Hey, good evening. We'll open this meeting. Um, today is the the 5th of June. Well, that was really tough to come out. So, at six o'clock, get started with the meeting. We'll start with the pledge of allegiance, please God. Justice Mr. Mayor motion to approve the agenda. Uh can we do roll call? So you did you are on it. M please do roll call. Mayor Hib here. Council member Brian here. Council member Glazer here. Council member Rainville here, Council Member Swenson here, financial consultant Jagger, and myself, Natalie Johnson. All are here. Council, Council Member Bryant. Motion to approve the agenda. Second. Well, that's quick and easy. All right. Move it to vote. All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Agenda is approved. So, we'll open it up for the public forum. It doesn't look like we have a lot of individuals signed up for tonight. Um, so we did get one via email, so I will read it off. Uh, thank you, uh, Cadelia for printing this off. Uh, and this is from Lucinda Benson. She asks, "Would the city of now consider hiring a kayak vendor for Twin Lakes Regional Park? I believe it's East Twin Lake. Uh, your consideration is much appreciated." Thank you. Nothing else for the open forum. All right. Let's uh close the open forum then or the public forum and move on to Lori to get started on budget 101. The city council decided Can you turn your mic on for us? Mr. members of the council, the the city council um decided last month that it might be um advant advantageous for us to meet and just talk about the the budget process and how we go about doing budgeting on an annual basis because there's three new members this year. And um so I put together a calendar that's included in your packet. I think that really helps and showing you deadlines and and um when when we're going to be be meeting to to discuss the budget. Um I'm just really here kind of to answer questions that you may have regarding the process. It's a it's a pretty basic process. We start with staff. Um, well, we start with the the CIP and the ERP, and I I take whatever's in the current year, the 2026 year from those, and I put it into the budget. And then I also take last year's actuals and last year's budget and I kind of project out what a 26 budget is going to be. And then I also include any staff recommendations. And um, we we begin there. And then we tell you what are the changes that we've made to the 26 budget and here are the reasons why and we have meetings to discuss the needs of the of the city and and move forward from there. Um one of the big questions I think was regarding fund balance and the use thereof. Um and the city council generally has at least 40% of its um expenditures, annual expenditures held in fund balance and the the state auditor's office recommends five months. And so is that considered the general fund? Is that what you call that also? Yes, the general fund. Okay. So you have general fund, capital funds, debt service funds, and special revenue funds. And so the general fund and the debt service funds are where you do your property taxes or your levies. And this um right now the end of 20 24 we had a fund balance of about one $1.5 million and you should five months of expenditures is a little over a million dollars. And so you do have some flexibility there to use some fund balance to transfer to other funds or to um use for emergencies that come up during the year, things like that. And so in the 26th budget, I do recommend doing some transfers, but we can talk about that in July when we start our first first budget meeting. Um, so that's kind of the basic. Um, in regards to revenues, your your your levy is your main source of of income. You don't get very much money from the state at all. you get some small city um funding and um I believe in 26 that's going to be $74,000 is what I looked up on that. That's not very much at all. No, it's not very much at all. So um yeah, it it's all of the uh the city services are are funded through property taxes basically. And I did on the at the at the end there, I showed you how much levy goes to pay for the individual departments. So you just have an idea of what each one and then also Oh, are you talking page five of the handout? Yep. The last page. It act It's an example summary budget. It's kind of my preliminary budget, but I I'd rather just say it's an example because I we don't have everything in there. We don't have everything taken out. We don't know where we're at. So, um, yeah, this is this shows you where the levy is going to be used. And you can see down there, there's a 25 road improvement bond and a 25 equipment bond. And I don't know that that has been decided yet as far as the equipment goes. The the road improvement, we do need to do the bond issue for that, but I think there's still going to be discussion regarding fire equipment is my understanding. full zone. That's But so that's in there. And um you can see that the the levy for 2026 is the the the bond levy is actually doubling and that's where the the largest increase is coming from is is from the bond levy. Are you talking in the 20 26 levy category? Is that where you're talking about? Yeah. Yep. It's going from 20 253 to 254 increasing by $200,000 if you go ahead with the equipment that year. And I know this is just like a snapshot, more of a balance sheet just to look at it. But so like one of the things that we've talked this year that we didn't have a lot of funding for is code enforcement. There's a small amount and it got chewed up in by month three, I think. Okay. So do we have a line item? I know this is an example but in there for code enforcement so that it can be a good discussion point. Yes, we do in the detail. And another one as I've done budgets in the past is just looking at you know we always would look at capacity. Well, we might not have as many things to look at as from a capacity standpoint but is there other major inputs that we need to have quotes for and ready to go as we start our budgeting process? Do you have any recommendations on that at all? You know, we generally would like to know what your salary increases are going to be for 26 and we look at other cities to see where they're headed. The benchmark. Yep. And and so definitely um the salary changes would be a big issue that would be would be um something that would would I would like to have in July for sure. June, end of June would even be better. So, um if any besides what we talked about in the the um capital improvement plan, if there's anything else that's coming up that you know of that wasn't discussed. So, in theory, all your quotes would be in in the CIP already, right? Okay. So, that's why you're able to pull that in. Yes. So I just from a public safety standpoint and I this is one that uh council member Glazer and myself had talked about is you know um whether it be a severe weather siren or the high volume pump something like that. I don't particularly remember if they were in the CIP or not. No they were not. So those issues would I would like to know about and if if we're going to address them. I pretty sure the fire chief, Chief Miller, has a quote for the siren, but I don't know that we have them for the quotes exist. They're old, but they're but they're a couple years old. So, maybe we can look at updating that and have that as part of it. I think that's one that I would request from the staff. Okay. To see if we can do that, you know, whether we choose to do it or not, but we have to start with a quote so we can at least discuss it. Yes. Yeah. Mr. Mayor, uh, Mr. Jones, go ahead. I do know that the chief has been looking with that, looking into that and he's also been talking to Markwell to find out the exact. So, you may you may be working on that one right now, correct? Okay. I have Morwell at my house to fix my wall. Mhm. And then one more thing is u and and I think we've reviewed this at least a little bit but is there any thing that we could look at for reducing uh reducing costs? There's not a lot of lowhanging fruit as we you know a couple of us reviewed this last year but is there anything we could look at reducing? And so if there's a recommendation that comes from yourself to say, "Hey, this is higher than other cities," whatever inputs that you have from a recommendation standpoint, I think it would be great input for the council to um the sheriff's service. I don't know, you know, the number of hours that they're here. Um and it really depends on how you feel about it, you know, as far as if if you're getting the value there there. Um it's it's quite high. It's a big big chunk of your budget. Um, it's going up again to $527,000 or $530,000. Um, I'm not even going to write that one down because it's public safety. That's the one that I wanted. It's tough. It's tough. It is tough, but it is a big expense, but they also provide a good service. Now, um, Miss Johnson had provided an email that came from the sheriff's department that said, "Here's what they do for us current. it it can be reduced down and here's what it reduces down too but your services drop almost immediately if you reduce that down well and you know there you might want to think out of the box and maybe look at hiring an individual to do those other services that the sheriff's department does like the investigations and stuff like that um you know the investigators probably make I don't know I'm just ballpark 90,000 or something like that. Way more. Oh, they do. Mr. Mayor, Miss Jagger, too. Also, too, is uh a law enforcement agency isn't going to give someone access to their systems. Okay. And they would need that access to to to run reports on people and, you know, all of that. So, they're all right. Well, yeah. But I I do know that Natalie has had conversations with the sheriff's office of what more can they do for us within that eight hour or 10 hour day. Um and some of it was related to code enforcement. Okay. And N can speak to that a little bit more. Mr. Mayor, go ahead. Um so the deputies have been going out and kind of verifying some of the complaints for us. Um talking to some of the individuals. One of them right now is the one that has uh two homes on one property. The one home is not being lived in, but it's still not completed and it was started in 2006. So, he did speak with them and we've gotten the ball rolling on getting the permitting going again and she's been working with um Rum River Consultants. Uh he went out and verified some other complaints about some trash and uh talked to a couple other residents about some other complaints. So, I mean, it's been, I believe, beneficial so far. Um, they really can't help us enforce enforce, but they can bring me back the proof that the uh code is being violated. I did get another one again today that's coming in. Um, which was again another resident who feels intimidated by a neighbor who's doing some stuff. And, um, I I am going to need some direction for these kinds of things. I did have um the sheriff check on her yesterday. He's got it down and recorded that this incident had happened. Um so hopefully there'll be some background there if they have to go forward. But we are going to need to do something whether we go with the administrative citations like Oak Grove is going and then pop it all over to the prosecutor or any other suggestions. I I guess I would prefer not to use a civil attorney because it costs so much. Um, so I don't know that we want to jump to that on the agenda as we stick this, but it's it's an area that it's an area we need to talk about specifically from a budgeting side and we can tie it back to this one. Council member, yeah, I was just curious. Oh, thank you. Um, when the deputies are being paid by us to specifically service our area and they write a speeding ticket, do we get the revenue from that ticket or does it go to the county? We do get a tiny tiny little portion. You'll see that in the revenues. You'll see um on the claims, you'll see where we get in some of the deposits. It'll say signs and that's the amount we get. Usually, it's under a couple thousand dollars. And then another question on your topic of the like code zoning violation stuff. My understanding is the contract with the sheriff increases the more calls they have to respond to. Does that increase the cost of them or is that just like a space filler where he's here for eight hours and if he's not doing anything, we send him out there and it doesn't cost us more. Correct. And actually, if you go by the number of our calls, I did have him look at that to see if that was really affecting us and he said no. um with or without a few of our frequent flyers. Um the contract would be the same amount. Um they are not willing to uh reduce hours. Okay. Um there's only one township that's not using their services at this time in an NOA County. And it's because they are a township. As a city, it is our responsibility to provide some safety. Sure. Um he recommended I could go to bid and ask Ramsay or I could go to bid and ask St. Francis that they would be willing. Um kind of the feel I haven't officially done it because I didn't have approval to do it, but it doesn't really sound like it was anything either one of the cities were interested in at this point. Personal feelings, I think the county is the right people to be doing it. Again, public safety is really important, right? And so that's why we came up with the idea of maybe they can help with a little bit of the code enforce enforcement. Um I did get a photo of one of the deputies with some of the kids. So I mean they are engaging in the community. Um I know that once in a while they'll stop and play some basketball or play football with my kids. Yeah. So I know that they're engaging with the community and um trying to do everything they can to keep it a nice and safe neighborhood. So, if there's any other recommendations from the council members on things that we should look at um where we can reduce any budget or any quotes that are needed for um I think we should do just an open discussion on that. Council member Swson, go ahead. Yeah, I just have a question on other sources of revenue. So these are just sort of newbie questions and maybe dumb but um for example like sales tax from the businesses in our city bills. I mean is it possible for us to add a sales tax? Not that there would be much to make it and it would be mostly now than residents anyways paying it but is that an option? Yes. I I think you have to go to the legislative voter and and ask them if you can put sales tax in your city. So, our city's full sales taxes. Are there any other creative revenue sources that you can think of that we're not utilizing? I mean, there's gambling, there's the tax levy, there's the tickets. I guess you could go for the cannabis stuff and start selling some cannabis and Yeah. What's What I guess on that note, what And maybe this is a question for Dan and Mary, but have we ever looked at doing like a municipal liquor store? There's that. Everything's possible. It's on the table. The challenge you have is you already have a liquor store in the city. And what do you do with that? You can't I mean, it wouldn't be right to just shut them down. No, but every city gets a a cannabis license. I know the city of Anoka is gonna literally start selling Mr. Mayor Council to the cannabis piece um or even the municipal liquor problem is startup costs. Oh, you have to build a building to do it in. I mean, we're not going to I would assume we wouldn't be selling it from the front office, right? Um so you you you'd have to have a structure to do it. It's staffing. It's an insurance. Yes. It's not a just open the door and start making you really need the uh population that Yes. And you don't really have that out here whereas Anoka does have a higher population and more communities around it. So, and and I into the sales tax. The legislature did make some changes in the process for cities to um bring forward a request for a sales tax increase. I've not looked at the last couple versions of it. Okay. Um but it is something you'd need to get legislative approval for. So that would not be um available to us if we would choose to do that. Not that we are um that that would be a 27 y legislative session. Yes. Bill and not so it would not affect the 26 bill. Yeah. Um and then remind me so again we do not get LGA anymore. No. So that that was a hit we took the government aid the $74,000 is that that's the road fund. Yep. The 50 cents on a delivery to your home that's over 50 over $100. Yep. But now, did we not choose to take that money and an average of what we get from the pull tabs and not put those into the budget? Because if it comes back less, we've we've harmed ourselves because say we budgeted for 74, but we only got 55. So, we got 20,000 of us to make up. So, did we put those in there or not? Mr. Mayor, members of the council, we we do have the um gambling funds or proceeds in a separate um special revenue fund. Okay. We are using $50,000 a year right now from that gambling proceeds to cover our sheriff costs, right, to help cover that sheriff. The um the the the state aid that we get for the roads is in the general fund. It we did over budget for it in 2025. Um, we thought we were going to get 90,000. I think we're getting 52. So, we're not getting what we thought we were going to get. I have looked online now and it is available and you are getting 74,000. So, it went from 52 to 74. Right. Um, and the other state aid you get is for the fire pension and that goes right to the right to the pension. Yeah. Right to the fire relief. We just record it as revenue. We don't we don't even see it. Or you don't even see it from the state and they put right into the the fund. Yep. The PAR program and that covers for all of our all the firefighters. Yes. You also contribute $7,000 into that too. Can I ask a question just about commercial? If you look at now then we do have some red and some purple over there. Um one is zoned commercial and the other one is industrial I think is what it's labeled. Okay. Is that something we should take a look at increased zoning for businesses to help from a revenue standpoint? You know, that would always help um somewhat. It depends on the business and if it costs you to have if you need more service because of that business, then it's not really helping. You know, say you put in something like a liquor store and you need more policing because of that or you put in a a bar in a restaurant and and I wasn't thinking that route at commercial property where right or something like that start a business. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of concept. I think that you know can you touch base on the difference between residential income tax and commercial income tax. Talk about the difference of that please. The residents pay um 1% of of their property value is their tax capacity value. So and then commercial properties I believe are 2%. So they're slightly higher taxed than the residential properties. The tax capacity is higher and so so the values are higher in this formula. And so you apply the same tax capacity rate to both, but they pay slightly more because they're they're the formula is slightly higher for the their tax base. And so for that to happen, we'd have to reszone some of this. And that doesn't really increase your taxes. that just redistributes it to commercial versus residential. Your taxes are what you set. Your levy is what you set. And so the distribution thereof is based on how much is commercial and how much is residential. Switching it to commercial just moves it, you know, some of that moves the fence over here. So it could be zone differently. Yep. It just depends on what you're going to levy. That's not suggesting it's a good idea. I just wanted to bring that. Yeah, sir. Okay. I'm You go. Who's first? Uh, council member Rayo. Go ahead. Thank Thank you. Um, also too, so when we look at our next comp plan, that's typically when we look at changes to zoning. Um, whether we would increase commercial or or which is 2029 if I remember right. I'm trying to remember. 2027, I think. 27. Yep. Yeah. because we're budgeting for some of that in Yes. Because the we'll get started. Oh, I'm drawing. Sydney Nash will start to work on that 26. 26. Yeah. So, that's when we would decide whether we change any boundaries, whether they go more of one, less of the other. Um, and then residents, if you do change from like a residential property and if the city determines it's we're going to go bring it into commercial, as long as the resident stays as residents, there's no change in their property taxes. So, it doesn't they're not harmed by that whatsoever. Um but I just know in the past when we've gone out and asked people if they wanted to change to commercial especially along Viking Boulevard um they were like no not and you know and and they have that right um and whether it's just the only effect is if when you sell it is it a more valuable property if you sell it it's commercial but again then you have to have the businesses that are willing to come in and large businesses because were well in septic um that they're not there isn't that much interest in it. So you get the little mom and pop type you know maybe a construction building something like that. Um so but that's a discussion on the comp plan during the comp plan. Thank you counc. Yeah, I was just going to point out on the uh CIU um as tax base, I did sort of a deep dive on the LGA funding and the formula. So, I was curious if there was anything we could do to get back into LGA funding. And one of the only things that we could actually have an effect on is increasing our CIU as a percentage of our tax base and doing some sort of reverse math. I mean, right now, I think it's, if I calculated right, about 6.7% of our tax base, but if we were to increase it to 18.2% of our tax base, then um we would re-qualify for LGA under this year's um formula. I don't think that's a realistic jump. And by the time we get to 18%, their formula will have changed. Yeah. But and I don't know historically how they have weighted the CIU as a percent of the tax base but just a thought there is an added benefit to increasing that. But then the other side of that is what is that source of funding for the CIU that gets distributed among the metro. It's uh fiscal disparities. Fiscal disparities. So if we increase our CIU tax revenue theoretically that goes down, right? We end up maybe being net losers on that because we got to send 40% of it to the um right to the the fund or the you know because right now we're like a net gainer of almost 200,000 aren't we? Um you know the the fiscal disparities does not impact your levy particularly if what it impacts is your net tax capacity. So your value it it's um I think you were looking at you were comparing apples to apples but then when you get to the formula it doesn't work that way and so um so increasing our CIU tax base wouldn't have an effect on it would have an effect on your contribution. Yeah. So our contribution would go up but our what they pay us might stay the same or only slightly go up. So if our CIU significantly increases, we could reach a point we're a net loser on that, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So not that this is something depending on the rate you went up. And it sounds like there's a couple factors in here of what? Depending on the rate that you increase the CI could could still be beneficial, but if you go too fast, it might actually have an Yeah. I I that man to get to 18% that'd be a lot. That'd be a lot. Yeah. That's not a short-term goal. I just I wanted to figure out reverse what it would how you would get some LG or some Yeah. I mean my my conclusion is there's not a chance in hell we're going to qualify for LG. Mr. Mayor Rambo. Go ahead. The legislature has had a history of if not every year every other year changing the the formula for LGA. So to try to you know game it for this year hurt ourselves in two years. So it just just wait. Yeah. Sorry. Well, it's certainly not simple. No, it's not a simple formula by any means. I still cannot get my the attorneys working on that at the state. Sorry, Brian. We're uh I was just going to say um you were talking about expanding the commercial and our industrial areas. We have expanded it at least once in the last 10 years. We added basically the the points going east and west on Viking. in downtown had been added on and as well as we went north on 47. So we had because there was a time where people were where we were didn't have a lot of commercial area. So we'd have expanded it at least once. But yeah, there's still a lot of commercial that's not being used right now. When that when that expanded, did you guys see a direct and quick? I don't I don't think it's most of it many most of it I don't think any very little of it has been used since we expanded it. So it's going to take more than reszoning. Yeah. So we need to attract businesses really. So if there's and I I didn't know how much of it was filled or not filled by percentage. It's very interesting to look at. So it's not just creating the zone. This is attracting the business to fill the zone. It literally was at the time it was like we it was requested that we need needed to look at our commercial districts because because at the time anyway we were running out of space. Okay. So, we we expanded it up. I know there's that there was a couple businesses that came in uh north of Viking on 47, but I know pretty much everything south is there's that um auction place that kind of was there because of the farmland, but yeah. So, we I mean there's still a lot of commercial that's not being used right now. Mayor, I remember expensive. sort of a wacky idea question, but what if if we did hook ourselves up to city water? Where would the water come from? Would we hook up to a neighboring city? Is there like a main like would it be Elk River? And I guess let's say for example it is Elk River and it would be very cheap to hook up water on the the west side of our city. Could we zone? Could we, you know, sort of invest in it, run water just across the border and reszone that for commercial and can we make that space then any more attractive to open a business than Elk River through either, you know, the property tax rates or sales tax or or whatever else it is. So it'd be sort of just, you know, doing enough in one corner of the city and making it attractive for uh businesses to come in and essentially, you know, stealing Elk River's water and business. Is that I mean, does anyone know if that's even at all possible? Mr. Mayor, members of the CO uh council, you know, um now then has not used tax increment financing um yet. And that's one way that you could possibly, you know, attract some commercial business is to offer them some tax increment financing like so they wouldn't they would still pay their taxes but they'd get a benefit from it um over a a long period of time. Um, you know, I I guess I could look into that, see what options are available um for that if you could tap into Elk River's water. I don't know how I I just think we got to it might be Pandora's box if you open that because if you're talking city water, then you got to talk right behind it. Yeah. And that might be exactly the direction our entire city doesn't want to go. Yeah. Well, and the idea there would be an investment solely to attract commercial businesses, and I don't know, that might create its own issue, only providing that one little commercial district, sewer and water. But if it was an investment we could make that would actually draw businesses in because I don't know what else would discourage businesses well I mean aside from being in sort of the middle of nowhere but discourage businesses from opening in our city um other than uh you know that sewer and water issue and I guess not having a main road coming through us hurts us. Mr. Mayor, council member, council member um Swinson, if if my assumption is correct, you're talking about a part of town where we were, you know, there was some commercial development that had been proposed that got shut shut down um whether we had city sewer water over there or not. So, it would be a difficult cell. Are you talking about bills? Well, Bills and there were other businesses that were that would have considered, you know, uh putting up a structure and running their business over there and um it it was not found favorable. Yeah. Mr. Mayor, council member, so Elk River is Sherburn County or in Noa County. I don't know how that will mesh with Met Council because if we do if we were to talk about bringing in water and sewer that's going to be a Met Council um project and because Sherburn is not part of the seven county I don't know how that'll work right um I think it was Ham Lake that brought in water along 65 and Viking and it was if if we put it in they will come And the commercial didn't residential did, you know, the smaller lots and it cost them resilience in dollars. It was I mean it about broke the city. It's very very expensive and I know that if you so to build a house if we had sewer if we had city water to build a house where that were we're were mandated by the Met Council just to hook up to water I want to save the bills about six grand. add that to the cost of your house. Yeah. Because that's a that's a fee that it's a sack charge is what they call it. And that's the the net council charges that on every structure, but then you don't have to dig a well or Yeah, the I believe the overwhelming majority of residents now want to maintain their their private wealth subjects. Yes. Yeah. No, I'm I would concur with that statement. Yeah, it was just sort of a wacky idea trying to create a little thing the c the met council to commit. Probably not what we want to do unless we all want to get more. No, there was I mean what I think was St. Francis and Oak Crow. Oakrove took a very a common boundary uh to St. Francis and they brought the water in from there for that one little area. The rest of Oak Grove is septic and well, but it just it worked there. When we were talking years back on the comp plan and they wanted us to set aside um land for um residential um they couldn't even decide would they bring water from St. Francis or up from Ramsay. So even on the east side. So even even you we would have to pay for it from the Ramsey border up or wherever the first last connection on the north side of Ramsey is to bring it all the way up. We'd have to do something similar to that and we don't have to get into the specifics just be nice if it was easy to do. Any other thoughts on the process we got off a little bit? Did you have any more comments? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Council B. I just wanted to to to make a comment because it's came up and and and it has been talked about around town. You know, there when people have been saying, well, we're in the city's in a deficit. I just wanted to be clear, we're really not because um yes, we were using I mean, for the last few years, we've used we've set up to use fund balance, but that's fund balance and that's what it's for. And um so um you know as as Lori said you know there's a a million5 at the beginning of that's projected that's potential to be there that's in in our accounts. So we c the city certainly is not running a deficit and we can't no legally because we have to be able to fund um fund the city until like the property taxes come through and all sorts of things. So I just wanted to make that statement. Yes. So it should have been stated a deficit from budget. That would have been a correct statement from what was there because it was in the red 254,000 was a lot but it's not a deficit true to the city. It's a deficit budget just using we chose to use money from the general fund didn't need to and were able to make changes to the budget because of the way 24 ended up where we weren't even we weren't we did not have to use that full amount. some other additional funds come in and it was it came together very nicely. But yes, Mr. Mayor, Council Ra, go ahead. Also too with the recycling center, um I was working on that over the weekend and I'm going to work with Dileia on it tomorrow. Um I'm thinking at this point we should not have um we should not be in the in the in the hole on that that we should be good. Um, one of the problems, it's kind of like the local government aid and stuff, or not local government aid, but the road stuff is we're always six months behind in getting our money from the county because you report. So, we just did the report to give us a grant. The grant is $29,000. Um, we asked for another 20 to do some enhancements. Um, we don't put the 20 in to the bill into the budget because we don't know if we're going to get that. we can get that 29, right? If we only spend 26 over there, we're only getting 26. Okay. Yeah, we don't they don't give you any extra. So, you only get what you pay what you spend. Um, but the numbers I ran the other night, um, it looks like we actually made a profit in 24. So, I'm going to work with Dileia on it. Um, but it just it's how that money comes in from the county. it doesn't always come in in the same budget cycle. So, we need to need to look at that. And that's the first time I've had a chance to deep dive into it. So, Mr. Mayor, uh Mary Mary Rain, Council Member Rainville, um the money that uh when we do the year-end audit, we acrew all of the revenues for the recycling center. So in the financial statements that is an accurate reflection of of the recycling center and I believe in 2024 um there let me pull it up real quick here. Um remember where the the um it ended up being one but that's okay. Uh there was a profit I believe right it was like $14,000 on sorry let's see nope that's not that went too far's taking a look at that we look at the dates that are uh that have been proposed here um And any discussion on them dates as they put it because there's a lot. We're talking July 8th, July 15th. And not to cut you off, ma'am. So as soon as you got an answer for her. Yep. 13,400. Okay. And if you need to spend some time looking at calendars while we're in here. Um I I have not reviewed all these dates yet and check my calendar. I'm just going to do that real quick to see if we have any conflicts or if we need to propose a different date. May I ask? Go ahead. May I ask Lori a question? Mhm. Oh, actually um so Lori, with your projections, how long can we continue to use fund balance? Oh, okay. Um so depending on what what happens in 2026. Um the we can use fund balance. Well, that's kind of a loaded question because we haven't made a decision about 26 yet. So, uh, depending on what the tax levy increase would be for 26, um, if you want to use all your fund balance in 26, you can get down to a a 10% levy increase, you're going to have a 10% because debt service is going up. So, what is going on? Debt service for your for your bonds. Um so it if you don't want anything higher than 10% then you're going to end up using a lot of fund balance just for operations. Um and this is a big discussion that we need to have and and this will be happening in July and and so if you use it all one year then the next year you have to increase your levies. So it's gone once it's used. So you want to be super careful with that. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to do that if you can avoid it. No, I prefer not to. So, I mean, I think it's okay to use some fund balance every year to and transfer money out and but the responsible or the the the correct thing to do is levy for your operations and then use your fund balance for your capital and and things like that and to help bridge a gap or emergencies or cases. Yeah. Yep. Um, did everybody uh did everybody take a look at dates? Is there any concerns on the dates that are proposed? Some of them are city regular city council meetings, so that helps, but there's some definitely some additional ones in there. Mr. Mayor, Councilman Rainbow, also just on the on the bonds that we have to issue like for a road bond, even though residents are paying for half of it, right, we have to issue it for the whole dollar because if they all belly up, right, we still owe the money. Yeah. So, do we have to pay it? No. And they end up paying us back. They pay us back. So, then we recoup that in receipts, but we do have to bond for the entire cost of this project. And it is it um correct to assume it's better to bond a higher amount rather than to bond multiple lower amounts? That's correct. It's um it less expensive as far as you know you have to pay the bond process fees and all that. So, and that's not a cheap process. It's very expensive. So, we've been doing bonds basically every other every other year. Y we're in that same cycle. Yep. And we'll be in that cycle for many years depending on the road improvements. Really? So, in the road study, let's just talk on that. So, the road study was paid for last year. We've got a map back. Did we get any more information than a map? I have not had time to reach out to more engineering. Can you take a note of that, ma'am, and ask because that's really important as we try to project forward and not saying we're going to have a comprehensive one complete by the time budgeting starts, but if anything, well, I know um our engineer um Nelson has it as well and has been working on it and he has given us some preliminary numbers for what we should be doing going forward. However, previous council had decided that we were going to spend about $500,000 a year and that just really isn't enough to do what the city requires. What did he say would be an amount to catch up on a million dollar? We never really got to that because he only gave us a fiveyear projection. We're missing that next 10 years and you need to look at that as holistically to understand what would your average be per year, right? And he did provide some numbers that were just, you know, over a million dollars every year for the next few. He goes, "Every year that we don't do that amount. It just gets it just gets us further and further behind." It's going to keep us up at night right there. I'm sorry. Mr. Mayor, and I think that's very common amongst cities. Ramsey just had that. You know, they didn't do anything and then all of a sudden they've got all their their road. So, because it's an expensive um expense, cities do tend to put it off and we probably put it off too long. Um but it it's not uncommon for cities to do that. So, the only concern with that is so if you project it out and just say it was on average a million dollars a year, by putting it off, not only does it increase cost, but your roads perish, then you have to rebuild them. So, it I don't want to say it's going to double, but it's significantly more. might be a third more compounding. It's a compounding problem. So that so if we can get in front of it and look and project that 15, eight, 20 years out and say this is what we believe the overall comp plan needs to be. We're setting the residents up for success as we go forward. Now, it's a tough bill to eat, but that should be our goal is how do we stabilize that and get a long-term plan. Yeah, I don't I don't disagree. I think we that that issue has been kicked down the road. It it needs us now. We need to deal with it. But we have been doing road projects. I just want to be clear. We keep saying about we're kicking it down the road and we've been putting it off and all that kind of stuff, but we have been doing road projects. I don't know how many millions of dollars we put into roads. We I we've done a lot, Mr. Council Member Ryan. That that is very true. We have done a lot. Um we just had we been a little more aggressive, we could have done a little bit more. But we did we have done a lot over the last 12 years I've been on the council. I know that that's and that's that's a very valid point. Very valid point. Any other questions for our conversation at all for tonight? No, it stands. Stand. I move to adjourn. Second. All right. All those in favor? I I turned. Thank you guys for your time. Thank you for