All this meeting of the Del Rock with the city council to order and welcome those of you who are here attending the meeting tonight and are welcome to those of you who are watching via the webcam, free speech, your interest in the city government. We will ask the finance officer, please call the roll.
79 years ago today, an event took place that created a situation that inconvenienced the American people for the next four or five years.
Greatly, called World War II, and hopefully, hopefully, younger people are aware of the significance of today.
and I'm sure those people drove down the main street today and said why are the flags out?
So, we remember those who lost their lives and what stand in the state of Pledge of Allegiance.
I
fully believe it is to the flag by the United States of America and to the Republic for which
it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you.
next is the approval of tonight's agenda so moved by Bob to approve is there a
second second is seconded by Chad all the favorites in the Bible saying aye
I oppose name motion carries. It should move along a lot quickly we don't have to do the
roll poll. Nobody on the phone so good. Next is the approval of the minutes from our
last meeting on November 16th. In the last paragraph I talked to Claire a little bit
the bottle already adjourned, should read Bob Meyer, move to adjourn, not exit close session.
So noted.
Move
to approve.
Move to move by Bill to approve the minutes with the one-changed noted, is there a second?
I'll second that.
Seconded by Michael.
On favor of signifying, saying aye.
Aye.
I have a close name.
I think everybody that's here tonight is probably here about when we enter into the discussion
about the COVID-19 mask and all that.
I assume that's what everybody's here for.
Okay, so there's no other.
This is the time if you're here and it's not on the agenda that you have that opportunity.
So we'll move on. Now it's time for the public hearing on
issues on renewals on liquor licenses. Resolution number 2020-16.
The next subsequent items for the public hearing are to renew the city's liquor licenses.
There's resolution 20-16, 17, 18, 19, and 22.
for all the current and existing holders of liquor licenses.
Both on sale and off sale.
There is one that has been left off that is Prohibition Pub
and there will be a public hearing for that license
at our December 21st meeting.
But with that said, all of the licenses
have paid their license and full
and other property taxes have also been up today
on their properties as well.
also with that recommend the Council approve.
All of those resolutions associated with the liquor licenses
will find an off sale as well as wine license
for the dollar general, which is item half.
So, but we need a separate motion.
That's correct.
You need a separate motion on each resolution.
So, entertain a motion on 2020-16.
Any motion to approve?
Well, by Gary to approve, is there a second?
I'll second that.
Seconded by Bill.
It is a resolution that does require a role callable.
Please call a role.
Smith?
Yes.
Ron Lovian, Bob?
Yes.
Next is resolution 20-17 for pins.
Entertainment motion.
Some move by Bob.
Is there a second?
Second.
Seconded by Chad.
We call a role.
Yes.
Ron Lovian?
Yes.
Okay.
Resolution 2020-19.
County Fair.
Shall move.
Move by.
Mark.
Is there a second?
Second.
Seconded by Gary.
Gary.
Okay.
Please call the wrong.
Yes.
Orchard.
Yes.
Yes, yes, yeah, yes
Next is twenty should be 2020 dash 20
Yes
Alright I jump one
See this print here so damn small
Okay, 20, 2020 dash, 18, which is coming
So move my chat. Is there a second? Second? Seconded by James. Please call a roll.
Yes.
Yes. Orchard? Yes. Chris? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. We already did county
chair. So we'll move down to 2020. It should be 2020-22, right? Yes. You've got 19 in there.
Sorry make that correction on motion so moved moved by bill is here a second
Check it. They can be by mark. Please call roll
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and we have item f which is a wine license for dollars general
some move by Bob to approve is their second. Seconded by Chad, please call the roll.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Moving into old business, these are the second reading on some changes over on the old
for our edition. So first is the second reading of ordinance number 883, this is considered
the second reading of ordinance number 883. There's an explanation of this property in the
council's packet. This is the property that is on the corner of the intersection of Highway
115 Centennial Place and Orleans. This property, there's three sequential properties that
that are all being rezoned specifically as planned developments.
The purpose of a planned development is to,
for an owner to utilize their property outside
of the prescribed zoning regulations.
This essentially creates a specific zoning district
for this particular property.
On lot three, the new property owner, Paul's rifle,
is requesting that the zoning be based
on both B2 general business, as well as I1 light industrial, these, the density, yard,
height regulations, the setbacks are all based on those property owners' requests and
our specific in ordinance number 803.
The intent of the property owners, they like flexibility on this property, they intend
construct a series of buildings and they want the flexibility to possibly have
light manufacturing in one of the facilities as well as the ability to do
potentially do some storage, the potential to have an activity center potentially.
There's several ideas out there that the property owner is looking at as well as
the potential for a pretty decent employer, a 20 to 30 person employer that the
the property owner is currently working with today to potentially attract them to
noir outfits.
So that's what this property is doing with that said, recommend the council approve
ordinance number 8883 that requests a reason on a lot three of old poor addition from the
current state as a residential manufactured district to a PD plan development district.
And this is the oneness to the point that we added it like yes if the last meeting there
was discussion about requiring the individual to weigh their rights in case the city was
to improve centennial or lean to letting their property so we put in some more specific
language that we've seen and that we've had listed on other plan developments in the past
that we're abutting undeveloped property or streets that we're not fully
improved up to city design standards. So the caveat there's a clause in there
that says if the city is to make these improvements, the property owner you know
needs to comply and work with the city to do so.
And it ain't a motion. So we'll go by mark to approve second reading of ordinance
eight, eight, three, is there a second?
I'll second that.
Seconded by Mike.
I don't believe we've had any questions,
so we'll ask the finance officer if we can call the roll.
Okay.
Yes.
Quarter.
Yes.
Round side in?
Yes.
So pass.
Next is ordinance number eight, eight, four.
Ordinance number eight, eight, four is a rezone of lot two,
also from residential manufactured housing
to plan development. This is also the second reading of A-8-4. Specifically on this lot,
it's just to the north of last three. It's a smaller piece, but the current property
owner, who will remain the property owner, has an intent to install a structure on this
property for the purpose of a light industrial type building. And this property owner plans
to construct this building but they also have intent to potentially sell off
another lot or another two lots within the property. Therefore this plan
development reflects I-1 as the light industrial as the base of the
ordinance but then it has specific regulations associated with it if they'd
like to plan off other lots on the property. It's very very similarly based
of the properties that are south of Centennial Avenue that were re-zoned as a plan development
several years ago. So that uses that as a base. There's a smaller setbacks between buildings.
There's the necessity of having a private road with private road agreement in between
has public access and everything in that nature is included. So with that said, recommend
the council approve ordinance number 84 to rezone a lot two of the old poor
additions from R&M manufactured residential to plan development district based on I-1 landing dust
drill.
Move by James to approve the ordinance 884 is there a second? Seconded by Bob
We'll ask finance off to the police call roll.
Yes.
Next is ordinance number 885.
And for those of you who are wondering why we're not...
No one's asking questions.
That all happened at the prior meeting when we had the first reading.
So, you're aware of that.
There were lots of questions asked.
and things that were changed, so go ahead, Justin.
Ordnance number 85, this is the second reading.
This is a lot, one of the old quarry edition.
Map of this is all included in the council's packet
and on the city's website as well.
I will say that all the information
to council is discussing tonight, is it?
Is on the city's website publicly available?
is resounding from resounding to a planned development.
Currently, the owner of the property, Dennis Halverson,
has a manufactured house sitting on that lot.
According to the city's zoning ordinance,
you cannot have a manufactured housing district
with less than 10 acres.
So this is creating a planned development district
that is essentially giving them the ability
to continue to have a residential manufactured housing district with 4.5 acres, which is what
thought one currently is. The ordinance also stipulates that the existing building that
is there may remain, but it prohibits the additional, any additional homes to be moved
onto the property. It also states that that home may be replaced sometime in the future if
if it needs the current code standards at that time.
So with that said, have the council approve
the second reading and adoption of ordinance number 885.
It's a request to rezone lap one of the old court addition
from RM Manufactured Residential District
to PD's plan to build the administration.
Intertain a motion.
So moved by Mark to approve the adopt ordinance
of PD-5, is there a second?
Second.
Seconded by Chad.
and finds office that please call a roll.
Yes.
Chris.
Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Okay. Next is ordinance number 886.
Ordinance number 86 is not a plan development. It was last five, which is actually directly to the east of these properties that we've been discussing. That property is a lot five operating addition. It's currently zoned as NRC natural resource conservation district. The local Del Rapids economic development corporation.
As purchased that property recently, they're intending to develop that property and make
it for sale to prospective companies, prospective businesses in the future, and they are requesting
to have that in the zone to I-1, the industrial district, this would be considered the second
hearing.
The potential, the development corporation is to bring some fill into the property, hopefully
to the property, make improvements to the property so we can get a good solid business
in the area outside of the floodplain and a developable area of Delrahapis.
So with that, recommend the council approve the second reading and adoption of ordinance
number 886 to resume lock 5, a perting addition from NRC, natural resource conservation district
to an I1 light industrial district.
move by Gary to approve an ordinance 886 is there a second? I'll second that seconded by Bill.
Finance officer will please call the roll once again.
Schmidt? Yes.
Richard? Yes.
Chris? Yes.
Ron Simon? Yes.
Mark? Yes.
Mayer? Yes.
Eric?
Epstein?
Err?
I'm on the board.
Yes.
Okay.
Next is final pay request number seven from dirt specialties.
Finally tying up this
project, dirt specialties have this project completed earlier in the year on August. We've been
waiting on lean waivers to be submitted by the subcontractors. Those have been submitted but this
would be considered the final pay request and the approval to sign all final contract documents.
The final pay request is in the amount of $28,758.56 made to zero special fees.
I recommend the council approve.
In the case of motion, it's different.
Oh, Chad makes the motion to zero second, seconded by Gary.
All in favor of the motion to signify the saying aye.
Aye.
Opposed, nay, motion is carried.
Next item of business is Selfie Infrastructure Project Pay Request Number 13.
Getting close to wrapping up this project, Riley Reinhardt, the city's engineer representative
is on the phone if the council has any questions of him.
This is Pay Request Number 13 in the amount of $480,000, $85,444 and $57 cents.
This is for the work that's continued out.
I'm going on Forest Street, Washington Avenue,
alley sewer restoration and the alley restoration,
everything of that nature.
Pavement is also included in here being
why it's such a large pay request.
Project, just a quick project update
for the Council of Pavement, pay request.
H&W has said nothing but good late season leather
to make progress towards completing the project.
They've finalized the installation of all utilities,
99.5 of the concrete is installed at this point.
I think that they are, they plan to,
we're emphasizing to them the tie is 99.9% of this project
up by this week is really no excuse in our minds
that they can't have all of the dirt created to final grade
behind sidewalks and between sidewalks and perfect gutter, that the alleys are cleaned
up and there's some fine tuning of some of this area. The only thing that the
contractor is not going to be able to get done this year is seating on the
properties. We plan to have them bring that forward. We've emphasized them to be
here early next spring as early as possible to get that done so we can get them
paid in and get this project closed up. We had some discussions regarding liquidated
damages at the previous meeting and we'll continue to have those discussions with the
contractor with the council. There's just nothing to discuss this evening since they're
not where we don't consider it's substantially complete yet at this time. That said, if the
council has any questions for Riley? He's on the phone. Any comments you want to
throw in Riley?
I think just been pretty much covered at all. The one thing that I'll
add is just there would be a little bit of punctuous work other than
seating that carries into the spring.
Some small spot repairs on concrete, you know,
cracks that showed up in sidewalk here and there and then possibly a
picks in a couple service lines, but like he said, 99.9% of the stuff we expect to be done
to.
Any questions from council of rally?
Project? How much will be left? They're finally in their final pay request?
We're talking about putting damages.
Well, those are criminal.
And there's a 15% retention, so it's a significant amount.
I don't have that on top of my head.
It's in the paid eligibility breakdowns.
Every time we've left.
Every time we've paid them, we've held 15%.
Is that right?
Yes, help.
and it's 10% and right now it's about $600,000 that's being held.
Yes, 610,000, some of your questions.
So we're holding 20 Macs.
Any other questions?
It's not, it detains any motion.
Move to approve.
By names to approve, please.
Number 13, the H&W is the second.
Seconded by Bob.
Well, I'll pay for a second time by saying aye.
Aye.
Opposed nay.
Motion is carried.
Aye.
Well, we need to do business.
And the reason why the room would be getting warm.
We ordinance number 888, which would be a temporary emergency ordinance pertaining to face coverings.
I'm going to let Justin speak to this first and then those of you in the audience who
wish to make comments to the council, we would appreciate that you step up and use the podium
and identify yourself and your address so that it's in the public bracket and we'll listen
to anybody who wants to speak to us tonight so first so Justin.
Yes. Thank you, Ms. Counsel. Thank you for everyone that you're doing here tonight.
This is obviously not a simple or easy issue to engage in, but I think it's necessary,
I guess, as leaders of the community to restart this discussion, not encourage you to,
as city administrator to vote either way on this.
is just, you know, both as you see fit.
As the council is aware, too,
we're not the only community in this state
in our region that's having similar discussion
over the past few months, last few weeks.
With the upcoming winter indoor months ahead of us,
national experts across the board are warning
of TV rises in COVID-19 across our region.
And they're warning of spread
without mitigation measures, we've seen a spike in cases and subsequent deaths not only in our community but in our county and our state.
I guess I'll just point out I'm not a medical expert so I think it's important that for us to consider advice of medical experts as we have seen and has been provided to our community and our state over the past several months.
The city has taken actions in the past on this.
The mayor of about six weeks ago had a mayoral proclamation.
This mayoral proclamation was made at the behest of our local
and mayoral hospital and our administrator at the hospital,
encouraging that our community take measures seriously,
including mask wearing, including hand-washing and social distancing.
So I will point out is that this is the ordinance that's being proposed is the city had been approached by many members of the community, businesses, as well as council members that thought that we needed to have this discussion this evening.
In the mayors, the mayors' proclamation was made as a way to put this information
out there into the community.
This ordinance, it's important to point out, does not have any enforcement measures.
This ordinance is very, very similar to what Sioux Falls recently adopted.
There is not fines, there is not requirements of businesses.
I would state it that it's basically like the mayoral proclamation, it's just saying
it at a, I guess, a louder volume is the way I think that this ordinance could be interpreted
there is not any enforcement measures there is several exceptions and those
are listed in the ordinance and in the packet and those exceptions really have to
deal with restaurants, bars, places of our individuals that might have medical
issues, things of those, things of that nature, it's providing guidance to the community
at large as we go into these winter months.
With that said, any of the council members have anything to say to the state about
I have a discussion and then I would say open it up for public comment.
I'll be back for it.
What is the expiration date, it says it has an expiration date.
What is that date?
I think the date that was placed on here, if I call it the ordinance, February 1st.
So if the night you would be looking, we wanted to approve the first reading, second reading
would be, the second reading would be, I did not point that out, this is considered the
first reading, the COD.
Then there would be a second reading at the December 21st, and it would go into effect
after that second reading as a nurse or any
other council people would like to speak now
just as far as an ordinance or resolution can you define that a little better if we
instead of adopting an ordinance if we would adopt a resolution you're saying that the ordinance speaks louder but I did point that out
But resolution with going to affect immediately, you know, there's really, in this case, since
there isn't any enforcement in this, and there's really, I guess, not a difference.
Inordinates, or a resolution could be just as appropriate as an ordinance in the circumstances.
But that ordinance can be part of the law, and resolution is not, is that part of the
to, but since we are enforcing the ordinance, that's why you're saying this.
There's been a lot of this discussion in other communities, you know, I think the city
attorney and the rapid city said that, and they've adopted a similar ordinance, he said,
it's the first time in his 15 years of city attorneys that he adopted, or he, the council
was adapting in ordinance without any, without any enforcement measures.
So I'd say it's a rare occurrence to have the ordinance for this nature.
So is this just a fuel-go ordinance that, hey, we passed an ordinance with people that, you know, you got to wear a mask, but, you know, no penalty.
So just to make you feel good, or I don't get the purpose.
And, you know, what this should fall is just this weekend.
You know, I go to my yard regularly and so I have to wear a mask.
and I respect that. That's just their business and I ordered my mask. Afterwards we went
all to eat and I thought about going out to eat. What do I got to wear a mask? Well it's
a wife wore a purse and of course I figured I'm going to eat. I'm going to order my mask.
I'm walking there and nobody was wearing a mask that walked into that building. And it's
a popular place. It wasn't very busy. That was just last night, Sunday night.
So we ate
and had a good meal. The wife was at Target the other day, and by creating this ordinance,
what you're going to do is you're going to divide the community. And the reason I say that
is the wife was at Target here a week or so ago, and there was a person in there who
And this is after the city of adopted their ordinance. There's an elderly gentleman that had blocked in with his wife, and he had seen that person, and he has raised all kinds of holy help about that person not wearing a mask. And the lady that was talking to them was trying to settle down, finally the man would drink him over and said, hey, look, we would like everybody to wear a mask. But there's no way for us to enforce it, because there's no penalty for them not to wear it. So, sir, we welcome you to shop our store, but I'm sorry.
You know, there's nothing we can do about that person that we're in a mask.
So anyway, I look at this as if it's a feel good ordinance.
I feel as though we're going to divide the community because we as a
council, we pass this ordinance, hey, you're going to wear a mask but we're not going to enforce it.
So, whatever business, they're not enforcing it in their business and somebody walks in there
And I feel as though it's just going to be holy hell for somebody, especially on social
media.
And, you know, social media today can destroy business.
And when I look at our businesses in this town, especially all of our eating establishments,
to me and my eyes, and I don't mean this derogatory or anything, but they're all vulnerable because
most of these eating establishments have changed hands in the last couple of years.
We have new owners at Pizza Ranch.
we have new owners of poppuses. It's been in the paper recently about poppuses possibly closing.
I was down there Friday night. They had a wonderful evening. Lots of people.
Good for them. The bowling out here recently had some new owners and they've already gone
through a shutdown and we passed this mass ordinance and we divide our community that
everybody starts pointing fingers at everybody. Is that what our businesses need?
you know I feel as though a lot like our governor feels I feel this virus is
real I understand it's real I'm not denying that but I feel as though our people
in South Dakota are smart I feel the people in South Dakota have a choice I feel
as though I have a choice to go into pop is down there Friday night they have a
choice to run their business the way that they want to run it. When I walked in there and we
had to wait 20 minutes in the place was full and we're not wearing masks and 10% of the people
in there were wearing masks and the wife and I chose since we walked in we're not leaving this place
you know I don't want it to look bad and I think everything's going to be fine for me and the people
that were around me.
Like I said, 10% of the people were wearing masks,
but am I going to get on an airplane in flight today?
No, I think I'm a little smarter than that.
I don't want to be confined in that area with that many people.
But overall, I think the people in this community
are smart enough to social distance is best
that they can.
They have a choice to go into a business that's
enforcing the rules or not enforcing the rules.
You have a choice not to go into that business
if you don't like the way they're running it.
So, I just look at this, is dividing our community, and when I thought about this, I knew
this was coming just, and I knew this was coming in the minutes who followed me through this.
And so I've been thinking about this, I've been thinking about it a lot, in fact I drink too
much coffee thinking about this right in the morning.
But anyway, the educational part of this,
just in that you have recommended,
that's what I believe we need to do more of.
We get more things done in this community working together,
such as building a library.
We work together, we build a library.
We work together, we're building more,
repair and more streets today than we ever have before.
Because we've worked with the people that we're going to go
under their part of town and say, hey, we would like to fix your streets and it could cost
you this much.
And when you educate the people, it's just easier for everybody to get along.
And I think with this thing, let's do the educational part somehow.
I don't have the answer to that.
But I think it'll be much easier for everybody to get along rather than passing some ordinance
just to feel good to say, yep, we pass the ordinance.
I said enough.
I'm sorry.
One thing about me, you always know where I stand.
I'm not putting in laws that are not enforceable, that's a really tough thing for me.
I've viewed it more, I thought a lot about this as well, and I've always viewed it more
as an act of leadership, kind of along the lines of the education, right, to say that
as leaders of our community, here's the best practice, here's how we would lay it out,
right? So the fact that it doesn't have teeth, I think, speaks to that we're not trying
to putty and not anybody's liberties or things like that, but it's a stance of leadership.
So, I guess that's how I took it myself.
I take it as a stand of control.
I think the education is just as much leadership as putting it in the audience.
How much would the education involve, how a dedicated approach?
You know, I think through this, you know, we looked at some type of education campaign
when, you know, the color committees have done with signage, you know, the business wants
to require it.
The city could have a, you know, a sign design saying, you know, a mask, a mask where you're
mask going to store with the city window or whatever the case is, something like that.
I think that those have happened in many communities, you know, the city does have some
CARES Act funding that we can dispel before the end of the year here, we talked about
potentially buying a few thousand masks and having those handed out to businesses so
they could have in their front door, in case someone enters the building and potentially
We forgot their mask in their car or something in that nature.
So we're providing those.
We thought about that if we did an access ordinance
that the businesses aren't responsible for having to have
that come out of their own pocket.
I guess some of those things are some of the things
that have crossed my mind, Bob.
We can also look at what other communities are doing
along those educational lines.
Can we probably happen to do the mask donation
with all of our needs?
Yeah, definitely.
We're looking into getting some of those cards for
this man, what did he ask you?
If we can provide the bleak yet mask and do some kind of donation distribution
without an ordinance.
What's a little box as a mask slate?
It's similar to what Dan's wearing.
You see them at businesses.
It's depending on where you sing with Bob's God.
depending on where you get them. It can vary anywhere from 16 to depending on
right here in the box. First of all, anywhere from 20 to 30 I could do some
lucky. I was just looking at the ones today for about 50 or anywhere between
eight bucks and 15 bucks. Yeah. For how many? 50. So is that something that could
work into this educational program where it would have fallen to your
care is deal that the city helps provide all these businesses a box of masks.
Hey, the city would like to see us wear these masks.
Here's a free mask, you know, if you sow desire, please take that and wear that.
Let the people be smart about it, whether or not they want it.
I mean, is that something that you could incorporate into this educational thing?
I mean,
well, something to be said about that, Mark, also, you go with ours.
When our charges are $0.99, so they're making them some money off the gig, which is absolutely ridiculous.
When they should be helping a community get through this thing.
And as far as your talk on what you believe or your thoughts on this, my thoughts as far as social media is so difficult.
And it's so easy for even our children to sit there and
well, nag on someone and get in trouble doing that.
And maybe cyber bullying, I guess you call it and things like that.
And it's unfortunate that those things happen.
It would be unfortunate to start something like that as far as a business,
you know, or if someone's wearing a mask and someone's not,
and how that whole thing starts.
I know what you're talking about.
As far as South Dakota with our other ordinances, regulations, rules, you know, there's not
we're not a mandated state, even in my line of work working with water quality.
We don't, it's not mandated that you have to do things.
I work on a voluntary basis and I think we've had a lot of education on this.
I'm sure everybody in here in the audience has a TV.
we've been educated a lot and it's all up here that if you believe that you know
I'm not wearing a mask is going to get you by COVID I mean it's not yeah you've
got the experts on their signal wear it but maybe wear it and a lot of
people that are or everyone would want to be having this discussion at all but my
My stance is not to tell someone to do something that we can't tell to do anyways and really
to have a law there that has no teeth or no direction in it saying that we're going
to not enforce it.
It's almost silly, so that's where I stand of that, that's all I've got.
I agree.
I mean, if you don't have teeth to it,
maybe my analogy is stupid, but it's like closing
and the gate after the cab will go out.
If we're not going to have any teeth or what are we going to do?
I mean it's just, we're telling everybody out here you should wear a mask, but it's
your choice.
Well, my choice is all right, so I don't think this is the way we want to go in my eyes.
I don't think any council member that is spoke tonight just so everybody understands.
I don't think there's any council member that spoke tonight.
I think we all realize COVID is real.
We all realize masks can probably help.
Is masks the best answer with today's knowledge
of probably is.
But I think everybody in the council will agree with that.
COVID is real, or none of us are sitting here saying it's not real.
But my biggest thing is I didn't take this seat.
to control anybody. I took this seat to help the community the best way that I can.
You know, I think my voice tonight, the best way I can help the community, is to figure out how
to work this thing together instead of creating an ordinance that divides this community.
And then in different, and then that's their different, of course, different masks are better than
other ones. So which ones are right? Which ones are wrong? Which ones are protecting the
the best which one is. I mean, and I, yeah, I, well, we can argue those things all along.
All you got to do is look at the state of South Dakota's website, and you can find the
answer to it. Our governor's put the answer out there for us. So it's there. And I, you
know, when we did this proclamation to point it out, you know, and again, as he said, the
very, well, we requested it. And, and, and any of you out there who have any connection,
involvement, knowledge about what's going on in the medical world, those are people who are
directly greatly impacted, obviously, if they're working in dealing with that and their request
was to just to make people be more aware of the fact of what I do, what I don't do, can, or might not
have an implication that can have a result on somebody else. We live in a state where
We all feel that everybody is going to do the right thing.
My only concern is I tell people to do the right thing,
but don't do stupid things either.
Make good decisions, but don't do stupid things.
And to be frank about,
we've got people who do stupid things.
And some of those people have died.
Now, like Mark is saying, it's there, it's real.
And why do I...
I don't want to catch it,
And I'm going to do what I think I need to do, not to catch it.
We had people in my wife's family who've gotten it.
And thankfully, you know, great majority of people,
you know, it's not that big a deal.
Some people, their second week, it becomes a big deal, et cetera.
Again, our purpose with the proclamation
was just to tell people, be aware, be aware, be aware.
Even in this age of information, all of the place,
You communicate with people, and they ask you questions like, and you go, why don't, you know, it's like some people just pray absolutely no attention.
And so, you know, how much do you have to communicate this, you know, to be like, I guess you have to do it over and over and over.
And, you know, we are, the city is certainly
We're willing and able to do that and to, you know, put information out there that there's no lack of information.
If you go on to governors on the Department of Health's website about COVID, there's a vaccination. There's a 64-page document out there explaining how a word, where it comes in and all the protocols are going to use, etc.
So, so there's a wealth of information out there if people would use it, so if you look at any other options that we have an exporter talked about with CARES that other communities are doing that we can maybe pull CARES Act money for that can directly go to the community.
I know a lot of things beyond like like sturgis after the rally opened up free testing sites.
I think testing's pretty decently readily available at this point where I guess we didn't
approach that or look into that at all, that's testing, I'd say that's probably the only
anything that's popping in my mind as far as what what other communities have done with that care act for me. We're talking short notice. No, if it has to be by the same way for we still be still by get PPE stuff.
Yeah, we've been doing that for the ambulance and fire.
and when we take a face mask also to distribute out to businesses I think we have that discussion
here in the last few years
as part as when this issue came up the Chamber of Commerce
did survey their membership and then Dan maybe time to tell us exactly what some of the
business is done.
Sure.
Dan Allers, I'm here tonight for presenting the door
atmosphere of commerce.
We surveyed our membership.
When we heard about this to find out what our members
would think.
And of the 79 that opened their emails, nearly half of
them answered the survey.
Now some didn't answer the survey because they're
They're more than one person with a company that gets the email so they only take one survey.
So this is a pretty good sample size of the dollar app it's businesses and
members of the dollar app is chamber of commerce.
Of those approximately 72% are in favor of a mask ordinance.
There's about 12.5% that are unsure and 15% that disagree.
So you can see overwhelmingly that the business community here would support a city-wide mask ordinance.
And you have the full support of our board. It was a unanimous vote of our board to support this.
You don't have to go very far to see the impact of COVID and what it's done for our businesses.
As you know, this is not the first time I've been here speaking to you guys about COVID-related
issues.
At the very beginning, we were here talking about what the Chieber was going to do, how
we were going to work with our businesses.
We've been there putting information online.
We've been there creating videos, helping people get access to the funding that was available
to help support them.
We have met with businesses upon request, and in some cases, those that we know that we
anticipated would be seriously impacted, like some of our restaurants, we we wanted to find out
what we could do to help them. And we've been there the entire time working with them. You saw
quarry days. Initially we planned on having quarry days in June. Things didn't get better. We
decided to move it. And we did everything that we could to try and keep an event going. But ultimately
We felt that it was safe, the safest bet is not having a large group event and canceling
it for this year.
It was the first time in 30 plus years that we hadn't had court days.
It wasn't an easy decision.
I know Marlena is on the board.
She could tell you that we had a long lengthy discussion about this.
These decisions aren't, are not easy decisions.
We've gone out of our way to maintaining keep other events, retool events so that we could
have ways to keep some sense of normalcy. So, it's not an easy thing. But when you're
a leader, you're compelled to make decisions that are not always popular, or perceived
to be popular. You have to do what is ethically right, and sometimes it takes courage to make
those choices that mean sacrificing convenience.
What you're asking people to do today is no different than wearing a seatbelt.
It saves lives.
Now to everybody, where's the seatbelt?
Often there's a state out there talking about where your seatbelt, where your seatbelt
it saves lives.
Don't text while you drive.
It saves lives.
Even with enforcement, they're hard to enforce.
But it's about leadership standing up and saying, this is for your own good, this is for your safety, this is to protect and save lives.
So it goes beyond whether or not you can enforce it or not.
Look to our school district, the Delaware Rapids Public School District, has a very robust policy.
Mass-wearing, different measures, keeping kids separated so that we don't have large gatherings.
They sometimes eat lunch in their rooms to keep the numbers in the commons down, different
hallways, the control traffic flow, cleaning before and after classes, and you can see the
fruits of their labor, far less than a 1% infection rate in that school district.
And unlike a lot of schools across the state, they haven't had to close.
They're struggling with shortages of staff just like everyone else.
I'm one of six people between the middle school or one of five people,
between the middle school and high school, it's seven.
That's not a lot of substance.
To find ways to get things done, but good policies allow that school to stay open.
Which is what everybody wants.
People wanted their kids in school.
There was a decision made by that school board that helps ensure and protect safety by using best practices.
Are they 100% guarantee? Absolutely not.
But while South Dakota, between March 30th and September 1st, South Dakota had 167 COVID deaths.
Since then,
that's 33, by the way, for a month.
Since then, we're averaging more than 300 deaths a month.
South Dakota is not only leading the nation, it's leading the globe and
COVID infection rate and deaths. Meanwhile, the cities that are doing the best in
South Dakota, the two best, Brookings and Mitchell, both early on adopted mass
ordinances. Does everybody abide by them? No, I've been to Brookings. I've seen
people there, they're not wearing a mask. And it's tough to enforce. But if we have unity
in leadership and a unified message, the reason that we're having problems today is because
we don't have a unified message. We don't have unified leadership. The division already
exists. Now, the single business in this town is closed because of the city shutting
them down, or because of COVID, they close out of choice. When you look at the businesses
in Sioux Falls like Target, they were requiring masks before the city ordinance, menards requiring
the mask for city ordinances, and there are a few people that make a scene. They're always going
to be those people, but that should not deter you from doing what's ethically right and what is in the
best interests of the people of this city and the people of South Dakota. I urge you
guys to consider sending a message and in what regardless, I agree. Ordinance should
have teeth. If it were up to me, it would have teeth too, but it's not. But you do send
a positive message, you send a message of safety, you send a message that it does mean something
and you send a message of unity with all the other municipalities around you
they're starting to look and adopt these ordinances to home did anyone have
any questions about our survey or
we
asked whether or not they supported the
mass ordinance which we attach to copy of the ordinance no we asked we asked
other questions that pertain to the keeper and how we could help them work what
What they like about what we're doing, what we can do better, those questions, but those are all relevant to us in the business that we do.
What percent of the businesses do you feel offer food services and don't wrap it?
The food services ones that respond to it?
If you're going to go in and eat or drink kind of like Mark said, walk
to your table or is that?
Well, the ordinance explains what is required of you there, and you can't use a mask on.
Some restaurants, business is in town, and we didn't have quite a few that responded.
The percentages are a little mixed up with some put other, and did classify themselves
as a restaurant because they might have been a bar or something like that.
But, you know, we had a fair amount of other respondents, I would say somewhere in that 20% range,
cumulative, you know, 50 to 20%.
But, you have to, you know, realize that the large number of businesses aren't getting
established in a few minutes. Those are the ones that we work very closely with throughout this too,
and have met with some of them personally to help as much as we can.
I can't tell you how, I can tell you only five businesses disagree with the ordinance.
That's a pretty big sample size, and you got nearly 40 respondents.
Can those businesses put their order this up?
Because some of them are afraid.
Because when you tell them that you tell somebody that they got wear a mask, the division already exists.
And they're not concerned about it really.
Because they're the risk losing business.
Because the virus is more important than business loss.
Do they want to be the business?
Going out of business might be.
But the point is that leadership makes the statement.
And if you're unified, then everybody understands there is no more debate, because if you want to speak to the council, as you can see, division already exists.
Let's keep it on track.
Any other questions about the survey?
I'm going to be going to bring more data about it.
I will put some of the survey.
Do you know what percentage has a lot of foot traffic?
Are they storefront businesses?
or are they like we keep the privacy of our membership I mean most of it is
whether or not they agree with it the rest of it is for the chamber so that we
can do a better job assessing them I think most of the businesses out you know
we don't have we've got county fair as a large business a lot of foot traffic
but you go they establish it the cross street over here Narvis has got a lot of
foot traffic in the evenings, but the rest of those businesses don't, you know,
Ace Hardware is another one, and they've, all along they've been making
a social distance, et cetera, et cetera. I think the majority of the
rest of the businesses tend to be, are, you know, a lot less foot traffic in whatever.
Who else would like to address the council?
Hi, I'm Amy Delgado, my husband and I have the coffee shop down the street here and I just
wanted to say, you know, we didn't grow up here, we didn't live here but we've been here
for about five years now and we love cell rapids and the sense of community and togetherness
and wholeness that it brings, you know, we have lived in quite a few places considering
our age and I just feel like there's just this respect for all people and opinions and choices
and then kind of looking at interactions between different customers you know we've got
different people coming in some people are added mass squares some people do not there's always
the sense of respect and, you know, we're Midwestern, so our, you know, personal space
bubbles are naturally larger. But, um...
Just the ebb and flow that naturally happens without us even having to put up a sign or recommend anything or do anything like that. We've really been able to watch our customer base be respectful to each other, respectful to us. We don't require our staff to wear masks. We had an employee who thought maybe she had some different kinds of exposure issues, things like that. She chose to wear a mask when she came into work until she was more confident.
We respected that decision, you know, there's at least six members of the council here that are frequent visitors to the coffee shop that I have seen not wearing a mask into the shop and I see that as me respecting you to make your best decision based on what you feel like your exposure levels are your safety levels are you none of you are ignorant.
none of you are not considerate of other people's feelings and I'm
respecting that you're making the best choice that you can be. I'm respecting my
choices right now not to wear a mask and I feel I've been proud so far to say
that we've been such a community that has been able to give the power and a
sense to the people.
And I think that we have as a community adult with it in a very
respectful way this far. And I do agree that I think it will create a sense of division.
I see that there's been a lot of shaming. And I think with mandates like this, it takes
the heat off of, I think it can be perceived to take the heat off of leadership and push
it on to the people to self-regulate and self-shame and then there's kind of just this,
it just doesn't feel right to me in a way.
So there hasn't been any mandates so far and places that have mandated have done so out
of their own responsibility as a company.
Like the school has done what they found
as necessary, county fair has done what they think.
Places that are closer contact have made
different regulations all on their own.
I love the idea of the mayoral proclamation
because that's education.
And then you're educated to make your own choices.
Our immune systems are so much more complex than just a mask.
If you have a bad night's sleep the next day, your immune system is 40% compromised.
When you have high blood sugar levels all the time, you know, they found that a lot
of deaths in cases have to do with people who have diabetes as underlying.
You know, there's so much going on, there's so much more education if we really want to keep
our people safe.
There's a lot more that we can be offering other than just a mask mandate and that's kind
of my opinion on that.
So thanks for listening to me.
Justin, could you put her in that committee for the education?
He's got more kids.
What more could you say?
Anybody have any questions?
Any questions or anything?
We would like to speak next.
I'm sure somebody's up.
Please use the podium.
So we can pick up the volume.
My name is Lee Mackinari, and I'm from Delaware.
happens. I had a nice, long paper letter I was going to send to all of you and
save myself talking. Unfortunately, Mark had every point that I had. We are by the
way here. I know two people in here, not in here, but in this community that
were mass and they're faithful by it, they both got covered. So it isn't a
out there, they can say what they want.
But the fact is they have nothing to back again.
It's all hearsay, it's all just ridiculous.
The way the news media is spreading it around.
Myself, as you can tell, I'm against wearing a mask.
I'm 79 years old.
I have lung problems.
I have not worn a mask at all, and I'm healthy.
people I have wear a mask or have problems with it. Not all of them, I'm not saying
everyone. And I respect the rights of every one of you guys that want to wear a mask.
This is fine. You have your feelings, I have mine. But I have the same rights. What are
you guys wanting to do? Take my rights away from me. So when I walk into a store, I'm sorry
we can't serve you you got a mask you haven't got a mask on that isn't what this country's about
that's not what this community's about we do all our business here in town as much as we possibly
can and if I have one of those people tell me when I walk in here I'm sorry but the commission said
I got to tell you you have to wear a mask I'm walking out of that business and taking it down to
suit falls that has the same man be making walk into all but maybe two stories out in their
business and not have to wear a mask because you don't have any meat behind that. You have
no nothing to prevent a person from not wearing a mask. You're going to arrest me? You can take
may be my medical but it's one in jails if you want to but the fact is you're I think
this council has much more to do for this community rather than sit here and tell people
what they can and can't do in regards to wearing masks. That's all I've got to say.
Any questions?
Well, the one reason we're here tonight is that we, members of our community, raises
issue and instead of your city government saying, yeah, it's okay and ignoring it, we're
here tonight.
We are having this discussion.
We're not ignoring it and that there are some people who have a different opinion relative
to mask or whatever, or in the whole issue, I guess,
for example, so we're, I think we're doing our job
and the people sitting at this table have always
been willing to listen to all points of view
and to understand what our community needs.
And who would be next?
Anybody?
Yeah.
Oh, of course.
Well,
I didn't really want to talk, that's not how I started a lot of speeches out in
Paris.
I didn't really want to talk, but here I am.
So my name is Tom Pischy.
I'm here.
I live in 503's, 12th Street.
I'm your district 25 representative.
I was asked by a few people here in the room and some others that come speak today, or
you know, to address you guys and so here I am, but first and foremost, I want to thank you guys
for your service. I know firsthand how hard it is to put yourself on the line and put yourself
out for public service. You know, I go out the pier, I've gone out my fifth time here in a couple
about a month and you know how hard it's to take up hard issues and this is certainly a hard issue
for you guys, for you gentlemen. And I don't envy being in your seat and taking the hard vote. I mean,
I mean, I've been there myself, so first and foremost, I want to let you know that I'm
against the mandate, let you know that.
I think first, also that Mr. Consul and Chris, you hit the nail on the head when you gave
your speech earlier.
That was my number one concern, is that we're going to divide this community.
We're going to have people walk around and choose not to follow the mandate, and they're going
to be publicly shamed by other people that are wearing it and I think that's going to
be even make the situation even worse than it is now. So I mean I'm not going to probably
wear a mask, I rarely do, I have it times but I rarely do and I don't want to be publicly
shamed just like anybody else in this room doesn't want to be publicly shamed. So that's
why I would urge first foremost to oppose this mandate. Also I would also oppose doing
an ordinance, a sneaky little thing that I've learned out in peers that when you pass an
ordinance with no teeth, it's not that hard to come back and say $0, put a 1-0 in front
of that and make this $100 or make it $50.
So that's why I would certainly oppose the ordinance if you want to do a resolution.
Maybe that's a better approach to this, but certainly not as an ordinance, do it only as
a resolution.
You can use your guys' counsel position to spread the message as a resolution to the
that where a message is important, that would be a better approach in my opinion.
My former district mate, Mr. Oller's talked about courage earlier in his speech.
And if you're right, it does take courage to be a leader, take courage to be on this board,
take courage to go out to peer and represent your state and your district.
And he made a comment about courage being standing up for your community and doing what's right.
I would urge you guys to use your position and use courage to stand up for liberty and to stand up for freedom.
So that's all I'm really going to say.
I don't want to get into weeds on if masks work or don't work and what the effectiveness of that is.
I think there's lots of people in this room that can give you their opinion on that, but that's all I want to say about it.
Thanks.
Any questions of Tom, under the council?
Thank you, Thomas.
Anybody else who would like to address the council?
It's your chance to be recorded on the webcam.
Hi.
My name is Sandy Paganpa, and I live at 304 E7 Street here.
I did not prepare for this, so next time if you guys have this,
in the second radio, we'll come with lots of statistics and data
and information to back myself up.
However, today I'm just going to kind of talk from the heart and, sorry, so I am a recent
citizen to this country.
I've been a citizen for 15 years, and this year I'm homeschooling my kids not because
I'm scared of this virus, because I don't want my children to be taught fear mongering and
And all the stuff that kind of goes along with it from school, I'm trying to kind of keep their lives as normal as possible.
And so that is something with three kids at home and a husband who's now working from home.
Our lives have been upset by this and it's a new world this year for all of us.
So I was recently talking to my grandma and she lives in Canada, Southern Manitoba.
Now, they are currently on complete lockdown.
I had to send her Christmas cards.
They're allowed to go to the store and grab just the necessities and their numbers are
not anywhere where it should be a complete lockdown.
The World Health Organization has even stated that lockdowns don't work and they don't agree
with them but yet that continues to happen.
Now, I think with the masks, you know, it's a slippery slope.
So we elect you guys to, you know, take care of the community, but I don't elect you to tell me what I should do for my medical purposes.
I believe a medical freedom, a mask, is a medical device, and when you require somebody, whether there's not any backing behind it, you know, there's responsibility behind that, you know, there's risk, there's hypoxia, OSHA talks about how, you know, if you're not getting the proper oxygen, you know, like Amy said,
If you don't have the oxygen that your body needs, you can also get sick from that.
People are driving these in their cars and passing out in them.
There's a lot of statistics and data that talk about how masks, when they've studied
them, I can bring next time 15-plus studies that talk about the risks of wearing masks.
And there has recently done a handful of studies in the last year where they're trying to prove
that they actually work.
So there's a lot more data out there that state that they're not as efficient as you might think they are.
So if you're going to do something to educate the community,
if you're going to provide masks, provide N95 masks that provide up to 95% protection for people who want them.
Putting a piece of cloth over your face is going to catch large spits, mucus, anything like that.
from people who are sick, for somebody who isn't sick and isn't sneezing or coughing or spitting.
Most people are smart enough to cough into their elbow, wash their hands.
And that mask yet provides a minuscule amount of protection for those large droplets.
But if you're going to provide something, provide an N95 mask, or provide opportunities for
people to, you know, offer grocery service for people who can't get there.
I would be happy to go to the store and buy groceries for somebody and I would volunteer
my time to do that.
The other thing would be to, you know, talk to people about vitamin D, C, zinc, eating healthy,
getting exercise, going outside for walks, you know, the things that are actually going
And keep them healthy, just like in every season of sickness that goes around.
You know, Dan talked about how the school has done a good job with keeping the infection
rate down.
So the problem that I see with that is that I see the kids get off the bus every day. I have friends all over town that have kids. My kids are 7, 9, they all just have birthdays, 7, 9, and 12. They all go to each other's houses after school and play. So if you think that the masks are doing something to keep that down, you're not looking at it correctly. They're all playing together. Our high school teenagers are all still communing together. They are hanging out. I see them drive by all the time.
And not only that, but 95% of the community is also still hanging out with each other and
being around each other.
I think I hit, I was trying to keep notes here as I want to make sure I hit everything.
I think that I
respect your guys' opinions and your position and I think it's your responsibility
ability to bring up the other side of this.
I understand people are very concerned about this.
I don't think people are uneducated in this.
I think that people have had nine months
to sit and educate themselves on how to keep healthy,
what viruses do, what the history of viruses have done.
I think a lot of people have created their own thoughts
and opinions on it and decided for them
what's best for their family.
I don't want you guys to make medical decisions
for my family. I moved here. I'm teaching my kids about the Constitution and
knowing that says that you guys get to decide what best is medically for my
family. I think that everybody wants the ability to make the best
decision for themselves and I know I've rambled a lot but those are my
thoughts on it and I'll come next time with more data and information. So any
questions. Any questions?
Thank you. Thank you Ok.
How was the health like to dress?
I just stepped in half on the crazy tax
firms in town or they're quite, they're preparing to pose me as, I'm pretty good at talking
one on one, I'm terrible if it's so if I start struggling, I might start crying even
who knows what will happen but I'll give it my best shot. I just, I came from
Minnesota,
I don't like Minnesota, I like South Dakota, they had a mass
mandate quite a while ago. We're not number one anymore, by the way, Rhode Island and in the NR.
Minnesota is almost identical right now, per capita cases. They've had a mass mandate since
forever, and they're shutting everything down, and that's the last six days. So
as far as the debate being over, it's not. They worked, Minnesota shouldn't have any cases.
They don't even have businesses open.
Last six days, there's high as we are.
I'm sure you pretty sure Rhode Island,
I don't know about Rhode Island,
but just knowing where they are,
they probably have one too.
Didn't really look.
But I have a graph and I can send it to you guys.
I didn't yet.
It'll show you with the option downs.
We're in the Midwest, it got cold.
We all stayed inside.
I don't think it's gonna do any good.
And what you said division, 100%.
It's gonna create that.
It's gonna make us police each other
and vote on it with some with a fine in it or don't do it or go all I don't think so I can respect the fact he vote on it with a fine
Don't want it, but that's all I got
Thank you
Anyone else who wants to address the council?
Okay, my name is Cindy Parsley. I live at 709 East 7th Street
I'm also not good at this, so I'm a little nervous and I apologize I'm probably gonna trip over my words, but I guess for the I had a little bit of a problem with the doing what was ethically right because the people I I don't wear a mask, but I have my reasons for not wearing one like somebody who's wearing one has their reasons.
I don't assume that you're afraid and that's why you're wearing one.
Any more than you should assume the reason I don't is because I'm an ethical or I'm
apathetic.
I do research, I've done a lot of research, I don't see a lot of backing.
One thing I do pride myself as belonging to a community, honestly, I'll have to say that
But I've probably done more shopping in this community in the last nine months because
of all the restrictions in Sioux Falls and when they placed a mandate, I headed to County
Fair.
I don't go to Walmart anymore, all day and none of those, I will continue to give business
to County Fair.
And that's one of the reasons is just because I feel like it's not forced.
I do not, I keep my social distance, you know, I am smart, I can make my own decisions
and I respect people's decisions to be able to do that.
So I just feel like that if this is, I believe,
that if this is mandated, I can also see where it could take,
it could have an opposite effect and decrease business
because if you're going to demand it here,
then why not go to the other places where I can save money?
It seems like that it could have the opposite effect as well.
But I don't want to be looked at as an ethical because they don't wear a mask and that takes
courage too.
It takes a lot of courage to walk into somewhere without a mask because you do feel like
you're looked down on.
You do feel like you're apologizing so shaky.
You do feel like you're being judged and so we're saying, you know, we're not judging
you but don't judge us either.
So, I just feel like that if it's mandated, it will have an opposite effect of what you think it will.
So, I'm going to keep that short and sweet.
So, thank you.
No, don't ask the shaking.
I wish
it was to address the council for that.
Thank you, council.
I don't get up.
I'm not in a lot of meetings.
I don't talk.
My name is Pastor Brandon Wenzel.
I'm a Pastor of Quest Church, 1403.
North Highway 77 Plaza.
Right, Mark.
All right.
I'm not going to get up here and argue one way or the other.
I will say that I fill out that survey.
We said that we would be in support if the city supported it in their own right because
we believe in honoring our local government at our church.
Even though we don't fall under the retail of the ordinance, we would honor that in whatever
you want.
Right now, we do not require people to wear masks in our church.
And so we would just, we would like to follow our government.
And so in Marlena, we trust you guys, whatever you guys decide.
I am shaking out leghood and ridiculous, but based on what's been said tonight, what I would suggest is,
just, I don't know what kind of partnership we can get with the Vera.
Vera's got a great marketing campaign right now for a mascot South Dakota.
They got graphics made.
I don't know if they have programs out there to help purchase PPE or whatever for businesses that
do want to have that. If it becomes a financial issue, I will say that question would stand behind it and help provide PPE for businesses that run through it a lot or whatever might not have that possibility.
But I just want to get up and say we honor you guys and whatever you guys say tonight is good. I think I know where it's going, but I would just say let's hit the marketing hard.
Let's send a unified message. That's what's kind of been being said. We want to honor freedom, we want to honor personal choice,
but we also want to honor
Being smart about things and so whatever you guys decide questions would be in full support of that, so
Anything else that you guys want to ask me tonight?
Thanks guys.
My
name is Lisa Pishki, 503's, 12th and married to the guy with a time limit over here
I just wanted to get up and say the conversation to me is awesome.
I love when you can get into a room and everyone can share their points of view.
We all have a lot of perspective to offer, so that's really cool that everyone did.
And I guess I just wanted to point out that I'm hearing honestly the exact same message,
even though we all have different facts behind it, we all have a different perspective and
how we want it done.
I think we're having hearing the same message that it should be consistent messaging, which
is why I would support a different word than ordinance.
I like resolution, I like education.
Ordnance means something already, and so I think using that word, if you want to be a strong
leader, if you want to be, you know, promote health, that's not what ordinance means.
So I would just urge all of you to consider the words that you're using remember that they mean something and
Then kind of go back to what the objective is. I think from the very beginning the objective here
Is what can we do to help our community?
Times are tough, you know people are sick businesses are struggling
So kind of just go back to the objective and if you're objective isn't to you know push an idea on someone but maybe help them
just use language that I guess supports that but otherwise awesome
conversation really proud to be part of this community. Any questions?
I still have
a couple minutes I think.
I
think you mentioned resolution that's what I think Brandon did.
Yeah, they are in a process of enacting a resolution, it's very somewhat similar to
the verbiage in this ordinance, is anyone else who would like to address the council?
Thank you very much for your opinions and speaking.
I think great Mel Allen, you all remember him, don't you?
Going, going, going, God, man.
I have work.
Okay.
Sandy Packenbach, three and four, you seven straight.
A couple things that I wanted to point out is, I have had COVID, my whole family has had COVID.
I'm not going to wear a mask when I've already had it.
And I know they say that there is asymptomatic spread
or you can get it again, the information
and this just is six for that is super low.
And I'll bring that next time.
But one thing I didn't touch on was the divide
in the community and the lasting effects for that.
COVID, we don't know how long it's going to be here.
It may end next year.
You know, it may end once they bring the vaccine out.
It may end.
We don't know what's going to happen.
But what is going to last longer than this virus
is if I'm walking into somewhere and I, you know, in Sioux Falls, there's been many instances
where somebody has approached someone and said, you're going to kill somebody's grandma
or you're going to do this. Like, there's been death threats against people.
Now, I read an article the other day about Rapid City and the suicide rates.
It's risen 200 and some percent, 227, something like that in their teens.
Now, kids here in Del Rapids already have a hard enough time.
I've heard from many people the bullying situations that occur.
Now, when they're out and about and that kind of stuff, whether it comes from an adult, a child,
you're adding bullying all over the place, whether it's bullying to wear a mask,
bullying to not wear a mask.
I just want people to understand that there's going to be lasting effects for this.
And in five years or ten years, this is always going to be something.
You know, there's going to be the divide in the community, how people treat each other in these tough times.
And so I really think that it's important to also think about that.
Anyone else?
I know you were just dying.
Did you see it in my eye?
No, I was like, hey, I'm Allison Magneton.
Okay, there's a lot of things I'm going to say, but I'm going to say two things.
First, it started with stay home.
Don't leave your house or your murderer.
Then it was where your damn mask, if you don't, your murderer.
What's the third thing going to be?
I have a feeling it's a vaccine and that's going to be shoved down our throat.
You can't come to school if you don't have the COVID vaccine.
It's getting ridiculous.
Okay.
That's my first one.
My second one is, I live in the middle of nowhere for a reason, and it's not for the
weather, it's for my freedom.
Sioux Falls is too liberal for me, I can't even go there.
I know this isn't politics, but they're taking away our rights and our freedoms, and
I know this isn't a right or a freedom thing, it's about health and whatever.
But I think a lot of people that live here do it because we want to.
And it's going to start making me not want to live here anymore.
If dollar app it's just going to start turning into Sioux Falls,
which is turning into Minneapolis.
And like, let's just like not get too big for our bridges.
You know what I mean?
So that's all I mean to say.
Is there
anyone else who would like to, yeah, one more. Bill?
I'm Bill Swift and I live.
Pretty silly. There's not going to be anyone left who hasn't been up here, right? Well, the observation I have is we had the Bill Swift.
I guess one math with it is, you know, ordinance, not ordinance, it's December, the stuff started in February.
They'll wait to get moving on something like this. I believe information's out there.
You've got people giving statistics that they're close, no hard numbers.
The other thing is, if you have so many people that are forward in the mask, why are they?
That's all I got to say.
Anyone left that wants to talk to the people?
No, he's like the only one left.
Well, if there isn't anyone else who wants to address the council first off,
thank you for being here tonight.
In the course of a year there's maybe one meeting or two where we get the chairs filled.
So most of the time there's one or two people sitting here, so that's different.
But again, thank you and for expressing your opinions and your feelings on this issue.
As has been stated, you know, it's a, I look at it as a health issue, it's there.
Someone asked, when this all started, someone asked me if I'd ever seen anything like this
in my life, and I said, when I was a kid, I knew if I went and some of the time I went
to a swimming pool, I was going to catch polio and die.
And that's what that was before the vaccine came, and when the vaccine showed up, it was
just mass inoculation of kids, when that all had ancient history and long time ago and
whatever. I just hope that, you know, that people do look at facts and they do look at information
and they do make good decisions. It's their own personal health and to the extent of the people
they interact with, it has an impact on them. And this, you know, since this started last March,
Everything that this council has acted on has always been with the goal of making a good
decision and doing what we thought was right and best for the community.
As has been mentioned, you know, we – this community in the last six to eight months,
we have not – if you look at the financial side of things in terms of how it's impacted
business and our and the city's income through taxation, especially sales tax, we've never had a
better year and it's probably because of people doing more shopping here in Dell Rapids and we
spoke to that here a while back. So we're fortunate in that respect.
I guess that the
And again, the reason we're here tonight is that there were some people who asked that
this be brought up and discussed, and that's why we're here tonight.
So, again, we appreciate your being here, and we appreciate your comments.
Is there any action that the council wants to take?
Hearing
none we don't move on
to the next item of business which is the
Minnehaw County property tax abatement but excuse
me it's the County Sheriff's Law
Enforcement pushed around one there either way we're looking at all of the
ways to address the couple yeah can we get a little clarification on the city
council's no motion or anything on that ordinance died. It's not going to be
brought up again two weeks for a second reading because there was no action
taken. I wasn't this wasn't the silence
I don't know why my screen shows, it's reversed not there.
Property tax.
Yes.
Many high county property tax abatement, including the council's packet, is a request for
four different properties to have their taxes evaded for a period of four months, September
or October or November or December, and end of 19 following the flooding.
These were made to, these requests were made to many high county on these four properties.
all four of these properties were affected by the fall flooding in 2019 and all
four properties were deemed substantially damaged, therefore, basically
and uninhabitable in their current state. So I guess I recommend support of
us proving all four of these properties actually. I can agree with that but where's
other six. That was my question. These property owners, the county has equalization when they did it
for everybody. But they did it for 2020. They weren't able to do it for the period between September and December.
So all the other ones have are for 2020 but they weren't able to do that for the previous years.
but these poor properties filled out the paperwork and divot.
The other properties have not done that.
Could they still do it?
I think potentially before the end of the year,
should it be third on a little bit?
Or can we just...
So you're looking for a motion to approve this?
Why don't you make it a motion to approve this
and why don't you include in that motion
evading the others and now see if we can let the county
just do that?
So move.
Yeah.
The other 6 be notified of some of the other 5, it's a little data pass array that do this year, and that's a potential to, I'm guessing no, probably on some of them, but unless they have like us growing on mortgage or something.
Okay, the motion made by Mark is to approve these in and approve any other abatements related
to properties.
The other five properties under the FEMA umbrella, however you want to say it, and James
has sectioned it that-
Well, I've got one question.
What about the other property that wasn't able to get under this and is going through the
program, Justin. I would say that since he's not going with me, his was not substantially damaged.
Got it. You're right, got it. And he's okay if you, we were talking about nine properties,
not ten, we had ten. Yeah, we had one drop out of the ten. Yeah.
Okay, are we clear on the motion?
and what we're doing.
Okay.
All in favor.
Signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Opposed nay.
Motion is carried.
Okay.
Now you want to do the county.
Sure.
Do that.
Yes.
Attached is the county sheriff contract for the next year.
This is in the amount of $221,791.60.
This was a 2.7% increase in the 2020 contract.
This was approved for the 2021 budget, just a promality to have the mayor signature on the
track.
No different.
Move to approved by Chad.
Is there a second second?
Seconded by Bob.
All right.
We'll see if I have the same guy.
All right.
I have all the name, motion carried.
Next is ordinance number 87, supplemental budget for 2020.
I'm actually pretty good, I prefer my explanation than not the actual ordinance.
If it works well better FEMA, we wouldn't be taking anything as a reserve for once.
Going through the line item just especially to see what everything is for.
Do you all have this copy of the color, copy in front of you?
Okay, I tried it to our point.
Okay, so everything is green except for the last two, where there's library, community support, there's a little bit of COVID in there, but everything in green is non-COVID, non FEMA.
So, the first two items are journal government and finance.
Unfortunately, it's your bulk substance and my laptop died.
So we have for a new laptop sitting in front of us, but so costs associated with the new laptop and stuff.
Next one, Delta, and now it's building and maintenance. All of this is COVID-related.
We have not spent $10,000 in this particular section, but I'm adding it so we can purchase more.
Like we were talking about masks, I'm in the middle of loading my Amazon cart right now with a bunch of PPE that will get reimbursed to the state.
So anything in orange or gold is COVID and will be reimbursed 100%.
I'm getting free for both for everything fire department. We were pre-approved for both
a fire and the ambulance to get $24,000 worth of radios. I don't understand how it's
COVID but it was approved so we went with it. So we purchased I think it was 14 radios with
this new state system for each the fire department and the ambulance and it is re-imversed through
the COVID funding. That's for that $25,000 question. Just a pet over there.
Co-inforcement, both he and Diane, Diane got laptops and we're set up with, yeah, laptops and
we're set up with VPN. They're not as robust as ours as the VPN into their systems
here. That was really merciful. So they can work for the whole. So they can work for
me. Can't read my mind.
Then there's other protection. This is a new department. I added
actually just on Friday after talking with Rod Fortin from DOA.
So there are $79,000 of FEMA cost
the flood repair. So everything, especially with the second flood, there's a little bit
with the first flood that wasn't as bad, but the second flood was very, very costly. There
There were $79,000, so I created this account department and account in it to cover that
to cover those expenses because anything we go over in spending, even if it's even
a reimburse, we're spending it.
So with this $79,000, 85% of it was reimbursed with the state and the federal government.
The other 15% is $12,000.
The other portion of this is the amount of what you see here, so it's also FEMA but it's
with the bio portion.
So there's two different parts of this FEMA with the FEMA money.
So there's $60,000 that we have spent with Seacock fees and that's all of their work with putting these properties together.
Close to $5,000 in its fastest testing and $15,000 in the payment.
Now this is all across that.
We're incurred this year and so that needs to be included in our budget.
Yes, we were getting reimbursed for that, but it's going out the door. It's also coming back in the door.
So we have to work out for that. Do you have questions on that one before I move on?
Yeah, so the, especially us and all that.
Does that come with property owners?
That's where the owner is. It comes out of the property owners.
Correct. But we are getting passed through.
We're getting passed through.
We're getting passed through, but it's basically coming up.
So down below, you'll see the FEMA reimbursement part, so that blue part there is, so that $79,000
that first blue FEMA reimbursement is the FEMA bio, that's 100% covered by federal funds.
The other two there, the 63 and the 84, 100, are for the flooding.
That's 75% federal and 10% state, and so then that other 15% is on us, and that will be coming out of the contingency portion.
this contingency, which is $38,450.
We put a $50,000 contingency.
No, it is not that much ever.
You just said at the beginning,
this is the first time you had to pull.
You're just saying that's temporary.
So this part down here is essentially revenues.
And it needs to match the expenses.
And so down here is the grain is contingency what you ask.
We are going over budget, but we budget it for $50,000 over budget.
The blue is the FEMA funds coming in, and the COVID reimbursement coming in is the gold.
The reserves, both below that, where there's nothing, it says none.
Typically, in the past, we've had something come out of reserve, and then we've had to pull out of there.
At this year, we are not.
She said it.
Yeah.
I heard it wrong too.
I'm sorry.
Again, make sense in my head.
We're trying to read your mind.
Yeah, we're trying to read your mind.
I understand it was really hard for me to explain things.
I'm sorry.
OK, no other question, but another protection.
Mosquito, we just purchased more spray than previous years.
My assumption, I didn't ask clearance,
but it was very nice this year.
So they were able to spray a little bit more than usual.
Ambulance, they have.
This is very padded because there is something in there. There's this lift that is about $60,000 that they're hoping to get free approved by the state.
It has not been so far, so we've not purchased it and once it is free approved.
There's been a few other things that they have been approved for and some of it the parties already come in and they have some or one of them is a PAPERS.
I can tell you more about what it is, it's a head piece.
It's a white, it's a hood, it's a hood, you know, and then it's got to be an air system.
I believe most of your transports now are COVID-related or are considered COVID-related.
So that was one of the main issues with that.
They also got the radios, the, what's that compression thing, they got in the, the
Lucas compression machine, that was approved, I can't remember ever, they, were acting as
a pass through for the ambulance and the fire department.
Yeah.
They're obviously on site agencies, but they're being, that money is being provided through
This is not an actual expense. We track all of our water usage. We have meters on all of our
lift station, lift station, excuse me, conversation at the pool, at the campground. And this most
it is just because of the new work for the campground in the shower house. We just expanded more on
on water.
Parks, this was personnel, most of it, 85% of it was reimbursed, the diapers
out, obviously at the park a lot more than they were in 3 years here. It wasn't boring
you.
Library, they had a couple, especially if they were not expecting, $6,700 is an air
conditioner. I almost said we paid over the last six years on the initial subpar
conditioner. So that part is that's the green in there. The other end and the
COVID the booksteralizer. That was a mistake and that's partially my fault and we
We assumed it was, so a book sterilizer, and Dave can probably speak to this.
You basically put a book in the oven and 60 seconds, 10 seconds, pretty quick.
Yeah, you can put it up.
I believe up to 20 items in there.
It's something that's allowing the library to operate and operate safely for our place.
So our number is two falls and we have to quarantine everything for seven days.
This way they don't quarantine if they do it for like a day.
because you can put it in and it's everything. DVDs, phones, and you can put everything in it.
We thought this, but they came back and said, a book serializer, I think it's a library.
A library is not an essential form of government.
It's an essential service.
And we, yes, thank you.
So we didn't take her that, but I think, I mean, I myself, I read a lot and unfortunately
it's an expense that we're going to have to take on now, we have it, we can't do anything
about it, but I do know I did have to bring in, and she has tried to pull back on purchasing
some other things, I'm not going totally buying all of her books this year, and a few other
things she has decided not to do, so it is covering a portion of it across.
Um, and then there were some book trucks, um, just because there's a lot more books going in and out, um, the book trucks were approved by, uh, for COVID reimbursement.
And, um, yeah, I know.
Because because it was under certain amount.
Yeah.
Guess that I were all in there.
Um, community support.
support. But yet we have how much to spend that they want to get back. That makes a perfect
sense. Well, $100,000 a year. Can we edit that up? They're very, very, very, very
But you know it's our money and we don't spend it.
That's an exact number.
Our work has an everybody's.
The last one is community support.
5,000 of this is my fault.
I put in the amount that they requested two years ago and not last year.
And they requested more and so I praised them more and because I went off of their request sheet.
And, anyways, $5,000 is my full $3,000 is the fund that we gave them to work with the community for COVID, and that was reversed.
So, based on the conversation we had tonight earlier, should we bump that up?
Bump what? The $3,000?
For public education stuff? Yeah.
They have not spent their total $3,000, and I think Dan Heaney's suspended by the end of the year.
Okay. And I think they should have three dollars
would cover anything.
Yes.
Yeah.
And they have to spend it on.
I don't know.
Where would you buy it?
Like math or whatever, but you have to find somebody
in the air.
Okay.
Any questions?
Other than that?
We need two.
First reading.
Abortment.
Eight, eight, seven.
We need a motion.
Some will buy a bot to approve first reading.
Abortment.
Eight, seven.
Is there a second?
Seconded by Bill.
I'm a favorite single five saying aye.
I'm going to be in any motion.
It's carried.
Now we get down for our old faithful.
Is that right?
We didn't have the rule.
This first reading, first reading.
Second reading.
We're going to do a rule.
All right.
Now next is resolution 2015-15.
We've been paying, and are attached as the paperwork associated with the grant the city received,
solidated grant for the six-street project in the amount of $750,000 not to exceed $750,000.
You know, the time receiving the grant, we hadn't moved forward with finalizing paper work until we knew we were going to be moving forward with the project.
So, starting to get the paper work in line with the DNR to begin looking at setting up our bonds and, you know, we're going to be having discussions on the ordinance's adoption on rates and everything in that nature and looking at resolution of necessity for six streets.
So, this is just a kind of a first step, getting some of the paper we're going with the DNR for getting our funding set up for this speech project.
And this is what this is as a resolution supporting the mayor's signature on the grant
outpricated.
On the grants award.
So I make the motion to approve.
2020-2015.
We're going to be married to approve 2020-2015 resolution.
Is there a second?
Second.
Seconded by Chad.
Please call the roll.
Yes.
Bortr.
Yes.
Brown Fagan?
Yes.
Meyer?
Yes.
Gert?
Yes.
Okay.
Next is collections of utilities.
Well, I'm every year.
We need to be clear.
There's a hand.
Analyze.
Path to utilities.
That have not been paid out.
That we've attempted to collect from the individuals
schools that have unpaid utility bills with the city,
passed out the ordinance to the states that property owners are
ultimately responsible for unpaid due water bills.
There's also a letter that's been submitted by one of the property owners
kind of contesting or requesting the city to consider sending the property to collection.
And we've been around and around on this for many years.
This ordinance was relatively recently adopted,
regarding how the city is going to handle collecting
of unpaid utilities.
I don't think we need to rehash that tonight.
Ultimately, the city needs an ability
to collect these property owners that
have renters is what the majority of these are.
these renters may leave, we keep their deposit and anything on top is going to be attempted to be collected from that renter.
You know, the forwarding address is that most likely they're going to forget that bill that ultimately ends up falling out of the property.
You know, the property only letter that's been submitted is disputing that the city's process
associated with collection of utilities on property owners that have renters.
You know, it's been in two years since we kind of had an end up discussion on this.
And we nailed it down to this is the best method associated with collecting.
So with that Council could take any questions declared by recommend approval of the list as it's stated I do want to say number seven number ten and number eleven has been paid and then number one in two we got a call on today.
We're getting a check they were sending it out today. I still want you to approve that one. Just in case we don't put this.
You said seven, ten, seven, ten, and eleven have been paid for water, yep.
You all have a copy of that letter, and I had a phone call from that party, and what
took place was that when the letter from the city went out about this issue, it went
to her daughter who picks up the mail and that's how she found out about it because
she's there they're not here in town. So I call her, she called early this morning and
And I was driving the bus and she had called her this evening and we talked about it
and she certainly, she certainly understands the position of the city in terms of these
issues.
But I guess 1.2 points really and I think it's mentioned in the letter and I think in
a conversation I had with the employer today, that deposit amount we have right now is 125.
And if you guys know what your water bills are, you know, most it's 90 to 100 bucks.
And so if I told, like I told her, if we cracked up and moved out of town,
and you never saw us again in two months' time, you'd rack up a $200 to $225 cost right there.
So what we're taking in as a deposit is not matching what we would end up being stuck with the liability.
I think what we need to consider doing is every time we increase rates, we need to increase that deposit.
I went back and I looked at an average.
we in Del Rock is considered about 3,000 gallons average per month and if you use
3,000 gallons for two months that would be approximately $175 and what is
Is there a positive?
No, it's fine.
But only two of these are passed at $125 a month. Because they've already had the one twenty-five on this. Yeah, the deposits are not right. Don't these renters have a deposit for them direct from? Yeah. And we have talked about this also in like, we want, we don't want this to happen.
So we want landlords to contact us when they know they're going to be up.
Some of these up in need, especially the ones that get large, they know that the times
coming and they up in need.
So it doesn't help either one of us.
But it doesn't look internal what they want.
No landlord.
Yes, yes they do.
But what I'm saying is there are other landlords that contact us.
And there was one in particular today, and he said, you know, if I rent your looks like they might be fixing the leave and not pay, basically, or not let me know, we believe in or they believe in or move in.
But Paul Diana asked, you know, where are they at? And Diana said, they'll be shut up at the end of the month, if they don't pay.
and told them the amount of, you know, we want to work with you, but we also, we don't know,
you know, you may have one property, you may have ten properties, we can't watch all those.
So, we ask the landlord to work with us, you know, it's a two-way street.
And before if you know your renter is going to be moving out,
of course I have to see where they're at and maybe you don't give their deposit all
back.
You know, I think it's telling you I would get their goods at pain or not pain.
I mean, you didn't look at their trucker.
You know.
Right until the, what I'm getting at is the good renters, don't want to have a $200, $300
deposit for water, I mean, they're probably strapping up as it is and it's just hard to
I think that's one that we raised, it's just, you know, well, it's only recently, but I want to point out, maybe we should keep that in mind, what you're saying.
Because it gets really difficult for people to put the process on.
But if it does need to be raised up because our reigns, then so be it, but that you don't go through the rough.
That is true, but I say I'm earning $75 and that's to cover two months.
By the time we're shutting these people off or shutting these properties off, they're
hitting three months or two and a half to three months.
So we also have to do what's right to cover us too and it's not like they're just giving
us the money.
It does get applied at the end when they move out.
I mean, it's towards their water, and I get what you're saying, so people can't reward it, but the cost of renting, too.
Right, and then I guess I'll put it on the old landlords to think about the third deposit.
But if they're good renters, what are they going to do?
They're going to get their deposits back to some other place they can take that deposit.
Exactly. So if they're good runners, they will stay ahead of it. It's going to be the
bad ones that we need to stay on top of. So we don't notify the land lord when the tenants are behind
over the water bill. I don't know how we would do that. You don't know all properties that are being
rented in town per se, you know. Yeah. I think it's the land lord's responsibility to check
with us if they're the ones running the prop and we do have those like
Claire just mentioned that check with us where is that where is that
this account right now I don't think it's our responsibility to track a you
know hundreds well yeah if I was renting my house out you know and somebody
living there not being a water bill in the city would know that if they don't
want to stop with it it would be I we would encourage them to have the water
building and then the property owner's name in charge, the renter, right, water and
not stuff. Yeah, you know, they want to go and see that a lot too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And Mark, that's like, you know, Mark, all the property, Mark's properties, like that.
Yeah. On the problem is, as a landlord, you have to return that deposit within two weeks,
so that's why they should be calling the state issue. You see that they need to hold back
And part of this issue is that they moved out like in January and they in April they paid
off some of the what was old and what they're still remains that 236.99 and this took place
in April and the landlord is only finding them out about you know a few days ago and so
So that was also, and in my discussion with Diane today about the same point, you know,
can we effectively give a landlord a heads up, but this is the problem we have.
You don't know all the rental problems.
And she has made that comment.
She has told landlords that all you need to do is call us and find out where the status
of the building on a rental property.
In this particular instance too, and fortunately in a lot of sense, the renters often leave.
We don't necessarily know they're gone.
We just know the water should turn out.
There are people living in houses with water turned off and then they come back in a pit.
And some don't.
We have no idea where the landlord is going to know if I would assume any ways that they're
still in the house.
And if they're gone, then it would be nice if they would contact us, but we do know when we can't get on top of this chair.
One other important point is that these are sent to collections.
The collection agency has instructed that their first individual that they should attempt to collect from is the renter.
And second would be the property owner.
So they will attempt to contact the renter for us.
Yeah, that's a good point to make that clear.
Yeah, so are these new landlords that don't understand this?
No, I don't check on that.
I mean, that's your property, that's your business, I don't know.
OK.
It's another example of personal responsibility, I guess.
OK.
So what do I see a lot of things?
I need a motion.
I need to make motion to send these properties to collections for not being able to send the
utility overdue bills to the collection agency and that's been seconded by Chad all fair
So, I'm single from saying nice.
Oh, they should carry.
Okay.
Now we have the Sioux Falls humane society.
The contract for 2021 with the Sioux Falls for Maine society
is nothing this changed as far as rates or anything of that.
We appreciate everything.
Thank you for our community.
They come up here to one of their calls.
We recommend approval of the 2021 contract.
to approve.
Move by the schedule.
Approved.
Is there a second?
Seconded.
Seconded by Bill.
All in favor.
Signed to have a second.
Aye.
Opposed.
Name.
Motion to carry.
Nine to pay our bills.
Some will move by Bob to approve the pay claims payable.
Is there a second?
I'll second that.
Bill seconds.
It'll all in favor.
Signed to have a second.
Aye.
Opposed.
Name.
Motion to carry.
If they come to Bob, who wants to pay them bill?
Bob is responsible.
First of all, responsibility, I don't know.
We're only going to have a question.
Administrative finance office in 2004.
Sixth Street, Fifth Street, and Iowa Avenue Project,
proposed project in 2021.
We sent letters out to the property owners
that are going to be included in the project,
the housing project, provided them with breakdown
of their assessments, proposed assessment,
map of the property, etc. We also offered, you can see in the correspondence that we get together and meet given COVID.
We're not going to be holding a big public meeting like we had up at the Catholic Church meeting room prior to the Southeast Infrastructure Project.
I think what we did learn with that project, though, is communication with property owners is extremely important.
So, we've offered, we've got a schedule of times, and we're creating half hour, 45 minute
time slots for anybody that would like to come, sit down, zoom call, conference call,
whatever the case is for people that, and how they would like to ask this question.
So, Lance and I will be meeting with everyone individually and explain the project, how it
affects their property, the why we're doing it, the assessment process, how that assessment
process rules out trying to work with them on any little issues they might have on their property,
we drive ways, et cetera, et cetera, everything that we kind of dealt with on the self-disinfastructure
project as well. We've had I think five or six property out owners call at this point as it
and we plan on having meetings with them starting next Monday and then we've got some other date
set aside too for meeting with these folks. So we'll report on how those meetings went after we'd
have both meetings. Timeline lines, I think we're looking at February March-ish to do an
adoption of a resolution of necessity, so we'll send folks out. The notice is on that
post-public hearing, so we can get that process, questions answered, and attempt to get through
that process, hopefully successfully, so we can be looking at bidding in this spring on
the people who contact who want to come in and visit the KY.
What they want to visit about the sidewalks.
Yeah, just some design stuff.
You know, most of them, even though I got one or two, six free properties,
but a lot of those folks, they were at the meetings at the church.
There's some new people that have moved into houses there.
So there's some new questions.
Fifth Street is added onto this project.
I will have an use out of this project. There's some assessments associated with those streets too.
So what are we doing with the current bill?
That's the replacement of the culvert.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
We're going to be doing that. It's going to disturb, you know, more than half the street.
So, you know, we're not going to dictate today that we're going to install curb and gutter and sidewalks.
We want to talk to these folks and find out if that's something that they're in favor of and can you go from there?
Since we're going to be disturbing that much area, we'd like to see that get cleaned up like all the other neighborhoods and treat them the same.
And then Iowa Avenue is just that branch from 9th to 10th.
So we've been, we met with the hospital place already and then there's two other property owners on the other side.
We've had a conversation.
All right, old 77 Overlay project.
The DOT, the city of cemented community access grant.
There was a list of those rewards.
There was a lot of interest this year.
A lot of communities you saw, you could see the requests on that attachment, and there
were only about four or five that were actually awarded.
We did not make that list.
We had applied for the maximum $600,000 grant.
That $1.8 million, that's all inclusive, I forgot to put that in my notes.
That's all inclusive of the trail and everything.
We just went kind of full-gore and threw it all on the plate to see if what the response
would be.
We actually scored pretty well, a little bit better than I thought.
I was honestly not really expecting this grant to be issued to the city.
I didn't think we'd score that great.
You know, this is a project we budgeted for next year.
We had put in the budget that we would be receiving some grants from the state on this.
So I'd like to clarify and sit down and kind of analyze the budget, you know, we just spent not the budget but the reserves.
The reserve accounts, you know, we just spent down the money to pay off that debt.
So if we're looking at fully taking reserves out to pay for this overlay project, I want to know what those costs are specifically.
We've got estimates right now and then bring that to council and talk about whether or
not we want to pursue doing that overlay.
The council has had this discussion with our capital improvement plan.
You have committed using reserve fund dollars to take this project so I know where the council
stands you want to get this project done.
I just want to take a look at it with Clarencey, if it's something that isn't going to put us in on the back of it, since you were here.
Fully have plants moving forward with the design on the project.
Really anticipate we're going to keep moving forward and do this project this next year.
This is a pretty quick project. It's not going to be a three-month project or anything.
It's a few weeks of a project.
So the only thing would be, you know, let's maybe look at the condition of that street.
We scored a little bit higher on this grant than I thought we would.
We hold off next year on its 2022 and apply again.
And maybe we get successful next time on a second.
That might be worth considering too.
So I kind of want to think about that a little bit more.
And then bring something to council. One other thing mayor asked me to bring up, I didn't write down, was ash trees. The guys have been cutting ash trees down in the area where we had established for cutting ash trees down. Been working with property owners, you know, prior to, you know, there's been a handful of properties that have treated, a handful of properties that plan on treating. So we're working with
with everybody, you know, it's kind of a mass hub
if you haven't driven through these neighborhoods.
We're not, we're not near done yet.
So we're going to continue doing that at our leisure
when the guys have an opportunity,
they're doing two or three days a week right now.
We've been working with Fegan Tree Service too
to assist us with some of the large trees
that we don't have the equipment to handle.
You know, they're just gonna, they're gonna keep going.
you know we budgeted 25,000 I think as far as what we can pay you know
somebody better help us out so we're we're keep we're mindful of budget too
but we want to keep making progress on that so there's a bunch of brush in my
backyard from the construction okay but they haven't cleaned up yet okay I don't know
They've got a bunch of branches down there, so I suppose there's equipment through it.
We'll make sure we're all making sure that's about that.
I'm still here.
Okay.
You got it.
If I see it, I mean, there's probably more in there.
Okay.
So it's good.
We're going to be out there this week doing some of that stuff, so I'll remind them tomorrow.
Okay.
Thanks.
Good to go.
That's all that.
The only thing, more than night, that's the Chamber's monthly meeting, and I'll probably
talk a little bit about if the Chamber wants to be more actively involved in educating
its membership relative to the discussion tonight, et cetera, and to the extent of, if
Whatever we do, we need to generate the verb as your whatever, whatever, whatever, I'll help just in with that, so.
Thank you to each of you for tonight.
Obviously, you know, Bill's question about where are the people who said they liked me?
Well, you know, you've been around as long as I have been.
They've never show up, right?
It's people who have the, who are more, you know, the people who are four and are going to be home
because they don't want to sit in here.
That's right.
I don't know.
But it is what it is and you know, I think the bottom line is if people are aware of, you know, we all are all born with a free will and I can say, you know, if you're good, make good decisions and not do stupid things and you know, if you're alive and whatever.
But it's documented we had a community discussion about it.
You know, it's very similar to getting hammered or just having a conversation.
You know, I think that's documented.
Yeah, and I think that's important.
Yeah.
I think we could be looked at otherwise for not having that discussion publicly.
So, I think it's going to skip the Council to go through that.
But again, I appreciate that you guys, you know, your attention and you know, listening
to what people are saying, that's important, you know, this council and I are all here
has always been to do what's the best interest of our community and obviously safe people
lives is important, but everybody has a different spin on things I guess, so we'll move ahead.
So anyway, I guess that's all I've got so you walk back in just in time to hear Bob say I make a motion adjourned