##VIDEO ID:t-dR9P7iLzY## call me to order ask you to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance Al flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation God indivisible with liy and tonight's consent agenda consists the following items item a approve the minutes of the following City Council work session October 15th and city council regular meeting October 15th Item B adopt resolution r- 24-40 to accept a donation for the Winston volunteer fire department in the amount of $500 to be dedicated toward the Winston Volunteer Fire Department's Capital Improvement fund item C approve the claims list for December 3 of 2024 item D declare items related to the G or the G1 grass rig as Surplus equipment and eligible for sale or donation as recommended by the fire chief and authorized the city administrator to determine the process and best method for sale or donation of the equipment that's the consent agenda I'm looking for a motion to approve that Mr Mayor a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented we have a motion do we have a second I'll second we have a motion a second all in favor I I oppos motion carried before we jump into the public hearing tonight we're going to go right to the uh Department report uh Chris you're up thank you mayor and councel um past 6 months for the public works uh couple highlights we finished up with the street light project we finally got all those done um all the all the flags all the Christmas decorations fit good except one of them we had to do a little modification on but they all look they're all really nice they look good um we finished our portion of sidewalk removal that we had on Andy Avenue um got all the hydrant flushed for the for the summer before fall I've been working on Boulevard tree removal kind of the Ash Ash boore getting those done starting on them been putting up the flag Flags banners as you saw the decorations are up now um we had a um airport inspection done in was it I think it was May May or June they came out and did an inspection and gave us a list of recommendations to do and we have a majority of those done waiting on a few things yet um the new County Road 5 project is done uh we did had a little bit involved in that uh the new gate at the swer plant is up and it's functional been working with the Department of Health on water tests that they come out and we got a couple tests that we do every year that um lead and copper and um P Fest that they test for we did have uh well four went down um took a little while for them to get the parts and get that back up but that's going um we had the water tests sent into the Department of Health and those came back good so that well is is up and running um we received a grant for the new lawnmower for out at the airport uh we took possession of that probably two month ago month and a half two months we have that so that's one piece will be ready for for next next spring we'll start Mo our own lawn out at the airport finished sweeping for the year we've swept right up until it it was snowy and now it's rose that couple of the major things we've been up to that's it did you want to ask how the streets was working no uh I was going to ask about uh the ash trees you guys you guys are taking down some of them yourselves ourselves no no we've we've had them all HED out that we've done do we do we have a goal in mind of how many per year we're trying to knock out or just as they are right as of right now I mean we have to try to stockpile a little money for that yeah um hopefully when we get to that point where we really need it that there's going to be some grants available to us but um yeah just preparing I guess and we were so far we're in the planning stages but not of a it shouldn't be within even the next year that we really have to to motor down should be in the next is there talk of state aid because there's so many throughout the state or something okay there has been some Grants awarded too for removal on the Ashes to other cities right we're just not there yet in our region or our area as far as the um as far as the numbers of trees that been hit you have much equipment for trimming or removing you have chainsaw we have chainsaws a couple P saws was a bucket or anything we don't have the no bucket no bucket no is there a plan to um trim the weeds and shrubs behind the Boulevard on the lake side in the spring yes there is what is the plan the plan I mean we um our tree trimmer that we use that we're sending up for bids we put that on there okay and then he trims it okay yeah it would be nice to get it done in the spring so that you could en enjoy the lake all summer um that job just so you know Tom just um from this past year and talking with Zach who's done it it's a he says it's a difficult job and I know Public Works used to do that and handle that on their own but he doesn't he's not real fond of doing it either so um he said I can see why they don't want to it's he says it's so steep that it it definitely needs to be a professional what he plans on doing it this spring yeah wasn't excited about it but yes he plans on that as part of the whole package okay any other questions for Chris and the company that does the water fountain there on board again next year yes yep the fountain is put put away cleaned up put away in our shop so okay they uh they contact us or me and then or I do in the spring and have it set up okay make sure it's lit that night there was there were well this year there were some lights that were burning bur out and broke that they did fix know so they'll come out in the spring and check it all again before they install it okay I'll put you in charge I'll take care of it okay okay thanks Chris okay thank you thanks uh we've come to the public hearing tonight and first thing we'll do is um make a motion to open the public hearing a motion to open the public hearing second all in favor all okay motion carried well first thing we're going to do is go through the truth truth and Taxation heing Neil's going to go through a slide presentation then you people if you have something you want to ask to step up to the microphone well that makes it easier yeah okay uh so as Mr Mayor said it's a truth and Taxation public hearing I'm going to go through a little bit of the process and how we got here and uh what we ended up at for our final numbers so we went and uh City staff met and you'll go through I'll go through this timeline coming up but what you're going to hear in this is the recommended 2025 budget process um the recommended expenditures and the revenues what our general and Debt Service is going to be and what the property tax levy and Levy analysis looks like and that led us to hear today for the hearing so budget process in July and August we start to prepare as a staff the proposed 2025 budget we get information from all the department heads and um really just analyze where we're at as a city and and where we're looking to be and we look at uh August 20th we had a work session review recommended 2025 General fund budget and preliminary general fund with The Debt Service property tax levy the 17th of September we certify the preliminary Levy um near 12% at that time and I'm happy to say we did get it down from there October 22nd to 25th City Council budget hearings to review the recommended 2025 budget which in this case we added the airport funds these are what are called our Enterprise funds airport funds fire funds sewer fund and water fund are all Enterprise funds and we talked through the capital which is mostly our equipment and then General funds Is How We Run The City December 3rd we have the city council is conducting currently you're living in it truth and Taxation public hearing and then on the 17th that meeting we will certify the recommended numbers Neil yes sir I think it's important that the public understand that the preliminary tax statements they received had our original 12% levy on it and when we finished we're around six now 6% we'll be at 5.72 right so what they see on their taxes as far as the city's sh will go down yes yep okay from where and that's that's like that every year right um as far as Y when you set the preliminary Levy the city sets it at a a rate that doesn't constrict and so much as if something were to come up or there's some other project knowing that the idea is that it will go typically go down for the final Levy so the 5-year budget model that we've been operating under all city council to understand both General conditions of the city's budget but also examining the impact of particular decisions on the financial position of the city so basically taking into account all of our decisions that are looking in the future and um there's a variety of assumptions and you can see what those are here but just expecting a 5% increase in the fire department per unit fee and 5% general property tax um Levy just for the general side of things and then 1% materials and supplies 5% employee wages and 9% of benefits looking here the one thing that I did want to um bring up you can see there's there's a few things that have changed quite a bit so last year um because of the way things shook out in the capital Improvement fund we spent 1. 278 million um that was by purchasing you know a couple of police cars we have the grass rig that you saw some of those pieces that were in for that expenditures or for those expenditures um that were saved up for but still made it made us spend more um this upcoming year we don't have as many Capital Equipment needs at that um immediate Capital Equipment needs so you can see that number is quite a bit lower which will make this bottom number the 5, 329,000 uh quite a bit lower now that being said in the water fund we are spending quite a bit more when they redo County Road one which will be sometime this summer uh we're going to put some new gate valves and and upgrade that equipment because that's a time so we don't have to rip up the street again and then of course we have well number five that'll be coming on board here and sometime next fall likely and we'll have a large payment that goes with that so we will see an increase in water as far as rates go I think we'll hit everything else coming up here later so I'm not going to go too deep into there so general fund budget assumptions and considerations remember I spoke of the general fund as kind of just how we operate our operating fund so we have conservative and conservative revenue and expenditure assumptions um the we implemented the 2025 Compensation Plan into this we have a cost increase of the employee benefits are in here reallocation of current resources based on need and actuals history adjusted to better reflect actual expenditures adjustments to um some of our external revenues I think whenever you're preparing a budget whether it be for your house or for the city or for a business you're going to probably overestimate what your costs are and underestimate what your revenues are at least we're hoping to do that so hopefully at the end of the year we're able to reflect a little bit more money than we spend um this supports a current complement of our full-time employees plus adding three new officers and then a part-time Public Works employee that will help us out with the lawn mowing um continuing on with this we're going to reimplement the multi-year funding strategy to support the street Capital Improvement program is adopted in 2017 budget um you'll see one of the items in here is that we are going to have some preparation in regards to the 2027 Street Improvement projects which come at a um fairly high price dig and that's part of the reason that things are you know that we're halting some of those Capital Equipment purchases there's U additional Park CIP funding in order to um make our handland Park dreams come true and and really um dressing up some of our other Parks there's the Eda funding is uh continuing and looking to see what projects that we can have with them hopefully related to bringing in um some housing to to Spur some more Economic Development and then things that doesn't include are some of the tax abatements that we have um that we've already agreed to as far as bringing in businesses with that all right so these are the increases that were over $1,000 uh the wages and salaries which we have spoken about before but um these haven't been for the mayor and City Council Members haven't been done for I think it was at least 20 years from what I've been told and um so you'll see just a small adjustment there the auditing Services that's not even the entire amount that they went up to but the total cost is $41,000 for our audit which we really don't have a a lot of options on so you'll see that that number went up quite a bit the CIP transfer that is putting more money towards the parks the streets um some of those equipment things we have that $35,000 are there and then public works as a lot of these things that are going to be related to us actually taking over our own Mo a lot of those items are are there and you'll see the ,000 extra in the tree maintenance fund there just in case another one does go down and then one of the things we hadn't um budgeted and that was my fault but we just missed out on some of the parkboard meetings so all right so the way that our revenues um come in it's going to be 62% come directly from the residents with the property tax and then we have our LGA funding from the state and that's about 30% and then we have different fees fines permits building fees things like that that that will add up to about 5% of our revenues and then other miscellaneous um items that might come in for things like the public safety things like that that that are we don't like to count on necessarily but we do we do think that they're going to happen so we do have them in there and here just our our numbers for the revenues so we expect to have about a $190,000 increase in our general government revenues and um staying flat for the rest of those now the public safety you can see that that went to zero as you know we are merging um departments with Lester Prairie so that number is going to look different and actually might not even end up being on there in the future as far as where those revenues go because it'll be its own separate fund it will be outside of the general f it it'll be treated a lot like our uh fire department this is a separate funny questions there good so um you can see the bulk of our well I suppose a quarter we we're kind of in a lot of quarters and then that last quarter split up in a lot of different areas but uh Public Works and a lot of things going into public works besid it's streets maintenance it's um different Christmas decorations things like that are in inside of that that um inside of that number there for the 22% General government is um basically us running running the city and then you have the public safety taking up the other portion there or the largest portion uh here you can see some of our expenditures most have stayed relatively flat um the parks one here that you have the negative - 28% again that's operating the Parks really that's us bringing in and taking over our own mowing that piece of it but it's offset by that increase in public works because that's where that that cost differential comes in um so you're looking at you know roughly $60,000 more than over last year for expenditures and this is fund projections at a 5% growth um if we could if we can stick with that that's where we'd be looking and going in the right direction where we get that orange line a little bit higher over the Blue Line there giving us a little bit of as we said that that push and hopefully building back up our funds in order to have at least three qus to a year of being able to pay our bills so recommended property tax levy as we talked about earlier per state law city council must certify a preliminary property tax levy honor before September 30th each year that is done by the 30th so we can get those preliminary tax statements out or the county can get those preliminary tax statements out to the residents um and then they can see their values and and try to prepare themselves uh the final property tax levy may be lower but it cannot exceed that though the city's property tax Lev is comprised of two parts General Levy and debt Levy and then that'll equal your property tax levy the general Levy is what we have control over now the debt Levy is basically our bonds that we owe that we don't have a lot to um a lot of wiggle room without renegotiating those loans refinancing those uh this is approximately what who pays what in our city so residential homesteads pay about half uh commercial pays the other another 36 and then you have some non-residential and a little bit of egg here are those bonds that I was talking about you can see we do have some dropping off here in 2028 so 20 27 will be our last year paying some of those we have one that's dropping off in the water funds um I don't know if that one's up here or not but that should be dropping off next year oops uh so additional debt issued for water and sewer Improvement projects and then that debt issued is financed uh by other City funds again those are the Enterprise funds that are supposed to support themselves so recommended tax levy for our preliminary um 2025 Debt Service Levy would decrease by 2.9% I shouldn't say preliminary anymore but for 2025 the general property tax levy would increase 82 present which would result in a 2025 property tax levy increase of approximately 5.7 2% um here's some of the the history of and some that you know predictions maybe moving forward um these things aren't necessarily I wouldn't do a lot in the future but obviously the ones that were in the past year so if you look in 2023 we had 99.86% increase in 2024 7.85% so we ended up at that um 5.72 which is you know at least a little bit less than what we have done here in the past and then these are all those bonds that should be dropping off in 2028 and that's what's allowing us to go and do that street project that um it's it's nice that these are leaving but we'll be replacing them with other pieces questions yeah could you go back to slide that showed the increase and explain why it's 11% how like that kind of jumped out um well really it's because you're going up for $5,000 on a $20,000 budget it's not H not necessarily paying oh you want me to go through what it actually is yeah so it's not it's um a per meeting fee increase I guess uh everybody that is on our commissions currently is getting $25 per meeting and I'm sorry $40 per meeting the council was getting $25 to attend those same meetings and we just made it so those are even so that's why that number went up to that so now now everybody who attends those meetings outside of paid employee like myself will get $40 um also have any questions before I turn over to the well I'm not quite done yet okay then I'll wait okay thank you no problem so going through the property tax levy we have $1,549 n10 for the general Levy plus the $445,500 for the debt Levy bringing our total property tax levy to $11,995 410 this one might may be hard to see um looking at where your tax capacity is we're and really what that's saying is that we can tax at a 100% rate right and we're taxing at 65.8% the median value home um for 2024 was the oh I didn't update this one um 27 9,000 that went down just a little bit for this year so you'd be looking at an increase of $195 per year or 1625 per month and we'll get to the bigger one here in a second that gives you kind of a a I would say a more fair picture um the recommended 2025 property tax levy responds to cost pressures but it also continues a strategy established in 2012 to reduce the amount of bonding costs again that's where we are putting that money away in those uh CIP funds so we don't have to borrow as much money it improves the funding rate for the 2017 Street CIP funding strategy improves the funding rate for the park CIP funding strategy supports certain recommendations of the fire department satisfies the goals of Economic Development funding through general tax levy dollars and then reflects the difficult economic climate and inflationary factors now this one is a little bit more um accurate of what a a resident would see so when you're looking here from you'd have an increase in um that that median home value that we talked about about that 275 279,000 to an increase of $1 12361 um the water rates are going up significantly so um to cover those costs of that the well and the other infrastructure that we're putting in so that that will be something that we're going to need to um make sure it's communicated accurately to Residents and Sewer minimums then you're looking at the perun fire department fee of $9 for the year so in the end across all of our funds and activities the recommended 2025 budget results in a total cost increase about $315 per home which is a monthly increase of $26.25 what's next this meeting is your opportunity to address the 2025 budget and tax levy concerns with city council city council will consider this testimony and adopt a final 2025 budget and tax levy at their next meeting on December 17th um Property Owners can challenge their assess values in the spring during the local annual local board of appeals meeting that meeting is not here that meeting is with the county and we use the County Assessors to this property well everybody in the county does [Music] know almost there Steve you're ready okay now you can go um have you had any contact from anybody any public I have not okay if you guys want to step up and ask questions now as the time just state your name and address for the record and ask away mayor councils councilman uh Mark bilstrom Beth bilstrom 4:30 Lake Court instead um I appreciate you sort clarifying right off the bat that the tax statement document that we received that the numbers are different um frankly the presentation you just did was very helpful answered some some of our questions but I just add some some general ones related um so the document I have understanding its change was it showed a property Levy increase of 12.9% correct okay and you to make sure I'm comparing Apples to Apples you're saying that's now at 5.72 correct correct okay I did have some questions on the expenditures but again your summary explained kind of the ups and downs and changes I guess one question related to the police officer increase you said three new officers which we fully support this is not a negative comment sure um I'm just wondering if that's going to be involved with sharing with the city of Lester Prairie are they too taking on cost for that somehow correct yep so actually that reduced our our cost overall even though we increased three full-time employees we are acting as the stewards of the the police department now so it it is taking on their three officers but they are paying that portion if that Mak sense okay so we're really not it's not like we're adding we are adding three but it's not that cost isn't added sure directly to the Winston residence one of the things that sharing or joining police departments and adding officers does is for Winstead and Lester Prairie there'll be an officer on duty in his car 24 hours a day 365 days a year so in the past an officer would work his shift go home and he was on call so if there was a call then he'd have to get ready jump in his car and go now um someone will be actually working okay very good so yeah in the end theer has um besides having better coverage it reduced our cost a little bit okay thank you m um then the one other question is and again I'm using numbers that I had so they're old but I assume the relation the ratios are about the same um in our particular case while the the levy was proposed at 12.9 we we ourselves are see an increase of about 15.4 and so assuming that relationship is close instead of 5.72 we're probably going to see six and change and I'm just wondering is there a simple formula or a not simple formula that says why why we're going to pay more and someone else is probably paying less to to achieve that average so are you saying besides your property value itself of why somebody would pay more and why somebody would pay less right that's going to be the main reason so and it might be it could be your property value but you have to remember what the county what's on there they they didn't change theirs I mean I think theirs was dead on so theirs will stay the exact same there's well on this document show that they were actually decreasing by 3.7% okay and that'll probably stay I think that is staying the same so I don't think that they change theirs and then your other piece will be the school as far as your home the county sets the market value all right and so we have to go with what they what they set so for example if on a normal year the county usually raises Market values of all the homes and if we would have excuse me a 0% increase Levy increase it would still go up because your market value went up okay so what'll happen is let's just say your neighbor your house is worth I have no idea right let's just say your house is worth $400,000 um and they say this year it's worth $420 they might say that your neighbors is $400,000 but it's only now this year it's only worth $390 so that's where that percentage changes okay from home to home and when you combine all the all the properties and when stad it comes up at the 572 average yeah well that really that's the number that we're asking for is that 572 average y yep okay so we get a that dollar amount I put out there that's what we're levying for so the close to $2 million that's what's spread out amongst everybody including the businesses in town gotcha okay that's all ad thank you thanks for coming thank you thank you um I'm looking for a motion to close public hearing we make a motion to close the public hearing we have a motion do we have a second second a motion a second all in favor I I opposed motion carried any questions on the council on this no thank you uh Neil was a good job good presentation well we've come to the open Forum section of the meeting anybody wants to come up and talk to the council again they're welcome except for you mayor um just want to remind folks of the winter parking ban that isn't effect all city streets 2: a.m. to 6 a.m. uh we just ask that you contact the police department 320 485 2600 if you need to park on the street it generally is not an issue even if it's snowing we just ask that you contact us and we'll work with you you know like I said sometimes we have snow during Christmas and then people park on the street we just ask then at that time to move your vehicles when the plows are coming through and we all make it work um it works out but I just want to remind folks because now we're at that time where once it snows the citations are issued we try to remain consistent and treat everyone the same thanks thank you um the administrator update and announcements uh the only thing I have is the wined winter winter festival is put on this weekend by the Amber so lots of fun events and come on out on Saturday prade Saturday night Tom do you have anything I do not yep no Jesse Jim no sir looking for a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn we have a motion do we have a second call second we have a second all in favor I oppos meeting adjourned