e e e I'm waiting for my okay from the man nope got the thumb when your kids are ready okay 5:15 we will call the workshop to order roll call please council member Cole I'm looking at Dan here council member Wong here council member nordby here council member schwe is absent mayor mongi here thank you very much can I get a motion to adopt the agenda please so mov so move council member Cole second second council member Wong all those in favor say I I I thank you topics all right thank you mayor um first up is the community center RFP review update so for the RFP the uh posting came down on the 20th at 2 pm we had six submissions from different contractors um and uh oh is it not working there we can hear it um so we've formed a committee uh internally of five employees that we will be going over um the submissions we'll be looking at um consulting firm and key project and staff experience um proven track record proposed approach for completing the project um proposed project schedule and then the cost and we'll score all these and then we'll bring that back to you guys on the 15th um to make a decision on who you'd like to move forward with uh that contractors so just want to give you an update on what we got and how they came in and we'll BR more information to you at the next council meeting thank you absolutely so moving on to commission workshops meetings and recording discussion so um I was asked to look into this to so there are plenty of cities out there that don't actually record or video their um uh commission meetings or even their workshops um for different reasons whether or not it's for it's not quite a uh formal committee where you're following Robert's Rules of Order um it's more of a conversation you're trying to figure out some of these topics um and it also comes down to uh a matter of cost so we've looked into the total cost um is going to would be approximately for the finished out this year would be approximately $34,000 if we we went away with that and did uh just Council meetings a we would save about just under $19,000 a year if we did that um so there are reasons we would still take minutes that would still be available for the public um but I just wanted to open that up for discussion I know we don't take any votes here but uh maybe a consensus on what your thoughts are and I can bring that forward At a next council meeting um but like to open that up and get your guys' input on that if I could please so notes will be taken yes there still be minutes absolutely and that will be available to the public and be put online as well how are the minutes taken so like for us now it' be Jenny who takes minutes for um a council meeting um for the commissions it would be the liaison so she doesn't use the recordings or anything like that for the for doing minutes and stuff like that Jen yes um would be nice to record option yeah which would be the reason for it you know there's different recording mics that you can have because that was an issue at times like whether or not it was in the room over here for our workshops but to have the mics that you can set down in front of people so you can actually hear what they're saying as opposed to her just having that handheld device for recording because that doesn't pick everything up so just making sure that we get a good clear uh recording of it that you can turn into minutes but then the minut minutes is what would be available to the public um to me for the savings of 19 Grand I don't think I'm for it um a I think it's a step back in transparency um and I I think it makes it harder to access the information um I know for me I was sick a couple meetings ago so I was able to watch the workshop and see all the finance discussions so as a council member being sick to me it's a valuable tool um also then for the Planning Commission that I'm the Lea on to because that has such an impact depending on the discussion of if it's a topic relative to where the residents live um I think it's easier to follow and easier to see what's going on with the recording so to me for a $199,000 savings I don't see the value in eliminating those um um and if we do eliminate it even partially uh I think we do definitely need to keep the recording for the Planning Commission meetings that have the open to the public segment um uh Ju Just so it's easier for the residents to get the information but like I say personally I I I don't see the value for a $199,000 savings thank you I think for for me from a commission like uh being the commission leaon I'm thinking my um commission would be probably happy not to be on on the screen um however um I think it is helpful for people to use it as a reference refence um I think I'm much more interested um for us to have the workshops still um accessible I think having an audio recording can be helpful but um if you're vision impaired then um that I me or like auditorial Le impaired then that makes it a little bit more difficult so um similarly I don't I don't think it's um um a huge loss if I think it would be a benefit actually if we kept it as as transparent as possible now for the the workshop I think it'd be more beneficial if we were maybe in a different setup um I think we've tried that in the past but if we could get an audio or like a setup where um you know we're facing each other we're at a table rather than up here in in this um um setup so I think that could help um help us um um get further in our dialogue me yes sir so in my tenure we've had both um and prior to that um my years on the park and wreck um when we went to recording everything there was a lot of reluctance um there was reluctance to get volunteers to even um become part of some of the commissions and the Committees because they didn't necessarily want to have every action recorded or not recorded um from a commission's and committee standpoint they can bring recommendations to council they're not setting precedence they're not passing anything um I am fine with it just not being recorded either back in the sanberg room or over in the training area which there's more space um and and going back to having notes taken and the way that it was um what two and a half three years ago now I suppose um from a workshop standpoint I guess I'm mixed um happen to have the opportunity um at the league of Minnesota City's conference um to be in a group be in a room where they actually had this discussion um the majority of the participants in the room um did not have their uh workshops recorded um again there's a lot of information shared um couple of them referenced being not in Chambers but in a room where the tables could be set in a square so everybody could look at each other could see each other face to face as opposed to you know however the configuration some of them have larger horseshoes than we have but um I I I guess I I could go either way there's a lot greater opportunity for frankness for greater open dialogue um I fully understand the transparency piece of it but the transparency piece is what happens up here this is where decisions are made um conversations can be had so um to me 19 Grand is a lot of money um for Park and wreck and a couple other commissions to to have recordings of um I guess I would be in favor of going back to the way that it used to be thank you for myself that's why I brought up recording because I know when you and I talked about it a while back you go back to these for notes and things like that too so if we're going to be recording anyways at least for the council meetings in the in the um workshops I would think we continue that way and um one thing I would like to see though because I know you mentioned this before is when Parks you know sometimes they can meet at the parks and do different things where Parks committee I like to have a little bit of flexibility sometime where we could say we're going to have a meeting at a park or somewhere else and then just have an audio recorder with us and be able to do that because I think that really for the park people to be able to meet at the parks and be able to be you know participating there and have people that maybe live closer that want to be able to come up and do things like that I would like to be able to have a little bit of leeway so we can still be a little bit mobile that's where I on y I appreciate it that's helpful is it it is the majority has spoken on that one all right moving on item C is 2025 Enterprise fund budgets I'm going to turn that over to finance director Dan Winnick good evening mayor council members uh tonight we're going to discuss the 2025 Enterprise fund budget that are being proposed um I'm going to start off with just kind of a high level overview um of the Enterprise funds and then uh tonight we have uh uh the electric director John Wick and then um we have uh Ron Richie um and Randy Miller uh for uh Water waste water and surface water and then I'll cover the final two which are relatively small ones solid waste and um fiber um and then um we have some other exciting items I'll give Financial plans on those Enterprise funds and then we'll conclude with um uh kind of an update of where our current budget on the general fund and the um uh Enterprise funds are um your date um as of August 30th August 31st um we have six um Enterprise funds uh water fund Wastewater fund electric fund surface water fund Solid Waste fund and fiber optic fund and a difference between the Enterprise fund and internal service fund is an Enterprise fund the fees are coming from external sources where internal service funds um fees are coming from uh the organization itself um kind of a high level of of the proposed budget for the water fund U revenues are 2.2 million it's an increase of only $7,000 from 2024 uh we're not anticipating any rate change um the budget um of of uh uh $1,356 th000 that's a decrease of $173,000 from 2024 um right now this would uh have an impact of an increase in the fund balance of $863,000 and then I just kind of showed you the expenditure component to it the big the bigger drivers as you look on there um again Personnel costs um are increasing 8% um only $26,000 but 8% increase you're seeing contractual Services decrease um significantly um 92,7 and then the capital numbers that are currently in the budget are what will be presented in the CIP um and so they're put into the each and every one of the budgets um and then you can see uh we're reducing the transfers part of that um dedication of the um amount going to the street um Street Levy because that impacts the Water waste water and surface water um so you can see um the budget um for the water fund um still increases the fund balance uh significantly uh Wastewater fund um again we're seeing kind of similar results uh revenues 2.6 million that's an increase of 41,000 over 2024 uh no rate increase um budget of about a little over 2.1 million that's a decrease of $455,000 and you'll see that that really that significant decreases is due to the capital um need again on CIP that's being dropped dropped down significantly in 2025 um this would increase the fund balance $538,000 is what the estimate um on this is and again you can see um not a lot of change in supplies or contractual Services um so um you know you're going to see it kind of consistently across the majority of these Enterprise funds uh the electric uh fund um doesn't really change a whole heck of a lot from a true composition standpoint um um there the revenues are um just under 12 million that's an increase of 151,000 that's really due to the increase of of uh users of some of the development that's happening in town um the budget um is pretty much the same at 2 million um as a that's a decrease of $944,000 that decrease is really because of the transfer um that we did this year in 2024 of the $1.1 million that went to streets um and the fund balance would only decrease uh you know $9,000 so it's pretty close to a balance Budget on on the electric fund um part of the revenue um increase also is due to um in the past uh we've done away with it in 23 is that City use U would be reported as a negative amount in other words reducing the revenue and so we're not showing that anymore that way I don't know why it was done but we're eliminating that part to it so so their budget's pretty much the same as it is in 2024 um surface water um the revenues are a little over a million dollar that's an increase of $31,000 um the budget's just under $800,000 that's a decrease of 162 again the bigger contributing compart um component to the decrease is capital um reduction um which you're going to see in when we show the capital Improvement plans uh fund balance would increase 253,000 this would require a 2.5 U perc increase in the rate um as you can see um surface water gets hit quite a bit by um and we'll see it a little bit more later on when we start looking at our financial plans um but water we water and surface water are all all hit by um preventative maintenance on the streets and in major reconstruction projects and you can see and I'll kind of show you you know when you're looking at a a water fund that has a 2.2 Revenue waste water that's 2.6 and you go to surface water with only a $1 million you know that 2.5% increase on the on the rate is only going to generate you know like $25,000 um so it's not significant but it has the road projects have a significant impact as far as cost that has to be paid from for the surface water um and so that's where you're seeing the the request for that 2.5% rate increase and this is the only Enterprise fund that we are proposing to have any change in its rate everything else will stay uh the same as in 2024 um and then Solid Waste uh revenues of just under 1.1 million that's an increase of 26,000 from 2024 um budget um is about 1.2 um that's an increase of $26,000 in 2024 um you know that increas is due uh to uh the contract uh with our supply or holler that we have a 3% increase for the next two years and then uh we'll be going out for an RFP um for a vendor at that point in time this would decrease from a budgetary standpoint decrease the fund balance 103,000 if you remember there is really no Capital that comes out of the solid waste fund and this fund does have some excess um fund balance um so instead of raising rates or anything we're going to hold the rates um study and buy that down a little bit uh significant changes again is the contractual services and that's our our vendors increase and then the last one is uh the fiber optic fund um if you remember from the financial statements this one has a a truly a negative fund balance um it'll take a number of years to ever pay that off um but the revenues are about $220,000 that's an increase of 6,200 the budget of 113,000 that's an increase of 7,000 primarily to the vendor that we use who does the maintenance um on the the fiber lines and this would increase the fund balance 109 really what is still doing is buying the negativity down um by $109,000 cuz it it it is negative over $2 million so it'll probably take us about 20 some years to get this one to be in a positive um uh State um so really there's no significant changes on on that with that that's kind of the high high level overview of our Enterprise funds I'll entertain any questions at this point in time um if not then I'm going to turn it over to um John Wick who will U um discuss the electric fund one question about the fiber fund I know I know people are there's groups coming through there and putting fiber is there any way we could be able to lease space for them to be able to you know hook up as far as that or is that not feasible because I know we have that infrastructure sitting there and they're they're burying it everywhere as far as is there any way we can take any of that to be able to get some Revenue out of that I've had a couple companies that have actually reached out to have a conversation um looking to set those meetings up to see if there is something that we could do or help with um not only Fiers space but potentially we have a lot of empty conduits around town that we have a potential maybe selling um so there's some options out there I'm good I'm just it was a boond doggle so we get as much as we can out of it I don't know if this is appropriate time but I want to write that dollar off like we had talked about I don't know if you want to explain that or you want to get into it later um if you're why don't we do that when we do the rest so sounds good yep thank you for you bet appreciate you looking that so um what the city managers we'll discuss it at the end um we've kind of kicked a kicked around kind of a thought um on that fiber fund um but we'll throw it out to um city council um to see what kind of the appetite of it is but I really kind of want to get into our department heads if this discussion goes beyond the workshop I'll stick around and we'll finish all those on city council but I'd like to get our department heads to have an opportunity to to get through any other questions we'll wait if we have time we'll wait I've got a five rupted question too so we yeah sorry you're staying after I have what's hopefully a quick one can you tell me what that 2.5 or 2.3 increase means to the average resident and their bill I don't off the top but I certainly will calculate that information and get it um to every thank you sure so I think we'll move on to the electric Department um and so our electric director John Wick thank you so uh just to kind of kick things off uh you know 2024 being kind of an outlier year with the the big TR transfer we're hoping in 2025 to kind of bounce back to uh what our normal budget would look like um obviously the biggest driver uh of our budget is the power that we purchase uh it's the biggest portion uh and with that being said uh from all indications from our power agency uh there is no increase in the rate for 20125 uh therefore no increase in the rate going forward to Residents uh um uh a big indicator of uh you know how we set the the budget for our materials uh is the lead times and the supply chains and I know I've stressed in the past just how um how difficult it's been to try and plan and uh to have the proper inventory that that we require to maintain the system uh I do believe things have gotten better uh but uh at least from lead times perspective uh instead of two years we're looking more like a year on things um bigger pieces of equipment um but the prices I think have kind of established a new norm and I don't think they will be reverting or it'll be basically fluctuating with the cost of uh raw materials uh so it might go down a couple percent and come back up uh but the past three to five years I was even speaking with a vendor earlier this week and um they've seen inflation in the past three years of 45 to 50% on all their um all the major items we're buying from them um and and like he said it's that's where it's going to stay and we're not going to get back to that that normal rate of increase uh so we can kind of plan from there on out uh so and it kind of reflects our budget um the when you go to our um maintenance materials on both the overhead and underground budget um we actually decreased the overall total uh but the reason we did that was uh we're able to utilize the CIP as well to um complete projects uh with them infrastructure improvements uh so I don't think we have to be as heavy in the maintenance materials uh if we're planning a job and we need a border contractor to come out uh we can take the quotes that they're giving us and use the CIP to effectively plan for those infrastructure upgrades U and not have to pull them out of the maintenance materials budgets or the um or anything within that underground or overhead uh to try and uh decrease the the overall budget uh just for them items so uh like I said in the overhead uh we decreased in the materials um and also in the underground in our structures uh the only real change uh in 51 that was the um we're still working on getting our charts updated at the substation and the overall cost of that's uh coming in around 10 to 15,000 and that kind of reflects in the change from the year before um but as far as uh the CIP which I know we'll get into at a later date but um we had a quite a heavy year in 24 for the field equipment that we upgraded uh and we look to be uh substantially less than that for 2025 uh with besides the infrastructure improvements uh I think the overall total was about 91,5 uh and that would be between a a piece of equipment being upgraded and uh the antenna for some of our electronic metering so really not much of a a big dollar amount in the CIP kind of getting us back to a new normal um but other than that I don't have a lot of things that change drastically so if there's anything on this budget that stands out to you that you have questions about I'd be happy to uh answer any questions you have I have a question do you anticipate any changes in the price given you know big outages like we've seen with um some of the storms down in the southwest um impacting the supply chain and and how you may access some of these um items I mean they definitely have a there is an effect but um a lot of the vendors that we work with um kind of plan accordingly and have stock for occasions such as that or they can pull inventory from other from other allocations um it may cause lead times to get longer for certain things uh but I don't see it infecting the immediate price uh but like I said the prices are already kind of jumped up to a new normal high so um just kind of trying to anticipate you know we have a project we want to do in 26 we need to start ordering in 25 for that project um and to have things the materials we need on hand thank you what's the most expensive piece for you guys as far as I mean it I've heard some generators like about them you know or some sub what forget the terms you mentioned before substation Transformer has yeah that's number one that's not a normal thing is there a life span for those yeah um I mean typically typically uh you know 30 years uh 35 where are we at in that cycle that's what I'm kind of get to see we're getting yeah we're getting close to that I could give you the exact date I don't have it 92 was the substation was built but at that time EXL they have a Transformer out there that's probably 65 years old um yeah okay one of them has been rebuilt but yeah they can there's no moving well I shouldn't say that for that there is but not a lot of moving parts inside of a Transformer uh except for like the regulator part of it but uh so they last for a very long time in other words just want to make sure there's nothing on the you know Horizon that's you know coming up and that needs to be replaced after so long type of thing I think a good measure we take to try and prevent that unexpected I mean there's catastrophic failure can happen um but you know we have our substation on a maintenance routine uh where every 3 years they're out to uh go through every mechanic or mechanical component in that sub station they do all the tests on the Transformer to tell us if there's any indication that we might have a failure or a potential failure in the future um so I think we're taking the steps we can to try ensure that we won't get hit with an un unexpected cost um but if if the indication starts going that we need to start looking that way um The Hope is that by doing that maintenance that we'll have the time to react to it if there is a catastrophic is there any way you can hook up to Exel to help us during that time type of thing so we do have a and suspenders type of look all the people that are without power now and something crazy happens yes yeah we can uh we we share that substation with EXL so we have the ability to tie into their Transformers as well it's good to know in actuality that happened so there's a bypass that we can hook onto their system or they can hook on to ours they actually had one of their power Transformers which is the big Transformer go down and it was out for 9 months and they fed up of our system during that time so but we also have that ability to depend on them if something like that happens good and one thing that we've done John's been good with is uh setting money aside for those High ticket items so not only the Transformer that's the one big thing but the the large wire that goes from the substation into town is that wire is very expensive that' probably be Millions many hundreds of thousands if not a million or so to replace that wire and that has a a useful life as well uh it's all in conduit it's jacketed wire you probably get a 40 45e life out of it but you know it was built in ' 92 so it's something we need to start planning for now for the future which we've already done and John's been doing great at that good thank you I appreciate that makes you feel better that there is something in case of a catastrophic that we we'll be able to yes look on thank you I have a question so like when um squirrels eat the lines how much is that costing this the city because my understanding is that happened recently uh it it does it happens fairly often um usually the Damage Done is something that we can fix relatively inexpensively um you know there's there are occasions where a squirrel takes out a big chunk of town um and really uh the materials to repair those it's not costing us a lot of money to to fix it's just the inconvenience to the residents that there a big chunk of town goes out of power so great that's good to know thanks there used to be they do all right thank you appreciate it of course move on to Ron thank you very much John uh now we'll move on to Ron and Ron has three budgets water Wastewater and surf water all right thank you um I'm going to start off with water um I'm just going to give like high overview of kind of like I said that if if there's any line items or anything that you see in the water budget but you know it's pretty much all of our maintenance stuff that we're going over here um uh just kind of everything we take care of um in the in the water part when we have contractors in town it does take take a lot of our time oh I'm sorry yeah I got this I came in early to make sure this worked and then I didn't put it up so thanks um us suspense sorry um so yeah when we do have these road projects um going on um we do have a lot of of work that we do with the contractors um when they're digging into the into the ground finding different water lines finding just having questions on you know all kinds of different things um that are underground that they come up and they're like hey what is this or we might not have records of that um rebuilding of the manholes that house are um that house our our valves in the in the water department so the manholes in the streets they can be you know multiple different things uh water uh storm sewer sanitary sewer um but each one of manhole structures has uh a bunch of different parts that go into it you know it's the for uh could be a cone section A lot of our manholes in town were built out of bricks brick and mortar so it wasn't like one single structure so over time it I mean I don't know how many of these structures we have in town but um a lot of our maintenance dollars go into uh repairing these uh this year here we um found a company that does a lining for the inside of these manholes they can come in and uh they paint on like a flexible um rubber type stuff that they can put on them that's you're supposed to you know give us some longer life out of these um certain ones are candidates for it certain certain ones are not um but that is something that we're trying out we're going to do uh a bunch of that we we've had some of them done and and we we're going to do a few more and see how this holds up and see if something we're going to move forward in in the future and doing but we're using our some of our maintenance dollars for that um this is more CIP stuff um that we'll talk about but in the next three to four years we're going to start replacing our water meters they have a lifespan of 20 years on them for residential water meters uh the commercial meters have about a 10year lifespan on them uh the the commercial meters we just have to replace actually the the meter part of it we don't actually have to replace the whole meter um and the residential ones we have to replace the whole meter um so I believe that's out in 2027 we're going to start looking at that but at this time um to go out and replace those just for the cost of the parts it's about $150 for each piece which is a radio and and a meter and then we'll have to have installation um but again that'll be more CIP stuff but for um the day-to-day maintenance stuff right now we go out we replace um meters as they go bad or if they get wrecked or if they're frozen or uh replace the radios um just kind of on a day-to-day basis and I would say on average I don't know if we work on what handful of meters each week um we we have a list from the finance department where meter is not reading there can be multiple different things that uh go on with them either are not working um but yeah I think they said there's about a 2% rate of I I don't know if you call yeah airs that is kind of The Benchmark or a standard that is like common with these meters so um that is something like I said we work on on a weekly basis or as these calls come in or if the finance department alerts us to a me is not reading um hydrin flushing uh we we try to do that twice a year spring and the fall the last couple years um with the whole wiper Lake thing going on and the drought uh we've been we I don't believe that we' flushed last year we're out again um now flushing we've been working on that for the last two weeks um it's something that you know you should do for your system to clean the pipes out but in going and touching every hydrant and flushing them um sometimes things break and you know knock on wood a water man can break when you're doing that by opening and closing these um but again that is another um part when we go out and start flushing these uh we find out you know fire hydrants that are bad or fire hydrant that might have leaks in them and we have to do some repairs we make a list um that we have to uh work off of to you know do our repairs on our hydrants um right now with some of the maintenance dollers we kind of wait and see how the years go our our maintenance money that we have in our water fund is yeah I don't want to call it a guess it's kind of a guess but we have to kind of see how things play out for the year and then at this time of the year we can make a decision where I think we P I think we're having six or seven um hydrants replaced they're super old hydrants that are in town um nowadays standards when you install fire hydrant you install a valve in front of it so if you have a problem with that hydrant you can just shut the valve off to that hydrant you won't have to shut down a whole block these hydrants that we're replacing they're going to require us to shut down a block or two to replace them but we're going to put a valve in and a hydron in and like I said at this point we are just going or working off of the maintenance money that we have in the fund um and waiting you like I said towards the end of the year to kind of give us a gauge on how much we should or could spend to kind of replace these um um uh like again I touched on the rebuilding of manholes um this will be in each one of these uh surface water um sanitary sewer and the water um all these have manholes and all these have um you know repairs that could you need to be done uh unfortunately the the way a manhole is is worked or is built um it's built up close to the road and then they put concrete Rings or plastic Rings they have now up to get the manhole casting up to the height of the road um the salt we put down over in the winter corrodes those uh Rings or those rings around those manholes and that's why when you're driving down some Road you hit some really big holes in the road um more than likely that's because the Rings underneath are failing um so that is something we could open up probably 90% of the manholes in town and probably do work on any one of those man holes uh again we try to work within our budget you know it wouldn't be realistic to try to replace every one of them but some of those things that you run over you probably have to run over for them a while run run them over for a while but um you know we do all that's in considerations when we start looking for next road projects when we're doing these uh P this pavement preservation that we are working on I don't know if you've been on like first or Margaret um we do do address some of those uh we do address those uh manholes or those castings at at that time but it's it's kind of a fine line on what we do because some of those could use a full rebuild and as we as this um we this pavement preservation goes on year to year we're going to try to do a better job of going on really inspecting what we can what we're have to replace and that'll determine if something's really got to be rebuilt cuz technically these are kind of a Band-Aid for our roads to get us by hopefully 10 or 15 years when I say a bandaid 10 or 15 years is a long time um so some of these things might not last that long so it's a fine line on on what we do you know for how deep we go into into one of those uh manhole structures um and again gate valve turning operating our gate valves around town it's something that it's kind of an ongoing task because we use it as a secondary thing for people to do it's an important step again we go out and turn all these valves what we don't want to do is get into a situation where we can't turn a valve off um we can go out further to another block to turn something off but you're just affecting that many more people but going and exercising these valves um when you start doing that um you can cause some trouble or break some valves or um we find out we we have some they call it hot soils in town different areas of town where these uh our bolts are rotting off of our valves um so that sometimes we might think we have a water main brake could be a leaking valve or just leaking uh um bolts on there something we can replace [Music] um average uh a yearly average water main brakes are you know I I have we have eight up there last year we only had a couple with knock on wood um but hopefully as we go through and start doing some of these road projects the water main break areas we really focus on those areas as far as doing a hopefully not doing a pavement preservation or Mill and overlay would do a full reconstruct um up in the area that we're you know hoping to go next year um I know that area has you know some a bunch of water main brakes up there um so that's kind of a big overview of the water or high overview of the water I don't know if you guys have any questions on that or do water M breaks correlate with the weather so if it's much colder they they do um well they say they do so we always correlate them with really cold weather um they say the pressure change like a lot of times it happens when snow storms happen so they say the pressure changed but we one year we had had four water main braks in the summertime so yeah more more times than not that happen in the winter time I mean that's the when it happens but really cold weather or uh snowstorms it seems like we we have those gotcha thank you I'm not going to get into barometric pressure I don't know but that that's what they that's what they talk about or they say so yeah so any questions on the water side of things all right going on to sanitary sewer um we currently maintain about 46 or about 47 miles of sanitary sewer we have four lift stations um in the past couple of years we've been updating our skus system which it it monitors both our lift stations and our um Wells um for yeah pretty much it it's super super cool that what we have it saves a lot I mean we can really see Trends on how often pumps run how long they run um just a a ton of information on that I mean we could find out you know if we did have a water main break all of a sudden a a water tower started to drop really fast we'd get alarms we get alerts all the guys in our department are on emails for all of this stuff um so it's a super super important tool for us to help us sleep or not sleep better um just because it does we have alarm set for multiple different things we have this uh just the last year and we had it was it last year the year before we had a new skater system installed and a new uh company that we are working with and they've been just awesome I mean the guys are super smart that that work on this stuff and I they have they can put things on our pumps to tell us if one pump runs a little bit longer than another one and we can really monitor and hone in on things we can if a pump runs longer than a lift station we can you know it kind of indication that something's stuck in that pump we have two pumps in every lift station you know for redundancy and backup um but that's ska system and the maintenance and the things that we can add each year it seems like they have something else that they can add that really send us an alarm to help us like operate that system or monitor that system better so hopefully we don't have any um you know major problem or Sewer back up or like I said on our on our wells um how long they run our water tower Heights how much water we have in there um you know are I don't know if everybody knows but water towers they give you your pressure in town we don't have pumps that give people pressure um it's basically the height of the water tower and how much water is in that is what gives the pressure um to people to the people um this is CIP future planning but it we've talked about water tower the Water Tower study has been done um with WSB you know I think that's something that we're looking at all at 2028 and it's it's it's uh more storage capacity I think we're about 500,000 gallon short on our our capacity um for where we need to be but that'll be something that we'll talk about in the future but that's on the horizon out in I think 2028 is when we kind of have it uh stuck in there um like I said the lift station lift station maintenance that we do um and I'm talking about like maintenance money for how we spend that um the lift stations uh we they take a lot of attention sometimes some more than others over at uh Target the lift station uh we have been we were dealing with that every day for months and months and we were finding the security tag stuck in the pumps at the lift station over by Target so what was happening is people were going into the bathrooms cutting off the security tags at Target flushing them down and I don't know if it was just the perfect size or whatever but they' clog our lift station pump and what it would do it would it would take that pump three times four times five times longer to try to pump something down um we talked with Target let them kind of know that hey this is what we're finding I mean this was happening daily um in talking to that we went went out and got pricing for different pumps that might be able to handle those type of tags we kind of sent that information to Target and let them know hey if this can continues to happen and I don't know if they changed something but it kind of went away for a while or so um again lift stations uh that that was a kind of an odd thing but we have lots of Grease builds up in those and there's lots of different things you find in these lift stations that you wonder how they got down there but um we clean those lift stations uh multiple times a year to you know maintain there there's floats in there that gives give us our alarms and um like I said that is one thing that we we spend a fair amount of time cleaning uh sewer cleaning we clean onethird of the city each year per our policy um it pretty much takes us the whole summer to get through that that third of the city that some areas are worse than others again with uh some of these projects that we do sewer lining uh projects that we do that it greatly helps us with our sewer cleaning because once a sewer is lined we don't have those RIT problems um you know the majority the longest uh sewer cleaning times we have is in the areas where we have to send a RIT saw in there and cut it just takes a lot longer you know to get through that um again rebuilding the manholes I spoke on that um same thing kind of goes for the San sanitary sewers um we the last couple years uh in our CIP plan we've had sewer cleaning and Cameron we've had a a company that is was bit out for the for three years for us to go out and they're cleaning sewers also and they camera everything for us and what that is doing is uh in our data mapping that we have from WSB it has all of our sewer lines in there you can click on a sewer line you can go in there um they have connected the videos that the camera videos that they took now the camera videos are only good for the day that really you have it but what else they we have with that is that a manhole from manhole to manhole there's an average of 300 feet in between each one on each one of those it we when they camera it they give us the footage where uh service comes in at that or where someone's service can come in what's really nice about that is when we're out and we have to do locating or we have to do any work out there uh we can take that information look at it it can tell us how many feet from the manhole up the road it is where your sewer uh connection may come in or where an abandoned sewer connection may come in so having all the information that we have never had before um it really helps us do our jobs better and gives us uh information that we you know never had before so um I think this is the second year of that or three third year third year of that and I think one more year I think we should be one or two oh it's a fiveyear plan so we'll be through all that and have all that information and you know that'll be information that we can have you know forever with that so that is a super um good thing for us for the city um uh hotspot uh cleaning it's another thing that we do in our city where certain areas at certain restaurants we find a lot of grease in in area the restaurants are supposed to have grease traps but there's just certain areas of town that we have to clean uh multiple times a year um I think we have it on the schedule to do it in the spring and fall I think usually we go out there maybe an extra time but certain areas that get really bad that we spend extra time just running our sewer cleaner through to make sure that there's not problems we've had backups in there before and we found lots of grease and uh you know different things in there um so that's kind of the overview of sanitary sewer any questions on that you ever um talked to the ones that seem to get there to ask them to see if they can update upgrade their TRS we have um one area is the apartment complex um which there's just a lot of uh grease sets probably dumped on the sewer there but it's it's kind of hard we've put uh some uh notifications out to them um it's another big really big problem is is uh baby wipes if you go and if you go into the store and look at ad them they say flushable flushable wipes there it's a huge huge problem um it's talked about in all our SE classes all the different cities talk about it um they've actually gone and and tried to these companies and try to get them to not put that labeling on there um I went on a tour and met Council where all of our sewer all of our sewage runs too and they said 10 years ago they they had a like a semi-trailer that they'd have at on site and it would be there for a week and what it would do it would screen out any things that weren't supposed to be in the sewer and they said it would take about a week to fill that trailer up now I think when I went on the tour I think they said they have three or four trailers a day that they haul out of there now and it's those wipes that are the biggest contributor to that they just don't break down those wipes hang up on the roots in in there they don't break down and then they just keep keep building up and a lot of our backups will find that it's those wipes that are down there so in areas that we you know have those we try to notify people put door hangers out in those areas but and some people are like oh I bought flushable wipes so they think it's okay so it's really kind of uh you know it's educate trying to educate people on that and you know you get it you can't really get upset with people because they're advertised as that so um all right so we'll move on to uh I have it is Storm sewer but surface water um again uh like Dan spoke of with the surface water and these projects the Watershed plays a huge part in these uh road projects that we have when we go and we do a road project now um and Morgan would be able to talk about this way better than oh he's I'm not asking you to come up here but when we do these projects um The Watershed dictates what we have to do to upgrade our storm system might be bigger pipes or you might have to put in a pond and these road projects get really expensive because they say hey you guys need to install this now to do this and it adds a million dollars to the project that I don't want to say we didn't plan for but it's just more money than hey you have to do this and we might not have room to put a a pond in so we have to put a underground storage system in to catch that water so um storm water you don't think a whole whole lot about it but it it is it ends up being a a big expenditure um you know for us for what we do for as far as the sweeping part of the storm water system goes the Watershed wants us to sweep as much as we can we do do a really good job in town uh street sweeping um we get out we're probably out between 5 to seven times I think we've been around town uh three times or yeah I think we've been three times around town the last one the storm kind of started us to to do that but you know going around town um it's basically you know two guys we can I think it takes us about three weeks to get through the whole town if we can stay on it every day um and then we also have the cost of getting rid of or getting rid of the street sweepings that we get street sweeping has to get hauled to a landfill um I think I've spoken on this before but to get rid of that it's about $1,200 a truckload we actually truck it all the way up to MOA um which saves us I I think it costs us about $200 a load to get rid of it plus the fuel in the time but we do it on off days or rain days and you we use that as filler work to do that um um overall uh pond maintenance that we do that's another CP of things we have some money for the pond maintenance that we um have to do these ponds that catch the storm water they get filled with sediment um we actually have one that we're working now with the Watershed district and WSB um it's pretty much full of sediment they have to get uh dredged out and you know there's certain levels that they have to to be so we're going through evaluating all the pounds in town figuring out you know what we can do it again the number that we have in there I think in the CIP now is like $100,000 um it's just a number that once we start getting into these we can kind of figure out what or try to live within that budget that we have or if we need to adjust it but uh we're working on that um yeah anything on storm overall budgets you know changing yeah I mean really for for our budgets they're not really changing there's nothing that we added like significant in in any of that um again we try to work within the budget that we have and these numbers you know I can say um contracted maintenance and you know and supplies that we have from the contractors it's really really hard for us to get contractors in to do some of this work um and you look at okay a contractor coming in to replace a fire hydrant it it's a pretty small job for a contractor to do so we put together like five hydrants for them to do to try to get them to to bid on them it's really hard to get people to bid on them and I believe and don't quote me on these numbers but I think we had five hydrant bid and one one quote came in at 650 some 50 some thousand and one quote came in at 25,000 so we're thinking W did he did he miss it did did they did he misquote it you know so we double checked and you know I think the $50,000 one the person was just like ah if make it worth my time this is what I'm going to do but just trying to get these contractors that come in to do this work so in our maintenance budgets that have we try to get the work we try to get as much fixed as much stuff as we can with that budget and the the contracted part we work on someone from late winter early spring to they're coming in now maybe to do the work so a lot of these numbers you know we might see if you're looking at them and they're like hey there's only this much spent out of this budget we really try to do try to use that money to improve and you know fix things up up but getting these contractors in is really a challenge so so any questions on anything I've gone over none here for me thank youse good appreciate it thank you thank you very much Ron uh that leaves us with uh two Enterprise funds to go and that's the solid waste and the fiber optics and as you can see in the general overview um for those two funds there really isn't a lot of change um that has um occurred into it if this can do we can kind of try it but um so there really hasn't been a a lot of change in those two budgets and this only take PowerPoints doesn't take anything else screen there try to hit that thing this thing yeah Ron Ron you're not supposed to tell them that so again um you know Solid Waste um there's an increase of 26,000 um both the revenue and the budget um and it's a decrease in um the fund balance um that's really kind of we're at um with that one um we're not suggesting any rate change at this point in time uh we're going to use um existing fund balance and then with the fiber optics one um kind of it it is where it is uh a part that we've been kind of uh the city manager and myself kind of looking at when we're talking about the fiber optics is that when I when I move on to um the 10year financial plans for the Enterprise funds they look at cash and they look at the cash that's reflected in the financial statements at the year end since those have been audited in the electric fund the surface water fund and the Wastewater fund the cash that is showing in a financial statement is reduced it's reduced in the electric fund because there's two Tiff districts that have loans um that'll be repaid over time to the electric fund um in the in the tuna at the end end of 2023 of $4 million um so when you look at that cash that's in electric fund it's really 4 million more on once those loans are paid off and in the uh surface water and the waste water it's split each one's about a million dollars um and it's a split of what the fiber optic losses so a thought that we've been kicking around because and I did not reflect it in what we're going to see later as our 10-year Financial plans but we may not be able we may not have to increase surface water at all um at least for 2025 and for hopefully for 26 and and and reduce what you're going to see later on if we were to make that find a way to make that fiber optics hole that $2 million hole and a thing that we've kicked around is really it's that city council is the one who has to to put their arms around this and make that decision is that do we turn around and transfer the2 million from the electric fund into the um fiber optic fund and the fiber optic fund is now zeroed out doesn't have that negative balance you don't need to then show those negative on the cash on both the wa the waste water and the surface water which then will reflect differently in the financial plans which you know a million dollars well as I said uh you know 2.5% increase is only generating $25,000 um it'll go a long long way to to make insolvency for those other funds so it's something that we've kicked around um and um you know it's it's more of a discussion that needs to take place um if there's interest into it I definitely will um reflect those three 10-year Financial plans differently with what those changes would be um and and bring those back uh for consideration and and discussion onto it um uh council member Norby you asked me what that 2.5% increase would be on a average resident um if you remember in the beginning of the year we gave kind of estimates of what um the average uh user of our our utilities would be if you remember for surface water was approximately $136 on an annual basis basis if you do 2.5 it would be an increase of about $3.40 so that's kind of those and probably stop here before we move on to the other and unless you want me to finish everything up in 10 minutes I go home no I just kidding but uh I think we'll we'll leave it there um after city council after the items um we'll go back and we'll we'll look at um the 10-year financial statements and then we'll look at where our general fund and our Enterprise funds are um you know currently as at least at the end of August that sound sound good if you have any questions on that type of stuff for and we we've got more time to talk later too on these things I mean for me if you're looking for feedback on the um bioptic fund that was my question that I was holding off on was can we move money around to to get rid of that debt is is it a good guy or a bad guy to show debt you answered that question for me so um you know if you're looking for guidance from from those of us who sitting up here I would say yeah I would like to I'd like to look further in in into that see what the impact yeah okay absolutely I agree because we have to just to get an idea we have to pay it off so how do we best get help from under it just get all of our options that's great in you're you're aware every year that's a point that the auditor brings up y um you know on to it so it's something that we could eliminate from that component to it and so I definitely it has to get paid no matter what happens yeah right now we're the bandaid or do you pace of about 20 years or so or you kind of move it a little bit further down the road and and if the fiber fund does do better I mean there's always the opportunity down the road to transfer those funds um back and and we definitely after I do the analysis and if there there's favor of doing that and then there's a resolution we could actually have a resolution that then States in there that in the event that the fiber fund hits a certain fund balance that that be transferred back to the electric fund that's what I'd like to see I'd like to make that whole because you know we can come up with an idea to use the infrastructure we have and be able to rent it out or do something but you know pay back what ex was taken if we can generate more Revenue with it [Music] absolutely can you speak to the um charges for services when it comes to fiber optics and how that rate is decided on I mean I know we have some contracts with say the library um but how are those determined um yeah there there're basically there's a component that's internal um in other words we do charge all of our departments um for utilization um but uh for the most part the the revenue that's generated in the fiber optics um there is a long-term contract um that set it was 20 years both of these with Oak the city of Oakdale uh and the city of Maplewood and those dollar amounts are all set um actually they prepaid everything things we just show the revenue as it's actually earned um so it shows as deferred revenue um at that time um and so there's three funding sources and then we do have um the libraries um that there's an separate contract agreement um that they pay a certain dollar amount um for it and then we have some um State um departments that also have agreements that have been set a long time ago um that are in place um there hasn't been any additional Revenue um for quite some time um the only thing that changes is if we increase what we're charging our own departments um do you know about when those other contracts are are due I I believe we approve the library one this year but in regards to like Oakdale or um Maplewood are they on contract for much longer um I believe they're probably on contract or for another I'm going to guesstimate somewhere about 8 to nine years before those are expired and at that point in time don't know if they would continue um or they would go away um so I mean that but yeah there's there's still for a number of years thank you when you speak of the debt of the fiber optic fund what fund is that a debt to what fund is that in debt to um two funds surface water and waste water so so that's what originally funded that debt for the fiber optic we can't answer who originally funded it that's how it shows in the financial statements so there was basically cash that was borrowed I'm I'm assuming there was some sort of jurisdic I mean that's the way it's been ever since I've I've been here and it's been split between the the two of them for financial purposes um it's just to show you never show in a financial statement a negative fund balance so to correct that negative fund balance there's it's really just on the books it's a transfer but it does impact cash of when we go into our 10-year plans and looking at it so it was the electric fund that paid for it that was transferred to those funds later on back when jeie day was the director here okay I'll have more conversations later uh oh good that is one I got understand it I don't understand he every we even got down that road I have one more question in terms of the fiber optic fund um while we were having conversations around the community center and the cost of utilities it seemed that the fiber optics cuz it's housed within the community center was also sharing those utilities is there a way in which to parse that out or get a better sense of what the fiber optics is utilizing versus what you know is the utilities for the library are not easily when when I did the tour of it it looks like there's only a few switches in there that would use electricity they don't seem to be because those racks are empty except for a few at the far end and some of that belongs to zo some what belongs to us okay um we they actually own a cable and it has so many strands in it and we own like a couple of strands or a few strands that are in and they own the rest of it so the contract was pretty complicated back in the day and it's a very unique situation um I've been talking with SE recently we're setting up an appointment for them to come out and take a look at that room to see I mean what if we had to move the fiber that is there across the street to the Public Works building um just to get a better idea of how that all operated back then that was people that worked that out in Roseville and here are no longer here so got it thank you nothing further how about we do yeah 628 sorry 628 can I get a call for adjournment so moved so moved council member Wong second second council member Cole all those in favor say hi hi I all right