Great. Alright. We're ready. Welcome to the City of Northfield Council work session this evening. I will call this meeting to order and request a roll call. Mayor Zweifel? Here. Council member Peterson White? Here. Councilor Soukup? Here. Councilor Beamer? Here. Councilor Dahlen? Here. Councilor Holmes? Here. Councilor Ness? Here. Fantastic. We have just one regular agenda item tonight for our work session, which is a budget, a budget extravaganza. Yeah. Administrator Marjorie, are you kicking it off? Thank you, mayor, member, city council. So this afternoon we sent you a supplemental memo,
which is basically the presentation, for this evening. I would say about, I don't know, I didn't count where it started, but the back half of the slide deck is mainly there as informational background for you. So we're not planning on going through all of the slides as part of that. So we'll get through basically the policy discussion section of the slides, and then the intention wasn't to go to the rest of them. We could certainly get to those if you'd like to. Alright. I'm trying not to move here on the slide. I don't think it slid in there. Maybe that worked.
Alright. For those of you in person, we did print some of the slides, but not all of them in case we we thought some of this might be handy, but didn't wanna overwhelm you with all of them printed. So there were two sections. Some of the sections were covering on the property tax levy options and then some policy direction feedback should the council, at that stage, the mayor will facilitate some discussion if the council is comfortable to give some feedback this evening or not. I did just want to open by saying, thank you. We do have Brenda Anglestead, the finance director, and some of our department directors, here this evening.
In case there are questions later in the agenda, they'll be here to help support that, but otherwise, I'll be leading the presentation this evening. Jordan Hansen, our budget analyst, who has been extremely helpful in doing this work is not here this evening, but has been tremendously helpful. I would say that the information that you got today, had we not had a budget analyst, I'm pretty confident to say we'd be lucky to have this information available by September, this work session. And certainly would have liked to have this a little bit more in advance this evening, but might be helpful also to present it and explain it as you see it
too might be helpful as well. And this is certainly a step in the process, which I'll cover later, where we do have some additional number of steps ahead of us. So tonight's agenda, primarily kind of quickly going through the budget timeline, heaviest pieces on some of the preliminary analysis on some property tax levy and budget options based on some feedback we got from you previously, and then kind of next steps for particularly the September work session and heading into a preliminary levy in September. And again, we do have some background information for reference related to tax base comparable cities and
general fund and citywide levy. I had intended to have a little bit of additional information about some of the work plans that staff are currently working on, but due to time, preparation, we'll continue some of that conversation at a future meeting. So I'll be working with the mayor to program an appropriate time for some feedback on, some of that related to, the work that we're doing on boards and making sure we're in alignment with some of the council's interest on that. The intention would be to go through the full slide deck and then turn it back to the mayor unless the mayor would like to at any point facilitate any feedback on it, but that's generally the direction.
Alright. So again, we've had a kickoff on our timeline here. So we're currently at the August work session. July, we had some initial high level roll up, background information that we have presented to you. Then we received some feedback on it. A key date that we're heading into is a preliminary tax levy at the September where we'd have a maximum property tax levy that would go out in the tax statements in November. And the budget can go up or down at that point, but would be adjusted with that time. We are planning on a
work session in September on the sixteenth that we would take some of the feedback tonight and then have more detail that we'd be refining for your feedback at that point. Still expect to have significant discussion around the budget and particularly the levy related impacts, but we'll also have utility rates planned to be at that meeting as well that we'll be covering. We're doing some updates on our five year utility rates and that's the staff's in the middle of working on that currently with those funds. Alright. So again, I do wanna emphasize tonight, this is just another step in the process.
So we have significantly more time for added changes. Staff's continuing to refine, including the options that were presented this evening. There's a lot of detail even though it's kind of rolled up into some summary. There's been a lot of work in detail behind the scenes that are included to that. So we do want to emphasize the openness to other ideas and brainstorming potential other adjustments related to revenues expenses as we work on the budget together. So I'm gonna roll into the current options that we're putting together based on some
of the property tax levy items that we presented at the previous meeting. At the prior meeting that we the option a at the bottom of the slide where we took all of the individual department requests and rolled them up without really a broad internal discussion around what those impacts were. We basically are transparent and share what the requests are of the staffing input and looking at line by line, looking at strategic priorities and business that we're doing. It rolled up to an overall property tax levy, of about 17.8%
total. Based on those numbers that came in of that amount, we knew the debt that we have was pretty much fixed. We had debt rolling off that but for the ice arena project that was approved, we would actually had a slight decrease in the debt. But that's driving about an 8% increase on its own. And so the staff request coming in from an operating standpoint would have been an additional 9.4% roughly. That option is currently off the table. We really haven't done any review on that, but we're looking at the four options on the top of the screen.
The 14.5% number was one that was based on the end of the year last year forecasting that we were looking at based on what we were projecting potentially expenses to be including debt and operating was also the number that we had had right before some of that ice arena decision was happening as well. So we do have some options that show, that which from an operating standpoint separate from debt would be about total expensing, total increase of 6.1% on that option. The other two, we received feedback on that was helpful for staff to to to really work to
come back with some alternatives since we've got a package of options for you. But, again, we're not wed to those that we did put together a package of them, but should be helpful at least understanding maybe the scope and and some of the options that we brought forward related to, impacts that we would have to try and bring that number down from the original department request. But with that one, total levy dollars supporting those expenditure increases with the debt to keep it at 9.9 would be about 1.5% total levy available for all other, use, for all other needs and operations.
And then option d, if we went to a 3% total tax levy, would mean we'd have to actually go decrease the tax levy supported by about 5.4%, which represents about a 14.9 decrease from the original roll up on the, funds. So as I go through those, these are kind of the three options that we'll be focusing on on some potential options that we have that we've been looking into. On the revenue side, this is an initial brainstorm that we've had of, additional revenues that we'd be exploring related to alternative revenue options.
Just a reminder too on our strategic plan, exploring up to three new alternative revenue sources was a goal of the strategic plan that we'd be working on. And a couple of those that maybe are new or amended, I guess, they're on the first list is the we did this is a relatively small income that we have, but I do think it has added benefit for intergovernmental operations that we did approve the new operational agreement with Dundas where we're providing buildings inspection services for Dundas.
So we think that will be helpful for builders, in the area who often, do work both in Northfield and Dundas. So that those revenues are built into the budget relatively small, but again, noteworthy. And making progress on the franchise fees, we had a meeting today with Xcel Energy. This was one of the items on the agenda back when roughly I'm trying to remember, 2020 or so. The city, eliminated special assessments for street projects at that time and, replaced that revenue loss with, new fees for gas and electric,
users. And at that time that was passed, the intent was to update those rates because under our current agreement with Excel, they have to be fixed dollar amounts. They can't be they can't have, like, percentage based, numbers with them. And so the intent was after a few years was to do an incremental increase to it based on inflation and particularly driven by construction inflation. We're a little behind on that. So we're actually working on proposing new rates that would actually go through 2029 to look at the inflation from the time it was, created out to 2029 where we create fixed rates that would be set until that
date assuming we hit revenue goals. So the revenue goal originally was $1,300,000 We were a little short shy of that in recent years. With the inflationary adjustments, it's about $1,800,000 I believe roughly that we're projecting. So they're working on adjusting those rates to come back to the council and expect to have something, in September for your review, will be the plan for that. There is some delays, so it takes we have to have two ordinance readings and would, have a ninety day notice after that that they have to send to their customers
as part of the process. So if we hit that timeline, we'll be into early, 2026 related to those revenue adjustments. So our intent is to proceed ahead with that as planned in the past. The other ones on the list, are on your screen, college voluntary donation. We did have an assignment of few council members that got put on a special committee to to give feedback to staff related to discussions with the colleges about that, brainstorm a list of other items, potentially exploring a conversation with the county in the future related to partnership on their contributions on the library.
Park dedication fees is under analysis. That hasn't been looked at for a significant amount of time. Code enforcement fines, administrative citations that you can do for, low level traffic violations and parking issues that the police department potentially could do. Potentially some parking charges in the downtown parking lots, and as well as parking permit fees in the residential areas, potentially for processing fees related to those. Legislatively, continuing to advocate for franchise fees on broadband and possibly municipal cannabis as a conversation in the future potentially for the council as well to consider.
So I would say for the most part, these are gonna probably require some time, so likely not to have immediate impacts in 2026, but we're gonna add these to the list to research. We'll continue to brainstorm if there are potentially others. Again, it doesn't commit us to these, but are these are the lists so far that we've kind of started to generate, related to revenue opportunities that we'd be bringing forward, which is why we're gonna be probably more focused on particularly the property tax levy related funds on those, expenditure sides and the revenue options are probably not gonna be relying on significantly new
revenue, at least for 2026. On these slides that are gonna be coming forward, again, these I just wanna emphasize again that this is an initial list and summary on the slides. We've been working with the department directors. They've been working with their staff, related to ideas of potential reductions that we could do based on the initial roll up. These lists are still need some refinement even on the ones that we've got listed on these, but, this is at this point anyway a structured framework of some options to come forward. We're gonna continue to look at, those at a future date. And, no later than September work session,
we're gonna have more details for you, to provide back. We're even at a staffing level right now. We identify under some of these options some reductions in staffing levels. They're at a high level right now, but I would say based on the feedback of the council and these options, we will be much more specific in September, but we're working through some of those details and also wanna be respectful of communications with our internal staffing team related to awareness of these conversations. So we're also being sensitive to that. So the the option of the 14 and a half percent, so we'll start with the highest number on the option b and go through the lower dollar amounts on options
c and d. And again, there's probably a lot to digest. So if you could take notes, if you have questions at the end, or the mayor would be the one to ask if you wanna pursue any interruptions. On that option, again, we're just calling out. This is about 6.1% operating levy, so we're not really focused on the debt at all because those are fixed dollar amounts that are already committed, that we have planned, for the future. There might be some that are pending like the ice arena debts in process right now. It should be closing this week. So maybe we have some slight decreases on that hopefully, but, we'll see how that goes. So in order to get to that point, assuming we don't have revenue offsets,
it's about 578,000 that we're working for to, come up with some reductions in the dollar amounts for that. Translating that to a typical $350,000 home in Northfield, just to put it in some perspective, on the operate the combination of the two of them would translate to about $27 per month total at this higher option c. Operating wise though that it's about, $10 per month, out of that $27 per month increase. Now because there isn't a direct correlation between the increase in the levy and the
individual residential owner because there are other commercial properties that pay different tax rates, there's, what, fifteen, twenty tax rates in the state of Minnesota in different values. So the total percentage change based on that 350,000 home is actually looking at about 13.2% adjustment on this option as well. Alright. So here's a summary. We did group. There's a lot of detail behind this, and we didn't wanna overwhelm with having, like, 20 rows to read through on some of these or even more in some cases. So we did group some together, and I'll I'll verbally explain some of the breakdown on a couple of the items.
But I would say as follow-up, we can get into more detail at a future date about some of the specifics of some of them that we maybe grouped together. But we also wanted them to be in significant chunks that it was, you know, usable. I would say as you look at these slides going through on options c and d, a lot of these base ones will carry over into the future cuts. So we keep the ones, a lot of them in the original, and then we'll add to them as we go through the additional options. So on the, parks, the first line item, a $110,000 reduction from the initial roll up for our parks and facilities funds and then the
funding for the economic development authority and HRA. Most of the dollars on this particular one is gonna be related to, those maintenance funds. In particular, for this particular one, the, there is a, the the parks department or excuse me. The parks and facilities fund still would have an increase from the prior, year related to those maintenance facilities, but would be at a reduced amount from the original roll up with that. The EDNA HRA would have a slight reduction on the overall increase, but would still be funding on that particular one
at the prior year's levels with that. The liquor store currently is we've been transferring in recent years and I've got a number of slides related to the liquor store that we'll cover later, but we've been previously putting in $50,000 a year. We'll talk about it more, but we've been building up more reserves in the liquor store, preparing for a new debt. But this would be suggested to use an additional $100,000 from the liquor store as a one time for 2026 to do a transfer. We really haven't done had the opportunity yet to do the multi year planning components. Actually, hit a couple of the slides that get into that because we haven't done some
adjustments on the debt and maintenance funds. But it would be an additional one time transfer that we're recommending related to the liquor store to help out. Certainly still manageable and, with some of those profits, we expect the fund balance to still potentially grow based on our past year's history. Department of Motor Vehicles would have an additional $12,000 to the operations, the general fund. The state of Minnesota did increase some revenues this last year, so we've allocated some additional dollars for that as well. The discretionary general fund cuts of about 73,000.
The items that we've listed on this one at this point would include fireworks. We do have a multiyear contract, but if we give notice in advance, assuming they haven't purchased actual fireworks for us yet, they would allow a cancellation of that contract. So that's included in in that, in that option. The board and commission, training and holiday socials, we've done a training in October and then a holiday social in December. The training has gotten a decent turnout, but we haven't gotten some of the people attending that we'd like to see. And, you know, feeding people and the presenters has added some costs,
so we included that. I've got a slide on the policy feedback on a number of these actually pursuing to initiate yet this year, to get a jump on them. And on this one, if there's an interest on the fireworks, which we expect based on the feedback of the council on priorities, that certainly is one I would say is discretionary. We would wanna know that so we could give notice to that company. The local list is a community calendar that our communication department's been managing. It does allow people to put to load their own events on that community calendar. It's more robust than, say, the Chamber or CVB community calendars that they do.
CVB focuses on larger events right now, but there is a cost to that. And our thoughts are is to potentially offer that to the CVB chamber to see if they might be interested to take some of that over to have an expanded, use of that. But our the proposal would be to eliminate that service fee that we would have with that. We have been members of the National League of Cities. In recent years, though, we have not had any counselors participating in the National League events. Travel is the biggest cost related to that, but it's been a pretty inactive membership, I would say,
over the last couple of years. So that's one that suggested to go away based on lack of usage. Could be something in the future on any of these, though, to, you know, bring back at a future date. But for now, we've got this included. Human resources, extra video support is included, some supplies, logos for clothing that we might reduce and some more minor professional service expense reductions we've got listed. We kinda grouped a number of those together. Those aren't huge dollars, but are part of that lump. The general fund reduction of 222,000,
some of these, keep in mind, would probably and I can call some of them out, would likely be deferred. So we wouldn't do them for 2026, but we probably wouldn't defer for too long. Library website redesign, was is one that wouldn't have to be done. It was scheduled for some updates, but could be, put off into the future. Ames Park planning, where we had been working with, Bruce Jacobson. There's already been some conceptual plans that have made some pretty good progress that we've already got in our files. And with some of the work related to the dam project, it's actually probably not great timing as we've reevaluated that to do that study and
analysis next year. Probably it'd actually be something to incorporate in that project schedule further down the line if there's a need to do that. But there also is some good concepts already to potentially work with. So that that's included in a reduction on that consulting fee. The we did include some public education around local option sales tax, potential option. I I didn't get the chance to add more information related to local option sales tax and what might be included projects, but that's on my work list to do. We did include some extra dollars for engagement with the public around those,
like education, but we could do that in house, instead. So we took those, included that as a piece to take out. Emergency preparedness siren. So last year was our first year to start planning replacement of those. We did have two go out this year, but we did get them repaired. I would say this is one where this extra one isn't critical. This could be a question for chief Schreepfer if you had wanted to get into that more, but that would be definitely be one where we could put off, but would be one we'd probably likely in 2027 wanna start restart that back to reengage in a replacement plan for our sirens.
And then we do have a number of discretionary expenses within the police department that are bundled in with us as well. The last one on the summary b options, would be 61,000 related to external partners. This one I would wanna say that we do have a increasing cut percentage cut. I'd say this is one where this extra one isn't critical. This could be a question from chief Schreepfer if you had wanted to get into that more, but that would be definitely be one where we could put off but would be Thank you. It's always nice to hear yourself talk. Right? I'm sure everybody loves to hear their voice being replayed back.
Nothing only thing worse is to see yourself on video being replayed back. Alright. So on the external partners, as you see these future, options c and d two, you'll see an increasing percentage. However, full disclosure, we do recognize that some of these probably aren't likely. Why? Because some of these contracts in particular are, for services that they might be not be able to actually perform it for us if we do a partial cut that are fairly significant. But we do wanna keep on the table some of these external partnerships for discussion on potential reductions, based on some of the challenges we have on the savings.
So we can get more into details on that one. So that's an example of these still need some massaging even on these options, but I think it's helping us to give a framework, overall on what the level of cuts to get to these different options are getting at. So HCI who does provide services such as the youth on boards program, that we contract with, they also have helped with Northfield ASAP where they really provide the staffing for that. Those are ones that might be a little challenging. Age friendly, Northfield's a group out doing that work. They have had in past years some cash carryover,
so they probably could look at some reductions for a period of time and be able to manage. That might be one that could could is more likely to be ones that we could do some temporary, reductions or permanent depending on the council's interest. And, so those are a few. Northfield Fire, Northwood Area Fire and Rescue Services is a challenging one as well because we're part of a joint powers agreement. We got the budget request. We're about 75% of their total operational costs. We have to respond back by the September on our commitment to the support the budget. We certainly wanna work in good faith with our partners to be open.
So I have had some preliminary conversations with the chief of, the fire chief who is also here this evening. But there might be able to be some reductions back related to that. To translate that, on the NAFRS, it'd be about a 4% reduction in order for us to realize the savings we've got built into here. There might be some training or things that could be deferred for a period of time. But, otherwise, we'd we'd have to work with them on those potential options. We'll be in conversations more with them. So that's kind of a bundling to get us at the 578,000. This one at this time doesn't have any that would have any direct staffing related
reductions in order to achieve this goal, but we'll get into that here in some slides as we go forward. Option c. So this one would be an overall 9.9% tax levy. Again, that would translate on the operating side to about a $1 per month increase. And again, the debt stays the same at the $17 This would actually translate to a $350,000 house if the value stayed the same to about an 8% increase, based on our current estimates that we have available. We are gonna work on debt schedules that show these options to across different valuations,
both commercial and residential. But for now, we're just focusing on the residential side. Alright. So I, I'll call out the ones I'll quickly jump over, the ones I already covered. But the first item actually expands that. So the, the maintenance funds would have a 50% reduction on the increase that was being recommended. We were working on a multiyear goal to increase dollars into those funds because we knew we had been underfunded on parks, facilities and vehicle equipment fund. They actually added a slide later that I'll show some of the increases that have
been driving our budget increase in recent years has been pretty significantly driven by trying to improve the maintenance of those capital assets that we have and putting more cash into being able to fix those and replace those. But that would cut that in half based on the increase that was planned. The EDHRA actually get into much more significant numbers, which again, the realism of that one probably has to be looked at. But that one is looking at a 25% reduction from the reduction from the current total levy of the EDHRA. So that together equals about 384,000
from the combination of those increasing reductions on those particular funds. DMV and liquor stores currently the same under this option. One item on the street, trail and sidewalk maintenance is it would actually stay if we did this option, it would actually keep our street, sidewalk and trail maintenance flat from the 2025 to 2026, whereas we did have an increase in the original budget roll up to help expand some of the maintenance on those. One thing to note though is we wouldn't actually going be going backwards because the
state of Minnesota did approve some additional funding that we're get touring maintenance. So the idea is we take the revenue from the state and then offset a decrease on the city's maintenance funds to basically keep it at the same level and not use that extra state money to increase those funds. So it would be an offset to keep it at a similar dollar amount. I do have some the previous presentation that you had, we did talk about absentee validating. This option does have elimination. It's not a huge dollar amount. It's about 16,000. I am predicting that might not be real popular under the option C, but it would probably be something we'd have to look at as option D based
on the significance of those reductions that will come to at the next slide. But again, I think we have more time ahead of us to do some amendments to these, but that would include the elimination of the basically, the early voting, which would mean people would have to go to you could still vote by mail from home, which is now an option in the state. Faribault would also have a facility available unless the county chose to open up an early voting in Northfield. That option would mean the early voting would not be available, if the council chose to do away with that.
The county would also have to pick up the rural areas that Northfield's been taking. In addition to that, they have been compensating us, which we'll talk a little bit more about in some slides ahead. The general fund deferral expenses are the same as the prior slide. The external partners ramps up to a 50% reduction. Again, some of those might not be realistic, but we're working through some of the alternatives there. The last one on staffing reductions, we look at four FTE reductions in staffing. Again, I don't have the specifics for you tonight. We're massaging details of those options around what specifically we do,
but, it isn't it wasn't just approached across the board just to be across the board, but it's actually as we analyze each department. It's gonna be likely that we'll be recommending from each area that we would have, one FTE or somewhere around that that would be reduced from each of the areas. It's actually strategic even though it might feel like we're just doing it across the board. One specifically I wanna call out though is the council, and I'm gonna talk about it in some upcoming slides. The council did add a new position within public works in last year's budgeted option for this year for a public works mechanic position.
So we'd go from one to two mechanics. We did did an internal promotion already for one related to the lead position, and we're in the middle of a process for recruitment of a new one. However, if we're looking at some cuts that would put us in the need for some staffing cuts, we are recommending to pause or eliminate that current process that's in place, to put a hold on that indefinitely based on some so that would be one solution that we'd have is likely doing that. We don't want to add a position and potentially have to cut or eliminate other positions based on some prioritization that we have.
One thing to note on the library, that one would include reduction of library hours to result in some of the savings. So we have example Sunday hours are about eight months of the year, so that would be eliminated, as part of that solution. And might have to eliminate a few other hours as part of the service delivery reduction in order to achieve the staffing reductions with that. And then police and community development, we haven't identified specifically, but we've got some ideas in mind there as well. We would be, again, ramping up some of the analysis and specifics for you to react to because I'm
sure if you're gonna get policy direction on some of these, you're probably gonna wanna know more specifics. But again, this has been a pretty heavy lift on on these options to get it to this point, and we're refining some of it. And we also wanna have some time to be able to talk internally, communications as we bring forward more specifics on some of these options. The option d, the 3% overall tax levy, again, on this one operating from the, we'd actually have to go backwards on our operating levy dollars that we have. Why some slides coming up is because we do have labor contracts for two years and we're at the market midpoint for our existing employees.
We're not seeing out in the market right now other communities doing pay freezes or things. There's not any overall local government aid crisis or anything. So we think in order to continue to attack, tracked, and retain employees, we need to be stuck, you know, with our current, personnel plan. So we are looking at additional reductions with limits our options a little bit more on this one. This would require $2,600,000 in cuts to operating budgets, for this one. On this particular one, the operating impact to the individual homeowner would actually be going going down by $13
per month, even though the debt offsets that. So it'd be a net of $4 per month increase, that people would realize under this one, which would translate to about a 1.8% property tax levy increase, for homeowners under this scenario option d. So on the first line item to get to $722,000 in savings, from our original roll up, It would keep our parks, facilities and vehicle and equipment funded at twenty twenty five levels. Again, I don't know how realistic this next one is. I think it would pretty significantly damage our strategic priorities around growing our tax base
and housing. So again, this thing is far from perfect at this point, but would be reducing about 50% of the total levy of the ED and HRA operations. So that would have to be analyzed. I would say that a lot of those dollars would be those parks facilities certainly would include the ED and HRA as part of that. I haven't had a chance to really dive into some of the actual operational or strategic plan items, but certainly under option d, this is ramping up to a level that's gonna more eat into those priorities in order to continue to do business as usual,
patrolling the streets with the police. It'll probably make some of those strategic priorities much harder to achieve, that the councils identified on the strategic plan. So that would be added conversation we probably have to do with that. We do keep the liquor store contribution at a one time, transfer of a 100,000. We didn't increase that. Potentially, we could do some additional transfers, and we'll talk about another option in a little bit about just eliminating the liquor store operation entirely. But we'll get that into that in a short period of time. DMV is the same. General Fund, we we have, this one, I believe the cuts are equal to on the prior slide.
I'm trying to remember on that one, Brenda, on the trail and maintenance fund, 143,000 to $151 So on that one, we potentially do have a little bit more decrease in our maintenance from 2025 that we would have related to those funds. Deferral of the general fund expenses are the same under option B, and then we'd fully eliminate all funding to external partners and eliminate those programs as part of the solution. NAFR's reduction would be part of that as well. And then the last piece to get us to additional $1,200,000
would have a total of 11 full time equivalent employees, that we'd be reduced. If you look at total of our staffing, about at 110 maybe roughly right now, so it's about a 10 reduction in the overall 11% reduction in our overall staffing levels under this. And keep in mind, if we're looking at tax levy savings, that wouldn't include any of our utility funds. So I haven't run the numbers on only the property tax levy related. So none of those positions would relate to, like, wastewater, drinking water. It would be administration, community development, police,
library would really be the focus of the positions that we'd be looking at for that. So it would be the four that we talked about before, plus an additional seven full time equivalent positions, to be looking at reducing. Again, this one would be a pretty heavy lift. We haven't done we haven't gone nearly as deep into this option about how we would do it, but I would say if the council wants to continue to look at this one, it's gonna take some pretty hard conversations and alternatives to look at this one related to the impact, of those. I think I kinda covered some of those on this slide.
So again, public safety, none of these departments would be able to be there's no way we could realistically not go into multiple areas of these departments to get to that number of reductions. So we'd certainly be looking at police officers. There would have to be some response time impact, so it would take us some time probably to analyze how operations be impacted with that. Library service hours would probably have further reductions on that. We wouldn't be able to probably staff any of the Oasis. Programming cuts related to some of our programming that we have at the library. Public works is a challenging one.
I'll talk a little bit because that department in particular is pretty heavily understaffed currently based on some studies that we've done. So I think they're really cautious about cutting more deeply into that particular department related to operators, but we'll cover that in a slide coming up. And then general government, community development and administration are areas too that we would be looking at with that, but I don't have any specifics this evening. Again, our I don't have a lot on our strategic plan, but again, we would be further analyzing as we come back to you in the future too about how we might be able to achieve some of these items or not.
But again, it'll probably get particularly more challenging as we move from option C to D to really be we might have to look at some significant expectation changes related to our current strategic plan, particularly if we move into that option D. As part of we actually use some of these slides as background that we gave a presentation of the Chamber of Commerce. I am exploring other presentations of the public based on some interest on what's driven some of our spending. We've done the initial kind of look back to about 2020,
but I would say as part of our triaging of our budget analyst work priorities, we are going to look at building a internal expenditure revenue history going back to probably the 2000s to give more of a longer term history of kind of how things have changed over time. It's just right now, we've had them focus more on these immediate preparation of these budget meetings. But long look doing some look back analysis to understand where we've come from and why is on the work list. And then more importantly, I think to understanding where you've been, where we're going to do internal financial management planning is on the list as well.
We are looking at some enhanced budget, presentation materials to receive recognition from GASB in addition to our independent audit that we get awards for, regularly and, also bringing in some of the financial planning that Ehlers have been doing to bring that more in house to have more real time, what if options are on our list too. But we can only get we still won position, in addition to the day to day work that our finance director has and their staff. So we're going to continue to work on that. But at a high level, there's two or three primary areas that have been driving our debt in recent history.
One is capital maintenance funds. So we've been building up the dollars from different sources, including the levy to increase funding into replacing our park equipment that's aging, being able to do things like fix the roof at City Hall that's on our upcoming list, vehicle and equipment fund, which is kind of two steps forward, one step back where the increases that we're seeing on the equipment are so large that we're actually, you know, even though we're adding more dollars, we're kind of going backwards based on what we've seen in recent history on increases. But that's since 2020 to 2025, that's we've increased almost,
dollars 870,000 on that. Debt service has been one too that we've seen debt go up. The biggest driver of that is that street reconstruction cost in particular that we've had hit full reconstructions recently, any street projects have been exceeding inflation for many years. And so even though we've had debt fall off on street projects from, say, fifteen years ago, the new cost of doing the same amount of streets are dramatically more. So we we actually have to levy more to accomplish the same amount that we used to in the past. So that's been a driver of that.
And then staffing levels, our staffing levels are about about back at 2,000 levels that are 2,002 levels. So we've had some down, you know, downward trend after local government aid. City of Northfield did do some significant reductions in staffing. We've been slowly building some of that back. Some of that's been based on independent studies that we've been having done to look at our peer communities. We I'm actually gonna ask to assign some homework for all of you to watch to read some of the reports that we've had in preparation of September and watch some of the video of the past presentations that I think might be helpful from
three of our departments where some staffing analysis has helped, council in the past adjust the service levels. But we're basically back up to that similar number. So this slide just illustrates those back since 2020, primarily focused on, full time equivalent positions that have been added. So through our joint powers, the public safety, public works and administration are the three areas we've had independent studies completed in recent history. Fire department, of course, went to a full time chief. We've got a number of police additions. Public works, has had some positions added as shown on the slide.
Again, the mechanic one, we're actually suggesting to now put a hold on that one. Library oasis a little bit with our outreach coordinator related to our equity work that the city had had as a priority under the two previous strategic plans that we've had some pretty significant increases to diversity and greater representation of the community within our library operations as a result of that. Community development department has had some, primarily a program associate added, but then a little bit of a code enforcement, additional hours we've had on a part time code enforcement person.
And then administration, Again, some of that equity goal, we've added a Spanish translator related to that equity work. It's not fully funded from the property tax levy. Communications fund, is helping to fund some of that. Same thing on the station manager related to our video production work, has has been partially offset by the communications fund. I'm not getting into that fund in a lot of detail, but we are monitoring that one. That's an area of concern with dropping revenue in that area. So even outside of property tax levy pressures, we are looking at potentially having to make some adjustments in the communications area to
offset some of those losses in revenue related to cable access changes with technology that we've had. And the budget analysis has been added, which again has been tremendously helpful even on this initial work. Utility funds not really focused on tonight, but we did add a wastewater planner scheduler on that position. This slide just shows again from back to 2023 now to 2026. Year to year expenses in the general fund, interesting, 100% of the increase in 2023, 2024 was attributed to staffing. This is a combination of maybe new positions,
but also just labor cost increases. So wages and benefits, gross compensation. And then you can see in those prior years. So again, that's where most of the dollars are being driven from is personnel expenses in the general fund. 2824% respectively in the last year for non personnel related expenses. So that's really where most of our costs have gone up. Here's another illustration of that a little bit different showing by accounting fund category that we have, personal expenses, legal fees, training, lease payments. We broke some of those out. But again, really,
I've talked about this anecdotally, but we're translating it to real dollars to be able to illustrate you what some of the changes have been. Because I know we've had some questions come up about what's been driving the increases. So we're just starting to scratch the surface to show some of those trends and what's driving it, but it's primarily those those expenses. Strategic plan, so calling out again in the strategic plan and enhancing service delivery included in some of the actions is actually looking at those studies that were done to say, should we implement any of those or not? So that's part of what we're starting to do now is to determine these studies
were done. Should we make adjustments based on those, adjust our expectations or, so that's why I think it's important to look at those studies because we brought in some external people and looked at other communities in those areas. I'll touch on those in just a couple of slides ahead, but, would ask that you take some time, taking a look at that. Just at a high level, I was just calling out a few slides to just touch a little bit on that. The streets and parks study, again, I've I've I've shared with staff internally, and I think the numbers are showing it that I feel that parks and streets, particularly at the operating level, is an area that's probably our most understaffed,
in my opinion, within the city. And I think the data of the ones that we've done studies have shown that pretty clearly. So, our peer comparisons are probably in about the 23, staffing over about 12. So we've been looking at some adjustments. Now keep in mind, there are nuances and limited data sources we have to work with when these studies were done. Some communities have way more robust recreation programming that we don't really have in Northfield. But I think regardless, the study made some adjustments with those considerations and suggested probably an ideal situation based on expectations of service levels probably need six additional positions.
Didn't think that was affordable at the time that that study was done in 2014, so the council did last year approve the lead mechanic position on that first phase, but we haven't done any of the additional phasing. So just realize that that's where we're at. If you watch the presentation too, there's a lot of there's examples within there too where our former, streets and parks, title Dave helped me with Charlie's Manager? Yeah. Charlie Fredericks. Yeah. Charlie Fredericks when he was here and presented. He'd been doing data tracking related to responsiveness of the department and trying to quantify some of the work assignments. And in that,
it's pretty indicative of some of the things that people sometimes get feedback on related to how responsive are we to complaints that are received. If you watch that video, our service levels are probably not at what some people think they are, but it's also just setting the expectations. Like, a rusted out, I think, basketball hoop took at least three months to come to have enough time to respond to. That's the realistic service levels if you watch some of that. So, again, I think it's also just recognizing what we can actually accomplish with a staffing level. Can we do it? Yep. We have been, but we just also need to be realistic with what our capacity is,
which might be reflective out in the community with weeds and conditions of pothole filling and some of those issues. Administration department, I'm calling you one slide here. It's probably a little hard to read, but, whoops. Let's see here. Just trying to remember how to do the there we go. We do have a retirement coming that we have included in the budget. It's basically budget neutral, for the most part, assuming we do the franchise fees increases. Our HR and communications director who also oversees IT, Michelle Mahold is retired planning to retire next year.
She's been open with that. So we've been doing succession planning. So the current plan would be to transition the assistant to the city administrator to an assistant city administrator title. This is common language to use, but the the position would oversee those areas. So what would be planned would be the assistant to the city administrator would be reorganized into the director of this department. We would have an HR manager who'd be more of a working level, not a director level person working on that. So this would be the new position. The sustainability coordinator through the franchise fee increases and utility fund offset wouldn't have a
property tax levy impact. We go to a full time position. We probably have them working on the building maintenance side of things too related to some of these like solar projects, energy efficiency related to building man, getting more professional related to managing our buildings would probably be part of what they work on as well. The details aren't worked out yet. It would also be dependent on first making sure the council is supportive. But that would be the immediate plan with that. We would not be looking at adding any administrative We would not be looking at adding any administrative assistant. We'd also not be looking at retitling the community relations specialist who's our translator currently.
So we'd be holding off on that. And like I had said earlier, within particularly the communications area, we might also have some other challenges that we might have to look at some other expenditures related to the communications fund overall that might have some impacts operationally. But just calling that one out as well, really not focused on the other areas. We did get the budget analyst hired and those other ones are pretty much in place. The police department was our oldest study. It was done, I believe, when, chief Elliott first came on board in 2019 or it might have been when he was the assistant,
deputy chief. At that time, they had recommendations on adding some positions, patrol officer, sergeant, and some changes on the CSO officer. They were suggesting to actually add some CSO officers, an additional CSO officer, or look at adding some part time ones to build a potential force that would be police officers in training that they aren't certified through patrol. Sorry, chief. I got the terminology wrong there, but, generally speaking, become a licensed officer. It would be those that might be going to school or working to get their, certification to be able to become an officer.
So based on the 2019 study, we're actually at a plus one from this 2019 study on the overall department. We have had some shifts around within the department. But I would say, even though the chief, Schreffer has been looking at some adjustments in the sergeant position and the CSO officers potentially making some changes related to some of these budget solutions. It's a pretty well staffed department based on this study that was done. So I think that would be an area unlike police or excuse me, public works department where they've been pretty understaffed.
We work to add more officers to get to that optimal level and within the overall department as well. And, so we're we're feeling like that's in pretty good shape overall. But again, if we have to look at some of these further reductions, that would have to be part of the solutions, within our public safety department, police department as well. We were asked to take a look at how we might illustrate consulting to explain that. There's been a lot of conversations or speculation maybe within the community about some of those dollars. So our finance director and our budget analyst really kinda independently did this work as
I was focused on other things. This is kinda what they came up with at least at a current option, and we can try and do a deeper dive. But for twenty twenty six, they went through and scoured the budget for what we would call more truly consulting fees that wouldn't be tied to, say, project a capital project. And I'm gonna talk about that on the next slide. So the ones that we identify here are really the ones that are truly more like studies or optional things that aren't leading to a capital project. We didn't include in the terminology of consulting things like cleaning companies and that type of a thing. We're assuming that's more of like a contracted service than it is consulting.
Sorry. I don't I didn't think I'd oh, sorry. I didn't plug in. I think these pop back pretty quickly once we plug them in. I, didn't have my power cord plugged in. Sorry. Rookie mistake there. It's coming back. Alright. Well, thank you. For your patience with me there. Alright. Back to the consulting slide. So the items in red there were identified on earlier slides as cuts that we had on all of the options and, well, yeah, all of the options that we had listed. The ones up above,
I'll I'll quickly go through some of those. We do have a full rewrite of the zoning and subdivision ordinance. We're trying to phase out the language, land development code because that is not common nomenclature in the profession. So we're trying to transition people to zoning code and subdivision ordinance, which is really what it is from a technical standpoint. It's a significant dollar amount, but this is a full complete rewrite and it's they would say that it's very important related to our economic development goals to create more clarity related development, encourage maybe more modern creative ways for development to occur on properties and flexibility.
Mr. Riley would be the one to ask questions if you want to dive deeper into that. That one would be coming right out of the levy. The next ones though are more out of the utility funds. So the next three would not have any benefit to the tax levy, but it would have some maybe very minimal impact to rates, maybe if at all. Currently doing the rate analysis, but when you look at the rates for the wastewater and water fund, these are gonna be pretty minor, costs overall within those funds. But on our Northwest area, we have done a conceptual design to be able to extend a sewer main collector
out to the Northwest area. We do have capacity to attract some industry in that area. But for potential larger users to really develop out that 300 acres, we've done a conceptual design cost estimate. We think it would be very helpful to get to a 30% plan full construction plan set and why. It takes time to do the planning for that. It would identify any easements we'd have to acquire a property. A lot of it's planned to go along along Highway 3 and down 200 And Thirtieth Street. I always forget this at 200 And Fiftieth.
Sorry, Dave. 300 And Twentieth. 300 And Twentieth. Sorry. I think I'm starting to get a little delirious talking here. The 300 And Twentieth, But it would get more project readiness. It would be upfront cost we would incur. And obviously, with a new development, we would hope to collect a chunk or all of those costs from maybe a development depending on the details of that. We think that would be important to put us in a position to be more clearly ready to provide that service. Water is in pretty good shape out there already. We have a water tower planned.
We have some looping that could happen if development demands it, but this is the more complicated one. But on something that could be correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Bennett, might be a three year process to even get to being available. This could cut that timeline down significantly for us to be more responsive to potential development interest, which we've had out that area. And some of that demand interest could require that main to be extended. So we think it's helpful, but might help a tiny bit on rates for people. The next two items are as part of the comprehensive plan update,
there was three areas that were there were some areas of the chapters that weren't updated. The sewer plan and water plan were from six. We didn't include that upfront, but were planned to be added to be updated. The Northwest area is a significant change. There probably are some other changes. It's over twenty years old, so having some updates to those plans would be helpful. I think it does by being in your vision document, it helps support consistency with the comprehensive plan. So if you had a development proposed to go up in that area, that could be potentially a material weakness on your consistency with your development planning if
you don't do this update that there could be some arguments against supporting development. So we do think it would be helpful to do that and be more consistent with what our actual planning has been happening. There's been significant changes on water and sewer. Our growth hasn't been huge since that period of time, but we think that would be valuable. Again, that'd probably be a question for Mr. Bennett and Riley, if you want to dig into that deeper. Really, all the rest of the consulting fees, which are consistent one, are really primarily driven by capital projects. So I'm not getting into a deep dive on this,
but just wanna give it a high level using that project influence chart that we use on, say, street projects pretty consistently. So we do, the comprehensive plan. Then we do five year capital planning. And as you get closer into, like, two years out, so right now we're, you know, in design phase for 2026 for bidding early next year. And then in 2027, that's starting to get more serious. As you move along these two different phases, once you're to the feasibility report like we've done on some 2026 projects that you just approved at your last meeting, that's an area where you dramatically see a shift in the cost.
Construction documents are very expensive. But a lot of times on many of our projects, street projects, almost exclusively, you create an accounting fund for a project that you start incurring expenses as you start ramping into these, one to two year out on the capital plan into the feasibility report where we're basically doing internal cash borrowing for a lot of our projects with the idea that when it leads to construction that we get reimbursed back for those planning expenses later. That's a common practice. Every, you know, vast majority of cities do that.
There might be a very few select ones that just use cash. Dakota County's been doing that historically, but they're now starting to issue debt on their projects. But this is very much the norm. That's why it's so important at different phases that we have support on scoping, and we agree with the scoping as we move into the ordering of the improvement and final plans because those costs drive up significantly and then the ability to change as you get, as you move along these processes get harder. But it is oftentimes an internal fund.
There are some exceptions where we use cash. The water fund, we had cash to work with on the water plant planning. So even though we got to construction document and bidding phase, that was all paid for for cash. As a counterexample, Bridge Square did not. It was planned to be a 2020, six project. So we basically have full construction plans completed. We're ready to roll into bidding. But now, again, you know, change in plans and priorities and sensitivity to property taxes. But we have about 600,000 that's owed based on design work and things on that fund that we're gonna have
to in future years levy back if we don't do them or we'll reimburse ourselves when that construction gets done later. So a lot of those like quote unquote consulting fees are actually engineering fees for projects, design for the documents. In some cases, if you have to go through the heritage preservation commission related to consistency with historic designation in the historic district. Those are added expenses and design and approval processes you have to go through. Sometimes it involves the state or other agencies. If we had those in house services versus consulting, we would probably have substantially more cost for our full time staff use versus using
consultants. We also might not have the right experts to be able to consistently year after year to have those expertise that we need on different projects. And you also might have some ebbs and flows where you might have years where you have a little higher design work that has to get done and then you have a drop off. And it's hard to justify keeping a full time staff in place to do that. So that's why we use consultants. And so the vast majority of those fees again for next year, we identify that really the ones you see on the screen are those truly discretionary ones.
Otherwise, they really roll into project consulting. That if you wanna save money on the consulting related to projects, we'd have to look at the capital plan and probably propose to move back capital projects that are currently under design to save the engineering and design work with that. That's why it's difficult internally. It's difficult to do coding and run reports on these consulting fees because the vast majority of them go into these project funds or an expense out, and they're tied to a capital project. So finance department can maybe look at other ways to illustrate this, but we thought this might be a way just to explain that that we disclosed
to you what we've identified as kind of more optional consulting fees that were requested to be looked at. Zangolsted probably would be somebody to ask that question if you wanted to dig into Alright. We we good mayor to keep rolling. We're heading into liquor store analysis and a few other things, and then we'll get into a policy analysis. Anyone need a a break at this point? We're good. Keep going? Okay. Great. Alright. We've we've also done a deeper dive on the liquor store operations, primarily focused on current operations. Councilor Beamer requested that we take a look at this.
The e d the EDA has had a number of these slides presented, so it's a lot of these are carried forward from that. But our budget analyst and finance director have been working on kinda trying to illustrate these options, that we have as well. So, at a high level, since 2012, the liquor store has generated and has netted $3,100,000 to the city at about 240,000 per year if you look at total true kind of profits, that to the store benefiting the the city. We've never had a case that we're aware of that we've actually lost money, within the liquor store.
So it's been a net gain, to the city. The annual benefit, so we have been recent I'll get a slide here in a minute. This last year, we transferred $50,000 Initially, we were recommending $50,000 transferred to the general fund for this last year. But as I said, we're suggesting an additional transfer. We do have some internal charges for administration and IT services that are built into the operating budget that aren't really aren't easy to see in the financial statements that you see in the audit unless we call those out. But that's about $67,000 benefit that if we didn't have the liquor store,
those would be lost revenues too for the budget. So the total retained profit in the liquor store, increasing the fund balance about 160 $76,000 we've been putting in recent years to the general fund. The impact to all transfers of the general fund would reduce the levy by about 1.7%. In 2024, 0.66% is covering the transfer expense allocation as 1% remained in the liquor fund and built that fund balance. So I've got some illustrations. Before I do that, this last year, the council did kind of reaffirm its commitment to why we're in the liquor business,
but this goes back, predates me. I think it was probably 2015 or 2014, when the council had evaluated whether they wanted to stay in the liquor business or not. And they came to the conclusion that for these reasons, and then we added e last year, controlling the sale of alcohol by limiting the access to the city being the exclusive harder alcohol sales in the city is trying to limit that. We've been trying to research studies that might suggest give more quantitative analysis related to if there's more availability at more places,
could that increase the likelihood that it gets sold to underage people? We haven't found good studies on that yet. We might be looking at, tobacco licensing violations as a good comparative to that though. So that's probably the route where we're making some progress on some analysis that we're doing both internally for our city and looking at other cities. It's gonna take some time though. Supplementing per traditional tax and fee revenues, again, trying to decrease the property tax levy being an economic stimulus to the business district. Because if it's private, they could go anywhere in town or you might not have any private liquor stores
in town potentially. So it would help drive traffic. We have about two to 3,000, door access points per week, to the liquor store. It's it's added benefit to hopefully those people are also spending money in downtown. Being convenient location and then adding the idea, we also need to service our our customers as well to be successful. So, you know, having a good selection right now, we have major accessibility problems for people with disabilities and, challenges with the two different levels. So that's another issue we're trying to work through. A few things just to be aware,
if we go through a privatization and get out of the liquor store, which is I think the policy question being primarily driven at least immediately is, if you discontinue as a municipal just to make sure it's clear you can't start up again. So once you're done, you're done under state law. Licenses would be open up to the market. The maximum statutory authority for liquor license off sales is $565 a year. We could have no licenses or you could have many different, you know, liquor licenses that the market would really determine that. And then our commercial options would follow our zoning code, which would be primarily downtown in the highway district where they could go,
but wouldn't guarantee that it would be in a downtown location. There's real no blue sky value either to the business operation because, again, if you privatize, any business can come in and compete. So you wouldn't really have an asset of Blue Sky to sell based on your current store. You might, might get some interest, but unlikely. So the option that we primarily looked at just to keep it simple was if you closed down discontinued working on the liquor store, keep in mind you would have unemployment benefits for about six months. We have some costs we have for existing employee. Right now our fund balance about $1,900,000
So a good chunk of that, you might eat into costs or shutdown costs. But if we did say a one point five one year, you know, use of those funds, you look at about an 8% tax reduction in 2026, that you'd have. You could also look at selling them the assets of the liquor store and then the Ameriprise Building was purchased with the idea of a redevelopment site to combine the current liquor store and the Ameriprise building that after the liquor store found a new home. We package it together for a new hire and best use for that. We did hear from many developers that it's already a small site with the two
of them together to potentially pull off some redevelopment. So I'd say the options the council would have to sell it together with no development plan. I don't think that's particularly wise financially to just do a fire sale, But you could just have a sell it as is and people can choose what to do. Or b, probably more likely recommendation would be market for a specific development to try and sell it where you have any specific project to replace, what's there. So those would be, two options the council would have if you wanted to, sell the to discontinue our current operation and sell sell that.
Here's a look at my earlier comment related to the total profits. This goes back to 2032. So the green and the orange are those combined administrative charges, for I for green for the administration department. So a portion of, say, finance department, we build a liquor store for some of that overhead cost. IT charges for the computer people that we have, we do an internal charge for that. So that's helping the general fund currently. That that money is in our budget for next year, which would go away, could be covered for one year at least on those transfers of the remaining cash.
The blue shows the transfers out. The council in 2017 to 2018 had an intentional policy decision to increase more of the profits to build up the reserves with the plans for new stores. So there would be a combination of debt and cash to pay for the new operation. Zero property tax support, on that. I just want to make sure that's clear too is that you can't legally use property taxes. You might be able to use it on a short term basis. But Northfield hasn't used property taxes at all and wouldn't on a new store to offset any new store. It would be fully funded by operations.
That would be a separate analysis though that we're that I'm going to get to in a minute that's not really part of this because it needs dependent on any project. So this shows, illustrates that growth in our cash reserves, really building it up for for replacing the store and making investment. We have been intentionally not putting dollars into that building as much as we can. So we've been limping along HVAC systems, not looking at really new carpeting or any of that kind of thing, knowing that the goal is a new store and a demolish plan for the site. So if that changes, that that's been why we've been doing that,
I would say. Trying to be fiscally responsible to prepare for the replacement costs so we wouldn't be fully reliant on debt over time. And if we took those dollars out, we'd be keeping about three months operating reserve as a minimum for a enterprise fund. And the rest could potentially go towards a new store. But again, you wouldn't have to do that. Here's a little bit of an illustration of those two options again on we're making about if you look at our net goal, yes, we've been putting a good chunk of that into retained earnings to build up that reserve.
But let's say you build a new store, chunk of that's going to go towards debt service while you're repaying that portion that cash can't cover the full cost. But then over time, that would be fully realized profits once the debt on a new store would be paid off. In fact, we'd expect it to be a bigger number than that long term. I think I thought it went back to the 80s that they were talking about some changes to the liquor store. But Mr. Riley told me today that he's found some minutes back to 1960 talking about, some investments needing. But I think if Northfield had made some decisions a number of years ago,
you'd been realizing some substantial, profits much beyond what we had today. But again, I know for various reasons that didn't happen. Again, this is one alternative just to show if if the current store were to become private, about $8,200 in property taxes, and a $560 license fee as a comparison. So net loss over time, by privatization. Assumptions could be different, right? I mean, you might have multiple stores. You might not actually have new buildings built. They might be a current tax building that really isn't increasing any. You might have none. You might have the current stores in Dundas ramp up and you might not have
any stores in town. It's hard to predict. But if you wanted to isn't I didn't include that in any of the policy options. But if the council was interested, we could look at getting out of the liquor business, shutting down the current store, transferring those dollars and selling selling those, selling the assets that we have of the buildings as an option. It it would be in about four years though. I was trying to figure out how to talk about that though as the normally, I would talk about a return on investment. This is like what is the how many years would it take to make up that difference though. So in four years, you'd basically have made up those one time uses in dollars that you could to
offset property tax levy. You'd make that up in about four years. So from a financial standpoint, based on the current store, our financial team doesn't see any logical reason to get out of the liquor business if it's financially motivated. There are other reasons that the city has chosen to be into that. But that could be an option to do that. That would help certainly solve some budget increase challenges on the short term. There potentially could be some negative impacts to our bond rating on S and P. We'd certainly try and explain why we were doing it. If it was truly just to solve some short term financial solution and budget challenges,
they would potentially look negatively upon that. But I think we would argue that there was some policy changes around us being in that business, but that would be something that we'd likely have to explain to S and P and might actually benefit if we had a little more time to explain it to them as well versus a short term kind of look at that. I think this one's kind of already been covered on, some of that. One thing I think I wanted to note on this one as well, I thought I had a slide on there, but I must have taken that one out is the, oh, yeah,
it's on the policy question slides. I maybe should have added in here. Currently, where the other part of that resolution was delegating the current area that we're looking at in the new stores at Fifth And Washington, where it would be part of a mixed use development, where the liquor store would be an anchor on the main level and then you look at housing on the upper levels with some parking to be accommodated with both of those operations, maybe some extra to certainly replace the lost parking It's actively used lot now and potentially to accommodate some other users of that.
We do have a developer interested. They presented at the EDA meeting. They're doing a lot more market review of market conditions, determine like the costs and then potential like product that they could offer at the site. Right now they need some significant times. We're looking at coming back in October. If and when there is a if we believe there's a viable option, we would build a financial pro form a tied to those updated costs that we had tied to the liquor store project to be able to show could it cover the cost of construction realistically for a new store,
but we're waiting for the updated numbers to do it in concert with the housing component. I would say if that site doesn't pencil out at this time on the housing components, staff likely would be recommending that we put a pause on the redevelopment project idea on that and not proceed ahead with some partial project with liquor and parking. It would also open up the opportunity to maybe revisit a couple of other locations that we think were viable that might be more simple for the liquor But again, we're intending on all of those. Any new store policy discussion, we would have specific numbers tied to that when we had some realistic cost updates.
We're just not there yet, which is why our analysis is more focused on the existing store. But we certainly expect to have significant analysis if and when that were to happen and a detailed pro form a that could be critiqued at that point in time. But again, kind of on that sequence chart, we don't we don't want to get ahead of ourselves and do a bunch of analysis on something that might not really pencil out anyway on the housing component side. So we're trying to be patient on that. Ms. Angelstead would be a good one to ask questions related to this analysis since she helped to provide an illustration of that. Okay,
this last piece really doesn't have a lot of Volunteers, and interest certainly is helpful in many ways, but there is real operating costs to that, particularly related to productivity on staffing levels that I feel like we're already stressed. And if we have further pressures of taxes, this would probably be an opportune time to reevaluate those. And I would say this is probably a good start to ones that we've internally talked about as possible, options because you look at to provide effective, you know, citizen volunteer boards and commissions,
you have to onboard people. You need to provide some training. Some people might come with board experience. Some might not have none any. So we've been trying to do more training with that. You have staff that have to prepare memos for the boards, do policy feedback. We have the meetings themselves. We have added meeting associates as part of our expenses, though. We're cutting all of those meeting associates out of the budget. There might be AI solutions now to do some minutes or some staff can maybe multitask. We're looking at that as part of the cost savings. Some of the boards we might keep because, we'll be having discussion next week about things like the ED and HRA planning commission
where they actually have independent powers. We still might want some higher level video of the meetings and minute taking as part of that. But, and then you have post meeting work with minutes and follow-up. And if if you have issues with board members, it takes my time sometimes or the mayor's time in the past to have to work with people. So this is a preliminary list that we have with more discussion about streamlining some of that work that might also hopefully open up more time for this council to do maybe some areas of engagement with the community,
as well. Because the council's time is significant as well on some of this, particularly as we've added in recent years more liaisons to boards. So the arts and culture commission is one that we've been internally even separate to budget. We've been talking about this as some of our governance work to shift away from our arts and culture commission. So through the ordinance amendment, we've clarified their role more specifically, which we think is helpful. But under current public art funding process, we do have a separate committee that is created based on the specific project, and we actually think that park process works well.
And there's a lot of the meat and potatoes of the arts and culture commission where there's probably some crossover on that. We have been working more with the, with the Arts Guild as a community partner to maybe take on some of the programming that has been done maybe by the commission. So some of the roles and efforts like Art and City Hall has transitioned over there. And most recently, we've actually contracted for them to help lead lead some of the recent part processes because our our library director is also the staff is the only staff position currently that staffs two boards. My general philosophy is we should have one staff per board and not have multiple
ones and some of those people also have to present to the council sometimes as well, which adds to that workload. So this would allow us to streamline that one to shift some of that out and maybe explore more partnerships with the art guild. HRA duties would be more of an alignment with our strategic plan priorities. The council can serve as the HRA and might provide greater alignment with the council's goals. I've had this in my past work in another city where meetings can be integrated with the council. So you might have if as needed, you might call a pre meeting where you have a 05:00 meeting occasionally. I don't see this as a regular basis.
It might mean more of the actual doing of the work is delegated to staff and doing some engagement. But we would still have to do some check backs with the council, but we think that this would be an efficiency to at least try, to see if that might work well. Recruiting board members takes time and energy too on all of these. That's another piece of it. Parks board looking at eliminating the parks board, integrating more we've been integrating more on our park projects, direct neighborhood engagement with projects that we think is returning some benefits to us. And with our current five year plan, we don't see a huge need based on the park planning that we've done to
do a lot of planning work. We actually probably need to work more on can we build up more funds first where there's more dollars really to work with to be useful for a citizen engagement committee because we also don't want disengaged volunteers to feel like they're not providing meaningful work. And so this has been an area and I would say we've been challenged with finding staff to service this board as well. So we've had people that have been more probably parks maintenance type people that might not always be trained as much as being, like, providing planning work. We just don't have the internal staff
levels to have people that might be better in those planning areas or have the time to do that. So as I talked about Charlie Fredericks, he had the skills and abilities, but with this this level of department analysis, he he didn't have time or energy to actually put into the park board work. And, so that's that's a challenge. Internally on the council, so we've had discussions at the council finance policy committee level about they're really focused only on the policy if there's broader financial analysis that really resides with the full council, not with that committee. So it's primarily like updates on our financial performance,
budget to actual analysis, our investment reports that we provide. There really hasn't been a strong interest on really digging into a lot of the policy updates. It's more being asked to be driven that a staff sees a need to bring that forward. So the recommendation on that one would be to eliminate the finance policy committee that's basically created by resolution. Our finance director would come into the financial reports to do a quarterly update to the council. One of the those reports is the audit. So it'd be basically three updates to you that they would present on a quarterly basis and those other three times a year.
And then we plan on the investment reports to be provided in your packet and then once a year have the investment company come in and give an update on the investments directly to the full council. So it's not going to be huge time savings, but we think would actually be more strategic based on our recent discussions, with them. We could always call an ad hoc committee if we ever needed it for any reason on finances. It might be on whatever the topic might be if we really needed it. Personnel committee internally, that one has been helpful that if there's a deep dive on analyzing any personnel policies that are always under a constant review,
if the state changes laws or the federal government, it can be helpful to have a committee to dig in so that our full council doesn't have to spend the time digging into it, but we think it's kind of been working like this anyways. And we'll call them as needed to maybe package a number of updates together with a committee, keep that structure in place so that we could use the consent agenda currently as we have been doing with that committee. And an ad that I haven't had a chance to talk about or analyze a lot that we have talked about is there ways to have listening sessions. I know some of you are doing it informally, currently, or exploring it, but I would it would be nice to have a more intentional planned group engagement
with the full council. And I think if we go through the changes on the liaisons on the board ordinance that we're doing in combination with these, we think we might be able to open up more time that's limited with the council to maybe do some town hall meetings or listening sessions or maybe there's all kinds of ideas, maybe it's project based. Even if that's monthly or quarterly, we're not really formally organizing that now and we think these things might help us to be able to justify doing some of that where some of you are spending time on these committees or others. So this is kind of an initial list that we have on these.
One thing on the HRA is we've had we have had some of the vacancies start to come up. So another question might be should we look to maybe if there's interest look to partially start to transition some of that as well if we have some vacancies or the mayor is ultimately responsible for those appointments. But, or it might be a way to keep it at a lower vacancy for the remainder of the year, but then transition it over. But that might be a policy discussion as as well if there's interest to do that. Alright. I'll let the mayor decide. I'll quick go through the policy questions that are before you that we posed at
least for tonight if you're comfortable. I know this is a lot of information to digest, and I'll leave that to the mayor to determine your interest on that. I would say any of that can be helpful. We have staff here for if you wanna first do questions on the presentation here. I guess we didn't get into that, but that could be an option too. But some of the policy questions would be overall, as I said, we feel like there's been a lot of brainstorming and options we packaged, but there's a lot more work to do to lead into that preliminary levy, which we currently have one more work session designated.
Of course, we have October and November to finalize things after that. But any kind of feedback, we could be helpful. These are currently the options that we've been working on. We could do a modification of them or keep working on them as is. Do you want us to keep working on option b, c, d, or any of those? I would say d in particular is gonna require, as you probably saw, some of the solutions is gonna require substantial more work. So I hope that if you that's the option you want to do that you are serious about that because it's gonna be that one in particular is gonna be more tricky, to continue to work on solutions,
but we'll look at that. If they were items to be explored and we don't hear feedback and they were packaged in, we'll assume those. Of course, I called out some examples that I've already identified that might be challenging, so we might have them or we might modify them, but any feedback would be helpful. I didn't have the municipal liquor store in any of the solutions, but if there was, interest to explore that option to pursue, closure of our municipal liquor store, I would say that would be one that we would be working more on. But if there isn't interest, with this budget process to really explore closing the liquor store and using those dollars
as a solution, it would be helpful to know that from a majority of the council. Also, we've been currently looking at a one time transfer of 100,000. We might be able to dip into a little bit more, but we're assuming under every option that's there. So we're expecting that we think we can manage with that, but we'd be helpful to know if you didn't think that was an option. And then as I noted earlier, we are kind of on pause for the more comprehensive redevelopment option in October. We'll see how that plays out. I don't really have any new update on that one. But if you had any feedback that you wanted us to share with the EDA
or change our direction on any of that, that resolution could change too. If there's an interest to that, you might want to watch the EDA update by the developer first as part of that work. And I know some of you serve on that committee as well. This is one I feel like we need to probably make some more immediate actions on. Might be others, but these are the ones that come to mind. The recruitment process of the mechanic position based on the options we have, I really feel like we need to stop that process and notify the current applications we have unless you really feel strongly that you do need to stick with that
position. But just realize if we have other positions, our staff recommendation is not to proceed with that one. Now if there is interest in those options, two of the options did have some staff impact. If we have to restart a process, there's interest later to add it back in, we can always do that, but I would rather notify the people and put that on pause now. Fireworks, the sooner we could let them know, the better. Because, again, if they could might be able to argue that they purchased for our contract that they purchased some fireworks. So I'd say the earlier we can notify them if you think that's on the list. I presume that that would probably be on the list as a very discretionary item.
Prior to me coming here, there was a person who had privately received private dollars in the community that did fundraising from the business community or other, volunteer donors. It went away. Just a side note under state law, it's a little bit unusual, but the city cannot legally, seek proactively donations as a city for city services. That's why as an example, the library has a friends of the library nonprofit group that does that advocacy for us. So it isn't an option for staff to be assigned to go out and do fundraising. It's probably not what we do well anyway. But just a side note,
usually if there's some donations on things like sometimes people give to the police department for something, It's on their own initiative that that's usually completed. We can sometimes create a book of things that if people wanna donate to, so that's been discussed, like park benches or something. We could have a book of things to say if you wanna donate a park bench, here's what it is, but you can't go door to door asking people, to donate basically under state law. NLC membership, our clerk identified that even though we had signed up for a membership, they'd give us a prorated discount, if we wanted to terminate it this year.
Then the board and commission training and holiday social, those it would just take it off our list to have to start doing planning for those if there weren't interest. I think we're comfortable that they've been nice to have options but based on I think the cost benefit on those to this point, they probably require a little more work. So we plan on pursuing these unless the council had alternative feedback, but that could be a policy feedback from you. This one I didn't spend as much time on because we covered it last meeting, but again, the the total reduction is only 16,000 if we did away from absentee balloting because we do get money from Rice County
for covering the county portion of that. We did have it in option c and d, but it'd probably more likely shift into option d, because I'm assuming there's probably gonna be support of the council. Open to your feedback on on providing that early balloting or not. However, the staff, we did suggest we could make a ask to the county. We actually listed from it's an addition from the last meeting. Our suggestion might be to ask for an additional 8,000 that might help us save some dollars, So it can't hurt to ask. So, we have that on the list maybe to give you a little more guidance if you are open to us asking for them.
Oops, excuse me. And then another one that, on the training that we had posed this question to you last meeting where we gave Lynette Peterson, the city clerk gave a presentation. We paused on the feedback though to give you till this meeting to get feedback on that one. Another one we feel pretty strongly at a staff point is to have the training sessions in Northfield if we provide that because we have had to pay mileage and food costs for our staff that have gone down there that we think, you know, from a fairness standpoint and based on what Dakota County does, Dakota County does a lot of their training basically is remote.
And they provide more one time trainings available to us that Rice County asked for more. So we think it would be fair to pursue that participation. Lynette can correct me if I'm wrong on anything I stated there on my facts, but that's a last piece. If you had other feedback, we'd certainly take it. I know this is a number of policy questions kind of posed to you that some of them you might have been waiting for and others not. So I'd let the mayor facilitate that. So where do we go from here? We feel like there's been a substantial amount of work done, but we have a lot more to do. Again, we're not wed to any of these,
but hopefully gives you a better framework of what these options might look like. Can they be tinkered with? Absolutely. We are gonna have a utility deeper dive next meeting, but we think the property tax is a really important one too. So we wanna dedicate that meeting to probably those two areas and try and limit other issues on that agenda. So that as you head into the, council meeting on the twenty third, you can feel good about a preliminary budget and levy that's a maximum levy amount. It would be helpful to the more closely to a final levy we can be because we also haven't had a chance to think about it a lot, but we can also start to roll into maybe some engagement with the public for
feedback, based on options. And then also education after preliminary levy is done so that we can get you feedback in October for follow-up discussion in November and adoption of a final levy hopefully in that first meeting in December like we've done in the past. So with that, I'm not getting into all the background information. We did I think most of that was a repeat slides that might be helpful. We might have slid in a couple of extra illustrations that might be helpful for you, but I turn it back to you, mayor, and I probably spoke for an hour and a half or so. So, probably good for you. Yeah, pretty close. Would you like to take a break?
Yes. Everyone says we will break for five, six minutes. Alright. We're gonna call I'm gonna call us back together, and I think the best way to tackle this is to go around the horn, with each question. We're gonna start with question number one, which is the question about, the the tax levy options b, c, and d. So, and we're going to start with councilor Dolan, who's remote on this question. So please indicate, your interest in the various options b, c, and d for the we're just handling that question right now.
We'll have everyone weigh in, then we'll go to the next question. So councilor Dolan. Yeah. Am I on audio? Yes. Yes. Yes, you are. Oh, good. I can't see the video there. I'm not sure why that is. But quickly, in fact, I'm coming out tomorrow with an op ed piece on it that I still support the 3%. And I have four reasons why. Three percent and four reasons why. So I could go into them, but I think, they're pretty understandable. And as I was listening to the presentation, I just think about the 1,500,000 that we have to to save find savings in the budget for in order to
pay for the hockey ring and then went above that. So let's just say 2,000,000 that we have to find savings in the budget for. I I I assume that's doable at least that's to some degree. And so that I wanna stick with 3% has the basis for a discussion, much like the school board, did this last fall. So how's that for a quick answer to move the discussion along, mayor? That's great. Thank you. And then we'll go to councilor Beamer. Thank you. I too wouldn't mind to see a 3%, although I know
what that what that means and what that would entail. So I'm I I think I'm a little bit more inclined for the, the option c, the 9.9%. I do know what that also entails, and that doesn't go unrecognized. I think we owe it to the citizens to to try and keep this as low as we possibly can, based off of what's happened over the la over the past few years. Thank you. Counselor Holmes. Thank you. I think we have I think option c and d create some very drastic cuts when it's actually not drastic times in terms of,
what's actually happening in terms of our market value increase in our homes, LGA staying steady. If you look back at past trends, I don't know if there's ever been a year where we've done an 11% cut on staff, where there hasn't been something drastic in terms of not having LGA or not having something to be able to fund things. So I think that that's a huge while I do think we need to look at things and and be very, and it's gonna be uncomfortable,
I think all three of the options we have are very uncomfortable. I still feel comfortable with option B as a, as a max, and would like to come down from there. But I think we we have clawed to have positions added. And I wasn't on council at the time, but I was very closely working with an organization to add two community development positions in 2019, 2020, I think, and they're because we were so understaffed. And so to lose positions that were fought so hard for to be able to
get us to a level of service, is really, I don't think it's fiscally responsible. And so I think that we have to be forward looking. We have to look ahead. And if we cut off our nose am I getting that wrong nose in spite of our face or our face in spite of our nose, whatever we're gonna cut a lot. If we wanted to keep things low, we should have not voted for a nice arena. So we have to we have to recognize that and recognize, the choices that we've made and how we work with that. And so I continue.
I would love to be at option C, but I don't, but I'm not I I don't like some of the cuts that have been put in there. So I again, I'd go with option B, with the hope and intent that by the time we get to December, we even come down from there. Thank you. And councilor Soka. Thanks. Yeah. This is really tough. I think, looking at these numbers and, in bold is are the are the percentages for the other outside, which means everything but the ice arena debt. And I think if there was an option to raise a levy 6.1%,
given the last several years with option b without the ice arena, that would be really exciting. But we have to recognize that the 8.4% of debt is fixed. And, you know, I know that I'm a broken record at this point, but I said when we were voting on the ice arena and the whole process along the way about how much the association was contributing to that versus the city, that the city would have to cut things because of this one project.
Because there's no way that our levy was gonna pass with such a high increase for one project. So this is where we're at, and it's I think it's really unfortunate. The idea that we're building an ice arena for a very small percentage of people in this town. And in so doing, we're now going to cut library services for everyone in town. The library is not gonna be open on Sunday because we're building an ice arena. Like, this is just a huge bummer. However, the last two budget cycles,
I have been against how high the levy has been. I feel, like, really, really thankful to mister Mardig, miss Englesad, all the department heads for how much work they've done to show us what it looks like to, at this point in time, actually pass a three a 3% levy. And it is it's a astronomical shift in what how the city would be operating. So I'm really thankful for all the work that you all have done to just
show us what what these options are. I I hope that this information beyond the numbers gets out to people in town, because I think all we we usually just talk about the percent number and kinda leave it at that. But, you know, you've done the initial work to show what these various levy increases would mean. And it and it is really, really helpful, at least for me. So, I'm really grateful for that. I think where I'm at,
I where I've been the last couple of years, I would really, really like to see the levy below 10%, and I'm really struggling with what that means because of the ice arena. So to be honest, I I feel like I'm operating within the option c framework, but things like not having the library open on Sundays or, a decrease in the HRA and EDA budget is kind of completely antithetical to our strategic plan of increasing
our commercial industrial tax rate and also increasing housing supply. So, I I don't know. This is I'm going back and forth here because this, the impact of an over, over 10% levy increase on the average resident in Northfield is impactful, and it it does change who can live in this town. And so I think we really I I hope we can really keep that front of mind, but that getting to that number at this point because of the ice arena also
drastically changes the services the city can provide. So I I think I hope I can learn more from other counselors in this discussion, but, yeah, I I I don't know what else to say beyond that. Thank you. Councilor Peterson White. Thank you. Just trying to gather my thoughts here a little bit. I think it's, I think I'd just like to acknowledge that all of us, of course, have heard from constituents that they are not happy with tax increases. And, of course, none of us are happy with tax increases either. I've heard over and over people say that they don't support tax increases.
But unless you also support cuts that we have seen before us today, unless you can choose those cuts and recognize the impact on your community and your constituents that those cuts will have, the impact that on the future of our community that those cuts will have, then the statement is really just political to say, I don't want to raise taxes. And I'm going to push back gently on the on the statement that we can't do these things now because we voted for an ICE arena because we went into that with eyes wide open.
We had abundant information from staff. All of us had the same information about what the cost per household would be for the ice arena. We never pretended the cost would not be what it is. We didn't say, well, we could if we cut the library two days a week and eliminate a huge chunk of funding from our economic development and affordable housing efforts, then we could build a nice arena. That is not how we talked about it. And that is not how we should talk about it now, in my opinion. Except I mean, we should acknowledge that if we want to go with option D that that is
the trade off we're making. We're cutting a huge number of other city services because we don't want to own the fact that we knew the ice arena was expensive. Now I knew the ice arena was expensive, and I voted for it because I want a bright, well equipped future for Northfield, and I think that's what my constituents want as well. And, I think that choosing option c or option d, I I can't support either one because both of them would constitute
cuts that would not just inconvenience our constituents by having a library be closed a couple days a week. And it's not merely an inconvenience that would occur with the library being closed or a raft of other consequences that our library director could certainly share with us from those cuts. But I think we all know how unpopular that would be, so it's an easy one to pick. Right? I think we all know that our constituents would not would not be happy about cutting the library hours. The thing that might be less visible initially to our constituents constituents in the budgets that would be required for Option C and Option D would be the significant cuts,
in our efforts to do economic development and to create and to improve our housing stock and to create more affordable housing opportunities. The cuts in here to those that work, which we have been to borrow Councillor Holmes' word have been clawing our way to get resources for those efforts so that we can have a more balanced tax base so that we can afford the things that our community wants and needs, would be wiped out. So, or at the very least with option C very significantly set back. And I I can't support that.
I think it's penny. I think it's I think it's extremely shortsighted. I think it would probably be a big hit with some folks who whose main goal is for their property taxes to be low for the short term. But when I came on this council thirteen years ago, the main thing that we heard from people about was that we weren't fixing the streets fast enough, that we're not fixing the parks fast enough. We're still drastically understaffed and underfunded in some of those areas, and we have really worked hard over the last decade to make up a lot of ground on those fronts. And people still mostly don't think we're doing enough.
I think you'll hear that if you talk to your constituents. They're not gonna say, yeah. You know what you should cut is public works staff. They I think that there are some cuts here that staff have suggested in option b that I think would be, we could probably figure out how to make them palatable. But I think when we get into option c and d, we're really shooting ourselves in the foot. We're really, damaging our efforts to make our community one that is economically thriving for everyone, in order to get a short term win. So I really hope we don't do that. Thank you. Councilor Ness. Thank you. I'm thinking that I'm leaning toward item c right now.
We do have to stress to everyone that values of the houses are going up in Northfield. And because of that, 4.8, I think, is what our finance director said at one time that the Rice County houses are going up. I'm gonna round it up to five. So half of the 9.9 is because the value of your house went up. Of course, if you look at the option b, it is under 10 because more of that percentage is because your house went up.
So but I'm still would like to see a little more on c. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I'll just say that this is our first look at this, so it's really helpful to hear the reactions about specific things. We will have the option to refine things. A lot of people in the public have been asking us what these cuts would look like, so here they are. So I'm looking forward to hearing from people who've been asking for this and hearing them weigh in now that they're seeing some of the options before us tonight. So my take on this is, I I'm interested specifically in pausing projects until we get the economic development to sort
support them. That's one of the reasons why it's for pausing the Bridge Square, potentially putting off the Ames Mill project until we're further along with the dam removal, and those can be done in concert with each other. So, I see this as an opportunity to review and hone our budget. We have a new council, a new comprehensive plan, a new strategic plan. I would really like us to focus on the new strategic plan, and be strategic with our budgeting in a way, kind of a new we we've been trying to crack the housing and economic development
not for a while. What how many metaphors have we used? Like, nuts and noses and all the things. But, I I would I think it's gonna take the seriousness of an option c where we're saying that the focus is on this strategic plan. And I think one one thing specifically, with the library, and and we have we know we have the we're setting money aside for a liquor store. I would I would rather have the library open than set aside money for the
liquor. I mean, I feel like there are some things within here for us to dig deeper on the next time it it comes back to us. So, that's where I'm at on the policy questions is I'm in the option c. So that gets us to number two. I don't know. Is Peter still out there? Peter, should we, cl do you have any interest in, closing the liquor store? On the liquor store, I would ask staff if they could look again at the numbers for the year end of 2022, 2023, 2024.
Because I look at ABDO and their financial audit of the liquor store profits. I just want to make sure the staff looks at those numbers from ABDO before we discuss what the future of the liquor store is. And then the other thing I would say about the liquor store is just the market's changed dramatically in the last couple of years. So, we need to factor that into our discussion about the future of the liquor store that it operates in a competitive market. Thank you, mayor. Alright. Do we want to handle maybe we should handle the liquor store ones,
cluster them. So would you also like to voice councilor Dahlen your support for a onetime transfer of a thousand $100,000 and, whether or not we should continue exploring the fifth in Washington? I think it's part of the mix because I I see so much that I think could be discussed as potential savings in the budget. So transferring only a 100,000 doesn't really add up to as much as probably our needs to be found in other areas of the budget. So one of my big questions for staff is gonna be,
and I'll write this in an email, are there savings in our use of consultants? Are there any savings there? And I want to go through to this whole idea that expanding the tax base. Yes, we have to fund the community development team to do that. But that's really what we need and expand the tax base and hope that LGA goes up. Otherwise, we're just gonna keep and I'm looking ahead to 2027, 2028, where we'll just have to keep increasing property taxes in Northfield. How's that? That's that's great. Thank you. Councilor Beamer. Thank you.
Yes. I I made this clear for well over a year now. I don't really support the liquor store anymore at this point. I certainly do not, support, investing 6,000,000 plus into moving the liquor store to Fifth And Washington. To me, the location's worse than it is now. It puts it, two blocks further off of Highway 3, two blocks further away from the Saint Olaf campus, maybe a block or two easier for, the Carlton students to get to.
Parking is still a problem that we would get stuck paying for. Some of the proposals that were out there were for us to build a parking ramp in conjunction with some housing at the top of the building. So we're looking at 6,000,000 for a liquor store that we can hope the new store pays for, and then, you know, another 8 or 10,000,000 for a parking ramp paid for by the taxpayers. I think there's some value into squashing the idea,
saving the consultant fees, and not getting any further down the rabbit hole on this one. I'd even suggest that we maybe remove this away, pull this off of the EDA's plate, and put it back on the council to decide on the liquor store. I think taking, 2,000,000 out of the liquor store fund and applying that towards, the hockey levy, which is a twenty year levy. I don't I don't see a problem with that. It buys a levy down. Maybe that helps staff save save a little bit,
of budget cuts over the next couple of years as well. And then we start either looking I'd look at you know, try to recruit some businesses to come to town, to sell it for us. That's kinda where I sit with that. Thank you. Thank you. Counselor Holmes? Yeah. Can I ask a question of mister Martig? Yeah. Of course. About the what's happening in consulting for the EDA? My understanding was from your presentation that there is a developer who is interested in this and was coming back to the EDA, And that there was gonna be a discussion if the housing would be feasible or
not. And that was a discussion that's happening at the EDA. There's no other consulting fees that are happening right now with this? Yeah. I don't believe we aren't expending any consulting fees. Mister Riley, you wanna clarify if you think there's anything you can think of with that? Other other than, like, architect architectural services or other things that are being paid for for the concept, and I think are already, like yeah. I can't think of any consulting fees in addition to what's already been spent on the program. So it's just In the existing contract. Our architect TSP, we've been working with in the past is the current contract that we previously paid
them to. We'll see it through the decision of fifth and Washington. No additional fees and they're not doing any design work right now. The due diligence of developer doing is not involve our consultants at all. So our consultants are basically on hold. We do have them if there are ever project updates, we do invite them in to listen on the meeting, but those fees have already been incurred that so that they that was part of our contract approval last year to see it through the fifth and Washington, decision anyway. Okay. Thank you. On question number two, I'll just say an aside here, just coincidentally,
I was, at some event today, and I met someone. I didn't we didn't we hadn't heard a packet yet, so I didn't know that this question was gonna be on the agenda at all. Just happened to have this conversation. She is a distributor who works with our municipal liquor store. And I did not disclose to her that I was on city council before she provided this information, but she said that our our liquor store is actually quite amazing, that our manager, Mr. Witt does an amazing job. And she said specifically, he thinks about the city first and everything and he has made you so much
money. He has made these decisions that have been so effective for your for your Muni. I she lives in Rochester. I wish we had one. If we could have one just like yours in Northfield, it would be so great. And I said, Oh, that's great. I just happen to be on city council. So, so and I just so happened to have this conversation tonight. So me, I think too, I have zero interest in pursuing the option of closing the liquor store. I think as was shown in the presentation tonight, thank you for that information. I know people have been asking for that detailed information. It is a profitable it is a profitable business,
that pays for itself and that also will continue to pay for itself, and give back to our give back to the levy. So one time fee, one time down payment, one time pay down on the on the ice arena might be nice, but I think the long term again, we leaders need to look forward and we need to be thinking long term. And the impact that we can gain from having this business that sustains itself but then also gives back to the levy is critically important. I support the additional transfer on number three there.
And and if there's more that we can look at there, you know, great. But I think as an initial ask of that $100,000 I support that. And I support the EDA continuing to explore this as my understanding is from the presentation that if it is not if housing isn't viable, in this project, that then we would we would pause it or we might look somewhere else. I support that, especially because it doesn't sound like there's any consulting fees or anything going into that, but that it's looking at how can we then also get potentially sell the current property
build that EDA build up that, the economic diversity that we want and to potentially, impact the tax base by getting that back on the roster, having a business having some sort of development there, and and figuring out other things. So I continue to support number four as well. Thank you. Councilor Soka. Thanks. Yeah. I'm curious to see what, comes forward in October with the EDA, however I lean more toward just in terms of the cost, keeping the liquor store that we have and figuring out if there's any I'm what
I'm really interested in because, well, I'll just say, is having conversation if the October meeting with EDA kind of doesn't really turn up anything. Having a much more thorough work session conversation at the council level with whether or not the fund balance that's been built up can renovate the existing liquor store or not. I know we've talked a little bit about that in the past, but just in terms of making it ADA accessible. If not, I think that that's a much bigger conversation than feedback for tonight in my mind
at least. I would be curious if we can, figure out a solution, and I'm really supportive of the additional transfer. I'd I'd like to figure out a way to move forward and make the transfer larger and more permanent. And so I I guess I I'm not in general in favor of closing the municipal liquor store. However, that, we clearly need to move forward with it as well. Thank you. Councilor Peterson White. I guess I'll just take these in order.
So no. I'm not at all interested in closing the existing liquor store for a number of reasons. One is that I'm a downtown retailer. And I believe that in order to have a thriving, a thriving business district in the downtown, we need anchors in the downtown. And the Muni is one of those. And it also happens to be profitable and contribute to the city's general fund. It also happens to provide us with an excellent way to control the sale of alcohol in the community, which I think is effective. I think it is this is I don't have a lot of data to go on, but I think it seems to me, based on my experience of being a downtown retailer,
it seems extremely unlikely to me that should the Muni close, we would get some other magical unicorn of a downtown liquor store or probably even a liquor store in Northfield because there are two liquor stores in Dundas. That but those two liquor stores in Dundas are not threatening the very profitable business model of the North North Shield Muni. The North Shield Muni is profitable and could be more profitable with a better space. And I think we have ample evidence to that effect. I think there are all kinds of good reasons for the city to stay in
the liquor business, and I would actively oppose its closure, because I think it's good for the city and it's good for the downtown. I, I think I'd probably be okay with a onetime a $100,000 transfer as long as it doesn't permanently negatively affect our options for building a new liquor store. I serve on the EDA. So as to number four, I, you know, I've had a chance to, learn a little bit more about that. I think that it really for me that, that it really depends on whether a developer can make a development there at Fifth
And Washington Pencil out in these difficult times for real estate development. If it can, I think that I have voted several times in support of that as a location for the Muni, and I continue to believe that it would be a great location for the Muni if we can make it a part of a larger redevelopment that would benefit the community in other ways and would cash flow? I probably am not interested in, like, a huge outlay of public dollars to build parking, except insofar as the parking might be associated with the Muni and other spaces that
would exist there, but I think we'd have to go into that, very cautiously. I'm the we already have a TIF district there. I think if it is not possible in this moment in 2025 to make a redevelopment project or pencil out, that I think in the future it likely will be possible, and we can bide our time if this is not the time. If that is the case, that that that that doesn't make sense for a developer without a significant public investment on that site, then I would be interested in looking at alternative sites for the Muni,
many of which we've talked about in the past. I think there probably are we we could put some fresh eyes on that and come up with some interesting options. I I feel very thoroughly convinced after having spent almost a decade reviewing this at council meetings that it does not make sense to renovate the existing building. Personally, I'm willing to cross that option off the list because I think we've really tried to figure out how to do that, and it's not very possible. So, certainly not in a way that would make it ADA compliant, and that's a high priority for me and for staff at the liquor store, I think. So I I hope that we can keep this moving forward.
I think that there's I get that it's tempting to look at that pot of money that the Muni has set aside to build a new Muni as available funds to help solve our budget problem that we have created by voting to build a new ice arena. But that's not what that money is for. And past councils set that money aside in order to invest in a profitable operation of the city of Northfields. And I think, personally, we owe it to the future to stay on that path and make that investment in that profitable operation that also serves the public good in several important ways.
Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Ness? Thank you. I think one of the most informative slides tonight was the bar graph showing ten years or that amount, the 50,000 and it came down from close to a 100, I believe it was. But, and then showing the city expense, 67,000 for administration, which I think is a bargain because there's financial stuff done by the city. And they don't have to hire a financial expert. Yes. They have to put the numbers together.
But, you know, so I and then putting the rest into the excess fund, you know, it it's informative, and it perhaps might even silence some of the social media critics that are saying the liquor store doesn't make any money. Why do you do it? I think if they look at that sheet, that one sheet, they can see, oh, it is making some money. And I've said since day one that the liquor store needs to be on Highway 3.
If you watch traffic in in and out of that liquor store, they pull into the parking lot, walk in the door, buy their stuff, hop in their car, and drive off, or park on Fifth Street, or park in the Water Street lot. Very, very few of them walk from Division Street down to the liquor store. And I'm this is strictly my opinion. Not any public study done on it, but trust me. I park in the liquor store parking lot of fairly often and watch other cars too.
So, and, yes, I would support a 100,000 transfer. You know, it's in the reserve fund right now, and it's not gonna kill a project. I don't think Fifth And Washington is the place for the liquor store. And like I say, it's a drive up thing. People are driving home from work and go, oh, I need a 12 pack. So they pull into the liquor store and drive off. So that's all that I got. Thank you. Thank you. So I'll just add that,
I'm not in favor of closing it right now. I would like to see how, things play out. So and I am in favor of a transfer, and I would be in favor of, even more than a 100,000 if that's what it takes to, get to some of the things, some of our must haves, like keeping the library open on Sundays. And on number four, I will say that if Fifth And Washington doesn't work out, there has been a change in ownership at the family fair we've looked previously,
so that is something that could be reviewed. There's been change in, willingness for changes at the q block. I also like a highway location, but and let's see. One other thing I think I should throw out here because it well, I guess it was on one of the slides, but it's not in our policy questions, is cannabis. So if we're talking about revenue and we're talking about changes in this type of substance, alcohol and cannabis, I'm curious about a cannabis dispensary for the city.
Just throw that out there. Sorry. That was a add on. Someone else can add you can add that on to your next question if you want to jump on that jump on that, bandwagon. It just came I don't know. It it just came to me. So next policy question is oh, yeah. This one's got a couple of questions in it that staff would like to know about now, which would be to terminate the recruitment process immediately for this position, notify the fireworks, League of City. So, when you answer this one, if you could just do thumbs up,
thumbs down, yes, no on each of these. And councilor Dolan, are you still with us? It I think I think he did have something in his time zone wherever he is. Okay. Yeah. Oh, good. I have Oh, you're still here. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. I had my mute button on. I I think there is something a bit strange to go through those the list of what are small amounts, albeit to go towards the savings in the budget. So I would not be in favor of doing any of that because it just seems like it's ill ill conceived or just just like a throw away.
Oh, we can do that. Well, it it there has to be much more thought put into this. So, as a policymaking board, I would like us to just see we will pause on any hiring of new consultants. We will pause on hiring new employees or replacing or filling jobs. That to me is a much better way for us as a policy making board to go at this rather than go thumbs up or down. I'm sorry you say thumbs up or down on individual items that in the end of the day probably won't add up too much money.
I I just find that to be almost impossible. I mean, all of us have ideas about where there could be cuts based on where we think the vision we have for our vision of the city. And and all those that were listed out in the PowerPoint, I just didn't think matched up with the that vision that we all want to have and implement on. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I'll just, state again that, staff has pulled these out specifically because if we want to take action now, some of these could reduce, our current spending and that action needs to be taken now, on these items specifically.
That's why they're pulled out for us. I'm I'm I'm sorry. Did did you wanna change your answer, councilor Nolan? Well, right. I mean, yes. Right. I I still think that if with with more tomorrow or next week, I would say to staff to maybe just use their best judgment, on each of them because of the nature of those negotiations and the nature of what the expectations are of the vendor, etcetera. Thank you. That's great. Councilor Beamer. Thank you. Question for mister Mardag or whoever might be able to help answer it.
When we're looking at total dollars, what are we talking for the fireworks? I'm sorry if I missed it earlier. If you might have thrown that out there earlier. America's, I think that's about 19,000. And then the National League of Cities membership? Mayor, members of the council, I think that's right around 2,000 or 2,100. Again, the, the boards the board training and holiday and holiday social, do we do we have possible figures on that kind of stuff too? I believe it's about 5,000. Four or 5,000. Yep. Alright. Thank you. I would say since we haven't hired the public works mechanic yet,
it would make sense to to pause the recruitment process on that. Fireworks, I guess I could go either way on them. They do go off in my backyard, and I do rather enjoy sitting on my deck watching them from about 100 yards away or so. The but it it sucks when you say I mean, we need to look at what we need and and what we don't need. You know, to save a couple thousand dollars for the National League of Cities, if nobody's using it, then I would say, yeah, go ahead and cut it. As far as, the board training,
Could do it online, save some money. I know it doesn't take that long anyways. Might be an easier route and, more cost effective way to do it. The holiday social, if we're looking at budget cuts, we should certainly be looking at, you know, dropping off the holiday social. Kind of bad appearance spending taxpayers' dollars to go down to the reunion and and open up for a few hours after work one day. I guess it's probably where I sit the most with it. I would think there's, you know, similar to what counselor Dolan said,
there's probably some other small areas somewhere throughout there that we could, you know, potentially look at cutting to add up to that 19 k, so we can keep fireworks on if we if we if we want to. You know, pluck a little bit here, pluck a little bit there, and all of a sudden, there we are. That would kind of be my direction on that. Hopefully, that answers your question. Thank you. Counselor Holmes? I have a question for miss Angleste. I think it's for you. But if not, feel free to deflect. All of these things, except for the public works mechanic position,
are slated to be removed in all of the options B, C, and D, correct? Okay. So we are picking things here, picking things there, just to get to 14.5%. And then picking things here, picking things here, to get more things here to get to 9.9 and then even more things to get to 3%. So it's very interesting to me that we are then, Let's just add these things back in. It's fine. It's like only a thousand here, like, or the fireworks 19,000. Great.
And those are things that were already in process and that we were looking at in order to get to any of these numbers that we had tonight. So I I mean, I think you need direction from us. And I don't think that that's what our bot that's what we're here to do. It's not a, Okay, just use your best your best judgment. Because we are nitpicking things and we will continue to nitpick things until December. So I guess I'm because of where I want to be with the budget, I am okay with all of these things except I was I was supporting option
B, which allowed for us to continue to have, to continue to the recruitment of the Public Works mechanic, because I do think that's important. If we have to go down lower than where we were and we're trying to get to, you know, option C, which had that taken out, then I then I can understand that. But where I sit right now, I feel like that's an important, that's something important to fill. I believe, mister Bennett, without the support, we outsource, maintenance and and repairs. Correct? So there's still fees that we're still paying, except we're gonna be just outsourcing it instead of having it in house.
American yeah. That is correct. So we would recoup some of those dollars. So, you know, the full salary cost is not, the full cost that would be removed. So we'd still have outsourcing costs. We'd be losing some of those savings. Okay. But there's still be more expenditure for the salary. Okay. Thank you. I then I just maintain on this question or multiple questions that my support for option b. And so I my answer reflects what comes out of option b. Thank you. Counselor Soeke. Yeah. I think that was a good way to put it. I think my answer would reflect what's laid out in option c.
I think these are well thought out. I I don't wanna lose the fireworks, but if that's part of what is being rolled together, then that's what's being rolled together. In terms of the National League of Cities, did you say a couple thousand? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And that's like, that feels like a little nitpicky thing, but it's like a good example of if no one's using it, it's something, and those add up. I think I looked into the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities because I thought, oh, that makes a lot of sense.
And I was like, wow. That's really expensive. Mhmm. So all these thing all these kind of memberships add up, so I appreciate you looking into that. Thank you. Hold just a second. Councilor Peterson White, administrator Martin. Thank you, mayor. Just to make sure that people do understand, we are not members of the coalition right now, but yes, there is a fairly large cost to that. They give you some early entry fee, cheaper entry fees if you want to. But I did want to clarify too just on the National League of Cities. We also have probably higher travel training budgets that we have placeholders for for council because in the past,
they've you know, that is out of state travel. So there might be follow-up savings that we might be able to downward adjust some of the training budget to for the counselors, but we'll cross that bridge another day. But, just thought it that's mainly how we use it. We haven't used their other, like, informational website information really much at all. So it's been more of a placeholder for past counselor participation on like committees and going to other states for that work. Thank you. Counselor Peterson White. Thank you. I too am fine with suspending the membership in the NLC.
I think it would be okay to cancel the board and commission training, but I think because I think that we've had a hard time getting the critical mass to make that training as effective as we dreamed it could be. But I would like to see us I I really think we owe it to all these community volunteers who dedicate their time and energy to serving the community, really just out of the goodness of their hearts to provide them some information on what they're doing and to show our gratitude as a community for what they're doing. And to me, that's what the board training and the holiday social are for. It's not about counselors whooping it up after work.
It's about thanking our staff and our volunteers, and celebrating the work that's been accomplished, which I do think is important, especially if we hope that people will continue to wanna do those things. I think that the if if the goal of the board and commission training is truly to train people, I would like to see us develop a specific plan for how we're gonna build that into first meetings of the year for boards and commissions. And I think that's really possible, and it might be a more effective and more cost effective way to reach people with the information we want them to have. We've done some of that in meetings,
but I I think we've kind of hoped that this one event would do that for a whole lot of people. And we might need to do it in the individual boards and commissions, and that that might be really effective. You know, the holiday social, I really I I I get it that it's a party. I'm fine with cutting it, but I think we should recognize that the reason we started doing it is not because we all wanna go to a party, but because we want to recognize and thank the legions of volunteers in our community, who give so much time and energy and care and thought to the boards and
commissions that they serve on and to thank our staff as well for their incredibly hard work throughout the year. I would rather not, terminate the recruitment process for the public works mechanic position because I think we really need that position. And I voted to add that position to the budget, And I don't know what the plan moving forward is to not have that position filled. I understand that maybe where we're at budget wise, but I look forward to hearing how you all plan to meet the needs of the public works department and the public's expectations about what that department does if we're not hiring that position.
And I guess I'll just share my perspective on the fireworks. It's maybe a little different from other folks. I've been, you know, working as a retailer in Downtown Northfield for a long time now. And, have and before the business I have now, I had a different business in Downtown Northfield in the early two thousands, for several years. And so I've been in that world in the previous era of less impressive but publicly funded Northfield fireworks and then the period when the city cut the fireworks budget and then the period where there were no fireworks and then there was,
which was brief, I think. Maybe one or two years there were no fireworks. And then there was community funded fireworks. And now we have a really great fireworks program. And, what I would say is that fifteen or twenty years ago when the Northfield Fireworks were not much, this town would completely empty out over the fourth of July. There was no point in being open as a downtown business or a restaurant or bar. There would not be a lot of hotel bookings. It was very quiet in town, and that is absolutely not the case anymore. There are many downtown businesses that go out of their way to be open on
the fourth of July because people who live here stay here over the holiday, And their families come to visit them over the holiday. And it might seem like a small thing to have fireworks, but our fireworks are pretty great. And so people come here to see fireworks from the surrounding communities. And that I you know, it's $20,000 or 19, whatever. What did you say, Dave? 19? 19. But it is the kind of thing that it sounds like it's just a nice to have thing, but it does have a cumulative effect on the community and how the community is
perceived and what it's like to be in business in this community as a result of whether people wanna choose to spend their time here instead of leaving. So I find myself, to my surprise, reluctant to cut the fireworks. I get it that it's kind of might seem like low hanging fruit, but, I think that it'll be real hard to get back. And if we leave it to the community to do kind of a crowdfunded thing, it's likely to not be as robust a program and, or as consistent, as predictable, as well communicated, things like that. And I really have seen it,
make a difference to what that week in midsummer is like as a business person in town. Councilor Ness. Thank you. I agree that if things are included in b, c, or d, they should stay included. We don't wanna play right pocket, left pocket at an expense at a cost here or take an expense there. So I wanna leave those alone. Thank you. I also agree with that sentiment that, I would move forward on all these things. And I would just say,
personally, I've always been opposed, to the fireworks. They are, not environmentally sound. They are can be disturbing to pets and, veterans, people with post traumatic stress disorders. So I am not a fan of fireworks. I think that we could find something else that our community could do, to celebrate that day other than fireworks. So, we have about fifteen minutes left. I think we can take six, seven, and eight together. And but I also had two additional questions that weren't here. One was if there's other datasets that you'd like to see come back the next
time that we're gonna get this again honed based on our responses tonight. And then if if we have time, I am curious about, specifically in the board and commission changes outlaid, if there is interest in the council serving as the HRA because staff would need to take steps into looking into that. So, that those are the two questions I have in addition to the three questions that are left. Councilor Beamer. Sorry. Do we wanna make a motion to extend the meeting now before we get into
discussion so we don't have to interrupt it? Sure. Are we okay with doing a few more questions? Alright. Yeah. You wanna make I'll make a motion to extend the meeting until business has been concluded. Thank you. Is there a second? Counselor Holmes. Second. Alright. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Do we need a roll call? Technically, yes. I do think Dolan is I do think Dolan is still on. Okay. We'll take a roll call then. We could ask Peter, are you still there? I am. Okay. Alright. Counselor Pearson White?
Aye. Counselor Silkep? Yes. Counselor Beemer? Aye. Counselor Dahlen? Aye. Counselor Holmes? Yes. Counselor Ness? Yes. Mayor Zweifel? Yes. So we will continue on. The next three questions are all around the elections questions. So, if we support, the absentee voting, should we ask for more money, and then the training questions. So councilor Dolan, would you like to kick us off on the elect three election questions? Yes. Thank you, mayor. I've already texted, our city clerk and said that I support whatever she supports. That's a very short answer.
Thank you. Councilor Beamer. Yes to number six, yes to number seven, and, yes to number eight. I'll just keeping it nice and simple. Oh, great. Thank you. Counselor Holmes. Emphatic yes to all three. Great. Counselor Soukup. Sorry. Number six is a this or that. I just wanna make sure you're getting the feedback that you need. Is that it I'm I'm understanding the answers that they're they are, support continued absentee ballot. Okay. That's how I interpreted the answers. Was that correct?
Okay. Great. You provided clarity, Mayor. We probably didn't write that very well. Thank you. No. I just wanted to make sure it was who who prompted the clarity. So not me. Yeah. I just, yes. I support continuing absentee balloting and negotiating with Rice County and doing the trainings here or online, if possible. Did you want did you want the other two questions, or are we doing that in the next round? I think we'll do that in the next round. Councilor Mead or some white. I believe that if at all possible, we should continue absentee balloting,
but I think that we should. I would support, what the clerk supports in terms of, trying to get a little more funding since we are providing a service to a larger part of the county and then only our taxpayers. And we have a county commissioner who could be prevailed upon to go to bat on this. Thank you. We actually may have more than one county commissioner who represents parts of Northfield. Yes. We do. Alright. Councilor Ness. Just to make sure, absentee also includes early voting. Correct? Mayor, members of the council, yes. That does. It's forty six days prior, and the early voting will be eighteen days prior now,
which will be considered, yeah, early voting with the machines. K. Yes. Yes. Yes. Great. Thank you. I am the same. I I support absentee balloting, and I think we should ask for more support for that. And I think we should insist on, training in the city of Northfield or online. If they'd be willing to option offer an online option, that would be great too. So, yeah, let's do other things you'd like to see, either data or things we haven't talked about and then the direction, if you're ready to make direction on the HRA.
If not, we can talk about that later as well. But, yeah, counselor Peterson White. I think the HRA plan is doable. As far as other data that I would like to see, I think that, I would like I I realize it may be difficult to get a high level of detail with this question, but I think that when we are talking about, staffing cuts and even just the funding reductions in option b for parks, facilities, EDA, HRA, and then the cuts of positions. I would like staff to be prepared to tell council which things will not happen as a result of those cuts.
Because it, it's abstract to say we're gonna cut these dollars, but it's clear to me from the discussion today that folks maybe don't it's it's hard to connect those that number of dollars with what are the actions that the city will not be enabled to take because of those. And I I know it will be very difficult to estimate, say, how many additional days people will need to wait for, say, the graffiti to be removed from the tunnels in the roundabout or how much longer it'll take to, fix a piece of broken playground equipment or,
how many fewer potholes we'll be able to fix quickly in the spring. But I think that those are the kinds of impacts that I would I would like you to attempt to explain to us. Thank you. Counselor Ness. I've got nothing right now. I'm gonna wait and see what Okay. Comes back. Yeah. I mixed it up on you. Sorry. Counselor Sook. No. I'm trying to keep I'm trying to I know. I'm trying to keep everyone awake. Good luck with that. Peter's been asleep all evening. Bad. Alright. Well, counselor Soukup, the floor is yours. Yeah. I agree with the what counselor Peterson White said about the additional dataset.
I think that's really helpful. And even if it's not it can't be really specific information, if it can just be more especially when it when the grouping was, like, parks, maintenance, EDA, HRA. Like, what what does that mean as a total number in reduction? Or what would what would you envision that meaning? In terms of the HRA, I'm a a fan of the council taking on the HRA responsibilities given our strategic plan. I think my request would be that
instead of making 5PM meetings, although I know sometimes those would need to happen based on sale of property, etcetera, I would love to have an HRA meeting incorporated into our work session schedule, because I think we there's a lot of room to talk about future vision for housing in Northfield and what that looks like and especially given the sites that the city owns and what kind of the vision for those sites could be is,
I think, would be a really worthwhile work session kind of led discussion. Great. Thank you. Counselor Holmes? I echo the wanting to see, like, that that dataset. I don't have any anything anything else that I would request, but being able to have some more of that specific and tangible information would be helpful. And I'm interested in the HRA conversation, so I will defer to, fellow counselors who currently serve on it and have an understanding. So I like, thank you, counselor Soakup. I I I we have not had a real discussion on HRA since I've been
on council. We haven't had any work sessions or anything that have gone, like, deep into it. So, and I agree that as it being a priority in our strategic plan, it would be good to be able to roll up our sleeves and get involved in that. Thank you, Councilor Beamer. Oh, sure. We'll we'll yeah. Councilor Dolan, you're next. And, no comments. I'm following the debate. Thank you. Councilor Beamer. Of course, I support taking over the HRA. I think that that would be a really good thing for the council. I like council soak up.
Think that, trying to incorporate that into the work sessions would be ideal, you know, unless we need to call a special meeting or something along those lines to to get something done, sooner. As far as, some other data, what I'd some of the thing that you know, what would it look like if we were to put a pause on, some of the some of the, capital improvement projects like the liquor store, like the park some of the park improvements, the the larger park improvements that we have coming up? I know some of them are probably a little too far down the line,
to do to do anything with. You know, what what does that I'd like to see what that does to the levy. You know, we've obviously pushed the water treatment plant out. We've pushed, Bridge Square out, maybe the Ames Ames Mill Park, you know, push these projects a little further out, give the taxpayers a little breathing room, except for the street projects. You know, we we still need to maintain the infrastructure and and do that, but let's not tag on excessive amounts of items to those,
protected bike lanes, complete redos of those streets to to achieve a bike lane when, you know, we could do a mill a simple mill and overlay or infrastructure improvements if necessary, things like that. Be interesting to see what it would look like, you know, down the road to to put a pause on a lot of those smaller projects and what kind of money we could look at look at being saved. Thank you. Mayor, can I make one quick comment just Yeah? For you? I just wanted to clarify too. In the packet that we sent out, we did show a five year kind of financial model,
schedule based on recent conversations. We haven't updated on the debt schedule. Based on recent conversations, we haven't updated under the options of the funding to the maintenance plans. So just be aware that if you go back and read that document to councilor Beamer's point, that's part of our next steps too, is to show those impacts to that over that plan. And we can certainly add his other feedback on it. But I'm just wanna try and avoid thought I'd use that as an opportunity to call that out. That's partly why we, removed that one from the presentation even though it's in your materials. Yeah. Thanks. So I, I am in favor of,
giving it a go as the council, as an HRA. I think we can be more efficient, more nimble, if we need to meet more frequently to take advantage of things, that come up in the housing realm. And, I served on the HRA when I was on the council previously. So I think it's very doable, and I think it could really address some of our strategic initiatives. In terms of data, I am curious I know we don't know this yet, but I'm curious in our general fund balance policy,
we're above the limit that we set for ourselves, and I don't know if there's any wiggle room there. But should there be some wiggle room, there, I would be interested in exploring that. I'm also interested in some long term forecasting for the choices that we're making and also thinking about buying down that I Serena debt that that's compound interest. Is there anything we can do to buy down that iSerena debt in the early stages of it? Does that make sense?
Okay. Any other comments? Councilor Peterson White. Yeah. I'm sorry. I just have two more things that I didn't think of saying before. No problem. One is that I also am curious about municipal cannabis and what that might look like as a part of our budget. So I just wanna chime in on that. And also, I think I would like to know, what the potential levy impact would be of I realize this is a very abstract question, but I think that if we're looking at cuts to partner organization funding, then we should look at all of our partner organization funding and that should include, understanding what the levy impact would be of charging market rent at the NCRC.
Any any other, comments or something you wanna amplify? Councilor Soukup. I have a clarifying question. In terms of municipal cannabis, is it correct that if Northfield had a municipal cannabis dispensary, it would not count toward the number within the county? Correct? Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Alright. Wow. We only went a minute over. Thank you all. This is really helpful. Thanks so much. Oh, motion. We need a motion. Councilor Ness. Move to adjourn.
Thank you. Second. Councilor Beamer? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? We need a roll call. No. We're we don't need a roll call. Okay. He's it's just us. Alright. Thanks, everybody.