Hi Kevin. Hi Sarah. Hi a little bit cake. Oh. Oh, he's not going to be here. Joel's not gonna be here. No. Oh. Oh, he sent us an email. Oh, what have you sent that? I didn't get it. Um, I don't know if he replied to everybody. He said one about the article thing that he was talking about being saved. Oh, okay. Yep. That one was a joint. No, he's out sick. Gotcha. So, I'll order meeting city council work session on Monday, April 28th, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. Uh, let's rise and do the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call, please. Denny, Vogle, here. Council members Robinson here. Advig here. Bonis here. uh agenda items. Dave, uh Mr. Mayor, as requested, we did provide a copy of our organizational chart for any discussion purposes the council may see fit. We haven't had any real structural changes to our organizational chart with the exception of when we brought Bethl on board, we did add kind of another operations tree, which would be that lieutenant and captain that is in charge of station 2. Otherwise, historically, there hasn't been a whole lot of dramatic changes with our organizational chart. obviously the addition of the administrative captain kind of slid in where the assistant chief position used to reside. Um and we do have one vacant position that we're working on a pending appointment with and that's the training lieutenant. So, um, with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions council may have regarding the organization. Kevin, um, let's see. Let's see. On the overview, it says as a role, responsibilities, administrative cap position have evolved in the past 15 months. What what created the opening? Let's see. We're not quite to that one yet. We're just on the board. Oh, sorry about that. Questions. Um, no, I see haven't gone. Um, I don't see any branches coming down from the administrative captain Kaiser. They all kind of funnel up to him. That's why he's off the side where that tree comes up. Okay. So, he's kind of that first layer between rank and file and myself. Okay, that that was the only question I had. Are we I guess I do have one more. Are we short anybody right now? Are you short staff? We have the bandwidth for probably four or five more firefighters, particularly over at station two. So, our authorized strength has been 25 and as you can see from our org chart with where we're staffing right now at station one, we're at about 20. We do have one that's still in process right now. So, that'll bring us up to 22. Uh, but we always have room. Our our retention, just like any other paid on call fire department, we're seeing as you guys heard with the state fire marshall's office, our retention time is going down all across the nation. So, our mentality is our doors are always open. We'll take you when we can get you because we don't know when we're going to have the next opportunity for people to come in. We still have more than a heartbeat and what is it? That's right. We do have standards. Correct. Yeah. Any skill sets coming over from the Bethl side of the three individuals that are what were three individuals that were available at the time? Oh, absolutely. One of them is a career firefighter down in Brooklyn Park. Um he's been a member of probably every fire department in I'm sorry that's to help fill our need. Yes, I I do think so. Um you know since we've and we'll talk about when we get to the fire inspector position. I have had two internal candidates come up and um at least describe some potential interest in that position. So um we'll see where that where that goes, but we have to have authorization posted first. So all right. Is there anything unusual in in the department of your size and whatnot when you talk to your peers? Um any other remedies or possibilities out there that have come to light in the last couple weeks that you brought this subject to us or as far as the inspector position? Yes, sir. I think it's just more people were a little bit more reflective of where we're at. Um I think with some uncertainty, people are always willing to kind of step up when we have this level of uncertainty. So I think that's probably what what's generating more of the hey what if I were were to be interested in this discussion. So okay that's positive. I like that it is that's all I have mayor. Thank you. Sir question. U I had a couple questions. So um I just counted. So there's 10 officers including yourself and 10 and 18 firefighters. What is what is your goal for I feel like we're pretty well balanced right now. Part of that is the duty officer rotation that provides a good level of repetition where people aren't feeling burned out from their duty officer rotation time. Before we added the station 2 cadre, if you will, that was one of probably the complaints that we heard the most out of anything is they were on a I believe a six week rotation or a seven-week rotation at that time that it was just too much repetition for them. So I think where we sit right now, we have a good division of labor and we do also have to keep in mind with the exception myself and Captain Kaiser, all of these people are part-time, right? So if for example the captain at station one is not available, we have a lieutenant available. If they're not available, right? So everything has some built-in redundancy because we we have no certainty of who and when is available. Does that make sense? Yes. Except the duty officer though. Tell me what that means. What does that mean? So each one of the officers, with the exception of myself and and Captain Kaiser, because we're we're the ones that kind of fill in when people have needs where they have to be away from the city for whatever reason, the rotation falls on a birthday party or graduation party or church, they need to step away for a while. Tim, Captain Kaiser, and I will kind of fill those gaps. The duty officer position isn't much different. It's actually no different than when I first got here is they sign up for a week at a time. We have it on a rotating schedule. So, it just continues to repeat. Each one of the officers is required to do a week stretch which starts on Wednesday, ends on Wednesday. We don't restrict their movement during that time, but the expectation is is that they're the primary person on duty after hours for calls, problems, anything that may come in, but not during the day. Typically not. Some do. We do have a couple officers that have some daytime availability that will take care of things during the day, but there's only two of those. So, does that mean that some calls during that time when you have a duty officer, which theoretically should be all the time, um, does that mean that there's an officer at every call? Not every call. No. Okay. We have no way to ensure that 24 hours a day. And then does that mean that some some calls only need the duty officer? Like, which calls only need the duty officer? Yep. So duty officer calls right now would be slumpers would be illegal burns, phone call requests, carbon monoxide with nobody ill are the primary duty officer only calls right now. Okay. Okay. And then um now I see in station two. Yes. Some some of these folks came from Bethl. Yes. And so but maybe I missed it. So are they now St. Francis employees? Everybody is a St. Francis employee. Bethl has no fire department employees. Okay. So, is the agreement with BETHL complete? The contract is. Yeah, we've been operating under a contract for this contract we're in currently will expire the end of 26. We're currently working towards a JPA that would have a longer term to it. So, when we talk about JPA, that's why I got confused. Yep. When we talk about JPA, there's a lot of nuance to it and a lot of legal ease that needs to get processed, which we've just begun that process of working through the J joint powers agreement. The benefit of a joint powers agreement is it creates um a little bit more of a long-term relationship than just a contractual relationship, which um at least in my opinion uh based on our last meeting is still very much the goal of both parties. Okay. And then so if they became St. Francis employees on whatever date did they get to keep their retention for on the their retirement? Two separate issues two separate retirements. So their retirement was funded through the Bethl Fire Department through their relief association. The Bethl Relief Association is dissolving and paying out their BETHL share of their pension. Once they became St. Francis employees, they started a new pension under our program as employees like any other new employee would with the exception is if somebody came from a department that's currently utilizing the SVF program, you can get a continuation of years of service, but because BETHL was a defined contribution, they were not eligible to do that. Okay. So, I think I heard you. So the Bethl employees, their whatever they had in their fire relief association is getting paid out to them. Correct. Not not getting mixed up with with their pension. Pension dollars. Yes. They are spending their general fund dollars down. So again, back to that same conversation where we have a special fund which is your retirement dollars. your general fund which is typically derived from fundraising dues charitable gambling. They are currently spending those funds down. For example, they purchased a Lucas device because that was a piece of equipment that we had invested in. Their membership felt that that was important to them to have. So, their membership voted to spend dollars on that piece of equipment. Okay. And then can you just remind me why why in the first place did we work through this with Bethl? Did they ask us for help? Yes. Okay. They were the initiators of this conversation. They were down to they had five or six firefighters on their roster, three of whom were actually active. So, they were at a point where they no longer had sustainability. Um Yeah, because I see um well, Jimmy Rogers. Yep. He's been a firefighter for almost 40 years. Yeah. And I know that he um does training at North Henipin or at least he did or whatever. So I mean I personally would like to see him move into some some training um because he's he's really got a lot of experience with that. Um but that's neither here nor there. Um I guess that's that's all the questions I had on the organizational chart. Um except I see that um Sam is here listed under inspection and PubMed as well. Is he not able to step up and fill Evans um responsibilities there? Not in totality. Sam is doing a lot of the pubed stuff now. For example, we're having the ambassadors come through the fire station this Thursday night. He's helping with the St. Francis family uh elementary fund event. So Sam does participate. It is a heavy lift, right? And again, Sam doesn't have daytime availability to do the fire inspections, right? Because everyone on here, most everyone on here has a full-time job. Correct. And they all have different degrees of availability. Some are available during the day, some are available not. Some some work in town. Yep. And can leave their jobs. So, okay. That's all that's all I had. Thank you. All I got to add is Ray told I really appreciate the organization. Sure. I'm I'm hoping to see that when we get the website done. I would hope to see this for like every department, public works, everything because it just it just it makes it clean and simple to kind of understand. So, I appreciate you putting it together. No problem. Uh on to updating job description. All right, mayor and councel, before you is a redline um draft for consideration for updating the administrative captain job description. Um I guess the important piece of this is is to spell out that this was a new position. We had a lot more unknowns than we did known at the time. Um and this is a process of this position evolving organically over the period of time where we have found where the division of labor makes the most sense. During last year, the election period, uh, Captain Kaiser w was instrumental in helping fill a lot of those gaps with the election piece. Once we began that transition into our new building and and in particular our new technology rollouts with our new records management system, our ecosystem, which is what we see when we do our monthly reports, um, and also um, onboarding our Lexipole system, which we're migrating all of our policies and SOGS through. that really started to shift a lot of that workload under that position because that's just kind of where it felt fel fell into naturally. Um, Captain Kaiser has never been unavailable for additional projects as needed or requested. Um, but this is where we have u utilized most of his time to kind of fill that gap. And I I want to also state that I don't know that this position was I guess designed on a on a pure 50/50 basis between fire and administration. we always knew it was going to be a little bit more heavier on the fire side. Um, and as kind of we got through the elections and this building became more of a real reality, we found that that need certainly was there from a workload capacity on the fire side. So, with that, I'm happy to any answer any questions you may have regarding the job description. Uh, sir, excuse me. Um, no, I I I think that a lot of it was just cleaning up some of the the verbiage in there. Um, I think we do a a pretty good job of of keeping on top of that. So, I didn't really have any any questions on that. Just hope that we can get somebody in there that will work for us. Amy, uh, don't go to me next, please. All right. I have no question here. Oh, so my only my only question is I mean it's going to tie to the next one, so I'm kind of tied together here. So, what I'm what I'm trying to get my head around is I mean there was some administrative duties, correct? And again, I you know, I I'm going to feel like I'm echoing Joe here. I I acknowledge that nobody's sitting around doing nothing. So, I I don't want to make it sound like that. Not at all. I'm just curious though how we had the administrative role in here. Let's just say it was 30 40 30 or 40% of the time. And now that's been freed up. So, can some of these other things that we're going to be talking about next be covered by by that position? I two things. I'd be careful to assign a percentage of the amount of time and and I don't know that 30 to 40% would necessarily be an accurate reflection. I would argue is probably more 20%. Okay. Um the challenge that we have between these two positions, if you will, is two things. one, we're taking we're trying to fill a position in the inspector piece that accounts for about 900 hours a year. So, a full-time equivalent employee is 280, right? So, we're talking about essentially a half-time employee. Under the current operation and role that Captain Kaiser is fulfilling, I don't know that there's bandwidth for even 400 hours of that time. Again, just based on kind of how organically this position has evolved to kind of fit our needs. Again, it was a new position. I think we had some really good ideas on where this position could fill in some of the gaps based on the previous assistant chief workload. Obviously, not all of the work that the assistant chief was doing would be appropriate to put on a captain level position. So, I had to take some of the burden that the previous assistant chief was was fulfilling as part of my role, which is fine. Um but then we allow that allowed us for me to shift some of my lower task level stuff that I was performing onto that administrative captain position once we here. So um I don't know that it's an applesto apples discussion where we say well you had this position this was a 50% of the time position. Let's just merge these two together. I I don't see it working that way. If it did it would be a heck of a solution for us, right? I'd love to be a I'd love to have it be that simple. Um, we're managing 27 employees on a daily basis. That that's a pretty heavy lift. We're the largest department in the city from an employee standpoint. We manage two different buildings. We have 10 pieces of equipment, 10 p 10 apparatus, multiple pieces of equipment. So, we are busy. Um, I just don't see how we can effectively nor efficiently merge those two positions. Sense. I'd love to, trust me, I will, but I don't see it being a fit that's going to be neither efficient nor productive, at least to the rate that we've been operating currently. So, again, I'm I'm linking these two together. I I apologize for that. I don't I don't know of any way to talk about without linking the two that's together. I I mean, if if we went ahead for the next agenda item and and promoted somebody from within to the position. Yes. What does that look like budget-wise? It would be a zero impact. So, I would argue it actually probably be less of an impact. Um, arguably because I don't know that we're going to have somebody again to the previous work session that's going to have as robust of a daytime availability as Captain Stersel has had over the last couple years. Am I confident we may be able to find somebody for maybe four to eight hours a week? I think so. I think so. Um, but I'm not entirely certain that we have somebody with the bandwidth for 16 hours a week. Um, so I think that's really where we are going to just naturally as this if we're successful in being able to post and and fill the position. I do see some of that overflow falling back onto Captain Kaiser and myself because I don't believe that we're going to we're not going to replace 16 hours a week with 16 hours a week. I'm really hoping at this point that we can do it eight hours a week and then we can figure out where the rest of that is going to fall. So, that'll take us a little time to figure out. Obviously, it'll be new. We'll be dealing with different schedules, different processes, but I'm confident we'll be able to get very close to if I can get somebody that can at least get to that eight hour a week mark. I mean, I hate to simplify it down to that much, but for me, it really does it really does fall down to can we stay budget neutral? Yep. So, the Evans position has been a budgeted position for since I've been here. So, I don't see it being a net increase in any capacity. I I don't know that I would have somebody that would have more availability than what we've already been authorized for. So, thank you. You're welcome. It's all about that. Um, so Evans hours for 2023 and 2024 were 88 86 and 966. So, that's 16 to 18 hours a week. Yep. If I did my math right. So, but that wasn't just um fire inspections and pub events. Those that was also training because he gets paid for training and to go to calls. Correct. So it does are these hours just all of that or is it just this is just his scheduled time that we put in there? Oh, okay. So he actually had more hours because he also gets paid for training and for any calls that he goes to. So these were just these were just that. Okay. Um, so by moving someone, a current person into a position. Y and I mean these to me these jobs, everybody has a title, captain, lieutenant, y, you know, whatever it is. And you assign them jobs, you know, right? Kind of. um you know and Evan's job was to do inspections and to do public a pub events and Bridget's job is to do training and um and Carl and Brent's operations. Um so would you be able to split inspections and pubed to like to somewhere else if you can't find somebody internally that could do all of it? Because as as we said, everybody has a full-time job. Yep. or most do and 16 hours a week to add on to that that that is a lot as and that's even assuming that they're available during the day. Correct. So, is there is there a way to to kind of split that to Well, if if we hearken back to the previous work work session, I believe it was council member Robinson that actually provided that direction that let let's post it as it has been and if we're having trouble filling it, come back to us and see if we can split those two roles and see if there's more maybe we have somebody who's passionate about Pubed but really doesn't have the skill set nor the desire to be a fire inspector or vice versa. Right? Usually the pubed events are not during the day. A lot of the planning is though. That's the challenge. So we're fully in our pubed planning um time of the year and and we meet with the police department on an ongoing basis. Those meetings are exclusively during the day. So um wait, the next item is position, right? I think we're kind of intermingling. That's why I'm confused. Well, yeah, we can I mean if you're done kind of we can wait. Well, I just move on. Um the way that I'm sorry I'm jumping around. I didn't mean to jump around, but the administrative captain I was at the meeting when I wasn't on the council, but I was at the meeting and there was two different meetings and there was one in right when Joe said that he was going to leave. I think I um you wanted to have the assistant chief position be full-time. Correct. you came and asked for that and I don't know if it I couldn't find it. I looked for it, but I remember being at the meeting and I don't know if it was in a work session or what I I just couldn't find it, but it it didn't it didn't pass at that point, the assistant chief being full-time. And then sometime later, again, I was at this meeting um the position of administrative captain came up and it included some percentage of duties for the city and I kind of remembered 20%. I I remember that part of the the meeting. So, that was kind of the number that was thrown out there. And and I understand that things change and um and again, I I'm sure Tim would do anything that was asked of him. Um but things change, but it it it feels a little a little sneaky to now have it be full-time a full-time fire position when it originally wasn't approved for that. And then you we changed it to be some other duties as assigned basically. And then, oh, those duties, he's not doing those anymore, so now we're back to a full-time. Sure. I I can't address how you're feeling about it, right? I can just address what has happened over the course of the last 15 months and how this role has played out. And mind you, this isn't the fire chief telling you that everything has changed. This has been a cooperative position. The discussions regarding the structure of this position have been cooperative through the city as a whole. Right? Nobody's here to pull the wool from anybody anybody's eyes. Nobody's here to try and sneak a full-time position through. We want to be forthright in everything that we're doing. And this became kind of that organic kind of juncture for us to address the job description itself. Right? So, you know, I I would look at this more as this is an opportunity for us to do some house cleaning based on how this position has evolved and making sure that we're transparent about how this position has evolved without assigning malice to anything because that's certainly not the case from my perspective and I will speak for my colleagues that that's absolutely not their case either. So, well, and that's not what I meant, but the transparency is really important to me. Absolutely. when I noticed that, I just I just want to say it. And um I said some things at our last meeting and on my way out, Joe said, "Hey, you know, I just don't like it." And he said that in the meeting, too. I just don't like it when somebody says something negative. And I agree with that. I don't I don't want to say anything negative or make it sound like anyone's done anything wrong. That's not my intent. But I am I'll just just so you all know I am not one if I see something that's wrong I'm not one to just talk about it after the meeting or talk about it before the meeting. I and I I'll try to do so in a respectful manner but um and me having been at those two meetings and it just it and and we don't need to we don't need to you know you know hit it over the head here but I just it it it's and it but it is important for the job description to be accurate for what he's doing. I I do very much understand that and like again, no one's thinking that Tim isn't willing to do anything. But um that is asked of him. But I I do feel a full-time employee um that works during the day, right? He works during the day, right? As you do. Um so does he go to calls outside of his during the day shifts? He does. Okay. Okay. How does that work with overtime then? Or it's just part of the job. He's an exempted boy. He's not eligible for Oh, okay. Okay. So, but anyway, I just wanted to say that, too. Um I Nobody likes to say things that sound like somebody's doing something wrong and um and that's not not what I mean here. So, um, but it just it it does need to be accurate, but I just it it seems it seems a little off to me that it didn't get approved and then couple months later it did get approved by changing things and now we took everything out that Well, this is that in defense, I'm going to say this. Um, if if we were trying to not be transparent, we would have put it on the council council agenda here. They're they're coming back. They're saying, "Look, we looked at this. this is what we're proposing again. Let's take another look at this. If we don't, then we go back to the drawing board again like we do with everything it seems like. Um, which gets frustrating, but I don't think there's anything sneaky or non-transparent. If you if you're going through things and you're readjusting things, you you have to look at every angle and this is the angle that they think would work best for the department. And if that's what they're asking, then they come to us and this is where we hash it out so that it's a little less um the public doesn't have to see some of the ugly stuff if they don't want to. I guess kind of um because this is where we're more open and more, you know, whatever. So, I it's it's not the first time that something's come back to a work session or to a council agenda. It's certainly not going to be the last time. I mean, we just took the whole roundabout thing off. So, we're going to revisit all that stuff, too. That's not not being transparent. That's saying, "Hey, we took another look at it. This is what we have to do." So, that's just my two cents. All right. Anything else? Not really. I guess I will say something. You know, you have to look at the last three years what took place. We had now then and I was one of the biggest uh in defense of the chief's needs 50 60 hour weeks in a family and sports and activities and whatnot. That's what kind of brought some of this on. But we did now then for three years. We got paid for it. That's full. That's out there. Then we took on Bethl. We got we didn't get paid for some of that, but we had to investigate it. So now we are getting paid for it. Thank goodness. But so that's why some of this came to light. But I I'm glad to see the housekeeping take place cuz it's time. And also the transition on a new building. I know that the uh captain, if I'm not mistaken, was more qualified probably than anybody here as far as the IT portion of making things go and putting things together. Think of what that would have cost on the outside. $50, $60 an hour plus get somebody in here. So there was some needs filled. So I that it was in my mind also that can the captain do some of the inspection andor public relations stuff? We're gonna we're vetting that now. This is now the time where we're opening the windows and bringing in some air. So, that's all I got. I think you summed it up perfectly for me. I I I'm glad we're clean house cleaning this up and we'll we'll see where see where it goes. And there's a good chance some of this is going to fall back on them to some degree. So, I don't know. I think we're on to the fire inspector pending resignation and replacement considerations even though we've kind of talked about. Yeah. So, mayor and councel just again uh at our previous work session before I put the um request to fill the position as is, I went back to the meeting minutes from the work session and and forgive me if I misunderstood it, but in the minutes from the previous work session, the consensus of the council was to explore an internal candidate for the fire inspector role in a part-time capacity. And again, we made the determination on the policy piece for Captain Sterszel. So, that piece, that's where I came back to the the request for council action to fill the position kind of currently as it stood to see where it went. Um, and as I alluded to before, I believe it was council member Robinson said, "Let's give it a shot. If we got to council member Fus point, if we got to split those roles, then bring it back to us and let's have that discussion so we can try and figure out what this looks like so we can have some success." So, again, just asking for clarification on on the council's direction on how you'd like us to fill the fire inspector position. I think we're closer tonight than what we were before, but if if you guys have other feelings you'd like to add, please share with me. Who wants to start? I'll go. Go ahead, Kevin. I One of my questions was, "Are we mentoring others?" Well, you kind of answered that already that some people have stepped forward on their own accord, which is awesome. Um, I would under challenges in item number one says challenges may create staffing gaps and other critical roles. Correct. And I'm not putting you on the spot, but critical role, non-critical role. What's the definition? So, here's what I envision as as a strong possibility. Um, we have some people that are currently serving in leadership positions, maybe in a different role. So, we kind of have three main buckets of leadership within the organization. We have the operations division or or functional divisions. We have the operations division, which kind of handles the station, the station needs, and the personnel. We have our fire prevention and and pubed division which handles all of our pubed and co- enforcement and citizen complaints and all of those pieces. And then we have our training division which handles all of our internal and external training from our newest recruit to our most senior firefighter and all of the training needs both state and nationally require national requirements. What I meant by that is we may have somebody and and unironically both people that have asked or shown some level of interest in potentially applying for this position currently serve in a leadership role in a different division. So we would move somebody from say the operations division to the inspection division. Now I need to fill a spot in the operations division and are we going to now again either run a deficit because we're in a similar position. We may not have somebody that's either qualified, capable, or ready yet. I don't know what that looks like in totality, but that is one of the risks that we have is we may be moving shifting somebody who's already in a leadership position to a different silo, if you will, and then we have to backfill the previous silo. Does that make sense? Yes, sir. Okay, that's what I meant by that. To me, I'm kind of a guy half a glass half full guy. It's it's creating a vacuum on one entity, but then some other talent skill sets can come up and you haven't discovered as of yet. That I'm hopeful. Me too. Maybe I'm too hopeful, naive perhaps, but and then um maybe I'm get a little cart before the horse here. I worry about when it says we have a balance of public safety funds of $169,000, etc. But when it's gone, I always say we we create things which our own state government has done many many times. Create stuff unfunded mandates and say you got to do it or they give us money temporarily and say oh money's not this year. Sorry. Right. I just you know in my my six years doing this we've only done it a couple times. We haven't over spent it. We were very cautious and but when it's gone it's gone. It's not coming back. So um I'm sure like the mayor can attest we'd like to live within our means. Who doesn't? But um um that's all I have. Yes, sir. Sure. Yeah, this is it's just hard because in the perfect world, we'd have all the funds we needed, right? And everything would be easy. Um but just to clarify, those public safety funds would only be needed if council directed to have that become a full-time position. We're still with well within our budget if we continue as existing, right? So, if we as long as we don't as as long as we don't do a full-time, we wouldn't really have to dip into that at all. And that would just continue to sit there and be available for future needs. Correct. Um, you know, it would again if if we can find somebody who can do some of this at a part-time, that would be ideal clearly. Um, but again, it's that whole how many part-time things can people do? You know, do you have four part-time jobs instead of having a full-time job or do you quit another part-time job to take this? So, if we can do the part-time, that would be great, I think. Um, but again, it's the whole do we find somebody who's willing to do a part-time? That's where we get into issues is people are looking for more full-time that actually helps them not have to work two other part-time jobs. You're talking about someone from the outside outside either way. Either way, if you're going to hire full-time to somebody who already has a full-time job, they're going to be quitting that job. And so, you have to consider that. And and yes, more and more people are it seems like more and more people are having to take on that extra job, but how sustainable is that in the long run, too, before you get burnt out because when you're doing full-time plus part-time, that actually ends up being full-time. Let's be honest, when we volunteer, we find out that or even a part-time job, you end up working more hours than you probably want to. So, but you're for position one then basically to try to I would like position one. Yes. But I'm I'm not real I'm not real uh I don't have a lot of confidence that we're going to find somebody who's willing to I know Kevin I know I know you know that would be great but want to wager on it. Sorry but yes thank you. So pos uh position number one for replacing Evan. Yes. Um has no budget consequence. Basically if we went with hiring the position as it is, which would be option one, the cost of that position is already accounted for in our 2025 budget. Correct. Right. Okay. So, um, do other do other fire departments hire a part-time fire inspector? I'm not saying I'm going that way. I'm just I really think it depends. I guess the easy answer is and the fair answer is it depends. Um, East Bethl, for example, has a full-time fire inspector. Bulkrove has a part-time fire inspector. Andover uses some of their building staff to do some of their fire inspections. Rapids has six fire inspectors. So it it really is dependent on the needs of the individual department. Um so to there there's not a one-sizefits-all and and there's not one justification that overarches the need for the position for every department, right? It it's very nuanced to the city's needs. the city's expectations, the community's needs, the community's expectations, the business owner needs, and the business owner's expectations. So, um I do believe we are trending that way into the future as part of our financial plan. We did identify that as a future need, which is why we laid out the option for a potential of a full-time position using those public safety funds as a stop gap. Again, that wasn't me advocating, saying we need that full-time position today. That was me presenting you as the council with the options to provide direction back to the fire department with what you are comfortable with moving forward with today. So, I'm not married to any of these. I just wanted to make sure that I had clear direction moving forward so when we do fill the position, we all know what the expectations are. Okay. And that's the thing about the firefighters that are paid on call. Um, they all live here. they have to live here and I hope that they all start out wanting to help their community and so they don't go searching for a part-time job maybe because they need the money but maybe they do. It's not it's different than getting a different part-time job like I'm going to go work at Target, you know, for 10 hours cuz I need some extra money. Um, most of them, I want to believe, start off because they want to help their community. And so if they put in five to 10 hours a week on calls and training and this and that, that's that fills something for them, not just a paycheck sometimes. And so it so what you need to do is make sure is find the people that that fit these roles because everybody has a different set of skill set a different set of skills and they all have full-time jobs. They all have probably gone to college and they've they've they all have a, you know, life experience and there's there's a perfect person for this these roles. And so sometimes you have to move people around to to make that work. And so that's what's unique about a part-time paid on call fire department is because they all have a different focus also. Um, and so that that's a really unique thing. I just kind of went off on a tangent, but um I would definitely be for number one in this case, but I will admit I don't know what the $169,000 is. What is that? What that was? Legislative appropriated public safety one time public safety funds from the state of Minnesota. So that was a part of the COVID thing. Okay. Yeah. So that money is just sitting there. It was probably a higher number. It that money is just sitting there. we can do. Those funds have been spent down through over the last couple years between both police and fire. So, what we decided to do as a city is split those funds equally between police and fire. We've obviously had different needs or uses or purposes for those funds. That's just our current balance right now. So, we can certainly reappropriate it to other initiatives that we we would very like to use them for. But again, we had this opportunity here. And again, it was just an opportunity for you guys to see the big picture in totality and provide direction back to the organization. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm I'm pretty excited about number one as well. And I I I'm hoping so the two that have somewhat expressed interest in maybe fulfilling those roles. They're not doing it out of nobody else is going to do it. I'm doing it. They're doing it I don't think I don't get that impression. I don't think so. I I think one was very hesitant and I guess in in you know just interest of being forthright the one that initially had approached me since the previous meeting I think would be an exceptional candidate there's a training gap right so we got to figure out what that looks like the other candidate I think would also be an exceptional candidate but works a goofy schedule but I think we can carve out some time to make it work so um we do have a couple people like I said that in the last couple weeks have expressed interest that previously have not. So, I'm optimistic that we'll be able we'll find something. We'll find somebody and we'll figure out how to make the balance of those hours work for the best that we can. I I can't promise everything, but I think that's exciting that I mean people want to go into a different role and I I kind of go back to what you were saying, you know, 15 months later. So, let's I think we go with option one and 12 months from now or whatever else we take a look and say, okay, I'll go. I I I I would really like to try option one. See how it goes. Very good. Absolutely. I think everybody's in agreement with that, right? Yes, sir. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you, Dave. On medical response, um so the question has come up on what type of calls the fire department responds to and why. Um so this is just kind of a layout of what we go and it it'll kind of work backwards. So on the back page is the CAD codes of all the types of of incidences that we respond to. Um and the first page is our overview on why. And just a couple things to point out. Um certainly the increasing ambulance times have been a big contributing factor to that. I don't see that as um a concern that's going to be addressed shortterm and and likely not long term as um not only the state of Minnesota, but generally speaking nationwide service jobs are really starting to decline in interest and longevity. Um, the second piece of that is making sure that we're keeping our law enforcement people available for high priority calls as needed. Um, for those of you that know or don't know, once we make contact with a patient on a medical call, we cannot leave until we're relieved by equal or higher level of care. Otherwise, that becomes an issue of patient abandonment, which is in state statute. So, that creates certainly some challenges there. The biggest piece for me is um the fire department, we are 98% to the EMT level. I'm a paramedic. We have another person that's in paramedic training right now over at station two. Um we are probably the highest varianced fire department in Inoka County as far as what we can do with our medical variances, whether it's providing interventions or administering medications. and we're usually the first point of contact with some of the additional services that may be needed for extenduating care, whether that's uh human services, whether that's CPS and doing our best to try and create that continuation of coordinated cares. So, um certainly with that, this has been an ongoing discussion between myself and police chief for my time here for my eight years here. Uh I think our system works extremely well. Um, but I'm certainly happy to answer any questions that you guys may have uh in regards to why we do what we do. Anybody got questions? Want to start? Necessarily have a question maybe, but my comment is that with the increasing we've seen the increasing times and ambulance responses and we have the ability in our fire department. We're fire and rescue. We have the ability in our department currently to go to these calls and be that, you know, be the first people who have medical advanced medical training. Um, that can really make or break a a emergency. And I hate to see that I hate to see that go away. Um, there's just too many instances where when our fire department has gotten there, it's it's been a matter of saving someone's life and I just I don't I don't want to see that go away. Um, I'll jump in. I I mean, I found it very interesting. We had local fire protection council. We had a long meeting there and with East and with another different meeting with East Bethl, but and I know East Bethl is looking at this right now. They're talking about reducing which calls they go to. And the cities that have tried this saw significant drops really really quickly in in the number of calls. However, what they also found was that within a short time, I correct me Dave on some of this. You know this better than I do, within a year or two, the number of calls just crept right back up again and they were right back at the same spot when they first reduced some of the calls. So I I mean from what my take on it is after listening to the America Fire Protection Council talk about this and everything else is is only cutting it people just our citizens have to realize that if you want the fire department to go to every call that's not cheap it's expensive and you're right I I you know I hate to somebody I don't know the numbers but for everybody who exaggerates a call and you come out and it's just a nose bleed and there's somebody who doesn't call when it's a nose bleed and it's a more serious situation. It turns into that. So, it's it's a the double-edged sword. It can go both ways. But I I one thing I I I would like to pursue and I I know I know they brought it up. One way to reduce it and it's a much bigger picture than just St. Francis is if your dispatch center if you get to another level on your dispatch center, the dispatch center can walk people through and really filter the calls better. But of course that's an Oka County thing that we would all have to participate in. But that's one way of reducing the number of calls is on the front end on the dispatch and with better trained and more people available to walk somebody all the way through the call instead of just taking a call sending the fire department hanging up kind of a deal taking the call further. So that's I don't know how we have that capacity in county they can speak to that. So Anoka County dispatchers are not EMD certified. a line of dispatchers are and one of the challenges that we face even with the EMD system they call it proQA it it's almost a scripted process of you ask this question specifically if they answer this way or this way you go to the next card right so one of the challenges that we have when we're dealing with a dispatch center that is not EMD which the fire chiefs have been advocating for over the last at least a year for DOA county to also become an EMD dispatch center is the Ino County dispatcher picks up the phone. Hello, this is 911. This is Mrs. Smith. This is my problem. In order to not create a delay in dispatching the call, they grab the best information that they can. They put it into the CAD system and they zap it out to the responders because we don't know if it's going to be 3 minutes for the ProQa process to get through. We don't know if it's going to be five minutes. We don't know what information is going to change from the initial line of questioning to some of the more in-depth or secondary pieces of of questioning where now they go, "Oh no, this isn't what we originally thought is let's get responders going now." So what that does is it has the ability to really amplify the gaps in response times, not minimize in our current system. Um, to the mayor's point, meeting with the state fire marshall's office, and I think this was his first kind of true exposure to the bigger fire service as a whole, this is something that we hear not only across the state, but across the nation. Calls are going up for everybody and and we have found ways to intermittently or for shortterm mitigate some of that. It really comes down to a culture problem. things that I would have never considered my parents dialing 911 for or even myself dialing 911 for has become kind of the normal, right? And that that's a very difficult process to unpack because I think our influence is much less than the influence that they see in their lives every day. Everything is instant gratification. You want it, you you get it, right? You need something, you jump on your phone and it's there. and and I think that's really become the expectation with their healthcare. We do and we always try to implement strategies that reduce our volume in areas where we can and and I would say the best example that we have for you is a select urgent care. We have select urgent care now set up on a system that when they have somebody in their clinic that may need additional help, we send them directly to Alina. They'll go through the P proqa directly with Alina and if Alina says you know what we should start rescue to this call then they will if they don't they send it to us as an information page so we know that there's an ambulance coming to town and that were not needed right but that's also a healthc care facility with a higher level of care that's available there right but we we are seeing some small successes if you will in helping I'll say slow the growth or volume that our firefighters are responding to. And maybe this is more question for Todd, but because now you're told, you know, whatever it is, you call 911 and it's whether it's an emergency or not, right? So, I mean, because obviously sometimes you can think it's not an emergency and then you're on the call and all of a sudden something happens, another symptom happens or you collapse or so how does I mean because they're told call 911. So, I mean in in the past I mean I mean calling a non-emergency number didn't do anything if there's no one there to answer, right? But but is is that like a change in somewhat in the culture too? Yes. because you're just told don't just whatever it is whatever it is if it's like I mean when there the some kids broke the water fountain in Rum River Park it seemed crazy for me to call 911 but other than leaving the water run all night what what other option did I have well and part of that is the dispatchers also have all of the on call numbers for our public works department right if for whatever reason there's a need from the police department they will help kind of triage and I'm trying not to speak for you so if I say something stupid, tell me. Um, they'll help triage kind of where that call needs to go to, right? It's it's no different than when you call the nurse line, right? Another thing that has changed in the last 5 years that have made it very difficult for us, right? The nurse line's going to ask you a couple questions and if you say one of a couple words, guess what they're going to tell you to do? Right? We call it the 911 referral line, right? Part of that is, and they're not wrong, right? And I want to emphasize this. They don't get to see the patient. They don't get to touch the patient. They don't get to do diagnostics on the patient. Are there patients that we show up to and we do all of our evaluation diagnostics and it may truly not be a medical emergency? Absolutely. But what's the cost if we don't go and we're wrong, right? Because there are no takebacks on that. No. Right. So, we do our very best to try and screen these the best we can. And I have a high degree of faith and confidence in our dispatchers, but their job is very difficult to. They're talking to people that are in panic or crisis for whatever reason. It may not be the same level of panic or crisis that I see or you see or maybe even the vast majority of the general public see. We see some of these because they don't have anybody else to call. They don't have family. They don't have a car. They don't have anybody to call to get them to where they need to go. And what we have implemented as a culture in the fire department is don't judge before, right? Because it may seem like this is a non-emergency to even the average lay person. To them, it really is a bad spot to be in. If you don't feel good and you know you just need to go to the clinic and you can't drive and you don't have anybody else to call, it matters when we show up. Right. Right. And and to that too, like you can have somebody who's called eight times with a glucose issue and it's been nothing. But then there's that one time where it really is something and it does happen. And it it does. Yeah. I worked in the hospital so it was very real. So all right. And a lot of this isn't their fault either. And if we have a brittle diabetic that may not be their fault, right? There are medication challenged diabetics that just don't respond like 90% of the population does. Right. I shared at our meeting to part of the culture problem. Television. Yeah. Watch a TV show. Watch Oh, yeah. And they're there within a second on the TV taking care of the problem. That's true. It's just like I complain about fix it up shows where the bathroom gets remodeled in 30 minutes. Not life. It's not life. They're way more handsome on the TV though. I will give them that. Touche. Yes. Okay. I got some questions. Go ahead. All right. So, okay. I'm going to say this before I'm going to say what I'm going to say next. Sure. I absolutely want our residents to get the best possible care. Absolutely. Don't come after me on that one. Um because that's absolutely true. But there there may be some things that we should think about to try to implement. And I totally understand how difficult that is because you got dispatch, you got you get a call and it changes. I I get that more than anybody. I I truly do. Um but maybe maybe there's some calls that only two people get dispatched to. A lot of medical calls can be handled by two people instead of instead of the entire department, right? The entire department gets called out and it it they get paid for a minimum of an hour. You know what what do they get paid? $20. I don't know. It's $200. Just it could be $200 and they're there for five seconds. They could get cancelled before they even get there. But many medical calls can be handled by two people. Agreed. And maybe we can do something like that again. And I understand that's really difficult to manage that. And there's a lot of a lot of things that you're going to tell me why that doesn't work, but but I would like us to to revisit that. Um because it those those two people if they realize the call came out and oh this sounds like it may be stuff they don't they can always call for more help. Always. Um if Alina is in route and it's a it's a less critical call. Um if they're in route and they're nearby, the fire department can get cancelled. Maybe, maybe not. But if if two people go to the medical call and they need help, they they just call for more help. It it it's it's easy to just call for more help. And then that way you're only paying two people. Um, I don't know how any of that works, but I mean I know how it used to work, but I don't know how any of that works for you today. But I would like to see something like that because when you you page out the entire department and all of a sudden you have eight people at a medical call, what happens when you get a house fire and the good news is we have eight people here. Well, yes. Yes. you have eight people, you know, here, but it it it changes it because um and just like you said, you're a paramedic and so if you go to the medical call, you can't leave until another paramedic arrives, right? You can't pass it down to leave an EMT or a first a first responder. I didn't mean to say just um you you can't leave. So that ties you up. So um so you're basically stuck there till Alina gets there. Um because there's I don't I don't think there's any other pairs. Did you say there was one? Yes, we have one in training right now. Okay. And then so I I would like to see us try and minimize the calls even though our residents have come to expect it and they know, hey, I'm going to call 911 and fire department's going to show up and I'm going to get a ride to wherever I need to go. And I don't mean to not have empathy for that person at all. But the the study that East Bethl did, they and I printed this today, but I I have to be honest, I didn't get a chance to read it. Um, but I did read it when it first came out in October. And some of the things that they were trying to accomplish was they were getting firefighter burnout because they were going to so many calls that in their mind maybe didn't they didn't need to. Um and they all had full-time jobs. So this I want to help my community and it was going to be 5 to 10 hours a week or less now became 20 hours a week because there's so many calls. Um and they had good reasons for doing this report and um it was done by Capstone. Jerry Strike has been around for a long time. Um and you know worked on a lot of departments and I I feel like we should we should glean something from this report because we're not that different than East Bethl. Um, and in this report they did say they were going to go to fewer calls. And I don't know how that's working. You mentioned that you you thought you'd heard it went back up, but I think that I I think we I just want to have some reduction in the budget because it does cost a lot when the all the department goes gets called. It does and it's often not needed knowing you can call for more help at any time. Um I just I just think we need to revisit that again. Um, and and also too, firefighters that are expected to get 20% of the calls, if the calls have gone from 200 calls a year to a,000 calls a year and being and just being in general, they're all they're expected to do a lot more than they were when maybe they were hired. And I don't think that's right either. Um, and so we got to do something to to mend that bridge. Um, or fill that gap. Um, and maybe maybe our residents if if we didn't show up every time they called 911, Alina came instead. Um, and it cost them more money because they had to take a trip in the ambulance instead of us coming to do their blood pressure, which doesn't cost them money, right? If we show up, if we show up, it does not change the pay metrics at all. Yeah. Whether we show up or not. Right. So, but if Alina shows up and they force them to go to the hospital, that cost them money. Sometimes we can prevent before they get to that point. Right. Exactly. So, it's and again, I want to say I want our residents to get the the best care they can, but I do think that there's good information in this East Bethl report, and I think that we need to like take a close look at it. Um, I I I do and I I there was a few things that I liked that they did in their report. I like I actually liked that they list out their actual address for where the medical call happened. Um, I'm sure there's some kind of HIPPA rules on that, but if if they did it if they did it I won't base it on I don't know. I don't know. But I'm just saying follow suit of them. I'm sorry. I'm just saying I liked it. Yeah. And maybe that's only a report for us. Maybe that's not a report. I liked that about it. And I liked I like your your list here of all the possible calls you go to. I I like that. Um most of these seem like they're um high priority calls. These are all high priority calls. They're not all of them. It's well that's all of the CAD codes that we have available to us through CAD with the one that I did miss and I realized it this morning is the call for slumper. And the only reason I miss is because that's traditionally more of a law enforcement code than an EMS code. There unknowns there. What's that? Just so many unknowns there. Yeah. Um, well, and I I like this list. Um, I I absolutely want the fire department to go to all fires and accidents. That's your niche. Carbon, you know, all of that and all major medical calls. I want you to go to all of them. Um, I'm not saying that a heart attack should only send two people, but there are some that you could only send two people to, and I don't know how to manage that. And I'm glad you said that because I don't entirely know either, right? The the easiest way is great, let's send two people, let's hire six full-time guys and we'll put two people on a day and they'll rotate every every other day, right? I also know that that's not very much of a reality. Duty crews can work. And I will say that I I came from a department that was one of the first early implementers of a duty crew program. And for those of you that don't know, that's when we essentially operate as a career fire department with part-time firefighters working assigned shifts in the station to create 24-hour coverage. It works great for a couple years. The challenges are real. We have to manage their hours because of the Affordable Care Act. We can't exceed a certain amount of hours per week for a majority of the time of the year. The other piece that happens, and this is what impacted most departments in the metro, which is why they have made the transition to full-time staffing, is once you become accustomed to a schedule, you don't want to go back to not having a schedule. And that's just human nature. If I worked my 40hour week job, I scheduled myself for 12 hours in the fire station. And now there is one of those calls where we need to call people back. They're less likely now to come back because now their 40-hour week where they may have went to f five or six call backs is now a 52-hour week and they're going to call backs. Does that make sense? Um, I agree with you. If we want to look at doing an at home duty crew, as soon as we restrict their motion, we have to pay it, right? So, if we're going to pay them, I might as well put them in the fire station, right? because then we're eliminating that gap from dispatch at home, travel time to the station, then responding to the calls, right? So, I agree with you. There are certainly calls that we can reduce the number of responders that we send to. I don't see a solution where it's cheaper than what we're doing today because of those things. And they're and they're very real, but but I do agree with you. Um, the other thing just you have to be a little bit careful to take a study that was designed for a department with their unique set of challenges and apply it to a department that doesn't have those same unique challenges. We are in the middle of our of our own independent study with a 30-year fire service veteran who is very familiar with ina county as well. Both the mayor and council member Robinson got their first peek at it our meeting last week. So you will see more information coming that is specific to St. Francis, the idiosyncrasies of not only our demographics but our community and how our department responds and why we do it that way. Um we're also one of the few departments in this area that's not in crisis right now. I mean that that's for employees. Is that what most areas right? We're pretty well staffed. I don't have people coming to me saying, "Chief, we're going to too many calls." I I don't have that right now. So, I do want you guys to understand what we do and why we do it. Um, but again, just those couple points. I'd love to put on a duty crew. I don't think we have the staffing for it right now and I don't think we have the budget for it right now. Um, but it is certainly something that we do need to key ourselves into the future as we see not only the employment trends change and evolve in our community grow and evolve and whatever that looks like in two years or 10 years from now. All of our departments have to have the agility to be flexible enough to meet those challenges and it for the fire service those challenges are are pretty unique and never at a loss. Right. So, um, I do appreciate your insight. I I do agree with you. I I wish there was a way I that we could do it and be cost-effective. Um, I wish we could do it in a way where we had the employee staff that could support it longer term. And I wish there was a way that we could trend that and not end up with a negative consequence implementing a system like that. Um, but I think we do a pretty good job here. I think we have a good balance right now. Um, but your points are well taken. Thank you. Well, and your your comment of I know you you weren't saying we should do this, but if we ever got to be have six full-time people, you you still can never get rid of your paid part or your um pay people. We live in this little donut here and it's 20 minutes to get everywhere and everybody has to live in is it six minutes, eight minutes? It's 10 minutes. Everybody has to live in a 10-minute radius of the fire station. We don't have a huge pool of people to draw from and we need to keep the people that live here and are dedicated to our city. And I I have noticed in the past four years there has been 10 or 12 firefighters that have left and nearly all of them still live here in the area and most of them work in the fire service. um or a nurse or you know something medical and you know there's a few of them that just completely moved away but I I just I just wonder if it wasn't for the large number of calls that they're expected to go to. Could we have kept them here? They were they were trained people. We trained them. Yep. And then they went off to another job. They were trained people. they live here and and we we let them walk out the door and we didn't let them. They chose and and just so you don't have to wonder in exit interviews with every one of our staff members that went to a career organization which is far exceeded any one of our neighbors and our previous history which is a testament to the amount and quality of person and candidate that we are training and teaching here. If you're a 24-hour shift firefighter and you get home after not sleeping all night and you get home, you really don't want to come back to a different fire station. Probably not. You've done your tour, right? It could have been a hundred calls. It could have been 10. That's the reality of it. I still talk with almost every single one of them to this day. It's not because they weren't unhappy here. They chose to leave. This is our reality in the fire service. It's not a St. Francis problem. It's not an old growth problem. We bring in the bre best and brightest from our communities. We give them high quality education. We give them structure. We give them an environment where they can be successful and they're out the door in two to five years. You pay them while you're doing it. And we pay them while we're doing it. And and as much as I love that, that we are getting a reputation from very large metro fire departments that we are producing high quality candidates, I also know we're sending $25,000 out the door with them. costs a lot to train a new fire. Cost a lot to train a new firefighter. It does, right? So, it is a dual-edged sword. Pass the first year or two, you know, and that's what we see, right? So, it's a great reputation for us to have. Point well taken. It's they do leave, right? But it's not because we're too busy or we're not busy enough. If you've ever worked in that environment, even days when I was working on a career department or even on the ambulance, the last thing I want to do when I got home from work was to go see another sick person in my free time, right? Well, that's the reality. It's only different because it's their community and they they probably started because they wanted to help their community. So, you're you're right. you know, if you're a plumber, you don't want to go home and fix your faucets, but um you know, it's it's their community and they they probably still could have had some value. They still stop in quite frequently. If I've learned anything over the last couple months with some of the fire stuff, I'm not going on a limb and saying five to 10 years. Oh god, the whole fire fire systems in flux right now. I'm not going to say crisis. crisis is the wrong word to use, but it's in flux. And I mean, there's a lot of talk going about mergers and everywhere because something's something's going to give. And it is. I don't know when exactly when, but in the near future, it's it's it's going to change. So, I don't know. I think we're kind of ready to move on. I got a couple. Go ahead. I didn't get a shot. Yep. Sorry. Um, you said 90 in the beginning. You said 98%. Um, you guys are 98% EMT. We have two that are currently not. Um, one we inherited from BETHL and part of our arrangement with BETHL is that we weren't going to require them to then take an EMT course for us because one of them isn't pertinent or 20-year veteran and flat out said if you make me go to EMT, I'm I'm not coming. Sure. Right. So, we can make some concessions and that was part of our contractual language. The other one has been a longtime St. Francis firefighter who is he's an awesome caregiver. um went through the course but was unsuccessful in completing the national registry testing and our requirement at that time was you at least have to go through the course right and that was for our people that were kind of getting into the organiza that were already in the organization our standard for all new hires is EMT right so the last person that's still an EMR that was kind of an original St. Francis member before the merger went through the course wasn't successful at the test and that was that was our only ask is we're changing this as a policy we'll offer you the course we actually hosted it here in St. Francis eight years ago did everything that we asked of him just didn't get through the test and Gro doesn't have the same skill set that your people do. I don't know how many EMTs they have. I don't think that that's their baseline requirement. Ham Lake East Bethl they have qualified people like that. They have some. I don't know the ins and outs of their roster. You're striving for a full percent or the 100% of your crew. Absolutely. Do they do do other departments have goals like that or they it's it's becoming more and more of the trend. Um the department that I came from, that was the requirement. Um talking with other fire chiefs, that's been the requirement. It's the requirement for any new firefighter in Now Then. Um I believe it's the requirement for any new firefighter in Ramsey. Don't quote me on this because I don't read other department's policies. You brought that culture for now then, didn't you? You started that. You started here as well. Yes. Okay. Your yearly budget is what 560,000 something like that. It's either just below or just over 600,000 a year. Yeah. Well, the customers who call you are customers. They paid their admission to get you to come to their house. So, that's what I want to say about that as far as paying taxes. You know, you know, if they get the the the glucose meter people and stuff like that, you deal with it. You've also done some, you know, community outreach to those people. You've gotten family involved and stuff. I don't know how many other departments take that extra step or just write it off as, oh, Mary's going to call again. We'll just wait for a call. So, there's some there's some exceptions to the rule for sure. Um, well, I'm really proud of you guys. I'm I'm happy to to tell uh other other people when I'm in other cities, you know, that you guys are qualified what you guys do. So, um, again, my goal here has always been the police, fire, roads, and bridges. We fill the bill pretty good here, I think. Um, there's not too much gaps as far as frugality. I don't know, the six years I've been here, the biggest money we spent was getting you some assistant captain and we bought a fire engine and then we built this building. So, as far as public service, I think we're doing a pretty good job as far as where the money gets spent and, how it gets spent. So, That's all I have, sir. Anybody else? Thank you for the discussion. I I absolutely I know it's got long- winded, but it it it's information and it's all about getting correct and accurate information and I I found this very helpful. So, you're welcome. Thank you. And thank your staff because I I have no no complaints, let me assure you. So, we are very fortunate here. We have incredible team me team members. um they have really leaned in over the last few years. This department has grown leaps and bounds. Um I am extremely incredibly proud of the city and this fire department and I do that into the future. Thank you. Thank you. On to something really glorious. Storm water fees. Well, you got to stay for storm water. Uh you just filled up the fire truck this morning. I I I Oh my good time. Thank Thank you, Chief. Thank you, guys. Darcy, you're I can start. Yep. So, mayor and council, before you tonight is the conversation of storm water fees. So in this agenda report we put some of the history um how we got to being a storm water fee need city um through the types of having not only our population but our outstanding resource value the scenic river the rum river uh some of the projects that are ongoing and have been completed I would encourage you to look at our website so we have a very extensive list and continue to keep that updated so everybody knows when they're paying these storm water fees now what that really is impacting what we're doing with those fees. So again trying to do that transparency um back in 2016 this is when this started and Darcy definitely has the history of that uh where we started at $5 a month and there was a schedule that was supposed to be followed u from 16 to 2020. Uh it was kept flat for many years at that $5 a month until uh 200 25 26 25 we went up to $7 um or we were going to go up to $7 but we kept it flat at the $6 from 2024 and we are have held now for two years at that rate. Uh we did bring this to a fee schedule or to a work session and we talked about going forward and creating a new schedule. Um 2026 is going to be a year we are going to need to increase that fee if we continue to do the invoice style. Uh this is one where we've been able to stretch a lot of our fees with the use of grants uh Paul's work with the Rem River um watersheds and the different partners. We've been able to actually take our storm water fees and and extend them out much greater which has allowed us to buy this time as well. Uh so our process to collect this, we have letters that go out to all of the property owners in March. Uh we send them a late fee is applied in July. They get another notice in October uh for public hearing in November. And then all of the assessments go to the county in for January 1st. Um that doesn't come without cost. Those steps do, you know, incur a cost from everything from staff time to the mailing to the uh ongoing interaction once those letters hit homes. Uh can be very very time consuming for both of our front uh desk and for for Darcy. Uh so with that history I did put some information in there of the ways to that have been discussed about collections and the some advantages and dis disadvantages that have been talked about. So tonight as this was brought to staff to to review this uh really we have to make a decision. Are we going to increase it to the $8 a month and start continue the invoicing or apply it to the levy? Uh Paul is here who manages all of the projects and works with all of our partners to stretch these funds. Darcy manages the money and the collection process. So we are here to answer any questions. Just want to add one thing quick to your when you talked about the cost to us because I don't know what that cost is Darcy will but once when we have to apply it to somebody's property taxes, we the city have to pay a fee. If I'm understanding correctly, the county charges a fee to put it on the property taxes or no? Yes, there's a fee to put the special assessment on and then there's so much per parcel. I think it was it's $100 for the assessment and then $1 per parcel. We're we more than cover it with the fees that we assess to the homeowners. Okay. Thank you. So, I don't know. Who wants to start? Anybody? I mean, I'll start. I mean, I'm the one who initiated this whole thing. I just think it's crazy not to just keep this put this put this as part of a levy and I hear it all the time. Okay, now you know I'm going to pay more because I have a higher value property than somebody else, not just flat fee. I do it with everything else. I don't use the dog park and they pay for it. I don't I don't use this and I pay for it. So, I'm not sure why the storm water fee would be any different, separate than any other fee we do because and I'm just adamant about the ill will it creates. We've got over 800 people a year not paying this. And then we send them So, we we send them a letter, get them upset. In July, we send them another letter, get them more upset. Then, it shows up in their property taxes, get more upset. I think I've been one of them. It it it so all all we're doing is just creating creating ill will. I I get that it, like I said, it's no different. I don't have kids in the school system anymore. Doesn't matter. I have to pay for kids in school. I have to I hear people, oh, I'm green. I ride my bike. Good for you. That that bike came across the road at somewhere. So all when we create when we create all these separate billings for things, I just think it's silly. It creates it draws attention to it. It draws attention to it and it cost and it cost time way. Yeah. So that's just I'm just gonna I think everybody knew that's where I stood and I'm just going to reiterate it. That's that's why I would just assume just put this on the levy. So I'll let the rest of you whoever wants to go I'll go. It would show would show up as a line item then on the levy. You got school, you got this that how's it show up then? It would show up just as your general operating just tax the the the when so the general operating includes for the general fund it includes capital improvements it includes everything except debt basically there is not a separate category that is shown on the property tax okay I get my property tax statement where does it show up there how are they reading it or how do you see it or how do you recognize Although putting in the levy just make it disappear as the the bulk amount. I'm sorry. I was thinking you actually put it out there but No, that's all right. Paul, can you um you know back when I lived in No Grove, we you know again unfunded mandate by the state. You got to measure the silt in the ponds. You got to do this, you got to do that. How much is of the money is involved in that still? And how much is involved in banking for future sewer pipe replace or storm water replacement or curb? Mayor and Council, that's actually a really good question and that is evolving uh as MPCA continues to tighten down on everything. That's changing. So, the percentages are changing. Uh for instance, the the the Woodbmine project two I don't know if you caught it, but 200,000 of that is storm water that will come out of that fund. That in in in the past had been part of a street fund, right? So now that all that separated out now, it it's getting way more credit now than it ever has. So to answer your question, it it changes the percentages. So, but the bottom line was we're we're hoping we're not hoping. We're trying to avoid assessing the individual properties that the these things run by. Correct. I mean, if you're doing wood buying, you're not charging up for the storm water because the pipes got to replace. Correct. You know, the life expectancy is exhausted on this piping. Correct. How do we explain that to the public on again something like this if we do make a change? What would the roll out be to the public as far as letting the public know what we're doing and rather than again the transparency is the the buzzword of the last two years plus. But how would I mean we need to keep them involved so they well I never heard about it. I never knew about it. And you know even now the thing that still bugs me is you ever look at the electric bill there's a railroad fee on there a rail tax. What the hell's that for? We don't use a rail. You don't have a railroad around here outside. Exactly. Right. But uh how how would we rule this out to the public? I guess it it we need the money for this this subject. We've got to there's no way to get around it. Um we need to show them the pluses and minuses. How do we do something like that? I guess is it just I'm throwing it out there and Well, I mean I I guess I'm I don't know. I guess maybe I'm looking at too simply. I I totally agree with you about transparency. If anybody didn't scream that I would scream or for warning or whatever you want to call it, you But how does how is how is taking care of our storm water ponds any different than replacing this road or this curbing here? How's it how's it how's it any different? Because the state's requiring you to do one thing and then the city needs the money for another thing. So maybe it's 10% of 10% of the money we're gathering is for something the state's done. Don't call it the I guess you call it the flection but letting them know where it wasn't us for this 10%. We need the other 90 for sure but it wasn't us for 10% or 15% of the money. I mean, I get what you're saying and maybe it's not even worth worth mentioning, you know, just do it and just do it. I don't I don't I think it eventually just becomes kind of forgotten in the whole thing. Right now, it's nothing but a big negative. It it isn't negative. So, for the few I'm just going to say for the few people that it really gives them the transparency they're looking for. So, let's just say I I don't know. I don't know numbers. I'm just going to say for the 10 people it has a positive impact on, there's 790 who it's not a good impact. So maybe separating it or letting people know the difference it raise more questions than than answers. Go ahead. I would just like to point out I mean that's where we would have to do the truth and taxation. They would get their notice. They would you know if they question it that their taxes are going up we would explain it at truth and taxation that this levy we went from a feebase to into the le. We also are going to try and do um another an article in the newsletter to explain a little bit more about the whole budgeting process and the levy and and stuff like that as we move uh closer to that time or as the website might evolve we could have a crawl on there that says you know what's new or whatever and yeah well I know I agree though and I Darcy about the city that did this and know she looked into it a little more but the city did it where you can input your house or your property to your value and it gives you not a fine detailed breakdown but it gives you a breakdown. It says you're paying $20 for fire. You're paying $20 for police. It's all it's a generated thing that gives you a real good idea as to the taxes you're paying what it's going to percentage wise. It's a breakdown and it's not line item specific, but it gives you a really good I don't know. They found success in this city doing that to answer all the the transparency stuff. So, it's there if you want it. You'll still have people bitching or complaining, but it's there if you want it, right? That sounds interesting. Um, I guess that's probably a better way to go like you're saying as far as the public guessing or when we do explanation is um how much money for postage in the followup and the followup or the following of the followup. So, I guess I'm I'd be good with putting out a levy then as well. We're going to get beat up no matter what in my opinion, but I get beat up less. Yeah. Doing it on on the web. That's No, I agree. I don't I don't know if we're going to get beat up any less. I I think I think they're I think they're going to look at it and go, "Well, at least when I got this, I knew exactly I I got it and it was $80. I don't liked it, but it was $80. Now we do it this way." And I'm not saying I don't want to do black, but this is then they're going to say, "How much am I really paying? And how do I know each year what you're raising it to?" And how do I know? So that's where I have problem with the transparency where we're going to have to really shoot it out and be like, "Hey, just so you know, it's you're still paying the storm water fee. We're rolling it into this and you're going to it's going to we may as well tell them it's going to go up every year because we we can't keep not doing it. We just if they know that you know what every year and and we have the numbers, I mean, we we see them. we see that, you know, in 2029 it's going to be $11. By that time it might be $15. We don't know. This is just a projection. But I think if we do it this way, although we're going to it's going to save stack. It's going to seem But I also see that there could be much more of a of a storm about now we're really not being transparent because now we're hiding how much we're taking from them. Whereas at least every year I got this postcard that told me I was paying 60. Now I'm paying 66. Now I'm paying 80. Now I'm paying 90. Whereas this one I'm going to have to guess. And who am I going to call to I mean who am I who am I going to call to find out how much I'm Well, right. We're going to call Darcy. We know we know that. We know that. Um but does I I'm just saying so that's a very good point, Sarah. So I I would kick it back to Darcy for a second. How realistic is it to give us give them a breakdown with MS4 for a particular property? How realistic is that? You know, can we make that tool available? Like I said, or showed you what that I mean, you know, I the one thing I had to check on is that is going to cost money. Y, so I haven't even investigated that any further. Um, but there I think we we could come up with something that would show, you know, hey, this is on a $150,000 house. I can do it. Or a $200,000 house. This is how much you went to each different category. Yeah, that that isn't a problem. Um, you know, I actually there's a lot of hard feelings from people. I we read a lot of different comments on checks. Um, they don't they Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I some people, you know, do different odd things. And I've heard I've been told by some people, I'm never going to pay for it. You'll always have to specialize. So, um I think it's Yeah, it's one half dozen of you're not we're never going to make very many people. I mean, nobody likes this. I just I just need to I see it as people going this is a sneaky way for you guys to keep raising and raising and raising and me not even Can I ask another question? Oh, you can. The question would be, okay, why would they want to know how much they spend on parks? Well, I'm I'm not right. I I agree with son on every I agree. But I think that they look at this. They don't understand this. They understand that parks are part of your community. They don't understand this water fee. They think they the majority of people still think it's a city doing it. No matter how many times we've told them, we don't want to do this anymore than you do. and and you know the whole thing of you know we're trying not to raise it we're trying not to well that only gets you so far and then you have to do then you have to well and so you know I don't have storm drains on my street but I have to pay it you know I mean that's probably the biggest complaint is why and that yeah and the whole thing is it's you know what we all we all use our we all use our rivers we all use our you know we all use water. So, we have to but so that that's my main concern is like, you know, and maybe that's maybe that's putting it up on the website. I mean, we're going to have people coming up and being mad again, but you can't just ignore it every year. If you're going to raise it, you know, $8 and then next year it's going to be $9. Somehow we have to let them know that, yeah, we're going to keep raising it. We're we're being transparent with you. We're going to put it, we're going to bill you a step a different way than what we have been because that's saving our staff and that's saving you money in the long run for city time, but the general public doesn't equate that. It It doesn't make sense to us. I think it's a topic for the mayor's next town hall meeting. I'm happy to discuss it. I I just think I just I totally agree with your points. I totally do. I just think there's two ways to approach it. One is we keep doing the building separate that we're doing and I don't think that's the answer. Second one is we got to do a better job explaining explaining it and and like I said I'm not saying it's the perfect answer but I I I got to look that article up. I actually found this on the League of Minnesota cities and something and I brought it to our attention, but this town had kind of the same. There we go. Shaka and they had the same kind of issues going on and they wanted to become it more transparent. So, they made a program that allows you to come on at home, type in your address, you put in your your amount and it gives you the breakdown of not every single last thing, but it gives you a breakdown by the major major things. And I I just think that's well and and we'd have to make sure that that was one of the things that we I'm sure you get to choose several things that you want to include and clearly we'd have to make sure that was one of our but you know fire police I don't know your parts whatever right and I I mean I I realize we need we need to we need to make adjustments and and I do think that as they get used to it will probably be less angering to them than getting that postcard and then getting that letter and then getting that reminder that it's going to be assessed. I I don't doubt that. I just the whole transparency thing the way that the public looks at it is totally different than the way we look at. We do get a lot of comments that why don't you have this on the well and they don't like the separate billing thing. Well, yeah. I mean, who I mean, you know, if you can there's a reason people consolidate their credit cards. They don't want to have six of them coming at a time. You know, it makes sense. It I just I just want to make sure that we when we do it, we need to let them know that yeah, we're doing this. Yes, there's going to be an increase. And just know every year, whether it's a dollar or $2, it's going to increase every year. Well, I I definitely agree with all your points. I think I think we just got to we got to bite the bullet and just bite the bullet and do it. But then, like you said, I don't want to do this in the dark of night. That's not my intention. highlighted as far as I'm concerned in front of the newsletter, but I I think it's time we make that change because I just I don't I don't I don't see the point. So, I agree. The year that we, you know, we did switch from 60 to 72, there's a lot of out priority. When you raise that fee, then there's and moving forward, we are going to have to raise those fees. We, you know, we held off one year just to kind of okay with everything, but we're going to have to go back to that and and because we have so many projects that are scheduled and we need to fund them, right? You know, it's every uh street project basically has a storm water. There's some that don't, but there's a bigger component there. And I think we also have to be prepared on how to respond to social media because we're going to have people going, "Oh, did they get rid of that because I didn't get a postcard?" And we have to have a cleared. Yeah. And and probably not have six different people respond. You know what I mean? Um so that when that does because somebody is going to come on and say, "Oh, I didn't get that bill this year." So maybe that maybe did the city finally do something right and take it away. So we're going to have to be prepared for that because it's going to be I I can see a lot of people going on social media and making, you know, because when you're used to getting that and being ticked off every year, you're going to notice it's not there, right, Mayor? I pay mine on the last day every single time. Well, at least you pay it without Yeah, I believe me, I go on there, I would check and I'd be like calling my friends going, "Get in there and pay it." I just think long term, I I really just think it's much healthier long that direction. I think it's so just going back to history when we put this on, you know, there it was the right thing at the time and now it gets to be a lot. There's 3 thou over 3,000 invoices that we process and we send out. That's, you know, Yeah. $2,20072 checks that we have flow through here, right? It's hard because they're all the same amount. It's like the deposit is quite interesting because it's like 7272. Are we switching it to $96 at some point? That would be really even harder to add all those $86. Yeah, that that is if you continue with the the invoice, we'd have to go to the $96 I think next year is what plan call us for. Do we need to decide something? I don't know. I mean, anybody anybody else want to discuss? I got input. I mean, I just kind of excuse me. We want to come to consensus here and then I don't know. you come to a consensus and I can just start when I'm preparing the uh levy, you know, for the September meeting that we do the preliminary levy, then that will be in there because remember once you set that levy in September, you can't go up except for certain unusual circumstances, but you could lower it. So, we need that in that preliminary mode. So, if if we don't have Joe here, I know we're not we don't really vote here, but if Joe's not here, um he loses loses. What if we're two and two? Then then she she doesn't have any direction then we'll deal with it then. Okay. I do have another question. Um probably because I'm new on pages 24 and 25. Um it says the next discussion. Oh yeah. Oh, did I move on? So, you kind of include I kind of included that because we're gonna discuss the upcoming levy. Sorry. And I'm I kind of showed you, hey, if you put in the levy, this is what it do to people's taxes. If you don't put it in the levy, then the taxes are estimated to be this. All our topics are just um so on page 24 for under 2025, it says that the tax increase is 10.48. 48 and the in 2026 is 11.24. Are those are those numbers just up because of this building or was there some other No, the building we're not because of the building anymore. That that has been raised up to the the max. I mean, if we all of a sudden show that we don't we're not collecting enough to pay the debt service, then we might have to discuss raising that somewhat, but it won't be a huge amount. Um, so why are those those so much higher than 2027, 2028 and so forth? A bunch of stuff. Um, well, now some of those are based on that that's based basically on that long-term plan that we did. And some of th that stuff is kind of out of date. we need to revisit it, you know, and look at it because there's stuff that we built into there that we might not be doing, you know, like employees or something like that. So, going forward, I just kind of gave you what was in the long-term plan and that has changed a lot and and maybe going down. I wouldn't ever look to see that it's going to go down with increasing costs, okay? Unless the state would come across and give us a lot more in LGA or something like that. That's our next biggest revenue for the city is LGA. So they can take that away. Yeah, it's gone before. Yeah, I've seen when we haven't got any. Yeah. Or very little. So, anything more about the storm water fees? I just I'm just going to go out and say I'm in favor of putting on the levy. I'll just go down the line. Amy, I would say the levy, too. There you go. Mercy. Hey, that's how I'll work the budget. Thank you. Thank you. On to preliminary budget or excuse me, preliminary levy discussion. Mayor and Council, we're just going to start the uh conversation. We're working on the new budget for 2026 and um we have some stuff that is going on. Um and want to get your input on different things. Uh one of the first things we do need to talk about is we have that tax abatement that was done what was it last year for this uh the senior living facility. Um, this year their full value isn't on there. So, we're estimating about 50,000. We have to put 50,000 in there because we have to pay them back the money. What they they pay their taxes. We then have to turn around and pay them back the amount that was the cities. So, it is up to 200. The max that we have to pay them in a year is $200,000. for next for next year it's 50,000 based on the value that they had right now. Okay. So that is one thing that's affecting your levy. Um the storm water which you just you know said to go to levy. Uh another thing that's affecting it will be it's an election year again next year. So every other year we have to put money in for election. So you're going to see some changes there. um the inflation. Um then employees uh we have the non-union we have to discuss a cola for non-union. Um and then we have the public works union is negotiating. So Kate is and them they are just starting that process. So we'll see how that affects our budget. Um and then you know we have impacts from other places which are the market value that is set that dictates you know when if they change market values very much I know several years ago everybody's value went up a lot and that increased taxes um fiscal disparities uh that can change that's that's the amount that the uh the seven county metro area uh generates that. We all share in that pot. It all comes from 40% of the commercial and industrial that has been placed on the on the um properties. And then we have of course the state of Minnesota the local government aid that is always a thing. I haven't heard anything about where that is right now. We got very little increase for 2025. So, I'm not expecting anything really in 2000 places. So, don't know if you guys have anything, you know, any of any priorities you have, you know, if you have any idea of like uh cola that you're thinking about this year for people. um you know police was just police negotiations were just completed last year for 25 26 and 27. So those are set. I don't know if you want to have a general I don't know if we can discuss them here. So you have put in numbers just rough numbers for cola correct? Yeah, I always do a rough number. Yep. And try and make it work right. So I mean we really don't want to discuss those percentages here for non-union. You can discuss, you know, you could discuss that and set a non-union right now or, you know, tell me what to work into the budget. There's no negotiations there. Public works is the one that you do have to negotiate with. So, and personnel cost is a big part of our our budget. So, is it smart for you to say right now what your cola what increase you marked on there or not? Um well for non-union it isn't a big thing if you decided to go more. Uh I always kind of generally lean towards the 3% 4%. I was just at a meeting last week and there's probably I want to say 20 30 different cities there and the consensus there was most of them were working at that 3% rate. There is one city that had come up with 5%. They had done a um [Music] a study. Yes. Thank you. So, but I don't know is there anything else you know prior uh on your priority list that you want to work into the budget or that? I think the big thing we discussed tonight was that storm water You know, the levy the levy is increasing for uh each year for street improvements. It goes up by $60,000 a year. Um I don't see a change in that for this coming year. It looks like we're still good there. Uh the capital improvements goes up a little bit each year. So And I mean it's no secret I I totally believe that's the way we should be doing business because our costs always go up every year. Now I still question whether it's a shared sacrifice at the at end of it. But I mean you put increases in here pretty much for everything. Correct. I mean, so I start out I put in salaries and like um insurance costs and and stuff like that. And then all of the department heads, they're right now in the middle of working on their own budgets. Like they need to tell me, you know, like maybe Paul um oh no, gravel is, you know, gone up in price and we're using this much more and we need to up that budget. or Todd will say he has a special thing that is coming up for next year. He'll change those budget figures in there for me. So, I'm waiting for everybody to complete those yet. So, I mean, I guess it's just a question for everybody here in the room. I mean, I'm not aware of any big adding employees or anything like that. Am I missing something or Mayor Council, May I just add? So, so what would be helpful is um over the past few years we've kind of had projects that are outside of what the the city staff are focused on. Um so like your software for example, we'll have to find out a cost for that for setup and it are there other projects that you would want the city staff or other initiatives be it we've changed what we've changed budget software at one point. Um, we looked at the sign at the liquor store, right? So, there's been a lot of things that have come and gone throughout the year. So, if there's anything specific that you want us to look into for next year's budget, be it a software, be it a project, be it a piece of equipment, um, giving us that input so we can kind of structure not only what we're looking for, but give it give it a value that we can work in. So it's not just about what what we do daytoday. Um right every department is going to go in and figure out you know what's their equipment like what is inflation on their gravel what you know what are training needs with you know some of the departments have very intense training needs. So they'll they'll hone in on all of that. Um, but is there something else that we're not considering outside of the day-to-day that is maybe a priority for council? And then, like I said, the non the non-union cola and then we'll have um we have a couple meetings set up already to begin discussions with the public works team. When we do have those discussions, we'll close at the end of a meeting uh and we'll discuss that as a group uh with our attorney at that time. So right now we don't have I believe we have kind of a placeholder again like we did last year when we were negotiating with with the police sergeants. Um but as soon as we know kind of where are we is our placeholder falling in line or are we very separate we'll know that the next two weeks. So, so as the department heads are putting their wish list together or sorry, all of that comes back to us in September or what when does the when does all that information come back to the council? So, what it doesn't all come forward. I guess it comes comes in lump sums. Um, so once all of that is built, then we know what we're looking at for capital equipment. We know where roads need to be and all of that. We do have one work session before we set that levy. Um then we'll set the levy in September and then we have from September to the truth and taxation meeting in December to go down if we find where there could be savings. Your favorite one truth and taxation. Sorry, I'm the only show off. You're Amy, you're gonna want snacks for that. Okay. We we go real long on that. All right. You you message me. Well, I realize it's not a wish list. We always go along on our budget on on that. We sit there and we It's a long one. I realize it's not a wish list. I mean, I'm just going to throw out the three that near and dear to me. One would be the software thing. I'd like to explore that. I would be doing anything. Number two would be I don't know. It's just initial expenses and continuing the discussion about Bridge Street through to 47. And then third, it I mean it's already on our radar. Everything else, but anything to do with 47. Those are those are the only three that come to my mind. Anything else? I'll go, mayor. Go ahead. 40 47 was top on my list as well. That was number one. Number two, do we have any bonds that uh was the wastewater treatment plant that bond to be paid off soon? But I just had a I heard from the mayor. The wastewater treatment isn't paid off until 2026. But now that doesn't affect the levy at all. That affects just the wastewater. The water plant, not 2026. 2046. That's just a bit different. Some really good math, aren't they? They they were saying the other day they were asking me the question. And I said 30 year 30. And we thought I meant 30 years that the bond was going. They thought I meant it was 2030. Now she's 2021. The water comes off sooner. The water comes off in a couple years, but that of course, you know, there again, it doesn't affect the levy. That's all water funds. And then we've got a lot of projects that are kind of we're trying to figure them out yet. So it just goes into the kitty for an allowance except for future expenditures. Yep. That one. So and uh any debt service off of the levy is it's a real small debt service levy that will come off in I want to say five six years. Okay. Yeah. And as far as public works union members are you and Jeremy and Tom Jeremy and Tom are union now, aren't they? American council. So, in public works, um myself, Parish, Jeremy, and Jen are non-union. Six are six of the individuals are. How about And Trevor's our utility man? Trevor's a Yeah, he's non-union. He's not. Okay. Um Darcy, what about um uh tax capacity, market values of homes, whatnot? My house actually went down, but my taxes went up. when we you know with the market we nobody knows what the real estate market is but I guess one of my comments to myself was should we freeze our own expectations because we you know is there have you seen some cycle as far as the real estate value I mean that's all smoke and mirrors really I mean it's lead lag two years goes by and your house is either going to go down again but yet they tap you and I mean I could sell my place tomorrow and have to go to Wood Haven here pretty soon if this goes up another 500 bucks so I that one. Just saying. So, I mean, it's getting expensive to live here. You know, we're we're half and halfbedroom community kind of, but urban but rural and we're not. I mean, I I can see why, you know, and some of these houses that they build along um 229 there. They were 440,000 for those little slab on grades. I'm going, you got to be kidding me. But I'm just overwhelmed. I guess would proper to come to our taxes taxation meeting and same thing you know you work hard and you do stuff and you go I don't know I might have to you know upsell Minnesota might be looking pretty good on a milk farm or something I don't know so if they would go and the county say the county would just lower your market value on your house then you would see a decrease in your taxes if they go like several years ago it was everybody everybody went up or a lot of time, you know, they also will lower them in in a whole group of them. You don't see it because it's we spread the levy. No matter, you know, if you're you're if all the houses went down by 10%, we still have a levy that we need to cover and for a fixed amount that we decided. Only thing only thing that helped with going into 25 was they raised that market value exclusion. But what that did was it pushed it up onto um industrial commercial and industrial or the higher val because they exempted, you know, those uh what was it more than uh it went up, you know, 10,000 at the max that you could have exempted. So there are some people that saw a benefit from that. But now this year, this coming year, it will they haven't changed that, right? But I've heard and I don't think they'll change it again for several years. Yeah. It's just the burden of us, you know, about freezing our expectations as far as the future. We can't seem to stop. It's either go forward or or or not. I mean, the city still needs needs. We have to pay the dues. But again, that's one of those things. How do you get the public to understand that the city marches on? on your student except the pipe, you know, cast iron pipe isn't what it used to be and all the expenses. It just um inflation hits us too. You know, our cost of gas or our cost of electricity, everything, the tariffs, you know, when we're trying to buy a new vehicle that they're going to hit us, too. Yeah. Yeah. So, I guess 47 is my biggest thing that's coming. I know we got to have dig deep. Even though we went back to roundabouts, it's still our our contribution is going to be considerable. So, I'm for the next few years, 47 would be tops top tops for me as far as where we can put our money. But, and just to reiterate, highway 47 is not in is not funded within the street plan. We're going to have to do a bond at that, but there'll be some expenses related to that. You don't get you don't bond for the preliminary engineering and yes those right now the stuff has been covered by the street fund but when we go to have to do that project we are going to have to sell a bond for what we need to do and then there will be bond payments. So, but still we have to have allowance again for the engineering and the preliminary stuff got to come out of one of these pots pots here comes out of the street. That's one of the things we need to explain to the public. You know what it's been a law of 47 but it's coming and then we're going to have to start the street fund. It's going to have to come out of the street fund checkbook and they're well and at that point what it will be is when we sell a bond there'll be a bond a debt service that will be a line item line items. That's all fair. So yeah 47 is probably highest on mine too. I just think that that's been in the it's been in the forefront and just kind of been brushed back and brushed back. I think that our residents are more than ready for us to do something. I'm again, I'm not quite sure how they're going to feel about putting all that time and energy into coming up with a plan and now us going, "Ah, maybe not." I'm not really looking forward because a few people that I have mentioned that to I'm going to say I voted for this way. So, if you have a problem, go talk to them. Just telling you right now, it's Amy Fa. Yeah, I have I have cards printed on. Here you go. I have one question here. You you mentioned software now. Two years ago, we we put 150 60,000 into some some software to up bring a bunch of stuff together. Is that relative to anything that you're talking about now? I don't even know if software is really the right word for it's a program. A program to to do the to do the estimating. If your house is worth this, how much are that? That's what you're talking about, right? It Yeah. And there is a special uh specific website that they use. And if I remember right, Ellers actually said a couple years ago, it was really late in the game that they could make something kind of like that for us. So I'll check with them. I'll check with this one from Shaki. Please help me find that art. I I gotta pull that article out again, too. And we'll just share that copy of it. Yeah, we'll just she'll just share the article with you all that I can put it in the next next off week. Perfect. that thank you Dr. Um, just to say that 47 would be my priority as well and as everyone said and then possibly, you know, connecting Bridge Street to 47. Not that that would be next year, but um, you know, just I'm excited to talk about that again. Um, and I I don't think there's anything else for budget wise, but um, I just maybe someday you can explain this to me because this is kind of a pet peeve of mine. We, you know, when you talk about budgets, you say, "Well, we have to use it or we're gonna lose it." That just drives me crazy. Um, so if we eliminate this, no. Haven't you heard that? No. No. I've heard it other places. I Yeah, but maybe not here. Good. You know, if that that just bugs me. It's like, well, if and we don't even have conversation about it, but but that's what I think of when I think budgets and trying to balance it is, well, I have to use it or I'm going to lose it. So just let's not say that because that that and that's not it feels really thing though. That's like when you get government funds and they say this is where and I didn't mean us. I just I'm just saying that's you know that's generally where that comes from. It's not like we have a pool of money sitting here we have to use this. It's the state says we're going to give you this money and if you don't use it this year you're not getting it next year because obviously you didn't need it. Right. I know that just it is very frustrating. You're right. that use it or lose it thing. It's the same thing with vacation time, Todd. Use it, right? You got to use it or you lose it. So, use it, please. Is this helpful? What What more direct? I mean, the only other thing is your consensus is the 3% on non colas still you're kind of settling. It's kind of where we I mean, that's what you're hearing and that's what you generally put in. I I would say keep that same. Yeah, we'll come back with there's actually a resolution that we'll have you guys approve later on, but um I'll keep working on it. Anything else that we can give you clarity or definition? If you come up with something, you know, bring it up to me and we'll send you. Another another piece there that they are still in the middle of is doing a part-time getting and working through that. I know Paul and Kate have been working on it to get me some money to tell me all the money that we need to Paul or Kate anything I don't Mayor Council I have nothing further on this. Um yeah Paul and I are taking the list of all of the parks and all of the replacement schedules and putting that in a schedule much like our roads. So it'll be clear as to why maybe what's being requested is on there and then something that makes sense. Yeah. So, but otherwise just day-to-day I I don't have anything to add on our budget. So good. Oh, I don't know. I I have just a couple questions that are unrelated. Um, so with with the storm tonight and other storms that have happened all over the country, um, I would like to learn more about our emergency manage management program and what we're going to do in a major emergency. Are are you the director? Um, I would learn I would like to learn more about that. Whether that's here in our group or I can come meet with you. I would like to learn more about our preparedness for sure any emergency. Um if you don't mind and then the citizens academy is that a no-go because we didn't get enough people. Didn't you get the email from officer? I did and he he Officer Hearn sent me a message today because we had shown interest and he said I you know I'm just checking. Are you able to come? And I had to say no as much as I'd like to. I have conflicts for the first three Tuesdays of It's Tuesdays, right? Um and so unfortunately I'm not able to do it this time and I was inferring he's probably wondering if he has enough people to just go forward. I think he does he does have a handful. Oh, good. Okay. Okay. Hoping he gets a couple of more that it's a definite but yeah it looks it looks positive at this point. Okay, good. I'm sorry that I can't go because I really wanted to. So, I was just guessing that he didn't get enough people under. I just figured that he knew that we were interested. So, let's just call it if he knows that you're interested. He's like, "Hey, haven't heard back from you. You probably have busy like, right?" And I think actually I I'm looking at my calendar and I'm going to try to do it. Oh, good. I think you signing up to be tased. No, my concussion doctor told me absolutely that was not that was not. He's like, "As long as you don't get knocked around or anything stupid, you can." I'm like, "Well, you know me, so I hope that's not a thing." Well, you can't get tased. I'm choosing not to. Joe More. Yeah, we have video of Joe getting tased. Yeah. I just Well, that actually would be fun to watch, but I wouldn't do it. I have a question. Mayor, our upcoming meeting, our upcoming meeting Monday, we're going to be talking about apartments or not. we talk about what's idler is is what's on the agenda for Monday is that well I'm wondering if the the northshore is coming as a subject line and my concern is there's still some discussion to be had about um tiff as opposed to concept and again we've in the past we've always talked about you walk these people down the aisle and then I don't want to mislead anybody but there seem to be some concerns about what we should talk about when we should talk about it and I don't want to get the cart before the horse and I don't want to squelch it I But I want to vet we need to vet this thing out and not give any any false expectations. Yep. So on Monday, mayor and council we have the concept plan. So that is a formal land use application. So that is moving to the next step which is council and then ellers will be present to to discuss tiff and at that point they will ask if you want to call for a public hearing and that is the point where you would make a decision to move it forward or not. Okay. All right. That's what I need. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Oh, apparently Mu is watching this because he just asked me before I was calling stupid between you two meeting a jur at 7:33. I'm like, where to