New Prague City Council - September 2nd, 2025

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opposition. Okay. Passes. Next on the uh agenda is item number four. Uh the public is invited to be uh heard on matters not on the agenda. Um again we if you want to speak at this time uh come forward name and address and state your comments. Again the council is not going to interact with you uh on this item. So, the only person on the list right now is Brian Pollson. Uh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, only I wanted to point it out from a previous meeting, uh, the first, uh, budget meeting, um, the CPI was talked about, um, and then it was, uh, doubled, but, the CPI is actually year-over-year. Um, so you wouldn't take like the July CPI and double it, um, for like that 4%. And just kind of looking at the last year uh CPI monthly numbers, um one of them hits three exactly, otherwise they're all uh all below three in the in the two figures, but I just wanted to make sure. It seemed like uh the CPI was being doubled. Um but it's a year-over-year figure. Uh that's all. Okay. Thank you. There's no other names on the list, but I will give anyone else an opportunity to speak at this time. Okay. If not, we'll move on to the next item. Uh, public hearings. We have none scheduled at this date. Next, we have the city engineering projects update. Uh, Matt, do you want to add anything? Oh, okay. Okay. Hi, Chuck. Yeah, we haven't met yet. So, Chris Kudson with SH. I'm your city engineer. I just took the summer off apparently from come to council meetings, so you haven't seen me for a little while. So, um I do have a project update uh in your in your packet today regarding projects that are currently underway with um 2024 project uh we're hoping to get to close up pretty soon. Uh 2025 project has one more day of paving tomorrow and then uh we'll be getting into to a regular wrapup. Um other items on here I'll kind of add uh regarding the lead service line replacements project. Um I do have an email from PFA saying they have all the information they need. So that project should be moving ahead uh with from the funding side of things. Um and then later in your in your uh council agenda, I do have a developer project proposal that's for providing um engineering services related to uh developer projects, reviews, uh construction of and um other miscellaneous tasks. So, um, wanted to come in tonight since I haven't been here for a little while and, uh, we'll be doing the, uh, assessment information assessments for the 2025 project or the next couple, uh, council meetings with the assessment hearing, um, being called for hopefully in at next next meeting and then being held at the second meeting in in October. So, I guess I'll see if there are any questions for me on anything, I guess, or anything on this uh, on this uh, memo, the project updates. No, I think Matt was keeping us pretty uh advised of what was going on and and I guess we really appreciate having it done ahead of schedule actually. I had it before uh Dojinki. That's always nice not have to worry about that uh those areas during Dojinki. So, I appreciate that. So, yeah. No, it's it's worked out great. They're six weeks ahead of schedule on on the street project for this year. Okay. Uh I I'm not planning to stick around for the whole meeting here. I guess um I don't know if you want me to talk about the developer proposal here, Ken, or if I should just be open to questions or uh we should be able to get the through the rest of the things pretty quick. So, if you could just stick around with Oh, absolutely. Yes. Okay. Sure. Thank you. Any other questions or anything on any of the engineering projects? Okay. Uh seven, there's no ordinance for introduction. Eight, there's no ordinance for adoption. Nine, resolution. The first one is deals with Josh, I think you're going to take it. This deals with uh a resolution regarding the uh initial um budget uh percentage that we discussed in our last budget process meeting. Correct. Yeah. So over the first two budget meetings, the obviously the council kind of talked preliminary and coming out of the last budget meeting, the council asked that um I bring forward a levy um that would set our preliminary levy uh for 2020 uh 2025 collect 2026 at 5,685,800. And this is a seven would be a 7% increase in um the levy over the 2024 approved that we're collecting on this year. um obviously that this is just the beginning and budget work will continue as we uh look to make the most efficient use of tax dollars going into December. So um I guess I would at that I would recommend resolution 2590201 um setting the proposed property tax levy at 5,685,800 and scheduling the public hearing um to set the 2025 final tax levy for December 1st. Okay. So this is this 7% or this number is is what goes to the department of revenue. Correct. Correct. We we are required to report a number to the department of revenue every September. So that that way they can send out preliminary tax statements to everyone by November prior to our public hearing. Right. So, this is the uh top level that we could this would be the highest that we would be able to and I you know I just want people to be aware that this is always set a little higher than it normally comes in just to kind of give us room uh and time to really dissect the budget. So, uh, I just want people be aware that it might show up on your statement at this percentage, but, uh, um, I'm pretty sure that that, uh, we'll be a little, you know, lower than that, but we we just wanted to set the high limit, uh, just to, uh, get that ball rolling. So, it al it also gives us room in case something should happen in the last couple months of the year that are unforeseen, but Right. And does this information also go to to the counties? Correct. Yeah. So, so what happens is we send it to the county, the county then reports it to the state. It's kind of a chain of command that comes up. Okay. Okay. Anyone have any questions uh regarding the resolution? I don't. So I will make a move to approve resolution 2590201 adopting the 2025 preliminary PRA property tax levy for taxes payable in 2026. Yes. Second. Okay. I got a motion, a second. Do we have any other comments or questions? If not, all in favor say I. I. Any opposite position? Okay. Passes 4. Next. Ken, are you taking this one? No. Yes. I will have a short power this up here. All right. So, from uh the last planning commission meeting last week, uh we had request for V8 2025 for a inground swimming pool setback variance at 11:09 Park Lane Southeast. Applicants are Ben and Uh the applicants are requesting this variance for the uh reduction in uh the typical ordinance set back of 10 foot from any uh cross footing or building. Um in the case of this request actually started building uh the ingground pool with a issued building permit and upon their visual uh look at that felt that um it was going to be too small. Um one thing to note is that specifically their property above to the north. There's a delineated wetland um in that portion of Settler's Park that caused a large uh wetland buffer um in the form of an easement on the very north end of their property. That really restricted the pool to be pushed up much closer to their house than a typical backyard uh would see. Um regarding the 10-ft setback, it just been in the code for a long time. We don't have any specific background on why it was set at 10 ft other than that's just how it was written. Uh regarding the international uh code council building code that we follow in the state building code, there's not a minimum setback uh from ground pools to buildings or frost footings. uh building official Scott recommended keeping that minimum distance of 4 feet which is kind of the typical area that you don't put u any excavated areas uh within uh distance of a foundation that was recommendation from building official some cities do allow minimum 4 foot just by zoning ordinance. So um one thing the planning commission did talk about um actually in the past month and a half was looking at reducing that back to um a six foot um set back. So, um after the review, the planning commission did ultimately recommend uh allowing it to be up to a 4 foot setback. That gives them a little wiggle room uh with their uh final design. Uh but it's actually on the plan in the packet here, and we'll show you in a minute being here's just a picture of their property there. wet land just kind of looks like scrubby uh vegetation, but it is actually wetland. Here's the actual drawing. Inner um less dark outline is the pool they were approved for. And then actually for this drawing it being up to about 8 ft from the corner of their home, then about six feet from the corner of their deck. But again, they're applying for up to 4 foot. Again, um one thing we talked commission is that their pool contractor uh was not able to put a formal drawing together for the request. So this may be off by a couple feet. We're recommending and the planning commission recommended up to 4 foot set back at minimum versus and you can see that 30 foot buffer from that land in the for property. So they didn't have that. they have plenty of room to to push that pool further away from the home. But um they did look at reding the wetland and we do allow a wet land quality assessment to be re reviewed and uh they did not want to go through the cost to do that. And there's also the thought and possibility that that wetland does not move and does not give them any additional step back. This is really the best way for them to accomplish a larger pool within the area and not have to go through that expense cost of reading. Uh just another wetland uh air photo and overlay view there just to give you perspective. Again, they're very far away from the north property line. It just puts it closer to the home. We'll just move on to a couple of photos. side of Park Lane and then from the back there. So again, they're out of that rear 30 foot set back to the wetland really just kind of bunches everything up there. Uh so again staff recommendation and commission recommend approval of the variance to be reduced from 10 foot setback to 4T that would be based on the findings listed in resolution. So that I'll leave up this drawing or a few drawings on this page stand for questions. We also have the applicant here questions. Quick question for you. When I put my hot tub on my deck, the underwriter made us put a lid on it with a lock. Yes. Would something like that be in on that? So we got to worry about that next. So we actually do require in ground pools to have a full perimeter uh fence around them and that is one of the requirements that they're not looking to vary from. So they will have a enclosure around that. So hot tubs we do allow anm approved hot tub cover just as a comparison. Right. Ben I assume you're going to have one of those covers that automatically roll over and you once it's closed you can't get to the water. Can't do that on a free form. Okay. You have to have something else that you can strap down over. Okay. You will have a cover that is secure. Okay. Thank you. Well, I'll make the motion if you'd like. Unless you got one. I'll make the resolution um 25-09-02-02 um pool setback. Second. Okay. There's no other comments. All in favor say I. I. Any opposition? Okay. Passes 4 Z. Thank you. Next general business. Chris, it's up to you now. Now we're back at uh the agreement for developmental fee. Thank you very much. Yeah, you're in kid and you got through this Jenna pretty fast. Uh so so in your packet today I do have a uh proposal to provide engineering services related to developer projects. So uh this is a service that has provided in the past um this last year or two. I think I've most of the reviews been pretty quick so I don't bill the time but uh uh moving forward with uh some work especially in first street southeast there's a um a street being constructed. It's going to require construction observation and and some uh work on behalf of the city that's going to be performed by a CH. Uh that's going to be certainly more time involved and some of these developer reviews have definitely got a little more extensive recently um uh taking hours in some of these cases going back and forth. So what I do have in front of you is a proposal for a not to exceed fee of $40,000. Um this is going to be uh um used on developer commercial residential type developments and that fee then gets um pushed back to the developer as per their their cost. So it's uh the city's kind of going to we'll build the city, the city will build the developer. Um this be moving forward for projects for the next year or two most likely. And uh the $40,000 is just to make sure I'm not coming back if something larger comes back. uh you know if we spend half our budget just doing one project um like the street construction currently underway or about about to start I should say um that um not coming back every six months to get additional budget added to it. So the $40,000 I wouldn't expect to go through for a few years but um that just just kind of the starting fee. So the fee is $40,000 and the contract is continuous until that 40,000 is used up. Correct. So, if it's a year, two year, three years. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We'd probably hit a point where four or five years down the line, I might want to close that project out and then start a new contract. Um, but just, uh, some of these developer projects, if they do involve construction, especially, um, could certainly use some of that fee faster than others. Okay. And I think you expected Chris to use roughly half of that 40 just for First Street Southeast construction observation. Yeah. So, full full-time construction observation could be $4 to $5,000 per week. And depending on how fast the developer works, um the the construction goes. Yeah, we could certainly go through half of that budget just uh just during the first month here with that construction going on. Okay. Is the fee schedule the same for this type of work than work directly with the city? Yes. Yeah. So the uh the rates that we'd use are based on a rate table that um has used with the city of New Prague and and most of our other communities in the area as well. So the same rate that I would use for this developer project. be the same rate that would use for working any other city city contract. Any other questions? So, is it until that is used up? So, seems a little vague. Um, yeah. I mean, we can certainly uh when when when I when I uh work off of this project, I will separate into tasks so you can track where the money is going to for each project and that'll help out for u for billing that back to those developers. Um it could certainly be less. It's just an hourly not to exceed fee is a lot of our contracts. Some of our contracts are I don't want to just be hourly open-ended. Um and uh the $40,000 just gives us a point to say that we need to come back to council and get that re approved or or review it again. Um it's just an hourly not to exceed. Sometimes we do work on a lump sum basis. I don't know how much time we'll spend on this kind of thing. So we certainly couldn't do lump sum for this one, but uh um it's essentially just an hourly. Right. Right. I I don't have any um problem with the work or with you or with your firm or anything like that. I'm just trying to understand the structure seems a little uh so this would preclude us from using anyone else while this contract is in place. Is that correct? Yeah, I would say it would be a contract for SH as a city engineer to do our developer um reviews as on behalf of the city for developer related civil plan review and and obviously construction observation for public infrastructure on a private development. Right. So this basically exclusivity. Yes. That goes further than our annual agreement. Don't we do it annually approve them or? No, it's not like our regular city engineer. I mean, so certainly we we talk every year we kind of appoint them as our city engineer every every January kind of reup that. um was it three years ago, four years ago now that we kind of went through the whole process of going out and I think we interviewed a few firms and we came back to so um I think this is it sounds like as I understand this much more of a private development stuff because we certainly have costs as a city when a private developer because we don't have a city engineer in house. No, I understand all that. I my my only mind uh game here is that they're not dovetailed together that let's say two councils from now you decide to go with someone else but this agreement is still in force and you'd have one provider and then you'd have this doing the other one if that if you're okay with that I guess that's fine I guess yeah from our work from as staff like we we works very well for us and obviously no I'm not saying the quality of the person. I'm just saying that the that they're not they're not approved together at the same time that the contracts expire at different times. That's all I'm saying. Oh, the expiration expires. You could potentially end up with a different engineer for a city project and then have this. Yeah. And if you're okay with that, I don't know if there's if that's important or not, which we can already have in place with all our street projects. Those are roughly three to four year projects. So, for some reason, if we left this year, Chris would still be the one to finish out those projects until they're completed. Basis this is under and I would say as staff we already kind of do that a little bit because Bolton Mink handles most of our wastewater stuff if I'm correct and so we already kind of work with two firms as it is right now. Okay. Well, thanks. That's good. That that's what I was looking for. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Guess I'll look for a motion to approve this resolution or this uh Yeah, you need that. So move. Okay. And I will second that. I got a motion by Rick Ser, second by Chuck Nikolai for this agreement with SH for private development reviews. If there's any other comments, if not, all in favor say I. I. Any opposition? Okay. Next on the agenda is a city Chris. City administrator review summary. And uh I just want to uh basically state that um we did review uh as we are have done in the past our annual review of our city administrator who reports to the city council um and Josh Tesla uh on the we had 10 different topics that we kind of evaluate them on from supervision, leadership, ex execution of policy, community relations, administrative duties, economic development, intergovernment relations, city council relations, planning and financial management budget. Um all council member uh this year I did not get involved in the annual review because I felt um being that I didn't start till June 16th, I really did not work with Josh through the whole year. Uh so the other four uh council members did review Josh. He did receive an average of 3.475. 475 which is above meets council expectation which is the reason why we did renew his contract for another year and uh we look forward to continuing his development and uh the development of the city. So I want to thank Josh for his uh work with the city and uh we're looking forward to a a very good year coming ahead. So thank you Josh. Anyone else have any other comments? Okay, now we're at the fun part. Miscellaneous. Rick, nothing. Okay, Bruce. Nothing. Maggie? No, sir. Yeah, I don't have anything either. Josh, is there anything you would like to bring up? Uh, I guess just kind of an an unknown date at this point. I know I'd kind of talked to the mayor about it already. Um the numbers, deep dive numbers for all the data for the comp study are back and they were we had a meeting today and kind of went over that. Um and so hopefully uh they'll be kind of pulling together kind of a few recommendations of possible avenues they could go and then we'll actually be meeting here with the council um to talk about your guys' visions and ultimately um what you'd like to get out of this comp study and uh moving forward from there. So, we don't have an exact date yet for the meeting with the council, but I'm assuming that that'll be here in the next four to six weeks, I would guess. So, that is all I've got. Okay. I do not have anything. And uh so, I guess I will make a motion to adjurnn. Second. Got a second by Rick Siler. All in favor say I. I. Any opposition? We're out of here. Thank you everyone. We didn't You almost got We didn't set a record. Rick said the record's 20 minutes. I have no validation on that, but um I'm the one that did it. [Laughter]