Good afternoon. With it being 03:00, we're gonna start our, Dover City Council, our special meeting, this Monday, June 23, 3PM. We are here to do our long range city planning. With that, we'll call this meeting to order, and we'll begin, with a roll call. Roll the horn, please. Laura here. Steichen here. Now she here. Olson here. And on the staff side, Payton? Yes. Payton Masera. Hunter Rawson. Mike Dennis. Don Lorson. Peyton, we have our agenda in front of us, but I also see that we've got some great, great sheets of paper and some colored pencils.
I'm gonna turn it over to you. Thank you, mister mayor and members of the council. We wanted to have a conversation with the city council today in an effort to be more efficient, keep things more streamlined. We wanted to have our initial, long range planning meeting, with you just to give you an idea of what it is that the city is targeting to do over the next or for the next for the foreseeable future. A little different than a comp than a than a comp plan,
different than a strategic plan, which is more high level initiatives of the community. We're trying to get a little more granular here and talk about larger scale projects. What we are envisioning some initiatives that maybe we will be taking on, what maybe the city council would like to see us taking on as well, I think it just it's good to get everyone in the room periodically to have these conversations just so we understand big picture picture what we're gonna be focusing our efforts and bringing our attention to. With that in mind,
I have a this isn't we we don't have a set agenda or anything, but what we do have on your big sheets of paper, for it's double sided here. We had this broken down. Don and I kinda put this together, broken down into four different categories that we felt like were the most important to us to focus our efforts on. We can add to this. You'll see here in a moment, I've provided some thoughts on what some initiatives should be, what some descriptions should be. What comes out of this meeting.
Maybe it's a priority ranking. Maybe it's just something an internal document that we're gonna be utilizing so that we better understand where we need to be focusing our effort and energy. We're gonna be looking at some of the property we own in town, thinking about big picture, long term, where we see the community on the city facility front evolving into. So an example of that, we own property next to the maintenance shop over there. So taking a look at that property, where that is currently located, what we envision for that going forward
as we work to align our goals into the future, when we're thinking, do we need to actually be buying more land? Do we need to be looking at selling, disposing of this other shop over here? So just having those level of conversations and ideas just so you can understand, too, on a staff level some of these different concepts and things that we are discussing on a daily basis. Again, there's no set agenda. I don't have an outline of how we're going to do things. We'll sort of attack these one at a time. And so the first one being on the housing front,
right? So we're just thinking big terms of housing. I think a lot of the housing stuff got spurred on by the recent housing study that was led by Metro COG. You know, those findings were presented. You know, we talked about missing missing middle housing, but there are other things related to that. And so I'll show up on the screen sort of what what it is that, you know, that we have been sort of jotting down as far as, like, initiatives go and things that we will be looking at on in the upcoming future
here. So again, we identify that missing middle housing, you know, proposals, assistant options, trying to identify, what it is on the on the workforce housing front. You know, we have the one workforce housing project that got green lit last year on Third Avenue. And, you know, where do we need to be is this a focus of us? So it's one thing to have this missing middle initiative. But if the city council doesn't feel like we need to be developing any new standards or does not feel like we need to be incentivizing beyond what we do
or focusing our attention to missing middle housing, we can strike it from the list altogether. And then we, you know, have a few other things on the housing front that we have listed there on single family and accessory housing units. These sheets of paper just to take notes, jot down anything you want to. Don't jot down anything you don't want to, so it's totally up to you. I just wanted to have something there for you, to you know, there as a guide. So with that said, Don, I don't know if you have anything on the housing front that you would like to discuss or make mention of things that's sort of on your mind in the
on the housing side of things. You want me to just go from top to bottom? Yes. You can do that. Thank you. So yes, so missing middle housing review proposals. This is just simply if developers bring us proposals for review, say, Hey, we want to put in a dozen townhouses, as an example, two to three bedroom townhouses. This is the area we're looking at. We're going to subdivide that. We want you guys to come and put the infrastructure in, just like you do with a single family or whatever. So that would be just as proposals come in. Right now,
just so you know, and we'll jump down to two a little bit, The only appetite out there because of the interest rates and where everything is at with the cost of materials, we would have to if we were to want to build some today in 2025, we'd have to put it out additional incentives. And we've heard it before, whether we would own the property and there'd be a write down on the property or whether now we would do something with the specials, hold the specials for one, two or three years, beyond what we do already because we already do the new homeowners.
Those that are in there, the owners get the two year, property taxes coming back. So tax abatement, basically. So first one is just as things come in, and they will eventually come in again. It's this stuff's cyclical. It will come in. Mayor? Tom, could you just please call me, Chad? No. I appreciate it. So with that, I just wanna make sure I'm understanding this correctly. Right now, there's not a private appetite to be building for the missing mill. Am I understanding that correctly? Well, I mean, I just got Peyton just got an email that he sent to me,
and they're looking for city property. Mhmm. It was a major a major builder and not from this area. So And you're gonna see more of that. So they want us to own the land and they build on it? Well, they they want us to write down the land. They'd want us to buy or they're what they're looking for is they've got x number of townhouses. This is an example. Say there's a dozen townhouses. Do we have a piece of x you know, basically, it would be x number of acres of city property that we already own that, you know, theoretically, we would sell to them and I would assume some kind of reduction,
reduced price or whatever. So they're just out on a fishing expedition right now trying to find and locate property like that. We don't have that. Obviously, we'll share with them our development partners, but our development partners typically want full rate for the stuff. So that's what's happening right now. Numbers May I do one more interjection, Don? The other reason why this is an important discussion point, We're under we're doing our comprehensive plan right now. We're sitting down, last week, the way just been the week before, with the few planning commissioners on our future land use map,
trying to identify different areas of town where we can incorporate more missing middle housing. A lot of that came out in the Eighth Avenue corridor study that we were doing. They really got down to the nuts and bolts of it as far as saying this is where we would like to see it. However, as part of those conversations, something that struck me, by one of the members, it's, you you know, what what do we pride Dilworth on? You know, having larger single family lives. Okay? That's fine. So we have to make sure,
but there's some sort of alignment, though, with what the council wants to see versus what our future land use map is and ensuring all those are aligning going towards the same direction. We're under no obligation to focus our efforts and energy towards this. But if we feel like that is a gap, you know, that's something that definitely needs to be incorporated within our future land use map. When it's gonna be brought to you here pretty soon, that's gonna be the recommendation. Obviously, you have veto power for lack of a better term. But just for their clarity purposes,
I guess, and from a staff's perspective, we wanna make sure there's alignment on that issue. Or if the direction is, you know, we just wanna focus on what we've been traditionally developing, that can be how the attention is focused as well. Good point. Thank you. Can I add one thing? But to your question, Chad, when I was meeting with the Home Builders Association or the BIA now, One of the builders there, you know, when I was they were asking me what our community needed, and I was talking about some of these spaces or a 55 and older space.
It's just not affordable to them. Like, they they say the cost point isn't there for them on this side of the river. Well, that's nothing new. Right. No. But I'm just saying so when you ask that question of the because it's not affordable, yes. That's the answer. Right. And then and we we've seen that with the workforce housing because that was put off and put off and put off until they got the additional state funding, and then it went through. We're also seeing that with whatever's on the Third Avenue on the North Side of Third Avenue with the incomplete construction, that's sitting there. They for whatever reason,
that isn't materializing either. And and, again, so when we're looking at this because when we talk about the missing middle, it's fantastic. And I don't know how we put ourselves in a position to be a partner in building. And we've seen I mean, that's the whole some of the history behind, the city carrying specialists is because the developers couldn't afford to do it. So the city would carry, you know and I'm gonna blame Fargo, because that seems where it all stems from. Fargo started that idea to to help grow our residential communities,
and now we're all doing it. But when we start looking at this, I mean, it's fantastic. But if there's no market for it, I mean so my my notes are I mean, how does that actually work with us with us with the municipality owning land and that whole process? And my other one was, like, how does that manipulate the market? Does that ultimately, you know, make us a a player and and put other people out of business? The developer, you know, has a certain amount of profit they're gonna make. Right? They maybe can skim a little bit of it,
but they're not gonna skim much. If they can't get the price point, for the end product, that end townhouse out there to where they think it'll sell on the market with the amount of of subsidies that go into it, and they still make their profit margin with cost of materials and everything they have to do to build the thing. You know, they're they're not gonna do it. So the question becomes and we've asked them that question. We sort of asked the development community, what do you need to have for that? You know, they came back. Most recent one was, well, we would like you guys to hold the specials for maybe one,
two, or three years until we can get so many units built in this development and get some traction in this development. But in my mind, I've been around the block long enough, it's just like, well, don't fool yourself because they ask for it there, they're gonna ask for it for the rest of it too. Mhmm. So it depends where you wanna go with it. Like Peyton said, we're we're looking at areas that are gonna be, you know, because density is a knockdown. Basically, commercial high density, middle missing middle housing and then single family. You know, so what you'll have, you'll see the long range plan with those nodes on it and everything where that,
you know, would would be, I guess, where we would desire it to happen. The thing is though is no matter how it's laid out financially, it's it's got a cash flow. And right now, I think it's difficult to get these to cash flow. I mean, you know, even even on the Minnesota side, it's always been a little bit higher. No matter where you're at now, it's higher, you know. And and I think the market is gonna have to change up really if we, you know, before we wanna do that. But question for you today is, I mean, do we wanna look at trying to develop some further incentives to make this happen
in the meantime? And it's not I mean, it's not, let's say, getting in the way of competition. Right? Like, if we want something to happen, it's still like we would open it up to people. Like, this is what we want built here, and then you open it up to everyone to build, you know, like, with proposals to build there. So I don't think it would be unfair competition by doing it and then opening it up to anybody. We could identify corridors, and we could say we desire development within these corridors. We're looking at requests for proposals for development in those corridors.
Mhmm. You know? Yep. And see what comes in. So with that, then how does our how would our existing incentive packages translate into something in that missing middle? Is there something that we can already that we would be able to We we already have the two year I mean, if you buy it, the the two year tax abatement on it, you know. And we already subsidized it through using special assessments, put the infrastructure in, utilities and everything. And we hold the bag on that till the assessments are paid off. There's two ways we already subsidized it versus some kind of cash injection or further
better terms on the specials where we eat more of it because we're going to need more interest basically if if you elongate the time that those specials are paid out, you know, over more time. So it it becomes a subsidizing. So I I have another question, Don, kind of tangent to this. When we're talking about an RFP for it, I'm thinking in my head this would be something the city would own. I don't want to get into the ownership business if we don't have to. I don't think anyone does. Can we put together an RFP and some sort of partnership,
you know, with a property owner and say, hey. This is our desire to see this type of a development here in in alignment with our future land use map. And if you do this, you get x, y, and z. I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud. Of course, if our future land use map dictates it already, why are we? I don't know if I'm making sense. But Well, the the question becomes, do you with the market the way it is right now, do you even try and do something to artificially incent it to come in? Yeah. Or do we just wait?
I mean, right now, the game in Dilworth is commercial, you know. And that's not a bad game because look at the taxes we receive off of that versus off of housing. The only way you come out on the other end of it with housing is high end single family residential pays more taxes than it uses the services. So, I mean, the question becomes that we say, okay, let's reevaluate that in twelve months or twenty four months, see where the market is at, and then maybe look at you know, decide then whether we want to try and use incentives if between now and then nothing has happened.
And again, we use incentives for commercial. Right? We use it for residential. And I guess what I'm what's running through my head is, you know, we have the other multifamily unit, I'm I'm assuming, going up. Right? Mhmm. Is there some type of connection between like, what what is their incentive? Right? I I get I I understand that it's not quite the same, but if I'm gonna build a triplet home? Not a twin home, but, like, if I'm gonna do 12 Townhomes? Townhomes and it's, you know, you know, four sets of three,
whatever, is there a way that we could do an incentive similar to the loan? Down like how we do Well, we We ultimately, a it's a multifamily. Mhmm. I don't know if it's does it even does it is that does that meet the, the definition of a multifamily unit? Well, we have a we have a certain we have a a bottom number of units that before we would even allow a tax abatement. But that is one way to do it. If, say, you're the developer and you're gonna own these and just rent those units, there's an opportunity to do that.
The problem is how do you translate that? Because the developer, the guy who builds them and nails them up is the guy who wants the incentive. Right. And and the way abatement works, you actually have to build the project, hold the project to create the taxes, to get the taxes back. Yeah. And and I guess that that's again, I don't wanna get, like I said, I'm glad, like, we're not talking about market manipulation. But but at the same time, if that's where if we say, alright, Hunter. If you build those, we're gonna give you money. But yet,
Mike, if you're still doing single family, we're not gonna give you money. I mean, that there's some, you know what I mean? There's there's winners and losers there. Right? Yeah. Your your other way, you know, the other way to translate that is to sit and say, okay. We're gonna go ahead and, use an economic development incentive, an incentive that would be allowable, where we will give so much per unit to the developer that is some kind of equivalency. It'd be a cash equivalency or an equivalency over a number of years. However, you would cut the development agreement to be somewhat equivalent to the tax abatements that
we give for the big apartment units or the commercial. I think that's more the housing people are looking for. I mean, yeah, they would like a big, nice, new home, but it's just not affordable for a lot of families. So they're looking for something maybe a little bit more private than an apartment, but still not that $3.04, $500 price point. So I think that's more of the development we should be looking for. It's the cheaper townhomes, I guess. Is that what we're gonna call them? Yeah. Well and and there's a difference between a townhome and a and a Yeah. To it. Right? Right. And and so here's another question as,
you know, we we hear about the silver tsunami and everything like that. And it's a very morbid question. But at what point in time do we look at and say, okay. We're gonna see that that population is gonna move out of their home into something else. They're also going to die. Right? Mhmm. And then there's an existing there's an existing market for for housing. Yes? Yes. See the headline of the newspaper. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But but I mean dying. Well, we know it's going to happen. Right? I mean, that's the the baby boomers are going to go away,
and we know that there's a population decrease. And that's just simple math. And it doesn't it's not fun to talk about. But at some point in time, there will be a surplus in the inventory. Yeah. Well And that's just a mathematical certainty. Right. And if if you had developed those patio homes or whatever that they're living in, those would open up. Existing housing in your community, the Ramblers, the splits that they've been living in, you know, those will open up. That that will all open up at some point in time. And do can we get information from the BIA about their projections of of how,
like, they should see this happening. Right? They I'm I'm assuming. Well, I'm sure somebody has done a study on it. Right. And and that because when we were at the the city night for the for BIA, that that's what they were talking about. I mean, that was one of, the keynote speaker's points was just that. And and how I mean, that's fantastic as we're looking at immediate needs right now, but if we're projecting ahead as to everything else Goes to the articles that say affordable housing already exists in your community. It will just open up over time. Right. Yeah. I had a question on all this,
and it's I'm going to kind of hit it a couple of different directions. But, you got people that are seeking some cheaper way to live, cheaper house, cheaper mortgage, whatever it is. There's all kinds of things that, you know, if it's if it's the workforce housing that it took some funding to make it happen, incentives possibly, city land possibly from different whatevers. Does that translate into a cheaper way for the person to live, or does that just translate into the developer ensuring a profit? Now it's a good question.
Right? Pass the buck to the to the point. I mean, that's the bottom line on so much of this. The developers aren't gonna go forward until it's worthy worthwhile of their, return on investment, which is good. But does that translate into someone that's really searching out affordable housing? That's kind of a colorful, catchy thing, but does it really translate into affordable housing? Right. Or is it affordable to build? Affordable to build. Yeah. That that's the But does it is the rent cheaper? Is the mortgage cheaper? Is the payments I mean, I don't know. I mean, that's just kind of a question I'm gonna put out there.
So I don't have an answer. That's a good question. That's a very good question. I mean, you can artificially make it happen you know, through projects or whatever where you provide incentives and you say, okay. 10% of the units have to be at at 80% of the median rent of whatever, you know. MHRA's do that all the time. And, you know, we could put stuff like that together too. But, again, that's just gonna be a percentage of the units over time where the HRAs actually own their own housing and operate it, you know. But, again, you have that's income limitations on that to get into that housing.
So it's out there, but it's subsidized one way or the other. There's a program somewhere subsidizing it because the other other ways market adjustment, market force is happening. And traditionally, that's been how we've operated. Eventually, the market gets to where it hits a point to where a new subdivision comes in, whatever that may be. So the other side of the coin is we keep doing what we're doing but also stressing the need and desire via the future lane use map or whatever and sticking to that,
that this is the only type of housing we'll support there and let the market dictate that whenever it should go. You know, you can't at some point, you can't incentivize your way into development. Yeah. I think the price point right now is high. I would recommend waiting and bringing the topic up in a year or two or evaluating annually where things are at. Because right now, I I think it'd it'd be expensive to subsidize it, and I would be concerned what what our results would be. I don't know if anybody really beaten down my door unless somebody can get a heck of a deal on either property or delayed specials or something like that.
The thing you gotta remember is, you know, I worked in the North Side of the cities, and I I went through the foreclosure crisis. In fact, my town was one of the poster children for the foreclosure crisis. You guys never had that. Your values up here didn't drop a dime. I watched that that entire time. And, so if that follows pattern, we're really not gonna see that much adjustment up here. There really have to be some strange, economics happening. Anyway, my observation. Do you wanna talk about the accessory housing units and what we have noticed at the state level,
but also other states implementing certain these types of developments? Thank you. Yeah. And you're all aware, there's been movement in the legislature trying to change up basically the state to take over our zoning authority. And we already allow by planned unit development, multifamily housing in our commercial areas, but for cities that didn't or whatever else, there's been all of that. One thing, another point of discussion is accessory dwelling units. I mean, all the way from tiny houses to conversions of garages or houses into,
you know, grandma flats and whatever else. You know, the way the state had approached it, it basically would really have stressed our utility systems, parking or whatever. And basically, one of the things is to get rid of parking requirements. You know, maybe over time into the future, that will resolve with less people driving, less, you know, cars, that kind of thing. But I you can't artificially dictate, I don't think, at this point. But that is something for us to think about. That is an opportunity to get to, get more housing units. I think Fargo has gone that way,
with tiny houses, and and you're you're starting to see the communities in our area take a look at that. I think even Moorhead, is starting to give allowance for those kind of things. So, I mean, if that is one area you want us to take a look at, we certainly can. Julie, do you remember? Did we look at stuff like that a while ago? Yeah. Like We said they weren't allowed. I mean, it because we went with a minimum lot size and basically what we did. We have a minimum house size of a thousand square feet.
But we have a minimum lot size too. Right? We we do in certain zoning district in our zoning district residential zoning districts. And a lot of that too, if you remember, there was the caretaker thing that we, that cities had the right to exempt out of. I think that was probably five or six years ago for caretakers at a home because there was people popping up in this similar fashion, that they're allowed to have these type of housing units on their property right now unless a city requests to get out of it, which we did as because they're just being forced at the time.
But that's effectively what it is. Mhmm. I mean, I could see again, if you had an area, you know, like, what we do with mobile homes, having a certain area that allowed, like, tiny homes or something for, you know, workforce housing or something. But, I mean, we don't really have an industry right here that needs that kind of although I know there's an area over in West Fargo where a company has bought up all the homes over there, and they just house their workers there in the summer, and then nobody lives there out winter. You know? And so they just buy up regular homes.
And so, I mean, there could be a market for it if someone was willing to build it, but I would, again, wanna see our land use maps do that instead of starting to pluck, you know, like, accessory buildings in people's backyards. And we do have some of them, I know, around the school. Because I know when back in the eighties, like, Lowe's had an accessory that they rented out. You know, like That's still there. I don't know if it's inhabited. I think it's still there. But and, you know, like, there's single family homes where the part above the garage was rented out or the basement's rented out.
You know? So we do have Yeah. Area that is single family homes that we have a lot of rental units in that are just kind of grandfathered in. I put up on the screen right here, what Montana just adopted. I think what went to effect last year. So this kind of gives you an idea of what it is. So secondary housing units are typically located on the same property as a primary residence. Their state required made it a law that every municipality had to have regulations that
required at least one. It gave people the right to have at least one ADU on their property. The city of Dilworth can take a, I guess, its own aggressive step in allowing that. They're not currently required in Minnesota. It just feels like it's going that direction, though, eventually. There whether it's that, whether it's the allowing it in commercial zoning districts, you know, that's come up at in Saint Paul the past few years. So that's why we put this up here if this is something that the city feels like it needs to go on and get ahead of.
Do you have any inquiries about the possibility of any part of the city available? You know, I'm not trying to think if I've ever taken the question before. On Third Avenue and off of County Road 9, wasn't that Yeah. The idea at one but never materialized. Yeah. Yeah. A little time. But was that the cost of Saint John's? Homes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Of doing that. But this am I reading this? This is what you're about. Putting in my house and selling it right now. Choices you can have with that. That's just one of them. Yeah. Yes. This like, what what you guys talk about is is one of many ideas. And one thing too that makes it challenging at this point at least,
you know, we still do have subdivision requirements. And within those subdivision regulations, Summerwood, Woodbridge, whatever subdivision, it's gonna prohibit the use of an ADU on their property. May not explicitly state that, but presumably, it's gonna say one dwelling structure per lot. I don't know I presume we would not have the right to override a subdivision regulation, but for any new subdivisions, any old any prop parcel that's not within a subdivision, the city could modify its, laws to allow for an eighty year.
But so with the with the subdivision, is that like a covenant? Yes. That's what I mean. Mean. So the city doesn't enforce those anyway, do we? Yes. I was going to ask who's That's enforced by the developer. It's supposed to be, yes, the responsibility of the developer and or the landowners within the subdivision themselves. But generally, they're more bonding than what a zoning ordinance would be, more restrictive. And right. But the state was looking at overriding those covenants. Well, we don't want the state in our backyard anyway. Like I'm just in I just have a problem with that in general, but that's that's just me.
I don't want I don't want the lady in Saint Paul that was upset because her family couldn't subdivide her, whatever it is, 160 acres of farmland. Remember, we we were at? That that's what that came from is the city would not subdivide her land. So as a lawmaker, she thought this would be a great idea to give Saint Paul control over all of it. Was it it was either the league or CGMC that we were at and listening to her. Yeah. And it it yeah. It was at a LMC event this time last year. And in fairness to her and and this is where I'll again,
not saying I'm not saying I want this, but at least I'll defend some of the lawmakers in the sense that people are gripping to them about solutions, wanting things more affordable, and then they're they do are trying to provide something. It maybe worked for her circumstance Right. And it may work in Minneapolis, Saint Paul. But, yeah, it was just so encompassing of the entire state. It didn't really make sense. So, but just to drive the conversation a little further as far as, like, what is this something the city would like to see, or we think it's gonna create more headache than what it's worth? I don't necessarily wanna see it on air in areas that are already zoned.
I mean, if people are in a single family area, all of a sudden you say ADUs are allowed. That's not a single family. I don't know. Because how are you gonna guarantee who's ever in there is grandma? Like, who's gonna go monitor that? Yeah. That's the Chief? No. Just kidding. But if Right. And and, Julia, I I agree. But what's, I mean, if what's to stop the the she shed or the he shed from becoming that man cave right now? Like, if I if if I have the lot space, is there any is there I mean No.
The key of what you just said is Key of what you just said is lot space. Right. I think ADUs, we have to be careful, make sure that there is the ability for that lot to be able to have that ADU on it. Not all our property is, you know, is positioned to have those. And, you know, the carte blanche of the state trying to put them into existing single families, that's 50 foot lots. Right? It it really doesn't work. However, you know, you could have single family development and through your zoning or whatever, that also comes with a zone with ADUs. You know,
that's designed that way. That an ADU could be a possibility and people would go into that buying that home or whatever or buying into that area knowing that they could put an ADU on their property. Right. And, again, as long as that's the intent and we look at that forward looking, I don't know that I wanna do it, Yeah. You know, backward. I don't know. And I I don't know if that too is like, is that, is that the affordable option to putting, you know, mom in a home? You put her in the backyard instead or dad where it choose,
you know, under the steps. Well, I mean, if your house is big enough, that's fantastic. You can have a room or whatever. But, again, I I don't know. Like, can we talk about and I'll just use the low property as the example. I mean, some of when you fence that in, then all of a sudden you can't see that exact that ADU. Mhmm. And that's a public safety issue, you know, on on many I don't know. It's interesting because I can see the potential in it. Like, there's some logic behind it. I just don't know how I think we'd have to zone a whole different Yeah. Like, if it's gonna happen,
it's gonna I think the yard should have to be bigger. I think I think Yeah. Can the city, like, I mean, could you say you can't have fences in this area? I mean, if our fire department has to get into the backyard and there's a fence, right, or whatever or place an ambulance, I mean, that's just I mean, it's kind of some problems when you look at this just from a public safety standpoint. But There would have to be access, obviously, too. Right. Access is that response and So I bring back alleys and stuff like that as well then. It might depending upon the design. Like I said, I think you'd have to be intentional on a subdivision to have ADUs on it.
It it doesn't work. It's not a fix for everywhere at this. And so if we're not looking at retroactive, what is this something that we just keep on our radar for They wait until the state mandates it. Seriously. No. And I agree with that. 100%. And and and then we can have a conversation as to how we, you know, work with what the state mandates to be successful with it. Or a developer comes in and says, I wanna do this, and I wanna put ADUs on it. And then we can figure out how to make it work. Is there anything that's obviously, we don't wanna partner with a developer that wanna do that. Is there anything that that we have right now?
We have lot size. We have dwelling units or anything like that that would prevent us from coming in and and wreaking havoc? Yeah. The I mean, we're covered now. We allow a single residential structure on a lot. Okay. Yeah. So we're covered there. Yeah. It's your primary structure. Yeah. Go ahead. So Interesting. I mean, I'm not trying to drive the conversation specifically, but for what we have up here thus far, somewhat a holding pattern on all of these, right? Is that sort of the sense I'm getting from everyone? We'll come back and evaluate
market conditions, come back and evaluate workforce housing and whatever that may be. We're comfortable with incentive packages that we we have today. No drastic measures we need to take to incentivize certain types of development ADUs hold on to for the time being until mandated or, you know, it has to be revisited. Is there anything else on the housing front that you would like to discuss before we move on to our next category? And this is good. This is this is good.
So we don't have to but when people call and ask us, at least we have somewhat of a direction. You know? Hey. We've visited about this. This is something we're not gonna be doing, entertaining at this time. So that at least gives us a little direction. But is there anything else on the housing front that's that's on your mind collectively? Okay. Do we wanna just sort of throw this as a placeholder that when we do goal setting every year, we talk about it a little bit and say, are we are we there? Is there appetite for this or that at this point? If things change, then we would report out to you guys. Makes sense? Thank you. Mhmm. How can I ask one question about how we address homes that have been modified
or, like, buildings downtown that have been modified? Like, I was just reading in the paper today about one in Fargo where a person had bought the house and they're it's gonna be torn down because they basically couldn't do anything except because someone modified it into a a three apartment building out of a house, and it's only was ever, like, coded for two or something. You know? And we have some like that where people have taken businesses and turned them into housing or Mhmm. Part of their homes are rented out or things like that. How do we do we just It's tricky because you don't find out about them
until Right? Seven years later or until there's a code violation, right, something burns down or whatever the circumstances there. You know? I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, Don. I mean, this is the probably see everywhere, though. You know, and we've received inquiries about trying to do housing right now in our commercial area, you know, downtown here and and on main level, and we just don't know it's not allowed. You know? Well, then we can't make a cash flow or we can't do anything with the building. And, well, it is it is. We don't wanna start that at this point.
It's allowed elsewhere, obviously, around the country, but we say that we don't want that. As far as homes being put into units, like two or three units are split into four, I've seen that in towns, that had traditionally had a factory base and they needed that housing at the time. Those homes got split up. I've also seen them deconstructed and put back to single family homes. It really depends upon the structure itself, how sound it is, is there some architectural features or whatever that it could be deconstructed and put back
into single family use or is it better off just to take it down and rebuild on the property itself? So it's gone either way. Again, it's it's almost, again, math and market forces and doesn't make sense to do it. If you go around NDSU, there's a bunch of houses done that way. A ton. Oh, and some are designed that way. Like, you look at the city of Minneapolis, they were designed that way. Right? On NDSU, they're not designed that way. They're just done that way. That way. That's very true. What in Dilworth Fargo, there's you can have no more than three unrelated people in the house. Like, more just four in West Fargo's five.
What's Dilworth's official? I don't think we designate Okay. That. Just because that's violated constantly. I mean, there's five, six, eight, ten people in where I work. Yeah. That's not on your that's why they don't like names on their mailboxes. Yeah. At least because they're not on the list. Sense. Yeah. That's Yeah. Is there any people asking for, like, barndominium lots or anything like that? No. Yeah. Not within the city limits. Because I had to have one. Well, I was just curious because I'd give up two I'd give up two bedrooms from our garage space on a heartbeat. Yeah.
It it wouldn't meet our requirements. That's why I know it it almost have to be, like, in a commercial zone area or an area zone just for something like that. To answer, we've taken quest inquiries on that before, say, a couple different times, and we've we've shut it down in the sense that it's currently not allowed in the community, and I don't know if it's something that would fit the character. But we do. We and you see them everywhere. Right? When you're driving anywhere, not just in the metro, but out in the towards the lakes or whatever you see them.
Town here five miles. Yep. Exactly. Ones out there. Yeah. They make them look beautiful. Mhmm. Let's see. Sorry. I was looking at Dave's question here. In our multifamily zoning district. Yeah. We just say multifamily dwellings. It's probably a good point, actually, to have something listed as far as nonrelated. Yeah. Because in Murray, I think we used to have up to four nonrelated individuals are allowed in a home. But, no, we don't we don't designate that, which most of our multifamily are all apartments. You know, it's not like we have a lot of
residential multifamily areas with traditional homes set up in town. So College areas and towns. Yeah. And a large house, three seems like not enough when you're occupying the whole unit whole building. But that's what their rule is. Is there anything else on the home front, housing front, to speak of? Okay. Let's see. I'm trying to figure out. It's the first time using a mouse. Transportation infrastructure. Perfect. I can't even read it. Okay. So taking a look at just
various projects in the community and, I guess, outside the community as well and, some projects that we are looking to identify. One thing we are what we have to work on internally, and Mike and I were talking about this morning, actually, is actually coming up with the true especially since we have this the federal dollars coming in or that we're turning away, however you want to look at it, about having an actual capital improvement plan for road construction. Normally, these things are just organically coming about,
and we know we need to identify them. But as the community grows, we need something a little more structured and more engineering has a program. We've started inputting in a project or two just to see what it looks like and provide some milestones, budget information and so forth. So when we're playing financially and we're able to actually put numbers down with some inflationary considerations in there and also just helps us from a budgeting perspective. So the first one I have mentioned up here is our fifteenth Avenue North project, which we have received.
We've got $1,100,000 coming in for 2029 construction up there. That's going to be a multiyear project though because if you remember, there's going to be some right away acquisition that we're going to have to do specifically on the North Side. Yes, sir. And with this just point of clarification, we're talking in between Seventh Street and County Road 9? Yes. Okay. Thank you. And so it's that one mile stretch. Yeah. And that would also actually encompass the of the sixtieth or is it Well, yeah. Yes and no.
So what I have right now for Fifteenth Avenue North is also the shared use path that we would end up putting in from 30 Fourth Street on over as well, which is the Heartland Trail designation too. Because if we're going to be putting in this road infrastructure and putting in that shared use path at the same time, it would connect over to, 30 Fourth Street. So that's just at least what's in my head at this time. But just to give you an idea of what we're talking about here as far as steps in the process,
I didn't even put it up here, but there has to be some level of preliminary design that may have to come about as early as 2026. And from there, that's probably what they'd have to use to do the easement collection. So that's maybe a chicken egg thing. Maybe that gets pushed back a year, but that's something that's coming down the pipe pretty fast here. And to answer your question there, Kevin, I can't remember if I put it on this page or not. So tangent to our well,
we have the Highway 10 reconstruct going in, and that's listed as a bypass route. And how do we want to see all that come together? I don't know if financially we're able to do that, so that's why we're going to be really pressing upon the state to provide some assistance in that regard. One thing that was floating in our head is when we do this we have Fourth Avenue and Sixtieth Street. That's where the community center is going and so,
you know, having Fourth Avenue constructed over to Sixtieth Street but at that same time paving that section down to Hwy 10 over from Sixtieth Street. It may not be a full on city roadway, but at least it'd have some pavement over top of it and make it a little more drivable and that was maybe part of our package that we would suggest to the state, you know, if there's any monies available that maybe they could provide some assistance. If we're gonna if we provide some funding for Sixtieth Street, could you help us around,
the top half of Fifteenth? What gets tricky is, eventually, you know, Fourteenth is gonna come in and so I don't know if that's gonna be more the driver of getting the remaining port part of Fifteenth. And for us, our biggest concern is over to Sixtieth Street. Ideally, yes, we want to see it out to Highway 336. But, I mean, that's all well and good, but that's our top priority is getting it over to Sixtieth Street, however that may look. And that's just gonna be something that we're gonna be tying in through the years,
how the funding looks. I don't know. The other thing with the Fifteenth Avenue North project that probably even has to be done first, we have to understand the ownership situation. We We have no idea how that's gonna work right now. It's not our roadway. It's a township road. The county has an interest in it as well, or they don't have an interest in it really. They want us to just mess with it. In an ideal world, I think the county should own Fifteenth Avenue, not us. Makes sense to me, but maybe that's just because I'm biased. And but from a maintenance standpoint, I think it makes the most sense.
Or maybe once we annex in on the North Side, maybe at that point, we would take it over. But up until then so I think just from a from a setting up standpoint with this, the first thing will be so for Fifteenth, determining ownership and then the preliminary design and easement collection. Those are going to be our next few steps in the lead up to our 2028, let's say, actual design of the project and hopefully have it bid out to construct '29. And for the record, I think we've already spent way too much money on Fifteenth Avenue.
But that's just I might have a little bias there myself. Like how much, like $10,000 Approximately, yes. Question on kind of it's all connected to what we think would be a good bypass. But when I was talking to the DOT, I didn't get a very clear answer on how they're going to actually do the road through town. It'd probably do one direction, get that done because you can't have a bypass that's not approved by the state, and that's not gonna be a 10 ton road either. And you can't go through town. It's because city roads aren't 10 ton. So does that mean there's gonna be even a longer construction process if they can
only do half if that opened up the other half? Well Traffic would continue going through. Yeah. Well, if they don't know, I definitely don't know. But what I can tell you is that that they're they're gonna be redirecting you to a state route. You know, that they're state approach. For the you know, to create the exact There could be a long way around. The is that exactly You're exactly right. On the interstate. Twentieth, whatever it is. I'm sure they would route you up to 18. County Road 18. 2018. Depending which way we wanna go. But Yeah. It's not gonna be Fifteenth Avenue. No. And that's that was kinda our hope that that would kinda, get them going a little bit more on the idea of getting that thing worked
on a little bit. It wouldn't it wouldn't be an approved detour route. Like, it won't meet MnDOT specifications for approved detour route, but what they were kinda talking about is they may be able to still help with it to help deter other traffic from the detour, like, for in town. So they would not run their detour on fifteenth. They would still require their detour to go up to eighteenth. But by the way, they couldn't go through Fifteenth, the the official detour. You're right. Exactly.
But that's not saying they won't help support Or they just can go wherever they want to go. In order to alleviate traffic being detoured. I don't think that's gonna be big gonna be any big incentive for them to cons well, they might consider it, but that's not really their their purpose is to their purpose is to create a Fifteenth Avenue for us. It's the Eighteenth or 94 or whatever direction they're gonna go. No. They said they would have to look at it. It was their idea. Right? I mean But they they don't have any clear answers at this point either. I mean, I mean,
who you talk to is gonna get different answers. We're also assuming the 2031 construction. You know, I'm still holding my breath for that. Right. But perfectly I mean, they're they're well positioned as far as the design phase goes, but still, this is at the mercy of a state budget being approved to have this in their own work program. What I took out of it is the traffic is is going to continue through town. That's not gonna change. But it's just gonna delay everything because you're gonna get one direction completed. Then the next year or two or whatever, the other sides can be worked on.
So I would think it'd be quicker just to do it all. As you could, but Yeah. So that's just sort of an update of what how I see Fifteenth Avenue. On the Eighth Avenue front, this is where we wanted to get a little bit of input from the council as far as how it sees we need to be prioritizing things. So we have multiple sections. We have Eighth Avenue from, say, Walmart, 30 Fourth Street over to County Road 9, which I think would be a widely utilized
roadway if we got that in. And then, everything else from there, from Canyon Road 9 over to Seventh Street, but is that gonna be more developer driven? Is that something we need to be getting involved with or in the midst of the first portion I was talking about there, the 30 Fourth Street, that might be something the city could initiate if it feels like it's you know, we wanna prioritize that, from a flow of traffic purpose. And I I really do think it'd be heavily utilized right there.
So I don't know if you'll have initial thoughts on Eighth Avenue and sort of what your thought process is. I think the one from 30 Fourth County Road 9, I feel like it needs to happen. I know the developers didn't want it to go all the way through, which is, they didn't really support it when they put that development there through, but it would also hopefully alleviate people driving through the apartment complex over there through the park. I still can't I mean, it's not that much further to go around.
I don't understand what their deal is, but far be it from that. I I mean, again, it it would take a lot of traffic off some other roads that weren't really, I don't know, meant to Mhmm. Be a road. Right. I have a question, Payton. Yes, sir. So what what mister Steichen was saying with MnDOT not really backing that Fifteenth Avenue as an official detour, if they're not inclined, like, to support that, are we looking at getting state money for that?
Is that is that gonna be a thing? And can we do that Fifteenth Avenue without state money? Like, if we up a creek on Fifteenth or what? I think that's why Peyton was saying he wanted to explore it with the county to be so that it would might remain a county road. But, I mean, MnDOT did not say that it wasn't going to be available. It's just not especially the part that's already in, it's it's not built to MnDOT standards to be a detour. It will not support the trucks. But that didn't but they didn't say they wouldn't support some funding towards
fifteenth with the people but they didn't also have the ability to commit budget. Yeah. The people they're talking about. And and it's because here's what I wrote down. Because if if we're not gonna receive state money fifteenth and it's not something that we can do, where else can we spend the $1,100,000 that we received? I think we're committed to that. You know? I think we can do that, and it's technically, you know, something we developed with the county on. And, again, we're just talking over to Seventh Street with that $1,100,000. That's all those funds are eligible for.
So it's only eligible? Because I was like, if that's Can we pivot to Eighth Avenue? That was my thought. Because if that's not really I don't think feasible, can we pivot that to that Eighth Avenue where we could see an immediate benefit and something that we can do right away? I don't I don't correct me if I'm wrong, Don. I don't think we're allowed to because it's not an existing roadway. I saw his eyes roll. Yeah. I don't think we can Yeah. I make his eyes roll a lot, and I have yet to have it. Yeah. No. I I think that's right. I think the money is committed to that. Okay. I'm just trying to think in my own mind, you know,
the DOT and they want yeah. They're gonna need an internal roadway. I mean, I suppose they could slap at the port and say that's your internal roadway for your for the residence during the time of construction. The fifteenth would be optimal. It was suggested to us actually by by, MetroCock because we're looking, you know, I was just my brain just give me the money to $3.36 and let's get it done. But, you know, they said, well, really, you know, what you should be asking for is fifteenth down to 60. I guess what Peyton is talking about is really being the reliever that for our
internal road network wild tents under construction and trying to push for that. So in my own mind though, when the county when the they built from 34 to nine, that's not a commercial 10 ton section. Mhmm. Is it? It is that I don't know a 100% what it's it's assigned to whatever standards the engineers put together. I can't remember what that is, though. I'd I'd be surprised if the county did not construct those standards. Because county built the road. Right? Yeah. I think it is. But I I may be mistaken on it,
but it has to be to whatever their development standards are. And I believe it has to meet those guidelines. You're talking about Fifteenth or Eighth right now. No. Fifteenth. Fifteenth. Yeah. Okay. Fees from three of ours over to Casa 9. Yeah. Okay. This this is my follow-up question is if we look at we spend the $1,100,000 on Fifteenth Avenue for that one mile, What's the project cost, and then where does that come from? That oh, right now, I believe that don't quote me, but I wanted to say it's 5 and a half million dollars. I believe that's what the project cost is.
He's always willfully under on his estimates too. It's only like seven. Thirty two minutes. Well, that's because that's the question. Right? Because then we're gonna spend we're gonna spend $7,000,000 on a road north of town. Yeah. That's what we need to explore. I would say, like, continue exploring the easement, the ownership, who would do it, what the options are. But And we can allocate that $1,100,000 to all of those costs? Or is that just construction. That's just construction. Mhmm. STB is just construction, I think. I know what we can start with conversations about Oh,
we need to. Yeah. I'm not I'm not saying that, but we're also looking at, you know, construction in 2029. That'd be nice to have financial partnerships in place as as we're going through this because that's a significant contribution to a road that, well, isn't in town yet and that we don't own. Part of that's gonna be how far out are they gonna punt 10? I mean, is it gonna move in the mid thirties? I mean, then they won't be too inclined to wanna help us. If it's gonna be something that's to be done in a couple years, I think they'll be more inclined to put some money into it.
And I'm also concerned with with what mister Steichen was saying is a Fifteenth Avenue cannot be a legit detour route. Why would the state even say, yeah, we're gonna do that at all? Like, why why would the state look at creating a detour right route onto a road that doesn't meet the DOT standards for a detour route? They would just say use Fourth Avenue for cars and Eighteenth or Univer I 94 for 10 times 10 times. Mine 10 on Fifteenth also from a funding standpoint. We got the 1.1,
but also applying for LRIP dollars to like, what we got for 30 Fourth Street. And then can I just ask I'll just ask this question, Alan? When can we start when here's what I when can we when will we have, a 5,000 population, so we can get access to those additional state dollars? I mean, does it have to be on the census? And how does all that work? And this apartment goes up. Yeah. Just say where are we at when this apartment goes up? We're at 4800 and whatever right now. So I guess that kinda gets back to our housing discussion too a little bit there. So after the apartment's done.
It'll be closed. That that should no. I will be interested this time. Well, they when did they do? They just did their building permit. So you don't know that number until this time next year, I think it is. And it's based upon the building permits that you've issued. I think they do those at, like, 2.5 a unit or whatever. So that's gonna get us pretty darn close, I would say, at that point. What that does is I know it's not a windfall or anything, but it is more money, that can be helped applied to I think it can only be under state aid,
in which we're updating our state aid functionally class roadways, map right now. I don't know how that works if it's outside the city limits, though. But it could be applied towards other projects, and you could recalibrate and shuffle from there. Yeah. The other thing that's gonna give you is you will have the ability to work with MnDOT and and allocate future funding for our projects. And there was a couple of one, two, or three years worth of funding we used for in projects. It's based on the demog to answer your question, how does someone's explained it to me, as doctor Bob was saying, it's based on the demographer number for the year.
Yes. So it's not like you gotta wait every decade to be It's in the we can review that number annually and say, okay. Yep. They and they do. We get I got the I got when the sign get updated? That's decade. That's a decade. Yeah. Oh, that's We can go out there. The thermometer out there. Yeah. Yeah. It hits that 5,000. Yes. Yeah. Again, it's just that I mean, because I'm gonna go back to what you said first. We do need a plan, and we have all of these elements of a plan. Just wanna make sure that our priorities don't don't exceed the purse, I guess. It is.
It well, we are. Right? And that's and that's where that comes in. And it it it does it makes it complicated, incredibly complicated, which is why, you know, we're trying to prioritize, but these are all Priorities. High priority. Right? We need to maintain our infrastructure. We need to start looking at some of these other, sidewalk rehabs, whatever it is in town. So these are all just coming I don't say they're coming to a head. This is where they all always Right. You know? And it's just the reality of the, situation here. So you can see there's a couple other things I wanted to mention here on
this, page. Just some things that we're gonna be looking at here soon. Hey. Can I ask one question? Yes. So just from a council perspective, it sounds to me that if you if there is no state funding, and if you could shift dollars, you see eighth as more of a priority than 15. Is that what I'm hearing? I think they would get more use. I I that I think there's a utilization is one thing, and then there's a greater public appetite for something that's in town that ultimately would would has a a more immediate benefit than,
you know, fifteenth that, again, we don't own. It would seem to me, like, as things develop to the north, then that was kind of the whole idea. Right? Like, we were gonna maybe get the double dip where the state's gonna redo the road. They're talking about detour north of town. If that fills in, that's awesome. Right? Like, that makes that more appealing to develop. But if we're just doing it to do it, I don't know. I mean and at that point, it was gonna go all the way to three thirty six too. Like, I was in Right.
Block step with you. Right? Like, that that's what made sense to me. But then when we turned it back to the south at 60, it does kinda getting weird, and now I don't know what I think of it anymore. I think it's Okay. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. Yeah. And and just to clarify, the reason why we're showing what what we're talking about when it making the right hand turn on Sixtieth down to Highway 10. So how the rules are to utilize any funding, it has to go to another functionally class roadway. Sixtieth Street's not one.
So that's why we can go County Road 9 to Seventh. Seventh Street is classified. Then 336 is another one. So, yeah, that'd be a whole other segment as well. So for counting to segments, we can't say just to Sixtieth Street. It has to go for a funding. You can do some whatever internally. But a lot of this is gonna be driven as, KP was talking about just on the development side. If we get something on Eighth Avenue and all of a sudden we're making these improvements for us starts filling in up there east, I think, then that'll drive Eighth Avenue from County Road 9 to Seventh Street,
you know, and then we're off to the races. Right? Fourteenth Street, whatever it may be, because if you get Fourteenth up to Fifteenth, there's too much to think about. I can't I can't deal with this. Let's just focus on a road. But On tangent before you keep going, is there seal coating on this at all? I didn't see Yes. To talk about Yep. Mill and overlay. Well, I just put mill and overlay right here, but I think that's all part of the whole, discussion point. And one thing I was talking with Andrew about recently on the mill and overlay front and the seal coating part, when we have a project here on,
we're gonna write that into a contract to do the seal coating one year, two years later, however we wanna do it. And he said that's perfectly fine. You can do that as part of a contract. But we we used to have that every time we did road construction. Like, that was a thing. Like Oh. Like, we had seven seven streets in there brand new. Like, we got a frosted ditch. Everywhere, like, where we where every road that we've done where they cross the ditch, it's all starting to fracture already. You know? K. And getting back to the fifteenth, are you gonna have a discussion with the county to find out That's our next we don't own the road. That's our next how many,
like, how many three different entities Yeah. So us and the township or ships. I don't know how the old would be nice and work right there. To get some thoughts or no answer, I guess. That is the first I think that's the first step with all this. Right? We have to really hone in on the ownership, financial responsibilities, maintenance responsibility. Because that's a whole other thing too. Right. You know, it's all of a sudden, oh, are we gonna send Mike's crew crew up on Fifteenth Avenue? That's why you'd want to be a county roadway as long as possible, hopefully, and have them come to the table even if it's just on an engineering side or whatever it is because they have I think they all have some benefit to
this. And, now how all those conversations go, not exactly sure. Posture like we're gonna walk away, will that make them come to the table? No. They don't care. If they don't care, well, then maybe we should Yeah. Yes, sir. Long as begging. So as we're gonna transition, you know, out of, like, rehab and construction, stuff like that, I mean, we're gonna put in a we're gonna put in fifteenth. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do that. Fourteenth, whatever. Looking at that, I guess, this is where I would like to see Mike and specifically say, okay. What do we need for for manpower and machines when we start doing this?
And how do we budget accordingly in terms of this? Because those are significant ads from my my my perspective. Mike said five more employees should get it done. Fantastic. Well, we'll we'll That means my name with shovels. So we'll give you one of the can't afford new equipment. Yeah. So there was two other things I really wanted to hit upon with this or three, actually. Number 1, Fourteenth Street overpass feasibility. Our next planning study, Don and I feel that's most important to us with this whole casino thing,
things going on behind the scenes. We're gonna have to start moving on this if now that I do think is a priority, you know, to get that in from a public safety standpoint, how it all shakes out. But that's sort of the next step in that process to actually do a planning study of this specific overpass. Right now, they're doing the whole rail needs assessment. But that is our ask internally for our next planning study next year. So that might be something we'll have to budget for like we've done for the Eighth Avenue study and the other ones. But that's kind of our next priority if we're going to have to because that's
going to be a whole coordinated effort going for federal dollars and the like. Yeah. MetroCog, it's they've realized that too and they've talked to Yeah. BNSF. And they said they just said, this is where we wanna concentrate our efforts going. Then that's that's what being a self said. And so MetroCog, I mean, like, Ben said the same thing. So this is really what we need to be going on. My understanding, they may Yep. So so with that I mean, if I remember correctly, they came to us and said, hey. How about this?
Mhmm. Right? And so, like, the major players are in on this. My only concern is maintenance once it's built because that's that's fantastic. But then the responsibility is it, how is that funded? It will be very expensive in the future. It's gonna be interesting at the point that it connects up to 94 because it'd be multi jurisdictional. The maintenance of that roadway, it'd be an interesting agreement to knock out. Just looking way ahead. Well, thinking about 30 Fourth Street, that's there's a great piece of trivia.
We own the dirt underneath it, but Morehead owns the road above it. So have that kind of That's fine. That's fine, isn't it? I would be 100% okay with that. Sure. Guess what? It's a State Road here. You deal. Yeah. I make that. Yeah. And if the bridge goes down All the time. Issues with the bridge? Yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine what time is out. I'll make that deal. Yeah. I mean, just look what this thing down in the hour. Just a drop. Yeah. Just resurfacing. Two two other things I wanted to make note of from our notes at least, sidewalk rehabilitation. Our sidewalks are getting worse and worse.
I'm gonna say it's my recommendation, but just one thing I put up here for consideration when we're going through the budget process for Mike's purposes is having a dedicated you know, we have a road improvement funding, which that's all encompassing of this too, maybe dedicating I put $150,000 a year, whatever that number ends up being. I don't know or anything. But so that he knows, hey. We're spending $150,000 a year and we're slowly pick this off. We'll continue after Safe Routes to School funding or whatever that may be.
That's part of the budgetary process. That is something that we were planning to bring. And the other thing, this obviously conversation comes up all the time about special assessments and what our ultimate goal is with special assessments, preserving it just for new construction, rehabilitation, whatever that may be. I'd you know, we we have updated our policy two or three times since I've worked here at Mirrors, other communities. It's not like we're out of line with anything, but it's a topic of conversation that's always coming up.
We haven't had a project now in a couple of years. And so you see all these horror stories now of someone's special assessments being several $100,000 that they get tacked on. And we don't want to be that necessarily, but is there any consideration that the council would like to have on the special assessment front? How we review our area wides, do we wanna stick just to area wides? In an ideal world, we'd be able to do, I think, rehabilitation work without having to do area wide or doing localized special assessments.
So I don't know. I don't know if you have any thoughts on special assessments as a whole or if there's a vision of how you see it going or what you would love for us to get to with it. So in short, typically how it works I'm sorry. I have to add a truck brake grade nine to take this Oh, you're good. Typically, how it works, 100% is specially assessed for new construction, 50% is assessed on rehabilitation. That's utilities and road equipment that was approved. When yet there's areas of the country that don't have specialized Yeah. Like 99% of the world. Yes.
The country. Like We're we're about the only place. Be unique if we work towards something more like that, or is that not something that's supported by Minnesota statute? No. Again, I don't think many places in Minnesota do special assessments to the extent that they're done up here. Special assessments, they have variations of them across the country, but special assessments as they're utilized in this area is, I guess, I shouldn't say unique because it'd be singular, but it's not common at all. Again, it threw me off more than anything when I came up here and people were
talking about special assessments. I had to stop the interview process and ask what is the special assessment because I never heard of it before. Mhmm. To me, it's like, well, you're paying city taxes. Why aren't those going towards whatever? But that's not here or there. That's the mechanism that's utilized up here, especially to spur development. And is there a goal that the city would like to get to, you know, some sort of place with them? I I feel like I've asked this question before, but is there a way we can quantify what my city taxes would go up to do away with special assessments?
Mhmm. You know what I mean? Like Yeah. What's it gonna cost? What it's great to say, hey. Do it doesn't have special assessments. It's all picked up in your city taxes. That's fine, but you're still paying for it. Mhmm. So how do you how do you how do you sell it? How do you quantify it? How do you I mean, I guess for simplistic purposes, we take off every bond, well and we're still paying a bond issuance. But but, you know, we have an amount that we collect every year. Right? And so if you throw that $400,000 into our levy, you know, that I guess,
that's sort of your answer there. A little complicated because we can look at things differently and, you know, you can't start from point a in time. But going forward from here, you could it's easy to see, right, instead of this 5 instead of this 5,000,000 of the $10,000,000 project, that 5,000,000 is coming on the books for the city and, you know, how that's picked up. You know? You just have to recalibrate. Mhmm. So, yeah, so then it's always on the levy. Yes. And that's always one thing, Chad, that's always kinda bothering me about it is and this is sort of the argument
with it. Right? You know, I get specially assessed. Cool. I'm also getting taxed for it too. So it's like you're getting hit twice for it. Right. Because you Because you're part of the whole. Yep. Yeah. It's not like that part comes off of your taxes. You're the benefiting property owner, and you live inside the city. And I again, I apologize. But we're talking, JP, with with what you're referring to. You're talking just with, like, not new like, anything outside of new construction. Yeah. Right. New construction is a completely different issue because that would Right now, we're doing area wide. For for new construct on major roadways.
Yeah. Yeah. And then Mhmm. But if it's like an internal roadway system, again, that's still to all of them, on an area wide basis too. But, yeah, it just depends. I don't know. Like, you just wanna identify your major roadways. Those are the only things that are specially assessed and try and do all these rehabilitation projects where you keep going with the same process, just evaluating the percentages that people contribute to. I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer to it. It's it is I feel like I just need to be able to explain it
and then when both to do it. I could change change the yeah. Because we're we're changing a policy. We don't know the the economic impact. Right? I mean And it's and it's a regressive policy. Right? Because it's based on footage. Yep. And so you are you know, whether you're in an older part of town or someone who can afford three lots, you're getting a step by the footage and instead of, like, the value of your home. But then again, value of your home, you know, doesn't say how much you,
you know, are able to afford either because it could be very I don't know. All of it is very I'm just I'm not against it necessarily. I just feel like I don't understand it completely with One question though. So the one part about the bond rating, we had to have so much of it, especially as best in order to get a certain In the 81. Which one was that? It was right? Like, didn't we have We said we have to have some Like, a certain assessment that was specially assessed in order to get a certain 20%.
Something. Right? So that's why I think it's weird that some places don't have special assessments, and yet we had to have a certain amount of special assessment in order to get a certain bond. Oh oh, to get a certain type of a bond. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. They have their system set up here. Yep. Yep. We've had this conversation in council too. We kinda we didn't gain momentum in one way or the other. It was stating with exactly what we had pretty much I mean, the concept behind it was that so let's say people don't come in and say, I want a new park in my area,
and we just start putting things into where the people are the most vocal, have the most, you know, input with your council and want improvements done at will. Right? And so the idea is then you would special assessments kinda equalizes that because you would have to pay for what you were requesting if it spread out across the whole city and you're only putting it in the richest part of town. That's not very equitable. But I don't know if that's a concern as much as it may have been at one point.
I don't know. And I guess I've I've used special assessments as infrastructure, not for parks. Well And Same idea, though. Like, you you decide you want your road Well, yeah. Right. Than someone in a We want our roads paved right now. Right? The Yeah. That transition in the late seventies, early eighties, where we want the road to put in and pave because I'm gonna drive to my new house. I don't want a dirty car. Yeah. I remember that conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But in theory, over time, it should kinda it's all it's gonna cost x amount who's ever paying it. Right?
Mhmm. The ones that are probably the least happy, let's say two years ago, they got specially assessed. Now this year, there's another project and they're gonna get hit. Again, I mean, but over time, there's no perfect answer, obviously. And, and it'll probably solve a lot of questions and probably create as many questions or but, it's hard one to explain sometimes when how come I'm paying for this and I see these other people driving down this road? Yeah. I don't know. I think it's just rid of a lot of things. I mean, eventually people are gonna be paying the same amount of money because somebody's gotta pay
for it. Right? So if we get rid of special assessments, we're all gonna end up paying more for something that isn't in my what would have been my area wide assessment. So but because it shows up on my taxes instead of a special assessment, for some reason, people are more okay with that. The word special has like a icon. I'm the exact opposite. I would rather keep my city taxes as low as I can. And if something happens in my neighborhood or in my area,
then I get specially assessed for it. Like, that's what makes sense to me. But like I said, I'm not against doing away with that. I just if my taxes are gonna go up in perpetuity, how much? Like Yes. I I understand. Like, they they are because and maybe there is no difference. I don't know. But I just don't know how to explain what the difference is. And ultimately, you get away. It's building up your road improvement fund Right. To the point where you can make these improvements. To the zone. Right? Well, k. You know? In which we're When that's slowly getting there.
That's the plan. Right? As as projects mature, reallocating those funds, maintaining the existing level of taxation, and then putting it into dedicated funds. And, like, we've sat here and said, yeah. We like this idea. And, hopefully, we're able to maintain that as it goes through as an idea that works for the city of Delworth and grows into the future. So council's after us, management after us, administration after us. Yep. We're gonna continue this as a matter of course. But I don't know the right answer because I like to see my own bill and pay it. But I'm also, like, hey. I I also don't want neglected areas of the city just because a voice isn't
heard or, you know. I I I don't know the answer. I get all I know a lot of people as much as maybe internally, we don't like that. But they get their special assessment, and they they have the opportunity to pay it upfront rather than just always paying for it. Yeah. And I know there's also municipalities throughout the state that it's 100% on the property owner. We're gonna fix your street. You have to pay for the whole thing. That's I mean, so there's two ends of that that spectrum. I think mister Steichen is saying, I don't know if there's a right end answer because if we raise everybody's taxes
on how to pay for the next project, the people that got tagged for Seventh Street, of which I'm one, now maybe a tag, you know, for a project not in hours. I think everybody's South Of Fourth Avenue on the Seventh Street. Oh, yeah. I mean, right. It's three times. And there has to be a dividing line with this if you would keep so that was a full on reconstruct. Right? I think maybe you could argue that, but if we're we're just doing, like, a routine mill and overlay type project, maybe that's a dividing line. Just throwing that out there food for thought.
We're just doing general maintenance, to our city roadway system that has to be repaired every ten years theoretically. Part of that maybe. And that I mean, that's our east and west corridors become city it's not a special assessment. Like, Seventh Street, Fourth Avenue, Eighth Avenue, they're part of the The area wide. So yeah. No. They are just city. Like, the city is gonna take care of that. No. I'm saying no. And overlays, like, become part of maintenance and it's something that special assess to properties. I mean, because it's not fair just because you live on Fourth Avenue that you don't have
to pay any special assessment. Right? Yeah. And that's If the rest of us are for the roads that go by our houses. But I mean, if we start with Mill And Overlay, looking at removing them from a special assessment policy, And we just pay for that as maintenance as part of the city. I think that's one way to start because left off and you deal with it. Yeah. And and that would be that would be an incremental step towards it because we'd have to budget in some capacity. Mhmm. You know, whether it's taxes or And this it's maybe fifteen years away to to build up
that pot. Right? Right. You know, we still may have two or three, four mill and overlay projects that we have to specially assess for until that time. But You think of one? But if we're thinking like long range planning goals of the city, it's like we really need to be actively trying to get to this point where we have this dividing line between routine maintenance and new constructionreconstruct projects over there. I don't know if that's again, that has to be a policy level decision if that's what we wanna, go towards, and we can start putting in the foundational work to get there to that point.
I think you would justify I was gonna say again, like, if we actually move to a maintenance schedule where we're like, we are gonna do these road every so often, it makes sense to remove it from special assessment. Yeah. That helps. Yeah. Yeah. And what's it gonna take to move that economic deal to where we can pay for it? Few years. Well, but at the same time, like I said, we have projects. That's gonna be part of I mean, the equation isn't simply the projects or whatever, but it's the projects. You know, there may have to be dedicated, you know, tax increases. Like, we're gonna have to increase the mill and overlay,
whatever, maintenance, road maintenance fee by a percent to get us to the point where we can do that and then we're set and right now we're again we're doing $25,000 a year plus whatever's rolling off right in the books which and a lot of money $25,000 a year but it's something we want to get the we want to get the ball rolling and won't even do it right away but we're getting there with it and so it's just one of those things where you just have to slowly increase that number. Hey. We're gonna be adding,
you know, 25 each year. So next year, it's 50,000 and so forth and till it gets to a comfortable point, then you have your routine schedule, you know, and it'll build up. Well, it'll happen quick. I mean Yeah. I think that's a great idea, and I think, you know, councils continue, like it's a good idea. Like, if we're gonna move Yep. Great ideas. And the last well done. And the last comment, and we'll go on to the next one here, is that just because we move to that line of thinking, you still reserve the right to specially assess.
Oh. You know, we're not removing it from the policy. It's just more of an internal way of how we're trying to operate the city. Because those are that that that is where it is becomes a little challenging. Right? We did our Seventh Street project, and at the same time, we were doing the the mill and overlay. So they were getting twice hit on a single in a single issuance there. So that that is kinda tough. Are there any other and I'm sorry. I know we're flying through these a little bit. These are sort of the main projects that we just identified from infrastructure standpoint. Are there any other ones on the road frontage,
utility frontage that you think we feel like we need to identify? Yeah. I would just say, again, for me, like, I would be a whole lot more receptive to the sidewalk issue if we had a plan in place to seal coat everything that we've just replaced as far as mill and overlay. Because I have it really to me, it makes no sense to go and rehab all the sidewalks while this stuff rots. Mhmm. Why are we allocating money? Investment we just made? So This also ties back to the dividing line again because the last seal coat that we did, granted, I think we've all determined in a citywide one,
might be a little wonky, but that was a we reserved the right to specially assess. We went through some sort of weird abatement procedure to get that done, but you're absolutely I don't care if we have to budget for it. I don't care where the money comes from. Yeah. We need to do it. Yeah. But you're absolutely right in that respect. Last year, I had Andrew run the numbers on just the stuff that's done as of now, and that was 525,000. Is what he figured. That was a year ago. To seal coat? To seal And that was north and south? North and south seventh. Our recent projects. Yep.
That's what you're talking about. Yep. Half million dollar. And how much are we looking to spend on sidewalks? Well, I just put a number in there. Like, every year, we have a dedicated amount. I'm just through that number. And I mean, so I I guess I don't you guys know where I stand, I guess. Mhmm. But So I'm torn on, do you wait a few years and I'll do any projects to save up for seal coating? Or do you just kinda keep going and Well, I guess if we split it in half, right, like, if we did the South Side in seventh, that hypothetically would be $25,300
k. And then next year, do the North Side. I don't know. And I'm not sure if it'd work that way because you get a better deal because it's bulk, of course. But yeah. I don't know. Okay. I'm gonna ask the question without blame or whatever because I don't understand it, and I've sat here for a while on council. That used to be a thing that we do after every single project. Not since I've been here. Right. But why did it change? I have no idea. I can't answer that. And then you go all engineering system or change through through. Yeah. Yeah. Is not recommended anymore? Because it's it's a half million dollars onto that project. How much was that project?
Like, 7? The Seventh Street, and all that also, like Altogether, probably. Yeah. Why are we not protecting that piece of infrastructure that we had to fight over? Like, it was it was And maybe we need more information from Andrew on that, like, why they aren't recommending that. I I Now let me clarify. Andrew recommends it. I I don't know where again, that was since I've been here, we've never had a Silco program. Now we did have the one inch, you know, the, what's the top layer called? You know? The mount Yeah. The mount overlay.
Overlay. Oh, the wear coat? The wear course. The wear course. Wear Like that, we've done since I've been here, like, a year afterwards, and we've continued to do that. But, you know, I've been here eleven years. We've never said we're doing a seal coat this roadway the next year. Again, that so that had to have changed before even I saw it. It was, like, you had, like, two years to kinda let it season, and then That's how you should do it. And that and that's kinda right where we're at. Right? So, like, to me, like, that's a big priority at this point. To be honest. Yeah. Yeah. And and now we again, I'm not I'm not
my question is, did something change in terms of, you know, how the road is built, what is added to the asphalt, all that other stuff that may contribute to that. Because I'm a big fan of taking care of what we have and maintaining it so it doesn't fall apart and have to replace it again. And if the best course of action is if there's, hey. We just did a mill and overlay or we just put in a new road. What is that process so we can do that? What is the best because it used it used to be and then there's the thirty year life of a road.
Right? You do the mill and overlay, like, two or three times. Right? And then before you do the significant replacement and reconstruct of the road. Good. I wonder also, I'm gonna add to that, like, what we used to do, but, because you see all the peeling on the roads now. I don't think we had as much peeling in the past. Like, you see all these little, like, where that top course is coming up and water is sitting and you know? And it's like, I don't remember having so much peeling. Like, if you go up Sixth Avenue by me or Mhmm. Fourth Avenue on the East Side of town.
Sixth Avenue is getting beat up. It's just like yeah. Fourth Avenue on the East Side of town. Like, that's where I feel like because we haven't, like, continuously done that, maybe that's why it's coming off. I don't know. It would be nice to know. Like, I mean, could we ask someone who's an expert? Percent sure, but in the spring, you usually see a lot of water coming up in them through them cracks. So I don't know if the road is coming off. Cracks. This is like the whole it's peeling off. But what happens is the water comes through the road Yeah. And then it thaw it thaws during the day, then it freezes it at night so then it pops that.
And I don't know if it's Yeah. I don't know if it's because the under underbed of the road wasn't properly drained. Right. And and there is that issue with Fourth Avenue Northwest. And you can see it where the seals are. Right? So it it follows along that, but this is more like it's different. It's at yeah. It's at inch or shallow peeling. Yeah. So there is yes. Definitely. I agree with Chad. You do wanna take care of what you have, and there's gotta be some best practices for if there's a scheduled bill, after a new road has been put in.
I mean, obviously, somebody must have the knowledge. But the other thing I was thinking, how come we haven't taken care of our sidewalks? I mean, that's we talk about taking care of your, assets. I mean, the sidewalks is a complete embarrassment for this city. The sections that you can't walk on, just bought in dirt and I mean, a lot of the older people live in this core part of town, obviously, and and they're on the road because that's the only choice. And sidewalks have been neglected for, looks like, decades upon decades. So I I like the idea of allocating,
whatever, a 150 per year into that fund. Keep chipping away at that. I mean, that's something you can do in a not like you have to do the whole town in one year. Yeah. Do a major amount. But to agree with this, going over with this, I would find out best practices, what the people in the know would what other town cities do, I guess. Would be that's true. What other cities do. Well, it's important what other cities do. It's important what other cities do because, obviously, they're doing it probably better than we are. Right. We wanna make sure we're doing it the right way. But best practices would dictate what's what other cities have done,
what we should be doing possibly. Is there an appetite for looking at getting maybe that like, I see it as the way when I drive down Seventh, which is a lot, like, I worry about that. Like, why are we not why do we not chip seal that bad boy? They just and it I don't know if it's force of habit, tradition, whatever. But if it's something that should be done, like, a half million dollars is a whole lot of money. But if that means it it extends the life of our road, to me, it's something that would maybe look at finding the money for. Right. Because we're gonna have a community center and no road to get there.
And we bake it in, like, going forward. Yeah. And that's the kicker. We we have to plan for when we're doing the actual construction Right. Going forward. And I agree. But I'd also like to see us protect that asset and then, like We're gonna keep doing that. Yes. Yeah. Like Okay. Could that be built into the cost of a new road? Mhmm. That's what he said. Yep. I thought you're only limited on so much you can access it by. Part of it. You're unlimited on that? Whatever you can justify? I guess I don't know what you're saying. I'm sorry. Well, you you have your cost, then you had a percent over that,
typically. He's asking if you could add in the seal Could you add in a million dollars for two the next two seal coats on top of the new project? You could probably add in the first seal coat and stretch to add the second one. Yeah. I've seen that done before. Okay. Just the first one in two years. But you could. That would be allowed you in your No. It's part of the project. Yeah. It's just part of the project. Well, it's not the project. The project's over with and the road's done. But Yeah. But it's only half done. Yeah. What's that? Technically, it's only half done because you're not Well, look. If the road's good for twenty years, you probably have four more seal coats in there.
So that isn't that part of the project too? I mean, I'm just kinda throwing it out there. I yeah. I everybody I've ever talked to said seal coating after two years is recommended. So I guess to me, it's part of the project. But Like every two years? No. No. No. No. No. Just the And it might be fifteen years. It might be twenty years. Years. Yeah. What Maybe it's a mill and overlay somewhere in there too. Yeah. So that should be a time It all depends on those Yep. Initial cost of it. Well, and on the road, you know, how it Well, and I I think that's where we need to go back to that whole idea
of, like, coming up with a plan. Mhmm. Like, what is our plan and start going every so many years we're gonna do this. Every so many years we're gonna do that. When a new project happens, then we do this. Like, come up with an operations manual of how we're gonna address road improvements, and I think that's something I'll find out the questions. Yeah. So we can find that out. Okay. Yeah. The reality is we've just never prioritized road and sidewalk construction going back for eons now. Well, a lot of it is. They've left it to us. They well, it's been we've been so re so reactionary over time too.
It's like a lot of it is development driven in terms of residential roads and everything like that. Now we've had some opportunities for commercial development. It's it's made from being able to do what we have. We budget $0 until five years ago in our road budget. So just think about that. Yeah. Okay. This is on the economic development front. And Don, do you want to roll through these really quick? I think these the last two sections should go a little faster, at least this one will. Yes. And I put these together just sort of looking at everything we have going in
the community from a commercial industrial perspective. Now, obviously, you sustain the traditional downtown. We need to probably be looking again, you know, what incentive programs we can put together. We have tax abatement, border city, if we're able to use that, has some limitations on that use. Access improvements for this alley alleys or whatever to improve those properties, and and, that kinda just drops down to EDA or a downtown development authority or even a port authority depending upon the powers that we need to get in there to get the job done.
And that ranges all the way from work from, property acquisition to working with developers to other, economic development incentives that we wanna put together. It may take a separate board to to deal with all that. And dilapidated property clearance is a part of that too. And do we want to have a fund put together annually? Again, we're talking money, to buy up properties as they become available to start assembling. If you work with the developer, they can maybe get a property two or three, but we have to have three, four, five and six probably, to make the whole thing go.
We've talked about, we have plans and concepts for all the traditional downtown would look once we develop, but in order to get there, you have to start somewhere. So those things are also tied together including finding a site development partner for the downtown. That could be probably more than one. You may pick up pick up a project at a time where you have somebody that's willing to come in and and take three, four, or five lots, get about a I'd say 80 to a 100 running feet of downtown, put in a commercial building with second story apartments. Then we have to start looking at the backside of that and where we're gonna
put the parking. Usually, that's acquisition behind that, which is probably gonna be removal of single family homes. I mean, that's just things you have to look at because people have to park somewhere and then also have accessibility for the bike pass, walking pass, and and that kind of thing. It's good. Because we're not gonna be parking people much out on town. West Business District, business support, that's our traditional area out there, support the incentives, road access, infill, reuse as projects and opportunities become available.
Access itself, the building is underutilized, there might be some project that will come in that we might participate in to further utilize building and site in a better way, just as an example. West District third Avenue Northwest Housing, will continue a phased multifamily housing support. We've had some different stuff coming. We talked a little bit about the tax development that came in with the slab on grade houses. There, I think by the time we sat down with the fire department, we sort of figured out where we needed access in and out of there and where we're going to park people.
They couldn't build enough units to justify it economically and that's why it went away. Rail District, again, support our commercial growth out there. That's our, obviously, our primary right now as far as where we're putting effort in. It's part of business siting, subdivision planning and access, and it's a whole discussion again and forth, extending forth out to to sixtieth and all that. And then the internal road systems will develop as time allows as we work with the development community. And, you know, there's only so much absorption, of course, of that commercial area, how we wanna build that.
So that'll happen over time and be redevelopment of some of that, you know, sites out there too. Dilworth Energy Park feasibility. We're gonna talk tonight at council meeting about exploring the infrastructure extension South Of 20 Eighth. We'll leave that for tonight. But as you start thinking about that, you've got to think about that property and developing road systems, infrastructure systems into there to maybe develop that energies, you know, slash commercial industrial park in that area on that side. There's definitely opportunity for the community versus just extending water and sewer up there and
allowing the frontage, allowing thirty fourth to develop. And, you know, there's obviously access issues with that too, and, road systems needed to be built. And some of that could be EDA finding some of that might have to be city contribution in that. Otherwise, as far as business promotion, we don't have a Chamber of Commerce, you know, we partnered with the FM Chamber of Commerce to help us out a little bit on that. You know, we do some of the of the promotion, you know, on our web page and that through a more you know, be more colorful and that kind of thing. Limited and simple at this point.
Obviously, get it will get more sophisticated as the community grows, we get more commercial tax base. That's a quick run through on it. Are we on the right track? I guess it's kind of what I wanna know. Missing anything? Just a metal. Do you see? Oh, I just took the one the one I want. The first thing I wrote down was from the planning commission perspective when we talked about the Main Street and the Highway 10, like, that four block corridors Yep. Block. Right? And how we look at, revitalizing that area, main you know? Because without a doubt I mean,
that's the traditional area in town. You know, when you look at big picture, I mean, Fargo's able to revitalize their downtown. West Fargo's able to revitalize Cheyenne Street. It's just, you know, keeping that They might have bulldozer. Sometimes you you have to build on top of what was there. There's there's something to be said about that. Do you also have to ask someone to go and do it, though? I mean Yeah. And I don't know how West Fargo did it all with their with Cheyenne. And and, yeah, we don't have a Doug Burgum,
for downtown. Just open to the ideas. I like the idea of, again, how how we do it, you know, so there's not winners and losers. I mean, we have to make sure we're more careful on that one, I guess. Yeah. Do you want us to to start looking at creation as some kind of a redevelopment authority for downtown? I mean, what what is the What is that? Best fit for us, whether it's an EDA or whether it's an HRA or combination powers or even port authorities. Yeah. We explained sort of what that would mean for the city if we establish something like that. Right. We'd have a board and,
US Council would fund that board to be in existence and provide staffing for the board as well as look at you would also be responsible for any development programs that they would promulgate or put in, but they, in theory, would have some some authority to do some to but it's actual you would you can either grant them more authority or limit their authority to do any kind of bonding or financing or that kind of thing. Might be just another group of heads put together to specifically look at the issues downtown all the way from planning that property to the specific parcels themselves,
getting the studies done where you look at the buildings, what can be saved, what can't be saved, all that kind of thing. You know, if you're gonna make steps to do that, you gotta have a group with your eyes right on that and you'll have to you'll have to dedicate resources to have that kind of stuff done. If you're if, you know, if you say, hey, Don, that's maybe five years in the future we can do that, not right now. That's fine, but I'm just saying at at some point it's gonna have to happen. What's a ball park number? For what? Well, you said we have to fund them. You mean just You can get started with about $40,000
ballpark. Get staffing, get prep something. You know, to get something going. Letting it rot. You put theaters out to the businesses now and see what they have used in the past. Well, I you know, that starts with meetings with them getting the owners in here, business operators. Got reaction. Well, the ones I've talked to on the phone, some are interested in doing something, but others are kind of getting towards where, I wanna say they're moving out of out of that part of their career, their lifestyle of running those businesses, that kind of thing. Others are looking For more money, looking for other partners to come forward.
That's what I know so far. I mean, really, we'd have to get them in here and specifically have a conversation with them. And that would be all part of this. So what is the $40,000? Like, where is it like, just type of funding itself. $40,000 for what? Well, it's for for studies, for staff capacity, that kind of thing to do. I'm just spitballing a number. Because I I know one of again, one of the things I wrote down is, you know, for other businesses, how do we do that? You know, our the Chamber has been fantastic. Reason why they're great great partnership.
But how do we get someone with laser focus on that work? You know, and I have, like, is there an equivalent to that to the MBA, the Morehead Business Association? Not your masters in business administration. Too many, similar acronyms. Well, it's like a downtown development authority. It's like Morehead has one that work on redevelopment of their downtown area. And and you I know I know smaller scale, but yeah. Basically Again, I like that idea because I don't know the solutions, and maybe other people could help us find them. In in Barnesville, right, they have a similar type setup, if I remember correctly. Are they a main street community?
Is that what they do? I don't know if it was Karen. Yeah. I know that's her official title, like economic development. Okay. Now what that means, you know, I guess I could take on various you know Yep. That might be a resource at least to see exactly what it is that she does over there. And from other other communities too in the state, so we come back with more ideas. I mean, if it's if it's something you're interested in doing or, you know, we we only right now have so much capacity for projects, you know. You say, hey, guys. The community center is your number one. Get that done, you know, and and we're and we're doing the comp plan and whatever.
And you say, well, when you have time in the next year, two or three, keep it in mind. So we have to be a little careful too that way. But I'm just throwing out some bigger picture ideas and what ultimately has to happen to make some change down there. Mhmm. I think it's a good idea. Look into it. I think now let's find out what we'd look at for budget, what other towns are doing. Start with somebody interesting. You got east, though. Activity on the West Side. Got the activity on the East Side. In the center part of town, it's like a pass through for the most part. I mean,
you know, they would have to get themselves actually involved with something. I mean, the the end seem to be working pretty good. Mhmm. They are. This is probably the only way they really get something moving is if they get them on sale. Well, it's gonna take more incentives to redevelop the middle part of the city. You just gotta know that going into this. Yeah. You know, it's gonna cost more money to get this redeveloped, the middle portion, ultimately. Is there anything we've talked about today that doesn't cost money? I'd like to do that first. No. Okay. But but that's that's I mean Yeah. When you look at it, though, I mean,
the East Side Of Town has new developments, a place that people can walk to. West Side Of Town, peep place believe it or not, you can walk to the West Side Of Town. You're Just not a lot highway down. Or, you know, make your own road. But and and same thing. Like, people in the center part of town, like, you can walk there. Like, it it done a lot. Generally, home from there, but it it's possible. So to neglect that middle is is one of the things that we should not be doing. It's our you know, make sure that we're not neglecting parts of town. So I like the idea of the downtown authority so they could focus on that
while we're looking at everything else. It it gives a voice. Well, what I've got on one, two, three here is look for other examples in other cities, cost to get started, and then what would be the best instrument? Like I said, EDA, HRA, Port Authority, Downtown Development Authority, what's the best instrument for us to use? Cool. We done here? Not quite yet. We have one more to go. City facilities and parks, last section here. Some things that we had jotted down. Obviously, the community community centers are our highest priority. Going through the design phase currently.
Again, the most important part, I know this is kind of the chicken and egg thing, is setting a budget for that. And tangent to this, an opportunity has come about recently for a potential library as part of this, community center project that we would be doing. So I'm thinking in terms of driving traffic, having individuals there on a daily basis. We're not creating a facility that is just a rental hall space.
We're not doing that. What would drive traffic there on a, you know, regular basis? We recently met with the, executive director of Lake Agassiz Regional Library, just having a conversation. And what she say, Don, there's 19 over 1,900 people in Dilworth that have a library card. Libraries have proven to be a heavily traffic, you know, or at least a consistent traffic space. So how this would work, it'd be something potentially that or not potentially,
it'd be something that the city would have to add on another space and, you know, we're just spitballing the size something we'll say the size of city hall here. You know, what would that what that could potentially look like. They would staff it. You know, it's nothing that we have to staff or anything, but the facility would be ours. So that's just something that our architects have more like, we'll say, a I mean, and then what's the word I'm looking for? An alternate, you know, sort of like an alternate, you know, hey. If you wanted to add this on, this is what it would look like.
Obviously, this would have to be the direction of the council. This is something that you would like to see as part of our community center project. Maybe it's not a worthwhile investment at this time. But if we're trying to get drive people out there with programming, whatever that may be and it it would be limited hours. It's not like it's open from seven to ten every day or anything like that. You know, being maybe open five, six days a week. You know, during the daytime, we'd look to them for a recommendation. But we did wanna make sure that came about.
We wanna make sure that you're aware of that if it were to ever come about there. And the other thing, we already talked loaded up Fourth Avenue supporting the infrastructure, and this is all going into the planning of everything out there with our whole road system, new retention pond. Future city building needs assessment. You know, what does what do we ultimately wanna see? Right now, we have our police maintenance department located on a property. We have us located next to a gas station.
Long term, what do we wanna see? Do we wanna see some kind of a campus concept where maybe the police and city hall are colocated? I could see some benefit in that. Most definitely, we filled a lot of calls, and they PD does as well. They get directed to city hall, something about pulling resources, having one centralized person that answers the phone, whatever that may be. I could see where that'd be an amenity that we could offer to the citizens being colocated. And then, talking about the regional build out of our park,
up there on future Eighth Avenue, where does this need to be in our prioritization schedule? Is this something that's just organically happen as development comes about? Do we need to be investing towards it? What amenities do you wanna see in the park itself? We have some things that were somewhat sketched out, but that doesn't mean you have to see that in there. Should this just be more of a green space type part with some amenities, obviously, if we're talking about ball fields or what whatever it may be. But, do we want this to be a lot more of a just an open space
as opposed to having splash pads or pickleball courts, whatever it, you know, that looks like there. And and I'd mentioned this sort of tangent to that at the time, you know, about maybe having an ADA playground is something that is an identifiable attraction for individuals. Our playgrounds are pretty well ADA accessible now with wood chips and such, but actually developing a true playground with the I don't know which that material is, but, you know, the padded material there that It's a little bit more I did.
Yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah. That type of facility. I think that'd be a really great thing to offer. And then looking at our maintenance shop, we were talking about that earlier in our conversation. We have two properties right now that encompasses our maintenance area. Long term, is that what do we need two sites? Could one of these go away, like the one over here, go away potentially, the old maintenance shop, and, have that for developmental purposes, residential development purposes. So there's a lot on the table here, but just I didn't we just wanna open up the conversation to council as far
as, like, what you see, how our city evolving from a city facility standpoint. So we had that one study done that gave us kind of a campus layout for over there before the whole community center end up going on entirely different route. Right? Right. I mean, because in some ways again okay. So one step back. I would like to know if there's a state definition of what a regional park is. Like, if we wanted to really pursue funding because I know Moorhead just got designation for
regional park. Can there be two regional parks within x x number of miles from each other? I mean, can we all have a regional park in within a mile of each other? The same county. Why do they beat us to the punch there? Because, you know, there's a difference between a park and an athletic complex. And so are there state requirements that may limit what funds can go to? You know? Because, again, if we're gonna do something big like that, it yeah. It I just wanna know more about that. I love the ADA playground idea.
Again, like, with the whole regional park, now that the community center is on the other side of town, like, what does that regional park look like if our community center is somewhere else? You know? Like, it's changed. Like, when we were talking about at one point, it was here. At one point, we might have it up there. Now we're going another way. What is I get what what your question is. What is our our And and I'm not hung up on the nomenclature regional park because we never actually did any research or anything like that. But the idea was to have a park of some significance. Big park. A big park. Right?
That would that would be an attraction for both, like, obviously, people hanging out, but for development and then to hopefully draw in the, the, Heartland Trail and stuff like that. I I don't know that like, again, that that nomenclature, it it's it's whatever its letters. It it means absolutely nothing. But if we're gonna county park or a park. Just like it just something of some significance, like, to show that. I mean, because I think you're right. Like, regional park might have some significant, you know, state qualifiers in order to meet that. And if it is,
and if that's what we need to do in order to pursue some funding, because I think I mean, Morehead did a great job of pursuing all kinds of funding, and it's their pool. Right? That's where where is their regional park? That might be the I'm not sure if that's the one. Now I'd have to go back and look again, but it could be. I think that is where so it's really close to us. So, again, if What you know? It was rocky, wasn't it? Yeah. That would be the one That would be the swimming pool. And Yeah. And when I first brought forth the idea, it was similar to, like, Gooseberry Park or what's the other side?
Linenwood. Linenwood. Something like that. You know? Just just of that nature, that size, that magnitude. Because when you look around those neighborhoods, I mean, you see a lot of activity. You see a lot of growth, a lot of residential opportunities, and that's it. I mean so, again, that that nomenclature, don't get hung up on that. I'd be like, how do we how do we maximize that? Because what happens if, like, we sell the north half off in the future? Right? You know? So and I I'd also hate to say, well, this is a regional park. And then in the future, not be able to sell that part off because,
like, if you watch 40 Fifth Street in Fargo, they used to have 15 or six 16 different baseball, softball fields, and they sold off half of that to a developer that brought in a hotel and everything like that. So, like, when we're pursuing this, right, that's one thing. And and to have something significant and I and I know there's been some interest on development on on the east side of our designated park area. But I don't I think pursuing it is is key, but not being hung up on it.
So I just who knows? This could be fake news for all I know. This document that I found AI. It's more of a DNR designation, if I'm looking at it correctly. And they differentiate between a metro regional park and a nonmetropolitan area regional park. So for regional park criteria, 100 plus acres, well, that already is already knocks We're up. The the place isn't a 100 acres. Yeah. That isn't a 100 acres either. So Well, maybe as far as Serves the regional clientele,
obviously, rec activities offered, special features, scarcity of recreational resources. Again, this is a DNR thing, and Met Council has their own type of stuff that doesn't really involve this. Worth exploring more. Because, again, it's like if it means putting in native plants and native trees and, you know, like, doing that, that makes it something that draws people in. Yeah. You know? And we get funding for it. That would help. Yeah. Because if we're gonna pursue, like, bonding measures or whatever. Yeah.
So that's why I'm like, I don't necessarily wanna downplay it if it's it's upplaying it. We need to play it just right. Right. Not too hot. Not too cold. We need the Goldilocks, the regional park on Yeah. And so then back to facilities, again, I kinda like the idea of collocating so that I mean, like, the PD isn't dependent on whether Stacy's there or not. And they're like, you can have, like, redundancy, you know, in your staffing. You know, would it be good to have it by the community center? Yeah. But I don't think we have the space there. So now we're looking at where's the next best
place for it, and I think maintenance should be all in one place. Seems like that makes sense. So what does that look like down the road to get it all in one place? We can move PD and city hall over to the old maintenance shop and then move those guys to PD. Love it. I mean, people the the place hey. Because I don't put them there. They were in the hair salon before they bought the street. Wouldn't even think of that. I don't know. I was back in that area. That's right there in the vlogger, man, because the hair the hair salon is still there, I think. The hair salon.
Yep. I don't like where you live. And when we did the Yeah. When we did that, study or whatever, they looked at the land that we owned at the time. Sure. The city owned land at the time. Well, that's changed significantly since then. I I I do I think Colo collocating City Hall and BD makes perfect sense. Yep. Where and I'll stand by I've said this since the beginning. Like, grew up on the railroad. I don't want City Hall anywhere near the railroad. It's loud. It's noisy. It's smelly or whatever. And, again, I love the railroad. It paid for me to go to elementary school. But I I think our city hall needs to say a little something about Delworth,
and I don't want them looking at a switch engine when they're doing it. I look at the size of Morehead's Maintenance Department, Fargo's maintenance department, and we're not there yet. And I'm talking about their footprint, and we're not there yet. But I think giving giving Mike all that space right there, the maintenance department from corner to corner, to me, that makes sense. It's it's industrial or commercial in the buildings that are on the east side of that. Well, sort of until it turns into residential for whatever reason. But how I mean, again, Harsh bulldozer, gives us and Mike an opportunity to to see where that that property will fit
what we need as we go from 5,000 people now. And what do we look like in thirty years or forty years? You know, one or 10,000 or whatever. I just I just think that that chunk of dirt would suit maintenance really well. Is it is it crazy that your how would the offset would would the selling of this building offset in any capacity buying land next to Constitution Park? Oh, out in front of the fire hole out there? Would he parcel that off to where
in half or a third or how how whatever we we need? Because, I mean, I've heard a million dollars. I've heard $2,000,000. I don't know where Van Raden or the Van Raden's even owning it anymore. They do. You know what I mean? Like, I don't obviously, I don't I don't know if this is a maybe it's a million dollar bill. I don't know. But what I think it would be interesting to see, like, what if Casey's has any appetite to acquire this from the city, what that number is. Would that number offset purchasing land over there to build the I don't know.
Maybe I'm in left field. I don't know. Oh, don't buy that. Yeah. Good idea. We're we're gonna lose commercial real estate, or we're we're gonna lose taxable real estate one way or the other once we put City Hall and and the PD on it. So I've tried to find the least impact possible. I'd like I I I You can't I recommend you find the best site possible irregardless. I I would agree with that. Absolutely. And if that's if that's the best site, then then so be it. But one of the reasons, I mean It is prime commercial real estate. I'm not gonna argue with it.
I'm 42, and it is still vacant. So And so was U Haul until last year. Yeah. That's true. I'm gonna buy Vodas on it for a long time. So my purse my perspective on it is from a public I'd wanna acquiesce from a public safety standpoint where it'd be best located first and foremost. The city hall thing, that's great for it to make a statement. Fundamentally, I agree with you. On the flip side, nobody comes to city hall. No one comes to meetings.
You know? So it's not I I serve on a building committee for a church back home and, you know, question things like, is this what it's supposed to be about doing these monstrosity type improvements? Now it says something about the facility. It says something about the pride that you take in a facility attracting more people to the congregation. But are we trying to attract more people to come to city hall? You know? And, again, our space here, it's somewhat functional. It's kinda weird. It works. I mean,
there's some things laid out goofy, you know, kinda, you know, that we would certainly change store space and the like, but I think deferring first and foremost to where the PD would like to be, you know, where it would and I don't know if it matters one way or the other, to be honest with you. Was it at Walmart? So Midgill parking follows where they need. Right in between the two trailer parts, access to Highway 10. And that is nice. I gotta see what the road handle one way of the roundabouts look like in the future and how we can quickly get to Walmart. You have any thoughts, Hunter?
No. Kinda like where you are. Our location right now is perfect. You know, we're isolated for another officer in '27. We're kinda making that top, but we just renovated it. And for not right now. I like the footprints that we had initially a couple years ago with the space that we had. I believe Ty was showing those to me at one point, but I think that's a great place for the maintenance. Realistically, I mean, with that size and everything else they have for us. If we were to move in and and colocate on that property, is that the end of the world? No. Because I it's it's not.
You just move it to the corner? Yeah. Yeah. Or just yeah. However, I don't I don't know how we'd add on there or even relocating Yes. PD building on-site. I mean, that's property we own. So to get back to your question, and we have that we have that corner right there. Right there. We own Yeah. All of that. So it's a The one's pulled out. Right? Correct. Yeah. And we'll own that eventually too. I mean We're around. Yeah. I mean Yeah. But what what happens when MnDOT closes that access to Highway 10? We're gonna get fifth, though. Right? Because that's the fifth coming all the way through. So that is actually not bad for us.
That's fine, guys. Works. Yeah. I was actually thinking about that. I'd like to go right off a second, put in another gate so we can just drive straight in over there. Straight away. Get ahead of it before it happens because that's gonna mess with us turning in and out of there. Not till that gets done, of course. But Mike, explain again what what place? Coming off a second. Okay. Okay. That's just behind the other There there's actually where where the two buildings are. Gotcha. Cut right through there. Put a gate in the fence and because with fifth coming through,
it's gonna be a Yeah. We have that land right there. And there's already gravel there, so it wouldn't take a whole lot. I'd like to get rid of them two buildings too. Interesting. You know, we're doing more for so less people need to actually show up here. Right? And we're talking about building a bigger place. Well, no one said bigger. Yeah. Absolutely bigger. It has to be bigger. Can't be smaller. It can't be smaller. But, you know, if this is in range. That's what we're proposing. It has to be bigger. It has to be more beautiful and magnificent. Zone park. But the thing is if you sell this place for x, it's gonna probably cost you 10 x to replace it.
So just keep that in mind as well. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, but this is totally sufficient. You don't need anything different really when you want less people to show up. I mean, it doesn't matter if it's downtown and looking at a railroad. I mean, it's part of downtown too. So, you know I I think it'd be interesting when we look at the designing of a new city hall as to how we can incorporate working from home and what do flexible office spaces look like. I mean, I was at Microsoft two weeks ago or whenever the heck it was, and there was no one there.
The place was empty. Oh, one site shut down. So how do I mean, is it is it necessary? How do we make that work? And is that does that make working in the city hall, you know, more attractive if I can spend my Tuesday working from home or whatever? And how does that impact the building? Because I didn't say bigger. I just said I want to make sure that we have something that represents the city of Delaware. I don't know what the space looks like anymore. Our biggest attendance of the year is for, volunteer of the year. Special. Right? And even special assessments. I mean,
we we just relocate anyway. But so I I think there's it's an excellent opportunity when you when you see what what is happening with, spaces and combining spaces. So we looked at when we did the hiring of of architects and engineers. There's some crazy cool stuff out there nowadays. But in in in, like, city hall, it doesn't draw that foot traffic like like it used to. I mean, it used to up here for everything, and now we're trying to find ways, like, so people don't have to come here. Everything's online. Right? Can we get away with less? You know, in my and I think it can be designed in a way where
the the biggest kicker is just having this differentiation between our police and city hall and the maintenance department. Right? Just giving them their own space. Again, if they all look like they're together, it's probably not the end of the world. But I think with trees and design and things like that, it can almost feel like its own property within the property too where you're not feeling like you're on top of each other or invading their, you know, access or whatever it may be there. But again, that's available property. A lot of available property actually.
It's a big old space right there. There's one home that remains recently purchased actually. I don't know if that's the long term vision of the group. So we're trying to figure out. What did y'all think about the library? It's an unexpected opportunity. And I'm at the mind since I go to the libraries anymore. Like, I have a Kindle. But the the statistic were 1,900 people in this town, that's just about half, have library cards. That's kinda awesome. It's kinda awesome. Are they calling mine from, like, elementary school? I think I'm the one with the 19.
I might have two, actually. And I also like the idea that it would draw people in on a daily basis, potentially, rather than, oh, there's the lion stag or the fire department stag or whatever having a wedding. There's constant traffic to that location. I think that's pretty smart. Like David's library comment. I I I I go to the Moorhead Library quite often, to be honest, and they have lots in the summertime, a tremendous amount of activities. Mhmm. It's free. Last two weeks ago was the Meat Rabbits. It's like an odd musical thing that was they take a normal song and change
it craziness. But they got lots of outside things, lots of inside things, lots of story times, lots of Mhmm. It's a tremendous place to for especially for families, the young kids. I see. They got weekend things. I mean, I think it'd be great if they if that would be something that would work here. And more is still on. I know we talked about that. I was worried about the criminal aspect of we have a lot of complaints at the Martin Library. People aren't intoxicated. They're fighting. So with more it's still being there, it's a little more farther than I've removed. I think it would be advantageous for our community. I don't see the same issues that Martin has or the part of Free Wi
Fi. I'm glad you brought that up. I was wondering about that. No. And there'll be issues, but there's issues there every minute. Yeah. You know, there's there's issues with the new restaurant coming down. There's an issue, you know, whatever. I'm interested in learning more about it. I I I'd I think it's good. Yeah. It's very it's definitely an opportunity. Good work on that one. The elementary school night I mean, back in the day. This was a long time ago. Like, the school used to open their library during the summer too. They don't do that as long as they have a letter.
I don't I don't think that. I don't know. Years later. Yeah. Yeah. I don't I don't know if it doesn't. And with Rebel Kids Care, right, maybe that's open all the time now. Yeah. That's part of it. I don't know. I don't know. And I don't wanna replace what they you know, like, if they already have something, I wanna make sure it works with what they're doing. I don't know. And I think mister Steven's idea of of the programming because I think that to my knowledge, my kids recently went through elementary. There was nothing in the summer in terms of programming. Nothing. And so can I just clarify? So we're talking about giving up part of the community center for this?
On and having another space. So we'd have to build it. Build more we'd have to build in more money for a library when we also need the rink building to be redone. They roll away. So do we have the the skating rink building on here? We don't. Because, again, I'm like, so we're talking about something completely new when we also have some We're gonna hockey rink? Well, the warming house is Hold on for a second, please. We're we're gonna build a ring, by the way. We just came up with another 7 and a half million dollars.
Why are you gonna drive the zamponi? You know, does DTF still build a a house or a shed or something like that? Yeah. Is that something that, like, we could look at one of the local schools and say, hey. What would it cost you? We'll bulldoze. Like, now I'm I'm getting on a theme. Just bulldoze the old one, pour the concrete, pour the slab, have them come in, build the slab on. Great. Is that the I I have thought about that. I mean If they could do it for a project? Or Yeah. Like, you'll you'll do that. Would that be Moorhead or north North Fargo does a lot of sheds if DGF
does They used to do houses. They they still do houses. They still do houses. Yep. They do, but I know they when I drive by there, there's a lot of sheds. I mean, because that's ultimately what it'd be. Right? It's just, big, insulated. Super fancy. All you're doing is staying on one space. Four walls, ceiling, the the the But, again, that I would like to see that address before building something new, but I'm not against it. It's just I wanna know where it is on the priority list because we've got some other projects we probably need to build before that.
Yes. We've identified about $57,000,000 for the projects and about $47 in which we do have a something that's not make up for. I agree with the I agree with the logic, Julie, 100%. Then if but here's an if we have the opportunity, the community center is priority one. And, yes, we have budgets, everything like that. I totally get that. But to not explore that and look at that, that's I mean, we don't want right? We might not know all the right answers. Program is huge. You could have to be right. You could have Well, is there potential for state dollars?
I mean, yeah, it's like I said, I'm I'm I'm curious to learn more about it. Yeah. If you don't wanna turn it into a rental, turn it into a use place. If you're not so worried about if you don't worry about competing with, tech or whatever, make it a place that's everybody is invited. Everybody can come. I mean, the skating thing is nice, but what you got there probably could suffice for. I don't know. I don't go there. But I think huge percent of the community and surrounding area would go to whatever, if it's the library or our thing or whatever combination.
That's gonna hit so many people. Yeah. It's another thing to think about, actually, like Julian was saying, but, I wouldn't dismiss it. I would definitely work on it. Another amenity to attract people to do work. Mhmm. So, Julie, that was one thing we talked about was this is gonna be, like, an additional space versus just taking one of our meeting rooms, I guess, we'll say. And, it which that's an option too if you can expand one of those existing rooms. And we we felt pretty strongly about having a
having these multipurpose rooms. So that's why I when they're developing this or just I mean, it's a block right now. It's not too in-depth. You know, it'd be its own separate space connected to it. So if And I would wanna I'm a little curious too about the agreement Morehead has with them because I know there was some disconnect between when they were doing their new community center and the library was supposed to move in and then something about rent. Yeah. I think there's and, again,
I'm not don't know what was the details. Yeah. Yeah. Like, no one's going on. The Moorhead Library, which is going into the new community center And LAO. And, and, yes, and Lake Agnes Regional moving in there as well. I I think they'll probably end up I don't wanna speak to it. But, yeah, that's two different two different things going on. Yep. K. I believe. That's how I understood it. Got it. And and when we talked to them, it wasn't gonna be like a library link site where they could share a multiuse room. They literally wanted their own space. It would be a library here.
She had no doubt to go over, like, Gamebusters here. Yeah. She felt really confident in it. Like, she's surprised we don't have one already. Are there any other initiatives that we should be considering? This one's free. There you go. No. It Okay. I'm done with you. Kind of more probably geared towards you guys. Did did coach Dayton call you or anyone up at city hall? Yes. The ten u baseball team or the Babe Ruth team? Nine u whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Nine u. P u. So They they would love to utilize
the Don Bogle Field. But the fact that they can't reserve the field to make a schedule forces them to operate their home games out of Centennial. So his ask of me was and he has no idea I'm bringing this up, but, he just wanted more information. I said, you gotta call city hall. But I think it's something that we could start collectively chewing on is, like, what what he what he had been told or what he understood was that they couldn't they couldn't schedule
the baseball field because it's a city park. Right? And so, like, if if we let them schedule it, then are we letting are we not letting someone else schedule it? So I guess my question is if we're gonna do long range planning, how how can we market that field so that we can use it for home games for our own kids? Yeah. And it's a it's a tricky one. And I called him off a message. I haven't heard back from him, but, this came up when there were some renovations being done when Don Vogel Field was coming together.
Right? All the groups that were putting it together. And even at that time, there's again, I don't have a kid. Don't obviously have a kid in baseball or anything like that, but there's multiple factions. You know, like, there's not just one singular baseball group that plays out there. I just don't know how from a internal standpoint that we would I know we Chad's talked about having programming, you know, as part of a future park initiatives. Right? But from a city hall standpoint, someone calls us, we reserve a space for them. I don't know how we go about administering that.
Like, if they get out there and someone's on the field, are they calling Mike at home to come out there and kick the other ones off? Right. You know, we just don't have dedicated staff to Hunter. Yeah. They come out there. What I mean, like And so we just not gotten into that business of it. I'm just a little leery of it just because there's so many different, I don't say so many different I think now the baseball club has essentially taken as soon as, like, you get out of coach's pitch, now they're as far as summer programming goes, they they're all kinda lumped into the DGF Baseball Club.
They're all unified now. And as of this year. They they were wondering if the baseball club and they would be willing to rent it, you know, maintain it because, obviously, our city schedule doesn't necessarily constitute game schedule. So there it was relaying to me. It had no problem getting out there and cutting the grass or doing the the grounds work as part of the baseball club's, responsibilities or whatever. But I I and, again, I don't know I don't know how it works, but it seems to me like it could. So, I don't know,
something to think about, I guess. And we've talked about this before. Like, what's on the schedule? Is there any way to throw it online where they get on online by themselves? So it runs itself. I mean oh, the spot's filled. So let me either move on to the next one or I guess I'd throw them spitballs out there, see what sticks. Maybe we need to have a baseball club reach out to who? I mean, it's who do they reach out to? Do they reach out to you or you or you or Reserving it could be the simple part, but administering it. Yeah. But, I mean, there's gonna be some conflicts.
I'm sure. I see. So it up. Policy thing is then put a park Well, and then that's just it. And like I said, we'd like to get to the point where we are offering programming around the entire year around all of our parks. What the only what what comes to my mind right now is there was a a post, I think it was from not the city of Holly, but from a resident of Holly who was talking about the batting cages. And the batting cages are open to any resident in the city of Holly if they wanna come in and and use those batting cages.
However, if there is an organized team that is coming for practice or to play, they have priority. Sure. And I don't know if it's simple enough to work Mhmm. Without reservations, everything like that. If all of a sudden, hey. You know what? Sorry, Julie. Our team's coming in. You know? We'll we'll be done in an hour or whatever, you know, after anything. You know what I mean? If you rented it to the baseball club, they'd be able to self govern what time the home games are. Or, you know, I mean, if they had conflicting schedules of one team's away, one team's at home.
I don't know. You'd think they would figure it out for themselves. But I'm less concerned about the baseball clubs because I think they would. I'm more concerned about public perception and kids playing or, you know, pickup games and stuff like that than feeling ostracized because they're not on a team or too young or too old. How how do we convey that? You know? Like, my kid's in baseball. My kid's played on that field. We've done all done all those things. How do we make it so, you know, on whatever not because it it's also it's also only fit for young kids. Yeah. So what is what and I don't even know what to pay,
Bruce. A 60 foot basis? I thought it was. It might be something that it was. So how do we look at programming across the board? I mean and where do we get a how does how does that look, and what does the staffing look like to manage it? Because we're talking about, you know, collocating so we can have redundancies and people answering the phone or anything like that. How do we get to the point where someone calls and they're they wanna rent the community center? They wanna, you know, know what's going on in the library. What what can they do at Don Bogle Field?
How do they get the deep all of that stuff, and and what does that look like? Yeah. It feels to be used. It shouldn't just be sitting on there. So, yeah, we definitely should come up with a plan. And I like the idea of of again, it's crazy how many people play baseball. Right? How many kids play baseball? And bringing people into town. Right? There's another team. It's eight you know, 12 kids, 18 parents, you know, a half dozen cars coming in and out of town. See like, it it believe it or not, it does make sense. Like, it it and people do it.
So I I would like the idea of it. I'm trying to figure out a way to say, okay. The ninety's gonna host Moorhead, and we're gonna play in Dilworth tonight rather than playing Moorhead. Or even better, West Fargo. If I had to drive out to comes here. If I had to drive out to Rendezvous Park in West Fargo one more time, I was gonna lose it because you can see Bismarck from there. Forty minutes. It's it's a It don't get ready to go. And part of it is bringing people to deal with. Yeah. And if they're constantly going to more, they're constantly going to Fargo. That means they're not coming to deal with. So Thought maybe what's the first step to in that direction,
I guess. Is the schedule set for the year? This year, it is. Yeah. So, like, the and his point was, like, you know, the the if they can use it, they will this year, but the schedule is set. So their home games are at Centennial. So it's like his his thing was, starting the conversation for more of a a next year so that they can get it on the schedule to be in. You guys have to sign up for your own practice fields. I know I used to do that when I used to coach our kids. We had designated times we could pick from all those fields. Does that does that work?
Yeah. And we just bounce to whatever Just go wherever it's available. There were some times where we kinda where we just found open grass. Yep. And then there down the grass. I mean and that's just the reality of of unlimited space. But, again, I like the idea. We have these amenities. Like, if we could schedule games, if we could schedule things, if we could have that programming and bring people to town, it it it's it matters. I like the idea. Yeah. But Or just distance ourselves from them. Like, hey. You guys schedule it. You know? Well, that's what I'm told. On you. Yeah.
That's what I've told them. But they want someone to be involved in it so that they have a cover if they get out there and someone's out there playing or whatever. I mean, that's also what it comes down to. So they just want a signature saying that it's it's that they have the right to be there. That's correct. I mean, that'd be the only reason why you'd want city blessing on this. Their signage up that we use. And I understand where they're coming from with it. It's just more of an administration standpoint. If they get out there well, I mean, our problem is we have an awesome field,
but the other problem is we have no more fields than that. Yeah. So unless you go out there and we wanna gate off the rest of it, I mean, I guess we could do that. I mean, the the only thought I have of how you could make it work is to put up a sign that says this field for rent. Yep. Call city hall. And then reserved by But, I mean, we don't have to say so they show up and they say, we have this rented. Here's my agreement. I mean, you could do but just be hands off at that point. It's like, you know, like, again, have, like, a little Have a bottle. Calendar that says Does that mean I can't play on it if I have it
rented and it's not Nope. You can play on it. But if it's rented, you can play on it. But if you specifically wanna make sure you have access to it out there and call the rest of the month. See if I can find it. Rent it right now. See if I can find what he posted. Yeah. And and maybe that's just some simple signage like, you know, the priority will be for the organized sports or what. I mean, there's gotta be a way. And you'd Priority for whoever pays to play. I mean, how many teams are really going out there for pickup games? Are there I don't know. Probably. Yep. But, again, it might be one way to try it.
It doesn't mean we have to stay with that. It could be a way to be, like, if you want designated playtime Yeah. Like you need to rent it. Otherwise, you can't kick anyone off this field. Right. And then And I think they're open to that. Yeah. Like, the structures in some of the parks like that. You can pay to have it for your event or if it's open, you can go. But the person who paid is gonna get that structure. Yeah. The person who says There's this from 05:30 to eight. Yeah. That's where the games are. Yep. This is this is scheduled for game time. We do that in Fargo. Fargo has a bunch of those out there.
Yeah. You have some signage for that? Because then I get some photos. Minimal staff time that it would require. You know, like, similar to renting, the we just wouldn't have control over making sure nobody could be there, like, how we can control the buildings. But is there a way to make one more form that they could fill out to rent it? So I'm not Nathan's guy was It might be and it might be a simple I don't know if there's a way to put another calendar on the website that you know, like, and it would just be, like, if someone wanted to look to see if the field was available as well.
I don't know. Yeah. We wanna play wiffle ball. We're gonna get a wiffle ball tournament going because that's a thing. Like, you see that increasingly with I don't know. Sounds like I It's an I don't know that it'll work. I'm just throwing it out there. It might be a way to and then let them self regulate. If it didn't work, then give them rent their rental feedback. I don't know. Good discussion for the park board. There you go. Park board can work it out. There's an idea for them. Here's what it says. Yeah. I understand. This is what I was referring to. Why I gotta rent it? K juice. Blah blah blah. Go do that right. What does it say? That's listed as 48,000.
You have Sox complexes and baseball fields down there. I'll put you over there. Yeah. What about it? Oh, that one is but I think they have another one now too. Listed though as a regional park. Oh, I think they just re recently had one approved though, and it might be Romke. It was, like, in the last year. I don't know. Well, Romke, the whole thing the whole block is tore up now, I noticed. No. I know. I'm just talking about the state of Minnesota just did some designation of a Regional Park. When came up with Southside Park on Fortieth Avenue. Wouldn't it So Relating to baseball and and cage and and field usage,
it says, like, that's huge. Cages are free for anyone outside of the structured practice or game. Please be respectful of teams using these cages during practice as games outside of those times. We highly encourage anyone who wants to improve their hitting, use these cages. Because it so change it from cages to baseball fields or diamond or whatever, and just go from there. What whatever the simplest way to be and the least least intrusive to be. I I I'll go find that science. We I I think looking at how we start doing that is gonna be important with and at the same time,
I I don't anticipate a lot of problems, but then again, what do I know? You know, I don't I don't take the phone calls at city hall. I'm not qualified to. I'll just figure it out from there. And maybe it's all consolidated now, like we were saying. I know it wouldn't have worked originally because there's two different competing baseball groups going on. In Hillworth. And that's and I told them that time I'm not getting the middle of y'all, trying to determine who's gonna be out of school. Yeah. That I don't. Yeah. And if it goes that way, then we go back to nobody has access. I don't know. Most of the time. I don't know. They could probably schedule every game and be fine right now.
Right. It just Also Assuming that there's no one out there, but I I don't know how often people are out there and I mean, there's still bleachers out there. Yes. Set up a set up a calendar with a QR code and you scan it and swipe your card. I'll make it easy. One there. It doesn't matter what club you pay for. You can bid on it. You can bid on it. That's gonna give us twenty minutes before we got any back here. Oh, yeah. Are we solid? Any other questions, comments for this? Thank you for putting it all together, Peyton, Don, gentlemen. I do I do appreciate the conversation today. It seems like in any any meeting that you go to,
all these side conversations start going on about futures and what can happen or what you should be doing in a city or, you know, with projects. That's really what this is, you know, just more of an elaborate talk, those side conversations that we always wanna have. This gave us that opportunity. So I appreciate your time today. All right. So with that, there are no further business before this special session. We'll call this meeting adjourned.