Good evening.

It's the 23rd of September, it's 515.

And we're in the Tom Baker room of the City County Building.

This will be the Board of City Commissioners.

But before we get started, we would I'd like to ask Chaplin Wolfgram to come forward for the Pledge of Allegiance and Invocation, please.

Thank you for the opportunity.

I'm back.

I keep coming back.

Greg Carr was supposed to be here.

He is serving our firefighters tonight, so we're grateful to Greg Porter for serving in that capacity.

Let us pray.

Last week you showered us with rain to replenish the earth.

And today these first days of fall, you give us the beautiful sunshine and warmth.

We are grateful for the many blessings you give to us in our community.

Today we are grateful for our media for them, keeping us informed about all of the activities around here.

We thank you for the devotion and dedication of Monica as she looks to retire.

Thank you for her time spent here and pray your care and blessing for her in her retirement in the next chapter of her life.

We pray your care and blessing also for our city, for those who serve in emergency services.

Be with these leaders, with mayor and with the uh commissioners as they uh deliberate and consider things before them.

That your good and gracious moment we accomplished to serve our community.

Again, we are grateful to you for who you are, for who you have made us.

Grant us your peace this night.

We pray through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands on nation under God.

Liberty and justice are all.

Thank you, sir.

If we can call roll to call the meeting to order, please.

Commissioner Rish.

Here.

Commissioner Zenker.

Here.

Commissioner Connolly?

Here.

Commissioner Cleary, here.

Mayor Smith.

Here.

So first we have a couple of special events tonight.

Um the first one is we're kicking something off new.

Um it's my honor to do that, try to have a new tradition for for the city of Bismarck and City Commission meetings moving forward.

Um I I truly believe community engagement is important, and certainly when we have members of our community who have done a lot of things to help with that engagement in multiple ways.

So today we're is the first of this, and we're going to recognize a couple of individuals tonight.

Um I will be presenting the initial inaugural certificates of achievement to two individuals, Susan Lundberg and Stephanie Delmore of Sleepy Hollow Theater Park Arts and Park.

Sleepy Hollow began of all places on a family road trip they were on as the Lundbergs traveled and conversed about what it might be that could be important to Bismarck.

A powerful question.

What does Bismarck need?

The family had deep roots in the arts, and they believe the answer was clear.

More opportunities for youth to get involved, to participate, to learn, and to create, and to feel a sense of belonging through the arts.

So drawing on their childhood summers near Reagan, where Susan and Stephanie built a playhouse and stage productions, the idea for Sleepy Hollow Theater and Arts Park began to take shape.

Classes and performances followed.

People got involved and the community took notice.

It's now 36 years later, and Sleepy Hollow remains to be one of a kind in North Dakota.

An outdoor program focused on youth producing Broadway style musicals with professional lights, sounds costumes, right in the heart of the prairie.

It welcomes adult volunteers.

This year alone, nearly 40, 400 parents, teachers, and neighbors helped usher at performances, run concessions, build sets, and sew costumes.

And actually, I think some of the most of the sewing is done by these two ladies.

They're amazing.

The impact of Sleepy Hollow extends far beyond the stage.

There's countless organizations that have contributed, whether it's the Bismarck College students, the State Industrial School, the North Dakota Tourism, Basin Electric, and Kirkwood Bank or other banks in in town, the MDU Foundation, VFW, and Eagle Scout and Gold Awards.

Susan Stephanie, your investment in our community and the lives you've touched can't be measured.

For many in Bismarck, Sleepy Hollow is a summer rite of passage.

As the show melts and the day snow melts and the days grow long, we find ourselves looking forward to the next season of stories you will bring to life.

If you'd like to say a few words about Sleepy Hollow, you are welcome, and then we will present you with your certificate of achievement.

Well, thank you very much.

We reminisce that I I think Bismarck is unique because we to come up with an idea and kind of sift it through how is this going to work, get good people involved, and we just did it.

I don't think that can happen just any place.

And we've had wonderful support throughout all the years, and it's doing good things for our community, and it's it's just a winner all the way around.

And of course, we're celebrating.

Look at this gorgeous day.

We are celebrating being outdoors at Sleepy Hollow, and it's it's right in town.

It's right here, it's not far.

And uh, and so we've got the pheasants crowing and and uh all kinds of rabbits, and we've had skunks too at times, but it it's just what a grounding experience for all of us.

Yes.

When we traveled, that's what Dad said when Susie moved back from California, and I was here, he said, if we're gonna be here, we should what?

And what a wonderful place to vote.

And so making a difference is what we should all do.

That rooting system, that then it can reach out as far.

And now with help of organizations, we planted 300 trees since we've been there.

And so it's a sanctuary for our city and our region.

That as you say, you don't feel you're in the town, but you are you're in a safe haven.

And as we grow, that is something we can give our state in our region.

We keep giving more and more opportunities for our kids, and also opportunities to remember there is a time.

It's sleepy hollow, and it can encompass us all.

And thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for what you've done for our community.

Ladies, ladies, ladies, please stay here.

And I would like to see if we can get a phone opportunity with the commission too.

Thank you so much for what you do.

I'll be in the back.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

And we're not quite done celebrating.

Um, so I have a proclamation to read because we're honoring uh a person who's been a stalwart of the news community in this uh city and region.

Whereas Monica Hanna began her distinguished broadcast broadcast journalism career in 1981 at KUM TV following an earlier turn internship and has since dedicated 44 years to the television industry, which includes 38 years of informing North Dakota citizens, and whereas Monica has served as the news director at Calfwire TV from 2004 to 2014, where she pioneered the launch of the first 9 a.m., 4 p.m.

and 5 p.m.

Newcasts newscasts in western North Dakota, setting new standards for regional news coverage.

Therefore, be it resolved that I, Michael Schmitz, mayor of the City of Bismarck, on behalf of this city commission do hereby proclaim September 26, 2025 as Monica Hannon Day, and urge the community of Bismarck to join in celebrating Monica's enduring impact on in journalism and the impact she has made throughout our community as she makes her final regularly scheduled broadcast appearances, signed today, the 23rd of September.

Monica

One of the responses received to that email from Mr.

Tomonik was that there are already fire stations near residential housing.

While this is true, fire station three sits adjacent to housing, but it exits away from it into the intersection of Tyler Parkway and Century Avenue, which is a transitional location between commercial and residential.

Fire station five does face towards residential housing, but is an even more heavy commercial area, sitting on the corner of 43rd Avenue and State Street.

These areas are not even close to the quiet, almost rural setting of the proposed location for Fire Station 6.

We would ask that you reconsider the location to a less intrusive spot.

One such location is the city-owned property at the intersection of Burley Avenue and Boston Drive.

This would not add to construction costs and would place the station in a more central location on the south side.

This lot is currently across from undeveloped commercial properties.

This location would only add a few seconds to the response time for the minimal calls received west of Washington Street.

In return, it would cut response time to a majority of the calls which are east of Washington Street and for future developed areas to the east and south.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, uh Mr.

Mayor, members of City Commission.

My name is Brian Clipfall, and I live at uh 2251 Trainer Lane, that's out in Southport.

And I am here to support the new fire station where it is the location is proposed.

It's a uh great location.

It's a quick response down for Southport and other areas down there.

And uh the for fire calls, and I think the uh the other main thing is they the fire department also responds for emergency medical situations.

So I think the location there is really good and would serve us all down at Southport very well.

Any questions?

Thank you.

Yep.

Again, this is public comment.

Anyone wish to speak, please come forward.

Excuse me.

Okay, second call for public comment.

A third and final call for public comment.

Hearing and seeing no one, the public comment period is now closed.

Commissioners, with regard to the consent agenda, what are your wishes?

Move to approve this presented.

Second.

Is there any discussion?

Hearing none will call roll.

Commissioner Zenker?

Yes.

Commissioner Connolly?

Yes.

Commissioner Cleary?

Yes.

Commissioner Rish?

Yes.

Mayor Schmitz.

Yes.

Moving to the regular agenda, I would like to move item J up to item A because the consultants are here and we'll just respect their time a little bit.

It's to receive consider requests from community development to provide a presentation on update of the Bismarck Land Development Code.

Go ahead, Daniel.

Good evening, Mayor, Commissioners.

So the land development code is underway.

This is an update to our zoning and subdivision regulations in Title 14.

The consultants are here, Jenny Baker and Mary Madden from Claring Associates and Madden Planning.

I won't take any of their time up.

I'll let them give you an update of this code.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners.

Thanks for having us back to give you this update on the land development codes.

We have a very quick agenda.

We will remind you of the project objectives, talk to you about the work that has been accomplished in Module 2, and then go through the next steps.

If you will remember, one of the primary reasons for initiating this project was to support the recently adopted Together 2045 plan.

One of the most effective ways to do that is to have regulations that can help you accomplish the goals in that plan.

So that's one of our focuses in the updates that we are doing.

We have also been charged with coming up with a code that is user-friendly.

You all are familiar with the current code.

There's not a lot of illustration tables, graphics, any other ways to make it easier to access for regular users rather than professionals.

We're trying to address that.

We are also focusing on making sure there are objective standards and predictable outcomes.

Before we get into the details, I want to mention a couple of opportunities recently where staff and um staff and others have gone out to public events to hear to update the public on what's been happening and to hear their thoughts on it.

Recently at the street fair, there was a booth that people staffed and talked about the LDC update and also at Bizmarket.

So in those two events, they have talked to over a hundred people, heard various concerns.

It's mainly at this point just to get the word out to bring people's awareness around to this.

As we are coming back probably in the spring for adoption, we want to make sure that the community has been aware of the project and will be doing a lot more outreach before that time so that they can give us their feedback on it.

Mary is going to talk to you about the downtown.

Thank you, Jenny and Mayor and Council.

Um thank you for having us.

I'm just going to briefly talk a little bit.

I've been, as part of the team, I'm working specifically on updating the downtown district for the overall ordinance.

I want to highlight it's being handled a little bit differently, and as you are already aware, downtown is currently handled a little bit differently.

Um of the unique things is it is a unique place in Bismarck.

It is a defined geographic area, and it will continue to be that way.

So the standards we're working on will not apply anywhere else in the city.

They are only for the area that has been designated downtown.

Um it does build on the previous districts that were downtown core and downtown fringe.

It adds a couple of other sub-areas, and now the medical district, the medical area is also going to be considered part of downtown.

It will have some overlapping standards and some unique standards to accommodate the unique needs of medical facilities.

High level, we want to just emphasize one of the reasons this is different is the unique nature of downtown.

So these standards are reinforcing the unique character of downtown, that it's mixed use, that it's buildings oriented to the street, sitting at the back of sidewalk.

So as new development or infill or redevelopment happens, the new development is very complementary to what is already in downtown and not people wanting to do suburban drive-through fast food restaurants, for example.

It's just trying to make sure that downtown remains unique and downtown.

That it is pedestrian-friendly, mixed use, walkable with the grid of streets and blocks.

A couple of the high-level objectives that we are focusing on, again, building on what's in the comprehensive plan.

We are creating sub-districts, recognizing that although downtown is a defined area, it doesn't mean everything in downtown is the same.

Most of the standards focus on the scale and the context, not on regulating uses so much.

We want to have practical flexibility, but also to make sure that if you own property or run a business downtown, it can be predictable what somebody might do next to you or across the street.

We want to make sure we can enable change over time.

As you know, most of the buildings in downtown, especially those that are 100 years old, probably don't have their original users.

But if you have good traditional downtown buildings, the uses can and will change over time.

And we want to really make sure that the new standards encourage infill, revitalization, and are compatible with that existing context.

This week, while we're in town, we're working with staff, we're meeting with the technical committee, the steering committee.

We're also meeting with the downtown Renaissance Committee and the Historic District Review Committee, so that all of them are giving us input and giving us feedback on what we're working towards.

That's a high level of where we are on working on the new downtown district.

All right.

And now I will tell you a little bit about the rest of the contents of module two.

The last time we came here to talk to you, we talked to you about zoning districts and uses.

And the way that I think of those are they are the regulations that tell you what you can do and where you can do it.

These are development standards.

And what this talks about is how does it need to look when you do it?

Do you have to provide parking?

Where are your buildings?

How do the buildings look?

So that's what this covers broadly.

These are the sections that are included.

You can see the new ones.

We'll go through them very quickly, but the point of the new ones is to support goals in your plan.

And in a couple instances, we've called that out.

The ones that are not new, we have made some adjustments with the exception of signs that looks different because we wanted it to be more usable, but we haven't significantly changed any of those standards.

So these are the new sections.

Improvements in open space.

Improvements are the required things that have to be provided for development.

This section actually is not so much new as it is taking what is common practice and putting it into the regulations so that it's clear to everyone.

And so those things, such as easement dedication, and when that has to be done, are now in the ordinance.

For open space, that has to do with parks, and we have made no changes to the way that parks currently wants to approach obtaining open space with new developments.

We've added a section on mobility and connectivity.

This is in support of the plan's goals to have a robust and multimodal transportation system.

So the things that are covered in here, prohibition of private streets, unless there is some exceptional circumstance.

So it's not a private street just because you want it to be a private street.

It would be cheaper.

It's a private street if it's approved because there is some kind of topographical issue that prevents you from meeting street standards.

It talks about how to access different sites, and one of the provisions here that's new is allowing for larger developments two points of access to support emergency services.

So if there is a disaster of some sort or if there is a fire, there are two ways into and out of larger developments rather than just one, which can be very compromising to the response.

We've added some basic bicycle and pedestrian standards, a new development if it's within a proximity of an existing bike trail, we'll give a connection to it, and there will be sidewalks on both sides of the street with certain exceptions.

There are some standards related to environmentally sensitive lands.

There's something in the current ordinance about it, but it applies in the ETA and has been very limited in its use.

So this deals with not building in the floodplain, that's nothing new, and some protection for wetlands.

It also talks about steep slopes.

Outdoor lighting is a basic set of standards that we think will be helpful for issues of enforcement in particular, where somebody says, you know, my neighbor has this light they put on their building, it's shining directly into my bedroom.

So there are some standards so that you can go out and verify.

Is this actually happening?

Is this an issue?

What do we do about it?

So those are the new things.

Other things are existing in the ordinance and changing to a certain extent.

For parking, there was a recent update, which we thought put it in pretty good shape.

We have made some adjustments to the required parking and are offering some opportunities for reduction.

It's just to give a little bit of flexibility with what is really an art rather than a science in determining how much is needed.

There's still no parking for downtown.

Loading space is not required.

There is carried forward a provision that if you provide bicycle parking, you may be able to reduce the number of on-site spaces.

So that's nothing new.

With landscaping and buffers, we are doing a couple of things or proposing a couple of things.

One is to have a focus on trees because the benefits of trees are much greater than the benefits of, say, just a lot of shrubs.

You get air quality benefits and you get some heat mitigation benefits.

So we are in a couple of different areas focusing on having trees provided rather than requiring shrubs, perennials, and mulch.

You all are familiar with your older neighborhoods closer to downtown with those gorgeous old trees that line the boulevard.

And so over time, these street trees that are installed in new new developments will hopefully produce that same kind of effect.

Exceptions with all of these for industrial development.

Signs are staying the same.

And I think that is that is pretty much what we wanted to tell you about the content.

I am happy to entertain your questions as an overall update for the project.

We are hoping to hear back from the community about this module.

And then there's a third one, the third and final one, which we will be giving to staff in October, and hopefully we will get the consolidated draft out to everyone by the end of this year and do a lot more talking to the public to hear what they think about what is proposed.

The module three involves how the process works, so development review procedures and administration of the LDC land development code, and then the adoption, we hope to come to you in the spring.

So that is what we had to say.

Can I answer any questions for you?

Are there any questions?

Commissioner Rish.

Um Mr.

Mayor Jenny, I just want to commend you on the lighting thing.

I've had three different complaints about you know these excessively bright LED lights.

One of the guys said neighbor put up a pole and shines into his bedroom.

I mean, things like that.

So it it's an issue that needs to be addressed.

And your tree ideas, wonderful.

So thank you for your work.

Anything else?

Thank you.

Thanks for your time.

All right.

We'll move back up to item A.

It's the continued public hearing on ordinance 6635 and an annexation of part of Law 1, Block 2, Northern Sky, 2nd Edition, First Replot.

Daniel.

Good evening, Mayor Commissioners.

Uh I'll get my presentation loaded up here.

Okay.

So good evening again.

This is something you may be familiar with by now.

Uh this was on your agenda at the last meeting and the meeting before that.

So Willman Development LLC is requesting approval of the annexation of the eastern portion of lot one, block two, northern sky second edition first replat.

Uh this is the location on the west side of North Washington Street, north of Ashcoole Drive.

So uh City Bismarck staff did find that this proposed annexation would not adversely impact the public health, safety, and general welfare, and we recommend approval.

Uh that more details are in your staff report.

The planning zoning commission uh considered this in June, and then they recommended approval as well.

Uh you considered this in August.

Uh the applicant did request a little additional time uh to your previous meeting in September, and then you uh granted that, and then they requested more time at that point to this meeting.

Uh and here we are today uh at the um second meeting in September for another continued public hearing.

Uh so once again we do recommend approval of of this request.

And I can attempt to answer any questions of the applicant is here as well.

Any questions?

Okay.

I'm gonna open the public hearing.

Anyone wish to speak, please come forward.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Lennon Response and Hagen Engineering.

Uh yeah, here to sing a familiar tune to you.

We are requesting yet another continuance for this.

Uh some more financing issues are still kind of being worked through.

Uh I think a change in financial institutions actually recently happened as well.

Uh so we are requesting a continuance into the October 14th City Commission meeting.

Okay.

This commissioners, what are your wishes with regard to continuing?

And then we can I'll make a motion to continue to the October 14th meeting.

Second.

Any discussion?

Hearing no hearing none will call roll.

Commissioner Cleary?

Yes.

Commissioner Vish?

Yes.

Commissioner Zenker?

Yes.

Commissioner Connolly?

Yes.

Mayor Smith.

Yes.

Next item B, public hearing on ordinance 6636 annexation of Boulder Ridge Commercial Edition and Ordinance 6642, a zoning map amendment from CA commercial and CG commercial zoning districts to CG commercial zoning districts for lot one block one, Boulder Ridge Commercial Edition, and Major Sub Division Final Plated Boulder Ridge Commercial Edition.

Daniel.

Good evening, Mayor, Commissioners again.

So this is uh Willman properties LLC and Woman Development LLC that are requesting these three items that you had mentioned.

Uh the location is actually right across the street from the previous one on the east side of North Washington Street and north side of 43rd Avenue.

Northeast.

Uh this is I'll I'll actually I'll go through these in reverse order.

So I'll start with the subdivision plat of the three requests.

Uh this is actually a replat of boat or a portion of Border Ridge First Edition.

Uh it does trigger our major subdivision requirements because it is dedicating a new public right of way of Clements Lane.

Uh you can see here on the on the map or also on the plat.

Uh this new road will create a loop uh to North Wash from North Washington Street down to 43rd Avenue Northeast.

Uh and there is also a private access that would connect um up to Slate Drive from the site.

Uh overall, it would create four lots uh in two blocks uh for commercial development.

The zoning is already commercial at this point.

Uh there is a tweak to the zoning that is being requested uh last year, it was actually this year in the January of 2015.

You did approve a change to the CG district uh on the just south of this or is part of this.

Uh however, because one of the lots was a landscape lot that was not surveyed or divided at that time, uh that change did not occur.

So essentially they're just changing that portion of the landscaping lot to align with the existing zoning to the south.

So that's what that zoning map amendment is for.

And then finally, the the entire site, uh the entire replat would be uh annexed.

Uh that is part of the request as well.

So the planning zoning commission did hold a public hearing on this on August 28th, and they did vote to recommend approval of of all three.

So I'll just read uh what that recommendation is.

So based on the findings that were contained in the staff report, the planning zoning commission recommends approval of an annexation of lots one through three block one and lot one block two of Boulder Ridge Commercial Edition and all of adjoining rights of way of Clement Lane, a zoning map amendment from the CA commercial and CG commercial zoning districts to the CG commercial zoning district for lot one block one of Boulder Ridge Commercial Edition and a major subdivision final plat titled Border Ridge Commercial Edition.

Do you have any questions?

Any questions?

Okay.

We will open the public hearing.

Anyone wish to speak, please come forward.

Thank you again, Mayor.

Uh yeah, just add a little bit to what Daniel had had discussed up here.

Um this is a reply of parts of Boulder Ridge First Edition.

Uh this particular area had uh had these the string of these 20-foot wide landscape lots that were surrounding the entirety of the area.

Uh so with this replat, we're we're kind of eliminating those sort of those oddball lots and just bringing them into to a larger lot.

Uh the zoning ordinance itself will take care of the landscaping uh buffers that are required between commercial lots and uh residential lots.

Uh the zoning change we're requesting doesn't affect those lots that are joining those.

We we we've already covered that before.

The CA will be by the by the residential.

We'll keep the heavier commercial uh further to the west and the south that'll be adjoining some of the office spaces.

Um additionally, you know, some of the annexation for this area was some of it was in the city, some of it was not.

This will bring the entirety of the of the parcel into the city.

So we can cover that at that point.

Um access points.

There's that existing access point, kind of an oddball little little finger of land that sticks out into further into the into the into the subdivision.

That's always been there.

We're just sort of replatting it to allow it for uh these other lots within this area to be able to use at that time.

But I can certainly answer any questions if you have them.

Anyone have questions of landon?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Again, this is a public hearing.

Anyone wish to speak on this zoning ordinance, please come forward.

A second call for public comment.

A third and final call for public comment.

Hearing nor seeing anyone, public comment period is now closed.

Commissioners, what are your wishes?

Motion to approve.

Second.

Is there any discussion?

Hearing none.

We'll call roll.

Commissioner Rish.

Yes.

Commissioner Zenker.

Yes.

Commissioner Connolly?

Yes.

Commissioner Cleary?

Yes.

Mayor Schmidt.

Yes.

Moving to item C public hearing on future land use plan amendment and ordinance 6639 is only map amendment from RM 30 residential zoning district to DF downtown fringe zoning.

Any few future land use plan amendment from urban neighborhood designation to downtown desk designation for lots one through four block 10 of Northern Pacific Edition.

Go ahead, Daniel.

Good evening, Mayor Commissioners.

So in this case, the community development department is requesting approval of the zoning map amendment and future land use plan amendment.

The location is it's between Avenue B, East Avenue B and East Avenue C on the west side of North Third Street.

It's a half block, currently RM30 that would be going into the downtown downtown fringe zoning district.

Just for the sake of having a contiguous district.

So we we do reach out to all of the other property owners and we asked the planning zoning commission to initiate uh these zoning requests on their behalf.

And so that's what happened.

Uh the this would be going into the downtown district, would it which would enable uh a greater level of mixed uses, a greater level of development on these properties.

It is, of course, contiguous to the existing downtown fringe uh district, so it'd really be a a logical extension uh to the west from across across third street and from the north as well.

So the um the the planning zoning commission did hold a public hearing on this item on September 9th.

Uh and we uh did not hear any opposition from any of the residents or or owners within within this area or from the surrounding areas as well.

Uh based on the findings uh that were contained in the staff report and at the clue and at the conclusion of the public hearing, the planning and zoning commission recommended approval of the zoning map amendment from the RM30 residential zoning district to the DF Downtown Fringe Zoning District, as well as a future land use plan amendment from the urban neighborhood designation to the downtown designation for lots one through four block ten of northern Pacific edition.

Any questions for Daniel?

Okay, public hearing is open.

Anyone wish to speak to this, please come forward.

A second call for public comment.

A third and final call for public comment.

Seeing no one and hearing no one, public comment period is now closed.

Commissioners, what are your wishes?

I'll move we approve.

Second.

Is there any discussion?

Hearing none will call roll.

Commissioner Zenker?

Yes.

Commissioner Connolly?

Yes.

Commissioner Cleary?

Yes.

Commissioner Rish?

Yes.

Mayor Schmidt.

Yes.

Next item D's public hearing on the approval of the concrete sidewalk curb and gutter and private driveway assessments as part of this w 2024 assessments.

This is a public hearing.

Anyone who wish to speak to this, please come forward.

A second call for public comment.

A third and final call for public comment.

Hearing nor seeing anyone, public comment period is now closed.

Commissioners, what are your wishes?

Move to approve.

Second.

Is there any discussion?

Hearing none will call roll.

Commissioner Connolly?

Yes.

Commissioner Cleary?

Yes.

Commissioner Rish?

Yes.

Commissioner Zenker?

Yes.

Mayor Schmidt.

Yes.

Next item E is public hearing on the 2025 special assessment districts and confirm the assessments as amended.

Gabe, are you gonna you got something for us?

Yeah.

Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners.

I should note uh the appeal to this.

Uh supposed one of the projects in our special assessment package that you that you have here today uh was included in your agenda memo.

Uh but that individual indicated she would not be able to be present here to speak to it.

I also just want you to know that that's available.

If you'd want to have hold the public hearing if there's anything else, uh I would be willing to come back up and address any concerns or questions that you may have at the conclusion of the public hearing and prior to confirming the assessment list.

Okay.

Thank you.

This is a public hearing on the special assessment districts.

Anyone wish to speak, please come forward.

A second call for comment.

A third and final call for a comment.

Public comment period is now closed.

Commissioners move.

Commissioner Rish.

I've got a question for Gabe about the appeal.

Okay.

Gabe, I I it's from Cheryl and John Patch made this appeal.

I thought they did an excellent job.

Their house is not directly on Century Avenue.

Um they make some pretty good points or mayor and commissioners, Commissioner Rish.

Uh I've had multiple email exchanges and a couple of conversations with Ms.

Mrs.

Patch during which time she's been very professional in all of our dealings, so we'll compliment her on that.

Um we in our special assessment policy probably don't get to the level of definition of defining what benefit is because that is a subjective component that is given to the uh the special assessment commission to help decide what that benefit might be.

So historically, we have not included access as a prerequisite of benefit uh distribution.

There's lots of parcels that are landlocked, and I guess in that scenario, that parcel would not receive any benefit from the roadway improvements adjacent to it if access was a determining factor.

So historically, we've not included access as the primary driver of benefit, uh, but then do have pieces in our policy that help limit uh what that exposure is for that resident or that business or whatever that parcel might be.

If they have double frontage, we try to give uh uh attributes to allow that uh to recognize I should say that property is in multiple assessment districts, one on their front yard and my pension on their backyard, and give a discount as well as is the policy would allow in those examples.

Okay.

She did an excellent job.

If I can add maybe one more item, there was one item in particular that uh that piqued my curiosity, and it was the use of our median lot size uh in comparing our parcels.

So we'll bring all the residential parcels and into this attribute table and compare the first to find what the median lot size is and then compare each parcel to to that median to see if they're a little bit bigger, a little bit smaller, and then make uh adjustments accordingly, uh depending on how that size works out.

In this particular example, the median lot size because of the sheer number of condominium parcels in this uh site was was pretty small.

It's around two thousand or so square feet, which was pretty small compared to other projects that we have where the median lot size is usually a single family home type lot size.

We did rerun the attribute table using a 9,000 square foot lot or a 10,000 square foot lot just to see how that would affect uh the the parcels.

So the single family homes would have a uh less assessment cost in that scenario, but it's at the uh but it comes from all of the condo lots and uh the park district property in the area would have a higher assessment.

So it is just a reallocation of those dollars.

Uh and I it through that analysis, I wouldn't advise that we modify uh the findings of the special assessment commission uh and that we would approve as presented.

But it was a good analysis for us to go through to see the sensitivity.

Sure.

Okay.

All right.

Commissioners move to approve is presented.

Second.

What discussion do we have, if any none will call roll.

Commissioner Cleary.

Yes.

Commissioner Rish?

Yes.

Commissioner Zenker?

Yes.

Commissioner Connolly?

Yes.

Mayor Smith.

Yes.

Next item F.

Consider request or receive an update and provide direction on the street utility fee and half cent sales tax for arterial roads.

Gabe.

And I think we have in front of us also a handout to everyone.

Okay, Mayor and Commissioners uh here before you to talk about two items.

Uh one is the half cent sales tax for roadway uh construction reconstruction, and the other is our street utility fee.

Uh we were directed at our July 22nd, 2025 meeting uh to engage with some of the members of the special assessment task force and infrastructure task force to talk about these items uh and get some feedback from the that group uh to be uh considered what would it look like in a 2026 ballot question on on these two topics.

So uh initially it was thought that maybe these could be one ballot item that would kind of cover the the the scope of both of these programs.

Uh but in additional conversations, we've come to the conclusion that this might be better to have two separate type questions.

One uh involving our half cent sales tax, and we currently use for arterial road reconstruction and construction, and the other question on the street utility fee uh and let each of those items uh rest on their own merits, and if the public supports them or one or the other, um so be it, but we don't want to maybe confuse the public and or uh have uh the negativity associated with one of them bring down the other in that scenario.

So the first topic we'll cover is our half cent sales tax.

Uh if you've seen the slide a couple of times, I'm sure by now this is passed in 2018, restricted to the construction reconstruction activities on a set project list.

It sunsets in 2029, so it's still collecting and it collects about 10 million dollars per year.

So far, we have invested uh 67 million dollars in our sales tax and have combined that with 18 or so million dollars in federal and state aid to build the projects that we have uh highlighted.

I should say build and or commit to the project we have highlighted in yellow and outlined in red on the screen in front of us.

We anticipate a $13 million balance at this point in time of what the program has in revenue that is yet to be uh allocated to a project at this point.

So I just want to kind of walk through some of the things that uh in my opinion have been led to the success of the half cent sales tax for arterial road construction.

Uh so this is the policy framework that we've had.

Um many of this was written directly into the home rule charter amendment, and some of it is just more uh because it wasn't written in there, it'll allowed for some flexibility.

So the first would be voter approved.

Um, it's always nice when we know we have the support that we're doing the things that the voters want us to do, uh, they did so with the the ballot.

So they approve that uh concept, which gives us the assurance that this is a program that they support.

Uh the next item, a defined scope uh that helps us prevent what could be uh looked at as scope creep.

So having a really defined arterial road construction and reconstruction helps define that.

Um the next piece, the unprioritized project list.

Uh two pieces that I like out of that.

First, the project list uh once again gives the voters they knew what they were getting because that was a smorgasbord of of potential projects that that uh these funds could be used on uh so that limits where that you know maybe something else could have uh got popped up later.

But the other piece is the unprioritized part of that is that it is very difficult to look into that crystal bottle and say in nine years this is what I think the priority would be.

So it allowed us the opportunity to program where with the needs were.

Uh if we have new development occurring in a certain part of time, that might drive the need to fund an arterial road in that part of town.

Uh, if that development wouldn't have occurred, we probably wouldn't need to be in those same areas of investing some of those dollars in that uh location.

I would also say the unprioritized part allows us to respond to the state of North Dakota.

If they come back to us with a proposal to do something on a state highway in our community, it gives us the ability to fund maybe a local share.

Uh but if the state doesn't move forward with that project, we don't have to invest entirely our local dollars into what would be a state or federal facility.

Uh the sunset of sales tax collection, uh, that is very complementary to having a project list.

Uh once again, it helps define that scope as well as now the duration that that tax will be on the book.

So those are all all good things.

And lastly, this one isn't written into the uh the the voter approved ballot, but it was the flexibility that we have to use with other funding.

As I noted on the previous slide, we've paired this with state and federal dollars, both to do water main extensions funded through our state water commission and department of water resources.

We've also used this with funding with the Department of Transportation using federal funds and even state funds that they're allocated to expand and really leverage and stretch those dollars out as far as we can.

Um should note too that we could use special assessments to be paired with the half cent sales tax.

The board has made the decision on every project to not use that, but it was not written to the that mandated that.

So that would have been another way uh that if this board and previous boards would have wanted to stretch those dollars out, it could have been a supplementary revenue source as well.

Now, as we talk about what we would be proposing uh through conversations uh with Commissioner Zenker, the policy framework uh would you see a lot of the same things on this on this list.

So still a voter-approved uh concept that would go to the ballot, still a divine scope of construction and reconstruction.

But what I want to maybe stress at this point in time is uh while we've done a really good job of of getting caught up on our Terial Road network, it was very apparent when we passed when the citizens passed this in 2018, uh the need on on 43rd Avenues on Ashcoole Drives on South Washington Street, some of these corridors that we've now since constructed or reconstructed.

Um, if we look into the future, I would say we have more need or more pressing need on some of our collector and local roadway network than we do have a need to expand another arterial road another mile out of town or or on the outskirts of town where currently a two-lane rural facility is more than adequate meeting that need, and we might want to utilize those those dollars elsewhere in our community.

Uh so we'll uh recommend the expansion of to select collector and local roads.

We'll update our unprioritized project list.

So I put new on here because it would be a new list.

We take all the projects that weren't constructed previously, roll them over onto the new list as well as identify some new projects, and we'll get into some of what those could look like here on the next couple slides.

Once again, be a proponent of having some sort of sales tax to the sunset, whether that's 10 years from the date of passage or 10 years from uh when the previous uh tax was set to expire.

Those could all be determined and thought through as we get closer to having uh a commission decision on where to go with this proposal, as well as then maintaining that flexibility to use with other funding.

Uh I bring that one up here in particular.

We historically didn't use our Terial Road special assessments, uh, but there might be some value in considering what is the appropriate level of special assessment if we're going into a local road or a collector road.

I think we holistically, as the the board had decided on arterial road, that was more of a community need.

Uh one could say that maybe on some of those local roads, there could be some skin in the game for that person who lives on that street.

Maybe not obviously the full brunt of that project, but some sort of subsidize it at a pretty healthy rate with the city picking up a majority of the costs, but still having some potentially locally funded.

So as we look at the that list here, once again is the list of the 2018 voter-aproved uh projects.

Those in yellow are either committed and come or completed.

As we now cycle into what new roadways we could consider.

So I didn't go through the exercise of of putting these all on a list just yet.

This is all just still concepts, uh, but it does show you uh where, I guess, in the engineering department's view, we could have needs, um, some driven by development, some driven by uh current needs.

Um those all could be determined, some driven from uh yeah, I guess little development or or or emerging needs.

Now, as we combine that with then the roadways not completed, that would give us a rough outline of of the types of facilities we could expect an extension of a half cent sales tax uh to be requested to fund.

Now, as we look at the types of roadways, it is still very heavy on the concept of arterial roadways.

Uh, that's still the the bread and butter of this program.

Um should note the what you see.

Oh, go back one slide here.

Uh the interstate is yellow in this map, but it is not yellow for the purpose of eligibility.

That was just that's just an interstate roadway that I guess looks kind of yellow in this particular version.

It's orange on my my printed version.

Um but just want to note here the arterials, collectors, and locals.

Uh, we're not trying to expand this to a huge degree of local roads or collectors.

We're trying to find those roadways that haven't been constructed due to our normal or through our normal development patterns.

Usually that adjacent property develops, they want to build something, we have them build the road.

The network kind of grows organically in that way.

But for whatever reason it might be, the roadways that are listed in green currently are roadways that either were never constructed or just were not constructed with the pace that we would like to see and could be uh eligible in my mind for for uh additional city support to construct said facilities.

Um same could be said to some degree on a local roadway.

Uh that functional classification is is a process that we use to discuss access management and discuss uh eligibility for federal funding.

Uh but we have some local roadways in our community that have more traffic than some arterial roadways in our community, but so I don't want to use the functional classification as the only or the be all end all for what we would determine as eligibility when there could be other components, whether it's traffic volumes or um roadway condition uh that could also be eligible.

The blue roadways, the locals that we brought into this that I would recommend bringing in here are all facilities that are either uh a rural section, so a ditch section roadway today, or it's a gravel road, or there's not even a road there today, but the community might be using it or wanting to use that network.

Um so those are the at this point in time what we have listed.

Uh this up on the screen now is 20 miles of arterial roads, three miles of collectors, and two miles of local roads is what this would amount to.

So to do all of that uh would uh at a really high level um estimated cost would be over 200 million dollars to do uh that updated project list of the carryover work as well as what would be new on this list.

We, as I said before, would be estimating to to garner about 10 million dollars a year in estimated revenue from a half cent sales tax.

So if that's once again on the books for about a 10-year period, we obviously have a shortfall, uh, which is okay because many of these projects I would not consider that we have to do, but would be good to have uh on the eligible list in the event that development triggers it, or uh another political sub-requests assistance or the the state of North Dakota requests assistance and funding, it would be good to have projects like State Street on uh on the list.

Not a high priority for us to spend our own local dollars to five lane state street from Calgary up to 57th Avenue.

But if the state said we'd like to do this project as long as the city can chip in X amount of millions of dollars, it would be good for us to have that support to be able to build um uh that some that sort of facility.

So if we look at just the priority number one and number two roadways, uh and really it's it's kind of the priority number one would be roadways that I believe we would need regardless of any uh new activity in our community.

Uh priority number two are a little more subject to potentially development activities.

Um but the number one and number two roadways would get us to about ninety million dollars, is what that would amount to.

Mr.

Mayor, yeah.

Um Gabe, but won't we have some federal or state tax sharing is something to uh go along with it to help us get to the 200 million?

No?

Mayor, commissioners, commissioner Rish.

Uh I would say there's opportunities on on this the state street facility in particular, that there could be uh the the DOT could program the use of their federal dollars to to allocate it towards that roadway, similar to what they're doing on Mandan Memorial Highway or what they've done on other um uh facilities in town here, even when they built state street and initially up to Calgary or reconstructed it.

Um so I think there's opportunity there for federal aid.

Really, the the federal aid where where we've ran into a uh problem with the federal aid system is that they want to have the entire dollar that is allocated to us used up in one year, and so we can't save that federal aid for two or three years and then be able to tack on one of these big projects, uh especially on the arterial road network.

Um similar to what we've done on some of our previous projects, we showed that we had about eighteen million dollars in state and federal aid, but that was in many of those instances uh two million dollars at a time or four million dollars at a time, and it on a still the 20 million dollar project.

So it helps, it it programs out or it keeps the program at a at a higher funding level.

But the expectation that there's gonna be another hundred millions of dollars that shows up to to fix any of this from the feds, I think is an unrealistic goal.

So lastly, on this topic, what I would recommend for some next steps uh if if the commission approves is kind of do a road show of some sort, get out to the public.

Uh could be a couple different strategies here, but collect input on what we're talking about here tonight uh through the end of this year, uh, with the goal to say what are we missing?

Are these the right roads or are there other facilities that we should be talking about?

Is this too big of a program?

What's what's the right level here to get some feedback through that conversation?

I would hope to come back to you all in the early winter, you know, January-February time frame of 2026 to finalize that project list and ultimately propose that home rule charter language that would then uh have to be completed by March of 2026, so it can be on the June election.

That would give us time then in the April to June of 2026 to take whatever it is that the commission decided and provide additional education.

Uh, we wouldn't be looking for input at that point in time because the commission had made the decision or would have made the decision uh and the language would be kind of fixed, but it would still provide an opportunity to at least tell the people what this means.

Uh, we wouldn't necessarily advocate for passing it, but at least be able to present the information to the public in various forms as well as have information on our website and presentation materials.

So I'll pop I'll pause there if there's questions on anything that I've said so far on half cent sales tax, um, take some initial feedback on that one and then go into topic number two and then wrap the whole thing up at the end.

Commissioner Codley.

Gabe, on East Maine, because that's been a topic over the last decade and things, um from say ninth all the way out to um centennial, maybe even 52nd.

Um that would project was never completed in things.

Why isn't that on say one of the priority lists continued?

Because if it's been up under discussion a couple of times and not under discussion now, it makes me curious a little bit.

Sure.

Mayor and commissioners, Commissioner Conley, the main avenue corridor, really the the concept that the half cent sales tax has historically funded what we recommend it to be funded for is the uh the creation of new roadways or expansion of those facilities.

Uh so whether or not this tax could be used for a main avenue rehabilitation, a concrete pavement repair, yep, definitely could be.

I think it comes a slippery slope into then why would we not use that same tax for other purposes?

Because now you could really talk about all the other concrete roads we have in our town, and really for that matter, every road in our community could be supported through through other uh matters besides uh sales tax, and that's really why topic number two is on the discussion here too, to talk about a street utility fee that could help mitigate some of that.

Um, I wouldn't advise that we identify a particular roadway for maintenance that then allows that landowner to just luckily lives or or owns property on that that street to not have any maintenance responsibilities.

Meanwhile, their neighbor across the street or two streets up has a special assessment bill of a hundred thousand dollars.

I don't believe that's an equitable way of of using the the resources that we have available.

So I'd want to keep those conversations as well as we can um separate from each other.

Any other comments, commissioners?

I I I I like the way we're headed.

Yeah.

Okay.

So into topic number two, a little wordier.

We'll start with that.

Let's less pictures more words, more charts.

Uh so street utility fee, something we've talked about, uh, ad nauseum.

I'll have a slide that goes through kind of the history here.

But it is the monthly, what uh what we propose would be a monthly fee on the utility bill.

So just want to be real clear about what this thing is.

Um that monthly fee on the utility bill would replace the street maintenance special assessments that we currently use for various activities, our chip sealing, uh, crack seals, mill and overlays, full depth pavement rehabilitation, pavement repair.

Um I want to identify that when we say full depth pavement rehab, that's when we will use the entire road bed and reconstruct the pavement, but we leave the curbs, we leave the sidewalk, we're leaving the street lights, we're leaving the boulevards.

So we're trying to be really sensitive to our language when we use the word reconstruction, uh, because even when we've talked with some of our initial stakeholders, uh that word when we're using it in different context means different things.

So we'll try to do as well as we can when we talk about maintaining existing facilities, use words like full depth pavement rehabilitation and not reconstruction, and kind of save that word as well as we can for those larger conversions of rural facilities into urban curb and gutter facilities and the like.

Um so the scope of this would be curb to curb or shoulder to shoulder, preventative maintenance, repair and rehabilitation of existing streets that were historically funded through special assessments.

Uh at this point in time, we did not uh include sidewalks, driveways, lightings, or other items not historically funded through straight maintenance special assessments.

So why would we even consider this?

Is probably the first question that we should ask and feel real comfortable with the answer, or else we're spending a lot of time looking into things that we don't need to be looking into.

Uh but we talk about the benefits of what a street utility fee would be.

Uh these are the first four that we have on here.

Um, first would be a reduced interest during construction.

Uh, we would expect this utility if enacted to operate similar to other utilities that we have, that the revenue generated from that utility is what we use to pay for their expenses.

And we're not bonding, we're not carrying costs, we're not um borrowing from the future years to pay for that infrastructure.

So we treat it similar to uh our water utility, sewer utilities, uh, street lights, et cetera.

Uh the next item, the eliminate the bonding costs.

Uh so that would be a cost savings element if we had a uh fee coming in uh as well as then whatever that prevailing interest rate might be.

Uh, we have historically been lucky in more recent times with lower interest rates, uh, but we are very subject to whatever the interest rates are at the time, and we could find ourselves with 79% interest if we got back to that sort of interest rate environment.

It allows us to program improvements specific to the needs of the roadway.

Uh a lot of times when we look at what we should do on the roadway in the back of our mind, we're also thinking about what are the special assessments on that project or on that property.

And how do we build a special assessment district that makes sense from an equity of the special assessment, and less so from what does the road really need at this point in time.

So removing the uh special assessment, I guess, chains from that discussion would allow us to be more responsive and more efficient in how we deliver road maintenance projects.

Uh then the last one I have on here is more subjective in nature, but a consistent fee uh would be less of a surprise to the property owner uh than getting the letter from us.

I get to write a lot of you know thousand letters every year, don't really write them.

The computer writes them and then puts my signature on them.

But then we do mail them that says you are the lucky recipient that will get a two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand, et cetera, uh, special assessment.

Um so having that letter go away in exchange for a more consistent fee on your utility bills would be one of the uh what I would consider a benefit anyway.

So history, how did we get here?

This uh started in 2017 with the creation of the special assessment task force.

Uh they identified a street utility fee would be a great idea.

In 2019, uh there was a bill that was created that would allow communities like Bismarck to use a special assessment fee, uh, that or a special assessment task uh tax and back up street utility tax.

That failed then in 2021.

We did get House Bill 1419 passed that then allowed what we're calling a street utility fee, a street maintenance fee.

It has different languages uh throughout, uh, was allowed.

That triggered the special assessment task force to reconvene in 2021, come up with some recommendations that were presented to this board in 2022.

Uh but one of those findings was the uh inequity that the in enabling a fee like a street utility fee would create to our political subs like parks and schools.

So we went back to the 23 legislators and uh requested a change in the legislation uh that would allow the local political subs to use their same uh mill levy authority they're using to space for special assessments to be able to pay for a street utility fee if the community uh used one.

Um but that failed in 23.

That failed again in 25.

Uh and really the 25 version, it went really sideways that we were worried that even touching it would would make it a uh an unusable fee or unusable concept, the way that some of the amendments worked through the legislature.

So we feel at this point in time we would rather try to have a discussion with our community to see if this is a fee that we're interested in pursuing with just a carve out for parks and a carve out for schools so that they wouldn't be affected by this fee.

And really that would what it would have amount to is removing them from being fee payers in this system, which would obviously increase everyone's rates a little bit, but as I'll get into some analysis later just to show what it really would or wouldn't change.

So these are the policy components or some of the policy components, it wasn't all of them that were presented by the special assessment task force to the city commission.

I have a slide here that'll show those, and my next slide will show kind of just my commentary on those things.

We really never had the opportunity at the city commission to say uh yes, this board agrees with these things, or no, we don't agree with these things.

It was kind of paused at that moment in time to then talk to the legislature to see if we can make a tweak to it.

So I just want to make sure we have time to discuss these concepts, uh, especially before we put something on a ballot somewhere.

Uh so first option, first concept was the street utility fee policy to follow current special assessment policy.

Um that was in some ways making it so that there wasn't a big change that we for the street utility fee charge someone in a similar manner than the special assessment policy fee does, uh then there really should be no inconsistencies.

Um whereas if we had a street utility fee that was predicated entirely on number of garage stalls or size of your home, that might have an inconsistency with how their current special assessment is used and valued compared to what a street utility fee would be.

Um next piece, this fee should be based on the parcel square footage.

Uh, went through a lot of iterations on what the best criteria should be for that.

We talked about garage stalls, we talked about number of trips generated by the the property, talked about the parcel size, talked about impervious area, all those items uh were talked about uh what landed at once again trying to be consistent with the current special assessment policy as being the parcel square footage.

The third bullet there, all parcels should pay a street utility fee.

That once again is getting back to that special assessment policy that right now, even if you don't have a water meter, even if you don't have a building, we can still assign a special assessment to that property and collect uh a uh revenue from that property paying off its special assessment.

So the thought at the time from the special assessment task force is we should treat this the same and create the X number of accounts, whether that X is a thousand or a couple thousand for those properties in the city of Bismarck that do not have a water meter currently installed.

And so that would be something for to consider still.

The revenue split was 40% residential, 60% commercial.

Um that lined up uh with the land area or the land mass associated with both of those pools.

Um that is highly subjective to including the airport and the landfill into that calculation because those are very large tracts of land that then skew the that commercial cost up to to a higher percentage.

The per dwelling rate for apartments and manufactured homes, just kind of talk on that a bit.

That was the philosophy was we're trying to treat apartments and manufactured homes as they are homes and residential units, not like they are commercial properties, is what our special assessment policy treats it.

So whether or not it's apartment building with 30 units in it or a condo with 30 owners, the street utility fee goal would be to treat them the same and have that building pay the same amount, uh, whereas our policy and special assessment land would could look at those differently because one would be considered a commercial property apartment building and one would be considered a residential home or 30 residential homes.

The fee framework should include paying off the current special assessments.

That was one item that had cons uh maybe not consensus, but support from the special assessment task force.

Um it was an equitable fairness kind of concept.

If you're asked to pay this new fee and you're still paying off special assessments from previous, is that appropriate or not?

I think it was the recommendation of the special assessment task force to have a have the fee responsible, the new utility be responsible for paying off everyone's special assessment.

So it doesn't really matter if your project happened last year or two years ago or will happen next year, all of those special assessment debts would be wiped clean and the fee would be responsible to pay that on those landowners' behalf.

And with that, not looking back for those people that might have paid off their special assessment early because it became a uh and complicated potential issue.

So now my commentary to each of those is on the screen here in red, really contrasting.

Uh first item, I do agree in principle that we should use the special assessment policy, uh, but really just to get to the concept that a larger parcel should pay more than a smaller parcel.

That's really where my value system would kick in that a large retail space with uh that consumes 10 acres of land should probably pay something more than a retail space that takes up a third of an acre of land when it comes to the expans or the network that is needed to maintain for both of those.

So using the parcel square footage, uh once again, yes, that could work in principle.

Uh I do want to talk about the impervious area that we do have already in the system is as another option for us to use there.

The parcels should all pay a street utility fee.

Um, this is one I'd probably say wouldn't I wouldn't fully support at least initially.

Um in principle, it makes sense, uh, but I it does add a layer of complexity to then create utility accounts for parcels that don't actually have an account.

Uh then do they get flagged for all the other concepts that are also out there, whether it's a street light or some other items that they might not have a water meter, uh, but they are maybe should be paying other fees too.

So it adds another level of complexity to it.

Uh and at least at this point in time, I would rather approach this, assuming that we aren't creating any new ones, and that does give us a little cushion.

If in a future year the commission decides to add in undeveloped properties, it would create that opportunity to do so once the fees are already up and running and you can see how how well it's it's working.

The revenue split was 40 60.

Um I do want to say though, if we remove political subdivision property, that changes that concept.

So I would be maybe not looking for a residential split in that manner, but maybe building it in a different manner, which we'll get into on the next slides.

Um per dwelling weight for apartments and manufactured homes, that's perfectly fine.

Uh counting something on a per dwelling rate uh actually is very consistent with what we already have in the utility building system software.

Um so we know how many units are in that apartment building.

So for if we decide an apartment building pays X dollars per unit, uh it's relatively straightforward to then um put that bill onto that particular account.

Uh free frame fee framework should include paying off specials.

Uh once again, I agree with that one.

It does create an equitability concern if you don't.

And then same wise with the no look back or allowance for special assessments previously paid.

So anytime we we build a utility, uh, you gotta first talk about what do you want it to do.

So we talked, you know, we're looking to replace what was the street maintenance projects uh with the street utility fee.

So we grab that capital program.

This was the average of our 2019 through 2025 project budgets.

So that includes some level of contingency, but it is the bid project amount.

Um so it's it was the contractor's number, but if we had some change orders might be um a little bit higher than the bid amount but lower than what we're showing here.

It rounds out to about 16 million dollars for capital program.

We have an eight million dollars in debt service.

That is the current special assessments that are being paid currently.

If we wiped the slate clean on special assessments, and it's the utility's responsibility to pay for those, that would be an item that currently runs about eight million some change to pay that off.

On the bright side, as we stop using special assessments, that debt service will get smaller and smaller every year until the debt service component of this fee would be zero once all the debt is paid off for um historical debt prior to the fee existing.

Uh and then the last one, sales tax and federal aid.

Uh the lion share by far was is like six and a half million dollars of that as sales tax.

The federal aid is reflecting that we have had some federal aid projects that we've used for maintenance projects, some of our downtown urban grant projects we funded in the maintenance realm of things, putting back what we found, mill and overlay, et cetera.

Um so I did want to recognize both of those, but the lion's share of that has been the sales tax.

And I do want to recognize that the uh the think about this one.

This the sales tax, we're not recommending an increase or a decrease in that.

We're recommending that just be brought over currently as we're currently doing that process, whether it's sales tax or uh uh North Dakota Flex funds what will be the next program that we will use, but we also have our prairie dog funds that we're using for those programs.

What we're not asking the fee to pay for everything, or I think the fee just to kind of replace the special assessment components right now.

And that that sales tax was part of the 2018 measure, I believe, on sales tax where we capped the really the property tax buy down.

Am I not am I correct?

And then we and this is the money we were using to offset some specials previously or are currently using to offset some of those specials, right?

Yeah, mayor and commissioners, Mr.

Mayor, the sales tax that we're talking about here is part of our 1% or the first penny is where we're using that that that generates to the 20 million dollars or so a year, and about nine to ten million of that is what is used to pay down special assessments, excuse me, pay down property tax mill levy, um, and the rest of is used for snow gates and buying out specials.

Yep.

Thank you.

So as we look at what sort of utility accounts do we have currently, uh so if we try to took a step back and I didn't try to put our parcel database into the utility accounts, I just started from scratch with just what do we have for the utilities, uh, the number of accounts in particular how many units are on so on those accounts.

So those residential units, sometimes it's one unit or one account that is for one unit, that's the vast majority, but we do have some utility accounts that it's one meter that splits into maybe two units.

And so we want to recognize both the accounts and the units as far as apartment buildings, condos, and multifamilies and manufactured home parks, try to get a good uh number of those accounts and the units, and then the number of accounts for commercial, and those are the ones that have the most variability because it's going from a shop condo um to Kirkwood Mall.

It kind of is the range of what those commercial accounts could look like.

And I do want to note the schools, parks, and lawn meters.

Um, I identified those 400 because in my mind, those will be the 400 accounts that we wouldn't bring in to this system because they are schools, parks, or a lawn meter generally is one that is a secondary meter on a parcel and they're already paying for it through their commercial or in some cases a residential metered account, and we want to charge them twice.

So want to put a big old asterisk on there saying this is just the point in time.

If we use this information, we'd have to audit a lot of this data just to make sure it's used for the right reasons.

As we then look at what rate design could look like, a couple different options here.

Uh the first being a $30 per month residential.

Uh, once again, the goal is to get to a $17 million uh revenue requirement.

If we called it a $30 month per residential unit, uh, that would generate around $7.2 million in annual revenue.

If we special assessment task force had some consensus around 25% as the percentage to use for a residential uh percentage of what that manufactured home park unit should pay relative to uh what a single family home pays.

Uh same could be said for the apartment building, whether that's the right percentage or not to be determined, but we use 25% in both of those situations.

So that would be a $7.50 per month per multifamily uh and counting the number of units that we have and the annual revenue gets us to just about a million dollars generated from that category of the manufactured home park and multifamily.

What that leaves us in this analysis was an $8.7 million requirement from the commercial properties.

So as I said before, is about seven and some change in residential.

In this scenario, it would be eight and some change in commercial, so maybe closer to that 55% commercial to residential component is what a $30 per month residential program would look like.

The column to the right is increasing the residential to a $35 a month fee schedule.

And then you can see as that trickles down to the apartment buildings and manufactured home parks, those numbers go up.

Uh, but then that decreases the amount of commercial property that would be uh utilized or required to pay for this uh fee.

But once again, the goal still is to get to that $17 million number.

So as we work our way to what that commercial could look like, uh I would do want to note that we do have our uh impervious square footage right now in the utility building system and is used to assign uh the stormwater utility fee to those commercial properties.

Now it's a much smaller fee than what we're be considering with here.

So we'd want to make sure we audit that.

But we did go through or should say public works, staff went through the process of looking at site plans, looking at aerial photos when they turned that fee on a couple of years ago and and recalculated based on what they saw is improved services.

So that's your parking lots, your rooftops, anything that was not allowing water to penetrate, uh, that's how that fee was established.

Whether that's the right thing to use, or we'd want to calculate the actual parcel area for each one, that's I guess subject to determination and decision.

But one of the benefits of using the existing per impervious square foot, it still accomplishes the goal of a larger parcel pays more than the smaller parcel.

That's still kind of one of the values we were trying to achieve anyway.

It uses the existing data set that will help both in the implementation, but more importantly, in my opinion, the management of that information over the long term, not having to manage two separate data sets for eternity by by having one based off of impervious square foot and another based off of parcel size.

Um the impervious square foot has already been split.

So if there was a parcel of land that was fully impervious, so the entire acre was impervious, but there was two meters, they've already gone through the analysis and allocated half of that impervious square foot to one account and the other half to the other account.

So we've already kind of split up that in privious nature into the multiple accounts that might be on a parcel.

So as we look back then to the revenue goals, the 8.7 on one end of the spectrum and a 7.3 on the other end of the spectrum, that equates to about you know it's fractions of of the penny, but two cents and then fractions of pennies uh per impervious square foot is what we would anticipate.

So if this is something that we would say we have interest in pursuing, it would be relatively easy to get out and let every account owner know what their bill could look like and provide that analysis.

If the request is to say we want to use parcel area, that would first involve us creating an understanding the parser relationship to each account and then going through another analysis to get to that uh point of the conversation.

So I would offer that if this is what I would recommend, at least for now in terms of talking to the public for the impervious square foot.

I think it's it gets us a good head start in this whole process and uh gets us to the point of just trying to say a bigger parcel pays more than a smaller parcel.

Uh and we've already done that analysis for these commercial accounts.

So lastly, then I'm sure everyone's really happy that I just said lastly, because that means I'm gonna be done talking soon.

Uh next steps for the street utility fee, you'll see a lot of same parallels between this and the special assessment or excuse me, the half cent sales tax component.

What I want to do initially here is confirm some of that policy framework before we'd even talk to the public about anything, whether that's something you can say here at this meeting, or if you want some more analysis and we come back to uh a future meeting.

Um what I'd want to be able to do is at least lay out that this is kind of what we're thinking for rates if you say that's not going to be above one dollar.

I don't want to be out in the community saying this is going to be $30, and vice versa.

I don't want to say it's $30 if you think it might be $50.

I just want to be somewhere close to what we think could be the realm of possibility with what we're thinking here.

Um from that, we'd want to then collect some public input on this.

We we've done engagement with stakeholders with the special assessment task force, etc., but not to the community at large.

So I think there's a really good opportunity for us here to talk about what do we want this to do uh and then collect that through various uh channels, whether it's uh surveys, meetings, etc.

You know, service club presentations, whatever that might be, just to be able to get this message out, see what sort of ideas are out there, maybe some things we haven't thought about, and then be able to come back here in the early parts of January, February of 26 to finalize framework and potentially even rates.

Uh, there might be some desire to incorporate rates or language about rate stability into the ballot language.

If you want to say it's no more than 35 dollars for three years, that could be something we put into the ballot if that's a a desire for this board to to pursue.

Um so with that, I would uh in the March time frame propose that home rule charter for the primary municipal election, and then similar to the half cent sales tax, have some opportunity there between April and June to get out to the community to at least inform them of what is on the ballot now that that decision has been made, if it has been made, I should assume, uh, and let them know what that program would do if if passed.

So with that, that was a lot.

So I thank you for staying with me and uh take any questions in any direction that you have.

Good, Commissioner Rush.

Um Mr.

Mayor Gabe, um well done.

I mean, this is well thought out.

Thanks to you, your team, and Commissioner Zinker on this.

But the $30 possible fee is for the medium-size lot, right?

I mean, if you've got a six thousand square foot lot and your neighbor's got a twelve thousand, he'll pay about twice as much in the utility for me.

Mayor commissioners, commissioner Rish, at this point in time, what I presented would just be a flat fee for anyone residential.

So the the small house, the big house, the tiny house, they would all pay the same.

Uh what I would suggest that if you wanted to have tiers or do something with a larger parcels, medium-sized parcels, whatever it would want to be, um, you could do that, but I'd want to keep that within the containment of what uh was being identified for those single twin home and three unit buildings.

So it's just a kind of a reallocation of that and not a change those to different numbers, and then that trickles down to everyone else having to pay more or less potentially.

So at this point in time, it would all be the same fee, but that could be a topic of discussion if the commission desired.

It was a major discussion item during the entirety of these the uh street utility fee, special assessment task force that all got combined.

I think it became I recall it was kind of a comp complicated process to get to some kind of tiering on it.

And I don't think anybody ever felt that it achieved anything uh appropriate, but I mean I I would be of kind of a flat fee per residential unit, so to speak.

Um I I'm not certain how I feel about whether we set a fixed flat fee for the first three years or so.

I think I'm okay with that, but I think a bigger component of whatever we do is we've got to make sure that the fee that then ultimately is collected has what I'll call it the stop gap.

So we aren't accumulating a bunch of funds.

And if we get to, you remember, Gabe, we had this level of when the fund got to X dollars, we weren't gonna we may even decrease the fee if we were collecting more than we should be collecting because we weren't spending it.

I don't want this ramped up pool that the government is just collecting all these dollars and never using it for what its intended purpose was.

But um I I'm I'm very supportive of the process and the concept.

I I think you've done I'd like to see what happens with the impervious square foot calculation and how that impacts some properties, because that's the thing.

I think that the residential side is easier for me to view and kind of get my eyes on is the commercial stuff I'm having a harder time with.

That's just because I I mean I know we ran into some like really weird numbers before and we were really struggling with that.

So that's that's what's my I like uh I would like to move forward and certainly get some community engagement and and conversation personally.

Commissioner Connolly.

Um I like the 30 for residential.

Um I'd like to see the calculation on paper for everybody to see what the $10 for uh the manufactured home park and apartment one, it's an easy just round number for citizens to calculate too.

When you start adding sense and things, then it gets more convoluted for them.

But um a lot of the fee for service conversations that long six years was um the fact that a lot of people in say uh uh uh manufactured home house or even an apartment, they have just as many cars as um people in single family homes.

And that was a lot of the conversation too, is how do you uh accommodate all the trips and their impacts onto the roadways?

And uh so I still think like that ten dollar portion is affordable.

It's not gonna um breaking the bank, but it does um encapsulate some of those trip counts.

Mayor and Commissioners, if I could maybe just add to that, Commissioner Connolly, uh your comments made me think of two things.

The first being I I do want to kind of get to the bottom or get you know stress test the concept of those renters that are paying for their own utilities that right now have a $50 per month utility bill that might go up to $80 a month potentially compared to their special assessment that in theory the land the property owner was paying for that and and running that into the rates that they're charging to rent that space.

So whatever we would do, I would want to make sure if if something is promoted and something does pass that there's enough runway time for implementation that some of those concepts can be identified and incorporated into future lease agreements so that something that the resident knows it's gonna be something higher and can take that into account when they uh maybe negotiate their rent or whatever that rent increase could be.

Um so I just want to maybe offer that piece.

The the other piece I'd say too is the trip generation concept that you had.

I would view we're we're not trying to get to trip generation as a as a concept that we're we're we're trying to uh understand or use as a criteria.

Um even if that lot is vacant or even if that's just a single family home, if there's 300 feet of frontage or our winters in North Dakota destroy that road after 20 years, even if we're trying to maintain them, they're just even without any traffic on it.

I would think a trip generation component would be very appropriate if we're talking about capacity type improvements and who's gonna pay for that new turn lane or who's gonna pay for that new traffic signal or that expansion of the roadway.

But the concept of maintaining the existing system, um, even if no one drives on the roads and all the cars go away in five years, all the roads would fall apart in that scenario.

Commissioner Collie.

I'm glad you brought that up, Gabe, because uh when we're talking manufactured home parts and things, um when there was a lot of corporate buyouts starting in 2017, um one of the first one that uh went down to an out of state investor um cited the improvements along uh 12th Street and Expressway as a major reason for a major jump in rent.

Well, even after the special assessments paid off, the rent never goes down.

It's a matriculation up.

So that's that portion, the reason why I said 10.

I merely stated the trip count to be encapsulated into that monthly where we went to actually have the trip count language, but um a lot of those parcels uh um like the say uh trailer house, they might have three or four cars, um, just like a single family home would.

So it's it's more that it's it's a catch-all when you have it in the fee, but uh not including the trip language, sort of speaking, uh measure.

So I think we're kind of saying the same thing.

It's just a lot of words.

Other comments or direction for Gabe Commissioner Cleary.

Um I I guess I pretty much agree with everybody.

I would like to see it move forward.

I think there's been a lot of thought put into this over the years with the task force.

Um I do agree, Gabe.

I think that like the flat fee for residential, whether it's 30 or 35 makes more sense.

I think part of the problem when we get into the weeds of trip count or garage number or frontage footage.

It's like there's so many anomalies, right?

Like I live in a neighborhood where all of our front yards are fit only 50 feet wide, but some of the lots go so far back, you can still have a huge garage, you can still have tons of people driving on the road.

Like I just think that the flat rate, I think makes more sense and it'll be easier for the public to understand.

Um I guess I'm more curious to see how that commercial rate plays out.

But um I like what I'm seeing so far.

If I could maybe add something to there, uh Commissioner Clary, just to add to that, any time we would add a um component into the fee, we would need to be able to justify why we did it.

So the less slices that we have in here and what's the magic number from small to medium or medium to large, uh that just creates another, I guess, issue for someone to take exception with.

So I I the most of the time I I believe if the simple answer is the right one, just to pursue that one instead of try to find a a more perfect but potentially still flawed answer.

Yeah, I definitely agree.

I think that like keeping it simple is best just because the way that our city is designed, there's so many anomalies where you'd have to make specific exceptions for certain garage sizes or certain frontages or certain amount of cars that our property is using or something.

So I think that keeping it simple is cleaner and easier for everyone to understand.

Okay.

Commissioner Zenker, go ahead.

I guess I'll just it's not a question for Gee, but it's a question for the the rest of us.

I mean, Gabe put this all together based on his CIPs that he's had over the years and and what we've worked together.

So when when he gives you the 17 million dollars, are you comfortable with that dollar amount?

Um because that changes rates as well.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

I mean, um we all know that and it's gonna take what, 15 years to pay off that current debt that we have?

Some of the some Commissioner Zenker is long, I guess.

I mean, we we our current bonding cycle for our special assessments is uh seven years for these types of projects.

I'm sorry.

Um, but we'd still have some projects from before we've made that change that are still in the books, but there's probably not 15 years' worth out there.

Okay.

So it's seven seven years before that the debt services paid off when you know, I'm sure there's some department heads salivating over some sales tax that might be available.

But we all know that things go up.

So in seven years, the if we use thirty or thirty-five for residential and whatever we use for commercial, the inflationary thing is go is going to be an issue too.

So your comment about capping that and those types of things, those are details we can work out later.

The biggest thing is are you comfortable with the 17 million dollars?

Um then um he's already got the questions for that, so I guess that's all I'll go from there, sir.

Yeah.

Um go ahead, Commissioner Connolly.

During the special assessment task force, didn't they normally talk about a 20 million dollar?

So 17 would be less.

Mayor and Commissioners, Commissioner Conley.

Uh when we looked at the special assessment task force, we were looking at the the CIP primarily, so forward-looking.

Um it's really hard to project out what oil prices might be three, four or five years from now.

So in all of our CIPs, we're pretty um I'd say conservative with what our estimate is, because we don't want to say that this project's gonna cost 17 million and it turns out it's 20 million.

We'd much rather have in the budget it's 20 million in this scenario or in a the CIP for the street maintenance, because it's being special assessed, there wasn't really a need to budget that at all because it was just special assessments only.

It was a means to get the sales, the appropriate sales tax uh dollar amount allocated to that amount of work.

So we always would know that we'd have enough in sales tax to support that buy down of the special assessments by having what would be a little bit conservative or higher number than what we'd actually expect.

What we've have in this project or this program now is the actual costs on average for the last um six or so years.

I feel like that's gonna be a more accurate number for what next year's project will look like.

But we do need to keep in mind that there are inflationary pressures and that unknown in the future that we'd have to keep on top of as well.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Commissioner Clary.

Um I guess to answer your question, Commissioner Zinker, I think that the 17 million makes sense if it's based off of you know what we've been looking at for the last couple of years.

I think that just like any other utility fee, you're gonna have to look at it from year to year and say, does this still make sense?

We do it with street lights, we do it with solid waste, you know, uh, because I think there's gonna be inflationary issues, but then there's also going to be as that debt service goes down, like that's gonna adjust too.

So I think as long as we are working under the concept that we know that that dollar amount can change in future years, I think that the 17 million makes sense now for sure.

Well, only as long as that's 17 million dollars and consider considers some inflationary index to the historical numbers that you've been working on, because next year that 17 million dollars would be short if it was 17 million this year.

And Mayor Commissioners, I'll also want to add we're always a year behind in our construction projects because we will bond our like you did here today, certified the the special assessments from last year's projects.

So there is always going to be uh a year's worth of debt that we'd have to take into account that probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense to special assess it only for us to wipe that off.

Um what I would recommend if it gets to that point is just be a little more strategic once again with that implementation strategy, and if there happens to be a year that we know this is happening, that might be a good year to tone down potentially some of the roadway maintenance investment for that particular year so that we don't have just more debt or two years worth of debt that we have to pay, we're just paying the previous year.

So all these are kind of details we'd have to work out and get a little more firm commitment, but I have um confidence in that $17 or $17 million number to be good for the first couple of years of the program.

Then then I'm comfortable.

I mean, you're you're the one that's got the data and have run the analytics.

But it's a it's a fair question to ask because we need to know the starting point.

Yep.

Right.

Yep.

Okay.

Okay.

Anything and so do we need further direction on the sales tax item as well for you?

Mayor commissioners, if you'd have some consensus to say what you heard tonight is is appropriate and to go out to the public and talk about it and come back to you with with results of that discussion before any decisions are made.

That's really all I'm asking for tonight.

Okay.

Go ahead, Commissioner Zenker.

Mayor, Commissioner, and just to just to re-emphasize, right?

It's going to be two questions on the ballot, not one question tied together.

I I led to that when we first had that conversation.

Um through more conversations.

I really like this approach.

Yeah.

It's clean, it's transparent.

Um, and it it really sets up future commissions for that half cent to do other priorities.

Um, just like Gabe said, the crystal ball isn't always crystal, right?

Right.

So Mr.

Mayor, uh, one of the most attractive parts for me is the money we save on interest on these projects for the for the UT Street fee.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

So 3%.

Okay.

So do we have consensus for Gabe to proceed forward?

Yes and engage whoever he needs to engage to sounds good.

Thank you all.

Okay, thanks.

Item G, consider requests to receive and award bids for the replacement of the terminal doors and walk-off mats.

Mr.

Haug, you've been so quiet and patiently waiting back there.

I was really interested in that last item.

I don't even think it's not going at all.

It's in it.

Here's one more.

Mayor, commissioners, we have uh a couple of items for you tonight.

Um if we want to put them up on the machine here.

We've got uh uh item number one was the automatic sliding door replacement.

So all three of our entrances are 20 years old.

We're starting to have some issues with the getting parts and stuff, and of course, pretty important to be able to get people in and out of the building.

And there's uh two set, you know, there's a set at each uh door opening.

We received one bid uh, but we couldn't uh we can't consider it because they did not include their bid bond or their contractor's license.

So the attorney opened it up, check for that, and it wasn't there.

And so we've sealed that up and we'll send it back to them.

So that item is gonna have to be rebid.

We did actually think that we are gonna get three bids on that.

Uh there are three glass companies that are capable of doing that, but uh we're gonna just have to do some checking and regroup and uh and put together uh another um advertisement for that particular item, so there's no action on that one.

On the floor mat replacement, um we did receive one bid from House of Color.

Um actually two, one for the base bid, one for the alternate.

Um and and we kind of anticipated two bids, but we only got one.

But uh the engineers' estimate on that was uh 35,000 and their bid was 29950.

And we'd like to recommend to you to award uh alternate one to house of color for the floor mat replacement Commissioner Rish.

Uh Mr.

Mayor Greg, the disqualified bid was it relatively close to the estimate?

We didn't, I didn't see uh Julie might have seen what the number was, but uh my staff that were there didn't did not see it.

Um I understand the architect has talked to uh how uh who was it uh CNH class, and uh they said they would resubmit with uh proper paperwork and stuff next time, but we've got to find out why the other two outfits didn't uh submit a bid.

Maybe it's a bad time of year.

You know, trying to close up projects before the snow flies.

So commissioners, what are your wishes with regard to uh I'll make a motion to approve is presented.

Second.

Is there any discussion?

Hearing number call roll.

Commissioner Zenker?

Yes, Commissioner Connolly, yes, Commissioner Cleary, yes.

Commissioner Commissioner Rich.

Oh, yes, I thought she said mayor.

Yes, yeah, thank you.

Maybe she's like maybe she's calling me mayor now.

Next item H consider request from the administration department to provide an update on the draft of the 2025 strategic plan.

Go ahead, Doug.

Evening, Mayor and Commissioners, thanks for the opportunity to give you guys an update.

Um, as you all are all aware, we started this process in the spring of this year.

Uh we reached out to uh we put an RFP out for services to lead us through our 2025 strategic plan update.

Um said back in the spring, we awarded a contract to Patrick Gibbara of the Mayhoranda group.

And shortly after that, he began meeting with staff.

Um he came to town three times over the last several months, the first visit, and I'm just gonna recap a few things you've already heard and for our audience.

He came to town to visit, get to meet you all, get to meet uh the steering committee.

Um, and then he also met with about 150 staff from across the organization to kind of get a pulse on where we are, what the the culture is, and kind of analyze the concerns, what people were happy about, some of the concerns that our staff had as well.

But before I go any further, I want to just tell the uh strategic plan committee that I appreciate them.

They've done a lot of great work.

I'm sure Commissioner Zinker will have a little bit to say about them, but I want just want to recognize them specifically.

We had quite a few directors and a few staff.

It was Dimitri Chernyak, Gabe Shell, Renee Mock, Ben Aerith, who um has moved on to uh a different position in a different part of the state, Steve Sowway, Luke Teagle, Tondra Kraft, Caitlin Oz, Jason Stugemeyer, Sarah Berner, Leanne Schmidt, and Katie Johnkey.

So pretty diverse group of staff, and uh they've just been a uh a joy to work with during those meetings.

Um Patrick came to town uh the second time.

This was in June, and we began working on the uh vision, mission, and values, and we went through a SWOT analysis.

The vision, mission, and values, it's a is a pretty important part of what we do.

It's kind of sets the direction.

We we take a little bit of time.

There's quite a bit of debate uh about the direction of where our organization is.

Uh I'm just gonna read what we had in 2019 with our previous Strat Plan and where we are at now because it's significantly different.

And I think it's really important to point out that it's different for the uh a very specific reason.

This strategic plan is focused internally, where the previous plan in 2019 was focused on the community.

So it makes a little bit of sense that those are gonna change fairly significantly.

So the vision in 2019 was Bismarck is a preferred destination for people who enjoy living learning, working and playing in a city with an enduring community pride.

We embrace our rich heritage, economic opportunity, and lifelong learning to cultivate a healthy and sustainable environment fostering opportunity for all.

So that's it's a lot.

Um I don't know that anybody could necessarily remember what that was, and except it was a lot of really good things, and it was a lot of good things about our community.

But where we landed, we wanted something a little bit more succinct, something that we could remember.

And during that process, we were kind of thinking about well, what's what's the best quality of our community?

And uh where we landed is that we have an extraordinary quality of life in our community, and that's something I personally value quite a bit, and uh, I think the committee as well.

That so our new vision for this strategic plan is that Bismarck is a dynamic community committed to an extraordinary quality of life.

I know our administrator, Mr.

Tomonik really appreciates the use of the word extraordinary.

So much so that we had to rehash that over for a couple hours.

But sometimes you just don't get your way in the game of life.

Um you know, the next portion that we worked through was the mission.

Our our mission in 2019 was to provide high quality public services in partnership with our community to enhance our quality of life.

We didn't deviate too far from that.

Where we landed this time was together.

So just shorten it a little bit, made it a little bit more succinct.

And then our values.

But in communications that we had and debate back and forth, we we decided to change it up quite a bit this time.

And our values are something that we want, you know, a reflection of our organizational culture should reflect our values.

And so when we look at what we had in 2019, it would be really hard to base a culture or try to form a culture around what those values are.

So we did quite a bit of work.

Um again, there was and you've heard me say this is a good group because we had I don't know if I if heated is the right word, Commissioner Zinker, but there is a lot of back and forth and some opinions.

It was playful, jesting fun debate is what I would call it.

But it was important that we had good debate, and that's what makes a good team, and you've got a bunch of good staff that are able to do that and be effective through it.

So where we landed on our values were service, and I'm gonna give you a little sentence, uh, a little description of what service means.

It means we are dedicated to delivering safe, responsive, reliable, and exceptional services.

The next value is stewardship.

We manage our resources ethically, responsibly, and sustainably.

Respect, we treat all individuals with dignity, fairness, and civility at all times.

Care, we care about our work and the people we serve, and innovation.

We embrace creativity, forward thinking, and meet current and emergent needs.

So the goal for another goal for these values is to incorporate it more in our decision making.

Um, and when we're selecting consultants, when we're evaluating our staff, uh, when we're giving promotions, uh things like that, we should be looking at our values to make sure the actions that we're taking are reflective of that.

And I think this is a pretty good set of values that we can begin incorporating that into our decision making processes.

Uh the next thing that we worked on were our strategic focus areas.

The strategic focus areas are kind of the categories in which the goals and objectives are going to fall under.

In the 2019 plan, we had strategic focus areas of signature spaces, all ages and all wages, social health, 21st century hub, complete connectivity, and government excellence.

So, because that strategic plan was community folk community focused, it that made a little bit of sense.

Uh but because this is more internally focused, we're doing work on the organization on this one.

We decided to change it up quite a bit.

So our new strategic focus areas.

I stole a phrase from you.

You did.

Sorry.

I can't ground yet.

Uh our strategic focus areas are infrastructure and development, economic vitality, safe and healthy community, emerging issues, engaged and informed community, desirable lifestyle, and organizational excellence.

When we think about infrastructure and development, what we want to do is address the growth.

And so just at as you see on our draft plan that you have in front of you, there's a description for each of those strategic focus areas that you see over and over in the blue.

And I'm just gonna read a little excerpt from each of those so that staff is aware of what these are, and then those in the audience or those listening online.

When we think about infrastructure and development, an important note is that as our city continues to grow and evolve, it is essential to develop and maintain facilities, systems, policies, and practices that not only meet today's demands but also anticipate future needs.

So that's what we're trying to accomplish under that strategic focus area.

For economic vitality, we're recognizing that economic vitality is critical to the overall quality of life and long-term prosperity.

This strategic focus area emphasizes collaboration with partners, modernization of business processes, and thoughtful community planning.

For safe and healthy communities, we want to develop a comprehensive approach to public safety, health and well-being for those within the organization and across our community.

On emerging issues, we want to make sure that the city of Bismarck continues to adapt and be proactive in its approaches, anticipating challenges before they arise and positioning the organization to respond strategically.

Engaged informed community.

We've talked about this a lot tonight already with what Gabe presented.

But as Bismarck continues to grow and evolve, effective communication must go beyond simply sharing information.

So we have to be strategic.

What did I do?

Oh, I'm sorry.

We're on the same, we're on the same page.

Um we all we all see it.

There's a lot of communication that goes on right now.

It's evolved, it's evolving very quickly, and we need to make sure that we are keeping in front of mind, making it a priority to evolve with what our citizens are expecting.

And then organizational excellence.

I think this speaks for itself, but this focus area reflects a strategic commitment to building high performing organ, a high performing organization that can effectively meet the evolving needs of the community, adapt to future challenges, and deliver high quality public services.

So I lost my spot.

Next steps.

My plan for you all is that over the next month that you take time to review the strategic focus areas and the goals and objectives.

And you look to the second column next to the objectives, and you can see the departments that are have been assigned to those objectives.

What tasks can we formulate to accomplish these things?

Um tentative timelines that you think those tasks can be started and begun, and then I will be meeting with them as well to talk about this.

Um the other thing I would ask that that you do, commissioners, is to begin thinking about how you want this strategic plan to be made relevant, and that's something that we've struggled with in the past for very legitimate reasons.

We had a flood in 2012, and we had a pandemic and shortly after the last one was approved.

So there's pretty legitimate reasons to get off task, but we don't want that to happen with this one.

Um so I ask that you think about how do you want this reported out to you all on a consistent basis?

Is that a quarterly report from department directors?

Is that a report from administration about the high points of the strategic uh plan that's been touched over the last several months?

Um do you want to just meet with your department directors?

There's lots of things that we can do so that you are receiving the information that you want to get out of this, and then know that on the backside the the staff is working on you know how do we make it relevant for our organization.

So uh my part is to coordinate, I would like to to split our uh steering committee into three subgroups to accomplish a few tasks between now and the end of the year.

Uh so I left one part out for you all, and I apologize.

But the goal would be for us to approve this at the second meeting in October.

So we have about a month to review with department directors with the goal of final adoption at that point.

And if you know, by chance you need more time and we need to push it back, we could do that.

But I'd really like to try to get this accomplished by the end of October.

Uh for staff, we're gonna I'd like to split the steering committee into a few groups.

Um that though you guys are gonna meet, you commissioners are gonna meet with your department directors.

I would like the subcommittee to also meet with some of them as well to help them get in dig into the tasks a little bit more.

We don't have to have those adopted right away with this uh strap plan.

We can continue, it's a living document we can continue to work on over the next several months.

Um, another group I'd like to have work through a detailed implementation plan, and I've got some ideas of who specifically I'd like to put on that.

And part of that implementation plan is how are we communicating with staff, what this is exactly and how it's gonna affect them on a regular basis.

We need to make sure our directors and supervisors and leaders across the organization are communicating regularly with them, um, emphasizing the importance of the values and what we're trying to accomplish through the strategic plan.

So also, as part of that, we're gonna be looking at uh a reporting software where our citizens can view the progress on this, but then on the back side, we have a lot of freedom to to provide regular input so that you are up to date as well, as long with others in the organization.

And then finally, uh another group will work on the communications of this, you know, the outward communications, and then you can see what this draft looks like right now.

It's in an Excel.

And what I would like is to work with somebody to help make this a little bit more professional looking so we can distribute this to people to stakeholders across the community so we can have um you know more published refined version that we can give to each of the departments so they can have to distribute as well.

So those are the three things that I'm gonna work on and with the subcommittee, and I've asked you to do two things work with your department directors and then begin thinking about how you would like this implemented on your end.

Commissioner could you add anything because you helped lead this?

Better hurry up because Gabe or uh Doug will take some more of my stuff.

No, first of all, I think we need to congratulate Doug because he led that charge and did a fantastic job.

He doesn't like the limelight, but he he really did.

He could steer that committee.

Uh we get a little bit stuck once in a while, and he'd bring the bring in his insight.

And I kind of did the same thing, tried to I didn't want to make it my plan, right?

Because we're working on the business with staff and employees and those types of things.

So I'm gonna point out a couple things.

One, I still have mine from when we did before, because after we gave our presentation, we accepted that.

Always thought that it was critically important for me.

And if we're gonna go through that and we're making decisions at this table that it matches that our plan.

Um yes, it did get a little stagnant and it needed then it's outdated.

So I'm I would challenge us to do the same thing once we once we adopt this.

Um, and and Doug was right.

It everything that we talked about in the previous presentation from Gabe, every one of those items matches.

How are we gonna provide better service?

How are we gonna make sure we're showing stewardship for our for our uh residents in our in our properties, how we respectfully make decisions so it's not just a snap of a finger type scenario, and that we care because we want to make sure that we hold ourselves to that high standard that we have.

Um and there's people out in the community who have transitioned from other parts of the country, other states, and come in.

And some of the things that we take for granted, especially I'll I'll pick on myself a little bit here because I'm a lifelong residence that I'm used to.

Hey, plows get done, garbage gets picked up, you know.

Our our city looks really nice.

We have the uh a great urban forest.

Um, some of those communities don't have that, and they really appreciate what we have.

Um, we don't have tall buildings or those types of things.

We have a we have a community, right?

So I I think that's important because in our strategic plan it it looks to a vision and into the future.

Um it's critically important for our our directors, um, department heads, upper management to take this down to the to the people who are boots are on the ground.

Because they gotta they gotta feel they do all the work, right?

When when chaos hits the streets, fire police, you know, um CENCOM, uh public works, whatever, whoever needs to jump in, does it.

And we've we've seen it over and over within our community, what our staff does.

And if they feel that sense of pride, and some of them didn't when Patrick came, that we got to we gotta make sure that our our directors and our managers managers enforce that sense of pride that they have because they always don't get a pat on the back, and they do a fantastic job running the city.

So uh with that, I I again I want to thank that group.

Um they did a great job.

It's a little, you know, it takes a little bit for the the icebreaker so to so to speak in there.

But we had it, I thought I had a I had a great time.

Um we have some very, very, very good staff.

Um, we have very good directors, and we got a good group of up and coming um people within our commit within our organization.

So that's all I got.

Okay.

Commissioner Connolly.

Uh I concur, Doug, thanks for all the work and team of people.

Um similar to the 2045 plan where um it's mentioned on just about every staff report that comes up to the meeting.

Um that would be kind of daunting here too, but that's why I'm mentioning it here when you take it back to the stakeholder group, whether it be a small excerpt on where it meets the provisions of the strategic plan with every item because uh a lot of citizens and things, if they're looking at our agendas and that, it might give them a point of reference that they might not otherwise identify with, or if it's just citing where they on the staff report where they could look into the strategic plan if uh as a possibility.

I appreciate that.

And that brings me something I forgot to mention.

What the strategic plan is, just to elaborate a little bit, is we're gonna do the day-to-day stuff.

We've got great managers, we've got great supervisors and directors.

We're gonna do the jobs that we're gonna do.

We're gonna plow snow, we're gonna keep designing streets, we're gonna do all those things.

What the strategic plan is or the or where we want to be in the next three years that are above and beyond they're gonna push our organization.

So there will be things that you know the day-to-day stuff, the bid awards probably won't get mentioned as part of the strategic plan, but we're looking at the bigger picture things that are pushing the organization forward, and we definitely should be putting that stuff on the memo for you guys when you're making those decisions.

Okay, Commissioner Rish.

Um Mr.

Mayor Doug, thanks again for your work on this.

Uh, oftentimes organizations will do a strategic plan, they put it on the shelf, checks a box, oh, there it is.

But I like your idea, the follow-up maybe a quarterly update on the where we're at.

If we made any um achieved any of the goals outlined in the plan, and I don't I don't know if quarterly is right or every six months or whatever the case may be, just to keep track of it.

So we don't lose track of it.

So we don't forget about it.

So I think that's actually one of the his requests from us is to give him some of that feedback and guidance and when we adopt it or even at the next meeting if we want to have it on the agenda, we can talk about whether we have a conversation then or when we adopt.

But uh as and I know Commissioner Zenker was part of these conversations because Doug had a probably the same conversation to a part with me on like how we're gonna report this out so we stay on task.

And um, you know, it's I think it's our job as a commission to give that kind of guidance to not only Doug, it's it's the whole team here, all 650 plus employees.

Um I think it's a like the the items that are in here are tremendous.

There's gonna be a lot of tasks that aren't developed yet, and but I think it's something that is that will really put our city in in a really good spot three years from now.

So thank you, Doug.

Yep, yeah.

Thank you.

Commissioners, I just asked that you uh start to meet with some of your departments so we can give some additional feedback in a couple weeks, and a couple, I guess, four weeks, five weeks, something like that.

Yeah, if you could just let your directors know and then they can communicate with me, and then we'll go from there and have something ready for you at the end of October.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Item I is considered requests from the fire department to provide an update on fire station six.

Chief Mayor and Commissioners, my purpose tonight is to provide you with a brief update on fire station six.

In our last discussion, we shared data on the need for the additional fire station, and then we also brought up proposed location that was on Burley and Calypso, the city owned piece of property.

This is an area of the city that we've been analyzing.

It's our intent to build upon the emergency services that we provide, not only for the fire protection, but also for our emergency medical water, ice rescue, chemical response, etc.

Whatever type of emergency.

So since our last discussion, we've been working with city departments on the project, public works, Michael Martin, Solway, um Steve actually led the process for selecting the architect EAPC was chosen.

EAPC Alan and Brett are here tonight in in case there's any information that they would need to provide.

Community development, Ben and Daniel have been extremely helpful in growth projections.

GIS, Darrell Nusich getting us uh into the data collection mode has been very helpful.

Gabe with engineering and his staff uh looking at some of the infrastructure, working with the APC and EAPC stepping into that realm of working with our staff to make sure that our operations and that station are functional and we get to the things that are important to our persons and to work towards a cost estimate as well.

So the fire department, we take great pride in the service that we provide to the community, and we also take great pride in being a good neighbor.

We've had a number of opportunities to interact with the public on this project to answer their questions about how we operate, when we use sirens, when we don't.

Um we appreciate the input and we'll work hard to fit into the neighborhood.

So, in summary, I just wanted to say that the fire station project is moving well.

And mayor and commissioners, thank you for your time this evening.

Commissioners, any questions for the chief.

Okay, thank you.

All right, we are at uh item six, other business.

Do we have any other business before we head to executive session?

Go ahead, Commissioner Cleary, and then Commissioner Connolly.

Uh mine's just quick.

So last week we had uh the free landfill week that we do in the fall at uh at our landfill, but it rained like five days in a row.

So we had some people reaching out to public works wondering if there was any ability to extend the week because it was very hard to get out to the landfill and there's a lot of mud and um it was a little interesting with all of the rain.

Um after Steve and I discussed it, um we decided that we will do another free landfill week, but we didn't want to extend it straight into this week.

We wanted to give it opportunity to dry up, and so there will be another free landfill week starting next week.

So Monday, September 29th through Saturday, October 4th.

Um it hasn't been like the press release hasn't gone out just because we're trying not to confuse people with whether it's this week or next week.

So it will be like publicly announced later this week.

But just for anyone who is wondering, because I know that I've got inquiries, I think Commissioner Zenker got some too.

Um, that we are going to extend it because it was a bit of a mess out there.

So uh and it will be next week, all the way through this Saturday.

So thank you.

Commissioner Connolly.

Yeah, I just wanted to mention uh last night we had one of the there was two honor flights um taking off this week and returning.

Last night was one of them at our airport, and there was a tremendous crowd, a lot of not dry eyes there, but there was room, so um just encourage anybody if they have free time or flexible time after seven tomorrow night, uh see if we can't make sure all of those uh empty spaces aren't filled.

It's a tremendous opportunity to thank people that have protected our freedoms and our rights.

And I've been to several of them.

My grandfather was one more than a decade ago.

Uh it's just a really great community event.

Any other business?

Okay.

If not, I would entertain a motion to enter into executive session.

Uh move into executive session under do you want me to century code or okay?

Uh under North Dakota Century Code section 44-04-19.2 regarding negotiation strategies.

Second.

Any discussion?

Hearing none will call roll.

Commissioner Cleary?

Yes.

Commissioner Rish?

Yes.

Commissioner Zenker?

Yes.

Commissioner Connolly?

Yes.

Yes.