Rayford.

Shaner.

Scott.

Okay, go ahead.

Good morning, Mayor and Council.

Morning.

Morning.

I'm gonna wait for the presentation to come up, hopefully.

So today we're here to um discuss the proposed operating budget for the FY 2027 budget year.

First, I'll talk about the uh timeline.

We have already um went through the CIP here CIP hearing.

Um back in July, uh we had we have the departments do an entry, um both the CIP and the operating budget.

Uh then after that we do a um peer review for CIP, um, finance does a um a full review, we do a manager review, uh, we send um questions back to the departments, we do um reviews of um improvement requests, we balance the CIP and the operating budget, and um then we're at this point here.

Um we bring and present the the best um proposed budget to the council for your review.

Um beyond that, we once we um get past today, we will do a wrap-up hearing on um March 18th, and beyond that, we'll approve the budget.

Is the wrap-up on a Wednesday morning?

That right from 8 30 to noon.

Right.

Yep.

So this year we went um we asked the council for your priorities as we have in the years past.

Um again this year the top priority from our council was infrastructure.

Uh the second um in line was quality of life, economic development, followed by health and safety, and then customer service.

So we what we do when we go through this budget and the departments go through the budget, we take your priorities and try to ensure that the budget is this budget we're presenting to you, um, encompasses all of your priorities in the order in which you provided them to us.

So the highlights of this year, um, we have a balanced budget, uh, complies with the city's opposite um adopted financial policies.

Um what we're we're introducing you to you today reduces the property tax levy by 13 um nearly 13.5 percent.

So we're pretty proud of that um of the product that we've um we're put will be presenting to you today.

Um, and this maintains all of our core functions, um operating strengths, and preserves the current service um levels across all departments.

And and point out the property tax levy is going down by 13 percent, but the overall levy is going down as well, correct?

What?

The overall levies are going down as well.

Well, our our part of the levy, yes, and we'll go down 13.5 percent.

Um now there's a portion of that is the schools and the counties, and we can't control what they do.

So um our part is a reduction of 13.5 percent.

Uh budget impacts.

Um, as you can see, there's a lot of um negative impacts, but we do have some positive impacts this year.

Um property uh values increased uh 13.3 percent, which is good.

Um it helps us give relief to our um citizens.

Uh the rollback percentage was beneficial to us.

Uh it changed and reduced that.

So the reduction that you'll see that we present later, 45 dollars of that reduction is uh is um due to the rollback percentage change.

Um's did not have a change in the contribution.

Um FPRSI did have a reduction, um, not quite one percent, and um our 411 expenses decreased 13.8 percent last year.

Negative impacts.

Um we are still seeing the impacts of a lot of the different Senate files and changes that have happened at legislative level, and um there are certainly other items that are still um up in the air this year for property tax reform.

Um, as you can see, there's a numerous items.

Um the Senate file 718 is a very large item that's still impacting us today.

Um, cumulatively it has been a 2.8 um percent negative to our budget impacts.

Um house file 252, uh 2552, um, which changed the um property tax credit into a permanent rollback around the first 150,000 dollars, um had nearly a 500,000 reduction to our budget.

House file 252, 2552, which changed the property tax credit into a permanent rollback around the first 150,000, had nearly a 500,000 reduction to our budget.

Also, you'll see we use fund balances.

So each year at the end of our fiscal year, once we do our financial audit, we determine what our funds, what's available in our general fund for us to reprogram.

So this year we had a excess of 2.8 million dollars that we reprogrammed into this budget.

Um so we are not taxing our citizens for that portion of the budget.

We're we're using leftover budget in essence from um last year.

Um we did have um the increase in um insurance expenses, um, health insurance went up about $340,000, and um general liability expense went up $65,000.

Also, we saw a reduction in our um local option sales tax of a $750,000.

So those are all um items that um made this budget difficult um for us to balance.

Um however, I like I said, I think the staff um budget staff did a really good job of presenting something that we've we're proud of today.

Um our proposed um 2027 budget, as you see that the CIP budget there is the budget that we've proposed to you.

We haven't made any reductions or changes to it as that will happen at the wrap-up hearing.

Um the debt service hasn't changed, but the operating budget, you'll see as it was proposed, um, and then the updated proposal, and I apologize, that should be the opposite way around.

Um, it actually had a reduction um oh no um to the updated proposed, it should be flipped the other way.

So we actually saw a reduction of 2.4 million dollars from when it was entered to what um after um finance staff went back and forth with the departments, we were able to reduce the budget by 2.4 million dollars.

Uh the proposed operating budget um again entered at um 261 million dollars.

Um, you'll see that we had some improvement requests that were approved, some that were not approved.

Um we had um increases in revenue.

Um so what typically happens is when we go through um any of the revenues that are um that are submitted by the departments, um the the finance staff will go through and say, you know, based on your history, it looks like the revenue really is historically falls in this line, or the expenses fall here.

And we we make requests to the department for them to review to determine if that's a change that they're able to make.

So in this case, we were able to increase the revenues by six hundred and thirty thousand dollars, and we were able to reduce the expenses by seven uh one point seven million dollars.

So this overall additional revenue coming from.

I can look for you, I don't know exactly.

Oh, that's fine.

I can get that for you though.

Um so this budget here um presented today is an increase of 0.5% from the FY26 adopted uh adopted and approved budget, operating budget.

So here you'll see your operating expenses.

Um this just gives you a really good overall of where um the expenses lie.

As you we've always talked about majority of the expense falls in our public safety area.

So 32% of this operating budget presented to you will be in public safety.

Um next largest would be utilities, 17.5%, um, public works 14 percent, um, economic development is 11 percent, administration nine percent, transportation nearly six percent, um, and cultural items and parks and rec both at around five percent of this budget.

So this is the levy details.

Um, this is what you'll see this year for residents and commercial.

You'll see a difference um in what how we're presenting this year, commercial.

We're presenting it as $300,000, which is what um the state legislator has now requested that we utilize instead of $100,000.

So based on our proposal this year, your proposed taxes are um set to reduce $110 per $100,000 for a resident and $383 per $300,000 for a commercial property.

Well you have a $300,000 home, your taxes are gonna go down $330 on the city side.

Yes.

Still at risk because we're only basically one third.

Correct.

I understand that.

Yep, I'm just want the public to know that.

But the city's portion.

It's the city's portion we go up, they always print that.

I want them to know what it's gonna be.

The average house in Sioux City right now is probably I would guess in the 180 average.

So those people are looking at about a 200 reduction in their taxes on the city side.

Correct.

And if they don't see reduction, that's because somebody else increased it, not us.

Yep.

So property tax levy, I wanted to um put this out there only just to show the history for the last couple of years and the impacts of um House File 718.

As you can see, those M asteric uh levies are no longer available to us.

So back in 2024, we were able to levy um some of those different areas now, they're all lumped into our um general fund levy.

So that general fund levy takes on the symphony, the band levy, the emergency, the auditorium, and the CAT levy.

That's no longer available.

So this is a history of our property taxes.

Um that uh line in the middle is the average.

So right now, um, for the last 10 years, we are actually this proposed budget is slightly below the average of what it's been in the last 10 years.

You said that slide in general.

I can, yes.

Um, I wanted to go over just the um discussion of the property tax and the different levies and defining it for the purposes of the public, and we do have a few um council new council members that it may be beneficial to.

Um the general fund um is the general fund levy is property tax levy.

So this is um, and it's also the revenue from franchise fees, develop development fees, license, and permits, um charges for services such as like pool admissions, any abatements, any other charges for services we would receive.

And the uses for the general fund are public safety, support departments, the cultural departments as well.

The trust and agency fund, trust and agency fund is typically our employee benefits.

Um so the revenue that comes in is the property tax levy that we we receive.

Um uses are for cost related to the employee benefits such as Social Security, health insurance benefits, pension contribution contributions, MFPRSI, and the IPERS.

And debt service.

Debt service is another levy.

Uh the levy is again um property tax, the levy that we're able to cut property tax for.

Um, and expenditures include the city's um general debt obligations, principal and interest payments.

A few other um funds I wanted to define today just for the purpose of everybody understanding the budget, enterprise funds.

These are self-supporting funds from the city that fund the operations of those specific areas to cover the costs of the service being being provided.

Some examples include the water, the sewer, parking, road use, transit, and um solid waste funds.

Local option sales tax.

Um, this is was voted in by a referendum.

Um it is in like 1986, one percent of um the gross sales collected from the city is distributed um to the city from the state.

So in that referendum, what was approved was a breakdown of how those items would be applied to the city's budget.

60% of it would be property tax relief, 20% infrastructure projects, 10% city facilities, and 10% economic development.

We know where the dialogue is with the legislature currently on the additional half a point.

I do not.

Um there are definitely there are several different bills that are are moving out of subcommittee right now.

We haven't seen it.

Um, some include it and some extra.

Right, correct.

Yep, yes, it did.

Um yeah, it's still alive.

Yep, it's still alive right now, yes.

Um increment financing or the TIFF funds, um, these are property tax designated for TIFF districts to meet economic development agreement obligations.

Um grant funds, these are revenues received through the federal and state um grant awards typically.

These are limited to specific scopes within the city for funding.

This is just a list of the next steps.

As you can see, we're nowhere close to done.

There's quite a few things that we'll have to do in order for us to certify this budget, but um you'll see most of those items specifically um at regular council meetings.

I would do want to point out we have that wrap-up hearing um on March 18th, and we will hold a special um meeting on March 30th, and that's the public hearing on the proposed tax levy, and that's at four o'clock.

And then we'll get all the way to the end of the end and we'll certify our budget.

We'll approve it last um in front of you on April 20th.

Oh shoot, and um then we'll actually certify it with the county.

You guys have any questions?

I was hoping that you could just take an extra maybe two minutes, all the house files that you listed on the kind of go over that impact of what that um so each one of the negative impacts that we had um resulted out of a legislative change that happened um at the legislative level.

Um so the Senate file um 619, which eliminated the backfill, so that was a um a backfill program where the cities were backfilled a portion of the rollback for um commercial and um commercial properties.

That took about a five-year period where they started to ratchet down the ability for us to receive that.

Over five million from us, was it?

Um about two million.

About two million.

Yep, about two million.

But in total, um, and then we have the seven Senate file um 718.

That was an impact of about 2.8 million.

That that was several items that ratcheted down those um levies, so we're know it no longer able to levy for some of those items, and then they started to reduce or ratchet down the percentage of the levy based on the growth of our assessments.

So we also had um set up um house file 2552, and that was the um property tax uh that where they did the um permanent rollback for the commercial properties of 150,000 dollars, and that was this that was a reduction or an impact to us about 500,000 dollars.

So those are the items now.

Uh again, like you you just said, um Craig, there's several items that are still alive out there in subcommittees and passing out of subcommittees.

We expect to see something related to property taxes uh this year.

We we're just not sure exactly what.

Oh, all in these do total greater than five million dollars.

Yes, which is income reductions taken away from the city that is outside of our control.

Correct.

That we don't get it replaced from the state in any other way, shape, or form.

We don't even have the ability to increase our levy to um to recapture those items, correct?

Yes, all right.

Thank you for doing that.

Yep.

Okay, up first we have our legal department, page 163.

We have Nicole Du Boy participating electronically.

Good morning, Mayor and Council.

Thank you for the allowance to appear remotely.

Um legal has committed a flat budget out at a payroll line, and I would be happy to discuss or answer any questions I may have.

Thank you.

Questions?

No, no.

Okay, no questions for you, Nicole.

Thank you.

Nicole, good luck today.

All right.

Thank you so much.

I do have one question though, real quick.

And this might be with Rex.

The when they when you met with the judges, the the word the the term homeless court funding kept coming up from the legal perspective.

I'd never heard of that before.

That what is it and is there really funding there?

And I know that you guys had a great meeting with the judges, and I was curious that came up.

What what is it?

Uh Rex Merewood Police Department.

I I think that'd be a good question for Jill.

Okay.

Jill is going to appear with us Monday on our report out to talk about the three dollars.

Yeah.

There are there is a separate fund.

Yeah.

You know, the judges were asking about that too, so that's where that came from, not my question.

Oh.

So okay.

Thank you.

Okay, up next we have the Art Center, page 85.

Todd Barens.

Good morning, Todd Barrens Art Center Director.

Um like uh legal, we had uh designed a uh a flat budget, actually, a slight decrease in our budget.

Um I did want to draw your attention to one uh numerical chain that we need to add.

Um if you look at page 88, that's when we have the summary of the art center expenditure revenue along with the Gilbras Center.

Um the contributions line, which is the first line under funding sources.

We discovered only recently that the the number that's under there under 51 uh fiscal year 2027, the 39359 number is uh incorrect.

Um the contributions line it reflects the uh reimbursements made by the Art Center Association, which uh is a private organization which supports the Art Center.

These are funds that go from the Art Center Association to the city to reimburse for three full-time equivalents uh uh that are of city staff.

What we realized is that the the number of three nine three hundred ninety-three thousand five eighty-nine reflects three point five uh full-time equivalents.

So the actual number that should be listed there is three hundred forty-one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one dollars.

So that's a it's a difference of uh $51,738.

$341 what?

$341, $851.

I can so you're needing to add the $51 to the general fund.

Is that right?

Uh I would yes, that would have to happen, yes.

Well, and you'll notice that the actuals are a lot lower.

We did not realize they had a variety of unfilled positions, so it was not as apparent, but once we removed those unfilled positions, it was easy to identify that we've actually been practicing this way, but we budgeted incorrectly in 26 and 27.

So what what what dollar amount comes from your endowment to help supplement that?

You said years are at 2% or 3% drawn off?

Um this year it's well, it's it's a little complicated in a traditional year it would be three percent.

Um and those more or less those funds, uh, we pull those funds when we are uh the association is paying the city uh on a quarterly basis.

Um so that's about 180 usually.

Uh this year we budgeted a little bit more than that.

I think it's like two twenty something uh from the endowment.

Yeah, so I got it.

If you went from three percent to five percent, you pick up two fifty-six more if you if you just tap your endowment to the max.

And if you pick up fifty-six more, our city contribution goes down, and then we basically go to a level playing field with the city contribution and private contribution.

The um again, so it's a complicated thing.

Yeah, in the next couple of years, we are actually tapping fully the full five percent that we can into from the endowment.

Um we're doing that because pardon me.

We're actually in the process of of setting up a uh a second endowment to support large projects.

And so there's a we're we're bringing in donations for that, which would normally go towards supporting the bottom line, uh, and then we're tapping more deeply into the endowment this year and next year to effectively backfill to make sure that that the annual budget is met.

But this is helping raise this uh 26 and 27.

We're raising uh those funds to the new endowment to let us do bigger things.

For the programming.

For programming.

Not for not to support your personnel complement.

Right.

The general endowment allows us to spend as we wish, and and that's generally funds towards the city from the association.

Yes, right now the city portion we figure was 933.

And if we if you guys go to five percent, it takes you to 670, it takes us to 677 and you at six six fifty-five.

So where I look at it is what I like to propose for March is uh is that we reduce the art center's budget to the equivalent of the two percent if they take it to the five percent on the endowment, is what I like to see.

So whatever that's if that's any money for program.

Well, that's okay.

We're gonna we're gonna they'll figure that out they got they got another endowment going, but I we're gonna level this thing up.

It takes our it takes it to a 50-50 split then for public and private on this.

We're talking about 30,000 people that attend this is for this facility at a one for a million dollars cost the city.

We appreciate it.

I'm not saying we don't, but this is a very easy way uh for us to balance that out.

So I'd like to go in March a vote on the to reduce by the two percent, whatever that number you guys can come up with with the difference in the endowment, is what I like to see the reduction in the art center budget of general fund.

Does that make sense, Teresa?

Todd, does your endowment have a restriction on the percentage of what you can take out?

Five.

But it is five percent.

Yeah.

We've we've limited it to three um.

I mean, I know you at least at the end of the yeah, I know you've been targeting five percent, but is the do the does the endowment creation limit you to five percent?

Five percent is is the max, yeah.

Um three percent allows for a slight bit of growth, you know, with the ups and downs of the market.

Um the concern with using five percent uh continually is that it will actually over time reduce the endowment.

So it'll no longer be self-sustaining because of the return.

Yeah.

I mean, with with the the three percent, the um the number that we've drawn each year has been about even at about one 175 to 180.

So next question is do you guys from a programming perspective, are you set up to take on some more programming with other departments wanted to use your facility?

Uh absolutely absolutely.

I mean, I think uh I'm just saying if we're in the we're gonna throw I like city art center get utilized a little bit more for different programming.

I mean, there that's gonna be one of the things you see that um other entities in the city do.

Yeah, so it's like let's I want to build your value, is what I'm saying.

Understood.

And so you know what I mean.

But this this gives us a 50-50 split.

It's gonna give you an opportunity to go out and bang your donors a little bit and start raising more money on your endowment, and uh, you know, it's fair.

It's it's always been the the goal to try to have it at at 50 percent.

We've been working steadily towards that.

Uh it's it started off uh under considerably under uh 50 50 match.

Um this past year, I think we got it to 40 55 54 46.

Um that doesn't affect any of your services like that.

Everything stays in place.

We're not asking you think that that's just talking about just a budget.

Yeah, I mean that's that's i if we can uh match that funding without uh losing staff.

That's the that's the the concern.

Um I mean this would be this would involve, I would assume uh yeah, I'm trying to think of it.

Yeah, we'd have to in effect it would it would increase the the art center association's uh reimbursement to the city for the staffing.

Um I have uh just work on it.

You get to a march.

Yeah, I've got a couple of boards.

Okay, and then we'll work it from there.

Teresa, are you good?

Okay.

We'll work with you to just bring it back for wrap-up.

So on the 18th of March, we'll have a wrap-up last for a memo of do you have a board meeting?

Yeah, uh well, um I'll have to call a special meeting of the trustees.

Um I'll have a an association board in early March.

So from the from the from the public perspective, the good news is is that right now it costs about 44 dollars per visit is what was what cost for the for the art museum.

The city, the city right now picks up about 33 dollars of it, and the boards pick it up about 13 dollars per visit.

If we do this new proposal which balances it, it goes our portion is 22 bucks a visit, and you guys is 2203, it's 30 cents different.

So it's a balancing act, is what it does from who's supporting the art center and how it's supported.

So that's all that's where I got my math.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, like I'd like to see what the numbers, Teresa, exactly how you play it out.

Yep how you try and subsidize with what Todd's proposing, because this is a pretty significant modification.

So let's let's see what those numbers look like.

We'll have a memo and you'll have that for wrap-up.

Well, we're not asking to do anything that they they can't legally do.

They can legally take that two percent, they should be taking the two percent in and uh, and then that just gives a little more balance for the utilization.

Now, if we start utilizing the art center for more programming, which down the road like we're talking about, then it makes more sense that we can kind of go that route.

So this is part of the the change process of of utilizing and stretching our dollars, and so it's all good.

You uh use it, do you take any money out of that fund for anything else, or is that all you take it out for is the city portion of the salary?

Well, in fact, so we're I mean we're paying uh the association's paying like last year uh 289.

Uh out of that fund, do you take anything else out like for programming or anything else?

No, no, it it it all goes to the city.

So the endowment has been growing.

Uh slightly, it's it's been fits and starts over the last five years or so, yeah.

Okay.

And all capital expenses are the cities.

What's that?

Yeah, we paid utilities and everything.

Well, we own the building.

I mean we gotta maintain them.

No, no, no.

We could be like the county and not maintain a damn building, and guess what?

Then they fall apart.

So cheaper to maintain the city.

Oh, I agree.

All right.

Thanks, Todd.

Thank you.

Todd.

Up next we have the library, page 169.

Helen Rigdon.

Good morning, Mayor and Council.

I'm Colin Rigdon, the director of the library.

Um, budget was pretty flat.

I did work with some vendors to get our they usually have a five percent increase.

This is in our integrated library system.

I'd worked with them this year to only to get it down to just a three percent increase.

So we've tried to do some things like that.

We've also tried to um you know, look at our what we actually are doing with our money and where it goes.

So we kept it pretty flat.

Our only increase was in uh salaries, so uh overall it's pretty much a flat budget, and then we have the question of a position at fill.

Questions well, Helen, I do uh effective fiscal public policy uh view uh last summer.

Uh made some recommendations to probably most of them, I think Teresa.

One of the recommendations for the library was to perhaps reduce the budget significantly by a possible remodeling, uh reprogramming, not of your program, but creating a new model of perhaps three to four smaller branches speckled with out throughout the city, keeping the Morningside branch, perhaps a smaller footprint downtown, um, perhaps a new location for a west side uh branch, maybe in the Hamilton corridor, maybe a small branch on the Floyd Boulevard corridor, which offers a lot of accessibility for our residents for the neighborhoods.

Um needless to say, it wasn't very well received.

Um I think it was by you at first, you know.

Uh the presentation by Teresa and Mike was to have you take a look at what a model like that would look at and how you and your board would structure it.

What would this look like, you know, for our community?

Because I think one of your largest obstacles is the building that you reside in that the library main branch is in.

Okay.

That thing is huge, and it's very but we're going to need a building of a good size downtown.

We have to have a main library.

We have to have a place to process the books.

We can't have books being, because then you're going to have to have tech service people at each location.

We need a place to house our local history.

We have an extensive local history collection.

We have uh city records and all the poke directories back hundreds of years.

So we, you know, we need some place for that.

Uh you know, that's we have microfilm, we have just lots of things that has to go into a central location.

We can't have those things in each each location because then you increase your size and it won't be available at each location.

So again, we would like real quick on the on that on that point.

So from a space perspective, what do we got in the live in the museum back there, Steve?

We got some space, don't we, downstairs?

A lot of space.

Well, I know we do.

That's a rhetorical question.

But is it going to be accessible to the public?

The hours, the library.

I'm just talking about some of the stuff you're talking about, you know, our local history and some of the things.

Right, those have to be accessible to the public.

Yeah, or requested.

You know.

They come in and a lot of people are from out of town and they're looking up family and yeah.

How would you describe the utilization, Helen?

Of the library.

Of the historical pieces that we're talking about right now.

Um, I don't have those numbers in front of me, but it gets used quite a bit.

Um directories included.

Oh, those are requested a lot.

And microfish?

Yes.

Because we have the journal back way, way far, further than um, I think the journal.

They are missing some years, and we have them.

How much space do you need square footage wise?

I couldn't tell you off the top of my head.

Part of this is we have a new director coming, will be coming in sometime.

I'm leaving the end of April.

So a lot of this needs to be answered by them.

So a um so um the effective fiscal and public policy committee continues, you know, to work towards reducing this budget of almost four million dollars, and they believe that by restructuring to the smaller uh libraries and and not a book depository.

I know that some of those things were brought up in earlier discussions that you know, changing, remodeling would take us backwards instead of forward.

But again, we really feel like this is a solution to reduce that budget, making these libraries more accessible to all neighborhoods, um, people who don't have transportation, just there's so many benefits to doing it, and I think off the bat we're looking at the negatives of all the reasons that you stated that could be an obstacle, but as we know obstacles, we can work around them, we can find solutions, and that's what I would like.

And I think it's rather than falling on you, as you said you're leaving.

I think it would be great if we had your committee look at a restructuring and what would it look like if you did do it, not what does it continue to look like if you don't do it.

So we're not reducing the importance of the library or your programming.

In fact, I think spreading it out and making it more accessible for the proposal was would cut our budget in half, basically.

The original one that came to me was for two million.

And you look at the number of people we serve in this community, and almost dollar for dollar we give back our budget and services.

Uh I'm not saying that can't be looked at, but if you look back in the history of the library, we used to have branches all over town.

We had the one in Leeds, the uh Carnegie, we had the one on Fairmont, we had one out at uh oh, it's the head start now.

That was a public library.

But I think it was in the 70s and 80s for cost efficiency, they condensed them down to make them, you know, because to maintain those buildings and those sites cost a lot.

I think like the morning side one is a great example.

You know, you look at just so the public knows, you know, we could we maintain that morningside branch for 450,000.

I think what Julie is proposing, I think the council is just talking about is you know, if you do, you know, even if you did 500 per per location, and I mean the morning sits a great little branch.

Uh-huh.

Talking about surrounding, you know, modernizing it.

I mean, people consume their their information differently now.

You guys know that.

And to go back to the mission of the library.

Um also I think that the community is ready for a freshening up, you know, putting them in places with there's some amenities around small retail or around you know small food where you're gonna get more access to it.

So we're looking, we're asking for an open mind.

Um I think the down the downtown is is becoming a community concern.

Um by who besides the council, I guess.

Well, it's that's not fair.

No, I'm just asking who you're hearing this from.

Well, you mean people in general if they want to bring their kids down there, there's the there's the obvious, the homeless issues, the ban the stuff that's around the the library itself and the size of it, um it's just not you know but that shouldn't be held against the library.

It's not but again I'm talking about just modern.

I think what we're talking about is modernizing it in the same process.

The I think the the consumer, the citizen is gonna get a better product, and it's gonna be more cost effective for the library, and it's a freshening up.

You know what I mean?

Um so I think the proposal on there is Julie's yours is to take the budget to two million, correct?

Eventually, yeah.

Eventually, yeah, to wean that down over the two years, go to a you know, it gives you guys an opportunity to put a plan together, um, a modern plan.

And it's exciting.

I mean, for the new director coming in to put a plan together in, you know.

Half million is pretty, I mean, I would keep this probably on the wraps because any new director being interviewed if they know this is the plan to cut the budget in half, will they will not be able to do that?

We're excited that they get an opportunity to develop their own system.

I'm kind of a positive to a point.

But when you're losing two million dollars, that's a huge that's 50 percent of the budget.

And it's a proposal, How and it's a lot of people.

I I understand that, but I'm just I'm trying to explain.

But if we saw a model that had been worked through that worked towards that goal is different than the board did not agree to do that, so they don't have to.

That's right.

Alan, you've got I was gonna say you you've done a really good job of trying to decrease uh every area that you can, you know, and it looks like uh just some employee compensation is what has step you up.

So, you know, and I think we need to take a look at that because there are decreases uh across when we talk about trying to operate better and look better.

I mean, even with utilities, you've done everything that you can do to do those things.

So I think we all have work to do, right?

You know, correct.

I agree.

I mean, there's always room for improvement.

Uh that's just that's just a big number to try and reduce it by because the citywide models didn't work in the 70s and 80s, and I don't know if it would.

My understanding was that the proposal was to send it back to the boards for our time.

Then you guys come up with a plan, and the plan didn't come to fruition.

So that's the board said to wait for a new director.

They knew I was retired.

The only option then that the council has is to force action is budgeting.

So I think that's the signal that we're giving today is I don't think anybody's talking about a huge monster slash for saying is you get another swing, you know, you get another bite at the apple.

Go back and this is what this is what they that we're looking to do, um, do something.

You know, with with the we're re resizing it, fitting a budget of about two million dollars.

Um again, if if the if if the board doesn't want to do it, great.

But at some point, then the council is gonna move, and that the only power we have is the dollars.

Okay.

Yeah, that's fair.

And I think for me, um, I don't want to see the tail wagging the dog.

What I'd like to see is a better sense of what libraries need to look like in today's society.

And and I think that's what really what Julie and Rick are both saying is that you know, rather than trying to address it simply by reducing your budget, what I like to know is what because personally I don't want to affect the library's operations.

I think you run a great service, and neither do Julie and Record.

I'm correct.

I'm not modernized.

But I I think it's from my perspective, and I shared this with Karen Clark earlier today.

I I simply want to see from an educated perspective from possibly a consultant input as to what our library system should look like and run it properly, run it efficiently, run it consistent with 2026 and beyond.

And that's why I would rather, again, rather than having the tailwag the dog, I'd like to see a proposal from whether it's the new director, your board, and get a better sense of what we should look like going forward.

Okay, and I believe that will be probably under the new director.

I I just don't feel it's my place to put a plan in place and then make them to, you know, they may come in with new and fresh ideas and you know, be able to address the needs.

But again, I just go into the smaller models concern me because we will not have the resources that we have.

I mean, I'm not saying that we couldn't go into a smaller space downtown that the downtown library, but we have to have that central place to hold those big collections.

We have to have those collections for the people of the city.

I mean, you look at how many people use the library, and I know people gather their information differently now, but the people that don't have Wi-Fi at home use the library.

Our Wi-Fi went up like 108% this past year of usage.

So they are coming to the library to get the services they need.

And I want you to remember that a library is one of the only places in America that people of all classes, all uh say their their economic that have access to the same information.

Absolutely, and that is one of the bullet points that I put on my own notes, that it's more accessible closer to home.

Right.

More accessible closer to home.

But we can't have offer the full services in tiny branches.

Right, but but does the kid after school that doesn't have Wi-Fi need access to the pulk directories and to the to the microfish and all of that?

No, they don't.

And that'll be other people do.

I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying I've got more kids that would probably need accessibility than I do a person coming down to research a journal article that's on microfish.

So I'm thinking more about the masses and accessibility to those demographics that you mentioned.

Absolutely.

I was that demographic as a kid growing up.

I didn't have a way to get anywhere.

The book mobile library to me, my bookmobile that was across the street was open.

I was over there.

Right.

I understand that.

Julie, what are you proposing?

Or do you want me to propose?

I don't care.

Go ahead.

Well, mine's bigger than yours.

Okay.

Yours is more friendly than mine is.

Well, um, I'm gonna propose a 25% cut this first year.

Yeah.

And on that, look at what is a model look like that can fit that number.

Are you wanting to bring that back to wrap up?

Are you wanting them to provide a sample of some type of model at that time of what that we wouldn't have time to get that?

You'd have to have studied that the town and you know, the areas, where you're gonna put these branches, what are they gonna be located?

I mean, yeah, we wouldn't have time in three weeks to do that.

I think just a general, I mean, do want just but I'm not what I can ask.

Well, the board doesn't meet until the 18th that afternoon.

So asking Julie what she's requesting us to put in the wrap.

Do you want that or what what do you want to put it in?

And they could just give us a general overview of the direction that they want.

Can you do two can there be multiple proposals?

Um submitted.

Well, we typically have one proposal and then you can um make it on the floor.

Okay.

I'd like to have one that shows about uh $300,000 reduction.

Okay.

And if rep wants one, let's show you.

That gives that puts the pressure that they've got to change.

I I I think for purposes of this discussion and fiscal year 26-27, I agree with the mayor.

I think we probably need to be a little bit more methodical in how we make changes this year.

And if we're going to make a broad scope change, which I understand what Julie and Rick are saying, I'm I'm fully supportive of having that discussion.

But I think for purposes of this year, I would I would not be supportive of seeing too drastic of a reduction unless I saw what it actually meant.

So I think I would agree with the mayor.

Well, we're gonna get we're gonna have a choice in in March to nibble at the edges and status quo it and run the clock out, or we can make the changes that the community needs and that the budget desires.

So that's a that's a decision that we're all going to go on the record with and I'm that's cool.

And but it would changes in the air, updating is modernization.

It's we're all in the team, same team.

Um so it this is a great discussion, and I'm I'm excited for the future of the library.

I really am.

And I the idea that going into places with amenities and more traffic and more localization with the kids than the one on the west side, one back over the north side.

I mean, I use the one in the morning side, uh, the Morningstate Library, and I think it's a it's a great setup.

I go in there and I do a lot of work and find my find my spot and what a great model, and they're doing it on 450.

And again, I think there's some compromise with meeting space that we can utilize other city property.

You know, I mean, we just heard from the Arts Center that they've got meeting space for programming available if we're worried about programming with space.

I think we've got some XX space in the bottom of the museum.

We need to re-relook at our plant uh as the museum is a plant that what what we have to house if somebody specifically needs those type of services to research, that we can direct them that way or pull from them.

So just open open, think big open our minds.

Okay.

Can I have my board president come up here?

Jane, do you want to speak?

She's here today.

Sorry.

Or they come up.

You know you guys are talking 450 for a branch.

You got you can come on up.

I'm gonna be quick.

Jane, you can come up.

You're talking a couple million bucks just for that, and you don't have any administration in any computer because that's all the downtown.

So keep that in mind.

You're you're not gonna be able to effectively run the system without some of that administration that has to carry over.

So it's not gonna be the if you're gonna really talk about four branches.

You're not gonna be able to do what you want to do with two million dollars.

Yeah, it's gonna happen.

I agree.

The administration is about equal to a branch in total.

And that's the problem that I see.

And you know, we can sit around here and give all kinds of money to developers, and we want to cut all the arts.

Well, you know what, there's got to be balance in a budget.

There are certain amenities that I don't go to.

I haven't I've read one book in the last 20 years.

I hate to admit that.

I'm not a reader.

I read lots of articles every day.

Well, I read all the time, but not books.

I got a little ADD and I don't uh I don't do well with a book.

But I don't go to the art center a lot, I don't go to the museum, but those type of amenities are important to a community, and we need to somehow figure out a balance.

And we if you're gonna make this transition, it can't be this particular year.

You've got to phase this.

You can't even get a building and get it up and running by June and get a move.

So go ahead.

I wanted to get on my soapbox one time today.

I won't do that.

I would agree with you, Mayor.

Um I'm sorry, but Mr.

Scott pretty much said exactly what I was thinking.

Can I have you state?

I have nothing else to add except that I'm sorry, Jane Vereen.

Yeah, thank you.

Um this is an impossible thing to put into place so quickly.

Um there's just so much to be done.

And uh I do agree with Helen that in the past um we consolidated save money.

And uh the way our community is laid out and the people library, it's just not seemed like a feasible idea to anybody on the board.

Can we do it in a year?

I mean, that's like that's really the conversation that we're staying in.

Nobody's saying about cutting or or slashing jobs.

That we're just saying is that you got a year to figure out a new plan.

They gave you a year last time and nobody did anything because they weren't worried about the budget.

It's the only way it sticks and carrots.

The only way that you create gene is you have to talk about the budget.

This was in October.

We got this.

So it was given to us here.

Wasn't it budget time?

Correct.

It was an AI induced uh developed proposal that just did not simply all we're asking for is a proposal of the next year.

Well, I think the board would be willing to work on a proposal, yes.

The parameters of what you're discussing are not possible in a year, but they would be willing to work on that.

It's not impossible.

She said within a year.

Thank you.

Um I do have the question about the staffing uh for our position.

Uh it was an office and facilities position that the uh personnel review committee uh said we should cut.

They oversee our facilities and uh oversee the staff, and um they asked the to change that to administrative pos administrative assistant.

They agreed to that, but they want to get rid of our part-time person also in that office.

And if that person, the full timer is out, who's going to handle things?

The part-timer, we usually try and alternate their outs, so we have someone to meet the public to answer the phones to set up the donations to do handle all the things like that.

We're just asking for status quo on our staffing.

And I know we need a decision because we've got to move forward with this position.

Open position.

I just want to make it clear that um we've actually updated the compliment.

So the council approved the compliment change back in December.

So that was already updated.

Um, where a um a that full-time position she's um discussing the part-time position was reduced and a full-time admin assistant was added.

So the compliment was amended back in December.

And my understanding was that just in case the council decided to go with the administrative, so we'd be ready to go with that.

But we still the the operate or the office and facilities manager is very important to the library.

That would be it would require you to bring it back and um amend this budget.

What's um question as to job descriptions and what when we pass in on that?

And I can talk more to it too.

But when we go through the hiring um justification, we look at all the job duties and um make a recommendation based on the job that's being performed and what what you know based on um fiscal being responsible.

And at that time we felt that that position did a lot of administrative duties, which Helen is referring to, so we felt the position was in line with an administrative um assistance.

Correct.

But we have no one and Chris.

I'm sorry.

And Teresa was human resources involved in the Mr.

Yes.

It was Mike, um Janelle, um HI director, and myself are on the hiring committee.

We did get a memo about it.

Um back on December 1st.

It looks like the budget impact would be immediately um 77,000 increase to this budget, if we would ask.

Increase to this budget.

So this one or the upcoming well, to to the upcoming the 27 budget.

Yep.

Yep.

The only thing I want to say when they showed the compliment in your budget packets.

Um this is on page 173 for fiscal year 26.

They show that the elimination of the part-time administrative secretary already, and she's still working and will be working until you know she's underfilling a position right now.

So they have a full-time admin assistant.

That part-time person is underfilling that position because the compliment was changed.

The council approved a compliment change on December 1st.

So we we updated um the FY26 because that has occurred before we provided you the proposed.

So on the on on to Helen's point on one seven on page 173, looking at the personnel complement, the administrative assistant under fiscal year 2026 1.0, the 1.0 compliment is what you're talking about.

Correct.

They really did see a reduction of 0.5 FTEs.

And we are the per capita, the fourth or the second lowest library per staff per capita in the state.

We track librarians, we like statistics, we do all that.

Just to kind of last closing comment real quick.

You know, Mr.

Mayor, respectfully, on the nobody is proposing that we cut the arts.

We're talking about modernizing the arts and more customer and citizen friendly.

And when it comes to the dollars we give to the economic people, they produce revenue.

They produce property taxes, they produce sales tax.

So again, that's I'm just telling you, it's it's it's that's not an apples to apples.

So we're not we're not cutting the arts and the economic community returns the dollars.

So we'll leave it at that.

Okay.

But nobody will want to move to this town if there are no cultural services.

I'll just say that.

When I move someplace, I look at those things.

Sure.

No, the budget hearings are about difference of opinions.

Absolutely.

We all have our right to have an opinion here today.

You would have the wrong counsel if we didn't all agreed on every vote.

So thank you.

Our direction on that position is to wait till March.

I think it's got to be all part of this.

So I agree.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Less than a month now.

That was an ad of 77026.

If we okay, up next we have the museum, page 181, Steve Hansen.

Morning.

Morning, Mayor, Council members.

Well, again.

Just a few weeks ago, I was here to give you the broader overview.

So I think in the uh the short story is if you look at the budget, we're actually past years.

I've always said status quo, this is actually less than status quo.

You'll see a little bit of a lesser asked than the previous year.

So I think we're doing great things.

You have the uh metrics in front of you.

So I'll just open it up for questions.

Question, Steve.

Unless somebody else wants you good.

The do you ever see a scenario where you could share janitorial services with other like the art center or anything like that?

I think we should.

Well, your hours are kind of set up, you know.

I'm not challenging that, but you do see do you see an opportunity for the directors to get together on that you and Todd to get together, maybe start reworking the how we service those?

I think that's fair.

We're always open to that.

I mean, not just with city working with other museums, period, but um just we stay when we came down with the capital campaign 15-18 years ago, all of a sudden uh our goal is to be a community meeting place and to have as many organizations work with us as possible.

That includes all city departments.

We host any number of city departments events, uh police use this on occasion, human rights.

So um when we can we work with the art center on different program, the uh with our welcome center.

They try to work with the interpretive center on different programming that's more with tours and that.

So uh I I think there's room for that.

Of course, there is, you know, we also have our own programming needs.

You asked about the library and their space, you know, they have a tremendous amount of stuff they're storing, so would we have space for all that?

Of course not.

Uh but we do have some space available.

I mean, there's the records Helen was talking about it really needs to be HVAC controlled, and we we have space, there's some duplication, but uh not to the degree of cutting that back down.

But um I I just want to go back for a second on history, there's a reason, and I was saw it change when you started taking all those branch libraries away.

That was a council decision because it was efficient thing to do.

Now we're I mean, I happen to think it's nice to have.

I remember the Smith branch and the Morningside branch, but uh um so it's just there's a reason that was done downtown.

I remember when it was big hoorah when we moved into the building across the street with the library.

It was a great thing and it still is.

So uh but going back to sharing services, the library sends people over to us, we send them over there for different resources, so absolutely.

I I think that's one of our things that we strive for is to be used more.

Yeah, I think Rick made a good point earlier when Todd was um visiting with us because you do a really nice job of engaging with the community as a whole, not just as a museum function, to invite the community interests into the facility for meetings and otherwise.

And I it was a good idea for Todd to do the same at the Art Center.

Yeah.

I should know the answer to this, but I don't.

What what's on the third floor?

Uh that ours or the school district.

Both.

So on the third floor, think about the roof up there.

People don't know there's really a third floor to speak of.

Think of two shoeboxes on the roof.

There's a shoebox on the west side that's roughly 24,000 square feet.

Yeah.

Well, we kept 12,000 square feet for the museum, and the uh school district has the other 12.

You answered questions that you think yeah, we have the joint freight elevator that goes up there.

Then the other shoebox on the other side is the HVAC, stuff like that.

So it's uh we store our a lot of our large items that we're not gonna use right away.

An example of Sovac sign that we saved.

Uh it's like don't throw that away.

We'd like, don't know if we'll ever use it, but rather than go to the landfill whether let's save it.

Big things like that, stuff out of the old KD stations.

So our storage is slowly starting to shrink.

Do you think that you'll ever take any of those large items out of there?

And I mean, would they be used for a display?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, th there are some things.

Um, how big is that sign?

Pardon?

How large is that sign?

Came off a building, right?

It uh it came off the front of the building.

Yeah, it I only have to laugh at myself because I said yes to it.

We rented a U-Hall, and it turned out the sign was too big for the U-Hall, but we managed to uh our OSHA people probably wouldn't have liked it.

How big is it?

But I think something like that repurpose it.

Well, I thought, well, disassemble it and then just use the face of it.

But they're saying that uh we took the sign from the SADOffs when they were moving from the plaza, and it's like, well, let's see, you know, don't throw it away.

We may or may not use it.

I don't know.

You know, we might use it for an exhibit, but on the other hand, to fill send it to landfill and wish we would have had it.

Um so at some point though, you you'll go through a process of de-accession, and some of that stuff will go by the wayside, but go on the auction block.

Possibly.

Yeah.

I mean, when it when you do get to that point in time, yeah.

Um rather than it end up in the landfill, maybe it ends up in some descendant of that particular piece of their man cave or in their lower level or on their garage or wherever it might be, which is a far better destination than the landfill.

So there's you know, another opportunity there if you need to clear out storage or whatever, then to say, oh, I hate to throw this away, because I hate to throw things away at my house too, but it goes to a donation instead.

My wife was happy when I took the museum job.

That way she thought I had someplace else to store stuff.

Yeah.

Hey Steve, um you know you've done a good job of of reducing quite a bit uh with your budget.

Uh just the one area, and and maybe this is a question for John and uh with the uh IT department, but like uh where you did have your increase.

Um is there a possibility that you know with the whole city, the whole, you know, city and county or whatever, that we when we're looking at like software maintenance, I and I don't know exactly what the extent of that looks like, but you know, a package deal for for all the entities that that are is that some completely that's something we are doing.

We're underneath the city's IT.

Okay, it's a uh so we use them heavily.

We have a separate package for our permanent gallery, all the equipment that's out there.

Um disaster all the orientations here.

That's that's not on ISO.

This museum is that you need.

Yeah, yes.

You're gonna find out.

And increases in software costs.

Okay, right.

Going up, up, up.

And they say that's because of the price of silver, I'm told.

I don't know what it is.

That's what John tells us.

Yep.

Any other questions?

Yes.

I do have one quick.

Oh, no, go ahead.

Quickly, Steve, can you help me understand?

You've got a two and a half person compliment for museum curator.

Why do you need two and a half compliments?

I'm not questioning it, I'm just asking why.

Or which you've got a museum curator uh in 26, 27, you've got two and a half compliments.

There, yeah, they're part-time and two full-time.

You want me to show you?

Yeah, we only have one full-time curator.

That's our exhibits curator.

Oh, I'm sorry, it's a museum director.

And then a part-time curator.

So one and a half percent compliment.

We have one full-time curator.

That's on the history side.

Right.

Our exhibit.

And then you have a half compliment for reporting.

For education.

Right.

That's an education.

Okay.

And uh we have two part-time people for education.

So is that the museum development coordinator and then the part-time museum curator?

Those are their act.

You do have a part-time museum.

Yeah, you have a part-time there.

Under your part-time staff listed on here.

You have an education coordinator and a museum curator.

So which one is overseeing education?

I'll put faces here.

Teresa Weaver is our education curator, and then we just had a retirement and replaced it with a part-time education coordinator.

So to combine that's one compliment.

It's two part-time people.

And then you have a third part-time education coordinator.

Let me come on.

In your compliment right now, you have a part-time or a point F uh.5 FTEs of an education coordinator, you have a point five FTE of an education uh a museum curator, and a point F um five museum development coordinator.

Well, well, the museum development coordinator.

Yeah, that's not an education.

I see.

No, above the you've got museum.

You've got a half compliment under part-time for museum curator, and then above that you've got an education coordinator.

Correct.

You just said that the museum curator engages in education activities.

And then above that, under full-time, you've got a museum coordinator, one full-time curator.

Curator.

Curator.

That's Matt Anderson, our exhibits in collections manager down below the part-time education curator.

Uh coordinator is our part-time person, the education.

It should be museum education curator.

Okay.

That's just what we want to clarify.

You don't have a full-time and a part-time curator.

You have a part-time education curator.

Correct.

Okay.

Uh 20 years ago, she was full-time.

That helps.

Thank you.

Yeah.

We'll get that change then.

And then the development person is at that she does our communication part-time does communications.

Um fundraising on a 20-hour a week basis.

So quick.

We could really blow this up and I could say that we should probably start charging at the museum, but that won't that won't apply.

So I'll just, well, you know, you start wire and get everybody all excited and that we won't, though.

But I want to talk about the welcome center, the boat down there.

What's what's the attendance on the boat?

What's our head count?

We're averaging about 20,000 a year.

Yeah.

Good.

Yeah, so when you look at the welcome center, so again, this is not about cutting arts or anything else, it's about reshaping with the needs of where we're at as a community.

And I think now with the uh is the Betty Strong, that's one with the big flag, right?

The Betty Strong interpretive.

Seems like to me that draws, that's a pretty good draw for people down there on for when people are coming into Sioux City, it just seems like they make they drive by the boat and go, oh look, a boat, and then they head down to the big flag.

Um so my question to you is from a budgeting perspective, it's it's it has two FTEs.

Um if we close the boat and left it in place as basically what it is, which is a great showpiece.

Not telling it, you know, just to maintain it as a showpiece, but that doesn't affect any of the bathrooms or anything down there, does it?

No.

So the bathrooms would be just fine if we leave.

If that if the boat closed, the bathrooms are fine.

Correct.

Yeah, we're good there.

At one time, at one time the bathrooms were underneath our control, and then in a budget move, yeah, they'll switch to the city.

And just so I saw in the CIP budget, you're looking at about 250, about a quarter of a million in a in a upcoming 2028 on the boat.

It's gonna need some.

For the boat?

Yeah, it's under 200.

Okay, I got two and a half.

We'll we'll I'll I'll round down.

188.

Okay.

So by the time you get everything, by the time you get there, let's just say 188.

So that that's an upgrade that's gonna be of capital, it's got to be infused into this boat, right?

On that end of it coming up.

Round it up to two.

Correct.

The uh so what I'd like what I again not downplaying the getting rid of like that, I'd like to for March propose that we close the uh the welcoming center and push everything down towards the Betty Strom.

It doesn't affect bathrooms it's just I think it served its purpose and and it we can modernize and move forward again.

That's just a proposal like to see us vote on that.

Um and the other question I got for you for the open mind is so if you retire tomorrow or in five years, you've done an amazing job.

You put the museum in a great position.

Are if you put the museum in a position now where the next guy coming through can share, can take the duties of the art center and the museum together.

Can we go to a shared director at some point, or is that just you think that's too big of a bite?

You know, we looked at that was discussed heavily when we were thinking of moving downtown.

Yeah.

Council, but it really is two separate entities.

It's like saying, can you have a police and fire chief combined?

Could you just thought I'd ask it's uh Yeah, you got two different your fundraising for different entities and um could you sure is it ideal?

No.

You still gonna have the cost, and you probably end up with an assistant director or two assistant directors.

So uh I I think the city has a pretty good deal right now the way it's going.

Yeah.

The thought is just as we modernize it, like I said, we've got so much space to utilize in the in the in the um art center, and it'd be nice to kind of start coexisting with with uh maintenance and with custodial, and we start to just kind of combine these services as we again modernize what the two together.

Yeah, I think right now both facilities are skating by on minimum.

Pretty open, pretty minimal hours over there at the art center, too.

So I mean the janitorial staff though is part-time for us anyway, so okay.

So great, thank you.

I I would say on the boat, the welcome center, that that is not property tax, it's that's sales tax.

Yeah.

So it's within pack right, it's not coming out of the general fund, it's coming coming out of sales tax.

It comes out of the back.

Any reduction in sales tax would then move something that's property tax based into um sales tax kind of.

Where where do we fund Betty Strong from?

We don't, that's all done on the stage.

Yeah, that's the best part about it.

Yeah, that's what I just wanted to clarify.

That's part about it.

We'd have to get a I just want to point out the only item that you want to bring back for this is the welcome.

Yeah, they're doing it anyway.

Just clarification the item that you want to bring back is for the welcome center.

Do you want to bring anything else back for this?

What's that?

I just want to clarify the only item you want to bring back is for the welcome center.

Is there anything else you want to bring back for museum?

Um I don't think.

You brought up a lot of different things.

Was there any clarification just on that employee compliment to clarify that?

Well, there is somebody in every one of those positions.

I think it was just in the way it's listed per title there, but Teresa, I'd like to see it.

We talked about the custodial staff.

Can you whip up something to show us that how is there a plan that you guys can whip together, maybe show how that the custodials can be shared or based upon the hours of operation?

Yeah.

Put us together a number there that maybe we could find some cost savings on on that.

Those will be the two things that we should vote on.

Thank you.

So in the compliment, I just want to clarify.

Are you saying you have two education coordinators then?

No.

We have we have a history curator, that's full-time.

And that we have a part-time education cure curator and a part-time education coordinator.

So you want this to call an education curator.

Okay, so um we would either have to change um and take a job description back to council, or we'll just clarify it here that that's what it is.

It's wrong here.

That's why I wondered.

The position title is education curriculum.

We don't have an education curator.

Yes, we can that position doesn't exist.

Yes, it does.

Up above, you have one.

She's been with museum for 24, 27 years as an education.

The technical title is is education cure.

Well, our system and HR do not indicate that that's the title.

I think we'll have to do something.

Yeah, let's just you guys get together.

I don't know what I don't know what the problem is, but she's been education curator.

Started it full time, and then we changed it to two part-time positions.

Now it's kind of a budgetary deal, too.

But Steve, do you think um with regard to the welcome center?

Is there a possibility that you could find outside funding for it if you were not obliged or in favor of closing it?

And the mirror's been around there.

People have the idea to dry dock this boat.

Bring it up.

It's a historic landmark.

Um the question is what do you do with it?

Are you just gonna leave it vacant?

I mean uh that'll be the choice of this council or some further council.

Uh I think it serves a good purpose.

It's the introductory point for many people to Sioux City.

Right.

Um and the Lewis and Clark.

And they ask questions and answers.

Uh it's a travel center, and it is like I say it's also gives some history on the city of Sioux City.

I think it's a little hidden gem down there.

Um so as far as somebody so I'm back.

So the convention center first had control of it.

And uh River Cade had an office down there, but it was underneath Denny Gann and the convention center.

The director before me saw an opportunity with Lewis and Clark celebration coming up.

He thought that might be a good deal for the museum to have it.

Denny Gann being fairly sharp said we could work with you on this one.

Right.

Cooperation, and then he kept a couple of staff members and sent everything else.

So then Rivercade moved out of it a long time ago.

I mean, so you know, it depends once again what you want in the city.

And and quite frankly, Consulman Bertran, I I have to kind of laugh because from my end, talking about not cutting arts.

What I've heard so far is we want to reduce the art center's budget.

We want to reduce those first six items on the agenda.

Well, anyway.

When we go all the way down the agenda, it's gonna be treated no different than any other department.

I'm just saying on this side, but I'm hearing is we're gonna cut the art center, we want to cut the museum budget.

Not the library budget, and we're thinking about closing the welcome center.

That seems to me like a reduction of service.

No, that's modernizing and reorgan, Steve's.

Yeah, I'm just saying.

So there's there's another perspective from here.

Yeah.

It's my job to defend the museum, and I'm very proud of it.

Love coming down there.

Yeah.

So the welcome center.

Yeah, you know it you're gonna I think you're creating a place to have vandalism if you're gonna leave it.

And and I'm not particularly in favor of closing it.

Yeah, I just think it's a good fit.

Rather than close it, and rather than us just say, okay, we're gonna pull this 188.

My question to you is can you take this time between now and end of March?

Uh 17th is March 18th.

March 18th and reimagine perhaps some outside funding.

Maybe donations, maybe look for grant opportunities that may support it.

Let's look at that part of it differently, not overall, let's get rid of it.

I truthfully, I'm probably in the minority of one.

Um the whole discussion about explore Sioux land and 300,000 and money elsewhere is on pumping up the city.

Um I think money well spent would be explore Sioux land and the welcome center to be hand in hand and working together on have you discussed that with no Stacy's here, so when she's up, we can ask you.

I'm glad that you're thinking that way.

Yeah, I well once you get the money, you don't give it back.

No, the short the guy that was short term before our interim Stacey.

Uh we had a meeting.

She's no longer interim, she's full-time now.

Yeah, I know that that's good.

I I'm smiling because I like that, and I think we could work together, but uh, but the prior two, the original gal that went to Texas, uh there was no working with her on that part.

But now you have a crack in the door.

Yeah.

You got some direction from council.

Yep.

No, I like the possibility.

I okay.

All right.

All right.

Well, let's do that.

I see tourism, I see.

I do let's do that.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks, Steve.

Thank you.

Thanks, Steve.

I do want one kudos to Mike and Treesa in Finance.

They did sharpen the pencil and they asked every department had me to do that, and we did it.

We we made our cut.

Um, and we'll get by.

We'll see it in a year from now.

But um, so they've they've been working for months on this, and uh so have the department heads.

So I'd I I begrudgingly say thanks to them because they made us uh take a good hard look at our budget.

So thank you for for that.

But I and and on this side of it, just based on Teresa's opening statements, and you having been at the state, those cuts that we've received are well out of our control, and you know that.

Oh, yeah.

No, I something has to be done, and this is how we do it.

And we all can stand up here and say we don't trust what they're doing in Des Moines.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Steve.

Thanks, Steve.

Up next, we have WIC WCICC comm center, page 287.

Wendy Hess.

Good morning.

Uh Wendy has the communication center director.

Um the 911 dispatch center's budget's pretty straightforward.

Obviously, it's mostly personnel expenses, uh, payroll and benefits.

Um done the best that we can the last few years and identified what expenses can be paid for out of 911 surcharge money.

So we've moved several things over the past year, um, couple years, you know, all of our software, all of the equipment um expenses that are related to 911 are being paid by the 911 board.

So um we're pretty bare bones departments, uh, kind of just a bunch of doers.

Um, also included in my budget numbers this year is a small improvement request.

Um I'm proposing we move to a new um, it's called Critical.

It is a um testing software for applicants.

Um the reason I'm proposing that is right now we're using a paper test that human resources administers.

While it is designed by a company specific to dispatchers, we're only seeing about a 50% success rate on those that score well on the test and are actual successful, actually successful in the job.

So we um reached out, there's a lot of other agencies using this critical software.

Um people can take the pre-employment test from home, or we could provide a computer for them to do it.

Um, and other agencies are seeing a much higher success rate.

The company boasts that they have about an 80% success rate.

We've talked to some actual customers like West Westcom and West Des Moines is one, and they are seeing about a 73% success rate.

So if we can do a better job of picking applicants on the front end, it's gonna save us a lot of money.

Um this would this typically be in the operating budget, or should it be in the capital budget?

This is typically an operating it's in operating operations, yes.

Um, and I did lost my train of thought.

Sorry, I'm sorry.

No, you're good, you're good.

Um, I did kind of look back and see what we've spent on people in like in calendar year 25.

We spent over $50,000 on training people, you know, the pre-employment testing and then the actual payroll hours and benefit hours of people that weren't successful, and that's just in one calendar year.

So I think if we can pair that down, and yes, and that's 25%.

And that yeah, and that's not even the the time of the HR people administering the test and onboarding them.

So if we can switch to that, it's a pretty minimal um addition to our budget.

If that can save us money, that's gonna be huge in the long run.

So we talked about in our meetings.

Yeah, it's uh more favorable complimentary applicant.

Absolutely.

Absolutely less cumbersome.

Absolutely.

That cost is actually initially being purchased out of the technology fund.

Um in the city portion of that is about $2,500.

Yeah, as I look at this, it's the net expense is $3450, but it looks like it's in CIP $59025, which is $2,400.

Yep, and it that's the city's technology fund.

Right.

Okay, thank you.

So we take those improvement requests every year, and any of them that are technology.

We try to fund through the technology fund if possible.

Okay.

And I want mayor and counsel to know when do you went through some significant transition and turnover this last year, and the phone was still being answered.

So thank you for that.

Staffing has been a struggle for a couple of years for us.

So it seems like since COVID, it's just been a loss.

So we've been paying a significant amount of money, and over time, we've still been in budget because then those regular salaries aren't being paid.

But I feel like but not with bodies.

Right.

The wheels are moving slowly, but we're getting back to um is it the pressure of the job, the qualifications for the job, combination.

Are you getting?

I mean, like so when so probably around 30.

So um when HR advertises the position, we usually get about twice that many um fill out an application, but only about half of them show up to take the test.

So that's one of the other things I'm hoping with the new testing software.

You know, if people aren't showing up to take the test based upon the timing, maybe they have a current job, and they can't leave in the middle of the day to come in and take a test at 11 o'clock or whatever.

So, you know, when I started 25 years ago, we would get 200 applications, and so that has really changed.

Um, but just I think it's everyone, it's not just us.

Right, you know, please hits fire.

Yes, it is, and other dispatch other 901 centers across the nation are seeing the same thing.

So there's places that are um struggling a lot more than we are.

So I am grateful for for that.

So how does the uh I mean, have you talked to HR and and and what their feelings are as it relates to this this app or so um Theo's here today, I noticed um so Theo and I have talked extensively about it, and in fact, um we demoed a different product um because there's some computer testing that they had access to.

Um and Theo and I kind of did a demo of it, and um I did not like it at all.

Some of the questions they were asking um to me were not entry-level questions.

There's something a dispatcher might know after going through training.

Um, and too, it's going to save their people a ton of time.

So when we administer the testing, two of their HR staff basically their whole day is administering the test.

They usually do it at two different times.

Then it's a hand scored test, so they're spending extensive time then scoring the test and providing those results.

So it's going to free them up extensively and take away um because they they're a small department that does a lot of work, and so to set aside time to do that.

Um, so yeah.

The other thing I checked, it is specific to dispatchers, so it's not something that customer service or another department in the city could benefit from.

It is very very specific to the 901 dispatcher job.

So is this is is the cost that's associated with that is it is that an ongoing cost, or is this the one time?

It's an there is an annual cost, it's like a subscription fee.

So that's a bargain if it frees up other things and gets your applicant pool.

Absolutely.

We'll find out if it doesn't.

I was gonna say that's a big it's a big if, right?

Yes, yes.

All right, anything else?

I do have a quick question after one have any plans.

Your uh challenges with your I can't remember what's called uh your redundancy location, your emergency location should what are your challenges there?

So um right now we have a backup location.

Um it's in climbing hill in the emergency services building.

Um, and we practiced that back in October.

Um, if we had to, if we had to evacuate our facility going to climbing hill.

So the reason climbing hill was picked, it's a county facility.

Um when it was picked, net the network was much different.

And so we learned in October it's not ideal.

And we almost have less than ideal.

Yes, and in we almost had to evacuate there.

Do you remember the ice storm we had in March of last year?

Um, our generator was not starting at our facility or our main facility, and um there was a slight panic that we may need to go to climbing hill.

It would have been the worst time ever to try and drive to climbing hill.

And so we had um sheriff sheehan and some deputies with four-wheel drive vehicles ready to take us to climbing hill if we needed to there was like a semi-jackknified on highway 20 and going there was like a terrible idea.

Generator got started we didn't have to evacuate but we learned that most likely the reason we would have to leave our facility would be things like severe weather um and so relocating staff to climbing hill is no longer ideal both both based upon um the computer network capabilities and the physical location so uh project I have going forward is to identify a different location as our backup and so I've had some initial conversations um with the sheriff with the police chief with the fire chief um and sheriff sheehan thinks that there may be some space um at the L at the new LEC that would be um feasible to do that so um we're in the very early stages it's something we will talk to the 901 board about I don't anticipate our operating budget having to incur any cost to create a new backup location for us.

Basically everything we have in climbing hill we would just move so we have computers down there and radios and all that um and so there would be some expense you know if Sheriff Sheehan locates a spot in the LEC that's appropriate we may have to add some radio antennas and things like that so that we could operate but um so that's in the early stages but that's definitely something that's on the radar for this coming year.

It's eminent that that's gonna happen though yeah yeah and the idea's 911 there's some mine one need it you can access to make sure that you've got that in the budget you know because we see it every month at on the WIC board I just want to make sure that you have that covered because from discussions this past year it's happened.

Yes so I'm confident when um we haven't had a lot of discussions with the 901 board yet about it but I'm confident that whatever would be needed there the 901 board would be any idea what your time frame best case scenario would be?

So um kind of just early discussions with Sheriff Sheehan um kind of um kind of tasked Travis my operation supervisor with that and get with um the sheriff and the facilities um gentleman at the county to see what our options are realistic to think in 2026.

I think so yeah thanks yeah so okay thank you all right thanks thanks Mr.

Malloy Wick IT page 291 Molloy open the pencils mayor council city manager financial staff uh full support of moving the redundant center from climbing hill to somewhere in the in the metro area that would that would be a nice move for for Wendy and our staff just because we have go ahead.

You're for it how could we be against it and would you be in charge of facilitating that your group or part of the we would be a big help yeah okay and again through the leadership of the work commission and this council and and this supervisors we do have a redundant fiber connection to the new LEC.

So uh that would be that would be a great great spot to have it so just my two cents on that.

How much how much what budget together say that again put a budget together for Wendy would do that.

Again we would help Wendy with that again I Wendy would put it majority of those costs would be paid for but E91 was it has a lot of money and if we don't spend it the state steals it from us better.

So there's they have money to do those like we got radios at the fire department all the rurals got about eight or nine new ones up per department and so there's that's ongoing revenue comes in every year and quite frankly we use it to enhance these sort of things.

So they they would be able to take care of that and what they learned in climbing hill is what we all thought.

It's a terrible place to put a com center because if you're there any extended period of time you got all your employees trying to drive out there in the country that all live in the city so it's actually getting there if it was weather related it's long overdue and they've had preliminary discussions with the E911 and they would be supportive of that the reason for having it out there is the exact reason to not have it out there.

That's just not a yeah.

But the mayor's been really good at identifying uh projects to uh apply those 911 fees.

So excellent save the city.

Or lose them.

Yep.

So regarding my budget, the the one that jumps out to me is is the 23.5 percent.

Uh and that that's the improvement, and uh that improvement is a is a software tool uh that facilitates data visitability and or into the data that PII and HIPAA data that's on our network and the exposures that we have with that, and then it sets up a framework for AI as far as labeling our data going forward.

I don't expect you to understand that, but if you do, you guys can explain it to the rest of us.

Uh all I know is every year it goes up.

That's yeah, yeah.

And he's a big supporter of of the tool.

So I he's really excited about the two.

No, I'm talking even in my own office.

Oh, yeah.

It it it is it is crazy town.

So the maintenance contracts and the licensing, it's ridiculous.

It is ridiculous.

I think we did a nice risk tabletop this last year as well regarding cybersecurity, so it's it's a real thing.

Yep.

And credit to Mike for facilitating that tabletop exercise or being amenable to it to get a bunch of seat city leadership in in that meeting.

I think that was eye-opening for both parties as far as what our cyber risk is and uh the risk management that we're taking, taking place you know, within the city and the county.

I really like to learn new words, and I I had literally never heard the word ruggedized.

Ruggedized.

I had never heard that word before.

Ruggedized traffic switch upgrades.

Yes.

So yeah, the electronics that go in these cabinets are hardened and they're able to meet the elements of the rugged, the rugged, yes.

The rugged funk numbers.

Yes.

Rugged targetized, yes.

Nothing from me.

Me either.

Thanks, John.

Okay.

Thanks, guys.

Up next we have human resources.

Wait, wait, wait, John.

Oh, sorry, John.

No, I no, no.

Uh no, no, you're good.

Okay.

Good exercise.

I'm a union guy, we take a break at 10 o'clock.

You also rest of you aren't, but we're gonna take five minutes.

Okay.

All right, okay.

Perfect.

Good break.

Take a break and we'll be back.

I just texted you.

Yeah.

Should know not nothing.

Okay, we'll start with human resources.

Page 151, feel Mecklehouse.

Morning.

Morning.

I um I believe Janelle submitted a uh flat budget.

And I'm here today on your behalf.

She's uh she's out of town.

Do you have any questions for me?

Well, uh I have one that won't be very popular, I'm certain, but we added a position for lack of a better term, DEI, and now that function according to state law does not exist.

We kept position.

I hate to cut anything, but well, and I shouldn't say I hate to cut anything.

That's not true.

But somebody's got to justify by March 18th, the continuation of that position to me.

And it has nothing to do.

I I don't look at people, I look at positions.

Correct.

So yeah.

You want a memo on the other.

I'm just looking at staffing levels in the department.

Yep.

I don't if there's another position that they can move around, but don't understand when we hired it for a specific purpose, and that purpose doesn't exist anymore.

Why we're maintaining that position?

Yeah, we have talked about that as well when it was absorbed kind of as a human resources specialist, but now that person has been tasked with the the head up the ADA portion of the website and outwardly facing that's a new requirement by the Federal Government as well.

So it's a full-time job.

Some will say it is until spring, right?

When it the mandate in April.

But it might not be full time by itself, but it's going to take a lot.

Year one.

Yeah, I just put that in the memo.

Yeah.

We have talked about it again.

I think by industry standards, if you look at the uh staffing in HR compared to the number of employees that we support, we're very low.

I don't have those statistics right now.

The position right now helps with the uh job postings and uh screening applications, and it's also helping me with uh you know drug and alcohol testing program that is federally mandated and uh the uh accessibility website that um Mike is talking about, and uh the position is going to be going to job fairs as well.

So if you look at just going by numbers, I'm a numbers guy, I'm not a Yes.

Just go by numbers, the applications are down, vacancies posted are down, external hires are down, separations are down.

Correct.

So you would make the assumption if you're a guy like me, that workload has not increased 155.

That's why I want to move five.

I don't have one fifty-five, yeah.

That's good.

All right.

We'll have her bring a memo back on what that position, what work they're performing.

I was gonna say, and and this kind of goes back to what Wendy was talking about.

I think, you know, as I was listening, even with that the the app and you know what HR is doing.

You know, I I'm just curious, you know, I I served on civil service, and so I I understand a few things, but you know, I I I think that you know, I wonder if we have the population, you know, when it comes to you know who's applying for jobs and uh what that looks like.

Uh I don't know what that job with Wendy's if there is a background check and all those things.

You know, but I I and I don't know if HR would do this or she would do it, but you know, how are we marketing uh those jobs, you know, geographically, what does that look like?

And to the the point of we're spending money, uh whether it's purchasing a new app to do something that we'll continuously do, uh, that may not do it if we don't have the population anyway, uh uh for those that are applying for jobs and and and and such.

And so I I don't know if HR, you know, can give us some of those numbers as to you know who's applying uh you know, if there's a mass exodus of people when once they start the job, realize that they don't want to do the job or whatever that looks like, but um you know these numbers that the mayor pointed out, yeah, it looks you know, that is down so again if if nobody's applying.

Right.

What are we doing, right?

So it's like I I you know, when I was here in '85, they get two or three hundred for cops and for firemen.

You don't get that anymore.

Look at your post office.

When I was a young guy, everybody wanted that job.

Now nobody wants it.

It's just a changing culture that we live in.

It is I realized I was a young man a long time ago, but don't remember it.

That's what's good.

Any other questions?

And just to that job that the now, you know, as it was hard as a I I guess I I misunderstood it too, but uh that person is doing other duties and other tasks.

Correct.

Correct.

And like I said, you know, if you look at the industry standard, we uh very very, very low staffed than you know, we should be based on the number of population that we support.

So yeah, they are very busy.

They are duties that they executing.

And they're titled as an HR specialist, right?

Correct.

Right.

So this may be a question for Nicole, and I know she's not here today, but Mike.

Maybe you can address in but both state law and federal law, there has been indication that you can't have a DEI officer, you can't have a DEI program.

I know that in a significant number of the um summaries that we were getting that there were references to DEI efforts.

Do we need to make sure those are eliminated from the library and all that we've tried to remove all those that I think there were still a couple?

I didn't it wasn't part of the budget discussion earlier, but since the mayor raised that I had seen it in a number of components of the budget, so we need to probably pay attention to that.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thanks, Dion.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Events facilities, page 115.

Good morning, Mayor and Council.

How are you today?

I'm hi guys.

Good morning.

Hey, Craig.

Um, I'm Chad Smith, General Manager of the Tyson Event Center at Orpheum Theater and Sioux City Convention Center.

Um you look at our budget, we we're not really doing anything different than we've done in the past, but consistently trying to come in a little bit lower every year.

That's different.

Well, no, we try to do that every year.

Um historically, if you look, and I think we talked about this last year, that is something that we've strived for every year we've been in the venues to come in a little bit lower year over year on our on our budget predictions and where we end up at the end of the seasons.

Questions?

The uh so that's just kind of a continuation we talked about when it comes in and presented, which it was great, and then we had a couple meetings, Craig and I with you guys um on on there.

So I I kind of compare it to people I've had I've got jumped a little bit public about you know the the walking around money that I suggested.

Um and I I want to real it's really easy to to justify it.

It's we asked you guys to mop the floor, but we didn't put any water in your bucket.

Um so you gotta have the tools if we want the shows that the community wants and demands, and I think is part of the overall perception of the community and morale and the the travel dollars that come in, real dollars that come in, um, especially as we're trying to do some of the things that uh grocery land's trying to do.

Um I think it's completely appropriate.

And what I suggested to you is an out of line other communities to do it, right?

Uh correct, yeah, correct.

And um, you know, I'm not familiar with exactly what the other programs are, but we are aware that there's part of the competition.

There are some other um, you know, facilities and cities in this region that are doing similar things.

So let me ask you this.

The uh uh we throw a dollar amount at it, which is can move in March.

The is the have you guys talked to the hard rock at all about a cost share on some of this walking around money?

Uh not on this particular program.

Um and you know, we submitted a memo yesterday.

I realized you know, maybe you have not a chance to to read through that.

Um, you know, we submitted a $500,000 number as a starting point.

Um does it have to be that number?

You know, there's probably some, you know, we could talk about what the number is, but we think something in that range is an example.

What average average show, what do you think it costs to land?

What's your dollar versus input to the city?

What's your average phone to get a show that you know is gonna fill the seats?

Is that mean rent the facility or a full-blown show?

Um I would say uh uh every show is a little bit different.

Yeah.

Um on a per show basis, we figure 75,000 to 150,000 in addition, and in addition to like what like just money into the pot, right?

Um would be a meaningful amount to attract new content.

Nick, can I have you state your name, please?

Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, Nick Palmiati.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah.

Nick, would you rather go for three big shows or four?

I mean, I mean, don't get me wrong, Lee Bryce, uh, you know, I get it.

It's an easy name.

But I mean, what when you think of these big shows, would you rather try to do like a uh you know, three times a year and go big 100 grand each or something like that, or I mean what what's your feel so far?

Have you put any feelers out in the in the promoter market saying, hey, that we might have an aggressive council?

What what what are you feeling on the backside?

That's an interesting question.

Um we'd obviously welcome, I mean, it's gonna be it's two strategies, right?

Um, you know, there are like the if you look at our the what we've done over the past year.

We had the offspring, we had Nate Bargettse, we had Parker McCollum.

Um those are great artists, and those artists are touring venues of our size.

Um with an additional 75 to 150,000 per show, we're gonna be able to attract it attract more of those types of shows that are playing venues the size of ours and markets the size of ours.

If you're if you're talking about like you want to attract uh you know Zach Brown band, uh like I think it's a that's a different conversation.

Um I think the number we proposed is definitely the intent to increase volume of the types of acts that are currently playing venues of our size.

Say in more quality events, like a like you said, a Parker McComb's a good event, good events.

Yeah, you think you can increase those for the suite owners and for the community itself and for more dollars flowing downtown?

Um if you you know, if uh you know, look around the region and look at bigger venues that have 10,000, 15,000 seats, like you know, the acts that play those venues, they're just not able to play the Tyson, right?

So if you're if the strategy is to try and attract some of those shows, you know, it could be two, three, four, five hundred thousand dollars you have to per show to subsidize the five to ten thousand seats we don't have.

Guaranteeing a certain revenue stream to the promoter that isn't able to generate a ten thousand.

Correct.

Frank.

Correct.

Is the thought that or recapturing some of that money on the city side?

Let's say you did get high-end act here, you you know, ponied a couple hundred thousand dollars to do it because of the venue size.

Four store.

Our citizens, and I may know the answer to this already, but I'm gonna ask it.

Our citizens understand the value to having that in their own backyard and not having to spend the additional money to travel north, travel south, travel east.

Uh road time, gas time, baby sitter time, eating out time, possible hotel motel time.

Do they understand that?

And could we recapture part of that that they would be spending on an elevated ticket price?

I will tell you I would pay more for a ticket to see somebody who I want to see in Sioux City and not have to hit the road easily.

But I think if you ask Stacy, she would tell you that it's not just the indirect, which is a significant component, but it's the direct revenue that we generate from those that will come from a hundred miles away, come to the event, come to dinner, rent a hotel, get a hotel room.

Well, in both ways, though, but it's it's really both city here.

100%.

Yeah.

Um, you know, to just use a recent, like we just had the rodeo a couple weeks ago, and which is one of our biggest events.

We had four on Saturday night, we had four thousand people in the building.

The Hard Rock had a concert going on as well.

They had a thousand people in their building.

So on Saturday night, last you know, last week in Sioux City, we've got five thousand people in downtown that come to our show, and then those people don't go home, right?

They go out, they go to restaurants, they stay in hotels, they go over the hard rock, you know, and I think that um and we can work with Stacy on like measuring, there's tools out there that can measure the you know, put dollar amounts on that, but you know, um if uh you know we can increase increase that volume a little bit.

Um I do think that there is a direct economic impact to that.

I I think the key to Rick's question is working with hard rock.

I had a chance to meet with Mike and Doug this week, and you know, they're such a phenomenally strong partner in the vision they have for this community and what the resources they have um locally, regionally, and and really nationally domestically, and I think we need to continue to work with them and to try and find opportunities to grow and expand as well.

Well, prior to you guys being on board, prior to any outside management, uh ArdROC offered to manage four concerts a year for us and bring the big acts in based on their whatever system behind it.

Yep, you're 100% right, Julie.

I remember that as a stakeholder downtown, a small business owner, and I was in favor of it based on what I know, these big acts in these big concerts due to the local economy.

Um point taken was a cash a concert at Battery Park and Toby Keith and the Tyson, and this town was on fire.

On fire, and people were wondering why in the world would the city, as we were managing at that time, book Toby Keith at the same time cash is over there.

And guess what?

It worked like a charm.

Like a charm.

And different different audiences.

Very different audiences and I'm just saying, if we don't think big, dream big, go for it.

Because it's not because we're just Sioux City.

We have to stop thinking about that.

You know, we're not changing the size of that Tyson anytime soon.

Yeah.

And you know, the one thing I just want to affirm.

I mean, we talk to the Hard Rock weekly.

Um so we have uh extremely active dialogue.

Um can I ask you this on that conversation?

What's that?

So can I ask you this on the conversation?

Yeah.

Is the conversation about like a like a three-show sharing or a four-show?

You guys book it, and then we can just rent them the facility type thing at a discount.

I mean, it that I mean, let's get creative.

Because the summertime they kind of got us covered.

They kind of got the community covered with the summer series.

That takes us off the hook for the suite owners and stuff, because they all go outside.

So on the in from the so we're really looking at about uh an eight-month window that we got to play at the Tyson, right?

So if they want to come in and if they're willing to go to the shows and everything, and if they can forego the cost, well, we got an empty arena.

You know, I mean that's that's something the council needs to discuss on, you know, what are we willing to, you know, sometimes you should give away the facility and let them do their thing to bring people to town.

So I mean, I'm just get creative in your thinking when you talk to these guys.

Yeah, for sure.

And I do think with that in March we'll we'll hash it out as a council what that amount is, but I think we're probably all somewhat in agreement that we want, you know, we gotta put some water in your bucket.

Yeah, or we're just gonna drag around a dry mop and we're gonna continue to get excited about the circus and we do have to remember that Doug and Mike have to run that up to Churchill Downs, right here.

For sure, yeah, for sure.

Understand.

Just to clarify, you want us to bring something back to wrap up for the did he did you put that in your budget or not, the 500?

Um it we it's separate from our budget.

Yeah, yeah.

I know Craig is not a 500 guy, but put it in there, we can all debate it out.

So I want to know the results of that because these guys get paid on performance.

So if we're putting 500 in and increasing their performance and they're getting even more money.

Oh, sure.

That's I think your guys.

You can't you can't benefit from the additional money we're putting in and then get paid additional money.

I don't think that's an unfair, yeah.

I mean, I would agree.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Great point.

If you're going to do 500, there's got to be a trade-off right about that work.

Do you have a proposal that you can provide like a memo or something?

Yeah, we still don't have an old, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

That's pretty fleshed out what that what all that is.

Yeah.

I think that we can make this work.

And and you know, you know, to your point, Mr.

Mayor, that's time that's you know, yeah, that's a good point.

Let us think about it.

That's a that's a fair point.

Yeah.

It's got to be a blended great point.

Responsibility.

Yeah.

Craig wants 600, is what he was telling me in the Craig.

No, Rick keeps saying that kind of money.

Rick keeps saying think big, think big, and I said Rick.

Not that big.

Not in the bathroom.

Not that big.

Anything else?

Okay, thank you.

Up next we have police department, page 215.

Chief Rex Mueller.

Good morning, council members.

Um very happy to be here.

I uh I'd be remiss if I didn't speak about finance's role.

They've uh done a phenomenal job under Theresa's leadership in and holding all of our feet to the fire so that we made appropriate cuts.

And I think our department uh really looked hard to try to cut where we could and still maintain a level of services that we have.

Um we just finished uh in the past year our own strategic planning, which I believe uh aligns very well with the city's strategic plan.

Uh obviously some of our priorities are staffing, uh getting our staffing back up to that allocated level so that we can maintain services, and we've been hiring a lot and we've been training a lot of personnel.

Uh and investment and training is obviously part of that.

Building partnerships, and I think one of those partnership pieces which stands out most is our work on the home task force.

Uh and then uh just as simply uh as mentioned is our goal is always to maintain uh high level of service, and you know, uh I'm sure you're aware from my updates, we just had our on-site assessment for CLIA.

This is our tenth accreditation, uh, which is simply outstanding.

We're American.

How many years is that Rex?

Tenth accreditation that means 10 years.

No, it doesn't.

Uh it so the early accreditation cycles were three years.

So we're looking about at about 33 years of accreditation.

Uh so we're one of the senior agencies, just even in uh across the country and in Calia is uh not a lot of agencies get to where we're at for on board early.

We believe in setting high standards for the agency, and I I think uh the parting comments of the assessor said it all, he said if I was starting my law enforcement career 40 years ago like I did, he said this is where I'd want to start it.

And he looked at the community support, he looked the way the department runs, the standards that we hold ourselves to, and it was very humbling to hear that.

And all due uh to the work of the officers and staff, uh the superstars.

Uh we challenge them every day to do things that are very difficult, and they rise to the channel time.

So can't thank them enough for the work.

And I I would like to add one more thing.

In my interview, we had Council Bluffs here interested in modeling themselves after Sioux City.

Yeah.

Uh they're working on their first accreditation.

Yeah.

We are we invited them up because we want to support other agencies.

We see the value in setting high standards.

And uh, very impressed is the feedback that I got while we were in the room together.

Yeah, great agency.

Great agency.

If your performance measurements are from fiscal year 25, when will you have the performance numbers for 26?

Uh the performance is 25-26.

They should they should be updated.

But part of our issue is that a lot of a lot of the crime data that we provide as far as performance measures is given to the Federal Government, then they reinterpret it.

So we're we're actually currently in fiscal year 26.

So these will not be, they won't be available until June 30 of this year.

So these are not 18-month-old numbers, these are six-month-old numbers.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Yeah.

But still there's there is some delays, and that's why when we give you, like uh some of the performance measures as far as the crime data, what we're giving you is preliminary numbers.

That's the way that we record them, the State of Iowa records them, and then we expect the Federal Government to uh to reinterpret it.

Because Iowa's laws don't specifically align with the way that the FBI interprets crime data.

So it's always a weight game, but when we reach out to the council and reach out to the media in January, is that's based on our preliminary numbers, and then it's a weight gain to see how how they look at our numbers and how they reinterpret them.

And it's usually, I mean, it's accurate to our area, but we want to make sure that we're providing you with the uh federal numbers too.

Rex, do you want to speak to stats that were maybe thrown out Monday on prime percentages?

Yeah, that's so one of the battles that we always fight, um, this is and we always have been, and I'm not about to change.

Uh we uh we are a customer service agency.

Uh if somebody uh steals the $2 yard nome from your front yard and you make a report with us, we come and we take a report.

There is a lot of agencies that set a threshold uh that they won't even come or generate a report unless it reaches a certain threshold.

So our status as an accredited agency is a customer service as a community policing agency.

When somebody calls, you're gonna get us.

And so a lot of times those statistics that we report are are simply because of that.

Now I can get you numbers, we can show the numbers, but I was a little dismayed at the way that uh that Flock uh rolled out their analysis.

Um I sent, I attached a memo to the Info to Capital this past week to give you a little perspective on on how we gather information and what that information uh really means.

And every year when we give you the crime data at the beginning of the year, you're gonna get a comparison of us to us.

It's not fair to compare us to other communities, nobody has our demographics.

Um what we've noticed is uh a very long time we've maintained a very steady uh crime rate.

And uh I think this is an extremely safe uh and prosperous community.

And that's what we look at.

We always say, hey, don't compare us to others, compare us to us.

Now, those safe cities, I think uh the flock, and I think they offer technology does offer us uh a way to uh reduce our crime and be more proactive.

And that's why we advocate for systems like that.

But I don't like how that was rolled out.

I I don't think it was a fair comparison.

You can make statistics look like anything.

Again, I would recommend that everybody uh look at Sioux City compared to Sioux City and what we're doing.

And this is a great, no doubt about it.

I feel very comfortable here.

I think the citizen and the uh the cooperation that we get between citizens and our officers and staff makes all the different uh years and years of community policing has benefited us in that uh citizens feel like part of the solution, uh not just you know, just call us and come fix my problem.

They want to be part of the solution, and I think we do that better than any community.

Uh so I wouldn't be alarmed by any of those.

We're gonna provide explanations every year when we run our crime data so that uh you have very specific understanding of where we're sitting, uh what we're doing, uh, what the rates are and and how safe our community is.

Great place to live.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Chief, when I met with you in 2025 during the campaign, also had a chance to meet with Chief Collins.

One of the questions I asked both of you was where are your fears?

You know, is there anything that we're not doing that adequately addresses public safety?

And I think one of them that I mentioned to Chief Collins was the issue they had in Texas last year where they had the significant flooding.

And for $80,000 county could have had a warning system that would have eliminated the concern of the young ladies and the counselors that were killed or that died during that disaster.

So I I continue to ask the same question, but I'm asking it in a kind of a particular way this morning.

The school resource officers, how do you work with the school system to make sure that we're adequately safeguarding our schools?

And and are the school resource officers funded by general funds, or the is there a separate fund that a grant fund that supports that?

Well, the school resource officers, they actually currently about I believe around 70 percent of their uh wages are paid by that.

We are renegotiating with the school right now.

Um and that would give them more access too.

They do have summer programming.

Um there's obviously new school administration.

We're working with them uh to pay their fair share, but the benefits uh for the school system and having those officers there and uh the benefits to the department is uh is the partnerships built with the schools are as good as any partnerships.

We're engaging with youth uh in the schools at a very non-threatening level.

The most of what those school resource officers do is not policing, although they take a very, you know, zero tolerance approach to vaping and any criminal behavior.

Obviously, they're addressing criminal matters, but just simply their presence, their work with the students, it's very proactive.

Um we have a lot of police officers whose uh on our department who, because of their interaction with SROs, uh chose this as a profession.

So the early engagement with youth cannot be understated.

The benefits we'll never know all the benefits having folks in the school, but the presence, the safety.

Uh not only do the high school and middle school SROs work with strictly those schools, they will go to the satellite schools.

Uh they will address things outside of schools.

Um, you know, you're aware that we've had issues around West High, which we work to alleviate.

Officers aren't glued to those schools.

They step out in the community when when a community issue relating to those schools arrive.

And uh I just don't think you can understate how important those of all the times that we've had to make cuts to the department, we've made some adjustments, we haven't filled positions because of vacancies.

We've always kept uh the officers in that one thing that we never really even considered uh not filling those positions.

Now, you know, there could come a day where that would come under consideration, but that's the value that we place in in having those officers.

And again, it's one of those things that you'll never it's interesting I you know that you asked this, sir, is that one of the most frequent things I get from members of the public who approach me that are in their 30s and 40s, they remember their school resource officer.

They remember who it was that interacted with them, you know, 20, 30 some years ago in high school asked about that person.

Absolutely.

Leo Miller.

And so those are those are engagements that you know you can't put a price on.

We're dedicated to that.

I think the school sees the value of the officers, uh, they're very financially invested in that and physically invested in that.

I've never heard conversations uh from the school board about you know devaluing the presence of those officers.

They're just part of our operations.

Uh they assist the schools, but they also assess us, and that when issues can be handled within the school, don't have to thank the district car uh to address that.

So SROs are very well equipped to address what address enforcement efforts in the schools.

On a s on occasion, they'll need the assistance of district officer or district cars.

But by and large, they're handling the issues themselves, which alleviates our uniform personnel from having to respond to the to every issue at the schools.

So very symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship with the schools that uh, you know, again, we'll never know uh most of the benefits that happen with that relationship because we're avoiding trouble by our presence, we're setting a standard, uh, we're engaging with youth, probably uh, you know, such positive engagements that it's it's leading to positive outcomes for a lot of these youth too.

And we're teaching classes too.

That was another thing that we've done in the last couple of years is they're teaching uh in the high school level, the officers, the SROs are teaching criminal justice classes as part of a potential career pathway.

Uh I mean that's those are just uh great ideas and and positive outcomes.

And um I see the actions of the officers within the schools, I get body cam footage every now and then, and the positive way that they're interacting, the de-escalation skill that they're deploying, the the manner that they treat these handle with care initiatives, things like that, when students are in crisis, they're intervening.

So just doing a great job.

Can't do that enough about that.

I want to clarify that um 70 percent of nine months right now is currently paid by the schools.

Um the rest is general funds.

However, right now um one of the captain, Captain Bertrand is working with the schools to renegotiate that plan.

Um, and they'll they'll talk to their board next week to determine if that's um if that plan is in place at that time.

They would take on a small uh a little bit larger portion of then of the expense from this from the city.

Thank you.

Chief, I don't remember my school resource officer, but that's a whole different conversation.

Uh I do have a question.

Like you, yeah, we we didn't want to know them, right?

Um but I I do have a couple questions, uh, and it just kind of goes back to like what we were asking the museum.

On your records uh section of your budget, you have um or police records technician in your compliments seven, and then part-time uh 1.65.

Um what's the uh just kind of looking at having both uh what does that look like for you?

Well, so call volume is and not just not just records, but the redaction transcription specialists.

So that was the uh position that you guys signed off on.

We're adding responsibilities to those sections.

Now uh some of what uh our record staff, our civilian staff are doing is based on uh volume, and so having the accessibility of part-time staff to bring them in as needed uh to me is a very positive thing for the city now, especially those redaction and transcription staff.

Um I think in one of the prior council meetings I mentioned to you that the open records requests, meaning I want reports, but now that we have body cameras, we have video too that needs to be reviewed uh for any privacy issues, HIPAA violations, redaction, and those have increased by 300 percent.

So some of the volume uh in that support services division, those civilian staffs, their uh their demand has gone up significantly.

And we haven't increased staffing.

We're looking at trying to see how we can utilize things like AI for some of our uh, you know, uh transcription functions.

We're trying to see how we can leverage technology to lessen the burden on some of these staff and then shift it to some of the newer demands.

So I think we've got we've taken a very progressive look at our civilian staff.

It's you know, you can ideally you can say, oh, well, this new technology will allow us to do this.

Well, we have to see it first.

Uh so changing those jobs descriptions within that division in the uh in the support services division, increasing responsibilities and trying to shift towards uh what we believe we will need in the future based on the demands of the public is what we're doing, and that's going to be a wait and see.

Our our plan is to, as we uh shift these responsibilities and rely more heavily on technology that will let the council know.

If if people's workloads are lessened and we can uh reduce staff in the future, that's what we're gonna do.

If you know, but those that's kind of a wait and see, which is why we're redefining some of the positions in that division that we're talking about.

Records department, uh those are by and large the civilian positions, and I think that's what you're referring to.

So we've got records text, also got the transcription and redaction staff.

Staff.

So they work on they serve different functions, but the bottom line is the everything that we do within the agency from a paperwork and a record standpoint.

And now and and the same thing with the word processing, right?

Yes.

Okay, because of the question.

And and then I just had a question about animal control.

Uh can you just give me some some background or understanding of the question?

Well, we that's obviously a contract function.

So the city uh is invested in having an animal control function.

In fact, we have a lot of communities around us that request assistance that we don't provide because they're not financially invested in our animal control services.

But um we contract uh with a provider who who then fulfills those functions.

Obviously, the building, the animal control building, uh the vehicles, those are our resources, and the contractor then utilizes those resources uh for the animal control function.

And um they it's it's interesting.

They have come back uh for some increases to to keep staffing in the last few years, and I can understand that.

Uh it's a competitive hiring environment.

But I think they've been uh very responsible with city funds and the functions that we asked them to fulfill.

And one of the things that they like, one of their functions is adoptions.

Uh they work very hard and and they as a company can profit from those adoptions to offset costs, uh, but at least that way, we're not destroying more animals than we need.

So uh I think they've been, Cindy and Chris and their staff have been very good at uh partnering with like Humane Society for mutual benefit, so that uh those resources are here in the community, and and uh if you've seen other communities that don't have that resource, uh there's some pretty significant issues with feral cats and and some of these things, and and uh while we do have animal control issues, I think that having a division like that staying on top of it uh is important for for us as far as service provider and as a an agency.

But that's a contracted service.

And we own the building too.

Yes.

That's why City and Chris do a great job.

It's a yeoman's really is.

I'm curious.

Um did they have the capacity to do work for other communities on a fee basis?

I I there yeah, I don't know that our contract allows that, but uh could that be something they could do?

We've never interesting to know that they have capacity.

Oh, they don't have the the space, but uh would the question would be and I'm sure the other those other communities would be uh if they have a compelling need now, they probably wouldn't want to pay for it next year.

I mean, uh I I think getting agencies to pay in would uh or getting other cities to pay in, that'd be that would be an interesting question.

Not very likely.

Well, I don't know that it's not very likely.

I mean when you look at our comm center, uh communication center, you have you have uh, you know, you have a group that are served by that com center and everybody pays based on usage, but I don't know how much it's been explored.

It's every now and then that we have outside communities that will ask for assistance.

And I think Cindy and Chris, what they do is they find outside organizations, uh, you know, rescue places and try to help divert that and help those community out, communities out with knowledge, not necessarily using our resources for other communities who aren't paying uh for the services.

So they're still there's still a resource to those outside communities.

I'd have to ask Cindy and Chris how, you know, if if they would see a need for that.

Uh, I think it's in question.

Yeah, every now and then.

We we will get the physical capacity, I mean human resources.

Yes.

And every now and then we'll there'll be an ask and they'll reach out to us and they they find a way to assist them without using city uh you know paid uh resources that we provide and pay for uh for those outside communities.

So their their knowledge is just what I can.

So we own the building and equipment repair and maintenance.

What what kind of equipment do they have there?

Well, they've got you know, they their vehicles are one, so the animal control vehicles are.

So we own those two?

Yes.

No.

Don't own all of them.

They had one donated, because I asked that question.

I am sure they have one that they are nonprofit donated, and the trailers too.

Okay.

I'm thinking of the the physical vehicle.

We have we have one.

I think they have one if you check, I think they have had one that's been donated by their whatever OTSA or something, friends of the shelter, I think.

I think we have a list of assets that was asked for.

What's that?

I think we have a list of assets.

Right.

But I'm saying I think they have actually got like the trailers and that somebody else's purchase form, just so you know.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm thinking I'm thinking, uh, Mr.

Mayor, I'm thinking of the the ones that we see with the enclosures.

Yeah, but if you see one that says provide, I think cheap by the It does say photos on the side of it.

Yeah, I think that one was provided by some outside source, I think.

So we're responsible for the upkeep of them, though, of all the vehicles there?

I'm just looking at that million dollars there.

And so I think I don't uh don't hold me to that, but I I think I asked that question last year.

Question.

The uh so on the homeless task force, you've we we repeatedly have the same conversation a little bit on resources on where is that going to bleed out or not bleed out.

So I guess the question I have, it sounds like that there's some internal candidates that would be interested in being reclassified to that type of a division if that position was identified.

Is that correct or not?

Well, we what we did was um when you know, obviously we're doing short outs for you.

Uh when council advocated for its continued function, we are I would see those as a temporary allocation.

At some point in time, those were taken out of patrol functions.

Yeah, that's what I'm asking.

We are still not fully staffed.

So at some point in time, I think I would say we're still evaluating it.

And I think it's I think it's very valuable.

I think uh I think Jill uh is going to provide some new insight when she comes with me on Monday to talk about uh neighborhood services portion of the services.

But yeah, at some point in time I think the city is gonna have to have the conversation on whether or not this is a permanent for the.

But that's where I want to have the conversation now.

It's like so are you ready for us to propose uh an FTE for the homeless for a homeless task force if the if we have a uh uh a candidate that's knee deep right in it, or do we need to propose that we just reclassify an existing FTED to into that because I I think both is viable for us is to say we keep saying is it these resources are being bled?

Well, let's shift let's shift a full-time employee that's existing that we know wants to do it and just reclassify them, and then there's no distraction of that they're being taken off of their assigned position, if that makes sense.

Well, and then if then if we want to go another a full FTE, make the ask.

I mean, it's I was waiting for it to come and it didn't come.

So I'm just curious on it you do we need it or what?

Uh I'm not and the only thing is I'm not the only participant.

Police department is not the only one providing within the city providing positions, so it's certainly I can comment on my side now.

Uh does it does it hurt me to not have those two positions uh responding to your regular calls for service?

Yes.

Is it providing a function?

Uh absolutely.

I think our eventually, whether it's now or in the future, uh I Mike runs the homeless task force.

I would, you know, that's probably a larger discussion that that our department along with field services, parks and rec uh all need to have uh to see what a you know a permanent.

I guess our thought is that is it is that constant feeling that it's uh it's not an identified position.

Let's identify it.

And then then then at that point, either then we request another officer if we're short or or whatever, but then it's it's dedicated versus you feel like it's uh that we're bleeding from another department.

So let's either identify it or let's ask for another FTE.

Because I do think it is going to be a permanent fixture at some point if we're getting the effectiveness, what it seems that we are getting at this point.

I think you guys are I think I think we're actually seeing, you know, I'm always going to complain about outside the rail and those types of the brass rails like that.

We're doing a lot better.

I mean, the guys that used to text me three times a day, uh, that there's people hanging around their properties, it's it's slowing down.

And you you can physically see it on the on the streets.

So again, I compliment that.

So whenever I hear that it's not the police problem, but you guys are the solution.

You're our finger, you're our arm as a as the city of part of the implementation.

So I guess I'm just again I'm gonna ask the question again: should we propose to reclassify a position or are you should we at this point start the discussion on an uh a homeless task force position?

Well, and I would ask you uh the council and Mike to have those discussions is uh what's what's a long enough trial period to gauge our effectiveness.

Now it's been in place for about three months.

Yeah.

And and we've been and we're still finding ways to track our successes.

Like, is there something that we're missing?

Um The test is coming with weather.

The weather is coming, that's gonna be.

No, yeah, and that'll that'll that will change the nature of the process.

That's the test.

Obviously, uh some of the issues we're dealing with now with the you know the uh squatting and stairwells and public spaces, uh, those aren't gonna be as significant when the heat uh you know and the temperature changes, it will change the nature of it.

But uh I trust the council to to determine what you think is appropriate.

But um I don't know.

I uh I would have to ask, is three months enough to evaluate the effectiveness?

And I think our crime analysis unit, and again, we're just one player.

So it's really you're asking me questions that it's hard for me to tell you because uh, you know, you guys have said we should not be the face of this.

I would agree.

We're not the only department invested in it.

We're not the only city entity.

There are other providers that are outside the city that are also uh in invested in this task force.

So uh it probably needs to be a larger discussion beyond just me to to answer those things.

Thank you.

So Teresa, um on for March, can you propose let's let's debate it out in March, let's uh a classification shift for the existing officer to homeless task force, and then if we want to amend it there and bring on a new position, we can have that in March.

Let's talk about it.

Well, I like to add to that.

Um while we're evaluating, my question is because I don't I'm not really in favor of taking an officer, full-fledged officer from regular duties and switching to task force.

We have somebody committed there, Julie, that we have to do that.

I understand that, but I would say I'm wondering if in the overall evaluation uh perhaps it's not a full officer, but perhaps a position that's created that's a liaison of I don't know.

Well, and they're they're functioning a certain way.

One of the uh so Jill will be speaking with me Monday.

Right.

But uh two count or uh two weeks from then, what I'm gonna what I have asked, I've asked our two uh officers who are functioning in those positions to come with me to be able to speak to you.

So if you guys have questions on the ground, they'd be good ones to ask what they are dealing with.

Um I think they'll be a they're a much better resource.

They're seeing it every day.

I'm getting the report outs, but I'm not out there with them.

So I think I think they should provide some insight a couple of meetings from now that will give you guys some ideas is what's getting done.

And and again, I think we need to pull in some of our other providers and talk about what they are seeing.

But again, I'm just wondering, does it need to be an armed full-fledged trained officer out there assisting?

Well, they're gonna be it's just what we call him or her, right?

I mean, if you if you're talking about reclassifying, well, if we were reclassify, it will be.

But it'll still be a full-fledged officer, that's my point.

It's just gonna have a different title.

And singular function.

Not if we create a new position.

Well, I I would say that our position is somewhat defined, even though it's a temporary duty spot.

So the question would be um, you know, do you just can do you give us that?

Do you add to our allocation and those people are permanently assigned to the task force?

Can we afford to leave lose two officers?

Well, no, if uh we that's we are committed to the as a department, we are committed to addressing this issue.

I think it's I think we're handling it.

I think what we've done is very innovative.

What we and by we, I don't mean police department, I mean all of our participants, is really cutting edge, and I think we're having some impact.

So larger discussions, hard for me to tell you outcomes because I'm not the only uh participant, but um that'll be up to probably Mike to have uh to have discussions with you guys and then the other participants to to categorize their needs and and what participation in this task force is costing them and how at what level they can continue to participate.

Um hard for me to say right now uh forecast.

I think we're doing a very good job, and I think what we're doing day to day is giving us an idea of how effective we can be.

Uh it might need tweaks.

I mean, we might need less particularly.

Oh, and and I would expect less.

You know, this is uh a learning period right now.

Very, very data gathering, et cetera.

How many openings do we already have on the force right now, though?

Uh so we looked at our numbers.

I think we're at uh we we are at about at present, at this particular moment, not taking into account uh the people who will be leaving the agency, we're about six short.

But uh you have to understand that uh many of those are either in training or have conditional officers and are set to go to the academy.

So streetable officers, we're you know, probably down about 15 officers, roughly.

I'd have to look at the numbers.

I can provide them in the next council update.

But back to my point.

I'm not sure that we can body counts for staffing afford to take two active officers and commit them to a title change, classification change at this time.

Yeah, and it it's it's tough, but I but then you're always replaced them.

Yeah, I get it, and we're always hiring.

So the I think when a decision is made by the city, uh, if you would, you know, if it would increase the department's allocation to account for that, then we'd hire for those positions.

Yeah, I'm not concerned about that.

The jobs will open and these keep working them through.

But I like the idea.

I like the idea that there's people on the ground that you have that are actually enjoying the work, the feedback that I get is that they're feeling some satisfaction doing it, which is fantastic.

That's the point.

You will be able to hear it from the horse.

So thanks.

Right.

So having them here will probably be helpful.

So if you've got good questions, they'd be good ones to ask in a couple of weeks here.

So Chief, uh, you're reducing the drug task force dramatically.

Is that disbanning or no?

So it it uh Mr.

Mayor, a number of years ago we had uh we had a a bigger presence in the task force.

Now, Burn Jag and uh height of funding has uh main, but burn jag funding is uh slowly reduced.

But we also were gonna allocate those people where we had that thought they had the most impact.

And so what we started to do is we started to merge some of those personnel from the drug task force to the SIU.

Uh and so we bolstered our special investigations unit by pulling personnel from there.

Now we maintain a presence there, uh, but we have uh and that's we're gonna continue to evaluate, we're gonna continue to make sure that HIDA is invested in that task force.

But we as a department have to have to make decisions on what we think will be most impactful for the area.

And I can tell you that having special investigations has been to me more impactful.

However, we are still we still maintain a presence and we have shorted them a position for now.

We have two sworn allocated down there, but they're working with one.

Um, but then we also deal with military deployments of those personnel.

And so that's something that we evaluate uh, you know, based on some of it, based on the funding, what HIDA looks like, um, but is as far as effectiveness goes.

And so yeah, we've removed our presence from that task force, and and unfortunately what we've seen is that uh it's hard for the the DEA manages that task force.

The Sioux City Police Department started it years ago but the DEA has since kind of taken over as a lead agency and they have been able to get a supervisor, a permanent supervisor in that office for a long time.

So they haven't been able to have an acting.

I talked to one of your former officers that's with them out of Minneapolis and he said that it's been open and nobody will take it.

Nobody will take it.

So it's it's kind of a wait and see.

We want to maintain a presence there's the height of funding is continuing.

I'm part of the HIDA executive board so we continue to go and advocate for funding height of funding being spent not just on us but other agencies that have partial funding from HIDA and as long as Midwest Hida is is willing to put resources into our task force we're willing to have personnel but again it's it's uh it what is the DEA what is the managing agency going to bring to the table and we're gonna we we look at them and if they're when we don't don't get the feeling that they're they're invested in our best interest too that's when we have removed personnel and we're going to place them where they're going to be most effective and I can't say enough about the SIU.

Well I've never been a fan of it so I'm not disappointed I'm not asking to be critical like no no I but I I think I think the way that we have managed and moved personnel from that have benefited the city and that's at the end of the day that's what we need to figure out is what's going to benefit the city the most and those were that's where those decisions are made.

So I realize you always have vacancies but I'm a traffic citation guy because I believe what Pete Gretkin always said you have to change behavior and you dipped in 2024 dramatically in citations issued.

You came back a little bit but you're still below 22 numbers on citations and as I drive around the city I don't see less people violating laws I see more is that a at least a focus that department traffic is always going to be a focus and we just refilled that was part of our problem with the hiring you guys know we had hiring vacancies and so um essential services uniform patrol always got the benefit of the doubt we left investigations positions unfilled we left step positions which was the traffic unit specifically unfilled and now we're starting to fill those so the as we get numbers back up there we want to refocus on that.

That's I mean you know this Mr.

Mayor that's one of the bigger concerns that people bring us when we have the town hall meetings is traffic.

And those are important and those are important to focus on but I would those 24 numbers we knew those would dip because we were leaving positions unfilled or we are actually transferring some of those personnel and assigning them to the watch.

Now they were still trying to strike a balance those traffic folks were writing tickets when they weren't responding to calls for service but we still had to give priority the calls for service we are getting past what is a huge bell curve as far as hiring goes there was a lot of hiring in the early 90s a lot of those folks like myself are getting closer to the end and so when they they retire we are then working to replace them.

So I would like to think that in the next couple of years we'll get to a point where we have hired for those huge hiring cycles that we had in the 90s and we are getting to kind of an equilibrium where we're hiring less officers per year because we have reached staffing levels and then we're gonna we're going to be able to maintain those units and get our numbers back up and address those issues.

But for now it's a it's just an interesting game we think we're getting up there and then we have a military deployment or have some injury losses or unexpected retirements and uh it's you know we're playing the game but the positive thing is our hiring has been good.

We've had quality candidates this week we had a hiring orientation that was something we didn't do years before we're doing everything as an agency we can to recruit and hire talent to replace our losses and we're having more success than a lot of departments so that's a positive thing.

One more thing just a concerns dramatically down from 23, 22, but on the rise again do you see that as a concern?

Well that depends sometimes it's uh is sometimes those narcotics levels and the seizures are dependent upon the size of a seizure so I mean you could get a a you know I think officers are regularly working drugs just a couple of nights ago and I don't know if I put it in the council info uh traffic stop led to some good seizure and some firearms and some prohibited persons owning those but a large seizure can sometimes uh skew those but drugs is always gonna drugs drive crime illegal illicit drugs uh can very much drive some of our other crimes to include property climbs so that's what I'm worried about.

Illegal illicit drugs uh can very much drive some of our other crimes to include property climbs.

So that's what I'm worried about.

All because the seizure numbers are down.

Yeah.

So they're up from last year.

And that's always gonna be, and that's that goes back to, Mr.

Mayor, that goes back to that that discussion I had with you on SIU, that special investigations unit are focused on gun crime, drug crime, uh vice crime, some of those things that and they and we have left them short also.

So as we get our numbers up there and we get that SIU fully staffed, that'll be another tool that we can use to address some of the drug crime, and uh, you know, it's like any criminal activity.

You take out some of the big guys, and you're gonna see a reduction on the back end as far as uh criminal activity and violent crime.

So thank you.

Any other questions?

Thanks, Chief.

Thank you.

Chief Ryan Collins.

Uh good morning, Mayor and Council.

Um Fire Department's proposed uh fiscal year 27 operating budget is a maintenance level budget.

It does represent a 2.3 percent increase over the pre fiscal year.

Uh 86 percent of our costs uh are attributed to employee compensation.

Uh 10 percent is allocated to um expenses that are outside of our control, fuel, utilities, insurance, that sort of thing, even only about 4 percent uh being discretionary funds for the purchase or replacement of essential equipment, um training, that sort of thing.

So uh we're kind of limited on on what we can uh spend our our funds on.

Um special thanks to finance.

Uh we met several times with Teresa and Sarah and the rest of their staff going line by line, 340 some odd lines, um, and we looked at every single one of them to see where we can reduce.

Um notable reductions, uh anticipated contract overtime needs.

Um over the last 18 months or so, we were down up to 16 people at one point.

Um I'm happy to report we are down to two, um, which is fantastic.

That will help with those overtime needs uh in the next fiscal year.

Uh some operating equipment uh reductions, CMG uh CMG leased charges.

Previously the ambulances were under the operating budget.

Uh when we acquired the four new ambulances back in January, those were moved to the CIP budget.

So that does reflect uh in the operating budget as well.

So some of the challenges that we have going forward uh is just that continued call volume.

Um we we uh the mayor mentioned workload just a little while ago.

Um over the last five years, our call volume has gone up 22 percent, 45 percent over the last 10 years, and we're doing that with the same number of people.

Um there was been some conversations in the past, um, and I just want to make sure that we're clear on when we're talking about a performance measures, specifically our our incident call volume.

Um that is each incident is is one uh address that we go to.

It's not the number of units that are responding.

So on a typical EMS call, you're always gonna get one engine and one ambulance.

That's one incident.

If we go to a fire where we have three engines, two trucks, an IC, a medic unit, seven units, that's still one call.

So you'll when when I communicate with you through memos or whatever, um I'll I'll either use the term incident, which means an address, or responses, which is the number of units that are going to that particular incident.

So I just want to make sure that we're clear when you're looking at the performance measures that when when it mentions incidents, that is one address that we're going to.

Um some of the other challenges, uh obviously the the uh applications that we are receiving for employment.

Uh we test for firefighter at least every two years.

Um the last couple of years has been almost every year because we're exhausting those lists due to the vacancies and the and the hiring cycles, uh no different than than PD.

Um the number of applicants continue to decline.

Um this last cycle for firefighter was actually higher than the previous year, which was great.

Um the recent paramedic application period uh garnered only three qualified applicants.

Uh and that's going to be a challenge going forward to make sure that we have enough people on those civil service lists to to replace those that are retired or move on.

Uh and then finally continued uncertainty with the GEMT funding, which is a huge revenue source for the city.

Uh I spoke about that at legislative day.

So far, it doesn't look like there's any threats to it, um, but at any point that can change.

That represents roughly between three to four, five, six million dollars a year on Medicaid reimbursement to the to the city to allow us to provide transport services.

So we're constantly keeping an eye on that GEMT program.

Good news though, uh that I mentioned the call volume continues to increase.

The last two years it has started to level out.

Um so that is encouraging.

Um the cost of fuel has continued to decrease.

Um I wrote my notes prior to the events that were reported this morning, so that could change.

Uh and then as mentioned earlier in in Theresa's opening statement that the pension, the MF Pro SI uh pension contribution rate for the city did decrease one percent.

So with that, I'll uh I'll open it up to any questions that you might have.

Well, Chief, I I definitely uh love your metrics and your performance things.

And I'm glad that you did point out that you guys went line by line because I was gonna ask about everybody else seems to look uh or have a decrease, but there is like no decreases there.

But um, you know, you and I do understand I I think that we have to um uh is there a way to study uh as it relates to the the overtime uh that that comes through your department, and I know you know if there's an incident you you you can't get around that, but we we are we are continually looking at our overtime.

Uh last year, fiscal year 25, um we had about 15,000 hours of overtime contract overtime, and that majority of that is due to that rig staffing.

We do have minimum staffing levels every day.

We have to have so many bodies on the rigs.

Um when when we go below that threshold, then we need to staff that with overtime.

And at some points it's been mandated over time where we've had to tell somebody you can't go home, you have to say another shift, and that is very difficult.

Does that include those training officers or is that separate?

That is separate.

That's the training officers.

Um fiscal year 25.

Uh each day we were averaging about 43 hours of overtime.

Uh in particular, what is that?

How does that look in in dollars?

I mean uh in a fiscal year 25, that was 1.6 million.

So I'm I'm encouraged by our staffing levels as it stays today.

Uh going forward, I anticipate a lot less overtime.

That's still less than it used to be five years ago.

I'm sorry?

That's still less than it used to be five years ago.

Yeah, in fiscal year 25, we had 35,000 hours of overtime.

I'm sorry, fiscal year 22, 35,000 hours.

Yeah.

How come so many hazmat out of region calls?

And how do we get paid for that again?

That's part of our regional hazmat program.

Right, but it's a bad amount.

So if we got a lot more calls, we just need it.

Is that my right here?

So each of the 13 counties pay a fee per capita uh to allow us to to staff maintain the equipment.

Um when those calls go out, we we respond, but we we do not take over those incidents.

We are there only as long as they need us.

Any equipment or materials that we use is billed to the RP.

Um so the only we we really don't have any reimbursement from the county, it's usually from that RP.

Right.

But why do why was so there are so many?

Do you have any idea?

I mean, that's amazing.

You got 16 of them.

That's more than one a county.

We yeah, we've had quite a few, quite a few more in South Sioux City than we've had in the past.

Um I think we've had a couple up north in the northern counties.

Um and we go to South Sioux under that program.

How are they involved in that?

It's it's through Dakota County.

What do they pay us?

Uh I have to add I don't have those numbers, but I think it's it's a flat amount per capita per county.

I think we should know that just because if we've got one count county that's running those numbers up dramatically, and we're not getting balance.

Didn't those um fees just come back to council and movie calculated?

Um, that was in the memo December count.

Those numbers have been pretty steady over all the years, and now all of a sudden they're jumping, and we can because when you pull that hazmat, you're pulling somebody out of a job that's increasing.

So that I just want to that's a lot.

So we'll have a memo come back.

Okay.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Uh I do I do have an improvement request.

Uh that's in.

Uh I brought it forth last year.

Um, and I promised you I'd bring it forth again this year.

Um, and that's for that administrative assistant chief position.

Um that represents a hundred and ninety-six thousand dollar uh increase, uh, or about 0.7% of our overall budget.

The uh just to kind of give you a little bit of background again.

Um in 2016 when the administrative assistant chief retired, uh at that point it was decided to move the position to a captain deputy fire marshal because at that time that's where the workload was.

Um in 2018, uh we stood up a an EMS division with 33 additional employees.

With that comes a lot of more administrative work from a human resources standpoint, and so all of the job duties that were farmed out that the the administrative assistant chief previously did was farmed out to other staff members, um, you know, both on shift that are working 24 hours, and then the fire marshal.

Uh unfortunately it's it's become to a point where they're unable to do their their primary duties uh as effectively as as we like them to do.

So um just the workload is there, we see the need for that administrative assistant chief back.

Thank you.

You can bring it back, but do you want us to bring it back to wrap up or not?

Or what's the I think the mayor does.

No, I don't I mean I've sympathized with what he's saying, but this is probably not a year I'm voting for any increases.

I can promise you that.

So but thank you.

Any other questions?

Thanks.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Parks and recreation, page 187.

Matt Salvatore.

Good morning, Mayor and Council.

Uh our budget this year is actually general fund support is less than what it was last year for parks and recreation.

So we're uh maintaining services without doing a lot extra.

We worked with finance to identify some uh reductions and some agreed upon changes, and we reviewed our complement uh clean things up there, so that's how we were able to achieve uh less this year than support general fund support this year than last year.

Lodge is that at least in part because of your management of parks and parks maintenance?

Yes, mark parks maintenance was the biggest change as far as complement goes.

Why is your I probably it's probably here, but I'm not seeing it.

Why is your leases of rentals down so dramatic?

What's that leases and page 192?

Is that due to the marina, Matt?

Yeah.

Uh yeah.

That's what due to the marina.

That was like 350,000 of it.

The marina.

Oh, the expenses went down as well.

That's because the revenue didn't generate that we were promised would.

Well, and I think the expenses went down accordingly, though.

Yeah, hopefully, but a lot of the listen, the expenses should go down because you're not gonna dredge every year.

The revenue should go up because now they can put boats in it.

So justifies the other one going down, doesn't necessarily in my mind.

The marina was a really big challenge last year because we didn't have gas.

So we'll have it this year.

I'm hoping for a much better occupancy rate usage of that facility.

They have a three-year contract run year two.

I think we can get out on social and really push that that you know, thanks for seeing us through our first bumpy year, you know, kind of got it, and we're ready.

Yep, and they're at the operating back.

They they rightfully so the gas is a big part of that.

Uh they're at the outdoor show this weekend, uh promoting the marina.

So marketing along with having uh facilities, there's been it it was the marina was in a lot worse shape than what we thought.

I mean, most of our time is just spent fixing things based on the damage that resulted in blood.

What's that?

Uh uh Kelly and Sarah are working through that.

I think that's I don't think that's specifically the marine itself, it's the Gali Rogers area.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

We're working on fixing those utilities so we can do an RFP for that.

Jolly Rogers, all right.

So that was my question.

Yep, that is being addressed.

Yeah, we're working on the utilities, and then I have an RFP ready to go.

Um so we're just waiting.

I'm hoping, yeah.

That's what we're waiting for FEMA money for is to repair a lot of that damage up there.

There are gaps, the shorelines crap, the fences are gone.

And utilities.

So the gas is running now.

Not yet, we're close.

So we had the we repaired the gang plank, so all the lines that go under the dock need to be addressed, and then we'll be so the majority of the work is done.

So just for clarification, the FEMA funds are reimbursable.

So after we complete the repairs, then we'll get FEMA funds for to reimburse us back.

So we don't wait for the funds.

We we we we uh complete the work and then they but we do have an obligated project with FEMA, so we are okay.

So we're scheduled for Jolly.

This looks terrible.

Do we're scheduled for utilities right now?

Or you were talking about getting scheduled.

Yeah, we've been doing some cleanup.

No, we we uh we're actively working on getting we'll give it something bid out to repair the utilities, and then we got to fill in a big sinkhole um where we shorted up last year, so there wasn't further deterioration.

So the question on the on the discussion on the mowing and stuff and the overall maintenance.

I know you presented on that.

Um we right now from uh do we have the same crews on the same sites every week or yes, we do.

There's just who's available.

No, it's the same routes with the same operator.

There's a little bit of overlap, but uh we'll be able to concentrate that on that a lot better this year with uh less real estate and economic development mowing that we've done in the past.

Okay, so we can have so we get pulled up, we don't get pulled away for to do other things.

Okay.

I'm gonna I'm gonna keep asking that question on the summer is it just seems like uh the same people need to be mowing the same parks, and there's some accountability there on the services there, because I lost control out a little bit.

Um then you think you maximized all of the ground you can farm out when it comes to third party mowing?

I yes.

Yes.

You're still gonna need your part timers.

Right.

Yep.

How many part timers is that?

Uh I'm trying to think it was no, I had it in my presentation.

I didn't bring that with.

I can bring that back if you need to.

Well, in the compliment at 7.25 FPEs, but they typically hire significantly more than that because it's only a period of time.

So I think budgeted for six months, but we only usually get them for three to four months.

Right.

Yeah, he I think he puts in for like 30 if he can't get them, but I don't know that he always gets them.

I had a slide in my presentation that I can dust back off if needed.

Yes.

The the the mowing and trimming is just a small portion of what they do.

So you think you're the right guy when it comes to what's going on with the parks.

So when it comes to the pools, yeah.

Um Lewis Park, yep.

Lewis Park, yeah.

So that one right there, that's scheduled for 125,000 paint job that we're gonna we're gonna invest in uh in a failing pool that we're doing there.

Would define failing.

Um is it long-term hole?

So that is it a long-term what hole.

Would you recommend that that pool being closed if you look at the pool closure?

I could tell you where we're at with the park board, has been evaluating all the pools.

So the plan uh to be proactive was with the water park opening this year, to take a look at all of our swimming pools, look at hiring, look at attendance, look at revenue, and evaluate what impact will the water park have on all of our swimming pools.

The attendance for our swimming pools have decreased significantly each of the last two years.

So that's a part of uh part of the whole conversation.

And uh and obviously the capital costs are accelerating that that conversation.

So that's been a topic of conversation for our park board for the last two, three years.

Uh we're we're hoping to get to that evaluation point this summer.

So we recommend closing Lewis.

I said if service level uh reductions are needed.

I think swimming pool are one place that we need to take a look at just because there's not other services that we can really paint.

Can we swim it?

Yes.

One more year.

I don't know.

Safety wise.

We can't we can't paint it before the season starts anyway.

So it would be after year with no paint.

Correct.

We're gonna have to.

We can't get a pr a painting project done between now and the we need to clarify that um because building maintenance has told us otherwise that it has to be painted prior to us being able to utilize it.

That has been the indication.

Okay.

So we need to.

I don't know how we get we would have to start like we would have to get that out.

It's got something to do with uh depth perception, and there's uh all sorts of different reasons why it people can't tell how deep it is and what I mean.

We gotta get that out for bid soon if that's the case.

Last month.

Yeah.

Well clarification out for bid.

We'll bring a memo back too and and discuss with um both Mike uh Matt and Stan.

They can get it.

Wait that long?

Well we can well, I wouldn't wait by the time you get back from wrap-up in two weeks, we'll have a plan in place and what we're gonna do.

Yeah, but by the way.

Not because it's wrong, but because the gut way that we have to work, you're not gonna get that thing a contractor hired by April 1st, and you don't have it hired by April 1st, not gonna get it painted by opening season.

And there's only that guy from Homer the last time I checked, even close it paints pools, right?

We can check and get that.

No, there's vendors out there, but availability, a lot of them are busy already.

They done were done by that guy in home or weren't there somewhere around in the birth.

They did leaf, yeah.

We can get an answer to council next week.

Yep, we can for sure.

I'll touch base with Stan on Monday.

We've got to hurry on that.

Okay.

Yep.

Uh rule it's a little bit.

Well, just Lewis and Clark, just Lewis.

I just think that's part of a broader discussion.

So give us an update on Leaf.

Because if you I was told that if we were forced rank, the problems we have with our pool system, leaf is actually top of the list.

Leaf is in the worst condition, correct.

Leaf is in the worst condition.

Yeah.

The public needs to know that.

Yeah.

So what's what's what's the forecast not to the worst condition, or what's our three-year vision with Leaf?

So although historically it's settled over the years.

We used to survey the the corners of the pool every spring and fall.

We've quit doing that because it has quit moving.

But historically, it was it was the pool was sinking.

Uh it's leveled out.

So it's fixed.

But there's still well, I don't know that's fixed, but the the issues aren't continuing.

So Matt, how how has your committee viewed the new water park and its likely impact to Lewis and Leaf?

I'm assuming you don't believe your committee, your board doesn't believe that it will impact Riverside.

But is there a general sense of what it's going to do to the numbers at Leaf and Lewis?

We anticipate the numbers will significant reductions or that's they really just wanted to rely on the data.

So they're they're trying to try not to forecast that.

Um and hiring has been fine for us this spring.

So after a year in, uh a year from now, it might be more of a challenge, but we're actually able to find lifeguards for this upcoming season.

I believe this investors at the pool at the water park have offered to integrate schedules if need be too.

Yeah, we could discuss sharing.

You know, you you want to everybody's gonna be wanting to be excited maybe to get to flash, but maybe we share and you can go out there for two days or whatever it might be and maybe share the schedules a little bit, which I think would be great.

I'm gonna say I'm never gonna be a proponent, you know this, Matt, closing our pools, um, unless we have a plan in place to replace them.

Um maybe we don't need three pools, maybe we need riverside and then we need one aquatic center.

Um but have got to have pools available to teach swimming lessons and get kids used to being in the water so they're not too afraid to take swimming lessons.

And we've got to continue on that path.

And until we have a backup plan, I just don't see how we can just oh well we're closing this pool and we're closing that pool because it needs maintenance.

Yeah, swimming lessons are the top thing.

Um that's a public safety issue.

But then there are alternatives to be able to being able to still provide those, but that's a heavy consideration.

I'm not against replacing, but I'm against closing without a plan.

Yep, understood.

Outside of Riverside, but Leaf is being used more than then David and Lewis, right?

I believe so.

It's it's been used.

We got a lot of adults that like to use that one.

Yeah, Leaf is the second highest attended swimming pool.

Leaf and Lewis are right there.

Aquatic center, everybody.

Put it right out there by Sealand Splash.

They're looking for a neighbor.

Yeah.

You can set that memo out on the wall and stuff.

Yeah, it looks like general fund supports about 231,000 for the for FY27.

Any suggestions?

We generate what revenue we we can, but we'll never generate enough money to offset the expenses.

So long term, I I said this before, long term, I think there needs to be a plan to what would that look like if long lines did not exist.

And how how could the how could there be support for everything that OVG 360 does out of that building for the Tyson Event Center?

That's a tough one.

Part of the short-term and long-term plan.

Yep.

Could be a retreat topic for council to come up with a okay.

Yeah.

Sooner than later.

Thanks, Matt.

Thank you.

We're actually going to change up the the um schedule here and move human rights.

Um I think we'll go over our lunch period with um Mike's topic areas here for the day.

So we're gonna let Karen go so she can leave for the day.

Page 159.

Good morning, Karen Mackey Human Rights.

Morning.

Morning.

Thank you for moving me up so I'm not the last person before you eat lunch.

So first I want to talk briefly about what we do.

Um we are a law enforcement agency that is uh charged with enforcing civil rights laws in a fair and neutral fashion.

In addition, we do education and prevention work trying to reduce discrimination in our community.

Um currently our educational efforts are somewhat limited due to reduction in staff.

Um one of the good things that's happened is that um one of our commissioners was able to write uh for a Gilcrest microgrant.

So we're getting five thousand dollars to help us put on faces of Sioux land.

Um she was able to do that because it's uh a grant she's very familiar with.

She has written other Gilcrest microgrants and was able to get that done in a pretty quick manner.

So staff is currently uh working on how they're going to uh use that money.

Uh we're hoping to infuse more art into Faces of Sioux land, and so it should be exciting this year.

So, you know, why are we important to Sioux land?

Well, part of the biggest reason I think is because having a local commission helps to make Sioux land a place where people want to live, not where they need to live.

None of us really need to live here.

I was born and raised here.

I love Sioux City.

But I might feel differently about it than other people.

I I love it with its pluses, its minuses.

I think it's a great community, but we want to get everyone to feel that way.

Everyone to love our community.

We don't want to have a brain drain where we lose kids once they go to college, they don't come back.

We want we want people to come back here.

So a local commission staff is uniquely positioned because we understand the community needs.

You know, think about the Sioux City PD.

When they're investigating local issues, they have an understanding of the local issues.

Okay, well, if you brought in law enforcement from uh the state, they wouldn't understand things.

There's still law enforcement, they would still probably do an outstanding job, but you start off by having uh an understanding of the community and what's going on, and that that helps to get things done.

Um it helps to can respond more quickly, can respond more thoroughly when you have a base understanding of what's happening.

The community trusts us because we're from here.

Of the three of us who are staff, um, two of us were born and raised in Sioux City, the other has lived here 20 years.

So they know us.

When someone believes they've been discriminated against, they get frustrated, they get angry, having local people to be able to jump on an issue right away, even though we're neutral, just the mere fact that we're involved right away, reduces tension, and it's better for the community overall.

We work with other local agencies, places like the Landlord Association with Women Aware.

We also work with regional organizations and national ones.

One that we've worked with, it's been a couple of years, but we have worked with the Department of Justice's community relations service to do some training here in Sioux City.

The last time we had them here, it was about protecting religious buildings because we all know that discrimination against religious minorities is on the rise, unfortunately.

So I did want to start by talking about the income we have in our budget and talk about our two partners.

We have cooperative agreements with two organizations.

The Iowa Office of Civil Rights.

Previously they paid us once a quarter.

So they've gone to a different model where now they will pay us next year for the work we've done this year.

Okay, so when we cross-file with them, essentially that what that means is we do the work, they pay help pay us for some of the work we've done to kind of reduce the burden of the city.

But they don't really do any work on it.

They do some filing, that kind of thing, but we're the people doing the work.

So just so y'all know, then you're not gonna see any money this year.

You're gonna see it after July 1.

Okay.

So HUD at the end of September, you all probably you might remember that the government briefly closed down for a little while.

And so on September 30th, by September 30th, HUD had done a couple of things.

Number one, they got all the appendices that go with your our contract.

They sent that out to all the fair housing assistance programs across the country.

The top page, they sent everything else.

And they had a Zoom call with all of us and told us that the money has been encumbered, so the money's sitting there, and that as soon as they could get the contracted out, they would get going on that and get us the money.

No fair housing assistance program in the country, has that first page yet, has a contract to sign, which means none of us have gotten our money.

We have all been working together to try to find out from HUD when that might happen, because that's important to every one of us, even small little commissions like us, where we're gonna get around 36,000.

There are some agencies, uh, large agencies that are really expecting a lot of money, and they're really hurting.

So we don't know yet.

We know that the money's sitting there, it is obligated, we just don't have it.

We will continue to work with others to do everything we can to uh rattle that cage and get that money because that's important to us.

Now, the last thing I want to mention regarding HUD is that they added new criteria.

Previously, we have been required to close 50% of our housing cases within 100 days.

100 days is a reach, it's a big reach.

On the average in our office, we have somewhere between six to seven housing cases a year.

It's not a huge number.

So it's really easy to miss that mark.

Um, the other thing is that we're not entirely in control of how long it takes to resolve a case.

If a respondent hires a lawyer, there's a hurdle that adds more days.

I'm not implying that lawyers are slow, but lawyers are busy.

What typically happens is under our ordinance, people are given 10 days.

Respondents are given 10 days to get back to us with their response.

So they wait to uh it seems like they wait till about day nine or 10, and then they talk to their lawyer.

And so their lawyer then calls us up in a panic and says, I just got this today.

It's the ninth or tenth day, and my client was supposed to have a response in, I need a continuance.

Well, we we are a neutral agency.

We need that response.

We need to know because their response may be enough that we can close the case.

We can't just close it without hearing from both sides.

So we give them an extension.

We will routinely, the first time out of the box, give a respondent's attorney a two-week extension because they need some time to research, figure out what's going on, what they need to do.

Sometimes they'll come back and ask for additional extensions.

We strongly discourage that.

They need to have a very good reason for that.

We can, and we have.

Yes.

And so and one of the issues is that sometimes attorneys they know that this is a time game a little bit.

And so they will think maybe they're running out the clock.

They're not really running out the clock, they're just hurting us.

If 100 days passes, we still investigate.

Doesn't matter if it takes us 300 days, we're still investigating the case.

It just hurts our statistics with HUD.

Okay.

Which could affect your funding in the future.

Well, it could, and it probably will, and here's why.

Like I said, 50%'s tough.

This year, HUD is up that to 75%.

And in talking with other directors across the country, no one has any idea how they're going to meet that number and still do thorough investigations.

Frankly, you know, there's some thought that it's just a way of trying to weed out as many fair housing assistance programs as they can.

I don't know because at the end of the day, I don't think there are going to be very many that can meet that criteria, especially the smaller ones.

It's going to be difficult.

We're trying, we're doing everything we can.

So our investigator, her priority is housing.

It's been housing for years, but her priority is housing.

Now, one of the issues we've run into, especially lately, is she's the only Spanish speaker in the office.

So we if we have someone who's a Spanish speaker who comes in, maybe they have an employment case.

They need to talk to someone.

They end up talking to her.

That takes up her time.

Now we do an investigator.

Yes, that's our investigator.

Oh, okay.

Is this person who's fluent in Spanish.

Now we do have a part-time intern this semester who's from Portugal.

So obviously he's fluent in Portuguese, and we actually have a Portuguese complaint right now.

It's been great because that person has taken up a lot of our investigators' time, and now he can take up our interns' time.

And we also have Spanish-speaking customer service reps that you can borrow that they know that they can be used in other departments.

Yes, so sometimes we've needed to do that.

Um intern, Spanish and Portuguese are very similar.

So in a pinch, he can help with that.

In fact, Jessica has gotten, so she understands a lot of Portuguese now because they are very similar, and she's had to deal with this individual quite a bit.

So anyhow, yes, we focus on the housing.

She deals with the housing, the other two of us try to do the other cases.

So I do have some statistics for you, and this comes from WIC.

So my secretary contacted WIC and wanted to know the number of external inbound calls.

So for the last fiscal year, we had 1,707 calls coming in.

That doesn't count.

Say that number one more time.

Sure.

Then this is external calls.

Inbound calls, 1,707.

What that doesn't count is internal inbound calls.

Say someone calls customer service.

They get transferred to us.

That happens occasionally.

Or maybe more often, the city manager's office.

Because you know, when people don't know where to go, they either contact us or they contact the city manager's office, is what it seems like.

So that also does not call count count us calling them back.

Maybe calling another agency, getting some information, calling them back.

But we thought this was a good pure number of like how many people are calling our office.

Whether they're calling you intentionally for a complaint or whatever, because I know in the past you've said, well, they may really need to speak to Mid-American Energy or our water department, or you know, they they don't know where to go, and sometimes you're the hub, and then you try to do a one-call resolution.

Yes.

Get them to where they need to go.

Yes.

So what we do when someone calls us, regardless, because we don't know to begin with if this is something that's going to result in a case or not, if it's regarded related to discrimination or not.

So we start with discussing the issues, figuring out what's going on, discuss with the person their options, because this is their life, they get to decide.

And then we help them determine the best path forward.

And if there is another organization that is better suited to handle their issues, we refer them there.

So on an average, according to WIC, we spend 19 minutes and 38 seconds on a call.

That's the average.

But on average, it's about 20 minutes.

Okay.

To run through what's going on, figure out their options.

And this is only people calling.

This isn't walk-ins.

We we get walk-ins almost every day.

Not a huge number, but sometimes we'll get several people in a day.

One of the things we do is we we track how many complaint forms we give out every month, and it's somewhere typically between seven a month to 12.

That doesn't mean that those are going to come back as cases, because again, ultimately the person gets to decide what they're going to do in their life.

If they want to file a complaint, they can file a complaint.

But if they're sounding like that's something that they want to do when we're speaking to them, we get them the complaint form, we'll email it to them.

If they want a hard copy, we'll mail it to them, and then it's up to them.

We don't go chasing complaint forms.

And one of the things this also means then is that because in this last year we've had only three people and we're all full-time, which means we have vacation time, sick time, and boy, we've been using those.

Um it means sometimes there might only be one person in the office, and it has meant that we haven't been able to do as much educational or outreach events as we would like.

We have used commissioners at some times for some of those, but um commissioners can't do it all.

We have an intern, he's great.

Hardworking kid, English is not his first language.

He's been in this country going to school.

He's a soccer player who discovered you can get scholarships in America to go to college, and so he's only known English three years.

And geez, he's college level at speaking speaking English, so he's doing a great job, but he can't do it all for us.

Uh what he's helping us do is not drown.

Not drowned.

Yeah.

Sorry, not drowned.

We're treading water, okay.

We're not swimming, we're not in a race.

We're treading water and trying to not drown.

We've been going in reverse the last year.

So the the last fiscal year, we ended the year with 13 pending cases, plus three cases that needed to be set up for public hearings.

And most almost all of those cases were six months old or less.

We were really well positioned at the end of that year.

Now we have 20 pending cases.

So seven more.

We have four cases set for public hearing.

But of that 20, a number of those are getting close to a year old.

They're not there yet.

But well, they'll turn, they'll throw in a euro later next month.

And as I said previously, not been doing a lot of outreach.

That's horrible for a respondent.

Most people cannot imagine how horrible it is to have a civil rights complaint filed against them.

It's an embarrassment, it's a stress.

If we can get on a case as soon as it comes in and get it resolved one way or another, however that happens.

How quickly would you like to accomplish that?

I mean, what's your goal rather than having it stretch out, you know, three quarters of a year, nine months or a year.

Well, I'd like them all resolved in uh 180 days or less, six months.

And I think that's a good goal.

Um I'd love to get it so it's even lower.

Eventually I'd get like to get it so it's you know, 120 days maybe.

But but yeah, if we can get it so it's six months.

Um I think most uh respondents would understand we're trying to do a thorough investigation here, it's gonna take a few months.

Um you know, one of the things about having a local commission, there have been times that we have had cases against local small businesses where we've been able to get those closed in two months or less, sometimes only a month.

And typically what has happened with them is they rarely hire an attorney.

Just your presence.

They call us up.

Um, you know, I can't talk about like what it what organization, but for example, one of the first ones ever dealt with that was a local small business, they were just big enough that we had jurisdiction.

The owner of the business called me up and said, Hey Karen, why don't you come on over to my office?

So I did, and because they were just right downtown, and uh I got there and we had some chit chat, come to find out.

I didn't know this, he did like he knew my father years ago.

Okay.

So that's one of the reasons he felt comfortable with me.

But he told his secretary, Karen's gonna be investigating this.

You give her access to anything she needs.

If I'm not here, just give it to her.

And we were able to conclude that case in a month, and it actually was a no cause.

But um it was because they knew about the commission, didn't really know me, but knew about the commission.

He knew my father, he thought I'd be fair, gave us a chance to do a fulsome uh thorough and fair investigation, and we did, and we did it quickly.

I'm I'm Karen, I'm confused.

Is it only your housing cases that require a 10-day response?

No.

So you just said I'm trying to make sure I understand where your strain points are.

You're telling us that in certain cases you're having trouble getting the respondents and or their attorneys to respond back.

Oh, we always are.

But now you're telling us that the respondents want to get this addressed because they're embarrassed and they want to get it resolved.

They do I'm I'm struggling understanding where the pin points are.

No, I I get it.

Um yeah, people are embarrassed.

People respond by being embarrassed different ways.

There are some people that just let's get this taken care of.

That's a minority.

Um I don't look at that paper, if I don't accept service by certified mail, it does doesn't exist.

And so, yes, sometimes frequently we have difficulty getting uh respondents to first accept the stuff from the mail carrier and then respond to it.

So that's the first thing.

It's a rarity that we have people that jump on it and let's deal with it.

It's wonderful when it happens, but it's rare.

Do you have any other questions for me?

Just a real quick question, federal government operating grants.

Um is that the HUD stuff or yes, that's HUD.

Yes.

So we have two cooperative agreements.

One's with the Iowa Office of Civil Rights, which used to be called the Iowa Civil Rights Commission, and then the other one is with HUD.

Specifically with the fair housing division of HUD.

So yeah, we're waiting for that money.

Um who knows when we'll get it.

I know we had someone from finance, uh, I think it was last week come in and just kind of like, what's going on with that?

And that was included in your um the report you got for the quarterly reports.

We always indicate why the revenue is below, and that's why they were reaching out to Karen once.

Just to delay.

Yeah.

Because it it it's ridiculous, frankly, but it's just where we're at right now.

Um we have no control.

The feds are in the driver's seat with that.

So any other questions?

All right, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

I think so.

Okay.

Yeah.

We're about right on.

Okay, we'll break for lunch and we'll be back in a half an hour.

I would I'm sorry I had to leave for a minute, but I would like to at least bring back the human rights to not ask excuse me, not ask for any more additional tax dollars than the year before, which would be 7481.

Yep.

So I'd like that brought back.

Okay, we'll add that to the wrap-up and notify them.

Okay, we'll move to administrative services, page 59, Mike Clott.

Uh for administrative services, as we keep looking at things, probably the the largest increase that's being passed through is postage.

So one thing for council to consider would be right now, we are defaulting to electronic for their utility bill and making them opt out for paper.

If you want to consider if they opt out, adding a dollar fee or something on that to pay for that postage if they decide to opt out.

So just for consideration, because postage is up significantly in the budget.

And we can bring it back and wrap up if you want to, if not, just no, I I don't have a problem with that.

I even we do a lot of mailing out for W 2s and 1099s, and this is the first year, it's just gotten out of hand.

We we've charged our clients for that postage because you can't continue to eat that.

Yeah.

Uh Mike, do you send out many registered letters?

Um no, I don't think that's a big piece of it.

Not through adding.

Well, it's more than you think in the city.

Yeah, but it's more than you think.

Yeah, it's uh permanent.

And in fact, in the engineering uh or in public works, we learned that um, and it was due to the notices that ARIS group was sending out, that just because they don't respond to that notice, or they choose not to go pick it up, I should say.

Our duty is over, that we are not required to send a second notice or a third or whatever it might be.

And we've had that verified through legal that that's it.

You're one and done.

You did your due diligence, you sent the required document.

If they choose to avoid it, not go pick it up, that's not on us.

So I think making that known to all departments that you don't have to do a repeat.

I mean, it's I don't know, 10 or 12 bucks or something.

I forget how much they said it was costing.

Ridiculous.

Yeah.

All right, so we can cut it at the one when we're required to send it, but then we don't need to follow up if they don't respond.

Okay.

Would you like to bring back the opt-out fee for wrap-up?

Yes.

Yeah, we'll bring that back.

And isn't there also some legislation contemplating the public notice requirement?

Yes.

We've been fighting for that.

Yeah, so are we getting any indication where that stands I believe it's out of subcommittee?

So I think it is at a subcommittee.

Good.

That would that will help reduce for the publication fees.

Good.

Yep.

Okay.

Airport.

Page 71.

Probably just items of note is this is this next year is a essential air service timing proposal for us, usually every three years.

So this will be in that fiscal year.

Overall, the expenses are down slightly.

Um the difference is this 27 will be the first year in five years we are out of uh COVID relief money, so that's where that increase comes back into play.

Where's that line item, Mike?

So federal operating grants.

Okay.

That's the $600,000 reduction.

Yes.

The expen.

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm looking the wrong way here.

I do want to note that the um performance measures for FY25 inadvertently did not get updated, so we're requesting that that gets updated.

Um will I can provide that in the wrap-up packet just for your information that you have it prior to the um the approval of the budget running the concessions now?

OEG.

Some of that's due to flight times.

You know, the that success of that concessions is due to flight times.

So I think they're better now since January with a third flight in there.

Um, so I was visiting with somebody yesterday that told me that they were notified of some flight adjustments to a flight from Denver.

Is that a permanent adjustment or is that uh one off?

Starting May 21, right?

There will be a flight change.

And is there anything that we can do?

Are they adding another time or completely eliminating that return flight?

We're not eliminating anything, just the flight times are changing.

The time is changing, okay.

For the better, actually, we think.

Now the Chicago flight is the kickoff flight in the morning.

Okay.

And coming back, so somebody can go to Chicago and back business wise in one day.

And that was a struggle before.

This was a flight from Denver.

So what what's the changed time?

I I don't know off the top of my head.

Okay.

But May 21 is the new time.

Mike, I think I asked you this before uh CIP.

What is the restaurant?

What's so we have a restaurant out there as an amenity, and that's what the mayor was asking about who runs that the OVG runs the the concession part of that.

It's not a very restaurant.

I don't think just in the hangar or whatever it is.

No, it's restaurant.

Yeah.

Kind of little cafe.

Yeah.

We have no uh risk in that, so we just get a percentage back on what they sell.

So I wanted to.

This is the place if you want.

I know the previous council made their position known on the LEC route.

Just if there is any direction to look at that without um or wanting county participation, I guess this would be the time for that.

I remain the same.

The county should have approached us prior to completion of their business plan out there, and I don't believe that our citizens should put the bill for their relocation.

Now, if they want to talk about some cost sharing or something like that, I would be open to that.

But have they come to the table?

No.

Right.

So then I don't change my stance as one council member.

Okay.

Give me some background.

Sure.

The um the one that new LEC got built, we don't currently run a bus route out to that facility.

And the county has funded us to, but they're not interested in participating in any of that cost.

Which is around 100,000 to go out there two, three times a day for the year.

Yeah.

Also, we looked at the fuel pricing.

But transit's a large fuel user, so we are gonna pass along some fuel savings in the current year next year's budget.

Yes.

So we do have uh so we looked at the three largest users, and we looked at their fuel based because we set this way back in July, and then we determined hey, the fuel is a lot lower than we thought it would be.

So we looked at this current year and said, here's where we lie right now, and we feel comfortable reducing years budget by what we feel will be under in this year.

So for um transit, police, and for um field services, the field services area.

Um we are we will be making and bringing back to wrap up some reductions in the fuel stuff.

I was gonna ask that earlier when we were visiting, but okay, good.

So it's about 400,000 in total.

Um, but to the um 101 fund, it's about 160,000.

Then a portion would go to um Mike's um transit fund and then a portion of it will go to road use, but we will see a reduction in the budget.

What is new freedom?

That is a program where we offer a priced voucher to um disabled individuals on the hours we don't run paratransit.

Okay, and they pay we pay the difference, they buy $11 voucher, we pay the difference.

It's it's a way for us to offer some of those services without offering full-blown paratransit services on some of those critical times and days.

So going back to the LEC mic, the Siouxland regional transit system had proposed a ride program.

I think $20 each way, just to get, I think, to the bus location at Walmart.

Did that ever materialize?

Was that a proposal or did they implement that?

Do you know they did not implement it?

They didn't they would need they would that program somebody needs to book a day in advance to use that system, and I don't um if the jail wants to pay for that, you know.

I'm not proposing we put that in our budget.

Oh no, I wouldn't I'm not either.

Oh, is there some sort of a voucher system that council bluffs or someone's using?

Didn't we do a little bit of they are count that's what council bluffs uses when somebody needs to leave the the jail provides them a transportation voucher uh through a taxi service?

They can do that.

I I don't know why they don't get a couple of minivans or something.

Transit, small used transits, and have one or two out there and because they don't have enough it would be more expensive than to hire somebody because a jailer's probably uh 100 plus with all the costs, and then you still got the van and the then they better put an RFP out and get it hired.

That's where the uh the court trailer court right a sidewalk for building up that area too, right?

I mean, there's stuff coming in out there, right?

Rick, did you spend the side?

Yeah, that road every day.

It's in the works.

I think there's a development coming in right next to the it is in the well, right?

Yeah, but they're gonna flag lot that, so they only have to put it on the part that they leave.

Which which we should not allow.

But I can't figure out why.

They're they're gonna put one in.

They won't put neither one of them set sidewalks in America or LEC.

But we should have required it when we did all that.

That's probably about the city then agape is it's in their agreement that they're okay.

I know, but we're working up the hill.

We are you okay.

They are gonna split their lot and flag it, meaning they're gonna have a driveway in and none of that to the west, so they don't have to put sidewalk on.

If we approve that, but I don't think we're going to well, you're okay.

Well, you're okay.

You're going to have to do a sidewalk assessment technically then because they can do that if they flagged that lot.

Well, we'll get it on our next agenda.

In fact, I'll send it right now.

Because that's been a topic in the past.

Okay.

Okay.

Economic and community development.

Page 99.

Marty Doherty.

Can I say something real quick before Edie goes?

Mike?

Yes.

The biggest kudos for all these hats you're wearing.

No, appreciate it.

Interim manager, administrative service, the airport, transit, everything else you're doing.

Overseeing staff, working shoulder to shoulder with whomever asked anything of you.

You're very responsive.

I'm one of the abusers, probably.

But I know who to go to when I need something.

I need the correct information, and kudos to you.

I appreciate you more than ever.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Um have all of our divisions represented here this morning.

So if you have any questions about any of those, um teams all here.

Um just a general comment.

There really aren't any major changes to the budget for the department.

Um I don't believe we had any improvement requests.

There are no staffing changes except one.

Um and it's sort of a lateral move.

A uh maintenance worker, the decision was made to move a maintenance worker from the parks department over to inspections.

That this is a person that deals with graffiti, graffiti removal and in enforcement.

Um it's a part-time position.

I think it's a 35-hour a week position.

So I think it's a lateral move as far as budget goes.

But we're kind of doing that to improve the coordination and tracking of the of that uh service.

Um otherwise, the one thing you may notice too, in in the economic development portion of it, uh it does kind of go up and down over the years, and the biggest reason is the but what's included in that budget is the tax rebates that are used for different projects, and they can vary quite a bit, or they can one one year one will come be completed, and then a new one, a couple new ones will start.

So if you see kind of a swing there in economic development, that's um that's the biggest reason for that.

Otherwise, there really aren't too many changes in that.

So I'm happy to answer any questions about again, and these guys are all here to all of our experts here to in each area.

So if you have any questions.

Well, historically, council some have argued that inspections should cover their department by fees.

I've never been a proponent of that, but I have been a proponent of at least 40 percent.

And that under your budget today, it appears to me you're about 127,000 short, which I realize would cause an increase in fees.

But we did um, if you recall, Mayor, we did um, I believe two years ago we looked at the fees in inspections and in planning, and we made some uh increases.

Uh and these guys can tell the details of that, but um we did we didn't do anything last year, I don't believe, but then this year we have discussed it some and we've done some research on it with the changes that are happening.

I probably should have mentioned that too, is changes in the department we made uh not budget-wise, but we made a lot of physical changes in the office on the third floor affecting inspections planning and economic development.

We're almost done with that, not quite done, but um and with the new software coming in.

We discussed it a little bit.

We talked with finance about it, and we thought the right time to do we I do think we it is time to look at it again, but we thought with with the new uh system coming in and online charges and so on that we maybe would wait until that's up and running before we would bring those to council.

What does that have to do with the cost of service?