All [Music] right. Welcome to the April 30th uh special meeting here at 5:00. Um call the meeting to order. Um, first uh agenda item for the meeting tonight
is Tom has a uh budget um plan proposal uh for us to go over for public works and the wastewater. So, I'll turn it over to Tom. All right. Um Kiki, if you can see it, there should
be a memo for the budget there somewhere. Yep. Okay. I don't know if everybody's had a chance to read this, but I'll kind of go through it. Uh, yep. So, the first thing I do did is I
outlined um the core what I believe the core functions of the public works department are, and that's to build maintain quality efficient roads, sewer, water, and building systems for the city of Niswah and its citizens.
Um, our mission is to provide that in a professional, efficient, reliable way. Um, and in a timely and courteous manner again to the city and and its constituents. Um, and the reason I point that out is
if as you go down in here, especially with the 10% cut um, budget scenario that we were asked to do is what are we doing uh, that could be cut without cutting those core services, you know,
for instance, plowing or replacing signs or anything like that. So, um I outlined for my 10% budget. Um most of our inputs increase in price each year. I think most of you are aware of that with your uh own um either
businesses or homes. Um fuel prices are never lower. Uh grocery prices, whatever you have, uh parts, labor. Um and it's no different with us. We we get a lot of that stuff at a discount from uh private citizens but we
it still goes up every year. Now the other uh thing we have to keep in mind is um population of the city is steadily growing. There's more roads. There's always more buildings. Uh that gener that's more people generating
more phone calls and it trickles down to the public works department. Um, so referencing that, um, and I go back to our core functions and the mission statement, I've I've made as many of the cuts as I could from places
outside those core functions. Um, so, uh, the first thing I did, just because it's not really, um, something I can easily predict, and this was a hard one to cut because I've been trying to raise this every year, is uh, matching funds for county and state
road projects. So, um, I believe last year we had $50,000 in there for that. So, that was one thing. I just cut to zero underneath the 10% budget line item. Um, I cut another $2,000 from our
cemetery budget for improvement projects there. And then, uh, the next thing that I wanted to consider was, uh, downtown garbage service. Now, this one's kind of a sticky one for me. Um, I get the reasons
why it was probably added. you know, people didn't want to see garbage blowing down Main Street or whatever, but we don't provide garbage service down at the 371 and 77 intersection. We don't provide it
anywhere else in town other than downtown. And that service between the u cans that we provide, the labor to empty those cans every day, the bags for the cans. Uh we can spend up to $17,000 a year on garbage
service. So that for me, I under that 10% cut scenario, I'm cutting out all those services for downtown garbage for 2026. Um I would like to get your opinion on that. um if that's something that you'd like to continue or not. Uh
because it will impact how do I get to a 10% cut if if we privatize that to one of the haulers. Would they be putting out cans as we have on the sidewalks or would it just be dumpster? That was the one thing I was wondering. Um I think
they would probably have their own cans so they could come around more conveniently get it with the type of truck they have. Uh it kind of would depend on the hauler. I did have one of them call me that was interested in this topic. So there is there's at least one hauler that is interested in providing
this service. Okay. Can you I mean can you speak I know last time you had kind of touched on this issue um with you know uh the feeling of how it may have been abused by certain
business owner stuff like that. Um, maybe it's a combination of not completely getting rid of it, but maybe relocating cans to a different location in town depending upon where where if
there's sections that more abuse is taking place than others, you know, is is that a possibility also? Um, we could. Um, so up till now at least, we've just been adding cans. Um, we get a complaint, we add a can,
and it's, you know, the ones that you're referring to that were abused were in the square and they were filled with coffee beans to the top on more than one occasion. And so, one of the expenses the cities occurred to deal with that is
we put Tommy gates on the back of the truck to lift those heavy cans. We maybe wouldn't have had that. I mean, we use it for other things obviously now that we have it, but that was the impetus for getting a truck with a Tommy gauge. It was either that or we were
going to have um a um a lost time injury for her for back or for back injury, one of our guys probably. So, so that's one. The other uh form of abuse we get is everybody sees those cans around and they'll bring
their home trash and stuff them full. And so that gets harder to control because they'll just grab the first one they see and they'll just they'll lift the lid off and they'll pack it in there. And so there's that. It's a similar situation to what we had with
the recycling. It's there. It's free. It's there's not a lot of oversight in it. We don't lock the lids on or anything like that. And so if a person wants to, it's pretty easily abused. And unfortunately, yes, we've had some of the downtown
businesses in the past have abused it for what whatever reason. I have a chat comment from online, Jennifer C. Some business owners from the chamber are interested in cutting the trash removal to save
$17,000, but we should engage the chamber further for this discussion as well. Yeah, that's fair. Um, this is the first time I'm bringing it up. Um, I did the calculations on it to come up with the amount that we're paying. Um, I think
I've brought up obviously Joe, you were aware of some of the complaints I've had about it in the past. Um, this has been a service that councils past have not wanted to touch. I don't know why. I mean, it probably is nice during some of
our festivals to have city cans out there, but I think uh private carbon services could provide cans um just as easily. And well, couldn't we explore the the the concept of having additional trash
receptacles out there during these festivities that we have? We do. Right. We do bring extras out. Yeah. Right. So even removing it to its entirety and then providing some additional support for that during those festivities, Fourth July parade, the uh jubilees, you
name it. That should still satisfy any type of issue that we would have during those peak influxes of folks coming into the community and then those that are going in to these various businesses or
restaurants in town. Mhm. those businesses are going to need to be able to provide the additional comments online. Would the city leave the trash recepticles and also would the city consider bringing in temporary or those
t paper box type cans for the big events? In other words, the third of July and Festival of Lights and so forth for the big events. those paper cardboard cans that you're referring to, I think those were brought in by one of
the garbage haulers one year uh at the request of the chamber. We've never provided those. Uh as far as leaving the cans, if the council decides to eliminate the service in any one area, we'll remove the can, prevent the abuse. The cans aren't cheap. Uh we'll reuse
them. Uh, for instance, if you stop the downtown garbage service almost allto together, we still have to deal with the pickle, the chamber of commerce building because those are ours, right? So, there will still be cans in those spots. Uh, this is just an idea uh of
how to get down to a 10% cut. Um, and to me, it's not really a core service. It's not maintaining any of the city-owned buildings. It's not maintaining the roads. it it's something that if we cut it, there is another way to provide it and I just want you to consider it and
see what you'd like to do with it. I'm open to suggestions or modifications of it. Any I think that would be something like that Kiki had said to get the chamber involved and see we'll work with them.
Yeah, I'm sure after tonight too, you know, it'll get out that we're considering this, you'll hear a range of thoughts of what to do with it. So, some of them really depend on it. Um, it's been my experience that the cans are largely there because of the food
oriented businesses downtown, you know, and the other businesses that have them have them to prevent their debris from coming into their store. Say they're selling clothing or something else. So, if we remove it, they'll have to make
some kind of accommodation for that. So, another question from Mayor Carneahan. I don't know if you can if we can hear you yet. Oh, yeah. I don't know if everyone can hear me. Sorry, I'm not there. Um I was just going to say um next week we
have our monthly uh chamber city of Nisa meeting on Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. So you know that would be a good place to you know have a a discussion as well. And then on Wednesday the 7th is the Nisa
downtown chamber spring meeting um which I'll be attending anyway as a business owner, but um could certainly talk to Cali about, you know, broaching this topic as well since all the business owners that are in downtown would actually be at that meeting and it'd be a good place to get comprehensive
initial feedback from folks. Thank you. Um so moving on from that, I think we kind of have a direction how to proceed with with the downtown garbage. Um the lion share of the cuts I make if under
the 10% cut scenario are um I won't be rehiring um our newest maintenance tech position. If you recall last fall we promoted uh Corey Larson and Mike Deck. And so that left us that took our new
guy that we had at that time and moved him up to the to a regular role, if you will. So I'm one person short of what ideally we would have. Um I couldn't I couldn't possibly hit
the 10% cut without eliminating that position. Um and maintain uh the service levels people have come expect from us. uh whether it's you know how often we plow, how often we cut grass, um a lot of things would have to been
sacrificed for that. So right now under that scenario that is how I have arrived at the cut that I did. Um some things I'd like to have understood um under these underneath
this scenario. Um the last two budget years we've had little to no snow removal and our summer storm damage has also been very minimal. Normal winter or significant summer could cause this budget to be blown
out. Just to be aware of that. Um question with that. Um do we currently have anything set aside in reserves for storm damage? You know that's earmarked within the city? No. Okay.
Well, I I should qualify that a little bit. So, the city overall has some reserve in the general fund, but nothing is earmarked specifically for uh public works operation. Yeah. Um, inside the sewer department, um, I
cut out two of the trucks related to potentially a second operator that we were going to hire should we construct lift station 12, uh, inside of our vehicle matrix for for that. It cuts
14,544 per year until the till those uh items become necessary. Uh I delayed for one year uh the replacement or upgrade of air release structures on the existing uh collection system. Um for the last few years we've been spending
$35,000 a year replacing a number of these uh air release manholes throughout town air release structures through town. Uh I'm not sure how many are left to do, but we did have it in the budget for this year yet. Um, so I'll just be
hopefully postponing it one year until 2027. Um, I removed uh elective equipment uh from sewer, $5,000. Uh this is usually where we buy things like
uh attachments for vehicles inside that department such as buckets for uh the mini excavator we have or pumps some of that kind of thing. Um so I just knocked that down to zero for one year. Um the rest of the cuts in the
wastewater department uh came from our personnel change. Um Mike W Mike Mike Wagner's retirement Mike Dex promotion has save has saved the city approximately 28,000 for 26 year 2026
year. Moving back into um perhaps a brighter scenario as far as um what we can do is a flat budget scenario. Um, under that, um, we can continue to provide the downtown garbage service as
you're familiar with it. It wouldn't allow for expansion, but we can continue to offer it as exists today. Um, Iron would add back in the ability to purchase office equipment in the government buildings.
um repair and maintenance supplies in the government buildings is restored to more likely spending level. For the 10% cut scenario, I had to cut that probably to a level where we're not keeping up with things that are breaking. We're just going to allow some things to be
broken. See, um I would add some money back into the utilities for a cushion against a colder winter potential. um professional services restored in government buildings to allow improvement projects to be
considered. Uh county state and road project funding would be restored to its 2025 level that should have a escalator in it for inflation, but we aren't doing that. Um the new maintenance tech is hired as
approved by the council on December 17, 2024. Um, public works committee pay is retained. That was one thing I forgot to mention in the 10%. I'm eliminating the committee altogether and their pay. Cemetery spending under a flat
budget would be with would be held within $200 of what it was in 2025. Um, in the sewer department, I'll I'll be able to put back in the $35,000 for the air release.
Um, I'll reestablish the uh other equipment fund of $5,000. And then there's two kind of unknowns. Uh, the first one would be the lift station one rebuild project. uh it financially can proceed underneath that
scenario barring approval from this this uh council. Um we would have to figure out what the bonding expense would need to be for the final version of that for the budget. Um and then the one unknown
that I don't I can't answer that the council has to work through a little bit is the new property the city purchased uh in lift station 12. Um, I don't know what the expenses would be should be for that yet. Um,
and depending on what you decide to do with that, we would have to add in money to fund that construction possibly. Um the last scenario I went through is uh I think we we had considered
it an allout or a dream scenario or uh you know if you there were really no limits on it. So I didn't have a lot more to that. Um really it comes down to what are our bond payments going to be for the 26 road bond.
Uh we potentially would add in a second shop pickup truck. Um that would add 346275 annually from our vehicle matrix. Um we would need to discuss and that's
being worked on funding for uh retaining walls at the pocket park related to the alleyway and drainage on Main Street. We've talked about some curving and other things. And I add in funding for lift station one and under
sewer and that is approximately 788,941. Um that is shown in our uh last cash flow document from PFM. Um, same for lift station 12. Uh, as of as of that cash flow document, the the
estimate that we had put them at about $780,000 a piece. Um, under the sewer department, if if things are good, we would be adding and you decide to move ahead with the lift station
12 project, we would be looking to add a second sewer operator. Um and that's approximately 90,153 annually. Um then there would also be a second truck for that department too with a
second operator um that would be just a pickup truck. So I similar amount 3462 um annually and possibly a back truck. Uh right now we have um all of our step station maintenance
we have done through uh files. So it's getting to be a large enough expense to where we considered um doing that for ourselves. Plus it gives us the flexibility to do some other maintenance that we don't do as often as we'd like. So would that
need to be a back truck or could you have a pole behind? um smaller unit it could be pulled behind. I guess I don't I think we had looked at a used back truck is what
we were looking at. Do you know how much on average we pay files currently as a I'd have to find out. I had done the calculation when I a few years ago when I proposed this and I
just don't have that information in front of me but it was getting to me quite a bit and then there was things that Mike Wagner at the time wanted that kind of a vehicle for so we were talking about it so this isn't a deal breaker it's just
if we were to look at what ultimately could be done might be done in the future sure with with the sewer department. That's certainly one of the things we looked at. And then uh finally, I just go [Music] through I updated the vehicle matrix to
increase the accuracy of it and to adjust for um current prices as much as I could. And so I added some of the attachments that we buy when we buy some of these pieces of equipment. For instance, uh the snow wing to the large loader.
Usually that thing when the motor goes, you you probably get a new snow wing. It could be reused, but anything with snow and salt gets the crap kicked out of it. So, a lot of times we'll replace that. I added the blower to the small
loader for now. And one of Jenny's versions of the matrix had our vehicle lift that we recently bought in there, but that's has a very long cycle time to it. I think I've got it set at at least 20 years.
So, I don't see replacing that anytime soon. That should be it as far as the budget. Um, I guess if you have any specific questions or comments, thoughts. No, I think
um my only comment would be uh lift station number 12 and uh the city purchase. You know, we can talk about that in the future uh coming up here with conversations to that property because I think those directly tie in
together on what we're going to do. Uh can you remind us though for everybody on lift station number one, we are up against kind of a timeline on that. Can you remind everybody of the timeline of lift station number one? So, we have budgeted
um for that replacement or well, it's a rebuild um really is what it is. Um and we had planned to do it as early uh start the planning for that as early as this summer, looking to do the construction next summer. Um and so what that would entail is it would be a
larger um barrel size pumps um to help handle uh some potential flow because if a list station 12 is built, it's likely going to empty into this one. We already have at times some capacity issues here.
Um and it's also uh one of the original lift stations from 1991. So there's some things that have degra degragated enough to where it's time to upgrade it. Um it takes quite a while to get a new
lift station online um from the time you say go. Obviously there's some engineering that has to happen in construction obviously. So if we wanted to go for next year we have to be kind of planning for that this summer. Okay.
And that budget amount covers also the new property cost for that or would the property cost be in addition to that? Do you recall? Um, I'd have to find out that that number is getting to be an old one, too. So, I'm not sure. And I I hate to color that too much because I don't
know what the property value is, but I'd have to look to see if that was included in the estimate. Those are my questions. I don't have any more comments. I'm good. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And if
you have questions about any of this stuff to think of later, as always, stop in. I'll go through all this with details for you and uh fill you in where I can. Thank you. Okay, moving ahead.
Um, the next item on the agenda on the agenda is the city administrator uh transition discussion. Um, do you Oh, sorry. Skipped it. I was reading the Tom. So, apologies. Back up
to Tom's annual report on the uh um public works and water or wastewater. Wait one second. Pull up my document. Okay. Go there.
Well, that's the second one part of it. So, um if you could bring up the packet. Okay. So, [Music] um, let's see. Yeah, there we go. Okay, so there's
not I don't have a picture for this, but uh maybe some of you have noticed there's a street sweeper running around town last couple days. Street sweeping is underway for the year. That's a service that we hire out. So, just wanted you to be aware that
that was happening if you hadn't seen it. Uh, this picture is Clark Lake Dam. And so, the reason I had this um in here is uh this past winter we had a lost time
accident related to cleaning the beaver dams out of this. And this is something the city's been doing longer than I've been here. And I don't know exactly how we got started doing it, but we were. And so a lot of people on Clark Lake will call the city anytime that they
feel the level is rising in in the lake and want us to go take the beaver dams out. So the reason I'm bringing this up with this meeting is just so that they'd have an opportunity to hear that they need to call the DNR if they're concerned about the lake level or beaver
dams with this Clark Lake Dam on the Paul Bunan Trail. Um, we will not be able to do that anymore. It It's a DNR property. Um, like I said, we had a lost time
accident here. Pretty severe one and our insurance carrier has advised us not to be involved with it anymore. So, unless I hear differently from the city council, this is the policy I'm so just wanted you to be aware of that.
Um hopefully I mean we I know we'll have more beaver issues with it in the future but um I will be referring anybody that calls city hall to the DNR. So some of the residents have been trying to take care of that and they you know I'm not going to we don't tell
anybody. Yeah. Whatever you do is up to you I guess being in there fishing for all I know. So, um, the next item I wanted to talk about was, um, city hall or excuse me, um, well, I I could I don't have
pictures for this either, so bear with me a minute. Uh, the city hall remod um, that's scheduled to begin next Monday on the 5th. Um, just with that, two things. Um, wanted you to be aware that coming and going from the building, there might
be some adjustments. You might have to come in through a different door. It's possible the front doors might be closed for a little while or there's just warning signs and tape. Uh we may have to relocate some bigger
uh meetings possibly over to community center. Uh people will be notified if that happens, but just to be aware that there may be some inconveniences related to the city hall remodel, including uh parking in our parking lot back here,
that side and the back. Uh there should be a blue dumpster and some uh trusses there already that's going to be used for construction. So, um, the other item I wanted to bring up, and I discussed this the other day with, uh, Jesse a
little bit. Um, myself, um, and then Amber, I think, for the trail have a similar question, and that's if change orders occur. Um, we're looking for some, uh,
permission or authority to deal with larger change orders up to potentially $15,000. um have the authority to to to uh say yes to those if need be. Looking for the council to give us some direction on that or thoughts or possibly approve
that. Obviously, we would still come back to you with the information on that change order. For instance, if uh when they start tearing off sheetrock, they find more mold that they than they expect. I I don't know, you know, there
could be just things when you're doing remodel projects, there might be other expense you don't expect. So rather than coming and having a special council meeting every time they come up with something that's over the spending limit that I have as a department head, I'm asking for a temporary raising of that
if possible. Joe, do you want me to speak to that or are you gonna speak? Yeah. Or or I can. Okay. Okay. Um, so we act Jennifer and I had a meeting earlier today with the city labor attorney about this to try and
increase this and stuff. And there are some legalities with the current ways that the city um policies and codes, correct, Jennifer, are written that we
it actually kind of has our hands tied at this point to actually legally do that for you. we found out. We will talk more about the proper steps to go through that the attorneys advised us in the next portion, but that
was an exact question that we asked today and we're a little bit tied at this current time to actually rule on that. But if I could, I would appreciate that. So, just know that because we like
how do we make this happen for all sorts of reasons. So, we can touch more on that in a minute. Understood. Okay. Um, my next item that I'm going to move into is again lift station one. Um, with that project, um,
we've gotten a precise location. Now, this is lift station one here as you see it. Um, this is the current lift station one. Um the next slide, next picture down it is about where we
expect where we might need the property that we would need to build new station. We need to be able to keep the current station operating while new one is constructed. So this is we have a better description than this
but this is where so that would be constructed while the new one is built. Um and so once you decide to move ahead with that project, um this the city attorney would have to
be engaged to contact property owners for a potential purchase for that. Um guess I'm looking for I'll be looking to the council for
some kind of direction on that as far as how you would like to handle that or when you would like to get started with that. I think for myself, you know, knowing the timelines and maybe knowing more information about this, I think at least going through the steps on getting a
full accurate picture of cost of of cost and timelines, you know, if we've got to acquire property and stuff like that, um is beneficial to at least start working on that portion so we have all the information to make a
decision. That would be my feedback on it. to start working on those steps. So, that's nothing that you have to make a decision on. Just wanted you to be aware that that's that is a decision that's
coming up. Is the appraisal of that piece in motion? What's that? Is the appraisal of that piece of property in in motion? No. So, at the meeting that you were at the other day with with me, um we talked
about um appraisals for the 26 road bond. And that's kind of my next item that I'm leading up to. And so, it's possible um that we could time these things together so that the attorney can work on the road and the station one
getting the appraisals all at the same time. From what I understand, the appraiser for this stuff is very busy and is getting backed up quite a bit. So even though you may approve it, it could end up being a couple months before we
would get that done. So just to be aware that uh if we can avoid delaying that at all, it'd be helpful. kind of leading into the 26 road bond discussion a little bit. We um met the other day um with
Widsth uh regarding uh the delivery of what's necessary for right away for the 26 road bond for uh some drainage work that needs to be done and some other items with that. Um, some of that will be delivered to the attorney to begin
um, looking into the rightway by May 9th. Um, and hopefully, Bill, if you want to talk about that a little bit more, I Yeah, leave that door open. I think what we're going to do is as soon as we get um a street complete, oop,
sorry. As soon as we get a street completed as far as knowing exactly where the rightway and the temporary and permanent easements are going to be, then we will um get that information over to Tom. So, we'll, you know, as we get stuff done, we'll send it over to him. Um I know like we're still working
on Upper Roy Lake Road and all in the day, but a lot of the other ones are really close. So, as soon as we get them done and uh checked over, then we'll send them over to them. And so, that's the main issue with road bond 9, excuse me, the 26 road meeting.
So, right now, just for the general public's information, so they're kind of aware of what's going on with that. We still anticipate um beginning that early summer ne of 2026. Um it it will be
a reclaim and new pavement. Um there'll be some drainage improvements in most cases. Potentially there will be some base corrections if needed. Have the road list in front of me, but let's see. So it's upper Roy some connecting roads off that I think
Roy Lane it's upper it's Edna Lake road um Edna Lane um remember the other ones are on it um day bay bay old government trail
sumac lendy pulk pulk road thank That's in the 27. Wooddale's in 27. Oh, sorry. You're right, Bill. Thank you. Wooddale next door. Yeah.
I was thinking of Woodward and Cander. So, um, all of that is still on schedule to be done in 2026. Tom, would this be a good segue to discuss with these gentlemen and
Mayor Carneahan online about what I discussed with you after our meeting yesterday? Um, I'll go into that into the 27 road bond because I think that's more impacted by that. Um, so you and I
talked a little bit about um in in in the instance of East and West Lynon and some of the other roads that are close by. Well, I guess 26 it would be too because you're right. Um, some of the roads that are closer to G Lake or are in more sensitive areas
where they're trying to avoid perhaps some of the drainage work that we would like to do. Jesse brought up potentially having a district where there's a a special assessment for those roads or that
there's a different standard for how we build in those areas. Um I don't know if you want to speak to that a little bit, Jesse, what your idea was. I can I think that uh all of us here have seen the dramatic increase in
the property valuations of the city of Nisan and obviously this county but um on the basis of what's impacted this city in the last five six years real estate market value now being at 1.3 billion and rising from what it was five
years ago going six years ago precoid of half of that if not even less We're seeing the driving impact of the properties up here that's attributing to those increased market values not being the homes off of the water. It's the
homes being on the G Lake chain, not just Main G Lake, but every associated chain lake a part of that. So, as we were reviewing yesterday, going through the offboarding of Jenny Max for these projects and getting
everybody on the same page from Woods, Smith, Nolton, and myself, Tom, city attorney, and Kiki, Jenny took Jenny took the liberty of providing some ideas for or it's it's not even ideas, it's just the the few funnels for funding that we have as a
city to be able to pay for these roads. A thought that crossed my mind after I left that meeting and I circled up with Tom immediately was, is it not worth us considering looking at assessments? And what I mean in regards to assessments is to look at specifically the roads
alongside the G Lake chain. The roads alongside the G Lake chain having a special assessment where those adjacent properties that hit those roads are responsible to share the burden of the cost for those roads and those roads alone. Right.
Not the properties off the chain, properties off the water, the farmland going east. That will essentially be able to give some potential relief in the form of the remaining bond that will have to
be procured. That will ultimately be a levy increase unless we find other cost cutting methods to be able to drive budgets down, which I think we're going to be pressed on. But the point of it is is it's not anything due to a majority
of the citizens of Nisa that don't live on the don't live on the lakes or primarily G Lake chain. It's the homes on the G Lake chain drawing up the value throughout the rest of this city. So to be able to be a little bit more fair and I hate to throw
the word out there equitable, but to try to be able to get some relief to those that are not on those chains that are causing these property valuations from the county level uh to be as high as
they are to not have to bear the spread of burden per property for those road bonds. having an assessment on various roads. I'm sure within five minutes you could identify them all for 2026 and 2027 road bonds of what they'd be,
but I think it's something that we should explore and explore firmly because it's going to give it's really one of the the best ways in my opinion that we can provide some sort of relief to those not on
these very costly and expensive and high property valued uh lake chain properties. Would the assessment be on the whole project or on upgrades to the project for the roads like a drainage and so forth? Can be up for debate, but you
have some various roads. Take East West Lyndon for example. Sounds like they would prefer to have some prescriptive solution to their roads versus matching what the city new standard is. Plus, it's going to be a bear to be able to go
through that anyway because look at how tight it is. I mean, it's just In reality, what's going to be the most feasible solution? A prescriptive pathway could mean that it's going to be more routine versus having a 30-year planned out upgrade on that road like
Tom and Public Works tries to do. Yeah. So, if you're familiar, um this summer we're going to do a a thin mill and overlay um on the roads through Grand View, including East and West Lynon. That was a stop gap project. um east and
west Lindon is probably not as urgent as the areas are more specific to the resort, but there are there is some damage there. And this way the road is consistent from when you come off of 77 all the way to the back. So that will be done, but that is not the project that
we would have preferred to do. Um, had this planning progressed a little faster, we would have liked to have done a project that actually dealt with drainage and um, looked at the widths and other things. Well, we need more time to figure that out. So, that's why we're
doing this mill. Last summer, we received a letter and a petition for some from some residents on East and West Lynon that they did not want anything to do with drainage work through their area.
Um it was at a council meeting that was presented. Um but either way um it is something that the city council would have to consider if you're if you want to move forward with the road standard as we as you know it or if you want to
allow uh kind of to what Jesse was suggesting the way um Jenny Max and myself had talked about a little bit is do we need to establish a rustic road standard. So you have east and west Lynon potentially in years to come camp
Lincoln road there's some where say the trees are in and you don't want to remove trees our road it gets very difficult for the city for contractors to put in things like curb and gutter and underground drainage without impacting buildings views that may be
considered historical with that if we can't put that kind of uh infrastructure in. We can't get the pavement to last 30 years in most cases. So, how do we fund that? How do we make it fair for the rest of the
community that does follow the road standard, does put the curb and gutter in, does put the the drainage in, clears the trees back a little ways like they need to, how do we make that equitable? So assessment the assessment was some
form of an assessment was how we see that happening. There could even be a commercial assessment for some areas such as Grand View where we're in there doing maintenance more often if they don't follow the road standard. So it may not only just be you know you might
consider that a rustic road through there as well. But how do we handle that? If if somebody has another mechanism other than than an assessment, I'd like to hear it. Um, and I think we should consider that as a group, how how can we handle that and
allow for for those kind of changes? Joe, you must have a thought. Well, I'll let you go, Joe. I mean, uh, yeah, to sum it up, um, if we don't put the roads in properly with the curb, gutter drainage, fix the
issues, um, it's going to be more expensive because we're paving it more often. Right. Correct. The people that don't want to curb the gutters fixing the issues, you know, are going to be forced to cover the burden of that cost.
the the the concept makes sense, but also too in some of these roads, some of these runoffs right along the lake, different things. Uh we could go along and identify different areas. Part of what we're doing too is also um
protecting the water quality, the lake quality, the water runoff, which is probably, you know, if you can speak to that for everyone's knowledge, you know, as big of issue as the road stuff, you know, that has been identified to us
from the county and the state in several different areas. So, um, good concept, but I don't, you know, um, with, you know, um, Stevens, you know, behind you nodding his head too,
you know, trying to actually get the city up to current standards by the state rules. I don't know that I I mean, I don't know. I would think that this would be a bigger topic of conversation
to have before we went too far down this lane. Could be getting getting the state and the county involved because they've already identified a lot of these things in the town that they've kind of asked us to look at or fix with working with
Stephen. Um so that'd be my first comment before we went too far. Um, second comment is, you know, does this, you know, just doing it in certain portions of town, stuff like this, is this something that, you know, would
potentially end up on a vote, a ballot, you know, I don't know how big a issue that this could come um create for the city as we move through this model. And knowing some of that information, too, what would that do to
um the current timeline? I don't I don't know how to go about this. I know when it's been brought up in the past with different things in assessments. everyone's kind of like, you know, from WSN to whoever, it's a huge mess and actually just to get the assessment
portion done because of all the survey work that it's actually not cost effective to even put this project in place because of all the upfront expense that we as a city would need to do.
Yeah. You know, can you speak to any of those topics? Oh, maybe a little bit. So, I think some of you might be familiar with the work that the county has recently done on 115. You know, that was a huge controversial project that went
through there. And so, I've I've um sent some of the folks that have asked about this on East and Westland and take a drive down 115, see what you think. Um, some of the things that they've done with curb and gutter, for instance, it's a beautiful section of road that was
built. And so when people think of curb, they automatically think of this thing that's 6 foot or excuse me 6 in tall on the edge of the road. Well, that's not necessarily what has to be built. Some of it could be surmountable curb. There are some that will have lower rises. We
would look at all those options when we're building. [Music] Um road assessments are difficult and then a lot of communities are going away. Um, and so far we've managed to keep our road building policy pretty
simple. Um, everybody pays in to the to the general fund with their property taxes and we rebuild all the roads according to when they were last paved. So, the oldest gets redone first or ones that are in really bad condition.
Now, that's where the starting point. Now, there are roads in town that are busier than others. For instance, if you go through Grand View, a lot of people recognize that there's way more traffic. It's going to wear out faster. What we've been doing to try to address that
is in those more sensitive areas, we did this on Hazelwood. We bump up the tonnage of the road so it can handle the traffic better. It'll last longer and that has helped. And where we can save the money on some of those smaller culde-sacs and stuff, we leave them at a
lower tonnage. That way everybody has a what we consider a quality road to built to drive on throughout the town. We're trying to improve the ride quality throughout town and the usability of our streets. Mayor Carneahan has a a statement as soon as you're done there,
Tom. Um she can interject. I'll I'll carry on after she's done. Oh, okay. Thank you. Yeah. First of all, um I appreciate that, you know, people are trying to think of different ideas and solutions for how to get things done,
but I just want to go on the record to say I'm adamantly against a special assessment for a number of reasons. Um I feel like it's forcing these property owners that are on the lakes or on these certain areas to pay for a project that
perhaps they didn't initiate. And while we understand that improvements on the roads are needed, we're not I'm not comfortable without actually going to these residents, whether it's on East London, West London, or whatever road, to allow them to have a say in a voice
and assert their perspective on it. I feel like it also places a very unfair burden on certain residents. And that's one of the things that I've I've shared in multiple meetings when I was door knocking for mayor. Even people on lakes um that are maybe seniors that worked
hard their entire lives to be able to retire where they are, they're on fixed incomes and doing a special assessment like this, they may struggle with these unexpected costs even if their property value is going up. And I also think it takes us down a very slippery slope. if we're going to go down the path of doing
special assessments and one passes, what kind of precedent does that set for Nisa down the line? Um, and I would say too, as it relates, Tom, cuz you brought up County Road 115. Well, that's the road that my parents lake home is on. And I
was very heavily involved and a key citizen voice and that's what actually got me involved in uh public service and government because my mom was walking our dog on that road a miniature ducksson that weighed 7 pounds and a a truck came by and hit and ripped the dog in half and almost killed my mother. And
that propelled me to action uh with the county, with the residents, um you know, initiating neighborhood meetings, going around all of Round Lake, door- knockocking all those doors, holding meetings at my parents' cabins, engaging the county, meeting with Crowing, County
Engineer, Tim Bray, um and Tim HooL at the time, the county administrator. And I can tell you that that entire process was very divisive for the residents, uh, cabin owners, homeowners on those two roads, um, and roads that also need to
access County Road 115, um, or Nashway. And the takeaway from it still like, yes, the road we needed it, but where where it came down to, and this was the crux, is a lot of the residents on that road, they didn't want the curb and gutter. They wanted an overlay and
the county flat out said, "Well, we're just going to let your road rot and you you guys can continue to drive over potholes and you can continue to have unsafe conditions. You either do it our way or we're just going to let your road rot." But that's not the role of government either, right? The role of government is the only reason that
government folks, you know, have funds and whatnot to do projects is because they're taking our money. And so I think people's voices need to be heard. And I know in particular because we've been dealing with um emails with some residents on East and West Lyndon. There
there is some concern right now with those roads and Tom and I have a meeting uh related to a different thing, sewer over there next week. But I just think as a council, I think we're going down a slippery slope here and and if this is something that the city really the
council decides to push, um I can just affirm that I will not vote for it ever. and and I would just ask the council to consider the impact that it's having on those residents and these roads we're talking about and that again we need to be transparent. We need to involve people and include people and I think if
if some of these folks knew that this was coming up tonight, we might have had people at this meeting tonight. Um and so I I guess I would just ask everybody to really consider that. Yeah, this isn't something I think would be enacted overnight. there'd be a lot
of discussion on this. Um, this is this is I I'll summarize some of my thoughts on on this topic. It's this community has a lot of legacy families. There's a lot of individuals that have been in homes or have had
family estates here for a long time. and to see the the value of their property two, three miles east of here off of the Gulch chain have the same type of tax uh implications um that they're having to
bear and perhaps their family household income is not increasing to the degree that would maybe warrant an individual or family coming in buying a Greek chain home. Um, it's an angle or at least a a topic for us to discuss of trying to see
is there any value in going this route. There's no way that this is something that would even be voted on tonight, but something to discuss because when it comes to the dollars of the project, that levy increase for a road bond of 26 or for 27 and might as well
just combine them both. It's going to be spread throughout all taxpayers within the city of Niswah. I will say one thing kind of related to assessment projects too. If they come about, if the council decides this is something they maybe want to do and you
identify a road as a as being one you want to assess. Now, it falls under a different process to that there are public information meetings that have to be held. It's a state law. So you can't just enact it and there would be a lot
of opportunity for the public to be involved in whether or not the road gets done. And I think that's part of why you saw with 15 some of the delays with that project. And that's why I was bringing up, you know, the assessments and everything that we've already kind of initially talked maybe in previous um
road um committee meetings and stuff too is that the assessment process in this town community, the the process itself isn't even feasible. you know, from the initial look with all the survey work and everything that is done. By the time
that all got done, it would negate what we had gained is kind of the initial takeback, you know, that we've that when we've talked about in the past from WSN, the city attorney and stuff, their feedback on, you know, that, you know, Tom can share more about that, but that
was kind of going with my question. It's not I think everything should be talked about, but you know, from the initial stuff that we know, it it doesn't even seem like it's a feasible option with what has probably been looked at and some of the stuff in the past and what's
in it. Mark, what are your thoughts? I understand why municipalities put in assessments. I know some municipalities, they'll only put assessments in for roads covering 50% of the cost on roads that are going into new developments.
Um, personally, I am not a big, uh, road assessment person. Um, property we had up north, um, we were told that we'd be assessed because now the, you know, the city wanted to put in a new road, wanted to
pave, it went from dirt. They were putting all in all these things. And I was told initially that my portion would be about $12,000. Halfway through uh the project, they changed the assessment on how they were putting the
assessments out. We ended up paying $30,000 for a 350 foot road in front of our property. But I I understand assessments and I understand that. And I think, you know, if we're going to look at that, I think for roads that are already there, there
shouldn't be assessments for when we redo them. You know, I might be looking at, you know, if it comes and says, "Okay, we want to do an assessment for, you know, the city has to put in a road that's going to connect this development." I I might look at that as
having the assessment then, but um it it it's kind of hard to tell somebody, well, we put a road in, it's there, and I understand, and now we're we're re we're redoing it, but we're going to assess you for the work. I just don't think that's right for the taxpayer. I understand what you're
saying with those that are on the chain. Um, and as Mayor Carahan said, you might have somebody that's been there for a long time and they may, you know, they're just barely getting by paying the taxes on that property. And so there it's a discussion we should have and just look at it. But I think, you know,
open it up and go there. Um, and and you know, the the surveying be would already be done when we're going in to do a road. So I mean that's not to me that's not an issue. I understand what Joe's saying on that one, but um I think that is a big
discussion we have to have and if that's something that the city's looking at, I think we should get some involvement with the taxpayers too on that. Yeah. Um I agree. But but as far but I do think that we need to start putting in curbs and like
you said, everybody thinks the curbs like this, they're not. You have those I call them the half moon rolls. Um because that will help with keeping our roads lasting a little bit longer. You know, it protects the edge of the road, right? You look at church. I mean, you
put it in there and then all of a sudden within a year or two, it's cracking because people drive by. Gives a place for a structure to collect storm water so we can route it somewhere. Um I I think largely why we were looking at the assessment, why why we'd consider
it. And this comes up every time we do a roadbot. This isn't the first time the council's tackled this. There's always a rub on how do you make this fair. It if we have a road standard for the bulk of the community that includes the curb and
gutter and drainage and road widths and such and we go into a community such as East and West London and we say, "Well, we're going to let you bypass all that." um or even Grand View too because they've been allowed to bypass this for
a number of years too. And I think it's time to have a hard look at that and how are we going to handle that? Um if we allow them to bypass that, we go in and we do far more pot pothole patching and you'll see that coming up in my presentation here in a few minutes, my
PowerPoint. We do far more uh patching and and pothole repairs. the edge of the pavement gets busted off more easy. So, we're fixing that. The road's alligator because some
of them will sit in water too long and the base isn't corrected underneath. And so, if all we do is we come and take the pavement off and we put back new pavement, we're not addressing the base underneath if it's not sound. This is what we're trying to do is we're
we're as we are coming to these new roads, we're trying to get everything onto a 30-year cycle where they're brought up to a really good standard during this first run through. And so that way when they come up again 30 potentially 30 years later for some, it
might be a little less for the higher travel ones, but for the lower ones, typically 30 years is what we're targeting it. um once this curb and gutter is in and some of the drainage products they're in there for 100 years and so we don't have to necessarily
update all that every time but you do get the benefit of it for as long as it's it's there and then we can do a mill and overlay and it's relatively inexpensive because the base has been corrected other we might have some spot corrections then but it won't be the whole road so I I think this behooves
the city this is something that's going to be done over several decades this isn't something that we're going to do through the whole town in, you know, five years or something. The roads that are on these bonds that we're talking about now, it's their turn. So, if we're
not willing to assess how do we treat these areas that are requesting no additional work other than a mill and overly, how do we address that and keep it fair for the rest of the community? That's that's what I'm trying to address with you because I don't have all the answers on that. Yeah. And I guess a
thought I would have, you know, some of these roads, you know, um, East and West Lynon. Um, let's just start with them. Yeah, it is an old historic road. Um, it's all built up and developed, you know, on the sides, per
se, minus somebody tearing down an existing place, build a new place. They both dead end. Um, it's not a thoroughare. You know, this is always a hot topic. you know, um the whole neighborhood wants involvement in it. Um
I would be more open to saying, "Okay, um here you go. The city actually turn them over to the neighborhood and let them have a private road and they can do they can maintain it. they can do whatever we want and just uh just
eliminate that burden altogether from the city and have a private road standard in place. So fire, you know, whatever can still get in service and work on a private road standard that
would have to be followed. But um well there is there isn't leave leave it to them just like Grand View did with with North Pines that whole development in there that you know it's a whole private road standard you know is is there one established now? No you
can't currently do it after because my neighborhood of Tall Timbers is a private association. We pay for all of our own road upgrades and repairs on our own. Right. Existing private roads are are still there. So let's say you have an ex but new private roads that was a
couple years ago said no we want everything up to standard. Um and the other thing too is is if there's a current private road and they want you know I know some private roads let's say we want the city to take care of it repave it whatever that if that is it
then we would put it to the standard of the city but then there would be an assessment for that development to do that. So currently right now, yes, if there's a private road, it's been grandfathered in, but everybody has to take care of it. Yes. But what we'd have to do is adjust that standard,
you know, for the roads and kind of go back to the way it was prior to a couple years ago where it didn't have the same standard, but that's a bigger topic of conver they're going to be m paying to maintain it. They're not going to want a Cadillac if they're only willing to afford a Buick, so to speak. Right.
Right. So like if they're not even wanting the store and gutter and they just want the prescriptive, right? Replace replaced by tuning with surface or we're good. We'll do it every 5 7 10 years and call it. It's cabin country. I mean there's not depends on the
neighborhood you're in. But um most of the private neighborhoods I have found come to us a few years after they're built and they want us to maintain their road. Um Jesse, you're more than
familiar with that. Uh Mike Wagner, who lived in that neighborhood as well. Yeah, same thing. And not everybody in a neighborhood can agree on what the road should be. This is a very hard thing to get through. Um Centennial Lane, we've had a number of folks in here asking the city to take over that maintenance.
That's the gravel road next to the cemetery. And the city's policy has been for longer than I work for the city is it has to be brought up to the city standard. whatever the standard is at the time. And then the which usually just means it's paved,
but now we include drainage and things in in that standard. And once that's done, we'll maintain it. And that has some benefit, too, because a lot of people cannot agree on who to hire to plow, how often to plow, salt sand. They
come to the city looking to get salt sand. So, it gets confusing. And so that was kind of the impetus for why the city adopted um that all new roads would be public. Well, the other thing too is a lot of people when they go into an area
and say in a development and not realizing, you know, they know it's a private road, but they don't realize that, oh well, we have to pay for this upkeep and maintenance. A lot of people don't understand that. So, um that's a conundrum, too. Now where we've made the exception is we we we have allowed we
call it a gated community. So for instance North Pine as you referenced that that's considered a gated community for NISLA. In that case um when the plaft is approved it's made very very very clear that that is a
private road. It will remain a private road will not be brought into the city. So that way if they build it to a lesser standard where it just is the way it is. Now in the case of that one there's an entity Grand View has been around for a very long time maintains those roads. So most
people through there won't won't notice the difference but we have had certain developers for instance like Centennial Lane where those roads are put in by that person with no intention of maintaining it. They assume that there's going to be an association that's made
and that that association will figure out how to maintain that road. Well, in today's climate, neighbors don't talk to one another. And to deal with something like road plowing or road maintenance requires a fair amount of um
uh cooperation and it just doesn't seem to exist. I unless it's by absolute necessity. Now I I get calls even from places like over in Lake Edward or on the edge of Lake Edward. When when can we get our private road plowed? They've
just moved up here from the cities and well I have a Niswah address. Yes, you do. You're on a private road and it's very hard to dis to uh describe that to people. Now to Joe's point, we've never had a private road standard that I'm aware of and and so we did try to
address that. That's when we came in with a we're only going to allow new road all new roads would have to be public unless they're in a gated community. That's why we came up with that standard. Um there was no standard. I mean we have everything from a cart
trail on some of the roads up to the north and some down to the south and and then some are close to being road standard but they're not quite. And but you know for the city it needs to be uniform. we're running down it with a large truck. Um, you know, we're
responsible for pothole patching. We can't have, you know, pavement that's this thick on one and this thick on another, you know, so there should be a standard if there is a private if the city considers private roads. Again, there's a lot to consider. Uh, we've talked about as far as how do you
get firet trucks down at school buses, uh, you know, and it changes depending on who's sitting up front here, too. opinions change. So, last question I have on it is uh maybe Kiki you can help me or Maggie, but if
we do if this 2026 road bond is actually let's say it's the 3.8 million, what would our annual debt service be on that and for how long? Do you guys have like a rough guesstimate? I do not. Um that is how long do they
typically go for? 10 15 years. So we've been doing seven to 10 years on a road bond. What the reason that is we've divided the city roughly into fourths as far as that circle. Yeah. And
so that period of a bond allows us to get one paid off as new ones coming on. Understood. But that's still I mean are we like amateurizing that debt load throughout the entire duration
consistent or is there a front load that we then pay down and then it's lower for year two three beyond. It's normally the same amount. Now, each bond is set up differently, but if you have a bond payment that's
$250,000, it just changes based on principal and interest, but the bond payment is still $250,000, but you're still looking at So, let's say it's a 10-year. Okay? And you average that amortize over that 10 years, you're still you're talking
$380,000 a year. So that to our budget right now is going to be a starting off the cuff is 10% levy increase and then we got another one in 27 that is going to be higher. So kind to speak to that a
little bit and Maggie knows this too I think. So, as the new ones coming on, there are some older ones coming off. Now, granted, each time they come up, they're well, we just had one we just had one go off that got supplemented with the infra or the the land acquisition, right? Which further drives
the point to develop that thing to sell some of these highway lots off to get some of that principle back, but we we've we've broken his cycle because of the land acquisition, so to speak, until that principle is is recuperated.
But we're looking at a 26 and 27 levy increase for these road bonds at least if it's let's say 10 10 10 year amortized notes. These these that's a 10 to 15% yearover-year levy increase which
is why I I bring up the point of trying to get creative and talking about it. Talking about it. No, for sure. But the the other thing since the last road bond to this one, the price per foot of asphalt or doing a road has gone up what
four four times, it's it's a lot. You know what you think of as in between those two road bonds is co everything real that you can pick up and hold a computer in your hand a car you drive a road that you're driving on
everything is about doubled or more in cost from that in that short period of time. So thank you. I have a quick comment from Mayor Carneahan. She just notes that it's important to remember that government should work with the
people and not over them, which I think is a valid point. So, what I would recommend, and I think Maggie might echo this too, um when we really get into the meat of this bonding stuff, we need to bring our bond
um experts in, PFM. They can help a lot with this. They can recommend different terms. they can talk about how to better package this so that it's more affordable for the city or as affordable as it can be made. I'm
not an expert at that for sure. Maggie's probably more of an expert than I am and they're more than anybody in this room and we can invite them up to a council meeting and they would send a representative up here. So if you really want to talk about it in depth soon, um
I can send out an invitation. Just give me the word. I mean, yeah, definitely. This is good topic to have and and more discussion because it's the biggest expense to the city that we have over the next several years that we have to tackle and it's only getting more
expensive and so kicking the can down the road, anything like that, it's not helping us at all. Well, I know Jesse brought up a a good point there, too, is I mean, if we could get look at the property that we purchased, um, get some infrastructure in there and start selling off some of those lots, that can
come back to the city to help pay off some of this stuff. But that's a long time period. That's also an expense, too. Um, that doesn't have to be, though. I know. I know. Um, because that money
can be used for these these projects that are coming up. Yeah. All right. Um I think Are we ready to move on to the next item? Bear with me while I find my place again. Said this would be five minutes.
Right. Okay. So, the next topic I need to move into because that was kind of just dealing with bonding from our lift station one and and our 2026 road bond, but it also affects the 27 road bond. That's our last item on this list. And
so, um the slide you see up there is a it's a proposal from Woods uh to provide some preliminary engineering for that 27 road bond. Um got to bring that up and so I can read it myself. Um,
go ahead, Bill. You You're more intimate with it than I am. Oh, okay. I if you want to describe it a little bit, I guess. So, what this proposal talks about is just um from the the city kind of requested us to
look at two different areas and area one is city hall street and this avenue corridor. Second area is church street corridor um up to kind of with the uh church of St. Christopher property. Um
so what our idea was is to um kind of look at for each one of these different areas kind of look at schematic design concepts and then kind of go through the process of um what each one of these areas
um what what everybody might want for those different areas as far as like the design and the construction and kind of take that to like a 30% plan. This is a very similar concept to what we did for the 2025 streets where we kind of looked
at the different concepts for what we wanted for the roadway and um um kind of took it to 30. We met along the way with the city staff um with the um we actually had a public hearing with the residents to kind of go over it. So
that's kind of what we're proposing in this at least that idea or that method and then along the way we can adjust make changes to the schematic make changes to the preliminary design in order to get to what we want at 30%.
So that we move forward from 30%. we don't have a change in scope. So, we know what we want to get to, but up to that 30% is the opportunity for um things to change and modify and uh you know, we can deal with issues or deal
with um ideas that people have. Um so, that's that's kind of what we were looking at. And then hopefully by going through this process for each one of these areas um we can define um look at different options and determine if
the city wants to go through with those options. Um like the geometry or the how the intersection works out at um Main Street and um city hall street with Nisa Avenue. You know where do you want to have sidewalks? Where do you want to
have the ped crossings? we can an look at all that stuff and give you an option as to what we think it should be. Um and then we can decide and move forward from that and make decisions. Will um um I know one of the
issues I have is when where where Church Street comes up to Lakers Lane by the school there. I mean um right now it if I'm coming to Church Street wanting to make on left left on Lakers, you've got all those cars parked right there now. And that's a safety issue in my opinion
because you can't see what's coming. Few times pull out because you can't see what's coming. Um also for safe schools, will that be addressed also? I hope so. Um so kind of to go along with what Bill is bringing up. So he's he's trying to
uh build a scope for his for 27 road and as a city we need to be fair and and clear what we want them to pursue. So, you know, I've made a three-page document with checkboxes for all the
different streets um that I would like to at some point go over with either the council or the public works committee or some group to so that we can say, "Yeah, these are things the city wants done with these roads or the
sidewalks." For instance, um, right after this document, there's there should be a letter from the, uh, Nisa Elementary principal, I believe. Yeah, right there. Because, have you been looking at that for what can be
done up there on Lakers and and Church? We've been talking about that for a couple of years. They want they would like to have, excuse me, some crosswalks, some better lighting put in, uh, blinking lights, uh, pointing out that there's crosswalk
lining some things up. The sidewalk in front of the school is shot. Uh, that includes some curb that we own. Um, and potentially there's some drainage work that might have to be done there, um, or rebuilt. So, we need to look at that.
That would be something that Bill would be getting us the details and making giving us some ideas of how that could work. We're just saying that yes, we want to go consider that or no, we're going to move that to a different project or maybe you're going to pursue that somehow different, but I think we
need to figure out quickly what we would like to go into that bond because by the time we get to next winter, he's got to be working on the actual engineering for that so we can stay
on time and on on schedule with that. And um remind me I can't remember have we had discussions about sidewalks all the way down church or at least down or or has that not so in my um PowerPoint
presentation I've got a map. It's this map that you'll see. Okay toward the end of it and we can talk about a little bit more there. So, if you walk around downtown and by the school too, uh this is everywhere from in front of uh A&W.
This is up and down city hall street. There's a bunch of gaps in our sidewalks. Yes. So, do we want to pursue filling some of those gaps or lining things up better so that traffic can flow better so they make sense? You know, they're not offset in a lot of
places. I'm going to talk about that a little bit more as we move into it. Um, but just for now, I just wanted you to know that Bill has presented uh a proposal or is going to be presenting a proposal to scope the project. Yeah. And
this is the feedback that I'm going to give him and probably some of you will help build into that scope. So, real quick to your pages of notes and check boxes. Yeah. If you could present that to the council at some time, I think that'd be
great. We'll do. Yeah. I mean, one of the things I guess, and this is just in my opinion, if we go through this process that's shown here for areas one and two, which area two is Church Street, kind of from Laurel or no,
Lakers Lane all the way up to can't remember what the name of that street is, but it's it's a pretty long ways up. If we go through that analysis or go through this process of going from schematic to 30% plans, we're going to identify most of these issues that
you're talking about and we're going to identify them and then we're going to come up with a concept or or a solution for them that we can it it it doesn't it can change. I mean, there's more than one solution to a lot of these problems. We'll come up with some stuff and um
that will give us the direction that we need based on the communication that we get with from staff and from the public hearing and from the council as to how to get to the end which is our 30% preliminary plans. Right. Um you know one of the one of the
issues that you'll be looking at is part of our trails plan sidewalk plan. There's sidewalks included in that trails plan um parks and that's Amber's here tonight to offer a little bit of
feedback on that if needed. Um Church Street is one of those where we might consider sidewalks. So that this is one of the decision points that we will need to come up with for scope on that. Are we going to build it? We needed it. What do we want to do with that? So um you
don't have to make that call here tonight by any means, but but it is something real that we have to look at. [Music] Um so moving on from that scope You've seen the letter from the Niss
Elementary principal. I've talked about the alignment. We'll talk about this a little bit more when we get to my PowerPoint. Uh we'll talk about the sidewalks and then uh the primary thing you're going to see in that if Kiki if you bring up the PowerPoint now. Um we'll talk a little bit about
drainage. That's this will be a good um place to start. um to talk about all the various issues that we're trying to address with the road bonds and this one deals in particular with the 27 road bond.
So that we talked about those two items already. I just wanted to talk for a minute um what we spend on pothole repair. So this year alone, we've we've spent
approximately $2,500 on cold patch. Um and and this spring so far, we've spel spent $1,260 in Grand View alone. Uh each bag of the cold patch cost $21. Large pothole can take several bags
to fill. Um the amount of labor required to install pothole patch is two men, 5 to six hours per week, 10 to 12 hours per week. [Music] Um, equals 10 to 12 hours per week,
excuse me. Uh, go back one there just quick. Sorry. Uh, spring season for pothole patching is usually March to April with a little fringe in February and May. So, we have about a 6 to8 week season. Skilled labor
is approximately 30 to $44 per hour with benefits. So in addition to that, we also do patches and crack filling. So uh we contract annually for road patches and other repairs. Parts of the roads that are too badly damaged to effectively
pothole patch uh get um these larger what I'd call paver patches. After an easy open winter, we may spend 75,000 in a year like this one uh on all the various types of uh repairs we do from
crack filling to pa patches and such. Um after a more normal winter where we get the snow and the runoff and the freeze thaw cycles, it could be as high as 125 to 150,000. uh the patches get larger, um if we
haven't resurfaced roads for a significant amount of time or those roads lack the drainage, um we can be on the higher end of that uh on a typical year. Um so that is one place where we as we bring these roads
up to a standard, we have seen a drop off in what we spend on repairs uh even with a bad winter. So, hopefully we can get it won't probably won't drop off because of inflation, but at least we'll be holding it flat. Um, some things that affect
um, uh, road damage, uh, poor drainage. Uh, we're about to dig into that more heavily here as we move through the slides. Uh, poor design and construction. We've been talking about that for this last several minutes. if you don't have underground drainage, if you have pavement that's too thin, too
narrow of a road, so people are driving off the edge of it. Um, heavy salt usage, um, you can see that all the time. It causes the water to not freeze back in the winter and it'll get in. So, it allows it to
get into the cracks of the road and the freeze thaw in conjunction with the salt will lift. And so if you go down a road for instance that has uh concrete, it's made of concrete as opposed to asphalt even more. That's where you get the bump bump bump. So the the salt is definitely
uh uh accelerating uh road damage, overweight vehicles. This is a big one and one that we're trying to address uh in a more practical way. We do put up signage every year limiting the weights of trucks. We're trying to increase the
design of our roads to handle heavier loads so that if people can still use them who do have to do commercial activities uh even in the spring, but if somebody does happen to use them is overweight, they won't do as much damage. Uh and then age. Age is
the other thing that affects um seasonal road repairs. Um so to summarize that um uh for pothole patching annually we spend on the low end between labor and materials $18,000. The high end it can be
55688. Um add in contracted patches and repairs and we can spend up to $200,000 on uh some repairs that are preventable. My conclusion to that is is it pays to install adequate drainage systems in our roads. And I'm just going to show you
now uh some places where there isn't adequate drainage. Now, this is one of our newer roads, but it was one where the council decided that um they didn't want to tackle a drainage project. They didn't put in the Yes, there's curb here, but it doesn't have the drainage structures. They didn't address the base
underneath. And so, a lot of people are familiar with this area in front of the post office. This is a perennial complaint here. There's Anderson's I thought did a fantastic job getting the water to flow here without drainage structures, but in the wintertime
especially, um ice will build up kind of in front of the doors of Main Street where you come around that curb and that causes water to back up in front of uh the post office. um had we been able to put the
drainage in properly that pot that um ponding of water wouldn't occur there. Um and that's that's a problem that I think a lot of citizens can relate to. So I just wanted to put that slide in here even though it's not currently on our uh two road bonds that we're
considering. Um this is what I was talking about with the drainage in front of the school. Again, it has curb and gutter, but it's it's old. This is an old county road 18 for those who don't know. Um, and I just wanted you to be able to see uh some of the issues with
the drainage here. This was uh after a rain event we had last year. This another view of the same thing and you can see it gets to right up to the same height as the curb. So there there would have to be some in addition to fixing the sidewalks, the
curb and the uh drain structure underneath would have to be updated. Now, I've had some cons discussions with folks on Westland that said that they don't have a drainage problem. They don't the road is fine. Um, this is looking down West London. Now, to be
fair, this is near Grand View, so this this is probably the worst end of it. But, uh, I do have some more slides that show that it it exists the length of it. Um, this is further down. Um, you're
looking west here and you can see the water ponds on both sides. There's nowhere for it really to go. It has to wait for it can seep seep away in the dirt on either side. Uh, this is further. This is outside the resort. You can see on the right hand side the water collects and
it will sit there for a fair amount of time. If this was winter, it would go nowhere. It would sit there and destroy the pavement. Um, one thing you'll notice with roads like like this, often the road is used as the conduit for storm water. It's
lowest point. Uh, the property on both sides is higher than the road. Uh, this would be a design flaw. This just further examples. As I'm driving further down the road, you can see another area where it
collects a little further. Same thing. Um this is moving into Church Street which is on will be on um the 27 road bond. Um Church Street is another one where it's it's the conduit for the for the
storm water. And this pond will happen every time we get a significant rain. This is just looking to the north on Church Street in front of this church. Uh this to your right is City Hall Street. Kind of showing where it's
coming from there. Just a little bit more on Church Street. Um now here's where um some I I would call it less than effective uh drainage products were installed.
It's not terrible, but it just it it isn't effective, especially for heavily traveled road like Ncomomas and Forest. This is in in Grand View. This would be one of the areas we'd be looking to improve. Um, the French drain has been an improvement from what was there before,
but still it doesn't uh keep the water off the roadway as you can see here. And you see there's ponding in several areas along here. And if if you were to come with me out there, you that is a rough section of road. There's a lot been a lot of repairs on this over the years, mostly because of pavement
busts up. Some of it's from construction with some of the uh new buildings Grand View has put in, but a lot of it is the road's very narrow. People drive off the edge and in this case there's also water damage. This is looking down Ncomomas, and you're actually looking at one of
our patches right there in the center of your screen. And you can see the water still collects there. And as you move towards us, um you can see that there's probably going to have to be another new patch there on the edge of the old patch. Well, that's kind of what's
happening with a lot of these roads on the road bond is it's patches on top of patches and pothole repairs. move further down the comus just to show the same thing on kind of getting to be
repetitive. Now, this is kind of an interesting one. So, I'm just going to kind of point something out. Um, and the water's being used as the drainage. So, it's coming along the edge and it's actually spilled across here. You can see the condition of that river
of water. This is where it has to kind of see. Yeah. I mean, batuminous pavement is really not designed to carry water. It just after over time it degrades or basically spalls away the the fines and
they have asphalt from the surface and over time it just yeah doesn't be it's no it becomes no good after a while and this is just another view of it. Um you can see lots
of potholes that have been repaired here. This is a patch that's been put in. Here's another patch been put in. This little piece here is a trail that has on
there. Water nice here finds the seed. That's it. I thought I I had a newer version of this, but So, one of the other things that I did I have a slide for, but it isn't in this presentation is there's also flooded
manholes. And so, what happens with that is it it becomes what MPCA would call ini water. So, basically, we're sending clean water to our sewer treatment plant. When we do that, there's an operational expense to treat clean
water. we don't need to treat the clean water if we just keep it away from those manholes. So, that would be one other reason we'd want to repair um or provide for storm water removal to keep it off the roadway to
keep it from flooding the sanit sanitary sewer manuals. Um think if there was anything else I wanted to cover with this. I think that's about it for my presentation. And I guess if anybody has any questions or thoughts
on on that, this is on road bonds. I'm just going to go back a little bit. PFM, we've always used those them in the past for we've used them for a very long time. Um that's going back to when Herold was the mayor. All right. So
maybe even before that. I I longer than I've been with the city. They've been here at one form or another. Okay. That's a nice little cost, isn't it? What's that? That's a nice little cost.
It maybe is, but um I think I think they give us information that saves us money more than it costs, right? So, it's worth it. Keeps us from making mistakes. Uh helps us uh get the bonds in the first
place. I think it's a necessity. All I have. No, thank you. Definitely a big topic and like I say, it's going to be what we've got to spend the most money on at some point over the next several years. So, the more information we can know, the better we can make decisions, I
think. Yeah. Yeah. So, just to be aware, this was my annual report and this is I just talk about the burning topics of the department and so obviously the two road bonds and then lift station one and the burning issues and I thought this would be a good place to discuss those or open it up a little bit, give people
in the community a little bit familiar with what we're trying to to do. So, thank you. Appreciate it, man. Anything else? Okay. Now we'll move on to C
uh or D actually. D is uh discussion uh with the city administrator transition decisions and um materials provided. So um I don't know actually Kiki if you have a I can send
that down for a copy of Kiki too. Um so with this topic um we're obviously in the transition stage. Uh just to recap um for everybody at the last um city
council meeting um Kiki was assigned the duties and responsibilities for the city administrator on an interimm basis. Um we also online with us have um what what was the length of the interim
I was that six month we didn't there is no defined length okay so until we get a new yeah so there's no defined length it's just the start of the process and so um the city labor attorney and we have them online correct Kiki or Joe I
can jump in too because I've been working with them on on this as well if you'd like me to. Yep, if you want. Yeah, perfect. So, Angel's on from our uh our labor attorney firm, Flity and Hood. Um and we have had multiple conversations with both her and Brandon
who was not able to be here tonight. Um but what what we discussed at our last council meeting and voted on was that on an interim basis, but that the timeline was not defined. um that Kiki would assume duties and
responsibilities related to um the city administrator role, but those also had to be defined after um in working with the personnel. But one of the things that was discussed that I think we should just um motion here right away is
that there would be a temporary pay differential for Kiki for the duration that she is assuming the duties and responsibilities on a trans transitional basis here uh or interim basis of the
city administrator role. And so we did um Joe and I actually did speak with Kiki about that. We looked at the pay scales of where she currently is as city clerk and then also where uh our previous city administrator Jenny was at. But again, it's not fully taking on
the role, right? It's just this interim and and some duties and responsibilities, not 100% of the position. Um and so what we came to was that there would be a differential there of $1041 per hour uh which would be
annualized backdating it effective to our last meeting which was April 16th. Um and so the sum of the differential um and Kiki's hourly wage annualized would be her salary prorated weekly effective again backdating to April 16th. So
that's that's a clear one that I think um we wanted to come back and address. And so if the council would entertain, I would make a motion that based on that understanding reach between the city and Kiki um that backdating again to April
16th, she would receive that additional pay of differential of $1041 per hour annualized again back dating to April 16, 2025. I'll second that motion. Any further discussion on it?
And this is what's laid out in the information ahead of you. Any other discussion on that? Okay. Go ahead and we'll vote on that. So, Jesse, we are we do a roll call vote?
Yeah, we'll do a roll call vote on I I I I Okay, motion carries. Do you want to continue, Jennifer, walking through stuff? Yeah. So, okay.
Then the second item was um and I think this was shared or distributed with all of you in an email um maybe last week or the week prior. Um, so I sat down with all the department heads. Um, I guess maybe it was April 17th or April 18th.
Um, just to do kind of like a roundroin just open candid discussion from folks um, as to their perspective as it relates to kind of this transitory time and just in general what what staff's thoughts were about um, the governing
structure in the city of Niswah. Right. The city has been operating under a structure of a city administrator for some time, but previously the city had operated under a clerk structure. And the feedback from all of the department
heads who were a part of that meeting with the exception of one felt that um they thought that the city could consider looking at operating under a a clerk structure again. that we have very capable department heads of different
departments that you know are were hired because of their expertise and knowledge to do their jobs and that maybe that added layer of um I guess employee bureaucracy wasn't necessarily needed.
Um and so the the takeaway from that from again not every it wasn't it wasn't unanimous. There was one department head that that didn't feel that way was, you know, could we could the city consider trying um going without a city administrator and just letting folks do
their job letting the city operate and see how that works. Um and again, that's that's not a decision that staff would make in that meeting or, you know, I just wanted to share that feedback with all of you. It's a decision council would have to make and not even saying that it has to be made today, but just
wanted to be transparent and share that. Um, and also like over the past two weeks, and again, we were all kind of operating and moving in the moment on April 16th, if you'll remember. So, like motions were being made on the fly. People were moving in real time. Dialogue was happening very fast and
feverishly. Um but now that there's been like a few weeks to just kind of you know level set right let things kind of fall into place there have been additional discussions around that about um you know Kiki she has a full-time job
as city clerk and she has you know offered and did step up at that meeting to assume duties and responsibilities but making sure that we're not causing unnecessary disruption on city operations putting more burden on city staff and not creating
unnecessary confusion uh around the components as our ordinances are written and as the city administrator job description is um outlined. So, in talking with our labor attorney, Joe and I as personnel liaison, um, one of the
discussion points that came up today was also to, um, again, we talked about we assign the city clerk or the city administrator duties and responsibilities on an interim basis um, to Kiki, but also that to understand
that um, effective like let's call it today that um, Kiki would have these duties and responsibilities of s city administrator only to the extent that's necessary and required at this point by the city and after meeting and
discussing with both Joe and I as personnel liaison prior to performing these necessary duties and responsibilities so we don't create more confusion chaos um unnecessary uncertainty within staff um if that
makes sense and Joe I don't know if I missed anything on that part specific part of the conversation that you want to add on to or Angel um our labor attorney who was on the call. Um and maybe we hit on it a little bit already previously with like the
$15,000 increase and stuff. So there were a few topics specifically discussed like that in the way that um Angel step in if I say something incorrect. The way that the policies or the um
um I'm looking for the right word. The the ordinances maybe not ordinances. What's the word I'm looking for? The city code of ordinances. There's a specific one. Yeah. Yeah. So, the way that that
language is currently written um um kind of needs to be um reworked before we could actually vote on something like that the way that it's currently set up. And
so having the legal council guide us on this, you know, um kind of that's what we're looking at. How can we do this? How can we make it the most efficient to operate now for city departments as we
move forward, you know, how does it work where it doesn't overwhelm Kiki? you know, kind of um helps get the ball rolling is kind of what we're looking at and and how we move ahead in the quickest manner. Back
to maybe Mark's first question like how long I think our goal right now in the discussion kind of um starting to do a deep dive in this. We want to move quickly. Um Joe, did every did the council get a
copy of the privileged and confidential memo from the Yeah. Yep. So that's that's all sitting right right in front of us. So kind of explaining maybe some of the stuff that isn't in there. A lot of this stuff needs to be looked at because of the way the interm is set up.
Um to keep that as short as possible for everybody's benefit and move ahead, I guess. and then to um be able to explore what needs done to c to change some of that language. Is that kind of correct, Angel? Do you have anything to
add to that? Yeah, I think you pretty much covered it all. But the Yeah, the way the city code is currently set up, there's a purchasing purchasing policy. Um but this will have to be addressed later discussions based on the trajectory of this meeting and then future discussions that Brandon Fitz
Simmons and I will have with Mayor Carneahan. and then um you Joe during those uh personnel discussions. So Okay. So do you want Joe, do you want me to read off the motion or Yeah. So I think
you know um if you want to read off the next motion. Yeah. So then the second motion to follow up on this portion of the discussion. So, I will move that effective April 30th, 2025, um, city clerk Kiki is assigned to perform um,
duties and responsibilities of city administrator only to the extent necessary and only after she meets and discusses with myself and Joe Hall as personnel liaison prior to performing each necessary duty and responsibility.
Um, and the second part of that is that Joe and I would continue communicating with Kiki on this assignment and consulting our labor attorney. I'll second. Any further discussion on
this? Okay. So, I think move ahead again with the roll call vote. I I I I Okay, motion carries. Do you want to continue, Jennifer?
Yeah. So, then the last part of this you guys and again we were all kind of like moving so fast in the moment last time was that there is an opportunity here as well for the city to explore an outside independent um third party if you will.
I don't know if the, you know, the title you call it a a independent uh interim full administrator slash internal consultant, but basically someone that would be able to come in um
fairly quickly, right? So we could we could we could move Kiki out of this interim as quickly as possible so she can focus on on her core duties, which she absolutely has a lot on her plate there. um and get someone that can come in and actually take a look at, you
know, the city governance structure, explore different pathways and options and what those impacts would look like. Um present that back to council for different consideration models and whatnot. And so that's what that that
last motion in this memo was specifically about. Um, and in speaking with our labor attorneys, um, and Angel, you can expand upon this more and Joe, jump in if I'm missing anything. They have indicated that they've walked a lot of cities through, uh, transitory
periods like this. And there are a lot of people ready to go on the bench like retirees that you know don't necessarily have any stake in the game but are there just to really help cities assess assess their governing structure and look at things and find ways you know how can
the city operate most efficiently. Right? When you have a change like this that's your opportunity to kind of have a opportunity on both ends. Right? someone that can come in and and help fill a gap but also provide a different consultancy level. Um, and so that's
what the last motion is related to, but Angel, you should chime in and Joe if I missed anything from our conversations. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just going to add in quick. Um, we've worked with, as Mayor Carneahan mentioned, we worked with several that just come in. They
It's a good way to have a neutral basis looking out at looking at from the outside in. they provide um just a little bit more concrete advice on how to manage things. Um it's an option that can be discussed later on. Again, not necessarily needs to be discussed during
this meeting, but it's something that can be considered. Yeah, for sure. and basically going through this process. Um, myself and Jennifer, we've had now many meetings, conversations with the attorneys, you
know, and really, you know, as presented in front of you, you know, guiding the correct way to go through this. um and the correct steps to be taken and even you know once again the example of giving some power back to department heads and stuff and the correct steps
that we need to go through as a city to do that. Um um there's stuff that's starting to jump out at us that we need somebody um internally to start working on some of those provisions to make some of that
happen. And so taking this next step um for us to start looking for that would be the next course of action I guess to keep going down this road. So um so then the motion for that last or
third portion would be um I guess I will move that myself and again Joe as personnel liaison are designated to explore options to facilitate the city administrator transition.
I'll second that again. Only piece I excuse me the only piece I have to ask on that is are we moving forward to explore options to facilitate the city administer transition with the notion of not having a future city
administrator. It's to explore all options all and every options. But um really what it does is um like Jennifer had mentioned um our attorneys have worked with a lot
of different cities through this and to find an outside person to come in and actually help us do an evaluation of what would be best and consulting. Yeah. A consultant or an interimm thing. Angel, if you want to speak to this, but
it's to explore every option in finding somebody to help come in. And so that decision, Jesse, isn't what we're talking about. It's we're still four or five steps before that. It's just the ability for
us to work with the city attorneys to help find somebody to come in to help us make those decisions as we move forward. Yeah, you're correct, Joe. I think it's just for now opening that discussion to be had at
future meetings. Um providing, you know, uh other options potentially in the future. So, for right now, it's just to allow for that discussion to be had. Thank you. Does that clarify? Yeah. So it's just this is just the first what we're kind
of learning is this process is going to be baby steps. Yes it is. So okay kind of the process that we're going through. Roll call. So roll call again. I I I
motion approved. Okay. Jennifer, anything else you want to follow up with? No. Thank you, Angel. Of course. Thank you. So, um, with that, I'll make a
motion to adjurnn. Second. All those in favor? I I Thank you.