The Fargo City Commission met on Monday, March 17, 2025, at 5:00 PM in Commission Chambers. The meeting began with a video highlighting the Transit Department and the presentation of the Rising Star Award to Andrew Almer, a fixed route dispatcher. The commission approved a consent agenda, conducted several public hearings, received a presentation on employee overtime policies, and heard a resident comment on a police shooting incident. The meeting adjourned at 7:08 PM.
Call the meeting to order. I invite you to join us with the Pleasure of Allegiance. Roll call. Cole Pack. Here. Here. Strand. Here. Turnberg. Mahoney. Here. Gotta get the right folder. Happy St. Patrick's Day anyway. This evening we're continuing our effort to showcase and highlight each of our city departments and everything they do to serve our residents 24-7 365. At the beginning of the commission meeting, we're taking time to honor an individual department and their staff for their dedication, hard work, and customer service that makes local government work for all of us. We're looking forward to sharing this information with our community and continue to show our commitment to going above and beyond for our residents. Tonight we're highlighting the City of Fargo's transit department, which operates MAT bus services in Fargo, West Fargo, Moorhead, and Delworth. Every day Mat Bus employees are focused on ensuring that the residents get to work, school appointments, wherever they need to be in a timely and efficient manner. MAT BUS is a vital piece of our workforce engine that drives our economics and makes Fargo community an amazing place to live. MAT BUS employees keep Fargo running on all cylinders. We will now share a video that underscores the transit department's exceptional work. MAT BUS offers three different modes of transportation for the residents of Fargo, Moorhead, West Fargo, and Delworth. We have our fixed route service, which is our large buses that go around all the different cities on predetermined routes. They have predetermined times, so you can take a look at Mattbus.com to see exactly when those buses are arriving at those particular stops. With that, people can uh pre-apply with us to be able to utilize the service and it will take you anywhere within those four different cities. And then last we have our on-demand service, which is sort of like an Uber or Lyft type thing where passengers can download an app and with that uh request a pickup and drop-off destination within some predetermined zones that we have. And then our vehicle will come get you and bring you to your destination. Our entire system last year had approximately 1.2 million rides. So if you think about how many vehicles that would be on the road if people were driving individually, it does help to reduce a lot of the wear and tear on roads just based on those sure numbers, and it also can help to reduce some congestion around the Fargo More High West Fargo and Delworth areas. Preventative maintenance is one of the main things that our maintenance staff performs on a daily basis. Some items are replaced on a on a schedule, um, some of the high failure items just to prevent uh a breakdown on the on the road. The buses are replaced on a 12-year schedule. Obviously, you know, an older bus is more costly to maintain, so staying up to date on our replacement schedule and making sure those buses are replaced as close to 12 years as possible helps us to really control our operational maintenance costs. Every day the drivers will perform before they go on route a pre-trip inspection of the bus. They also perform a post-trip inspection of the bus after their shift is over. Um we have actually some new software that utilizes uh digital inspections, so the drivers do their inspection on the vehicle and then they perform that inspection and mark any notes on the inspection digitally on the tablets in their buses. Um that new system allows for real-time information to be shared with operations staff and then also our maintenance staff, uh, which makes for quicker response times when defects are found, and then allows the shop to uh prioritize those repairs as the buses come off-route at the end of the night. On our fixed route side, we have our live tracker, uh, which residents can go on to our website and take a look at that. Uh like I said, gives you the exact time of bus arrivals, so you get to see the bus traveling on the live tracker as well as accurate arrival and departure times. This is a very affordable option for people to be able to get around. It's a good option for people who unfortunately don't have the highest incomes. We're able to offer a way to get around town, still be able to get groceries, be able to get to work, you know, make daily commutes, or even go out for a little bit of fun. Matbus gives a good opportunity for people to still maintain a pretty good sense of independence on a budget. Once a year, uh, we have uh what we call uh try Map Bus Week. So all of our routes are free to everyone in the community. So if you haven't tried out public transit, uh we definitely encourage you to do that. That'll be coming up October, and we'll definitely be sending out some information to people ahead of time. As we spotlight the achievements of our city departments, we are instituting an honor of city employees called the Fargo Rising Star Award. In each department, the award will go to employee who's been with the city of Fargo for seven years or less and has gone above and beyond in their service to the community.