Are we ready to begin? [Music] Call this meeting to order at 7:01. Please stand for the pledge. 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. [Music] I am having trouble with my hearing
tonight, so I may ask you to repeat something if I don't catch it. Huh? Yeah. Sorry. Um, approval of the agenda.
Any additions or corrections? I have no additions. Motion to approve. Second. All in favor? I consent agenda. Okay. Attached in tonight's consent agenda is the minutes from September
8th. Then you have your receivables and regular payables. Um there's really nothing that sticks out too much in the payables. So it's all pretty pretty routine. Second. All in favor? Right.
Public forum. We have anybody to speak through public forum? D. Michael. Nothing. Got some questions for me. Nothing for me. I'm here to learn. Perfect. Um,
this Mly crew. Come on. Moving on from public forum notices and communications. I do not have any for you, council reports. You got anything, Ivan?
No, I uh can't keep a calendar straight. So, last week we were on vacation and I missed my two required meetings. [Music] Kyle uh part met about an hour and a half ago. Um I don't think we really
talked about anything that needs to come to council at this time. Gotcha. Sarah responds good. They have some stuff going on in the state and minimum wage stuff and they're trying to get some money that the state has for them for
the new salaries that are coming in. So, they're just working on that. Um, we with the golf course stuff, I know there's going to be some interviews coming up, I believe, um, from the personnel committee. The advisory board
is going to be meeting tomorrow at 5:30, Wednesday at 5:30. I will be present at that meeting, I hope. And outside of that, we'll see what we come up with with the uh
interviews coming up. Administrative report. Yes. Okay. in your packet here with the report. We have a cash balance with the graphs uh that dated last Friday, September 19th.
Uh citywide cleanup was on Saturday the 13th, a couple Saturdays ago. I I did stop by to drop some of my stuff off. It seemed to be operating pretty smoothly. Um I have not heard of anything, any concerns from anybody. I was just going
to ask if any of you had heard anything. I have not. Did you hear a tonnage or anything or No, I I actually emailed him today and he said he would get the invoice. He was going to track it down. So, yep. Uh the third item are health
insurance. As you know, beginning December 1, health partners will no longer be covering health insurance for staff. So, last week on Monday, uh staff actually had a some training and then we had a staff lunch and then Julie was
here. She presented the three different options for each employee to choose from. We asked everybody to bring their selection back by Friday, October 3rd, and then we will get everything enrolled. The open enrollment for our health
insurance is that time frame. So, uh, last meeting Todd Trader was here. So, we are going to schedule a public hearing for our next council meeting. I was able to talk to a gentleman from Centerpoint that explained to me what Centerpoint is doing with other cities
that have franchise fees. So, basically in our city code franchise ordinance itself, we're going to add a sentence that says commercial um corn dryer grain drying. Yep. Um uh accounts are exempt. Um I did
talk to Todd though. I actually didn't have a chance to talk to him, but I stopped there. Um, I'm going to ask him when this law went into effect cuz when we do our city code, I think we'll put the statement effective. July 1, 2025, you know, whatever.
If that makes sense to you. Um, then the only other thing I guess I have here, next meeting would be Indigenous People's Day. So, I suggest that we meet on Tuesday, October 14th, rather than Monday, the holiday. We've
done that in the past. Is that okay with everyone? All right. Sure. Uh, regarding the green dryer franchise fee, if we have to exempt them, then apparently we were collecting
franchise fees. Are we collecting them from anyone else? We are collecting them from Well, he's the only drier business. He's the only drier business. But it is there a line item in our
paperwork that says Mini Gasco is paying us franchise fees. There's one line that says franchise fees and that's for all of them. Okay. Y Uh, that's all I have for reports. Motion to approve administrator report. Second.
All in favor? I department ABS. We didn't really have any scheduled for tonight. So, staff reports. That's me. That is you.
Okay. Attached. I got Okay. So, tonight we're looking at our preliminary levy. Um, I do want to point out that as you know, in the last several months, department heads have come in, you know, and we've taken each section of the budget one by one. Um we
we put all that together and then we we actually found that our levy was going to be quite high because we don't have as many revenues in 2026 as we would have in 2025. So uh thanks to department heads, everybody uh got together and got pretty
serious and was able to make some more cuts in their expenses. The general fund expenses went up 2.8% 8% from the 2025 budget. And the resolution that you have in front of you tonight, number 13, is going to increase
the preliminary levy 15%. Last year at this time, we were at 18%. And whittleled that all the way down to about four or 5%. So, um, I have confidence, I have faith that we'll be able to get that down from 15 in the
next couple of months. As you know, we always know our final insurance rates and premiums u in the latter part of the year. So when we get that, you know, we can update all those numbers. I do want to point out that I think health insurance is going to be really close to what it is now. You know how years past
we always had increases every year. I think they're going to wash out pretty close this year. So that's that's good. Uh thank you to everybody. Thank you the staff for putting these together. Once we adopt this levy tonight, I will send
it to the county auditor and on Monday, December 8th, we will adopt our final budget and adopt our final levy. That's the game plan. Anybody have any questions? As I was going through the general fund
packet, I came across the library section in the back. Yep. And last year we allowed uh uh $20,000 for capital repairs we were looking at.
At that time we had talked about painting and new furnaces. Mhm. Those projects weren't completed. Correct. Uh some of the furnace work was complete this this summer. Okay. But then we still have money slated to
to keep doing those. Well, also in in that same document, it says that we're going to be doing the inspect the gutters and something else. Inspect something else yet this year in
25. Yep. And we did inspect the roof a couple months back. Um and I actually have called into him to see if I can get the report. I I guess the library needs a lot of
work. It's been neglected for a long time. I kind of hate to see that uh amount rolled back. I know it's only five grand. I shouldn't say it that way, but it is five grand, but uh I think it would be put to good
use there. Okay. I was going to ask the council, um, do you want an October council meeting where we look at the budget again or or maybe into November? Would you like to do that?
I will probably I'll probably have insurance numbers by I hope middle of November. Will any of the department heads have things to report next month? Um, who's scheduled?
Trying to think who's scheduled for the October meeting. Yeah. I mean, if if there's nothing coming from them, I don't know if we need to Okay. go over it. Sure. Well, we'll kind of keep I'm only one guy here. Somebody else can
speak up. Remind me when the date that everything has to be done finalized. Um well the end of December. End of December. Okay. I would like to at least see you know the numbers where if it is something that needs to be addressed
then I would be in favor of talking about it. I guess if it gets down to a reasonable number where everybody's pretty happy then I guess I don't foresee the need. But that's just my I'll keep you posted. two cents.
Okay. So, attached tonight is the resolution 2025-13. Motion to approve preliminary budget resolution 2025-13. Second. All in favor?
I I All right. You got that right there if you want to sign it. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Uh, moving on. Clubhouse manager opening. Is that the
last thing you Yeah, the clubhouse manager opening. Um, I attached the job description and the job announcement that we placed in the various newspapers. We received five applications. Three of them met the minimum and
preferred qualifications. So, we have a committee set together that will interview those three individuals uh tomorrow, actually. And I talked to Chief Steve here today. When we do, if we do find a finalist that we're happy with, uh Steve would be
more than happy to do the background check like this weekish. Um, and having said that, then I guess I would like to see if the city council could possibly have a quick special meeting sometime next
week so we can officially give you the report and then we can vote on hiring. If that's okay with everybody, if you want to look at your calendars and see uh if there's a good day that works next week. I would be out of state next week.
Oh, nice. This is a different policy than what we usually have for hiring. Usually we don't get a chance to look over the resumes as Right. Yeah. The committee the
committee's doing that. They already that's already been done or that's what that's how they got down the three finalists that we'll be interviewing, right? So what is the city council to do? It won't be it's not going to be the
time to hire them yet. Correct. Yeah, we can hire them. You'll come with with one decision or you'll have multiples. We'll after tomorrow's interviews, we'll hopefully select one that Steve will do
the background on. Pending the background being successful, I would just ask the council to make a motion to hire that individual in because the city council does all the hiring. Yep. I I just thought it sounded like you were having us do part of the
interviewing [Music] and they the reason to get while there's still a little season left to get the individual out there to get kind of you're assuming they can start work the next day. Well,
well, no, but it'll be a little bit out, but you can as a council tonight make a motion and going with whatever recommendation committee goes. So, you want to have sure that's
if that's something you guys want. I have a hard enough time hiring somebody when all I know is their name. So to just say go ahead and hire somebody is kind of way out there for
me. So do you want then just the committee to do it, the hiring committee to do it? Is that what you're saying? They're going since they already Yeah, I want them to select the person and bring us the name and you know that's all we get.
I don't think it's right, but that's all we get. It's it's the same as everything else we do. We're we're counting on our department heads or who's ever in charge of what we're doing that they have done their
due diligence and did the inspections and quizzing and have made the right decision. We have to trust the people we've already hired or put in position. So
it's difficult. So what you're saying is you have a little bit of trust issues. Well, when it's the ball start throwing backwards, it comes to us first. Why did we hire him? Correct.
So yeah, like what little power we have. So yep. So next week we would be looking at Well, you're going next week. We couldn't do it with three.
You could as long as all three of us showed up and agreed. Yeah. I don't know when if or when Andy plans on being um 7th or I think.
Yeah. We could uh I'll be out of town until Monday. It'd be Wednesday. Wednesday. Look at Wednesday here. I have football practice Tuesday, Thursday.
October 1st. I'm actually I'm starting to teach religion class again on Wednesday the 1st. That's at night. If we did it on Wednesday the 1st, it would be uh we'd have to do it during the day. Could it be at
Um I suppose cuz we need to set that date to announce it. Yeah. Right. That's that's what my goal was tonight. We could do it Tuesday or Thursday if it's done before 6.
Yeah. If that's the only thing doing pop in takes what 10 15 minutes and we're out. So should as long as after 5 to 4 6 somewhere in that show any day or if you guys want to get together on Wednesday I have the whole day.
Yeah. Let's uh let's let's do Tuesday at 5. Does that work? Yep. Ian, this next Wednesday. Tuesday. Tuesday. Next week, not tomorrow. Tuesday next week. Yep. I will do my best to put it on my
calendar and read it. So, Tuesday, September 30. FaceTime you and give you a vote at 5 p.m. that mic. Okay. Okay. Uh, do we have anything else? Why is
that date red? September 30th. National Day for Truth and Reconciliation Canada. There you go. Okay. You didn't know that? I did know that. The truth and reconciliation of maple syrup
day. Um, if we don't have anything else, I motion to adjourn at 7:22. Second. All in favor? I
[Music] Yeah, it's going to be closed. Well, and stuff that I do I do
get it all wrapped up before we're gone.