We'll call the meeting to order. Let's stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance,
please.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of 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, all.
Bye-bye.
Let's have roll call, please.
Cook?
Yes.
Eller?
Yes.
Ferreol?
Yes.
Fletcher?
Yes.
Mazur?
Yes.
All present, Mr. Mayor.
Thank you.
Agenda is solid as published?
Yes.
I make a motion we adopt the agenda as presented. I second.
Fletcher?
Roll, please.
Fletcher?
Yes.
Cook?
Yes.
Eller?
Yes.
Ferreol?
Yes.
Mazur?
Yes.
Okay. I don't have anybody signed up for public comment.
So,
I look forward to this. We're all solid with the consent
agenda. Everybody's seen it. Could I get someone to make a motion to
adopt the consent agenda?
So moved.
Ferreol?
Second.
Orr?
Yes.
Cook?
Yes.
Eller?
Yes.
Fletcher?
Yes. You can restart that one, too.
It is okay.
Okay. Well, we'll get you.
I need training.
We're just trying to keep all the steps correct.
Training.
Mary Ann, you have the claims. Anything we...
Were they good?
I make a motion that we pay them.
Thank you.
Second. Yes, I got that one. I did. You got the other one.
Yes. I'm going to give that to Mr. Eller.
All right. Orr?
Yes.
Eller?
Yes.
Cook?
Yes.
Ferreol?
Yes.
Fletcher?
Yes.
Levity is good.
Hey, thank you all.
We're down to number eight here,
reports from city boards and departments.
Ryan Flaherty, you're up first.
Good evening, everyone.
I believe there's three there.
Okay.
Ask if it's been done.
I guess it's three.
Three more things, might not be.
Perfect.
Okay.
First of all, I'm going to start with, we ordered salt.
Last month, I ordered salt.
We ordered 125 ton this year.
We used about 75 last year.
We're going to try and start putting more salt down than sand, so we don't have the
street to clean near as much anymore.
I'm sure that everybody's noticed that we've started painting
early. We usually paint in August, but we started painting
uptown
for tourist season to make uptown look a little bit better, do the
crosswalks. We will paint crosswalks for the school and the school
painting in August when it's closer to school time.
We
are pretty close with our phase one of the street
project.
We've got some final grading, seeding, fertilizing, all that
good stuff. They've got some cleanup to do in the streets.
Some of their manhole lids are marked different.
Some say storm, some say sanitary, and they're in the different
holes. They're going to get that taken care of.
We have two
sidewalk approaches that need to be redone.
When we did the final walkthrough on Thursday,
some of them are more than 2% slope, so they have to redo
some of those.
And then,
with that being said, they should be wrapped up, and that should be hopefully by
the end of this week. And
that is going to be done
with phase one. Phase two, I asked Jordan on Thursday through the
walkthrough if he has talked to Tom Pike
through Grimes Asphalt. He thinks they're going to start sometime mid-June,
which is coming right up. We'll have that done.
We'll get John Wayne done, get Yates done.
Yeah.
And then,
I
had a concerned citizen call about the cracks out on
Cherry Point out there north of town
on the coming highway and went out there and looked at it, and some of the cracks
are very large. A bicycle wheel fall in it.
I've contacted the company that's going to come in in July and take care of all the
cracks and fill them with
plastic crack mastic
material that's...
Dallas County uses it right now. They're from Cedar Rapids.
They're going to come out and get that taken care of so we can hopefully
leave that section of town alone for the rest of the time that I'm here, but we'll
see.
And then other than that, I have tough truck coming up on this weekend
and-
Best I ever
... yeah. We do know that the county's not bringing some
equipment. I talked to Rachel, so I'm going to try and take as much equipment as I
can.
Yes, thank you, because that's an awesome deal.
Yep.
The grandpa's in the room, and the grandma's I'm sure appreciate it.
It's a great deal.
Sorry, I interrupted you.
No, you're fine. That's all I had.
I want to thank you for the no outlet sign.
Yep.
I've got a retired librarian that's not calling anymore.
Fair
enough.
Yes.
Yeah.
And I have one more.
Okay.
No outlet there on 3rd Avenue. I'll send you a note.
Just off of Lane.
Okay.
That 3rd Avenue cul-de-sac up there.
Going north?
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Are we getting any closer to putting up no parking signs for-
One side of the street or the other?
As soon as I get to my new budget,
instead of buying brand-new signs, I'm going to
buy the sticker faces, and they're half the
price. And so we're going to go through and sticker the ones that need to
be stickered.
Good deal.
Anybody else have anything for Ryan?
I see you cut trees today. Somebody trimming trees.
Yes.
Every time I drive down the road, and I see there's several trees.
We started trimming the bus route from the start of the bridges.
When we get done with that, we'll start with the rest of them.
Yeah. It seems like this year we must have got a lot of extra growth this spring.
Yes. They're all heavy.
Water.
Yeah.
And there's a lot of the small ones actually have grown
horizontally out I've seen. So.
Yep.
Thank you.
Yep. Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
David, I've already besmirched the librarian, so let's-
Yes, sir. Well, you get to deal with the mail.
Yeah.
They're retiring.
Good evening, Council.
Good news right off the bat, I can report our program attendance
for this fiscal year is up
about 25%, and that's
wonderful. All the credit goes to the staff there. Great programs.
Also doing a good job reporting on attendance there.
And just to finish out there, it looks like we'll be able to,
knock on wood, close out fiscal year '26 well in
the black. So,
we'll see about that next month.
Next,
well, there goes Ryan out the door, but, many thanks to
our City of Winterset safe operators who will be
present for next Saturday's Touch A Truck.
As I've mentioned many times already,
we're having a big model railroad exhibit this weekend, and
then I think that, if anything, will
guarantee that my attendance for programs will be way
up this fiscal year, which ends
at the end of June. So very excited about that.
And once again, I can't fail to mention the hospitality suite is for safe
operators and officials, people with official status.
Right.
And so that's all of you. And so I look forward to seeing you there next
Saturday. That's my hope.
Next, our staff is ready for construction.
Your approval of the contract, our contract with Hildreth
Construction this evening is very much appreciated.
That will really move us forward as an institution
and I'm just so excited about that.
Lastly, I can announce that, as of
July 1st, we are accredited with the state library
through 2029. And I know that just sounds
academic to you, and
some people may think it's a foregone conclusion, but it represented a fair
amount of effort to get all that data together, and so I'm happy that's all done,
and it was a successful effort. So, that's what I have for you,
Council and Attorney, Mr. Administrator.
Thank you. Any questions for David?
Is your accreditation, are there different levels to that?
Yes, sir.
Yeah.
So we would be at what level?
We are at Tier 3, which is the highest level of services, and that's
for E-sized libraries, which are Iowa
libraries serving communities between 5,000 and
10,000. And our programming has just really
gotten attention in the last two or three years, even from the state library, and
I'm just so excited to run those numbers at the end of this month.
And that comes from having good people in place doing what they're supposed to be
doing, namely Rachel and Chris Baumgarten, our adult
services guy.
Very good.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
You bet.
Scott, you're up.
Thank you, Mayor, City Council, Scott Schmaderer, director of parks and rec.
Park center's up and operational for the 2026 season.
So this year we have roughly 51 seasonal employees.
We opened up this past Memorial Day, as we typically always do.
And then a little bit different, actually, last year was kind of the same as this
year's school year, but we did stay open from 4:00 to 8:00 throughout the week.
So a lot of the other municipalities around us, they don't do
that. Just so you guys know that they typically just open the weekend, shut down
for the week, and then reopen the weekend.
But we stayed open 4:00 to 8:00, and attendance was great.
So the weather's been perfect.
Planning for the pool season, obviously, it never really stops anymore.
It's a year-round deal. So,
hats off to Zach and Chris. We start hiring back in
November. So we'll close this year in August and then take about a six-week
hiatus and start back with the hiring process.
So again, hats off to Chris and Zach.
Obviously, as Council is aware, alongside our engineers and design team, we
carefully reevaluated the field house and police department,
and reduced those costs by 25%, lowering the total estimate to 16.4
million, from the estimated 20, without reducing the facility's
footprint or impacting the business plan.
And then so some of those premium amenities
that we did
remove for cost-effective reasons and
alternatives were the traditional wood floors now replace those LED courts.
The hoodie gathering area replaces the indoor playground, and the new common space
replaces the concession multi-sports simulator area, allowing for more
flexibility to utilize those spaces.
So those modifications, along with reduction of sand volleyball, the redesign of
utilities, allowed us to reduce that estimated cost.
Obviously, the process wasn't simply about cutting costs, it was also about showing
the community that we heard them, and we all heard questions.
So, that's the big thing. And the other thing is without the footprint not
being reduced, those amenities that I mentioned, this basically would
be an alternative. So, or down the road. So those things aren't gone forever.
The LED floors was a design, we'll save the traditional wood floors.
But the other things, depending on fundraising or whatever, could still come back
in another day.Internal Recreation Trail Project at City
Park will start later this month, and conclude around the beginning of
August-ish. This is the next phase of that recreational trail project.
So this is the internal loop around City Park.
And if you guys can remember,
around almost a year and a half ago, the majority of this project
had been funded through grants. So most, not all, but most of this project
is funded through the Iowa DOT,
and through their trails and grants.
City Park playground is extremely busy again.
Weekends are pretty much at capacity. Husky Health Day just occurred.
Our parks were big beneficiaries of this.
Split and bundle firewood, hedge maze with the rotary, the flower mounds in
front of Carver Park, or it's front of City Park,
with the master gardeners, and then the tree plantings in coordination with the
Tree Commission.
Friends of, we picked up 120 flower baskets.
So if you haven't seen, if you go by, there's some flowers.
They're growing. They're blooming.
We got 120 of those from Harvey's, and then the next day around 4:30, we all went
outside and started hanging them.
So the Friends of and some of our parks staff, we took over the
first week just so we can kind of work the kinks out of it, and the volunteers have
been taking that over to date, and have done a fantastic
job. Also, the Friends of group held a park
rededication and mural reveal at George Washington Park.
So if you have not had a chance to go check that out, Christine Hulbert, local
artist,
did that, and then also a local contractor, Clayton Stevens, took down the wall,
put a new one up. And that project was, again, primarily funded
with donations for that project.
New water line installed at Giffen Fields with assistance from Winterset Municipal
Utilities. That might be the longest service line in the history of service
lines. If folks aren't familiar with that, it starts at the concession stand and
runs literally due east under the creek, and hooks up, I don't know, 200
feet to a main. So we've replaced that three or four different
times in patches. So we tried to do as much replacement as we could finally.
Upcoming programs, T-ball's in full swing with about 180 kids.
Pitch, Hit, & Run will be a free event this Saturday.
This program came back last year. It's a local event, lets kids who potentially
go through this local competition go to a state level and so on and so forth, and
potentially end up at the World Series.
Pickleball's open, move in the park began Friday, June 19th.
We've got swim lessons starting next week. Private swim lessons are open.
Middle school recently held a cardboard boat race at the pools.
We worked with the school district on that a little bit, and they had
120 sixth graders, I think, out there doing some cardboard boat races.
With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Sounds great. Anybody have any questions for Scott?
Out of curiosity, with the field house plan or the funding
and the fundraising-
Mm-hmm
... you're still keeping the target on that the same, though?
You're not changing that or your fundraising target because you were-
Pledges
will still be accepted.
Yes.
Obviously, we're going through and seeing how the public turns out to that
project. And yeah, we'll still be accepting pledges.
Like I said, those amenities that we discussed, those are just going to be
reduced for the bidding process. They'll be...
And there's an alternate, so we can see where those prices are.
So some of the fundraising could go towards some of those other amenities as
well.
Okay. Thanks.
Campgrounds was full. I saw that.
Yeah.
It was an amazing crowd. And so thank you, sir.
Good.
Drew, do we have something from-
I don't have anything from Fire Chief.
I just text him and I say, "If nothing else, can you text me your report?" So...
Okay. Well, we'll-
I spoke with him earlier today,
but...
We'll move on to Chief Hipman then.
And I know we've got
something from him already.
Good evening, everybody.
Glad to be back.
I missed the last couple anyway.
Hopefully Sergeant Wood did all right in my stead.
I've heard good reports that he got you out of here on time, so
Fairly uneventful month for us in May.
Statistic-wise, we were a little higher than the previous month.
Those stats are there.
For our notable events, we did the $10 hot dog days again in all the school
buildings, had a blast there. Assisted with traffic control for the Little League
parade and for the John Wayne Days 5K run.
We held testing for officer applicants for open positions and in
the process of interviews at the moment.
And
one of the reasons I was gone at one of the meetings is I was at the annual Police
Chiefs Conference, which is always an excellent round of training for all of us
and a good reset.
That's all I got.
Any questions for Chief?
Thank you, sir. We appreciate you being back.
All right. Holly, you're up next.
Good evening, everyone. As you can see from the report in front of you, in May,
33 properties were in violation of the code, and 37 came into
compliance. Right of way jumping debris was the most commonly found violation for
the month. The Planning and Zoning Commission met on May 26th.
They denied a preliminary plat for the Hollowell One located at 411 East Lane
Street, and recommended some changes to better align with the comprehensive plan.
A special meeting was then held on May 29th for the resubmission of the
Hollowell One preliminary plat with the recommended changes.
The plat was then approved at this special meeting.
The Board of Adjustment met on May 7th.
A special exemption use permit for an in-home daycare located at 103 South 5th
Avenue was denied.
Variance requests for 115 West North
Street, 419 South John Wayne Drive, four vacant lots located
on Mildred Circle, and 602 West Hutchings Street were all approved
as submitted.
I have been diligently working on the 2027, 2028 Iowa Thriving
Communities application, along with Ms. Marquart.
The deadline is Friday, June 5th. The finalists will be notified on or
about July 20thAnd I've included a flyer as to what the
benefits are of this designation.
Thank you.
And that is all I have for you this evening.
I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Any questions or
comments?
Thank you.
Watch out for the deer.
I will.
Drew, I bring this to you.
Yes, sir. I included my report in the packet, Council.
For the period of May 18th through May 29th, operations-wise,
worked with utilities and city
staff on our ongoing projects. As Ryan mentioned, we're about ready to close
out phase one and have been in talks with phase two.
Of course, the wastewater treatment facility has been high on our list.
The landfill, I attended the quarterly landfill meeting, and the
board has elected to fill an assistant landfill
manager position, which I worked diligently on this afternoon, shared with
that board, expect that to be shared and posted shortly.
We will host that, not holistically, but
in concert with Indianola, Madison County, and other
communities that our South Central Iowa landfill
serves. So, that might show up on a newsfeed for
you.
Attended a food bank and Central Iowa meeting last
Friday. It was very informative. I can tell you this, that
the local food banks in Madison County, specifically Winterset,
with our church and our PAW pantry, are well
connected with the Des Moines area food banks.
And the effort is to try and get
information to people
in a discreet
and helping manner, because they realize that
patrons that are attending their food banks are somewhat humbled
or somewhat embarrassed, and that we talked a lot about
that. How do we discreetly offer that assistance to people and retain their
dignity and help them? So we're in a collaborative
effort with the school, as well as the utility partners,
to work with all of our people and identify demographics that might
just be in need of a flyer or a QR code to find
food in need so they can continue. So something that was
kind of a little more touchy feely, I guess you could say, than normal
operations.
Projects, as I mentioned, wastewater treatment facility, we did cut that
check for PAYF 10, after we got concurrence from USDA.
I've been meeting with Travis Squires.
We expect to get a rating
from S&P,
which we expect to be an A+ rating again.
We did our due diligence meeting last week, which nothing changed from the last
time we applied.
So we'll hope to get the rating
this week, and then put it out to sale next week, and then
close well before the 30th of June.
The lawyers at Dorsey, as well as Travis with PFM, believe that we
still have authority based on the original
February resolution where the council granted myself the authority
to assume the note for so long as it didn't exceed
5.5%, and interest rates are in our favor there.
So we look for a positive rating on the end of the week and a bond
sale by the end of next week with a closing.
And the big concern is to get that revenue available to our account.
Whereas we've been paying out of our sewer fund,
and we'd like to get that reconciled and balanced before we get to the end of year
books. So that's the precipice of that July, or excuse me,
June 30 date. So good report from last week's meeting.
We did get all employees, that desired to elect, which all did,
for the majority, or continued as they previously had, for our
enrollment. Again, with our benefits package we offer sponsored by Holmes
Murphy and negotiated with IGHCP, which again is
a 1.8% increase just on the health insurance,
which the national average is anywhere between
10% and 15% annually. So still continues to be a
positive cohort that we joined three years
ago. Finance,
been working with CLA. They'll be in town next week,
completing our audits, so looking forward to meet them in person instead of on
Zoom. And I also included, and Mary Ann was the first one to see it,
based on some requests, I think it was Council Member Fletcher, I can't remember,
to correlate the revenue source and department and then
normal expenditure line item. You might have saw that laminated sheet in there.
And what the question was is as our department heads code their bills, it
all makes sense to us as we do our accounting system.
It's a quick reference guide that you can literally decipher what a code is
by the revenue source, the department, and then the general accounting
practices. So hopefully that's helpful and everybody will get a chance to see it
as they have the claims, and I can also email it to you.
So that was the work completed over the last couple of weeks, and I'll answer any
questions you may have.
Thank you, Drew. I was at a meeting at St.
Joseph's during food pantry hours, and
I was amazed by the number of folks in there that time,
and then just
had a discussion Sunday, and
evidently that was close to a record, and those numbers seem to be continuing to
climb, so glad you're helping spread the word on
that.
And just to clarify, we're working on the temporary construction loan for
the sewer plant-
Yes, sir
... not anything long-term, just-
Correct
... till we get her up.
Interim financing.
So that's it for me. Anybody else for
administrator Bard?
Okay.So
that brings us to number nine, resolutions and actions,
which is,
and I just was looking at it, this is for the library project
to
do the final approval there.
So,
Drew or Dave, do either one of you want to say anything about this?
I think it's pretty self-explanatory.
A resolution approving standard form of agreement with Hildreth Construction
Services LLC. That would be Resolution number
2026-28. So,
without any other comment, I guess I look for a motion to
approve Resolution 26-28.
I'll make that motion.
Second.
Any discussion about this particular item?
All right, let's have a vote.
Coker? Yes. Ferrell? Yes. Eller?
Yes.
Fletcher?
Yes.
Mesor?
Yes.
And I will then
comment two things here on council considerations
and discussions. First one being, I received a letter about
trees. I'll forward it on to Drew, and
Skye, and Ryan about a couple of comments.
I think we're probably doing a lot of what the citizen was concerned about.
We just need to maybe work on
talking. So it was certainly a friendly letter.
It's aspirational by nature. And then,
I sent a note to the young couple that had talked to
us about chickens last meeting and
said I would continue to research that issue.
So that is the end of my
points here.
Anybody else have anything?
Entertain a motion to-
Hold on.
Oh.
I did.
Uh...
Now, Holly's gotten through her thing, and you and I had a conversation, I think,
but last meeting,
I asked for some numbers
for,
uh...
The rental agreements.
Rentals.
That's right. I'll email them to you in the morning.
So-
I forgot to pass that on to her.
Yeah. Could you do that?
Yep.
Just, or get it, just whenever, you know
Absolutely. I'll email it to you.
Yeah.
I'll send it to the council.
Yeah. And it was nice to hear after that last meeting, we actually had a couple of-
We did
... people actually step up to be blind on their own.
Absolutely.
So,
and then we have a
workshop meeting coming up-
Yep
... sometime, don't we? We haven't really nailed down the date yet.
Pending, I have... Yeah, great. Glad you brought that up.
I'm looking at June 10th, looking somewhere between the 9 and
10 o'clock hour, starting and going till 2:00,
2:30, whatever that time, open end at the end. Mr.
Matstof will be available that day. I have to get the venue, maybe calling Mr.
Hargrove.
But we'll find a spot to host and...
So I haven't got the venue, but I will send that out via email, your
availability on June 10th,
which is a workday.
Okay. Thank you for bringing that up.
Hadn't brought it up yet because I didn't have the place yet, so...
Yeah, I just know it's getting tight on time.
Yep.
I didn't remember, but I knew it was...
I thought it was, we were trying to do it before Mike and them were
gone. But if it wasn't, it was that way.
Yep.
And then, and then did the,
subject matter is going to be?
Senate File 2472, just like we did with 718 when that came out and
impacted property taxes. We'll have Matt Stoffel here talking about what they refer
to as divisions of a code. And so if you
recall, last time we produced that, there
were over 20 divisions in House File 17.
I don't even know how many are in the 88 pages right now.
And some were impactful, and some were potentially, and some
were non-impactful. And we kind of went through them.
We kind of cull or filter the ones that are non-pertinent to our
situation. So council is very well aware of what
this impact will look like and discussions,
about House File 2472. So
that will be the intent of it.
Proof positive that we went to the meeting.
We are photographed.
We know we're right. I've been there. It's just...
All right, now I will accept a motion to adjourn.
So moved.
Second.
Unanimous consent.
Aye.
There we go.
We just have a record
for