I'm not going to put it on the founders.

Plus, you know, you get a little bit.

And they're respects for that.

Yeah.

Like, okay, can't do this project.

Guess what?

So reminding myself.

Well, it's a science.

There he is.

There's a man.

Which ones are the easiest?

There's the man of that.

Right there, cancel.

This one's gonna be over.

All right.

Um's not gonna be here.

So all right, are we ready?

Okay.

All right, everybody.

Welcome to the city council conference for Tuesday, July 14th, 2026.

We have one item on the agenda, and it's continued discussion regarding the Lindsay Street water tower, and we have our utilities director and staff here to lead us in that discussion.

Thank you, Marion Council.

Uh Ken Gianoni came with us today.

Nathan's on vacation for two weeks, so he stepped up, it's gonna help me make sure to do the slides.

Um well, we had an awkward thing today.

I I thought of scenario A, B, C, what was gonna come in on the bids today when we opened them at two o'clock?

Well, we were sitting in there waiting for someone to show up, and we had no one show up for bids.

So for some reason, we scared off our bidders.

So we were like, oh no, what are we gonna do now?

So we've uh spoken to legal, and we need to it'll make us have to rebid it 21 days by rule if we go that path.

But we got some other thoughts too to go with that.

But we'll kind of show you from last week.

I'll I'll go with my slides here, but so we'll go over the bid.

No one showed up, kind of a path forward, kind of some ideas of what we have, and then the cost estimate of what we think it'll cost.

Still a guess, but the engineer weighed in after talking with different construction groups, and this is his best numbers.

So uh again, no bids received.

Um anticipate, we thought at this time of year, usually people don't want you painting tanks because they need them for peak season, summertime season.

But actually, some of the guys called back and said, actually, we're very busy.

We had like five bids, and in honesty, your bid had eight scenarios of what you might paint, and we had done that purpose because we thought we might pare it down and do part of it or try to make stuff that happened on cheap.

Um but he said that that was a negative.

So they had these other tanks where they painted the full thing, and this one was a partial and didn't know what where it was going.

So he said that worked against you, and he he put it at the bottom of his pile and ended up not bidding, and that was kind of the sentiment of uh the other two he heard from three of them today.

Um then the other thing is they did say they like bidding commercial, you know, with municipalities.

We have a lot of rules, regulations, bonds, so they just kind of threw that out also that they like bidding private jobs and commercial jobs better than they like bidding for us, but we always hear that.

Um so but what we're thinking is we re-bid it and we take out all the scenarios and just make it simple.

Um, don't really even advertise of uh maybe another group coming in and offering something on there.

I know we've talked, you know, still in our minds demo is an option, and I know Mayor, you don't love that one, and I get it.

Or the other option is to go on and instead of letting it sit there and rust and catching a lot of negative feedback that we're letting our utilities look bad, you know, out there on Lindsay Street.

We're proposing maybe we just paint it and just kind of put it on the mothball white, and the bid be really simple.

We'll we'll go on and get demo price because we need that to know what the NUA would need to contribute to someone else if it comes along how we're gonna do something else, but also the painting, just make it a two-coat system, give us a white paint job, and and let's be done for a minute.

And that way the asset is protected until we decide something we're gonna do with it in the future, or you know, just puts it on hole, keeps it safe.

I mean, we're asking for guidance here, but that's Ken and I were talking, just thinking.

Um, and no logos or anything, just keep it cheap.

And and so, and then that's where he came in with the uh the pricing on that.

He said about 400,000 is what he thinks the demo was.

The last time we bid it, it was like 320, 315 somewhere in there.

So we thought we were on the line for that, but uh Joe thinks it's gone up now with inflation.

He said he thinks about 400 would probably be a demo price, or you paint it for 500,000.

He thinks it would be that cheap if you go with the two coat system, just white make it simple.

So that's uh we're kind of looking for guidance.