00:00:09,601	S1:
Good evening. It's 5:00 on September 2nd. This is the Bismarck Berlin admissions committee. First, we'll call the meeting to order from call roll, please.

00:00:22,067	S2:
Administrator. Here. Auditor here. Mayor Schmitz here. Commissioner Bakken.

00:00:27,868	S1:
Here. All right. First item is public comment. Um, to the previous meeting agenda item, which was ETA into this meeting, which is ETA. So I guess that's kind of the agenda. Um, so anyone who wish to speak to that topic, please come forward. Uh, state your name, sign in and let us know what, uh, what the comments are.

00:00:50,701	S3:
Yeah. Just a moment, Mark. Can you, uh, go ahead and and notice this? Yeah, please. Thank you. We had another commissioner show up. Uh, County commissioner. So.

00:01:04,868	S3:
So. All right. Proceed. Sorry.

00:01:06,767	S1:
So, are you okay with public comment? Without. Yeah. Okay. So public comment period is open. Please come forward.

00:01:19,701	S1:
A second call. Okay.

00:01:26,767	S4:
Good evening. My name is Tamara. Sarah.

00:01:29,100	S3:
Is that on?

00:01:33,267	S3:
Thank you.

00:01:33,667	S5:
Good evening. My name is Tamara. Sarah. I'm thankful that you had another meeting. I wasn't able to make the last one, so I really appreciate this opportunity to share my experience.

00:01:58,701	S5:
So I'll forewarn you, it might take a little bit of time, as I'm generally long winded according to my family, but I have family property also in the northeast section of the county, as well as personal property in the Pumpkin Patch area where we just finished building a new, accessible home. Because my husband is in a wheelchair and we needed to split our rural property in order to do that. Um. on that same property, we built an original two story home with our own two hands in 2004, and it was not in the ETA at that time. Both the properties I've referenced are now in the ETA. In building our new home in the ETA, we needed to split. As I said, our property. It took a year and a half to get through the approval process just to start building. This is for a single family home in a private subdivision. My father established in 1999 and he had an eighth grade education. Today, the multiple approvals, the detailed process was so difficult to transverse or traverse that Genny had to put it in a letter format for us, and even then it was like transverse in Greek. We flipped homes. My husband and I, since 1987, we've developed home designs and general contracted and built two homes, the one that we are trying to sell now currently. We built with our own two hands. There were so many steps this time to the process. It was mind boggling and the fees were overwhelming. We both have college educations and are experienced builders, and we soon realized we were going to be required to hire professionals to submit the required paperwork. This was not the case in 2004. There were multiple hurdles. The process was very time consuming. Took a year and a half. Yes, the ball did get dropped at the beginning by someone at the end, by someone else. Having to get permissions from both the county and city level was ridiculous. Double stepping, if you ask me. If you ask me to recite the process now, I couldn't tell you because it was so mind boggling as we were going through it and the process of developing our plan, finding the resources to build it, we just jump through hoop after hoop. It became clear this was an understaffed office. There are not enough employees to serve constituents in a timely manner, although they did rush our request because of a misstep in the beginning. Again, it took a year and a half, and actually I can't thank Jenny enough for her work with us. I don't think we would have gotten through it without her. We didn't agree with all the decisions that were made during the process, but it was understood, you know, from our perspective anyways, that each person was doing what they believed was now required under ETA jurisdiction and code. In my opinion, it's now a cogwheel system that's overregulated and rigid to the point of nonsensical. We've built a lot of times and remodeled a lot of places. Let me just give you two examples. First, we were required to secure our propane tank because we were placing it in the flood zone. Laughable actually, because we lived through the 2011 flood. I'm actually probably one of the few citizens in the flood that actually got FEMA to reimburse them. So this is a system that FEMA now has that will secure nothing. It's a complete waste of money, but I was required to do it. I know it won't do it. We've been. We lived through the flood. We know what happened. Everybody knows what happened to propane tanks in this community. On the propane tank issue. You can drive around my residence, even in just a one mile radius, and find that this is rarely done, that propane tanks are secured. Yet we couldn't get signed off on our plan to build without agreeing to do it. When I challenge this because it was an unanticipated financial cost in a very tight build budget, I was told education would be going out to propane distributors. That was in the fall. By the next spring, when I was ready to install it, that still hadn't occurred. I was calling distributors. They were laughing about it. They said they'd do it for us for a fee. Nobody had called them. What was eye opening Was the comment made by a steady staff person related to this discrepancy I viewed with my own eyes. I was told the city trusts developers to follow a plan and guidelines. Well, newsflash they aren't. Seems at a minimum like disparate treatment to me because we are just a little the little guy. From another viewpoint, one might ponder if it's preferential treatment for developers. This is the reason for me as to why the ETA needs to be eliminated. It's reason one second we were not allowed to keep in our home plan a tornado shelter we were planning to purchase and install ourselves according to the simple installation guidelines. We are builders after all. The reason we were not allowed to place an above ground, FEMA approved tornado shelter in our residence is because we refuse to pay for a North Dakota engineer to sign off on an approval of this particular shelter. It was suggested by city staff. We build an underground shelter or reinforce a room above ground. That wasn't in our plan, and my husband's in a wheelchair. We'd already poured the slab before we knew this would be an issue. Anyone can build an underground shelter or reinforce a room above. I'd done my research. I preferred to Texas when institute tested shelter above ground. That is, FEMA approved for an F5 tornado.

00:07:43,767	S5:
You see this company that we were working with because it's a FEMA approved shelter, has engineers that have already signed off on that. It met FEMA approval, but that wasn't good enough according to the standards with the city. No. Here in the Bismarck City ETA, we needed to get an engineer to sign off in North Dakota. The company I was working with, they couldn't believe it. The cost to get an engineer approval would have been in the 3000 range. Yes, I checked because I was willing to go through that step, but not for 3000. I didn't have that in my budget, so we couldn't purchase and install a safe shelter for our residents. Does this make sense in any form of common sense approach to residential building in a rural area? I'm sorry, but in my opinion, this is government overreach by even the best of standards. Do you know who sells these shelters? Lowe's. Menards. Home depot. You think they're going to sell shelters? That won't be safe. What does that tell you? From a common sense approach, it should tell you any shelter is safer than no shelter, which I now have. Yet this is how Bismarck city government in the it operates. Again, in my opinion, it's overregulated. Secondly, let me tell you about my experience with family related land, because again, we have family related land in the eastern part, actually around 80th and 43rd Street. The Etta developed zoning, and even when you want to place something on your property that fits within their own future MPO zoning standards, they will tell you that will not be allowed. I actually heard from a local realtor developer that the fire department is often used as a reason to not approve it, indicating the fire marshal will say they will not respond to the area. That made me go, why don't we have rural fire responses? And if not, if I can't do anything with land that we own? Why am I paying taxes on a property I can do nothing with because of government control? Another small developer told me they asked to connect to rural water access. They were told the rural water hook up along 80th was only placed for the county building use. No other residents can have access to this line. So this is on the county then. And I think that was confirmed later in a discussion that my sister had with somebody in the office. So basically they ran a major water line to the county building on 80th, but no one else can connect for development. This is going back a couple of years already, I don't know. To me, that just sounds ludicrous. I just couldn't believe it that a resident whose taxes have gone to pay for that rural water line can't even have access to it. I will sum it up with my own personal opinion. The EPA seems to allow government overreach. It feels like it's in place for developers and not the little guy who wants to develop their rural property. So when the question was asked by Commissioner Bitner at the last meeting that I wasn't able to attend, what is the city so afraid of and letting go of the MTA? And no concrete answer was provided. I'd like to see some commissioners here who have the guts to call it out as it is. Do you think that as citizens like myself, we are so stupid we haven't figured it out? I can tell you one thing. I found out from a staff person. The price of a land deal is public record. This is coming again from the city office. Some records don't get published, even though they're supposed to be right. I know I've looked for one and was told by a city official it wasn't available, even though by law, it was supposed to be. Do you think that city representative called up that land developer and told him to rectify the problem? Not the last time I looked.

00:11:56,200	S5:
The issue I have is if government overreach is going to go on and develop it in this community, then I ought to be able to vote out the representatives supporting it. I've actually called both the past Past mayor and the current mayor. Mr. mayor, during your run, I contacted you to discuss these very same issues I brought to the table here. This was before I built our new accessible home. And you said you were aware of the issues yet since you've been in office. I've encountered all these issues with no change. And people I worked with in the field are telling me it's gotten worse since you've been in office. With the last mayor, I couldn't get a call back from anybody in your office on the concerns I had. The last I heard was some firm was going to be hired to make the process better for everyone who was building. I don't know where that ended up. Frankly, I don't care. It's time for a change, and I'm asking every county commissioner, and I'm hoping some city commissioners will come on board at least, and encourage you as well to end the E.T.A. around Bismarck. In my opinion, it's created more problems than it solved, and it robs landowners of their rights from a development standpoint and a constitutional voting standpoint. Additionally, the amount of money that the citizens continue to pour into the Metropolitan Planning Organization Committee is concerning. I've been watching these committees nationally. You know what they're doing in other states. They are now using their plans under the Metropolitan Planning Organization, according to farmers and landowners, to rob land from them who've owned it for generations, and they're stealing it for private development under the eminent domain category for privately developed public housing. Think that can't happen in North Dakota? It already has. I know a family who told me they refused a developer offer, and afterwards their land was condemned by the city and sold to that same developer. This has been going on for generations.

00:13:59,000	S5:
I know Commissioner Risch made some comments about the voting issues, and I understand his concern about owning property in two communities. But still, he had a choice. You see, when I moved to Bismarck, I sold my Mandan property. That was a choice. I left city back door planning and moved to a rural area for a reason. I was given a no choice about the Etta, and I have no representation. So when Commissioner Risch says it's the same thing because he can't vote in Mandan, I say it's not the same thing. He at least made a choice where to live. ETA residents didn't. Did not. Government officials made decisions about our land. If I wanted to be in the city, I would have purchased land in the city. Built in the city. I've already lived through a city approach to develop him in Mandan. Have you seen their land tax increase since I left? Because that was in 2004. Yes. I'm glad I left the property there because what I countered continues to this day, which is why I went into the rural area. The other concern I have is the length of time that you can have control of property in the Etah. The new plan is what, 20 years? The family land I have has already been under the ETA for ten years. That's a lot of time for government to control property development. I'm requesting everyone, my Birley County commissioners, as my representatives, requesting the commissioners on the city commission, that you please stop the government, overreach the unconstitutional control of private property, and help this area get back to its rural roots. Which where is where less government was the supported approach. I'm asking you to end the ETA. I am not naive enough to think this will end all the problems, but at least I know I can work to change who has control through my constitutional right to vote. Thank you for your time.

00:15:59,067	S6:
Any questions?

00:16:03,667	S1:
So I'm going to ask that we withhold applause. Please. Let's keep this informational and informative. Um, so we just have good public discourse. We're trying to gather information so we can meet with the joint committees and also the joint commissions again at a point in the future, and it just becomes a distraction. We're not making any decisions today. So thank you.

00:16:32,000	S1:
Public comment is open.

00:16:38,100	S5:
Hello, my name is Nancy Jackson. I live in the Ashwood subdivision, which is in the Hate Creek Township area, which as you know, is in the Oeta. Um, I did not know much about the ETA until recently. I had talked about my brother in law in Idaho, which is where I'm originally from, builds Paul Barnes. And we had talked about putting one on our property. And, um. It absolutely baffles me that I have to call the city to put something on my own property. Um, I think it's crazy that I would have to call the county, either because I own the property that I've lived at for, um, it'll be 11 years at the beginning of October, and I've lived in Bismarck for 13 years at the end of December. Um, I am against the ETA. I think it needs to end, um, if it is required. I loved Commissioner Schwab's suggestion of making it a foot out. Um, if it has to be bigger than that. Um, I recently watched the planning and zoning for our commission meeting, um, which was very informative. I learned a lot from that. Um, and I live near Ward's property. I'm on the north side of 1804. I don't even want to fathom to think what specials would be, because you are going to have to plumb all of us into city. Um. Sewer devil. You know, we'll have to have, uh, city garbage and all that stuff. Um, I don't want to even think about what the specials will be on that. I feel like if we're going to be in city, then you should provide sidewalks. So that would.

00:18:27,367	S7:
Be a special. Um, the county takes care of my roads in the winter now. And, um, I know there was a comment made at the last joint commission, uh, meeting that they would the county would have to hire a significant amount of people in order to take over the properties that are now in the ETA. They already do. They already do. The city has zero to do with where I live. Zero. Absolutely nothing. And I don't want to pay for that. Um, especially the specials I lived out in the rural I. We bought our home in 2015, and during that time, if we found a home under $350,000, it was a freaking miracle. It was a bidding war for homes in the rural development areas at that time. And so we kind of settled on the house that we settled. Um, but which is why we need to build a pull barn and add on possibly to our home. But I don't want to have anything to do with the city. I'm sorry, I love Bismarck. I have appreciated it, but I like living out of Bismarck for a reason. Um, and I just want this to end, and I think that there was a good discussion, but I think that there really needs to be. Even more discussion and I hope you guys listen to us because it's it just sounds like it's a big mess right now. And it's it's been a conversation for for too long. And I'm really disappointed that decisions aren't being made yet. And you're having a meeting about a meeting about when you're going to have another meeting. And I don't I don't like that. I think decisions need to be made sooner rather than later, because we're all in limbo in the Etta and I, uh, I literally just finished watching the last joint County Commission meeting on my way here. I was listening to the end of it on my way here. And, um, Commissioner Bacon, you mentioned that. What about the people that have the oddball properties? I am the oddball property in my development in the Ashwood subdivision. I'm the only house on that block that has 2.47 acres. Everybody else has the standard 1.6 that the other rural developments have. And we can't. They won't let us divide it into a different property because it would make it even more oddball. It would make it too small for living out there. And so, um, I just my biggest concern is having to be connected to city sewer and the cost that that is going to incur the city and the county and what it's going to do even more to my taxes that I think need to be abolished anyways. And but that's a whole different topic. But I, I don't I don't want the specials. I picked the subdivision that I lived in because it didn't have any specials. And the county has done a great job of cleaning our roads and doing whatever they're doing. But if the wards do end up getting allowed to sell that into a development, um, across the the 1804 from us, I think that they should be the ones that are included in the MTA or in the city. However, you guys decide to do it because they're going to be a brand new development and it will be easy. And I think, um, Chad Moldenhauer said that heritage already is connected to sewer. So I think if you're going to do that, everything south of 1804 would be okay, because it's going to be newer and it's already connected to city sewage. But all of us that have septic tanks and everything, I just don't want to even think about what the costs are going to, um, incorporate. But I appreciate your time. Thank you.

00:22:22,767	S6:
Thank you.

00:22:24,801	S1:
Public comment is open.

00:22:47,467	S8:
Hi. My name is Matt Schwab. I'm actually Steve Schwab's son, so you can put that on the record. Um, my dilemma started way before he was elected. So this is my own personal experience, and that's why I am here on my own accord. Um, that being said, I bought my house in 2011. I live south of Lincoln, two and a half miles or east of university to marry two and a half miles. So I'm in the middle of nowhere. When I went to build my shop, I had to go to the county. Asked the county, I said, hey, I need to, you know, get these plans approved. They said, no, you got to go to the city. So I go to the city. And then, to my dismay, I'm limited to 1400 square feet, which is pretty small. But being the person I am, I follow the rules. I built what I was supposed to do, and then the subsequent years you guys changed it, or the former commission, the mayor changed it. So now when I add on, it's going to cost me more than what it could have cost me to build it right the first time. So the rules get changed and I have no say in it. I don't have anybody to go to. I can't vote for you guys. You guys don't knock at my door and come up to me and ask me what you can do for me. I have no say. Um, and that is probably the heart of the whole problem right now. We don't have a say over our overlords who can tell us what we can and cannot do. Um, and I think when the state granted the city the power to govern non-residents, we're not residents of you guys. It created a special kind of government. It's not representative. It is just an overseer of us. We have no representation. So this really sets the stage for no accountability. You guys aren't accountable to us. We don't get to elect you. I get to elect the county commissioners, not you guys. So I think maybe you guys need to rein it in. I don't know if a foot's good. I don't know if a half a mile is good, but you guys are way too far out there. I have City of Lincoln. I got the airport, I got Apple Creek, I got farmland, I got state land. I got all this land. Before you even get to Bismarck. It makes no sense. You guys are out there. So I don't know what you guys are doing, but it's going to be 50 years before anybody even considers it. I think you guys need to, like, draw the lines back in and at least have some sort of semblance of normalcy rather than just big swaths of land that you guys control. Um, and that being said, I think that you guys need to have, um, people in the ETA on the planning board for the ETA, whether you have to separate a planning board or have a separate planning board for the ETA, we have no representation and we need that. And if you don't do that, shame on you guys. That's all I got to say.

00:25:39,367	S6:
Thank you.

00:25:41,567	S1:
Public comment is open.

00:25:51,367	S9:
For the record, my name is Travis Jensen gave public comment the last meeting. Um, what I came tonight to address is I want to echo a lot of what's being said about action. It seems you guys are dragging your feet on this issue. Um, for instance, you say you you give ETA residents representation on a planning and zoning board. Um, I want to point out again with the misty water situation. The planning and Zoning Board holds no weight. That is simply a recommendation. It it's theatrics is what it is. It makes the people think they have a say. Um, just to briefly touch on the misty waters that was recommended as a no pass by the planning and zoning, and the city commission overrode it. So the people that disagree with it have no Recourse. It's done now that the opposite would have happened. That particular requester could have came back and asked it be changed. But I want to address Commissioner Rice's comments at the last city Commission meeting. I think our city commissioners and our mayor need to be honest, quit with the smoke and mirrors and let us know because we we got a taste of it at your last city meeting. Let us know what you really think of us, because you made it sound loud and clear that we are simply dollar amounts. We are not welcoming your community because we don't pay taxes, but you have no issue taking our sales tax. You have no issue with us sending our kids to public school, which we do pay for. Mr. mayor, you ran as a man of numbers, and I actually pulled up a newspaper article today that said that you were going to tackle the tough issues. I can forward to you if you so wish. When are you going to uphold the promise you made during your campaign? Because to sit there and let a commissioner group, not only Burley County residents, but anybody outside of our community as unwanted. Your job as a leader should have been to speak up. And, Jason, I'm not going to let you off so easy either, because I went back and watched your little TV show. You stood behind it too. So instead of you guys putting the smoke and mirrors and making these people in this room feel like they're heard. Let us know what you really think of us. We are simply dollar signs. You want us to come to your community. You want us to spend money. You want us to work in your community, but then you want us to leave. We aren't wanted in Bismarck. You guys made that very clear at the last city commission meeting. But I want you to start asking yourself with comments like what were made? Did you ask chamber EDC what they think of comments like that? Did you go around and ask small businesses what they think of comments like that? You guys are supposed to be not only leaders, but you are supposed to help drive economics within the city. Comments like what were made at this table at the last city Commission meeting. From an individual who openly admitted that he did not know what he was originally voting on. When this when this initiative was asked, does not help small businesses. It does not help economic growth. Our our county commissioners have had our backs. It's time the city is open and honest about what they think of us. It's as simple as that. Mr. mayor, I ask you to uphold what you ran on as an elected official. You made the promise to tackle the tough issues. I cannot vote for you, but I have not seen that it's going to come to where we're going to butt heads, and the Aeta folks are going to give you the finger, and we're just going to start building. Ask yourself when that day comes. How do you justify to the taxpayers the legal fees that the city is going to incur because of that? Because that's going to come at a cost. Thank you.

00:30:06,667	S6:
Travis.

00:30:07,300	S1:
Travis, can I ask you just to sign in?

00:30:09,367	S9:
You know my name.

00:30:11,767	S10:
I'm not hard to find.

00:30:18,300	S3:
Yeah. Travis, just for the record, can you sign that, please?

00:30:29,100	S9:
If it doesn't come with a cost of sorts. I know it sounds like, uh, you know, we want to charge us outsiders, um, for everything. But, Mr. Mayor, um, it was asked that it be addressed at this meeting. So I do plan on sitting through the whole meeting, and I would like to hear that conversation.

00:30:51,667	S1:
Which conversation?

00:30:53,200	S9:
Uh, what Commissioner ish brought up at the last city commission meeting about charging outsiders. Um, the three examples were airport library, and I believe parks.

00:31:04,067	S1:
You're. I think you're right.

00:31:04,868	S9:
I can play it back, I got it. No, no, I got.

00:31:06,467	S1:
A clip that sounds. I just want to make sure I.

00:31:08,467	S9:
I'm going to sit through the meeting and hopefully we can have that discussion. And I would like to know as the mayor what your opinion on that is. Okay.

00:31:15,400	S6:
Thank you.

00:31:18,667	S1:
Public comment is open.

00:31:32,100	S11:
Hey, how's it going? Uh, my name is Andrew Iverson. I'm a burly county resident. Have been for just under 15 years. Um, about that land in 2011. I don't think there was an ETA as far as I am. Then, um, two years ago, I tried building the pole barn, went to the Bismarck Lumber, got some plans drawn up. Guy goes, what's your address? I told them it's like, can't do it. Gotta have engineer plans from the city. Are signed off by the city for. You can do this. That's gonna be about 10,000 extra dollars. Um, so two years later, I don't have a building up yet. Um, jumping through hoops, I got concrete poured. Finally. Um, but I'd like to see the CTA go away. I'll be honest with you. Um, to me, it's a precursor to annexation. That's all. All I see it as, I don't feel represented. Um, it's pretty much it. Thanks.

00:32:36,567	S6:
Thank you.

00:32:39,567	S1:
Well, my comment is open, and you want to wish to speak.

00:32:47,100	S1:
A second call for public comment.

00:33:05,567	S12:
Good evening gentlemen. My name is Wayne Munson. I'm a Berlin county commissioner. Um, what I'm hoping for today. And this was a statement I made at the last joint meeting between Burleigh County and the city. Uh, I'm hoping that more of the residents behind me come up and give us very specific items to work on. Um, in order for us to work together as a work as a group. the pole barn issue. I appreciate that. That's that's a conversation we can have. Um, and we heard from the city staff at the last meeting and including the Burleigh County staff that the ordinances are being worked on, and we're getting closer and closer to the ordinances so that we have very consistent, um, guidelines throughout the city, the MTA and the county. Uh, so as a Burleigh County commissioner, I am really hoping that that we have more people behind me stand up and stand at this podium and give us those for instances that we can work on together. That's what our job is as commissioners that we are elected to do. And without having those specifics, it's tough for us. We can have the conversation that we want to make changes. But what? And so I really encourage the folks behind me to stand up and give us those those details. Thank you.

00:34:24,767	S6:
Thank you.

00:34:35,267	S11:
Mayor.

00:34:36,501	S12:
Board members.

00:34:38,100	S11:
Mike Conley I'm one of the city.

00:34:39,667	S12:
Commissioners.

00:34:40,300	S11:
And the one that asked for.

00:34:42,767	S12:
Initially this conversation.

00:34:44,200	S11:
To.

00:34:44,367	S12:
Come forward. At the first.

00:34:47,000	S11:
Joint meeting, I'd.

00:34:48,167	S12:
Asked some.

00:34:49,000	S11:
Questions, and.

00:34:50,400	S12:
I came up to.

00:34:51,567	S11:
The podium to talk about them because I wanted it included.

00:34:55,701	S12:
Into the education.

00:34:56,767	S11:
And I was told no, because.

00:34:58,868	S12:
The topic.

00:34:59,400	S11:
Would have been, um, the issue of like the sewage and the, um.

00:35:06,200	S12:
The assessments would have been an issue, whether.

00:35:09,267	S11:
The.

00:35:09,400	S12:
EPA.

00:35:09,801	S11:
Exists.

00:35:10,267	S12:
Or not.

00:35:11,000	S11:
And it was interesting because during that combined joint meeting.

00:35:16,100	S12:
Um, when.

00:35:16,901	S11:
I.

00:35:17,000	S12:
Did my research.

00:35:18,100	S11:
I knew about the.

00:35:20,400	S12:
EPA.

00:35:20,868	S11:
Authority from 1975 and the exercising of how to address the MTA in 1977, but learned at that meeting, like almost all the other citizens, that it's been in conversation since 1929. So it was even harder to fathom why somebody would choose to say, we're not going to educate on it. Um, when for nobody was alive when those original discussions started, and especially since the answer is so easy, and I do appreciate the fact that our city engineer and planner sat down with me in another constituent and we talked it through. And as it stands now, because as many people have talked about as far as the changing in things, is, is that what happened to the house, say, south of Beverly Avenue that I bring up a lot? Um, there were look back taxes and things that applied with that. Um, we've since switched that, and it's called a utility capital charge. And the utility capital charge on a lot is significantly less than what those look back taxes were. And at some point, probably during our joint meeting, if we can encourage an education on that, because the only look back taxes that really apply now have occur with a flood mitigation infrastructure. And that's a sizable, smaller portion of the ETA than what it used to be in the past. But to get that right from the staff, um, so that everybody's on the same page as these discussions go forward would be helpful. And that's all I wanted to say. Thanks for continuing this discussion.

00:37:01,767	S6:
Thank you. Go ahead. Jason.

00:37:03,667	S13:
Commissioner. Just so I'm clear, at a future meeting, you would like a presentation on utility capital charges and how those affect properties going forward.

00:37:13,000	S11:
Yeah, yeah. And the to because when we think back to like the Martin house stuff and we're talking a say um Almost $60,000 lookback charge versus a utility capital charge, which would have been significantly less. That changes the context quite a bit on how we had our transparent and honest with this conversation going forward. So I would say at the next joint meeting that would be helpful because it kind of, when I bring it up is say in saying that it was not part of the education before, it makes it more political and it's the politics that hurt people. If by understanding it in the context as it exists now, even with the potential to change, it takes that little part of politic out of it to where we can have those better discussions. And I think that's beneficial for all of us.

00:38:11,167	S13:
Okay, I'll make sure to put a note in my notes that it gets added to the next agenda.

00:38:18,167	S11:
Thank you.

00:38:25,100	S7:
I don't know if we're allowed to come back up here or not. But again, my name is Nancy Jackson. I just wanted to address what Commissioner Munson had said. I thought Tammy was very specific in her examples. Um, if I want to tear down my deck because it's made with real wood, and I hate the stain, and I hate what it looks like now. And it's been damaged in every hailstorm, and I still haven't replaced it yet. If I tear it down and build it, and I decide I want to build around the rest of my house and tear down some weeds in the front so we can enjoy the sunset better from a better view. Do I have to get a permit to rebuild my deck like from the city? I that's a home improvement. Do I have to get a permit to paint my siding? Like, I mean, where does this end? Um, I the thing that you need to know and the thing that blew my mind. I don't know what they're considering. The size of a lot is when they were comparing the differences between the cost of permits for each of the different things that, um, is his name. Gabe. I don't remember what his name is, but whatever the differences and similarities he was showing less than an acre in the city was $900, and in 1 to 2 lots in the county was 2 or 300 or something like that. That's crazy to me. And again, I shouldn't have to pay for a permit to rebuild my deck that was already there and just maybe add an extension onto it and it would cost me even it it sounds like the permit for a pole barn, because I know from my brother in law, building them here would cost more than the actual pole barn or the equipment to buy, or the materials that needed to put it up. It's just please think about those things like, do we really need a permit for everything? Does it really need to be everybody's business? Like, I just it's crazy to me that we're we're having to have this conversation, but just know that most of us do not want the MTA.

00:40:38,667	S2:
Thank you.

00:40:41,868	S1:
Public comment is open.

00:40:47,667	S1:
A second call for public comment.

00:40:59,167	S14:
Hi, my name is Kelly Benson. I live in Bowie Acres area, which is just off of 43rd Avenue, up by Legacy High School. And my husband and I built. Oh goodness. 20 some years ago. And being in the ETA has been a problem from day one when we bought our lot, we went through the city commission because we were told by the county that we were in the city, so we had to go through all of our plans, doing our roads, whatever the case may be. And we were our there was a road on the plat map that we wanted to be vacated so we could build our house right off of the main road coming into Bowie Acres. While we were approved to have that road vacated, only to find out three weeks later. Oops. You're not in the city. You're in the county. You have to go back through the process. So we did that. My husband and I paid for the road to build a road. It's going to be on the plat maps. We're going to build it. We paid for the culverts. We paid for the road. We paid for rural water to come out. We have a septic system. There's an empty lot of about ten acres right next to us in Bowie Acres. We were told when we bought that lot of ours that that lot was never supposed to be. Um, there's, um, storage units there. It was supposed to be, um, I believe pasture land. And they were able to build a commercial storage lot there, and there's about ten, I think, ten little buildings on there. Well, that wasn't done right way back when then either. The Bohe Acres does not actually have two exits to it, which is not supposed to be that way either. So my husband and I have been going through this for 20 some years. There's this ten acre lot that I told you that's empty. It's been sold. It's been resold. And what we found interesting was several years ago, 3 or 4 years ago, our neighbors wanted to actually pave the the lot or the driveway that comes in through our lot. There's only five houses back there, but yet I live on Loveland Road, Bowie, Bowie Drive comes in and then there's Loveland Road with no exit, no exit to it. And our neighbors did not include us to have our Loveland Road paved, even though it's a county road. They did not include it and we thought, that's really weird. So when we went back to try to figure out how come we're left off, sure. They required they requested the bid from Clay and found out that our road was a private road, which it wasn't. It's a county road. County has been grading it. They've been removing snow. They went through this whole thing and we found out we're not even on the. Our road is listed as a private road and it's a county road. Our neighbors that bought this ten acre lot sold it because all of a sudden they were recognized as having an exit through this ten acres lot. The city and the county have never connected our lots together. And, um, our neighbors actually sold that lot. That's ten acres and that storage unit is still there, still being used as a storage unit. Being paid for that. And now two years ago, we started seeing our tax bill change because we were being we were being considered as a private lot. Whoops. All of a sudden that's a county law. That's a county road. And now our taxes are changed. We pay just a little tiny less for that whatever right of way. But we haven't maintained the county comes and maintains it. And I just feel like this whole ETA has been a problem ever since we've been out there. As a matter of fact, I actually got to visit with Bo Hee Acres owner from 40 some years ago, and she said it's always been a problem, even though we live off of 43rd Avenue was a main highway, our main road. She said it's always been a problem because we've been in this ETA. I don't think we would see any benefit on being city. What would we get? That's been my question. I think Mike Connolly had put on Facebook and I about this meeting and all this ETA stuff. I don't I don't get what we would actually get actually get out of it if we would ever be thrown into the city. We've paid for everything. I don't want to be taxed again and pay for it again. That's my main concern. Thanks for listening.

00:45:30,267	S6:
Thank you.

00:45:42,300	S15:
Good evening everybody. James Wald I city, a city of Bismarck resident. I've been hearing a lot tonight in previous meetings about some of the the overarching theme is is building restrictions is what I'm hearing. I'm hearing about people in the ETA and the shared opinion of the residents of. Nobody really wants to be told what they can or cannot do on their property. They don't want to be restricted. They want to build as they they see to build. And a lot of people that move to the Aeta have expressed opinions that they moved there. They moved out of the city of Bismarck to not have somebody like the city of Bismarck tell them what they cannot build. My question is, is there have been a lot of a lot of expenses incurred by submitting permits? Um, my question for the city is, is how many dollars are spent processing those permits, inspecting those permits, following up on on these permits if you want to, instead of razing and looking for new revenue sources, perhaps I encourage the the city and maybe even the county to go back and look at some of those things that you're requiring of the residents. Are they still prudent? Are they still necessary? And is it something that the city and the county needs to continue to spend money on processing and enforcing. Thank you.

00:47:09,467	S6:
Thank you.

00:47:21,701	S1:
Public comment is open.

00:47:30,267	S16:
Hello. My name is President Schaffner. I am a part of the county resident just off of 97th Street south of that. So a few years ago, I built a home and, um, did the majority of the work ourselves. I went through the painstaking process of getting all the permits, and since it's south of 97th Street, they're all governed by the city. And it let me tell you, it was pretty painful at times. So some of the individuals I worked with were fairly good. I will be honest, 100% honest with you on that. But one of the the hardest problems, the biggest problems that I had was especially when it came to the septic and the water. And so I had an engineer design my plans because I knew this would be a headache. And in my area it shouldn't be an issue. I went ahead and I was trying to be as proactive as possible. So I went out, got soil samples, sent her to an engineer, had a whole septic system designed, and then I submitted it to the city and went about the business of building, excuse me, about building my house. And so, um, as you're doing that, especially if you're doing it yourself, you things kind of get behind and get away from you. And it turns out that no one had reached back to me at all after I had submitted my plans for my septic, until I was getting ready to close on the house. And so when we took pictures and called and no one got back to me about looking at it. So then at the end of the day when we're about to close, hey, we didn't approve your septic system. I'm like, well, I've submitted this pretty close to six months to a year ago somewhere. I can't even remember exactly when, but I can show you an email and no one got back to me. So what happened was, and, um, I assumed maybe that was my fault, that if I have an engineer design a septic system based on the soil samples, that should be good, right? Well, that wasn't the case. The individual from the city said, well, I don't like the the verbiage in here, and that does not. No, I don't agree with this. And I'm like, well, who am I supposed to contact? Am I supposed to get a different engineer to do this or how does this work? And so I had to go back to the engineers and talk to them to figure out what I got to do. And I've already got this in place, because how much longer am I supposed to wait for someone to get back to me? And it was just so. The worst part of it was, is, well, send me the pictures that you got and we'll take a look. Well, I developed a system that had 11, um, pipes coming out of it into 11 different sections of drain field. Well, one of the ends, one of the pipes was just tilted a little bit. And he said, no, that's not I don't like how that one looks. So we had to dig up the septic system to show them that we can cut that pipe, move it a little bit. I moved that thing from here to here. That was it. How much time and how much? How much expense does that occur? And the simple fact that this all should have been avoided right out of the bat when someone could have got back to me. So eventually the verbiage was changed and he was okay with it, but he still had to dig up the system and change it. And this is what a lot of people are really worried about when it comes to the annex. So I also am looking to build a shop, and I'm not looking forward to going through the process of getting all the permits and doing these things and being told what I can and cannot do. I also do some side building contracting work, and uh, and I actually have done quite a bit of contracting work and construction over the last few years. And every time I talk to some of the builders and some of the other individuals, not the big builders, but your smaller builders, they said what a pain it is to go through some of the individuals because the it's never consistent, and even it almost appears that there's no common sense with some of the regulations and some of the recommendations that these guys are saying now, I think that they should be much more open to interpretation, because there's a lot of different ways you can build a home, and a lot of ways you can look at something in that aspect when you're building, you know, I understand what goes down hill. You probably got to figure that out. But there's some other things that people can work on, and I think they need to be have a much more open mind. Thank you.

00:51:54,767	S1:
While the comment is still open.

00:52:00,467	S1:
A second call for public comment.

00:52:06,868	S1:
Third and final call for public comment.

00:52:13,667	S1:
Seeing no one and hearing no one public comment period is now closed. Thank you everyone for your comments. Our next agenda item is consideration of the approval of the minutes, which I think would actually be from our joint commissions.

00:52:30,367	S3:
The joint. Yes, I'll move to approve.

00:52:34,167	S13:
Second.

00:52:35,267	S1:
Is there any discussion? Hearing none will call roll.

00:52:41,667	S2:
Yes, mayor Schmitz.

00:52:43,067	S6:
Yes.

00:52:43,567	S2:
Commissioner. Bacon. Yes. Administrator. Tammany. Yes.

00:52:48,968	S1:
Next is. Um. Well, first off, before I forget, because. Travis, you made the point. And I do want to address your comments on if I miss something. I apologize. I was taking some notes, but a I don't view the MTA residents as a burden on the city. In fact, I think everybody within the two counties are very important, whether it's Burley or Morton or Bismarck or Mandan. They're all important to us because that's what makes the community thrive. And so to the extent someone was offended or someone made an offensive comment and I didn't dress them down, I unless it's really harboring and hits hard at a person individually, I tend not to try to dress someone down at a commission table. I don't find that that's really very constructive. Um, but I certainly have had conversations with all of the commissioners at different times. I think there's two of them in this room that probably could attest to that. I've had off the side conversations with them when it's appropriate so that we can try to cross those bridges. But, you know, the airport is here as an example for all of us within the two counties. Actually, it serves way more than that and serves all of western North Dakota, for that matter, and goes into eastern Montana and it goes to east to Jamestown. So, um, I don't view that as something that is not supported by all the communities around us. And sales tax dollars are part of what make up the City of Bismarck general fund budget. And that's what helps support those things.

00:54:17,100	S3:
So come on with the airport, too. You know, there's a lot of federal dollars that come into that as well. So yeah.

00:54:24,400	S1:
So I, I appreciate your comments, Travis. I do respect that coming from you. And I do try to take on tough issues. And I feel we're trying to address one now that it's tough for some people. There have been other tough issues, trust me, in the city that I've dealt with in the last three years, and not everybody likes what I what. My thoughts have been on that as well. Um, so.

00:54:47,000	S13:
Mr. Mayor, Commissioner, I believe Mr. Jensen had also remarked about the Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library as one of commissioner comments.

00:54:56,367	S1:
Yeah, and I think that was also probably not appropriate because I do believe Berkeley County contributes to the.

00:55:00,968	S3:
We contributed to that as well. So when Berkeley County residents receive a library card, we pay for that.

00:55:06,767	S6:
Yeah. So thank.

00:55:08,067	S1:
You for correcting.

00:55:08,667	S6:
That.

00:55:08,968	S13:
Yep. There is the there is a Berkeley County Library in the basement of the Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library. There's a separate carved out area. And there also is the bookmobile, which is supported through Berkeley County tax collections.

00:55:20,767	S6:
So yeah, that's all.

00:55:25,067	S1:
Um, moving on to continue discussions of boundaries. And I think, I don't know, Ben or Daniel or I don't know, we're going to let Ben off the hook here pretty soon. So.

00:55:37,968	S3:
But he's off that he's right.

00:55:39,501	S6:
Yeah.

00:55:40,567	S1:
Not very much longer though.

00:55:42,300	S3:
Yeah. Thank you mayor and commissioner.

00:55:44,968	S13:
So basically.

00:55:46,167	S3:
I'm.

00:55:46,567	S13:
I'm just here to transition.

00:55:47,868	S16:
Between.

00:55:48,767	S13:
Uh, what we heard.

00:55:50,501	S17:
As staff from the last time this group got together, and which was actually the full boards of of Bismarck and Burley commissions and present some of that information. And I think what we heard as staff is there was an interest in identifying areas within the existing extraterritorial area that we as city staff at least don't anticipate urbanizing, uh, ever or perhaps beyond 50 years from now. And we, we have, uh, we have done a fair amount of research in that. Daniel has been the primary, uh, researcher, uh, of that information. And he'll talk to you about his process that he's gone through to identify that, um, what some of the preliminary information is telling us in terms of how many people, uh, might be impacted by by some of the areas that that we would identify at this point, I think we're not prepared to show every area, some of the areas. We certainly will be prepared to show every area that we're willing to state that we likely won't be developing in for the next joint meeting of the Bismarck and Burleigh County full commissions. Um, I think we'd like to talk to some of our colleagues before we present that information publicly. And some of those colleagues include our counterparts at Burleigh County, uh, to get their comfort level on what what we're thinking about proposing. Uh, we think that's only fair to them to be able to react internally before before we release the information publicly as well. So we'll be doing some of that information or information gathering and connecting with, with our colleagues over the next week or two to make sure they're on the same page that we are. Um, unless you have any questions for me immediately. Um, I'll turn the podium over to Daniel, and he can kind of walk through.

00:57:48,000	S3:
Go ahead. Ben. Just because I know in my stead we had this conversation. That's why I was so adamant on pushing it out to 2045. At least I would like to see a little further, but, you know, trying to plan ahead. And I think the ability to get that plan in place, and that far of a snapshot out, is what leads to a lot of the discussions. We're able to hear and remediate some of the issues, those in the ITR feeling. So, um, just you and I had a lot of discussions about why that needed to be 2045, and I think we're seeing fruit from that now.

00:58:22,100	S17:
Yeah. And I appreciate that comment, Commissioner. And I think that's probably the results of some of that future planning are what lead will lead in to some of the criteria Daniels using to help identify areas that we're likely not going to grow into, or areas that are probably prime, that we're going to grow into next, just for the ability of the cost, the, the, the ease of of serving some of those areas. So thank you for that comment.

00:58:46,467	S3:
And just an aside. Congratulations on the new position this year leaving the community.

00:58:52,267	S17:
Thank you. Thank you. I'm here for another couple of weeks so I can still do these things. So.

00:59:04,400	S18:
Okay. Good evening, joint committee. Let me see if the slides will work here. Great. Okay, so my role here is to give a background on a very technical question that we've been analyzing right now. That is how much area do we really need as a city to manage projected urban growth over the future time horizons that are in our comprehensive plan? I'll spend a couple of minutes going through some of the background of how we reached these conclusions. But I will say this is a work in progress. We have a map that we are working on for areas that we anticipate growing into. However, there's still more to do, so I don't have that completed for you tonight, but I can give you a little bit of a background here. So we use our comprehensive plan for anything involving zoning, and that is by state law. We're required to think of it. Think of it as a way of backing up and thinking as an entire community of how we want to grow. Our plan is very much pro growth. We do anticipate growing about 1.2% per year, and that would be in population, but also expanding the boundaries of the city limits. So there's a couple of concepts that I think are pertinent to this discussion I want to introduce. One is the urban service area. And in the urban reserve urban service area dates back to 2003. But it's been carried forward in all of our comprehensive plans, including our newest 1 in 20 21 or 2022. Sorry, and this is the 25 year time horizon. So where we expect to grow into within the next 25 years, urban reserve is the area beyond 25 years, up to a projected 50 years. This was introduced in the 2014 Comprehensive Plan. Where do these numbers come from? They're not magic numbers. However, we need some goalposts to look forward to in the future is a fairly standard in any kind of long range plan you may see. And really, 50 years seems like a lot. But when you think about it, a lot of plats that were developed in the 1970s are really at the city's doorstep today. The rural plats I'm speaking of. So really, 50 years in the terms of the world of development, growth is is not as long as it may appear at first. So one thing to consider is what are we projecting? And this is I think this is an important question that affects this analysis in a lot of ways. If we're looking at traffic, if we're looking at revenue for property tax or so forth, you would look at the final build out because that's when those effects happen. However, with the FTA, we're considering really when a subdivision occurs or when the city may annex property by petition from the landowner, and that occurs at the very front end of the development process, which takes a while. And Bismarck, it takes an average of about five and a half years to go from the initial conception to when everything's built out and ready to go. People were living in those homes at about 85% occupancy. So that's five and a half years. So we're looking at the front end of that is the projection that that I'll be showing you. So we look at our past, determine our future, and we look at the how the city has grown in the past. Over the last 25 years, we've grown at about 1.4% per year in acreage of the city since the year 2000. Of course, we've been growing consistently as a city since the beginning, so we used that to project our future growth. And by doing so, we would anticipate we may need about 32,700 or so additional acres of land to accommodate the way our city has grown in the past, if that continues to happen into the future. Um, now that could change based on the density of of our population. Of course, if we grow more dense, we need less land. However, in the past 25 years, our density as a city has not changed. This surprised me a little bit. Um, of course we have had infill and redevelopment occurring, but we've also had some larger lot sizes. And a lot of that seems to, to, to balance itself out. And so really, we've been about 2100 people per square mile in the city. I'm talking about for the last 25 years. So whenever we're making a projection, it's best to assume things really won't change unless there's a reason to believe they will. We'll project that the density will remain about the same. So therefore, the target would be about 43,000 acres or so in 50 years. That would be needed to accommodate that growth. Now there are some things to account for inside of city limits. There are areas that have been annexed, uh, but maybe aren't ready for development yet. And the big one, that is enough to kind of move the needle is the school section, section 36, which is owned by the state. We it is in our growth area. We do anticipate development of that occurring within the next 25 years. However, it hasn't been subdivided. It hasn't been zoned. So it's in city limits really just by name only. And so we would recommend pretending as if that is not annexed and using it as available capacity within the Oeta or within the urban rural areas to grow into, which would adjust the target downward a little bit and need less land in Oeta to accommodate that future growth. So, um, I'll show this map just to give you an example of how this may look. The this is and I'll explain each of these lines as we go through. This is the pink line you're seeing is showing the current negotiated Oeta boundary that has been in place since 2014. And then, of course, the city limits are the dotted line there. That does change every year through annexations. The negotiated city does not change unless it's renegotiated. The, um. Now, the areas that are shown here are in our growth phasing plan, in the comprehensive plan, and the urban service areas are the areas we anticipate growing into within 25 years. So in this case, you can see these are the areas that are either in the, uh, I'll say the reddish color or the yellowish color, uh, depending on their level of priority. Those are within the 25 year growth time horizon. And those who would anticipate keeping within ETA to allow that growth to continue unabated. And the urban reserve area would be that the 25 to 50 year time horizon. We would recommend keeping those as well. However, there are a number of areas in our ETA Etc. currently that are outside of either the urban reserve area or the urban service area, which we do not anticipate growing into within the next 50 years. That may not be needed within the ETA, and those are areas that are the hash marked areas in this particular case that are either developed as rural residential properties, that are areas that we really don't expect to grow into as a city, or areas that are rural, residential, and may be surrounded by the city or mostly surrounded by the city at some point in time. And there may be unique challenges in the future that will have to be dealt with. But we don't anticipate coming in and urbanizing those areas. That has been a change of our comprehensive plan in recent years. In the past, that was a goal with new engineering plans and ghost platted lots that are inside of those subdivisions. However, our new comprehensive plans really don't expect that to occur, so there really is no reason to keep those in the ETA in our in our estimation. So those could be removed as well. The um, so if this were to be applied throughout the entire city and use those categories in our comprehensive plan, this would potentially remove about 94% of all of the homes from the ETA, so the population of the ETA could be significantly reduced. However, the lands it would keep about 53% of the land within the ETA, which really, from the city's perspective, is what we intend to grow into. There really is not an intent of converting rural residential subdivisions into urban. It's really the raw land that is the intent of the ETA at this point. And so this would maintain that ability to continue to grow while also removing many of the homes. So you can see the chart here would show, um, if, if this and this could change, of course, we're still looking at the map in detail, but this could show how how the final outcome would, be. So I could answer any questions you'd have. And certainly this is a to be continued if you'd like. And also I can take any direction from you here as well in terms of further analysis.

01:07:44,801	S1:
So, Daniel, you showed us just a snippet of a quadrant, I suppose, of the of the aetate. You have the kind of the whole map that has those identified areas. I think that might be helpful for future for sure discussions. But even here today, I don't know if you have that available or not.

01:08:06,467	S18:
So so yes, mayor and Commissioner. So so we it's under development. So, so we have something that we could certainly share at a future meeting if you'd like. I think it's just a matter of time and, and making sure enough people have a chance to look it over and and evaluate it. But we could certainly share that.

01:08:22,667	S1:
I for sure would want it at the next, I'm assuming before we meet as this for we have the combined commissions together at that point in time for sure.

01:08:33,801	S3:
So, Daniel, what does it look like? As far as because I know one of the things the city's cognizant of, and we need to be conscious of the city as well, is not creating a bunch of donut holes with here's an island here in an island here. In an island here. Um, just from an infrastructure perspective, not very efficient. So how does this address not not creating those.

01:08:56,267	S18:
Thank you, Commissioner Morgan. And it has been a topic of discussion. So the in this case those donut holes may be already developed residential or rural residential subdivisions. And I think actually this comment did come up from some of the members of the public as well in our evaluation. It really it would require a lot. There are a lot of technical barriers, as well as political barriers to coming in and urbanizing those rural subdivisions, and that's something we've debated for many years. I'm sure engineers could could give more detail to the how the stormwater would need to be reconfigured, how the urban street profiles that need to be reconfigured. It's quite a challenge. It can be done, but certainly in mass it's not something we're expecting. So those that is that is a good question. And those are areas that could potentially be surrounded in the future by the city and those that'll have to be addressed in some way, but it would not need to be in the ETA to be addressed. That could certainly just be a discussion among property owners in the city.

01:09:51,400	S3:
Well, and Jason, I had this conversation a little bit too, because, um, yeah, I would think that it's in the best interest for Bismarck because cities grow. That's what they do. And building a path forward because you stated it. Right now the city is in a position to annex in developments. And unless somebody wants to be annexed and they're not going to be annexed in, I think part of the discussion we need to have at this table is how does the city provide a pathway that Incentivizes people to want to be into the city of Bismarck eventually, or that property eventually, because one of the things we're hearing and we're hearing from a lot of county constituents and to residents that there's no way in hell they want to be part of the city. And I think that's a sad testament to a certain degree. So having the discussion about how to facilitate some of that for future growth and down the road, I think is also at some point, something we need to discuss at this table as well.

01:11:00,901	S6:
Jason.

01:11:02,467	S13:
I guess for what it's worth, for the faces in the crowd that we haven't seen at these meetings before, I think it's appropriate to talk about what city annexation actually means. For us, it means the ability to provide services, primarily water and sewer, police and fire protection, those sorts of things. Providing water service in a rural subdivision at this point in time isn't very practical, and we understand the concerns that would come along with special assessments and costs to do all of that. That may have been a perspective that the city shared 20 years ago. I think in today's today's staffing, today's leadership, we're looking at that in a much different scenario, that the reality of providing water and sewer into these rural subdivisions is, frankly, challenging enough for the city to take on, never mind the fact of what it would actually cost a homeowner to be responsible for 300ft of water, pipe and sewer and all of these conversions so the city doesn't forcibly annex property that typically the request comes from the landowner. There have been, in my nearly 20 years with the city of Bismarck, there have been just a small number of instances where we can point to where the city did cause annexation to happen, but it was when the city was completely surrounding an entire neighborhood, and we had gravel streets that were being used by many people to get to a middle school that was, frankly, built out on the edge of town at the time. So I, I understand your concerns from a residential perspective, from living in a rural area. I get that city taxes are different, but when we talk about annexation, it comes down to really that core delivery of services. And if we are not able to provide those, there would be no value in annexing those properties. So I think that's kind of what Daniel is getting at now, is when we're looking at these rural subdivisions that are already established, in many cases, I think we're going to have to figure out a way to either go around them or move past them. But there are going to be raw land instances that do make sense from a city's perspective for development. And we've also got landowners that are purchasing large tracts of land adjacent to city limits with the intentions of growing more urban subdivisions. And so I think that's where we're going to be focusing our attention is on these areas that are within that urban service area, and not just coming into grab land for the sake of annexing land. That's not the goal of the city here at all. If we can't provide the service, we can't provide the annexation. So.

01:13:36,167	S3:
You know, one of the other things too, is in this keeps coming up over and over again. And in lieu of being a city resident and having full voting rights along with the privileges and they come with taxation. Um, I think part of the discussion that we need to have here is where what's missing in the portfolios to where they match, and at what point can we get the city comfortable with the county managing areas of future growth for the city, where the city is comfortable that we're doing the same thing the city is doing, and then the residents of the to get to come to us, rather than having to go through the city with extra incurred costs, building that comfort zone so that the city has complete confidence that the county is doing what the city would be doing anyway. I think that's a place we need to get to.

01:14:41,100	S1:
Probably, but I think also right size in the MTA helps that a lot.

01:14:44,767	S3:
It does. It's a good step in the right direction.

01:14:47,000	S1:
Because it starts to eliminate some of.

01:14:50,000	S3:
Those. Some of that.

01:14:50,667	S6:
Yes, some.

01:14:51,000	S1:
Of that, which is probably honestly over the last.

01:14:54,767	S3:
There's a lot of layers.

01:14:55,601	S6:
No Lord knows how long.

01:14:57,100	S3:
There's a lot of different layers to this, but those are the two areas I think we can probably make a lot of progress quickly.

01:15:04,767	S6:
So.

01:15:05,067	S1:
Hopefully that we can make some of that progress in the next.

01:15:07,868	S6:
Meeting. Jason go ahead.

01:15:09,367	S13:
One more question, Daniel. If you could pull that map back up that showed the annexed areas, the east areas. Yeah. So

01:15:20,567	S13:
if I'm not mistaken, on the far right of the screen, there's a hatched area that's surrounded on three sides by the the orange color. If that Imperial Valley subdivision. Correct. And so if I'm reading the map right, that would be an area that would be considered to be removed from the ETA. Correct. Okay. So that's a I'm going to speculate that that's a nearly completely built out subdivision, meaning there's very few vacant lots in there. Most of those lots. If not, they're not a traditional rural size. Is that correct? It's it's more of an urban density.

01:15:53,100	S18:
That's correct. Yeah. There's a lagoon.

01:15:54,801	S13:
Okay, so there's a lagoon. So we've got a neighborhood that is fairly dense. It's very close to city limits, but we're saying we would take it out of our jurisdictional area. Why would we not leave that particular dense subdivision in this growth area?

01:16:12,767	S18:
So, yeah. Um, Commissioner Thomas. our insurance. Veronica. Um. So. Yeah. And these are all certainly up for negotiations. Certainly. You know, I think that was just anything that was identified as transitional rural in the plan in this iteration was just removed. Imperial Valley is is a bit of a unique situation. It's an urban subdivision. It was actually developed in the same program that developed the city of Lincoln, uh, through, uh, USDA grants from the 1970s. Uh, and and it it could be explored as a possible annexation because of its urban size. Lots. However, yeah, that would maybe need to be explored and need to be evaluated separately.

01:16:51,901	S13:
If I may continue. So, Daniel, not to wish anything upon those residents. I'm sure they're very content. What would cause them to need annexation from the city? In other words, what would happen if their lagoon system were to fail? Yeah, that's.

01:17:08,767	S18:
What that's really what would what would trigger that? I mean, right now they don't need it. However, depending on their situation for their sanitary sewer, they may request it. So it just depends.

01:17:19,100	S13:
And the question? The keyword there would be a request. In other words, their lagoon would fail. They would then call the city of Bismarck, or call the city of Lincoln and say, we need some help with our sanitary sewer. Then the process begins, the conversation starts, and we would go from there. It wouldn't just be the city pounding on the door saying, we're here to annex you. Take it or leave it. It would come from the neighborhood first. Right. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

01:17:44,467	S3:
That would also be a situation where the neighborhood in this case would be able to assess what their cost of redoing the pond is, versus let's just hook up to city services or city sewer in this case. Which brings up an interesting question, because Imperial Valley, if I remember correctly, is on rural water. Right?

01:18:02,667	S6:
Correct. Right.

01:18:04,267	S3:
So that's all. Is that okay? That that's a well that's private. Okay. Okay. So, I know you and I have had this conversation a little bit too, but then what is that palette of city services look like as well? Because they don't need city water, but they might in the future need city sewer. And are they happy with as long as the water conveyance is fine, you don't need curb and gutter all the time. So again, another area for discussion down the road.

01:18:35,467	S13:
Potential hybridisation of correct station. In other words, only charging for the fees or the services that can be provided. Correct.

01:18:49,901	S6:
Thank you.

01:18:50,667	S1:
Any other.

01:18:51,100	S6:
Questions? Thanks, Daniel. All right.

01:18:54,167	S1:
Is there any other business or do we have topics? Do you feel that we.

01:18:59,667	S6:
Should.

01:19:00,267	S1:
Kind of have isolated to take forward?

01:19:04,300	S13:
One thing we did pull the Bismarck City commissioners for availability in September. It's a challenging month, but the one date that was available for this room and all five city commissioners would be Wednesday the 17th, 5 p.m. that would be a request for the next combined City Commission and Berkeley County joint meetings. So if you wouldn't mind pulling your commissioners and let us know. Yeah, that was that was the only date out of 7 or 8 that we were able to get all five commissioners at the same time in September. We could look further if necessary, but we pulled September 1st with the intent of trying to keep this conversation moving.

01:19:44,567	S3:
Um, I would like to see that built out map a little bit further. You know, the the rest of it, for one. And I think it would be incumbent upon us to direct staff to start figuring out where, where the gaps might be, because I would really like to establish the city's confidence that we can manage that for the residents of the ETA in a fashion that fits with the city and probably save the city some money in the process.

01:20:19,968	S1:
But we can have them look at that. Yeah, I would think, you know, but if it's a bunch of vacant land warrants.

01:20:26,000	S3:
It warrants looking at. Yeah. So.

01:20:30,601	S1:
Anything else?

01:20:32,100	S13:
Commissioner Conley's comment about the.

01:20:38,000	S13:
Fees held in abeyance.

01:20:39,767	S3:
Yes.

01:20:40,467	S13:
That was on for the next. Is that for the joint both Bismarck commissions or would that be for.

01:20:47,968	S3:
You know what I think it would be? Because I think that's an educational piece as well. And if we get more people that are familiar with that because, um, you know, like Commissioner Conley mentioned, the one that comes to my mind as well was I believe it was $54,000 because it was an assessment times six. And for that parcel that he was talking about south of Berlin. So how to address that in the future as well as is.

01:21:16,467	S1:
It should be. It should be on the combined.

01:21:18,868	S13:
Yes.

01:21:19,167	S3:
We'll hold.

01:21:20,467	S1:
Both commissions.

01:21:21,367	S13:
We'll put it on as a utility capital charge, education and discussion. That's the new term for the fees held in abeyance from the previous mechanism that we used. Right.

01:21:33,667	S3:
So thank you. Did you have anything else or. Okay. Um, actually good opportunity. Did either city staff or county staff have anything they'd like to add to this agenda?

01:21:56,567	S19:
Commissioners chair Smith's, uh, the I would think this commission would do well to appoint a planning task force for this item to have a group of people who have long range planning and organizational land use ideas to bring to the table so that this can this commission could consider their findings and what they can present to you. This is a very large item to take care of and to handle and consider and make decisions on.

01:22:31,067	S3:
Sounds good. Thank you. Mitch. Yep. Um, how would you like to address that? Should we bring the discussion for putting that task force together at our next joint meeting?

01:22:48,000	S1:
Um, I don't know if it matters if it's that meeting in September.

01:22:52,567	S3:
Well, they're not, they're not.

01:22:53,767	S1:
Or it could be our our next committee's meeting.

01:22:57,200	S3:
Um, maybe it's something you addressed the city level at the county level, and then we bring it forward at the the.

01:23:03,000	S1:
Meeting, our commission meeting next week is an agenda item. Yeah. See?

01:23:09,267	S2:
Okay.

01:23:12,868	S3:
We'll put that as an agenda item for our next joint meeting as well. So and hopefully the 17th will work out for everybody. So. Commissioner Munson, do you have anything to add while you're here? All right. Thank you. I'm good.

01:23:25,567	S1:
Okay, we stand adjourned. Thank you, everybody, for your comments.