00:00:10,430	Welcome to Bismarck Insights with mayor Mike Schmitz a transparent and engaging conversational dive into meaningful topics impacting local government in Bismarck, North Dakota, Bismarck Insights is dedicated to removing barriers between the city of Bismarck and the citizens we serve every day.

00:00:31,530	Hello. Welcome to Bismarck Insights. I'm Mayor Mike Schmitz, and today we're bringing Gear Show back from City Engineering. It's springtime, and we're going to have lots of things going on in the community. And so, Gabe, there are a lot of people who know who you are, but maybe you want to just reintroduce yourself a little bit.

00:00:47,000	For those who have not seen our previous episodes and tell them, what are your experiences and what's a typical day as a city engineer? Sure. So Gabe Schell, the city engineer for the city of Bismarck. So our role is planning, designing and overseeing the construction of a lot of our municipal infrastructure within our community.

00:01:03,600	I've been in this role for about ten years from May of this year. And previous to that, I worked as a consulting engineer for about ten years prior. Sure. So let's talk about what engineering department does and how it's impacting the city as a whole and how we grow and take care of things.

00:01:21,530	And, you know, like, what a typical day that happens for you and your team. Sure. So, I mean, a lot of it revolves around answering questions involving infrastructure such as our water mains, our sanitary sewers, our traffic signals, our roadways, our sidewalks, etc.

00:01:38,800	it's both maintaining what we have and trying to find ways to stretch that infrastructure out for further for the life, or replacing that infrastructure if it's at the end of its life. And then also the conversation about new infrastructure, how do we solve problems, engineering problems with engineering type solutions, whether that's addressing a capacity constraint on the roadway network or, a maintenance concern the public works may have on,

00:01:55,630	on some of their facilities that they want to maintain. We always try to look for those sort of solutions and come up with engineering, problem engineering solutions, I should say, for those types of problems.

00:02:11,330	Typical day is a lot of coordination, a lot of understanding, trying to dig into what those issues are communicating with either the residents or internal or external stakeholders to figure out what the problems are and how do we craft solutions for them. So is there anything that you would find that maybe the community things would be a surprise the city engineer has to deal with or or your team has to deal with on a regular basis.

00:02:27,470	I mean, maybe it's not a surprise that just how long some of these things take. By the time someone says there's a problem at some location, in terms of how long it takes to analyze what that problem is, come up with what we think might be a solution, look for funding under the funding grant, opportunities

00:02:41,170	to potentially fund that. So it might be a pretty simple step to say we should put a, a stop sign at this intersection. Some of those, if it's an easy solution that are kind of easy to administer.

00:02:55,270	But if it's a more complex thing, it might take years before we're able to actually execute a develop and construct that solution. So and that's leads kind of to the next process. I many projects and people notice projects when construction starts to happen during the during the summer, spring, fall, whatever, you know, before winter or not during the winter, hopefully we don't have a major issue that happens, but, how is it

00:03:15,800	that your team prioritizes what project should be next? Because we have restrictions on how many dollars were out. We also have kind of a time limitation. We only have five, six months to actually get something done during the year. Yep.

00:03:34,630	So obviously the weather that we have in North Dakota affects greatly our ability to produce good construction infrastructure. If we lived in Florida, we'd be building things year round and we'd have a just a different scenario. But because of around here, we can kind of count on April to be early construction, and we hope to get parts of November as the end.

00:03:49,330	But those months in between are really where we have to do a lot of our work. So it becomes kind of a cyclical manner in terms of, you know, we'll do construction in the the summertime, you know, spring, summer, fall.

00:04:03,500	And then a lot of our winter time is getting ready for that, whether it's designing new projects or closing out the previous project so that we're ready to hit the ground running the next time, the weather allows us to do that. In terms of prioritizing, a lot of us just trying to find efficiencies, sometimes there's efficiencies for us to, redo the street, traffic signal at the same time, we're fixing some of the, sidewalks in that area.

00:04:21,230	But other times, those two solutions are better, actually be kept independent of each other. And let's just fix the water main first, and then maybe a year or two years later, let's fix the street component or go and do a rehabilitation on the street.

00:04:36,730	What we want to avoid is having to ruin perfectly good infrastructure or damage infrastructure that we've recently constructed. So usually it's kind of starting from the bottom up and making sure that the underground utilities are sufficient before we invest a lot of dollars on whatever that top code is, whether it's a sidewalk, a driveway, or a road.

00:04:51,730	In that scenario, how about as we look at all major new, maybe extension projects? How do we go about prioritizing those? What what's the mechanism or the science behind that? Sure. So we use a lot of factors. Some of it it might be the age of the facility.

00:05:08,000	So there could be a situation where that two lane rural ditch section roadway is coming to the end of its life because the pavements fall apart. Well, that could be one of the reasons that it gets prioritized. It might also be that that pavement is perfectly fine from the assets perspective, but it's not meeting the needs anymore because there's more traffic trying to get to that location.

00:05:22,000	Or there are some safety concerns because there aren't sidewalks or, a turn lane or whatever that may be. The deficiency might be on that corridor. So we look at both the assets, perspective as well as what that assets intended to perform.

00:05:36,870	And it's usually a combination of those two things that help us prioritize where we should invest our public resources to, to improve the network. Sure. Which let's talk about some of those big assets that are under construction, maybe right now are going to be in a lot of we don't control exit 161, but we have to work with and coordinate a lot of things with the state on that.

00:05:54,330	Is that not true? Yeah. So that exit 61 161, reconstruction project with the D.O.T., that North Dakota Department of Transportation is the lead organization. It's about a $50 million project, with most of that being federal funds. The city does have $1 million or so that we're contributing towards that effort.

00:06:13,700	But it's a it's a multi-year project, even just the construction component of it. So we'll see. The last of that construction here in the 2026 construction season. But looking back to when this these ideas first started in the D.O.T.

00:06:27,870	, first started engaging with us and coordinating, that's probably 5 or 6 years ago when those first conversations were had, both from a staff level as well as from the elected officials perspective, to understand what sort of interchange do we want here? What are the issues that are currently affecting the operations of the interchange, and what sort of solutions would help minimize or mitigate what those issues are?

00:06:41,270	As we come to a plan that works for the D.O.T., works for their governing federal Highway Agency, but also works for us as the locals to make sure that our fire trucks can leave the marine fire station in that very close proximity.

00:06:57,000	We're working throughout construction with their staff on coordinating the traffic signals through this area so that we can make sure that if the the ramp is changing on Tuesday, that we have the correct signal programing in the traffic signal controllers, that we can still funnel traffic through as efficiently as we can, understanding it's still a construction zone.

00:07:10,670	There's there's always going to be delays, but we're trying to make sure that we minimize those delays and use the tool that we have available to do so. Okay. And so that that's a big project that's been going on. Now I don't know, it's probably a year three basically of some kind of form of construction. Last year it was real heavy.

00:07:23,530	It's going to be pretty heavy again this year and then there'll be wind up to it. But we have some other things that we've had going on at the same time. And we have to figure out how to fund those and how long it takes to get those ready to go.

00:07:35,600	And once Tyler Parkway is going to be started this year in some form, but we just finished up a whole big project on Century Avenue. Like, how long does it take for some of those projects to fruition? Sure.

00:07:52,370	So from the time the, the, the idea is had that this is the corridor, we're going to improve it probably takes about a year's worth of time at a minimum, to survey the corridor, get a better understanding and in-depth engineering perspective of what the issues are in the corridor. Come up with alternatives that we think are beneficial. Choose one of those alternatives.

00:08:08,530	There's always a do nothing alternative, so if it turns out that there's not a good idea or a solution for that, there's always the right to just say, no, we're not going to fix this. At this point in time. We got to keep analyzing, come up with something better. But that process usually takes about a year to get to that point.

00:08:19,900	Then it kicks into the construction of the actual facility. So that's that usually takes at least a year. A lot of our projects will be multi-year in some way, shape or form, so that it allows the contractor to use one season to really construct that facility and get it back to a serviceable condition,

00:08:36,800	and then maybe the following season to do some of the landscaping or tree planting or some of the things that might not be the best time to install the tree in November in the snow, but you could still be finishing up some of the sidewalk as long as you're keeping it covered and protected from the elements.

00:08:49,800	So there's some of those elements that carry over and do the second year, but most of those larger, corridor reconstruction type projects, I would say, are primarily a one year construction with the following second year. So from initiation to the end, it's usually about a three year process most of the time.

00:09:03,800	And there's one we have coming up. Starting the summer is going to be it's no longer because we have that's a major extension through some terrain. That's a little unique. Yep.

00:09:20,700	And so what what's going to be happening from Tyler Parkway this summer and not only the roadway, but I think there's stormwater easement or stormwater related items as well. So our Tyler Parkway extension will get going in earnest here in 2026. And that's an extension from Valley Drive up to Cogburn Road. It's about a 1500 foot or so extension. So it's not a very long project, but we are traversing across a coulee with that. There's not an embankment there today.

00:09:39,870	So one of the major components will be hauling in material, on from, from an on site location to fill up enough room at the bottom of the coulee to place a road on top of that. We know that that there will be settlement in in that embankment.

00:09:55,000	So we're doing work, initially at the bottom of the coulee to help, stiffen up the surrounding ground. We'll be installing some aggregate piers and some other geotechnical elements to ensure that when we place this large embankment on the ground, that that ground can support it.

00:10:10,270	Then we'll have the process of bringing in the large embankment and hauling materials down there and compacting in a uniform manner so that we can safely put a road on top that will continue to, settle throughout all, all eternity.

00:10:24,470	So we're trying to take as many steps as we can to minimize what that settlement will look like, so that when we put the road on, it will be an asset for a very, very long time that we can maintain. In doing so, we'll have that stretch out over a couple of construction seasons. So our 2026 season will be mostly earth hauling and embankment material and putting in, a box culvert structure on the bottom to convey water, through this embankment.

00:10:40,630	And then year two, after we get as much of that settlement out as we think is sufficient, it will be one. We'll be installing the road so the public won't really have access to cross Tyler Parkway or cross Tyler Coulee on Tyler Parkway until the 2027 construction season, but they'll see a lot of activity here

00:10:54,430	in the 2026 construction season down in the Valley. And at the same time, do we not have some stormwater stuff going on in that same area? Yep. So we'll have some stormwater improvements in the Tyler Coulee area.

00:11:10,170	So we've had a long standing master plan that we've modified a couple of times in more recent years that identified some much smaller embankments. These are in the magnitude of 10 to 15ft tall. So they're not filling in the entire valley by any stretch of the imagination. So a series of those, including the Tyler Parkway crossing, and some upstream of those will be constructed here in 2026.

00:11:27,000	We're trying to find, once again, some of those efficiencies. If you have a contractor on site putting in infrastructure for Tyler Parkway, that was a really good time for us to have that same contractor build some of the stormwater improvements, because that's just one less coordination item to worry about, and we'll be able to kind of get those elements

00:11:40,970	completed in the 2026 construction season and get the grass growing and those facilities in operation. Yet in 20 states, do we have any other major extension or road projects? Besides our, you know, road repair and maintenance type stuff that's historically goes on every year? So I wouldn't say there's any really large extension projects

00:12:00,700	besides the Tyler Parkway one. That also our major ones are the other ones that the D.O.T. is leading. This year, there will be a reconstruction of, the interstate itself from exit 161 to the east towards the Nelson.

00:12:15,270	So that's a process that will be under construction in the 2026 construction season, similar to what was done last year in on the, the other lanes, the D.O.T. is also going to be performing some what I'll say some lighter pavement management, some scrub ceiling, some micro surfacing I think is what what the what their, improvement will be on a lot of the roadways, including the interstate, including,

00:12:33,170	expressway, Bismarck Expressway in University Drive. What are the accommodations the Dot is making in that project that they're bidding in? April will be, nighttime work.

00:12:50,170	So the contractor will be performing all of that work, or the majority of that work under nighttime conditions as a means to avoid placing that infrastructure or that repair at the same time that everyone's trying to use that asset or the roadway in this instance. So try to make as many accommodations as we can to limit the impact on the traveling public by constructing that infrastructure at night when it's just less.

00:13:04,170	So, is there a place where the residents can find out about what the timelines are, when construction is happening, when roads are going to be open on an easy basis. So we have a couple of resources that we use. On our website, it is Mark and.gov/streets.

00:13:20,100	So on that streets page we have both a construction map showing all of the resources, all of the projects that we'll be undertaking in 2026, the type or the facility, they'll be repaired. It doesn't get into the timeline. We have another map on that same website that gets into our lane closures and our road restrictions.

00:13:35,430	So if there is a lane closure on the expressway, a lane closure on a state street or a major arterial, we will post that information to that location and send out a press release with graphics to the news media, throughout our community. And then even citizens can sign up for text alerts and email alerts if they want to know everything that we're doing.

00:13:50,000	There's the ability on that website to just subscribe to those updates as well. And that's what I try to make points for everybody is, is that there are resources. You can find out when things are going to happen.

00:14:04,530	Maybe we don't know today when it's going to happen, but as that timeline approaches and is more set, you can find out and say, you know, where to be able to commute, and what to maybe avoid. Yeah, that is definitely the case. Yeah. So, you know, so we're talking about Tyler Parkway, and I know that the Century Avenue extension, those are projects that came about and were funded through a sales tax.

00:14:24,230	And on the, right now, we're going to ask the citizens to extend that. Let's talk about that process. And what is you know, what if we passed that sales tax extension, what are we going to going to be able to accomplish in general? Sure. So at a high level, we've used the half cent sales tax.

00:14:39,530	So the city's use those dollars to invest in corridors like 43rd Avenue, Cooley Drive, the Century Avenue project that you mentioned, our Tyler Parkway, South Washington Street from 2024 is construction.

00:14:59,170	So really large arterial type reconstruction projects taking an insufficient or a roadway that has some sort of deficiency, whether it's usually it's capacity related, and build a new facility, whether it's three lanes, five lanes, whatever the right traffic control situation might be, roundabouts, traffic signals, etc.. To build a facility that is more befitting of the adjacent development that is either there today or that we would anticipate being there in the near future.

00:15:14,870	The citizens passed that in 2018, with a sunset clause that would have that, expire ten years later. So we'll see an expiration of that sales tax, in 2029 or early 2029.

00:15:32,070	And so what the city will be proposing is an extension of that sales tax to use it still for roadways, whether it but it will be expanding that project list that the voters previously approved to still have those roadways on there because some of them worked, constructed or weren't constructed to their their final version of roadway configuration.

00:15:46,730	So we'll solve many or all of the existing roadways that were on the project list, but we'll be adding a few other ones that, as we've seen growth in the community in the last ten or so years, additional roadways might be eligible for for redevelopment or development.

00:16:03,470	So we'll see a new project list that will expand the scope of, of the roadways, still being just for roads, but having some collectors and some even arterial and local roads as well on that project list and then extend the sunset to be 2038. So another ten years from when it was planned to be sunset did extend that out. Another ten years, so that we can accomplish more of the roadways that are on that project list.

00:16:18,630	And what has that funding mechanism allowed us to do, related to roadways? If we didn't have it, what would we not have? Maybe it's a good way to ask the question. Sure.

00:16:35,800	So historically, we would have funded these large arterial roadway projects through mostly through our federal aid allotment that we get from the federal government, through the D.O.T. and eventually through our Bismarck man and metropolitan planning organization. Those dollars, I think, were somewhere in the tune of $18 million over the last time period, the last ten years or so.

00:16:53,270	That amount of money would, would give us probably two miles worth of reconstruction is what we would have been able to accomplish. But we did use the federal dollars in the program that's able to expand and extend the sales tax and how far those dollars reached by still using the federal dollars. But if we relied only on the federal dollars, we probably would have just had two miles worth of roads.

00:17:07,230	So imagine probably just the 43rd Avenue corridor from Washington Street to State Street, and then from State Street to 26th Street. That probably would have been the projects that were the highest priority at the time. So those are the first two that we constructed with a half cent sales tax.

00:17:22,070	That would have meant that our Ash Coulee Drive project from 2023, our South Washington Street project from 2024, and our East Century Avenue project from 2025, all would not be constructed. It would just be kind of waiting for allocation or waiting for another solution to come that would fund that.

00:17:42,000	Those projects and other solutions would have maybe been even potentially had some special assessment, which is what we're trying to avoid yet. So we're able to, through the half cent sales tax, use the funds that the community provided to invest those dollars back into the community.

00:17:59,100	So we find that these projects are probably larger in scope and scale than what a typical assessment would be, manageable for that single family home or even that business. Just because of the scope and scale of of how expensive it is to build a new roadway from scratch.

00:18:15,000	With water mains and sewer mains and all the elements that go into that particular facility, without the half cent sales tax, it would be a very large assessment on those types of projects, which would maybe make it not feasible that that is quite possibly not feasible. That is definitely a consideration.

00:18:33,730	And and knowing that most of these roadways that are being constructed or rehabilitated through the House on sales tax are roadways that are being used by the public at large, including individuals who are not residents of the city of Bismarck. That's why it's targeted to those particular projects that rather than your local street, I guess there's some value in the sense that the dollars collected from from the sales tax within Bismarck is both paid for by the citizens of Bismarck.

00:18:53,900	Obviously a large percentage of it is, but also those visitors that come from outside of the Bismarck corporate limit. So we're able to have more of the community that is using the facilities coming into our community to shop or to work to help pay for maintaining and building the facilities that we need in the city by by extracting

00:19:07,700	some of that cost from, from our visitors, as well. It's important for we realize it's not a new house on sales tax. It's a continuation of the existing half cent sales tax that we're asking the voters to say yes or no to. Yep, that's correct.

00:19:23,630	It would show no difference on if if the sales tax measure passes or, that it would not show an increase on whatever that purchase would be for that land. Alright.

00:19:42,000	So as we look to what we currently have for funding, which ends in 2028 or early 2029, do we have any projects that we can complete with those dollars beyond Tyler Parkway? So the remaining dollars that we would anticipate collecting over the next couple of years, if the sales tax extension would not be approved by the public, there's still elements that we would be able to put money towards.

00:19:58,130	On the State Street corridor is a corridor that we haven't invested, very much of our local money because there's eligibility for for federal and state aid on some of those corridor. So we would look to see what our, what is still left on the project list of corridors that are eligible for funding and then look to see what the greatest needs are on those corridors to, to help prioritize those dollars.

00:20:13,000	Some of that is, is why we are considering an extension, because it adds additional project list opportunities. And in some ways, some of those projects might be more, critically important to the citizens at this point in time than some of the list that, is on. The some of the projects that are on the project was currently.

00:20:28,970	So if we were to look at just the ending in 28 roughly, and it's again, it's a rough number because we don't really know until the taxes collected from sales. But what does it look like? The fund would have available. So we'd anticipate around 20 million or so somewhere, somewhere around 20 million.

00:20:46,870	It would be our estimation at this point in time of, unencumbered projects. You know, we don't have anything else in the books past our Tyler Parkway extension.

00:21:02,730	So we would feel that those dollars are the ones that are still available to be put towards any eligible project on on the project list or the project list as revised, and to give some perception of what that $20 million would pay for roughly how many miles, so that 20 million would probably go towards, 1 to 2 miles of arterial road reconstruction. If that was put towards a State Street type project and it's six lanes wide, it probably wouldn't stretch as far.

00:21:19,900	Maybe it's one mile on on a state Street would equal to, you know, that $20 million compared to other corridors where that one mile capital stretch a little different.

00:21:33,970	So I'll just want to give perspective to people so they know why, why we feel it's important that we have this funding source to continue to take care of our roads and provide the the network that's necessary to get to and from major places, I guess. Yeah, that's what we look at.

00:21:52,330	And it's interesting in, in Bismarck or any community, as we look at that network where we build the network, what we're asking the citizens to reside within that network and use it. We're not asking the citizens to to manage the water main or the sewer main once they flush the toilet or turn on the tap, that that's their only job. It it's up to us to get the water or sewage away or to the transportation network.

00:22:04,600	So it's kind of its own little animal, because we're asking people to really occupy that network and use it. So we appreciate the input that we get from the public, because they are the ones using the network and and knowing the deficiencies or knowing the delays or the areas of improvement because they're,

00:22:16,970	you know, ingrained within that network on a daily basis. And that leads into working with the public. And what what is part of your role when it comes to engaging with our residents? What we're we're all civil servants working on behalf of of the public. So it's as we're trying to find solutions for finding solutions.

00:22:33,900	But for me, as a person having a problem and trying to find a solution for that person who's engaging in that system, whether it's a a stormwater pipe that isn't draining the way it should, or a road facility or a traffic signal progression that maybe isn't operating at its greatest efficiency.

00:22:49,430	We're asking we get a lot of information from the public because they they're the eyes and ears. To be able to say, it rained last night and I got water at this location. I've never seen water there before, so it's up to us to try to help figure out if there's a solution that involves the city.

00:23:00,530	Maybe it's something upstream that change. Maybe it's something that we're just seeing more, intense rainfalls. And there really isn't a solution per se to to to solve the problem.

00:23:15,370	It's as we engage with the public, we try to take as much information as we can to better understand what the problems are and see if there are solutions in the realm of infrastructure that we can present. Sometimes those solutions are more enforcement activities.

00:23:31,730	If it's, a police officer, you know, helping with enforcement on speeding on a corridor, it's a problem that the vehicle speeding, but it's both because maybe there's not a sufficient speed limit signs out there to let them know the speed limit is maybe there's other solutions that we can come up with engineering so it doesn't feel as comfortable going faster than the speed limit. But there's also an enforcement activity.

00:23:42,800	So sometimes maybe the problem comes to us and we try to look at solutions, but we reach out to other departments within the city to help find if there's a solution that's more holistic in nature. And how do we go about trying to engage the the community? You hold some opportunities.

00:23:57,170	Well, even talking about the sales tax, we've had some opportunities for people to engage on that. So let's talk about that process. And and how do we how do we have more of that from our public? I mean, basically it's public come to these meetings when we have them, but let's talk about it. Sure. So a lot of it is through engagement opportunities.

00:24:12,900	Usually it's because there's a reason that we're asking for input, because we're trying to get that input before a decision is made or before a direction is given. Obviously we're we're open to input at any given time.

00:24:26,500	Someone calls us up or sends in an email, contacts us through our website very, very frequently just to ask a question. So we're always open to that. But if we're trying to go through a more strategic process at the city, we'll have a very detailed engagement process we'll try to use that is reaching the audience where they are. So it's come to a public meeting. That's great.

00:24:40,370	We know that there are people that are busy that don't have time, so we try to put those same resources out there to be consumed at their leisure. So maybe the same slide deck or the same information.

00:24:53,270	That's shared at a public meeting is is recomposed or reconstituted in a in a different way that can be consumed by that citizen and always with the request to say, please look at this information and give us your feedback.

00:25:06,230	What are the things that you like? What are the things that you didn't like? We take all that information and whether it's through a staff vetting or if it's eventually a commission decision, we we present that information so that we can try to make the best decision as we can with the information available. So that's kind of the typical process that we use in those additions. And how do we let people know about a public meeting.

00:25:20,070	So a public meeting we'll try to use as much as we can the the news media outlets that we have. So we'll we'll broadcast that information out through the channels that can be can expand that message. We also have our own social media and our own websites.

00:25:34,270	So anyone who follows our information or follows our channels is able to get that engagement. If we know we're doing a project in a particular neighborhood and we want that neighborhood input, we'll send out direct mailings or postcards to those individuals saying, I think you probably are the one that needs to know the most about this project, because this is the backyard of your area

00:25:49,370	that we plan on building this new facility. So we'll do a more direct engagement when we know that that's the person that we're trying to reach for those higher profile type projects as well. And we did back in December, I believe it was.

00:26:03,900	We had some more community wide forums, specifically when we talked about the sales tax extension and, and what the project would look like, or projects that might look like on the list. And, and we're not afraid to get critical comments either, are we know that a lot of times I love getting criticism because it's always constructive.

00:26:21,270	Even if someone calls up and they're yelling and swearing, they're calling because they have a reason and they're passionate about that issue. So we try to push the the swearing and the yelling part aside and just try to think of what is the thing that they're really asking about.

00:26:33,170	How do we mind that data mined that information to come up with what this real problem is and what the solutions might be? So we're always trying to extract that information. We want to have a bad, solution vetted early. We don't want to get to the point of constructing this thing and then having it not work and having someone say, well, I told you so.

00:26:47,430	If someone has some good insights as to what the water elevation is when it rains out there, we take that neighbor's information. We try to corroborate that with what we think is happening, and make sure that we all have the same understanding of what the problem is, and we get a lot of that through our public engagement.

00:27:01,070	So our public I just encourage you to be on the lookout for when there's notifications posted to to engage, because that's how we can make better decisions as a community. And it's it's the information we gather from that is what we can sanitize and come up with a potential solution to fix a problem.

00:27:20,700	Yeah, I feel very confident. If we had 75,000 people say we want alternative B, and they all said that, that we would know that we're doing right by by the people when we have only ten people engaged and three of them say, do this and seven of them do this other thing,

00:27:35,000	it's hard to know exactly if that's what the all of the public want, or if that's just the very select public that engaged in the process. So the more public engagement we get, the more confident we feel that that engagement reflects the view of the total public and not just maybe a couple of interested citizens.

00:27:49,070	So as we look to the future, where are some of our challenges or opportunities for Bismarck? I think a lot of our challenges and opportunities are thinking through funding streams. And how do we approach funding? We'll have a really large, stormwater management and flood protection project in South Bismarck coming to a head here soon.

00:28:08,470	Looking at how we'll fund that project is something that's kind of the central have to get made in the very near future for both our local share as well as what else we can potentially get from our partners at the state as well as the federal government.

00:28:22,700	So funding is always top of mind because we can have the greatest solutions possible for a particular problem that we see in the community. But ultimately those cost money. And so trying to find what's the right amount of money to invest in that solution is always a challenge, and it's always a top of mind sort of subject, for sure.

00:28:37,530	And we don't want to go and build, try to build something knowing we can't fund it and vice versa. We don't have a bunch of money and then not use it. Yep. So it's kind of making sure that our analysis and our understanding of the problem is in lockstep with what we think is a legitimate funding plan.

00:28:54,170	Even funding the design or whether it's performed in-house by engineering staff or performed by through a consultant, it takes time and resources to to analyze those things. And so we want to make sure we're analyzing the things that maybe have some daylight on the end of that process to constructing a solution that would solve that problem.

00:29:10,800	And so we've talked about a lot of projects. I think it's important for everybody understand that we partner significantly with the state of North Dakota and federal D.O.T. to get some of these projects done.

00:29:27,530	And even utilizing our sales tax dollars sometimes allows us to construct a project knowing we're going to get federal funding, but we can wait for that federal funding to come in. For example, think South Washington Street is one of those. It's not not true yet. So our South Washington Street, we were able to advance construct that project.

00:29:42,430	So we used entirely our our sales tax dollars to construct the federal aid eligible elements of the project, with the understanding and agreement from the Dot, try to facilitation that when the federal funding is available in a later year, that we would be granted those same federal funds as at that point in time.

00:29:58,770	So we were able to get that project in the ground faster, which generally speaking, the construction industry, if you build it today, it's going to be less expensive than building it tomorrow. There's always inflationary aspects that seem to increase the cost as we look into the future. Rarely do we see cost savings if we wait five years, it is rarely less expensive to do something five years later.

00:30:13,930	So our ability to construct those facilities early and then get paid back by the dot a year later, or maybe even two years later, we're able to see the cost savings by getting that infrastructure on the ground in an earlier time frame. Great.

00:30:28,530	So is there anything that you would like every Bismarck resident to know that's behind the scenes of the city? From your perspective? I would say, as we're approaching our construction season, the thing that I would like everyone to realize is just to drive slowly through those construction zones.

00:30:46,970	When we see a cone, hopefully we're all remembering, driver's ed or getting our permit or whatever those rules of the road are, and just slowing down because you might not know what that activity is. And our ability to have potentially a construction worker walking along that cone. And it's a very disruptive feeling when someone's driving past at 35 miles an hour, next to that construction work zone.

00:31:04,270	So just encouraging as much of the public as we can to drive slowly through those construction zones as we enter that season. I guess that'll be the one message I don't want to share as much as possible.

00:31:16,270	And that's, thank you for saying that, Gabe, because it is it's important we keep those men and women safe, but we also keep our drivers safe for traversing through the area because of if there is some construction object may not be a person, it might be a piece of equipment that causes an ultimate quick decision that may cause an accident. Now we've brought the police department. The fire department in, Someone's been hurt. Like we want to avoid that.

00:31:35,470	And when the road closed sign is up for that barricade that says this road is closed, leave us. You don't have to drive past that to see what happens. And then have to turn around and come back out. That's not helping anyone. Maintain safety in the worksite.

00:31:46,970	It's really not helping that resident get to where they want to get to. If the road closed signs up, that means the road is closed. Yep. Well, Gabe, thanks for joining me today and talking about our upcoming summer season and the project list related to the extension of the sales tax and the the value that brings to the community.

00:32:02,000	That's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

00:32:15,700	Thank you for watching Bismarck Insights with Mayor Mike Schmitz. If you have specific topics or questions you like addressed in future episodes, email mschmitz@bismarcknd.gov.

00:32:29,270	Or call the City of Bismarck at (701) 355-1300. To learn more about the City of Bismarck, visit BismarckND.gov or follow us on a variety of social media channels by searching BismarckNDgov Bismarck Insights is a collaboration between Dakota Media Access and the City of Bismarck.

00:32:51,730	You may find Bismarck Insights episodes on Government Access channels two and 602, as well as on Roku, Apple TV and Fire TV devices on Radio Access 102.5 FM and on demand at FreeTV.org.