All right, welcome everybody. We're going to call the meeting to order. Everyone please rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all any changes to the agenda tonight. Yep. Any motions? Motion to approve agenda as amended. Motion by Kate. Second. Second by Amanda. All in favor? I. Agenda is adopted. We have one presentation. tonight. So, Eugene Baltz, is there family members here from Oh, perfect. Okay, great. Well, Eugene Gan Baltz, according am I saying that right? Baltzes. Baltus. Baltus. Okay. According to Wikipedia is the oldest living known male in the United States of America. Gan was born in October 14th, 1914 and grew up in the village of New Market. His first years were spent in the living quarters in the living quarters of the hotel on Main Street. His parents operated the hotel, bar, and hardware store. After Jean's grandfather died, the family moved in with his grandmother who lived at 330 Main Street, and the house still stands today. Jean's military career began in November 1941. He spent the next 20 years in the Navy serving his country. He married Doris in 1960 until her death in 1988. After Jean's discharge from the Navy, he began working for the US Post Office for 18 years. He retired in 1979 and enjoyed playing golf, traveling, helping out at church in his retirement. Jean's eyes eyesight started to fail and was sent to the VA facility in Illinois. While at the facility, he met a nurse named Zeni, who became his wife. Gene and Zenny have lived near Chicago since their marriage. Gene attributes his long health and long and healthy life to never smoking, never drinking, and good jeans. His parents were 99 when they each passed away, and excuse me, five of his seven seven siblings died between ages of 93 and 96. Gan and his family will be celebrating their his outstanding longevity accomplishment with a party on October 20th. And I have a certificate to present to the family. Yeah, we're not feeling that well. Let me sit next to you guys. Can we just do this 110th invitation for 110th party? that we'll open it up to public comment. Is there anyone in the audience that appears to address the council under public comment tonight? Once, twice. All right, we'll close public comment. Get into consent. Aside from the change already mentioned, is there any other changes? Consent or items. I'll make a motion to adopt the consent agenda. Second. A motion by myself, second by Kate. All in favor? I. All right. We have a few things under general business. Tom, are you taking point? Y. So, business council being chief emergency management director. Craig was appointed as the interim chief. Tom, is your mic on? Is not. Thank you, council member. Um Craig was appointed as the interim chief with the resignation of uh Chief Juel uh with the intent that that would serve as a um trial period for his time in that position. and the council directed me to return after four or five months with my assessment and recommendation. I'm recommending that we make that appointment as the regular chief of police. Um so looking for a motion from councel. So moved. Second. Motion by myself, second by Kate. All in favor? I. That is it. That's all it took, right? [Applause] Please do normally say anything. You guys know me. I'm don't really say a lot. Um, but I did want to say thank you to Tom uh for supporting me. um for having the faith in me. Thank you to the council for always having my back and showing how much you appreciate the department and in me. Um thank you to all the officers and deputy back here. Uh great group of people. I am very proud and honored to be their chief and especially thank you to my family here. Um it's really hard being the family of a cop and they put up with a lot of stuff, a lot of missed um parties and family gettogethers and a lot of late nights and things like that. So um just wanted to thank them as well and we're going to go back and have some cupcakes. So thanks. All right. [Applause] [Music] All right. Next item. Next item is adopting ordinance 308 amending title 11 of the city code concerning detached accessory structures. council recall that this was an item that had been presented to the council for feedback some months ago specifically on the size of accessory structures. Um that feedback was sent back to the planning commission. Uh Jake is the staff member that's handling it, so he'll be giving the presentation. Yep. Thank you, Tom. Uh so a little background and history on the topic. past complaints and comments from residents in the city, uh staff have received over the years complaining that the city standards are too strict regarding allowable detach accessory structures, especially when it comes to size allowable. Uh the city's current standards are listed below. So for 1 acre and under, you can have a maximum uh square footage right now of 250 square ft. That goes up to 1,000 square feet with a approved conditional use permit. If your lot is over one acre, you can do a thousand square foot uh structure right now by right and go up to 1500 square foot with an approved conditional use permit. So staff looked at some surrounding city standards and um noticed a theme that a lot of them are a lot larger than what we currently allow at 250 ft. Um, Lansdale is starts out at 800 square feet. Bell Plane 900, Jordan 840. Savage, Shakape, Prager Lake, and New Prager are all 10,000 square feet. And Burnsville is a thousand if you don't have a attached garage. Um, looking at the average of all of those put together that are listed here, it it comes out to approximately 823 square feet. Um, if you're interested in kind of the average staff have been discussing possible amendments, as Tom mentioned, to the city zoning code now since February. These discussions have provided several recommendations um that I will show you here tonight. Uh, number one is the proposed building height definition will be amended as follows. Just to the vertical distance to be measured from the grade of the finished building line to the highest point of the roof. It's a simplification of the current definition which uh gets into the details on different types of roofs and different measurements. Number two, for properties one acre and under, the planning commission has recommended increasing the maximum square footage allowed to 1,000 square feet and removing language related to conditional use permits. For properties greater than 1 acre, that'd be 2,000 square feet. Again, removing language related to conditional use permits. Um they are increasing it. Uh the city's current standard now is just one detached accessory structure. The planning commission has recommended increasing that to no more than two. Um so if somebody did have a small garden shed, they'd be able to keep that while still creating a new structure as long as they don't exceed that 1,000 square foot maximum limit. Uh the maximum building height for detach accessory structures is increased to 20 ft as recommended by the planning commission. Uh currently it's 15 feet and the only caveat to that is it must not exceed the height of the principal structure no matter what. Uh no the planning commission did not recommend any access or driveway requirements and to be enacted for any accessory use structure no matter the size. Um they also recommended to treat ADUs accessory dwelling units the same as detached accessory buildings for size standards. Um, so whatever we allow for detached accessory structures would also be applied to accessory dwelling units. Staff are recommending the city council tonight to consider the amendments to the city's detached accessory structure ordinance um and definitions as presented. And I do have a copy of that ordinance amendment here if there are any questions. Thank you, council. Anyone have questions or comments or concerns? emotions. Well, you know, and I've said this from the very beginning. I mean, I think this is too large for the accessory buildings. Now, I'm all for ADUs and and allowing for additional housing options and things like that. So, I mean, I struggle with it. I said from the very beginning, I think it's way too big for multiple sheds. And and I think if we were able to parse it down further, I mean, how many lots do we have that are one acre and under? I mean, the majority within the city, but they're not one acre. They're, you know, 0.25 or so. I mean, I just I don't know how many of these you're going to fit on a on a lot with setbacks and different things like that anyway. So, maybe it's probably not going to be that big of an issue. But um that was the planning commission's kind of reasoning behind it is the natural setbacks would limit the properties to you know acceptable sizes to still meet setbacks. I'm with you Josh on that. I'm also wondering if we don't need um or require a separate driveway. What about um like for emergency vehicles or um so it wouldn't be a separate driveway. Um for ADUs we it's just one driveway per property, but for ADUs, accessory dwelling units, the city does require that they have an access for emergency vehicles and stuff like that. Um nobody would be living in the detached accessory structures. So that wouldn't necessarily be needed un Yeah, unless it was an ADU and in that case it would be required to have a an access. So can people rent out Okay. Yep. We don't have any requirements saying they can't. I don't know. It I mean it seems really big. I mean I don't I mean I support from the ADU side so I'm going to support it and go for it and then if there's issues we can tweak it but question planning commission was 50 on this and that means something to me I mean we asked them to look at this take a hard look at it and I tend to trust their their judgment on it supportive of it supportive of it I am as well um I think of things like I feel like we have a lot of snowmobiles and golf carts and things of that people might not want to look at every day. So, if we can put them in a shed, then you don't have to look at that and you can look at a shed. I don't know. I don't angry. I'm fine with it. Is anyone opposed to this or wants to I know some concerns have been raised. How do you I mean, what do you want to do with those? I mean, I trust our planning commission. Yeah, Josh. It's 3 to2 so I don't really care. It's not 3 to2. It is 3 to2 right now. So, it's four to one right now. Okay, fine. If I were Well, no, I I I think let it play out. I mean, I'd rather be less restrictive than more restrictive anyway, just generally. And I think we could do things better. So, I think I'm fine. Take a different bike. Any motions? Motion to adopt ordinance 308. Second. Motion by Amanda, second by Kate. All in favor? I. It's adopted. We have one more item for general business. So this item was moved down from consent agenda. Uh there are three actions that the council's being asked to approve that um are related to the water appropriation permit specifically to implementation of the response plans which are part of the appropriation permit. Uh the first item is the council's being asked to approve as to form a standard agreement form to provide between us and property owners so that we can get access for doing sampling as required under the permit. Uh the second item is to authorize Brun Intertech to perform the field test. This was the firm that Richard had talked about that we were working on to do the independent third-party testing. And then the third item is to approve an agreement as to form uh the access well measurement pump and depth adjustment and sampling. So there's two agreements. I'll let Rich talk about it. One is just getting access to do testing. The other one is there are certain wells that we may um specifically the high-risisk wells where we will need to get on site to do that work. Um, but in addition, we're going to need to pull their pumps and possibly do work on the pumps to lower them if they are within that turn out to be within that at risk range. So, those are the three items. I'll let Rich maybe talk about it at greater length. I think Tom covered it. These are all in service. I know there's some questions. I'd be happy to be um Did you get my email? Yep. I had forwarded that to Rich. So I can read off any jokes, Rich? [Laughter] So these questions So these questions came from the community. Um so how did the city choose the 20 wells that will be sampled? So the U water quality complaint response plan requires us to do baseline sampling at 20 wells and in the response plan has criteria for those wells. We turned that criteria and request over to our hydro geology consultant LRE because they have the expertise to know what the different um aquifers are that are in in the location. And so they sent us back a list of 53 wells. 20 of those would be primary or our preferred one and then there's alternates. So uh we got that list from LR did nothing to it. Sent it to the DNR and they approved it. Okay. Um do you know what the criteria was? It's all in the response plan, but it's geographically spaced out so around not all in one spot, but representative of clusters of housing around the city so that we're kind of capturing neighborhoods. So, it's kind of random different um strata within the aquifer to make sure we're capturing the different geological forms um that type of thing. Okay. And have you reached out to the owner? We have sent a questionnaire and a agreement um to all 53. We only need 20, but we want to have backup ones in hand in case we get to one to do a sample and we can't get to the hose bib or something's not right or whatever, we can we'll have an alternate to go to. So, they Yeah, they've all been contacted. Uh I have 13 of the 53 back at this point. It's been like 10 days, so we'll probably send out again a reminder. Um, but yeah, they've all been contacted. Okay. Um, how did the DNR determine the wells that are at risk of interference from future city pumping based on available data? So they they have a model that they built that predicts draw down at different distances from the point of withdrawal. In this case, that would be our city wells. And they modeled at our max expected pump rate for four weeks and predicted a draw down curve. And then they looked at wells in the area where they have data for from the Minnesota well index and looked to see okay would the draw down under the conditions I just described leave the water level less than 10 ft above that pump and if it was that was determined to be an at risk well and for the at risk wells we are required to try to verify that that pump is still at that elevation that it hasn't been lowered in the meantime since that record was prepared or some other thing has gone on. So that means we've contacted there were seven uh wells in the um response plan. We added one based on a complaint we got from a third party about one person that was out of water during the pump test. So we added that well just well we'll go measure that one and see what's going on. Um they have not responded yet. I have I think three or four of the eight questionnaires that we sent out to those wells determined at risk and we'll be following up with those. We had the first uh pump poll scheduled for tomorrow. That now has been delayed, but uh that'll be the program. If we can't find records showing that it was changed, we'll go with the homeowner's consent, which is that agreement you're approving, pull that pump, measure the water level, measure the well depth, measure the pump depth, and since we're there, uh, if it's not deep enough, we'll just have the driller stick another stick of pipe on because all the other work is the same. So rather than put it back and then come back again, we'll just drop the pump right there. Okay. Um, So that agreement is allows us to do that. Okay. Uh let's see. So in the document it states that the next pump test is scheduled for late 2024. That is a mistaken understanding on Bron's part. There will be increases in pumping. We have to go out and do another round of baseline sampling. when our pumping increases. We project sometime next year to a certain pumping level, but there are no more pump tests scheduled. Okay. Okay. Um why are we pulling in flushing five well pumps and sampling before and after the flush? What is the purpose? Uh until today, our thinking was we uh not only want to meet the minimum requirements in the response plan. We would like to try to figure out what might have happened that's causing the complaints that we got during the pump test. And one of our strategies was well, we're going to be pulling these pumps. We can grab a sample from the well before we pull the pump. Then we can pull the pump. And when it all gets put back, the driller has to flush that well. And that is basically taking all of the water that's not just in the pipes, but in the whole well all the way down to the rock a pumping that out. So you know you're getting fresh water out of the rock into the pipe. We are suspicious there may be a difference between what's the water that's been in the well for a while and the water that's coming out of the rock. and we would like to try to document that. So that was an attempt. We met with the DNR today to go through our thing and we are going to scrub that part of it. We won't be sampling during any pump pulse uh because we've figured out a different way we can cover that more economically. Okay. How many complaints about did we get? Something between 50 and 70. I don't remember the number off top of my head, but okay. something like that. And why aren't we sampling those wells? Uh we're not required to. Uh we intend to use data from the sampling that we're going to do. Um if there's a lot of similarity, that would tell us that it's probably a common phenomenon that might have led to the complaints. If there's variety, there are other things in bronze proposal that might allow us to do some follow-up testing to look for those things to might and and I should add any sampling or testing we would do outside. We would do that in conference with DNR because we want their buy in and you know, yeah, this makes sense. It's a it's a viable hypothesis. It's worth looking into or no, we've studied the heck out of that and that don't make sense and do something else. So would any additional testing we would do to try to find answers not just document baseline would be done with the DNR and that I think answers one of your other questions. There's some additional constituents we may choose to go and do one or two or three tests for uh but we don't intend to do that to all wells. We just had Brun included so that we had an idea what those additional tests might cost. Okay. And where's the funding coming from? Uh just like the um funding of the response plan, the time and staff time and everything is out of the water fund. The water fund. Okay, that's what I thought. And I'm sorry, I think I have maybe just a couple more or Gina, can I ask a quick question? Oh, of course. Um, what if a resident feels that their well is considered high risk by recent discussions and meetings that we've had according to diagrams that were shown before? What if a resident feels that they're high risk and they never received a letter for testing? So, um, it could be several things. It might be that the DNR did not feel there was that that that there was complete data in the well index. the DNR checked it and determined it was not at risk because there was more than 10 feet of water over the pump at that draw down level. That's one possibility. Another possibility might be that there wasn't enough data in the well index for the DNR to complete their analysis and they have asked us to try to find that data. That's another category of investigation we're doing and all of those folks have been contacted as well. Or it could be that it's a well that nobody knows about because it's not in the well index. And that's another category that we have contacted all of those parcel owners to see if or isn't a well on it. And then once we know that, we'd follow up to try and find information from the driller uh ideally about when the well was put in. So it might just be that it was either found to be okay or there wasn't enough data. In any case, we would be tracking back to but if they still question it, they could reach out to you and find out exactly where their well falls in what the DNR is saying. Correct. They should or they can go to the Minnesota Well Index, although they may not know what they're looking at. Um they should send an email to my private wellci.nm.com. That'd be the most sure way to make sure it doesn't get overlooked. and then we can see if we are already investigating. If we're already investigating it, they would have received a mailing by now. So, if they've received nothing, it's a good chance it's one of the wells that has complete information and the DNR felt it would be okay. Okay. All right. What is the plan change that the DNR suggested? There wasn't any. Okay. Um and then How will a data be used and um will the data be private? So the property location won't be identifiable. So I I will just assume you're talking about all data. We uh we have promised I think in our agreement so if we do sampling on different constituents in the water the results from that would be shared with the well owner. It would also be shared with the DNR but we have no plans to post individual. There might be some sort of aggregated or summary and conf you know after we confer with DNR what we found in general but um but I we have no intention of putting everybody here's your address and here's your results if there's concerns about that. Not sure why there would be, but um I don't see a need to put that up, but there might be some sort of a summary of findings or something like that. Ranges of of um of uh con concentrations or something like that, but it won't be as someone's name and address. No, no. The DNR is pretty concerned about making sure that we're um communicating with people, but they're also aware of the sensitivities. So we we plan to talk to them before we put anything out about that type of thing. Is there a law that protects some of this data that we can't I don't know and then I think one more. Um so in the agreement it looked like um the city would not be liable for any damage done to the property um during this process. But what if um the contractor clearly did damage to came in with a big rig and did damage to the yard? I mean so some sort of willful negligence kind of thing. Yeah. I'll let Andrea pick that one up because I would imagine that well the city will except for the owners. Okay. The reality is if you're going to get a rig in to pull a well, there are certain limits to that if it's completely covered with landscaping and everything else. So there's reasonable limits to it is if there's actual negligible damage where they're driving across and somebody wasn't looking where they're driving the truck and they drove it over, you know, drove it over something. But the reality is that even if they're having service their own well, normally you have to get the rig in and it is what it is. Um, so the idea is to basically make sure that if somebody's having that if somebody does something wrong like somebody's pulling a stick of pipe and goes whoops and runs it through somebody's window, right? That type of thing. Okay. There is an element to the um pump pulling agreement that um I can explain further if there's question about that. We do not intend to pay for example for replacement of drop pipes that are in bad condition when we're pulling the pump to lower the pump. That drop pipe we would pay for. We would be paying for the the labor because it's the same to pull that pump out, take each stick apart, put it all back together. All you're doing if you're replacing drop pipe is taking a new piece of pipe and putting it in place of an old piece or hanging a new pump on the end of it instead of so the labor is the same but the materials if they need to be replaced would be built by the well contractor to the property owner um because it's something that should have been done anyway. Um so I don't know if that confused anybody but um that is spelled out in the agreement and it could result in costs for some of these folks. My only concern would be that someone wouldn't be able to afford it. But well, they can decline to sign the agreement. Or they can refuse to. And if we can put it back together, we would. Um but if we can't and it's in bad shape and they can't pay, that's between them and the well contractor. Okay. Well, that's what I have. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions, thoughts, comments, concerns, motions? Motion all together. Motion by Josh. Second. Second by Amanda. All in favor? Under reports administration. Really? Staff is seeking council members availability for scheduling a special city council meeting on Friday, November 15th. due to canvasing of elections. Scott County is limited on um the days that they have to do this. There's a day off in there um of holiday, Veterans Day, and the ballots are pretty long and they just want to give themselves enough time. Um so I'm just asking council members if you would be available on November, Friday, November 15th to schedule a special city council meeting if needed. If we don't need it, if we can get it on the night before, I will cancel the special city council meeting. What time? Whatever time works for the majority. Works for me. I mean, I could do really early or late after early. We could do something in the morning. Sounds like Yeah, you said 7:30. 7:30. Okay, that's what we'll schedule it for and if needed, we can cancel it. So, on 15th. 15. So moved. Second. Motion by Kate. Second by Amanda. All in favor? I. Thank you. Is there anything else for administration? We don't have any public works here. Police engineering. What are you gonna say? Just a lot of candidates for interviewing. It sounds exhausting. I will take a candidate. Yes. Yeah. Uh community development. Um we are preparing for a big planning commission meeting at the end of the month. So that's good to um know staff this afternoon. Uh some of us attended the Scott County CDA's FastTrack challenge. um proud to announce that a Elco market um business took second place in the challenge. uh so row uh so river rentals. Um Luke Marshall uh started a company within the last um year that rents uh event uh for pedestrian uh events like gates um CV radio or radios walkie-talkies and things for community events like fire rescue days or um I think he's doing pretty well for startup and it's exciting. want some money and um business services like uh attorney services and advertising. Awesome. How many do you have any idea how many businesses competed? Um I don't know how many applied uh but three made it to the final interview round. A new Prague business took first place and then the alchemy market business took second. Nice. Is this the first time that an alco market business won? Uh, I think this is the first time that Elon Market Business won in my memory. Yeah, that's awesome. Um, I'll circle back to the departments that aren't here. Um, but CC, we meet next week, but I just want to put a plug in for the Halloween party. Um, it's October 26th from 10 to noon. Uh if there's any businesses that want to sponsor a door or otherwise kids can sign up, you can register early for $3 or it's $5 at the door. Is there advertising out yet for like businesses though to letters went out to everybody? I know, but as far as like on Facebook, I mean, do you have anything out there? I haven't seen anything. Maybe not for the businesses. I I think we just put a little note in the newsletter that if you're interested in sponsoring the door a door to contact me. Um, so if we can get a social media post out there's a lot of small business that wants to do it. Yeah, I went off of their list, their membership. I sent out 90 letter over 90 letters to um businesses and majority of the businesses I did get off of the chambers websites or the yeah website. Um before we do other committee reports, was there anything from public works, police or parks that needed to be passed along? You want me to do my parks one or do you want Brandon to go first? Yeah. Uh but as far as general reports, no just the items specifically listed on the agenda, right? Um other committee reports scale scales tomorrow. I think it's healthcare related. Okay. I think I think I saw there was a panel. Um shoot, let me look it up quick. add it up. Trends in healthcare. Trends in healthcare. Scott County trends in healthcare pan. Yep. So, um and y'all are getting invites to that. I was not at exact last week. Tom, you were is there anything more to um No, it was just more primarily more discussion on the legislative platform and trying to get it more refined um for purposes of the um upcoming meeting which I think will be November when they're asked the membership will be asked to approve it. Um I had sent out to council the the draft for for feedback. So, if you have it, please get it back to me ASAP so I can take common elements of that and give that feedback to the to that committee. Okay. Uh, anything for service delivering? Anything? No, we our meeting is later this month, but there's a decent chance we'll be cancelling it. Our item on the insurance consortium, the consultant wasn't ready for the meeting, so that may slide till December. Okay. I35. I didn't make it and I swear it might have been cancelled. I'll find out. I don't remember, Tom, unless you saw an email come out. I didn't make it this morning. It would have been today. Okay. Um All right. So, we got a couple things on parks to go back to that. I'm sorry. Oh, and community. Oh, yeah. Well, where do we want to start? Should we start in community development? It was cancelled. I thought I saw something. November November 14th is the next one. Phew. All right. All right. So, we're just kind of wrapping up the topic of cannabis zoning here. Um, so the last thing I need from um you guys is just to tell me whether or not you want to proceed with the planning commission's recommendation for to allow a conditional use permit for outdoor cultivation in the urban reserve district. Um staff decided upon this because one, we learned that we have to have it somewhere we can't prohibit the business. Um, and two, we I wanted we wanted it to be a CUP because um the Office of Cannabis Management has yet to come out with their performance standards and until they do, we want to make sure that we can place our own there. Um, so that's the reason it's not a permitted use. Um, yeah. So, planning commission voted 50 in favor of it and um, let me know what you think. Council, any disagreements? I got to give kudos to the planning commission. They they've done a good job on this topic in particular watching their meetings and having a good thoughtful discussion. It's been fun to watch. So, no fully supported. Yeah. You have what you need or did you Okay, perfect. All right. So, we got that parks. Jake will be giving a presentation on the utility roundup program concept. Uh so the purpose purpose of this discussion is the parks commission has been recently asked to discuss the funding of future parks facilities using non-traditional revenue sources and provide a recommendation to the city council. For the purposes of this this discussion, future park facilities are only new parks and all improvements within them. So it it's wholly new facilities. that doesn't include any existing parks. Why uh growth is coming? It's ine inevitable. The timing is debatable. Uh growth causes both needs and opportunities and the funding of the development of the future parks and facilities are not currently included in the capital outlay plan. Uh so that's always um just existing inventory. The city needs to have a plan on how growth of the parks and trail system will be funded in the future. Uh so staff identified the facilities likely to to be developed in the near and midterm future. Uh based on the 2040 parks plan, near-term is defined as within five years. Midterm is 6 to 15. Um then we'll get into parks that are long-term 15 and more years out based on staff's best guess estimate. Uh so the identified cost estimates for these facilities um as you can see here here on the comp plan the green ones are the long distance ones that are the furthest out um the yellow are um midterm and the red are the most likely parks to develop in the near future. When we put all the uh the estimates together it comes out to just over $16 million in total cost uh for the future park system. And this assumes that no land is needed for these parks and that's all obtained through park [Music] dedication. So how can we pay for this? Uh the three traditional sources of revenue for the city's park systems are the gambling fund which takes in a percentage of revenue from local gambling operations. Pull tabs. Uh park dedication. Of course, when developers come in, they have to give the city either 8% of the pre-development land value in cash or 8% of the net acreage in land for purposes of parks. And then the last one is obviously taxpayer dollars, property taxes, uh go to fund the the park system as well. So when we look at the the big pie here, um the traditional sources of revenue identified account for a little over $2 and a half million, which is 16.7% of that total system cost. So we need to find alternative funding sources for the future park system. Um these were all possibilities identified by the parks commission and staff at the June 12th parks commission meeting. Uh the commission parks commission was in general agreement that further research should be focused on three programs. One being utility build roundup program which we'll talk about tonight, a donation program and a community foundation approach as well were discussed at the August 14th parks commission meeting. Uh they narrowed it down further to recommend that the city council consider a utility bill roundup program for the purposes of funding future parks facilities. Basically, participants in a utility bill roundup program authorized the city to round up their monthly utility bills to the nearest dollar or possibly adding a fixed donation amount like $5 a month um that would go towards city parks. These roundup programs have been proven to be a stable source of revenue in other cities that have instituted their own programs. It would require some additional um initial startup costs and ongoing marketing as well as staff time to administer the program. The most a customer can contribute annually would be $11.88. If that's 99, round it up 12 months. And typically all these programs require is that a resident a resident fills out a form um that would go to our utility billing department and uh their bills would be adjusted accordingly. Jake, can I just stop you real quick? Yep. That's if we do the roundup, but let's say I wanted to do $5 extra. Could I do more than the 1188? Yeah. So, it it it depends on our um our future utility billing software. We've confirmed with them that they can do the roundup. Um we would have to confirm that they can do an additional donation amount as well, but it should be possible. So, in that case, yeah, they they could donate more. Uh some cities that we researched that have their own programs include Champlain, New Brighton, Hanoka, Proctor, and Rochester. Staff reached out to these cities to see what their average participation rate is in the program. We averaged up all of those to come to an average participation rate of about 25%. So if we assume that 25% of city of Elco New Market residents, which has about 1,500 residential accounts approximately participated, that'd be 375 accounts. And just using 50 cents as an average roundup each month, it would be estimated to generate approximately $2,250 per year in revenue. uh the program would generate enough revenue to cover approximately 50 hours of staff time uh administering the program as well. The the thing to keep in mind is if it takes if you value the staff time it also means that after 50 hours of staff time you're going backwards from a revenue standpoint if you want to include the staff cost. The reality is our staff are here Monday through Friday anyways. Um, so it's not an additional cost. So it depends on how you value it. So there's definitely some pros and cons to the program. Uh, it could be a pro proven source of stable revenue. It could also grow in the future as we see more development. It's also pretty easy to implement uh with our our utility billing software. Some cons are just ongoing costs administering the program. um the revenue that it would produce yearly isn't nearly enough to fund the future park system, but um as we mentioned earlier, that could grow in the future as well. So, working towards a future park facility funding, we're asking the city council to provide feedback tonight and direction to staff on the potential for the creation of utility bill roundup program, which proceeds would go to benefit future park facilities. Thank you. Well, council, what do we think? I think it's a great idea. Any way I mean 50 cents on a on your utility bill just to go towards parks to beautify our city and our community. Why not? Guess the only I don't even know if I call it a negative thing, but it just I don't know that we're going to really gain that much from doing it. Um, right. That said, it's creating something out of nothing. So, I'm going to support it. Just think about those that'll be like, "Well, I can do an extra $5, right?" Instead of rounding up. So, maybe we would get some people that would do that instead. I hope so. I think that'd be great. Like you said, it's more money than we started with, right? I agree with you, Joe. I mean, I think our water rates and and stuff are so high, so I don't know how many people will participate, but I mean, why not? It's optional. Josh, why do you hate this? I don't hate it. I love it. I just I want to I would love to expand it further. And so, like, not force, but highly highly highly encourage businesses in town to also contribute above and beyond just rounding up. So, maybe that's this program or the donation or or whatever the foundation type stuff. So, I think this would be a good way to get into it. And then, I mean, I love the creativity and the the thought coming out of the parks on this. So, I think it's great. So, As the attorney, I always like to be the bearer of bad news. Um, so you should let her talk first. It's something I think I I want to dig into a little bit. So, I today I learned that uh there was a an opinion by the state auditor that said the city cannot fundra. I want to see if this is going to conflict with that decision. They just say the city has no authority by statute or the constitution to fundra. So, but if it's a voluntary program, well, that that's why I want to I want to dig in a little bit and just make sure that that that works. But just want to give that caveat just because other state auditor finding and sometimes those are frustrating. I get it. So, that would just be a caveat. I will look into that just to make sure it's something that we can so I'm hearing council support subject to legal opinion and if legal opinion suggests that there needs to be a fix or something at the legislation to allow it then yeah. Okay. So you got got what you needed. All right. Um we will go to discussion by council and save the public hearings for last since we got a little bit of time. I have one thing, but before I go, does anyone else have anything? Okay. I'm having some remorse on the marijuana stuff on the specifically the ability to host events and be right next to someone's house or be right next to a residential area and that smoke. I mean, I can't liken it so much to alcohol because can't smell it. But I, you know, as much as I want everyone to be able to do whatever they want, gosh, if I have a house and I'm right next to a place that's having a party or I don't know. I don't know. What do you guys think about revisiting that? [Laughter] [Music] Is anyone else interested in having that discussion or should we just move on? I mean, is there more to the discussion than that? Well, I just I want to implement something. I I don't know what the right amount of feed is. I don't know how we actually do that. I could have gone back and looked up council minutes to see what was provided previously and I didn't do that. But you're talking about for events, right? Talking about specific for events. Yeah. Just have it x amount of feet away from a residential area or something. That was kind of what I had in mind. I think it's fair to bring it up in a workshop and you discuss it if it's not too much work. staff. So, we're at the point right now that based on feedback, the next time you would see it would be the final draft of the ordinance for your adoption. Currently, the ordinance is scheduled for uh hearing in October at the end of the month. Um, actually, it'll be two separate ordinances. So, the events category will actually fall into the administrative one. So, I haven't even started drafting that yet. The one at the end of the month is just strictly zoning. Oh, then then this would come directly back to you without going through the planning commission. Correct. So, um, maybe Brandon, you could give a quick summary of based on the previous direction, what that would look like, what type of restrictions are there with regards to the events, if any. Well, I think based on what I'm hearing that the best realistic solution would be x number of feet away from residential properties. I don't think we want to restrict it fully and I don't think we want to specify which place or places in town can only hold these events, right? So I think that to meet in the middle the I would bring back some options for X number of feet. I mean that works for me. I mean I'm going to push back hard on it just because I mean are we going to do this for cigars and and cigarettes and other things then too? I mean if if we're open to having that conversation sure I'm open to it but to specify it just to this I don't know if I would support it. Well my concern is what if someone has like a house party or bonfire? I mean houses are getting closer and closer. I mean, I just I don't know. I mean, I think houses I separate houses from events. I mean, events I think of, you know, x amount of people being there. I mean, maybe it should. I don't know. I just the one thing that just I haven't been able to shake since we left that meeting was specific to events. Give me an example of an event where this would be an issue. like I just can't think of anything other than I mean I don't know what kind of events would actually be held. Um so just a recent example it happened over in Shakapir Savage I think. I don't remember the name of it, but it was a marijuana like festival um if you will. I don't but that was out in the middle of the country. So, it's a different If it's an event that requires a permit of some kind like we do for music and things like that, I could wrap my head around that, you know, versus a whatever Jake's hosting a party and you know that kind of event. That's that's more what I'm thinking. something you would have to apply for. And it's important to distinguish the two because yeah, one you the actual temporary cannabis event that you will be voting on is applied for where like today you could smoke weed in your yard legally, right? So, I mean, I can't imagine a big event would be like right in the middle of a neighborhood, but you never know. And we can leave it to I mean, I think we wait and see what he brings back. and take a look at it. Sounds good to me. Everyone good with that? Yes. All right, we're going to recess for five minutes and start back up at seven. Going to resume the meeting. So before we open the public hearing, is there a staff report for it for any of them? Either one? Yes. Uh Rich will give a brief presentation uh related to the assessments and it may answer some questions that we have. Okay. The old market or old new market reconstruction project is the first first one up. I know that's classic Rich. That was quick. host has joined. We've let them know you're here. recording in progress. I'm getting there. Tell some jokes, Linda. alone. Share screen. Presentation's not even that good, but I'm sure it's great. So, Ela New Market assessment hearing for the 2024 neighborhood reconstruction project. I will move through much of this quickly. It's just an overview. Um, we'll talk about the uh mostly about the assessments, uh, the special benefit test, but uh, there's some other stuff in here, some map of the project area that you may recall uh, was unchanged from the beginning to the end of the project. Uh, West Lewis Street on the west, north to south, we've got St. Joseph running east west at the north end. Through the middle, St. Mary Street, two blocks on the south, Paul Street, one block two blocks of William Street between Paul Street and St. Joseph, and then one block of Church Street from St. Mary up to um St. Joseph. Scope of work, um we replaced and made bigger all of the water manes in the project area. We replaced the water services to the shut off. We place the shut offs 8 feet behind the curb so that they can be dug up in the future without undermining the curb in case a homeowner wants to replace from the shut off into their house at some point in the future. But uh that's all new under the streets. Uh we replaced and supplemented the catch basins and storm sewers. Uh I believe there will be a dramatic improvement in drainage during large storms. just be able to get that water off the street and away from the project area. The water's been rerouted now to the Todd Street pond that was designed for this eventual purpose. So, um there will be an overall improvement of water going out of the city because it'll now be treated through that pond before it went straight to a creek. We aligned the streets within the rights of way, which was not easy. They're very narrow. We regraded uh at least on paper based on the survey to improve drainage off of the yards uh to the extent we could. Uh we did quite a bit of subgrade correction. We added drain tile below the streets around catch basins in especially William Street, very wet area. So that drain tile will hopefully keep that groundwater at bay which will help strengthen the street and make it last longer. Uh we added curbon gutter. There was only curbon gutter on Church Street uh before the project. There is now curbon gutter on both sides throughout the project. And we also placed concrete driveway aprons uh behind the driveways to help um keep runoff in the street during a heavy storm and also to just make a little nicer driveway entrance. And then of course new aggregate base and asphalt paving throughout. So basically brand new roads, uh, brand new water, um, storm sewer, much improved, and a lot of that is brand new. Also, I mean, how long, what's the lifespan that you would expect on those roads? I would guess they'll be like other roads. 20, 25 years, we'll be looking at an overlay like we've just done on the other project. And maybe 35, 40 years, another replacement, reconstruction. Um just so you get a story of when this started, we introduced to you back in January of 2022. Um different events uh kind of milestones along the way. And then um we are still we have some minor items to do. Most notably the grass is not great everywhere and we are waiting for the contractor to address that. um just kind of stopped raining as soon as they planted the grass and rained every day before that. Um but they are required to water it. Um there were some difficulties with that and so we're withholding payment until we get that squared away and there's some minor work left to do that uh they'll be finishing up this fall. Um so everything all these dates and milestones leads us up to uh tonight which is of course the assessment hearing kind of the final um public forum for the project. Uh this is a table of project costs and funding from the uh improvement hearing. Basically see the estimated cost at that time was 2.2 million different funding sources. Uh, interestingly, we got very good bids on this project, uh, as well as the other project. I think that was largely due to a um, in this case, a motivated bidder. It was bid so that the work could start early in the year, which is often a problem for contractors. They like having a place to go as soon as they can go without having to find something for their crews to do for a month while other jobs get ready. So, that played to our favor. Uh, I think maybe a local contractor that wanted the job was was also in our favor. So, um, bids came in lower than expected, which was good news. Uh, that does not affect the assessments, and I'll explain why. So, this basically is a just a bullet points of the way we calculate assessments. If we're going to apply the city's special assessment policy, it's more or less the city pays 60%, the residents pay 40%. At the time we did the improvement hearing before the project was bid, we had estimated that the um typical owner would have assessments under this policy somewhere in the 12 over $12,000 range. Um we also though did a um so yeah, here's the range here. Residential parcels ranged under the policy from just under 12,000 to over almost 50,000. Average was about 20,000 and then there were some commercial industrial properties very small or very large and that hit bigger. But uh we also did a special benefit study and with the idea that we need to comply with the special benefit test for our assessments. Essentially, the city cannot, if challenged, assess more than the increase in property value due to the project. So, if a parcel is worth $100 before the project and you do the project and then it becomes worth $140, you can assess $40. But if it costs you $200, you can still only assess $40. Um, we had a professional valuation firm do a study. Uh, Charlie can attest they did a lot of work. We got a document about 3/4 of an inch thick comparing the increases in property values due to similar projects through multiple cities and neighborhoods looking for comparables, making adjustments. Um, and they came up with a range for a single family home between $8,000 and $8,500 for our project. They did not differentiate based on footage. It's basically the be the value to a house is about the same whether it's a big house, little house, big lot, small lot, no house, that type of thing. uh we uh recommended the council that we assess the higher end of that range because we are uh we had replaced all of the water services which was not included in their study and so we felt that would be a justified um reason to select the higher value. Uh basically the taxpayers pay the difference um between the the um special benefit evaluation and the assessment calculation plus the 60% that's not already uh being paid. So um for assessment collection and payment there's a due process we have to have uh several things. I've highlighted in green where we're at right now. So the improvement hearing was held back in August of 2023. um did the project design, bidding, construction. We're now at the assessment hearing and we have given mailed and published notice uh per as required by law and uh property owners who wish to speak tonight will be given that opportunity. Um they have a right to appeal the assessment to district court provided they notify you uh tonight either at the podium or in writing ahead of time. Um once the assessment role is adopted by the council, and we're asking for that tonight, uh the assessment role would get certified to Scott County where the assessments would begin getting collected with property taxes on an annual basis um for the next 15 years. That would start in 2025. Um the assessments can be prepaid. If they're prepaid, suppose you adopt the role tonight. If they're prepaid within 30 days, they'd be paid with no interest. There'd be no interest charged. If it's after that, then interest gets charged to the end of the following year. Um, so this is again, uh, it says next steps, but it's another sort of timeline just showing where we are. And interestingly, um I don't know if I should admit this or not. It feels like one of the few times in my career where a predicted schedule is met. The uh schedule provided at the improvement hearing did talk about October 2024 for so I didn't have to change this slide even. Who has the first question? Thank you, Rich. Before we open public, does anyone have any questions? Okay. And with that, we'll open the public hearing specific to the old new market reconstruction project. If anyone's interested in talking, please come up to the podium, state your name and address. Council, Mr. Mayor, I'm Charles Fis. I own two vacant lots between St. Mary's Street and St. chose a street along Church Street. Um, and also another lot or another house lot on 340 St. Mary Street. I'd like to have that right to appeal this aspect. So, I don't know. I do have a piece of paper here also. You have you have something like in writing to In writing? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, you can give it to me. Fine. Okay. So, who is runs point on the appeals? Is it you Tom? I'll take it. Okay. Then what happens with the process from here? is then he would have 30 days to bring uh special assessment appeal to district court. Okay. So you have to bring that to district court to formally appeal. You just had to notify us in writing tonight. So Okay. I did drop a copy off at city hall also this afternoon. Okay. Of the same thing. Perfect. So perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else care to speak on the the reconstruction project? Please state your name and address. Hi, my name is Martin Sar. I live on 230 William Street. Um I was gone last week one day and I noticed a mailboxes when they put him in. They got him coming almost right down the middle of the alley. Okay. On William Street between my house and Charlie's and see here. Yeah. And um some of actually you can see the tire tracks using my driveway as a point where they can't get through to 230 Williams. Yes. So I got pictures of it too here on my phone. Marty brought it to my attention before the meeting. So we'll So you're already familiar with the I showed the pictures to figure it out so that people Yeah. Because if they choose to come, say from the water tower, they're doing some work there or something, come down the hill, they can't get through the alley opening because two mailboxes were placed there and they got a hump. So, they go around them out on his driveway. So, we'll we'll figure out a solution to Okay. to prevent that. Thanks for letting us know. Thank you. Anyone else care to speak on the construction project? We're going to close it. All right, we got one more. So, Dave Anderson, 420 Paul Street. I'm concerned about the drainage. Our lot was not supposed to be touched at all. I talked to Rich about this. A catch basin was removed. So, I'm very skeptical about what's going to happen come fall or come spring when the snow comes and everything that our front yard will flood just like our backyard. I've talked to you about that, Tom. And then we brought up the thing about the curb being crooked coming down the hill that it's still an eyesore. I just got to bring it to everyone's attention. Sure. So, so you said a catch basin was removed, right? Yes. Any particular just to make sure that they were in the right of way. Okay. Instead of on private property. Um and I did my darnest to make sure that we maintain drainage and there's actually two new catch basins and more pipe going out. But things happen. I may have missed something. So, I will look at that with Dave to make sure I understand the concern and if we need to do something to make sure that water comes out, we'll figure it out. Okay. And you've you mentioned this, this has been an ongoing problem in your you say your front yard or your backyard? Our back our backyard, we we always got water, but since the farm has been built behind us, we now take all their water as well. Okay. So, our backyard floods for much of the spring. Yeah. There's a large drainage area behind their house. Nothing to do with this project, but I was aware of it when we designed the catch basins and tried to make sure we had enough capacity to keep that from bonding and and get it off. You can't design for every storm. No. But um is there any actions from a city standpoint we should be doing then? Other than to take a look at the concern and if if it's um if I don't have a good answer, then we'll have to figure out, you know, a solution. All right. I appreciate you bringing it up. Thank you. Any other comments on this one? All right, with that we'll close the public hearing and council. We have we have a resolution in front of us. Any uh discussion? Anything further we should be covering before someone makes a motion? Okay. I make a motion to adopt resolution 24-80. Motion by Josh. Second. Second by Amanda. All in favor? I. All right. We have one more public hearing tonight for the pavement rehabilitation project. Um, resolution 24-81. Rich, is that a I'm assuming you got something teed up for that. Indeed. Okay. What was your address again? Mine? Yeah. 420 Paul Street. 420 Paul Street. All right. Thank you. 2024 pavement rehabilitation. Um, could I just have a show of hands? Who's here uh specifically for this? Um, okay. Um, I don't know. What do you mean? Well, the there's I I'm trying to figure out whether I should spend a lot of time on the slides or move through it quickly. If there's only one or two, I can deal with questions more. Um but we'll we'll uh just march through it. So, um this is uh just for refreshment um a lot of repeat material from the improvement hearing uh in case people couldn't make that hearing or so just to understand why we did this project, what we did, that type of thing. Um, an important figure is kind of in the middle of the page. It says special assessments. Before we bid and constructed this, we had estimated the assessment per household would be for a typical household be 1,250 bucks. Um, so that's uh important to keep in mind. Uh, we'll talk about Elanoo Market streets. We'll talk about pavement management. um how asphalt streets work, what we actually did, and then uh I'm going to skip the future of the street, but that's a a simple uh we just covered that. It's reconstruction would be probably the next step in 10 or 15 years. So, Elan Market has about 25 miles of paved streets that are owned and maintained by the city. Uh we consider um we have local streets which are strictly uh tend to be lower traffic. They mostly provide access to people's driveways. Um the the neighborhood we just talked about, that's all local streets. Then we have minor collector streets, something like an Aaron Drive or Windows Curve where it's kind of a through street, but it does allow some driveway accesses. And then we have major collectors, things like France Avenue or 255th where we don't allow private access. Only city streets can collect to those. So, the mileages that make up our 25 miles are are those listed there. 16 local, 3.8 minor, 4.9 major collector. Um, it's not something that people think about much, but your streets are probably the highest value asset you have. If they were all new today, and this was a year ago, you'd be looking at something on the order of $30 million, which I believe would be more expensive than pretty much anything you have at this point. Um, and they're also subject to deterioration as in all assets are other than perhaps land. Um, but um, so it's a it's a big deal to take care of them. This is a graph that shows the ages of your streets in 2024. Um, you can see you've got and on the left it's how often it happens. So these are street segments, not necessarily mileage, but um, in 2024 you can see a big peak. We had 28 streets that were 21 years old. 28 uh street segments. Um and what this tells you is that a lot of your street mileage was built kind of in the same 10 year 9-year time frame. Uh which becomes a maintenance challenge because it also means they all need maintenance and eventually reconstruction in that same 8 to 10 year time frame. So pavement management has different components to it. There's maintenance which in you know removing the snow and ice, filling cracks, um restriping, filling potholes, uh and we assess the distresses. We go and look at the streets to determine, you know, where the problems are to try and keep them usable. And then we do maintenance or rehabilitation to slow the impacts of them aging. Rehabilitation is a step up from routine, you know, maintenance. It's done less frequently. It's a little more intense, but that would be more things like patching and the mill and overlay we just talked about. We're adding structural strength before the distresses lead to accelerated deterioration. Streets will degrade and degrade and degrade and then they kind of hit a tipping point where if you don't catch it soon enough, they'll drop off even quicker. We're trying to catch them before they hit that tipping point. by adding this strength uh through the mill and overlay process. Then of course reconstruction like we just talked about. You take it all out, do it over. Um in our pavement management system, we've broken the system up and I mentioned segments before. So a segment might not be a block from here to here. It might be a one part of Windrose Curve that was built with Windows Curve second edition. So it might end up in the middle of a block, but what we're trying to do is group or identify segments so that everything within that segment is the same width, the same pavement section, the same construction, and the same age. Um it doesn't make sense to start grouping a new street with an old street just because it's on the same route. Um so so we broke them up into those segments and then we uh applied a condition and we started this back in I think 2009. We rated them. So 100 is brand new top notchotch and then it goes down as the number of distresses the different types of distresses start to show up and increase the rating would go down. We tracked that all in the database. We discovered that there's pretty good correlation between the age of the street and its condition which allowed us to back off on the annual sort of ratings because it's labor intensive and expensive to go out and look at all those streets and that kind of detail. Uh and so we've simplified it. We're now more periodically, you know, every five or 10 years we might go out do a rating just to kind of catch up, but mostly relying on the age of the segment um to make uh rehabilitation decisions. Uh we do also Corey will go out and just kind of drive the streets and verify, yeah, this looks like it's due kind of just so we're not doing anything obviously dumb. But um that's kind of how we come up with the segments to do. Um so the 2024 pavement rehab was based on uh basically streets that are all roughly the same age. I think we had bypassed doing a project in 2022. So it's a bigger project which I think might have led to the bids I'll talk about. Um but still within that kind of that 20 to 22 24 year range where we seek to overlay it to prevent that more rapid deterioration that happens if you wait too long. So this is a cross-section. If you took a street and cut it and looked into it, you can see the curb and gutter on the left and right. Uh that's labeled. It says surmountable curb and gutter. uh the middle um where it says proposed centerline grade. All the streets generally have a high point in the middle and drainage drains out towards the curbon gutter from the middle. There's uh typically three to four inches of asphalt at the top. Then um some layer of aggregate base be a gravel that uh is underneath that. Anywhere from six to 12 inches thick depending on the road. And in some cases, uh, we have a two-ft layer of sand underneath that gravel because you have fairly weak, uh, cohesive soils here that are moisture susceptible. So that layer of sand, um, makes the street last longer. So that's what a street looks like if you just kind of chop it and look at it from the end. What we do in a mill and overlay project is we mill out a wedge at the edges um about six feet wide to create a lip next to the gutter so that we get a full inch and a half of new asphalt at the gutter line and then we overlay the whole thing with an inch and a half of asphalt. So basically, other than at the very edges, we're making the pavement an inch and a half thicker. We also did quite a bit of pedestrian ramp work. Um we are required to have a transition plan for upgrading ped ramps under the Americans with Disability Act. Our approach uh our plan basically is that we will upgrade those um ped ramps as needed either if there's a problem reported to us or if we have an opportunity based on adjacent work. And so an overlay is a is an activity that is a modification means we have to make those bed ramps improvements with a millin overlay. Um so uh we had planned on 26 ped ramp replacements. I think we did all of those. Uh if you walk the streets, I think you'd notice they're much nicer and uh look better, more comfortable, and meet um Americans with Disability Act requirements. And I would just point out this isn't just for disabled people. We have kids, we have seniors. Making it easy to get on on and off the street, up onto the sidewalk is important for all of us. special assessments. Um, again, on this project, we're assuming a unit basis, meaning each house pretty much gets the same under most circumstances. So, someone with a large lot uh would be assessed on a unit basis, the same as someone with a smaller lot. And that's basically the idea is the benefit to the property value is the same for a good street. Um, there are some exceptions. is if someone has a corner lot and the and the side the corner side is more than 150 ft, they would pay a premium under your special assessment policy and that was applied on this project. There weren't too many of those, but there were some. Um, so special assessments are defined by state law, also by the city's special assessment policy. Rehabilitation of roads is accessible. Your policy requires a 6040 split. City pays 60%, property owners pay 40%. Uh I mentioned the unit-based uh large parcels including city-owned. All that footage is converted to units based on a typical lot of 85 ft. All those units are included in the calculation. So basically we take the total cost that's accessible say it's a million bucks and we divide it by that total number of units regardless of whether those units will get assessed they're included in that computation of the assessment rate and that rate is applied. So the city doesn't assess itself, but its property is included in the computation for all assessments. Basically meaning that uh someone that's getting assessed on this project is not paying more because of the city's uh land. They're not paying to cover the city. Um and then the good news is we got very favorable bids and the final assessments instead of being 1,250 are being recommended to be adopted at 96381 per typical homeowner. Um so that's all I have for you. Um I was just some comments on the bids. it. Um, we were fortunate in getting very good bids. And the reason we were told by for that by the contractor was because in the paving business, they're normally having to wait for pipe work and grading and stuff to get done before they can come in and work. On a job like this, they can put their crews to work as soon as conditions are fit in the spring, and they like that. So they they bid these very um competitively. This is also a good size job because we put kind of two projects together in one and that is just more meat in the sandwich. There's more to do when they get here and they can uh bid a little cheaper. So we think we benefited from that. We were expecting higher bids just based on the inflation patterns from the past couple years and that turned out not to affect us so much. Um, but those good bids are reflected in the assessment reduction. That's all I have for you. Thank you, Rich. Council, was the first question for Reg. Or are we good to open the public hearing? Okay. All right. We're going to open the public hearing for the 2024 pavement rehabilitation project. Does anyone care to speak on it? Please state your name and address when you Richard Peard, 26730 Oakidge Way. Um, I just wanted to get a better understanding of how the assessments are arrived at. Okay. Is it based on home value or property value or or frontage? It's based on We did the Can you cover the study that was done or not? Actually, that was not that didn't apply to this. There may be some overlap, but no, not for this project. This was just based on the city's special assessment policy where we take the we take the total cost plus whatever overhead is allowed under law, multiply that by 40%. We take that 40% and we divide it by the total number of units. Essentially, the total number of houses that are being affected. That determines the assessment rate. a large parcel might get multiples of that. So, they'd pay more like the golf course or something like that. Uh or someone that's got a corner lot might get one plus 10% because of that long corner. But most people, it's basically 40% of the cost divided by the number of homes. Regardless of frontage, regardless of area, it's equal benefit per per house. That that's the basis of the policy. Okay. I only asked that because I happen to know a neighbor who h has about the same size property as ours and his his well I guess he should be here to to talk about that but if I'm not mistaken it was like 1,700 and ours was 900 almost a thousand. I thought that that doesn't seem right. It could be that he's on a corner. It could be that I made an error. That's rare but it could happen. Um um yeah, I just don't know enough about what you're telling me. Yeah, I don't have I don't have that would that would seem like a or maybe he owns two parcels. I I don't know. Yeah, it it almost sounds like two parcels rather than What's your address? What's your address again? 26730. Yeah, 2-6730. Ours is under $1,000, which I guess is good to me. Yeah. Um, Rich, would you mind following up on this? Sure. Later as as needed. I mean, maybe it's your neighbor that should be contacting us, but Yeah. Yeah. But maybe if you can put him in touch with Rich, we can get some answers. Okay. I can probably look it up when we're done here. Um, it looks like it's corner lock. Is it Brendan? Is it the wheelchairs? Brendan Wilchshire. Yeah. his on the assessment ro his on the assessment role the neighbor to the south his assessment is 96381 which is the same. Okay. The preliminary numbers that had been sent out in the spring were over a thousand unless maybe he was thinking that uh they just came in under bids. 1250 was the original estimate. 1250 was the original estimate. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Does anyone else care to speak tonight? Done once, twice. All right, we'll close the public hearing. Council, do you anything you want to discuss? Or if not, I'll entertain a motion. Uh before I make a motion, I would just say it's a heck of a lot cheaper to maintain these roads than it is to replace them uh based on the reconstruction costs. So, uh especially in this case. Um, well, significant. I I want to be clear, we will eventually have to replace these, but if we can push that out 10 or 15 years, I think that's credibly valuable and a good move. Yeah. Uh, motion to adopt resolution 24-81. Motion by Josh, second, second by Kate. All in favor? I I resolution is adopted. That concludes our agenda. Um, we've already covered discussion by council. So, any motions to adjurnn? Motion to adjurnn. Motion by Kate, second by Gina. All in favor? Meeting is adjourned. Thank you everybody for attending.