The Fargo City Commission met on Monday, August 17, 2026, at 4:00 PM for an executive session to discuss negotiating strategy for the Convention Center project with Kilbourne, LLC, followed by a regular meeting at 5:00 PM. The commission approved a consent agenda of 31 items, held public hearings, and debated several regular agenda items including a $20,000 donation for SWAT equipment and a health officer contract for former Mayor Dr. Tim Mahoney.
Just uh reconvened from our executive session, so we're going into our 5 p.m. regular meeting, and we'll begin with a Pledge of Allegiance. I invite you to join us. Pledge of allegiance is a flag of the United States. Thank you. Ms. Bauman, we'll do our roll call. Strand? Here. Turnberg? Here. Peterson? Here. Golixon? Here. Boshe? Here. All right. Before we get into our meeting, we do we have a video that highlights the new leadership for the Red River Valley SWAT team. Uh that'll be shared on the video screens in front of you and on the walls. The transition piece is always tough. This will be the second time I've stepped away from this team. It's always a little bit painful. Spent about half of my career on this team. So stepping away from that again and very likely permanent is difficult on a personal level. But operationally and the confidence I have in Lieutenant Neeman and Sergeant Castle, I have zero concerns with those guys taking over. I've been with the Red River Valley SWAT team since 2013, so uh a little over 13 years. So it's truly an honor, an honor to be uh taking on this role. And when I think about the men and women and the years of sacrifice, the long nights and the commitment that they've really put into this, it's truly humbling to be able to take on that role. I think that uh being the team commander, it's something that uh it's always been a goal of mine. It's something that I've been mentored to do. I feel very well prepared for it. It's a very humbling position to be in. It's I see it as a position of service, a position to really give back to the team. I've always had the uh the mindset that moving into a leadership role, um, such as like the assistant commander role. It's important to have a perspective from a variety of different angles. So I always want to get exposure to a bunch of different things, um, which I feel like I've done over that career because we're making decisions benefiting the entire operation and not just one piece of that operation. Yeah, I think we have uh very similar command philosophies. We both want to build the foundation of leadership on this team for years to come. We're trying to think years and years in advance. I want to train everybody, uh my leadership team to have all the same knowledge that I do, but I also want to bring up the foundation of this team to train future leaders, so I want to train the next generation of team leaders, the next generation of operators, and so does Castle. Castle wants to do the same. He wants to pass on all that knowledge. For me, uh I've kind of view my role as you know, planning for the future, planning ahead, um, anticipating things that are going to be coming up, and uh start putting things in the works now so that we're not feeling those effects later on down the road. Additionally, I know that uh we have a lot of of really good officers on this team. They do things to a high level within their agencies and with uh within this team. So a big part of it is getting out of the way and letting them do their jobs and just providing the support where they need it so they can keep doing that. I appreciate the opportunity both from the Fargo Police Department and the personnel on this team to allow me to command them the second time that I've been back. It's been a great experience. I really appreciate the relationships that I've either renewed from guys I'd served on the team with before or new ones that I built with guys that I haven't.