##VIDEO ID:SfQxGmZ0klU## this conference will now be recorded [Music] anybody with that minor change I just need adoption of the agenda agenda second any F the discussions all in favor I oppos passes 500 uh we'll open the public comment portions individuals may address the city council about any item of concern speakers must State their name and limit the remarks to five minutes public comments I will close public comment portion and we'll jump to consent agenda all items listed in the consent agenda are considered routine by Council and will be approved by one motion there will be no separate discussion on these items unless council member requests in which case the item will be removed from the consentant agenda be considered in its normal sequence on the agenda I know there's a few things on there but nothing only thing I thought about is I usually don't vote on the cigarette licenses but it's not really that big of a deal I mean shouldn't be a big deal yeah so I'll make a motion to approve the consent D I guess one thing that I want I just I just looked at it that last one L is that that pump that went out yep okay and I didn't know if the council was aware of that Mike do you want to explain that no no no this is the one from before oh okay okay sorry y this was just the labor portion of that just following up with okay because I do know that we had another pump go out the waste waterer treatment plant y we have another one I had let Todd know about so yeah I thought that was the pumps we had another one that went out and I think was it like 8,000 or something to get a new pump and it's ordered and on its way but typical maintenance and issues so but I apologize got a motion I just need a motion second oh did you okay any further discussions all in favor oppos passes 5 Z let's jump down to public hearing meetings uh 2025 final budget and live Levy can Kim we're going to let you run with this for a little while again you don't run out a cord there oh you're good all right I thought it would be helpful because I did have some questions about um some of the changes in the tax structure within the city to talk a little bit about our taxable market value and how it affects your taxes so as we may or may not know the assessors are uh required by State Statute to assess Properties or evalue properties at their market rate and we've seen a lot of raising in the market rate as we watch the housing market for sure um we've seen huge increases in homes and it also is affecting commercial as well um last year I guess within the county there were quite a few commercial sales so there was a big reevaluation with commercial their values went up which did affects their rate so we're going to go through that a little bit um they uh those as we know those valuations always lag behind the year that you get taxed so in April of this year you got a valuation statement for your property that valuation is what's used to pay your taxes for 2025 so as we know that if you have a an issue with your valuation or you think that it's too low or too high or whatever you think you have to appeal it at the county at that time the time to appeal now is passed so if anybody would come in and say I want to appeal my value for my 2025 taxes you we have to say no we have no way to change that it's done um each property in Town whether it's residential or commercial ass sign a property class because as we know the tax code within the state of Minnesota is pretty complex so uh and we are property stack tax Reliant state so we use that to pay a lot of our taxes and the tax capacity of each parcel is a percentage of each parcel's market value that is the parcel market value times the class rate and in residentials it's 1% uh up to $500,000 that's your partial tax capacity that just means that's the maximum we can tax you that's the ma and not even tax you that's the maximum that they use that you can add all together to make the levy and we know that homeowners don't have to take any action in order to benefit from the home homeowners market value or market value exclusion and that is for homes that are $517 $200 or less the more your price houses value goes up the less credit you get so if your house is getting up into the two upper two $300,000 range you're going to start to see that drop drop drop until it's nothing um it's important to know that market values are determined in the year prior to the year I kept saying that because that is one of our biggest things that we have so here you see the maximum exclusion applies to homes valued at $95,000 the exclusion of that level is 40% of the assessed market value so you take 95,000 minus 40% and the remaining market value which is $57,000 would be used for determining the tax capacity so there you see that um I always had somebody say to me that they thought they paid more taxes depending on where they lived um that's not true everybody's tax rate is the same but when you have a home over $500,000 one that increment over five the F first 500,000 is the tax capacity is figured at 1% after $500,000 anything above $500 is at 1.25% so they actually in a sense do pay a little bit more in taxes because of the value of their home but it's not based on where they live it's based on value so a home valued at $600,000 uh the tax capacity with the first $500,000 would be at 1% or $5,000 the $100,000 over the 500 would be at 1.25% which gives a total tax capacity at 6.25% and as you see commercial is a lot similar but they pay higher rates their tax capacity is higher than residential except for nonresidential non-homestead single units um commercial property is valued at 600,000 the tax capacity is calculated as follows now the other one that we saw what that tax capacity was 6250 here we got the first 150,000 at 1.5% which is 2,250 the $450,000 above that would be at 2% tax capacity which is $99,000 that total tax capacity on that parcel is $1,250 does that mean we have to pay that much no local governments do not set a tax rate that is the function of the levy and the total tax base so the county adds all the tax capacities within the city together to an aggregate it makes a few adjustments it takes off Tiff it takes off abatements it takes off things like that and then um what we do that's the when they make all those Aggregates that's the result of that is a TA total tax capacity and that's how we determine what our tax rate is by comparing it with the levy that we have set um the city Levy sorry guys let's getting to the snoozy part then the city Levy divided by the taxable tax capacity equals the city tax rate for the city of Zoda the estimated tax rate payable in 225 is 49.2% in 2024 neighboring comparable siiz cities had tax rate ranging from 41.9 to 80.9 7% two were under 50% it was last in another Community this year everybody did increase their Levy nobody stayed uh level so those rates would probably be roughly the same so I would anticipate that again there would probably be possibly two under the 50% the rest would be over all the way up to 8.97% so there's a big difference we're at 49.2 proposed this year year or next year and I would believe the other one would be close to 8.97 maybe just a smidge lower um residential property value saw a slight increase proposed for taxes payable in 2025 this resulted an increase in city taxes of approximately 12.97% did it looked like it was a $12.97 approximate increase per each $100,000 value taxable market value of your home so we saw those big increases remember last year we had a huge increase in the year before we had like a 15 it was like 20 some percent last year and 15% the year before so between 22 and 24 residentials saw the big taxable value increases now commercial is seeing it and so there's when you add them all together and you look at them overall they're roughly the same and of course I like to look at what's in there I go on the County website public information you can look up any address in the county you can find out what they pay for taxes you can find out who owns it you can find out if they're laate on their taxes or not it's all public information so I just went through and I did a bunch of houses and I just put in their taxable market value since 2020 so you can see from that that there's a huge change in there most the uh increases are right around 40 some percent there could be some homes in here that had some improvements if you pull a a building permit or something that will flag something and they'll come in and adjust your value but there's a about a 40 some per increase in tax in in the uh taxable market value in the properties you might recognize some of those yep because there there every probably but everybody in this rooms and then a few others I tried to do a cross section in town we are starting to see that between 150 and 250 we don't have a lot of properties that are falling into that tax range anymore with that's and that's because the market taxable market value exclusion goes away so I think it makes kind of a hole in that when you're looking at comparisons last year more was paid for commercial properties and estimated market value so I called the Bob came in and talked to me I did have another business owner come in and talk to me about theirs so I contacted the assessor to ask how often do they re-evaluate these and she said yearly but the state of Minnesota last year required goodu County to make a very large adjustment on all commercial County County uh wide because there were so many sales of businesses within the county all commercial properties received a larger than normal increase because of the commercial sales across the county and last year remember the legislature increased the agricultural value tier and increased the homestead exclusion value range that in effect shifted some of the tax burden from residents to Commercial and Industrial owners um that's making a shift now it shifts back and forth if you look at what happens you watch your taxable Market exclusion if you have it it'll go up and down not even dependent on the value I was it was interesting looking at all those statements well at least I found it interesting so there's some of the uh commercial values and some of the changes we've seen there so there's been pretty significant increases in there as well again they're roughly about the same between commercial and residential just different years of increases there we go there's our population so now we're moving right on to the budget here so our estimated population in 2024 for the state demographer is 3,993 people in 20 2008 we were 3,172 that's a pretty good increase over that amount of years and I haven't changed my pictures for years so next year I promise I'll put new pictures in uh last year in 2023 we only had nine housing starts this year we have 20 so we're seeing a bound back last year was slowed down because of the um because of the increase in tax rates now why do I why do I talk about this because all these new construction projects they're going to add to our Market B our taxable Market capacity next year which could in turn could raise or lower our um tax rate depending on what is decided by Council here's that we added $ 6,658 th000 we we are believing in new residential housing for this year or at least that's what we pulled in building permits if the houses aren't completed this year part will be on it and the next year we'll get the complete house on the the tax book because there's a lag just remember there's always a lag commercial value last year was a very slow year this year we've seen a little bit of a bounce back which is great I think a lot of that is due to some of the commercial expansion we've seen downtown uh nilson's remodel some other things that have done I think have really added to our commercial market value and whoops I got that one we've seen okay so there is our Levy there's our Levy since 20 2017 of where we're at uh We've increased by a little bit over a million dollars with the levy but remember that our population and our housing has also increased during that time and then I wanted to talk a little bit about some of our 2025 budget considerations and what we took into it we budgeted an overall increase of 3% for general costs and purchases as costs overall have risen we increased wages in in accordance with Union contracts our health insurance increased by more than 12% so we had to take into account for that we budgeted for equipment certificates to sh up equipment funding for future large purchases we increased the seal coal budget budget we added we're accounting for adding additional admin staff we increase the storm water fee to allow for increasing volume and costs of repairs we are again like every other city in the state we have aging infrastructure we need to keep up with it and we have that's why we are are budgeting for that at this point and we but on the plus side on the happy side we have seen a significant increase in interest received due to the change in interest rates a few years ago our interest was maybe $23,000 and last year it was over $100,000 so um we're definitely seeing an increase but that's there's a flip side on that as well if we go to borrow our rates are going to be higher but for right now that's helping our budget a little bit um we start the budget process as you know I started in a April try and get it to you in first meeting in June and then we start doing our meetings going forward so that we can set the budget this is the last one where the public can chime in there um if they have any comments about what we're spending on why we made the decisions that we did um that's this is some of the things that I took into consideration and um if you have any comments or questions or changes you want made uh next uh council meeting is our last time we make the change we can go down but not up we have to finalize and vote on the budget at the next meeting thanks thanks for the info any questions for Kim kind of true is perfect thanks Kim for all work and explanation I know the commercial I know I talked to the mayor from Pine Island asking what's your commercial Bob knows that first hand and we're kind of in the same boat and it was a good new County thing tough so thanks Kim yeah and I just want to note too that you know that increase in the uh interest that's a lot due to Kim and and keeping on top of CDs and and just U moving money around to kind of optimize when we have dollars uh there she moves things just before projects projects out when there's going to be a project how long we can put a CD uh to get the best rates so a lot of that increas is is do the Kims keeping on top of that as well our our financial institutions treat us well yes oh that yes absolutely too it's another good Factor there yeah perfect thank you uh let's jump to uh new business uh Minnesota office of traffic safety recognizes Sergeant pquality impaired driving enforcement efforts we'll let Scott MCC have the floor sure I don't behind me right here your Chief and I go long ways probably about about 15 years now I think so um thanks for having me I I don't want to make little of the fact that you time you share for this because you have a lot going on busy agenda so thank you for your time hope we uh use it uh to your benefit um I've known Patrick for a while I know he cares deeply about this community and and the citizens in it and I also know he cares deeply about his his cops that are here to Serve and Protect Your Community um one of the things he shared with me is your Sergeant's dedication to the DWI enforcement and helping to keep this community safe we know when there's efforts to remove the impaired driver the community is safer and the quality of living even goes up because people feel safe and secure when they can travel um boy I couldn't keep up with those numbers I couldn't even think of it but no but that was amazing I just was but I have one not very uh joyful number to share I was just looking before I came up at the fatality rate in Minnesota at this point this point last year we were at 402 deaths on our highways way too many yet right as of today we this year we're at 426 25 more so our work is cut out for us in traffic safety you can't let up because there's always new people coming up uh Shifting the populations and we just always you know we've been at speed since the 1930s look at we still seen with pair driving impair driving too is has kind of launched a new area and we're helping one of the things our office is trying to do to help is get training but it's the drug impaired um impaired driving used to be kind of a nighttime activity uh I started my career with as a State Trooper working out of Rochester straight nights for 11 years I covered your county and uh several others but it it continues even even to this day so that that's why we're here um just to recognize uh there's a lot of cops but that are dedicated but we're going to limit it to this one and um and he cares about the community as well so Sergeant why don't you step on up I don't want to miss I just got to see he has his fan club here so that that's neat to see um but because of that um we just want to thank uh Z broa for supporting your Police Department dep want to thank the chief for leading the police department we want to thank the sergeant for taking these efforts um I come out because I at uh your Department's request and I'm very glad to be here but I'm me being here isn't the important thing the thing that's important is that you are here and that you're here to to share and to uh uh your appreciation for what the police department and their officers to keep your community safe and I would be remiss if I didn't say there's one job I know that's tougher to be in a cop it's being a cop's wife can you AG me yeah and I thank my wife often for for doing that so because of that Sergeant pascali uh state of Minnesota once again recognize you as a DWI allar thank you sir thank you and uh kind of going along with the baseball athletic theme um they get a little athletic and here we'll get it yeah there so so in a just a small way of saying thank you in a physical way so thank you very much thank you for your time thank you for your support anything you'd like to say yourie well I'd like to say good job well done thank you and uh thank you for your continued contribution not just to the city but as well as the officers that uh um are under your supervision and you know the the way you handle um training and being involved you're bringing up the next generation of officers that hopefully will follow in your footsteps so thank you thank you thank you than thank I just want to say thanks and for your hard work indication to the zro police department I've uh told some cops recently who just promoted they say you don't know what time but the best day in any cops career is the day he fails a promotion exam but thank you thanks Scott uh let's jump to 7B uh resolution 2024 39 adopting the 2024 hazardous mitigation plan Brian oh yep uh we've been at this for about what 18 months um Pat and I Mike was involved as well along with the county they have to update their plan every I think it's 10 years and uh so what resulted is the the updated plan um I didn't give you all the paper Todd because it's 252 pages but but in your packet or in your the you've got the electronic version the council does to to page through the last three pages are are zabota so um um and um you know a lot of it's the same as it has been with just some updated hazards updated um things like that and uh we just need to approve a resolution to uh to be part of that hasard litigation approval process and that'll allow us to be able to access FEMA dollars if we have things like the flood uh which we are going to access uh it's looking like about $5,200 is what we'll get back in what we spent on on clean up for the flood um so the effort uh that went into this and and being able to access some of those dollars and and uh put some of these hazards at the Forefront is is a good thing so just requesting approval of the resolution by the council any questions or concerns with that uh we'll do roll call Sarah we have to make a motion oh sorry I'll make a motion to approve resolution 20243 every's having trouble what is happening what are you gonna do without me here passes 4 Z thanks Brian uh let's jump to a nine seat discussion draft ordinance 20247 cannabis or ordinance and set public hearing Brian yeah um as you know this has been a a whole deal this cannabis um you know it's evolving quickly um I thought we had a little bit more time found out that no we need to have something in place January 1 um I talked to a whole bunch of different cities I was with a bunch of Administrators and they are all using the model ordinance from the state which is what I've got in your packet I think I included the model ordinance itself and then one that I had started to modify I had some questions for the county on that um as far as licensing and registration because we delegated that to the county um but I'm gonna add that back in I think um if council is okay with that just because we may take it back at some point so we think we should have it in the ordinance and maybe just list it as city of zro or design uh some other communities are doing that and then we also at the end of the ordinance there's the temporary um um special event and we do license that evidently uh the county said to leave that in there so really it's a work in progress right now uh we'll continue to work on it I've been talking with Matt and we've got some things that we want to take a look at in there uh but we anticipate talking more about it at the work session uh next Wednesday um and then bringing uh more of a completed document back to the for a public hearing um if Council so chooses to set the public hearing uh at the December 9th 19th council meeting um so any questions so far um comments anything on there um how do the um the annual compliance checks work is that just where we send our police officers y same as the tobacco and the edible cannaboids that's the other thing I removed out of there because that I need to talk to more about Matt with because we have our our edible or low potency ordinance already in place so I figured we probably shouldn't contradict or Double Di with that in here so I took that part out um but yeah compliance checks will be just just like they're done for cigarettes and and and edible that's only if we um if any of them and that right no no we still do the compliance checks so we have we have a say on the yep we have the say on the what where when um you know so we can limit you can't smoke it in the park you can't smoke cannabis wherever children are not there's a whole bunch of things um and and then also compliance checks would be would be ours how about a number of licenses no we don't have a number of licenses um in all likelihood we probably won't have any because the county has been pretty restrictive on what they're doing with their ordinance as well um you know it's a matter of if somebody applies and and requests to be in Zoda then we we would have to consider that that um there's not any number in there that I saw in the ordinance um I think we're kind of bound by the state and the 12,500 in the county or or one per 12,500 uh in the entire County so that that defines the numbers of them where they end up I don't know that we have a lot of say uh we do have some communities that didn't delegate their registration and are wanting one or two in their community so that'll chew up some licenses but um again um we'll continue to work on this from now until the work session and and get some a little better Fu for yeah I got a call from um Brad Anderson one of the uh County Commissioners and and they're concerned that if if they are requested to have a license in zro um and we don't have anything in place they'd feel terrible if it ended up across the street from the school or someplace where we don't want them and we would have no mechanism to stop that unless we get something in place and then that's why and again a lot of communities are in the same boat because we all thought well we got a little bit of time yet um but that's why the model is is working out really well I think um when I started populating the the blanks in there and uh it really followed very well U Matt and I are discussing about the zoning districts and and whether having them in here does that necessitate that we make changes in every zoning District to add that most communities are saying that this will be a standalone and it'll just point to the zoning District uh as a conditional use uh they're hoping to stand on that but again we'll we'll look into that a little bit more and and come back with more information on Wednesday the main thing tonight is if we'd like to get a public hearing set okay I'll make a motion to set the public hearing on December 19th at 610 610 second any further discussions all in favor oppos passes 4 Z thanks uh Brian uh let's do reports Brian yes uh the pool fundraiser went well the BFW H big thank you to BFW and all the work that they did and all the people that sold tickets and bought tickets and we raised a little over $4,000 total uh that included the silent raffle or the silent auction which was raised about $2,400 give or take uh so thank you to all the individual there's a lot of individuals that that brought stuff in for that um as well as a lot of businesses so uh so was all um it was a ton of work uh but well worth the effort what do we have about 50 baskets was that what we had 54 I think is what we ended up with 54 different items on the silent auction and every one of them got a bid and every one of them went and and uh so it was it was good we're very happy with that and again big thanks to the BFW uh we're going to be doing more fundraising things I think we had talked about maybe a comedy night in February um I'm hearing about um maybe a pancake fundraiser as well now uh that'll take place over there so uh more things planned the next pool committee meeting is the 16th at 6 o'clock we have to be out here by 7 because there's a Monday night football game by bears but yeah 6 o'cl on Monday the 16th is the next committee meeting um The Trestle I've been in Communications with whks the bridge engineering team has been reviewing the inspection report we got the full report um and we'll have more information for you at the work session as well um and we're starting to talk about you know what would repairs look like just if we could do repairs right now we're looking at $100,000 which I'm not sure is feble or something we even want to do uh but we're also looking at some other options and then try and get a a feeling from the engineer that did the inspection uh on some different options that could or you know may may work um Engineers are hesitant to touch the thing because there are some uh rotting rotting boards there and you can't really put a value on how long a rotting board is gonna g to stay there so uh but we're going to continue looking at it um we have the application materials for the transportation Alternatives Grant um so we're working on that as well we're asking um the County Commissioners to pass a resolution of support um for that uh because they will have to host if we were to get the money because we're a city under 5,000 still uh so the county would have to host those dollars and uh so they're working on that they'll have to do a resolution in all likelihood we'll ask the council to do a resolution as well um to take responsibility for the dollars involved um uh you know as far as the the uh construction and all that stuff um with the county being the host so anyway more to come on The Trestle we're hoping hoping we can get it open that I've heard from the snowmobile club multiple times and they're willing to do anything and and help and and uh you know rebuild whatever needs to be rebuilt to get that thing open now so so we'll continue to explore that um and then just reminder we've got the work session on Wednesday next week at 5:30 I'm taking all my stuff oh did I take that any more else no that's it thanks Ryan Matt Chief I just uh note that uh if you hadn't seen or heard of the speed trailer in use um that we we did receive it finally um and it's functional we're getting all the uh information on how to operate it how to get reports done on it um because it will certainly keep track of things and speeds and vehicles and so forth to help us understand our traffic problem areas um we ordered some graphic materials to put on the trailer so it it's got our logos on it and uh hopefully we'll have that uh in the next few weeks all decked out and but we will be utilizing it we're got some trading on it next week and uh that's all I got we that was one of my questions for you is uh we haven't got any reports or from that yet I mean from using it because we're it sounds like you're still waiting for the programming and well no actually Tyler's been the one operating it he's the one that spearheaded it I said it's you caught it you clean it kind of figuring it out Tri by fire and then once we get everything out figured out I'll be training everyone else on the operation how to uh deploy it do studies with it get the information and how to format that into a report is there a way we will to add lights you know some of these speed traps your things you see in different towns when you're going too fast they got actual red and white is that something we can add oh it does it okay CU I saw it going the opposite way so but there is lights when if you go too fast it and can we set what speed that turns on it's fully customize all of that we could be very specific as to exactly what pile an hour we want that to AC I'll have to see if that are you sure you haven't seen those lights already D no I haven't I just got to check to see perfect thanks thanks Tyler for doing that uh Curtis yeah the excuse me uh just a report from the Eda the Eda was um approached by Mr Rasheed femi who owns the building where the Mexican restaurant is for a loan to fix the hood in that restaurant so we could get that open uh we had a meeting with our finance committee which consisted of uh Kim James Hill Brian hgen and myself and we discussed and came to the point to fully offer a loan of $38,000 uh to Mr FY to get this fixed the loan was going to be at $34,200 at 3% for 10 years with 10% forgivable um thanks to Kim Mr FY came in and signed that loan this week uh the Ed this was brought to the Eda the Eda approved it um and the check will be cut to him within a week and hopefully that will spearhead it one of the things that the finance committee said to finance this is our lack of restaurants is to get a at least get a hood in that building ready to go for this current restaurant and whatever would happen in the future so so yeah we got that issued and uh he came in and signed the papers Tuesday and yeah let's go thanks Kurt mik anything um just what you mention is we got another pump it's a sledge we had to get that coming I'll have that in memo we get labor Whata okay perfect thanks Mike I have nothing Sarah B Kevin three quick things from the the EMS Round Table in Dodge Center that was on November 20th um most uh common theme among the different ambulance agencies was that there's uh a lot of expressed interest in forming other associations much like the one modeled here at our zro Ambulance Association so that was something that they're going to be cooperating with to see develop further uh legislative representatives are also looking to make the reimbursement better because some of the funding especially for is the Medicaid or Medicare um transports they get almost no money back from those type of things and there's a lot of unsustainability in the current model that's going on so that's one of the main things and then Minnesota is issuing the state is issuing a one-time Grant allocation we'll find out on the 27th if Zoda was able to receive any of those funds and starting or effective January 1 there's going to be a restructuring of the oversight body for EMS the emsrb will no longer exist and a new department at the state level is going to start working so it's going to be some new just new structure of how that works so there'll be some Growing Pains I assume how that all works out but overall it's looking our zambro area ambulance is doing really well and seems to be a model for other communities to emulate so my quick question if Z ambulance gets that Grant what is their what are they going to use that grant money for I believe that's going to if I remember right that's going to go towards the um uh maintenance of the the care of the equipment inside the vehicles if I remember right know what dollar could be uh that's it's all behind closed doors until it's divvied out so thanks meeting ad joury [Music] is