called uh together the regular city council meeting at June 5th, 2025 um starting at approximately 6:32. two. Uh, Kim, would you take roll call, please? Council member Schroeder here. Council member Zan Miller here. Council member Hatton here. Council member Erikson here. Mayor Bishop here. Would you join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. This time, could we have a motion to uh adopt the agenda? I'll make a motion to adopt the agenda. I'll second it. All those in favor? I. Going to the consent agenda under our part two um which includes approving the monthly claims as well as the April 3rd 2025 city council meetings. Um is there any discussion concerning either in that case since there doesn't appear to be any uh can we have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Well, I'll make a motion that we approve the consent consent agenda. I'll second that motion. All those in favor? I I going to three unfinished and new business which has two parts to it A and B. A is consideration of contractor quote for reclamite rejuvenator. Um in our uh information that Kim has provided to us, there's a bid there. I did um since the last meeting I believe walk the streets with John Parroi just to see how they were doing and everything seems to be going fine as far as the project that we did approximately let's say 18 or 20 months ago and in which a significant number of the um streets were uh repaved and generally speaking what happens after that within a 2-year period of the uh actual uh laying down of the new asphalt. Uh there's a rejuvenation process that needs to take place which if I remember correctly is an oil based substance that is uh spread on the roads uh which doesn't necessarily um impede driving on it for any significant period of time. But um that's what this bid at the last page of the uh information given to us by Kim sets forth and the bid which when I talked to parody uh he said it's not one of these things in which you have multiple companies that are capable of doing this particular type of project. apparently is very limited in the number and uh this bid is for $20,5515. Um it's pretty much self-explanatory. It would be done, I believe. Depends on when they're in the area. That's generally speaking when they do it. Uh as to if they're doing other streets in the near near in the area, they would do it. But it certainly would be done by fall. And uh does this include the the approaches coming off the county road? No. No. Okay. It includes just the the stuff the new stuff. Okay. And I did talk Well, we'll talk about that later. Okay. Is it the same company that did the project about two years ago? No, it's not. They the company that that was the company that's up on the frontage road, the asphalt plant up there. I mean, it's it's kind of something that is unfortunately something that needs to be done and prolongs the life of what they've already done. And um are we also including this alternate ad 3 cents a square yard for the notification? Is that the extra 400? Yeah, I it when I said the total of 20,55115, uh I was including that 44355, which is the notification. How they go about notifying people, I'd be interested to see, but uh um it does include that. So, are you looking for approval to get this taken care of? Yep. It's question of uh if there's no more discussion on it. Any concerns? Um we need a motion to approve uh um this particular bid. Oh, go ahead, Tim. Well, I'll make a motion that we get the um corrective asphalt materials to the reclamite application for the total of the 20,5515s. I'll second the motion. All those in favor? I. Second part of part three is consideration of the lower St. Croy Valley Fire Department budget increase. We've been given today a I don't know how many pages it is, but it could be 10 or 12 page u information uh sheet from I'm assuming the uh fire department and is there somebody here that is going to sell us on this idea? Yeah, this is here though for May I you may you just step up there put your name down and tell us um who you are and then um My name is Beth Olfelt Nelson and I am the chair of your local fire district. So, thanks for giving me the the podium mayor and um thank you to the council. Primarily, I want to walk through this top packet that Kim handed out to all of you. And uh this describes a little bit of why I'm here and what we're asking for. Um so just for just because I like to remind people about the structure of our fire department and our fire district, that first page sort of explains who we are. The district as it's described includes the five cities of Afton, St. Mary's Point, Lake St. Craig Beach, Lakeland Shores, and Lakeland. Every city that's a part of this joint powers district has two members of their community who represent them on the fire district board. The department is the organization that we oversee. And so they are managed by the chief, but when it comes to the dollars and cents and the budgeting and things like that, the district has a lot of uh work that we put into coming up with plans around that. So, the department is staffed by people in our community. So, when you call 911, somebody shows up in the middle of the night, it's probably one of your neighbors. So, on the next page, I talk a little bit about the budget cycle. Our joint powers agreement requires that we bring to our five cities a budget proposal in May. We're a couple days after that because of your meeting cycle, but that's why I'm here. We start budgeting and doing workshops to understand where we are on our budget um in as early as late February. And this time we went through I think Tim five or six meetings reviewing and reviewing and reviewing. One of the things that we always try to do is we try to come under a 5% cap. So the reason is that the joint powers agreement says if you're under 5% you just send that budget to us in May the cities to all the cities and we will just take that number and put it into our budget in the fall when we do their city budgets. If the fire district is exceeding that 5% cap, we need to go to each city in the district and talk about why and ask for approval. So that's why I'm here this year. So for the first time in my time on the board, and I don't know, Tom Wilson is here. Do you remember if this happened before? This is a new process for us in a long time. It has happened one other time that I'm aware of, but not when I was on board. Yeah. So it's not something we do often, but this is the year. this is a year we're coming to you and saying we don't really think that we can be below that 5% cap. So the next page kind of talks a little bit about the wise. So, as we were looking at 2026, there are some things that we we have been working with that have been kind of a an issue and known things that we will be facing in the next budget year. Uh in administrative fees has been a challenge. We had to hire a new auditing firm. We recently had to hire a new accountant. And um software fees are one of the things that didn't used to be a thing for the fire district or the fire department, but we have been spending more money on software and things like that. We also have some known facility costs that we're facing and um some higher dollar costs. One being that our industrial generator is likely going to have to be replaced. We have an electric supply uh repair that needs to happen from the pole that Tim's been working on. And then our chief has worn many hats. He used to do a lot of he has been doing a lot of work at the department for us. Oil changes, electrical repairs, installation of a water heater. As we move into our transition plan with our interim chiefs, we are losing our man of all work and so we will have to be hiring those services out. We're looking at potentially hiring a new chief in 26 and we're also looking at expanding a program that has um helped us with staffing and it's also a thing that we look at is a possible retention tool. So I'll explain a little bit of more about uh more about that on the next page. We call it our duty pay program and um we have over the last three summers had a duty pay weekend duty pay program that we've had in place. What that does is that on weekends which were becoming harder and harder for us to staff, we now ask for people to sign up for our duty shift, a 12-h hour shift, and they put their name on the page and they commit that they will be available. They will be in the vicinity. They will not be impaired. They won't have been having drinks at the picnic. And for that, we're paying $5 an hour. We've proposed to expand that to a year round program. Again, in an effort to have adequate staff show up to calls throughout the year on weekends. weekends have been a noticeably harder time for us to have volunteers coming to staff calls. And the new chief, as far as that cost goes, uh we've been very fortunate for a long time to have a chief that has served for less than market. And we know from some research we've been doing that we will be probably paying substantially more. So, we accounted for that fact in this budget. So, on the next page, I broke out Lakeland Shores um piece of this district budget pie. And what we are asking for is we're asking for your approval of this budget. The um overall increase in the pass through levy to the all the five cities is 20.11%. The total dollar amount 732293. So that's 15% approximately over the cap that we have kept to over many years. Looking down the sheet a little bit, if we look at your portion, which is based on tax capacity of your city and the population of your city, that increase is actually 24.66% or 19.66 over the 5% cap per household for a year's service. That amounts to $316.70. So, it's up from 252 from last year. The average cost per month per household is $26.39. I'd like to assure you that we didn't come to these numbers lightly. We've been um we have engaged a a um consulting firm to help us with a long range plan, a master plan for our district. It's our responsibility as a district to about every 10 years come to each city and say this is our long-range plan. I think last time Tom pretty much took care of that. When I and some others looked at the job of doing it this time around and we looked at Tom's good work, we recognized that the shape of service, fire service has changed quite a bit since that time. and staffing is one of our big concerns as we look forward. Nationally, people are not choosing to go into fire service the way they once were. We provide both EMS services and fire service through our department here. And the trend is less and less paid per call departments or combination departments like we have. We only have one full-time staff person. That's our chief. And everybody else is paid if they come to to a call or if they sign on for the duty weekend. These types of departments still exist in rural communities, but we are surrounded by the metro now. And so those competi competitive forces are at play as well. So we did choose to hire um this consulting firm. They are in the process of meeting with all of the district board members. They've done a survey with the firefighters. They've met our accountants and um they've been looking at our data. How many runs do we do? How long does it take us to get there? And what we're hoping is that they can help us shape a plan as we kind of move into the future. So, some people have said, "Well, why would you ask for any increase now?" Well, that's because we've been talking for a number of years about how we maybe are doing our community a disservice by not by not maybe making some of the changes that seem obvious around staffing. But we do know that the future is probably going to look a little different. The other packet that um I think Kim sent out or handed out to you is the detailed budget and it's just supporting information. Um and you can see if you wish to look at it each city is listed at the top and kind of how each city ranks and how much of the how proportional each city contributes to the department. So I do not have a resolution with me today. our uh retired attorney who sits on our board is helping uh craft that. So, I'll get that to you when we have one. Yeah, Mr. Bank, council members, I would still want a motion if you approve the increase or not. So, I'll stand for questions. What's the hourly rate that the firemen get paid? I think it's 1832. Yeah. So these guys get 18 bucks an hour if they go to a call. Go to a call to get out of bed in the middle of the night and commit their weekends. So and training. Yeah. And so I know quite a few of them and I talked to them over the last few years about the duty pay that on the weekends that they like and a couple of them said, you know, if we could do it all weekends that would be great. So that's why we brought that forward, you know, for year round, but that's another option. We decided against that. Yeah. One of the budgets that we did look at this this cycle was, well, what if we implemented that duty pay 24/7 and um there was lively discussion about that. The reason that the reason that that could be important for us is that we need to have a certain number of people show to a call so we can roll the trucks and then we can maybe have somebody back at the station if another call comes in. So when we say that we're looking to have four people on staff for duty on a weekend, that's that's bare bones. other people still can come to calls, but at least we are saying that we're pretty assured that there's going to be four people signed on and four people that show up because I think right now we have what 29 members or 28. The number is not quite quite that high right now. I think it's more 26. Yeah, I think more than 26. So, and summers get a little thin because they're short in Minnesota. It realized we we have a limited pool to to have people join as members because they have to be able to get to the station within 11 minutes. Yeah. So, it's not like we have unlimited supply of people that can be members. So, we're kind of limited on that. What do you uh when do you think this consulting firm is going to get their final report to you? Well, good news is we just hit um we just hit kind of a important milestone. The um foundation of this report is databased. So they have been asking over the past months they we had a kickoff in January. I think you were there mayor. I was. And at that time we started to collect data and then send data to them. We had to do a couple of iterations because we didn't maybe get their spreadsheet right or we didn't get all the data they needed. We just had a meeting the other day where um the chiefs were verifying the first report that they kicked out from the data. They said, "Does this data look correct to you? This is what the output looks like right now and if you say yes, then we can start to run the reports that we want to run." So, I I'm really glad it was really good news that we got to that point. So, um, we also have, um, in near in the near term, they should be reaching out to city officials like you to ask for any input as well. So, they started by trying to set up meetings with the district board. And so, they're they're gathering information, softer information now, but the data is in. So, I think that the soonest we'll see anything, the very soonest would probably be end of July, but I don't know for sure. And what's going to be the general overall? I mean, they're they've got the data and you think the data is correct. It probably is. Um I mean when they're going to start making recommendations, what type of recommendations do they make? Well, they might say um looking at our staffing for instance, uh they might say if you can retain a certain number uh keep bringing in a certain number of new recruits, this model is sustainable into the near future. But you might want to in I don't know 2028 start seriously consider bringing on a couple of full-time people. They might say that um we respond faster than is necessary than anybody cares for us to respond. um they might say during certain times of day that we respond slowly and it might be related to staffing. So they can look at they can look at our response times. They can look at windows of time maybe where we aren't appropriately staffed or where we are very well staffed. They might recommend some kind of hybrid staffing models. So, we asked about staffing models for them to help us with staffing planning. We they they will assess our equipment and our facility. Um they might suggest that we need to have sleeping quarters or better sleeping quarters than what we have so people can be at the station and on duty overnight. Um I don't know. And we also asked them to look at our governance structure. So this department has run well for I think you know a lot of years over 50 years the way it is but I know even at the board level it's um harder for people to commit to doing the work on the board. So it's a question I think that these five cities need to consider and be a part of the conversation. When this district was formed, all five cities came together and they were, I think, pretty enthusiastic about building this department and we've had such, I think, stability. It's been amazing. But with our longtime chief and before that deputy chief, you know, he served for, I think, 47 years, we're seeing those people age out now. So there's just a lot of transition and I think there's just questions that as a community we all need to kind of ask. What do we want? Um so this 20% plus increase that you're asking for for us to approve uh is not has nothing to do with what they might recommend. It's just what you feel is is looking obviously with a fair amount of knowledge on on the subject matter. This is something that you feel is is probably the minimum amount of increase. I mean conceivably there could be a greater increase next year. Conceivably there could be a recommended increase that's greater next year. That's not our goal. No, I understand that. No. And this again I would say we did not come lightly. I mean this percentage sounds big. Um I I think it ha has been helpful to look at it in a per household way because if you look at the average cost per month per household for this service, it seems quite reasonable to me. Um and we have at my house been served by EMS services and um you know this is a sort of a form of insurance. Um as far as as the increases go, we have had I think a very unique situation and that you know our chief being the full first full-time chief for our department. I think he wore a lot of hats on purpose to make it work for this community. But when you go and shop for a new chief, and I've looked at, and Tim has too, many, many job descriptions in the surrounding communities for chiefs, for uh fire inspectors, for firefighters, and our chief has been serving us as chief for what he could earn as a captain in Bethl, Minnesota or Hugo. And so we've had um I think amazing service over the years and we're not going to like we are not going to be able to hire the same person. We wouldn't maybe want to, but we're not going to be able to hire that same type of person. Most chiefs play more of an administrative role. Even if we hire a chief that is um a working chief, one who goes on calls and finding a chief is going to be work as well. Has there ever been any thought, I know this is going to be something that's not popular in this crew, but um has there ever been any thought as to what the alternatives are to the five city plan? So um I mean for instance like EMT being coming out of Hudson or something like that. So there's there certainly are different opinions on that. We have done some work to review that. I did raise that in the request for our study for that to be examined. I will tell you anecdotally that um I've talked to a couple of chiefs in the surrounding areas and one said very strongly if you have ambulance service of your own do not let it go and that's because they have not been very happy with the service from M Health who's their outsourced provider. We have a good relationship with Lake View. We um sometimes back them up. They sometimes back us up. The my understanding from um the state of Minnesota is that they're concerned about ambulance service across the state and they in fact last year gave us a grant as more of a rural ambulance provider because they want us and they want rural communities to have this service. And when you outsource to a business, you lose some of the control that we have by having our own service here. The other thing is when our ambulance rolls, we actually do get some reimbursement for the service. When we roll a fire truck, we don't. So, um, when we've done some analysis on the budget around that, we do not lose money having an ambulance service. We lose money having fire trucks. We don't necessarily like you can you can look at it and say, well, the ambulance earns us money. If you if you analyze it as a whole, it doesn't necessarily earn us money, but it doesn't cost us money. So, one of the situations we'd run into also is when somebody dials 911 and an ambulance gets dispatched. You know, our ambulance goes and a fire truck goes along to assist. uh if we didn't have an ambulance service, the fire truck would go to assist and these guys are standing there waiting for an ambulance to come. Sometimes not saying these services, they they might be short staffed. They might not have enough service people in service. So then one of the things we got to look at is the response time for our community. uh and also that bides with our insurance rating for your homeowners insurance and so on. So that's something we have to look at also and I think it's in the bylaws and that would be a big well our community has to provide ambulance service. It's in our bylaws. So, but I mean there there might be ways, but it'd be a tough one to get all five communities to accept that, I think. Yeah. And I'm not suggesting there'd be any cheap. No, there's been talks about it and this, you know, talking about this budget, not saying it was an easy budget to look at or go over. Uh there was some heated conversations that we had at the fire hall. So, yeah. And I think, you know, my my feeling on that is that um we're asking people to set aside weekend time. We have been set it, you know, setting aside time from family events and such to just be on standby. And I have not been a firefighter myself, but my husband was on call at times and wasn't compensated for that time. and it changed what we could do. And um so I think it's fair and correct to be compensating them. This is not uh by standards in surrounding communities. This is a low amount of money and and if you look at the numbers, it's $64 a year per household, which is on average. Yeah. On average, depending on your house. The other thing that you may, if you have your ear to the ground, you might hear some people talking about, well, maybe we don't need a full-time chief. Maybe we could have an administrator instead. Um, cursory research shows that administrators don't necessarily come cheap either. So, no. So, but but as we talk about I've shared that with our consulting firm and um you know I I just am asking them to be rigorous as they talk to people in the community and they write their report that these are some of the things that we are struggling with. The conversations around this are conversations that are being had and that this is what we're expecting them to kind of sus out for us. So what has been your reception at I assume that you've approached other cities within the five you're the last that you're the last city we visited and um reception has been good Afton has been the given us the most push back but I think we are going to be okay. So, if one city chooses to say no, what that means is that we are kind of back to square one and we have to uh rework the budget. And I I think one of our concerns is that we've been sort of, and this is Tim's phraseology, we've kicked the can down the road for a few years and here we are. Has any of the any of the other four cities said yes yet? Uh yes. So St. Mary's Point was ready to vote yes. I didn't have a resolution in front of them. Um like St. Corey Beach was very favorable in their reception. Uh Lakeland I think was friendly. Afton met in committee. Tim and I were there and um they were the community that had the most to say, but I think we were able to substantiate our message. One of the, you know, you look at a budget over the last four years, you know, insurance rates, electricity, gas has gone up. We're looking at needing new generator. And I have no idea if that's going to be 25 to 50 grand for a backup generator cuz we need it cuz we we're an emergency shelter. And then we had a squirrel chew one of the power lines that provides power into the building. One company wanted to nail us for 50 grand to pull new wire underground where uh it's probably only going to cost a couple thousand dollars to get it done right instead of So it's stuff like that. administrative, you know, attorney's fees, accountant fees, all that stuff is increased by having different vendors. You know, we used to have a smaller accounting firm. We used to have an auditor that was a one-man guy that, you know, was 7 to 8,000. Now we're looking 15,000 for auditing. And you know, you just can't sustain a 5% budget when you hit that. And you know, this weekend duty pay, it it's not going to who knows if it'll be a long-term effect, but it's going to help retain members. And like I always say, we can have a nice fire department outfited with all the new bells and whistles, but if we're not going to have anybody in there to operate it, we're not doing a good service to our community. And for, you know, what is it? 300 and some dollars a month or a year. I don't know what city you can go to and get a service that we have for that amount of money. I know people look at 20% but we've been hitting that 5% for well Tom could go on conversation. And I would also add this. Um, one of the things that doesn't necessarily reflect in this budget, but one of the reasons that we've been able to operate at that 5% or below is that we've fortunately received grant funds at times when we've really needed to have an infusion of some kind of money. So, we had to buy all new air packs some years ago and it was going to cost our department $125,000. Well, fortunately, we won a grant for that. So, somebody on the department did write a grant and we received a grant. Um, we've received some funds from this city which have been helpful. um not all the cities were as generous as you were with proportionally um when it came to the safety grant that came from the state, but we did get receive an ambulance grant last year which is proving to be an important thing. So, um, we also have received gifts from people in our community, which makes us feel great. But, you know, it's we've had this sort of supplementation that has also, I think, masked some of the some of the budget requests that we've made because the environment we're in right now, we also firemen have to wear flack jackets that we have to provide for them, which is sad to say I don't know what they are $5 to $900 a piece roughly I think around six we also um the last couple years have got a lot of money from the Mason trust funds to the tune of close I mean which is because of the economy and whatnot they had a lot of extra money probably because the kids weren't going to school at their fire station a considerable amount of money that buys things radios so the the Mason trust for people that don't No, it's a a family husband and wife that left their estate to the fire department and for that money to be used for fireman's kids for a continuing education or the fireman or his wife. And if there isn't anybody using that money that year, it can be used by the fire department for specific things which has helped us in the long run. Yep. So Kim, you made a statement earlier that uh even though there's no resolution before us uh that uh we should vote on it uh this this meeting. Is that because generally speaking we don't meet in July? Correct. And that's typical. You don't have to have the resolution in front of you, make a motion for what they're proposing and a second and then good. Well, is there any more discussion about this? Somebody want to bring a motion? So, we're just looking for to approve the um 24.66% increase. I would I would suggest that you use this overall budget increase. The the rules are that it will be broken out proportionally, but the overall amount of 73293, which is what the levy amount is on this for all five cities. Well, then I guess I'd like to make a motion that we approve the increase of the 20.11% for the dollar total dollar amount for all five cities to be 7,000 or 732,293 for the 2026 budget. Is there a second? I'll second the motion. All those in favor? I I I those opposed. Thank you very much. Thank you for what you do. Yeah. Thank you Beth for coming in and taking your time to come and pitch us on this increase. Greatly appreciate it. Nice job for her. Thanks. You're welcome. Uh, at this point we would go to item four, which is council and staff reports. Uh, staff updates. Uh, Kim, anything? I have nothing tonight. Going to the mayor and council reports. Uh, council member Schroeder. I have nothing. Council member Hatton. Um just to to add here to the quick to the thing, the the the um chief is retiring and we don't have a new chief yet, but we do have two deputy chiefs. One mainly is going to step in and take the role of the chief in the interim. Um and so so the chief position will still be filled either by the deputy chiefs or by the um captains. Yep. Yeah. So we'll still have somebody to have her service. Um, that's about it. Uh, Council Member Zen Miller, nothing. Council member Ericson, I have nothing. Um, I don't know if this is the proper uh time to bring this up, but I one of the things that concerned me recently, uh, when I think back upon the last approximately year, uh, is that, [Music] uh, Joanie does a great job, you know, getting our checks out to us and, uh, you know, paying the bills and that type of stuff, but I'm somewhat concerned about the fact that we don't have any year round a yearly u report that tells us whether we came within our budget for the year. Uh I mean I feel like we're flying I hate to admit this on the record but a little bit blind here and that uh I honestly think that it's something that should concern all of us. Uh I have normally what would happen is and I think in the past we've had our treasury person who is probably a retired person that's been involved in accounting for most of their life and they have the software in which to do much of the stuff that they would normally report to us on. And we would at the end of the year say, "Well, you you know uh your budget was uh you managed to uh have $15,000 that you did not spend when let's say you had a budget of $185,000. You spent $170,000. You had 15,000 extra. What do you want me to do with this money?" And I think we used to put it in the in the highway fund or that type of thing. We didn't have anything like that last year. Okay. Um to the best of my knowledge, we didn't have anything like that. Mayor and council members, I would have to take a look at the um budget stuff that you guys got the work session and I believe those numbers were in there because Neil did those numbers. Yeah, but Neil was gone at the end of last year, but he still did it. Did he? Yeah, he put together that budget package and that should have had the year-to- date in it. Okay. Well, and what you spent the past three years compared to the budget. Yeah, that's an analysis that is done, right? I if it was it was there then it's my fault for not having acknowledged it or even read it. But um or if I read it uh you know it passed by me in a blur because we certainly didn't do anything with if in fact we had a surplus what we did with that surplus. Okay. It would have been interesting to know, of course, probably would have been interesting to know that at the time that we were projecting next year's budget, but either way, Neil's not with us at this particular point. And um I don't know how we're going to get that report at the end of this year. What kind of report are you looking for? I'm looking for how much we spent on which items we spent on. It doesn't have to be within a penny, but you know, as close as possible. How much did we spend for engineering services? How much did we spend for snow plowing? How much did we spend, you know, for whatever else we spend money on? Okay. And uh what was the total and were we within our budget that we set? Because then we'll look at it in September to figure out our next budget to see what we need to increase or decrease. Yeah, of course. Um mayor, council members, that is a function of CAST, the city's accounting program. That's a report that's run. That's um pretty standard. It's very simple. Okay. I I mean I I'll just talk to Joan about sending that. It's a click of a button. So, okay. I mean, and then you would have to I mean, you would have to take a look at your It'll give you all the totals. It'll give engineering, uh everything. Um and then compare it with your budget, right? Yeah. I mean, that's what I want to know. I mean it would be nice to know if we're even close to what we project our expenses are and you know sometimes because they don't do much snow plowing we come out ahead um but or for whatever other reasons you know not spending money on lawyers or you know whatever else people you're under cost under budget and I think for especially the new council legal you have to remember a budget is just fine. Yeah. Um, you're not penalized if you go over, you're not penalized if you are under. Um, there's just different factors like you said, snowplow, right? Um, I just want to know what it is. Sure. Okay. So, I feel a little more comfortable, you know, that somebody says, well, geez, you know, somebody embezzled, you know, $100,000 out of your account. And I would say, really, I didn't know that. You know, I mean, because I have no way of even Exactly. Yeah. even looking at anything to tell whether or not uh you know somebody's taking $15 a month out of that they shouldn't. And this has nothing to do with our current No, I don't uh treasurer. This just has to do with my fear that we're flying a little bit blind here. And I want to I think we all ought to, you know, have this information so that we can, you know, make sure that maybe next year we don't have to have an increase in the budget, you know, if we're consistently over, you know, that type of stuff. Well, and the reality is, I didn't want to mention anything with the fire department, but the reality is everything has gone up. Probably will have to have a property tax increase even just for this, right? Um, either way, residents are going to pay for this, but they would pay more for it if there wasn't a fire department because that's insurance rates if they're too far, if it takes too long to get there if there's a fire. So, probably Sorry, I'm somewhat of a cynic. That's a sales pitch anyhow. Okay. I'm not saying it's not true. Oh, yeah. It is true. Yeah, it is true. Um, I work with two fire departments in another community and yeah, that the miles are checked out. Um but anyway, um if you I think you've only done increases like at 3%. Um you very minimal and I get that the philosophy is let's keep our taxes low. Property taxes are high enough. I mean when you look at what this went up 64 bucks a year, what is your property taxes go up? And that's county. They're getting the majority of that. Yeah. Um so yes, you probably will. You do you typically have just done minimum. You have come pretty close to spending most of it, but typically are under um kind of saving for a rainy day because emergencies do come up. You could get hit. Oh, and I'm afraid it's coming. We're going to get hit with the winter where it's going to be plowing because they could still my coats. But yeah, that's it. And then you're going to go over. So again, it's just a plan. And um like I said, everything has gone up. When you when you guys have kept to this 3% consistently, you're doing a very very very good job. Other cities are up annually they're going up 18% on their levy. It's just they're trying to keep up. Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but you know, and the fact that we're doing so wonderful, but I'll get the report tonight. But no, I mean, just as long as I get it, you know, sometime. Well, I'm gonna have to show her how to do it, right? Yep. And I'm taking the checks back and we will do that. Okay. But don't scare her. [Laughter] Don't tell her she could see this meeting. I was just going to say that. Thank you, Joan. I'm not going to scare her. I love her. Yeah. And I'm not looking for another option. I just want the information. So, I get it. And I That's very clear. Not looking for another option. And I will say when Neil was in place, he was an ex city administrator. When Judy was in place, she was a finance person county. So, and Tom spoiled us for Yeah. worker, right? Yeah. So, so there would just be, you know, a major cost to that. But yeah, she does great. She's still learned, but awesome. Yep. Good. Thank you. Uh, with that, uh, I nothing else, uh, has come to my attention in the last month in town. Um, and uh, I'd like to have a motion from someone to adjourn the meeting. Motion to adjurnn. I'll second it. All those in favor? I