Monday July 22nd 2024 we will call the city of Mayor city council meeting to order if you could please join me with the Pledge of Allegiance I pled aliance 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 do we have any uh additions to the agenda tonight uh no additions mayor all right hearing none then I'll look for a motion to approve the agenda as
presented motion second we have a motion and a second all in favor say I iOS same sign motion carries 40 that will takes public comments if there's anyone who would like to discuss anything that is not on the agenda
please come to the podium and state your name and address and seeing none we will close public comments move to consent agenda is there anything on the consent agenda that needs to be pulled for further discussion hearing none I'll look for a motion to approve the consent agenda as
presented motion we have a motion do we have a second second motion second all in favor say I I oppose same sign motion carries 40 that will take us to consider request from the Eda to enact a deadline for
demolition of the old cream report thank you mayor so at the last meeting of the Eda uh they discussed the topic of the old crey and as part of their charge uh with economic development in the
community they had asked for an update on on the status of the old creary and the status I gave them was um the current property owner understands that his project isn't viable and that his choice two CH real two choices are to sell the property with the uh building
intact or sell the property with the building demolished and after some discussion the Eda wanted to uh bring to council a recommend or request and recommendation that a deadline be placed on when the old crey would be demolished
uh so they have requested a deadline date of July 31st 2025 if the uh property is still in the hands of the current owner and it has not yet been demolished any questions on that not I'll look for a motion to place
a deadline of July 31st 2025 to have the structur demolished unless ownership changes hands and a new plan is in place for development motion we have a motion to we have a second second motion a second any further
discussion and I think this is plenty of a good time on I think gives money we're coming up on almost a year since we first discussed having it torn down and securing it so um and then obviously you be working with the current owner let
them know these days Y and what we've done obviously I know you do that but that's all I have any other discussion hearing not all in favor say I I I post same sign motion carries 40 with that we can move to consider
approval of contract between the city mayor and the local 49ers Union uh thank you mayor after a few rounds of negotiations and close session with Council we have come to an agreement with the Local Union uh since the last
time you guys saw the contract a couple of changes in there very low level we had the attorneys on both sides take a look and some of the changes in there that they requested was uh clarifications uh putting in language regarding effective dates on when things because we talked about when things
would take effect but the effective date wasn't necessarily specifically listed so the attorney said well let's put some effective dates in there um one addition was also to the when we discussed implementing the step system uh that we had looked at a part of that was
contingent upon successful performance evaluations and we have new language in there that says uh performance evaluations are not grievable under the contract which is pretty standard language but that was something brought up on our end um otherwise then we also
reverted some of the insurance language uh because it went from uh saying the city's policy or the city's offered policy which is the 49ers Union I looked at changing that to specifically stating the 49ers Union but
after Consulting with the attorney says well we'll keep that generic it's not that we're looking to change the plan but keeping it generic is where we want to be on that so with that we I believe we have a contract in place ready to go the union has signed off on this and approved this version of it so this
comes to us for approval and this will go from August 1st of 2024 to uh July 31st 2026 thank you that I'll look for a motion to approve the contract between
the city mayor and the Local 49 res motion have a motion a second any further discussion so Nick thank you for your time working with the uh the bargaining unit and getting us where we are I think we have a good contract in place
certainly happy with it and I appreciate you running it by uh our attorneys also with Tim sullon so I do appreciate that any other comments hearing none all in favor say I hi for same sign motion carries 4 Z that
we'll move to city council reports council member Wagner anything to report on I was at the rising Community f Festival um I did the open house for the sidewalks and the trails and then last Monday I was at the Eda
meeting so thank you council member F anything report on I was also at mayor Rising other than that nope CC H uh I was at the Eda and the rising Community Festival uh at the Eda we did
award um seven businesses is with grant funding people mentioned we did have the May Rising Community Festival it was a success although it started out a little sketchy with all the rain so we didn't know where where it was going to end up it turned out great um obviously I want
to thank all the volunteers that helped and of course uh Deputy Hendrick and Ryan from the Caro County Sheriff's Department who first time put on a bike Rodeo which was a very well received and a big success so I think it was a good addition um and with that I want to
thank um R&V Auto and towing they donated one of the bikes that were giv away and also Knuckleheads bar and grill for donating a bike for the giveaway so that was great it was a good turnout um and of course thank you to Lauren uh uh Zach and Tom stier for all
their work they did most the heavy lifting on this they do most the organizing on this I want to thank them too so it was a good turnout so that I'll look for motion to adjourn motion second motion Motion in a second all in favor say I I
sign motion carries 4 Z we are adjourned that we can move right into the work session for the uh 2025 budget first look thank you mayor I don't know how much time we're going to have left here seeing as our council meeting was
twice as long as the one prior to that um but 2025 budget first look uh first thing I want to go over right off the bat is going over our budget schedule so our first look is tonight we're going to take a look at uh
preliminary changes and then we work through the general fund upfront uh the reason for that is as you can see on September 23rd we have to adopt our preliminary Levy and how it works with the preliminary Levy is you can you can
always lower the levy in December but you cannot raise it so that is something we want to have really dialed in and it's been uh throughout my entire career my budget philosophy is I don't I don't like to do the process of set the preliminary Levy a little on the high side knowing it'll come down I want to
hit that as close to the bullseye as humanly possible so I've been fairly successful in that in my career so I'm going to continue with that practice so our Focus over the next few months are going to to be heavy on the general fund as you can see there looking at CIP as well and then once the preliminary Levy
is set um and we know where that's going to land then we look to the Enterprise funds which is our utility funds water sewer and storm sewer on that front we take a harder look at those um because we don't have to set levies for those and as we get through the final months
we get U more data more monthly data about our revenues and expenses and how those are turning out and that really helps guides us dial in the utility funds we look at our utility rate study see if we need to update that and and those things then on December 9th we'll have our truth and Taxation public
hearing and then we'll adopt our final Levy and budget for 2025 and that's the schedule we're looking at so as we get into the budget itself this year uh our um oh yeah also one
thing to mention on schedule I like to do one at nearly every council meeting rather than doing big two three hour budget meetings waiting a long time everybody forgets what was said at the first one then we got to rehash for another two three hours break it up into small pieces each
time that build on Builds on top of the one previous so that easily digestible remember what we done over the course of the period and then that builds into a really nice final budget uh so with that getting into the budget itself talking a little bit about uh budget philosophy
and how I put these together um I like to do the the style I like to go through is zerob based budgeting you have um the other couple other options are you do just a flat increase like you do just a 3% increase across the board
on everything and call it a day um I like zero based budgeting where I start from zero on everything and then I build back the categories I go into the uh accounting software I look at each of the line items SE was deposited in there and what
was expensive out of those see if it makes sense sometimes you have onetime expenses that don't necessarily justify an increase in the budget because it's a oneoff thing but you really got to dig in and analyze otherwise you're not tightening that up as much as you really could um for the revenues I like to uh
budget us slightly On The Higher Side to make sure we're doing well there and then expenditures be a bit tighter uh uh so revenu is on the higher side uh I'm sorry opposite way revenu is on the lower side expenses on the higher side
so that if revenues you know you have a shortfall in the revenues you're still going to do okay and if you're a little long on the expenditure you you've got a little room there uh not that you design a room in there but it happens to work out and that's been a good experience
over my career on that uh this year we don't nearly have as much moving and shaking on things as we did last year we were transitioning back because we had the street project and we're getting the levy low back down we were removing a bunch of departments and cons the fire department was getting Consolidated
Administration was getting Consolidated moving things around in categories not doing nearly as much of that so this gets to be a bit more straightforward so we'll look at the budget uh where we're starting out in the general fund as well as the Enterprise funds then I want to take a
look at the levy uh projection worksheet that we use that's our working document uh look at our tax rate comparison and where we stand with the rest of Carver County then take a quick look at debt and see where that's falling as well just so everybody's refreshed on where we're going with that so hitting it off
here we'll start with the general fund on the revenue side so if you've never seen budget codes before take a look at this so the city's Finance is used as a fund accounting system uh that which
has broken up into the first into broken up into funds and that's where we talk about general fund water fund sewer fund storms who are fund the CIP funds that service funds down the line and so where you find that is in the first three digits the first three digits here are
referred to as the fund code general fund being 100 water being 620 sewer being 640 and so on the second set of uh digits in there the five-digit code that's the department code so uh this becomes more prevalent when we look at
say the expense side of things we right here it lists the 41,000 as general government uh fire department is 422,000 Police Services is 421,000 streets 43,000 when you look at that it doesn't matter where you're at that will always be
general property taxes 32240 will always be animal license similar on the expense side of things so with that we'll start taking look at the key differences now generally speaking when we look at things things such as um
insurances and uh wages and salaries since since those are locked in I'm not going to go over those in detail they're included in there but I don't highlight them because they're this same across the board uh for the various departments and the funds so I'll touch on more of the key differences in here so in here
you can see that general fund general fund property taxes is up by 14,000 why that is is to keep a placeholder in that Levy spreadsheet and it's really to keep the levy flat when we look at things on the totality side of things so this
number likely to change float depending on what we want to do with that as we go through our budgeting process the next big change we have in here is under Tower antenna rent uh we were I was able to clean up a lot of the subcontracts we have get a lot of the
revenue streams that should have been going back on task and so uh that was going to net us an additional $225,000 a year that we weren't seeing in years past we got the back data checks so that's going to look good for 2024 but making sure that those payments are
coming and going forward so we'll see uh a lift in that which is good for Under Fire contracts looking at an 18,000 $1,641 increase and what that is primarily fund from is how our fire contracts are set up with the townships
it's based on the expenses of the fir uh the maintenance uh the maintenance and operations as well as The Debt Service and CIP go into the formulations of how the fire contracts are C calculated and in 20 since for 2025 those are based on
the 2024 budget the so the when we do contracts it's always always based on the year prior's budget so for 2026 contracts we'll be using 2025 numbers so on and so forth so this being based on 2024 budget we had the very large
one-time expense with the perah uh payment we also had some increases in other areas uh to keep up with Rising costs so we had a big one there there I foresee in the 2026 this number will come back down again and level off but
for this year this is why what we're expecting and why uh we're also having an increase under refunds and reimbursements uh we do Supply health insurance uh for the widow um Mr
uh Mrs vulmer uh and I was able to locate a reimbursement program through Department of Public Safety that will give us the money back majority of it on those expenses and we were successful in 2024 and getting a lot of that funding
back when I was applying for it I it was at the end of 23 I didn't include it in 24's budget because I didn't know where it was going to land now that I've had confirmation of where that's going to land I know what to expect for 2025 so we're looking at that as a
reliable source moving forward and I'll always keep in tabs with uh Department of Public Safety to see where that's at moving into the future those are the big changes on the revenue side on the expense side of things right off the bet in general government decreasing
auditing and accounting services by 5,000 this was kept uh on the higher on the higher side uh for 2023 and 2024 when I was looking at the 24 budget looking at potentially dropping it back down but uh Tracy Schaefer has done a
really good job of picking things up and the amount of time that she's been working with the Auditors to pick up skills and get training was accelerated faster than anticipated so we're antici going to anticipate less usage of the Auditors for those Training Services
moving forward and thus we can look at dropping it back down here the Eda has uh also made a request to city council I didn't have the agenda for official businesses we'd be talking about it under budget as we move forward but they're requesting an additional
$25,000 as part of their transfer they had they receiv received $50,000 this year and uh for this they received 120,000 in Grant requests of which they uh awarded 65,000
in grant funding you might say well that's over the 50 that they were given the Eda had about $20,000 already in their fund so was about 70,000 of that they awarded 6 5 since they had a good Grant turnout we're
hoping and expecting good Grant turnout again in future years so they're they're making a request for an additional $25,000 uh to increase it to 75 to give out as grants in anticipation of that moving down not too many major
changes here uh elections here it's just that's getting acted out because we're not having elections in 25 looking at the Police contract going up uh almost 8, 7,773 and that's based on cost increases
of the contract that'll be coming out here for approval as we get towards later in the year we've received those numbers under Fire Protection wages and salaries for the fire department uh a little bit red in the face on this one
but uh the spreadsheet I was using um that I had found and inherited was not accurate as far as predicting wages and salaries for the fire department uh there were some missing numbers in there uh quite a bit as you can see so to come
back into better alignment with what the cost actually will will be that's why you're seeing this jump up on that front so U discovered that error after we had approved the 2024 budget and um so I've got it corrected now this also is
potentially taking a look at an adjustment for the fire department hourly wages uh we had last adjusted them in 22 going into 23 and at that time the council wanted to see more regular updates on that rather than doing these
every fiveish years leaps forward so I'm preparing data like I did for the uh wage analysis for City staff I'm preparing something along those lines as well for fire department wages and salaries as well so I'll be getting that to Personnel committee here in the near
future scrolling down then we get towards Street lighting this number has lagged behind in years U making predictions of catching up but this this figure here took a longer and harder look at that and especially as costs have been rising on the electrical side
of things um so increasing that to make sure that we're staying ahead of it like for 2024 for example I'm predicting will be a couple thousand behind this will probably land in that 36 is area and then 2023 is in that 34 is area so
catching back up on that um small things on to Professional Services with Park um bringing that back down we had it increased in 24 expecting some other things to happen but they're not materializing uh one of those was we were using a lawn care
service um to do some of our Park maintenance we haven't used that since 22 so it's removing that cost calculation since we have three part people on public works now there's we don't foresee a need to use that for quite some time um if ever so we can ax
that out plus we're also reducing the cost of um mini BFF service in old schoolhouse Park since we're going to have the bathrooms there oh yeah so we're not going to need to have the expense of a mini BFF so those two combined brings us back down into this
range and that is the uh very first look at the general fund for 202 uh 2025 you can see right now we're sitting at about 5,000 revenues over expenditures as we sit right now and the idea is when we hit um
September we want to have this really close to zero as possible and then in December we'll certainly have it balanced out for sure sure so any questions on anything uh that I've highlighted or anything that I didn't highlight that you had questions
on on the um Park and wreck you will reduce the repairs and maintenance weren't seeing nearly as much repairs and maintenance under there so with the splash pad going in do you
think this is the right time I I don't know what that's gonna so so with that um the general repairs and maintenance is lower than 125 so I'm like in 2023 our general
repairs and maintenance without a splash bad came to about 10,000 so I was boosting this up to 15 I think I overshot I don't think we're going to have that much in repairs and maintenance into the splash pad when it's new so this leaves about 2500
cushion specifically for the splash pad and then we can just as we see it coming in uh but we still have the electrical here uh for the spash splash pad remaining at nine even though we haven't had a full run of it so with this we
still have some cushion for the splash pad in there it's not as much as the the full 15 uh we can certainly adjust that if we want to be conservative on that nature I wouldn't push back against that in the slightest that's something come back to
I think a good point get year and know if we're going to get vandalism or problems in the bathrooms or spray paint whatever it may be or just something we have to fix um without knowing but we're only
talking what $500 yeah right well I'm not overly concerned with it but I think it's a good it's something to keep earmarked right right yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't have any issue whatsoever he said he wanted to go 15 just to make sure there was enough and then 2026 like
all right we can drop it back down yeah see and I kind of looked like we went up and then we went down and I understand if we're not hitting it but I was like it just seemed odd that we would right more of the maintenance than
a repair aspect is I'm assuming we have some warranty that we true any other question sorry any other questions on general fund before we move on to Enterprise this looks good no big
surprises nope nothing big that's great what did I have this 145 and the salaries you have the step in there calculated based on yep when Kyle hits his an
and Scott and yep I got all that predictive in there now my spreadsheet I use for wages and salaries for everything but fire works really well I wasn't questioning no no no yep but in that wage and uh benefit spreadsheet I
take into account uh health insurance increases I usually budget for 10% we'll know in a month or so what that will actually be but I like I like to do that on the high end because then at the end of the day again with expens is being on the wider side if it only comes in at
six okay we get to shrink that then we get to shrink the levy a little bit when we hit there but okay I don't want to go short and only predict a three and then it turns out to be 14 it's like yeah no on that front but yeah the uh wage spreadsheet I use calculates into that
uh step increases year-over-year now that we've got that established that's all been plugged into there thank you on the water fund end of things not ton of changes in here uh based upon our
utility rate spreadsheet I've got 2% in here for rate increase otherwise not a whole lot of changes on the revenue side on that front on the expense side of things adjusting Debt Service and that we'll go over that in the future because Debt
Service um when we look at 2026 into 2027 we'll be seeing a good break there um otherwise no shocking adjustments on a lot of stuff in here just uh pretty smooth sailing on
the water fund end of things sewer fund end of things we have uh the big notable one is because our debt Services defeased as of 2024 for the sewer fund going into 2025 we are no longer leving for The Debt Service so that drops off
completely otherwise things stay pretty well the same otherwise on the expense side of things as you can see since we have The devis Debt Service debt drops off completely um we will see about having debt coming
back on at some point when we pull the trigger on the phase one project but we have to get the pig funding before we do that when we look at go down to sewer treatment uh and a notable adjustment in here is on chemicals and chemical products um I've been tracking this for
the last couple years kept it at 25 but after seeing some more data and getting things nrow down I we can drop this by five grand to 20 uh we are not spending nearly 25 or on the on the upper teens when it comes to this so This Will Keep Us good on that front for Bio sols
disposal you'll see this took this again vacillated a bit here um what I've discovered over the years is that we don't have a static number of uh bio sols disposals each year sometimes it's
two and off years it's three so when you have two we're meeting 30 just fine when we're go up to three then that adds adds more expense into it so and it's not on a regular cycle either you get two two two two three two
it's an odd cycle when the biosolids happen so adding a bit more back in there to compensate for that otherwise General adjustments and utilities end of things just with changes in that
um and then you can see there's revenues over expenditures with The Debt Service gone and uh what have you um the goal of council is to keep that steady until we see what's going to come on board for Debt Service and our debt service should be in about that 100 100
to 120 range that's what we're going to go the goal will be uh once we kick off the phase one project so sorry nope uh down a little more so
the bio solids dump wherever that was um right two to three a year once we get phase one and we go through that that should go down right yeah that'll go down there's actually um we've been
talking inhouse Public Works and I about the cost of that there's potential changes coming on the P MPC a level that's going to make it more difficult for people uh contracted services to spread that which is what we do now we
paid Lester Prairie to go ahead and take that and then spread it on some Fields the alternative we're looking at um is buying some equipment inhouse and doing the spreading ourselves we'll contract with a farm field in the area and then we would do the
spreading uh which possible to do and that would eliminate uh the cost of bols disposed completely because we're doing it ourselves the tradeoff is that we would need to purchase equipment in order to do so a tractor and a honeywagon things of that nature so
we're looking at costs on that benefit um cost versus benefit and once we get that a bit more solid we'll definitely be discussing that with Council yeah but part of the the sewer Improvement plan yes is like
bigger storage having to do it only once a year cu the farmers don't like it like they want it in the fall yep they don't like it in the spring yep absolutely all of that kind of stuff so regardless of what else happens um once we go through that
project that would come down and be a once a year the once a year expense it might go may be the same though because the quantity will be larger one time could see a little savings because we're not doing it twice a year it's just one dump and just getting rid of it you're not making an extra trip you're not
doing an extra spreading could save some on that mobilization end of things okay storm sewer end of things storm sewer is always the most boring of the utility funds because rarely things ever change as you can see here we can fit
the entire budget onto one side of a page um engineering fees will stay pretty much flat repairs and maintenance pretty much flat Capital uh that drops back down because this year we're looking at having our storm sewer Pond sonart and that'll then help us create
the CIP for when do we dredge the storm ponds uh in what priority order what those costs look like and then we can start building a CIP around that but uh outside of that bring that cost back down because we figured it be about that 20ish thousand to get her
done um Eda side of things looking at uh if their request is approved that increase there which is directly proportionate down here to how much grant funding they give out so that
goes right back into uh grant funding on that front so that is the very first look at our 2025 budget uh next on to this
um this spreadsheet uh Sam this will be new to you um for Council they've seen this quite a bit before because I like to harp on it um I like to do some Outlook into the future years on what our Levy is going to look like what's our CIP doing what's our debt doing um
so taking a good look at that so I project out here to 2030 now this is not some crystal ball it's not set in stone this is our living working document this will be making changes every single year as we take a look at this this is by no means our
a hard fast line that we go on but it but it helps us give us idea whereas before what is it doing potentially so where this gets broken up into the three sections the first being the capital the second being debt and then the loose third being the general
fund which doesn't have necessarily breakout but it's a pullup on that so in here we look at what we Levy for the fire department that goes towards their equipment purchases over the years see in 2025 that's going up because we built built the CIP last year realizing we
need to increase that in order to make sure that our fire department uh equipment is fully funded the idea being is that we don't want to have to take out equipment certificates in the future to pay for equipment that saves us on issuance costs of the debt as well as
interest payments on that Debt Service as well so this gets us in line with that for the streets uh you can see here 2023 was the big upe because we had the big Mill and overlay project brought that back down to get back in line and we're looking good on that in the future
not seeing a ton of change on this the reason being is um with the new tax revenue Source whether agree with whether you agree with the tax that was implemented or not aside we have projected funding that's going to be
coming to us in 2025 uh it's not shown in here because it's a state uh Revenue that'll go right into the 405 fund for streets we're looking at about $47,000 if predictions hold that will be on top of the 110 that we put in there
for um Street Maintenance work seal coating Mills and overlays things of that nature so once we kind of see those numbers come in we'll get those incorporated into the CIP uh and see what that does so right now just kind of holding steady to see what those extra revenues uh do parks
and wreck that was increased by $25,000 in 2024 to 75,000 and that's holding stud there asphalt sidewalk replacement uh where this comes from you can see down here PW bu building which stands for the Public Works building that was
recently finished and uh 2023 that funding then got shifted up in Asphalt sidewalk replacement we have a number of aged trails in town that we haven't set aside money for for reconstruction and thus being the point of the sidewalk and
trails implementation plan we're putting together uh so we can solidify that we did our we're doing our public Outreach piece to serve as one of those foundational components so when we go after Construction Grants to reduce redo these Trails we're putting the money
away to act as that match so we can get get this done and move forward with it we also had made changes last year to how the 435 General Capital Works prior to this uh if there was a revenue over
expenditure in the general fund and that the fund balance was over the fund balance policy the difference of that was deposited into the 435 fund that was a very unreliable way of funding General Capital Improvements because if you're doing budgeting right you're not putting
any money into that fund so we wanted to make sure like everything else had a dedicated Revenue stream for the CIP items in here uh General Capital tends to handle um in the general fund so like Park mowers Public Works trucks the roof
of City Hall the windows that got replaced with the stuckle it handles those various things so that's where we have these looking off into the future some total here at the bottom then when we get down into the second portion on the debt side of
things this pulls uh this takes our debt service that is existing I did add one in here that wasn't in last year's as we look at the Second Street Northwest project that's in front of Zion and in that area we're probably looking in that
2029 2030 area of doing a reconstruct in that area potentially looking at adding in morning drive as well since that's getting aged um to the point we're replacing the street rather than Mill and overl and the infrastructure in there is uh getting on the older side as
well we're haven't determined if we would do slip lining of that sewer line if we do a full reconstruct we'll need to do some televising of that to make sure but starting to set the stage for the possibility of new debt service on that front as we look at
it the rest of these all are our bond payments the 2023a bond that was the millon overlay uh 2021a bond that is for the fire station 2021b I believe that was for the Fourth
Street project uh 2020a is for some equipment that was purchased uh this is 2017 this is the amount that we Levy that goes into the sewer fund that's 2017a and then the 15 and 14 14 is
already done and then 50 is 15 is wrapping up here this year so those will be falling off going into 2025 think you meant Fifth Street project Fifth Street project yes Fifth Street project so the down
into this section this then pulls it down and wraps it together for the general fund for future years I simply add a 4% inflator onto the existing year that we're working on and when we actually get to budget time we're going to dial that in and really get close but
I have to have some sort of predictor in there to give us an idea of what it's going to look like uh so I throw in 4% inflator in there so when we get to the bottom here you can see the dollar change and what the levy is looking at doing you can see the percent change and
then we can get a can't really predict out this far what the tax rate is going to look like just because tax base changes um valuations change and I can't predict that very well uh but for 2025
we're looking in that 37 is percent on that so we pull it across to the handy dandy Levy graph we can see what that's doing over time so the total
uh that you can see here I'll go to the total how about that so the total or leveling off here then slow 2% is increases going to the Future stable and even those might be offset by
additional housing and additional valuation changes so that could remain um from tax rate standpoint rather flat nice job Nick getting stable and then when we take a look at um tax
rate comparison on this so this is what we've got for the existing years and then where mayor has ranked not that it's a competition and I want to put this up front because every city is a little different but comparisons are made uh on tax rates uh so our ranking
this goes uh the lowest in the ranking so out of the 11 cities and we were in the fif five fifth and sixth ranking six fifth sixth lowest and in 2024 we SLI to Fourth lowest in the county at
38.8% and the number three slot is being currently being held by Chas at 36% so um again not that we're in competition but uh we could be in Striking Distance of chasa depending on what chasa does with their leving moving
forward but uh seeing in a pretty good position here I like to think and then touching on the debt side of things as we wrap up here uh so I have a big debt if you notice anything Sam it's a lot of spreadsheets throwing together
it makes sense I promise once you get used to it really makes good sense this I Aggregates all of our debt service that we have and that gets pulled into the levy Kels on the U on
this side of things it gets pulled into there but this one also takes into C water sewer and if there was for storm it'd be in there here you can see we have the 2017 a dropping off for 2025 so there's no debt on sewer currently uh
one I'd like to go to on this one in point to is the water fund because this is the aggregate of uh four bonds uh 2006 2015 uh two yeah 2006 2015 and the uh
2020 so three bonds sorry on that we're seeing a little decrease as the 2015a drops off and then when we get to 2026 will'll be the last payment on our 2006 PFA Bond because that's 20 20-year issuance and that drops off and whereas
with some other like the sewer fund for example we're predicting debt to come back on and the water fund we're not predicting debt to come back on water treatment plant is in really good shape the water tower is in really good shape the wells are doing just fine we're not predicting a big street project that's
going to rip up a bunch of the infrastructure to replace it yeah we might have a little bit with the um Second Street Northwest project but that's in the grand scheme that's a smaller project and the scheme of things so we're looking good here
um maybe at some point in the future we look at um lime softening on the front end to help control our chlorides but that's a toss up in the air and I can tell you that's a $12 million project if we were to do of softening on the
municipal end of things so a lot of things would have to happen before we bid off debt on that front uh so as we run into the 2026 2027 and we touched I touched on a little bit last year when we looked at our utility rate study that
this was coming we're after to decide now where do we want our fund balance to be right now water fund sitting about 600,000 and so for fund balancy scope fund balance policy scope of things for utility funds you generally want to have
six months worth of expenditures at any given time and as you saw in the water fund uh water fund is about $550,000 a year so if you're talking 275 at six months we're at 600,000 we're sitting really good on fund balance for
water so there's a a lot we could do here and a lot of uh flexibility in what we could do with this drop off here just as a not for 2025 but as a Prelude of things to come so with that I've covered all of my
topics on the first look for the budget any questions a great start nice job as usual trying to get her dialed in here good and early and
and as if you you've got it uh in your hands if you look at it if something jumps out you got a question on anything of course of course of course you know you can email me text me call me ask questions um I like to be very transparent in my budgeting process um
well I'll be well I should be sending out here the six-month Revenue expense report to you guys as part of the financials now that we're through June I can Crank that out so you can see where things are actually sitting for 2024 that front Nick a few times yeah but like I
said don't hesitate to call stop in early anything if you haven't already I'd recommend getting a hold of Kyle and touring the Wastewater Plant or the water plant and the Wastewater Plant
it'll help just seeing it and see how they operate where all this money's going and I think I think it's beneficial Kyle would love to take you around okay no problem doing that if I can make a recommendation I think the best time to go on the tour of the facilities especially the Wastewater
facilities find a nice 90 degree July day don't do it in the front building and really get that full flavor of the facility really perfect looks good anything anything else any other comments
questions thank you again and we'll just keep keep moving forward on it thank you thank you guys we willj thanks Nick