Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to our meeting.

The date is May twelfth, two thousand twenty-six.

The time is seven 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.

The City Council may vote to go into closed session on any agenda item as allowed by state law.

Now I ask that you stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

The City Clerk will now perform roll call.

Councilmember Sheridan.

Present.

Councilmember Stelk.

Present.

Councilmember Conley.

Present.

Councilmember Nickerson.

Present.

Councilmember Brown.

Present.

Councilmember Housey.

Present.

Councilmember Mendoza.

Present.

Council President O'Neill.

Present.

Councilmember Pollock.

Present.

Councilmember Lanfear.

Present.

And Mayor Steele.

Present.

Also present are Jill Grenier, the City Clerk, Patrick Brown, the City Administrator, Matt Boyle, the Deputy City Attorney, Carrie Fisk, the City Attorney, and Keith Kurtz, the public works director.

Individuals who have appropriate items for City Council consideration should complete the request for future agenda items form located at the information booth.

If the issue can be handled administratively without council action, notification will be provided.

If the item is scheduled for a meeting or study session, notification of the date will be given.

Council members, would you like to remove any of tonight's consent agenda items for further discussion?

Hearing none, we shall continue.

A sign-up sheet was available in the lobby for individuals wishing to provide input on any of tonight's agenda items.

If you did not sign up to speak on an agenda item, please come forward, state your name, and the agenda topic on which you will be speaking.

So we shall continue.

These students demonstrated incredible talent and dedication in fields ranging from advanced manufacturing and robotics to emergency medical services, engineering, and technical education.

Their success reflects the commitment of both their teachers and families who continue to support them along the way, with many of them here in the crowd tonight.

On behalf of the city of Grand Island, congratulations to all of our first, second, and third place finishers.

Your achievements at Skills USA showcase the strength of career and technical education in Grand Island and highlight the bright future ahead for our local workforce and industries.

We're incredibly proud of each of you for representing the city at the state level.

Two certificates, first place emergency medical technician, and first place health knowledge bowl.

Natasha Chaubiqua, second place, career pathway showcase engineering technology.

Nicole Gonzalez, second place career pathway showcase engineering technology.

Stephen Castro Lopez, second place, Mobile Robotics Technology.

David Diaz Inojosa, second place, Mobile Robotics Technology.

Hyper Jeffers, second place, Precision Machining Technology.

Ethan Erb, third place, Automated Manufacturing Technology.

Holden Wemhoff, third place, automated manufacturing technology.

Ethan Wickman, third place, automated manufacturing technology.

And I want to give a special thanks to Alex Chemnitz, engineering and robotics teacher, 8151 Islander, Robotics Coach, Grand Island Senior High School, Academy of Engineering and Technology.

Thank you for helping us put all this together tonight and for bringing all these wonderful young people in for us to celebrate.

At the end of the school year, because we miss having all of the wonderful young people who do such amazing things with their time and their talent.

We don't have them over the summer to come in and celebrate.

So we look forward to another school year.

Agenda item six B Grand Island Public Library 2025 annual report.

Mrs.

Celine Swan.

Thank you, Mayor, and good evening, council.

And don't worry, all those kids, we'll take them at the library.

We're getting ready for them.

So our youth are really great.

They're really our future.

So just a quick few minutes here to showcase our great year that we had with the library from 2024 to 2025.

And yeah, we can kind of toot our horns with some of the great things that have taken place the past year.

So this is our annual report that's due every year.

And our staff put this together.

We've got some real talented staff that can do some really wonderful posting and Canva and all that stuff that I don't know how to do.

But so by the numbers, our circulation was up 401.

Our book checkout was up, audio was up, video was about the same.

Our visitors to the library was up to 27,282.

Our meeting room usage was up 1,671.

And our borrowers were up 1,654.

Computer sessions were down.

I think that's because more people are bringing in their own devices, and we have free Wi-Fi.

So program attendance was down just a little bit.

So that's always interesting to see.

And you can see the top titles there.

Some things that are really popular are the art exhibit wall.

We have just great feedback on that.

Our Berthoya was renovated.

If you haven't seen it, stop in.

Wow, I'm really old.

But our bookmobile has been gone for 17 years.

And I have not heard one negative comment from the community.

It's all pro bookmobile because with that bookmobile, we can reach people, the underserved people without transportation.

We can really make a difference.

So at the end, I'm happy to answer any questions about the bookmobile.

Also, our uh programs for kids.

You know, we've continued to uh provide outstanding programming with uh steam programs, um reading enrichment, and um coming up we're gonna have a story walk um out at Staly Park in the new garden area.

So um we're really trying to get things out there for our community for our kids, and um our teen programs have been really good.

Um, digital uh services have been on the rise about 25 percent.

People really like the online services, and so uh we're excited about that.

Our library board has been very, very supportive of everything with the library.

Um they provided over $30,000 for our programs, uh supplies, um special authors, makerspace equipment that we might need.

Um with the new bookmobile, they decided that they were gonna go full enchilada and put 200,000 dollars into the project, and so um they're very pro-bookmobile and supportive.

And our staff directories there, um yeah, so I'm gonna flip through these really fast.

Uh lots of support from different sponsors in the community.

And any questions.

I talk fast, I'm sorry.

Mr.

Shear, thank you.

Uh as the council rep on the library board, I feel I I should at least tell you guys that uh I've been coming to these meetings, hearing so much more about the library and the excitement that they have there for our community and for continuing their mission.

Um they're doing it with a lot of excitement and energy.

And uh I've been impressed with how fiscally responsible they're trying to be along the way, yet come up with innovative ways to get their mission out to more people.

So thanks for sharing this tonight, and thanks for all you guys do.

Uh you, your board, and all your staff.

Thank you.

Mr.

Brown.

Well, really we really appreciate all the books you're putting out to the airport and the passengers really love it.

Uh picking up books and they always ask them to buy books, but they don't have to anymore.

But uh thank you very much.

Doing a good job.

Thank you.

Mr.

O'Neill.

I'm gonna pass a couple of compliments along as well.

I've been at the library a lot the last several months.

Um I've been taking advantage of your meeting rooms both for government and business use.

Um great meeting spaces over there.

Um, that makerspace, wow, that is really amazing area that you have over there too.

And I'm not surprised to hear your numbers are up for that either.

Um, if you haven't heard you need to check it out.

But there's some really you guys have some really good things over there, and um no wonder it's uh staying busier as well.

So Mr.

Nickerson going to steal a phrase from Mark Stelk.

Now, this is paraphrased a little bit, Mark, but this is kind of my gist of what you said.

I think Mark did a good job of summing up our public library as an event center for kiddos.

And that's just another part of your mission that is just so valuable to this community.

And there are events going on all the time.

I remember when I'd sit in your board meetings and you'd put the list up on the screen.

I mean, there the calendar was like this long with the events that were coming.

And that's what it's all about.

We want people engaged in our library from little rascals to us old folks.

We all want to be in there, and you've got something for all of us.

The baker split space is a wonderful thing, and I love using it every Christmas to make nice little jigsaw puzzles out of pictures.

I'll tell you guys got me hooked on that, and it's the coolest little gift you can have.

But we're also talking about the bookmobile that's going to be on our consent agenda coming up here soon tonight.

And again, the funding of that to kind of help refresh our memories.

That's not all coming out of general budget.

We're talking about foundation is supporting that.

You're willing to give up some money for a kiosk.

So all these entities are coming together to help fund that bookmobile.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

Um, 200,000 from uh the library foundation, uh, 70,000 from that kiosk, and 10,000 that we got from the um Andrew Carnegie uh grant that we just got.

And we applied for a grant um last week to get um more books for the bookmobile upcoming and also some laptops to go out there for people that will use the bookmobile for the internet.

Very good.

So good things ahead in the bookmobile world.

Yep.

All right thank you very much, Celine.

Yep, thank you.

Thank you for your report.

Thank you.

Council members, will you approve the consent agenda?

Mr.

O'Neill.

I move to approve the consent agenda items A through K.

Mr.

Stelk.

I second the motion, Mr.

Mayor.

Any discussion.

Please vote.

Motion adopted.

8A public hearings.

Public hearing on blight and substandard study for proposed CRA area number 42, located in Northwest Grand Island, east of North Road and South of Capitol Avenue.

Grand Island Area Habitat for Humanity.

Good evening, Mr.

Nabity.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

The item before you this evening, you saw a couple months ago at the June meeting when you for or at the March meeting when you forwarded it to the Planning Commission.

Um Planning Commission did hold a public hearing on this at their meeting in April, and we're bringing it forward this evening for a hearing and possible approval by council if you choose to.

Grand Island Area Habitat for Humanity did commission this study.

They have purchased about 17 acres on St.

Paul Road from the Ziller family, and are proposing to do a subdivision there.

They would like to use tax increment financing to pay for to help them pay for sewer water streets, etc.

as they develop this.

It is immediately adjacent to the orchard subdivision that Fred Hoppe did.

It's just south of the outfall ditch there.

Everything around it to the south and east and west has already been declared blighted and substandard.

This has been in the city limits since about 1888.

Um is when it would have been annexed into the city and is approximately 17 acres of undeveloped property with old farm buildings and so on on it.

The Marvin Planning Consultants did conduct the study and did find that it could be declared blighted and substandard.

Planning commission held a hearing on this and recommended approval of the blight study.

Thank you, Mr.

Navity.

Public hearing is now open.

Keith Marvin, did you want to speak?

Evening, Council members.

Uh Keith Marvin, Marvin Planning Consultants, David City.

Uh as Chad said, we found that this uh area would meet the criteria being declared blighted and substandard.

Uh I'm here more to answer any questions that you may have in the next part of the agenda.

So thank you.

Lindsay Jurgins, did you want to speak good evening, Council?

Thank you for reviewing this item for us.

We're very excited about this.

Um when we visited about this before, I wasn't really at liberty to talk much about what our plans are, but I can tell you now that we are in ownership of the property.

We are working with Pentail Engineering to create an affordable housing development that will have more than 80 homes built on it, and that will be over the course of several years.

So it won't be a quick quick project for us because we are not quick builders in that way.

Uh we're still at three to four homes annually, and we don't have any immediate projections for that to change.

So we're looking at a lot of room for us in the future.

So the future of habitat to be in a much more secure space in terms of land than we have been recently.

We we've been running out of land quickly.

So just to give you an idea of what we are wanting to do with this.

Do you have any questions for me?

They may after they have a motion.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

Zach Butts.

Good evening, everyone.

Um, I Lindsey and Keith have hit some of the points.

I'll be judicious with your time.

I know you have a big evening here.

Um it's always good in the practice of law when you don't have to get creative in legal work, and this is a situation where we don't.

This plot of land in question certainly meets statutory requirements for being declared blighted.

It also meets the eyeball test.

You don't need to be an attorney and do a deep dive analysis to see that if we're gonna blight a parcel of land in Grand Island, this is one that we should.

It's adjacent to previously blighted land, age of buildings, condition of infrastructure around it, all leads to a conclusion that it should be blighted.

It's also great uh as an attorney when you have a client like Habitat for Humanity that without hyperbole only does good stuff for the community.

I can't say that necessarily about a lot of my or my firm's clients, but I can about habitat.

They their mission is terrific, and they're excited about their future with this land.

They're gonna do some really good stuff for Grand Island, and we are uh looking forward to the opportunity to get to bring that to you in the future here.

And so happy to answer any questions about the specific blight, the vision habitat has for it, and we appreciate your consideration.

We also appreciate the support of regional planning when we presented this to them as well.

So thank you very much is there anyone else that would like to speak on this item?

If not, public hearing is now closed Mr.

O'Neill.

I move we approve 2026-122.

Mr.

Brown.

I second that motion.

Any discussion.

Please vote.

Motion adopted 8B public hearing on blight and substandard study for proposed CRA area number 43, located in Northwest Grand Island, east of North Road, between Capitol Avenue and Nebraska Highway 2.

The tree folks.

Mr.

Nabity.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Mayor.

Again, this is another blight study that was conducted by Marvin Marvin Planning.

Um Keith is here if you have any specific questions for him.

This particular area does include the farm property that is at Capitol and North Road.

And in particular, Grant Calarose, who is with the tree folks, owns the piece north of this, where he has some storage units, would like to do some flex storage, potentially put a public street in there, hook those up to sewer and water.

There is no sewer available to that property.

Sewer is available at Capitol and North Road.

So half a mile to the south of his property.

Um as I know you are well aware of Northview Subdivision, immediately to the east of Mr.

or west of Mr.

Calarose.

Uh has their own private lift station that they all flow to the east, and then it pumps it back to the sewer line that is to the west of them into the sewer main and into the sewer system.

It was designed to hook up across on the east side of North Road when there is a sewer line there.

Mr.

Calarose would like to develop his.

Uh and again, like I said, I'm here for any questions that you may have.

Dave Averchek, did you want to speak on this item?

Well, I can appreciate the redevelopment, and when I looked at this item, when I see 170 some acres, uh, this is probably a giant parcel that is in car is within city limits.

And of course, any parcel that's not in city limits is not eligible really for a redevelopment plan, but also brings up through a 400-page agenda item.

I would just ask maybe Chad to go ahead and uh illuminate uh the tree folks, LOC.

It doesn't say who it is, local owners, if it's the people that have the farmhouse there or what, but also speculating what the redevelopment may incur since it's proximity is so close to Grand Island Northwest and education and so forth.

I think it would be uh good for people to know potentially what is this redevelopment area designated potentially to be.

Um the other parts in the presentation of the packet, there was like one slide where it says tax increment financing uh site.

Well, this really, if I'm not mistaken, Chad can maybe remark on that, but this is a necessary step to go ahead and create a blight uh designation, knowing that that may be a potential consideration down the road on a project.

So I just think some awareness maybe would be appropriate on this.

The last item, I don't know if there's any threshold of the amount of percentage within our community that can be blighted and substandard, but I would just bring up this is almost 180 acres that would be potentially, and I'm assuming will be approved, uh, blighted and substandard.

Thank you, Mayor, for the opportunity to address you and Chad.

Thank you, Chad.

Mr.

Mayor, would you like me to address yes, please?

The concerns um there are 195 acres is the equivalent of one percent of the city limits under our current city limit size.

So this would increase our blighted and substandard area by almost one percent, a little less than one percent.

We are currently at, and I'm gonna get into the numbers here.

So if you read my May 1 report, it's gonna make sense to you.

If you did not read the May 1 report, it's explained very well in there.

Um the we are at about 26 percent blighted and substandard, that is of our 35 percent.

My opinion, and you can take that for what you think it is worth, is that we really don't need to be overly concerned about that percentage until we start until we go over 30 percent blighted and substandard.

That gives us a thousand acres that we could still declare.

Maybe then we start thinking about it pretty carefully.

Um but that 26 percent is reduced by anything that's declared extremely blighted.

So that takes us down to about 19 percent, because about six percent of it is extremely blighted, and then it's also reduced by anything that is blighted and substandard, and in the good life district, which actually takes us down to about 16 percent blighted and substandard net.

So we can go to 35 percent, we're under half.

I'm not concerned with adding one percent to that at this particular time.

If you are you get to make the decisions, um the property to the south, the um of Mr.

Calarosa's property.

Mr.

Calaros owns on the north side of the outfall ditch there.

So he's he owns where the storage units are right off of highway two.

He does not own the 172 acres, that is owned by another property owner.

And at this point, they have no plans for development there at all.

The comprehensive development plan would say that that is low to medium density residential, that that's what that is planned for, but until they're ready to develop it, it's unlikely to develop.

They have not done any development there since in the last 20 years since they sold the parcel where Primrose retirement is right on the corner.

Um if we could get a sewer line in through there, they would have a sewer line that when they're ready to develop, they could connect to, and it would also take that sewer line up to Mr.

Calarosa's property and make it available to the properties on the west side of the road.

Brandon Wagner, did you want to speak?

Thank you for your time this evening.

My name is Brandon Wagner.

I am the president of the HOA for the Northview subdivision.

So what that entails is approximately 70 properties.

One of which is the commercial property of the veterinarian clinic and multiple duplexes that are rentals in that area.

Um we are here in support of this project, and it comes down to sewage.

So we are on city sewer.

Um the lift station is a is a huge expense to the homeowners in that area.

Um the HOA dues go to maintaining that lift station.

They are not area beautification, they are not lake maintenance, they are not.

We don't pay trash, we don't.

That lift station is a huge drain on our HOA.

Um, how it got through and why it got approved being substandard for the city of Grand Island is beyond me at this point, but the expense for these homeowners to bring in that sewer line on our own is astronomical.

Um that being said, this alleviates that issue.

Um if we were to foot the bill for that sewer line, it does not increase my property value, nor does it increase some of the other property values as we are on city sewer.

So this is an issue that has been brought forth to the city council many, many times, and I would ask you to consider it when you look at this study and this blight and how it affects neighboring residents as well.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this item?

Gerald, you can come on up.

Uh thank you, Mayor and Council.

I just my question, I guess, is to you can what is the limit on extremely blighted percentage of the city?

I what is what is the extremely blighted percentage limit?

There is no extremely blighted percentage limit.

The properties have to meet the statutory requirements, which are double the unemployment rate and a 20% rate of poverty within the within that area.

Um that's how that is determined by statute.

So an analysis has to be done each time something is declared extremely blighted.

And in this case, they are not even asking for the extremely blighted, they are just asking for the blight designation.

There is no action on extremely blighted this evening.

Okay, so I've brought this up to the council before.

So you could if you had 20% extremely blighted property, you could have 55% of the city.

You would have declared blighted.

You would take 55% blighted, subtract your 20% extremely blighted, you would meet the 35% requirement, and that's a lot to try to have us all afford, and that kind of refers back to the question you asked, Mr.

Baberchak.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this item?

You can come on up if you want to state your name.

My name is Kurt Cook.

I also uh I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the council.

Um I've lived in the Northview subdivision since uh 2011, and we have talked to the county board several times about this.

The original subdivision was plotted for 78 lots.

The sewer system was sized and engineered to serve that need.

The single family dwellings and one in and a single family dwellings with one household.

Now it's expanded to 98 households, with an addition of 10 duplexes in that in the ninth subdivision in that subdivision called North View subdivision.

It was origin it was changed the the uh the status of it was changed in 2008 at a board meeting, and I've never been able to find the board meeting minutes for this.

There was no discussion uh on the impact of the sewer system when it was changed from R1 sub uh suburban residential to R2 and R2 low density residential, and it was changed to R3 medium density residential.

When that was done, there wasn't any study that I know of that uh talked about what the impact would be on the sewer system that was already there.

And uh since that time also Park View veterinarian uh building has been built and now is being expanded almost to twice its original size, and there's a great deal of affluent and and uh water that goes into the sewer system that was originally sized for 78 lots.

So you can see that our sewer system and the lift station that pumps that sewage to the west trunk line that goes into that goes from north and south into Capitol Avenue main line is overburdened.

We've had episodes where our lift station has gone down, and people have had sewage come into their basements.

Many of us out there in looking uh through records feel that the original engineering on that was substandard.

We have no proof because the uh uh the council minutes don't really aren't very specific about how this was all uh how it all came about, how it was all approved.

But uh any consideration the city council can give the residents of the Northview subdivision would be greatly appreciated.

We pay an individual to clean our uh lift station uh at once or twice.

Well, every month or every two months, we pay that individual.

We also still pay the same property taxes, we see pay the same sewer bills as everybody else, but we have to maintain our own system.

I think there are like 15 different substations where there's lift stations around the city, and I don't know of any of the residents that have to pay for the maintenance of their own uh lift stations.

Maybe you can correct me about that, but I don't think they have to.

So I guess in closing, there's there's we've we've discussed this several times at county board meetings.

I know it's been discussed some in the city council meetings.

We really would appreciate any consideration you could give us, because we are an adjacent issue to what you're considering a sublighted area and and bringing sewer into that area so can it can be developed, but it would greatly impact an already existing uh sub-development north view and and uh would give a great deal of certainty to the people that live there that they would have adequate sewer and it would be maintained.

We would no longer have to worry about sewage coming up in our basements.

So I appreciate any consideration you could give to us.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this item?

If not, public hearing is now closed.

Mr.

Brown.

I move we approve 2026 TAC 123.

Mr.

Hawsey.

I'll second that motion.

Discussion.

Please vote.

Motion adopted line A presentation about progress of good life district negotiations with Woodsonia GI GLD LLC.

Mrs.

Fisk and Mr.

Boyle.

Mayor, members of council.

Um Matt and I are going to go through and kind of give you all a what I'll call high-level overview of the materials that are in your packet.

Um, not going to read every single word on every single slide, don't worry.

Uh no following quite yet.

Um we will go through some of them in particular that have been put in there in response to some of the assorted questions each of you have uh asked over the last month or so to kind of walk you backwards a little bit uh for those of you who may not remember.

Um we will go through some of them in particular that have been put in there in response to some of the assorted questions each of you have uh asked over the last month or so to kind of walk you backwards a little bit uh for those of you who may not remember this item was originally placed on the agenda today at the request of Woodsonia who asked that a proposal that they emailed directly to council uh what we'll refer as their April 6th proposal be presented directly to you for your consideration as the packet relays to you uh little less than a week ago.

Would Sonia asked that that proposal be withdrawn from presentation for you today and instead replaced it with the list of uh four items of conversation they'd like addressed.

So there isn't necessarily an act of proposal we're gonna talk about, though we are going to highlight a few of the key issues that came up there.

But fundamentally, first we want to walk a little bit backwards and uh give kind of that redo primer on the status of when we say the good life district law because it's become very clear over the course of this that the evolution and change of that since we started this process in November of 2023 has uh perhaps caused some confusion, has has shifted where we are and what progress has occurred.

So as we go through this, again, if you have your packet materials, you can probably see where we're headed a bit.

Um so ideally, we'll hopefully get to any of the questions you had as we progress through things, but if there's something that we skip over in these slides that you would like us to focus on, feel free to let us know a little bit.

Um as most of you are aware, though some of this predates even a couple of your time on council uh back in the fall of 2023.

City council was asked by Woodsonia to uh recognize that they intended to apply with the State Department of Economic Development for the creation of a good life district under the Good Life District Transformational Projects Act.

At that time, that was the statute that had been passed, the law that had been passed to allow the creation of up to five good life districts in the state of Nebraska.

Uh, would Sonia made that application under this particular set of statutes?

The the reason I want to highlight that there's been two sets here is that the actual request for money and for what I'll call progress now comes under a second set of laws.

But when we talk about the purpose of the law, they have gotten a bit commingled.

The Good Life District Transformational Project Act sets forth pretty clearly what the purpose of the act was.

This is what the legislature put into the law to define what the goal of creating the districts was.

Fundamentally, for each of you, when you're talking about accomplishing the goals of the Good Life District Creation, is to promote and develop the general and economic welfare of the state and its communities.

So very big ethereal academic goal by growing and strengthening retail, entertainment, and tourism.

So the legislature was relatively clear that the purpose of this act was to spur growth in these particular areas.

It was to encourage the these sort of transformational projects that create jobs that build the infrastructure, the roads, the sewers, the electrical services we need to develop, and other improvements that attract and retain tourists and college graduates.

So when we talk about the main purposes, that was the big goal.

After an application gets made, Department of Economic Development went through an administrative review process.

As you're aware of, this wasn't a process in particular in which you had any involvement in other than to be aware of it.

And they created the district up against their particular set of standards in June of 2024.

So our district, as we know, the boundaries was created back then.

At that time, the district was created for a period of 25 years.

This statute was then amended to allow the district to exist for up to a 30-year period.

Under the Transformational Project Act, once the district is created, it exists in the existing boundaries, so long as three key benchmarks are met.

First and foremost, it has to generate new development costs.

The legislature defines those new development costs as construction and improvement costs on real property.

So it includes the acquisition of personal property that's part of the project, including improvements to real property in the district.

So lay when we say real property in lawyer world, we mean land, personal property or things you own, new constructions in additions to existing buildings, and construction acquisition of the infrastructure necessary.

If it isn't one of those items, it doesn't count as a cost for keeping our district alive.

After that point in time, there's three different times Department of Economic Development steps back in in the district.

And that's at the three-year mark, the seven-year mark, and the 10-year mark.

To keep the district alive, there has to be that new development costs in the in a and it's a percentage of the hundred million dollars that Grand Island is that our particular size community has to build.

At the three-year mark, we have to have had commitments, so either money actually spent or promise firm commitments and promises to spend 10 million dollars in new development.

If we did not clear that particular threshold, the Department of Economic Development could terminate the district.

At the seven-year mark, that's a commitment of $50 million in new development.

And at the 10-year mark, it's a commitment of $75 million in new development.

By the 10-year mark, if we've cleared $75 million in new development, the district just stays until the end of 30 years.

Those are the only three collapse points the Department of Economic Development has.

So by December 2025, little under two years into our district, over 75, just shy of 75 million dollars, that 10-year permanent benchmark had been met according to Woodsonia.

If we look just at what we know is the city, since the creation of the district, the city, when you when you get a building permit, you have to tell us how much your building is worth.

In the district, we've had 63 million dollars worth of new development, things that construction costs that building permits have been issued on, and $59 million of that is in what I'll call tax-generating properties.

Retail, hotels, the sorts of things that generate that sort of economic growth that the Department of Economic Development has highlighted they want to see.

So in two years, our community has grown just in this small geographic boundary by $63 million worth of buildings that are either built or in construction.

And so I think it's a really key thing for each of you to remember, and frankly, celebrate, that's a lot of growth in a town our size in a very short period of time in a small footprint.

Um both just in celebrating how great our community is and how far it's grown, but also in those benchmarks.

We have cleared in actual development costs the three-year benchmark, the seven-year benchmark, just in building permits alone, and we're just shy of that amount in uh just shy of that 10-year benchmark.

If we add to that about half a million dollars in private infrastructure, and the city right now, just in the southern part of the district, has about 700 about 7 million dollars worth of infrastructure improvements, road improvements, street lights, uh, sewer lines, moving fiber lines.

So we are at it probably safely when we do the next round of certifications, have cleared that 10-year benchmark in actual expenditures.

And remember, we only have to show commitments of 75 million dollars.

So in all of this, I want to make sure you don't lose sight of the fact that as far as the goals of that first act, we've cleared those thresholds probably on a permanent basis.

So just causing you to take that, take that moment to celebrate.

That's all that's a lot of actual development and growth.

Umce we clear those particular thresholds, we've satisfied Department of Economic Development's requirements for the district, and the collapse points in the district pass us.

Um this was designed to be the sort of benchmarks that had us making that growth and those progress and then uh then passing that on.

After the Good Life District Transformational Project Act was passed, became relatively clear that monetizing that reduction in the state taxes was difficult, if not impossible for uh private developers.

The Nebraska State Constitution has a variety of uh restrictions on taxpayer dollars that pose some problems.

One of the first and foremost ones that that is kind of a recurrent theme that you'll hear from us is there's a prohibition on governments lending their credit to private industry.

We can't co-sign a car loan, for example, without specific legislative permission.

This act does some of that.

It gives some of those authorizations to take taxpayer monies and spend it on certain narrow things.

And a lot of why we want to highlight some of these restrictions is because these serve as your legal guideposts.

You have policy discretion within these boundaries, but you can only spend the taxpayer money generated out of this program within these certain parameters.

So we want to make sure we review those for you so as you evaluate what is and isn't legal, what is and isn't a policy call, you know exactly where these rules came from.

They're not arbitrary rules, they're set forth by the legislature, and then we've acted on a lot of those.

The goals of the Good Life District Economic Development Act are outlined in the law itself.

It's to allow cities to assist in encouraging development, because as you're aware, we can't use taxpayer money for economic development without those express permissions.

For most of our use, that's that LB 840 program.

This adds an additional tool for economic development within that district.

It's designed to allow us to raise money to offset that reduced sales tax to help encourage that growth.

When that sales tax dropped, that a drop in sales tax doesn't generate growth unless we can turn it around and use it for something.

And specifically, this act had one very key local targeted goal, and that's if voters approved it, it allowed us to create a program tailored to meet the needs of the local community and to benefit the state.

This program is designed specifically to make sure that what works for us can be different than what works for Omaha, what works for Kearney, what works for Gretna.

So it gave you the path to do that approval and create the unique Grand Island specific program.

It gave you the permission to ask voters to approve the creation of a program because to spend taxpayer money requires taxpayer permission, and that's what we accomplished with that election was getting that blessing from the citizens to create this program.

It created the rules for how we can use these local sources of revenue.

It created a specific set of requirements for what the city has to have in our program.

So when we created that program, we can't go beyond the boundaries of the legislature set.

We can be more restrictive, but we cannot exceed those boundaries.

And it gave us some financing options.

It gave us some of the ability to seek bonds for those sort of city expenses that did not exist in an easy format in the law beforehand.

We're going to walk through some of the key features that exist for the program for you.

I'm not we're not going to go through and read all of them, but it's very important that you remember these are some of the key features set forth in state law.

These are non-negotiables, or they set those sort of policy boundaries.

You cannot spend property tax money on the fund.

That was in the ballot initiative that was passed.

That is just a fact, it's just a rule, it's not an opinion.

It is, it is what it is.

This does not exempt us from following a lot of the other laws that apply to the city.

Ideally speaking, it complements those other laws, but there are some places that it does not.

Our program has to include those benchmarks.

You are required by law to remember that you have to consider infrastructure first.

You can't just spend money on vertical construction without making sure there's roads to service it, electrical infrastructure to service it, sewers.

Relatively vague lawyer language, but but fundamentally speaking, what you'll see over and over again is this theme that the law in our program requires a return on investment.

The pledge of the state was that if they gave up this much tax dollars, we would do something with it that generated more tax dollars than it took out.

Um you're required to have gatekeeping and ensure that most of the money stays here, that we're not taking money generated here and spending it in Ogawala, spending it in Kansas, that it stays in Grand Island.

And there is an additional cap that's been added to the act that limits how much money can be spent on things that don't generate new tax dollars.

Um they also unambiguously put an obligation on you as city council to make sure you're controlling the expenditures that you have those authorities to the extent that we are responsible for audits, bonds, and finances.

You stay on the hook throughout it for compliance with the law, compliance with audits, compliance with bond terms.

Um it gave us the permission to enter into third-party contracts.

Um it does include one particular restriction that has come up in some of the communications that you've seen has been kind of addressed in the media, and that is it includes a restriction that for money generated on property owned by the owned or controlled by the good life district applicant.

If we want to spend their money on somebody else, there are some restrictions and some strings, and we'll go through that a little bit here in a little while.

And it created a requirement that we set forth our application process in city code.

Required our application process have certain features, and that we put it in code and that we follow it.

And so that application process will again be a sort of theme you see again because this is not a process that was just created, it's one that's required by law for a third party to access those funds.

One of the other key definitions in that statute is uh what is and isn't an eligible cost.

This program is designed at the state level to reimburse development costs only to the extent they're defined as being eligible.

So before we can spend money out, every cost that goes back out has to be eligible.

Um see in the packet, there's a list, a fairly detailed list of what is and isn't eligible.

Uh I'd ask you to kind of take a good look at that because that's not something we get to control.

We can restrict eligible costs.

We can decide less things are eligible, but we cannot add to this list.

Um, whenever you see any sort of request for something that's not on this list, um it is probably not eligible for program funds.

You do it when we created the program ordinance, we included all of these expenses.

We basically copy pasted the state requirements.

You do have the option to go more restrictive, but right now you are you are not more restrictive than that.

Um it also limits certain types of expenditures in some different ways.

The one you're most familiar with is a limitation on non-revenue producing expenses.

Uh that is things owned by private industry that don't generate taxes, not to over to not to oversimplify it.

City expenses don't count, but if I want to use it to build a private park, obviously nobody pays sales tax user private parks, so it typically is that non-revenue producing.

One of the big legal boundaries that's here that kind of gets lost a little bit in the weeds is that's 20% of money out of the program fund disbursements.

So for every dollar that goes out to a any sort of private applicant, 80 cents has to be spent on something that's going to generate new tax dollars, 20 cents can be spent on non-revenue producing items.

That is not a benchmark on money in or money we borrow against.

That is dollars out.

So, as we talked about some of the proposals that have been floated, you do not have the legal ability to frontload non-revenue producing expenses because this benchmark that you're responsible for compliance with and that we have to survive an audit for because in the end, this is the fund that the city is on the hook for.

It is 20% of disbursements from the fund is the maximum.

The state statute allowed the city to go anywhere from zero to twenty percent in our program ordinance.

Uh, what you did in your program ordinance is say that the default is zero unless you give permission to go higher, in which case you can give permission up to 20.

You can never exceed 20.

Nothing is eligible unless you say it's eligible.

Those are really your benchmarks.

Zero to 20 is a policy call that you will make application to application.

Um, even as we move forward, there are some key requirements on the city under the Good Life District Economic Development Act.

We had to go to voters, which obviously we've done already.

We had to create the program ordinance consistent with those statutory requirements, which is done.

Every year throughout the program, we're required by law to go through an audit of the program.

Uh, are we spending the money on the right things?

Are we accomplishing the goals?

That I mean, that big fundamental audit.

That does not go away, and it's also a non-delegable duty.

We have to do that every year.

We cannot pass that off to somebody else.

In the end, if we mess it up, we're on the hook for it.

Um required at all times, as you're very familiar under your own elves of office to uh follow the law, act in the best interest of the taxpayers who've entrusted you with their money.

Um that best interest standard is something you'll hear all of us say all the time that it's it's the lawyer magic buzzword.

It is a soft subjective line.

In most of these situations, I'm gonna use the word back to define it to you.

Is this in the best interest?

You get to make there's some fuzzy edges there, and that is that is a gray area, but fundamentally, that's your test.

Does it serve the citizens you were elected to serve?

Is it in our best interest?

Are you that and so always keep that in mind?

You ongoing have to ensure there's enough infrastructure to service this.

You can't spend money without the essential services to support that.

We can't use money to spend it on buildings if there's no electrical service to the buildings.

You have to ensure there's a return on investment through capital growth.

Um, that is statutorily limited to capital growth.

These sort of soft economic growth, I mean the growth you and I all lead on growth and paychecks, growth in uh sense of community, growth and resources is not the benchmark this law uses.

It uses capital growth.

Um we have to make sure the program is sustainable and benefits the city there.

Is this gonna last 30 years?

Um the other ongoing requirements that we that we have to look at if you want to kick through the is that uh you check those big boxes that the money stays here.

That accountability, no matter who you give it to and send it to, still comes back to you.

After that Good Life District Transformational Projects Act got the district created, and the economic development program authorizes to go to voters.

We then have the obligation to create our program.

So when we talk about the program ordinance, this is the program we're talking about.

When we talk about an application for program funds, it is not the application of Department of Economic Development that we're talking about when we say the application.

That is done, that was done two and a half years ago.

Uh those are the benchmarks we talked about first.

We're talking about an application for local sources of revenue.

It expires for us in 2054.

This pro there's no option for you to extend it past that.

This program goes for 30 years.

As you're all aware, this is the boundaries that were created.

At the time the district was created, the law allowed us to expand these boundaries.

That law has now been restricted, and these boundaries are fixed.

We cannot add property to it.

Removing property to it from it is a relatively complicated uh mess.

That is possible.

When we talk about the southern half, of course, we're referring to everything south of capital.

Um, we talked about the northern half or the well, I think most of you call the veterans village portion of things.

That's that northern half, that undeveloped land there.

Um, as you're aware of having created the program, there's a lot of purposes listed in that city program ordinance.

Um hang on to these sort of checklists because every action you take should be benchmarked against these program ordinances.

These are the promises you are required to make by the legislature, these are the promises made to voters.

These are the things you're supposed to keep in mind.

And a lot of them are pretty ethereal to use this opportunity well to uh build improvements that attract tourists.

But most of the goals of this program, I wanted to make sure you remember you've already accomplished a whole lot more than you think.

Um if the goal is economic retail growth, tourist growth, we've hit the retail growth and the economic growth.

I mean, obviously we can do a whole lot more with the program, but those benchmarks have been cleared.

When we talk about the applications, we're talking about this tourist draw, uh, the sports complex, the aquatic center, the things that are going to get folks from out of town, in town to spend money at all of our new retail establishments, to buy stuff at Target, to stay at our hotels, to pick up construction supplies from Menards.

Um keep all of these program goals in mind.

They're what you're required to do and what you've promised to do there.

Um a couple of key kind of notes when we talk about the statutory framework.

Umctionally, every business that generates sales taxes is a qualifying business to apply for program funds.

In fact, the legislature said even governments are qualifying businesses.

So when we use that phrase, functionally, if you pay if you operate a business that charges sales tax, you're probably a qualifying business.

Um click on through the next one.

So one of the hurdles we've had in trying to resolve and negotiate an agreement uh uh to the end uh to this end, is determining what finances we have available as a city to be able to support these types of construction projects.

Um this has been talked about quite a bit, and you obviously probably have some background in this, but originally the city was in charge of collecting revenues associated with businesses in the good life district.

Um we were you know responsible with that, or the city staff was doing a great job of making sure that we were getting compliance from from businesses in the area.

Uh after the uh second law was passed, the state took over that process.

Umfortunately, there's been some variance in the collections we've received with respect to some of that that property or that sales tax.

Uh originally, the average monthly collection was just under 700,000.

Um to this point, especially early on, there was a whole bunch of variance in what was collected as you can see here on the slide.

The information is uh $50,000 to $1.2 million, which likely attributed or accounted for a few different months, so it was hard to establish exactly how much money was coming in on a regular basis and how reliable that would be in order to borrow against it, for instance.

Um the monthly av to this point is 40,000 is not an insignificant amount less than what we were averaging before.

Um but that also has not yet accounted for this new five million dollar cap on existing business revenues.

So uh I would expect that over time as we hit that five million dollar cap, that that number will probably decrease on a monthly average.

Uh but the difficulty with this, then as is kind of folded into the negotiating process as we've been trying to work on getting a development agreement done, is uh severely vacillating numbers as far as revenue makes it really difficult to bond against.

Makes it really difficult to establish what what our borrowing capacity is.

And so the recommendations we've had have talked about needing a much longer period of time to establish what that revenue source is going to look like on a more consistent basis before we can even make reasonable bonding terms and understand what it is we'd be borrowing against.

So that has been a significant hurdle in the in the process as we've been going through this.

And that's really, you know, if when we talk about our abilities under this program, that instability, even though the total average is about the same, that instability complicates life.

Um if you go to get a mortgage in your house and you're self-employed and your income one month is a thousand dollars, next month is ten thousand dollars, next month is two thousand dollars, next month is fifteen thousand dollars.

Your bank wants a lot more history before they're gonna give you a mortgage.

It is fundamentally the same sort of problem for the city.

Until our revenues are relatively stable, can the bondholders get a guarantee that we can consistently make the same payment because we cannot use property tax money to backstop any sort of loan we take out.

So while that revenue is unstable, it changes how much how much we can borrow.

If we once thought we could borrow a lot of money, we have to measure our expectations until we get that stability.

On top of it, you added that cap.

So one of the things that you'll hear is that our financial advisors have told us that the prudent thing, and they're the experts that that make these sort of recommendations, is to live within our means.

We know our means are roughly around that five million dollar cap to not exceed borrowing around that point until we have some stabilization.

Um we'll get better terms, better likelihood of being able to for sure pay it.

Because in the end, any money you authorize borrowing, the city is on the hook for, and ultimately you're using taxpayer funds to pay for it.

So there's that sort of financial due diligence.

So stability and our ability to borrow is is kind of a common theme you'll see.

Um the wonderful decision tree that is the law here, um, is what happens when lawyers start adding math rules to statutes.

But fundamentally speaking, all the money that comes into the program is a local source of revenue.

There are rules as to when and how you can remove money from that account.

Um the farther right two columns are what we can do for debt servicing.

When you borrow, you've got some ability to pay use this local source revenue to pay back the money you borrow.

We can use it for some some basic administrative fees to cover the cost of those audits, the program compliance.

And then there's money we can directly spend on that growth.

And there are three ways that growth money can come out.

The first and probably easiest to digest is the city can spend it on eligible costs.

We can spend it on roads and on sewers and on the sorts of things cities do.

Uh anything that's infrastructure, anything that qualifies as improvements, right-of-way acquisition, buildings, parks, and we can spend it on operational money.

Um, for example, when we talk about the sports complex, the city can spend it to pay a management company.

A private entity cannot.

So that's part of the operational expenses are a government expenditure.

We we can spend it in response to our requests for proposals.

So, for example, if we say, hey, we've got a million dollars of incentive money, tell us what cool thing you'll do.

We can send that out, and then we can issue those contracts in response to our requests.

As far as a qualifying private business making an ask for this limited source of revenue, there is one authorized path, and that's through an application process.

The Good Life District Economic Development Act uh obligated you to create that program, and you are required to set forth the application process in code.

If a private business wants to make a request for that money, this is the way to make that ask.

This is the way you are allowed to remove money and transfer it to a private business.

That process is clearly established in code.

We were required to go through the exact steps in code, and so we'll run through a little bit what those processes are, largely because one of the things we need you to understand is is when we talk about how this current process got complicated.

It's because we started the journey on the right path.

And then about October of this year, that path wasn't moving quite quick enough.

And so it got sidestepped in short kind of before it was really done.

And the proposal and those kind of key terms came to you in November before you authorized this negotiation.

And it's been in a constantly evolving and changing document.

The terms, the key things that should have been in the full application, have been constantly evolving.

So when we do this the legal way, you follow the key application.

Our application process is set forth in City Code Chapter 38, Section 19 for those who need some light reading to fall asleep today.

But it includes the exact list of what is supposed to be in that application.

An application needs to have all of those pieces or those questions answered to be considered complete.

The application that was last received by Watsoni is missing some of these pieces.

When the process works appropriately, the application comes in with the associated fee, goes to the community development director who checks the boxes to make sure everything's there, then gets sent on to the administrative review team.

That team is designed to fluctuate depending on the size and scope of the project.

It always includes public works director because infrastructure is a very key part of any project we do, city administrator who administers your business, me to do those, go through the sort of contracts, and then it's designed to let other stakeholders be a part of it as may be necessary.

So, for example, in this process, we brought in bond council, we brought in financial advisors, uh the utilities director gets to be involved, sometimes parked director for the parks programs.

But if we were doing a single building project, it could be a smaller team.

So it's designed to be flexible and grow there.

The application then goes to that administrative review team who gets to ask follow-up questions, collect more information, try to get this nicely packaged up and bundled for you so that way by the time you vote, we can just do things.

The reality is we got about halfway through this process before things weren't moving quick enough, and a request was made to come directly to you to make this pitch.

That's part of why we have these gaps and these holes.

Additionally, if the process is working right, the request is solidified before it comes to you.

We've had the additional complications that the request has changed and evolved throughout this application process.

I'll use the sports complex itself as probably the best example.

The size of the building, depending on the different version of proposed plans that the city has received, has oscillated from as small as 95,000 square feet to as big as 165,000 square feet.

So nearly doubling in size, the cost has never really changed.

So knowing what it is you're voting for has been a difficult question for us to answer.

The commercial development has included everything from a bunch of pictures of commercial and mixed use development to a list that is general and vague in terms of retail growth to one hotel, one restaurant, and a 2500 square foot commercial building.

And then sometimes it said those are maybes.

So if the application process is followed, for example, one of the items you should have got is a list of occupied structures, structures intended to be occupied, their use and their size.

Once that process has been through and been fully vetted, an application would then go back to the applicant to say, hey, this is all the recommendations the administrative review team has, these are the things they'd like to see happen.

And at that point in time, the applicant gets to choose do I make those adjustments and come back through?

Do I say, you know, wait, this is not the right program for me, I'm gonna withdraw my application, or do we forward it to council, ideally speaking, ready to go.

Um the application process sets forth pretty cleanly what those qualifications are.

You have to be a qualified business, you have to be either involved in the operation of a tax-generating business, um, you have to have some basic insurance coverage, you have to be able to obtain a performance bond in the amount that guarantees you're gonna finish what you've asked to start.

Um you have to promise to be committed to legal compliance, you can't have had government contract problems, you have to provide proof of ownership in the property that you're applying to make the improvements on, um, or encumbrances or an exclusive interest, something that basically says you can do what you're asking to do, and uh proof that those improvements meet building code, some of those basic standards.

Um, your application has to have all of the materials, and it has to have some key measures for you to ensure the project is realistic, it's deliverable, it's financially viable.

The math has to work in a way that's past what most lawyers can understand.

You have to have proof it exemplifies the purpose of the program.

Is it gonna build infrastructure, generate tax revenue, and bring in tourists?

Detailed, we ask for detailed plans, projections, governments governance documents, a list of the structures, all of the supporting materials you might need to make your decisions, um, and again, those sort of pro formers, the proof that this can actually materialize.

Then you also have to have a list of a variety of other materials.

Who's going to be on your team?

How are you going to get this done?

When we're talking about land and contracts, one of the key obligations that's written into code that has been a continual stumbling block here is a requirement that these proposals include encumbrances, restrictions, kind of tie-ups, which provide assurances that if if this project fails at any point in time, we end at least a little bit better off than we started.

So in this particular project, for example, if it were to fail at the five-year mark, the 10-year mark, the 15-year mark, are we at least breaking even?

That has been a continual issue for us in every proposal we've had is there have been a lack of encumbrances that demonstrate that if if this fails, we're good to go at any point in time.

So as you consider these applications, that's one of the big things you need to make sure you remember.

You all we also require a clear description about the program goals.

What about this makes this project transformational and unique?

As we've talked to some of the state senators who are involved in the creation of this program, this has been a really key point for them.

This was the point and purpose.

Senator Von Gillern used the example that if he can find the thing in every other town, it's probably not transformational.

Something that stands a part that is that draw.

The legislature in the Good Life District Economic Development Act debates really focused on housing, for example.

Housing is neither transformational in the sense that it's not routine and ordinary or particularly unique.

So it is distinguishable from the sorts of things that only one town has.

And a clear statement that it is going to generate that whatever the ask is is going to generate at least as much money as it takes back out of the program.

So if I ask for a million dollars, I have an obligation to prove to you I'm going to generate at least a million bucks back for you.

Over time, perhaps this may be at the end of 20 years, but that eventually there's going to be a return on investment of those taxpayer dollars.

And then you have to have proof there's enough roads, sewers, streets, electric to service everything.

You have to show that there's enough capital investment in the building some facilities to do this.

So there has to be some concrete data behind all of this.

And you're required to submit proposed distribution schedules that prioritize things that generate taxes over non-revenue generating.

So your schedule is supposed to show that you're going to spend money on transformational tax generators first, non-revenue producing stuff second.

Those key requirements of the program, the requirements of law have been for the most part missing from the materials we've received.

As far as the particular application with Woodsonia goes, Matt's gonna kind of walk through some of that big history there for you a little bit.

One of the things obviously we've been talking here for a little bit, but one of the reasons we were going through all this is because we do think it's fundamentally important for for the city council and the public to understand what the purpose of these statutes was, why the state decided to make these decisions before we actually go into this whole process so you can understand the decision-making process that the city legal and admin team has put forth in analyzing these proposals.

Um now that we're here, this process, this is this is where Witsonia kind of gets involved.

Um they made their initial application here in October of 2024.

Uh again, uh physics alluded to this, there were parts of the application that were missing, and then that's kind of part of the process.

They provide their application, and we come back and say, well, here's some more information we need, maybe it doesn't quite meet what we're looking for, and then we go back, they can give us some more information, or they can address it from there.

There's a little back and forth before we get to the review team before we get to the point of solidifying things and getting it on to the council to vote for approval.

Unfortunately, that's got a bit of process where we've been stuck in going back and forth from.

But something else to note in here, when you look at this year gap in here, there were a couple of other things that were happening here.

After that application, the legislature was tinkering with the statutes again.

So there was a there is some moment of time in which everybody paused while we waited to see what the legislature was gonna do.

No point in getting too far.

Um, this is the time period in which the legislature put that non-revenue producing cap in, they put the five million dollar cap on new revenues.

The other thing that happened in the middle of this is the city of Grand Island ended up being a party to a pretty significant lawsuit.

Um we end up being being brought in as a defendant in a lawsuit between Woodsonia and AMC theaters related to the redevelopment of Conestoga.

That creates a complication for the city in that any time anybody gets sued for anything, one of the risks that comes with that lawsuit is that if the person who's suing you is successful in that suit, they want money and they can try to collect on assets you have.

So when part of the request is for us to turn over a little over 150 acres of land, uh, if AMC were to be successful, one of the things they could do is attach that land and take that land from the citizens from Woodsonia from the city and use it to pay a debt.

So figuring out the likelihood of success of that lawsuit, how much that lawsuit was worth was another reason we kind of pressed pause for a second.

Uh that lawsuit is still is still pending, I believe.

Uh when we looked the other day, there's a uh there's some pending arbitration and a status report due to federal court right now, but as of right now, we still don't know the outcome of that suit.

But that is a huge risk in the middle here is that one of the biggest assets at play here is tangled up in this application.

So there was a period of delay there as a result of that before we realize that's not resolving anytime soon and started to move on.

So then we kind of kick forward to the amended application.

One of the other things I need you to know in all of this is the applicant for the good life district with the state is would is Woodsonia Real Estate Incorporated.

The first application is made in the name of a second corporation, Woodsonia Highway 281 LLC.

The amended application then replaces that with a third LLC, Grand Island Good Life District LLC, which is important in legal risk assessment because in all of this, when we're looking at at the risk, the return on investment, the proformas, company history, subject uh susceptibility to judgments, can we collect, can we enforce, depends on some of those sorts of due diligences.

It's easier for us to make those assessments on long-term, well-established businesses, it's harder on new businesses.

So when in this application process, the actual business applying has changed multiple times, it's a wrinkle and a complication that we've had to kind of continuously address.

The statutes do allow for these, what I believe the law calls them related persons to do this all.

But every time that changes, it resets our due diligence a little bit.

Um of the other changes that occurred during this application time.

So then obviously once we get the the new law passed and we have a better idea of what the city can do and what the city's authority is.

Uh the application was amended in August and November.

You obviously all were here in November and December when uh the presentations were made uh to council.

Um but there were some significant changes made to those applications, which again is why we have the process we had, hopefully to kind of hammer that stuff out before we got to this point.

Um that includes adding the aquatic center, reducing the sports complex size.

Um there were another other items in there as far as what guarantees were going to be in place, what bonding requirements they were asking for, how much housing they were going to develop and could cap the development year by year.

Um so some of that stuff that is pretty fundamental and and necessary to hammer down in the agreements kept shifting between various amended applications.

Um then, again, as is Ms.

Ms.

Fist noted, they presented to uh council on November 12 and December 9 prior to that actual application process uh being completed.

Um December 9 council meeting happened.

Uh there was a lot of conversation that happened about the importance of the aquatic center and some of the other uh items that were and were not included.

I know there was some frustration about pickleball courts and that sort of stuff as well.

Um, but there was uh support for housing was talked about.

There was some concern, I think uh as to the extent that housing appeared to be a huge part of the design element.

Um, but ultimately authorization was given to the city to continue negotiating towards the agreement, reflecting what was contained in the proposed terms of the amended application in the best interest of the city.

Um and one of the things in particular that that I know the council highlighted was making sure that there were sufficient encumbrances and clawbacks to safeguard against project failure, which is some of the stuff that Ms.

Fisk was talking about.

Making sure that we have the ability to guarantee return on our investment, making sure that the land is going to be used as it has been indicated is going to be used, and making sure that if something goes sideways or heywire, we're not left in the wind and we're left at the very least no worse off than we were when we got into the deal.

And when we talk about these negotiations, uh at the very initial stages of our discussions with Woodsonia, um we tested a variety of models.

I think I think they'll probably agree with you.

The first probably 20 meetings we had were monster group meetings.

Every stakeholder in the meetings, 15-person wide Zoom meetings, very quickly realized governance by committee is is uh messy and complicated, even just scheduling the meetings became a bit stressful.

We attempted smaller groups, different groups, stakeholders have changed, we've changed city administrators, they've changed lawyers.

We've we tried about every different combination of folks possible throughout the course of that year and a half there, up to the November meeting.

Just looking at my calendar alone, there's over 90 meetings that we had that were calendared and included outside stakeholders.

So a pretty exhaustive combination of folks there.

After the December 9th meeting, one of the things that Woodsonia had had asked is that we stopped doing these group meetings and it don't do and they just negotiate through their lawyers.

So at that point in time, um their uh their attorney Kurt Peterson then proceeded to work pretty heavily with our bond counsel Mike Rogers to do just some one-on-one attorney to attorney negotiations.

They had more schedule flexibility and could meet relatively frequently.

So when I go through some of these, what meetings occurred then, all some of them were just between those two to make the progress.

Then their attorney would go forward and meet with them separately, and Mike would kind of keep us up to speed and updated, and we'd every once in a while we'd come back together and have some four or five person meetings.

But we designed a process to keep the groups small at Woodsonia's request just to those two lawyers to kind of talk and see if that helped us make some progress.

Umce we were back here in front of council before, again, we facilitated we did these negotiations between uh their attorney and uh our bond council, and not to oversimplify it, but the negotiations just kind of were circular.

We didn't really ever make meaningful progress.

We would make progress on one step only to lose progress on another step.

And a lot of the key issues we started to see regression in.

Uh when we get to the point where we're putting things down on paper, the commercial development, the tax generators, for example, continued to shrink.

That list went from an amphitheater and commercial development to one hotel, one restaurant, and then a commercial property.

Eventually, that commercial property shrunk to of at least 2,500 square feet, which a note is about half the size of Chick-fil-A.

And then it got another string added to it, and that was that they would only build that if we promised enough money.

Um of this, I one of the things that you need to know is that all of these checks and balances, they take time.

That is not a bug in the system.

Um, to quote Mike Rogers, that that's a feature.

We're talking about an ask for 140 million dollars in good life district revenue, 50-ish million dollars in TIFF and 150 acres of land that have been in in the city's or the government's care and custody for 125 years.

It's supposed to be hard.

Um it's supposed to be time consuming, it's supposed to be restrictive.

It should not be easy to spend almost 200 million dollars of taxpayer money.

So it's okay that it has got complicated.

That's a good sign.

It's a sign everybody's doing their due diligence and is putting their homework in.

Um part of that complication uh complicated process was as it was Kerry noted um at Woodsonia's request.

The the conversation was really led by representative attorneys and then would come back to the group so we can have some feedback and then provide feedback and then hopefully push the negotiation even further.

Things stalled out, and then in uh early March when we had uh meeting to assess how things were going.

Um, the city received notice from Woodsonia that they no longer wished to engage in further negotiations using the attorneys anymore.

So after having negotiating uh using negotiating process incorporating attorneys primarily, then a few months later they decided they didn't no longer wanted to use attorneys to do it.

Now they wanted to start using in-person meetings with larger groups again.

Um so we actually had done that uh a couple of times as well.

And in the middle of this, this is when you were provided updates about this revenue issue, the fact that this revenue was going increasingly unstable.

So one of the core features of of Woodsonia's ask um that has stayed relatively stable through all of the assorted versions, is for a promise that the city seek a maximum level of bond financing.

Um the early kind of really optimistic projections were upwards of around 140 million dollars.

As that revenue stream has shifted as the economy tends to do, the projections for that available revenue have gotten smaller.

When we add the unstable collections, what we can borrow and what's in our best interest to borrow, what our financial advisors borrow has become increasingly questionable.

And as we've advised you, when when you have months dipping as low as $50,000, getting a loan against it becomes darn near impossible until we get stability.

But the ask has always been to guarantee a certain level of bonding.

That has become throughout this process factually impossible of a promise for us to make.

So we updated you then, of course, on that stability issues and on the fact negotiations were stalling, and then advised Woodsonia of the same that there was a growing frustration with the fact no progress was being made, and started the process to ramp up these meetings.

In the middle of meetings when some are scheduled, that's when Woodsonia provided the notice Matt relayed to you, which was that they were no longer interested in meetings.

I note that I think in the media that answer has been relayed that we somehow the city cut off negotiations in February.

That is just patently untrue.

We were still meeting at the beginning of March.

That first week in March, then Woodsonia notified uh the city by and through legal counsel that they were no longer interested in this negotiation, and instead would submit what they called their best and final offer.

I note that their November offer and December offer to council were also couched as their best and final offer.

Um that offer was given, and uh we checked it against the authorities that were given to us by you in uh November and December and against the boundaries of the law to see if there was hope that we were pretty close.

We just had to tie up some loose ins.

And fundamentally speaking, we were still not even reading the same book, let alone on the same page.

And so in the end of March, then uh mayor Matt Patrick Brown and I met with Drew Snyder and provided in that notice that we looked at the best and final, and it did not meet any of the authorities we'd provided by council or the authorities set forth in law, and but that the city still had an obligation and a promise to do this transformational growth, a promise that you all had made to the voters who approved the program.

And so we let them know then at that time that uh that things were not going well, met again then on that March 25th, and uh had that formal meeting where we said we we've got to move on and get this growth done.

A week after that, or two week and a half after that, we received what we call the April 6th proposal, another best and final offer, this time sent directly to each of you uh via email, outside of the application process and outside of the boundaries of what is required by law.

That's what was sent to you.

And so when we talk about that proposal, that's the proposal they originally asked to present directly to you today.

So a lot of these risks and uh balances are are checked against that proposal.

This packet then gets prepared right before this, and over the course of the last week, then um Woodsonia sent the city another notice that it did not want to present the April 6th proposal anymore, and instead replaced it with uh four items of discussion they wanted uh the city to agree that we're on the same page with.

Um, and that's kind of what we have.

That's kind of where we are here.

Um, in the course of this, one of the other things that you all received at uh Woodsonia's request were two separate emails from various legislatures.

The one I want to make sure I specifically address is an email and a letter that was sent by Senator Von Gillern, who's a senator on the eastern half of the state, who uh was kind of the legislative architect of this this program.

His letter that was sent to you indicates and communicates a uh a legal belief that um the applicant with the State Department of Economic Development controlled all of the revenue that comes into the program.

Um that opinion to to be quite candid is different than what the statute says.

So we had the series of uh discussions by and through our lobbyists with the senators to figure out where we were missing each other.

Um throughout the course of that meeting, um Senator Vaughn Gillern was was wonderfully candid with us and and uh indicated frankly he had really had no intention of getting into the weeds and into the mess with all of this or serving as an advocate advocate for anybody, and we addressed some of those concerns.

And one of the things I specifically told him was that I was certain one of you was going to ask whether that's still his legal opinion.

And Senator Von Gillen was very candid with us that that he was incorrect in that assessment.

We reviewed with him the legal framework for distribution that that Matt's gonna go through here in just a moment, and he confirmed for us that he shares the same assessment that this is how the program funds work.

So he has clarified that that opinion is not an accurate statement of law and that he agrees with that that core assessment.

So when we go through some of this, I want to make sure and address that that to the extent that that is a concern any of you have that we're contrary to the legislative architects, that has been uh addressed.

Since that meeting, too, in furtherance of you know, making this progress, the city has issued two requests for proposals.

One uh for preliminary engineering services for city infrastructure, and I do owe Keith a little asterisk there that the lawyer definition of infrastructure and public works director of definition of infrastructure are a little different.

One of the things we have to do is figure out how big the box for the sports complex is gonna be and where it's gonna go before we can do any of Keith's part of that infrastructure, before we can figure out where the roads are gonna go, before we can figure out where sewers have to go, what drainage has to look like.

So the first RFP is designed to figure that out.

Um we have a proposal for a sports complex that shifts from 90,000 square feet to 165,000 square feet, that changes the core land that we have to work with.

The land we have in the northern half is in some places in floodway and floodplain, it's gonna require some work to be buildable and design that infrastructure.

So we'd set that first RFP out to get those really basic, basic basic engineering answers, and then to solicit a request for a sports facility manager, somebody who's an expert in sports facilities who can serve kind of as your advisor on you know those big core issues.

How do we take that study that you had done and turn it into an actionable usable facility?

Big huge ethereal decisions like what direction should the doors face, how many basketball courts should there be?

Um somebody who can help guide us through to make sure whatever it is that gets built can be operated efficiently within the budget we have in a way that fits our community.

Um of the reasons we're going through this process, and I want to explain this because I think it's important and it's it's been one of the things I've noticed throughout my experience in involvement with this issue, is there is a whole lot of I feel like a broken record, but there's a whole lot of putting the cart before the horse in a lot of this.

We we can't really plan out a lot of the infrastructure until we understand what the site might look like.

We can't really understand what the site might look like until we have someone who's actually engaged and involved in an expert in the area who who advises us what a community of our size and a community like ours needs in order to put into that facility.

Um so we come up and we have a lot of presentations about some really nice looking and attractive looking facilities without actually diving into what the ultimate need for this community might be, what the footprint might need to be for that before we can really start assessing all the rest of the need, appraising the land, for instance, and determining how much that might be worth, how much resources we might have to devote to that.

And so this is this is what the city does.

We we make sure we go through all the steps incrementally and appropriately in the order that they need to be done, so we're not actually getting ahead of ourselves and making sure that the questions we're answering are the questions that need to be answered, and not because this is the answer that we want to get eventually.

Um those RFPs were sent out.

We have received uh proposals under that, and we're currently in the process of reviewing that.

So then when we kind of kick into into today, of course, I need you to know that this was designed under the assumption that we were going to be reviewing the April 6th proposal that's now been withdrawn.

So we do still address some of those particularities, but we'll try to be kind of general as to what has been a steam versus what was a peculiarity of that application.

As we as we do this, I want to talk to you really briefly about what has to be in a contract or an agreement.

Um because one of the challenges that that you will face constantly in this, or whoever negotiates it is at the end, we got to get to a if if money's gonna go out of the program to a private developer, you have to have a contract at the end of this.

Um office reviews hundreds of pages of contracts for every single council meeting, your entire consent agenda is full of nothing but contracts to buy things or perform services.

This is relatively dime a dozen for us, but we recognize it's it's not pedestrian for all of you.

So when we talk about a contract, a contract has to have a couple of really basic features.

There has to be good and valuable considerations, the wonderful law school buzzword.

If I'm just giving you something, I'm giving you a gift.

If you're just giving me something, you're giving me a gift.

To be a contract, I have to give you something of value, and I have to get something of value.

So when we're reviewing this sort of application, if an application is just a request for an ask, that's a gift, and we cannot buy law gift taxpayer money.

Um the thing of value has to be tangible value.

I can take it and do something with it.

Uh, if I tell you in exchange for a hundred bucks, I'll be your best friend.

That's an illusory promise.

That's though it's very valuable, it's not a thing of value.

So when we talk about evaluating whether this meets the requirements of a basic contract, I have to be able to say, in exchange for this, we get this, and they have to be real big, valuable things.

It has to be for something in the future.

Um, I can't do a contract in the past.

I can't say, hey, remember when I lent you 20 bucks in high school, uh, let's do a contract now to pay me back.

It has to be for something I'm going to get in the future.

So when we talk about this particular application and getting and giving credit for things that happened two years ago, we have some pretty strong limitations on our ability to do that.

Uh, for example, you have deadlines by law for how old a bill can be when you can still pay it.

We can't exceed some of those things.

We can't cut somebody a check in exchange for the cool thing they did a few years ago.

So we've got to be forward thinking.

Um, it has to be enforceable.

There has to be a consequence if I break it.

If you I do a contract with you, I'm going to give you a thousand bucks to get a car.

I got to be able to get my thousand bucks back if you don't deliver the car.

So a contract without enforceability, you see those a lot.

They're called MOUs.

They're written down promises, but they are worth about the paper they're written on.

They memorialize a handshake, but you can't enforce them.

And everything has to be reduced to writing.

A promise I make you right now doesn't matter.

It's a relationship builder, but it's not enforceable.

So when we talk about the pictures and the promises and the don't worry, guys, we won't do that.

Unless we write the promises down, it doesn't matter.

This has been a relatively consistent issue for us as these negotiations have gone forward.

The example I'll use is when we talk about private investment.

You all have heard a lot of sales pitch about how much private investment is going to be put into this particular project.

When push comes to shove and we started to ask to write down that promise.

What do you mean by private investment?

That that promise started to vaporize.

Turns out private investment mean loans against stuff we already have.

Turns out when we say, will you promise in a way that we could enforce on that you will put X dollars into the program?

We weren't willing to write that promise down in a way that was enforceable.

So whenever you were reviewing any sort of contract, is it good and valuable consideration versus a gift?

Is it in the future?

Can we sue each other about it?

And are you willing to put it in writing?

Because if it's not in writing, it doesn't matter.

Um we cannot go back and address this.

Um this is a particular concern for the city when it comes to Wood Sony in particular, because right now Woodsonia's other subsidiary corporations are involved in active lawsuits with other entities in which the oral promises and the written promises weren't in sync.

And when the contractor sued on the verbal promises, the defense is hey, it's not in writing, it doesn't matter.

So very important for us to get everything reduced to writing.

So as you focus through and do this all, I want you to remember what said out loud doesn't matter, it's about pencil to paper that really matters here.

Um when you kick through these agreements, you have to remember whatever agreements you do, program funds have to follow the law.

You cannot exceed those legal authorities.

You have to follow all of the other assorted laws that cities are obligated to follow.

If we finance something, if we do a city-based bond, you are on the hook for it.

You're responsible for the payments, you're responsible for the compliance, uh, you're responsible for all deliverables and all costs.

That's not necessarily assignable.

There are some options to pass it through a bit, but in the end, ultimately you're on the hook for that all.

Yeah, but some of this is that same sort of contract stuff that we we've kind of already talked about.

Our financial advisors have also contributed some of these key reminders.

We have to have those details on the financial records.

We cannot reimburse a cost that is not statutorily eligible, no matter how much you want to, you can't spend this money except for what the legislature has said.

Um of the key features of this program that that is important is this program is designed to be reimbursement-based.

We spend the money on eligible costs, we get paid back.

It's not designed for private developers to front load and then and then borrow against it all.

So our money-wise, it's designed we can do some borrowing, but when it works well, a private developer would submit an expense and we would pay them back once we know what the expense is buying.

If we're on a reimbursement model, this is actually relatively easy to do the contract for.

Front loading it is unbelievably complicated there.

And one of the other big risks that we have now right now is the requested funds exceed how much money you have available.

We're talking about the request was for 140 million dollars of funds.

We don't have a fund, 140 million dollars of money to give.

So just factually speaking, there's not enough money to pay for the requests there.

Um we're required when we build infrastructure to follow certain hoops.

We cannot gift taxpayer resources.

We have public procurement obligations by law.

We can't spend government money in secret.

We have to have open, competitive, and transparent processes to do so.

That's why we constantly are bidding and doing contracts.

And most importantly, then the statute specifically puts that responsibility to spend the money appropriately in city council's hand.

Um when we go through and when Matt goes through here, the uh kind of the May 4th ask, um, we'll talk about why some of these are still a bit of an issues there.

So a lot of background information for ultimately the crux of why we're here.

Uh lawyers are nothing if not thorough and boring.

Um, but we feel like it's our job to make sure everybody here understands what this entire process is supposed to look like before we can even get here and make intelligent decisions about what we're supposed to make decisions about.

Um again, we have been prepping for a while to be able to address some of our concerns with that April 6th proposal, and then at the last minute, that proposal was with withdrawn or requested to be withdrawn from consideration.

So I want to talk about some of the specific requests that Sony has asked for us to address here today.

Some of that conversation, we're going to use examples of uh development agreements they've had, and most recently, obviously the April 6 one, just because we want to make sure we can make it clear and concrete some of the concerns we have had this entire process and why we've had those concerns.

Um but specifically, uh these are slightly reworked from how they presented them.

Um, but here are the four or four key components that Woodsonia wanted to address or asked council to to address.

And we're gonna take each of those in turn and specific preliminarily, I think is the most important issue that is gonna be the biggest deal breaker that has been the the stumbling block this entire period.

And that is uh Woodsonia wants the city to agree that the good life district funds are tied to Estonia, the applicant, and specifically that the city has to have Watsonia's agreement to use any of those good life district funds, whether the city's gonna use that for themselves, or or any other project that they might not use that doesn't involve Woodsonia.

And the bottom line behind this is that it's flatly wrong.

It is absolutely unequivocally contrary to the clear statutory language.

Um you've all read statutes before, you've seen ordinances before, and oftentimes uh legal language is as clear as mud.

I don't think that the statutory language in this capacity is is unclear at all.

Um this is the language of the relevant statutes.

Under 77415, good life district funds are placed into an economic development fund.

The important part is underlined there.

In any amount, the the these proceeds can be distributed in any amount and at any time at the discretion and direction of the governing body of the city.

Period.

So unambiguously speaking, this the law says you control the money that goes out, not the applicant.

This is not a legal opinion, this is not legal interpretation.

This is reading you can do with about a third grade reading level, not a law degree.

The money can be spent in any amount at any time at the discretion and direction of the governing body of the city.

Now, there is one caveat to that, and this is important to note.

Um, but the city can provide money to other qualifying businesses.

And and the qualifying business definition we kind of talked about earlier, it's included in the presentation in the statute, we can talk about that.

But the bottom line is if you're a business in the good life district and you spend some money on an eligible cost and you want to request reimbursement, whether the you're the applicant or not, you can ask.

The city is allowed to make agreements with qualifying businesses to potentially reimburse them for those eligible costs.

However, the city cannot enter into a contract or agreement with a qualifying business to provide those funds using revenue collected from property owned by the good life district applicant.

Obviously, in this case, the good life district applicant, the DED applicant is Woodsonia.

So for any revenue generated on property that Woodsonia owns, and they have some property in the Constitution marketplace that they have owned and generates revenue.

Any of that revenue, we would have to request their permission to use so long as we're using it for another qualifying business.

And they would have the right to object to that.

So to make this abundantly clear.

So let's pretend that there are two businesses in the good life district, business A and Business B.

One business is owned by the applicant, A, make it easy.

The other business is not owned by the applicant.

They're qualifying business.

Both of them each generate $20,000 in sales tax based off the good life district program.

Half of that then is given back to the city to be put into its good life district program fund.

So that means the city now holds $20,000 in the Good Life District Program Fund.

$10,000 of that is each coming from property owned by these two respective businesses.

Okay.

So then the question is what happens if B spends money on an eligible cost for reimbursement and then applies to the city under our application process to have that cost reimbursed.

There's basically two steps to that.

We've got $20,000, $10,000 of it attributable to each business.

Business B requests less than $10,000 in reimbursement, or business B requests more than $10,000 in reimbursement.

Those are really kind of the two cases we have to talk about here.

Well, in the in the instance that business B would request less than $10,000 in reimbursement, city can do whatever it wants.

The city can choose to reimburse that money if they want, because they have access to good life district revenues that would cover that expense.

It's an eligible cost by a qualifying business, and the city can, in its discretion, decide to spend that money again in any amount and at any time that it chooses.

The other circumstance is what happens if they're requesting more than $10,000.

Well, the the unspoken part of that then is then that would be a request to dip into the amount of the proceeds that would be attributable to property owned by the applicant.

And the city really kind of has two options there.

Either the city can disperse up to the $10,000 it has that's not taken from the property belonging to the applicant and distributed that to business to the business B.

And they can do that whether the applicant wants them to or not.

The applicant's opinion on that does not matter.

Or if they want to reimburse a larger portion of that and then have to dig into the $10,000 that is attributable to the property owned by the applicant, then the city would have to ask for the agreement of the applicant in order to dip into those funds.

That is the only time when the city would need to ask for the applicant to agree to expend those funds.

If they're going to dip into funds specifically generated from property owned by the applicant, short of that, the city is in is in control of all of the funds and how and when that money would get spent.

And so this particular scenario, we ran through the senators who sent that letter, it's kind of indicating they thought that, and they concur with our analysis.

I think on that call, we're a wide variety of our state senators, an attorney for the revenue committee with the legislature, um, a bunch of our lawyers, because you can't put enough lawyers in a room together to have a good time.

And there's no dispute amongst the relevant lawyers that this is this is how that one restriction works.

But for every other penny, you have complete and total control over that revenue.

So as to that first request that Woodsonia has made to see if we're alignment, categorically speaking, the law is not in alignment with their position.

Um you cannot agree to deviate from that law.

That is not what the law is.

So we have a pretty significant failure point at that first item.

Um I'll go through the kind of the second item on their list.

So there was uh another point for request that that Woodsonia or comments on this item that they wanted to be addressed, one of their second items.

Um, that Woodsonia has agreed to pay fair market value for the land is determined by future appraisal.

Now, this is where I'm gonna get a little lawyerly and legalistic on you because I think language matters.

And the statement by Woodzoni is that Woodsonia has agreed to pay fair market value, and and I would push back on that because until the April 6th proposal, and then specifically until this statement was made, there was no discussion whatsoever by Woodsonia to pay anything even close to fair market value for the land.

The original, and mayor addressed this in his new news conference, the original proposals up to April 6, 2026 was for Woodsonia to get the land from the city for a dollar.

That was the request.

And that was consistently request, despite the fact that on multiple occasions the city told them explicitly not only would we not do that, we legally cannot do that.

Kerry ran through the legal prohibitions on that earlier.

We cannot gift public land, we cannot gift public resources, and giving 150 acres of land for a dollar is functionally a gift.

We cannot do that.

Despite the numerous meetings, despite the constant refrain from the city that we cannot do that, that request by Woodzonian never changed.

So there wasn't really negotiating on that point.

It was just a consistent and repeated ask to give us the land for a dollar.

That's not good and valuable consideration.

And it wasn't until April 6th that that request changed.

And the reason that request changed was because prior to that, the city had flatly told them we cannot do that, we're no longer going to do that, and we're going to start proceeding on our own.

So it wasn't until the city started taking steps to make good on the vote of the people and promise to provide transformational growth to the community that Watsonia then finally changed its ask for all the land for one dollar.

And at that point, they did make an ask that we would purchase what Zonia said they would purchase that land for $10,000 an acre.

Again, I'm gonna go back to my refrain that we're putting the cart before the horse.

And we'll talk about this a little bit more in detail later, but we can't sell land for $10,000 if we don't know it's worth $10,000.

And I I would note prior to the application because we're really talking about what's happened since the application for program funds.

Prior to that application for program funds, there was a period of time in which there was a proposal floated to pay and I can't remember the exact amount, a certain amount per acre for land in the floodplain and a certain amount for land not in the floodplain.

But it wasn't a genuine contractual offer because it was please give us the money to buy the land from you, and then we'll buy the land from you at this price.

So it was that sort of illusory consideration we talked about where they wanted $15 million in program funds to give us $15 million to buy the land from us.

So there was an offer for exchange, and basically we would give them our money, then they would give us back the money to buy the land.

So it did not meet a contractual fair market value.

So there was an illusory offer to give some money, but never their money, always our money, or the the program's money for the land.

Since the application processes went that was reduced then to a dollar, it then got replaced by this up to $10,000.

But I would note, even in that April 6th proposal, it then shifted to we'll take TIFF money to pay the purchase price to purchase it.

So we're still not quite at this sort of concrete offer.

We're still a little bit illusory, but we're better.

Um at least there is some offer.

But then when we get this May 4th proposal, it says they've agreed to pay fair market value, no cap, no restriction.

That is the first time the phrase fair has agreed to pay fair market value based on the appraisal with no limitations or exceptions has ever appeared as an offer.

I would to that end too, though, I'd like to address some of the the contract provisions that Kerry talked about earlier with illusory promises.

Um, because the April 6th proposal, and this is why I take uh a little umbrage with the has agreed language, because up to this point there was no agreement.

There their proposal was to pay fair market value so long as the fair market value was capped at $10,000.

And the reason they were capping the value of $10,000 is because they wanted us to take into account all of the great things that they have done up to this point.

So you should lower the value and asking price of the land because we have done a lot of other good development and production in the community.

And it's true that they've done other good development and production in the community, but as Kerry noted earlier, we can't contract on past performance.

It doesn't matter what you've done in the past.

If we're selling land for good fair market value, we have to sell it for what the land is worth, not for what other services you've done for us in the past.

So they haven't agreed to pay fair market value.

What they did in this instance was say, we have agreed to pay the fair market value based off of a future of appraisal, but we don't know what that actually means at this point.

So then the third agreement is is a uh shift in the contract terms back to kind of what I'll call an original proposal, which was the new source of agreement they want is a request for private ownership of the sports complex and then a change to remove the aquatic center from consideration that was promised to you back in the November and December meetings.

So we have a material change in what is going to be built under their proposal, and they've asked for that sort of alignment.

They've made it relatively clear throughout all of this that public bidding is a is a thing they would like to avoid.

Umoubtedly uh public bidding is a hassle.

Um public bidding is time consuming, public bidding requires a lot of engineering specs and publications in the paper and time.

But publication about public bidding is a requirement of law when you're spending taxpayer money.

Um we have a legal obligation to get the best deal possible for taxpayers when we spend their money.

Um I can buy a car for 50,000 bucks from one dealer and a hundred thousand bucks from the other dealer.

When I'm spending my money, I can make a bad financial decision.

When I'm spending somebody else's money, we have to follow these public bidding statutes.

So ownership does shift and change some of this, but fundamentally one of the things we don't know in all of the rest of the proposals, it has been the city borrowing to build the complex.

And so calling up public ownership, private ownership, the reality is they've been inextricably intertwined.

They've been commingled.

Because if we're taking out the loan to build it, government money has government hoops and government bureaucracy to it.

We don't have a waiver in a path outside of following those rules to make sure we're getting what we paid for there.

On this last one, to build that infrastructure in the land, and asking for a commitment and promise that we will the city will not use any of the good life district money to build the aquatic center or for operations.

So in there in this current ask, uh, to the extent you guys make that policy call that that aquatic center matters for you.

This current uh list does not include that aquatic center.

Um, and it includes a specific request that we promise not to ever spend any of the money on that, except for basically a pad ready site.

Um so that is a big material change from what we were we were looking at and analyzing before.

Um as you move forward, no matter what you look at, there's a bunch of risks and recommendations that our legal advice will always be to do.

Um first and foremost is this program is designed if we're if we're encouraged is to encourage private development by leveraging public money.

When that request is 100% private, pretty easy to know we got a lot of private resources.

When it gets to be 100% public, we don't have that goal accomplished.

So you need to constantly consider back and forth in there when we hit that right balance.

Um in the proposal that was submitted that was supposed to be presented tonight, we had a lot of strings and conditions attached among that private investment.

Um all of the promises for construction have been consistently uh conditioned on only if there's enough money to guarantee all of this stuff.

So that number has changed from about 140 million down to as low as about 95 million dollars, but it's always been conditional.

If enough money comes in, we'll build these things.

Um that is a risk that we want to make sure you are consistently aware of is when when those things occur there.

We've asked pretty consistently for them to concretely identify what purely private commitments, not loans against our property, not loans against the bond will be made.

And we haven't been particularly successful in getting those firm concrete commitments.

The other thing that that Woodsonia has asked for that we have consistently recommended against is in the course of this development, obviously it would be phased.

Every proposal you've had would build this program out, this project out over a 20-ish year period.

They have requested that all of the land, the entirety of that north portion of Veterans Village be transferred in a single transaction at the beginning, even though there's been a consistent statement that they don't plan to build on half of that for the next 10 years.

We have pretty consistently recommended that we phase this transition.

As we do each step, then we transfer the land so that we're not transferring land for it to sit dormant and undeveloped for 20 years, so it's not exposed to uh capture by a creditor, so we we can adjust to the market as it changes.

Um Woodsonia has consistently been unwilling to do.

So I think they've expressly told us that compromises their ability to get a loan against the physical property.

You have an obligation under law to make sure that those assets are encumbered enough that if this fails at some point in time, we're whole again.

Um we will call them clawbacks, encumbrances, whatever variety of terms.

This land is a significant asset.

This this chunk of land was donated, uh I'll consistently say by pioneers in the 1880s and gifted to the state for the soldiers and sailors home, and then has been in government contact year.

This was a gift given that you have an obligation to be good stewards of, and it's an asset you have.

You have an obligation to make sure it's encumbered enough that if something goes sideways, we still get growth there.

Um we've floated every variety of proposal that we could think of.

Um, everything from saying, hey, how about once the sports complex is built, then we'll release you the next 10 acres.

And once you build the hotel, then we'll release you the next whatever acres.

Um it became clear that Woodsonia's intention was to flip and sell most of these lots.

They didn't intend to do that, they were going to transfer them to a third party.

We talked about encumbrances, making sure that these restrictions transfer to the next owner.

Um, that if we give you the land to build a hotel on, that's what's gonna get built, not you know, something that gets changed.

And there's been an unwillingness to negotiate there.

Um we even floated some basic things like fine if that's what you want to do, do you want to flip it?

Um Mr.

Brown at one point in time suggested like if that's what's gonna happen to get that return on investment in the program.

Shouldn't the program get a uh split of the proceeds?

Um categorically rejected.

We never even got into the 1%, 10%, 20% discussion.

It was a no.

So when we talk about these good faith negotiations, on a lot of these issues, we've spun in circles and/or not really had a true negotiation.

It's been a request, a no, a counter request a no.

So negotiation has been has been a bit fuzzy, but we've had no compromises on encumbering and protecting that land other than some ceremonial sure, we'll look at clawbacks.

Uh when we get down to writing them down, there's been no real progress there.

Um risks uh we want to make sure that that is always in the forefront of your mind is making sure that whatever uh obligation we might get ourselves into that we make sure that any spending restrictions are done in compliance with special requirements for the government.

Um for instance, some of the uh stumbling blocks of which there were numerous in in prior development agreements were developer fees and what that was gonna be for.

Um because again, uh the reimbursements that the city makes out of this fund have to be done specifically tied to certain performances.

And when we've asked, for instance, if you want a seven and a half percent developer fee, what specifically uh is that seven and a half percent developer fee going to?

We're talking about millions of dollars of payment here.

What exactly is this being provided for?

Because again, the financing considerations at this point in all these development agreements have been using city bonding capacity to pay for this stuff.

So we're already reimbursing expenses for the construction costs of this.

What is the seven and a half developer fee going to?

And there could never be an identified benefit or performance that that is tied to.

So, for example, we would ask is that is that are you gonna be the general contractor on the job?

Is that what we're paying you to do?

Because because we do, we pay general contractors' fees for their services.

Uh, and that was a that was a no, they were intending to use a third-party general contractor.

Um, we talked about whether this would be by developer fee, do you mean construction management services?

We were told that they did not intend to do that, that would be uh chief development that would do a lot of that for them there.

So when we literally end up in a meeting and say, okay, what do you mean by developer fee then?

In exchange for 7.5%, which is which is somewhere between 5.6 million and 10 million dollars.

So we're not talking about an insignificant chunk of change.

In exchange for that much money, what do we get?

What is that good and valuable consideration?

To be really honest, we were never able to get an answer to that question.

We would get a circular sort of, well, you would get development services.

Okay, well, what does development services mean?

And at best, we got kind of a well, it would be for all the work we've done and coming up with the idea.

Not good and valuable consideration.

Like if we're paying you to manage the construction site, that's one thing.

The other thing that you have to know is that the city has a prohibition, and it's in city code, you can Google it if you get bored.

That we cannot do what's called a cost plus a percentage contract.

We cannot say I'll pay this plus materials.

We have a lot of contract models available to us, uh, traditional bidding, we can do some construction management at risk proposals.

We floated some of those.

We used knowing that Woodsonia intended to use chief to do some of this building, we floated the courthouse project, for example, that's being done using that legal model in which the county said we have this many millions of dollars, please build us this courthouse.

Um, and Chief absorbs some of that risk, the market fluctuations, the the pros and cons with that.

That was not a viable model uh for Woodsonia.

That was a proposal that they rejected.

So we've we went through a lot of this stuff here, but in the end, whatever agreement you have, you have to get something in exchange for it.

It has to be tied to performance.

The April 6th proposal that you have in your packet, one of the things I'd like to know is that in that proposal, there's a big key change in that, as we've referred to this whole entire project, uh, phase one, when we talk about that phrase has typically meant everything through the public infrastructure, sports facility, the aquatic center, all the infrastructure.

In this April 6th proposal, phase one changes.

The sports complex and aquatic center get moved to phase two.

And in their proposal, this 10 million dollar developer fee kicks in at the end of phase one, which is dirt work and some basic infrastructure.

Um, all of which in their proposal, program funds would be paying for.

The important thing to note about this is you know, the corollary to what one of the contract principles Kerry was talking about earlier, that if it's not in writing, you can't enforce it.

The other side of that is if it's in writing, even if they say we wouldn't do it that way, they could because it's in writing and in the contract.

And what this provision did was allowed termination of the contract in Woodsonia's sole discretion, if they decided that the project was no longer economically feasible.

And mind you, this would have been done after all the land sales would have been accomplished in one fell swoop.

Phase one of the project was now simply grading the land and doing some designs for infrastructure work.

And then upon termination of the contract, they would still be entitled to a full $10 million payment.

And all of the land and the contractual promise to bond, a pretty significant chunk of change.

So when we talk about that enforceability, the next thing we kind of explore is okay.

So if everything went terrible at that stage, what could we do about it?

Um because the good life happens, economic factors change.

In that particular agreement was a provision that basically barred us from ever forcing construction.

One of the specific things that proposal said we could not do is compel construction.

Um we explore these contracts for those sort of what what lawyers call poison pills.

The things that make the promises at the beginning of the document worthless at the end of the document.

And unfortunately, this proposed contract was was riddled with them.

They could cancel the contract at any time.

In their sole discretion, it doesn't meet economic feasibility, which is a term that's not defined there.

Um in the proposed land transfer agreements, if they find anything wrong with the land, they could come back to us, tell us we have to fix it at our expense, or they could cancel it.

Um keep the land, but cancel it there.

It was it included requirements that we waive our ability to compel construction, waive our ability to protest damages.

We had to agree to their choice of lawyers, um, which the last time we did, it got us tangled up in a lawsuit with AMC.

Um, so something that we have to advise you not to do.

The point of pointing all this out isn't to say that this is necessarily all the things that were intended to be done under this contract, but the fact that it's in the contract and it's down in writing means it's something that can be done.

And if it's in writing and we agreed to it, our hands are tied, and there's not really much we can do to fight it.

And in all of this, you guys have a political role to fill.

You make the policy calls, you're the stewards of this money.

Our job is to advise you of all the legal risks, all the political risks, the social risks.

Our job is to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.

So we don't get the luxury of sugarcoating it and playing the political game that you get to do.

Um sometimes I guess luxury curse, whatever that, whatever that may be.

Um we have to give you that clean candid advice because you have an oath of office to follow these duties to do these things, exercise your judgment in doing so.

We have an obligation to tell you, hey, you're you're getting outside the lines here, or hey, this is a risk.

Do you want to take it?

So that way when you take that risk, you're doing so intentionally, with knowledge and with eyes wide open.

So when we evaluate these sort of risks, this we are telling you what we have to tell you.

My personal opinion about anything, frankly, doesn't matter.

Um, it is completely irrelevant.

I could think this is the coolest thing ever or the dumbest thing ever.

It just doesn't matter.

My job is to tell you what the legal risks are, the social, the political risks, the economic risks, the feasibility.

Your job is to govern yourselves accordingly there.

Um the other recommendation I think that we have to make on here too is that you have made a promise both to follow the law, the Good Life District Transformational Projects Act, the Economic Development Act, your program ordinance, the promise to the voters, that this provides uh return on investment, generates enough program revenue to be sustainable, no matter how we exit this, we're better off than we were.

You're supposed to be spending money on things, at least 80% of the money on things that generate taxes.

Um the proposed development agreements that we've seen flip that equation.

They say we'll only build you the tax generators if there's enough money.

It front loads non-revenue producing expenses, which you just can't do by law.

Whether you should be able to or not, legislature has said no, and we're on those sort of restrictions.

Um it conditioned the hotel, the restaurant, and the uh retail establishment on if there's at least 75 to 90, 105 million dollars worth of bond proceeds.

So if there wasn't enough money, you get nothing that's revenue generating, which is just not something you can agree to.

If the city is building the sports complexes, we're in a different bucket and a different set of rules.

Um, but if the if the sports facility is being ran, being built, who owns, runs it, builds it, pays for it, changes which bucket it fits in.

So as you decide which bucket things will go in, that's something that you have to consider there.

And when you add this newest May 4th proposal, you hit another kind of policy level decision.

Remember that all of your growth is supposed to be transformational and unique, as opposed to routine and ordinary.

That's the language the statute uses.

I didn't make it up.

Um is it gonna drive huge change and is it unique?

Senator Von Gillard and point out if it's in every city, it's not those things.

The thing that was in the last the proposal you last reviewed that is different than the other cities with good life's districts and is different than our neighbors, is the competition level aquatic center.

The sports complex itself, though transformational, and though undoubtedly it will drive tourists in and bring hotel stays and bring kids in town and will cost me a lot of time and a bleacher at some point in time.

Carney has one, Columbus has one, Omaha has them, Lincoln has them.

It is not particularly unique in Nebraska.

It is unique for our city.

So we're in that sort of policy call.

Does this clear that threshold for you?

Transformational and unique, does it not?

Those are the legal boundaries, where this rests in the middle is there.

But this newest proposal removes the one thing that we can distinctly say is unique compared to everybody else.

So that is a risk you take under this proposal is have you accidentally started considering something not in compliance with that with that program.

Um again, as we talked about, the April 6th proposal includes a bunch of other litigation poison pills.

One of the other things it does is says if anybody sues, every dollar stops flowing out of the progress.

So the risk to the city and to this taxpayer funded program is if anybody gets mad at anybody, every piece of progress stops.

Our ability to fund a business that might come down in 20 years is frozen.

The money frozen.

So if one of your promises is to deliver growth, the active proposals here make that functionally impossible for us to control.

Because if a third party came in under their proposal, we can do nothing.

Um we cannot compel construction.

Um it frankly asks for more money than we than we can get.

Um our financial advisors have been relatively consistent that since this revenue stream has gotten unstable, we need to bite off only the parts we can handle at different times.

Phasing this development, uh shifting things.

The proposals as given now run contrary to the the money in the bank and our ability to secure good quality financing terms.

Um what we have consistently recommended is that we follow the big spirit of the first round of the law, which is that this is designed to be a reimbursement-based program.

Eligible costs are incurred, eligible costs are applied for reimbursement, and that we are looking backwards at reimbursement-based models once progress and growth has been made.

So it will continue to be our recommendation that we use that approach because that approach reduces risk.

We don't have a risk, we're not going to get the growth if we wait till we get the growth to pay for the growth.

Um, if we're going backwards, it's it's less risky.

Do you have some options to go forward a bit?

Especially when it comes to city projects, absolutely.

We do it all the time.

Uh, when it comes to giving that money to private developers, that risk skyrockets.

So if you're going to take that risk, make sure you're consistently and cautiously aware of that risk.

Um the other thing that we've consistently recommended and will continue to recommend is that you bite off what you can chew.

One of the structural flaws to using a development agreement like this is we're trying to capture 30 years worth of hopes and dreams in one document.

Um, not knowing what the money is gonna look like at year 20, not knowing what the market's gonna be at year 20.

So our consistent recommendation will be to do this in bits and pieces.

As we're ready for each next step, then you do the documents.

We don't transfer the land until we're ready to do something with the land.

We don't transfer the money until we're ready to do something with the money, because that reduces risk and exposure to taxpayers who are who you're ultimately responsible for.

We have floated these suggestions repeatedly over the last two years towards SONIA and have been categorically rejected at each phase when it comes to breaking this up.

So frankly, if we go all the way back to when the legislature started messing with the the last round of changes on the Good Life District Economic Development Act, and we started to worry about losing this construction season.

One of the things we floated was we already owned land.

Would Sony had relayed they'd started the engineering work, we could authorize the dirt work to start one council meeting, one agreement.

So we offered from the beginning, hey, we can get you an access agreement that lets you on the land, lets you start doing that engineering work and that dirt work to get things going so we don't lose a construction season.

And we got told no, they were not interested in piecemealing this because they were afraid if we got a little piece, you would not give them the big piece.

Um, and development-wise, that's a concern they get to have.

That's also a risk that we have to advise you about taking is that when you take a big huge chunk, you maximize your risk.

If what you tell us you want, which is what you've consistently told us is growth and progress, the legally safest way to do that and stay in compliance with the law is to take this one step at a time.

To do this level of growth will be hundreds of legal documents over the course of all this.

Everything from land transfers to bond agreements to contracts for sewer engineering to power pole purchases.

We will consistently and categorically recommend we do this one step at a time.

That's our job to do that.

If you think there's a way to do 30 years worth of growth in a single document without taking those sort of risks and running a foul of the law, um we hope we can get there.

We have been unpatently unsuccessful, and no matter how many lawyers we brought in to do this, we have been unsuccessful in reaching that.

Um so then when we talk about those, there's a series of construction recommendations and financial recommendations.

In the end, they boil down fundamentally to one thing.

We have to know what it is we're buying and what it is we're building.

When we're talking about giving 50 million dollars for a sports complex, we need to know how big it is, where it's going to go, is it engineered appropriately, is it usable?

Um there's a lot of soft edges in the middle of that, but as you look forward on this all, things need to be concrete.

Um the last question we're gonna kind of run through with you that that is probably the question we've gotten from the most of you is how much is this land worth?

Um the reality is we've got a little over 150 acres that has never been on the tax roll.

Um perhaps it was in the 1870s, but in the last 150 years, it hasn't been taxable land.

Um so, unlike my house or or some of the other commercial properties where we know what it's worth, we don't in particular.

In the end, before you transfer this land, we would get an appraisal.

Um to get an appraisal, though, is not something you can just turn around and do, because appraisers need to know a few key things to do that appraisal.

They need to know exactly the definition of the land that's going to be transferred.

They want to know who it's going to be transferred to, what it's going to be used for, and when it's going to be transferred.

If you think about it fundamentally, straight dirt with no roads and sewers is worth very a different amount than a piece of dirt that has a sewer but no road.

It's worth much different than a lot is.

If I'm going to use that chunk of land to farm, it's worth something different than if I'm going to build a skyscraper on it.

So some of this we just practically cannot do until we know more information.

Um we look though at if we sold it right now, um, what is that land worth?

Um, the reality is it's all over the place.

So in your packet, we've looked at other similar large parcels that which both are city owned and or some that are not city owned, and the value for undeveloped land is wildly all over the place.

Um the city has sold.

If I if we look just at land that has no buildings, just raw land the city owns that we've transferred in the last uh transferred or looking at transferring in the last about 90 days.

We've been everywhere on appraisals from almost $80,000 an acre down to $13,000 an acre, depending on where it is and what it's going to be used for.

Um so when you ask me how much is this land worth, somewhere probably between 80,000 an acre and $13,000 an acre, I think.

But in the end, we'll have to get a certified appraiser who has answers to all the magic questions certified appraisers need to be able to do that.

When we look at other property in private development, um, we try to look at a variety of property that has this kind of mix of restrictions and encumbrances and floodplains, because right now that northern piece of property has portions that are in the floodway, portions that are in the floodplain, and as you've heard previously, there's a giant utility or fiber easement that runs snack up the middle that right now has an encumbrance on it that says you we can't dig and the encumbrance is sold, it says more than plow deep, it tells you how long this restriction on the land has been there.

We can't go deeper in the dirt than a plow in the 1920s would have gotten, and you can't build anything on it.

So we know we have land right now that's somewhat undevelopable.

We're working on getting that fiber line moved.

I think that cost upwards of half a million dollars to move it.

Then we'll be able to remove that easement, and then the value of the land will change because that land will go from unbuildable to buildable.

But right now, if we look at some of these other comparable sales, we've got one chunk of land that was sold, uh, 92% of it in a floodplain, um, sold at a public auction, which I typically produces the least ideal sales price, just shy of 8,500 bucks an acre.

Um another chunk that's largely sandpit lakes, so probably 80 percent water, 20 percent land, including the water portions that are obviously not buildable, about 12,000 bucks an acre.

Uh another property that is wholly uncomfortable, cannot ever be built on 100% in the floodplain at 3,000 bucks an acre.

Um that is the closest that we could find, land that is raw land still with plans for development.

Uh, this particular parcel had TIFF approved already, but had no infrastructure built on it.

So kind of where we're talking about plans, but no actual action, looking at just about 70,000 bucks an acre at that pre-infrastructure stage.

Um so how much is that land worth?

Depends on when we sell it, depends on how much infrastructure exists, depends on how much the market is willing to pay at that time.

Somewhere between 13 and 80,000 bucks an acre is our best guess.

Um but the reality is we don't know and we can't know until we have answers to the rest of those questions.

So is a ten thousand dollar an acre offer closer to appraised value?

Absolutely.

Can we do a combination of cash and other good and valuable consideration?

We do it all the time.

When we acquire easements, a lot of times we're paying next to nothing for it, but we get access.

We get something good and valuable for us.

When we give land we sell land for cheap, we get rid of a liability to mow.

So it can be things other than money.

But for what it's worth, I don't have a good answer for you, but this at least gives you the metric as to what we're roughly thinking there.

Um because that was probably the most consistent question that we received is is what's that land worth?

Um we've given you a lot of information, um, an exhaustive level of information, but I want to again stress for you this every single one of these factors, you're required by law to consider, good common sense to consider or at least think about.

Um there are a lot of strings attached because we're talking about a lot of money.

190 million dollars worth of asks and 150 acres worth of land is a huge deal.

The growth and progress we're gonna that's been proposed is a huge deal.

If successful, it's transformational.

Um it will change the landscape of our community.

That takes time.

That's gonna be rocky, and that's okay.

We'd ask that you that you kind of remember that that is not a default in the system.

That is what the system is designed to do.

Checks and balances and verification and trust but verify and write it down in commitments.

So slow progress is okay.

Um if we're gonna go the private development path.

As we've told you before, you always have all the other options to go forth at a government pace and do government things with government money.

Um this sort of partnership is complicated, and that's okay.

Um we have folks here if you have financial questions because everybody knows you don't want to hear technical bond advice from from me, you want to hear that from your bond lawyers, you want to hear the financial advisor advice from the finance folks, the sewer advice from the public works director.

But if you have any particular questions that we didn't get answered today, I think we tackled all the different ones you've sent us, and you guys are good at asking questions.

Um that's great.

I don't uh whoever else wants to present and go through.

We can we're definitely ready and be back here if you want to check and reality test some of those things, ask us whether whether we've attempted things and considered things.

Um we've spent two years doing this sort of due diligence.

Contract review is 90% of what we do.

Um giving you that advice as the government entity is what we do.

We don't advise developers, we advise boring governments that move at a slow and steady pace, and so we will always give you the answer you need to hear.

Um we will always be candid with you about it and not sugarcoat it.

Um exchange, all we need from you is the remembrance that you have to follow the law there, and you have to ask in the best interest of the taxpayers who've entrusted you with a pretty substantial chunk of change and the state's deflected tax revenue, and that you make sure whatever you do, you deliver on that growth in the way the state has defined it.

Um before you move on, have you not heard enough from us and would like a few more questions answered?

Um, before we move on, I maybe the council will have some questions or comments.

But I'm gonna ask the council, would you like to take like a 10-minute breaker this time?

This time, or just keep going forward.

Keep going for is that the keep going.

Any questions or comments?

Council members of the community uh for uh Mrs.

Uh for uh Mrs.

Fisk and Mr.

Boyle.

Mr.

Still.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

My question to you is if we don't get an agreement to do a contract with Wilsania, what happens?

Does the good life thing go to away for us?

Do we have no other opportunities since the development has to be in their name?

The development does not have to be in their name.

There is not a nothing in the state law or our code says the money has to go to the applicant.

There's that small restriction that says money that's generated on their property.

If we're going to give it to a different business, so if we're going to take their money and give it to Menards, whatever that may be, we would need their permission.

But this can progress either in giving it to any qualifying business or RFP or the city can do this work.

So it's not going to be the end of everything.

The one risk I would I would I would tell you is we're not in great economic times as a state.

If we don't do something with this and deliver some sort of growth, there is a legislative risk that next session the state might come back and say, hey, if this growth isn't happening, let's get rid of this program.

And if we haven't done something, there is legislative risk and political risk, but we are not in any obligation tied to any particular developer, or just one.

You could do agreements of ten, you could do agreements of zero, doesn't matter.

The growth is that metric there, but no, it it doesn't affect it whether we do something with Woodsonia or not.

If we don't get a contract worked out, we're not forced to work with them.

We can go somewhere else.

You always you always have those three options.

We can spend money on city projects, we can solicit requests for development.

We can say, hey, we've got X million dollars of incentives and this land.

Everybody in the community pitch us what you'll do with it, or any qualified business in the district can make an application for reimbursement of those eligible expenses.

So anybody else who's doing some of that $63 million worth of building, if it checks the right boxes, they can apply for those funds and come ask you for a piece of that pie.

Um we have had one other application that then got withdrawn before it made it to you, but at any point in time we could have zero, we could have 20.

Um nothing in this stops anybody else from applying for development money.

Yeah.

Mr.

Hawsey.

Thank you, Mayor.

So I had a couple of questions on what you had said.

Uh one of them was you were talking about the seven and a half percent developer fee not tied to performance.

Um could you add, could they add that to on the expense side?

So when they came in for reimbursements and they had a hundred dollars worth of reimbursable expenses, could they add a seven and a half percent development fee like a you know whatever at the end of it, would that meet the legal requirements of what you're talking about?

Jack, you hadn't heard me say it depends enough.

Um so I'll give you the it depends.

For the most part, the answer is is no.

Uh the way eligible expenses are defined in state law focuses heavily on capital expenditures.

Um eligible expenses for the most part, if they're going to a private developer, are to buy things, not services.

Um so that's why we can spend it on operational money, they can't.

Now the reality of it is every contract for a road, a building includes overhead costs.

So to the extent it's tied to overhead, probably straight just profit, no.

Somewhere in the middle, sure.

We can pay construction services, that is an eligible cost if it's tied to a building and to a capital expenditure.

So it depends.

My second question is about on the no matter what they decide on the value of the land, no matter what it is.

Uh early on in this process, I was okay with the dollar because I'm I wanted more of the good life district money to go for the vertical projects and not buying land, you know, and particularly land that the city got for nothing or next to nothing.

So can they use good life district funds to purchase the land?

Can Woodsonia do that?

There are some statutory paths to using it for acquisition of land for private development.

The wrinkle here is when that land they want to acquire is in government ownership, because though we can use money to buy land, they could use money to buy land from another private business, we can't gift the land.

So half that transaction would be legal, half of it is not.

Um, but could we use money to buy, could Woodsonia use money to buy property from one two three Main Street LLC?

Yes, probably.

Um government just can't gift it.

Uh so somewhere in the middle.

Um I think there would also be a concern whether or not that would qualify as a non revenue expense as well.

And so you might have different caps with respect to the amount of reimbursements that could be made for it.

So it's not just what we can sell the land for, if we can sell the land is also how much can we reimburse based off of that?

Okay, thank you very much.

Mr.

Sheard.

Thank you.

First of all, thank you all for still being here.

That was a long, thorough presentation.

Um if it doesn't highlight how confusing as hell this whole situation has been.

Uh y'all probably have been confused and bewildered a little bit tonight.

That's our process for the last two and a half years.

Uh I want to be honest tonight that this process has been confusing for us.

It's been annoying for us.

Uh I'm sure Mitch and Drew, it's been annoying for you guys.

It's been frustrating.

Uh there's been a lot of changing parts.

You guys have changed things on us, we've changed things on you.

Uh even since our last public vote, there's been a lot of changes, as Carrie and Matt highlighted tonight.

Um what I think has been awkward is how much has been talked about in public, not by us.

We haven't been speaking.

We haven't been, in my opinion, transparent or clear, and I'll apologize on behalf of myself uh for not being clear to the community uh what we are thinking and what we're doing.

Uh Matt and Kerry have kind of played out a lot of what we've heard, and I hope people can see what we've been dealing with.

Uh you know, as we as we go through this, I maybe it would have been in the public's best interest to know more politically.

I don't know.

I don't think it matters anymore because if they pulled out, you guys have pulled the April 6th proposal out.

We spent a long time talking about that.

I don't even think it's relevant anymore.

I think we're starting at zero right now.

So I guess being pragmatic.

I would suggest whatever we do, and I have some questions about this.

I want to be straightforward going forward tonight.

That I think what we want has not changed.

We want a transformational project.

That's what we campaigned on.

That's what we've already agreed to do.

That's a sports complex.

That was an aquatic center.

However, it gets paid for, I guess I I just want to see both of those things done.

I want to make sure that the land for the school district is still maintained and ready if that happens, if that if all the housing happens up there, that they have a school district land.

I want all the infrastructure to be in place.

And I want to make sure that we do everything legally so that we don't get our tails sued later or lose uh any op any future money uh that comes from this.

And I don't think we should be using general dollars to pay for this.

Certainly we're not allowed, we're not allowed to use tax uh property tax money for this.

And I believe from the get-go, we said we would not do that.

This was something that we told people in the community when we were getting the ballot passed by them, that this would be money from the state, a gift that only comes along one time.

And they emphatically agreed to do this, and we put pretty pictures in front of them of a of a nice sports complex.

There was a lot of talk of an aquatic center.

There was a lot of talk of a lot of great things.

I think everybody still wants those things.

And it's my opinion that our best bet is to probably work with Woodsonia on this.

I don't I don't think there's an easier route to get this done.

I certainly don't want to spend any more time listening to lawyers in a lawsuit.

My God, tonight's been enough.

Yeah, you can laugh.

I think that was a joke.

So that's not a very complicated list, what we're asking for.

Uh I don't know if we're allowed to say this, but if y'all would pay 20 million dollars for the land right now, we'll build the aquatic center.

You build with good life money the sports complex, and we'll worry about the rest of it when that's done.

But I don't think we're ready to do that yet.

So I guess I have a question for you guys.

Uh you said something in there that we can't use good life dollars and give them to Woodsonia or anyone else to pay management of the sports complex.

Correct.

Uh the way the statute defines eligible costs, operation expenses are an eligible cost for government.

So if we want to spend the money, good life district money to hire a sports manager, we can.

But operation expenses are not an eligible reimbursement for private industry.

So the best road there is for the city to own it in the end to be able to use good life dollars to the other.

If we want to use it to pay the employees to run it, insurance bills, whatnot, yes.

If you don't want to, then it doesn't matter.

So you spent a long time talking about Woodsonia.

If we're going if if they're going to have a claim to the money, it has to be with land, the value off of land they own.

Right?

The tax value that comes from that.

It's it's sales tax.

That's yeah, right.

Do they own land under the same name?

And I'll be honest, I haven't looked in in a while.

When we looked last, Woodsonia Real Estate Inc.

did not have any titled land in the Good Life District.

Does it matter who which version of Woodsony it is?

Does that matter?

The the secondary statute includes some definitions for related persons that lets some access so you could have these sort of subsidiaries.

I'll tell you that uh that some of the senators' opinions is that it does matter that that applicant status is not transferable.

I would tend to lean towards telling you yes, it can shift a bit between those applicants.

So if if Woodsonia or any entity they're related to owns it, I would probably advise you to act with caution and assume there's that level of of financial control over the revenue generated.

Better better to act conservatively there than probably the spirit of the law, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

Um Matt, you said earlier that uh we needed to wait to be able to do due diligence to have uh feasibility of making this happen.

But man, I think we've done that a number of times.

We've had different studies done.

Grow Grand Island paid for one, Woodsonia paid for one.

We've heard that in front of us a couple times.

What more would we need to do for a feasibility?

So fee the feasibility studies you've had done now have been much more high level.

What type of sports does our community want?

This would be that next level of operational feasibility.

Are the concession stands in the right place to make the facility usable?

Is the HVAC system gonna operate right?

Is it insurable?

Um that needs to be done.

Staff members for and how much are we building?

If we want to go borrow money to build a sports complex, we have to have a we have to know how big it's gonna be.

Uh like they're a bonding company isn't gonna just give us a hundred million bucks saying, trust us we'll build something cool with it.

They want to know what we're buying with it, just like a mortgage.

You and so that operational feasibility, how big is this building we're gonna get?

Uh, what's it gonna be in there?

How much are they gonna give us money for?

That seems awful deep in the weeds for council to be dealing with where the concession stand is.

That's but that's at that man the expert consultant is there for us to do to do that because none of us have that expertise.

But if we're gonna have the liability, you have to address the operational risks and and expenses that are.

I would say there's also a question of scope here because if you're talking about this in the context of the development agreements that have been proposed to us, we're talking about something all in one full swoop.

And that includes things like how big is the road that goes through, is it gonna meet all the needs?

Is is the infrastructure gonna be putting in for the entirety of the complex in development?

And there are concerns that the plans that they have proposed, the high-level feasibility study plans that they proposed, don't actually account for the needs that the development in that community would create.

So the roads wouldn't be big enough.

The access wouldn't be appropriate.

The infrastructure might not be actually sufficient to meet the needs of development, which is why we actually need a little bit more information on the on the fore end before we can actually make these types of agreements.

So that's what I'm referring to.

That's how we're two and a half years down the line.

You know, I think this is when you when you bite off 30 years with a growth in a single agreement, you have to make 30 years worth of projections.

What I think council is PIP, we can do this fast.

Um what council needs tonight is to know what the logistical guardrails are for getting this done.

So is it money?

What is it?

Is it what are the legal you've you've painted a lot of legal pictures?

I think we have a good idea that but I'm starting to share.

I mean, I appreciate everything you guys have done.

Don't get me wrong.

I just want to know what the rules are, and I want to make sure that those guys agree and you agree so that we can start negotiating to get where we can get if it's one false swoop or one bit at a time.

Just want to know the rules.

The fundamental issue is what when you say get it done, we are unable to tell you what it is.

If you if your answer is we want to get the sports complex done, are we talking about building a 90,000 square foot building or 165,000 square foot building?

Does this building have a soccer field?

Where where does this build like how much drainage work do we need to do?

How big does the sewer pipe to make sure they can flush the toilets need to be?

If I can't tell you what it is we're building consistently, and and I need you to know that this proposal has changed at least once a month for years now.

So every time we approach being able to tell you, okay, hey, yeah, this is what we need to do next, it changes.

Um the new May 4th proposal adds 60,000 square feet to a building, adds an indoor soccer field, um, adds the pickleball course back in.

It changes the equation.

So when we say get it done, when we're testing the legal boundaries, it has to have tax generators.

If it's got 20 retail establishments, easy to do.

If it's one 2500 square foot retail establishment, really hard to do.

Your parameters are big and ethereal, but I can't test a proposal against those parameters if the proposal changes constantly.

Um and so I don't know.

Their current proposal today, legally and factually unworkable.

Um there have been phases and components of the past proposals that were really close.

But it seems like every time we fix one portion, we break a different portion.

And then the money disappeared in the middle of it all too, which which does not help.

Which is not their fault or all the other.

Yeah, that is it is just a factual reality is that the revenue projections cut down significantly.

So I can't answer what it takes to get it done because I legitimately do not know what the active proposal is.

What are you buying for 140 million dollars?

As of now, we had an application, it changed three times and it got withdrawn.

Right.

So I don't even know that you have an active proposal to discuss.

Um I don't think it's important to know when we're talking about delays in the process, because I know there's been frustration on everybody's side for delays in the process.

Um when the negotiating process includes give us the land for a dollar, and we say no, we can't do that, and then they come back with a new proposal that says give us the land for a dollar, and we say, No, we can't do that, and then they come back with another proposal and say give us the land for a dollar, and we say, again, no, we can't do that.

That's not a negotiation.

So we can attempt to address some of the underlying concerns you're talking about.

Those are some of the things that we would like to be able to address.

But again, if the entry point for the conversation has absolutely no give, there's no negotiating we can have.

There's no progress to be made.

So but if we're starting at zero tonight, right?

Then the legal framework that exists under state law says we go back to the application stuff.

If private developer wants money, we start back over at step one and we revet whatever it is through the framework we're required to do by law.

So if they came up to the podium tonight and we started talking about just general ideas and what we could start to agree on, that would be productive still, right?

So that then they would know what we're gonna say yes or no to, and then they can say what they're gonna say no or yes to.

And then they would need to reduce it to an application to request money to a lot of the funds, and it would vet through those checklists.

If we do that here on tonight on camera and everybody's watching, then we are held to what we say and they're held to what they say a little bit more in spirit, yes.

Um, last time that conversation's happened, those again the last time this conversation has happened, though, there was still backsliding against some of the terms that were said out in public in city council meetings.

So in the end, it it it helps, it improves relationships.

It is not a contract.

Um, uh I probably have 50,000 more questions, but I will let someone else talk for a little bit.

Mr.

O'Neill.

Thank you.

And there's a large economy of words earlier, but thank you for getting through all that as well.

Um I'm glad we're able to talk about this.

It's been five months since we've been able to talk about it in this room here.

Um I have a couple of questions and then I want to go through a few things.

I mean, I may have a little bit here as well.

Um if the land was sold for fair market value, whatever that may be, um, what all could we do with that money?

Could that be used to help pay for buildings in this project as well?

Making an assumption that you would take that check for for the land and put it back into the local sources of revenue into that bucket, it would be those sort of eligible expenses.

The reality is though, this land is separate.

The the Good Life District program deals with money only.

We happen to own the land, and they made an application to approve on land they don't own.

That land is ours.

Right now, if we sold that land just in a separate separated transaction, I believe it'll go back into general fund.

Um I think uh so then you could spend on the sort of things you spend general fund money on.

But the reality is this particular statutory scheme does not contemplate the giving of government land.

If Woodsonia were to make a new application under the law as it is now, they would actually not be eligible because the law got changed after their application was approved to require as an eligibility requirement with Department of Economic Development, they have to own the land.

Um so they literally could not make the same application successfully today.

We're stuck in legal limbo where they they applied for a bunch of improvements on land they don't own, and so our land got tangled up in it.

Legally speaking, separating those two transactions is probably ideal.

Money is one land is another, but um and I I I agree that one of the big issues on this is the sales tax collection issue.

You know, we don't know how much we can get yet.

Um do we think we would know what we can bond?

I mean, that's probably several months out to know the exact amount.

So right now the financial advisors have and and I'll oversimplify it, said that we probably have some likelihood of being able to borrow against that five million dollar baseline.

Even then they there's some recommendations that we let that be stable for a while so we get better terms.

Um when it's unstable, when we've got that $50,000 bottom out, you're not gonna get as good of interest there.

So they've recommended a period of stability.

What they've recommended is that we spend the cash on hand now and get the the the core infrastructure done.

The dirt work, the roads, we we we use the money we know we have, and then we finance the vertical stuff later.

So when we're ready to build, then we build.

Practically speaking, and and and Mike Rogers are probably gonna be annoyed at me for oversimplifying this, but once we issue the bond, we only have so much time to spend it in.

So we want to make sure we're ready to start building the second we spend that money.

So if we've got to get that vertical construction done in three years, that's part of why the financial advisors advise us to spend our cash on hand and get the dirt work done, then finance it later.

If we follow that advice, the revenue stream should be stable enough by the time we go to borrow, just by a passage of time.

And we can't bond more than revenue stream will pay as well.

Not not we can't do a revenue bond for more than our revenue is.

So uh a couple of things I want to say in this.

So the you know, the clock's been ticking on this for a long time, and there's a lot of people across the state outside of this room watching this process as well.

Um, you know, today my phone just exploded today.

You know, there's an article in the independent talking about the uh lack of the aquatic center, and um that's probably one of the things I've heard the most about in this whole process.

We we know it we got talked about a lot here in November, December.

Um, you know, that's a real big deal to people.

Um let's figure this out.

Um the clock has been ticking for a long time, and in any negotiation, at some point there has to be some type of equilibrium.

Um I want to be very clear.

We need to make sure that both the aquatic center and the lettuce complex is built.

That is my biggest concern, and that is a transformational part of this that I think the residents are expecting.

Um the current indoor pool in Grand Island is already on borrowed time, past its lifetime.

It's eventually going to fail.

And if we don't build another one, we're gonna be a city without indoor pool.

And to me, that's not an acceptable outcome.

Sorry.

Um, to emit an aquatic center or the athletic complex from the first phase of a project like this would be to ensure that they never exist.

It's now or never.

If we wait, it'll just get pushed to the back burner.

And to me, that's that's not a productive outcome.

You know, we've spent a lot of time spinning our wheels on this.

We need to sort out um get things where they belong.

I would like to see a proposal that actually works.

We need to find one that includes the buildings that we all want and need.

Um we need a smart plan to sell the land, but we need real safeguards in place as well.

Um we need to make sure the vision doesn't get watered down.

You know, cities and developers both have different strengths.

You know, cities are great at accountability, developers are good at building and uh having the vision.

I would really like to find a way to get it done.

And uh I would like to actually make a motion here as well.

Um I know we don't have a proposal here, but I would like to, and we're not gonna sort this out tonight.

Um, and I think one of the important things is we need to keep this in the public view.

I think that's been a big problem is we haven't really been able to do that for several months.

Um I move that we request the mayor to establish a council committee as allowed in Grand Island City Code, Chapter 2, Section 9.

I would request that the committee include no fewer than three council members who'd be permitted to hold meetings to review any applications for good life district program funds after the administrative review team has completed their review, but before the application is presented to the full city council.

I would request this committee be authorized to make formal recommendations to the full city council, which would accompany any future applications.

Discussion.

I guess there you go.

Who wants to speak, Mr.

Conley?

Yeah.

Um I I don't agree with the committee.

Um, like the mayor said in the press conference, I feel like I don't want to read anything else in the newspaper.

I want this to be open discussion in front of the public, so we don't have to do that anymore.

Set there and read articles in the paper.

So I just feel like the committee, again, we can't attend, so if you select certain council members, some of us won't go to the tent because then you you get to a quorum.

So I feel like I think if we're going to do this, we're going to continue to negotiations, it needs to be open and in the public.

So that's my opinion on it or opinion on it.

I'm going to say at the outset, I'm going to veto this motion if it passes.

I think the breakthrough we have achieved in the last few weeks came when Woodsonia made statewide news by saying we were not transparent, which I disagree with, and I held a press conference, and then Woodsonia dropped its months long demand to buy the land for a dollar.

I think the only breakthrough we've achieved is once we embrace the idea that this should be transparent, and you have transparency when it's in front of the full council.

General George Washington had his Continental Army headquarters in Newbury, New York.

That's 60 miles from New York City, the British occupied New York City.

There were negotiations happening to end the war to so America could achieve its achieve its independence.

They were going to mutiny because they hadn't been paid.

So the plan was they would ignore the order, they would remain a standing army, and they would threaten the Continental Congress.

General George Washington heard of the plan, and he learned of the secret meeting the officers were going to have, and he crashed it.

And when he walked in, you have to understand something about General George Washington.

He was not just loved, he was venerated.

And he told his officers he knew why they were very upset.

He told them that he had served for eight years without pay, without leave, and he told them that he would do everything in his power to make sure they were paid.

But to mutiny, they must never do.

And he reminded them that they were unique because they had taken an oath to assume the duty of a soldier.

We want we want our independence, obviously.

And Benjamin Franklin said, Wow, we want our independence.

Now we have to prove we have the wisdom to govern ourselves.

Council members, those of you who take an oath to serve any in elective office, or in the front line of proving every day that we have the wisdom to govern ourselves, ourselves.

Most people will not take that oath.

Mr.

Brown, you told us the other day that only one percent of Americans will take the oath to fulfill a soldiers and a sailor's duty.

Less than one percent.

That's how few there are who will take the oath.

I'm telling you that to understand that you stand apart from ordinary citizens.

As well intentioned as they may be, they have not taken an oath.

And I consider the oath you have taken to be a soldier's duty.

Every council member here has the duty to bring their common sense and their sound reason to this major issue, probably one of the biggest issues the council will ever see.

And to punt this to a committee is to farm out your duty.

Your duty cannot be delegated.

You cannot say, well, let a committee handle it and they can report to us how we should think.

No, it is your duty to hear, to observe, to read and to study, and to provide your own input.

And more importantly, if you do your soldiers' duty and we keep this squarely in front of the people at these open meetings, then I think we'll push back against Mr.

Sheard's observation that we have not been transparent.

I can't think of anything more transparent than we keep the full council assembled and that we work through all these issues and that we all work together.

I am against a committee, whether it's the mayor's committee, which I could appoint under city code, or whether it's again or whether it's a council committee, which the council could decide to do.

But I'm telling you up front, if we if if you turn your back on your soldiers' duty and punt this to a committee, I'm gonna veto it so you know right up front, it's your duty.

I come from the world world of jury trials.

We assemble 12 people in a box.

They don't get to go back and say, well, we'll appoint four of us to consider what happened in that trial and advise the rest of us what to do.

All 12 of those jurors are supposed to bring their best game and their best brain to the issues.

Every council member is needed for these issues.

Every council member is needed to provide input and guidance to one another.

I will veto this if it proceeds.

Any other speakers on this issue?

I I want to speak on this issue.

Mr.

O'Neill, Mr.

Nickerson, you're you're on.

I don't know if I'm still okay.

Mr.

Mr.

O'Neill.

Um my questions are for Carrie or Matt, whoever.

Uh it's my understanding that the council committees would be open public meetings.

Is that correct?

Under under City Code, um, a council committee is created by the mayor, approved by council mayor that appoints the members, uh, gives them a they're given a particular purpose, whatever that may be, whatever you may authorize, and then those meetings do occur as public meetings, uh, open meetings act applies to those meetings under city code, and uh then you were that's a council committee is required to make recommendations in writing back to the full council.

Um, but so they would happen publicly, they could not happen with the full quorum of your body.

I believe under city code.

You're you're gonna quiz me a little bit.

I believe it maxes at five members that can be in a council committee there, um, but in the end, uh mayor has to create that committee and make those appointments.

Um I I would just like to echo, I I agree with everyone up here.

I I think everything should be in the in the public, and my understanding was they would still be public, but that's that's all I had on that.

So thank you for confirming.

I've got several people lined up to talk.

Anyone else to talk on the motion?

Yes.

Uh Mr.

Hawsey.

Thank you, Mayor.

I think the committee deserves an opportunity to try.

What I have seen in this bouncing around of proposals for the last two and a half years, and not one council member has been on the administrative review committee.

So we're not privy to everything that goes on in all the details.

What I can say, because I number one, I've been on this council for 18 years.

Number two, I've negotiated dozens and dozens of contracts, including these types of development contracts.

I was actually the president of a development company, so I have actually have hands-on experience to know what we're doing.

And I feel like the things that I see, whether it's in the newspaper or through the staff, everybody's in a defensive position.

You know, everybody's defensive, and no one is working together for the benefit of the citizens that we are obligated here to do.

I would be glad to volunteer my time to take what expertise I have to try to negotiate that last mile.

And I know that many good things have been decided over the years, but our request is fairly simple.

We want we want two things built.

This this is not rocket science.

This is something where every party that's involved at this point, I feel is in a defensive position, and this continued hour, two hour, three hour debate is just gonna end up in failure.

I'm not looking for the opportunity of my lifetime in the good life district to end in failure without an opportunity to try to negotiate the last mile.

That's where I'm at.

And by the way, I am a soldier.

Retired Army.

Anyone else to speak who?

Mr.

Sheard.

Chuck, I agree.

I think.

I think the we're three hours and 15 minutes into this meeting, and we haven't even heard the other side talk.

We haven't heard people from the community that wanted to talk.

And doing an entire negotiation in this manner, I don't know.

With 10 of us up here, I don't know if we're gonna get where we want to get.

And I agree with Chuck that we didn't come this far to get this far.

And mayor, I don't consider it a mutiny to want to do this a different way.

I wouldn't consider that a proper thing to say to your council that we're doing mutinous things to want to continue to make.

Do you want to delegate your duty?

I'm gonna volunteer to be on that that committee.

I don't think that's mutiny.

Who appoints the members?

The by code, mayor, you have to create the committee.

Council has to approve its creation, and then you appoint the members and then they vote to approve it.

I have not created the committee.

Great.

I believe the motion is requesting that you do so.

Um suppose we'll do this in public.

No matter what, we should do it in public.

But I just want to make sure what we do, we get to a result, and we don't screw this up and uh I fear that we're getting close.

Anyone else want to speak on this motion?

Mr.

Mayor, I do.

Yes.

Thank you.

Um I can't uh support this motion.

I'm I sit on the city council to promote Grand Island for what's good for Grand Island, and I don't think this is good for Grand Island.

Um I talked to my constituents this afternoon, and what they want is they want us to work together to get the Good Life Project put together, to get the Sports Center and the Swimming Pool put together.

And I think we have common ground, and we're all everybody's neighbors and constituents.

I think we can just work this out and get this done.

That's why I'm not gonna vote for this.

I want to work as a team.

Okay, so do we vote on the motion first?

Yeah, there's been a second rate.

Yes.

Okay, yes.

Okay, so please vote.

Motion failed.

Mr.

Nickerson, you had some uh comments you would like to make.

I did.

Now we've kind of lost our momentum from that discussion.

Kind of shift gears here.

So I'm gonna come back to what we were speaking about before the recommendation for committee.

And like everybody in this room, I'm disappointed with the amount of progress we've made.

I'm disappointed in how this has played out in the media because it it doesn't have to be that way.

It didn't have to be that way.

We're better than that.

Grand Island has done a much better job in things like this in the past.

And I and I I think when we hear a group represent representing themselves as victims without allowing anybody else to tell folks what's going on, I don't think that's right.

We got our headlines splashed all over the place.

We got compassion and support from the community without knowing both sides of the story.

We got compassion and support from the community without knowing both sides of the story.

That's not right.

But that's the way we play the game sometimes.

So tonight we're talking about where are we and where do we want to go?

A few things that I heard tonight that were very important to go back to the basics is that this project needs to be transformational in retail entertainment and tourism industries.

Those are three key things.

That isn't the houses, it's not the multifamily units.

This is things that can really generate those taxes.

I was also brought to mind that we have to follow the law.

You have no option not to do that.

And as a council, we have to follow the law.

And part of the reasons why we weren't sharing with people is because we were following our obligation of confidentiality in meetings, and we couldn't tell you.

Oh, we could.

I think we had at least one or two members that decided they were going to go out and talk about it anyway, but we are not supposed to do that.

And we were doing our duty.

Judge us for that if you want.

But that's what confidentiality is.

Do you know I don't even tell my wife what goes on in those meetings?

Because it's confidential.

It's nobody else's business but those of us that are in those meetings.

So we did what we were supposed to do.

And we've created kind of an uproar in a community and a community that doesn't typically live like that.

So I'm gonna ask a couple of questions tonight, again from Carrie and our Matt.

And these are basic questions that come before us tonight.

And I just need to know your I need to know the answer.

And I need to know not your legal opinion, I need to know what is the answer.

And I think you presented them tonight, but I've just got to make sure I understand that.

Question number one is who controls the funds from the good life district.

By statute, the city council controls the funds, all disbursements, you can spend any amount of money at any time on eligible costs.

Is there any question about that?

The only question would be if you ask to spend the money generated by the applicant on a different business, I would tell you you cannot do that.

That would be the one asterisks there.

But otherwise you control every other penny.

Okay.

Question number two is the applicant the only entity to work with if negotiations fail?

No.

Is there any question about that?

No.

The city, any other government entity or any other qualified business, can uh use those funds for eligible costs.

Okay.

Question number three.

When we talk about an 8020 rule that we have there, that's what I'm calling it.

80 percent of the projects need to be revenue generating.

Is that correct?

Any 80 percent of the money dispersed to a private applicant.

So government, we're off in our own bucket.

But if we're gonna take money out of the program and give it to a private business, 80 percent of that those disbursements have to gener be given in in some sort of cost that generates tax money, 20 percent can be on non-revenue producing.

So that only applies to that private businesses, but yes, 80 80 cents on every dollar has to go to tax generating um expenses.

Okay.

If a developer decides that they only want to produce one tax generating project, what does that do to the project as a whole?

That's part of why this this is disbursement based and that your legal safe harbor is in reimbursing expenses, because then you can never do that.

If we are back paying bills, then we can come in and say, hey, there's a million bucks worth of requests, but only 200,000 of it can be spent on this type of bill and it self-corrects and self-regulates.

So that's why our advice is to do it backwards as a reimbursement-based model because it eliminates that from being a possibility.

Uh, if you were to spend money without legal authorization to spend that money, um giving 100% of it to a non-revenue producing cost as disbursements, that would be illegal.

Um to be honest, I'm not sure what all penalties would be there.

Please just don't do that.

Well, my my question is is as those tax generating projects become smaller, it seems to me like it limits the overall size of the project because you've got 80 percent.

I mean, it's got to be based on 100 percent.

So that would be a rolling amount that kicks out with distribution.

So if in one year we distribute a million bucks, that's 200,000 bucks for non-eligible.

If in the next year we've saved up money and we spend 10 million, that pot's bigger.

But it's it's based off of the money going out.

Whatever money goes out, 8020.

So that really is going to depend on what it is you're spending the money on for private industry.

Um almost impossible to project.

Um, it's still a little muddy, but I I think I understand something.

It is, yeah.

Okay.

So those are the and then the contract has to be in writing.

Things that are promised verbally are worthless until they're in writing.

Yeah, they're not going to be able to do that.

That's important.

I mean, that that's important.

So those are the basic things.

But the basic of all basics is right there.

We know who controls the funds, no question.

We know that the applicant, if they choose not to play fair, and I'm just throwing that out, not picking on Woodsonia, but they're the only applicant, it so it sounds bad.

But if they're not willing to play, if they're not willing to do what this what the city really wants and what they need, the city's not obligated to work with them if they don't want to agree to that, correct?

City yet, city can have 20 partners or zero partners.

All of those are legal.

Although those are the two basic things, plus the fact that this whole project is based on retail entertainment and tourism industries, knowing that we'll have some other projects that go along with that.

I don't know what happened from December 9th forward, because when we had our presentation here, I thought we were all knew the direction we were going.

I mean, we we even, if I remember right, does it the December 9th one brought back a nice better aquatic center than what the original one was about a month earlier because it didn't meet what our what our community wanted, and and they did an outstanding job.

But then something changed down the road after December 9th, something changed in these things, including clawbacks that were presented to us that said that if we don't meet these sort of certain thresholds, then we then the city may get some of the land back, meaning we're holding people accountable.

I questioned those.

They said we're okay with them.

I also asked the question what happens if we come to an impasse in negotiating?

And they said it comes before the council, and here we are.

So this whole thing changed, but I don't know what changed.

I don't know why it changed.

And it's not right for the community and for us to sit here and say, that's okay.

What you agreed to on December 9th is okay not to agree to now.

Because for some reason it was okay on December 9th, but after no December 10th it wasn't.

And here we are with other proposals sent to us changing things, which I don't get.

And I don't know if it's just overall dollars if we bid off more than we can chew.

I don't I don't get that part of it.

And it's not right.

We need to figure out how to do what the community wants.

And that is the uh sports complex.

We know that's very important.

I kind of like the idea that the pickleball courts added that was kind of an up nice upside.

I like that.

And I can tell you about 500 other people in this town that like that.

But the Aquatic Center is really a deal breaker as far as I'm concerned.

If you don't want to do that, that's I don't know why you would not want to do that, knowing that it fits into this entertainment and the whole gamut of what we're trying to do for a community.

It also helps build an 80-20 percent of the overall project as we look at trying to build this out, and I would agree that you've got to plan this in phases.

You can't plan a 30-year project in in the first three years.

You can't do that.

And economic times are going to change.

So because of that, the other reason it's very important, is that we have to have the ability to not let one person decide if the project should stop, and then you're we're done.

We said it we we don't think it's feasible anymore.

So we're gonna stop.

And we get to make that decision on our own.

That's not right.

The sole discretion to terminate is not an acceptable term.

It's just not.

And that's why we have to do this in phases so that we know that we can try to succeed together, no matter who's helping us on this.

Those bite-sized pieces is what's gonna make this successful, not trying to make this grandiose plan and plan for 30 years.

We have to do this in bite-sized pieces, and it's very manageable, and we do start with the infrastructure, but then we have to build what we want.

And as far as I'm concerned, whoever helps decide this in the future, it's not gonna go to a committee, it sounds like, not a subcommittee at this point.

But I know and we know that an aquatic center is an important part of this project to this community.

It's huge.

And we've got to get there.

And I don't know if Woodsonia wants to be that person, that group to help us get there, but we need to find a way to get there.

If they choose not to, and we're by a law we're not obligated to, then we need to find another partner that's willing to work.

Because I think there probably are people that are willing to do that.

But it's because part of us followed the rules of confidentiality, which didn't allow anybody to share the things that they really would have liked to share.

And there's no big secrets going on in those meetings.

I will guarantee you.

We talk about the things that we're talking about tonight.

And that's all they are.

We can do better.

Grand Island could do better.

We have a history of doing that.

And I'm looking forward to how we're going to get that done.

Mr.

Brown.

Just a couple questions.

Can we continue on the cable project?

That's that was long lead time for ATT to change that cable.

The city can incur any of the sort of expenses, everything from the city.

So we shut anything down on have we shut anything down on that cable project?

No, no, we've we've still continued to proceed on relocating the cable.

I know we had it scheduled and it's a long lead time item, so I believe right now they're custom building the the fiber line, which they have to do before they can move it.

And we could continue on dirt work or whatever, like removing the trees and stuff.

Yep, right now, since we own the land, we can continue to do it.

So we're not losing time on that.

Correct.

Yeah.

Mr.

Shear.

Thank you.

So uh we're gonna continue to have this conversation.

It's gonna last, it's gonna look a lot like this.

What advice can you give us for how this is going to look?

This negotiation like this, whether it would have been in the committee or not, it would have been public.

But how how will this go forward?

So under law, there are again those three ways money can come out of the fund.

Because in the end, fundamentally this comes this comes down to getting money out to deliver the growth.

Uh city can do the work itself, we can incur those eligible expenses, we can pay for the dirt work, hire the engineers, build the sports complex.

You got that path.

You have under code the right to do the request for proposals.

You to actively solicit a developer to do it and then process there, or it goes through the application process.

So since right now we kind of have no application out there, um the or or or some level of withdrawing proposal, what whatever the limbo is we're in now, restarting that application path would be the private developer route if you don't choose that proposal.

But one of those three paths is where we go next.

An application for funds and for whatever the development is that proceeds down the path required by law, the application, application review, development of all those questions, presentation counsel, or you could opt to say send it a request for proposal out.

We have X land, X dollars and want X things done, send us your best pitch folks, or we could do it ourselves.

Those are all three legal options.

Um which one you pick is a policy call.

So let's say we were going to talk with our our friends from Woodsonia.

How do we get to that point?

Uh any it assuming that the ask on there and is for program money, that goes through by statute the application process.

An application that says this is exactly what we want and want for, and it goes through that review process.

That's the path we have been on, and we kind of deviated off that that statutorily required path in November.

Um, you would have a couple of choices.

You could say, let's go back to square one and do a new new clean cold application, just start over, redefine what everything is, or we could kind of go back in time to that application review process and deal with kind of a third amended application and and then reset the clock halfway through.

How can we get it to a point where they're right here?

We're right here as a group of 10 and have a conversation that doesn't waste time, that doesn't have them put something together that's gonna get through a bunch of channels before it gets to us.

Can we have the conversation where we just plainly talk back and forth before they do an application, or is that not legal?

You you can have some some sort of public hearings, that sort of negotiation to do those funds has that due diligence step built in by state law.

But you mean we can talk conceptually speaking, but to get to that negotiation stage requires those those levels of vetting and then it to come back to you.

Ideally speaking, and they're their paths are written out in code, ideally speaking, with all of the contracts already done, so you can say yes and no.

Um there is a path for you to do what you've done.

That's what we've been doing, and that hasn't gotten us anywhere at all.

I think what we're trying to say is we want them to talk to us.

Yeah, I think Chuck said it, I think Ryan said it, I think Mitch said it.

I think everybody up here feels it.

I'm I I I know what you're saying, and I appreciate it, but I think it's a time where if we're gonna not have a mutiny and give this up, I don't see the difference in not having a saying at all.

Right?

As mayor's words, it's a mutiny if we don't get involved.

And by God, I'm not gonna be accused of that again.

So I'm gonna stand up here and do my duty that I did an oath to, and I want to know how we can talk to them before we give up on them and go somewhere else.

Let them get the chance to define clearly what they're willing to give, formalize that in paperwork and send it back up to you for a up-down vote.

Um it's a bit backwards in conflict.

The process contemplates doing things in a certain order.

This would be doing that process out of order, which is inherently messy, but that would probably be the best, but you guys kind of can we talk before there's paperwork.

You can you can talk forever about anything, you just can't take action without the paperwork.

Right.

Yeah.

But I mean, could we have the conversation in a meeting just like this?

Maybe not tonight, but a meeting like this to say this is what we want, though I think Chuck, we've been pretty clear, right?

I think we've all been pretty clear.

Mitch said it really well.

We know what we want, but they haven't had a chance to tell us why they're not gonna give it to us.

And I want to know what they're facing, why that's not gonna happen.

Because I think we've said it's pretty simple.

What we want is really, really simple, and it is affordable in the money we can get.

But I want to hear from them at that podium why they can't do it so we can understand their frustrations.

Yeah, the the agenda item you have in front of you now, we could have in perpetuity as long as it takes to do that.

Um, we've never gotten past us talking to give the chance for everybody else to talk, but in whatever order, whether that is seven separate meeting agenda items, continuing this to the next time to do that next phase, stay until 3 a.m.

All of those are options.

We just continue to do what we're doing right now.

Um, but move on to the next speaker.

Um I think it's worth a shot, more than going back to the the basics or going back to try again the things that you guys have just said, it hasn't worked.

Matt, you said it.

They just kept coming back with the same thing.

But until the mayor said, we're not gonna do this anymore, then they didn't move, and then they did.

Well, let's not wait for that to happen again.

Let's do it when we're all in the room together.

The the one thing I would challenge and say is that the legal framework you have, that program ordinance and the application.

Part of the reason those requirements are in there and were required from the application was to avoid having all of these uncertainties by the time it got to you.

Yeah, but we did that and it didn't work.

So but it is but it is required by state law that the application materials include certain items that simply didn't include before it gets to you.

So the way to do it legally compliant is to go backwards at least a little bit and say finish filling out the blanks and get those answers so that way you have something concrete to decide that doesn't change and doesn't shift during development.

That applicate that's why the application requires things like a list of the structures to be built so that way we're not here two and a half years later, still not certain how many buildings are gonna get built with the money.

Um so we can do it without 700 meetings.

It does require that step backwards to to do that core.

And then they can go do the paperwork.

Which which is what we did in November.

I'm asking if we're now yeah, we can do we can do it as many times as you like.

Um obviously things have changed since then, and I'm like Mitch.

I want to know what changed.

Yeah, yeah, we you can have this exact agenda item, the discussion on their proposals.

We can do this as many times as you can convene a public meeting.

There's no limit under law for how many minutes we can spend talking about something.

Okay, Mr.

Ose.

Thank you, Mayor.

So I really have two questions.

The the first one is if we're gonna have a continuance of this discussion, we really need to at some point close this meeting and and reopen it at another time.

And and how is that process and how do we get that started?

You you could do one of two things.

You could move to continue this agenda item to the next meeting.

Jill, I have to tell you pick an actual date to continue it to, not just table it indefinitely that creates some issues.

Or because this item doesn't have this was just a discussion, somebody could just replace it on the agenda pretty continuously.

There's no public hearing that we're like legal public hearing that we're continuing.

So you could do either way, continuance or just put it on whenever you're ready to talk about it again next.

I'm I'm thinking, I mean, not about the next meeting and the next meeting and the next meeting.

I'm talking about close it at midnight, let's open it back up at eight o'clock in the morning and let's keep walking it through.

I mean, right now, if that's what we're gonna do, you know.

I I happen to believe that a lot of management styles, a lot of cultures actually get things done in an informal setting, whether it's a Japanese style over dinner or whether it's at a golf course.

I happen to think that's how things actually get done.

And then you come back and m memorialize them in paper, so you have the right paperwork.

But if we want to do this in a public setting, I've been here around here a long time.

I've never seen it done before like this.

But I'll tell you what, I'm I'm willing to play the game, at least up until the first meeting in December.

But I think the thing is is we close this meeting in midnight, we reopen it the next day, not the next meeting.

You you'd have to I think that's the that's the ugly process of how sausage gets made in government.

But if we're gonna do it in a public setting, I think it's gonna be one continuous meeting until we get it negotiated.

I don't think you do it in two meetings in May and two meetings in June and two meetings in July, or we'll be here another two and a half years.

The only legal restriction would be you have to notice your public meetings, and so since we don't have a meeting noticed for tomorrow, the next time you can move it to is the next notice meeting.

Now you could add additional meetings.

You there's the process in code to request you do it for study sessions pretty regularly to add non-regular meetings, but that has to get noticed the public knows and has that that legal public notice there.

So somewhere between is probably where the law allows.

You can you can talk and tell you adjourn and then have to re-notice the next meeting.

Um I I'm ready to to have would Sonia stand up to the plate and and have us ask them questions whenever everybody else is ready for that, Mr.

Nickerson.

My question will be I'm not sure where we're still heading tonight, but as we move forward, and it sounds like we're okay with more discussion.

Nothing's being voted on tonight, one way or another.

What is would Sonia's ability to contact us individually to discuss things?

Or is it still in this meeting only is that you would want those items discussed?

Uh open open meetings act-wise, you can't use uh informal communications for the purposes of circumventing the open meetings act.

So if it is one-on-one contact for the purposes of avoiding a public transaction, that would be a violation of the open meetings act.

Everybody's ability to call and and have some informal chats is a bit different.

So it really depends on your intent and purposes in those communications.

But um but can I mean can I call and tell you my thoughts about the weather without being an open meetings act violation?

Absolutely.

Can I purposely negotiate things piece by piece by piece only to avoid public accountability?

No, that would that would be um uh violation of open meetings act.

So but to simply talk and bounce something off somebody not negotiating it, but asking what your opinion is about this or telling you why I can't do this, or this is why we're not comfortable with this.

Is that very very intent-based, and so if it's done to avoid a public vote to basically toll the votes, it's a problem.

If it's just answering questions, that's literally what lobbyists get paid to do all the time, so that's typically fine.

Um, so it it really is it is a true, it depends on the legal world.

I would just caution you to get familiar with that open meetings act poster and make sure you're not running a foul of those requirements.

And um if you're there, you're okay.

That's yeah, and I don't think it's I don't know.

I don't I haven't talked to Woodsonia, I've purposely not answered the phone because of that reason.

I don't know exactly what the questions gonna be.

But if we reach a point where there's a few people they feel comfortable talking with, I don't know why I want to make sure if it's okay that we know here tonight.

If we get a phone call in a few days and somebody asks a question about something, or hey, what'd you think about the meeting?

Is it okay or not okay?

Thoughts and feelings are always fine to share privately, taking evidence, making decisions on behalf of the parent body behind closed doors, always not okay.

Um so I I really can't answer without knowing exactly what question you'd be asking and why it'd be being asked.

But those are the big parameters.

Discussions are fine, holding hearing, taking evidence, taking action when you're one of ten without the other folks in the room, always a problem.

The law rests somewhere in between.

Um just something to think about.

Mr.

O'Neill.

I'll try and be brief here.

Um out of respect to what uh Mr.

Connolly said earlier, too.

You know, I agree we all want it public.

Um the committee meeting was the first idea I had, but scheduling a separate meeting with a legal notice for the whole council, I think is a great option as well.

Um, I don't know what the legal notice period is, if it's 10 days or a week or whatever, but it just needs to be in reasonable amount of time.

And and I want to be because a lot of council members work, I don't think meeting at 8 a.m.

is very practical, but I think we all want to figure stuff out in here.

And I I would be totally okay with having another scheduled meeting.

You know, we we can't have four-hour council meetings, you know, for every regular meeting.

But if there's other separate special meetings we have for it, I'd be well open to do that idea as well.

But we have to keep talking about it.

I think it's great to have it in public and get everyone's input.

But I don't know it off the top of my head, but the process for calling a meeting is in chapter two of City Code somewhere, so what how that works is is written there.

I that's one I don't have memorized off the top of my head, but the answer is out there for you.

So um, I believe there's a couple of different ways those special meetings can get called.

I'm just trying to figure out how to keep the ball rolling forward and have a meeting to do it.

But um we can hash those details out later.

We can't resolve that now, but I just want to add that in there.

Mr.

Still.

Thank thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh I guess I'd like to invite Mitch and Drew to the podium to see if they could talk about some of the differences so we can get some discussion talk on where they stand why they stand where they are, and so we can get some positive feedback.

Um is that possible?

Whenever you're done asking us questions, we love nothing more than a sit down.

Yeah, right.

All right.

If you have no more questions, we'll sit down and let you keep progressing on your item.

I would love to hear you, both of you.

Well, good to see everybody.

I wasn't sure.

We 10 45, so it's a little past my bedtime, but uh anyway.

Um lots of discussion tonight.

Um, yeah, we appreciate the opportunity to come up and speak.

I personally am I'm a little bit with Chuck here.

I'm personally probably don't think there's a lot of benefit to going back through the last two and a half years.

Um I'm I think we're of the opinion it's time to look forward and not look backwards.

Um we are 100% supportive of the council.

We want a transformational sports complex, and we hear you loud and clear on the aquatic center.

Um, there's some legislative tools that came through this legislative session that I think might be to our benefit that's that's worth evaluating.

Um we've heard a lot of feedback on the sports complex.

You saw some correspondence from us on May 4th uh about the size of the sports complex.

This was really a function of allocating good life dollars.

I mean, we all know in 2025 we took a haircut and we're down to a five million dollar cap now on those dollars.

So when we came before you in December, uh that was purely a function of of allocating dollars and how those would get allocated amongst those two facilities.

So our request was for a committee because we've tried for two and a half years.

Uh I would not be a proponent to continue to fill out more and more applications.

We've done that twice.

We've sent in a check for 50,000.

We've filled out applications, we've gotten sporadic feedback.

Um that's not been a productive process at all, at all.

Honestly, the most productive process we had was our December council meeting before you.

I think it was two or three hours.

We had a six-page MOU that talked about the key critical items.

I felt like everybody had an opportunity to speak on that, talk about it.

Um, I think there was a motion made to approve that as we got into those negotiations.

There was some major technicalities within the development agreement that made that extremely difficult to execute on.

Um accessing the funding from the state and getting the department of revenue to get this process corrected is crucial.

It's absolutely crucial.

What staff and everybody here needs to realize though is good life districts are a three-legged stool.

State, city, approved applicant.

Approved applicant has a contract with the state of Nebraska.

We are the party who reports new businesses within the district.

Those new businesses are then identified, and there's additional dollars, good life dollars provided for those businesses.

So to just turn your turn, it's a very short-sighted comment to say, well, if things fail, let's move forward with another developer.

We have a contractual obligation.

We're part of this three-legged stool.

We made the application, we got us to this point.

This has been a very difficult process, but those conversations, in my opinion, need to go away.

And the productive conversations need to be it's a three-legged stool.

How do we get all three parties to work together?

And whatever means we're gonna do that.

I've never had to negotiate these type of details in a public setting with 10 council members.

But if that's what we're gonna ultimately decide to do, then I guess let's give it a shot.

My advice though is I felt like we made the most progress.

I think or Jack, to your point.

How do we make progress and not get stuck in the mud where we've been the last two and a half years?

We need to bring in simplified memorandum of understanding terms that everybody gets an opportunity to speak on, ask questions on.

If everybody's in sync on that, those documents should get provided to the legal team, those folks put those documents together.

We come back before council again.

Any additional questions, development agreement is probably what that would look like, and we move forward.

I really don't know that this is that complicated of a process, but to say that we shouldn't work together or we don't need to work together is I think gonna make this very, very, very difficult.

So I'm I'm adamantly opposed to that position.

Saying we should go back and fill out another application for the use of program funds is gonna be a huge waste of time.

A huge waste of time.

And I'm gonna recommend we do not do that.

If ultimately we need to do that to check state statute, let's do that after we have a memorandum of understanding agreed upon, and we're checking a box.

Okay.

We're all looking to make progress here.

We are looking to make progress.

We've been involved in this as long as anybody.

Uh we are greatly appreciative of everyone's patience.

Um we took it upon ourselves to use our costs from Conestoga to certify those to make sure this district stayed uh viable to meet those investment thresholds that Kerry talked about.

Um we want this district to be successful.

We've already invested 150 million dollars into your community in Conestoga.

We want to invest another 500 million dollars with this project.

We want this to be very, very successful.

We understand this is gonna be a little bit of a unique process.

That's okay.

Let's set up council meetings specific to this, so we're not on the end of an agenda trying to talk about things at 11 o'clock at night.

Let's set up specialized meetings, let's identify those dates.

I don't know if we can make a motion tonight, but let's get these dates on the calendar.

We are ready, willing, and able to get engaged to come back to you.

I don't think it's necessarily productive tonight to go into some of the the roadblocks and the issues we ran into.

We have some great ideas to create some additional funding that I think the council should hear.

And and you guys should weigh in on a lot of these things.

So I think we have some great ideas to expand the sports complex to add pickleball that wasn't in December.

Um of these things changed because as we got the state involved over these last two months, that gave us an opportunity to really go back and dig into our original application that was approved by the state, and we realized how far we've deviated off of that.

We'll take responsibility for that.

We will 100% take responsibility for that.

Some of these things we need to get back to what we said we would do that we think are important, that also make the negotiating of this development agreement more simple.

Um, and some of those issues, our attorney Kit Seacrest is here.

Um, if we really want to get into some of the minutia about public bidding and all the things that we ran into from a stumbling block uh perspective on this development agreement, but um I guess those who would love I would like to ask you if within a week can the things that you disagree with on the MOU, can you send a list to us the three or four things that are deal breakers for you?

Then can you also there was a disagreement on the value of land if you were gonna purchase land?

I mean, I'd like to get started on discussion so that uh this is a two-way street that we're just not kicking the can down the road.

Totally agree with you, Mark.

I think I think what personally, if we can, we should make a motion for another council meeting tonight.

Let's get this thing set up.

I agree with you, Mark.

Let us take the MOU that was approved in December.

Let us address here's the items we think should be changed.

Here's an updated MOU for your consideration, and let's talk about it.

Let's come back, let's talk about it.

We have some great ideas that the council should hear about that's gonna make this a better project.

It's gonna make it a better project than what we presented in December.

This is not all negative.

I think there's gonna be a lot of positives, but people just need to be patient and be willing to hear some of our ideas.

I think we've proven ourselves with the mall redevelopment.

Just give us an opportunity, let us come back, but let's set a meeting where we're not talking about this at 11 o'clock at night, and we can address some of these issues.

And and I I think people will realize unless we're gonna drastically change things, we're talking about some mechanics and some modifications of what was approved in December, and based on some of the negotiation stumbling blocks that we ran into with staff.

I mean, that's why we don't have an executive development agreement.

Some of the public bidding requirements and issues on these being publicly owned facilities create challenges, real challenges.

Some of the public bidding requirements and issues on these being publicly owned facilities create challenges, real challenges, and they're technical and they're they're complicated, and that's why Kent was here because we didn't know if we were gonna have to get into some of those level of details, but there's rationale behind this that I think needs to be explained, and the city council needs to hear.

Yeah, if you could do something like get us something within a week so that we have time to study it and go over it with our legal people and then have it at our next meeting.

That'll get this thing going down the road.

That's what we want.

We just want to work out a deal with you, but I don't want to work it out at midnight.

I want I I agree with you.

I go to 9 30.

Yes.

Totally agree.

So yeah, I think I think tonight we were of the opinion we were gonna c I mean.

This meeting has taken a complete 180 from where I thought it was gonna go.

And I think our thought tonight was can we get on the same playing field on some general ideas?

And I don't know that that's necessarily as productive as if this is gonna be the forum that we're gonna do this in, okay.

Then what is the best and simplest way we can come in and present material to you guys?

Um, and I want to stay away from a lot of the legal e stuff, and I agree, Carrie, those guys they did a nice job.

That's so much detail, and I want to stay high level.

What are the important things?

Programming, size of facilities, allocation of funding, land price, timing, clawbacks, those are all the things that have come up.

Let's go through those again in detail, making sure everybody is aware of those items, how we're addressing them, and that we have consensus to move this forward.

So yeah, I I would agree with you.

Those that's something we can absolutely do.

Your partner have anything to add to it?

I don't know.

No, I mean, I you've heard it from me, and you've heard it from Drew, and you've heard it via these emails I've sent with 50 people CC'd on to them.

I mean, our firm desire has been to communicate with council through this process.

We don't feel like it's been transparent.

We don't feel like the message that we convey to staff accurately gets to council.

That's why you've seen this kind of freak out, especially over the last three to four months, Mark.

So our desire is to whatever that entails, whether it's a a committee or doing it like this.

We want to talk directly with you folks.

It's been three years and we've seen you twice.

So whatever we need to do to move away from that is is our desire.

We want to be in these meetings, and I I think when you ask the questions, well, what's different from what we'd approved in December?

Our opinion might be totally contrast to another, and we want you to hear that from us directly and make a decision for yourself of what that looks like, Mark.

I'd like to thank both of you for having the guts and being very professional about it and uh presenting your thoughts to us.

I'd also like to make a motion that we invite you back at our next council meeting to work on the contract, and that you give us within a week you send uh the mayor the the points that you want us to discuss council members.

Is there a second Mr.

Lanfear?

I'll start any discussion Mr.

Nickerson, please proceed.

Okay, I wasn't the first to the light, but well, I hit the wrong okay.

I I think we just need to be cautious about establishing the next meeting now because we don't know what's on going to be on the agenda two weeks from now, you may be here again.

I can tell you it is huge already.

That's I may be here with you, Mitch.

That may be here.

We set up a special meeting.

Yes, I I think that's much more logical.

We have study sessions all the time, all the time.

We have study sessions sometimes.

So I would say that I would not put this to our next meeting because you may be here till 2 a.m.

trying to sort through this, and uh I could make it till two, but some of you guys do go to bed a lot earlier than I.

So I I'm not gonna I'm not going to support that simply because sounds like the agenda is already packed.

Could I admit my motion to a study session?

Doug, or you agree to that.

And that would have to be determined by our city clerk where the best fit for that is.

But yeah, I I can support a study session for sure.

It depends on how soon you want it.

Um if you're talking next week already, we would have to have it in the paper.

I mean, I'd have to advertise by tomorrow by one to get it in by Saturday.

Um otherwise after that we wouldn't get it published before next week.

So you're looking like maybe three weeks.

Yeah.

Most of the budget's kicking in sometime.

Not until July.

Is it end of next week a possibility?

Thursday or Friday.

I mean, we would be ready.

That would have to be a would that have to be a special meeting if they do it on a different day?

Because it's not workable.

So uh under city code, there's really three different ways you can have meetings.

Your regular meetings published pursuant to your schedule by resolution, a special meeting that's called by the mayor and any four council members.

Um that has some mustn't have been used for a long time.

It has some requirements about notice being served by the police department or somebody else on council members.

I think it's designed pre-publication to be some sort of emergency meeting process, or there's your study session process that can be scheduled just subject to the legal notice required by law for any other meeting.

So this special meeting provision is is a bit antiquated and a little hard to do study sessions, probably your assuming we don't want to be on the regular meeting sessions, study session is probably the next fastest and most flexible of the choices.

Um unless we want to roll the dice on some pioneer law.

Uh June 2nd is the next available Tuesday.

Would that work?

Yes.

There, yeah, yeah, we can publish.

Yeah, our next regular meeting is the 26th.

So yeah, it'd be Mr.

Brown.

So if you while we do a budget is actually have two meetings in one day.

Start one at five o'clock, it ends at seven o'clock, and then the regular city council meeting starts at seven o'clock.

It's a possibility for the 26th.

Yep.

That works, yeah.

That works for us if that would work for council.

Could we set that up for the 26th at 5 and then go ahead and put in the second at 6 p.m.

for another one and just go ahead and schedule two?

The one for the 26th is already set to publish because it's a regular meeting.

So we would just have to the 5 p.m.

we'd have to publish.

Yeah, that's right.

We can we add a 5 p.m.

special session.

And then one on the 2nd of June for 6 p.m.

For a study session for the same pot topic.

Yeah.

If you guys want to move to make a motion for that, but before we get there though, let's let's think this thing through before we make motions.

We have to back off of what are we going to accomplish in two hours before we have to go into another meeting?

Because then you just have to stop abruptly because the next meeting is scheduled at 7.

And we've done that before.

And we've run clear up till 7, sometimes 7.02, trying to get it done, and then we're rushing at the end.

I don't know if two hours is an adequate time to to do everything we'd like, whereas an open-ended night is going to give us that flexibility.

You got your two, your three, four hours if you if it goes that long.

But it has to be very organized and it will be planned.

You'll be ready, we'll be ready.

Actually, we're gonna be ready to hear you.

And that's really what it would be.

So I'm not sure what we I don't know what we'll gain in two hours.

Maybe we'll knock it out of the park.

But if we don't, we gotta go back and we've got to go back to the house.

Or do we need a four?

Well, I think three hours.

I think we've already got one guy that's on vacation, so I don't know if we want to make it that early.

I don't just we need to we need to talk this around, find the best date.

I I don't like stacking meetings because we may not get enough done.

So it's um I I I like having an open open-ended time slot, study session style makes sense to me.

Uh June 2nd.

It's another week from May 26.

It's it's not that big of a deal in the big picture if we can accomplish everything we want to on June 2nd.

To me, that seems to make sense.

So, Mark, do you want to do a study session June 2nd at 6?

Do you what do you have?

Do you have much planned on the second or anything?

There's nothing.

There's nothing on that.

That would be better the whole night for it.

We'll start at six.

Yes.

Five or five.

Six.

Six.

Okay, that's fine.

I think that's the best way to go, really.

You know, one night just for this.

Well, the expectation then be to from that meeting take that feedback into a definitive document or to finalize a definitive document that night.

I think I think we would prep, I think we would plan to show up with a memorandum of understanding like we did on in December.

That would just get updated.

And then we could break, we could break out the changes from December, and then we could have an updated document that we could talk everybody through.

And we can we can we can send that out ahead of time.

That's not a that's not a big issue.

So you have plenty of time to look at it.

And any other questions we'll we'll uh send to them before the meeting.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Okay, please vote.

Motion adopted Mr.

Hawsey.

Thank you, Mayor.

So you ready for some questions?

I've been sitting here for a while.

I when you were when the application period was open, did the city of Grand Island or the City Council approve your application at some point?

Yeah, did we support your application or support?

And so that would the council had to approve a letter of support for your application when you went in.

Yeah, so we were supportive of this, you know, back in December of 2023 or whenever that application window was open.

Uh one of the things that we talked about tonight was a reimbursement model, um, which I think is like different than what the contract language is that I've kind of read.

Uh can you talk about whether the reimbursement model works for Woodsonia or doesn't work, or why wouldn't it work if it doesn't?

Well, this is where we hit some real stumbling blocks on the development agreement after the December MOU approval.

Um so in talking about these being publicly owned, um, really the best scenario that we came up with was staff based on statutes, law, etc.

Was would Sonia would pay to have all these public facilities built at our own cost?

And then we would come in, and that was the development agreement version that I think was submitted.

Um, and then we would come in and it was treated almost more like a real estate contract where we would deliver these facilities for X price.

The city would then agree to take those and pay us X price, uh, but then the city would obviously want to know there was bond proceeds available to make the payment to us.

It became a very complicated financing structure.

I mean, we were talking about um six sixty well, sixty to eighty I forgot the number sixty to eighty million, and so we were talking to different financial institutions of how can we get this structured?

Well, they wanted some assurance that the city was gonna provide that.

The city wanted assurance, they were gonna have bond proceeds.

It was just this multi-layered process that became very complicated.

And that's when we went back and looked at the state application on the sports complex, and we said, well, gosh, this was always intended to be privately owned.

That would make constructing this and owning it and doing a bond issuance and just using those bond proceeds so much simpler in how this transaction got put together related to the sports complex.

So that's why we came back and you saw in our May 4th email, is we said when we when we saw that and then we kind of took under consideration all the complexities that we had in the development agreement from December to today, that's why we responded back on that May 4th email and said this would make this so much simpler if we just stuck with what the state approved in our state approved application.

We wouldn't have to be trying to figure out all these complicating factors on the financing structure.

I think one of the other challenges throughout this that they talked about was where we went just the revenue fluctuation and how we're how we got to where we got today.

Um so when it gets down to bond sizing, bond sizing was a part of the contract.

I mean, the I know that the legal representation talked about the city being liable if we don't do it right or you know we go too much, but I didn't know on revenue bonds that the city does beyond, you know, we are dedicating a revenue stream for a revenue bond.

I don't know that there's any general obligation responsibility beyond the revenue stream that's uh that's already there.

So we don't believe so, Chuck.

But Mike Rogers is here as well.

This is your bond council.

My thing is on the bond sizing.

We can't pick it, you can't pick it.

So when we get into a contract terms, since neither one of us can pick it.

I'm like, if we talk about it, and I think Kerry talked about this is is using the cash to start doing the infrastructure stuff, and then kind of let some of the revenues stabilize and get some more time on that stuff, and then maybe do the bond issue earlier, or maybe do two bond issues, maybe do one here and then another one in five years once it's get more stabilized.

There's a five million dollar cap on the existing businesses, plus we're gonna get the revenue from the new businesses.

For example, I think Target is a new business that's in that district.

That that's a prime example of where we should get a pretty good size bump above the five million for that.

But because of all this paperwork shuffle at the State Department of Revenue, we're not kind of seeing it yet, and the bond people, I'm sure want to see a stream of it before they commit to it.

So of all this kind of uh chaos around the revenue stream, and we're talking about revenue bonds, neither one of us can guarantee a bond sizing, you know.

So it's kind of a mute point, it's hard to discuss it if it's a contract term between you and and us because none of us can control it.

It's just your guess versus my guess, and I don't know that either one's any good, and and even our bond council, it's still his guess, you know.

Right.

But I I think I think that's where, and again, back to what happened from December to today, all this revenue stuff started to come out.

And Pat brought a lot of this stuff up at meetings and saying, like, well, wait a minute, we were going to do a second issuance on the new sales.

Well, how are we gonna do that?

Super valid point, super valid question.

We're like, well, I don't know, we're gonna have to kind of figure this out.

So I think that's where some of these items, you know, we need to spend more thought on.

Well, how are we going to address this?

Now we're a huge part of this new sales because we're the entity that's obligated to report the new businesses to DED, who in turn hands that over to DOR.

So we're a critical part of that whole process, and so that's something we need to spend a little more time on.

What we should be able to figure out today is what are we doing with the five million, what are we doing with the existing five million dollar cap?

We know that's there, that's today.

We can move forward with that.

So that to me is where we can come in with assurance and say, well, this is we know we should be able to get these proceeds.

Let's go spend these dollars.

Let's figure out what parameters we want to put in place on the new.

I do think the new will get sorted out, Chuck.

I think it's just gonna take some time.

I do too.

I I just want the contract language to have that flexibility for the new to get work, you know, for it all to get worked out rather than having a demand about this much or that much, because none of us know.

At this point, we don't know, and so it's hard to have a demand number in a contract.

But I I would absolutely want to work with you and us together and bond council to get it right size as good as we can whenever we can, and you know, we might determine that it's gonna take three years to level out, or maybe it's gonna take four, or maybe it's gonna take two.

I and I don't know what the answer is, but if we want to start moving forward, we can't be locked around the axles over some term about something neither one of us control.

Correct.

And so I just want some flexibility and the language that allows for us to work together because I think that's a solution one.

Um I think our you know from the council demand, we're pretty simple.

We want a sports complex and an aquatic center, you know.

I mean, it's the the rest of this stuff, all the rest of this stuff is is all important, but not for our delivery of stuff to the community that we promised them and that they voted on back in August of 24 or yeah, August of 24 when the community voted to go with the good life district.

So we want to make sure that we're gonna stick with our commitment that we made back in in that vote, and that's all that's the really the two biggest things for us to provide community these these level of services.

So I think that's important.

Um all the rest of the stuff, I think we can figure out the sides and doing the MOU or having a punch list is what we need.

We need the city's punch list, we need your punch list, and we need to decide how do we get those two together and how do we agree to move forward because right now we're just we're just incapacitated, you know, and we need to we need to move forward, and I don't want to lose another season construction season.

You know, I think it's important for us to move forward quicker than later because I don't want to lose another construction season here.

And so that's why I think all this is important.

So hopefully we can when we start at the June meeting, we can start getting stuff done.

So thank you.

Mr.

Shear.

Thank you.

Um you guys have said enough, but I know that there's people that have been waiting to talk all night.

Can we let them talk?

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Uh Gerald Pools is the first on the list.

Did you want to speak?

Thank you, Mayor, Council, and everybody's still up at this late hour.

And you sounded a little disappointed.

I'm sorry.

I had uh I'd like to dispel um, I mean, what I consider is a myth, and that is about the good life district voting that actually occurred.

We talked a little bit about shortcuts that were taken that probably shouldn't have, you know, if we that vote was rushed.

It was done via a mail-in ballot, there was not a lot of discussion with the public.

And we hear the story that it was it was passed overwhelmingly by Grand Island, and that's really not true because it was only uh 28.65, I believe is the percentage of registered voters that actually voted.

It was so that's that means that over 70 percent of the people in Grand Island either didn't know about it, didn't care about it, really didn't want it.

So I really don't think it's an election issue is whether it goes forward or not.

I you know you some of you have gotten phone calls, but if you get 20 phone calls in a day, when you compare that to the 26,000 135 registered voters as of 24, that's really an insignificant amount.

So I this idea that Grand Island wants this or Grand, there's a bunch of people that are coming up to you then saying that they want it, but how many people have said I really don't care?

You know, because I think there's a there's a 71 percent really don't.

So it scares me to hear a councilman say I don't care how we pay for it, because it's all coming from tax dollars, okay.

I this idea that a committee should decide is ridiculous when you consider there's 26,000 electron voters that should have something to say about it, and the 71% of them said nothing.

And this idea that this land could be sold for a dollar, this is this is land that was earned by veterans back in the day.

And you know, I'm a veteran too.

I deployed twice.

I really think that anybody that considered selling that land that was earned with blood and guts, that anyone that believed that selling that for a dollar was showing a lot of contempt for their military brothers.

So uh I'm just gonna keep that short, and that's that's what I had to say.

Philosophically, it doesn't make any difference.

But it's my tax dollars.

If you build if you make a widget, and I see it hanging on the store shelf, and I say, Yeah, I'll buy that.

That's that's my decision.

But if you make a widget and tell me I have to pay for it.

That's a whole deaf, that's a that's what's that's what you haven't understood in your time.

You keep because you keep spending money because it's not yours.

It's everybody it's you gotta stop doing that, okay.

All right, I've made my point.

Thank you.

Ray O'Connor.

Evening, good late evening.

Uh Ray O'Connor, 611 Fleetwood Road, Grand Island.

Uh a lot of what I was going to say has been said.

Uh I've been in this community 55 years.

I came here after finishing my master's degree at the University of Nebraska.

Uh when I got here, the big uh discussion at that time, do we need Cottestoga Mall?

Is it gonna hurt downtown?

Do we really need a do we really need a regional mall?

That was a discussion.

We moved forward, and I know it's had its ups and downs, but it's on the right track and it's moving forward.

Soon after that, the discussion was do we need big box groceries or big box stores, period, in this community.

Why would we need that?

We have Skagway.

We don't need big box stores.

We have Skagway.

I heard a lot of that.

So those were two things.

I'll give you some statistics about big box in a moment.

The other issue was, I don't know if you're old enough to remember pennies for progress.

Friend of mine, Ken Gannat and I was asked to co-chair the have set sales tax.

Positive, very positive.

The council wanted to move forward.

The citizens want to move forward.

Did we have opposition?

We have an extensive campaign, promotional campaign because we have opposition to it.

A half cent made a lot of people upset.

So now we're into the good life district.

If you know me, I'm about progress.

I want to move this community forward.

Let's go back.

I'm in uh commercial real estate business.

When we look at the memorandum, offering mandorandum, there's certain things you see in it.

One of the things that they say is they will tell you what a one mile, three mile, five mile, sometimes up to a ten mile distance from the store, the big box that you were going to purchase, but the population was.

You have to make some decisions whether that makes sense or not.

That's how they present it.

In my business, we have to do things a little bit differently.

We rely on tracking software for uh cell phone usage.

The tracking software provides traffic to the specific locations, to the specific locations.

Now we know we don't care about the one, three, five, and ten.

We care about it, but we don't put as much emphasis on it.

We care about who's coming to that customer at that door.

Let me give some facts.

This is from Glacier, who I use, and it's from Alpha Alpha Maps tracking software.

This figures I just got from a national reality company I work with across the nation.

These are the results of 2025.

Walmart North, remember, I said, do we really need big box stores?

The criticism at that time, we were doing 420,000 square feet of Walmarts, 210 on the north and 210 on the south.

We were looking at Menards, we were looking at Home Depot, we were looking at on and on and on.

Do we really need those stores?

Here's the results.

Walmart North, 2025, 2.7 million visits.

That store is the top 20% nationally, nationally.

1.2 million visits, top 28%, nationally.

Sam's Club, 1.9 million visits, top 39% annually.

High V.

Remember we talked about do we need a big box grocery?

Because we had people said we had Skagway.

High V.

1.2 annual visits.

Top 28% nationally, top 97th percentile in Nebraska.

Coals.

Coals ranked by Alpha Mat uh Alpha Mats at 72% of all coals in Ashley.

Two years ago, it was at 52%.

Conestoga Mall Close, there goes Sears, there goes Pennies, there goes Dillard's, and there goes Yonkers.

Where did they pick up that business?

Coals, 20% increase.

TJ Maxx.

Ranked the 97th percentile of apparel stores in Nebraska, all of Nebraska.

That's how good that store is, and that's what it does for Grand Island, Nebraska.

Grand Corners, which consist of Kohl's, TJ Maxx, Hobbytown, and High V, 3.5 million annual visits.

It's in the top 25% of the state of Nebraska.

Home Depot, Asthley Furniture, famous footwear, the UPS doors.

3.1 million annual visits.

It's in the top 31% statewide.

Now that's progress.

If we would have left with the skeptics back the years ago, did we need big box grocery?

Excuse me, big box stores.

They said no.

The council and the citizens said yes.

You can show it did produce.

Thank you.

I just gotta say that.

I know I'm in the Brasky Country, but I just gotta say that.

So uh anyways, I'm just here to tell you guys we want a game in the fight with the YMCA.

We want to be a partner, we want to be a collaborator.

Uh my phone got blown up, my email got blown up like Ryan's did today.

I thought we had a deal back in December.

We're gonna have we were gonna hopefully be a partner for the aquatic center.

Uh and you guys talk about transformational.

I keep hearing that word tonight, transformational, transformational, transformational.

I've been in sports my whole life, okay?

Been involved in sports my whole life as a college player, as a baseball umpire, basketball umpire, football umpire, state, regional levels, everything.

Transformational sports complex is not needed in this town.

A transformational aquatic center is needed in this town, okay.

Just some stats I'm gonna throw out there.

For a size of this town, we need 22 ball, I mean 21 ball fields.

We already have 22.

For size of this town for basketball courts, they say about 25.

I don't even know how many basketball courts we have because I didn't count all the schools, all this high school know how much they have, but we're well above that already in the field house and the Harland Center.

We don't need a transformational sports complex.

We need a transformational aquatic center, and we wanna be a partner in that, and we want to help.

I've already formed a feasibility study from my December meeting.

I went prematurely to my board in January and February to start a feasibility study.

We're not ready for a feasibility study, but we want to be partners with you.

We want to build a YMC right beside there.

We did this prematurely.

Now we're taking a step backwards from this meeting tonight, and here it is 1127 at night.

We're still talking about it.

I mean, I don't know what happened from the December meeting to now, but I'm just as mind-boggled as you guys are.

And that high-level stuff that she went over, holy tall easier, that's way above my head.

And I don't know if you guys are smart enough either, but that's pretty in-depth stuff that she went over that she lost me in the first 30 minutes.

So, but I'm low-level guy, okay.

I just want to get her done, let's do it, let's get it going.

You know, so let's Larry the cable guy, let's get her going.

Let's do it.

You know, I'm with you, Chuck.

Let's do it, let's do.

What we already do, let's keep it going.

If we gotta be here till eight o'clock in the morning, get it done.

Let's move forward.

So that's my beef.

I just want to say that.

Uh I'm I'm just I just keep hearing promises, promises, promises.

I swim every day at lunchtime, excited to swim every day at lunchtime, and uh 75-year-old guy I swim with today.

He says, Chad, did you hear about the aquatic center?

Yes, I heard about it.

What's your thoughts?

I said, Well, I don't know.

I'm kind of lost.

And he goes, Well, I'm gonna tell you, when my kid was doing swim team here at the YMCA, they promised that they would be our aquatic center by the time he was in high school.

That kid has 35 years old now, has grandkids that are swimming in the YMC swim team now.

Okay.

Uh so he says it's been decades and decades of promises, so it's it's time we gotta get off and get on going and move on, okay.

I'm invested in this community.

I left Kansas my whole life.

I'm still a Kansas Bred, Rock Chalk again, but uh they've been trying to convert me to Nebraska, but I'm invested in Grand Island, and when I retire, which is probably gonna be 15-20 years, I want to be able to go to a pool and swim because that is important, okay.