00:00:02,930	City. Current. Produced by Dakota Media Access. In-depth discussion with Bismarck and Mandan city officials. Watch on Government Access channel 602 Tune in to Radio Access 102.5 FM. Always local. Always current. Coming up on the September 9th edition of City Current. Some meaty topics from last night's Bismarck City Commission meeting.

00:00:35,270	Have an update on Emerald Ash Borer and the plan moving forward now that it's been found in Bismarck. Take a look at the motorized scooter ordinance and dig into some details. The city budget had its public hearing last night. I'm Tom Gerhardt from Dakota Media Access. Thanks for joining me, Jason Tomanek, Bismarck city administrator. Good to see you.

00:00:54,730	We were just talking at first morning. That kind of felt like fall. It felt like fall. School's back in session. Light jacket maybe required from now on. So hopefully those 90 degree, 100 degree temperatures are in the rearview mirror. I hope so.

00:01:12,570	Gosh, we had tornadoes in parts of the state just a couple of days ago, and now I'm seeing maybe some 50 degree days not too far around the corner. So definitely into that transitional time and football's starting all over. And picked up a few leaves off of one of my trees over the weekend. So I think we know what's happening. That's the season.

00:01:31,370	Gosh, not a ton on the agenda last night, but some heavy hitters. So yeah, you know, I mentioned those three topics and it was just here recently that emerald ash borer was discovered in Bismarck.

00:01:49,000	I know the city and others have been planning for quite some time for it, as I think we heard last night that it was first found in Michigan in 2002. But now we have to address what's been found here. We do so making some changes as we go about things and how it was found. It was tree removal. So our forestry division has been intentionally removing distressed or declining trees, ash trees specifically.

00:02:12,800	And in this situation they were doing the same thing, removing trees that were failing and discovered the insect and confirmed it with the USDA. And so now, now what do we do? Well, now there's trying to discern where in the community it may be.

00:02:30,500	The bug doesn't travel terribly far on its own, but at the landfill we're have to do some things differently. There's no more firewood purchasing giveaway, that type of stuff. Our forestry staff will be transitioning into more of a protection mode. And by that meaning there is an injection process that you can treat a tree to help it survive this attack by the insect.

00:02:55,300	And really what the insect is doing is it's burrowing between the trunk of the tree and the bark of the tree and creating tunnels, more or less. And it's feeding on that material in the tree.

00:03:14,530	Essentially what it's doing, though, is it's severing the, the veins, the the arteries and the tree, and it's not able to uptake the nutrients in the water the way it would, and it eventually succumbs to that situation. So we've been removing trees to try and eliminate just potential hazards, but also at the same time planting new species. And the key to an urban forest is species diversification.

00:03:37,070	So at one time in early 2020s, we had somewhere close to 40% of the street trees. The trees on the boulevards were exclusively ash of one type or another. Today, that's less than 22% of the trees are ash trees.

00:03:52,400	And so what does that mean? Well, that means they've been removing trees, but it also means that those of us that are planting new trees are planting trees other than ash. Starting in 2010, the city no longer allowed ash trees to be planted on the boulevard for this exact reason. Now people still have them in their backyards. They're all over in the countryside. They're in the parks.

00:04:08,800	Having these these trees are very prolific in North Dakota as they are in much of the Upper Midwest. We don't have a ton of tree species here, and unfortunately, this is one of them that does pretty well. Yeah.

00:04:24,570	So but some of the other things that we are doing as an organization, there was a new piece of equipment that was acquired. It's called a knuckle boom truck. It's a specialty piece. Of got my attention last night. It's kind of fun. To say. Yeah.

00:04:40,700	It's a specialty piece of equipment that helps maneuver the tree a little easier than just simply manual cutting and using a crane and some of that type of stuff. So with that, that will help with more removals. Public education is certainly a hot topic right now, helping people understand we shouldn't be transporting firewood. Also, what to look for for all of us with ash trees in our yards or in our neighborhoods.

00:04:59,900	What does this look like? Well, you start to see dieback in the canopy. You'll see cracks in the bark, increased woodpecker activity, believe it or not, because those woodpeckers are in there trying to eat the bugs that are harming the tree.

00:05:15,730	So if you if you have mature ash trees in your neighborhood, be thinking about those types of things. If you have any questions, we would certainly encourage you to reach out to our City Forester, Christy Ames Davis. She is located at the Public Works Building on 26th Street. Or it's probably easier to simply give her a call.

00:05:33,630	355 1700 and the other thing that we did as an organization, we had set aside some reserve dollars, some committed funds directly for this situation when it occurred again anticipating it was coming. That was part of the discussion last night for the budget in 2027.

00:05:50,130	What are we doing with those funds? And there was a general consensus to use half of the $1 million that was set aside and use that to begin the injections program, increase the removal capacity. It's likely we will contract with a third party arborist service to accelerate those removals.

00:06:11,700	We as as as the city, do not have a large enough forestry staff to tackle all of these removals independently, so we're going to rely on the help of other professional arborists to get rid of these things as well. I think Steve spoke to and said that some good news is some trees can be saved. So it's not too late in some respects. And I thought that was good to hear that.

00:06:27,770	It's not, he said. It's not all. I'm not taking words, putting words in his mouth, but not all doom and gloom. I think it's kind of an overriding message.

00:06:43,630	And I would remind people that we still have elm trees in this community, and there are many parts of the United States where the elms disappeared as a result of a different pest that came in at that time. And so we, as the city again, were treating elm trees to make sure that they can withstand some of those pests or diseases or whatever the case might be, because there's a tremendous value in having urban trees, having an urban forest.

00:07:01,930	It helps with stormwater runoff, pollution, shade, just climate control. There's a number of great things that trees do for our communities. And if if you have a special tree in your yard or in a park that you're fond of, there are ways to try and preserve that tree through injection.

00:07:19,670	So I would recommend reaching out to some local arborists and see who can provide that service. And we'll we'll adapt. We'll we'll keep going. The bug will move further west, I'm sure, and it's just the next thing that we're dealing with.

00:07:37,930	We already showed this graphic, but I thought it was really interesting as you were speaking, and that there are 24,500 street trees in Bismarck in 50, 200 total ash Street trees. But I thought that was just kind of a really cool depiction. And it gives a perspective of, you know, the importance of trees and the canopies and just the enjoyment people get out of, out of that.

00:07:58,070	In in the older parts of town, you'll find elm typically and those that are that we have saved as you move kind of north of the interstate, you'll find more neighborhoods with ash. I actually live on a street in in a whole neighborhood that dozens and dozens of ash trees were planted on the boulevard in the 1970s, and they're now starting to show their age.

00:08:13,400	And I've actually seen trees on my street get removed, and I anticipate that there will be more as a result of this. And so if you can plant a different tree on the boulevard as as our former city forester Doug Wiles used to say, or sometimes still says the best time to plant a tree

00:08:30,830	was 30 years ago. Yeah. So get out. Plant one this fall. It'll be good for a long time in the future. Just don't plant any ash, please. Let's move along. That the city is going to have a new health plan partner starting January 1st of 2027. That's health partners.

00:08:50,100	Maybe just explain a little bit about the decision to transition to. Certainly new company. So the city of Bismarck is a self-funded health care plan. So as a city employee, we receive a health care benefit as part of our full time compensation. The plan is self-funded, meaning the city basically takes care of all the all the payments and all the things.

00:09:09,330	But what we're doing is we're contracting with a third party to manage all of those moving parts. For decades, we have been a customer of Blue Cross Blue Shield, and as we do with a lot of vendors, we go through a process to make sure that we are getting the best deal for our investment.

00:09:30,000	And in this situation, we work with a third party, Gallagher and Associates. They help work through some of these very complex issues. A lot of us aren't well versed in the world of insurance, and you must be in order to know that your plan is the right one for your organization.

00:09:45,730	And so we rely on third party consultants to help us discern what is the right next move for the city. And in this situation, there were a number of plans that were brought forward. And ultimately it came down to two health partners in Blue Cross Blue Shield and the general consensus amongst the insurance committee advisors.

00:10:05,630	Those are some of us within the organization that represent different departments and all the employees based on the evaluation process, the interview process, the scoring and all of that. The recommendation was, yes, to switch away from Blue Cross Blue Shield and to health partners. We didn't do this on a whim.

00:10:23,330	We spent a lot of time making sure that this was the right move for the organization and the employees, asking others similar to us. Hey, you're a customer of health partners.

00:10:39,100	What's your experience been? How was the transition? How does how does their customer service compare to others that you've been a part of? And all things came back very favorable. We've talked to a lot of other large scale organizations that have a good number of employees and came out with very high regard and high marks for health partners. So there's a cost savings that's part of this. We as the city will pay for services.

00:10:58,730	There was a difference in what Blue Cross was offering, not just in the monthly services, but also in stopgap coverage and some of these other things. And so the the recommendation was made and it was approved by the Commission, and we will be transitioning at the beginning of next year.

00:11:18,570	Well, let's move along to a topic that we just saw the city of Mandan enact an ordinance on motorized scooters. Everybody maybe uses a little bit different terminology, but we're talking about e-bikes and things like that. And that was back at the table last night in front of the Bismarck City Commission.

00:11:40,000	And it turns out we've adopted an ordinance similar to our friends and neighbors across. The river. And I appreciate that they're similar. We try and be similar in other ways when it comes to things like building codes, where we know there's going to be groups working on both sides of the river.

00:11:55,470	In this situation, if somebody crosses the river on them, motorized scooter, bike, e-bike, whatever we're going to call it, the rule should be fairly consistent for enforcement and just general understanding. It took quite a while to get through this one. We had a lot of discussion about the different classes of what an e-bike or an e-scooter is.

00:12:12,200	So there are three classes a class one, class two, and a class three. If it's manufactured appropriately, the device will have some sort of a sticker indicating its class. And really what the class relates to is the ability to go faster speeds and greater acceleration rates.

00:12:32,430	And so in the end, I guess some of the changes from where we had started to where we ended, there was a reduction. Initially the the ordinance was 14 years old and older. In order to ride these types of devices, Mandan had approved 12 years old. We actually had a student appear and said. Yeah, she was very articulate. Please consider I ride my bike accordingly. I follow the rules.

00:12:51,930	I wear a helmet and I'm not 14. So good point. Thank you for coming. Well done. Good civic. Engagement. Way to get involved. Or parents were smiling back there. That's that's great to see that. But that is a very genuine consideration. There are people that are writing these things appropriately.

00:13:12,470	And it was I think it was commissioner at all that had noted there was a lot of discussion around how youth are operating these vehicles. It's not just kids. There's adults that are riding these things, using them appropriately and then inappropriately. This we are humans. We all do things appropriately and inappropriately. That's why we have rules.

00:13:35,030	And so, 12 years old, that was one of the reductions and then 16 years old for the class three for the faster, more powerful bicycles, there will be a tiered fine system. And so, yes, you can get a fine for operating these things inappropriately. And the vehicles may be impounded by the police department if necessary.

00:13:56,130	So if they're operated in an unsafe manner, if they're part of a situation that involves law enforcement, there may be a need to impound the vehicle. Not saying that they shall, not saying that they will. It just gives them the opportunity.

00:14:14,900	No different than a vehicle or any other piece of evidence that might be involved in a situation that law enforcement is looking into. There are a lot of moving parts. I mean, on the surface it seems like, oh, it's just e-bikes, but there are a lot of different tributaries to this.

00:14:32,670	And I know one thing that I think Sergeant brought up last night was this modal cross class of bikes, two that are not street legal, but parents may think they are. So education, I guess, is going to be a big piece of all of this. To be part of it. Blinkers, you know, brake lights, all of these things.

00:14:46,800	And, and I think for some of us and there were some comments from some other community members as well. And I think it comes down to just a general desire for safety and some regulation. I ride my bicycle all over town as well. I'll admit, I've been passed by people riding e-bikes, and I didn't even hear them coming because they're they're quite quiet.

00:15:05,970	But also, as a traditional bicyclist, I realize that I can be very quiet when I'm passing someone on the trail as well. So there comes down to some common courtesies using the trails appropriately. Just some common sense as well.

00:15:21,900	But bottom line is we now have an ordinance and I think, as you mentioned, a good chunk of the effort that will be put forth by Bismarck police officers initially will be that educational piece, educate first. We're not going to be out giving tickets out left and right to 13 year old kids. That's that's not the intent here.

00:15:36,830	The intent is to now have some rules and to be able to engage and say, okay, here's what you were doing. This is inappropriate. Here's the proper way, here's the limits, and we'll go from there. And it was brought up last night to the immediacy of the speed. I mean, you mentioned obviously they are quiet, but the the acceleration is really.

00:15:55,000	Almost instantaneous, I guess. And and if you're a young, inexperienced rider, that can be a challenge for, for some young kids, if you're used to pedaling your bike and getting going on your own, that's a lot different than just pushing a button or squeezing the throttle. And there you go. So be safe.

00:16:14,800	Where are your helmet? Be respectful. Follow the rules. There's more rules to follow now, but in the end, we're not alone. Bismarck and Mandan are not the only communities in the United States that are facing these issues. Kind of sweeping the country. It is. And we're we're catching up with the trends.

00:16:33,500	We're we're behind the manufacturers and the distributors on these things. That's fine. But I think now Bismarck has a has level the playing field a little bit. And there's some baseline rules to start to follow. Let's talk about the city budget. There's a process as we know that goes through to adopt the 2027 budget.

00:16:51,000	And last night the next step in line was public hearing. So the public hearing was held on the 2027 city budget. And then a number of amendments or changes were offered by commissioners on pieces within the budget. Let's just walk through.

00:17:13,870	We talked about some of these earlier, but walk through a number of the things that happened last night. So we started out with recommendations from the Budget Committee. And if we go all the way back, we start this whole process in April, where we start meeting as departments and all the departments work on their requests for the year, their fees and charges for the year, their rate adjustments if necessary.

00:17:34,130	And all of these come forward and they work their way through the city's budget committee, which is composed of, in this case, it's the mayor, because he holds the finance portfolio myself, the assistant city administrator and our finance director. And so we are the kind of the four baseline.

00:17:53,600	But then there's obviously lots of other staff that get involved and work with the departments. Each department brings their requests forward through the Budget Committee. The budget committee has to try and balance the budget. That's the job. We've got far more asks than we have resources available to say yes to.

00:18:13,000	So our job is to discern what are the highest and most significant priorities once we come forward with our recommendations, all that information comes to the commission, and then it really starts to get entertaining when the commissioners have their opportunity to bring forward their thoughts, as they did last night. As we saw, there were a lot of suggestions, recommendations, some supported motions, some failed motions.

00:18:33,630	But in the end, where did we land? There was a an administrative support position within the police department. It was currently a vacant position. Commissioner Reisch felt the need to remove that position and essentially without the position being held. What it does is it reduces the salary burden slightly.

00:18:55,230	And he indicated, in the future, if you come back with an ask for this type of a position or a different position of this nature, we would be willing to have that conversation. But that that motion did pass. So we eliminated one position in the police department. It was a mixed supported vote.

00:19:11,300	That one went 3 to 2. The next change this was also came from Commissioner. He recommended reducing the advertising portion of the airport's budget from 300,000 down to 200,000. And we heard from our airport director, Greg, how Greg's been with the airport for decades and provided some context as to where does that money go.

00:19:36,200	I think a lot of the theory is, well, if we're in Bismarck, where else are we going to go to fly? Well, the situation is we have choices. You can fly out of Dickinson, Minot, Williston, Jamestown, Fargo, Minneapolis, if you're willing.

00:19:54,170	And so the airport does advertise locally, but it also advertises regionally because we are competing with all of these other regional airports for the customer base. In the end, that recommendation was approved as well. Not unanimous, but it was approved. So there was a reduction in the budget there.

00:20:16,570	There was a another change talking about fees and charges, and there were some new fees that were not previously allocated for or collected. Those new fees resulted primarily from a change to the Land Development Code. We've talked about this quite a bit, with the planning department doing a major overhaul of the city ordinances. There are some new processes that weren't in place before, ways to have a plat approval.

00:20:35,470	Some of those fees got reduced. Some of those fees are brand new. So there had to be a discussion in a baseline understanding there. There was also a request to hold the daycare and restaurant inspection fees that did not pass as well. And I think that adjustment that rate increase was $10 dollars.

00:20:55,800	So and really these fees are not meant to generate tons of revenue for the organization. In many cases, the fees barely covers staff. Covering staff time is what we heard last night. Yeah.

00:21:13,500	So an inspection for a restaurant is at least one person from our environmental health division of the Public health department physically being on site in a restaurant, walking through the kitchen, the coolers and all the service areas and and that takes time. Yes. These positions are these departments are funded through the general fund. But at the same time, that doesn't cover all the expenses.

00:21:32,070	These fees are intended to cover the vehicle, the maintenance on the vehicle, the staff time. They're not here to generate a ton of revenue for the organization. It's basically meant to, as I said, cover the fees. That request to hold those fees flat did not pass. There was a recommendation and a motion to centering around the salary adjustments for city staff.

00:21:56,000	And the recommendation that came from Commissioner Reisch was to give all employees a the same race. Essentially, if the total pool is X, we're going to divide it by the number of employees. Why? And everyone gets the same. And I understand that theory.

00:22:19,770	I understand that someone who is maybe in an entry level position, that amount of money is more significant than someone who's in a leadership position or someone with a lot of seniority. But the concern that was raised by our human resources director, Leanne Schmidt, is it creates what we call compression. And compression was a term that Commissioner Rich noted he wasn't familiar with prior to coming to this organization.

00:22:39,270	And for those that maybe haven't heard that before, really what it is, it's it's when the newer employees who don't have this scenario don't have the experience or compensated such that they are catching up to the people that have had 10 or 15 years of experience ahead of them.

00:22:57,130	So there there's this general theory that most people understand and and anticipate that if you've been in your job longer, you should be paid more because you would have been getting annual salary increases because you're you're being recognized for the work you're doing, but then also the cost of living adjustments.

00:23:13,970	When you bring in somebody brand new, you should start them on the lower end of the pay scale, because they don't have all the skills and the knowledge that someone who's been there for 10 or 15 years may.

00:23:30,300	But when you provide a larger salary increase for those newer employees, it pushes them closer to the middle, and then they catch up to the people with more experience in a quicker fashion. And that becomes that compressed situation where you've got people who span a very broad continuum of knowledge and time, but they're paid very similarly.

00:23:49,630	And Commissioner Reisch had shared his time with the railroad, an example that he offered if he took a train to deal worth. It didn't matter who was driving the train. That person was paid the exact same amount because it was paid by the task. I understand that too, but we are not that organization. We are not a union. We do. We have different tasks.

00:24:06,130	We have senior level positions. We have leadership positions, we have entry level positions all the way across. So that conversation took quite a bit of time for each commissioner to come forward with their recommendations. In the end, where it landed, Mayor Schmitz had the recommendation and ultimately made the motion to provide a 2.75% cost of living adjustment.

00:24:30,530	Sometimes people refer to that as a Cola, so a 2.75% adjustment, an increase, but then also to establish a pool of funds, about 1.5%. And that pool would be used by department directors and administered throughout the year as compensation for merit.

00:24:54,870	In other words, if you've got somebody that's outperforming or they're working extra, they're taking on new tasks and responsibilities, there becomes the merit portion of it. So everybody gets 2.75%, but then there's 1.5% out there for the directors to essentially use at their discretion throughout the year. That could also be used later in the year.

00:25:15,030	If you're looking to hire somebody that has a tremendous amount of experience, say, we've got a mechanic that's got 20 years and he's looking to come and work for the city of Bismarck. That's a lot different than taking a mechanic that's fresh out of school, that doesn't have all that time.

00:25:29,830	You want to be able to offer a little bit more than the starting salary for that 20 year experienced person. That 1.5% pool of funds would be used for that as well. A couple other topics caught my attention last night. One was Great Plains Food Bank. Commissioner Risch, I believe, made the motion he did to provide them with $50,000.

00:25:52,500	They had come before the commission several weeks ago or. Back in February. What was it that long ago? Okay. Time flies. Yeah. And that was ultimately defeated. And then there was another I think Commissioner Connelly brought up the idea of of the commissioners not receiving pay increase. That's correct as well. Yep. And that one also failed.

00:26:16,130	So we had a 7 or 8 different. To see how many motions. Just around the budget. Yeah. And Whitney will have her challenges when it comes to doing the minutes making sure we get it all right. And of course our finance team is adjusting to the changes as well. None of these things are insurmountable.

00:26:32,730	We will certainly do as we need to do to to make it all happen. But it you know, I've been a part of these discussions now for at least ten years, 11 years worth of budget meetings. This is probably the most robust discussion we've had in the recent past, and I appreciate that.

00:26:50,330	I appreciate that we're not just simply rubber stamping things. We had a number of citizens in there in the audience last night that were watching firsthand. I, I trust that there were people, just as they are now consuming this either online or at home or on the radio. We don't spend this money lightly.

00:27:06,900	We understand that this is a trusted resource that the citizens offer to us, and we, in turn, hopefully provide the best the municipal services that we can. And we're growing community. We've got new challenges, we've got growing needs, and we're trying to keep up as best we can. So the next step will be adopting the budget. Yes.

00:27:28,970	The so the way the city adopts the budget is through ordinance. A lot of places will do a resolution or something along those lines. We do an ordinance. And so this this like all of our other ordinances, this was ordinance 6681. So it falls in line numerically from here.

00:27:46,270	Yes, the finance Department will put those finishing touches on everything. And essentially we are done. Good to go for 2027. Well this was over four hours last night. Even took a five minute recess as the discussions went on. So it was robust discussion for sure.

00:28:10,570	And if you didn't catch last night's meeting or if you want to learn more after watching City Current, make sure you check out our on demand options at DakotaMediaAccess.org. You can download our app on your iPhone, iPhone or other devices, and you can also check out our Radio Access app to find out a bunch of local music and podcast entertainment options. But until next time for Jason. I'm Tom.

00:28:34,330	Have a great rest of your day! For more information on what was discussed in this episode of City Current, visit BismarckND.gov. or call (701) 355-1300. If you have suggestions, comments or issues you would like addressed in future episodes, contact us at info@freetv.org. This program airs on Government Access channel two and 602 in order on Radio Access 102.5 FM.

00:29:01,170	It's also available as a podcast, on Radio Access and as a video viewing link at FreeTV.org. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of City Current.