I could uh get everybody's attention here and I'll be out of uh we'll be out of the way here and handing it over to the main event as quickly as possible. Um welcome to everyone who is attending this evening. Um this is this meeting or this evening's meeting is being cablecast live on YouTube and is available there for anyone to view. Um tonight's meeting is not a town board meeting per se, but a meeting of the people of Whitebear Township. Town board sitting back there and up here members are present as well as staff and town consultants uh as resources for discussion this evening. Um the main part of the presentation is the proposed preliminary tax levy for 2026. When it comes to a vote, only township residents have the privilege of voting this evening. Uh since this meeting is not a town board meeting, uh it will be run by a moderator. And uh at this time, I'd like to ask for a volunteer to be our moderator. Bob Keris, Township resident, former supervisor, board of supervisors, has volunteered. Uh, at this time, I would ask for a motion to accept Bob Keras as our moderator this evening. There's a first. Can I get a second? Second. All in favor? I. All right. Uh, at this point, I will turn it over to Bob. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you, Pat. Okay, we have an agenda. Uh hopefully everybody has signed in at the door so we know who's here. And if you didn't get an agenda, they do have a pile of them over there on the table. Uh to so that we conduct the meeting and keep things in fairly to good order, we'll follow a a modified Robert's rules of order process. Um if you have any during the proceedings if you have any comments or questions uh please identify yourself with your name and your address and um then we'll be taking minutes. Of course the town clerk is responsible for that. So he's arranged to have minutes made for the meeting. Okay. So if there's unless there's any questions about those issues. Uh the first item on or the next item on the agenda is to approve the meeting minutes from last year's annual meeting. There's a copy in the packet that was also uh posted on the township's website. So it's been available for some time to read. Uh hopefully we don't have go hopefully we don't have to go through it right now. So if I can have a motion to approve those minutes please. Okay. Okay, there's a motion. Is there a second to approve those minutes? Second. There's a second. Okay. Uh those if in favor of approving the annual meeting uh minutes for 20 Yeah. for 2024. Yeah. Please say I. I. Any opposed? I got that mixed up. Okay. The next item. Yeah, we do have to approve this agenda. So, I need a a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Is there a second? Second. Those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Thank you. That motion passes. Okay. Uh we do have some distinguished visitors tonight from the state legislature and from the county uh county attorney's office. Um Senator Heather Gusfson is with us. Uh if you'd like to make a few comments. Hi everybody. I'm Heather Gustoson. I live in Vadness Heights. So don't hold that against me. But I am uh I represent um this area. So White Bear Township is something I often talk at the talk about at the capital because it is so unique. In fact, I had at least two meetings today um that had to do with White Bear Township. One was um we are reintroducing a bill on $300 million for public safety. And last time since it was my bill, it uh all of the public safety funds were allocated to uh every city, county, and tribal nation in Minnesota. And then I added and every township of population of 10,000 or more, which is only one, but it's mine. So, we made sure we got it. Thank you. here. Um and I remember the phone call that I got on the floor where um I believe one of the and I won't say who but one of the members sitting here at the table was yelling why did the seven we had some uh dollars that were also allotted for your transportation and your roads and um that infrastructure and I remember that we were looking at a dollar amount around 7 million and then the public safety went forward and I sent that out expect to all of our my cities and I said hey look this just passed you've got money here allotted for public safety. And he uh one of them replied back, "What happened to the 7 million? This is politics. Now we only have $450,000. This is crazy." And I was like, "No, this is in addition to the $7 million for your roads." And so it was a moment of like, "Oh, thank you." Um, but no, I those were uh those were different times. we're uh going to be uh d or introducing that language again. We'll see where it goes. But I just want you to know that you are always sort of top of mind because I know that you have a unique township situation and that most townships are oh man less than 5,000. Um and even that is probably only a couple. And so uh when I talk about my township I always have to tell the story of my township and therefore people get very tired of me talking about Whitebear Township. But um it is uh you are I in my view are um all of the uh loveliness of a township and the unique democratic process that we have here and that we enjoy here. But also you have a lot of the trappings of a city in a second tier suburb where you are facing a lot more wear and tear to your roads. You have housing issues. you have all of the things that White Bear Lake and Vadness Heights and Gem Lake and um you know, Circle Pines and Centerville have as well. Um but you have different resources and different ways of organizing those funds. So I I understand that and um just know that you are something I I talk about regularly because I want to make sure that you're being um represented and supported in however best we can do that. So um it looks like you have a big list in front of you tonight. a lot of big decisions, a lot of things that you need to look at from previous years and going forward. And I know that weighs heavy on you. Anybody who makes budgets, that weighs heavy and it's a lot of decisions and some of those decisions are really hard. Um, and um, they don't get easier. And as you all sit here today, I just think that this is a wonderful example of when people get together to decide how those money how that money should be spent and where it should go. And um I I just uh want to say thank you again for letting me represent you at the Senate. Thank you for welcoming me here tonight. And uh my office and my uh email always open. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know. Um we're in session now. It's crazy, but after it's over, um we have lots of time. And if anybody here would love to grab a cup of coffee or um you know just meet at the park and kind of tell me what's going on and things that I could do maybe to help you and your family in any way I would like I would like to do that. So um I'm easy to find. Um and I I hope you do reach out if you need anything. So thank you so much. [Applause] Thank you, Senator. Uh I have to back up a little bit. I have one more housekeeping item here. I mentioned Robert's rules of order. We do have a parliamentarian in the house and that's the town attorney Chad Lemons. So, if any technical issues come up with Robert's rules of order, he's going to have to answer them. Okay. We also have uh our county commissioner here and Terry Jabins Singh. I hope I didn't destroy that too much. Thank you. Hello. So, my name is Tara Jubbins Singh and I am the Ramsey County Commissioner for District 1. So, that is Ardan Hills, Mounds View, Badness Heights, Shore View, Gem Lake, North Oaks, Whitebear Township, and a little bit of Blaine and Spring Lake Park. I always start left to right. Uh I will say I have a soft spot for Whitebear Township for a couple of reasons. Um, one is that uh a couple of jobs ago I worked for Wiper Lake Area Schools and so did a lot of work in this area and all the second reason is because uh my colleague uh Kelly Miller who represents uh district district 7, our our districts overlap like this and because of the unique territory of the township, it means that she and I get to collaborate even more in this northeast metro. Um which is always a good thing. Um I just want to say thank you. This is I I'm very new into this role. Uh and one of the things that I'm finding more and more uh is really key to having worked with several of the folks in the different levels of government is to see how the folks at the township level, at the school districts, at the county, the state level, and even our federal government are in communication. Um knowing that uh collectively we all have our little piece of the puzzle um that serves the community. So, I I appreciate being invited to this kind of a a format so that we can continue those conversations. Um, one of the things I just wanted to say is that um I have a little bit of experience with some of the folks at the township also for my last job which which was at Northeast Youth and Family Services. Um, and the reason why I bring that up is I come from a health and human services background working with older adults and new arrivals, folks with disabilities and those living with mental health issues. Um and during this time, um there's been a lot of uncertainty about some of the funding that supports some of our most vulnerable friends and family and neighbors. Um and so this is something I've been really working on. It's the advocacy that I bring to the county. We have our own um systems to to make sure we're doing better at serving community um and then advocating across the different different lines of government. So, um, all I want to say is that, uh, we have our, uh, our District 1 website is up. All the contact information is there. I encourage everybody to sign up for our newsletter, and don't ever hesitate to reach out if you have an issue um, with the county or that maybe just somebody in the local level can help get you connected to whoever should be um, helping you get the services that you need. Um, so thank you for for letting me be here today and uh let's keep this conversation going so that you get the services and the representation that you need and whether that's from your township supervisors or from those of us at the county all the way all the way up to the top um we'll do the best we can to to serve you the best we can. So thank you. Thank you commissioner. Uh, I understand we also have a couple of represent a couple of representatives from the county attorney's office. Correct. Uh, Chris Tolbert and Rich Alter. Would you like to make some comments for us? Okay. [Music] Well, thank you very much for having us here today. My name is uh Chris Tolbert. I'm the executive officer in the Ramsey County Attorney's Office. Um, thank you for the invite here today. I know John Choy, our county attorney, wanted to be here. Um, but he is teaching a class at Metro State this semester on Tuesday nights, so he was unable to attend because his students call. But I'm here today with Rich Alter from the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office. Uh we're here in partnership um because really our sheriff and our county attorney's office are really in great partnership right now and we wanted to highlight a few things that our office has been working on. Uh Rich is actually on loan or granted into our office. He's Ramsey County Sheriff but he's embedded in the Ramsey County Attorney's Office um because of the great partnership that we have on with Sheriff Fletcher and and Ramsey County Attorney John Choy. So we're going to highlight maybe just a few things that we're working on. And I know Rich will talk about the the crime or lack thereof of crime in White Bear Township. Um, which is a good thing to say. Um, but then we wanted to kind of highlight some of the things that are going on in the county. Um, and and flag those things that County Attorney Choy wanted to highlight as well as Sheriff Fletcher. So, Rich, do you want to talk a little bit about Sure. Um, yep. Thank you. Yeah. Uh, so I've been with the sheriff's office for 23 years. I used to write reports back in the little room there. I was the SRO for Bel Air School. I've eaten a lot of lunches at Bel Air Park with uh students who maybe needed a little extra attention that day. Let's get out of the environment and go enjoy the lake. And uh so I I I do love White Bear Township. I think my wife and I maybe we should have bought the house on Buffalo Street that we looked at years ago, but I am uh in St. Paul and I'm missing my commissioner at the moment. She's we're minus one. Uh, so I live in in the Midway. Uh, so like Chris said, Sheriff Fletcher and County Attorney John Choy have collaborated on a few things over the last few years. They're both big thinkers. All right, I'm sorry. They both have big ideas and I've been lucky enough to work at the crossroads of a couple of them. One is autotheft and carjacking. So in 2021, we put together a team. You know, uh, carjacking was on the rise. you may have seen in the news in your neighborhoods possibly. Although I looked at the stats for Whitebear Township and it was really nice to see how little crime there was. So it's awesome awesome place to live. But uh Sheriff Fletcher put together the carjacking and autotheft team and I was in on the ground floor of that in 2021. We thought we were going to get a break after the after the state fair and then uh next thing I know we're launching a big initiative. So, the fundamentals of that, which the uh county attorney got in on and and and assisted with, were to apprehend offenders, find out what their families need for help, start trying to assist and get services that are that are needed, uh, and then cooperate with the county attorney's office to build good cases and get convictions where needed. So some juveniles are diverted into helpful programs. Some are are high-risk, highnee families and you know continue with criminal activity and they are helped through the criminal justice system. So the work we've done is you you're getting a hand out. Thank you Chris. Appreciate that. Sorry to make you do that. Um carjacking and autotheft have reduced in Ramsey County tremendously. There's a slide in there that shows a uh a national story where we received attention. St. Paul compared with major metros all across the country was the highest in reduction. So, and uh at the very top you'll see a very long blue line, Rochester, New York. That's where I moved from to here. So, I think I made a good move. All right. Not quite to Way Township, but a pretty darn good move. Um, so the CAT team is out there hitting it hard. We've reduced autotheft and assisted other agencies and the cooperation with the county attorney's office has been fundamental in that. The other area where we also cooperate is non-fatal shooting investigations. Uh we learned from Denver with their tremendous work in in non-fatal shootings that if you attack a case just like a homicide, if it's a non-fatal shooting where someone is struck with a bullet, but that they're not uh killed, it's not a homicide, but you put the same resources into that case as you would a homicide, you can solve that case. And St. Police Department has the majority of those cases. They have increased their clearance rate tremendously by putting together a specific non-fatal shooting team. So, they're doing awesome work. The sheriff's office at the same time put together a non-fatal shooting team. And since there are no actual non-fatal shootings in the contract cities at this point, we're able to focus on worrisome people who are showing potential guns posted on social media. uh guns flaunted on the train. You know, anybody who's a potential threat, we can take a look hard at that and try to stop shootings before they're shootings. We're trying to h stop homicides by stopping shootings. Well, now let's try to just stop gun violence before it even becomes a shooting. So, there's my two cents. I'll leave some cards also if anybody needs to get in touch, feel free to give me a call. Thank you, Rich. And just to kind of um cap that off, a lot of this work and those numbers, you can see they're pretty um those charts I think are pretty powerful. That's because of partnership. And I think as uh local government officials, you know, how important partnerships are or how detrimental the lack of partnerships can be. And I will say the partnership between the sheriff's office and the county attorney's office is one of the best that's been in my career. And that's that's part of the reason we're working on this crime. And the last thing I just want to flag, um, there's a new, relatively new law in the state of Minnesota called the Minnesota Extreme Risk Protection Order. Um, and hopefully this is not something that nobody in here has to deal with, but we're trying to get this information out here because it's really important. um especially in today's day and age and I have found that oftentimes when you're a local elected official or in involved community member um you you hear things and maybe 6 months or two years down the road you're like oh someone told me about that let me make that connection so I'm just flagging that for you but the Minnesota Extreme Risk Protection Order is a law that allows a court based on um petition by a law enforcement agency or a family member um to confiscate guns for a certain period of time. And that's for the purpose of preventing potential acts of violence, suicide, domestic abuse, or mass shootings. And um this has been happening in Minnesota for a while. Um family members will contact our agency. We have a specific attorney um that works on this. They have a family member who is uh very suicidal, who might have a lot of firearms. the family will petition the court uh to do a temporary um confiscation of those guns. Eventually, they the person can get them back if they show the cause, but it's really to protect against suicide um and of course mass shootings um or school shootings or things like that. But um it's a very limited gun control law um for a very limit limited circumstance. But if you know someone or if you know of that, contact law enforcement. Um contact our office. We have a person, a county attorney named Don Basque, who is our specialist on it, but we just wanted to flag that for people because it's a new law that could be very useful and save lives. So, um, that's the update from the county attorney's office. Um, thank you for the opportunity and I don't know if you guys are doing question or anything, but I know both Rich and I would be happy to answer them. you have res um the grant that established the uh C team is uh is that going to be able to continue? That is yet to be seen. We sure hope so. We are absolutely continuing to communicate with those grant providers and and give all our latest stats and you may even know more about that, Chris. Yeah, the grant was allocated to the county attorney's office and the sheriff's office. I believe it was $800,000 grant in 2021 um by the department. It was a department of justice grant. Um a lot of it has been been used um to pay for um for the work that we've been doing. Some of it is still there. Obviously with what's going on in the federal government right now, we're all on edge about every grant. Um the county attorney's office, the sheriff's office, and of course Ramsey County receives a substantial amount of important money for, you know, paying for police officers, paying for county attorneys, paying for um our public safety folks. Um but I think anyone who watches the news knows we're not sure what's going to happen tomorrow um with with the current federal administration. So we're watching it, but we're hoping so. And we we think it's a very beneficial grant. And if if if you don't believe me, look at the numbers. Anybody else? Thank you guys for having us. Appreciate it. Thanks, Chris. [Applause] Okay, it brings us to the meat of tonight's meeting and that's to uh review the preliminary tax levy and the town finance officer Tom Kelly will do that presentation. It's all yours, Tom. Thank you, Bob. Uh first of all, before we get into the tax levy, uh we do want to talk about uh Heather uh or Senator Gustoson uh mentioned us receiving some funds from the state. And we want to thank Senator Heather Gustoson for working to help the township get $7 million from the state uh surplus last year or a couple years ago. And uh the only real restriction on it is that it needs to be used for infrastructure improvements. And we did receive the funds uh in uh July of 2024. And uh oops. And uh like I said, the only restriction is that it needs to be used on infrastructure projects. Uh which was the intent. Uh we were able, as I said, we got the money in July. Uh we've had it invested as we try to figure out uh what to do with the money. Uh the town board just did approve a funding uh plan for that money where uh we're going to spend 100% of the interest earned each year uh plus an amount equal to 50% of the interest of the principal uh to buy down uh the bonds that we've been issuing to fund these infrastructure projects. Uh, and what that basically means if if we earn, let's just say $100,000 of interest in a given year, we would use that h 100,000 plus another 50,000 of the 7 million that we received uh for a total of 150,000. Uh that would be then uh reduce the bond issue that we would have. Uh the plan is uh by lowering the bonds, the amount of bonds that we'd issue, it would then reduce the property tax levy uh that we uh have to uh get approved uh to pay back those bonds. So again, using the example of the 150 that I just described, if the town had projects where we needed to issue two $2,150,000 in bonds, uh we'd only issue $2 million in bonds. Um, basically, uh, over a 10-year period, which is what we generally issue those bonds, uh, it would save about $15,000 uh, less that we'd have to levy for in principle and then approximately $4,000 to $5,000 in interest costs each year. Uh, so we'd be levying about $20,000 less each year. uh in uh uh tax levy. Uh so you not get away from the uh debt levy completely, but uh at least it would be reduced from what uh we've been doing in the past. With that, I'll go on to the uh 2026 uh preliminary tax levy uh presentation and uh Yes. Can I ask a question? Sure. Actually, I thought we were going to try to get through the presentation. No, we can do the Okay. Cheryl Smith, 5713 Jenny Lane. So on that proposal that you had just mentioned where it was 100% of interest and 50%. Were there uh there was another and I haven't seen the minutes posted online about monies being used for any assessments. Uh we're currently not going to use it for any of the assessments. The the problem we have with using it on the assessments. In order to issue the bonds, we have to assess uh at least 20% of the project costs. Mhm. And with what our assessments have been the last few years, we're bumping up against that 20%. And so we can't really use it to reduce the assessments. And by reducing the assessments, we're only affecting the people that are in the project area whereby putting it towards reducing the bonds that we issue, it affects everybody in the township. So you're not going to look at that as a casebyase basis? No. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Uh as always, I always start off by uh announcing the three awards that we do receive from the government finance officers officers association. And the white one there is on uh the town's popular report that we put out each fall that summarizes our uh our audit report. Uh we've received that award uh nine times. Uh the middle one there is for our budget uh a document. Uh we've received that uh for the 23rd time. And then the uh far end one is for our actual audit report which we've received 29 times. Uh the township is only one of 12 governments in Minnesota to receive all three of the awards from the GFOA. Hey, Tom. Yes, sir. Rand 5655 Portland Avenue. Um, just one question. By your example, you've had those funds now for a little while. What type of revenue are you seeing on the $7 million, let's say monthly? And then second part of that question and I can hand the microphone back to Pat is um when you're talking about the additional 50% investment, are you talking about pulling that from the $7 million fund so then that will dwindle or are you talking about subsidizing that in other ways? Yeah, we got the money in uh about July. Uh with the investments that we can uh invest in because we're restricted by the state statute, uh we are getting about we invested it anywhere between four to 5%. And so we're getting for 2024 we got about 200,000 a little bit more than 200,000 in interest earnings on it. uh once we get you know now that we've got it and we'll have it for the full year we'll you know basically double that as except we'll be pulling down some of the principal and yes the 50% would be drawn from the 7 million the town already somewhat supplements uh the um project cost because there's uh water, uh, sewer, storm work that usually goes into that that comes from other town funds, uh, that pays for that. And then depending on what we can assess, we sometimes have to supplement uh, the project costs uh, because the assessments aren't totally covering those costs. So, do you have a sense of what the duration might look like that $7 million? We ran out a projection uh quickly last week and uh we ran it over 30 years and it was still doing just fine. So, it'll last us a while. It'll get us through this wave of road improvements. uh you know we we're on year seven I think of our road projects six for and we had them projected out for 10 years. Uh so it'll get us through the next four years if you will and then we'll still have some of plenty of funds for when we have to start it all over again. And because this time, and Larry can correct me if I'm wrong, but this time a lot of the roads we were able to do mills and overlays. You can only do those so long and then you've got to come in and do uh full reconstruction reconstruction, which is going to be much more costly and so forth. And so we'll still have plenty of those funds left to help uh finance those projects into the future. Does that answer your questions? Okay. Uh going on to the 2026 preliminary levy. Uh you've all heard this before, but this is our worst case scenario. Uh we don't know a lot of the costs because nobody's started their budgets and we contract with other communities for so many services and stuff. Uh so we just don't know what uh our expenditures are going to be. So we use conservative res revenue uh estimates and then worst case uh expenditure. Uh again uh once the levy is set tonight, we can always lower the levy during our our budget process, but we cannot exceed whatever is approved tonight. The uh final budget and levy will be presented at our budget meeting uh on December 1st uh which is a Monday night uh this year uh and it'll be held here and that was voted on uh at last year's budget meeting. As I said, this is our worst case scenario. Uh this chart uh shows the red uh is what the preliminary levies have been in the past and then the yellow is what we've actually ended up uh with a final levy and that your your property taxes are uh on. For example, uh 2025 we had a preliminary levy of just over 6,535,000. we ended up with a final levy uh just over uh 6,212,000. So uh we hope that'll be the case again this year uh for 2026 and uh we think it will be with what we have proposed right now. As it stands we have a proposed preliminary property tax levy of $7,37,500. Uh that is an 11.82% increase from uh the 2025 preliminary levy and it's really based on the 2023 and 2024 actual revenues and expenditures plus some inflationary uh increases and then we do have uh some other increases. Uh the operational levy which funds our general fund is only a 9.2% 2% above last year's preliminary levy and the rest of it is in our debt service which is increasing uh because we're still doing road projects. Some of the changes that we did have to make that are outside of the inflationary and not based on uh previous results is uh our rental licenses and animal licenses. are collected in even years. Uh so they'll be collected in 2026. They're two-year licenses and that generates about $5,650. Uh we left our state and county aids at our 2025 amounts, which is $90,000. And then uh we left our fiscal disparities at $437,450 which is the same as it was in 2020 uh5. However, since we did increase our levy in 2025, we and uh things keep increasing in value, we should see an increase in our fiscal disparities. Um wages are based on our union contract. Uh we had a three-year union contract uh that we signed uh last year. So we'll be 2026 will be the last year of that contract and it calls for a 35% cost of living increase on January 1st. Uh we increased the amount budgeted for uh public works summer help. Uh one of the problems everybody is having is finding help. Uh and we need that help to help patch streets and uh maintain our parks. And so we increased uh the budget for that. Hoping uh we get some of the kids back that we've had in the past. and uh and uh can actually draw some uh new uh blood into the summer help pool. Our health insurance, again, we don't know what that'll do. Uh we've typically seen about a 7% increase on our health insurance. Uh to be safe, we plugged 15% uh in on our health insurance. And then uh the park improvements and seal coat budgets uh both were increased $25,000 uh to $400,000 for park improvements and 175 uh for seal coding and those were based on our 10-year capital improvement plan. Um we'll see where that comes out as we go on. uh the sheriff's contract uh we did increase that 16% uh for 2026. Again, we don't know what that will be. Uh we have seen uh slightly higher increases in our sheriff's contract as they've been doing some shifting on the county budget and uh we expect that to continue in 2026. So, we plugged what we think is a high number there. Likewise, we did the same thing with our fire budget uh where we increased that uh just over 12%. Uh we did include the almost 185,000 for the debt service that city is trying to charge us on their new facility. And uh overall public the public safety area of our budget which includes police uh fire and then uh code enforcement and uh building inspections uh is increasing 9.23% for 2026 with what we have proposed. Next, as I said, we do uh have a debt levy. Uh the debt levy for 2026 is estimated at $714,50. I say it's estimated because we do estimate uh having a issuing bonds in 2025 here for our 2025 uh road project. I because the amounts were similar to what we had in 2019 as far as construction costs estimates. I estimated similar to what we had when the first year of the 2019 improvement bond. So uh I did uh include an estimate of $224,572 for uh that bond issue. Uh I'm hoping it's going to be lower than that at least for 2026. And then of course we do have still have the 2019A and the 20A and the 21A bonds that we issued for our road construction and those debt levies are going to be based on uh their current bond schedule. The town still does uh maintain a double A+ from standards in pores and then a double A1 from Moody's investors. Uh both of those are one step below AAA uh for bond ratings. So we are getting very good interest rates uh when we do go out in the market with that. Uh this is kind of a summary and a comparison of our preliminary levy. Again, it's uh being estimated at 7,37,000500. And you can see that our operating levy uh which pays for our general expenses. Uh the general fund is being proposed at $6,156,000. the fiscal disparities uh I left at $437450 and then our uh now four bond issues and you can see that the uh big change there is really that having that estimate for the 2025 uh bond issue. So, if you take uh and again, I left the town's tax capacity at uh what the county estimates it estimated it for 2025 at 21,667,877. Uh with that proposed levy, it would give us a tax rate of 31.706 uh which compares to uh last year we had an estimate of 28.961 for the 20202. And what that basically means is if your property uh if your home value uh remained the same for 2025 and 2026, uh you would see a township tax increase of about $10 and between about $10 and about $22. And that's on homes valued at between uh 256,624 and [Music] 513,248. Again, as we do go through our budget process, we can lower the levy uh but we cannot exceed whatever is approved tonight. And as always, this is our worst case scenario. And so with that, I will uh what you're going to be asked is to approve a proposed 2026 preliminary property tax levy of $7,37,000500. Uh and with that, I will take any questions. Got a mic. Anybody needs to ask a question? Ron Denigan, 5655 Portland Avenue. Um, now in your statement you said if home values remain the same, what is the projected increase in home values across the township? Do you have that information? Well, the county assessor has not provided us with that yet. Um, you should be getting your your tax notices of what that value is. I I live in Henipin County and I got I received mine last Saturday. Uh, this is the typical time of the year when they do send out those those values. Um, I haven't heard anybody say that they've received theirs yet. So Ramsey County might be a little bit behind. Uh last year uh the median value home in the township and our our overall tax capacity went up uh just under 5%. Uh in the past it's gone up almost double digits. So I'm not really sure. I'm going to guess for 2026 it's going to be similar to 2025, but until they uh send out those notices, they don't give us much information on it. Depends on your house because yeah, mine's going up much more than that. So, yeah. Um just curious if you had that information. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Greg Hubinger, 5476 Bald Eagle Boulevard East. On slide 10, you indicate that the preliminary level levy increase percentage is compared to the preliminary number for 2024 25 sorry 25. Why don't you use the real number and use the actual for 2025? I thought about that. Um the final levy versus the preliminary levy this year the difference is about 17%. Um but I always struggle with do you compare apples to apples which would be preliminary to preliminary or do you use final? I don't know. It would definitely look worse because the real number that's Yeah. And I expect when we get, you know, as we go through our budget process and we start getting all those numbers from the county, from the city, um, and our other contractors and so forth, I expect will be even lower than the 11 10% we are preliminary to preliminary. I I think we'll end up, you know, in the single digits for for uh levy increase. I mean, we typically try to get it down as low, you know, as low as we can. Um, our 2025 uh tax rate uh is now uh the second lowest in Ramsey County um compared to all the other cities. Uh even with this proposed levy, comparing it to everybody's proposed levies last year, uh we'd only be the sixth highest or sixth lowest uh for our tax rate. Um so I'm hoping we're going to come down considerably. Can I ask a second question? Sure. Um, I noticed on slide um 13 that your estimated increase for law enforcement is 16%. And I know that we contract for services for RA for Ramsey County for that. It's a contract. Has the board thought about um a standard business practice and request proposals from the city of White Bear for that service? Uh probably not from White Bear, but at least not right now with the uh dispute with the fire contract. Uh but we have in the past looked at White Bear. Uh we did a few years ago. Um and they weren't any cheaper. Um and in fact we do uh the city of Gem Lake uh financials uh for them. Uh they contract with us for for that services and so I know their budget and they do contract uh both police and fire with uh White Bear Lake and their police budget has been going up higher than the sheriff's contract. It doesn't mean ours would, but I'm guessing it would based on that. Mike Demar's um 5474 Peterson. Um the first question is um slide 10. It has the increase of 11.82% from last year. Um, that seems steep just as a as a like a purely percentage number. How does that compare with other uh maybe not towns but cities, you know, around the area? Is that a pretty standard increase? Uh, are other cities seeing that same increase? Well, uh, because we're a township, we have to have this approved tonight. Other cities haven't even started their 2026 budget process yet. Um we uh going from last year's um final when we had our budget meeting in December and with everybody else at that time doing their final budgets and tax levies. Uh we were one of the lower uh communities for tax levy increase. Uh, a lot of the cities around us were actually seeing, for whatever reason, doubledigit uh, property tax increases. Um, and I don't know what was driving that for them. Uh, that it wasn't doing it for us. So, um, we have typically, uh, been one of the lower ones. Uh for years we were always the second lowest uh tax rate in the county uh which is based on our levy and our our values. The uh for a while with issuing the debt and so forth, we jumped up to uh fourth and fifth lowest in the county. And then last year, uh, because, like I said, some of these other communities were seeing big doubledigit increases, uh, based on those, uh, levy amounts, uh, we actually dropped back down to second lowest in the county. [Music] Um I guess on that same vein, so on um slide 15, it mentions um a debt levy of almost 3/4 of a million and that's an increase of over a quarter of a million. Um can you speak a little bit more on what the purpose of the debt levy is? Um sure. Sure. Um, basically what the town does when we have uh road projects, uh, depending on the size of the road project for that year, we will issue what they call 429 bonds, which are special assessment bonds. uh meaning that we will assess uh the property owners at least 20% of project costs uh for the affected properties. Then uh there are other uh parts of that u debt that we'll issue because we're only assessing as I said we're assessing right around 25% of the project costs in the past the town has to make up the rest of that and so when we issue the debt we have to provide funding sources and our funding sources will be those specialists assessments. It'll be our water, our sewer, and our storm water uh funds for those shares cost of the project. And then there will be another portion of the town's that the town is picking up that we actually have to have a property tax levy for. And that is what we're going to use the infrastructure fund to help reduce that portion of the levy. Hi, Brett Day again. 1226 Pawn View Lane. Um, you said that the you have to do this vote tonight. Can you explain why that is and u would there be an opportunity? This seems like a lot of guesswork honestly. A lot of uh unknowns for sure. Um why does the township have to do it tonight? Simple question. Simple answer. Okay. Cuz we're a township and the law says we have to. Yes. We have to have an annual meeting. Now, the residents of Whitebear Township actually voted uh before I even started here, which I hate to say it, it's going on 36 years. Um they voted to have a second special meeting in the fall for adopting their budget. So, we have a budget meeting it that's going to be on uh December 1st uh because the residents elected to to split those two things. Otherwise, tonight you would be actually adopting our 2026 budget and final levy tonight if we didn't have that special one in the fall. So, we have to do this tonight. kind of set our high end worst case scenario levy. Then we can set go during our budget process and lower it. And we actually have to send a uh preliminary levy to the county by the end of September, which they use to to send out the property tax notices that you receive in the fall. um telling you when the budget meeting is and and all of that. And then from there, we can lower it even further to get to whatever we present at that budget meeting on December 1st. Yes. Statutoily, every township in Minnesota is required to meet on the second Tuesday of March to conduct this exact meeting. Very neat. There's a special Sorry that our senator wasn't senator wasn't here to uh maybe help with that because this seems really u you know I'm on the board of an HOA in the township and kind of doing it this way. You know, we had to wait till the last minute to get our insurance policy. Sure. And it's like had we tried to do it at this point, we would be way under um with no money coming in to do that. So I I would just hope that the uh board of supervisors and our county commissioners would would advocate for doing this at a later date for I imagine it would help all the townships. It probably would. Any other questions? [Music] Jim Lynn, 2642 Suzanne Circle. Um, just a quick question about the overall levy and capital expenditures that you may have figured into this. Is there any major ones besides the roads? And I see there's one for parks and and the maintenance there, but is there any other kind of major capital expenditures? I'm trying to remember for 2026 if we have anything major for public works equipment or not. I Yeah, but I think there's smaller trucks. [Music] So, no, it's just and there again, it's based on the 2025 to 2034 10-year capital improvement plan. As part of our budget process, we refined all the uh capital items that are in 26 and we'll actually add 2035 to our plan. But uh all of those can get refined. So, if there's like pickup trucks or something that, you know, they maybe don't need or they estimated too high based on current pricing or something or not enough, they can adjust all those and and we'll build that into our 2026 budget uh as we're doing doing that. But uh yeah, that plan can still again it's too early in the process to refine that and really know Ralph Tilma 4294 Lane. Uh the term fiscal disparities is really mysterious to me and um I'm not sure what it is. Um, but I think the state is handing over money because we can't pay enough taxes. What? Correct. No, it's somewhat correct, but not correct. Fiscal disparities is a revenue sharing pool based on everybody the seven county metro areas commercial and industrial tax base. So every com community in the seven county metro area based on their commercial and industrial uh tax taxes contributes to the fiscal disparities pool. And then based on this con convoluted formula they then calculate out what your contribution back is. what they are what they've they created it the fiscal disparities pool in the early70s based on uh the city of Bloomington developing uh kind of along the 494 corridor there uh the communities in the north metro were feeling like they were I don't for lack of a better word, getting shorted on being able to attract commercial development. And so they created this fiscal sh fiscal disparities sharing pool. And like I say, it's based on your commercial values. The township pays into it. And when I say we pay into it, it's basically just calculated on the taxes. We don't really pay anything. But then we get money back. And because of the way the formula works, generally if you increase your property taxes, you'll get more money the next year. Makes perfect. No, basically it's saying we don't have a lot of industry base here. Other municipalities do. They're getting more tax money because they have businesses that can pay that where we don't. We're putting the burden of the township on the backs of residents, not commercial businesses. They're try Well, they're trying to take it off of you by pulling taxes from other commercial development that is in other communities. So, we're getting money from, say, the city of Bloomington's commercial buildings to lower your property taxes. We're a net gainer. We're a net gainer. They didn't have the pressure on the state to do something. uh his the gentleman's name and it's referred to uh and I don't to be honest with you I I'm guessing he is no longer alive but I don't know that for a fact but uh the author of the bill was a Charlie Weaver and he was from Brooklyn Park or he represented that area I should say I don't know that he was from time to explain that to the house to get them to go [Music] else Taylor 5211 Bald Eagle Boulevard. Uh if you addressed this already, my apologies, but it says here that the um levy can't exceed the preliminary levy. But in the past, um it says the property tax can go down. In the past, has it gone down? And what's the probability of that going down from your preliminary budget? and by how much or what's the amounts the others have reduced if so. Yeah. Um in the past it typically has gone down. Um let me see if I can find that chart real quick. Got to be getting close. There it is. Uh this chart, uh the red bar is our preliminary levies, uh starting in 2014, I believe, and going through 2025. Um and you can and the yellow bar is what our final levy was. So you can see that it typically has gone down. Uh again, uh as we start to learn some of these other costs, you know, what our sheriff's contract is actually going to go up, uh what our fire budget's going to go up, um elections, some of the other things that we contract out for. Uh likewise, our health insurance. Uh um hopefully we can bring this levy down. Um, one of the big things we don't know is, uh, with the road projects and issuing bonds for it, we since we haven't issued the bonds, we don't know what the payment schedule is going to be like. So, we don't know what that levy is going to be uh, for the 2025 bond. And I'm projecting that one off of a previous one. Um, and hopefully it'll be lower at least for 2026. Uh but uh so again it is our worst case scenario and we're hoping like in the past we can uh bring that down. I wanted to ask for Mike Demar again 5474 Peterson. Um I I noticed I think last year the sheriff's contract was also up or we had to re-up it. Um, do we ever consider doing multi-year contracts to maybe lock in a better price or or not? And that wouldn't even just apply to the sheriff's contract. Maybe any contracts that we do on a yearly basis. Um, I will turn that one over to Pat who actually gets to go to the sheriff contract meetings every month and uh they are the ones that actually uh discuss the sheriff's budget and what everybody will pay. And Tara could chime in on this one too. Um we have been talking about multi-years but right now the the plan is single year at least for this year. Um after that we are in discussions about multi-year but other contracts. Yeah I mean we just three years ago went out for RFP on our garbage hauler. Uh and that hadn't been done in 20 years. Um I mean those are examples of yeah we are trying to lock in better rates up front for sure. Or has there been any discussion about that at the board level or not yet as far as changing from single year to multi-year? It's just a matter of process, right? As far as I don't think it has anything to do with labor. I will say that one of the things though that has from from my understanding from both the sheriff's that's okay. My bad. From my understanding from both the sheriff's office and from the contract cities is that there has been a pretty favorable understanding of in order to uh recruit retain um our law officers and the very important work that they do and the excellent services they've been giving given uh in this labor market. It also includes um our local law enforcement and our folks across the river and other surrounding counties. So, it's a competitive market and and they're doing a great job and and so, you know, we that's part of the the marketing and the labor market of our negotiations with them is to make sure that we're honoring the work they do and can recruit and retain officers to do that fine work. So, that's that's part of the increases you're seeing. It's getting better for them. They're getting they're starting to recruit more employees. Anybody else? [Music] So, I just have one more question from that chart that you had put up that was hard to read, but it looked like from a 10-year gap, the increases have almost doubled in prices. So, and I don't Is that like inflationary or what do you attribute that to? Uh, mainly inflationary. Uh we have implemented uh a couple of different uh financing programs if you will like our capital equipment fund. We started uh where we've been uh based on the equipment that we own. We charge back to the departments that use that equipment uh based on the depreciation of the equipment. Uh the goal was to set that fee up at 105% of the depreciation cost. And when we started out with that, we were only uh plugging into the budget about 25% and we've been slowly ramping that up. Now in 2024 uh we finally got it to 100% and then last year we got it to the 105 that we're uh trying to project. And the idea behind that was when I first started, they would issue uh what they called equipment certificates, which were three-year uh for lack of a better word, three-year loan, uh that we'd then have to levy taxes for. Uh and we'd always have to get uh resident approval to issue the uh tax or the equipment certificates. Uh by implementing this equipment rental fee in the capital equipment fund, we can uh budget a set amount each year, set that money aside, and then when we need the replace the equipment, we have the funds available to buy it and not uh affect the levy cuz um and Dale will can chime in on this one, but uh the big plow trucks now cost us almost a half a million dollars. Now, we don't need one to buy one of those every year, obviously, but if we were to budget based on that equipment need every year that we need to budget for that big plow truck, all of a sudden, you got a half million dollar expenditure in your budget uh that you didn't plan on. This way we set aside, you know, um, you know, $5,000 or whatever that depreciation on that truck is each year. And our levy stays, uh, fairly flat for those equipment. But that's why some of those increases were as large as they were. No, they're they're actual equipment purchases. Um some of the equipment it's just too hard to rent. We do rent some equipment uh um for like uh Yeah. Yeah. We do, but it's an older speaker. We contract. We've had it for years. 20ome years old contract spring and fall street sweeping. So that's one way to reduce equipment cost. Tom, I'm getting back to K's kind of baseline question. I mean, wouldn't street projects have an impact on that levy? Street projects will have obviously I mean we went for years not doing any without having a a debt levy. Um and then in 2019 was our first bond issue for the street projects. Uh so 20 20 would have been the first year of uh restarting up a debt levy. Um and those as you could see on the one chart there uh you know they're over 10020,000 each year that goes towards those. Um again getting the $7 million from the state uh hopefully will help bring those costs down in the future. But uh still need to replace the streets. Anybody else? Once twice sold. I'll get out of your way. Okay. Thank you, Tom. These questions seem to get harder and harder every year, but Tom has the answers. Okay. And back to the agenda. The item number eight on the agenda is to announce the location. You got to have a motion to approve that. We need to approve. Oh, that's number eight. Yeah, you need to approve the levy. Okay. All right. It's up on the screen. Yeah. Sorry, that's my fault. Okay. So, we do need a motion to approve the levy. And that levy is set at 7 million. Is that a question or no? Oh, okay. 7 million7,500. Okay. Uh, is there a second to that motion? A second. Motion's been made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? If not, all of those in favor of accepting the proposed levy, tax levy, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? That motion [Music] passes. Okay. Now we can announce the location date time of the special town board budget meeting. And that's what Tom was referring to earlier. And that date is December 1st. It's a Monday uh December 1st, 2025 at 7:00 at this location. Night would What the heck do we do here? Yep, that's that's all you got to do is announce that and then uh Okay, this is all this is all part of the notice. Okay, now you got to and then there's a backup to that. So, if uh if the December 1st doesn't work, then we have a bad weather day to have that meeting and that is going to be December 3rd, 2025 at 7:00 again at this location. Okay. And next item on the agenda then is to uh set the time and location for the uh next annual meeting. this meeting and that has to be set by a vote from the floor. So the uh we need a motion to set the time and location for the 2026 annual meeting. It's suggested that we make that uh at Heritage Hall and that would be March 10th, 2026 at this location and it might or it might be located at the Otter Lake Elementary School and that'll be notice notified at the appropriate time. So, we need a motion to uh set that meeting date again. Okay. Is there a second? Second. Motion's made and seconded. So, we'll uh be voting to have the next annual meeting Tuesday, March 10th, 7:00, this location. Those in favor, please say I. Any opposed? That motion passes. Uh, last item on the agenda is for any other business. Is there any other business? Seeing none, I'll call for a motion to adjurnn. Is there a second? We are adjourned. Thank you, Mr.