All right, it's 446, and I'll call the public safety committee meeting to order if the clerk would call the role, please.

Older Schaefer.

Here.

Older Warton Weiler.

Here.

Older vocally.

An older motion.

Here.

Okay.

Three are present.

We have quorum.

Any corrections of the minutes from July 13th, 2026.

Hearing none, they'll stand as presented.

Moving on to C1 discussion regarding 2027 special events fees and structure.

This is administrator Rindy, and so kind of had been preparing.

So wanted to recirculate that also with new committee members as well, giving some history and context to what's been kind of in place.

So I did include a memo that also included the last time that this was kind of really discussed or dove into was back in the fall or late summer of 2023.

So kind of hitting that three year mark, the the new rates that were agreed upon at that point then became effective in January 1 of 2024.

Currently, the fee structure is kind of based off of if it's a one-day event or a mul versus multi-day, as well as if it includes alcohol or not, and then also a factor of street closures and kind of the number just a general concept of number of hours of staff time, and it uses the eight hours or more as kind of the parameter.

This fee structure, I think has been in place really.

This kind of dividing structure has been in place, I believe, since around 2018.

Um prior to me coming into place.

Of there was a lot of focus on kind of the running events and parades, and what was agreed upon at that point was if there was a use of a preferred route or approved preferred route by the Monroe PD of having kind of typically evaluating less street closures and less officers having to be in place, that it would be a lesser fee than if it was a bigger impact route.

So I also just kind of tried to re-evaluate comparables.

It is really hard as there are it really depends kind of on the communities.

And I think even if you maybe look at say another around 10,000 population community, it probably also depends on what they kind of host for special events or not.

We are an area that hosts some bigger special events, especially with our main street concerts and specifically Cheese Days.

Um, versus I when I also looked at some other comparable communities, you could see that they maybe had a simpler fee structure and permit.

Um, but many of the events seem to be specific to say like their parks and in that area.

So if you would think if we weren't using our downtown as our kind of special event location and twining, was the the impacts and in that nature would be a lot different.

And so that's where it adds kind of a different level of uniqueness.

Um comparable included even nuglerus is smaller, but also does a lot of events larger than us, is lacrosse, um, but I think also holds some kind of comparable events with their Oktoberfest annually, and they actually hold a pretty similar kind of breakdown with us.

Um to summarize, I guess there's the the difference, and we had a lot of this discussion at the last um meeting or back in 2023 when we dove into this was do we want to charge like per equipment that's requested per hours of staff that are there or keep kind of the same structure.

Um at that time it was really recommended to stay with the the same structure that we have.

There was some hesitation and reservations about trying to charge um per fee per hour for say every officer that's working overtime because one the the current chief at that time also cautioned that then you get some critiquing from the people hosting the special event of do you really need four officers versus two and trying to dictate that so it because it would obviously have an impact.

It also does really change the cost of what these events would result in.

And we're trying to balance of encouraging and because obviously there's benefits and and a desire to have these events and not wanting to discourage them by it being too expensive as well.

So I wanted to kind of just bring this forward for one, just kind of reminding of what our current structure is, allow for questions, maybe thoughts, and see if there is any desire to re-evaluate our structure or consider any increases at this point.

Um I also cautioned or hesitated a little bit as we obviously have a brand new chief who is just kind of getting acclimated and not wanting to maybe put too much pressure on the this change in structure or things right away, but also I guess thought it'd be at least a time to bring the discussion and maybe we revisit going into next year or start to evaluate things a little differently to prepare for different conversations.

So I'll maybe pause there and let you guys ask questions or guide me.

I have a question.

Yep.

Go ahead, Dave.

Have we uh we received any resistance on our fee schedule?

Yeah, when we did make the increases even um, so outside of the changing of the parade route um and difference when we did have the we did also do just some general overall fee increases or rate increases too.

Um and there were some, I believe Nick received some kind of gripes or yeah, there's your typical gripes of things going up, or the biggest thing is we're nonprofits, so now it's cutting into our nonprofit fundraising, and you know that was probably our biggest gripe, I would say.

And it is a little challenging as when you even think about it too.

It's this balance of a lot of the events are through Main Street or and we also support Main Street, and so if we increase their their rates, are they gonna say, well, now we need more money to be able to do what we do?

Um so there's that tipping point too.

Feels like we've talked about this since 2023, but 2023 was the official when we made the changes.

Yeah, correct.

I think there have been a couple events that we kind of some of this discussion came up, but correct.

Yeah, yeah.

I think at certain times with certain event approvals, there's kind of questions of what kind of cost impact does this have, and in that nature that for sure.

Are our events from city taxpayers?

Sorry, you cut out a little bit.

I didn't quite capture the whole question.

Can you I'm curious as to if requests are from city taxpayers to have if the request from the city taxpayers to have special events?

Yes, mainly.

Um I I'm almost leaning towards keeping it minimal.