Welcome everybody.

Um, we're gonna start out with a proclamation.

City Council bless Iowa, Office of Mayor Proclamation, excuse me, whereas change is constant and affects all cities, towns, suburbs, counties, boroughs, townships, rural areas, and other places.

And community planning and plans can help manage this change in a way that provides better choices for how people work and live.

And whereas community planning offers an opportunity for all residents to be meaningfully involved in making choices that determine the future of their community and the full benefits of planning require public officials and citizens who understand support and demand excellence in planning and plan implementation.

And whereas the month of October is designed as national community planning month throughout the United States of America and its territories, and the American Planning Association endorses national community planning month as an opportunity to highlight how planning is essential to recovery and how planners can lead communities to equitable, resilient, and long-lasting recovery.

And whereas the celebration of national community planning month allows us to publicly recognize the participation and dedication of the members of the planning commissions and other citizen planners who have contributed their time and expertise to the improvement of the city of Council Bluffs, Iowa.

And whereas we recognize the many valuable contributions made by the professional community and regional planners of the city of Council Bluffs, and extend our heartfelt thanks for the continued commitment to public service by these professionals.

Therefore, I, Matt Walsh, mayor of the city of Council Bluffs to hereby proclaim October 2025 as community planning month in the City of Council Bluffs in conjunction with the celebration of National Community Planning Month with the seal of the City of Council Bluffs.

I do hereby proclaim.

I don't know who's gonna receive this.

Next on the agenda is to review the agenda.

Are there questions on the consent agenda?

Questions on the public hearings.

Courtney on F, it's not really a question.

We talked uh you sent me an email.

I asked about um data centers, just moving forward.

I've had a lot of conversations, um, and it's been about a 50-50 split on people that like data centers and deplore data centers.

So if some it seems to me that data centers are gonna kind of be looking in this area when they start to come to us, just really educate and council so we can educate the public because it's been a pretty severe split on some conversations I've had, not on this one, but just things that are out information that's out there, so it might be better for when we educate the people we talk to on it.

Specifically the tax pieces like we talked about, or is there something tax pieces and just everything municipal water, you know, with people are gonna link it to Google and things like that.

But I think the tax pieces are big.

But you know, people like to say oh, they don't pay property taxes, there's no jobs, things like that.

So we can come back to and say, well, this, you know, because we know what it is, especially this project, but moving forward, if more are coming.

Just they are.

So I think that um what we can do is when we have those projects, we can do it in a couple different ways.

We could do it when they bring in their subdivision stuff.

Um, if that feels too early, we could also do it.

Some of them will not have development agreements if they're within like some of our urban renewal areas.

So I'd just just let me know what and when or if there's just a session that makes more sense so that we can provide that information.

Yeah, and they're not um specific to council bluffs, they're just blanket statements on things they don't like about data centers.

I mean, some of them, some of them that I talk to in my daily work.

So there's just a huge split sometimes, and so we can kind of get to the middle and like suggest the things that people talk about is the fact that there aren't a bunch of jobs provided in that is factual, but we don't have a lot of employees that are looking for work, and so for us, I'm not sure that we should consider that detrimental.

I've seen something that says in today's world, about three percent of all electrical production goes to data centers in the next decade or two, ninety-eight percent.

And so people are concerned about the electrical usage and data centers.

Water usage, water.

We we have uh water is not so much an issue for us, and because we're close to the Missouri River, but electrical usage, Mid-America, that's a business call for them.

Um we need to make sure that they have enough capacity to take care of our residents.

Um but again, there they do uh uh studies that determine whether or not they can provide that electricity.

I think they can they've said they can other places like OPPD tapped out, but it's pretty clean industry.

Um I I think as long as we work to collect the uh franchise fee, I think we can get immediate revenue.

Um probably know Iowa commercial property tax payers are at a distinct disadvantage.

Um prior to the 10% rollback in 2013, they were paying 217% higher commercial property taxes in Iowa as they pay in Nebraska.

After the 10% rollback, they pay 197% higher property taxes.

So it's been very difficult for council blows to recruit commercial business.

I've been told one of the five lowest energy costers in the country.

And because of the energy they use the property tax issue just becomes a rounding number for them.

It's it's more about the the cost of electricity, and so we've been able to recruit data centers.

Um we have several interested in coming here.

Um I think it's a smart business decision that given the fact we don't have a lot of labor and and we need the property tax base in Iowa, we can collect franchise fees.

So that's that's kind of my thoughts.

Other questions on the public hearing?

Uh 4D.

Um couple thoughts on that one.

So I had reached out to Mimi um about potentially talking about the one source or uh a verification adding in.

We talked over the weekend that because the RFP already went back out again, it it would be not the best idea to do it now.

I would like to get the council's ideas on either having a separate session and moving forward and getting this hammered out so when their next project comes through, we can have this as part of the RFP that goes out.

I I would support uh revisiting our template for RFPs.

Um of the uh things that you're concerned with to be part of the wording and develop something through legal and through the community development that we have a uh sound piece of uh uh legislation that we can refer to and make more streamlined of our RFP process.

So yeah, I wouldn't be I talked to Courtney after we had that conversation, so I wouldn't be opposed to it, so we can sit down and everybody can be at the table and get kind of a think tank to figure out where we go with that as well.

Okay.