We were in there for two and a half hours.

It was ugly.

All right, we can get.

All right, I'll call our Belgrade City Council meeting to order tonight.

And please rise and follow me in the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Roll call, please.

Jason Gucky?

Matt Niki?

Here.

Jim Simon.

Michael Mees.

Here.

Christine?

Here.

Aaron Congress here.

In your name, Animal?

Here.

Thank you.

All right.

First up on our discussion agenda is discuss our annual street fee update.

Mr.

Trian.

Turn my mic back on since you already did that for me.

Greg try and assistant city manager.

You're going to be hearing a presentation from Ryan Graft, a senior consultant from AE2S.

If that name sounds familiar, he helped us work through our utility rates previously.

So he has lots of experience with the city and a background to all this.

We've been doing this street fee update as part of a process with our impact fees as well.

Been doing that for a little over a year now.

So it's been a very in-depth process, both as a justification process as well as also what is the right method for you all to consider.

So at the end of this, there's going to be a couple options for you to consider.

So Ryan, are you still on?

Yes, sir.

All your circumstances.

Thank you.

I'm going to take over screen share so I don't have to bug you to keep clicking.

So thank you, Greg, for that introduction, uh, members of the council.

Um I am here to talk about the update to the street fees uh that we are proposing for your consideration.

Uh going into this project, uh wanted to just kind of reiterate that currently the street uh fund or the city fund street activity um through both the fee that you have in place now on a per parcel basis um as well as looking to other funds through interfund transfers and the general fund to help kind of offset some of the overall costs uh that are incurred to maintain the streets throughout the city.

Um I think that's maybe one thing to reiterate at the beginning of this.

Uh we are talking with the street fee about uh operations and maintenance as well as rehabilitation costs to the streets and not expansion or improvement uh that is adding capacity to the streets, those are handled uh generally through the impact fee uh and not through the street fee itself.

So going into this, one of uh really the key goal that was was driving it was how can what would it look like if we are uh using the street fee itself to fund those operations and maintenance that are handled through the street fund um so that they're self-supporting.

And so that's what uh when we do present tonight, um uh either alternative uh what we are looking at for the city itself.

Um wanted to just kind of review what we are looking at for the the fee methodology.

We are proposing in our our baseline recommendation to maintain that single family residential fee at the 205 dollars per parcel that you currently um have on the operation side.

Uh but as we are then looking to allocate costs and really dial in the fee on the remaining um use types throughout the city.

What we're doing is uh we're going through the revenue requirements for the utility or for the fund um and really developing that cost basis, what it looks like after uh as we are allocating costs to the different parcels, um, net of those single family residential fees.

Um then we're looking to a unit cost so that we have a defensible methodology to be able to assign those to the different property types within the town.

We are using it's uh ITE, the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

Um they crushed on a fairly regular basis uh updates to what it it takes um how many trips vehicle trips are generated per different part property types throughout communities.

And so this is a national database uh informed by city engineers throughout the country to be able to say on average, you know, commercial properties generate a certain number of trips for a vehicle to come and go to or go and come to it, um, to which then has its corresponding impact on the roads itself.

Um, and then with that, we look at calculating uh the associated fee based on that unit cost for different um parcel sizes, and we have a few different examples for you to as part of the presentation.

On the cost basis side, um, what we are looking at is the for the overall budget, just about 1.6 million.

Um we had identified a baseline budget through the process that was itself uh put together through kind of the working with the finance department, um, escalating some things in the past, and uh just due to timing, this the baseline budget of that 1.3 million was kind of was started before the budget discussions that you have today.

Um but then through operationally, we identified that the city is from a staffing perspective a little behind uh benchmarking levels that we've seen throughout the state and kind of similar communities throughout the region as well.

And so through the process, we identified the a recommendation of I think three new staff that are incorporated into the overall thought process for the street fund.

Uh I know the timing of when those staff might arrive or be onboarded uh the administration's looking at kind of I think more towards the end of the year, just due to being prudent and how uh one, you know, being approved by the council, but two also just being prudent in the logistics of onboarding staff and making sure that it balances with other uh departments as well and doesn't overburden the existing staff as it is.

Um but what that means is we are still planning for some costs uh to the utility, and so we are uh basing all of our recommendations on that, about 1.6 million in total costs running through the street fund for FY27.

Um here we show a projection through 2031.