Call the meeting to order.

We again with the pleasure of allegiance.

I invite you to join us.

With liberty and justice.

Correct.

Roll call vote, please.

Colpack here.

Pepcorn?

Here.

Strand?

Here.

Turnberg here.

Mahoney?

Here.

So your motion to approve the order of agenda adding an extra item to the regular agenda recommending the appointment of Angie Bear as deputy city auditor.

That's a move.

Is there a second?

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Motion carried.

So your motion to approve the minutes of the to uh two October 27, 2025, regular meeting.

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Motion carried.

Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda items one through 32?

That's a move.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

Uh roll call vote, please.

Pepcorn?

Aye.

Strand?

Yes.

Colpak?

Aye.

Turnberg?

Aye.

Mahoney?

Aye.

A little early for public.

Almost everything is public hearing.

Well, I'll go to the last item.

Recommendation to appoint Angie Barrett's deputy city auditor.

Do I have a motion?

I so move.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion.

I roll call vote, please.

Pepcorn?

Aye.

Turnberg?

Aye.

Kolpak?

Aye.

Strand?

Yes.

Mahoney?

Hi.

Mr.

Strand, do you want to talk about the tax incentive policies?

I certainly mayor.

Um item 42?

42, yes.

It's it's nothing complicated to think about except that when we had our report a few weeks back about uh tax incentives.

I it was my understanding that we had the under the it was my understanding that there would be a requirement of reporting back from uh applicants for pilot incentives.

That they they'd be required on an annual basis to give us a report back on how many jobs they created in the wage levels and and to see that that it's voluntary versus required was a surprise to me, so I think it should be required.

I I believe that's the intent of the commission is to have it just simply required.

And I'm not worrying about the past, I want to just go forward.

Going forward, I would like to have us implement uh a requirement that people who apply for tax incentives give us their reporting back andor face the consequences of not fulfilling their agreements.

It's that simple.

So I I advanced the motion that's in the packet, Mayor.

Commissioner Strand, is there any reason you didn't want to run through the tax exam committee first?

I it already went through them.

It's already been to them, and it's come back to us, and then it's isn't what I thought it would be.

So in my head, the tax commission extensive committee could breathe life into our expectation that this isn't uh a request, it's a requirement.

Mr.

Pepcorn.

So, Mr.

Chair, so this was the our first attempt to have everybody report, and so we had all but two report.

And so it was not mandatory, but and that's kind of what you're proposing, correct, John?

But I would say uh this is very easily resolved, and what what we have to say is if you don't report, then you lose your incentive.

So uh I I agree with your concept and whether or not that's the right way to do it.

That's that's up to you.

But uh to me, that like I said, this was our first attempt, and I always I think we we try to be on the positive incentive side first instead of trying to use punishment.

But to me, this is easily resolved by just saying you got you have to report.

If you don't report, then that's the end of your tax incentive.

So to me, I don't know if you agree with that with that concept or if you want to, but anyway, but I'll second it.

So to me I don't know if you agree with that with that concept or if you want to but anyway but I'll second it I'll I if you're making the motion I will second your motion but I just I don't know if that explains it well enough to you that that's I agree with your concept.

Mr.

Colpak excuse me yeah I understand um your your concern here too Commissioner Strand I appreciate the comments Commissioner Pepforn my question is are there other unintended consequences from the the motion that you were originally proposing that was quite long that should be brought back to the EDIC committee and bring some final recommendations after discussion of everyone on that incentive committee Mr.

Strand if it would be your desire and if the committee would like to work on this and polish it up and get it to where it needs to be I'd be absolutely fine with that.

So Mr.

Sherr, can I make a suggestion that we continue this but the other thing is so what we're doing is the our our uh planning department and our D EDIC is working with the EDC.

So that they collected a lot of the same information and so this was our first year of trying to do that.

So that was part of the issue too.

So I would say we're making improvements and but I I 100% agree that everybody should offer report if you're receiving public money then that's part of the requirement thank you Mr.

Chair and Mayor Strain I think the difficulty in your motion as you have rectified incentive should be revisited retracted or clawed back.

I think you maybe want that commission to revisit that and write out the rules to say if you don't do this is what happens would that be fair to say and and mayor I let's have some timeliness to this so this doesn't kick the can down the road in five years from now we get it back.

But but I'm okay with sending this back to the committee letting the committee polish uh get the policy to what we expect and want it to be simplify it and and bring it back to the commission.

Thank you.

So do I need to move on any motion or just we'll just do that.

I think mayor uh Commissioner Pepcorn moved to send it to committee continue this uh this motion uh but then it will go to the EDIC.

Exactly I'll second I'll I'm okay with that amendment.

Friendly amendment sorry Mr.

Chair Colbeck no okay moved and seconded we're going to continue it it's gonna go back to Commissioner and come back to us.

Roll call vote please strand yes Pepcorn Colpak aye Fernberg aye Mahoney aye I will go to public hearing uh it's public hearing 33 uh OLA second edition and the proposed J and O 45th Street departments edition uh approval recommended by planning commission on 5625 continue to attend 1325 then to 1027 25 regular meetings I'll let Donald Crest explain it because it's a lot go ahead Donald yes sir thank you mayor mahani good evening commissioners Donald Crest of the Department of Planning and Development I'll be presenting the next two items one of which includes an ordinance prepared by the City Attorney's Office and I must uh recognize the the case planner for this Megan Ellsog prepared that extensive staff report uh there which provides a lot of detail on this project uh this is uh it looks complicated but it's it's uh easier than it looks uh this property was originally uh we call it JO 45th Street departments edition and the OLA edition and yellow second edition and this is uh modification of several things that were uh once put in place so the subject property is located here on 45th Street and uh Amber Valley Parkway here uh you may recall that this was uh platted to have a water park and some other features um on that uh this is uh photos of the site here as you see only these uh some of these buildings here have been developed that's all the farther the development has gotten and other site uh site photo there and the zoning here is general commercial with the planned unit development uh again brief development overview there was a large scale destination planned unit development uh construction did begin in 2022 with these these are the mocked buildings the development company as you may uh recall from the news went out of business and so today there are five owners working to bring this whole project together and uh restructure it and and uh develop it and so that whole lengthy list of entitlements there the red outline was the original planned unit development encompassed all these properties uh one of the things that's before you this evening is these two properties here uh zone change and a PUD removal they would be eliminated from the planned unit development and they would have a conditional overlay uh put on them and a copy of that conditional overlay is in your packet this blue area would be a modification of the existing plan unit development and uh of the master plan and then the black area outlined here is the subdivision plat and there's a waiver in there too so the mocked buildings are not included in the subdivision waiver uh this summarizes the change in the PUD ordinance I won't go through all these points here this is in your staff report um so again those are for the properties within this blue box this light blue box um this is the PUD master land use plan this is part of the planned unit development your commission has seen these before originally there was uh continuity or uh connectivity going around the perimeter here that has changed the proposal here

So the mocked buildings are not included in the subdivision waiver.

Uh this summarizes the change in the PUD ordinance.

I won't go through all these points here.

This is in your staff report.

Um so again, those are for the properties within this blue box, this light blue box.

Um this is the PUD master land use plan.

This is part of the planned unit development.

Your commission has seen these before.

Originally there was uh continuity or uh connectivity going around the perimeter here.

That has changed the proposal here is to have uh five residential buildings here for a total of 330 residential units and a single story commercial building here.

And uh then the zone change we talked about briefly, that top box, these would be removed from the planned unit development, and the uh conditional overlay would be in place.

You've seen these conditional overlays before.

They have design standards for building materials, color schemes, uh pedestrian connectivity, uh, so they would no longer be part of the planned unit development.

This is the plat that we looked at, subdivision plat.

There are originally four lots, um, and they're going to eight lots.

Oops, missed one here.

Oh, okay.

We lost one here.

Okay.

So there's also uh along with this subdivision, there is a uh subdivision waiver for cul de sacs.

Uh that would be for this one here and this one here.

And those are uh waivers for cul-de-sac diameter, current cultivated turnaround distance, and cul-de-sac length.

Those are specified in the uh land development code, uh, but those modifications have been uh reviewed and approved by the uh engineering department and the fire department as uh being uh something that's uh safe to do there.

So that's that's included in the subdivision itself is the subdivision waiver.

I just want to make sure I covered everything here for you.

And the recommended motion here again, we'll just go through this one more time.

So there's a zoning change from general commercial planned unit development to general commercial with an amended planned unit development.

There's the planned unit development master plan amendment, so that plan we looked at is going to get amended for block two of lot one of the OLA second edition, and they're proposed JNO 45th Street Apartments.

There's a zoning change for those two top lots up there on the north side on the other side of 24th Avenue, and they will be uh changed from having a planned unit development to have a conditional overlay, and then the plat of JNO 41st 4th 45th Street apartments, including the subdivision waiver for reduced minimum turnaround dimensions and maximum cult length of cul de sac.

The uh applicant's uh engineer Brian Patengale of Houston Engineering is with us this evening and may wish to address the commission.

And again, the recommendation as we just covered there is uh stated in your staff report and shown on the screen.

Thank you, Commissioner.

So that concludes staff's presentation.

Sorry, but your president wishes to speak to the zoning change and development.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Brian Pattengale with Houston Engineering.

Uh Donald did a great job for any of it here.

I'm just sort of here to answer any questions you may have.

I know this is kind of a complicated site and a complicated issue, so I'm happy to answer any questions that may be present uh or issues that may pop up on this.

Any questions to commissioners?

Oh anybody else speaking wanting to speak to the zoning change.

If not, a closed public hearing.

Do I have a motion?

I'll make the motion.

Zero second.

Second.

Any discussion?

Roll call vote, please.

Call pack.

Aye.

Strand.

Yes.

Turnberg?

Aye.

Mahoney.

All right.

Item 34 uh plot of the 19th Avenue storage edition approval recommended by planning commissioner 9425.

Donald Donald Crossrick.

Goodbye.

Uh thank you again, Mayor.

So this item is considerably shorter here, as you see.

Uh so this property is located at 1101 19th Avenue North, uh, up here in North Fargo.

You've probably been by this one many times there on your way to the Fargo Dome or from it.

There's an electrical substation out here.

That's not part of the project, but that's what you see from the street there, most obviously.

Um here's the property here as it was this afternoon.

Uh the owner has has removed the previously building here.

There's a commercial building here, and some of these in this tree line.

There's a couple of different views of that.

Uh, again, you're standing across the street there at this at the uh strip mall and the holiday station there, uh, looking at this.

So this is a little different subdivision than we usually have.

Let me go to the uh the zoning here is LI Limited Industrial.

Just go to the plat here and give you a little background on this.

This plot is uh replat of lot seven block four of the airport first edition.

This was platted in 1969, and is one of the few, if not the only subdivision which has covenants on it that the city wrote.

And those covenants cover a number of things, including that uh let's go backwards here to the photographs, these this tree line here.

And the uh covenants can be modified through a process through the planning commission.

It's a rather extensive process that includes notification of surrounding neighbors in a little more detail than is usually done for our usual notices.

And uh in February, the applicant uh Rick Flaxbarth of Cityscapes uh representing the owner went through this covenant modification process with the planning commission, and they what is left to do with that why this plat is in front of you is the covenants got modified, but there is this 150-foot buffer on here.

The only way to get it off the plat is to re-plat it.

The buffer doesn't go away, just you just change the covenants.

So the applicant, this is like phase two of what they had to do, came back to uh replant this to remove this buffer, and then it's before your commission because it's a major subdivision.

Uh the engineering department determined that we need another 10 feet of right-away on 19th Avenue here.

So the boundaries of the plat don't change except for it's uh the dedication of some right-away here, shortening the south side, but that buffer will be removed.

Here's what the uh uh was provided to us uh by the applicant here, uh general layout, and this summarizes, and this is I believe in your staff report too, summarizes the the proposed modifications of the uh covenants.

There will, as you see here on item 5B, there will still be a buffer here with trees will be 20 feet here uh from this uh adjacent properties, including a tree buffer uh and some distance there to be uh uh installed at the time of development.

The uh recommended motion is stated in your staff report and shown on the screen, and again, Brian Pattengale of Houston Engineering is with us representing the applicant and may wish to address the commission.

Uh we did get one call on this from a neighboring property owner, uh not adjacent to the tree removal area, and he was curious as to what was going on.

I talked to him this morning and he was satisfied with the answer.

So there was no objection from him.

Thank you, Commissioners.

That concludes Death's presentation.

Are anyone president wishes to speak to this uh plat and change to the storage or not?

I have a question.

You have to speak to the mic, please.

Uh sir.

Oh, goes over over there.

My name is Dave Troutman, and I live at 1914 10th Street.

And I was very surprised to see the airport sound um trees removed this week.

Now, are they planning on replacing those trees?

And if so, why did they take the existing trees out?

You want to answer that, sir.

Could you explain that?

Yes, sir.

So uh what as we were explaining here, those trees were established by some covenants from 1969.

Uh they want to they add the property owner proposes developing that lot as you see here, basically shown on the screen.

They did remove those trees.

They're going to put a shorter or that is a narrower tree line in there.

They're required to do that.

So it's it's not as deep a buffer of trees.

It's not six low rows of trees anymore.

It'll be a narrower buffer of trees.

And the applicant's engineer can explain that in more detail as well, sir.

Okay.

I just object to them not taking part of what was there and leaving it.

It doesn't make any sense.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody else wish to speak regarding the zoning change?

I'll close the public hearing.

Do I have a motion?

Uh Mr.

Chair, I'll make the motion, but I also have a question if Rick doesn't mind coming up and answering.

Is that okay if I uh call on them to let's go to second first and then you can.

A second.

There's a second, there's a second.

Okay, Rick, you want to come on up?

So if you don't mind, and if you can go back a slide and just show the buildings and Rick, if you can just talk a little bit about what your vision is for what it will be.

And obviously, his backyard faces those buildings, so just talk a little bit about how that will impact him.

Thank you.

Certainly.

Thank you.

Uh Rick Flaxbart's commercial realtor with Cityscapes Development.

Um, when we first looked at that tree rows back there, um, literally half of them were dead.

And then uh we noticed there was a couple of homeless camps in there.

And we just thought the best way to clean it up was to take those down and start over.

So that blue line where you see there that uh Donald has up.

So we'll be planting new trees in there to replace the ones that we took down, and it will trust me, it will look a lot better than it did when they were, you know, all uh should I say knotted up and uh uh just need it needed to be redone uh from 1969.

So you just talk I obviously I'm sure you don't know exactly what your what the tenants will be, but can you just talk what your vision would be for those buildings?

Yeah, the buildings uh right now, our thought is probably 80, 90 percent of them will be used for our businesses and so uh be storage facilities for just ourselves.

So it's not at this point, we're not looking at doing any retail or any heavy traffic uh in there at all.

So uh it's just designed where we needed some additional storage on the north side, and uh this is a spot that we knew if we got the covenants changed, Commissioner, then we would be able to do something with that.

That's awesome.

So, Mr.

Chairfund, if I could add a couple comments, so I think this will be much improved for you.

I I can speak from personal experience.

There's been so many businesses in there I can't keep track, and the trees were in terrible shape, and so I think from my perspective, I uh they're they're it's a business with good integrity, and so I think it'll be an improvement for you.

So I think you'll be happy with the final the final outcome because I'm sure you can testify.

There's been a few uh businesses in and out of that spot for a long time.

Any other discussion or questions?

Moved and seconded.

No other discussion, we'll call vote.

Pepcorn call pack, aye, strand.

Yes.

Turnberg?

Hi.

Mahoney.

Hi.

Thank you, Commissioners.

Public item number 35, annexation of three hundred and three acres, more or less located at the west half of section three, township 140 north, range 49 west of the fifth principal meridian, Gas County, North Dakota.

Jim Gilmer to explain to Anne McLean.

Um this is a follow-up on resolution that you had adopted regarding annexation of the west half of section three in Reed Township.

Uh the hearing is uh scheduled to determine the sufficiency of any written protests against the uh annexation.

The owner of the appropriate property, applied digital, has filed a written protest, and that protest is attached to your agenda.

In addition, the city of Howard is protesting the annexation because it appears to be in the extraterritorial zoning jurisdiction of that city.

Uh, I've also attached that information.

At this point, you know, the city has the option to either stop the annexation or submit the matter to a committee of uh mediation as provided in the century code.

May I turn it over to Ian McLean about um our discussion of how to proceed?

And the alternative to that would be to um postpone this decision for two weeks to have the hearing allow anybody to object and not be heard, and then you can decide to postpone but based on the negotiated session instructions you gave us at executive session.

But you would want to go forward with the hearing allowing people to speak anyone president wishes to speak to this annexation.

Uh mayor and commissioners, applied digital strongly objects to the city's attempt to annex the west half of section three, land that lies squarely within the city of Harwood's extraterritorial jurisdiction.

Fargo has no legal claim to it.

Harwood has voted to retain it that jurisdiction and to annex the same land into its own city limits.

Applied Digital's legal position on this matter has been widely distributed and reported on.

So today's remarks will be short.

100% of property owners oppose this annexation.

That alone should carry weight in a city that once prided itself on respecting property rights.

To continue forcing annexation is to abandon that principle in its entirety.

As most of you know, you cannot reconcile with someone while continuing to injure them.

As long as this resolution stands, trust cannot heal.

Today, you have the opportunity to set the tone for what the next four years can represent for Fargo.

An opportunity to show that you value lawful process, neighborly cooperation, and the rights of Fargo area individuals and businesses alike.

I urge you to rescind this annexation and begin rebuilding trust so that we can move forward together on what is the largest development project in Cass County history.

Nick, just for the record, could you identify yourself?

My name is Nick Nick Phillips.

I'm the EVP of external affairs for Applied Digital.

Thank you.

Greetings, Mayor, Council members.

For those who don't know me, um, and Mayor Mahoney, as you mentioned uh when we met last week, you've made me famous, so a lot of people know who I am at this point in time, but I am the mayor for the city of Harwood.

My name is Blake Hankey, and I obviously I live in Harwood.

And on behalf of the city, and we've made this very clear from day one, we oppose this.

We feel it's in our extraterritorial zone.

This took us by surprise.

And I kind of go back to the fact that I was on City Council, then I was appointed mayor, and then I ran for a second term and won.

And guess who from the city of Fargo reached out to me during any of that my tenure with the city of Harwood?

Nobody.

Nobody.

And then Applied Digital announces a three billion dollar project.

And guess who wants to be neighborly?

The City of Fargo.

Wow.

Isn't that interesting?

A three billion dollar project comes to town, and now Fargo wants to play ball and work with Harwood.

Come on.

I think everyone needs to know and be be aware of that.

The only reason that negotiations were initiated that Harwood was brought involved was because Applied Digital brought us in.

If you read Nick's letter and he's he's here to verify it, the City of Hargo wanted to do this behind our back.

Not tell us.

Negotiated with our extra-territorial zone and not let us know this $3 billion project was coming into our backyard.

Wow.

That's not neighborly, Mayor.

That's not neighborly commissioners or council members.

Then we have a meeting on July 30th with the respective parties involved.

I was there, we had our city engineer there, Mayor Honey, you were there, Dave Pepcorn, you were there, uh Jim Gilmore was there.

We had a whole bunch of people for the City of Fargo.

And my interpretation of the negotiations is it just didn't go well for the City of Fargo.

It's just really it really didn't.

You guys wouldn't wouldn't budge on the four percent franchise fee, which amounted to millions and millions of dollars for well for this for the city of Fargo and the franchise fee.

Dick's letter eloquently states that it's probably unconstitutional, and I have a hard time disagreeing with that.

I think Fargo's got a problem there.

But after that meeting, what does Fargo do?

There's no communication with me, there's no communication with the city, there's a special meeting, an executive session, and our ET zone is now all of a sudden going to be annexed by the city of Fargo.

That's not neighborly.

That's not being a good neighbor.

I mean, come on.

I mean, that's embarrassing, guys.

Honestly, that's embarrassing.

Now, Mayor Mahoney, we were both on the Joel Heidkamp show at the same time.

A little bit of a spark and forth.

There's a podcast of it.

You can go back and listen to it, and you very clearly said, if you if we do not want as the city of Harwood, Fargo's help, you'll back off.

Well, here we are two months later.

Fargo hasn't backed off.

And so I'm going to ask here in a public forum in front of everybody with the newspapers here, with the TV cameras here, back off.

We don't want Fargo's help.

We didn't ask for Fargo's help.

And we want to be left alone, and we do not want the City of Fargo to continue to annex our property.

What we believe is rightfully our property, it's in our ET zone.

And that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Is there anybody else who wants to speak as public session?

We'll close the public hearing.

Just to recognize the right of different things that have been said about this.

We have sent two letters to the mayor and to the commission in Harwood.

Those have both been neglected, no response.

I did meet with the mayor last week to try to see if can we resolve this issue.

And uh waiting for tonight's meeting, I believe, just to go through those.

And just to be clear, uh Applied Digital met with both Harwood and Fargo.

We're in the same room.

We both were uh offered this deal.

There's nothing secret we had.

Uh it was initially going to be in the city of Fargo's extraterritorial and move to Harwood's extraterritorial.

Be quite frank, Nick, because it was closer to the power source.

Reasonable thing for a company to do.

I don't think there's anything unreasonable about that.

According to law, and when you get into extraterritorial, you have to do it in a certain fashion, and we exercise that right so we could sit down and have a discussion.

Unfortunately, we haven't had discussions, which makes it a little difficult, and we would like or still favor that having the discussion.

So we did have executive session at this time, and I think we do have a motion that uh needs to come forth.

Yep.

I move that consideration of the resolution annexing the subject property be postponed to the regular city commission meeting of November 24th, 2025 to allow for time for discussions with the City of Harwood and affected property owners consistent with the negotiation instructions presented in an executive session to the mayor and to the city and the city attorney's office.

Sir second, second.

Any further discussion.

We welcome having a dialogue.

We welcome sitting down and talk, and we understand uh the Harwood is going to benefit from this.

I welcome that.

I think that's great for your committee and wait for your city.

The tax implications for your city are fantastic.

It will help your city as you grow.

There's nothing wrong with that.

I do have some concerns about some of the issues around a big facility like this, and we can have a discussion, but would like to sit down and just talk about the one item that's before us tonight.

So if you have time to do that in the next two weeks, we'll be happy to meet.

Roll call vote, please.

Colpack, aye.

Hepcorn?

Aye.

Strand?

No.

Turnberg?

Aye.

Mahoney?

Aye.

Public hearing 36.

Annexation of 256 acres, more or less east half section three, Township 140 North, Range 49 West, Fifth Principal Meridian, Cass County, North Dakota, thus those parcels line said east half legal described the instruments recorded, Office of Recorder, Cows County, North Dakota.

Jim Gilmore and Ian McLandy explained as well.

This uh parcel property is immediately east of the uh the last one.

Um we the city commission adopted a resolution annexing this property, and we've scheduled a public hearing to determine the sufficiency of any written protest against the annexation.

The owner of the property has filed a written protest, and that protest is attached to your information.

Uh again, the city has the option to either stop this annexation or submit it to a committee for mediation.

Again, I'll turn it over to uh Mr.

McLean to talk about what we had talked about in uh executive session.

Same alternative to the previous motion would be available for this one.

Anyone president wishes to speak for this annexation for the record, Nick Phillips, the executive vice president of external affairs for applied digital.

Mayor and Commissioners applied digital holds a contract to purchase the eastern portion of section three, which we're talking about.

While it lies within Fargo's extraterrestrial territorial area, we are asking the Commission not to annex the land at this time.

Our position has been consistent and clear.

We are willing to work with Fargo after the annexation attempts are withdrawn.

Only then can we discuss a mutually beneficial path forward.

So long as so long as there is a knife in our back, we're unable to work with you.

Continuing this action sends the wrong signal to the development community that Fargo would rather fight its partners than collaborate with them.

Every day this annexation remains active, the city spends scarce taxpayer dollars on legal fees instead of infrastructure, public safety, and economic growth.

Rather than chasing away future taxpayers who could help avoid city services being cut, if the commission chooses restraint tonight, although it probably will not, it will demonstrate leadership, respect for landowners, and fiscal responsibility.

Values many of you hold.

Please vote no on this annexation and help turn the page forward toward productive future for Fargo and Harwood alike.

Thank you.

Hello, uh City Commissioners, uh Mayor.

And uh I'm Bill Furco.

My family is the owner of this property, and I think our uh my protest letter kind of is self-explanatory, but just to uh let you know that uh we're opposed to this annexation.

And like uh Nick said, there's been no interest in this property until this project came along.

And it seems like kind of a vindictive action that the city's taken to annex this property just because you didn't get this project.

So I would ask you to drop this.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

If not, I'll close the public hearing.

Do I have a motion?

Yes, Mr.

Chair.

I move.

Thank you.

I move the consideration of the resolution annexing the subject property be postponed to the regular city commission meeting of November 24th to allow time for discussions with affected property owners consistent with the negotiation instructions presented in executive session to the mayor and the city attorney's office.

Second.

Any further discussion roll call vote, please?

Colpak?

Aye.

Epcorn?

Aye.

Strand?

No.

Turnberg?

Aye.

Mahoney?

Aye.

Item 37.

Annexation at 236 acres, more or less southwest quarter and east one half the southwest quarter of section 35.

Township 141 North, range 49 west in the fifth principal meridian, Gausse County, North Dakota.

Jim Gilmer to explain.

This is the annexation of uh land also in Fargo's extra territorial zoning jurisdiction.

It's immediately north of the last annexation.

Uh this particular property is uh just used for agriculture.

If the city annexes this property, would you we would not be taking on any additional expenses as the south and east are bordered by county highways, uh which the county maintains.

The uh this hearing has been scheduled to determine the sufficiency of any written protests.

Uh we notified the uh property owner at the uh uh last address on file with Cass County.

Uh we have not received any um protest uh for this annexation.

So I'd like you to certainly determine that there were no property owner protests, and this annexation could be either completed tonight or continued for two weeks along with the others.

My name is Nick Phillips, not speaking for applied digital.

I'd like to briefly commend the gentleman from Applied Digital who spoke earlier.

He was remarkably handsome, incredibly smart and clearly dead serious.

It takes courage to come here and speak truth to power.

But on a personal note, as a residential property taxpayer in the city of Fargo, I have to wonder why the city is spending money on an effort it can't win when we can't even fix our streets or balance our budget.

Launching a costly legal battle against one of the largest economic development projects in North Dakota is a bold strategy indeed.

I would also like to point out that notice in your staff report was only provided to one-seventh of the owners of the parcel you are seeking to annex, who all received the property in 2014.

Since century code 40-51.2-09 requires you send a written notice to the owner.

It appears you are deficient, as it was only a portion of the property that you noticed.

Since you did not mail a copy of the resolution to the owner of each parcel, within seven days of adoption of that resolution, it appears to be deficient.

I urge you to vote no on this annexation and to avoid this lengthy waste of taxpayer dollars.

Thank you.

I should note that the annex uh the notice was sent to the property owner, the property owners and Matthew at all.

Just like applied digital, we did not send notices to every stockholder of applied digital.

You know, that's impractical and not required by law.

It's simply to notify the owner of what's on record at the county.

Um it's not illegal or what they had.

No, and I think our motion at night is to continue is to continue this for uh two weeks.

So if there is any issue with service, we will certainly look uh into that.

Okay.

Anyone else want to speak to it?

Do I have a motion?

Yeah, I move the consideration of the resolution annexing the subject property be postponed to the regular city commission meeting of November 24th, 2025, to allow time for discussions with affected property owners consistent with the negotiation instructions presented in executive session to the mayor and the city attorney's office.

They are second.

I'll second it.

I would notice uh Nick Leave Hansome fellow that we did have a balanced budget, and I would notice that our roads are one of the best in the country.

So uh would question where you got your facts on that, but AI doesn't give you all the facts sometimes.

So Mr.

Chair.

Mr.

Cole.

I just would like to add to appreciate um the opportunity for public comment on this.

Um you know this truly is in the spirit of of continuing the conversation.

And um there are real implications and costs to the citizens in Fargo, and as a city commissioner, um we you know have accountability to the citizens of Fargo to protect those interests at Wells.

So I will just leave it at that.

Any other discussion?

Just one real quick comment.

We in our executive session.

The the key thing that what we're doing as a city commission is protecting the future rights of the citizens of Fargo.

This is a growth corridor, uh, and so that's what that's what our interest is protecting uh the citizens' rights for the forgo.

That's what we're trying to do.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Roll call vote.

Cole Pack.

Hi.

Pepcorn.

Hi.

Strand?

No.

Turnberg.

Hi.

Mahoney.

Hi.

38 United to End Homelessness Update Explanation by Chandra Islinger and Taylor Severtson.

Good evening.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to share an update with the commission and the city of Fargo as well.

My name is Taylor Sievertson.

I serve as the director of community impact with United Way of Cast Clay.

And I'm here with Chandler Essinger Esslinger, the executive director of the Fargo Moorhead Coalition to End Homelessness.

We uh were last here in April providing a formal update, and we've had the opportunity to visit with many of you and many other civic business and nonprofit leaders.

And we're here today to share a brief and hopefully succinct update on two parts of the work of the initiative United to End Homelessness.

Briefly, I'd love to just give you an overview of the two parts of this work that we're gonna share an update on tonight.

We have this dual approach in addressing homelessness, making it rare, brief, and one time here in our region.

The first part of our work is what we refer to as the initiative United to End Homelessness.

And these are our short-term solutions, the things we're focusing on right now to address our communities crisis through this coordinated response to help individuals who are experiencing homelessness right now.

We have a population of focus that we're we're working to support.

We'll share a little bit more about who that is, and we're gonna share a detailed update of the progress of the initiative over the last six months.

We'll also share an update on the Casclay Interagency Council on Homelessness.

We know many of you have been involved or uh educated, informed about the work that has been happening to build our region's long-term strategy to end homelessness.

And so we'll share both of those updates tonight and are really looking forward to sharing the progress of this work.

As you all will remember, um, Taylor and I uh shared a number of different objectives that we were going to be standing up over the next several months, way back in January, and we're pleased to be here today sharing that we have been able to achieve and and begin the implementation of all of those different elements of our plan.

We have established our steering committee of direct service providers who are consulting on both of these initiatives.

We formed a cross-sector regional planning group that is helping to steward our regional comprehensive plan to prevent and end homelessness.

We've developed a fundraising strategy and a financial strategy to support this work now and into the future, and we've been well on our way to implementing our plan for addressing high visibility homelessness in our community.

Next, we'll continue to focus on expanding capacity of this initiative, finalizing our regional plan over the next nine months, and sustaining progress into the future.

In order to really contextualize some of the work that we're doing, we want to share a little bit more about the target population of focus for this specific initiative.

Uh, we uh term this group as individuals experiencing high visibility homelessness.

These are folks in our community who have often experienced many years of unsheltered homelessness.

They have frequent contact with emergency services such as hospitals, detox facilities, first responders, and our incredible crisis teams, and they have repeated engagements with local outreach programs, drop-in services, and other services in the community, but they aren't successful in transitioning those connections to long-term supportive services to move them towards permanent housing.

It is the combination of these factors that really highlights the urgency and the vulnerability of this target population and their need for prioritized services.

And so, really, this initiative is laser focused on a specific and uniquely vulnerable population, and this work complements the overall work of the homelessness response system.

So we're not tackling all of homelessness with this initiative, we're focused on a very specific population in our community.

We really think of this work, the specific initiative and the specific strategic focus on high visibility homelessness as operating as the safety net of the safety net.

The homelessness response system exists to catch people who have fallen through all of the other uh systems in our community that hopefully would put them on a path back towards stability.

And sometimes when people enter into the homelessness response system, because there's so many policies, nuances, and regulations within the system, sometimes people continue to fall through the cracks.

This opportunity allows us to bridge gaps between the knowledge held in outreach shelters and housing and support of staff to ensure that we are targeting resources to the people who need it most, the people who continue to be unsheltered in our community and lack a connection to resources.

We're coordinating care across systems again to catch those folks who are maybe excluded or have been turned away from programs in the past.

And we're filling the space where these traditional programs, programs that work and succeed for many people in our community every single day.

We're ensuring these additional folks have a path to housing and stability.

So again, these short-term solutions focus on these individuals experiencing high visibility, high vulnerability homelessness.

And through our fundraising efforts, we have been able to reach a funding level that allows us to support up to 20 individuals.

16 of those individuals in our target population have been pulled into programming.

We are being supported in this initiative by our direct service partners, Senca, Lakes and Prairies Community Action, and Presentation Partners in Housing, who are working with their teams to maintain these small targeted caseloads and these intensive interventions by the hiring of these three additional FTEs, one at each organization.

And right now we are really excited to share that two individuals have secured permanent housing.

In fact, one of our participants moved into housing today.

11 are actively searching in the process of their housing search, and three more are still in the outreach phase.

We know that building relationships, building trust and rapport with this highly disconnected population is of critical importance for ensuring not only their pathway to permanent housing, but ensuring that they'll continue to engage in services over time and that they can foresee a future where housing becomes a reality.

So who are we serving?

Of the about 55 individuals that we kind of consider to be in this target population, we have comprehensive data on about 40 of them.

And so you'll see a number of different kinds of demographic factors on the screen.

This really both highlights the vulnerability of the folks who are being served through this program, the unique needs, and the rationale for why this intensive wraparound supportive service environment is critically important for helping to interrupt the interrupt their current experience of homelessness and put them on a pathway to permanent housing.

You'll also notice that only about 50% of the folks who are served or would qualify for this initiative are currently experiencing chronic homelessness.

And so what we've been able to do is kind of innovate the system to say we know that folks in our community have experienced long episodes of homelessness, that they have high acuity, they have high needs, but there's some technical definitions that really regulate the system as it currently stands that prevent people from being served in the best way possible.

So this is an opportunity for us to leverage this data to understand these individuals' needs, and again, make sure that we're we're not that we are catching people who are falling through the cracks.

Oh, and I should I would be remiss to not share that of those 40 folks that we have some specific demographic information on, they represent a population of people who have a combined experience of over 250 years of homelessness.

If we had comprehensive homeless histories for all of those individuals and the total 55 that we have in our target population, we would expect that to be much higher.

So to loop back around, we consider this initiative again to be laser focused on highly vulnerable population in our community.

We are the safety net of the safety net, and we have created this very specific system innovation within the homelessness response system to fill those service gaps and serve those individuals who are not being served elsewhere.

We have created a level of flexibility and autonomy for our case managers who are supporting this work that really increases the speed at which people can be housed.

We are strengthening coordination among service providers, ensuring that we are leveraging all of the best practices, all of the skills from this interagency team that is working together.

So we're problem solving collectively and we're sharing strategies across borders.

And we're also establishing this really specific feedback loop to the challenges that have been expressed to us and to many of you by members of the public in our community and the system planning that's required to deliver on some of those measurable outcomes, things that we can see in terms of improving the experience of homelessness in our community.

So we do have some challenges that we're facing.

Like many other parts of the homelessness response system, the demand for resources and services still exceeds the availability of the resources that we have.

And we also know that this becomes especially acute during winter time.

As we think about how we can move from the short-term initiative to our long term strategies, we know that in order to effectively prevent and end homelessness long term, we'll have to figure out a way to make sure that we're not problem solving for winter over and over again to increase shelter capacity to serve more people.

And so we're focusing on sheltering, or excuse me, housing this population, reducing that burden on emergency crisis services and the homelessness response system, and moving forward.

With that in mind, the next steps we'll take over the next few weeks is to engage four more individuals to reach full program capacity, again, based on currently available funding and continue to fundraise to serve the entire target population of this initiative.

I think one of the things that's really important to note about that update that Chandler shared, the progress we've made with people and with systems is that this is complicated work.

It's highly individualized.

We have been able to pull in the right types of partners to help us achieve this work across the region.

We know that no one partner, no one city, no one organization can resolve this on its own.

So we've been able to build this really collaborative space where folks are working across organizations and addressing people's needs in a very individualized way.

And that individualized approach that includes both access to housing and those critical supportive services that are going to keep people stably housed.

That is our focus.

And seeing that population get housed and get access to those critical services is going to continue to have a visible and noticeable impact on our community and our neighborhood.

And so we're really excited to share that progress and continue to see that program grow as it supports individuals.

I'm excited to share some of the updates about that second part of our work.

The regional approach to addressing homelessness again is going to require deep collaboration.

And this is where our work with the Casclay Interagency Council on Homelessness is really focused.

Again, no one organization, no one jurisdiction, no one solution is going to help us build for the future.

It will take this deeply collaborative process in order to build that comprehensive regional plan to address homelessness.

This is busy because there are over 70 organizations, city departments, county leaders who are involved in the Cast Clay Interagency Council on Homelessness.

I think we fit, you know, maybe about 75% of the organizations who are involved here up on the screen.

And this is just really to highlight the fact that for the first time ever, all of these organizations are coming together to find solutions and compromise and really recognize the challenge of this issue crosses borders, crosses organizations, and we're gonna have to work together to make those solutions possible.

So I want to share a little bit of some of the things that we have achieved in the Casclay Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Again, this is a brand new cross-border group that has been stood up earlier this year with the authorization of the five Metro communities and both counties.

We launched the Cascade Interagency Council on Homelessness back in April.

We held our first meeting in July and our second meeting in October.

We meet quarterly with uh identified work groups meeting on a more regular basis, and a whole lot of in-between work happening between Chandler and I and our organizations between those meetings.

We've done some pretty uh big things in the last two meetings over the last four or so months.

So, first, securing the commitment from this variety of organizations has been really critical.

Again, recognizing that people are showing up because they understand that it is going to take all of us moving in the same direction to solve this problem at scale.

Our work to address people's needs in an individualized basis is important, and if we do nothing else, homelessness will continue to increase across our region.

That is the critical importance of the Casclay Interagency Council on Homelessness.

We've taken in a lot of feedback and a lot of insight and perspectives from a wide variety of people to better understand how is this issue impacting your business, your constituents, your stakeholders.

It's been really important for us to gather insight on that on the solutions we're gonna we're gonna work on together.

We've also provided a basis for information, data about homelessness in our community, really serving as a source of truth so that we can all start from the same place, providing that foundational learning about our community's needs and leveraging expert knowledge both from the region and nationally to help infuse some of those best practices that are going to help us move forward together.

Just at our last meeting a few weeks ago, we uh vetted a governance structure that's gonna help this group make uh collective decisions with that many people and that many different organizations, it's really critical that we are deciding together how to move forward.

This governance structure ensures transparency, accountability, shared decision making, and helps us do this in an efficient way with accountability to the public.

What comes next for us is that comprehensive plan to address homelessness.

And we share this kind of roadmap with our stakeholders about what is happening at each quarterly meeting, what are the the critical milestones that are part of this council's work.

As you'll see right there in the kind of the center of the screen, July of 2026, following our July meeting, we'll be excited to launch that comprehensive plan.

The work of the Cascalai Interagency Council does not end there.

The council will be responsible for supporting the implementation, maintenance, and evaluation of our collective work and our progress towards ending homelessness.

So I'd love to share in in uh sort of reflection of what we've shared today, uh, the key takeaways, the things I want you uh that we want you to be thinking about as we move into this next stage of the work.

First, we know that the homelessness response system in our community that's composed of many different coordinating agencies has been overburdened and under-resourced.

You've heard us share that many times in the past.

Our initiative is providing a service to the system, which is so critical, and we're really serving as the safety net to the safety net.

We have been able to hire additional individuals who are scaling high impact programs right here in our community.

It is working already.

We've seen the history of these programs work, and now we're able to do this in a highly collaborative inner organizational way, serving people right now.

And finally, that critical regional infrastructure of the Cascade Interagency Council on Homelessness is working.

People are coming together and they're staying together.

And this cooperation and collaboration among city and county governments, our nonprofit leaders, and our business leaders is really heartening.

And we're we're excited to see the progress of this work collectively.

We want to take a brief moment to share our immense gratitude to our steering committee partners who have been with us every step of the way, consulting on both of these big initiatives, providing us with content expertise, direct service knowledge, all of the things that we need in order to ensure that we're moving forward responsibly.

We also want to again give a big um uh congratulation and thank you to the members who've stepped up to be part of the Casclay Interagency Council on Homelessness.

We're grateful for your partnership along the way.

There are many, many leaders in our community who have been part of this work, who have done this work for many years, who are supporting us, consulting with us, um, and we're just so grateful for the legacy of support that comes along with this initiative and where we will continue to go from here.

And with that, we will uh take any questions.

Commissioners have any questions?

Mr.

Strohn.

Thank you.

And what a uh a great effort you're putting forward into our community.

So thank you for that.

On your page that you, your graphic you showed, who are we serving?

Would you go back to that by chance?

It's 50% chronic, 60% mental health.

What caught my eye here was 16% substance abuse disorder.

There's this.

And 33% alcohol, which probably reflects a lot of our community.

Um people think that the substance abuse disorder, I think is way bigger than that.

They just think that people, it's it seems to be connected to homelessness, that there's addiction, homelessness, addiction.

That doesn't say that.

What does it really say?

You know, I think um, so first, just to contextualize this again, many of these uh data points are things that are self-reported from individuals.

So we do just have to set that foundation.

I think, second of all, there are a variety of different behaviors that we see in our community that are usually automatically associated with substance use, alcohol use, and things like that.

And what this data tells me is that there's actually a number of different factors that can create an environment where an individual is maybe behaving in a way that makes somebody think that they're under the influence of substances, but there are combination of factors that are influencing their health and well-being.

Uh, they're living in crisis, publicly in crisis, they're living unsheltered, and it is the combination of all of those different factors that creates the environment that we see in our community.

So I think that would probably be the best way to kind of contextualize that.

Deeply vulnerable people experiencing high levels of crisis in public.

That can just look like a variety of different things.

Commissioner Strand, I'd I'd also like to mention that, you know, while every individual that our initiative is serving has a very different combination of complexities, the complexities of life that have led to their homelessness.

The one thing they all have in common is that they are experiencing homelessness.

And so we we know what the solution is.

We understand that the solution is both housing and those critical supportive services that are provided on an individualized basis.

Any other questions?

Thank you for your presentation.

I do have one person who wants to comment on it, so I would ask you to move from the pulpit that could get up there.

Christopher Cole wanted to make a comment.

Mr.

Furcall, are you here?

Well, thank you.

Continue the good work.

Thank you very much for reporting that.

Item 39, recommendation for approval.

The second phase, the request for proposals for the convention setting project, center project.

Charlie Johnson to explain with Jim Gilmar.

Mayor and Commissioners, thank you.

We're here to ask you tonight to approve the release of the second round of the request for proposals to the four finalists to build a public-private partnership convention center in somewhere in Fargo.

You've seen the document in front of you.

Most of you have taken part in the meetings to uh hone this document down to where it is right now.

I believe we have like nine nine categories with uh bullet points underneath them that we want the uh the different uh the the four remaining uh projects to uh provide more information on, and then we have a scoring system that has, I believe, uh seven uh seven uh points of scoring.

So uh we have presented this to you in hopes that you would allow us to get this out to those four remaining finalists uh this week.

And then our plan is to give them until February 27th to respond by 4 p.m.

on February 27th.

We'll have an interim meeting in January.

We can answer questions that they put forward.

And uh then after that, we'll wait for the proposals to come in and then our process will continue in a bit of a repeat of what we did the first round, where we'll have them come and give uh second round presentations, we'll have some question and answer with them, and then we'll get around to the scoring of the committee, and hopefully by the end of March, March 30th, we will bring you a recommendation uh of which project we think would be the best choice.

Uh and it will be a difficult choice, as you all know.

Should also uh note for the record, the committee discussed um whether it was fair for the proposals to make some modification from the proposal from the first round of the second round.

I think in general, the committee didn't want to handcuff them and wanted to allow flexibility, so if there's some way uh a group can improve their proposal by uh bringing in a better hotel operator or making the hotel better, uh different configuration or similar to the civic site to modify the exact location of the buildings and the arrangement of things that the committee was open to that.

What they're really looking for is four proposals, and we hope they all get better uh so that there can be a good choice for the uh city.

I want to include that in a minute.

Right, and we have uh we have felt from the very beginning that this is a work in progress for all of the people who who made uh proposals, and that work in progress continues as we try to have hope that in this round they will refine, improve, and give way more detail on their projects, including any possible changes they want to make.

Any questions?

The team?

Mr.

Strand.

Thank you.

I I'm wondering still about public engagement.

Is there any point in time where we'll open the room up to the public and have every proposal visible, people and have the citizens come in and just weigh in?

Uh thank you for asking that question, Commissioner Strand.

I know you've brought that up before.

We've had some considerable discussion about this uh internally.

Um we don't have a plan for having uh an open house or any such thing when it comes to this uh approval.

We feel like the committee has is in the best position to make the choice because the committee has diligently worked on this since last January.

Uh first meeting was first week of February.

Uh we certainly are receiving comments from the public and taking them into account.

Uh and the public uh can continue to send us suggestions, and we're happy to hear them out.

Uh we that's kind of the way that's that's my comf my level of comfortability with uh having the public involved in this at this point.

We've done a lot of work, studied this uh all of these different situations.

We've visited convention centers, we've heard from uh convention center operators, we've heard from stakeholders, we've heard from users, both local and regional, meeting planners, other sorts, and I think we are in a position to move forward.

And yes, of course, we will continue to receive public input as it comes to us, but we are not planning a public input session.

I would recommend it.

You know, uh uh I I just think that any time we can even if you have a room where people can walk around and see.

They don't have to vote, they don't have to put their name on anything.

But I did I did the more the public has a sense of ownership in anything we do and a sense of ability to opportunity to give us feedback.

I I just don't see any downside to it.

I think the committee has been very open and transparent in terms of this is all uh the uh meetings are broadcast, the proposals are all available on the website, you know, the individual committee scores are all public, and so we've tried to be very transparent in this.

And I know the committee is focused on you know, we're building the convention center to benefit Fargo, but it's primarily for the people that come here for meetings, they're the ones that are using it.

And I think the committee is looking at the users of this these facility, you know, what would they you know like best, what do they want to see?

And I think the board uh that you've appointed you have that kind of expertise.

But certainly as we get into this last round, impacts on neighborhoods, if there's a rezoning, that type of thing, that'll all have to be uh very public process.

I I understand your passion for this, and and um we certainly can discuss it when the committee reconvenes again in uh January 9th will be our next meeting when we meet to answer questions.

We can add that to the agenda and have a committee discussion about whether or not to proceed with that, if that would uh if that would help.

And also, you know, and John's question could could the developers just have a display in City Hall somewhere where you'd have the four displays or something.

Not a big thing, but just where people could look at it if they wanted to.

I think we could uh try to work something like that on the other.

Commissioner Stern, go ahead, you had another question.

So that's okay.

That's exactly what I'm thinking.

So, Mr.

Turk, can I just add real quick?

So we're gonna have the four finalists give presentations.

They will be open to the public.

The public's welcome to attend any of our meetings.

We'll make sure that we get it on the city uh webpage so people know when it is.

But that's thus if people want to be informed and and we're everyone on the committee, they can come up and talk to us at any time or text us or whatever.

And so we've been more than available to the public.

Uh and so I think we've done a good job.

But I do if the people want to learn more about the specifics, they can attend the the presentations and we'll make sure that uh we get that out to people.

I think a lot of people have been tracking it based on comments that I've received.

Uh certainly there are some parties who are more interested than others, but we've heard a lot of things from the public as well.

And uh yeah, I like the idea of having getting the four uh final projects in some form where we can present them to people.

That would be okay.

But Commissioner Pepcorn is right.

All of these meetings are open to the public.

They're on video to be watched later.

You can watch them live.

You can come to the meeting.

There's plenty of room here.

We've never been sold out.

Doesn't cost anything, but it's just never been a never been a standing room only audience.

Uh, but we have had people in the audience, and people are always welcome to come and talk to us.

But yes, we'll uh we'll put that on the agenda for January 9th and see what the rest of the committee thinks.

Yeah, I just want to reiterate the diligence that this committee has done, and um the participation has been very good.

I mean, um almost every member who started shows up for every meeting or watches the video afterwards.

And so I'm feeling good where we are.

I would move to approve the release of the second RFP as redlined in our packet, and as it adheres to the timeline recommendations.

Sir, a second.

Second.

Any further discussion?

Roll call vault, please.

Colpack.

Aye, Epcorn.

I strand.

Yes.

Fernburg.

Aye.

Mahoney.

Aye.

I think after this next report, we'll just take a five-minute break.

So item 40, recommendation of approval of the 2630, 2003 transit development team.

Jordan Smith to explain.

Uh good evening, Mayor and Commissioners.

Uh, here tonight to present to you the 2026 through 2030 transit development plan.

Um, I'll invite uh Blue Weber up here to the podium here as he's making his way up.

I will uh give a little background on the transit development plan.

Uh in July, MetroCog and Map Boss began working with Bolton and Mink um to develop the 2026 through 2030 transit development plan.

Uh the transit development plan is a state and federally required five-year plan that evaluates current Mappus operations, identifies community needs, and sets goals and strategies to guide future transit investments.

The plan serves as a management and planning tool for future service and investment decisions.

Public input was collected throughout the entire process to ensure the plan reflects the community priorities.

Adoption of the TDP does not authorize spending.

Future requests for uh transit investments and projects would go through the normal budget process.

Mapos Coordination Committee did recommend approval on October 15th of the plan.

Um so tonight uh we'll have the presentation, and then we are asking for a motion to approve um the resolution of support for the 2026 through 2030 transit development plan.

And with that, we can take it away.

Perfect.

Thanks, Jordan.

Uh thank you so much for having me this evening.

Uh, excited to come and talk about it.

This has been a really fun process.

It's been really uh enjoyable to engage with all of the communities kind of around the area uh and hear from so many people on this.

So I'll try to make this really brief, but I would love to answer any questions as well.

So uh like Jordan said, my name is Blue Weber.

Uh, I'm our engagement lead for Bolton and Mank.

Uh, but there this whole process uh included many people from the community.

Uh, some of you have seen these presentations already, but uh one of my roles on here was trying to understand what the community's perception was around MATBUS and uh what the future of that looked like.

So uh like Jordan already said, uh this plan is something that's done every five years here in the area.

Uh and really the components for what we worked on were uh starting by looking at the existing existing conditions uh and then starting to look at future system needs, so not just routes, but everything that the entire system needs, uh make some service recommendations, see how those floated through the community, uh, and get feedback throughout this entire process.

And then uh a really important note to make here is the coordinated transportation plan.

This is something that I really works with the entire community to find out where other commute uh coordinated transportation services are provided uh by some of those human service uh providers.

Uh one note that I like to make here though is that it is difficult on these transit development plans because you can't just pause transit, right?

These are uh about a 12 to 13 month window of working on these.

And so it'd be really easy to pause it, write down everything, figure out what the future looks like.

But we know that once we start, uh everything is still working and is still kind of in process.

So uh just an important note to make.

Um the purpose of this transit development plan is to really build up on some of the goals, uh objectives and the entire transit system uh and make some recommendations going forward on that.

So we start by looking at the uh 21 to 25 trans uh transit development plan and then identifying system needs based on that and really kind of uh bouncing those off of each other to make sure that it represents uh the entire vision for the community.

That planning process, uh like I said, started uh in July of last year.

And so we broke engagement and kind of the entire process into these kind of phases, as you can already see.

This existing conditions phase uh was one of my favorites.

We really got to ask the question of how does the system work for you, and we'll get into that here in a little bit.

But then the next was the future system needs.

What is it that the community sees?

What is it that the leadership want to see out of that and everything?

And then uh from there really put together that final plan development.

That's where we're at right now.

The engagement, which is my favorite thing, probably uh one of the easiest things for me to talk about is how we broke this up.

So we broke it into three uh buckets.

First was the study review committee.

This was a lot of your community leaders sitting in here meeting with us over these four different times.

We also provided multiple public input opportunities.

Uh, these were everything from some open houses to putting uh actual surveys up on the buses and giving people an opportunity to give us some feedback and then holding some focus groups.

Uh, this was important both for the coordinated services plan, but also just for us to hear from who some of the community uh leaders are and make sure that their voices are in this process.

So the way that we did that was we broke it down into these six different groups and really tried to hear from these groups individually of what the entire system looks like for them.

So, what we heard, probably my favorite thing to be able to highlight here is how much the community feels that the system works really well.

Uh, this is an easy place for us to start because it means that we don't need to completely start fresh on anything.

Uh, as you can see, the system works really well for over 60% of users.

I think that that's an important note and something that uh you guys should pat yourselves on the back for because that means that you have a really good system here in town.

Uh one of the things that we did note was that how often we hear people uh using this on continuous trips.

So uh regularly people are jumping on uh and then having to use multiple routes.

And so that was a really important note for us is that that didn't mean that people saw that as a negative, but it really helped guide us when we started to come up with some of our service scenarios and some of those routes that we wanted to bring into people and talk to them about.

So I the preferred service plan is really this overview of the entire network that we created.

The routes that we wanted to lay out, and this is how everything came out of here for the preferred service.

This isn't necessarily saying this is what needs to happen, but this is to guide Jordan and Julie and the entire team as to hey, here's some of the routes that we saw that work really well.

Here's some of the things that can be modified, here's uh the entire system.

So uh over on the far left here, we have these six kind of broken down categories.

These were what we saw as the most important things to note going forward with that transit development plan.

So simple and direct, bi-directional, uh, fewer transfers, maintain access to the areas, uh scalable, I think is a really important note.

Uh, and that is something that I think the Mat Bus team is going to be taking forward pretty easily.

Uh, and then making sure that the system maintains a reliable network because right now it is extremely reliable and wanting to make sure that whatever the new routes look like that we're proposing, uh, that reliability is still there.

So uh some of the key route changes that we just wanted to highlight uh were you can see them here, but one of the ones that I think is most important to note is uh up in that area around NDSU uh as well as over into West Fargo.

And I'm gonna go a little bit uh dive a little deeper into that on these next slides for you.

There we go.

So uh regional impacts.

This is just I really did talk about how we know that this is a regional system, right?

This isn't just here in Fargo, it's all the way over into West Fargo, it's all the way over to Dilworth.

Maintaining that is really important because this acts as a really good connector through the area.

Um last thing on this is I we wanted to make sure that people didn't have more than two to three jumps.

Uh so those transfers, uh we saw that when we were doing our original surveys of hearing that people really felt it was the best when they were able to just have one transfer.

And so I really trying to make sure that these are inner line systems so that way people can get to and from uh without having to jump off.

And then uh talking a little bit about that simple bi-directional.

This is also tied into that interconnectedness, but making sure that people can get to and from those specific destinations.

We know that the GTC down here downtown uh is a really important location for some of those transfers, but being able to almost have that be kind of a hub for people to jump to and from.

Okay, so now we get to dive a little bit into what some of these uh preferred alternatives look like for the city of Fargo.

Uh, this one really talks about and looks a little bit about NDSU's neighborhood.

So uh trying to analyze it based on where number one ridership is, uh as well as making sure that it stays a convenient service for people in this area.

Uh the next one to note here is I really you're not gonna see a ton of changes on this Route 14, but one thing that was important to note for us was making sure that we're serving the Elliott Place apartments.

Uh, this was something that we heard both from the Mat Bus Coordination Committee as well as our steering committee throughout the entire process was uh redistricting it over to that.

And then the last one, there's a lot going on on this screen, but uh some of the different notes that were important for us to note here was uh looking at that running uh bi-directionally, getting over to West Fargo.

Really, you can see that there's a lot of interconnectedness throughout the community on this one, uh, but making sure that all of those different routes connect still.

So uh our final plan feedback was really going out to the community one more time, asking people where their thoughts were, uh, and it's also doing some paper surveys out, uh, and then uh coming out and doing some of the presentations as well.

So this uh process has been going on since about August, and we ran it through uh till about October.

Uh, some of the things that I know we heard at the LAP MAT last MAT bus coordination committee were some of the notes, and so uh from uh director Thompson, we actually got to hear some really good notes that we've incorporated on there as well.

So trying to make sure that even though we're in these final processes, uh we're still getting the voices in that and making sure that it is iterative for you.

Uh so the future on this, this is something that was uh I already alluded to.

We can't just pause transit while we're working on these plans, and so it does make it difficult because we know that transit's going through a ton of different uh systems and going through some budget constraints as well.

And so uh it's something that we would have liked to have been able to dive a little deeper into, but this process needed to keep moving along.

So uh making sure that we're giving Julie and the team as much information as possible so that way the next five years of their lives look a lot easier too with that information.

Uh and then I noted on this already the coordinated plan.

This is something that uh our subconsultant on the project actually put this entire thing together.

It's an inventory of the available transportation services and how these human service providers uh all coordinate on on the entire uh transit network as well.

So uh we did have these five goals in that final plan, and I hope that all of you have gotten to at least see the entire final plan and read through it.

It's really good Friday afternoon reading, I promise, while you're sitting on your couch.

Uh but these five plans, uh these five goals were really what guided us throughout the entire process.

So uh right now we are in this approval timeline.

So uh we're here doing this presentation.

We're also going to be doing some presentations to Moorhead, West Fargo, as well as Dilworth.

And so uh just looking for that final approval.

There we go, Jordan.

Sorry, I maybe moved a little fast for you.

Thank you, Blue.

Commissioner Kolpak.

I just I have a couple of comments I want to make because of the the and we talked a little bit about a similar issue with the CIP when we had the conversation this morning at finance, but the biggest challenge we have is um understanding the resources between two very different states, um, different needs in different municipalities, and then the funding formula changes that have recently happened federally, but also right now what's so important is the work that's being done legislatively on looking at the funding formula formula across North Dakota now that Fargo has taken in the staffing of the transit completely and has the direct oversight, um, still working with the cities of West Fargo and Moorhead as well.

But it's that's the biggest challenge is this moving number and target of the resources available to provide what may be our best in class services or the ideal routes and and configurations when in fact we are limited by the resources.

And so I just want to put that out there that number one, um, thanks to the our local area legislators and the work they're doing on the the interim study will be very important as we move forward to secure the the the funding.

And the last prompt last point I'll make is that transit is a workforce issue, and we know that from the data we have, and so it's just so important.

Mr.

Stran.

Thank you.

I I'm not sure who to ask this to, but you know, Commissioner Colpak and I sit on on the MAT bus coordinating committee.

Four of the five of us sit on MetroCog's uh policy board, and we've had just we've been working this topic for months and months and months.

So help me understand how what happened at West Fargo because all of a sudden this development plan gets to West Fargo and there's a bump in the road, and it almost got voted down, or there was uh I I just I I hadn't heard that in any of our committee meetings.

I hadn't heard that feedback any time that there was this dissatisfaction in West Fargo.

And I'm just wondering what what was the was it a misunderstanding?

What happened?

It was a misunderstanding.

I talked to the mayor of West Farrow.

Our team wasn't there to explain many of the things that happened.

Our buses do stop at grocery stores, they just don't stop at Hornbackers.

There's some bus shelters that they want to be put up, but they put it on their budget for 27.

Commissioner or Bernie Dartis did not understand that.

He thought we're holding them back and their request to hold till 27.

Our team has now had a discussion with their uh manager.

And uh maybe taking her thunder, but uh, Julia was having discussions um with Dustin and uh we have ongoing discussions with them on on future service needs and and desires.

So we'll definitely continue to work with them on what they want for their community as far as transit goes.

And uh and I think one of the things that threw them a little bit is what it costs on average for a rider, right?

Sure.

And they forget what it costs us for a rider.

And I think the quote was 47 dollars a rider.

I don't know what it costs us for a rider anywhere close.

I don't have the number off the top of my head.

Okay.

But that was one of the concern, Mr.

Strand.

And so he's now being educated.

I hoping that transit has solved this issue, otherwise, we may have to go out and talk to their team it it sounded as I read the newspaper, um, that it sounded like they were ready to maybe pull out if they weren't satisfied down the road and they were that dissatisfied that right now they're not now.

I don't know.

I I I want to look at the numbers, but they're they're the lowest contributor financially almost maybe to the entire map.

You know, 400 and some thousand dollars, I think from West Fargo.

NDSU, Moorhead, and Fargo, and you know, it's I just didn't understand how I felt it was unfortunate that we went through all these months of work, and there people were at the table with us, and that didn't surface once that I recall.

The right communicators weren't at that meeting, but we should fix that.

So I hope it gets resolved.

So I did reach out to the city administrator the day after that article just to understand.

And so Julie and Dustin and I have all been talking.

And so they did put just an informational sheet together.

Um, and so we'll get that out there, and then we're we've offered let us come out and talk to you, and we can help answer any questions.

So we are communicating and talking about what we can do.

So moved.

Any further discussion?

We'll call them, please.

It's a lot of content.

All right, your mic wasn't working there.

Is my mic working?

Sorry, my mic isn't working.

Okay, we'll try that again, Jeremy, because I know you want to be announced.

So Jeremy Gordon is going to present this with Mike Bittner and go through the study that we've been doing for a while in University Drive and 10th Street corridor study.

There's been a variety of different uh rumors in the community what this is going to show, but we're going to get what it's really about tonight.

And I want to commend the team for really looking at this in great detail because of concerns people had for traffic safety.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for having me tonight, uh, Mayor and City Commissioners.

Um, the item in front of you is the final step on the university and 10th Street uh corridor study.

I just want to put it out there that I believe, and I've felt this for a long time.

University drive is our the city's backbone, uh roadway backbone to our entire system.

And in this stretch, it turns into a one-way for three north-south miles.

So the study came to us and MetroCog through the core neighborhoods plan.

This is a recommendation that we should look at these two corridors in addition to that uh study.

Um we did take three years, we took our time.

Good government work slow, and we took our time on this, and we uh took three years to complete this.

Um I'll hand it over to Mike here shortly, but the the study was turned into two phases.

The first phase was are these these are one-way streets.

What happens if we turn them to two-way streets?

All kinds of uh metrics that we got out of that.

Um then I'll just hand over to Mike.

Now I'll answer any questions you have at the end.

Umor, commissioners.

So our study area is the extents that is a one-way pair of University and 10th Street.

So that's 19th Avenue North, all the way down to 13th Avenue South.

And this really is really the most unique and diverse corridors we have in our region.

And not only touches the NDSU, the Fargo Dome area, downtown, several core neighborhoods, um, really in everything in between.

As Jeremy mentioned, we did have two phases overall, and really without uh the goal of a specific project at the end, there wasn't a desire to rush through it.

We wanted this to be very investigatory in nature so that we could fully assess and listen to a lots of public comment and really look at a lot of alternatives.

So kind of underscoring that the diversity and the overall uniqueness of this corridor, uh, we see that walking, biking, and transit um is more than twice to three times higher than what we see in the the metro area otherwise.

We've got 3600 kids enrolled at nine schools within a half mile, and the SU, of course, generates lots of of uh bike traffic, and then of course, a lot of buses between NDSU and downtown.

Unfortunately, 12% of our metrowide ped bike crashes occur along this stretch of the corridor.

A lot of folks said they don't like to bike along this stretch even with the bike lanes.

Um, but because of those railroad underpasses, we do funnel people to and from uh to be able to get them north and south.

One of our biggest comments though, overall was speeding along the corridor.

Um, not always um just consistent speeds, but a lot of that drag racing at night um that was really experienced and brought up many times throughout the process.

This is one of our highest crash corridors from a vehicular perspective in the region.

Seven of our top ten crash intersections in Fargo occur along this stretch.

You can see on the top right, uh, we have a lot of access points.

This corridor really is built like a local road, but it operates like an arterial.

Um, and that's just because of how long and how historic it's been around.

We also have a lot of blind intersections as we move through this area.

So the combination of the two really makes uh traffic safety complicated.

It has a lot of regional utility.

One of the the simplest analyses we did through this process, but potentially one of the more effective was just simply adding the two corridors together.

They work as partners to each other.

And so when you see one road, you see 15,000 vehicles, you think, well, that's way less than 45th Street or 13th Avenue.

But when you add them together, you see that this is our third most trafficked arterial system in our region.

We also see quite a bit of activity related to all those event generators on the north side.

So this vision of this study really was designed to be an engagement effort that also looked at transportation alternatives.

And so we wanted to try to make this the most robust engagement study from a transportation perspective that we could make it.

So we went door to door along this six-mile stretch of roadway, visited 600 residential properties, 60 businesses, sent out 6400 postcards.

We had focus groups with key stakeholders, NDSU, Fargo Dome, et cetera.

And we had 500 online comments.

And this is just our first phase of engagement.

And what we heard was that really came back to a lot of concerns over the traffic speeds.

We also, you know, we didn't advertise at the beginning that this we were going to evaluate would we convert these roads or not.

But almost everybody came to us.

Are you planning to change the way this roadway operates today?

And they're definitely at the beginning of the process was a great deal of concern that they this would change the way that traffic moves through this area.

Other comments were I felt uncomfortable crossing the street.

I prefer to bike on adjacent roads.

It's a bare university drive in particular, it's a barrier for downtown development, and then just a lot of support for the tree canopy.

So we looked at three different conversion alternatives.

We call the first one the minimum impact, where we would keep everything the same, but we would change it.

So we wouldn't move curb lines, it'd be the same amount of capacity.

So if you use two lanes in the north and south, you would just have one lane go one direction, one the opposite.

The second was to add a center turn lane and on the north and south segments of the corridor, we would need to widen to be able to accommodate that, but it does improve safety and operations.

And then last was just looking at downtown.

We can maintain the one-way pairs, but because we have three lanes through downtown, we can actually have two lanes in the dominant direction and continue the one-way pair north and south.

So what we found is that when we converted without changing any of the lane configurations other than one lane north, one lane south, is that we created a significant grid lock.

And that's not just during our AM and PM peak hours.

Anytime we had an event, anytime we'd have someone trying to turn left, you'd basically gridlock the system, bus stops, parcel drop-off, garbage pickup, tree trimming.

It's a very unique corridor, and that has all those different elements on it.

Overall, this increased the travel times to by about eight to 20 minutes longer to major destinations along the corridor.

And probably most concerning from the public standpoint was we weren't able to accommodate all the traffic using our computer models.

You can see about 50% of the traffic couldn't fit in the model.

So they need to find different routes, will that be through local roads or our different or different routes?

But there's really not a lot of great parallel corridors.

Now, if we convert it by adding a center-left turn lane, we certainly improve the safety and traffic flow.

We still have challenges with that.

But in doing so, we impact 125 trees, which is very unpopular to the public.

We also impacted 175 signal and light poles, about 20 million dollars extra.

But probably the biggest concern with that was just related to it really didn't meet the intent of why you would convert it would be to slow traffic.

We'd actually be widening the corridor, making it farther for people to cross the street.

So qualitatively speaking, we found that you know the most common preference, I wouldn't say the majority, but most, about the most common preference was to keep this to a one-way pair from the public's perspective, but find other means and methods to improve speeding, crossing, uh biking, and others.

And then quantitatively speaking, we just couldn't without widening, we couldn't get this to work safely or effectively.

And with widening, we impacted trees and lengthened crossings.

So we did bring this to the commission in August of 2024 with the recommendation that we we no longer advance conversion on the north and south segments, but through downtown we carry that forward and we evaluate that against other alternatives, and we brought that to the public, and that was pretty well received at those meetings.

So our next, the second half of the study overall was we started to look at all the different range of alternatives we could look at for all the issues we identified early in the process.

And what's unique about university and tenth is typically when you look at a roadway project, it's it's build alternative A or alternative B or do nothing.

For here, we had a little bit of a different package.

It was we had a main course, the downtown reconfiguration, as well as several side dishes that you can see along there, traffic calming, traffic safety, traffic efficiency.

So from a downtown perspective, there's three concepts we looked at in addition to a couple others that uh got dropped on the uh the floors.

We were starting to evaluate things.

And so the on the left, you see a two-way conversion.

So you can see two lanes of traffic going one direction.

Um this is at University Drive and First Avenue.

Uh, the second concept in the middle, we would eliminate one lane and we would create a ball belt for aesthetics, but we'd also use that space for either bus pickup and drop-off or loading and unloading areas, or whatever the adjacent land use would find beneficial, maybe even parking.

And then on the far uh right side of the screen, you can see we took that same lane on the opposite side of the street and instead used it for a two-way bike facility.

So, as we evaluated the alternatives, what we found is that really even if you eliminate one lane, but you keep it a one-way, we can still operate this corridor fairly effectively.

And really, the proof of concept is that uh south of downtown, we already have two lanes and we have more traffic, and that operates very effectively.

However, if we start to convert it to two directions, um it's a lot more difficult to coordinate the traffic.

You also have to think when you're making a left turn, now you gotta wait for traffic.

And so we started to see traffic flow really deteriorate even with just that small section of conversion.

We also found that it made, you know, it compared to those other concepts where we reduced the crossing width, um, we could actually improve pedestrian crossings with those second and third alternatives while also adding bike facilities and maintaining efficiency of transit.

So it was a little bit more multimodally effective for all the different modes of transportation, those second and third alternatives.

We also had more aesthetic opportunities, and likely as we moved through the process, we realized that there were several reconstruction projects forthcoming.

So the costs between the two are pretty similar.

Overall, the public supported those last two, a little bit more than the conversion.

We also looked at other packages of solutions.

This is a bike connectivity package.

Um, really, the the key takeaway with this concept was most folks didn't feel comfortable biking along university or 10th, even if even with the bike lanes.

And so making sure that we have a good system on 11th that kind of lets people come to and from that, and we would improve facilities along those railroad crossing locations so that people could effectively get to and from that 11th street.

We also looked to improved signalized intersections as well as add new crossing locations.

We would do this.

We actually found that of those 12% of crashes regionally, um, 50% did occur at traffic signals, and we see those as the utmost safety for pedestrians and bicyclists.

So we looked at different ways to eliminate uh left turn and right turn phases only when a pedestrian's crossing and then let them move once the pedestrians out of the way, also giving them a head start.

That's been proven to reduce safety or reduce crashes by about 60%.

We also looked at alternatives such as pedestrian scrambles, which allows you to cross and in all the different directions, which can be advantageous at intersections that do have diagonal crossings or people cross both legs.

Really the vision of the plan ultimately recommended to start with these types of improvements at traffic signals, but continue to keep these two locations, University and 12th and University and 17th, in mind to consider uh pedestrian scrambles.

The downside of those is that you require a much longer crossing time, and you can't turn it on and off.

It's either you're all in or you're all out.

So when NDSU is not in, you know, when NDSU is not in session or there's not an event at the Fargo dome, these two locations would operate pretty poorly for one person to cross north-south, for example.

We also brought forward several traffic calming solutions, which were certainly the most uh popular that we brought to the public.

Um, a variety of different solutions you can see on the screen.

I'm gonna focus on two.

Uh, first and foremost, signal timing and signs.

So during peak hours where we have a lot of traffic, people kind of travel in packs, and so we're not able to get that same drag racing effect.

But see, people still are driving faster than they should over the speed limit.

But if we tighten up how we time the signals and we put a sign that says, hey, this is timed for 30 miles per hour, that you could actually run into red lights if you travel too fast.

So a way to control peak hours.

Um, but really the most popular solution we brought forward was this rest in red signal improvement strategy.

Um, this would be primarily during those off-peak periods when people can drive very fast.

Now, imagine you're driving at 10 o'clock at night, every light is green, there's two lanes of traffic, there's no one coming from the side streets, you can get going pretty fast.

So the way this would operate, and you can see the top graphic is we would have radar detection that would detect the speed of a vehicle.

All the signals would be sitting in red at all times.

Now, once we detect the speed, if you're going an acceptable speed, we'd change it to green before you got to the intersection.

So you travel through without having any impediment.

Now, if you're going too fast, we'd hang on to red until we slowed you down.

Uh found a great case study in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Um, this certainly is an emerging technology, but in Albuquerque, they had a one-way pair, almost identical to what we're seeing here.

Um, and you can see in the bottom left graphic in black, that was their speeds before was a 30 30 mile per hour posted speed.

But you can see that you know, almost everybody's going 35-40 miles per hour, and we see speeds upwards of 60, 70 miles per hour.

But then after they deployed this, you can see about 90% of your traffic was within a couple miles per hour of your posted speed limit.

So an effective solution to tackle that problem, which is exciting because that felt like something that when we started the project, most folks felt well, there's nothing you can do to fix this.

You just got to enforce your way out of it.

But finding an engineering solution for this was really exciting.

We also had a variety of different traffic safety and operational improvements, phased access management, line of sight, law enforcement confirmation lights, as well as some technology in and around the event areas to prove efficiency.

So here's a very flash of a graphic of all the pieces kind of sewn back together.

We talked through them all in a disparate fashion, but you can see we've got pedestrian crossings working in combination with traffic calming solutions, working in combination with our downtown solutions.

So finally, our phase three engagement.

Again, it was really important that we got out to as many folks as we could, but in particular, the emphasis in this phase was to get to all the different types of users.

And so going to NDSU Tailgate to try to capture more folks that drive using this corridor.

So we engaged 400 total participants.

Um we had 150 online comments in addition to those 400, uh 6400 postcards.

We had our focus groups again, and then we had a public open house as well.

The summary of the feedback for this last phase is there was significant support for the various different improvement packages.

You can see in the bottom left, this is a percentage of support, 100 being you support it fully, zero, you support it not at all.

Um, and so you can see the different packages really um supported upwards of 65 to 80 percent.

Um, and then also just kind of uh differing opinions on what the the best way to look at downtown is the again, as I mentioned earlier, the most popular was removing that lane for something for ped bike uh utilization.

A couple of the lingering comments was just wanting more done for speeding, their um you know, relative to fines and enforcement, um, and then there also was a strong town's opinion to just convert it, continue to convert that concept out of the corridor, the whole stretch.

So, final two slides here breaking those different improvements down into implementation strategies.

Um, the recommendation that came out of the the study or the the improvement strategy was um really to look at these low-cost, high impact safety improvements, the rest in red, the signal timing, um, the pedestrian crossing improvements, uh, fit that into one project because they are all very similar, their traffic signals or their beacons.

Um, it'd be about 1.2 million dollars, um, and then make an application to the highway safety improvement program, um, and this would be a really good fit, and that could cover uh about 80% of the overall costs and probably as a very likelihood, a high likelihood of it moving forward.

The only disadvantage of that strategy is uh highway safety improvement program does take about five years uh in terms of the overall timeline.

So there would be options to move that forward quicker if you didn't want to wait there.

And then as we start to think about the downtown segment, certainly this is kind of like I mentioned the main course of the overall recommendations.

There are three programmed reconstruction projects that can take the take the findings of this study and use it as the foundation and continue to engage public and figure out what is the right solution.

We didn't finalize do this or that solution, but we left them all in the plan so that that could really uh be worked through a little bit later.

So, with that, did I miss anything, Jeremy?

Any questions from the commission?

Yeah, call tonight, Jeremy, is to approve this.

Oh, yep.

Motion so moved.

Second, all second, but I'd like clarification as to what we're approving.

If you go back a slide.

So we're what we want to do is uh approve the study as written.

Um yeah, you're it's a good question.

The alternatives that are identified here, the three alternatives.

Um looked at, they're valid alternatives, and we will look to implement one of the three when we have construction lined up.

Um when we have money um coming to the road project.

So I will note the very first project that's listed up there at 10th Street and P to Fourth Avenue North.

We just received funding for that.

We are were notified this year that we receive funding for the year 2029.

So we have time to figure out what we want to do on that portion on 10th Street.

Can I ask a follow-up question, Mr.

One thing, Commissioner Pepcorn?

On the first part, though, Mike, didn't you say that one million we could do now?

Is is that what we're approving as well?

Yeah, so um approve the study with the all the options still valid in the final decision would get decided when we bring the environmental doc on that particular project.

And the other thing is to apply for the safety program for the improvements you see on the screen there.

Um go ahead.

Just another question for Jeremy, and this is my last one.

The there's so many access points.

That's to me one of the challenges.

Is there a way obviously there's a lot of landowners that you have to have access, but is there a way to try to reduce those by could you do that with our engineering department meeting with them, or is that is that just too much of a it gets too complicated?

Well we for I it's it's complicated.

But these are also state routes, you know, it's US 10 or US uh 81.

Um we're going through the same process on Maine Avenue from University to 25th.

I an incredible amount of accesses.

We probably closed 20 percent of them.

Uh some of them are very necessary for business to operate.

Some of them are redundant, so we do keep that in mind.

I'll just add anything.

Another discussion?

Sorry.

I was just gonna follow up on that.

There is a part of the the report that actually goes through that exercise.

It starts to evaluate which ones are redundant, which ones.

I mean, some of them are you know alleyways that we're not gonna be able to, or direct driveways that are gonna be difficult, but totally agree that that's a major component.

And there's a slide that uh that I that I have hidden behind this, but the systematically improving that through redevelopment and through these projects is a really important element, and and similarly with the trees replacing them when it makes sense without impacting the aesthetics of the corridor.

So there's things that will take a lot longer than some of these shorter term things that are in the plan as well.

Mr.

Stran.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um Jeremy, you you mentioned it briefly, but I'd like to go there.

Highway 81 is are both of these roads US 81?

Yep.

And what's the relationship between the state and this and and the city with uh uh co-owned line roads like that, streets?

It's ultimately their land, it's their right-of-way, it's the state right-of-yeah.

But when we have our agreements with them, our cost participation and maintenance agreements, we are in charge of operates operation and maintenance.

So we we I mean it's a collaborative effort, but ultimately it's their right-of-and and we operate it.

Thank you.

Any other discussion?

Roll call vote, please.

Call pack, aye, Pepcorn, strand, Turnberg.

Hi.

Mahoney.

All right.

Uh Commissioner Turnberg brought this up.

I would just ask on this discussion, let's keep it to the issues at hand and not talk about city staff if we can, it's just the issues of what the concepts are.

So uh perhaps you could say what you want to get into and then uh Jen Fowl does have a presentation.

Mr.

Turnberg.

Well, sure, I would like to see the presentation first.

Uh one week ago I was contacted by a Fargo police officer asking if the city was now handing out pipes for drug users because they'd been finding them all over downtown around City Hall in the civic center.

I told them nothing had been brought up to the commission, but I would find out.

I then called uh Fargo Cast, public health director Jen Fall, who said yes, they had implemented a safer smoking program.

I requested all of her supporting data.

So I would like to see um Jen's presentation, please.

Good evening, Mayor, Commissioners.

The syringe services program was last presented to Commission in November uh 24th of 2024.

No, November 25th of 2024.

Uh at that point was voted to continue to produce to continue as the syringe services program under Fargo Cast Public Health.

Um public health does not provide services based on the lens in which we see the world around us or by the opinions held.

We do the work of public health that is rooted in and guided by evidence-based research and provided to the community in a response to the need.

That said, um we learned that the death rate by opioid use by um injection had decreased, but by smoking had increased.

And I know it seems super counterintuitive to then want to distribute pipes to further this effort.

Is really a nod to the effectiveness of the syringe services program that we have effectively reduced the amount of deaths by injection drug users.

And we've also decreased the amount of hepatitis C and HIV.

So going through that and looking back to the evidence-based research, I'll give you the presentation and all of this data and journal articles had been presented to Commissioner Turnberg last week upon her request, and it's also posted in its entirety on our FAGOCAS Public Health Facebook page.

So the evidence-based research that we had gone through.

And this was done in October of 2023.

The CLIF Note versions of this is in the conclusion of this global review found that safer smoking practices are essential forms of harm reduction.

International policies must be amended to help increase access to these essential tools.

Additional research is also needed to evaluate the efficacy of and access to safer smoking services, particularly in the United States and other similar countries where such practices are being implemented but have not been empirically studied.

This was a review of 32 studies in six different countries, speaking to the effectiveness and the variances of safer smoking practices.

The drug and alcohol dependence reports, which also supports the safer smoking with the titled article, Association of Safer Smoking Supply Distribution with Participant Encounters of Naloxone Distribution from Syringe Services Programs, the findings from the National Survey of Syringe Service Programs in the United States, and this was done in December of 2024.

The conclusion of this is that the United States is currently experiencing its third decade of overdose crisis.

The study found that syringe service programs implementing safer smoking pipe distribution had more participant encounters and distributed more inaloxone doses.

To maximize their full individual and population level health benefits, SSPs should be supported technically, legally, and financially to implement safer smoking supply distribution for participants.

Policymakers, federal agencies, and state and county departments should be informed about the potential public health benefits of safer smoking supplies distribution and address barriers to implementing this important service.

In 2022, 44% of safe of syringe service programs in the United States were distributing pipes throughout their survey and study was of 429 syringe service programs throughout the United States.

It was also founded in that study that more community-based programs were distributing pipes than public health or other healthcare entities throughout the states.

The last one that informs public health more directly is the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, which has the article distributing smoking supplies, a safety for harm reduction programs to reach new communities with overdose and infectious disease prevention, and this one's most recent actually in May of 25.

The conclusion of this distributing smoking supplies allows syringe service programs to reach a broader population of people who use drugs with a more comprehensive array of supplies and services.

While further research and evaluation are needed to more fully understand the relationship between smoking and overdose, our program evaluation indicates the distribution of smoking supplies allows syringe service programs to better reach populations that are inequitably impacted by overdose.

The findings of this project also suggest that many people who use drugs are interested in smoking more in lieu of injecting.

In short, distributing smoking supplies is paramount to reaching people who smoke and prevent overdose and infectious diseases.

The National Association of City and County Health Organizations, which supports local public health.

And in North Dakota, we have what we call SACO, the state agency of city health organizations.

There are 28 local public health units throughout the state, and we all are within this SACO group.

NATO, which then aligns and supports the SACO and the rest of us to do our work, support this initiative, and they have their data that compared to injections, smoking poses lower risk for transmission of HIV, viral hepatitis, and potential overdose.

Distributing smoking supplies could facilitate reduced injection and consequently infectious diseases.

The studies suggest people who inject drugs are interested in and open to reducing their injection and transitioning to smoking, especially if safer supplies are available.

Smoking and smoking involved overdoses appear to be increasing, making it even more important to reach people who smoke.

Again, it seems kind of counterintuitive, but we'll move through this.

Syringe services programs engage and build trust with people who use drugs, and that's going to be the acronym that you'll see in the research as you read it, the PWUD, connecting them to range of health care and social services, STI testing, substance use treatment, and by offering smoking supplies, syringe service programs can reach a broader, more diverse population of people who use drugs.

The century code for North Dakota actually allows for the syringe services program by code, and we've talked about this in our previous presentation.

The authorization here will go through a supply list, and this is going to be important as I go towards the end of this conversation.

The supplies are listed under C of the authorization, and then there's this bold term that says and other items recognized as supporting safe drug use.

This was added to the inventory of the syringe service program as an other drug that was recognized as supporting safe drug use.

Throughout North Dakota, this is the areas in which syringe service programs exist.

The North Dakota Department of Human Services or Health and Human Services reviewed and authorized and continued to review and authorize our syringe services program.

The harm reduction syringe service program was reviewed by the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services in March of 2025.

This was after the initiation of the Safe to Smoking Supply Distribution.

The North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services reauthorized the program with a statement of satisfying the requirements set forth in the century code.

The staff at the syringe service programs have been reporting the number of the 4,952 pipes that were distributed across the 7,090 visits that were conducted between February when we started and when we suspended our program in October.

We report them through a Maven reporting system of all of our data that goes to the health, the health department.

Not mine, but the State Health Department.

In March through October of 2024, compared to March and October of this last year, safer smoking supplies distribution again began in February of 2025.

So we're going to talk about the increases here.

38% increase was recognized in lives saved.

And this is when I talk about lives saved, this is because we were able to distribute naloxone to more people who came to the syringe services program.

Last year in those six months, we had reverse overdose deaths 318 times, and in 2025, it was 439.

We had a 49% increase of naloxone doses distributed from 4,434 to 6,608.

We had a 98% increase in enrollments from 230 to 454.

We had a 40% increase in visits from 4,668 to 6,852.

We had a 34% increase in unique individuals served from 985 to 1,321.

And unique individuals, I know there's a question about this previously.

Unique individuals are those people who are just one person coming in.

So I might come in but receive a service five times.

So but I am one unique individual.

And so it goes by the number of people, not necessarily by the number of visits.

That was that supply list that allowed for other safe drug use items to be distributed, and the century code that talks about paraphernalia and the definition that is lined out.

And because they line out specifically what they are in the century code that allows us to distribute that, but they do not allow pipes in the definition of paraphernalia on the criminal side.

There's this inconsistency that had our law enforcement officers and partners not knowing exactly what to do if it was going to be charged as a paraphernalia or if it would not.

The City of Fargo legal team and in partnership with the Farago Police Department and Frigo Cast Public Health met, and we decided to suspend the safer smoking distribution at this time until we can have further clarification on the policies.

Thank you.

No, I have I have plenty to say.

Well, they might want to hear it.

Yes.

Thank you, Jen.

Uh I will say you did get back to me when I called you asking.

It was surprising that Fargo police officers were unaware that the city was giving out crack pipes.

Um, but I did let them know.

I did get a reply from you that started with, I know you don't support the free syringes, but I hope you don't go to the media or on social media, which to me is a red flag.

There is a long list of items harm reduction gives out.

You did mention some of them tourniquets, spoons, needles, pipes, condoms, dental dams, mouth guards, etc.

Today I learned in addition, harm reduction also gives away booth kits.

Boofing is a slang term for the act of administering drugs into the anus, so they can be absorbed into the body through the rectal lining.

Medically speaking, that's trans-rectal abuse.

This is touted as harm reduction method for drug users.

Also, because boofing gives users such a quick hit, there's a big risk of overdosing, especially since the drugs have entered the body directly through the bloodstream.

Basically, no way of taking drugs is safe, but you can get your kit across the street at harm reduction.

Back to discovering the city was giving away crack pipes.

Days later, you did send me some studies, but nothing on the breakdown of money.

One week later, I still don't have the breakdown of money, where it's coming from and how much has been spent.

We did uncover this safe smoking program has been handing out what most people would recognize as crack pipes for the past 10 months.

5,000 pipes, not exchanged, not returned, but back into the community, many just thrown on the ground for children to find or others to pick up.

Then apparently there was an emergency meeting convened when city administration found out about the crack pipes.

And because the safe smoking program may actually be illegal, it was temporarily halted.

So who went rogue and decided on their own that the city of Fargo would now hand out 5,000 crack pipes?

And now booth kits.

Quite frankly, I expected to see a resignation announcement this past week.

An employee of harm reduction told the media they started giving the pipes in February, and then engagement is skyrocketed.

Well, imagine that people taking advantage of free items, although most people know that nothing is free.

What they need to understand is by by doing this, it's making our community safer.

So prove it.

Show me how handing out 5,000 crack pipes is saving taxpayer dollars.

You would think harm reduction would want to work themselves out of a job, not celebrate 5,000 pipes.

Well, let's dive deeper.

The program operates under North Dakota state law and is funded entirely by the federal opioid grants.

No local tax money is used.

So no local tax money.

Our individuals that work for harm reduction city employees.

Does the city pay their salary?

What does the opioid settlement pay for?

Just the actual needles and pipes, booth kits, and other items?

Again, information I've requested and not been given.

Where do you come up with no tax dollars when we have employees, buildings, and overhead?

Where does the money come from to clean up the needles and pipes and other equipment?

The city spent tens of thousands of dollars cleaning up encampments along the river where countless needles were picked up.

That's tens of thousands of dollars of your tax money.

North Dakota Century Code.

Where does it state that there is a crackpipe program?

North Dakota Century Code, Title 23, Health and Safety, Chapter 2301 Health Division, needle exchange program.

Exchange is stated repeatedly in the document.

Nowhere doesn't say free needles.

I would challenge is Fargo breaking the law by just handing out free needles?

There is no exchange.

There have been countless complaints from people finding needles, children finding needles around the metro, by the river, in parks.

There is no exchange.

Let's rewind again.

This whole program started with a blue ribbon commission created by Mayor Mahoney and other area leaders in 2017.

These city leaders would not listen to addiction counselors.

Here is a quote from an addiction expert who quit this blue ribbon commission.

Those that actually know anything got silenced.

We wanted to address alcohol, not just opiates.

The city said categorically no.

They set their mission as curing addiction.

You can't cure genetics.

You treat it.

Harm reduction began in 2018.

All of these items are available at the Downtown Engagement Center.

How has downtown changed since 2018?

For the better.

Rather than using opioid settlement dollars for treatment, we give out drug pirial, call it safe drug use, then offer Narcan when a person overdoses with what we supplied.

Then we call it harm reduction.

It's like you want to take a man, cut off his leg, hand him a crutch, tell everyone how much you helped.

Testimonies from recovered addicts and family members of addicts.

Quote, I think it is outrageous that they would hand out free pipes.

Why would you hand out free drug items for drug use and not invest into getting people into treatment?

My mind is blown.

Instead of enabling drug habits, help them get better from Omston.

Quote, my stepdaughter came from Oregon to Fargo.

I go into the community and volunteer at food shelves and as a chaplain to young women trafficked a rate.

They're all visiting and getting more drug supplies from the harm reduction center, then condoms at family health to stay safe as they are selling themselves to get more money for drugs and keep the circle going until the sixth or tenth overdose, and they finally die.

Maria.

Next quote.

After being released from jail, a young woman I work with was back at harm reduction within hours, high again and threatening people.

Fargo Cast Public Health is giving her condoms, pipes, narcan is killing her.

She has been raped and overdosed countless times, but can't get an inpatient bed anywhere.

Heidi.

Next quote The end of harm reduction and this insanity is my prayer this morning.

Some real truth has come to light, and I think the citizens of Fargo have had enough.

Also many things that are not working.

And the time is now for you to wake up and shut this program down.

We have city employees once again afraid to speak up because of retaliation.

Who is approving these items?

Who is cleaning up the paraphernalia around the city?

Cigarette vending machines are illegal.

However, many of these items are in a vending machine across the street.

There seems to be no consequences to illegal drugs.

Businesses downtown are dying.

You have the city of San Francisco dialing back their harm reduction while Fargo keeps adding to it.

We are one of 429 cities in the entire country that hands out pipes.

Why would we want to join that club?

We have a Fox running the hen house while the city is 1.3 billion dollars in debt.

So who made the decision to start handing out 5,000 crack pipes?

It was the director for the harm reduction program, and I trust the directors of each one of our programs to bring forward the evidence-based research to support the work in the harm reduction section they have, as much as I would any of our other directors that would bring forward a cancer screening toolkit or an immunization program to look at other issues that we addressed through public health.

That is if you don't like the policy, let's go after the policy.

The second thing I'd like to advise you on is that the deck does not have the needle program.

The needle program is at a different location.

So the deck has none of the needle program.

It's at a different location entirely.

So that team is not part of this uh program.

Go ahead.

The syringe services program is funded out of the opiator settlement dollars.

Again, it as the mayor indicated, it is not affiliated with the deck.

Yes, they are city staff.

The program is open 24 hours a week.

And the vending machine is at the deck.

And it does not have a pipe in it.

And to access the vending machine, you need to have the unique additional.

No, exactly.

Access.

You have to have the code that was given to you at the syringe services program.

You have to be over the age of 18.

And tobacco vending machines are legal, but they need to be in spaces that are over the age of 21.

But I'll open up public comment I have in person to Doug Charbonell.

Good evening, Mayor Mahoney and Fargo City Commissioners.

I am Doug Charbonneau.

Speaking in opposition to the drug needle and crack pipe exchange program operated by Fargo Cass Public Health.

I want to thank Commissioner Turnberg for bringing this travesty to the citizens' attention.

I would like to share a little history.

The current needle exchange program had roots in the 2016 Blue Ribbon Commission set up by the area mayors.

This in turn led to legislation passed in 2017 supporting needle exchange.

After a little research, I discovered the Blue Ribbon Commission was really undeserving of its name.

It was reported to me that the commission led by the area mayors did not listen to the addiction counselors within its body.

The Commission apparently knew more than the experts.

Some of these experts left that body in 2016 because they had little to no voice.

At that point, it crosses the line to enabling drug addicts.

With this action, the arrogance beginning in 2016 continues forward to today.

Expert recommendations were not followed, and drug problems in Fargo have since worsened.

Then you can look at the quote unquote needle exchange program.

It is anything but needle exchange.

It is needle giving.

Again, a deceptive title.

The exchange portion written into state law is not followed.

Then there is a safer smoking supplies title.

When one first sees it, one thinks of tobacco cessation.

It is not.

In reality, it is giving out glass pipes by the city of Fargo intended to smoke meth, opioids, and crack.

No one has yet satisfactorily explained how furnishing these illegal, not inconsistency glass pipes are safer.

The citizens of Fargo need the city to provide safety to our citizens.

We cannot have the drug curve or children to touch them.

Doug, your time's up.

Desiree Martin.

Just remind the speakers you have two and a half minutes.

Speaking time.

Good evening, Mr.

Mayor and members of the City Commission.

My name is Desiree Morton, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight about an issue that is deeply concerning to me and many others in the city of Fargo.

The issue of distributing free needles and glass pipes to people already struggling with addiction.

While I can sort of understand that harm reduction programs may be rooted in compassion to reduce transmission of HIV and STDs and to keep people safe, the reality is that these programs often have the opposite effect.

By handing out free drug paraphernalia, the city is not addressing the problem of addiction.

It is normalizing and enabling it, not to mention the fact that it actually may be illegal, according to North Dakota Century Code, Chapter 19-03.4, and uh Chapter 23-01-44.

Every time you hand out a free needle or a glass pipe or any of the other things that are offered in the vending machines within the that are considered part of the harm reduction program, continued drug use becomes acceptable, even expected.

Instead of recovery, you make it easier for these people to stay trapped in their cycle of dependency.

Where is the compassion in that?

These people need help, treatment programs, counseling, a pathway to employment, stability, and a life free from drugs and alcohol.

In the meantime, our neighborhoods suffer the consequences.

Parks, sidewalks, public spaces are littered with dirty needles, syringes, broken glass, and vomit.

Parents worry about their children's safety, businesses suffer, and we the residents lose faith in our city's ability to protect us.

Compassion for people who are struggling with addiction should never come at the expense of community safety and public trust.

Maybe the city of Fargo should think about funding detox centers, job training, treatment programs that restore dignity and purpose to people struggling instead of enabling and funding their addictions.

I have lived in Fargo my entire life.

I have always been proud to tell people that I live here.

However, the things that I have seen take place in my beloved Fargo in the last 10 to 15 years have been very disheartening.

Increased crime, gangs, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, homelessness, and the overall unhealthy atmosphere has caused me great heartache.

I know that if we are willing to make the hard choices, that we can do better.

Thank you for your time.

Glenn Knutson.

Mayor and Commissioners.

My wife and I were recently gone on a vacation for two and a half weeks.

I've been told by the mayor, crime is down in the city, and the police are fully staffed.

During our time we were gone, I uh Prairie Wood watch sent me just about two crimes a day occurring within a mile of my house.

Why would that be occurring?

It couldn't have any concept to a needle exchange program and giving out of crack pipes.

Then what was disturbing to me is I look at the who are in charge of those departments.

The mayor is in charge of the police department.

Mr.

Strand is in has is the commissioner who relates to public health.

Mr.

Strand knew nothing about this.

How is crime down when there's two uh crimes a day occurring within a mile of my house?

Why does a commissioner who is being chastised by other people on this commission find out about it, but the people in charge don't know anything about it?

Then on top of it, I hear this lovely lady, give on a radio program, that these pipes are given out because there's a crack program in Fargo, but because we have a fentanyl and a meth problem.

I want to tell you, one drop of fentanyl could kill you.

Meth will destroy your pleasure sensors in your mind, and those drugs are the worst drugs there are, ten times worse than crack.

And we are encouraging people to get continue in that because they can come and get a free crack pipe.

What kind of city do we have?

You look at downtown Fargo.

When I came to Fargo, there were seven liquor licenses in downtown Fargo.

And you had to wait until one of those became uh available and buy it from the existing person.

Today there are over 70 various types of liquor licenses in Fargo, and we've moved half of NDSU's campus down here, and we can't figure out why there's Far problems in downtown Fargo.

Pipes, needles, alcohol.

And then our commissioners don't even know how farms are doing.

Oh, Glen.

I remind speakers, you're really not supposed to mention names who can talk about the commission, but the names of the commissioners basically is not something that they uh are part of the rules.

No, no clapping.

Brian Hollis, please.

Good evening, Mayor, Commissioner.

Uh my name is Brian Hollis.

I live pretty close by, up by Oak Grove Park.

About a month ago, I was walking my dog through the park, and I found about 25, 30 uh used syringes in a clearance right by the river, uh, right off the path, maybe about 200 feet from a playground.

Uh, there's a bunch of other junk there too.

You could tell someone had had a party all night there shooting up.

Uh so I didn't want to dispose of of it, so I called the police.

Uh they had to use their resources to send an officer down to clean the place up.

She called me to follow up with me.

And uh I asked, are these the type of needles that they give out in the harm reduction center?

She said, Yeah, they are.

And it sounds like they're finding them all over the place from what she said.

Uh I didn't know it was that big of a problem here, to be honest.

So I started looking into our SSP program.

Uh, and these videos I'm about to reference, anyone can go see them at the nd.gov website, uh, the SSP page.

There's a 2023 training video where uh a program manager of harm reduction that works for AIDS United, uh, was talking about how a needs-based distribution program is the gold standard for these things.

What that means is they'll give pretty much as many needles as someone wants.

Uh, and as others have said here, you don't have to turn in a dirty needle to get one.

I think that's insane.

I think that's crazy.

At the very least, if we're gonna have programs like this, people need to bring these needles in and turn them in.

That's that should be the bare minimum for anyone.

Uh, the other thing that I noticed on a different video that was uh specifically the harm reduction center, one of the employees mentioned how no one has to give even their name to get these pipes.

Uh as he said, and I quote You can tell me that your name is Mickey Mouse, and I will sign the paper MM and get you what you need.

So I'm happy it's a joke to these people on what we're finding in the community and what this does.

I'm sorry, but anyone with common sense knows that this is not the way forward.

We have so many examples throughout the country where we where we can look.

San Francisco, Portland.

People are walking around like zombies.

I don't want to see that here.

So uh I'm hoping at the very least this council and the commissioners here, you guys can re-examine things and uh at the very least make people have to turn in their used needles before they get a new one.

I think that's not asking too much, and hopefully uh we can make that happen.

Thank you.

Our virtual is Olivia Fisher.

Levi are there.

We can hear you.

Two and a half minutes.

Hi, I'm Olivia Fargo resident.

I can't believe I'm having to defend the existence of the needle exchange program again.

I don't know how many times the facts need to be presented to make it clear that this program is saving lives.

Excuse my blatant frustration, but these continued efforts to harm vulnerable populations in our town are thickening.

I can't understand why the needle exchange is being threatened because of an entirely different program that has already stopped running.

Regardless of the locality of the pipe program, we know that the needle exchange works and it has been operating in a legal manner.

There is absolutely zero reason for it to be on the agenda tonight.

This is purely an attack on a program that is perceived to be mostly utilized by homeless people.

The regurgitated claims about needles supposedly being found all over downtown make that very clear.

And if you get rid of the needle exchange, there will be more needles found around town because there will no longer be anywhere for people to safely exchange and dispose of them.

That's kind of the entire point, along with preventing overdoses.

I speak for a majority of the community, and I'd hope a majority of the commission when I say we don't want to see an increase in overdose death.

It helps no one when public spears conflate harm reduction with enabling.

That is nothing more than a violent misunderstanding of how these programs work, and it spreads misinformation that riles up the public.

We just heard that misinformation reiterated by multiple speakers before me.

The vending machine filled with harm reduction supplies has clearly been a point of discussion.

Along with syringe service items, there are packs of Narcan, contraceptives, fentanyl test strips, and more.

The harm reduction center is not handing out drugs nor enforcing continued continued drug use.

And these items are not just for unsheltered individuals.

Your neighbors and co-workers could be utilizing the needle exchange.

Sentinel strips could save your children's lives if they try something without you knowing.

And contraceptives are used by the majority of people.

Drug use doesn't just happen on the street.

People from all walks of life experience addiction.

If people are going to use regardless, why would we not utilize the grant funding that is available to keep them safe?

To hear that fellow constituents are supposed to be playing for an end to harm reduction programs.

It's so backwards to me.

Did the words harm reduction not speak for themselves?

Would Jesus punish addicts and want them to overdose?

Why is nobody mad at the people selling these drugs?

The apathy is astounding.

So I urge you all to yet again vote to keep the needle exchange.

The majority of you did last time.

So please vote with integrity and for the safety of residents struggling with addiction.

Thank you.

So you have a motion.

Do you want to put forth your motion, Commissioner Termer?

Yes, I would like to confirm with Nancy.

Uh I don't know if this will take time.

Obviously, the crackpipe program is questionable if that's legal since the city didn't know about it and we had to stop it.

Is a needle exchange program that has zero exchanges legal under century code.

Um, my response to that is that the the work the statute itself does provide that the reporting of the number of individuals served, the number of syringes, needles, and supplies collected, the number of syringes and needles distributed, and any additional information requested by the Department of Health Services is what is required to be reported to the Department of Health, so they are aware of the number received and the number that have been distributed.

So there isn't a one-for-one requirement by the Department of Health.

But yet in sent the century code, it's specifically states exchange, not free needles.

Again, I can only provide to you what the language of the ordinance is.

I don't have an opinion as to whether it's an ex it does say needle exchange program.

That is correct.

But that is not what's required to be reported to the Department of Health.

Well, I would like to move that we halt the harm reduction program.

There has been so many people struggling with addiction, family of addicts recovered and in recovery, who are outraged at this.

And to me, it is completely tone-deaf for us to continue this program when you don't even need to give full identity to get the supplies.

So how these numbers come about is beyond me.

I'd also like to get the budget breakdown because I would like to see the opioid settlement go towards treatment to help people and not add more paraphernalia into this community.

Any other discussion?

There wasn't a motion.

That was my motion.

Please clarify what is the motion?

Halt the harm reduction program to get legal clarity.

And I would like to see this stopped.

So let's get legal clarity first.

But the pipe or the pipes are no longer being distributed.

So you want legal clarity in what?

According to ordinance, according to state law, we're following state law.

So what what is it you want to clarify?

Needle state law, the sentry cloak code specifically says needle exchange.

I don't, it seems that we have a a minority.

The vast majority of residents are outraged by this.

They're sick of finding needles.

They're sick of enabling drug treatment, and you continually vote for this.

There is no real data tracking, which you love the data.

You don't even have to give your real name.

If I may, yes, um, the needle exchange does have a so we have to be we have to have a second.

We've had a motion we didn't have a we had a clarification motion.

I give that corn, but she said something that Joan Powell wants to correct before we go to the second.

Just clarify.

It is not a one-for-one needle exchange.

We do by volume, we do receive needles back by weight, and I can get the weights back by the weight that we have and the weight that we receive back.

We give the sharps containers to the people who come to the service center in order to get them.

And then we have that weight going back, and we have distribution drop boxes, even at Frago Cass and downtown that people can put their sharps into our staff go through to collect that and then return it.

So we are doing not a one-for-one, but we are receiving needles back.

So I'll do the second, but I have a few comments.

First of all, we should be doing one for one to say that we do it by weight, that's ridiculous.

I just wanted to thank Commissioner Turnberg for bringing this to light, the crack pipe thing.

I'm a city commissioner, and I I just heard about it, and I think all the other citizens just heard about it too and were shocked.

And what when once they found out uh they couldn't believe it, and surprisingly, it ended.

Uh it's just it's unbelievable.

And I just wanted to read the dictionary uh definition for enabling.

That's called giving misguided support to someone with addiction.

And that's so that's exactly what we're doing, and so we have to stop doing that.

And the best part of that is our city will become safer.

Uh we will spend less tax money because we'll have less staff.

Uh the ironic thing is the harm reduction reduction is a total lie.

It's the exact opposite.

You're causing harm.

What we should be doing is get getting people that are addicted into treatment.

And instead, what we're doing is giving them crack pipes.

Unbelievable.

This is this is truly a turning point for our city.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I did want to clarify one thing.

When we had the commission, the blue ribbon commission, basically the staff and the experts in addiction were the ones who reported to the mayors.

And uh Narcan and every police uh cruiser and uh in all the fire departments came about because of that.

I think Bishop Strand and I found we were at a record deaths of people from overdose, and what happened is that turned that around, and that's why the commission met and did these things.

Uh the mayors had nothing to do with recommendations.

It was the experts in treatment that came up with ideas of what we should do to decrease the amount of deaths we were having.

Or unfortunately, it was a lot of young people who were dying.

So, yeah, we did decrease the amount of deaths.

We increased the amount of Narcan in the community, and we made some positive gains.

We also looked at addiction, addiction treatment.

There's a variety of different programs throughout the community that now are available, were not available at that time.

We have electronarcotic overdose and narcotic treatment.

We also enhanced a lot of narcotic treatment.

So out of the blue ribbon panel came a lot of good ideas that saved a lot of lives and got people into treatment.

So I wouldn't say that it was complete failure.

I think it turned around a lot of things that we've learned from it in that regard.

So Commissioner Kolpeck, go ahead.

Yeah, I'm just gonna say that I will always make a decision based on data and research and facts, and we just heard some research that was pretty powerful about how we connect people to services to get treatment.

Um, you know, while I I do have mixed feelings about the pipe exchange for different reasons, I certainly continue to support the needle exchange.

Um, you know, one of the the one of the powerful, which I understand maybe is a little counterintuitive to what I just said, but um, you know, the the intervenous use of needles and the cost of hepatitis um up to 75,000 per person cost avoidance by lowering that exchange.

Um I you know I I will say that I do respect also choices that are made in public health today, as long as it's based on research data and fact and best practices.

And so um I just saw information that that demonstrated to me that the needle exchange program does that.

And so I I will be voting no on on this on this motion.

Commissioner Strategia.

Thank you, Mayor.

I um I I do wear the hat of public health.

And and it's uh uh an arena that I'm chairman of the public health board, in fact, now.

When I was elected and running in 2016, the opioid uh explosion was in front of all of us, and we were all wondering what to do, the number of deaths that were surfacing, and they were across the town different, it wasn't any particular group of people.

Really prominent families have had some addiction overdoses and deaths.

So, you know, that was a challenge.

The Blue Ribbon Commission came around.

We've we've gone other paths of like we have a community medical services liquid methadone treatment plan now in town.

So people can go and do their methadone on a daily basis in front of medical providers, and medical-assisted treatment scientifically works.

You know, uh so I remember years ago when when Indiana had an explosion of HIV, and Vice President Pence was in the state leadership there.

And he was opposed to a needle exchange program, needle services program.

Then all of a sudden, one of the counties in Indiana had something like 3,000 cases of HIV explode because of the exchanging sharing of needles at 75,000 each or whatever.

You know, so the reality, what's harm reduction?

You know, harm reduction on the way here.

I go through stop signs, I go through yield signs, I follow the lanes I'm driving in, I have traffic signals.

Why?

Because we don't want to kill each other in cars.

Harm reduction is everywhere we go.

It's debatable what it means.

It's debatable what the results are, but the the bottom line is are we going to or are we not?

Are we is our intention or not to save lives when we can or not?

And if we're not going to try save lives when we can, who are we as people and as a community?

If that's not our goal to save lives of our people.

You know, I don't know.

I will say this.

I think every one of us in this room absolutely agrees that we have a challenge with addiction.

One of the speakers, Mr.

Knutson mentioned how many bars we have downtown.

And we open up everything there.

We stretched hours they can operate, open the days they can operate, create more bars.

We there's not a single bar license that comes to us that we don't support and allow.

And that's the biggest.

You see what happens in our community with addiction and so on.

You have this group of addictions and overdoses with with opioids.

You have this group of addictions and deaths with with with uh meth.

And then you have this mountain.

Now we don't talk about alcohol.

Let's harm reduct, let's harm reduce that.

I think all of us agree that addiction is just a killing, debilitating ill element in our people in our community.

And let's put our heads together to support the people trying to save lives.

Try help them do better.

I I don't disagree that this it's it's really hard to swallow.

I remember when this needle exchange program surfaced, and Dr.

Baird was representing public health then, and I remember Commissioner Pepcorn saying, and you know, it's consistent, and this view is very consistent, and it's understandable that people think like this.

It's absolutely understandable.

You you said, as I recall, I never thought in my life I'd hear medical professionals telling us to give needles to addicts.

Let's get rid of addiction.

That's the real core issue.

Let's deal with our national leaders, let's deal with our state leaders.

Let's get support for people so they get some help.

If somebody comes in for a needle or a crackpipe and they get introduced to some support services and they get some help, isn't that what it's about?

Who are they going to go to to get help otherwise?

Who's gonna who are they gonna talk to?

Who's who are they gonna trust?

So we all agree completely on addiction and and the the consequences and the costs to us.

Let's just quit attacking the people who are trying their best relative to community standards in medicine, which this is.

I'm open, I'm all ears to what the people say.

One last thing I'll say.

Earlier I raised the issue of tax incentives.

What do we do?

We sent it to the tax advent of review committee.

Let's send this topic over to public health, which we're probably should have been sent to in the first place.

That's their arena.

We're sitting here and talking as if we're the public health board, we're not.

We have a group of experts, that's what they do.

Let's hear what they say.

Let them vet this, let them talk about this, let them measure this, let them learn from what others are doing and what works and what doesn't work.

And report back to us every chance they can.

I think there was a misstep in us not up front, always telling people what we're doing.

And it's not true, I didn't know what this is going on.

I'm not in the weeds.

I'm not going to our offices to find out.

What are you doing down there?

You people who work for us.

I'm up in the balcony setting policy, which is our job.

And to honor the people who serve us and to try to help them deliver their best.

So thank you for bringing this up, Commissioner Turnberg, because it really is important that we all get a better grasp of addiction in our community, and we see the bigger perspective and issues of it.

It's not just honey on some of them, all of them.

Let's go full bore.

I'm on board.

May I make another comment?

I would say that we've had several instances of experiments in this city, and we've tried them for years, and it's not working.

When do we finally say enough is enough and try something else?

Alcohol is legal.

Crack, fentanyl, math is not legal.

It's a big problem, but yet you just keep enabling you didn't know that they were crackpipes, five thousand given out in the city of Fargo.

And I will end on this.

Yes.

Cold pack?

No.

Strand?

No.

Mahoney?

No.

We have uh ladies and commissioner updates.

I'll say Commissioner Pepcorn has a birthday coming up.

Happy birthday to you, Commissioner Petcorn.

I like I was as at the airport authority this morning, and some of you some of you may have heard in the note news that the airport membrane on the new parking ramp had blown off.

Happened twice.

So they're there.

Please step outside.

Step outside.

We're doing fine.

We already had our public dialogue.

Yeah.

Whoever brought up my stepdaughter that tried to kill us and steal an AR.

I have nothing more to report, Mayor.

Mr.

Colpak.

Yeah, I have um recovering out of the hard production saved my life.

You're disturbing the meeting.

I'm sorry, you could have banked comment at public time.

Mr.

Colpeck.

I just have a verbal update that I'll share.

I I was um had the opportunity to attend um uh the an event Saturday night for Wynn Liberia, which is uh program that supports um new Americans community members from Liberia, and it's about um helping provide them with the resources they need to be successful in our community.

So that was Saturday evening, and then I wanted to just um say that tomorrow is Veterans Day.

Um and we our city hall was as the liaison to the communication team will be lit in red, white, and blue, honoring all veterans.

I was born on an Air Force Base in California.

My dad served in the Philippines in Vietnam.

And so um to all families and friends of veterans and service members, um, thank you very much for your dedication to our country and our communities.

I appreciate that.

There's been a lot of communication by the commissioners about public uh comments at the time's public comments, and one of the difficulties we have is sometimes things are said that we really cannot take back by the speaker.

So staff and communications got together and had a discussion about it, and uh we all have a new policy.

So starting the next meeting on November 24th, we'll make a change on the broadcasting of public comments at the end of our meeting agenda.

While there will be no change in the public comment procedure, and we will continue to hear from our residents, we will stop broadcasting this portion of the meeting and is not show the presenters.

At the conclusion of the public comment period, we will adjourn the meeting as we do now.

I just wanted to share this broadcast update with the commissioners and the public so they understand it.

Commissioner Turnberg.

No update.

Commissioner Pipcorn.

I do have one person that's chose to speak, but I don't think I have the proper name, so I really can't have you speak.

Arcuria Meta uh Tron, are you here?

Because if you don't give your proper name and address, we can't have people speak.

So this person obviously made up this name.

And uh people have to understand you need to give your name and your address, and you can you're welcome to talk to public comment.

Uh if there's no other business to be had, we adjourn this meeting.