what we do to save some money is we order all regular salt and then we order beet juice. And beet juice we will mix up kind of like a 100 tons at a time. Um, salt only works down to 15°. Um, so below that, uh, we have to use something that's treated so it activates or it works in the colder weather. So I think we save, I think, $15 to $20 a ton by mixing it ourself.

we actually haul our street sweepings to MOA. And it's a it's a long trip, but we actually save about $1,000 a load by doing that.

in the next uh you know two two years two to three years uh we're going to need to start replacing all our residential water meters. Um there's I think we have about 4800 4,900 water meters.

the answer is because it's federal law. So when they pass the laws at the federal level that require cities to inventory the water services and that sort of thing, part of that law is the the annual notification.

we applied last year through the uh uh PFA program um which is uh part of the drinking water revolving fund and they the state does have dollars that are made available for lead and galvanized service line replacement. Um you wind up going into a a a pool of uh all applicants which are you know all cities statewide. Currently, we're ranked, I think, somewhere in the two to 300 range out of like about 1,200 placeholders in the overall list. And so, we moved up from 2025 to 2026, but we're not in the fundable range yet. So, we're hopeful maybe we'll get selected in 27 or 28.

It all goes back to Clean Water Act 1974. Another federal law. No. So, uh the you're exactly right. um the Ramsey Washington Metro Wershed District, which is most of our town except for Silver Lake... those regulatory agencies do have rules um that cities need to abide by.

This is our last full year of that grant that we received, that relief grant, that was $400,000. uh $300,000 was for our public asht tree removal and $100,000 for uh the low-income private uh ash removal.