Testing, testing, testing.

I mean, there's that's all.

I thought maybe there would be help you.

All right.

We're live, everybody.

Let's go ahead and we're getting going.

Um yeah.

Welcome everyone.

I showed up.

I think that's a good question.

Welcome everybody to the Tuesday, July 21st.

2026, the city council special meeting.

Um we're gonna get started with public comment.

Do we have any public comments?

All right, okay, we'll move on to number two.

Administrative items and 2.1 strategic plan overview.

Becca, are you?

Yeah, I can yep, I can start with that.

So um back in January of 2020, there was a strategic plan session.

Um out of that came four top pillars and then two additional items um based on um the sheets um in your packet.

So uh the four top pillars were to increase housing inventory to meet the needs of our expanding workforce, expand recreational and sports tourism offerings to grow and diversify our economy, invigorate development of a vibrant downtown area, uh, create a new and enriched existing pipelines to create a prepared workforce, um, evaluate organizational structures for economic development, and to develop financial policies and procedures that provide a solid long-term foundation.

Um, kind of going through um what we've done since 2020.

So these were supposed to be a 10-year goal, and then um see where we we are at 2030.

So since then, um April of 24, Hatham Village opened with uh 96 apartments intended for lower income households.

Uh council approved the sale of 46.5 acres on John Deere Drive for a mix of workhorse and single family homes.

Uh there was expanded recreation by constructing the eight-court pickleball complex opened that opened in March of 22, and then um we received a grant dollars for the tourism plan, um, and also upcoming in September dollars to do items on that plan.

And then with downtown redevelop development, um a new REA plan was created.

Um we received grants for downtown trash bins and benches, and the steam center had their opening in 23.

So questions we should look at.

Um how large are we expecting to become?

I think we talked about that and kind of have a thought of maybe that 50,000 range.

Um what community characteristics must be protected during our growth?

Uh what residents and employees are currently unable to find housing, uh, what types of jobs mesquite actively pursues, what should downtown look like in 10 years?

Um which tourism investments produce a measurable local return, what infrastructure will grow will growth require and who will pay for it.

Uh what level of financial reserve is appropriate, what services must improve as the population grows, and what premises have already been made through land sales incentives or promises, I'm sorry, or development agreement.

So those are kind of some starter questions and how to start some conversations of where we want to go, are these still our goals?

Um I think one goal that hasn't been accomplished that we that we need to fill is that to develop financial policies to create a solid base for us.

Um but these so these are some questions to kind of start conversations.

So I'm gonna start.

So the one that really kind of intrigues me, kind of not intriguing, kind of bothers me, is I don't think we can put a cap on population.

For you to say 50,000, I don't know how on earth we're gonna turn away people who want to move here.

I'm not saying there's a cap.

That's what's been thrown out there.

Well, I I'm just saying that's what kind of struck me was like there's no way we could like close our borders and say we're we're at 50,000 and now we're gonna.

The question is we can't put a magical cap on it, but we are capped in the amount of land we have.

At some point we are gonna be out of land.

At some point we are gonna be out of land, and so do we um go after more land?

And if we do, do we use it for housing or do we not use it for housing?

So that's the question.

So that brings up something else that we can talk to yourself and Becca and Martina about is it sounds like BLM has some accessible land on the outskirts that we can take.

Right.

I mean, if in the event, I mean they can transfer.

So I think that that might be something to look into in the future as well, like um flat top mesa on that side, further down um I-5 or south, I mean, if that if it comes to that, yeah.

And I guess that's the other question is the other land that goes down, depending on what we do, but that that's on the south side of the freeway down towards the other exit is depending on what happens if we eventually it happens that it is gonna be housing.

How do we pay for the infrastructure?

And that goes back to one of those questions, right?

How do we get water power and everything else out there?

But that I'm sure all that will I mean we'll be able to work that out in the future.

I mean, this is probably not around my lifetime, but if in the event, or I mean, or some of us, but I mean that's a possibility, and if you look at other infrastructures for other small communities, that's what they've done.

They've just grown out, yeah, and they make it happen.

So, also with that, um, we have been working with BLM, we're gonna start looking at that.

But the key factor on this is also water that's out of our control.

So the Virgin Valley Water District's currently they got 12,000 acre feet roughly a year.

They're currently running around 7,000, 8,000 right now.

So that perennial yield study showed great promise for them to grow, but that's hoping the state engineer approves that to go up to 20.

So that would take us to about maybe three times what we'd have.

But realistically, the land we can go and try to get that, but it's going to be looking at how does mesquite want to grow?

Are we looking at just maximizing all of that water and all that land towards residential?

Where how do we master plan that whole thing?

And I think that comes into play, not just because there is going to be a time where, yeah, we're set.

We're gonna be like probably like Boulder City, and that's gonna be beyond any of us looking at this, but a moratorium on housing and things like that.

That but for right now, I think realistically, if we're really looking at this in a holistic manner, we want to be able to combine all of those with the water with the land, um, because that is going to cap what we've got.

We can't go against the state water engineer and just start pumping more than what they're allowed to, so that is a huge consideration on that.

Looking at the looking at the water districts records over the last couple of decades, and all the studies that they've done.

I don't I don't foresee a huge issue with the state engineer.

We're hoping the water if it migrates beyond mesquite and gets under the Virgin River, it's basically useless at that point.

Your total dissolved solids get too high to use the water.

Well, not necessarily because the aquifer that they're pulling from everybody always thinks that it's the Virgin River that's feeding the aquifer, but it's not.

No.

But it's all those, and so the Virgin River water, that's that first when Aaron was talking about the aquifer, and you've got that water table that's the first part.

Their wells are deep underneath that.

What I'm saying is it should come off the slope, and as you come up the slope of two aquifers, they're gonna be at a low spot, which is gonna be under the Virgin River.

Correct.

And both of those aquifers then will turn and go towards like follow the river underneath.

Correct.

So the water once it gets past Mesquite basically isn't usable.

And I think with that in mind and with everything they've shown that the state engineer will give them that extra 8,000 acre feet.

With that said, the areas you're looking at that aren't already being developed south of the freeway, you can get water and power to them just fine.

Probably should need to build a new sewer plant.

And if you get on top of flat top mesa, that water's gonna be expected and everything up there and then probably build an above-ground storage facility up there in case of fire and things like that.

Well, we looked at that, and one of the things that's very um awesome about flat top mesa is when you look at the existing wells they have up in Lincoln County, they're approximately the same elevation as the mesa.

So they're drilling down to 1,500, 2,000 feet at that location, and that's the best well producer that they got.

So if you build if they are able to, as they get that additional water or whatever, put another well up on the mesa, your problem solved already with that one right there.

That the good thing about the Mesa is that with that being though that same elevation, they know what their known costs are for that drilling of that well and the treatment plant.

But it also serves that we our treatment plant right now is at six million gallons a day.

We're only running just about two million gallons a day.

So by being able to take that land and bring that down into our we have the infrastructure with our treatment plant there to handle any of that growth that's happening up there, and it's all it would be a gravity system coming up.

Up above, yeah, down below would be the tough one.

Yeah, on the other on the other side, you are gonna be looking at another treatment plant, and that's very expensive.

You're looking at 40 million dollars.

So this makes so much sense for the city on the future growth going out that way.

Um yeah, it's that one is in my opinion, that's where we need to go as the city.

The mesa is a lot more valuable than south of the freeway.

That there's no doubt about that.

If we can get that from the VLM, that would that's a no-brainer.

Absolutely.

There would also be some of the best view lots you'd have in the city.

It would be beautiful up on top of that.

It's pretty it's really flat, so your development costs also go down in that because you're not gonna have the grading that you have over there.

So there's many, many advantages to being able to get that lamp and BLM, and it's you know, in my opinion, no-brainer that you actually do.

Um I remember at some point they were talking about uh an airport up there as well.

So the airport is going to be over on the Mormon Mesa, not flat top mesa.

Okay.

So that went to Way Windows.

White building is over there.

Right.

Okay, yeah.

Didn't that go away when St.

George built theirs?

So it was a combination of things, it didn't even get out of the environmental assessment review with that, and basically it was programmed to really be for corporations, you know, UPS, FedEx, you know, VMware of that.

Um, but yeah, that as I talked with FAA and that, it's a high dream to think that we'd get another until we get larger and that.

So our airports basically is what we got.

Sorry.

Interjecting.

Let's move on to the next question.

What community characteristics characteristics must be protected protected during growth?

Small town field.

Yeah.

And that's gone.

It's going.

I'm sorry, yeah.

We're gonna lose that.

We can't we take on the Mesa and all these other places, that's gone.

As much as uh you know, this grammarness of our older population that wants to keep that small town field that's not gonna have I I think the key word here is community.

So no matter what size we are, as long as we continue to be a community.

Um I think that's a key word here.

Yeah, it's sadly I think a lot of the people that have moved into town associate the small town field with the size of the town, not necessarily the town itself, because I don't feel like a lot of people are necessarily involved with a lot of the things that go on with the entire community versus their community within the community, which is fine, it's just you know, it used to be you know, Randy couldn't attest, and you know, everybody in town went to the basketball game, everybody in town went to the football game.

That that's kind of gone already at this point.

So I guess the question is more in my mind, how do we keep it safe?

And of course, we still have community activities like our Fourth of July or veteran's praise, these kind of things, but more so just you know, making sure we grow in a way to have quality growth of you know, I don't know what the right word is, but mixed, you know, economic, you know, from lower income to upper income, so we don't just build a million low-income housing houses up on top of the mesa, and you know, as long as people within their individual communities are safe and have things to do, and then we kind of have our larger community events as well.

But with building costs right now, I don't know who's best answer this.

Is it even feasible to make workforce housing or low income, whatever you want to call it in a single family home?

I don't even think with with your building costs and wages and materials.

I don't think that's where the focus should be.

And as people grow in their jobs and start making more money, then they can move from there to an actual home.

Yeah.

But when you when your cheap houses are starting out at 370,000, 380,000.

I mean, I know the first house I bought was 18.

I thought that was crazy.

I can't even imagine the payments of something that's that expensive, especially if you don't have a huge down payment.

I think building up on top of the mesa, like Travos was saying, will help alleviate a fair amount of that within the city because even like so NRC's project where they bought the land, they're gonna spend a few million dollars just moving dirt before they even build a house up on top of the mesa, you eliminate that, which might bring the you know, how they cost valuable property and build your cheapest homes on top of the city.

Well, that's that's the hardest.

But you a lot of that the town on the edge will be extremely valuable.

The stuff that's back at the other end, you're not gonna have a view there, you're just gonna be flat.

I mean, your view is gonna be the other houses.

And so I think towards the back, it's not gonna be quite as valuable to where maybe you can tear down and have really nice houses out on the edge that have amazing views, and then as you go back towards the desert, now in that area, maybe you could have some $300,000 houses instead of you know three million dollar houses.

You know, and maybe we'd also get views back there too.

Yeah, you got good views of the Mormons and you don't have views of the back, but I would rather live on the back.

That's a good point.

I didn't think about that, but yeah.

But maybe we put them right in the middle where you know a little spot in the middle, but I still think at some point some large apartment complexes somewhere, yeah, and in an area that's reasonable, maybe not around a lot of right.

And we have two or three that are online, and I don't know, I don't know if we've heard anything what's happening with those, or no, they they were going and then um they just stopped.

And so I don't know if during you know all of the stuff that's been happening over the last four years, five years, um is even before that that uh they they were gangbusters and then also just stopped.

But we have the one over on Smoky Land that got approved not so long ago, and then also the one up kind of by the pot shop that got approved and uh have you heard anything about that?

Yeah, so the one uh so NRC, that's that land that you're talking about.

So they are looking at um, they're trying to do everything they can to provide a single family home that is a lower now.

What that translates to is tiny homes.

So we've talked about that.

One of the things that's challenging um in our city code, we don't have anything for anything that is less than a 7,000 square foot lot in our code, unless you go through a planned unit development.

So that's what they're working on right now, doing a planned unit development to create lots that are smaller in size, much the same as say portable, um 35 wide, you know, and and doing those, and so they're that's really as the developers are looking at them, they need to go up or they need to go small in that aspect.

So they are looking at those.

Um there's so they're trying to figure out how they can make that pencil out and and work with those.

The Smoky Lane, um, they had stopped because one of their investors passed away, and so they've been retuting.

Um and so I got an email from them yesterday that they're going to um continue with that now.

But there has been some challenges that are beyond some of those control.

Um but that is, and I'll be honest.

I moved here in 2000, raised my family, had four kids.

One of the biggest things that is um sad to me, and you guys have probably seen this with families, is when my kids graduate high school and college, there's nothing for them to come back to Mesquite for.

And so luckily I've got one, she was able to be a teacher at the middle school and live here, but all the rest of my kids, there's no jobs for them to come back to, let alone housing for.

And so I think the key on all of these, and we keep bringing it up, even with the land, is to be able to.

Well, I also grew up in Cedar City, and when I grew up there, it was about the size of Mesquite is now.

And it was a small town, everybody kind of knew each other.

Now when I go back, it's about 50,000.

And when we look at where we're gonna we could end up, that's it.

It still has that small town community feel because of the way that it's grown and able to do that.

And so I think yeah, they honor their they they really value their tradition.

And so when you talk about characteristics of of that growth, I think that's something that we absolutely can do, you know.

Um, and I think we're in a good way, but it's as we continue to grow, it's going to have that strategic plan to help all of us as councils and staff change to keep driving that toward that because that is one of the biggest um sadness in my life that there's nowhere for my kids to live here and to work here, and so um if there's anything that's bad about mesquite, it would be that other than that, it's an awesome place.

You just can't your kids can't stick around.

So you're familiar with the subdivision right behind Ace Hardware, where I think it was Nevada Rural Housing.

This is probably 20 years ago, right?

And what they ended up doing is coming, you had to fill the application out, and basically that was part money from the government, you get FHA or funding, and then you did sweat equity.

And so a lot of those people that built those houses, hey, you had to have so many hours into that home to qualify and get that permanently.

I always wonder whatever happened to that programs, and is there other programs that if the city has a property that was somewhat inexpensive that they could help with affordable housing to get into those programs that are people who really want a house, they can come in and do some sweat equity that they could use as an offset for finances going into that.

I'm just kind of kind of curious whatever happened to those programs.

So it was a great idea, and it worked for the few that were able to do that, but it didn't know.

Part one was there, and then they couldn't uh finish the second phase of it, and so we so keep in mind that was probably when there was what eight, ten thousand people here 20 years ago.

And so I'm curious.

There was more people than I get 12,000.

So let's just say, let's just say, for example, we have 25,000 people here.

I mean, I'm just curious: is there something we look at to help the lower income people that are just starting out?

Is there a program out there that potentially could help if you did 50 homes into that program?

I don't know if there's even the need or the program even exist.

Well, to your point, in my opinion, nothing's off the table, right?

Absolutely.

So whatever you can figure out that's the the key when you're looking at all these and master planning is hey, nothing's off the table until it's told no, you can't do that, or these are the stipulations, and those stipulations become too stringent that nobody can just work, and sometimes that happens with the federal programs, is they are so stringent that they make it harder to go through the program than just to try to do a tradition.

And and that's sad.

So, what I'm what I'm hearing um from everybody's conversation is especially to have our children stay here or come back.

We need corporations or businesses here that are not fast food that are decent what like what you're seeing happening in Vegas as they're working their way out.

Um, and I know Martin working on quite a few different things.

I think that that's what we want to look at is bringing in corporations or businesses that pay a decent wage so that your children can come back from school or whatever and and stay here because they don't want to come back from college and work at Taco Bell.

I mean, they they want to have a career, so um, I think that that may be something we may want to focus and address ourselves as going like do a best that's gonna grow up by 40%, they said because they bought through value, but then again, where are they gonna live?

You know, it's right, it's like 22, right?

But I think if you if you build the businesses, the people will come.

Yeah, look at how much I mean crowns been awesome thing exactly.

160 employees exactly so we need more.

I think we need more of that.

We're worried about housing, and I know housing is important, but if they don't have jobs, well, even then the house poor.

Like I got a daughter that's an RN and our husband's uh electrician, and they bought in Beaver Down because there was nothing in town that they could actually buy and then still have a life.

Yeah, I mean, when you talk about 3500 house payment, like it's painful for everybody, right?

I mean, even everybody in this room would be disgusted with a 3500 house pavement.

Yes, I am very disgusting.

That's a that's a whole like problem for the entire economy.

I mean, I don't think that's something we can fix, but we can surely do our best to help.

I mean, I don't know what that entails.

Well, I my thought is there's like three single family lots in town you can go by and build whatever you want on.

Three literally like three lots, maybe four.

So if we do get that land up on top, maybe we need to take a certain amount of that acreage and figure out how to develop single family lots, and we just the city sells the lots for reasonable, and there's gonna be obviously conditions on those lots of you know, whatever.

But say you can come and buy that lot, you have to live in that house, you know, you have to be working in Mesquite, whatever it be, but you can build whatever you want as long as it's up to code to where people can go, you know.

I think that's a lot of the problem with the HOAs is I think uh you know, they regulate people, the younger people that don't want to live in an HOA.

And so if we have non-OHOM HOA homes where people can just go buy a lot, and as long as they're being reasonable, you know, they can build a house, and if they want to have a few four wheelers or whatever they have, and $150,000 a lot, you wouldn't have to be able to do it.

You're right though.

It's all the subdivisions.

If you want something $400 on that, that's easy.

Yeah, lots are $100,000.

Easy.

Yeah, yeah.

But if you can get to the point where you can sell those lots, even if we don't, maybe if it's break even, right?

For our development costs, and it's $50,000 for the lot, and those people can actually afford to build a house on it after they bought the property.

Because the property is the killer, you know, like you say, if you have to pay $150,000, $175 for a lot.

And I mean, one of the lots is over uh um, I think on Bannett and one of the thousands.

Those that area less than a quarter acre for $150,000.

I mean crazy.

But yeah.

Back to a community feel and working into economic development.

I think you always have a community field here because you're isolated.

I look at I grew up in a small community, Bluffed El up in Solid County.

It was community, now it's not.

And the reason is because you can't tell where you cross from Bluff Delta River to South Jordan, they all just go together.

You're never gonna have that here.

Nothing's gonna come from Lincoln County, nothing's gonna come from Clark County, and the Arizona area here is going to stay basically the same, a little bit of growth.

But when we're looking for economic development, everyone talks about 25,000 being a key number.

But if you take Bunkerville, Mesquite, Scenic, Beaver Dam, and Littlefield, and take the the population of all of that area, every single one of them does their shopping and their entertainment in Mesquite.

And that businesses, if they would know that, that maybe there's not just 25,000, there's 40,000 people that will be available to come to you full-time in the winter time, even more than that.

And I think they look at mesquite and see 23,000, 24,000, something right in there, and that's not big enough.

But but you'd have a lot more people using the facilities than just the people in Mesquite.

Because there's nowhere else for them to go.

Well, a lot of people even from Wappa Valley do a lot of their shopping.

You know, see way too much blue and gold at Walmart.

You know, and then staying ahead of that keeps us uh ahead of the curve because like I've heard a lot of talk about beaver down, like the log businesses wanting to go in Beaver Down and whatever, and if that becomes a pole, then that's gonna deteriorate from our but if we get them here and the people from Beaverdown are forced to use them, you've got that bigger.

You get that bigger.

I like your point though for marketing.

That's really good.

We should have been we should make them for the last 10 years, to be honest with you, because that's this city's growing.

So if those other communities and those other communities use the facilities and the amenities in the city.

We're not we're not gonna stop the growth, so I think I think the housing's gonna sell itself personally.

I I Martine gets tired of me talking to her about this.

I think we need to focus our energies per se on industrial growth, whether it's commercial, whatever, whatever that industrial growth is.

Housing's gonna take care of itself.

We get a hold of we get a hold of flat top meso, holy crakey.

That that's gonna be that's gonna be stuff's gonna be gone in a microsecond.

We don't need to worry about housing.

Uh Sun Webb, all those other people, they sell their own stuff.

We need to focus on infrastructure.

And I've I've harped on that.

I know several of the cannabis back there have done that.

And I know you all get tired of listening to me and Dominic talk about Severe and Christ and all that about their infrastructure.

That's what we've got to do if we want to keep our kids here.

I you know, my son came down, my oldest boy came down here, great job, but couldn't afford crap.

And he was almost at six figures a year, and he couldn't afford to get into a house because he didn't have a you know even a 10% down payment.

But if we get some more infrastructure here, before we could pull back away from St.

George or from Vegas, I think the housing will take care of itself per se.

And I don't like them going on to the housing.

I know we're only on number two here, but going on to the housing thing, but you all know this is I think what scares a lot of people is that word affordable housing because they instantly instantly take that right towards section eight, yeah, the title 31, everything else out there, and that's not what affordable housing is.

That's what this is an affordable housing day.

It is, but it's it's wage-based affordable housing.

Now, when they start going after these tax grant and these tax relief grants and everything for the state, unfortunately, then we have to abide by the the housing, the housing fair fair housing act, they have to open up to everybody, but like the like the folks up there.

I mean, like the Dan from the place up there by the haunts, but you know, they they can put out to mesquite first, and then if it doesn't fill up, they'll put out now.

Maybe a lot of y'all don't know, uh, but when they were doing this, we had her in here signing people.

This is one of her little office space.

We let her use her to sign up over there for Haven Village.

They the reason they went out and everybody's complaining and griping about this.

The reason they had to finally go outside of Mesquite, because people from Mesquite weren't signing up, and so they had to fill up, they had to fill the apartments, and so that's why the Hafen Village had everybody from wherever.

It's not because they opened it up to the entire world, just the mesquite residents didn't come in here and sign up.

And so I think if we get more advertising out there about that first as we go along, I think that'll work for the again.

Like I said, housing, I think you know Karen probably disagree with me.

Housing will take care of itself, right?

And it will.

We don't have to sell housing here in the ski.

But I think we have to concentrate aggressively on this, Martine, aggressively getting other infrastructure in here.

Yeah, that was kind of my point, I think.

I totally agree with that.

I'm just that.

No, no, no, I totally agree with you because I think we're not going to get people here, we're not gonna get people buying houses if they're gonna work at a fast food restaurant.

I mean, not that there's anything against that, but those wages don't it barely covers food or whatever for the especially if they have kids.

So I think if um I think if any of us know of any corporations or companies that we can contact, I think we need to get in touch with you because I think it is important that if if especially for your kids, if there's not a decent job, because a lot of our college students don't want to come back home and work in a fast food restaurant, so they're staying where they are.

So um I'm wondering too if um we can work a little bit with the companies in with um Vegas and just maybe try to get some leads from them on some companies that maybe they're they don't want to go there, but we might be able to.

Well, we're definitely on the on the far front with the governor's office now and getting leads from there.

Okay.

So I worked for good.

Probably six weeks on a company that would have been just like Crown, you know.

It I mean, a lot of the stuff happens behind the scenes.

Yeah, and so and uh I had to sign an NDA and it was between us and another town, and it ended up going, you know, to the other place, but the governor's office wasn't really looking at our area for that kind of growth, but now they are so our relationships have strengthened personally.

That's good, yeah.

And those it's all about the relationships.

It is it's all about the relationships, not what you know, it's oh you know, yeah.

Okay.

Um talked about, yeah, we talked kind of about jobs, let's downtown.

What's our vision for downtown?

Is it we let it happen how it happens?

Um Mesquites never had a downtown per se, like a lot of you know towns do.

Um we kind of have our one end and the other, and then downtown seems to kind of develop into our historic area.

Do we kind of embrace that?

Do we push more for more businesses downtown?

What's thoughts on that?

Both it would be nice if you had one spot that was big enough, like a city block, and you could have a park there, you could have veteran memorial inside of it, all around the outsides.

You could have businesses, small businesses, maybe some cafes or some places people could go and get a drink or whatever, but just somewhere with trees shaved where people could just go and you could spend a lot of time there.

I've been to places like Prescott Arizona, that's exactly what they have.

And you'd be amazed how many people migrate to those areas, and especially during lunch or before lunch or after, and people doing shopping, window shopping, and seeing everything, and and the city of Mesquite has nothing like that.

I know we we try to do the art walk, and it's just it's not close enough together to keep people interested.

And I don't know how you you've gained that, but it's certainly something the city doesn't have right now.

We're a little landlocked because we got houses on the south side or south, and then you got houses on the north side.

So I think we've been trying to, you know, the the historic district, you know, trying to make that a cohesive area, you know.

It's but I think we're working towards Paul Point, maybe like a town square, like you see what you see.

Um in Boulder City have their town square with Ark and they can think maybe that's what we need to well.

I wonder my thought, and this is not something we're gonna be able to pull off probably anytime soon, is we tear down the old school, and that would be the thing to do, and do it right there, and then it would kind of interconnect with Dixie Levitt's and down the city hall and the few businesses that are down around there.

I mean, I'd say that's it.

That's not tomorrow.

That's now is that is the old school on the historical registry?

Not the high school.

No, no, no.

That the one building, yes, but we'd like to keep that anyway.

The other where I went to school, it it's it's heartbreaking.

Well, it's sentimental to me, but it has no architectural value.

I mean, it's a block building.

I mean, it's a junkie building.

I mean, well, you know what, and the as you know, Travis Mills has a flat roof, it's constantly leaking, we keep bandating it.

I don't know how many conversations I've had in the parking lot with different city managers.

You know, what are we gonna do?

Turn over for a dollar, you know, knock it down.

I mean, it's yeah, it's an old building.

But then what you're doing is you're forcing out all those other businesses like CSN, who's we talk about education and stuff for the kids.

That's also something I want to bring up as well, because I've talked to the theater, and we need an updated theater.

I agree.

I've talked to the president of CSN, also the president of ULV.

They are very interested in putting the campus.

Who?

The president of CSN and ULV.

They're they're doing a kind of combined project in North Las Vegas right now.

They are interested in doing the same type of thing in Mesquite once they're done with that.

And the master plan committee set aside land kind of right by the hospital, right there, for exactly that, which that could solve probably some of our problems of one we put CSN there, maybe they build a theater along with that project that gives us a new nice theater that we can access.

Um, because it's freeway.

It is a nice spot, and then also bring more college students in, which can fill some of those, you know, Taco Bell, McDonald's type type jobs.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so that's something.

Um it was very interesting because I talked I talked to Mr.

Dr.

Clippenstein a couple times, and I ran into the president of ULB at the Las Vegas thing, and he he brought it up to me.

It's like I talked to Dr.

Klippenstein, and we're we're interested in doing it.

So I didn't I didn't even honestly know who he was.

And I introduced myself as the mayor, and he's like, Oh, I've been talking to him, and we're we're interested in so I think we need to push push that and but that's awesome because they've been they've all been up to mesquite more in the last few years than I've seen them.

Yeah, and they are contributing more, and so they know we're not just a little town that they are they want to be part of mesquite.

Yeah, and I think they see our growth.

Yeah, and you think about young people coming home, they're not attracted by an old old building.

Yeah, I don't want to go to school there, right?

But if there's something newer on the other side, and I know that when my father was on council years ago, that that was a vision that he always wanted too as a greenway from City Hall, because he was here when the city hall was built, but going from City Hall all the way out to the freeway to the ball fields, and it does just make a lot of sense.

We own a lot of the land, it connects up with the Dixie Levin.

So that would that would be a perfect location because that building leaks everywhere.

I mean, it was cheaply junk.

It is so bad.

I can say it's very sentimental.

One year school there too.

That's right.

I was sad when they pools here, right?

I spent so many hours there.

All kinds of you know, years ago where the fire department is currently and the library, we talked about doing the exact same thing with Paul just mentioned was doing a community park in the center of town where you have art districts, where you have festivals where you have that kind of stuff.

And so that's been discussed over the years, which if you look at Cedar and these other places, they have more of a centralized park for those types of things.

I think the campus area, I hate to displace people because there's a lot of use there.

Yeah.

Uh obviously, there's a lot of little factions that use that place.

Ultimately, uh, if you look at the recreational historical downtown district, that's a great spot for a community-based park with festivals, alleys, car shows, whatever that is.

And so I think that's a really good idea.

We we looked at that with the fire station library was that you know years ago before that was built, it was almost too small, you know, and so that's part of that reason why we kind of backed off of that.

But I think the campus would be a very good idea, especially if the college is gonna come in and add another location.

And that'd be perfect use of redevelopment.

Yeah, build it perfectly for what you want.

Yeah, make sure the road's going around it, there's plenty of parking businesses, yeah.

You know, have spots designated for certain types of businesses where you can just go and walk around the park or walk through the park and you can do some shopping, get a bite to eat, yeah, meet up with friends.

Which would be nice because it's high in the pineapple.

The heritage park right there.

Actually, when the new redevelopment agency was formed, that was one of the plans to do all you know, it's everything south of the freeway.

So that was one of the things that was discussed is redevelopment money for that, specifically for the campus, doing something with it.

Well, that ties into our banquet hall that we're gonna work on.

Yeah, you know, but I so how much Randy, how much do we make anyone bringing the people who rent out that old campus?

And because a lot of them are nonprofits, not very much, and that we don't make very much, and so I mean you don't make a ton, but I don't think it's really about five or ten thousand dollars a month or a year or whatever.

It's really about what's the best interest for the city mesquite and the residents that live here.

And really, if you incorporate that, like Paula was saying, a functional community centered park area, we'll find places for those for those exactly absolutely.

But I think ultimately, at the end of the day, what is the best and long interest for the community fill for the kids that come back home that want to stay here that have that central figure that we're really trying to accomplish.

And so those people, I I think you're right, Karen.

You don't really want to displace them, but at the same time, what's the best district long term?

There's nothing, I think yeah.

So I think I think that's a great idea, and I think it brings that community fill for our festivals or our mosquitoes days, Fourth of July, whatever that looks like into a central location, the historical district, the downtown.

Uh I think that's really what we're missing.

And then it's not too far from the visitor center.

We have the recreation center there, the visitor center, the marketing side, you know, the rising star, the holiday in right in the exactly.

While you're waiting for your restaurants and and your businesses to move in there, have an area where you open it up to food trucks.

Absolutely.

So people come in.

Yeah, right off the bat comes back to the city.

California does that on the Friday night festival.

You know who has a really neat neat park right in the middle of their city is Omaha, Nebraska.

And they have an open, oh you've been there, and they got an open amphitheater, like an open amphitheater in the middle, and they do ballet there at night, they do little concerts, just like swing dancing classes, and then they have the the coolest like uh kids stuff on the side of it, like like uh recreating toys or whatever you want to call it, like climbing walls and all this neat stuff.

It's really the neat, it's really really a neat place, and there's right dead in the middle of skyscrapers or whatever else.

It's it's kind of weird, but they got the neatest little part there.

But I've always been impressed with that amphitheater, because you go there, and you never know who's gonna pop up, like literally, they were doing ballet one night and then swing dancing the next, and then you look at Cedar, that central park there, I go to Cedar every weekend.

I go through that place on building.

Yeah, we do.

And literally, every time I go there, they're having a festival of some kind on this huge park, and really coming back to that downtown community fill with uh the structure that they have.

That's a great idea.

That's exactly I think a great thing for the city of Mosquite.

It brings everybody together, you have festivals, you have a downtown district that feels warm.

And if the theater, yeah, theater's absolutely, you know.

So I think to your point, Tracy, that's exactly right.

So I'm gonna throw me in Jason's plug-in right now.

Remember, all of these projects, you bring in bigger businesses, you bring in parks, you bring in one, it puts a big strain on us, and we're already bare bones.

So just when every time you think about one of these issues, think, well, okay, we're gonna have a park and we're gonna have festivals, you gotta have cops there.

You gotta have police, you gotta have medics on standby, you gotta have access, you gotta have all these other things.

Just I know that we're the dirty little secret, but you know, we we we still have to show up, so just back your head, it's like a park is awesome, and lots of people are awesome, but it does put pull it does.

You're already bucking for next um budget season, are we?

Okay, but let me just say you guys did a great job.

You guys did a great job 4th of July, so I think we're okay.

There you go, man.

I won't tell you what the over time costs.

Everything likes overtime at the same time.

Okay.

So how does that happen?

How you get CSN to a new building, right?

Because that's probably the first step.

Well, I'd be coming back to Jesse's point with CSN and USB, potentially low key going to an agreement with property and getting it here, at the same time transferring them to whatever they're at.

You can wait for them to come to you.

Or you can actively go to them.

And if it's something they want, you might be able to push it forward a couple years.

Well, I I definitely think with the CSN thing.

If we make a concerted effort, unified effort, interests.

I think that they are very interested.

I mean, it's gonna have to go to the state because we I and I've told them straight up, I'm like, we have the land, we'd be more than happy to give you the land.

I'm speaking for everybody, but sorry.

That's what I told them.

Something like that actually makes sense.

Yeah, but but I'm like, we don't have any money, and so in talking to them, we would have to go to the state.

So with them with us combined, I think that's a doable task.

I you know, the state I think supports education, and and I think that's something we could get done.

I think if we approach him, sorry to cut you up, but like with CSN, I'm sort of biased here because I teach here, but um, you know, with something like you know, something back with what you said, you make a campus look like a campus, people are gonna come to it right now.

It doesn't look like a campus.

Right.

I'm not gonna say dilapidated building, but I've when the guy that teaches AC has to fix the freaking AC.

But uh we're just testing their skills, testing mosquitoes, but teaching as you go.

But I got two kids out of the house, and some coming up through it never even crosses their mind.

Exactly.

And then told you about some we got some great programs there at you know, medical and and now trying to get the trades in here.

But I think if you make it, I think with education and coming from up where I was part of an education system, the split.

Oh my god, what a nasty divorce that was up in Salt Lake.

Jordan.

Jordan Canyon.

But uh, if you give them the land, that right there is probably half of their stresses, you know.

Now we okay, now we've got the land.

Okay, we can we can sell a building to the to the regents of the trustees or whoever.

Yeah, that's a lot easier to do it that way at the state level than there's the okay, crack you, we've got to pay 6.5 million dollars for 120 foot square lot and the scheme back.

Yeah, you know, we're gonna be able to do it.

I think you think about jobs and economic development for Cedar City, SUU is an economic driver.

It brings good jobs.

Absolutely, you know, it's a way that so education is something that can be brought here.

That brings some professors and other people.

You know what I mean?

I teach a master's class in SU right now, and it's it's almost 62.

I almost have 60 62 sets of students in that freaking master's class.

And so, yeah, you're right.

I mean, it that would just bring it here.

But it would not only bring that, it's gonna bring dorms, housing, more people here, and that's something that was said years ago that if our campus here was nothing against it, um if it was bigger, newer, better, then we could have the dorms.

We would attract more people.

So CSN is has amazing programs up at the high school, the dual credit, which all my kids took, well, minus one, took dual credits, and my daughter who went to UNR, she she graduated with like nine credits starting up there because of that.

And so I think that if we get a better campus, something for our kids, promote it more at the high school, then they're gonna see it locally that we have a new campus, and that we really are invested in our kids.

Like Travis, I have three kids, they're don't live here, they never will move back.

They don't want to because it's small, there's nothing to do, and for them, um career-wise.

So I think if we can promote the city with CSN at any aspect, yeah, that it's gonna be it's gonna be better.

To your point, that also brings additional children and additional students from other places.

So now you're bringing in a little more.

Well, there's two reasons to go to college, right?

Okay, education, job, and marriage.

Well that's part of that's part of it, but then they the college experience, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

You go there, you socialize, you go to things.

You want people from everyone?

More cops.

They can have their own campus people.

But sometimes you can put the right design below.

If you pursue this, don't ask them what they need to start, ask them what they're going to need to finish.

Yeah.

Make sure there's enough land cut out of there that you can't put in dorms, and you can put in a campus.

Yeah.

Maybe a gymnasium.

Just what whatever.

Yeah.

And I think they set aside.

Do you remember 40 acres?

Was it from the next year?

Do you remember John?

No.

I think it was like 40 or 50 acres.

That'd be cool.

Um, which we could definitely incorporate.

More, but I think they're doing their campuses in Vegas are considerably less than that from what I understand.

So really, yeah, so yeah, they are sounds small, but yeah, it doesn't seem like very big.

Oh, sounds like yeah, when I talked to talk to him, he's like, man.

That's more than we needed.

So that's a common complaint I hear with young people too.

Like, well, I'm I want to meet someone.

There's not a whole lot of people to meet.

Right.

Yeah, you need to help.

My daughter won't come back.

It's a stagnant big old.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, the other thing I this is I've been talking to them.

I was like, let's let's get one of your home games, home baseball, home softball, home basketball, and do it in Mesquite once a year.

At least, you know, it's for working up to this.

And so that kind of brings some of the college.

So working with them on on that too, and that's kind of a separate, but I think it would be helpful grease the wheels at least a little bit.

We got a couple of our at least one of our kids playing softball there, which would be fun to have them come play with their own softball games here.

Well, I think giving them the land is a good idea.

Yeah, I think they're very interested in it.

So doing it.

What level of financial reserve is appropriate?

What are we at right now, Becky?

What percentage do you know?

I don't.

I'm sorry.

I think um when I was trying to get all this financial stuff prepared, I think they say when you're really good here, like 16%.

We talked about it, wasn't it like 12, but we're at the 10?

9.

Pretty low.

I think four is when the state comes in.

Different states, different things.

Minnesota had 30%.

Ours, I think ours and Morris is a 25 that we had to keep.

Um back.

But so it's just kind of as we talk about the financials more in a little bit.

Um the question is gonna come up.

Do we do we want to put a policy together?

Um a fund balance policy, which would talk more about this.

So if we want to go on to some other questions, we sure can.

But one thing, one thing to remember in the real near future.

More cops is gonna help the police department a little bit, get some people in here, and that's supposedly never going away.

But we brought those six firefighters in, which we're using just to mat all of our houses now, and it's important to have them.

But in a a year, year and a half, the city's gonna have to start coming up with the money to pay them too.

And when you look at what's left over and then take enough to pay six firemen on top of that, you you're cutting you're cutting the reserves a lot.

And it's something that's needed.

Both both of those are needed for the city.

So it's it's gonna dwindle faster than you think once that once that kicks in.

So we'll put push that off.

Um I think the services are pretty pretty obvious.

We just we kind of talked about that.

Um which tourism investments produce a measurable local return.

STORs I was made to receive.

So now we need more policemen.

Anecdotally, I know what Randy and his crew do makes a huge difference to the smaller businesses, especially restaurants and the ski, because I've been in Bala Pizza when they're like are we having tournaments again this year?

And almost in a panicked thing of you know, we need this to survive type of thing.

So that is definitely one thing that helps a lot of small businesses, small restaurants.

Um Randy, what what can we do to maximize that?

Well, you know, we've talked about for years about do we need more fields?

We can't build more fields because we don't have enough hotels, we don't have hotels, we can't build fields, and that's been going on kind of a cat and mouths for a long time.

Now I kind of feel like the hotel industry is catching up with that because we have a few bills, holiday ends open, we have new hotel going out by uh Walmart and a few things like that.

So now the question is gonna come too is now we're catching up on the room space.

Now, what do we do to fill those rooms?

Yeah, and it really, if you look at it, the car show is always a good show, right?

That's once maybe twice a year.

Uh with our tournaments, with our tournaments that come in, we're easy 3040 a year.

Now that's difference in sizes on every weekend.

We do have a fair amount of people out of whether it's Idaho, Vegas, Salt Lake when it snows, that type of stuff, they're always trying to find more places to play.

Part of the problem we have is is these bigger tournaments, we don't have enough fields to even house what they want.

And so when you have five or six fields that are decent size, that's nice and fine, but they're looking for 12 to house their tournament.

And so, really, what it comes down to with a small business, we set up a calendar uh this last year, it's a live calendar we send out to all the businesses, um, that they can see exactly what's coming.

We have an estimated uh visitor rate per tournament so they can prepare for small businesses of what is coming.

Now, that's estimates, sometimes it's a little more, sometimes it's a little less.

But as far as tourism goes, uh outside of gambling, I feel like personally the sports industry is huge, and we're not quite tapping into that.

Whether you go 12 to 18-year-old kids, whether it's soccer, softball, whatever that is, they're gonna travel.

Uh they spend a lot of money doing so.

So, really what it comes down to is the hotels are catching up.

Does the city want to throw in 30 million dollars for another fiveplex to help support the small business to bring more tourism in?

Uh, maybe festivals come along with that.

Really depends on what you want to see in the next say five to seven years.

Can you fill a five plex every weekend?

I think if we market it properly, absolutely.

Uh the problem we have, one is where is the we're limited to three to five fields, give or take a little bit.

We have smaller fields that we if you do a smaller little league type girls softball, you can fill seven.

Uh, if you build it in the five place, then you start reaching out to some of the bigger players.

You know, you look at the Huntsman Games up in St.

George.

It's a massive, massive tournament.

Uh I can guarantee you we could pull them here if we had a few more fields to even handle their overflow, and that goes on for a month.

You know, and so if you look at that, you start marketing some of the larger soccer tournaments in Vegas, Salt Lake, Idaho, start pulling them in, you know, soccer's a little bit different than baseball, but it's still is sports tourism.

I think that's a huge market that we're missing.

So let me ask you, because you're talking about outside.

What about like up in uh St.

George where they have Snow Canyon where you see the basketball and then the plaything for the kids and um it's like a big big building.

Um, do we need another outside venue, or would an inside venue be better?

Because if we're investing, I think you can do I think you could potentially do both.

Really, really, really what it comes down to is obviously whether you bond it, whether you where are you gonna find the money, where Merrill Cruit Packer's gonna help us out, you know what I mean?

So I think you know, and I I don't want to use the word pickleball because Bill gets mad at me when I do that, but pickleball is a big thing, and that's just one example of indoor facility.

You look at the holiday and they have two full-size courts in there, uh that you know they're trying to figure out how to manage that.

If you build a recreational downtown district, whether it's along with that part and that area, uh, I think if you market it properly and bring volleyball tournaments in pickleball, whatever that is, it's a whole different realm that is just new and up and coming.

And so I think if you really go after the sports tourism, and I'm not just talking soccer or baseball, I'm talking various things.

Right.

Uh which is kind of why I said indoor absolutely, especially with our weather.

With the I and I agree with that.

Sorry, I know you're gonna re-talk, that's why I cut you off.

And we can concentrate on sports, but we also need to reach out to other entities, uh, like one of our candidates back there, you know, and you know, and unfortunately BLM shut them down, but we could help with that process by bringing that in.

I know everybody knows doesn't like ATVs, some well, not everybody.

A lot of people don't like that.

Not as much as I don't like pickleball, but it brings them money.

It brings them money, and that's and we're talking about tourism, getting tourism dollars in here ultimately.

Things like that, also um, then on the sports thing, you know, what about Bay and Express?

What about their big building?

You know, well, we've had discussions about that, but another thing that uh you know, years ago, they used to have a rodeo grounds here that used to sit with a hospital's at.

I cannot tell you how many years cowboys and regular butts I saw walking around this town because of rodeos, it is a huge, huge thing.

Look at the NFR in Vegas.

We're not even touching that, and so if you look at not, I'm just not talking, you know, I guess rodeo is a sport.

I I would assume, I don't know.

Uh so is cheerleading.

So have them here, indoor facility.

It doesn't matter what it is, it depends on what's the right thing.

The difference between rodeo, and I'm glad you brought that up between rodeo and soccer and softball and chair lane is rodeo people have money, but I mean they're driving a $200,000 horse trailer truck just to travel.

Well, look at California's $100 horse and stuff.

Yeah, exactly.

So you've been approached by three different people that want to do rodeos, and I think that might whether we build our own rodeo ground or whether we lease the ground to them and let them build it, or how do we go about that?

Or put it all together, right?

Half the rodeo at night during the day, have your volleyball tournament outside the grounds and just off the class, do it, do it all outdoors, yeah.

Make it in the fall when it gets a little bit cooler in the spring when it's a little bit cooler, and then Tracy can complain about not having enough cops.

All I can hear is more public safety.

What really probably needs to happen is some kind of study done.

What is the top five or six money sports tourism revenue funded things?

And I think one of them potentially could be the rodeo.

The other one, the youth sports, is huge.

I mean, families travel all across the country for youth sports, and they will spend money on the stuff.

Absolutely, and so you kind of look at those and say, okay, what do we really?

We want sports tourism, which is all nice and fine, but what kind of sports tourism?

Do we rodeo?

Do we want youth sports?

I mean, you can't just you know, 50 million dollars is great, but it only gets you this much.

How do you want to spend that to tribute whether it's rodeos or whether it's softball, baseball, soccer?

They're spending big money when they come.

I mean, I talked to the guy at Pylaw, and he spent $15,000 just on the barriers.

And he gave us, we we build in I want to say $11 or $12,000.

It's $12,000 just for security for overtime.

Well, that's because they need it.

To Tracy's point, that's one event that comes twice a year.

If you marketed that and had a good sports facility, if you will, you could easily surpass that plus.

So just on that note, so years ago, um you and L V's football team used to come up to the high school and practice in the summer.

Oh and they would take them out of Las Vegas out of their normal realm, just like us today.

We're having a focus group at a different location, and so that's what they did years ago.

They would train up at the high school, they would take them out, they would put them up, and you look like you want to say something about it.

I do.

Here we go.

Okay, so I love this.

So, really, if you think back 20 years ago, 25 years ago, we used to have a pretty good college softball tournament that come.

We'd have Air Force Com, we'd have Boise State come, we had all these tournaments that would come and use our facilities.

And that's kind of went away because some of our facilities I'll take the I'll take the blame.

They're not being kept up, they're not putting money back into facility.

We're not growing along with the times or whatever that looks like.

Uh, the mayor and I talked, I know you probably don't remember this, but about a year ago of reaching out to the Raiders Association for the simple fact that they want a training facility.

I think right now they go to Arizona for their training facility.

And so those types of things, if we reach out, have them do some donation with the city of ski to have a park complex and donation on that side, that would just help develop that sports tourism site.

And so there's a lot of ways you can go about it.

It's just what's the best for the money.

You go back to the where at though.

Like we talked about land, like we only have so much.

And like, where are you gonna put a big place like that?

We have a thousand acres out by the soccer complex.

By the soccer complex there you go.

Yeah but you're talking I know we need more cups.

No talking untold amounts of dirt work.

I mean just millions and millions of millions of dollars in the build because there were some washes and rainage and that's not the case the one thing and our historical death seeing with the mesa people get mad when you start destroying the mesa.

Right.

But I mean it's also if we're gonna do up on top that's a two year project.

And maybe if we start working on some of this other stuff it would be easy to put something like that up on top.

What a mesa well Karen talks about UNLV they do it all over Ron McBride when he was at the University of Utah used to do Camp Carton that go up to price for a week.

And the reason they did it was to get the football players the beginning of their spring practices and stuff or their summer training get them away from their friends and their girlfriends and all of all of the things that are going to distract them for that one week let's go we're gonna go somewhere and all we're gonna do we're gonna have classwork we're gonna and if if the high school would work with you they could use the high school field they could use some classrooms inside or the gymnasium for some of their sessions defensive meetings offensive special teams and so on but it would if you went and talked to Utah Tech or Southern Utah and said hey come on down here for a week during the summer get your kids away from everything maybe they would yeah and then they'd pay a little bit for the facilities but you'd be feeding a hundred and five kids plus coaches and staff and everything every mill for a week in the city of Mesquite.

It would it would bring money to tag on to that real quick we have a soccer complex up there that's that's huge.

Anybody better the soccer complex why are we not building onto that and creating a a clubhouse effect with all the fields we already have we're five times bigger than the high school uh just at their own our own facility that we're not putting any any funding into to even to uh whatever I want to say great just build out upgrade or whatever so we have a facility there that is pretty big part of the problem we run into is parking you know parking's a big deal in what we currently have but if you look at the you look at the end game of say UNLV or or raiders or whoever that thing is we have 20 acres up there built as a park why don't we develop some of that and try to start pulling some of that revenue in and build a clubhouse and some bigger restrooms and some different things in our own facility that we currently own.

That is a beautiful facility too yeah it's just it needs a little bit of TLC to it but I think you can put a little bit of money into it and do a clubhouse effect uh and bring in some of these UNLB how how booked is that the fields up there it's pretty busy usually summertime obviously everybody knows it's hot but I would say September through through maybe the end of May uh I bet you're booked 85% a weekend almost every week and then local kids use it a lot for practicing during the week which is great.

But I think we have a little bit of diamond in the rough right there that we're not really we're not really taking advantage of even if we got that golf digest line drive back again.

And they used to air that live on Thanksgiving day every year.

Well and Tracy mentioned Pylon I'll give you a quick example when Pylon comes in we usually have anywhere between five and seven thousand people to go to that little complex over three to four day period you know what they always ask hey do we have a building we can do sign ups in do we have check-ins do we have some kind of clubhouse mentality to where we can actually house people when they come in and make it more of a really nice facility they've been asking that for years and it's like how do we develop that to make it whether it's a stadium effect or something like that.

So we have property there may be a good idea and Travis is always a wizard so he can come up with something to maybe do a stadium effect in our own facility you know we have property there we have sports fields there already well that lower field has the slant on it already kind of like the high school could you just build it into the field or would it be more cheaper just by bleach that's why Travis is the wizard man.

You hit the nail on the head with the parking though Travis give me a monitor you can make it bigger and better question about it.

The parking's like paramount shoot the fireworks off you can you can level that off and do a parking lot there if we don't do parking we're sort of spinning our wheels yeah Tracy wants more yellow vests but I think I think if you look at the soccer complex you look at sports tourism we have a diamond of the rough right there if we can develop that and it really accentuate that better I think we can bring tons of revenue in just on that one site alone.

If we can develop that and it really accentuates that better, I think we can bring tons of revenue just on that one site alone.

We need more up there anyway.

Like I went to watch the long drive, and the you're sitting outside and bleachers in the full sun.

And right next door you could have an amphitheater, somewhat like smaller version of Tuacon.

Well, let me tell you.

Let me tell you, perfect little area right there.

No, we just need to.

Oh yes.

Oh, wait a minute.

So right in that same area we looked at, it's been years ago.

Down in one of these washes that we're talking about as a stadium effect.

We would this is kind of crazy, but we put speakers down into this wash for decibel count for Pulti Sun City area.

And so we've already talked about that to some extent.

Yeah.

I don't know what was the greatest fit, but it is a great idea.

Well, the original layout, and did you send that to me?

Or what have you sent it to?

It shows that they had planned an amphetic.

Twenty years ago.

So you could kind of curtail that how you want, but yeah.

So we can we can talk about all these great things and make the town square and bring in more tourism.

The only problem is you don't have any money.

And it's all gonna cost money, and until you get to the point where you have an you're getting enough money to have a nest egg that's enough to afford your debt service.

No bonding agency is going to give you any money, and if it is, it's gonna be a jump on and your interest rate's gonna be outrageous.

So before we do any of these things, these are all great things.

You better figure out how the city's gonna make more money.

That's what's gonna happen.

If the city can make more money, we can do some of these projects and the city won't get more money.

Yeah, but we can't do that until we make more money to start.

Okay, we're gonna end with that thought.

And we're going to 2.2, the 10-year capital improvement plan.

Yeah, I guess it's folded.

Really quick.

If you all want water or anything like that, the water or coffee's on me, so water's back there in the kitchen.

So it walks back in the kitchen.

Whiskey at two o'clock.

Well, we have to wait.

You don't have any questions.

Oh, this is all on there?

Yeah.

I guess it's the same.

I don't know.

I think everyone should have.

So no.

Why are we doing it?

The only break guy who's interested in the word time is whatever the last one is.

At the end of the water.

We're flexible and everything.

The mayor decides to have a go.

You can say this we think it's a germ.

We only got through the first time.

As they get tired, the questions will be less.

Yeah, but it does.

Yeah, we didn't have an egg.

I was telling him that it might be a good one.

Maybe I'll find it.

Maybe it's for a minute one here.

I think we're like, we have multiple.

I was gonna say it's not a good thing.

Oh, yeah, 20 up to my second.

Yeah, let me 32 tour.

I know we're not gonna be able to do that.

There's another run.

I need it more coffee.

Did anyone need it?

We're on this now.

Yeah, the financial capital drop.

Oh my god.

I didn't bring my reading glasses.

Dang, that's small.

What are we going to share when I'm gonna have to read it?

Jason, where is it?

Just click in there and then try to do that.

How long would she be in public?

So not too long right now.

It's like go in the country, and then you really have to have somebody where you know where the actual learning language works right now.

Oh wow.

So would this just be in our special media meeting?

There's no public comment after every agenda item.

Is that not required?

It's not required by the open middle model.

We do have an ordinance that says there should be anything.

Our ordinance is saying yes after every item.

You could read the ordinances on regular zones city meetings.

So where is the ordinary qualifications?

I understand the variance.

What's that for?

But Bill's talk to me and we're gonna look at the put it back the way it was before assignment wanting to change it by ourselves.

I don't care if it's everyone.

So right now it's not a present storage.

So we can't just give it out as we initially hash for you, but yeah.

And those are the ones not as a better.

Those are the single family halls that don't have C C and R that are coming coming in front of us.

The other ones I see get approved anyhow because their C C and R is already saved.

So we need to realize it's button that down just so all of them can't.

Alright, everybody.

We're gonna go ahead and get back going.

Uh 2.2, the 10-year capital improvement.

So we can see that.

What you see up on the screen up there and in front of you is our capital improvement ten year plan.

So the the closer years are more dialed in on items that we have identified for both maintenance needs and new project needs.

So this list goes through all facilities, roadway, um, store projects, anything that we're spending money out of our 45 account.

Um one thing to keep in mind when we're looking at these, we talked a lot about the rec parks and rec and and with new construction.

Um we don't have a lot in maintenance funding devoted for that.

And so a lot of the maintenance activities will come out of this 45 account.

And the 45 account is generated from uh the general account.

So our general fund feeds into this 45 account.

So again, we're talking about where does the money come from and for these so as you're looking at these, and I anticipate that this list will probably uh be revised dramatically based on discussions council would like to have on the vision of all right.

If we want to like in later years, we had an aquatic center on here.

I think it was like 40 million.

That was one of the things that so in the later years, these are kind of like wish list items that we put on this to keep our eyes on these goals.

Does that help in funding to get a campus?

Or what if so when you look at this, um that's really what we're looking at, and I think the goal that we would like to, or at least I would like to see, is as we're going through these.

Um I don't know if we'll have enough time to go item by item and and but maybe categories on as we continue these discussions.

Where's our vision?

Where do we want to go to and are these things that we have on this list replaced with other items or added to?

And so I don't know what might be if any of you have had a chance to really look through this to see if you have questions or if you want to go through categories.

One of the things that let's just start at the very top, this um community development block grant.

So the CBBG.

This is what we've been able to utilize.

This is grant money that comes from Clark County, and these are for in the disadvantaged areas, and these projects have consisted of different parks.

Um we actually paid for the skate park with CDBG money, and I believe that we get roughly 225 to 250 million, or not million, cool, thousands a year.

So um, and you have to use they you can only bank that um for five years, and then you lose that first year money.

So basically, you can um bank and do a big project, or you can do smaller projects.

So we've used this in parks, it's anything that in the um C D D G area, and this is more of the downtown um for these.

So there's items on here, but those were just kind of picked as we saw things, but we would love to get council's input on if there's projects that that they're seeing.

You can see we have shade structures, pulsar park shade structure, um, Hafen Lane Park facility improvements, recreation center field improvements, and so we had these based looking at starting fiscal year 29 to 30, because we wanted to bank up a little bit of that cash because we were still we have in there the skate park finished two years ago, and so we've got maybe half a mil.

So, but if we wanted a bigger project, that's why we were showing those um in those later years.

But could this money be used to develop a town square?

Um so they are there are um requirements, and it has to be able to show a benefit for the um children, which I think the element of the park, and that I absolutely think it probably could.

So I would we would go to the board, the development board, and say this is the project, and have them help us to bet it out.

Yeah, well, and I we've used it, like I said, for shade structures for the ground surface on the rubberized surface for the the playground equipments, absolutely.

So this is this has been used, so that money is a hundred percent grant money.

Um, and there are you have to go through that it's considered federal money, so there's federal requirements when we do bidding on these, we follow all of that and go through those.

So we're not um we we know how to do that.

But the projects that are associated with this, we'd love to get input on what council may want to see.

Um, because these are what we've identified, but um, there may be a different need that that you guys would see.

Um you know the one we talked about the other day when we talked about it, um connecting the two topics.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So I definitely think something needs to be done at Pulsico Pulsifer Park.

Either we need to do something with it or level because I've been by there a dozen times and there's never one person there.

Yeah, um, but maybe if there's a shade structure, maybe that would help out get that use.

But um if we connected the two trail systems, we could do, you know, which maybe this would be something bill, or maybe I mean we could do a half marathon on the trail system.

I will.

But I mean, theoretically, we could do a half marathon with only having to cross three main.

Right.

And I did look at that, and I think that's not sure if that would be here, but we can look in these other categories.

Because yeah, that we've already got the bridge across there.

I looked, and I don't think that's a huge huge cost on those.

Um especially if we're just doing it, it's a trade.

Right.

So I mean, I'm not having cars driving on it, so um that's a good one.

Um could it be used?

Paul's talking about over the campus, could it be used to pay debt services?

Or probably no?

No.

Okay.

No, no, no.

I don't know.

I don't know how you get grant money to pay bond.

Right.

Yeah.

We've got to show that you have that money, or they're not going to give it up in the first place.

Right.

So now one thing when you were talking about, you know, like with CSN, uh, and we've done this in the past before I was here, but I remember the city doing it.

When they did the industrial park, so they did RFQs for contractors, and NRC even suggested this.

So if you said, we're land rich, money poor, right?

So you say, all right, we're going to sell you this property, fair market value on this.

We're not you get the land, but build us this.

And so that's how a lot of Pioneer Boulevard was constructed out in the industrial area where it do a best, they graded pads, they did all that.

So there's there's elements like when you're talking with CSN that it's like, okay, if we the city council thought that was in the best interest, you can absolutely have a contractor do land deals and say, okay, you're gonna get this land, but we want this graded, and we want this 40 acres.

So then you're not spending that money, you're trading training that land, which then you're getting you're maximizing that.

They're able to do whatever they can with the land they've got, and um that makes a lot more sense than the matrix.

Yeah, get something for it.

Fire station three done.

Yeah, fire station three.

Uh I mean, so this isn't a new thing, um, especially with all that property that we've got up there.

Um so when we're looking at those, I just wanted to bring that up, but um for this.

So that's with the C D BG grant.

So um, as you look at these, these would be um want to get your input, and I know we're probably flying through these today, so we probably won't have a lot of time to go line by line.

Um, but as you come up with these, we can bring them back to council and say this is an item up for discussion and do it that way.

Uh next we're going to city facilities.

So these are all either with um, and I've tried to break it out on funding source.

So a lot of the airport, we get FAA grants.

Um, that's how we paid for the runway, the taxiways.

We're doing a project here on the service road.

So most of the the airport.

Now, one thing that we are looking at, I'd like to add on this is with our fuel system.

Um it's doing you know, it's it gets baked by the sun.

And so one of the things that we want to I want to add to our capital projects listing is the shade system structure that would shade our fuel system from just getting baited um the electronics and and things like that.

Um then we come down, you'll see we've got the animal shelter.

We just finished that project of city hall, these are items that we identify at City Hall, like we need new carpet, new chairs, uh there's a project for covered parking um to help protect the city vehicles from getting some bait, um, things of that nature.

The fine arts that are we had for the parking lot, and we'll be doing that this year for that hundred thousand fire stations.

So when you look through these, these are all of the city facilities that we've got either capital projects or maintenance projects, but they're all coming out of this fund.

And so this fund is very important, not just uh well for everybody on being able to maintain um these.

I think the biggest when we're looking at these is to try to get a feel of where is everybody's vision on these?

Because like I said, when you get into the later years, it's more of a wish list.

On we hope that we're able to save money and to get to these things, but you know, are we looking more at all fields than aquatic center?

Are we even though you there's needs on both sides?

Do we need another?

Is there ideas for a new police substation somewhere?

You know, so the this is really where the input, again, I'd say nothing's off the table when you're generating this list, and then we'll whether it's year one or year ten that we try to do these.

I update this every year, and this is a good thing because a lot of the time we're just working with department heads and not really getting the full input of the council and the public on what are our needs.

What are what are we really seeing as the most important thing that we can spend our money on right now for that?

Can they point out something I noticed?

What's it?

We're both.

Oh, you're like our hands.

I got you got to speak up for you.

I noticed on here, uh, what did I circle it?

Um gosh, no.

The roof replacement.

So we're talking about the campus.

Yeah.

So that's a million and a half dollars that we may not need to spend on the campus if we get something going that million and a half can go towards the new and just a facility.

And just keep putting a band aid on it and tell them.

And that money we had I showed it on here, but it didn't get approved in the budget, so we weren't spending that.

Okay, so we don't really have any.

No, but to your point, there's items on here that, yeah, if we were able to go to the college campus thing and do that, there are maintenance items.

So we can use that money.

Absolutely.

Yes, sir.

Um, this goes back to the previous session.

We were talking about uh kids staying here in town and all this and that.

Is there some way we can create some sort of policy or ordinance that gives local businesses a bid preferential treatment, as in like five or ten percent.

Uh so in other words, fire station three was built by out-of-towners, so yeah, City Hall was built by out-of-counters.

Um, I don't know how many things have been built in this city by out-of-towners.

That money goes to the general contractor in Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and we never see that money again.

If we can roll that money back over into our own economy, I think it would be a huge plus.

So we've got to come up with some sort of mechanism to make that happen.

Great question.

So I do know that in the NRS that's the uh 338, which is our purchasing policy, and how public works sends out these projects for Nevada.

Um, if it's not a federal project, if it's just our money or even coming from the state, it follows with that regulation, and there is a preferential bidder status for a Nevada-based company, but they have to have shown that they've been here for five years and follow some rules.

There's nothing that actually in that NRS allows for the city to add, but we can definitely look into that.

I would need Adam's help to help me establish if there's another 5%, say if you're a local company, which is a great plan, because obviously that is very unnerving when you're paying this much to uh companies out of town, and you know that it's just leaving us.

Yes, and um, but there is a thing that we follow already with the NRS for Nevada companies.

But if you could look into maybe tacking on an extra four or five, or even two and a half or three percent.

I mean, sometimes it would be just enough to keep the money here in town, and it would be reward us ten or fifteen fold.

I promise you it will be more restrictive.

Without without getting in trouble with discrimination of any, I mean, we can't discriminate by any means.

No, no, no.

No, and that's what we would look at and see you know if that, but yeah, that's I mean, I mean, I believe there's an NRS statute that if it's a woman-owned company, they get an extra five percent.

I'm telling you, oh no, I'm just gonna do it.

Well, I'm sorry, but there is that lever in there somewhere, I know it is, but so they don't uh that's what the DBE and woman-owned businesses on federal projects.

You have to have a goal of using certain percentage points with that, but it doesn't give you a preferential on your bid, like in the NRS.

Say if you had two companies and they both came in at a hundred thousand, and one was the Nevada and had the preferential, you get a five percent discount, which basically you're still paying that contractor a hundred thousand, but it's as if their bid was 95.

Right, and so um that's how that works in that um for federal projects with those a lot of the time there's a DVE goal that is set, and this happens at the airport all the time.

We have to meet at least one percent or two percent that are women owned business or disadvantaged business.

Well, when the city sends out their RFQs, what percentage and I'll take the what he just said, fire station two and city hall.

How many local companies even put in a qualification?

Yeah, that's what we're so for the the fire station.

We had oh heavens.

Um I don't think that we had anybody as a general contractor come in for that as the general.

We had local subs, but nobody had the um ability or the time.

Um I know Trade West has done many buildings for us, and when and a lot of our skate park and projects like that, which has been awesome.

The last uh we've had local companies get the last few projects, whether it's um for our dugouts or these, but the big ones like that projects a lot of the time, those bigger companies are the ones that are what if our uh code or thing that said that uh if it was a bigger company and they used local subs that we give them some kind of but they're but that's too hot, that's true hard.

The general would get the money and it that would be not the sum.

He he's just tacking on the 10% pass through, and then um so what happens, but he still utilizes local company, he does utilize local, but then it's so it's a catch-22.

Whether the you know you're you're you're stipulating those rules so tight that when you get that our price comes up, yeah, right?

Because you're getting those, and people know well, he's gonna have to use the well, and not to mention the fact that people, if you have your own company, you don't necessarily want to be forced to catch to work.

I think Travis can bounce on this right here, Travis.

The problem we're having here, sorry, Kevin, is that and I know that's firsthand what we're trying to do it with uh Catholic church where I'm at is that we don't have companies here that have a high enough bid on high enough license bid to even do that.

Trade West, that's about it.

Right.

That have anything over a million dollars under license.

They're also the only one that can go over three stories, right?

Right, but there's smaller stuff in here.

Yes, absolutely.

There's new carpet, there's new chairs, we got boulevard here, we got a couple of carpet stores.

I mean, yeah, let's give these.

No, I'm just I just use those two big ones as an example, but we get a lot of small projects in here.

Let's give it to the local business, keep them afloat.

I mean, summertime kills these guys, and we do like when we're getting these bids for for these, we're going local absolutely.

Uh it's it's when we have to go to these others, and we send it out on the bidding site, and we get that.

But I do like your idea, and and if you can help me out looking at what stipulations we can put on these bigger bids.

Um, so yeah, we're all for I love giving it to local people because the same idea.

They're here, they're buying their groceries here.

I mean, yeah, it that money cycles through.

Um if there's concerns in the NRS, we can always work with the charter committee.

Understood.

So but that's still got to get passed by the legislature.

But it's so my question was looking at this um regarding city facilities.

I don't see anything, nor have I heard for a while.

What's happening with the old fire station behind City Hall?

So great question, and that's one that we were hoping to talk about.

Um so this melts right into our discussion of the campus.

So there's areas that use the campus for things.

One of ours is um our maintenance facility shop.

So realistically, this is what my vision of that old fire station one.

We've got the base, they're in great shape.

They're in perfect shape.

We tear down the old building, it's got asbestos, and we figure out if we are looking at doing a teardown of the campus and that I would need somewhere for a shop.

Randy would need is also looking for someplace for a better maintenance shop.

We have needs for facilities to be there.

But the intent would be rip down that building and build up a new one, but keep the base because they're in great shape.

We can utilize them for uh trucks for holding our AC, you know, all of the stuff that we have now.

And so it dovetails into the discussion up above, and this is where this is a great conversation because one question leads to another question, and if we get that one answered, then we can say, all right, now this is what we want to do with this facility.

But and that's where some of this is so hard because we haven't had a true vision on you know, a cohesive group saying this is where we're going.

It's true.

And so if we have that, then it makes this list so much better, and we all know that you know cash is what's going to tell us what we can do.

It's a dollar amount where you have to go to prevailing wage 100,000.

It is.

Uh-huh.

So if you took NRC just hypothetically, and you said we want Dylan, we want you to come and tear that building down.

It's got asbestos, you're gonna have to do what you do.

And for that, well, you'll give us how much that would cost, and we'll carve out some property that's like valued and make a tray.

They wouldn't have to pay prevailing wage.

The city wouldn't have to come up with money.

There might be some legal issues with that when I've looked at it before.

So, but it's something we want we could look at.

I do know that just like with the um when they did, if you do a they upfront the money, they build it and give it to the city, um, but I don't know how then that's different.

Um, so yeah, there are there are probably sports, it's not much of a gift, yeah.

Yeah, but I mean the the teardown, um, yes, but those are some of the believe me, we've tried to visualize how can you maximize the money that we've got in different ways.

But so to answer your question, I would be looking to help get help from the council and and the public on, but we have needs also with depending on what happens with other facilities that could that'd be a great location.

I've even looked at old maps that you know, way back before any of us were here, uh, showing they had a uh four-story parking garage with the police station um in that area right there, too.

So there's been many ideas about that area.

Um it's a great location, especially right next to City Hall for public works, parks, whatever.

Um, any but that would be my recommendation.

We tear that building down and we start a vision of what we can what we can put there.

Keep the bays because they're great.

Well, no, they're newer than the building.

The building was built in 1950 something, and it was a daycare used to be a medical center.

It used to be I'm not sure.

It used to be a mechanic shop in the city back in the day.

Yeah, it wasn't actually it was part of it.

I mean, it's 67 years old.

Yeah, it's it's disgusting.

When they were the when you were still there, I did it, and I was like scared.

Yeah, so those are kind of the some of the things that you'll see.

We've got HVAC units for our areas, parks, it's showing you know, facilities.

I know one of the things that we would love to see as we talked about tourism and that Pioneer Park.

I played softball on that, my kids have played softball.

It's a great park, it's one of the best maintained parks and fields I've ever played on.

The building that's there now is old, and it may it pulls the whole effect down.

That would be one of them, in my opinion.

That concession building and that would need to go and build a new.

And I think you have kind of a vision of what you want to do there, but that's like a gym.

You see it from the freeway, everybody's honking when they drive up the, you know, you see kids playing on there.

That is a uh one that if we can promote better pioneer park, is awesome.

Well, it's probably the one of the highest use facilities we have next to the soccer complex, and it's fallen apart.

If we were we need to develop that part that because we own all this property across the street, buying the gel and whatever, so that would even become a better parking facility for that.

There usually be a better crosswalk set up there because that's crappy crosswalk.

Um you could do you could do like your concession and stuff on both sides or whatever.

It will you use more of the parking lot to build a better concessions place if you develop parking across the street.

Because that around where you know where the gel sits, all that property around the gel is the cities, all the way around it, and that could be utilized for a lot of good parking and stuff like that.

That would be great place for us.

And it could be one stop shop.

So one thing to keep in mind, I do have a project where I'm going to be doing rapid the flashers, like you see at uh auto zone there.

Um two on Hafen, and that is one of the locations.

So I've got um RTC money to put those in.

They're doing the designs, but so that's already I'm working on that, so this goes hand in hand because you do have so much traffic in the winter time with those tournaments.

Well really people to point when we have a decent sized tournament that they're parking in the jail facility just to get to the salt law complex.

So parking's a major issue on many locations.

That just happens to be one of them.

Yeah, so I mean, I I point that out because there's many projects that and trying to this is the hardest job of trying to prioritize where can we maximize that money and get the best return, you know, because that's the thing.

Um, when you're looking at trying to maximize that return, we see a huge return from all the people coming in and doing that, and but that is one of the ones that I see that a great place for like a food truck at a like the congregation spot there would be on millside.

Um those are the fields.

Then we come down to the landfill.

One of the things that uh I'm actually working on.

This is on the last page, we're working on right now.

So every year I track this quarterly, the existing landfill off of the tonnage of the uh reuses delivered there.

So um currently, right now, and I also have it um topography shot on that landfill, so I can verify volumes of where we're at.

Currently, right now we're at 60 percent um capacity.

The I am working with an engineer and looking at a fee uh uh feasibility study on new site locations and how long they anticipate we have capacity left.

So, what they're showing me based on our intake right now and the projected, we will be in need of a new landfill in 2040.

So we have also looked at what would maximize us until 2090, and that would be an 80-acre site.

The existing one is 40 acres, and so we have already been um trying to ask around, look at best locations.

I get identified with BLM on if we can get land from them, and conversations with them are very good.

We can um so when you look at the landfill, we've got in there that uh planning money, and obviously the good thing with the landfill is the insurance policy that we have with them uh with pool pack, so we're not going to be on the hook for any closure costs or post-closure monitoring of the existing landfill.

We will in the future, because that was all through a payment plan with the insurance, and that's all paid off.

So we're in great shape that way, but when we develop this in the future, and this project would be awesome for a bonding project because just like what we did with the sewer, there is a dedicated service debt service charge that that money could be dedicated to pay the bond back, and so when you're looking at these, um that's a perfect use of that.

So when you're looking at the landfill, you'll see future landfill and um things of that nature.

Then the regional flood control and RTC, those are our grant money that we get from them.

So currently, right now, we get about uh two and a half million from RTC to do projects, and just as an example, the Boulevard project was six million, so that would be three years of money.

So we're very judicious with our projects and and Boe, and we've been very aggressive, but this will mean that uh we'll be looking more with slurry projects on our roads and not as much on the mill and fill remove and replace.

Can I ask you a question too?

Um the project um was partially done on uh oh my gosh side winder.

Um so one lane was done.

It's more going to be done on Sidewinder?

No, on well, Sidewinder, I guess, will probably be uh Sun City will pay for that, right?

Yes, that's um but I'm talking about then when you make the right onto Verizon.

Or Falcon connects with horizon.

Yeah, like there's one lane going one direction, two lanes going.

Is that gonna be widened?

Are you still gonna be doing more there?

So no, those would be um we're finished with the stuff on Canyon Crest and Horizon.

Sun City, they're finishing as they bring in their subdivisions, they're finishing Falcon Ridge and up to with it where it stopped.

Well, kind of where the turn is.

Yeah.

So that so that'll still so that part of horizontal, so that's gonna be one lane each direction going by the firehouse.

Yeah, correct.

Okay, so it's not gonna get widened by not until they so they have plans to continue with those, but until they do that, and that's one of the things we don't like to.

I widened out Horizon because the city owns all of that land basically, but then there was that little chunk, um, and we just we didn't put the curve in right there, and that's why you see that.

We want to have the developers finish their half of the roadway.

That's why on Levit Lane down here, I did the middle, right?

And then the developers are required to do those.

Okay, if it becomes a safety hazard, like what we were seeing with um Pioneer Boulevard, uh Hafen Boulevard, where kids need to walk to go to school, and then that's where council has said, yeah, let's finish those so that we're providing those safe.

But we really want them to finish.

But would that affect the firehouse?

I mean, you got one lane, and if you got somebody on that road, I mean, is that an issue?

So I think way that we can minimize that is with cheap with each of these, we get the millings when they grind up the asphalt and we save those, we'll put those on the shoulder.

So if we have somebody that is, we still have a safe enough for these guys to get through.

I do have a project that's in design now to finish out canyon crest umskite heights and then canyon crest going down to the oasis because of the need uh to get through right now.

Everybody's on that one side, and so yeah, that is a problem.

So is that roundabout gonna have to be changed when everything ties into that down by a numbers a whole number seven?

Yeah, it'll actually make it better because then you'll instead of you'll have that roundabout and the island that will lead into it.

Now you have just the asphalt, and so it makes it to where you're more well, it's not as good as it will be when it's finished.

So, yes, that will help that situation there.

Travis I've got a question, sorry.

Sorry, back in.

Can I just quickly comment?

So coming back to Patty's um comment and question.

Um when Levet Lane was finished, um, I had asked Travis about the sidewalks and questioning, do we ever just assess you know the homeowner or the property owners?

Right.

Um because that I mean, if that instead of just the city, if the developer doesn't do it, maybe that's what we should look at.

Is it required by the developer, isn't it?

Kerb better.

It's not required until they develop the property.

Right.

Right.

Because I guess the issue is which I talked to you about um on the levit lane, is gentlemen in a mobilized wheelchair trying to get through there, but it's only one lane and one lane, and cars are trying to get around him, and um that's why I had someone ask.

No, and a great point.

Thank you for bringing that up because that is if the city council came and said, hey, we need this in there, but we want to have the developer pay for it.

Um what we probably have to do is lean that property, we do the improvements and then lean the property for that and go there.

The problem with that is our costs are higher than normal developers because we have to pay the wage.

So they always squawk at that and say, hey, that's unfair.

You're leaning me for what it more than what it would have cost me to do that, but I'm not ready to do that yet.

So there's a few of those, but yes, absolutely.

Yeah, it's kind of that's a catch kind of a kitchen on the two there.

Okay.

Okay.

So I'm sorry.

Um everybody was talking, and I still want to go back to the landfill for a second.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

So on the landfill, it's in Lincoln County.

Correct.

Do we pay them?

Do we lease the land?

So will it be no go ahead?

Part two.

Will it be better for us to get BLM land in Clark County versus Lincoln County?

So financially wise.

The your uh question on the first one.

We do not lease the ground, we own it, but we pay a host fee.

So when this was originally established, they didn't, we weren't paying them anything.

And then about five years ago, well, Bill was still here, so that's been 10 years ago.

They came back and said we feel that it's unfair that you're utilizing our land even though you own it for a landfill, we're going to assess uh host fee onto you, like we do all of our so the city currently pays $15,000 a year, which their original was they wanted to charge us by the tonnage going into there.

So this was a lot less, and uh attorneys were involved in that, and so this was the best deal that we can get.

But yes, they we do pay them, we own the property, but we pay them $15,000 a year.

Um what I talked to BLM.

One of the things that I would actually like to continue to use BLM land in Lincoln County, which would be north of the solar farm, and we would absolutely probably have to pay a host fee, but it is nice that I've got that road, the scale system, everything up there, where if we come down into Clark County, which would be in our city limits or out west, it just pulls it closer to town.

Is the range, the farmers range not an option for that?

Expansion there instead of it's not because of the well water is so close to that.

So I can't put a landfill that close to that existence.

But it's interesting that Nye County wants to charge us for that, but they don't want to give us money when we're using our fire department to cover them.

Absolutely.

So that might be some negotiation that needs to be taken place because taken advantage.

And that was part of the thing when we were discussing this that they were wanting to get stuff and and not give anything.

And and no, because their tax base is so small.

They're trying to eke out anything they can, and that's why they were so excited the solar farm because at least they're getting something rather than nothing up there.

Um and that's the reality.

Yeah, you've covered any fire, any issues up there.

I've had some very small brief conversations with the county attorney on Lincoln, and it seemed like there is some interest in maybe annexing that and giving it to talked to me about it, they came and met with me and the commissioner and everything, and I said, What's the benefit to us?

They don't think they want our services, right?

They want our services and our water, yeah, and our power.

Well, I mean, they in it sounds like they don't make as much off of the solar as they thought.

Yeah, so it's it's like you took that over.

But again, it's just very kind of brief nothing.

So, what dictates capacity of the landfill of the new landfill?

Of any landfill.

What dictates what dictates the capacity of our landfill?

So we have certain stipulations on what how deep we can go and how high.

And so when you that formula, so we've been keeping records on that.

Um Bill was very diligent on this, and I've kept that up on the intake and because it's not just the amount of intake, but we have to cover, and so you have the soil.

And with these type of you're digging down, you use that soil as your cover and and then go in that break.

I can't remember what the actual capacity of this one that we've been allowed to.

The new one at that 80 acres, it would essentially be 55 would be usable land, and it was or for the landfill, it was around seven six point nine or seven point two million um cubic yards of material that would be able to, and that would take us their projections.

And it also was based off population that was showing that mesquite had a population of 172,000.

Wow.

That was which I told them we would never reach that, but I wanted to be conservative because we currently now receive um we charge double the rate for Bunkerville, Scenic, and Beaver Dam to take trash to ush, which is a good money maker in that um, but if you just as you were saying, if we look at the whole area, then we could be at 172 when you look at Scenic Bunker Bill, Beaver Dam, and us by 29.

You know, so it's not just us, but it would be this would be quite a spanning strong metropolis.

What you have any idea what extra costs would be if you did um green waste?

Yeah.

Um we've looked at that for we tried to when did we go up there, Jason?

Was that four years ago?

We went up to Washington County to look at not only their green waste but their uh construction and demo debris.

One of the things you're adding another 10 acres because the process, you're chipping, and then you have to rotate that, and then you can create a compost from it.

And so it was you're adding acreage and equipment for that, and um I forget what the actual number it didn't pencil out for us to look at that with our existing landfill, um, but it would be something that um we could look at with this would green waste.

So if you did a green waste and you just buried it and a regular waste, would the green waste still fall under the same qualifications in those biodegradable things?

It would, but they consider that the same.

Um we haven't even when I talked to the BLM, they said that the time frame, if we did go that route and we were able to get acreage, um the BLM process could take two to six years to get that property.

Um and so this is something we're looking forward at.

Um I don't want to get caught you know in 2029 and then or 2034, I mean, and oh shoot, we need a new landfill, and it's gonna take us that long.

So we're we're actively getting into this now because not only BLM, but with the state regulations, I don't know if I'm gonna have to line this site now.

Um because currently the one we have now is so there's a lot of things that are time sensitive on this, and so that's why the planning and looking at it.

So with that green waste, so would that enhance our recycling?

If we were to do that, because then that recyclable stuff could go to the green waste because that I don't know if I want topsoil with stuff I put in the garbage.

Yeah, no, it absolutely so what they do up in Washington County is they have the landfill that you know, all of your household, all of that, and then for landscapers or whatever, they take it all over to this section, they offload it, and then the workers there put it into the shredders and all of that, and then I can't remember.

You remember four or five piles?

That and they're constantly rotating that they're taking human waste and they're adding to it, and then they're rotating it, but it's not the plastics, it's not it's the trees.

Uh the the comment that we had four years ago is it's the need for it is dissipating in the southwest as grass is going away in the desert landscape, they're spending huge amounts of money on manpower, equipment, acreage to create this for the need, and it works, it's great for the Lawrence.

It's one no one's disputing that, but they're the lawns are disappearing.

Right?

More desert landscapes, and so they're they're packaging this and shipping it away from southern Utah more than they're using it in southern Utah.

So I just wonder how much of our landfill is getting used up by green waste.

But even if we gave it away, at least wouldn't take up space in the landfill.

I do have that number, I just don't have it with me.

Yeah, uh I mean I've been out there lots of times, and there's a lot of green waste that's going into that.

Yeah, no, absolutely that is a great question.

Any other questions on the landfill or that?

Sorry, sorry to bring that back up.

No, that's great.

That's that's great.

I'm flying through this because I know we're sensitive.

The other category that you see in the capital projects is the 99 account.

This is for vehicle replacement.

So in the city, we have vehicle replacement program.

So this is where we identify um vehicles that are eligible or look to be, and that is a program based off not only the mileage of the vehicle, the maintenance records of that, and there's a different standard with lease and fire with emergency vehicles.

Um, and they're usually replaced at a shorter increment so that their vehicles don't break down on the chase.

That kind of is a bad deal, right?

Very much as the city elects bigger people.

Can we get larger vehicles to drive to Vegas?

When we got that little uh 302 uh Mark, I don't know if you guys remember Mark, he was our uh supervisor there.

He called that the the little roller skates, uh car on roller skates, because it's one of those you just kind of wind up and then go get up with the grain on it.

So we have had that discussion and the vehicle 330, which I think is that a Ford Escape or Equinox Equinox, that's the smallest that we would go for that.

Paul knows.

So that's what I that's what I usually get.

Yeah, I was got a question for you.

Not trying to be the devil's advocate here, but when I go by City Hall, I see all of these pickup trucks and everything parked up during the parking lot.

Do every single one of them get utilized all the time, or are they just sitting there?

They do something.

The so the vehicles that you're seeing um are you with public works and building department, and there's two intersect or uh vehicles that uh IT uses, they're the not Tahoe, um Ford expeditions, I believe is what those are.

They they do get utilized, especially the public works every single day.

So the reason I was asking starting one country, there's a couple of them there we're actually called graphs that are on the tires.

So that would be um the building department that has one vehicle that they don't use all the time.

The code enforcement and Robin and uh Scott both have the smaller mavericks, I believe.

They're using those every single day.

The other vehicle is used when they have to go out and do um those IT.

I believe you guys are using yours.

He's in the back.

We're in the back behind.

Yeah, they use them a lot.

I I know that they're up to my building all the time.

Every day, every other day.

So um on your vehicle usage daily.

I drove my own truck over here because we have the right.

So uh just wonder yeah, the ones we have three pool vehicles which are parked out front.

That's the three cars.

Um, and those are available to anybody within the city organization or council as they're going to Vegas and things like that.

So that's our capital projects.

Uh I'd encourage you to go through this and help me identify as we narrow down this vision of the city.

On what do we really want to spend our money on?

Because we don't have a lot.

Well, anything that we can spend money on that will save us money, right?

Is what I want to do.

I mean, because I mean that's that's the way we're gonna save money.

Is sometimes we've got upgrade and update and if it's gonna save us money in the long run.

Well, save money or make money, yeah.

And to your point, uh, you know, the the whole college campus thing, I love that idea.

The whole park area because I will that building, you know, the the college campus.

It's it's awesome for functioning, and we could have never built anything like that back in the day, and it's been great, but yeah, maintenance costs on that building are the money we get for the leases, don't you know cover any of that?

So thank you.

Thanks, Travis.

Thanks, Travis.

Uh let's move on to 2.3 financial health.

Do you want to go on to this?

We have about 15 minutes we can start.

Yeah, let's have lunch.

Okay.

Let's try financial help.

Yeah.

So Bryce wasn't able to, he had more important things to finish up before he left.

Um, so he wasn't able to help get things together for this.

So bear with me as I kind of comb through some things.

Um, as we saw this past budget session, um, our general fund revenues are um lower than our expenses.

So we're needing to figure out kind of next step.

So um, as our city growers, we have needed to create more staff in departments.

Um, just kind of some information for you.

Um, public safety is a little over half of our general fund expenditures.

Um, say if you have a five percent increase over the public safety in a 15 million dollar budget, you're looking at 750,000 annually to cover those costs.

our city growers we have needed to create more staff in departments um just kind of some information for you uh public safety is a little over half of our general fund expenditures um so say if you have a five percent increase over the public safety um in a fifteen million dollar budget uh you're looking at seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars annually to cover those costs so um it's important as we talk about growing the need for staffing it does add a lot of dollars so we need to figure out how to get those dollars to pay for those services that we need um obviously salaries are going up every year uh that is our main operating budget the majority of it comes from salaries in all departments um so i've I don't really have where we're at with the um we had our budgeted amounts for revenues and expenses at the end of this year um but once we uh finalize the audit we'll kind of see where we're at um I don't have it um I do have it on this sheet so on this sheet you'll kind of see um actual revenues and expenditures in 2122 um our your revenues were up over expenditures 23 22 23 um again up you had balanced budget of an adopted budget in 2324 um actual 2425 year revenues were still above expenditures uh this last year it's estimated a little bit more with revenues and then next year's we're looking at expenditures um from things I found I don't have it on that this one but um a few years back in 2324 the ending fund balance in the general fund was uh about 7.3 million dollars and now we're down to this last year was at 3.3 um looking at what Bryce and I budgeted for next year it's about a 4.8 um estimated for 2526 so we'll see where that comes in at um but it's kind of we're trending expenses are going to be higher than revenues the ending fund balance has slowly um dwindled um I don't I did not get a chance to look back to see were they one time expenses were they because because of salaries um what those were um I didn't that out I did find that um we have I think it was about 13 positions that have increased from there um most were from maybe the side most were from most were from public safety obviously that is our um our focus um and what most cities who have lease and buyers that's where their budgets are so that is that's kind of where they came from you know interestingly enough southern devada health district is um not filling positions as they leave to be able to try to save some money um because you know everybody's struggling with with um people's uh earnings so or the wages um so that's one of the things as we're looking at their budget this year um they've been able to kind of keep up with their budget somewhat because they're just not filling positions that would be believed as this the city's grown one of the places we the city has really missed our impact fees or impact fees are so much lower than anyone else's it doesn't affect anyone that already lives here it's for people coming in building new homes that impact is impacting fire and police so those those impact fees can be used to pay their salaries new positions and everything else when you look at what we charge for impact fees for new homes in Mesquite versus St.

George or Vegas for thousands of dollars less and if it cuts down your growth just a little bit maybe that's not a bad thing either to slow things down a little bit but in order to take care of the the things are being impacted by adding more people we've got to get we've got to get our impact fees up and it doesn't affect anyone already and if you are already here and you want to go to a different house as long as it's not new there are no impact fees they were paid when it was built you want to buy a new house sure you're gonna pay impact fees the builders will complain for a minute they'll roll them into the fees they'll increase the price of the home by three or four thousand dollars and somebody's coming to buy an a five hundred and seventy thousand dollar home is going to pay five hundred and seventy four thousand body and they want to take the other one you know and I agree with what Paul says on impact fees um and I've I've got I've done so much friggin' research on this as far as St.

Take down the real estate commissions.

Yeah, so Mike.

Yeah, Mike, you know, and I agree with what Paul says on impact fees.

Um, and I've I've done I've done so much friggin' research on this as far as St.

George and Vegas goes, and those who were in this know that you know, we we probably have the lowest impact fees west of whatever rivers out there, Mississippi, whatever West of the Atlantic.

Yeah, and Western when we have um when we have a residential impact fee of four or five hundred bucks, and they're four or five thousand dollars, and they're four or five thousand in North Las Vegas and St.

George and our commercial impact nine hundred dollars or whatever it is, and our Vegas is ten grand for that.

Like you said, we're missing it, we're missing a big paycheck right there.

And yeah, that the builders are gonna complain, NRC's gonna complain, they're gonna cry and boo-hoo.

But when you add that five thousand dollars on the end of a six hundred thousand dollar home, doesn't even notice it.

And so I think we you're missing something here.

I know that Kevin wants to do taxes.

No, it's not that guys.

You're talking out of both sides of your mouth, and I apologize for saying it that way, but it was less than two hours ago.

You're saying we need to do affordable housing.

Both of you said that, and I get it, but you can't pack 10 grand onto uh an affordable home.

We come on, no, you can't, Paul.

You can't city you can.

Yes, you can, but it's gonna raise you were just saying you wanted to give land away and do uh sweat equity, but here you go, you're gonna tack 10,000 dollars on impact fees.

You can't do that, Paul.

Probably think about it.

Project comes before city council and it's for something affordable, the city council can waive the impact fees.

Okay, so then you're opening yourself up to a lawsuit.

Okay, who does who gets away from the impact phase and who gets them?

That's BS, Paul, and you know it.

No, I don't know.

So let's get takes 10% 10% on the dollar and let's just make it simple property.

We just need to bring in more industry, more big businesses like Smith's.

Let's do impact fees are not gonna solve the problem.

We're talking millions of millions of dollars that we need.

We need something that generates 20 million dollars, and you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Okay, so let's get that thing here, let's get it built, and let's take that 20 million dollars, and then the city's gonna be in perfect shape.

Screw the impact fees.

We don't need impact fees.

I'm sorry.

We do we need we do need to be.

Can you do could we do graduated impact fees?

I'm sure you could write it up any way you wanted.

If you wanted to say if the house is worth you're selling for this much, it's this rate.

If it's for this much, it's that rate.

And the more expensive the home, the more impact it is to the city, the more impact fees they pay.

The impact fees can be something we work on a lot quicker than we can, and history's proving it here for whatever reason here in the city mesquite, bringing on bringing in an industry has fallen on deaf ears lots of times.

And it's taken us, I don't know how many friggin' years to even get somebody here that's interested in building here, whereas impact fees, even if it is a graduated rate, we can do that quicker than bringing in industry and all this other stuff that we want uh a lot quicker.

And it takes us 20 years to get freaking sniffs in here.

Well, I know we've got three right now that really want to build here.

There's three projects that really want to build.

I know, but I know we have three really big projects that want to build here right off.

I'm okay with impact fees increasing.

Um I mean, I no, that's fine.

How many houses a year are built?

So one of the big drivers, it's right around 300.

300.

Here is the the simple truth.

I I agree, you know, if we're talking affordable housing, that hurts that, right?

But you look at um, they haven't raised the impact fees on any of these for a long long time.

You look at the overton power, what are they doing?

They raise their impact fees, they raise the Virgin Valley Water Virgin Valley Water District because they're seeing that.

So if you look at that, it is something that and our rates when we were doing the traffic impact study when we were seeing how much they were charging.

I know it's not a popular thing to look at, but it is a reality, and when you're looking at I know you're saying that you there's three projects that are looking here, we can't just bet on that.

We need to at least start chipping away at some of this.

Um, and these impact fees and these that we're coming up with to present to you guys are going to help us to slow that gap because right now, how do we pay for more officers?

How do we get these services?

And how do we we have a big wish list and dream of what we want this community to be like?

How do we get these services and how do we we have a big wish list and dream of what we want this community to be like we can't get there at all if we don't at least start to try to do something, and I know that's a very unpopular thing to say, and I'm not gonna make any friends by saying, hey, we need to raise these, but it's reality, and I'm not trying to sugarcoat anything, I'm just saying the reality of we're in a mess, and we need to try to do something, and whether we can do that, and I'm you know, if there's agreements that you make with develop developers on land transfer that you know you're doing this, they'll figure out a way, you know.

And and I'll be honest with you, I would prefer to do impact fees for new people coming here, new builds versus tax and every single raising taxes for every single resident in the city of Miss Gate, which is not a popular vote by a lot of people, right?

And it all it affects new people coming, new housing versus all of us sitting here will be taxed.

I mean, increased tax, and I'm not favorable for that right now either.

So taxes don't come back to us in it.

I was just talking to Paul about this with my main house and all my rental properties.

I pay about 25 grand in taxes last year, property taxes, and the city mosquito maybe, maybe four percent of that.

That's it.

All the rest of it went to indigenous bill comes to the school, or whatever it comes back to.

Over half of it goes to Clark County school schools.

Yeah, it's just not fair.

So with what we can legally raise, it's it's only 0.3%.

0.3%, it might be worth doing that.

I mean, it's gonna be minimal, but it's 0.3%.

And then if we raise impact fees to say three thousand dollars or buy three thousand dollars, that's a million dollars right there.

That's pretty significant.

Where we're at right here.

That all helps.

Yeah, right.

And 300 houses a year if it goes up, whatever two thousand, because you're talking what, two thousand dollars difference between impacts.

I know that we we just looked at a place in St.

George and it was twenty, eight hundred dollars.

You're not moving, you know.

My daughter, and and I think then the impact fee was like twenty-eight hundred dollars.

Yeah, and ours is six, yeah, I think, right?

Yep.

So if it if it's a two thousand dollar, it's a two thousand dollar difference.

I don't know if we want to go two thousand dollars, but honestly, I don't see why that is a problem either going straight to two thousand dollars.

I mean, you know, rip the band-aid off.

When the last time they were raised, when when home prices were 150, 200,000, two, three thousand dollars was a lot of money.

But when you're getting up into these three-quarters of a million dollar homes and stuff, an extra three thousand dollars is nothing.

It's the six hundred dollars, and that's what all these houses are being built, are getting up into those price ranges, but it would help the city and a lot.

Every dollar that comes in is a dollar that we have for our budget, right?

And the council has the ability to wai things, yeah.

Right, just like we can we could give property away, we wouldn't have to pay 10% if it was for the right purpose.

So, as projects come through and they come to a city council, and there's something that the city actually needs, the city council can work with them and and fees can be waived and all of that, but for your normal builders out here that are building these six hundred thousand plus dollar homes, that's where the city has missed out for the last two decades by getting so far behind.

If if all that growth in the last 20 years or let's say, yeah, since about 08, when everything collapsed and start coming back, if you'd have been getting impact fees that were similar to everywhere around us, it would have made a huge difference for the city now, and we missed all of it because they never got raised during any of it.

It's a tough subject, no doubt about it.

But it's one that we honestly need to try to tackle because we're in a bad one.

The only other things you could really do besides property taxes would be rates, and the only rates you have are sewer and garbage.

Well, we have other things, and we you know, I don't know if you want to stop now or talk, but we you know well, you have impact, you have big big fees, but yeah, we have a lot of different fees that we should licenses to be talking about.

Um that that I would request being looked at is a data request fee.

Um we have a lot of data requests, a lot of not even just citizens, but outside people that um like finance like would spend um hours on for just for just from like schools or different things, and um I've not gotten out of them, but they will back off if you're like here is our fee schedule, fill out the farm, and you have to pay to get it, and then they'll be like, no, thanks.

Um, which saves us time and dollars.

Um what is the feed there?

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

And we can spend hours.

I probably have a full-time person just doing public information.

I think there's nothing like that.

Police is adopted.

Yeah, oh that's crazy.

So that is that is crazy.

I wouldn't like to talk about the printing costs or anything, it's the four or five hundred bucks an hour.

And it's a bigger, not that much, but it's a bigger issue facing like all the municipalities talk among the municipal attorneys and you know, trying to get a better handle on this because it does get out of control.

I'll bet you spend I'll bet there's two full-time salaries a year.

Like with two of our like administrative salaries or whatever of the city are just doing fulfilling data requests.

So we're we're paying out 200 when you put 500 and everything, we're paying 400,000, 200,000.

You go to those ones online.

For people working and getting nothing at all.

Sure.

That's great.

And there's not even anybody.

Well, the problem is a lot of this stuff could just be fine online.

And they but anytime I found a check on anything, it they charge you.

You have to join us.

Right.

Wow.

So I did not know it was that that is something I'd like to talk about after the break.

Um, our fees um for our rec center um and our bar ball fields and all of that.

I'd like to talk about that just to make sure.

Not that we want to um like with the ball fields charge a bunch of people, but we want to cover costs.

We want to make sure our costs are covered, and right now some of that's not happening.

Well, um, I think the city's been so afraid of making people pay for anything or charging any more than they did 15 or 20 years ago for something, services, fees, you name it.

That the city's grown numb that everyone in the city just thinks this is the cheapest place to live because of all that stuff.

We don't have to pay for any of the government.

Go to the go to the dump up in Salt Lake.

And if you're just throwing away a TV or something that's really not a lot of weight, they're still gonna charge you five bucks.

If you don't cover your load, they charge an extra 20.

Because they gotta go clean it all up.

And if you have a big load, they charge it by weight.

But anyone that goes to the dump pays money.

We go to the dump.

You go up there all the time.

You you said all the time, you never pay a dime.

Well, maybe for your residential for our commercial, it's quite expensive.

Yeah, we would even up in neutral.

I can even the rent, we paid everything.

We pay both both of them, and there was one special landfill that took paint and contaminates products, yeah, things like that.

The other one wouldn't take it.

So sometimes you have to travel further to go, but you still had to pay them to take it off your hands.

Yeah, no, for commercial, it ended up being about a hundred dollars a trip by the time you get all the way out there back and then pay the dump fees.

We figured around a hundred bucks a trip, but for private, yeah.

I mean, but even if it's five five dollars, that's still pretty cheap.

But it all adds up over time.

Well, where's the food attitude?

Well, I think it's an event.

It's in the kitchen, it's in the kitchen.

That was a test.

That was a test.

And really it passed.

I'm gonna send it to put it down there.

Well, that's kind of water.

Bring it again, it's I do.

All right, we're gonna turn it back over to Becca.

Come back.

Yeah, okay.

So before we start talking about what ways we could do revenue, just a couple things that I have listed on here.

Um things that I think we lack.

We don't have a five five-year financial management plan.

Um, hopefully, when we get a new finance director in, we can work on getting that done.

Um just to know we do transfer money from the general fund into the senior nutrition, technology replacement, vehicle replacement, uh, recreation center and capital projects.

Um the last few years we haven't been putting monies into those besides um the senior center and the rec center.

So um just some things to note as we go through this kind of on the agenda, uh talking about enterprise funds.

Um we have the sewer fund, which is healthy.

Um this is the only fund that we have a bond out for, which will be complete next year or the year after.

It's not too long.

Um so that's that's good.

We have step service on that bond.

I don't know.

I need that much.

And what was the original bond for?

How much money was there?

Well, if she can look up, I don't need to know, she'll just send it to me in the next couple of days would be good.

She could send it to all of us.

Yeah, but that might give you an idea if you are bonding how much you need to have in reserve.

Yep.

Yeah, good to know.

Um our special revenue funds with the senior center and the recreation funds.

So those funds aren't supplemented from the general fund, they're not self-sustaining.

Um, so it does require us to put dollars from one general fund into them.

Um and then we met with the bank last week.

Um, I think Martin knows more about this, so maybe she can fill in.

I didn't get a chance to talk to Carol this morning, kind of on what trust accounts we have, what they can be used for, but he did ask, are there any projects that the council is looking at since you guys are the trust holders of those?

So um if you want to.

So the the trust, the City of Mesquite Charitable Trust, you know, which Adam is familiar with as well.

So we have we had three subtrusts for education animals and um there's public arts, there's seniors and the arts.

And so at one point with one of the city managers, he goes, we want to add a four subtrust for senior services.

So I wrote the trust amendment to that.

So now we have four subtrusts.

So the idea was people could bequeath money, put it in there, and then you guys are the trustees of the trust, so any time money is taken out a check, you know, like the senior services one.

There's still like five thousand dollars in there.

So that was the idea.

Was that they're restricted, they're not in the general fund, they're completely separate.

Um, that people could um bequeath money and that it could be used for those four subtrusts.

But do you know how much is in there right now?

Uh I know that the senior services one has about five thousand, but I'm not sure if she knows Julie.

Um the other three pack has about three that I think they might be.

So these aren't huge amounts.

No, there's not huge amounts.

No, none of them control has about two thousand.

And don't see the other one has oh CF doesn't have they have like 400.

Okay, so we just moved.

Yeah, not a ton of money, but something to think about.

He asked if there's anything that we can start.

I do have other clients that have named those funds, but they're still alive.

So the time you hurry them up.

That was only case.

Sorry.

Do many people know about those forms like public, like people who are looking to donate at the end of the year for taxes.

They were created a lot of a long time ago, so I don't know if there's been a lot of public.

There's probably not a lot of people to know about it.

Oh.

When appropriate, I'll bring it up.

But uh most people have plans pretty much in place.

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, I didn't mean for like you to like say two or people want to.

Well, no, but I will when appropriate.

Like, hey, you know, I've got this, and I'm thinking about that.

Well, did you were you aware that you know there's something else besides St.

Jude's?

Right?

St.

Jude's is definitely the top, but I try to at least let people know keep things local.

Okay, themselves so much.

And it helps a bit, like all the new chairs in the senior center came out of that.

Um at one point there was 17,000 in there, so it's it gets used.

Um things uh as we look the things that I think that we should be doing.

Um, we should look at our fees to make sure our fees are covering costs of activity.

Um, and then we need to protect the assets we still have by making sure dollars are put aside.

So uh, like um Travis mentioned in the capital projects, um we do not have set aside dollars to go to maintenance.

Um we can't use the park fund for maintenance.

Um we can't use the park fund for maintenance, you have to use it for new parks, and so we tried to look at a workaround on okay, we'll take down the equipment, we'll put up the new equipment with the park fund, and we were told we can't do that.

So what about if it's in the same location?

This town square we're looking at.

If we're putting a park in the middle of that, could we use that park fund money to put that in?

Yes.

As long as it's new.

Yeah, yes, as long as it's new.

Well, it's not there yet.

Yes, right.

But the maintenance, so you know, we needed the turf turf maintenance.

That can't come out of the parks dollars.

Um the Jensen Park can't come out of park dollars.

So we need to either set aside and when we talk about our economic development dollars, we'll talk more about that.

But we need to figure out how we can set aside dollars for maintenance to maintain what we currently have.

Um back to fees, um, and talking about kind of what are you comfortable with?

What do you want us to look at?

Um I did talk to Warren Hardy, and we were um we're setting up time Thursday was as soon as he could do it.

So I was hoping to do it before this meeting, but it just didn't work to meet with um Henderson and him to kind of discuss um how they went about doing a referendum for adding a tax for their parts.

Um I don't know if that's something you want to pursue, but it was something that um I thought, well, at least I can hear the information, see how it's done, see what we would need to do, see, and then bring back information to see if that's something you want to do.

Um go to the taxpayers to see if they want to add a little tax for parks or other items.

We're gonna kind of discuss how that all works.

So um that's one thing that I'm looking at.

Um, as we talked before we went on break, there was some conversation about the public record requests.

So um it is in the big uh fee schedule, and you can uh we're not gonna go through this line by line.

This is just what we've gotten all together before this meeting.

Um I'm sure there are other fees out there that we haven't gotten on there, but this is what we prepared for today.

Um I believe you've looked at this.

So we have the public records request policy um that we kind of took from Henderson, um, put in some different things, certain things that um I think we should talk about as we figure out where we want to go.

Um I believe you would put this in, but I guess I have some concerns with the rate of $25 an hour for staff time.

Um part in part of the issues on these fees, it's kind of if this is Becca's decision, really.

I mean, we'll get feedback from council and because there's there's different viewpoints, right?

Open government and or we gotta be right, this needs to be rationally related to the time.

Um, but there was an article in the in the Nevada Independent, I think a while back that kind of canvassed all the different fees that are charged, and so we're trying to see what everybody else does, and but it it's really there's no rule for it, we just whatever we think is reasonable.

Um my thought would be we charge what our costs are, which includes not only the hourly raise wage but all the benefits.

So at the end of the day, what what is that hourly wage?

If someone can't understand why you're doing that, the city's not making money, we're just breaking even.

Then they don't want that request very bad.

We found like with this, I mean, I have because we've been muddling to this with all the body camera requests, right?

We found like a flat rate fee is like a lot simpler because what happens is is we spend a bunch of time figuring out how many fees we were supposed to do in our accounting.

Our accounting costs us more than what it costs to like do the other part.

So it was like, no, it's 75 bucks for that.

I mean, that's just the way it is.

And then I was just gonna say, when why don't you judge charge a hundred dollar flat rate fee or whatever, and then if you dig into it, you can email the person back and say, hey, it's gonna cost you five more hours on top of that 50 bucks an hour or 75 bucks an hour, whatever we want to do.

If you want a report, it's I gotta print a report for you, it's like X amount.

If I you want this type of report, it's this amount, this amount, and it's just flat, and then our body cameras are based by exactly um first video plus uh but redaction is a lot of the time for instance.

So which when I saw the redaction fee on this one, um, so that's where you run into trouble.

Well, if it's a six hour video or ten, whatever, like seventy-five dollars money when you touch it.

So you gotta kind of factor that in.

Like a lawyer, point one hours.

No, every point one, every six minutes.

Yeah, start the meter and start.

Yeah, Tracy, on these fees, um, only because somebody called me about this a while ago, they had an incident report theft at their home that they called to get a copy of their insurance the report for their insurance, and it was ten dollars to get a report on their own house.

Yeah, cost money.

Somebody's gotta pay somebody's gotta go do it.

Someone's got to write the report, somebody's gotta the report's already done, right?

It's written on, but they gotta but you find staffing.

Make sure it's redacted because they have to go through and redact information, whatever.

So ten dollars is I mean, it cost it still costs us much.

Well, and I know it says on here victims of sexual assault, domestic violence receive it for free.

They do.

But I mean, they're the victim here on their well, the thing is like on a defendant, like you get all that stuff anyway, right?

Like the defense attorney gets discovery, he gets everything anyway.

So they get it all for free if they want to wait on a criminal case.

If it's civil where they're like like a traffic accident or something like that, and they want their traffic accident report and all that, we're just like everybody else, we just charge you for that because it's civil.

It's like it's not a criminal thing, it's just well, it just was posed to me two a week ago, and then I saw this on there, and see that's the problem we're always gonna run into like the ten dollars.

It's ten bucks.

Yeah, or some reports.

People are not everyone's gonna.

Well, like I say, if it's five hundred thousand dollars a year, essentially we're spending on this.

That's revenue.

I mean, 35 million dollars, 500,000 is still a significant, but um I want to bet that my staff puts in at least a one full-time position just doing redactions, dealing with the PIRs and stuff like that, especially the last year or two.

We've had a lot of we have had a lot of love lately.

And I was gonna I was gonna mention that as we make good decisions, as we work together, as we lower the level of contention and controversy.

This has a direct effect on the finances, right?

Because there's less public records requests, there's less because people so that's an intangible, right?

They were all working on it at any given time.

Um, but it does get really quite time consuming.

Like, you know, I want every single email between all these people for the last two years, right?

You get a request like that, and the law requires us to respond.

But the law is also pretty complex on what can be given or what not.

And so, like, there was one request recently that talked about emails like that, and there's a whole chunk of emails like from Wayne, our IT, about like building the evidence room and like details about security that can't be released, but someone has to go through and make sure that it's you know, we're not giving out stuff that's a safety issue, or that there's a and there's a bunch of Supreme Court cases that dictate what can be released and whatnot, and so you know there's different groups that get real upset, and then we get a bunch of requests, it takes a ton of time, and then I'm denying based on the law to both sides, and then everybody's mad at me, so I'm figuring out figuring I'm doing my doing my job.

But yeah, but both sides people get upset, but we gotta just apply the law blindly, doesn't matter who's requesting it, and do the best we can to recruit.

You always know you're doing good when everybody's gonna do it.

Everybody's mad exactly.

Do we have any questions or anything that you want me to be like, oh, I don't like this as we go through the public data requests?

Okay.

Um kind of talk about because it's been talked in-house and with uh parties is the reclamation fees of the softball, baseball deals.

Um just because in the past, not everybody's been handled the same way, not everybody has been paying the same amount.

Um, it's different.

Um we'd like to change that to have everybody paying the same amount uh in order to make sure that we can pay for what we're we're using to maintain the deals.

So really what it comes down to is we've gone over the past year, year and a half, and just a lot of inconsistencies of some people were gonna get it free, some people are only paying a small percentage, other people were getting paid a hundred percent.

The way I look at that is how that's not really fair.

And so I can't go and charge, for example, I'll just use this as an example.

I have a hard time charging my little leak local youth group a rate to use our fields for two and a half months and not charge another group the same rate, or vice versa.

And so, really, just trying to be consistent with a flea that comes in and use our fields, we have to pay for labor, have to pay for material.

Uh we're just trying to be consistent across the board with everybody.

You have a rate per field?

We do for so for every little league field you have a certain rate for correct.

Is that correct?

Correct.

Then there shouldn't be any problem.

Pretty simple, isn't it?

It sounds good, Kevin, until the the non-profit for cancer research or someone wants to come and use your field, and then you're like, oh well, I can't do that to them because it's all non-profit, it's all for donation, it's all in front from my perspective, it needs to be consistent.

Yes, you would think it's because there's the equal protection clause, we have to the 14th Amendment, it's just very clear.

Like a while back uh I filed a lawsuit against the city of Uh having different different fees for their landfill structure, and it resulted in a pretty significant settlement on behalf of my client.

And because it's just a plain vanilla equal protection, it's got to be consistent.

And so to Adam's point, really what we try to do this year is we've kind of gone through and we redid our contracts.

We we did a lot of research on why is this person being charged or this group being charged?

This person wasn't being charged, or it was a different rate.

What we're trying to do now is speed that up and keep everybody, everything consistent, everybody pays the same, and just try to keep it even killed as possible.

And we have a lot some more work to do, but we're close to getting just to be the consistency of what should be there.

Do we still have city employees free?

Say that again, I'm sorry.

City employees are they still free for what?

For the regulator center.

Oh, it's in their field.

It's in their contract.

No, yeah, but I but we're talking fees, so I didn't know.

Yeah, they want to come using the recenter, that's part of their bargaining contact.

So and that's what I'm just saying.

Okay, so there's nothing.

This pertains more to like just the labor material for fields, whether it's soccer field, baseball field, or whatever that may be.

So you mentioned local baseball teams.

Okay.

You're having trouble charging them this rate.

Am I having trouble charging them?

No.

Do we charge them?

Yes, and some we don't.

That's where the consistent inconsistency came around.

So we're trying to.

Why would why would we charge a local baseball team that's here in town for the field and not charge somebody from out of town?

I don't see the I don't see the issue.

It's a great question, isn't it?

That's we're we're fixing that.

Okay.

Me and Randy have this wrestling match over staff over security issue.

Because like I want to, like, I've said, okay, well, if it's this many people, it deserves a cop.

Regardless of what they're doing, or whether it's local or non-local.

Well, and then there's but there's content involved, right?

With police work, right?

Like Randy's like, well, if it's six-year-old girls' soccer, right?

There's a thousand bombs over there with six-year-old girls' soccer.

It's a lot different.

Then I would do football.

So we've had a tribe, you've gone back and forth about consistently.

I'm usually right, by the way.

Not really ever.

I think I'd rather do the pylon football than the six-year-old.

Really, at the end of the day, all we're trying to do is be consistent across the board, treat everybody the same, and we have a little bit of work to do, but that's the goal.

We've seen a lot of inconsistencies of charging this and not charging this, and then like I think Tracy said it, the nonprofit comes in and all of a sudden everybody's a nonprofit, right?

And it's like, where do you stop?

And so we're just working on the progress to be consistent with every organization that comes in, so there's really no gray area.

If it's very little, even if it's nonprofit, if they're making it.

If you're if you're making you're charging them for what the city's actually paying to put into it, personnel and time.

Time over too.

I don't even think a nonprofit would be playing about.

We have the same problem with special event permits because you you run into the exact same thing, like, oh well, I'm doing this for charity, and so I don't want to pay.

And then who makes that decision?

And who makes that decision?

And so there's there really has to be a criteria.

If there's a chop off for like whatever, we need to have like a like a hard line, right?

Like so that we can say that's what we can fall back and say, no, they fit the they fit the criteria for a donate for a free spot from the city.

But we need hard line, I think.

Correct.

Correct.

That we're not right.

Yes.

He inherited them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, he helped create them.

He's been here forever.

I'm sure there are some deals that they're expecting the same deal.

Well, and and you know, a lot of those conversations, unfortunately, I've had to have some of those.

Yeah.

And I'm a little bit more on the business mindset of their medical.

Look, it's just I'm just trying to pay for time and material and not lose money.

That's really all I care about.

I'm not here to make a bunch of money, but I have to pay for profit.

And I'm also going to do the right thing.

Well, you you can make me the bad guy anytime too.

I do.

The attorney says we've got and I hope everybody understands that.

We're not we're not trying to make a bunch of money, but we're just really trying to pay for time or material and stay above above the board per se.

Above board.

Above boards.

Is the keyboard.

And you know, we have a little more homework to do, but we're pretty close.

I've talked to Becca about this over a few months, and uh we're on agreement, so we're just trying to get to that level playing field for everybody and and potentially you know get some revenue that we have not gotten because of those deals.

Yes.

Yes.

Fables.

Yeah.

Okay.

So are you saying on this the facility rentals where it says the nonprofit organizations right here currently it's zero?

So you would add them to one of these on the other page, that would be $300 per field, or six hours would be $250.

So you're just gonna take these things and yeah, if that's what's approved, then yes, that's what I'd like to do because I learned that nonprofit isn't necessary, not always nonprofit.

Exactly right.

And and you know, they're they have to run the organization, so they've got to get money somewhere.

Yeah, all we're saying is let's just pay for our time of material.

I I am not it.

It's a deficit that is increasing if honest.

And you know, like I said, we're not here to make a bunch of money off the fees, but we have to at least pay for it and maybe make a touch out of sports fist uh teams that come into town.

Yeah, and I think we've we've lost that opportunity too to make some money when we give it away, and that goes back to impact fees haven't been updated.

Taxes haven't been increased for so many years, and we've missed all those opportunities that we need to start someplace.

And really, back to Adam's point, I just want to be consistent.

That's all I care about.

I want whatever that fee is or whatever that structure is, I want to treat everybody across the board fair and the same.

So there's no these backdoor deals going on or whatever.

I don't really like it.

Yep.

And so that's what we're trying to uh change.

I think it's I think the other thing is everybody knows what the fee is.

You can't be calling, you can't be able to do it.

My friend, I can make it.

They know what I don't do that.

Yeah.

Anyway, the second bottle of water.

I know you are.

So anyway, that's kind of what the what we're trying to accomplish uh in the fee structure, and I do have some other material that I talk to Becca about.

Um to me it's fairly simple, but sometimes it's a little hard to get it.

I know I'll enter the next morning.

Do you want to talk about the rec center fees?

Yeah, so Red Center fees uh I did put in the packet and we did a fee increment analysis with Washington, Boulder City, and a few other entities that do recreation fees.

We did a projection of an increase uh for a one-year increase and a three-year increase.

Uh really, and that's just to help run up the rec center.

Uh we're well behind Washington County, well behind Boulder City, probably 50% lower than any other recenter that is being served currently.

Uh the hard part for us is every time we open the rec center, we have roughly 800 people that come to the recenter every single day.

And how do you keep that up when the revenue is not there?

And then we have to pull out of the general fund, and I have to go back and say, hey, I need more money here, or I'm not paying my staff enough.

Uh you guys have heard it counsel that the lifeguard issue.

I can't even staff our pool because we're not paying enough.

Well, if I don't keep up with just the basic fees with other entities, how do we open the door?

And and there again, uh we're not even trying to match what Boulder City or Washington says, but we are trying to slowly progress to get to that, and it's like 40 bucks a year for family pass we're trying to increase.

You know, that could be a family of three or eight, you know, it just depends.

And so there's not a huge increase, but it's uh we have to do something uh to keep the lights on, and that's kind of where we're at.

One thing um comes to mind just my experience on the water district, your experience on the water district, it's a slow and steady increase, and everybody gets used to it.

It's fine, right?

It's the big jumps is when everybody's there at the meeting and city stuff.

We can do this.

It just and then like water this was so financially stable.

Well, small increases, but it's over a period of time, and so I rip the band aid off.

Well, you're gonna have to do some of that, but then for the long term, right?

Well, so we did a projection that I gave Becca this.

I think you guys may have this.

We did a one-year uh projection and a three-year, you know.

I don't I'm not a big fan of having to come back every year and try to grovel for another increase.

But if we can do some smaller increases over a three-year period, it will get you to where you're a little bit closer to where you should be versus that band-aid off uh, you know, explanation.

But what do you talk about, Randy?

Like an entry fee of three dollars going to five five or something or four.

Yeah, basically, it's not much, but it does help us quite a bit just financially over the year.

It's 40 bucks for like a family pass versus you know, even at that, Washington and Boulder City is about 250 dollars more a year than what we are only asking for a 40 increase.

And so it's there again, small small at a time, but we have to get somewhere, or the deficit's gonna continue to grow.

I don't like to raise them any more than anybody because you know I'd be taxes as well.

If you're if your annual increase for your employees is approximately five percent, five to seven percent with co-less and everything, then your fees should be going up the same because you're paying that much more every year for the people being there, just to cover cost.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

I understand government is not like a business, but if you're not charging enough to break even your trouble, I think you're not doing business the the right way.

I don't I don't think, but you know what we've been in business for 35 years.

I I guess that's my mentality, but I mean, what's wrong with breaking anybody?

I agree.

Okay, well then let's break even.

I mean, do what we need to do to break even.

I mean, and maybe you don't you know what your costs are every year, yeah, you know, divided by 800 people or 800 memberships, and that's what your membership rate is.

I mean that it's simple math, isn't it?

Should get a response fee.

Do you know the gun with your ambulances right now?

I know, but you know what?

Sorry from January to June.

How many people do you think have come through the Red Center?

I'm gonna say probably 65 or 70,000.

Close.

106,000 people.

So in six months.

So my point is that is there's a lot of people that travel a few there, yeah.

And if we would just keep up that expense and at least be able to maintain it to a to a good standard, that's all we're asking.

That's right, and do it.

Do it.

Has the rec center been affected?

Because the um, and this is not take away from employees because I do think employees should, but they didn't always used to get that for free, and then they started getting it for free as employees and then family members and stuff.

Has that affected this a lot?

I would have to go back to see what the rate of how many free passes actually come to the rec center.

Okay.

I would say it's probably not that many.

I don't know.

You're probably talking, I bet it's less than 20 percent.

Now summertime when the pool's open, that may change a little bit, but through the years when school starts, I bet it's very little.

Goodness, good.

That seems better if that's good.

Good.

And that's a financial component too, because if that's something that we can negotiate with the with the different bargaining units, you know, right?

That that plays a benefit to the city.

Yeah, and it doesn't have a huge impact on the recenter.

I mean, the biggest part would be the pool for the summer.

But when kids are in school and stuff like that, they have all these youth leagues that are joining and stuff like that.

Now we do have youth leagues we run through the rec center that do compile through that program.

Uh I don't know what that percentage would be, but there is a there's a value to that as well.

Which and they don't get it for free, they just get a little discount.

Yeah, and they have to sign up for the program whenever's being uh you know given and whatnot.

So you don't want to take the mumper and just down all the girls.

Well, yeah, so people that will hear from the summers or the winners or whatever.

So I think monthly's fine, but we just have to keep keep it up.

And like I say, we're of course she didn't have a new rate for monthly.

Well, yeah, yeah.

I'll have to look at that.

But I tried to put this together more or less just to try to get a little bit of revenue to cover cost, and and it's no different than the field fees, to be totally honest with you.

It's like we're giving some free, some not free.

We're just trying to keep it consistent.

When we looked at the study between Washington County and Boulder City, and we're easily 250 dollars uh difference uh per family.

I don't want to charge any family more than we have to, but at the same time, I have to pay for what we're trying to accomplish.

And that's really what it comes down to.

And you're dealing with employee rates going up as well.

Yeah, yeah.

And all this adds up within the budget and then all of it.

I think it's gonna impact the general fund.

I think that on Kevin, maybe on Kevin's point here.

We're probably heading into unless we started making some of these fees a little bit harder than we'll look at.

Me personally, I don't think I don't have a problem with this.

They increases, and I think it would be you know, you're cheap.

You know, you're I mean why NCA is a hundred bucks a month.

Yeah, join the work.

I mean that in a good way, because you're fun and cheap, but you're still cheap.

So we need to dance right now, or what do you want me to do?

I don't want to ask them bill.

But I think I think increasing those fees some of the other stuff we've talked about, or something we need to start looking at as a business aspect and not a governmental aspect anymore.

I think we've got to get rid of that small business mindset.

So I this gets complicated on different levels, right?

On providing public safety.

Um I can tell you our ambulance billing service is ran through the Center of Medicaid Services for what we bill for, and that they they'll pay us 30 cents on the dollar.

Good luck, that's what you're getting.

And that's coming from the federal government.

So it's hard for me to say we're gonna cover our cost when it comes to all the different scenarios, of course.

Different scenario, but I I think that's kind of to what we're talking about.

It's gonna need to come from all phases, whether it's our fees, whether it's for fire permit review, um, impact codes, taxes, economic development.

We're gonna need to hit this from all sides as a as leaders of the organization to get in front of this.

Because I can write a letter to Medicaid Medicare, who is 79% of the people that we transport in Mesquite are on Medicaid or Medicare.

Most of them are on Medicare.

Uh 68% of them are on Medicare, 11% Medicaid.

And no matter what I do, they're gonna give us the 30 cents on the dollar.

And then that so we want to cover our costs.

Different scenarios, but I think as we approach this as as a from all sides, athletic leader services, public safety, we're gonna need to try to work.

And I I think that's for the impact fees, that that's what makes the most sense for us for the new construction moving forward.

Um it is it's uh not a that's a big gap.

So that's a big gap.

Well, it is, I can tell you for calendar 25.

We billed out 4.8 million dollars and we collected 1.669 million on that.

That's a 34% collection rate.

Now that in business is a horrible statistic, right?

I wouldn't want to run in health care, and that's one of the things I don't see representative from Ace of you here.

34, 30 to 40 percent is is very normal for medical billing.

Um so yeah, just different components of this, but I I think where I can't change CMS, but maybe the impact fees or the taxes, what can we control here in the ski?

So what so billing the 2.4 and making I mean and receiving 1.3, what does it cost us for that?

Great.

So I I pay for ambulance billing real quick.

I we pay four and a quarter percent of what is collected to the billing company.

And we've done our you know, we differ we used to pay six and a half percent, we're now four and a quarter.

Um so that's what that's what it costs.

Right, and then we'll then we're talking wages and equipment use and well I've got a 7.8 million dollar budget, and I'm only bringing in with other grants.

I'm bringing in just over two million for the fire.

So I I we want to treat it like a business, it is important, but the fire department will never make eight million dollars.

Yeah, you've got government time.

So I just different context for different conversations.

I think everyone's on with that for standby.

I can sell some of our that is a big yeah to try to.

What Jason's saying is like some of this stuff is human rights that we can't we can't bill for.

Like I the me go joking about a response fee, like my guys will answer 100 plus calls every day.

If there was a fee for that, yeah, we'd do just fine, but we're never gonna do that.

We can't do that.

And so um Jason's in the same boat I am, we're required to provide that service, and the city's gonna have to get it.

I I got a really easy solution.

What's that?

25% of our calls are lift assist.

Does that mean the fire department?

I'm just I don't think this by any means.

But do we start billing?

We only bill right now if we transport, but if we go in and pick someone up off the ground, put them back into bed, we're not billing them.

Now, if it's getting abused to end of life, and they need to be in a nursing home or uh system living facility, that then I get involved, I go talk with uh health care, and we try to get a plan for them.

But over 25% of the fire department's 4500 calls are lift assist that we are not billing for.

Well, and that's and that's the same with fire.

That's a good thing when they're called on the freeway, and there's an accident.

So we are billing for the medical there, not on the but on the right, but not for right.

And so I know you and I have talked about this for so many years.

Yeah, and it's really unfortunate.

Sometimes it's an accident, and there's a fatality.

Do we bill them?

I mean, I mean, it's it's a service we're offering, and I think that's important.

Right, on the medical, but anyway.

I didn't mean to, Randy, just different context with athletic leader services and I think public safety, but just the same concept of some of these statements and different context of what we can work on the federal government and what we can't, and what what change what we can change here at this table and within our community?

How many?

I'm not gonna change what the White House is doing.

How many calls because that's interesting lift this living in some city?

I know they're always yeah, I that is a lot.

I hadn't really thought about you guys.

Don't charge for them coming that day.

Not if we don't transport.

Now we're getting going down the right, so most of the time are mechanical fault.

Sometimes my heart's given out, sometimes my brain's given out, and we transport, we we bill that patient.

If I've got a mechanical fall that I've tripped over the rug, or I just need help getting out of bed for the one time because I'm sick.

This is these are 1,200 calls a year.

Well, because there's a lot of times a day.

Don't a lot of those people say no, I don't want to be transported, so you've done all that that's it.

You've done all that work and yeah, yeah, so a lot different context.

Um tell them where your guys get hurt the most.

Lifting up the people right in different positions.

So again, where does that bridge of public service?

I pay taxes, I'm a citizen of mesquite.

I expect my fire department to come help lift me off the ground when I'm falling.

And I'm not talking about the abuse.

When we're when we're going repeatedly for a long time, I get involved or we start bailing.

But the normal service that we are providing is if you fall, we will come pick you up, right?

Um so just different context, and I think what Randy's talking about, but um there are some things that on the federal level that we are not gonna change.

That I think if we can change within our table within this organization, we're gonna need to look at it.

To your point, slow and steady.

So, based on that, what would be some of your suggestions or input on that?

How do we do that?

So, I I do think we start billing for fire response on the freeway.

We're up on the Mesa on a regular basis.

Now that there's a lot of uh weekly, there's a lot of uh politics to be played there, right?

With Clark County and what money they can or cannot uh bring in for us, and mutual aid.

If the if we have a major incident, Clark County Fire is gonna help us out if and when that big incident happens.

Um we're on the Mesa weekly.

Didn't Marilyn tell you to start charging more for something?

I mean, uh battery, that's the battery filled, the solar panels.

Okay, so um anyway.

Sorry to I just wanted to kind of bring different context.

Every department's a little bit different.

This has been interesting because we are seeing needs that we didn't know that uh yeah, five million dollars in the in the red, right?

And so um how does the fire department oh Korea?

You can drip right to it, yeah, charge them.

Interesting, but there's a lot of needs of medical stuff.

So again, I I had to keep me hitting this sort of what not get worse, but how what's the approach on that then?

So you do an agency assist with Beaver Dam, something like that.

We charge medical on anyone that goes a resident of Mesquite, non-resident Beaver Dam up on the Mesa for a rollover.

If we transport them in the back of our ambulance or use certain supplies because of the high acuity of the call, we will bill them, right?

But what about if you send a truck out, an engine out?

So we're that that's where we're not, and that's what uh councilwoman fielding has brought up for a very long time.

Of we need to be billing for these services.

So, what's the process in getting that started?

Meeting with Marilyn Kirkpatrick, Clark County Commissioner, uh and Mayor Whipple, and and Jesse, and and talking about those and and talking about those.

So we need to get her here instead of us going there.

Yeah, there are certainly things that are gonna take a long time to figure out if if you ever do, and maybe as you go through and figure them out, and you just are resigned that this is the way it's going to be.

And maybe as you go through and figure them out, you just are resigned that this is the way it's going to be.

But we've talked about a lot of things that we can do right now.

And maybe that's where our focus should be.

Not with first responders, but with something owned by the city that we can control costs.

Imp fees, rates, different things.

Those changes now, if we can get them in line and then just keep them going up slow and gradual in the future, are going to help.

The problem is they've been neglected so long that getting them up to where they need to be right now is going to be hard to swallow.

And it's probably a good time again with some um communications with the mayor and Patty and yourself last time with Marilyn about billing for bunker bill, didn't go too well.

And um so maybe it's it's time again that we have that conversation again without having her take anything away from other resources that certainly that she gives us.

I agree.

I I think I agree with the councilwoman walls or that's that's get going on what we can get going on, but also need to get me personally, you know, my background get going on your stuff too.

I think I think that's something because I know that we've talked about this also, Chief, and uh it's something that I think that needs to be addressed.

You know, and we've got any really good with um Marilyn.

Yeah, Maryland.

She's texting her right now, and so I think this is let's do what's new.

But also, I think this is something we need to work on.

It's easier to start with the low-hanging fruit and work up from there.

Well, like the cemetery fees when I was doing the cemetery sales years ago, it was 950 for the new cemetery, open close and 200 for the old cemetery.

I'm like, why are they different?

And it's the same manpower, right?

And it was just and that was for decades.

And so, and the cost for the plots.

I mean, some of that stuff just never got addressed over the years.

Isn't the mechanism that we use to change the the fees the pro of the biggest problem?

Because like if if if the city manager was able to say, look, that's not right and adjust those fees within reason, right?

With justifiable cause or whatever, it's like why does it have to become such a big deal?

Why do we have to wait on all these things when if we fix the mechanism, some of this stuff will take place behind the scenes and it just won't become an issue.

Nobody leave it'll just happen, and you know there's cost to doing business.

Yeah.

What is the what is the actual like it's some fees if they're right in an ordinance, then we have to amend the ordinance.

Other fees that it's not in the ordinances, and so manager can have more discretion for that's that's the low-hanging fruit proof.

Which is which is good.

It's really easy to do that then, as long as council's on board.

Because the public will come and you guys get much rather than much rather have the public come and get them my case about fees rather than STRs and pickleball courts.

One's gonna help their city, the other one isn't.

So the other two more.

So I mean low-hanging fruit.

So if that's something that's yeah, that's why we're having these conversations.

So when it does happen, you're in the know and you're prepared when it's on the case.

And we've got you on record though.

You can have it on record.

They all know most of them out there know how I feel.

So and there are some uh the one that you have separate, uh the police one that is separate.

This chapter three, that one will have to change because that these are in there.

Our animal shelter fees cost us money for way underneath of what I mean.

They I think the six dollar registration fee are the tags we buy, they get them cost more than six dollars.

So we can't we can't hemorrhage money just to be nice to everyone.

Well, the other thing.

If if you pay ten dollars for a tag and then you charge six dollars to give it to them, that's ridiculous.

We have people that just think it's hilarious that they come to register their pet and it's six dollars a year to register their pet, and everywhere else they're not you know, it's a couple hundred bucks or whatever, and so they'll register them here just and then take them back with them to come.

We only charge six dollars, and so yeah, there's I but I would love to be able to have um that be less of a headache for us to change.

If the reason it is the way it is, is because you have to amend the city code and fix it.

But if we have ordinances out there that are specific and we change the ordinance to say that that any future changes will go through the city manager, we only have to do it once, and that's that's what we should be focusing on.

If we're gonna invent the will once, do it, but you shouldn't have to come back every time you need to do it again.

So as we amend these ordinances, make sure they're done right.

Yeah, council.

We we've amended our ambulance fees probably five years ago, and we attach it to CPI, so they just raise with it.

That's right, and that's what we're talking about now.

If if your wages are going up five percent, then that fee should be going up five percent every year.

Yeah, that and that's break-even.

That's making nothing, probably still under in today's market of what inflation and what CPI is really at, but it at least is closing the gap.

And that's all the ordinance would have to say the direction of the city manager office and fee schedule adopted by the city manager.

You're gonna be busy, so we've talked about a little bit of existing structure, um, property tax, property tax.

We want to even if you max it out, it's such a small amount of worry about um franchise fee.

How do we I guess explain to me the franchise fee?

They have franchise.

Yeah, so um with the the trash collection, so that is with Virgin Valley disposal, and the percentage that uh we pay to them is per the agreement.

Um it's a certain percentage based off of the collection of those.

Um this also ties back in with the new landfill that we're looking at.

So right now, the sanitation fund is looking really good.

We have we did a study about four years ago, um, five years ago, on the rates that we're charging with the collection charges and things like that, and um we're looking really well, however, we'd like to be able to increase those so that we can start setting money aside for this new landfill, right?

Um there's ways that we can pay for the new landfill um that are unique to these type of situations, much like what we did with the sewer treatment plant when we upgraded that, they bonded for that, and they did a debt service charge, and the water district's done that.

Uh you know, you see that on these big large capital projects where you have a dedicated money source associated to being able to pay that bond back, but in answering your question here on that franchise fee and the collection fees with those, um even if we were able to increase those in a in a small manner, like what the water district's done one percent a year, you know, that's a that's an increase that's taking us to a location where we want to be.

And so that is something that we would we would definitely like to entertain, and whatever that number is, that's where we would do more homework and and figure out um if it's entertaining that often that's right now about the only way you can bond it, is if the debt service is going to be paid for by what you're building with the bond money.

And so when we did that, uh I believe our bond was not quite 10 million dollars back when they started, and the debt service charge on that, I believe is 12.

So that um goes directly to paying that bond our payment, which is about a million dollars a year, and I think that is I thought it was 29, but I think in the backup you said it's next year.

I think we that'll be paid off for the sewer.

So I use that as a reference, you know, that when we're looking at these, and I know the water districts have great success on applying those um bonding for these projects where they needed the service, and so that would be an awesome um way to go about that.

But it would also, if we increase that fee, because yeah, we're we talk to people every single day, and they're with our bill being combined, and they're like moving from other areas, and they're like it's that cheap.

Yeah, let me pay double.

So bonding for stuff like that is doable because your bond service can see you have the means to pay it back.

Right.

Where the city's going to run into problems is when you want new ball fields.

Correct.

Or you want to wait for it.

Or you want a new fire fire engine, or you want to put a few things together and get them all at once.

Because they're not going to bring you more money.

The cost of those ball fields, what you're going to get off of them, a year isn't going to pay the bond for the $30 million ball fields.

So until we figure out how to get enough money in there, these these big dollar items that we're looking at, but maybe the way you do it is bond.

Until you get enough in your reserves to show you can pay that debt service, you're never going to be able to do it.

And that's why raising all of this stuff and getting everything going up to get more money into the city is going to benefit you five or ten years from now.

Because then you're going to have the opportunity to be able to do that.

And you've got to start some time, and now's probably the best time to do that.

So we talked about sewer fee schedule and service fees.

So I think we're all on board with giving Becca the power to raise the fees that she can raise.

Just let us know what to do.

Just let us know.

So we can use her authority.

And then we want to say, oh, we told her to.

Do we want to put this on the agenda at some point in the near future?

Yeah, that's a meeting.

We would bring forward, like staff would bring forward.

So and other similar ordinances too.

Um grants.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Just I think I think we you know we should go after.

There is like there's a lot there.

There's a lot of dogs.

Yep.

Go after it.

We are George.

We haven't posted.

We do.

We have a grant writer position posted that closes.

George wants to fill that.

It's got time like that.

You know, I've had meetings for a while.

I've had meetings too with the RTC.

And they've got this.

I don't even know what it is for Southern Nevada, this big program going on.

They have some of the best grant writers in the country.

They I can't tell you how many million dollars they pull in in grants, federal grants every year.

I've asked them, would would you guys be open to having your grant writers help ours to learn how to do this and be as productive as them?

And the answer's always been absolutely yes.

Oh nice.

So there's there's places you can turn to to get help if you have the person in that position that I'm sure there's others that would help too.

Yeah.

But the key is getting someone in there and going out finding all these grants and starting.

If you're gonna get one out of a hundred and you can put 200 in a year, maybe you win two of them, you know.

Right.

If you're doing two a year, you're probably not getting any.

There is one.

Um I hate to go to the audience, but John was just telling me about one.

I have not read the email yet.

I'm so sorry.

That's a letter of interest has to go in this week.

So we'll go to council to be like, hey, can you know, do you approve us moving forward with this?

But I'd like to kind of if it's okay with you guys direction now to yes, we can put in a letter of interest.

If you're gonna get money for the city, that's a no-liner.

Most of those have to, you know, go after the money.

Perfect.

So last thing on this section, public and private partnership opportunities.

Um we've kind of talked about that off and on, so let's get past that.

Is there anything else as far as finance you want to add?

I don't think so, unless you guys think of other things to go after.

I have some fees.

I have the property taxes to see um what our schedule is like that we have to do that.

Um raising impact fees, we those are probably toilet council.

Yes, yeah, and there's business impact statements and there's a colour.

So we'll work on the impact fees and bring those to the city.

Yeah, exactly.

Are there any others that you want to add?

Um well, senior center.

Senior center.

Do we bring this in brings nothing in?

I know there's talk about bailing insurance for some of the senior center stuff.

Is that an option?

Or how close is it to break your name?

Zero.

But you guys get grants.

Is the grants not covered?

No, no, okay.

So you're 3500 350,000 in the hole in the senior center.

We transfer over 350 every year a year.

And then you get what 50 grand from you didn't know that the can't the county.

No.

This town is more than that.

Well, it's 50, oh I don't know.

For home balance and the different programs.

Okay, for home bail for the Rust B.

But that's what we're getting we were getting from Maryland.

That's bullshit.

Because we missed it.

Either way, you're a messenger.

Okay.

So maybe there's a way to get more grant funding through the county or the state.

Right.

We have a grant writer.

Attach that.

Because uh multiple times, and I know you've talked to her as well.

She says, tell me what you need.

But nobody's I don't know what's needed, and nobody's following up.

I think this is a great idea.

We're having meetings for talking about these things.

So a room tax will go with that.

So what do you charge for a meal?

Donation.

Are you kidding me?

We can't we cannot make people passionate.

Who says you can't?

Who says you can't?

Because of the grant.

Because of the grants for giving the money to cover.

And Marilyn Kirkpatrick gives us 30,000.

No, fifty.

She's giving us fifty.

Well, and that's and I know that it was something accepted, but she kind of knows that bunker bill goes to the senior center.

But we just need to charge for parking.

And if not, you can make the four dollars.

It takes silver right now.

They do everything.

They get free, right?

Well, part of it is education too.

Like if we like for the homebound deliveries, a lot of people, even where I live, don't necessarily pay.

Um I know.

Even though they can and a lot of people come in there, they have a suggested $4 donation.

But majority don't eat.

I understand.

They're going to.

Yeah, they are.

But that's where that's where they still get the money because correct me if I'm wrong, but everybody who's over 62 gets an amount paid by the state for that person.

Right.

But we have to account for it.

Yeah, it's all right.

We have to that's why they got to see how many people coming in there.

Yeah.

Right.

So they have they have to do that to get that grant for that person.

Either way, you're still going to be able to do that.

I get it.

Yeah.

We should look for ways to get money from our visitors, less from our residents.

How many meals do you fees?

Well, there's 300 homebound that go out every day.

And then how many actually are in the facility?

Another 300.

It varies.

No.

At 150.

Yeah, probably 100.

So a total of 450.

150 a day?

Roughly, yeah.

In the building?

With a suggested donation.

People.

You get 150 seniors that come in.

This time of year, probably a little bit closer to 100, but during the mainstream, you're probably going to worry.

They feed them next to it.

Yeah.

They drop off bills.

And a lot of these people that go there go there for social, it's not because they don't have money.

Correct.

Including the homebound.

There's a split there.

I think some duty is social, but there's a lot that you need that service.

So there's this is a 50-50, maybe.

Yeah.

So we definitely need to up that education though, to like going to Sun City and educate them, you know.

We we don't stay afloat.

So those meals that were delivered to you, and there's no donation.

Yeah, I mean it's a good thing.

You're delivering meals and they get cities a lot if they have and they get mills on Fridays to get them through the weekend.

You're right.

They get the frozen leftovers.

For the for the weekend.

So we're feeding them Saturday and Sunday.

Seven days a week.

You're 350.

Yeah.

That has to be.

No, it happened.

We need to change.

We would just need to be this might be discussed in the city.

So where's the line where it's doesn't make sense to have the grant?

Yeah.

How much is the grant?

50.

So that doesn't cover.

So is this something that should be on a regular city council meeting agenda so that we can have a real open discussion about it?

Yeah, we get a little more homework done.

I was gonna say, I think we need a little more.

Yeah, we can't take any action right now.

Talking about it.

Can't take any action.

So I think we can also start with talking to Marilyn and see if that 50 could be upped.

It's probably worse for home bail than for the congregate.

Over and above.

And then the Rust bit.

So we get so the ones that are going to Sun City that you were just talking about, you're actually that's for home bail.

I mean deliveries.

So you're actually getting money for that.

We get reimbursed for percentages.

Okay, so okay.

So it's not a good thing.

Overall, it's about $300,000 for the entire program, the facility, the employees.

So we just need to up that was my she would help.

So we just need to update that was my so here's here's my question because when I was volunteering at the senior center for Thanksgiving dinner, I was talking to Leora and Chrissy.

That what requirements to be homebound?

Because somebody had called and said, hey, I'm golfing tomorrow.

Oh, I won't be there to accept my food.

Exactly.

So how do home bow home bags?

And Chrissy and Layora's like, that's exactly and they canceled them.

Because like we're not there when you're more golfing.

Right.

I don't have to look at that.

I mean, I'm just curious.

What do you what are they doing?

There's gotta be because things like that, because they're out golfing.

I can't remember.

A lot of it is they literally is they some people literally, a lot of them pay nothing.

No, I understand that.

It's amazing.

That's something we can discuss.

Well, we need to fee we need to implement.

This needs to be dug into I don't still don't think it's right.

We're not a charity, like you were just because you're a nonprofit doesn't mean you're a charity.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And here's the other thing is the senior center.

There are too many people in there for that small senior center that it's been brought up several times.

That do we increase the senior center?

How do we make it bigger to fit more people?

It's like if we can't afford it now, I mean, if we're in the hall, how are we gonna make it bigger for these people who get free meals?

Yeah, there's services, there's services and rest fit and stuff.

Hey Kevin, we we we qualify, we could go to lunch.

You can't go to lunch for under $10.

You just cannot go to lunch for under $10.

I don't know.

I do know some people it's their only meal.

I understand those are good at them.

Yes, but there's inmates.

There's a lot of people.

You're gonna have to start checking for them.

But we do feed the inmates too.

Yes, you do.

Well, that's something we can dig into and give it back in and Martin can help out there a little bit.

I think you can just try to figure out best case scenario and what we can and can't do.

There's gonna be some that you know that's all they have.

That's all they're gonna get.

And so maybe we charge some and some we don't.

I don't know how that works, but let's put it down.

But I don't think you can.

If you're talking about the other thing, you're talking about fees and fees, and we gotta charge everybody across the board the same thing.

Then how are you gonna pick and choose?

I think that's let us dig into it a little bit and see what other communities do.

At least help offset that I'm thinking, Maryland.

It really doesn't mean well.

Let's move on.

I'm gonna skip 2.4.

We'll come back to that at 230.

230.

Let's go on to 2.5.

Martina, you got that?

Which is what?

2.5.

Be gentle we go.

Be prepared.

Be prepared on the almost quarter free.

There we go.

That's a top knock there.

So unless in the last five years, uh we've closed 23 transactions.

And so it's been uh it's been a mix of housing, commercial.

Um I've done, I think, four transactions with Overton Power and Virgin Valley Water District.

They bought some land from us when Crown was coming into town.

Um, and I ended up taking that over.

We quickly realized Overton Power and I that we didn't have enough power in town, so we sold them the two acres across the street so that they could put in a substation.

Um, and then the switch yard next to Sun City and the Virgin Valley Water District, they have um as you go up Falcon Ridge, you know, there's that building there on the left before you get to Sun City.

So they were that was an easement, and now they own that.

They own that parcel, and then they needed uh a boost or a Sun City booster.

So right next to where Adobe Mesa is, they bought an acre there to put in a booster for Sun City.

So the utilities have bought land from us as well.

Um then, as far as you know, just going forward, the I think the economic development the economic outlook, it remains positive.

I think the big thing that I see is the imbalance in this town because I've done real estate since 86, and I it just is so surprising to me that it's easy for six sixty somethings to move from Wyoming, come here, buy a house at $600,000, and there's so many subdivisions under construction, and some cities that not even half done, it's gonna be 6,000 houses.

But it's so imbalanced.

I mean, we don't have enough apartments, we don't have enough condos, we don't have enough affordable housing, so it's this constant catch 22.

So for instance, the Smiths, everybody knows now, it's gonna be a marketplace, it's gonna be probably 100,000 square feet, which is double the current size.

They're gonna keep both stores, and there's gonna be other pads there in that shopping center in that 18 acres.

So I mean, you know, what is a brand new marketplace Smith?

75 employees, 100 employees.

So, okay, we're bringing in a new grocery store, but where are they gonna live?

And so it's this constant catch 22.

You know, as I'm watching our town grow over the last 15 years, you know, we need new businesses, but then we need employees, and then we need housing, and it's just this constant evolving of trying to diversify from only being a retirement area, you know, for anyone that wants to move here that can easily build a brand new house in any of these subdivisions, Val Vista, you know, all these different subdivisions going in, Sun City, but that's not so it's just it's a constant challenge.

If the city doesn't get apartment complexes in here that are reasonably priced, and there are some we have here that aren't.

My son lived in a studio apartment across from Maverick.

I think it's 540 square feet.

And when he moved out, they were charging him just over 1400 a month.

They went up 1650.

So if you're gonna do apartments like that, you're not helping the situation at all.

Right.

But if we can get some apartments in here where people can rent a one-bedroom for uh 800 and a thousand for two and twelve hundred for three, or whatever, or some something like that that's reasonable, then you have a place to bring employees in for these new businesses.

Otherwise, every time you bring in a new company, you're just gonna take workers away from other businesses because they pay more.

That happened with Crown, it'll happen, it will happen with every business comes in here unless you have a place for people to move here and live.

And right now the city doesn't.

And what they do have to charge $1,500 for 540 square feet, ought to be a you ought to be arresting somebody there.

That's that should be a legal.

Well, the the market will dictate that, right?

So the problem is, but the only reason it does is because there's no competition.

Right, because there's nothing.

Put in a couple of big apartment complexes and all the rates will drop.

You think these they'd be coming up?

Anybody listen to be like, well, if it if I can charge it, the council approves these apartment complexes, and then they don't have no why we need to figure out why.

If the market is that expensive, because half the time they're coming in expecting money from elsewhere, and it doesn't come through.

It's not the impact fees.

But usually it's a financial.

Exactly.

They have these big plans, they sell us on this big thing, and then they don't get the funding.

So the push is okay.

We need so there's another retail store.

I can't say what, I'm so sorry.

But the same site selector, hint hint that was uh looking at the 10 acres that the Kramers ended up getting.

That guy moved over, and now behind the new bank in Nevada on that 10 acres.

So there's a retail store kind of.

So that's about 50,000 square feet.

So is that the one off of wastes?

Yes, yeah, it's western West Calinas.

I'm only allowed to say it's a retail store.

That's all I can say.

So this is this right here goes back to what to be.

Paul was just saying we bring these in.

You know, I I don't have a rental problem because I my three bedroom houses are renting for 1500 a month.

Yeah, so I mean they fill up that thing.

So we've got to bring, we've got to try to go up there and try to find something.

So we're gonna have two big things coming in, big.

And the one behind Oasis wants to break ground this fall, and there's gonna be other pads on there as well.

And I mean, between the two shopping centers, you know, what a couple hundred employees.

Yeah, but I think to Paul and Bill's point.

Yeah, you can bring in all the businesses right.

That's right here to work in it.

That's why I said it's a catch 22 here.

It's but I think we need to focus on housing.

Okay, the business owners.

We have switchpoint, is that the name over here on the corner of Old Mill and so switch point?

So that's there you go.

I mean, that land is the first out.

That was perfect.

And so has anyone ever thought or has it ever been done anywhere where a city that was in the same position as us?

The city went out and built an 800 unit apartment complex and managed it themselves, and the rent went back to the city to pay the bond.

If we had a housing authority, we don't know exactly what we would do.

So that's the same thing.

I think we have looked at that a long time.

Well, that was something maybe it should be revisited.

That's something that the rising star had approached the city several years ago about having the city buy the rights and start and intend.

And then lease in it at free markets.

Council back then years ago said, you know, we're not in the leasing business.

Yeah.

That's right.

You know, and for 21 million, you could get the whole acre, 21 acres with the hotel and the barn.

The city was not in any position to pay land.

21,953,000.

26 cents.

And 26 cents wasn't.

So this is what I was talking about, and the stuff that I typed up is that you know, people are like, we want another grocery store, we want two more grocery stores, we want this, we want that.

But the people moving into like where I live, I think I'm the only one working in there in Sun City.

You know, I wave in the morning as I leave.

Oh, you do.

You do too, that's right.

But I mean, it's they don't contribute to the workforce.

So it's like, you know, we have a lot of retired people moving in and they're not contributing.

And all of the young people, as we talked earlier, are moving out.

Yeah.

Well, even Crown's got gobs of their folks that are coming in from Vegas and St.

George and stuff.

So the hospital.

23% of the hospital's employees go from St.

George.

That's the casinos.

And the Casablanca buses are theirs up every day.

And then do a best said they want to increase 40 employees, they're gonna grow.

So, you know, there's another 40.

There's 200 between those two shopping centers.

Those are more employees coming in.

Housing sounds like it's the issue.

So maybe that's what we need to focus on.

Housing for affordable houses.

But that's nothing.

If the city could control that, and they can make just enough to cover their debt service.

I mean, look at all I lived in Palm Desert, and I sold Sun City there actually in Palm Desert, and two other subdivisions.

I drive around there, and that's what it looks like subdivision, subdivision, subdivisions.

But they're all you know, 400, 500, 600.

That's all we need.

We definitely need housing.

Okay.

That's gonna be a good thing.

Are the are the business owners saying, hey, Ruby's not coming because there's no there's no workplace.

I mean, if we've got bigger things coming in, they've got to do it.

The people who are actually spending the money think it's gonna work.

Well, my first meeting with Crown with the plant manager, he goes, where the heck am I gonna find all the employees?

That was his first comment to me.

So that'll be the first comment from everybody in the move.

It's like the guy who wanted to build Mickey Mouse World.

He was gonna have some.

He was gonna build a lottery in from the ocean.

He was gonna build 400, 400 housing units for his employees.

Bangley's gonna hire a thousand employees.

And every time we bring in 200 here or 200, we just exacerbate the situation we're in right now.

You've got to do that.

And it gets worse.

So we've got the grocery store some housing available.

Whether the city does it or you housing.

You get a hold of a big developer that's willing to come in and do it.

The city takes ownership and figures out a way to make it happen.

But if we're gonna bring business in here, the people who are gonna work have to have a place to live, especially when they're first starting out.

They don't want to buy a $600,000 home if they don't even know they're gonna like the job.

Yeah, they want to rent somewhere.

Um so one thing is Bill Brewer's coming out, and that's somebody we can talk to.

Another thing I've been thinking about is maybe we should start a committee, a housing committee to start working on reaching out to regular.

We talk about this and then we kind of move on and talk about the buttons.

This is fluid.

You almost have to with everything that's here and everything that this city's doing and all the projects these people are working on.

No one person can focus on it.

There needs to be a group or a person that's that's what they're doing.

Yeah, so we can continue to do the other things we have to do, or if we had our employees can't do it.

I think so.

I mean it's NRS 315 is the housing authority.

So you don't have to do that.

We have to do that when we get to 25,000, we have to have a housing authority.

NRS 315.

You guys deal with housing so often in this issue, like it feels like every council meeting I'm in and listening to the same same spin, right?

It's like the housing authority just makes sense.

It's like I'm talking to a brick wall every time we bring it up.

And that was a boom.

I'm gonna start turning around and talk into the window.

Well, and then every single time on it.

And then the council knows I'm working on something big, I you know, we can't say what, but that 50%.

Be careful on your NDAs, we don't want you to be doing anything outside.

An acreage, you know, out by the that's all I'm gonna say.

That's all you need to do.

That's all I'm gonna say.

The acreage outside we know out of exit 112, which would require employees.

More people, say every one of these things are going to request more people.

So I can keep driving the economic development and bringing things in, but there's nowhere for them.

We need to have a vote to create a committee, or can I just create a committee?

Uh I'd have to look at that.

You can think you can think you can appoint me.

I was gonna say you could probably start one.

All right, we're gonna start a housing committee.

All of you send me a name.

I will be able to do that.

Any volunteers out there?

Yeah, right here.

Yeah.

Not you, not you, Dominic.

Put your hand there.

So you want if you want housing brought in here at a cheap price, talk to me about it.

I know a contractor will do with a little house in the city.

So where's he been?

We need him now.

Where would I be?

No, where's he been?

Your housing authority.

I think you guys made him mad the last time we were visiting the he wasn't the Australian guy, right?

No, I don't think we made him happy.

He was gonna bring you something.

So yeah, so let's start that if I need to bring it to council out and all the time.

So here's a good example of what an outsider sees when they come here.

Like the guy Trevor for the the Smoky Lane apartment, 70 apartments.

I got a random call one day because my name's on the website now, my my cell number.

So I get called I get calls all day long.

So he he's a I'm a Prescott, I'm gonna fly out there on my plane, and I want to look at the area.

Does it need apartments?

And I said, Oh heck, yes.

So I picked him up at the airport, I drove them around town for three hours.

You're right.

This town is completely unbalanced.

There's no multi-family here.

And so the poor guy, you know, he came up with those 70 apartments for Smoky Lane, then his partner passed away.

Uh so now he's gonna work with the guy with Lenore properties, and somehow those guys are coming together, so that's gonna happen.

But from an outsider looking in and driving around town, you could tell just driving around in three hours, he goes, You're right.

There's there's no multifamily here.

I think the people who've lived there just driving around and seeing the lack when your median age gets somewhere north of 60.

You've got an invalid.

Exactly.

So I have a question that I just thought of.

So the gentleman across from City Hall that had that mixed use, and he didn't do the other one because he had to do commercial on the bottom, apartments on top.

What if we said if you can do affordable housing in there, affordable apartments?

You can do the whole thing apartments.

Because you wanted, didn't he come back and ask for a whole lot?

But the whole the whole premise was that park was supposed to be like a town square, and for everybody.

If if you put down if you take the businesses out of there and just put all retail, all homes homes in there, it's gonna look like a park for the community, not for the city.

Not for the community.

And it was it was supposed to be for the city, and there's the amphitheater that's in there.

Nothing's nothing's going on with it.

And they got mad there.

Take the businesses out of there, which they can't fill.

Right.

And you lose you lose what it was supposed to be.

So one thing one of the issues I deal with, you know, how many how many developers did you look at for that 15 acres next to the shop?

In fact, one of you goes, another one?

You're showing us another one?

I think probably eight different entries.

Sometimes we were looking at two in the same meeting.

So there were there's been a lot of different entities that showed like smaller homes or tiny homes or whatever, all sorts of different uh things that were not necessarily single family homes, but a lot of times the public is like we don't want those apartments next to us.

So that's part of you know the the challenge that we've had and putting some multi-family in town, like where, where are they gonna go?

That has to stop them.

But that's what a housing authority, if you had one would be good because the city has enough land, you could pick the parcel where you built that big apartment complex and have as little impact to other homes in the city as possible.

So private person comes in, they're just gonna be trying to stick it wherever it fits.

So that vacant land over there at Heritage Park there, they did come to City Council and we turned it down because we said this is what you said you're gonna do.

It needs to be consistent with the other building.

Somebody wise told me that why don't we do single family and then take away the contracts we have regarding the bathrooms and the streets that we maintain over there and and make it so it's a win.

We get the housing.

But we already took a lot of that out when they when they changed the first time they made the change was took buildings out.

And we got the landscaper and all that taken out at that time.

We did Randy?

No hard.

No, we still take care of the parking lot.

You don't have to have a bar.

We don't have to have a full-time person there.

We still maintain the facility, though.

But it's not a full-time person like they wanted to be able to do.

Right.

So I mean, and matter of fact, it was Randy who brought that up.

We had that discussion months ago about make it worth our while and let him do it.

Because if we need the housing.

Well, really, but you know, the way that I see that, we had a conversation months ago, and it's like when they came to council, it's like, you know, you agreed to put shopping or stores.

How many stores are vacant now?

All of them.

A lot of them.

So we want more, we're gonna make them do more.

To their point, and I talked to those a little bit because I helped with that project.

I was simply asking the question would you guys be interested if they allowed you to do all apartments on there for whatever that looked like to take that landscape contract and bathrooms or whatever that is back over if they allowed that not to have the commercial building there and just do apartments that are more affordable.

That was when they gifted us the park.

Yeah, it's gonna be.

We owe the land to begin with.

We did it to them, then they did it back.

But it but it is it is the idea to get more apartments in the downtown district to maybe revisit that even come back to the table.

Right.

It'd be perfect.

I mean, why not ask?

Because businesses aren't.

And that I think especially if you're gonna be able to do that.

Well, you're gonna be talking to Tresset Harding, I think.

So you want to talk to you needing affordable housing.

If they would do affordable permits, but they're not really affordable.

I mean, they're nice price.

It feels like anywhere you guys want to put it.

Well, that's the thing.

But there's no houses right there.

It's it's gonna be if you want to I mean if this whole town square is gonna be that whole next block.

It's perfect location.

Just the new can't remember there you go.

They want to make money though, because that's why the price per square foot went up, and that's why some of the people didn't lease some of the retail space below, right?

It's but then again, if you're a kid, this argument has been going on for years about affordable housing.

People have no place to rent.

They you know, all these businesses want to move in, but yet we don't have employees to run the businesses.

Right.

At what point is the city gonna step up and say, you know what, we're gonna not let commercial not make you put commercial there, we're gonna bite the bullet and let you put affordable housing, apartments, or whatever that case may be.

It doesn't do any good if you can spin that wheel for 10 years or whatever.

Totally agree.

Unless you choose to try to figure it out.

And I don't know what the answer is.

You know, the term may be the problem a lot of times because you say affordable housing, and then workforce housing.

People think of subsidized or just whatever bad, right?

Yeah, they think of I don't know.

Just they think ghetto.

Um maybe we need to come up with uh a definition or categories of what housing kind of.

It's on the website.

I've actually put it on the website.

What is it working for?

The way you talk about it.

It's like this is no, you the definition of what we're discussing is this one.

Because I think that is always the problem is everybody's like, well, I don't want that next to me.

Right.

It's just like employee houses.

The units that they're getting the tax credits across from my house.

Yeah.

Next to hospital.

Oh, the senior isn't supposed to be seniors.

Everyone was up in arms about it.

But it's 55 plus, it's it is affordable.

Something's needed in the city, they agreed to lower it and not put in the high rights, and the people bought into it.

And you don't even want to come back and ask for an extension, there wasn't anyone there pushing against it anymore.

Everybody's come to the realization that it's not going to be what they hear that it wasn't a affordable housing, and they think you're gonna get a whole bunch of trash in there.

I'm trying to tell developers call it workhorse housing, call it call it something else.

Low cost, whatever you want to call it.

I don't know.

But maybe they're using low cost.

Yeah, some kind of definition that says, yeah, we're talking about workforce housing, and this is the definition of workforce housing.

And anytime we you know, like make that part of your packet or whatever each time or whatever, so that people.

Oh, I've tried to tell developers don't call it that.

Don't call it I don't know.