All right. First thing is the call meeting order. First thing is the pledge of allegiance. Standing for a moment of silence. I pledge algiance 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. Thank you everybody. Okay, first thing is approval agenda, additions, corrections, additions mainly. Not
somebody make a motion to approve. I'll make a motion to approve. I'm going to second. I'll second it. All in favor say I. I. I pull this. Motion carried. First thing is Bolton and Mink. Wow, that was quick. Yay. Yeah. Really? Oh,
yeah. I'll let Jov involved with the finance looking at PFA um and bonding. Um a lot of things to consider there, the governor's bonding bill or
the Minnesota bonding bill. I haven't checked here recently, but I know that's um still in the notes, but um if you adopt it, it's it's going to be sometime in I think May, early or later part of May, early June before um the governor
would even consider it and sign it. Um there's a lot of things out there a lot of people are buying for financing and they um want so there's only x amount of dollars to go around to be able to get um city under
and their water improvements on that in that bill so the bonding bill. So anyway, right now we're just waiting. Um, next step is to continue with the BFA financing, but I'll before I go, I'll just let
Yep. Um, we'll talk about the projects that we've been talking about for a couple years now. I believe I have council member D. I haven't had an opportunity to meet you, but I'll just give a a brief background of the project. So the city's been looking at a new well water treatment facility and
demoing the existing water treatment facility and the existing backup well would be decommissioned and the existing primary well would then become the backup well. So we've uh been working with the state representative Sue and myself have been working with state representative Bjornne Olson. He's the
representative for this area on the legislative floor and so a couple of his legislative assistants. We've had some correspondence with them as well. So, this dates back to uh let's say March of 2024 is when we first start got going with the representative. And
essentially, we asked um him to to try and allocate $10.9 million on the legislative floor for the city of Good Thunder. And of that, 7.5 million was for the water treatment facility, well, and the demolition of the existing facility. 7.5 million. $3 million was
for South Holiday Street reconstruction and looping the water man um down Chapel Street and then $300,000 was for a Hiller Drive water main looping project. Sum those up was the $10.9 million that we've been asking for. That'd be a state bonding bill project. um you know,
bonding bill dollars are kind of um there's not exact science for how to obtain them, but you work with your representative and you explain needs that needs the needs we have in our community and you hope that your representative can do a good job lobbying on the legislative floor to get those. So, like Jeff noted um and
probably a lot of you follow um the political cycle there. There were some they didn't get a bonding bill approved in in 2025 um or excuse me, in 2024. Thank you. And now here we are in 2025 and one would like to think a bonding bill would be passed, but we don't know that for sure.
They're back in session now um trying to work to get a bonding bill approved. So with that said, we asked for the $10.9 million from our state representative to try and get that. And then what the city's also been doing is applying for PFA U financing. You get on
the project priority list and the intended use plan are two acronyms. We're always saying project priority list is PPL an intended use plan and what PFA is it would be a low interest loan for the city to use as a local match if the representative of the 10.9
we asked for he could secure seven um and now we have 3.9 that the city needs to to be able to finance. So that was the reasoning for getting on the PPL and IUP. It's a It's a low interest loan program um for the city to What are they calling low interest right now or what
would be interest right now? Yeah, that's a great question, Mr. Mayor. Um it's certainly not the the 2 to 3% interest rates that we were talking in in kind of the COVID times. I don't think I have a exact number for you. Maybe in the four to five. Yeah. Would it be? It's hard to You got an idea
though? We're seeing 4%. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, um, a couple things that I wanted to So, the reason that Jeff and I are here tonight is to ask the council if we would like to reup our intended use plan application. Um, it's just a
one pager that we submit online. Actually, in past years, we we got Mr. Mayor's signature on it, but it it the process changed in this last year. Um, it's online submission. It' be our recommendation to get on that intended use plan. The verbiage is sort of interesting. It says intended use plan,
but it doesn't necessarily lock the city into anything. It shows that we're pursuing an option for for financing if if the legislature is able to come up with a portion, but not all of the 10.9 million. How would how you know you said
uh 10.9 we'd have what was it 3.9 would be could be part of our share. How long would we 15 year 20 years would that be out over or what? Um, PFA is a 20-year loan, right? Yeah. Okay. You're sure?
So, we're throwing numbers out there right now, but I mean, right now, cities applied for or requested bond financing or bonding funds in the order of 10.9 million. It all depends on if one if the if um you know the governor signs the
bonding bill. a couple things and two how much the representative was able to to get in there as for the city of Good Thunder and then ultimately that remaining portion would be you know if he gets 5 million then the city of Good Thunder would be responsible for like six million but to answer your question
mayor the uh the financing would be PFA would be over a 20-year period um and the city of Good Thunder I think median household income is is above average And so it
does B or grant funds might be difficult to come by. I mean you do I mean all cities they check to verify if you're grant eligible. Um but um it's it's tough to get grant funds. It's it's really challenging. So um but ch likely
the city of good would be um in the running or in for low interest loan. whatever that rate is that it's typically the standard or
the governing rate or the US bonding rate but it's minus one or two you try to make it competitive and lower than what you could bond long answer to a short question I was just trying to think with the
financing in there you know what what kind of debt service would there be there each year for the city for the next 20 years, right? Got that up there? I do not. A couple That's great questions. A
couple points I want to clarify on before we go too far down down that is um one big one is that so we requested the 10.9. We'll use more hypothetical numbers is if the legislature was able to secure seven per se. So now there's
that remaining 3.9. the city has has to build everything we requested to unlock even that 7 million there. What I'm saying is, you know, the water treatment facility, well, and demolition was 7.5 million and then the South Hall Street
um and the looping and then the Hiller Drive looping. What you can't do is okay, you requested 10.9, he secured seven. You can't say, well, we just won't build the remaining 3.9. you you are entitled to build all that to access even the seven that he obtained. You're
obligated to do what the project and the and the thought there is that otherwise a city may come in and request you know 50 million to reconstruct their entire town, right? Maybe in the back of their mind they really only wanted to do three blocks and then you were you were
awarded 5 million and that's kind of what you wanted all along. So it just prevents that from process from happening. That's important to understand, right? If if the legislature was able to scare the city 7 million, that would be a huge win, but as a city just need to be financially prepared to
pick up that 3.9 to to make it happen. If if that's deemed financially feasible for the city. And as you touched on, so our options are money through that budget, low interest loans, but you're saying that grants are something that we
Well, yeah, the funding agencies like since PFA and R&D development, they're another funding option for you. Um, they're to me they're very similar other than R&D provides loaning years. So basically it makes
um your your annual payments a lot less because you're amateurizing over 40 years versus 20 years. Um typically I don't like to recommend using um RD one for smaller projects. Um there's a lot of uh a lot
of red tape I guess but there's a lot of extra costs involved and things involved in order to make those requirements. But um when it comes to um interest rate and and pa are very similar and then also affordability both
of them consider affordability for a city. So, I've been talking about this for a long time in the city. We've been I think they pinch our rates up. What happens is I'm not going to go into details, but a certain percentage of the medium household income. Um, residents
in the city supposedly can afford to pay a certain percentage of that to one and a half, 1%, whatever it ends up being, one and a half, 2% of your median household income per month for just water as an example. And that puts your rates, you know, we're just some cities
around here are $50, $60 a month and well, it's probably more than that now. It's probably $60 70 a month um for water rooms. So, as a city, let's say you got a $10 million water plant and let's say you had to finance uh seven or
we could say five million as an example. If you had to finance five million, you could choose to do that one of two ways over 20 20 years or um 40 years. But one each one program does is they'll look at your affordability and say, "Okay, one,
are you a city? Are you charging up to what the affordable rate is for water?" And if you're not, you would have to do that before you even become eligible for grant. So based on your other income or u other debt that you have, if you have
any other debt, they consider they they um they consider that right off the top. And then they also look at what you're paying based on that with your total project cost minus what you have available in cash minus um what you can
afford um to to raise when you when you raise your rates to cover that additional expense. If there's anything left after that that you wouldn't technically be able to afford then that would be grant eligible.
Um, and I know in the past, like I say, in the past it becomes real difficult to access those grant funds. I mean, there's cities whole state of Minnesota that are, believe it or not, medium household income is quite a bit lower. So, that means they they're higher on
their priority list. Just wondering to make sure that we cover are we supposed to be looking for grants? Do you look for the grants? Do we look for other options? I mean, yeah, if you do get um if you're on the take I'm hijacking your
conversation here, but I'm sorry. Um a PFA um if you if you do get a um let's say you do get bonding funds, right? Then if you want to pursue PFA financing to cover that portion of the project that's left public part of that process
then you determine what kind of um funding you would be eligible for eligible grant or loan or a combination of both. But it wouldn't be until that time that it could be done every time I wait
to get an idea, but it's just it's not set in stone and they really moving on something. Generally, the bonding deal the bonding dollars are good for three years. So the city would have some time to kind of re react, digest, work with the financial planner to then figure out
how how would we cover aggressive and this is all hypothetical contingent on on a bonding bill passing and the governor signing a bonding bill and two how much the representative if any is able to secure for the city. Greg was just saying a little bit
earlier before you got here that Vernon was very very lucky they got a lot of it granted right? Yeah, it was state bonding money. Wow. State all of it. Yeah. I think we made a strong case as a city.
Sue's done a great job. She wrote some handwritten letters to to the legislator there and he's been just council meetings. So, it's positive, but it's How does that come out? I mean, you you were talking 20-year loan, 40-year loan. At the end, boy, 40-year loan. Yeah.
It's going to be lower interest and lower payments, but the finance charges at the end of 40. Isn't that going to like up the cost? You know, that's always the big weight that the city has to consider
because if you always look at your total interest amount that you've got charged that 40 years versus what it would be over 20 years, just like anything but challenge. I think a lot of times what happens is a lot of communities simply can't afford with the cost of the
project. They can't afford to buy or amortize loan money over 20 years and make their payments because it would require their rates to go you know sky high as an example. But a lot of times if you can push that over 40 years then
then those rates are reasonable and people don't go take over kind of take over the city hall you know because come to meetings and right no matter what but it's always going to be a challenge and that's one of the things that you'd probably almost
cut that payment in half going out 40 years versus 20 right you know would it get that close you know saying and I know the interest be up there higher, but you aren't paying as much to start with. So, I mean, it would
almost probably cut that debt to the individual or the town probably in half. Say, you know, we had a $200,000 obligation every year. You probably drop that down to a h 100,000 if you finance it out that far. Is that what their
point is of doing that? Probably that it's that's exactly it. That's why RD is there because rural, you know, rural development, that's the name. A lot of rural communities, most all rural communities, I mean, they're just not as they don't have the budgets to to
finance the same kind of water treatment plant that a larger community will need. Yeah. So, that's the challenge and that's why they call it rule simply because a lot of that grows over 40 years. I did want to recommend though, but um I wouldn't recommend using rural
development for things like uh street improvements, that sort of thing. Instead, I would use it for like water towers. Um things that are going to be there 40 years later. You want to put a street improvement under 40ear loan when you're going to have to replace it 20, 25 years anyway. So things like water
towers, water treatment facilities like the current one, the wells, um those would be 40 years, no problem. wastewater, that sort of thing. But so you wouldn't want to consider RD for anything to me. I would I'm not a financial advisor to me other than the
water tower. Yeah. Water tower well and water treatment plant that'll be there for years to come. It gives you as a city a few but I guess um we hit on okay one one more point to touch on is when we talk about these PFA
dollars uh those dollars would be accessible the PFA is the low interest loan they're not accessible till after uh a project is bid and awarded to a contractor so with that the city would have to front some engineering and planning cost that go into it to just some things to think about I think the
important take away is that wait, we have to wait and see what happens with the legislative session and then the city to work with the financial planner and react how to how to cover what's left there. Again, the purpose for being here tonight, our recommendation for the city to continue on the intended use
plan and and show that we're prepared to pay for cost if necessary. And it doesn't the city's by no means committed to using an opportunity that that we're prepared to utilize it if necessary.
Do you know when that legislation? So it's a great question. Um miday the legislative session typically closes and then the governor would sign the bonding bill sometime in June. But it's kind of contingent on how the session goes. So that would be you guys watch those dates
pretty close. Yeah. Or just we we get feedback our our funding team gets feedback on what's happening at the legislative floor. Okay. So, right now in our uh water fund, if I read that right, $183,000 cash balance
summary, you know, so we have been saving money and uh sewer fund, you know, we've we've updated that multiple times. did a lot of uh lining, you know, and uh treatment now, but
which is working great. Got it. Okay. Good. So, I think, you know, we're in the process of making more money right now instead of spending it, you know, so we could finance engineering there easy enough out of it.
Yeah. A pretty good solution. and make the um bonding bill include include coming if that if the bonding bill comes through eventually it's not this year maybe it'll be every three years
not this year hopefully it's two years later um then they approve funding for the city because then that's the case then you have it depends on how many dollars you get of course but if you get a good chunk of that money up through a
bonding bill grant dollar which you're in a position you want to be in a position to be able to access other funding PFA and RD are great funs rather than market rate simply those market rates are a little bit typically 1 to 2%
more than PFA and RD can provide for loans so one problem we'd have if it takes a couple years is our our trays to ariate the are are on very borrowed time yet, Brian. Right. Yeah. I was telling them
out in the parking lot that the main pipe that goes down the top of the above the trays um is no longer attached inside the filter um the framework is rusted away. So when the well pump starts and stops, that whole thing
shutters. So we had Javs come out and brace it up a couple of times. Done. It'sund over 100 years old. So, say we had to dump in u say we had to go to a spray system and kind of redo the whole
filter area there. You know, it wouldn't be wise to be dumping in $150,000 and then tear it out in two years if we got all this all in the forward motion. But then you said you
can't pull back from the project either. So that's one of these damn it if you do, damn it if you don't deal, you know, because we probably will have to spend money to get that to get us by for two years if it took that long. Yeah, if you do have some issues here over the next
two years, which you know, yeah, but very well might be a deal where we have to call Javs to come in and replace that pipe, brace it up and but how about the trays? You know, we need that variation. The trays themselves are in good shape, but the structure that they're holding, it's angle iron. It was made out of mild
steel, so it should have been stainless back in the day, but I suppose they didn't consider that. Yeah. And so over the years, it's just gotten thinner and thinner and from the pump shaking it all the time. It's just it's not. So they could probably rebuild that structure also. I mean, we
could get a bid and have look at it, but yeah, but that could be a problem for us before this ever gets resolved or approve a motion. Yeah. City technically according according to the department of
health, we have to add chlorine and fluoride. We have to add chlorine. That's something we decided to do, but um you don't have to. South Ben doesn't treat their water at all. It's from the wealth of the distribution system. So if it would fail, there's nothing. There's no fines. There's no It's just people
are going to complain about their rusty clothes and Yeah. But it smells. The water smells variated. I'm just saying in a pinch, we had to if it failed and it took a month to fix. Yeah. You can distribute raw water without any fines
or penalties as long as you meet the Department of Health standards for fluoride and we chlorinate. So, um, high in magical chlorine. Huh. High in manganesees. Manganesees. Yeah. And iron. It's a fairly deep well, but it's still
pretty high in iron and manganesees. So, and when you're on and which we have, I was counting up here. I think we have six six dead end fire hydrants, you know, that are not looped. And the one on North Miner Street, my son has a filter about this big around this tall.
He just changed it. That thing is rust slime about an eighth inch thick on it. So I was just wondering should a guy on dead end dead end uh fire hydro or water manes should you like crack that once a month to get that sediment out of that
pipe you know because that filter is registers everything up. You can't just do one. You got to start at the tower and work your way out when you flush mains. If you just start doing one, it's it's not a good practice. Yeah. Even though that that
that pipeline here only has residence taken off of it. Yeah. And there's more settlement at that pipe because it's not got that flow going through and around. When you open up the hydronet anywhere in town, it's going to pull water from the tower all the way out to where that is. And you're going to stir everything
up between the tower and that whatever one you opened up. It's better to flush everything out to the outsides. Are the flushed? Are the mains flushed? I see. Should we ever up that to once a quarter?
I don't think you need to. Well, you need a filter. You'd want it. Wouldn't be able to in the winter either because if you didn't have that filter in there, you'd be drinking that rust. Yeah, but we wouldn't be able to flush in the winter months anyway. You Well, no. You have an ice. Just not You'd have to go practice. I I think you're still going
to see that manganesees in the in the water even if you are flushing more often because that's always in the water. Yeah. So you're collecting it and seeing a filter simply because it's being filtered whereas most people it's too fine. You're not you're not seeing it. I mean you might see a little bit of
you know if you don't have water softener as an example you'll be able to see some um rust and red develop on your sinks where every water splashes and evaporates. They had this situation in Peton. So they added phosphate
um polyphosphate to sequester the iron and keep it in solution so it didn't drop out and end up on people's filters. But do you want to add another chemical to our water? I don't think so. All right.
So we just need to give the okay then to continue or to renew our request. Yeah. to renew to renew our request to remain on the IUP, which is the intended use plan. And that's something we would take care of as an online submittal and we could
let you know. Okay. Does have to come from doesn't have to come from the city. No. So, anybody else got any questions for Joe or Jeff? If not, then uh somebody want to make a motion then to renew the uh intended use intended
use in use plan. Intended use plan IUP. IUP. Okay. Somebody make that motion. I'll make a motion. Someone second. I'll second that motion. All in favor say I. I oppose. Motion carried. All right. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Go get some
money. Yeah. Push. Push. I think it's going to be very difficult the way the finances are in the state of Minnesota. Where where did all that other money go? Just wondering for a friend. A whole conversation. All right. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Yes.
Thank you. Okay. We have uh see you soon. Burkart here. Greg is here tonight to go over our record keeping, bookkeeping, management. Got it. Right. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you all for having me.
Uh the mayor mentioned, I am Greg Burkhard, represent the firm that performed the financial audit uh for the city of Good Thunder. earlier records for 2024. And tonight's culmination of that work, uh, we're going to walk or I'd like to walk the council through the
audit process. We provide clarity and what exactly we do, why we do it. Uh, we're going to talk about some different responsibilities that are held related to financial reporting, some brief results for the
audit. There's a handful of things professional standards require that I communicate to the council. We'll touch on some of those and then I'll I'll finalize the report with a a brief overview of the financial condition of the state. Um I know many of you have sat through a presentation of mine in the past. Uh for
those of you that first time, I'd just like to let you know that I'm I want to keep this as informal as possible. So if there are questions that come up as I'm going through my presentation, please stop me and I'm happy to discuss those uh answer any questions you may have. If I don't touch on something that is of
interest to the council, be happy to address those questions when finish. So, uh, I do have a PowerPoint that Sue is going to run for me. You guys all have the printed slides in front of you as well. Uh, so what I'd like to do then is get started on slide number two. You
guys will see that at the bottom of page one. Slide two describes the responsibilities that are held related to financial reporting. Okay. So uh management of the city holds certain responsibilities as well as your audit
firm. So as we look at that slide, management essentially is required to make all the accounting decisions that are necessary to put those financial statements in the condition that you see them in your financial report. All
right. In addition to that, uh management of the city is also required to have processes and procedures in place that will safeguard your assets. Whether that be cash in the bank, your investments, even your equipment,
infrastructure, vehicles, you need a process, you need policies to ensure that those items are safe. Uh your audit firm, my firm's responsibility essentially relates to around the three different reports that we provide over
those financial numbers. We provide a financial opinion trying to determine is the numbers are the numbers reported accurate. We also provide a report on those policies and procedures that the city has in place. We attempt to
determine are they appropriate. Do you have the right policies based on the facts and circumstances that the city finds itself in? If we find something that doesn't quite measure up or we notice limitations or things that are missing, we provide a report that
describes what we found as well as recommendations to improve that. And finally, we provide a report on your compliance with Minnesota law. The state auditor requires us to evaluate seven broad categories of compliance. We spend an awful lot of time during the conduct
of the audit going through those checklists, sampling items, looking at invoices, contracts, those sorts of items to determine if the city did indeed follow all of those compliance requirements. If we find something, we report on it and then we provide some
recommendations for uh improvement. We move over to slide number three. Slide three will briefly summarize the results of the audit this year. Uh so starting on the left hand side there under financial
opinion. Uh it states that the city has received a qualified opinion on your governmental activities. Okay. Um qualified is not what you want to hear. That means there's something missing. And in this case uh what is missing is
the representation of your fire relief pension fund or fire relief pension activity. We discussed this over the years. I'm sure you guys are somewhat familiar with that. I do support the decision you've made. So the there's a county standards that require the city
to incorporate the activity the fire relief has as it relates to their fire department pensions into your city report. The reason for that is because you do hold the responsibility for any shortfalls that might be found in that uh in their investment accounts. Okay.
Um you've chosen not to go forward with the cost to get the actuary reports and whatnot. So we did qualify the government activities. We did however the next element listed there did give you a clean opinion on everything else. All
right. So the city complied with all the accounting rules, all the responsibilities that are necessary with your general fund, your water, sewer, everything else that you have in place except for that fire relief piece. Okay. Um, so those are good results. That is
something that you guys should be proud of. The middle section on slide number three describes our report over your internal controls. Can I ask a question, Greg? Do you just need to get a report from their auditors
to your to your company to get that in compliance or do do you have to do that auditing of that relief association? Right. Not quite. So the relief I'm I'm certain the relief has an audit or they do some type of reporting in the state
auditors. You got to do it every year. Yeah. actually need is you need to you would need to contract with an actuarial firm. Yeah, I remember they take a excuse me, they take a look at the investments, the
the fire department members, the relative ages, the benefit levels that you have, and they try to forecast how much is going to be paid out in pension benefits. And they take the investments related to the liability and they do
some math on it. uh and they give us a number. It's called a net pension liability. We would then incorporate that into your financial statement. Uh CPA firms are not allowed to do that work. You must be a licensed actuary to do it. So how far out do they go just
per year like or do they look at it like five years and oh yeah, you've got eight guys going to retire and you're going to be in salvage in five years. Is that what they're looking for? 30 years or more. Oh, you know, it's very similar to what's happening with PERA. Uh, you
guys, your your employees contribute into the PRA plan. PRA is much bigger. There's, you know, State Board of Investments has, you know, a billion dollars that they invest on behalf of several public employee uh groups. They contract with an actuary that provides
information we need to put that information on there. Very similar. So, there are there are two main actuaries in the state of Minnesota that do that type of work. I don't know offhand what they charge. It's an It's kind of strange how it works, but it's an every
other year sort of report. Is that cost to the city? Most likely it would be. I don't believe that the fire relief would be uh on board with paying for that. It can be to $5,000. And really, it doesn't have much of an impact on the fire relief because
they the state auditor doesn't doesn't require them to do that type of work. It's the city's report that would benefit from this actuary state auditor. We got to report what we have. They look at all the the numbers and they come back and say,
"Hey, you got to do this or you got to do that." And they'll tell that we're got enough money to if something ever happened in all of us at one time, god forbid, but yep, that there's enough in there and they look at that every year.
So, but that doesn't satisfy you. Who doesn't? Yeah. Because really what they're doing is they take the number of members that you have your benefit levels and they just do a simple multiplication and they say here's your investments, here's your liability if everyone paid out today, you have enough. And I think you're referring to
like a required contribution from the city that would supplement where your funding levels are. So there's some some calculations they do, but it doesn't meet the the the requirements of one of the accounting standards related to that, you know, and there's some
valuable information that can be gleaned from that work if it's important to the city. We can certainly get some tech information for some actuaries in the in the state of Minnesota that can do that work. Um they're swamped right now, so they certainly couldn't do that within
the next six months. you'd want to get with them right away. The other piece that that could potentially trip you up, and I know this has been a problem in the past, the fire relief hasn't always been timely with their reports. I know there's been years in the past where u
the required reports didn't get to the state auditor in time that delay the fire relief aid that the city received to then turn over the relief and that's happened. If that were the case, even if you contracted with an actuary, it wouldn't be done in time for you to report that information on your city.
So, that's something to keep in mind as well. I'm not suggesting that's happening now, but I know it has in the recent past. Really just a it's a decision the city will need to make. Are you comfortable with a qualified opinion on your government activities? So, you you have
a clean report on everything else except for as it relates to that fire relief. Well, the city in reality backs everything that the fire department does. Yes. You know, we are the backbone of them. You know, like you say, if there was a shortfall because of
retirees, that's where we as a city would have to make that up. Correct. And that's why it is a is a required element of your city report. And you think that's three to $5,000 in that ballpark? Yeah. And would that be
done yearly or every other year then? Every year. So they would do a full actuarial evaluation year one. Year two they would what they called roll it forward. So they would just make some estimates on year two. So the fee would be much less and then year three another
full actuary report would be created and they so they kind of leaprog it. So it's every other year but that information would need to be provided to us annually so that we could update your records and that's total decision of the city council. that likely would be cost that the city
would have. So that actuary uh audit would be good enough for this the fire department then because we're dishing six plus grand out a year for your accounting work. Yeah, it' be two
separate that's two separate animals, right? We're talking completely separate. I'm not sure what your what your asset levels are. They have recently changed the thresholds to get a actual audit because once you go over that threshold, if you drop below it, you still have to doing an audit every
year. Yep. Yeah. So, it wouldn't impact any the reporting that you're doing. If you are getting a full audit, it's unlikely it would impact that. I'm not sure if your audit firm would incorporate that. They certainly could, but it would benefit the city so that you could
better monitor the the performance of that fire pension on a more complete basis rather than just looking at here's our investment balance. Here's our total liability if everybody was paid out. We don't even give a report, do we? To the
city from your fireman's rel. S needs to sign off on it annually as well before they can certify the aid. Okay. It's supposed to be to the city by August every year. And like I said, it's they've missed that mark. And it and it does happen. There are other fire departments that don't quite make that
reporting deadline. So, like you say, legally, by law, the city is required to meet any shortfalls that are are there. We already got the paperwork into the auditors and they put extensions on it. You know how busy you are. Yeah. It's the whole gets done in
the summer, you know. So, but things happen where some of those get missed. If you miss that certification deadline, it is in September. You end up getting paid out in March. So, you you miss six months. But I know So, there was one year that I think you guys got your your
fire aid two years in one essentially. So, could you give us a list of the information that we need or what is suggested? I mean, it does not be tonight. The actuary, there's two. It's Hildy, which I think they've just
changed their name. So, I'd have to get you and Van Warden and they're basically the only I've seen operate in the state that does that type of work. And I'm just saying kind of the list of whatever we would need to get this on the level and if we had all the information and
seeing what it was going to take and what it was going to cost to get to that point, then we could make a make a educated guess or a decision. Not a guess. make an educated decision, okay, on whether or not you want to go forward with it. Yeah, I can certainly get some
information to sue. I I think that would be it is it is nice to see. Again, they look much in a much longer time horizon than what you would get from the fire form or the SC form that gets prepared. if there are any trouble spots out
there, you know, and then also when the fire department shows up and they want a benefit increase, you know, that actuary court could certainly support a benefit increase. You know, if you're well funded, you can prove it by that actuary that might allow you to increase your
benefit levels beyond what you would normally think would be acceptable. It would make your report more complete. Also, yeah, we'd get rid of this. you you wouldn't have a qualification and you'd have a full clean audit report every year. Correct.
So, and and most cities we we work with maybe three to four that have gone down this route that have said, "Hey, we don't want to implement that." Uh but eventually they come around and they say, "Hey, let's let's just clean it up." You know, and it may it may benefit you if you end up with some rural development financing. You know, those
are federal dollars. It would be ideal if you can keep your report as clean as possible when the federal government starts looking at some of those things. I don't know if it really makes much of a difference whether or not you receive that funding. Uh but it can complicate things if you
have a modification to your audit opinion. Okay, that's a great question though. So, uh continuing on, I think we were talking about internal controls, uh the limitations, our report. That's the middle column of that slide number three.
Uh we did see three areas where the city could improve. That's really how I want you to look at this. Not necessarily something wrong, but some improvements could be made. Uh please list there. Uh material audit adjustments, audit prepared financials, limited segregation
of duties are the same three that you had in the previous year. And you guys have had these same limitations for several years. As a matter of fact, it doesn't mean they're not important, but some of these are difficult to remove simply due to the size of your office
staff. You know, Sue uh basically handles all the accounting responsibilities and ideally you'd like separate individuals u to handle these important responsibilities, but not necessarily because you're worried about something uh going missing. It's more so errors
can be u can be worked into your financial records and not notice. And that's really the important piece of the segregation. So, uh, the the last two that you see listed there are really just a consequence of the size of your staff. Uh, the material audit adjustments relates to a lot of the work
that we have to do to get the records in the condition that you see them today. You know, so important, yes, but you know, something I think at some point you've got to live with a little bit of risk. You got to live with uh, you know, what are we willing to accept? And my
view is accept these limitations. However, continue to stay actively involved in the financial condition of the or the financial affairs of the city. That's going to be your best line of defense. Okay. Uh then finally on slide three under compliance
findings, I am thrilled to report there were none this year. So that is fabulous. That's probably if you were to ask me what was the best result this year, I would say that without question. Being able to come through a compliance audit, do the evaluations that we do,
the digging that we look into uh and get a clean report is not something that happens on accident. You know, that is everybody playing their part, being conscientious, being aware. That's really the first step is knowing what these compliance pieces are and handling
those. and and we didn't find anything that caused us to believe that there was any non-compliance. So, uh, excellent, excellent results. That's great. Perfect. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Very good. And John, I think John, them two, they get together all the time and
I think they they they're getting us to where we need to be. Yeah, I appreciate both of them doing that very much so. Okay, on to slide four. Uh so slide four uh contains those those required
communications at professional standards uh demand that we that we discuss with governance. I'm not going to spend an awful lot of time in any of the information on this slide other than to just encourage you. We do provide another report, a separate report from
the audit. It's called a management letter and I did email that to Sue. She has an electronic version. It does go over this information contained on slide number four in much greater detail than the time that I have a lot of this evening. So I would ask you all to uh take a look at that because you'll learn
quite a bit about what we're seeing here without uh chewing up most of your evening to do it. The only thing I will point out on this slide however is uh under significant accounting policies you see there was adoption of a new accounting standard. So Gazby 100
was implemented this year. Uh this standard is it relates to error corrections and changes that happen in your financial statements. Okay. So if you didn't think financials are scary enough, they've gotten even scarier that we now have ghost columns in your
financials. And these are and that was my only joke by the way. So you got to laugh a little bit. I'm an auditor. I'm not supposed to be funny. But we have ghost columns. And basically what it is, it's it's helping you reconcile last year's audit to this year's audit. So
some things things change from time to time where you have a new accounting fund or one of your accounting fund goes to a different area of the report. These ghost columns help kind of the breadcrumbs of where it go, what happened. Okay. Yeah. So that's going to be in there. So you guys may see that.
Don't be alarmed. Um it is supposed to be there. So uh all right, continuing on there. my punch line and go over quite like I had the whole time. It just took us a minute. We got We don't want to laugh at you. We want to laugh with you. That's No, no, no. I want to laugh with you. All right. So,
that is the bulk of the the legal ease if you will related to the audit. Okay. And I think you guys had excellent results there. Very happy. What I want to do now is Yeah, we are on the next slide. What I want to do now is touch on
the city's financial trends. Okay. So, what we're going to do is we're going to look at where was the city a handful of years ago, how are we looking today, and we're going to try to use that information to maybe forecast where are you going to be in the near future. Okay. So, if you go
over to slide number six, what we have on this slide is a five-year representation of the city's cash investment balance. Okay. Uh in the chart there you see blue bars, we have
orange bars. The blue bars represent what we call your governmental activities. Okay? When you hear me say that, I want you to think general fund, right? It does include the fire department. It includes some of your other capital reserves, but it's predominantly the general fund. Okay?
The orange bars are your business type activities. That is your water, sewer, and refues fund. Okay. So, as I look at this chart and let's just maybe focus in on the blue bars, you know, you can see that the cash balances sort of eb and
flow as we move from 2020 into 21, 22, and 23, they kind of stabilized over the past two years, 22 and three. And then there was a little bit of a dip at the end of 24. Okay? So from 23 to 24, your
governmental activities, cash dropped approximately $200,000. Okay. The main reason for that had to do with transfers that you guys approved to help finance some of the construction work that was going on in
that water and sewer fund. Y Okay. Um the orange bars, those those business types, again, a little bit of this the wiggle back and forth year-over-year. Uh however, the last three years there has been some fairly consistent results. 22,
three, and four, you're seeing steady, and that's really what you want. Those cash balances are kind of they're they hit that equilibrium, if you will, and actually up slightly over the year about $30,000 from 23 into the end of 24.
Okay. So, even though the governmental activities slipped back a little bit, um I feel like your reserves are very good. But if we look at the table at the bottom of slide six, um what we call days of reserves, you guys have likely seen this before. And
what this is is just a representation of the city's cash balances at the end of the year. Do we take your year end cash balance, we divide it by your average annual expenses, then we multiply it by 365.
So what that does is it converts those cash balances into how many days can you operate under average annual conditions. Okay, we all know there isn't anything average about government. Your expenditures can eb and flow from month to month, you know, but that's why
reserves are very important. So if we look at and we have the same general breakdown, the governmental the blue line, the business type is the orange. If we just take a look at the 2024 column, you can see that your governmental activities, even though
there was a decrease, still maintain 600 days of reserves under average conditions and that's approximately 20 months. Okay, your business type, although there is a lot less cash available, but your expenses are much
smaller in those business type activities. you have 862 days of reserves which is approximately 28 months you know so although there were some decreases uh we're very comfortable and we're very pleased with the level of
reserves that the city has based on you know your average expenses over the years so very very good a lot of the cities that we work with do not have these level of reserves you know it's typical to see 12 to 14 months in the general fund and quite honestly the the
utility funds or the business type six to 10, you know, so you far outpace that. Uh, and that's important obviously as you're, you know, you listen to your engineers today tell you that you might have to float, uh, several dollars to pay some of their
engineering design invoices before you'll ever receive any money from PFA or that state bonding. And, uh, make no mistake, that is, it will be sizable. you could be looking at upwards of a half a million dollars that you may need to that you may need to pay. So having
reserves is going to be vital. Okay. So I would start planning now for that eventuality. You know whether you do RD, PFA, state bonding money. Um none of that can get put in place until the design is made. That's where a lot of those costs from that engineer are going
to be generated. Do you audit our refuge fund? Oh yeah. So, we hardly make any money on that, right? It's basically a break even operation. That's what it's always been. So, as a city offering that, should that
margin go up a little bit? Should we should we make a little more money off our garbage instead of just to break even? Because, you know, when we have cleanup days, we take that out of general fund. Yes, we do. And uh and this year we're trying to do it do it
three times and and we're going to probably spend uh what 15 12 $15,000 and that would put that in a negative if you took it out of that. Yeah. So I mean years that happened too.
So and our advice to to you guys were to load it to the general fund because it's really just a it's a service a service that you provide. Yes. But should we should we be making a little bit more on our Yes, absolutely. I think the rates
in your refuge fund likely need to increase because it has been carrying a deficit cash balance for for some time now and uh we'll get to that. you kind of uh getting a little bit ahead of me, Robert, but uh there is a deficit in the refues and I think it it stands to
reason to to look at those rates, you know, compare them against what you're being charged from your hauler for what you're collecting from your residents and there is a there is a mismatch there. So, all right, great question here. So,
let's continue on. We only have a couple more slides to go through. Uh slide number seven, top of page four. Uh this is a representation of the city's general fund and it's your fund
balances of your general fund. Okay? And and audit firms, uh financial managers, financial advisors, they look at your general fund and they focus in on that for for several reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is your general fund
essentially is your main operating fund, right? So the majority of your expenses are there. That's where your property tax levy, a lot of your aids and evaluating the health of the general fund gives some really good clues on the health of the city. Okay. So, your fund balance is a
representation of your net worth. Well, the general fund's net worth. So, when you hear me say fund balance, I want you to think net worth, equity. Okay? Uh so what we see in front of us on this chart is a five-year representation of the
city's fund balances. All right? It's separated into two broad categories. The red bars represent total net worth. The green represents what we call or what we label as
unassigned. Okay? A lot of terms I'm throwing at you, but unassigned is important. that the reason it's important is because the city council and management has discretionary control over those fund balances. There are fund balances that you hold that you can't
spend. You got that permanent improvement revolving loan fund that was generated by restricted resources. You can only spend that money on those purposes. What we see here, this green bar, represents money, resources that the city can spend however you see fit.
whether it's to move some money over to the water and sewer fund to help out with some of those improvements that are being made, whatever it is, any legal purpose, let's put it that way. So, um, as we evaluate that unassigned or that discretionary money that you hold, we look at that as
a as a ratio of your overall budgets and your annual spending. Okay? Okay. So, we take your unassigned fund balance, divide it by your budget and your overall spending and we come up with a ratio. A lot of the financial advisors
uh entities that rate city's debt, you guys haven't had to go through a debt rating yet. You may depending on what shakes out with this project. They have a certain ratio that they would like to see maintained in your general fund as it relates to your unassigned and that is 75%.
So if we go to the table below that chart that very first row that fund balance percentage that is exactly what we have done here. So we've taken your unassigned divided it by that annual ex your annual spending. So for every year so what they're saying is you should at
least have 75% exceeding. The state auditor has a different evaluation. They think we want to see you between 40 and 50%. I personally feel that's a little bit low. I'm I'm on board with that 75 or
greater. And as we look at the previous five years, you have maintained that standard each and every year with 2020 being the lowest that you've seen, you know. So again, there's es and flows in that amount and it really does sometimes relate to the amount of spending in that one particular year, but you've done a
fabulous job uh maintaining that level of reserve or unassigned equity. Okay, so that general fund is sitting very good. All right, I'm very happy with what we're seeing there. uh as we move forward here. So on the slide number
eight, the bottom of page four, uh we continue with this with the analysis of your general fund. And what you see here is your budget and actual. All right, so um this is your profit and loss statement, okay? The money that the city brought in and how you spent that money. So if we start at the very top, that
blue highlighted section, revenues, you can see your budget actual and your variance with that budget. So your road map or your projections were 670,000 in revenues, you actually received
775,000. So you're about 100,000 over your projections, which is you're going to go over any budget, you might as well go over on your revenue. Uh the majority of those variances related to some state aids the city received that were not budgeted as well as some uh fire
department contracts with your neighboring townships and comprise the majority of that variance. As we continue on in this slide, we go to the next section below. Starting with that orange highlighted area, those expenditures. Okay, again we break those
down into two categories, current and capital outlay. current expenses. I want you to think operations. That's operating expenses. Okay. Capital outlay is what it what it sounds like. That's equipment. Those are
costs or purchases that are going to last more than one year. All right. Um we go one more row below that. Your total expenditures. You can see you budgeted exactly the same as your revenue budget. Uh your actual and then
your variance. So, you guys were approximately $37,000 below budget overall in your general fund, which is great. Um, that helped support some other operations, some other activities that the city was doing. If we continue down that center
column down to the green highlighted area, you see it labeled as change in fund balance. In my world, in the governmental world, we don't say profit loss, we say change in fund balance. But that's what this is. That bottom row, that's your profit and loss for the
year. And you can see that number in parenthesis, $184,000. That's a loss for the year. Okay. However, that loss was entirely caused by the approximately $300,000
that you did provide to that water that we transferred that you transferred out of the general. Yep. So had that transfer not happened, your general fund would have seen a significant increase on the order of what you guys have seen in the recent
past. And are we I know we talked about this. Are we uh trying to pay the general back out of the water sewer fund, you know, $5,000 a year for the next whatever, or are we not? It's just I don't think it was a
loan. From what I saw, it was a permanent transfer. Okay. To support that expenditure that they because I know we talked about that one time that we could take and budget 5,000 a year until we paid the the general back from these entities that we put the money
into. But we just gave it a loan, clean slate, done. Correct. Okay. Yep. Remember that for next year, John. Yeah, it is an option that you have. Okay. So, continuing on. Um on 85 slide
number nine what we're going to talk about on this slide is your enterprise funds and you guys have heard me describe them as business type activities already. I don't mix and match those terms to confuse anyone. We do that for a very
specific reason. Uh these business type activities we use that term because these activities water sewer and refues need to operate like a business. Okay. There aren't many businesses in the world that will last very long if they don't generate some type of profit. So
these are profit motivated. They need to be autonomous. Need to stand on the roof, generate profit, which is good. And I want you guys to evaluate the profit loss of those funds. However, profit loss can be misleading, right? Um
there's a lot of journal entries that audit firms perform that impact your profit loss but don't have an in any impact on what you have in the bank. Okay. So what you see on this slide is a representation of your cash balances.
What happened to cash for these activities? You can't pay your bills in profit. You pay them with cash. So it's vital that you evaluate cash flow. When these two gentlemen were speaking about bonding 20 years versus 50 years, you know, I do agree with what they're
saying as far as the infrastructure that you put in place, but cash flow is vital. You know, determining can we afford the bond payment. Don't worry about the total amount of debt that you're going to hold. Worry about what type of debt service you have. That's what's going to be important for you.
And that's that one there that Sue provides each month. Is that it says uh cash balances summary council. It has absolutely this is the one. Yeah. What you can do and what this slide really represents this is the annual slide but you can do this cash analysis from the
beginning of the year to the end of the year, beginning of the month, end of the month, you know, and it's easy to see did your cash go up or did it go down. If it went up, you had a better period or year or quarter than if it had gone down, right? And if it does, you need to evaluate and ask yourself what's going
on there. So if we just start looking at slide nine here and we start at the very top, that blue highlighted section says cash flow provided by operating activities. Okay, let me explain what that means. That really boil it down into a nutshell. That is the purpose for
which that fund is in existence. Okay, so let's think about the water fund for instance. Your water fund is is there to provide water to your residents. In order to do that, there's a lot of costs that are involved. You have wages to pay. You have chemicals, you have
electricity to pump it into the tower. Because of those costs, you have to charge your residents a certain amount. Y, okay, to cover those bills. So, when you charge your residents for the water you delivered, you collect on those and you pay your bills. Whatever is left after you pay all your bills, when
you've collected that money from your customers is called cash flow. And it and what you ideally want to do is en ensure that you have enough left to pay some other things that are very important to those utilities as well. And those are listed uh down below
there. So two of the most important are equipment purchases, infrastructure improvements, and then repaying debt for prior work that has been performed. So that's why I think it's it's very important for you to to estimate and
evaluate the cash flow that's going to be generated based on your rates, based on your expenses so that you can purchase this equipment, improve the infrastructure, and repay your debt. If we just look at the water fund, uh the water fund had 43,000 roughly of cash
flow after paying all your bills. Uh how did you use that money? So some of it, see that inner fund activity, that's money that came into the water fund from the general and used 113 almost 114,000 to purchase capital equipment. I believe those were
water meters. That correct? Several water meters that were purchased. Okay. Uh overall cash is down $8,000. Would you care to guess what the profit loss statement shows? Good thing I know because I can
tell you it's $93,000 of profit in the water fund. So, if you just solely look at your profit loss, it's said a good year. However, your cash balances did go down 8,000. Okay, so that's some of those differences that I was talking about. Let's take a look at the sewer fund. The
sewer fund uh had almost 34,000 of cash flow interfund activity, 261 came from the general fund. Uh ended up using on I believe it was Holiday Street and some phosphorus mitigation or something to that effect. uh
$267,000 for those activities. Ended the year up $28,000 in cash. Okay, you go to your profit loss statement, the sewer fund had profit of $267,000. That's quite a mismatch. You know, you mismatch your profit loss
quite a bit with what's going on with your cash balances. So again, it's vital. If we look at the refugees fund, the refuge isn't doing much activity. you can see that it's a negative cash flow. So, what that tells you right off the bat is your bills are more than what you collected from customers. So, there
is something not quite right with your rates that you're charging in that refuge and it's just continuing to drive deficits. Okay? So, I would encourage you to take a look and see what's happening there and and make a correction to those rates so that at
least you break. I mean, I understand what you're saying, Mr. Mayor. you want to build a little bit into that reserve or into that refuse, but it's ultimately just to collect trash, you know, and you just want to break even at a minimum. Okay. So how would uh we take what we
pay the landfill and what we take in um and to when uh say uh LJP comes to us they they have to present we have to uh have a motion to raise that for their
for their bill that they're presenting for the next year contract. So for as a city ourselves, how do we justify going up? You know, we just say that, hey, we're going in the whole $6,600 a year and we need to do this much more each quarter.
How do we make a motion on that? I think it's when you set your rates annually, you know, do you evaluate? Do you do any rate adjustments with your utility? I don't think we do anything until their contract comes due. We did the first one first time this past fall soon and I
worked on water sewer because we were going from the quarterly to monthly and because also right now we don't qualify for any of those grants that Burkart or that um bolt in the mink we're talking about
because we're charging way less than what whoever the higher power is that decides that we're not changing or charge enough. But anyway, so we did we did the first part. I did notice on uh um the refuge when we were looking at that law. So, we just haven't taken any
action on it yet. We did raise because Tom figured it out when Tom was still on. We did raise um No, we raise the garbage. We did raise it. Okay. Okay. And there are some costs on their invoices. I don't know if they they put in tipping
charges or there's there is some variability there. you know, one is the the uh weight that uh the trucks go in to dump. So that I mean one month it can be minimal. Yeah. Next month it could be high stripped. I mean they have their base fee but you're absolutely there's
some variability there. I think that's what's being it's not being returned back through in your rates that you're charging for revenues. Right. Right. You know so you might want to just take a look at it start gaining some of that ground back so that it's not a losing activity anymore. At least it's a it's
at break even. But do we have to have a motion to say we raise it 25 cents uh I don't know how you would say that a a pound or 10 cents a pound? What is the rate? I don't know off hand. We just they just charge so much for the um
garbage can. Yeah. It's a flat it's a flat fee per container. Okay. So it's flat fee per container but the containers are weighing more than what the container is budgeted or soed for. There's there's two charges. one is LJP
and that's that's the containers everything else and LJP is also charged through Minnesota waste or whatever to dump wherever they dump it. Um and that's by t or by I think it's I think it just went up last year to 101 or $102
a ton. So that's that's the variable rate. So I mean one month we can maybe maybe we have 10 tons. I want to say it's probably about 4,000 a month. Yeah. that we pay in garbage roughly. And what do you bring in? You know, that's what you So, you need to look at the number of containers you have, the number of
residents that are paying in and ensure that you're hitting that 4,000, maybe 4,100 because there's going to be, you know, delinquents, things of that nature. I just had a conversation with LJP and they hadn't reviewed us since 2018 on how many services we have until.
So, that's on my list um to try to figure out how to run that report. Okay. figure it out. So if we did raise the rates not too long ago, you probably you wouldn't see that, you know, not in this report. If it was in 25, no, we would not see that. And to your answer or to
your question, Mr. Mayor, I would say, how do you raise them? Well, I would put together an, you know, an official rate structure or rate sheet and evaluate it and say, you know, we need to make a modification to this rate sheet. Go through the process. I don't believe there's anything beyond a motion, you
know, to approve that rate sheet. You'd want to obviously put it on the website or publish it however you publish your official rate structures for all the different fees that you have and then implement it on that next billing cycle. Cities will do it annually. They'll do it in that January time frame. You'd
almost have to break down the trucking and the the other charge of John with that the weight. Yeah. And then see what that costs you per month and uh adjust it accordingly. You would get them two expenses. Yeah. I don't know if you
could do it dynamically in that manner. Would you do it over the whole month a year of 24? I think you would take an average of the months. Got to hope at some point even out and maybe LJPA could assist with that. Like what's going on? Why are we seeing large spikes? I don't
know. You can see it after Christmas. Everybody's dumpster is full. Yeah, but you guys do a spring cleanup, so you wouldn't think there'd be a lot of excess, but Well, we haven't Did we do one last year? Yeah, but it's not as successful when it's not curbside and
they have to load it up and take it to an area. Yeah, the curbside goes over way better, you know, because you only got to take it out 50 60 feet. Sure. Instead of putting it in a vehicle and hauling it down somewhere else. Yeah. But it's a lot cheaper so that the, you
know, the hauler doesn't got to go around the entire city and pick that. So, but we're going to try a couple different things this year to see. Okay. Yeah. So, overall, I I think the utility funds, these business type enterprise activities are doing well, you know,
notwithstanding some of the challenges that the refugees fund is has uh incurred over the past few years. Um, next slide is uh the audit team myself, right Birkhart. Uh I'm kind of the leader on the audit team. The other
three smiling faces you see there. Uh pretty much did all the work. I get to come out here and take all the credit. So uh we enjoy coming out here to the Thunder, spending time with Sue, looking through the record. Uh you've got a good exploration. You should be very proud of where you're sitting financially and the
results that you had here on your audit. the clean report minus that fire relief no compliance things things turned out really good so this is our best audit in quite some time isn't it things are moving in the right direction yeah absolutely you know
and there's so many factors that that tie into that you know just the results of the the audit opinion internal patrol those sorts of things yes you did very good um the finances are in good shape minus a few challenges that we discussed here but yeah things are things are
looking really I think you guys are well positioned um to tackle this enormous project that you have in front of you, you know. So, if you found a mediumsiz cash discrepancy, what action do you take?
Where do you go with that? Pardon? Medium size. I'm not sure. You know, if we found uh if you're saying fraud, y if we found fraud, what we would do is bring it to the council's attention. Yep. You know, it would really depend on
who committed the fraud. Uh if it was Sue, we certainly wouldn't discuss it with her. We'd bring it to the council. If it was an employee, it would start with management. Uh it would come to the council and then it likely would escalate from there. There are some requirements as far as reporting it to
the county and to the state auditor, but it would chances are 99% of the time it would come to the council first. Yes. Okay. Yep. Council would have an opportunity to address it. Absolutely. And based on how the council addressed that concern or issue would then dictate
further action and that's never happened over the course of quite a few years. Had it happened a few in good thunder? No. But it does happen. You know, you're every once in a while you run into things. We hear about other cities that have had issues as well. And
but no, I don't think that's happened in the city. Payroll top notch. Doing pretty good. Yeah. Perfect. Didn't find any penalties. I think he's got a pretty good handle on the payroll process. Timely payments, everything. Nothing
late to the state. Not a thing. Yeah, nothing that we came across. Can't be 100% sure on every bill, but we do randomly sample and we did not locate. We didn't see I think last year there might have been a late payment here or there. And it does creep up. That's one of the ones that I would be less concerned about. You know, if you mail a
letter to your neighbor across the street, got to go to Minneapolis all the way back down here to deliver across the street. So, there's some delays that are inherent with the mail service, but um and we are seeing that more and more. It's creeping up just because most offices have been having some
challenges. Yes, they are. Yeah. But overall very good report. Great report. Great on this. You want to look at this? Great. This says J payroll and then it's 3,100
in parentheses there. journal entries. Yeah, the payroll module automates the sheer runs payroll, pushes a button, it comes over into your accounting software
and that is represented by this. So, you're always going to see negatives in here and that should represent the total payroll for the month or whatever period this was. But you'll always see a negative because that is our payroll for the two
entities. So if you look at the negatives are in this manner they're out of research. You know receipts are what's coming in the out. Here's your total balance. So that's what you want to be
referring to as you look at these activities. Well, like I said, when Jeff refuge fund 9,000 in the hole. Yeah. So, and it was at what 66 at the end of the audit. So, it's accelerating. Yes, it is. Yeah. We have to act on that and up
that. So, you would have to uh So, it's 9,000 now. Um you'd have to raise that at least $800 a month probably to get that solid possible. And if you took that over 220 households
or whatever, that'd be a quick little calculation how much to raise it. Yep. $360 already. He's not only our maintenance and water guy. You know, we'll have to add you to the team of John and Sue.
The number crunchers. Yeah. Well, all right. I guess very good. Yeah, definitely good news. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. Yeah, definitely appreciate that. All righty. We'll march on then. Uh approval of the minutes for
March 10th and the 27th. Anybody with additions, corrections? If not on the minutes from March 10th, just a minor spelling error on second page, second paragraph or third
paragraph, second line, uh, discussion regarding vehicle parking. P I Yeah, I don't know why that didn't pop up on spellch check, but yep. Anyway, anything else? Nope. Anybody else with
any additions corrections? If not, may I make a motion to approve? I'll make a motion with corrections to approve the minutes. Second. I'll second it. All in favor say I. I. Thanks, Greg. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
All righty. Approval of the bills. check uh 18421 to [Music] 18451, EFT 56825 to 56845 and payroll EFT 500 160 to 500
167 make a motion to approve motion to approve the bills made a motion to approve someone a second I'll second it second all in favor say I I opposed motion carried community comment. I guess we can move on to I did
have one person from the community come up to me and ask uh what it would take to get potholes filled. So I explained to them to call Sue. She'll make up a work order that's on my list. I'm going
to take a bucket of recycled R down and fill the hole on Giller Drive that's getting some pretty bad ones. That's the one that's the road. Yeah. Right on by the school as it comes down the hill there that needs to be filled. I've I've been spotting them. Um even be able to get to that this
week. So they were down for sure about the one they've come down to the end. You're making the right turn to go on to the ball field. Yep. That first one I guess is pretty deep, but I just said, "Well, I will pass." Robert last week and told him I was planning to do that. I just said I did good. We did good
because that's the way we want it to work. We want it to go to the city hall and then she write and once it's on paper doesn't go away. You know, it's it has to be done in return. So, it's not like you say, "Yeah, I'm going to do that." And then it never gets done. I did tell him I would pass on the word
and I told them to in the future get a hold of Sue and we got a new work order policy and we have a new uh m tech I don't know what you want to coming on we'll yeah get this procedure rolling in the right direction on that
I'm going to overlap with him for a week or two to I'll work my same half a day and then he can continue on the other half of the day but you know one day it'll be how to flush my hands out one day it'll be how to run the scrubber. One day it's going to be how to do the software for the water meters and to do individual data collection and all those
different things. Once I cover all that, then I'm going to fade away. Not completely. No, no, just I do think nice thing though is now that I learned all this stuff, you know, I can run all the equipment, the machinery, snowplow, sanders, all that. If he goes on
vacation for two weeks, you can call me and I can be a temporary fill in while he has a vacation day or a sick day or something like that. So, I think it's going to be rather important that you are around too just for the transitional
to the the checking or the watching of the meters of this of that because yeah, you made a big investment on that and we might We don't want to hear retirement talked out of you. We don't want to hear retirement. Oh, no. Not yet. No, not yet. That will be disapproved. But
yeah, no, I'm not. Like Jim stated, you know, them them water meters which we had that big expenditure there wherever that was. I didn't remember wasn't you know it was a big investment but boy the technology now he can tell Sue that
there's a leak at 480s avenue or whatever and it is really topnotch what we have done and you're pumping so much less water now out out of the tower you know it's not wasting it was a good investment that resource you know and
we're not today I went in there and looked at the cam straw and it that's the part of the software that measures the noise level of certain meters. Yours is one of them that all of a sudden it popped up as a meter of interest and that's when you were running the water. You got that going through your furnace
deal that you got there. So yours started making more noise. Uh the meter picked that up and so I can click it. This week I got my weekly report that comes from Camstrup and I clicked on it on the address and
it came up with a graph for the last, you know, six, eight months and you can see the the noise level going up and down and then up, you know, when you started using that. So it picks up on everything like that. Yeah, it's it's really it's was a very good investment now. I mean, and what are we pumping out
of the weld out the grounded now? typically like 30,000 or less now. Back in the day, 50,000, 60,000. We were emptying the tower once a day, right? Well, now it's half as much. Yep. Almost half as much. Not all just due to the
meters. Well, that's a big part of it, but we've kind of gotten things buttoned up, you know, and we're not How about our ini there that a couple weeks ago? We got a couple. Yeah. So, that was I was going to mention that when I got to the I might as well talk about it now. But, um well, we can get
to you, too, but um but yeah, the INI is good. I um typically in the spring when the frost comes out of the ground, we start getting some rain and the snow's melting. I used to get a couple hundred thousand gallons out of the pond and this year I had about three days where
it went like 80,000, 100,000, 110, 100, right back down again. So, I didn't get that huge, but there wasn't a lot of snow on the ground. Right. Yeah. Right. All right. Well, let's see. We better move on to the sheriff's report. We got
to 63 hours. It's here. Do we have to name them off or just good enough? Fire department. Chief Clammer had 11 calls, four medical, one mutual aid, two lift assist, one down power line, two grass fire, and one vehicle. and they need us
to approve a Galvin Dearing membership to the Good Thunder Department. So, may we want to make a motion to approve his membership? I'll make a motion to approve. Someone second. I'll second it. All in favor say
I. I post. Motion carried. All righty. Street update. New hire starts on 4:30. I guess now Brian, you can Yeah. a little bit more. I can just talk a little bit about what I've been up to lately. I what a typical day is like.
Today I did four locates for power poles and uh internet around town and one for Kellen. He's doing some excavation around his house. So we located his shut off and and uh I went down to the park
today and cut off the stump of that big 30 foot pine tree that fell. The other day I went down there and limmed that and then cut it into three big pieces. got that all down by the brush pile and pushed the brush pile up, pushed the leaves up, took all the sand I took off
the streets. I think I took 15 tons of sand off the streets about, you know, approximately. And uh it was so wet down there I had to kind of dump it in piles in a row and then I went down to the tractor the other day and got that all put up onto the big pile so it's not, you know, in the way down there. So
typical day, I really never know what I'm going to do when I get here because it might have no locates. I might have four or five of them. Um I'm managing to get everything done on four hours a day. I'm working 22 hours a week and um keeping up with everything. So I know
it'll be different when the mowing starts, but um just to say a guy if you have good time management, there's not a reason why you can't keep up with the things that need to be done. So, yeah, because in that time you've
reorganized, cleaned, washed walls, cleaned the bathroom up, and made that shop really very very nice to come into the ceiling's been a little challenge for him when he comes. Yep. I got a little work yet to do, but I'll get on it. And then, uh, meters. I
read meters every Monday and then we I enter that into the I download the meter readings into the software and then it'll tell us immediately if there's somebody that has an unusual water consumption and uh the last three four weeks have been really good. I haven't had any unusual ones. Um
we still have the ones around town. There's some that need to be addressed with. From the time you start that till you run a report hour. Not even. Not even. No, I've gotten pretty fast at it now. I got a route that I drive. If you take those antennas and if you don't just use the hand holds with the with
the antenna, the little Webly antenna on there, um, if you use the real antennas that go stick them out on the hood of the truck and run them through the window and into those devices, you don't have to go like there's a couple of them in town. If you don't do it that way, you got to drive up into their driveway and, you know, or some of them you got
to sit there for a while. Um, they read a lot faster with the with the with the antennas on the hood. So, I just do that every time now. Yeah. But um I got my route set now where you can hit all of them. And I I bet today it was only 20 minutes, half hour by the time I was
done. So it's not a lot of time. Perfect. Mhm. All right. So, one thing when you start uh working with Eli, if you can go over all the curb stops with them and then do we do we know
where some of them are that need to be repaired or that we're going to have to Oh, there's one that needs to be um now that it warms up a little bit, I'm going to go try that one again and see if maybe during the winter. I was trying it in January, remember? And maybe there was water down in that hole and I couldn't get it because of that. I'll
try it again before we have to call Bon to excavate that one. But I I'll work him through that process of who to call and what to do. Okay. But um because there's still a few that we don't know that Race never could figure out where they're at. Yeah. I ran into one today actually right uh on
uh across from the Catholic Church. There's the there's a house right in the middle by the alley there. And on none of the maps, we've got this map, we've got my map, we've got one on the tablet, and then we've got some old ones somebody made by hand. There was no information in any of that where the
shut off was. And um yeah, I don't know. You'd have to on some of them you'd have to go in the house. We've got two We got two locators. One you just wave back and forth and you can it'll read the curbs up. We've got one where you can put a ground rod clamp onto that and then clamp the
other one onto either the cur well if you're looking for the curb stop obviously you're not going to clamp it there but you can clamp it to their outside faucet and then you can locate the line down in the ground. Um, so maybe a guy in a pinch could do that. But
there's no water man in front of that house, right? Okay. So in that alley Yeah. down at the end there's a curb stop in that alley. Yeah. Would that be for that house? Could be. Yeah. Could be. But there's none on the property that I could find. Yeah. There's one on
which street is that? Not Milky. Um, one on the church. You shop? Oh, you the Catholic Church. Yeah, that street going east west. Um there's one there's a curb stop by that guy's
driveway. I can point at it. The street the church is on that east west street. Isn't that Shabet? Shabet. Yeah. Yeah. Right here. Yeah. So right there where you got your pen right there? Yeah. To the right a little bit. Yeah.
There's a curb stop there by that guy's driveway. Okay. And I didn't know if that was for both houses or just the f the house on the corner. Yeah, because there's a one right here in in the alleyway. Maybe that's for that. But then there's also this. No, this house would probably
Well, that one should be on there. Yep. That one's on there. Yeah. So, it could be that one in that alleyway. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, for the for the purpose of doing the internet line, I put you have to click click a choice
whether it's marked, unable to mark or clear, nothing. So, I clicked on nothing because there's nothing there that they're going to run into with with fiber because everything's 8 ft below the ground. So, anyway. Okay. Yeah. So, I get a lot of locates. They're coming
in fast and heavy now for the They're going to do this pull back here probably. If they didn't do it today, they'll do it tomorrow. I think they might have done it. They were back there today. Okay. I don't know if they actually put it in. I didn't look. They're getting to them. So, but there's been a lot of locates coming in for internet.
All right. Well, then we have uh building permit GT125. Any questions on that? I make a motion. They're putting in two eress windows. Yeah. I think they're replacing
two. Oh, they're just basement windows now. She said they're actually putting egress in there. I'll make a motion to approve permit number. It's GT01. Oh, that's a date. Do you have a permit number in here? Yeah, 01-25. Okay. I'll
make a motion to permit to GP-01-25. I'll second John second. All in favor say I. Oppos. All right. So, who needs to sign this? Who needs to sign this one? Would that be you or
me neither. We'll have one on the end of the month. That's true. All right. Um, frozen water meters. That's probably part of you yet, Brent. So, you want to just talk about those? We have one out here on um chapel.
Chapel. We did determine that there is a individual shut off for that. That's not the case where we thought we were going to shut two people off. So if it gets to the point where you guys think we need to do that, we can turn the water off to that facility. I
But there's resident says that nobody's living there and the water's off inside the house. Yeah. And he said that he wouldn't he's doing a he's going to eventually do some remodeling inside the house. He wants to move the water meter from where it can freeze to up inside where the laundry room is or something like that. And he has not done that yet.
So, at this point, there's no point in putting in a new water meter where it's going to freeze again because he's already froze one, right? And he's on his second. He's already froze two. Two. The one that's in there now is But, you know, the freezing weather is over. So, maybe we should shut it off and put it
on because myself, I don't believe that there's not water being used because there's people there. There is. Well, and I don't. And I So, I went and I asked our attorney. I said, cuz I had said verbatim, this is what the resident told me that there nobody
is living there. The water is turned off inside of the house because they're remodeling. Per the attorney, we can shut it off at the curb stop because the resident stated the water was off inside the house. But I wanted council to make that motion instead of just Brian and I making that decision. Again, there's
individuals that drive by after school that go to that residence and they also get on the bus every day. So, we're talking four or five kids. So, you hate to see them not. I think
what we should do is get a new meter on there because it is You can't get a new meter on there because it's in the ground. So, the resident has to do it's inside a hole in the ground. Yeah, it's under the trailer. in a hole. But there isn't an outside access. Not that I'm
aware of. Got to crawl in. According to what the resident told me is that he has to something. There's there's a hole in the floor that they go into or something. Can you give him a date? Because he said he was going to put it up. Can you give him like a date? He said nobody's living there. So I I would say let's let's turn
it off at the curtain there. He would shut the water off. Even if you don't live there, you can call a plumber to do the work. Correct. You give them a date to say, "Hey, you either do this or we're going to do this by such and such a date." Well, like I said, he he states that nobody is living there and the water is off to the house. So, if the
city wants to shut the water off the curb stop, that is not a problem. Yeah. I would say let's shut it off at the curb stop. Only the only problem I have is I believe there's four or five kids there. Well, if there's kids there that I still say shut it off, then
they'll fix it that much faster. Maybe we needed to contact the sheriff's office, too, to investigate who's living there, if somebody is truly living there. Okay, John. But but if if the owner says that it's off in the house, then I would say let's turn it off at the curb stop.
And the attorney said that's fine. Yes. Okay. Well, we'll soon know. You know where it's at, Brian? Yep. Uh I know it's in the backyard. I can find it. I'm sure Race has it marked. Yeah. He said it sticks up out of the ground. I'm getting good at finding them. Yeah. He
said it sticks out of the ground because that's one of the new ones they had to put in. Well, one time there was a whole bunch of stuff piled over it. Oh, really? And Jason remembered where it was that time and showed Race or somebody. Okay. So, they had to put a new one in. Yeah. This last time cuz it was all that water. Okay. Well, that's
what we'll do then. We'll see what backlash comes up. Do you want a motion for that or do you just want I mean Well, maybe we should have a motion to shut that water off. Okay. I'll make the motion. I'm going to second. I'll second it. Scott second. All in favor say I. I. Oppose. Motion carried. So, next step
would be to make a work order and Yep. And you're going to deal with the other one on Hulk. I want to go try it and see if And then otherwise, can can you just contact Bon then or do we want us to make a list um of ones that we need to on her one particularly? I mean, maybe
we can contact Mings to get on their schedule, but I'd like that to take place after the after Eli starts so he can see the process of what we do and what safety. Yeah, she's getting build an average of usage. I don't know how. But it's leaking before the meter. Down
there now. Oh, I'm sure it's leaking inside her house. It's after the meter. The dirt floor. It's after the meter. Yes, it's Is it Or is it before the meter? It's before, but the meter's cracked, too. Well, yeah, her meter froze, too. I don't know which one this is on Hulk. It's on Hulk.
Yeah. 220 Hulk or Hubble. Sorry. Hubble. Hubble. Yep. Sorry. Yeah. So, anyway, um we need to get on the list and get it fixed. Like you say, maybe there was
water and it could be filled up. Maybe you could possibly get on it. It can be a tomorrow job, too. You help me remember some of this. I'll do a work order for both of those tomorrow morning. So, check your email. We've kind of got a history going on the one. Yep. All right. You said get on that
list. That might be a a wait. Dust control. We talking about just uh Well, that's from that guy. What's that? SW. That's why I I sent it just because I wasn't sure if that's something you guys wanted to do. Now, last year you guys had
environmental dust or something. So, that's why it came through my email, so I put it in here. Well, which was the better oil? The Oh, what's this guy's name here? Bogey. Bogey is the one that presented
this one, right? Carbon bogey. Yeah. Yep. Um, that there is basically chloride, calcium chloride. Calcium chloride. It does not last very long. The other one is the better stuff, but it's very expensive. One from
environmental. That's what you guys did last year on Graham. Yeah. And see, that's that stuff that goes down your street, you know, that binds. You never did it last year. No, I know. That's what binds that recycle black top together is that stuff from
them guys. Okay. So, you know, um last year when they did Graham Street there, boy, you know, that helped control the dust. The other stuff, it's gone within a month. use the good stuff, you
know. So, for sure I I you know, I can't remember it was it's very high what we last year it was 36.95 3669 for Graham Street alone. Yep. And then in 2023 you guys did holiday in Chapel and that was
10,000. Yep. But it does last. That was that sticky stuff, wasn't it, that you guys put on? Y real oily. And but it was like sticky. I mean literally on our street it stuck for months. It was horrible. It is. But it was because
on your shoes and it was not user. It was not good. But it does the job far superior. Did it need more gravel or something to make it not so Well, they put chips over it, right? Well, I don't know. But they chipped it or you know um
Yeah, they chipped Well, they chipped it up there. Are they? I don't know if they're chipping it there, though. I know. But I'm not kid. It was literally You could just You had to pick up your foot. You could They were sticking, but you don't want to do that until it warms up a little bit, too. Yeah, that's why. Yeah, this was just on here. It came
through the email. Yeah. So, I guess my my thought is that uh other stuff doesn't last good enough to Okay. So, we won't do this one, but we'll entertain environmental dust control later in the spring. Yeah. All righty. Unfinished
business. Life disability insurance. So, we don't have it in the policy. That was on the agenda for last month, but the city doesn't offer it. It's not through the league. So, and I know that's something that um Eli had brought up. He's the one that actually
found it. So, I don't know if that's something we need to remove it out of the personnel policy if we're not going to carry it. So, I think we need to update that. Um, and then if we want to, we just kind of get some information and have Eminem come out this fall when we do our
renewal for our insurance and get some information then. I don't know how long that's been in the personal policy, but it's the city's never had it. Is the league working on health insurance yet? You get a whole
bunch of people. Well, I showed you that public employee one that we did. I went and got the information for that. Oh gosh, last fall and it was way higher than what we're paying now. The other one is a healthcare consortium which I learned at the conference and they kind
of do a pool also. Um, so they told me to con to give that information to Chad when we do our renewal and then he can work with them on getting rates or something. Um, I don't know if I should have asked Greg a few of these question, but you
know, with the turnover and city maintenance and stuff, you know, it's no different than the police. It's they they come and they get experience and they go because Blueorth County Sheriff or Blue County Roads have
better insurance. They can afford it. That's right. So, you know, do we as a city to be able to compete, do we have to start an HSA for the individuals here and take that money out of the general
and throw in just say $5,000 per year per individual? HSA would be to get that some incentive to be able to compete with other entities. I mean, how
how you know, that's not a bad idea, but the number you threw out there is extreme. Well, I'm just got hired on to a different company and it's $200 they throw into her HSA a month. A month or a year or what? Um, no, it was a year. Oh,
no. That sounds good. I'm I know, but I'm just saying that that 5,000 was an extreme. Well, yeah, but I mean, yes, but you could also throw that in there as when it's time for a raise, you know, hey, you know, we are putting that in
there and if you don't use it this year and you don't use it, then there's 10,000, you know, and that just keeps kind of building and that way leverage you could yeah do a raise or you could put more into an HS because that way, you know, if there was these small little trivial things, but they cost
2500 bucks and your deductible is 6,500 bucks, you're you're not taking that out of your pocket. You're hoping. So, you know, that's some things that a small town like us is going to have to look at
to keep people Yeah. You know, well, why don't we And what mount? I don't know. I just threw that out. Yep. Why don't we do like she said, get a hold, you got to get a hold of Eminem. Yeah. And see if they have an option. you put your mount uh certain amount there or HSA is a
option. There's a lot of different options. Yeah. I have no problem with seeing whatever it takes to because I mean my insurance premiums are outrageous. Yeah. And I mean I mean and the deductible is what? High. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I never mean it to be able to afford insurance anymore. Your your deductible is very high. have to do an HSA and Yep. And then, you know, you're you're footing the bill for the $1,000 bill here and the $800 one here, you
know, where if you get that HSA there and I think that's a great idea because we can't afford to insure, we've already looked into that avenue, but we can't afford an HSA. sound. Well, and I mean like when I talked to um Chad, we could have a policy that's very similar to
what we have, but it's an HSA plan because we do have a high deductible, but we're not an HSA plan cuz then So, that could be something which I never understood that either. With an HSA plan, you could have it to where the city would put in so much. Yeah. And you
you decided to add to it, you can put in a little bit. So, like you were saying, the hit isn't so big and it's taxree and it's taxree and you can use it for anything. And it's just totally an HSA. There's no separate health care. No, you
would be you would get a health care plan and then it's you can have an HSA with it and where the city maybe would pay 50% of the premium or 75% of the premium, the employee pays the rest of it and then you contribute y $100 a month, whatever to the HSA. Yeah. That
There's a lot of different ways to look at that because that goes in before tax goes. Correct. You said there's a you learned about that up the healthcare consortium. Yep. At the conference. Okay. Yep. Is that something a small town like us would get in too?
Yep. Oh yeah. Okay. They just put it all into one big pot. So basically it's kind of like that public employer one, but it's according to what they've told me that it has more options and it's cheaper. I'm not sure. I didn't get a lot of information on I mean I do I just didn't
read it. So um because you'd be going strength. How would that work if you just say we're going to $1,200 a year and the individual was here for 10 years and he never took a dollar? I don't think so. I don't know. When he he departs 10 years and there's $12,000 in
it. Did that go with that person? I don't think so. I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't know. I think it would be rare that minimal on HSAs. I don't either. I'm just You don't have HSA? No. Oh, we have HSA. I have social
security. Oh, I got the best insurance in the world. We have a very high deductible for insurance so it can be affordable because I'm a business owner or whatever. But we have HSA and that's how we we have to pay our doctor bills because y our insurance is never going
to touch our bill, right? We're never So HSA is great. Yeah. like a major medical at that point, right? I mean, so you can only change that policy once a year too, right? October. October. So I mean this life
and disability, would that fall under Chad's policy? Yes. Yes, I think so. Well, I can talk to him. And so is everybody happy with waiting till what, October then to get this? Well, we we need some leg work up front, I think.
Well, yeah, I need to start working with them and get the word to them so that they can start preparing information and get information from us what we need. Um, I'm kind of waiting for Eli to start because I mean his age, you know, plays a role into that too, what b what's going to benefit the city and the
employees, right? So, like the life part of that disability insurance, I mean, is that uh what is it? 50 100,000 $200,000 life insurance. Life insurance is usually equal to your salary, your yearly will pay. Okay. If an employer if an employer
offers life insurance, it's usually they usually cover it up to the equal to your year. I mean, you can obviously the employee can put more money into it and then get a higher coverage. I guess we'll be learning about the insurance industry before we know all
about this. Is that something that uh we could maybe ask him to come to a meeting for all of us? Yeah. No, that's what I my plan was because it would be easier to get was to talk to him, get him some information. He can put together presentation, bring it here and then
because he comes on October. Yeah. Does that be easier than trying? Yeah. and then you'll have present it and then we can kind of we'll kind of review and narrow it down to a couple and let them present it. Okay. All right. Well, that's where we pursue
that then. Spring cleanup. It's scheduled um for what? April 24th through Yeah. April 24th through the 23. That's Saturday. Yep. I think they're going to pick up the dumpsters either Saturday or Monday. Oh. Um, and the
question is, how many do we want? Do we want them inside, outside? She said they can, because we're doing it early enough, we can kind of pick choose what we want. I mean, do we want to start out with two dumpsters? I don't know what you guys have done in the past. I think, you know, they need to change one out. We can get them to change it out.
Two would be should be sufficient. If you're going to do it on a th start it on Thursday, I would think so. You know, it's already full by late Friday morning. my Friday, then we'll have to call for another one cuz you got the Saturday. I would like to see you put it outside. Can you just hang a sign under this? This area is under camera
surveillance. Good thunder residents only. And then because we really don't want it in the shop. I don't think you do because who knows what's going to be in there. Yeah, that's right. And then you set it up for rodents and and whatever. People don't want to go anyways. No. So, and this way too, if it's outside, you know, if we need to push it up, we can have Brian push it
up, you know, the garbage into the dumpster or whatever. Oh, it'll be piled all over it. I'll guarantee you that. But uh um at least we have cameras there to see that if it's not in town residents. So, we need to have a little sign like you
say. Mhm. You are you are being watched. Good thunder residents only. Yeah. We have multinate some signs. Yeah. All right. Do you know what side are you putting it on? I don't know yet. Maybe we'd either go like between the two garage doors in front. Oh, you want to
put it right in front or on the side? On the south side would make more sense. The best camera footage is right in front. Yep. It's my daughter. Yeah. I think you know if we get two, put one on right in front of the shop
door and the other one south of that a little bit because the camera is right there. Yep. Okay. Yep. Well, I'll make sure that you're here. Yeah. Let me know when they're coming and I'll meet them. All right. Parking lines on Hulk from
Maine to Sherman. So, last month you guys talked about putting um diagonal parking lines. Oh, in front of the chair. And that you guys can do that. There is nothing in the ordinance per the attorney that says you can't. And the street
seems to be wide enough, I'm assuming. Right. Well, that's the way it's always been, you know. So, I don't know if you want to find if we want to have Ryan find a company that will do it or does the city want to have the city guy do it? I don't know how you guys do parking lines. I don't know. Straight lines.
I think you can rent that from Z, right? Yeah. I do know a guy that does that. Okay. There's guys that do that on the weekend my whisp back and they come and they're done in a day. They run a sweeper over it first and got a little little go-kart looking thing he runs all over. He sweeps it and they just It was
pretty affordable. Yeah, it wasn't bad. So, you got to give me the contact number, Jim. I can. And then I will get a hold of them just to get a bid if the city wants to do that. That would be nice. And I don't know how you would ever cure it. So, nobody parks there, you know, for
Sunday morning. I have driven by the past couple Sundays when church is in session and there's been nobody parked on the church side of the street. It was just those couple times other than people going to church and but I mean there was nobody blocking it. So, I
don't know if if everybody was talking about the west end of the street, which I don't see. I mean, that's their residence, you know, so they have every right to No, but I thought I the way I was in understanding is they were the east side of the street right in front of right in front of the steps. Yeah.
Yeah. But the past two Sundays there there hasn't been I think you only see that at the snowest. Well, there was one time there wasn't snow, too, was it? Oh, okay. That camper that sits there, too. Does that ever get moved? All right. But those
lines would be nice even for the people. Same. All right. City Hall parking lot. I'm sure we had two bids. Well, that one bid is that current. These are both current bids within the last
almost $20,000 difference. Oh, well, it says 718 of 17. Yeah, I saw that. I put in your mailbox. No, somebody gave me MK concrete. I don't know who that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I was digging through files, going through
stuff and I came across a bid for the for this. Yeah. And she wasn't here, so I just stuck it in the Oh, that's where that came from? Yeah. Yeah. Crying out loud. I thought I just stuck it. I just didn't know what year it was. No, I put that because I knew you were getting bids and I thought, well, maybe you'd like to see what it was a few years
back. I got that, too. And I thought, wow, I didn't notice that at all. I've been a year off for All I notice is that was for six inches and the other one was for four or five inches. If that's how much it was in 2017,
I hate to see what it's going to be. I hate Exactly. I was going to say I hate to have them do a bid for 2025. And I did uh talk to another individual that's very close, four or five miles out of town that's probably coming and seeing you to give a bid also. We haven't put a
time limit on any of it, right? No. No. So, I mean, I guess it's I don't know how long this proposal is. Oh, it says it's good for 90 days. So, we may have to have him do another one. Anyway, done that practically. If you want to make that phone call. Yeah, he's
in town over at Kellins right now. Okay. Okay. And then we got to figure out what this is. If is it four? Is it five? Well, you you wouldn't want you'd want to have just five. You probably give them both. Yeah. The spec. You want to give them you want them five.
Five would be better so it holds up. The only reason I brought that up is because if it was and I guess call this guy and see if you'll give a new bid. You really want a new bid if that's how it was in 2017. Six inches in rebar. Those other ones are four and five inches. Yeah, but they
all have rebar, right? They all got rebar. Yeah. And I wrote down is that um is that fiber mesh concrete? Is that regular concrete? Might not have been on the same. Yeah, that's we just want to be on the same level. I don't if you don't I don't
care. This is why we have our maintenance guy do this because I don't know what all those I would refer to an engineer. I don't think about concrete. I don't either. Well, the only reason I said that is because if they pull this up and it's a difference in even an inch throughout the one, they say you get a
free load of rock. Well, if it's is that inch difference, well, there's another load because, right, you're not going to have a lip going in and out of the door, right? You want it level. Well, I can contact this other one and ask him if he wants to do another one. Yeah, maybe. I guess you know, why not? As long as I'm
calling, we can try one this year anyway. Two, three, four of them. me and all. Yeah, I'll uh I know I know a guy too that I'll call and tell him to come look at him if he's if they're not busy. All right.
Website. That's my expertise. Um we have a website too. So I don't even remember with this one. We got the new website, but we had a contract from the old one yet that I wasn't aware of because we didn't there was nothing here. We talked
about that. No, we talked about how do you guys want to deal with that? You just want to keep paying that other one yearly because I can't I I tried to get them to come down. I tried to work with them and they're like, "Nope." Boy, it is for how many more years? Three. Three, I think. That's what it is. We're
locked into him. And I'm not going to pay him all of it now and have it done. He They can just wait a year. Well, no. If he would lower it, well, I would to get out of it sooner, right? it would, you know, but we pay you for two and you get rid of two and a half three, that
would be a different story. Okay. So, that's where I was with that. As long as we're on website and Wi-Fi, I had a uh person of the community ask me, "Is the city's Wi-Fi
in the parking lot out here locked?" Should be. Okay. Well, they can't figure out why. I guess there's cars coming up after supper sitting in the lot and the car sits and has headlights on going into their house. They're trying to
figure out why they would be sitting here. Here they unless they know the password. Yeah, cuz I I can't get on it with my phone. I mean, I can try right now, but Yeah, if you don't have the No, it's all password protected. Yeah. So, make sure it was locked. I don't even know the password for the shop. So, no,
evidently it was a rumor that that's why they were coming up here and sitting here because they could get on the cities. I don't think that's true. But I'm just Yeah, it was just brought to my attention. I would whoever's telling me that I would just tell them give 911 a call. Say, "Hey, there's somebody
loitering by city hall." You know, there are people that will sit at city hall and they're getting pop or you know that and this pickup in the afternoon. Yep. I don't know. This person was It was dark and they said the car sat there for a couple of hours running headlights on.
Really? Yeah. Huh. Blasting lights into their house. Well, then I guess they call 911. You can't access it. So, it is locked. Yep. Okay. Well, yep. I said I would ask. All right. Schedule public hearing for ordinance
changes. Yes. So, we need to move on that. Um, do we want to set that or do we want um to see if we can get some more information on the cannabis? We do have Can we um pass the one for
cannabis though too or what more information? No, no, that would be the other all the other ones did. Um, but if we're going to do a public hear and I want to put them all on one. Yeah. So, now we're kind of held up with that cannabis one. Um all we did was to voted
to go by state standards county. Oh okay. We haven't said our own right and I have asked a lot of questions since then and there is quite a bit of differences on everything as far as uh
cannabis low dose hemp is different. Uh liquid version is different than grown version. And I do have two individuals that are very knowledgeable in the uh field that did volunteer to come out and
bring us all up to speed if that would be something that we would be interested in. Yeah, I think so. I don't I mean is it to sell so a business could sell it or what? It's it's like three different ways. The one is a dispensary which is obviously what we
don't you know wouldn't want. The other one would be uh like I say lowd dose hemp is usually in liquid form. U grownable is growing is the smokable and then you got gummies,
chocolates. I mean there's there's so many different avenues and drinks. The drink is the liquid and stuff. Yeah. Oh, there's a lot more about it than is it ordinances for you know individual houses or for businesses? Just for business. We need we need to have an
ordinance just for the business because of the cannabis because individual houses that's that's regulated by the state. Okay. You can have so many plants if it's only for your own I mean they if it's for your own personal Yeah. But if you want to sell it or this is just this is more mainly for setting your
limitations. So you would not have a dispensary, a refinery, a grower grower business in your town. Yeah. And it it's totally different. They were talking about it like on a liquor license. Some
of it ride it can ride on a liquor license, but then it's you pay a percentage to the state and it's like 10%. Different in a in a sales tax than you do. You'd have to be registered with
Yeah. And that percentage gets dispersed to the cities. So, do we have a copy or can we get a copy of a county ordinance already or haven't they got that authority yet either? Yeah, the county has it because I I Well, you guys had it. We had it. You guys had that one
because a lot of the townships have given their authority delegated the county. The county has authority because Lyra gave their delegation to the county. I did read through that. Linker like Crystal did as well. How about other small towns? You talk to them at
all about what they're doing? Mhm. They've all got their ordinances involved, our ordinances in place ready. Can you get a copy of some of them? I have them. Oh, you have them? Oh, heck, we can do it tonight. We'll be all done. We won't. Well, yeah. If you got some of that
information, we um So, do we want to wait and do that in May? Do you want to schedule a meeting to just have a cannabis meeting, for lack of a better term? Yeah. A cannabis meeting about the ordinance. Um or do you want to wait and do it in
the May meeting? Um because it's real once they start explaining it. It is really simple. But they know what they're talking about. Wouldn't it be a bad idea to have one and I mean we can post it and then if residents want to come in and learn more about it or they don't. I mean whatever.
I'd say do it in a special meeting. Yeah. I think so too. Just focus on that and be done and then we can y schedule the ordinance hearing. So, could we do both? Could we do an open a hearing and a special meeting on cannabis? We couldn't, could we? Well,
we haven't approved. You can't have an open you can't have a public hearing until the council approves that one. Oh, yeah. That's right, though. Okay, never mind. So, we can we could do a public hearing prior to a council meeting. Yeah, council meeting. Yeah, you could do it
if No, I prefer not to do it that one because I won't be here the week before cuz I have the institute. So your May packets, you won't get them. You're the institute. I'm in I'm going to the Yes, I'm going to go there. Never come back.
Don't know how you sounds good to me. So you won't be here on the uh I will be here for the May 12th meeting, but the week prior to that I will be gone. So, we're trying to get things How about like the 1st or 2nd of May? That's on a Thursday and Friday. Yeah, I'll be here.
Yeah, you could do a special meeting then. Yeah, maybe uh Yeah, maybe a Friday. Probably not a Friday. No, Friday. You're not If anybody from the community wants Well, and we need to find out when Yeah, just give me a I would say if we're going to do a Thursday or Friday. A Thursday would
probably work. We could for the first on Friday. I'll ask. Unless you want to do May 1st, you're saying? Yeah. Unless you want to I mean, even like the end of April, whatever. Okay. What What are you thinking there? What? At the end of April? Yeah. Just give me a day. I'm
going to write it down. I'm going to ask them. And Well, do you want to do the 29th? I was going to say, what about if we give them the 29th and the first and they can pick Okay. on that what works best for them at like It shouldn't take the half hour. Yeah. I
was going to say if you'd say at 6:30 I bring in free samples if you you like. Yeah, I'm sure you would. Just we'd have a a real relaxed me. Yeah, somebody better bring wanted snacks. Yeah, I'll come.
Do you want to set it for like tenative? I mean, obviously tenatively um six o'clock if it works for them or 6:30 everybody or 5:30. I don't think we need an hour and a half, but I wouldn't think so unless there's a lot of community and there's a lot of
questions and I will have those ordinances for you then too. I'll try to prior what time did you say? Well, it'll be right before a regular Oh, wait. This is a special meeting. It has to be at 7 o'clock if you want public input. You know, it's 29th be wouldn't you
resident, you know, public input? 7 o'clock. Said Tuesday the 28th. No, we did say the 29th, didn't we? April 28th. What about the 30th then? That's the That's a Wednesday. May April 30th. April 28. 29th or the
30th or May 1st? I can't on the 29th. April. I was on the 29th either. So you can't. Okay. Can you on the 30th? I can't on the 30th or the 1st. Yeah. Okay. Anybody do it on the 29th? April. I can make the 29th and 1st. I could make the
28th. the first. Yeah. Okay. So, let's the 30th or the 1st then, Jim, and you can let us know. Oh, you said the 28th, Scott. Well, I was looking in May. I thought it was May. And 15th and 29th 9th. So, if the 30th
does not work, first does not work. The only other option would be 28th. I'm going to I'll just 28th is on Monday. No. So, that would be kind of like tonight. Okay. Okay. But John, you can't make the 28th. I can't
do the 28th. No. Well, you can't do that one. No. Well, then I don't We'll I'm guessing it would work though. I'll ask. He made it sound like long as we didn't get into, you know, summer ball season and everything else that their schedules were okay. They wanted to go at
tenatively, would you say, 6:36, 5:30? What's everybody want to do? Well, I would think you'd have to, you know, if the if you invite it at a public meeting, you'd have almost have almost have to have it at 7 so people are home at supper and
here and maybe there won't be nobody and it'll take whole 15 to 20 minutes and get right. So, my thoughts are you have to have it later. 6:30, 7 o'clock. What do we I'll just go to standard time at 7. Okay. Okay. I will ask
May 1st. Yeah, that's the first choice and the 30th will be the second choice. Okay. Yeah, just let me know and then I'll I will do I'll get around to council and we'll post it. Okay. Okay. All right. Um, new business.
Anybody got any new business? Well, on the just one quick other note, one other patron of the town did ask me about the an update on the school, which I see Sue does have in here in our meetings where we go to new business,
old business, and she did call Mike Drummer, stated they are ready to go, just waiting for interest interest rates to drop. Then they will start with interest rates where they were, the project would not cash flow. So, in case they're listening, I'm
updating that question. What does it say? Some about it's got to go below five. Yeah. Right now, it's at like seven. He said it just won't cash flow because he'd have to charge more for rent and it's just not feasible in Good Thunder. Yeah. He's looking for five, five and a half. So, we'll see
what I wonder how long it take for interest to go down. I don't know. Well, did he just say it was like at four? No, that's for a loan loan. Government government loan. Okay. Well, wasn't that he trying for though, too? He was trying to get that. I've never talked to him,
so I don't know what his plan is. Yeah. Yeah. He was trying He had He was getting a match or something. He was trying to do the application state for some state funding for low income or not low. What was it called? Affordable housing. Working family house something.
There you go. Yeah. Because it wasn't like a state fun rural development housing, but it was more of a Yeah. Yeah, there were there were some key things that you're able to get it better or quicker with and he had and he could only rent it for like what 900 to,200 a month or something. Mhm. What
is a rate rate on a house? No, but I didn't think it was 7% but I mean sixes, fives. Okay. Depending on your loan and your credit rate and all that. Okay. Yeah. I don't I don't know anybody that's doing seven yet, but No, I've
never heard his one standard mortgage loan, though. That's probably true. I don't know that be more of a business loan, business construction loan. Has there ever been a a a business plan put together that's been presented to council for what the plan is for that
building? Oh, yeah. He brought us plans. He had I was not on it. Draw out at 25 or 20 apartments was it? Yeah. 24 27 something like that. One bedrooms and two bedrooms. Okay. And yeah, he had
some he had some I thought it was 13. No, it was more than It was more than 20. It was quite a few because he had some threebs in there, too. I think so. Yeah, he had a couple three bedrooms. I remember that. All right. Okay. That might have been before I came on. Yeah,
it was. Yeah. So, yeah, there's uh he had some projections of what they were going to do with it. So, okay. I just was asked the question. Truthfully, I can't even tell you because I don't even know that information. Yeah. So, so um m uh no other new business
miscellaneous. Uh you're going to a institute to the clerk institute. Clerk Institute. This is my second year where they put you in a flat jacket and tie your arms behind your back. Absolutely. You have to make a motion to have Sue
attend. Do we? Oh, I thought we had Okay. Yeah, you did that already. Yep. We did that already. Okay. Last one or whatever. I did get a $200 grant for it this year because I think it's like five. I think it's $500. Last year I got 100. This year I got a
$200 grant for it. So reimbursements packets approved. the one pursue for the conference for 19350 and one for postage for Brian for 953. Yeah. To approve both of the
reimbursements. All right. I made it. Amy second. All in favor? I motion carried. Um there anything back on the Dakota Mart yet? Um, still in the works, ain't it? Yes.
Had a court, I believe. But that's how I heard. Um, and yeah, and again, I I don't know who the the underground tank that's going to have to come out of the ground. I just I don't know what'll
happen. convince them to turn the building over to willing to do it. Yeah, that back wall's getting pretty bad. I know it. One of these days it's going to collapse. Hopefully somebody ain't around it.
When you get licensed in order to put that tank in the ground, it that must have been put in their name. No, that was put in, you know, put in a long long time ago. 30 years ago. 30 years ago. Yeah.
Okay. You remember that happy dance at one point, right? Yeah. Yeah. But has that any the hardware store was still there when that was put in because they had them yellow posts there along the hardware store. So Scott's right 30 some years ago. So So every time you acquire
that property, you acquired whoever bought it. Yeah. Because you bought it for a gas station or a convenience store and you assumed the responsibilities. Now that uh all what has happened in this case, I don't know who will put the
bill. They're probably full of water. Yeah. Um how many years? Four. Yeah. Yeah. And we don't really have anything figured out for you know if they let it get unsightly. I know the state was down there two years ago because they were
here buying shop and they didn't go to my gas station because it was brand new. But they did go from there down to there. And I seen him measuring. I don't know whatever happened because of that. So, and I know he called me about
coming back again to my place. So, maybe they'll have be going down there again because it's every two years. Oh, with that being said, we'll have to wait and see as as we've been patiently waiting for quite some time.
Um I was down to the ballpark yesterday with my grandchildren and that's you know John you had an idea what what you go down there and you know we have a beautiful concussion stand but it's not getting utilized
anymore. The ball field the the posts are getting crooked again. What is the city of Good Thunder going to do with that whole area? I mean, John, you made a maybe we'd have to put pickle ball
tennis. Is pickle ball is that still a big thing or was it a fad? Huge. Yeah, I think it's go by am frisbee golf. What? Frisbee golf. I don't think we have enough space down there for frisbee. No, I know the pickle ball
court that they rebuilt and added on to behind CNS Supply in Mano. Yeah, that's is busy. 7 in the morning till 11:00 at night. Yeah, but that's all that population down there. How about like Amboy? They got one. Theirs is utilized
though. That's a P. Yeah, there gets used. Really? I don't even know where Amboy is. It's right where the old school was. Right where the old tennis court. I have seen people there in the nicer days, too. Mhm. Okay. So, I mean, you know, we it's up to us to we need to get that used in figure out what is
going to happen to that ballpark. You know, do you keep in maintaining the infield and keep dragging the the line? And uh do do we have little league? Is there little league team? Everything goes to Maple. Everything go Okay. Well,
there's such a thing as I mean, we use it as a dog park. We pick it up. We like to go down there. He runs. He loves it. He runs from one side to the other. And fact, there was a guy down there yesterday when I was down there with my grandchildren. He says,
"How about a dog park?" Okay, so again, it's fine to having a dog park if people are responsible. But if they're not responsible, then guess what? Pick it up. There you go. We do not believe the enormous amount of dog poop and all of the garbage cans
emptying town. They're half almost half full every time. Yep. Yeah. Which is good. They're picking it up. But they're picking it up. There's a lot of dogs in this. I don't change them once a week in the summer. Well, Eli, they they get they're going to get pretty stinky. But it is nice to have a place to be able to
take the dog and let him off leash. We stand third base line or left field line, right field line. He runs back and forth between us just to let him get out and run. He loves it. But at least it's being able to utilize. Was something going to be like that holding the
retaining retention pond? Yeah. So, we didn't make any decisions because of the by the basketball skating rink. Yeah. area. It's going to go west of the old skating rink. So, that's where the old basketball court was. That's right
there. Pretty poor shape if Yeah, that's resurfacing the basketball court. And that's when we said the retention pond is somewhere. This might be a dumb. I don't know how it would work, but could you move that concession stand up to the No, no,
it's all black. That baby ain't moving. You got to move your activity to that. Okay. And that beautiful concession sense. We do. We don't have great lights, but there's at least some lights. You got the concession stand is
very nice. It is. If that infield area is not going to be used for baseball anymore, you got a sand base, lime base, you got a good start, you could do pickle ball there. Would uh would would softball baseball ever come back? You
know, it's kind of funny, you know, CO killed it and co killed a lot of things. Yeah. And I don't uh I played down there a lot of years and we had a great time every Friday night. Good Thunder was full of people and the firemen had uh
hot dogs and hamburgers down there. It was a great deal. Yeah. People came that weren't watching baseball, but they just came for the hot dogs. Or it was kind of both. You know, they came had hot dog a little uh little supper and had a little entertainment. And yeah, it's a I know
back when I played that would have been awesome to have all that there. We didn't have that. It's a shame to see it. Yeah, it is. It's thing. And now we have community if we had a committee a community committee or whatever you want to call it or something like that that you could bring
some stuff maybe you could get people in you know on a Friday night something or whatever but I mean we wouldn't be able it would have to be a community meeting that I don't know how to get that but what I don't know I was thinking of that before because I was brought up um about
a pickle ball court. I don't know what kind of money we have in a park and wreck account. I was going to look that up and I didn't. But yeah, that in order to use that concession stand. Yeah, it would wouldn't be I don't think that
much. I don't know. Maybe I'm blowing smoke, but to do four pickle ball courts in a square to do tennis slash basketball long as only thing is like the cons concession stand is for when
you're doing a sport you're going to observe. You know, nobody's going to eat hot dogs and play pickle ball cuz it's No, unfortunately nobody wants to eat when they're working out. I call it George Strait have a counter but he can't make it on the wait list. We don't have enough
room. Yeah. But I'm just saying it's there are option or ideas there where it would be nice to see it. Well, I think we talked about in the fun that we would have now to do something. You brought up that what was it that frisbee golf or whatever. Disc golf.
Yeah. But that's Well, there's probably you could do a short course. Yeah. You ain't do You're not going to do no nine holes. Yeah. Like they got No. I don't know if you can get softball back there. Can I mean you'd be the person that probably be able to do it. I don't Boy, they the young people
today, they're more interested in their thumbs than they are getting out and playing softball. Um has to be somebody a lot younger than me because I know I'm done playing. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I don't think the school district will ever ever
utilize it. could have one or two over there now. So there's here we are sitting with it and it's up to us to make a decision. You know what how are we going to move forward? I think we need to take our time with that one.
Um because if we take out the ball field then what are we going to do with that concession stand? Chances are the concession stand's not going to get used ever again at all. No. Um unless you had some leagues. Do they have leagues in pickle ball? You know, the one thing
about the ballpark that was always popular is always at night. It was shaded on a hot day. It's always gotten shaded, you know, and it was had a little bit of a little draw that little draw because it was shaded and it wasn't out in the
middle in a flat. It's kind of in in that bowl. You could always sit on the hillside, you could have a blanket, chair, whatever. Yeah. was always kind of unique to the area cuz if they ever got to pickle ball tournaments and they moved around to different towns. I don't think pick well I don't even know what
pickle ball is. At least a combination of ping pong and tennis. Yeah. Oh, okay. At least if it was down there. I mean, yeah. The the concession stand won't get used for spectators, but if there's a tournament or something, the people playing. I mean, if if there's like beer involved, people are going to buy food,
you know? I don't know. At least there'd be small chance of it being used versus none. That's what I was thinking. If we did a pickle ball, court, you'd have to do it down there. If you want to supply the the bathroom facilities, the you give to run the concession stand. Well,
that would hopefully, again, like she was saying, you get some committee, some groups, businesses that want to fund raise, like fire department, that was fundraising for them, you know, so they they did it every Friday night because they made the money on the hot dogs and whatever. By the way, down in there, there's
still three or four big jars of pickles in the fridge and other stuff from back then when the firemen were doing it. Do you want me to We're having a clean up week. You best get rid of Yeah, that' be a good time. There's like gallon jars of pickles in the fridge. Really? How much buzz are on
them? That was probably And I think they're they're still still sealed. Still sitting in there. Yeah, technically it probably belongs to the fire department. It was there. Could have been St. John's was in there. St. John's was running it and then they just abruptly quit. That's why the fire department kind of took it over. Took it
over. So, it's probably the fire department's pickles. I can drop them off. They're probably pickled pickles. Yeah, I'll take them. I know. They They built a pickle ball barn out on east of
Menard's. Some guy spent millions half million. Three and a half million bu big fancy building. Wasn't that a drummer? They play. No. No. They play some young couple. Pickle ball. They're only in their mid30s. Yeah. They spent three
like dad. Wow. A doctor, a dentist. I don't remember. There's always people in that parking lot. Oh, yes. People love their serious about it. Yeah. So, how much does Amboy get used? Um there's it
gets used a fair amount in the summer. Yeah. Somebody had um inquired about like a signup sheet, I guess, because every time they went there were people in it. Really? They only have one one area, right? It's only one, thanks. Or is it? There's a couple. I think there's you
can set them up as a double. I don't know how they usually don't ever have just a single cord. Usually it's a double cord. There's two nuts in it. Yeah. Yeah. It's usually a double cord or a quad cord. Yeah. Yeah. That's at least two. And they just put their nets down.
They're not in use with it. Um, call that clerk over there and ask them what what they kind of spent on theirs and give us an idea and give the community if it And again, like I say, man, we had a beautiful ballpark and a beautiful uh concession
stand, but now we got no people. Yeah. So, I don't know. Uh, unfortunately, I don't think a lot of that's going to change anymore. I don't know. Not unless we have a big crash and nobody has a cell phone on floor. I know it. The cell phones have got everybody preoccupied. There would have to be
cameras down there. Well, that if he's going to put We have them already. 23 apartments in the old school. And maybe if we could get these patio homes up here and get some young families and and there's kids that ride around on their bikes all summer looking for stuff.
People that do go down to the park quite often. But I mean, I see them going down the hill, you know. So, it does whatever's down, you know, people are using it or they're hanging out. Well, they're in that playground equipment. Well, that's something we need to work
at. See if we can figure out something. Yeah. Because have our brainstorming. Keep your eyes open as you go to other communities and visit relatives and stuff and maybe you spot something somebody else has and it looks really good, you know, as you're traveling
around and we should come up with All right. Hey, yeah, swimming pool. We need concessions and they stun the babe and they we wouldn't get you to get anything done. No splash pad. Those are horrible.
Yeah, but that's what I want. I brought my grandkids there and my granddaughters loved it. That splash though. That splash. We brought all four of them. Yeah. Yeah. Why is that terrible? Just cuz they I'll tell you a story. Okay.
with a splash pad and the chlorine level got too low. And all these kids, they have this this it would squirt here and then it would squirt here and it would squirt here. So the kids would run around and well, it was shooting water up their dirty diapers and it got in there and they all got cryptosperidium and a bunch of kids got sick and one of
them died. Oh yeah. You got to watch the chlorine levels every day. Wow. Quite a bit of maintenance. A lot of maintenance that goes with this flash pad. There's a lot of maple was broke down for Yeah. quite a while. All right. Well, that makes I don't know what was wrong with
maybe it was that. Well, that was it under miscellaneous. I had anybody else anything miscellaneous? Um, you know when the it's under pancake feed, right? Or not yet. Okay. It's the 27th, right, Scott? Of April. Yeah.
Okay. 9 to1 or something or is that the right time? 9 to 12, I think. I just we we backed it or shortened it up an hour. What is it then? 9 to April 27. 9 to 12. Oh, was it
12? That was from 9 to noon. I think I shared it today and I put the one No, I haven't got anything. I will post. No, the last one you back. I know they had talked about he's gonna
come up. Oh, I didn't hear from Phil. So yeah, I've got some stuff here. We never ever We didn't even talk about that. So that uh thing that Greg Bertart was talking about, we need to keep that on our agenda. The fire department audit or
whatever. Yeah. What was it called, John? The actuary. Actuarial. Actuary. You know, we need to discuss that information needs to be done. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't think, you know, now that this this audit was really
pretty clean, so I wasn't I wasn't as concerned about it as I have been in the past. But, uh, was it Greg that brought it up? He said, you know, if we have to go with funding, you know, if we have to get any funding for the water project that we're looking at, then yeah, probably be a
good idea to have a a fully clean audit. So, you know, I think it'd be be worth our while. It seems like we did do something on that last year, but I don't remember where we ended up. He's brought it to our attention for quite a few years. We did the actual We did it last year. I have it. Okay. I presented it. I
thought he said it was good for We didn't have the audit every other year or something. It wasn't a from previous year from just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. You have an audit. You don't have that actuary. He said there's only two of them in the
state of Minnesota. Yeah. If you know anything about numbers and know anything about an actuary. No, it's a it's a very highly sophisticated smart. Yeah. Why don't you adjourn it individual? It would be like a
professor. The gravel. I took business, math, business, accounting, whatever all that through there. We had to actually had an actuary come in and talk to us. And if you think you know numbers and they start spitting out numbers, they they lose you in a hurry.
Yeah, we'd be sleeping. It's very intense numbers. Well, we need to keep it on the on the on the agenda, but he never came right out and said how many town towns actually were actually doing it.
Yeah. Was that what's the what the live was was it on live for on the um oh PowerPoint that he had? Yeah, it was on it was on the PowerPoint and everyone back I mean no it's been recording it just wasn't showing it to you guys to us. Yeah. Yes. Did you want to talk
about this for any other reason? I'll give it to us with you and John. Okay. I'll get with you later on that one. Okay. Nope. I just was curious if it was something we were supposed to All right. Well, that's it. Nobody else has anything. Somebody want to make a motion to adjurnn. I'll make a motion to adjurnn. I'm on a second. I will second
it. Second. All in favor say I. I oppose. Motion carries. Thanks everybody.