I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Roll call around the horn, please. Peterson here. Steichen. Nash. And Olson. With that, it does move us to number three. We have our agenda for approval, and I didn't see any additions or subtractions. Are we solid? Pardon me? You want to make note about the change? Oh, you want me to do that now? Yes. Number eight? Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Perfect. Looking at number eight, I guess we can adjust our we'll adjust, the agenda. We'll remove eight alpha. Just recent conversations, this is taking a different direction, and we can just move it forward through staff. So we will not have that conversation soon. Thank you, Peyton. Motion to approve the agenda removing item eight. All right. I have a motion by Nash. Steichen, second. Second by Steichen. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. With that, it does bring us to number four. Any questions, comments, or concerns with our consent?
Hearing none, I will entertain a motion. Motion to approve the consent agenda. Motion by Nash. Second. Second by Peterson. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. With that, moves us to number five. Peyton, has there been any formal request to speak before counsel? Once again, encourage our public to participate in the process. It will help us make some progress. Progressing to number six, tonight we have, six alpha. We have a recognition for, investigator Elias Hoberstein and ten years of service chief.
I got ten years to be the chair. Alright. Council member, mister mayor, friends, family, officers, today, we are here to recognize investigator Horvison's ten year yes. That's you. Ten years of service. Your commitment to the citizens, to the community, and to this police department has not gone unnoticed, ma'am. I appreciate everything you have done. In the past ten years, investigator Horstin has handled countless number of cases, some that are longer written than novels. Just amazing amount of cases that he is able to handle.
Also, with the investigator position, he is always on call. That's twenty four seven. He's never afraid to answer that call, whether it's to give guidance to an officer, ask if he needs to come out the scene, or even recently with me when I was on a very serious call for service to see if I need anything on his day off. I'm not sure if it was for overtime, but it was, it was, I do I do appreciate when you do that. You've done you've been an outstanding partner for our department and for our community for ten years. It's almost, what, a third of your life? Yep. There you go. I know it feels good. Well, I'm excited to see what happens in the next ten years and what else you're
able to accomplish. Congratulations, investigator Hoberston, for ten years of service, and thank you to your commitment to the police department and the citizens in this community. Thank you. So so you're awarded the mayor's award. What's that? It's his award. It's his that's right. Your gold watch has come up in eight years, Elstool. Twenty eight years. So is it twenty eight? So they have to have 30 in? I have no idea what we're trying to figure out. It's still a gold watch. It's launched anyway. Works. Even at today's rates, we're good. Works for me. Alright. I mean, we'll work here. Get our picture taken. Yeah. The parting of the No one wants to be in the background.
Squared up a little bit. There you go. What's your name? You you might not even uttering the not even there you go. Perfect. There we go. Congratulations. Thank you. Congrats. So that's you, Mark. Yeah. Zero question. You want to prepare anything? Oh, thanks. Good words. Concise. I like it. No. Investigator Hoverston, I I do believe the chief summed it up very well. It's been a pleasure to watch you grow and mature through, your time serving the citizens of Dilworth as you started in our police department, have made your way up,
and proven your mettle, and taken on increasing responsibilities now as investigator, but as importantly, being a leader of our department, and being a leader of our community. So on behalf of the city of Dilworth, we are thankful for your dedicated service, and we are appreciative of all the efforts, big and small, that you bring to our community every single day. So thank you very much, officer. We appreciate you. Thank you. Ten years. Wow. Seems like yesterday. Yesterday. It does. With that, we do move on to number seven, this evening. 7 is we have a visit from,
the visit Fargo Moorhead, pardon me, and Shirley Hughes, president CEO, presenting. Shirley, the floor is yours. Thank you. I just want congratulations. Good evening, mayor, councilman. Love lovely to meet you. Thank you so much for having me here today. And thank you for having, the opportunity for me to talk a little bit about our organization, Don't Know What You Do or Do Not Know. So I thought I would start a bit from the beginning and then share some highlights and then some things that we've done this last year and some things we have looking forward to that not only affect Fargo more than West Fargo, but we believe our greater region as well in the work that we do.
So, with that, thank you for driving for me, Peyton. Appreciate it. So, just to start from the beginning, not everybody really knows what we do, but we are what's called a DMO, or a destination marketing organization. That's what entities like ourselves are called around the world around the world. And we are non for profit. And we are charged with representing any specific destination and largely funded by lodging tax. So, with that right now, we have a 3% lodging tax across Fargo, West Fargo, and Morehead. With an additional 3%, being started to be collected sometime probably in the fall from Fargo hotels only for
the, convention center that we're building. Everybody knows we're around that process. I'll cover that in a little bit as well. We have a little bit over 5,600 hotel rooms. We also collect dollars through other booking engines, such as Priceline, Airbnb, booking.com, etcetera. So we do collect, those lodging taxes from those organizations, that represent properties in those three cities as well. So really to go back to our our mission statement, we work at to position our distinctive, which we believe are very distinctive in our region, and desirable destination is a gateway to the region and nation resulting in a superior
quality of life for our residents. We we live by the belief, that a lot of DMOs believe that every it starts with a visit. And so many people come to live in a community because they visited there first. And it keep businesses come to communities where people want to be. And so it's a full it's a full cycle, that we are we believe a big part of is the visit really starts with us. Our strategic goals are we align our resources towards high value market segments, and I'll talk a little bit about what those are. We're advocate for destination development,
not only in our three cities, but across the region. We work with, two city three cities, two states, and work very closely with both state tourism offices. We're here to help enhance our community livability and sense of place, and I'll talk about what we do to invest back into our community. And then, again, continue to build organizational excellence. If anything, we are a non for profit. We need to make sure every dollar goes as far as it can go, and that we're maximizing the opportunity that we have every day, all the time. So a lot of people don't realize this. We are,
again, a very dynamic organization, and the the people that we sit side by side with every day, is pretty impressive and it makes it very dynamic and for me, quite frankly, a lot of fun. We, again, if you look at us being in the center of this locally, we work with all of our restaurants, our shopping, our attractions, anything that's a destination for us, across three cities. And I would also say, again, as I was sharing with the mayor right before the meeting, also our region. We're working very closely with the Detroit Lakes area, because of everything happening there, that they've got with Project four twelve,
with the mountain, lakes, obviously, everything happening. So we really look at when we're marketing also as a more a little bit of a region regional approach as well. We work to bring in all types sports tourism is very big for us. I'll talk a little bit about that, as well as meetings and conventions, and then the leisure traveler. We work with our chamber, our economic development teams across all all three cities. And then again, we work with all the city mayors and council, as well as the states. So North Dakota's the state commerce department where the North Dakota tourism office sits,
and then with Minnesota, with their tourism, group as well. And then that even branches out farther. We work with a group called Destinations International and the United States Travel Association. So especially in advocacy and anything that affects people being able to travel, to our region easily is what we want. And so, again, it's what advocacy that we take part in, across the board that help make sure that our, again, both international and our US residents can travel to us easily. So, again, just to give a little bit about who we market on a daily on a
daily basis, we do we are very focused on who we go after. As I said, sports tourism, last year, in our region brought in over $70,000,000 in direct visitor spending. All the hockey tournaments, the volleyball, the basketball, everybody sees them. Going around our community, USA Wrestling, if you're familiar with that, thirty one years in running that we've had the that large, wrestling, tournament here. So, we're very proud of the work that we're doing in sport. We've got, a lot going on and we believe that's going to grow exponentially as well. Meetings business, again, once we get the convention center in Fargo,
that's not just gonna affect Fargo, it's gonna affect our entire community. We'll be able to bring in, events that are 1,500 people plus that we couldn't do from a meetings perspective. Because what you need when you go to a convention is very different than when you're going to a wrestling tournament or a hockey tournament, etcetera. And, we believe that agri tourism could be big for us. We know the medical space as well as associations, that are both state and regional would would be great for us. The leisure market, we have we believe this year is gonna be a very big year for us.
We run the visitor center, as you know, out on forty fifth and ninety four. We believe it's gonna be a very big year because of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the United States. People coming across our state, going west to to see Teddy Roosevelt, Presidential Library opening, in July 4. So we believe it's going to be a really big state sorry, really big year for us from the leisure market, even bigger than it normally is. We also talk to our fly markets. We have a lot of direct flights. Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, Minneapolis, Denver. So we talk to our leisure travelers through our marketing efforts in those markets as
well. We market across owned, earned, and paid, so please follow us, fargomoria.org, on Instagram. We're very active. We do a lot of work with content creators and influencers that really highlight our region. With the content that we have, we do some paid media. And then this year for the first time, we will actually be doing an aggressive, PR campaign and be more proactive rather than reactive. So you'll be hearing probably more from us than you have in the past, and that is intentional. And then our visitor center and our visitor experience, extremely important for us.
We welcome thousands of people there a year. We have something called the Best for Last Club that I believe is probably on the next page. Yeah. It's hot right there too. Sorry. Yeah. That's okay. It's formatting. It's formatting. I know. It's fine. Oh, no. Anyway, we have something called the Best for Last Club. And if you don't know what that is, so many people came into our, tourism, visitor center over the past, you know, fifteen years. They were like, North Dakota is the last state I've ever visited. And we're like, there's a marketing ploy here. So So we started what's called the Best for Last Club. And, they come in, they get a t shirt,
they can take a picture, there's a Facebook group that's still very active. We have international travelers, that are members of this Best for Last Club. It's a thing. Very surprising when I came back to hear what a thing this is, but it's a really great marketing, tool for us and actually, it blew up after Conde Nast ran an article about it and they've reached out again as well as some other national publications and news outlets to talk about the Best for Last Club. Is there coming through Minneapolis and going, or they're coming the other way, or going north to south? So, it's just a fun way for us to market our community.
So really important more important is tourism impact. And, we're really proud of this. So these are twenty twenty four numbers. We're still waiting on 25. But you get the sense here, Cass County alone in North Dakota was $1,000,000,000 of visitor spending. And we know that, you know, Fargo West Fargo pretty much takes up the most of Cass County from a visitor spending perspective. It's a $103,000,000 local tax revenue that was generated by the by those visitors. On the Minnesota side and Clay County, it was almost 80,000,000, with that being about $3,500,000 in local tax revenue.
Again, so that's Clay County. And and we know, a lot of that is has to do with the hotels. We know there's more hotels on the Fargo and West Fargo side and other things. But, very proud of what we have in this community. It's rich with opportunity for visitors, and we know that they're we know that they're here. Another way to look at that, and I and I don't know, but we updated this. We just had our annual meeting this week, so I also know that there was 5,700,000 visitor days last year in our community, if you look at it that way from a different perspective. So we have people here when we don't even know it.
Oh, there there you go. There's it there it is. 500,000,000 in visitor spending in 2025, and that doesn't include all of our segments. Again, 5,700,000 visitor stays, dollars 70,000,000 in sports direct visitor spending, and then 12,000,000 in conventions, which again, those cycle, those rotate. If you have state conventions that might rotate, cities, and locations, Again, we don't have a very a big enough facility to do some of the things that we wanna do, so when we have the convention center, that will definitely make a difference for us. Just to give some other examples, I'll talk about Banana Ball in a minute,
if you guys are all familiar with that. But, $20,000,000 of direct visitor spending from USA Wrestling alone every year over those nine days that we have all 50 states represented with wrestlers, junior wrestlers, both, boys and girls, experiencing our community and our region. About a million dollars for the street fair that we believe comes in from out of town in direct visitor spending. And in 2019, there was about 2,700,000.0 in direct visitor spending from the air show. So again, that was in 2019. So imagine what the next air show will bring when when that comes to town.
So that just gives you a little bit of a flavor. The dome will also say when they have a concert, their dollar goes through the community in the region seven times. So if you think about the impact, it's not just the hotels, restaurants, it's the gas stations, it's the the local shops. It's it's a little bit of everything, and you guys know that as your thoroughfare, to Lake country and people stopping in your community. Banana ball. I don't know if everybody's familiar with the Savannah Bananas, but we're very excited. We teamed up with the Red Hawks. Oh, it doesn't wanna run. That's okay. We teamed up with the Red Hawks,
a few months ago to take a bid on Banana Ball, and they have chosen us to come with two of their teams, two of their newest teams, in the league. Very excited. It's the June. Again, we estimate that will bring about $2,000,000 in direct visitor spending to our community. It's extremely hard to get a ticket. They are on auction only, so that is how they're giving out tickets. I get a request weekly. I don't even have a ticket. Oh, there we go. And you don't have to show you don't have to you don't have to show it all. But if you know anything about this, it's a little bit of Harlem Globetrotters for baseball.
And, you know, if you do get a ticket and you catch a foul ball, that isn't out. So that batter is out, for example. There's some fun different types of rules that go with banana ball. We're very excited about it. You know, it was announced on, ESPN that we were one of the host cities. And, as I said to the team, I love being on ESPN, and we've been on there before, but this is not because of NDSU. So, it's for another reason, so we're very excited about that. The other thing we're very excited about, and we are and, pun intended, but no pun intended. We are casting a wider net of what we're going out for for sport,
activities, and we will be, doing a press release about this in a couple weeks, but we are bringing in a national catfishing tournament on the red. They will be launching off of MB Johnson on the Moorhead side, working very closely with Moorhead Parks and Rec. Mayor Carlson and the park team have, been great working with us on this. We figure probably anywhere from 200 to 400 anglers that will show up for this. It will be live on YouTube TV TV and Instagram, and we're hoping that this is a yearly, event that we have come back. We didn't realize, there are people that did, but we did not realize that the Red River is one of the best channel
catfishing, places in North America. So we're very excited about that. Again, lots of boats, a lot of, stopping for gas and doing other things that you need to do when you're coming through because they'll all be driving here, obviously, with their boats. So we're very excited about that. That will be happening, third week in August of this year. We do just a little bit on the marketing side. So we do a lot of work with content creators, travel writers, influencers to really sort of showcase our community. Last year, we had 1,100,000 views from all of that content. We have an events calendar home page and food and drink pages on our website.
So if there are, if if people from in or organizations in Delworth that we do not have, please have them reach out to us. We can list any restaurants that we want. It it's not a membership thing. It's just, you know, we list everything that's going on in the in the region. Last year, we had 2,600,000 page views. And one of the things that's changing with AI is how, people find information. And we are we are making sure that we're optimizing the opportunity that AI has changed with people in search. So, we're working with that as well, to make sure that people can find us in the right way in the information.
And, we did a lead generation campaign last year. And with the people that, we, touched through that lead generation campaign, it was paid media as well as earned and owned. We found that 8.3 per eight they were 8.3 per six, more percent more lightly to times lightly to visit. Sorry. And we targeted Minneapolis, Chicago and the Minot DMAs. So it was really successful for us. It was more of a lifestyle campaign. We are gonna be launching a very big lifestyle campaign, coming in May. More to come on that, but we're very excited in showcasing everything that the region has,
including arts and culture, music, food, sport, all the things that we have to offer here. So we're we're excited about what that brings for us, in '20 this year in '26. I have a question, Drew. Yeah. The content creation, how does that how do those partnerships start? Do they reach out to you? Do you reach out to Little bit of both. We, I don't I don't know if we put the TBEX slide in here. We have been involved with no. We've been involved, with an organization called TBEX, which is was called the Travel Blogger Exchange, but it's changed as content creators have morphed into influencers.
We are bringing, we're working with them. They are bringing their summer event here in sorry, fall event in September. We are gonna be bringing, over a 100 content creators and travel writers to our community, in in the fall. We're very excited. We are actually doing pre trips, post trips. We're taking them, and we have a partnership with Duluth. We're taking them out to the Lakes country to experience some stuff there. We're they're going to Madura pre and before and after. So they'll be all around our community creating content. We have done some partnerships through content creators that we've met that way.
We have we have a really good way to vet them to make sure that they have the right audience for us, that they create the right types of content. And then it's typically a paid deal that we do for them, hotel, give them money to eat and shop with a little bit, and then they have to post, you know, the right type of content for us. So all of those are contracted to make sure that they deliver what they need to deliver. One of the things that I know a lot of people don't realize that we do here at Visit Fargo Moorhead is, of our 3% lodging tax that we have, 2% goes into our operating budget, and 1% goes into our capital budget.
And with the capital budget, we reinvest that back into the community. And we've spent $9,100,000 since the beginning of that capital grant program into, events, other nonprofits, across our community. So for instance, we gave a half million dollars to the Fargo Theatre as they needed to renovate. We're giving money to Plains Art Museum, as they're doing they have a capital campaign. We've given money to, the Healing Garden. We've given money to a variety of places over the past ten years, that not only are help with visitors, but with those those dollars are, the places that our residents can also enjoy.
So if we're if we're making the, you know, the baseball park better, it's our residents as well as the teams coming from out of town that get to experience and get to see. So we're super proud of that. Again, it's a little bit of a hidden secret. You know, people have to present to us what they want, what they want funded. We will only pay up to a quarter of what they have, in their budget. We don't guarantee we will pay that, but that is what we can legally do. And then the board makes the decision, and I haven't heard of anything that's been turned down since we started.
So we're very proud again of investing back into our community. Some of the places that we've, again, invested in, Cullen Hockey Center, City Of Morehead The Loop, Yumkom Center, J Christiansen Field, Concordia Track. Now that we have helped Concordia update their track, they can now host NCAA track meets. So we're very excited about that. Again, just a few others. Oh, he's zooming in. Thank you. So, again, over the past, Hulbert Aquatic Center in West Fargo is another example of the lights. So, very proud of what we've done here again because it's also going to create a sense of place for our community.
So really quickly, in case you want the latest on the convention center, it's been a very long process. As you know, in November '24, the Fargo residents approved an additional 3% in lodging tax, and that is one of the things that I want that's really important for people to know it is a lodging tax. It is not a sales tax going into effect. And that is going to build that convention center. We after the, vote passed, the Fargo City Commission put together a committee, and which my predecessor, Charlie Johnson, is still, the chair of that committee until a location is chosen.
But we are down to the final four locations after we received nine responses to the original RFP. No particular order, these are not numbered in order, of of preference, but the Fargo Dome, the Civic Center, Brewhalla location, and then next to Shields Arena. Those are the four that are remaining. As a reminder, it is a public and private partnership. So the public part being that the convention center is funded by the lodging tax, and then the private partnership being the hotel developer that needs to go along either connected or right beside it.
Any questions on that? We're excited about that again because we we know that we can do much larger events, and conventions and meetings that, again, will spread across multiple hotels throughout the region, not just Fargo. They'll fill up, and, again, bring more people to town than we've been able to bring in in this type of environment before. That's the really high level of what we do every day. Hopefully, that's helpful. Thank you very much, Shirley. Are there any questions from counsel? Mister Steichen. Thank you, miss Hughes, for presenting. It's good to see, excitement and energy behind new ideas.
You said you work directly with state North Dakota and Minnesota state tourism. Is that like an ongoing, or is it for specific events? Or It's ongoing. Ongoing? Yeah. It's ongoing. We have dialogue with them constantly. They they help us whether it's press initiatives. We just were on the phone today with the Minnesota, tourism office because they actually have a film commission in trying to get communities film ready. So we could actually help you with that if you're interested, if there's places that we could put on their website that would be good shooting locations for whether it's a TV commercial or an independent film or anything else,
you know, that Dilworth could be part of. We're happy to help you with that. So that's an example. Minnesota does grants, tourism grants for certain projects. So we have oftentimes applied for grants. We work with them day in and day out. It just depends. Same with the North Dakota side. You know, they're they're different. Obviously, North Dakota is every two years legislate legislative session. Minnesota is every year. So advocacy as well, another another way that we work very closely with them for the industry. And then as far as, tracking traffic, I talked to a neighboring town. Through their phones,
they're able to figure out where people are coming from, how long they're staying here. At the time, they weren't exactly sure how they were gonna use that. I suppose you got all kinds of fancy ways to figure out where people are coming from and We can. What we cannot do is track international. So, again, one of the big questions is are Canadian markets soft? We're not able to really track that way. The only way we can really track Canada, visitors Canadian visitors are through border crossings. So, but that is one way that we can look at, from data of who is here.
Doesn't always tell us if they're they could be staying as friends and family. We don't know that, but we know that they're here in the community and more than likely spending dollars in the community. We also have tools that we tap into with national associations that have, tools that they give organizations like ours to help track anything going on in the industry because it helps share the industry story. And one last thing. You mentioned at capital campaign that I'm sure you're aware we're building a community center, and we would probably welcome some money to improve or you know?
It it fit nice with those pictures of all the other things you had up there with Dilworth on there. So You know what? Happy to have you guys take a look at that. Our one requirement is you need to show how it will bring visitors to town and generate, you know, visitors to the community, but always happy to listen to any opportunity. Thank you. Anything else, Mr. Stake? Any other questions from Carlton? Thanks. Again, thank you for coming out. One of the things that sticks in my head right away is the calendar and promoting our local days and and tagging in with that. It all starts with the with the visit.
Like, I I love that, because how do we get people to come into town and Yeah. Invest in town and stay in town is Yep. Is starting with that visit. So hopefully, we're able to do something like that. Do we do anything like that? I'll send you the actual quote. Okay. It it comes from a of a pioneer in the tourism industry. It comes from a quote that she had, and I'll send it to you. We it's we completely agree, and it's part of the ecosystem. But, yeah, we definitely if we don't, we probably we could easily maybe already have your event on there, but we'll we can double check for sure. Yeah. We'll just be partnering with Radio Fargo Moorhead on that.
Yeah. Do you think so? Yeah. Double check. Yeah. Again, thank you for coming out this evening. For all you do for our community, that's some pretty awesome stuff. So thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity. And, again, if you know, happy to talk to you guys if there is ever a hotel here or we wanna talk about Airbnb, you know, the situations if you do have short term rentals here and how we can maybe work with you on that. Just there's lots of ways we can work together. So Awesome. Future is bright as they say. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Have a great evening. Thank you. Alright. So with that,
it does bring us now to nine. We have nine alpha. We have our ordinance twenty six zero three amending title 15, land uses, chapter 153.068, general yard lot area building regulations, removing permitting requirements for swimming pools. Peyton? Yes. Thank you, mayor, members of the council. Pretty quick one here. Ever since I've worked here, as long as I've worked here is a better way of saying it, we've not bygone practice that has occurred. And some of the requirements have changed through the years,
specifically on the building code side of things. That used to be a standard requirement as part of the International Building Code. You can even look in today's building code. It's been deleted altogether. There's no regulation at all for swimming pools, and I think that's just because they've continually evolved over time. We do have some requirements in there depending upon the size of the pool to have some level of screening or other coverage that should exist on a pool. Again, we do not go out and police this even though it's in our ordinance currently,
But it is one of those things that we wanted to just clean up from a language perspective because people do when they're putting in new swimming pools above ground, in ground, whatever it may be, they'll contact City Hall and, you know, ask about the permitting process because we laid out in there. But that is no longer a requirement. So it's more of just a language cleanup reflective of how we operate on a day to day basis. Questions for Peyton? I'm sorry. It's a little challenging to read. I know. Threw me off.
It was blue instead of red. Yeah. It's like a big hyperlink. Yeah. Any questions? Some of this also is required by insurance, some of the things mentioned. So Mhmm. So we went through all that. So Yep. It makes sense. John, do you have a question? Is there some bull frame bull hanging fruit here? Like, what specifically are we changing? What am I voting for? Right. So right now, it says that we have a permit that's required. We don't require a permit. So we're removing that language altogether. We're also kind of in that bottom section.
I reference the well, few things. And also in the appendix G, International Residential Code, that's what our former reference had in the ordinance. That no longer even exists in the International Code, so that's why we're removing it. And also to make reference to the AST FM four thirteen, the structural code that exists out there for when you think about an above ground pool that has coverings over the top of it, that would act as a suitable replacement for an enclosure.
I don't think those were as common place as they are now at the time. So it's just making reference to it. Does that help? I can get on board with all that. Yep. Yep. Any other questions? Solid? Alright. So with that, hearing no further discussion, I will entertain a motion for ordinance twenty six zero three amending title 15. So on deadline. So moved. Motion by Nash. Steichen. Second. And second by Steichen. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. With that, it does move us to number 10. We have public hearings,
with it being 06:35. We'll open our public hearing on resolution twenty six fifteen, miscellaneous assessment, and begin with, staff presentation. Peyton? Yes. So just be sure and pay you, you know, be up to date on your NS don't have NSF fees. And if you do, please pay them. Any questions for Peyton on twenty six fifteen? I will entertain a motion for resolution twenty six fifteen. Steichen, so move. Second. A motion by Steichen and a second by Nash. All those in favor, say aye.
Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. With that, it does move us to 10 b in our public hearing resolution twenty six sixteen, miscellaneous assessment for water meter charges at three zero four. Staff presentation? Yes. Just pay your bills, when you receive them. And I guess, my apologies. If there was anyone here to speak on 10 alpha, they could please do so now. Anyone here to speak on 10 bravo? I I totally forgot about that one. I second call on 10 bravo. Hearing no one here to speak on either resolution, I will entertain a motion for resolution twenty six sixteen.
So moved. Motion by Peterson. Second. Second by Nash. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And with it being 06:37, we'll close our public hearing and move to number 11. Councilor's concerns and committee updates are on the horn. Peterson. Some members of the community may have received a a text message, seemingly on my behalf. It is not spam. Goodparty.org reached out to me wondering if I would be willing to have them conduct a
survey, on they would conduct a survey on my behalf. So if you do get a text message and it reads something like this is Kevin Peterson, your local, city council member, and you feel like answering it, it's not spam. If you if you don't feel like answering it, that's just fine too. But, apparently, they're going to kinda just take the temperature of some of the constituents in in our community, and I will report back what we find. That's all I got. Thank you. Mister Steichen? Well, chief, thank you for recognizing your officers when times come up,
and you spoke very well of them. And I know they do a great job, so do appreciate the recognition that you're speaking about, and, I know we only see a small part of what they actually do. I know there's it's a lot more involved than I mean, it's it's very involved when you start understanding the role if if it's police or fire or public works. So do appreciate all of your work. As far as the, I know the fire fire calls have been up quite a bit in the last
week, and and public works has been busy too. So with the change in weather, we do appreciate that. I was invited to, Vietnam New Year's celebration the other day. It's pretty neat that these ethnic groups, I guess, keep connected and keep their their their history and their their everything about what they represent. And, you know, some of them are, very new to the community, and some have been here for quite a while. So the dancing,
the singing, the costumes, the whatever is just it's always when you think of any oriental event, they really do it well. So, that was that's always exciting when you get to go to those events. So, that's, where I'm gonna stop and turn it over to Julie. Thank you, mister Steichen. I don't have much for updates other than, you might see a new Durango driving around town. One of them is here out of the two. So it'll get wrapped soon, but, otherwise, it's finally here. So that's good news. And then to just keep on your radar,
the health fair coming up in on March 14. Anything else? Nope. Thank you, Julian. Payton? Thank you, Mary. A few items here. So in the March, we will be rolling out a new utility payment software program, for residents. Not it's pretty much net neutral as far as cost goes. It'll be a little more user friendly, allow for, better payment opportunities for individuals and just an overall better user experience. So we're, you know, just trying to keep up with the times and,
didn't get you know, and stay on top of that. So, be on the lookout for that. If, if you would, please cross all fingers and toes for Thursday. That's when we're gonna be having our bid opening for our community center project. So, hopefully, that may our bids come out in our favor for it. First Loco Days meeting, it will be held next or this coming Thursday. So that's just about five months away now. So mark your calendars, and we'll mark it. Be sure to mark it on the calendar,
at the tourism, center, with Shirley's office. And lastly, on Friday, was notified that we were awarded $750,000 for our grant that we did for the roundabout at 34th Street. So that's good news. And Morehead was awarded as well. So that means between us, we'll have $1,500,000 that we get get to apply towards that project. So I have a strategy meeting tomorrow with the City of Morehead, so we'll start talking through some of the logistics of it.
It's programmed in 2028 step. So '27, 28 project, we'll say. So we'll work through kind of the finer details of it, see how it aligns and matches up with budgets and all of that. But, yeah, good news on that front. Thank you, Pete. Anything else? That's all. Just real quick with this, and I know we're it was our second month into the year or whatever, but with our portfolio requirements, please remember, if you can't make a meeting, reach out. We have our alternates. I wanna make sure that that we're represented moving forward,
and I know we all have very active lives with, children and other responsibilities, stuff like that. So if things come up, please, be flexible, work with one another, and support each other, as we represent the city. It's definitely a dynamic time, and I know it gets a little bit more so during the summer. So keep that in mind, as things do change. With that, also, we have the opportunities coming up with representation, with the Chamber and, the trip to Saint Paul and and legislative opportunities. We may not have any significant capital projects,
but we have legislation that can influence how things operate in the city of Dilworth that can definitely benefit, some of the things that we're trying to do and and the environment we're trying to create. So keeping those lines of communication open even in Saint Paul or when they come to town, those those relationships are important. So, as of right now, that's all I have, but we we continue to serve. February 23, it's Charlie Ray's birthday. So happy birthday, Chuck. We'll put that in the record. And, with that, that's all I have this evening. It does move us to number 12, payment of the bills. Motion
to approve the bill. Motion by Nash. Steichen, second. Second by Steichen. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. With there being no further business this evening, call us to make sure.