[0:05] [music] [0:16] [music] [0:26] [music] [0:37] [music] [0:43] [music] [0:57] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Good evening and welcome to the January 20th city council meeting. If you join me for a moment of silence in the pledge of allegiance. [1:34] **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky**: Okay, roll call, please. [clears throat] Michelle Volk? **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: Here. **Ann Orlofsky**: Luke Hellier? **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Here. **Ann Orlofsky**: Dan Wolter? **Councilmember Dan Wolter**: Here. **Ann Orlofsky**: Joshua Lee? **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: Here. **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Okay, very good. We'll move on to citizens comments. This is opportunity for anybody to address the council for up to three minutes. [1:50] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to additional agenda information. Mr. Miller? **City Administrator Justin Miller**: Nothing tonight, Mayor. **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Very good. Now, move on to item number five, our 2025 annual liquor operations report. And I'll turn it over to our liquor operations director, Tana Wald. [2:14] **Tana Wald**: Just in case. **Mayor Luke Hellier**: That's right. **Tana Wald**: Mayor and council members, thank you so much for the opportunity tonight to present the liquor operations 2025 review. We will start off with sales metrics. In 2025, we ended slightly below 2024 and adopted budget metrics. The plus side is that we increased our gross profit, which means that we made over $43,000 more in 2025 than we did in 2024, even with the reduction in sales. [2:48] **Tana Wald**: The liquor fund contributions, we contributed a total of $1.74 million in 2025. The big winners were the equipment replacement for the equipment fund and the police station debt service funds. And without these contributions, [clears throat] these services would be covered by property taxes. [3:08] **Tana Wald**: The emporium room remains to be a very popular site out at our Keokuk location. Our rentals have increased almost 10% over 2024. And our promotional events are just as popular and they produced a $57,000 increase in sales at the Keokuk location. [3:30] **Tana Wald**: Door Dash was a new thing for us this year. We started at the end of October. We didn't really know what to expect. From October 29th to December 31st, we had orders totaling over $25,000. And in December alone, we had $17,000 in sales. [3:47] **Tana Wald**: So that was a nice surprise for us. And it's still growing. So ecommerce continues to grow for us as well. We're 10% um almost 10% increase over 2024 in sales. Um and we continue to focus on expanding our marketing for e-commerce, our community engagement. Uh this year we raised over $100,000 for valuable services benefiting our community. In March we held our annual fundraiser to benefit our local food shelves. Um July we helped defray the cost to replace two retired canines for our police department. And then in November we did our regular Lakeville yellow ribbon fundraiser as well which I just went over and took the picture with them. So they were very happy. Um, we also worked with the Rotarians in their taste of Lakeville and we partnered with College City Beverage and Michelob Ultra to hold our second annual 5K fun run and walk um to bring more awareness to breast cancer. [4:51] **Tana Wald**: So, achievements—for the fourth year in a row we were named a top 100 retailer by Beverage Dynamics magazine and we are also voted the number one liquor store by readers of the Sun This Week publication. [5:07] **Tana Wald**: And we completed our perpetual inventory counts with a 0.02 shrink. Our goal every year is 0.75. So, it's um a huge uh thumbs up to my staff to be well under that goal. [5:24] **Tana Wald**: Staffing developments. We've had a few open positions this year and we've been lucky enough to be able to fill those positions with internal candidates. We do have full-time assistant manager position that's open currently at Keokuk. It was just posted today. So, we're excited to get that position filled soon. [5:45] **Tana Wald**: Our upcoming events. So, every January, all of our managers get together for a goal setting meeting. We just had that last week. Um, we discuss operational and personal goals and kind of our strategies for the upcoming year. In March, we do our annual safe server training. That's for our entire staff. [6:02] **Tana Wald**: That's so everybody's properly trained on how to check IDs and to identify intoxicated customers. And then in March, we'll be doing our food shelf fundraiser once again for the Open Door Pantry and 360 communities. [6:18] **Tana Wald**: That is all I have tonight. I now stand for questions. **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Council questions. Joshua. [6:26] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: Uh thank you. I had two questions. One related to delivery. Um, so with Door Dash coming in, are you still offering the in-house delivery? Is that planned to phase out in with the success of Door Dash or what's the plan with that? [6:47] **Tana Wald**: It's a totally different clientele that uses our delivery compared to Door Dash. **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: Gotcha. **Tana Wald**: Um, so it's more of a target market for Door Dash. Um, we still have a lot of regular customers that use our in-house delivery, so we'll continue to do that. We only do it out of one store, so it's not an inconvenience for us. [7:02] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: Gotcha. And is there still a minimum for Door Dash orders that there is for— **Tana Wald**: No, there's no minimum on Door Dash. **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: I can see how the clientele could be different with that. **Tana Wald**: Yep. [7:22] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: Um and then the the other question I had was having gross profits increase even amidst some of the sales challenges that we're just seeing. I know that's a national trend. Um how how do you do that? Uh what were some of the ways that you were able to accomplish that? **Tana Wald**: We've had a lot of strategic buying changes. We have bimonthly meetings with all of our buyers. Um we've been buying really smart, so we're saving a lot of cost on our buys. Um we also have watched our inventory levels closely and at the end of the year we have a benchmark of 10% of our sales and all of four stores hit under that benchmark. So that helps our gross profit immensely at the end of the year. **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: So well, congrats. **Tana Wald**: Thank you. **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Council, any questions? Okay, thank you very much. [7:59] **Tana Wald**: Thank you. [8:00] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Okay, we'll now move on to item [clears throat] six, our consent agenda. These are more routine items for the council. Is there anything you'd like to highlight, Mr. Miller? **Justin Miller**: Thank you, mayor. Three items tonight. Item 6H is an agreement with Pyro for the July 4th fireworks display. Yes, it will be summer. I [laughter] wonder um and I bring this up because this um along with our contract uh contribution, the Lions contribute $8,000 toward this and so we're appreciative of that. [8:28] **Justin Miller**: Item 6N is labeled as North Ryan second edition. This is going to be the Dakota County Recycling Facility. That'll be off of 70 and Jacquard. So we're um thankful for their investment in that project. And then item 6P is an approval of a pay equity filing. This is a report that the city has to provide to the state every three years. And uh we passed once again. [8:48] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Very good. Council, any items you want to discuss further or pull from the consent agenda? I'll take a motion to approve. **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: I move approval of the consent agenda. **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: Second. **Councilmember Dan Wolter**: Second. [9:02] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. **Councilmembers**: I. **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Opposed? Consent agenda passes. With that, no action items, any unfinished or new business? Okay. Announcements. Uh, next city council work session is Monday, January 26th. Our next city council meeting is Monday, February 2nd. And with that, I'll take a motion to adjourn. [9:21] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: Move to adjourn. **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Is there a second? **Councilmember Dan Wolter**: Second. **Mayor Luke Hellier**: All those in favor say I. **Councilmembers**: I. **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Opposed? [9:26] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Closed.