Bertrand.

Here.

Rayford.

Here.

Here.

Scott.

Here.

Here.

Stand for a moment of silent curve followed by the pledge.

Congratulations to the flood.

Christine Nathaniel.

Hi.

Proclamation.

It reads, whereas the United States was founded upon the principle that all people are created within inalienable right of freedom and added the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, making slavery illegal.

Whereas slavery within the United States States today is most often found in a form of forced labor and sex trafficking, which weakens our social fabric, increases violence and organized crime, and debases our humanity.

And whereas this problem is found even within our community, whereas every business, community, organization, faith community, family, and individual can make a difference by choosing products that are not made by forced labor by working to protect our young people from sexual exploitation by addressing the problems of internet sex trafficking and pornograporion.

And by becoming more aware of the problem and possible solutions.

Now therefore, I Robert E.

Scott, mayor of the city of Sioux City, Iowa, and be after the City Council to hereby proclaim January 2026 as human trafficking prevention month, and encourage our citizens to become more familiar with the problem and to work towards solutions.

Thank you for all your work.

And say a few words, please.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Scott, and members of City Council.

Welcome to the three new ones.

Thank you for allowing us to present this proclamation, and thank you for um if you don't know, the clock tower is lit up in blue in observance of this month.

And for the new city council, Bernadette Rixner, who I actually just really want to honor, um, is going to hand out brochures about what we do.

We are a nonprofit the 501c3 located here in Sioux City.

This coalition was founded in July of 2014, and our purpose is to work toward abolishing all forms of human trafficking through education, advocacy, and collaboration, focusing on but not limited to the three states of Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota that comprise Siouxland.

I do want to let you know about Bernadette Rixner.

She has been with us from the beginning.

She's actually uh started, I think in 2014, and she was actually awarded last year the outstanding anti-trafficking service award last year.

And she also is our outreach coordinator, but not only that, she's on the board of Iowa Network Against Human Trafficking and Slavery.

And I thought it would have just been not okay if I did not honor her because Bernadette is just a huge role model for me and an inspiration, and I just wanted our even our new city council members to know who Bernadette is because she is incredibly a life changer.

So thank you guys for this and thank you for all you do.

Thanks for that patient.

That was nice.

Bernette congratulations.

All right, we'll go to the consent agenda today.

Items two through ten beak constitute the consent agenda.

Items will pass unanimously unanimously unless a separate roll call vote is requested by a council member.

If you want to speak on an item, please come up as I read that item.

If you want to speak on an item not on the agenda, please come up under citizen concerns.

Please remember to always state your name for the record.

I'll move the consent agenda.

Two is a reading of the January 2nd and 5th council city council minutes.

Mayor, can I ask for one slight change on the last page of the minutes under council concerns?

Could I just ask that my name's Barenstein Bernstein?

The third time it's Bernstein.

Could I just ask that that be changed?

Thanks.

Okay.

Three, our resolution approving a schedule of peas for slips and lifts at the marina.

Can I ask what's our occupancy rate there?

Not very good.

That's why I'm asking.

Matt Salvatore Parks and Recreation Director.

This last summer is about 25 percent coming off uh the year where the marina was not in operation.

Uh big reason for the occupancy uh being that low is we did not have gas due to some uh mechanical issues.

Those were addressed last year.

We will have gas first thing this spring.

So what's your target for this year, Matt?

I'd like to see us closer to 40, 50 percent.

Also got to do some more outreach, get the word out.

But we're that that was gonna be my next comment, how much outreach and marketing.

So we're working with uh F3 Marina is our our contractor that uh manages that facility, so they have big plans for for this spring.

Thanks, Matt.

Thank you.

How long is there a contract?

Because I'm two more summers.

I'm uh hoping they do have a big spring.

I'm hoping that uh yeah, this year and next year we see a great increase in the numbers.

Five is a motion reappointing Todd Hageman to the building and housing code board.

Six is a resolution appointing Michael Wingert to the Woodbury County Law Enforcement Center's authority board of commissioners, subject to the concurrence of the Woodbury County.

I need to Mayor, can we have some dialogue on this?

I I've had a chance to visit with Mark earlier this afternoon, visited with Tony briefly.

I think I had a couple of concerns that I think you were able to address, and I think this is a great appointment.

I really do.

I think this is a a strong indication of of what we need in oversight, and I'm pleased, very pleased that you're willing to serve, and I look forward to working with you and getting your getting your input and direction I need to abstain.

Mr.

Wingert's a client of mine.

I would like to say this will get me in trouble, but I think the board that served in the past wasn't necessarily dealt a very good hand by some of the engineers and architects.

I gotta be careful.

I understand that, and contractors.

And um I think that's unfortunate.

I think their intent was to do good, and and unfortunately things didn't always work out that way.

But we can all take a lot of blame for it.

Isn't one or two people that that have shouldered the majority of the blame?

We all got to have an interest in making sure this thing works the way it's supposed to.

Seven are actions adopting construction documents.

A is a resolution adopting plans and specs for the fiber optic project.

B is a resolution adopting plans and specs for the Pulaski Park drainage improvement project.

A is a resolution awarding a service provider agreement to LNS Electric for the Floyd PLC upgrade project.

B is a resolution approving a contract to Thompson Solutions Group for the Art Center HBAC replacement project phase two.

I need to abstain conflict of interest.

C is a resolution awarding a purchase order to Ishkosh AeroTech for the jet power ground power unit for gate number one passenger boarding bridge at the airport.

D is a resolution awarding a service provider agreement to Oshkosh Aero Tech for the removal and installation of the new jet power ground power unit for the gate one passenger boarding bridge at the airport pending legal approval of the insurance certificate.

Nine are applications for alcohol licenses and ten are beer board commission and committee minutes.

Anyone to be heard on any of those.

Mark, do you want to make any comments?

I just I candidly I feel that the conversation you and I had earlier today clarified so many questions and concerns that I had that I think would be helpful to get it both into the public record and share with with the balance of the council and some of the things that we talked about as as we discussed reality is perception and perception is reality, and I think we've got to make some fairly significant adjustments in this process with the LEC.

And I'm really encouraged by Tony's participation and his background and and his willingness to participate.

And I just thought maybe it would be helpful if you wanted to share some comments, either consistent with what you and I talked about earlier or just in general.

Sure.

So Mark Nelson, Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, and thank you, Mayor Scott, a councilman and women for having this on the uh agenda to discuss today.

I reached out to all of you if you had any questions and concerns, and and some of you did contact me, and I appreciate that greatly.

You know, the Board of Supervisors approved this unanimously several weeks ago.

Um, but you know, Tony has been an incredible asset to Woodbury County, and we're very sad that he's retiring and moving on this year, but uh because there's a lot of information that's going with him.

But I was very, very pleased uh back in September when after an LEC meeting, uh Tony came up to then Chairman Bittinger and myself and said, hey, if you guys are looking for a change, I'm gonna be retiring after the first year, and and I would, you know, I would throw my name in the hat to serve such an appointment.

And any time that someone that has this sort of area of expertise volunteers for a job, I think it's very very notable.

You know, he didn't have to volunteer or speak up or get involved, he could have ridden off into retirement and maybe never heard from him again.

But I think it's great that he wanted to share his his area of expertise with the taxpayers of Woodbury County.

And and as we move into kind of the next phase with construction over, and and as far as just the the monitoring and overseeing of the building, as a taxpayer when when this building was being proposed, I remember going to some of those meetings where we had folks from the city, folks from the county that touted the maintenance fund and touted how this building was going to be taken care of, unlike the last jail.

And that maintenance fund is ahead of schedule, and we talked about this at the board meeting several weeks ago.

But I think it's imperative that we have people on that authority that understand the building, understand how it functions, understands the the timetables of replaceable equipment, and who better than someone who has worked in that jail for well over 30 years of a distinguished career.

And and so I I'm very proud that uh that the board you know brought Tony forward.

I'm proud that he volunteered for this.

I think that he will represent not only the county and the city, but all the taxpayers of Woodbury County and ensure that that building is taken care of for years to come and that the uh the proper things are done to maintain it.

So and I appreciate any of you that reached out and and you know communicate with me.

I appreciate that a lot.

Thank you for calling.

It was appreciated.

You did have a lot of great information and letting us know what his expertise is.

And you know that's that's a six-year term, so a commitment.

Yep, and change is always you know is always a good thing, and and uh that's you know, um, I think that uh for the next six years he can do a very good job for us, and um the feedback has been very good from constituents since then, and you know, we ran this past other leaders in the community what they thought before we brought this in front of the board, and the feedback was very, very positive.

And you know, uh I didn't know Tony from Adam until I had gotten on the board of supervisors, and he's someone that works very hard behind the scenes, is not involved in drama, does not want the spotlight, he's kind of that worker bee, you know, he's behind the scenes getting things done, he wants to go home, he's got a life, he's got other things to do, and so I've always appreciated that from him, and and I know that he's gonna do a very good job in this role and represent the both of these entities and the taxpayers very well.

And also note that you had shared with me that while not a formal process, you had vetted other candidates considered other candidates.

Yep.

And Tony was simply the he he rose to the top, both because he had reached out to you and his background.

So I think that's that was a key component to me to know that you had had visited with others and that Tony clearly was the and some of those that we that that we had fielded said no, this is the guy for the job.

And so that that really made me feel good that you know when we're we're looking at folks that that are entrenched here in Woodbury County and care about the success of this project, and we reach out to them and then they say no, you've got the right guy in Tony.

That that makes me feel really good as well.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Reminder to the new council.

Um, we'll be voting electronically.

You can go ahead and vote.

Love and motion appointing one of the following two applicants to the Civil Service Commission applicants, Andrea Buckley and what?

Oh, I got it.

It's coming up.

The consent agenda passes 5-0.

And Jacob Wonderscheid, we need a motion for one of those move that we appoint Andrea Buckley.

I will second that with the comment that I think Jacob would be terrific on this committee.

I know he's been on the effective fiscal management committee before and does a nice job for the city.

But I think in this particular role, I'd like to see maybe Jacob look for another opportunity on the board or commission.

I think Andrew would do a really nice job.

Passes 5012 is a hearing and resolution approving plans and specs for the police department storage facility project.

I'll move that.

Second.

Public hearings now open.

Anyone to be heard?

Seeing none, the hearing is closed.

Passes 503 needs a hearing resolution approving plans and spec for the utility lining project.

I'll move that.

Second.

Public hearings now open.

Anyone to be heard?

Seeing none, the hearing is closed.

Passes 50 14's hearing resolution approving plans and specs for the South Apron Reconstruction Project phase two project at the airport.

I'll move that.

Second public hearings now open.

Anyone to be heard?

Seeing none, the hearing is closed.

Amending the authorized personnel complement, position classification manual, and salary schedule by adding an EMS training officer and EMS lead medic and reclassifying an emergency manager medical technician lead medical training officer to EMS officer and reclassifying three emergency medical technician lead medic training officers to EMS lead medics.

I'll move that.

Second.

Yeah, I just wanted to point out that the RCA that was submitted is slightly different than the original.

We did make some modifications just for more clarity, but I'll be happy to entertain any questions that you might have.

So it's still a paramedic only, not by the rec the recommendation remains the same.

The EMS uh training officer and the lead medics were both consolidated under one job classification when the EMS division was first formed.

This essentially separates out the two and increases the the lead or the uh EMS training officer pay to make it more comparable to those of the lead medic.

May I have your name for the record?

Oh, I'm sorry, Ronnie Collins Fire Chief.

I was read usually everybody knows you, but what would the other option be?

Uh the the alternative was, and that was moved kind of into that discussion area.

Uh the alternative would be to reclassify that EMS training officer position uh and fill it with a firefighter or I'm sorry, Lieutenant Paramedic that would offer more flexibility, capacity, and succession planning within the training division, but that does come with a higher price tag.

Which would you prefer and which do you think is best overall?

Not rumpling any feathers, just what is needed because I keep hearing so this position's been open since October of 2025.

Uh and it is a tough tough uh decision.

Uh I've consulted with the Ask Me Bargaining group.

Uh the position review committee uh met several times to discuss the position on what would be best.

Uh long term, um, it would be best at that paramedic or that lieutenant paramedic, because like I said, it would offer flexibility and capacity within that training division, similar to our deputy fire market right now that are staffed with lieutenants as the needs of the department changes, as people's uh professional development goals change, we can move people in and out uh without impacting any job classifications not coming back to from council.

It's basically an internal work assignment.

Uh that's what the deputy or the the EMS training officer position could become.

Um, but again, that comes with a higher price tag when we met with the position review committee.

It was decided at that time to uh go through the the formal steps or formal processes, offer it to uh ask me position first.

Uh if we're unable to fill that with a qualified candidate, then we can move to that alternative option.

Chief, when we were visiting last week, some comments were made that if we went to the alternative that it might be able to offset some additional overtime or some additional compensation structures.

Were you or was anybody else able to put that detail together?

Yes, so at that last meeting um a uh a figure of around $10,000 uh was provided.

Uh I had to go back and look at that.

Uh that is realistic.

Um the numbers that I came up with was anywhere between 7500 and 10,000, but that's not guaranteed, it's dependent upon how many um uh overtime personnel we need for a particular live fire training exercise or special ops exercise or something of that nature, uh, but there would definitely be overtime costs that could be offset.

This may be for Teresa as much as it is for you, but when we visit in February on your operating budget, how is this position classified?

Uh as far as the option one or the do you have it as option one?

So uh uh uh option one it would it would be have to do a budget add to get us through this remaining of this fiscal year.

We if we make the accommodation now, does it it it's already a position complement for the budget discussions, or it will still need to need to be added then?

That would have to be worked into the proposed fiscal year 27.

Not been added yet.

And it's a is it a total of option one, fifty-five thousand dollars?

No, uh option one would be an additional thirty-three thousand and the and then if the alternative uh would be fifty-two, so roughly uh an eighteen thousand dollar increase.

Uh the second option goes up by eighteen thousand.

Yeah, above and beyond what above the thirty-three.

Yep.

But ten thousand offsets that, so it's eight.

Okay.

You should make sure that if the this passes, Teresa, that it is offset because I'm not but historically over time in the fire department, it has been an issue.

And it has been.

Yep.

Somehow you have to make that happen because otherwise it gets it doesn't work out that way.

So the the example that was provided was our live fire training.

Uh that is three days of it is what it is, live fire training down at our training center.

That's that occurs over three days, four times a year.

Each one of those sessions we have to use overtime personnel.

Yes.

Saying if it was if we move to the fire by the that position could be.

If we move to the alternative using a lieutenant paramedic who has those firefighter skills and has that certification to provide live fire training, we could offset those overtime costs, correct?

Trace Fed Finance Director, I would agree um with uh Chief Collins.

Um, that's in the scenario we're currently in right now, provided nothing changes in fire.

That's the that's the part that's always the um you know the um unknown.

We have no idea if other items will change that will impact their um overtime budget.

But if it were the case right now, I I agree it would have a reduction of their overtime and you anticipate being able to hire for I mean because you say that this job has been uh open for our the current position has been open for some time now.

Yeah, it's it's been open or it's been vacant since October, but we haven't entertained, we don't have a civil service list for lieutenant or lead medic or EMS training officer, so we'd have to go through that civil service hiring process.

But your other list is full.

Correct.

We we have qualified applicants or qualified candidates on the lieutenant's civil service list.

Correct.

And and uh out of fairness, I believe last time we spoke that we were gonna give ASME an opportunity to if anybody is in the crowd from ASP, yeah, like to speak to the council.

Um I would ask that they're allowed at time.

Absolutely.

I was just going to say this position, if approved, has not yet been posted as the EMS training officer.

Um we were waiting for approval from the council, and then the next step would be to go to the commission.

But given the new job title, job description, and salary, we have not had an opportunity to recruit or post post this position yet.

Anybody from ask me here.

My president of Ask Me Council 61.

My address is 4320 Northwest Second Avenue in Des Moines Des Moines, Iowa.

We represent the 12 employees in this position, as well as 40,000 other employees throughout Missouri, Iowa, and Kansas.

I'm a little confused after watching last week's board meeting or council meeting, uh, based on our union representative in this area has met with the chief, as well as the local president has met with the chief and HR.

And we go into negotiations with the City Council in three weeks.

And to my understanding, there was this was all but resolved as far as it was still it was going to stay as an AFSME position.

It was not going to be moved.

There was no talk of that.

And the confusing part of this is last week when President Paulson for the firefighters got up, uh, it went a different direction.

APSME Council 61 has represented this group since its inception.

In 2017, Firefighters Local 7 didn't want them.

In fact, emphatically didn't want them at the time.

I'm sorry, you said who who didn't want what?

The Firefighters Local 7 didn't want this group when they became available.

We have been representing them ever since.

That one Su Lam Paramedics closed.

What's that?

One TULAN paramedics came in, right?

Um and we have had a great working relationship with the HR department, the council.

And uh how it's got to this point that there is an alternative involved with this is disappointing at the least.

Um this position, you know, this open position is no exception.

Uh local leadership has met with management numerous times, as well as Ben Ingersoll, who are Ingersoll, who is our union representative, who recently met with Janelle, Chief Collins, concerning the position, and all parties have come together to work on a path to move forward with this and at with ASME as the representative, uh, even in you know, in an alternative to what we've all agreed to.

Uh we are the exclusive bargaining representative of ASME Local 2796, these employees, based on Iowa Code Chapter 2014.

So I'm not sure why President Paulson or Chief Collins appear to agree on as much as they did last weekend when we've already kind of agreed on this prior to to last weekend.

Um my concerns with everything that happened in last week's uh meeting.

This position came up, and President Paulson made numerous statements on why local seven should be the representing should be representing this position.

From about the 20-minute mark in the in the YouTube video, uh the President Paulson Chief Collin make statements on how this position would benefit being represented by the firefighters, stating how it would eliminate overtime, help recruitment, uh help the workload of the EMT on that side, uh, even stated that there was legal obligation to be filled in this.

Uh in fact, at the 28-minute mark, President Paulson says we see an opportunity to make this position better.

In my world, there are things that people are allowed to do and not allowed to do.

And it's a violation of Article 20 in the AFL CIO Constitution.

We are, AFSME, an affiliate of that labor group.

So are the firefighters.

And to try and make it as easy to understand, we don't Article 20, sections 1, 2, and 3 are explicit on what not to do when it comes to going after other bargaining units, affiliates, positions.

It's a lot like the United States wanting to take Greenland.

There is NATO treaties saying that you can.

Excuse me.

Are we in the middle of a turf war here?

Is that I mean, is that where we're at?

Is this between two unions about fighting for position?

I'm just trying to figure out it's illegal what's where this is going.

Okay.

It's illegal what they're doing.

And they're also violations of chapter chapter 20.

Okay.

Because of the work relationship that we have with the the council, if we exercise the right to pursue these prohibitive practice complaints through chapter 20, unfortunately, it will involve the chief, but they come against you guys.

That's not what we want to do.

We want to try and get this resolved.

As quickly as we possibly can.

Um we have a good working relationship with you guys.

We want to retain that as much as possible, as well as our hope is that you will not look at the alternative to this and follow through with what we have been working on and plan to work on in the very near future when it comes to negotiations.

Thank you for your time.

I appreciate it.

So just for one quick quick clarification, then are you is it your belief that the alternative as proposed is in a legal action and violate the collective bargaining agreement of that bargaining group?

Based on the comments made last week, yes.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Well, I'm not lawyers, so I don't know how to reply to that.

I can get a little deeper in the weeds if you like, but I mean it's I don't know how that would affect or make a difference to anybody up here.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chief, do you have any other comments in the middle?

Paulson, local seven president.

Um must have missed the phone call about asking about those issues.

Uh we simply supported the alternative on the position.

Um we felt like there were certain uh additives to that position that could be offered at a cost neutral to the city.

There was no attack on any existing positions.

Um it is your decision to do what you want.

Uh we did find upwards of 27,000 of savings if it goes to that position.

Um I'd also ask that you ask questions of our training officer who's currently in that office doing that job of his position on this this job.

Um I would also ask to defer it.

I'd like to follow up for legal reasons.

And if I am in violation, I rescind any of my comments.

So let that come to light, but I still stand firm that the benefits and the cost offset to this position are there.

We've done it several times in the city before.

It's nothing new.

If the applicants were there to backfill the positions, we wouldn't be here anyway.

So I appreciate all your time.

And if you have any questions for me, I'll go sit down.

I think the question I would ask is either to Janelle or Chief Collins, if we defer this, which I don't know that we're inclined to do so, but any time allegations are raised that a certain action could be considered illegal under a collective bargaining agreement, it gives all of us pause.

I mean I don't mean to speak for everybody, but I think it gives all of us pause.

And I think we want to make sure we're clear on what our options are.

And so I'm curious what if we defer it, what that does to your hiring process.

If it's not posted yet.

Yeah, it's not posted yet.

It's been vacant for since October of 2025.

Uh and so, you know, if if the council elects to defer it and and revisit it after uh consulting with legal, um, it is what it is.

I I don't think you ought to do that.

I think you ought to vote it one way or another today.

Then if you can have your discussions about legal and that, but stopping the process any longer doesn't make I mean, just because you go out for a list doesn't mean you have to hire anybody off of it.

If you renegotiate if you negotiate something with the Ask Me Later, but all we're doing is making your job even more difficult, and I don't think that's the way to do it.

Am I right?

I mean, you don't have to fill a position just because you have a civil service list.

Do you?

Yes, you do.

Within 30 days, we're required to appoint a position, appoint a person for the position.

And what if nobody's on the list?

And we'll have to discuss other options.

Well, I don't think there's any question.

I'm not a lawyer legal labor lawyer, but I do think you better be terribly careful when you do this, because I personally don't uh I'm not gonna get named in that lawsuit.

I'll make sure I vote so I don't, because I in a union member long enough to know that there are certain things you can and can't do when it comes to other unions.

Whether you like it or not, it's reality.

So just just for my clarification then, um, in the future, just not have an alternative then.

No.

That we're no.

Okay.

But you got to negotiate some of this stuff.

You just can't do what the firefighters would like us to do today.

You just trying to give council options.

Right.

That's why the question is.

Well, yeah, right.

That and yes, please.

Because quite frankly, there would be that doesn't mean just because you give an option doesn't mean we can accept it without negotiation.

Oh, absolutely.

Well, I think we need to establish if we're impeding on any laws under this Article 20, because I don't know how we can move forward with the boat without knowing that.

What good is it going to do?

The item as presented is exactly how it came before the council last week.

And I think just to clarify the position of ASMI as per presented, you're not indicating that you would file a perp complaint related to how it is on the agenda currently.

And I would just ask you to come up to the microphone.

It would be retained as a ask me jobs.

If you have no grounds for tolerably, ask me, Council President.

Yeah, there as it is currently presented.

No.

Excluding the alternative, obviously.

Uh we represent this position.

We would like to keep that as much as possible.

As presented, I don't think we have any questions on the legality.

It's if we want to move on the alternative, then the question is supposed to whether that's legal actually.

So we would vote no on this and then ask them to present the alternative now.

Or would we vote to defer this?

I would just indicate that a it's the union's prerogative to file a perp complaint, whether depending on what the council would do or not do, that I mean, is completely within their discretion.

I think what they're raising today is that they feel that they entered into negotiations.

And I don't want to speak for you or miss state that, but that they entered into negotiations and had a belief it would come forward as presented.

But ultimately it is the council's decision.

Um but they could file a perp complaint if they chose to do that.

And we can provide additional legal analysis if that's what's asked for us.

I would just prefer not to do it on the floor, if that's okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm going to move that we defer this item.

Second Rayford.

Aye.

Scott?

No.

No.

Okay, it'll be back.

For clarification, when is the deferral to?

Can you get clarification on the questions?

We we don't have a meeting next Monday, do we?

We don't.

So the next available council meeting would be a deferral to January 26th.

Sounds good.

Okay.

Okay, let's go.

Property taxes.

Hey Danny, do you know logged in?

I don't have access to open the presentations.

It's under the presentation.

But I think it's logged in in here under somebody else.

I lied it in under Oh, you did?

No, I don't.

Only 27,000, and maybe maybe they'll be giving us money back.

That's right.

Okay.

That's fine.

Sorry.

I have no idea how to call the other ones.

Okay, I can move on without the presentation.

I don't know that it's as helpful.

Um, however, it won't let me in.

So um, do you want me to try to remove the permissions and move to the bottom of the presentations, or do you want me to move forward?

Because it's a lot without everybody seeing what I have to say.

Well, then you work on it and we'll go to building permits.

How's that?

Okay, perfect.

Yep, I will go and see if I can get permissions.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Building permits.

Who's who's talking, Marty?

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Um, I'm having Danny pass down the reports that you we had been asked to put together.

It's the same one that was emailed to you.

So just for reference.

Um, and um just wanted to say a couple things uh before we go into the details of that.

Um we have been looking at and working on improvements to the development review process.

Um specific component of that is, of course, an at the application approval of building permits themselves.

The process is a little broader than that, includes every step that we take from the initial interaction with the business or builder, uh developer, whoever it is looking for a permit, um, all the way through to the final inspections and approval of occupancy permit.

So our goals in this initiative, which we started last year, uh primarily three things.

We want to create a more customer focused process.

We want to improve the efficiency and reduce the time that it takes to issue a permit, and we want to support economic growth and development.

So just before Christmas, um we brought forward a proposal to purchase some new software the council approved that will allow for some greater online capabilities for application of permit to for permits and um a number of the other processes involved in that.

We recognize that that's just one step.

Software doesn't solve all problems, but we think it will help uh uh improve our process overall.

The reports that that we handed out and had sent to you by email um basically um are we had to pick a starting point there.

So they're basically the permits that were issued in December and in the first week of January, and then should also show any pending permits.

So um there again, there's two reports, one is for residential and one is for for commercial and industrial.

So uh basically uh if you've had a chance to look at those, um we can attempt to answer any questions that you have about those or any discuss any part of that.

But um we put that's a kind of a new report for us.

We have a similar report that we put out uh monthly that shows permits for people that want to see that, uh realtors and builders and so on, a lot of times, uh tradespeople and so on, look for those reports.

This has more detail in it, shows the specifics about the um different projects that are currently either again, either that were just issued in the last month, five five or six weeks, and the um ones that are pending, and the report shows for uh in some detail about why maybe they're pending or what the status is of any of those projects.

So, Marty, this report didn't exist until just now.

This is kind of the new way moving forward, ought to kind of track.

Yeah, we we have a similar report.

Does this incorporate the new software that was purchased in the election?

Okay.

I should clarify we the software um is uh been ordered.

We're waiting for the uh delivery of that software.

It will take.

We're told it came from Central Square.

That's the that's the software that the city uses for all of our all of our, or not all of them, but m most of our financial functions and so on.

Um that will be installed as part of the of the agreement, and then there will be training given to everyone that uses that.

Um that they tell us it will take two to six months.

I really wish that was a whole lot shorter, or at least it was more on the two-month side.

But we have um I I checked with IT, IT department is is gonna oversee the installation of that software, and then we will on the on the community development side, economic development side uh oversee the training of people and the organization of that and the changes that we will make to the way that we function.

So we've got a team working on it.

Again, the software is one component of it.

Um it will, Rick, to your question though, it will generate new reports that will probably be easier to understand and and more more.

Oh, that's all right.

It's a good start.

Yeah.

It's a start.

And the way I look at it is moving forward.

If this is what we're gonna use for the next few months, that's great.

But I like to see on a weekly basis.

I think this council would like to see in a basis.

If it's uh if you're gonna color coordinator, what are we gonna do?

But as as projects drop off, why don't we do uh an update and redline them?

That way we've got a we all up here we have a real time as we pull out our week before we can see what's being redlined out as they drop off.

And then uh I got a feeling this is gonna generate some conversations with the individuals that are on this list on on why they're still on there.

So I'll shut up, listen to your next comments.

Okay.

I I would just I don't know if you want to add anything.

I I just we'll answer questions if you have any about the process or specific specific projects or whatever, but um we've we've been doing some other things.

We started doing um uh digital submission of plans.

We're not all the way there yet, but I think that's a big step forward.

We've done some reorganization of the office and uh the software will be put in place over the next couple of months.

And I still think there's some some other things we need to do, some training and some uh we we formed a committee that is uh across departments.

Um and you can see on there, of course, it sometimes it involves not just uh the plan uh plan review, but also engineering review and zoning questions may be a part of the process.

So it's a T it's a it's a it's a process that cuts across a number of different departments and members of city staff.

Mike's been very much involved in that.

Teresa, we've been talking with some developers, some contra uh people in the construction industry, architects, and so on, about the process.

I know Craig mentioned to me one day you'd like to continue to do that, and we and we will and we can, as well as talking with you about with the council as we move forward with improving this process.

It doesn't it's not gonna happen overnight, but we're very committed to doing that.

Um we think it should be as easy as possible uh to develop and build in Sioux City while also being mindful of the the need for safety and and for the why the reason why we do plan review in the first place.

So, but um sometimes we talk here about the development review committee, that's another thing we're looking at, that process, keeping in mind that the development review committee really starts with site plans uh and not the building plans themselves.

Right.

The first steps of a of a plan, of course, is to look at the site, are there utilities, where are the driveways and all those kinds of things?

Is the zoning proper and so on, and then there's always engineering questions about grading and so on, as you know.

Uh and then we move into when the plans are submitted to review of of the of the plans themselves.

And we have two people that do plans examin examination or that are plans examiners.

Um cities have more people than that.

Uh some have a another type of position that's uh uh that participates in that.

But um we have not really asking for more people.

We did Mike Mike asked that question early on.

Do we need more staff?

And we're we're not saying that we do.

We're we think we can improve our processes uh without having to add staff, but that's always a consideration.

Um, Marty, the uh you know, we're talking about process, process, process.

That's probably half the issue that's out here.

This is one of the reasons that I'm sitting in this desk right now is the business community and the perception which is reality of the unfriendliness of economic development in this town.

Um so we can do all the process in the world, but if our attitude and how guys are coming in, how they're being treated um stays the same with the same players, uh it ain't gonna work.

And that I guess that's the question I have is when I asked for uh I guess Henry and for Brian to present, I would like them to present the process and how they see it through their their's eyes.

So I guess my first question does is to you is is is the permit process part of economic development?

I think so, yes.

Hands down, it has to be, I mean, doesn't it?

Of course.

I mean, so if it's if it's part of the process, then then why why is it coming across when you know I'm not saying anything the other councilman having heard on the campaign trail, but it's been a standing um kind of mantra, which is why do we do things in Sioux City that we don't have to do in other communities?

Why is it so hard to build in Sioux City?

I'm never gonna build in Sioux City.

Why are we hearing those things?

And so I'm trying to, we're trying by by flushing this out in public every week.

What I'm trying to get to go for is we're the goal is to go from the worst to the best, from the hardest to the easiest, um, from the most unfriendly to the friendly.

And to get there, I think it's got to go back to not just the process and and software, but how we interact with the builders.

So again, I'd like to hear, again, walk us through the process if somebody walks in with a commercial uh commercial set of plans.

Walk us through.

Henry, would you like to come and address that issue introduce yourself?

I I agree with you by the way.

Uh we're on the same team.

We're on the same team, brother.

People, I mean I agree.

I think that that um, and and as I as I tried to state earlier, uh we can change the process, we can work on the process, we can add software, we can do all those things, and we need to do those things.

But at the end of the day, customer, customer service and the customer expectation are critical.

And that does include people, and of course it does.

And anyway.

Henry Anchill, plans examiner.

Uh so the beginning of a process, obviously, is we will have an interaction.

Uh now it's digital rather than a physical handing of the plans.

Uh we see them.

Uh we will start a review.

Uh we'll verify if all the information is present.

If it's not, we'll make them aware.

Uh, once we do the review, we will provide them with a red line set of documents with whatever deficiencies noted.

We will return that to the designer or the contractor, who party was, and then they will be able to do that.

Presume does that take?

Once again, it depends on the size of the project, what type of project it is, the bigger.

Obviously, complex projects take longer than simple process.

I'm going to build a home.

Okay.

How big is the home?

I mean, once again, 5,000 square feet.

Okay, well, uh 5,000 square feet, you'd need an architectural license based on state law.

So obviously things are going to change a little bit when you get it that large.

I'm sorry, quick.

Do you have a checklist of things that you are checking off for those things or well we have informational handouts available online uh that kind of dictate the items that we are looking for?

So I you know that could qualify as a checklist, yes.

Okay, let's go back.

It's a 2,000 square foot house.

I bring I bring in a set of plans.

Does that have to go to DRT?

Uh depends on where it's located.

If it's in a current subdivision, no, it goes through that one stop shop process that we have.

So it could be ready with site review in regards to the engineering or the planning and zoning within days.

Uh I think our plan review and a two to three days typically for a house uh based on you know our aspect of it from the sense of review, but like I say, the other aspects of it, the engineering, you know, they'll look at it.

Well if you say I'm going to build a three thousand square foot house and plan review will take two to three days.

That that's your estimated time frame, or that's what you strive for.

Well, that's what once again, that's what we can typically do a house.

I mean, houses are fairly standardized construction.

So you look for certain things typically that a lot of builders may miss.

Uh we supply them with a lot of information that typically is not in the set of documents.

Documents come in, some of them are fairly scant in regards to information.

Brian's review will outline all the items that are expected to be provided for in that plan or in the control.

I'm asking the question because I want to see going forward, do you make that three days?

That's all.

I just I don't want to reinvent the.

Well, I we can do the review in two to three days, yes.

Whether you are able to obtain a permit, I think is the bigger issue.

Why would that why would that be?

So we would expect some information to be returned if there's any deficiencies.

And that could take weeks, days, depending on the what's your normal deficiency?

Because I build a garage one time and I went to Lechner and got the LAM.

And of course, you got to see what that lamb is.

So a guy like me that only builds the garage every 10, 20 years.

Where would I have known I would have had to get the lamb layout for the well the checklist basically says, you know, for detached garage that you would need to have, you know, trust layout, trust information, uh foundation plan, site plan, those kinds of things.

It's not in subdivision then.

What's that?

Well, if it's not in the subdivision and it's an infill lot, then it does go through the DRC process.

Uh there is no fee for residential.

Uh you do have to apply still.

It will be put on the agenda.

It will go through the Thursday morning process.

Bob's usually there.

Yeah, but I just I don't understand, like on a house, why it do that.

That's what that's where I'm struggling.

Why does it have to go to DRC, especially?

Well, I I guess that's probably part of the reason it's being revamped, uh, whether that's an issue or not.

I really can't say so.

Again, the the DRC is really looking at the site.

So there might be, but it's in a if it's an in-fill lot, it it was approved for a house at one time.

It should be pretty simple.

It should be pretty fast.

Right.

But why do you have to do it?

I'm asking.

I I I guess to consider the whether there's any site issues with the with zoning or there are a utilities issue or something like that.

I think that was something that we missed when we went through all these little zoning changes in 2025 with SATFAX and lots of.

Sure.

We've made something that we should have considered, and it wasn't brought to my attention, but it is now.

So we'll have to revisit that, whether those are lots.

We're not going to release all these lots and then all this hubbub to get it done.

Right.

Somebody wants to come in and infill when we've already made all these revisions, that it doesn't have to be 5,000 square feet.

It doesn't have to have a 25 feet that back, yada yada.

So we've made some of those zones.

Let's go back though.

The disconnect, I think, Marty, is is between when you turn a set of plans in and when you can start.

That that's that's the issue of the communities.

So I'm trying to figure out why we as a Sioux City community feel the need that when we receive a set of plans, that we have to have someone sitting in an office that doesn't go in the school.

I'm just gonna start with residential, that doesn't go back to the field.

I'm not picking on the position.

I'm saying it doesn't go back to the field.

When other communities, and we have the checklist, that's the best part, Mr.

Mayor.

We don't have to reinvent this.

They hand us a checklist at the end.

I'm trying to figure out that why do we have to go through a review process that then that takes week 10 days?

Um it's not three days, it's not.

And if you don't make the timing on the on the on the meeting, it's another week on the review on the review.

And and then when you get the notes, it then gets mailed to you.

Okay?

So now we're playing that game, and then when you get the reviews, then you get a call that says, hey, I just got it out to you.

Then you get a list of things that have to be corrected.

All of this stuff can be done, and again, I'm trying to figure out again why the city feels the need to dig into the plans if when when they with the way they do other communities don't.

When you get a set of plans on the commercial side, you know, you you they look at it in design review, they look at the setbacks, they look at as good as it does it apply to the master plan, they look at materials.

You know what?

Get your footings going, let's go.

Let's get in the ground, let's go, and then let things then let the permit process back catch up.

But here in Sioux City, we grab the set of plans and we play pinball back and forth, and even after we get in in construction, when they're actually, you know, there's there's nails being pounded, we're still making changes through the design review process.

So I'm just trying to figure out why why the city feels this need to be so hands-on if everything on the commercial side, number one, is being stamped, and if it was built in the county, none gets none of this review.

One foot into the county, none of this review happens.

Is that right, Henry?

That's correct.

None of it happens.

So for one foot outside would end to into Woodbury County, except the exception of electrical and what fire that's doing it really that's that needs to be reviewed.

I don't believe the fire department has jurisdiction outside in the county.

I think it's state marshal, be it anyway.

Those are the two things.

So that's what we've experienced.

So I'm just saying is that I'm trying to figure out why in other communities, when you receive a set of plans, when you see you receive a set of plans, why can't you do the initial look at setbacks, master plan, materials?

Let's go, get it to the field, and make this more of a field-based review process like other communities do.

And then and then what happens here is with the attitude part of it, and again, I'm not picking on any individual, but what happens it creates an atmosphere of from the get-go of just button heads, buttonheads, but I'm not gonna be, and they don't feel this in other communities.

So my question is, can we put a process together on the let's just say on the residential side first?

You know, again, I think again, the position that's there, sometimes I feel like they're trying to ram a 15-hour job into a 40-hour week because of the amount of traffic you're seeing in the department.

Not a lot of problems.

So my feeling is you get a set of plans from a builder, again, go through the same three-step process, pass it back to Ron, they can check the setbacks, check to see if it fits the master plan, check the materials, give them the give them the checklist, and send it to the field.

And it's all it's on the builder at that point.

Why can't we do that?

That that should be a that should be a three-day process tops.

And if there's issues you have on the plans, bring them in, red line it, sign off on it, get it out to the field where that where it all happens in other communities.

Why can't that process get in place?

Can that is that something we can do?

I I don't derivable inspection services manager.

Um there are restep requirements in the ICC codes, whether it's residential, the IRC or IBC for the everybody else breaks them.

So whether another community wants to ignore those or a county wants to ignore those, that's their option, obviously.

Um there are issues out there, and there's case law where it has been sued because of failure.

Um God forbid anybody gets hurt or killed in one of those buildings.

Can we be better at it?

I think there's probably an opportunity for that, and I think electronic review submittals will help, especially with the communication part where you talked about the mailing out, and I agree.

That's a long-term thing, you know, it's ping-pong nonsense.

Yeah, that snail mail.

So if you're able to respond back electronically, and the builder then responds back immediately too, perfect.

Perfect scenario.

So the problem we're in right now, Daryl, is that the process gets drug out, it becomes personalities and headbutting, and then inevitably what happens is it starts marching to a council member, and then it back then it was Mr.

Padmore, and now it's Mr.

Collette.

And then it goes to the city.

Why is our city manager telling our lead engineer, telling our permit people to issue the permits?

Shouldn't be.

And it's been happening.

Have we been documenting that?

And it happened this week on Monday, we had a situation where we're we're reviewing hardware, handle hardware on a project.

Are you kidding me?

No.

Oh.

I mean, I mean, what I'm what I'm trying to say is that is it at what point is this not the process?

Because when I when I sit and talk to people, is it the process or is it personalities?

Because I look at this as the the city just changed head coaches.

They brought in a new council.

And if we're gonna re-jump start and make this this this city open for development to business to builders, I'm not sure we can do it with the same quarterbacks.

So I'm gonna we're gonna give it the benefit of the doubt and say, you know what, we got new hard new software coming in and everything else.

But at the end of the day, if the builders don't want to deal with the people that are here, well how how are we gonna get better?

Is it the pro you guys tell me?

What's gonna change?

I don't know what can't.

Well, if if if we're directed by council and staff to eliminate some of that process, whether we want to absorb the possibility of liability, that's going to be the council's decision.

I don't believe it's liability, dear.

I'm what I'm asking is why don't you guys find a process that can get that can do the big three review like other communities do that you can start projects and let permitting and zoning catch up.

Why can't and I also want to know is why when we have stamped projects and we should look at more what they're doing at the state level.

I think we think we're a Chicago or something where the big cities have all these review processes, Sioux Falls.

We're not.

We we need we need to push these projects out the door because what we want to become is when people look at us, is that we can we can sit up here and say, we're a community that's going to get this process out of your way.

You can start your project, you can get in the dirt.

So what I'm asking from you guys is to present in the next couple weeks, we're off next week, is a is a process that shows a three-day process that can pump a res residential or a garage edition or whatever it's got to be, if it's redlining or if it's calling them up and setting them down, that they can get a residential permit out the door.

And then I like to see on the commercial side of it, I want to see a real process that's customer service focused, that maybe in five days we get through after the initial, we're pushing it out.

And then when they when they bring their when they bring their stuff back, then we throw it back, and then it's a two-week process.

So at the end of maybe, maybe anyway from 14 to 21 days, we gotta roll, we gotta we we we trust the stamp.

Who are we protecting the builder from the stamp?

Doesn't necessarily mean it's correct.

The stamp means the field guy, the field guy explains that to us.

The field guy is an inspector, he's not a plans examiner.

He doesn't have the same bond.

So when they stamp it, they're not stamping it to code.

That engineer is not taking liability when he puts the stamp on that.

When he puts it when he puts an HVAC stamp on it, when he puts an electrical stamp on it, when he puts his stamp on that, which is what we're required to do.

Correct.

We're assuming why is the city of Sioux City butting in?

Who are they protecting us from?

Because nothing is perfect.

That's why you go to the field.

But the field people don't necessarily would you rather catch something that's wrong and has to be replaced at say 25, 30,000 dollars.

It's not my problem.

That's the builder's problem.

But they're gonna complain about that.

It's not your problem, it's not the city's problem.

But that's the better engineer.

Get a better architect.

To review the documents.

The ICC, you shall be.

You're you know, you're reviewed to look at setbacks, footings.

Uh I mean, look look, look at how it's done.

I do it in the county.

You tell me the county buildings are just all screwed up?

The county is building stuff that doesn't comply.

I've seen them.

I've been out in the county.

But the state, if we're going to do things that are less compliant than the state, the state requires everything that we do.

We are following almost lock step with what the state does.

They require stamp drawings, they review stamp drawings, they issue the permits.

So let me ask you this, Henry.

Do we have a do we have a perception issue outside of Sioux City that we're tough to build in?

You've been here, what, 22 years?

I mean 19 years.

19?

Is there a perception that Sioux City is hard to build in?

I wouldn't know.

I haven't heard that, no.

I guess that's where the problem lies.

Yeah.

Are we any tougher than anywhere else?

Yeah, that's no problem.

I think that's where the problem lies.

Are we going to do that?

If we can't, if we can't even, if we can't even admit that we're a tough city to build in.

But how can we be any tougher than any other state that follows the code that we're mandated to follow?

That's what I'm asking for.

I'm asking for a process on the residential Brian, that'd be great.

I know you I know you can whittle one down.

Um give me a give us, give the give this community and this council a look at some type of a three-day non non-U.S.

Postal Service red line, send a checklist out at the beginning of the process, not the end of the process.

First of all, it's not all I can do.

You do.

I so the minute I get the plan, it usually takes me a couple days, just like Henry said, to do a plan review.

Like you said, there's issues sometimes up front with DRC or one stop shop.

There's sometimes problems on the back side.

Once I get the plan emailed out, I also mail it out.

I do not get an answer.

So I will call them.

I will email them saying, hey, this is all I need.

You give me this, you have a permit.

That's where I lose days.

It doesn't take me long to do a plan review itself at all.

But getting zoning up front and engineering, an answer from the contractor on the back side, does take a little time, it seems like.

So I do have it down to two or three days.

Once I receive that drawing, my plan review is done on my computer.

So again, let's use a real-time example.

You call the you call the builder and say, you know what, on your plans, you don't show the insulation at this level.

That's that that's that's an issue, right?

That that's a kickback issue, right?

Usually I'll either say So why why does that become an issue versus just hey Rick, why don't you come in?

Let's go through your plans, Mr.

Builder, let's go through your plans, and let's go let's scratch it through.

No, I want it on the plans.

And say, hey, come in and talk to me for insulation.

I'm gonna do that.

But if they show no insulation, I'll say, hey, either show me the installation prescriptively or just stay R49 for ceiling, R 19 walls.

Whatever you want to do.

Some people blow it in.

They go to R23 walls.

Some people go more than I asked for.

So if they don't show me, then I'll just say, show me what you're using.

Brian, respectfully, you're you're not required to go to the field.

You never you never go out and inspect, do you?

So whatever you turn, after you're done with the set of plans, you review, you never see the building.

Correct.

Correct.

So you never see the building.

So it goes to the inspectors.

It's based upon the field inspectors, which we have a good pretty good relationship with.

Yeah.

So I again, I'm not I'm just saying is it why can't that be applied then on the commercial side?

Mr.

Mayor, I know this probably I this is this is this is the genesis of economic development right here, Councilman.

This is it right here.

This is this is the process that everybody gets hung up on.

I when I sat, I sat in in multiple, multiple meetings with developers and builders.

And I asked them, should do we need to and I had the so proud of this revamped program.

And everyone, that's not what they were asking.

They're saying the service sucks.

We're treated terrible.

We don't get treated like this in other communities.

But then we I asked that, and he's like, oh no, it's really easy to build here in Sioux City.

So all I'm asking is I look forward to the next couple of weeks of standing is this this report that never existed before.

Let's see what what the permits are coming in.

Also, on the second thing is do we have a process in place as these permits come in?

Another complaint that we have is is there any communication between permitting and economic development upstairs?

Frequently there is if we're working on a project in economic development.

Can this go to economic development on a weekly basis?

So they can look at it so that way when somebody's building something out and existing and they they're pulling a permit and then they get they got they got walls up and they find out three weeks into the project there was some dollars available and that they didn't understand that they were available.

I agree with you that better because that happened, Marty.

I've I think that we frequently communicate um on economic development projects, but these are not all of these are economic development projects.

These are you know, if it's somebody's building some houses or whatever, it may not be.

But I agree with you that we can improve the communication between that different uh.

Henry, this is communicate.

This is this is what they get Webster City in Waukee when they do commercial, they send a checklist out.

You know what they do?

They have they have the the guy that owns the building, pays for the inspays for the engineer to pay for the inspections.

They give them a special schedule of inspections, they check the setbacks, they check the master plan, they check the materials, they said here's your list.

As you progress, you pay for it.

They'll accept some things they want to do themselves, maybe.

Here's the list, send us you pay for it, you send us your inspections, and we'll we'll see it completion.

I guess I'd say why doesn't Des Moines, Sioux Falls, Iowa City if we're huge.

They're not huge.

They're not they're a lot bigger in Sioux City, my friend.

Tad, but they're not huge.

Council Bluff.

Again, our goal, our goal is to push it out.

So I appreciate you guys coming up.

I look forward to next week, the update.

I really do.

I think too, this report will actually spur some more communications with us to might have some other opportunities.

So we'll use that otherwise.

I just wanted to say uh a long time ago, 20 years ago, whatever, we set up the development review process, development review committee to kind of cut through some of the red tape and some of the issues that are still there at the time and bring all the departments together in a single process to approve projects.

I think over the years that's become seen as an obstacle.

It was originally intended to be uh helpful to have you know engineering and planning and and inspections all work together.

So somehow we lost that over the years, and that's a great deal of concern to me, Rick.

I agree.

I don't know about it over a generation.

I've worked in economic development a long time.

Absolutely.

We can't have that reputation.

It's not acceptable.

And we've been working on that.

I I I think we can continue to intensify our efforts here because it's it's critical.

I agree, it's critical to growing Sioux City.

Well, I understand if this was a real company, I could gut the whole thing, but I can't.

I gotta sit on a council.

I it reminds me of that.

But if it was me, I'd I'd gut the whole thing.

These guys will say, we have to we have to comply with the code, and we do, but we can do a better job of thank you.

Appreciate it.

Of the of processing that and working with people, and to me, it always comes down to cut customer focus, customer experience.

We've got to have the best possible customer experience we can have.

I'm not gonna be here till midnight.

Thanks.

Let me just say, thank you.

Let me just look at the Marty, Marty, Darrell.

I think it's always important to continue to review process.

Evaluate our our the our standards, our process, and make sure that we're adequately addressing the customer needs.

Rick has shared a lot of information.

I think it's helpful to understand the the scope of the direction he's giving.

I think from the council's perspective, I think it's just helpful to continue to review, continue to discuss, find out where some of our hiccups are, and try and do the best we can to manage the customer relationship so that we can look at this as both growth and economic development.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thanks, guys.

Teresa Fitch, Finance Director, thank you for being patient.

I think I got it figured out.

Um this is a lot of numbers not to have on my presentation, so I wanted to make sure we had um all of the numbers, and then I have the presentation for council afterwards as well.

Um last week, uh Councilman Um Bertrand asked me to um come back and talk about property taxes, and I I do want you to know that this will seem a little bit more than he asked for, but it's really difficult to just pull out that portion of it.

So I wanted to talk about the current um budget, how it relates to property taxes.

Rick smiling because that's the exact conversation we had.

It's not just property taxes.

I have to talk about it all.

So I want to start in the beginning.

Um, first, um, our budget is three different um components.

It is the CIP, it is the debt service budget, and the operating budget.

It's uh 487 million dollar budget um for FY26.

So it's important to know that as we go through, once we piece this all the way down, you'll see actually what the property tax amount is.

So I wanted to point out that we have a significantly large budget compared to what the property tax um revenue is.

Um the first um part of it is the CIP funding sources.

Um again, that large um CIP budget.

Um, a huge portion of those come from transfer ins from our um enterprise funds.

Um, our geo bond, our debt levy is just 6.5% of our full CIP budget.

So I wanted to point out that that portion of it is our what we will eventually receive property tax for.

Um the rest of these items are from our enterprise funds or transfer in sales tax, other items.

Um, debt service funding sources, same here.

Um you'll see property tax with the debt levy is um 41% of um how our debt service um funding is paid, but there's a lot of transfers in transfer ins from other enterprise funds.

Um you'll see from the storm, the storm sewer fund, um, sewer, um, water, uh, airport, all sorts of different um areas that you'll they'll they will receive um revenue, and that revenue or the enterprise fund pays for the debt service in that area.

Uh the third portion um of our budget is the operating funding sources.

This is where we'll start to piece down detailed.

Uh the general fund is the key portion here that will go further into detail, which includes the property tax component, uh, but that again is only 38% of the operating budget.

So a pretty small portion of our our total operating budget is actually funded by the general fund, and that is not all property taxes, as you'll see.

Um, the general fund breakdown, um, so 35 million dollars of that is um property taxes.

Um, there's also other revenues, transfer ins and transfer outs.

And I'll just I'll briefly go over um some of the other revenues.

We have franchise fees, um, we get um revenue from the casino, we receive investment revenue.

We also have um a lot of our charge for services are in this area, fines, um, GEMT.

We receive a lot of other revenues that fulfill our operating budget.

Uh, we get transfer ins and those come from the employee benefits levy, and which you'll see on the next page is a portion of the city's levy, um, also sales tax and um other items um from the cost allocation plan, which is our and our other enterprise funds that pay for portions of our general fund.

So this here is a breakdown of the actual levy.

Um, the general fund portion you'll see um again, just the general fund, the 30 million dollars, uh, transit, which is a part of our general fund, which is 3.3 million, the insurance portion is 1.8 million, which again is a total of 35 million dollars.

That is the portion that goes into our general fund to fund our general fund.

The other areas are the employee benefits, um, which is one of those transfer ins that you saw into our general fund to pay for the um employee benefits, and then the debt service fund is pays for our debt service.

Teresa, right there is a is a good slide to pause real quick.

So for the the public to understand, so out of what's the total budget 487?

That's our that's our budget.

So out of 487, 62 million 591 is what we collect from residential and property tax.

Correct.

So when we're talking about uh lowering property taxes, that's 62 million 591 is the number we're talking about.

Correct.

Thank you.

Yes.

Keep moving.

Thank you.

So this slide here is the um levy impacts.

I just wanted to go over what our the city portion of the the levy.

Um, and I again I kept it at 100,000.

I know that's not the average house in Sioux City, but it makes it easier for calculation purposes.

Um for us, um, the city portion of a hundred thousand dollar um assessed valued home is 729 dollars.

Of course, that's not the full portion of your taxes.

Uh that's sometimes where the confusion occurs.

Um, and specifically talking about residential, that is a portion of the tax that you pay of of your total tax.

This here, this next slide.

Where do your taxes go?

The city of Sioux City, um, the Sioux City School District, Woodbury County, and then those other taxing entities, which include um Western Iowa Tech, the assessors, um, and then the ag extension.

So we as a city we're 44.93% of your taxes.

So when people are confused that, hey, you said my taxes will be 729 dollars per 100,000.

That's only the city portion of the tax.

There's a there's other taxing entities that make up the other portions of the tax.

So you can see the school district is 32 and a half percent.

Uh Woodbury County is 18.66%, and then the other entities are 3.91%.

So our what we can control is the City of Sioux City portion of it.

Um so that's our goal every year.

Um, those other tax entities, um, they control their own let portions of the levy.

So as you can see, um, you can see each one of the taxing um entities.

I I broke down what for residential and commercial industry, what um what those would be for each one of them.

Um yes, Sioux City is uh not quite half, but 44.93% of the total tax that you receive.

I know that was a quick breakdown.

Um you'll see here more again this weekend and in a couple more weeks.

Um I will bring this exact um presentation when we approve the 27 budget.

So when the 27 budget comes through and we go through all of the changes that you guys will make this next weekend and then um in the operating budget, I'll bring some this exact same um spreadsheet so everybody can see exactly what it looks like.

Now we may not have exactly what the other um taxing entities are doing, but we'll at least be able to present what Sioux City is doing.

So do you guys have any questions?

I did want to give a plug that we have upcoming upcoming budget meetings.

We always invite everybody to come.

January 17th is the capital improvement program.

Um February 28th is the operating budget, and then we have a wrap-up for both of those, any of the items that council wants to bring back for further discussion on March 18th.

The public is welcome.

It'll also be on YouTube.

So any questions, um, feel free to come.

We don't get very many people that come, but we certainly encourage people to come.

So Teresa, um great, thank you, really quick.

The uh so from this council's perspective, for us to say that on the campaign trail that we want to buy down property tax, right?

What we have the ability to buy down is the 62.5 million, right?

Out of a four.

So I'm looking at it as a week.

The debt services.

I get the debt services, that's 13.1.

I want to be careful.

Yep, the 13 million of it.

I'm not talking about erasing it or anything crazy.

I'm just saying is there's there's restricted and unrestricted, there's committed and uncommitted.

Right.

So but but from our council perspective, and we go into these budget hearings.

Um, I know it's all about how can we get more money, but we and I have talked about it, it's about how can we reduce.

So from our perspective, um, out of a 487 million dollar budget, 62.5 is property taxes.

So if we want to reduce our portion of the property taxes 10 percent, we only got to find six million in the out of 487 million.

I would agree.

So did we hear that?

So out of 487 million dollar budget, if we want to buy down, yeah.

But 230 of the five-year capital.

So you can throw that out.

No, you could still no I don't, but but there's there's restricted and unrestricted parts of it.

There's loose money, and I know, but that goes back to what do you what where are we gonna prioritize?

That's all this is, Mr.

Mayor.

That's I get it.

The spending side of it.

You got water and stuff.

No, we gotta you gotta dumb this down.

That's part of the number that you you're gonna reduce rates, but that doesn't reduce taxes.

People don't ask much what their water rate is is what their tax bill is, right?

What they pay attention to.

And most of that goes to cops and firemen.

So good luck.

I mean, I'm not saying uh I don't I make more motions than anybody, but at the end of the day, as we're looking at.

I think I'm just trying to quantify it to say that this is a manageable number.

62 million is a manageable number.

But on the flip side, that we can't do it alone.

You're right, Mr.

Mayor.

We can't do it alone.

We looked at that's why she brought out the county and the the school district.

And I don't know if the journal Dolly, you still in there?

There she is.

I think I think we need to ask the Sioux.

I mean, I I took the meeting, I went into the Sioux City Community School District, and I asked, why are you sitting on a 98 million dollar unrestricted surplus?

It's COVID money.

They did it, they did a little shift-oo on how they did it.

And after about two and a half hours of digging it, digging they could came, they got a 98 million dollar.

That's not that's not reserves.

Their reserves should be anywhere from 25 million.

So they should have been buying down their levy to the tune of about 60 million the last three years, and they're not.

So as we do our work on this side of it, we we're gonna call on the Sioux City School District, they've got to go down and they've got to do their side of it.

Don't give me this that they're underfunded.

They're sitting on unrestricted dollars.

They need to look at their budget to start buying as we do this together as a community.

If we want to feel it in our tax bills, it's got to come not just from us but from the Sioux City Community School District.

And the third piece is the county and the county.

We've got we've got this conservative county board.

So you know what?

They've got to do their part too as they bring in new revenues and stuff.

So I'm just saying is a great first place to start.

And as we go behind closed doors and start looking at this budget, I'm asking your department to show us how we can buy down that our portion of it and do our part uh from the city's perspective because it is about spend or is about uh not spending, it's not about just growing revenue.

Because it is about spending about uh not spending, it's not about just growing revenue.

So thank you, Teresa.

Yes, you're welcome.

Any other questions?

Sorry.

Thank you.

I want to make a comment on this before Rex starts.

I don't know if Frex and Chris are gonna present on this together, but Rex and Chris came to me in October and said they wanted to try something different.

And I asked them what that vision was, and they said we'd like to try something different.

And Chris had had gone somewhere and saw another program and maybe implement that in Sioux City.

I think the goal all along was to find out where the holes in the system are, identify them, and bring all the partners together.

The PD is not the only one chasing the homeless uh issues.

There when we had our first meeting, I was surprised about all the people that gathered around the table from our other department staffs as well as the hospitals, um, uh, the mental health professionals.

And I think as we went through the process, we've seen improvements and progress.

Focused approach on a daily basis seems to be making a difference.

If we're consistent with the outreach, um, I think there will be results.

And I think it's not just results from the citizens in Sioux City, but the individuals themselves that we're trying to help along the way.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Rex.

Chief, as you get ready to prepare, I I think one of the most salient points you made, Mike, was that we have to make sure that we're identifying all of the stakeholders, not just the important, most important, but all of the stakeholders, because they haul they all have a key element to the success of a task force.

So thanks, Chief.

Uh, Rex Mueller, Police Department.

Uh Chris Groves, Uniform Services Bureau.

Um, obviously, last week, Councilman Bertrand asked for us to give a little progress report on this.

Um I can tell you that Captain Groves and the task force participants have been meeting weekly.

Uh, they've been recording takeaways.

Uh uh about a week ago, we had another discussion where I kind of uh do a little did a little strategic planning where we took notes.

I'm gonna try to convey those to you.

I know we had a lot of presentations today.

Uh but as uh the city manager mentioned, this is an effort uh by the City of Sioux City, it's headed up by Mike to bring the stakeholders together for positive solutions.

Um I get the finger pointed at the police department quite a bit saying, Police Department, why don't you solve this homelessness issue?

Well, unfortunately, there are so many other stakeholders who have many more solutions.

I can provide one solution, it's criminal justice solution, and it is very often square peg round hole, an inappropriate solution, but we utilize the tools that we have.

So this is an effort for us to bring partners together who have a stake or have resources, and it's been uh extremely uh good to get people in the room.

I can tell you that before uh I talk about some of the results and some of the takeaways thus far, Captain Groves is already working on uh some meetings with other providers, the judges, county attorney, the hospitals.

So uh where can we tear down barriers?

I think last week's uh legislative session with our legislators, we realize that there's a huge amount of barriers at the state level.

The way the state laws are written, the way that committals happen, the lack of uh mental health resources funding, uh, inpatient treatment that is so needed in our area.

So there's a lot of barriers, uh, but I believe, and I'm gonna try to uh go through this.

Captain Groves is uh probably gonna pipe in at times, he'll be available to answer your questions also.

But I'm gonna start by talking about some of the participants, and these are just a few of the agencies that we're working with now.

We have a to-do list of other agencies we like to bring in.

Uh, but the Iowa Department of Human Services, Iowa Primary Care Association, Siouxland Mental Health, uh, the Mobile Crisis Assessment Team, Siouxland Community Health, Sioux City Warming Shelter, Keystone Treatment Center, Rosecrans Recovery, Sioux Land Soup Kitchen, Family Alliance, Veterans of America, Iowa Works, Iowa DOT, uh among the City of Sioux City participants, neighborhood services, parks and recreation department, parking enforcement, public works, police department, uh obviously outside our agency, Woodbury County Sheriff's Department, Heartland Counseling Services.

Just a few uh things that we have noted as successes, and what we plan to do is give uh weekly in the info to council uh some statistics for you, some things that we can quantify, and some great success stories.

They have already experienced some very good successes in the deployment of this.

But some of the things noted in our little debrief uh last week, the coordination and communication between agencies and providers is leading to new solutions.

Word on the street.

People that need services are getting accustomed to seeing the officers, city workers, mental health workers that are going out in the task force, and they know they're there to assist them.

We're breaking down barriers.

We are addressing encampments much more quickly because this group is working as a team.

You've got the safety and security of the officers, you've got barks and rec, you've got resources.

Now that's a good and a bad.

One of the things that we did note was uh that we do need more resources to address those and do more thorough cleanups.

Uh but MCAT resources are being deployed more often, meaning that we're making referrals to mental health, positive responses from business owners and residents downtown, which obviously increased feelings of security and safety when they're downtown.

Uh partnership allows for officers to provide safety, so as far as my department goes, uh we are there with providers.

And I think there's a certain sense of safety and security in having the officers there.

I think they can engage more uh uh, you know, at a greater length of time and offer those services.

Um those are barriers that we're trying to overcome.

Uh one of the participants mentioned an expansion of Native American Native American specific treatment options in our area with some developing resources.

Now there are barriers, and I'm gonna go over those very quickly.

Lack of funding for needed resources, obviously uh Jill and her staff probably mentioned to you how some of those pools uh are limited, uh lack of uh addiction, mental health treatment options, uh delays in referrals and need of assistance, individuals in need of services often lack documents.

Something as simple as having a driver's license or identification can be a barrier to getting treatment or success.

Lack of available time to do the work.

So while the task forces are out, uh that is out there and they are engaging people, sometimes, even in that you know, eight-hour day or their shift that they're working together, there's not enough time.

Not enough time, not enough resources.

Uh treatment services providers not given enough time to treat individuals for underlying issues.

One of the things that was mentioned by mental health providers is that some of these folks that are committed, uh they get them to a baseline and then they are moved out of the system.

And that baseline is a baseline for them.

It doesn't mean that they're, it means that they're probably barely functional and could use longer inpatient treatment.

So that could be a state issue, that could be a you know a state law and redefining those, but that's something that we're finding is that when somebody reads a base baseline, they're then shoved out.

They're pushed back on the streets where those underlying issues are going to come out again.

Uh hospitals uh releasing individuals dealing with mental health issues a little bit too early was was part of that.

And then again, the fact that we continue to be the face of this when there's so many others in our community who contribute to assisting it.

Now, some statistics that we're gonna track and we're gonna look for other things that we can track to better show the success of this.

Now, our crime analysis unit was kind of following 62 individuals uh that we've been have officially been contacted.

So we've kind of got this pool of people that we are tracking.

During the task force, or prior to the task force, there were 879 calls for service involving 62 people, 879 since the inception and the working of the task force, that has gone down.

So we've basically seen uh us going from about 73 calls for service to about 26 calls for service per month relating to these individuals.

Essentially a 50 percent decrease in contacts with that group of people.

So you can speculate, and we kind of speculated, it could be a number of things.

It could be we have made a referral to service and we've gotten that individual assistance.

It could be that just the frequent contacts is is kind of maintaining and helping maintain order, and these individuals maybe are less apt to uh engage in uh less than constructive behavior, or we're getting them resources and they're feeling like they're being dealt with, and they're maybe they're not acting out or doing things uh that are leading to a police response.

So that's kind of significant to me.

Now, again, I'd have to speculate as to the reasons as to that drop, but you have to take a look at that and say, wow, 50 percent drop in dealing with these 62 individuals in the two months since we started this is significant.

And again, it'd be speculative for me to say that it's this, this, or this.

Now, in the count info to council, I uh mentioned a success story.

We're gonna have a lot more of those.

Uh we have individuals that were chronically homeless that we found veterans' resources for uh that got them, you know, maybe got them some health care and got them segueed to some temporary or permanent housing that maybe got them off the street are uh our task force officers are specifically tracking individuals that they see as a problem, and they're forwarding them to mental health services.

Or if necessary, I can tell you that in some cases, it's criminal justice.

It's, you know what, this person's a problem.

They might have mental health issues, but we need to get a warrant for their arrest, and we need to locate them.

So they're tracking and identifying these individuals.

We're still trying to rope in a handful of folks in the community that are service providers and are going to provide solutions.

But I think the the most compelling thing for Captain Groves and myself is that when you get, as Mike mentioned, when you get all those voices in the room, you become aware of problems that we weren't aware of.

You become aware of barriers that we didn't know existed.

Now, some of these are being overcome just by our communication.

Others, as I mentioned, are probably a little bit uh harder to overcome, maybe state level, as we mentioned, uh, mental health funding, things like that that aren't going to be instantly solved.

However, uh have been very proud of the work of the task force under Captain Groves's uh at least leadership from the aspect of uh conceptualizing this, tracking this, getting providers, he's done a fabulous job under Mike's leadership, obviously, and supporting it.

Um I guess the next steps for you as a counsel would be uh do we continue this?

Now, right now this is on a trial basis with the participating uh agencies.

Um we quite frankly, uh it's stressing our staffing, uh, and it might seem silly, but having two officers available, uh, we're pulling them from uniform shifts, and and those are something that we're always playing catch-up on.

But uh, we believe it's a worthwhile thing, and going forward, uh charting our successes will hopefully give you more information with which to make decisions on the future of this collaboration.

But for now, uh I believe Mike, myself, Captain Groves, we believe that this should continue, and we should continue to draw the data from it, continue to start our successes, failures, and see what obstacles we can overcome.

Chief, I have a couple questions for you.

Uh one, you know, currently with those uh issues that lack of funding, lack of facilities.

How sustainable uh is this effort uh when you think about and does it even matter with winter months versus warmer months and and what we see?

Well, from a from the I can only speak as to the police department, but there are other providers, and they have mentioned that um some of the other providers have mentioned that hey, they have while they do appreciate the collaboration and do come along with us, sometimes they have office hours that they have to keep.

I can only speak about it.

Um there is what you mentioned the weather aspect does change things.

Captain Groves and I have talked about how uh weather dependent it might change our association with some of the other agencies uh that are involved.

There might be a heightened need during the summer for one agency and uh, you know, a lowered need in the winter.

I'll let Captain Groves comment on that.

So there was a there was a purpose of why we started this in October twofold.

One was our staffing levels in October.

October is a shift bid time for us, and we were able to start staffing some of those investigation spots that we hadn't staffed.

Um there was things that we had had vacant for a while, and it was the time was right for us to try it.

Since we've done that, we've also lost staff, and it's put us back into a bind again.

Second to that was the timing of winter.

We knew that they would be more congregated into an area, and it would be easier for us to focus on this with a smaller group.

It was our foot in the door to congregate or get them in a congregated area.

We knew where they would be, and we fully expect as summer hits, this grows.

This goes into other areas, other areas of the city, the parks, and then then we'll have to learn from that and how do we grow it.

But there was there was a plan to why we started in the fall and really implemented.

One was the staffing reason, two was knowing where they would be.

So have we identified, you know, those that want help and those that necessarily don't want help?

Yeah, and I don't know if that list always it'll always it won't always be the same.

Um we uh circulated a list, and and on that list, we've identified 21 people that don't want don't want services.

They're what I would refer to would also say is the problems.

They're the ones that are generating most of our calls, they're the ones that are creating um the things that people don't want to see or have don't want to deal with.

And my direction has been not just, I mean, the task force is a is a proactive approach, it's not reactive.

What I mean by that is when citizens call, you're not getting a task force officer coming to that.

They're doing they're doing proactive things trying to do cleanup.

The district cars are still supposed to respond to those calls, and I the direction has been has been a zero tolerance.

Um as we grew this or as we started this, it started out with a core group of people, and as it grew or as it started, we started to add more people into it.

I'll be honest, it wasn't my plan, but the plan, I didn't know how it worked, but the plan worked out better than I ever could have dreamed it could have.

What I mean by that is as we got people involved, the process has taken a little while.

We got people involved from the jail.

The jail people were not originally involved in it.

We wanted to start with the city core group of the city that we controlled to get those to be had the buy-in.

We then got we brought the sheriff's department in.

We brought some of these outside um uh treatment facilities in.

But having somebody with the jail now, they're seeing it in a big picture that we're not trying to criminalize homeless homelessness.

We're not trying to take every homeless person to jail.

We're what we need to focus on are the ones that are the problems, the ones that are again causing the main concerns for the citizens, and they understand we need to incarcerate.

I mean, that's the answer.

We need to have enforcement, they may need to be incarcerated.

The next step of that is as the chief said is meeting with the county attorney's office.

I have a meeting set up with them this Friday.

We tried to actually get it done earlier, just schedules.

It's uh again getting through the holiday season, we get with them on Friday, they will then facilitate that meeting with the judges.

So the judges, I've printed off emails again, frustrations of officers, the things they see, and then we'll share those, and hopefully that everybody sees the big picture what the goal is.

Um we understand the the jail, they have they they're looking out for their interest as well.

When you the mental health, the uh alcohol, the addictions, the deep the withdrawals from that, that causes medical issues in the jail, and then they're concerned with that.

So, how do we overcome those things?

Um they don't want to have to deal with those medical issues.

And I think about that.

I was just gonna ask about that when you finished.

And that's their that's their biggest concern is the is the withdrawals from some of these addictions.

Right, but when a Sioux City officer, somebody gets called for trespass or disorderly, whatever, and it's established that they're drunk or under the influence, and do we not take them to the hospital still?

So there's there are some standards.

Um it's a.250 or higher, which many of these people are special in the evening night.

They they have to go to the hospital.

Um chief has seen this.

I have reached out to the hospital.

Um I don't have a meeting set up with them yet, but not only from an ER standpoint, uh, can we get a little bit of a faster track in and out?

Right.

We can't stay there for two or three hours to do these tests.

And that's the goal for them for everybody again to see the big picture.

We understand that citizens with broken arms and heart attacks, you know, there's gonna be things that are gonna trump us, but there's if we can get that process uh sped up, and then the mental health side of it.

We know that we've taken one of our one of the task force members did a commital on somebody who we fully believe is that mental health is a is a major issue, and they spent less than two hours in the yard and they were baseline and they were brought back out or released, and then we continue to get calls on those folks.

So it's the idea is to try to educay or not educate, that's not the right word, is explain the frustrations, explain what we're trying to get to, and so that everybody's on the same page.

So when they're required, they meet the two-point whatever and they have to go up to the hospital, and that's the idea that they have to be examined and basically.

So what the jail get it down.

Yep.

Right.

So are they not still guilty of the crime that you picked them up for in the first place, and then they go out to LEC?

Correct.

So what the jail wants is they want is it's called the fitness for confinement form.

So basically the judge is signing off that they're fit for confinement, that while they're in confinement, there's not a risk of well, and it could happen, but they're hopefully reducing that liability of something seriously a medical condition happening.

They would still see the judge on a public intact.

They're likely gonna see the judge next morning, they're gonna be released.

If they're high blood alcohol level, they're probably getting released, and their blood alcohol level is probably still over the legal limit.

That's just what their normal that's their normal baseline.

But they would the jail is not keeping them beyond that 24-hour period or the 12-hour period, they see the judge in the morning and they're getting released.

Um if they keep them longer in that, then that's when the DTs or withdrawals from those substances start to kick in, and then they start to see a medical concern.

Uh and that's something we've been working on trying to overcome.

Staff out there to observe them.

They do have a medical staff, and that the medical staff honestly calls all of their, I want to say calls all of their shots, so to speak.

They they contract with a private medical firm.

So if the medical firm says they need to go to the hospital, we we take them to the hospital.

Um for whatever that reason is to get that fit for confinement to get them back.

But how'd they get out of the hospital in the first place if they're still above the limit?

The judge the the we take them to the hospital, we stay with them.

We can't we're we can't walk away from the once the doctor signs that form and says they're fit for confinement, and then we transport them to jail.

Right.

But if they're still over the limit at the time, when they see the judge, they let them right back out.

More than can they normally do.

Right.

Is it possible, Chief and Chris, that if you know, as you give reports, I mean you mentioned warrants for arrest and and those things.

I I'd like to see what that looks like, you know, weekly, who you're arrested and why you're arrested them, or what that warrant would entail, uh, especially for a homeless person.

We're gonna try to uh one of the things that uh you'll note in the info to council that I probably give initials to somebody.

Some of this stuff has to do with health care information, and we can't uh we have HIPAA concerns about naming names.

So we're gonna try to give you examples of the Captain Groves and I, yeah.

We're not always gonna know about some of these arrests, what occurred, the outcome.

We're trying to find meaningful information to give the council to consider uh what's working for us and what's not.

Um I'd be remiss.

We are going, as Captain Groves said, he is he has told our folks we need to make arrests, and that was the work with the jail is you need to, whenever possible, hold these person people.

However, I can tell you that arrest has been our approach since I've been a cop, since uh Chris has, and we've seen the problem get worse.

So it's one of those you know, a definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, which is why the other people in the task force are so important to success, because if we can segue some of these frequent users to assistance, uh to help, to housing, to jobs, what have you, uh the population that we're dealing with is reduced, then uh the amount of contacts that officers are repeatedly having with a poor group of folks is gonna drop, you would hope.

Uh but there are times, as Captain Groves said, there are some people who out and out refuse help.

There are some people that are very accepting of help.

Um so we need to straddle and get help to those who are accepting of help that we might be able to, and I think we've got some local success stories with Hope Street, places like that that have done a very good job of transitioning people.

Um I'd love to see this be an example uh to a lot of other communities.

We're trying something different.

Uh the same old, same old is not working.

We have tried different approaches, different task force, different partnerships.

Uh this seems to uh be providing some uh meaningful progress.

Can't guarantee an outcome, but I think the best way is to continue to move forward, track our progress, see where the holes are, and see what we can do about them.

I'm not throwing Jill under the Jill is here, so Jill's staff.

I will say that when we first met with them, they were doing things that I wasn't aware that were being done.

Uh it was educational for us as well.

Um and Jill staff with the officers, they uh what I've the feedback I've got is the tr the homeless that we're even encountering, they're not necessarily afraid of the police officers anymore.

They're willing, they're they are opening up a little bit, they are willing to accept a little bit more services, maybe than even what um Jill's folks were offering.

Some, not all, but the it it has been beneficial.

Um, but it is a slow and long process, there's no question about it.

This is this is very good work, and it's encouraging to know, Chief, that you believe that your task force is moving in the right direction.

Um I've got a little bit of pause when you made the comment, you know, we're the face of the task force of this movement, and and personally, I don't want to impose that on you and your people.

I just don't I I don't feel that's the best use of your resources.

And the reason I made the comment that I did before you even started was that we needed to identify this the right stakeholders, is that we also need, I believe, to identify the right entity that can run the task force, they can understand the full scope of all of the issues.

You're doing a great job, Captain Gross.

I I think you've you've outlined exactly what what the men and women of the police department see as critical functions.

You're identifying ancillary um groups and organizations, but I just my sense is that the police department shouldn't be the face of the project of the task force.

We need to identify who should be and identify all of the stakeholders to continue in the progress that you're making.

And I would agree.

Um that's what, if you ask Mike, that's been our goal from the very beginning.

We do not want to be, because we are just one aspect and we are temporary solution to permanent problems.

That's why Mike is uh Mike Coletta's the city manager is is the basically manages a task force.

I would say that our role is strictly as maybe an engineer, is that we made a proposal.

Uh uh for now, Captain Groves is kind of the the heart of it and bringing people together and setting the meetings and getting the players.

Uh the hope would be that we would be able to take our hands off the wheel to some point in the near future uh and let others take a more prominent role.

So our goal is not to be the face of this, quite the opposite.

So briefly, real briefly, uh thank you, Chief.

And uh Captain Gross, I know you took this project on here in the last couple of months, and I want to thank you for that.

And it's it's just cool to hear people are talking, communicating, like you said, some of the eye-opening things.

I too chased the process and and chased what happens when they're picked up and how do they go to the hospital and go to the jail and all that nonsense where everybody's trying to kind of uh you know, kind of play past the buck type thing, not in a good way, not a bad way, it's just the reality of you get married to these people probably for two, three hours a day and it sucks.

And the reality of it is is that we can say that that we don't want the police department to be the face of this, but the reality of is that's the tool that we have.

The public is spoken, that they they think they see we've got a growing problem.

And I think one of the things that we're not addressing is where is the problem coming from?

Um I guess the first question I have you, Captain, is is it fair to say that there's a large percentage of these people that probably aren't even from Sioux City?

And I'm gonna give you an opinion.

Um whether it's we know, we have witnessed it, we've seen the van pull up, people get out dropped off.

Yep.

We've seen we've seen a squad car drop people off.

So we become the solution for other people's homeless problems.

They feel really good about themselves over uh in Davenport and other places when they send them to Jackson Recovery for 48 hours, or they then that are they're on the streets.

I mean, they're finding avenues to get them bust over here.

Um so I guess the question I have again, uh the the community is gonna apologize that you are gonna be the tool, have to be the tool as we push this forward.

Um if we want to identify is is again, I'm looking for an opinion, Chief.

Is is downtown a better place with the homeless shelter or with the warming shelter, or is it a is it a more dangerous and disruptive place with the warming shelter?

I I would kind of switch that and say I think downtown is a better place because more people are occupying downtown.

I think the investment in downtown, I think positive investment spreads.

Uh, and I think you know, just as blight spreads, we believe in the broken windows theory of the So is the warming shelter an asset to downtown or the downtown businesses.

Do you feel that the downtown businesses are excited that the warming shelter is there, what you see on the street when you're policing?

I wouldn't go so far as to say the warming shelter is an asset.

Okay, thank you.

That's a very honest answer.

Um I guess what I look at it for is the first thing as a community we need to say is that we are not uh it stops.

Uh it has to stop, that we are not uh a landing place for other communities.

Uh I too, Chief learned what Jill does back there.

There's things that she did.

Um Mr.

Kosovich got beat up pretty hard on the uh campaign trail when he talked about the process of putting people on buses uh and shipping them to more places that have more support.

Um that we've been doing that in Sioux City for years.

I realize that we've got a budget for that.

And where we take these people, we find out that they've got another support system, 120, 150 miles, is that a friend, is it a cousin or whoever it is, and we're putting them on a bus, we're giving the resources to get out of town.

So my question is, and I asked Jill, she's got a $20,000 budget.

I would ask that she presents a larger budget, she needs more resources.

I would ask that you uh put more dollars in those funds to give the people, get them to the get them to family, get those to people uh support systems that maybe aren't in this community uh at some point.

So I would encourage you, Jill, to update that and send and ask for more cash.

We do receive 20,000, that's um local dollars into our budget for that program specifically.

As of today, so we're a little bit over half of our uh halfway through our fiscal year.

We've spent about 17,500 of that already.

Um relocating about I want to say around 90 people, I could get specific numbers.

So we're almost um through what we have out there.

It's not like you're busting them to Omaha.

You're they're uh the last two, I think we're Bismarck, North Dakota, yeah.

So that process, when they come in for intake or they come for help in part of the interview process, remind people it's how did you get here, how did you get in this situation?

I came here, I was staying with my cousin, whatever.

They had a call out, the cousin moved away, who knows what exactly.

Where were you on your way to Bismarck or whatever?

And then we offer the assistance.

Can we help you get to where you're going?

Yeah, we specifically vet out, you know, why do you want to go to the place that you're going to be, you know, what's your plan when you get there, all of that kind of stuff.

Right.

Right.

But I was told the story in one of our meetings talking about the warming shelter, and perhaps how we could.

Well, I was on the relocation committee to be transparent, because I'm not a fan of its location.

I've not been quiet about that.

And uh I would not turn somebody down.

I think there are people that will donate to that.

And it's not necessarily what you're doing is the right thing.

If they have a family support group somewhere else and want to get there, we ought to be able to help them.

I don't run out of money there.

Let us know when you are, because I think there are people that would donate to that.

Mr.

Mayor, I think I'd I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the fact that that separates our motivation from some of the motivations of individuals sending people to us.

Ours is to get them where there's uh family structure resources.

I know what to be doing.

Whereas other communities, it's to rid themselves of a problem.

No, yeah.

That's what I'm saying.

If she we're sending them to support money, we were sure.

We were shared a story by the warming shelter that specific meeting that a city 70 miles away from here brought an ambulatory person here who couldn't walk, had to have help, made them our problem.

And they were basically doing home health care with this person.

And that is unacceptable.

It truly is.

In fact, the mayor and I have had recent discussions here before the holidays.

I said, we need to get up and do a press conference, did I not?

And say, stop.

Stop dropping people here.

We don't have the resources to help them.

You know, it'd be one thing if we had some kind of a big facility or the resources to do it, but we have no more resources than these communities that are bringing them.

So I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but we are aware that that's happening.

And I sent the our attorney, and we had I think I sent it to Rex to find out if there's some legalities that we can look at about dropping people off here that are not able to care for themselves, and just leaving them here on their own.

And there are some codes that I think that we could maybe make work, but I don't know.

We need to peel back that onion, but we need to make a broad statement.

And again, I spoke to the mayor about this a couple months ago before the holidays and said we need to have a press conference that just says we're aware that this is happening and it's unacceptable.

We're not we're not able to help all these people.

Well, Julie, that's a great transition because the I think the at the end of the day we can have all the task force and the players and the the the ready to stakes, but at the end of the day, the people want the people off the streets.

They don't want to drive by at two in the afternoon and the doorways down by the brass rail, you got people that's laying on the concrete, stuff like that.

This this is what people want.

It's just that simplistic.

So I think the other areas, and I understand that pain handling and the follow-up First Amendment court cases we've had in the last six months to a year.

So I think the avenue that we need to look at, and I've talked to Nicole about this, and she doesn't like it, but that's her job is to keep us out of trouble, um, is the loitering laws.

I would like next week you to present to us what the the current City of Sioux City loitering laws are.

Um, what are the penalties um and what the definitions, because when you look at when you actually read the definitions even on our own website, you know, loitering uh is lingering in public without clear lawful purposes, obstruction, free passenger pedestrians, it's causing annoyance or disturbance.

It's interfering with lawful using of public places or businesses, loud obscene languages.

So the obscene laws, and here's where I'm gonna go with this obscene laws is you mentioned that that the jails don't like it when they when they get to the 48-hour period with these people when we bring them in, is because most of these people have some type of substance abuse.

So what they found in other communities is that if you can we've if we need to up the ordinance when it comes to loitering to uh three strikes, if you're picked up once, picked up twice, picked up the third time.

It's we're we're I like to see us ban it at a mandatory 72-hour or a four-day, and they've I've seen it across the country there are places that do up to five to seven days.

Why that time period is is is key is because when you hit that 72-hour period, you become a detox, comes into this.

And the the person gets very uncomfortable.

They don't want to go back into jail if they're picked up again because they don't want to go through that what they're going through.

So what they're finding also too is like it or not, uh they tend to move out of a community that does this.

It's a deterrent if they know that if they're gonna be hanging around loitering, um, that they may end up in the drink for three three days uh and it upsets their tummy and their head and then they move on.

Um so again, I want to I'd like you to do some research on the on our current loitering status, and and maybe it's maybe it's an unconstitutional bad idea, but I couldn't find anything.

I have brought that up before.

So well, again, I've seen other communities do it.

Let's let's let's dig a little deeper and maybe take on a little risk.

And to just respond to that a little bit, is that is we gotta have we really have to have uh judging the judges on board with that agreement.

And and again, those are the steps we're taking.

You guys are doing it, it's great.

That's hopefully that we can get everybody.

And the pressure's got to come from the community, you know, Captain, and that's and that's what we're doing right here.

By doing this in public, the way we're doing it is long and on a Monday night that it is, we're just we're continuing to throw light on it, that it's not just your problem.

It's what's going on at the jail, how are they receiving them, what's going on at the hospital, can we expedite them through?

Are the is as Luma's prosecuting them, and now are the judges upholding those projects.

So it's a community pressure that has to come that we've done the work and and we're gonna make changes.

So I I completely applaud what you're doing, and I look forward to the update.

Thank you guys.

I gave up Monday Night Golf League, so yeah.

So you guys are gonna learn to have a big lunch on Mondays.

Tom Pingle, public works director.

Uh Vicky Baker, Assistant Public Works Director.

Thank you for this opportunity for us to get you guys back updated on the wastewater treatment plant, uh Phillies facilities plan improvement project.

Got a little presentation here.

I could talk hours and hours about this, but I've slimmed it down.

Um, you're not going to not uh but if there are questions or things I did not answer, please just let me know and then I can come back and get get those answers for you.

This all started with the facility plan.

Um this is mandated by the state since we were over 80% of our capacity.

Um most of the time are running at about 100% or 110% of our capacity.

That kicks in uh the requirement to do a facility plan.

Facility plan is an all-en cuff all-encompassing plan that an engineer will have to do and has done for us, and then review all of our processes, look at that versus the wastewater design standards by the state, and ultimately give us a big report uh to tell us what's going on with our facility.

Um we understood that our plant had quite a bit of issues, and it the issues that we were facing were costly.

So we and the uh uh council directed our engineer to also look at what it would cost to build a new plant versus upgrading and fixing our plant to the DNR's standards.

Uh the majority of our wastewater plant is 65 years old.

Most wastewater plants' lifespan is 20 to 30 years.

Uh our equipment is old and crumbling, our infrastructure out there is failing us.

Um, as you can see in this picture, that slab is about 20 feet wide, 40 feet long.

Guys were walking on that about 30 minutes before that collapsed into a 20-foot hole.

You can see the rebar on the walls.

Uh it's missing about five to six inches of concrete on the outside of that, and you can imagine what it looks like on the other side.

Uh, also our plant, since it's running at 100% capacity, all of our redundant equipment is online that's supposed to be in place for backup in case something breaks.

Uh, if something breaks, then we're just we're we're not treating as well, and then we're uh pushing up against our MPDS limits, which MPDS discharge permit.

It's what the EPA gives each and every discharger uh guidelines what to uh meet when they discharge these pollutants into the the waters of the United States.

Uh there was a question last week about sizing our plant.

Um you can see the historic max month of our facility versus uh these other uh instances, but I want to talk about our current capacity is 89,000 pounds of DoD per day.

Um, and our historic max month has hit 110,000 pounds.

So the facility plan included uh what would what would we have to do to size our plant when South Sioux City's three industries go offline, which they already have last June or two Junes ago.

Two Junes ago.

Yep.

And also Jolita is planning to go offline off of our system here in the near future.

We took that into our facility plan, and it's still with those coming offline.

We are above our capacity.

So you can see the third or the phase one and two uh bar there.

That uh is includes what our capacity would look like after phase one, which is 100,000 pounds, and uh after phase two, which is 120,000 pounds.

Um how did we get to this?

How did we size our plant?

Um in the facility plan, the engineers include all of the growth through this the the city's total time as being a city, and they do a linear regression to project out 20 to 30 years because this is what that this facility plan is for, is to set the city up for the next 20, 30, even 40 years.

This is a generational project.

Um we also did a survey with our industries.

We sent out a survey to each and every industry, we talked to each and every industry individually, and um we wanted to know what they expect for growth in the next two, three, five, and twenty years.

We took that survey into account for the sizing of our facility.

But most importantly, um the state revolving fund, which is funding this project, will not allow us to oversize the plant as much as we would want to, which I would never would want to.

I think the design standards are too stringent, and we can obviously this supports that we can operate a plant and still meet compliance at over capacity, but those those are from the 1980s, those those standards are still in place, so we still have to meet those.

But SRF will not allow us to speculatively grow our make our plant too large.

So we are uh held by the SRF and the IODNR to how big we can size our facility.

Tom, is that is that based on what we currently have like users like for instance, South Sioux and Jolita is going offline, so do they base that on the Yep, that's all included.

Um but we uh those three industries in South Sioux City, they've came offline two years ago.

This facility plan I should have noted started in 2022.

So we've been at this for about almost going on four years.

Uh great question.

This is the wastewater treatment cost estimate for upgrading our current facility.

Like I said, the facility plan looked at uh what it would cost to upgrade our facility versus bring building a brand new facility.

We all had our fingers crossed.

We hoped we could get the wastewater plant outside of town and get it away and get the odors and everything away.

But that that cost was 900 million dollars versus the 500 million for phase one and two.

You see phase three there.

Um I like to tell folks just to ignore phase three, that's not any near-term project.

We don't plan to do phase three anytime soon.

That is just uh something uh in our playbook that we can pull out if we get a another large industry in town, like another seaboard wants to move into town.

We can go ahead and start phase three.

Obviously, the revenues would be there with an industry that large, or maybe it's five or six smaller industries.

But we we I just want this you guys to be aware that we have a plan in place in case uh something soon were to happen or near term.

But we're not spending 125 million.

But we're not we don't plan the new phase three unless it's right like needed.

Stakeholder meetings.

Here's a list of meetings that we've had with the council, uh industries, the Sioux Land Initiative, um most uh you can also see up here that uh the council had uh uh mandated that we start a wastewater treatment reconstruction and design advisory committee.

That started in 2023.

Um that just got extended for another six months, so that'll be through the next July.

We'll keep going with that meeting.

We've met with the environmental advisory board, Saratoma Club, Sioux Land Go, Sierra Club Rotary Club, Sioux Land Cosmetolitan Uh Club, and Caboard most recently.

These are the sewer rate increases that our users have experienced, and um 2025, 2024, 5, 26 have all occurred, and the 27 rate increase will happen this June, the and June 30th.

So the the largest increases have already passed, and uh the last one that is approved by the past council is 2027.

The 2028, 2029, 2030 rates are not approved, but we do recommend keeping some kind of rate increase to uh keep the plant uh after it's built, obviously to keep the plant um with healthy funds for prolonged maintenance so we don't get into another issue like this.

So Tom, the elephant in the room right here on this slide is really simple.

It's is what happens if C-Board goes offline when you're we're only projected to 2027.

So if C board goes offline um and they just say, you know what, we're gonna build our own plant, which is a strong possibility if what some of the future things you're looking at doing.

So what does that mean for 28, 29, and 30?

Has that been calculated?

What it goes back to, I'm just looking at for the residential user.

We're uh we have a great relationship with CBOOD, and I would hope that they would have told us that, especially in our most recent meeting.

Right, we did but if that were to happen, that would be devastating.

We wouldn't we wouldn't have a plan for that.

Uh yeah.

Uh but CBOR can't just do that in the city.

No, they can't as they say they have to get permission from the city.

I mean, that's it's okay.

Just like any industries, we have in I I have a slide up here.

We have 29 industries in our city here.

If if we had another recession or something, I don't know you know, I don't know what would so how overbuilt are we if they get off?

I mean, what is that?

If they would come offline, we'd still be we'd probably be at capacity, right?

That's what I was thinking too on the end of it.

No, I'm not I mean I get what you're doing, but I just I'm just saying is that I think there's we're being naive if we think that with these kind of increases and everything that's going on and what they want to do in the future that we're not thinking that they aren't considering, and we know they're cleaning their water now, but right think they're not gonna come offline.

What does that do to us the consumer?

And we figured what does that do to the consumer?

That that would be a big one.

Uh we was that again?

That would be a big one.

That would be a big one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That'd be big one.

I don't I don't know what we would do.

We would do if we lost our largest industry in town.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, keep going, sorry.

That'd be a big one.

Here's our rates versus other cities for an industrial user.

This industrial user that we've uh mocked here in this billing for monthly billing is a user similarly similarly sized to Triumph Seaboard.

So you can see in the yellow uh where our current rates in 2022 were versus our adjusted rates in the green.

It does put us up to the top end of the middle.

But uh as I've walked other council members through this, uh there's uh uh cities below us that are going through the same projects.

We all build our plants in the early 60s through the Clean Water Act with mostly funded by the government.

Uh everyone's plants getting to the same decay level as ours, and they are rebuilding, they'll move up, and uh hopefully we go back down to the lower end.

But we had some of the heaviest loads coming as compared to these higher rates.

Right.

I should think you for bringing that up.

Uh a lot of folks, you know, we're a smaller community nation nationally.

We we have about 90,000 folks.

We have about 125,000 folks discharging to our wastewater plant, including our industries.

A lot of a lot of people probably were wondering why why the heck is this so expensive?

Um that's that's a great question.

Uh and I I want people to be thinking like that.

But due to our industries, due to being one of the number one food producing uh cities in the United States, we have a high pollutant concentrated wastewater stream.

Our we treat more wastewater pound per pound of BOD per day than Denver Metro.

So we have a we've made the top 50 wastewater plants in the United States out of 17,500 wastewater plants.

So we are a huge plant.

Uh if if we didn't have any industries and you were to mock it so that it is just all residential users, we would have a population of 9.1 million people here.

So that's that's how large our plant is.

It's uh tremendous how big our plant is, and people just you know drive by it every day and they don't realize it how this is a huge asset to the city, and I don't want it to be a liability.

I just remember you telling me when you've been going around to the other cities, you know, looking at different components and making sure that you know we're comparative to what the newer products are that we should be using.

When they find out what our loads are, they said from Sioux City?

Right, right.

I can believe it.

Yep.

It's a lot of people's reaction.

This is a residential monthly billing compared to other cities.

You could see the current was the 2022 rate, and after this year's rate, it'll go up to the green bar.

Um this bill mocks uh uh uh low-income, like uh mom and like retired uh mama pop with using minimal water.

I could do another one showing you know a family of four, it all looks pretty similar.

But you can see here that again we get pushed up in the middle top tier, and uh hopefully eventually after the everyone else does their um improvements, we come back down and remain competitive.

Uh industrial users and pre-treatment, which Rick brought up.

We have up we have 30 users.

Out of those 30 users, 26 of them utilize pretreatment.

That what what is pre-treatment?

Um it's where an industry will discharge into a little facility of their own, get rid of like fat soils and greases, the easy stuff to get rid of out of the wastewater to help lower the bill, but also help protect our collection system, and then that water does come to our wastewater system, our plant to be treated.

Um the remaining four that don't have pre-treatment, those facilities are uh sorry, my mouth's getting dry here.

Uh they they they produce ammonia for for nitrogen type facilities or for for nitrogen farmers and stuff like that.

Um they would in order for them to do any kind of pre-treatment, they would have to put a full-blown treatment, it'd just be too expensive for them.

Orders of magnitude do matter.

Our facility, like I said, is large.

It's more cost effective for us to treat wastewater than most of our industries do.

So just because we're so large.

I want to talk about the consent order just for a second.

Um there's six important things on there.

The first one is to uh have an independent third party environmental audit that is due in 240 days.

You'll see an uh an RCA here, hopefully next month to approve uh third party auditor to go ahead and audit our facility.

And uh hopefully there's not too much that doesn't come outside of the scope of our facility plan.

Who requires that?

Right, the Iowa DNR.

So that just that one.

I mean all of the consent order is okay.

All these are required by the Iowa Attorney General's office.

Um the second one is the UV disinfection project, which we completed last year.

The third one is a digestion and high strength waste project.

We started that last year, and it should be completed by the end of this year.

Both of those projects projects that I just had mentioned are uh mostly funded by our ARPA funds that were given to us through the council.

Uh the remaining ones are the Bacon Creek sewer repair, which is out to bid.

Hopefully, we get our bids in and they're competitive.

That why is that on there?

Oh, it did it bid?

It's already been awarded.

Oh, okay.

Sorry, I've been well, yeah, that that's good then.

Um that project's on there because uh when the river comes up, the the Missouri River comes up, it floods that Bacon Creek Channel.

There's manholes in that channel and laterals that get flooded, and it brings our flow from 20 million gallons a day all the way up to 70 or 60 million gallons a day, which brings us out of compliance, and we have to work with the DNR, and then it also uh overloads our plant and it causes tremendous amount of damage as finance will tell you.

Um but mostly FEMA does cover those damages.

Um the next two are the wastewater treatment plant phase one and phase two.

Uh the first phase needs to be completed by 2032, and the second by 2036.

Uh all these except for the first one, have a $5,000 per day fine if not completed on those due dates.

Uh uh Councilman Bertran wanted to see the contracts for both Hayes and Sawyer and QIT.

Uh Hazen Sawyer has one contract with two different uh sides to that contract, one's for design services, the other ones for construction services.

Design services is the design of the facility that goes to the DNR to be approved, and then the the contractor uses those designs obviously to build the facility.

Construction services are uh inspections, ensuring ongoing uh uh support to the city and helping uh with all the change orders or any uh uh requests for information and all that.

Also, that comes with a lot of uh on site three day three guys always watching all the construction going on.

I want to mention that they they Hazen Sawyer teamed up with Black and Beach and McClure on this project.

They were all competitors, but they all decided to team up.

The QIT contract is just for pre-construction services only.

They we have not hired anyone to construct the wastewater facility.

Um you can see the contract is not to exceed.

We are at the end of this contract here soon.

They will give us the guaranteed max price.

I'll explain that a little bit later, and you can see their scope.

This is the last slide here.

Next steps.

Um Hazen to complete the design, they're at 90%.

They need to get to 100%.

Uh that'll happen next month.

Uh then the mayor and council are to uh adopt the plans and specs so we can put it out or or we have to adopt them anyway if we do go with the uh the CMAR process, the contractor at risk process.

Um the next one is the IOD and our construction permit, that'll be submitted in March.

Takes 90 days for that to get back and it'll be approved.

During that time, QIT will be developing the guaranteed max price.

And if we like that guaranteed max price, if the the committee does, and then the obviously the mayor and council like it, then you guys can approve it.

If we don't like it, we can what we call an off-ramp and go ahead and take those plans of specs that we just paid a ton of money for, put them out in the street and bid it the conventional way.

So you answered number five, so we do have an off-ramp clause in the contract.

Yes, basically at that point if we take our spec, our plans with us.

So if they come in and they don't hit the 300, and we can show that they're not pushing the excess of 300 on to phase two, which is gonna be a question mark.

Right.

We hate we do have an offer up, we can take our plans and bid it.

Right.

Good job.

That's correct.

Okay.

If we off-ramp or not, uh we hope to start construction in May to June.

That's all I have tonight.

But if you guys have more questions, maybe you don't know them now.

Uh don't hesitate to reach out to Mike or me, and I'll be sure to get those answered.

The only question I have is so when you're looking at the answer to a lot of these was great.

So I want to go here.

The the original phase was 275 plus the three 30 million for the 30 million for uh design.

That's the 300 million.

Do we what's the last um what's the last exposed budget we got from them?

Oh sorry, what's the last exposed budget we got from them on the heart on the on the gun in the bid?

Uh phase one.

Is it over 400?

Uh QA has given us two uh updates on their uh cost, and I can do this in a different meeting or do it right now.

Right now it's fine.

Uh the 30 percent was 550 million for phase.

I thought you got that down to 440 by the time they reviewed 60 percent.

They just reviewed the 60 percent, their costs went from 440 down to 420 with a lower end of 340.

Okay.

Well, the question the question again, I think we want to ask is are they off are they offloading it onto phase two?

That's you know, we've seen that you've been around the block.

You know what you know, I mean is it we haven't started the design.

Yeah, I know, but are they pushing are they pushing portions of this project into phase two?

No, taught to drop that from 550.

No, they no, they can.

They do.

They could, yes, they can.

Uh but but we haven't allowed the any scope change yet.

Okay.

And we've been holding them to the fire to try to get their number down.

Okay.

We we and our consultant Hazen believe that their number is a little high.

Yeah.

The uh first again, you're doing a great job.

But you, Vicky, great.

I mean, it's a this a tough, tough gig.

But the bigger thing I want to go back to is the reason I bring that up is because real time, November 4th, 2025.

You saw this, and we sent it to each other.

The same the same players that are involved out in Corpus Christi, um, doing a wastewater, doing I mean doing the water project, same thing.

They came in at the pre-construction, and I'm not doing any cuzing, but they were so far out of whack on their on their budget that Corpus Christi actually dropped these guys.

This was a November 5th.

So one reason I'm bringing this to public's attention is is that we gotta be really diligent on what is involved in that first phase number.

Are they they're guaranteeing us 300?

That's why they got the that's why they're where they're at.

They're the big boys.

So are we gonna are they on that number?

Did they push anything into the phase two part of that budget?

That's all I would ask.

I didn't guarantee anything.

No, I mean the big they set out the 300 as the as the number.

Right, but but you can go and look up any contractor of that size, and they've all been kicked off a job because of that where we're at in this process because of the inability to determine what material costs are right now.

I mean, at least it's it's flattening out, it looks like by our own bids.

But they are not guaranteed anything other than bidding it as they go.

So material costs are a big issue.

The largest issue right now is labor.

They they seem to think that there's not enough labor here in C City when when we have it's hard to I I don't know if I believe that or not, but it's hard to when we have a design advisory committee where all the union guys show up and they tell us there's plenty of labor.

So what you're telling us publicly is if if we don't we sold it to the public on three hundred million.

Right?

Right?

So if they come in and they're not at 300 million to the public, we're willing to do the off-ramp.

Right.

We're willing to do that.

So they know that we're making that very clear tonight that we know that.

We also want to make sure that we're clear on what the scope is on phase one versus what was pushed from phase one matches up, and I have all the confidence in the world in you guys, I really do.

So that's where you know we talked about there was so much again.

I'm not trying to pick on what's going on in the past, but lack of kind of just communication with the with the public.

To me, this is as clear as it gets.

They've got to hit a 300 million dollar number without moving their scope.

If they don't, we're gonna take the off-ramp, we're gonna take our plans and go play in somebody else.

Right.

Okay.

So we're all on the same page.

So thank you.

Good job.

I look forward to the updates as we go.

Great job.

All right, citizen concerns.

Thanks, Tom.

Thanks, Vicky.

Brett Waltron, once again.

Um hi guys, nice to see you all.

Uh, I'm once again gonna harp on the same thing.

Um don't remember there being a three-minute limit to the first amendment, once again.

The uh meeting time.

Uh it needs to be visited to change.

I will say it a million times.

I'll say it every time I get a chance.

Uh putting it earlier in the day is not a solution.

Uh just for what Craig suggested last week.

Um it needs to be pushed an hour or two.

You think I suggested that we do it earlier?

Well, you said we do that there was a talk about doing it at noon.

That's insane.

No, I said he's willing to listen to you.

So we were willing to listen to alternatives, but I certainly didn't suggest no.

Oh, my bad.

My apologies.

There.

It's just uh I I believe it should be pushed like an hour at least.

Five o'clock would make it a lot easier for more people to attend.

Um I've decided to put it on myself.

I will start a petition for this type of thing.

Uh not only that, but the opening of the YouTube comments, that's just an easy layup.

I don't understand why that one's even just dismissed out out of hand.

Um just from what I I missed a little bit tonight, so I'm afraid I'm sorry I can't comment on everything.

Um the only thing I would uh suggest uh uh Rick on your uh idea about the um lo enforcing the loitering statute for a little bit longer.

Be careful.

Uh that type of thing, the what you're suggesting specifically, could put the city open the city for liability in a uh eighth amendment violation.

Just just throwing that out there.

Uh any good defense attorney would jump on that.

Uh yeah, I guess that's it for tonight.

Like I said, I missed some stuff.

I apologize.

See you guys.

Oh wait, oh yes.

Uh how many signatures would get this actually, you know, actioned?

What do you guys think?

The same amount for running, like one fifty, two hundred.

Or what?

Like I said, I'm gonna start a petition for the uh change in the meeting time.

If you if you don't want to listen to me, maybe a few hundred people is my idea.

Well, petitions, I always said I can go to not a more because there's nobody at the mall, but in the old days I could have gone to the mall and got 200 200 signatures on signatures on a petition that said Elvis is alive and I saw him here today.

I mean, it's not hard to get signatures on a petition.

It's what this council wants to do.

Because that's ultimately who decides.

Once again, I would explain my petition and I would I tell people that this is why I want it.

And if you don't want to sign, that's fine.

But the idea is if you're not gonna listen to me, maybe you'll listen to you know a few hundred citizens.

Well, this room was full at four o'clock.

Oh, and guess who couldn't make it at four o'clock?

But I'm just saying, and now look how many people remain.

True, true, but that's because we ran long.

If we started at five, there might probably be more people here.

All right.

Four o'clock just doesn't make sense for people who actually work.

Okay.

Anyone else?

Seeing none we'll go to council concerns, Rick.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

The uh Salazar still in here.

You and here?

Salvia.

Matt, I pronounced this.

Yep, you can always do that.

The uh you want to put this off for a couple weeks, or you want to talk a little bit about it now?

I'd rather do is is Gordon still here.

Uh Gordon left.

The um let's do this.

Um Mike for uh our agenda coming up.

Can we bring can we put on the public's work, public works?

It's Tom again.

I want to talk about the road overlay project, snow readiness, gravel roads.

A little bit of the road conditions that we're hearing out in the public would be great.

And then if we could bring the event center specifically, the Tyson Center people in.

I'd love to have a discussion with them.

The council would.

And then um anything specific?

Um, you know, just now just to give us an overview of how they're uh how they're selecting what they're getting.

Okay.

Kind of the and I'm sure that's out there, but I haven't heard it.

Okay.

Um and then the park side of it.

The uh you know, Matt, let's talk about it real quick.

You know what?

Six o'clock, we haven't eaten yet.

Let's keep let's stay hungry.

So when we talked before, had a great meeting with you in your office.

Um give us a brief overview.

I know it's right here, really what what you oversee real quick.

Sure.

Uh uh Matt Salvatore Parks and Recreation Director.

Um I I provided a memo and a map and an inventory of everything that uh the parks department is in charge of.

Uh as far as just the parks division, we oversee 60 parks, of which 53 are maintained uh by the parks division.

Uh we have seven lease sports complexes that are not maintained by the parks uh system.

Uh we also are in charge of river dykes, right-of-ways, retention ponds.

We almost maintain as much non-parkland as parkland.

Uh we also are in charge of the three city cemeteries.

Graceland, Logan, and Floyd.

Uh Floyd Cemetery is at capacity and it's mowed by a contractor.

That's just a real quick overview of uh all the responsibilities of the parks division.

So we talked about in the office a little bit and we talked about here.

Do you feel like that maybe our park we have we've got a lot of parks, right?

Are we kind of operating, you feel like on a on a dated park system at this point?

I mean, for the size of parks, what we're doing with the parks, everything like there.

We've done some uh uh research uh through the National Recreation and Park Association.

Um the standard is uh the average is standard is 10.2 parks per 1,000 residents.

Uh Sioux Cities at 11.7.

We are above the standard, so we have more parks than the average park system.

Uh we do have aging infrastructure uh as far as specifically with playgrounds, uh all playground, uh all but two playgrounds have been replaced uh since 2002, but the lifespan of those playgrounds are typically 15 to 20 years.

So we are at the end uh of a replacement cycle, and that causes the aging infrastructure causes some some safety and liability concerns.

Yeah, we talked about the the it's almost it's gonna be the real investment for the upgrade all the equipment at this point what needs to happen.

And really, the parks system, what it was in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, it was uh was the T ball ball diamond, it was horseshoe pits, it was an ice skating rink, it was uh you know you have picnic areas and all that stuff, and I think the community is kind of um uh evolved into more modern day parks.

You're starting to get some success with it with smaller type pocket parks, dog dog parks, um, up be able to upgrade facilities.

So nothing we're proposing here today is talking about closing parks.

I want to make sure that's not the headline tomorrow.

Talk it's about repurposing and and and uh re-jump starting our park system.

Um so are some of these parks.

What I like what I'm asking from you to do is also is that you you guys mow a lot of ground, right?

That's not correct, even being it's not considered parks, but you're mowing a lot of ground.

Correct.

And you're stretched then, you do a lot of part-time help in the summer on that time.

So what I'd like to see is put a proposal together and kind of identify those grounds that we can start farming out to a third party.

We already do it at Floyd.

Yep.

Um let's let's find those areas that we think we can get fixed.

That way we can focus our staff, our full-time staff, so that we get consistency, same people mowing the park, same people mowing the same areas from a quality control standpoint, and we'll still start there.

Um maybe get us what you propose um that we maybe could send out to bid or a third party.

I think you start that last week, didn't you?

We did talk about that.

Yeah, we had an internal meeting about what we are taking care of.

Uh we used to do a lot of economic development properties, we no longer do those, so we are starting to be more selective on what we are maintaining within our park system.

And then you and I talked about maybe jumping in the truck and maybe going for a drive and talking about some of these parks.

If you're not, you can do it with the map.

But I'd like you to get with Gordon and I let's identify some low fruit.

Um, when we talk about neighborhood revitalization and really affordable housing, not even low income, but affordable housing when within the inner city.

Um I know there's a half dozen parks that with that that have potential for economic development when we start talking about it.

And I think what I like to see you do is get to don't spend a lot of money, don't go out hire engineers, just get together, lay these parks out, have Gordon slap a cul-de-sac in the middle of them.

Let's get an idea of what something like this would look like if we want to start repurposing them and also implementing a pocket park with new equipment, dog park, and kind of show that thing.

Um just it doesn't have it can be rough.

That way the the public can see what we're trying to do versus oh my gosh, they're closing parks.

And I think there's some really low fruit there that can be part of some of these neighborhood revitalizations.

So I'd like to just start with those two things.

Um, and then we'll just we'll get an update when we get to the case.

Yeah, what I'd like to mention there is is when these parks were originally uh designed, the state of play is different now than it was back then.

So what people value is recreation now versus when they did back then.

I think that needs to be uh looked at and and uh that's the way do you neighborhoods revitalize themselves by reinventing the state of play in our neighborhood parks?

Well, you know, parks think about plugging in you know, you know, 25, you know, 1300 square foot houses that to the neighborhood and what that'll do to the neighborhood and property values and just initiative in general.

I think that um now we've got to get in our engineering department on board and make them understand that we can build on existing infrastructure and uh and make it make these affordable to the free market.

So I appreciate your help in this.

Let's don't get beat up.

We're not closing parks.

And uh I look forward to hearing a couple weeks.

Thanks.

Thank you.

That's it.

Greg.

Um just very quickly.

Um we've had some dialogue recently about health care in Sioux City and how it can drive the economic development.

I would like to see maybe Marty, you and Renee work with Mike, maybe help set up a health care task force.

Um I think we need to think through what components we want to put together, but I think it would make sense for the city to to maybe be the driver for some of those discussions.

Um also, Teresa.

I know that when we received the capital budget last week, there was a request to if we had any questions.

One item I do have is on the parking meters.

I know there was some dialogue about repairing, replacing.

I would like to see the revenue stream on the parking meters and what it supports and if we have any alternatives.

Thank you.

That's it.

Ike.

I have nothing.

Julie?

I don't have anything today either.

Move we adjourn.

Second.

Scott.

Barenstein.

Hi.

Bertrand.

Rayford.

Aye.