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Current Events
- Election Updates: There are now 4 council candidates and 2 mayor candidates. General election is Nov 5th. Click here for list of local candidates.
- If you or people in your area want to meet and discuss current/future topics related to the city, reach out to me to set up a time to visit. (email, phone call, or in person)
- As you're driving on the river road by Stephens' park, you'll notice construction on the south side of the road. That's the new central water system treatment facility in progress.
- Many of you are familiar with the phrase "rural look and feel" or "rural character." Dayton residents have said this is important to them and I agree. It's even in our mission statement. We've had a couple work sessions on the topic and I believe it'll result in a list of ideas we will be prioritizing for the future. If you have ideas, please let me know.
Work Session - Budget
This was another of many work sessions for the 2025 budget. The intent was to get closer to a final answer. The preliminary vote will be in September.
What staff is asking for includes (cost is in addition to current):
- $185k in expenses that must happen (mostly union contract increases)
- Starting to move to a full time fire department (2 FT fire fighters at $194k – though this has an offset reducing it to about $145k)
- 1 additional police officer at the start of the year and 1 halfway through the year at $216k (causes a built in increase for 2026 of $72k)
- $70k for software to help with the city’s web site (every few years we hear of software that’ll “save us labor”)
- Moving the Activity Center employee to full time ($47k)
- Assorted increases total about $130k.
- Various capital equipment - $660k.
This results in a budget increase of $1440k ($1.44M) or 18.4% increase.
My proposal deviates from this by:
- No additional full-time fire fighters this year. We’ve significantly increased the Fire Department budget in the last 2 years and while I believe we do need to start looking at transitioning to full time, after hearing the opinions I felt this year wasn’t the year to add more full-time employees.
- 1 additional police officer. I don’t like building increases into later years and believe we should push the half-year officer to next year.
- I wasn’t at all sold on the software (all 5 on the council agreed to that).
- Additional $20k for the Activity Center but not moving the employee to full time. I believe our Activity Center employee is doing a great job in creating these events but I don’t believe it’s anywhere near a full-time position, at least for next year. My additional $20k can go towards more hours and more events.
- Capital equipment - $400k. My reason for this reduction is, I would like to see us look at other options to always buying new, always buying big, etc. I want to apply some pressure to look for better solutions.
This results in a budget increase of $930k ($0.93M) or 11.7%.
Keep in mind that the combined NEW revenue (new homes and commercial) is about 14% which means any increase in the budget above 14% will result (on average) in individual taxes going up. If you include legacy home value increases, it’s at about 16%. This is referred to as capacity. The tax rate is the total property taxes divided by capacity.
We also have a ladder truck being proposed for 2028 so I’m ok with some money being put away for that (but only up to the 14% number).
From what I heard at the meeting, Members Fashant and Salonek are in that ball park and members Trost and Henderson want the full amount of capacity (16%).
Item M (Quarterly Report)
This is a report we get on budget tracking for last quarter and it didn’t indicate any unexpected issues.
Item N (EDA)
This was a continuation of an item last month that cleans up problems with the EDA originating documents. We basically didn’t change much of the intent and approved the updated documents. This was also to re-appoint the current membership which ended up getting tabled to get clarity on the terminating dates. Unfortunately, I believe one of the council members is playing some political games here but that seems to be the state of things now a days.
Item O (Cannabis Moratorium)
Until we get more details on where all of this going, the council decided to put a moratorium on it until the start of the year.
Item P (Magnus public event)
Magnus Veterans Foundation is having a public event in September. They have asked that we wave permit fees since they are a non-profit. The decision was to wave the assembly fee but not the fireworks fee. This passed 5-0.
Item Q (Heritage Day Festival)
This was the same issue as the previous item. The only difference here was both members Salonek and myself abstained due to our involvement in the festival. This passed 3-0.
Item R (Traffic Control on Dayton Parkway)
Dayton Parkway will require signal lights on either side of the interchange. This was to approve the engineering work for the project. 90% of this project will be paid for by local assessments to those businesses that drive traffic. It passed 5-0.
Item S (Amending Fee Schedule)
Our fee schedule defines all of the amounts the residents pay for services. One of these is water. Our residents get water from Dayton, Rogers, Champlin, and Maple Grove. For those that get water from outside of Dayton, they pay Dayton, but Dayton then pays the municipality that provides the water. Recently Rogers adjusted their water price so we adjusted our schedule accordingly.
Item T (Water Trail Environmental Review)
A while back our city was given a grant of about $850k to start work on a water trail between the old village DNR landing and Stephen's Park. This was to approve Stantec to do the environmental review. This will be paid for out of that grant. It passed 5-0.
Item U (Special Event Ordinance)
If you've ever questioned how much government can get into your business, this is one example (as is the next one). Our current large assembly ordinance requires anybody having an event over 200 people and lasting more than 4 hours to get permission from the city, and to add insult to injury, pay $60 for that permission. This proposal was advertised as being less restrictive... except it isn't. The old one applies to private events and this one doesn't so for that it's less restrictive, but it now applies to events with more than 50 people and lasting more than 1 hour. It was voted down 2-3. Members Trost and Henderson voted for it.
Item V (Territorial Water Extension)
Here's another eye-opener. A self storage company is trying to put a facility in on Territorial, in between Brocton and Dayton Parkway. State statute requires them to have a fire suppression sprinkler system and city water doesn't go that far west on Territorial. They had planned on putting in their own well / water storage unit but it's actually cheaper for them to pay to extend the water service at $500,000. Ponder that. $500,000 for a fire suppression system required by the state in a single level storage facility. This item was to ok the engineering. It passed 5-0.
Closed Session
This was to discuss various properties (the PIDs are listed in the packet and can be viewed HERE) for possible purchase by the city for future facilities.
As always contact me for any questions or concerns you have.