With it being 06:00, we'll call the meeting to order and start with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisibly, who delivered in justice for all. Go that way too. I just carried along. Alright. So with that, we'll go, number two. Roll call around the horn, please. Peterson here. Bora here. Steichen here. Nash. And Olsen. With that, it does move us to our agenda. I did not see any additions or subtractions. Motion to approve. A motion by Nash.
Second. Second by Borah. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. With that, we do have our consent shorter this evening. Any questions or comments regarding our consent? Hearing none, I will entertain a motion. Motion to approve. A motion by Nash. Second, Steichen. And a second by Steichen. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. With that, it does move us to number five. We have our public comment period. Peyton, has there been any formal request to speak before council this evening? None received. Again, please encourage the public to participate in our process. That is how we will make some progress.
With that, it does move us to number six, and we have our, six alpha. We have our update tonight, with Rebels United. We have Jason McCoy here, presenting for us. Jason, the floor is yours. Good evening. Thank you. Good evening. I'm gonna be really quick for you guys. I just wanted to give you guys a celebration of what's been going on with our positive community norms work at the DGF school. Just as a quick reminder, we started about three and a half years ago. So we're halfway through year four of a five year program. It's a combination of the school and Clay County Public Health working together.
Next slide. The science that we work behind is by Doctor. Jeff Linkenbach. It's known as the science of the positive, thus why we get positive community norms. It really works on that wheel of transformation where we start with spirit or our energy, we apply good science to what we're doing, put that to action, and then we really reflect on what's going on. So every year we have a strategic planning process as to how things are going and what we wanna do in the next year. And so far, I'll show you. It's been going really well. So the way that it looks in four boxes,
one is we look for the positive. What's going on in Dilworth, Glendon, Felton? What's going on that's good that we can partner with and shine a spotlight on? Then we look at I think if you hit the buttons, it'll give you the arrow. There you go. Then we look at the gaps in information. So what does that gap looks like? Things like when we talk to kids and they know that everybody is doing it. Right? Whatever. It's vaping, drinking, alcohol, bullying, anything you wanna talk about. There's a certain perception that maybe more people are doing something than there is.
And we compare that side by side with data. And when we do that, what we find is almost invariably less individuals are doing something than what they think. So for example, if you think 99% of my classmates are vaping, You might think I have to vape if I'm going to fit in. When you actually find out, and I'll show you the the data on this, when you find out that only 7% of your peers are vaping, it helps those kids in the middle that are wondering,
do I or don't I? It helps them make the positive choice. So we challenge that misperception. That might be messaging on the radio like we have going on right now. That might be posters in the school. That might be, one on one conversations with people. But as we challenge that misperception, it creates health. So I'll show you how that works. So in a more picturesque way, misperception really chains us to the ground. Right? That's where we were when we first started this survey. Most of our kids assumed that everyone was vaping, and we were.
I mean, we got let's be honest. We got the grant because at that time, DGF schools was one of the highest rates of vaping in the state. Now, three and a half years later, we're one of the lowest. So I like to think of our kids that work in our rice club as suit as having superpowers. They've been doing a lot of things that have been really awesome that I'll show you as we go. So Rebels United is, is the name of our campaign if you see that around town. Next. And these are some of our kids. Our our youth group has grown from 13 kids total to we currently have,
almost 50 in the high school working with us, which when you look at the the population of our high school, that tells you that we have about somewhere about an eighth of our high school is in is in our club. Middle school, we have 13. So we are working to grow that group a little bit more. But they call themselves Rise Club, which is responsible individuals striving for excellence. So we paint with data. Communication is what this campaign is all about. If we don't get the right information out there, we can't change misperception, and so we do a lot of surveys.
Every year, the kids take a survey. This year in fact, this last Tuesday was the, Minnesota student survey. The years that we don't have that, we do one of our own, that revolves around substance use. We've had hopefully, you guys, received it, in in last fall, we did another parent survey to kind of update information. We do, surveys with the staff. We have a lot of data is what I'm saying. So that helps us tell the stories. So here's where we were when we started. As a reminder, 2019, '20 '4 percent of our students were vaping. At that time, the state average was twenty percent.
Twenty three percent were drinking alcohol. At that time, twenty percent was also the state average. Twelve percent were using cannabis of one form or another. At that time, the state average was about ten percent. So we were higher on all three substances when we started. We started our positive messaging campaigns because even at that time, that means that most weren't using. Right? Twenty four percent is nowhere close to 50. So we still had to remind them that most weren't using. And And so these were some of our first posters. Now, along the way, we've made some huge changes. Our posters now showcase local events,
things that are going on, things that the kids would want to show up with. So here you can see, of course, the football game going on, but one of our senior sunrises. And so this was, two years ago where we had made it to 91% choosing not to use alcohol and 92. Percent. Or if you flip that around to make it match, by this time, we had lowered alcohol rates from twenty three percent or sorry, twenty two percent down to nine. And we had lowered vaping rates from twenty four percent down to eight percent.
So huge, huge changes. Ninety percent of the kids also on that one were encouraging their friends not to vape. Huge changes. So our big idea was here. Students who accurately perceive the norm are going to move in the direction of not use. And there's your there's your, protective factors. Nine times less likely to vape if they believe the truth. Nine times less likely to use cannabis. Eleven times less likely to drink. By the way, I didn't put the numbers on here. Our cannabis use rate is down to five percent.
And that's what the state passing recreational marijuana. Right? So we have some amazing things going on. We keep shining that light into the community. That is our middle school group, doing some of their work. I included this other picture as some of the fun things we do. Two years ago, we had one boy in the high school that was part of our club. All the rest of them were females. Well, what do you do with that when it comes time for Christmas? The guy decided he was gonna be the Grinch, and he was the Grinch for the elementary school, for the high school, for the middle he he didn't know he was getting in for a whole day's worth of work. And that was that was a lot of fun.
His inspiration though all the girls were the Who's in case you're wondering standing behind him. Looks like he's in a boy band or something. But, you know, but his inspiration, we now this year have eight guys that have joined. Guess how many of them wanna be the Grinch? All eight. All of them. All of them. Yes. So some fun things that we get to do along the way. And two years ago, without me asking or knowing they were gonna do it, when we got our first t shirt that we give out, because every year we take data and we put a message on it, we do this because it makes them walking billboards. Right? We love this idea of being able to let the kids brag about themselves.
The basketball kids ran down, grabbed their jerseys before we were ready to hand them out, and used them for practice jerseys. Obviously, we were not upset about this because now all the kids got to see some of the the leaders in the school wearing the message. This was a great thing. Our art teacher, Carrie Kinslow, has painted a mural. If you haven't been right off of the the lunchroom, if you take a a right, you walk through this center area that used to be a a classroom. We wanted to make it more friendly and put more messaging. And so over the summer,
she painted that entire wall. It's like it's something like a 24 foot long mural. It's hard to read it, but rebels united is in the middle. We picked that campaign on purpose because we want our kids to come together and around it, it tells them it reminds them that most of them aren't using these three different substances. On a parent, or sorry, on a, on a teacher appreciation day, we used our seven core principles. They all revolve around B something and, and put those on cookies. Just, just, we like to have fun with it as well. If you went to the high school,
if you've been to any of our games, you've seen this huge, like, floor to ceiling mural that we put on there, reminding people that most of them don't vape. This worked doubly well. We like to be practical. And if you had been to any of the games before this happened and you sat on the home side, you know that the sun would come through here right about starting time for any basketball games or volleyball games and blind everybody over there. So when we were like, where are we gonna put this? Our our assistant principal, Katie, was like, hey. I got a idea. And so we put one up there.
But we go. We everywhere I mean, you'll find me over at rebels or sorry. At rebels at roasted rail, having coffee with people on a regular basis. We we we try to get out in the community and just share this good message. Really just brag on our kids and make sure people know that there's really good things going on. We put a huge sign. Guys, I thought this was, like, gonna be, like, a 12 by 12 sign, and I didn't know it was eight feet long. I showed up in my Kia Optima and then realized we had to send a truck for it. But that that sign is on the softball and baseball field, reminding people of the great choices.
Most girls are actually in our club. We show up at at the parades. We try to be in as many of them as we can, just to, you know, get our message out there. So huge changes. This last year, here's our numbers have gotten even better. And when you consider that you've lowered rates of use to 87% to even go further down is astonishing. So now we have, a vapor rate of seven percent. Ninety three percent of our kids aren't vaping. Ninety two percent of them aren't drinking alcohol. Five percent are the are all that are using any kind of cannabis.
So ninety five percent don't use cannabis. We are now the leaders in the state as far as substance prevention. So this doesn't just happen from our message. These things happen in partnership with you. When we asked you a couple of years ago, I think it was two years ago, we asked you to end the sale of flavored vapes, and you did. That helped. When the state raised the age to purchase to 21, that helped. These policy works, these are things that you're doing that help our work, be so much better as we go along. So this is a huge partnership all across the community.
Here's some more pictures of of, some great things going. All those kids eating pizza is one of our, our, spring fling events where we give the kids something fun to do that doesn't involve around getting in trouble. And we've we've made this cultural shift. It's it's amazing to see what's changing. If you can read the words up there on the poster, I love it. This came from our survey. We when they say I don't use, we ask them why. And we give them a bunch of reasons, and they could write one in. My friends and family won't wouldn't approve. That tells me that our parents are actually having these conversations with their kids even
more. Their peers are supporting them not using. It doesn't fit the image of myself. I don't need to need it to have a good time. These are amazing changes in the mentality of our kids. That poster, by the way, is going up this this, year. And so now we can honestly say rebels don't need substances. Think about that. Three and a half years ago, we had some of the highest use rates in the state, and now we can honestly say our kids aren't using. Are there some of them still? Is that still a concern? Yes and yes. And we still have work to do.
But changing a cultural shift like this is amazing, and we still got a year and a half to go on this grant alone in case anyone's wondering. Cause I say that multiple times we are looking to write another grant to keep the work going. So we're ho we're not we're not this isn't gonna be five years and done. So I always end with help us grow the positive. That was our last year senior sunset. They got an amazing picture. I love the idea that our kids are, are looking to be leaders and passing this on that bottom right corner is our strategic planning. This last summer, we had 28 to 30 people show up for three hours,
three different times. Half of them were kids in the summer showing up because they wanted to they wanted to help guide how we were going to make changes in their school. So just amazing. I I hope this has given you a little bit of inspiration. A little bit of hope that the work you guys are doing here is important because you're leading our community and we really, really appreciate you. Thank you. Any questions you guys got for me? Any questions for Jason? Mister Steichen. Thank you, mister McCoy, for presenting. I've heard you on multiple times, and I do appreciate your passion Thank you.
For what you're doing for the community and the kids. So that's I wanna make sure that's not gone unnoticed. Huge success in lowering the vapor rates. Correct? Yes. Absolutely. Now is that through messaging from our key peers that, how what do you contribute that to? So a lot of it is messaging, policy work that you guys have helped us with. Some of it is there's there's a growing movement across the nation to be, kind of be dry, right, to to to drop alcohol rates. Also, some of our kids saw when we were having those really intense vaping rates,
and they they didn't like the fact that their bathrooms were being closed up and they couldn't go there. And so there's a lot of peer to peer communication that's really supporting it. K. Then with the, vapor rates vapor rates dropping along with alcohol and cannabis, you see changes in behavior or school behavior, I guess, that could have been an issue before? Absolutely. It's it's getting better. Now are there still problems? Yes. There always will be. Yes. We still have some bullying that we're working on. There's still mental health challenges. A lot of those mental health challenges are what lead to substances if they're not
addressed. Our counselors and our our admin team are doing an amazing job helping with that. Do you have any idea what age a lot of them start? Like you said, you had junior highs. Age age of initiation has actually dropped to about 12. Okay. That should be that should be startling. We have found elementary students with vapor with vapes. Oh. Yeah. Well, thanks for all your work. Absolutely. Any other questions? Again, thank you for coming out this evening, mister McCoy. Congratulations to you and to the kids at DGF for the the fantastic work over the last couple of years.
Healthier DGF. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. So that now moves us to planning and engineering. It does move us to seven alpha. Correct? Resolution twenty five zero nine, the adoption of the five year tax abatement policy. Who start with this one, Peyton? This is me. A couple little over two years ago, the city council adopted the tax payment policy for commercial and industrial policy. In that resolution, you had a date in there of 12/31/2024 for it to lapse,
basically, just for the city council to come back and review the document again just to make sure it wants to continue on with the program, similar to how we're required to do with the county in our two year residential tax abatement program. As you can see, the next item on our agenda deals with awarding the five year tax abatement for for Zcon out there in the Rail District. But before we do that, this is more of a housekeeping item, and it's just some I probably should have had it when we did the readoption because that was the intent of it was to get on the same cycle as
our two year tax payment program just so we're reviewing it every couple years. But given this is a new program, I just slipped my mind. So, anyways, it's here before the council just to consider it to extend it on another two years similar to our other program. Any questions? And and mine's more of a procedural question. Mhmm. And and at some point, we do a public hearing on this or on a two year tax payment for the county. And I don't remember at what point we do that. We do that when we're awarded. We're awarded. Okay. Alright. So so that doesn't need to happen now. No. And we will actually end up doing that as well with our commercial programs.
At this point, even though the program has been in place now for a couple years, we've not gotten to the point yet to where we've had to actually abate anything at this time because there's always a lag sometimes up to a year and a half or two. For example, the other commercial building on the Rail District, it's not built out in full at this time. Once it is, then that will apply. Similar to how this building is, it's gonna be just a shell at this point. As tenants fill it up, that's when the abatement will come online.
So we could be looking at two or three years down the road before the full realization of it. Now from a policy perspective, that might be a consideration going forward if we look to amend the policy as far as how long out to extend it. So getting back to my other example of the other building that's been constructed out there, We've not submitted yet that for the tax payment purposes because it's not built out. There's still one more available bay, I believe, out there. But maybe the council would wanna set it, like, you know, if this is not complete within two or three years or whatever that timeline is,
then at that point, the city's just gonna move on with it at that point. Any other questions? I have one. Kevin? Peyton, is there a way to or maybe you know that maybe this is a Perry question. I don't know. But is there a way to quantify the the asks to use the tax abatement program. And maybe that's not the right way to word it, but, like, the crux of it is, like, is it working? And I think, optically, we can see that it is. You know, there's thing there's businesses coming into town at a at a higher rate than they're leaving,
frankly, at least from what I can see. My question is, is there a way, like, not that there's a a box that you check, you know, when they're filling out the applications, but, you know, did you decide to to use Dilworth, you know, based on our tax abatement program, or or did it sway your decision at all? Is there anything that we've got there? Not at this time. That's certainly something that we can engage, you know, potential businesses on. I can say again, I'm not sure if it was a determining factor with this development that we're reviewing
next or even the previous building. I do know on the VFW one, for example, that was a consideration of them in meeting with us. Same for the reconstruct of the, you know, the the building that burned down, car Valley. Valley. Valley. Excuse me. Yes. I know that was definitely a consideration of them both. Yeah. And how to actually garner that feed that's really what you're looking for is feedback to know, hey. Is the program working? Yeah. I also think it's so it's also pretty early on in the program. Again,
we haven't even cut a check to anybody at this point. We're still Understood. I just think it'd be something interesting to Yep. Track, like, as we keep Yeah. I mean, I'm presuming that we're going to pass this. Right. You know, but Right. You know, as we as it goes on, you know, five, ten years down the line, we can say, hey. We've abated, you know, this much in tax revenue, but it's also brought in Mhmm. X. So just curious. Anything else, Scott? Alright. Thank you. Any other questions? Alright. So back to seven alpha, resolution twenty five zero nine.
I will entertain a motion, for the five year tax abatement policy. So moved. Motion by Peterson. Second. Second by Nash. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And that does bring us to seven bravo public hearing on resolution twenty five ten, awarding the five year tax abatement. And with it being six twenty three, we'll call the public hearing to order and begin with staff presentation. As the council is aware, there's another commercial building being constructed in the Rail District. You can see it here on the indicated property.
You've seen the concrete work that's already gone in. Hopefully, gonna be seen it going vertical here pretty soon with, the weather being cooperative. But in similar fashion to the commercial building right across the street, the property owners in is requesting a five year business tax abatement, similar to what we did last time over there. And I know Lance is here and can probably speak to the timeline of what they're looking at as far as having tenants come in and things of that nature. But at this point,
unless something's changed, you know, it's just a shell building at this time, but, obviously, knowing that they're working with tenants to have someone in there as soon as possible. But this is but through the process, we'd like to capture this as early on in the process as as possible. So, you know, they're really in the infancy stages of construction. We have the site plan and everything. So now is the time to bring it for the council's consideration for this five year tax abatement. And as I said, Lance Zibart with Oz Development is here to answer any questions for you.
Is that all for the staff presentation? Yes, sir. Alright. To that end, is there anyone here to speak in opposition? Second call to speak in opposition of resolution twenty five ten. Hearing none, we'll move to speak in favor of resolution twenty five ten. Is there anyone here to speak in favor? I can speak in favor. So first of all, if I could, thank you for the evapement on the Dilworth Mercantile and to answer Kevin's question, it does make a difference and it makes a difference. You know, for us, we don't land, so, you know, we're, I mean, that's, we're gonna we're gonna develop somewhere out there.
But what it does for us also is the goodwill and and the, what do I wanna say? Sort of the seed for the next prop, for the next, project. And so that's that's the, one you're seeing there. It's gonna be called the Milton. It's it's a small building. We've come to the point, we think we're gonna have a, tenant in that last space by this this summer. If I can just get it tipped over. And, and then we we would have no more inventory. So, we wanted to build some more inventory. So, we we started that next building speculatively.
It's four spaces and, we have already some interest there. And so, when Don came back around and we looked at, the qualifications for the first abatement, we looked at the number of, jobs that were created by that first development, you know, we're meeting the marks. And that's exciting to see. So it's fun to go into the to the West Main Pizza and see how those kids work and all that. So we we just think we'll just keep generating their local businesses, small startups, you know, area businesses that are coming out there and we're making sure that they are,
viable and the right kind of businesses and we'll continue to do that. So, again, the the abatement is one piece of our financial puzzle that does make a difference and, makes a difference on our side, and I think it makes a difference on the city side too as far as the jobs created. So That's good to hear. Any of your questions? Thank you. I appreciate that opportunity. Is there anyone else to speak in in favor? Second final call. Hearing no one else to speak in favor at 06:27, we'll close the public hearing and have council discussion.
Questions, comments from council? And now that you sat down, does anybody have any questions for Lance? I think it's a good program that, you know, we decided to continue the program and also a great project to continue it all. So I'll make a motion to approve it. I have a motion by Nash Second by Steichen. And a second by Steichen. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. With that, it does move us to number eight. We have eight alpha consideration of the contract with Zurburg Architects for the community center project. Peyton, you start in this one? I am. And it'll be rather brief.
I enclose within your staff report and email from Zurburg discussing the details of how the contract is. You don't have the actual contract in front of you, but you got the framework of how it's gonna look. It'll be a standard AIA contract that we'll look to execute. So this evening, just searching for, you know, a motion from the council to sign the contract. And, really, the how it's gonna be broken down is into two different components. You have the master planning side and then the construction side of things.
Those are the two big ticket items there. On the master planning side, you can see there what is highlighted. Let me pull up my you you can see what is, highlighted there as far as laying out the entire area over to Sixtieth Street. So getting a grasp of not only what this community center will look like, but also the transportation network and the general layout of that vicinity over to Sixtieth Street. In addition to that, the actual construction side of the building itself will involve the architectural and design work.
So working through that entire process, standard 7% construction cost, that that's how those are determined. Those rates do adjust a little bit as numbers do come in through the whole process. But, again, that's pretty typical of how all these works, same as how we, worked with on the fire hall project. The whole project itself made up of the master planning, as I talked about, the community engagement side of things, you know, carrying us through design and also construction administration services. So Zurburg Architects will be with us the entirety of this project.
And to give an idea of where we're going next with everything, this week later this week, we're meeting with Zurburg to start to laying the foundational timeline pieces of how we're gonna be proceeding through this engagement with, landowners and stakeholders like, Lance and others, as we work through this and trying to come up with some kind of an action plan to get this going pretty fast. And I feel like considering we're still in February, the local option sales tax was approved in early November. We're doing a heck of a job getting it to this point already.
Any questions for Peyton? And mister, Tony Wolf with, Zurburg is here if you have any questions for him. Any questions for mister Wolf? I'm just gonna go right back to what mister Steichen said earlier today. Right? We don't have to how'd that go? We don't It's not so important we are right. It's important that we get it right. Yeah. And as long as you're ready to get it right, let's get this going. That's outstanding. That's outstanding. Well, if there aren't any other questions, then we're ready to to move the contract forward. With Zurburg, I will entertain a motion. Motion to approve. I have a motion by Nash.
Second, Steichen. And a second by Steichen. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Congratulations. Well, I think it's officially official now. Official? It's twice now. Signature away. One signature away. One signature with that contract. Alright. Thank you very much. Have a good evening. Good one. With that, it does move us on to number nine, on my favorite part of the program. Alright. Here we go. Nine alpha. Public hearing for resolution twenty five zero five. Miscellaneous assessment hearing on unpaid roof repair for Center Avenue West. With that, I will it is six thirty one. I will open the public hearing.
Peyton, we have staff presentation. Right across the street from City Hall here, there were some roof repairs that was a public nuisance that was causing a danger to the vicinity. So we got that repair done, sent an invoice to the property owners, and this is just for an unpaid invoice for that work. Perfect. Is that the end of your presentation? Yes, sir. With that, is there anyone here to speak in favor? Second call in favor? Anyone here to speak in opposition to the resolution? Second call in opposition? Hearing no one here to speak on the resolution,
we'll close the public hearing at 06:32. Council discussion, questions, comments, concerns, considerations, or a motion? Questions approved. I have a motion by Nash to approve resolution twenty five zero five. Second. Third. Second by Borah, third by Kevin. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. That moves us to number nine bravo, public hearing on resolution twenty five zero six, miscellaneous assessment hearing on unpaid utility bill. With that being 06:33, we'll call the public hearing to session.
Peyton? Just, pay your utility bill. Alright. Anyone here to speak in favor? Second call in favor. Anyone here to speak in opposition to resolution twenty five zero six? Second call? Hearing. Can you hear no one here to speak? Seeing that there's no one here. With there being no one to speak, in favor of or in opposition to, we'll close the public hearing at 06:33. Council discussion, questions, comments, concerns, or a motion? Motion to approve. I have a motion by Nash. Second. Second. The second by Peterson. Third. And a third by Borra. All those in favor of resolution twenty five zero five,
say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Backside. Alright. More. Alright. Nine Charlie. Public hearing resolution twenty five zero seven. Miscellaneous assessment hearing on unpaid utility bill with it being $6.34. We'll call the public hearing into session. We'll open the public hearing. Peyton? Just, please pay your utility bills. Anyone here to speak in favor of the resolution? Second call in favor. Anyone here speak in opposition? Second call in opposition. With there being no discussion, we'll close the public hearing at 06:34. Council questions,
comments, concerns, considerations? I will entertain a motion. Steichen, so move. A motion by Steichen. Second. Second by Peterson. All by himself. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. With that, it does move us mercifully to nine delta public hearing on resolution twenty five zero eight. I don't know if I closed the public hearing on that one. Yeah. I did. It is now 06:35. We'll open the public hearing. Peyton? Yes. We encourage everyone to pay their utility bill. Alright. Is that the end of your presentation? Alright. Is there anyone here to speak in favor of? Second call in favor of.
Anyone here to speak in opposition? Second call in opposition. With there being no public input, we'll close the public hearing at 06:35 and go to council, discussion. Questions, comments, concerns, or considerations from council? Will you entertain the motion? I will entertain the motion. I'll make that motion. I have a motion by Peterson. Second. And a second by Nash. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And with that, that ends the public hearing portion of the program. Who's this number 10? Council members concerns and committee updates around the horn. So local days has kicked off,
believe it or not. In a few short months, we'll be doing it all over again. I don't know if you've noticed on on the line, but we are currently accepting applications for a grand marshal. I don't think we've made that determination yet or if we have any, front runners. So please dig deep and and think about who should have that honor bestowed upon them. Secondly, the the Clay County, has reached out to, the first responders of Dilworth between,
fire and and law enforcement for how do I wanna say this? Active threat or, Yeah. It's active threat training. That's fine. Active shooter. Active shooter training. And so it it it it's at Barnesville, and, basically, they're trying to get, like, countywide entities there to just kinda go through some high level, scenarios of if this, you know, were to happen, this is what you should look for, and this is this is maybe how to react. So I think I think it's noteworthy because if the worst were to happen,
you know, in our community, at least, you know, we've got the opportunity to train and and, you know, there's gonna be a handful of people that will know, which way's up anyway. So, aside from that, packing up the fire hall, it's it's a hot mess right now and getting ready to move next door. Hot mess. I see what you did. Smoldering. And, you know, we shout out to Mike and the guys, and, they're going to help move things where fire department's currently getting things palletized and ready to use the, the telehandler with forks on it,
at their convenience. So appreciate that. That's all I got. Thank you. I have got nothing. Okay. Thank you, Amber. Mister Steichen? Okay. Lance is gone, but wanna thank his interest in the rail district and building out there and making that develop. And it's good to hear him say that the the incentives does make a difference for him and for probably most people. So thanks for his work in that. This this afternoon, we had a interesting strategic planning.
You know what? So I wanna thank the council and staff and the chief Payne, chief, Ralston, and, Mike and Perry and Don and and the council for I always like talking about ideas and, you know, it's when you collaborate with all these other people with different knowledge bases, it's interesting to see what ideas come up. Lots of great ideas, lots of work left to do. So thank you for everybody that, helped on that.
Moving forward on the community center is always exciting. I just can't comprehend how much work it takes, but for the city staff to get it to this point is pretty amazing like Peyton had mentioned. So thank you again for all the work you and whoever else has done on that, coordinating everything. So that's fantastic. About a week ago, we had a chance to go on an EDC, evening at the Armory Events Center. First time I've been in there, I was in there years ago when I was a car dealer, but, it's it's pretty neat.
I mean, it's very neat, exciting. I didn't really know what to expect going in, but there was a lot of engineers there that I don't speak their language. So, I just need very simplified ways for them to explain what it is they do. And, I do have an interest in the Grand Farm at, Wheaton, And what they do is pretty amazing, high level. They got a huge grant, and they're working with lots of innovative things that'll help the well, precision farming is a big part of their work.
So, And that was great, and they're all good. It's sort of a recruiting event, but it's also just informational. The other thing that kind of piqued my interest there was, I forget the name of the company, but they do genetic mapping. So if you have, well, you might not even know it. You might have a predisposition for certain disease or illnesses. And it's a program they sell to the healthcare providers. And you go through whatever inventory of what you know you have, what your parents, siblings might have. And I imagine there's a whole lot more to it than that.
But they come up with what you might be, inclined to consider for testing and genetic markers that would maybe catch something earlier. And I don't think it's anything brand new, but it's, they're promoting what they're doing. And it's pretty amazing, this technology. And I'm not a technology guy. I needed, Peyton to help me start my computer this evening. So You did well, though. The other thing was Fargo is an area for extreme weather testing.
Big part of it is the, for the military because we have extreme weathers up here is what they say. So, and whatever is involved with that, you know, everything from how materials handle to paint, you know, different types of materials, how they hold up. It's pretty neat what what's out there in our area. And, and it was kind of fun to see, listen to what they have. There's a lot more to it. A lot more other things that were being displayed that night. But, Metro COG policy board met, and I think we probably all knew it was gonna happen.
But the, for local interests and I'm kinda getting into this Metro COG is pretty neat, what's goes into it. And I only understand this much of this big of a idea. So but for things that are gonna pertain to us, they're gonna work on studying. They wanna build a bridge across the Red River from university that's gonna tie in with Bluestem. It's a huge, like, dollars 3,000,000 to 5,000,000 project if it works out. And the other thing was, they approved the Eighth Avenue extension study,
and they approved the Fifteenth Avenue corridor study. So that was good to hear. I didn't vice mayor Nash would understand it a lot more than he, but some of the funding was made available on some of these different other projects because somebody got some other funding, and they pull their money back, which frees up money to give some of these other projects a big boost. So, that was good. Just come back from the League of Minnesota Cities, in Plymouth, so thanks for the council to send me there. I always like this this idea of meeting these
I don't know who the mayors of some of these by us. I just know them by name now, but big city, little city. Big problems, little problems. It kinda transcends the whole, municipalities. Lot of things they're talking about is kinda unique and difficult, everything from good and bad and the ugly. So one of the sessions was on dealing with labor negotiations, kind of the do's and don'ts of that. And that was more of a just like technical things, which is, you know, good. One was,
and we kinda touched on it this afternoon, this earlier this afternoon, was the communications between generations. What you know, there's baby boomers, and there's gen x and millennials and gen z, and they all see everything differently. Not that one is right, one is wrong. But if you're gonna talk to a baby boomer, you're not gonna probably see speak to the you're not gonna get to the millennials or the Gen z's in the same way. They got different focuses, different priorities. But long as you keep that in mind, you know, the baby boomers might want x done in Dilworth,
and another group might feel that's totally unnecessary, and this is important. You're never gonna keep everybody happy, but long as you can speak with them, understand them, listen to them and make sure they know they've been heard. That's a great starting point. The last part is, it's called home run leadership, And the principles are so simple. It was written by, a guy. His mother grew up in Morehead, but he's he was a superintendent of the schools in Saint Paul. And now he goes around doing this leadership training. But these four ideas are so simple that we do them in everyday life a
lot of times without even knowing it. But once you can understand how this is done, your decisions will be faster, more effective, and, more accepted by everybody. So, even though you might not like the end result, you'll probably still here's here's what they are. It's IROD, I r o d. First one is information. Whatever the topic is, some people just want information galore, and that's fine. Give them all the information everybody wants, and you always ask anything else. You wanna make sure that's kinda totally exhausted.
The second one is, reactions. Don't just go from information to making a decision. You have to get to the reactions. Everybody's reaction is valid. I mean, they can be addressed. And then you wanna go back to anything else. Make sure that's exhausted. Then you want opinions. The o is for opinion. I got some little cards I should have brought, but you want opinions. Everybody's opinion is also valid. It might not be workable. It might not be practical or whatever. But if you skip over the opinion part and just push somebody off,
they're gonna get very offended. I'm really trying to make this quick because I go on way too long here. And the last one is decisions. Even if you don't make a decision, that is a decision. But generally, this comes down to a decision that probably pretty much everybody's on board. And here's a good example. You're going down a highway and you see the traffic light turn yellow. What do you do? Where am I on the highway? That's gonna matter. And where is the chief at? Well so you got the information. You're driving. You might be late to work.
You see the light yellow. Well, the reaction is, do I I can slow down, or I can might get rear ended, I can gun it, or whatever. But if you see a cop sitting on the corner, you might think twice about it. And then so you make a decision. So those things happen really fast, but you have still followed the four steps, information, reaction opinion, and, so it's just a pretty neat, it's very simple, but it takes a lot of takes work. And this works for church councils, for city councils, for just about anything. So family,
family, you know, if it's planning a vacation, ideas about what you should do for the weekend, for movies, whatever. So it's just a simple, very, very valuable I thought it was very valuable stuff to do more work on this to probably get you guys some information. So, so thank you for sending me, and that's where I'm gonna end. Thank you, mister Steichen. Nash? Okay. So my first I have a question first. Like, what's the requirement for a local day's grand marshal? Who should I be looking for? Okay. I don't I I think it's pretty wide open. Oh,
wide open. Yeah. So they don't have to, like, be involved with local day. It could be anyone in the community. Yeah. I, we'll we'll we'll accept any nomination and vet it out. Oh, there you go. Okay. Okay. Alright. I just gotta get my creative, like, thought process going. Okay. Yeah. Me too. Okay. So, yeah, the EDC was interesting but again a lot of North Dakota side type events and projects going on but it does show the importance of how what they're doing is not to compete with current businesses.
It it definitely helps collaborate. And so it was interesting to hear about the different projects and everything. And then next week, we head down to Saint Paul. Right? So, council member Steichen and I will both be going down with Peyton. And, so if there's anything that you specifically want information on or think it's something you think we should be sharing, reach out before next week. That's all I have. Pete. Next week, the planning commission will be kicking off its comprehensive plan review with Metro COG.
Really excited about that and what the future holds. I just wanna make a note too about just the speed at which the fire hall is being constructed. Council member Peterson was talking about some of the work going into making the transition over. We had the final farewell to the community center. That was in early April, if I remember correctly. April 6. Yeah. And then in one year following that, practically one year, there will be a whole new facility, fire hall facility for our firefighters to be in no community center.
But there will at least be a new fire hall there at that location and to substantial completion. I know there will be some other work going on for the subsequent month. That's really cool that in just a year's time that this is all coming together. Anything else, Pete? That's it. I just wanna I wanna say thank you across the board, for the efforts this afternoon. Matt, I'm glad to see that the back row one stayed in the back row and two didn't bother listening when I said I had a standard for this evening, but here we are.
But but in all in all in all seriousness remember that part where I said, hey. You don't need to stick around and go home? I'm good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Just checking. That's that's weird. Alright. So, but but at the end of the day, it's two at least two things. One, it it's nice to see that the efforts we've made up to this point have led us and kept us on track to where we decide that we want to go in the future. I mean, we're not taking any dramatic steps to correct anything one way or the other. We are on track and keeping that vision moving forward.
And I think the goals that we've kind of identified, big picture goals are definitely attainable, because of the collaborative effort. So that's all I have. I thought today was great, and and thank you for everyone for their efforts this afternoon and maybe even for sticking around. So, with that, we're gonna jump to number 11. We're gonna pay these bills. Any question about the bills? I got a not necessarily a question, but to be more colorful, I understand what they do. Is, do you see much, comments or reaction from anything that they've put out there? We really like it. I was actually asking someone in the office last week if we believe we're getting value of it for
$1,200 a year or whatever that number was. And the consensus is yes. You know, it's just a cool resource that we can direct individuals to while also promoting our businesses. Angela has a side project going on right now about promoting our businesses that you'll be seeing more about, in the coming weeks. So any effort that we can take, I believe, to bolster our community businesses. When you consider the fact we don't have our own personal chamber of commerce or anything of that nature, I think in a small town,
we are we have somewhat of an obligation to get out and, you know, increase that spirit at least about, our business community. And I think to be more colorful, our virtual tour thing provides that. Once we get the new fire hall up and constructed, we're thinking it'd be cool to get some photos in there Sure. Get a three sixty views or we're we're still enjoying it, I guess. You know, I think long term, we'll evaluate the need for it. But at this point, I think we feel pretty strongly that it's doing a good job.
Good. Thank you. Any other questions regarding the bills? If we have no other questions on the bills, I will entertain a motion to pay the bills. Steichen, someone. Motion by Steichen. Second. Second by Nash. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And with there being no further business before council