Whereas Fire Chief Steve Wy has faithfully served the city of Newport fire department for 39 years, demonstrating unwavering dedication to the safety and well-being of the community.

with this building Steve was integral to what we ended up with for the fire side um of the construction, how things were laid out, what kinds of uh things we would need both today and in the future. And I know he's left a really important mark um on the community because of his wisdom and his experience within the uh fire community and understanding fire service and um for that I think the residents need to be very grateful because that's going to serve us for many many decades to come.

I'm extremely confident that he is the right guy for the job. He's been assistant chief, you know, the entire time I've been chief, done an excellent job and he's the right guy to move this department into into the future.

I've deeply appreciated the professionalism that you have brought forward to this department. And I've asked you personal questions about the about the staff and so forth. And you answered me in ways that enabled me to understand the respect that you have for the firefighters and that has translated into the excellent job that they do.

The special assessments, this is a process that is outlined in chapter 429 of the state statute that allows municipalities to assess benefiting property owners from public improvements. The assessments for any given project represent only a portion of the total project costs.

without that benefit analysis, the assessments would have been around a little over $16,000. This is just very quick math. Um total project cost divided by 80 properties equals $16,000 plus dollars. what the benefit analysis does and I think it's important to differentiate that this is not something that John's firm is going in and and you know trying to make numbers work in one way or another. It's an independent um appraisal company that comes in and says what is the value of an upgraded street? What is the value of better sewer and water? What is the value of having curb and gutter? What is the value of concrete aprons? how does that impact um the individual homeowners? So, as a result of that benefit analysis, instead of being at 16,000 plus, it's at $9,000.

One is if everything is going to be affected on my street, the assessment cost would be $9,000. Correct?

So a 10year at a 9,000 is 75 bucks a month plus interest. At 15 is 50 bucks a month plus interest. So just for transparency, that's what that would look like.

I live uh just on second avenue by 12 street and you might look wonder why are we doing all these street projects second this year we have third avenue going next year 12th street and it's part of a bigger effort to control inflow infiltration which think about rainwater clean water getting into our sewers that goes to Met Council or the wastewater treatment plant we pay we pay extra for that we've been fined heavy in the past for that Newport was I think about a decade ago when they started having a major storm event Newport was the worst culprit in the metro. So the penalty the good the plus side of that has been in recent years and the mayor and the the city administrator been and John and others have been working very hard to get grant money to help address this problem. Without that money, these projects don't go. So that's allowing us to take some of these projects on with minimal bonding to this point. And so it's it's kind of an opportunity to address this need and that's you know we're tackling it very aggressively.