[Music]
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Yeah.
Appcate
together.
My grandma's finger. There must be
Hallelujah.
celebrate
you know
Wow. Hallelujah.
right
now. I love
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to go.
Last
[Music]
night, how many more?
coming.
Are you
So
I
not the speakers on.
Call this meeting to order. Start with
the pledge of
allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the
republic for which it stands. One
nation indivisible with liberty and
justice for all. Next is invocation by
first Lutheran.
Okay, roll call.
Stabers here. Goldmer here. Hi. Mard
here. Jack here. Here. Sharks here.
Here.
All right, we have a quorum. Approval of
consent agenda items. Items appearing on
the consent agenda may be removed by a
city council member for discussion. the
beginning of the formal agenda items.
Move to approve. Second. Motion by Mr.
Mardle. Second by Mr. Goldhammer. Any
further discussion?
Would anyone in the audience like to
discuss anything on the consent
agenda? Okay. Roll call. Doer. Hi. Hi.
Barington. Hi. Baskkey. Hi. Charts. Hi.
Smith. Hi. Sabers. Hi, Gold Arm. I
motion carries. Citizens input. If you
need to address the mayor and members of
city council on an item that was not on
the agenda, excluding personnel items,
please come forward to the podium and
state your name and your concern.
Presentations are limited to three
minutes. Items will be considered, but
no action will be taken at this time.
Would anyone like to address the
council?
I'm Karen Pulley from
the Mitchell Food Pantry and I'm here to
report on the Easter ham dinner
giveaway. Uh we had planned to give away
200 meals and then on the Friday before
we got 42 hams from a donation and so
then we said we had to do 242
boxes which we did. I think it all went
well because I didn't see any uniform
policemen there.
So,
um, we included in each box besides the
ham and a gallon of white milk was 5 lbs
of fresh potatoes and 2 lbs of fresh
carrots, three lbs of fresh apples, a
pound of fresh onions and two cans of
green beans, a package of dinner rolls
or a loaf of bread, a pound of butter or
margarine, a dozen eggs, a package of
cookies, Pepsi, and then a package of
pinto beans with a recipe so they can
make bean and ham soup.
The value of this meal purchased locally
with items that are on sale was
$62.39. The 242 households came in 190
cars and those households included 133
seniors, 268 adults, 249 kids for 650
people that got an Easter dinner. Most
came from Mitchell, but some come from
Alec, Artisian, Delmont, Ethan, Fulton,
Mount Vernon, Olivet, Barkston, Zou
Falls, Wagner, and White Lake. The 34
volunteers donated 100 man hours on just
that day to get the event done. So,
thanks to Dan for paying for our
fees, for Josh for Thanksing the lot,
the council for approving it, and all
the volunteers who helped make this
happen.
Thank you to you, Karen. Thank you.
Anyone
else? Hello everybody. Uh my name is
Christian and I just am here uh to
formally introduce myself as the
executive director over at the Mitchell
Prehistoric Indian Village. Um and
actually talk about just a little bit of
what we have going on. Um we a little
bit about myself. Like I said, my name
is Christian. I'm originally from
Houston, Texas, and I have moved myself
up here to be the director. And we have
a lot of exciting things going on. Um
one, we just recently went through a
name change to include the term
archaeological in our name. We think
that's going to draw a lot more visitors
into our site. And as part of our
conversations we've been having with the
Chamber of Commerce, um we've been
talking about how to make Mitchell a
stayover versus a stopover site. And we
believe that the Mitchell site is really
an integral part in that. On average,
people spend about an hour and 20
minutes over at the village. And um we
really think that is important for again
just kind of bringing in a little bit
more revenue and a little bit more
business into the city of Mitchell as a
whole. Um, we also have set a record
number of school tours for this month,
which we continue to offer for free due
to the generosity of um, you know,
funding from people like y'all. Um, we
also are going to have our archaeology
awareness days on June 14th. Um, our day
on June 14th and we encourage everybody
to come out and see it. We're going to
have a lot of fun stuff going on. And
yeah, just kind of wanted to kind of
humbly present myself as the new
executive director and formally invite
all y'all to come out and get a personal
tour for myself, take you all onto the
the floor of the actual dig site itself,
and just kind of tell you guys a little
bit more about what we're looking to do
to update and modernize the village um
and really kind of proceed with a new
vision. So, thank you guys for letting
me come up here and hopefully we'll see
you guys over at the village soon. Thank
you. Thank you.
Good evening, council. My name is
Johanna and I am with the Mitchell
Chamber and Convention and Visitors
Bureau. So, I wanted to come talk to you
guys tonight because this week is the
2025 National Travel and Tourism Week.
Um, so I wanted to talk to you about
some ways that we're celebrating and
some important stats when it comes to
tourism. So, first off, we are um
lighting up the Corn Palace red. If you
didn't know, red is the national color
that represents tourism. and then visit
Mitchell will be doing some social media
promotions throughout the week as well.
And just a reminder as we move forward
um through these stats, tourism is the
second largest economic driver in South
Dakota under agriculture. So tourism is
very important to our state and to our
city. So starting off with some
statewide numbers, in 2024 we had 5.1
billion in visitor spending in the state
and that generated $399 million in state
and local taxes. And then um kind of
breaking it down into Davidson County. I
know I've shared these numbers before,
but I wanted to reiterate. We had $118.4
million in visitor spending, which is a
3.3% growth from 2023, which had
114.6 million. So thatund 118.4 million
generated $9.1 million in state and
local taxes. And this is money spent by
people who live 50 miles and farther out
of Mitchell. They come here, spend their
money, and it helps generate tax revenue
for us from people that don't actually
live in Mitchell. So, we market to both
regional and outofstate uh groups, and
we target people who we know are
potential visitors to the area. And all
of this data we get from Travel South
Dakota. It's all available online. If
you go to their economic dashboard, you
can view all of this data on there. Um,
and Travel South Dakota, if you didn't
know, it's our state tourism office. So,
we work very closely with them. Um, and
just to wrap it up, I just think these
numbers show how important travel and
tourism is to our state. And I want to
thank the council and the mayor for
supporting um, what we do. Thank you.
Thank
you. Anyone else? We got a long list
today.
Greetings. I'm Elizabeth with Mitchell
Mainstream Beyond. And what a week we've
had in Mitchell. Uh, if you didn't know,
the dessert rumble is happening actively
right now and that delicious dessert
competition is happening until the end
of the month and you can use the
Everything Mitch app to find the
participating businesses. On a in last
weekend in April, we had ladies day out
and it was a record. We had 41
participating businesses. We hadund
sorry
1,832 entries this year, which is two
over 200 more than we had last year. I
had the joy of going through every
single one and seeing where they came
from. They came from anywhere from the
farthest one away was Phoenix, Arizona
who was just visiting family to Hiron.
We had a couple from the outskirts of
Minnesota. Sou Falls had a lot. And then
a lot of our rural communities that
surround us came. So that's a very large
impact. We did ask the small business
owners what their average sale was that
day. And it ranged from anywhere from
$25 throughout the whole day to an
average of $100 to a couple kitchens
getting sold at our bigger real. So like
this average is all over the board. But
if we just take that
$1,800$1,832 just times $25 as an
average. should say they fueled up their
tanks to go home, which a tank of gas
does not cost $25 unfortunately, but it
was a $45,000 $800 a
$45,800 economic impact of taxable
revenue from that one event of ours. We
also had first Fridays last week where I
got I was a little busy down with Hope,
so I didn't get to see the crowd. I got
told it was packed. It was fun. And then
it got a little chilly, but it's okay.
It was our first one. And then if you
were at Hope, I really appreciated
seeing you guys in the crowd. It's
amazing the turnout we had with Dakota
News Now, our local news, and the whole
community that came out to support it.
Um, I really appreciate you guys letting
us do this. Hope is a beacon of a
brighter future for Mitchell. And I am
happy to keep this legend alive and keep
going forward as Mitchell mainstream
beyond. Elizabeth, do we have any
pictures of hope for these guys to see
because it's so impressive? Do we can we
pull that up? Not off the cuff, but if
we go to Mitchell Mainstream Beyond on
Facebook, uh you can find it on there.
Um some background real quick. Hope is
over 10 ft tall. It is based off of the
Hope grain from World War II where a
South Dakota farmer, Edgar S. McFaten,
crossbreed two germinations of wheat to
make it rust resistant. And it led to
our nation not starving. And it also
honors our agriculture history here in
Mitchell as who we are. And it ties to
our roots. And there's a deeper story
that Clark has with this as well.
There's interactive elements. Tell them
who Clark is. Clark Markinick is a
nationally renowned blacksmith artist.
He has pieces coast to coast, a lot of
pieces in Sou Falls. And he's actually
becoming international, internationally
known. There's books written after him.
And we have the joy of Mitchell being
his home. He's this kind of a hidden gem
diamond in the rough that is passionate
about bringing art to his hometown
Mitchell so that the next generations
have a way to express themselves and ma
main street has all and whole town of
Mitchell we hope to grow it to there's
different mediums of art there's fine
art and sculpture art and then there's
different murals of art there you go
that's kind of a from Mitchell Republic
there I think they had like 33 pictures
that they were so grateful to take if
you click
It's okay if you scroll back. That's
okay. That's a good one right there. You
can see it behind Clark's head. It all
the interactive pieces on it mean
something to the story. And as we get
that story board, the my big white
board's still out there, very aware. But
um there is going to be a storyboard
between that bench and the hope statue
where it's going to have all the drone
footage and the whole story with a QR
code with Clark's voice over of what the
statue means, but also leave it open
open to interpretation for those to find
their own meaning. You might relate to
the mouse that's at the bottom of the
statue just getting the scraps from
harvest or you might be the bird that's
constantly on the hunt for that morning
that early bird gets the worm. There's
different pieces. There's hidden
ladybugs in it. And he asked me like,
"Liz, what what bug did I miss?" And I
was like, "I kind of like butterflies."
And he's like, "Ah, it's too late for a
butterfly." But he did build a
crystallis on the back of it so that it
can transform into a
bigger bigger thing on Main Street and
keep that dream growing and grow more
art on Maine. And then tell them about
the hope um award that you plan. Yeah,
absolutely. So, the Hope Spirit Award
will be for years to come. It's going to
kick off this year. It's going to be
open to anybody in Mitchell to nominate
anyone. I'm still building the website,
so give me a moment. It is going to be a
one-pager where you can nominate someone
that inspired hope in the Mitchell
community. And I'm envisioning a one one
question, one pager because I'm going to
probably be the one that reads through
them all. And then the foundation board
will come back together and read through
the applications. And then we'll select
that one person that inspired Hope and
Mitchell that year. And it will just
keep going. And that uh the nominee will
receive a 10-in version of the 10-ft
statue of hope at the annual Mitchell
Mains from Beyond Chamber and
Development Corporation award banquet
along with our Mitchell Main Street
Champion
Award. Yeah. I just have to tell you how
proud I was that night of you and the
board and the artist and maybe just
mention who the sponsors were just.
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great point.
I have technically no. I have been
meaning to jump in
because Okay, never mind. Yep. All good.
We appreciate our sponsors and you can
figure it out on your own. Yes,
absolutely. All is
well. Yep. All is good. Thank you guys.
Okay. Thank you. All right. Does anyone
else wish to address the council?
Okay, this is my third time. You know,
three times a charm, I guess. My name is
Tom Fergen. Uh we were able to buy a lot
number one on India Head Development
1976 with a beautiful view of the lake
and still have that beautiful
view. The city council speaks for the
people of Mitchell. I was
told if you cannot trust someone 100%
you're going to have a
problem. I am concerned about those who
limited income can afford to buy a
fishing license who spend time fishing
Lake Mitchell as a way to
relax. These are the same people who do
not have the income to go on extended
vacation outside of South
Dakota. I am concerned that these people
today who are catching fish will not
have any fish to catch once the lake is
drained. fish habitat will be destroyed.
Some are estimating it'll be 10 years
after lake has been dredged before
they're fish to catch in the lake again.
I am concerned about lakefront houses
that are up for sale
today. Many bring their grandchildren
here to jet ski enjoy fishing from the
retaining
walls. I am concerned about knowing fire
steel creek stars from western spring
flows into Lake Mitchell. Cattle
drinking out of the fire steel creek. I
am concerned there will still be the
blue allergy after the lake is
drenched. I am concerned. Why you
draining the lake first and then asking
for bids? Aren't you putting yourself at
the mercy of the
contractors? Last year we had 10in rain
in June. Our neighbors deck was covered
with a blue algae film. Years ago we
extended the height of the spillway. I
biologists told me we should have kept
the height at the level it was at so
when you get a rain you can wash the
algae out of the lake. Last June after
tennis raid the lake was in good shape
because a lot of blue algae washed
out. I'm concerned about those who have
100% certainty in this project that the
dredging project will will work out as
predicted on paper. The engineer
convince this project what we need. If
mother nature does not give us if mother
give us a drought when will lake
bitchell be at a current level? Thank
you for your listen to me. I appreciate
it.
Thank you. Can I give out copies of
this? Sure. hand them to Mike and Hill.
Okay, just pass. I'll keep one for
myself for good measure or
two. Would anyone else like to address
the council? I got one. Thank you.
Okay. Next is mayor and city council
discussion items.
I have one now. Now you have unlimited
time. Thanks for the thanks for the tip,
um, Justin. So, I'd like to have
Elizabeth from Mitchell Main Street come
back up because there are just a few
items of unfinished business that I'd
like her to tell you about about Hope.
Maybe talk a little bit about the
sponsorships because I think that's
really an important aspect of this.
Yeah, absolutely. So, we had the
foundation sponsors that helped
immensely make this happen, which was
Plains Commerce Bank, Clockworks, and
the Adamos family. We had some new era
sponsors as well which were the Mitchell
Area Charitable Foundation and the
Mitchell Area Alliance Club. And then we
had some smaller donations from Bugleman
Family Insurance. Uh the city of
Mitchell helped us greatly with the
bumpouts and making this possible.
Mquar, what's the engineering names? Joe
Mcquaryy Engineering that helped us make
the bumpouts possible. There's a lot of
entities that came together to make
Mitchell's Main Street that next step
into the future and revitalizing it down
there. One of the things I wasn't aware
of until I saw your post was the process
that it took to put it in place, which
was really impressive. Do you want to
just talk a little bit about that? So,
Northwestern Energy, uh, they have
building a brighter future in our
community, and they reached out and
asked if they could if we could use a
hand installing this 500 lb statue,
which they have the right tools to make
that a very easy job, thankfully. So,
they had seven of their team members out
there with a very large truck. Don't
hold me to what that large truck was
called right now, but they picked it up.
We got a great photo opportunity with
Hope in the middle of the air with the
Corn Palace in the background. And
thanks to their equipment, we were able
to install it smooth as butter that day.
It was just a great opportunity. And we
did install 24 hours ahead of time to
make sure we had a a buffer and have a
time to
react. And I just want to add that this
is hopefully just the first sculpture
that this is one of many that will come
in the future and we'll have a sculpture
walk um that will adorn our Mitchell and
historic correct um Main Street, the
historic district. So that's exciting.
Thank you. Yes. Thank you, ma'am.
I just want to I went to Armor the other
day to purchase some trees and Joe,
correct me if I'm wrong, but they're
putting water pipe in the ground.
Yeah, they probably had a quarter mile
in the ground already. I was surprised.
The Randall thing. Yeah. H They were
going under 281. Really? Yeah.
Huh. Very interesting.
Okay. Anything else before we move on?
All righty. Board of adjustment.
Entertain a motion for the city council
to recess and sit as a board of
adjustment.
So moved. Motion by Mr. Gohammer.
Second by Mr. Bathky. All those in favor
of the motion say I. I. Same sign.
Motion carries. Action to set the date
of the board of adjustment hearings
519-25. It's for all of these. Move to
set the date. Second. Motion by Mr.
Goldhammer. Second by Mr. Murdle. Any
further
discussion? Would anyone in the audience
like to discuss
this? All those in favor of the motion
say I. I. Post. Same sign. Motion
carries. Entertain a motion. Oh,
reconvene the city council entertain a
motion for the board of adjustment to
adjurnn and the city council to
reconvene into regular session. So
moved. Motion by Mrs. Turks. Second by
Mr. Bington. All those in favor of the
motion say I. Post. Same sign. Motion
carries. Roger. music presentation on
visitor
spending. Rogers asked us to give us a
presentation on visitor
spending. Well, mayor and city council,
you're up to listen to me one more time.
Um, the last time I was here, we had a
presentation by the tourist uh
organization that indicated that
Mitchell had received, I think it was
$114 million in
um visitor or tourist revenue, which was
a tremendous shock to me. And I had
worked with Dr. Brown on the study in
2012 which analyzed the Mitchell
economic situation and he made it very
very clear that we had a tremendous pull
factor meaning we had shoppers that came
from Platt Winter Chamberlain and do
their daily shopping or weekly shopping
in Mitchell and we also had some
tourists and those were two totally
different things. And I think up until
the last week, anytime you heard people
talk about tourists, they talked about
the revenue from both of those
organizations instead of, you know, what
is the tourist revenue and what is the
regional visitors. Um, and
I decided I was going to figure out what
the difference is. Dr. Brown told us we
need to to make sure we count those as
different numbers. and they uh should be
uh marketed to totally differently
too. Um can you real quick just tell
everyone what who everyone at home for
who Dr. Brown is? Oh, sure. Dr. Brown
was the South Dakota state economist for
many many years. He was a professor at
USD was the I don't know 15 or 20 years
was the number one economist in South
Dakota. And he had done the study. We
hired him at the development I believe
hired him and he did a real nice study
for us and I made sure all of you guys
had that in the last couple meetings
because uh I think it's I don't think
you can make good decisions without
understanding the Mitchell economy and
he attempted to explain the Mitchell
economy to us and his number one
recommendation is we should promote jobs
in Mitchell that are high-paying jobs
and bring money into Mitchell. He always
used the example, if you're trying to
improve your economy, you don't
necessarily go recruit more barbers, you
recruit more businesses that will bring
heads to Mitchell and that will
automatically bring more barbers to
Mitchell. And he had a
very elaborate uh presentation and he
got all of his numbers from the state
website on the labor that is spent in
Mitchell. you know, how are the labor
dollars that go
to that uh people pay their employees in
Mitchell in the different categories and
you can get that from the state
website. Um anyway, I was shocked when I
saw that $114 million because I had sat
through Dr. Brown's study and he didn't
have it anywhere close to that. He had
high regional spending but not very high
tourist numbers. So, I got my son Cody
to write a program and he went to the
state website and pulled all of the
state numbers for sales for South Dakota
for different towns and different
categories for a couple years. I think
he did 20 23 and 24 or 22 and 23,
whatever, whatever was widely available.
and he wrote a program where you could
go in and figure out what what was uh
summer tourist type sales and what was
non- tourist type sales. And if you look
at uh the sec well the second page of
what I handed out to you shows after we
did the study I got to thinking well
should I should ask chat GPT how we
should do this analysis. So I went in
and said, "How can I determine the
summer tourist economic impact based on
just the monthly sales data, which is
that was the data we had available." And
it told us exactly what to do. And it
was effectively take the eight months
sales that are not summer, figure that
out, take the four month sales that are
summer and figure the difference. And
that's your summer tourist bump, I'll
call it. And uh that's exactly what we
had done. I was glad it confirmed what
we had done was correct. In the last
part of it, it says you can do uh
analysis based from year to year and if
if there's inflation and stuff, you can
take those kinds of things in into
account. And I wasn't into getting that
accurate. I was looking for a highle
number of what does it amount to. So, if
you turn to the third sheet, and I I did
sit down with Mike from the chamber and
Jared and or Jordan and uh Stephanie and
showed them the program, and Stephanie's
actually got the program, she can run
it, but instead of uh running the
programs, I did the printouts from it so
we could have them more accurate. And
you can pick the towns that you want to
compare with. And in this case, I picked
Brandon Mitchell Chamberlain Heron shows
the total
sales at the top number 772 million for
Mitchell and it shows the population and
then it shows the total per capita and
this is what's really documenting our
pull factor. We're getting uh you know
almost twice as much per person as
Brandon does. Well, that's because
Brandon doesn't have winter plat all the
towns, especially to the south and west
of us to come shop in Mitchell. And at
least when Dr. Brown did the study, that
was the highest of any town in South
Dakota. I I don't know if it still is,
but it's awful close if it's not. So,
we're getting twice as many daily
shoppers here as we deserve. So, we need
to always thank the small towns around
South Dakota. And to me, whenever we
talk about our great sales tax in
Mitchell, we need to give them credit
for it because that's where it's coming
from. If you look at the baseline,
that's the average of the eight months
that are not counted as summer months.
And in this slide, it's or sheet, it's
May through August is summer written at
the top. And the baseline is $64 million
per month. And then you look at the
summer months and it's
64,781 with a difference of $655.
$655,000. You look at other cities,
Brandon, Chamberlain, Hurin shows the
percentage
difference, which you can see Mitchell
is a slightly higher than her, but not
higher than any of the other towns. And
the really the percent increase is
almost insignificant. This is 34. Now
you can do it for a different year.
You'll get different numbers, but you
always get a very low
number. You know, this is $2 million out
of $700
million. Okay. If you go to the next
page, I didn't know what what four
months should be counted as summer. So,
I did it over again with June through
through September as summer months
instead of the other ones. And you can
see the numbers are different, but uh
they're still very very small. In this
case, it's n $9 million a
year, which is significant, but not
compared to 700
million. And obviously there are just
year-to-year variations that are, you
know, minor. But to me, this showed me
that thisund was it 114 million from
tourists, that's like 90 99% from
visitors to the southeast of us that
come over and buy their stuff in
Mitchell, Chamberlain, Kimble, those
kinds of things. A little tiny bit from
tourists.
is people understand what I did here
because I tried to keep it as simple as
possible.
Um the other thing the program does is
it allows us to look at the different
categories. How much was hotels, how
much was eating, how much was all the
different typical categories that would
be associated with
hotels or tourists. It clearly shows
the, you know, hotels going up in the
summertime and we actually peak about
beginning a hunting season and Dakota
Fest, I would say, is probably our our
best time for tourists, but it's still a
small percentage of what what our
economics is here in Mitchell.
the I went to after I did this, I said,
"Well, how can I be so much different
than the state of South Dakota?" I went
to their website and I found the little
tiny print that says anybody from that
travels more than 50 miles or stays
overnight, they classify as a visitor,
which I don't think if I asked a
thousand people in Mitchell, you know,
where are tourists coming from? Nobody
would tell me
Chamberlain. I mean, no, I don't think
any of us count that as tourist. We
count that as regional visitors. Hell,
there's people in South Dakota that go
more than 50 miles to school.
So, as far as I'm concerned, when the
state says, you know, they're the second
largest, tourism is the second largest
industry in South Dakota, that's totally
false as far as what the general concept
of what a tourist
is. You know, from their standpoint,
every every time you go to Sou Falls,
everything you buy is counted is counted
as tourist revenue. I I don't think any
of us assume that.
Dr. Brown was very clear in his study,
you need to differentiate between the
two of them because they're totally
different, a tourist and a regional
visitor.
So, what do you think is the
second leading in in South Dakota?
Uhhuh. Revenue generator. Oh,
I think you'd probably just see what
number three is and then call that
number. Yeah, I don't know what it is,
but it's whatever number three is, but
they're not advertising that they're the
number three where the state department
of transportation or they're advertising
that as the big deal. And I I think it's
totally false. I don't think there's
anybody that would count when you go to
Sou Falls and buy something that you're
a
tourist. And as I say, Dr. Brown who was
a state economist for 20 years made it
very very clear that you need to
differentiate between a regional visitor
and a tourist because they're to two
totally different
things. Um I have a quote on page three
that I thought was very appropriate. If
you start fooling your shareholders, you
will soon believe your own baloney and
be fooling yourself as well. And I think
that's where we're at. That's a quote
from Warren
Buffett. I then uh the reason I think
it's really
important is we in Mitchell have heard
how terrorism drives our economy for the
last 50
years. Dr. Brown was an attempt to try
to get that down to what really drives
our economy. and he told us I think over
the last 20 years we forgot and a lot of
people have changed and uh
understandably but if you don't
understand what drives your economy you
as councilman mayor can't make good
decisions of how to improve our economy
and the people when they have to vote on
something they've got incorrect
information because they think tourism
is the most important thing in Mitchell
and it just isn't
Um, anybody disagree with me here
because or I I gladly research more or
figure out something else. So I I guess
my question for you
is whether I mean I can see that you're
drawing a difference between 114 million
and 9 million. That's that's a little
bit different, right? So what's the
bottom line for you? Like you don't
think we should be giving any uh don't
any money to these subsidy requests. Is
that what you're saying? Subsidy
requests have nothing to do with this.
So what's your tell me when you're
making significant dollar decisions on
what we should do to improve Mitchell,
the tourist is a tiny little part of
that compared to other things in
Mitchell. And I went ahead and I got
Cody to write some more programs for me
to go into the state labor uh website
where they have all the labor dollars by
different categories which is the
statistics Dr. Brown used when he
analyzed Mitchell. So he went into that
and we generated a bunch more
information.
Um, I took three the three I think uh
biggest categories out of that. There's
about 12 or 13 categories. I didn't
think we'd want to look at all 13 of
them. So, I took the I think the top
three. And the first category was
professional, scientific, and technical
services. That's a a labor category that
labor dollars are being put into in this
county. And that category by itself went
up
94 employees from 2020 to 2023. In 2024,
data wasn't available or isn't available
yet. The wages for that category went up
from 27 million to 51 million. So that's
like 10 times as important as the entire
tourist industry in Mitchell because
those are all labor dollars that get
spent. Those people get it in their
paycheck and they go buy things with it.
Now there's a few that save some money
but not a
lot. Average wage in that category went
from 60
60,528 to 94,484.
Well, that's exactly what Dr. Brown told
us we should do is recruit those kinds
of people to
Mitchell. And if if we recruited, let's
say in the next couple years,
another 100 people, well, that's another
50 million. And it's 50 million every
year. It's not a one time. It's 50
million every year once they're here.
That's what's going to drive our economy
and make it better. So I took the the
other place I think we've done well in
is construction. If you look at
Mitchell, we've got Muth Construction
and Chromemer and many other contractors
in Mitchell. In that category alone,
we've increased 181
employees, a total of $18 million. So
just in the construction side, we're two
or three times what the tourist income
was. So if we could go out and get Muth
to expand, Crumber to expand or other
companies like that to come in over the
next few years, that's another $20
million to our
economy. The third category was healthc
care. This one has an increase of 32
people, but it has a lot of them. I
mean, it had 19 thou or 1916 people and
went to 1948 people. 32 wages went up 14
million a year in
healthcare. So if you look at those
three places together or three
categories together they've added
3077 employees which I figured probably
is in the neighborhood of 460 people
because they most of them have kids and
those aren't counted in the labor side
of it.
We've improved our income, annual wages
by $56
million. And the main point here is most
of these new employees are oh in their
20s and 30s and they all have small
kids. That's the most important thing we
can do is make it easier for those
people to recruit people that want to
live in Mitchell and to keep the people
that are here so they want to stay. And
that's a quality of life thing. That
that's and we've done a pretty good job.
I mean, we have great parks. We have a
lot of things like that, but we got to
continue that. When you talk to these
people, you know, and you ask them what
do they what do they like about
Mitchell? What have we done that's best?
Usually the first thing is the bike
paths. I mean, that's the number one
thing they all say. And by the way, I
think every one of you should be talking
to 20 of these young people that are in
this group and figuring out what they
want because when you're spending
dollars, you're spending dollars that
they're going to have to pay back by the
time whatever the big big project is
done. We're probably all going to be
gone. Somebody else is going to be
paying for it. So, we should be doing
things that they want, not not
necessarily that I would want to see.
Roger, when you differentiate between uh
tourist and regional spender,
um it would it be unwise to not look at
what makes regional spender come to our
community? Because when I look at when I
think about that and you totally agree.
No, no question. And I I think we could
go down the the list. Walmart,
Menard's probably doctors and dentists
and those kinds of people that they have
to come here and then they shop. Uh what
would be next?
Restaurant. Yeah, some restaurants. Yep.
I mean, I think the thing that I think
draws more more people to this town from
their surrounding communities is their
kids play games here. Baseball,
basketball, football. Their kids come to
this town, play those games, spend that
money. We're going to have dinner in
Mitchell. We're going to buy the thing
at Walmart, whatever it is. Most of the
little towns I'm thinking that are here,
like Platt for example, they may come
here once a year to play a game, but
they're not they're not playing most of
their games here, you know.
Collectively,
well, collectively we Yeah, I'm not
against that at all. But I just if I
look at it and say, you know, a $100 are
spent here, you know, maybe one or two
or $3 come from that, but the big ones
are the big box stores. And I think
Stephanie will probably attest to the
fact that like before Heron had their
large stores, we had people from Herin
coming down. you know, once they got
their stores, it reduced. Correct. But
also, when we did the Buckton study, we
saw the number one sales for sporting
goods came from Aberdine, Watertown,
Pier, Rapid City, Sou Falls. A lot of
those areas that play regional sports
here or kids tournament kind of stuff.
I'm all for kids tournaments. I'm not at
all against it, but when uh I look at,
you know, if I went out to Menard's or
today or Walmart today and started
looking at license plates, I think you'd
find a large quantity of them are from
the south and west of Mitchell just
because those people don't have any
other big town to go to. Where where you
go east, maybe it's from Alec and a
little bit this way. When you get to
Salem, those people might be going more
to Sou Falls than they are to Mitchell.
But they're all they're all good. And
I'm I'm not implying that any of these
dollars are bad. I just want to know why
why they're here. And I want to have an
honest view of what tourism is and what
a regional spender is. And we need to
make sure when we talk about our super
good sales tax, we're giving those
people credit for it. the the towns, the
small towns around
Mitchell. And the other the second part
of my presentation here, if you go to
the next
page, can't get my pages separated here.
This is a this one here. Okay, this is
another printout that I had Cody do for
me and it's at the top you can see it's
professional scientific and so forth.
And then it's got a number of years all
the way back from 2014 through now. And
if you look at the bottom you can see
the average of the total wages in that c
or the total wages in that category. say
the in 2023 it's 51 million down at the
bottom. The next line down is the
average wage per week. And this uh 1817
equates to 94,000 a year. I wish I'd
have done those in per year, but they
were weekly
numbers. And the bottom one is also very
very interesting. It shows the number of
people in Mitchell in that category. And
you can look back and see the growth
over the last few years. And the graph
is the green line is the number of
employees. The orange line is the
average salary. So you can see the last
oh six, seven years the salary has went
up significantly in that category. And
it's mainly just because technical
people are hard to hire. So they have to
have to pay more to get them to move
here.
And the blue is the
uh total wages that are spent in that
category which I thought this was a good
way to represent a given type of thing.
You can see the wages total amount of
wages and number of employees all on one
sheet. Next one is the same thing for
construction and the last one is the
hospitalization or hospital type
employees, health care and social
assistance. And as I say, there's
probably 10 more of these categories.
These three were the biggest and most
important for I think us. But uh to me,
these are the numbers you guys need to
be looking at all the time and being
figure out how do we how do we make the
ones that pay really well
grow. I also had a number of studies
where I compared us to Hurine and
Brookings and so forth
that biggest example I guess would be
Brookings has I think it's 4,000 people
in manufacturing and that's what drives
the Brookings economy along with SDSU
but they have 4,000 goodaying jobs at 3M
I think primarily in in Brookings that
kind of sets them aside or different
than any of the other towns that I comp
compared
with. The one I I did notice, I think
the number of people that are in food
service, what's the title? Food service
and
hospitality is actually down the last
couple years. Um, and I think we can see
that by hell, we've got three or four
restaurants that aren't going anymore
and that's gradually went
down. Anyway, my my whole presentation
is to convince you that focusing on
growing highpaying jobs, which Dr. Brown
showed told us we should do and keeping
those people in Mitchell that's what is
going to determine the success of our
economy and when you compare the numbers
like 57 million in just increase in the
professional thing compared to tourist
income not very
comparable questions questions. Um, I'd
prefer if you had questions or things
you don't agree with. I'd just as if you
if you don't agree with me or you think
I'm totally off on something, I'd like
to know that and I'll try to figure out
how I can find the actual facts to do it
because I I think dealing with facts is
the real key. Would you be would you be
okay with us sending out the website
that you use for the you know where you
type in the different towns and you can
look at the graphs? It's very
interesting on a on a selective basis. I
don't I don't think I want to try to
support that for hundreds of people. I
mean, just with the this group. Oh, this
group. No problem. Yeah, Stephanie's got
it. She can It's It's on the internet.
So, it you know, you just need a link to
go to it. And you can't pick any town,
but we picked a number of towns. Then I
talked to Stephanie and she said, "Well,
how about these towns?" So, we added
them. And uh you know what what that
will allow you to do is also go down and
look at like eating and drinking
establishments. How much revenue was
there from that in the summertime?
Motel, how much was there from that in
the summertime? And you know, this is
looking at the sum of all of them
together. Okay. So, one of my questions
is why does it matter whether they're
the tourists or the people who are
visiting our community? Why does it
matter whether they're coming 50 miles
or 150 miles or 350 miles? Why? As Dr.
Brown said, the reason it makes a
difference is because you recruit them
totally differently. You know, we don't
advertise the Corn Palace in order to
get people from Kimble to come do their
shopping in Mitchell,
right? And you know, we need to know why
those people are here. and uh the uh
concept of a of of a suburb bump or you
know that's what tourists typically come
in about a four-month period and that's
what we're looking for is what what is
what are they giving to our community
and so and then um one of the other
things that occurs to me is when you're
talking about people in the health care
professions I mean we just recently
downgraded our hospital um that
certainly certainly not in my humble
opinion not ideal for our community. um
we outsource this I say we I have
nothing to do with it but um the
hospital system outsources and it's uh
you know the example I always use is
that uh Kim Lorenzan was the pathologist
and he lived here locally for 30ome
years and when he retired they hired
they assigned my son who is a
pathologist in Sou Falls to be the lab
director and the pathologist in Mitchell
without bringing bringing one to live
here which we've we'd had for all those
years. So, and my son would be the first
to say I can't give the quality of
attention to the hospital that Kim
Lorenzan did for 35 years because he
lived in Mitchell. I will do what I can
but I live in Sou Falls. So, so that
whole scenario that you present to us,
while compelling, has nothing to do with
the people sitting around this table.
And it's it's disheartening at best.
Yeah. We don't have control of
everything. I'm just saying that we
could recruit. Yeah. It would be nice if
we could recruit more people, but that
has nothing to do with the people here
in the in the healthc care industry. I
can distinctly remember talking about
that with Dr. Brown and he pointed out
that you know we have a lot of people in
Mitchell that go to a doctor in Mitchell
and then get referred to a doctor in Sou
Falls right for a specialty at the same
time there's people in winter and so
forth that come to Mitchell to as their
first doctor they still may get referred
to Sou Falls but if I rem he he had a a
concept of location quotient which was
kind of the ratio of your how many
people are going out of town compared to
how many are coming into town for
something like that. And healthc care
was one of those areas that was about a
break even. We were losing as much to
Sou Falls as we were gaining from
winter. And I'd argue I would argue that
that has
disproportionately gone to the point
that we are referring more Yep. to Sou
Falls than we're bringing in. I mean, we
have all the tertiary Yep. primary care
things here. Well, we have another
orthopedic surgeon or orth orthopedics
in Mitchell. So that's probably another
10 or 12 people. So we have some I don't
know if it's up or down. At the time 12
years ago it was slightly positive, not
not significantly. The ones that are
really good for a community like
Mitchell, somebody like Trail King, you
know, they don't sell nothing locally.
It's 100% money that's coming from Oh,
they sold you one. Okay. Almost nothing
locally. Be surprised. Well, compared to
their total, it's not significant. If
you look at like Vantage Point, well,
they probably work for Mitchell Telecom,
but they work for 500 other people all
over the US. So, he called those export
industries. They're industries that
export their product and bring money
into your town. And then there's other
businesses like a barber that kind of
circulates the money in town. If you
want to improve your economy, you
improve the companies that do exporting
because that's that's the new money that
comes to your community. And some
businesses are doing both like hospitals
or let's say you take pits, they
probably do, I'm guessing now 80% of
their business outside of Mitchell and
20% of it in Mitchell. And what it
amounted to is he had a way to look at
the entire state and figure out how many
total dollars are being spent in that
one area and were we getting a higher
percentage than we should based on our
population. So if if it's hard to
explain but it's a process that figures
out how what percentage of a business is
exporting and
uh there are other businesses I'll say
vantage point pretty much all of their
business is labor I mean they don't
really sell any product so it's 100%
labor so whatever they bring into the
community a high percentage of it goes
to the employees where if you take uh
Walmart as an example, I would almost
bet if they sell $100 worth of a
product, uh maybe $4 stay in Mitchell to
pay the employees in Mitchell, you know,
$60 go to China to pay for the product.
You know, the rest of it goes to
corporate to pay for their overheads,
but a small amount stays in your local
community for labor.
And there was a category for retail that
showed the number of people that we had
in retail. And by the way, this is all
based on the state numbers, which I
think are far from perfect. You know,
they're the best numbers we have, but
uh I don't think you can say that is
perfect down to the dollar.
Yep. Is it okay if I like give a real
world scenario? So, so I was invited to
Vantage Point to meet with some of their
younger my age I guess I don't know if
it's younger but 30 to 40year-old uh
professionals and ask what they wanted
to do and I have a a picture of the list
of the things you know and a lot of the
stuff is one is indoor playground for
kids another one is an indoor park for
kids and then another one is an indoor
sports complex and that was like 50% of
the stuff they asked for you know so I
think what Roger's trying to get at is
That's, you know, if we want to support
those highpaying jobs, you want to
support those uh future generations and
then this is what they're asking for. So
when we make decisions, yeah, you're
asking to take this information into
consideration heavily, right? Is that
the easiest way to say it? That
information plus I'm encouraging every
one of your council members to go out
and talk to those people. Get 10 of them
together at some business and ask them
what do they want. I spoke at Leadership
Mitchell. Mhm. And I will say that one
of the one of the big discussions that
we had was we need affordable housing.
Oh, definitely. So that was a like that
was what they wanted was afford was they
want to be able to buy themselves a
house. Yeah. They want affordable
housing, economical daycare and good
jobs. Yep. And and something to do for
their kids, you know, the indoor
facility to play in the wintertime.
Summertime, we got a lot of things to
do. Wintertime is pretty tough if you,
you know, got a 5-year-old kid. One
thing I just thought of on the way down
here. And I drove past the rec center
and it it always bothers me when I drive
past somebody like the rec center and
there's nobody in it, even if it's
open. Maybe we should consider that it's
free. You don't have any charge to go to
the rec center and we get, you know,
five times as many people there doing
things. The swimming pool, we got a
great swimming pool. When I look at it,
a high percentage of time there's nobody
in it. That that's not something I like
to see. I like to see people using our
facilities. One, not to discredit what
you're saying, but one interesting thing
is I feel like what's the number Kevin
Nelson? How many people are members of
the rec center? It's like 4,500. Yeah,
it's great. Which is like Yep. That's a
big number. So, pretty interesting. Was
that the number right, Kevin? We should
encourage people that can't afford the
rec center to I think it's 37 to 38 be
able anyway because we got a lot of
people that can't afford it. And if it
was overcrowded, obviously you you raise
the rate to lower it. And and I don't
know the real numbers, but just when by
driving by it doesn't look like it's
overcrowded, but did you hear that we do
have grants for people that can't afford
it? Yeah, but yeah. Do we are we having
a significant number of those?
That statistic I have. Yeah, that would
be interesting to know because are we
are we uh marketing that, right? Are we
telling people about it? Mhm. But and I
say that was just something I noticed
coming in here. I drove past it and I
thought, well, hell, it'd be great if
there was 100 kids playing in there
tonight, but didn't look like there
was. Okay. Anything else? We're good.
Appreciate your time. Thank you.
Listening.
Okay.
Action to approve application of
Bernie's LLC doing business as Barney
Sports Bar and Grill for special event
malt beverage in South Dakota Farm Wine
license located at Cadwell Park for June
14th, 2025 for the first annual Blernies
Amateur Baseball Classic. Move to
approve. Second. Motion by Mrs. Turks,
second by Mr. Mardle. Further
discussion?
Would anyone in the audience like to
discuss this?
All those in favor of the motion say I.
I oppose same sign. Motion carries.
Action to approve requested partial
closure of alley joining sixth and
seventh between Maine and Raleigh
streets. Mr. Shrader. Yep. Mr. Mayor,
council, a request was brought to
council to partially close the alley
joining 7th and 6th between Maine and
Raleigh streets on at the November 4th
24 council meeting. Council asked staff
to provide uh closure ideas for future
consideration. Uh so tonight I am going
to show you uh two options. Um, option
one, uh, is a closure with,
um, Stephanie, would you mind pulling up
option one, please? Thank you. Um,
option one is a closure with strictly
um, concrete barriers, either um, jersey
barriers or, uh, we have an example of a
2T x 4T retaining wall block. um
Mitchell Main Street and beyond would be
partnered with in either option um to
help us uh decorate um these areas. So
you can see uh we're still utilizing
both parking lots. So it shouldn't
inhibit uh either of the parking lots.
Um access will be able to flow through
those um obstacles um freely. So say a
wheelchair or people would be
nonobstructed. Um option two, the only
change is um showing a swing gate uh
which could be um unchained if needed to
get through um quicker. Um in either
option, the plan would be to leave the
alley uh open during winter months with
closures initially being from uh
Memorial Day to Labor Day. We want to
think about trying this as a trial run
to see how it goes. Um we like it, we
can continue. If not, uh, we would not
do it next year. How's that going to
work, Joe? That's a one-way alley. We
going to have them go both directions or
Yeah, the the parking lots would be
accessed from from either direction or
through the um accesses that exist uh
from either uh six or seven.
I'm going to move to approve option one.
Second.
Uh, now that there's the motion in a
second, further discussion. Sorry, just
following the rules. Perfect. Uh, the
reason I think one is better is because
we're looking at this potentially as a
temporary thing that before we put
something into the ground, it makes
sense to make sure we like it. And I
would always be okay with coming back to
look at option two once we're happy with
it.
So, you think the the cement barricades,
the jersey decorated, whatever are
better than a swing gate are more
permanent or less permanent. I think you
could decorate them and remove them if
we're if they decide that they want to
reopen the alley because it didn't work
or wasn't feasible for what they were
hoping.
Are they heavy?
Yeah.
So, I mean, for me, I just for the sake
of argument, I feel like the swing gate
would be a better alternative to start
with if you want to see I mean, then you
have easy access to be able to open and
close
them. If if we find if on year one we
find out that, oh, you know what, this
is probably not a good idea to have this
completely blocked off, it would the
swing. So, the cement barricades are not
going to be permanent. They're just
going to be dropped there. And if we
need to move them, just grab a forklift
and scooch them off to the side. And the
swing gates would require uh four
ballards to be installed which would be
permanent that if we decided not to go
forward we we'd have to remove them and
then patch the concrete. Okay. Well,
that being said then I agree.
Okay. Further do the uh one other
comment. Is the police or fire have a
preference?
[Music]
Uh, Chief Canip, mayor, city council,
Chief Canipling, I think me and Dan have
both talked about this. As long as we
would know what side to respond on if
we'd had approximate location u as far
as getting in and out there would not be
an issue for either one of us.
Yep. Yeah. And I the only other thing to
add is I had talked to Joe and said, you
know, just leave us room to get a cut
through. Um, we don't typically try to
fight fires from alleys. We, in fact, we
do everything possible to not do that.
So, our only concern would be getting a
cot in there for if we had a patient in
that general
area. Squeaky.
Okay. Anyone in the audience like to
discuss
this? Okay. All those in favor of the
motion say I. I. Post. Same sign. Motion
carries. Action to approve agreement A
2025-33 water modeling continuing
service with AE2S. Mr. Shrader.
Yep. Mr. Mayor, Council, AE2s developed
a water model of our water main system
in 2019. We utilize their services to
complete additional water modeling when
needed for future projects. They also
update the water model uh when needed
after projects. They're assisting with
review of plans for the Randall Regional
Row Water to Mitchell project. Uh so
with that we do recommend approving the
attach agreement uh for services not to
exceed 20,000 be hourly as needed.
I'll move to approve. Motion by Mrs.
Church to approve. Second. Second by Mr.
Goldhammer. Any further discussion?
Would anyone in the audience like to
discuss
this? All those in favor of the motion
say I. I. Post same sign. Motion
carries. Action approve agreement A
2025-34 Hitchcock tennis courts with SPN
and Associates project number
2025-34. Mr. Shrader. Yep. Mr. Mayor,
Council, uh the city council approved it
funds during the supplemental budgets
for a design to replace the older tennis
courts at Hitchcock Park. The project
will include eight tennis courts, update
lighting and fencing, and reconstruction
of the adjacent parking lot. The tennis
courts will be designed and bid as
post-tension construction. The attached
agreement with SPN will provide design,
bidding, and full construction phase
services. At this time, staff is
recommending authorizing SPN to move
forward with preliminary and final
design and bidding phases. Staff
recommends city council approval for the
attached agreement from SPN in the
amount not to exceed 52,700 for the
services identified in the agreement.
And I can answer any questions you may
have and Kevin Nelson can also as well.
Motion approve. Motion man, Mr.
Sabers second. Second by Mrs. Turks. I
got a quick question. They do the
design. How long does that last for? Is
that one year, two years, three years?
So, as long as there isn't any drastic
changes uh within the park facility, uh
the design would
be would be good as long as nothing
changes. Okay.
Okay. Further discussion. And this is
the post tension meaning that we would
have that in ground
springs. Okay. And that adds how
much I want to say in the the pickle
ball courts percentage wise
10%.
Yeah. So, it's 10 additional 30 25 to
40%. Oh, wow. I thought, Joe, I thought
it was another $60,000 and it was a
$600,000 project. Yeah. Well, I'm
talking just weighing the concrete
versus the I if you give me a few
seconds going from regular to post
tension, right? Those were broken out
separately.
While he's looking that up, I I want to
make a comment. And I was asked to make
a comment about if we move forward with
doing this eventually, we have no lights
on the four newest courts. Correct. So
if we were to take these out in the
summer months, it would be very
detrimental to the tennis association
because of the adult leagues, the rec
runs that during the day they have some
kids that give lessons and whatnot. So
they felt like they should pursue
getting lights in first on the other
four courts. The newest four courts, the
west side, the west four, the newest
four. So then they would have I don't
want to say 24-hour day, but there's a
lot of times you go by there at night
and there's people playing with the
lights on. A lot of times the lights get
left on too long, but they just wanted
me to make sure that that was possible.
And I know that you had shared an email
with the group today, Kevin, and they
they think like the questions that
they're asking aren't being answered.
They're being kind of I don't want to
say avoided, but a nebulous was the word
they used. Like they never really get a
true answer when they ask something. And
then they want to know like where are
you at with the school
district as far as what are they willing
to help with this? Because this is a
large project. I mean, and if you looked
at the engineers estimate, it went from
750 to two main. We're doing a parking
lot and everything all of a sudden. And
I was like, whoa. So, the first estimate
was our internal discussion on what we
thought it would cost to remove and then
rebuild concrete, thinking we could
reuse the fencing and not even talking
about the parking lot and lights. They
were questionable to start with. There's
still issues with the lights out there.
Going back to this actual
design, Jeff when we were out there with
him, Jeff McCormack from SPN talked
about several different things with us
and we with him. Number one would be
adding two courts to the end of one
through four going back to the east. So
making that a six court complex as as
one option, adding four to the north
going over toward the bandell or
rebuilding the the the eight that are
there understanding the lights. but
they're going to um show us for for us
what a bird's eye view, let's say from
100 ft above what all of those things
could look like without getting into the
details of designing each of those for
us. We will then Joe and I and the mayor
and Stephanie discuss those taking into
consideration Mitchell Tennis, Mitchell
High School and all other users to see
what's going to be the best solution and
we'll come back with a recommendation on
what we believe should be the best
route. We haven't decided internally.
Okay. I I I knew you hadn't decided
internally. Just the number was very
startling to them and to me too. And I
just I felt like I don't know where uh
Jeff came up with some of these numbers.
It was just there just to get to the job
site 210,000 for mobilization. I'm like
wow. It's just like these it seems like
when we do a city bid and I've had
firsthand doing this. I I got an
estimate from engineer then I went out
myself and did it. It's amazing how much
you can save because you're not being
involved with the city. I don't think
we're getting our best foot forward on
our bids and you know it goes back to
the light pole bid uh on corner of
seventh here by rejecting rebidding it.
We got a better bid and I think it was
kind of you know we have more biders I
think too at the time. So, and I know we
had a lot of pickle ball bids. So, I'm
I'm excited to put it out to bids to see
if we can afford to do it or if we can
move forward and what kind of money the
different groups can bring to the table
because it's going to be a necessity to
do that because it is an expensive
project and I think you as council need
to determine how much you're going to
request from school and other users to
make this happen. Is it going to be 50%,
is it going to be a lower percentage
than that? That's what I need to tell
them. I had a conversation again with
the AD at the high school today just to
say what can you bring forth? He said,
"Well, it's going to come down to
business manager and their school board
and and the superintendent what they
believe they can afford." And I talked
with Stephanie earlier today, too, about
would this be bonded? Again, up to you.
Are are we going to just pay for it
outright and then there still could be a
payment plan where the school district
could pay back? Again, I'm not trying
not to speak on their behalf, but we
would allow that. I'm I'm assuming you
would allow that for the school district
to pay back any cost that that we felt
they needed to pay toward this
construction. Yeah. And they're getting
ready I I believe they do their budget
in June. I don't know that for sure.
Right. So we'd be looking at a 2627
budget for them because they're they're
fiscal year 26 is starting in July 1.
Right. So I guess on on the same topic
uh there was a tournament this weekend
uh 116 kids and about 300 people
attended it. So these courts are being
used. It's not like we only have 50
people using them and stuff. So it was I
had actually asked them to get a drone
picture for us and they didn't do it
just so we could understand that this is
just one tournament of the boys and I do
think they do four tournaments and then
the girls do four tournaments. So and
then the adult league. So but I
understand it's a lot of money. Joe, is
that the final estimate from the
engineer or will that be revised as they
do the design? Yeah, it it is their uh
original I mean their first engineers
estimate typically you want that to be
uh
25% higher than what you think it's
going to be just for estimating
purposes. This project you don't want it
for dollars right now because the
project will be bid uh at a minimum the
fall of this year. So we don't know what
next year's numbers are going to be. Um,
we obviously want them to come in under
uh what the estimate is. So that way we
have contingency on the project in case
something comes up that we don't know
about. And it always seems like when you
get into these projects, the original
estimate um because it is just a high
level on paper, there's always something
you miss or that you should have
included that's not. So you want some
extra dollars in there to take care of
those items.
Um so is the estimate high? Yes. And the
reason is you want it high. Um, back to
your original question, uh, the
post-tension was roughly 25% more.
Are we going to have them look at post
tension versus non-postension just for
the sake of argument? Okay, just
checking. No,
the direction from council at that
evening was uh post tension. I I will
just tell you that the the tennis
association has done a lot of research
with it and and I've stated a lot of
this before, so I'm not going to repeat
it, but they are willing their money
that they're willing to put in will only
from what I understand from them. I
don't want I don't like speaking for
Jacob in the group, but they said they
will only put it in if they do the post
extension because they want this to last
the rest of their life. They don't want
to have to mess with it again. And and I
think that you know this will be year 30
coming up I believe or is it 28 either
28 or 30 it's one of those. So if we get
another 30 plus I do believe we will get
more out of the postion we get 40 out of
them. Won't bother
me. Okay. Anyone else would anyone in
the audience like to discuss
this? Okay. Okay. So, we have a motion
to second. All those in favor of the
motion say I. I. Oppos. Same sign.
Motion carries. Action to approve
resolution R2025-31 amending water and
sewer rates for 2025 by implementing a
search charge for CW13 CW15 and DW08.
Mine.
Mayor and council. The resolution that
I'm showing up on the board is amending
our existing water rates to implement a
search charge for three different
projects.
CW13, which is our south wastewater
treatment plant improvements. Uh CW 15,
which is the sewer improvements on Fifth
Street, and DW8, which is the water
improvements on Fifth Street. The only
changes to our previous rate resolution
that was approved is just implementing
those search charges. The search charges
are taken out of the existing rates. So
you can see there there's the water one
and the two sewer ones are listed down
here. These search charges are required
as part of the state revolving fund loan
application that we have with
DNR, Department of Egg and Natural
Resources um as a repayment source for
those debt service payments. If the city
was not to implement the search charge,
it would go against constitutional debt.
Um so I can answer any questions that
you have, but otherwise I recommend
approval of the resolution as shown on
the agenda.
Exactly how much is it going up? The
rates are not going up. We are just
taking the search charge out of the
existing rates. So it's the same rates
that council's approved. It's just we
segregate part of that revenue and put
it aside for that debt service payment.
Move to approve. Second by M. Second by
Mr. Beth. Further discussion.
Would anyone in the audience like to
discuss this?
[Music]
All those in favor of the motion say I.
I. I oppose. Same sign. Motion carries.
Action to approve resolution
R2025-25, a resolution giving approval
to certain sewer facility improvements,
giving approval to the issuance and sale
of revenue bond to finance directly and
indirectly the improvements to the
facilities, approving the form of a loan
agreement and the revenue bond and
pledging project revenue and collateral
to secure payment of the revenue bond
and creating special funds and accounts
for the administration of the funds for
operation of the system and retirement
of the revenue bond and providing for a
segregated special charge or
searchcharge for a payment of the bonds.
Miss Owen Mayor Council, first I
apologize for the title that does not
come from me. That comes from B bond
counsel. Um this resolution as well as
the next resolution are both required as
part of that same process that we just
talked about. Um the first resolution
2025-25 is
for I'm trying to look the Fifth Avenue
sewer project. Um, I can answer any
questions that you have, but again, this
is just the format of the resolution
that's required as part of the state
revolving fund loan application. If the
city were to not pass these two
resolutions, you'd be paying for them
out of cash reserves. Move to approve.
Second motion by Mr. Sher, second by Mr.
Bington. Further discussion?
Anyone in the audience like to discuss
this? Mayor, I was just going to point
out real quick that I'm sure people saw
in in uh the article in the paper about
Mitchell throwing their hat in the ring
for the potential prison. Now, we're a
long long long ways of even discussing
anything about it, but the reason we
were able to put it in is because we
have ample water and have the ability
for sewer as a result. So, that's just a
a case in point of of the potential of
what Mitchell has coming forward as a
result of bringing additional water to
Mitchell um and be able to treat it of
the sewer. So, I'm not saying that I'm
for or against. I'm just saying that's
an example. So, I nobody wants to pay
higher water rates, but we're looking at
this as a as a long-term investment.
And we really do like that searchcharge
debt. um implementing the search charge,
it doesn't go into our constitutional
debt category, so it reserves as that to
use for other projects that the city
might have.
Further
discussion? Okay. All those in favor of
the motion say I. Post same sign. Motion
carries. Action approved resolution
R2025-26, a resolution giving the
approval to certain drinking water
facility improvements, giving approval
to the issuance and sale of the revenue
bond to finance directly and indirectly
the improvements to the facilities,
approving the form of the loan agreement
and the revenue bond, pledging project
revenues and collateral to secure the
payment of the revenue bond and creating
special funds and accounts for the
administration of funds for operation of
the system and retirement of the revenue
bond and providing for a segregated
special charge or searchcharge for the
bond.
for the payments of the bonds. Mrs.
Elman, same comments as before. This
resolution is for the loan that is for
the drinking water improvements on Fifth
Street.
Move to approve. Second. Motion by Mr.
Goldhammer. Second, man. Mr. Smith, who
wrote this? Was it this? Was it the bond
guy? The bond council writes those. Yes.
All right, sounds good. Further, it's
not me. It's the other lawyer. It's the
other lawyer.
Anyone in the audience like to discuss
this?
All those in favor of the motion say I.
I. The same sign. Motion carries. Action
to approve resolution
R2025-32 creating tax increment district
41 and approving the project plan. Mr.
Johnson. All right. Uh this tax
increment district would relate to the
Woods apartment proposed development uh
being undertaken by Paul Groige LLC.
Uh staff did meet to review the
application and project plan. Um and
I'll kind of walk you through some of
that. Um as you can see in the project
plan, the proposed development is a 70
apartment unit complex. Um
includes oh I don't have the numbers in
front of me. I think
six 12 buildings
total. Um also one of those would be
gym. um uh possible mixed use space. So
I think it's six 12plexes or is it 12
sixlexes? Um one of those two. All I'm
seeing in front of me right now is 70
units. So there we go.
12
buildings. Um staff again reviewed the
the project plan. Um requirements that
you'll see is uh the legal description.
One thing that's different with this one
is we did uh uh loop in Matty Street um
for the city to be able to potentially
construct that in the future. Uh we
added that to the legal description. Um
we know that there is projected to be
some portion of unused tax increment
that should be available to support that
project. We don't know how much it's
going to be able to support and we don't
know how much the city might ultimately
um you know uh end up constructing off
of Matty Street, but it should help
support that project if we want to
pursue it in the future. Um, the nice
thing about adding it now, um, getting
that increment developed, uh, you get
the the apartments starting to develop,
within the first couple of years, you'll
start to see what those valuations
actually come in at. Um, you'll be able
to see how much the TIFF is actually
going to generate over that amount of
time. and then you've got up to five
years to decide whether you're going to
end up uh doing any portion of Matty
Street. Um so you'll have those more
accurate numbers to work off of before
you have to make the decision. So that's
one unique thing about this project plan
compared to past ones that you've seen
is it's got that potential component. Um
you'll see in there the developers
projected costs are at that 2.281
281 U
million.
Um the developer would p uh would get
their increment first and then uh the
any remaining increment that develops
over that uh would be used towards uh
the the potential Matty Street project.
If we don't end up doing the Matty
Street project, then the tiff would
potentially pay off quite
early.
Um, other than that, it's very similar
to past TIFFs that we've done. Um, it's
got the 20-year expiration or when that
increment is paid out, whichever should
occur earlier. Um, no interest
associated with the TIF. It is a grant
pass through type TIF um where it does
not count against the city's
constitutional and statutory debt.
There's a number of reporting
requirements built in there that the
developer will need to meet.
Uh, we did build in some extra language
regarding Matty
Street.
And if you go to to the increment page,
Stephanie, you can see that um recall
that their request was for the 2.281.
um their their increment projection
which uh typically is a little bit low
because we don't factor in growth or
anything like that showed that it should
generate up to the
2.7. So we knew that there was going to
potentially be $400 5 $500,000 that
could support that Matty Street project.
Hopefully it ends up being more than
that and we'll know before you decide to
move forward with the Matty Street
construction. And then the other point
is all of the tiffs have to certify
their costs as approved in the project
plan. So if something comes in um less
than what they estimated that
construction cost to be, then it would
free up some of those funds to Maddie
Street as well.
Other than that, um again, staff worked
through the project plan in uh in the
review. It does appear to meet all of
the statutory requirements uh for TIFF
approval. Um, it does also seem to
comply with our TIFF handbook. And I
believe we've got representatives
available to speak to the TIFF. Um, so
we can open it up for council questions
or discussion.
Good evening. Don Peterson. I'm the
attorney for the developer, Paul
Gronowige. Paul is uh this is a busy
season for him and so he's uh pouring
some forms and getting stuff on another
project. So he couldn't be here tonight
but uh he wishes that he could. I think
uh Stephanie and and Justin have laid
out what what the plan is.
Um the the nice thing about this is is
half of these uh half these apartments
will be three-bedroom and so they'll be
more family orientated there. There's a
uh workout facility included in one of
the buildings. Uh room for a coffee shop
uh in one of the buildings. Uh he has
plans for an outdoor pool potentially
fire pit kind of a play area for for
children. One of the things that we've
seen is that affordable housing which uh
Roger was talking about has a and and
Susan about a shortage in Mitchell. Part
of the thing is is affordable housing is
expensive to build and a lot of the the
entry positions in Mitchell. You can't
afford a $400,000 house. You can't
$350,000 house. But if you have a nice
apartment that you can move into that
has three bedrooms, room for your
family, you can work a few years
hopefully and save for the down payment
and then get into that uh get into that
first house. So I think that answers
all, you know, it fills all those boxes,
checks them all. So, I'm here to answer
any questions that you may have.
I did kind of skip over the affordable
housing uh aspect of that. So, again,
this would be um it's got language in
there that it be classified as an
affordable housing type tiff. Um if it
doesn't receive that classification,
then the tiff would terminate. Um again,
the reason that we do that is so that it
doesn't get classified as a local tiff
and so that it doesn't impact the the
tax formula. Right. So, in addition to
certifying the costs every year, they
also provide um a certification of the
rental rates as well. Interesting. I I
pointed this out to the planning
commission, but uh Paul Gronowig had one
other affordable housing tiff and it was
for houses uh first-time home buyers and
it was out uh north uh out there by the
lake and it's full. Every last been sold
and I think every last been built upon
and that's maybe a three-year-old tiff.
So that's just kind of a
a monument or a action that shows that
um there's a need for this type of
housing in Mitchell. And if if it can be
done with a tiff, it just puts more, you
know, it puts people in them. So
Don, this is not income income based
though. It is not it is not income
based. Right. But but the point well
taken is is families, young families can
move into Mitchell and start out in this
type of a of arrangement and hopefully
eventually get into a house. Yeah. Or
people our age, Jeff could retire and
live out in them, too. So it's not
income, but there is a set rate there.
There is a set uh rate, Mike. And it's
it's the state of South Dakota sets that
and so it's and so it cannot be above
that and it has to we have the same
thing on the same development you talked
about. There's a couple rental houses
out there that have to meet that
requirement and then Flats on Havens is
also set up that same. So Mike, what's
that program called? It's
the I got it. It's the uh 80% of the
state South Dakota area median income.
There you go. It's set by the South
Dakota Housing Development Authority.
So, it's 80% for the state of South
Dakota area median income being utilized
by the state by South Dakota Housing
Development Authority at the time such
rental agreement is entered
and that changes from time to time. It
it Yeah, they do update it on their
website. It's
I can't find it. It's extremely hard to
find now, Stephanie. I was working with
the Department of Revenue and they
couldn't find it. It used to be really
easy to pull that up, but it's not quite
as easy anymore. Actually, Pam and I
found the calculator online to find it.
[Music]
Yeah, I I I mean Flats on
Havens full, right? It's a capacity. So,
I mean, obviously, this is something
that is necessary. We need it. We um
there's a demand. So, well, we just, you
know, you just approved not so long ago,
you you approved one that is income
based uh and and that'll fill up in no
time. And then there was another uh
similar apartment that was affordable
but isn't income based uh being built as
well. So they wouldn't build them if I
don't think there was any need for them.
So second that.
Okay. Further discussions or questions
for
Okay. All right. Anyone in the audience
like to discuss this?
Uh, good evening evening. Steve Simpson
here. I have a handout I'd like to
provide. There's 12 copies. So, there's
a few extra for the administration here.
I want to start out while that's being
passed around saying that I'm totally in
favor of the developer part of the tiff,
the
2.282. Uh we've already passed many uh
affordable housing tiffs in Mitchell
recently and and in order for this
developer to compete with those, he
deserves to have a tiff, too. So I I'm I
support the tiff to the developer. Um my
concern is with the Maddie Street uh
south of uh Quiet Lane being added into
the uh tax instead of the district. uh
if you read uh the plan the project plan
it clearly states that these are two
separate
projects. If you go to uh page 10 uh it
talks about the financing terms uh the
the fourth bullet states
uh that the developers project with the
remaining tax payment up to 2.2 for the
Mandy Street project. So there's 2.282
282 for the developer project and
there's 2020 for the for the Mandy
Street project. So it states right there
on page 10 there's two different
projects. Um you go to page 11 and and
it it talks again about the city shall
pass through all available tax increment
fund revenues not to exceed 2.282
million in a manner consistent with the
Mandy Street cost. Then the bottom of of
page 11 it talks about the Mandy Street
terms.
Uh at the top of 12 it says if Mandy
Street is constructed the tiff increment
will first be applied to developer
certified cost up to the
2.282. Okay. Once the developer
certified costs are paid all remaining
increment will be paid to the
city up to the maximum of 4.3.
Um before I go into the handout, what
does this mean is I want to uh go to
page 18, it talks about uh the tax levy
of 017 is is what's creating this tax uh
benefit
normally. And the way the tiffs have
been working is in this example once it
reaches 2.2082 282 the tiff is done and
then the uh uh various county school
district and city of Mitchell begins to
have that benefit financial benefit and
if you look at the percentages of the
tax levy the city of Mitchell is
25% of the total uh the school
district's 56% and the county Davidson
County is 19%.
So this is where I'll go to the handout.
On page one, I
highlighted that these tiffs are used so
that you don't have to use general
funds. So if we uses the general fund of
the city of Mitchell to uh put in Manny
Street, the city will will be on the
hook for 100% of that
cost versus if you use the tiff money,
it's only
25%. And so so you're asking people
outside of city limits to help pay for a
city street. And there's a fairness
question there.
Now, with regard
to requirements by the South Dakota uh
Department of Revenue, uh go to page two
highlighted under the county and
municipal approval. It states, quote,
"Local authorities then request the
department of revenue to make a
preliminary classification determination
prior to the tiff district approval by
the county or municipality. So, has that
has that been done yet?" according to
the uh tax increment financing handbook
for the city of Mitchell that was
approved uh January 6, 2020. Uh I I go
to the back of it and that step is not
included in the steps to uh process a
tiff at for the city of Mitchell. And
the reason why this classification is
important, you go to page
three and it has the classification
types. There's four of them. And the one
I want to point to is the local type. It
states that unless the tiff district
meets the definition of an industrial
economic development or affordable
housing tiff district, it is a local
tiff
district. The projects usually benefit
the local government instead of having a
regional or statewide benefit. And I am
saying that the Manny Street project is
a local tiff and we're mix it in with
this housing affordable housing tiff.
And so I'm not sure how the department
of revenue is going to classify this
thing when we're putting two different
things into the same uh district. Uh and
the reason why this is important is in
the last column that for a local tiff,
the county auditor is required to impose
an additional school levy on all real
property within any impacted school
district to hold the districts
harmless. Okay? And really what's going
on here is if this local tiff does not
benefit the state as a whole as the
other three types of tiffs do, the state
is not going to uh provide the school
system with state aid for that
increment. And so then the local uh
taxpayers of that school district will
then have to make up the difference.
That's happened in Brookings. I brought
that forward. They did a couple of those
and uh when the tiffs were complete, the
county continued to tax the taxpayers
$470,000. And I talked to a a county
audit uh a person in the county audit
here in Davidson County. I explained
this to them and they were concerned
that this would be a very complicated
process if we have to go through this.
So my recommendation is you push this
back to the planning commission, tell
them to remove Matty Street south of
Quiet Lane from the from the tax
increment district and then then put
this uh
2.282 affordable housing tiff forward
back to your table and then improve it
and get this thing
going. Thank you for your time.
Guess one of the experts have uh some
followup. All right. Well, I I don't
want to speak to Steve's comment as to,
you know, the philosophy of including
Matty Street, but I do want to speak to
a couple of the the points that he
raised. Um, mostly in regards to how the
TIFF would be classified in the process
for that. Um, it's our understanding
that the state no longer gives
preliminary classifications. You
actually need to go through approve the
TIFF and then supply them with the
information from it being approved
before they'll give any indication as to
how they're going to classify it. Um,
another thing to to touch on here is
that we've got language in our project
plan that if it does not get classified
as an affordable housing, it terminates.
So, there's no risk of it being
classified as a local TIFF because if it
does get classified as a local TIFF, the
TIFF terminates, it ceased to exist. So,
if that were to happen, we may need to
reconsider um the TIFF at a future date,
take out whatever component the state
had an issue with, and then reprocess a
new TIFF. Um but as far as this one
goes, there's no risk of including it
and having it classified as a local TIFF
because if that happens, the TIFF
terminates.
Can you just come up to the podium for
the folks at home?
Um, follow up with what Justin said in
the past, uh, we I used to always ask
for the pre-approval and we'd send in
the project plan at the same time we'd
send it to the city and we we'd get it
back uh, in four or five days either
saying yes, it works or it doesn't work.
And in this particular case, I sent it
in and they asked for several more uh,
items and one of those was, "Has the
city approved it yet?" And I said,
"Well, no, that's we're trying to get
the pre-approval." and they said they
don't do that anymore. So there there's
no way to get the pre-approval uh until
the city council would approve it and
then Stephanie attaches sends in the
plan and attaches some uh items to it
and then that's what gets looked at.
Yeah. And I was just going to say even
when they were doing preapprovals, it it
wasn't it wasn't relevant anyways
because when they got once they got the
plan they could change your mind, right?
So it's really a duplication that was
wasn't accomplishing much. Right. Stay
here. I have a question on Matty Street.
I've asked you this in private before.
Stephanie, this is the second time Matty
Street has been included in a tiff. Why
did it not get built the first time?
Well, I I guess my answer would be they
had an estimate of 10. Well, Don, you
you did that, Tiffy. Probably. Yeah.
There you go. Well, I'm going to I'm
going to Stephanie was right. I'm sure I
don't have the project plan in front of
me, but I'm sure there was an estimate
of what the uh what what the tiff would
generate. Uh and it and it didn't
develop quick enough uh because remember
all your spending has to be done in the
first five years and it didn't
generate enough revenue in those first
five years to uh allow for the building
of Matty Street. Yeah. Um, I will say,
[Music]
um, you might phrase this better than
me. Um,
yeah,
I guess the the other thing to take into
consideration is that was an old style
tiff before we started moving over to
grant pass through and before we started
started limiting the interest that was
available to developers. So, it was
likely a situation where a lot of the
available increment would have been
going into developer interest costs. I
guess what I'm getting at is I feel like
there's that word again. There's no
teeth in these deals because right
because I was not here to vote on that,
but some of you were. You voted on it
with the understanding that that if the
increment occurred, we were going to
build this street and it didn't happen.
So, I feel like we're really doubling up
on a tiff here. And I'm for the project.
absolutely for the project. I think that
it's a needed project. The the street
would be fantastic to put through. I
just I I'm kind of with Steve. I don't I
question because of this the second time
it's been in front of us and that's why
I asked you to answer it because I knew
you would wrote the first one. I will
say uh two things though that come with
that. We do look at the if you look at
all the added residential um structures
that have been added to east of Foster,
having additional outlet for those
residents to get to Havens without
having to use Foster is going to benefit
that apartment complex. Absolutely. As
to your question or your concerns about
the previous tiffs, I think that's
really what led to the change in the
process is council wanted to see more
accountability, more reporting.
Everybody has to certify their costs.
Now, they have to provide a list of what
their rental rates are or what they're
selling houses for. Actually, Paul's
been great about that. Stephanie
actually is the one that sends them to
me every year. And we've added on to
that reporting when people are saying as
part of the TIFF project plan that
they're creating so many jobs, I'm going
to start asking on job creation as well.
So, we are having a lot more oversight
than what we've had in the past. Um I I
think partly because your concerns were
shared and I'll add too, Mike, that the
nice thing with this one is the city
holds the cards this time on whether the
the Matty Street construction moves
forward or not. And it's there's really
no risk to us. The de the development is
going to happen within the first couple
of years. We'll know what kind of
increment or what kind of values come in
for those projects once they're
completed.
Um once those come in, we'll be able to
do a more accurate projection of what
that tiff will generate over the
lifespan of it. So you'll know with a
lot more uh certainty how much is going
to be able to uh come in to help fund
the Matty Street construction. And then
the city once it has all that
information can decide exactly how much
of Mattie Street we want to construct.
And remember, the developer is still at
risk. The developer, I'll take uh Paul
Gronowick in this case, is going to go
out and he's going to build five
buildings by November 1st of this year.
If those don't fill up, he's still it's
his loan. He went out and got the loan.
He's going to have to service it whether
there's tiff increment available or not.
So, he's taking a big risk. And if they
don't fill up, he probably won't build
the last five because if he can't get
the first five rented, at least right
away. So, the developers going out there
taking a risk uh in that and and
sometimes they work and they work great
and sometimes they don't. Stephanie and
Justin are right. Um there weren't
affordable housing tests when that when
Matty Street was in, so I can't re
remember how how that was created. Um
but they've tightened down the rules and
and and and the developers have accepted
those and we have to play by those
rules.
So, so when if if and when we put Matty
Street in, will those property owners or
it's just a dirt trail now, will they be
assessed a portion of that street or
will the taxpayer or the increment pay
for all of that? That's something that
you'll have to decide when that time
comes because right now we don't know
how much is going to come in. We don't
know how much of the street you'll end
up wanting to do. Um, so it's possible
that it might pay for a good chunk of
it. it's possible that it's only going
to pay for, you know, half of it. Um, so
that that's something that the council
in the future is going to have to
consider and decide. I mean, the way the
way it's set up now, it wouldn't pay for
a lot of it, but we haven't taken in
into account any increase whatsoever in
anybody's property taxes out there,
which is bound to happen. And we big
costs what seem seem to be going down
for us right now. Yeah. So, that that
could help. Um, but there's a reason why
most tips and Mitchell are paid off in
15 or 16 years or uh is is because when
we figure them out for the life of them,
we never build in any increase in the in
the in the taxes and they pay off early.
So, and and so hopefully this is one
where it comes just like it's supposed
to. Uh prices go up or the taxes go up
and there's money available for Matty
Street. So I and we should explain the
reason why um the internal review
started the conversation with the
developer is this was one of the
discussion points back in 2014 2015 when
we were redoing the tiff plan because
there was frustration that we didn't see
this completed. So we thought it was an
opportunity to kind not wrong or right
but to try it again and the developer
had no issue whatsoever. He was happy to
be able to to accommodate
Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Back to the page
three. It states that a local tiff is
the default unless it's
industrial. Is there anything on south
of uh Quiet Lane on Manny Street that's
uh part of an industrial business? So
the the fourth category there, Steve,
under affordable housing is housing
development, infrastructure
improvements, housing development, and
workforce housing. That's what we're
applying under. Yes. And and south of
Quiet Lane on Manny Street, there are
already houses there, right? Are are
they lowincome affordable housing based
on state statute?
Steve, I I think they look at the
project as a whole, not specific areas
of it.
Okay?
Because if you're looking at just the
street, there's no tax increment that's
being generated with any portion of
Mattie Street. The only tax increment
that is being generated is the apartment
complex. Well, that's because that's the
boundary is set up for that. And I have
a problem with if if we just did Manny
Street south of Quiet Lane as a TIFF, it
would be a local tiff. So we really have
two different projects here. As I
stated, your plan state said it's two
different projects. One project is a
local tiff type. The other one is an
affordable housing type. And I'm not
sure how the South Dakota Department of
Redwood is going to view a project such
as this. You said at the beginning that
this was a unique project. Okay. And it
is a unique project. I've never seen
this before and I'm not sure if the
South Dakota Department of Revenue ever
seen uh something when it has two
different types of tiffs in the same
tiff. Well, I think a similar
Well, I all I'll say is that there's no
risk to the city to find out. So, we we
can approve it as is the developer.
We're going to delay the project by
going through this charades with the
department of revenue. I don't think
there'd be a significant delay between
sending it back to project, you know,
planning commission, revising the
boundaries, and restarting the process
if we find out that it won't be
classified correctly. So, for the sake
of the developer, hope you're right.
Thank you.
And I think Stephanie made a good point
is having access to 37, adding the
people on First Street and then instead
of funneling everybody through First
that you're even for safety issues that
you're able to utilize Matty Street.
That is where I'm thinking is where this
could make a difference.
Okay. Anyone else in the audience like
to discuss this?
Okay. All those in favor of the motion
say I post. Same sign. Jordan, we don't
have a motion. I thought we did. Yep. I
think Susan, he second it. We got this.
Susan first. Susan first. Okay. Okay.
I keep track now because I forgot. I
used to forget all the time.
Okay. All those opposed? Same sign. Did
I say that? I can't remember now. What?
All right. All right. Motion
carries. Action to approve resolution
R2025-33 creating tax increment district
42 and approving the project plan. Mr.
Johnson. All right. So, this would be uh
TIFF 42 in relation to Dale's A1. Um an
expansion with that business. Um as you
can see in the project plan, their um
proposal would be to add
um several additions. I won't get into
the footage of them. Um you'll see a
picture of the the proposed construction
later on in there, but um approximately
doubling their base space. Um potential
to add up to 10 new employees on top of
I believe their existing
15 if I'm remembering correctly. Um,
once again, staff did uh review the
project plan, uh, work with the
developer to to revise that and get it
into a state where it does meet all of
the statutory requirements and the the
TIFF hand Mitchell TIFF handbook
uh requirements. Legal description
includes the the property itself. Um,
and then there were uh adjacent
rightaways that were included for any of
their aprons, sidewalks, utility
connections that they might need to make
in the in the rightway in those
locations. Uh, you can see their tiff
request was in the amount of $340,15.
The TIFF does function as a grant pass
through. Uh very similar terms that we
just discussed as far as the 20-year
timeline or when the increment gets paid
out, whichever occurs first. We do have
the language in there uh acting as a
grant pass through does not count
against the city's constitutional and
statutory debt. Uh we also have the
reporting and certification terms in
there um as we do with other tiffs.
Um you can see going down to their
project cost breakdown
uh that their eligible project costs
came in higher than what they were
requesting. Again that's limited by uh
what the TIF is projected to generate.
So um you can also see the total of
their non-p project costs which are
about $300,000 higher than what they
have for eligible. uh total investment
would be up in that $1.1 million
range. Uh their tiff generation again
shows that that would be uh generating
over the course of the uh lifespan of
the tiff 340,000 which uh roughly
coincides with the amount of their
request.
And I think if you want to give them
the scroll down to the picture,
Stephanie, give them an idea what the
the improvements are going to look like.
So, um, other than that, um, I think
covers the basics and we can open it up
to questions or further comments.
uh two of them. So if you I'll maybe
maybe Don will speak to this, but if you
look at the pictures, uh the the front
portion of the building would be
existing and then there's a walkway and
those six additional bays in the rear.
Um and I think one area to connect those
that would be uh the the expansion that
they're proposing the tiff for.
So two of the long brothers are here, uh
Darren and Devin. Um, it's a their
second generation. Their father Dale
started the business and their sons are
now in the business. I wish Roger Music
was still here because these up to 10
new jobs uh come with full benefits. Uh,
a good enough pay that I told Darren I
didn't want him telling our associates
how much he was paying people at
Dales. But, but I mean that this is
exactly what I think what Roger was kind
of talking about. These are highpaying
jobs, full benefits, and we can add 10
new ones to the existing 15. Uh, but
it's it but for the tiff, it it it won't
go forward. So, I don't know if you have
any questions for for Darren or
Devon. Any questions for the developer?
I'll move to approve. Motion by Mr.
Hurle, second by Mr.
Golden. Further questions from the
council. Would anyone in the audience
like to discuss this?
Okay. All those in favor of the motion
say I. I. Oppos. Same sign. Motion
carries. Action to approve resolution R
2025-34 vacation of public right of way
16 ft alley in Bayside overlook
subdivision phase one. Mr. Jennings. Mr.
Mayor and Council. Um we did put this in
front of planning commission. There's no
statutory requirement for it. Um they
did recommend approval of the vacation
unanimously.
Um the all the joining neighbors um to
this alley had to sign the petition um
all saying that they would like this
vacated. Um it it serves no purpose for
the city of Mitchell. We don't have any
utilities or anything back there at this
point. Don't anticipate any either. Um
the road that ab butts to on the west
side isn't a road anymore because that
was vacated a long time ago as well. Um
each person each abuing land owner would
get half of the alley um 8 ft
essentially to each person. I can answer
any questions that you have for me. Um
there's probably some people from um out
there that are here as well that they
can speak to it as well.
Move to approve. Motion by Mr.
Goldhammer.
Second by Mr.
Smith. Further discussion.
I'm going to abstain.
I'll abain also.
Okay. You want to
say anyone in the audience like to
discuss this?
No more abstensions.
Okay. All those in favor of the motion
say I. I. I. Same sign. Motion carries.
Action to approve resolution R 2025-35
plot of as shown on the agenda. Mr.
Jennigus. Mr. Mayor and Council. uh
planning commission recommended approval
of this unanimously. Um they're doing
some estate planning in this area. Um
currently it's under one parcel, so
they're breaking out the farmstead from
the the land for uh farming, so that way
they can sell the farmstead separately
from the the farm ground if they so need
to. Um there is an easement on the
southwest corner of it to get from lot A
to lot B because there's already an
existing approach right there for them
um for implement. Um this is just
outside city limits. Um, but it's still
within the ETJ, so it's still city
zoning jurisdiction. Um, the county will
hear it at their planning commission and
tomorrow and um, county commission the
following Tuesday and answer any
questions that you have.
Move to approve. Motion by Mrs. Turks.
Second by Mr. Bathky.
Further discussion.
Anyone in the audience like to discuss
this?
All those in favor of the motion say I.
I. Post. Same sign. Motion carries.
Action to approve resolution R2025 plot
of lot 2 block six of the woods first
edition. Mr. Jennigus. Mr. Mayor and
Council. Planning Commission recommended
approval of this unanimously um with the
condition that there's a 10-ft drainage
easement on the south side. Um during
planning commission, they said that they
were going to put a drainage ement along
the south side. Um actually today when I
got the plat, I didn't since we already
have this in the packet, there is a 10ft
drainage easement along the southside.
They also put a 10-ft drainage ement
easement, excuse me, on the east side.
So, when it gets recorded, those will be
part of um the plat as well. Um it's
following the master plan out in the
area. It's going to be for another
residential dwelling out there. I can
answer any questions that you have. Move
to approve. Motion by Mr. Mardle.
Second. Second by Mr. Goldhammer.
Further
discussion. Would anyone in the audience
like to discuss
this? All those in favor of the motion
say I. I. I. Post. Same sign. Motion
carries. Action to approve resolution
R2025-37 as shown on the agenda. Mr.
Jennings, Mr. Mayor, Council, Planning
Commission recommended approval of this
6 with one extension. Um, this is just
outside city limits um but is still our
zoning jurisdiction. County will hear it
um Tuesday and the following Tuesday. Um
they're getting ready to plat this for
um development of the area. Um meets the
zoning requirements right now. I can
answer any questions that you have.
Move to approve. Mr. Goldhammer, second
by Mr. Bathky. Further discussion.
Would anyone in the audience like to
discuss this?
All those in favor of the motion say I.
I. Say sign. Motion
carries. Action to approve resolution R
2025-38 property annexation at 30 5213
FA Road. Mr. Shrader. Yes, Mr. Mayor.
Councel. Um, the property located at
5213 Fiala Road, owned by Nicholas and
Hillary Rockwell, signed an annexation
agreement dated September 18th, 2023.
And staff is requesting this property uh
be annexed per the annexation agreement.
Um, the legal description is in the
staff report and I can answer any
questions you may have. Move to approve
by Mr. Cardell. Second. Second by Mrs.
Church. Any further
discussion? Would anyone in the audience
like to discuss
this? All those in favor of the motion
say I. I. Oppose. Same
sign. Motion carries. Second reading on
ordinance O.
2025-4 providing for staggering of
mayoral and city council elections. Mr.
Johnson. All right. So the second
reading on this uh the same basic
structure there from the last meeting.
The big uh big change from uh the last
time that you saw it would be that we
did make the change um as council uh
voted on at the last meeting to move it
to uh two two-year terms for the mayor
to get that staggered and then keep
everybody on those same three-year terms
overall. Um
so the schedule on how you lay you know
all the lay out all those elections is
included within the ordinance there. Um,
I won't run through them all, but next
time the mayor's up for election, it
would be a two-year term. Then they
would be up for election for another
two-year term. And then after that
second two-year term, they would revert
back to their three-year
terms. Then starting in that 2031, I
believe it is, everyone would be on
their regular three-year cycle.
Justin, would this rotation
cause us to have a one
item issue on the ballot? One
uh one being just the
mayor's election should school.
Yeah, I can't say what other things
would be on the ballot. Um only because
a one item ballot has very little
interest, very draws very few people.
And I was told by the county auditor
that it cost 18 grand roughly to run do
an election to have a one ballot
issue just seems like a lot of money. I
think an example would be this year is
our off year and the school board does
have an
election. So you'd be combining with the
school because don't they usually
combine with you? Yeah. So you'd be
combining with the school. The school
has an election this year. This is our
off year. If the mayor was running this
year, it'd be combined with the school
board. Okay. So, it wouldn't be a one
ballot. It'd only be a one ballot if the
school didn't have election.
And on all even years, you'd have a
primary, right? Yeah, that's true.
When's the school board? How long are
their terms?
I feel like they run every year. So, if
theirs is three years, then it's going
to be the same, I guess, right? forever
and and I believe that the election
every year every year. Oh, so no matter
what there's an election. Okay, we'll
just tag along with that. Yeah, but I
mean if
the school board is having an election
this year, they pay for it. You know, uh
they probably the cost city and school
board then we share the cost. Yeah.
Whoever has items on the ballot splits
the cost based on like the last
election, it was mostly a city election
last June. So we took the brunt of the
cost of that election
and it cost us about 21,000.
How much? 21,000 last year. I guess to
your to your point, John, it costs more
to have an election than to not have an
election. If if that's the point that
you're getting.
Okay. Looking for a motion.
Oh, you're looking for a motion. I am. I
will move that. Motion by Mrs. Sharks.
Marty. Second on second. Second by Mr.
Bton. Second on second.
Okay. Any further discussion?
Would anyone in the audience like to
discuss this?
Okay. All those in favor of the motion
say I. I. Post. Same sign. Move to
adopt. Second. Motion to adopt. We got a
second. Further
discussion. Would anyone in the audience
like to discuss
this? Okay. Roll call. Barington. Hi.
Bathy. Hi. Hi. Smith. Hi. Saber. Hi.
Gold. Hi. Joel. Hi. Mardo. I motion
carries. Motion entering executive
session according to
SDCL1-25-2 for negotiations. So moved by
Mr. Goldhammer, second by Mr. Bington.
All those in favor of the motion say I.
Say sign. Motion carries. There will be
no action after executive session.