It's the 28th of July.

It's sh just after 5 15.

We're in the Tom Baker room of the City County building.

This will be the Board of City Commissioners regular meeting.

But before we start, we will stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

We'll call the meeting order if we can call roll, please.

Commissioner Rish?

Here.

Commissioner Dahl?

Here.

Commissioner Connolly?

Here.

Commissioner Holt?

Here.

Mayor Schmitz.

Here.

Our first item is public comment.

Public comment period is limited to the items on this agenda in the consent agenda or anything in the regular agenda that's not a public hearing.

And the prior meetings agenda.

Anyone who wish to speak, please come forward, tell us the topic you're speaking to, sign in, and give us your name, please.

A second call for public comment.

A third and final call for public comment.

Seeing no one rushing to the mic, I'm going to close public comment.

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

I actually had a question for uh Julia, but Mr.

Mayor, if that's right.

Sure.

Um just quick question item I was uh uh just out of curiosity.

How come the entire definition of Growlers was removed?

Okay.

Oh, sorry.

Um you can answer it, but this is a call for public hearing on the uh consent agenda, so it's not actually the public hearing, but maybe you can just so not to just not get us off track as all.

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

Move to prove approve.

Second.

Any discussion?

And I'll just during public hearing next meeting, discuss it uh or even ask the question of Julie in between.

Uh no discuss if there's no other discussion, I'll call roll.

Commissioner Dahl?

Yes.

Commissioner Connolly?

Yes.

Commissioner Holt?

Yes.

Commissioner Rish?

Yes.

Mayor Smith.

Yes.

Moving to the regular agenda item A.

Consider requests from the Bismarck Mandan Convention Visitors Bureau.

Uh Executive Director Sherry Grossman to present her 2025 annual report.

Sherry, go ahead.

So my name is Sherry Grossman.

I'm the CEO of the Bismarck Man Yan Convention.

Is the mic on?

Doesn't sound like it.

There you go.

Hi.

My name is Sherry Grossman, and I'm the CEO for the Bismarck Mandan Convention Visitors Bureau.

Because I'm short, Commissioner.

All right.

Um thank you for allowing me to be here tonight to give you a quick update on some of the things the Convention Visitors Bureau has been doing this past year.

I wanted to start by sharing our mission.

So our mission is to promote engaging visitor experiences resulting in community economic growth and quality of place.

Just to give you a little bit of background on how we're funded, our main funding source is a lodging tax.

We get 75% of the 2% lodging tax.

Um we also have we are also a charitable gaming organization, so we currently have four sites, and then a small amount of our income is membership and visitor sales in our our visitor center.

So I'm gonna start out with some numbers to help show you the significant impact that visitors have on our economy.

So this past year we used move to using Placer AI to obtain this data.

You probably hear placer a lot, a lot of retail places use that.

They recently added a visitor's component.

So that helps to make it a good product for CVBs, and we can um track the visitors' expenditures.

So normally all the data I give you is Bismarck and Mandan together.

Placer AI separates the two, so these next two screens, the two will be separated.

So in 2025, visitors had 1.7 million trips to Bismarck.

Of those trips, 65% were overnight and 35% were day trips.

Anyone that lives in Bismarck, Mandan, or 50 miles out or excluded from this data.

Yes.

How do you come up with the 1.7 million trips, 2.1 million I I could see the visit, but the visit nights, what if what if somebody comes and stays in my basement?

You you can't counted.

That's not counted.

That's not counted.

These are hotels.

Yep, they have to stay in our hotel, um, Airbnb if they report it.

Okay.

And then how do you figure out their spending?

Do you have an average and you multiply that?

Um this is uh mayor and commissioner.

This isn't any of our data.

This is all data that Placer AI collects.

So they collect that on um expenditures, a credit card mostly is what they get it on.

They also get have access to the hotels, um, their information.

Okay, but the 1.7 million trips.

That's 1.7 million.

There was seven 1.7 million trips.

And the reason they say trips is one person might have been here several times.

So is that many trips to Bismarck?

But how do you come up with 1.7 is my question?

The the tracking from Placer.

The people that are in our community that are not locals or residents.

And they also can track so specifically that they know the people that commute here.

The phones that basically sleep here every day are not tracked in here.

So your cell phone is the device that's usually cell phones and credit cards, yep.

Wow.

I know.

I know.

You can turn off that if you want on the case.

I turn off all I can.

You can.

Go ahead, Commissioner Connolly.

Uh Commissioner Rish uh when Kate from the Downtowners presented the app that they track with.

There was a lot more delineation.

And yeah, it was like, let's go back to rotary phones.

I get it.

Oh, yeah.

We can there's a lot of information we can get.

Um this is like a high overview on it.

So those trips generated 2.1 million hotel nights, and those visitors spent $300.6 million dollars while they were here.

We can see a lot of spending categories.

I just gave you the top three.

Retail was 101.1 million, hotels 77.8 million, and restaurants 26.4 million.

So the next slide is Mandan, just to give you that information.

Um 208.9,000 trips, 64 percent overnight, and 36 day trips.

Those trips generated 346 point, 48.6,000 hotel nights.

The direct expenditures were 14.9 million.

Their top three categories were the same three, just one and two were reversed.

Hotels were seven million, retail two point two, and restaurants one point one.

This next slide shows um the impact meetings and conventions have in our community.

Um they really have a significant role in our economic impact.

So the top half of the slide is meetings and events that were held here in 2025.

This isn't every meeting that was here.

These are the meetings that my staff worked with, and they were multi-day meetings.

We don't really count the one-day ones.

So we worked with 330, 339 meetings.

Those meetings brought in 287,315 attendees, and they spent 3.1 million dollars while they were here.

The bottom half of the screen is what our sales staff worked on in 2025.

So it could have been something that maybe was held in 2025, but more than likely something for a future year.

They booked 355 meetings and events that will generate 96,410 hotel room nights for an estimated 273,000 attendees.

That will spend 28.6 million dollars while they're here.

I I think it's significant to point out.

We have a question from Commissioner Dahl.

Yes.

Thanks, Mayor.

Uh Sherry, just a question.

You said the direct economic impact was is it 3.1 on the screen it says 31.

It is 31.

Okay.

Yep, sorry.

No, I just that's kind of a big difference.

Yes, it has a big big difference.

Yes, thank you.

It's it's 31, you're correct.

Um of that 28.6 million that our team booked, 7.9 million of that will be regional, national, international visitors, so out-of-state money coming into our community.

There we go.

Um our destination master plan was completed at the end of 2025.

The CVB retained JLL to conduct this initiative that will serve as a strategic roadmap to guide the future of tourism in our community.

The process involved JL conducting meetings with a steering committee, focus groups, individual site, individual stakeholder meetings, and an extensive research process.

This comprehensive plan will help solidify Bismarck Mandan's position as a tourism destination and provide long-term improvements to elevate the visitor experience.

The document is over 100 pages, so it's very extensive.

Just gonna give you a little bit of a high level overview here.

Everything is divided into seven pillars.

So everything that's in this hundred page document would fall under one of these pillars.

Destination experiences, destination infrastructure, events and festivals, destination marketing, community engagement, Missouri Riverfront activation, and Bismarck Event Center Strategic Strategic Partnership.

Go ahead, Commissioner.

Mayor, uh sure.

The riverfront, it looks like it's coming along.

Will it be done this year by this fall, do you think, or what is what's the status?

Um Mayor and Commissioner, um we are actually I'm in uh about a month.

I'm my board is having a a walkthrough down there.

Um it's not gonna be done this year.

I think they're gonna get a lot done this year.

The first phase of it will be done sometime next summer.

Okay.

And what what one of the con if I may one of the concerns I've heard is where are people going to park if it's a great big event, it'll be a struggle to have to maybe park at Pioneer Park and walk over, or what what are your thoughts on that?

That'll be it, it's always an issue of parking.

Yeah, mayor and commissioner, that that will continue to be a problem.

Um there's no doubt about that.

I think the planners have done a really nice job of it.

They've done some parallel parking along the edge to kind of shield it from it so that if there's children running in there, there's parallel parking alone there, so right next to the road, you know, kids won't be able to come out of there.

So it it it of course, you know, will be something that will have to be worked on, and you know, maybe some of the larger events they'll have to bus from places, but um hopefully we'll they'll come up with some plans and from some other areas.

So our plan is a 10-year plan that will evolve over time.

It includes recommendations on how to move our communities forward and what is really needed to get the greatest economic impact.

Some things will move forward, some ideas will change, and others might not emerge.

There's so there's numerous points under each phase.

I'm just gonna give you a high-level overview, just mentioning a few.

So the first phase one, the foundation, the first one to three years, developing the foundation including new event activation and a hotel study.

Phase two, build and activate, possibly a convention hotel construction and seeing larger events and visitor volume.

And then phase three, grow and lead.

By this time, we should be hosting many more citywide conventions, and tourism is viewed as a permanent economic driver.

So one of the initiatives that was highlighted in the DMP was a need for a community events calendar.

This wasn't something that we didn't really know about.

We knew we needed one.

We've it's been on our radar for a long time, but we moved it to the front of the list and a few months ago implemented a community-wide event calendar.

Um the reception to it has been great.

Um people at Plan Events are very excited about it.

Um people looking for events are excited.

It's interactive and continually updated.

There's a lot of information in there, and it could look a little overwhelming, but it's very customizable.

You can search with filters by date, type of event, organizations.

I think the best part of it is there's a minimal need for people to submit events.

We're scraping over 300 websites and Facebook events daily.

Yodel, the company that we work with us on this has been trained to scrape the sites every 24 hours so the information is continually updated.

For example, you had an event on there and it it was gonna be eight to four, and you change it, and it's gonna now gonna be nine to six.

You change that on your website or whatever forum you have it on, this will scrape it at night and pick it up.

So you don't have to go in and change that.

It's technology can be great.

Um we do still encourage people if your events aren't there, submit them and they'll go through our process and and we'll get them on there.

Um the general public, you can sign up and get weekly events, uh weekly emails of events too.

So if you don't want to check back all the time but just kind of want to know what's happening every week, you can do that.

Um another thing we implemented this year is convention event business is very competitive.

We're always looking ways to make sure this is the best place and the easiest place to have their meetings.

So we now do event micro sites, a free offering for meeting and event plan planners.

So our sales team can set up a link that includes registration, accommodation.

If we've gotten hotel blocks for them, that would be in there, or we can put the live rates for the hotels, local promotions, restaurants, shopping, and more.

So the sample I have up here is the Willston Basin Conference, which we had this May.

We initially thought the people that would use this would be like the smaller groups that maybe didn't have a website.

The Williston Basin Conference got on board with it right away, was very excited about it.

It was one place where they could direct their attendees with all the information.

The nice thing this has an interactive map.

So this was held at the Bismarck Event Center.

So when the map is in there, attractions and restaurants and shopping, you can see from the map where those are.

So it kind of helps guide them through our community.

Anyone that's a member of the CVB and offers a coupon, those are those are right on there for them.

So it's it's uh very nice offering.

Um it also is good for us, it kind of helps us track um the visitors.

We also um started a new online store this year where you can shop from anywhere and we can ship it to you, or if you're local, you can shop online and schedule a pickup too, just like Target.

Um, this gives us an opportunity to showcase some North Dakota products and help promote the small businesses that we work with to supply some of the unique items that we carry.

So we're talking about technology, AI.

We didn't want to be left out of this AI world, so we added a new AI tour guide on our website.

I believe we were the first CVB and maybe still the only CB in the state that has done this.

So it's designed to keep people on our website and help them with local research and plan to spend more time in Bismarck and Mandam.

So hopefully this will work.

But we have a sample that we're going to show you.

So into this, we put the information in and said we're planning a trip to Bismarck Mandan for some back to school shopping.

Um we're traveling July 20th or the 23rd.

Can you recommend hotel for a family of four, including attractions, activities that we can do together or individually?

We'd like some local some restaurants and local coffee shops.

So it takes a little while while it thinks it's through, so that's why we did it ahead of time and recorded in here.

But you're going to kind of see how it's going to come up.

It's going to come up with some hotels.

The links are all on there.

They can click and go to it.

Um, we'll come up with some restaurants, some shopping, just like any i tool.

If it doesn't have what you want, you can ask it for some different options.

You can say this isn't the kind of restaurant you wanted.

You can change the search completely.

But if you like what it has on here when it's done, there'll be a little box up in the corner.

You can download it.

So you kind of have it all downloaded.

If it was just what you wanted, it'll be right there.

Um, this is a very extensive one.

You could just go in and say, I'm looking for a Mexican restaurant.

You know, it can kind of be anything you want.

This now will also pull from that community calendar that we talked about.

So if they're asking, I'm coming this weekend, tell me some things I can do this weekend, it will incorporate that.

So it's it's really nice.

It's done some itineraries in there, and then the bottom um we have our phone number if they actually want to call and talk to a person.

We can kind of help them through that.

Also, the nice thing about this is we get the questions that are asked, so it can help us build a better website and also let our members know a little bit, maybe what what we're hearing and what they're looking for.

Go to Commissioner Dole.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um, just a question.

Does that look at every all the businesses in Bismarck Mandan or just member businesses?

Mayor and Commissioner, um, it's designed to look at our members first because that's a benefit of being a member.

After that, it will look at others.

Because we don't have a large membership, we have a smaller membership, and we wouldn't want someone, gee, they want to come here and they're gonna be building a home, they want to know if we have a lows and all those things.

We wouldn't want them to think we don't have those.

So it will have that too, but it won't have the link.

If you're a member, you'll have a link.

The others will just be mentioned.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Mayor, Commissioners, Sherry, thanks for the presentation.

If I could get that 100-page document emailed to me so I can look through that too.

Uh Mayor and Commissioner, I can get you a copy of it.

I can't email it because it's not in that format because of the volume of it.

Okay.

But I can get your copy of it.

Okay.

I can stop by.

Um, so we're located at 1600 Brentport Drive, and we have a visitors information center inside.

They're on the in the summer, we're open Saturdays and Sundays.

So as of June 30th of the 50 states, we had visitors from all but 12 states that stopped in.

You can see the 12 up there that are different color.

They're the only 12 states that haven't been in there.

It's kind of a big thing if it's your 50th state, they know that, some of them, so they come into the visitor center.

So we have certificates for them, and um right now we're giving some other prizes for that.

We have had visitors from Canada, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Scotland, and France.

So a total, not counting North Dakota visitors because we don't track those.

Out of state and out of the country, we had 1,332 in the first half of this year that stopped in the visitor center.

So lastly, I want to give you an example of just how important tourism is to our economy and the significant impact just one large conference can have.

These last three sides aren't pretty.

I just got this information at the end of the day from our reports, and I just um snapped them in here.

So the Wilson Basin Conference, and in fairness, this is our largest conference, but it was here May 19th through the 21st with 2,800 attendees.

So this diagram shows the visitor journey.

On the left side of it, it shows the last place they were before they came to the event center.

The right side shows the first place they went after.

Can you make that any larger?

I can't just because of the format that it came in.

I can so if you wouldn't mind giving these slides to us.

I I'll absolutely do that.

I'll absolutely do that.

You can't see it on the screen.

Okay, sorry.

I will I'll absolutely do that.

Hopefully the next one's a little bit better.

Um so just for when they left there, 23.6 went to hotels, 12.1 went to dining, 9.1 went to shops and services, and only 8.3 went home.

So that just kind of shows you um the impact of it there.

Um the next slide, and I bet you probably can't see this either.

Um, this was just a screenshot I quickly grabbed.

This slide shows the impact of the event.

This data was exported from the economic impact calendar that we subscribe to, and it's provided by Destinations International and Oxford Economics.

So this is the standard for measuring impact um for meetings and events throughout the United States at CVBs use.

So this conference had a direct impact of 2.1 million dollars.

Um and the next slide I'll show you, and I'll get these to you after.

Um is probably really hard to see.

So I'll I'll give you some of these numbers.

So that was good.

Oh sorry about that.

Um the first column, and and to let you know, this isn't data that we think will happen.

This is this is data that we put in to this, and this group um provides it back to us.

To get this information, it isn't we just don't put in what we think.

We we went talk to the meeting platter on this.

We have a form that they have to fill out.

They tell us what they paid for rent, what they paid for food, what they paid for AV, and then we take the hotel information that we have, and then we check with the event center to see if anything was missing on that.

And then I gave this group the tax rates for our community, and then the so the data we have here, if you did this conference in Chicago, it would be way different.

So this is just for us.

So the direct impact was 2.1 million dollars for this conference.

The indirect when the dollars start to roll around in the community was 1.5.

So the final impact for the conference was $3.75 million.

Um information that you obviously can see on the screen now that I thought would be information important to you is the local taxes.

The local taxes, the direct impact was $70,000.

Indirect was $18,445.

So the total tax impact for just local, not the state, because on the top has state and federal as well, was $86,000.

This conference directly supported $164 jobs while it was here.

The indirect uh the final was uh 1,200 jobs.

Okay Commissioner Dahl.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor and Commissioners.

Sherry, can you explain a little bit more what indirect tax is?

What does that mean?

So direct is the money that they spend while they're here.

So this is direct expenditures.

It's c it's money that was spent either the planners spent on the conference or the people that were here spent while they're here.

The indirect is as the dollars roll through the community.

So if you were in this store and you spent this money, then the workers that in that store had jobs while they were here, so they can take their money and spend it, or the owners of the store had more income so they can expand or use the money through the community.

So it's how the ro dollars roll through the community.

This is new to us.

We've never um reported that because uh we didn't have the tools for doing that.

We've just always done um impact.

So this is uh the industry standard, what uh the rest of the country uses to predict this.

Thank you.

And essentially on that indirect, that's probably the one time turn.

There's probably additional multiple turns after that.

That's yeah, it's typically a seven multiplier.

So if we did one million dollars of new business in the community, ultimately the impact is probably closer to seven.

But that's over more than that three day period that's over the year basically.

And the one thing I asked them, because this was actually I'm gonna be honest, this was the first report we've run in our new um program.

And I asked what the other taxes were because if you could see the screen, I thought you'd be asking me what the other taxes were.

And you know, they were naming a whole list of things, and I said, well, what if we don't have those here?

And they said, well, if your community doesn't have the other, it's not part of it.

This would be things like utility feel fees, airport fees, um, parking fees, public service fees, licensing, things like that.

All right.

Any anything else that is it?

Unless you have any qu questions for me.

Are there any go ahead, Commissioner Rish?

Mr.

Mayor, Commissioner Sherry, how about the TR library?

I I would suspect people would fly into Bismarck, rent a car or do something.

That should have a positive impact on our tourism.

Mayor and Commissioners, um, I I definitely think it will.

Um I think uh from what we're hearing, a lot of people will fly in.

I think this is should help our off season market a little bit for the leisure travel.

Summer is really big for us for leisure, and I think this is gonna extend that season as they're going through here.

I I I was at the library.

Fantastic.

Highly recommend.

Um the other question I have the city currently owns your building and maintains it.

Is that the status today?

So we have a we negotiated a deal.

Oh, I didn't mean to um upset it.

So no, it's not upsetting anything.

Um so they they basically rent the building from us for a dollar.

They take care of all the regular maintenance.

We have to take care of infrastructure.

Um in exchange for that, we receive back to support our activities at the event center, a three-year pledge uh totaling over a million dollars to help us a re-engage the event center and get it up and going, which there's a plan in place for uh for that in this year 2026, there will be additional dollars and twenty-seven and then twenty-eight, and we'll negotiate potentially beyond that.

But the partnership with the convention visitors bureau is is extraordinarily important to us.

It certainly is important for the event center as we try to have that be a driver of these tourist type activities, be it a convention or uh uh an artist coming into play, and we need to do some things to start drawing those people here, those artists in particular, or our convention here, so we can activate the community as a whole.

So that that was an exchange for we weren't collecting very much rent on the building anyway, and that building was purchased with grant dollars and there is if there was a way we could figure out how it could actually probably transfer it, we would.

So we'll be just continue to o f own it and maintain the structure, the overall infrastructure.

So like a rule.

The outside.

Right.

Okay.

Uh Commissioner Hall, and then I think Commissioner Connolly.

Oh.

Okay.

Uh mayor commissioners, uh Sherry, is there a breakdown of you know, visitor numbers or you know, money coming into the community between you have of conventions versus you know sporting events, you know, to filter you know, find out like what I'll say raw tourism or or people coming in for shopping versus, you know, I'll say raw tourism, where it's like, you know, folks that go to like you know, the black hills, like that that would be where it's like we're going to the black hills for the black hills.

Is there do we have a breakdown of those kinds of numbers just out of curiosity?

Um Mayor and Commissioner, so on the sc slide that I showed you meetings and conventions, realistically out of that those other dollars we could subtract that out of there.

We track meetings and sporting events together.

So realistically we we could subtract that out of there.

Thank you.

Commissioner Connolly.

Mayor and Commissioners, uh just to clarify too, Commissioner Rish.

I believe we just redid the roof, and I think it's steel.

So we should be set on that for the foreseeable future.

Right.

Yes, that's correct.

And that was done as actually part of the new lease with them and the arrangement or donation back to the city out of effectively out of the lodging tax.

Yep.

Any other questions for Sherry?

Sherry, thank you for your time and presentation.

Moving to item B.

Uh Jason, I'm gonna let you lead us off.

It's discussing this building and uh the deferred maintenance associated with it and things we might need to look to do.

Yes, uh good evening, Mayor and Commissioners.

Uh maybe a little bit of context here before we jump into the presentation from the architects.

Uh the City County building, the City of Bismarck has owned this building since 1984.

It was previously operated by Queen and Ramstead QR Clinic as a medical facility.

In 1984, this building was significantly renovated to accommodate first floor is 100 percent Burley County offices and then floors two, three, and four are city offices, and of course, this room in the lower level uh is a shared space uh owned by the city uh but utilized by city schools, county parks, and a variety of other uh stakeholders, partners, and uh government organizations for these types of meetings.

Uh why we are here today is because Burley County has made it known to us that they will be vacating this property at the end of 2027 or by the end of 2027, if not sooner, uh relocating all of their offices across the street and up a block to the provenant building, which is owned by Burley County.

Uh because of that, we essentially will inherit 25 percent of our building that we've never utilized.

Burley County has been part of this building since its inception in the mid-80s.

And so, in order to properly explore how to uh reconsider this building, uh we had engaged the help of some local architects, uh Cole Johnson and Nate Hacker from Endeavor North Design.

That was a process that was initiated in July of last year, uh interview process and ultimately approved by the commission that met in November of 25.

Uh since that time, we've gone through uh a little bit of a design process and learned a lot about this building.

Uh Nate and Cole have assembled a good team of architects and engineers, design professionals, uh variety of engineering disciplines and team of landscape architects.

Uh one of the big drivers in thinking about this building is the room that we are occupying today.

For anybody that has not been in this building, uh it should be noted that we are in the basement of this building, and we are in the basement of a building with the oldest elevator in North Dakota.

The only way to get downstairs is an elevator that was probably predates a lot of us in this room.

And so that elevator has presented some challenges in the past.

Uh I was part of a meeting a number of years ago where we had a good number of uh citizens that are uh experiencing accessibility and disability issues and getting them in and out of this room took an extremely uh generous amount of time.

If we were to have an emergency situation, I'd hate to think how that how that would have been handled.

Um so thinking about getting this room in a more accessible location that is safe and secure and uh solidifies us in this building for a great number of years going into the future, those were some of the driving factors that uh we put in front of the design team and said help us figure out how we can better utilize this building, how we can get out of the basement and provide a public meeting space that is safe, secure, and accessible.

And in part of these conversations, we've also talked with leadership from Bismarck Public Schools and Bismarck Parks and Recreation District and receive favorable responses that they would prefer to stay in this building and share a room with us in the future.

It's my understanding Burley County will be uh creating their own commission chambers within the provident building, and I believe it would be located on the second floor.

Um so with that in mind, this room would not be used by just City of Bismarck, it would be used by schools and parks as well.

Um so with uh with some of those kind of parameters in place, we asked Nate and Cole and their team to explore a number of options.

What you will see tonight are five potential scenarios, five options to consider.

Uh we're not asking you to make any decisions tonight, but once we do have the design concept shared, we will also give you some information on how we could potentially fund some of these options.

We're not just coming to you with a uh high-minded concept of with some pretty cool pictures.

We're also going to come forward with some potential funding options that would allow the construction and renovation of this building to go forward.

So, Jason, but that until we get to narrow down the design concepts, we don't even know for sure.

We have some big broad numbers, but Mayor Schmidt, you're absolutely correct.

Uh Nate and Cole will tell you that there are some contingencies built into these big numbers and they are very much uh estimates at this time.

But until this authority or this commission provides some direction, we're really elaborating on a bunch of different concepts.

And so what we would like to do tonight is have them share where we are today and provide these options, but then allow you some time to think about it, ask questions between here and likely the end of August or early September.

We would like to come back to you at that time and receive some direction on the right path for us to consider moving forward.

And then that would keep us on schedule with the design and potentially construction beginning in 28 after Burley County has vacated the building.

So with that, I would like to introduce uh Cole Johnson and Nate Hacker.

And I believe Cole's got a number of slides to walk through this.

We appreciate your patience.

There's a lot of information here, and uh that's part of the reason we don't want you to be compelled to make a decision tonight.

However, um I don't doubt that these gentlemen will have answers to the questions that come forward.

And if there's questions that staff can help with, we are happy to do that as well.

So with that, this is Mr.

Cole Johnson, and I will get out of his way.

Do you want me to move this or do you want to vote?

I think we'll go like this here.

All right.

Uh evening, commissioners, mayor and commissioners.

I'm Cole Johnson with Endeavor North Design, uh, one of the architects working on this project.

Uh we have uh full team behind us, uh, some of their logos here.

Um moment here.

I'm gonna adjust something.

Some of our uh engineering partners and design partners are listed below.

Uh as Jason mentioned, we've been working on this for around six months and having meetings regularly.

Uh Jason did a great job of just kind of hitting on why we're even looking at this.

Um step back one one step.

Um the 2026 strategic plan hits on.

You can't really read any of that, I'm sure, so we'll just hit on the key things.

Um one goal, one um one point one, that that directly addresses this building.

Modernize and upgrade the city county building to improve functionality, efficiency, safety, and accessibility.

Uh so that was in the 2026 strategic plan and spurred spurred this.

So uh some of the other goals are listed there, uh, have to do with uh engaging uh staff, staff retention, staff uh quality of work environment, and also this the quality of space and engagement with uh the overall community.

Uh so why why are we looking at this project?

Jason mentioned Burley County vacating roughly 25% of this building.

Um another main aspect uh of this this project is the aging mechanical, electrical, and plumbing infrastructure.

There's some uh needs coming up.

There's some needs that are here now, and they're they're only going to be getting worse as as time goes on with uh mechanical systems in this building.

Uh oldest elevator in North Dakota.

This is a building that's highly dependent on that elevator.

So if that goes down, it'll be very disruptive and hard harder and harder to fix for that uh that older elevator.

Accessibility challenges uh both get into the building and when you're within the building, and then this chamber uh location.

So the the location within the building is a concern.

The space, this is uh there's lots of room for improvement in this space.

Um if you were to build a a contemporary, uh modern commission's chamber, you would have higher ceilings, better visibility.

Um there'd be a lot of improvements.

Security is a big concern as well in this space and throughout the whole building.

Uh so what we've done to date is we've we started with a facility assessment to really understand what is the current state of this building, uh, what are the needs, what's working well, and uh what are the potential solutions.

We we went through uh series of interviews with the departmental directors uh to understand their their individual individual departments and again what's working well, what can be improved, and uh very importantly, what is their department look like over the next five, ten plus years?

How much are they growing?

Uh what kind of roles will they be adding, and how do they work with other departments so we can understand uh the space needs and adjacencies as we're looking at this study.

Uh after that, we developed those five options that we'll look at closer today.

And um so some of the key things that we're we're looking for is how to uh locate this chamber, this commission's chamber, this meeting space better in this facility.

Uh what's the best way to use that first floor space that's being vacated?

Uh and what are the ways that we can improve the way public engages with this facility and uh make it a more secure facility as well.

Yeah, you can't it's tough for you to read.

This is all in the packet, though, and you can read through this.

But this is a summary of all the options A, B, C, D, and E.

A is the more minimal approach.

Uh what basically what do we have to do to this building to keep it going for the next 10 to 20 years?

That really focuses on mechanical and electrical and plumbing upgrades, elevator upgrade, roof replacement, uh, but for the most part, everything else stays as is, and we'll go over that in a little bit more detail.

Options B, C, and D make uh iterative improvements to this facility and kind of build on each other.

And then option E is actually looking at a new build on the adjacent site, uh kitty corner from from this building.

So this is the time to look at that.

I not whether that's a viable option or not, that's for you all to decide.

But this is the right time before a significant investments made in this building.

Before we jump into the concepts, we have uh all the floors showing here.

So this is a building that was built in at least three phases, if not more.

But the original building is shown right here.

If you can see my pointer, it's tough.

But uh that there that was the phase one.

Phase two was off to the side, and then phase three was um to the southeast.

So there's three major uh additions to this building plus some vertical expansions.

And everything shown in red is some obstruction that we have to work around as we're planning.

Either columns, stairs, elevators, mechanical shafts, or bearing walls.

So it just makes reuse of this building challenging and when we plan it out, not as efficient as a new build.

Get in into the options.

So we have a summary slide and then uh floor by floor slide after that.

Uh you can see up on the top uh in your packets as well.

We have a rough schedule, this assumes phase construction, and then we have a uh budgetary estimate range.

So that includes construction cost, contingency, and a soft cost estimate.

Uh and that also assumes multi-phase construction.

The the first plan, the first floor shows uh the current main level, that is where uh some of the colors aren't quite showing up right, but uh this would all remain unassigned.

So this is this the space that the county is vacating.

Uh and in this concept or in this plan, it's it would remain as is and unused.

Um focusing again mainly on mechanical, electrical plumbing, and uh kind of infrastructure upgrades.

As we go up, every this will help orient anyone that's not familiar with this building on where who is where within the facility, but engineering, planning, and inspections would all stay as is.

Uh again, not really improving their space, but improving the infrastructure within the facility, so they all stay within uh their current departments.

One thing I wanted to point out on this floor, I think it's a good example, but the secure boundary is shown shown in orange.

Um kind of meanders throughout the building on different floors.

It's it's uh much it's a less than ideal situation.

It it bisects this floor, engineering, planning inspections, uh kind of separated there.

That's something that we'd want to improve with with any modifications that we make.

Third floor is IT finance and assessing those again share uh would stay where they're at.

Uh colors are really hard to see on the screens here.

Um human resources, legal and administration is on the fourth floor, and those would remain as is.

So option A really focuses on the infrastructure and keeping the facility running for the next 10 to 20 years.

Uh basement uh stays stays the same as well.

So chambers stays in the basement.

Option B is where we start to see uh spatial improvements.

I think option A with those investments, there's they're going to improve this facility, but you're not really going to notice any of those.

They're they're kind of behind the scenes improvements.

Option B is where we start to move some things around and improve flows and functions within the facility.

Um budget jumps up uh quite a bit there, and then the schedule bump jumps up some too.

As we go floor by floor, chambers moves up to the first floor in the southeast corridor or corner of that.

To orient people, uh, if you can see my pointer on the south side here.

This is not north is is actually to the left, but the main entries in this location.

This would move the chamber up to the first floor.

And uh this is the best best space for it, primarily due to column spacing.

So you're going to get less columns than this space or better spacing than the columns, but you're still going to have columns within the commission's chamber.

You're still going to have a very low ceiling.

You're basically going to take this space and move it upstairs functionally.

So call just for my own knowledge, I guess.

With that design, roughly how many people would be able to be seated versus this particular chamber.

This is a larger chamber.

And I think right sizing that chamber, it's something that we jump into regardless.

Um, mayor and commissioners, this is this is around 150, which may be more than you need.

This would probably accommodate very large meetings.

This is around I I think your chair count in here is around 125.

So whether it's this size, it might shrink a little bit.

But thank you.

It's roughly the size.

Yeah.

I've looked at these drawings a few times and trying to get my head around them.

Uh so we would also move admin, human resources, and legal down to the first floor.

Those are our three departments that have a high level of interaction with the public or other staff that are outside of this building, so those three make a lot of sense in this location.

And we also have a kind of central area here where these blue dots, these dots that are around there are the uh service windows for these different departments.

So if you're coming into this space, we have something that we're calling the Heritage Hall, which would be somewhat of a gallery space that would show different uh historical documents, artifacts from Bismarck, but possibly some uh local artists' artwork, and um become just kind of a core to this building.

If you walk into this building today, you're greeted by a stair in an elevator and a directory.

It's it's just not the best uh first impression for this building.

So that would be a huge improvement.

But this does keep the entry in the current uh current space or current location.

Heritage Hall summary just kind of elaborates on that.

There's some interest in there's a historic fire truck that the city owns and would like to find a spot to showcase that.

And some of these options provide a potential location for that as well.

Uh jumping up through this BC and levels two, three and floor on option B.

Everyone stays the same in the same locations.

We reorient uh some of the the front of house kind of public areas here to not bisect the floor, but uh also create some shared staff um support spaces in the middle so uh you can kind of take advantage of those shared shared uses like printers bathrooms, co-locating those in a central location.

Uh level three finance assessing and IT all stay the same there, again, kind of creating a back of house connection for those departments and some shared staff areas there.

And then fourth floor, we were uh we are showing currently a shared break break room.

So instead of creating break rooms on every floor, this concept shows it all in one location.

Actually, option B and C and D all do this to different locations within the facility, but this would uh have a larger break room for staff to uh come together, get to see other staff throughout the facility.

And then you can also see there's a large area that's unassigned right now with the county vacating that first floor space.

There's there's some additional space needs from the city, but not a one-to-one replacement.

So we do end up with some space for expanded opportunities growth, uh kind of unidentified potential users of that space.

In the in this current space, we would backfill the commission's chamber with uh uh training room for staff, possibly public as well, uh, which is a need for the facility, and then some other sh storage and staff amenities, small staff wellness center in the basement.

This gives you an idea of the space.

So it's not a fully designed commission's chamber, but it it at least gives you an understanding spatially how that would feel on that that first floor.

Columns are there, um, ceilings low.

I think it doesn't it doesn't provide the opportunity to do a raised AS, a raised commission desk.

Um it's gonna be very similar ceiling height to this.

Um it at least gives you an understanding and idea of of what could fit in that space.

Option C there's uh you can see schedule stays fairly fairly similar, budget.

Uh there's an increase in which I'll go over.

B and C are very similar, uh, except for on C, we start to incorporate this south lot.

So to the south of this building, there's a parking lot, uh, and that owner has shown some interest in a land swap between this parking lot and uh the parking lot to the northwest of this that the city owns.

So that opens up a number of opportunities.

So on this concept, we're showing the public entry actually shifting to the south side of this.

The creation of a public plaza as well.

Uh so the main entry goes to the south here.

Generally, the floor plan is very similar, but we also look at uh improving the quality of space for the commission's chamber uh meeting space.

And that's that involves actually removing a row of columns and removing the floor above the commission space on the on the first floor.

Good commissioner Rich.

Mr.

Mayor, Commissioner's Cole.

So if we swap that parking lot where I'm parked at right now, uh for this parking lot, would there be any parking available over here with this public space?

There would be some minimal parking on the south side where the street parking is, uh, Commissioner Rush.

And we haven't fully designed it, but it wouldn't I the intent right now that we've discussed is to create a public plaza for downtown and and not a replacement for parking.

So discussions to date have been along those lines.

Uh second floor, this shows the open to below.

So the big change on this plan for the floors two through four is that planning and zoning and building inspections would go up to the fourth floor, and that shared break room would go down to second.

Third floor remains basically the same between B and C, and then C has planning inspections on the fourth floor, and the then the basement plan between B and C is very similar.

And we're losing part of floor two because of raising the ceiling on first floor where the chamber would be.

Exactly.

Yeah.

There's quite a bit of structural work that goes into that.

Uh we it's a very expensive decision.

But we we thought we'd look at it and give it an honest look just to see could you get a commission's chamber meeting space that would be closer to aligned with what would you do with uh a new build.

So uh it's doable.

It's it's not easy and it's not inexpensive either, but it's a viable solution.

Uh a look at what that South Plaza could look like, the south entry, we'd upgrade that, do some updates to that south facade as well.

Uh I think uh a big improvement for the site, uh stronger civic identity, the flows within the space work better.

Um there's still some security issues, there's still some or security concerns that secure boundaries not as clean as we'd like it.

There's some it's not quite as of intuitive finding your way through the building for the public, um, but there's there's improvements there.

And a look at that raised ceiling space, the less less columns, it gets much closer to what you do in a new build.

Option D is just Commissioner Hall.

Uh Mayor and Commissioners, uh Cole, can you tell me can you give me the uh the height of the you know the room, the meeting rooms for what B, C and D, I guess?

Yeah, so and I'd say for the ones where it's like I don't know if it's in your you know in your picture you showed you know for lack of better term, wooden beams going down, you know, if that's if that's part of the design or just aesthetic.

Uh I don't know, I'm not an engineer on it.

Um yeah, what they what the effective ceiling would be.

You know, say uh I'll frame it as if a tall person is walking through it.

Yeah.

Uh mayor and commissioners, it it be it would be roughly this, probably around eight feet.

Uh maybe we could do a little bit better, but not significantly.

Uh C this option where we remove the structure above, it'll be around 14 to 15, which is what we would want to do in a new new facility, anyways.

Uh that does involve some very extensive structural work.

There'd be adding some very large beams uh in that scenario.

Okay.

Thank you.

And then D, once uh getting into that, it would be around that same ceiling at 1415 for acoustics and visibility or visuals.

Uh option D uh actually ends up being slightly less expensive than B.

And we were a little surprised by that, but it it seeing how much work it took to get C to pull off C, it makes sense.

Uh and this actually adds a commission's chamber, a new entry lobby.

It instead of replacing the elevator in place behind us here or behind me, uh it actually builds it off to the south side, a new stair.

So everything public completely shifts to that south side.

Your your entries there, you have a lobby outside, which could be overflow space for meetings with high attendance.

I think that would really allow us to maybe right size that commissions chamber out of possibly a smaller size, having that overflow adjacent.

And then it has restrooms, conference space next to that, that heritage hall, this is where that fire truck, if this was to be showcased somewhere, it would be a great option within that lobby space.

And then the public plaza is just a it's it's still a very usable functional space, even with that commission chamber expansion.

Another thing we heard in departmental interviews is uh a desire for a loading dock that would allow larger orders and larger shipments to come to this building, better pricing, and then also have a spot where a small truck could back up and deliver larger quantities of supplies.

This uh actually the as you go up, this cleans up that public interface.

It's everyone that's coming to that building goes up the elevator, stairs comes to this lobby, which would be visible from that plaza.

Uh the service windows are on the south side, the small conference and consult rooms, any place that a public uh person, a member of the public coming to this facility would have to use, it's all in that south side, and staff would come to them.

That cleans up uh the secure boundary significantly as well.

And then uh going up, same thing, IT finance and assessing uh and then fourth floor unassigned.

A look at uh basement again, similar functions to B and C, just a little different uh layout with that added elevator and stair on the south side.

Look at what uh that plaza and building could look like.

It has a very strong presence.

It's a uh you can really the civic identity is much improved here.

I think wayfinding for public and s uh is improved as well, everything that they're going to need is on that south side.

Um I think the layout also on the first floor actually allows for the whole building to be locked down except for the commission's chamber and the restroom.

So that that could provide some interesting opportunities to allow that commissions chamber to be used by by others other than just the political subs.

Uh you could lock down the whole building except for that space.

Um, how far you take that, I uh it could be a point of discussion, but it could be a real community asset at that point.

Another look, as you see, you can see all those public lobbies right here on that next to the stair tower.

And then the commissions chamber here too.

So we're showing this slightly elevated to, I think this is where we would land in a scenario where we can elevate the uh the desk, the dais, um, so that's when people are presenting, you're kind of eye-level, and then the community can see has better visibility in the space as well.

Option E.

So this is the new build.

Um looking at the site that's adjacent to uh this facility.

So this is fifth and Thayer, so it's one the opposite corner of this building or from this building.

Provident building is to the north.

Uh I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail.

I think functionally it has a lot of the same same uses on the same floors, uh, other than we have underground parking in this scenario.

Uh around 38 spaces is all you're going to fit on on one floor there.

So it's not a direct one-to-one replacement of that current parking lot, but there are some parking spaces available there.

We talked about going down another level, but that would just the the cost would skyrocket at that point.

It would be very expensive for not many, not many spaces.

And then going up to second floor, IT and human resources, finance and assessing on the third, fourth floor, planning inspections, and engineering on the fifth floor.

Uh quick look at what that that could look like on that site.

Um again, I I think this is the time to look at things like this is before this building needs needs some significant investment.

Um option make sense all for you to discuss and decide, but we thought it was worthwhile throwing it out there and having that uh at least that data point of what a new build would look like.

And I I think um the size of that, this new build is smaller than this existing building.

Um we get to lay it out more efficiently, um, basically aligning with true true needs of the staff.

This existing building with all the columns, the existing window bays, it's really driving a lot of uh how we can lay this building out.

Uh schedule, I as I mentioned before, we're we're estimating and planning a phased approach.

Uh whether or not that's a full two, three, four phases, or if we can do it in one or two is uh something that we've discussed, but for our pricing, we've assumed that it's a multi-phase project.

Uh and that does come with a premium as well.

So I'll spend a little bit of time on on this uh the estimates.

So we have option A through E, they're a high and a low range.

Um just candidly, if if we were to look at these when we started this, seeing these numbers, we they're they're much higher than we thought they'd be when we started this effort.

Um but as we dug into the state of the mechanical systems here and the effort that would take to replace all those the electrical components and really understood the needs of this building.

Um the numbers are are justified and there are our best estimates at this time.

So the blue columns are all or rows are all the direct construction costs, and we have uh the building number and a plaza and site number broken out there, and then the high and low ranges.

Uh after the blue, we have a contingency and escalation line.

So that is a high number right now.

It's it's 20%.

And that's made up of a design and construction contingency of 15% and then an escalation factor of 5%.

Um I would say that if you're going in on any project, I think it's uh uh the correct thing to do is go in with a a healthy contingency like that, but the city is balancing many, many projects too.

So the likelihood of every one of your projects needing all that contingency is unlikely.

Um but still when we're looking at this one project, this is where uh we and we we reviewed with some construction partners locally too what what would you recommend and they are in alignment with that as well.

Uh the that gets you the total construction cost estimate, ranging anywhere from nine to ten on the low end to into the 40s on option E, 40 million.

The next column in there is uh yellow.

So that's the yellow soft cost estimate.

So soft costs are um costs such as furniture, equipment, computers, equipment, um, hazardous material media remediation, design fees, and that right now is just a uh percentage.

We haven't nailed down all those prices we've we or all those costs, but assigned a percentage to each option, so going with a lower percentage on option A, up to a higher uh percentage on option E, thinking there may be more furniture, more equipment that you would you'd buy for a new building.

Uh so that gets us to that that full range of uh 11 to 12.8 on the low end with A B, C and D all get into the 25 to 40 range, um, and then new build is 46 to 50.

Um but just candidly, there's a chance we're conservative in this.

There's a chance that we're over contingency.

But this is where at this point in the project we'd recommend, but it can be a absolutely a discussion point.

When we look at a kind of a gut check for us was to look at the cost per square foot for for these options and A, which is kind of the essentials, it's around 150 dollars a square foot, which is high for basically infrastructure work, but this is a very complicated system and it's complicated at replacement.

Uh when you look at B, I think that was around $350 a square foot high for renovation, but not unreasonable for for this intense of a renovation.

C was more, I think that was into the possibly 425, 450, but what was driving that was the construct or the structural cost to do that taller chamber.

And then D actually was on about three, I think 375, which was lower than C.

There's actually more square footage there too.

But so those costs per square foot for construction um don't seem off to us too.

So we've got a few things to kind of gauge that by.

We created a guiding principles matrix.

So uh options are the rows here, A, B, C through E, and then we created these uh guiding principles and then scored them.

Five being excellent alignment, excellent alignment, one being not well aligned.

Um and then we weighted those two, so putting a lot of weight on construction cost and value.

So putting a lot of weight on construction cost and value.

You can see the weighted scores here ranging from two and a half up to four.

And then we also had the steering committee or the steering committee scored these options based off the the city's uh core values of service stewardship, respect, care, and innovation.

And again, we weighted those.

Uh they assign those points and then we averaged those out.

So you can see how those scored.

Uh we have that in this column here.

Um then we also have the the estimate ranges.

So those are total project estimates with construction or with contingency in those and soft costs.

And then the scores.

Um I feel like I've taken enough time, but there's plenty more I could discuss.

Uh I would what can what questions do the do you all have?

Commissioner Hall.

Commissioner Hall has.

Thanks.

Uh Mayor Commissioners.

Um I I forget if it's in here, you know, talk earlier with uh Nate of Um there was there'd be cost savings.

I can't remember if it's five or ten percent if you did it one phase.

Um I wasn't sure if you'll you know, because I guess you're uh if I recall correctly, you're you're still refining the numbers.

Would you build a refine so we could see each of those options of you know, because there's a savings of being able to just be like, we're out, you know, you've got the billing to you know play, you know, do do all at once, yeah.

Versus the costs, you know, but also include the cost of having to vacate, you know, everyone everyone's out, you know, a move day versus you know, but also I guess if you do in phases of you know, there's also the cost of each floor having to move.

I guess if we you know I know it's compared to the overall number, it's not much, but I figure it might hit I don't know if that moves it by you know the six-figure range, it'd be it'd be nice to know.

I don't know if that's possible.

Yeah, absolutely.

We could refine that uh show the five to ten percent uh reduction, uh and then those those moving costs are actually in that soft cost number too.

So we could bring those kind of uh to light and just show those to what we have assumed for moving costs and how those might change for one phase, two phases versus four.

Thank you.

Other questions.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Yeah.

Uh all right.

Um I was wondering if there are there other like you know, I know just you know, upgrading lighting and you know, HVAC is in energy savings right there, but I figured this is a great opportunity to upgrade the building.

Are there other energy energy efficiencies that we could, you know, that you've included or that we could include that you know could pay themselves off and say 10, 15, 20 years, because we're gonna be here for 10, 15, 20 plus years.

Yeah, I think the the next thing after systems would probably be the exterior insulation.

I we we're assuming that there's not much, if any, exterior insulation in this building.

So uh looking at that too, that would be something that it's incorporated in the numbers, but um we could break that out, our assumptions too on that.

Ums is one that we've we we don't have that in our number right now, but it's something that we could look at.

They're they're functioning, they're in good shape.

They don't necessarily need to be.

Um I'm not sure what the payoff would be, but those are two that come to mind.

Um, because I just figure if we're gonna vacate the bill and let's do it, you know, let's get everything we can done now for you know, I don't know, 50 years.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Commissioner Rish.

Mr.

Mayor, Commissioners Cole.

So the last major renovation was actually 1984.

I think it's or has it been renovated since then.

Uh mayor and commissioners, Commissioner Rish, the building was renovated in three separate phases, 2006, 2007, 2008, floor two, floor three, and four floor were done independently.

At that time, uh staff was relocated to the then owned city public health building on the corner of fifth and front, but it was basically one floor per year, and then that spanned three separate budget cycles to help manage the costs of the renovations over a period of time rather than a lump sum.

So 20 years since 2000.

It'll be quite disruptive.

It yes, it it will be.

Um the other questions I have is whenever we do something like this, are we going to buy all new furniture, all new furnishings, the entire operation?

I mean, that's what seems to be the trend.

I moved last year from South Bismarck to North Bismarck.

We kept most of our furniture.

We moved it.

But is it gonna get be all new furniture?

Everything?

Chairs, desks, all everything?

I believe in E we have new budgeted.

Uh our soft costs includes that for the new build.

And then the rest of them, I think it's uh a hybrid of assuming that we'd reuse some.

If you like your chair right now, we can bring it back upstairs.

But it's it's a hybrid.

I think in the the remodel options.

A, we don't have really anything.

It's it's assuming that it's just uh reuse of everything that's there.

So go ahead, Commissioner Hall.

Uh mayor and commissioners, I guess I guess uh, you know, trying to figure out how to phrase it best.

But you know, I know it's good to, you know, look good to let the audience you know be able to see the commission.

But I also know it's like, I don't know, you know, we're we're just you know regular old people, we shouldn't be up on a high dais.

It's like uh what like how you mentioned one you know, we'd be elevated to you know improve visibility with the like the person that come up to elector and would they also be elevated so we're at like you know similar level or I I don't know, I'm just you know I didn't like the the metaphorical optics, so that was sure you know help help me figure that out.

Yeah, we would study that definitely in all all options, but uh this isn't ideal.

This is kind of a little awkward um with it at the same same level.

Uh it's also not great visibility for for the people in the audience.

Uh so looking at one to two steps up is probably the right uh level.

So then we become more eye to eye as we're as we're discussing um better visibility from the the audience when you start going to two three or uh three or four steps, it becomes a little bit more intimidating, or like a judicial bench type of thing, which is not the the feeling that we're we're going for either.

So I I think some level of elevation around 12 inches, a couple steps is probably the right amount uh to hit that balance between better visibility and uh not being intimidating.

Thank you.

So I'm gonna uh Jason, are we uh you asking for any kind of direction tonight?

Because I I'm swallowing hard on some numbers.

Yep, totally understand, Mayor and Commissioners.

Um I guess any direction you're willing to consider, we would certainly take, but we weren't expecting anything beyond you know, continue to proceed.

Uh there's more work that Nate and Cole can continue to do uh before we get to the kind of next decision point.

We just wanted to give you information to consider for now with the intention of coming back, uh like I said earlier, either the uh last part of August or the first part of September.

And then we at that point we would be looking for some direction, whether it be option A, B, C or a hybrid of one option or another.

Um but we wanted we wanted you to all have this uh consideration at this point and anything, any feedback you can offer the design team or the the steering committee, uh myself, assistant city administrator Doug Wiles, and our city engineer Gabe Shell have been a big part of this along with our facilities.

Sorry, public works service operations director, Steve Solway, who oversees the building maintenance.

So uh there's been some staff involvement in this, and along with a good member, good number of members of the design team as well.

Commissioner Rish.

Uh Mr.

Chairman, um Commissioners Jason.

I mean, the million dollar question is do we have the money to pay for it?

I mean, I I think it's wonderful.

I like option D.

It looks like it scored the post.

But we got a lot of stuff in the pipeline.

We're building a new police station, 100 million.

Um, expanding the airport.

Uh it'll be about 20 million from the city share.

Um, South Bismarck flood control.

Flood control, 100 million dollars on the south side, Tyler Parkway, where we're gonna have a new fish pond, that's 10 million dollars.

Um before you know it, we're talking real money here.

So I'm just wondering where do we um we have a plan.

I mean, like last year's budget and this year budget, we're limited to three percent increase plus new construction, and we're spending it all last year and this year.

The good news, I think we didn't spend all of our budget from last year, so we build up a little bit more reserve.

But so my big question going forward, I'm all in if we can find a way that it's we can pay for.

Sure.

Mayor and commissioners, thank you for that question.

Do we have the cash on hand today?

No, not a hundred percent.

But we're also not looking at starting construction next year.

We're we're looking at 2028.

So through a series of uh exercises that we've done with our new finance director and our comp troller, we've come up with potential funding scenarios that could work without borrowing a whole lot of cash and without depleting our entire resources.

We have building construction funds that could be eligible.

We have um committed fund balance, and we could also be looking at potentially um revising our fund balance policy to limit the amount of cash we have in reserves and then redirecting some of that towards this construction project.

Um but you're absolutely right.

We have been talking a lot about new construction and and big projects, unfortunately.

Um this the estimates that have come forward with these five options uh far surpassed what I thought it would take to renovate this building.

When we heard that it could be between ten and twelve, fourteen million dollars just to fix the roof, the elevator, and the HVA system in this building, that's pretty staggering.

Uh but when you then look at the next options going forward, you quickly realize that a lot of that cost that goes along with option A eats up the budgets for options B, C D as well.

So we have to fix the HVAC system.

Just for example, this weekend, I happen to be in the building Sunday evening, and it was a toasty 90.2 degrees on the fourth floor.

Our cooling tower went out Friday.

Our building maintenance staff worked throughout the weekend on and off to get that thing back online.

So when we came in Monday morning, it was a comfortable work environment.

We have three different HVAC systems in this building, and it is uh a struggle to maintain.

I think Mr.

Solwai would tell you that his building maintenance staff spends a fair bit of their time just attending to this building, not to mention all the other facilities that we have throughout our entire holdings.

And uh we see them frequently, we see them regularly, and we are we're calling because things aren't working, things are leaking.

There's there's problems with this old building.

And if we continue to ignore them, unfortunately those costs and those problems just get bigger.

So it's probably time to make some decisions.

Uh again, that what's really causing a lot of this conversation is the fact that our first floor tenant will be vacating the property, and thereby we have a responsibility to reuse that space in one way or another.

It would be great if we could just simply move in and set up shop, uh, but that doesn't address some of the other issues that we've talked about already, and particularly this room uh is being one of the one of my primary concerns with remaining in this facility.

We need to provide a safe and accessible place for all the public to attend our meetings from now and into the future.

So I'm I'm not afraid to give a little direction.

Certainly.

So I feel there are two options that are probably not viable.

A, because that's really it's solving issues, but it's not addressing more concerns in E.

New construction.

New construction.

Understood.

And I would love to see us find a way to keep the number under 30.

Okay.

Duly noted.

Yep.

And Mayor and Commissioners, if I can offer as part of the steering committee, I don't know that any of us would be in favor of new construction either, but I think it was worth having that exercise to put the number in front of you to to just compare what does new construction look like versus the various renovation options that are out there.

So uh we certainly didn't expect anybody to be high-fiving us on a fifty million dollar new city hall, but we wanted it to be a part of the presentation so you had it for context.

But that's my broad, I mean I probably narrowed it down.

So you you have my finance number.

Sure.

Go ahead, Mr.

Mayor, you make an excellent point.

Oftentimes every time all these building and construction projects, we bring in these consultants, the engineers, the architects, and they give us a number.

Instead of us giving them a number and say, what can you do for 30 million dollars?

Maybe that's the approach we should take.

And I think or whatever number that might be.

And I and I just picked 30 because I think it's unattainable.

I would love to be 25.

I'd like to do 10.

Well, uh, I don't think we're going to do 10 because we've got to take care of the we've got to take care of the elevator and the and the mechanical pieces, which you know it's we've been making it by, but if we're going to do something, we should fix it.

I'll if there's nothing else, I think I'd look forward to what you bring forward.

Then also uh our finance team would bring forward the potential plan of how we pay for it.

Understood.

Do you have a preference if we shoot for the second meeting in August or the first meeting in September?

I would say because the first meeting in September is our budget hearing.

Um it would be better if we went the second meeting in August if you can pull it off because I think it's better to not.

Um I don't know what the budget meet hearing will look like or how long it will be, but I want to make sure we give due time to that because that's very important.

Understood.

And a quick check with Mr.

Johnson here at the second meeting in August wouldn't be a problem for them.

So we'll plan on that.

And we'll come back with a potential funding package and whatever new information the design team can share between this meeting and the meeting a month from now.

Thank you.

And Cole and Nate, thank you for the work and getting some concepts for us to think about.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm just work, would it help if we eliminate two options?

If that's the general consensus of the of the board, Mayor and Commissioners, Commissioner Hull, we can certainly focus on options B, C and D, and just eliminate new construction altogether and recognize that it's not the best use of our resources to just shutter a portion of the first floor.

So we'd be happy to focus on the three in the middle and go from there if that's I I might add that we might eliminate option C as well.

I mean it's more expensive than D, and I don't like it as well.

Neither all the people weighing in on it.

Probably not.

I mean, I just think the cost of the infrastructure is kind of wasted money in my opinion.

Yeah.

I would I would move we may you know give them either limp remove it, move down to two or three options, but if we do, I would say you know, let the commission know I do have stock in one of the companies listed, and then you know, the another company is a client of mine.

So I, you know, I'll step out of you know if you all feel it's a conflict of interest.

I don't have any involvement with the project, but uh I just wanted to put that forward, you know, for you know transparency.

Okay.

I I don't know if we need a motion for today, and right now I don't think it's a conflict I don't personally.

But I think if we give them direction, I think we certainly I'm gonna guess option C is gonna fall off because of the dollars.

So it's probably down to B and D.

Some form of B and D.

B and D.

Okay.

I'm not seeing head shaking no necessarily.

We're just all we're all trying to get our head around the dollars.

It's a big number.

We we understand that's not what we were here to not what we were hoping for, but it's unfortunately what it what we're dealing with in today's environment.

And if we wait any longer, the number just gets higher.

So we can certainly focus in on options B and D and come back in a month and we'll take direction at that time.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Moving on to item C.

Excuse me, public hearing on ordinance 6673 to create a special assessment district for annexed properties.

And I think I don't have a presentation for do I our new finance director is going to make an appearance.

Mr.

Chair, you're correct.

There is no presentation.

It's just a public hearing for the park improvement charges to be assessed to annexed property.

Newly annexed property.

So I will then open up the public hearing.

Anyone who wish to speak, please come forward, identify yourself.

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 closed.

Commissioners, what are your wishes?

Move to approve as presented.

Second.

Is there any discussion?

Hearing on a call roll.

Commissioner Connolly?

Yes.

Commissioner Hull?

Yes.

Commissioner Rish?

Yes.

Commissioner Dahl?

Yes.

Mayor Smith.

Yes.

Moving to item D, a public hearing on ordinance 6676 zoning map amendment from A agricultural and C G Commercial Zoning District to C G Commercial Zoning District.

And a major subdivision final plat, Titleburg Acres Addition, and a development agreement.

Go ahead, Jenny.

Thank you.

I'm making sure the computer is all right, working perfectly.

Thank you.

Mr.

Mayor, Commissioners, Stephanie Sheets and Dennis Berg are requesting approval of a zoning map amendment from the A agricultural zoning district.

And CG Commercial Zoning District to the CG Commercial Zoning District.

Sorry about that.

Well, this is awesome.

I just can't get it to work.

So here we go.

Um so we're doing a zoning map amendment, a major subdivision final plat, titled Virg Acres Edition and Associated Development Agreement.

Um these requests are located east in East Bismarck.

Um between 52nd Street Southeast and 66th Street Southeast along the south side of East Main Avenue.

And can the plaque consists of 6.99 acres with two lots in one block.

The proposed Platin Zoning Map Amendment are being requested to facilitate an event facility on lot two.

We'll get there here.

City staff have determined that a private on-site septic system is acceptable for the event center in existing dwelling until municipal sewer is available.

During the initial review of the proposed plat, staff determined that a roadway along the western edge of the property extending to the south would be required to provide a corridor for the extension of municipal services and the roadway network to the properties to the south for future urban growth.

The proposed plat includes a 45 foot wide right of way, roughly half of the required 80 feet of right of way generally for this for the type of roadway that is anticipated in this location.

It is accepted that the adjacent property owner to the west would dedicate the remainder of the right of way when they choose to develop their property.

The city and applicant have finalized development agreement that addresses timing of future improvements of this roadway 62nd Street Southeast will be its name along the western property of the plat.

And interim use of the existing of a private septic system until public sanitary sewer is available.

Approval of the development agreement is also included within this request.

It is my understanding that the applicant has signed the agreement and if approved tonight Mayor Schmidt and City Administrator Tomatik will be also available to or able to sign it as well.

The planning and zoning commission held a public hearing on this request on June 24th and voted to recommend approval of the ordinance 6676 the zoning map amendment the major subdivision final plat for Berg Acres edition and associated development agreement.

Do you have questions?

Any questions of Jenny Thank you.

We'll open the public hearing anyone who wish to speak on this please come forward if the applicant or any representative wishes to speak a second call for public comment a third and final call for public comment public comment period is closed.

Commissioners what are your wishes move to approve as presented.

Second is there any discussion hearing and we'll call roll commissioner hole sorry yes commissioner Rish?

Yes.

Commissioner Dahl yes Commissioner Connolly yes Mayor Schmidt yes moving to item E, public hearing on ordinance 6677 a zoning map amendment from A agricultural and RT residential zoning districts to RT residential zoning districts and a major subdivision final plated DC in addition.

Jenny Thank you Mayor and Commissioners as you noted um DCN is requesting approval of a zoning map amendment from the A agricultural and RT residential zoning districts to the RT residential zoning district and major subdivision final plat for DCN edition.

This request is located in North Bismarck North Central Bismarck really north of East Calgary Avenue between North Washington Street and State Street.

That's left over from an old one it is between Normandy and Coleman on the south side of 43rd Street.

The planning and zoning commission held a public hearing on this request on June 24th staff received one phone call asking about a roundabout in this location and one in-person inquiry asking just more about the project neither for or against at the conclusion of the public hearing and based on the findings contained within the staff report the planning and zoning commission voted to recommend approval of this request.

Do you have questions?

Any questions doesn't look like it you'll open up the public hearing anyone wish to speak please come forward identify yourself.

A second call for public comment a third and final call for public comment public comment period is closed.

Commissioners what are your wishes move we approve is presented any discussion hearing on will call roll.

Commissioner Rish?

Yes.

Commissioner Dahl yes Commissioner Connolly yes Commissioner Halloween yes moving to item F.

Consider request from the administration department to provide an update on the strategic plan tracking.

Go ahead and commissioners tonight I'm here to present the second quarter update for Commissioner Dahl and Commissioner Hull.

Our strategic plan was adopted or approved in November of 2025 and as part of that discussion when that was approved it was a request from this commission to do quarterly updates.

For the second quarter update we had I attached in your packet three different reports.

The first one is the detailed task report that lists a whole bunch of information.

That's every single task that we are currently working on.

So there's 177 tasks.

For the strategic plan currently we are at 24 percent completion or progress sorry not completion but progress.

And if you look on that second page of that detailed task report you can see some different statuses in process some disruption major disruption so a lot of our tasks that are that our organization is going to take on are upcoming and so we haven't even started those yet one has been discontinued and we've completed a fair bit as of right now as well I'm not I don't plan on going through this entire thing.

I want to keep this very brief because we have a very important item right after this.

But moving to one report that I felt was interesting and that you may have some questions about is this disrupted task report.

Uh you see some bright colors on here.

Uh we have nine tasks that are in this disrupted status.

And disruption isn't a negative term with how we're reporting, and um, I hope our our directors are getting more and more comfortable with this language.

Red often means danger or that there's problems, but that's not necessarily the case here.

It's just identifying that there has been kind of a change in course or some circumstances that have come up that have uh kind of altered the path that we had originally thought we were going to take to accomplish some of these goals and tasks.

And I just want to point out a couple as an example.

Um if you look at task one point one point two point one.

The the goal was to strategically identify land that will provide efficient community fire protection and procure the site.

So we're we're well along in that process, but we're kind of wavering back and forth between two two locations, and there were some variables that came up on one of the sites that have just taken a little bit more time, so we identify that there's some disruption in accomplishing that task.

Another example would be uh if you look at task 5.1.2.1.

Uh this task was to train staff in the usage of software dedicated to help remedy ADA noncompliant content on our website.

Um most of you are probably very familiar that there was a new federal regulation that came down to municipalities for how we manage our websites to make sure that they are ADA compliant.

And with that, it was been very challenging because there was a as you can imagine, we have hundreds of thousands of documents on our website that our residents reference, and all of those need to be ADA compliant.

So there was some add-ons to our website that we needed to purchase in order to become compliant with this new requirement.

So uh, and then we became we got right to the edge of the finish line in April when the deadline was in the federal government came out and extended a year for everybody.

So we're we're way ahead.

We're about 95% compliant on all of our data on our website.

So we're sitting in a good spot, but that the federal regulation has caused some disruption in that process.

Um another update that our public health director uh provided just this week that wasn't included in this because the reporting time period was a couple weeks ago, is she got an update uh for the rural health transport transformation grant.

And she stated that we were previously anticipating getting some sort of approval between June 1st and June 30th, and that timeline has been extended.

And we haven't heard when that will take place.

But she wanted you to know that they are continuing to work with stakeholders.

And if the grant is awarded, the next step would be to issue a request for proposal for technical assistance to develop financial sustainability sustainability plan for the triage center.

And if it is not awarded, uh public health would reconvene with the steering committee to discuss alternative sources of support for developing the financial sustainability plan and determine the most appropriate path forward.

So that's a pretty big project for us.

I know a couple commissioners are very interested in that.

All of you are, but uh, Commissioner Hull, is that's your new portfolio that's of extra interest for you.

And then finally, we have the department progress report, and this is just to highlight some of the tasks that we have completed already this year in the first couple quarters of the strategic plan.

Uh the biggest one that we have accomplished is the half-cent sales tax extension.

That took a ton of work uh by a lot of staff, but primarily from the engineering department and our our city engineer Gabe Shell.

Uh and there's a very detailed checklist of what they had to accomplish um in gearing up for this election season and getting information out to the voters.

And we had great success at the ballot.

I believe we that was approved at about 65% approval.

So I don't need to go through all these with you, but if you have any questions or would like these reports presented in a different way, or would like uh maybe different details in these reports, I'd be happy to alter that.

I have a lot of flexibility in the reporting.

Do you have any questions?

Commissioner Dahl.

Thank you, Mayor, Commissioners.

Doug, I just want to say I think this is a really interesting um piece of information for community members to see.

I think a lot of times um different pieces of city government aren't recognized for all the work that they're doing that is admittedly behind the scenes to keep the city working.

And I think this is a really interesting report to just see all the things that are going on to maintain our city and improve our city.

So good work to you and all of the department heads and employees of the city.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Any other comments?

Commissioner Rush.

Mr.

Mayor, Commissioners, Doug, good job on this, and thanks for following up.

Oftentimes you do these things that get set on a shelf and nobody bothers to look at it after we approve these strategic plans.

But I'm going to bring up one of the destructive, disrupted task report, and it's 5.1.1.1.

Major disruption, and it's um enhanced communications.

The highest priority is that we form a newsletter is a priority project in the future.

And um, I don't know if you know it or not, but Mandan actually has a newsletter.

They put it in their utility bill, and oftentimes it's a single sheet of paper, tells you when all the meetings are, it's got the phone numbers for everybody, and just a little blur blur blurb on both sides of the page, telling the citizens um what's going on in the city.

And um, I was talking to the city administrator over there one time.

He said one month they didn't have the newsletter, and it failed.

Something happened, and he got nothing but calls because people really relied on this newsletter.

And I'm not suggesting a separate mailing.

I'm suggesting one page, both sides in an existing mailing that we do anyway.

So it won't cost us anything in postage.

So I'd be happy happy to help work with you on that.

I think we should do a newsletter, um, something that people can hold in their hand when they pull out that um utility bill and um get a grasp of what's going on in the our community.

So that could be done.

The mayor could issue a decree and we could do that.

Thank you, Commissioner Rish.

Uh, it is in the strategic plan for that very reason.

And I know that you're this is something that you're passionate about, and we're working towards it.

So thanks for bringing it up.

There's been a there are some staffing related resources at the moment.

Yes, we plan on advertising for one of our vacant positions in October.

I offered to write it.

I didn't take him up on that, but I know he's a very good writer.

But we do plan on filling that position.

I should free up some resources so that we can begin tackling that.

Okay.

Any other comments or questions?

Thank you.

Thank you, Doug.

Oh, go ahead, Commissioner Hall.

Uh sorry, mayor and commissioners.

Thank you.

Uh sorry, Doug.

Uh uh, you know, echoing the other commissioners, you know, great job on this, great, you know, letting the public know it's like, hey, we're we're working on stuff, not just closing.

Uh is there anything you need from the commission to help on any of these.

No, our department directors do uh a great job of keeping things updated, and I believe doing a good job communicating with you as you will learn.

Um and if there's ever changes to any of these projects, we have the ability, as this is a living document, to change it on the fly and then redirect as we need to.

So any feedback on these reports would be fantastic.

And then communicating with your departments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving to item G, consider request, receive, and approve the city's 2027 preliminary budget requests and the budget committee recommendations.

And uh Ryan is going to start us off and Eric is going to lead us through, and then I'll have a few comments.

Go ahead.

Uh Mayor Schmidt, members of the commission, thank you for giving us the opportunity to present our preliminary 2027 budget.

Um as you all know, I came into this process way late in the game.

Uh for efficiency and simplicity's sake, you're right.

Um, I'm gonna go through just kind of a brief overview of the process, uh, the process that we go through, some of the the timeline, the objectives that we run through as far as putting this budget together.

But then after that, I plan to turn it over to our comp troler Eric Lund, as I know you'll have plenty of questions, and and rather than me turning around and and looking at him dumbfounded, um waiting for an answer, I'll let him have that answer right at the top of his head because I know he has that information and has been digging through it.

So to move forward to start with, uh the first slide we have went the wrong way.

There we go.

Uh just kind of summary of our requirements uh that we have as part of our budgeting process.

Uh the first, obviously, we're gonna comply with state law uh statutes that North Dakota Century Code, and we're also gonna comply with our local ordinances.

Uh beyond that, we adhere to GAP and GASB standards as our accounting standards that we must adhere to.

Uh and then we we must establish a formal appropriation authority um to expend funds out of our general fund, our special revenue funds, our debt service funds.

Then we have a local ordinance that uh requires us to put a five-year uh capital improvement project plan out there as well.

Um additionally, uh for our other our other funds, our capital projects funds, our enterprise funds, internal service funds.

Uh we put together a financial plan, uh, not necessarily a appropriation authority authority, but a financial plan for those that essentially fund themselves.

Um they bring in their own uh dollars uh and and are able to expend those funds as well.

Uh beyond that, you know, this is just a summary of what that last slide was.

Uh the the process we have, the budget process we have.

Um each of those departments, uh we have our department directors and and their assistants help put together a financial request uh for each of their agencies.

And so that information is required.

We could request that to be submitted to us uh this year.

The deadline was May 26th.

The budget committee then meets individually with each department.

We also bring in the commissioner who has that portfolio, who is the member of that portfolio, and we go over each of those requests in in kind with them with the portfolio commissioners with the departments to make sure that we have all the information we need to put that together.

Once those meetings are held, budget committee gets together and makes those final determinations, the final recommendations to bring together what what was given to you as part of this presentation.

That brings us to today.

Next uh budget committee, just as a refresher for for those of you that have been here and those of you that are new, uh including myself, the membership of our budget committee is the commissioner with the financial the finance portfolio.

Um previously, or at the beginning of this process, it was Commissioner Cleary.

Uh Mayor Schmitz has taken over that portfolio, and so he was involved in in most of these conversations and and discussions that were held.

Um beyond him, the city administrator, Jason, uh the it sits in the city administrator, Doug, and then the finance director who at the beginning and throughout most of the process was the acting director, uh Eric Lund, and then we'll forward on to me as we move forward in this process.

Main objectives.

Uh the main objective is to develop a balanced budget that incorporates this prudent and strategic use of our reserves when appropriate.

Um beyond that, we want to adjust departmental budgets to account for any inflation or other cost pressures.

Uh we enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of public safety operations.

And then we also want to evaluate and address any staffing needs that come up and that our directors, uh division directors are bringing to us.

Um there's also a goal to preserve the the improve the street and infrastructure conditions.

Uh we'll continue to do that on an annual basis, and as well as the equipment replacement program that we have in place.

We want to make sure that we're continuing that uh to be efficient and effective with our resources.

Once that that budget committee we puts together their recommendations, uh we we take into account everybody's uh ask, their their justifications for their asks, and we base that base our recommendations on those asks versus the city's financial situation.

So it uh as we saw earlier today, there's a lot of there's a lot of asks for our dollar.

Uh there's a lot of needs out there for our dollar, and we want to make sure that we're spending that appropriately and where those needs are are being addressed appropriately.

So I will I will take a step back as we move into the specific numbers.

Uh I'll hand it over to Eric Lund.

Uh but just know that uh we're always here to answer the questions.

Um new commissioners, existing commissioners, uh please feel free to reach out to my office, our office, uh Eric and I can get you whatever you need as we move forward.

Uh but uh again I want to I want to express some thanks uh to Eric because I know he put a heck of a lot of work into this, and and he's gonna have a lot of answers for you guys as we move move forward this at this evening.

So thank you, Ryan.

Thank you, Ryan.

Thank you.

All right.

So first thing we're talking about is the general fund.

Um and what the the preliminary budget impacts for that look like.

Um just a real quick snapshot.

We included the 25 actuals, um, the current operating budget for 2026, and then our projected budget for 2027.

Um if you look at the 26 budget, it shows a deficit spending, and that again is a reinforcement of using our existing reserves in an effective and prudent manner.

Um but looking at 2025, you can see we had about a 7.6 million dollar growth in fund balance.

That just simply goes to show we conservatively budget, we have a number of vacancies that are helping to contribute to that unspent budget that we have, but also contributing to that is some of our general fund resources that we count on are exceeding expectations, um, whether it's our licenses or permits, the ongoing economic activity in this community helps to support those general fund um budgets.

Mr.

Mayor.

Good commissioner.

Mr.

Mayor, Eric, um so I I thought when we did the 26 budget, we pretty well balanced the budget, but now you show we're 7.6 million dollars will have to reach into our reserves.

Yep, and that's that's assuming that we have 100% spend on all of our FTEs, all of our capital projects that we had planned.

Um we know that's not going to happen.

That but uh that change negative change in fund balance.

That was because we had some reserves set aside for some projects that are being spent, and they have to run through the general fund expenditures, even though we're not using current dollars for them.

There were planned transactions.

So for example, like the fire station five million dollars we set aside.

The the money for fire station six and the coinciding fire engine that needs to be for fire station six, those are expansions of our existing resources, and those are cumulative in that $7.6 million projected um deficit.

We have the reserves set aside in previous periods to account for those that spending and actually had the dollars committed towards them.

Correct.

So the coming out of those reserves intentionally.

In previous years, we had planned for this ongoing expense or this excuse me, this future expense.

Um, and so now 26.

Well, preliminarily when we did the 26 budget about this time last year, we thought we would be further along within that project and be starting to spend some of those dollars.

We know today that we're we're not there just yet.

And so those dollars, the budget authority would be carried forward likely into the 27 budget.

It's just not a part of this budget process until we approach the end of the year and know where exactly we're at in that process.

Commissioner Hull.

Uh Mayor and Commissioners, I apologize if I'm getting in the weeds because I know it'll be a long process.

Uh but I see where it's like 2025 to 2026, you know, the revenue is dipped a little, which you know, it's fine, but we've we project uh six six and a half million dollar increase.

I don't know if uh can you give me a give me an idea on the why, just so we know.

So well, what I will say with revenues, um, we are very conservative in our budgeting.

We do not want to put a revenue projection out there that we don't believe is attainable.

And so what I would say seeing this information on a daily basis, our projected revenue of $72.2 million for 2026, we will likely exceed that.

We just want to make sure that when preparing a balanced budget, we don't put a revenue number so high out there so we can spend and then all of a sudden our revenues don't meet that number, but we've already spent that number and we inadvertently live beyond our means.

Thanks.

That's that's why I was wondering.

I'm like, uh, if we got 78 million to play with, okay, but just yeah, yeah, and and keep in mind when we're looking at fund balance, there are various levels of fund balance that are are out there.

We have non-spendable things like prepaids inventory, those types of things.

We can't use that obligation to pay bond to pay bills.

We have committed resources fund balance to where the city commission has allocated some of that fund balance intentionally for future projects, and without action from the commission, we cannot remove that commitment.

We then have an assigned fund balance that is set aside by staff for ongoing needs that we have specific earmarks for for those types of things like um equipment reserve, um, some of the computer expansion things that we have that those things are accumulated through ongoing savings through um things that weren't spent that we had planned to.

And then the last thing would be unassigned fund balance.

That's essentially the least restrictive thing that we can use to pay for anything.

Um that 78 million isn't just an open checkbook.

There are certain restrictions and allocations in place that are earmarking that number down.

At the end of 25, that 78 million, there was approximately 31 million of that is unassigned.

So we have 40 million or so that is set aside for specific purpose.

Thank you.

So looking at the the 27 budget, what we have here is we do have again looking at a intentional use of reserves for specific ongoing projects, whether they're IT related or certain equipment replacements like a fire truck or something of that nature.

So to show that that 1.1 almost 1.2 million dollars, we have reserves set aside directly for those intended purposes.

Commissioner Rish.

For example, the fire truck, we have a specific fund for that 1.3 million dollar fire fire truck, and we get that through insurance, the state, different places other than regular property taxes.

Correct.

So the next slide here is showing just a breakdown of our 27 budget general fund revenues.

You can see of the 78.7 million, about 39.3 is coming from tax collection and fees.

An important thing to note here while the roll-up does say tax collection, it does also does include things like our cable franchise fee that they're required to pay to the city of Bismarck through a contractual obligation.

It's not significant in the total amount of 39.3 million, but just know that when it says tax collections, that is not the entirety of property tax.

There are other incremental amounts that are put in there by accounting function.

Roughly 9.8 million dollars of sales tax property tax buy down that helps to support the general fund through the approved measure that was amended in 2018 at the 2019 amounts.

Um that number from sales tax, barring any other change through a ballot measure, that will remain at roughly 9.8 million dollars going forward forever.

Um the other the other things are I think fairly self-explanatory.

The charges for services, that's obviously an in-kind transaction with the with our citizens, whether it's um engineering fees for developers and other departments, such as the utility funds um for preparing engineering projects, those types of things.

Um intergovernmental that's coming from other government agencies, things like state aid, um contributions from Burley County for public health for renting of the building, those types of things.

All right, so just more about the the general fund revenues.

Um roughly 49 percent of our general fund is is property tax driven.

We're estimating about 38.3 million dollars, and that is in accordance with um the new House Bill 1176 that passed in 2025, where we're allowed to take three percent um of the dollar increase plus growth.

And so we part of your guys' packet is the um property tax calculation that shows our three different levies of property tax for the general fund, the library, and public transit, and showing that that compliance with um state law.

Commissioner Rish.

So um keep in mind now, so we have the three percent baked into the budget that's allowed by state law, correct?

Yes, and um at some point we're gonna have to probably reduce the mill levy because a lot of people's homes were assessed and are upset that their home is assessed more than they thought it should be, but it at some point will we our property taxes based on the increase is based on the total dollar now by by state statute three percent though the three percent individual homes within that will fluctuate at different values.

Some may go down, some may go up five or six or seven, but we're we are capped at three percent on the total dollar, and that the individual tax statement is not dependent on the budget process.

So the answer is the mill level will go down because our property values on average went up by more than so we want to reassure some of the folks that are watching this.

Because you're because your house went up in value, it does not mean it's gonna go up.

If it went up 10 percent, doesn't mean you're going to get a 10 percent property tax increase.

Correct.

Because we'll probably reduce the mill with House Bill 1176, Commissioner Rish, the variable in the property tax equation changed from where we asked for a certain dollar at a certain mill amount to create how our total revenue of property tax came.

Now we know what the end result is of total property tax, we know what the valuation is of a mill, the new variable is the mill amount.

And so once you back into that, that mill levy essentially will decrease year over year as valuations are increasing.

It doesn't change the tax rate, it just changes that mill number down.

It changes the percentage, effectively the tax rate on fair value.

Correct.

It does change, it reduces.

Yep.

Um I already touched on the intergovernmental revenue and the other financing sources and the charges for services.

Uh one thing I forgot to include there is our CENCOM.

Um the financial um piece of record for CENCOM, and we provide that service to Burley County and the city of Mandan, and they are paying us proportionately for per the JPA their level of service that they get back.

Um I don't want to discount that because it is a significant input from the other two jurisdictions to help us maintain our 911 service.

So looking at operating expenditures, um, keep in mind that these are these are base budget numbers.

They don't include any of that information in one of the attachments where all the priority requests from the departments come out.

This is strictly our base budgets that are occurring year over year for our our people and our supplies to perform the duties.

The first pie chart, if you take a look at it, 37.6 million dollars of our general fund is spent on public safety.

That's more than 53 percent of our overall spend by and large public safety is our number one spend.

Commissioner Dahl.

Thanks, Mayor.

Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

You're okay.

I was just wondering what is considered public safety.

Fire, police, CENCOM.

Is there anything else in that is what that is what we consider public safety.

So when we talk about those pieces in that first pie chart, those are by accounting function.

Um so public safety is our police fire, our CENCOM.

General government is kind of the catch-all of folks that don't have a better thing.

Culture and recreation, um, we look at specifically is our Dakota Media Access support.

Um, highways and streets is our engineering staff, and then health and welfare is our public health staff.

Everybody else falls into general government, like finance administration, legal, HR, um, planning, community development, or building inspections.

Um, I hope I didn't leave anybody out.

It wasn't intentional.

But that's that's what our general government is that we're just overall support staff of all of the things within the city.

Um the second pie chart is just an illustration of how we're spending our general fund money, and it's important to note that 52% or 37.1 million dollars is strictly going to our staff.

Our human capital, the thing that makes City of Bismarck work.

Um, in addition to that, there's another 16 million dollars that go to benefits and all of the fringe costs of maintaining our employee base.

So by and large, 75% of our our spend in the general fund is our human capital.

Um, the people that interact with the public that provide those services.

Commissioner Dahl.

Thanks.

Sorry, quick question.

Yep.

The grants and subsidies is that grants that we as the city of Bismarck give out, or is that just a placeholder for when we get grants and that would be the grants that we give out.

So whether they are in support of a committee, or like the sorry, I got a fly bothering me.

Um things like arts grants that we have given out in the past, Dakota West Arts Council, um, the human relations committee.

When those monies are expended out, we're considering them like an operating grant for that entity or that committee to be able to function.

Um I just thought it was kind of amazing that we spend more money on professional, legal, and contracted services than we do on buildings, equipment, and vehicle services.

Kind of jumps out at me.

You'd think the buildings and the equipment and vehicles would be a lot bigger part of the pie.

Right.

And so professional legal and contracted services, that can be anything from an elevator maintenance contract if we have to um seek outside counsel engineering and um architectural consultants that we need for for various ongoing things that maybe we don't have all of the expertise in the city, and so we have to seek outside consultants, so that's why that number sort of sticks out is that is a by and large gaining um professional consulting services to help us accomplish what we're looking for.

Um just in in words here, looking um at the general fund.

Keep in mind part of the general fund expense is helping to support roads and streets, forestry, and weeds.

Many years ago, forestry and weeds had its own individual mill levy, and that through mill levy consolidation is coming through the general fund as support for their ongoing operations.

Roads and streets is a huge cost to the city of Bismarck in the general fund predominantly because the highway tax distribution that we get from the state has remained unchanged largely for decades.

Our costs are continuing to go up because of expansion of city cost of materials and machinery to do those things.

And so the ongoing support for the general fund is continuing to increase for roads and streets until something changes with that highway tax distribution to help provide relief and more support of our road maintenance program.

Um just general things like striping, crack sealing, um, traffic paint, you know, maintaining those roads in the winter time.

Um, all of those things that our roads and streets folks are out there doing on a daily basis.

Again, just to reiterate our human capital is roughly three quarters of our ongoing general fund operating costs.

Um within this budgeted plan, the budget committee is recommending a 4.75% salary increase per the city's compensation plan and how we come up with that a number of years ago when the salary plan was put in place is we look at the cost of living index for government employees, and we take 75% of that, which gets us to 2.75% market rate adjustment, essentially cost of living increases you know per the consumer price index, and then our pay plan adds in another two percent to get to the total number um to allow for additional market adjustments and performance-based metrics for employee raises.

Um so, but that number excuse me, is included in the general fund number that you have in front of you with the priority initiatives.

So to touch on the the committed fund balance that I I did previously.

We have 20 million dollars specifically set aside by the city commission previously for related things emerald ash bore um prevention and remediation.

When that hits our community, we want to make sure that we have some money set aside to prevent the the overall detriment to our our canopy with ash trees in the city of Bismarck.

15.8 is earmarked for capital projects, that is inclusive of fire station six.

Other things that we've looked at, like um an initial consultation for the city county building and those types of things, ERP replacements.

Commissioner Rush, Mr.

Mayor, Commissioner Derek.

So the 15.8 million is already spoken for, it's not something other than some of the design that we were talking about today for the city council.

It is set aside in fund balance to help us build fire station six.

And so it's not accounted for in current 2026 revenues.

So fire station six, if that comes at a six million dollars, we've got 10 million left, right?

Yes, yep.

Essentially, so but there's multiple capital projects inside that.

Yes, there is.

There's I I believe there's five or six of them that account for that 15.8 million.

There was, I believe, five million set aside for fire station six.

Yep, 5.8 million.

That 15.8.8 million.

Yep, and then's over here, he's gonna try and get it lower.

And then capital equipment is much like the capital projects, that is intended for specific equipment replacement things, um, whether they're IT related, I believe there's a fire truck, fire truck six is in that number as well.

Shifting gears to probably our our most important special revenue fund, um, which is our sales tax fund.

Keep in mind that we have three existing sales taxes, one of which is divided into two separate pieces.

The 1% general sales tax, which is the oldest one for the city of Bismarck.

Keep in mind these sales tax by ballot measure, they are restricted for specific use within ordinance.

The one percent brings in um roughly 20 million dollars per year.

Of that, we use 9.8 million dollars for property tax relief, 6.8 million dollars to help offset the cost of our special assessment program to help provide relief to the citizens and the overall cost of those special assessments.

And then roughly 2.3 million goes to snow removal, snow gates, winter maintenance by ordinance for our roads and street staff that are out maintaining our roads so they're safe for our use.

The second one is the half cent special road tax that was just recently renewed in June.

That is specific use is about 13.2 million a year, what we're planning for.

That'll be like the Tyler Parkway project that's ongoing right now.

And this these uses come through the capital improvement plan that Gabe puts together and how we're utilizing those dollars.

This is just strictly a budgetary number that he would come forward with a project that would get commission approval of how we're spending that money specifically to a project.

And then the last half cent.

So Eric, I think there's a typographical error on that because half cent is a half cent on pretty much all the sale and sales of 13.2 million would be the total, and somehow we have 14% for public safety and one million for public transportation.

I know that's not right because the split would be 40% of the total for public transportation.

Right.

So here what we're looking at this is looking at our 2027 budgeted spend.

Um the on the the second half cent that's broke out that 14 million dollars would be earmarked towards the um the the initial spend on the police the new police station um trying to advance fund some of that construction before we have to go out to bond.

So can just for the public or most importantly for the public, not just for the public, and also for us.

How much are we collecting and how much would be allocated towards public transportation?

Grad, I know what this is you're this is you're talking about the spend, but from a collection standpoint from yes, from a collection standpoint, a half cent sales tax brings the city just over 10 million dollars.

60 percent of that is allocated towards public safety capital um relate capital projects in nature, whether it's equipment or buildings um facilities, and 40 percent of that is for public transportation.

So roughly just over six million is for public safety, and just over four million is for public transportation.

And so I don't know if it's in the slides, but I'm gonna bring a highlight to it here.

Approximately how much is sitting in the reserves for each of those two categories.

I don't recall that off the top of my head, but the I want to say we have roughly four million dollars in the public safety reserve today because some of that is spent um for the acquisition of the the police department land.

And I want to say there's roughly four or four and a half million dollars currently sitting in the public transportation um portion of that.

We've only had two small asks um since the implementation of this for from transit.

I think it's cumulatively we have supplied, we have supported them with about a million dollars.

Thank you.

Sorry to distract you.

No, you're good.

And so looking at the sales tax, we're budgeting for about a million dollars of support to public transit just to make sure that we have enough appropriations to to cover what their potential need may be.

And that's over and above their particular portion of the property tax.

Correct.

They are getting um a portion of the property tax, I believe is a million dollars is about what they figured they were gonna be needing to cash flow.

Correct.

Okay, Commissioner Connolly.

Well, and part of when I wrote that measure, um, it's specific to public transportation, not specific to transit, because as our city grows, transit's just not able to meet all of the dynamics within the city.

So as ideas come on board and we can meet some of those other special needs.

Um hopefully those ideas come in front of us to where we can utilize and have some flexibility with it.

But transit happens to be our public transportation system right now.

Right.

But they'll always be part of the next.

No, I understand.

I just that's the point I was making.

Okay.

So looking at the 27 budget, um, specific or significant initiative and items that that we have ongoing that we know about a fire station six, the new police station, a new fire truck that goes with fire station six as well as typical ongoing replacements, potential city hall renovation, the equipment replacement program.

You'll oftentimes hear this referred to as the fleet plan.

That's something that we implemented probably five or six years ago and have worked very hard with our fleet department to make sure that we are maintaining and replacing all of our fleet vehicles throughout the city on a regular cadence so that it we're not overextending ourselves or having these huge bubble years where we have to replace four and five million dollars worth of equipment.

So that that's what the equipment placement program is.

Um so if you hear fleet plan, that's what we're talking about.

And then our ongoing annual support of the street maintenance projects, and then identifying new positions for the recommendation for the general fund is a public health social worker as well as an additional deputy fire marshal to help with that workload that is undergoing in the the fire department.

Looking at our our enterprise funds or our fee-based funds, the ones that operate more like a business with fee generation, the water treatment plant expansion.

Um we have some some funding in place and we're going to continue working towards the the cost of that project.

That is a three or four or five-year ongoing project into the future.

Um there are changes and updates and rehabilitations going on at the wastewater treatment plant.

Um the airport terminal expansion project.

I believe 27 is the final year for the Hay Creek lift station and interceptor project for sanitary sewer purposes.

The event center HVAC project that will be undertaking 27 will be a continuation of where we get going on 26.

The South Bismarck flood control project, and then the new positions for the enterprise funds that we've looked at is an additional airport police officer position that's paid for by the airport, a master electrician position within our building maintenance staff, and then industrial pretreatment tech that I believe works with the wastewater treatment plant in our businesses in the community.

Looking at the utility funds, um, the thing that's probably most pressing is what are the rate changes that are going to affect those utilities and looking at our citizens' utility rate utility bill costs.

When we put this together, we looked at a typical single family residence that has a three-quarter inch water meter as as their base rate.

Um the items that you're gonna see is about a 38 cent monthly increase on our street lights and traffic signal line item.

It's about three percent.

The solid waste utility, so our garbage collections, um, our landfill, that is gonna go up a dollar fifteen recommended, it's about six point one two percent.

Um, and then the recycling aspect of that is going up 40 cents, which is 4.9 for 5%.

That is a direct pass-through per contract with waste management in providing that recycling service for us.

One thing to note with the waste collection, it is the highest increase on there.

If we would not have made changes to the um not picking up extras and just continually doing garbage service as we had for all of the years prior, this number would have been much higher of a rate increase change for the solid waste utility.

Um looking at the water utility, we're estimating a 64 cent um base rate increase and a six cent per unit increase.

And so that's based on your levels of consumption within your household through the the through the various tiers, both of which are about 3.3 to 3.5% of an increase.

And then on the sewer sanitary sewer side, 29 cents to the monthly bait rate base rate, and then eight cents on the per unit increase, both of which are two and a half.

So cumulatively, we're estimating at about a three dollar monthly increase, all in for all of the services that our utility bill provides to our citizens.

Three dollars.

It's about three dollars.

So just to kind of wrap it up, the overall budget committee recommendations of the FTEs.

There were 14 positions requested citywide, eight of which were approved.

Um to that, only 11 of them were FTEs.

The airport did uh request three part-time seasonal operators to help alleviate and would only be utilized if necessary in the winter months to provide relief to the existing staff if they have to do emergency snow removal operations.

They just don't simply have enough staff today to run 24-7 for extended periods of time.

Believe it or not, people need time off, and sleep is essential to providing safety out there.

Um the ongoing operating, so these are budgetary increases to the base budget.

Um, these are the ones that are gonna help us stave off some of those um operating cost increases, the inflation area that we're seeing.

Um requested was about 1.7, almost 1.8 million, and budget committee is recommending 1.4 um for approval.

One time costs, these are when we talk one time, these are truly a project-based thing.

It's one time, it's not gonna have ongoing implications.

It's to pay for an implementation, those types of things.

Um that ask was six point two million, and the the budget committee's uh recommendation is just under 3.4 million.

Commissioner Rish.

Commissioners Eric.

Um FTE's rec requested 14 positions, recommended eight positions.

I noticed you listed uh a social worker and a fire marshal.

What are some of the other six?

So the social worker and the fire marshal, those are direct general fund related.

Um the other ones, those are on the attachment that I sent out Friday evening.

Okay, and they are inclusive of the police, uh, the airport police officer.

Okay, um, the master electrician and the industrial pretreatment tech.

So those are those are enterprise, those are the enterprise funds for those pieces.

And the capital projects, this is the last slide.

Um just highlighting um some of the things the the significant cost inputs that the budget committee has has considered through this process.

The police station um preliminarily until we get a GMP GMP in place.

Um, we're estimating 97.6 million.

This is a total budgetary ask.

Likely um we're gonna try to fund 14 million of that, and the rest of it will go through a sales tax revenue bond for us to complete that that police station.

Fire station six, um, as mentioned before in the committed fund balance.

We have 5.8 million set aside.

Preliminary estimates say that we're gonna be at about 6.4 million for total construction costs.

So we're we have 700,000 budgeted in general fund spend for this year to help accomplish the the final part of that funding for fire station six.

The street repairs maintenance and construction, it's 42 point 40.2 million dollars, and that's that's a mix of combination of sales taxes, special assessments, and other grant-related um revenues that we may have from DOT federal highway to accomplish those costs.

Um street lights and traffic signals, they have a uh spending plan identified intersections were replacing cabinets, traffic signals.

We're estimating about 1.59 million from that utility worth of spend.

Phase one of the airport terminal is estimated at 66.5.

We're putting that in as a budgetary number.

Keep in mind that we may not spend at all.

It will have a timing component of how that goes, and the additional money will be rolled into to future years if we don't actually get to that point.

And then the the event center HVAC.

Um, this was supposed to be excuse me, year two of that part of it.

So it's estimated at 6.35.

It may, depending on the timing of the project, um, that number may fluctuate or need to be adjusted upwards uh depending on how we we get there.

And then lastly, the utility operations.

Um, we're estimating that we're gonna have 14 million dollars into the water treatment plant of actual construction this upcoming year.

Um, 4.3 million to finish up the Hay Creek Interceptor, the about 12.7 million in the wastewater treatment plant rehabilitations and expansion, and then South Bismarck flood, a potential 65 million dollars spend in 27.

Um, depending on how that project turns out for us with our our revenue partners, um, the state and the federal government, if we can get that going.

So those are really the highlights um of the 27 preliminary budget, just to kind of supplement all of the information that was sent to you guys Friday evening.

Um have any questions for me?

Commissioners, do you have questions of Eric?

Good job, Eric.

Thank you.

So my my request is that on the being on the budget committee and the commissioner holding that in my portfolio is to us as commissioners is to look at the departments that you have in your portfolios to see if there's any adjustments that we should be making to the budget.

This we do need to approve the preliminary budget.

I've already had conversations during budget committee in particular around a couple of topics that I probably will be working with my departments on, and one of those could ultimately affect all departments, and that's going to be compensation adjustment.

Um I think we need to take a look at that.

It's this year it's is pretty strong, and we may have to look at that.

But I I asked that each of us visit with our departments to see if there's anything to do that uh allows us to be more streamlined and efficient and deliver our services for a lower dollar cost.

And uh I know that some of you have probably already had those conversations but with two new commissioners.

You're really, you know, we're throwing you into the fire.

And uh so I if anybody has any direction right now for Eric, great.

Um, we can do that, and then we can make a I would entertain a motion to approve approve the preliminary budget, knowing it is going to change.

And really, what approving the preliminary budget tonight allows us to take direction from the commission um in preparation of the final budget, it keeps us on schedule to be able to hit the September 8th meeting um for uh approval of the final budget so that way we can stay on schedule with the certifying to Burley County and doing all of the things we need to do in accordance with North Dakota Century Code.

If we don't get a an approval of the preliminary tonight, that means we'll have to come back and have a another meeting to get approval of the preliminary budget, which will set everything back and likely will require um special commission meetings in September in order for us to make sure that we get final approval so we can get through all the way through all the century code requirements and dealing with levying property tax to Burley County.

Our intent, knowing that Commissioner Dahl and Commissioner Hall, you guys were not commissioners at the time to go through the budget committee and meet with your departments.

Um we would like to be able to you know offer you know extend uh uh an invitation to meet with with your departments to meet with Ryan and I to answer questions that you guys may have about all of this information that you're likely seeing for the very first time.

Um we understand that there's a lot of information and that there's a learning curve to understand the method to our madness and achieve what we're trying to achieve for the city of Bismarck.

And so um Ryan and I would like to offer that that to you guys to be able to meet with you to help answer any questions that you have about the process and what what's all included in this information.

Mr.

Mayor, Commissioners Eric, I just have a few things that I want to toss out and not making formal motions or anything, but I'm constantly working with my portfolio to try and find efficiencies.

We need to find efficiencies.

I want to pay our employees well, they need good fringe benefits.

I believe in that strongly.

But things change and we can find some efficiencies.

Our police department and my friend the chief in the back, um, he um was able to won one of the administrative positions um she left.

Um the other administrative position took care of all those responsibilities.

That's an efficiency.

Um technology changes, we don't need quite as many support staff in some of these places that we uh that when we once had.

But the only issue I have with that is that full-time position is still on the books for the police department, and if he needs it, he needs it.

But it's vacant, and I'd like to see that uh position taken away.

And the chief, who I love the chief, if you need a position in the future, you can count on me to help you get a new one.

But that FTA FTE should be taken off the books.

The other thing I've been pushing uh we're trying some electric vehicles.

So my wife said to me, Well, what do you know about electric vehicles?

She should go get one.

So I went and got one, and they're remarkable.

I've got a essentially a three-quarter ton pickup made in America, purchased in Bismarck, and I'll probably save close to five thousand dollars a year in operating costs on that one vehicle, that one vehicle.

I'll give you an example.

Uh, three weeks ago, I was in Madora and I had to get on a conference call with the Burley County zoning.

For three and a half hours that vehicle ran.

I did not use a dollar's worth of electricity, and it was air conditioned, and I had a cooled seat.

Now the other night I was at the baseball game, the Larks game, and the police officer was there, very nice young man.

And and he's got to keep his vehicle running because he got all that electronics, it's a hundred degrees outside and whatnot.

So that vehicle was running burning gasoline for four hours.

I don't know what it costs, but it certainly wasn't a dollar.

So I would just encourage some experimentation with um some electric vehicles because they're vastly more efficient.

They're just vastly more efficient.

Um some of the police departments around the country claim they save seven to ten thousand dollars per vehicle for per year.

But we've got to get from here to there, and I'd like to try some, and I see there's none in the budget, even though I've been pushing it.

Another thing, I see the Great Plains Food Bank asked for fifty thousand dollars, and that's not included in the budget.

And I'm not a fan of giving city tax dollars away to anybody, okay.

But included in the budget, we have two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the vision fund, two hundred thousand dollars for the chamber, fifty thousand dollars for the down counters.

So that's a half a million dollars.

Um but if you get if I got to pick and choose, we give city tax money away too, and I'd rather not give any of it away.

I'd rather give it to some poor kids that need food rather than the vision fund where I see time and again some of the most affluent people in the city are getting buy downs on their loans to buy a new building.

Um employee raises.

What I what I suggest on employee raises, whatever the number might be, it's 4.75 you're gonna look at that and adjust it.

But year after year we give this percentage increases in employee wages.

And I brought this up last year on the budget.

And what happens then is the highest paid employees, because it's a percentage base, their wages go like this and the lowest pay go like this, but the spread between the highest paid employees and the lowest paid employees keeps widening and widening.

We have some department heads that are not just paid twice as much, not three times as much, but four times as much as the lowest paid employee employees in their department.

So my recommendation is that we have a flat increase pay for everybody, and I'm not suggesting we do this every year, but this one year we do a flat increase.

Whatever that 4.75, or if you have some other number, come up with that number and divide it up with all our city employees, give everybody the same amount.

Somebody called said that, well, that's socialism, John.

I said, Well, no, no, no, that's not social.

Socialism if we paid every employee the same amount, and we don't.

We have six hundred and seventy employees in the city.

No two of them are paid the same.

That's amazing to me.

That's completely amazing to me.

So my recommendation is that we take instead of a uh percentage base, everybody um gets the same amount as long as they're a full-time employee, been employed since lack October, what whatever the the um uh guardrails are.

Um and the last thing I just want to comment on is I keep asking the department heads, let's find some efficiencies.

Well, now I anybody that's watching this that's a city employee, I'm calling on city employees, come up with some ways in which we can find some efficiencies that don't affect your wages, don't affect your fringe benefits, but ways in which we can uh be more efficient and in in your line of work and get them to me.

Get them to the mayor, get them to the portfolio ha holder, whatever, so we can find some efficiencies as we proceed forward.

So that's my kick.

Um, those are my recommendations and Commissioner Hull.

I guess uh Mayor and Commissioners billing on Commissioner Rich's idea about efficiencies.

I know one thing on the campaign trial I pitched was uh do you know put a bounty on efficiencies?

I use the example of uh if there's the two thousand dollar printer and they're spending a hundred dollars, you know, it breaks down every month and they have to spend a hundred dollars to fix it, you know, pay a repair person to come in because they can't, you know, get the two thousand dollars to fix it.

Let's you know, let's give them a you know, give that department a two thousand dollar loan, you know, zero interest loan, uh you know, give the employee the report a reward, but if that printer lasts five years, it's like you know, I would use the example of the library.

If they you know, once they pay it off, if they got a hundred dollars a month, they you know, they you know, I'm sure all the departments can, but you know, budget-wise, I feel the library could, you know, it's like you know, they could do amazing things with the extra hundred dollars a month over that, you know, the two and a half years that they would have.

So it would reward the department, reward the employee, but in the end it would also just you know improve services and save money if they want to take that printer out back like office space, that'd be you know, that'd be another reward too.

But that's one idea I would pitch to you know, incentivize people to find these efficiencies, where it's not trying to reduce headcount unless there's unless that works, but it's finding those, you know, passive aggressive IT problems or whatever it is.

Mr.

Mayor, I I I just to follow up on that.

I think I've discussed this with our human resources.

I don't think we're allowed to let's say we we we we put out a bounty, whatever you can find in efficiencies, you get 10% of your savings for the first year.

Can we even do that, Leanne?

Um reward employees in such a way.

I I I think what we discussed is at one other point, it wasn't I think it's a great idea.

I mean, then they'd go find some officials.

I knew the legal might be an issue, so yeah, Mayor and Commissioners.

Um I think it would depend how it's set up.

I mean, if it's some we can't give employees anything beyond $25, but I know at one time the state had some kind of a program where employees could get X dollars of savings for lights or computers being off, or whatever the case is.

I think it would depend how you set it up, um, if it would be considered a bonus or something like that.

I'm gonna try to ring this like we're getting a little off topic here.

Not a little, we're a lot off topic.

I think it's right up um we're we're talking about the preliminary budget, and uh, I have no problems as we move forward into the final budget in the hearing is if you have departments you wish to bring ideas to their department, and that comes floats back through so we get it into the final budget, and if there's cost savings, believe me, I'm all in favor of that.

I would love to see our our general fund spend on operating expenses drop if we can.

I think there are some areas in that.

How we compensate employees.

I my first number is what's the dollar amount that we're allocating it to pay adjustments, how we get to there and how they're allocated.

That can be a secondary proposal.

Um, but let's keep ourselves focused on what we're trying to accomplish here.

Uh it's great to talk about some efficiencies if we need to do that.

But you know, we're talking uh we have a we have an eighty million dollar budget general fund budget, and if I find two thousand dollars, I don't know how significant that is.

I gotta be honest.

It can help, but I need a lot of two thousand dollar adjustments.

So go ahead, Commissioner Doll.

I just had a question or clarification.

If we approve the preliminary budget tonight, um, and then we meet with our departments, we can't add to the budget, correct?

It can only be subtracted.

So what we can't do, well, there is not a can't.

There's no longer with the passage of House Bill 1176.

We can adjust the budget however we see fit.

We are, in terms of levying tax, we are already asking for the max that's allowable for the city of Bismarck.

And so if we were to increase general fund spending, we would then have to find other revenue sources to help support that or identify the use of reserves to accomplish those things.

Yeah, and just to be clear, I'm not advocating for adding anything particular into the budget.

I just wanted to come back to the preliminary budget and know what the bounds of that budget are we are hopeful with what is presented tonight that we're aware of everything that we can be aware of, and it's been presented, and that that number would not increase, but there is not a guarantee that in a month from now something may rise to the attention where we need to include it in the the final budget.

All right.

Well, with that in mind, I move to approve the preliminary budget as presented.

Second.

Do we have further discussion?

Hearing that we'll call roll.

Commissioner Dahl?

Yes.

Commissioner Connolly?

Yes.

Commissioner Holler?

Yes.

Commissioner Rish?

Yes.

Mayor Smith.

Yes.

Thank you, Eric and Ryan and Eric.

Uh again, I want to thank you because I know you had a major lift.

You were flying.

You and your team were flying shorthanded during the budget process, and I commend you for all the work and you got us to this point.

I really appreciate that.

Commissioner Conwell.

Um I concur on that.

I guess I jumped the gun I want to share when we get to other business too.

Okay.

Um, so that brings us to other business.

I will first ask the commissioners if they have other business.

I have one item to call forward, but go ahead.

Mr.

Mayor, Commissioners, I got a couple of things.

Um I've now got building inspections, and Brady is going through the code and revising our building code.

Um, he's reached out up to a bunch of folks, and he's not getting much of a response.

So anybody that's a builder or somebody who's interested in our building code, now is the time to interact with our um Brady over at building inspections or their team, put your input in on this new revision to the building code.

So I'm um I when I was campaigning for office, I got these complaints about oh, they made me do this, they made me do that.

Well, if there's something that's erroneous that really doesn't enhance safety, this is the time to adjust it.

Let's let's do it.

I'm all in on that.

Uh then I've got some good news, and I happen to like good news.

Uh, when we change the way we've collected garbage, uh we you know, without picking up the extras and whatnot, we made the commitment that we'll look at some ways in which to mitigate some of the effects.

And last fall we gathered up leaves on certain a couple of different garbage days, provided they were in paper bags and things like that, and that was helpful.

But I've been getting um people, two different people contact me about the issue of branches.

They used to be able to tie up their branches and leave it next to the can and the in the people would pick up the extras.

Well, we don't do that anymore.

They have you actually have to go to the landfill, you gotta go through the scale, you gotta go dump it off, come back through the scale again, and it's a it's a pretty big inconvenience, especially when it's muddy out there.

I've been out there when it's muddy, and I go in there with a relatively clean truck, and then it's a mess when I leave the dog on landfill.

But I've been working with um Steve Solway and uh Toby Shell Sheldon, and as of today, we've got a roll off in North Bismarck and a roll off in South Bismarck that you can put tree branches.

Now we don't want you taking big logs and trees, you know, things like that, but you got some tree branches.

There's one at the Ash Cooley, a water tower saw site on the north end, and down by Cottonwood um parking lot down on Santa Fe and 12th on the south end.

And I'm just urging our citizens to just put branches in there.

We've had situations what I have somebody's waving at me.

Four inches or less.

Four inches or less.

Okay, the branches have to be four.

Our former city forester who knows branches, four inches or less that go into those roll offs.

Um but be respectful.

Uh in the past, we've had people throw tires in them when we used to do this.

Uh I talked to the uh mayor of Mandan the other day and just mentioned I like they've got a thing in Mandan where they allow branches.

He said, Yeah, a guy threw an engine block in it.

Well, you know, that's that's that ruins it for everybody if it gets too um abusive.

So put only branches in there, and when you put the leaves in the grass in the other roll offs, make sure you dump dump them out of the plastic bags and do your civic duty as a citizen to um treat this new special thing.

We're getting you place it to haul your branches.

So Steve's in the back there.

Thanks, Steve, and pass on my thanks to Toby as well.

Commissioner Conley.

Yeah.

I just want to uh thank uh um our police department, CENCOM, uh medical support staff, and both in the community and whatnot.

In the last 48 hours, we had a hard circumstance that's gonna change a couple of families and uh the uh it's something that working at CENCOM for a little bit.

It's it stays with people.

So just want to say thanks a lot for supporting our community.

Anyone else have other business?

If not, I'm gonna ask Jason to come forward because we need to recognize one of our wonderful team members.

Mayor and commissioners, uh pleased to share this information with you.

We held this at the last meeting because she wasn't here to help celebrate, but we have our public health director, Renee Mock, has been recently appointed to the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

She often refers to this as NATO.

Uh Renee will be representing Region Eight, uh, which is uh composed of Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.

She is the first representative from North Dakota on this national board, and it is a four-year appointment.

She comes in as the uh current vice president, and then we'll move through the ranks uh over the over the next few years.

Uh I just wanted to bring this out.

This is a pretty important distinction for Renee, uh, both professionally but then for us as an organization because we have a voice on a national board.

And she is representing the rural communities and and us as an organization and Bismarck as a community, and I think that's a pretty special thing, and I think it's worth giving her a little time at the podium so she can talk about this and maybe share some of her experiences while she was at the conference two weeks ago in Louisville, Kentucky.

She's not prepared for this, but I think she can handle it just fine.

So congratulations, by the way, on the opportunity to serve our country and our state.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Um I don't know what to say.

Jason explained it very well.

Um I just want to say okay, so it's NATO, it's the National Association of City and County Health Officials, and it is the professional association for local health officials like me that work for uh city and county health departments across the nation.

Um there are 3,300 local health departments um across the nation, just like ours, and there's never been on the executive committee representation from region eight, nor from the state of North Dakota.

And so it it is an honor for me to represent um the city of Bismarck and also have the opportunity to bring a voice of rural and um more secluded areas um to the executive committee, uh making decisions about policy and public health, having conversations with CDC, federal level um individuals, so we can put our input and um and voice at the table along the other large metro areas because we are innovative here, we have good ideas, um, we're doing great things, and for us to be able to share that information at a national table is an honor for me.