it's been my privilege and honor to have served for the past 10 years as your sheriff.

The increase in residential area in the population certainly we continue to see the growth in Lake Elmo, whether it is commercial, whether it's residential... it wouldn't be wise for us to not plan ahead.

Very much so. Very much so. Um I you know we started this we started looking at this a few years ago. We partnered with Washington County Community Services... if we can stop that ahead of time, that's that's our goal.

This is stuff that is not paid for. This is just the service that you get. If you had your own police department, you would have to pay for all of this stuff extra.

So bringing this deputy on would be more trying to catch up maybe because we're already low is what it sounds like.

It could be daily. It might not happen, but it's a common occurrence. Like it's safe to say it's happened.

our current ladder operationally u I feel is it puts us at a disadvantage given its current length and looking at the current build times and where our vehicle replacement schedule puts this truck at.

That truck was specked in 2012, 2013. Um, when there was a mindset in the city that we weren't going to grow, we weren't going to have development. And frankly, the highest building we'll ever see is High Point Surgery Center.

I don't want to sound extreme, but it feels like every time that truck's got to go up, we're at a dis disadvantage.

And I guess that's where I'm just struggling a little bit because obviously the risk that we're talking about here is a pretty significant risk. And so I don't want to take it lightly. Um, I'm just I'm struggling with that a little bit.

I just I think this is something we really need to be paying attention to. So, I guess, you know, if this is the direction we need to go, um, I guess I would just push for being able to get it signed as soon as possible, but delivered as late as possible, I guess, would be and payment as late as possible would be my preferred direction.

But I think we need to have a mindset shift of how do we in multiple projects extend it just slightly. That that's my issue with this is like I get that argument but my counterargument is that's a pattern that we're following and when we follow that pattern where we replace things a year earlier than they need to when we could actually maybe take it a year longer over time that really adds up.

The item number four on our agenda is draft 2027 budget and levy and ongoing strategic financial planning.

I just want to point out that this discussion is a starting point. Um everything's, you know, we essentially kind of put together all our numbers. We plug in our our strategic planning numbers that we've been working on for the capital stuff and and so we're we're bringing to you our our starting point.

I also wanted to just mention um, one thing that I didn't really put in my my packet, but just wanted to kind of drop it into the conversation is that one of the things I really dislike about um, when we pay so much attention to the levy increase is that that lens presumes that where we are today is the correct baseline.

So I think understanding what the staffing plan is for 15 years from now needs to coincide with what our strategic plan is.

I just I'd really like to add into priority objective B expense stability as well. This is something that I've obviously harked on quite a bit. I feel like we spend a lot of our time talking about the revenue side um and and not enough of the expense.