We're going to get started.

We have a pretty packed agenda for this study session.

Administrator Zelms is going to start us off.

And then we'll hear on the agenda is some budget items.

The fourth fast.

We're going to hear from Tim on some RPU fees.

And then we'll hear from Aaron on equipment revolving.

And then we'll hear about the RCTC collaboration possibilities and then rapid wrapping it up with more discussion on outside agency.

So hopefully we'll get out of here.

Administrator Zelms said two hours.

I think maybe two 50.

But it's up to you.

It's up to you, as I like to always say.

Thank you.

Councilmember Palmer is here, so it will be at least eight minutes longer.

30 minutes.

Thank you, Council Council President, Councilmembers, Mayor Norton.

I am just gonna, of course, as we always do, do a very quick recap.

Um, obviously, we've uh really centered uh some of your strategic priorities and foundational principles in the recommended budget.

Um, we are in our third study session on the budget, and um just as a reminder in honor of the mayor's birthday on September 22nd, we will be coming to you to ask you to set the preliminary levy.

Um that is the time after which the levy can stay the same or go down.

Um, and then your budget hearing and budget adoption is scheduled for December 1st.

So very first day of December.

Um, we will be coming again.

We do have one other study session held.

We will probably start adding some things to that unless we hear a lot of questions on September 22nd or today.

Um but we do have a little bit more time held in case there's um anything that you um still need to talk about between the preliminary levy and the final levy.

Um, folks will also get that um just separate awareness December 1st date when they get their tax statements um in early November.

So that is probably our greatest form of communication is when people open up their tax statement and hear when the various taxing entities are going to be having their public hearing for the tax levy.

And as the council president pointed out, um, we are going to start with uh a little bit more follow-up on the fourth fest and fireworks.

Fireworks have always been planned to be part of your budget, just for clarity.

Um, and uh director Avatal Ravedewicz will come up and share some of that information.

So with that, I will turn it over.

Good afternoon, council members and mayor.

Thank you for reviewing my report.

That is not my report.

Uh-huh.

The other left.

Okay.

So today I am asking you to select a delivery model for the city's July 4th programming.

And as um administrator Zelms said, there will be fireworks.

This is not a discussion of removing fireworks.

Want to be super super super clear about that.

So in recent years, the city has produced fourth fest as a concert with multiple acts and fireworks.

That model is no longer sustainable without new ongoing resources.

So the three options before you are option A, multiple acts and fireworks, option B, community band and fireworks.

Option C, patriotic radio broadcast and fireworks.

And the music department recommends option C beginning in 2026.

Option C keeps the fireworks on July 4th itself, pairs them with a partner produced patriotic broadcast that reaches residents citywide, and right sizes public music's footprint.

So our three-person team can sustain a full summer season of 17 events.

So this slide shows the three options side by side.

So option A, as you can see, requires the greatest resources.

It's feasible today, but responsible delivery would need new ongoing funding.

Option B fits the current event budget.

Once we add funding for contingency and backup, which would be required, its cost savings compared to option A are essentially used up, but it still exists within our current budget.

Option C is the most sustainable path.

It preserves the fireworks tradition, protects staff capacity, and keeps the budget on stable footing.

So to put it simply, option A needs new money to be responsible.

Option B balances the books but doesn't free additional resources.

And option C is sustainable citywide and right sized.

And so this is a summary of why the department recommends option C.

So it is a citywide celebration.

So a patriotic broadcast reaches residents wherever they gather to view the fireworks.

Optional additions with a simulcaster broadcast could include a mayor's message and a poet laureate reading.

And the fireworks would remain on July 4th proper.

Sustainable operations, it frees staff capacity to deliver 17 summer events and protects the dedicated funds that support our core programming and risk and cost management.

So it avoids single point of failure staffing in option B.

So that was mentioned in the packets essentially because it's a smaller event and smaller footprint.

We have fewer vendors, and so it falls more on staff to deliver that option, and we would need to build in some redundancy in case that staff is unavailable.

It sidesteps rising production costs projected projected after 2028 in option A, that is due to a vendor retiring and costs are anticipated to increase significantly there.

And it requires only about 40 to 60 hours a year to coordinate.

That would be coordination between the department and a media broadcast partner to deliver.

And then as an addition, um, so looking ahead and not part of tonight's action.

If council and mayor were to consider in-part programming on a nearby weekend date, not July 4th proper, we could revisit potentially a Rochester Fest partnership.

So part of the constraint with partnering with Rochester Fest was the resources that would be required to align Rochester Fest programming with a July 4th holiday date due to some of the same constraints that you saw in the report regarding staffing and doing things on a federal holiday just becomes really challenging.

So in short, uh option C keeps fireworks on July 4th, makes the celebration more accessible and ensures public music can continue delivering a full season of summer events within our capacity.

So thank you for your time and consideration, and I'd be glad to take any questions.

Thank you, Miss Rabinovich.

Um I've got a couple questions to start us off.

Can you uh talk about the uh the average attendance for the fourth fest?

And I know it's difficult to separate out uh those that are kind of trickling in for the fireworks at dusk, but kind of compare the daytime band uh attendees to say our riverside concerts.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we have tried um in the past to count, it's always tricky to count these types of events, Riverside as well.

I think you've heard me discuss that.

Um, we have a system for Riverside, not so much for Fourth Best, just because we don't have the staffing or volunteer support to actually do account.

So we our best guesstimate is that it's several thousand people at the peak of the event, which is for the fireworks.

So um, because the weather, we always joke, it's either extremely rainy or extremely hot, or sometimes both.

Uh, we do see that people start coming in more around dusk that 8:30, which is why you see that option B was a recommended kind of shifting to what was more of our traditional model, which in the past, which was a concert band performance and then the fireworks.

Um, so that was why that was my recommendation.

We're noticing that during the daytime activities, they're appreciated by some.

That's not where we're getting the most um traffic, the most people coming.

I think because it's so hot.

Um, and the in-park attendance, I would say I have no hard numbers on who is attending across the city, but it does seem to be fractional anecdotally.

I was walking out of the park this past year when the fireworks were going, and I saw many, many, many, many people lined up around the golf course.

And you know, they'd been there for a while, they were parked there, they were having their their activities there.

And so that also made me start to kind of think about resources and what is the community really seeing as the tradition of this event, and over and over we're seeing it's the fireworks.

Um, and so of course, no one is touching the fireworks.

Um, but it was thinking about okay, if the fireworks are the kind of connective tissue, how can we amplify that for folks who maybe don't want to come down or can't come down to the park?

And that was kind of how we landed on this option C idea.

So I have a question, option C and the uh the broadcast partner.

Uh, can you talk a little bit more about that?

That partner will it be a local partner?

And as you mentioned, the mayor could have a message.

We could uh make make it more localized and uh folks can listen to it wherever they are.

Can you kind of talk a little bit more about that?

Absolutely.

So this um, because I'm bringing this to you now.

I haven't explored beyond this.

So I don't have a partner that I've had discussions with.

There's no agreement in place or anything like that.

But the vision is, and what has happened in other communities as well is it's a partnership with a local radio um partner.

And so we have several in town.

We work with a number of them for Riverside and Forward already.

We have established relationships.

So the vision would be that we would sit down with them and say, okay, you know, does it make sense to do something before the fireworks, during the fireworks, both?

Um, and that they would be curating basically a playlist, and it would be something that someone could tune into.

They could simulcast is the word um that is used there.

They could stream it online.

And yes, it would be something that would be a special, like, hi, you're listening to such and such stations, um, you know, partnership with the city of Rochester for Independence Day, and it would be patriotic music and things like we would ask them, you know, could we do a Mayor World Message five minutes long?

Um, could we do maybe some pieces by the community band?

It kind of would go from there, uh, us kind of discussing that arrangement and what we envision.

But that's kind of my thought about the partnership.

So, one last question on uh a potential, I guess it would be option D.

Uh the uh working with a community partner, whether it's a community group or a fraternity organization to take on the role of the uh the programming.

Is that an option that you looked at?

And is that a possibility?

That was not an option that I looked at.

Um, because frankly, I think we we are currently delivering maximum benefit for the funding that is being applied toward the program.

Um, a partner is going to have kind of a similar issue, I think.

Um, so I didn't I didn't look at seeing, hey, could someone else deliver something for this cost?

Um, I'd certainly be happy to explore that.

I don't really know who that might be.

And that was more of that kind of direction was what we were looking at with that community partnership with the special event permit.

And that would be folks allowed to have the flexibility to kind of do what feels like it works for them within a budget or resources that they're able to find.

Thank you.

Uh councilmember Miller.

Sure, thank you.

I I guess my question is similar to Council President Schubring.

Um I guess looking at the current year and technology, and we see this in our I don't know, cable franchise fees declining.

I I would suspect that radio audiences are also declining.

Do you have numbers on where those are?

What portion of our community is tuning into the radio?

No, I I don't have information on that.

I'm I'm not actually sure that that's quite relevant because this would be marketed as a special partnership.

This isn't asking the existing radio audience.

We're not trying to reach an existing audience.

We are telling the community that they can access this through a partner, and it's it's not just terrestrial radio, they would also be able to stream it online through devices.

And I I guess then where I think this relates to council president shoe brings.

Is there a way to do a simulcast but have it as a live event as a special event?

Maybe they broadcast from a location.

I know I brought up Cascade Lake before.

I I appreciate your comments also about noticing people lined up around the golf course.

To me, that potentially communicates that people are finding access challenging or not enjoying the experience of the park, not having space to spread out.

I just wonder, right, about this shift away from in-person, particularly in a year where we're um you know getting up to a major milestone in the history of this country 250 year.

I don't know.

I I guess it it doesn't feel like it's landing with folks I've heard from in the community to shift away from all but the fireworks.

Well, so option B is community band and fireworks as well.

So the through line is really the difficulty in securing resources, predominantly staffing to work the event.

Um, so as you as you know in the report, we're a small department with three people.

Um, we also looked kind of citywide at what are resources that we can secure for these types of events, and because it's a federal holiday, it's really difficult with staffing and overtime and other concerns there.

So that's really why we're looking at a more sustainable model that also works for staffing.

We're looking at kind of burnout and capacity as well.

So that was kind of another reason that we landed on this.

So adding a simulcast would not reduce staff burden, it would increase it.

It's certainly um potentially possible.

It's not something that I explored because once again, I was looking at cost and resource savings.

Mayor Norton.

Thank you.

I I understand the the issues that you're grappling with.

You and I have talked a little bit and I I've talked to the community and the the folks I've talked to are more interested in the fireworks than they are the rest of the day.

And my attendance at that in the last few years has indicated that people come the later the day, closer to the fireworks, they come.

And part of the reason they come early is to get parking and to make sure that they can have a place to park because they don't want to be so far away.

That's absolutely true.

Um but the park is even if you only do the fireworks in the evening, the park is still available all day for people to come.

Correct.

Yep.

It just will not have programmed activities in the flesh.

It would correct online music if you started earlier.

I don't know how early you're planning on starting.

The other question I had, um, I love the idea of the community band is something this the community has struggled with, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be recorded in advance and played as part of that simulcast.

So I'm kind of getting a little more comfortable with that.

Um, the the question I really have, I guess, is if we have to do this this year, I would hope that we can at least content consider revisiting this as council member Miller has talked about um when the construction is done, when the West Transfil transit West Transit Village is complete.

We have a band shelter out that's pre-done.

We don't have to put one up out at Cascade Lake.

And I think and the traffic could get there through the bus.

I think I don't want to just say we're making this decision and we'll never do it again.

I would like to say if we have to make this decision for financial reasons right now, it it may be cheaper to do when you have a stage when you don't have to put one up in future years when we're ready.

So I guess I would you consider, and I guess administrator Zalms, too, that this doesn't have to be a decision that is a forever, but for now.

Um mayor, council members, maybe I can start.

I don't think we ever may assume that we're making these decisions forever because we have lots of ideas that come to us from um different community members and uh elected officials.

Um, but uh Ms.

Rabena Benowitz actually has looked into that, and there are some security concerns.

So I think those are things that we have we would need time to work through, and that we probably would need construction to be done to work through based on some of the concerns that were raised by our public safety partners and our fireworks partners.

I don't know if you'd want Avatal to elaborate on that, but it definitely would require a little bit of time to work through some of those.

Absolutely.

And that's why I'm saying if we have to make a change now, when we give ourselves that time to try to make something more successful in the next year or so, it would be it would make me feel better that we're messaging to the community that that we can still continue to talk about this as West Transit Village is complete and that the park is there to at least consider something different in the future, that it isn't we're not taking it off the table forever.

So I guess I'm I'm looking to see if that's a possibility.

And if I may, I guess the other thing that depending on feedback that we receive, um, that is always a possibility is that the department will be coming back with requests for funding that would support some of those ideas because I think some of the concern that the department has, this that administration has with being able to continue to deliver on fourth fest, which the department inherited with no increase in their budget, um, is that it's probably not sustainable in the current fashion with the current funds that is provided.

Does that mean that something else couldn't happen?

That's a question of whether or not that's an important thing that the city council wants to resource with additional funds in the future.

Councilmember Fredericks.

Thank you.

Thanks for the presentation today.

Our fireworks and our and our music.

This is a fun subject in the community.

But uh I was reached out to by uh a very reputable gentleman that's part of the community band, and he expressed that his organization is very interested in playing at the band shell this coming season.

And they may have talked to you too, and I hope they did.

But the number that he uh number that came up, obviously that's a lot of things come down to money because that's what we're discussing is budget.

He said in the past there was like a three thousand dollar price tag that kind of came with that.

He said they're more than willing to do it for a thousand dollar donation, and they're willing to visit beyond that.

So that's just uh, you know, I think there's a definitely tying in that we talk about being community-minded.

Uh President Schubring brought it up right away.

You know, is it going to be a community-based organization putting on the radio broadcasts and such?

Obviously, the community band is a need part of this community, and it's a great showcase for them.

We have the band shell there to use for just this type of stuff.

So that's something I I would definitely support uh this year.

Well, and that's an interesting point.

So uh we actually have just today heard from the community band, and they are exploring doing an earlier performance at Cascade.

Um, and so as the mayor just mentioned, at Cascade is a viable location.

So we did convene with our pyrotechnics vendor and with public safety folks, police fire, emergency management, and their assessment of the site uh they were and parks, they were very thorough, was that they were not comfortable recommending going forward with that site location as it is currently.

Um there were concerns about fireworks and the highway, there were concerns about entrances and exits.

So that that's actually part of the report in here.

You can read uh um, I can't remember what uh appendix it is, but it is in there.

So that's another reason why the options B and C are attractive is that it does free up other community partners to do other pieces of patriotic celebration.

It wouldn't need to be at Soldiers Field or any other place.

There's no reason why with option C, the fireworks happening later in the evening and a simulcast that the community band couldn't do a performance at Cascade.

Right on because the concerns are fireworks-based, right?

Right.

So that that's another reason why I think that this actually gives more flexibility, not to just the city and the department, but also to partners.

Councilmember Wolf.

I think you maybe uh just described something that I was was hoping for.

Uh having the community band at Cascade and then separating the fireworks from that.

There will be many uh lots of minutes between the two.

It'll be too uh dark to continue uh band concert and too light to do fireworks.

Uh I have been at a community band concert at Cascade.

Uh there was no trouble getting in or out.

Uh hundreds of people in their deck chairs and blankets and kids running around picnic baskets, uh, which was really quite fun.

And there'd be plenty of time to go from that to fireworks.

And if people have trouble parking, I can recommend uh the Kmart lot and Bethelutheran, where I sit with hundreds and hundreds of people, uh, and there's room for more.

So uh I don't think I'll be any trouble uh getting people relocated for those who want to do both.

Uh so I would be supportive uh next summer of using this uh stage that we already have there, which is very effective.

The concert uh I enjoyed so much.

And they offer music that I don't think necessarily that uh Rochester community music uh offers.

It's just a different style of music that appeals to a different sector of uh our populace.

So uh I think that we can do both, and I think it can be pretty cost effective by not having to use the show mobile.

It's um I will say Cascade is an excellent venue for the community band because of the their makeup and because of how loud they are, they don't require amplification.

So it's a really good site for them to basically they come in with chairs and can and can just perform.

Yeah, um, what you're seeing in some of the costs associated with soldiers' field and staging is that we do need to do things depending on the group amplification, setup teardown, fencing, port a potties.

There are there are a number of things that most of it is not artistic fees, most of it is kind of these other supports.

And so that was another reason why we were looking at Cascade was to try and see if we could get some additional resource for the community as far as um you know amenities, nearby restaurants and things like that paths, but also to reduce the um setup and teardown burden on staff by using the amphitheater.

So this is kind of a hybrid, is what you're what you're discussing here.

Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, let's just clarify though that is if we go with option C, you can still do the thing, it's it's Cascade, or is there some reason we are saying that's not possible for 2025 or 2026?

We can do that within our existing budget.

It will reduce the amount of cost savings that the department is receiving from Sunsetting Fourth Fest.

Very good.

So we'll have to get an opinion on that at some point here.

But I I mean, let me let me just start out with uh again, just the overall topic here.

It it does seem a little disorienting to have this, you know, 600 million dollar budget, and we're talking about this one event.

But in truth, I think it really does show that we have some rigor in each individual step going through our budgets.

And I appreciate the fact that we do have to look at these things.

It just seems the timing doesn't feel right in the bigger budgets thing.

But again, I do think it's good.

I also agree with the thing of saying let's keep the focus on the fireworks on the uh for the fourth of July.

And I think we do have to figure out these other things.

Um, and I don't think we've talked about it much, but I think I want to stress this idea of the difficulty of staffing a fourth of July sort of event.

Never mind just that we're talking about a music department, but there's police that need to be engaged in this.

There's park and rack, there's lots of other staffing things that I in other groups I've been with doing that stuff around the Fourth of July, it's difficult to get people who aren't already committed to other sort of things.

Um so based on where we're at, I I would support the staff's recommendation.

I don't feel strongly of you know, of like putting more investment here and the idea that things could be changed.

But I I guess I do want to make a comment just when I when I was involved in this uh probably a couple months ago in some of the different discussions, there was this idea of these other um partners that we had that are running something in Soldiers Field the week before this, and were there options we could have worked out there, and then there's other groups that are you know are going to be in our discussion later today.

And I I'm a little disappointed that they weren't looking at trying to say what can we do to give keep this thing working.

And uh it's something that bothers me that you know we try to say these are our partners, but when we go to try to work with them on how we can adjust schedules, I think they look at the city as the bank to pay them to do what they do as opposed to you know doing their mission next to us.

So um uh I I want to kind of lay that in there, and I would support option C and I'm I'm glad this idea of this other standalone one-off event could happen, and we'll have to figure out the funding for that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Doring.

Yeah, I'm just looking for some direction from public works or um uh deputy city administrator Steinhauser about the uh where we're gonna be at with West Transit Village in construction around July 4th of 2026 and access to Cascade Lake Park and whether this is a discussion or not about having a band concert there at that point.

I will need to get back to you.

I'll shoot a note over to the team right now.

I'm not exactly sure.

I know we will be under road construction and um uh station construction bathrooms come later.

So let me see if I can get the exact dates.

Yeah, I I agree it's a the only reason I asked is I agree it's a wonderful venue, but if access might might really be tricky for 2026 at that point.

Um, so I just that's part of the discussion as well.

Councilmember Palmer.

If I heard you correctly, you you said that the pyrotechnic and the public safety did not want to go to Cascade for fireworks.

Is that right?

That is correct, yes.

Just to clarify that.

And so I I mean, I'm we've always had fireworks, we've always had a band concert during the Fourth of July.

It's always been a national holiday.

So I'm kind of trying to figure out it's just the stage that's the problem.

Is it you you said fencing and bathrooms, but we've always had those items in the in the um 4th of July.

So I'm I'm kind of trying to figure out why today this has become a or this year's become the issue.

Sure.

Um happy to answer that.

So we actually have not always had those things.

So it is true that there's always been fireworks in the community that goes back decades and decades and decades.

So for a long time, and there is some context in the packet about kind of who owned that.

It was the post bulletin for a while.

It's it's changed different partners.

As far as kind of music's contribution to the events, we did have at the time the Rochester concert band performing, which was part of the department.

Um, and that was a very simple setup as at Silver Lake.

So that was just kind of them performing.

I'm not even sure there was a stage.

They may have just been on the grass.

Um, so when we're talking about Soldiers Field, we're looking at more of that infrastructure like fencing, like a stage, like the portable restrooms.

Those were not provided at Silver Lake um by the music department.

I'm not sure if other departments were providing those types of facilities, but it was much more of um, there's a focus on the fireworks and on people kind of choosing their spot at Silver Lake, uh, making it their own.

And we did have a band performing, but it didn't have all of these other amenities and production that we have been doing since 2021 with Fourth Fest proper.

Okay.

So I'm gonna go back to your your thought processes and in your option C, you're deciding that we're gonna go out and have a radio station or a TV station.

Are you gonna go off for an RFP for that?

And and what is your what what's your broad stroke idea that the RFP is going to cover?

So the idea would be that it would be um a partnership, it'd be essentially a media sponsorship.

So we would not be paying them, they would not be paying us, it would be a partnership where they would be essentially sponsoring, you know, their contribution would be doing the broadcast.

Um, and it would just be it would be a partnership agreement between the the department and the sponsor.

So during Rochester Fest Parade, there's a TV station that televises it in sponsors that I believe.

Is that what you're looking at?

Or I'm I'm trying to figure out, you know, if if you had a group that came and says we're gonna take over Soldiers Field and I'm gonna charge admission in and I'm gonna have advertising and and this is sponsored by the city of Rochester.

Are we okay with that?

I'm sorry, I don't understand.

Um well, if if if a group comes to you with an RFP and says we're going to sign simulcast, but I'm going to do it down at Soldiers Field, and I'm going to charge an admission to come to Soldiers Field to listen, and I'm going to have sell advertising on this on this broadcast.

Oh, okay.

So you know, we're not talking about an in-person event.

So if someone were to do something, an event, a public event, that would come to you as a special event permit.

So that would be a completely separate thing from the department's involvement.

What I'm discussing is simply a um a digital or terrestrial based broadcast.

So this would be something that someone would tune into on the radio or on by going to a station's website on their phone or their cell phone or their computer.

So we're not talking about them having a physical presence anywhere.

But if you have an RFP, I could do that.

If your RFP says we want to simulcast this and leave it very broad, then I could if I wanted to.

And if I'm going to do it, I'm assuming any any radio station or whatever you want to call it, is going to charge advertisers to have listeners listen to this.

They potentially could charge for underwriting or advertising, like they do with kind of all of their activities.

If we're concerned about them creating an event and charging admission, that would be something that we could prevent in the agreement.

Because no, I don't envision anything like that happening where where the media partner is independently creating an activity or event that they're charging money to attend.

Okay.

I guess I'm in favor of leaving the way that it is and figuring out from a budget perspective what more we need to do.

Um, you know, do we need to set up earlier and the day before and take down the day after, or if we hit a weekend um for fourth of July, and that was the route that I would like us to go.

So I will just one point to that.

We actually do have to do that for some things, and that's what I meant by driving additional costs.

So because it's a federal holiday, there are a lot of vendors that do not work on the 4th of July.

So we do need to pay for extra days for fencing for porta potties for things like that because they do need to drop them off and pick them up during days that they're working.

So that does drive additional costs.

Um that's part of the vendor costs for the date that I mentioned in the report.

Thank you.

Councilmember Miller.

Yeah, thank you.

Just a quick question.

I see in the report that there's a mention of a west and east launch site at uh Cascade Lake, they're not identified exactly where those would be, and they share challenges.

My question is about the city owned land uh north of Cascade Creek, just along the highway.

I mean, it feels like those fields that are there are not used, it's totally separated from access.

Was that site considered as a potential fireworks launch site?

Not to my knowledge, and I will admit to not being great at being able to tell those schematics and being able to look at kind of the pyrotechnics.

So I really did defer to parks um and and police and fire, but that's something we could certainly ask about.

Okay.

And I I understand the challenges of 2026.

I know we're not yet to the BRT, but I I look at these other challenges of access and I mean those are known challenges that basically anywhere we would pick in the urbanized Rochester area of limited access, parking.

And I just question two.

I mean, you're mentioning um people along the golf course perimeter, council member walls mentioning people at an off-site location.

I mean, none of these are considered part of the special event location from staffing, and I think we just have to understand what area we're covering and where the event epicenter is and where people can view and access this from.

And I just wonder if some of these concerns about public safety and access, et cetera, are just trying to draw too large of a circle around the area that the special event would be happening versus where people are just able to participate in the community, uh, watching the fireworks, having their own gathering somewhere in the broader public space.

Oh, if I may just point out for the record, the major concern about any location at Cascade, not saying it can't be overcome, is that people will pull over on the side of highway 14 and view the fireworks.

Council member Keene.

I just want to follow up on council member Palmer's comment about you know, we should be able to do this and you know, take on this expense.

And I I honest, obviously, we could if if that was our decision, but I I'm also watching that.

We have Rochester Fest ending less than a week before this, and we take down all that stuff, and then we're back three days later putting it up, and it just looks awful.

And from a you know, talk about financial rigor, this idea that we can't figure out how to get that to work bothers me.

But we've tried to work that out and it wasn't able to work out.

I've got a couple uh follow-up questions.

So um I understand uh highway 14 is a could be a concern, but when it comes to the the um pyrotectics and safety issues down the road, is that overcomable forecascade at in uh future in the future?

That's a great question.

So um I'm gonna open up my page here so I'm not forgetting my understanding is that the concerns were really independent of things that are currently happening regarding um construction and whatnot.

It's really more like administrator Zelms mentioned, it's highway 14.

It's do we have a safe launch site?

There are certain things that the pyrotechnics vendor requires as far as clear areas of brush, um, you know, easy ways to access and evacuate.

So there are some safety things that that the pyrotechnics vendor had some concerns about.

We didn't look at that site that council member Miller referenced.

Um, but there were discussions about that.

What's a native planting?

What's going to be growing larger?

What can be cut down, what can be maintained.

So it's all these kinds of discussions, and I won't pretend like I have the faintest idea about what is actually required to not burn something down or injure someone or whatnot.

But I will say they had serious concerns about this.

Um, then that's reflected in page nine of the packet.

I don't anticipate that those concerns would be mitigated due to anything that's going to happen regarding construction or any change that I see.

Um, that would really be a conversation for a more detailed conversation for the emergency management, police, fire, and pyrotechnics to see if there's any way that it's feasible.

Um I will say they're creative folks, and we did go back and forth about what about this, what about that?

And they looked at things from different angles.

What if we trim this?

What if we move that?

What if we um and I that's not to say that there isn't a way to do it, but there is not a way that that readily presented itself now or in the immediate future.

Thank you.

Well, I where I'm at on it is I guess it's where uh council member uh wall is.

I think uh let's pursue the uh broadcast partner.

Uh I think I I and I I'm sounding indecisive here, but I do think we should explore if that broadcast partner wants to be on site, uh you know, in the show mobile.

I thought it said snowmobile totally confused me.

Uh so that, but I think I think having the community band at Cascade Park this year, and then and then having the broadcast uh uh for the fireworks itself, and then as council member Miller said, continuing to explore other sites in that cascade lake area.

Councilmember Wall.

I I appreciate the support.

Uh Mr.

Schubring.

Uh again, I'm actually kind of a uh between B and C.

That is, I think that we can do uh I think we should absolutely commit to the community band uh using the offer the council member Fredericks uh found, uh the the one that I attended out there, I didn't see any uh city employees who were trying to uh marshal um traffic or uh uh doing broadcasting, anything.

Uh they actually brought their own PA and set it up, and uh we could hear the director uh with some uh offerings about particular pieces that they were going to do.

So I I you know, between B and C, the fireworks uh as we always have wanted to have them, and then offer this music that some people in the community would like to see in person, otherwise you could just well turn on the Macy's uh day parade and uh watch professional stuff on the East River in uh New York.

Any more on this council member Fredericks, our community band professional too.

Wow, here to clarify, are you suggesting that we produce both the community band performance and the simulcast, or that we provide monetary support to the community band to fund their broad their performance, or that they are doing a performance on their own independently?

It kind of can exist in a couple different spaces there.

Yeah, uh uh if if I were waving my magic one, I'd cut them a check for a thousand dollars today, have them do their own thing.

Uh the simulcast, I'm I'm with Mr.

Miller.

I don't necessarily think a lot of people are going to turn their radio on, uh, even if we say it's gonna be on XXXX uh station.

But to be uh to be uh there in person and enjoy that music together, I think would uh answer uh the needs for for a segment of our community.

All right.

Thank you.

And that would be supportive and make that part of the Fourth of July festival.

Here is our Rochester lineup for that day.

So I I suspect uh you will come back to us with a couple iterations of this, given what I'm looking at the administrators.

Council President, I don't think we would anticipate coming back.

What I'm hearing from the city council is we would be cutting very little from the budget.

Everything's on the table, and the staff will move forward with something.

And I believe the community band is already utilizing Cascade Lake.

So I think we would pursue the live streaming, which is what a simulcast is.

It's live.

They may want to be there in person.

That does happen in some locations.

And typically at this level, the staff would be administering based on what's available in their budget and the feedback they got today.

We wouldn't be coming back with additional approvals for how to do the work because they need to start planning it probably two months ago.

Yeah, it does take a long time.

Referencing again the uh federal holiday.

So um competition for talent.

And as you heard the community band reaching out wanting to confirm things with partners.

Great.

Well, we are thankful that we provided you some clarity.

So thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

We will move on uh to uh Mr.

McCullough who will give us a budget update on RPU fees.

In contrast to the prior item, we try and keep sparks and explosions to a bare minimum at RPU.

Uh good afternoon.

My name is Tim McCullough, general manager for Rochester Public Utilities.

Um, have two items for the council's consideration.

Just like to acknowledge these are a bit out of sequence as you've already had your fee discussion earlier this year as a part of the budgetary process.

The reason that these two items are coming before you now is partly related to some project work and also related to the RPU budget preparation.

Um, so there's two recommendations here that the RPU board has had in front of them.

There's general consensus from the board to move forward with these.

The reasons they're here is you will ultimately see the RPU recommended budget and wanting to at least test these assumptions with the council before bringing forward the full package to you.

So, two topics water availability fees and credit card or card payment convenience fees.

Um, I'll take the take them in this order as well.

Um, you may or may not be aware.

Looks like they looks like I resequence them.

So we're gonna take them in a different order here, starting with card and digital wallet payment convenience fees first.

Um, there's a brief provided to you as a part of uh council admin or uh city administrator Zelms' packet uh a couple weeks ago, but we are entering a phase where the credit card processing fees uh are in excess of $650,000 a year.

Um, that is growing as we have more and more people adopting credit cards as a form of payment.

It equates to about 25% of total utility revenue today.

And there's a considerably what I would say considerably higher cost to recollecting revenue through credit cards than there is through other forms of low or no fee payments, cash check, bank debit, particularly, about six and a half times more expense.

So we have 25% of payment revenue coming through incurring about 80% of the processing costs here.

RPU by charter has a drive to be cost-based, and therefore there's a recommendation here to align our costs with uh the fees here and institute a convenience fee.

This is very different than uh a percentage-based surcharge that others may charge.

Um, and there's a particular reason for that, although it may be allowed.

Um, surcharges are governed by state statute and have a uh a very specific implementation that has to be followed.

In general, utilities don't use surcharges uh because of several factors, one of which you can't apply surcharges to credit card uh to uh debit card and debit card payments do have a cost incurred, but they're prohibited by federal statute in not being able to charge a surcharge.

The alternative is a convenience fee.

Um, the proposal is three dollars per transaction.

The average residential transaction is about $300 a month when you consider all four utility services stacked together.

This is revenue not just for RPU.

This is revenue for the sanitary sewer utility enterprise and the stormwater enterprise.

RPU does the billing and revenue collection on behalf of all four of those city utility services.

And so the recommendation before you, or at least that would be before you, assuming there's concurrence here, is to implement this convenience fee as a part of the 2026 budget implementation when the RPU recommended budget tariffs, rates, and fees comes before you later this year.

This would be included in that, assuming there's concurrence with the city council on this approach.

Be happy to take any questions here related to the convenience fee implementation before I move on to the next item.

Thank you, Mr.

Mercalla.

I have a question.

So uh I'll I assume among the 25% that use card-based payments that there are people that use it out of their own convenience and uh so my question is how will you communicate to your customer base that those that actually could use a bank card or uh or use their banking account number uh to make sure that they're not incurring that $3 payment.

Fair question.

We've anticipated the need to communicate this change if it were approved through customers.

We would plan to send out communications through our plugged-in publication to notify customers.

There would also be signage displayed at the payment counter and on our app that allows customers to pay.

So it's in they're informed at the time of transaction.

It's actually our obligation to inform customers ahead of the transaction as well.

So that would there's multiple channels that we would roll out the communication before the fee would be incurred.

If you would potentially flag it, say if you have reoccurring payments, you may want to make sure that you're not paying through a credit card in order not to incur this.

Yep.

We're going through the midst of a uh major software upgrade right now with our customer portal that's currently in place, it's being replaced before the end of this year.

So it's an opportune time to make this change with our credit card processing vendor.

It's one of the reasons this came up mid-budget, is we're making progress on that project and ready to launch it in the November to December time frame.

I'll also note that you should never let a general manager do your graphics.

Um, that card payment convenience fee graphic there.

I made and I made a couple errors on it.

One of which is we don't currently accept American Express or Apple Pay.

I assume some things that were not true there, but this is an example of what would be posted at our counter before a credit card transaction would happen.

Any other questions on this?

Uh council member Miller.

Yeah, thank you.

Just a quick question on the logistics.

Since you mentioned uh the the change in your customer portal or your software platform generally, does that mean anybody who's currently set up on auto pay will have to re-establish this?

Because I'm I'm wondering about those customers who have a credit card on auto pay.

How are they notified?

Or do they just probably see that if they miss the notification, start paying three dollars in perpetuity and then maybe find out at some point later, maybe have feelings about that.

We hope that customers will continue using auto pay.

We don't want to interrupt that process.

It's very convenient for them and uh convenient for us as well.

So we intend to do direct uh letter uh reach out to the customers who are currently on auto pay who might not normally access the portal so that we can best inform them about the options that they have in front of them.

We would hope they would choose to move over to some other type of automatic payment that doesn't have a fee, cash uh uh bank draft or ACH as the two prevailing.

But if that customer has auto pay established today and they disregard the notice, don't see it.

Does that auto pay continue under the new software automatically?

It's our intention not to interrupt somebody's auto pay right now.

Um I don't think my per my personal opinion and professional opinion is customers would not want that interrupted.

So we would continue to auto-pay, auto-draft those, but we'll do our uh best outreach to customers to know that that fee would be incurred.

It would show up on the bill, they clearly out uh outlined on the bill.

We do know that many people don't look at their bill on average as well, so it could be missed.

It's fair question.

Thanks.

Just curious of the logistics.

Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, first off, I'll say I do I do support this change.

I think this is a way of trying to make sure we live that that charter thing of by by making sure that the fees that we incur are covered by the those who are driving the cost.

So I appreciate that.

Um, 25% equals about 15,000 residential customers.

I think that'll add about 550,000 to what we collect in 2026.

Where does that get offset somewhere else?

Is that help me see where yeah?

This is designed to be revenue neutral.

Um, we did not incorporate this assumption into the budget.

We didn't want to pre-assume that this would be supported.

So in the first year, there would be additional revenue collection, but on a cost of service basis, that would produce lower long-term rate pressure by about a half a percent.

That's the overall revenue uh cost here of annual revenue that we currently pay for processing fees that would move to the customer side of the transactional.

Thank you.

I think it's an important point to make that we're not just adding to what we have with that over time this will bounce out and help us uh keep our rates as as competitive as we can.

Thank you.

Anyone else want to uh council member Palmer?

Thank you.

Maybe I missed this, but but why are we charging the flat fee and why not a percentage?

Um so utilities can charge a percentage.

They can charge, I believe, up to five percent by state statute.

Federally, you can charge up to four percent.

So there's a bit of a conflict there between even state and federal statute.

A percentage surcharge has some different rules, including you can't charge it on debit cards by federal statute, and from a cost of service basis, the the typical is a flat fee basis, and that's what's recommended by our payment processing vendor.

And generally the practice in the utility space is to do it on a flat fee basis.

So we've opted to recommend only a convenience fee-based model.

We would not recommend a surcharge-based model.

So most restaurants that I'm familiar with will charge it above, but it's usually a three percent, and that's why they don't take American Express typically.

And I know that you negotiate that fee as a merchant.

So what you're saying to me is is if I pay by credit card now and I'm gonna pay this fee, I can write you a check and and send it to you, and that's easier for you to process, or I can come down with dollar bills and pay it to you, and and that's cheaper to do that for the for the utility than it is for a credit card.

It is objectively cheaper to do that.

Okay, thank you.

If I might also note the the typical, I think if you go out in the retail space, you'll see a three percent surcharge basis.

This fee equates to about one percent of the total transaction value on average.

We are able to in the utility space negotiate lower rates with our payment processing vendor.

So the overall impact to most customers on average is about one percent of the transaction cost, not three.

Administrator zones.

Uh, thank you, council president.

Thank you, Director uh McCullough.

I just wanted to point out we did consider this for another department, and it's something that you are likely to see in a future budget.

Um, the community development department does a lot of transactions via a credit card, and they are absorbing currently the processing fee.

Um, it's a little bit of a different situation, um, but it's about 550,000 a year.

It continues to rise.

So that's something that we might we may be um looking at for the 2027 budget.

So I just want to make you aware of that.

Wouldn't be exactly the same as this.

We have different rules.

Um, it's a different transaction, um, that type of thing.

Um, but I did just want to make you aware that there is another space within the city budget that we are absorbing significant amount of credit card fees, and that uh it's a little bit more complex there based on everything from a deck permit to West Transit Village.

Um, could be paying with a credit card.

Um, really different.

We don't have averages there to a to a large degree, but just wanted to make you aware of that.

Councilmember Miller.

Yeah, thank you.

And I appreciate the broader context because I'll agree with some of my colleagues that I think that this is the right policy direction to um incentivize people to choose other forms of payment when there is a cost incurred by the city and others are are bearing that burden.

So I'm glad to see this, and I I would I will support this and I will support future uh study of other departments where there's significant costs related to credit card fees.

Mayor Norton mostly and I and I'm sorry to take us down here, but because uh adventure Zalm said something, you mentioned Rust Transit Village.

What are you referring to with that?

I was just using it as an example of like a size and scope of a project that has to get permits that's very different than a homeowner that's trying to build a deck.

Okay, so I could have used an example of a new hotel being built or the investments that will be happy forthcoming in Northwest Rochester with all of the housing coming in with Pulti homes, those types of things.

A permits a permit's not a permit, it's not a permit.

I guess and I appreciate that.

But what I was concerned about, and I guess I will just say it here.

We do in our parking garages require people to use a credit card, and I hope we don't add a fee for something we're requiring and giving them no alternative.

So that would be the only caveat that I would have a concern here because there's no other choice.

No, I and I appreciate that.

I was when you mentioned transit village, that my head went to the parking garage.

And that's why I was asking for clarity.

So thank you.

That's my confusion.

Councilmember Keene, did you have a question?

I didn't just put Mrs.

McCullough on the spot here.

What is the goal of the policy?

Is it to collect the fee and offset our costs, or is it to drive them to a different behavior?

It's primarily to be cost based.

And if we're not cost-based, I guess the policy would be to move them towards the cheaper.

And so the driving goal is being cost based here.

I I hope the driving goal is to have our um costs follow the people who are driving those costs.

Um, but I think I would say the reason we're doing this is the best behavior would be them to not use their credit card.

Certainly in the community development, that would be the direction because that's that's dramatically less transactions and dramatically higher dollar amounts.

Um so that that there's a the different dynamic there.

And my other comment on this is you it is disorienting when some businesses have will not take cash and others now are going this way.

But what it comes down to is you want to have one main method of processing and not have cash and credit cards and debit cards and checks local that that might be good and checks remote.

I think that's what most businesses are driving towards a more consistent method.

And we are not like most businesses, we will accept any and all forms of payment except American Express today.

But we do work very hard to meet our customers where they are with whatever payment methods they have.

And cash is sometimes the right transaction method there.

Walmart pay is actually a very uh uh good option for many.

You can go right to Walmart, give your name and account number and pay your RPU bill at the Walmart kiosk.

And so we we try and work with our customers wherever they are to help them, including our kiosk in the front here as well.

Very good.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

I'm gonna ask uh another kind of credit card debit card question for the consumer.

So I have a debit card, it has a visa on it.

How does the payment system know that I'm using that as a debit card as opposed to a credit card?

And I and then I have a follow-up question as far as in our parking.

Uh when I park in our ramps, it it comes off as a debit.

It doesn't come off as a credit card payment.

So I can only speak to our payment processing vendor.

Those are all, if it says visa, it's processed as a credit card, even though it may be a debit card for the consumer, and there's a cost to that in the payment processing.

I do not believe our customers have an option when they're paying online with a debit visa to have it run as a different type of transaction.

And that was one of the key things that I learned in this on a percentage on a surcharge basis or a fee basis.

That's why we're recommending the fee basis on this one since they are processed as a card payment, not a debit payment.

So in that case, then when you inform your customers, you have to let them know that even if they're using their debit card, if it has a visa or master card on it, that they should let use their bank account.

Is that correct?

Yep, that's why we've tried to be very generic in the naming of this fee of a card payment, which would include debit and credit card payments.

Okay.

Thank you.

And moving on.

Okay, hearing general consensus to move forward, you would see that as a part of the overall proposed budget from RPU.

Um, next item is water availability fee.

This is a council adopted fee, at least historically has always been council considered only this cycle with the work that we're doing on the water master planning effort and uh very acute escalation that we've seen in the cost of building water storage in the last year, going up over 7% in just the inflationary cost of materials and labor.

We are recommending that the RPU board include this in the RPU board schedule of fees.

And the recommendation here is to escalate that according to the same general rate increase that you heard earlier of 9% and 9%.

So the fee here is on a per acre basis of developable land or land that is not yet paid the water availability fee.

And it is uh designed by um city code to recover the cost of water storage.

We're only talking about above ground storage, the fixed tank storage.

That's the component of this fee.

It's so that as the community grows and develops, we have the required revenue to build future storage.

And uh we looked at this.

Uh we were planning to build a new storage facility, I believe, in the last year.

We saw the costs escalate, and therefore uh the recommendation on this fee to go according to the general rate increase.

Historically, I think this fee has been recommended by the public works team, been before council on the fee schedule and has generally just been escalated according to the inflationary cost pressures, this can consumer price index.

So with that, I'll pause and see if there's any feedback on the water availability fee.

Councilmember Palmer.

Not everybody in Rochester has availability for water.

Is that not correct?

For Rochester Public Utilities served water?

Correct.

I know two subdivisions that we've had lately that we cannot provide water.

So one of them didn't come into the city, and I don't know if the other one is coming into the city.

So how do you judge that that you know from a zoning perspective or annexing in property that we all that we don't have water availability?

I'm not familiar with the two circumstances.

I would have answered yes, we have service to all city inside the city limits, and we would typically on upon annexation this fee, water availability fee would be charged.

I need to do some research on the particular cases that you're talking about before I can speak intelligently about those two.

Mr.

Yetzer, do you want to add something?

Councilmember Palmer, are you referring to the the subdivisions that we removed from the urban service area because we couldn't serve the farms would be water?

Yeah, so they're not in city limits.

So but they're not in the city limits because we couldn't get them water.

Yes, but I think that's the disconnect.

I I think I think I heard it as houses in city limits that don't have water, and that's not what you're saying.

They're outside of city limits and don't have water.

Well, we we could have annexed them in in RPU said no, we we can't service you with water.

So then the city community development said, well, then we're we will allow you to stay in the county.

I I that troubles me that that you're you can't have that.

And I believe in the Negan property on the on the north side of of Coach Club Manor Road, there's an area there that is not going to be served by water.

So to me, if I'm I'm gonna annex any piece of property, I think should have all services.

And then on the flip side of that, I know down southwest we have an area that's not in the city, but yet we have water.

So that kind of confuses me.

So on the on the latter point, there are areas where we serve REP RPU water beyond the extent of city limits.

That's an intentional city council decision to offer water service beyond our service territory, and there's city code sections that govern that that rate can't be any more advantageous than our internal rate.

So, yes, there are cases where we go beyond city limits.

I guess my answer on the earlier point is within city limits and property that would be annexed in, it is our obligation to serve.

I'd have to do more research to answer the specific question.

This fee would not apply for those that were removed from the urban service area.

Correct.

Yeah.

Uh council member Keene.

Yeah, again, generally I support what you're saying here.

This is the idea that our costs are higher over the years and we haven't been adjusting them, and that and we're going to do that.

So that vaguely that makes sense.

Um, when I look at this for sewer availability, which we spent a lot of time on this council back in 2019 and 2020, we have seven different zones and charge differently in those because our costs are dramatically different in the different zones.

Do we not find that to be true in RPU?

As it is today, our cost to serve is not zonal based right now.

We have a very distributed-based water system today, localized well houses, localized treatment to localized storage.

We don't move water across the city, and so our costs don't change drastically depending on the direction of the city and proximity to a centralized treatment plant.

That may change in the future.

That's not the topic of conversation tonight.

We're in the midst of a water master plan effort and a groundwater modeling study to look at what future alternate sources might be beyond the current.

That's really work for over the next two years as we determine if the Jordan Aquifer will be remain as a viable water source for us in the future.

And so I will have more to report over the next two years as we go through this groundwater modeling study and the master plan to look at what our future infrastructure might need to look like if it's at all different than it is today.

Good.

So my my last comment, and again, this might be more for uh community development, but I support this as uh, especially with the annexation and that sort of future development.

What I would want to question is if we do have areas that are already within the city through through annexation from years ago that weren't able to get, I know there's many, some that weren't able to get sewer.

I don't know of many that don't have city water, but if they're already in the city, I wouldn't think these sort of fees would apply to them.

And I I'm not sure I've had been have had some uh surprises on that in the last couple of years.

Councilmember Miller.

Just a quick clarifying question.

When in this uh slide it says uh for land, is that per parcel per it's per acre, depending on the uh if if that land area, sometimes parcels, sometimes assembled parcels, has not paid this water availability fee in the past.

If it's undeveloped currently, that would apply for redevelopment or infill development.

Okay, thanks.

Anything more on this topic?

It seems reasonable to me.

Great.

Appreciate that direction.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

McCullough.

Next up, we have uh a budget follow-up on uh equipment revolving fund and electric vehicles, Mr.

Parrish.

All right, mayor president members of the council.

Uh this is just follow-up on essentially the health of our equipment revolving fund as well as how the electronic vehicle acquisition integrates into that.

Um so maybe just setting the table a little bit on the health of the fund.

Um, generally speaking, we've got a fairly significant asset in our equipment and ranges from everything from mowers to plow trucks to uh large heavy equipment to passenger vehicles.

Um, but our existing fleet has a depreciation amount of 49 million dollars.

So the asset is probably more significant than that.

Uh we you know ultimately go through a process every year where departments submit requests, we evaluate those requests against resources we have available.

Um we've had a couple of the challenges that we've been trying to navigate within the fund, and the council within the budget process has done a few things to help uh move the the health of the fund in a more positive direction.

Um you can see kind of in the uh 15 to 2019 range, uh we were overspending the amount of uh you know fleet acquisition that we had relative to the amount of depreciation that we had.

Um, so we were drawing down fund balance in a fairly significant way uh during that period of time.

We've sort of recalibrated that.

Um, but as a result of that, you know, we are sort of getting behind on our replacement schedules.

And so you know, we have a number of pieces of equipment that have exceeded their useful life.

Um, and we you know, we are just navigating.

Uh, the fleet team does a great job of trying to find the right intersection of is it more expensive to maintain or replace relative to also what we might get for trade in value.

So that's an ongoing calculation that we have uh in this process.

Um just kind of also context like the fund, you know.

Well, well, you know, important, like we get a number of like significant acquisitions in there.

You talk about a fire truck at 1.2 million uh to a bigger ladder truck to you know two plus million dollars.

You know, those haven't really been built into the fund necessarily.

You've borrowed for those in the past.

We are trying to work that into the fund as well.

So some things that weren't really um being accounted for um as well.

This in essence sort of talks about some of the fund health and challenge issues.

Uh, specifically, you can see sort of in that uh line that says 10% fully depreciated.

That's a new item.

So for items that are fully depreciated, we are charging out departments 10% to retain that asset.

That's to discourage the retention of spare vehicles.

Um, but also this does include RPD RPD uh vehicles.

So this pretty much includes all but our people excluded our major fire department or I would say the the fund is designed to account for everything.

Uh we'll call them the city portfolio.

RPU has a different structure uh for its vehicles, but yeah, police fire parks, sewer, you know, all those are account for here.

But you can see we have uh you know 17 million dollars of of equipment out there that's fully depreciated at the moment.

Uh we've also added in flat amounts to the budget.

Another thing that's really challenging the health of the fund is as you can imagine, uh, as you go to buy vehicles, whether you know uh you're doing that personally or otherwise, the the cost has just gone up.

So we buy a plow truck 10 years ago, 15 years ago, we go to replace it.

Um we necessarily we depreciated it at 216,000.

We go to replace it as 404,000.

So we haven't really built in mechanisms to account for the inflation of the vehicles outside of these other one-time funding sources that we just talked about.

So just some examples of you know, the cost of equipment, the cost of vehicle replacement relative to um what it's costing today.

Uh, police vehicles are a great example.

You know, that's not just the vehicle, it that's all of the equipment that goes in there.

Um, they're kind of like iPhones, you know, the chargers don't go from model to model, so the equipment in the vehicles doesn't go from model to model.

I mean, it's like designed obsolescence in a lot of cases, which isn't helpful, but it is something we have to live with.

Um I also say every time we have vehicle replacements, we evaluate the potential for electric.

We price as if it's going to be non-electric, um, but we do evaluate the potential for that, and we'll get more into the electric.

But again, uh cost pressure here is a is a very big factor as we look at the uh the fund.

Uh, a couple things kind of pivoting from uh the equipment revolving fund health to EV vehicles.

Uh, we did a fleet study a few years ago.

Um, I actually have paper copies of that.

I meant to include it in the packet and did not, so I will pass out uh Kayla did a nice job of provide Mrs.

Betzel did a nice job of providing summaries.

Um, I'll pass those around.

Um, however, uh a couple anchoring pieces uh from that study.

One was just we need charging infrastructure.

If we're gonna do EV successfully at our various different locations, uh we need charging infrastructure.

Um, we also then you know, look in this the study recommended 10 vehicles uh potentially for replacement.

I'll say we also have to do an evaluation of you know, can it work?

Right?

Like we haven't really seen scenarios where there's like electric bobcats that work out in the field yet, or you know, there are electric fire trucks, but there's a number of things to think about in terms of whether that helps or you know, what kind of challenges might be you know in place for that, or electric, you know, uh PD squads, etc.

There's just operational things to think about um and what kind of infrastructure is in place.

So that's part of the uh evaluation.

Um I will say though, we have been trying in this space.

I want to just emphasize we've done a couple of important things here.

One is the new maintenance service center that's under construction, that's a 43 million dollar project uh for our parks and public works maintenance.

Uh, we have 10 uh level two EV chargers inside the building, so future opportunities.

Uh, we built that into that building's budget.

Uh, we also have eight for the public there.

So as we make investments, we are trying to be strategic about that.

Uh, we have with the parking lot redesign and some other things that happen at City Hall, we have more EV charging in the parking lot there.

Um, if we're gonna do more of our fleet vehicles there, we at some point would need to you know do some upgrading to our electrical service uh as well as uh you know getting the charge point chargers in place.

So one estimate of City Hall.

Uh we have a few passenger vehicles that would be good EV candidates, um, would be $55,000 or so to do that.

And that's not built into the equipment revolving fund.

Like this would have this kinds of things have to stack on stack on top of that.

Uh, and we have evaluated grant opportunities have applied, haven't been yet successful, um, but have made some effort there.

I think we have more EVs than people think about.

Um, and so that study a few years ago said we should have 10.

Um, but in fact, uh, and I guess I'll get to the next uh slide here and jump ahead and uh and jump back.

But we have 14 electric vehicles now and six hybrids, so we'll go through that momentarily.

Um, but we've made more progress and maybe meets the eye um in that space.

Uh also we have a lot of opportunity out at the DSIC uh for charging.

We've we've made progress.

We have uh four vehicles out there now that are charging.

We have a space for six.

We have a fleet of about 40 plus vehicles out there that you could do.

Uh you start to do that though, we are not like electrical service-wise set up for that, and you would have to add a lot of infrastructure, and that could be pretty expensive.

But you know, again, something to think about long term, continuing to be on the radar uh for things uh that way.

Uh I want to just say, like, you know, we've got a lot of uh EVs deployed out in the community.

Um, I'd also say, like sometimes you know, we code vehicles to departments, but they are used interchangeably across the system.

So, you know, department A might pay a part of, but it might be deployed across you know our entire enterprise.

So just those department categorizations aren't always as important there.

Electric buses.

So we've gone fairly you know big into the electric bus space.

We have four electric buses that have been uh delivered and are in service.

Um, and then we have one that you are aware of that uh was delivered but not accepted.

There's some you know retooling that's happening with that, and then we have 11 of those on order, and so if you think about the 11 on order, a very substantial investment.

Um, but again, we're learning into this.

Like the current electric buses that we've acquired are a bit of an older generation, and you know, we're still learning how those can be effectively used.

You know, we've been running those at about 50% service, so 50% of our service profile, those are in service.

Otherwise, we are our charging.

Um we are seeing the performance of other EVs, next generation EVs by the same manufacturer do better than that, up to 70% availability.

Um, and so we are continuing to evaluate you know how that works best.

And you'll see obviously a huge deployment of this uh with the BRT system.

We're looking at a BRT police vehicle as part of the uh bus rapid transit uh project as a potential pilot or idea for that.

Uh in our current equipment revolving, though, we do only have one uh plan uh EV to be acquired in 27.

That's for traffic operations.

That is a pickup.

Uh the other thing for a while, we were dealing with supply issues.

That's those have seemed to smooth out um and got have gotten better.

Um, and I also say, you know, we have other vehicles, you know, we have inspector vehicles, for example, in community development that are programmed as equinoxes.

If we have charging stations available for them at the DSIC and electric is an option, the cost benefit or the the lifecycle cost of the of the vehicle would say we could acquire electric and we'll we'll judge that out when we go.

We just have to have a place to charge and has to work operationally.

So we do make sort of like vehicle by vehicle decisions on these as we go along.

Biggest need here if we want to go bigger into this is uh EV charging.

Um, and with that, um I'll turn it over to you all for questions.

Questions, council member Palmer.

Thank you.

I got two quick ones.

Are we still buying all our vehicles off the state contract?

Um, you know, we buy a lot of our vehicles off the state contract, but we also I think try to find the ways to purchase that makes the most sense.

We do an enterprise leasing program for PD vehicles.

Some we spec out if you think about like a bus or a fire truck, we run that through like a specification uh process, but a lot of our vehicles are purchased out of some form of competitive cooperative purchasing.

I'm just talking your regular drive pickup truck, your your regular car.

I mean, most of those are all bought off the state contract.

Generally speaking, yes.

So it does the state contract offer electric and also regular sedan.

Yes.

And is there a difference in price between you know, if I'm looking at apples to apples, is there a difference in price?

Yeah, so I don't I I don't have like a an object lesson or an example for you here.

But yes, there is a difference in price.

The price on EV uh for upfront purchase cost tends to be more uh lifecycle cost when you you know factor out you know, less gas and maintenance, et cetera, tends to be closer to you know break even, minus the charging infrastructure.

That's the variable that isn't accounted for there.

But generally, if you look at the whole cost of the vehicle, they're pretty competitive.

So when the police department came and said, geez, we're having trouble getting vehicles, we want to rent them or lease them through enterprise.

Have we looked at that for our other vehicles?

You know, I I think we're really using the PDS, sort of the pilot there.

Um, we have not uh thought about deploying the enterprise model to there.

Uh that was a lot of that was availability.

They were able to contract large numbers of vehicles.

Uh, we don't have the availability challenge as much in our other spaces.

The the PD vehicles were they're very specific.

Um, and you know, there's law enforcement models, so it was really that it's kind of a tight niche market that was trying to be solved with that one.

Okay, thank you.

Council member Keene.

Uh, thank you.

Yeah, I I want to understand page 17.

You've got the chart that shows that uh uh the um the requests for those years uh for um replacements and then what we have in the budget.

It uh back two more.

There you go.

I I'm not sure if I'm reading it right, but are we 1.1 million short to be able to fill our requirements?

Is this a budget request or what what am I what am I reading?

So when we go through the budget process, you know, departments submit requests and then we reconcile those to come to a budget that we think you all you know can ultimately support.

So what you're seeing is the department requested amount on the left, and then the what we've ultimately, as an overall staff or the city administrators recommended budget of it recommended to you to replace, given all the fund health and all the other considerations that I mentioned.

I think I understand that.

I just don't know if you've told me what they've requested is what we really need, as opposed to, and then I would read we're short 1.1 million dollars.

But it I don't you never said that.

So I'm I'm trying to understand what I'm looking at.

We're not here tonight asking you to to fund more than what is uh being replaced here because we we have done some things uh to provide additional one-time money and depreciation funding within the budget, which will help us in the future.

Um we and that'll make significant progress.

We do need the fund to stabilize a little bit.

That will start to take place in the 27-28 time frame.

And we should be able to do get closer to the requested amounts.

Again, the departments had a real reasonable ass, and everything you know met the standards for hours use mileage that we tend to look at.

Yep.

Um, but they also try to manage and stretch things out as long as you can.

No, and I understand the complexities underneath it, but your messaging here is different than what I saw in that chart because what I saw in that chart is our gap gets dramatically worse in 2027.

But you're saying we're actually moving towards better improvements.

Yeah, this doesn't have the the if you're looking at this chart, is that what you're talking about?

No, I was looking back on the same one where it says 2027, what's requested is 9.6.

And we're we're this budget recommends 6.3.

So the gap is getting the gap is there, but we are also um pending your approval of the budget.

Some of these other fundings will allow us to in 28 start to catch up and no that helps me.

I just want to ask my questions, make sure I was reading this down.

The other one just on this infrastructure for uh so that the idea is you don't want to be buying electric cars and then find out we don't have a way of charging them or find out we we're not they're not gonna be useful for.

So I appreciate that.

But I don't know what it means to build the infrastructure.

Would that so that be sort of a direction towards we need enough level two charging in all of our city property so that if if a car was or any of the cars that are left overnight at places, we need a certain percentage of EV capability or but it is level two or not level three, or are is there something that knows this?

You're gonna lose me a little bit on some of that.

But well, I would say generally like this is the speed of yeah, the speed of charging is important.

I think the biggest thing to think about there, and we can have others go deeper on this if you like.

Um, but I think for the general response there, Councilman Rakeen is we have to be strategic about where we buy and what buildings are allocated to, because if we have a one fire station that could have an AV, but you're gonna set up infrastructure for one fire station, right?

The cost benefit on that might be kind of low versus you've got 40 fleet in and out day-to-day vehicles at the DSIC.

It might make more sense to think about that, or City Hall, where you have a lot of in and out um opportunity there.

Coincidentally, I'll take a little brief point of privilege here.

City hall vehicles, we have fleet vehicles there.

Uh, we have like three that are available for checkout.

Um, and I would just say, like, for you all, just for your awareness, this goes maybe back to the council budget conversation.

Um, we have a reservation process for those vehicles.

Um, so generally speaking, you know, when you go somewhere, if you have a meeting in St.

Paul or conference in Alexandria or whatever the case is, um, you have the option of doing mileage, which is a fairly normal thing that a lot of people do.

Um, if that doesn't, you know, meet your expectation, you can see if there's a V city vehicle available um to check out.

Um, Lisa Mullenbach can help out with that.

We have a calendar of all the check-in, check out of that.

It's just a very simple reservation.

So as you all navigate your travel, know that that's an option for you as well.

Oh, very good.

I the electric charging, I don't want to get into it here, but there are people on staff who really understand this.

And it isn't it isn't as I don't we talk about we need to have the infrastructure, but what that is is I mean, it can be dramatically different.

Um our traffic side, Sam Bedzinga understands this stuff, and I think he'd be very helpful when you talk about how what we need so that we could start uh having you good use of our of our electric vehicles.

And what we've said is just if we're gonna go to this and like some of it is like do you have the option or opportunity to fund the investments either in the electrical service or the charging infrastructure?

Um, and if you do, you know, there's an assessment you would do for 10 to 15,000.

So you know, our facilities team has said that's about what it takes, and our sustainability team has just said to look at what are your options, you know, in building uh to do that.

I think this kind of walks a little bit with your conversation previously around the natural gas franchise fee, and yeah, you know, if you split that for organizational investment, certainly transportation and building is you know, your two anchors there on the organizational side, and EV charging infrastructure seems like it would fit well on that organizational side of the and again a point of privilege.

Another thing we could do is buy electric cars as a city and see how good our city is to have the support to support to be able to charge them and use them.

Councilmember Miller.

Yeah, I appreciate that point because that was gonna be my other question.

Of I mean, today we don't operate city fueling stations.

We go out and refuel vehicles around the community.

So I just would want to understand that balance too of what charging capacity, even level three chargers are available in the community, what the rates are and how we accelerate um our progress towards electrification and understand the long-term infrastructure requirements um and and plan accordingly, because at some point uh you know, I a 20th century technology fossil fuels will no longer be available or the most viable.

And obviously, that's a long-term planning to set up the infrastructure, but it this seems like something we have to plan for over the long term anyway.

And I I think we have an opportunity to be smart about it and and build up the infrastructure, but also not limit ourselves just based on the infrastructure when there are other opportunities.

All right, thank you very much, Mr.

Parrish.

Up next, administrator Zelms and our current collaboration with RCTC and potential evolution.

Thank you, Council President.

The book end of the budget.

Uh, but you will get one more Aaron Parrish.

Uh so um this is really going to be a brief history of time, and I'll just um acknowledge someone that's in the audience who probably doesn't want to be acknowledged, but a person in the audience, um, Gary Newman has been through all of this, and so um just give him a little bit of credit for um being at least the one person for sure that knows all of this in and out.

And so just give him a little bit of credit for being at least the one person for sure that knows all of this in and out.

And I would also just acknowledge that Rachel Hoduk is also in the audience.

You see her occasionally.

She is our finance manager and makes all of this happen.

She was.

She was there, I promise.

She was there.

And so she doesn't want to hear about this.

But what we would like to just talk through is I'm not sure everyone realizes all of the agreements that are in place and the brief history of time I think would be helpful to the city council and others in understanding how the collaboration progressed over time, starting in the 90s, even starting with the acquisition of the land.

And then how from your feedback, we might look towards reimagining that part partnership, which has always been focused on meeting community and regional needs as well as the needs of students.

And if perhaps you're the school, you might think students and community and regional needs because you operate a college.

So there is that aspect of this, right?

We are very community focused and city focused, not saying the college isn't, but they have a primary mission.

So if you look at this map, and I'm hoping I can actually see this from here, um, if you look at the number 12, so you're um looking sort of west of what is that?

Uh 30th Avenue, all the way um below the Hein Center in that area.

You have fields there, fields to the east of the Heinz Center that have a 12 on them, and and below that, all of those fields that have a 12 on them are fields that the city operate that the city is maintaining.

We rent those fields out for a fee to members of the public.

Um, if if you haven't rented it and you're able to drop in and magically nobody's there, you can use it.

Um, but there's no guarantee that it wouldn't have already been rented by someone to use.

So our um staff in parks manages those diamonds, those fields, et cetera.

Um, and RCTC uses those at no fee.

So all of those fields were a part of um a former land trust called the Jaeger Land Trust.

Um, all of that area used to be goose habitat.

Also the area uh east of um 30th Avenue there, and you can see the little black hash line.

Everything within the black hash line except for probably 30th Avenue is actually land that is RCTC state minescu land.

So you can see east of there um to the entrance to Stonebridge, um, where the girls uh or the youth fast pitch um complexes.

That's also on RCTC land, similar arrangement.

It's uh maintained and operated by um our parks department um for for use.

Um RCTC can use it.

Um it's slightly different agreement, and for your viewing pleasure, we put all of those agreements in your packet.

I will hope I don't know if I hope that you read them all or not, but we tried to summarize them as well as possible.

So that was the most recent um uh partnership that transpired between RCTC and the city.

And you can also see the um item the two buildings, three and two.

Um, three is the stadium and bubble.

Um, so that was a partnership that had sales tax funding associated with it, um, as well as the field house, which had both sales tax and state bonding associated with it when it was constructed.

So all of these things, um, the parking lots that you see that are on RCTC land are also um owned and maintained um by RCTC.

And then the interior roads, except for um the road, the main road through with the roundabouts, which is a city road, all of the interior roads are interior to the college, just like if you had a very large park property with a long driveway, um, that that would be your responsibility.

So for perspective, that's a very large portion of um of the campus that has a lot of community use and had a lot of partnership over time.

Um, just wanted to kind of ground you in the map of um how that works.

And we'll go through this on some of the other arrangements we have for um the field house and um the stadium and bubble, which are a little bit different.

You can see um that in 1998 is when this really started with uh the funding partnership um for the baseball field complex regional sports facility that is the field house um and performance courts, um, the sound system, um, there was the health sciences building, which isn't sports, um, and then the stadium um there in the 1998 authorization, which very clearly in the sales tax legislation talked about both community and student use.

So already we were contemplating um that this was going to be a partnership um in I would assume long term is what the um folks were thinking at that time.

Um, and then in 2005, again for student and community use, um, or uh a little bit of an iteration here.

There was a $8 million both for UMR and for um RCTC um use that was $4 million each, much broader authority there.

It wasn't specific within the legislation for specific facilities.

And then moving forward into the 2012 sales tax.

There was again some additional funding provided to RCTC.

You can see the additional funding for the stadium to make it ready for the bubble and for some other sports improvements for community and technical college.

So a significant investment utilizing the local option sales tax as well as some state bonding in order to be able to provide that joint use.

There's a lot of other things that were funded.

It's a different way of looking at it.

But with that, the city also entered into a, I guess it would be more of a three-party agreement between RCTC, which is a sub a subset of the of MinskU, the state system.

So ultimately, the school is part of the overall state assets of the Minnesota.

I don't actually know what Minskio fully stands for.

Hopefully it's in one of those agreements.

But the state agency that is responsible fully for all of those properties.

The initial agreement for the dome, which was recently in the newspaper, that there's concerns about continuing to put that up after this season was again contributing to the construction to make it ready to be able to have the dome.

So technically there's a 365-day termination clause that exists within those agreements, which is fine if no one's ever planning to terminate, but it's in the agreements.

So that can be sort of concerning as the entity that is continuing to invest.

And then responsibilities for the dome.

RCTC manages all of the operations, the staffing and maintenance guided by the committee that was created at that time, three people from RCTC, three people from the city.

They handle all the maintenance and repairs and annual dome installation and removal.

So really it is their facility, and they are also providing usage during the indoor season.

So that essentially a lot of the control there, and um probably rightfully so, is that the college has much authority as they also were envisioned to be maintaining, operating and replacing that facility.

This is just a little bit more information about the dome and the entry point and that this is from the facilities study, facility condition index study that um RCTC and all of the other MinskU schools have.

So there are it's it's in relatively good condition, but there are some concerns about the actual fabric of the dome and the um heating ventilation and cooling system and the blowers that are necessary in order to ensure that it is operational.

The field house, which is another thing that not everybody realizes, everyone realizes, is a public um partnership with uh the college.

So if you look at the top part of the schematic on the lower right-hand side of the page, that's ostensibly the field house that is primarily utilized by the public.

Um, those other smaller rooms are available to rent.

Um, the performance court has some different requirements for it, and um it's it's available but less available because the college is using that a lot for their teams.

Um, again, this was entered into in that 2000 timeframe where we had the 10.5 million going towards um the facility.

There was additional dollars that went from state bonding.

Um it's about 115,000 square feet facility.

Um, the term of the agreement that we have is for the life of the facility.

RCTC is responsible for all aspects of operation management, staffing and maintenance, um, as they are also for the stadium and bubble.

And then um there is some some difference here.

There was an adjustment made um to the agreement in 2011 where it used to say that the city would have priority and it was changed to the public shall have priority rental from Monday through Friday from 5 p.m.

to close and Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m.

to close.

And then RCTC has priority to the offices, weight rooms, classrooms, and locker facilities from 7 a.m.

to five, um, I guess on the off hours to that.

And then there's also some um priority, as I mentioned, for the performance court classrooms and wrestling room that is a little bit different than all those other sections based on how they use that as a college.

So we do have a number of agreements spanning a long time frame, 30 years or so, um, with all of these different investments happening at different times across the life of the community and across the life of the college.

You can see that there is a scan sample schedule here and that there's a lot of RCTC words on there for the sports center, the field house and the uh the performance courts there during the day, which isn't surprising.

Perhaps though there might be opportunities there to do that differently.

Um, is there an opportunity for mixing up a little bit where where the college is utilizing the dome?

I failed to mention the college when the dome is a dome, when the bubble is up, um, actually rents the um bubble space just like any other user.

So they pay the whatever the rack rate is um for rental when it's in the indoor dome during the um the colder time frame, November to about March.

That might feel free up the field house a little bit.

Maybe we could be looking at that slightly differently for community members.

Could we enhance the field house programming um between that 8 a.m.

and 2 p.m.

time frame?

Um, obviously, just like anyone, there's a scheduling system at RCTC.

And if you think you might need something, it's easier to schedule hold than it is to put your specific times in.

Um, so that would be an operational difference, but maybe there's some opportunity there to work with um our partners there to see how we could evolve in 2025 and 2026 beyond 1998 and 2011.

Um, the sports center and field house, again, if you've been there, it's in pretty good shape.

Um, I would say for something that was built quite a long time ago.

Um, and you can see um some of the photography there of the classroom space, the um bottom right hand side, I believe is the field house.

Um, you can see that there's the track around to be able to um primarily what happens there now is walking, maybe there's an opportunity to reintroduce running, um, things of that nature, but it's a pretty large space and um and has a lot of opportunity um like anything, people have to know that it's available.

And as schools have evolved and sort of behavior around schools have evolved.

I think there's probably any number of folks who don't think that they're supposed to be going into a college facility.

Um, if you go to any other public school, there's a whole check-in process that happens.

Um, that isn't really the case at the field house.

So um again, just a recap of the FOD Monsour rectangle fields, about 40 acres.

Um, city developed all of the improvements there.

Um, and the agreement there is that we maintain and operate 8 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

Um, and then um on Saturday, we always have one rectangle field and one rectangle field, two evenings per week.

Um, that continues but can be terminated with 365 days of notice, despite the investment.

Um, Rochester Youth Fast Pitch and Baseball.

Um, so that uh area that's north of uh 30th Avenue, 12 softball and baseball fields, city developed the improvements on the RCTC owned property, and that agreement operates similarly um to the other outdoor facilities with that 365 days of notice of termination.

The pause for question, but I think some of the investment needs would be valuable to hear from Deputy Administrator Parish.

Why don't you go ahead with the investment needs?

So, as you can imagine, there's a number of things when you have large facilities like this.

You have over 100,000 square feet in the field house and performance court, 88,000 square feet in the bubble, not including the accessory facilities.

RCTC, like all the MinskU institutions, you know, does a uh an annual or not annual, but periodic exercise around their facility master planning.

So a lot of this data is really extracted out of their like us, they uh ask the state legislature to invest in their uh facilities through a program called HEAPER, which is higher education asset preservation.

Um, so we'll talk a little bit about that.

But um they have a number of uh projects identified.

I'm not gonna go through it here.

I'll go through it uh later in these.

Uh in this plan, they've identified just uh over 24 million dollars worth of needs.

Um, and Minsky as a collection of institution, and Minsky is the Minnesota State Colleges and University system.

Um that ranges from everything from all the community colleges to all, you know, you think of Mancato, uh St.

Cloud, et cetera.

Um it covers uh it's a large uh large institution, but their projected capital needs are 2.9 billion.

Uh if you look at the historical uh funding levels of HEAPER, um, they're really just scratching the surface.

So, you know, they have a lot of uh investments that they need to make uh either through third-party partnerships or through campus funding.

Um clearly we all understand the higher education uh is very dynamic environment in terms of facilities and term in terms of how higher education is delivered in today's uh day and age as well.

Um so trying to come into this conversation with some of that perspective in place.

Um a lot of great partnerships, but we're at a point now where we have to think about how do you sustain it going forward.

As City Administrator Zelms mentioned, the agreements contemplate that RCTC and MinSQ will operate and maintain the facilities.

Um but the language in the agreements does say you know, we'll make maintenance and capital investments as it deems necessary or appropriate.

So there's a lot of bandwidth for them to make decisions on what is necessary and appropriate.

Uh just looking at some of the similar things we've done with the council for city facilities, we you know tried to understand, you know, what kind of assets do you have there?

Uh, if you look at just the regional sports center, so think of the field house performance court.

Um, you have about a 20-year ownership cost of 46 million dollars.

All that's really doing is taking about 2% of the value of that facility over you know each year, articulating that you would need to you know reinvest that.

That's a national research council building standard.

Um something that we used as a guideline that can range from two to six percent, depending on how well you're maintaining it.

Um, this is assuming it's being maintained uh well.

A couple of other important uh things to think about.

Uh there's the ongoing operational costs in these buildings.

So if you think about just for the regional sports and rec uh the regional sports center, rather, a lot of regional stuff there.

Uh the regional sports center, you're looking at six million dollars in utilities, plus or minus with four percent inflation, which for utilities is probably conservative, um, but six million dollars over 20 years there.

Uh parking lot snow removal for all we'll call the areas within the blue, uh, which are you know, we'll say areas of city interest, uh, that's estimated at 1.7 million dollars.

So a lot of it long-term investment needed in order to keep these being beneficial for the community and students.

Uh and then also you have the dome needs at 3.1 million.

Um, and that's actually not based on the 2%.

That's based on identified needs within their facility condition assessment, and then annual utility costs just under 200,000.

That $3.1 million needed, principally uh just under $2 million of that really is for uh dome fabric.

Um, so just to understand uh that a little bit, you know, that's a key piece for comparison though, as we were looking at options for the regional sports and rec complex.

We looked at a dome as an intermediate solution or something that could be added on to what you know is being discussed now as the phase thing facility.

Um, an intermediate dome.

Uh now, granted, this is year-round, so you wouldn't have to take it up and down like you do at RCTC because it would have a footing.

Um, but in this case, uh that was you know estimated at over 10 to 11 million dollars.

So, in context by comparison, you still have the potential to maintain an important indoor recreational use at a cost that's much less than what would be needed to build new, especially um if you were you know thinking about walking away from that.

Uh other projects in that little middle spreadsheet that have been identified as priorities uh for RCTC, the field house floor replacement, um, both to just make it more user functional, uh water heater replacement, so smaller projects in the scheme of things, but contemporary projects that are on RCTC's uh mind.

Uh some of the other upgrades really are related to um extending the county steam into the site.

So that's the 1.7 million dollar uh item there.

And then there's some site improvements.

You know, you can see the parking lots do need attention out there, um, circulation could be better.

Um, so you you have another almost uh four and a half million dollars plus or minus on different site improvements that are uh potentially uh needed in that space.

So not insignificant.

However, if you're gonna build this new today, and as we've had conversations uh on what phase two indoor options might be, how can you meet indoor recreational needs?

Um, those numbers are small compared to you know what it would take to build new, and uh you'd be sort of reusing an asset here.

This is just some of the data that flows into the numbers that you saw there a moment ago.

As always, we're trying to look at like where the right intersection of interests and needs are.

I won't read these for you, and we don't want to presume what RCTC's RCTC's interests and needs are, but you know, obviously are interested in learning and understanding better uh what those are.

Uh, but we we all have some common things.

You know, we want to serve the community, we want to provide great indoor uh experiences, um, maximize the benefit we've received from investments we've made in the past.

Um the community's invested a lot in these buildings, and you know, I think it's a fair thing to think about how do we continue to have that partnership and for the community to receive uh value and leverage those local uh sales tax investments.

interested in learning and understanding better uh what those are uh but we we all have some common things you know we want to serve the community we want to provide great indoor uh experiences um maximize the benefit we've received from investments we've made in the past um the community's invested a lot in these buildings and you know i think it's a fair thing to think about how do we continue to have that partnership and for the community to receive uh value and leverage those local uh sales tax investments this way is into your economic resilience uh strategic priority in terms of how do we use this to generate uh activity that's relevant for you know regional sports um there's used to be a lot of activity out here um I'm a wrestling family and so spent a lot of time in the RCTC field house with wrestling events and um not as much of that's happening anymore some of it is um but you know we've lost a little bit there and so how do we uh get some of that back and make it you know relevant for the economy um I think a couple of short term things and I think as we look uh I think Alison and I had the opportunity to have a a good baseline conversation I know others have had you know conversations uh you know with the RCTC team as well um I think we're trying to come to this with sort of the spirit of what can we do to sort of ignite our partnership in the short term and uh go through a few of those options while we're still looking at like what does long term you know look like for us as well uh mentioned earlier uh just you know are there opportunities to reprioritize use um there's a lot of stranded time in there right now particularly during the day if you think of uh back to that schedule we showed eight to two is like basketball and it's like unstructured right so it's just kind of a placeholder item um we have the opportunity to look at that eight to two period I believe um and say what might we be able to do there and and program there uh if we look at some of these facilities and these facilities all were developed at different times so they kind of act like they're their own entities but if you start to think of these facilities as an ecosystem I think there's opportunities even to generate more community use uh at the uh kind of we'll call it after school hours time anywhere in that four to five you know kind of time frame uh now again this would go against the existing agreements and we'd have to determine you know if this works with and balances out effectively with RCTC student needs but you know you have baseball and softball that are basically during that two to six period of time offsetting use in the dome and the field house um can we transition more of that use to the the the the bubble and utilize more of that field house space um they obviously are very interested in you know addressing some of these short term investment needs particularly the flooring that's probably part of the conversation um do you trade investment for access um in this scenario so I think that's part of the kind of conversation that we'll continue to have uh to bring forward to you um so priority scheduling for Rochester MSA just making sure that you know a lot of community investment here that community folks have the opportunity to utilize it first before you know folks out of area you might have seen you know there's a few users you know that aren't necessarily as local and you know we want to make sure that the time is uh available that way and I just think a lot of times this is this might be one of the best kept secrets just to build on what administrator Zoom said um just awareness is a big deal here and uh putting our teams together just to generate that awareness of what's uh imagined uh possible and then or you know what's what's available right now and trying to put all this into an MOU that says here's what we can do short term here's our process for having a better long-term conversation and see where this might go so with that I think we'd be happy to entertain questions thank you administrative Zooms and deputy administrator parish for the great deep dive and all of the information I would also add that I think the timing couldn't be better because there is a strong desire in our community for community access and primarily community access indoor and the striking piece of the information that you shared that you pointed out was it costs a lot more to build new than it does to uh to rehab existing what I'm most excited about and I really love your terminology reimagining the partnership and and I too have talked to RCTC leadership and they're excited about reimagining that partnership and when I say reimagining it and you touched on this it's really starting with those agreements and really looking at you know those 30 years of agreements and what is the future of those agreements who does what uh in the future and then also the operating and management model having a balance between community needs and student needs our focus here is the community the uh RCTC is a college their focus is educating uh young people or and people into a new profession so we know something about uh community access to parks and rec and then uh and then also what are those needed enhancements to the facilities uh going forward and then the big question and and I think it's really important that we look at it in this uh sequence the agreements the operating uh model what enhancements need to happen and then comes the financing models how do we sustain that for uh future and so I really applaud all the work that you guys have done to bring this

And then uh, and then also what are those needed enhancements to the facilities going forward.

And then the big question, and and I think it's really important that we look at it in this uh sequence, the agreements, the operating uh model, what enhancements need to happen, and then comes the financing models.

How do we sustain that for uh future?

And so I really applaud all the work that you guys have done to bring this all together, and I see it as a as a uh as you mentioned, maybe there's some short term uh wins there.

Uh long term, I see the long term as us uh working on this partnership over the course of the next year or so, uh, and uh to address the elephant in the room, maybe at the same time the proposed uh sports complex in Southeast Eastern Rochester is happening.

So, with that, I will uh go to council member Fredericks.

Thank you.

You've all covered everything, I think there, Council President.

But uh thanks for the presentation, Administrator Zelms and Parrish.

Question for you is there's been talk circulating about the dome not going up this winter.

Is that accurate or inaccurate?

Yeah, I believe that's a pretty distinct perspective that you know RCTS RCTC has put out there.

I I do think that you know it's gonna be part of our MOU conversation on what could we do to you know consider that?

Um is there some support in terms of the teardown takedown?

And then they obviously are concerned about their risk just with uh an equipment failure and what they do, you know, there.

But I think that's part of the short term MOU as well.

I did just want to clarify that when I asked that specific question based on correspondence I received, and it said next season, like that could mean a lot of things depending on who you are.

Um, they were intending that to be after this coming season.

So we still need to have these conversations now because every season gets, you know, it's closer than you think.

Right, because that just leads to the next question.

It said they would they would maintain the dome as long as it was serviceable or it's serviceable life.

That's what I heard you say during this presentation.

I think I believe it's serviceable life, is more is longer according to the um report than this coming season, but those are things we would want to talk to them about.

What I'm hearing is there's a little grey area there.

All right.

You useful life is a term we have this in some other agreements, can be challenging.

And so, you know, it's a point of conversation.

We have a similar term in our uh trying to put it on the spot.

I'm just trying to see where we're at with that because you know, people are asking, you know, and a lot of teams rely on that in the winter to get their reps in and so on and so forth.

It's a good asset for this community.

And if it's still in good shape, what do we got to do to keep it rolling?

You know, I don't I'm I'm very much of this of the opinion.

Let's utilize to the best of our ability what we have in place instead of running out and building new.

If we're not using what we have in place, what's building new gonna do?

Are we gonna then in five years think that one's not usable too?

So it's just let's let's utilize what we have.

It's a nice facility.

Um, I've gone to a lot of events out there, basketball and wrestling both, and dance and things like this.

So uh I've I've always had a good experience out there.

I don't know that it needs a whole bunch of renovations.

I like the awareness piece.

That doesn't cost a lot of money.

Um, yeah, again, uh I think this is a really good topic for us to be touching on, and there is some timeliness with it.

Um again, obviously you talk about obviously it's much better to find existing things and try to bring them to certain things, the communication, the awareness.

Um, but frankly, the whole MOU or mode of oper uh you know management agreement here, at least I I would really be hesitant to invest any other sales tax or any other money right now with without major changes to how we do business.

Um, because I mean I I'm actually could be okay with the idea of these days, these times of the day are blocked for college usage or something like that, and not to be trying to compete uh though again, creating some of the problems we had at 125.

Um, but the way this is managed right now, I don't think it's I don't think it's um valued.

The I don't think we're getting the value of the investments we put in.

So I would rather work to get that to be in a much better shape before we start talking about taking other sales tax or other city funding from anywhere else and investing it on property that we don't control, and we get into these situations where someone says we're just not gonna do this anymore, even though we have these joint powers agreements that are in place and all signed and they have dates on them, and we we have I feel very little uh capability of challenging them, and it's frustrating.

Uh council member Miller.

Yeah, I really appreciate the presentation of the deep dive.

I know we've asked for this in a few ways through different conversations.

Um and I I would agree that I think that the availability of the space and what they can be used for and what times and what fees just really missing.

I I looked up the RCTC website for the facility.

Doesn't mention anything about public access.

There's a fee schedule.

So I think we have some real opportunity to communicate in a coordinated way, like we do in other programs and say these are the facilities.

This is the type of activity that you could do.

Here's the fee, and here are the times of day.

And I think that would be a huge resource, even to us on council of knowing what's across our parks and recreation system.

I mean, most people know where parks are if they live near them.

Most people assume that the parks are free to use during days of the week, during daytime hours, first come, first serve on a lot of facilities, and the shelters are rented.

But I don't think that those sorts of assumptions are clear depending on the types of facilities, whether that's the volleyball center, the rec center, 1255, the field house, any number of other things.

And I don't think we have a central resource, which you've identified here for this facility, but for all the facilities across our parks and rec system.

And I think that that would be an opportunity before we invest any capital dollars that would be uh a short-term win.

Councilmember Keene.

Wait, I know it wasn't a question, but I do think there's something there that is really important, which is making sure people are aware and thinking about it as regardless of who I am.

If I'm going to that website, I know that I could utilize it and how and how easy is it.

And do I need to you know go through like background check in order to walk at the field house and things of that nature?

And so I do think there's a lot of opportunity short of a full reimagining, and I cannot guarantee you a full reimagining, but there's definitely opportunity.

Um, we do sometimes also have challenges with the outdoor fields.

So on that map, you saw a fair amount of um stormwater retention, which is the responsibility of the college, and occasionally um there will be beaver dams that are not remediated, and that very much encroaches on and requires the fairly significant investment from the city to be able to get those fields ready again.

So again, a challenge if I'm a college, um, but we have a lot of we have a lot of great opportunity to really reimagine even current day, what people can do at these facilities and also how we can maintain them in a way where people are not feeling the pressure of um some other challenges that that are that end up happening occasionally.

And I guess I would just add uh is a final comment, thinking about the engagement that we've done and community needs, particularly in indoor walking space that have come up, just really uh pulling out the highest level priorities, particularly that could be met with existing facilities and making sure that that's a key communication focus.

Um, especially thinking about uh opportunities that wouldn't require giant budget amounts, capital amounts, reinvestment amounts.

Thank you.

You actually talked me into what I was actually going to try to say, but it escaped me.

Um, and I don't want to speak on behalf of Director Whitman, but I know that we had talked in the previous meeting about looking at all of the partnerships and and how might we make sure that people are aware of access and coming back with an ask.

And so I think this could be a small part of that.

Um, because I don't think you'd want just one way of people finding about this fight.

There might be groups of people who would never go to the college website to think that they can get recreational opportunities, right?

So I I believe that this at least a small piece of this would also be a part of that conversation.

And I guess just an opportunity too to clarify the expectations that public facilities are available to the public and clarifying what are public facilities and what should have public access, and that should probably live primarily on a city website, a city resource.

Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

I I think we need to also understand that RCTC is a huge asset for Rochester and that brings a lot to Rochester.

And uh I am a proud graduate of uh RCTC um a long time ago.

Um and the other thing that that bothers me about this is I have used the the dome, and it's difficult to use, they're not friendly, um, and it's not been our experience, and and I can talk from many different people from running, that it's not a great experience.

And so if we can get different management or we can take control of that, I think that's well worth our effort to do um because it's a great facility.

And if you if you walk or run it at night, which no you can no longer run it at night, um, there's basketball players all the time and young people all the time using that.

So um, I think that's an asset.

It opens at 6:30 in the morning, um, eight times around a mile.

It's it's a it's a great facility, but again, they're not real welcoming in probably what Mr.

Miller's saying is that how do we get that out in the community, but that's an asset that everybody in the community can use.

Councilmember Doring.

Yeah, I really appreciate you coming back with all the information that you did uh this evening.

Um, and I would be remiss to say uh that I am tying this to the regional sports complex.

You've even uh labeled these uh assets as regional sports center.

Uh so I'm utilizing or thinking about this as a regional sports entity in the community of Rochester, and I am less hesitant to think about um putting capital into approving facilities than maybe some of my colleagues here are uh to improve community use experience.

Um my colleague, Mr.

U Friedrich's just said uh, why build something if it's not going to be used?

Um I've heard that argument talked about the regional sports complex.

I just heard my colleague uh Mr.

Palmer talk about uh uh the dome and maybe taking that over, uh, which would require staffing hours to do so.

So it'd be uh better for community access.

That is going to uh uh cost us some dollars to do.

So I would uh I would encourage us as we continue to move forward in developing agreements or developing memorandum memorandums of understanding with the college who is also who are also members of our community here in Rochester, uh, to not be so hesitant in realizing that when we are in these discussions that we might have to invest some dollars.

Yeah, just a couple of points to that.

I I mean obviously we're in a very dynamic environment, you know, and I do think looking at these as part of a broader ecosystem is important.

I also wanna you know, uh refer back at some point, you know, in your current action plan, you do contemplate doing an update to your parks master plan, which tries to look at all of your needs holistically, and you know, the challenge we have uh with a lot of projects, and I'll use Soldiers Field as an example.

You know, you're in there, you're doing a project, and everybody wants their particular issue to be addressed in that one project because that's what you're focused on at that point in time.

Um, but I I do think we can look at some of these things holistically.

Um the the university college might see value in how the regional sports and rec complex might be able to meet their early season needs, and I think we can you know look at that.

Uh so I do think there's a variety of things for us to deal with.

I I want to give you just a brief update on the schedule for the regional sports and rec complex.

So we had intended and are intending uh at the first meeting in October to bring a request for authorization to bid.

Um, that's still um the working plan.

Um, given some of the bid timing issues and what we're hearing out in the construction environment where they might need to phase some of the field installation.

Um we're we're needing to think a little bit more about the operating agreement and how it might work in that first year and a half.

Um, and so that looks to be a December 8th item, and then the bid award uh and and having all the bids and understanding likely looks to be December 8th.

Um, we would also then instead of going deep into the financial conversation and engaging the rating agencies, and that's a bit of an exercise for us to go through.

Um, we'll hold on the uh the bond issuance and request the authorization for the bond issuance on the eighth as well.

So just a little bit of a difference in the schedule, but just wanted you to know that you know, you might not see all of what you thought you were gonna see on that first meeting in October.

Councilmember Wall.

Thank you.

I appreciate uh whatever the administration is doing in the way of trying to establish uh better relationships with uh leadership out of the college.

Uh, I really believe we need to have uh a motivated and willful uh partner in making some of the changes that have been hoped for along the dais here this afternoon, uh, without uh both parties that are committed to uh serving the community.

Certainly one party has uh greater interest in serving students, but unless both parties are interested in serving the community, I don't think that our conversations are going to go uh really very far.

So thank you for for establishing those relationships and uh as many conversations as you can have moving uh the community's needs forward.

uh without uh both parties that are committed to uh serving the community certainly one party has uh greater interest in serving students but unless both parties are interested in serving the community i don't think that our conversations are going to go uh really very far so thank you for for establishing those relationships and uh as many conversations as you can have moving uh the community's needs forward mayor norton thank you and a lot of the comments have have been helpful today um i had a couple questions one erin you mentioned on the dome i should say administrator parish my apologize for the okay you can hit me back um one of the comments you made was purchasing new is way more expensive i as in talking with uh the president uh at out out at rctc was and again this was just a casual conversation was that he doesn't believe it has that many more years of life yet left so um as you look to replace the dome is the replacement for the the material um the place where we can save money i i'm i'm trying to because that's not buying new because we still have the underlying framework is that am i understanding that correctly i wasn't sure if i did yeah your honor uh deep in the recesses of your packet um there's like two pages um that are r ctc's uh facility condition assessment for the dome um there's a number of assets that have a lot of life um in them you know that are out there they require ongoing investment of course uh but your principal issue really is the fabric and is it sustainable operationally you know they're just you've been having to spend you know 120 or 30 thousand dollars off the trying to remember off the top of my head um just to you know do the put up and takedown of the dome I think as we go through the short term MOU we'll continue to explore can we provide city teammates to help that process out better they've been relying on volunteers in the past that aren't as available as they have been so I think we'll we'll look at options there.

I I do think there's those two issues capital and just the ongoing ONM and I I think you know it behoove us to really try to see where we could do that.

If you the fabric though and the rest of the items seem very solvable resolvable from my perspective if you can navigate the fabric.

Okay.

And I was just trying to get my head around what you were actually saying because if if he's correct in that there's only several years left of the dome if you could afford to put it up and down did we have to buy new anyway or we can just replace the material and that's a cheaper cost is what I was getting at.

And like it sounds like maybe you're gonna look into that and it might be um also a couple things one and some others have have hinted at that I would like to see us invest dollars out at RCTC to make that not only more available to the community but so that it has the elements that the community told us they needed and wanted that we aren't able to do with the Southeast project.

So whether that means a small addition whether that means redoing a floor whether that means indoor pickleball um some something we're not putting it you know it'll be outside at the other one um is there a way we can satisfy the community's needs i e pickleball courts at this site either indoor outdoor or both um and not and take it off the plate of the one out southeast so I'm I'm just asking you I guess to consider are there some trade offs that we could make understanding that the financing for this will take some work right um and and I think that's something we haven't discussed yet I think our legislators would stand ready to try to address this for us and I would even suggest that knowing the legislature like I do sometimes those things can be done very quickly if your team agrees to it it doesn't need to wait till the bonding thing at the end of the year for a small change.

So I just I'm throwing those out there as things I hope you will think about because for me funding and I think uh the council president and and a couple of the other members have said I don't want to say we're gonna work on something that won't meet the community's needs because we're not discussing the financial part of it to do it now in tandem with what you're doing out southeast rather than saying we'll work on it and 10 years down the line right I don't want people to think that we're shoving it off I want it to be dealt with immediately.

So Mayor Norton if I may I know it also wasn't quite a question.

But we are trying to represent to you that we would hope to have a broad conversation with RCTC.

There are some caveats to that and I would even to your point the additional bonding dollars that came forward with the sales tax happened in mid session because a legislator said you can't put a metal building out there it needs to be brick and magically like the bonding arrived that year.

Um, granted, very different time at the legislature right now.

Um, and I don't think we've ever intended that something's gonna take a certain amount of time.

This council, previous councils makes up makeup of this council have proven that if you really want to move something forward, you will come up with a way.

We are building a pool at Silver Lake right now.

Um, in the middle of the year, we had appropriated five million dollars.

Um, we figured that out.

I'm not suggesting that you would absolutely do that, but I think there are opportunities, even within this near-term conversation um to improve the availability and access.

And some of that is how do you rent?

How do you use?

Can you just get a waiver?

And how do you know that you're getting a waiver versus needing to have a bunch of insurance and a whole plan, those types of things?

Um, because when I look at it as a community member that has an idea and try to click through and self-help a little bit to understand if my idea might be a good idea.

I can't quite tell if I need to have a business manager and an accountant on the books in order to do that.

So I think there are a lot of near-term opportunities that may not take a lot of investment or almost any investment, as you've been talking about, even at your last study session.

And that I think what you've touched on here is we keep talking about these facilities, like it's like we only ever invest in one thing.

But since I've been here, you've rebuilt Soldiers Field pool and a bunch of amenities around it.

You've actually invested in Silver Lake significantly.

That's within five years.

So those things weren't necessarily planned 10 years ago or even five years ago.

There was an idea, but pulling them together, you've been able to do in pretty short periods of time.

So we keep talking about the sales time.

I'm just gonna put it out there because I get to talk about it all the time.

Um, the South Complex, it would be concerning to invest.

I think that amount in a complex that currently has a 365-day cancellation that you're hoping no one ever triggers.

But if there's a better idea that comes forward um for the mineskew system, like we don't have a guarantee of that, and we have regularly experienced flooding on some of those fields.

So I think that these things can exist together, which you're suggesting, and they need to.

If we don't think about our entire parks and recreation system together, then people aren't going to realize the many opportunities that you actually talk to people, they love the park system, they love the trail system.

They probably don't realize there's 187 parks because they use five of them.

But we have a huge asset in our park system in the city of Rochester, and all of those have unique partnerships.

And I think pulling those together to show them more as available versus how it's operating can be a huge benefit.

I appreciate that.

And that's what I'm asking to think about the whole the whole and think about can we make some changes?

Maybe we were thinking one way, and oops, we have another opportunity.

Maybe we don't need to do that.

Let's make some shifts and changes as we go.

The other piece that I didn't say that I do want to say is our model for provide, and some people have said this our model for providing our facilities, access to our facilities needs to be better advertised.

That's been clear.

The community needs to understand it.

Um but we also need to remember that there are things that the there are people in this community that cannot afford to belong to a club or to rent something.

They need and does deserve access to taxpayer-funded facilities, either free or at it at a small cost.

And I hope as we move forward, it's not all club-based, it's not it's how can people in this community access their amenities in ways and at times that are meaningful to them.

And I feel like we keep falling short on that, despite having a wonderful system that people love.

There are people who can't access it, and and let's think about that too as we move forward.

So I would just ask that of you as well.

Councilmember Keene.

So in closing, I'll try to do this.

Um, I did want to point out that you talk about the packet, and there is like uh all a lot of this uh the agreements, the um joint powers agreements, some of the other things signed starting in 1998, going forward to uh amendments in 2009, things like that.

It's it's a slog to go through them.

It's not written to be read, it's written to be enforced.

Um, but it's still good stuff out there.

There's also 300 pages of what the RCTC assets have been used for over the last year and a half, um, and just in list form, and it's kind of the same thing.

How do you absorb this?

But just scanning through it, the usage has been very much youth sports and club oriented.

Um, and and I'm gonna say that's a really that is a really good use.

That's uh that is something that's valued in the community, and you can see it out there.

I also see you know, the random um senior softball stuff in the dome.

You see the random, some individual, it looks like they uh rent out the place and then bring in their friends to play pickleball or something.

I hard to tell, but just individual names.

So there is a lot happening out there.

So, and I'm gonna try to point it out to the community.

The other one that sort of bothers me in this discussion is I have city administration sitting in front of me, but we keep referring to parks, and then other things we have that we mention is some of our amenities are run by other groups.

So we have many different faces um with um like whether something, even when 125 was being built, there was this idea of well, Paul Whitman will answer how that's going.

And Paul's going like, no, the contracts with administrations is not with parks, uh, but we share the building with them, so everything comes back to us.

We have other situations, a more common one is the city owns something and somebody else runs it for us.

And again, that's a lack of control we have there.

This one to me is worse because this is a place where we've done the investment, but we don't own it, and it really hurts our control and what we can do about it.

And I'm gonna just use that to go back to this thing.

I'm gonna reiterate this idea that this idea that we're gonna go out to RCTC and start plowing money in with these investments without a major change in how the operations work.

I I just won't, I just won't be able to participate in that.

I I think we recognize and appreciate that.

I mean, that was a conversation you know that we've had, and obviously you got to find the intersection of interests and needs uh here.

Um, but you know, common management and ownership and you know, a value proposition that's fair to everybody is is really important.

I I'm not gonna go out on a limb here.

I think we don't feel like the relationships calibrated appropriately right now.

We want to get toward that um and continue to provide and you know advocate for community use, which was the original intent with our investment.

Um, I I believe RCTC is open to having those conversations, yeah, particularly in the short-term community access.

Um, but if we're talking transformative investment, if you're looking at a compare and contrast of what you're trying to accomplish with the phase two indoor facility in the southeast versus a reimagine and reinvested in facility here, like you really have to have an operating model in place that you know reflects the level of investment you're talking about.

Yeah, thanks.

Great discussion.

And yeah, I mean, starting with those agreements, operating models next, then facility enhancements, then fine financing.

And just also to uh address the point, and I think administrator Zelms uh pointed it out that the visibility of the what we have to offer at RCTC now uh can be a part of that gap analysis that uh Mr.

Widman and his team is pulling together for us, and just to the mayor's point, that gap analysis is all about you know, where can we have access for all members of the community so that it isn't dominated by just the clubs and associations, which I have to say, they are they do a lot of good work for the city of Rochester and uh and keep our uh our staffing uh down.

So I I really appreciate that.

But I think also one of the points that and this gets to what council member Keene was talking about is that we have to from a parks and rec standpoint.

I'm looking at you, Mr.

Whitman, that we have to start thinking about those agreements.

What are our guidelines for those agreements?

Uh, so that future councils don't have 30 agreements to wade through.

Uh so that's something that I'd like to see us sort of culturally move towards from a city uh administration standpoint.

So with that, we will close this topic off.

And uh I know we're a little over a break, but we only have one more topic for today's session.

So I am going to ask administrators elms to just plow ahead.

Sure, not as maybe beefy as the last topic, but always a hot topic during the budget is uh outside agencies.

Um we did get we've shown this multiple times since April, um, but did just want to point out again that there are some investments, there are some um holding the line um recommendations in this.

And then um, one of the things that we talked about more in depth all the way back in April, but haven't really talked about as much since April was that there was a recommendation in making these shifts um for the other outside agencies that are really principally based in Rochester um to reduce the funding for Southern Miss Minnesota Initiative Foundation.

Um, I'll come back to this slide, but part of that is every time we review their um their financials, it's a very all of these entities are very different from one another.

But um Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation, um like the other foundations across um across the state of Minnesota has a lot of pass through dollars, but they also have a significant um current asset availability as compared to some of our other partners who have significantly less.

That's because they operate very differently than, for example, the Art Center or something of that nature, Art Center or Civic Theater might actually be an agency that would be able to submit for a pass-through grant or a direct grant um from Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation.

Um, but did just want to point that out.

There was a question about that.

Um, and so um in case people weren't aware, the red meant that the funding was going away.

Um, and um that was has been the recommendation since we showed you this in April.

Comments on this, uh, Mayor Norton.

Yeah, I would just say I've been involved with Smith for 25 years or something.

And I understand I get what you're saying.

And on the other hand, why would our local area benefit continue to benefit as we do on the return of investment?

Why would they continue to benefit?

Why would Smith continue to invest here if we cut them off?

That that's my concern because the return on investment and our nonprofits do get benefit from Smith.

And I and I'm especially worried with all the nonprofits being cut off right now anyway, from particularly federal and and other funding sources.

So I guess I guess my review of Smith is our local investment is not precluding them from providing any amount of resource that is oftentimes passed through grants.

A lot of this is McKnight grant funding for the mission and uses that they have shown.

Um it's difficult to be able to provide these resources to our local um nonprofits, and we don't provide $15,000 a year to other pass-through granting agencies.

Um if if it's something the city council wants to revisit, but I guess I would be surprised if Smith didn't continue to consider equally any of the applications from our local nonprofits.

And if they do, I guess that would I guess that would be concerning to me.

And that's my own professional opinion, but I I don't operate Smith.

Can you tell me if any other communities don't there are any number of communities that do and do not provide funding?

And anytime a community suggests that they aren't going to provide funding, there's quite a hard press from Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation.

So that doesn't surprise me.

But when I look at a $15,000 investment as compared to some of these other entities that are based locally in Rochester and year-round are providing services and then look at their current assets, their current liabilities and the revenue that they receive beyond what the city of Rochester is providing.

And knowing that they also do a lot of pass-through grants from Deed and other entities that have specific requirements, I would think that they in their mission would be reviewing those in accordance with whatever the mission is for each and every one of those grants.

If they aren't, we don't control that, much like the conversation earlier.

Um we do not influence whether or not they're going to provide direct funding, but also with 500 nonprofits located in Rochester, providing three, five, 10 grants a year is probably quite different for that nonprofit community than an entity that's in a smaller community that's providing maybe less funds, but has one or two nonprofits that are applying and benefiting.

So I don't pretend to think that there's apples to apples here.

Um every community is slightly different.

Um, but that was how I came up with my recommendation, looking at the various entities that are provided funding and trying to be balanced in the approach of not drastically increasing your budget.

I understand that.

And I will just say I find it deeply disappointing that we would not continue to invest in the Southern Minnesota Institute.

And if the city council gives me different direction, but I haven't received that since April.

I'm I understand that, but this is our opportunity.

And so I guess I'm just saying from my knowledge and my working with Smith over all the years that I have, they have continued to invest in this community with grants.

And I I'm just shocked that a small amount, like $15,000 is being considered to be withheld.

I I just I don't think it affects our budget enough to do this to them and to our potentially to our nonprofits who benefit from the grants that they get.

And I do understand their flow through for some of them, but not all of them.

And so my recommendation is for the 15,000 that we continue uh based on the good work they've done and the investments they've made in our community over the years.

So that I appreciate the opportunity to say that.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh so my experience with Smith has been I have not had a lot of experience, so I don't know what the you know where their outreach is into Rochester.

I do know that they are going through a major leadership change.

And uh I and in that meeting, what I was really looking for was something that would they are very rurally based uh um foundation and something that really connects us as the urban center in a rural area.

And so I would be curious as to you know hearing more, and I don't know if this is the time given that they they have new leadership it to, you know, what is their vision for Rochester being the center of a uh a uh urban rural area.

So uh so my thoughts are I would be supportive uh one more year with them uh really having a discussion with us about how Rochester is a priority in their rural uh focus.

And I'll just clarify I did ask that question, and I haven't received any Rochester specific information, just the normal formula that they provide to every entity about how many dollars you receive on the return on investment, which doesn't take into account how many grants are given in your community.

So I'm happy to do that.

If uh there's clarity, I would need clarity to add $15,000 to the budget.

Otherwise, there's not funding in the recommended levy to provide this.

Councilmember Palmer.

Well, there's a couple of ways of looking at this, but one, I I've listened to Mr.

Penny on the radio for years, and you know, they are rural, and I don't know what they do for Rochester, and they've never made a uh a plea that OG's Rochester is is a is one of our top 10 things to worry about.

The other side of that is with the size of their budget, I can't imagine they'd miss $15,000.

Where for us with these other other organizations, you know, $15,000 is a big deal to them.

And what I have always looked at this um funding sources is they're doing something for us, Rochester, that we can't do ourselves.

And they we that's why we give the Arts Center money and and other places.

I don't see that the that we're us not giving them the $15,000 is going to make a uh a difference to their organization in or to Rochester.

So I I would assume that we keep it the way it is um this far into our budget budget period.

Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, I'll I'll just kind of weigh in.

I I looking at the bottom lines here.

We're already we're going up uh year over year with our uh community reinvestments.

Um I I sort of council member Palmer says something similar to the way I look at this is that they um we I look at each group and say, do how do they extend our vision?

How do they uh operate within our our strategic uh priorities?

Um, but I don't think we give anybody money.

My view is this is almost like this is almost a these are groups that are working locked with us as far as what our priorities are and they're extending them in our community and using that model, I can see why Smith would come off.

Um what I'm really looking for is if they don't, what else comes off or who else?

What are these trade-offs versus this awful thing about just general generic growth every year?

And I appreciate the fact that we're looking to reduce in some areas, and that's why I've been supporting it.

But but I will say I too have seen really good stuff they've done.

When I uh was first involved with the city, they were one of the lead groups as far as child care and trying to improve child care options in our community, and I shouldn't say our community in the in the community.

It was it was much more extended.

It was it was important stuff, and I expect they're gonna continue to do those sort of projects.

Any more on this?

Okay, with that.

Uh we are going to go to our study session schedule.

Sorry, I apologize.

I I thought we were just talking Smith right now and not the rest of the list, or are we talking everything?

No, it was Smith, unless you add more to uh on the list.

I I did want to just I did okay, go ahead, Councilmember.

One is what I just said.

I mean, I don't consider this to be like uh my wife and I will sit down and say who are we going to donate money to.

I don't see think that's what we're doing here.

We're we're looking at groups that are operating and doing things.

Like when I look at the um what's going on at something like the History Center, I consider them our archivists, and I we want them to uh to thrive, and I think that's why we take parts of our budget and try to invest it that way.

Um as far as specifics, I'm again I I really want to support something like I said the history center because I've been involved in watching them sort of like operate within the community and extend our um what we're trying to do in the city.

Same thing with something like our neighbors.

I think that's an area where when I've watched over the years, there's been times where it's less interesting.

But right now, I think there are really good extensions they're doing and improving like the quality of life in the in our city.

And I I'm glad to see them like stabilized and in some cases getting nominal increases year over year.

Um the one a couple other ones, as far as the youth uh council, that's 10,000.

It's it looks like it's staying the same.

And I think that's good because they haven't been doing this, but I want to keep in our collective memory that this was a 20 or 25,000 funding source a couple years ago when COVID hit, there was no travel and it all came down.

But I don't want to lose that that at some point, you know, the this group used to have this opportunity to go to uh the National League of Cities events and some of the people that were most involved.

And I think those are great things for our city to be supporting where we can.

So those are areas I just want to add to the memory.

I'm not trying to add money to that right now because I think that's got to be developed and moved in in that way.

As far as concerns, two of the growth areas that I was concerned seeing was one was civic theater, like with a 15% increase.

I again I think they do good work, but when I look at 15% increase, then I'm thinking, like, okay, who's not going to get money and those sort of trade-offs?

Yeah, no, that that might be one.

That one was concerning.

The other one, I'll I'll say it.

I'm 20% increase for Rochester Fest.

And we just had a discussion about how we can use soldiers feel better, and we couldn't really make a partnership with them.

So that that's one of the those are the two that I would question.

I don't mean to change the budgets, but in terms of getting input on how these things will come forward, I want to say it in front of my peers and see if there's any other uh if there's any consistency there.

Thank you.

Thank you, council council member.

Any more on this?

I think we're good.

Uh let's go to our study session calendar.

Oh, good.

I was hoping it was going to be there.

Um, thank you to the clerk's office.

Um, so today is as far as we are today before your preliminary um levy on the 22nd um and birthday celebration.

Um, we are at the last study session before approving um the the preliminary levy.

And what I have heard from the course of these is we have a lot of opportunity to talk about some things that are longer term that are beyond your 2026 um adopted levy budget.

Perhaps some of those would hit 2027 or beyond.

Um, but the one thing that I've heard from you is that we would add $50,000 to the budget um to be able to um have additional funding for the community um the community building grants.

And so just clarifying that here.

That is what I have heard from the city council as a whole.

Um, and so that is what will be included on your September 22nd levy conversation.

And of course, the budget is an annual process, even though we do a two-year budget.

If there's supplemental changes that you are interested in for 2027, um, just like we talked about um earlier in the conversation, there there could be additional things that change in 2027.

Um, upcoming on the next study session on September 29th.

Um we have, I don't know if we still have the RPU power supply resource plan update since we did a power supply resource plan update, but I don't see a power supply resource plan person here.

Um that's looking repetitive to me, but you might still have an update.

Um, communication and engagement.

I did just receive um uh correspondence today from um director Bowman that she's hoping with based on how full this is that perhaps that would move to October um and broaden in scope.

So just wanted to point that out.

Um that happened today.

This went out last Wednesday.

Um, an update on the sales tax funding for um flood control and water and water quality, street reconstruction and economic vitality.

Um, and then you do have scheduled in a closed session for um the city attorney's performance evaluation following all of that.

So that's what I have.

If you will be in this room.