekends. [50:12] Alan (Staff): Five hunts. [50:13] Kathy Weier: Five hunts. [50:14] Jennifer Arsenault: Six weekends. [50:16] Kathy Weier: Uh, they are not weekends. Fridays and Saturdays or it's it's six. It's 12 days total. [50:24] Ryan Hankins: Six two-day periods. [50:27] Jennifer Arsenault: Four. [50:29] Ryan Hankins: Not count. [50:31] Kathy Weier: Oh, five five two. One, two, three, four. Two-day periods. Sorry, I'm looking at 10 days. Okay. Weekends are not. Um, I'm sorry. Uh, Kathy? [50:41] Kathy Weier: Aye. [50:42] Ryan Hankins: Nay. [50:45] Jennifer Arsenault: I go last. [50:46] Alan (Staff): I go last. Yeah. Go ahead. Quickly. [50:55] Ryan Eisele: Abstain. [50:57] Alan (Staff): I think you—I think you have to give a reason. You can't just abstain on these things. [51:03] Ryan Eisele: I can—I can not vote on something. [51:06] Alan (Staff): Yes, you can. [51:08] Jennifer Arsenault: Our bylaws, you have to vote. [51:10] Alan (Staff): Unless you abstain for a conflict. [51:12] Ryan Hankins: Yeah. Unless there's a conflict there, it's important to say yes or no. Come on, man. Pony up. What say you? [51:24] Ryan Eisele: Well, give me a half hour. [51:25] Jennifer Arsenault: We'll come back to you. Bridget? [51:28] Bridget Sperl: I say aye. But is there an opportunity to reach more of a consensus if we reduce the dates and change the motion? [51:39] Alan (Staff): Probably easiest just to make another motion if this one fails. [51:41] Kathy Weier: Okay. [51:42] Alan (Staff): Or clean in the minutes. [51:44] Jennifer Arsenault: Just let us know when you're ready. [51:45] Ryan Eisele: I will. [51:46] Jennifer Arsenault: Do—do you want to like— Should we take five minutes here? Yeah. You want to take a break while you— [51:53] Bridget Sperl: Take five minutes. [51:55] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. Let's go into recess for 5 minutes please. Oh, yeah. Can we Alan? Can we recess in the middle of a vote? [52:00] Alan (Staff): We can finish you. [52:02] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. We cannot recess at 7:34. [52:04] Alan (Staff): All right. No discussion about this vote during recess. Five minute recess. [58:49] Jennifer Arsenault: Council is back in session. Um, as a recap, we are taking a vote on the deer hunt contract. We have uh we're taking a a vote by roll. What do you call that? [59:11] Alan (Staff): Roll call vote. [59:12] Jennifer Arsenault: Roll call vote. Sorry. Right. So, um, Kathy has voted aye. Hankins is a nay. Bridget is an aye. Mr. Eisele? [59:28] Ryan Eisele: Nay. [59:29] Jennifer Arsenault: Nay. And I am also a nay. Motion fails. Someone like to make a different motion relating to the bow hunt? [59:39] Kathy Weier: I will make a motion to approve—you said one day—one—one set of days, October 16th through 17th, I believe, was the preferred one. [59:55] Ryan Hankins: I'll second that. [1:00:12] Jennifer Arsenault: So, the motion on the table is to reduce the hunt to October 16th and 17th. We have um Kathy making the motion and Mr. Hankins seconding it. Um would you like to do a roll call vote on this as well? [1:00:12] Ryan Eisele: No. [1:00:13] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. All in favor? [All Council except Arsenault]: Aye. [1:00:15] Jennifer Arsenault: Opposed? I'm opposed. So, do I say nay? Motion passes. Four to one. [1:00:26] Bridget Sperl: You did a really nice job with that. [1:00:30] Jennifer Arsenault: Well, as—as we did. It's because we're um respectful of each other. No, but I—I mean I just think we should take a minute to say we did everything. Good job, guys. Nice job of that. And look, we can still be friends. How about that? Um, okay. Number six. Um, [1:00:48] Bridget Sperl: I think— [1:00:49] Jennifer Arsenault: Oh, Kathy, I wanted to thank you too for all the work you did on this. I know it's a lot of work. [1:00:53] Kathy Weier: It is a lot. I hope you— [1:00:57] Jennifer Arsenault: That's all. Thank you. So, just to be clear, we approve resolution authorizing the dates of the 2025 deer hunt pursuant to the contract with Metro Bow Hunters Base for October 16th and 17th, striking the remaining dates on the resolution. Is that basically how you have it, Alan, or do we need to redo it? [1:01:16] Alan (Staff): Yeah, I just have that the authorization was for just those two dates. I will reach out to the bow hunters and confirm that they still want to do it. [1:01:25] Jennifer Arsenault: And then we need to pass another resolution suspending the— [1:01:30] Alan (Staff): Correct. That's uh in here. [1:01:32] Jennifer Arsenault: Just—just want to make sure we don't miss it here. [1:01:34] Bridget Sperl: What's that? [1:01:35] Kathy Weier: Yes. Um, in—I believe it's page 13. Um, no, sorry. 17. 17. Thank you. Um, I am moving to— Well, I'll explain what this is. Uh, we have an ordinance within Birchwood Village that does not allow any hunting to allow the bow hunters to do their hunting. We have to suspend that for the duration of the hunt, which would be October 16th and 17th. Um, based on what we had just approved. So, I make a motion to approve a suspension of our uh resolution suspending the city ordinance section 609.02 for special bow hunt for the dates October 16th and 17th to allow that hunt. [1:02:30] Jennifer Arsenault: Kathy made the motion. Um, can I get a second, please? [1:02:37] Bridget Sperl: Second. [1:02:38] Jennifer Arsenault: Second. All in favor? [All Council except Arsenault]: Aye. [1:02:45] Jennifer Arsenault: Opposed? Nay. One. Motion passes. [1:02:50] Alan (Staff): And we'll make sure the minutes reflect the uh numbers of the resolutions because they haven't been assigned yet. [1:02:54] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. Thank you. Okay. Um, are we good with that then, Kathy? Do you have everything you need? [1:03:00] Kathy Weier: Let me make sure. Okay. [1:03:02] Jennifer Arsenault: Before we move— [1:03:04] Kathy Weier: I got to look at my paperwork here. Okay. All right, we did the authorization and suspension and yes, I do have great. Thank you. [1:03:30] Jennifer Arsenault: Um, let's move on to number six. Um, oh, Kathy, do you want to do this one too? Discussion and scheduling of a work session to discuss Prebby Lake and Halls Marsh. [1:03:35] Kathy Weier: Sure. Um, a little background info. Uh, for the last two and a half years now, um, myself, Alan, and Marcus have been working on um an uh MOA with Rice Creek Watershed District for the um draining of Prebby Lake, which is a lake uh in White Bear Township— White Bear— um white sorry White Bear proper um to drain that down into Halls Marsh to allow the marsh to marsh and clean the water before it ends up in White Bear Lake. Um, which would allow Prebby Lake to be fully dredged, cleaned, etc. Um, there has been a pipe that was attached in the 1970s and Birchwood has been putting in place several requirements to allow that to happen. Um, we just finished up the MOA, um, based on input from White Bear Lake, uh, Mahtomedi, Birchwood Village, Rice Creek Watershed District. There's another one. Who am I missing? Yeah, township—um to let this happen because it does cross several um groups and then obviously it'd end up in White Bear. So all the surrounding communities potentially would be involved um with that. Uh since we are now at the stage where we'd need to sign something, we wanted to bring that in front of the council to discuss what has gone on in that two and a half years and all the agreements and everything. and then also discuss potential options that we have for um signing up for grants etc or other cleaning methods to restore the marsh after this cleanup um because that was some of the portions of the agreement that we have put in. So I wanted to set up a work session to discuss that with the council before we needed to vote on that. Um, so we'd have the opportunity to discuss any potential changes. [1:05:53] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. You have a date that you're thinking? [1:05:56] Kathy Weier: Um, I know you are gone for a while. Um, so— [1:06:03] Jennifer Arsenault: Thank you. [1:06:04] Kathy Weier: I wanted to make sure it was after that date if possible. [1:06:06] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah. Um, I was hoping for September. [1:06:10] Kathy Weier: Yep. Um, so I was thinking September 30th because it does not look like there's anything automatically scheduled that day because it is a fifth Tuesday. [1:06:20] Jennifer Arsenault: Perfect. [1:06:21] Kathy Weier: For me, if for everybody else— [1:06:23] Bridget Sperl: The 30th? [1:06:24] Kathy Weier: Tuesday. [1:06:25] Bridget Sperl: Yes, it's a Tuesday, which is our normal meeting date, and figured that if we did it at 6:30, it should allow... [1:06:34] Ryan Eisele: I don't see anything on my calendar. 50/50 at this point, but I can commit to getting briefed on it afterwards if—if it works for everybody else. [1:06:44] Kathy Weier: Completely fine. Um, I was planning on inviting a couple of the residents who have been heavily involved over that time frame too. [1:06:50] Jennifer Arsenault: Work around you. [1:07:00] Ryan Hankins: I'm sorry. [1:07:01] Jennifer Arsenault: It's okay. [1:07:02] Ryan Hankins: I don't know. Like at this point in time, I might or I might not be able to. I'm waiting for a meeting possibly. [1:07:08] Kathy Weier: Okay. I was just—I was just—Bridget, we can work around her. Well, would a different date work better? [1:07:18] Bridget Sperl: I sure. Yeah. Or else you guys can just follow up after and like just—the 30th works for me. [1:07:23] Jennifer Arsenault: You can just—you and Kathy can just work together and if the 30th works for you, we'll keep it. And if it doesn't— [1:07:27] Bridget Sperl: And I'll follow up. [1:07:28] Jennifer Arsenault: We'll—we'll do go through the regular special meeting scheduling thing. [1:07:31] Bridget Sperl: Or if you guys want to meet without me, that's okay. I I think I'm good on it. [1:07:37] Kathy Weier: Well, I was planning on inviting Tom um as well from and then um John Waller. I will invite him as well but Tom—what is Tom's last name—from Rice Creek? From Rice Creek Water District um... because he asked if if we would like him there for any answering questions etc that we can definitely have that. [1:07:58] Bridget Sperl: Yeah he was nice enough to offer that up. [1:08:00] Kathy Weier: And then there's a couple other residents who are interested in attending as well so I would like to try and pick a date if possible. [1:08:05] Jennifer Arsenault: So, you're thinking 6:30 on September 30th? [1:08:08] Kathy Weier: Yes. [1:08:10] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. [1:08:11] Kathy Weier: But I can move it if it does not work for everybody. I don't know what Ryan, you haven't mentioned. [1:08:16] Ryan Hankins: I—I'm— [1:08:18] Kathy Weier: You're okay. [1:08:19] Ryan Hankins: Good. October—it's a little dicey for me. So, as long as not in October—trying as close to staying out of it as possible. And if a date works better earlier in September for the rest of you, that's fine. Um, I can also just catch up later. [1:08:38] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. [1:08:39] Kathy Weier: Okay. Whatever you all decide, we can do the 30th preliminarily and then you let us know. Okay. [1:08:44] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah, I will. [1:08:45] Kathy Weier: So, the 16th is a parks committee meeting. I don't think there's one on the 23rd, which would be the fourth Tuesday if that one's a preference. [1:09:00] Jennifer Arsenault: We're doing the 30th. [1:09:02] Bridget Sperl: That's Yeah, I think—right. We're saying the 30th. [1:09:05] Jennifer Arsenault: The 30th is okay. Okay. Yeah. And then I will—let's tend to—let's plan on the 30th and if I can't go, then I will let you know and I'll—I'll find a way to follow up. [1:09:23] Kathy Weier: Okay. Do we need a motion or anything or are we just— [1:09:25] Jennifer Arsenault: No, I was just scheduling it, but we will need to post, right? [1:09:28] Alan (Staff): Yeah, we'll make sure an agenda goes out and gets posted in the box and then... [1:09:34] Jennifer Arsenault: Set in the box and posted online. 6:30 on September 30th. Right. Thanks, Kathy. Again, thank you for all your work on that. [1:09:41] Kathy Weier: Thank you. Those are big-time something. [1:09:47] Ryan Hankins: That's why I signed up to be a council person. I'm okay signing that one down the road here sometime. [1:10:00] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay, now we're on to what has really brought us here tonight, which is the star of the show. Um, so by law, we need to pass a preliminary budget and have it submitted by September 30th. [1:10:14] Ryan Eisele: Can we just do a CR, Alan? [1:10:17] Alan (Staff): No. [1:10:18] Ryan Eisele: So what you're thinking, but no. [1:10:20] Jennifer Arsenault: So um man, we have worked—Marsha was going to try to join us. She had another meeting this evening. Marsha is our treasurer. Uh, she has put together some figures for us. Um, so if you want to look at the one I just put on your table—a copy Alan? Yeah. Okay. It's pretty blurry in the agenda. [1:10:55] Ryan Eisele: I've heard. Are we looking? [1:10:57] Bridget Sperl: Okay. [1:10:58] Ryan Eisele: The sheets that were in there, right? [1:11:00] Jennifer Arsenault: Yes. [1:11:01] Kathy Weier: The two-page. [1:11:02] Jennifer Arsenault: And let me know if you want me to put them on the ELMO. [1:11:04] Ryan Eisele: I have some questions. I don't know if I can answer. No. Uh, so go ahead. What's your question? Um, I think actually Kathy asked this last time. Um, and I'll ask it again. The building under—on the first page, the fourth line down, building permits. [1:11:32] Bridget Sperl: Oh. Mhm. [1:11:34] Ryan Eisele: Our actual receipts are $11,720. [1:11:38] Bridget Sperl: Mhm. [1:11:40] Ryan Eisele: And so I don't—it seems like we—we generally collect way more in building permit revenue than that. Um, or it just makes me think we're not tracking it correctly or something cuz like the budget is 90K. Looks like in 2023 we did 85K. In 2024 we did 60K. So far this year we've done 12K. So that—it just seems like it's quite a bit lower. And that's granted—that's a receipt. [1:12:14] Kathy Weier: Yeah. So, I had reached out to Marsha on that. Um, that's the one I had asked uh to be followed up with at our last council meeting as well. And she had stated that—I can pull up her email here. She contacted Jack. Yes, she reached out to Jack and that is accurate um for the amounts we've actually collected because pre—the previous two years, which is kind of what we're looking at, we had all those hail storms that came through that people had to replace their sightings and roofs. So, we had a significant number of—almost everyone had a permit um during that time frame. If you look back further um from the proposed budget we had gotten in 2021 um the lowest we've gotten in the last 5 years though was 50,000 so it still seems low but— [1:13:02] Ryan Eisele: That—we are at the end of the— [1:13:07] Kathy Weier: That doesn't—still—I know still doesn't make sense—strange to me that's why— [1:13:13] Bridget Sperl: Did people do a lot during COVID and maybe are done—snapback? [1:13:18] Ryan Hankins: I mean was it—so it was Jack Kramer that gave—gave you this answer. [1:13:21] Kathy Weier: Jack Kramer confirmed to Marsha and Marsha confirmed to us. [1:13:23] Ryan Hankins: Cuz I mean I wonder if something just wasn't getting bucketed there or something. [1:13:27] Kathy Weier: I don't know the answer to that question unfortunately. [1:13:29] Ryan Eisele: But then Jack's um—Jack's payments come out of that. [1:13:35] Kathy Weier: But we don't pay him separately. His always comes out of the building permit. [1:13:38] Ryan Hankins: Right. But—but his should be less as well if in fact we're doing less permits. [1:13:42] Kathy Weier: Correct. But the planner's is a set fee. So that would not change. [1:13:51] Ryan Hankins: I understood he gets like 25% of the permit fees. [1:13:55] Alan (Staff): I believe that's right. [1:13:57] Bridget Sperl: Yeah, I thought it was too. I thought it was like 50. [1:14:04] Alan (Staff): Yeah, that sounds right to me, but I'd have to go look it up to be sure. [1:14:14] Alan (Staff): I'll take a peek here to see what I can find for you. [1:14:24] Ryan Hankins: For budget purposes, your hard number is what you're going to bring in. [1:14:32] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah. Yep, that's right. So, that 11—wait, it was 1,069. It—the 11,720 should be what our number is. This is only building permits going to Jack. It's probably not that big of a deal because it's not going to necessarily affect the levy that much. It's kind of a—we take a cut, but most of it just is kind of a pass-through. [1:15:05] Ryan Hankins: Yeah. 67,900? [1:15:11] Jennifer Arsenault: Because really there's not much administration that's not Mr. Kramer when it comes to those things. [1:15:18] Ryan Hankins: Okay. Just to make sure we're all looking at the same sheet. Um, let me just explain a little bit to you. You should the one I put on your desk this evening. Um, it has—do you have the 679,794 for the top line general fund receipts? [1:15:51] Kathy Weier: Yep. [1:15:53] Ryan Hankins: Yes. [1:15:55] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. And then at the top you have the two columns—excuse me—the 618 budget for 2025 and then again—excuse me—um, for 2026, do you have the 744 up there as well? [1:16:08] Kathy Weier: Mhm. [1:16:10] Ryan Hankins: Yes. [1:16:12] Kathy Weier: Yep. [1:16:14] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. I just want to make sure we're looking at the same one. So the—um—we want to put this on the screen projector thing since it's different than what— [1:16:21] Ryan Eisele: Yeah, that's why it asked. Do you want this up on the screen? [1:16:23] Alan (Staff): Sure. [1:16:25] Jennifer Arsenault: Um, yeah. Do you want—I have another copy if you'd like to do this one. [1:16:28] Kathy Weier: I've made another copy. [1:16:30] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. So before we even go through these when I—and we have been as a council talking about the lack of saving in a capital improvement fund. Um, actually we're carrying a negative balance in that fund right now. Um, the state of the—hold on a minute. The state of the city—you know people want good roads. We are looking at aging infrastructure. These are big-ticket items. There is no savings for them currently and it—as we have talked over the course of this year so far. Um, you know, I think we are all on board for planning for the future, you know, future spending in the city, saving in the city, just um general maintenance and— [1:17:39] Bridget Sperl: Ongoing upkeep. [1:17:41] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah. You know, things need to be replaced, right? This—everything's getting old. Um, so what you're looking at is this 10% would be the increase, a tax increase at 10% and that's where we got that 679. And I was just having Marsha just run some numbers just to see where it would all shake out. But the ones where you see where it says per contract um for like police and fire and on the third page um under 605 sewer utility like that 62,000 those are things we do not have control over. Um, so what I um was looking at here is if you go down the big tickets, the big difference to make up for that 10% is what people are asking for. There's a street—if you go down again now to I'm in um the 100 category where it says streets and road maintenance. If you come across that number is $100,000 in there. Big ticket. But that's—we need our roads, right? [1:18:55] Ryan Eisele: I'm not sure where you're looking. [1:18:57] Jennifer Arsenault: I'm done. I'm on page one now. [1:18:59] Ryan Eisele: You said general fund— [1:19:01] Jennifer Arsenault: Under 100. Disbursements. [1:19:03] Ryan Eisele: Oh, okay. General fund disbursements 100. Yeah. Okay. So, if I go look down about 20 items down... [1:19:11] Bridget Sperl: Closer to the bottom. [1:19:13] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah, 2/3 of the way. [1:19:15] Ryan Eisele: Streets and road maintenance. There it is. Okay. Thank you. [1:19:17] Jennifer Arsenault: Easier to look over and find the 100 grand. Right. It is. So, there's a 100,000 in there. Um, and that was actually budgeted also for 2025, right? We had 100,000 last year that was budgeted. So, that's just keeping it in there. So, that's the a big ticket which makes up that 10%. And I'm going to make you flip a page again. And if you go to the page three and look at 406 where it says total capital project fund. [1:19:53] Ryan Eisele: I don't have a page three. [1:19:55] Bridget Sperl: They don't have a page three. [1:19:56] Jennifer Arsenault: Sorry. Um, we don't have page three. I'll go make you a copy really quick. [1:19:59] Ryan Hankins: It's—it's this one, right? [1:20:01] Kathy Weier: They have this one. They're looking— [1:20:04] Jennifer Arsenault: Oh, 40—page two. [1:20:08] Alan (Staff): Oh, I think so. Yeah. [1:20:09] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. Do you have it? No. Page—406 capital project receipts. [1:20:18] Ryan Hankins: I have it. [1:20:20] Ryan Eisele: Okay. Yeah. 406. Yep. [1:20:21] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah, I have that. Okay. And so the 2026 proposed budget is 50,000 in there. And what that 50,000 would represent is—you saw—and I didn't put it out there for public consumption because I didn't want anybody to get scared, but I was just kind of playing around with the numbers. And that was—I sent you guys a blank um—Ryan—I—I sent you guys this blank one—and I put—I filled out one. This is just me messing around. This is nothing that I'm— [1:21:03] Bridget Sperl: It's an example. [1:21:05] Jennifer Arsenault: That's right. Don't get scared. This is just—right. So, um, what I was doing is writing down things where it says item, just things we need to think about in the future, saving for, possibly replacing. If you notice, some of them at the top might come into like um just general maintenance things. But the biggies at the bottom here when you get to road improvements and replacing, if you notice, we really have to start saving money. You know, I don't want to be continuously talking about the water mains, but you know, they're not going to last forever. We do need to plan for it. And this what I put in there is to not even start anything any work on them till they're 90 years old in 2055. Um and if you just look at that number there without grants, it's ridiculous, right? What we would have to save—this number you're talking about is 197,700 a year. [1:22:05] Bridget Sperl: Yeah, that's the total for 20— that. No, that would be the the total for 2026 if—if we save 2,000 um for like roof replacement in—for 2045, you know. So, we would save 2026, 2027, and possibly when we got to 2045, you know, we would—we would be close to that 50,000 cost to replace the roof. Um, another example would be like the lift station replacement. Um, the I believe it was 2004 was when the Dellwood lift station was completed, the updates to it. So, right now now we're looking at 21 years on that, right? So, here I just put that in 2046. If we had to replace that lift station, let's say in nine years, it costs 625,000. Like I just said, it's rough, right? So, we would have to save in order to pay for that without grant money—62,500 a year just for that replacement to come up with enough money to replace it in 2046. And the reason I filled this out is just so we can see the seriousness of the money that we have not put away in the past to take care of this city. [1:23:48] Bridget Sperl: These are huge numbers and these are numbers that we cannot save for in one year, two years, five years, 10 years. It's going to take us 30, 40 years of serious hard saving in addition to taking care of the city, our infrastructure, all this building, all our assets. [1:24:06] Jennifer Arsenault: Um, I was talking with Marsha today about um bonding, you know. Um, that was someone had um suggested we just go out for bonds to and do all the roads at one time. First of all, we need um to get an audit done and um Marsha was saying those are between 20 and 30,000 a year for an audit. So, we would have to get the audit done. And she was also saying the amount of money that we have in the city would c—like we couldn't get a good rate on the bonds and um which would mean we would be paying a higher interest rate um because we don't have that cushion there. So, it's—it's almost like we're kind of stuck. Um bonding isn't going to work for us until we start a savings program for the city. And that savings program in a city is a capital improvement fund, right? Um, I I don't know. I I just I kind of get discouraged when I look at all of this. So, I'm hoping that you guys being the brains of the operation can come up with some really good ideas because I'm just, you know, and and like the pickleball court, you know, that's fading, right? Those those um the—the structure isn't going to last forever. The matting and you know that's up for—like I put in 2035—but even if that's $30,000, that requires us to save 3,000 a year and that's 3,000 more than we saved last year for capital improvements. So I'm—I'm—I'm at the—and you know I know nobody likes taxes. Okay, cool. But everybody wants water and everybody wants nice roads and things are not free. We don't have money trees growing in the city. So, we're going to have to pay for what we want. And these are going to be—it's going to be tough. But, you know, do we want to be a city? [1:26:18] Alan (Staff): It is your—it is hard. [1:26:22] Jennifer Arsenault: It is. And we have to make some hard choices as a community. What do we want? Do we want to start, you know, being smart about future planning, being smart financially? Yeah, there's nothing really we can cut. We run a really tight machine here. [1:26:47] Alan (Staff): I dare say cheap of this and local politics of course is the assessment process. You go through and that way everyone kind of pays their fair share. It gets the project done sooner because you can directly assess property, right? It does really act as a tax. So it feels like that. They're not popular. It's the way you get the job done instead of the saving for 40 years because the pay as you go when you can't bond. [1:27:03] Jennifer Arsenault: That's right. So that that was what I was going to get to. So we're really limited on how we're going to get money and you know that's why we're so big on grants and I don't want people poo-pooing grants. Anytime you can get free money, it's a good thing. So if anybody out there would like to help get grant money for any project in the city, that's awesome. It just saves us paying out of our own pockets. But anyway you look at it, we're going to pay either with increased taxes or with assessments until we have enough cushion in there to where we can get bonds because right now we can't. So I'm done. [1:27:42] Bridget Sperl: I know—I know this isn't apples to apples because it's—it's a different community, but um, when my wife's father passed away and we inherited that house, we also inherited a $15,000 assessment because they redid the water lines and the roads. And so that's something to think about. It's a big chunk of change all at once, you know, and it does affect people's desire to move into your city. I mean, those assessments sit there, they're payable—payable back, they're paid back over a period of time, and they come out incrementally in your property taxes, but when the property transfers, typically what you're going to see is buyers are going to want to say, well, you eat the assessment and we'll buy it, but it's coming out of your pocket. Yeah. So, a lot of people, they feel it very directly. It's hard to pass those on because the—doesn't want to adopt those, right? But it's easier to pay when you sell also because you're dealing with a chunk of money. Then—some people will just write the check, right? If everyone in Birchwood got a bill for $15,000 and you got brand new roads, you know, you'd be surprised how many people are not going to want to mess around with the idea of having this assessment sitting there. So, they'll just write a check or do what they can do. But the alternative is it's paid back over a period of time, with interesting with no interest. [1:29:10] Bridget Sperl: Right. Mhm. So could the story of our budget for 2026 be something like this? We keep run the business flat. Um, we increase our maintenance budget because the city is asking for that. We start putting away money to start to save and we have to decide how much and then you know it's an impossible amount. We have to depend on on government grants or we have to do um an assessment at some point in time if if people really want streets, if our sewers are in terrible shape. That's—that's what we got to get to. I don't think we're there for next year. [1:30:02] Jennifer Arsenault: No. [1:30:03] Bridget Sperl: Um, but we could start the discipline of starting to put money away. [1:30:08] Jennifer Arsenault: And that's why I kind of, you know, when I was thinking through this, and please, I—I'm not saying that this is right, and I absolutely am open to ideas because I know you always come up with great ideas. Um, but that 100,000, it's just the voices inside. That 100,000 um in roads, you know, when Marcus was talking earlier, just an idea. We were on Wildwood, you know, and Wildwood is set according to this roads plan to be reclaimed, reshaped, you know, which is super expensive. Yeah. But as we're sitting there, you know, the sides of the road where the water is eroding the sides, you know, there's big ditches, not ditches, but a lot of erosion on the—the surface. And I was asking him if we could just like do a big patch because the center of the road is all right. It's the two sides. And he said, "Yeah, we can do that. You could tear that up, patch the sides, you know, make your um curbs, you know, set up your curbs again." You know, right. It's just a matter of sitting down really and taking the time. And I don't—I just don't think the city has taken—there's just no time. I mean, we—I can tell you there is no time with the staff that we have to actually take a week and really focus focus focus on this. Um, but that was kind of what I was thinking this winter. It would be a really great project once we have the tree things settled and everything to really dig in. Um, I don't know. [1:32:04] Ryan Hankins: I heard a good idea. [1:32:06] Jennifer Arsenault: All I—all I heard were roads and trees and so this is really road-heavy and saving. [1:32:16] Alan (Staff): You're not the only ones in the country. [1:32:19] Bridget Sperl: Oh yeah. Everybody's doing it. [1:32:20] Alan (Staff): You got to believe that there's some out there and so a lot of infrastructure is 60, 70, 80 years old. It's like yours, right? And that's why with grants, you know, we can get creative and like when we were talking about playground equipment, you know, we would have to maybe do a um—I'm losing the words—not all inclusive. You know what I'm talking—I'm looking for. Um, anyway, so yeah, you just have to be creative when you're looking for grants and think of ways that we can apply for the money. You know, it might be not what we're thinking of originally, but it could still work for us. [1:33:09] Alan (Staff): You're talking about accessible playgrounds. [1:33:11] Jennifer Arsenault: Thank you. [1:33:12] Alan (Staff): All inclusive. Yeah. No, that's not—they have grants available for special playgrounds if we make it all-inclusive. [1:33:20] Jennifer Arsenault: Yes. Then uh there there are more grant options for that style. So creative thinking of course will be good. [1:33:27] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. It—I still think it's at least it's helpful to me to think about what our overall strategy is. Correct. And then underneath that so one of our strategies is we—we can't do a lot of this unless we have grants. So that's the strategy. Then we can start doing deep work on grants. You know, if—if we say we need to start saving, then we can start to do deep work on what should that savings look like. But I just think an overall picture because that's how we have to describe what we're going to do to residents, right? [1:34:06] Jennifer Arsenault: But I—I don't think it can be either or. It has to be both. We have to save and we have to go full-on grant money. Absolutely. We don't have a choice but to save. Here you go. [1:34:24] Bridget Sperl: Um, I have a question and I'm kind of nervous that only Marsha can actually answer it though, but with the money we've been paying out for the lift station, I know that's money that's coming out of our budget right now and then we will be reimbursed. Did we take into account that that money is coming back? So, is that included in here? [1:34:40] Jennifer Arsenault: So, what I asked Marsha last year and I'd like to ask her again is um she—I said how much reserves should a city have and she basically said 18 months' worth. Mhm. And that was last year. It looks like we tend to underspend our budgets a little bit. So, we may be there a little higher, but that was—that 18-month reserve was basically the cash flow for the lift station. So my understanding is that the lift station is sort of a pass-through. [1:35:14] Bridget Sperl: Okay. But yeah, we should be having 600-something thousand back which you mentioned right now we're on a negative balance. [1:35:22] Jennifer Arsenault: That's the capital improvement fund and that's negative 15 or 20, right? But—because we spent more in roads and we pulled it out of there and the money didn't go back into that fund. It went into the general fund instead. [1:35:36] Bridget Sperl: Oh, okay. [1:35:38] Jennifer Arsenault: So, the bud—if you look in um the 2025 budget, that money for the lift station is under the grants and aid, state grants and aid as income. Mhm. Uh but it's not taken out. That's why I'm looking where it's dispersed because I—I didn't see those amounts in here and they should be to cancel that out, right? [1:36:10] Bridget Sperl: Well, I think what you—what you— [1:36:12] Jennifer Arsenault: But that gets it through July though, too. [1:36:14] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. I just don't think any— right because that was the first payment. [1:36:17] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah. Okay. Was in July. Yes. And then we've paid two others since then. So, unfortunately, these numbers aren't—current. [1:36:48] Ryan Eisele: So, I know we're—d—I'm going to say this one more time, then I I promise to be quiet. I know we're diving into the line item numbers, which is great, but what are we trying to achieve? Like, what are the big things that we want to achieve in 2026 in the budget? What—what's the story of this budget? I mean, I guess to me, you know, I'll look at the—I'll look at something very different than what you're looking at is—I think we saw 20—I think it was about a 16% increase two years ago. I think last year we were at a 7% increase. I think it's—it's really hard to tell people that we're doing more double-digit increases here. And so, you know, I know this is the challenge everybody faces, but I think if we go out and say more double-digit increases, we're going to have a lot of pretty upset residents here. So, I'm not—I think this—there's been many years of underinvestment in the city and I think that Alan's kind of nodding. Um, so Ryan, would you say the story of our budget this year is to just keep things under 10%? [1:37:43] Ryan Eisele: I would like to—I mean I think that would be my opinion. I'm open to other opinions, but um I'm uncomfortable with more—asking people for more tax dollars at this point. But I do think we have to cope with the reality of if we always keep taxes down, we're going to be, you know, the—the next 10 years can't be like the last 10 or 12 years and then we'll end up with no capital improvement savings. So, I think we need to find a balance there. But, um, you know, and I don't think anybody's wrong here about starting to save some money. Um, I think—I guess I think I kind of made my point here is that's uh—it's not an easy decision here for me, but I think residents are kind of saying, "Hey, my taxes are going way up." So— [1:38:36] Bridget Sperl: But when you talk about a 10% increase, you know, I think about my own taxes in Birchwood, right? So if they, for example, I don't know, they're—if my total tax bill is 5,000, my Birchwood line is like less than two, right? [1:38:50] Ryan Hankins: Yeah. [1:38:51] Bridget Sperl: 10% of 2,000 is $200 a year. Uh, you know, hi Marsha. [1:39:03] Jennifer Arsenault: I just don't—let me—I guess I'm trying to read this. I'm trying to read the budget here. And um— [1:39:07] Bridget Sperl: Perfect timing, Marsha. Awesome. [1:39:10] Jennifer Arsenault: I still say what do we want to do for the residents? What is—I don't know how to do it. Now we can put the numbers down. [1:39:20] Marsha Olson: This one. [1:39:21] Jennifer Arsenault: Thank you. Do you see that disbursement of—I guess I'm not—How much money do we have? [1:39:27] Marsha Olson: So it did back out. [1:39:29] Jennifer Arsenault: So it did back out. Station and that's throwing the books off. [1:39:34] Marsha Olson: Sorry. Took me a minute. [1:39:35] Jennifer Arsenault: No, I don't. No, I—I agree completely with you, Ryan, because when we did that, it was at 18%. Be awesome. Like—it was a pitchforks kind of experience. Um, and it was because the previous year they had got dropped taxes. Yeah, you can't do that. It did not—did not go well for us. [1:39:55] Alan (Staff): I said it. [1:39:56] Bridget Sperl: What' you say, Jen? [1:40:05] Kathy Weier: So, that was a very hard thing to do—to do that. And we heard about it significantly when we did. And then last year we tried to keep it under wraps. But a lot of—a lot of our expenses we have no control—like fire and um—our huge expenses do not have control. Those were some of the hardest because we had gotten these grants and then they raised it exactly the amount of our grant. Surprise. Anyway, so— [1:40:22] Alan (Staff): Magic. [1:40:25] Kathy Weier: It was a magic number that just happened to be exactly the amount of the grant that we got um which meant that we got no benefit from that grant other than not having that tax, but they decided they needed a new building or whatever it was at the time. But we don't really get the choice of being like we don't need fire and police. Those are fairly necessary, right? That's running the business. [1:40:46] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. Um, I am actually kind of surprised by snowplow—how expensive snowplowing has been with how few times we needed them comparative to the year we had the snowmageddon. The price of that obviously was significantly higher, but it doesn't seem like um the same style of snowplowing has been happening. I don't know. I don't have a solution for that but that is a big portion of our expenses of the increase that you have mentioned here. [1:41:21] Bridget Sperl: I think we should make Bridget answer her question. [1:41:23] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. Well, I would answer because I'm thinking we have to explain this to residents what we're doing. So, I would say one—we have to run the business and sometimes that's going to be really expensive because a lot of those costs are out of our control. Police, fire—but we have to—snowplowing, all of those things. We'll do our best to get the best price, but we have to run the business. Then I would say you told us you wanted to do roads and you wanted to do trees and you wanted to do more maintenance. So, we are increasing the budget to do those things. And this is what it looks like. And these are the—these are the big actions. And then finally, we know—like every other city in America—that our infrastructure is old and we have to start saving. So, so we are going to put together a fund and every year we're going to put X in it. And to me, that's a really good way to explain a budget and then you can go through—if we all, you know, if we all agree to something like that, then we can go through and sort of—needle the costs and figure out can we do this for less, etc. But to me, that's—that's where you have to start. [1:42:33] Jennifer Arsenault: I agree. I don't disagree with you at all. I just know that we were—going—we will—we will for sure. It doesn't matter if you raise it 1%. You know what? Yeah, absolutely. We have to do what's best for the city, right? The city at large. And I have heard more people say to me, and these are not—these are younger people say, "You need to do that. We'll pay more for it." And then and someone told me, "If it cost me $5,000 to have a nice road in front of my house, I'll pay for it." So, it's not what we hear are the people that complain. You don't hear from the general population that's like, "Yeah, we need to get this done." They're not going to come in and say, "Hey, good job. Thanks for raising." [1:43:08] Bridget Sperl: Oh, no. No one does that portion for sure. But, but if they can see it, if they can see the difference, that helps. Correct. And these are all things that you will see. These are going to—it's—these aren't new software or you know things like that. Right. It's visible improvements in the city. [1:43:34] Kathy Weier: I do feel like 20% would be a hard ticket to explain to a fixed income and we do have a significant portion of people on fixed income here. So I would not discount that at all. [1:43:50] Jennifer Arsenault: Um we can have a talk about fixed income then. [1:43:54] Kathy Weier: Okay. I guess. No, I'm not—I'm not saying anything about that. My—my personal story. [1:44:03] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. Um, but as far as individuals who—that will be a hard amount to swallow. [1:44:08] Kathy Weier: I understand. [1:44:11] Jennifer Arsenault: And then everyone's houses are also aging as well. So, well, all the houses that are original for sure are aging as well. So, there's infrastructure fixing there too. So, every time people are doing improvements, their houses are reassessed for more, of course. and people come and chat about that a lot. So, they've improved their house. The cost is going to go up. It's a shock for a lot of people. [1:44:31] Ryan Hankins: Put on solar panels. They're exempt from property tax. [1:44:36] Alan (Staff): So, and remove all your trees so you can use them. [1:44:42] Bridget Sperl: So, what are we saying here? Um, now that Marsha is here, you guys had a good question about the pass-through with the— [1:44:59] Marsha Olson: Yeah, she found the sheet that shows it on uh page three, which we don't have. Um, has the— [1:45:03] Kathy Weier: Don't have page—this one? [1:45:05] Marsha Olson: No, no, she has a third sheet that we didn't get. It has like two things on it. Oh, that little guy. Oh, okay. And Marsha had already explained the—I—I had mentioned regarding your email regarding Jack Kramer and the building inspection. Um, we were trying to figure out which percentage of of building permits comes to the city and which goes to Jack. [1:45:28] Marsha Olson: Jack will get 65% of— [1:45:30] Bridget Sperl: That sounds right. [1:45:31] Marsha Olson: So we get the 35. [1:45:32] Ryan Hankins: Okay. More than we have. [1:45:38] Bridget Sperl: I said 50. Marsha Marsha, I asked you this last year and I'll just ask again. Um, I said cities keep a certain amount of reserve and you said the typical amount is 18 months. How are we—how—where are we on that? And is that—do I have that right? And where are we on that in the general fund? Yep. And—and are we roughly at 18 months? [1:45:58] Marsha Olson: I'd have to look at that. [1:46:00] Alan (Staff): I can do that. I'd be just curious to know if—because I—I feel like we often come in a little under our budgets. Particularly with the shuffle that's gone on in the administration, right? Yeah. Payroll. Yeah, for sure. [1:46:21] Bridget Sperl: Okay. Payroll. So I think one thing that might be possible here would be to take—if we've—I know if we were at 18 months last year, if we've budgeted to be roughly break even this year, if we came in a little bit under budget this year because of the administrative staffing messes we've had, maybe one thing we could do would be to seed some of our capital improvement budget with some of that overage. [1:47:04] Ryan Hankins: Absolutely. We should spend every nickel before the end of the year. [1:47:08] Bridget Sperl: If that's what you're saying. [1:47:09] Ryan Hankins: No, I'm not necessarily saying spend it. I'm saying some of the funds in the general fund that we over-spent—that we haven't spent— [1:47:14] Bridget Sperl: And move that into this capital improvement savings plan. [1:47:20] Ryan Hankins: Yes. [1:47:22] Bridget Sperl: And—and that I think might allow us. I'm all for some capital improvement savings. I'm easing in. [1:47:30] Bridget Sperl: I feel like easing. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Is this—it's not only going to take us time to build up the fund. I think it's also—we're going to have to go for the second derivative and ramp up the rate at which we're putting into it here as well and not—not put in—you know 10% of our budget may not be the most feasible thing next year but if we two or 3% and they had increase that by 1% a year we might be—might be more palatable to people. Does that make sense? Yeah. [1:47:57] Bridget Sperl: So, but I'm still—I guess I have some still have questions about the numbers here. This—the 744,294,04—is that just a straight 20% increase? Where does that number come from? Of the um the general fund property taxes—that's on there which the general fund property taxes you're kind of forced you back into that number by taking your disbursements for the general fund and then taking off all the other sources of income. So, um, that 679 that's up there is, is that what the number is? 679. [1:48:36] Ryan Eisele: Well, I see a 618,134 and a 744,294. And then I see a 20%. And I guess— [1:48:47] Marsha Olson: 618 would be the same thing that was um—that was the 2025 budget when you took the general fund levy and the um capital fund improvement, which we didn't budget anything in there. Um, and then the 744 is the general fund levy plus the capital improvement levy. [1:49:04] Ryan Eisele: That 618 looks like it's the same as the general property tax number. So, we didn't carry it. [1:49:10] Marsha Olson: And that's because we budgeted everything into the general fund. [1:49:14] Alan (Staff): There was no capital plan. [1:49:16] Ryan Eisele: What what we're proposing is if we want to increase—and—and where is the number for the capital improvement fund? That seems like— [1:49:25] Marsha Olson: It's on the next page. [1:49:29] Ryan Eisele: It's $50,000 we're proposing to put into the capital improvement right now. [1:49:34] Marsha Olson: That's what I had as a placeholder. [1:49:37] Jennifer Arsenault: Marsha? Okay. Say that again. What everybody laughed at. I missed the joke. No. Okay. Um. [1:49:46] Jennifer Arsenault: I'm sorry. Was that on TV? [1:49:48] Bridget Sperl: Yes. [1:49:50] Jennifer Arsenault: All right. So, I see. And so, we're talking about some... So I guess—so we're saying let's start our capital improvement fund with $50,000 basically per year starting in 2026. That's kind of— [1:50:06] Marsha Olson: That was my thought. [1:50:08] Jennifer Arsenault: And that—okay that's what it says. [1:50:13] Ryan Hankins: So if you look at again— Yeah. Okay. We do a straight 10%. Okay. [1:50:19] Marsha Olson: Yep. [1:50:21] Ryan Hankins: And if you want to kick it down to 9.8... whatever... but um just— I'm trying to understand before I give too many opinions and then I'll give opinions and stuff trying to understand but um... [1:50:42] Ryan Hankins: But if you look at the numbers that um Marsha's provided us starting with the receipts right and then look at how she did the disbursements—she did the increases, right? Three cost of living, three—three—so she did our increases for us. The per contracts I already talked—talked to you about. Um, so Marsha really did put in all the—the—the numbers and really the only difference between last year's budget and this year's budget would be that 50,000 in the capital improvement fund, which you know, I understand what you're saying, Ryan, about 1% a year or whatever, but what's that going to buy us? I mean, you might as well save nothing then. [1:51:16] Ryan Eisele: I'm not saying 1% a year. I think what I'm saying is 1% a—like let's—let's just as a abstract example put 1% of revenues into capital improvements in 2026, 2% in 2027, 3% in 2028 and so by 2037, you're putting in 10% of your revenue every year. You're—you're creeping up. You're ramping up. And so you're getting there, but you're not putting a big burden on people all at once. And maybe instead of starting at 10 at 1%, maybe you start at 5% next year and go to six and then seven and then eight. I think— [1:52:16] Marsha Olson: 5% of which number are we talking? [1:52:20] Ryan Eisele: 5% of—well this $50,000 is let's say that's looks like off the cuff is 7%ish... I don't know... [1:52:35] Bridget Sperl: 5% of which number are we talking? Total revenue? [1:52:41] Ryan Eisele: I guess what I'm—I'm—I'm just—it was just supposed to be an abstract example but like— [1:52:45] Jennifer Arsenault: I want to know what number we're working off of. [1:52:48] Ryan Eisele: Um I mean let's say you take that be an 8% right? Yeah. And so at 5% it would be— [1:52:56] Marsha Olson: No, right now it'd be an 8% increase on the last year's budget amount of 618. [1:52:59] Ryan Eisele: So if you— So 679,794 or what— [1:53:05] Marsha Olson: The 50,000 is an 8% increase. [1:53:08] Ryan Eisele: Okay. Thank you. Okay. [1:53:14] Bridget Sperl: I guess the important thing is we start. [1:53:17] Ryan Hankins: Well, I absolutely agree. We should start. Um the reason we didn't have one last year is because we knew we'd need to have additional funds. That's why um there's one that says general fund engineering expenses that 28,840 and it says not sure why 2025 and then it got cut off on mine. So um I'm assuming they're trying to figure out why we put that amount in there. That was because we knew that the lift station was going to have more engineering expenses than we anticipated. So what we had planned on initially for capital improvement of 20,000—because we were going to do 80,000 for roads that year and then 20,000 going to—that we knew we'd need it for engineering. So that's where it ended up. [1:53:50] Bridget Sperl: I mean, I—I guess I want to just make some excuses here for a second in that there were a number of years when the budget when the village saved a little bit of money and then all of a sudden that money got pushed down to kind of replace lift station number one down there. And so that reset—whenever they did that lift station six or seven years ago, basically it reset set all of our capital savings back to zero. [1:54:15] Ryan Eisele: Yeah. And then those—that money that was being saved for that kind of got subsumed into operating budgets. And now—and—and so a couple years ago we kind of came in and people were—the roads were in pretty rough shape and we you know started setting aside money for that and now it doesn't surprise me again that we're kind of coming back and saying well we're still not saving enough. And so you know I know Kathy and I are kind of veterans of of pushing this. It wasn't a whole lot of fun necessarily to deal with that stuff. But I mean, I don't disagree. I think we need to get there. I just think it's um you know, working through the numbers and finding some way we can kind of make this a little more palatable. So— [1:55:04] Bridget Sperl: Um but what's—what's actually—if it seems like what you're kind of saying here, and thank you for putting together the budget, is if we had—if this were Birchwood Beverly Hills or something, we would like to just like go to 20% taxes because that's a reasonable way we would sort of at least even like start to make some progress on our capital on our capital spending. And that's kind of what we're saying or we would like to go— I mean— [1:55:41] Jennifer Arsenault: What do you—what—what are we saying here that we wanted that ideally if we thought people wouldn't be push—push back would do a 20% increase. [1:55:50] Bridget Sperl: Well, I'm not suggesting that. [1:55:52] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. [1:55:53] Marsha Olson: And just to put it out there, right now I have it at an 18% increase because I took the if you look down below under I think in the park there are special revenues there was 145 that I budgeted just for permits, but that shouldn't be included in the levy number. So, um, I apologize—that number went to 729,794.04, which is an 18%. [1:56:16] Jennifer Arsenault: So, we're down to 18. [1:56:18] Bridget Sperl: We're down to 18. [1:56:19] Ryan Eisele: Okay. I wouldn't be apologizing for that if I were you. [1:56:22] Kathy Weier: So, I did want to ask on there, we do have parks budgeted for something on here. Is that uh maintenance, Jim's maintenance? Because it has a 3% increase. Yeah. Can we change the name of that one to—because he's not just parks maintenance and I don't want people to confuse that with our parks funds that are the special revenue one. [1:56:49] Bridget Sperl: Oh, sure. [1:56:50] Kathy Weier: So, like parks and building maintenance, uh, maintenance staff, I think, would be helpful for that instead of parks because I'm nervous that I don't want people to think the special revenue fund is somehow part of the levy and it—it is not. [1:57:04] Jennifer Arsenault: So, Ryan, what do you think we should do? [1:57:07] Bridget Sperl: Should have played the lottery yesterday in one. [1:57:12] Ryan Eisele: Yeah. Yeah. [1:57:13] Bridget Sperl: You'd be out—what is it, $2 now? [1:57:15] Ryan Hankins: Yeah. [1:57:17] Ryan Eisele: Um, so I know we were talking about our staffing challenges. So, what is the—what are we under this year for that? I might be getting to the point where I need readers, but... [1:57:33] Marsha Olson: Right now we're at 41.6% of the budget um through July. Um but we do have to factor in that we are paying unemployment too which is down under employee insurance. Um so that—the unemployment is is quite hefty. You'll just see the first one coming through I think in August. It's like um—let's see what it was. [1:58:05] Ryan Hankins: I don't know where that is. [1:58:07] Jennifer Arsenault: How long we playing that for? [1:58:15] Marsha Olson: We started on that. Do you know? [1:58:18] Alan (Staff): I—I don't. It was a year. Six months. No. You get unemployment for six months, but that's not directly paid out. [1:58:34] Bridget Sperl: So there's— Okay. Insurance employee. Is that what it is? [1:58:40] Marsha Olson: Yes. [1:58:41] Bridget Sperl: Okay. So, there was just one in August um for $2,354.55. And we expect that monthly, you know. So that's— [1:59:04] Ryan Eisele: Is it going to go monthly, do you think? [1:59:06] Marsha Olson: Should be that... [1:59:08] Ryan Eisele: That's 30—a little less than 30,000 a year. [1:59:13] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. Okay. [1:59:16] Jennifer Arsenault: So, what do we want to do? Got to decide. [1:59:19] Bridget Sperl: I guess to me, I mean, here's what I'd do. I would say let's pick a number for the—because it seems like the—the big kind of thing here is how much we're going to put away for capital projects. I would pick a number for capital projects as a percentage of the budget and then I would put together a plan that basically says we're going to put 5% into capital projects in 2026, 7% in 2027, 9% in 20— and and so we're kind of ramping that up over time. People get used to that. That's what I would do is— Jen, you're shaking your head or shaking? [2:00:06] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. You know, I guess I just get caught up when you just say, "Oh, people are going to freak out. This is a different number." Because I'm looking at my tax record right now. My total tax for 2025 is $5,244. My Birchwood portion is $1,274. If you raise my Birchwood tax 10%, I'm paying $120 more dollars a year. $10 more a month. [2:00:46] Bridget Sperl: But we're not doing this in a vacuum. [2:00:49] Jennifer Arsenault: I understand that. But Birchwood there, our only income is this. So if you raise my tax 10%. I'm giving Birchwood $10 more a month. What in the world are—are we going to do with an extra 10 bucks, man? Woohoo. [2:01:07] Kathy Weier: I—I think what I kind of understand where Kathy and Ryan are coming from because that's on top of 15% extra we're paying for healthcare next year. It's on top of however much Washington County raises our taxes. It's on top of how much daycare costs get raised that year. It's how much gas is. It's the school districts. [2:01:27] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah. this—the totality of taxes. [2:01:31] Bridget Sperl: I totally get it. [2:01:32] Ryan Eisele: This—the one expense that people have five people in their neighborhood that they can come talk to about. [2:01:39] Jennifer Arsenault: I just, you know, then um—I don't want to hear complaining about how the city isn't maintained. You can't maintain a city without money. We're running—we're maintaining the city on Jim, a 20-hour a week 60-some year old man. Mhm. That is our maintenance crew. So, you know, I don't—I get an icky feeling when people complain about stuff like that and then they complain that the city looks like garbage. Well, you know, those are—then we have to pay more money. No. So, help me figure it out. What do you want? You want roads or you don't want roads? [2:02:22] Bridget Sperl: I understand. Yeah. Money is tough. It's a—life is about decisions. So I don't care what we do. I mean I'm one— [2:02:30] Jennifer Arsenault: You do care. [2:02:33] Bridget Sperl: I do care because I—well I care about people who cannot afford it. I really care about that. But I think we could provide some sort of safety net for them and I've started researching some of those avenues. But on the flip side, we're charged with taking care of the city and doing what's best for the city as a whole. So where—where does that come down? Like who? I don't know. You know, in 10 years from now, are the people going to be complaining, look at our roads are crap? Well yeah because—well, even if we do everything, you're still going to have people complaining that the roads are going to look like crap because some people just—you only hear the complainers. That's the way that works. [2:03:36] Jennifer Arsenault: Well, so what I would say is we save for the future. We have to determine what that amount is. We make sure that all of the maintenance that needs to be done is covered, and that probably is an increase, and it's not 20 hours a week. And then we run the business. So, what does that add up to? [2:03:52] Ryan Hankins: I mean, just as an example, too, you know, there's $15,000 in our tree removal budget for 2025. Everybody, probably almost everybody in the city has taken down at least one tree this year or, you know, from the last couple years. It's not cheap. And what were you saying, Kathy? How many do we have in Paulie's Park? 101. [2:04:14] Kathy Weier: 101 that need to be taken down. We have $15,000. Some of them have fallen in the last storm, though. So, it's probably a few less, but that's not ideal. [2:04:22] Bridget Sperl: So, I guess we have to decide, do we want to tackle these things or do we just—I don't know that it's a decision, unfortunately. It's more of a—we have to plan for them better. But if we decided to tackle them more aggressively, it would be a decision about spending more money. [2:04:54] Kathy Weier: Um, I would like to point out in case anyone doesn't know that the September meeting is our—our ceiling amount. So, we cannot go up from that for our final budget. We can always go down, which is something that we have always discussed in all of the meetings because we will have a full room um for that budget meeting, no matter how much we increase it. [2:05:15] Alan (Staff): Well, I mean, if I—guess my experience is if you increase it a lot, you're going to have more people. It's not a great idea to raise it what you think it should go up. It's not a great idea to raise it up a whole bunch and drop it down because everybody sees on their property tax statement the first number and they don't look at the second number after you've dropped it down. And I think the previous mayor kind of did that and learned that that maybe wasn't the best way to run the show. I mean, I agree we can always come down, but you know, if people see like... [2:05:52] Bridget Sperl: But I mean, as far as like if we raise in a reasonable amount, we can't go up. I do want to point that out. [2:06:00] Alan (Staff): Go up, right? That's right. We can't go up. [2:06:04] Kathy Weier: In the event we go with something un—unreasonably low and then find out that we have to increase—let's say the police come like they did two years ago um in our November meeting to inform us that we had what was 124 up from whatever that amount was 124 up from our 36. Um when they came to do that it was after our September meeting. That was a a hard meeting to discuss because there was nothing we could do about the other portions of the levy. So we had to cover it out of that. So a lot of things got shifted around because of that which meant the next year we had to make up funds or pull funds. And fortunately we had a very low snow year that year. But that's—that's not the best way to do that. [2:07:00] Jennifer Arsenault: So what do we have to budget for maintenance? Okay, let's get—let's get down to business. So maintenance would come under—where is that? [2:07:11] Marsha Olson: She did say parks, but I changed it on mine to say maintenance staff. [2:07:15] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. So, it's under parks, though. It's the 4250. [2:07:17] Ryan Hankins: Yep. Budgeted up to 41,500? [2:07:22] Marsha Olson: That's Ron. Is that where we pay Ron? [2:07:24] Bridget Sperl: That's—that's Ron and Jim. [2:07:26] Jennifer Arsenault: And Jim. And then what else would we pay out of that? [2:07:29] Marsha Olson: It should be just them. [2:07:31] Jennifer Arsenault: It's just staff. It's not— [2:07:32] Marsha Olson: Yeah, that's not equipment. That's not um materials. [2:07:36] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. So 41,500—that's why it has a 3% increase on it—is it's a staff budget. [2:07:44] Bridget Sperl: Okay. Well I propose we double it. [2:07:49] Jennifer Arsenault: Well we—let's try it. Let's double it. And if we don't like the outcome we can Marsha can always back it out. Right. So, let's just start with something. [2:08:02] Ryan Hankins: Ryan, you got my pen again? [2:08:04] Ryan Eisele: Sure. Um... what? I don't have your pen. [2:08:12] Ryan Hankins: Um, Ryan, let's just try it, you guys. Let's make some progress here. So, parks. So, if we doubled it, I assume that means we will be hiring some people, correct? Summer help potentially. [2:08:33] Jennifer Arsenault: Yes. I have an idea. Vendors, you know, hire somebody to—correct—go in and clear the sides of the road that... doesn't need to be in a... Why—if we wouldn't the sides of the road cleared like just make an ordinance saying, "Hey, everyone has to clear three feet from the road on your property. If you don't do it, we're going to do it and charge you for it." [2:08:58] Bridget Sperl: Assessing houses is painful, though. [2:09:00] Jennifer Arsenault: Well, I'll assess all day long. Yes. But uh Therese and—and Marsha will—will appreciate if we do it the other way. [2:09:09] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. Well, I I'm just saying like what's a... you know, creative solution. [2:09:16] Jennifer Arsenault: Yes. Um, so if we—we just put 41,500 into maintenance. So, do you wanna—see the thing is is now we go back to the capital project fund. If you want to back out 41,500, drop that... I'm going to be bad at math. So, what is that going to be? 8,500 now in there. You know what I mean? The 406. [2:09:58] Ryan Eisele: Why—I mean—worst case scenario why don't we do both and see what the number is to pad it a little bit? [2:10:10] Marsha Olson: Pardon? [2:10:11] Jennifer Arsenault: Just to pad it and start a savings account for some of these other things that— [2:10:14] Alan (Staff): 8,000 in a capital fund. [2:10:15] Jennifer Arsenault: I know—do it. [2:10:16] Alan (Staff): I know that's what I mean. [2:10:17] Jennifer Arsenault: Right. So I—I'd keep it in and see what we got. [2:10:20] Bridget Sperl: Okay. So then, but you get—there was already push back with the not increasing the maintenance and having the 50,000 in there because that already brought us to... [2:10:33] Bridget Sperl: I just think you can explain—I mean maybe I'm naive—but I think you can explain it to the community that we don't have any savings and we are short on maintenance and you're complaining about that. So this is what we're doing about it. [2:10:50] Alan (Staff): Might be naive, but— [2:10:52] Jennifer Arsenault: I don't know. I just look at it from a math standpoint. I just go back to facts, right? Math. Let's do some math on this. Like I said, my house is pretty average in here. And a 10% increase would be $10 a month for me. It would be 200 uh 10 a month. Yeah. Okay. Roughly. [2:11:15] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. And when we communicate about it, that's the kind of examples that we will—could use when we tell residents about the budget. [2:11:27] Jennifer Arsenault: I mean, look up your property tax. You could do the same thing with yours. [2:11:31] Alan (Staff): I know what my property taxes are. Um, you know, and the thing is too, I—I don't know how other cities do it, but is there—is there um like a fund that cities might have to help people that are at of a certain income that they could apply for that to help them with their taxes? Even though you know what, now that I'm saying it out loud, there is the state—u—the county has that or if you have a certain if the tax is a certain percentage of your income, um you pay 40% less. For example, someone whose income might only be like a $2,000 a month pension. Um, and their tax rate is—I can't remember the numbers, but I could look it up. You go you fill out a form online and you get that rebate on your taxes, your property taxes through the county. Did you know about that? [2:12:12] Kathy Weier: Well, there—there is a certain point um I—I grew up very low income, so I'll just go ahead and state this. When you have paid no taxes, you get no refund. I just like to point that out. [2:12:22] Alan (Staff): It's not like they give you extra money. [2:12:25] Kathy Weier: No, but— we're talking about property. [2:12:27] Alan (Staff): No, no, I know. But as far as uh you mentioned it's a a discount off your taxes. [2:12:31] Bridget Sperl: That's when you're filing your taxes. [2:12:33] Alan (Staff): Oh, I see what you're saying. [2:12:35] Kathy Weier: Yeah. You—you don't get money back. So, it—there's nothing to discount. [2:12:43] Bridget Sperl: So if we kept that, if we kept Marsha's numbers but increased maintenance to 82,000, what would our increase be? And and in Marsha's numbers, did we put 50,000 or whatever? [2:12:56] Marsha Olson: Leaving 50,000 in capital improvement year and and keep the 50 in capital improvement. Overall, a 25% increase. [2:13:08] Kathy Weier: Wow. 17% in the general fund. [2:13:10] Bridget Sperl: We only have 300 some houses. It doesn't spread far. Okay. That's a lot. [2:13:16] Marsha Olson: That's not much money. But when your budget is small, right, it doesn't take much at all to jump numbers here, right? [2:13:25] Bridget Sperl: That's even 20%. You guys take— No. [2:13:30] Jennifer Arsenault: And that's why I'm saying it's all math. You can be afraid of a number 20%, but 20% of a dollar, I mean, you know, I— whatever. I can't. You guys can decide. I'm good. [2:13:46] Ryan Hankins: So—so how much money do we have? How—what's the surplus from—I'm starting to get very tired. The surplus from the uh employees from the turnover this year—is that zero or what's the surplus on that? [2:14:03] Marsha Olson: Um well right now taking into account the insurance payments for sure actually—running deficit over saving though because I mean that little percent—we're budgeted to spend 165,300 through July. We've spent 68,700. So thinking probably roughly another four grand for this month. [2:14:38] Ryan Hankins: So can you do the quick behind the napkin math—extrapolate for the rest of the year? [2:14:44] Marsha Olson: We didn't have those expenses full year because he wasn't on—you won't have— No, we're not talking about that. We're talking about— No, but we can put some of that money. I know what you're saying. Are we intending to replace? I assume we are. Yes. [2:15:06] Alan (Staff): Yeah. It looks like roughly around probably like 95,000 that— [2:15:10] Marsha Olson: Yeah, we budgeted for 165. So, so far we've done 68. Let me just see what a typical month is. May have um calculated the amount of payrolls. [2:15:24] Ryan Hankins: Marsha, do we have an overall sense of what—where we're going to end on the budget for at the end of the year? [2:15:31] Marsha Olson: Um, so far being that we're only pretty much have half—half the year in here, um, it—it looks like, you know, we're still—we have over half the year in here and we're under um, so we're—we're only at 27% of the budget for general fund um, disbursements and 35 for the receipts. So um, technically I'd like to take out the—the 600,000. [2:15:58] Bridget Sperl: Yeah, we'd have to do that. Yeah, that's true. [2:16:03] Kathy Weier: Um, I know we had planned, well, we were planning last year for the uh possibility that the EPA would not pay it back in the event that they got discontinued completely. Um so because of that—and that was in September that we were looking at it—uh there is a possibility that we had left additional funds for knowing that we'd need of cushion or—are they— [2:16:35] Marsha Olson: Well right now they're being paid out and then we get our money back from the EPA when they pay us back. So that's why it's a wash. I mean, if you look at the general fund, there's what, $900,000 in there. That was basically the plan was to take it out of the— [2:16:51] Jennifer Arsenault: But that $900,000 is roughly what Marsha recommends as our buffer. It was basically just to draw down the buffer. Yep. Tell everybody that we're sorry and we all got screwed and then raise their taxes if we—if we lost funding. So, there's no real like— [2:17:15] Alan (Staff): And I think one thing, you know, there is a basically—as far as I'm aware, I would think it's probably up a little bit. There is basically an 18-month—18-month buffer in the city that can be drawn down if we have emergent needs. The problem is if you start running deficits, that means your tax increases are going to go up even more exponentially, right? So it's not—not ideal. [2:17:41] Marsha Olson: You shook your head kind of like I would Bridget. [2:18:13] Marsha Olson: You had mentioned the 744,294 was not actually that—was 18%. You said the amount that's currently on here. [2:18:25] Marsha Olson: Yes, that 744 was um—it was a different number. Um after adding the maintenance in we're at 772,294 which is 25%. And that's 25%. Um and it's looks like it maybe be about a 30,000 savings there. [2:18:48] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. On payroll. On payroll. [2:18:52] Ryan Hankins: I mean, I think one of the other things we can do is look at—I don't know it'll buy us a whole lot, but we can look at our fees a little bit, too. It'll buy us—we could probably get five to 10 in fees. [2:19:07] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah. Do you think if we changed the um capital improvement to 20 and then took the 30,000 we saved on payroll this year to make up that 50 in capital improvement? [2:19:19] Bridget Sperl: Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. If we did that that way. [2:19:23] Marsha Olson: Yep, that's a good idea. [2:19:25] Jennifer Arsenault: And still leave the maintenance at the 83. How would we look with 30,000 off of the capital improvement? [2:19:34] Marsha Olson: We're back to 20. [2:19:36] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah, that's an even one. [2:19:38] Marsha Olson: Oh, back to 20 thou— or 20%, I'm sorry. 740,294. So, we take maintenance down by 20 to make it 60. Mhm. And that drops you to what about 17%? 16. [2:19:57] Bridget Sperl: 16. [2:20:00] Jennifer Arsenault: In progress. [2:20:02] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. We increase fees by 10? Ryan, is that what you're thinking? [2:20:06] Ryan Eisele: That might be hard. Um, I do think like we can probably—I think the dock association we probably should have some discussions with them if they can bear a little of the maintenance burden here. So, but five five—I think 10 is kind of hopeful. I think five might be— [2:20:30] Jennifer Arsenault: Five. Okay. [2:20:32] Ryan Eisele: Somewhere we can get—I think we can shift—I think if we reorganize correctly and um—you know one of the things I think we can look at is—I think if we reorganize we need to reorganize our planning and zoning fee structure and I think we can get 5 to 10,000 out of there. Um, and we have 22.5 budgeted for this year. I think we—we um need to be able to push—basically push those fees on to people who are doing planning and zoning. Not completely, but more than we are now. And and you see up here like our permitting fees are 11,200. Our planning and zoning fees are 22,500. Like we're subsidizing planning and zoning quite substantially and you know hopefully when this RFPs—when the RFP comes back on the planner we can kind of recalibrate how we're doing that there because that's a pretty significant expense for the city. [2:21:56] Jennifer Arsenault: Ryan—where can you tell me where you are? [2:21:59] Ryan Eisele: Planning and 100 down under—under planning and zoning here. [2:22:04] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay I see that. Um... [2:22:06] Ryan Eisele: And where were you basically doubling permits our price or the cost for us? We're—I mean, you know, if we're—if we've brought in 11.7 this year, maybe we'll bring in 20 by the end of the year. We're paying out 22.5 to—to plan—to the city planner and it doesn't look like that money is necessarily being recovered in a measurable way. Maybe it is. Is that... mhm. [2:22:46] Ryan Eisele: So I think—and that is something that I'd be okay with doing because that is people who are doing special projects generally. [2:22:56] Marsha Olson: That's right. And so I mean I—you know this has been over the past couple years and Justin, Marsha and I all kind of went through and squeezed out a lot of the stuff out here. And there's a couple things to squeeze but there ain't—what is there—there's juice—so much. I don't remember what the expression is. [2:23:20] Alan (Staff): Something about juice and squeeze. [2:23:22] Ryan Eisele: Juice isn't worth the squeeze. Something like that. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, it's ice and snow removal. We already, you can see we reduced that from 47 down to 34 and that was partly because I think we were paying Alan an unreasonably low number and we worked something there. And, you know, I don't have any issue with paying people fairly and giving them 3% increase here. So like this—a lot of this has been scrutinized and if people want to—want to work and and find other things that's great like... but it's just—it's—it's limited what we can squeeze in my view. [2:24:04] Marsha Olson: Yeah. We need fire, we need police. [2:24:08] Ryan Hankins: Where's all that stop sign ticket? [2:24:10] Bridget Sperl: Can I ask you a question? Um—so you know when you were just saying we're going to be under budget—the salaries. Are we please blot it? Oh I see. But we're also going to be under budget with the receipts here for permits, building permits. Does that affect anything? I mean, part of it is you're—I guess what I'm saying is you're under receipts on permits, right? So, does that affect— [2:24:42] Marsha Olson: That's mostly a pass-through, but I think what I'm saying here is you're pushing 22,500 to planning and zoning. And that's mostly—that right there is mostly a subsidy by the city to planning and zoning. I think it's money we're not—we should be recovering and we've tried to find ways to recover it. But I think basically working through a new contract over the next couple months is going to be the way to do that. [2:25:07] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. [2:25:08] Bridget Sperl: I see what you're saying though, Jennifer. We can't account for 90,000 in—in revenue from that. So we actually have to take 80,000 off of our revenue. [2:25:15] Marsha Olson: Well, that's how come we have— [2:25:16] Bridget Sperl: And you can't—like the 30,000 that are under on salaries and then we're under... [2:25:21] Marsha Olson: Oh, but it's not—but it's not a net 90 as I understand it because it's a—it's—Jack gets the majority of that money goes— [2:25:34] Bridget Sperl: So his isn't— [2:25:36] Marsha Olson: And—and one of the things that happens if you have one or two new houses in Birchwood that brings in fair amount of permit fees and I don't know of any that have started going up— [2:25:46] Alan (Staff): In 2020 the Pratt one down there 131— [2:25:52] Marsha Olson: You're probably going to get a bump there from when that house goes in from permit fees. But—but I would assume that that 90,000 is our money because we put it in as our budget. We wouldn't have accounted for Jack's money coming into our city because he takes it off before it gets here, right? [2:26:11] Marsha Olson: They send all the checks in and then— [2:26:13] Jennifer Arsenault: So the 90,000 would be that and then somewhere in there we have—I don't see anything for him in here. 60% of that— [2:26:20] Marsha Olson: He is down below underneath the fire—building inspections administration. [2:26:26] Jennifer Arsenault: Oh, okay. So that's 62. Okay. [2:26:30] Marsha Olson: 62. [2:26:32] Bridget Sperl: So that one's down 40,000 there. So it's sort of— [2:26:35] Marsha Olson: 45.5. [2:26:36] Bridget Sperl: Can you tell me where—what— [2:26:38] Marsha Olson: Under page two or page—building inspection administration? We had anticipated 62. You got 20. [2:26:48] Bridget Sperl: Okay. We've paid 20. [2:26:50] Jennifer Arsenault: Well, okay. So yeah, so this—why is the building inspection administration money that's going out higher than the money that we've taken in in permits? [2:27:06] Marsha Olson: Well, that makes sense if he gets 65%. Because he takes us 65% kind of whatever he submits. [2:27:14] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah. Deposit. 65, right? Y. [2:27:21] Bridget Sperl: So I think—you know there's a couple of things to squeeze. So, if we're—if we go down to 62 on maintenance, if we can squeeze 15 more in fees and re-engineering or whatever... I don't think that's unreasonable proposing, right? Um, then where—where does that get us, Marsha? [2:27:54] Marsha Olson: You wanted 62 on maintenance. Yep. And then what was the other change? [2:28:00] Bridget Sperl: Fees would increase generically by 15,000. [2:28:03] Marsha Olson: What—which fees? [2:28:05] Bridget Sperl: Doesn't matter? Uh, we'll come in—I can bring in the fee schedule and we'll take a look at it. [2:28:13] Marsha Olson: But where—where line—licenses and permits or building permits or what? [2:28:18] Bridget Sperl: I mean this—this is only general fund levy receipts are fees on here. But they are on—where are the fees on here? [2:28:28] Marsha Olson: The fees are in the um the special revenue projects revenue I had in it. Um but it's not included in the levy number. [2:28:38] Bridget Sperl: I mean that's one of the problems I think with the dock association is the dock association funds are limited to parks maintenance and we could change projects. [2:28:50] Marsha Olson: They're limited to special projects. We could change that—those funds—but and make it so that they just go into the general fund. But if we do that then I—I mean the other option I think is just to make sure that Jim is billing all of his parks work to the special revenue fund. [2:29:10] Bridget Sperl: Well, we don't—that—that fund is being used for improvements and park maintenance for—well no for in general. So like anything we add to the parks or do for the parks is coming out there—is budgeted here, right? [2:29:26] Marsha Olson: No, we don't. We don't. Um, so like if we get new nets or something like that, that's coming out of that special revenue fund. So that—they are doing run the business kind of stuff with their money. Yeah. [2:29:40] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. But I mean that—you could increase that and then shift some funding out of the general fund to the parks fund for example when Jim is doing maintenance. [2:29:50] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah, they've kind of been using the special revenue fund for the parks committee as like their budget to try and figure out what they can do each year based on that so that they are planning ahead for we need to do something at this easement. Here's how much we have. [2:30:08] Marsha Olson: Is there—can we get the parks committee then to start where you're talking about doing maintenance. Can—can we have the parks committee start to plan to do some of that so it comes out of that budget? [2:30:19] Bridget Sperl: Um, no. The special revenue fund is not for maintenance. [2:30:23] Marsha Olson: It is for maintenance. It says right in the document. [2:30:25] Bridget Sperl: It's for projects though, like when we um fix Elm easement and the... you know what I'm saying? It's not for lawnmowing or it's not for trimming the trees, that sort of thing. [2:30:36] Marsha Olson: I wonder if we should change it to make it a little more general if we're really going to focus on some maintenance in the city. [2:30:43] Bridget Sperl: Um, the dock association— I wouldn't—I wouldn't touch it for next year. Yeah. Okay. because we also have the $10,000 reserved for the parks project that we have going on now which is out of the 14,000 the majority of it. So—that's what happened before with that money and then it got used for things that it wasn't supposed to. [2:31:07] Jennifer Arsenault: So Marsha, do we need to pick a category? Can you just tell us what an additional 15,000 gets us in terms— [2:31:14] Bridget Sperl: You want it—take it—you want it—take it out of somewhere—doesn't matter. For net—right now—right now—I—I would—down to 14%. [2:31:31] Marsha Olson: Okay, that's under 15. That's not bad. That's under 15. [2:31:41] Bridget Sperl: I—I mean, we don't—we don't want to go in with too low a number for September 30th. Correct. [2:31:50] Jennifer Arsenault: No. No. You want to keep your— [2:31:52] Marsha Olson: Right. So, 14% for September 30th. [2:31:55] Jennifer Arsenault: I—I would almost leave it at the number before the 15 because—well, the reason I would is because if we end up finding 15% to remove, then great. If we don't, then we can't go more. Right. Um, so I—I don't want to set ourselves up for failure before we even start. [2:32:19] Bridget Sperl: Thank you. But I—I don't—I'd like it being under 20 for sure. Um because that would be a hard number for a lot of people. It—it's a scary big—it's kind of like charging 99 cents for something instead of a dollar. [2:32:38] Jennifer Arsenault: Agree. [2:32:39] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. And I—I'm—you know I just want you to understand where I'm coming from too. It's not like I came in with "we need to do that" but I just wanted to put down realistic numbers like you know if we wanted to do some of these projects this is what it would take. [2:32:57] Alan (Staff): Well nothing's going to get cheaper in the long run too. So I would like us to plan at least a little ahead would be awesome. Plus, the other thing that wasn't on that capital list, and I know that we are hoping for grants, but we got Halls Marsh, we've got the beaches, we've got Fisner. [2:33:23] Kathy Weier: Yep. um part of the Halls Marsh um—if you haven't had a chance to read through the Prebby Lake agreement that Rice Creek would be responsible for removing all the plop on there—which I will totally explain what all that is—but it's the sediment buildup from what is 197—50 years of overflow drainage that has happened. Yes. I mean—yes. So, as far as when they remove all of that sediment, which will have to happen as part of the agreement, um we will get a little bit of restoration in there because we can at the same time get all of those invasive species, etc. out of there, which will help us um go more towards that natural aspect of it. the grants that are available, a couple of them would allow us to do something fun like a boardwalk in there while we're taking out the invasive species or something like that. Um, so it has to have a—a fun enhancement while also taking into account that it's a habitat that you're restoring. [2:34:24] Bridget Sperl: No, my only point is—you might not get it. Exactly. We've got park property. Yeah. And park property—we have a lot—time is going to process. Yeah. Yeah. We can't charge funds for those. So, it's something that's a service. It's just harder. But yes, there are grants available if we creatively think about—much like your accessibility park equipment. Um, there are grants available for that, but not a normal park like you know a—a normal swing set, but if you do the dual swing set that allows for accessibility special ways to do it. [2:35:10] Ryan Hankins: Sorry. Um, just like what Marcus was saying last month about that grant for Hall. Yeah. Right. They'll reclaim redo the whole road if we put a bike path in. [2:35:21] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. So, yeah. No. Yeah. There are some grants out there. It's also a matter of making sure that we're going to be able to pay our portion of those grants and and keep up our reporting on them because if we don't, we owe all the money back, right? is implementing grants. [2:35:43] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah, there is some admin with involved in that too, right? There's a lot of work to do. Yeah. To do that. [2:35:55] Jennifer Arsenault: So, well, where we want to be for this 30th? [2:36:03] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. Well, I was thinking if we left uh 60,000 for the maintenance, which would be Jim, and then took out 20—uh knock down the capital projects um fund 20—that—that was that 16 that you had said. [2:36:26] Marsha Olson: Did you want 60 or 62,000 in there? [2:36:31] Bridget Sperl: Um numbers thrown out. I thought that we kept it—kept at 50. What did you want the maintenance at? 60 or 62? [2:36:43] Jennifer Arsenault: I didn't write it down. [2:36:46] Marsha Olson: Let's see. It was both. And then I heard 62 thrown out, so I popped there. [2:36:53] Bridget Sperl: Oh. Uh—well, where are we with 62? [2:36:58] Marsha Olson: With 62 and bringing the capital down to 20, we're at 17%. And then what about the 15,000 of fees that we're going to— [2:37:12] Bridget Sperl: The 15,000 would bring it to 14. [2:37:16] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. I'd still leave it at the 17 and I—I don't like it and I know we'll hear about it but until we know what we're where we can trim I think it's a good explanation. [2:37:34] Bridget Sperl: You know, I—I agree. We can explain all of it. It doesn't mean it's going to make sense to anyone, though. Is all they'll see as a number. [2:37:43] Alan (Staff): Yeah. [2:37:44] Ryan Eisele: I guess I'd really prefer to leave to—basically keep it down to 14 because and and basically force some cuts. [2:37:54] Marsha Olson: You think uh maybe taking How much was the difference? [2:38:03] Bridget Sperl: I think we're going to have a lot of upside—dollar-wise. I know— 15,000. [2:38:12] Marsha Olson: 15,000 difference between the 17 and the— [2:38:17] Jennifer Arsenault: What cuts are you forcing? I because I can't see a place where we can cut. [2:38:22] Ryan Eisele: I think we can cut the planner expenses significantly. Um I think we can also look at our fees some and increase our permitting fees some. [2:38:36] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. [2:38:38] Marsha Olson: So maybe we put those $15,000 worth of fees under escrow because—is that what you're thinking is that—like the plan by cutting the planner it would be escrowing it to the resident? [2:38:52] Ryan Eisele: That's what was supposed to work that way but it has not. We need to—I think basically we haven't been able to get—we have a planner—he's on retainer generally he doesn't bill his time out to residents. We've asked him several times to do that. And I think by moving to a planner on an hourly rate, he'll basically—he or she will basically bill either to the city or directly to the resident and then we'll recover those costs. Now, I think we're still going to end up with a few thousand in planner expenses just because we're going to want to talk to the person as a city. But I think the majority of the city planner expenses should be borne by people doing construction. I also think we have to be careful because of the way the contract works with Jack where we have a um a fee-based schedule. So if you do a project for $20,000, we basically confir—calculate the cost of the permit based on the valuation of the project. And we're required to do it that way. Our contract with Jack basically says Jack gets whatever it was we were talking about earlier, 65% plus the 75% additional plan review fee. I think we can augment our fees there. It may make it a little more complicated for staff. We've tried to do that before. Um there were some objections to doing it that way, but I do think that would probably push more of the planning and zoning budget onto the people who are actually doing the work and off the taxpayers. We probably always—we might save some office costs in this whole process too if we re-engineer it. [2:40:51] Jennifer Arsenault: I—I agree. Maybe you had some experience with the—it's not like you have little experience in the office with how some of that stuff works. [2:41:00] Bridget Sperl: Yeah, it was really interesting to see and you know people are doing a really good job but it's a—it's a buggy system that hasn't been fixed. The—the permitting software is—yeah that's a story for another topic. We were promised big things. I don't think it's happened that way. [2:41:20] Jennifer Arsenault: Well, I think there can be bigger things if we want to invest in it, but um—I asked to be put on the agenda for the 9th just to brief you guys what I found out. [2:41:31] Bridget Sperl: Okay. [2:41:32] Jennifer Arsenault: And Jen was there, so you don't need to be briefed. [2:41:34] Marsha Olson: And I'll be happy—I'll watch the video. [2:41:38] Jennifer Arsenault: Therese's already contacted them to fix the bugs that you found. [2:41:43] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. So, it's good. It's a process. [2:41:47] Jennifer Arsenault: Yeah. No, it's—it's a process, but I think we could do more with that if we want to keep it. and I—I can put together some documents that kind of revise some of the fees and things and we can visit that next month or something. Um it's—there's some complexity to it, but I think I've done most of it before and we'll just pull it together. One of the problems is we haven't been able to pass ordinances for a while. So, [2:42:15] Bridget Sperl: So are we going to go in for September 13th with 18% or 14%? That was 17—or 17. Sorry. Yikes. Sorry. [2:42:32] Alan (Staff): Hank was advocating for 14. Kathy was advocating for 17. [2:42:38] Bridget Sperl: I think that's what—right. Just split the difference. I could be talked into either really, but you want to split the different. I'm okay with that. [2:42:51] Marsha Olson: So 15.5. Well, I mean—yeah. All right. Because I think that's more reasonable. I don't know. Simply because you might not be able to get the 15,000. I would love to. It would be amazing. [2:43:10] Bridget Sperl: You know what I mean? Not that worried about it. But I mean, I think here's—here's what's going to happen is people are going to get their tax statements. They're going to come in and they're going to—pound on the table and—glare at us. Mhm. And then we'll come in and say, "Oh, hey, we found a way to reduce it three or 4%." And they're not going to memorize that. And then when somebody comes in running for mayor and says... they're going to say—they're going to give the numbers that were given out before we—we dropped them down. So, I'm just saying like, you know, it's not going to be pleasant no matter what at these numbers. I think even if you increase it 1% you're—you have people there will be... well 1% you probably you know people say whatever but—yes exactly—you get one person in for every percent. [2:43:58] Bridget Sperl: Here's—here's a—here's my proposal: if I—again I don't care if it's 14 or 17 that we start with or 15.5, but in the interim before that we have—for that Truth and Taxation meeting, right? Between November—well, that's what people come in—that's what they come in for, right? So, between now and then, we educate people. [2:44:26] Jennifer Arsenault: That's what we do. Put it out there in multiple forms. We can send out a letter as a city. [2:44:31] Kathy Weier: I have been hearing wonderful things about our Facebook and our newsletter posts. So, the communication with the city has been uh praised significantly. [2:44:42] Bridget Sperl: So that—the newsletter looks great and I think—yeah the newsletter this time was terrific. [2:44:48] Alan (Staff): What you were talking about—I think what you guys are saying—is that we need to just explain it to people. We really—you really have to explain that this isn't really—this is just stuff we're going to have to do and we're not—out buying people free lunches, just council members. [2:45:07] Jennifer Arsenault: Oh, what? You're getting a free lunch? [2:45:12] Alan (Staff): Hey, he has enough. [2:45:14] Jennifer Arsenault: Where do I sign for the little kids meal? [2:45:17] Bridget Sperl: Like I think one of the things that—one of the reasons we really got into trouble last year is we didn't really explain that these are the that—and the way it was put—I think Bridget said it—these are what you're asking for. These things cost this amount of money. We're not off spending money donating to some willy fire department or something. It's all going right into these things that people are asking for and to make this a livable community and these are the fire five things are and I think if we explain it that way it will at least lessen the impact. Plus, you know, the other thing if the city is running really smoothly and everything is, you know, in a perfect world, everything is—nobody's complaining and everything's mowed and we can start to use our brain power to figure out how we raise more money. You can—and one of the I think one of the things we're struggling with right now is some of the staffing issues we've had. We—Nobody can do anything right now. I can't do anything. You guys can't do some things. It's—I can't pass ordinances. Running in the hamster wheel, right? It's—and it's been that way unfortunately. I think nearly all year. [2:46:27] Marsha Olson: Yeah. We weren't set up when you guys came in necessarily that well. And—that's okay. We're going to end the year strong. I can feel it. [2:46:38] Bridget Sperl: And—and there's been a lot that's been accomplished. [2:46:41] Marsha Olson: You've done a lot, right? In hard—in a difficult situation, a difficult year. Let's think of it. If we were fully staffed and functioning, right? Well, think of the things we could do, the places we could go. [2:46:58] Bridget Sperl: The Dr. Seuss book. Yeah. [2:47:01] Jennifer Arsenault: One more thing that we hadn't put in there though is for an audit. Oh, right. And if you are truly thinking at that there'd be some point in the future where you'd want a bond for roads or or anything, we would get a much better bond rating if we were audited. We had that document. It's—was it 20,000 when you had looked it up? [2:47:28] Marsha Olson: It's 20. I mean, I—what—what the the number you gave, Marsha? You said 16 to 20. I think— [2:47:38] Alan (Staff): ChatGPT just told me 8 to 20. [2:47:41] Marsha Olson: That's—those numbers are—are in the ballpark. And I'm—I have a firm that I work with with a couple of my other ones that are audited yearly. And they are—I just went out for bid um last year in May Township and they came and at the lowest also. So—it's 16-ish or— [2:48:02] Bridget Sperl: Do you think ours would be lower-ish because we have such a low budget? [2:48:06] Marsha Olson: It just mean that they low. It's not that many line items to look at. [2:48:10] Bridget Sperl: Why don't we— Why don't we say no to an audit for next year, but start telling the community we're going to have to do it in '27, especially if we're planning on doing something that requires a bond, we'd need to. [2:48:26] Kathy Weier: Right. [2:48:27] Alan (Staff): It was recommended that we actually have—it should have had it done in January with us all coming on board. Oh, sure. Who recommended it? [2:48:38] Kathy Weier: Scott? Did you know? [2:48:42] Alan (Staff): I mean, I don't think anybody's wrong. I just think—just to protect us. I'm the biggest proponent of an audit of anybody. I just think—I agree. I think it protects the council. I just think there's hard choices right now. [2:48:58] Kathy Weier: I agree. So, right. [2:49:03] Bridget Sperl: So, if we can stabilize our expense base so that—you know—maintenance—a higher maintenance budget is always in there now, then we can increase for an audit in '27. Okay. [2:49:18] Kathy Weier: I think we had planned on—what was it—a third of the audit budget for three years so that it would be done. I don't remember if we did. [2:49:28] Marsha Olson: Is that what we had planned on, Ryan? I know we had budgeted for it and that left because of the police department, but... [2:49:36] Ryan Hankins: I think we paying $100,000 for the police department. That just seems absurd to me. [2:49:45] Jennifer Arsenault: Why? It's 24-hour service. There's six people in this area that are on 24 hours a day. We couldn't pay for one—one employee at that price. [2:50:00] Bridget Sperl: Ryan, I think—I don't want to get too far off topic here, but I think it's worth renegotiating because what we have right now is a JPA. JPA is a joint powers agreement with five different cities. It's like Dellwood, Birchwood, Willernie, Mahtomedi, Grant... and basically we pay proportional the population to contract jointly with the Washington County police—with the Washington County Sheriff. The problem with that is Birchwood has somewhat less commercial business than say Willernie or Mahtomedi. And so in some ways we're subsidizing those cities for their—and and I think Alan's even thinks that's a bad deal. And and I think when the JPA comes up for renewal, which I thought was this year, maybe next year... [2:51:00] Alan (Staff): Just came up in '22 I think. [2:51:04] Bridget Sperl: Okay. So when that comes up, I think we need to look into whether that's really a good deal for Birchwood. Right now I don't know that and I think we're still even then—you know—are we going to save 20%? Maybe in a super super good world, but realistically— [2:51:24] Ryan Hankins: You'd still want to keep the same service though, right? [2:51:28] Bridget Sperl: We'd want to keep the service, but realistically I think those communities—communities—are doing a little little better than we are so there's probably some room at some point to renegotiate a little bit there but I don't—I think people have looked around at Ramsey County Sheriff at White Bear police and I don't think that those places are any cheaper. It's just expensive. Mhm. It's 98,000 for you right now. Yeah, it's—it's expensive. So, it's—it's a big portion of our budget, you know, it is—it's... [2:52:16] Jennifer Arsenault: But so as a practical matter until that comes up, you know... [2:52:27] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. We—we—there's not a lot we can do right now. And believe me, I've screamed about it a little myself, but you know... [2:52:41] Ryan Hankins: So what happened to you guys can't happen to us this year—this coming year? What happened to— Would they increase the—the— I mean, whenever they show up and tell us what our bill is going to be, is going to be what it is. [2:52:58] Bridget Sperl: I think we could have made some noise there, but I don't know that we would have gotten anywhere with it. I think they would have said, "Okay, you can go shop around." I think we would have shopped around and gotten higher rates than they were offering. [2:53:14] Ryan Hankins: Yeah, it's 8% of our budget is—is police. Um, I don't know how often they're in the neighborhood. I do not think it is 24-hour at all. [2:53:25] Jennifer Arsenault: No, they're available 24 hours. They have the people in this area 24 hours a day. I'm saying— [2:53:32] Ryan Hankins: It's an opportunity we could choose to look at. [2:53:36] Ryan Eisele: If I call—regardless if Birchwood has a contract with the sheriff or not, if I called the sheriff about something, the sheriff would show up. And so what I feel like we are paying for is them to sit there and give stop sign tickets. And so I see it as us spending $100,000 to write some tickets for stop signs. And so I guess that's where I think it's expensive because I think that I'm already paying for the Washington County Sheriff because I'm paying the county and they're paying them—and so we're contracting with them for that service and so it's like we're kind of double paying a little bit. [2:54:14] Alan (Staff): Mike, well it's part of a separate agreement council. So I mean— [2:54:21] Bridget Sperl: But discussion, but when it comes up as an agreement that you have to ratify again, that's when you can talk about performance service and whether or not there's bang in the buck juice from the squeeze, that sort of thing. And those reports, I mean, they do some hard stuff. [2:54:40] Ryan Eisele: No, I'm not saying that they're not worth the money. I'm just saying it's a big portion of our budget. [2:54:45] Kathy Weier: And it would be nice if that were a slightly smaller portion of the budget. [2:54:50] Jennifer Arsenault: Just—it's a big number to—see for how little I see them. And you're right though, 911 will always get someone to show up. [2:54:59] Ryan Hankins: So that's what you pay for. [2:55:04] Kathy Weier: I think from our meeting last year when they showed up, uh over 75% of their calls are uh people who have fallen down or elderly individuals who—welfare check is our neighborhood. That's the most use. So, we don't have a lot of violence and/or crime, which is great, but that's—that's the majority of the—car break-ins, so lock your cars. [2:55:34] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. Um, but as far as the—you don't—you don't see the sirens and the everything as often when it is that kind of call. [2:55:45] Bridget Sperl: So, should we make a motion? Are you guys all ready for this or not? Did we decide on our percentage? [2:55:58] Marsha Olson: So, I took the 15,000 down to 7,500 is what I heard somebody say. [2:56:06] Bridget Sperl: What? 15,000? [2:56:07] Marsha Olson: Half of that. The fees. Um, and that brought the percentage to 15.3. [2:56:15] Bridget Sperl: That's—is that okay with everybody? [All Council]: Yep. [2:56:19] Alan (Staff): Okay. And we're just going to launch—like, but—we're going to launch an educational campaign. See how it goes. [2:56:32] Bridget Sperl: Yeah. And Bridget number—we can go door to door. Yeah. No, I'm fine with that. We can do all kinds of good communication because it's a good message. [2:56:45] Marsha Olson: It's like—you've asked for this. We're doing it. Costs money. People know that. [2:56:56] Bridget Sperl: Can you—after the meeting? Um could somebody set out send out just by email to the council the revised numbers? I'll try to help a little bit with—I'll make spreadsheets. Marsha, could you send out after the meeting the revised numbers, the proposed revised numbers, and I'll try to help. I make spreadsheets. I can make some pie charts. [2:57:19] Alan (Staff): You do pivot table. [2:57:21] Ryan Eisele: No, I—love pie charts. Um... [2:57:32] Bridget Sperl: I'll—I'll try to—I think let's get the numbers out to the whole council and just try to— Okay. So everybody kind of can get their own take on it and kind of communicate it to people and we can all—you have to—can't do open meeting but if you email the numbers out we can try to kind of work together and we should all have the same talking points. Mhm. [2:58:02] Alan (Staff): Well, this is what people like—exactly what you said, right? This is what people ask the same thing. We're not being extravagant. It looks like a big increase because our budget is so small. [2:58:19] Bridget Sperl: I'm happy to draft some talking points and have them sent out to everybody. But, but I mean, really, boil it down, Jen. All we're doing is saving a little bit. We're trying to save a little bit of money in trying to keep the city a little cleaner. Maintain the city. That's it. That's it. Right. We have very little wiggle room. [2:58:45] Jennifer Arsenault: Do we need a motion? It's not dramatic, right? It's necessary. [2:58:50] Alan (Staff): Um, I've got a proposed motion because I'm doing minutes kind of live fire. [2:58:54] Jennifer Arsenault: Oh, lovely. What do you got? Help us. We're spinning. [2:59:02] Alan (Staff): I confirmed the number with uh with um Marsha. And so what I've got teed up is: motion to approve the modifications to budget document as presented and adopt the same as the city's "preliminary proposed budget" set at $712,794.04 (15.3% increase) as required by state law and direct staff to communicate the same to Washington County. [2:59:34] Bridget Sperl: Thank you. Sounds beautiful. So moved. [2:59:41] Marsha Olson: So move—motion by where? Oh, before we make one that motion, Marsha, the 70,000 from Lake Links, which we will be totally reimbursed for, does that need to end? We and we need a line item for it. So, I don't know if that changes. [2:59:58] Marsha Olson: That's an in and out. It's a wash—pass-through. [3:00:03] Bridget Sperl: But it's a pass-through, but still it should be— [3:00:06] Marsha Olson: Does the fund come to us and then go out? [3:00:09] Alan (Staff): We pay and then they pay us. I think you—Alan needs to change the levy amount for that. [3:00:18] Bridget Sperl: I'm just saying it needs to be included. Add the line item. [3:00:22] Marsha Olson: No. I didn't hear a second. [3:00:26] Alan (Staff): No, Kathy. I—I motioned first. [3:00:30] Bridget Sperl: I got you on the motion, but second? [3:00:34] Kathy Weier: Second. [3:00:36] Bridget Sperl: Second. Who's a second? [3:00:38] Ryan Hankins: Second. There you go. [3:00:40] Marsha Olson: Thank you. Oh, sorry. All in favor? [All Council]: Aye. [3:00:46] Jennifer Arsenault: Opposed? Hearing none. Motion carries before we adjourn. Wait, we have another item. [3:00:54] Bridget Sperl: Oh, darn. You're right. One more thing. [3:11:57] Jennifer Arsenault: So, on the 9th, you will be gone. I will be at that wake. So, I will not be here on the 9th, which is why we had a meeting today. And Kathy is—I am the deputy mayor. Yes. So, that's why I'm suggesting we appoint Eisele or Bridget to be to run the meeting. We should just appoint somebody to run the meeting. [3:12:20] Ryan Hankins: I appoint Eisele. Wonderful. Nicely too. [3:12:28] Ryan Eisele: I'll get drunk with power. [3:12:30] Ryan Hankins: Can't wait to watch the video. It's going to be— That budget's going to be 30% increase when you come. [3:12:34] Jennifer Arsenault: We don't need a motion for that, right? [3:12:35] Alan (Staff): Not really. Okay. I—I mean, we can do a— Do you think we should do a motion for that, Alan? [3:12:39] Alan (Staff): Yeah. I just had: motion to appoint member Ryan Eisele as acting mayor for the September 9th city council meeting. [3:12:50] Bridget Sperl: I'll second. [3:12:51] Jennifer Arsenault: Motion. I'll—I'll move to appoint Eisele acting mayor for the purposes of the September 9th meeting. [3:12:55] Kathy Weier: I'll second it. [3:12:57] Jennifer Arsenault: Okay. Now before we adjourn... all in favor? [All Council]: Aye. [3:13:08] Jennifer Arsenault: Oppose? Hearing none. Motion passes before we adjourn. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We had two hot topics on this um agenda tonight. And you know what? This is the best council. I mean, this is the dream team. Seriously, you guys are awesome. I've seen a lot worse. You were doing so well until the last one. That's such a backhanded compliment. Okay, let me—let me try that again. You know, seriously, I—I like the fact that um when we—when we talked about civil discourse, right? We talked about civil discourse. You can—you can disagree and still walk out and be friends. Yeah. So, anyway, I appreciate that about all of you and I appreciate all the work that you do. So, thank you. [3:14:05] Bridget Sperl: And we appreciate you, Jennifer. [3:14:10] Jennifer Arsenault: Oh, thanks. All right. Um, can I get a motion to adjourn? [3:14:14] Ryan Hankins: So moved. [3:14:16] Bridget Sperl: Second. [3:14:18] Jennifer Arsenault: All in favor? [All Council]: Aye. [3:14:21] Jennifer Arsenault: We're adjourned. Thank you. [3:14:24] Bridget Sperl: And I need to sign some papers. Awesome. I'm serious.