this money is going to be used for those of you that do not know um to train up all of our uh public safety personnel, police and fire um to the level of EMS. Um this is a big deal for our city and for our partnering and neighboring cities. I believe using these funds in this way is going to help save lives.

we appreciate the opportunity to be able to be involved in our community. It's one of our core values is to make sure that um we are good partners in the communities in which we operate. Uh public safety is obviously something that's very important to us and so we're thrilled to be able to partner with you guys uh provide these funds to help get that training folks need so that hopefully we can have a positive impact on the St. Paul Park community.

I just want to state that the uh administrative committee uh is ex excited to have Hugo McY here. He performed exemplary during his probationary period and we're excited to take him off.

periodically we have inspections of, uh, the water tower and other, uh, other infrastructure. And uh four or five years ago uh this was identified as something that we should repair. The impeller at the base of the uh of the unit um uh was damaged from an ice up uh in previous years... staff is recommending that that comes forward and it's been delayed somewhat. No impact to water quality, etc. Um, but, uh, it's been identified twice now to be, um, repaired. So, hence the the presentation coming forward, but it's it's been a known um, uh, repair item and, um, uh, staff has seen fit that we should get it fixed this before this winter season.

the, uh, concrete pad that the new pedestrian bridge rests on, uh, does not appear to conform to its original specifications. So, um, WSB is working with that subcontractor to correct that. Um, and so that, um, that's not currently, um, asked for reimbursement yet until that gets, uh, vetted. So there appears to be an anomaly with how the concrete was poured and the bridge is resting on that.

our job as auditors is to provide reasonable assurance that the city's financial statements are materially correct. So, that's kind of a lot of lingo. Um, but basically, we issued what's called an unmodified opinion or a clean opinion, meaning we didn't have any um any doubt that the financial statements were materially correct as presented.

for 2025 is about 45% the general fund balance was about 45% of the expenditures. Meaning at the end of the year we basically had enough in our fund balance to cover half of next year's expenditures. Um that's right in the range that the auditor recommends the state auditor recommends 35 to 50%.

We saw that, you know, the the uh state auditor requests between 35 and 50 or uh and states and we understand the 35% because you want to have liquidity. We get that. But can you explain to us again why they say 50% as a ceiling?

I think just to be able to have those things available for other other projects. Uh again there was a you know a large number of transfers or a large amount of transfers out of the general fund... And so it it it's allowing that fund to look a little bit more. You don't want to look at it and see, oh, there's all this money in the fund... because those things are still paying for the city's operations. They're just paying for debt payments and capital projects. And you know, you had a $3.5 million capital project in 2025 that you didn't have to issue debt for. And like that's that's great. That's phenomenal. That's the goal. Um because of some of those things that because you had a healthy reserve, because you had the MDOT funding. Um and so all those things still go into running the city. It just doesn't all happen in the general fund.