The Grand Island City Council met for a study session on August 6, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. to review the proposed Fiscal Year 2025 budgets for eight city divisions. Public Works Director Keith Kurtz, Transit Manager Arlie Wallman, Street Superintendent Shannon Callahan, Utility Director Ryan Schmidt, and Wastewater Manager Matt Walker presented their respective budgets and capital improvement plans. Council members asked detailed questions regarding land acquisitions, rate competitiveness, infrastructure lifecycles, lead service line replacement progress, and operational efficiencies. No formal votes were taken.
Welcome to our meeting. The date is August 6, 2024. The time is 6 p.m. This is an open meeting of the Grand Island City Council. The City of Grand Island abides by the Open Meetings Act in conducting business. A copy of the Open Meetings Act is displayed in the back of this room as required by state law. Please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. And to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Councilmember Mendoza. Present. Councilmember Kaczynski. Present. Councilmember Hazi. Present. Council Member Sheard. Present. Council Member Pollock. Present. Council Member Fitzkey. Present. Council President Stelk. Present. Council Member Nickerson. Present. Councilmember Lanfair will be absent. Councilmember Conley. Present. And Mayor Still. Present. Also present are Jill Grenier, the city clerk. Laura McAloon, the city administrator. Patrick Brown, the assistant city administrator. Gary Fisk, the city attorney, Keith Kurtz, the public works director, and Matthew Gleason, the finance director. We'll start our agenda with 4A. Good evening, Mr. Kirks. So I'll kind of kick off the presentation tonight based on or starting with the engineering and the admin portion of public works. So for the fiscal year 2025, personnel services for the engineering and admin overall, as you can see. And the admin portion of public works is actually down a little bit. We're accounting that towards the the payroll taxes on that uh line item or that area were overestimated last year, so that made that budget look a little higher than what it should have been. So our operating expenses, this portion of public works obviously doesn't have a huge operating budget. Um very small purchases and whatnot. As you could see, we're we're down just a little bit, basically, for basic items such as uh copiers and phones, so nothing too critical in that area. Um our budget, as you can see, uh engineering is a little over a million. Um approximately 275,000 of that is uh recovered. Uh we account for all of our time. Uh if we're working on a certain project with a certain project budget, uh, we'll uh bill that time out. Uh there's some minor review uh plan review fees that we also collect that cover a little bit of money back towards uh this area, as well as some minor permitting fees that they don't make up a ton, but they are accounted uh in in these figures. Uh majority of of the work is not billable just because the nature uh of the department were either investigating problems that citizens have or building new projects, investigating things uh kind of before we set a budget for a real actual project that you guys would approve.